a fictional mans whore

It’s too bright out today. Blindingly so. Like the sun crawled out of bed nursing a petty grudge specifically against your corneas and decided today was the day it would exact revenge.

Your palms form an ineffective visor above your eyes, everything still burns despite this.

The sand throws light back at you in sharp, splintering flashes, like someone crushed up a chandelier and scattered it along the shore, sea spread out before you in that lurid, too-perfect blue that does not look real anywhere outside of vacation brochures and edited Instagram posts.

You squint toward the shoreline, blinking against the glare until Emma and Joy emerge in pieces.

A moving arm. Emma springing up and down at the edge of the surf. Joy beside her, louder, both hands around her mouth with the grave urgency of someone trying to rescue you from land.

Which is ironic because you are on land. And land is safe.

Land is reasonable. Land is not going to seize your ankles with freezing water and stop your heart out of spite.

Whitaker’s speaker thuds behind you, the bass breaking open in the breeze as Joy yells, “Stop being such a wuss!” and Emma adds, a little gentler, “Come on, it’s really not that cold!” 

“They're just gonna keep bugging you, you know,” Jack butts in, flipping another page of his book with a flick of his wrist. “Might as well rip the band-aid off.” 

You glance sideways at him, stretched beneath the umbrella like some indolent deity, skin still glistening from the generous layer of sunscreen you smeared into his chest earlier, fingertips skittering shyly over muscles and bones as he tolerated it with begrudging patience.

His shoulders, however, still blush pink at the edges, a physical monument to yesterday’s disregard for your very detailed and considerate planning.

Jack Abbot would rather burn a little than admit you might know best. The eternal martyr, sacrificing comfort at the altar of pride.

You didn’t give him the chance today.

“But the sand,” you protest, words coming out a little more whiny than intended, each syllable a tiny balloon of anxiety popping mid-air. “It gets wet, Jack, and then it sticks in between my toes, and dries in weird little crusty patches, and then I’m stuck thinking about that all afternoon instead of, I don’t know, enjoying myself, which is the entire point of a vacation — at least as far as I understand vacations, and —”

Jack’s book snaps shut decisively, interrupting your spiraling train of thought.

He stares at you, expression caught somewhere between amused tolerance and weary affection, as though he’s watched you spin yourself dizzy like this too many times before. And he has.

“Hey.” His voice is level, gently pulling you back to earth by the scruff of your neck. “We’re at a beach. Sand is inevitable. Rinse it off, dry your feet, move on. You’re preemptively ruining your own day, you realize that, right?” 

A helpless little pout blooms across your mouth, the tired-and-true expression you reserve for only the direst emergencies. Which, admittedly, occurs more often than you’d like to acknowledge.

It’s practically foolproof.

And the way Jack’s gaze softens in increments demonstrates that.

He sighs in response, an unconvincing performance of irritation, eyes half-lidded in exaggerated exasperation.

“Look,” he mutters, resignation thickening his voice, “if it gets that bad, just come back up here and I’ll...I don’t know, help rinse the sand off myself, if that’s what it takes.” 

“Kay,” you mumble, the concession melting off your tongue in the most petulant way possible, fingers fussing at the edges of your cover-up, dragging it upwards.

“There we are,” he drawls, squinting to look at you. “Atta girl.” 

You resist the urge to stick out your tongue at him as you pull it fully off.

And when you do, a sudden, piercing wolf-whistle splits emerges from somewhere in the sea of your peers.

You reel backwards until the backs of your legs nearly knock into Jack’s chair.

You freeze when you get your bearings, cover-up still bunched in your fists, shoulders crawling toward your ears as Dana’s voice sails across the beach.

You think it might be loud enough to alert passing boats.

“Well, damn. Didn’t have you pegged as the type.” 

For a second you think she means the bikini, which is revealing, yes, but nothing crazy.

And that would be bad on it’s own, honestly, because it’s weird enough to have your coworkers perceive you in swimwear, but then Santos gasps from your left.

“Little Miss Prim-and-Proper has a tramp stamp?”

You can feel your eyes double in size.

You release a strangled little laugh. At least, you meant for it to be laughter. You think it sounds more like a sparrow smacking headfirst into a glass window.

“Oh, it’s — it’s nothing,” you insist, swatting a hand. You hope no one notices that the pitch of your voice has risen several octaves. “I honestly forgot it was there.” 

A lie. A terrible one at that. Because yes, obviously, people forget about permanent body art all the time. Perfectly normal. Perfectly believable.

You turn so your back is toward the ocean, blocking the majority of everyone’s view of the damning evidence as your palm flutters helplessly near your hip.

Whitaker rolls slowly onto one elbow from his spot on a towel, eyes narrowing. “Is it, like, supposed to be symbolic?”

“Is — what?” 

“The tattoo,” he elaborates, waving a hand in your general vicinity, like he’s reluctant to approach it directly, wary of frightening you off. Valid concern. You do feel like a flight risk at this exact given moment. “Does it represent something meaningful?” 

Dana snorts into her drink. “Yeah, kid. It means she had a wild semester and access to eighty dollars.”

You part your lips, words half-formed. Explanations or possibly just meaningless static. More likely the latter.

Because with everyone’s eyes suddenly looking at you waiting for you to say something, the attention feels a little too overwhelming.

“It’s a pomegranate,” Jack announces suddenly, rescuing you from yourself. You could kiss him right then and there. “For Persephone. Rebirth, renewal, growth, all of that. She got it sophomore year of college.”

“Yeah,” you agree faintly. You glance helplessly from face to face, feeling every glance bounce painfully between you and Jack, dissecting the air between you into tiny, fragile pieces. “It’s, um — exactly that.” 

Samira’s the first one to offer a reassuring smile. “Oh, that’s actually really beautiful.”

You release another round of nervous laughter, shoulders inching down cautiously. A little uncertain whether you’re in the clear just yet.

Apparently not. 

Langdon jerks his head toward Jack in one jerky movement, sunglasses nearly tumbling from the bridge of his nose. “Hang on. Why the hell does he know that?” 

Your stomach does a violent drop. Like someone yanked a trapdoor beneath you and forgot to cushion you fall.

Shit.

Of course. Why wouldn’t this happen?

Because clearly, the tattoo itself was only a minor humiliation, the polite opening number before the headline act of Jack publicly revealing his encyclopedic awareness of the ink approximately one inch above your ass.

But this is salvageable, right? It’s plausible that you would’ve told him this on a night shift after too much adrenaline and too little sleep.

Your gaze swings toward Jack, wordlessly pleading, imploring him to explain this all away, practically mentally gripping him by the collar and begging for mercy, but he only shrugs. Lazy and indifferent with the tilt of his burnt shoulders.

“Kind of hard to miss from certain angles.”

You watch everyone’s faces go slack jawed.

You don’t wait around the witness the dawning realization behind you.

There’s no need; you can feel it spreading through the air like spilled ink soaking silently into paper.

A terrible little chain of silence, then gasps, then hissed laughter like matches flicking alight one by one. You’ll never live it down, you think.

Someone’s voice calls after you, but you’re already moving towards the ocean.

Suddenly, wet sand seems acceptable. Inviting. Wonderful, even.

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

​He was leaning against the table, a half empty beer in his hand, with his gaze entirely on you. You were sitting across the table, throwing your head back as you laughed at a joke someone just made. The warm ambient lighting of the pub caught the edge of your smile, and right then, something shifted heavily in Jack’s chest.

​God, she’s easily the most beautiful person in this room, he thought, a sudden clarity hitting him.

​It wasn't just a fleeting work crush anymore, and he knew it.

Watching the way you effortlessly commanded the space around you, he realized he was completely done for.

He found himself thinking past the walls of the bar, imagining what it would be like to be the one walking you to your front door tonight. He’d willingly play the perfect gentleman, do whatever it took, even charm your mom if he ever got the chance to meet her; anything just to ensure he got to stay in your life.

The mere thought of a future with you, spoken out loud or just kept in his head, made his heart race.

​As if feeling the weight of his stare, you turned your head. Your eyes met his, and your smile softened into something private, just for him.

​Jack didn’t look away. Instead, a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.

The music in the bar shifted to something with a pulsing beat, and a few people from the shift immediately dragged you out toward the cramped dance floor.

Jack stayed at the table, but he didn't join the conversation around him. His eyes followed you through the lights. He watched the way you moved, the unbothered laugh on your lips, and the way you completely shook off the stress of the past week.

Every second he spent watching you only hammered the realization deeper into his chest.

When a song ended, you made your way back, flushed and laughing. The drinks had fully caught up to you by now, leaving your mind pleasantly fuzzy and your movements a little loose.

Instead of reclaiming your original seat, you slid straight into the tight space right next to Jack.

The moment your hip met his, his hand slid effortlessly around your waist, his palm warm as he pulled you against his side. The warmth of your body radiated through his clothes, and because of the alcohol blurring your usual boundaries, you happily let yourself sink heavily into him, leaning your head back against his shoulder and looking up with slightly unfocused eyes.

"Too much dancing?" he murmured, dropping hus voice so only you could hear him over the bar’s bass.

"Maybe a little," you hummed, a smile playing on your lips. "Or maybe it's the drinks."

"You're a lightweight," he teased softly. As the words left his mouth, he leaned his head down and pressed a kiss right against the bare skin of your shoulder, his lips were warm against your skin.

A shiver ran down your spine, and you let out a soft giggle, shifting even closer until there was absolutely no space left between you. You reached up, your fingers playfully tugging at the lapel of his jacket. "Are you being sweet to me, Jack?"

"I can be whatever you want me to be," he replied without a hint of hesitation, his hand at your waist gently squeezing. He was completely dialed into you, entirely forgetting that you two weren't alone.

Across the table, a few looks were traded. A couple of eyebrows went up. One of the paramedics cleared their throat loudly, a massive smirk spreading across their face.

"Uh, Jack? You want us to leave you two alone?"

Jack blinked, fucking finally remembering the rest of the world existed. He looked up, catching the knowing grins of the entire shift crew staring.

Anyone could see it: the way he was holding you, the softness in his eyes, the absolute focus he had on you. He was totally whipped, and there was absolutely no denying it anymore.

Instead of pulling away or getting defensive, Jack just looked down at you, seeing the faint, beautiful flush on your cheeks. He chuckled, his arm adjusting around your waist.

"Mind your business," Jack said to the table, not a single bit of shame in his voice. "I'm minding mine."

Before anyone could even process his words, Jack turned his head down toward you. His hand slid from your waist up to the nape of your neck, his fingers gently tangling in your hair as he tilted your face up and captured your lips in a deep kiss.

The kiss was deep, slow, and full of all the unspoken words he’d been keeping to himself for months. It was a warm claim that left you completely breathless. He tasted faintly of the beer he’d been sipping, his lips incredibly soft but firm as they molded against yours, demanding a response you were more than ready to give.

The shift went absolutely wild around, cheers and loud whistles erupting from everyone, but Jack didn’t pull back. Instead, he only deepened the kiss.

The sheer excitement of the crew brought a shy heat to your cheeks, and a breathless smile broke across your lips right in the middle of the kiss. Jack let out a chuckle against your mouth, loving the feel of your lips curving against his.

Yielding completely to the fuzzy rush of the alcohol and his touch, you wrapped your arms tighter around his neck, burying your fingers in the collar of his shirt. You tilted your head and kissed him back softly, your smile pressing directly into his as you let him completely steal your breath away.

⋆｡˚☤🩺✧˖°.｡⋆💉

(urgently need Jack to kiss me)

“My buddy, Officer Hiro,” Jack answers immediately, through a series of panted breaths. “High-velocity GSW, warehouse robbery gone sideways. He’s getting harder to bag.”

The windowless trauma room swallows you whole as you wheel the gurney inside. The four walls swell suddenly with the scent of coppery blood and bitter chlorhexidine. Nurses rush to wake the surrounding monitors with a set of electronic chirps, while Jack escorts the officers he came with out of the room. “We’ll take care of him, I promise,” you hear the man say as you slide your stethoscope into your ears.

You press the chestpiece to the man’s bloodied sternum, bare from where his uniform had already been cut down to his waist and sticky with fresh blood. His heartbeat is weak and rapid in your ears, barely maintaining enough pressure to reach his brain.

“Pulse is thready,” you murmur and slide the diaphragm half an inch higher. “Diminished breath sounds on the right…” 

Jack appears across from you, mouth curling into a familiar crooked grin. “We have got to stop meeting like this, Doc,” he jokes in a gritty deadpan.

“That’s crazy— I was thinking the exact same thing,” you quip and slip the stethoscope back around your neck. “Dr. Santos, let’s make sure these lungs are up.”

“You two know each other?” Robby wonders aloud. He glances between you and Jack with a pair of suspiciously narrowed eyes as he plucks a pair of scissors from the metal tray beside him.

“Yeah, you could say that…” Jack huffs with his eyes on the blade, which slices mechanically through the end of the endotracheal tube protruding from Hiro’s throat.“Pulling out,” the man announces before sliding the thing out through his mouth. “Bag.”

A silver-haired nurse, whom you’ve yet to come acquainted with, squeezes at the valve mask at Jack’s instruction. Air bubbles at the wound.

“He’s not moving any air,” you call to the crowded room. “Get me a neonatal mask.”

“Neonatal?” Santos echoes with furrowed brows.

“Yeah, we’re gonna put it over the wound to keep his airflow up while Dr. Abbot cuts a full-length tube and Dr. Robby shifts his trachea back into place,” you explain with a firm nod, smiling softly as you turn back to the attendings across from you. “Sound like a plan?”

Robby glances up at you from where he’s hunched over Hiro’s body, with two gloved fingers searching for his vocal cords. A faint smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “Do you always explain procedures like you’re assigning homework?” he laughs.

“If you’re asking if she’s always been this bossy, yes, she has,” Jack quips with a crooked grin that widens at the edges when you roll your eyes, turning away to accept the neonatal mask a nurse passes from behind you. “And yes, it saved my life— Santos, cut me down a 6-0 ET tube, will you?” 

“Oh, do tell…” Robby hums.

“There’s nothing to tell,” you huff and set the mask of the neonatal tube over the bubbling wound, helping the air move in and out of the unconscious man’s lungs. “It’s just the kinda stuff that happens when you’re an army medic— you win some, you lose some.”

“Oh, she’s just being modest,” Jack croons drily as he irrigates the wound with saline, washing away clotted blood until the displaced trachea emerges beneath the crimson. His gloved fingers move alongside yours as he rambles. “She had orders to leave me after I got hit by that IED… The rest of ‘em were pulling back— didn’t have much of a choice but to, really, but… She didn’t… She dragged me about… What was it? Two-hundred meters?” 

Jack’s eyes lift and find yours have gone strangely distant. Your gaze zeroes in on the neck wound below; your mind wanders against your will.

The freezing A.C. of the emergency department grows sweltering in an instant, burning like the familiar desert heat that feels like dry fire in your lungs. Black smoke threatens to fog your vision all at once. The antiseptic smell turns suddenly to burning fuel. And the blood on your hands becomes darker, fresher, running over your fingers like an open faucet. 

Your hands start to tremble the same way they did when you tied the tourniquet around Jack’s wounded limb, made of nothing more than exposed nerves and tendons from the knee down. You feel your legs weaken the same way they did when you dragged Jack’s weight across unforgiving ground beneath earth-shaking explosions and whizzing bullets. 

Jack apologized through his guttural screams — because, even now, he swears the pain from the tourniquet hurt more than losing his leg — as you sat him up behind an unmanned tank.

“Shut. Up,” you commanded, covering his mouth with your bloodied hand. “Or I swear to god, I will kill you if we make it out of here— Do you understand?”

You made it out. And it became a funny story everyone told back at the VA — that time you threatened the life of the man you were saving — though you still struggle to laugh about it even still.

“…Right, Doc?” Jack presses, head ducking in an attempt to catch your eye.

Your hands remain firm over the small mask pressed to the wound in Hiro’s neck, but your face has emptied into an expressionless sort of look. It takes a long moment for your brain to will your eyes to blink, and only then does the sun-bleached desert in your mind return to the hospital where you plant your feet — buzzing fluorescent lights, beeping monitors, blinding white walls. You list everything you can see until your brain recalculates its surroundings.

Your wide eyes flit across the unblinking stares looking back at you, each of them waiting for a response. Your heart lurches in your chest. Your mouth opens and closes as you struggle to recall the last thing you’d heard. 

“Uh, n-not quite two-hundred,” you stammer with a trembling smile. “We had a team find us before then, I’m pretty sure.”

“See what I mean?” Jack hums with a surer smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. His softened gaze remains fixed on you, studying you despite all your attempts to hide. “Modest.”

The automatic doors of the ambulance bay sigh open and shut every few seconds behind you. Each mechanical breath exhales waves of freezing air into the thick July evening, which smells overwhelmingly of hot asphalt, cigarette smoke, and gunpowder from far-off fireworks. 

You stand next to Jack beneath the overhang, with summer wind whipping through the thin fabric of your tied isolation gowns as you wait for the incoming trauma together — roughly five minutes out, Dana had said.  

“So…” you start slowly, wringing the loose pair of gloves in your anxious hands as your eyes fall to the man beside you. He’s still wearing the baggy camo pants he’d arrived in, though he’s since traded his heavy plate carrier for the fitted black t-shirt underneath it, which clings ardently to his muscular torso. “…SWAT, huh?”

“My therapist said I needed a hobby,” he jokes with a lazy shrug. “And, turns out, I suck at golf, so… I chose the next best thing.”

You shake your head and turn away, exhaling a quiet laugh in response — perhaps your first real one since the unforgiving shift started. The corner of Jack’s mouth lifts into a grin, proud of himself for having heard the pretty sound. He hadn’t thought to miss it until now.

“…How long has it been, you think?” he wonders suddenly, with a pair of squinted eyes.

You draw a deep breath through your nose. Your eyes scale the milky pink and orange skyline beyond the ambulance bay, where a molten gold sunset streaks across the sky. “A while…” you settle on after a few long moments.

“Anything new with you I should know about?” he asks, rocking gently to ease the weight on his prosthetic. 

You scoff like it’s funny — maybe because you can’t remember the last time anyone other than your therapist was asking after you. “Nope…” you sigh. “Unfortunately, I am still the exact same person you knew back then…”

“Doesn’t seem so unfortunate to me,” he insists, brows furrowed, like he’s half-offended by your own self-degradation.

“Well, you’d think after— I don’t know— a decade of pretty intensive therapy that I might be a little different,” you quip with an awkward laugh. The humor dissolves a second later when you realize how pathetic you sound. “But, uh… I’m still working through it, I guess...”

“Aren’t we all…” Jack trails off with a slow nod.

“I don’t know,” you lilt, eyes drifting unconsciously towards his hand, where a black wedding ring sits around his fourth finger. The sight of it makes your chest ache more than you’d like to admit — as if a not-so-distant part of you had expected him to be as single and miserably lonely as you, even after all this time. 

Of course, someone loves him, you think to yourself, how could they not?

“You seem to be doing pretty alright for yourself, I’d say.”

Jack follows your gaze and, almost instinctively, clasps his hands behind his back as if to hide them. His anxious grip tightens on the blue latex he holds between them. “Yeah, uh—” He clears his throat, eyes fixed on the street beyond the overhang. “My wife, she… She passed. A few years ago.”

The humid summer air becomes harder to breathe in an instant. Your mouth parts with shock, though it takes a long moment before any words of apology fall out. “Oh— Shit, Jack, I— I’m sorry. I—”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know,” he assures with a gentle smile, rubbing absentmindedly at the ring with his thumb from where it hides behind his back. “It’s my fault for still wearing the damn thing. I just— feel weird taking it off, I guess…” 

You nod slowly to yourself and glance away. You’ve gotten well acquainted with grief and its tricky rituals over the years.

“What about you?” Jack wonders aloud, smiling a little wider when you turn back to face him with a pair of raised brows. “You seeing anyone?”

Your first instinct is to laugh. “No. God, no.”

“Oh, c’mon…” he croons. “It can’t be that bad.”

You flash him a cynical look and a sad sort of smile. “Yeah, well… I don’t think most people are looking for a girl like me, to be fair.”

“Yeah?” Jack hums, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know,” you scoff. “A girl who… works all the time. Who barely sleeps. Who can’t sleep if someone’s breathing wrong in the next room. Who… goes to therapy twice a week— three times if things are real bad— I mean…” A laugh sputters from your lips. “I’m a total nutcase.”

“Hey,” Jack argues, weathered face screwed in a playful offense. “Some guys are into nutcases, I’ll have you know.”

“Oh, really?” you hum drily.

“Me chief among them,” he nods.

“What?” you laugh. “Is that supposed to flatter me or something—?”

Boom! An explosion crackles across the evening sky. Your body reacts before your mind, going into panic mode in a flicker. Your shoulders jerk violently, your heart leaps into your throat, your eyes snap instinctively for cover. A red-hot spark rushes down your legs as though your body was telling you to run. 

Your brain catches up a second later.

It’s a firework… It’s just a firework, you think to soothe yourself, and to ease your suddenly pounding pulse. But as the fear fizzles slowly away, the self-hatred comes next — the undeniable fact that your body will always belong to a war that ended years ago.

You force your shoulders to relax once more and pray that Jack hasn’t noticed any of it. But you can see his expression softening in the corner of your eye — first with concern, which flickers thereafter into a softer sort of pity. 

At the very least, however, he gives you the dignity of pretending he hadn’t seen it at all as sirens rage in the distance — growing nearer and nearer until the red-yellow lights of the ambulance whip around the corner. The two of you snap your gloves on in tandem.

Jack steps off the curb first when it squeals to a park just in front of you. “You picked a hell of a day to come in, Doc…” he huffs and rushes towards the back doors. 

“I’d rather be here than working,” you scoff and follow behind him. “It’s less depressing that way, I think.”

“Is it?” Jack quips with narrowed eyes.

You laugh through your nose. “Yeah, jury’s still out on the one, I guess…”

Fourth of July rages across the city. You pretend not to notice. 

You stand in the muffled quiet of the breakroom, tucked away from the chaos of the emergency department, and watch the coffee machine in front of you sputter as it coughs up steam that smells like burnt grounds and vanilla creamer. You let the bitter stench singe your nostrils as the firework show begins in the heart of the city.

Boom!

A firework sounds off in the distance, closer than all the ones from earlier in the evening. You wrap both hands around the paper cup of coffee, letting the scalding warmth seep into your palms. The heat nearly burns you, but it’s half-grounding nonetheless.

Boom!

You swear it’s shaking the ground beneath your feet, and trembling the thick, concrete walls on either side of you. Though, with the way your day is going now, it’s impossible to tell what’s real and what lives only inside your head.

Boom!

Your fingers tighten around the cup to the point of trembling. You close your eyes and attempt to count your breaths — in for seven, hold for four, out for eight. Your brain tries to trick you — tries to convince you that the freezing cold of the emergency department smells like desert heat and metallic blood and burning gunpowder. It works.

“Counter…” you mutter aloud to yourself, despite how strange it seems, flattening your hand along the white laminate below, even as your shoulders jerk from another explosion in the city. You place your hand on the smooth curve of the cold sink next, and then on the rough cloth draped just behind it. “Faucet… Dishrag…”

Your attempts to anchor yourself to reality only halfway work. You opt to abandon your coffee on the counter altogether as your pulse continues to climb. You’re grateful to find the E.R. still waiting for you on the other side of the door, instead of a memory you can’t seem to leave. 

“Oh, hey— I was just looking for you.”

Your head whips over your shoulder to find Jack strolling down the half-empty corridor with a tablet in his hands, now dressed in his dark black scrubs instead of the tactical gear he arrived in. 

His shift has probably started now, or is about to, at least — which means you should be leaving with the rest of the day shift. But you fear what waits for you outside these walls and those automatic doors; the crushing certainty of solitude that always seemed to be waiting for you back home, to be more specific.

You exhale a trembling breath, falling into step with Jack when he walks by. “Where is everyone?” you wonder aloud.

“Day shift went up to the roof, I think,” he answers with most of his attention on the tablet as he scrolls absentmindedly through it. “Watching the fireworks and drinking beer, I’m sure… Lucky bastards.”

“Santos did invite me to karaoke today,” you tell him.

“A karaoke invite on your first day, huh? Impressive,” Jack croons, laughing softly through his nose when you lean to knock your shoulder against his broader one. He gets a faint whiff of the perfume still lingering on your clothes, beneath layers of antiseptic and hospital soap. He misses your warmth the second you’re gone. “You gonna go?”

Your shoulders sag with a sigh. “I don’t know… I’m kinda liking this adrenaline rush, to be honest. Might try and ride it ’til the wheels fall off.”

“Well, that always ends well, in my experience,” Jack quips with a lopsided smile as he slows to a stop in front of you, tucking the tablet under his bicep. He towers a few inches over you, close enough to make you lift your chin to properly meet his eyes. “But I do have something you could help me with, if you have a few minutes to spare…”

“Of course.”

“I, uh…” he trails off, turning to glance awkwardly at his left shoulder. “I took a hit… You know, in the field earlier… I’m pretty sure the vest caught most of it but—”

“You were—” You catch yourself before your voice can carry down the hallway. You take a step closer, lowering your voice into a harsh whisper as you scold him. “You were shot?”

“Shot at,” he corrects, with his brows raised to his hairline. “And it’s not as bad as you’re thinking. I tried to clean it up myself, but it’s pretty… inconveniently located…”

He rolls his shoulder in an attempt to ease the discomfort building there from his scrubs rubbing against the wound. His scruffy jaw tightens with a faint grimace, enough for you to notice the pain in his weathered features that he’d been pretending wasn’t there before now.

Concern flares white-hot in your chest. “Let me see it.”

The tone leaves little room for argument. It’s the same one you’d used on him all that time ago, when you ordered him to shut up and quit apologizing for bleeding out before the people trying to kill you could find you.

“Yes, ma’am,” he nods.

Jack leads you to the nearest empty exam room and slips inside while you gather the supplies you suspect you’ll need from the cart outside the door. You hold them to your chest when you return to the room, where you find Jack undressing, tugging his scrub top off by the collar. 

The pale tendons in his back flex unevenly when he pulls the fabric off completely. The milky white canvas of his back is exposed to you then, along with the raging scrape glowing a bright scarlet along his left shoulder.

The door clicks shut behind you and garners the man’s attention. Jack turns to face you. You find he’s grown strangely broader with age. His stomach is full but toned, and his chest is filled out with a similar strength. Both are dusted with faint freckles and light colored hair that trails down from his sternum and disappears beneath his scrub pants.  

He seems to mistake the subtle shock on your face for concern.

“I’ve had worse,” he assures you.

“I know, Abbot,” you deadpan, reaching for the glove dispenser on the wall with your free hand. “I was there.”

Jack settles on the edge of the exam table while you arrange the supplies on the metal tray before you — gauze, saline, antibiotic ointment, steri-strips. Your hands remember the motions before your mind has to. It comes to you as easily as muscle memory. You work with an effortlessness that only comes with years of experience; and Jack weathers the pain with an effortlessness that only comes with years of aching.

“You wanna know something funny?” he announces suddenly. The muscles in his back tense slightly when he twists to glance at you over his bare shoulder. 

“You getting shot at and not telling anyone for half a shift?” you answer in a monotone.

He exhales a quiet laugh and turns back around.

“I had… the biggest crush on you,” Jack confesses in an achingly gentle voice, and pretends not to notice when your hands still suddenly behind him. He inhales slowly through his nose, as if he’d been sitting on those words for some time, and crosses his arms over his bare chest as if to shield himself from them in some way. “I was, uh… I was gonna ask you out, actually. You know, when we got back home, but… You disappeared before I could.”

His quiet laugh sounds much louder in the silence that settles heavily between you.

“I, uh—  I’m pretty sure I still have the letter I wrote you, actually, when I figured out your address— in a box somewhere in the attic probably, but… It felt a little too stalkerish to send it, and… Then I met my wife, and I figured you moved on, too, and…” he trails off, struggling to find the right words. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. You’re here now.”

“It was probably for the best,” you tell him, and clear your throat when your voice shakes. You pretend not to notice your fingers trembling when you smooth down the edge of the bandage you press over his wound. “I wasn’t exactly… the best company back then.”

“You were always good company,” Jack scoffs. “Even when I thought I was gonna die, I was glad I was with you. I mean, I hated that you were gonna have to witness it obviously, but… I was still glad it was you— Even when you were threatening to kill me.” 

You’re pierced almost physically by his words. You blink rapidly to clear the haze of them when your vision starts to blur, another memory threatening to drag you under. Memories you’d spent years and a shit ton of money working through in therapy, that are now eating away at you from the inside out.

His shoulder beneath your fingertips is covered suddenly in shredded camouflage. The bandage on his freckled skin stains red until it gushes once more with warm blood. His laughter turns to screams. The air turns to smoke. The fluorescent lights turn to a white-hot sun.

Jack frowns to himself when he feels your hands freezing once more behind him. He glances over his shoulder and finds that your eyes have gone empty again, fixed somewhere far away — the same way they had earlier that day. His chest pinches with an instant worry. 

“You okay?” 

His words sound like they’re muffled by water or light-years of space. You can’t hear them over the heartbeat whoosh, whoosh, whooshing in your ears, pounding harder against your pulse with every second that passes that you can’t catch your breath. 

Another firework explodes outside like distant thunder. Your body jolts in response, and reality slams back into you a second later.

“I, uh…” You swallow hard, eyes flitting wildly around the room, like you’re struggling to place yourself inside it. “I-I’m all done here, I think.”

“Hey…” Jack coos and turns around to face you completely. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

You step back from him and rip off your gloves with two dull pops. You chuck them hurriedly into the bin, feeling overwhelmingly like the walls are closing in on either side of you. 

“I, uh... I just need… I’ll, um…” You shake your head when the words don’t come out right. The next ones leave in a whimper when you try and fail to catch your breath. “I’m sorry.”

You rush out of the room, gone before Jack can gather his shirt.

“No…” That’s the only thing you can seem to make out as you hide yourself in the breakroom. The word scrapes against your throat, still too narrow to properly let air flow through. You wedge your pointer fingers painfully in your ears when the far-off fireworks become unrelenting gunshots in your skull. Your vision tunnels, the room blurs, every breath seems to catch somewhere in your chest. “No, no, no—”

The words dissolve into a half-strangled whimper in the back of your throat. You crouch slowly down in the center of the room and curl inward on yourself, forehead nearly touching your knees. Every muscle draws tight enough to ache. Your body makes itself smaller on instinct, as if it still believed that smaller targets survived the longest.

You vaguely hear the sound of your name coming from behind you — far away at first, like a voice carried underwater — and then much closer, when a pair of warm, calloused hands curl gently around your forearms. Despite the inherent softness of the touch, you flinch violently in the sudden hold.

“Hey… It’s just me,” Jack coos. 

His voice cuts through the buzzing panic with a remarkable steadiness. Your head snaps in his direction. You find him looming just beside you, bent over at the waist. His face is slow to flood into focus. For a gutwrenching flicker of a second, he’s the same dark-haired, bloodied, and crying man that nearly died in your arms.

Reality settles in a moment later.

The silver threaded in his curls catches the buzzing fluroscents overhead. His light eyes, still so soft despite the carnage they’ve witnessed, dart over your features with a silent concern.

“It’s just me,” he continues. “You’re okay. Just keep looking at me.”

You try to until— Boom! Another firework crackles in the distance. Your eyes squeeze shut despite yourself. Your entire body recoils. “I can’t—” you whimper through a ragged breath that catches in your throat. Your chest sears white-hot accordingly.

“Okay. That’s okay,” he nods. “Just breathe with me. Don’t fight it, okay? Just breathe.”

Jack inhales slowly, drawing in one exaggerated breath until his chest rises beneath his scrubs. You try to mimic it, but it stutters painfully halfway through. Your lungs seize despite yourself. Your face twists into a pained sort of look.

“That’s okay. There you go,” he praises. The corner of his mouth lifts into the faintest hint of a smile. His thumbs rub softly along the buzzing skin of your arm. “I know it doesn’t feel good. Just keep trying for me.”

It takes several long moments for your breaths to finally even out. Jack holds you through every single one of them. Only when your hands slip from your ears and your shoulders stop trembling does Jack carefully guide you to your feet, with a pair of warm hands clasped gently around the outside of your elbows. 

He keeps you stable on unsteady limbs as he guides you the short distance to the plastic chairs gathered around the breakroom table. You collapse into one. He pulls up another to be nearer to you — close enough for your knees to slot between each other’s and for his fingers to thread with yours when he reaches for you again. His palm is warm and gently calloused; a little like velvet as it glides against yours.

You rest your other arm on the table beside you, hiding your face behind the palm of your free hand. When you regain your breath, the first thing you think to do is laugh — a wet, brittle, exhausted sort of sound.

“What the hell am I doing here?” you ask within a weak chuckle, shaking your head at yourself. “The VA recommended me because I was supposed to be good at this, but… I’ve been here for one shift… And all I’ve done is make everything worse—”

“C’mon,” Jack hums. “You know that’s not true.”

“Look at me!” you laugh, gesturing helplessly towards yourself when you lift your head to meet his eyes. Tears glisten in your gaze, clumping your bottom lashes together. “I’m supposed to be taking care of people, Jack! I’m not helping anyone like this!” 

The man studies you for a long moment. His eyes narrow with a careful curiosity. “Does this happen a lot?” he wonders gently. “These… spells?” 

You shake your head, eyes fluttering shut. “No. Not in— years. I thought they were gone. I mean, I certainly pay my therapist enough; they should be gone by now, but…” You end your ramble with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know… I think… Seeing you, you know, for the first time since… Since we came back home, it just… Opened something…”

Jack’s thumb swipes across your knuckles. You expect him to be half-offended at your confession. He smiles instead.

“Well, you know how we fix that?” he asks, with something short of amusement on the edge of his voice. “We go get a beer tomorrow night. Or whenever you’re up for it. And we talk about all this shit. All of our— trauma or whatever. We just… We have it out.”

Something like sunshine threatens to swell in your chest. It burns out quickly, though.

“But what about everything else?” you wonder in a small voice, wet eyes drifting towards the closed break room door. “I can’t go back out there. Not like this. What if… What if I freeze again? Three seconds is enough to… to kill someone if they’re in critical condition.”

“We’ll make sure you have dual coverage— if you freeze again, you’ll have another attending to step in for you,” Jack answers with a firm nod and unwavering gaze, confident enough to soothe you. “But, for now, we take you upstairs to neuro. Maybe do an EEG since you’re having new symptoms, just to rule out anything structural. And then tomorrow, you book an appointment with your doctor, and I’ll drive you— I don’t care when it is. Just call me, alright? I’ll give you my number.” 

You crumple under the weight of his tenderness, of his thumb running soothingly across the ridges of your knuckles. You shake your head, brows knitting softly together. “Why—?” you go to ask, but the words get caught halfway through. 

Why are you doing this? you want to say. Why are you doing this for me?

“Well, you pretty much carried me through hell, in case you forgot,” Jack answers with a tired laugh. “And I spent a long, long time wishing I could’ve helped you the same way you helped me.”

Silence settles comfortably between you once more. Your wet eyes fall to your joined hands, where his larger one engulfs your own. His are warmer, slightly rough around the knuckles, and calloused at the palms. It’s hard to imagine, you realize, that the hands that once clawed desperately at the sun-hot desert when you tended to his leg are now reaching so gently out for you.

A series of voices race down the hall all at once, yelling over the buzzing wheels of a gurney. “—What do you mean he lit it in his mouth?” 

“He thought it’d shoot out the opposite way—”

“Sir, please, stop trying to pull the bottle rocket out yourself—”

“There it is…” Jack huffs. “The annual reminder that fireworks are nature’s way of thinning out humanity.”

You exhale a quiet laugh through your nose, too weak for anything else, and follow Jack when he stands to full height. The distance between you is barely a step. You feel yourself closing it before your mind can catch up, sliding your arms experimentally around his shoulders and pressing your chest against his.

For the faintest fraction of a second, Jack goes still. His breath leaves him in a quiet rush at the feeling of having you so close. His arms raise slowly, wrapping around your waist with a tenderness that threatens to undo you all over again. One broad hand settles warmly between your shoulder blades, while the other spreads carefully along the small of your back.

You haven’t been this close to him since the day he almost died. In fact, the last time you held him, your hands had been slick with his blood — so much of it, that the dirt turned to sticky paste on your palms. But now, he no longer smells of the metallic blood and burning gunpowder and death that haunts your dreams. Instead, he smells of fresh laundry, expensive cedar cologne, and hospital soap. Like home. Like life.

You breathe in through your nose, inhaling him deep into your lungs. 

“Thank you…” you hear yourself say, chin bobbing on his shoulder, words brushing over the fabric of his scrubs.

“Don’t thank me,” Jack scoffs humorously, though his hands drift up and down your spine with an unyielding tenderness. “I’m still paying off a debt.”

“What debt?”

“You’re the one who refused to leave me behind, remember?” he asks. “Well, now it’s my turn to make sure nobody leaves you.” 

Outside, another firework climbs high into the starry summer sky and bursts into a thousand brilliant stars with another far-away explosion. Only this time, you hear it without hearing the war. 

Summer softens slowly into autumn.

The relentless early-July heat gives way to crisp mornings and cool evenings. Dusk arrives a little earlier every day, spilling through the closed bedroom curtains in silvers of honey-colored rays. Outside, a late afternoon breeze stirs the trees until the copper-colored branches brush the window — tires buzz across the worn pavement while the streets fill with the comforting chorus of the early evening.

Life always has a way of finding its rhythm, you find.

You continued working at the PTMC even after Robby returned from his sabbatical, settling into permanent dual coverage on the night shift with Jack. Your symptoms subsided after that first shift — no more blank spots since you switched medications; no more nightmares since you started spending the majority of your nights in Jack’s bed. Your mind feels like home again.

You lay there, tangled in the rumpled gray comforter, the majority of which you had unconsciously stolen during the night, and listen to the man’s even breaths as he sleeps soundly just beside you.

Jack lies on his stomach with his strong arms folded beneath the thin pillow under his head, facing away from you. You watch the gentle rise and fall of his back from where the dark sheet has slipped around his waist, exposing the freckled canvas of his back — and the healed scrape along his shoulder, now a thin scratch of marred, pink skin.

Your hand wanders slowly beneath the blankets — finding his clothed hip first, then crawling up the familiar landscape of his spine, before settling in the strands of silver curled at the nape of his neck.

The man wakes with a sharp inhale and turns his wild head slowly to face you, still not quite awake.

“Jack…” you whisper to him, fingers still twisting in his curls. “Jack.”

“Mm?” he grunts without opening his eyes, brows pinching in protest.

“We gotta start getting ready.”

Your hand parts from his neck to reach for the phone charging on the other side of you. You don’t make it far before a large, warm hand catches your wrist.

“No,” Jack grumbles halfway into his pillow, voice still gruff with sleep. He tugs your hand back to the back of his neck. “Keep going…”

You exhale a quiet laugh but oblige him anyway. His shoulders deflate with a contented sigh when your fingers return to his hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “Why is it you make me do this every morning, but when I ask you to scratch my back before bed, you’re asleep in two minutes?”

“I have a medical condition,” he slurs into his pillow, with his eyes still shut.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“Mm… Pretty sure that’s a HIPAA violation, honey.”

A laugh escapes you before you can help it. “You’re so annoying.”

“Here— We’ll do it at the same time,” Jack mumbles.

He grunts quietly as he twists on his left shoulder until his facing you properly. His right hand slithers around your waist, urging you closer until your knees bump beneath the blankets. His hand is warm and gently calloused when it slips beneath the hem of your oversized shirt. His dull nails scratch lazily up and down the length of your spine. Still without opening his eyes.

“See?” he hums. “Teamwork.”

You exhale a satisfied sigh, then joke drily despite yourself. “Your breath smells, by the way.”

He peeks a tired eye open at that. “Oh, yeah? And what do you think yours smells like, huh? Sunshine and rainbows?”

He leans in to kiss you anyway — a mere brushing of your lips for no longer than a second. But then the second lingers, and so does his mouth against yours. The kiss turns sleepy and slow, mouths gliding and tongues brushing.

Jack lifts himself onto the elbow of his free hand and urges you onto your back until half of his heavy weight is resting on top of you. The stiffness tucked in his boxers rubs against your thigh. A smile curls slowly on your mouth.

“We only have an— an hour to get ready—” You just barely manage to protest between his kisses. “You know that right?”

His mouth slides down to your neck to smear wet-hot kisses along your pulse. His hips flatten further against yours, pressing his hardening length more ardently against you. “I only need five minutes, honey. I promise.”

“Oh, trust me,” you scoff drily. “I’m well aware.”

Jack pulls off of you with the quiet smack of his mouth parting from your jaw. His sleep-swollen features twist in a feigned offense. Slumber clings stubbornly to every inch of him — curls flat on one side and wild on the other; stubble a shade darker on his jaw; pillow creases stamped along his cheek.

“Oh, you are just asking for it, aren’t you?” he squints.

“Clock’s ticking, Dr. Abbot,” you tease with a lazy smile, fingers dancing through his silver curls. “I’m gonna be in that shower in five minutes— With or without you.”

A flicker of amusement flashes across his face, right before he ducks back down to swallow you whole in a searing kiss. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”