captains boy

Robby rushes in with Dr. Al-Hashimi just behind him a second later, shattering the playful tension between the two of you with a thousand different questions. You’re left as the only resident in a sea of attendings and nurses; Dr. Al passes you the reins accordingly. “This is a learning hospital, right? Time for you to learn how to be the boss, R4.”

“Hear that, Abbot?” you joke as the older man migrates inevitably to your side, smelling of blood and sweat and the cologne he always leaves on your pillow. “I’m the boss here.”

“Well, you could try to be a little more humble about it, sweetheart,” he squints and tugs on a disposable PPE gown, which Perlah helps him tie in the back. “Let’s do some skin hooks— 4 Shiley. Sound good?”

You hiss through your teeth and drag the clear blue sleeves of your own gown over your shoulders, while Robby stands behind you to knot the garment in place. “I don’t really like the curve of a Shiley… Especially not if we’re about to rush him up to the O.R.”

“I didn’t know you were so picky.”

“Well, you should know better than anyone, Dr. Abbot,” you grin. “Cut me an ET tube, will you? 6-0?”

“Yes, ma’am…” the older man nods and holds back his giddy grin until he turns away from you.

Robby grumbles a noise of disgust in the back of his throat in the meanwhile — quickly realizing that the two of you were much easier to stomach when you were working night shifts together, and he only had to see you for half an hour in passing, at most. 

“Jesus Christ— Get a room, you two.”

“Well, technically, this is a room,” Jack quips distantly as he returns to your side with the endotracheal tube in tow. You make room for him at the head of the gurney on instinct, and drape a thin blue cloth over the patient’s neck, centering the aperture over the gushing wound. 

Robby moves to the opposite side of the bed and pulls the haphazardly placed intubation bag from the man’s mouth with careful hands. “One without me in it, preferably,” he argues.

“Ooh…” you lilt. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Dr. Robby.”

“Just focus,” he scolds in a gritty tone of voice.

“You need to find the second and third tracheal rings,” Dr. Al instructs, sliding between the crowd and motioning to his neck with her gloved pinky. “You’ll be able to feel them with your fingers— just make the incision through the cricoid cartilage and be careful to avoid hitting the vocal cords, yeah?”

She flashes you a dark, doe-eyed, and distantly unamused look, seemingly immune to the playful banter surrounding her. 

You nod once, scalpel in hand. “Yes, ma’am.”

You make the incision while Jack preps the tube. You work together with deft hands and a relative silence, aside from a few procedural directions. For the most part, the two of you communicate without words — you locate the man’s ruptured trachea in a sea of bright red blood while Jack slides the thin tubing to make an airway.

“I’m in,” he blurts after a few tense minutes. “Balloon up.”

The rapid beeping of his dropping SATs begins to even out almost instantly. 

“I’ll sew the tracheal to the skin,” you announce within a sigh of relief. “2-0 silk, please.”

Jack passes you the round of sutures with a proud nod and a quiet smile. “Not too shabby, Doc… We make a pretty good team.”

“Or maybe I’m just really good at telling you what to do, Abbot,” you quip.

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “That, too.”

Robby and Dr. Al take their leave when the chaos dissipates, and Garcia comes down from the O.R. for a consultation. They trade the crowded trauma room for an equally crowded emergency department — slowly filling to the brim, like a pot bound to boil over. But, even still, it’s not nearly as tense as whatever you and Abbot have going on.

“Are they always like that?” the woman wonders aloud, nodding her tied-back curls towards the room behind them.

“Yep…” Robby nods with a heavy sigh, rubbing hand sanitizer between his calloused palms. “But they’re not usually dayshift, so… My philosophy is— let the night crew deal with it.”

You and Jack decide to follow Robby’s advice and find a room of your own — on the half-abandoned wing of the eighth floor, where everything smells like dust and time gone by, and the dying overhead lights only work a quarter of the time. It’s a good enough place to be alone with him, though; it gives you ample time to patch up the wound on his shoulder, and saves Jack the trouble of getting caught with the injury and being forced to fill out a mountain of paperwork accordingly.

He sits on the edge of the hospital bed with his shirt off and his broad arms crossed over his chest. The tendons in his freckled back twitch despite himself when you smooth a fresh bandage over his freshly cleaned scrape.

“Does it feel okay?” you ask him.

“Yep…” he nods once, trying and failing to get a peek of the gauze from over his shoulder. “Fine.”

Your concern doesn’t waver. Your brows lower with it, in a palpable look of worry that etches across your face. “You’d tell me if you were, like, in pain, though, right?”

Jack ponders for a moment, lips jutting faintly. “No, probably not,” he answers, too blunt for his own good.

“Well. At least you’re honest…”

You sigh and turn on the heel of your sneaker to chuck the dirtied napkins and crumpled wrappers into the bin across the room. Jack watches you go with something mischievous glimmering in his gaze.

“But I am fine, though— If you’re really all that worried about me,” he assures you with a quiet smile. “I’m a little banged up, but… I’ll survive.”

“So I can still come over tonight?” you wonder, half-shy.

Jack nods slowly and tilts his scruffy chin to keep your gaze when you walk the short distance back over to him. “Yes, sweetheart— I still plan on buying you dinner tonight,” he answers in a dry, sarcastic lilt.

Because that’s usually how it goes nowadays. You keep him company for a night, and he gets you food, pays off your grocery bill, or covers your rent — and then you go to work the next day like none of it ever happened. 

It didn’t always used to be that way, though, this quid pro quo thing that the two of you had struck up over time. Jack bought things for you because he cared about you, because he didn’t want you to go hungry or homeless when he knew he had the money to help. It was all a part of his job, he figured, to help his residents out whenever he could. But, somewhere down the line, he became more than just your attending, and a whole lot less than your boyfriend. It was more like a secret, third thing that the two of you never bothered to put a label on.

You frown. “That’s not why I was asking, smartass.”

“Well, that’s the arrangement, though, right?”

“Calling it an arrangement makes it sound like I’m your— mail-order bride or something,” you scoff and cross your arms over his chest, following his form with a squinted gaze as he reaches for his discarded shirt. “You don’t have to make it sound so formal, Jack. I know this is fun for you, too.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t…” he quips with a faint wince as he slides the thin black t-shirt over his head, grimacing at the burn that blooms beneath the bandage as he does so.

“And no pressure or anything, obviously, but, uh…” You trail off and swallow hard, struggling to find the courage to continue as your eyes flit everywhere but at the man before you. “My student loans are about to hit for this month, and I—”

“I know,” Jack interjects with a polite nod. “I already took care of it.”

You lose your breath almost instantly, for a reason you can’t quite name.

“…Seriously?”

He scoffs like it’s obvious and rises from the bed, towering several inches over you. “Well, yeah. I told you, sweetheart— You don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore. As per the arrangement...” he croons lowly, with a playful half-smile, before bending softly at the waist to press a fleeting kiss to your lips.

You’re too busy trying to remember how to breathe to respond.

You struggle to finish the rest of your charting through the thoughts of Jack still plaguing your mind. You don’t think you’ve been so taken care of before; so seen, so held. You’re not entirely sure what to do with all of it now — these feelings that you’re harboring for your boss, of which you’re almost certain there is no room for in such an arrangement, as he so lovingly calls it. 

Because he doesn’t take care of you because he loves you. He takes care of you so you’ll come over at the end of every night, and remind him what it feels like to be a little less lonely. And even still, you run hopelessly to his side anyway — half-ashamed because you don’t even care that he’s using you; half-ashamed because you like it.

“Have you seen Dr. Abbot?” Samira wonders through panted breaths, disrupting your distracted train of thought. She enters your tunnel vision from the opposite side of the desk, and all of a sudden, you’re back in the E.R. The distant droning of constant noise fills your ears when you’re shoved back to reality again. “I’ve been trying to find him for, like, ten minutes at this point.”

“Uh… No— Not recently, no,” you stammer.

Her chest deflates with an exhaled breath. “Shit…”

Your eyes narrow as they scan over her form, frazzled and sweaty, with dark curls falling out of her claw clip to frame either side of her face. “You okay? What happened?”

She sighs and leans her elbows on the desk in front of her.

“Nothing, I just… I should’ve planned this better,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. She talks with her hands as she rambles, “My patient doesn’t have any insurance. And he’s already in a mountain of medical debt as it is, so I was gonna send him home with some supplies, right? But then I lost him, and I was gonna Uber the stuff to his house, but then Dr. Abbot said he’d pay for it, and… Now I can’t find either of them, so…”

She trails off with a deep huff.

You forget that it’s your turn to respond, too hung up on the fact that Jack had offered to help her pay. It shouldn’t bother you as much as it does, but it hits you like a punch to the stomach all the same. Because you weren’t special, Jack was just kind; and you’re only realizing now that this arrangement of yours was never exactly exclusive.

“Sorry,” Samira shakes her head. “I know I’m rambling. It’s just… been a long day.”

You blink rapidly, clearing the haze of hurt from your eyes. “No, I— I totally get it. You should check upstairs. He might be with Hiro in the O.R.”

“Thanks,” she says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, that disappears the second she heads back for the elevator across the room.

You return to your charting when she’s gone, but forget to do any of it. You lose yourself in the void of the stark white computer screen, instead, while your hurt and distant jealousy scratches at your chest from the inside out.

Robby watches from afar, giving you a few minutes alone, before dismissing himself from the interns and shattering your cynical stream of consciousness. “How’s the charting coming along?” he asks in lieu of a greeting as he walks to stand at your side.

“Great,” you deadpan, muffled into the hands holding up your heavy head.

He scoffs out a quiet laugh. “Not to say I told you so, but… I did kinda tell you so…”

You turn slowly, peeking at him with one glaring eye as he leans against the desk beside you with his arm crossed over his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you question in a gritty monotone.

“I told you not to get involved with Abbot,” Robby shrugs. “Not until you were done with your residency— ‘cause you already repeated one year, and if you want that neuro fellowship, you can’t have Jack screwing with your head.”

“Oh, yeah?” you squint, feigning interest as you slouch back in your chair. “The same way you screwed with Heather’s? When you got her pregnant when she was your resident?”

You say it to hurt him, and you can tell that it does, though it doesn’t feel as rewarding as you thought it would.

“Yeah, actually…” Robby nods and scratches at the greying patch in his beard. There’s a hurt look swimming in his dark eyes that almost makes you cower when he peers down at you. “Look, kid. I don’t care what you and Abbot get up to in your free time. That’s not what this is. But I’ve known you since you were an MS3— and I know you’re gonna go off to do great things, because I’m the one that taught you, right?”

Your frown deepens.

He smiles wider. “I just don’t want some relationship getting in your head, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s not, so…” you trail off with a less than convincing waver in your voice. 

“Really?” he hums, eyes narrowing in a challenging squint. “Have you checked in with that fellowship you wanted?”

You smack your lips against your teeth. “Not yet…”

“And why’s that?”

“When did you become my mom, exactly, Dr. Robby?” you joke and spin in your chair to face him. “‘Cause it feels a little like you’re reprimanding me here—”

“I am reprimanding you,” he tells you, only partially joking, before turning at the distant call of his name. He stands to full height again and flashes you a playfully stern look as he walks away. “Take care of it, alright? Or else I’m grounding you.”

“For how long?” you call after him.

“However long it takes to get your head out of your ass—”

You’re left reeling for the rest of the day, trapped in a merciless cycle of want and unwavering doubt. 

Jack is not yet close enough, even when he’s all but smothering you in the center of his bed, pressing you into the mussed sheets below with his broad body propped on top of yours. He smells distinctly of sweat, stale cologne, and the steak dinner he took you to after your shift ended. 

You wrap your arms around his freckled shoulders in a feeble attempt to pull him impossibly closer, careful to avoid the bandage still stuck on his left shoulder blade. You bury your nose in his greying curls while he sprinkles warm, wet kisses along the tendons of your neck, relishing in the salty tang of sweat staining your skin.

But even as he slots himself between your spread thighs, even as he marks his territory in the lovebites he litters on your collarbone, you can’t shake the feeling that he’d rather be somewhere else — that there’s someone else he’s thinking of, someone else he’ll call after you’ve left for home, someone else he’ll take care of when you’re gone.

The train of thought leads you inevitably back to the root of your cynicism, which you struggle to shake out of your mind once the visual has entered it.

“Did you ever find Samira?” you hear yourself ask, shattering the honeyed quiet of his lamplit bedroom. 

Jack’s head is far too cloudy to hear you properly the first time. 

He pulls away from you with a quiet smack and sits back on his haunches. Your hands fall to your stomach, clad only in a thin white tank top, while his rest over your bare thighs, propped on either side of his waist. Your cotton panties are the only thing keeping you hidden from him now, and his form-fitting boxers cradle a hardening length that threatens to make your mouth water.

He wears a swirled look of confusion across his scruffy face, along with his spit on his swollen, kissbitten mouth, as he asks, “Did I ever find what?”

“Samira,” you echo, brows raised to your hairline. “She was looking for you a little bit before we left— Said she needed your help paying for something.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Jack hums, pale shoulders bouncing in a lazy shrug. “Her patient needed some supplies Ubered to his house, so… I took care of it. No big deal.”

He bends down to kiss you again, but freezes with his nose pressed against the bridge of yours when he feels you tense below him. His heavy sigh fans warm across your jaw before he sits back again, features screwed in a faint grimace.

“And I’m realizing now that that’s probably not the best phrase to use, but… I was just helping out a friend— a patient, actually,” he rambles. “That’s it.”

Your eyes narrow in a playful squint. 

“That’s it?” you echo.

“Trust me, sweetheart,” Jack scoffs and shifts between your thighs, lifting your hips with his wide hands cradling your ass and bending at the waist to press his mouth over the bow in the center of your underwear. “The only girl getting her student loans paid off by me, is you.”

He leaves another chaste kiss on the cotton of your panties, right over the place where you throb like a heartbeat for him. Your stomach blooms with warmth.

“Because I’m special or because you don’t have the money to afford anyone else?” you ask.

Jack squints, light eyes glimmering with mischief in the low light. “Because you’re special and because I don’t have the money to afford anyone else. How about that?”

You roll your eyes despite the soft smile hinting at the corners of your mouth. “Just get to work, Dr. Abbot,” you scold in a distant monotone.

“With pleasure,” he mumbles, right before sliding his fingers through the hem of your underwear, pulling them to the side, and kissing your glittering pussy the way he would your mouth.

The lamplit bedroom swells with panted breaths and the heavy scent of sex. 

Jack slouches against the headboard, heavy-eyed and wearing a mixture of your cum and spit down to his scruffy chin. His toned chest is coated in a thin layer of hair and glittering sweat. You watch a rogue bead trail down his sternum from where you’re perched on top of him — with the sheets bunched around your hips, and your thighs straddling his waist. Your pussy still clenches with the aftershocks of your orgasm while his spent cock softens slowly inside of you. 

His calloused hands trail slowly up and down the length of your torso — from your shoulder blades, down to your ribs, over the bend of your waist, and up again. His touch is softer than summer rain, warmer than the cum leaking slowly out of you now.

“Do you think you could write me a letter of recommendation?” you ask, tracing the freckles on his chest with your pointer finger. “You know, for the neuro fellowship we talked about?”

“Wow…” Jack croons drily, brows raised to his hairline. His words slur slightly together as he comes down from the remnants of his high. “No aftercare, huh? Not even a little pillow talk? Just… straight to the point?”

You flash him a playfully stern look from beneath your lashes, lips quirking in a shy smile. “‘M just asking a question…”

“Yeah, while I’m still inside you,” he scoffs a tired laugh. “You know you don’t have to sex with me to get what you want—”

You frown. “That’s not what I was—”

“—You can just ask.”

“I’m having sex with you because I like it, Jack,” you blurt, very foreignly stern with him, as your eyes harden in a glare. “And I’m asking you for a letter of rec because I respect your opinion—”

“And because you don’t trust Robby to give you a good one, I’m assuming?” he quips with an arched brow.

“Exactly,” you nod.

Jack laughs. You can feel it rumbling in his chest beneath your palms. “I’ll e-mail it to you later. How about that?”

“There’s no rush,” you assure him. “Seriously. I haven’t even applied for it yet—”

“Don’t worry about it. I already wrote it.”

He steals the breath from your lungs for the second, third, or hundredth time that day.

“You already wrote it?” you echo, brows furrowed. “When?”

“When you told me about it the first time,” he confesses, bouncing a bare shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I knew you’d need a letter of rec eventually, so... I wrote while I had some free time and just… waited for you to ask, I guess.”

Your face screws with skepticism. It burns somewhere in your chest, too. 

Even with him softening inside of you, leaking out of you, you can’t help but feel slightly suspicious of his sincerity. You still can’t quite believe that he cares about you this much.

“…Really?”

“Yeah,” he laughs and squeezes gently at your sides. “Why do you look so shocked? I do care about you outside of… all this. You know that, right?”

“I didn’t…” you confess, painfully shy, and lacking the courage to meet his gaze for several long moments. You focus instead on your hands, and the shapes you trace along his chest. “Not until now…”

“Well, what do I gotta do to prove it to you, huh?” Jack asks within a huff as he rises from his slouched position against the headboard. 

The mattress creaks softly as his weight shifts. His warm chest presses firmly to yours, smothering your breasts against his heartbeat, as he cradles you to his chest. His glittering eyes dart back and forth between the two of yours as he says, “I’ve already given you everything, sweetheart…”

“I don’t want everything,” you murmur with a shake of your head, unable to tear your gaze from his attentive one. “I just want you.” 

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