after midnight

He can almost time when you’re about to take a drink, too — the way your fingers fidget around the chilled aluminum, right before your tongue darts out to wet your mouth. You tip your head back with the can to take a quick sip, then lick your lips again when you bring the beer to your lap again.

It’s subtle and mostly unconscious, but Jack can’t help but notice all of it.

The same way he can’t help but notice how flustered you get when he asks, “Did you get that dress I bought you?” 

Your head snaps in his direction. Your eyes widen with a set of owlish blinks. The smile you had before softens slightly as your shoulders tuck in, going painfully shy in a flicker. 

It’s not so much the reminder that Jack scoured the internet for the butter-yellow dress Kate Hudson wore in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days — after a passing comment you made about it during movie night some weeks back. It’s more so the reminder that you didn’t get it because you no longer had a real address to receive it at.

Because you’d rather die than tell him you’ve been sleeping in the PTMC for the past week.

“Uh… No. I-I don’t think so,” you stammer.

Jack’s brows lower. “Really? The e-mail said it was delivered yesterday.”

You glance away again — fingers fidgeting, tongue darting. “Maybe it went to the wrong place?” you shrug and bring the can up to your mouth again.

Jack notices how you shift awkwardly on the bench beside him; how you struggle suddenly to meet his gaze, and how you try and fail to tune back into Whitaker’s rambling. There’s something more going on inside your head, something more you’re not telling him, but he figures prying after a twelve-hour shift probably isn’t the best idea.

“Yeah…” he says slowly. “Maybe…”

There’s a long beat of silence between you thereafter, filled by members of the dayshift exchanging staggered goodbyes. Jack takes a quick sip of his beer. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing, and turns to you with the sheen of alcohol coating his lips.

“I should probably start heading out to,” he clears his throat. “Want me to walk you home?”

You fake a shy smile, instead of telling him that you have no real home to go to.

“I’m a big girl, Abbot. I think I can get there on my own,” you lilt drily. Jack’s stare hardens into an unwavering deadpan; not mean, just firm. You cave with a roll of your eyes. “You go ahead. I’ll walk with Trinity and Whitaker— They live closer to me, anyway.”

Jack hesitates for a lingering beat. 

He wants to tell you that it makes him feel better when he walks with you, that sometimes he thinks he lives and breathes only to protect you, but he’s self-aware enough to know how insane that sounds. So he just nods with a slow exhale.

“Okay… Just— Call me when you get home?”

You give him a soft smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Of course.”

Jack takes the long way out to give you enough time to pack up your things and head out in the opposite direction with Santos and Whitaker. 

He cuts around the block instead of heading straight out, positioning himself just far enough away from the entrance that he can still see it. When he turns the corner, he spots you brushing shoulders with Trinity and tipping your head back to laugh at something he can’t hear from here.

The sound of your giggling is carried on the summer’s evening breeze, along with your words as you veer suddenly towards the side of the hospital again. “Shit— I left my keys in my locker. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up with you.”

You slip inside through the automatic doors.

Jack straightens his back and tightens his hold on the strap of the camo bag slung over his shoulder. He gets a strange feeling in his chest that he just can’t shake and decides to follow you back inside the PTMC. He figures it’s better to be safe than sorry — better to seem insane by following you like a creep instead of risking something bad happening to you, anyway.

He weaves through the noisy emergency department with strong shoulders and a sharp gaze. He checks for you in the locker room first, then the break room second, then doubles back for Shen at the workstation.

“Said she left something up in ortho,” the attending shrugs through a short sip of his iced coffee. Then he jokes,“What do you wanna bet she’s screwing around with Park the Shark?”

Jack's chest flares, but he tries not to let it faze him as he makes a beeline for the elevators. 

He knows you’re lying — you wouldn’t have said something different to Trinity otherwise — not unless you really were sneaking around with Dr. Park, that is. Jack has to shake the thought physically from his head, which Shen had unknowingly planted there, the entire ride up to the eighth floor.

No one goes up there anymore — no one other than you and Jack — and it’s the only other place he hasn’t yet looked to find you. The west wing of the upper floor has been nothing short of abandoned, and is eerily quiet compared to the E.D. below, save for the faint buzzing of fluorescent lights that are bound to die out any day now.

As he passes the old rooms, left clean and untouched, he hears a faint song playing from behind a shut door. One of those old 2000s pop songs you always play in the car when you’re together. He knocks first and, when he receives no answer, pushes it slowly open with a call of your name.

This room, unlike the others, is not abandoned. Not exactly. There are blankets folded neatly on the edge of the bed; a duffel bag tucked in the corner by the nightstand; and a pile of books stacked on the windowsill. A laptop sits open on the pillows, where music spills from its speakers.

“‘Cause every time we touch, I get this feeling; and every time we kiss, I swear I could fly—!”

It’s all so organized, so lived in. Jack feels his chest tighten accordingly. He wonders how long you’ve been staying here, how long you’ve been lying to him.

The drumming water faucet shuts off from behind the closed bathroom door. He hears your voice behind it, singing softly to the music, and freezes when the door clicks open a few moments later.

“Can’t you hear my heart beat so, I can’t let you go! Want you in my—” You cut yourself off with a scream when you find a figure standing in front of your bed. 

Your hand rises instinctively to your mouth to muffle the sound. Your chest deflates with a breath of relief when you realize it’s Jack, then tightens again when you realize that it’s Jack. 

“Fuck…” you huff. “You scared me…”

Your free hand readjusts the fluffy white towel wrapped around your body, still warm from the shower and glistening with droplets of water. As the steam rolls out from behind you, he gets a whiff of your sweet body wash — and, as you shift awkwardly on your feet, he notices that you’re wearing a fluffy pair of house slippers. All of which tells him you’ve been staying here for way, way longer than he initially thought.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jack squints, a little harsher than he means to be.

“What are you doing here?” you retort. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I was worried about you,” the man shoots back, firm hands propped on his hips as he sways slightly on his aching prosthetic. “And obviously for good reason— What is this? Are you living here?”

Your mouth opens to argue, but you hesitate with a wavering breath in. You adjust the towel on your naked form and fight back a shiver as the humming AC cools the water on your skin.

“I’m… I’m just… I’m in between places right now. That’s all.”

Jack lets a short, disbelieving chuckle. His stern stare never wavers as you duck past him for the desk across the room, where your pajamas sit on the back of the chair.

“In between places?” he echoes. “What does the even mean?”

You sigh, gaze averted, and try to get dressed without dropping your towel.

“You remember when I told you about my creepy landlord? You know, the one who won’t stop calling me?” you ramble, sliding on a pair of underwear before reaching for your sweatpants. “Well, I was going to move to a new place, and I had already started the process of moving out, but I didn’t get approved for the apartment I wanted—”

The canvas of your bare back is revealed to him when you throw the towel to the side and reach for the sweatshirt laid out before you. Your voice goes slightly muffled as you shove it over your head.

“—And I can’t go back to my old place, obviously, so I just… Moved in here. You know. For the time being.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack presses. “I would’ve helped you.”

“I know,” you roll your eyes. “Because you’re always helping me. Because I can’t do anything for myself—”

“That’s not what I said—”

“You don’t have to say it,” you snap, flashing him a wide-eyed glare. “That’s just what it is. And I can’t keep going to you every single time I have a problem that needs fixing.”

Jack shrugs, oblivious. “Why not?”

Your face twists at his confusion. 

“Because I can’t just rely on you for the rest of my life, Jack! That’s not— sustainable,” you rant, gesturing wildly with your hands. “I mean, what if you get bored of me? What if this stops— being fun for you, and I become a burden? Then where does that leave me?”

The words hang in the quiet, still, sweet-smelling air between you for several long moments.

Jack’s stern expression melts into something softer as a white-hot feeling sears his chest from the inside out.

“You aren’t a burden to me, honey— You’ve never been a burden to me,” he tells you, closing the distance between you in a few short strides. 

You peek through your lashes to meet his gaze when he towers over you. The corner of his mouth flickers into a smile as he huffs a breathless laugh. 

“I mean, not to sound like a selfish asshole here, kid, but this is more for me than it is for you… I don’t buy you stuff just because you want me to; I do it because it makes me happy. I take care of you because it makes me feel good…” Jack trails off, going foreignly sheepish as he crosses his arms and bounces his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Us being in love with each other is just a… super cool bonus.”

You blink up at him with wide, wet eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “And you know what would make me feel really good?”

You hesitate for a moment, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “…What?”

“If you stopped squatting in an abandoned hospital room, and come stay with me at my place,” Jack says. “And if not with me, then at least in my guest room. That way, I know you’re sleeping in an actual bed. And have access to a real kitchen— What have you been eating, anyway?”

You cower under his squinted stare.

“I don’t know... Uber Eats on a good day. And whatever’s in the vending machine on a bad day…” you answer shyly. “And cafeteria food on a really bad day…”

Jack nods slowly, smacking his lips against his teeth.

“Yep,” he deadpans. “You’re coming home with me.”

Home, as it turns out, wasn’t so bad.

You had been to Jack’s place before, to be sure, but never with the intention of staying long term. It makes the place feel a bit foreign to you as you try to find your footing within it, when you arrive with nothing but a bathroom bag and your haphazardly-packed duffel, ‘cause Jack assured you he’d get all the rest of it for you later.

You leave your things in his guest room while he orders you something for dinner. You eat together in his living room, like usual, and wind up inevitably in his bedroom before the night is over. 

Casino plays on the television, bathing the dark room in its flickering neon glow. You lie on your stomach with your legs kicked up behind you, while Jack slouches against the headboard, legs spread to accommodate your body between them. He holds your right foot against his chest with a pair of wide hands, massaging the ache in the ball of it with his fingers.

“God, I would die for that coat…” he hears you mumble to yourself, as Robert De Niro slides the white fur over Sharon Stone’s shoulders. (He makes a mental note to find that one for you, too, and send an email to recover the dress from yesterday.)

“Isn’t this so much better than a hospital bed?” Jack wonders aloud.

You scoff a faint laugh, lifting your heavy head from your fist to flash him a deadpan look. “I think the floor would be better than that hospital bed.”

Jack chuckles quietly to himself before realizing, “…That’s why you’ve been complaining about your back so much, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know…” You turn away, suddenly shy. “I guess so…”

You feel him shift behind you, bed frame creaking under his weight. Your foot falls to the mattress as he sits between your legs, careful to keep the weight off his amputated limb as he kneels on the mattress. 

His warm, calloused hands smooth under the fabric of your sweatshirt. His thumbs dig into the unrelenting ache between your shoulder blades. You exhale a slow sigh and drop your head between your arms, melting under his touch.

You don’t realize he’s leaning over you until his lips brush your neck. You fight back a shiver when his silver scruff brushes the delicate skin.

“From now on…” Jack mumbles against you, low and quiet and just shy of menacing. “I want you to come to me the next time you need or want anything, alright? Anything.”

Your breath catches. Something warm pools in the pit of your stomach.

“Don’t keep it from me… Don’t brush me off…” Jack continues with a voice like honey as his hands press firmly against your back. “Come to me— directly. That’s my job now. Understand?”

You don’t trust your voice, so you just nod in response. Jack can feel it with his lips still pressed against your skin. You can feel his mouth curling into a smile as his hands smooth down the length of your spine, with a tenderness that sends chills pebbling across your skin in his wake. 

You forget how to breathe when his fingers curl in the hem of your sweatpants. 

“Who takes care of you, honey?” he murmurs lowly in your ear.

“You do…” you hear yourself say, half-muffled with your head still bowed.

Jack grins. He pulls your bottoms and your underwear down the curve of your ass in one fell swoop.

“Can’t hear you, baby,” he says in gritty monotone before sitting back on his haunches. 

You lift your heavy head, blinking away the haze of desire clouding your vision when you glance at the man behind you. You find him kneeling there, with a hand shoved down his pajama bottoms, massaging himself the rest of the way hard.

Jack smiles wider when he catches you staring. He feels his cock twitching in his fist at your heavy-eyed and wanting gaze.

“Who takes care of you?” he echoes, more firmly this time, but with a teasing squint in his light eyes.

The corner of your mouth lifts in a mischievous half-smile. “You do,” you repeat, more eager this time.

Jack nods once, almost approvingly so, and sighs as he squeezes hard at his stiffening cock. “Hell yeah, I do…” he murmurs to himself, proud.

You should’ve told him to give this a name back then — whatever this thing was between you — because at least then you’d have a name for the feeling searing in your chest just now, as you’re forced to watch Robby flirt with Noelle on the other side of the workstation.

You’re examining the chart glowing from the iPad in your hands, trying hard to ignore the ache in your lower back and the fact that you haven’t eaten since six that morning, when the sound of Robby’s sudden laughter graces your ears — finding you despite the buzzing chatter of the crowded E.R. 

You glance up automatically and find him leaning against the counter, with the sleeves of his undershirt pushed up to his elbows and his stethoscope looped lazily around his neck, towering several inches over Noelle.

“You’re getting less grumpy in your old age, Robinavitch,” the older woman quips beneath a quiet smile and the faint flush coating her caramel-colored cheeks. She arches a manicured brow in his direction, dark eyes glimmering beneath long lashes. “Something been improving your mood lately? Or some-one?”

Your palms go clammy around the tablet in your hand. You never wanted anyone to find out that you were dating your attending, but god, your heart stops beating just to hear your name fall from his lips.

Robby laughs instead, a sharp exhale from his nose. 

“You always think you know everything,” he says with a shake of his head, though you can still hear the smile in his voice when he tells her, “I’m not sure your new boyfriend up in ortho would like you asking about my love life, Hastings…”

“Oh, I stopped seeing him ages ago,” Noelle scoffs. “He kept calling himself an alpha male unironically, and I— couldn’t take it anymore.”

Robby physically recoils. “Jeez… And here I thought your taste in men improved after me.”

Their laughter entwines and lingers in the air for several lingering moments. It’s more familiar than flirtatious, but your stomach twists with a sick feeling anyway. Because Noelle was, to put it simply, everything you weren’t. She was effortlessly gorgeous and carried all that confidence in her matching pant suits and pulled-back curls. She was much closer to Robby’s age, too, and their lengthy history is one you know you couldn’t compete with if you tried.

You feel a little like a child as you watch them talk in hushed voices. You flare with all the embarrassment of one, too, when Robby’s eyes lock suddenly with yours.

You turn away a beat too late, just in time to catch the look that flashes suddenly across his weathered features — as if he’d somehow been caught. You pretend not to notice, or otherwise care, when he dismisses himself from Noelle and closes the distance between you. He towers over you the same way he had with her, smelling like a mixture of his cologne and your bed sheets.

“Hey…” he says, all casual, stuffing his hands into his scrub pockets and nodding to the tablet in your hands. “You get that CBC back on Central Eight?”

“Yep,” you deadpan, still without looking at him. 

He flinches slightly when you shove the chart suddenly at his chest with a less-than-gentle hand. His brows lower in confusion when you turn on your heel and walk away a second later, with considerably more ire than you had that morning. (‘Cause you’d been complaining about some mild insomnia for a while now, so Robby fucked you to sleep the night before. He figured you’d be in a better mood today accordingly. But alas.)

“So I take it you’re not helping with this endoscopy?” he calls after you, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket for a better view of the screen in his hand.

“Nope,” you call back, already halfway down the hall — not as his resident, but as a woman halfway scorned.

Whitaker’s eyes dart back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match — between you, Robby, and the bloodied head wound he’s watching you stitch up with practiced hands. There’s a heavy tension he can feel simmering in the air, snatching all the remaining oxygen out of the room. Even from where he stands behind you, peering over Trinity’s shoulder, he feels hardly shielded from the building stress.

“Call ortho for a consult for me, will ya?” Robby asks you, or rather politely commands, without looking away from the chart in his hands.

You, similarly, don’t glance up from your sutures as you tell him, “You have a pair of free hands, don’t you, Dr. Robby?”

The man’s eyes dart to you in an instant, peering at you over the top of the glasses sitting low on his broad nose. His dark brown gaze glimmers with a mixture of amusement and shock as a faint smile flickers beneath his beard.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll do it!” Whitaker blurts, half-strangled by the tension, as he rushes for the red phone across the room. It’s quite telling, the younger boy finds, that he’d rather suffer a call with Park the Shark than watch this lover’s quarrel unfold.

Robby squints as he takes a slow step towards you. His eyes flit from your deadpan face, to your gloved hands, to the balding head of the unconscious patient you stitch up. 

“Have you eaten today?” he wonders aloud.

“Are you gonna ask if I need a nap next to?” you scoff. “I’m not a child.”

“Well, you’re kinda acting like one,” Robby says within a breathless chuckle. “So do you wanna maybe dial the attitude back a notch?”

“Sorry, Dr. Robby,” you say flatly, tying off the final stitch with sharp, methodical movements. “I’ll remember to stroke your ego next time—  Maybe then you won’t accuse me of being a bitch.”

“I wasn’t—”

A laugh sputters suddenly from Santos’ mouth before she can help it. She hides it behind her fist when Robby glares at her and pretends to cough instead.

The tension between the two of you doesn’t snap until around the tenth hour of the shift, when you’re hiding from the chaos of the E.D. with the excuse of fetching more supplies from the walk-in closet. Robby enters like a dark cloud, mixing with your own storm, and threatening to create a most fatal concoction when he corners you against the shelf. (You hadn’t stopped moving for about four straight hours, to be fair — this was his only real chance of getting you alone.)

“What the hell is your problem today?” the older man says in lieu of a greeting.

You huff and roll your eyes, shoving at a pack of saline flushes a little harder than necessary when they threaten to fall from the shelf and on top of you. Robby watches with narrowed eyes and a pair of weathered hands splayed on his hip. 

“Did I do something to you? ‘Cause you’ve been acting crazy all day—”

You slam the cabinet door shut with a resounding clang, so hard it refuses to latch,before spinning on your heels to face the man behind you. The glare you give him almost makes him flinch before he swallows down the instinct to.

“Crazy?” you echo through a tense jaw. “You flirt with Noelle all day, right in front of me, and now you’re calling me crazy?”

Robby blinks owlishly back at you for several long moments. 

You almost think you see a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth beneath his mustache, before a chuckle sputters suddenly from his lips. You flinch at the intensity of his laughter, and at the distant mania glimmering in his dark eyes.

“Oh, my god—”

“Don’t laugh!” you exclaim, face burning under the weight of your embarrassment.

“—That’s what this is about?”

“Yes! It is. Because I thought I was enough for you.”

His weathered features soften with a heavy sigh, though traces of his amusement still remain — equal parts fond and exhausted. 

“Oh, c’mon… You know this wasn’t supposed to be anything serious,” Robby croons gently, taking slow steps towards you. “That was the agreement, right? Casual. So we could avoid all… This.”

You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes when he plants himself in front of you. You try not to melt when you catch a whiff of his dizzying cologne. “This?” you echo.

“Yeah… You know, all the… jealousy and the— arguments,” he huffs with a lazy shrug and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “I’ve been through this before, kid. Trust me. This is… This is what’s best.”

Your chest sears with a mixture of red-hot anger and ice-cold jealousy. Your jaw tightens at how detached he sounds, how rational, as if he were discussing policies instead of real actual feelings. (If he was even capable of those). You want him to feel this, too — this awful, wretched jealousy clawing at your ribs from the inside out. 

You fold your arms tightly across your chest, forcing your voice into a deadpan as hurt simmers somewhere beneath the words. “So I can see whoever I want?” you ask him.

Robby’s expression flickers slightly, almost imperceptibly. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, but his dark gaze never once wavers from yours. 

“Of course, you can,” he tells you, though his taut voice threatens to betray him. “We’re casual. That was the deal.”

“Okay,” you nod once and turn away from him again, giving him very little to play off of as he tries and fails to call your bluff. 

Robby’s forced to stare at the back of you while you pull a large pack of lap pads from the shelf. His brows knit in confusion when you spin back around to face him, mostly back to normal again, with a ghost of a polite smile dancing the edges of your mouth.

“Run these to Trauma 1 for me, will ya? Dr. Al-Hashimi needs ‘em for a trauma patient coming in.”

You press the package to Robby’s chest before he can answer and walk past him for the exit before he can blink.

Three days after the fact, you’re sitting in a crowded bar a block away from the PTMC, drowning your post-shift sorrows in half-priced beers. 

In those three days, you haven’t seen Robby once outside of work. There were no more stolen kisses in empty elevators, no more lingering touches in stairwells, no more “come over” texts sent in the dead of night. And Robby thought it was strange, because the two of you weren’t even fighting anymore — not technically, anyway — and yet you were more distant now than ever.

“Question,” the man murmured casually from the other side of the desk while you finished up your charting at the monitor. “Is it me you’re avoiding or just my apartment?”

“What?” you scoffed, still typing. “I’ve just been— busy, Robby.”

“Hm…” he sighed, less than convinced.

You didn’t spare him a second glance — not then and not when you took Santos’ offer of happy hour and Friday night karaoke. The girl herself returns now to the cracked pleather booth in the corner of the dingy bar, where you sit with Mel and Whitaker, after butchering another Alanis Morrissette song. 

Her chest heaves with panted breaths under her black tank top, pale skin sticky with a thin layer of alcohol-induced sweat.

“Okay, what’s with the long faces over here?” Trinity jokes as she steals a room-temperature fry off your plate, talking through the mouthful. “I know you and Robby are fighting or whatever, but I just gave the performance of a lifetime up there.”

You slurp nosily at the remnants of your fruity drink and nearly choke on it at the accusation. “What?” you cough with the thin straw still in your mouth. “We aren’t— fighting. What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please,” Trinity scoffs and reaches for her beer. “You’re both been acting like a couple of… divorced parents at soccer practice.”

“Okay, I don’t even know what that means—”

“Playing nice in front of everyone as not to evoke suspicion, which inevitably turns the obvious tension between you from angry to sexually charged,” Mel rambles matter-of-factly. Her blonde hair sways around her jaw as she nods, left slightly crimped from her undone braid.

Your eyes flit to Whitaker then, who nods much more solemnly in agreement.

Your face burns red-hot in response. “Well— we’re not even, like, together or anything, so…”

“Mhm…” Santos hums with a knowing look that makes you shift uncomfortably in the booth. She takes another quick swig from the amber bottle in her hand before her gaze zeroes in on an unfortunate Whitaker. “C’mon, Huckleberry. You’re up.”

His light eyes widen, glassy with exhaustion and alcohol alike. “I’m… Up?”

“Yeah. You’re doing karaoke with me. Let’s go,” Trinity says as she slides once more off the weathered vinyl. She frowns when she rises and finds the boy still sitting in place. “Let’s go, I said! We gotta get back in line before the spots fill up—”

Whitaker scrambles to follow the girl towards the stage despite his better judgment. You use that as an excuse to get another drink, tugging the skirt of your dress further down your thighs as you go. You weave through the crowd of strangers and coworkers alike until you reach the sticky wooden counter. 

You lean your elbows against it and flash the bartender a kinda smile. “Can I get another aperol spritz, please?”

“Put that on my tab,” a familiar voice says from beside you.

Your head whips to find Jack sitting there, one chair down and nursing a sweaty amber bottle of cheap beer in his pale hand. He looks more relaxed now than you think you’ve ever seen him — camo pants baggy around his legs, black t-shirt untucked from the belt, warm around the edges from the alcohol.

You feel very suddenly overdressed in your form-fitting velveteen number and cross your arms over your chest to hide beneath the loose cardigan you wear over top of it. “Oh, you don’t have to do that—”

“I insist,” the older man smiles. “You deserve it after that canthotomy you did today. You were a real trooper.”

The bartender slides a cocktail glass across the wooden surface over to you. The orange liquid threatens to slosh over the thin rim. You give him a polite grin in return. “Thank you,” you tell the man, then grow considerably shier when you turn back to the attending sitting a stool down from you. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”

“Jack,” the older man corrects before bringing the lip of his bottle back up to his mouth.

“Jack,” you echo softly.

The man shifts on the hard stool, keeping his prosthetic limb stretched slightly ahead of him beneath the bar. A not quite silence settles between you then, filled by the buzzing bar all around you. Your eyes cut to the stage on the far side of the room, where Santos belts the lyrics to “You Oughta Know” and Whitaker stumbles over himself to get the foreign words out. 

“I think Shen is looking for a karaoke partner,” you quip, nodding your head towards the doctor standing by the stage and flipping through the binder of song choices there.

The dim overhead lighting turns Jack’s silver curls a softer golden shade when he turns his head to follow your gaze. He grimaces instantly at the thought. “Yeah, absolutely not.”

“Why?” you laugh softly, with the thin straw dancing against your mouth. “You scared?”

“Yes,” the man answers without a second thought. “And I’ve been shot at before— Today, even— And somehow karaoke still feels more terrifying.”

Your eyes squint in his direction, glittering with something foreign. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t ya think?”

“Eh. Maybe a little.”

You scoff and slide into the bar stool beside him. “You don’t strike me as someone who embarrasses easily, Dr. Abbot.”

“That’s because you only know me at work,” he quips halfway into his beer, before licking the amber sheen from his mouth. “Where I am equal parts competent and mysterious.”

“Mysterious?” you repeat skeptically.

“Mm,” Jack nods with narrowed eyes and a faint smile twitching the corner of his lip. “Very tortured, you know? Very brooding.”

“Ah, yes…” you sigh with alcohol glittering on your lips like gloss. “The very brooding, tortured doctor who makes dinosaur noises to win over scared children in pedes.”

Jack pauses mid-sip, pale eyes narrowing. “Well, this is new…” he hums.

Your stomach flips at the way he’s looking at you. Heat crawls instantly up your neck. You feel very suddenly suffocated by the heavy cardigan on your shoulders. “…What is?”

“I don’t know,” he answers with a lazy shrug, though his heavy eyes dart once down your form and up again. You don’t realize, until then, that this is his first time seeing you in anything other than your dark black scrubs. “You… Flirting with me.”

You exhale a breathy laugh, if only to dispel the anxiety clawing at your chest. “Flirting? Is that what this is?” 

“Hey— You’re the one who called me mysterious.”

“Actually, I was clarifying if you thought you were mysterious.”

“Still counts.”

“Does it?” you squint.

Jack smirks behind the lip of the beer bottle against his mouth. His adam’s apple bobs with a short sip before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know… For a while there, I thought you hated me… Considering you never talked to me unless you had to.”

“You work nights, Jack— I don’t talk to you because I see you for, maybe, twenty minutes out of my day,” you scoff, and don’t realize you’ve called him by his first name until his eyes glimmer with amusement. You turn away with a shake of your head as your face burns, bringing the straw back up to your mouth. “Though, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t consider it…”

“Oh, really?” Jack hums with raised brows. “What’s the verdict now, then, huh?”

You let your gaze drag over him deliberately as you ponder the question, biting at the straw between your teeth. You scan over his toned biceps, his lean stomach caged beneath his form-fitting tee, and his spread thighs that make your head spin, before meeting his eyes once more. 

“Now,” you hum sweetly, “I think I’m starting to understand the appeal…”

Jack stares at you for a long moment before he lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. The lamplight shines in his greying curls as he shakes his head. “Yeah? And how does Robby feel about that?”

Your eyes harden in an instant.

Jack raises a free hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m just sayin’— He looks like he wants to put his fist through a wall any time another attending talks to you for more than thirty seconds.”

Your chest tightens unexpectedly. You swallow hard to fight the strangling feeling — of Robby, and of his laughter in the supply closet — as you shrug a lazy shoulder in response. You don’t bother to lift your cardigan when it slips softly down your arm.

“It’s casual,” you tell him.

Jack studies you for a long moment. The corner of his mouth curls into a slow half-smile, and you feel your heart stuttering behind your ribcage. 

“Casual, huh?” he hums and brings his bottle back up to his mouth. “Interesting…”

Morning arrives slowly through the veiled curtains of the quiet bedroom, where pale golden light cuts softly over hardwood floors and rumpled sheets. You rouse gradually, cocooned beneath strangely heavy blankets that smell differently from your own back home — like unfamiliar detergent, cedarwood, and musky cologne. 

For a blissful wink of a moment, you don’t remember where you are. Not until you stretch your tired limbs and brush a scruffy leg with your foot, anyway.

Your breath catches. Your heavy eyes snap open. Your body prickles with heat as flashes from the night before return to you at once — of the walk home from the bar, of Jack’s laugh against your throat, of his stubble scraping your skin, of the teasing murmur in his velvety voice as he told you to cum for him.

Your thighs clench together at the memory, while a lingering ache pulses pleasantly low in the pit of your stomach.

You lift your head from the pillow and inhale sharply through your nose as your eyes scan the foreign bedroom, which you had been too busy to do the night before. 

There’s an expensive-looking record player in one corner, sat beside a crate of well-loved vinyls. There’s a bookshelf lining the far wall — cluttered with medical textbooks, old paperbacks, and framed photos from his military days. His camo bag, etched with his name, slouches by the entrance, and over the foot of the bed, you can see his prosthetic limb lying beside your shoes.

Other than that, it’s strikingly empty, with very little decoration on the wall or bedside tables. It makes sense, you figure, for a man who is working far more than he isn’t.

Your head turns in the opposite direction to find Jack sleeping soundly just beside you. The gentle rays of morning light brush over the canvas of his bare back, turning his freckles there a deeper shade of golden brown. He’s got one arm shoved beneath the pillow he folds into his cheek and the other lying loose across the mattress — from where your waist must’ve been before you slithered out from underneath it.

Your chest pinches at the sight of him. With pride, maybe, at having conquered him. And with a pang of white-hot guilt that twists when your mind inevitably drifts to Robby.

You slide out of bed, careful not to let the mattress give too much beneath your weight. You grimace when the fabric of your t-shirt twists uncomfortably around your form, only to find that you’re wearing Jack’s shirt, which had seemingly been given to you at some point last night. It falls over your thighs when you stand, bare feet padding as you gather your discarded clothes.

You bend down to drag your underwear back up your thighs and wince when your head throbs from last night’s cheap cocktails. With your dress and knit cardigan balled in your arm, you toe your shoes back on. Your breath hitches when the mattress shifts with a soft creak.

Jack squints when he raises his wild head. His mouth twitches when he finds you at the foot of the mattress. “Y’know…” he rasps, voice rough with sleep. “I’m at least grateful you’re not robbing me before sneaking out. That’s very courteous of you.”

“I’m not sneaking,” you scoff. “I just… didn’t want to wake you.”

The man inhales sharply as he twists onto his back, charcoal sheets tangling around his waist. You force yourself to look away from his lean stomach and the red claw marks you left on his scruffy chest when he stretches his toned arms above his head. 

“That’s sweet,” he says with a wince. “But unfortunately, I wake up if somebody breathes wrong in the next room.”

You exhale a soft laugh. 

Jack’s eyes soften around the edges at the sound of it. “You workin’  today?”

“Yep, in about…” Your eyes flit to the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Half an hour.”

“Brutal,” he scoffs.

“You’re fault.”

“Don’t say that like you didn’t have a good time,” he teases with narrowed eyes, then softens slightly when you turn away. You fumble with the stubborn back of your shoe, and his chest twists at your silence. “Do you… Do you regret it?”

“No,” you answer instantly.

“Good,” he hums, relaxing visibly once more into the sheets. “Me neither.”

Your stomach blooms with warmth. You shift awkwardly on your feet before him, even still. “So, uh… What— What now?”

“Well, feel free to use my shower, if you want—”

“I’m serious, Jack,” you insist gently, then add, more sheepishly. “But I will be using your shower, actually, thank you…”

Jack inhales deeply, considering. “Well,” he starts carefully, “I like you. Obviously.”

Your pulse rushes like a teenage girl.

“But,” he continues, as relief and disappointment tangle in your chest all at once. “I also know that neither of us is in the right spot for a relationship right now…”

“So… Casual?” you offer lightly, mouth lifted in a tired smile.

“Casual,” Jack agrees with a firm nod and glassy eyes.

You wear the night before all over, despite your desperate attempts to hide it.

Robby notices it the moment he sees you — how relaxed you are, how happy you seem to be. Whatever had been plaguing you before is now long gone, and that alone should be enough to comfort him. But still, he can’t shake the feeling that someone had gotten rid of all the aching for you — fucked it out of you the way only he could.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he observes while signing off on the chart you’d given him.

“Am I?” you hum.

“Yeah,” he nods, clicking his pen with his thumb. He glances at you over the top of his glasses before averting his gaze once more. “What’d you get up to last night, huh?”

“Nothing,” you shrug. “Other than watching Santos butcher Alanis Morrissette’s discography at karaoke… Maybe I just slept well.”

“You usually only do that at my place.”

Your brows furrow when he passes the clipboard back to you. “I’m sorry— Are you accusing me of something, Dr. Robby?”

His mouth opens to respond — to tell you that he can smell the foreign body wash on your skin, far muskier than the delicate sweet-vanilla he’s used to. But the automatic doors across the station swish open and shut before he can. 

Jack enters with his camo pack slung over his shoulder and brings a cool evening breeze in with him. Robby can’t help but notice how your eyes find each other’s almost instantly, clicking like magnets and lingering together like there’s a secret that only the two of you know about. His stomach swirls with jealousy.

“Look alive, degenerates,” Jack announces in lieu of a greeting, then quiets slightly when he reaches your side. “What’d I miss?”

“I was just briefing Robby on last night at karaoke,” you answer with a polite smile. “And how I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette after Santos’ crimes last night—”

“Fuuuck you,” Trinity drags out from the desk beside you, still sluggish from the long day and the hangover that won’t seem to leave her.

“Don’t drag me into this,” Jack quips. “I took an oath as a physician to do no harm.”

You exhale a quiet laugh. The man’s eyes soften around the edges, as though pleased at having earned the sound, before walking off towards the locker room. He leaves a trail of musky cedarwood as he goes, and Robby’s heart drops when he finally places the scent — the one he’s been smelling on you all day. 

The realization hit him like a truck.

His expression darkens instantly when he turns back to you.

“Supply closet,” he mutters lowly as he walks past you. “Now.”

Your stomach drops at his tone. He takes all the remaining breath from your lungs with him as he goes. Your chest stings accordingly — with a surge of pride at his jealousy, and with a pang of distant regret at his hurt. You follow behind him down the long hallway to the supply closet like a scolded child. He barely waits for the door to click shut behind him before rounding on you.

“You slept with him?” he shouts, eyes wide and wild.

You cross your arms tight over your chest, with your head tilted inquisitively to your shoulder. “Aren’t you the one who said I could see whoever I want?”

“Yeah, I meant random assholes at the bar,” he snaps. “Not my best fucking friend!”

An incredulous laugh sputters from your lips. “Oh, so now we have rules? What happened to just being casual, huh? If you can flirt with your coworkers, why can’t I?”

Robby’s dark eyes narrow as he takes a slow step towards you. You catch a faint upward flicker of his mouth as he asks, “So that’s why you did it, huh? You just wanted to piss me off?”

Your anger spikes instantly. You feel it prickling red-hot beneath your scrubs. Because he’s an arrogant asshole, maybe, or maybe because a distant part of you knows that he’s right.

“No, actually,” you tell him anyway. “Because not everything’s about you, Robby. I did it because Jack wanted me. Because he didn’t treat me like I was just another one of his dirty secrets—”

“Yeah, alright,” Robby scoffs a breathy laugh and turns away, running a pale hand through his chopped brown hair.

“Because being with him made me feel good—”

“I said alright!” 

“Aw, what’s wrong, Robby?” you coo, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Does it bother you that somebody else wanted me?”

Robby exhales another one of his stupid laughs.

Your chest swells with a burning feeling that makes you feel like crying. “Why is it so hard to admit that you care about me?”

“I care about you! Of course, I fucking care about you!” he exclaims, red in the face. “Because I’ve spent months trying not to screw this up.”

“Oh, please,” you roll your eyes. “Says the man who practically shoved me into someone else’s bed.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Robby squints.

“Do what?”

“Act like this is what I wanted—”

The words die in his throat when the silver knob to the closet door clicks suddenly behind him. The hinges open with a quiet squeak a second later. Your heads whip in sync to find Santos in the threshold, rubbing at her tired eyes as she steps into the room. She doesn’t realize the two of you are in there until the door shuts behind her again. 

Her wide eyes dart back and forth between the two of you for a moment. “…Why does it feel like I just walked into a hostage situation?” she quips in a monotone.

“Now you know how I felt last night,” you joke back weakly.

She flips you off and walks further inside. Neither of you says a word as she retrieves a case of saline flushes and four-by-fours from the shelves. The plastic crinkles loudly in the silence. 

“Please. Feel free to continue,” Santos deadpans as she leaves. “I definitely won’t be listening with my ear pressed against the door.”

The entrance shuts behind her with a dull click that sounds much louder in the quiet. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as Robby pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. When he lifts his head against, his eyes zero in on you. 

“We’ll finish this when we get home,” he tells you, firmly.

“Can’t tonight,” you shrug, lying through your teeth. “I have plans.”

“Yeah, not anymore, you don’t.”

Your stomach does a back flip at his words, at his very sudden act of dominance that makes you feel like melting into a puddle at his feet. And judging by the newfound glint in Robby’s dark eyes, he notices it, too.

You couldn’t hide from him if you tried.