Stupid Cupid 🧸

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

His warmth still tingled on your lips, the scratch of his stubble against your skin. You groaned. How were you supposed to make it to work now? 

Your social work internship - unpaid, no living stipend - and now, somehow, complicated by a ridiculous work crush. You hadn’t thought you’d develop feelings for him. That old man. He carried enough issues to keep your social work brain busy for years. Enough that you found yourself diagnosing him every time he spoke.

You did three night shifts a week for experience, all while clocking full time at a dead-end job that had nothing to do with social work. Your life felt like an endless grind, the finish line nowhere in sight. 

Two years of full-time classes plus unpaid fieldwork, on top of a bachelor’s that somehow took five and a half years, then the giant exam covering everything you’d learned, and two more years of supervised practice. And today was only day two. Day one had been an absolute shit show.

You watched your supervisor tell three patients their insurance wouldn’t cover treatment. You learned how to report neglect through the proper channels. You filed stacks of paperwork for free. You sat in on a family being told their mother had died. Then you endured meeting after meeting after meeting. Just when you thought it was over, you and your supervisor got paged to a psychiatric patient brandishing a scalpel.

Of course he zeroed in on you.

You were obviously the newbie. One wild swing nicked your forearm. Not deep, but enough to leave a mark. Enough to bleed. 

That’s when you met Mr. PTSD - the grizzled veteran who charged in like a knight in scrubs, tackled the guy, dosed him with Midazolam, and ended the ordeal in under a minute. Then he led you to a private room and stitched you up himself. Two stitches. A battle scar, if you were feeling dramatic.

All you could think about were his hazel-green eyes, locked on the task, and the way his salt-and-pepper hair, mostly salt, let’s be honest, was mussed from the scuffle. He was everything your life didn’t need right now. And you already knew he was going to ruin your fucking life.

By the time you made it to the hospital, you had a very solid, very rational explanation for the dream.

Sleep deprivation did things to people. Strange things. Everyone knew that.

You badged in and exchanged tired nods with the day shift staff on their way out.

As you walked, you rubbed at the wound on your forearm without thinking about it. It was warm. Warmer than yesterday, maybe. It ached in a low, persistent way that you filed under problems for later.

You rounded the corner toward your supervisor's office and walked directly into a person.

Solid. Immovable. Definitely not a wall.

Hands caught your arms before you could bounce off completely.

"Morning."

You looked up.

Jack Abbot.

"Oh, God," you said.

One eyebrow climbed. "That bad?"

"No - sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Careful. Could've been a bed coming around that corner."

"Right. Sorry, Dr. Abbot -"

"Your arm." His attention dropped to your forearm, his grip shifting, careful. "How's it feeling?"

You looked down at it. "Fine. Sore. A little warm, but -"

"Let me see it before your shift?"

You glanced up and caught yourself looking at his mouth for half a second too long. "Sure."

He led you to one of the high-needs rooms and gestured at the bed.

You sat. He pulled over a stool and settled in front of you.

Close enough that you caught his aftershave.

You didn't comment on that.

He unwrapped the bandage without a word. After a moment, his frown deepened.

"It's infected." He pressed lightly around the stitches. "Should've put you on antibiotics yesterday."

You weren't really listening. You were watching the way his focus narrowed. The slight drop of his lashes, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver coming through in his beard more than the brown now.

"You know what?" he said.

"What?"

He didn't look up yet. "Coming back the day after that, no paycheck, straight off a day shift." He glanced up. "That's not nothing."

The heat reached your ears before you could stop it.

"How did you know about the day shift?"

"Asked your supervisor."

Your stomach turned over.

"Wanted to check on you." He was already reaching for the fresh bandage. "And I was curious about you." He said it like it was obvious. Like it wasn't a thing.

He finished wrapping your arm and gave it a brisk pat.

ThThen he leaned back on the stool, elbows on his knees.

"So," he said. "When do you sleep?"

You blinked. "Sorry?"

"You're pulling day shifts, three nights here a week, and grad school on top of it." He looked at you. "So. When do you sleep?"

"I sleep."

"When?"

"Sometimes."

"Not an answer."

You shrugged.

"Lunch breaks for class. Then five-thirty to seven-thirty before I come in. Midnight to seven-thirty after."

Something moved across his face.

"Jesus."

"It's temporary."

"Sure it is."

You opened your mouth, then closed it.

"Personal life?" he asked. "Friends? Anything?"

You laughed. "No."

"I'm not joking."

"Neither am I."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Dating?"

Your stomach dropped. "What?"

"Boyfriend?" A pause. "Girlfriend." Another pause. "I don't -" His ears went pink. "Partner. That's the word."

That made you laugh. He exhaled, visibly relieved.

He reached for his prescription pad and scrawled something down.

"Here."

You looked at it. "Antibiotics?"

"Antibiotics."

"Thrilling."

"You got stabbed on day one."

"Sliced, technically."

He gave you a look. "Try not to get stabbed again."

"I'll do my best."

"No." Flat. "Do better than that."

A knock sounded at the door before either of you could speak. It swung open and the night social worker stepped inside. "There you are."  

Her eyes immediately found you. "Well, I’ll be damned."  

You blinked. "What?"  

"I honestly didn’t think you’d be back tonight."  

Your hand went to the fresh bandage on your arm. "Oh."  

She tapped it. "Most people don’t get stabbed with a scalpel on their first day and then show up for round two."  

Abbot snorted. "Told 'em the same."  

"Thanks," the social worker said, nodding to him. "See? The adults are worried about you."  

"I’m right here," he grumbled.  

"Exactly."  

Despite yourself, you laughed. She shook her head. "Seriously, though - how’s the arm?"  

"Infected, apparently."  

Abbot held up the prescription pad. "Taken care of."  

"Good." Her expression softened. "You don’t have to prove anything. Nobody would blame you for taking a few days off."  

Her concern caught you off guard. "I’m okay."  

She gave you a look that said she wasn’t convinced but wouldn’t push it. "Well, since you’re here, might as well put you to work."  

Abbot groaned. "There it is."  

"We’ve got a veteran in room twelve," she said, the joking atmosphere vanishing instantly.  

"He came in during day shift for a psychiatric crisis," she continued. "Agreed to a safety plan, promised he’d see his therapist tomorrow, and was discharged."  

"And?" Abbot asked.  

She sighed. "He got home and came right back about an hour later."  

Abbot’s shoulders slumped. "The urges got worse?"  

"He says they’re overwhelming." She folded her arms. "No support system. No family nearby, no friends he feels comfortable calling."  

"Any active plan?" Abbot pressed.  

"He’s being cagey."  

That wasn’t good.  

"He did the right thing coming back," she said. "But he keeps apologizing, convinced he’s wasting everyone’s time."  

Silence fell. Then she looked at Abbot. "I’d like you there."  

His eyes narrowed. "Because he’s a veteran?"  

"Because you’re a veteran."  

After a moment, Abbot nodded. "Okay."  

She turned to you. "And you’re coming too."  

You pointed at yourself. "Me?"  

"It’s your second day."  

"Exactly."  

"Perfect time to learn."  

You glanced between them. "What am I supposed to do?"  

She smiled. "Watch. Listen. Learn."  

Abbot stood, pushing his stool back. "That’s social worker code for ‘try not to say anything stupid.’"  

She pointed at him. "See? Already learning."  

You rolled your eyes and climbed off the bed. The three of you headed down the hall toward room twelve.

Room twelve was silent when you stepped in. Too silent.  

The veteran perched on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor. He looked about late thirties, early forties. A ball cap lay beside him. His fingers were so tightly interlaced his knuckles had turned white.  

Sarah, the social worker, tapped gently on the open door. "Hey, Mark. Mind if we come in?"  

He shrugged without looking up. "Not like I can stop you."  

She offered a small, encouraging smile. "I’m Sarah. Remember, we met when you arrived. This is Dr. Abbot, and this is my intern."  

Mark glanced up just long enough to register the three of you, then dropped his gaze again. "Great. More people."  

He didn’t sound angry. Just worn out.  

Sarah eased into a chair across from him. "I know you’ve already talked to a lot of folks."  

"Yeah."  

"And I know that’s frustrating."  

He let out a bitter laugh. "Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover it."  

She nodded. "Fair enough."  

Quiet settled. You shifted your weight, uneasy. Sarah didn’t flinch. Abbot sat unmoved.  

Finally Mark exhaled. "I shouldn’t have come back."  

Sarah waited. "What makes you say that?"  

He rubbed his face. "I was here before. I told everyone I’d be fine, that I’d see my therapist tomorrow."  

"You did."  

"And then I got home," his voice cracked "made it maybe an hour."  

You and Sarah and Abbot stayed silent.  

"The second I walked into my apartment…" He shook his head. "It just got loud again."  

You caught Abbot’s eyes. Something in his expression tightened ever so slightly. Nothing dramatic, but you noticed.  

Mark laughed without humor. "‘Loud.’ Doesn’t even make sense."  

"It makes sense," Abbot said softly. "To me."  

Silence fell. Then Mark looked up - really looked at someone for the first time. Abbot leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, no hint of judgment or pity. Just understanding.  

"You served?" Mark asked.  

Abbot nodded. "Army."  

Mark studied him. "What’d you do?"  

"Medic."  

A short laugh escaped Mark. "Of course."  

You saw Mark’s shoulders drop a fraction, just enough.  

"Then you know."  

"Yeah," Abbot replied. "I know."  

You tried to track Sarah’s technique, how she validated Mark, guided him toward safety plans, but every time you looked away you found yourself watching Abbot. He never took over. He rarely spoke. When he did, it was concise, thoughtful, exactly what Mark needed.  

Bit by bit, the tension in the room eased. By the time Sarah was outlining overnight admission, follow-up care, and community resources, Mark looked less like a man drowning and more like someone ready to accept help. And through it all, Abbot stayed steady, present.  

You knew you should focus on the social-work lesson unfolding. Really, you did. But each time your eyes wandered, they always landed back on Dr. Abbot.

The door clicked shut behind the three of you.

Sarah turned to you immediately. "What'd you notice?"

"About -"

"The interaction."

You glanced at Abbot. He looked entertained.

"Don't," he said.

"I wasn't -"

"You were."

You looked back at Sarah. "He opened up more once Dr. Abbot mentioned his service."

"Good." She kept looking at you.

There was more. Of course there was more.

"Dr. Abbot was validating him without…" you searched for the phrasing, "without centering himself."

"Also good." Sarah started moving down the hall. You followed. "Anything else?"

You thought about how little you'd actually been paying attention to Sarah.

"Active listening," you said.

"There you go."

Abbot put his hands in his pockets.

"See? Learning."

"Being interrogated."

"Same thing," he said.

Sarah shook her head. "You're both wrong, actually."

Abbot raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

She pointed at you. "You're learning to be a social worker." Then at him. "And you're teaching without realizing it."

He grimaced. "God."

"Mm."

"Does that make me old?"

"You were already old."

You laughed. You couldn't help it.

Abbot looked at you like you'd betrayed him. Then something shifted in his expression. Not the careful, measured look he'd worn in room twelve. Something looser. Unguarded.

It lasted only a second.

It was, unfortunately, a very good second.

----

The rest of the shift blurred by. Fortunately so, given how vividly you remembered being stabbed on your first day. You helped several patients sort out their health coverage. Sarah coached you on approaching someone you thought might be a trafficking victim, only for it to turn out to be an entirely different situation. 

You sat in on a talk with a recovering addict, observed discharge planning, and mediated between a doctor and the family of an incapacitated patient. It was a good day. A busy day. An exhausting day. By the time Sarah finally sent you off, your brain felt like mush.

You should have gone home. Instead, you found yourself standing in the ER, staring into space. You needed a buffer between the hospital and the rest of your life. A chance to breathe. A chance to think. A chance to stop thinking.

Your eyes drifted to the elevators. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you stepped inside. The floor buttons lit up in sequence. You scanned them until you saw one labeled "Roof." It needed badge access. Worst case, it simply wouldn’t register. You swiped your badge. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the light turned green. "Oh." The doors slid shut, and you went up.

When they reopened, you stepped onto the roof. 

A cool evening breeze hit your face and you inhaled deeply - for the first time all shift. The city stretched below you, lights still shining against a night sky. A long breath escaped you, turning into a small, relieved groan. Maybe this was exactly what you needed.

"Whoa there." You nearly jumped out of your skin. Spinning around, you saw Dr. Abbot standing a few feet away, his toes alarmingly close to the edge. "What are you doing up here?" he asked.

You stared at him, then at how close he was to the ledge. "I could ask you the same thing," you said.

His mouth twitched. "Fair."

You stepped over and stood beside him, nowhere near the brink. Abbot noticed. "Smart."

You glanced down. "Unlike some people."

He chuckled. "I’ve been coming up here for years."

"Seriously?"

He nodded. "Whenever the shift gets particularly bad."

"How often is that?"

He looked out across the city lights. "More than I’d like."

You sank down onto a near low wall, leaned back, and watched the city breathe beneath you.

The quiet between you wasn’t awkward. Just still.  

After a moment, he exhaled. "That veteran really struck a chord."  

You turned to him. "Because he was ex-military?"  

"Partly," he said without looking away from the skyline. "Mostly because he did it the right way."  

You knitted your brow. "What are you getting at?"  

"He asked for help." He answered at once. "He realized he couldn’t manage alone, walked into an ER, and admitted he was terrified."  

Abbot shook his head slowly. "Most people don’t do that."  

His gravity made your throat tighten. Before you knew it, you’d fallen into case-worker mode. "So you’re -"  

He groaned.  

"- frustrated?" you finished hesitantly.  

"No."  

"What?"  

"Don’t start social-working me."  

A laugh slipped out. "You don’t want to talk about your feelings?"  

"Not at all."  

"You know that’s not healthy."  

"I’m aware."  

"You always tell your patients…"  

"I know what I tell them."  

You gave him a small smile. "And?"  

"Stop diagnosing me."  

"Social-working."  

"Whatever."  

For a moment you both cracked a grin. Then your smile fell.  

"Still, he’s going to be alright."  

He glanced at you. "The veteran?"  

You nodded.  

"He asked for help."  

On the rooftop, wind scoured your face as you stared at the distant city lights, blurring in the night.  

"I didn’t."  

You felt his expression shift before you dared look.  

"Three times."  

The words tumbled out before you could stop them.  

He spoke so softly you almost missed it. "Three times?"  

You nodded again. "The last was in 2020, during the pandemic."  

Abbot said nothing, didn’t fill the silence, and you found you preferred it that way.  

"It all just... fell apart at once." You shrugged, trying to make it sound insignificant. "I was angry for a long time that it failed."  

Your confession hung between you, raw and vulnerable. When you finally met his eyes, they were unwavering.  

"I’m glad it didn’t work."  

His simple words landed heavy. You looked away first - you didn’t trust yourself to keep looking at him.  

Silence settled again, carried away by the wind and the muted hum of the city far below. Minutes passed.  

At last you cleared your throat. "I should get going. I’m on duty at eight."  

"Yeah."  

His voice was rougher than usual. Neither of you moved.  

Finally you rose, slung your bag over your shoulder.  

"See you tomorrow, Dr. Abbot."  

His lips curved in a brief, hesitant smile. "See you tomorrow."  

You stepped toward the elevator, feeling his eyes on your back. Just before the doors closed, you glanced over your shoulder. He was still there. 

Watching the city, watching you go.

--

Weeks passed. Then months.

The pattern established itself without any particular decision on your part. Shift ends, bag over shoulder, badge still clipped to your chest, elevator button for the roof. Sometimes you'd find Abbot already up there, still in his coat, hands in his pockets, looking out at the city like he was waiting for it to explain itself. Sometimes he'd arrive later, slightly out of breath, muttering something about a consult that ran long. Sometimes the roof was empty when you got there and stayed empty all night.

You'd started keeping a fleece in your locker for the colder evenings.

Pittsburgh at dusk had a particular quality you'd never noticed before. The way the bridges lit up in sequence, the way the rivers caught the last of the light before the city swallowed it. You and Abbot talked about everything and nothing up there. The weird bureaucratic logic of insurance denials. What it had been like to do field medicine. Whether the vending machine on the third floor had always been broken or if something specific had happened to it. Abbots late wife. Your suicide attempts. 

On other nights neither of you said much. You'd sit against the half wall and let the exhaustion breathe out of you slowly, the way it couldn't anywhere else in the building.

The nights you came up alone were a different thing entirely.

On those nights, sometimes, you'd walk closer to the edge than you otherwise would. You were aware of doing it. You were aware of why. There had been a version of you where a rooftop at night was not a neutral place - where the pull of an edge was something other than wind and vertigo. That version felt far away now. Far enough that you could stand here and feel the distance like something solid underfoot.

You never walked to the edge when Abbot was there. You weren't sure he'd understand that it wasn't what it looked like. Or maybe you were sure he would, and that was somehow worse.

---

The last fifteen minutes of your shift were supposed to be the easy part.

You were halfway through your notes when the overhead page came through. Overdose, incoming. You finished the sentence you were typing. Answered a question from Sarah. The night had been full of worse things.

Then the doors opened.

The room moved the way it always did: nurses converging, someone calling out vitals, someone else already on the phone. The particular controlled urgency of an ER doing what an ER does. You'd seen it a hundred times.

The patient was maybe sixteen.

Someone said suicide attempt. Someone said there was a note. After that the words stopped registering individually. You were aware of staring. You were aware that you shouldn't be. The kid looked so young on the stretcher. So scared. So…

The room kept moving around you. Loud, then far away, then loud again.

They stabilized quickly. The attempt hadn't worked. Barring something unforeseen, they were going to be fine.

The staff visibly exhaled. Someone made a quiet joke. The tension broke the way it usually did after a good outcome.

You exhaled too.

You were glad. You were genuinely, completely glad.

That wasn't the problem.

For the remainder of the shift you ran on autopilot. Helping where you could, answering questions when asked, and ticking off every task Sarah gave you. You were convincing enough that nobody pressed you when you insisted you were fine. Finally, Sarah glanced at the clock and told you to head home. You nodded, packed your things, and lied outright when she asked if you were okay.

The moment your shift ended, you walked straight to the elevators. You skipped your locker. You skipped coffee. You didn’t pause to think. You just needed the roof. When the doors slid open and cool air washed over you, the pressure in your chest became almost too much. You stepped out, crossed the concrete without slowing, and only realized how close you were when you found yourself standing inches from the edge.

Below you, the city flowed in rivers of headlights and neon. The wind tugged at your clothes as you shoved your hands in your pockets and stared at the skyline. But the teenager’s face wouldn’t leave your mind. 

Sixteen.

You shut your eyes, and memories came flooding back: hospital rooms, frantic phone calls, the looks on people’s faces afterward: the disappointment, the relief, the shame. You hated how fast it all returned. 

After years of work, therapy, and just surviving, one terrified kid on a stretcher was enough to drag it all up again.

You lost track of time. 

Then a voice cut through the wind. "Move." 

You snapped your eyes open. Abbot stood a few yards away, his face carefully neutral but his eyes filled with something you’d never seen before. 

"Excuse me?" you said. 

"Move away from the edge." You frowned. 

"I’m fine." 

"I know." 

"Then what’s the problem?" His jaw tightened. "

You’re six inches from a six-story drop." 

Instinctively, you looked down. He was right, you hadn’t realized how close you’d gotten.

"You think I’m going to jump?" 

"No," he said immediately. Firm, certain. 

"Really?" 

"No." 

Some tension slid from your shoulders. "Then why are you freaking out?" 

He let out a short, humorless laugh and looked away toward the city. "I’m not freaking out." 

"You absolutely are." 

His eyes closed for a moment, as if he’d revealed more than he meant to. 

When he looked back, his expression had softened. "You told me you’ve tried three times." Suddenly the rooftop felt small. "You said the last one was during the pandemic," he added, voice steady but careful. "And now I find you standing on the edge after a rough shift." 

You looked away first. "Oh." 

"Yeah."

The wind swept between you, carrying the sounds of distant traffic up from the streets below.\

"How'd you know it was rough for me?"

Abbot stared at you for a moment, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"I knew it would be the second we got the call on that kid."

You swallowed.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

For a moment, you both stayed silent.  

Then a realization hit you.  

"You were there?" you asked, his brow lifted.  "In the room?"  

"Yeah."  

You tried to summon the faces around the teenager’s bed - the nurses, doctors, respiratory techs, security staff - but they all blurred together: movements, voices, fragments.  

You frowned. "I don’t think I remember anyone who was there."  

Abbot’s expression softened instantly. "Exactly."  

That one word landed in your gut like a stone. It wasn’t blame, it was confirmation. He’d watched you dissociate, drift somewhere he couldn’t follow, and he’d waited until you came back.  

"You stopped hearing people about halfway through," he added quietly.  

Heat crept up your neck. "What?"  

"You had that look," he said, searching for the right words. "The same expression you wore the night you told me about the attempts."  

He’d noticed. He’d catalogued your every expression. It hit you harder than you expected.  

"I was worried," he admitted, voice low. "Not just as your doctor. As… me."  

The unspoken weight of "me" hung between you. Not Dr. Abbot - Jack.  

"Come sit," he said, nodding at the low wall where you usually perched. "Away from the edge."  

You slid down onto the concrete, hugging your knees. He settled beside you, closer than usual but not touching. The space between you thrummed with unsaid words.  

You sat like that for a while, listening to the city pulse below, oblivious to the small, monumental moment unfolding six stories up.  

"There was someone," he said suddenly, voice rough. "Here. At the hospital."  

You kept your eyes on the skyline. "Go on."  

"Nothing serious. Just… physical. No strings, no expectations. Easy."  

Each word pricked you. You reminded yourself: you were an intern, he was your superior, you’d only shared one kiss… in a dream.  

"I ended it this afternoon," he said, finally looking at you.  

Your head snapped around. "What? Why?"  

He let out a humorless laugh. "Why do you think?"  

Your heart pounded. "Don’t say things you don’t mean, Jack."  

"When have I?" he countered, eyes locking on yours in the dim light. "Since the day I stitched your arm, all I could think was tracing your jawline instead of cleaning your wound."  

The air between you thickened, charged with years of unspoken longing.  

"I changed my schedule," he continued. "Picked up an extra night shift… one that overlaps with yours, starting next week."  

You could barely breathe. "This is a really bad idea."  

"Probably," he agreed, sliding his hand over yours on the cold concrete and lacing his fingers through yours deliberately. "But I’m tired of pretending I don’t want this."  

His other hand rose to cup your cheek, impossibly gentle. It was the same hand that had steadied you when he stitched you up, but now it felt softer, more personal.  

"We could get fired," you whispered, even as you tilted your face into his palm.  

"I know," he murmured, leaning closer, eyes flicking to your lips and back. He hesitated, giving you one last chance to pull away.  

You met his gaze, saw the same conflict and desire you’d known in your dream, and let a small, defiant smile appear.  

"You can kiss me, you know," you whispered.  

His tension melted. His eyes closed briefly, then opened dark and certain.  

"Fuck it," he breathed.  

Then he kissed you.

Hungry, urgent, nothing like the tentative dream version. His hand tangled in your hair, angling your head, and you returned his kiss with equal desperation. The scratch of stubble against your skin was everything you’d imagined, and infinitely more.  

When you finally broke apart, both of you gasping, he rested his forehead against yours.  

"We’re going to be in so much trouble," you said, though you didn’t care.  

"Probably," he agreed, thumb tracing your jawline. "But I think it’s worth it."

You let him kiss you again, let him guide your jaw and teeth and tongue this time. You leaned into the heat of it, the bristle of his beard, the solid press of his palm at the nape of your neck. You wanted to swallow him whole. Every cell in your body wanted to climb into his lap, to grind and take and fuck until the sky itself splintered and rained down you and Jack Abbot together.

He tasted faintly of bitterness - coffee and exhaustion, maybe - and his hands were restless, sliding from your waist to your ribs, up under your jacket, palms broad and greedy and shaking a little. You popped the first button of his shirt, couldn’t stop yourself. He made a noise, half-protest, half-caving, and then he was kissing you harder, more urgent, as if he needed to bite you to prove this was real.

He grabbed your wrists, trapping them in his large hands and held them against his chest, against the frantic drum of his heartbeat. Then he pushed back, just enough, his breathing ragged and uneven. "Wait. Stop."

Your stomach dropped. Instantly. The way it always did. That sick lurch, that reflexive flinch. You’d done something wrong. You always did something wrong. The button, the grabbing, the wanting. Too much, too fast, too obvious. You pulled your hands free and scrambled to your feet, concrete scraping your palms. "I should go."

"Hey - no." His hand caught your wrist, gentle but firm, and tugged you back down. Not roughly. Just enough. "Don’t. That’s not… that’s not what I meant."

You stood there, half-crouched, heart hammering against your ribs. His thumb moved in slow circles over your pulse point, and you hated that he could probably feel how fast it was.

"Listen to me." His voice was low, rough, stripped of every clinical layer you’d ever heard him wear. "I want you more than you can fucking imagine. You understand me? I want to take you right here on this filthy concrete and fuck your pussy until neither of us remembers our own names."

The words hit you like a wall of heat. You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

"But I’ve got two and a half hours left on this shift." He dragged a hand down his face, and the sound of his palm scraping stubble was obscenely loud in the quiet. "And this roof is - Christ - it’s disgusting. Pigeon shit and cigarette butts and God knows what else. You deserve better than that."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key ring. Three keys, a small silver fob, a worn leather tag. He pressed them into your palm and folded your fingers around them. His hand was warm. Steady. Yours was not.

"Meet me at my place." He was already pulling out his phone, thumbs moving across the screen. Your phone buzzed in your jacket pocket. "I’ll text you the address. Door code’s the last four of my cell. I’ll be there by two. Make yourself at home. Eat whatever you find. Shower. Sleep. Whatever you need."

You stared at the keys in your hand. They were warm from his body. Real. Not a dream this time you were sure, because dreams didn’t have the weight of metal or the smell of hospital antiseptic clinging to someone’s fingers.

"Jack -"

"Don’t overthink it." He stood, brushing grit off his scrubs, and you caught the way his jaw tightened. Like he was physically holding himself back from touching you again. "Go home. My home. I’ll see you in a few hours."

You nodded. Couldn’t trust your voice. The keys dug into your palm, and you clutched them tighter, as if they might evaporate.

He leaned in. Close, so close you could feel the heat radiating off his skin and pressed his mouth to your forehead. Not a kiss, exactly. More like an anchor. Something to tether you to the earth while the rest of you threatened to float away.

"Go," he murmured against your skin. "Before I change my mind about the concrete and let it tear up your skin."

You went. Down the stairwell, through the busy corridors, past the front desk where the night receptionist barely looked up from his phone. The cold night air hit your face in the parking garage, and you gasped, finally breathing again. Your phone buzzed again - the address, a second text with the door code, and then a third:

Don’t drive if you’re tired. Take a cab. I’ll pay for it.

You stood there in the fluorescent glare of the garage, keys clutched in one hand and phone in the other, and you pressed the screen against your chest like it was something alive. Something that could keep.You didn’t call a cab.

You walked to your car on autopilot, slid behind the wheel, and sat there for a long moment with the keys still warm in your palm. His keys. Three of them, and a fob, and that worn leather tag that you couldn’t stop running your thumb over. The parking garage smelled like oil and cold concrete and your own stupid perfume, which you’d sprayed twelve hours ago and which had long since given up.

Two and a half hours. That’s what he’d said.

You started the engine. The radio blared, some late-night talk show you’d left it on, and you stabbed the power button until the silence was deafening.

Your apartment was twenty minutes in the wrong direction. You knew that. You also knew you couldn’t show up at his door smelling like hospital antiseptic and old sweat, wearing the same pair of jeans you’d pulled on at five-thirty in the morning and a shirt with a coffee stain you’d stopped noticing around hour ten. You couldn’t show up looking like the same exhausted, underpaid, barely-surviving mess he’d just kissed on a roof.

So you drove to your apartment.

The streets were empty at this hour, just the occasional delivery truck and the wash of amber streetlights sliding across your windshield. You parked crooked in your usual spot behind the building, took the stairs two at a time because the elevator had been broken since August, and fumbled your own keys at the door twice before the lock caught.

Inside, you dropped everything, his keys, your phone, your jacket, onto the kitchen counter and stood in the middle of your tiny living room with your hands on your hips, breathing hard, like you’d just run a marathon instead of driven twenty minutes.

What the fuck are you doing.

You didn’t have an answer. You just moved.

The shower took three minutes, you were too wired to stand still any longer than that, scrubbing hospital grime off your skin with the cheap lavender soap you’d bought in bulk. You shaved your legs in a hurry, nicked your ankle, swore, kept going. Toweled off with the thin bath sheet that barely covered your thighs and stood in front of the closet with wet hair dripping down your spine.

What did you wear to the apartment of the man who’d just told you he wanted to fuck you until you forgot your own name?

Not a dress. Too much. Not your usual rotation of oversized sweaters and black leggings: too you, too much of the exhausted intern he already knew. You dug past the hangers, past the stack of fieldwork-appropriate blouses, and pulled out the black jeans you saved for the rare occasions when someone dragged you to a bar. They fit like they’d been painted on, tighter than anything you’d wear to the hospital, tighter than anything you’d worn in months, really. You had to lie on the bed to zip them.

Then the top. The dark green one, silk-blend, the one with the neckline that dipped just low enough to make you feel like you were getting away with something. You’d bought it on clearance two years ago and worn it exactly once, to a wedding where no one had looked at you twice. It felt different now. It felt like armor and invitation at the same time.

No bra. You couldn’t find one that didn’t ruin the line of the fabric, and the thought of him seeing the outline through the silk made something hot and reckless coil low in your belly. You pulled on the good underwear instead, the black lace pair you’d forgotten you owned, buried in the back of the drawer, and told yourself it was for you, not for him, which was a lie so obvious you almost laughed out loud.

Mascara. A swipe of the lip stain that came off as more of a flush than a color. You ran your fingers through your damp hair and decided against the blow dryer. You let it fall how it wanted, messy and half-dry, the way it looked when you rolled out of bed. The way it had probably looked on the roof.

You looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror. The woman staring back was someone you almost recognizedcheeks flushed, eyes too bright, the green silk clinging to every line of your body like it had been waiting for this exact night. You looked like you were about to do something stupid and necessary and irreversible.

Good, you thought. That’s the point.

You grabbed your phone, his keys, your jacket, even though the silk top was ridiculous for November, you’d be indoors in twenty minutes, and locked the apartment behind you.

His address was in a part of the city you didn’t know well, the kind of neighborhood where the buildings had doormen and the streetlights were softer. You plugged it into your phone and followed the robotic voice through quiet streets, past closed storefronts and bars letting out their last stragglers. The radio stayed off. The silence felt important.

His building was brick and understated, six stories, with a glass entrance and a small courtyard visible through the lobby windows. You parked across the street, killed the engine, and sat there for a moment with your hands still on the wheel. Your pulse was doing something absurd in your throat. You pressed your palm flat against it, as if you could physically calm it down.

He gave you his keys. He told you to shower. He told you to eat. He told you he wanted you more than you could fucking imagine.

You grabbed your things and crossed the street.

The lobby was warm and smelled like cedar and someone’s distant cooking. The doorman - older, gray-haired, reading a newspaper behind a small desk - glanced up as you approached. You held up the keys like a talisman, and he gave a slow nod and went back to his paper without a word. Either Jack had called ahead or the man had seen enough late-night visitors to stop asking questions.

The elevator was mirrored on three sides. You caught your own reflection from every angle. The green silk, the black jeans, the messy hair, the lip stain already bitten half off. You looked like a woman who’d dressed for someone. You looked like exactly what you were.

Fourth floor. The hallway was carpeted and quiet, lit by sconces that cast everything in warm gold. You found his door, 4C, and stood in front of it with his keys in your hand, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your teeth.

The door code. Last four of his cell. You pulled out your phone, found his text and punched in the numbers. The lock clicked. You turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The apartment was dark except for the city glow filtering through floor-to-ceiling windows. You stepped inside and closed the door behind you, and the quiet hit you like a physical thing. Thick and warm and smelling faintly of coffee and cedar and something underneath that was just him, that same scent you’d caught on the roof when his mouth was on yours.

You found the light switch by the door and flicked it on.

The apartment was… surprising. Not in a bad way. Cleaner than you’d expected, for one thing. A lived-in couch, dark leather, worn in the right places. Bookshelves crammed full - medical texts on the lower shelves, paperbacks on the upper, a few framed photos you couldn’t make out from this distance. A small kitchen with an espresso machine on the counter and a cutting board that still had bread crumbs on it. A dining table with one chair pushed slightly back, as if he’d been sitting there recently.

No television. That struck you. Just the windows, the books, the quiet.

You dropped your jacket on the arm of the couch and walked further in, running your fingers along the back of the leather as you passed. The bedroom door was half-open, and you could see the edge of a bed. King-sized, impeccably made, dark sheets rumpled. You looked away quickly, heat climbing your neck.

He sleeps there. He sleeps in that bed, and in a few hours he’ll be in it with you…

You pressed your palms flat against your thighs and exhaled through your nose. Not yet. Not yet.

You found the bathroom - clean, white tile, a shower with good water pressure if the head was any indication. A razor on the sink. A toothbrush in a ceramic holder. A bottle of something woodsy and expensive-looking on the shelf. You picked it up, uncapped it, and pressed it to your wrist without thinking. The scent bloomed warm and dark against your skin, and you closed your eyes.

This is what he smells like when he’s not at the hospital. This is what he’ll smell like when he’s pressed against you in that bed.

You set the bottle back exactly where you’d found it, like you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t have.

Back in the living room, you sat on the couch. Stood up. Sat again. Picked up a paperback from the side table -  A Man Called Ove, a few pages were dogeared, you made note to read those pages later - and set it back down without reading a word. 

Your phone said 12:47. He’d said two. That was…

You did the math. An hour and thirteen minutes. An eternity.

You pulled your knees up and tucked your feet under you, the leather cool through the thin silk of your top. The city glittered beyond the windows. Thousands of lights, thousands of lives happening simultaneously, none of them knowing that you were sitting in Jack Abbot’s apartment wearing his cologne on your wrist and waiting for him to come home and ruin you.

Your phone buzzed. You lunged for it so fast you nearly knocked it off the cushion.

Traffic. Construction on 5th. Be there by 1:30. You eating?

You stared at the screen. Your thumbs hovered, then typed:

Not hungry. Your apartment is nice. Very you.

Three dots. Then:

Define "very me."

You smiled despite yourself. Clean. Quiet. No TV. Books everywhere. Smells like cedar and that cologne on your bathroom shelf that I definitely did not put on my wrist.

The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

You put my cologne on your wrist.

I did.

I’m going to think about that for the rest of my drive and it’s going to make it very difficult to focus on the road.

Good.

You set the phone face-down on the couch and pressed both hands over your face, like you could physically contain the sound trying to escape your mouth. A laugh, maybe. Or something closer to a sob. The adrenaline was doing something complicated to your nervous system, and you couldn’t tell if you wanted to scream or sleep or crawl into his bed and bury your face in his pillow.

You did the third one.

You told yourself it was just to sit,  just to perch on the edge and wait, but the second your weight hit the mattress, the exhaustion hit you like a truck. The sheets smelled like him, that same cedar-and-coffee-and-something-deeper, and your body went soft and heavy without your permission. You lay back. Just for a moment. Just to breathe.

The ceiling was white. The room was dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the curtains. Your arm ached where the stitches had been - a dull, warm throb - and you pressed your palm against it absently, the way you’d caught him doing to his own scars sometimes when he thought no one was watching.

Two stitches. Two stitches and a rooftop and a man who ended a casual relationship because he’d been thinking about you since day one.

You closed your eyes. Just for a second. Just to rest them.

---

The next thing you knew, a key was turning in the front door.

The lock clicked, then the deadbolt, and then the door swung open, harder than it needed to, the handle hitting the wall with a soft thud. His footsteps were fast, urgent, and you heard his keys hit something - the counter, maybe, or the table - and then his voice, rough and carrying through the apartment.

"Hello?"

The worry in it was unmistakable. Not the clinical, measured concern of Dr. Abbot in room twelve. This was something rawer, something that lived in the back of his throat and tightened around the vowels. He’d come home to a dark apartment and an empty couch and no sign of you, and his voice said everything his face probably looked like right now.

You pushed yourself up on your elbows, the sheets sliding off your bare arms, and called out toward the bedroom door.

"In here."

The footsteps changed. Faster. The leather couch creaked - he’d brushed past it, you could tell by the sound - and then he was in the doorway, filling it, one hand braced against the frame. His scrubs were rumpled, his hair pushed back like he’d been running his fingers through it for the entire drive, and his eyes found you in the dim light and stayed there.

You watched his chest rise and fall. Once. Twice. The tension in his shoulders didn’t dissolve so much as shift. His sharp edge of alarm softening into something slower, heavier, more deliberate. His gaze moved from you face to the sheets tangled around your hips to the green silk pulled taut across your chest to the bare skin of your arms, and you saw his jaw work once, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble.

"You fell asleep," he said. Not a question.

"I closed my eyes for a second."

"On my bed."

"On your bed."

He didn’t move from the doorway. You could hear the sound of his breathing, still a little too fast, still carrying the residue of whatever had been running through his head on the drive over. The construction on 5th, the empty couch, the dark apartment, the silence where he’d expected to find you waiting.

You sat up fully, letting the sheets pool at your waist. The silk top had shifted in your sleep, the neckline dipping lower on one side, and you didn’t adjust it. You watched him watch you do it.

"You were worried," you said.

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "I walked in and you weren’t on the couch. Your jacket was there. Your phone was there. Your shoes were by the door. But you weren’t…" He stopped. Drew a breath through his nose. "Yeah. I was worried."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be." He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room in four long strides, and then he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, close enough that you could feel the heat coming off him, close enough to smell the hospital still clinging to his scrubs underneath the cold November air he’d brought in from outside. His hand found yours on the sheets - not grabbing, not cupping, just settling there, palm up, an invitation you took without thinking.

His fingers closed around your. Warm. Steady. Still a little rough from the antiseptic.

"You fell asleep in my apartment," he said. His thumb moved across your knuckles. "In my bed. Smelling like my cologne."

"You told me to make myself at home."

"I did." His voice had dropped to something low and rough, and he turned your hand over in his, pressing his thumb into the center of your palm. You felt the pressure of it everywhere. In your chest, in your stomach, lower. "I didn’t expect you to take it quite so literally."

"I’m a fast learner. You said so yourself."

That got the smile. The real one, the one that creased the corners of his eyes and softened everything about his face. He brought your hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to your palm, and the warmth of it traveled up your arm and settled somewhere behind your ribs.

"You’re going to kill me," he murmured against your skin.

"Probably, old man"

His gaze lifted to your, and the green flecks in his eyes caught the streetlight coming through the curtains. You could see the exhaustion in him. The same deep-bone weariness you carried, the kind that no amount of coffee or adrenaline could fully mask, but underneath it was something hotter, something that had been building since the roof and the concrete and the words he’d said out loud because he couldn’t keep them inside anymore.

He released your hand. Both of his came up to frame your face, thumbs brushing along your cheekbones, and you leaned into the touch like you’d been waiting your whole life for it.

"I need to shower," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I’ve been in these scrubs for fourteen hours and I smell like a hospital."

"You do."

"But if I get up right now and walk into that bathroom, I’m not sure I’m going to come back out with any self-control left."

Your pulse was doing something stupid and loud in your ears. You reached up and wrapped your fingers around his wrists, feeling the tendons shift under your grip, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse against your fingertips.

"Jack."

"Yeah."

"I didn’t put on this outfit and drive across the city at one in the morning because I wanted you to have self-control."

The sound he made was low and broken, almost a laugh, and his forehead dropped to yours the way it had on the roof and you could feel the warmth of his breath against your mouth.

"You’re sure?"

You answered by pulling him closer, by tilting your chin up until your lips brushed his, and the kiss was nothing like the rooftop. Slower. More deliberate. His mouth was warm and careful against yours, and you could taste the coffee and the exhaustion and something underneath that was just him, just Jack, the man who’d given you his keys and told you to eat and worried when you weren’t on his couch.

His hands slid from your face to your neck to your shoulders, and you felt his fingers curl into the silk of your top, gathering the fabric, and then he was pulling back. Just barely, just enough to look at you.

"Stay right here," he said. His voice had gone rough at the edges. "Don’t move. Don’t… just stay."

You nodded. Couldn’t speak. An obedience settling in your core.

He stood from the bed, and you watched him walk to the bathroom. The set of his shoulders, the way his hand dragged through his hair one more time, and then the door closed behind him, and you were alone in his bedroom with the sound of water starting and your own heartbeat hammering against your ribs.

You pressed your palms flat against the sheets on either side of your hips and breathed. The water ran. You could hear it through the wall. The shift in pressure when he stepped under the spray, the muffled sound of his hands against tile.

You stayed where he’d told you to stay. You didn’t move. You didn’t think about the ethics or the age gap or the hospital or what Sarah would say or what would happen when the internship ended in six months. You thought about his hands on your face and his mouth on your palm and the way he’d said you’re going to kill me like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The water stopped.

A beat of silence. Then the bathroom door opened.

Steam rolled out first, a warm, cedar-scented cloud that curled into the bedroom and softened the edges of everything. And then Jack.

He stood in the doorway with a towel slung low around his hips, water still glistening on his chest and shoulders, his hair pushed back and dripping dark against his forehead. The bathroom light behind him threw his body into sharp relief. The broad chest, the scar tissue mapping his left side in pale, knotted lines, the trail of dark hair below his navel that disappeared beneath the towel.

And his left leg. Or what was left of it.

The prosthetic was gone. The stump, below his knee, clean and surgical and real in a way that the polished carbon fiber never was, was bare and still slightly pink from the shower. He’d set the socket on the bathroom counter; you could see it through the doorway, propped against the mirror, the metal components catching the light.

You hadn’t moved. You’d done exactly what he asked: stayed on the bed, palms flat on the sheets, legs still tucked beneath you where he’d left them. The green silk was rumpled from sleep, the neckline still dipping low on one side, and your hair was a mess from the pillow and the humidity and the fact that you hadn’t bothered to fix any of it.

You watched him take you in. The way his gaze traveled from your face to your bare arms to the silk pulled tight across your chest to your hands, still exactly where he’d told you to put them. His chest expanded with a breath that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his lungs, and his jaw tightened not with tension, not with the clinical restraint he wore like a second skin at the hospital, but with something raw and open and completely unguarded.

"You stayed," he said.

His voice was wrecked. Not rough the way it had been on the roof. No, that had been controlled, deliberate, a man rationing what he allowed himself to feel. This was something else entirely. This was a man who’d expected to come out of that shower and find you on the couch, or in the kitchen, or pacing the living room. The man who’d expected, maybe, that the hour alone in his apartment would have given you enough time to overthink yourself out the door.

You hadn’t moved. Not an inch.

"You told me to," you said. “Old man.”

Something shifted in his face. A fracture, a crack in the careful architecture of his composure. His throat worked, and you watched his Adam’s apple dip and rise, and the hand that wasn’t braced against the doorframe curled into a fist at his side. The towel was doing very little to hide what was happening below his waist, and he didn’t seem to care. Hell, he didn’t seem capable of caring about anything other than the fact that you were still here, still exactly where he’d left you, still waiting.

"You actually stayed," he said again, and the disbelief in it made your chest ache.

You held his gaze. Didn’t look away. Didn’t look down at the stump or the scars or the towel. You kept your eyes on his - those damned green-flecked, exhausted, wanting eyes - and you said, very quietly, "I told you. I’m a fast learner."

The sound that came out of him was barely human. Low and rough and broken open, and then he was moving. Crossing the room in three uneven strides, the asymmetry of his gait more pronounced without the prosthetic, his weight shifting from his right leg to his hand balancing him on the wall, then dresser, then bed to get to you without his prosthetic. You barely had time to register the movement before his hands were on your face again, cradling your jaw, tilting your head back, and his mouth was on yours.

This kiss was different from all the others. Not hungry the way the roof had been, not careful the way the bed had been. This was something desperate and grateful and almost reverent, his lips moving against yours like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth through touch alone. His thumbs pressed into the hollows of your cheeks, and you could feel the slight tremor in his fingers, not from exhaustion this time, but from something far more dangerous.

You reached up and wrapped your hands around his wrists, and you could feel the tendons jumping beneath his skin, the heat of him still radiating from the shower. His chest was damp against the silk of your top, and the fabric clung to both of you where skin met skin, and you made a sound into his mouth that you didn’t recognize as your own.

He pulled back just enough to breathe, his forehead pressed to yours, his eyes closed. Water dripped from his hair onto your collarbone and traced a slow line down between your breasts, and you shivered. Not from cold.

"I’ve spent two weeks convincing myself this was a bad idea," he said. "Two weeks of telling myself you were too young, too tired, too - Christ - too everything. That I was too old, too broken, too -" His hand dropped to the leg, a reflexive gesture, his palm pressing against the scarred skin. "And you’re sitting in my bed in that shirt looking at me like…"

He stopped. Drew a breath. His eyes opened, and they were dark; the green almost swallowed by the black of his pupils, blown wide and unfocused.

"Like what?" you whispered.

"Like none of it matters." His thumb traced the line of your collarbone. "Like the leg doesn’t matter. The age doesn’t matter. The hospital, the ethics, the - fuck - the fact that I’m standing here half-naked, old, with one leg and you’re still looking at me like I’m -"

He couldn’t finish. You watched him try. Watched his jaw work, watched the muscle in his cheek jump, and then he gave up and kissed you again, slower this time, his hands sliding down to your waist, fingers curling into the silk at your hips.

You broke the kiss just far enough to speak against his mouth. "Jack."

"Don’t." His voice was rough. "Don’t say anything that’s going to make me think. I’ve been thinking for weeks and it almost killed me."

You pulled back enough to look at him, really look at him. The water still dripping from his hair. The scar tissue mapping his side. The way he held himself, slightly tilted, his weight distributed unevenly, one hand braced on the mattress beside your hip for balance.

You reached down and pressed your palm flat against the scarred skin of his calf, just above where the amputation began. His breath caught - audibly, sharply - and his hand shot out and wrapped around your wrist, not pulling it away, just holding it there, his fingers tight and warm.

"Don’t," he said again, but it came out differently this time. Less a warning and more a plea.

"I want to touch you," you said. Simple. Direct. The way he’d been with you on the roof. "All of you."

His grip on your wrist tightened. You could feel his pulse through his fingers. It was fast, erratic, nothing like the steady clinical rhythm he maintained at the hospital. This was the real Jack Abbot. The one who’d been hiding underneath the scrubs and the stethoscope and the carefully measured distance.

"Then touch me," he said.

He pulled back. Not far, just enough to stand upright, his hand finding your shoulder, his fingers curling around the curve there. The grip was steady, balanced, his weight shifting to his right leg as he found his center of gravity without the prosthetic. He stood in front of you like that, towel slung low, water still trailing down his chest, one hand on your shoulder and the other hanging loose at his side.

His gaze dropped to where your fingers rested on the edge of the towel. The white cotton, damp from the shower, the corner you’d caught without realizing you’d reached for it. He didn’t move. Didn’t adjust. Just stood there, his breath coming slow and controlled, and let you take it.

You pulled.

The towel came free in one smooth motion, the fabric sliding over his hips and dropping to the floor in a wet heap. His cock sprang free. Half-hard already, thickening even as you watched, the head flushed dark and already wet at the tip. He was bigger than you’d expected. Thick and heavy, the vein along the underside prominent, the hair at the base dark and damp.

You didn’t look away. Couldn’t. Your mouth went dry and your pulse kicked hard against your throat, and you dragged your gaze up the length of him until you found his eyes. Dark. Blown wide. Waiting.

You looked up at him from the edge of the bed, your hands back, flat on the mattress on either side of your hips, and said it. Suddenly, everything was a lot. You didn’t know where to begin.

"Tell me what to do."

The sound that left him was not a word. It was something between a groan and a curse, torn from somewhere deep in his chest, and his hand on your shoulder tightened until his knuckles went white. His cock jumped against his stomach. You watched it happen, watched the way his whole body responded to those simple words like you’d detonated something inside him.

His jaw clenched. His throat worked. You could see the muscles in his neck standing out in sharp relief, could see the way his nostrils flared with each ragged breath.

Then he spoke, and his voice was nothing you’d ever heard before. Low and wrecked and absolutely certain.

"Get on your knees."

You moved. Slid off the edge of the bed, your bare feet hitting the carpet, and dropped to your knees in front of him. The position put you eye level with his cock, and you could see every detail - the way it was fully hard now, jutting out from his body, the head glistening.

His hand left your shoulder and found the back of your head. Not pushing. Just resting there, his fingers threading into your hair, still slightly damp from the shower you’d taken hours ago.

"Open your mouth," he said. "Look at me while you do it."

You opened your mouth. Looked up at him through your lashes, the sharp line of his jaw, the stubble catching the light, the way his chest was rising and falling too fast. His hand tightened in your hair, and he guided himself forward, the head of his cock pressing against your lower lip.

"Wider."

You obeyed. He kissed your lips, the taste of him hitting your tongue, salt and skin and something faintly bitter, and you closed your mouth around him, your lips stretching around the width of him. The sound he made above you was guttural, primal, his hand flexing in your hair.

"Good." The word came out strangled. "Now take me deeper. Slow. Use your tongue, press it flat against the underside."

You did. Dragged your tongue along the vein as you took him deeper, feeling him thicken against your palate, feeling the weight of him on your tongue. Your jaw ached already and you’d barely started, but you didn’t pull back. You looked up at him the way he’d told you to, and his expression was devastating. Eyes half-closed, mouth open, every line of his face carved with want.

You had done this before, of course. Undergrad being deemed your "slutty days." But something about being told what to do made this seem all new. Your pussy throbbed at the concept.

His hand guided you - not roughly, but with absolute authority, setting a rhythm that was slow and deep and relentless. You felt him hit the back of your throat and your eyes watered, but tried not to gag, to pull away. The carefully applied mascara began to run down your cheeks. You breathed through your nose and let him push further, your throat finally opening around him, and the sound he made - a broken, reverent "fuck" - vibrated through your skull.

"Use your hand," he said. His voice was barely recognizable. "Wrap it around what you can’t take."

You brought your hand up and wrapped it around the base, your fingers barely meeting, and squeezed the way he’d told you. Always obedient. Twisted on the upstroke, your tongue still pressed flat against him, and he groaned, a sound that seemed to come from the very bottom of his lungs.

"That’s it." His hips shifted forward, a shallow thrust that you felt in the back of your throat. "Don’t stop. Don’t - Christ - don’t pull away unless I tell you to."

You didn’t. You kept the rhythm he’d set. His hand in your hair controlling the pace, your hand working the base, your tongue dragging along the underside every time you pulled back. Drool was running down your chin and you didn’t care, couldn’t care, not when every sound he made went straight through you and settled between your thighs.

His free hand found your cheek, his thumb pressing against the corner of your stretched mouth, feeling where you stretched around him. "You’re doing so well," he murmured, and the praise hit you like a physical blow. "So fucking good for me. Take a breath, deeper this time. I want to feel your throat."

You breathed in through your nose, steeled yourself, and let him push forward. He filled you completely - the head of his cock pressing into your throat, the stretch almost unbearable - and you swallowed around him, and the vibration of it made his whole body shudder.

"Fuck." His hand tightened in your hair to the point of pain. You yelped. "Fuck, you feel… I’m not going to last if you keep -"

You pulled back just enough to breathe, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his cock, and looked up at him with your eyes watering and your lips swollen and your chin wet, and you didn’t stop. You took him back in, deeper than before, your hand working in counterpoint to the rhythm of his thrusts, and you could feel him getting harder, thicker, the vein beneath your tongue pulsing with every beat of his heart.

His breathing changed. Got faster, sharper, the rhythm of his hips losing its careful control. His hand left your cheek and found the back of your head with both hands now, fingers threaded deep into your hair, and he held you there. He wasn’t forcing, but guiding, the pressure of his grip telling you exactly what he needed.

"Don’t stop," he ground out. "I’m going to come in your mouth and I want you to take all of it. Every drop. Can you do that for me?"

You made a sound around him to let him know that you were willing and able, and doubled your efforts, your hand twisting harder, your tongue working faster, and you felt the exact moment he broke.

His hips snapped forward once, twice, and then he was coming, his cock pulsing against your tongue, hot and thick and endless. You swallowed, and swallowed again, your throat working around him, and the sounds he made above you were sounds you’d never heard a man make - raw and broken and completely undone.

You didn’t pull away. You stayed exactly where he’d put you, your mouth still full of him, your hands braced on his thighs and you took everything he gave you until he was shaking, until his grip in your hair loosened, until he finally pulled back with a ragged exhale that sounded like it had been torn from his chest.

You sat back on your heels, breathing hard, your lips swollen and glistening, and looked up at him. You wondered how the rest of the morning would go. He was an old man; could he continue? Was he spent? Did he need a little coaxing to continue?

Jack was staring down at you like he’d never seen anything in his life. His chest was heaving, his hands still hovering near your head as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop touching you, and his expression… 

God, his expression was something you’d carry with you for the rest of your life. Awe. Devastation. Gratitude so profound it looked like pain.

Then his hands were on you - not hovering anymore, but gripping, solid and sure - and he was pulling you up off your knees with a strength that stole the breath from your lungs. Your legs were unsteady, your knees aching from the carpet, and you stumbled forward into his chest, your palms flat against the warm, damp skin over his sternum.

He didn’t give you time to find your balance. His arm hooked around your waist and he turned, and then you were falling. Not far. Onto the mattress, the dark sheets cool against your back, your hair fanning out across his pillow. The impact was soft, the bed catching you, and you looked up to find him standing over you, his hands already moving.

"Off," he said. The word was rough, stripped down to nothing. His fingers found the hem of the silk top and gathered the fabric in his fists, and then he was pulling it up over your ribs, over your breasts, over your head, and the cool air hit your bare skin and you shivered. He tossed the shirt somewhere behind him without looking, and his gaze dropped to your chest and his throat moved.

"Jesus Christ."

His hands were everywhere. On your waist, your ribs, your breasts. His thumbs dragged over the nipples until they hardened into aching points. You arched into the touch, a sound escaping you that you didn’t recognize, and his mouth found your neck. Open, hot, his teeth scraping the tendon there.

"These too," he muttered against your skin, and his fingers hooked into the waistband of your jeans. You lifted your hips without thinking, and he dragged them down. Slow, too slow, the denim catching on your thighs, on your hips, on the curve of your ass, and his hands followed the path of the fabric, mapping every inch of skin as it was exposed. His palms were calloused and warm and impossibly greedy, squeezing your thighs, your hips, the soft flesh below your navel.

The jeans joined the shirt somewhere on the floor. You were left in the black lace panties and nothing else, your skin pebbled with goosebumps despite the heat radiating off both of you. He knelt on the bed beside you, his weight making the mattress dip, and his hand slid from your stomach to the edge of the lace, his fingertips tracing the line where fabric met skin.

"Look at you," he said. His voice was wrecked. Absolutely destroyed. "Look at what you did to me."

You turned your head on the pillow and found his face inches from yours. His eyes were dark, the green nearly swallowed, and his breathing was still ragged, still uneven, and you could see the pulse hammering in his throat. His hand hadn’t moved from the edge of your underwear, his thumb pressing into the crease of your hip, his fingers splayed across your lower belly.

"I didn’t do anything," you whispered. “Old man.”

His laugh was a broken thing, warm against your cheek. "You drove across the city. You put on my cologne. You stayed in my bed. You got on your knees and…" He stopped. Swallowed. His thumb pressed harder into your hip. "You think I’m spent? You think an old man can’t keep going?"

Heat flooded your face. You hadn’t said it out loud… had you? Had you thought it loudly enough that he’d heard it somehow? Or did he just like the idea of being strong enough to keep going?

He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slid beneath the lace and his fingers found you warm and already wet, and the sound that left him was something between a groan and a prayer.

"Fuck," he breathed against your neck. "You’re soaked."

You were. Embarrassingly, achingly soaked, and his fingers slid through it without resistance, two of them pressing against your entrance while his thumb found your clit and dragged across it in a slow, deliberate circle that made your spine arch off the mattress.

"I’m going to show you exactly how spent I am," he said, and then he was moving. Sliding down your body, his mouth trailing a hot, open path from your collarbone to the swell of your breast, his teeth catching your nipple. He took it into his mouth without preamble, suckling hard, his tongue flattening against the peak. And you cried out, your hands flying to his hair, your fingers gripping the damp strands.

He released your breast with a wet sound and kept going. Down. Over your ribs, your stomach, the sensitive skin below your navel. His hands hooked into the waistband of your underwear and pulled them down. Not slowly this time, but in one quick motion that left you bare and exposed on his sheets, and you felt the cool air hit your most intimate skin and then the heat of his breath replacing it, and your thighs fell open without conscious thought.

Jack looked up at you from between your legs. His eyes were dark, his mouth wet, his stubble catching the streetlight. One of his hands pressed your thigh further open while the other settled on your stomach.

"Stay," he said. The same word from before. The same command. "Don’t move."

You nodded. Couldn’t speak.

The first touch of his tongue was flat and broad and devastating. A long, slow stroke from your entrance to your clit that made your hips jerk off the mattress despite his hand pressing you down. He made a sound against you. Approval, maybe, or satisfaction. And did it again, slower this time, his tongue dragging through the wetness with deliberate, agonizing patience.

"Jack -" Your voice cracked on his name.

He didn’t respond with words. He responded by wrapping his lips around your clit and sucking hard, relentless, his tongue flicking against the swollen bud in quick, rhythmic strokes that had you gripping the sheets in both fists. The sound he made, low and vibrating against you, sent shockwaves through your entire body, and your back arched off the mattress so hard you felt the strain in your abs.

His hand on your stomach slid lower. One finger, just one, pressed against your entrance and pushed inside, and you were so wet, so ready, that he slid in to the knuckle without resistance. The stretch was minimal, but the sensation of being filled while his mouth worked your clit made your vision blur at the edges.

He added a second finger. Curled them. Found the spot inside you that made your entire body clench, and pressed against it with merciless precision while his tongue never stopped its rhythm.

You were making sounds you didn’t recognize and your hands had migrated back to his hair, gripping and pulling and pressing him closer because you couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop yourself from chasing the building pressure behind your navel. His fingers moved inside you. Scissoring, curling, thrusting in a steady rhythm that matched the strokes of his tongue, and the wet sounds of it filled the quiet bedroom, obscene and perfect.

"Don’t stop," you gasped. "Please, don’t stop -"

He didn’t. If anything, he doubled down, his fingers driving deeper, his mouth sucking harder, his free hand pressing your thigh so wide open you felt the stretch in your inner muscles. The pressure was building in thick, rolling waves, each one cresting higher than the last, and you could feel yourself tightening around his fingers, feel the heat pooling and coiling and threatening to break.

And then his tongue changed. Slower. Broader. Dragging through your folds with deliberate, aching pressure before circling your clit in tight, precise rotations, and his fingers pressed that spot inside you and held, just held, and the wave broke.

You came apart. Not gracefully. Violently, your body seizing, your thighs clamping around his head, a sound tearing from your throat that was half sob and half his name. He didn’t pull away. He kept his mouth on you through every pulse, his tongue gentling but not stopping, his fingers still pressed inside you, and the aftershocks rolled through you in long, shuddering waves that seemed to go on forever.

You finally went limp against the mattress. Boneless, trembling, your chest heaving and he lifted his head. His chin was glistening. His lips were swollen. His eyes were dark and satisfied and still burning with something that hadn’t been extinguished.

He turned his face and pressed a kiss to your palm. Then he was moving up your body, his weight settling between your thighs, and you felt him against you. Hard. Already hard again, thick and insistent, pressing against your soaked entrance with a heat that made your freshly sensitized nerves sing.

You looked down between your bodies. His cock was fully erect, maybe harder than before, if that was possible, the head flushed dark and wet, and you could feel the pulse of him against you. The recovery had taken mere minutes. The time he’d spent between your legs with his mouth and his fingers had been more than enough.

"You… " You started, and your voice came out ruined.

"I told you," he said against your mouth. His hips shifted, the head of his cock sliding through your folds, gathering the wetness there. "I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. You think one orgasm is going to take care of that?"

His hand found your jaw, tilting your face up to his. His eyes searched yours - checking, you realized. Making sure you were still with him, still present, still okay.

"Tell me you want this," he said. Quiet. Rough. The most clinical thing he’d said all night, and somehow the most intimate. "Tell me, or I stop right now."

You reached between your bodies and wrapped your hand around him. Thick. Hot. The vein beneath your palm pulsed against your fingers. You guided him to your entrance and pressed - just the head, just enough to feel the stretch beginning - and looked up at him with everything you had.

"I want this," you said. "I want you. All of you."

His eyes closed. His forehead dropped to yours. And then he pushed forward. It was slow, deliberate, filling you inch by inch, and the sound that left both of you was something that existed outside language entirely.

He was inside you completely now. Every thick, pulsing inch of him and you could feel him trembling with the effort of holding still. His forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in ragged bursts across your lips, and his hands were braced on either side of your head, his arms locked, holding his weight off your body with a carefulness that bordered on clinical.

He started moving. Slow. Deep. Each thrust deliberate and measured, his hips rolling forward with a gentleness that made your chest ache. His mouth found yours, soft, reverent, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips before slipping inside, and the kiss was nothing like the desperation of the roof or the wreckage of the shower. This was tender. Almost careful. The kind of lovemaking you’d read about in novels and never quite believed existed.

And something about it felt wrong.

Not the tenderness, God, the tenderness was devastating, his lips moving against yours with a sweetness that made your throat tighten. It was the restraint. You could feel it in every muscle of his body, the way he held himself above you, the way his thrusts stayed shallow and controlled, the way his hands hovered over your skin without gripping, without taking. He was holding back. Deliberately, systematically holding back, and the realization hit you like a bucket of cold water.

He was being careful with you. Gentle. The way you’d be careful with something fragile. Something breakable.

You weren’t breakable.

You locked your legs around his waist like a vise, your calves crossing at the small of his back, and pulled him deeper. Your hips lifted off the mattress, meeting his next thrust with enough force to drive him an inch further, and you felt the head of his cock press against something inside you that made white light flash behind your eyelids.

His breath stuttered. His hips faltered, just for a second, and then he adjusted. Pulled back. Kept the rhythm slow, kept the depth controlled, kept everything measured and careful and wrong.

He was someone else right now. Not the man who’d told you to get on your knees. Not the man who’d come in your mouth with sounds that belonged in a church. This was Dr. Abbot. The one who stitched arms and ended relationships and worried about pigeon shit on concrete. The one who held himself at a distance because the alternative was too much.

Apparently, to Dr. Abbot, oral was one thing, but fucking you was something different. Something to be gentle about.

But you didn’t want Dr. Abbot. You wanted Jack.

You waited for the next thrust. Felt the careful roll of his hips, the controlled withdrawal, and then you moved. Fast. Your hands found his shoulders, your legs tightened around his waist, and you used the momentum of his own careful rhythm to flip him. One sharp twist of your body, your weight shifting, and suddenly you were on top. Straddling his hips, his cock still buried inside you, his hands flying to your waist in reflex.

His eyes flew open. Wide. Shocked. His mouth fell open, you could see the confusion, the surprise, the way his clinical brain was trying to catch up with what had just happened, and you didn’t give him time to process.

Your hand found his throat.

Not roughly. Not violently. Just your palm, pressed flat against the column of his neck, your fingers curling around the sides. You could feel his pulse hammering against your palm. Fast, erratic, nothing like the steady rhythm he maintained at the hospital. His skin was hot under your hand, the stubble rough against your fingers, and you could feel the tendons in his neck go taut.

"Where’d you go," you asked. "You’re here. With me."

The words came out steady. Calmer than you felt. Your thumb pressed into the vein of his throat, just enough pressure to make his breathing change. A sharp intake, a stutter in the rhythm, and you squeezed. Gently. Just enough to feel the give of his trachea beneath your palm, just enough to watch his pupils blow wider.

"I just -" Jack gasped. "I haven’t… not since…"

He glanced at his hand. His wedding ring was gone, you’re sure he must have taken it off during his shower, leaving behind a tan line on his finger. You instantly knew what he meant: he’s fooled around a bit since his wife died but this is his first time having sex.

His hands were still on your hips. You could feel his fingers pressing into the flesh there, not gripping yet, just resting. His chest was heaving beneath you, his cock twitching inside you, and his eyes - those damned green-flecked, devastating eyes - were locked on yours with an expression you couldn’t fully read.

Shock. Definitely shock. But underneath it, something darker. Something that hadn’t been there before.

You squeezed again. Tighter this time. His breath caught and his hands tightened on your hips. Not bruising yet. But close.

"You’re being careful with me," you said, and your voice dropped lower, rougher. "I don’t need you to be careful, Jack."

Something broke in his expression. A crack in the careful architecture, the same one you’d seen on the roof and in the doorway and every time he’d let himself be something other than controlled. His jaw clenched. His nostrils flared. And then… 

God, then…

A sound came out of him that you’d never heard before.

A growl. Low and rough and absolutely feral, rumbling up from somewhere deep in his chest and vibrating through you.

His hands on your hips became something else entirely. Bruising. Grip tightening until you could feel the individual points of his fingers digging into the soft flesh, the pressure sharp enough to leave marks she’d find tomorrow. And then he was moving you.

Not letting you set the pace, not letting you control the rhythm. His hips driving up off the mattress while his hands forced you down, a brutal counterpoint that punched the air from your lungs.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

His thrusts were relentless, deep, punishing, nothing like the careful missionary he’d been performing thirty seconds ago. Each one drove him to the hilt, his pelvis grinding against your clit, and the wet sounds of your bodies meeting filled the room. His hands held you in place, fingers digging into the meat of your hips, and you could feel the strength in them, the kind of strength that came from years of holding himself together, now being used to pull you apart.

And your hand never left his throat.

You kept the pressure steady. Not cutting off his air completely, just enough to make every breath a conscious effort, just enough to make his pulse hammer against your palm like a trapped bird. You could feel the vibration of his growls through your fingers, feel the way his throat worked beneath your grip as he swallowed, as he gasped, as he took what you were giving him and came back for more.

His eyes were wild. Unfocused. The green almost completely swallowed by black, and you watched the shock cycle through his expression in real time. The disbelief, the confusion, the dawning realization that he liked this. That the pressure of your hand on his throat was doing something to him that nothing else ever had.

He’d never been choked before. You could see it in his face, the way the sensation was new and overwhelming and completely destroying whatever was left of his composure. His hips stuttered, his rhythm faltering for just a moment, and his hands squeezed your hips hard enough to make you gasp.

"Don’t stop," he ground out. The words were rough, barely recognizable, scraped raw by the pressure of your palm. "Don’t you fucking stop."

You didn’t. You squeezed tighter, felt his pulse jump, felt his cock throb inside you, and rolled your hips against his in a slow, grinding circle that made his back arch off the mattress.

His hand shot up from your hip and wrapped around the back of your neck. Not pushing, not guiding, just holding you there, and then he was kissing you. Hard. His mouth crashed against yours with a desperation that obliterated everything else.

The rhythm, the pressure, the careful architecture of who was in control. His tongue swept into your mouth and you tasted yourself on him, salt and musk, and your hand slipped from his throat as the angle changed.

He used it. The shift in your center of gravity, the way your grip loosened. 

He rolled, one smooth motion that leveraged his weight and the give of the mattress, and suddenly you were on your back again, the air leaving your lungs in a surprised rush. His cock slid free of you, the sudden emptiness making you gasp and whine, and then he was moving, repositioning, his hands finding your knees.

You barely had time to register what was happening before he was pushing your legs up. He folded you in half, your knees pressed against your chest, your hips tilted skyward. The position left you completely exposed, spread open, every inch of you on display under the streetlight bleeding through the curtains. You could feel the cool air against your most intimate skin, could feel the slick trail of his release still glistening between your thighs, and the vulnerability of it - the raw, unguarded openness - made your face burn and your pulse hammer.

He knelt between your thighs, but he didn’t push inside immediately. Instead, he leaned forward, bracing one hand on the mattress beside your head, and used the other to grip himself. You felt the blunt head drag along your folds - slow, deliberate, the ridge of him catching on your entrance before sliding away. He traced the seam of you, the wet heat of your pussy, and then lower. Down, past your entrance, along the sensitive skin between, until the head of him pressed against something tighter, something untouched.

Your asshole. 

The pressure was light, barely there, but the sensation sent a jolt of electricity straight up your spine. Your breath hitched, and you watched his face above you, watched the way his eyes tracked the path of his cock against your body, watched the hunger sharpen into something almost feral.

He dragged himself back up. Over your entrance again, the head catching on your swollen lips, and then he was pushing forward, driving into you in one deep, punishing thrust that bottomed out and made your vision white out at the edges.

He pulled back. All the way. You felt every inch of him withdraw, felt the cool air rush into the space he’d occupied, felt the emptiness so acute it bordered on pain. Then he slammed forward again. Hard. The impact drove your hips up off the mattress, your knees pressing harder against your chest, and the sound of skin meeting skin cracked through the quiet bedroom.

Again. Out all the way, the head of him barely inside, and then in. 

Deep. 

Devastating. 

His hips snapped forward with a force that rattled the headboard against the wall, and each thrust punched a sound from your throat. High, broken, involuntary. He wasn’t gentle. Wasn’t careful. Wasn’t Dr. Abbot holding himself at a distance.

This was Jack. Raw and unfiltered and absolutely wrecked, his hand gripping your hip hard enough to leave bruises, his rhythm brutal and relentless, his eyes locked on the place where his cock disappeared inside you over and over and over.

You couldn’t think. 

Couldn’t breathe. 

Couldn’t do anything but take it, take him, your hands gripping the sheets, your back arching, your body clenching around him with each thrust. The pleasure was building in thick, rolling waves, each one cresting higher, each one pulling you closer to the edge you’d already been pushed to once tonight.

His pace never faltered. If anything, it accelerated. His hips pistoning, the bed frame creaking beneath you, the wet sounds of your bodies meeting obscenely loud in the dark room. You could feel him everywhere. In your chest, in your stomach, in the places his cock reached that made your toes curl and your vision blur.

You were close. So close you could taste it - metallic and electric on the back of your tongue. Your muscles were tightening, your breath coming in sharp, desperate gasps, and you could feel the same tension building in him. The way his thrusts were losing their precision, the way his hand on your hip was shaking, the way his jaw was clenched so tight the tendons stood out like cables.

He felt it too. You could see it in his face: the dawning realization, the shift from pure want to something more urgent. His rhythm stuttered, just once, and his hand left your hip. He reached down between you, his thumb finding your clit in the mess of your bodies, pressing hard, circling fast, and the combination of his cock driving into you and his thumb on your clit and the pressure of your own knees against your chest was too much.

You broke first. 

The orgasm hit you like a freight train: violent, all-consuming, your body seizing around him so hard you heard yourself scream. Your vision whited out completely, every nerve ending firing at once, and you felt him pulse inside you before he caught himself.

He was pulling out.

You could feel it.

The shift in his weight, the way his hips were already withdrawing, his hand leaving your clit to brace himself, his face contorted with the effort of control. He was going to pull out. He was going to come on your stomach, on the sheets, anywhere but inside you, because he was a doctor and he knew better and the condom that should have been there wasn’t.

"No." The word came out before you could stop it. A whimper, broken and desperate, your hand flying to his hip, your fingers digging into the muscle there. "Don’t - please -"

He stopped. His cock was halfway out, the head still inside you, and you could feel him trembling, every muscle in his body locked in the agonizing tension of holding back.

"I’m on the pill," you gasped, the words tumbling out between ragged breaths. "I’m on it - I’ve been on it for years. That’s the whole point, I like - please, Jack, please don’t pull out…"

Something shattered in his expression. 

The last restraint, the final wall, crumbling into dust. His hips drove forward. One final, devastating thrust and he buried himself to the hilt as the orgasm ripped through him. You felt every pulse, every hot, thick wave of him emptying inside you, his cock throbbing against your walls, his body shuddering above you with a violence that seemed to come from the very core of him.

His forehead dropped to your chest. His breathing was wrecked. Deep, heaving gasps that shook his entire frame, and his hands found yours on the mattress, his fingers lacing through yours, gripping so tight your knuckles ached. You could feel his pulse through his palms, still hammering, still racing, and your own heartbeat answered in kind, the two rhythms syncing in the quiet aftermath.

For a long time, neither of you moved. The only sounds were your breathing and the distant hum of the city beyond the windows. 

His weight settled on you gradually. Not collapsing, but easing, his body going soft and heavy against yours in increments. You could feel the sweat cooling between your bodies, feel the mess of his release still warm inside you, feel the ache blooming in muscles you hadn’t known you had.

His lips moved against your sternum. A word, maybe. Your name. You couldn’t tell, the vibration was too faint, his mouth too close to your skin.

You lifted a trembling hand and buried it in his hair. The strands were still damp from the shower, matted down now with sweat, and you carded your fingers through them with a gentleness that felt like the only thing your body had left to offer.

He turned his head. Pressed his mouth to the space between your breasts. Then he was moving, pulling out of you with a wince that you felt more than heard. The sensation of emptiness was immediate and acute, and you felt him spill out of you. It was warm, thick; running down between your thighs and pooling on the sheets beneath you.

Neither of you acknowledged it. Not yet.

He shifted his weight, rolling to the side, and you felt the cool air hit your skin where his body had been. Your knees were still pressed to your chest, your legs still folded, and you let them fall open slowly. The stretch in your inner thighs makes you wince. Every muscle in your body felt like it had been put through a wringer.

Spent.

Jack’s arm found your waist. He pulled you against him, your back to his chest, his hand splayed across your stomach and the position tucked you into the curve of his body like you’d been designed to fit there. His chin settled on the crown of your head, and you could feel his breathing gradually slowing, the frantic hammer of his heart against your spine softening into something steadier.

The sheets were ruined. You were both ruined. The room smelled like sex and cedar and the faintest trace of hospital antiseptic still clinging to his skin.

You pressed your palm flat against his hand on your stomach. His fingers twitched, then interlaced with yours.

"You’re going to have to move eventually," you murmured. Your voice was wrecked - hoarse, barely above a whisper. "You’re crushing me."

His laugh vibrated through your back. "Give me five minutes."

"Five minutes."

"Maybe ten."

You closed your eyes. The city pulsed beyond the windows. Thousands of lights, thousands of lives, none of them knowing that you were lying in Jack Abbot’s bed with his come between your thighs and his heartbeat slowing against your spine.

His thumb traced a slow circle on your stomach. Over and over.