peachy

Your phone buzzes again. You find only your name in the text.

Oh? Not even Sleepy? Baby? Whore? He must be irritated.

You smile like a wimp and settle yourself above the pillows. You hold the phone and take a picture.

The first one is awful, the second catches the loaded basket of dirty laundry. Not very seductive. But the third is...good. It's not exactly as polished or as purposefully hornified as the garage-gym wall photos you've gifted Jack. The ones he pretends are purely motivational.

You're just naked and fresh from the shower. Your mouth is slightly curled in a sleepy little smile.

You type, back to smiling like a wimp.

still pregnant

You attach the photograph, and for a moment, you almost consider whether this is a wise thing to do. But where's the fun in that?

You hit send.

At the Pitt, Jack is standing outside room twelve while Shen explains the patient's diagnosis inside. He's listening. Technically. His phone vibrates in his pocket. He ignores it.

"Sooo, the patient stated there was no possibility—"

"There is a difference between a patient’s assessment of possibility and documented confirmation."

"Yes, but—"

Jack's phone vibrates again. He swallows. He knows it's you, and you're doing what he asked. Updating, but needing to focus on work first and foremost is getting to his nerves.

Shen blinks.

"You gonna get that? Could be mama-to-be..."

Shen shuts up at what Jack's glaring. He's got good enough stern eye contact that the guy probably doesn't realize he's also smirking.

Whatever. He'll get it. Not because Shen said that. Because he was going to anyway....well. Eventually.

He opens your message.

"I'll be right back—"

...The pitt ceases to exist when your body fills the screen.

"Jesus fuc..."

God fucking damn it, Sleepy. That's not what he meant by a fucking update.

Naked tits. Round stomach. Your thighs disappearing beneath the sheet, crotch visible enough with the bush he groomed. That's it. That's the picture.

The sleepy, satisfied upturn of your mouth is the cherry on top.

still pregnant

Jack locks the phone as fast as he can. He walks away from Shen as fast as he can.

He gets three steps before his body catches up to the image. Heat moves through him with a harsh force, straight through his chest. Then lower. Then lower.

"Fuck."

He opens up the message again. He sighs low.

Same thing. You're naked and smug with the visible proof that he filled you up.

"You unbelievable little shit."

Jack's probably hypertensive. He is. He's hypertensive as shit. Of course, he is. He's dealing with a professional crisis growing in fucking his scrub bottoms.

His pulse is too fast. This is what you do, kid. You take his body, which has been through a whole fucking lot, and reduce it to a badly managed response with one picture.

...He's standing in the bathroom trying to negotiate with an erection cause his pregnant wife answered a request for an at-home update by sending him her tits and a hint of her cunt. The bravery of the kid.

The phone vibrates. He eyes the text popping up.

is that enough information, doctor?

The first time you came in, he’d handed you over to Shen. You were a sprained wrist and a BAC that explained the wrist, sixteen other things were louder, and Shen was free then. 

He’d clocked you for half a second on his way to a GI bleed in bay nine: girl on the gurney, one heel too high on, and one somewhere in the greater metropolitan area, some little pink lace-trimmed thing sliding off one shoulder, telling Shen with enormous seriousness that she was so sorry, she didn’t usually do this, she’d had a singular margarita. Only.

Singular. He’d categorized it under the thousand other single margaritas he’d sworn to in this department and forgotten you before he’d reached the bleed. 

The second time, he didn’t take you either, but he noticed the wrist. 

Same wrist. Different night — a Saturday, three weeks in, the sort of shift where the waiting room sounded like a kennel — and he caught it sideways while he reviewed another chart. It was the same left wrist, taped this time, the nails on that one hand done in some soft pinky color gone chipped at the tips as though the week itself outlasted the manicure, somebody walking you through the discharge paperwork you clearly were ignoring. Something thought for him instead of him thinking much for it, some pattern-recognition thing buried under twenty-some years of reading bodies fast, the same instinct that made him glance twice at something almost normal. A wrist that kept coming back, he supposed. A thread snagging on a nail, there and gone. 

The third time, it was Shen, breezing past the station with his Dunkin, saying over his shoulder, “Frequent flyer’s back.” 

He shrugged, not yet placing that you were the frequent flyer, and went to bed four.

And that — somewhere between the third time and a number he stopped keeping an honest count of — was where it stopped being a chart and became some sort of thing. A bit, he’d say. The nights the bars let out and the board lit up, he’d find himself reading the incoming names a half-second longer than triage required, and feeling something wrong in his chest when yours wasn’t in them. 

Pittsburgh was notoriously interesting, Jack learned through you, in that it apparently contained an infinite supply of ways a girl could get herself in trouble. He was convinced he could’ve drawn a map of the city by your injuries. There was the ankle, of course, a recurring grievance, always the shoes, never your fault. There was one time you’d burned your hand on a curling iron getting ready tipsy and come in more upset about the makeup you’d had to redo (because of crying it off) than the blister. The night you’d gone over in a parking lot because you refused to look at the ground while walking — looking at the ground, while drunk, you informed him, was how you trip — and the time you sliced your finger open trying to shotgun a White Claw with a key because someone had bet you couldn’t. You were really proud of the last one, you’d won the bet. 

You were never the same disaster twice, he had to give you that. A little too keen on busting yourself up here and there, sure, but at least it was the wrist once, then a knee that met a curb, then a memorable evening involving a fence you’d been certain you could clear. You came in apologizing — always apologizing, to him, to the nurses, once, memorably, to the wall — and you came in sweet, which was the part that got under him, because drunk people in this ER were a lot of things and sweet was rarely one of them. 

“Mmm,” you hummed the fourth or fifth time, the second your eyes found him through the gap in the curtain, going boneless with relief like Jack was the cavalry and not the man who was meant to flash light into your eyes for thirty seconds. “The pretty one.” 

Jack let out a huff. “Thanks, doll.” 

“Doll,” you repeated, the word going gummy in your mouth. “He calls me doll.”

“Eyes open. Follow the light.” 

“You call everyone that, Dr. Abbot?” you said, his name coming out in a cluster like you were losing thread of it, the Abbot dissolving into something closer to a hum. 

“Sure do,” he lied. “Track the light.”

You looked at his mouth, then his hands, then back up, a slow uncoordinated sweep because your eyes had stopped reporting to anything in particular, much less what they had to. Pupils blown wide and lazy. He thumbed your eyelid up a fraction to get the light where he needed it; your lashes were clumped and starry with whatever mascara had survived the night. 

He held the penlight steady and waited you out. He had nowhere to be. That was the thing about the dead hours after bars closed; the bleed had been signed up to the floor, the chest pain turned out to be a panic attack and a large energy drink, and there was just you, and the saline ticking into your arm one slow drop at a time. 

“What’d you get up to tonight?” he murmured, thumb finding the pulse at your wrist, counting without meaning to.

“S’fast ‘cause you’re here,” you said, sounding very pleased with yourself.

“Sure it is. Where’d you hurt yourself tonight?”

“... stairs,” you said after a moment, like your brain had to run a few laps to get to the word. 

“Oh, yeah?” He hummed. You lifted your free hand a little off the mattress, lost track of it, and dropped it back down. “How many?” 

“Mm. Four?” You squinted at the ceiling. “Maybe three. I dunno. Not the Great Wall or somethin’. Promise.” 

“I believe you.” He nodded, then turned your forearm to the light, finding the scrape you’d come in with. It was gravel-burn, raw, the heel of your hand and a stripe up your wrist. Nothing that needed more than cleaning. You watched him do it with your head tipped against the pillow, gone quiet so the talking had run out for a second, which never lasted.

“Should I get a better first aid kit?” you asked, then clenched your jaw for a second like you felt something was wrong with it. “S’I don’t have to bother you all the time?” 

“Might be a good idea to invest,” he said. He pulled the swab through the gravel-burn slowly, and you hissed and tried to pull back the hand on reflex. “Easy.” He kept it, his grip light yet unmoving around your fingers. “Almost done. Don’t fight me.”

You hummed, like you wanted a different answer.

Jack wet his lips, shaking his head slightly. He worked the grit out of the scrape, a fleck of it catching raw skin, and he tilted your arm to the light, getting it on the second pass, and wiped it on the gauze. Your hands twitched in his, and he pressed your fingers flat to the mattress with his thumb, and they stayed.

“You’d have to do it yourself, though,” he said. “Bathroom sink at three in the morning with one hand.” He reached for fresh gauze. “You’d make a mess of it.”

You frowned at the ceiling, nodding. “Sounds a little bad.”

“It’s a lot bad.” He laid the gauze over the scrape, thumbed the tape down at the edge of your wrist slowly, smoothing it flat where it wanted to lift. His knuckle dragged once over the thin skin there, and he felt your pulse jump under it. “You’d scar, probably.” His thumb passed the chipped polish, the chunky gold ring you’d kept on, even for this. “You’ve got nice hands. Shame to wreck ‘em over the sink.”

It took you a second. “You think so?”

“Don’t wreck ‘em.” 

“You like when I come in,” you said, delighted. 

“What I’d like,” he said, flat, lifting his eyes to yours, “is you off the stairs and down to the one drink.” His thumb settled over the back of your hand again. “But if you’re set on flinging yourself down, then you come here. Deal?”

Your fingers had curled around two of his somewhere in there loosely, without you noticing. He felt them settle, and he held very still so as to not spook you. He chose to not acknowledge it or look at it.

“Deal,” you mumbled, somewhere far off, probably forgetting the front half of the terms. 

He let it go at that, taping down the last edge and turning over your wrist once more to be sure of it. Then he set your hand back on the mattress, yours still loosely hooked through his, going nowhere.

“Anyone out there to get you home?” he asked. 

“Dunno.” Your nose scrunched. “Was gonna Uber.”

He sighed through his nose. “Where’s that girl — the one you came in with last time? Why don’t you call her?” 

“That’s annoying, Dr. Abbot,” you said, almost in a whine. 

“Yeah?” He kept looking at the wall behind you. “What’s annoying about a ride home?” 

“Calling people. Making it a thing.” Your free hand flopped vaguely. “Then they gotta come get you, and they’re all — have to be nice about it, but you can tell.” Your nose scrunched. “It’s a whole production.”

He pressed his thumb flat back over your hand where your fingers were still caught in his. 

“Oh? Nothing annoying about it, sweetheart. You call, she comes. Simple as that.” He turned to face you. “But if you insist on it, I’m not signing you off until you’re good enough to go home alone. So you call your girl, or you sit right here and keep my department company till you’ve cleared enough that I’ll sign off on it.” 

Your eyes narrowed as you looked at him as though he’d spoken a different language. “Second one?”

“Obviously you pick that one,” he said. 

He pulled the stool over and sat. For a few minutes, he had nowhere to be, and now, apparently, neither did you.

It wasn’t that you simply didn’t let people help you, either. Jack had never seen anyone so committed to being simply fine. Jack had met the stoic kind before; construction guys who walked in with rebar through a forearm acting like it was a small inconvenience; old ladies who’d been having a heart attack since last Tuesday and didn’t want to be a bother. But Jack had always believed those people to be suppressing, and you were just convinced, somewhere down in the foundation, that needing anything was an imposition. 

That was also why the shoes confused him so much. 

“This is the same damn ankle,” Jack said, turning your foot in his hands, watching the swelling outside of it. 

“You don’t have to remind me. Most men buy me a drink before they get this familiar with my ankles,” you said, then groaned as you looked at his eyes going over the swelling. 

“No drink.” He pressed along the bone. “Not my fault you keep handing your ankle to me.” 

You tipped your head back against the pillow, groaning again. “Dr. Abbot, they look so bad. I feel like I’m pregnant.” 

“I can do a quick blood draw and we can rule it out.” His palm flattened on the mattress beside your feet, leaning over to meet your eyes again. “But I think it’s those heels of yours, doll.” 

Your eyes snapped to him. “Don’t be a dick, Dr. Abbot.”

He tilted his head, then pointed at the laminated paper stuck to the wall. “Aggressive behavior of any kind toward healthcare workers is a felony.” 

“Then arrest me, doctor. I’ll die on this hill — and they’re not heels.” Your lips pursed, and the corner of your mouth kicked up. “Cuffs may be a little forward for a date, but I won’t stop you.” 

“Aren’t you just so sweet,” he muttered. “What are they, then?”

“Bottega Lido Mules.”

The words meant absolutely nothing to him — could’ve been a pasta dish, a town in Italy, a wine — but they clearly did to you, so he remembered them. 

“That’s nice, doll. They’ll be the reason I see you again.” 

“Maybe, ‘cause I’ll never stop wearing them.” 

You said the words your whole face, hands coming off the mattress to make the point with a drunk theatrical conviction as you argued something that genuinely mattered to you. Jack thought, not for the first time since he’d met you, that you’d have been magnetic stone-sober at a dinner party, the kind of girl that made a table lean in. It was just that he only ever got the 3am version.

At least you had a hill you’d die on and didn’t apologize for, Jack supposed. 

“You married, Doctor?” you asked as he started icing your ankle. 

“No,” he said, holding your eyes for a second. “Why — you got a boyfriend I should know about, then?” 

He almost wished you did have one. He wished that there were somebody whose name you’d have said just now who’d be in the waiting room with his jaw tight because you’d gone and hurt yourself again. Somebody who’d take care of the ankle when you walked out of here in crutches, who took the keys when you had too many. He wished there was a person in the world whose job you were. 

And you weren’t his first patient who he’d understood to not have someone taking care of them. He knew that if he carried them all, he’d drown inside a month if he tried to be the person nobody else had been. He’d never once had it turn into a wish, standing here with an ice pack in his hand going slack in his hand because he was too busy resenting someone who didn’t exist for not being in the waiting room. 

He wondered when down the line you’d stopped letting the people in your life around you be the ones you could call, became a girl who said sorry for bleeding and had nobody, nobody, and looked at him like he was the warmest place she’d been in all week.

You laughed. “If I had a boyfriend, would I be laying it on so thick?” 

He let out a breath through his nose, despite himself. “Stop wearing the heels, doll. Not nice to not have a foot.”

The next time you came in, it was a Thursday. With some pileup of bad luck, you came in somewhere past one with a split lip and a story about a dance floor he only half got the shape of. Jack hadn’t even been assigned to you yet, he’d just seen your name on the board, and reassigned himself quietly enough that dared anyone on shift to comment. Nobody did. 

“Lip’s not bad,” he said, tilting your chin up under the light, thumb at your jaw. The split was already going fat and shining at the center of your lower lip, and he found his eyes stayed on your mouth a second past the part that was his job, on the soft unhurt swell of it under the hurt. He moved his thumb. “Doesn’t need anything. You bit it when you fell down. That’s all.”

“S’throbbing, Doctor,” you mumbled, the word coming around muffled around the split. 

“It’ll throb. You’ve got a swollen lip.” He let go of your jaw and reached for the penlight. “Eyes on me.” 

“I was so cute before this,” you said through a groan. 

The huff that came out of him was almost a laugh, dragged out against his own will, and he shared a fleeting look with Bennet — a fairly new nurse — who had tilted his head briefly and was too afraid to meet your eyes.

“Alright. Still the prettiest girl I’ve treated tonight,” Jack said when your brows had furrowed together.

“You treat other girls?” 

“It’s a hospital,” he said. “Few hundred a week.”

Your face looked wounded. “Few hundred.”

He leaned in slightly, faking a whisper. “You’re my top three.”

You were further gone than usual tonight. He’d noticed it the second he came around the curtain, the way your head was having a hard time holding itself up, the loose unmoored swim of your eyes that took longer than it should to find his finger. A piece of hair had come loose and stuck to the gloss at the corner of your mouth and you hadn’t the coordination to deal with it, and he had the unprofessional impulse to, and didn’t. 

Bennet kept working the blood pressure cuff up your arm, half an eye on you, half on his own work. 

“Track the light,” Jack murmured. “Slowly.”

“Too bright.”

“Tough.” The corner of his mouth moved up slightly. “You can bat your lashes at me when we’re done. Right now, I need ‘em open.” 

You batted them anyway, slowly and theatrically, just to be a problem about it. They were long, and the theater of it was so ridiculous, and Jack had to bite down the inside of his cheek to keep his face flat to wait you out, until you gave up and tracked the finger. Your pupils were reactive, equal, and lagging half-a-beat behind. He clicked the light off. 

“Too bright,” you said again. 

“It’s off,” he drawled, chuckling. 

Bennett thread a line into the back of your free hand, and you watched him sink it with a drowsy focus. 

“Why’s it go in the back of the hand?” you mumbled. “More nerves there. Hurts more. Why not the — inside. By the elbow.” You tilted your head slightly to let your eyes wander to the crook of your arm. “Bigger vein. The antec—antecubital,” you said carefully, sounding out each syllable, afraid of messing it up. You wet your lips and turned to face him, then Bennet. “Why’s nobody use the good one?” 

Jack pursed his lips and looked at you for a moment. 

“Saves the good one,” he said, catching up, eyes going back to your chart. “AC vein blows easily when somebody’s moving around, and you —” He tipped his head at you, raising a brow, the squirming drunk of you. “ — Are gonna move around. Back of the hand’ll hold. I’d rather you be sore than re-stuck twice ‘cause you couldn’t sit pretty for thirty seconds.” He paused as he saw your eyes glaze over. He sighed. “Ask me how I know that about you.” 

You’d gone busy, lips moving slightly like you were repeating it back to yourself so it’d stick, and Jack felt something in his chest shift a degree as he watched you do it. 

He sighed, dragging a palm over the lower half of his face. “Where’d you learn that, then?” 

“School,” you said to the ceiling, a small hint of pride taking over your voice. “M’gonna become a nurse. Gonna be good at it.”

Bennet snorted, finishing the tape. “Gonna be patching up drunk girls just like you then, huh,” he said. “Full circle.”

Jack watched the pride go out of your face slowly, like a house losing its power. Your chin dropped and your eyes slid from Bennet to the curtain as your hand fisted in your lap. 

“Yeah,” you said, almost curiously. “Guess so.” 

Jack’s jaw clenched involuntarily. It wasn’t the guy’s fault, not really. It was a nothing joke, the sort the whole department tossed off a hundred times a shift, the gallows shorthand that kept you sane at two in the morning. Jack had made worse about patients who’d never know, about drunks who wouldn’t remember, about exactly this, exactly girls like you. He’d just never had one of them go quiet before, watched the bright thing fold itself up and get tucked away. 

“Bennet, you done?” 

“Yeah, line’s good — ”

“Then go take vitals on six. I’ve got her.”

Bennet went, and it was just the two of you again. 

Jack pulled the stool over with his foot and sat — lower than he had to, level with you, taking himself out of the column of people standing over you tonight and telling you what you were — and waited until your eyes came up off the curtain and found him.

“There she is,” he said when your eyes found him. He turned your taped hand over under the light like there was still something to do with it. There wasn’t, he just wanted his hands on something of yours while he undid what the room had done. “Look at me. Nothing good on the curtain.” 

“How’s school treating you then, doll?” he asked, aiming for offhand and not steering you off whatever Bennet had knocked loose.

“Hard,” you said, but a small smile had crawled up your lips. “But I like it.” Your shoulders came up loosely.

“Yeah?” He kept his thumb moving over the back of your hand slowly, like he could press the bright thing back up to the surface where it belonged. “I think you’ll be good at it.” 

It was such a strange feeling, Jack distantly noticed, to feel this utter conviction. He was rarely sure of anything good anymore. Sure of plenty else; sure within ten seconds of a bad rhythm which way the night was going to break, sure of which of the kids wheeled in at 2 am he’d see again and which he wouldn’t, a grim accumulated certainty that had nothing in it he’d ever wanted to be right about.

The job had made him an expert on the downslope of things. He could read the exact moment a body wanted to quit better than he could read most of what people said to his face. And here you were, and he was so sure of the other direction, and he felt the same weight of it behind his sternum, except it had swung and pointed at something good for once. You were going to be excellent at this. 

It bothered him a little, how much he wanted to be there to see it, whoever you were going to be once you stopped washing up on his floor on the worst nights of your week. He’d known you, what, a handful of shifts as a frequent flyer, a bit, a name his eyes unconsciously caught on. He had no business feeling certain of anything about you, and he was, and he’d let himself feel it. 

Your eyes found him properly again. “Liar.”

He huffed out a short laugh. “Tell you what. You finish that program, you get through all that mess where they try to drown you.” His thumb smoothed over the tape. “Then you come find me here and we’ll see if we can get you here with me on nights. Clearly you’re at your finest then.” 

It was maybe something silly to say, and Gloria may have his head for it. He had no actual standing to say anything like it, even though you’d never remember it. He knew better; hope was a controlled substance in his field and he was stingy with it on purpose, because he’d seen the withdrawal.

But God, he’d love to see the part of you he could only catch glimpses of through the wreck like a light under the door. He’d love to be the one who taught you which arrogance to keep and which to let the job take away. He’d love, plainly and without anywhere to put it, to watch you become who you’d just told him you were going to be. 

It was a lot of loving for a girl who’d been in his department and wouldn’t recall his face or a word of this by tomorrow morning. He was getting sentimental, or old, or both; the years stacked up behind his eyes until he started mistaking everything for a second chance at something. 

Your lips moved. “So I can patch girls up like myself?” 

“Nah.” He kept looking at your hand. “You can patch up old bastards like me, too.” Then, he pointed his index finger of his free hand at you, mock-stern. “Gotta make sure you’re not at point three BAC, though. Will have to do that work to get you working with me.”

“Mm.” Your eyes flickered up to the ceiling, weighing it with the enormous gravity of the very drunk as though he’d posed a very real proposition to you. “Okay. For you, I’d stop.”

“For me?” he repeated, mostly to buy himself a second.

“Mm-hm.” You turned your face to him and said it with such ease, no glance away to leave yourself an exit. “You’re worth not drinkin’ over.”

Your words went in clean, the way the best and worst things do, under the ribs where he kept nothing armored because nobody ever aimed there. Jack felt the back of his neck go warm and was abruptly, intensely grateful for the light that wouldn’t display it. 

Jack huffed, having to look away at the floor then. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all year, and you’re not gonna remember it. Hell of a thing.” 

When he made himself look back up, you’d tipped your face into the pillow, watching him from the side with your eyes gone soft and heavy, the smile arriving unguarded across your mouth. The split tugged one corner of it, that small wince folded right into the sweetness, and you seemed to not feel it. 

He had the sudden, idiotic wish to have met you on a night you’d remember. To have perhaps caught you when you fell at the bar, to have been the stranger whose arm happened to be there, not the doctor it eventually routed you to. Perhaps he could’ve been a man in your night instead of a stop in it.

He shook his head. “You’re trouble, you know that, right? Saying all these nice things. What’s a man supposed to do with that?” 

He’d have liked to have been remembered, was the bottom of it. By you specifically. He’d spent decades being the man people were grateful to and glad to forget.

“What’s your name, Doctor Abbot?” you asked, drowsy.

He looked down at his badge, then back up at you. “Take a wild guess?” Then, he added, “You never looked at my badge?” 

“Sorry. Didn’t read.” 

“Don’t apologize to me. It’s Jack.”

Jack was doing his usual rounds this Friday, on a rush from a chest pain in two that turned out to be a panic attack and a kid in five who’d put a kitchen knife through the meat of his own palm trying to halve a frozen bagel when Ellis caught him by the elbow at the board.

“Heads up, Abbot,” she said, grinning. She nodded toward triage, toward the doors. “Bed three. Your, uh—” The grin tipped over, delighted with itself. “Girlfriend’s got a boyfriend.” 

It was a running thing now. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you’d washed up on his shift the staff had started on it — your frequent flyer, your stray, your girl’s back — and Jack had stopped bothering to deny it because that’d only feed it, and he’d learned not denying it had a way of starving the joke faster. 

He looked, and was immediately able to notice what you weren’t doing more than what you were; you weren’t grinning at the ceiling, weren’t doing that boneless sweet-relief thing. You were sitting up too straight on the bed, hands folded in your lap, and there was a guy fitted to the chair beside you with one arm slung along the back of yours and a hand resting on your knee like he’d put it there to mark the spot. He was saying something low to the side of your face, and you were nodding at it, and not looking at anybody.

Jack felt a muscle tick in his jaw, immediately not feeling anything nice about the situation. “I got it — you mind taking six for me? I’ll come in a couple minutes.” 

By the time he’d made it to you, he’d settled his face into something unbothered. You could read it, he’d realized at some point during your frequent visits, and that only meant he had to be on his better behavior around you. 

“Evening.” He pulled the curtain half-round behind him, glanced at the chart clipped to the foot of the bed, then at you. “What’d we do tonight?”

“She caught an elbow,” the guy answered. “Some asshole on the dance floor. It’s nothing — she’s fine. She’s just a lightweight, aren’t you — ” A little squeeze on your knee. “ — didn’t even really need to come in, but y’know. Better safe.” 

You weren’t a lightweight, he immediately wanted to correct. He’d seen you put away enough over the months to know your tolerance better than this guy apparently did; he knew the difference between the nights you were genuinely wrecked and the nights you came in clearer than you let on, and looking at you, tonight, you weren’t anywhere near the state implied. 

“You,” he said, tipping his chin in your direction. “Not him. Where’d it get you?” 

You lifted your hand up from your lap and touched your cheekbone, movement slow, and Jack stepped in and tipped your head up toward the light with two fingers under your chin, thumb resting just shy of the scrape. The skin had gone dark along the bone, tender, an elbow’s worth of it. Nothing that needed more than an ice and a night, but you were still holding still under his hand and not meeting his eyes, and that he didn’t like at all. 

“It’s okay,” you said. “Really. S’not even — ”

“Let me be the judge of that, sweetheart. Gettin’ paid for this.” His eyes flicked down to yours and caught, holding it there a second with a small question in the rise of a brow, before he went back to the bone, thumb tracing the edge of the bruise so light you barely felt it. A small frown pulled at the corners of his mouth at the sight. “Follow my finger. Eyes only.” 

You followed, pupils fine and equal. No concussion in it. 

“She’s fine, I told you,” the guy said from the chair, a little laugh under it like he was inviting Jack in on something. “Hardly. She bounces back.”

Jack clicked the penlight off and turned to the side. “Gonna need the room.”

“I’ll stay.” The hand went back to your knee. “I’m all good here.”

“Can’t clear a head strike with people in the room. You get it.” Jack tilted his head to the side, raising a shoulder. “Liability. Coffee machine’s down the hall. Give me two minutes with my patient.”

The easy smile on the guy’s lips went thin around the edges, looking for a thing to push against and not finding it. He stood up slow, making a show of it, squeezing your knee and letting you know he’ll be back in a minute, babe, a hand trailing your shoulder on the way past, all of it aimed less at you and more at Jack holding the curtain. Jack pressed his lips in a thin line as he met the guy’s eyes. 

The second the curtain closed behind him, a breath left you, tiny and involuntary, and your shoulders came down in the empty room. 

“Sorry, Dr. Abbot,” you murmured. “I keep being a mess at this place.” You took in a short, almost shaky breath. “Sorry.” 

“None of that,” he almost grumbled, penning your chart. “Your folks down here, sweetheart?” 

“No,” you said to your lap, picking the edge of the blanket. “Back home. A few states over.” You let out a laugh. “Just me out here. S’nice.” 

Jack forced a small smile, having to look at the ceiling while you looked down at your lap, shaking his head, more of an action for himself than for you. He pulled the stool over with his foot and sat, getting level with you. 

“What’s goin’ on with you, huh?” he asked quietly, making sure there was nothing sharp in his tone at all. “Honest. I like seeing you but not like this bruised up with a guy who talks for you.” His thumb found your wrist. “So talk to me. What’s going on?” 

“He’s fine,” you said. “Just likes being around.”

Jack tilted his head, dipping his head to meet your eyes that were still facing down. “Not the important part of the question, and you know it.” 

You sighed. “Sorry, Jack.”

“Quit it. The only thing I want from you tonight is some honesty, alright?” 

A corner of your lip kicked up, even though the dimness in your eyes held. “Your eyes look really pretty tonight.” 

“Heard that one before,” he drawled. “Had ‘em fifty years. Try a new one.” 

“Your neck’s going red,” you mumbled, fingers reaching up to press flat to the warm of his skin, right there below the jaw, like you just had to feel whether it was true.

Jack stilled. Your fingers were cold on his neck. He distantly registered his pulse was probably going under your fingertips, and you’d feel it if you held there a second longer. And then you caught yourself, hand snapping back to the blanket.

“Sorry. Sorry — I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that — ” you said, the words coming out in a taut string. 

“Easy,” he said, voice coming out rough. He swallowed. “Got me all flustered and now you’re gettin’ all shy?” 

You huffed a small laugh, your hand still fisted in the blanket where you’d snatched it back. “I’m not allowed to do that. I don’t think.” 

“Had no idea you knew how to behave,” he leaned a little back from the stool, crossing his arms. “Should I be worried about that guy out there?”

“Jealous, Doctor?” 

He rolled his eyes slightly, not responding. 

You sighed when you realized he wasn’t taking the bait. “He’s fine. He just likes being around.” 

He stood off the stool and reached for the discharge clipboard at the foot of the bed.

“Whatcha doing there?”

“My job.” He clicked the pen. “Clearing you. You’ve got no concussion. You’re not dying tonight.” He scrawled on the paper. “And I’m writing you a script for the bruise and a code for an Uber — ”

“No, no,” you said immediately. “Please don’t do that.” 

He raised his hand with the pen, palm open. “You never let me Uber you back when you’re alone. At least have this.” Your face scrunched up, and he could practically feel the guilt building in you. “Don’t need to use it now. Or ever. You can keep it for whenever.” He set the slip on your lap before you could push it back at him, the matter completely closed on his end. “Goes in your phone case. You can forget it exists until you need it.”

“You can’t keep handing me stuff — ”

“Department’s got a whole stack. You’re not special.” He capped the pen, though the corner of his mouth made it slightly visible that his words were false. “Don’t flatter yourself, doll.”

You looked down at the slip, your thumb worrying the edges of it. “I don’t like taking things.” 

“I noticed. A few hundred times now.” He tucked the pen back in his scrub pocket, and his voice came down a notch. “If it really makes you feel so bad, though, then maybe we can start taking care of ourselves so you don’t have to keep ending up here?”

Jack was in the middle of hand-off, Robby doing his thing before Robby left and did whatever the hell he did. They were at the board, Robby running down the floor. It was six-fifteen in the ugly hour, the in-between where the day shift was dragging itself toward the door and the night hadn’t started biting yet, the light through the ambulance doors gone gold and slanted and almost decent for once.

And then the doors slid, and you came through them. Jack’s attention peeled to you the second your shape entered the room, except this was wrong, he distantly registered. It was daylight and six in the evening and you were on your own two feet, upright and, assumedly, sober and walking in through the front like a person as opposed to a patient. You were wearing a jacket that swallowed you, and he assumed underneath it was shorts of some sort. He could see a stripe of navy cotton peeking from under the collar of your jacket as you adjusted a tote bag on your shoulder. 

You looked, frankly, like a completely different species from the one he scraped off bed four on weekends. The jacket was too big — his first thought was that it was a man’s, and his second thought, which he didn’t care for, was about whose — sleeves shoved up to your forearms, a stripe of soft navy cotton on the collar, and below it bare legs and shorts and sneakers that had likely never seen the inside of a club. Your hair was up and a little damp at the temple and your face was scrubbed clean.

You looked like somebody’s whole good day, he thought. You looked around around the waiting room with slightly widened eyes, a lost expression coating your features like you’d built up a lot of nerve to walk in here and had no idea what to do with it. 

“ — and the tox screen is still pending, so don’t let them,” Robby was saying. 

“Mhm,” Jack said, attention already halved. 

And Bennet, breezing past the triage desk with cheerful obliviousness, caught your figure and said, out loud, “Don’t tell me you’ve started day drinking. It’s barely past six, you gotta pace yourself — ” He let out a small laugh at his own joke, and kept walking, and didn’t see the way it landed. 

Your body stiffened, and you looked like a deer in headlights. Your mouth opened, some sort of flustered apology forming, he was sure. 

Jack let out a short groan, shaking his head. He set the tablet on the counter, already moving to cross the floor toward you. “Finish the hand-off with Shen. I gotta go deal with something.” 

Robby said something at his back — deal with what? — but Jack was already gone, crossing the floor slowly but somehow still eating the distance fast, and he watched you spot him coming and watched the relief crash over your face. Except you were sober now, in the daylight, and your whole face was going soft and grateful and just slightly wrecked at the sight of him.

He stopped a couple feet short of you, closer than a doctor, further than he stood to you at night. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands — there was no chart to hold (he should’ve brought the tablet) or wrist to take or a penlight to shine — so he clasped them behind his back, and tilted his head to get a better look at you. 

“Hi,” you breathed.

“Hey,” he said, eyes doing a quick once-over to make sure you really didn’t have any new injuries.

You shifted the tote under his gaze and clutched whatever was in the bag a little tighter.

“Jack —” you started, stopped, like the name had come out wrong. “ — Dr. Abbot.” You winced, pinching your eyes shut for a second. “Jack?” you tried to say again, smaller, your eyes flicking up to check his face to check if you’d overstepped. “Sorry, I don’t know which — ”

“Jack’s great.” His mouth tugged up, despite himself. “You’ve called me a lot worse. Jack’s a step-up.” 

You let out a startled little laugh, your mouth coming over your mouth like you could catch it, as your body eased a degree. 

“I’m sorry — I don’t — God, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry.” 

“You know how many times you’ve apologized to me? Quit it.” He rubbed a finger over his lips. “What’s got you here today, then?”

“Um, I came to see you.” He raised a brow, and you let out a short breath, then continued, “I might not remember a lot of it, but I remember you took really good care of me. And my friends who came in with me sometimes said you took really good care of me.” The words came out softer now, flowing, more earnest. “Even though I was a mess. Especially when. So I just wanted to —” You shrugged, smiling slightly. “ — come say thanks.”

Jack felt the complete warmth of you land somewhere he kept no armor. “It’s the job,” he said quickly, before he could stop himself. “You didn’t have to come down here for that. That’s — it’s what we do. Anybody on shift would’ve done the same.” 

Your expression faltered for a moment, and your eyes dropped to the tote at your side as your shoulders came in. You shook your head, a small motion, then smiled again. 

“Right. No — yeah, of course.” You chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it a — I know it’s your job.” You shifted the bag, then shifted your weight from one foot to another. “Still, though. You did, so I wanted to.” 

Jack already wanted to take his words back, but he couldn’t, so he just shook his head. “Hey, you’re my problem, though. So thank you. For the thanks. We’re even.” 

Your shoulders eased and you nodded. “Well, I also have something for you.” You hauled a container out of your tote and held it out to him with both hands before you could chicken out. “It definitely doesn’t make up for all of the times you helped me.” You looked down at the container. “And I don’t know if you’re lactose intolerant, or have a peanut allergy or anything. I’m sorry if you do — I can — ”

“I’ve got a cast-iron everything. The cookies won’t kill me.” When you pushed the container further to him, he took it off your hands, eyes quickly scanning the round chocolate chip cookies, forcing a smile down. He swallowed whatever had lodged in his throat. 

“These are homemade?” He weighed the container in both hands, absurdly. You nodded. He swallowed whatever on earth had lodged in his throat at that.“Didn’t have to do all that for me.” 

“I wanted to,” you said quickly. “I wasn’t sure how the food here is, so thought it might be a nice change.” 

“Worse than you’re imagining,” he said, then tipped his head to the side as the memory crawled into his brain, uncalled for. “You’ve actually thrown a sandwich across the room.” 

Your palm came up to your mouth, and you let out a muffled, “I’m so sorry.” 

Jack snorted, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he cleared his throat before it could get away from him. He looked back toward the board, then at you, knowing time was slipping and he’d have to go back to work and you’d have to go somewhere else, most likely. 

“You got finals or anything coming up soon?” he asked. 

Your lips curved down, and you nodded. “Yeah, in a couple weeks.” 

“Am I gonna be seeing you getting wheeled in wasted?” 

“I want to say no,” you said, smiling a little crooked. “I’m working on it. But I’ve said that before and ended up here. So.” You shrugged, lips jutting out like you were also unimpressed with yourself. “Ask me again in a couple weeks, I guess. I’d like it if you didn’t, though.” 

“Then quit doing the hard nights alone,” he said, leaning in just slightly. “You keep yourself off the stairs, and you can come bother us instead here with a textbook.” He raised a brow as he held your eyes. “We’ve got a family room that’s almost always empty at night.” 

“I couldn’t — ”

“Won’t be a bother. Trust me. You’d be silly not to use people’s help when they’ve clawed through the same exams to get the badge. You get stuck, somebody’ll know it cold.” He shrugged. “Half of ‘em are bored out of their minds some nights. You’d be doing us a favor.” 

You let out a breath, brows pinching together. “That’s — yeah.” You let out a short laugh, looking away for a second. “I’d like that. A lot. Thank you, really. As long as you don’t mind.”

“This is a teaching hospital, doll. I don’t mind, so long as you don’t mind the company. Might be nice for me, too.”

You smiled and for a moment, neither of you moved to end it. Then you shifted the tote back up your shoulder, and Jack felt the pull to keep you here one more second before he could stop himself. 

“Go home,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll be looking for you. So actually turn up, don’t make me look for nothing.” 

The whole sun of you came up at that, stunned, like you hadn’t expected to be looked for by anyone. Jack felt the ground go quietly out from under him, the vertigo of having reached for a person’s happiness on purpose and connected, of being, for once, the cause of a face doing that. He’d gotten so used to delivering news that took the light out that he’d forgotten it ran the other way, too.

“I’ll turn up. I promise.” 

He nodded, clearing his throat and turning for the board, bidding you a throaty goodbye. 

“She’s the girl that everyone on night talks about?” Robby asked immediately, falling into step beside him. 

Jack looked at him sideways, shaking his head. “You got something to say, too?”

“No,” Robby said, rubbing his palm at his chin like he was holding something in. “You like her or something?”

Jack halted for a second, pointing his index at Robby as he lowered his chin. “You shut up. She’s gonna be a nurse.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Robby laughed. “Looks like she’s gonna be your nurse, old man. You’ll need it soon enough.”

Thank god you did turn up. Jack had the sense that maybe he’d scared you off altogether by his offer, and the line he’d toed had two very alternate spectrums: you’d find a new hospital altogether to go to in the metropolitan area after your falls or poisonings, or you’d be here a lot more often, which he still wasn’t sure would’ve been often enough. 

The first time you came in, it was well past midnight and Jack had unfortunately not been able to catch you off the bat because he was in an emergency surgery. He’d walked out of it with his blood-stained surgical gown still on to be met with the sight of you by the nurse’s station, writing something down on the back of a discharge form for Lena, with another Tupperware laying on the table. He made the guess that you’d brought the whole floor something and were three minutes from having Lena eating out of your hand. 

You’d found a corner of his department and made yourself a small soft home in it inside of ten minutes, and you were leaning in, and Jack stood there for a moment with the bad night still ringing in his ears and felt something unclench in his chest by a fraction.

“ — no, but you gotta,” you were saying to Lena in earnest as Jack approached closer. “If you put the brown sugar in while the butter’s still hot, it’s just — it’s a different cookie.”

“You taking the recipe, Lena?” Jack asked then, fully submerging into the knot you’d made with his charge nurse. 

You turned to face him, a smile forming on your lips almost immediately, and then your eyes dropped over him, to the gown, the rust-brown stain dried dark across the front of it, the set of his shoulders. 

“I am,” Lena replied. “Gonna make these for the kids.” She punctuated her sentence by holding up one of the cookies. 

“Gonna make some for us, too, then?” Jack asked, raising a brow, and settled his elbows over the table. He turned his neck to face you properly, putting on his best smile.

Lena laughed shortly. “I don’t like you enough.” She pushed off the counter with some forms in hand. “Her, maybe. You can have whatever she leaves behind.” She shot you a look that was almost warm before she went and disappeared down the hall. 

“Could be you someday,” Jack said, tilting his head in the direction of Lena’s chair. 

You shook your head, then pushed the container in his hands. “I’ve got to graduate first. And pass pharm, which is currently — ” You patted your tote bag, textbooks heavy. “ — trying to kill me.”

Jack nodded toward the family room, placing the container on the table for a second beside him. “C’mon, then, doll. Let’s see what the pharm’s doing to you.”

“You don’t have to — ” Your eyes flicked down the gown again. “You just came out of surgery. You don’t have to help me study.”

“Actin’ like I’m the one who got the surgery,” Jack muttered, chuckling slightly. He was already peeling off the gown one-handed, balling it up to toss. He started walking, and you followed behind him. “C’mon. It’s pretty empty right now.” 

It’d been pleasant that night and the few after to have five to ten minute increments of sitting with you helping you study in between doing his actual job. He’d duck in between things — a lull after discharge, the dread stretch while he waited for a CT scan, the ten minutes a trauma took to roll in once the call came — and you’d be there in the family room with your stack of cards on the couch. He’d drop on the chair across you or the couch beside you and pick up wherever you’d left off like he hadn’t left at all. Then his pager would buzz and he’d be gone, and you’d still be there an hour later when he came back, and he’d sit back down, and both of you’d pretend this was a completely normal way to study.

It’d annoyed him the first night how badly the flashcards were failing you; he’d seen you stare at the words and your eyes would glaze and slide right off it like they were greased. You’d memorized or retained nothing. And then he’d said, half to himself, a story for the why to click, and he’d watched it lock in you. 

So he’d stopped quizzing you primarily off the cards and started telling you stories instead and you’d talk it back to him, reasoning out loud, getting there in the saying of it the way you never got there on the page. 

The nights stacked up. The first week, you’d sat at a table across from him. By the second, you’d migrated to the chair beside him. Your coffee, the one by the far end of the table, was right by his elbow. Lena started leaving a second cup at the station when she saw you come in, his and yours, and never commented.

You’d stopped apologizing for taking up his time somewhere in there. He noticed when you’d started saving him the worst looking cookie on purpose because he’d once told you he liked the ugly ones. He’d noticed when you learned the rhythm of his pages; you’d go quiet and just hand him the next card when his eyes drifted to the board through the window of the door, would have it ready when he came back, like you’d kept his place for him while he was off keeping someone alive. 

He noticed that he more than looked forward to it. Somewhere in the dead middle of a bad shift, his feet would take him toward the family room before his brain could catch up on the why of it all. An empty table on a night you didn’t come in sat wrong with him, a tiny disappointment he didn’t have anything in him to figure out why.

Sometimes, like now, you’d get distracted. Jack had learned. He’d walked into the family room to see you and Ellis folded into opposite ends of the couch, the flashcards abandoned in a fanned mess on the cushion between you, both of you mid-argument and enjoying yourselves too much.

“Poaching my study hall, Ellis?” he said, finally moving in. 

Ellis pointed one stern finger in your direction as she pulled herself off the couch. “Do the crossword, not the sudoku.” 

“She’s gonna make you a worse student,” Jack said to Ellis’s back.

“She’s making me a worse doctor,” Ellis said cheerfully, already at the door. “I’ve been here twenty minutes. I have patients.” She turned to you one final time. “Crossword. You’ll thank me later.” 

She gave Jack a knowing look on her way out, one he didn’t want to read too much into, and she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her in one slow plunge. 

You watched the door settle, and the entire wattage of your attention turned to him. He hadn’t gotten used to that, and he didn’t think he ever would. “Looks like I’ll never be a nurse.” 

“Don’t say things like that.” He came around and lowered himself onto the couch beside you. “What’re you stuck on? Hit me.”

Your palm met his upper arm, a small smack. 

He narrowed his eyes at you. “Hit me all you want. You’re not getting out of this.” 

“But Jaaaack,” you drawled, tipping your head back on the couch. “Not here to study today.”

His eyes flickered over to your form briefly as he gathered the cards and squared them. “Oh, no? What’re you here for then?”

“Dunno.” You pulled your knees up to the couch. “Didn’t wanna be at mine. And work was a lot and boring.” You turned to face him then, a small smile growing on your lips. “Thought I’d bother yours instead.” 

He set the squared deck on his knee. “Lucky me.”

He’d caught it, though, how you’d folded the sad thing in the middle of the sentence where it’d draw the least attention and moved on before it could sit. He let it move on, but he kept it. The image of you on a Tuesday, work behind you, and the choice you’d made was to drive to a hospital rather than go home to your own quiet. He was getting a picture of what that quiet looked like and learned that he didn’t like it very much.

“Work was boring, huh,” he said, though he couldn’t imagine what a fun day looked like as a waitress. “You working more?”

“Mm. Saturday girl quit, so now I’m on Saturdays, too.” You picked at your sock. “S’okay. Tips are good. I learned that old guys tip better when you call them ‘sir.’” 

He huffed. “Do they?”

“Huge. It’s a cheat code.” You tilted your head at him, smiling shyly. “You’d tip well, I think. You’d overcompensate.” 

“I’m not gonna sit here and get profiled by you in the only few minutes where I can catch my breath.” He held the card up, front to himself. “And I tip twenty-five percent like every functioning adult, thank you.”

You groaned. “Where can I get tipped more than that?” 

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“I do. I do. I’m a broke student. Point me to the money — where should I apply?” You shifted on the couch, fully facing him now, the cards apparently abandoned for the moment. “C’mon. You’ve lived a hundred years. You’ve gotta know where I can make some quick cash.” 

“You’re sweet to me, doll,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. He set the cards down and looked at you, genuinely considering it now. He tried to ignore the fact that you likely had money troubles and tried to think about how he could actually help. “Define quick.” 

“Like — by next Thursday.” 

“Legally?”

“No.” 

“Legally, you can sell plasma. Twice a week, they pay you, you sit there with a juice box.” 

Your nose scrunched. “I don’t love needles in me sober.”

“You’re gonna be a nurse.”

“In other people. That’s totally different.” You waved it off. “Next. What else?”

“Sleep studies pay you to sleep. Egg donation pays a whole lot but it’s a whole process, not a Thursday deal.” He was ticking them off on his fingers, now fully committed. “Medical research’ll pay you to test things. Phase-one trials. You take an experimental drug and they watch you for side effects.”

“That’s the one.” You sat up. “How much?”

“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I bring you in here to keep you from blacking out. I’m not gonna have you volunteering to get poisoned for a quick four hundred bucks.” He pointed at you. “Maybe start laying on the ‘sir’ a little too thick from now on.” 

“Sir.” You tested on him directly, dropping your voice, leaning in an inch, lashes going slow. “Could you help me out, sir? Tips have been so slow, sir.” 

He turned his face away from you, now making himself look out the window. “I’m not entertaining this.” 

“Oh, but sir.” You’d fully abandoned the cards now, scooting closer, a hand under your chin, the picture of innocence. “I’m just a girl. A poor, hardworking girl trying to be a nurse. Don’t you want to help me out, sir?”

“I am trying.” He pulled up the flashcards. “If it’ll help, I’ll bring my SWAT buddies into your place and they can run up a tab.” He waved a card in front of your face, trying to get your attention back to it. “You do this, I’ll have eight cops eating mozzarella sticks in your section by Friday, overtipping ‘cause I saved their lives. Won’t even have to call ‘em sir.” 

“Right. No, that’s — ” You let out a little laugh too quickly, eyes widening at his words, and you took the card out of his hand mostly to have something to do with yours. “You don’t have to do that. Obviously. I was kidding — ” You batted the whole thing away with a shake of your head. “God. No. I’m okay, I promise. I was kidding.”

“I’m half-kidding,” he said, raising a brow. “I do know those guys. It’s no skin off me. But it’s okay.” 

He let the offer sit like that, and he saw you pinch your eyes shut. He watched the whole thing happen on your face, the small involuntary recoil you always had when anyone offered you real kindness. You were bad at it. For a girl who lied so charmingly about how much she drank and how her night went, you had absolutely no poker face for being cared about. You had not the first idea how to hide it.

He found it unbearably endearing.

You opened your eyes and looked a little caught, a little sheepish as your thumb worried the corner of the card.

“You’re a strange girl,” he mumbled, fond, before he could stop it. “You know that?”

“Shit — Jack,” you said through a small laugh, shaking your head. “I don’t — I’m — ” You pressed your lips together and your shoulders came up almost to your ears in a stiff shrug. “Is there anything I can do for you? I can’t just accept — all your help.” 

He snorted. “What help? I give you a study room and review flash cards.”

“Let me do something. I’m a good cleaner — ”

His head went back slightly, shaking his head. “You’re really not.”

“Okay,” you continued, rallying. “A dog? Guys like you always have dogs they don’t walk ‘cause of their hours. I can walk dogs.” 

“No dog.” He raised his hand when he saw your mouth move again, stopping you. “You pay me back by passing your boards. You can pay me back plenty if you end up working here, doing good at the job.”

You went quiet for a second. “That’s just me doing my own thing. That’s not real.”

“That’s real to me.” He shrugged, like he hadn’t just made your whole future the price of his kindness. “I get a good nurse out of it someday.” He pulled himself off the couch. “And now I gotta go. Floor’s not gonna run itself.”

“Boo,” you said, pulling the entire deck on your lap now. “You’re the worst study partner. You leave constantly.”

Tonight, Jack had come into the family room after leaving you for a longer stretch of time than usual — a multi-vehicle situation that had eaten two hours and most of his patience — and found the studying had long since lost.

You’d migrated to the couch at some point. The textbook was open face-down on the cushion beside you like a small tented roof, your flashcards fanned across the middle seat, and you were folded in the corner with your knees pulled up and cheek mashed into the worn armrest, fighting your eyes and losing completely. You’d dimmed the overhead lights, lighting the lamp in the corner, the one nobody used, throwing everything low and gold.

He paused in the doorway. “You awake?” 

“Mhm. Need a cat nap, though,” you murmured.

Jack snorted, shutting the door behind him as he walked closer to you. “How far’d you get?”

“Far enough.” Then, you added, “Cat nap.”

“Sayin’ it like I’m gonna not let you have one.” 

Your eye cracked open a sliver, tracked him, then fell shut again. “Feel like you’re gonna make me do more cards.”

He toed the leg of the coffee table aside, reached down, and started clearing your mess off the cushions. He lifted the textbook and shut it around the receipt you’d jammed as a bookmark; gathered the flashcards and squared them in his palm; capped the highlighter and pocketed it. You watched the cleanup through one half-open eye, not lifting a single finger, your cheek staying flat to the armrest. 

“There. No more cards. You’re done for tonight, doll.” 

“Hooray,” you mumbled. 

He nudged your socked foot where it had crept up across the cushion. “C’mon. Budge up a second. Don’t want you wrecking your neck sleeping like that.”

You made a small sound of protest but you went, peeling your cheek off the armrest with reluctance. There was a crease pressed into your skin where the fabric seam had been and your hair was flat on one side and mushed on the other. You blinked up at him, swaying where you sat, eyes glassy and unfocused in the gold lamplight.

He sank into the space he’d cleared, the cushion dipping, tipping the two of you a fraction into each other. That was all the invitation your body apparently needed, because you folded into him without a beat of thought — too tired to second-guess it, he supposed — your temple finding the warm of his shoulder, your whole side melting against his. You drew your knees up and tucked them against his thigh. Your hand came to rest on his chest, palm flat, fingers spreading once before they went still. You exhaled after a moment, long and slowly, and burrowed your nose into his neck. 

Jack stilled. 

“Ten minutes,” you murmured, the words barely coming out as words.

He took his arm off the back of the couch and settled it around your back, broad hand spanning between your shoulder blades and drawing you that last fraction deeper into him. You went boneless with it, a small contended hum slipping out of you. 

Because he couldn’t help himself, he tipped his head down a fraction to say into your hair, “Been doin’ really well, y’know that, sweetheart?” 

You hummed, the sound of it vibrating against his throat, your fingers curling the faintest bit in his scrubs. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Gonna be a good nurse,” he murmured, thumb moving once along your shoulder. 

“Gonna work with you,” you mumbled, three-quarters gone. “You said.”

“Mhm.”

“Holdin’ you to it.” 

“Yeah, I know you are.” The corner of his mouth flicked up where you couldn’t see it. “Go to sleep. You can hold me to it in ten minutes.” 

When you didn’t answer for a second, Jack realized you were already gone. You were warm and trusting at his side, your hand slack over his heart, your breath sinking deep and even into his neck. 

Jack let his head tip back against the couch, pinching his eyes shut at the feeling of you, at the feeling you caused. His hand spread slowly across your back, feeling the breath go through you — the proof of you — and he let his thumb find the curve of your shoulder and rest there, keeping his eyes shut. He sat with the enormous fact of you, the girl he’d not seen anyone circle back for, gone soft and so pliant in his arms like she’d always belonged there, and he stopped pretending he wasn’t already lost. 

The ten minutes came and went. He let them. He’d have given you the whole night, the whole shift, the whole of whatever this was turning into. There wasn’t one place on the earth worth standing up for, and he’d known it for weeks, and only now, with your breath slow against his throat, did he let himself sit all the way inside of the knowing.

Jack came out of the OR and signed — albeit distantly, mind running a meter a minute about nothing good — what needed signing and said the things he was meant to, feeling the familiar piece of his own damn soul rotting away in the place those things went to rot. He knew the spot by now. It’d been decades of depositing them into the same place, and the place didn’t fill, exactly, but it never emptied, either. It just sat there, getting heavier, like things usually do when you keep adding to it and never take anything out.

This one would sit a while. Jack had started to sense it around the first year in this job; the ones that stayed had a weight, and you knew on the table whether you were getting one of those or whether it’d wash off by morning. This one wouldn’t.

He stripped his gloves, and somebody said something he answered without hearing, and then his feet simply walked past the board, carrying him down the hall toward the one door on the whole floor that wouldn’t have somebody else’s catastrophe behind it. 

His hand was flat on the door. He was still wearing the gown, and he looked down and registered it too late. He should’ve changed it, left the thing in the dirty bin with the rest of what the shift had taken, the way he always did before he came to you, kept the two halves of the floor separate on purpose. 

He opened the door. You were on the couch, one leg tucked under you and the other foot on the floor and a half-empty cup of coffee on the table going cold. You’d been doing something on your phone, or nothing, when the door opened, and you looked up with the easy expectant expression on your face you always had before it dropped. He watched it melt.

“Hey,” you said, making your voice soft.

“Hey.” His voice came out rough, and he almost winced as he heard it himself. 

You set your phone face-down on the cushion and unfolded yourself from the couch and stood, crossing the room to close the gap between you. You stopped in front of him and looked up, your brow doing a small worried thing, and he let himself be looked at.

“Sit down,” you said. “You look like you’re gonna fall through the floor.”

He distantly registered you walking him to the chair — your hand finding his forearm, a light touch — and he let you. He folded into the chair like the strings of his own body had been cut, his elbows finding his knees and head dropping.

He heard you move, small domestic sounds of you filling a cup, the tap somewhere down the hall turning on then shutting off. Then your socks were back in his eyeline, toes pointed to him.

“Here.” You crouched, came into his lowered field of vision, and pressed a cup into his hands — water, cold — and folded his fingers around it when they were slow to close. “Drink it all.”

He drank because that was the path of least resistance. The water caught something he hadn’t registered was bone-dry. You took the empty cup out of his hands when he was done, setting it on the table behind you, and then he felt your hands find his shoulders.

He flinched just slightly, the smallest involuntary thing, for nobody touched him like that. Nobody put their hands on him that weren’t shaking one of his or needing something from him. You settled your thumbs into the iron base of his neck and pressed slowly, working the knots the night, the days, the weeks, and probably the year had wound there.

Your thumbs were unsure of themselves — you weren’t good at it, you weren’t trying to be, you were simply trying — and that was somehow worse because it got further to him than skill would have; there was the unpracticed earnestness to it, like you’d simply decided his shoulders had been holding too much and you wanted to put your hands there to take some of it down. 

He felt his head drop lower, coming forward on its own, the tension bleeding out of his neck by degrees under your hands. Your thumbs found a place at the top of his spine that had been clenched so long that it had stopped registering as pain, and you pressed there, and a fraction let go. He felt his shoulders drop the inch they’d been holding up all night, and an uneven breath went out of him.

You kept your hands moving, your thumbs working the meat of his shoulders through the cotton, occasionally finding a knot and leaning your weight into it until it gave. 

His head tipped a little forward after a stretch of time — chasing, or simply falling — and it found the soft of your stomach. His forehead rested against the front of you, where you stood close in the gap between his knees. He hadn’t intended for it, or maybe he had, somewhere under where the intention happened, his body had chosen to stop holding its own weight and give it to the nearest thing that felt like it’d take it. His eyes were already shut, and he stayed there, hands coming up on their own to rest at the sides of your waist. His fingers anchored into the fabric of your shirt.

“Shitty job sometimes,” he mumbled after a moment.

“Yeah,” you said softly above him. “I bet it is.” 

Your fingers had found his hair, threading through the curls. Then, you added quietly, “But you’re really good at it.” 

His fingers tightened a fraction at the fabric on your waist as he let out a short huff. 

“Didn’t help him,” he said finally, the words coming out muffled behind his own mouth. “Whatever I’m good at didn’t help him.” 

“Maybe not.” Your fingers scraped carefully at his scalp. “I think you were the best shot he had.”

He breathed you in, choosing to let the words rest in his skull for a while instead of fighting them. 

“I’m — ” He heard you take in a breath and felt it go through your whole body. “I’m really grateful I met you, Jack.”

For some reason, he waited for you to take it back. There was a primally fast thing in him that told him that you’d take the words back, and he’d have understood.

“You don’t have to say anything,” you added. “I just wanted you to know. While you’re here being all — ” Your thumb moved at the back of his neck, tender and so gentle. “ — Figured it was a decent time to tell you I’m glad you exist.” 

He took in a shaky breath against you, fingers tightening again. 

“Thank you, sweet girl,” he said, and it sounded like it’d been punched out of him. “Likewise. More than you know,” he finished, his arms wrapping around the rest of your waist now, pulling you in like he could just fold himself smaller if he held hard enough.

Your fingers kept moving slowly in his hair, your other hand coming around the back of his head to hold him there. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d let anybody do this; as far as he could remember, he’d decided in some wordless permanent way that he’d carry his own weight from then on, that it was cheaper, that needing somebody was a bill that came due eventually and he’d rather not run the tab. 

“You should sit,” he said after god knows how long without letting go. “Selfish, keepin’ you standing here.”

“It’s okay.”

He hummed, thumb moving once at your waist. “Two more minutes then.”

“Whatever you need, Jack,” you said, voice quiet. “I’m not going.”

Jack’s phone lit up on the arm of the couch at 10:52, face-down, buzzing itself a quarter-inch off the leather before he caught it. 

He’d been working his way, with grim completionist patience, through an iceberg video you’d sent him three days ago with the message ‘THIS rabbit hole i need you to fall down.’ You’d followed it up by telling him, ‘do Not skip tiers!!’ He hadn’t skipped tiers. He was, in fact, ninety minutes deep and only about two-thirds down the pyramid, somewhere in the tier where a young man with a serious voice was explaining internet folklore he couldn’t believe was real. 

He was fairly sure it’d been invented by some teenager, but Jack only shrugged, distantly wondering why on earth anyone would spend the labor — the diagrams, alone — hoaxing a thing this elaborate for an audience of complete strangers. He also wondered why on earth you were so interested in this. As quickly as the thought arrived, he realized that he was working down the iceberg himself.

Working down a thing you’d handed him felt adjacent to sitting next to you, and his apartment had become the sort of quiet that made adjacent worth ninety minutes of contemporary folklore. He’d sooner have chewed glass than admitted it out loud.

It was a good apartment and an unwitnessed one. He’d realized somewhere in the past year it was untouched by any hand but his. Every object was exactly where he’d last set it down, for there was no second person to nudge the remote three inches or leave a hair tie on the counter or ask why there was a mug in the sink and no bowl. His leg was off for the night, propped against the arm of the couch, the whole standing weight from his night shift to SWAT calls finally set down somewhere it was allowed to stay.

So, the phone going off, went off loud in the silence that had become almost-permanent. Your name lit across the screen, and the picture with it (one you’d set yourself, commandeering his phone to do it). It was already strange that it was a call. You never called; you texted in floods, six messages deep before he’d gotten to the first, but the ringing meant the thing had gotten past the point where typing it out would hold. 

He looked at your laughing face buzzing on his phone for a second too long, the cold little instinct, and thumbed it green.

“Hey,” he said. “You know it’s almost eleven on my night-off. This better be good.”

You stayed silent for a second, and he could hear your breath and the hollow of a call connected in a car, the cooling engine’s tick and automotive acoustics. 

“Hey,” you said finally, and Jack felt it wrongly. The back half of the word had gone soft and unsteady at the end.

Jack was already sitting up. “Hey, yourself,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He heard you swallow quickly. “Sorry. God, this is so dumb. You — were you asleep?” 

“I was almost through with your iceberg, if you want the truth.” 

You made a sound that tried to be a laugh but didn’t clear the runway, breaking apart halfway. “You watched it?”

“Almost.” His fingers were drumming against his prosthetic leaning by the couch now. “Are you out?”

“I’m —” You paused, then hummed like you were debating. “I’m kind of near your place, actually?” Your voice rose toward the end, like you were embarrassed or questioning it all yourself. “I know. It’s creepy. But I think I need to — talk to you.” 

“Yeah?” He tried to keep his voice light, though he could already feel something in his body start racing, panicking. “You break something?”

“No. No. Promise. It’s nothing like that.”

For some reason, that put a deeper hook in him. If it wasn’t a wrist, an ankle, or your body doing something it shouldn’t, then it was the other kind, and he had no idea how to hold something like that. He wasn’t sure what he could do with a sprain he couldn’t ice.

“Okay — ”

“Wait,” you interrupted, voice pitching higher, and he could see you were psyching yourself out. “I could just say it now, honestly. It’d probably be easier over the phone.”

Jack’s eyes widened a fraction at that. His stomach suddenly felt cold. 

“No,” he said, voice rougher than he’d intended. “I won’t make it hard. Whatever you want to say, I promise. Just — not like this, okay? Come here.” 

He listened to you breathe as you weighed it and knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he wouldn’t like what you were going to say. “Okay,” you breathed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.” 

Jack opened the door after the first knock, unembarrassed of waiting. You’d come as you were, a coat thrown open over sleep clothes, good wool hanging loose over a thin cami with lace at the collar and soft shorts and bare legs down to the sneakers you hadn’t laced properly. The second fact that registered to Jack was that you’d been crying; there was a soft ruin around your eyes, the mascara long gone, wiped with a sleeve somewhere back in the evening. Your hair was up and losing, a claw clip hanging looser than he believed it was meant to.

“Hi,” you said, eyes raising to meet his. “Thanks for letting me come by.”

Jack felt his shoulders rise to his ears just slightly at the formality. He felt like a bucket of ice had been dropped upon him because somewhere in the past few weeks, you’d stopped apologizing to him as much, which had felt like a small victory he never told you he was counting. And here it was again, your stiff little courtesy, the door swung back shut on a thing that had been open. Jack didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. 

“You don’t thank me for coming by,” he said gruffly, opening the door wider.

You came in, but only just. Before he could steer you to the warmth of his apartment, you were already reaching into the bag on your shoulder — hands shaking, he realized, with a fine tremor — and pulling out a folded piece of paper, creased hard down the middle and then again like you’d tried to bundle it up into a fist.

He unfolded it and smoothed out the edges, eyes looking for yours briefly, but you’d already looked away. Your bottom lip was between your teeth and you were looking at the ground. He forced himself to look down.

It was your pharmacology exam. Your cramped looping handwriting scattered the margins, a star drawn to one question because you starred everything. There was red pen all down the side and a number circled on the top. The number, Jack saw immediately, was not catastrophic, not a failure even. It was a low pass, the sort of grade that would’ve stung for Jack in his school days and evaporated by the next exam. He’d expected worse from the way you’d been shaking holding it. 

He looked back at you, confused more than anything. “Congratulations, you passed.” 

Your jaw tightened, and he could see your eyes go bright and wounded. “It’s a seventy-one.”

“That’s a pass.”

“Barely. Barely.” You took the paper out of his hands, folding it away like you couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. “And you helped me with this so much and I still couldn’t. I’m so tired of — ” You stopped, looking up at the ceiling as you pressed your lips flat. “It’s not about the test.”

“Okay.” He leaned back against the counter, giving you the whole floor of the room. “Talk, then.” 

You looked at him, and he watched you gather it all up, deciding, as it settled into your face, your mouth, whatever you’d come here to say.

“I don’t wanna waste your time anymore,” you said, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as your eyes landed on the wall behind him. “I can’t — it’s not fair.” 

Jack felt the whole floor shift under him and felt his brows go up an inch as he tried to keep his face seem collected. 

“You’re you,” you continued. “You’ve got a whole life, a hard one, and I’ve been just — dumping mine on you. Making you sit there and hold my hand through studying and I’m — ” You shook your head, face going grim as you said the words. “It’s not fair to you. You’ve been carrying me for so long, and it’s not fair. None of this is yours to carry. I’m not yours to carry.” 

His nose scrunched just slightly, something like burning blooming at the center of his face. Something in his chest had cracked along the seam he had no idea was there, because he’d never had to look at it once straight on. It was easy to carry your own weight when there was no one asking to take some. It was easy to call solitude a principle when nobody had ever made the alternative real. And you had. You’d made it real for months, and here you were proposing — no, telling — to take it back, to hand him his loneliness again because of some measurement of fairness. 

The horror of how much Jack didn’t want it — how badly, how completely he didn’t want to go back to how it was before you — was the first honest look he’d taken at himself in longer than he could stand to count. 

“That so?” was all he could say, voice roughening as his brows narrowed at you. 

“Yes.” You mistook the roughness for agreement, or maybe you just needed to do so, because you kept going. “You don’t have to help me. The only thing I can think is you’re — you are a good person and I was there. And you help people, it’s what you do.” Your hand waved in the general direction of him as your voice cracked. “So help someone who’d actually make it worth it. Who won’t barely pass and keep getting too drunk and — ” You laughed slightly, and it was all wet and terrible, the sound. “I’m a bad use of you. You’re this — you are so much, Jack, and I’m a bad place to put it. So put it somewhere better.” 

Jack had to force a swallow when you ended your words with a sharp intake of breath, the pool behind your eyes slipping free slowly down your cheeks. You’d run out of anything that’d make you wipe it away now, and that undid him worse than the crying itself, that you were standing there and letting it fall, done hiding, wrung all the way out. 

“I’m sorry — ” he started.

“It’s okay,” you said immediately, shaking your head.

“For making you think that’s what it was,” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s on me, that you talked yourself into thinking this has been some sort of charity.” He cocked his head to the side then, wishing you’d look up at him. “But you’re gonna quit shaking your head for one minute, and hear the rest, ‘cause you got it wrong. All of it, backwards and upside down.”

He came off the counter and closed the space himself, until you had to lift your chin to keep his eyes. 

“I’m not a man who spends his nights on a stray out of the goodness of his heart. Ask anyone I work with what I’m like. I don’t have that lying around spare.” His jaw tightened. “So take the halo off. That’s not what this was.”

“Then why — ”

“You,” he said plainly, for he learned it cost him nothing to do so, and a lot if he didn’t. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone. There’s nowhere else I want to put it.”

He watched everything in your face tighten at his words, the disbelief and reflex to argue all curdling underneath. 

“If you don’t want this.” Me. Me, he wanted to say. “Say it. I’ll leave you alone. You don’t owe me anything.”

“That’s not — ”

“But don’t act like it’s some favor for me.” He was closer now than he’d been. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving for my sake. That’s a lie.”

“It’s not — ”

“It’s a lie,” he said, voice going flat and so final, as he slowly nodded his head. He looked at you a second, lips coming between his teeth, then looked away as he felt something physical seize over his entire body.

Jack himself had to process the words as he said them, because he was only just realizing how much truth they held.

“You make it good.”

He forced himself to look back at you, and you had tilted your head now to look up at him, caught and still as stone, the arguing gone completely off your face now and replaced with something more frightened.

“Don’t — ” One of Jack’s shoulders came up in a half-hearted shrug. “You’re the one part of my day that doesn’t take anything out of me. Just — get that straight, sweetheart.” 

You were just looking up at him with your whole face undone, the tears gone still on it, as though his words had knocked your own clean out of you.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” you said quietly. “People don’t — that’s not a thing that happens to me, Jack. Being — ” Your sentence broke apart and your hand had come up and fisted loosely in front of his shirt without either of you deciding it should, holding on, holding him there. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Nothing.” His hand came up slowly and covered yours where it fisted in his shirt, holding it flat there against his chest. “It’s just true.”

You made a small, pained sound and dropped your forehead against his sternum, right where his hand held yours, and he felt the whole strung-tight weight of you gave at once and settled into him. He felt you breathe against his shirt at the same time he felt his own pulse going too fast on your knuckles; he wasn’t bothered enough to try and slow it, because there was no point now. You’d already found out. 

“Very grateful for you,” he murmured, his other hand pulled up to rest over the back of your skull. “Told you so earlier. Meant it more than you let yourself hear.”

You huffed against his shirt — half a sob, half a laugh, maybe the ruined cousin of both — and he felt it go through the cotton and land warm against his skin, felt your fingers uncurl a fraction from the fist they’d made then re-fist, like even now some part of you was checking he was still there to hold onto. 

Jack held still for it, same as you had in the family room for him. He was good at holding still, it was half the job, but this was a different kind — he supposed — where there was a plain animal willingness to be a wall for as long as you needed one and not move a muscle that might spook you out of it. 

He rested his chin at the top of your head, murmuring, “I don’t have to tutor you anymore, if that’ll help.” He swallowed, closing his eyes as he breathed in your faint perfume. “We can scrap the whole thing, if that’s what’s making you feel so bad.”

You stilled for a second, then made a small sound against him. 

Despite himself, despite it all, he let out a short chuckle. “S’okay. I’m the reason you got a seventy-one. You’re allowed to switch.” 

“You’re the reason it’s a seventy-one and not a thirty,” you said, and it came out muffled and immediate. You almost sounded cross, like you didn’t want the slander against him to stand even now.

After a moment against him, you added, “I don’t want to be just someone you help, I think. I don’t want to be somebody — I guess — that you’re just good to.”

When Jack hummed, you continued, “I don’t know what I wanna be instead. Just — a friend — or, I don’t know. Something that goes both ways.”

Jack’s chest swelled at the words. He felt that he’d have been anything you asked of him, simply because it had just become how it was. It was almost outrageous how, if you’d asked, he’d have handed it over, the whole rest of it, whatever you wanted the name to be, whatever box you needed him in.

A man his age was supposed to be past this. He was supposed to have calcified somewhere in the second decade of the job into something that didn’t reorganize himself around what someone he’d known properly only for the better part of the year had asked him.

“Consider it done,” he murmured, letting the word settle. Friend.

You breathed against him, and Jack felt himself want to remain exactly here and knew that he shouldn’t. He knew that the kind thing now was to give you somewhere to put your face that wasn’t his chest, some ordinary ground for you to set your feet back down on. 

“C’mon.” He got a hand on your shoulder and eased you off him gently, a slow, slow reclaiming of the eight inches of air between your body and his. He dipped his head to catch your eyes, which were pink-rimmed and swollen and doing their utter best to avoid his now that the worst was out of you. “Do you want me to order food?”

Your neck rolled back slightly as you met his eyes, caught slightly off-guard at the shift of tone. You blinked. “That was a lot, and now you’re asking about food?”

“It was a lot,” he agreed. He reached up and thumbed a smudge of leftover mascara from under your eye briskly, and you let him. “And now it’s done. So, food, and we can watch the stupid video you sent me before you head home.”

It had been six days since you showed up at his apartment, and Jack had embarrassingly counted every single one of them. You’d left his apartment somewhere past two with your eyes finally dry and a paper bag of his leftover Thai you’d protested and taken anyway, and he’d walked you down to your car and stood in the lot like some idiot in a movie until your taillights turned off his street, and then he’d gone back up to a quiet that felt, for the first time in years, like something had been in it.

Since then it had gone like it always had and nothing like it; you still turned up with flashcards and left a graveyard of half-drunk coffees on every surface. But he’d noticed how you started letting him sit closer now, let a compliment land without flinching off, and once, mid-story, had reached over and fixed his scrub top where it had folded under, casual as breathing. 

Friend was the word you’d settled on. Jack was thinking about that when Shen dropped into step beside Jack with a cup of fresh Dunkin sweating in his hand. 

“You know it’s not standard to let your girlfriend occupy the family room for three hours of your shift, right?” 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jack immediately clarified. It seemed more important to do now than it was earlier, when people only knew you when you came in as an emergency. Still, it felt wrong, like a key going in the wrong hole. “And you got a problem with it?” 

Shen lifted the coffee in surrender, unbothered. “You know we’ve grown to her. She and I do the Wordle every midnight.” Then, he spread one hand. “Administratively, she’s not staff. She’s not a patient. She’s not family of a patient. Which leaves the category I’d have to call —” He tilted his head, faux thoughtfulness. “ — Abbot’s girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s in the handbook.” 

“Try again,” Jack drawled, thumbing a form he wasn’t reading that didn’t need to be read. “She’s a nursing student getting hours of free tutoring off a board-certified attending. Put that in the handbook. Teaching hospital. I’m teaching.”

Shen shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “Alright. Alright. She’s not your girlfriend. Mind if I ask her out, then?” 

Jack snorted. “If you could only be so lucky.” 

“Clearly she has a type for attendings,” he pressed, grinning. “Or is it just the ones with gray hair?”

Jack looked at him sideways. “This is getting a bit weird, even for you.” 

“I’m happy for you, man. Even if you’re gonna make us all watch you not do anything about it for the next six months.”

“Mind your own damn business.”

“Sure,” he turned, lifting a hand over his shoulder as he went. “Close the blinds anyway. There’s a window on that door. Everyone can see her making you dumb.” 

Jack looked down the hall and set the form down before going there to close the blinds — telling himself it was for the window, for Shen’s real talk — and knowing, somewhere under that, that he was really just going to you. 

He could see you through the window in the door before he reached it, which was, he supposed, exactly Shen’s point. You had a textbook open in your lap and you were chewing the end of your highlighter, brow pulled in, mouthing something to yourself, working a card over your head. You’d pulled the sleeves of one of his old sweatshirts down to your hands, the one you’d swiped from his locker two weeks ago and never given back and that he’d never once asked for, because he’d found he didn’t want it back, found he liked seeing it swallow you.

You gave him a smile when he walked in. He reached up and tipped the blinds shut on the window with two fingers, the floor outside tipping away. 

“Why’d you close them?” you asked, slightly bored.

“Apparently the whole department’s been getting a show.”

You furrowed your brows then. “A show of what? Me failing?”

“Somethin’ like that.” He let it go at that, coming around and lowering himself onto the couch beside you, the cushion dipping and tipping you toward him a degree, what it always did that neither of you ever corrected. “How’s it going? Honest.”

“Honestly?” You blew out a breath, closing the highlighter. “I’d kill for a drink.”

“Oh?” Jack settled back against the couch, his arm coming up along the top of it behind you. “Telling that to the one man who’s seen what you look like at the bottom of the bottle.”

“Jaaaack,” you said, almost in a whine. “Let’s go to a bar.”

He snorted, dragging a hand down his face. “Now I’m wondering what’s pushing you toward the edge.”

He picked the flashcard you had set on the textbook, the one you’d been studying. He read the front of it without much intention — your handwriting was cramped and looping, a star drawn next to it — and turned over and checked the back. He did the same thing he always did, the story, the image; he’d done it a hundred times by now. He could do it half-asleep, and most nights he half was. 

You thought about it for a second, your bottom lip tugged between your teeth, then walked yourself to the answer. 

“Mhm. See. Good,” he murmured. He flipped the card to the back to check you, and you’d had it. Of course you’d had it, you’d had more of this than you ever gave yourself credit for. “Tell you what. Get the next three right, and I’ll get us a drink once your exams are done.” 

Your brows narrowed. “Bribe?”

“It’s an incentive.” He held up the next card, eyes on you. “Don’t think. Just answer me.” 

You did. One, then the next, then the one after. You were quicker now that there was something on the end of it, your lip caught between your teeth as you walked yourself there each time. He noticed you worked when there was something to earn. After all three, he hummed. “See. Good girl, there you go.” 

He felt you go still beside him, and his eyes flickered up to you to see your eyes dropping to your textbook. He stayed silent a second, eyes raking over you, your thumb running the worn edge of a card back and forth. 

Jack knew better than to point out how you being flustered was almost silly when he’d said the same words many times while taping you up or shining a penlight in your eyes. He let his arm stay where it was along the couch, hand not quite touching your shoulder, and watched the side of your face.

“You wanna do some more?” he said finally, voice coming out rougher. “Or are we done for the night?”

You held up a finger, as if telling him to wait.

“Okay, then,” he mumbled, leaning back further against the couch. “Take your time.”

After a second, he turned to say something dry to break the silence. You’d turned your head, too, and were closer than he initially realized, your eyes coming up off the card and finding his, near enough that whatever he had bubbling in his throat died there immediately. 

Jack hummed involuntarily. You closed the sound by pressing your mouth to his, the feeling of the plushness so very featherlight, there and barely there, the softest press. 

He went still as stone, every system in him locking at once. His hand was still along the back of the couch and his mouth hadn’t answered yours, not because he didn’t want to — God, he did — but because the entirety of him had gone still with the disbelief of it, with the you, here, choosing this — him — and the half-second of nothing stretched into a second, too damn long. 

He’d seized on you, the fact you’d nearly walked, had stood in his kitchen finding the kindest way to disappear, and here you were, closing the last of the distance yourself.

You pulled back like you’d touched a stove, a gasp leaving your mouth, replacing where his own had been. 

“Oh god.” Your hand flew up to your mouth, your eyes going wide before pinching shut completely. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, Jack. I read that so, so wrong. You’ve been so nice and I — fuck, I’m sorry.”

Jack made a pained sound that was lost somewhere in your ramble, at the sight of you snatching it back. Nothing had gone wrong. Jack knew you’d read nothing wrong, and that the only thing that had happened was that he’d been too slow, too stunned, too thirty-years-rusty to catch what had been handed to him in good reflex.

His hand came off the back of the couch and he caught your jaw, thumb on your chin as he pushed slightly against your skin. He was distantly aware that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so afraid about leaning in to kiss a woman, and went in to try and give you back the second he lost, mouth finding yours the exact way every bone in his body knew he should’ve the first time. 

You made a startled sound against him before the entirety of you melted. His mouth worked against yours, thoroughly, making sure not to fumble it twice. His thumb stayed on your chin, tilting your face the half-degree he wanted it, and when your lips parted on half a breath, his entire upper body leaned in to follow it, deepening it. 

It was you who moved first. Of course, it was you, always you. You followed it, the kiss pulling you up and forward, your knee coming over his thigh, and then you were settling over him. Jack let out the throatiest of a chuckle, still intent on keeping your mouth, as your hands slid from the front of his scrubs to his jaw. 

Jack’s hands caught yours on instinct — one at your waist, one at your hip — steadying you down to him, your hips still slightly in the air like you weren’t sure you could close the last of the distance, your weight held in the suspended air in the ache of almost, thighs braced on either side of his. 

Jack pulled back just enough to look at you, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch, dragging his eyes up the length of you poised over him. He blew out a short breath, the corners of his lips kicking up as his palm glided up and down on the side of your waist, catching onto your tank top on accident to show a sliver of skin at your lip — warm, soft, the band of your shorts sitting low — and he watched his own hand do it before he dragged his eyes back to your face.

“Nothing halfway with you, huh?” he said, the words practically coming out from his chest. His thumb rested against that bared sliver of you. “Climbing me at my work.”

You lowered your head, and your nose grazed against his. “You started it.”

“I did?”

“You closed the blinds.”

He let out a surprised laugh. “I can promise you I didn’t expect this when I did that.” 

Your lips ghosted over his for a second, and his chest swelled at the sight of you trying to tamp down the sweetest smile. “Problem?” 

“No.” The words came out immediately, because apparently somewhere in him, there was still something insatiable and teenage that had lurched up at the sight of you. “No. No problem.”

His hand spread flat and warm against the small of your back, fingers slipping under the hem of the top to your warm skin there, and he drew you down, finally, that last suspended inch collapsing as he settled your weight flush over him. 

He had to pinch his eyes shut a second, then open them again to take in the whole sight of you. His hand came up to your jaw. The light caught the loose hair at your temple, the bare line of your shoulder where the strap had slipped. Your mouth was full and flushed from his, parted slightly, your breath coming. The skin under his hand at your back was hot to the touch, and he spread his fingers wider against it just to feel more of it. 

You were trying not to smile. Your lip caught between your teeth, the corners pulling anyway. 

His finger perched against your jaw moved to your lips, dragging slowly across the lower one, parting it under the pad of his thumb. He watched it give, your breath warm against his skin. 

Your eyes flicked up to his as your lip closed around the first knuckle, your tongue hesitantly pressing flat against the pad, the wet heat of it catching him so completely off guard that the air went out of him in a rough exhale. His other hand fisted at the small of your back, turning over to gather the hem of your tank in his grip. 

“Oh.” His eyes had dropped to your mouth and fixed there, his jaw slack as his head cocked to the side. “Pretty.” 

His gaze was locked on the sight of his thumb disappearing past your lips, no hesitation in it, that same no-halfway boldness turned filthy and sweet all at once. The tired man in him went down all at once. 

His thumb dragged free, catching on your bottom lip and tugging it down before it slipped loose. His chest heaved harder now under the warm weight of you. 

“Where’d that come from?” he muttered gruffly, almost to himself, thumb pressing the slick of your own lip back against you. His palm moved to cradle your face, tapping your cheek softly once. “Can’t be doing things like that here, doll. I’m on call.” 

“Then don’t make it so easy.” Your lips brushed his thumb, then you moved down to press your mouth to the line of his jaw, the stubble catching your lips, then lower to the warm of his throat.

“You callin’ me easy?” he said through a chuckle, letting his head tip back. You scraped your teeth over the cord of his neck and felt the whole of him go tight underneath you, his fingers flexing hard into the bare skin of your back. 

“Alright.” His voice had dropped to stone. “You’ve had your fun.. No more of that,” he said, though made no move to stop you.

You peppered a line of pecks down his throat down to where his collar had started, your lips dragging over the jut of his collarbone through the thin cotton. He swallowed. One of your hands slid up to the back of your neck, fingers pushing into the soft gray at his nape, scratching light, and the other flattened over his chest, over the steady-then-not rhythm, fisting slow in the fabric just to feel him breathe wrong because of you.

You sat back an inch to look at him. His head was still tipped back against the couch, his throat bared where you’d left it momentarily pink and glossy, his eyes half-lidded. His hands had gone heavy and possessive at your hips, giving up pretending he wanted them anywhere else, you anywhere else.

You dragged your thumb over his bottom lip, watched it give, the same way he did to you. 

“Can I ask you something?” you asked, quietly, your hips settling more firmly into his lap. 

“Mm.” His hands spread wide, settling you down harder against him. “My social security number is — ”

You laughed. 

“Two-two-six — ”

“Jack — ” You swatted at his chest, the seriousness dissolving into something giddier. “I’m being serious. Stop.” 

“Okay, okay.” The corners of his mouth lifted up, and his hands squeezed slightly at your hips. He pulled his head up off the couch to meet your eyes properly. “Shoot. Doubt I could stop you.” 

“Are you seeing anyone?”

He let the question sit, humming. His thumbs moved idly at your hips, head tilting against the couch like the question required any real thought. “There’s a few women,” he said, lowering his voice as he looked at you, like he was letting you in on a secret. “There’s a nice lady who brings me fruit baskets.”

Your hand, on the flat of his chest, slid up slow to his throat and he kept talking like he didn’t notice.

“ — there’s this nurse on days who keeps leaving me her number at the station — ”

You leaned in and closed your teeth slightly on his earlobe. He let out a short laugh, one that was dragged out of him, his head tipped to give more of it to you without permission. 

“Alright. Okay,” he said as your nose dragged the line of his jaw. “Stop doin’ that. I don’t wanna explain teeth marks to the whole floor.” 

Your hips set firmer into his lap. “Jack,” you warned. “I can’t do this if you’re seeing fifty other women.” 

He sobered a degree, his thumb going still at your waist, his eyes coming up to actually hold yours. The joke drained out of his face as he realised the edge of seriousness you tried to tamp down, and he momentarily short-circuited at how it was even possible for you to wonder. 

“Hey.” His hand came up off your hip, pushed the hair back from your face and stayed there, cradling. “Until five minutes ago, there were zero women. Forget fifty.” 

Your only response to that was a smile and your cheek leaning further against his palm. He let his thumb move once across his cheekbone, watching the way your cheek turned into his hand. Your eyes drifted half-shut. There was a speck of dried highlighter ink on the side of your finger where it curled against his throat. The strap of your top had slid off your shoulder again; he looked at all of you and stopped bothering to pretend, even to himself, that he was looking at anything other than the only thing in the room he wanted.

“What about you? You seein’ anyone?” His thumb stayed where it was, but his voice had gone quieter. “‘Cause I’ve seen people bring you in. And I never liked one of ‘em.”

You huffed a small laugh, your nose grazing his. “Jealous, Doctor?” 

“Yeah.” He watched the laugh stall on your face at how easy he gave it up. “If there is, he should be worried. I’d like to take you on a nice date to change that.” 

“Ohhhh,” you drawled through a laugh. “There’s no one, but I won’t say no to the date.”

“Then you’ve got yourself one, doll.” He kissed you on it — short, sure, his hand still cradling your face — sealing the thing as the corner of his mouth caught yours before he pulled back. He let his forehead rest against yours for a second and breathed you in. 

Then, with a short groan, he tipped his head back off of yours. 

“I gotta get back out there.” His thumb was still moving at your jaw, clearly working against the very thing he was saying. “My work ethic’s going wrong and my residents might actually report me.” 

Then, his hands found your waist and he lifted you off, setting you off his lap and onto the cushion beside him where the entire thing had started. You landed with a small affronted sound, your hand fisting in his collar a beat longer before he had to let it go. 

You flopped back into the cushion where he’d deposited you, one hand pressed flat to your chest, the picture of wounded. “I guess it’s true what they say about old men. They use you. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” 

He stood up and scrubbed his palm down his face like he could wipe the last ten minutes off it before he had to walk out and be a doctor again. He could still feel the heat sitting at the back of his neck and even though he’d tried to scrub your gloss off, he was sure there was a remnant somewhere the worst possible person would notice. 

“Yup, got exactly what I wanted. Thank you, ma’am.” His hand came down to rest at the top of your head and gave it a slow, condescending pat, ruffling the wreck of your hair worse than it already was. “I’m a terrible man. You’re welcome to stay here while I go be one somewhere else.” 

He made himself step back and snagged his pen off the table, the badge, the small armor of the job clipping back into place piece-by-piece. The whole time his eyes kept catching on you, sprawled and rumpled where he’d set you down, looking up at him like the night had gone exactly where it was supposed to. He’d seen this room a thousand nights. He’d never once not wanted to leave it. 

“Mm. Gotta go home. S’almost three,” you mumbled. “And you get off at seven.” 

“I do.”

“So.” You pushed yourself off the cushion, slow, gathering your hair back off your face and pushing up your strap, putting yourself back together piece by piece the same way he was, the night closing in on both ends. “I’ll go and let you be a doctor. You’ve been very neglectful.” 

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He watched you reach for your textbook, your highlighter, the flashcards, and sweep it all back into your bag, feeling the small stupid pull of not wanting the room to empty out. 

He stepped in before you finished, catching your jaw, tilting your face up to kiss you once more. You went still under it, the bag forgotten halfway zipped, your hand coming up to rest light on his chest. He pulled back an inch to look at you.

“Text me when you get home,” he said, thumb dragging along your jaw. 

You chuckled, brows pulling in. “It’s a ten minute drive.”

The first date was a restaurant. It was lovely and exactly what you'd expected. You'd gone home that night with a warm feeling in your chest and the taste of pasta, thinking that this was nice and exactly what dating Jack Abbot would be like.

The second date, he took you to the fair, like you were teenagers. He took you on the Ferris wheel and everything. You'd looked out over the lights spread and felt like you were fifteen again.

You'd accidentally let it slip during that first restaurant date that the restaurant date had been your first date ever. You'd spent your entire adolescence and young adulthood with your nose buried in books, skipping parties to study, missing social milestones because there was always another exam.

He hadn't reacted much at the time, while you'd been mortified, certain you'd just revealed yourself to be hopelessly inexperienced and naive, but he'd simply talked about his first very awkward date and the moment had passed.

But the fair came next and you wondered, watching him win you a stuffed animal, if he was deliberately giving you the experiences you'd missed.

On your third date he took you to play Mini golf. You were approximately ninety percent sure he only chose it so he could get close to you. He'd asked you a couple days beforehand if you'd ever golfed before, and you'd shaken your head no, and he'd seemed delighted.

And he did teach you. Oh, he taught you thoroughly. He got all close to you, standing behind you to adjust your grip on the club, his chest pressing against your back, his hands warm over yours as he guided your swing. You were approximately ninety percent sure he knew exactly what he was doing. The other ten percent was just you being generous.

After the golf, he'd gotten you ice cream from a little stand near the park, and you'd walked together. Your shoulder kept bumping against his arm as you walked, and neither of you made any effort to create more space between you. It made you feel giddy to see him.

Giddy. A word you hadn't used to describe your emotional state since you were a child.

And you couldn't help but appreciate him and his thoughtfulness so much.

You'd been in a lull for so long. Years and years of studying, studying, studying, all your life really, missing out on everything and now you were finally a resident.

And you still had nothing.

Well, not nothing. You had your job and your career, but in terms of relationships and romance there was nothing until Jack.

You'd flirted with him, then and there, but you hadn't thought much of it at first. You didn't think much of the instances where he'd complimented your hairstyles or your glittery pens. Really anything that made you you, he seemed to notice and appreciate.

And now here you were in his apartment standing in his kitchen with flour dusted across your forearms and dough in front of you.

"I can't get the dough flat," you complained, looking down at your sad lump of flour and water. He grinned, but made absolutely no move to help you. You looked at his perfect dough and you sighed. "Why are you good at everything?"

His grin widened, a comment ready on the tip of his tongue and you got flustered immediately. "Oh, shut up," you mumbled, turning your attention very deliberately back to your dough so you wouldn't have to look at his smug face anymore.

"Didn't say anything," he said, and you could hear the grin in his voice even without seeing it.

Before you knew it, he'd left his pizza abandoned, coming around to help you with yours. You moved aside and he took your place in front of your sad little lump of dough.

"You have to add lots of flour so it won't stick to the counter," he explained, sounding like the teacher he usually was in the ER.

You were absolutely not listening to a single word he said.

You were straight up staring at his face watching him with so much fondness that would have been embarrassing if you'd had any self awareness left to be embarrassed. His silver hair flopped a bit as he pressed the dough back onto the counter and it looked so endlessly soft. You really, really wanted to touch it and find out if it was as soft as it looked or if it was coarser than you expected.

It was so curly too. You liked curly hair or maybe you just liked his curly hair. You weren't entirely sure anymore where the general preference ended and the Jack specific obsession began.

And his stubble. You wondered how scratchy it was. If you ran your fingers across it, would it hurt you? Would it be rough and abrasive against your skin? And if it was, if it left your fingertips tingling and sensitive, would he kiss it better?

You were officially going insane. You needed to be studied. You needed to be written up in a medical journal as a case study in acute romantic fixation.

There were light freckles across his face too. They had probably been darker when he was younger and had faded over the years.

You wanted to lean in and count every single freckle. You wondered where else he had freckles. If his shoulders were dusted with them. If his back was full of them. You wondered if any of them were traceable, if you could drag your fingertip from one to the next connecting them like stars in the sky. Orion on his shoulder blade. The Big Dipper across his collarbone. Cassiopeia scattered down his spine.

Would he like that? If you traced his freckles like constellations? Would he lie still for you? Would he hum gently if you did it and lean into your hands?

You wondered a lot of things, frankly an alarming number of things for someone who was supposed to be learning how to flatten pizza dough from their date ( slash boss ).

And you didn't hear anything. Your auditory processing had apparently been completely hijacked by your visual processing, which was currently fully occupied with memorizing every single detail of Jack's face.

His head tilted gently as he looked at you. "Sweetheart?"

He looked concerned and you figured you hadn't given him lots of opportunities to see what you looked like lovesick.

You weren't like Shen, who had a date every other weekend and always came back to the hospital on Monday morning bragging about how amazing his girlfriend was. Everyone knew lovesick Shen. It was practically his default setting at this point. The other residents teased him about it relentlessly, and he took it with good humor because he was too happy to be embarrassed.

But you'd never ever been in love. The only thing you dreamed about on a regular basis was your bed and tiramisu sometimes.

It felt like you were falling, just as long as Alice did in Alice in Wonderland when she went down the rabbit hole. And People did say you had an Alice in Wonderland quality about you, a different way of thinking when it came to approaching patients. It was sweet when they said it and it made you feel special.

"Yeah?" you asked, as if you hadn't just taken an extended mental vacation to a fantasy land where you were tracing constellations on his bare skin.

"Kinda just spaced out there," he said softly. His eyes swept over your face, checking to see if you were okay. "Everything good?" he asked, and you watched him resist the urge to touch you because his hands were covered in dough and flour.

"Yeah," your voice coming out a bit shaky despite your best efforts. "Sorry. I think I kinda just suck at this."

You attributed your mental absence to disappointment in yourself rather than the actual cause. It was believable. Jack knew you were the type of person who sometimes fell apart whenever she was disappointed in herself. He'd seen you pick apart everything you'd done wrong while ignoring everything you'd done right at work.

"You don't suck at this," he said gently. He moved away then, stepping back to give you space to work again. "I've done this a hundred times and it's your first time," he said, wiping his flour covered hands on a kitchen towel. "It's okay to not be good on your first try," he added softly, and there was something in the way he said it that made you think he wasn't just talking about pizza dough anymore.

"And," he continued, and his voice took on a lighter tone, " it gives us a chance to do this many, many times."

Your lips lifted into a smile. "Guess so," you said softly, and you couldn't quite keep the pleased little lilt out of your voice.

Jack smiled back at you, seemingly relieved that you were excited about spending time together as much as he was.

The date continued with lots of giggles and chattering. You got so caught up in talking that you completely forgot about the pizzas. They were just laying out on the counter, instead of being in the oven where they belonged.

You were leaning on one side of the counter, your elbows propped on the surface in a way that would have made your mother tell you to stand up straight, and he was on the other side. You sipped on your drink, the glass cool against your fingers. Both of you had chosen not to drink any alcoholic beverages.

You'd never had this before and you wanted to feel every single nerve wracking and heart pounding feeling about being in the same kitchen as the guy you liked. You wanted to remember every single detail.

And so did he. He wanted to remember everything about you and your sweet and shy demeanor.

You giggled as he recounted what had happened in his math class once, your hand came up to cover your mouth and he wanted to hear that sound for the rest of his life.

After a while, you glanced at the pizzas. "I think we were supposed to put those in the oven," you smiled as you set your soda aside on the counter. The condensation from the glass left a wet ring on the surface, and you wiped it away with your sleeve.

Jack glanced at the pizzas, following your gaze to the forgotten food, and smiled. He'd hoped it would take you longer to notice that you hadn't put them in the oven. The longer you didn't notice, the longer he got to spend time with you.

He grabbed them and slid them into the oven. He set the timer because you'd both probably forget about them again if he didn't.

Once he did, he led you to his couch. You settled down shyly at the edge. Your posture was stiff, your hands folded in your lap, your feet planted firmly on the floor.

"So," Jack murmured, settling down next to you on the couch but keeping his distance. "D'you have any embarrassing high school memories?" he angled his body slightly toward you, one arm draped across the back of the couch.

"All of it?" you smiled at him. Your socked feet moved restlessly on his carpet.

"Anything specific?" he pressed gently. He wanted to know everything and anything about you.

He could never get enough of you. Every day he looked forward to seeing you, excited to discover something new about you. It was one of the great pleasures of his life now. Whether it was a small detail about how you'd treat an injured child or how you'd hold your pen. Everything about you was interesting to him.

You thought about his question, sifting through your memories of high school, trying to find something worth sharing. You'd been so focused on your studies that moments that seemed to define other people's teenage years had mostly passed you by or maybe they'd happened and you just hadn't noticed, too buried in textbooks to realize you were supposed to be mortified.

"Don't think so," you said, embarrassment flickering across your face before you looked down at your hands in your lap. You felt guilty for not being interesting enough for him.

But he shook his head. "Lucky you."

And just like that, he made you comfortable immediately again. It was a gift he had, this ability to smooth over your awkwardness without making you feel self conscious about having been awkward in the first place.

You knew this sucked. You knew, on some level, that you were being quiet and not at all the kind of fun date that someone like Jack deserved. You were young, but wasn't this supposed to be the time to have a bunch of things to tell? Weren't you supposed to have stories? Weren't you supposed to rave about the things you planned on doing and the crazy things you'd experienced?

It felt weird to tell Jack how boring you'd been all your life. How you'd spent your weekends in libraries. How your biggest adventure in college had been pulling an all nighter to finish a research paper. It made you feel inadequate, like you were letting him down by being exactly who you were.

And it was hard to make up for it in the moment. You couldn't suddenly become interesting just because you wanted to be.

You wanted to apologize for it, but then again, you thought you might just make it worse if you pointed out how shy you were being. Maybe it was better to pretend you were totally relaxed and not at all spiraling about whether you were interesting enough for him.

You couldn't possibly know how much he was adoring your shy demeanor. You couldn't see inside his head, couldn't witness the way his heart swelled every time you ducked your head or stumbled over your words or smiled that embarrassed little smile. You had no idea that he was sitting there thanking the universe that he was able to provoke a reaction from you, that your shyness wasn't indifference but the exact opposite, proof that you cared enough to be nervous.

But then he got something. He asked you about your favorite class and your eyes lit up. You started talking about your English teacher and you went on and on.

You wouldn't stop raving about her. It was so endearing and he didn't see that happen often. At the ER, you were careful. Every word that came out of your mouth always seemed so thoughtfully considered.

He enjoyed it so much that he took the chance to scoot closer on the couch until his knee was almost touching yours.

And you barely noticed. Instead, you turned more toward him, your knees lifting onto the couch cushion and then your knee was pressing against his thigh. His eyelashes fluttered slightly at that, delighted to finally receive your sweet touch.

He admired you with a smile, asking a couple questions here and there that kept you talking without interrupting your flow. He was so gentle about it so careful to not interrupt you.

After a while, you stopped rambling and smiled at him and it seemed like you'd finally relaxed.

Every day it always took him a bit to open you up again. It was like an eggshell that you built around yourself every week and he always had to break it again. You'd arrive at work slightly distant, and he'd spend the first part of the shift chipping away at your shell with small talk and gentle teasing. To his luck, the shell got thinner every week. What used to take an entire shift now took an hour. What used to take an hour now took minutes.

And now, tonight, it seemed he had it all open. Shell pieces scattered across the floor of his living room.

You smiled at him, and he smiled back, and for a moment neither of you said anything at all.

He saw your eyes flicker down to his lips and he saw the way you seemed almost embarrassed for doing it in the first place and he knew that you knew that he'd noticed.

He figured he'd help out. He'd kiss you and spare you the agonizing decision of whether or not to kiss him. His eyes flickered down to your lips. Your lips were still glossy despite having drunk your soda. He'd noticed your lip gloss earlier and had spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it during work. It made your lips look soft. It made him wonder what they'd feel like against his.

His eyes flickered back up, meeting yours, and he held your gaze for a long moment and then he leaned in. One arm braced against the side of the couch as he closed the space between you inch by inch. You could probably feel his breath on your face now.

It was a testament to your shyness truly that it took you ages to do anything.

Jack had his nose touch yours before you pulled back, your eyes going wide with something that looked an awful lot like panic. He pulled back as well. His hands came up and he created as much distance as he could without actually leaving the couch.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said softly, letting you know he wasn't upset, because he knew it would be your first thought. "Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

He felt a sensation in his chest he hadn't felt in decades, not since he was oh so young and still learning that love sometimes meant getting hurt.

God, he'd been so certain that you wanted this too, but maybe he'd misread everything. Maybe he was just an old man making a fool of himself over a girl who was too polite to tell him she wasn't interested.

"No, you're fine," you said quietly.

"I'm sorry," he said again, because he didn't know what else to say. "You don't have to stay if I made you uncomfortable." He tried to catch your gaze as you looked away, tried to find some sign in your expression that would tell him what you were feeling.

But you shook your head, biting your lip, your teeth pressing into the soft flesh until it hurt. "No, it's fine," you whispered.

Jack stared at you and the way you avoided his eyes. He watched the way your gaze skittered around the room. You were pulling back into yourself, the shell reconstructing itself around you.

"Sweetheart," he said softly, his voice carrying all the tenderness he felt and all the regret he couldn't quite express, "it really would be fine if you left. I won't be upset."

He was worried your shyness was preventing you from telling him the truth, that you were too polite to admit that he'd made you uncomfortable in his home.

You met his eyes finally and it just came out of you. "Please don't judge me."

"I'm not judging you for anything, sweetheart," Jack said softly. "If you want, we'll just ignore everything that happened in the last five minutes."

As he spoke, he reached out very carefully. His fingers found your hand, where you had been biting your nails and guided it away from your mouth. You dropped your hand into your lap, squeezing your eyes shut for a moment and then you blurted it out.

"I've never kissed anyone before."

And Jack didn't say "it's fine" as if your inexperience was some mistake that needed forgiving. Instead he just smiled softly.

"Makes me crowding you like this a bit worse," he grinned, gesturing vaguely at the space between you.

You stared at him for a second, startled by his casual reaction, but then you smiled . "No, you're fine," you said absolutely delighted.

You traced a finger across your thigh for a second, back and forth, back and forth and then you looked up again. You couldn't imagine the last time he'd been told by his date that she had no experience dating whatsoever, but his reaction was perfect. He was watching you with a careful expression, clearly still concerned for you.

You finally made the decision to speak and he smiled gently as if saying go ahead.

"I'm fine with you kissing me," you said quietly. "I just wanted to let you know in case—" you stuttered for a second. "In case I'm not as good. But I don't mind if you want to kiss me," you added softly, and even as the words left your mouth you felt regret creeping into your voice.

You were terrified that this would erase his entire urge to ever want to press his lips against your pretty ones.

You were dead wrong.

He still wanted you like before. He didn't think anything of your confession besides maybe that he should be gentler with you when approaching everything touching.

"I want to kiss you," he said softly. "But I won't do that until you're ready."

And then he reached out, fingers brushing against your temple, and he pushed your hair behind your ear which made you smile. He let his thumb rest on your cheekbone for a second, then he dropped his hand, letting it fall back to his lap.

"I am ready. I want it to be you." And then, because you knew him you added, "I've thought about it before." You knew he'd want to make absolutely certain that this wasn't a spur of the moment decision and that you weren't just saying what you thought he wanted to hear, because you felt bad.

"You've thought about it?" he asked and a grin spread across his face.

"Very funny," you mumbled, looking down at your lap, but you couldn't keep the smile off your face.

"No, no, I'm flattered," he grinned, clearly happy to finally be teasing you gently again.

You shot him a look. "Don't act like you haven't either."

His eyebrows shot up, surprised at your bold reply, but it made him laugh. "No, you're right. I have."

Once you both stopped smiling like two lovesick idiots you asked the question. "So? Will you?"

He stared at you for a while, his head tilted slightly to one side. And you let him, in fact, you appreciated it a lot. It was nice to know that he wasn't just rushing to it and that your first kiss was just as important to him as it was to you.

"You're sure?" he asked once again, eyes scanning your face for any sign of hesitation.

You shot him a look, that said you'd made your decision and you needed him to trust that you knew your own mind.

"Okay, okay," he smiled, a lopsided smile that tugged up one corner of his mouth more than the other.

You saw his eyes flicker away for a second and it was a sweet realization to recognize what it meant. He was nervous about kissing you.

"You'll have to guide me through it." you said softly.

"I can do that," he said. He had guided you through so many procedures and so many difficult conversations with patients. You knew his teaching would be the best and you knew he would take care of you through this too.

"Can I sit in your lap? I think that's most ideal for me."

Your eyebrows were furrowed slightly as you spoke as if this was a medical procedure you were planning out. He assumed that's why you weren't as shy about asking. To you this was like the ER, something that needed to happen in the most perfect way possible.

Jack stared at you. He wanted to say something about how you were supposed to relax and how you shouldn't approach it the way you were right now, but he figured that if this way of thinking relaxed you, who was he to stop it?

"Make yourself comfortable," he said instead, and he laid back against the couch back, his shoulders settling against the cushions, his arms resting loosely at his sides.

You swung one leg over his body and then the other, settling down with your thighs on either side of his hips, your knees pressing into the couch cushions on either side of him.

"Okay?" you asked quietly.

"More than okay," he said, and the absolute happiness in his voice made you laugh.

He sat up a bit, careful not to have you fall off. His hands hovered near your hips and he looked at you for a second, and you could see the effort it took for him to focus on your face and not on the fact that you were in his lap.

"First," he said softly, and his voice took on that teacher tone you knew so well. "If you feel uncomfortable at any point, you just get off my lap and stop everything." His eyes were serious now. "No matter what's happening, you're allowed to push me off." He paused, making sure you understood. "Got it?"

You nodded, but he didn't accept it.

"I prefer words, sweetheart," he said softly.

You shot him a look, a little flash of exasperation mixed with affection, but he was serious. He knew you were a shy person and he wasn't going to just take your expression for an answer. He needed to know that you could use your voice and that your shyness wouldn't prevent you from speaking up if something felt wrong.

"Got it," you added, once you realized why he wanted words.

"Okay, good," he said gently. "Second," he continued, and his voice lightened, took on a gentler quality that made your shoulders drop slightly from where they'd been tensed up near your ears, "this is supposed to be fun."

He allowed himself to touch you now, finally. He reached up and brushed hair out of your face. His fingers were warm against your temple and you tilted your head further down, silently asking for more. And he happily complied, both hands coming up to your face now, his fingers threading through your hair, brushing it back completely from your face.

You got closer to him on his lap as he worked. You smelled nice. Vanilla perfume and it made him want to lean in closer and breathe deeper. He wondered if your lip gloss was vanilla too. Guess he was about to find out.

"Is it fun?" you whispered quietly. Your heart was pounding and your palms were sweating and fun felt like a very distant concept. "I'm scared."

"That's okay. I was too." he said gently.

But you shook your head as you glanced down at his lap, and your fingers found his button up shirt. You started picking at one of the buttons, flicking it open and closed open and closed.

"You were a kid then, probably," your eyes still fixed on the button. "I'm an adult. I'm not supposed to be this nervous. I'm not even supposed to be in this position." There they were. Your insecurities all out in the open.

He shook his head, his hands wandering up to your waist, and he brushed up and down your sides. "You're allowed to be nervous and so what?" He shrugged. "So you've never kissed anyone before. No big deal."

He said it with such a convincing tone that you couldn't help but smile. He made it sound so simple and you really really liked that.

"No big deal," you repeated and he squeezed your waist in agreement.

"Now what?" you asked softly, and despite the nerves still fluttering in your stomach, there was eagerness in your voice now too.

"The big moment," he said, sitting up more properly, straightening his spine against the couch back. He emphasized the words in such a silly tone that it made you giggle. Exactly his goal.

He lifted his hand and tilted your head lightly, his palm warm against your jaw as his thumb came to rest on your cheekbone. "So we don't bump noses," he mumbled. You smiled nervously, your lips curving up despite the butterflies doing acrobatics in your stomach.

He stared at you gently, his hazel eyes searching your face one last time, giving you one final chance to change your mind. "You're sure?" he whispered. You nodded, and this time he accepted it because he'd already established that you could use your words if you needed to.

"Very," you said softly, and your eyes glanced down at his lips.

"You want me to lean in, or d'you wanna take the first step?" he asked softly, his thumb still resting gently against your cheekbone.

He'd never had to guide anyone through a kiss before. He wasn't sure how much exactly to guide, how much instruction was helpful versus overwhelming or how much space to give you versus how much to lead.

"Can you?" you whispered.

"Yeah, of course," his voice coming out a little rougher. "You can put your hands on my neck," he said quietly. He reached forward gently, his fingers encircling your wrists with the lightest touch, and guided your hands up to the sides of his neck. He placed them there himself, positioning your palms against the warm skin just above his collar. His heart was racing and you felt it.

"You're warm," you blurted out. It was such a random thing to say, of course he was warm, he was a living breathing human being with blood circulating through his body.

He laughed and it made his shoulders shake slightly beneath your hands. "Not warm, just blushing, honey," he mumbled and the butterflies in your stomach multiplied.

You let out a sound between a scoff and a laugh, because the idea of Jack Abbot blushing because of you was both ridiculous and wonderful.

"I've got the prettiest girl in my lap and she wants to kiss me," he said, aware you didn't believe he was flustered. "I've got more than enough reasons to be blushing."

The words made you smile again. It was like your body was incapable of not being full of joy when you were near him.

You brushed gently under his jaw and his eyelashes fluttered at the touch and then your hand wandered to the back of his head, your fingers threading into his hair. His hair was just as soft as you thought it would be.

"Soft," you whispered.

He gave you a shy smile. "Reminds me of someone," he mumbled, and the comparison was so random that it made you smile again.

"I'm going to kiss you now, yeah?" he whispered, and it wasn't really a question anymore.

You nodded, your hands still tangled in his hair, your heart pounding so hard you were sure he could hear it. His breath hit your lips first and he waited, pausing with his lips just a breath away from yours, looking at you with those hazel eyes. Do you still want this?

He saw you nod softly and then he pressed his lips against yours. It was softer than you'd imagined. His mouth was really warm and gentle. You immediately tightened your hands in his locks, because the feeling of his mouth on yours was making your head spin and your thoughts scatter. He squeezed your waist gently in response.

You weren't sure what to do. The mechanics of kissing had always seemed straightforward in theory, but now that you were actually doing it, you found yourself second guessing everything. Were you supposed to move your lips? How much pressure was too much? You decided to just press back a bit, because you were supposed to do that, right?

And based on his hum, it seemed you were right.

His hands traveled up from your waist, sliding slowly up your back until they reached your neck. His fingers pressed against the back of it, pulling you closer.

It didn't last long and then he pulled back, just far enough to look at you, his nose still almost brushing yours.

His hand came up to brush the hair that had fallen down back in your face away from your face. His fingers were gentle as they swept across your forehead, tucking strands behind your ear.

"How was that?" he asked softly, and his voice was a little rougher around the edges. He seemed nervous and worried. He was hoping he'd made it good for you.

Your eyes, which had been staring at his lips the entire time he was talking, finally lifted to meet his. It took effort to drag your gaze away from his mouth that had just been pressed against yours.

"Nice," you whispered, and the word felt inadequate for what you were actually feeling. "Really nice." You paused, and then a disbelieving sound escaped your lips. "I just had my first kiss."

You pressed your fingers to your own lips and a smile spread across your face.

He smiled back, and the relief that flooded his veins was visible. He'd given you your first kiss and he hadn't somehow ruined it or made it weird or disappointed you.

"Yeah, you did," he said and he watched you press your fingers to your lips with an expression of pure adoration. "Did you like it?"

You nodded, your fingers still resting against your mouth. "Yeah."

And then you looked at him, hesitating for just a moment. "Did you?" you asked nervously.

"Very much so, sweetheart," he mumbled, and the words came out slightly slurred with affection. He was already staring back at your lips. He couldn't help it. One kiss had not been nearly enough for him.

You were already thinking the same thing.

"Can we kiss more?" you asked, and your fingers were brushing through the curls at the nape of his neck, playing with the soft silver strands, making his eyelids droop with pleasure.

"Please," he mumbled, and he didn't bother to hide his desperation whatsoever.

He kissed you again, but this time when his mouth met yours, his lips captured your bottom one, drawing it gently between his own in a way that was decidedly more than the soft press of lips you'd experienced the first time. It was a proper kiss.

You pulled back, your eyes going wide. You stared at him, and he stared back at you with heavy lidded eyes, his lips still slightly parted from where they'd just been pressed against yours.

"You can do the same," he mumbled quietly, almost too lovesick to explain it further in detail.

You leaned back in, pressing your mouth to his, and this time you were the one who captured his bottom lip. It was a little clumsy, your inexperience showing in the way you fumbled slightly with the angle. But it was easy once you started doing it and nice. His lip was soft between yours and the way he responded to your effort made your stomach flip.

He hummed again. It was sweet to know that Jack Abbot hummed during kisses.

That went on for ages or maybe it just felt like ages. What you knew for certain was that you spent a long time in his lap, exchanging kisses that ranged from soft and sweet to something a little deeper. He tried to stop you for a second, pulling back just far enough to check in, but you shook your head.

You were having fun. He was right. He'd told you this was supposed to be fun, and he'd been right all along. Kissing Jack Abbot was the most fun you'd ever had in your entire life.

You pulled back after a while, absolutely shining. Your eyes were bright and your lips slightly swollen. You were undeniably happy and that made Jack's heart squeeze with happiness.

Jack was more dazed as he stared at you. His breathing was uneven and his hair was chaotic from where your fingers had been tangling in it, but he looked just as happy as you.

"You taste like vanilla," he mumbled as he licked his lips.

"My lip gloss is vanilla," you smiled, confirming the suspicion he'd had earlier when he'd first caught the scent of your perfume. Vanilla perfume and vanilla lip gloss. You were vanilla all the way through, sweet and warm and comforting, and he couldn't get enough of it.

"Tasty," he mumbled and that made you laugh. He looked pleased with himself at the sound.

Your hands let the soft strands of his hair slip through your fingers one more time, before moving around to the front. Your fingertips traced along his jawline, feeling his stubble. You brushed across his cheeks softly that was as soothing for you as it was for him.

Jack simply adored you with his big hazel eyes. His eyes tracked your face with love. Being adored by you was the best feeling he'd experienced in longer than he could remember.

You kept going for ages, but eventually he wrapped his fingers around yours and pulled them away from his face. "Careful," he mumbled. "You're about to get beard burn."

He glanced down at your fingertips, and sure enough, they were slightly red from all the attention you'd been giving his stubble. He shot you a disappointed look, as if it was your fault his beard was razor sharp.

But then he pressed a kiss to your fingers anyway. The gesture was so romantic, that it made you want to cry. He kissed each fingertip and you smiled the entire time.

It didn't stop you, though. The moment he dropped your fingers, you reached up again. You found his light freckles and started connecting them like constellations.

“How about you don’t tell anyone, and you do the driving?” you propositioned, flashing the man a faux-innocent look from over the top of the rim as you brought the cup to your mouth. The fresh brew singed the tip of your tongue a bit, just enough to jerk your exhausted mind awake.

“Fine…” Jack caved with a slow huff; his first good breath all day. His following words came out slightly muffled as he leaned forward to press a fleeting kiss to your temple before walking on by you. “How much we got left on our sentence, huh? An hour? Two?”

“Sixty-four minutes, but… Who’s counting?”

“Well, that’s plenty of time for something fun to happen.” Jack turned in the doorway to flash you a knowing grin that you met with a tired scowl.

“Don’t jinx it,” you called to his retreating figure.

You’ve given enough of yourself for one night, you think; and after a rather urgent thoracotomy that nearly killed both the patient and you (though mostly in the metaphorical sense), you feel like you’re owed the small break. Now that the day shift is trickling slowly in, you’ve decided to stay hidden until somebody absolutely needs you.

You sink deeper and deeper into the plastic chair, willing yourself into invisibility, until a baby’s cry shatters the sacred quiet. 

The high-pitched whine cuts through everything — your heavy exhaustion, your simmering headache, and the steady hum of the emergency department you’ve learned to tune out over the years. You drag yourself from your seat with a distant groan in the pit of your throat, ‘cause you know you won’t be able to relax until you know someone else has got it handled. 

You trudge to the door and take a peek down the hallway, if only to say that you did, and find the long corridor bustling with an energy much livelier than you are. When the crowd parts, you spot Dana walking your way with something tiny swaddled in her arms — much too small to be as loud as it is now.

Her eyes light up at the sight of you.

“Dr. Abbot— Just the person I was looking for!” the older woman croons in her usual gritty monotone, with a knowing smile sitting crooked on her mouth. “We got a baby Jane Doe, ditched in the bathroom.”

Your features crumple under the weight of your exhaustion. Your head tips back to groan a long and theatrical, “No…” though your sneakers scuff the floor as you trudge her way despite yourself. “I only have one hour left on my shift— Please don’t make me do anything else.”

“Well, I also got a central line placement in Central 13,” Dana deadpans. “You know, if you’d rather not waste time takin’ care of this perfectly nice baby.”

The swaddled thing fusses when it’s shifted in her hold. Your eyes flit from its scrunched face, round and wet with tears, to the wise look in Dana’s eyes. She grins at your obvious hesitation.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You sigh and step forward, like a martyr to the gallows. You trade the clipboard in your hand for the baby in Dana’s. She sets the thing gingerly in your hold — a warm and delicate weight between your arms, fitting just perfectly against your chest.

You had done a rotation in pediatrics before you settled on emergency medicine some years back. You know what it means to take care of a baby in the most technical sense, though none of it ever seemed to come totally naturally to you. 

You move like a robot accordingly, all tense and methodical. The whining baby settles into your hold with a gentle coo anyway, like a switch suddenly flipped.

“Well, look at that,” Dana hums with an arched brow of amusement. “You’re a natural.”

“You’re evil,” you deadpan.

“So they say,” the woman quips drily, patting you on the shoulder with a warm hand. “C’mon. Show my shadow how to do a proper pedes check-up— Dr. Abbot’s not as mean as she looks, Miss Emma, I promise.”

You flash the young, fresh-faced nurse a polite smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes before leading her towards the pediatric unit across the way. She’s made of bright smiles, braided chestnut curls, and sunshine incarnate as she scurries just behind you. She’s got a sparkling look in her dark eyes that you’re pretty sure you lost somewhere around your first week of residency.

You pass the workstation with a sort of tunnel vision zeroed in on the vibrantly painted pedes room. You nearly miss Jack standing there, leaning over the desk with his arms folded and his biceps straining against his scrub sleeves.

The silver-haired man briefs a newly arrived Robby on the morning cases and pauses at the sight of you — his whole entire life, cradling a much smaller one in her arms, with an exhausted frown on your face that you don’t bother trying to hide.

Robby traces the man’s suddenly distracted gaze over his shoulder. His brown eyes follow your form, lighting up at the sight of you the same way Jack’s do. 

“Well…” the older man croons. “Would you look at that—”

“Don’t,” you cut in sharply, and don’t bother slowing your stride as you pass them.

Jack’s quiet laughter follows you across the room. His eyes do, too, as he drinks up every ounce of you and the tiny thing swaddled in your arms. He finds himself getting drunk on a craving he didn’t know he had until that very moment.

Robby’s dark eyes squint. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re mentally siphoning through a bunch of baby names right now?”

“I always liked the name Milo for a boy. And Iris for a girl— but the missus is pretty allergic to pollen, so I’m not sure she’d go for that,” Jack answers without missing a beat, as though the thought had haunted his head at least once before. He only turns to face Robby again once you’re out of view. “What do you think?”

Robby just scoffs out a laugh.  “I think you’re screwed, brother.”

Baby Jane Doe is mostly stable, all things considered. 

Physically, she’s perfect. She had obviously spent the bulk of her little life being properly cared for. And, if you had to guess, she spent most of the time being held — if her immediate protest at being left in the warmer had anything to say about it. Her breathy whines fill the otherwise silent room as you perform a routine evaluation with practiced hands. You pay little attention to her annoyed cries and slip into teaching mode despite your palpable fatigue.

Emma hovers just behind you, with empathy glittering in her dark doe eyes. “Gosh,” she sighs. “How sad…”

“Eh,” you hum with a lazy shrug. Your gloved fingers lift the hem of her tiny white t-shirt to check for any bruising on her soft, pale skin, or for any other markers that might indicate signs of infection. You ramble on, half-distracted, “If you think about it, this baby got pretty lucky— If it really was abandoned, I mean. Better to be left here than with a family that can’t love it properly, right?”

Emma’s eyes widen at your cynicism. She can’t shake the feeling that you’re speaking from experience as she swallows hard and nods once in response. “Right…” 

The door swings open across the room. The noise of the E.D. swells for a brief moment, before muffling when it clicks shut again a second later. Robby steps in first, with Jack following close behind. The former stands on the opposite side of the warmer and keeps his suddenly softened gaze on the cooing baby before him.

Jack migrates to your side the same way he always does — never as close as he’d like to be while on the clock, but never more than a few inches away from you when he can be. 

“What are we thinkin’ here, Doc?” he asks.

“Normal pulse. Normal BP,” you rattle off with an air of indifference. “She’s well-hydrated, too. No visible sign of infection, either — though I guess we can’t rule out a benign virus just yet.”

“Do you think she qualifies for Safe Haven?” Emma wonders from Robby’s side.

You shake your head, lips softly jutted. “No. Either this baby is gigantic, or it’s well past the twenty-eight-day mark for Safe Haven. Worse-case scenario at this point is obviously abandonment. She’ll likely be put in foster care after a full evaluation.”

The young girl’s face falls slightly.

You soften despite yourself.

“But,” you add, if only to make her feel a bit better. “Past experience tells me that her parents might’ve just needed a break. Maybe they— I don’t know— stepped out for a cigarette or something. God knows, I’d need one if I had to take care of an alarm clock twenty-four-seven.”

Robby scoffs a weak laugh and shakes his head. “I’ll get Lupe to make an announcement in Chairs. See if anyone’s looking for her— If you’ll excuse me,” he nods with a polite smile down at the squirming baby below before sauntering out of the room.

The baby jerks when the noise of the crowded E.R fills the room again, startled by Dana’s yelling, who seems to be telling off a rowdy patient down the way. Her wet eyes squeeze shut as her gummy mouth opens to bellow a tiny wail. You reach out to comfort the baby, if only to hear less of the thing, with a methodical palm placed against its frail chest. 

It whines for a moment before softening with a contented sigh.

“Look at that… You’re good with her,” Jack mumbles, taking a step closer to peer over your shoulder — until you can smell the coffee on his breath and the musky cologne lingering on his skin. A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth as he watches you with glittering eyes. “Told ya you should’ve gone into pedes.”

You flash him an emotionless scowl. “Don’t patronize me,” you scold.

“Have you guys ever thought about having kids?” Emma wonders with a kind smile, having assumed your marital status from your matching last names and golden wedding bands. She cowers instinctively when your eyes turn to her in sync, fearful she might’ve said the wrong thing. “Or is that super rude to ask? I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s not rude at all,” Jack assures her, reaching to wrap his hands around either end of the stethoscope around his neck. It makes his freckled biceps strain against the black sleeves of his scrubs as his silver head swivels slowly to look at you. Something mischievous swims in his blue-green eyes as he lilts, “We’re just… going with the flow. Right, Dr. Abbot?”

You meet his tightlipped grin with a deadpanned look. The two of you agreed long ago that, while neither of you is totally opposed to having children, you’d also be perfectly happy living a completely childfree life. 

But instead of getting into all of that with less than an hour left on your grueling shift — in front of the newest addition to the nursing team, no less — you just nod with an artificial smile.

“Right. Yeah,” you say, already inching back towards the door. The baby starts to cry again a second later, in a series of revving whines that lead to a sharp shriek. You flash an apologetic grimace over your shoulder from your place in the doorway. “You guys have fun with… all that.”

You spend the next half hour finishing up your already-completed charting. You reword, backspace, and click occasionally at your mouse — pretending to work to keep from being bothered, though it isn’t quite as foolproof as you would’ve liked. Whitaker rushes your way with one of his interns in tow, sporting a worried sort of glint in his wide puppy dog eyes that he only gets when something’s going wrong.

“Hey… Dr. Abbot. Are you— Are you busy at the moment?”

“Nope,” you answer in a monotone, without looking up from the bright-white computer screen ahead of you. “And I’d very much like to keep it that way.”

“Well, uh…” Whitaker falters, shifting awkwardly on the other side of the desk. “We— We kinda need you. In pedes.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Baby Jane Doe hasn’t stopped crying since you left,” the woman behind him says, standing several inches shorter than the boy and sporting a heavy pair of glasses and a glittering silver septum in her nose.

Your eyes dart toward the stranger — Joy Kwon, MS3, the badge on her chest reads.

“That was, like, twenty minutes ago,” you say with an incredulous twist to your features.

“Exactly,” she deadpans.

You huff and lead the duo the short distance back to the pediatric unit. The crying hits you before you’ve even crossed the threshold — a sharp, unrelenting wail that adds to the headache you’ve been nursing all day. 

You find a lanky, blonde-haired man who eerily resembles Whitaker in the vibrantly painted room, though his badge reads James Ogilvie, MS4. The young med student flashes you a wide-eyed look of horror, holding the writhing baby in a visibly awkward hold.

“Please help me,” he pleads.

You don’t bother trying to hide your apathy as you trudge across the room to close the distance between you. You slip the tiny baby back into your hold, where it settles almost instantly, heavying against your chest with another breathy whine. You rock it gingerly in your arms the way you were taught to. Its wet eyes flutter slowly shut as fat tear drops trail down its reddened cheeks.

Whitaker gestures with a dazed smile. “See? Knew it. Total natural.”

You flash the boy a deadpanned look over your shoulder. “Because I’m a woman? That means I’m automatically a natural-born caretaker?”

His light eyes widen with an immediate panic. Joy tries and fails to hide her amused smile as she purses her lips to the side of her mouth. Whitaker, meanwhile, stumbles over himself to get the words out.

“W-What? No! No, not at all! I just—”

“She’s just messing with you, kid.” 

Jack’s voice drifts in as he steps through the door, saving the boy from his own stuttered-out apology. He’s perhaps the only one in Pittsburgh who can decipher your usual monotone from your humorous one, which he was only able to master after years of loving you. 

“Oh…” Whitaker says, deflating with a relieved sigh, though his pink cheeks are slow to lose their newfound color.

“Go check on Mr. Alvarez for me, will ya?” you tell him, jutting your chin back towards the door. “You know, since I have to take care of… this thing.”

Whitaker leaves and takes his interns with him, who trail after him in line like ducklings. They pass by Jack in the doorway, who peers at you over their heads with a pair of wide eyes. 

 “This thing?” he scoffs.

You bounce a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I’m not getting attached to it.”

“It?!”

You huff and adjust the baby in your arms, with one hand resting on its diapered bottom and your other rubbing gently over its tiny back. You sway gently back and forth, far too sweetly for the following words out of your mouth.

“The entire reason I got into emergency medicine was so I could help people without having to deal with all the— baggage that comes with him.”

“Well, babies don’t have baggage, honey,” Jack laughs as he strolls slowly towards you. “They’re brand new— that’s literally their whole thing.”

“Yeah. That’s because the parents give it to ‘em through… years of psychological torment.”

Jack studies you for a long moment with a pair of squinted eyes. “I think you might be projecting a little bit here…”

“I know I am,” you scoff. “Which is why I’d be a horrible mother. ‘Cause I’d just be a mirror of my mom, and our kid would just be a mirror of me, and it’ll just be a whole cycle of… emotionless, unaffectionate women...”

You trail off with a heavy sigh, lifting your gaze from the calming baby to the man towering over you. You find him wearing a much softer gaze than you expect him to. He tilts his silver head to his shoulder, eyes narrowing and lips curling slowly.

“Our kid?”

Your eyes flick away and back again. “…What?”

“You said our kid,” Jack clarifies with a wider grin.

You roll your eyes at him despite the way your cheeks blaze beneath his unwavering stare. “Well, we are married, you know? Who the hell else would I be having kids with— Robby?”

“God, I hope not— Poor kid,” Jack quips drily before leaning in to press a soft, fleeting kiss to your temple. His silver scruff brushes our delicate skin when he pulls away, far sooner than you would’ve liked. “And, just for the record, I think you’d be an amazing mom.”

Something warm flickers in your chest at his words, like embers stoked suddenly to flame. You recoil physically from the foreign feeling, with a grimace twisting your features.

“Eugh…” 

“What?”

You shake your head in response, parting from him to set the now-slumbering baby into the warmer at your side. You lay it gingerly onto the blankets before stepping away with your hands splayed out, as if it had burnt you in some way.

“It got too real for a second there,” you mutter with a look of disgust on your face. “I started feeling all… warm and… and fuzzy— I didn’t like it…”

Jack laughs. 

“Yeah, that’s what they call happiness, Dr. Abbot,” he jokes in a gritty deadpan. “And I’m glad you’re finally getting to experience it after three whole years of marriage.”

Jack can’t get the sight of it out of his head. You, in the rocking chair in the corner, with the pedes room dimmed to a dull lamplight, cradling a sleeping baby to your chest and looking half-asleep yourself. 

“Thought you weren’t getting attached?” he whispered into the serene silence from his place in the doorway.

“’M not,” you mumbled back, head lolled to your shoulder, eyes half-closed. “‘M just using this as an excuse to shut my eyes for a second.”

Something about it all catches him off guard. Not the baby, exactly — he’s seen a thousand babies before — held them, handed them off, charted them like any other patient in a sea of a hundred different patients. They were always temporary things to him, always someone else’s. 

But then he sees you — his future, his eternity — with someone else’s baby tucked to your chest as if it had always been there. You had one hand instinctively supporting the weight of her head while your other smoothed up and down her back. And your voice, often edged with sarcasm dry enough to sand wood, had softened into something warm and low and honeyed. And the seemingly orphaned baby, who could cry loud enough to rattle glass, goes instantly still in your arms like it finds sanctuary in you alone. 

It does nothing more than pique his curiosity at first — the idea of having kids with you, of how great a mom you would be — which isn’t a completely rare thought, but one that is typically fleeting. But then the thought lingers. Festers. Settles somewhere in the pit of his chest until he can’t breathe without thinking about it. 

By the time you’ve settled in the empty cabin, six hours away from the PTMC, the desire has rooted itself somewhere far deeper than he’d like to admit.

Jack, freshly showered, reclines on the clean sheets of the familiar bed, smelling of detergent and time gone by. The bedroom settles slowly into a lamplit darkness in time with the late night. Fireworks crackle faintly in the distance, in mere echoes rolling across the midnight-colored lake outside. The quiet feels borderline suffocating compared to the never-ending chaos of the E.D. 

You move through the space as if you had always been there. Jack watches you from his spot on the bed, which gives him a perfect view of you in the adjacent bathroom. 

Your hair is still slightly damp from the shared shower, dripping onto the t-shirt swallowing your body whole. Your bare feet pad softly along the tile as you complete the last steps of your skincare routine; your attention flitting between your reflection in the mirror and the video playing on your phone.

It strikes him somewhere deep — swells from his stomach, to his chest, to his throat, until he gets the very sudden urge to cry.

“Should we have a kid, you think?” Jack blurts, as if the question were as simple as asking you if you wanted pizza for dinner.

You still in place in the golden-lit bathroom. Your fingers freeze on your cheeks, mid-swipe of moisturizer, as you flash him a deadpanned glare from the doorway.

“…Do you hear that?” you wonder in a monotone.

“The sound of my sperm dying?” Jack jokes

“The sound of quiet,” you correct before turning away to continue your work in the mirror. “Which doesn’t exist when you have kids. I mean, think about it— We wouldn’t have even been able to come here today if we had a kid. We wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

“Well, that’s just not true,” Jack scoffs, folding his arms behind his silver curls until his biceps strain beneath the sleeves of his black undershirt; the hem rises just enough to reveal the tuft of light brown-blonde hair trailing down into his sweatpants. 

His silver scruff brushes his freckled skin when he turns his head. “Parents take their kids places all the time— or alarm clocks, as you so lovingly called them.”

“Yeah, well, not mine,” you murmur distantly as you chuck your crumpled cotton pads into the bin beside the sink. “They always told me that I was the reason we couldn’t afford to do anything. ‘Cause apparently feed and clothing me was such a burden to them— as if I asked to be here.”

“Your parents were just assholes, babe.”

“The crazy thing is, they were actually pretty nice…” you sigh, bare feet padding softly across the floor as you trudge to bed, plugging your phone into its charger on the nightstand. “Just not to me. Like I ruined them or something.”

Jack’s chest flares with a white-hot warmth that makes his eyes sting. “You know that’s not your fault, right?”

You don’t answer him with words. You just bounce your brows and tilt your head, though he struggles to tell if it’s an agreement or not. He shifts on the mattress when you pull the fluffy comforter down to slide into bed beside him, brows lowered as he keeps his unwavering stare locked on your face.

“Is that why you don’t want kids?” he wonders gently. “Because you think you’ll end up like your parents?”

You scoff, kneeling on the mattress until you settle into place next to his reclined form. “Isn’t everyone terrified of ending up like their parents?”

“Sure, but… You’re nothing like them. I mean, I saw you with that Jane Doe today— You were perfect.”

“Well, you have to say that.”

“No, I don’t,” Jack scoffs. “If I thought any differently, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But I know you’d be a great mom because I saw that today— Saw the rest of my whole goddamn life in that place…”

He trails off with a faraway look in his eyes.

You watch him with a suspicious glint in yours. 

“…You really mean that?” you murmur, halfway shy, picking at pills of cotton on the blanket thrown over your legs. “The part about me… You know, being a good mom, I mean?”

“Of course I do,” Jack laughs like it’s obvious, eyes glittering as he peers up at you. “And it’s not like I expect you to change your mind right now— or ever, if that’s what you want. It’s just… Something to think about, you know?”

“Well…” you tilt your head and trail off with a mischievous sort of lilt in your voice. “They do say the best part of having kids is trying for one.”

Jack grins up at you, brows raised to his hairline. “Do they?” he hums lowly.

“Mhm,” you nod.

“Should we test that theory out, you think?” he teases, all giddy like a teenage boy.

You shrug lazily, t-shirt sleeping off your shoulder, pretending to remain uninterested despite the excitement flaring red-hot in your chest. “Well, what the hell else are we gonna do?”

Something about your indifference makes Jack ravenous. It always has. It makes him feel like he’s got something to prove. And there’s nothing he loves more than watching your mask slip, than watching all your attempts to tease him fade into moans you couldn’t hold back if you tried. 

You melt for him first, when his long fingers slide your pretty panties to the side, dragging an orgasm from you with an expert hand — and then further when he presses his mouth to the wet spot in the thin cotton, drinking the honey you leak from him until he licks another twitching orgasm from your buzzing body.

Jack’s wearing your slick down to the silver scruff on his chin when he crawls back up your trembling form, massaging his stiff cock through his boxers. “You’re not too sensitive, are you?” he wonders gently despite the proud smile sitting crooked on his face and the honey still coating his tongue.

Your hips buck on their own accord, chasing a pleasure you’re not entirely sure you can take.

“Fuck a baby into me,” you plead in a half-drunken slurs, etching scratch marks long his back in an attempt to ground yourself. “Wanna make you a daddy, Jack— Want feel you leakin’ outta me…”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack huffs, like you’ve just punched all the air out of his lungs. “You can’t talk like that, baby— I’ll cum before we’ve even started.”

He knows it’s just the previous two orgasms talking, ‘cause you’re still on the pill after all —  having a baby now is pretty much out of the equation even if you really wanted to. But Jack isn’t in the business of depriving you of what you want. So he gives you all he has for the time being.

He folds your knees to your chest with a pair of wide, calloused hands, keeping your drooling pussy spread for him as he pierces you slow. The head of his cock, glowing red with need, disappears inside your pulsing confines. His throaty groan entwines with your quiet whimpers as your cunt suckles him further in. Once he’s sheathed fully inside, he stills just against you, with the greying thatch of coarse hair above his cock nestled against your sensitive clit.

“Yeah, you feel that?” Jack croons with a breathy laugh, which turns into a moan when your nails rake down his muscular chest. “You’re so full of me, aren’t you, baby?”

Your heavy head nods lazily against the pillow, eyes bleary and wet with desire. They squeeze shut a second later, when Jack’s hips drag back, until only the head of his cock is left inside you. Then he slides back into you, slow enough that you feel every ridge and vein of his cock, and smiles when your back arches off the mattress.

“I’ll give you a baby one day, honey, I promise,” the man babbles, choppy between his measured thrusts. “Fill you up so much it’ll be leakin’ outta you for days—”

You whine, hips bucking into and away from his cock all at once.

“Yeah, that’s it… I’ll get you all round and full… ’Til you’re walking around the E.D… Showin’ everyone what I did to you— how good I make you feel…”

“Please,” you whine.

“Yeah?” Jack coos sympathetically, beneath the wet schlick, schlick, schlick sound of his thrusts inside you. “That what you want?”

You nod, head tilted back and eyes squeezed shut, though the pathetic “please, please, please”’s continue spilling from your kissed mouth.

“Take it then, baby— Take it.”

He buckles down over you, punching into you with shallow thrusts that slowly start to lose their rhythm. He talks you through every inch of your orgasm, which hits you so hard it makes tears swell in the corners of your eyes. 

“That’s it, honey. Let me have it,” he murmurs in your ear as your body starts to twitch beneath his muscular one. “Give me all of it, baby. That’s it.”

Your stomach pools with heat a second later when Jack tenses on top of you, burying his groans in his neck as his jerking cock spits thick ropes of warm cum inside of your pulsing confines. He deflates on top of you when he’s finally spent, sticky body melting with yours, until both of you are melting into the tousled sheets below.

“You okay?” Jack asks through panted breaths, muffled into your sweat-slick neck. 

You nod wordlessly, swallowing hard as the high fades, and shoving lazily at his bare shoulder. “Get off— I gotta go to the bathroom,” you huff. 

Jack slides off your body and falls heavily onto the other side of the mattress. He watches with lidded eyes as you hurry to the bathroom with your thighs clenched together. You clean yourself up inside and return some minutes later to Jack having wiped himself off and tucking his soft cock back into his grey boxers.

“Do you wanna… talk about all that?” he asks with a knowing squint in his eyes.

“Remind me tomorrow,” you sigh, feet heavy as you trudge back into bed. 

Jack scoffs a laugh, knowing you’ll likely tell him the same exact thing tomorrow, and flips off the lamp on the nightstand. The golden bedroom delves into a midnight-blue darkness.

His limbs entwine with yours on nothing short of muscle memory when he slides back into bed with you. His long legs slot with yours beneath the covers as he throws a heavy arm over your stomach, folding his free one beneath his head.

Quiet settles over the dark bedroom like a blanket. 

“Actually,” you blurt into the silence, catching Jack right before he falls asleep.

“Yeah?” he mumbles, warm breath fanning over your shoulder.

“It’ll probably take about— I don’t know, three or so days for all the results to come back. You know, for Baby Jane Doe’s workup,” you murmur, half-shy. “And we’ll be back to work by then, so… I was thinking maybe we could… Never mind, it’s stupid.”

Jack lifts his head before you can shrink back into yourself, eyes flitting across your shadowed profile. “No, what is it?”

You roll onto your back to meet his darkened gaze with a far more sheepish one. “Maybe we could take her, you know? Just foster her on an emergency basis until we can find her family. Or someone who can foster her long-term. Like a…”

“A trial run?” Jack finishes for you with an audible grin. “Yeah, that’s definitely one way to pitch it, honey.”

You grimace, hiding your burning face behind your hands. “I told you, it’s stupid,” you whine, muffled behind your palms.

“It’s not stupid,” Jack assures you with a quiet laugh. He pries your hands from your face with gentle fingers wrapped around your wrist. “I think it’s a great idea. We can, you know, taste the waters about the whole baby thing and help a kid in need at the same. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

“Yeah?” you hum with a soft wince.

“Yeah,” he nods. “We can look into it when we get back.”

Your chest swells with a sunshine sort of warmth when he settles back into bed beside you, tossing a muscular arm over you to tuck you back into his bare chest. It’s a pure, unadulterated feeling of overwhelming happiness that weirdly makes you feel like crying. ‘Cause only Jack would agree to foster an abandoned baby you found at work not even a day ago; only Jack would see all of you and still love you completely, for a reason you still can’t name.

“I hate when you’re supportive,” you grouse on instinct as you bury your head back into the pillow, even though you mean the exact opposite.

Jack knows this, too, so he just grins into your hair and jokes, “Yeah, I know. It’s definitely my worst quality.”

You whisper softy and lower his book for him. He already has his eyebrows raised looking at you questioningly. He knows you just when to put down your two twins, he can tell by the drop of spit up on your shirt and the milk stain near your breast. 

Hell your body’s not even fully recovered yet from the last two kids. Still having that pregnancy fat around your stomach and getting into a routine of taking care of three kids while Robby’s gone. 

“Our babies…” 

You almost whimper. But Robby knows enough to understand you’re playing up the puppy dog eyes. He sets his book on the nightstand and grabs at your hips to pull you closer. He loves you like this. Still emotional and dependent on him. 

“Yeah…? What about our babies.” 

“They’re legs.” 

Robby runs his hand up and down your arm because it looks like you might cry. 

“Yeah I know. They’re getting bigger, they have chubby little legs. Is that what got you like this?” 

“No their—“ you sigh loudly for dramatics. “They’re losing their scrunch.” 

“Ahh…” Robby hums and pulls you in tighter, he thinks he knows what you mean but he’s not going to double check incase your emotions switch up on him and you get upset. 

“They’re loosing their scrunch?” 

“Yes. They used to be so tiny and swaddling them used to be so easy. But now they both kick their legs around so much, especially Ellie, it’s like she wants to crawl so early.” 

Robby doesn’t mind. He likes putting toys in front of your two twins and watching them grab at it. Flexing their tiny fingers and eventually watching them give up. Robby gives in and hands them the toys anyway. They’re just so stinkin’ cute. 

“I want another one.” 

“What?” 

You paw at Robby’s chest. It would be easy to convince him if you slip a hand under his shirt, but you need him to want it too. 

“I want another baby. Your window is closing.” 

“My window is not closing.” 

“Honey please.” 

Robby sighs— annoyance mixed with disbelief. Three months. That’s how long it took for you to forget about all the pain you went through in the birthing room to wanting to do it all over again. Robby puts his reader glasses on top of his head so he can rub his eyes. 

“Can we talk about this next year?” 

“Next year? Do you hate me? I want one now.” 

“We cannot have another baby right now. You’re still postpartum. Still breastfeeding, we don’t have another bedroom and—“ 

Robby knows you’re devious, but he didn’t think you’d be so wicked and cruel as to start kissing his neck while trying to talk to you about how bad an idea this is. 

A shiver runs all the way down his back, shooting straight to his dick. When you place sloppy wet kisses into his neck it’s like he melts. You’re his one weakness. 

“Baby please.” You spoke desperately. Jutting your hips forwards for some friction. Exactly on the day your doctor cleared you for having sex again too. “You said you wanted our kids to be close together in age” 

“Yeah but—“ he groans. Annoyed because he’s losing, so easily swayed by you. “Not so close they’re doomed to share birthday parties for the rest of their lives.” 

“Can we just start trying now?” You bargain. This time your hands really do go under his shirt. “Will just practice. It will probably take a few times anyway.” 

“I feel like that’s an insult.” 

“No—“ you breathe and now Robby’s hands are going under your shirt, bringing it all the way up and over your head to look at your breasts that have been practically taunting him with how your shirt stains with milk. 

“It just means I really wanna have sex with you right now.” 

It’s easy to giggle when Robby flips you over.

“Jack”, Robby popped his head into the break room; “Come here, you’re gonna wanna see this, brother.”

Jack was bent halfway at his knees, inches from finally, finally, sitting down for the first time in hours and letting the weight off his prosthetic when Robby interrupted him. He didn’t even bother to suppress the groan that left his mouth as he pushed himself back to his full height.

He’d feel the soft couch cushions under him after this, he promised himself that much.

Jack followed Robby out, swinging his stethoscope back around his neck and holding both end of it in his hands.

“What do we got?”, Jack asked, inhaling the same way he always did during a long shift; the kind that made his back arch a little and his chest puff out.

“Female, late twenties to early thirties, jellyfish sting on the left arm and hand”, Robby read out the chart in his hands.

Jack almost stopped walking, a surprised look on his face that turned almost into a smirk.

“You serious?”

Robby laughed; “Hell yeah, figured you’d want in on it.”

Jack scoffed in the way he did when he found something funny; “Hell yeah I want in on it”

He grabs the chart from Robby’s hands flicking through the pages as he reads; “Haven’t seen anything like that since med school.”

“You and me both, brother.”

Robby turned and pushed open the exam room door with his back, sliding on a pair of gloves as he wheeled over on the swivel chair.

You looked up from the bed, eyes bright and not at all like you were in pain. Jack stopped in his tracks at the sight of you.

He realized then he wasn’t expecting someone so…pretty.

So lively and bright.

“Hi i’m Doctor Robbinavitch, this is my fellow attending Doctor Abbot, we’re gonna check you out today”, Robby says, offering a small and professional smile.

“At least buy me dinner first”, You jut back with a laugh.

Oh. Jack wanted to make that laugh leave your lips over and over again.

Robby got to work, carefully inspecting your sting, gloves fingers pressing gently into the raised red skin.

“So jellyfish sting, huh?”, Robby asks, motioning to Jack for a syringe off the tray next to him.

Jack hesitates for a moment, but his brain eventually follows, letting his eyes wander away from you for a moment.

Your hair was clipped back in a claw similar to Dana’s, a few strands falling loosely around your face and ears. A pair of black leggings and a Pittsburg Aquarium shirt. Even in the simplicity of it all, you looked so pretty. Jack swallowed hard.

“Yeah, comes with the job”, You say with an easy shrug, like it’s nothing new.

Robby pauses; “Oh yeah?”

“Yup. Marine Biologist at the aquarium. Little guy snuck up on me today.”

Robby chuckles; “Happen often?”

“More than you think. Not my first sting, won’t be my last.”

Your eyes wander over Jack, who’s still standing slightly off to the side, arms crossed over his chest. You lean a little closer to Robby.

“He always hover like that?”, You ask.

The noise that leaves Robby’s nose makes you laugh.

“Only when he’s working.”

You nod, eying Jack up and down. His silver curls and broad shoulders. The stubble that decorated his jawline. His dark hazel eyes that seem to get darker each time his eyes land on you.

“So often then?”

Robby looks up and tilts his head; “How’d you know?”

“I read people”, You shrug; “He seems like the type.”

Robby bites his cheek from saying something that’ll have Jack kicking him later, shooting him a look. You’re so accurate at reading him, it makes Robby gloat.

“Hey Doctor Abbot”, You nod your chin at him; “You ever sleep or blink or do you just…hover?”

Jack’s eyes flick back to you, the tiniest twitch of a curve at the corner of his lips as he adjusts his weight, shifting on his feet; “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

You snort, covering your mouth.

Oh you’re adorable, Jack thinks.

Robby’s still examining your sting, taking pictures on his phone cause who knows when he’ll ever see one again.

“Been meaning to visit the aquarium”, Robby says, not looking up, “My daughter likes fish.”

You light up instantly, eyes flicking between the two men, clocking Jack’s jaw twitching like he’s fighting internally on whether or not he wants to say what’s on the tip of his tongue. He eventually decides against it.

“How old is she?”, You ask.

Robby’s smile softens; “Almost two.”

You hum in response; “Fun age, usually very curious.”

Robby laughs like he couldn’t contain it; “Oh she’s very curious.”

You turn back to Jack, just as Dana pops her head into the room.

“Robby, when you’re done pawning over the jellyfish sting—trauma one needs you”, She says it with a smirk, a witty sarcastic tone with no heat behind it. Just enough to agitate him.

“Cmon Dana, this is so cool.”

Dana rolls her eyes, pointing two fingers at him; “Trauma one, now.”

She’s gone as quickly as she appeared, a sigh leaving Robby as he bows his head with a laugh, snapping his gloves off.

“That’s my cue”, He says, wheeling back in the chair and standing; “Doctor Abbot here will finish up. Get you some topical steroids and something for the pain and you’ll be good as new.”

You don’t see the wink Robby sends Jack’s way as he leaves the room, following the same path Dana had just taken.

Jack pushes off the wall, pulling a pair of gloves out and setting up everything he’ll need on the steel tray in front of him.

“I’m going to deactivate the area with some acetic acid, it’ll stop the stinging”, He begins, pulling on his gloves with a quiet smack.

“Acid?”, You ask, furrowing your brows.

Jack hums with a nod; “Don’t worry, it’s basically just vinegar. Shouldn’t hurt too much.”

You watch as he dumps the liquid carefully over your arm and hand, whatever stinging was there slowly began to dissipate, leaving behind a dull ache and general soreness.

“I’m gonna check to see if there’s any tentacles that need removed. Then we’ll get you all set up with some antihistamines and a topical corticosteroid”, He explains each step as he’s preparing it—whether it’s to ease the nerves he can sense off of you or to reassure himself—you find yourself appreciating it.

You can’t help swinging your legs a little as you watch him slide a pair of glasses onto his nose, a new pair of gloves on his hands as he grabs a pair of tweezers.

“Let me know if anything hurts”, He says.

But you’re too busy watching him.

The way he leans in close, the overhead lamp he brought over casting a slight golden hue to his curls, making them shine like silver. His features look more prominent this close up—aged in a rugged and handsome way that shows he has years of experience and stories behind him. Steady hands that hover. Sharp eyes that train on whatever he’s looking at. His brows furrow a little as he concentrates, his lips parted just slightly as he works.

“So you always pick fights with jellyfish or do you rotate through sea creatures?”, Jack asks, eyes flicking up to your face for a brief moment before returning to your arm.

You try to suppress a laugh—it doesn’t work.

“Nah, new animal each week. They’re usually pretty nice though…think that jellyfish had it out for me.”

Jack’s lip quirks at the corner of his mouth.

“What’d you do to it?”

“God nothing, they don’t have brains to know if I even did.”

Jack hums softly in response, letting you talk as he works. Committing everything you’re telling him to memory.

He lets a beat or two pass before speaking again; “Which one’s your favorite?”

You tilt your head; “My favorite what?”

“Animal, sea creature, whatever you call it.”

You can’t help the smile creeping onto your lips; “Beluga whale…name’s Arlo. He was brought in as a baby with an injured flipper about a year into me working there. I’ve pretty much helped raise him.”

Jack’s chest softens.

“He ok now?”

“Oh yeah!”, You say waving with your other hand, “He’s doing amazing! Just safer to keep him than set him out into the wild. I honestly don’t know how well he’d do with his flipper being permanently damaged.”

Jack finds himself nodding along as you talk, not realizing how long it’s been until he’s almost done tending to your arm. But he doesn’t really want to stop, or for this to end. He could listen to you talk all day.

So he lets you.

He listens intently as you talk about your job; which animals are your favorite, which ones are learning new commands and tricks, what shows you get to put on for guests. The conservation jobs you’ve been on. He watches your free hand move about as you talk—the many faces you make when—each full of passion. He finds himself enthralled by all of it.

“We also do two tours a day for guests to take them around some behind the scenes stuff, meet some of the animals”, You explain.

Jack lifts his head up, eyebrows raised at that; “Yeah? That sounds kind of interesting.”

Without a beat, you respond;

“Yeah? You should come. I’ve got tickets for this weekend you can have.”

Jack falters for a moment, forcing his brain to slow down and his breathing to continue.

“Oh that’s really thoughtful, but I’d hate to just take them, let me do something in return-“

“You’re patching me up, I think that’s enough.”

He stares at you, really stares. The unwavering look of certainty on your face, that small, smug smile at the corner of your mouth that was already doing things to him.

Then finally, he lets his shoulders drop with a sigh; “Ok.”

You perk back up instantly; “Yeah? Great!”

Jack smirks to himself as he pulls off his gloves, wheeling over to the computer stand and tossing the blue latex out. You find yourself staring a moment too long at the way his biceps flex under his scrub top—black material pulled taught against his skin and across his chest—littered with freckles; each different and unique in their own way. You’d be perfectly content counting and tracing each one.

“Think I’ll live, doc?”, You ask.

Jack’s lips twitch again; “Keep your arms away from jellyfish and I think your chances are pretty high.”

You let yourself smile, not caring how ridiculous and enthralled in him it makes you look. He was interesting.

You listen as Jack explains your discharge instructions, hands you a paper with them on it and a number to call if you need it.

“Come back if it gets really painful or infected. Keep using the topical cream I gave you and it should heal up good in no time.”

“Thank you, Doctor Abbot”, You say softly, sliding off the exam bed and letting him guide you out the door.

You don’t miss the way his hand hovers at your lower back, not quite touching, but the ghost of his warmth is there.

He nods once, head jutting towards the exit doors; “Know your way out from here?”

Like he’s offering to walk you.

“Yeah, thanks”, You smile; “Well hey, hope we can talk again sometime.”

His lips quirk; “Hopefully on better terms than this.”

“That’d be nice”, You say, knowing full well it won’t be the last time you walk through those hospital doors; “Maybe this weekend?”

Jack stills for a moment, the wheels in his brain turning before he offers a movement that’s almost a nod.

“Yeah”, He says it like he’s thinking, “Yeah, we’ll see.”

With that you’re heading towards the door with a thanking squeeze to his bicep that makes him feel like he’s a teenager again, watching as you stop and turn back towards him again.

“See you around, Doctor Abbot.”

Jesus, he was in fucking trouble.

─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─

Jack finds Robby in the break room later, hovering over a pot of hospital coffee.

“You free this weekend?”, Jack asks.

Robby quirks a brow; “What’re you asking me out?”

Jack bites his tongue, his eyes squeezing shut to compose himself; “No, I was gonna offer you these tickets I got.”

“What tickets?”

Jack sits down at the small round table with Robby in tow, passing him a steaming cup as he does.

“Remember the patient with the jellyfish sting from earlier?”, Jack asks.

Robby’s already smirking; “You mean the one that was flirting with you?”

“She wasn’t flirting-“

“Jack”, Robby chuckles; “You’re geriatric not stupid.”

“You’re geriatric and still older than me.”

Robby can feel the glare Jack shoots his way burning into the side of his head.

“What about her?”, Robby asks.

Jack sighs into his coffee; “She offered me tickets for some tour of the aquarium this weekend…they’re already in my inbox. Figured maybe you and Noelle would wanna take Nora.”

Robby shakes his head; “Nah she offered them to you man, you take them.”

“And do what? Stand around like a creep?”

“I don’t know…go?”, Robby says it like it’s obvious; “She offered you these tickets. Not me. You have to go.”

Jack doesn’t answer, just sipping on his coffee that’s starting to taste more and more like dirt with each passing day.

“She obviously likes you brother, or she wouldn’t have said anything”, Robby says.

Damn it, Jack really hated when Robby was right.

The older man sits up in his seat.

“Listen, Noelle’s out of town this weekend so it’s just me and Nora. Why don’t we go with you?”, Robby offers.

For some reason, that makes Jack relax a little.

“Careful”, Jack says with an arched brow, already clocking Robby’s enthusiasm; “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you actually like me, brother”,

“God don’t make me regret this”, Robby says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What else am I here to do?”

Jack stands to lean against the counter, stirring his coffee and tracing the rim of the cup.

“You’d seriously go?”, He finally asks, shoulders closing in a little.

“Yeah, why not?”, Robby shrugs; “Nora loves seeing the fish and for some reason you. Plus I can play matchmaker if i’m there.”

Jack groans; “And there it is.”

“What?”

“Your ulterior motive.”

“Gotta entertain myself somehow, brother”, Robby says, smacking a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

It takes everything in him not to smack Robby right then and there.

“I hate you.”

Secretly though? Jack’s grateful and almost relieved at Robby’s offer. But he’d never live down the day he tells him that.

─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─

“Unca ‘Ack! Unca ‘Ack! Phish!”, Nora’s little voice shrieks as she bounces it Jack’s arms, pointing to the floor to ceiling cylindrical fish tank.

They’d made it exactly five steps in from the front entrance, and Nora was already amazed. Her wide brown eyes stared at the fluorescent colors—her tiny hand pressed up against the glass—the tank lights reflecting off her face.

“Papa! Phish!”, She called out for Robby, turning her entire body abruptly in Jack’s arms, making him readjust his grip.

“Careful, Peanut”, Jack warned softly, his own eyes wide as he watched her, willing his hold on her to keep up.

“I see the fish, Munchkin”, Robby says, stepping in next to them and smiling up at the fish that swim by.

The sound of people bustles around them, other families being drug along by their own toddlers seeing something across the room. A group of teenagers off in the distance.

It smells like seawater—not in the gross dead fish way, but salty and soft—wafting through the air. It’s slightly cool inside, overhead fans and misters in certain spots with signs that say ‘Feel the Ocean!’

Jack has no doubt that kids would be absolutely sucked in by all of it.

“What time is it?”, Robby asks, eyeing his watch.

Jack beats him to it; “10:30, tour starts at noon.”

He’d looked at the schedule, of course he had.

Robby smirks knowingly; “What should we go see first?”

They find themselves in the underwater viewing tunnels—polar bears and elephant seals swimming overhead—light reflecting off the water.

Nora’s eyes are wide, pointing at each animal that swims by. Making sure Robby sees, and then Jack.

The ‘Dory tank’ quickly becomes her favorite, running as fast as her small and chubby legs will carry her almost two year old body—pulling Jack by wrapping her entire hand around two of his fingers.

He grunts in surprise, struggling to catch up for a moment before he’s laughing; “Peanut you’re gonna take me out.”

Robby claps him on the shoulder, quickly adjusting the backpack slung over his shoulders; “Don’t worry, I know CPR.”

Jack shoots him a glare; “You’re so lucky the kid’s here.”

Nora’s hands are pressed up against the glass, face as close as she can get it without actually touching it—Robby and Jack had both scolded her twice already about the germs—her small mouth falling open with a grin as big as her face.

By the time 11:30 rolled around, Jack was leading the way towards the Penguin exhibit where the tour would start. Nora was now in Robby’s arms, giving Jack’s back a break. She weighed almost nothing to him, but the constant pulling on his neck and shoulders each time she bounced or lean towards something made him a little sore.

Robby set Nora down, letting her walk over to the giant tank in front of her, Penguins swimming around at her height as they dove in and out of the water.

“Nora, smile for mommy!”, Robby called out, kneeling down.

Nora grinned as wide as she could, a penguin swimming past her just as Robby captured the photo.

“I see?”, Nora asked, already climbing into Robby’s lap where he was crouched down.

“See? Very cute, huh?”

Nora giggled, eyes on Robby’s phone before she turned and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Mommy see?”, Nora asked.

Robby nodded; “Mommy will love it, it’s a keeper. Think it should go on the fridge when we get home?”

Nora clapped happily at the idea of that.

Meanwhile, Jack noticed the employees starting to make their way out onto the landing from the doorway to the side. Then his world froze when his eyes landed on you.

Clad in your wetsuit, a ponytail braid down your back that swished back and forth as you walked. Clinging to you perfectly. Water shoes squeaking faintly, clearly slightly wet. His heart hammered against his rib cage. He didn’t notice Robby slide in beside him, Nora still in his arms.

It didn’t take long for you to find him, and once your eyes settled on his frame, your cheeks turned pink.

─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─

Starting a tour was absolutely second nature to you now. But you’d had nerves all day. Hell, you’d had nerves since earlier in the week when you met Jack. He’d been rattling around your brain ever since like he lived there.

When you followed your coworkers out onto the Penguin landing exhibit, you couldn’t help but let your eyes scan the group of people waiting. As soon as your eyes met his, you felt the blush creeping up your neck. Seeing the way he reacted the same, eyes unwavering and hovering over you—looking you up and down—had you biting your bottom lip in a last ditch effort to suppress a smile.

It didn’t quite work.

You offered him a wave that came off slightly shyer than you would’ve liked; but he didn’t seem to notice, and offered a wave back.

You could see the man you remembered as Robby nudging him with his elbow, eyes now trained on you as well—the little girl in his arms bouncing as she watched the Penguins.

After a quick introduction, it was your turn to talk, forcing you to finally pull your attention away and stand closer to the front.

You introduced yourself to the crowd; “But you can call me Skipper, I’ll be leading you on your tour today. Are you ready to see some animals?”

The response from families and kids around you was instant, but all you could see was Jack from the corner of your eyes; expression soft and gaze determined not to miss a thing. So the staring was an outside of work thing too, huh?

You didn’t mind. His eyes were soft in the way they were when he’d tended to your wound—like he was taking in every word you said and cataloging it for later—the same way he did with a patient’s information or a SWAT mission log.

God, you were screwed.

The tour went on smoothly, and as you talked, Jack found himself sinking deeper and deeper; like the ocean had opened up and swallowed him whole in the most peaceful and sunlit way.

He committed each fact you said to memory like his life depended on it; Octopuses have three hearts, the ocean produces 50% of earth’s oxygen, Angelfish choose one partner for life, a Blue Whale’s tongue is heavier than an entire Elephant, Dolphins are sleepwalkers, 50-80% of all life on earth is found under the ocean’s surface—he desperately wanted to seem like he knew something about your work.

You showed off starfish, turtles, dolphins. Jack watched with a childlike awe as you used simple hand signals for the dolphin, who happily obliged and did tricks for fish. He had no idea so much went into all of it.

His favorite though? Was finally getting to see Arlo the Beluga you talked so fondly about. He was huge to say the least. A permanent smile almost etched on his face.

Nora laughed when a spray of water from Arlo’s blow hole misted her face, clapping and bouncing where she was perched on Robby’s shoulder’s.

“‘Gain! ‘Gain!”

Jack—who was normally so enthused with his niece, only spared a quick smile at her before he was drawn back to you.

You with your bright smile and eyes to match as you held out different shells and artifacts. You who knew quick facts and talked so passionately about your work, you who kept glancing at him each time your eyes swept over the group of visitors in front of you.

Your heart stuttered in your chest each time you looked up to find his eyes already on you, like they never left in the first place.

─ ─── ─── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ─── ─── ─

By the time the tour ended in the stingray room, you were a little smug to say the least. Eyes flicking to where Jack stood each chance you got as you spoke with other guests. Taking in how he stood carefully behind Nora who was pressed up against the glass again, watching stingray’s swim by. Protective and oh so gentle.

Jack’s hand was carefully on the tot’s back as he crouched down next to her, dipping his face close to talk softly in her ear. Like he was making sure she knew all his attention was on her.

Eventually most of the guests cleared out, only a few staggering behind to check out other animals in the room. You quickly made your way over to the two doctor’s at the big tank—Jack already rising to his feet as he saw you approaching, taking Nora’s tiny hand in his.

“Well look who came”, You breathe out, smile engulfing your cheeks.

“Wouldn’t miss it”, Jack spoke.

His voice was softer than it had been in the ED, more relaxed and mellow. Like he belonged here standing with you.

“I hope it lived up to its expectations.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Jack’s smile didn’t waver, a comfortable silence drifting over the room as you both looked each other over. You in your wetsuit, Jack looking so mundane and domestic out of scrubs it hurt. His hair a little more messy than usual, no doubt from Nora playing with it.

Robby cleared his throat.

“Papa! Up!”

The small voice and noise beside you snapped you both out of your gaze, eyes flicking to the brunette man as he lifted Nora up into his arms.

“Nice to see you again, Robby”, You say, offering a small nod; “Who’s this lil girly?”

“This is Nora”, Robby beams, tucking his head more to her level; “Nor, can you say hi?”

Nora offers you a small wave, hiding her face in the crook of Robby’s neck.

“Hi Nora, I heard you like fish?”

She perks up a bit at that; “Phish?”

“Mhm”, You nod, “Wanna meet one of my friends?”

Nora’s already nodding enthusiastically as you lead them back to Arlo’s tank. He’s already hovering close to the edge, head peeking out and still smiling.

“It’s almost Arlo’s feeding time, he’ll be so happy to see us”, You speak out loud, not really sure if it’s more towards Nora or yourself.

You climb onto the landing at the edge of the tank, pulling a bucket of fish over with you, snapping a pair of gloves on.

“These are his favorite.”

Almost on cue, Arlo’s halfway out of the water, looking almost like he could clap as he opens his mouth for the fish you throw him. The water splashes, Nora giggles in Robby’s arms.

“Do ‘gain!”, She shrieks.

All three of you laugh as you happily toss another fish Arlo’s way before turning back to Nora; “Wanna pet him?”

Nora’s eyes grow so wide there’s almost no iris left, looking up to Robby like she’s asking for permission.

“Cmere, I’ll show you how”, You explain how to be gentle, guiding Robby over so they’re both close enough.

You take Nora’s tiny hand and press it flat against Arlo’s nose, letting her pat it gently. Another squeal from her tiny body, now almost vibrating with excitement.

“He’s a little slimy, isn’t he?”, You beam, nose slightly crinkled as you look between the two.

Then you look up at Jack, who’s standing with his legs wide and arms folded across his chest, so similar to the way he had been when you first met him. A small twitch at the corner of his mouth. But his eyes gave him away. His love for Nora and seeing you with her practically pouring out onto the landing, and a hint of something else entirely that you couldn’t quite place as he looked back at you.

“Mommy, ‘icture?”, Nora asks.

“Sounds like a good idea to me”, Robby says, “Do you mind?”

He’s holding his phone out to you.

“Not at all.”

You switch spots with him, letting them stand against the tank in front of Arlo, raising the phone to take the picture when Robby cuts in again.

“Jack, get in here brother.”

He hesitates for a moment, before ultimately standing on the other side of him, squishing Nora comfortably between them. Both of her arms wrap around the back of their necks as he smiles crookedly, her few tiny teeth poking out.

“Smile!”

You take a few, pausing at the one where Jack and Nora are looking at each other—bright goofy smiles that make your heart ache. You wanted to burn it into your memory. Instead you hand Robby his phone back, watching as he walks off with Nora as his phone begins to ring, leaving you alone with Jack.

He’s rocking on his feet, back on his heels as he shoves his hands in his pockets.

“So Skipper, huh?”, He’s right back to teasing.

You groan; “Coworkers gave it to me when I started, not my first choice.”

Jack shrugs; “It’s on theme. Better than fruitcake.”

You quirk a brow; “Fruitcake?”

“One of our frequent fliers gave that one to Robby.”

Jack’s small smile turns a little mischievous.

“Oh i’m never forgetting that”, You laugh.

Jack laughs too, like the whole thing is so easy.

A beat of comfortable silence passes before he speaks again;

“Thank you for inviting us, really”, He says, rubbing the back of his neck; “Nora loved it.”

You don’t hesitate; “And you?”

Jack’s mouth parts at your forwardness, that stupid little smirk twitching again.

“I thought it was…nice.”

“Nice?”

“What? Nice is good!”

“Nice is what you say when something is boring but you don’t want to say it.”

“Trust me, I wasn’t bored.”

“Could’ve fooled me, Mr. ‘it was nice’.”

Jack sighs, shaking his head as he smiles at his shoes, rocking on his heels again.

“Fine. It was really interesting. I had a good time”, He sighs, but there’s no real heat behind it, rather amusement.

“See? Was that so hard?”

“You’re trouble”, He juts, eyebrows almost in his hairline.

You bite your lip, watching as he traces your face with his eyes, his own demeanor suddenly falling serious again.

“But seriously”, He says, “Thank you for having us. I really did enjoy it.”

You nod in return; “I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.”

Jack looks over to where Robby’s standing with Nora, talking away on the phone with Noelle; a softness taking over his features again.

“You really love her, don’t you?”, You ask, following his gaze.

“Yeah”, He says; “I’d do anything for her. She’s good for him too.”

He lets a beat pass.

“Don’t tell Robby that, I’ll be out a pony.”

“A pony, huh?”

“Secret side business.”

You snort at that, desperately trying to cover your mouth but the noise had already slipped out. You except him to cringe, but instead he looks, amused? Content? Happy?

Reveling in the fact that he finally got to hear it again.

Inside Jack’s heart did a flip at the noise. Wondering how many things he could say to make you laugh like that again.

“How’s your arm?”, He asks.

You flick your gaze down to your bandage.

“Pretty good. Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Jack nods; “That’s good. I’d hate to see you still hurt.”

Your heart stutters.

“How can I repay you…for all this?”, He asks, gesturing around.

You wave him off.

“Again, patching me up was plenty. Thank you, Doctor Abbot.”

“Jack”, He says once, “You can call me Jack.”

“Ok, Jack.”

You test it out, tongue tingling at the shape of his name. Already liking the way it sounded. Yeah, that seemed perfect. Jack.

“There’s gotta be someway I can repay you. This couldn’t have been easy to set up.”

“Really it’s fine, Jack. My treat-“

“How about dinner?”

You freeze, mouth still parted and eyes wide as he continues with a smirk;

“My treat.”

You need an excuse, something believable, because if you’re honest with yourself—you’re already falling for him; and that seems dangerous.

But you don’t find one. Secretly? You’re relieved you don’t.

“Dinner sounds perfect”, You say, and then; “Just no seafood places. Too close to work.”

“Noted”, Jack smiles, nodding gently; “How’s next Friday?”

“Friday’s perfect.”

Suddenly you’re exchanging numbers with him, watching as he saves his name in your phone and you do the same to his. Then he’s saying goodbye all too soon, walking off to join Robby and Nora again; leaving the air around you too cold and lingering of his warmth and cologne.

You wave to them as they go, smiling down at your phone, breathing hitching as the new contact name staring back up at you.

‘Jack Abbot.’

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He dreaded it every year, knowing how long and hard his shift would be and anticipating that he'd have to work overtime. Something about the romantic holiday really set people off. It tempted those who were alone and single to start drinking early - usually setting off a chain of alcohol poisoning cases. Those in happy relationships used it as an opportunity to explore new sides of their physical relationships - he had seen many embarrassing cases of people hurting themselves in the middle of sex. Groups of friends would take part in rituals to banish their bad luck when it came to their love lives - he couldn't even count how many singed-off eyebrows he'd seen after people had decided to burn old reminders of exes. 

So, yeah. Dr. Michael Robinavitch hated Valentine's Day. And that definitely had nothing to do with the fact that he always seemed to find himself single around the holiday.

Dana was already waiting for him behind her desk when he walked into the ED that morning. She looked at him over the top of her glasses, already sensing his foul mood.

"Lighten up. It's not even seven yet." She chuckled, shaking her head in amusement.

Robby exhaled roughly, dropping his bag. "You know what day it is, correct?"

"Oh, I'm aware." Dana kicked his bag softly under the desk, out of the way so people didn't trip on it. Forever the considerate mother hen of the Pitt. "We manage every year. We'll do it again today."

He didn't know what to say to that. She was right, as she often was. So how was he supposed to argue? He reached for the pump of hand sanitiser that sat in its usual spot on the desk. But froze when he saw a yellow post-it stuck to the front.

Our love is like hand hygiene - 100% essential.

Robby ripped it from the bottle and waved it at Dana. "What the hell is this?"

The charge nurse squinted at the piece of paper, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "Looks like a love note to me."

He huffed, about to scrunch it up before she stopped him.

"Hey, wait. Leave it. We could all do with some cheering up today, I'm sure." She pried it from his fingers and carefully stuck it back to the bottle of hand sanitiser. "Just because you're the Grinch of Valentine's, doesn't mean other people can't enjoy it."

Really, he knew his frustration at the note wasn't rational. But he also found himself already done with his day, and it hadn't even started yet. "Where's Abbot?"

"Roof, I think." 

Before Robby could say anymore, Dana was swept away into a conversation with one of the nurses from night shift asking about handover. He took that as his cue to leave, striding towards the doors to the stairwell that would take him up to the roof. But before he could get there, he found another one of those sticky notes plastered to the double doors to the stairs.

Are you tachycardia? Because you make my heart race.

He frowned at the sight of it but left it there, pushing through the doors and racing up the stairs. Well, as much as he could race at his age. His knees didn't quite have it in them to go too quickly anymore.

The door to the roof creaked on its hinges as he emerged into the crisp morning air, slamming shut behind him again. It didn't take more than a second before his gaze landed on Abbot standing by the railing opposite him. The noise of the door and a few heavy footsteps clued the night shift doctor in on his friend approaching him.

Abbot turned, leaning back against the railing. "Happy Valentine's Day, dear."

Robby snorted, already so tired of the holiday. "You know anything about those notes floating around my ED?"

"You mean those cute, little love notes designed to make people smile?" Abbot stifled his own smile, tucking his hands into the pockets of his scrubs. "No, not a thing."

"Liar."

Abbot shrugged. "Perhaps. Does it make a difference?"

"I'd like to know who's responsible for being so immature." He huffed and planted his forearms on the railing, looking out over the sunrise. 

"I forgot how grumpy you get on Valentine's Day."

"I'm not grumpy." But could he really deny that? Dana had already called him the Grinch of Valentine's Day. There was some truth to it, he supposed. "I just know what today is going to be like. And I don't need to be distracted by some stupid puns."

"If you get distracted by a medical pun scribbled on a post-it note then I think that's more on you than the pun." Abbot slapped him gently on the shoulder. "Let it go, brother. Those love notes might be the difference between someone having a terrible day and an okay day today."

Robby hated to admit that his friend was probably right. He knew nobody in the ED today would want to be there. It was either a reminder that you weren't with your significant other or a reminder that you didn't have a significant other. He could only imagine the amount of sappy couples he was going to have to talk to today. 

So he nodded and stood up straight again, gesturing for him and Abbot to head back downstairs. "Well, I'm going to need a cup of coffee before I can bear to read one of those notes again."

"That's the spirit." Abbot teased softly, following close behind.

Only Robby wasn't so lucky. He found himself staring at one of the notes in the break room before he could even reach for a cup. Right there on the coffee pot. Another one.

You must be serotonin because you make me so happy.

"For fuck's sake." He grumbled, snatching the pot out of its spot and pouring himself a generous cup. It was okay. It really was. Only another twelve hours before his shift was over. Only another twelve hours before he got to go home to his empty house. Only another twelve hours until he got to wallow in how lonely he was.

"Good morning, Dr. Robby!"

The upbeat chime of your voice knocked him out of his miserable daydream. He turned quickly to look at you, almost slopping his freshly poured coffee everywhere. "Shit."

"Oh, sorry." Your shoulders hunched to your ears. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"It's fine." He snapped, watching as you turned away from him and buried your head in the refrigerator to avoid eye contact with him. He'd made you feel bad. Nice work, Robinavitch. 

"So..." You trailed off, softly closing the refrigerator door and sending him a glance that showed you were cautious about being on the receiving end of his wrath. "Wanna place a bet on how many sildenafil related issues we're going to see today?"

Robby took a slow sip of his coffee, ignoring how it scorched his throat. "At least a dozen."

You nodded, agreeing. He couldn't tell whether you actually agreed or whether you were too nervous now to argue. That didn't sit right with him, a frown creasing his brows.

"I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm sorry." He mumbled, hoping that would clear the air. He wasn't really in the mood to apologise much more. But that wasn't your fault. "You just... startled me."

It didn't help that he couldn't quite understand how you could possibly be so chipper on a morning like this. This wasn't your first Valentine's Day as a resident in the Pitt. You knew what it had in store.

"Sorry about that." You scratched nervously at your arm, a trait Robby had gotten to know too well over the course of your residency. Only he hadn't been the one to make you do it since your first ever shift. He'd made you nervous your first day, he knew that, but he also knew you'd grown to realise that he wasn't actually all that bad by the end of it. 

"It's okay. No harm done." That was true. How could he actually be mad when nothing had really happened? You'd made him jump with your greeting, he'd almost spilled his coffee, he'd almost burned himself. But that was more on him not being aware of his surroundings. It was the break room. Of course other people would be coming and going. Maybe Dana really was right about his status as the Grinch of Valentine's Day. 

"Uh, somebody left pastries for us." You pointed at a box on the table in the corner of the room, trying to change topics. "I think it's supposed to make us feel better about having to work Valentine's Day. I'd get in there before they're all gone if I were you. I've already eaten two croissants."

Robby's head tilted to the side. He'd assumed you'd only just arrived, heading straight to the break room after dumping your stuff in your locker. But you'd already been here long enough to know about the pity pastries and eat two croissants. "When did you get in?"

"Oh." Your eyes widened, like you'd been caught doing something you weren't supposed to. "A little while ago. I figured some of the night shift team would like to get home as soon as possible to see their loved ones today."

How fucking considerate of you, he thought bitterly. God, he really was a grouch. "That's a nice thing for you to do."

You shrugged, easing up at his careful tone. "It's not like I've got anyone at home who's going to miss me today."

Robby watched as you processed what had just come out of your mouth, appreciated the way your face screwed up.

"Too much information." You huffed, shoulders slumping. "I'll- I'll go see if anyone needs me."

And then you zoomed out of the break room, as fast as your legs would carry you without actually running. He quietly exhaled something of a laugh to himself. At least he had you to amuse him today, your positive attitude and general nervousness around him made you entertaining at times. Always so eager to please.

The box of pastries called to Robby. Well, the rumble of his stomach did. So he allowed himself to take a peek at them, see what was on offer. What he found was another one of those damn notes.

Call me glucose because I can't help being sweet on you.

At least this one made sense being stuck to the pastry box. He snatched a chocolate éclair and bolted from the room.

As predicted, it didn't take long for the craziness to set in. Before nine, Robby had seen three sets of singed eyebrows, two Viagra problems, and one guy who had cut off circulation to his penis by wrapping a ribbon around it too tightly. The latter's girlfriend had not been impressed by what was, apparently, her only Valentine's gift from him. 

The only thing stopping him from going insane was your bright presence. Every time he felt like he was about to lose it, and go and have a breakdown in the bathroom, you would appear at his side. Whether it was to present a case, offer your assistance with something, or just to quip something clever in his ear. You were always there. Like you could sense how far he was teetering on the edge. It was somewhat welcome. On the one hand, he appreciated your ability to talk him down. But he also wondered if you actually knew what you were doing, if it was obvious on his face how depressed the whole romantic holiday made him. He'd only found one more of the love notes in the first two hours of his shift. 

I have a concussion from falling head over heels for you.

He had found it on the bottom of his shoe. How it got there, he wasn't entirely sure. The assumption was that it had been stuck to something else but had gotten knocked to the floor and then he'd just walked over it. The inconvenience of it being stuck to his shoe had bothered him. But the actual note itself hadn't set off that flare of irritation that the previous ones had. Was he getting used to them? Was he softening a little as the day wore on? That was an analysis of himself that he didn't have time to make. 

An itch of curiosity scratched at the back of his brain, a part of him wanting to know who was the culprit writing them all. He debated asking someone else what they thought of it all. But he'd already caught a couple of nurses positively beaming when they'd read the note that was stuck to the hand sanitiser. So he decided to leave it. If it was making people in his ED happy, then why would he poke at the situation. Ugh, he was going soft.

Before he could dwell on that too much, you appeared at his side again.

"Hi, Dr. Robby." You rolled your shoulders back as you prepared to say something.

"Spit it out." He sighed, glancing down at you.

Your lips puffed out as you exhaled an annoyed breath. "I've got a patient that's being a little aggressive."

"Then take Whitaker for backup. I saw him wandering around a minute ago." 

You swallowed a giggle. "No disrespect to Whitaker but I don't think he's all that intimidating. I think my patient would be better behaved with you in the room. Because you're, y'know, tall and in charge."

"Tall and in charge." Robby repeated, eyebrows raising. 

"Authority figure vibe. Because you are. An authority figure, I mean. Put a white coat on and you'd be prime for the Milgram Experiment." You winced at yourself. "Anyway, I'd appreciate your help. Only if you're free though. Obviously. If not, I'll try with Ahmad first. But I don't think my patient is going to listen to what I have to say. If you don't support me at least."

"Alright, what's the diagnosis?"

"He crushed up a bunch of Viagra and snorted it." You chirped, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"Jesus."

"Yeah. Only he didn't crush it all that well. Little shards of it have torn up his sinuses so he's essentially choking on a mixture of blood and Viagra." You watched as Robby's face crumpled. "Only he's denying that it's the Viagra and that there must be another problem."

"Did he admit to the Viagra snorting?"

"Not at first. But when I pointed out the blue dust all over him, he stopped arguing." 

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute."

"Thank you." Your voice was grateful, tone light with the promise of his backup in your mind, and you practically skipped your way back to the patient.

True to his word, Robby took only a minute to compose himself before he made his way over to the examination room you were in. There, it only took a few seconds for Robby to understand why this particular patient had made you feel uncomfortable.

"Brought Daddy with you this time? Aw, was the little girl too scared to deal with me by herself?"

Daddy?

Any other time Robby might have been insulted at the implication that he was old enough to be your father, the fact that he was in fact old enough to be your father was besides the point, but mostly he was just focused on the predatory look that the guy laid out on the bed was giving you. It was enough to make even his skin crawl.

"I'm Dr. Robinavitch." He rubbed hand sanitiser into his hands vigorously, not bothering to offer up his nickname. "I'm the attending physician here today. Can you tell me what the problem is?"

The guy's eyes didn't leave you as he talked Robby through his symptoms. They even stayed trained on you as Robby examined him and as Robby gave a diagnosis. The same diagnosis that you had given. When he told him that, he finally managed to gain the patient's attention. Only for a brief moment though before he was looking back at you again, sat in the corner.

"Hey, you're talking to me." Robby snapped, careful to try and keep himself together. This was not the day for him to be dealing with difficult patients. He knew how close he was to completely breaking and taking it out on someone. An aggressive patient with an unhealthy fixation on you would be an easy target for him. He turned to look at you, to find you already looking at him. "Could you go get Dr. Langdon for me please?"

There was a flicker of admiration in your eyes as you dipped your head once to agree. "Of course, Dr. Robinavitch."

And then you were gone. Robby looked back at the patient in the bed. He was flopped against the bed with a smug smile on his face. Like he'd won. Robby watched him for a moment, mentally debating the pros and cons of saying something. He knew if he got started then he probably wouldn't be able to stop. He also knew that he was too tired to be getting into something like this. Before he could make a decision of his own, Langdon did it for him by appearing in the doorway.

"You called for me?"

Robby gave the senior resident a brief rundown of the situation, explaining what he wanted him to do, and then left him to treat the patient before snapping the gloves off of his hands and disappearing into the bathroom to cool off.

The hours dragged by at a glacial pace and Robby stopped finding those post-it notes everywhere. He figured they must have only been a few dotted about the place and he'd managed to come across them all. He couldn't help but realise that he could probably do with finding another one. At least it would momentarily distract him from the snail speed that the day was going. He wasn't bored by any means, as usual Valentine's Day had him hopping from room to room with the most bizarre of cases, but he did find himself coming face to face with too many happy couples. It was an odd concept to him how so many people could find themselves so happy despite being in the emergency room. Love was a curious thing. Maybe seeing you would also cheer him up.

It didn't help that he was hungry. The only thing he had eaten that day had been the chocolate éclair that morning. The protein bars he usually kept in his pockets for spare moments had been forgotten that morning in his sad haze to get to work before the sorrowful emptiness of his apartment managed to lodge itself in his brain. His stomach growled at him for food. So loud that he'd risked looking for Dana's secret stash in the break room, to no avail.

But then a moment of hunger-induced clarity hit him.

There was a protein bar in his locker. He was sure of it. It was months old, and probably crushed right at the bottom, but at least it would be something. He made sure that nobody needed him in that immediate moment before rushing off to the lockers. But he was barely around the corner before he stopped dead in his tracks. Even from a short distance he could see it. On his locker. Another yellow sticky note.

Robby took slow steps towards it, unsure whether he was bothered or not by the sight of it. He squinted at it as he got closer, trying to read it from a safe distance without his glasses. 

You must be hypoglycemia because you make me weak in the knees.

A soft breath, not quite a laugh, escaped him. Whoever was behind all of this, had to be given credit for their dedication to romantic medical puns. He wondered if they had been coming up with them all themselves or had taken inspiration from elsewhere. He shook himself out of the thought and went back to his original mission of searching for the protein bar. It was old and crumbled just like he predicted. He didn't let himself think about it too hard when he peeled the sticky note from the front of his locker and tucked it inside with the rest of his belongings.

Making his way back to the central hub, munching on the ancient protein bar, he found you talking to an elderly woman with a paper pharmacy bag clutched in her hands. He rounded the desk and took a seat a few feet away from you, noting how Dana was listening intently to the conversation, and pretended to occupy himself with something on the computer in front of him.

"It's all written down in the bag, Mrs. Cody. Step by step instructions that you can refer to if you need." You nodded reassuringly at the woman, voice slow and collected like you had already explained this a couple of times before. "And if the problem persists then just come back and we'll have another look, okay?"

"Okay, dear. You've been so helpful." Mrs. Cody reached out and gently tapped you on the shoulder. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." You smiled at her, like it was your pleasure to be helping her with whatever the problem was.

"I'm sorry for ruining your Valentine's Day."

"You have nothing to apologise for, Mrs. Cody. This is exactly what we're here for."

She didn't look too convinced. "Do you have any plans for tonight at least? Like a date with a nice man, perhaps?"

Robby found himself straining to listen closer, not letting himself acknowledge why.

You laughed softly and shook your head. "No, I'm going home to spend the evening with a tub of ice cream and a horror movie."

The elderly patient appeared confused. "But you're such a pretty, young thing."

Robby couldn't help but agree.

"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Cody." You smiled at her, like you genuinely appreciated her words.

Mrs. Cody looked briefly sad for you, before a light bulb seemed to turn on in her head and a sly smirk overtook her weathered features. "Well, my gardener is a very sweet man. And single. Maybe I could set the two of you up."

Oh, god. This was why Robby shouldn't have been listening in. Because suddenly his stomach felt tight, like it was twisting up, and he found himself hoping that you would say no. Please, say no.

A slightly uneasy giggle escaped your lips. "Once again, very kind of you. But I'm not looking to meet anyone new at the moment."

A wave of relief rushed over Robby. He was such a selfish man. Just because he was sad and alone didn't mean that everybody around him had to be as well. He should be happy that the people he worked with had happy lives outside of the Pitt. And he was. To an extent. He liked knowing that McKay managed to find time to spend with her son doing fun activities. He liked that Santos and Whitaker lived together and had clearly become good friends while being roommates. He liked that Javadi had found a hobby in being a content creator, although he didn't actually fully understand what that meant. He had been so delighted for Donnie when he became a father. 

But he also found comfort in knowing that there were people like him, people like you, who didn't actually seem to have anybody outside of work. What an asshole he was.

Snapping back into listening in on the conversation between you and Mrs. Cody, he found that the older woman was finally leaving and you were turning to Dana with an amused look on your face. At least you seemed unaware that he had been listening in on your entire conversation. 

"Get used to it. You'll get a lot of ladies trying to set you up with their sons, grandsons, nephews, neighbours..." Dana waved her hand around as she trailed off. "Especially on days like today."

"She kept mentioning her gardener when I was examining her. 'Oh, he's such a handsome boy.' 'He's so attentive with my flowers.' I thought she liked him. I didn't realise she was trying to set me up on a blind date." You groaned and buried your face in your hands. "And I kept asking questions about him to keep her at ease with conversation."

"Hey, maybe you should've taken her up on the offer. Then he could have been attentive with your flower." Dana glanced at you over the top of her glasses, one eyebrow arching. 

You snorted into the palm of your hand and Robby felt the urge to crawl into a hole and die. 

"Let's keep the chatter work appropriate." He said gruffly, trying not to act like he was hooked.

"Sorry, Dr. Robby." You mumbled, eyes widening in embarrassment as you realised he'd been listening. "I'll, uh, I'll get back to my patients."

"Yeah, you do that." He huffed, massaging his temple with two fingers.

You shot Dana a look of pure mortification before scurrying off.

The charge nurse turned to him, eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Let the girl have some fun. It's Valentine's Day."

"That doesn't change the fact that she's on the clock and we have patients in need." Though he did feel bad about how much he revelled in the notion that he wasn't the only one suffering on the romantic holiday. He was at ease knowing that you were going home to an empty apartment just like he was. He was a horrible person.

"There's an hour left before the night shift gets here." Dana said, calmly. "She's been on top of it all day. Probably only got some charting to do before she can leave at seven. Pronto."

"Not the point." He replied, gruffly.

"Jeez, and I thought all those love notes would've warmed you up." She mumbled, walking off to where a group of nurses were hovering to break them up before he could even question what she'd meant by that.

The time seemed to tick by quickly after that and, before he knew it, Abbot was strolling through the doors for the night shift. He took one look at Robby before a knowing smile tugged at his mouth. "Tough day, huh?"

"You don't even know the half of it." He groaned, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I'm sure you're in for something special tonight."

"I'm sure." Abbot continued to smile at his friend before turning in the direction of the lockers and walking off.

Robby sighed to himself, glancing around the room to see that it had calmed down a little. He knew that it wouldn't last long before the nightly rush started. He had to make sure he was out of there before it began. Reaching down to where his bag had been tucked under the desk by Dana at the beginning of his shift, he thought about how he would spend the evening. He could get drunk. But then that would mean being hungover for his shift the next day. He could follow your idea and eat ice cream and watch a movie. Not a terrible plan. 

Halfway through another thought, he was distracted by the sight of his bag as his picked it up. It was half unzipped. Robby never left his bag open. Never. Cautiously, he opened it all the way and peered inside. He didn't exactly know what he expected to find in there but a pink envelope wasn't even on the list of possibilities. He slowly eased it out of his bag, somewhat surprised to find his name written on the front.

Dr. Robby.

Huh.

With a gentle finger, he eased the envelope open and pulled out a card. A Valentine's card with a cartoon heart on the front. The cartoon heart was drawn with a big smiley face in the middle. It was kind of ugly.

Robby scanned his surrounding area to see if anyone was watching him, nobody was, before he opened the card.

Dr. Robby,

You've given me the love bug. The only antidote is your smile. Will you cure me today?

And a little heart was drawn at the bottom beneath the message.

It was the same handwriting as all of the other notes. Only this one was written in an actual card, addressed to him specifically. Was this all connected? A plan to wish him a Happy Valentine's Day? But who would do that? And why?

His musings were interrupted by Abbot's reappearance. "Figure out who wrote those love notes yet?"

Robby shoved the card back into his bag rapidly, hoping Abbot didn't notice. "No. Why? Do you know?"

"Nothing happens during the night shift that I don't know about."

Robby wished he could say the same thing about the day shift. "So it was someone on the night shift."

Abbot smirked. "No. I just said it happened during the night shift."

A frustrated chuckle tumbled from Robby. "You're not going to tell me?"

"Now, where's the fun in that?" And then Abbot was gone, pulled into the nightly routine of handover.

Robby finished up his work, filling in charts and typing up emails, and said goodbye to nurses and other staff members as they walked by him to leave for the evening. He could see the joy on so many of their faces as they left to go join loved ones for a romantic night. The ache of jealousy settled deep in his bones. He could feel Dana sending him pitying looks every now and again, but he just ignored her. He didn't need to have that conversation with her. 

The last dash of joy he was potentially able to drain from the day appeared when you collapsed onto the desk in front of him and Dana. Your elbows propped on the surface and your face buried against your arms.

"I've dealt with enough sildenafil to last me a lifetime." You groaned lowly, glancing up to find Robby side-eyeing you. You immediately straightened up. "Of course, nothing wrong with it. Perfectly normal thing for men to use."

He continued to stare at you for a moment before a smile cracked across his face, softening his features. It was so easy to make you nervous. "Relax."

You grinned back at him. "Wow, there's that smile. It's been absent all day and I was wondering when it would turn up for its shift."

Something snapped tight in Robby's chest. But before he could say anything you were spinning on your heel and heading toward the exit.

"Patients dealt with. Charts done. I am off home to nobody." Your voice was mock-excited as you punched a fist in the air. "See you tomorrow, love bugs."

Robby floundered around with a lack of words to say as he watched you leave. He looked around him to see if he was the only one suddenly having an epiphany, only to find Dana looking at him like he was an idiot. Which wasn't completely unusual for her.

"D'ya finally figure it out?" She huffed, shaking her head. "And I thought doctors were supposed to be intelligent."

"The notes? Her?" He pointed vaguely in the direction you'd left in. He didn't know why that prospect seemed so unbelievable to him. You were totally sweet enough to do something like leave love notes lying around for people to find to cheer them up. But you also didn't quite seem confident enough to do something so bold.

Dana looked over the top of her glasses at him. "Chase her, Robinavitch. While the night is still young. I've got everything handled here."

"Why would I-?" He cut himself off. Surely Dana didn't know about the card addressed to him.

"You think it's just a coincidence that all the notes were placed around to follow your routine. Hand sanitiser, door to the stairs, coffee pot?"

Holy shit. She was right. And the card was just the cherry on top of it all.

Robby shot out of the chair, knocking it back so it drifted away on its wheels. "You're sure you've got everything covered here?"

"Not my first rodeo." The nurse sighed, practically shooing him away. "See you in the morning."

He didn't dare question her further, just grabbed his bag and his jacket before practically running for the exit. Running after you.

By the time he managed to track you down, you were halfway across the park. His old knees just didn't let him keep up so well anymore. He called your name a few times, noting the headphones over your ears that were blocking him out. But one yell of your name seemed loud enough as suddenly you were tugging the headphones from your head and turning around to look at him.

"Dr. Robby?" You looked perplexed. "Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"No." He wheezed, stopping a few feet in front of you to catch his breath. Sometimes he missed his youth.

"Oh. Did I forget something?" You glanced down at his hands as if he might suddenly hand something over to you but found them empty.

"No." He repeated, pulling in deep inhales. 

"Then what?" You looked nervously over his shoulder at the dark park behind him. 

"I know it was you."

Your jaw snapped shut. "Know what was me?"

Oh, you were going to play innocent? Funny.

"The love notes everywhere. The card."

You lit up in two ways. One in absolute panic that he had managed to figure it out and was calling you out on it. And the other that you were proud of your work and happy that he was acknowledging it.

"Oh. That." You traced a line on the path beneath you with the toe of your shoe, hands clasped behind you. "Yeah."

"I'm not mad." He clarified. "In fact, I'm sorry it's taken me all day to realise it was you. I might've been in a better mood if I'd known sooner."

You frowned up at him. "You didn't like them?"

Robby couldn't lie to you. "I've been told I'm a grumpy bastard on Valentine's Day."

You snorted a laugh but said nothing.

"Can I ask why?"

"Why I wrote them?" You asked and he nodded. "You've seemed so sad recently. And I thought maybe it would make you feel better."

Oh. That pang of disappoint in his chest was unmistakable.

But then you carried on. "I mean, doesn't everybody like to know that they're loved?"

Oh?

"Loved?" He repeated, staring down at you intensely.

"Did- did I say that?" You pointed at yourself, avoiding eye contact with him. You swallowed thickly and let your eyes land on him again, defeated. "Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?" He laughed, hard. "You guess you love me. So romantic."

You shrugged. "I wrote you love notes and came up with puns. I think that's the most romantic I've ever been in my life."

He shook his head in disbelief. Suddenly he was striding toward you, closing the few feet of distance with large steps. A hand landed on either side of your face, big palms spanning the expanse of your cheeks. He used the positioning of his hands as leverage to hoist you up to meet his lips halfway. A low, breathless mumble ghosted over your mouth. "Oh, sweet girl."

And then Robby was kissing you.

A surprised squeak escaped you, you hadn't been quite prepared for that. But once it seemed to register in your mind what exactly was happening, your eyes fluttered closed and you relaxed. Your hands curled in the fabric of his jacket, fingers appreciating the feel of the fleecy material.

His mouth devoured yours, hungry for everything you could give him. Robby pressed himself as close to you as possible, tongue pushing at the seam of your lips as soon as he felt you reciprocating the kiss. He sighed into your mouth as soon as it opened and his tongue met yours. This was what had been missing, this was the thing that had been making him so sad. Kissing you. Specifically you. How he hadn't seen it sooner, he didn't really know. He was an idiot, he knew that now. But he also knew he'd never let himself be an idiot again.

When you both broke away for air, he was surprised to hear you laugh. 

"What's funny?" He asked, nudging his nose against yours. He liked the little sound you made in the back of your throat as he did. He made a note of that.

"Thinking that maybe I should have written you some terrible puns sooner if this was going to be the outcome."

You gazed up at him with such warmth in your eyes that Robby considered the possibility of a heart attack at the mere sight.

"I think the puns were great. Very creative." He tilted your head to the side so he could plant an open mouthed kiss on your neck.

"Robby, we're in public." You whined, despite how you pulled him closer to you. "Also, don't lie to me. Dana told me you hated them this morning."

"I was stupid this morning." He liked the way you shivered as his teeth grazed your skin. "My sweet, sweet girl."

You hummed lowly. "Wanna come home with me and eat ice cream?"

He pulled back from you, already missing the feel of you on his lips, surprised by the offer. He wasn't sure why. You were already making out in the middle of the park. Going home with you wasn't exactly a much bigger step. In fact, it was a pretty natural progression. So, of course, his answer was simple. "I couldn't think of anything better."

With the way you grabbed his hand and started dragging him behind you, Robby couldn't remember how he had ever started the day so miserable. Look at the way it was ending. Maybe Valentine's Day wasn't so bad after all.

You’ve met your uncle before. Your mother claims that the first time he met you was when you were born. The first time you remember meeting him was on your sixth birthday. He hung around in the hall while the rest of the adults conversed casually in the kitchen. Robby had always been awkward around his sister and her late husband’s family. You had watched him as he held a beer with loose fingers, looking almost small. Approachable. Maybe that was why you had grabbed his large hand and dragged him into the living room. Your presents were still scattered across the carpeted floor, torn wrapping paper piled up in the corner. 

“Mama says you’re a doctor. Show me how to use these.” You had lifted the play doctor doctor kit from one of your cousins. Then, you paused, your mother’s voice echoing in your head. “Please, Uncle Mikey.”

And Robby couldn’t say no. Not when you had apparently learned to weaponize your shining eyes since he last saw you. Eyes that looked like your mothers. Like his.

That was how your mother found the two of you. She teased her brother as he carefully explained how each little plastic tool worked. They were dwarfed in his hands and you listened with rapt attention. Your mother took a picture, printing it out the next day and hanging it on the fridge. It’s still there, held in place by a magnet in the shape of the Pittsburgh Penguins logo. A gift from Robby when he finished his residency, because he was the kind of person to give gifts when celebrating rather than receive them. 

Robby still visits, but his drives to Philadelphia were reserved for holidays and birthdays. A few select days of the year that he deigned take off of work. It’s a recent thing, you think. Robby has always been hesitant around your family. Your family, because all Robby had left was you and your mom. His sister and niece. Your grandparents died before you were born. Before your mom could remember. Your great-grandma died when you were three, taking on the responsibility of raising her two grandkids all alone. You can only remember her through stories and pictures that seem like dreams to you.

(You do remember one thing about her. The home your mom and Robby had sent her to, near the end, had birds in the lobby. Little things that chirped happily and flew around in blurs of vibrant color. There were pictures of her, old ones, with a bird perched on her thin finger. You had asked for a pet bird when you first saw the picture. When your mother said no, you cried all through the night.)

But that was twenty years ago. You’ve graduated college and found a job. A real adult, ready to take on the world. The only kink in this plan is that your amazing new job is in Pittsburgh. A breezy seven hour drive from your home where you still live with your mother in Philadelphia. You don’t love the idea of that commute and neither had your mom when you announced that you had been hired. Which is how you find yourself standing outside of Michael Robinavitch’s apartment, waiting for your uncle to open the fucking door already. 

“Hey, you must be the niece Robby told me so much about.” An unfamiliar voice calls from the end of the hall. You turn to find the source of the voice, only to see a man you don’t recognize. He’s not as tall as your uncle, but he’s built. Freckles across his nose and what you can see of his forearms. You have no idea who this man is, but you kind of want to. 

“Robby?” You tilt your head instead of climbing this man like a tree and hike your duffel up higher on your shoulder. The man’s smile shifts to something confused and you glance down at the post-it in your hand. Apt 3A, in your mother’s looped handwriting. You look at the door again. 3A. Huh. 

The man studies your face a moment longer before his eyes widen just slightly in realization. He scratches at the scruff on his chin, shining silver under the warm hallway light. “Right. Michael? Everyone calls him Robby at the hospital. It's a habit, I guess.”

“You work with Uncle Mikey?” The question slips out before you can stop it. You’ve called him that since you could first pronounce the words with clumsy lips. The man (whose name you really need to learn) looks amused at the name as he nods slowly. You make quick work of introducing yourself. It’s his turn to tilt his head as he hears your last name. 

“Not Robinavitch?”

“My mom took my dad’s name. He…he died before I was born.” Your voice softens toward the end and you have no idea why you’re telling this to a stranger. You half expect the usual litany of apologies and my condolences, but the man just nods again. Maybe you should change the subject. “I never got your name.”

“Abbot. Uh, Jack…Abbot.” His voice is nervous, a contrast to his solid exterior. It’s…cute? The thought is shaken from your mind as the man—Jack, your mind supplies helpfully—holds out his hand. You shake it quickly, trying not to focus on the way his calloused hand feels against yours. You cannot do this right now.

“Who are you? James Bond?” You tease, shoving down the flush threatening to rise on your chest. But you can’t bring yourself to look away from the pink heating the tips of Jack’s ears at your words. He laughs anyway and you think you want to hear that sound again. And again. And god, you can see his teeth and they’re just a little crooked. You wonder idly if he ever had braces. If he was one of those kids who refused to wear a retainer after. 

“Not quite, sweetheart.” And he’s still grinning. You like the way he says the nickname. Or maybe you just like the sound of his voice. You’re quickly realizing you like a lot of things about Jack Abbot.

You’ve always been like this. Falling faster than you can catch yourself. Your friends have always teased you but you can’t help it. You always loved the story of how your parents met. Like a fairy tale with a tragic ending. The way your mom tells it, she knew the first time their eyes met that she would marry your father. You’ve always wanted that. Not that it can happen with this man. Your uncle’s coworker? Friend? The duffel slips down your shoulder and you hike it back up again and glance at the door. 

“Oh! Right,” Jack pats at his pockets before pulling out a key. It’s bright pink. Your favorite color…when you were six. But you know Robby must have gotten it with you in mind and that alone makes you smile softly. “Robby got caught up at work. Asked me to drop this off for you.”

The key is warm against your palm and you shove it into the lock. The door clicks open and you turn to lift your suitcase. You have more boxes at home, but you’re only staying with your uncle until you can find an apartment of your own. Except, your suitcase isn’t on the ground. Jack is holding it in his hands. Big, strong hands connected to big, strong arms that you—no. You turn toward the entry and step inside. Jack follows and doesn’t put down the suitcase until you tell him where to put it. 

“Did Uncle Mike tell you how long he’d be?” You ask, studying the apartment around you in lieu of watching Jack move toward the fridge and pull out a beer. He looks so comfortable in the house and you wonder how often he’s stayed over. How often he’s slept in the guest bedroom. Your bedroom, now. 

“It was just one patient that came in as he was finishing up, so he probably won’t be too long.” Jack shrugs, taking a sip from the glass bottle. You watch his throat bob as he swallows and you turn back to the apartment. It’s warm and soft. The kind of place that makes it easy to call home. You’re snapped out of your thoughts as Jack speaks again. “I can stay, though. If you want.”

You don’t catch the hesitancy in his voice. The way he watches you move around the space. You’re very busy not looking at him, actually. 

“You don’t have to.” Jack just grins as you try to brush him off. The way things are going, you’re afraid you might jump him if he stays.

“I’m offering, sweetheart.” And there it is again. That name in that voice. Those arms. That grin. Freckles. Why does he have to be hot and funny and sweet? And completely off-limits. 

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, Jack.” You say quickly, pointedly glaring down at the floor as you force down a flush. 

“If you say so.” Jack shrugs, running a hand through his curls. That’s when you see the black band wrapped around his ring finger. Shit. No. Not only is he twenty years too old for you. Not only is he your uncle’s friend. He’s married. A shock of anxiety runs hot through your veins and you take a step back. As if the physical distance will obscure how much you want this man. “Here.”

Jack steps through the kitchen, taking his time to grab a notepad and pen. He scribbles something on the paper, pressing it into your hand with a smile. You can’t bring yourself to look at it until the front door of Robby’s apartment clicks shut. Scrawled across the small sheet is a phone number. A fucking phone number. And words written under it in tall, sharp handwriting that you can barely read.

Just in case.

That’s it. That’s all it says. You tuck the paper into your palm, holding yourself back from adding the number to your contacts. You can’t. Not when you know yourself well enough to know it won’t end well. It will end with you texting a married man.

“He’s married.” You mutter to yourself aloud, like it will stop you from imagining Jack’s face before you go to sleep tonight. The paper crinkles in your grip and you consider burning it for a single second. Just keeping it should be fine, right? 

Nah, you’re fucked.

Living with Robby is strange. Different from what you’re used to. They were raised together, but your mother and your uncle are very different people. You’re used to helping her cook and hanging up your jackets when you get home. You’re used to open blinds and music on the turntable. It’s not that Robby is a shut-in or a slob. He’s just tired. But, after a week of watching Robby only eat takeout, takeout leftovers, and granola bars, you decide that if you want him to live long enough to walk you down the aisle (a promise he made to you in a split second when you asked almost twenty years ago, a promise you still plan to hold him to) you’re gonna need to put the work in. And, really, it’s the least you can do with him letting you take over his home. 

So you cook dinner and make sure to keep some warm until Robby gets back from work. You hang up jackets that Robby leaves over the back of the couch. You force Robby to actually leave the house on his days off. Little things that will never be able to repay everything you owe your uncle. Even if he insists that you don’t have to. You don’t notice the change until Robby has guests over.

Jack and Dana insist on coming over. At least, that’s what Robby says when the three of them stumble through the door. However, considering the late hour and the smell of alcohol wafting off of the three, you think Robby just didn’t want to deal with getting his friends to their separate homes.

“Sorry, bug.” Robby murmurs, leaning down to press a kiss to the crown of your head. He hasn’t called you that since you were twelve and you begged him to stop. You don’t mind it so much right now. “Should’a let you know they were comin’.”

You wave him off with a soft smile. Robby usually isn’t so sappy, even with you. “Don’t worry about it, Uncle Mikey.”

Just behind Robby, you can see Jack and Dana huddled close over a phone. You wonder if it’s Jack’s, leaning forward to glance down at the screen. They’re ordering food? Okay, now you know where your uncle got all his bad habits from. Definitely not bubbe. He’s surrounded by bad influences. You huff just slightly before gesturing toward the kitchen behind you.

“I made dinner. There’s leftovers staying warm in the oven. Should be enough for all of you.” You offer before Jack and Dana can start arguing about whose turn it is to pay. Robby pulls you into a quick side hug, used to coming home to a homemade dinner by now. He was hesitant about letting you cook for him at first. About depending on you like that. He came around pretty quick when you threatened to call his favorite Chinese place and have them block his number.

“You cook?” Jack’s voice is soft and full of something close to wonder. Your cheeks heat and you look anywhere but at Jack. His ring glints in the low light, making something curl angrily in your chest. “That’s…hot.”

Your cheeks must be on fire by now. Robby speaks behind you, the oven whining as he pulls the door open. “Jack.” Just his name. In a voice that sounds both sharp and amused. Not something you often hear from your uncle. Jack just grins.

“Just telling the truth, Rob. She’s a grown woman.” You ignore the way Jack’s words make your skin shiver. The way he looks at you when he says it. Robby grumbles something under his breath and rolls his eyes before turning back to the oven. Jack leans in close before you can make your brain work again. “Ain’t that right, sweetheart?”

“Jack, you’re scarin’ the poor girl.” Another voice says. Dana, now known as your savior. You haven’t met her before, but you’ve seen pictures. Pinned on the fridge next to a drawing you made when you were little, too young to remember. Three wobbly figures holding hands. The only family you’ve ever known.

“You must be Dana. Robby’s told me a lot about you.” Snatching the chance to focus on anything but Jack, you introduce yourself to Dana. She doesn’t take the hand you offer, instead pulling you into a tight hug instead. It reminds you of your mother. You think you might already love Dana. She smells like whiskey and citrus.

Dana just laughs, patting your shoulder as she leans away. “Only bad things, I’m sure.” Then, she turns to Jack, her eyes something between amused and stern. Eerily similar to the tone of Robby’s voice earlier. Like they know something you don’t. “Apologize, Abbot. Or me and Robby aren’t sharing dinner.”

And Jack looks personally offended by that. Dana just brushes past him with a grin. When he turns to face you again, he does look apologetic. But you’re not sure if that’s because of you or the threat of losing his dinner. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

The sentence feels clipped. Not in the uncomfortable, please-stop-talking-to-me way, but like he’s forcing himself to stop talking. To not say something. You wonder if he was going to call you sweetheart again. If you want him to.

“You didn’t.” It’s barely a murmur, closer to a whisper than anything else. You wish you could meet his eyes but your gaze is glued to the dark metal wrapped around Jack’s finger. He leans toward you slightly and you catch a glance of his irises. Bright and sharp. Green and grey with flecks of blue and honest-to-god shining gold.

“That’s good.” Jack’s voice loses its hesitance and he lifts his left hand to his hip, cocking it out. The movement makes you lock your knees. Especially with the gravel in his throat that you want to feel against your skin. But you can’t, goddamnit. You can’t because he’s taken. Some smart lady already snatched Jack Abbot up before you could.

A noise sounds from the kitchen and you turn to see Dana quickly turning away, trying to hide a grin. Her shoulders bounce with silent laughter and your cheeks burn. Suddenly, you feel like a kid. A child surrounded by adults. Like every move you make is wrong and you’re just a fucking kid. It fucking sucks.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Abbot—”

“Jack.” He interrupts, smirk spreading across his lips. You take a sharp breath and force yourself to stand up straight.

“Dr. Abbot,” The name is hard and sharp, a futile attempt to put distance between the two of you. “I can’t do this. Whatever this is. Not when you’re…” Your voice trails off and you gesture vaguely toward his ring as if that explains it. Because, really, it should. 

And Jack’s brows do this really cute thing where they furrow together. Something between frustration and confusion. You almost want to smooth the wrinkle it creates with your finger. You don’t. He opens his mouth to speak, but you spin around and step into the kitchen before he can. You wave at Robby and nod toward the hallway.

“I’m going to bed. Love you, Uncle Mike.” His cheeks heat and he smiles at you with a nod, shoving another bite of food into his mouth. You turn to Dana, desperately ignoring the knowing grin on her face. “It was nice to finally meet you, Dana.”

She doesn’t answer, just grins and lifts her half-eaten plate in a mock salute. You return the gesture and turn toward your room, brushing past Jack. He tries to speak again, but you’re shutting your door with a final click before you can hear it. 

Going out with your coworkers had been a terrible idea in hindsight. Not that hindsight will actually kick in until you’re terribly hungover tomorrow morning. For now, the alcohol running through your veins is the only thing keeping you from crying because your fucking leg is broken. Probably. Most likely. At least, your coworkers are panicking and called an ambulance. But maybe we should start from the beginning. 

You love your job. The work, the people. It’s what you’ve always wanted. And your coworkers are great. It’s just…you’re the youngest person there and they all treat you like it. Not in a disrespectful way, but like you’re some kid they need to watch out for. So maybe you agreed to go out with them. And maybe you had a few too many shots in a misguided attempt to show them that you’re a goddamn adult. So, yeah. Tomorrow, you’re definitely going to regret the decisions you’ve made tonight. But right now you feel like a warrior who just won the war. 

“Please stop trying to sit up.” The paramedic in the back of the ambulance sounds almost pitiful as he pushes you back down onto the gurney. You huff, glancing over at where one of your coworkers is sitting, swaying slightly as she looks at your leg. “We’re almost to the hospital, just a few minutes.”

“Which hospital?” You murmur. Under the oxygen mask (which you’re sure you don’t need since you can breathe perfectly fine) it sounds more like wih ospil but you can’t bring yourself to care. The paramedic seems to understand at least, checking your vitals one more time before looking back at you.

“Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.” The name is awkward on his tongue and you wonder if he’s used to saying the whole name. You remember your coworker saying something about how you’ve only been in the city for a while. He probably thinks you don’t know it. You giggle, the alcohol making everything seem silly and inconsequential. 

You would probably be worried if this had happened during the day. Showing up in the emergency room, drunk as hell, to your already stressed uncle? Not a good idea. But Robby is safely tucked away in bed at home. You checked before leaving. So you have nothing to worry about. Well, maybe whatever the fuck is wrong with your leg, but that’s probably nothing. You feel fine, after all. Dandy, even. Then the ambulance slows to a stop and you’re being jostled as people surround you. 

“Drunk versus tabletop. Possible broken tibia, sprained wrist,” You glance down at the wrist you used to catch yourself earlier. It’s swollen and gross-looking and you turn your head away. The rest of the paramedic’s words float over your head. Fuck, okay maybe you’re sobering up now because your leg decidedly does hurt. Like, a lot. Maybe it did break. Maybe trying to climb onto a bar top table hadn’t been your best idea. Maybe this whole night was a bad idea. Ugh, now your head hurts. 

“Hurts.” You mutter through the oxygen mask (that they still have yet to remove even though you’re sure you still don’t need it). You decide to tug it off yourself with your good hand. The doctor at the end of your bed furrows her brow at the action. That’s when you realize the paramedics are gone. Your coworker sits across the room, slumped in a plastic chair. You’re on a hospital cot, in a hospital room. When did that happen?

“I’m Dr. Ellis.” The woman steps toward you, pulling away the mask as she can see you breathing perfectly fine. “Heard you fell from a table? Did you hit your head?”

You groan but shake your head. You caught yourself and you’ve got the swollen wrist to show for it. Although, you remember a girl in college telling you that falling head-first and trying to catch yourself with your hands can cause a shoulder dislocation. You shrug your shoulders experimentally. At least they feel normal. “What’s the damage, doc?” You ask with a slow grin. 

“You’ve got a displaced oblique fracture on your right tibia and your right wrist is sprained. A few other bruises, but your leg is what I’m most worried about.” Dr. Ellis steps away from you, toward a computer. She rolls it toward the bed, scanning her badge and pulling up a picture. Or, more accurately, an x-ray. A dark, diagonal line cuts across the thick bone of your tibia. The top and bottom pieces don’t quite line up, one shifted slightly to the right. You wince. 

“Surgery?” You ask before she can speak. Ellis nods, pointing at the obvious break. She opens her mouth to say something when the door clicks open. 

Jack Abbot stands in the doorway, looking like he just ran a marathon. You can’t look away from the flushed skin of his cheeks. You definitely can’t help imagining those cheeks flushed for a different reason. His voice is hard when he speaks, a tone you haven’t heard from him yet. “Ellis, go take care of the lac in North 7. I’ll take care of this one.”

“But—”

“Go.” His voice leaves no room for argument. You’d never admit it out loud, but if your leg wasn’t currently screaming at you for your stupid decisions, you would probably make another one right about now. 

“Jack.” Oh no. Is that longing in your voice? This is terrible. Absolutely horrible. Not good at all. Not that any of those tiny details stop you from reaching out to run your fingers across his arm. You trace the freckles there, creating imaginary constellations on his skin. 

“I thought I was Dr. Abbot.” He pulls his hand away and you whine. You actually fucking whine. Okay, you need this man away from you right now. Five minutes ago would have been preferable, but you’ll take what you can get. It’s made worse by the teasing in Jack’s voice. The amusement dripping from his smile. You glance over at your coworker. She’s still sleeping. Thank god. You could not take an audience to this humiliation. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll get you fixed up. But you’re gonna need surgery to move the bone back in place. And you’ll need to keep weight off the leg for at least a month. Preferably two.”

You’re not sure you heard anything past sweetheart but you nod along anyway. They don’t have you on painkillers, right? This is just your natural reaction to this man. Maybe you should just crawl to the roof and throw yourself off. 

“You listening?” He leans over the cot, over your legs, so he can meet your gaze. It burns. He’s careful not to touch your leg. He’s careful in general, you’ve noticed. Careful with his things, careful with his work. Not in a way that speaks of hesitance. It reminds you of the fact that careful begins with care. Reminds you that even rough hands like Jack’s can be soft when they want to be. Hands with a wedding band—

“Where’s your ring?” His left hand is bare. There’s a ring around his fourth finger where the skin isn’t quite as tanned. You can’t help staring at it. Why would he take off his ring? What could have possibly happened to make a woman leave Jack? “Oh god, did you—? Did I—?”

“Hey, calm down. Listen to me, okay?” You can hear the rapid beeping of the heart monitor as panic fills your chest, hot and sharp. Jack’s voice is soft and smooth. Steady. You grab onto it, an anchor in the roaring ocean around you. “That’s it. Good. Just breathe, sweetheart.”

And his hand is on yours. Warm and rough but so gentle. His thumb traces over your knuckles and you want to lean into the sensation. You wonder how his fingertips would feel on the rest of your skin. Your shoulders, arms. Your legs. 

“You can’t tell Uncle Mike.” A new panic floods through you, desperate to change the subject Jack winces slightly as you flip your hand to grip his. 

“Kid, I think he’s gonna find out whether I tell him or not.” Jack’s voice has a certain teasing quality to it but he doesn’t move to tug his hand out of your hold. He just lets you squeeze his bones together. “Would you rather he wakes up to an empty apartment and panics? Look at me, please.”

You do. Because how could you possibly deny him when he asks like that? His eyes are just as beautiful as you remember them, warm and bright and just a little teasing. 

“My ring is right here.” Jack tugs on a chain around his neck. A familiar dark ring of metal slides down the chain and your cheeks go hot. When you try to look away, he moves to stay in your gaze. You can see the light glint off of the ring, an inscription on the inside, S&J. “I take it off at work when I can.”

“What’s her name?” You really do look away this time. To the other side of the thin cot, at your swollen wrist. It’s easier to look at than Jack. His hand moves to your chin, gently guiding you to face him. It suddenly feels about ten degrees warmer in the room. 

“Sarah. Her name was Sarah.”

The door slams open before you can respond to that and the both of you turn to see Robby standing in the doorway. He’s breathing heavy and still wearing his plaid flannel pants. His t-shirt is wrinkled to hell and his hair is sticking up in the back in that way that you always smooth down for him before he leaves the apartment. 

“Fuck, bug, what happened?” Robby rushes to your side, leaning over the cot to check you over. You can see the way his eyes scan across your body, cataloguing every injury. The panic in his eyes dims just slightly as he finally sets his eyes on you. You’re sure he was overworried about you, worst cases running through his head on the drive over. You just huff, glaring at Jack as he steps back from the bed. 

“I had Shen call him.” Jack says simply, grinning. His biceps bulge as he crosses his arms across his chest. You turn your gaze desperately back to your uncle.

“Fell off a table at a bar. I’m fine.”

Robby raises one brow and immediately pokes your wrist. You hiss, smacking his hand away. “Yeah. Fine. This’ll take at least six months to heal.”

“I guess this means I won’t be moving out any time soon.” You groan. It’s not that you’re rushing to move out. You just…feel bad. Invading Robby’s home longer than you’d promised. An awful feeling bubbles in your stomach and you disregard it as nausea from the alcohol. “‘M sorry, Uncle Mikey.”

“Don’t apologize, bug. You’re welcome to say as long as you want.” Warm lips press against your forehead and any nausea melts away. You suddenly feel like you’re home, wrapped in your mother’s arms. Warm and safe from everything. Maybe Robby is more similar to your mom than you thought. You glance toward the door when you hear it squeak, only to see Jack’s broad shoulders as he slips out. He waves. You smile.

Was. He said was. It’s been two weeks since you saw Jack, drunk as hell with a swollen wrist and an even more swollen leg, and all you can think about was how he said was. It makes something fester inside of you. An ugly knot of emotions that you refuse to spend time untangling. Jack Abbot may be single, but he’s still your uncle’s friend. He’s still twenty years too old. He’s still unattainable. You hate the spark of something horrifically close to hope that refuses to be snuffed out in your chest.

(He’s also a widower. Because you don’t say was unless that person has passed. You don’t know how long they were married or how long Sarah has been dead. You do wonder what she was like. If the two of you would have gotten along. If she was anything like you.)

Not that it matters. You have much more pressing issues. Like your broken leg, wrapped in a thick cast. There are four pins screwed into your bone. Pins that, apparently, are supposed to stay there, as Robby had informed you. He had also let you know that the pins were not big enough to set off most metal detectors. You had asked if it would set off the ones at the airport. The last time you got on a plane, you were twelve. 

Oh, and your wrist. Sprained, with an ugly brace that clashed terribly with your bright pink cast. When the doctor had asked what color you wanted for the cast, you immediately thought of the key to Robby’s apartment. Something about the color felt like healing. Or maybe you just think your six-year-old self would approve of the decision. Her judgement always seemed sound.

Robby mutters quietly as he gently rotates your wrist. You wince at the movement and he gently velcros the brace back onto your wrist. The pressure actually feels kind of nice. Especially cool fabric pressing against your hot skin. “Yeah, that’s gonna need at least another week.” 

Of course. You truly regret going out that night. For the past two weeks you’ve been mostly sequestered to Robby’s apartment. The first few days were the worst, in and out of sleep as you curl up in your bed. Moving hurt like hell and the pain medication made you sleepy. Robby had taken care of you a lot on those days. He still does, making you lunches the night before and calling you from work when he can to check up. It’s strange, the routine you had established with Robby flipped entirely on its head.

“When does the cast come off again?” You whine, leaning back into the plush cushion of the couch. You have decided to spend as little time in your room as possible after being stuck in there for most of a week. 

“Well, considering you just got it on yesterday I’d say about six weeks.” The lines around Robby’s eyes crinkle as he grins. It reminds you of your mother. The longer you spend with your uncle, the more similarities you see between the two. Like one of those pictures where new details pop out the longer you stare. It’s fun to watch the tapestry of Michael Robinavitch slowly unfurl in front of you. But all you do in the moment is groan.

The splint had been bad enough. But the fucking cast. It restricts the movement of your entire foot and most of your right leg. Movement was difficult even with the stupid crutches that Robby had given you. Much less trying to get around without some kind of aid. And it’s all more frustrating than anything else. Oh, and completely your fault. You can’t blame someone else for your stupid decisions. So you live with it. 

For the next week, Robby drives you to work. He drops you off at the door, making sure you have your lunch and your crutches. You feel like a kid all over again. You realize that Robby seems to bring that feeling out in you. But it’s not bad. You like the color of the cast. You like the way people compliment it. You like depending on someone else again. Your mom never told you how exhausting it can be. To be the one someone relies on. Rewarding but tiring in a way that sneaks up on you.

This part, though, is definitely embarrassing. In your attempt to show your coworkers that you’re not a kid, you got way too drunk and broke your leg. And you’re being dropped off at work by your uncle. The last time you got dropped off at work, you were fourteen. Needless to say, you’re counting the days until your cast comes off. 

“What’re you doing here?” Jack’s voice calls out as you lean against the nurse’s station. You whip around to face him, cheeks hot. You hope the heat doesn’t show on your cheeks. Jack’s lips tick up into a tiny grin and all hope leaves you. Your ears burn. “No new injuries, right?”

“Just getting my cast checked out before work.” You hate how soft your voice is. No sharp edges or harsh tones. You want to be angry. At yourself, for being an idiot. At Jack, for being so hot. But you honestly don’t have the energy to be angry at anything right now. Crutches, you have decided, are bullshit. That’s why you’re leaning against the hub, exhausted and too lazy to attempt to balance on one leg. The aforementioned crutches are leaned against the countertop next to you, laughing at your misery.

Jack laughs. The kind that makes his head fall back just enough to expose his throat. The kind that makes you fight to keep yourself from smiling. You think infectious is a great way to describe this man. And you’re the stupid host who decided the bacteria was cute enough to keep around. You really need to start charging this man rent. 

“What’s the verdict?” His voice has that teasing lilt that makes you want to feel how it vibrates against your skin. Your mind goes blank for a second, staring at Jack as if he will physically put your train of thought back on track. He just grins and taps his foot against your cast.

“Oh!” Right. The cast. The reason you’re in this godforsaken hospital in the first place. The infection has long since spread to your brain, slowly eating away at the muscle there. “Uh, at least another month? Then physical therapy to strengthen the leg again.” You parrot what the doctor told you. Robby had been the one to take the pamphlets and further care instructions, shoving them into his jacket pocket before you could argue. Once, years ago, your mother told you that sometimes you just have to let Robby take care of you. Even before he became a doctor. Like it had always been in his blood to help. You try to remember that now, as you wait in the ED for Robby to pull the car around into the ambulance bay. Because, apparently, you can’t even make the walk to your uncle’s reserved Chief Attending spot in the second row of the parking lot.

“Hey, kid.” Dana’s voice comes from the other side of the counter. You turn to face her, glad to have an excuse not to look at Jack anymore. She jerks a thumb over her shoulder toward the large sliding doors. “Robby’s pullin’ into the ambulance bay.”

You nod, sharing goodbye’s with the charge nurse before turning toward the cursed crutches. Displeasure must show on your face because Jack laughs behind you, just over your shoulder.

“Want me to carry you?”

And that makes you spin around so fast you’re almost dizzy. God, your cheeks burn and you can practically feel the way your pupils grow at the idea, subconscious taking in every detail of this man. Even the mental image makes your one good leg feel weak. Jack’s thick arms wrapped around you while his heart beats right against your ear. His lips twitch and you realize you haven’t answered. Your still-mush brain seems incapable of forming sentences. So you stick with one word. “What?”

“You’re glaring at those crutches like you want to burn them, sweetheart.” Jack leans in closer and you grip at the crutches in your hand. His grin is sharp, like he knows what he’s doing. “Just offering to help.”

His voice does not sound helpful in the slightest. It sounds like velvet wrapped in something simmering hot that you do not have the bandwidth to study right now. You wish the stupid crutches weren’t so smooth. You need something digging into the skin of your palm. Something to ground yourself, to keep you from combusting on the spot.

“Kid, you comin’?” You hear Robby’s voice and turn away from Jack. Your uncle stands in to the side of the ambulance doors, dramatically tapping his watch when he sees you looking. Maybe there is a god, after all. You hurriedly shove the crutches beneath your arms and begin your pathetic limp toward where Robby is waiting. Jack easily keeps pace behind you.

As you scramble into the car, Jack hovers close behind. When your foot slips on the runners, he’s right there, hand solid and warm against your back. Not too low. A respectful touch that still makes you shiver. By the time you settle into the passenger seat, his hands are shoved so deep in his pocket you half-believe that the touch was a figment of your imagination. But you can still feel the outline of his broad palm pressed to your shirt. You really need to get out of here before you do something stupid in front of your uncle. 

“See you, sweetheart.” It’s a promise. You can tell from the curve of his lips and the shadowed glimmer in his eye. You can only blink. He gently pushes the door shut and leans through the open window. “Have a good day at work.”

And, oh god. He winks. He winks at you while saying those painfully domestic words. It makes something in your stomach revolt. You force a tight smile and turn pointedly through the front windshield, thighs pressed tight together. His smile doesn’t falter as he leans back, away from the car. Jack and Robby exchange a casual greeting before your uncle is pulling away. Jack stays in your rearview mirror for two blocks before Robby turns. 

“You and Jack seem close.” It’s an innocuous question. Innocent enough if you don’t know about the storm of emotions spinning inside of you right now. And Robby’s voice is the kind you’ve been dreading for weeks. The kind that does know. Knows too much. But you’re stuck. In a moving car. Even if Robby got stuck at a light, you can barely walk. So, yes, you’re trapped. A kid in a safety seat. 

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry.” Jeez, your voice practically drips with something between loss and resentment. Like a death you could have saved, if things had been different. If you weren’t Robby’s niece. Maybe—But you would give the world for your uncle. Anything for the man who made sacrifices for your mother. For you. You wouldn’t betray your uncle like that. Not for anything. Especially not for a man. Even a man like Jack.

It must show on your face, the conflict between someone and the one thing they absolutely cannot have. Robby doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. The quiet is cut through by the sounds of the city. Cars honking and people yelling. All underpinned by the light songs of morning birds. You lean out the passenger window, wishing the breeze could blow away every issue you’ve ever had. But the world doesn’t work that way. The wind stops as Robby puts the car in park and you sigh, gathering your bag and crutches.

Robby speaks before you can push the door open. “I won’t stop you. Jack is a good guy.” His voice is awkward and you almost smile as he pats your shoulder exactly twice. It’s probably supposed to be soothing or reassuring. It just feels surreal. Fake. “He—you both deserve something good.”

Something cracks inside you and the world seems to shift beneath the car. Just a slight tilt to the left. For the past few months in Pittsburgh, you’ve been having a continuous, low-level panic attack. One that reared its ugly head every time Jack Abbot came within ten feet of you. Because you can’t have him. Because he’s married. Because that would be wrong. Because you can’t do that to your uncle. But, apparently, it was all for nothing. Weeks upon weeks of second-guessing and biting your tongue. All because Robby is trying to set you up with his best friend? It’s all a bit much at the moment. Your brain feels like it got dropped in the middle of the desert, unsure of what’s real and what’s just a mirage. 

“I have to go.” You spit out. You really do. You need to get out of this goddamn car and sit at your desk and pretend the last few weeks never happened. The scramble out of the passenger seat is just as pitiful as the one into the car, but you can’t bring yourself to care. You wave at Robby before disappearing into the building without another word. You’re not exactly sure what you would say right now if you had it in yourself to speak.

Sometimes, you just need to call your mom. General life advice, honestly. Good stuff. About ninety percent of the supposedly impossible problems you’ve had in your life have been solved after a conversation with your mother. This one seems especially impossible, but you know she’ll at least have something to say about it. 

“That’s…a lot, honey.” Her voice is hesitant and a little tinny through the phone. You can picture her now, standing at the landline in the kitchen, twirling the cord around her finger. You think she might be the last person in Philadelphia who actually uses a home phone. Let alone a landline. The sound is comforting, though. You’re used to the way it shifts her voice. 

“I know. Trust me. It’s just…I don’t know what to do, Mom.” The words shake on your tongue. It takes physical effort not to call her momma. The way you used to. It’s always been a warm blanket around your shoulders, a motherly hug. But you’re an adult, no matter how much of a child you’ve felt like these past few weeks.

“You know what I’ll say, hon. Just be honest.” She says softly. It’s a familiar phrase. Everything in life can be solved by being honest. At least, that’s what your mother told you as you grew up. Especially when it comes to people you love. She’s right. You knew it was coming. That doesn’t mean it’s not relieving to hear. Something steady in the ever-changing life you’ve started. “Be honest with yourself and what you want. Be honest with your uncle. Be honest with the hot doctor you have a crush on.”

“Mom!”

“What?” She sounds genuinely confused and you can’t help laughing just slightly. Your cheeks burn red hot and you grumble something into the phone. You’re not exactly sure what you say, but it must translate to something, because she acquiesces. You can hear laughter through the speaker and think that maybe she knows exactly how embarrassing her words are. For about three seconds, you consider hanging up without another word. “Okay, okay. How is work?”

The conversation moves on to more innocent topics after that. Asking after Robby and his health. How he’s eating. Telling her about your job and your coworkers. She shares the latest drama about the neighbors who always yelled loud enough to be heard through the walls. It’s not that you haven’t called her since the move, but it always feels like a relief when the two of you talk. You just wish you could have her warm arms wrapped around you, soothing the simmering panic. But it’s okay. Her voice will smooth over the wrinkle between your brow. Enough to get through this.

“Mom, I love you.” You’ve said it before. You say it every time you hang up and every time you say goodbye. Habit by this point. But you mean it every single time. 

“I love you, too, hon. Say hi to Mike for me.” 

The call ends with a click, the line going dead. You listen to the dial tone for a moment, lost in the relaxing drone. It drowns out the thoughts in your head and you feel like you can finally think. Just be honest. Okay, maybe you don’t need to think. What would six-year-old-you do? Probably ask your mom. Check. What next? Follow her advice. Damn. 

You’re not used to flirting back with men. Not really used to them flirting with you in the first place. At least, not noticing the flirting. Jack Abbot must be going out of his way if even you have caught on. Or, maybe it’s because you always notice Jack. The guys throwing shitty pickup lines at you in a dark bar aren’t exactly the kind of guys you want to notice. But Jack makes you glad to notice him. Rewards your eye contact with a grin and listens when you talk. He draws light toward him like a black hole. His broad shoulders and shiny curls. Those eyes that crinkle just perfect when he laughs. You want to feel his laughter against your skin. You want to bite into those shoulders, see how much give they might have. 

And it’s so annoying because he’s not just hot. He’s brilliant. Whip smart with great instincts. Jack Abbot is smooth confidence wrapped in muscle and tight t-shirts. You can still remember how he leaned over you, so gentle. So kind. You know what those hands can do. You’ve heard plenty of stories from Robby about resetting bones and tearing open chests. But you personally know that those hands will be gentle with you. Maybe the knowledge makes you feel special. Maybe it just reassures you, relieving some deep-buried fear. What you do know is that you’ve been resisting the gravitational pull of Jack Abbot and once you let go, there will be no going back.

It’s fucking terrifying. Because this isn’t just your life. It’s Jack’s and Robby’s and everyone they work with. Because if this goes wrong, it either changes Robby’s relationship with you or it changes his relationship with Jack. Because if this all implodes and falls apart, you have to move back to Philadelphia. Maybe change your name. Just to make sure.

You know Jack wouldn’t be weird about it. He’d probably take whatever blame and distance himself. Even if you fucked up. Because he’s so good. So kind and selfless and you’re afraid that losing Robby would kill him. (You don’t know how he’d react to losing you. If he’d be sad, even if you weren’t Robby’s niece.)

“What’s got you thinking so hard, kid?” Dana’s voice asks. You’re back in the ED again. It’s becoming somewhat of a habit, but you’re sure none of the other doctors or nurses mind so long as they don’t have to treat you for anything. And, this time, your leg is free. No longer trapped in its Barbie-pink cage. You can’t even be excited about it because your brain is so preoccupied by a certain five-foot-nine situation.

“Nothing. Just bored.” Not a lie. Not technically. You are bored. A coworker dropped you off earlier for your appointment to have the cast removed. So, now you’re stuck in the staff lounge, waiting (im)patiently for your uncle’s shift to end so he can drive you home. You would walk…if you could. Just because the cast is off doesn’t mean you’re suddenly healed. After almost two months without use, your leg is just about as useful now as it had been in the cast. Except now you’re supposed to start putting weight on it when you can, to strengthen the muscles again. That’s how you find yourself leaning back against the counter, occasionally shifting from one foot to another. 

Dana raises a single brow that says I-don’t-believe-you-at-all as she lifts a mug to her lips. The steam from the coffee fogs up her reading glasses and she pushes them up absentmindedly. “Uh-huh.” Her voice echoes in the ceramic, making your cheeks heat. The cup clacks against the counter when Dana sets it down. “Wanna be honest with me?”

Damn. Clocked. Genuinely, you feel like someone just punched you. Shock from the impact and lingering embarrassment at not being able to dodge the hit. You know you’re still young. A twenty-something with her entire life ahead of herself. Robby and Jack and Dana are older than your mom. Definitely old enough to be your parents. It makes sense that there will be times where you feel like a kid around them. That doesn’t change the way your entire body feels like it’s being pricked with exactly one million needles. Your eyes almost hurt from the effort it’s taking to not look away. Dana Evans would get along with your mother, you think. Maybe that’s why Robby seems to gravitate toward her.

“I like Dr. Abbot.” You force the words out, around the lump quickly forming in your throat. “And I think he likes me back. But I don’t want to make things weird between him and Uncle Mike if it doesn’t work out.” Oh god, you’re rambling now. 

“Kid, listen to me.” Dana’s hands are warm on your shoulders. You wonder if she’s always like that or if it’s from the hot coffee mug she was holding just a moment ago. “Jack and Robby’s relationship is not your problem. And if Jack fucks up with you, he deserves whatever Robby throws at him.”

And that feeling? The one where you’re small and scared? It starts to feel more like arms around your shoulders. Like your mother scolding you. Like you know she’s right but you’re too stubborn to admit it. It feels a little like coming home.

“Dana, how many times have your daughters been through this?” Your voice is way too vulnerable to joke, but Dana rolls her eyes and laughs anyway. “You’re way too good at this.”

“My kids don’t have any uncles to crush on their best friend.” You glare at her, but even you can tell it’s weak. She just grins and lifts a hand to pat your cheek. “I manage an emergency department populated by emotionally repressed old men. That’s pretty much the same thing as a teenage girl, sweetie.”

“I am not a teenager!”

Dana slings an arm around your shoulders, grinning something suspicious. “Everyone goes through this, kid. Well, maybe not the whole uncle’s-best-friend thing. But the not-knowing-how-to-deal-with-a-crush part is pretty universal. A right of passage, kiddo. You’re just…a little late.”

You take it all back. You can handle being treated like a kid. What you absolutely cannot accept is that this pain is a part of growing up. An inevitability. Did your mom feel like this? Like her heart was breaking before she could even act on the feeling there? Did your dad?

Not for the first time, you wish you could speak to him. It was an angry feeling at first. Teenage hormones making the entire world your enemy. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t your dad have pushed through? Survived, for you? Now, it’s grown into a dull thud that occasionally vibrates your brain. An ache for someone you never even got to meet. Maybe that’s why you like Jack. Deep-seated daddy issues that bubble to the surface every time his eyes meet yours. But it doesn’t matter because Jack is good and kind and hot and you have a debilitating crush on him. And maybe it’s time to be honest.

“Hey, so I like you.” Lame. Holy shit, so lame. The reflection of your face in the mirror is nothing short of panicked. You literally know for a fact that Jack Abbot likes you back. He’s been more than obvious enough with his flirting. It’s not an issue of reciprocation. It’s an issue of making it real. Existing in the nebulous space between nothing and something is easier than picking one over the other. You know which one you would pick, if it were your choice. Because it doesn’t matter that Jack likes you if he’s not ready for…whatever could happen between the two of you.

You want it to mean something. It feels selfish, to want this man the way you do. The thing suspiciously close to guilt in your gut doesn’t change that feeling, though. You want to know that he feels the same. That he thinks about you so often, you invade his dreams. You want Jack Abbot to practice how he’ll confess to you in his bathroom mirror. You want him to daydream about having your last name. Something which you’ve only done once. Still, one too many times for an adult woman with (most of) her shit together, despite what recent evidence may show.

“Hey, bug. You okay in there?” Robby’s voice calls through the door, muffled by the thick wood. The sound makes you jump and bodily pulls you from your thoughts. Before he can speak again, you yank the door open. You’re sure Robby can see the manic look you try to school from your face.

“Fine. Great.” Yes, totally believable.Not at all excuse-sounding. Totally legit. But Robby doesn’t question it. Just shrugs with a little shake of his head. Probably not worth the effort of asking. Or maybe he already knows why you’re currently panicking. He’s the one that started all of this with his…blessing?

You kind of hate how you need permission to ask out Jack. Permission from a man. It’s first grade again and the teacher is asking for a couple of strong boys to carry something for her. You never offered your hand. Because you weren’t the one she asked. Because you don’t have the arbitrary permission. It never stopped the other girls. And now, as a grown adult, you still need to be told you’re allowed. You hate that you can’t make yourself break the rules. Even the ones that only exist in your head. What you hate even more is that you’re too much of a coward to even ask for permission.

“Okay…” Robby steps out of the doorway, but his eyes are trained on your face. You step out, letting Robby into the bathroom. He watches your movement carefully, but doesn’t say anything more. 

“Hey, Uncle Mikey?” No. This is a terrible idea. You should not do this. Not with your uncle of all people. Emotionally stunted, allergic to talking, Michael Robinavitch. So, yeah. Bad idea. “Does…I mean, does Jack ever talk about me?”

Something flashes across Roby’s face and you can see the split second that he considers simply walking away from the conversation. Instead, he breathes in and lets it out in a long, measured breath. His hand scrubs over his beard. You can see the gears turning in his head. You wonder if he’s trying to remember a time or if he’s trying to pick one. 

“I—yeah.” He sighs. You can’t help grinning at the exasperation painted across his face. If he didn’t want this, he shouldn’t have encouraged you in the first place. When you open your mouth to ask more, Robby holds up a hand. “And that’s all I’m saying. I am not going to—this is not happening.”

A laugh bubbles up and out of your throat. You just can’t help it. Robby’s cheeks are stained red and he looks like he just swallowed a sour grape. But when he hears your laughter, Robby laughs too. This is not the end of the world. It’s a crush that you hope can become something more. If it doesn’t, you’ll be okay. Probably cry in your bed for a week straight, but you’ll get over it. Eventually. The realization alone takes an invisible weight off your chest and you can breathe deeper than you have since you arrived in Pittsburgh.

“Uncle Mike? Thank you.” Your arms loop around him in a tight hug. He responds in kind, more out of instinct than purposeful action. Robby pats your back awkwardly as you refuse to let go. Eventually, he shoves gently at your shoulders. You relent easily. It’s a familiar pattern to the both of you, practiced over decades.

“Not sure what I did, but I’m glad to help.” Robby’s smile is soft. The kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes. You know that most people have never seen it before. You’re glad you get to.

The phone screen seems overly bright in the dimming room. It’s barely 6:30 and the sun is already halfway past the horizon. Robby won’t be home for at least an hour and you’re too lazy to flick on the lightswitch across the room. So, you lay back on the couch and stare at the little blinking line above your keyboard. The top of the phone screen says Jack in tiny letters. No contact picture yet, but no texts either.

You had found the crinkled paper in the bottom of your bag after an hour of frantic searching. The idea of asking your uncle for Jack’s number wasn’t even something you entertained. You’d rather wait until the two of your paths meet again. But now you stare at your too-bright screen, trying to come up with some kind of opening line. 

You’ve been on the apps before, written plenty of these. This time is different. You care. All those people online were ideas. Not real human beings out in the world. Jack is, well, he’s way more than a person. He’s someone you can picture a life with. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll be fine. Survive. You desperately want it to work out. Which is why you’ve been staring at your goddamn screen for almost an hour. At this point, you almost want to wait until seven. Until Jack’s shift starts and he won’t look at his phone for a solid twelve hours. But the idea of waiting that long for a response makes your gut wrench painfully.

Ugh. Fine, whatever. Fuck it.

Hey Jack! Okay, no exclamation mark. Hey Jack. Much better. It’s me you type out your name and consider tacking on Robby’s niece. But you don’t want that to be how Jack sees you. Why is this so hard? Alright. Greeting? Check. Introduction? Check. Now the hard part. Asking Jack on an actual date. Nothing too serious, but nothing vague either. Casual and cool. Because that’s definitely how people describe you. I think you’re hot. Wanna get breakfast after your shift? Hmm. Not quite the casual-cool-girl you were going for. You make me panic. Want to kiss? Arguably worse. Third time’s the charm (as in, you are sending this text no matter what, before you can talk yourself out of it).

>> I like you. You live in my head and I’d like to know more about you. Breakfast at Carla’s near the hospital? I’ll be there at 7:30

Horrid, but your will is waning by the second and if you don’t send it now, you never will. So you press your thumb against the little send button and stare at the screen for exactly one second before jettisoning your phone across the room. The next few minutes pass by as an eternity. So slow, you check the wall clock four times in a single minute. But you can’t bring yourself to crawl across the couch and grab your phone until the clock hits seven. When the screen lights up, you can see the text notification. You click on it. 

<< See you then, sweetheart ;)

And, oh. Fucking god damnit. Is that little winky-face? You suddenly can’t breathe. Something to do with an image of Jack winking flooding your mind. Winking at you during breakfast. Winking at you somewhere…less public. Alright, down girl.

>> Can’t wait!

Is it too eager? Do you care? Does Jack care? Probably not. He seems like the kind of guy to denounce modern dating culture. People trying to seem too cool to care about anyone else. He’ll probably hold open a door for you or something. He’s probably a gentleman.

The phone buzzes in your hand, another text. A thumbs up. God, he’s so old. A fucking thumbs up? You hate how endearing it is. How the smile forms on your face without permission. You glance at the clock. 7:01.

>> Shouldn’t you be working?

<< A pretty girl just asked me on a date. I can’t just ignore her.

Your cheeks burn, hot enough to make your vision fuzz for a fraction of a second. Because you’re that pretty girl. Jack just called you pretty. Jack Abbot. Definition of pretty. Yeah, he’s a fucking gentleman.

The diner isn’t as bustling as you’ve seen it before. The streets are busy, overrun with commuters trying to get to work on time. You can hear the birds chirping in the park across the street and the sound of the bell on the door as you step inside. You’ve been here before, once. A few years ago when you came to visit your uncle. He brought you here after his shift. So the warm scent of breakfast is familiar as it hits you. It’s always breakfast time at Carla’s, even at nine o’clock at night when Robby brought you before. 

Today, however, sun fogs through the windows, still hidden behind the Pittsburgh skyline. Well, that and Jack Abbot sits in a corner booth, tugging at the sleeves of his scrub top. You know, logistically, that he must have just gotten off work. The badge still hangs from his cargo pants and his hair has suffered the strong winds blowing through the city streets. It is not fair to look that good. Not right after a twelve hour ED shift. Especially as the light shifts, setting Jack in his own personal sun beam. A spotlight on his angelic beauty. 

Jeez, you need to calm down. Because that’s when he sees you, staring like a loon while the hostess awkwardly waits for an answer to a question you never heard. Too busy staring at Jack Abbot. Honestly, you’re a little surprised he’s already here. Robby almost always stays an hour past his shift, pulled between handing off a million different tasks. You had expected to wait at least fifteen minutes. Needed it. To rehearse what the hell you’re going to say, because the mirror had not been enough. You consider turning around and leaving, but Jack is already standing. So you politely wave off the hostess and head toward the booth.

“Hi.” Oh, god. You just squeaked. Like, actually squeaked. Yeah, you’re gonna kill yourself. But Jack just smiles like you made a joke instead of being one.

“Hey,” He replies, standing as you approach the booth. You can see the way his face twitches as he puts weight on his right leg. The one you know is half metal and plastic. “You look good.”

You’re glad he thinks so. It took you over an hour to pick out this outfit. Trying to find clothes that are nice, but not too nice. Because you want to make a good impression on Jack, even if his first impression of you was in sweats and a too-old college tshirt. Comfy travel clothing that he must have found at least somewhat endearing if he agreed to this date.

“Thanks. You do too.” You both slide into opposite sides of the booth. The tall back of the bench seats creates an intimate bubble for just the two of you. The sound of the diner around you quiets just a bit.

“No need for flattery, sweetheart.” Jack laughs. Like he thinks you’re lying. Like he doesn’t know that every detail of his fucking face is a distraction. It’s a little rude, considering you’ve been thinking about him for almost two months straight. So you let out a huff. An actual huff, because you already squeaked so you may as well do whatever you want now. 

“It wasn’t flattery, Jack. Just the truth.” And maybe you sound a little too earnest. A little too demanding, as if you can make it true simply by saying it, putting the words out into the world. You’re not going to apologize because there’s really nothing to apologize for, but you are about to make up some excuse about how Jack Abbot being pretty is a universal law of some kind. That’s when you see the gentle flush spreading across his cheeks. It makes his freckles stand out even more and you want to trace them, looking for constellations both real and made up. You smile something warm and soft. “What? Can’t take a compliment?”

“Only when they come from pretty girls.” His grin is sharp, but you’re too distracted by the pink on the tips of his ears.

“You already used that line.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” 

Banter flows easily between the two of you, words falling out before you can process them. It feels natural to be around Jack like this. Relaxed and smiling. The sun steadily rises in the sky, illuminating Jack in a way that you want desperately to look away from, but you simply cannot bring yourself to lose a moment of this man. You want to inject yourself into his veins and pump directly through his heart. You think, maybe then you could have all you need from Jack. 

“Let me give you a ride home.” Jack says as you both climb out of the booth. He says it like it’s simple. Like you haven’t been afraid to call Robby’s apartment your home. Yes, you want to move out at some point, maybe find a place of your own. But to call Robby’s home yours as well, seems like too much. Going too far. Claiming something that isn’t quite yours. 

And then you remember how your uncle reacted when you apologized for overstaying your welcome. Part of him had been amused. He thought the very idea of overstaying was silly. You’re his niece. Part of the only family he has left. So, yeah, he thought you were joking at first. Then, slowly, you saw something between sorrow and determination cross Robby’s face. He had grabbed you, gently and awkwardly, and said you were welcome to stay as long as you need. And then as long as you want after that.

The thought, memory really, makes you smile. A soft thing that reaches your eyes. “I’d like that.”

Jack’s hand settles on your lower back, high enough to be respectable but low enough for you to note. As if you don’t have an entire rolodex in your head of every single time Jack Abbot has so much as brushed against you. When you both reach the door, Jack does a little shuffle to step ahead of you. Because he’s a gentleman who gets the door for you not only at the diner, but circles around his car to hold open the passenger door of his old Bronco. You have to draw the line as he reaches to buckle your seatbelt. Even the image of him leaned over you in your mind makes your cheeks warm. And your face is plenty warm already, thank you very much. So you swat his hand away, buckling your seatbelt yourself. Jack doesn’t close the passenger door until he hears the click of the buckle in place.

“I may be a bit younger than you, but I can, in fact, buckle myself in.” You chuckle as he slides into the driver’s seat. 

“A bit.” Is all he says in response, more of a hum than actual words. You try to study the side of his face you can see as he starts the car. The sun streams through the windows and you can suddenly see every freckle on his face. His curls are tinted auburn underneath the silver-grey. He looks hand-painted by a master, with care and attention paid to every beautiful detail. What you do notice is the way his face tightens just slightly, despite how he tries to hide it. You know what he’s thinking. It was the same thing you were thinking restlessly about for the past forever. That you’re still thinking about and trying desperately to ignore. 

“If you’re worried I haven’t thought this through, don’t.” You say firmly, crossing your arms over your chest. Jack doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but you can feel the weight of his attention on you. “I’ve been thinking about this since you introduced yourself in that hallway. I am an adult, Jack.”

You’re careful to keep your tone casual. No accusation. No sharpness. Because if he’s thinking like you were (still are), Jack knows that this will either be the best or worst decision of his life. You wonder which one he’s leaning more towards right now. 

“You’re sure?” He’s about to say more, you can tell. The way he sucks in a breath like he has to warn you about himself before it’s too late. You interrupt him before he can. 

“I’m sure.”

The rest of the ride is quiet, with only the hum of the engine on busy Pittsburgh streets and the steady feeling of Jack’s hand on yours. The warmth of his palm only leaves occasionally to change gears, because obviously Jack drives a manual. You have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at how much sense that makes. 

Jack rolls to a gentle stop outside of Robby’s apartment building and you wonder if he’s the kind of guy to kiss a girl after the first date. Or if he’s so old-fashioned that he waits until the second or third. You laugh softly and Jack tilts his head at you. 

“Sorry, sorry, just…wondering if you’re going to kiss me.”

His cheeks turn pink again and you’re starting to realize how much you like being the cause of that. Jack doesn’t answer. He just slips out of the car and rounds the front to pull your door open for you. He even holds your hand as you step out. “I am not kissing you in the car, sweetheart. I still have to walk you to your door.”

“Do you walk Uncle Mike to his door every time you drop him off?” You ask, raising a brow. Jack simply guides you into the tall building, holding open every door like it’s his job instead of saving lives. 

“Only when he’s so drunk he can’t stand.” Jack laughs, hitting the third floor button in the elevator. He turns to you as the doors close and his smile is the sharpest you’ve seen it since that night. When he was drunk and lost his filter and called you hot in front of your uncle. His coworker. (And Dana, but you’re almost positive that she has seen more embarrassing). “He’s not quite as charming as you, though.”

You disagree. You’re just as awkward as your uncle when it comes to other people. As evidenced by you floundering in a silly crush while everyone around you rolled their eyes. Every time you’ve seen Jack in the past two months, you’ve embarrassed yourself. But he holds a hand in front of the elevator doors as you step out and walks you to apartment 3A. It’s strange. You’ve been here before. Standing outside of Robby’s apartment (your home) with Jack Abbot. Except, this time you know his name. You know that the ring on his finger is for a woman he is still mourning. You know that he likes you, at least enough to think about how and when and where he wants to kiss you. You know you like him more than that. You hope he does, too.

“Time for that kiss yet?” You ask. Or, you were about to ask. Before Jack’s lips are on yours and his hands are on your cheeks, holding you close. It feels like burning. Hot and hot and hot and oh so bright. Not fireworks, but a burning fire deep in your stomach. When he pulls back, satisfied grin on his face, you try to follow. Try to capture his kiss once more. 

Jack presses a finger to your lips. You feel like a kid again, except this time it’s the joy and color that comes with youth. The way everything seems to soften at the edges and colors seem to shine brighter around every corner. And Jack Abbot’s smile is so soft and so bright that you can’t bring yourself to be mad. Annoyed? Yes, very much so. “If you want another kiss, you have to promise me another date, sweetheart.”

Jack hated when his shifts never lined up with your schedule. Summer’s were easier, so were those few breaks you’d get during the year, but most weeks it felt like you were ships passing in the night.

You were his wife, not a “sometimes companion” depending on the day. So, when he had off, there was nothing he loved more than being at your side. Watching mindless television, going to the grocery store, listening to you complain about your job, and everything in between. He loved it. Jack never thought that chance would come again and when it did, he promised himself that the time he gave to you would be nothing short of devotion.

And, when the time to “love” became a little more intimate, Jack gave you everything you could ask for. You’d never had a more generous lover, in all sense of the word.

He cared so deeply about you that he was too easily forgetful about his own needs. Jack never liked when you tried to make it all about him—he’d had enough attention in the last twenty years to last him a lifetime in solitude. In return, Jack’s altar was beside you, on top of you, under you, and anywhere near you.

Therefore, when he sacrificed his time away from you to save the lives of strangers, it was only right for him to recompense through the most natural form of intimacy.

But it had been five days. Five days of back to back night shifts where he left you sleeping in bed and you left him walking out the door with your work bag in hand. There had been a light in the distance, Saturday, when his schedule finally broke and you were both off to enjoy each other’s company.

He cooked, you cleaned, and then you’d both retired to the sofa where your feet landed in his lap and a movie you’d seen a thousand times played quietly as days-long lodged conversations started to flow.

Then, you shuffled into his lap and Jack knew something was wrong before even started.

His lips met yours and you melted. You’d been so quick to fall into him, wrapping your arms around him, and pressing down into his lap that it felt needy. Tilting his head back, your fingers pulled at his curls to open him up to you. His kiss deepened and you couldn’t fight the smile on your face.

You laughed, breaking apart.

“What?” Jack asked incredulously. His eyes darted between yours as your hand brushed back his hair.

“Nothing.” You shook your head. “I just love you.”

Jack’s hands ran up and down your sides gently. “Well now it’s cheesy if I say it back.”

“No.” Your nose bumped into his. “You could never make it cheesy.”

“I’m pretty sure I could,” Jack admitted with a peck. He let his hands wander down your sides, feeling the skin of your ass before smoothing down your legs and holding them down on himself. “I love you.”

“How much?”

“Eh. ” He shrugged causing you leaned back and swat at his chest immediately before pressing into his pecs with your palms.

“Cruel,” you gasped. “You’re just evil.”

“I don’t know about that.” He removed his hands from you and placed his on top of yours. “But I don’t think a measurement exists for how much I really do.”

Not cruel. Just utterly adoring beyond comprehension.

You leaned in, kissing him again and again and each one ended longer than the last. He brought your hands back to his hair and encouraged a rougher grip. Jack’s tongue was the first to ask for silent permission to which you welcomed it with your own.

You couldn’t remember the last time you made out like teenagers on the couch.

And for ten minutes, you did only that.

Lips swollen and blood rushing in your body, there was something exhilarating about having waited so long to have sex this week. Five days wasn’t a world record for either of you but it felt like a necessary end to it.

Only you were expecting to feel something after ten minutes.

One of your hands slipped from his shoulders and entered the few inches of space between your bodies to grope him above his sweats. You had felt that simply being on top wasn’t enough—you would have felt his erection if you did—but this was the second time in three weeks that grinding on him didn’t work in getting him aroused.

Jack’s attention broke away from your lips and to your neck. His stubble grazed your skin with a roughness you’d only accept from his face. He lathered and sucked, teeth grazing your skin just enough to make you feel his desire through his lips.

As you met his groin, you felt the outline of his cock still limp between his spread legs. Gently trailing to the head, you molded your hand around it and rubbed to the base. Jack’s forehead fell to your shoulder and you couldn’t help but be satisfied, leaning your own into him.

Jack. Your Jack.

Your hand never stopped going. Slowly, you felt the minutes pass and you put more pressure in your grip and the air around Jack began to change. His kisses stopped, your fingers intertwined with his curls at the base of his head weren’t met with the same sighs, and his own hands loosened their grasp.

On the inside, Jack was having an existential crisis.

He knew it was going to happen.

It was the same goddamn thing from three weeks ago and he’d wrote it off as some kind of fluke. He was tired. He’d worn himself thin from a bad night and three weeks ago, sex wasn’t in the cards he’d been dealt. But now? Again?

Jack dug his forehead further into your shoulder to think—which was practically impossible for him to do in this state. Yet he tried. He thought back on any changes to his body and any signs he might have missed but the only possibilities he could think about were his age and his meds.

If it was his age, he was just about ready to croak off now. 50. Jack was only 50 fucking years old and he never imagined what the hell life would be like with erectile dysfunction at this age. He’d take it to his grave, he swore to God, but there was one other problem that he just couldn’t shake.

Those meds.

A switch from his therapist a few appointments ago to Zoloft, which was what he was supposed to be taking for years. But just like good medicine, sometimes finding the right balance was hard and it took time.

His therapist had warned him, right?

He was a doctor—of course he read the side effects of his pills. Right?

Right?

God. Jack could barely think for himself let alone think what the fuck was on the prescription label. He especially couldn’t think straight when you were on top of him, fingers carding through his curls and your chest pressed against his own.

Everything would be fine. Everything is fine.

It wasn’t fine. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him and when Jack Abbot’s internal alarm bells went off, anyone in a ten mile radius could hear them. All it took was one look, a not fully present kiss, and you knew something was amiss.

“Jack?” You murmured softly in his ear. He loved the feel of your breath; the warmth your body brought to his.

He swallowed hard. His jaw tensed as his chest shuddered in immediate nerves and your hands moved to cradle his face instead. Jack’s eyes avoided you like the plague, sticking to a spot over your shoulder in the direction of the tv.

“Yeah?” He barely whispered.

“Are you okay?”

Oh, goddamnit. Shit.

Everything was really not fucking fine.

He was falling apart. Jack couldn’t even look you in the eye because now he couldn’t have sex with his beautiful fucking wife and the world was basically ending.

“Yeah,” he barely squeaked out.

You saw through him and he could feel the pity in the way your thumbs rubbed softly on his cheeks.

“I think I need to use the bathroom,” he blurted out and discarded you to the side of the couch.

In his first attempt to stand, Jack struggled to gain momentum off the couch and the redness of embarrassment from another one of his problems inched up the back of his neck like a rash.

Holy shit, he thought. This is the worst day of my life.

He tried harder the second time to avoid your helping hands and rushed off to the bedroom, shutting the door so hard it reverberated throughout the house. Beelining for the sink, Jack’s hands strained the edges of it until his knuckles were white.

“What the fuck!” He scolded himself in a brash whisper. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

This wasn’t happening to him. This was all a dream. A really, god awful, terrible, no good dream that would be over in a matter of minutes. He’d wake up, sun shining, and never deal with this again.

He slapped a hand across his face. It was not a fucking dream.

“Holy shit,” Jack’s words were now nothing but saddened, pathetic whimpering. “This is not fucking happening to me right now.”

From outside the door, you leaned against the frame and let him wallow. Those little blue pills in the back of the cabinet had been pushed away out of spite and this time, you knew he just needed to face the reality of his situation. But that reality was hard to fathom after a lifetime of one activity never having been a problem. He couldn’t have just this one thing?

Jack opened the cabinet and pulled out his Zoloft bottle. Unraveling the prescription label, his eyes raced down to side effects and right there “Erectile Dysfunction” laughed at him. He tossed the bottle in the sink.

“Jack?” You knuckles rapped against the door. “Are you alright in there?”

“Fine!” He replied too quickly.

“Can I come in?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d rather you not.”

“You’re not gonna dump your meds are you?”

“No,” his tone was still sad. “That’s probably a bad idea.”

Jack could hear your hum. He imagined the look on your face and how you’d probably kick him to the curb now that he was completely defective.

“Jack, I think you need to talk to me about this.”

“No,” he drug out the word. “I don’t think so.”

“Honey.”

He said your name firmly in return.

“I’m coming in.” You didn’t give him any time because as soon as he got a syllable out, the door was open.

Jack’s eyes caught yours in the mirror.

“It’s okay, Jack.”

He shook his head. “It’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well that’s easy for you to say,” he couldn’t help the attitude that slipped out. “You don’t have a broken fucking dick.”

“I don’t have a dick but I do have a libido.”

“It’s not that, baby,” Jack sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex. I do. Very badly, might I add. But it’s like this—” he pointed to his brain “—just doesn’t want to work and tell the other parts of my body to do their jobs.”

Your brows furrowed in concern. “Is it the nightmares again?”

“No.” He shook his head and realized that you didn’t fully grasp it because of two things: you weren’t in healthcare and you didn’t have PTSD like he did. “They’re fine. They’ve been fine.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me, Jack.”

You approached him, settling for resting your hand along his back and feeling his tense muscles underneath the fabric of his tee.

“A side effect of the meds,” he gestured weakly to the bottle in the sink. “I can’t get it up.”

“That’s one way to put it,” you mumbled and picked up the bottle.

“My doctor gave me—“ Jack didn’t want the words to form.

Your rubbed soothingly on his back. He loved you so much.

“What did he give you?”

Jack reopened the cabinet and shuffled items to the side before landing on a small white bottle with VIAGRA plastered in blue on the front. His stomach lurched at the thought of needing to take one. Jack held it tightly in his fist in a refusal to show you.

You saw the bottle immediately when he brought it home. Jack was never as sly as he thought he was. He tried hiding your engagement ring for six weeks before proposing but you found it the day after the purchase because he stuffed it the garage where he kept all the spare keys.

He just hadn’t thought that maybe you’d lock your keys inside of the house one day.

Still, he clutched onto the white bottle as though if he dropped it, his problem wasn’t real. He could keep trying. Maybe it would just take a little bit longer than normal but eventually, he’d get hard and you could sail smoothly into the night.

“Are you gonna show me?” You asked patiently.

“I don’t really want to.”

“I’m not embarrassed if you need to use one, you know?”

His eyes pinched closed. “I feel like a fucking failure.”

You exhaled deeply, placing your hand over his fist, and dipping your head to better look at him.

“Look at me, Jack.”

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

“Jack,” you pressed once more. “Look at me.”

“This has never been a problem,” he said lowly. Jack’s tone lingered on disappointment but aired a frustration that sounded sexier than he meant it. “I don’t know why I can’t be normal in this one fucking way but of course not! Of course not. No… the goddamn leg just wasn’t enough. The stupid fucking depression and the nightmares and my joint pain isn’t enough!”

Jack rarely yelled. He bottled everything inside until it was ready to explode and it was just leaking out of him like a dam bursting.

“None of that is your fault,” you assured.

“What does it matter if it was?” He loosened the grip on the bottle and it rolled into the sink beside the Zoloft.

“Jack. I don’t care if we have sex tonight, okay? It’s not the end of the world for me.”

“It sure fucking feels like it for me.”

“I know it does,” you empathized. “But if you’re not ready to try the pills, then we don’t have to do anything. I can wait for you.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Jack whispered. “This is so inconvenient.”

“What would life be without them?”

He breathed in as your hand continued to rub his back and calm him down. Jack glanced down at the bottle, cursing the elephant in the room. He mumbled underneath his breath and even though you were standing beside him, you didn’t catch it.

“What?”

“It takes…” his words were muffled again.

“Are you having a stroke?” You asked honestly.

“No,” he heaved. “If I take one… it would take around an hour to work.”

“Okay,” you replied cautiously. It was his choice, you made that clear.

“And it’s not like… magical. Plus we had a whole bottle of wine with dinner and that might make it worse.”

“Trying to get hard or the erection?”

“Both?” He said like it was a question. He’s the doctor. He should know.

“If you wanted to try it, and it doesn’t work out, then you never have to use one again.”

Jack hummed. “I might have to eat you out for awhile.”

“Jesus,” you laughed. “Don’t try to be sly about it.”

His lips quirked into a small smile, one you’d missed seeing in his despair. Jack picked up the bottle and unscrewed the cap.

“I swear to God that if anything goes wrong, I will jump off the fucking roof.”

“You can’t say that,” you lamented. “You’re literally the last person who should joke about that.”

“I’m kidding.” He popped a pill into his mouth. “I can’t let you fall in love with someone else.”

“How kind of you to think about me.”

Jack flipped on the sink, cupped his hands under the faucet, and swallowed the pill in one gulp. There was no turning back now.

“Well?” You asked him as he wiped his mouth dry.

“Well what?”

“You want to finish what you started?”

He locked eyes with you in the mirror and opened his mouth to object to the statement. You climbed into his lap. You kissed him first. But he saw a glimmer of hope that maybe the little blue pill would be a good thing for the both of you tonight and forgot about it. Jack nodded instead.

“Get on the bed.”

Whatever the little blue pill did, it gave Jack an ounce of courage back and fuck, could you feel it.

Jack had been on you from the moment you laid down on the bed. In silence, he stripped off your clothes one by one and settled between your thighs ready to give. And for the past thirty minutes, you’d been close twice before he drew back and smiled at you as his cheek rested against your leg.

Every time he did, you had to look away.

He was so sweet. Jack, the man who does anything for anyone, looked at you like you held the moon.

You fought a grin by biting down on your lip and had your arm flying over your eyes to shield his own impenetrable stare from reaching you. And then his mouth was on you again, tongue lightly flicking your clit as he slipped two fingers inside.

You writhed, body shaking lightly in pleasure as his hands grew more firm around your thighs and minimized any distance between you. Jack figured if he could lay atop the mattress and grind into it that it would replace the need for you to jerk him off for five minutes, and he was right.

The combination of periodically rutting against the mattress, listening to your sweet sounds, and feeling you squeeze his fingers was sheer poison.

He curled his fingers up inside of you, sliding them in and out in the same direction until your moans turned into a whine that spelled out his name.

“Jack,” you breathed in heavily.

Your hand fell from your eyes and trailed over one of your breasts, squeezing it, pinching the nipple just hard enough before fanning out on the comforter. Jack removed his fingers to let his tongue sink lower, pushing into you softer and wetter than before. His mouth devoured you; a sickening slurp of his saliva and your wetness had your mouth falling open, silent in disbelief that not an hour ago, you didn’t think this was going to happen.

“S-shit, Jack.”

He slowed down, sparing a glance at your face before deciding to back off. His pointer finger replaced where his nose was grazing your clit. Jack pressed down there, moving in small circles as your hips moved with him.

“That feel good?” He asked softly.

“I think that fucking pill gave you superpowers,” you spat out fast. “Holy shit.”

“Magical” his ass. It was certifiably otherworldly.

“Might just have been a long time since we’ve done this.”

You agreed, moaning a “yeah” in reply.

“Sweetheart,” Jack said like a question. “I hate to do this to you…”

“What?” You sat up so quickly that you got a little dizzy. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Jack couldn’t hide his blush. There was no easy way to say “I’m hard now, let me fuck you” after having a meltdown.

His throat bobbed and you caught it.

“You ready?”

Jack nodded and you retuned it with a nod of your own. “Okay, yeah. Alright—”

“Why does this feel like I’m losing my virginity again?” He joked. His laugh barely sounded like one because the second he sat up on his knees, his erection was all he could look at.

Jack had never been embarrassed by his cock before.

“If this is how you lost your virginity, I’d be a little nervous,” you scoffed. “Sit back against the headboard.”

He didn’t argue with you which was a rarity it terms of control. Nothing was really in his control right now and it was making his anxiety shoot through the roof.

Jack shuffled back to the headboard and slipped off his shirt. He helped you pull down his sweats carefully and even though he didn’t feel like you had to be, he was grateful for your gentleness. At the sight of his prosthetic, you tipped your head knowingly at him.

“Why didn’t you take this off yet?”

“I forgot,” he feigned innocence.

“Mhm,” you judged and took it off for him. “Sure you did.”

With his prosthetic resting on the floor against the bedside table, you resumed your position in his lap and wrapped an arm around his shoulder while your free hand wrapped around him. You’d never been with someone who needed to take a Viagra before. Jack felt different and you knew how he felt in your hands.

His dick felt firmer—less like his own and more like one that was being controlled.

Your hand went from tip to base and back and he jolted.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “It’s like my nerves are on fire.”

“Does it feel bad?”

His nose brushed yours as he shook his head. Jack didn’t tell you to stop so you kept pumping him mildly.

“It feels really fucking good, actually.”

“Yeah?” You smiled.

“Yeah.”

Jack kissed you with everything he could muster. He gripped your bare hips tightly, sinking his fingers into your skin until he felt like you weren’t going to disappear. You put more tension in your fist and he groaned, precum escaping him and making your job easier.

“Do you feel like you’re ready?” You kissed him lazily, pulling on his bottom lip enough for it to bounce back.

He chased your lips. “What if—”

“Honey,” you soothed. “We’ll get there, okay?”

“Okay,” he accepted. He nodded, looking you in the eye and giving you the reassurance he also needed.

Lifting up in his lap, you guided him to your entrance and sunk down slowly. The feeling was overwhelming and you both needed time to adjust. Jack’s head fell back against the bed frame as far as he could go, clenching his jaw enough where the muscles strained on his face.

“You’re fine, Jack,” you cooed in his ear. Soft pants met his cheek as his hardness was unlike anything you’d experienced. “Breathe, baby.”

Your nails raked the base of his skull.

“Keep going,” he bit out. “You’re squeezing me so tight.”

“I guess we’ve both been ‘rejuvenated,’ huh?”

Jack wasn’t overly appreciative of your humor but you moved anyway, testing the waters of your bounces and grinds before settling into a rhythm that suited you. His cock stretched you wide and every time you sank back down, it was as though he never filled you in the first place. A spark of exhilaration bloomed. This was so different, so minutely different, that it felt new.

Jack’s hands groped your ass to help ease the strain on your thighs the longer you went. His lips swapped duties between connecting with yours and finding the skin of your neck, collarbone, and chest peppered with affection. Jack listened to your soft mewls. He soaked in the whispers of sweet nothings and the shaky gasps you couldn’t help.

He wanted you close.

Jack needed you to mold into him like he was showered in rain. He pulled you close; arms wrapped up around you so tight there was no escaping his embrace.

He nipped at your chin. Low and rough, Jack spoke to you. “I love you so much.”

Jack’s nose trailed up your cheek, bumping into yours and seeking your lips again.

“You have no idea how much I love you.”

“Jack,” you whined with a grin. A shake in your legs had him running his hands over your back, soothing you now instead.

“I know you’re ready, baby.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “I’m close.”

“What do you need from me?” He asked willingly.

You shook your head. “I-fuck, nothing. I just—”

Jack bent his knees the best he could and the angle his cock was hitting changed on a thrust. Deep and unforgiving, your fingernails dug into his skin hard. Jack murmured appreciation, egging you on to the finish line and neglecting himself.

You were too wrapped up in the feeling. The building of a week, the racing of your heart, to think for a second that he was nowhere near close to his orgasm.

“Come on, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

He felt the falter in your hips.

Your orgasm shook you from Heaven to Hell and back—even if believing it was hard to fathom. Jack’s hand flew to the back of your head, holding you into him as the aftershocks of muscle spasms lingered seconds after your breathing began to settle. You returned his kisses with your own against his neck and shoulder. The freckles on his body were reminders of all the places he had ever been kissed and you were adding to that—on top of ones that already existed, beside them, and in the spaces that laid empty of any.

He wouldn’t remember them in every lifetime but you liked to imagine that all of his freckles were kisses from you.

As your brain recovered from the fuzzy glow and you realized that Jack was still rock hard inside of you.

“Do you want me to—”

“No,” Jack cut you off. “No, it’s fine. It’s just… I think it takes time.”

“But now you haven’t even…” you trailed your response with a flick of your eyes downwards. “I can’t leave you like that.”

“Baby, it could take an hour.”

You glanced at the alarm clock on his side of the bed. The time read 11:47.

“We’ve got time.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m not gonna let you give me a handy for an hour.”

“Hey,” you tugged on his earlobe lightly. “I’ve got a mouth too.”

“It’s fine,” he reassured but you weren’t buying it. His mouth quirked to the side in thought. “Would you hate me if I asked you to clean up alone?”

You ran your thumb along his jawline.

“I could never hate you, Jack. I’ve lived this long, I think I can handle one less aftercare shower.”

“It makes me feel like an asshole.”

“You’re not. I promise you.”

Carefully, you lifted up from his lap and let him slip out. You avoided looking at him so he didn’t find another reason to be embarrassed about something that impacted millions of men—especially those who were on medication for concerns far more important than simply erectile dysfunction.

He watched you disappear into the bathroom and shut the door with a click before he put his pillow to his face and yelled into it.

The prescription tag read as follows:

Prolonged erection greater than 4 hours and priapism (painful erections greater than 6 hours in duration) have been reported infrequently since market approval of VIAGRA. In the event of an erection that persists longer than 4 hours, the patient should seek immediate medical assistance. If priapism is not treated immediately, penile tissue damage and permanent loss of potency could result.

Jack had to put his readers on to even see the label.

“… if priapism is not treated immediately, penile tissue damage and permanent loss…” he repeated the label back to himself to make sure he read it correctly.

His eyes flitted to his phone, touching the screen to light up a big 7:30 AM and a picture of both of your smiling faces beaming back at him.

This might not have been the actual worst day of his life but it was second.

His crutches clicked against the floor as he approached your side of the bed. He hated waking you up when you were clearly dead to the world. Laid face first into your pillow, he rested a hand on your back and shook you gently.

“Baby?”

You barely bristled. He repeated the action, calling out your name louder.

“Hm?” You grumbled in slight annoyance.

Jack shifted uncomfortably on the bed, wincing as he turned wrong and made his sweatpants tighter than they already were.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he started and realized how quickly those were the wrong words. You sat up abruptly, face twisted in concern as he tried not to cry from the pain his fucking dick won’t stop causing.

“What!?” You searched his face for an answer. “What happened!?”

“You gotta calm down.” Jack moved his arm to block your view.

“About what? What’s wrong?”

“I seem to be having a little… complication.”

Your brows furrowed. “A complication?”

Jack clicked his tongue with a nod. Your eyes darted down too obviously to his pants and back to his face. His erection was blatant. It practically waved at you from behind his arm.

“Does it have anything to do with that?” You said above a whisper. “Why do you have such bad morning wood?”

Jack groaned, again, completely at odds with himself.

“Remember when we had that bottle of red with dinner?” You nodded. “Well it turns out that sometimes while meds can cause the problem, mixing alcohol with the little blue pill causes… other problems.”

“And this can’t be solved with an orgasm?”

“Not after more than six hours.”

Your eyes bugged out of your head. “Six hours!? Jack, what the fuck!”

“I thought it was going to go away!”

You swiftly moved out of bed and shrugged on a sweatshirt. Jack watched you pilfer the room for socks and shoes and leggings and just sat there helplessly on the edge of the bed with his crutches one inch from sliding off of it. You didn’t say anything and that made it worse for him.

“I’m sorry,” Jack spoke up.

“What are you sorry for?” You opened his drawer and pulled out a fresh tee. “It’s not your fault.”

“It feels like it is.”

“Well it’s not, Jack. So stop apologizing and get your leg on.”

“I can’t bend over.”

You tossed the shirt to him. “We’re going in.”

“Where?”

“The ED.”

“No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “No the fuck we are not.”

“You say that like you have a choice, Mr. Abbot.” Oh. He didn’t like that. “Turns out that doctors are truly the worst patients. Your night shift is gone, Robby’s gotta be—”

“I am not letting Robby see me like this.” The thought repulsed him so badly that it made his skin crawl.

“Then someone else will help us,” you clarified. “The longer we wait the worse I’ll assume it will be for you. I’m not driving you to Presby or Mercy when I know the ones that can help you the best.”

“I’ll never live this down.” His eyes filled with ashamed tears and every now and then, you’d seen Jack down on his luck.

A terrible shift, a long week, anniversaries he’d rather not have… but he stared at you from the bed and he looked so small. His salt and pepper hair was flat from restless sleep and the scruff on his face couldn’t hide the jumble of thoughts pouring out of him. You moved to stand in front of him, grasping his face between two hands, and forcing him to look you in the eye.

“You are the strongest, most resilient man I have ever met. You’ve taken care of me more times than I can count and now, it’s my turn to help you the best way I know how. This is bad now, yeah… it is,” you nodded in agreement, “but it’s not forever. After this, you’ll call your therapist and tell him what happened and we will try again when things are better.”

A tear steamed down his cheek and you wiped it away with your finger.

“It’s okay to be embarrassed, honey.”

“I’m gonna make this up to you,” Jack settled. “I promise.”

“Okay.” You didn’t need him to. However, if it made him feel better, sure. Your hands tapped his face twice before letting go. “Let’s go, Soldier.”

The PTMC Emergency Room wasn’t an unfamiliar sight, but it wasn’t one you frequented.

It bustled with far too much chaos and while your own career had its fair share, there was something about Jack’s place of work that made you feel ill just looking at it. Death, hurt, pain, and suffering wrapped up in four walls, some windows, and doors.

And now Jack sat outside of it in a wheelchair because he refused to go in on his crutches.

“Just go in and tell Dana I’m out here.”

“Someone is going to have to come and get you anyway, so just come with me.”

Jack begged, “please.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Luckily, Dana was talking with a young nurse at the hub when the ambulance bay doors opened wide. You kept in a straight line to her, not distracted by the sounds and the yelling coming from one of the many rooms. Dana was halfway through a sentence when she glanced over her shoulder and did a double take.

“Hey stranger,” she beamed. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

The young nurse beside her, Emma, smiled at you in the awkward way you did when you didn’t know someone’s friend.

“Hi Dana,” you greeted.

“Jack’s not here,” her eyes questioned you. Jack had been scheduled off for the next couple days so there was no telling where he’d be other than at his house.

“Well,” you let out a loose, barely amused chuckle, “funny you should say that.”

“Is he okay?”

“Not really… I just—we just—need this on the down low, alright? He really doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here.”

She nodded understandingly and grabbed an iPad from the counter. “Where is he?”

“Out in the ambulance bay. I put him in a wheelchair.”

“Should I get Robb—”

“No!” You said loudly and shook your head. “God, no. Sorry.”

Emma jumped at the sound and her eyes darted to the bay. “Can I help?”

Your face scrunched. Jack would rather not traumatize a new nurse so early in the shift.

“Is Donnie around? Or Dr. Al-Hashimi?”

“Yeah.” Dana patted Emma on the shoulder. “Go get ‘em and we’ll put Dr. Abbot in Room 7.”

Dana rounded the hub and put a hand on your shoulder. As she stepped further away, she pressed about the situation.

“You know, you two aren’t getting any younger. You can’t go at it like rabbits.”

“Dana,” you scolded with a smile. “That’s—that’s not it.”

“What happened?”

All that was needed to be said were three little words:

“Little blue pill.”

Jack heard the hiss of the ambulance bay open and Dana walked up to him with a laugh buried in her throat. Jack was wearing a hat and glasses like a superhero in disguise and his backpack flipped over so no one could see the name angled in his lap.

“Don’t fucking say it, Evans. Don’t.”

“I’m not!” She held up her hands in defense.

“Dana said she’s gonna help. No one needs to know.”

You grabbed his crutches off the wall and followed closely as Dana wheeled him into Room 7 and pulled the curtains. She left still fighting amusement as Donnie entered with Baran.

“Dr. Abbot,” she said fondly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“I think we both had different ideas about how today would go.”

Jack took off his glasses and hat, passing them off to you. The bag stayed lumped in his lap.

“So, what brings you in today?”

There was a second of silence and then:

“I seem to have a bit of a… priapism problem.”

Baran’s eyes widened and Donnie hesitated putting on his second glove.

“And how long has the erection lasted?” Jack hated how she pronounced the word loud and clear. He looked at you, shrugging for a loose approximation of time.

“Maybe around… since 11 or so?” You informed.

“So somewhere around 8 hours?” She asked and motioned for Donnie to put the bed rails down. “Does that seem accurate?”

You both nodded. Donnie wheeled Jack over to the bed and he hesitated, looking at you to help him instead. You handed Jack his crutches and as he stood, both Donnie and Baran tried to be respectful and looked away from Jack’s body.

“Dr. Abbot, I’m going to have to ask you some questions about your medical history, medications, and so forth. Is that okay with you?”

“I think you can just call me Jack now,” he grunted as he shuffled onto the bed.

“Can you tell me what medications you take?”

“I-uh, take um, 100 mg of Zofolt, 3 mg of Prazosin for sleeping, and Cyclobenzaprine as needed, 5 mg three times a day, but I haven’t needed it lately.”

“And for the priapism problem?” She slipped on her own gloves.

“I took one Viagra.”

“Have you taken one before?”

“No,” Jack admitted. “My therapist changed one of my medications to Zoloft two months ago and ordered it as a precaution.”

Baran nodded in understanding and as she sat down on a stool and rolled closer, Jack’s hand shot out to yours and squeezed tightly.

“Did he explain the side effects of taking those medications together?”

“Yes,” Jack recalled. “But we must have had… three glasses of wine last night and I’m pretty certain that’s the reason it won’t go away. A reaction, if you will.”

“You’re not wrong.” She smiled at him kindly, then to you.

“How long have you been married? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Six years,” you told her. “And it seems we’re always finding something new to experience together.”

“It’s a good thing,” Baran assured. “Imagine living a life where it’s normal and boring all the time. At least you’ll be able to laugh about it later.”

Her eyes found Jack’s and he knew she needed to look at him more closely.

“What happens in this room, Dr. Abbot, stays in this room. Got it?”

He nodded and focused on a spot across the wall as Donnie hovered behind Baran. Your hand covered his, rubbing gentle circles to ease the discomfort.

“Was this a special occasion or something?” Donnie asked Jack. “Or just a regular Saturday night for you two?”

“Just a Saturday night,” he said shyly. Jack, being bashful? You relished it.

“I gotta say Doc, your wife’s a lucky woman. Who knew Dr. Abbot hit the genetic lottery.”

The blush that overtook his body was a deeper red than his penis. Your hand flew to your mouth, covering the choked laugh before it could escape but Donnie was grinning like the Cheshire Cat and keeping it in was practically impossible. Baran bit down on her tongue.

But Jack knew how to bite back too. “If your idea of the genetic lottery is a guy with 1.75 legs, then sure. Whatever floats your boat.”

“Okay.” Baran finished her inspection.

“I have a feeling this isn’t a cold compress kind of procedure,” Jack wished.

Baran shook her head.

“We’re going to need to aspirate.”

Jack was back on his crutches after an hour with a soreness that would last hours.

“I don’t think I need to tell you what you can and cannot do in the next 24 hours,” Baran opened up the curtain and immediately Jack locked eyes with Dana.

“No, you don’t.”

“Maybe also speak to your therapist about the prescription the next time you go?”

Jack gave you a closed mouth smile. “I already heard that from this one.”

“She knows what she’s talking about it seems,” Baran nodded in approval.

The door opened up and Donnie held it for Jack to escape from. The RN held out his fist, asking Jack wordlessly to bump it.

Jack obliged.

“My man,” Donnie grinned. He slapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder before walking to a computer.

“I’m never filling in for day shift again, ever,” Jack told you over his shoulder.

“All good, Jack?” Dana asked from the hub as you both passed by.

“Never better.” Jack kept going towards the door.

“Thanks Dana for your help,” you said appreciatively. “If he never tells you, he’s thankful too. And I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

The doors to Trauma Bay 2 opened with a whoosh. Jack, still on the slow run on his crutches out of the ED never looked back, but Robby caught sight of him as he sanitized his hands.

“Woah!” He exaggerated. “What’s Jack doing here?”

“He’s going home,” Dana informed and you gave a small wave to Jack’s work wife. He hated when you called Robby that but it didn’t make it any less true.

“Just a little accident.”

“Jack!” Robby called after him but Jack didn’t care.

“Adios! Goodbye!” He said your name loudly followed by a “hurry up!”

You tapped the counter. “Sorry. The princess needs a ride home.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to call him that,” Robby laughed.

“It’s the least of his problems right now.”

They watched you trail behind your husband who, once through the second door, turned and waited for you patiently. You kissed him gently before walking out of view and inside of the PTMC, the world continued to turn.

Robby looked at Dana with a question and Baran walked away before he could ask her anything remotely related to Jack. But Donnie… Donnie just can’t keep anything to himself.

He turned to Robby in his swivel chair.

“Did you know Abbot’s packin’ heat down there?”

A/N: i wrote this straight over three days after not writing for about a year. crazy how that works, huh?

i hope the twitter divas find this.

After all, this was a teaching hospital, and Ogilvie was listening as Whitaker spoke and you chimed in when needed.

Robby stood on the other side managing the patients pain and vitals.

You knew Park was upstairs but you really hoped he would send anyone else down.

“Is this a favorable amputation,” he said, cutting Dennis off and demanding the attention from the room.

You squeezed your eyes shut. You had successfully avoided having a conversation with Brendan Park for the better part of two years while working under the same roof.

Robby rolled his eyes, as he always did when surgery came down and demanded attention, “Park, always a pleasure.”

“Pretty clean cut, sliced through like a guillotine,” Garcia said calmly.

Then his eyes met yours across the room and he said your name, it was by no means soft. In fact, there wasn’t a soft thing about him.

But it wasn’t cold either, which was the only persona he ever presented, especially towards people he felt were below him.

You gave him a nod as acknowledgement. His eyes left yours and he went back to barking orders at everyone around him, Garcia taking notes from his side.

You could feel Robby’s gaze basically burning a hole into the side of your head at the small interaction. Everyone was a little confused by it, but it wasn’t uncommon for men in this hospital to have a crush on you.

You were beautiful and smart, and more than competent.

As Park finished giving instructions and being rude to Whitaker he moved across the room to stand by you.

Everyone went back to what they were doing, except for Robby, who was now watching you interact with Park.

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” he said quietly enough that you hoped only you could hear.

You scoffed, “really? Didn’t think you would notice, Brendan.”

“I was wondering if I could take you out again?” He said confidently, grinning.

You couldn’t have rolled your eyes further enough into the back of your head, “and why would I let you do that?”

You could feel everyone trying not to obviously listen to the conversation, grasping at any gossip they could.

“I figured maybe we could try again. Third time’s the charm and all that,” he said, still grinning. It was a smile he rarely wore at work, especially in the ER.

“Are you considering whatever those were to be two attempts?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest and raising your brow.

“Exactly. So the third would be the charm,” he smirked.

“You’re persistent. I’ll give you that,” you said, keeping your tone neutral in attempt to sound casual to those around you.

“Occupational hazard. Surgeons don’t quit easily.”

You hated the way you wanted to smile, god damn his surgeon charm. “That’s great for the OR. Less charming in a trauma room while you ask me out.”

“Ouch. Is that a hard no?” He said, feigning offense.

“It’s a polite no.”

“Did I do something wrong? I thought the dates went pretty well,” he said with a shrug.

“You spent forty minutes telling the waiter about how your ACL repair technique is the fastest in the state, even though I’m pretty sure there’s no evidence to support that.”

“It was relevant to the story.”

“There was no story. It was like I was forced to attend your TED talk.”

“Okay… fair. But I was nervous,” he lowered his voice at the last part of the sentence, like he was trying to be vulnerable.

“You didn’t seem nervous. You seemed impressed with yourself,” you swore you heard Robby choke back a laugh, but you didn’t spare a look at him,

“That’s my baseline personality,” he was still fucking smirking.

“Yes, I noticed,” was all you could manage in response.

“Look, I know I can come off… intense. But I did enjoy spending time with you. And plus you love teasing me,” he said reaching out to squeeze your side, a move that made you freeze, far too intimate for your liking.

“Mmhmm, but I can tease you right here in the trauma room without having to get dressed up. And it’s free,” you quipped.

“That’s harsh. But wouldn’t it be more fun to tease me over wine? And who said anything about you paying.”

You smiled a little, only humming in response.

“What if I promised to ask at least three questions about you this time?” He raised his eyebrows at his own suggestion.

“I feel like that’s something we shouldn’t have to preface, it should just be a given.”

“I’m serious. And technically I haven’t heard you say no yet.”

You nearly choked, “I think you’re delusional. I guess you’ll just have to do better than groveling with me in a trauma room full of my peers.”

“Alright. I can respect that,” he said with a small smile.

“Now, excuse me Dr. Park, I have to irrigate this severed leg with… what is it again… oh right… saline!” You patted his bicep before turning back to the patient.

He walked around you and back to the doors, his tense posture returning almost immediately, “page me once you have consent.” And he was gone.

You finally felt like you could exhale.

The nonessential people left the room. Whitaker took Ogilvie to find saline. Leaving only you and Robby, and your patient.

“So…” Robby broke the silence, “Park the Shark…. And you?”

You rolled your eyes immediately, “it was years ago, Michael.”

He hummed in response.

“You know I’m kind of taking a three month vacation with you starting tonight, right?” You said without looking up from the chart in your hands, “I also believe there’s a nice script M on the gold chain I’m wearing.”

“Yeah, well you seemed to have forgotten to mention your boyfriend to Park,” he said coldly.

“Oh my god. Michael, are you jealous?” You looked up at him, his eyes still on the monitor in front of him, “… of Park the freaking Shark?”

He scoffed, “no, not jealous.” You walked around the patient to exit the trauma room.

“Well, Mr. Not Jealous, I’ll leave you to your irrigation.” You said, pushing the door open with your back and leaving the room while snapping your gloves off.

You reentered the chaos of the ER and couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at your lips. Part of you loved seeing Robby a little jealous, you had been together for a few years, and it made you feel a little fire inside of you. Call it toxic, or trauma, or whatever you wanted. It excited you.

You weaved through all the people until you reached the small break room, hoping for a cup of shitty coffee and a moment of reprieve.

You didn’t even hear Robby slip in behind you until you heard a lock click.

“I didn’t even know the door in here locked,” you said leaning against the counter and sipping your coffee.

He walked over to you, ignoring your words. He took the coffee cup out of your hand, placing it behind you. He placed a hand on each side of you on the counter, caging you in. His face only inches from yours.

“Do I need to remind Dr. Park upstairs what’s mine?” He said quietly, his breath ticking your cheek.

“What’s yours?” You said teasingly, but your voice was shaking.

He smiled a little, liking the effect he was having on you. He nodded slowly, “what’s mine.”

You were blushing under his gaze, “no need to make a scene, I know who I belong to.” 

He nearly grunted at your statement.

“And I can spend the next three months showing you,” you added, barely above a whisper.

He chuckled, his shoulders shaking, his eyes didn’t leave yours, “I’m looking forward to our little trip then.”

The door knob jiggled, someone trying to get in to the break room. You looked at the door but Robby’s eyes stayed on you.

“Can’t wait to run out of here with you at seven,” you said, flicking your eyes to the clock before back to him, “only three more hours.”

He leaned down and kissed you slowly, much more passionately than you he usually would at work.

“We might have to make a pit stop at home, I don’t know if I can wait.” He said honestly as he pulled away from the kiss.

You laughed against his lips, “patience is a virtue, Michael.”

He laughed.

Now there was banging on the door. Robby groaned, pecking your lips before moving to unlock the door, revealing Dana.

“Oh, the lovebirds, should’ve guessed. I didn’t even know the break room locked.” She said with a smirk.

“Well I’m going back to work,” you grabbed your coffee cup, “see you at seven Dr. Robinavitch.” You said before slipping out the door and back into the sea of chaos.

You smiled into your cup as you were bombarded by residents needing approvals and opinion.