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Currently hyper fixated on Jack and pregnant!reader 🥹 Because like let’s say you’re waddling around your kitchen in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep with the uncomfortable size of your tummy at this point. We’re talking third trimester, any day now timeline. In walks Jack post shift, exhausted and grateful to be home. He sets his bag down and slides his shoes off at the door. He knows you’ve been struggling with sleeping through the night, but still moves through the house quietly in case you are.
He can hear you puttering around in the kitchen, cabinets opening and closing as you change your mind twenty different times about what you’re craving. He leans against the wall, a crinkly eyed smile on his face watching you. Amused by you. Amazed by you. His sleepy girl who’s creating a tiny life inside of her. You’re in one of his old band T-shirts, a pair of his boxers, and fluffy socks. Your hair’s up and disheveled with puffy, sleepy eyes to tie together the ‘hot mess express’ look you’re sporting. And Jack loves it.
Nothing screams ‘sexy’ to Jack like the woman he loves carrying his child. You could be wearing a fucking garbage bag and Jack Abbot still wants up in those guts, baby. You let out a little yawn while steeping your tea under the light above the stove, gasping in surprise as he comes up behind you and wraps his strong arms under your belly. He lifts it, earning an actual moan of relief from you. You could cry, it feels that fucking good. The last few weeks have been hell for your lower back, and you’ve been fussing about it (reasonably so) to Jack more often. Your heart just melts at the thought of him picking up a tip or two from the OBGYN nurses at the hospital.
“You get any sleep, mommy?” he mumbles into your shoulder.
“A little. I think we’re having a rockstar, babe. She loves partying into the early hours of the morning, this one. She’s been kicking me since three a.m.” Jack can’t help but chuckle at the havoc your unborn daughter is already wreaking on you.
“Does this help?” he asks. You nod your head appreciatively.
“Jack, it feels so good. Thank you,” you sigh blissfully. You relax into his arms, letting your head lull back lazily against his warm chest. “How’d you know this would help?”
“Dana actually gave me this one. I jus’ felt awful watchin’ you be so uncomfortable. Broke my heart, baby.” He kisses the side of your head tenderly.
“You know what’s breaking my heart right now?” Jack’s head perks up, caught off guard and slightly confused by your question.
“What’s that?” he asks, tentative.
“That we’re all out of chocolate chips, and now I can’t make chocolate chip pancakes,” you whine. Jack can’t help but laugh. You laugh too, you know it sounds ridiculous. But it also sounds so good.
“I see a Door Dash order from Denny’s in my future,” Jack says. You let him gently drop your belly before turning to face him.
“Hmm…I was thinking Waffle House,” you smile. The lack of sleep and backaches are totally worth mornings like this. And - despite the crying - even more so after the birth of your daughter.
pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – garrett's girlfriend is drunk, freezing, and extremely loyal. so loyal, in fact, that she refuses his water, his jacket, and his flirting because she’s waiting for… garrett graham.
warnings – fluff, drunk antics, alcohol, post-game party, protective boyfriend garrett, reader doesn't recognise him for most of the fic
notes from me – part of my 1k celebrations!! & based on this request!! thank u anon, such a cute idea 🥹
word count – 4.4k
navigation – masterlist | taglist
There was two versions of Garrett Graham. The version people got in the rink, all sharp focus and captain voice and that very specific game-day intensity that made even strangers in the stands start sitting a little straighter when he skated past.
Then there was the version people got after he’d won, showered, changed, and been handed exactly two beers at a party by Logan, who had called it recovery hydration with the confidence of a man who had never once been trusted by medical professionals.
That Garrett was looser. Warmer. Still tired in the shoulders, still carrying the ache of a hard check somewhere along his ribs, but smiling more easily now, head tipped back while Tucker said something dry beside him and Dean yelled over the music from the kitchen like volume could make a story better.
His hair was still damp at the edges from his post-game shower, curling slightly where he’d shoved his hand through it too many times, and the dark blue Briar letterman jacket had stayed on for maybe twelve minutes before the house got too hot and he dumped it over the back of a chair.
He was, by every reasonable standard, doing great. His girlfriend was not. His girlfriend had arrived at the party with Allie and a plan that had included one drink, maybe two, and absolutely no consideration for the fact that girls pouring vodka cranberries in hockey houses tended to treat measurements as a loose concept.
Garrett had been across the living room when she’d taken the first one. He’d been in the kitchen with Tucker when she’d finished the second. By the time he saw her again, she was standing near the bottom of the stairs with one hand wrapped around a red cup, smiling at something Allie said with the bright, floaty concentration of a girl whose whole body had started operating on a two-second delay.
He could notice a winger drifting out of formation from half a rink away with two guys trying to take his head off. He could absolutely notice his girlfriend blinking too slowly under the hallway light, her cheeks warm from alcohol and the heat of too many bodies packed into the house, her mouth glossy and parted slightly like she kept forgetting whether she was meant to be talking or laughing.
She looked happy, which helped. Loose and giggly and pleased. But she also kept shifting her weight like the floor had become more wobbly than usual, and Garrett had not fought for his life against Harvard’s second line that afternoon just to let his girlfriend get taken out by hardwood.
So he left Logan mid-sentence. Logan didn’t even pretend to be offended. He just followed Garrett’s line of sight, saw her trying to drink from the cup and missing her mouth by half an inch, and winced. “Oh, buddy.”
Garrett pointed at him without looking back. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was gonna say she looks graceful.”
“Die.”
Garrett crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone everyone automatically moved for, red cup of water in hand because Tucker, thank God, had seen the situation unfolding and passed it over like a medic on a battlefield.
She didn’t see Garrett coming. She was too busy nodding very seriously at Allie, who was holding both her hands and saying something that involved the words no, babe, I’m so serious and eyebrow blindness.
Garrett stepped into her space, close enough that his knee brushed hers. “Hey, baby.”
She turned toward him. For one beautiful second, her face went blank. Then her entire expression rearranged itself into scandalised horror.
“Excuse you,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height, which was less effective than usual because she swayed slightly at the top and had to catch Allie’s wrist. “I have a boyfriend.”
Garrett blinked.
Allie made a noise like she’d swallowed a firework. Garrett looked at his girlfriend. His girlfriend looked back at him with genuine, drunken offence, like he’d approached her in a bar wearing a leather bracelet and too much confidence.
“Uh huh,” he said slowly, because there were moments in life that required leadership and moments that required not laughing directly in the face of the girl you loved while she was doing her best. “That’s great.”
“It is great,” she said, lifting her chin. “He’s very tall.”
Garrett’s mouth twitched. “Good for him.”
“And he plays hockey.”
“No shit?”
“And he’s, like, really good at it.”
Allie had turned away now, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Garrett refused to look at her because if he did, he was going to lose it, and that felt like the sort of thing his girlfriend would interpret as disrespect from a strange man at a party, which apparently he was now.
He held out the cup. “Can you drink some water for me?”
Her eyes narrowed. Suspicious. Wobbly. Deeply loyal to the absent boyfriend currently standing less than a foot in front of her. “Why?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Baby.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Don’t call me baby.”
“Right. Sorry.” He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, nodding with a level of solemnity he absolutely did not feel. “My bad.”
“My boyfriend calls me baby.”
“Does he?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds annoying.”
“He’s not annoying.” She frowned at him with such force that it seemed to briefly take all her balance with it. Garrett’s free hand shot out to her waist before she could tip sideways into Allie. She looked down at it, then back up at him, appalled. “Don’t touch my waist.”
Garrett removed his hand at once, palms lifting. “Alright.”
Allie, still dying, leaned in and said, “Babe, maybe just drink the water.”
She looked betrayed. “You’re taking his side?”
“I’m taking hydration’s side.”
Garrett offered the cup again. “Just a couple sips.”
She stared at him for another second, clearly weighing the moral implications of accepting water from a man who looked suspiciously like her boyfriend but who she had, for reasons unclear to everyone except the vodka, decided was not.
Finally, she took the cup with great caution, like he might use the transfer to propose something criminal, and drank.
Garrett watched her swallow three obedient little sips, then nodded. “Good girl.”
The look she gave him could have killed a weaker man. “Nope.”
“Right. Yep. Forgot.”
“My boyfriend says that.”
“Bet he does,” Garrett muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She handed the cup back, pleased with herself and still indignant, and then immediately turned toward Allie like the conversation had been handled.
Garrett stood there for half a second, holding the water, staring at the side of her face.
Dean appeared beside him like he had been summoned by humiliation itself. “Hey, man.”
Garrett didn’t look over. “Do not.”
Dean’s grin was audible. “She knows you’re her boyfriend, right?”
“She’s drunk.”
“She just told you she has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, Dean, I was here.”
Dean leaned around him to look at her, delighted. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Garrett finally turned his head and gave him a flat look. “That’s sad.”
“No, what’s sad is getting rejected by your own girlfriend.” Dean clapped him once on the shoulder and immediately stepped out of reach. “Tough shift, captain.”
Garrett pointed at him. “I will put you through a wall.”
“Wow.” Dean called over his shoulder, already retreating. “Her boyfriend would never.”
Garrett took a slow breath through his nose and looked back at her. She was laughing at something Allie said now, one hand pressed to her own chest, head tipping forward so her hair fell around her face.
She looked ridiculous. Beautiful and unsteady and way too warm in the cheeks, standing under the hallway light like the world had gone pleasantly fuzzy and she trusted it not to hurt her because she hadn’t yet noticed Garrett had been replaced by some guy bothering her with cups.
His annoyance softened before it could become anything real. Fine. He could work with this.
For the next twenty minutes, Garrett kept orbiting. That was the only word for it. He didn’t hover, because hovering would get him accused of being controlling by Dean, and probably by her if she remembered how to form an argument.
He orbited. Close enough to keep an eye on her, far enough that she didn’t look up and accuse him of trying to steal girlfriend privileges from Garrett Graham, who was both beloved and missing.
She danced with Allie in the living room, mostly from the waist up because her coordination had started giving its two weeks’ notice.
She complimented Tucker’s shirt with extreme sincerity even though Tucker was wearing the same plain black t-shirt he wore to every party.
She told Logan he looked so tall tonight, which made Logan look down at himself like height might have happened recently and without his permission.
Garrett found her again near the back door, rubbing both hands over her bare arms.
The house was hot, but the door kept swinging open whenever someone stepped out to smoke or yell into the yard, letting in cold spring air that slipped over her skin and made her shoulders inch up toward her ears.
Garrett saw the little shiver move through her before she did. He grabbed his letterman jacket off the chair and came up behind her, careful this time, no hands first. Just the jacket, warm from the room and heavy with him, settled over her shoulders.
“There,” he said, low near her ear. “You’re cold.”
She froze.
Garrett closed his eyes for one second. “Please don’t.”
She shrugged the jacket off so fast it nearly hit the floor. Garrett caught it by the collar.
“Nope,” she said.
“Baby.”
Her head snapped around. “I said no.”
Garrett looked at the ceiling. The ceiling offered no help. “You’re shivering.”
“I only wear my boyfriend’s jacket.”
“This is your boyfriend’s jacket.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It literally has my name on it.”
She squinted at the embroidered Graham on the chest like letters were a personal challenge. “Lots of people are named Graham.”
“Not on this team.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. I’m the captain.”
Her face twisted with immediate doubt, like that was exactly the sort of lie a jacket predator would tell at a party. “You’re the captain?”
Garrett stared at her. “Oh my God.”
From the couch, Logan made a strangled sound into his beer.
She pointed at Garrett’s chest, very serious now. “My boyfriend is the captain.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard great things.”
“He’s very hot.”
“Is he?”
“So hot,” she said, and then sighed, soft and dramatic and so genuinely fond that Garrett’s irritation had nowhere to land. “Like, stupid hot. It’s actually kind of annoying.”
Garrett’s face moved before he could stop it, warmth pulling at his mouth. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “And he has really nice hands.”
Logan choked.
Garrett didn’t look away from her. “Good hands are important.”
“They are,” she agreed solemnly. “And he’s not some random guy trying to give girls jackets.”
“Right.” He held up the jacket between them, helpless now. “Can I just–”
“No thank you.”
“You’re gonna freeze.”
“I’ll wait for Garrett.”
“You do that,” he said, because love was standing in a hockey house holding your own jacket while your drunk girlfriend faithfully rejected you on your own behalf. “Sounds like a plan.”
She smiled at him then, bright and polite. “Thank you for understanding.”
Garrett looked at her for a long moment, then at the jacket, then back at her. “Anytime.”
He walked away to the sound of Logan losing the fight against laughter so badly he had to bend over his own knees.
“You’re not helping,” Garrett said.
Logan wiped under one eye. “I’m sorry, man, but she’s loyal as hell.”
“She thinks I’m a stranger.”
“She thinks you’re a stranger with bad intentions. There’s a difference.”
“Great. That makes it better.”
Tucker came up beside them, looking far too amused for somebody usually committed to being the reasonable one. “You know, technically, this is a very good sign for your relationship.”
Garrett gave him a look. “Don’t start.”
“She’s hammered and still refusing men for you.”
“She refused me.”
“Exactly. Nobody is safe.”
Dean reappeared then, because joy, unfortunately, had a way of finding him. “I just heard she wouldn’t wear your jacket.”
Garrett’s jaw tightened. “You heard wrong.”
Dean grinned. “Did I?”
“I’m gonna kill you before playoffs.”
“No, you’re not. You’re too busy getting friend-zoned by your girlfriend.”
Garrett shoved him in the chest. Dean laughed all the way into the kitchen.
By the time Garrett found her again, she had somehow migrated to the old armchair near the stairs, sitting sideways with her knees tucked up and Dean perched on the arm like some kind of terrible emotional support animal.
Her bare arms were folded tight over her chest now, because she was still cold and still deeply committed to jacket monogamy. Her face had changed too. Gone softer around the edges, bottom lip pushed out, all the earlier moral outrage curdled into something wounded and grumpy.
Garrett stopped a few feet away. Dean saw him first and his grin turned wicked. “Oh, thank God.”
She frowned up at Dean. “What?”
“Nothing.” Dean patted the top of the chair. “Your night’s about to improve.”
She slumped deeper into the cushion, still looking at Dean. “I haven’t seen Garrett all night.”
Garrett blinked.
Dean pressed his lips together so hard his whole face went strange.
She kept going, mournful now, eyes glossy from alcohol and the kind of drama that only really existed after midnight in a crowded house. “He’s, like, disappeared.”
Garrett slowly looked at Dean.
“He had a game,” she said, to no one in particular, or maybe to Dean’s knee. “And I wanted to tell him he played really good.”
“He knows,” Dean said, voice suspiciously tight.
“No, but I wanted to tell him.” She rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand, then stopped halfway as if remembering makeup existed. “And there’s this guy who keeps talking to me.”
Garrett’s eyebrows went up.
Dean made direct eye contact with him and looked like he might actually pass away.
“He keeps calling me baby,” she muttered. “And trying to make me drink water.”
Garrett bit the inside of his cheek.
“Sounds awful,” Dean managed.
“So annoying,” she said. “Like, okay, hydration police. I have a boyfriend.”
Garrett stepped closer then, because there were only so many times a man could be called the hydration police by the love of his life before he had to intervene. “Hey, baby.”
Her head lifted. The transformation was immediate and almost violent. Her whole face opened, bright and relieved and suddenly so happy to see him that it genuinely knocked the joke sideways in his chest. “Garrett!”
He froze. “Hi?”
“Baby!” She reached both arms out toward him from the chair, nearly tipping herself forward in the process. Garrett crossed the last step fast and caught her by the hands before she could slide off the cushion. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said again, slower this time, looking down at her. “You recognise me now?”
She frowned like he’d said something deeply strange. “What are you talking about?”
Dean made a sound that might have been a cough if he had not immediately turned away with his shoulders shaking.
Garrett stared at her. “Nothing.”
She squeezed his face, delighted and fully unaware of the damage she’d caused him tonight. “I missed you.”
His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah?”
“Yes.” She tugged at him, needy and uncoordinated, until he stepped properly between her legs where she’d moved to sit properly in the chair. Her knees bracketed his thighs, her fingers curling in the front of his shirt like now that she had found him, she intended to physically prevent further abandonment. “You were gone for so long.”
Garrett looked at her for one second, then over her head at Dean, who was wiping tears out of the corner of his eye. “I was around.”
She shook her head, very firm. “No.”
“No?”
“No. There was just this guy.”
Garrett nodded, face serious. “Right. The water guy.”
She gasped softly, looking up at him with genuine alarm. “You saw him?”
Dean slid off the arm of the chair. “I need to go tell Logan something immediately.”
Garrett didn’t even try to stop him. His hands had settled at her waist now, thumbs pressing lightly over the fabric of her top because she was still swaying in tiny increments even while sitting down. “Yeah, baby, I saw him.”
“You should talk to him.”
“Oh, I should?”
“Yes.” Her voice dropped into a whisper that wasn’t remotely quiet. “He was flirting with me.”
Garrett’s eyes flicked over her face. “Was he?”
“He kept calling me baby.”
“That’s crazy.”
“And he tried to give me his jacket.”
“What a dick.”
She nodded, relieved that he understood the severity. “I know.”
Garrett’s grin finally broke free, slow and helpless. He stepped closer until her forehead could tip against his stomach, and when it did, she sighed like the entire night had been restored to its proper axis by the smell of his shirt.
He looked down at the crown of her head, at the way her hands had found the hem of his t-shirt and held on loosely, and brushed his fingers once over the back of her hair.
She had rejected him all night. She had accused him of being a stranger, declined his water on principle, refused his jacket with the ferocity of a woman defending a sacred oath, and still somehow the inside of him went soft at the way she leaned into him now, trusting and warm and gone enough to be ridiculous but not gone enough to forget where she wanted to end up.
“Baby,” he murmured.
“Mhm?”
“You wanna get outta here?”
Her head lifted at once. “Yes, please.”
“Yeah?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, watching the way her eyes followed his face now with no suspicion at all. “You done?”
“So done.” She nodded, then winced faintly at the motion like her brain had moved one direction and her skull another. “Can we go home?”
“Yeah, we can go home.”
“And maybe get McDonald’s?”
Garrett laughed under his breath, and the sound made her smile like she’d won something. “Sure, baby.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But you gotta stand up first.”
She looked down at her own legs with sudden doubt. “Okay.”
“Confident.”
“I can do it.”
“I know you can.” He took both her hands and backed up half a step, giving her room. “Come on. Up we go.”
She stood with the intense focus of someone attempting a field sobriety test on a ship. Garrett’s hands went to her waist at once, steadying her as her knees straightened and her body tipped forward into his.
He didn’t make a show of it. Didn’t laugh when she grabbed his forearms and blinked hard at the room. He only held her until she found the floor again, fingers spread warm and firm at her sides.
“There we go,” he said softly. “You good?”
She nodded, then thought about it. “Mostly.”
“Mostly works.” He leaned around her just enough to grab his letterman jacket from the back of the chair “Can I put this on you now, or are we still being loyal to your boyfriend?”
She looked at the jacket. Then up at him. Then back at the jacket.
“That’s yours,” she said, like he was the one struggling to keep up.
Garrett pressed his lips together. “Yeah.”
She smiled, sweet and pleased. “Okay.”
He slid it over her shoulders. This time she pushed her arms into the sleeves with immediate enthusiasm, even though they swallowed her hands completely.
Garrett zipped it halfway because she was too busy smelling the collar with a happy little hum that did absolutely nothing for his ability to remain normal.
“You smell good,” she told him.
“Thanks.”
“Like Garrett.”
“Crazy coincidence.”
She nodded, accepting that, and slipped her hand into his when he offered it. Her fingers were warm and clumsy between his, squeezing twice like she was checking he was real. He squeezed back once and started guiding her through the house.
The party kept moving around them. Someone called his name from the kitchen and Garrett lifted his free hand without stopping. Logan appeared near the doorway, took one look at them, and grinned.
“She found you,” he said.
Garrett pointed at him. “Not a word.”
She turned toward Logan, solemn and slightly off-balance. “There was a guy bothering me all night.”
Logan’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked at Garrett, then back at her. “No way.”
She nodded. “Way.”
Garrett kept walking. “Let’s go.”
Behind them, Logan said, “Hope your boyfriend handles that.”
She turned around while still moving, which forced Garrett to catch her by the waist and redirect her like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. “He will!”
“I’m sure he will,” Logan called, voice cracking around laughter.
Outside, the cold hit her properly. She shrank into the jacket at once, shoulders rising, Garrett’s hand still wrapped around hers while they moved down the front steps and along the path toward his car.
The night was damp and dark around the edges, grass glittering faintly under the porch light, the music dulling behind the shut door until it became a pulse more than a song. She walked close to him, not quite straight, occasionally bumping into his side and then apologising to his arm.
“Baby,” she said halfway down the walk.
“Yeah?”
“That guy was so annoying.”
Garrett glanced down at her. “Still thinkin’ about him?”
“He was talking to me all night.”
“Sounds like a loser.”
“He was kind of hot, though.”
Garrett stopped walking.
She stopped too, delayed, then looked back at him with wide innocent eyes. “What?”
He stared at her. “Hot?”
She nodded, very serious. “But not as hot as you.”
“Uh huh.”
“And he had your jacket.”
“My jacket?”
“Yeah.” Her brows pulled together. “Actually, that was weird.”
Garrett looked up at the sky for patience. “So weird.”
“You should talk to him, baby. I’m serious.”
“Oh, I will.”
“Good.” She nodded once, satisfied, and started walking again. “Don’t fight him though. You had a game.”
His mouth twitched. “Right. Wouldn’t wanna overdo it.”
“And you already won.”
“I did.”
“You were really good,” she said, and the words came out softer now, slipping under the joke with no warning at all. Her fingers tightened around his. “I forgot to tell you.”
Garrett’s steps slowed by a fraction. He looked down at her, at her messy hair and flushed cheeks and his too-big jacket hanging off her shoulders, at the careful way she was watching the pavement. “Yeah?”
“Mhm. You did that thing.” She lifted their joined hands vaguely, as if the thing might be available in the air somewhere. “Where you went really fast and then the other guy was stupid.”
Garrett laughed, warm and surprised. “That was my favourite play.”
“It was good. I’m real proud of you.”
“Thanks, baby.”
She leaned into his arm, pleased. “You’re welcome.”
At the car, he opened the passenger door and turned her gently by the hips before she could attempt entry at a dangerous angle. “Alright. Watch your head.”
“I always watch my head.”
“You don’t.”
“I have one.”
“Having one and watching it are different.”
She ducked into the car with exaggerated care, one hand on the roof, one hand still gripping his. Garrett waited until she was seated, then crouched slightly and drew the seatbelt across her.
She looked down at him while he clicked it into place, her expression suddenly soft and sleepy. “Baby.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m so glad I found you.”
His hand paused on the belt for half a second.
She sighed, sinking back into the seat, eyes half-lidded now that the car’s quiet had started wrapping around her. “I missed you tonight.”
Garrett looked at her in the blue dashboard glow, and something in his chest pulled tight and fond and a little ridiculous. “Missed you too.”
“There was this guy–”
“I heard.”
“–and he kept trying to give me water.”
“So rude.”
“Exactly.” Her head tipped against the seat, eyes closing for one beat before opening again. “Can you get me nuggets?”
Garrett smiled and brushed his thumb over her knee before standing. “Yeah, babe. I’ll get you nuggets.”
“And fries.”
“Obviously.”
“And a Sprite.”
“You need water.”
She made a face. “The guy said that too.”
Garrett leaned one arm on the open door and looked down at her, trying very hard not to smile too much because she would see it and accuse him of something. “The guy sounds smart.”
She frowned. “Don’t compliment him.”
“My bad.”
“You’re my boyfriend.”
“I am.”
“And I love you.”
The words came out simple and softened by vodka and sleepiness and the warm cocoon of his jacket around her, but real enough that Garrett felt them land under his ribs.
He bent and kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”
She smiled, eyes closed now. “Good.”
“Good,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face before shutting the door.
He walked around the front of the car with a grin he couldn’t quite get rid of, hearing the muffled thump of the party behind him and the faint sound of her shifting around in the passenger seat like she was trying to get comfortable in sleeves three sizes too big.
When he got in, she was already curled toward his side, cheek against the seat, looking at him with heavy eyes and total, trusting recognition.
Garrett started the car. She reached blindly for his hand. He gave it to her.
For a minute they sat there in the dim quiet before he pulled away from the curb, her fingers woven through his, his thumb moving once over her knuckles. Then she inhaled like she had remembered something important.
“Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna talk to that guy, right?”
Garrett smiled at the road, the house falling behind them, McDonald’s glowing somewhere ahead like a drunken little lighthouse.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll give him a stern talking-to.”
“Good,” she mumbled, already drifting. “Tell him I have a boyfriend.”
His grin widened.
“Trust me, baby,” Garrett said, squeezing her hand once as he turned out onto the street. “He knows.”
Description- What happens when Jack's wife returns from the bar bathroom and finds another woman with her hands on her husband
CW- reader is jealous as all hell, another character attempts infidelity, Jack has a damn good time, casual and not literal mention of violence, takes place in a bar, implied alcohol consumption
AN- This spawned into existence while I was waiting to pick up my gal from the dentist. It's by far the shortest thing I've ever written, but I usually struggle with length anyway (that's what she said)
You’d be an idiot if you thought it would never happen. That no one would ever see Jack Abbot, the handsome, muscular man with beautiful steady eyes and a heart you couldn’t help but trust the first time he smiled, and wish that they had him for themselves.
You knew it happened, that people gave him a second glance when they passed him on the street, subtly looking him over head to toe and admiring the nice shape of him, the way he moved with quiet confidence, not taking up more space than he needed to make a show of himself like some did. He was handsome, he was attractive, he was beautiful and sexy and cute all rolled into one. You knew these things, and you knew others would too. How could they not?
That didn’t make it any easier to see as you returned from the bar bathroom.
The woman was standing between your stool and Jack’s at the bartop, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder as she tossed her head back in a laugh. Her chocolate curls fell down to her shoulders, catching the dim bar lighting and shining like a rich sleek metal as it moved.
Something in your stomach twisted, something dark and ugly that you didn’t care to think about, filling you with an undeserved surge of anger. You wanted to smack her hand away from him, to yell in her face to back off.
The black metal band on his finger was clear as day. You could see it from nearly across the room, glinting in the hanging lights where his weathered hand wrapped around his lowball tumbler. She must have been able to see it with how intently she gazed at him, drinking him in as if she’d never seen a man before.
That made it all the worse. Accidents happened, a stumble turning into brushed shoulders that could be laughed off, but this, this, was purposeful. It was a choice she was making, to cozy up to Jack, to not look at his wedding band as if it would merely poof out of existence.
Fuck that.
You were storming over before you realized it.
Jack’s face lit up as he spotted you, still a few feet away.
“There’s my girl,” he greeted warmly. His arm was outstretched, welcoming you against his side, the spot by your stool still occupied by the pretty brunette woman who’d had her hands all over him.
“Hi, baby,” you said sweetly, stepping into his embrace and leaning even closer, one hand cupping his cheek to steady him as you kissed him deeply. He made a small sound of surprise in the back of his throat, but kissed you back without hesitation, his arm wrapping further around you to hold you close. His eyes were dark when you parted, a faint questioning look passing behind them as you grinned at him coyly, bottom lip caught between your teeth.
“Making friends?” you asked lightly, settling yourself sideways on his lap, making sure to favor his good leg before you pressed one more kiss to his temple, your fingers combing through the thick curls at the back of his head. When you turned to face the woman, smiling overly sweetly at her, you felt a sick twinge of satisfaction to see the way her lips pursed together tightly.
“Sweetheart, this is Jessie,” Jack introduced, gesturing to the woman. His words lilted with faint humor, like he was watching his favorite reality show and the drama had just gotten good. “She was just complimenting my shirt.”
You laughed weakly. Of course she was. Just the thick flannel, surely it had nothing to do with the way he filled it out with his broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps.
“It looks like really good quality,” Jessie said, desperately trying to sound neutral. “What is it, cotton?”
Jack hummed, looking to you with a faint smirk. “I wouldn’t know,” he admitted. “This one bought it for me.” His arm tightened around you for a moment, giving you a slight squeeze.
You frowned, your hand running up and down his chest to feel the fabric as you thought. She wasn’t wrong, it really was a good shirt. You’d always loved the soft feel of it under your hands when you ran your hands over his shoulders, sometimes bunching the fabric in your fists when he caught you off guard with an especially deep kiss.
“I don’t remember.” You chuckled, giving her an easy smile. “Guess I’ll have to check later when he takes it off.”
Jessie nodded once in silent understanding, swallowing thickly before she picked up her drink from the counter. It was so close to the one you’d left Jack to look over for you that it had left a ring of condensation on the edge of the napkin you used as a coaster.
“Right, well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she said, doing her best to paste on a cheerful smile to match her overly chipper tone. Her words sounded hollow, her finger tracing the rim of her glass as her eyes moved between you and Jack.
You only nodded, giving her an almost sympathetic smile to watch her go from your perch on Jack’s lap, fingers still twirling through his curls in a way you knew from countless hours curled up together that he loved. You picked up your own glass to sip, and Jack had to duck his head into the crook of your neck to muffle the sudden laugh he let slip at the way her eyes widened when she saw your wedding ring.
A flicker of pride went through him, glad that even after so long together, he had made the right choice that day. Hours of designing had gone into your set of rings, months spent deliberating every curve of the band and cut of the stone before he finally showed you, wanting to make every detail perfect for you, to give you something as beautiful as you were that you would never want to take off. And you never did.
“Have a good night, Jessie!” you called as she retreated.
Jack gave you a warm look when she was out of earshot, dark hazel eyes trailing over your face like he wanted to catch every detail of it.
“You handled that mildly,” he drawled, amusement curling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes glimmered, the corners creasing the way they always did, bearing the weight of his hidden smile for him.
You laughed, adjusting your position on his lap to wrap both arms behind his neck.
“Careful, Jack,” you teased. “I might think you liked seeing me all possessive.”
He only hummed, the deep vibration carrying through his chest and into your side pressed against it, lifting one shoulder before letting it down into a small shrug.
“You expect me to be upset to have you all over me, playing with my hair?” He gave you a cocky smirk, gaze lowering for just a moment to your lips before flicking back up. Your breath caught, and he noticed, head tilting slightly as he looked up at you through his lashes that had no business being so thick.
“Thought for a moment you might smash a bottle over her head,” he continued, though his voice had dropped. His hand gripped your thigh, pulling you higher up his lap as he adjusted how he sat on the barstool. It couldn’t have been comfortable for him, but he was far from complaining. “That what you want, honey? Me having to stitch her up?”
The thought of his hands on her made you angry enough to bite your tongue.
“That’s exactly why I didn’t,” you pointed out smugly, nestling even closer until the tip of your nose brushed the bridge of his. “I’d much rather keep you as my private doctor, Jack.”
He laughed through his nose, his unblinking gaze meeting yours without dropping. “I’ll be your anything, baby, but I don’t think I should be your doctor.”
You rolled your eyes, giving his scruffy cheek a kiss before fully melting against him, nuzzling into the side of his neck.
“Have it your way then. I’ll just make Robby my emergency contact.”
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SUMMARY: One of the worst days you have ever experienced in the ER happens to fall on your birthday. Nothing goes your way, and seconds after you finish your shift, you are sobbing in the passenger seat of Jack Abbot’s car. Luckily, Jack knows how best to remind you that you are so important and so, so loved.
NOTES: Hurt/comfort, forgotten birthday, Robby being an asshole, aggressive patients, unintentional meal-skipping, stress-induced breakdown, lots of crying, established relationship, Jack is the lover ever.
NAVIGATION | PITT MASTERLIST | KO-FI
A/N: Did I have a lovely birthday today? Yes! Is that going to stop me from writing angsty birthday fanfic? Certainly not, so enjoy!
The clinical smell of the Pitt always seemed to cling to your skin like a second coat. It was a sterile mix of rubbing alcohol, sharp floor bleach, and the distinct, heavy scent of human misery. By the time your feet hit the pavement outside the double automatic doors, the chilly evening air felt less like a relief and more like another slap to your already raw senses.
Your shoulders were hitched up to your ears, your scrub top felt restrictive, and your eyes burned with a dry, gritty fatigue. It had been twelve hours of relentless, unyielding chaos. All you wanted to do was disappear.
Through the dim light of the hospital car park, you spotted the familiar, reassuring silhouette of Jack’s car idling near the edge of the drop-off zone. The soft glow of his headlights cut through the gloom, a tiny beacon of safety in a day that had felt entirely hostile.
You dragged your feet across the tarmac, your trainers scraping lightly, every step requiring a monumental effort of will. When you pulled the passenger door open, the sudden rush of warmth and the familiar, grounding scent of his cologne, woody, clean, and entirely safe, hit you so hard that your throat instantly tightened.
You tumbled into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut to lock the harsh world outside. You hadn't even buckled your seatbelt before the first sob ripped its way out of your chest. It was a violent, involuntary sound that seemed to come from the very bottom of your lungs.
"Oh, sweetheart," Jack murmured immediately, his voice a low, worried rumble.
You dropped your head into your hands, your fingers digging into your temples as the dam broke entirely. The sheer weight of the last twelve hours collapsed on top of you, crushing whatever fragile composure you had managed to maintain for the sake of the patients.
Jack shifted the car into park, switched off the ignition, and unbuckled his own belt so he could turn fully toward you. He reached out, his strong, warm hand gently cupping the back of your neck. His thumb began soothingly rubbing the tense muscle right at the base of your skull.
"Hey, hey, look at me, sweetheart," he pleaded softly, his other hand finding yours and squeezing it tightly. "I've got you. You're safe. Let it out, honey, just breathe for me, okay?”
But the comfort only seemed to unlock more of the misery, the tears flowing freely now, hot and fast down your cheeks. "Robby has been on my fucking ass all day, Jack," you choked out, the words tumbling out in a breathless, frantic rush between heavy, shuddering gasps.
"What did he do, honey?" Jack asked, his jaw clenching as his thumb continued its rhythmic, calming strokes against your neck.
"Every single thing I did was wrong," you sobbed, pulling your knees up toward your chest as much as the small space allowed. "If I was five minutes late with a chart, he was there, breathing down my neck. I think he’s stressed because Trin is falling behind, but that isn’t my fucking problem. He practically fucking yelled at me in front of the nurses' station because a lab result hadn't come back yet."
"He did what?" Jack’s voice darkened, a flash of protective anger crossing his features even at the expense of his friend. "In front of everyone? He's an absolute ass sometimes."
"He acted as if I have any control over what the pathology lab does," you wept, pressing your face into Jack's palm as he brushed a stray tear from your cheek. "I felt so small, so completely useless, and he just wouldn't stop pushing me."
"I love him but Robby can be a miserable bastard who wouldn't know good stress management if it hit him in the face," Jack said softly, his tone shifting back to pure gentleness for your sake. "You are brilliant at your job, and he has no right to take his own incompetence out on you. Don't let him take your peace, love."
You shook your head, cheeks damp with tears. "It wasn't just him, Jack. The patients were just so mean today. I had a man throw a plastic cup of water at me because his pain meds were ten minutes delayed."
"Jesus Christ," Jack muttered, his hand sliding down to rub your arm comfortingly. "Are you alright? He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"No, it was just plastic, but it’s the principle," you cried, your voice cracking with a deep, exhausting sadness. "And another woman spent twenty minutes just shouting at me, calling me incompetent because the wait times were long. I was running between cubicles, trying my absolute hardest, and everyone just looked at me like I was the enemy."
"Shit. You're not the enemy, sweetheart. You're the one saving them," he whispered, leaning across the console to press a soft kiss against your temple.
"I didn't get to sit down once, Jack," you whispered, sniffing heavily as he pulled a clean handkerchief from his jacket and gently began wiping your face. "I didn't even get to eat my lunch because I left it sitting on the kitchen counter this morning, and the cafeteria was closed by the time I had a spare five minutes."
"Oh, my poor girl," Jack’s voice softened even further, filled with a profound, aching sympathy. "You haven't eaten a single thing since this morning? You should’ve called me, sweetheart. No wonder you're absolutely spent. You've been running on empty in hell all day."
"And on top of everything..." You paused, a fresh wave of grief washing over you, making you feel incredibly small and desperately lonely. Your breath came in jagged, uneven hitches as the absolute worst part of the day finally forced its way to the surface.
"What is it, sweetheart? Tell me," Jack urged, his fingers gently tangling in your hair, tilting your face up so he could look into your eyes.
"It's my birthday, Jack," you whispered, the admission sounding incredibly pathetic to your own ears, your voice dropping to a miserable, fragile whimper. "It's my birthday, and not a single person at work even noticed. No one said a word. My own team didn't care."
You hid your face in your hands again, your shoulders shaking. "I spent the whole day being shouted at and degraded, and it’s supposed to be my special day, and I just... I felt completely invisible. Like I don't matter to anyone at all."
Jack let out a low, pained breath. Before you could spiral any deeper into that dark thought, he shifted closer, pulling you completely across the center console and tucking you firmly against his chest.
He wrapped his strong arms around you, holding you so tightly that the cold, cruel reality of the hospital seemed to melt away entirely against his warmth. He buried his face in your hair, breathing you in, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
"Look at me," Jack commanded gently, pulling back just enough to frame your face with his hands, his thumbs gently wiping away the fresh moisture on your cheeks. "You listen to me very carefully, alright?"
You blinked through your tears, looking into his warm, fiercely sincere eyes.
"You are not invisible, and you matter more than anyone else in my world," Jack said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "I am so deeply sorry that today was a nightmare, and I am sorry that the day shift made you feel small on the day you should be celebrated. But you are done with them now."
He pressed a lingering, tender kiss to your forehead, keeping his hands warm against your cheeks. "The shift is over, I’m going to tear Robby a new one another day, and you are coming home with me. I've got you, okay?"
You rested your forehead against his collarbone, the steady, rhythmic thumping of his heart beneath his shirt serving as a perfect contrast to the chaotic franticness of your own head. "I'm just so tired, Jack," you whispered into the fabric of his coat. "I don't want to think anymore. I don't want to be strong."
"You don't have to be strong," he promised, his hands sliding down to rub your back in long, soothing strokes. "You've done enough fighting for one day. From this exact moment, I am taking care of everything."
"What are we going to do?" you asked quietly, your voice muffled against his chest, though you were already feeling the heavy cloud of tension begin to lift.
"We are going straight back to my apartment," he said, his lips brushing your hair as he spoke. "First, you are going to have a proper, long hot bath to wash all of that hospital filth off your skin.”
"And food?" you murmured, your stomach letting out a timely, traitorous rumble that made Jack chuckle softly.
"Yes, lots of food, sweetheart," Jack smiled, kissing the crown of your head. "I'm going to order a ridiculously expensive takeout that you love. We'll get everything you want and a little extra for later. You won't have to lift a finger."
He pulled back slightly, looking down at you with a soft, adoring expression. "And then we are going to pile every single blanket we own onto the couch, and we are going to watch whatever mindless crap you want until you fall asleep in my arms. How does that sound, birthday girl?"
A small, watery breath that was almost a laugh escaped your lips. You nodded against his chest, your muscles finally beginning to unlock, the tension draining out of you now that you had surrendered the burden of your day to him.
"That sounds like heaven," you mumbled, your eyes fluttering shut as the safety of his presence completely enveloped you.
"Then to heaven it is," Jack smiled softly. He kissed your temple one last time before gently guiding you back into your own seat, reaching across you to pull the seatbelt over your shoulder and clicking it securely into place.
He treated you with the kind of delicate, fragile care that you hadn't realised you desperately needed. "Let’s go," he said softly, restarting the engine, the familiar, low purr of the car filling the silence as he pulled out of the hospital car park, leaving the misery of the ER far behind.
The drive back to Jack’s apartment was a quiet, soothing blur. Jack kept one hand firmly on the steering wheel and the other stretched across the center console, his fingers securely entwined with yours. Every time you let out a small, residual sigh, he would gently squeeze your hand, a silent reminder that the hospital was growing further away with every passing mile.
By the time he pulled into the familiar driveway of his building, the sky had turned into a deep, velvety black. Jack rushed around to the passenger side, opening your door and unbuckling your belt before you could even reach for it. He scooped your heavy canvas work bag over his shoulder and wrapped his arm tightly around your waist, practically dragging you up the stairs to his apartment.
The moment the front door clicked shut behind you, the familiar warmth of Jack’s home wrapped around you like a heavy blanket. Jack immediately kicked off his shoes and helped you slide your tired feet out of your stiff trainers.
"Gonna head to the bathroom, honey," Jack murmured softly, pressing a tender kiss to the side of your neck as he unzipped your heavy winter coat and slid it off your shoulders. "Don't worry about a thing. I'm going to go run the water."
After pouring a glass of water, you walked into the bathroom, the tiles warm beneath your socks. Jack was there, sat on his shower chair by the side of the tub. He turned the brass taps, and the soothing, roaring sound of rushing water instantly began to drown out the echoes of the chaotic hospital alarms that had been ringing in your ears all day.
He reached for an expensive-looking jar of lavender and amber bath salts, pouring a generous handful under the running water. The bathroom instantly filled with a thick, fragrant steam that made your chest loosen.
"There we go," Jack said, standing and wiping his hands on a fluffy towel. He stepped over to you, his hands gently finding your waist again. He leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours, his eyes dark with pure devotion. "Strip out of those clothes, sweetheart. Put them right in the laundry basket. I don't want you thinking about that place for the rest of the night."
"Thank you, Jack," you whispered, your voice still a bit raspy from crying.
"You don't ever have to thank me for taking care of you, beautiful," he replied softly, cupping your chin and kissing your lips with a slow, lingering sweetness that tasted like safety. "I'm going to order food now. Take your time in here."
Sinking into the hot water felt like an out-of-body experience. You lowered yourself down until the fragrant, bubbly water reached your chin, letting out a long, shaky breath. For the first twenty minutes, you just closed your eyes, letting the heat sink deep into your aching muscles, washing away the phantom feeling of Robby's critical gaze and the harsh words of the patients. You felt the tight knot in your chest finally begin to dissolve entirely.
By the time you finally stepped out of the bath, your skin was comfortably warm and completely relaxed. Jack had left your thickest, softest pyjamas warming on the radiator, along with a pair of fresh fluffy socks. Slipping into them felt like a massive relief, the soft fabric a stark contrast to the stiff scrubs you had been wearing for twelve hours.
When you walked back into the living room, the flat was dimly lit, illuminated only by the warm, flickering glow of a few scented candles and the soft amber light of the television. The heavy coffee table had been pushed closer to the sofa, and a massive mound of your favourite duvets and pillows covered the cushions.
"Perfect timing," Jack said, walking out of the kitchen carrying a large paper bag that was radiating a heavenly, rich scent. "The food literally just arrived. Come here."
He set the bag down and immediately pulled you into his arms, burying his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling the fresh scent of the bath salts. "You smell wonderful. Much better than bleach and stress."
"I feel human again," you admitted, a genuine smile finally touching your lips as you wrapped your arms around his neck, holding him close.
"Good. Because you deserve to feel human, especially today," Jack said, kissing your cheek before guiding you onto the sofa.
He didn't just let you sit. He practically buried you in the blankets, propping pillows behind your back until you were perfectly comfortable. Only after that did Jack adjust himself, taking off his prosthetic with ease and leaning it against the side of the couch. He opened one of the cardboard containers, revealing a massive, steaming portion of your favourite takeout meal.
"Eat up, sweetheart," Jack urged, handing you a fork and settling down right next to you, his thigh pressing firmly against yours. "You need to make up for that lost lunch."
You didn't need to be told twice. The first bite of the rich, comforting food was so good it made you close your eyes in pure bliss. Jack watched you with a soft, satisfied grin, occasionally reaching over to brush a stray lock of hair away from your face or to feed you a bite of his own dish from his fork. He kept one hand resting on your knee under the blanket, his thumb moving in slow, rhythmic circles.
"Is it good, sweetheart?" he asked quietly, his eyes warm as he watched the stress finally wash away from your face.
"It's amazing," you sighed, taking a sip of the ice-cold water he had placed next to you. "I didn't realise how hungry I actually was."
"I know, my poor girl," he murmured, leaning over to kiss your temple. "But I've got you now. No more skipping meals, and no more bastards like fucking Michael Robinavitch ruining your day."
Once the containers were cleared away, Jack shoved them onto the table and immediately pulled you back into his space. He lay back against the corner of the sofa, dragging you with him so that you were lying completely on top of him, your head resting securely on his chest and your legs tangled beneath the heavy duvet.
He grabbed the remote, clicking on a familiar, light-hearted comedy movie you had seen a hundred times before, something that required absolutely zero brainpower to follow.
"Comfortable, love?" Jack whispered, his strong arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you so close that you could feel the vibration of his voice against your cheek.
"Perfect," you mumbled, completely content.
His large hands began a slow, mesmerising pattern across your back, tracing smooth circles up and down your spine, occasionally slipping beneath the hem of your pyjama top to press his warm palms directly against your bare skin. The soothing friction combined with the heavy meal and the warm bath made your eyelids feel incredibly heavy.
"Happy birthday, my beautiful girl," Jack whispered into the darkness, his voice thick with an undeniable, fierce affection. He reached over to the side table, fumbling for a moment before pulling out a small, beautifully wrapped velvet box, sliding it into your view. "I know the day was shit, but I hope this helps a little bit."
You blinked, opening the box to find a delicate, sparkling bracelet, simple enough to wear even during your shifts. Tears pricked your eyes again, but this time, they weren't from sadness.
"Jack... it's beautiful," you choked out, looking up at him through thick lashes. "You didn't have to."
"Of course I did," he said, taking your wrist and gently fastening the clasp, before kissing the inside of your wrist right over your pulse point. "You matter to me. Every single day, but especially today. Don't ever forget that."
You buried your face back into his chest, clutching the fabric of his shirt as a profound sense of peace finally settled over you. The mean patients, the unread charts, and the horrible manager didn't matter anymore. Right here, wrapped in Jack's arms, you were completely safe, deeply loved, and exactly where you were supposed to be.
"I love you, Jack," you murmured, your voice growing faint as sleep finally began to pull you under.
"I love you more, sweetheart," Jack whispered back, his chin resting on the top of your head, his hands never stopping their soothing rhythm against your back as he held you tight against his chest, keeping the rest of the world completely at bay.
summary: Being a friendly neighbor can work in your benefit, especially for Jack. Even better when its for the girl in the laundry room who has the cutest shorts in the building.
word count: 7.3 k
content: age gap!!! reader is in their late 20's and jack is in his late 40's, neighbors trope hehe, hot make out session, flirting lol, yearning/slight nervous jack abbot omg, coworkers/boundaries talk, tension ofc loll, use of the nick names "honey, sweet heart, big girl",
a/n: i hope someone enjoys!! if you did pls leave a comment, criticism (or complimentsss hehe) are always welcomed. they rlly keep me going to write and make my day!! :33
Moving to Pittsburgh was one of the last things you'd ever expected to do. Considering you were from the west coast, it was quite the change for you in many ways — one being that you were living on your own for the first time.
It's not that you weren't independent, but you never had the opportunity to move away from home across the country, thanks to student loans of course. But you enjoyed it more than anything. There was no one to bother you in the kitchen while you were cooking and you didn't have to go through your parents bedroom in order to do your laundry. For once, you could establish your own routine in peace.
That is until your incredibly hot neighbor started doing his laundry on the same days you did every week. The first time you saw him, you were quite embarrassed. It was 1 AM and you hadn't expected any of your neighbors in your apartment complex to be night owls. And because of your naive assumption, you wore a strappy tank top with your comfy pajama shorts that were ones you wore only in the comfort of your home.
He had come in with his basket of clothes, dressed in sweats and in a comfortable white shirt and slippers. You heard the door to the laundry room shut through your ear buds, and you jumped.
"Sorry sorry, just a neighbor doing his laundry. Didn't mean to startle you," he says in a raspy, low voice, as he put one of his hands up as a friendly gesture to show he meant no harm.
You tried to compose yourself and fixed one of the straps that had fallen when you jumped.
"That's okay, I should probably have one ear bud out at this hour", you chuckle nervously, embarrassed at the situation at hand.
You tried your best to subtly pull down your shorts and pull up your tank top more in an attempt to cover up, and you couldn't help but feel mad for letting yourself walk out in a shared space in this state.
"Are you new here? I've never seen you before," the man asks as he puts his clothes in to the laundry machine not too far from you.
You turn your head and peer over, finally making eye contact with him for the first time. At first you were incredibly nervous at being in the room alone with him, but seeing his eyes and how kind they looked made you somewhat feel less tense and nervous.
"Yea actually. I just moved in last week or so," you say, and give him a polite smile while you separate your clothes.
You couldn't help but notice that most of his clothes were either plain t-shirts, comfy pants, and scrubs. You also couldn't help but notice how his triceps flexed with every pile he loaded in.
"Well, welcome to the building. My name’s Jack. Apartment 4C," he says and gives you another charming smile.
It was by this point you realized this guy was older, maybe in his late 40's. And he was incredibly attractive. You weren't sure if the nerves you felt were from being alone with him or because he was hard to look away from. Maybe both.
Your eyes lit up slightly. "I'm in apartment 5C! I'm right above you," you gasp at the coincidence.
"Well, apartment 5C, if you need anything just let me know. I'll see you around," Jack says and he walks over to shake your hand.
"Back at you, apartment 4C," you tease back slightly, feeling a little out of your depth.
Jack purses his lips into a smile you could've sworn was a smirk if you blinked too quickly. You smile back shyly and turn away to load up your laundry, not being able to hold the strong eye contact you felt from the charming man as he was walking out.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my goddd," you exhale as you bury your face into your hands, dragging the last syllable from how on fire you felt.
Since when did men look like that? You could feel your face warm under the palms of your hands and your stomach turning after interacting with the man for 5 minutes. That's all it took, and you were a nervous mess.
To be fair, it'd been a while since you'd gone out with men and gotten some action. And it'd been even longer since it was with an attractive guy. But nowhere near apartment 4C level of attractive. That was an entirely different pool you've never swam in before, and you felt like someone had pushed you into the deep end. You felt like you had drowned in the energy of one of the most good looking guys you'd ever met, and he left you without air.
You finished putting your softener and detergent in the washer and walked back to your apartment, processing the fact that even though you weren't in the same room as him anymore, you still lived in the apartment on top of him.
This had to be some cruel joke.
You'd assume the next time you guys ran into each other would be in the laundry room at some point in the future.
You did not expect to run into your hot neighbor on your first day of work.
"This is Dana, the most important person you'll meet here in the E.R. She's the ring leader of this circus, so do what and when she says at all times." Robby, your attending at PTMC, states as he gives everyone a tour of the place.
"And this is Dr. Abbot, night shift attending who takes over when I eventually make it out of here. He runs the night and sometimes comes in to help. He's your boss just as much as I am, so if you need any help and my hands are tied, either find him or a senior resident," Robby says as he pats the man on his back.
"Yes, but if I need to leave to get some sleep, then try looking for a senior resident first I beg of you," the man jokes grumpily and finally turns his face from the computer screen.
Your eyes widened at the first note of his voice, blinking hard to try to focus your eyes and ears again in case you were mistaken. He faces the new crowd and scans everyone before his eyes meet yours, and his composure slips a bit at the recognition of your face.
You try your best to pull your eyes away from him when you notice the scrubs he was wearing were the same ones you saw him washing not too long ago. You weren't sure why you liked that you were the only one in the room who knew that.
'Jack, apartment 5C' from your apartment complex is the night shift attending at your job.
"Okay, we're all set then. Rounds will start soon, so make sure to stick with the senior residents as they get their hand offs," Robby says, his body already turned to walk off and check on the morning board.
Jack is a bit mortified.
As an attending, he is not supposed to know how one of the residents looks in her revealing flower pj shorts before he sees her in her scrubs. He also wasn't supposed to see the way your hair looked tied up messily in a style that's only seen in the comfort of one's home and the way your breasts looked in that strappy tank top with the strap down.
He also wasn't supposed to have fantasized sitting that same resident on top of the washer and kissing her til the washer was done for the next cycle.
But here you were, apartment 5C, standing in front of him wide eyed and clearly feeling the same shock and confusion.
"So, apartment 5C. You followin’ me now?," Jack says as he crosses his arms in an attempt to play off his nerves. He didn't know how to necessarily handle this situation, but he knew better than to pretend it wasn't happening.
You felt a wave of relief wash over you at his attempt to break the ice and ease the awkwardness you guys were both feeling.
"It's actually Dr. Apartment 5C to you," you say as you grab your badge and wave it at him slightly in a teasing manner, showing off the big uppercase letters that say 'DOCTOR'.
"Right, my apologies. Just not used to seeing you in the black scrubs and all," Jack shrugs and smiles a bit at what he was implying.
Your shorts. Your tank top.
It finally dawned on you that your attending had already seen what you looked like in your comfy, but revealing, home clothes, including without a bra on. You'd never come across a situation where being professional wasn't your main quality at work, but here it was clear that some boundaries and lines were crossed before they were even formed in the work place.
You fucking regretted wearing those that day.
"Oh my god stop, please don't remind me Dr. Abbot," you say as you pinch the bridge of your nose and close your eyes, cringing at yourself.
Jack purses his lips and tilts his head slightly at you calling him Dr. Abbot. Clearly, there was no need for the fancy title.
"You can call me Jack, you know? I think we already moved past that," he says, trying his best not to laugh at your embarrassment. He found it charming and amusing.
"Well for the sake of professionalism, I'll just stick with Abbot. I don't need my fellow colleagues to think there's some nepotism thing going on or that I had some connection that got me here in the first place" you say, rubbing the side of your arm with your hand, trying not to stress out over the small coincidence your attending lives in the same complex as you do.
Jack catches your body language instantly. He can tell the fact that meeting each other prior to work is something you don't find necessarily funny or silly, and that what happened is something you wanna keep outside of the walls of the E.R.
He doesn't blame you. After all, there could be concerns of power imbalances and lines that must be respected ,regardless of coincidences prior, and if people were to find out they'd make it a whole thing. He knew how the rumor mill ran around here, and he didn't want to subject you to anything, especially on your first day.
"Hey, you're okay. I get it, really I do. I won't mention it to anyone so you don't have to worry about it. We don't know each other and we can pretend that you definitely don't live in the apartment above me. Deal?," Abbot says and extends his hand to shake in front of him, familiar to what he did in the laundry room when he first met you.
You smile a bit, relieved that he was able to understand where you were coming from without needing to explain any further.
"Thank you, Dr. Abbot."
As time went on, you realized there was no reason for you to have panicked the way you did. It's not like anything happened between you and Abbot in the damn laundry room, and you didn't necessarily plan on having him see you dressed more exposed than usual. It was just a silly coincidence that you happened to live in the same complex — out of all the complexes in Pittsburgh, for crying out loud.
It wasn’t something either of you could simply pretend didn’t exist, especially when you occasionally passed each other in the lobby or crossed paths at the elevators as he was leaving for his shift and you were going back to your apartment.
You felt bad for freaking out in front of him, especially when he took care of your feelings well and addressed them so kindly. It's a big contrast to how you've seen him act in the E.R — stern, quiet, and quite frankly, a little scary. It felt weirdly intimate that you've seen this other side of him that wasn't ever shown.
And you liked it.
But even then, you never really saw him much at work considering you both worked the opposite shifts. Except for Saturdays on the weekend when you'd guys do laundry.
The second time you ran into Abbot in the laundry room, you were dressed comfortably, but this time you were more covered up. You learned your lesson that this wasn't like it was at home where you could wear those clothes while your parents were out at work and you could walk around freely in whatever.
Abbot was a bit disappointed, however. He liked those shorts on you and he wanted to know how his hands would feel if he slipped them under those cute shorts of yours.
It's like he needed to satisfy his curiosity of how your breasts would look in that tank top when he'd slip off the other strap from your shoulder. He blamed it on the fact that he's a doctor and naturally scientists must do research to confirm their observations and theories, right?
It became clear to him more than ever why you'd been so stuck on professional boundaries. Once you see the cute resident in her short flower pj shorts, theres no going back. Not with that ass of yours of course. And technically, you guys were outside of work, so this didn't break the deal that you guys had legally solidified with only a handshake.
God he felt like a fucking pervert.
"Hey Apartment 5C. No earbuds this time?," Jack asks as he sets down the detergent on top of the unused washing machine a couple down from the one you had started using.
You were sitting at the small table in the middle of the room between the two rows of machines, scrolling on your phone. You look up and smile at the nickname, feeling comfortable compared to the first time you guys had met.
"No, not this time. Need to make sure I can hear in case whatever older man walks in here and does something bad to me," you say and shrug.
"You do your laundry with other men? Wow, I'm a little offended actually."
"Of course I do. And you get the night shift," you tease back and laugh at the fake look he had displayed, pretending to be offended.
"Just grateful to be on the schedule, I guess," Jack grumbles and finishes the load he was putting into the wash. He swears these machines eat up his coins on purpose as a scam.
"So how's work? It's been over a month since you started." Jack asks. He starts the wash and decides to pull out one of the chairs next to you, and sets his laundry bag down as he sits.
"Yea it has. It's been good," you sigh and lean on your hand, trying to uplift your tired head.
"I mean a bit overwhelming of course, considering Langdon has to step out for a while, so the load has fallen quite a bit on the others. But I guess more experience for me,"
Abbot nods as he listens. "I heard. But I've seen you in the E.R and even as an intern, you're teaching the residents some things. It's quite the first impression you're making here."
You smile, shaking your head at his words. You weren't sure if he was complimenting you as a friendly neighbor, or as your superior. It’s a little hard to tell the difference when he’s sitting across from you in a shirt that unapologetically shows off his chest and a pair of sweats, rather than his usual black scrubs.
"Have we reached that level of friendly neighbors? Giving me compliments now, huh?" you tease, your eyes feeling a little bit heavy.
You turn over to see the clock flash '1:30' at you. Your load was almost done.
"I'm not that friendly with the others," he grumbles, his arms crossed over his chest as he leans back into the chair.
The sight of him like that alone woke you up.
"Aww, that's sweet 5C. Feelin' very special now," you tease back, suddenly feeling very playful. And reckless. It was the sleepiness kicking in, or maybe it was because his arms looked so damn good in that fucking shirt, it was making you feel a bit impulsive.
"You should. I don't really talk to my neighbors. Except for the ones I work with now, I guess," Jack shrugs and looks off to the side, trying to hide that he was smirking.
The timer on your phone goes off, letting you know that your load was done. You get up quickly on instinct at the sound of the striking, unbearable alarm sound you hear every evening before work, when the change in your pocket falls out and goes flying everywhere.
"Oh fuck!" you yell, as you try to chase the running coins escaping from you. Some of them landed under the table while others went flying under the machine.
"That's like a month's worth of coins in your pocket 5C," Jack laughs a bit, watching the rest of the coins find their landing spots all over the room.
"You don't have a coin bag?"
"Can you just shut up and just help me get the damn coins," you whine, getting down on your knees to try to reach the coins you saw hide themselves under the machine. This was probably every apartment tenant's worst nightmare.
'"If you're not nicer to me I'm gonna take some for myself," he teases as he rolls his eyes, and starts to bend down from his chair to reach for a coin that was shining right in front of him.
He turns his head to look for another coin when he becomes faced with the view of your ass, arched up and squirming while you try to reach for a coin in between the machines. He could see the lace that outlined the edges of your panties for crying out loud.
"Oh my god this fucker is so stubborn," you grumble, clearly annoyed you weren't able to reach the coin. You refused to give up on it, knowing the coins add up fast for how expensive laundry can get nowadays.
Jack wanted to die. If he could, he would just drop dead on the floor right there. If anyone came in and saw the sight, they'd swear he was some older guy creeping on some innocent woman in the building and scream. But he couldn't help himself indulge in the sight of you a little bit before finally turning to avert his attention on the main goal of the hour — collecting all the damn coins he could find.
He found it hard to look away. He wasn't sure if it was the sight of you struggling over a single coin that was funny or if enjoyed the view of your shorts riding up your waist as you kept trying to nudge your hands between the washers. He felt like he was being teased, that he wasn't in on this cruel joke the world was playing on him for simply being a friendly neighbor.
Slowly, one by one, Jack managed to pick up all the coins he was able to find on the floor, minus the ones that got stuck behind the washers and dryers of course. He wasn't sure if it was really because he couldn't get them, or because he wanted to see you on your knees again.
"Thank you Jack. I really appreciate it. Definitely will be getting a coin purse now…," you say and bend to wipe the dust and dirt particles off your knees and hands.
It felt good to have you use his first name now. He'd help you out forever if it meant his name fell off your lips as a result. Plus, he really does swear he's just a good ol' citizen who has no bias towards helping pretty women he happens to work with. He promises.
"Jack? Using my real name now?" he chuckles. He manages to grab all the coins from his hands and pour them back into yours, where they finally end up being put back into the pockets of your sweater.
"Yes, first name is deserved for being so nice and friendly to me," you retorted, referencing how he was referring to himself before the coin flying fiasco.
'You have no idea' Jack thought to himself.
You weren't sure when it happened. Over time as you guys kept bumping into each other in the laundry room, it almost became a routine for you guys to do your laundry together. It wasn't ever agreed upon explicitly, almost like an unspoken rule between you guys that Saturday around 1 AM you guys would be the two people occupying the laundry room.
And Jack started to notice every damn laundry day on those Saturdays that you'd be wearing some different variation of your famous short pj shorts. Well, they were famous in his head at least.
Except they all had different cute patterns on them. Some had stripes, some were colored with some bears on them, and some were just plain colored. He'd see some lace or the occasional tiny bow in front of them. They were all the same length — the type of length that wasn't shy of showing your ass if you bent down a certain way or if you got up from the chair to get your laundry too fast before adjusting them.
Long story short, he liked them. Maybe a little too much. Sometimes he'd have to stay behind his laundry basket to hide himself from showing through his sweats too much. It was embarrassing, and he hated how he was reacting. Especially considering he was your superior at the end of the day. But he wasn't inside the E.R anymore, so it didn't really count, right ?
He knew better. If he'd met you first in the E.R, his mind would never have wandered into the territory of seeing you in this light, no matter how pretty you were. He always prided himself being professional and a damn good doctor when he'd see a beautiful woman in the E.R. But unfortunately that first night in the laundry room had no E.R walls around it, and it would stay engraved in his head when he'd hear your name through the halls at work.
One of the things that made you feel grateful to be working in a hospital, other than the reason being you really wanted to help people, is that all you wore to work were scrubs. You didn’t have to try hard in the morning to put a semi decent outfit together half awake, or go out and buy expensive office clothes that fit a bit awkward on you. Scrubs were simple and comfy.
This also meant that it made up most of your laundry basket, and so did Jack’s — until you saw the fucking camouflage uniform with the words ‘POLICE’ on them.
“Police?!” you gasp, completely big eyed with your face washed with confusion and some curiosity.
“What?” he says, confused at what the hell you were fussing about. Your eyebrows were doing that thing where they furrowed but one was higher than the other.
“Your uniform? The camouflage? Hello?” you say as you point towards the uniform that was laying on top of the pile in the machine.
“Oh, that. Yeah, what about it?” he says all nonchalantly, closing the machine and putting in his coins.
“Where do you go wearing that?” you ask, still completely shocked. And very nosey. And for some reason horny.
“Is that why I didn't see you during the day shift rounds last week?”
“Yeah I didn’t go in that day. Sometimes I’m a SWAT medic when the team needs to go in on dangerous cases where they might need me. Much more fun than the other hobbies I’ve tried, personally,” he chuckles to himself, completely unaware of how bizarre this sounds out loud. He's too busy processing the fact you noticed his absence.
“Oh right! Because running or cooking were too … what? Cliche? Boring?” you say, shaking your head at the new information.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, just traumatized I think. At least that's what my therapist told me.”
“Well at least you’re in therapy.”
“See? Total package.” Jack says.
You rolled your eyes as the man sat down at the table. You pat down the pockets of your jacket, looking for whatever change you had in there to start the wash.
“Shit,” you mutter, staring at the machine’s blinking '$0.50' like it had personally betrayed you. You were short 50 cents.
Jack looks up from folding one of his shirts. “What?”
“Do you have any spare change?”
His eyebrows lift. “After I rescued your entire retirement fund off this floor last time?”
“Jack.”
He reaches into the pocket of his sweats to get some coins, but instead of handing you the quarter, he closes his fist around them.
“What do I get?”
You stare at him, laughing at his words. “What?”
Jack smirks and holds up his fist with the change you desperately needed, shaking them a bit.
“You get the satisfaction of helping your favorite neighbor.”
“I don’t remember saying favorite.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The corner of his mouth pulls into that irritating little smirk he always gives you. He steps a bit closer and holds one of the quarters between his fingers, just out of your reach.
You reach for it, but he raises his hand.
“Seriously?” you laugh, a little shocked but intrigued at the sudden change of playfulness Jack was in the mood for tonight.
“You asked for spare change. You didn’t say please.”
The space between you two suddenly feels smaller than it did a second ago. Maybe it was because it was so late into the night and you guys had work soon. The dryers hum behind him, filling the silence while neither of you moves away.
You felt your smile fade immediately, finally understanding where this was going. You had felt the tension between you guys become too much these past couple of weeks, but always somehow manage to restrain yourself from doing anything more than tease him. Now, he was teasing you.
“Please,” you manage to say, quieting your voice for the first time in front of him.
Jack’s teasing expression faded slightly, realizing that you quickly did what he asked of you. His eyes drop to your mouth before returning to your face, trying to evaluate your body language before he spoke again.
“That wasn't so hard now, was it?”
Your stomach tightened. Jack was teasing you with a look in his eyes you didn't know what to do with, and with words that made your blood feel on fire.
You hold his gaze, refusing to let him see how much that simple sentence affected you.
“Are you going to give it to me or not?” you ask, trying to act annoyed.
Jack glances at the quarter between his fingers, then back at you. The smirk returns, slower this time.
“You're a big girl, you can reach it.”
You roll your eyes, but neither one of you laughs. It should've felt humiliating or annoying, but Jack giving you the chance to touch him excited you more than you'd like to admit. You felt your mind become hazy at the idea of touching his hand to reach for the coin or to touch his big shoulders as you jumped.
When you reach again, he doesn't lift his hand. Instead, he closes his fingers around the coin just before you can take it.
Your hand lands over his.
For a moment, neither of you moves.
His skin is warm beneath your palm, and suddenly you are aware of everything —the steady hum of the dryers, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the way Jack is standing close enough that you can feel the heat coming off him. You wanted to get closer.
His expression changes as he studies you.
“You always this stubborn?” he asks quietly.
“Only when someone’s being annoying.”
“Good.”
The word sends another wave of heat through you.
Jack turns his hand beneath yours, opening his palm so the quarter rests between you. You should take it. You should step away, put your laundry in the dryer, and pretend this strange shift between you never happened.
Instead, Jack closes his hand again. It's like he was giving you an opportunity to win the little game he was playing with you because he felt bad, but you were too late. He grabs the coin and slips it in between his index and middle finger, waving it around.
"You still want it?" he teases, and presses the coin onto your chest where the part of your tank top begins.
The cold from the metal coin made you gasp and hold your breath. You couldn't look at him anymore. All you could focus on was how he wasn't even the one touching you, and still you got goosebumps. You couldn't answer him. He had you right where he wanted.
He started to drag the coin down your chest, slowly, enjoying how you squirmed at the slow contact the metal was making with the thin material of your tank top.
“If you want me to stop,” he says, his voice lower now, “you should probably move."
Your heart pounds against your ribs, but you don't move. There was no sarcastic comment, no fight, no resistance. For once with Jack, you'd completely surrounded, and Jack took in the sight.
"I guess you really do need this coin, huh?" he mocked.
His free hand lifts slowly, giving you plenty of time to pull away, before his fingers brush a loose strand of hair away from your face. The touch is almost too careful, nothing like the teasing confidence he had a few seconds ago.
“Jack,” you whimper, suddenly making eye contact with him again, grabbing onto his chest. You could just feel how fit he was under the shirt, and it only made your mind fog up with desire for him.
His gaze flickered to your mouth again, treasuring those sounds escaping it.
“Yeah?”
You swallow, trying to remember what you were going to say.
"Kiss me."
Jack didn't need to hear anything else. He dropped the stupid coin and grabbed the sides of your head, softly but steadily, pulling you into a kiss. You gasped, his lips stealing your breath for a second.
Theres a list of reasons why you guys shouldn't be kissing right now. Jack was highly aware of the section in the employee handbook about relationships between coworkers, but more specifically between a superior and their residents. It's that same section that stopped him from pursuing anyone in the hospital.
But he couldn't. He wanted to say no and tell himself to stop, that it was a dangerous idea. Once you cross these lines they stay uncrossed — no going back. But as the lines got blurrier and the nights between you guys felt more familiar each passing week, he couldn't deny the his feelings and attraction he felt for you any longer.
His hands felt shaky and his body was filled with adrenaline, the kind that you feel the first time you kiss someone after a long, long time.
You melted against his chest, trying to moving your mouth to match his rhythm. It was slow and messy as you guys tried to match each others pace, learning how the other places their tongues and how your mouth moves. It was hard at first to focus on each others lips when both of your guys hands were too focused on touching whatever part you could reach first.
You realized quickly that Jack liked to kiss with tongue and take his sweet time getting to know each others lips — how they fit with one another and how sore they could get before you guys were forced to stop from the pain. He preferred going slow, but deep, and he wasn't shy to use his tongue.
He really liked using his tongue to lick your lips slightly to let him back in each time you guys switched, and he could feel your chest rising and falling each time he changed the pace and deepened the kiss.
Your arms wrapped around Jacks neck and his hands travelled down from your waist to the top of your ass, hovering. He'd been waiting forever to get a touch since that one night he accidentally saw the lining edges of your lace panties, and each time he saw the outline of your ass under your shorts when they rode up. He slowed his lips down a bit, waiting for you to give him the green light.
You whined and nodded a bit, trying to signal to him that you desperately wanted him to touch you more. His hands immediately travelled down to your ass to give it a good squeeze, moaning into your mouth at the contact. Those shorts had been haunting him every Saturday, and his need to know what the material felt like under his hands was finally met.
You only got louder the more contact he made. He liked hearing the small noises coming out of your mouth on his lips as he squeezed harder, testing your reaction to his touch. It made it only harder for him to stop himself — not that he was ever going to win.
He could smell the shampoo in your hair and the perfume he'd sometimes get a whiff of when you walked past him.
Lavender. He was a big fan of lavender.
The quiet laundry room became filled with the sounds of your tongues tangling with one another, only getting louder a slight slap of his hand on your ass. You felt his arms and his biceps, they way one wrapped around your waist and as the other reached around. You could feel through his shirt his chest and how defined it was, and you found yourself unconsciously tugging at the hem of shirt
"Not here honey," Jack managed to get out, as his mouth traveled to your neck to drown himself more in your scent.
"Why? It's laundry day, right?," you pouted as you let go of the hem at his response and placed your hands on his back. Seeing was an entirely different than feeling the man through his shirt, and he was denying you that piece of heaven.
"Smart ass," he mumbled against your skin as he nibbled on the piece of skin near ear and slapped your ass, reprimanding your smart mouth.
You yelped at the pain you felt in the two different places, feeling entirely overwhelmed at everything you felt like you could implode. You were completely tangled with one another up against the machine you'd been trying to start for the past 20 minutes, and you felt all the air leaving your lungs as he took it all.
His hands were getting addicted to the way your body arched against his touch, and the way you grabbed onto him when your knees buckled. You could feel his big hands rubbing all over your sides, your back, and the back of your neck, trying to somehow pull you in deeper. He had complete and utter control of you now, and you let him have it — you had completely and willingly surrendered yourself to him.
You kept losing your balance as you lost yourself in the haze, and Jack found it hard to not smile at your clumsiness. He loved feeling the grip of your finger tips tighten each time you felt like you were tipping over from your knees buckling from the heat traveling down your panties.
He took it as a compliment, as well as reassurance that you too were getting lost in this just as he was.
"Let me help you there honey," he managed to say in between the pecks you were giving him, rubbing your nose against his in the process, unable to go a second touching him.
You didn't really process what he was saying until he suddenly picked you up, causing you to wrap your legs around his waist and your arms to tighten around his neck in panic.
"Jack!" you yelped, grabbing onto him somehow tighter than before.
He placed you gently on the laundry machine, your bottom meeting with the cold from the metal, making you shiver and gasp.
"Just wanted to help you keep your stance," he chuckled. His hand reached down to fix your shorts a bit, your panties completely visible from the leg holes as they were all bunched up. They were all over the place from all his grabbing and squeezing. Jack tried to ignore that what he saw peeking from underneath were black panties with a little pattern on them, and the classic lace edge. He couldn't make out the pattern exactly and his curiosity was getting the best of him, but he didn't pursue it further at the risk of going too far.
He hoped he could satisfy his curiosity for the next time.
He reached for the back of your head, pulling you in for more. You couldn't mask your neediness even if you tried, writhing under his touch. You loved how he grabbed you — how his hands gripped your sides with tightly with intent and hunger. He was on set on making sure his hands remembered the curves of your waist. Jack quickly learned you liked when he bit your lip for a second before going back to licking your lips mid kiss to be let back in.
You let him, of course.
You kiss for a long time, and you come to learn how his hair feels. You used to wonder how the texture of his salt and pepper hair would feel under your finger tips as you'd tug on it, which he really liked, or how the lines around his eyes looked up close in the fleeting seconds you had before you tilted your head to deepen the kiss.
He was beautiful.
"Jack… please," you plead, quickly learning from earlier that he liked hearing you beg and that it got you what you wanted quicker.
"Yeah sweetheart I know what you need," he whispered against your cheek, and pulls your hips more to the edge of the machine to get a better grip.
His waist finally came into contact between your legs, and you couldn't help but gasp, wrapping your legs around him to pull him in more. You could feel how hard he was through your shorts as you rolled your hips into his, trying to somehow relieve the aching pain you felt.
"Oh my god Jack," you cried as softly as possible, trying not to make too much noise.
He thought it was sexy how desperate you were getting and how sensitive you were to every tiny touch and he couldn't believe he was the reason you were moaning. He'd spend all night testing how each touch made you react if he could, studying which touch made you more crazy or which one made you whine a bit higher.
You guys moan at the new contact when the the dryer he had running suddenly buzzed, loud enough to make both of you jump.
There was a moment of silence between you guys as you guys finally came up for air. You felt dizzy and loopy in the hot air between you both, trying your best to ground yourself. Maybe it was from the fact it felt like you'd gone without air for 30 minutes or because you couldn't believe it was apartment 4C, your damn attending, was the reason you were in this state to begin with.
"Need to catch my breath for a second," Jack lets out with a quiet laugh, dropping his forehead toward yours for half a second. He oddly felt like a teenager who just had their first make out session, while simultaneously also feeling rusty.
You laugh too, a little bashful once you realized what you guys did. Your body felt like jello and you gripped onto Jack's shoulders for guidance as you finally got off the machine.
Jack couldn't help but feel a little smug.
You bend over, finally acquiring the coins you needed for start your load, and turn to slip the coin in to see the remaining balance flashing at you.
'$0.50' remaining.
You looked at the clock — 2:30. Jesus.
"Are you okay?" Jack hesitantly asked. It finally set in for him what transpired between you, and as amazing as it was he wanted to address the elephant in the room as respectful and gentlemanly as possible.
You smile at him, still feeling shy. "Yes, Jack. Everything is okay I promise. Are you okay?".
"Yeah. Yes, actually. More than okay," he jokes slightly, hoping it would alleviate any awkwardness that always follows an interrupted moment of intimacy.
"I just wanted to make you were feeling fine after everything. I mean we work together, and I'm technically your superior at work. It's not the most appropriate relationship, and you were so worried about it in the beginning, I can't help but worry if I crossed a line or pushed you to something."
Seeing Jack ramble on and on in this state was probably the craziest thing of the night. Not the fact that you'd finally made out with the hot neighbor you had a crush on since you moved in, or the fact he was your boss. Jack, the senior attending and apartment 4C hottie, was incredibly nervous and weary. He wasn't his usual confident and cocky exterior shell in front of you, and the seriousness of his feelings and concerns kicked in. It was charming, really.
"Jack..." you sighed.
You took a couple steps closer to him and pulled him for a hug, surprising him a bit. You rubbed his back and he wrapped his arms around you as he relaxed his shoulders a bit.
"I appreciate the concern, truly. And I understand why you want to be cautious for me. It's really sweet," you reassured him. Your cheeks hurt a bit from how hard you were smiling.
"But I'm also a big girl. I can consent to anything with anyone, especially with things that clearly began outside of work. I understand the concern of maybe a possible power imbalance thing and consent in that perspective. But we're adults, and we can figure it out ... if you'd like to of course." you say but pause abruptly at the end, trying to not stumble on your words.
You didn't want to assume there'd be a next time for you guys to figure this out, or if this was anything to begin with. It was your turn to be nervous.
"It's fine, I promise. I'm okay, more than okay, and I don't regret anything. I hope you feel the same." you confess, still hugging him but unable to face him. You hid in his chest as you waited for his answer, gripping him tighter without realizing it.
"Y-yeah, yes, lets figure this out please. I don't regret anything either. I've been wanting to kiss you since I first saw you."
Hearing him be the one to say please was quite the ego boost considering you'd been the one to always give up that control before with him.
"Cutest shorts collection I've ever seen," he teased as he eased himself back into his cocky, playful self.
"Hey! They work, clearly," you shot back and smacked him on the arm.
"I'll say. It's pretty impressive honestly. No wonder why you have so much laundry to do," he chuckles, dodging another playful smack from you.
"Why do you think I needed some spare change?" you giggled as you hid your face slightly in your hands.
pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader
summary – garrett learns that kitty has left a trail of devastated men across briar, and takes it as proof that what they have is different.
warnings – lowkey misogyny, slut-shaming, references to multiple past hookups, emotional distress discussed humorously, implied sexual content, sex toys, hickeys, nail marks and biting.
notes from me – oh i'm kind of obsessed with this i won't lie. garrett baby a storm is coming.
word count – 1.5k
navigation – masterlist | MBF masterlist
The dining hall had reached its lunchtime maximum capacity, which meant every table was crowded, the cutlery station had somehow run out of forks, and the air smelled like coffee, fryer oil and the wet wool of a hundred winter coats dragged in from outside.
Garrett sat opposite Dean with one elbow planted beside his tray, peeling the label from a bottle of water while Dean explained, in unnecessary detail, why Saturday’s game would be significantly easier if Coach simply allowed him to express himself.
“You mean ignore the play,” Garrett said.
“I mean respond instinctively.”
“You went offside four times at practice yesterday.”
Dean pointed a fry at him. “Because my instinct cannot be restrained.”
Garrett snorted, glancing toward the television bolted high in the corner, where muted footage from last weekend’s game was playing beneath a row of university announcements. “Tell Coach that. I’m sure he’ll love it.”
“I have. He lacks vision.”
Garrett was halfway through telling him Coach had every reason to be afraid when a shadow fell across the end of the table. Three guys stood there in Briar football sweats. Garrett recognised one of them from Beau’s frat – a receiver, maybe, with a familiar square jaw and the permanently dazed expression of someone who had been hit for sport since childhood.
“Graham,” the guy said.
Garrett nodded once. “What’s up?”
The three of them looked at one another. There was communication happening in the silence. A full, bleak committee meeting carried out through widened eyes and tiny movements of the mouth. Dean lowered his fry.
The guy from Beau’s frat cleared his throat. “We heard who you’re, like, dating.”
Garrett frowned before he could stop himself. He said her name, careful and automatic, then added, “I’m not dating her.”
Dean’s eyes slid toward him, but Garrett ignored it. He didn't need commentary from a man who had once called forcing Tucker to Venmo her for mozzarella sticks husband behaviour.
The football player’s expression tightened with something close to pity. “Don’t.”
Garrett blinked. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t do it, man.”
One of the others – a massive guy with a healing split through one eyebrow – nodded hard enough to move his entire upper body. “Seriously. She fucked us up.”
The third guy hadn't spoken yet. He stood clutching a sports drink against his chest with both hands, staring at Garrett as if he had arrived too late to prevent an industrial accident. “I think I have legit PTSD, bro.”
Dean’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Garrett slowly put the water bottle down. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
The guy with the split eyebrow dragged a hand over his face. “I cried in bed for, like, a week, dude.”
“You cried?”
He nods earnestly. “My mom had to come get me.”
Dean made a choking sound and covered it with a cough that fooled nobody.
The first guy pointed at Garrett, growing more urgent now that the testimony had begun. “She’s so fucking fine, right? Like, insanely fine. But that’s what gets you. It’s deceiving.”
“Her face is deceiving?” Garrett asked.
“The whole thing,” the guy with the sports drink said grimly. “The little skirts. The hair. The way she smiles at you like you’re the only person in the room.”
Garrett pictured that smile. Usually right before she said something designed to make his blood pressure spike.
The guy continued, “Then two weeks later you’re apologising for shit you didn’t even know men could do wrong.”
“I don’t believe in love anymore,” Split Eyebrow added.
“You dated her?” Garrett asked.
“Not officially.”
Dean’s head came up. “Oh, so she wasn’t dating you.”
The guy looked wounded by the distinction. “We were together all the time.”
“For how long?”
“Three weeks.”
Dean pressed his lips together, nodding as though this had answered several important questions about the plaintiff.
The first guy leaned closer to Garrett. “She’s a maneater, man. She'll chew you up and spit you out. She's like a–” He snapped his fingers, looking to the others for help. “Like a viper.”
“A viper doesn’t chew you up,” Dean said. “It injects venom.”
All three football players looked at him.
Dean lifted one shoulder. “Accuracy matters.”
“Whatever,” the guy insisted. “You know what I mean. She’s crazy.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. “You’re talking about Kitty?”
“What?” Split Eyebrow said.
“Kitty,” Dean repeated.
Garrett huffed, shaking his head before the nickname could develop its own campus folklore. “It’s a nickname. Never mind.” He looked back at the three men gathered around his lunch like shell-shocked survivors at a support group. “So what, you came over here to warn me?”
“Yes,” they said together.
Something deeply uncharitable warmed behind Garrett’s ribs. He nodded with as much solemnity as he could manage. “Right. Thanks for the warning.”
The relief on their faces was almost offensive. The first guy clapped him on the shoulder, told him to stay strong, and led the others away through the tables, sports drink still held protectively against the third guy’s sternum.
Garrett watched them go.
Across from him, Dean had gone completely still, eyes fixed on Garrett’s face. “You look unbearable.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Dean leaned back in his chair, studying him with open disgust. “You’re doing that smug little captain thing.”
Garrett picked up his water. “Maybe I’m glad people care about my wellbeing.”
“No. You’re sitting there thinking you’re different.”
Garrett took a drink.
Dean pointed at him. “You are.”
Garrett shrugs. “She likes me.”
“They probably thought she liked them too.”
“She does like me,” Garrett said, because that part was not arrogance. Or not entirely. He knew the difference between her looking at somebody and her looking at him.
He knew the exact little pinch that appeared between her brows when she was pretending not to be bothered, the sound her nails made when she tapped them against his phone and asked who was texting him, the way she crawled into his bed already complaining and then stole his pillow before she fell asleep.
Dean narrowed his eyes. “You know she’s going to ruin your life.”
Garrett’s mouth twitched. He had heard her threaten bodily harm because Logan drank the oat milk she liked. He had watched her make a sophomore cry using only words. She could dismantle a man in public without raising her voice, all glossy lips and long nails and a sweet expression that made the damage worse.
But Garrett also knew what happened when the bedroom door shut. She talked a big game. She arrived with that sharpened little smile and called him hockey boy like she hadn't spent half the week wearing his clothes.
Then he got his hands on her, and the whole performance loosened one breath at a time. Her insults broke apart. Her grip changed. She ended most nights clinging to him and saying his name like it was the only word she had left.
Garrett shrugged. “I’ve got it under control.”
Dean stared at him for a long moment. “That's what every guy says immediately before an animal mauls him.”
Hours later, Garrett was lying on his back beneath the low amber light of his bedside lamp, one arm crooked behind his head and the other spread over the warm curve of her spine.
Her body was folded into his side, boneless with sleep and whatever was left of the attitude she had arrived with. One bare leg rested across his thighs. Her cheek was pressed to his chest, hair tangled over his shoulder, and she had been quietly playing with the chain around his neck for several minutes without seeming entirely conscious of it.
The room carried the soft, overheated stillness of aftermath. Clothes across the floor. Douglas abandoned near the pillows. The faint sound of Logan laughing downstairs, blurred by the walls.
She slid the chain between two fingers, watching it catch against his skin with heavy-lidded concentration. Then she leaned up and pressed a small, absent kiss beneath his jaw. Another followed near his chin.
Garrett smiled at the ceiling.
His shoulders and chest were covered in evidence, half-moons from her nails, a dark mark near his collarbone, another pulsing beneath his jaw where she had held him still with one hand and bitten down like she had something to prove.
His back would probably look worse. The guys would see it tomorrow in the locker room and Dean will become impossible to live with.
She kissed his jaw again, softer this time, and murmured something that dissolved against his skin before it became language.
Garrett lowered his chin. “What was that?”
Her eyes stayed closed. “Nothin'.”
“Sounded like something.”
“Go to sleep.”
Her voice had no edge left in it. Barely enough volume to qualify as a command. She tucked her face more firmly into the side of his neck and curled her fingers around his chain, holding it as though she had decided it belonged to her too.
Garrett’s hand moved slowly up her back. She sighed and melted closer, warm mouth brushing his skin in one last drowsy kiss.
Maneater, his ass.
He looked down at the marks covering him, then at the woman sleeping with her whole body wrapped around his and one hand possessively closed around the chain at his throat.
He had this completely under control.
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Oh my god Richee need that chubby sleepy jack nightmare scenario fleshed out to the max and on my desk asap
You wake up with your name falling from Jack's voice, a mess. His hand flies toward your stomach, but you think he was only reaching for the space beside him---you. That you are...alive. That this isn't all the dreams he's had before.
Like the one you're sure he's just torn away from.
Red light. You under crushed metal. A flatline that belongs to your heartbeat. He swears he can smell the blood and rubber...
He can still feel his little girl's shoe in his hand, pink and bloodied.
"Jack?"
When Jack grabs you, there's not an ounce of gentleness. You can only gasp when he drags you across the mattress by your shoulder and waist. It would be hot if you weren't so concerned.
"Jac---ow, what---"
His interruption is his face against your chest. Usually, it's the sleep-heavy nuzzle he'll pretend to do gruffly, but here, he folds into your body and buries himself between your tits.
He's solidly hunching, you think, and your stomach simmers with the need to comfort him. But you guess you're already doing that?
You blink into the dark as his breaths sound out hoarse against his shaking body and your trapped chest. The anxiety that Jack's breathing into you wakes your body before your mind does.
Your poor, old doctor. What happened?
You slip your hand into Jack's curls at the back of his skull. You let your other hand rub the top knob of his spine, and you can feel the muscles of his shoulders pulse beneath your touch.
"Okay, Jackie. I’ve got you."
His fists your tank top, and his breaths grow harsher against your breast.
"No. No".
His words are muffled, and they hardly sound like him. You look down. All you can see is the silver-dark mess of his hair and the hard, unevenly breathed curve of his back.
How bad was this dream? You want to murder it, choke it out with your hands.
Too much?
“What happened?”
Jack shakes his head, and the movement drags his cheek lower, from your chest to your stomach. He presses his face there as if the inside of you is where nothing can find him.
...You're flattered. Somewhere, in all of the belly-tense confusion.
"Jackie, I'm here."
You stroke his hair. He grips you harder.
"No, you weren’t. I couldn’t get to you."
His voice is hoarse. You let out a sigh, stomach sinking deeper.
Jack doesn't need to offer more, you know his nightmares always leave debris behind. They can be about so many things, but when they're about you and Chubby, you've become aware that they've turned you two into every possible ending he's spent trying to prevent.
You bend over him as much as his hold allows and press your lips to his hair.
"It was a dream. You’re home. We’re okay."
His fingers dig into your sides. You frown sleepily at that. You're only trying to help, but the pain is almost a pleasant delight---your greedy need for his need. You won't bother Jack with that now.
"You can't promise. Don't."
You can hear the anger grow louder in Jack's command, but it immediately falls back into a wavering, low noise.
You understand, you think. He doesn't want reasons that his anxieties won't let him believe, so you stop promising. You just hold him, palm moving slowly over his head, down his neck, across the tense spread of his beautiful, thick shoulders.
When he begins to cry into you, you're not sure that he knows he is.
You feel Jack's hot tears soak through your shirt, and he's not exactly fighting himself until you can be sure of the moment he realizes you can feel it. His tears, his silent cries.
He turns his face deeper into your stomach, hiding.
Your heart breaks before your face does.
"Jack, breathe, baby---"
You're surprised when he pulls away from you, especially when he was so in need of locking your body with his tears and arms, but your gaze follows his---to the dimly glowing screen of the baby monitor.
Jack reaches for it and stares at the tiny, black-and-white video image of Chubby lying sprawled in her crib. He holds it, still and focused.
"Chubby’s sleeping, Jack. She's fine."
He lifts his head, and as resentfully handsome in his tears, he looks wrong. Pale with reddened eyes and a mouth pulled so tight, like it's the only thing stopping him from making another sound.
All you want is for him to be happy, that's right. That's Jackie at his most beautiful.
Jack looks back to the monitor.
"You can't tell she's breathing on this."
It's a mumble as he throws the blanket aside and grabs his prosthetic from beside the bed. His hands are still shaking too badly for him to work the liner properly.
You crawl towards his side of the bed.
"Jack, slow down. The monitor---"
"I need to see her."
There's no room in his voice for discussion. And you know what? You know better than to try. Not tonight.
Jack gets the prosthetic on wrong the first time. You hear him swear under his breath and rip it loose before trying again. You move to sit next to him, but he holds out one hand without looking.
"You're staying."
The command is instinctive. You go still, and that's when he realizes what tone he's given you. He looks over his shoulder.
"Please, Sleepy."
"...Okay."
He stands, and his first step is unsteady, but the second finds him. He's gone before you know it, with all the urgency you're sure only he bears for the reassurance that a nightmare didn't take his girls away.
The first step is unsteady.
The second finds him.
Then he leaves the bedroom with the silent urgency of a man responding to a code no one else can hear.
Chubby’s door is cracked. Jack stops just outside it.
Good. Good. He can hear her now, her soft little breaths. Alive. Good. His hands will stop trembling in a second. He knows it. He fucking better, because there was a dream that kept some silence to a room where no living person belongs, and that he...that he....
He had found you first. Or what was left of you beneath the white sheet. Then someone handed him Chubby's shoe. The little girl you gave him. Nobody would tell him where she was, and he remembers screaming at Robby and tearing at curtains and slamming on doors.
Jack pushes Chubby’s bedroom door open. The sight nearly brings him to the fucking floor. You and she have a tendency of doing that. Menaces.
She's hugging Bun-Bun, safe in a way that kills him. Good.
Jack approaches the crib and places his hands on the railing, watching her chest fall and rise. He counts five, ten breaths.
Why isn't his heart finding its way out of the fucking fire?
He reaches inside and shushes the offended noise that leaves his little girl when he picks her up and puts her against his chest.
"Dada's got you, Chubs. He loves you so...so much."
The kid's heavy with sleep, but alive enough to knock her head into his chin when she settles. Jack closes his eyes. He breathes in.
He doesn't realize he's holding her too tight until he squirms. Fucking hell.
"Sorry."
Her head lifts, eyes barely open under her heavy lids.
"Dada?"
Jack swallows, not blinking.
Yeah, wake your daughter up from her sleep cause you had a nightmare. Dad of the year.
"Yeah?"
She blinks, and Jack tries to turn away before she can see him properly. But he should know his kid better.
Too late.
Her little hand rises, and his grief and self-hatred can only slow in its boiling when she begins to...pet his cheek.
Jack freezes in walking back to the bedroom. One of her fingers smears his tears away. Her brows pull together.
"S’okay, Dada. Okay? You okay?"
...He shouldn't put this on her, but how can he lie after that? How?
Jack's sigh is awfully loud and wobbled, just as wobbled as his chin.
"I had a bad dream, pretty."
He can tell Chubby's considering this. You've explained bad dreams to her before. Monsters aren't real, they're just scary things while she's safe in bed.
He'll never tell her how real they can all be in his head.
Chubby smiles. She knows the treatment for this.
"Mommy kiss."
...Fuck.
Jack looks toward the hallway, where he finds you standing with your chest stained where he cried into it. You look exhausted. The most beautiful.
He's sorry, baby. Are you sorry for being the most beautiful?
Jack’s eyes fill again. Chubby follows his sight, reaching for you, but when you come close, she doesn't care to leave his arms.
She just pulls you by the collar of your shirt and brings you into the hold.
Jack's arms close around your waist, and Chubby's held between you, very warm. Very confused. She's already beginning to drift off again. You kiss her cheeks before Jack's.
She smiles when she sees your lips meet his.
"Dere. Dada better?"
Jack looks down at your baby.
She's too small to be made responsible for this. Too small to learn that her father’s grief can be soothed by her and you alone.
But she's already petting his face again.
"S’okay, Dada."
Jack takes her hand and kisses the back of her palm, feeling you pressed up beside him.
...And he is. He is so much better. Both his girls are alive beneath his hands.
in which jack abbot is the first to notice the wallflower resident of the ER.
summary; reader has always been used to being left behind, and eventually stopped trying to make space for themselves. she doesn't think anyone notices her, until jack abbot starts paying attention.
warnings; fem!reader. use of y/n, use of she/her, probably medical inaccuracies bc all my medical knowledge comes from shows lol, also NO AI used !!! i use em dashes sometimes but i PROMISE this is strictly a no-ai account!! also reader has a cat bc i said so
i might make a part two of this tbh but i wont label it as a series bc then my brain will start procastinating and i'll lose all motivation to write it LOL
edit; part 2 here
The noise of the ER buzzed around you. The muscles in your neck ached, begging to be stretched and massaged. One of your hands came up to gently rub on your neck, the other slowly typing out the chart of your latest patient.
Some of the interns were huddled together, giggling to each other about something. It had become a habit of yours to listen in on them— on whatever gossip they had going on this time. Sometimes, you liked to pretend that you were part of it. That you got to gossip with friends just like they do.
That'd never been the case for you. In your intern year, you were the only one. Already feeling alienated, you struggled to find your place in the ER. Everyone seemed to already know who they were, aside from you.
For a while, you tried. You tried to include yourself. You joined the others when they went for a beer after a heavy shift. But as time went on, you didn't feel any closer to belonging. It didn't feel like anyone was making room for you either. So, you stopped showing up. And no one said anything.
Now, you just worked. You took all the patients no one else wanted. You stayed a little later to make sure another coworker could get home on time. You helped in traumas, then slipped away as soon as it was done.
This routine worked. It'd been your routine for years now. It wasn't that you were a bad doctor, no. You just didn't fit in.
A small wince covered your features as you rubbed your neck again. You truly couldn't wait to get off shift, and go home. You know your cat must already be sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for the sight of you walking through the door.
"Nice catch, earlier." You heard a gruff voice behind you— one you recognized as your attending, Jack Abbot. Being the eavesdropper you are, you waited to hear the response of the person he was complimenting. You wondered if they'd be humble or gleeful. You know that if you were complimented like that, you'd be over the moon.
The light of the monitor made your eyes burn a little, but you just had to push through this last chart.
Then, you felt a hand tap your shoulder.
"Kid?" Dr. Abbot hummed, looking down at you, the corner of his lips quirking into a small smile. "Did'ya hear me?"
Your eyes go wide, and you swear you can feel your heart jumping up into your throat, making your breath hitch. He was talking to you. No one ever bothered talking to you, not if it wasn't necessary.
"I— er- sorry, what did you say, Dr. Abbot?" You cleared your throat, trying to get your heart to return to a normal pace, the chart all forgotten now.
He watched you for a moment, his gaze softening from playful to a more gentle one. "I said..." His hands gripped both ends of his stethoscope, the one he always had around his neck, "Good catch earlier. With the silent heart attack patient. Not many of us could've caught that."
The apples of your cheeks shifted into a deep red color, your eyes darting from him to your keyboard, then to your water bottle, the floor, keyboard, him...
"Oh- um, yeah, thank you, sir." You nodded in response, already mentally degrading yourself for being so awkward. This is your attending, for gods sake. You should be professional.
But that easy grin rested on his face, and he nodded. "Oh, sure, kid. You're one hell of a doctor. Keep it up." He gently squeezed your shoulder, and walked off. And that was that. He complimented you like it was nothing.
That simple compliment swam in your head the entire day. It made you smile as you prepared your lunch for work at home that evening. It made you hum with content as you settled into bed, curtains drawn shut to hide the rising sun.
Good catch earlier.
It started happening more and more. Abbot would pull you into traumas with him, let you take the lead on them, and then give you a small compliment, and one of those warm smiles. He'd linger when you charted, always trying to spark up small talk.
You never came out of your shell, though. It was driving him insane. He tried everything. But you always shut it down and got back to work. For a while, he thought you might just dislike him. But he could see the small smiles you gave him, and the pink tint in your cheeks at his compliments.
So, he tried asking the other residents about you. Imagine his shock when no one knew anything about you. Everyone just responded off-handedly.
'Oh, Y/N? Yeah, she's a quiet one. Dunno much about her.'
'Y/N? Great doctor. Haven't talked to her much.'
'Saw her a few times in her first year of residency. Then she stopped coming out.'
No one knew anything. That's what made Jack perk up a little more. He tried to subtly keep notes on you throughout the day. See who you spoke to. If maybe you left with someone. Maybe discussed patients. But he got nothing.
You were all alone.
The last straw was when he spotted you slipping into the abandoned wing of the hospital, settling yourself on the dusty staircase, and opening your lunchbox. You even hid away to eat.
He had to fix that.
So, he became a little more persistent. He'd ask you to eat lunch with him, and before you had a chance to decline, he'd already led you into the breakroom, making you sit down with one pinned stare.
He could tell you were a little anxious. So he always made the first move. He'd ask questions that required more than a nod for an answer, just to get you talking. And he would listen. Full attention, eyes glued to you the entire time you spoke.
No dismissive nods, no hums of acknowledgement in a way to just make you feel heard, no. He made sure you knew he was listening. When you mentioned your cat, he asked for its name. He asked to see pictures. When you made an offhanded complaint about the hospital coffee, he asked what your favorite coffee place was.
The next day, a coffee from said place was waiting for you.
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
Part 3
masterlist
You feel like mangled prey the next morning. Nipples sucked raw, crotch a tacky mess of cum and sweat, flakes of it dried between your thighs, throat hoarse from screaming his name. Every inch of you aches when you try to move, the energy sucked out of you like marrow from a bone.
You feel like something torn from every angle, limbs just barely attached to your body. You vaguely recall him waking you up in the middle of the night by rolling you onto your stomach, a big arm hitching your hips up and positioning you just right before thrusting into you without any warning, no time to process waking up, the room around you still pitch black.
When sleep comes though, it comes hard, knocking you out until around mid-morning the next day.
Even then, when the sunlight splinters through your eyelids and rouses you back to life, it takes a considerable effort to even twitch your little finger, threaded through by a deep exhaustion. The bags under your eyes must be a wonder.
Your throat feels like sandpaper when you stick out your tongue to wet your lips, grimacing at the taste of your own morning breath. When you try to lift yourself up, your arm buckles, sending you toppling back down. Second time’s the charm though. There’s a deep ache in your hips and joints that you only feel when you roll out of bed. It’ll likely linger into the rest of the day.
“Where are you off to?” a heavy voice grumbles from the other side of the bed.
“A shower. Then coffee,” you croak, tucking your feet into a pair of slippers before waddling over to the door where you keep a housecoat hanging.
“Put the kettle on f’r me, darling,” John grunts, before turning over and burying his head back into the pillows.
The coffee maker boils and bubbles while you take a quick shower. It’s not what you need, but it’ll do until you’re alone, when you can take an hour long shower and luxuriate under the hot water with no thought to anyone waiting somewhere else in your house.
You sigh and shut the water off.
The breakfast table feels like a scene from a dream.
On the plate in front of you sits a satsuma orange, quartered, and toast with a thick layer of butter nearly spilling over the crust. Another plate sits on the placemat next to yours, piled high with toast, beans, sausage, and two fried eggs, a stark contrast from your plate.
At the sink, the man you let spend the better part of the night rutting between your thighs washes a pan. You stare at the meaty, undulating slabs of his back muscles until you’re nearly hypnotized, only snapping out of it when he shuts the water off, laying the pan down to dry in the dish rack.
“That’s all you’re having?” John asks, gesturing at your plate with his fork.
“For now,” you respond. “I might have something later if I’m still hungry.”
“Of course you’ll be hungry, you’ve hardly got anything on your plate. Here—have one of my eggs.”
He holds his plate over yours and uses his fork to push one of his fried eggs onto your plate. It flops unceremoniously onto your toast.
You decide against snapping at him because it’s too early and you’re far too tired. You slice open the yolk with the side of your fork instead, staring at the yellow spill over the sides of your toast.
There is a moment over breakfast where you begin to wonder whether John will leave at all. He eats his breakfast and drinks his tea with no real sense of urgency, no indication that he believes that he’s overstayed his welcome. You don’t want to come out and say it, but you can feel yourself getting antsy, your leg jittering under the table.
Then finally: “Well, this has been lovely, darling, but I’ve got to get going.”
Euphoria swells in your chest at the announcement, but you force it down, schooling your expression into something understanding. “You sure you don’t want more tea?”
The wry look he gives you lets you know that he can see right through your feigned dismay. “No, darling, I think that was enough for now.”
Shrewd man. Far too shrewd for the likes of you.
You send him off with a kiss on the lips and a look so heated that it nearly singes. And then he’s gone, the door locked behind him and his footsteps growing fainter and fainter until they disappear altogether.
And then, and only then, can you finally exhale.
It’s one of the first weekends in a while where you feel no compulsion to go out or do practically anything. All you want to do is laze about. You make a batch of iced tea and plop yourself in front of the TV, feet tucked under your thighs and phone open in your hand, both screens on at the same time.
It feels so good to do laundry after making a mess of everything. You strip the sheets and throw them into the washing machine the second John’s out the door, your clothes from the night before not far behind. Later, you cobble together lunch from whatever you have in the fridge, and when supper comes around, you order takeaway, barely cracking open the front door wide enough to snatch the bag off the stoop before retreating back inside.
He’s still there though. Every time you get a twinge in your hips or an ache in your belly. Every time you glance towards your bedroom on your way to the kitchen and you see the sheets, all clean and neat now, though you can easily recall what they looked like just a few days ago—a tangled, filthy mess of cum, spit, and sweat.
Unlike your sheets, the stink of John’s presence isn’t easily washed away.
By the time Monday rolls around, you feel normal again. Like you’ve caught your breath after a long sprint. No bout of Sunday scaries this time, not after the weekend you had, but still you come into work with your head on a bit of a swivel, feeling a bit like an emperor in invisible clothes. Waiting, against all odds and rational sense, for someone to read the signs of your weekend on you.
No one does, of course. No one says a word because no one notices a thing. You might have expected that if you weren’t so on edge, but paranoia has a way of twisting the mind. By the time lunch comes around though, and no one has said more than a pleasant word to you, you start to let go of the anxiety. Better late than never.
The latter point doesn’t apply to your period.
Tuesday is better. You pass a flower shop on your way to work and stop to smell the roses for a change, the heavy weight on your shoulders barely a feather in the light of a new day. It’s that time of summer where every colour is at its most saturated, the pinks and greens and golds and oranges so intense and vivid that their colours seem to almost pour out of them.
And then it’s Wednesday.
Wednesday is a croissant, the buttery flakes scattered all over the wax paper that you use as a plate, and an iced coffee. It’s a series of boring meetings at work that barely move the needle. It’s a long, circuitous drive home that ends at least once in a dead end because of all the construction going on downtown. It is, in every sense of the word, a profoundly boring day.
The first thing you do when you get home is collapse on the couch for a solid half hour, shoes just barely kicked off at the door. Supper can wait until later. Your stomach grumbles when you think about it, but you just don’t have the energy to cook, all of it eaten up by the stress of the drive home.
This is how the rest of your life is going to look. With a baby, for sure, but still, just you. Just you to come home from work and cook and clean and do it all. And even though it’s what you’ve been working towards, you’re a little morose thinking about it.
There’s a knock on your door. You lift yourself up to sit, frowning at the door. The bell follows soon after.
You know it’s John before you even check. Call it a sixth sense or intuition, but when the bell rings, your breath catches and your stomach clenches, and you know it’s him on the other side.
He comes bearing gifts at least. A stack of takeaway containers in a brown paper bag. Even just the smell has you salivating. You can almost imagine that you let him in, that you took a step back and waved him inside, interest and appetite piqued by the smell of greasy food.
You didn’t though, a sneaky little voice reminds you. You let the door open just enough to poke your head out and he was there on the other side, taking up every inch of space, as if someone had suddenly built a wall right outside your door. And he was gentlemanly about it, smiled down at you and asked you how you were, but his foot was against the door and then wedged between it and the frame, working it open gently with his leg and shoulder, pushing his way inside. Polite all the while, of course, announcing the meal that he’d come with and dropping a sweet kiss on the top of your head, but he did, in fact, push you aside on his way in.
Your problem is that you can always find a silver lining. Anyone with any common sense would tell you to kick him out tout suite—shove him towards the door, bye bye, so long, thanks for all your help, I’ll let you know if I need you to come back—but you can’t help thinking that, you know, while you have him here, you might as well—
John catches you glancing towards your bedroom door and smiles, amused. “We can get to that later.”
And he does.
Three times in one week. That’s how many times he comes over. He never leaves without at least folding you over the side of the couch and pumping a load into you, only satisfied when he dips thick fingers into a creamy centre and pulls them out wet, your trembling legs letting him know that the job is done.
You don’t complain because what is there to complain about? You have a man at your beck and call—though you haven’t yet had to call him—willing to help you make a baby and not asking for anything in return.
His involvement in your life extends beyond just the bedroom though. You suffer through mid-morning headaches for a week before realizing from the label on the jar that someone must have swapped your instant coffee for the decaf version. John doesn’t deny it when you bring it up.
Prenatal vitamins are the next thing shoved down your throat, albeit not literally. Fresh, organic fruits and vegetables as well. And grateful as you are for him saving you the trip, you can’t help but wonder if he realizes that you don’t need his help. Eventually, you’re going to have to be self-sufficient. You can’t get used to John bringing you dinner or picking up your meds or getting your groceries because eventually it’s going to end.
He doesn’t always stay the night. Sometimes he leaves right after the act or in the wee hours of the morning while you’re half-tucked under the sheets, limbs akimbo. His goodbyes are always a long, drawn out affair, even if it means pulling you from a dead sleep. Always a soft, slow kiss sipped from your lips and a little bit of tongue. One last once-over to make sure you’re okay. Sometimes he even fetches a glass of water to set on your bedside table for the next morning.
A pity you can’t look forward to this for the rest of your life.
A week and a half later, your period arrives right on schedule.
It isn’t a surprise—you warned John as much over dinner—but it does dampen your mood somewhat when you realize this means that you won’t be seeing John
The next time John calls, you tell him as much.
“We should probably reschedule—I’m on my period this week.”
You can hear the raised eyebrow in his voice. “Are you going away as well?”
You frown. “No, I’m not going anywhere. Why?”
“Then why would we reschedule?”
“Oh. Okay.”
Implacable. Unflappable. If you knew more about him, you would’ve expected that from him, but you learn it too late. Instead, you find out about this particular character trait in the shower of all places, your cheek pressed against the wet tile and your hips canted back, John’s cock plunging between your legs, blood dyeing the water around your feet pink and swirling down the drain.
If you’d known that about him, you might never have let things get to this point. But the dice have already been cast; they’re out of your hands now. All you can do is grip the reins in both hands and hold on for dear life.
It’s difficult to imagine what your life will be like after this. You’ve spent so long waiting instead of living. Waiting takes up so much space, so much time. It fills the walls of your mind with its presence, a constant, irksome insistence, making the world you’ve been running towards seem leagues away.
And then there are moments when it seems close enough to touch.
A month passes like a buzzing fly. Here one second and gone the next. You have an alarm on your phone that goes off while you’re scrolling in bed, waiting for John to come over, and you blink when you see a reminder for the first day of your period. You hadn’t even felt it creeping up on you.
You pull your shorts and underwear off right there on your bed, checking the gusset for blood and feeling your heartbeat speed up when you find nothing there. You’re late.
You call and catch him a couple blocks from your place, sounding half-crazy over the phone, but you’re coherent enough for him to double back and grab a box of pregnancy tests. One of the three-pack ones, splurging a little.
The second you let him in, John herds you into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, flipping the lock at the same time. Your stomach drops out from under you when you hear it click.
“Here. In this,” he says, handing you a small, plastic cup.
“Wait, can’t I just pee on the stick?” you ask, reaching for the box that he yanks away from your grasping fingers.
John shakes his head. “This is a better method. Less chance of you missing or not wetting it enough. We’ll put the stick in when you’re done.”
“John—”
“We can stand here all night talking about it, if you’d rather?” The slight furrow of his brows signals that his patience is wearing thin.
You’ve clearly been giving him too much leeway if he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with putting you through the indignity of peeing in front of him.
You do it though. Hunched over on the toilet with your pants around your ankles and the cup between your legs, John leaning against the counter and watching you the whole time.You stare down between your spread thighs and into the bowl instead of meeting his eyes, half to ignore him and half to make sure that you don’t miss.
When you’re done, you hand him the cup. Let him handle it while you wipe yourself off and pull your underwear back up.
The wait is excruciating. Three minutes of pins and needles, front teeth chipping away at the nail of your thumb. You wish that John would distract you somehow, but his eyes remain fixed on the pregnancy test, unwavering.
You nearly jump out of your skin when the alarm on his phone buzzes, practically leaping over him to grab the pregnancy test.
Your heart sinks when only one line stretches across the display. You turn the test this way and that, trying to make out even the faintest indication of a second line, but it’s clear what that one line means.
Taking it from your hands, John sets the test down on the counter and wraps his arms around you, cupping his hand around the back of your head as he pulls you into his chest.
“It’s alright, love,” he says in a low, soothing voice. “We’ll keep trying.”
His comfort is an unexpected balm. A firm pressure over a wound aching to open back up.
It’s the first time he sleeps in your bed without making a move on you. You almost have half a mind to bring it up, but you bite your tongue just in time. Why spoil the mood when his arm makes as comfortable a pillow as any one of yours? You like the way his breath tickles the tip of your nose. The way he doesn’t snore but breathes so heavily that he might as well.
You’re glad that it’s him. This would’ve been harder on your own, with no one around to make the heavy moments lighter.
Sure, you would have had your friends to lean on. But you would’ve had them on weekends and at mocktail hours, not in the quiet of your bathroom, staring at a negative pregnancy test in only your underwear.
You’re glad you have John.
Not everyone shares your opinion.
A lawyer friend (not a friend by virtue of being a lawyer, but simply happenstance) goes ashen when you finally break and tell someone about your arrangement with John.
“Did you hit your head or something? Are you out of your mind?”
You wince, sheepish, aware that you deserve the dressing down. “I know.”
“No, you clearly don’t know or you would have come to me about this before having unprotected sex with a stranger in order to get knocked up. Did he even get tested before sleeping with you?”
“Obviously. I’m not that stupid.”
“You actually are that stupid. Did you have him sign anything forfeiting parental rights?”
Your lips form in a perfect circle and she groans, scrubbing a hand down her face.
A day later, she has something for you to give John to sign. It’s long and technical, but you understand the gist of what a voluntary forfeiture of parental rights entails.
It should’ve crossed your mind to seek out legal advice before all of this, but you hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. You’d sort of hoped it would be quick, that he’d spend one singular night with you, and two to four weeks later, you’d be pregnant. You hadn’t expected it to take this long; you certainly hadn’t foreseen John's active and prolonged involvement in the process.
Clearly, you haven’t been thinking straight these past few weeks.
The next time John comes over, you hand it to him, expecting to have his signature by the end of the night. Not anticipating any resistance, and why would you? Your arrangement with him is predicated on this being a temporary affair.
His face gives nothing away as he works through the document. He might as well be reading a circular.
“Very official,” he remarks. You almost feel bad about springing this on him after everything that he’s done for you. He’s been nothing but helpful and dependable since this started.
You feel so bad that you actually apologize. “Sorry. One of my friends is just really paranoid. It’s just a formality.”
John doesn’t respond, flipping over to the next page, eyes still scanning the text.
“You don’t have to sign it right now,” you insist, guilt clawing at your stomach.
“Nonsense,” he says, dismissing your worry. “I know this is important to you. You have to take care of yourself and our baby. That’s what matters most.”
Your stomach flips. Our baby. It doesn’t alleviate the guilt you feel about ambushing him with a legal document when there are groceries on the counter still waiting to be unpacked, another one of his thankless gifts. It just notches the arrow, the bow pulled back to a taut full draw.
“Do you have a pen, love? I didn’t think to bring one with me.” The arrowhead punches right between your ribs.
“No, just take it home. I don’t need it today. Please,” you stress when he tries to argue, trying to take the papers from him. “John, I’m serious.”
He sighs, reluctantly handing you the contract back. “Alright, love, whatever you say.”
There’s a certain relief in getting that off your chest, even if it means putting it on the back burner for a while. It’s not like you have to deal with this now anyway. You aren’t even pregnant yet.
That must occur to John as well because he wastes no time divesting you of your clothes, his passion tonight a slow burn, a little ember cooking you from the inside.
Even he seems to be suffering from it tonight. He touches the head of his cock to your lips and sighs like it’s a shame he can’t come in there. He doesn’t mind wetting it though. Makes it a smoother glide when he gets you down on all fours, the floorboards chafing your elbows and knees with every thrust.
The next morning, you happen to glance down at the coffee table on your way to the kitchen and notice the contract missing. John must have taken it on his way out.
You never do see that little document again after that, and you never think to bring it up.
pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – a secret hookup with garrett graham turns into four close calls, one locker room scandal, and feelings neither of them are hiding very well.
warnings – 18+, smut, alcohol, jealousy, secret hookups, hockey violence/injuries, swearing.
notes from me – thank u for the request, anon!! this was so cute i got carried away lol <3
word count – 9.4k
navigation – masterlist
The thing about keeping Garrett Graham a secret was that Garrett Graham was, in almost every available category, a terrible secret.
He was too tall for it, for one. Too broad. Too recognisable from the back, from the shoulders, from the mess of dark curls and the stupid confident way he moved through a room like gravity had signed some private agreement to make him look good from every angle.
He was also, tragically, friendly. Friendly in that Garrett-specific way that meant everybody on campus felt like they knew him well enough to yell his name across a party, slap his shoulder at Malone’s, stop him in the hall to talk about last night’s game or next week’s line-up or whatever else men said to one another when they wanted to bask briefly in proximity to a local legend and pretend it was a conversation.
And she wasn't exactly anonymous either. Not anymore. Not after Dean.
Dean Di Laurentis, who had never been her boyfriend, which was a legal technicality he clung to with the same lazy confidence he seemed to apply to everything else in his life.
Dean had been a mistake with good hair and a trust fund. A mistake with a grin. A mistake that had lasted a few times longer than it should have because he was pretty and shameless and very good at looking at a girl like he had personally invented bad decisions and would be thrilled to walk her through the beginner course.
But Dean wasn't a girlfriend kind of guy. Dean was Six Flags. You rode the ride, screamed once or twice, maybe bought the photo after, and then got off.
She knew that. She had known that then, technically.
Dean had a way of appearing in her life at the least dignified possible moments looking pleased with himself, and she had a way of refusing to let him be pleased without penalty.
Like the time she found him coming out of a women’s bathroom stall at Malone’s with a girl in a denim skirt. She had been washing her hands at the sink, glanced up in the mirror, taken in his flushed face, his rumpled shirt, the girl fixing her hair behind him, and said, “Hi, whore,” with the flat calm of someone greeting a neighbour at the mailbox.
Dean, because shame had never successfully attached itself to his nervous system, had only chuckled and leaned one shoulder against the stall door. “Hey.”
That was the whole thing. Mostly joking. Mostly old bruised pride dressed up in insults because that was easier than admitting he had maybe gotten under her skin for a minute and then left muddy footprints on his way back out.
Garrett wasn't supposed to be part of that. Garrett had happened after a party, which was already a bad sign because nothing good ever began at two in the morning in a hockey house kitchen with tequila and Dean singing the wrong words to a song everybody else knew.
It had been loud and hot and stupid, the whole house sticky with beer and laughter and bodies pressed into doorways. She had ended up outside on the back steps because the kitchen had started spinning, and Garrett had come out five minutes later with two waters and an expression that suggested he was trying very hard not to ask whether she was going to puke on his sneakers.
He had sat down beside her instead.
Garrett had looked at her sideways when she laughed at one of his jokes, and something in his face had changed. Garrett’s face was a practiced thing, mostly grin and charm and captain-boy confidence, but this had slipped underneath it. A quiet little interest. A flicker. Like he had found something he wanted to pay attention to and was already annoyed about it.
Then, later, in the upstairs hallway, she had been trying to find the bathroom and he had been trying to find Logan, because Logan had stolen his phone to send a voice note to Coach that began with “hypothetically, if a man loved hockey but hated cardio,” and somehow Garrett’s hand had ended up on her waist. Warm through her shirt. Steadying her when someone shoved past in the hall.
“Careful,” he had said, close to her ear.
She had turned her head, too drunk to be clever and too annoyed by how good he smelled to be normal. “I’m always careful.”
Garrett’s eyes had dropped to her mouth for half a second, then lifted again with that awful amused heat. “Uh huh.”
The first kiss had been an accident. His room had been closer than the bathroom. His door had shut behind them. His mouth had been warm and confident and so immediately, horribly good that she had pulled back after ten seconds just to stare at him like that might make the situation less offensive.
Garrett had grinned down at her, lips a little swollen already, one hand still at her waist. “What?”
“You kiss like you know you’re good at it.”
He’d shrugged. “I am good at it.”
“That’s a disgusting thing to say.”
“Wasn’t really a denial, though.”
She had meant to hate that. Truly. She had tried.
The first time they almost got caught, she was riding him with her hands braced on his chest and Garrett’s mouth at her throat, and the only thought in her head was a soft, stunned, repeated oh that seemed to have lost all connection to language.
His room was too warm despite the window cracked open behind the desk, the cold night air barely managing to move through the heat they had made under the sheets. The lamp was off. Some blue-white spill from the streetlight outside cut through the blinds in thin, broken lines over the wall and across Garrett’s shoulder.
His chain had slipped sideways against his collarbone. His hair was a wreck from her fingers. His mouth was open against her neck, kissing up under her jaw with the kind of lazy, devastating precision that made her thighs shake around him before she could stop them.
“Garrett,” she breathed, and then immediately louder, because his hands had shifted to her hips and guided her down harder. “Oh my God.”
His hand flew up before the sound had fully escaped, palm covering her mouth, his other hand tightening at her waist. “Jesus, baby,” he said, voice low and rough and entirely too amused for a man currently participating in the same crime. “You trying to get me murdered?”
She made a muffled noise against his hand that was meant to be a curse and came out humiliatingly close to a whimper. Garrett’s grin flashed in the dark, teeth catching briefly, eyes bright and smug and so pleased with himself she nearly hated him. Nearly.
It was hard to maintain moral outrage when his thumb was pressed lightly against her cheek and his hips were still moving, slow and deep and mean in the way only a man with a scoreboard in his soul could be mean.
“There we go,” he murmured, kissing the side of her jaw while his palm stayed over her mouth. “Can’t be announcing it to the whole house, right?”
She glared down at him, or tried to. It probably lost some effect when her eyes fluttered halfway shut because he lifted his hips again and hit exactly the wrong place, which was to say exactly the right one.
Garrett laughed under his breath, quiet and filthy with satisfaction. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
She bit the inside of his palm.
His brows shot up. “Oh, we’re biting now?”
She nodded against his hand with as much dignity as a girl could manage while naked on top of him and very actively losing a fight against her own volume.
“Cool,” he whispered. “Very healthy. Super mature.”
She would have laughed if she had any air left. Instead her body gave her away again, a soft, trapped sound catching under his palm as he sat up suddenly, changing the angle and dragging her with him until she was pressed chest-to-chest with him, knees bracketing his hips, his mouth at her ear.
“Shh,” he said, but the edge of laughter in it ruined the authority.
He was enjoying this too much. Enjoying her like this, messy and desperate and trying very hard to be quiet because if anybody found out she was in Garrett Graham’s room, in Garrett Graham’s bed, after Dean Di Laurentis had spent the better part of the semester behaving like her eventual return to his mattress was a scheduling issue rather than a question, the whole house would become unbearable overnight.
Then the hallway floor creaked. Both of them froze. Him still inside her, both still overheated, still breathing too hard into the tiny space between them. Garrett’s hand stayed clamped gently over her mouth. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. His eyes lifted toward the door, and in the blue-dark she watched every cocky line in his face vanish into immediate, sharp focus.
Outside, Logan’s voice drifted close enough to curdle the air. “Yo– Dean. Is that who I think it is in there?”
Her stomach dropped so fast it was almost physical. Garrett’s eyes snapped back to hers.
For one suspended, insane second, they only stared at each other. She could feel his heartbeat hard against her chest. Could feel where they were still joined, which her body had the absolutely perverse audacity to notice in detail despite the fact that John Logan was currently holding a one-man investigation outside the door. Garrett’s hand loosened slightly over her mouth. Her lips parted against his palm. He held his finger up to his own lips, and she had nodded quickly.
He reached blindly toward the bedside table with one hand, the motion chaotic and deeply unathletic for a man who made a living looking graceful under pressure.
His fingers knocked something over. A bottle cap, maybe. His watch. A textbook hit the floor with a soft thud. She bit down on a laugh before it could get out, which was dangerous because laughter at that moment felt like shaking a soda bottle with the cap still on.
Garrett found his phone at last, thumb flying over the screen. For half a second there was nothing. Then the speaker on his dresser exploded to life with Cherry Pie so loud the whole room seemed to jump.
She slapped both hands over her own mouth now, eyes wide, shoulders shaking immediately with silent laughter. Garrett stared at the ceiling like he could not believe this was the solution his brain had selected and was, worse, proud of himself anyway.
In the hallway, Logan went silent. Then he burst out laughing. “Oh shit– sorry, G! Guess not!”
A second later Dean’s voice, farther away and deeply suspicious, called, “What?”
“Nothin’, man,” Logan said, still laughing. “Keep walking.”
Footsteps retreated. The music kept blaring. Garrett turned it down with the ferocious speed of a man who had made his point and no longer wanted Warrant narrating his sex life. The second the volume dropped, she folded forward into Garrett’s shoulder and started laughing for real, breathless and helpless, her whole body shaking against his.
Garrett’s arms closed around her automatically. Then he started laughing too, quiet and disbelieving into her hair. “Fuck.”
She lifted her head, face hot, eyes watering, and whispered, “Cherry Pie?”
“It was the first thing that came up.”
“You panic-played Cherry Pie?”
He huffed out a laugh. “It worked.”
“That’s not the same as being good.”
“It worked,” he repeated, grinning now, smugness returning by the inch because survival had restored him. His hands slid to her hips again, warm and possessive and much too confident. “And for the record, if Logan thinks you’re in Dean’s room right now, I might throw myself out the window.”
She pressed her lips together, trying and failing not to smile. “Jealous?”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “Careful.”
The word landed low in her stomach. Warm and bright and stupid. She leaned down and kissed him before he could see too much of it on her face, and he kissed her back still smiling, still breathing laughter into her mouth, both of them a little shaky now for a different reason.
“Too close,” she murmured against him.
“Yeah,” Garrett said, one hand coming up to the back of her neck, holding her there. “Maybe stop trying to wake the neighbours.”
“You’re the one playing stripper music at full volume.”
“Because you’re loud.”
“Because you’re annoying.”
His grin was all teeth in the dark. “Baby, just before? That wasn't an annoyed sound.”
She shoved at his chest, and he fell back on the mattress easily, gesturing for her to come closer with two fingers. The stupid warmth of it made her go quiet in a way that was much more dangerous than the moaning had been.
The second time they almost got caught, she was drunk enough that focusing on standing upright had become a full-body project.
The house belonged to some guy from one of Dean’s classes, or maybe one of Logan’s, or maybe no one knew and they had all simply agreed to occupy it until dawn. It smelled like beer, perfume, damp coats, and the kind of carpet that had seen too much and forgiven nothing.
She stood in the upstairs hallway with one shoulder against the wall, phone in hand, trying to read the same text from Garrett for the third time.
Garrett: You good?
It was a simple question. Easy. Very Garrett, actually. Casual on the surface, but sent because he had been watching her across the room ten minutes ago with that narrowed captain look he got whenever she reached the stage of drunk where her smile became too slow and her balance became hypothetical.
She typed, yes.
Then deleted it because the letters looked suspicious.
Then typed, yed.
Then stared at that for a long time.
Beside her, a cluster of girls in tiny tops and hockey-adjacent enthusiasm had been having one of those conversations that floated around the party like perfume: who was hot, who was overrated, who was secretly huge, who had commitment issues so severe they should probably be peer-reviewed.
She ignored it for as long as she could because she had bigger concerns, namely that if the bathroom door did not open in the next thirty seconds she was going to have to start making decisions about where else she could throw up.
Then one of them said Garrett’s name. Her eyes lifted off her phone before she could stop them.
The girl speaking was blonde, glossy in a way that seemed expensive even if nothing she was wearing necessarily was, with a little white top and the high, pleased expression of someone enjoying the sound of her own anecdote.
“No, I’m serious,” she was saying, one hand pressed to her chest like she was giving testimony. “Last night was the best night ever. Like, Garrett knows what he’s doing. He made me come, like, three times.”
The hallway did a small, drunken tilt.
The problem wasn't even jealousy at first, not properly. The problem was logistics. Garrett had been in her room last night. Garrett had been in her bed last night, sprawled diagonally like he owned both the mattress and several surrounding counties, one arm hooked around her waist while she tried to sleep and he mumbled something into her hair about setting an alarm for practice.
Garrett had stolen half her blanket and then looked offended when she kicked him in the shin. Garrett had kissed the back of her shoulder at five in the morning before climbing out of bed, half-dressed in the dark, whispering, “Go back to sleep, baby,” like he had any right to sound that soft before sunrise.
So unless Garrett had discovered cloning between midnight and breakfast, the blonde girl was lying.
The girl noticed her staring, because drunken staring was rarely subtle and this particular stare had been delivered with the blank intensity of a haunted doll.
The blonde’s smile faltered into something confused but still sweet, which was somehow worse. “Um… hi, babe. You okay?”
Another girl beside her leaned in slightly, brows lifting. “Did you need some water?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her phone was still in her hand, Garrett’s unanswered text glowing uselessly against her palm.
“You weren’t with Garrett last night,” she said.
The sentence came out too clear. Too certain. Sober-sounding, even, which was deeply unfair given the fact that her inner ear was currently behaving like a loose shopping trolley.
The blonde blinked. “What?”
“You weren’t with Garrett last night.” She frowned, genuinely trying to make the pieces fit and failing so hard that social caution had gone missing in the wreckage. “Why are you lying?”
The air around the bathroom line shifted. A couple of girls looked over. Someone’s mouth dropped open a tiny bit. The blonde’s face did that quick, ugly thing people’s faces did when embarrassment arrived and pride immediately tried to tackle it before it spread.
“And how would you know?” she asked, voice sharpening with a laugh around the edges. “Are you, like, his secretary?”
Her drunk brain, slow but not entirely dead, caught up with the fact that she was standing in a hallway full of girls, defending Garrett Graham’s whereabouts during the exact hours he had spent in her bed, while actively participating in a secret that depended on not doing that.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. The blonde’s brows rose.
“I– uh.” She looked down at her phone like it might offer legal counsel. Garrett’s text still sat there, accusatory and simple. “Never mind. Actually.”
Then she stepped out of the bathroom line. There was a slight shoulder bump with the wall and a near-collision with a guy carrying two beers, but she made it away from the girls and around the corner with most of her dignity still technically attached.
Her heart was thudding stupidly hard for a hallway interaction, heat crawling up her throat and into her cheeks. Not jealousy, she told herself. She was just offended by misinformation. Academically. On principle. People should not be allowed to lie.
Her phone buzzed again as she reached the top of the stairs.
Garrett: Seriously. Where are you?
She stared at it for a second, then typed, need bathroom.
Then, after a pause, added, girls are liars.
His response came almost immediately.
Garrett: What
She squinted at the screen.
Garrett: Baby where are you
The baby landed warm even through the alcohol, which was annoying. She looked back over her shoulder toward the hallway, where the bathroom line and the blonde and the whole stupid conversation still existed. Then she started down the stairs, one hand on the railing, the phone clutched in the other, already scanning the crowd below for Garrett’s dark curls and the broad, familiar shape of him.
She found him near the kitchen archway, and he was already looking for her. He caught sight of her halfway down the stairs, and his face shifted at once, amusement and concern colliding so fast that neither won cleanly. He moved through the crowd before she even reached the bottom, one hand lifting to her elbow as she stepped off the last stair.
“Hey,” he said, ducking close so she could hear him. “You okay?”
She looked up at him very seriously. “You were in my room last night.”
Garrett paused. His eyes moved over her face, then over the stairs behind her, then back down. “Yeah.”
“Like the whole night.”
His mouth twitched. “Most of it, yeah.”
“So that girl is a liar.”
A slow understanding dawned across his face. Then, because he was Garrett and therefore terrible, he started to smile. “What girl?”
She jabbed a finger somewhere upward. “The blonde. She said you made her come three times.”
His brows jumped. “Did I?”
“Garrett.”
“What? I feel like I’d remember.”
She crossed her arms. “She was lying.”
“Sounds like it.”
“She looked me in the face and lied.”
Garrett’s hand slid from her elbow to her waist, steadying her when she swayed half an inch in outrage. “You say anything?”
She stared at him.
His eyes narrowed, still smiling but sharper now. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Baby,” he whispered.
“I said she wasn’t with you last night.”
Garrett closed his eyes for one second. Just one. When he opened them again, he looked like he was fighting for his life against laughter. “Right.”
“She asked how I knew.”
“Okay.”
“And then I left.”
“Good call.”
“I almost said because you were with me.”
His grin did something helpless then, softer under the smugness, like the idea pleased him before he had time to make it a joke. “Yeah?”
She frowned at him. “Don’t look happy. I nearly compromised the mission.”
“The mission?”
“Our secrecy mission.”
“Our secrecy mission isn’t going great if you’re interrogating women in bathroom lines about my location.”
“She started it.”
“Sure.”
“She did,” she whined, dragging the second word out.
“I believe you.” He didn’t, not entirely. Or maybe he did and was simply enjoying himself too much to be decent about it. His hand squeezed once at her waist, warm and grounding. “You still need to pee?”
Her face fell. “Yes.”
Garrett’s mouth twitched again. “Come on. There’s a bathroom downstairs.”
“You know that?”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re a slut.”
“I’m helpful.” He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear, voice dropping into that low teasing register that made her stomach flip despite the fact that she was seconds away from becoming a medical emergency. “And for the record, next time I make you come three times, I’m expecting a better cover story than that.”
She turned her head slowly to glare at him. Garrett looked deeply pleased with himself.
The third time they almost got caught, she was in the hockey house kitchen at three in the morning wearing Garrett’s t-shirt with absolutely no plan.
It was after a loss, which meant the whole house had gone strange and heavy by midnight. The kind of subdued where the TV stayed on without anyone really watching it and the boys drank beer not to party but to have something to do with their hands.
Garrett had barely spoken when he came out of the locker room earlier, jaw tight, lip split, a bruise already blooming near his cheekbone, that restless, furious energy still moving under his skin like the game had not fully let go of him.
She hadn’t been supposed to come over. That was the rule. One of the rules. There were several now, apparently, all of them made by two people with a strong shared interest in pretending they had control over anything.
No arriving together. No leaving together. No obvious texts when the guys were around. No sitting too close at parties. No looking at each other for too long in kitchens, which was quickly becoming the hardest one because Garrett Graham had a deeply inconvenient face and an even more inconvenient habit of watching her mouth when she was trying to speak.
And definitely no sneaking into his room after midnight through the window like a raccoon because he’d lost a hockey game and she wanted to crawl into bed with him.
So, naturally, she had done exactly that. Garrett’s window wasn't as easy to access as she had expected it to be.
She had nearly died twice, scraped her knee on the siding, and whispered, “This is so stupid,” to herself with feeling before finally pushing the window up and tumbling into his room with all the grace of a bag of laundry.
Garrett had been lying on his bed in the dark, shirtless, one arm over his face. He hadn’t even startled properly. He had just shifted the arm enough to look at her, eyes bleary and bruised with exhaustion, and said, “Baby, what the fuck.”
“I’m being supportive.”
“You broke into my room.”
“I prefer… entered creatively.”
He had stared at her for another second, then lifted the edge of the blanket.
For all the jokes, all the swagger, all the please-don’t-call-this-what-it-is of him, he made room for her too easily. Like his body knew before the rest of him had finished filing objections. She crawled in beside him, careful of his ribs and the angry bruise darkening along one side of his stomach, and he rolled toward her with a wince he tried to hide and a hand that found her hip immediately under the blanket.
“Hi,” he had murmured after a while, lips brushing her hair.
She had smiled into his chest. “Hi.”
Now, hours later, she woke up with her mouth dry enough to qualify as an emergency and Garrett’s arm heavy across her middle.
The room was dark and cold around the edges, the cracked window letting in a thin stream of winter air that made the discarded clothes on the floor look like shadows. Garrett was dead asleep behind her, breathing rough through his nose, body warm and heavy and completely gone in the way only athletes after a bad game seemed capable of being.
One of his hands was tucked under the hem of the shirt she’d stolen off his floor. She swallowed once. Painfully. Then again. Still bad.
She shifted carefully. Garrett grunted and tightened his arm, which would have been sweet if it had not also trapped her in a dehydrated prison.
“Baby,” she whispered.
Nothing.
“Garrett.”
A deeper grunt this time. His face pressed into the back of her neck.
“Baby,” she tried again, softer. “Can you get me water?”
Garrett’s answer was a long, sleep-mangled sound that might have been English in a previous life. She waited.
“Garrett. Please. I’m really thirsty.”
“No,” he mumbled into her hair.
She turned her head as much as she could. “No?”
“M’sleep.”
“You’re talking.”
“Sleep talking.”
She groaned softly. “You’re the worst.”
“Mm.”
She lay there for another thirty seconds, hoping thirst might pass. It did not. Eventually she eased his arm off her waist inch by inch, freezing every time he made a noise, and rolled over to look at him properly.
The sight softened her irritation before she could defend against it. His face was turned toward her on the pillow, hair falling messily over his forehead, lashes low against his cheek. The split in his lip had dried dark at one corner. The bruise near his ribs looked ugly, even in the low light. Another mark curved along his stomach where he’d been slammed into the boards hard enough that the crowd had made a single collective ooooh.
He wasn't getting up. She sighed and climbed out of bed.
The floorboards were cold under her bare feet. Garrett’s t-shirt hit high on her thighs, soft and oversized and smelling like detergent and him. She paused at the door, listening. The house had finally gone mostly quiet. No TV. No shouting. No Dean wandering around half-drunk asking philosophical questions about hot girls and mortality. Only the hum of the fridge downstairs and the occasional tick of the heating.
She slipped into the hall and padded down the stairs, one hand trailing lightly along the wall because the dark made everything look unfamiliar. The kitchen waited at the bottom, dim and blue with moonlight through the window over the sink. Someone had left a pizza box open on the counter. There were three empty beer bottles near the stove and a hoodie slung over one of the chairs. The house smelled like stale chips, laundry, and the faint metallic cold of nighttime.
She found a glass in the cabinet after opening the wrong one twice, filled it at the sink, and drank half of it in one go with her eyes closed.
Then the light snapped on. She spun around so fast water sloshed over her hand.
Tucker stood in the doorway in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt, one hand still on the light switch, hair flattened on one side from sleep. He blinked at her. She blinked back.
For one full second, neither of them moved.
Then Tucker looked at the oversized shirt. Her bare legs. The glass in her hand. The stairs behind her.
“Well,” he said slowly. “Shit.”
Her stomach dropped.
“No,” she said immediately. “Please don’t–”
Tucker rubbed one hand over his face, looking more tired than scandalised. “Damn. I owe Logan ten bucks.”
That derailed her panic so thoroughly that she stared at him. “What?”
He gave her a sympathetic look that somehow made everything worse. “I can’t believe you slept with him again.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. The silence that followed wasn't her best work.
Tucker’s brows lifted. “Dean? Obviously?”
Oh.
The relief arrived so hard it nearly made her dizzy, followed immediately by the horrible understanding that she now had to let Tucker think she had climbed out of Dean’s bed at three in the morning. Her brain, which had been half-asleep and mostly water-focused three minutes ago, scrambled for purchase.
“Right,” she said, too quickly. “Yeah. Dean. Obviously.”
Tucker’s expression softened in a way that made guilt stab straight through the middle of her chest. “Oh. Uh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it weird.”
“No, it’s–” She swallowed, clutching the glass with both hands. God bless darkness. God bless Tucker being half-asleep. God bless the fact that Dean’s entire personality was plausible cover for almost any bad decision within a thirty-foot radius. “Please don’t say anything.”
Tucker frowned. “I won’t.”
“No, seriously. Please.” She made her eyes wide because she could, because she had been underestimated by men before and did occasionally enjoy the practical benefits. “It’s so embarrassing. I wasn’t going to. I don’t even know why I– God.” She looked down, shook her head, and gave a small, miserable laugh that deserved an award from whatever committee evaluated female deception in shared kitchens. “Please don’t tell Logan. Or anyone. Especially Dean. Actually, fuck, especially Dean.”
Tucker, who possessed the inconvenient decency of a man who hated watching people feel bad, visibly faltered. “Hey. No, yeah. Totally. Your secret’s safe with me.”
She nodded, still performing devastated shame with one hand wrapped around a stolen water glass. “Thank you.”
“Do you… need anything?”
The kindness almost killed her. “No. I’m good. Just water.”
“Okay.”
Another awkward beat passed. Then Tucker stepped aside from the doorway with the solemn discomfort of someone allowing a ghost to pass through. “Night.”
“Night,” she whispered, and scurried toward the stairs with the glass held carefully against her chest.
She didn’t breathe properly until Garrett’s door shut behind her.
He was still asleep when she climbed back into bed. Useless. Beautiful, bruised, useless man. She set the glass on his nightstand and stared at him for a second in the dark, still buzzing with adrenaline. Then she smacked his shoulder.
Garrett flinched awake with a strangled noise, eyes half-opening. “What– fuck– what?”
“Tucker caught me downstairs.”
That woke him a little more. “What?”
“He thinks I slept with Dean.”
Garrett went very still. Then his face did something fascinating in the dark. Sleep disappeared. Pain disappeared. Every exhausted, post-game softness sharpened into offended disbelief. “He thinks you what?”
“I had to go with it!”
“You had to?”
“Yes, Garrett, because the alternative was saying actually I’m sneaking out of Garrett’s room after cuddling with him because we’re both very normal and secretive and weird.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow, immediately winced, then tried to pretend he hadn’t. “Why the fuck would he think Dean?”
“Because of Dean!”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s kind of the whole answer.” She climbed back under the blanket, still whispering harshly. “You wouldn’t get me water.”
“I was asleep.”
“So I went downstairs and got caught and had to improvise.”
Garrett stared at her, jaw working. Even bruised and half-dead, he managed to look jealous in a way that made her want to laugh and kiss him and maybe shove him a little. “Tucker thinks you left Dean’s room wearing my shirt?”
“I don’t think he was doing t-shirt analysis at three in the morning.”
Garrett dropped back against the pillow with a quiet, pained groan, one hand dragging over his face. “Great.”
She settled beside him, taking a long, triumphant sip of water. “Your fault.”
“My fault?”
“Yes.”
“For being asleep after getting hit, like, forty times tonight,” he said, eyes wide in the dark. Then he groaned. “Fuckin’– Dean?”
She smiled despite herself. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.” He was very obviously jealous. His arm came around her waist and tugged her closer with enough care not to hurt himself but enough insistence to make the point. “I just don’t love Tucker thinking you’re sneaking out of Dean’s bed.”
“Technically, he thinks I’m sneaking out of Dean’s bed and deeply ashamed.”
Garrett made a noise of disgust. “Jesus.”
She pressed her face into his shoulder to hide her smile. “Poor Tucker was very sweet.”
“I don’t want to hear about sweet Tucker right now.”
“You’re so easy.”
“I’m injured.”
“You’re possessive.”
He was quiet for half a second. Then, low against her hair, “Maybe don’t make me hear Dean’s name when you’re in my bed.”
She lifted her head. In the dark, Garrett’s expression was harder to read, but she could feel him looking at her. Could feel the tension under the joke, under the jealousy, under the secret they kept pretending was only fun because fun was easier than looking directly at whatever else had started living between them.
“Okay,” she whispered.
His hand moved under the shirt, warm at her back. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” She nudged her nose against his jaw, soft. “No Dean.”
His breath left him slowly. “Good.”
“You still should’ve gotten me water.”
“Go to sleep.”
“You’re mean.”
“You broke into my room.”
“You let me in.”
“Mm,” Garrett murmured, already pulling her closer, careful around his ribs, his mouth brushing her forehead. “I know.”
The fourth time they almost got caught, Garrett took her on a date three towns over and still somehow managed to know someone there.
It was a cute restaurant. Cute in a way that made both of them a little awkward for the first ten minutes because hooking up in secret at parties and sneaking through windows had not prepared either of them for menus with seasonal specials and candles in little glass holders.
The place sat on a narrow street with string lights outside and fogged windows and a hostess who smiled at Garrett for two seconds too long before noticing the girl beside him and recalibrating. Garrett noticed the recalibration. His mouth twitched as they followed the hostess toward a booth in the back.
“Don’t,” she muttered.
“I didn’t say anything.”
She crossed her arms. “You were about to.”
“I was gonna say the soup smells good.”
“You were not.”
Garrett laughed, warm and low, and slid into the booth beside her instead of across from her without asking. They were far enough from Briar that no one should have known them, tucked into the back corner of a restaurant full of older couples and small groups and a table of women laughing over wine near the bar.
It made the whole thing feel suspended, like they’d stepped out of the rules for a few hours and could sit too close without having to perform distance for anyone.
His thigh pressed against hers under the table. Their shoulders brushed every time one of them moved. Garrett kept stealing fries off her plate even though he’d ordered his own, and she kept pretending to be offended while pushing the plate half an inch closer because dignity had left with the appetizer.
At some point his hand found hers on the booth seat between them. His fingers sliding over hers, playing with them idly while he told her about a freshman on the team who had tried to tape his stick with what Logan called the confidence of a man raised by wolves.
She laughed into her drink, and Garrett looked at her in a way that made the restaurant feel suddenly much smaller.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, you’re doing the face.”
His thumb moved over her knuckles. “Just like hearing you laugh.”
That shut her up immediately. Garrett’s eyes flickered over her face, and she hated him for noticing the way the words landed. Hated him more for softening instead of making a joke out of it. For a second they just sat there, fingers tangled on the seat between them, candlelight catching along the edge of his jaw and the chain at his throat, his knee warm against hers.
Then she looked down at the table because she had limits. “That was gross.”
“Yeah?”
“You should be embarrassed.”
He sucked at his teeth gently. “I’m not.”
“No. I know. That’s one of your worst qualities.”
He grinned and lifted her hand, pressing a quick kiss to the back of it. “Top five, maybe.”
She was smiling despite herself, leaning in closer, when a voice came from the side of the booth.
“Graham?”
Garrett’s hand froze around hers. A tiny, immediate stillness that went through him faster than any expression on his face could catch. His smile stayed in place when he looked up, but she felt the change in his body first. The slight tightening at his shoulder. The way his hand shifted off hers and came to rest on his own thigh. The casual posture assembling itself a second too late to be real.
A guy stood at the end of the booth, tall and broad, with the unmistakable haircut of a hockey player and a jacket with Eastwood stitched over the chest. Recognition hit Garrett’s face, then something flatter underneath it.
“Parker,” Garrett said, easy enough if you weren’t pressed against him and listening to the mechanics of the lie. “What’s up, man?”
The Eastwood player grinned and held out a hand. Garrett slid out of the booth halfway to shake it, and she sank approximately two inches lower in the seat.
Which was stupid. Very stupid. If she wanted to avoid notice, shrinking into the booth like a child hiding from a substitute teacher wasn't a subtle approach. But the whole night had gone bright and hot behind her ears. She took an intense interest in the remaining fries on her plate and prayed for invisibility.
No such luck. Parker’s eyes flicked to her with polite curiosity. The interest of someone who had stumbled into a scene and wanted to know the category. Date? Hookup? Cousin? Hostage?
Garrett, because his life was apparently a sport in all directions, stood in front of the booth with one hand settling briefly on his hip before moving up to scratch along his jaw.
Nervous.
She noticed it instantly. Garrett Graham didn’t usually look nervous. He looked cocky, amused, focused, pissed off, hungry, occasionally concussed, but not nervous. Yet there he was, smiling and doing all the tiny, useless things his body did when he wanted to seem casual too badly: thumb brushing under his nose, hand dragging through his curls, weight shifting onto one foot and then back again.
“What are you doing out here?” Parker asked.
Garrett shrugged. “Dinner.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Parker laughed, looking around. “Didn’t expect to see you this far out.”
“Had to get off campus for a minute.”
The sentence was true enough to pass. It made something soft and stupid open in her chest, because Garrett had wanted to get off campus with her. Not to hook up quickly before someone knocked. Not to drag her upstairs at a party. Dinner. A booth. His fingers playing with hers beside the cushion. The whole quiet normal shape of it.
Parker’s gaze flicked to her again. Garrett saw it and shifted half a step, not blocking her, but angling himself between the attention and her face in a way that made her want to press her forehead to the table.
“This is–” Garrett started, and then stopped.
Her heart gave one hard kick, because there was no good ending there. This is my friend sounded insane. This is the girl I’m sleeping with sounded worse. This is the girl Dean hooked up with and now I am secretly, catastrophically gone for sounded accurate but logistically challenging.
So Garrett, genius athlete, captain of the Briar men’s hockey team, man with a GPA that proved his brain did occasionally participate, did the only thing available. He smiled wider and said, “We’re just eating.”
She closed her eyes.
Parker blinked once, then, mercifully, either understood enough to leave it alone or decided he didn’t care. “Cool, cool. Good to see you, bro.” He clapped Garrett once on the shoulder. “See you on the ice.”
Garrett’s grin sharpened into something more familiar. “Looking forward to it.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
They did the aggressive male handshake thing again, all knuckles and shoulder tension and mutual threat disguised as friendliness, then Parker left toward the bar.
Garrett stood for one second after he was gone, watching him go. Then he slid back into the booth beside her, and both of them sat completely still.
She stared at the table. Garrett stared straight ahead. Then, at exactly the same time, they both exhaled.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Garrett said. “That was– yeah.”
She turned her head slowly. “We’re just eating?”
His jaw tightened. “I panicked. What was I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know, Garrett. Fuck.”
His hand found hers again, but this time under the table, fingers lacing through hers with a little more urgency than before. “Too close?”
She looked down at their joined hands. His thumb was moving over hers, once, twice, like he was calming himself as much as her. “Way too close.”
“Yeah.”
“And you were nervous.”
He scoffed and shook his head once. “I wasn't nervous.”
“You scratched your jaw like nine times.”
“My jaw itched.”
Her eyebrows raised. “And your nose?”
“Itched too,” he shrugged.
“And your hair?”
“Whole body’s falling apart, apparently.”
She huffed a laugh, and his hand tightened around hers. When she looked up, he was watching her with that softer thing again. The thing that kept sneaking in around the edges of their jokes and making them both go quiet.
“Hey,” he said, lower. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For making it weird.”
“It is weird.”
“Yeah.” His mouth pulled at one corner. “But I like this weird.”
The warmth hit so hard she had to look away toward the candle. “You can’t say stuff like that after calling me an eating companion.”
“I didn’t call you that.”
“You kinda did.”
Garrett laughed, then leaned in and kissed her temple because out of town meant he could do that. Could sit beside her in a booth and kiss her hair and hold her hand under the table and look at her like the secret was starting to bother him not because he wanted out of it, but because he wanted out of the hiding part.
She let herself lean into him for half a second. Just half.
The fifth time, the time they were finally caught, she didn’t think at all, and that was probably why it happened.
Afterward, she would be able to admit there had been options. Reasonable options. Normal options. She could have waited outside the locker room like other people did. She could have texted him. She could have asked Logan if Garrett was okay, which would have been embarrassing but survivable.
She could have done any number of things that didn’t involve slipping past the edge of the crowd after the game and walking straight into the tunnel like she had a right to be there.
But Garrett had been wrong all night. He had played well in flashes because Garrett Graham could probably play well during a natural disaster if someone gave him skates and a reason. But there had been something jagged in him from the first period.
Too sharp on the checks. Too quick to shove back. Mouthguard hanging between his teeth while he stared down some Eastwood winger with a look on his face that made her hands go cold around the railing.
He got sent off twice. Once for roughing, once for a fight that started so fast the crowd seemed to notice it only after Garrett already had a fist tangled in someone’s jersey. The second time, even Coach looked furious in that controlled way that made grown men behave like children caught setting fires.
She watched Garrett in the box with his jaw clenched and blood bright at the corner of his mouth, his chest rising hard under the pads, eyes fixed somewhere across the ice but not really on it.
Logan skated by once and said something. Garrett didn’t smile. Didn’t chirp back. Didn’t do any of the things he usually did to make violence look like part of the game and not something older moving through him.
So after the final buzzer, after Briar won, despite Garrett trying to personally fistfight the entire opposing roster, after the crowd started spilling into the aisles and everyone around her buzzed with post-game noise, she moved.
The tunnel was colder than the stands, all concrete and rubber matting and the damp, metallic smell of hockey gear. Voices echoed from the locker room ahead, overlapping male noise and equipment hitting benches and someone laughing too loudly in that exhausted post-adrenaline way.
She slipped past a staff member who was too busy looking at a clipboard to care, turned the corner, and found Garrett standing alone near the wall.
He was still in most of his gear. Helmet off. Gloves gone. Hair damp and flattened at the sides, curls sticking up where he had run his hands through them. His head hung forward, both palms braced on his knees like he was trying to breathe the game out of himself and failing. Blood had dried at his lip again. His jaw worked once. Twice. The tendons in his neck stood out under the harsh tunnel light.
Her chest tightened so fast it hurt. “Garrett.”
His head snapped up. The second he saw her, everything in his face changed. He came back by inches, like her voice had reached into whatever ugly room he was in and opened a door.
“Hi,” he said, breathless, already straightening. Then again, rougher, like the first one had not been enough. “Hey.”
She closed the space before either of them had time to remember they weren’t supposed to do this where people could walk by.
“Hey.” Her hands went to his face immediately, careful around the split lip, thumbs brushing at the damp edges of his cheeks. “You good? What happened?”
Garrett let out a breath, eyes closing. His hands came up to cover hers for one second, pressing them harder to his face like he needed the contact more than he wanted to admit. “M’fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
His chest was still moving hard, the pads making him look even bigger, all post-game heat and sweat and the raw leftover violence of whatever had been eating at him on the ice. She slid one hand up into his hair, fingers pushing through the damp curls at his temple. His exhale shook.
“You alright?” she asked again, softer now.
He nodded, but it was a bad nod. A nod made out of stubbornness and breath and the fact that he had no idea what to do with her looking at him like this in a tunnel. His jaw shifted. His eyes opened, finding hers, and whatever he saw there made his whole face pull tight for half a second.
“Baby,” he murmured.
That did it. Here, in the tunnel, with the locker room noise around the corner and blood on his mouth and his breathing still rough from whatever fight he had nearly brought home from the ice, the word hit somewhere deeper.
She rose onto her toes and kissed him. It was meant to be small, it really was. A check-in. A reassurance. A brief press of her mouth to his.
Garrett made a low sound the second her lips touched his, and then his arms were around her waist, pulling her in properly, pads and all, crushing the space between them like he’d been waiting the whole night for something solid enough to hold.
The kiss turned immediately. His mouth opened under hers, hungry and rough and not careful enough at first, then careful all at once when she brushed his split lip and he hissed softly into her mouth.
She pulled back half an inch. “Sorry.”
“Don’t care,” he said, and kissed her again.
Everything from the game poured into it. The hits. The fights. The awful, tight look in his eyes from the penalty box. Her hands cold on the railing. The secret they’d been carrying around like something light when it had gotten heavier every time he looked at her across a room and didn’t come closer. Garrett’s fingers dug into her waist. Hers stayed in his hair, tugging lightly. He kissed like he was trying to get back into his own body through her mouth. And she let him.
Then someone behind them said, “Ohhhh shit.”
They broke apart so fast it was almost violent. Logan stood ten feet away with a towel slung around his neck, hair wet, mouth open in the kind of delighted grin usually reserved for a successful prank or Tucker injuring himself in a deeply avoidable way.
His eyes moved from Garrett’s arms around her waist, to her hands still caught in Garrett’s hair, to Garrett’s swollen mouth, and then back again. For one second, no one spoke.
Garrett’s arms didn’t leave her waist. She noticed that through the panic, through the sudden rush of heat to her face, through the knowledge that the entire delicate architecture of their secrecy had just been bodychecked into open air by John Logan and his shit-eating grin.
Garrett kept holding her.
Logan’s grin widened. “Was comin’ to check on the captain, but… shit.” He lifted both hands, backing away already, eyes bright with the kind of joy that meant the locker room was about to become a crime scene. “Guess he’s alright.”
“Logan,” Garrett said, low warning.
Logan only pointed at him, walking backward. “Nope. No. Don’t Logan me. You have been weird as fuck for weeks, man.”
Her stomach dropped and flipped at the same time.
Garrett’s jaw tightened. “Don’t–”
But Logan had already turned toward the locker room, voice rising with unholy glee. “You’ll never fucking guess what I just saw!”
The sound that came from the locker room was immediate. A burst of voices. Dean’s laugh cutting through first, bright and vicious. Tucker saying something too low to catch. Someone yelling, “What?” and Logan answering with, “Graham!” in the tone of a man unveiling evidence at trial.
She closed her eyes. Garrett dropped his forehead to hers.
For a second, neither of them moved. His breath was warm against her mouth, still uneven. Her hands had slipped from his hair to the sides of his neck. His gear pressed awkwardly against her chest.
Somewhere around the corner, the locker room erupted again, Dean’s voice now unmistakable. “No fucking way!”
Garrett exhaled, eyes closing. “Fuck.”
She huffed, because there was nothing else to do. A laugh, almost. A sigh. The sound of a girl watching the secret blow up and realising, somewhere under the horror, that she wasn't as upset as she should be.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Fuck.”
His hands flexed at her waist. He didn’t move back.
This was the moment he could step away. Where he could put space between them and run a hand through his hair and say something easy, something Garrett-shaped and evasive, something that made the kiss look smaller than it was.
He could make it a joke before anyone else did. He could hide behind Logan’s big mouth and Dean’s inevitable commentary and the whole familiar machinery of the hockey house turning one private thing into public entertainment.
Instead he stayed with his forehead against hers, breathing hard, thumbs pressing into her waist through her coat.
Then Dean appeared around the corner, because the universe couldn’t let them have more than three seconds without sending in a rich boy with terrible timing.
He leaned one shoulder against the wall, grinning like Christmas had come early and wearing only half his gear. Logan popped up behind him, still delighted. Tucker stood a few steps back with his arms folded, looking resigned and not remotely surprised.
Dean’s eyes flicked over the two of them, still pressed together, Garrett’s hands still on her waist. His grin turned wicked. “Well, well, well.”
She groaned. “Don’t.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Dean said, hand over his heart. “I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“I absolutely will,” he corrected. His eyes slid to Garrett, bright with evil. “Graham. Buddy. Pal. Teammate. You’ve been sneaking around with my ex?”
“She’s not your ex,” Garrett said immediately.
Dean’s grin widened. “Oh, interesting. Strong feelings from the captain.”
“She’s not,” Garrett repeated, jaw tightening.
She shouldn’t have enjoyed that. She did anyway.
Dean’s gaze moved to her, faux-wounded. “I thought we had something beautiful.”
“You were sleeping with six other girls while sleeping with me. You’re a pig.”
Logan made a strangled sound. Tucker’s mouth twitched.
Dean pointed at her. “See? This is why I missed you.”
Garrett’s hand tightened at her waist. “Dean.”
“Oh, relax.” Dean lifted both hands, but he was still grinning. “I’m not poaching. I have respect.”
Logan leaned around Dean, eyes shining. “So how long?”
“Nope,” Garrett said.
“How long?” Logan repeated, louder.
She looked at Garrett. Garrett looked at her. For one brief, stupid second they both seemed to consider lying. It was a beautiful instinct, really. Loyal to the end. Completely useless now that Garrett’s mouth was visibly swollen from kissing her and his hands had still not left her body.
“Three weeks,” she said.
Garrett’s head snapped toward her.
“What?” she said. “He was going to keep asking.”
Logan’s mouth dropped open. Dean shouted, “Three weeks?” Tucker just closed his eyes, nodding once to himself.
“I knew something was up,” Tucker said.
Garrett looked at him sharply. “You did not.”
Tucker opened his eyes. “She came downstairs for water in your shirt and let me think she’d slept with Dean.”
Dean turned slowly. “I’m sorry, what?”
She winced. “That was strategic.”
“You were in my house,” Dean said, pointing at himself, “using me as a slutty decoy?”
“Yes.”
Dean looked moved. “Honoured.”
Garrett made a sound under his breath. “Jesus Christ.”
Logan clapped Dean on the shoulder. “Come on. Let the lovebirds emotionally process before Coach catches Garrett making out in a tunnel like a freshman.”
Garrett finally looked over. “Dude.”
“What? That was supportive.”
Dean pointed at her as Logan started dragging him backward. “We’re talking later. I have questions. Boundary-respecting questions, but questions.”
“No, we’re not,” she called back.
“We absolutely are.”
Tucker gave her a small, sympathetic nod as he turned. “Congratulations. And good luck.”
“Thanks,” she said, because honestly that seemed appropriate.
The three of them disappeared back toward the locker room, taking the noise with them in pieces. Logan already yelling something that sounded like, “Three weeks, boys!” Dean making wounded noises. Tucker telling someone to put on pants.
Garrett laughed, low and real, and the sound loosened the last tight thing still sitting under her ribs. She looked up at him, at the bruise on his cheek and the split in his mouth and the ridiculous, beautiful, inconvenient boy who had somehow gone from secret bad idea to the person she walked into tunnels for without thinking.
“So,” she said, brushing her thumb carefully under the cut at his lip. “Guess we’re blown.”
His grin came back slowly, cocky at the edges and warm all the way through. “Yeah.”
“And you still have to explain why you were trying to fight half of Eastwood tonight.”
The grin faded by a fraction, but he didn’t look away. “Later?”
She studied him for a second, then nodded. “Later.”
His arms tightened. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
Then Garrett kissed her again, because being exposed to the entire hockey house hadn’t cured him of bad timing. She kissed him back anyway, smiling into it when the locker room erupted once more at whatever Logan had just announced.
This time, when Garrett’s hand slid openly to the small of her back and held her there, neither of them moved away.
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pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
summary – garrett’s girlfriend gets asked out on her last emergency department shift and decides dinner is the perfect time to mention it.
warnings – mild jealousy, established relationship, workplace crush, paramedic flirting.
notes from me – HIII LOVES!! some cute NS!reader and garrett as requested here!!
word count – 2k
navigation – masterlist |
Her last shift in the emergency department ends without ceremony, which feels slightly offensive after eight weeks of being shouted at beneath fluorescent lights. There’s no applause. No commemorative cannula.
Maria hugs her once near the medication room, tells her she’s done well in a voice that makes something warm and embarrassing collect beneath her ribs.
The department keeps moving around them. Monitors chirp. A child screams somewhere near fast track with the impressive stamina of somebody who has recently been told they cannot take a hospital glove home. The doors to ambulance triage open and shut, letting in brief gusts of cold air, diesel and that particular metallic outside smell that clings to stretchers after midnight.
She’s signing the last of her paperwork when one of the paramedics catches her near the ambulance bay.
Evan. Tall, dark-haired, permanently carrying either a coffee or a look of mild concern about whoever is currently strapped to his stretcher.
He has been coming through the department throughout her placement, sometimes twice in one shift, and they have developed the kind of easy workplace familiarity built out of five-minute conversations over handovers and both knowing which vending machine steals money.
“You said this was your last night, right?” he asks, slowing beside her while his partner wheels the empty stretcher toward the doors.
She hooks her bag more securely over her shoulder. “Mhm. They’re releasing me back into the general population.”
“Terrifying.”
He puts one hand around the back of his neck.
It's subtle enough that she doesn't understand what's happening until he glances briefly toward the doors, looks back at her and says, “Would you maybe want to get coffee sometime?”
Her brain pauses. It's only the strange little delay that happens when a conversation abruptly takes a turn her body hasn't prepared for, all her thoughts bumping into each other beneath the harsh white light while Garrett’s face appears in her head with almost insulting speed.
Garrett half-asleep in her bed that morning, one arm over his eyes while he complained that six-thirty wasn't a real time. Garrett standing barefoot in her room while she clipped her hair up, passing her the things she kept leaving behind without being asked. Badge. Water bottle. Left shoe.
Garrett kissing the inside of her wrist before she left and saying, “Last one, baby,” like her placement finishing was somehow a team achievement.
“Oh.” She shifts her bag higher. “Um, I have a boyfriend.”
Evan’s face changes immediately – the quick, startled rearrangement of someone realising he's missed a piece of relevant information.
“Shit. Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know.”
“No, no, you’re fine.”
“Forget I asked.”
“It’s genuinely okay.”
He gives her a small, sheepish smile. “Well. Congratulations on escaping.”
“Thank you. Sorry about the coffee.”
“I’ll recover.”
He walks off laughing, perfectly normal about it, and she watches the ambulance doors swing shut behind him before continuing toward the locker room without giving the interaction much more thought.
Until dinner.
Dinner is Tucker’s pasta, which means there are vegetables in the sauce and garlic bread somebody has been threatened over.
The kitchen is warm enough to fog the lower corners of the windows, the table cluttered with plates, drinks, three open textbooks nobody is actually reading and Dean’s phone propped against the salt shaker because he insists the hockey highlights currently playing are educational.
Garrett sits beside her rather than across from her, one knee pressed along the outside of hers beneath the table. He came directly from practice and showered while she changed, his Briar shirt soft and clean over shoulders that keep nudging hers every time he reaches for something.
He's spent most of dinner complaining that Coach has discovered a new skating drill designed specifically to remove joy from the human body.
She's spent most of dinner listening, stealing pieces of chicken from his plate and thinking about Evan. Not Evan himself. The information.
The bright, dangerous little piece of information sitting inside her like a marble she can roll around until she finds the most irritating possible way to place it in Garrett’s path.
She waits until he's taken a bite.
“I got asked out today.”
Garrett stops chewing. He goes completely still beside her, the muscle in his jaw tightening once beneath the warm kitchen light while his eyes remain fixed on the plate in front of him.
Across the table, Logan’s gaze lifts immediately. Dean lowers his phone by half an inch. Tucker continues eating with the deliberate concentration of a man who knows perfectly well something has happened and would like it entered into the record that he tried not to encourage it.
Garrett swallows. “You what?”
She reaches for her water. “I got asked out.”
“By who?”
The question comes too quickly. Flat enough that it nearly sounds casual, except his knee has stopped resting against hers and is now held rigid beside it.
“One of the paramedics.”
Garrett turns his head. “Which paramedic?”
She takes a slow drink, mostly so her mouth has something to do besides grin directly into his face. “Evan.”
His eyes narrow. “Who the fuck is Evan?”
“You know Evan.”
“I absolutely do not know Evan.”
“I’ve mentioned him," she shrugs.
Garrett puts his fork down. Carefully. The little click of metal against ceramic draws Dean’s full attention away from the game.
“What does he look like?” Garrett asks.
She pretends to think about it. “Tall.”
Dean’s lips disappear inward.
Garrett glances across the table. “Something funny?”
“No,” Dean says immediately, voice strained. “Nothing has ever been funny.”
Garrett looks back at her. “Tall.”
“Mhm.”
“How tall?”
“I didn’t measure him," she murmurs.
“You’re in healthcare," Garrett gets out through gritted teeth.
“That’s not one of our standard observations.”
Logan makes a choking sound into his fist. Tucker kicks him beneath the table without looking.
Garrett’s jaw flexes again. She can see the pressure of it beneath the faint stubble along his cheek, the tendon at the side of his neck drawing tight as he leans back slightly in his chair. “And this guy just asked you out?”
“He waited until my last shift.”
Garrett stares at her.
She folds her hands over her stomach and lets her eyes widen with false innocence. “Which was kind of smart, actually.”
“Smart," Garrett repeats.
“So it wouldn’t be awkward if I said no.”
Something in Garrett’s shoulders loosens by less than an inch. “You said no.”
It's phrased like a statement, but there is just enough space beneath it for the question to show through.
She looks at him. “Eventually.”
His head turns so slowly it becomes genuinely difficult not to laugh “Eventually?”
“He had to finish asking first.”
Dean’s chair squeaks. Tucker closes his eyes briefly, perhaps in prayer.
Garrett’s stare stays on her face. “What exactly did he ask you?”
“To get coffee.”
“Coffee.”
“Usually a hot drink. Sometimes iced.”
“I know what coffee is.”
She tilts her head. “Then why’d you repeat it?”
Garrett leans closer, forearm settling over the table, his voice dropping into the low, even register he uses when one of the boys is about three seconds from being assigned extra conditioning despite Garrett having no authority to assign it.
“And what did you say?”
She lets the corner of her mouth lift. Only slightly. “I told him I was sorry.”
Garrett’s brows draw together.
“Oh– and that I have a boyfriend,” she adds.
The tension doesn't vanish so much as collapse inward, his shoulders lowering while one hard breath leaves through his nose. His knee finds hers again beneath the table, pressing against it with more intention this time, as though the physical confirmation of her beside him is necessary after the thirty seconds she's spent compromising his blood pressure.
“He didn’t know,” she continues. “He apologised. It was completely fine.”
Garrett reaches for his fork again. “Good.”
“He was really sweet about it.”
The fork stops halfway to his plate. She bites the inside of her cheek. Garrett looks at her.
She loses. The laugh comes out small at first, only a warm little burst she tries to hide behind her hand, but his face makes it impossible – the disbelief settling across it, his eyes narrowing as he finally sees the exact shape of what she has been doing.
“You think this shit is funny?”
She presses her lips together. Her shoulders shake anyway. “A little.”
Garrett stares at her for another second, then drops his head forward with a groan, one hand dragging over his face. “Jesus Christ.”
Dean breaks first. His laugh comes out so loudly that Tucker flinches beside him, Logan folding over the table while Garrett keeps his face covered like he might be able to legally withdraw from the household if he stops participating.
“You’re so easy to stir up,” she says, bumping her shoulder into his.
Garrett uncovers his face and looks at her through his fingers. “You sat there describing another guy to me like you were reading a fucking suspect profile.”
“You asked what he looked like.”
“Because I wanted to know.”
“I noticed.”
“Evil,” he mutters, though his mouth has started to twitch now, annoyance losing its grip beneath the warmth gathering around his eyes. “Actually evil.”
She reaches over and takes a piece of garlic bread from his plate. “But I did get asked out. So.”
Garrett catches her wrist before she can escape with it. His hand closes warmly around her, not stopping her so much as holding her there between their plates. “Yeah, because every man who spends more than five minutes around you decides he’s got a shot.”
“That sounds difficult for you.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“You’re very brave.”
“I’m serious.” His thumb moves once over the inside of her wrist, his irritation softened now into something warmer and more familiar, something that sits low in his voice when he says, “You told him you have a boyfriend?”
She looks at him properly. Beneath the joke, beneath the clenched jaw and the ridiculous interrogation about paramedic height, there's a quieter satisfaction in the question. Garrett trusts her. It's the word itself he wants, the simple public fact of him existing in her life somewhere he wasn't there to hear it.
Her smile changes before she can stop it. “Yeah.”
“Immediately?”
“Basically.”
“Basically isn’t immediately.”
“He got about eight words out.”
“That’s too many.”
She laughs, and Garrett finally does too, a low, reluctant sound dragged out of him as he pulls her wrist closer and bites the corner of the garlic bread still caught between her fingers.
“Hey.”
“Mine,” he says around the bite.
“That was mine.”
“You terrorised me at dinner.”
“For maybe forty seconds.”
“Longest forty seconds of my life.”
Dean points his fork between them. “Just to clarify, Graham, are you mad because she got asked out, or because some paramedic found out she was your girlfriend before you got to stand there and announce it personally?”
Garrett does not look away from her. “Both.”
“That’s deeply embarrassing,” Logan tells him.
“Eat your pasta.”
She tries to retrieve her hand, but Garrett keeps it, bringing her knuckles to his mouth instead. He kisses them once, eyes still on hers, all false irritation and poorly concealed affection.
“What did you tell him about me?” he asks.
“That you’re very secure.”
Garrett snorts. “Clearly.”
“And emotionally regulated.”
“Baby.”
“And that you’ve never intentionally forgotten another man’s name in your life.”
His eyes narrow. “What was his name again?”
She grins. “Evan.”
“Right.” Garrett nods slowly, already looking much too pleased with himself. “Eric.”
The whole table erupts. She laughs into his shoulder while Garrett wraps an arm around the back of her chair and pulls her closer, mouth brushing her temple with a smugness that feels earned only because she gave him the opportunity.
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