Oh I love older man ♡

“You’ve got work,” you said, and you knew that was far from refusing him. 

Jack heard that, and it took him slow seconds to fold into the gurney beside you. “I’ve got time to spare.”

He didn’t, and both of you knew that.

It was a gurney built for one, and he was not a small man. You watched him fail to make it work and do it anyway; he got an arm behind you, easing you forward off the rail so he could fit himself into the few inches of mattress. He arranged his own bulk around you with none of the certainty his hands often had. He bumped the line in your arm and went still, careful of it, then moved aside. 

He folded himself beside you like the eighteen months hadn’t happened. He settled you off your left hip without a word, the way he'd done it for years, the way his hands knew to do before the rest of him had weighed in. You let him. You hated that you let him. You were too emptied out to do anything but let him, and some part of you that you'd stopped trying to govern wanted the weight of him more than it wanted to win.

The dog tags swung forward when he leaned to get comfortable, and then they were against you; they settled cold at first, against the side of your throat, then went warm as they sat. Your felt your body do the obscene traitor thing of recognizing it as the sound that meant you were allowed to stop being awake. 

“This doesn’t fit,” you said. Your voice came out wrecked and small, nothing like you usually used.

He only hummed.

The curtains opened again, then.

Robby came through the gap with his eyes already half-down on the tablet, mouth open on whatever he’d rehearsed walking over, then it stopped. The room wasn’t the same one he’d left, for this one had Jack folded onto a single-width gurney with his arm behind you and his whole body curved around yours like he’d grown there. 

Jack stayed exactly where he was; there was no startle or guilty peel-back, nothing that would’ve held onto the cover. He turned his head, slow, and met Robby over the top of yours, and his arm stayed exactly where it was. If anything, it settled with a small claiming pressure against your hip.

You watched Robby’s whole earlier misread come apart behind his face, all of it landing wrong now against the actual picture in front of him. He'd come for something else and he visibly decided to stay on task, because the task was the only safe thing in the room.

“Jack,” he said. “It’s six. The board’s yours.” 

You felt the small tension go through Jack as his body registered the pull of the thing that had always, always won. Six o’clock; the department on the other side that was indifferent to what had just detonated in here, the one that needed its attending the same as every night, that had been needing him the entire time he’d been folded around you pretending the clock wasn’t running.

The job, the oldest competitor you’d ever had for him that used to take him out of bed at the worst hours, out of arguments mid-sentence, and out of the marriage by degrees, reasserting itself now, on schedule.

“Give it to Shen for an hour,” he said, almost flatly.

“Shen’s not on till eleven.”

Jack breathed in sharply. “Then give it to yourself for an hour,” he said, and there was an uptick at the end of his sentence. 

Robby’s brows went up a fraction, because Jack didn’t hand-off. Jack had built an entire reputation on being the one who never had to make anyone else’s Friday night worse, the one who stayed past his own shift so the next attending walked into a clean board, the one who'd missed two of your anniversaries and a Christmas because someone had to be the one who didn't go home and Jack had decided, permanently, that the someone was him.

Robby had worked beside him for years. Robby had probably never once heard the words come out of his mouth.

You felt it land in you, too, and you hated the place it landed. That had been the thing about Jack and the job; it’d never been about the laziness or ambition or even the easy excuse of patients needing him, though God knew he’d hidden behind that for years. The floor was the one place he was allowed to be needed without being known. Down here, he could pour himself out completely, give everything, be the steady voice and unflinching hands and the man who stayed without it costing him the things staying did with you. 

The department took everything he had and never once asked him to say a word about himself. It was the perfect marriage, one he could survive, and he’d chosen it over the one he couldn’t—every single time—until you stopped making him choose. 

You wanted to tell him not to bother, that you knew exactly what an hour was worth from a man who’d spent your whole marriage proving the floor came first, and that one borrowed hour eighteen months too late didn’t undo a single missed Christmas. You wanted to be cruel about it the clean way. 

“Yeah, alright. I’ve got the hour,” Robby said finally, still watching him with almost curiosity. He paused and looked at Jack a moment longer, something unsurprised in it, like he’d suspected for years Jack had a far side and just had it confirmed. “Take your time.”

He pulled the curtain halfway behind him, then stopped and looked at you. “He gives you any trouble,” he said, nodding at Jack, “tell me. I’ll have him removed.”

The rings dragged shut behind him before Jack could say anything, and it was just the two of you and the drip and the impossible four inches of mattress, and Jack let out a breath you felt move all the way through him, the held-rigid thing in him easing by a fraction now that the door had stopped calling his name out loud.

“Go,” you said into his chest, voice coming out hollow. “I don’t need you here.”

You felt him take the words—he absorbed them instead of returning them—and decided, against every reflex in his body, to stay anyway.

“Of course you don’t,” he said into your hair. “I need to be here, though.”

You sucked in a sharp breath. “One hour.”

You should have pushed him off. You had all the right words for it. But his heart was going too fast against your cheek, scared still, and you were so emptied out; the crying and the floor and the thing growing six weeks inside you. The traitor warmth was rising again underneath the grief, and you were just too tired to clamp it down this time.

You stopped holding yourself up. Your weight went all into him all at once, the same surrender and failure of the legs. You felt the breath go out of him as his arm came all the way around. He gathered the dead weight of you in against his chest like it was the thing he’d been waiting to hold.

You thought, distantly, you should be cataloguing this so you could be appropriately disgusted with yourself later. You should hold onto this fact of his fear, the fact that none of it was free, that a man could hold you like this and still have been the one who had completely torn you apart.

“There,” he murmured, a broken relief. “Okay, I’ve got you.”

There was a part of you, quietly insistent at the back of your head, that this was the first time you were letting yourself fall asleep near Jack since the divorce. No, before that. Long before the papers, since the last year of the marriage had become two countries with a cold strip of sheet for a border and you’d both lain on your sides pretending to sleep.

You hadn't slept like this in two years. Maybe longer. You couldn't pin the last time because you hadn't known to mark it, the way you never knew to mark the last time anything good happened until you were standing a long way past it.

You were going under, the room pulling far and soft the way it had before you hit the floor. The last thing you felt before you lost it was his heart slamming and his body rigid and wide awake beneath you, holding himself together by main force so you could come apart, and you let yourself go anyway, because you couldn't not, because his chest was the only place the floor had ever held and you were too tired tonight to pretend it wasn't.

This was far from safe. You knew that. He was the least safe place left in the world.

You woke to a ceiling you didn’t immediately recognize in a dark room with the lights dialed to their lowest setting, not off, never off in this building, but dimmed to the brown-amber of a monitor on standby. A family room, you placed after a second. The one off the back hall with a couch that folded out. Jack had moved you there, probably carried or walked or wheeled you to a room where you could sleep without the overheads cooking you awake. The knowing of that—that he’d thought it all through—sat in your chest like a swallowed stone. 

There was a blanket over you that was heavier than the cotton waffle-weave they kept in the warmer. It had a cedar scent, faint, the same one that had lived in his locker for years because he sometimes ran cold and refused to admit it. 

The line was gone from your arm; someone had pulled it and taped a cotton ball into the crook of your elbow, the tape overlapped carefully. It was in Jack’s way, only his. Your shoes were by the couch, set together, toes to the wall. Your badge was on the side table, clipped to nothing. He’d unclipped your badge so it wouldn’t dig into anything while you slept. 

He’d done all of it without waking you. A man could take his ex-wife down a hall and do a dozen tending things with his hands, and never have once met her eyes while he did them. You’d been unconscious for the only version of Jack that knew how to take care of you.

The space beside you was cold. Your hand went looking before you’d decided to send it, flat across the vinyl where his heat should have been, and there was nothing. Your fingers drifted up to the side of your throat next, the hollow under your jaw where the tags settled their weight when he leaned over you, and you found your pulse instead. 

What came up first—before the grief—was relief. 

It was cowardly and it filled you to the back of the teeth. He was gone, and his being gone meant you wouldn’t have to do the other part. You wouldn’t have to sit up and find his face going blank. You wouldn’t have to acknowledge you’d sobbed yourself empty into his shirt then accounted for it over the top of a paper cup of bad coffee.

He’d left, and that handed you the one thing you were good at holding: the version that none of it happened. 

You sat up, and the room slid bright then dim at the edges. Underneath the dizziness was the other fact, the six-weeks-old one, riding quiet under your ribs through every gray-out, and you breathed around it and stood anyway. You got down to your shoes where he’d left them and worked them on. 

You folded his blanket over the arm of the couch and you didn’t let yourself hold it to your face first, though the wanting was right there, quick and humiliating. You clipped your badge back to your waistband and left the family room. The hall caught you in its fluorescence all at once, that flat ER light that made everyone look a little dead, and you kept your eyes down and aimed for the ambulance bay doors because the lot was through them and the car was in the lot and the car was the whole plan.

You made it past the supply alcove and the second set of doors before you heard your name.

“Oh, good. You’re vertical.” Ellis, coffee in hand, fell into step beside you. “Park had to finish your consult, by the way.”

“Yeah.” You didn’t have anything for it. “I’ll find him.”

“You don’t look like you’re finding anyone,” she said, the words coming out easy but still slowing to match your pace, which told you what she actually thought. “You’re off home?”

“Unless someone’s found me a second job to faint at, yeah.”

“Smart.” She was already peeling off the way she came. “Drink water. Drive safely.”

You let out a laugh devoid of humor. “No promises.”

She lifted the coffee at you and turned to go. Her eyes caught on something past your shoulder, and you felt it before you heard it, the way the air in a hallway shifted when he walked into it.

“You’re up,” Jack said from behind you.

Ellis took in the picture and quickly decided that she wanted to be anywhere but here. “I’ll leave you to it.”

You stopped because your body stopped before you'd ruled on whether to, and you turned and there he was at the mouth of the corridor with a chart in his hand he was not looking at.

He came down the hall and toward you. “How’s the head?”

“Fine. I slept it off.” You hitched your bag higher on your shoulder, which was a small flag to say you were leaving, and he caught it.

“You don’t have to bolt.” He stopped a few careful feet off, close enough to lower his voice while being far enough to not corner you in. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll finish on a patient and I’ll drive you. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel after going down.”

“I’m okay to drive.”

“You went gray today,” he said, his voice even. He raised a brow at you, like he was trying to make you see his point. “Twenty minutes. I’ll get you a real meal first. Or I take you home and we get something on the way.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw when you went quiet. “Or I’ll call out. I’ll call out, I’ll come with you, you don’t have to—” He stopped himself when you started shaking your head in the middle of his words, recalibrating in real time, hearing how much of himself had spilled into the offers. 

“Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m helpless,” you said.

His thumb moved against the edge of the chart, finding the corner and working it. “I didn’t say that.”  

“Then what is this?” 

A tech rolled a cart past behind him and he shifted his weight to let it through without ever moving his eyes off you, still like he was making sure he wouldn’t flinch. 

When he spoke again, his voice had dropped out of the hallway and into the register that had no audience in it, the one aimed directly for you, and hearing it out here under the lights with his clothes on did something to the floor of your stomach. 

“Can we talk about this.” It came out as anything but a question. His eyes dropped to your middle then back up, so fast you would’ve missed it had you not been trained in him. 

Your brows narrowed as your hand went over your stomach. To shield it or simply try to erase it from his view, you weren’t sure. 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” you said flatly. “Not for another seventeen weeks anyways.”

You watched him take the sentence and turn it over for the meaning, and you watched the number do its work behind his eyes—the number, the window he knew to the day because of course he knew it—and you watched the second it arrived.

“Are you actually considering that?” His voice had gone rough, like he was forcing the words out. 

They’d set themselves into your orbit wrong, because there was no doctor left in him—nothing neutral—and there was only the bare thing underneath, the disbelief that you were going to close the door. 

You let out a laugh that sounded more like a broken breath. “Bye, Jack.”

Three days later, Jack came to get Kevin.

He texted first—heading over for him, 20 min—with no question in it, because Kevin was the one thing the two of you could still do without negotiation. Wednesdays were his.

You buzzed him up without saying a single word back. You heard him on the stairs—you knew the weight of him on the staircase—and you’d already got the leash, the half-bag of food, and his joint chews lined up by the door so the handoff would be thirty seconds, so it could be nothing. You needed it to be an exchange where two reasonable adults move a dog between them and don’t bleed on each other doing it.

You opened the door before he knocked; he had his hand half-raised and lowered it slowly.

“Hey,” he said.

You handed him the leash. Kevin was already losing his mind at the sight of him, the whole back of the dog going, and Jack crouched to take the assault of it with one hand buried in the scruff, his eyes coming up to you over the dog’s head. You’d handed him the food and the leash and were holding the door like that said the rest of it.

He looked at the door, at you, and then you watched him decide to not take the easy exit you’d built for him. 

He stood up, making Kevin get on his hind legs to scratch at Jack’s hip. “So, we’re not even gonna say hi now?” he said looking at the bag of food that had found its way into his hand. 

“Hi, Jack,” you said, fingers tightening around the door. “There’s his food. He’s been scratching at the left ear again, so—”

“I am not asking you about the ear.”

“—so you might want to have someone look at it, or I will, on Friday.”

“Oh, my god—” He stopped, and his jaw worked. Kevin sat down between the two of you and looked up, ready, leash in his mouth now because he’d learned to carry it himself, oblivious. “You’ve been like this since you found out. You won’t—” He exhaled through his nose. “I texted you about a gyno—I sent you a name. A good one. You didn’t even—”

“I didn’t ask you for a name.”

“No. You don’t ask me for anything.” It came out before he could quiet it down, and you watched him hear it and land in the air with more weight than he’d meant to give it. “That’s sort of the problem.”

There it was, the door you’d held open so carefully, and he’d walked past it into the apartment anyway.

“Don’t,” you said.

“We both did this.” He held the bag of food in his fist, and he didn’t try to come past the doorway. “I keep—you keep looking at me like I did this to you. You were in that bed too. You let me in. You don’t get to—”

“We both did not do this.” Your hand came off the door and flat to your stomach before you’d told it to, and you saw his eyes track the motion and stick there, and you hated that you’d explicitly brought attention to where this lived. “You want to split the bar tab, fucking fine, Jack. Split it. But this part’s mine. And I’ll fix it. For both of us, since you’re so big on both.” 

Something in his face went pale. “I don’t want you to,” he said, low and stripped. “I don’t want that.”

You should have let that be the last thing. You knew that the merciful move, the one a better-built woman would make, was to close the door on the both of you. But he’d carried his weight up the stairs and the meanness was already loaded somewhere under your tongue and you'd already decided, without deciding, to fire it.

“Why?” 

He blinked as he moved around his mouth, a nervous tell. Kevin had given up on the both of you and flopped down across the threshold, half in the hall, his ribs going up and down, the leash still hooked in his teeth out of some loyalty to the idea of a walk.

“Why don’t you want me to do it?” You stepped in off the door, which was the wrong direction and toward him. “Go on. Say it. Tell me.”

“You know why.” His thumb found the rolled top of the bag and worried it, the same restless thing his hands did to a glass, to a pen, the tell he didn't know he had and you'd had years to learn.

You felt something behind your ribs knot at that. The pen sliding back across the table at you. 

You say it. You’ve always been the one that says it. You do it better.

You’d said ‘I love you’ into the dark of a call room first, twenty-nine and stupid with it. You’d said ‘let’s just go to bed, we’ll talk tomorrow’ a hundred times into the back of his neck. You’d said the word ‘divorce’ first, out loud, because he’d stood across from you with it lodged behind his teeth and made you reach down your own throat to pull it out into the air where it became real. Five years of finishing Jack; a whole marriage being his interpreter, translating his silences into things he never had to put his name under.

“No.” Your voice gave at the seam and you let it go rather than fight it in front of him. “No. You don’t get to—not this time. You can’t get away with it this time.”

“Please.” His voice went low, lips moving like there were a million things behind them caged. “Just think about this. Let—” It died there, and he started over. “Don’t do anything yet. That’s all I’m—just don’t do it yet.” 

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m not—”

“If I keep it, it’s not for you,” you said, shaking your head slowly, and felt the words come out colder than the room, cold enough that some small lucid part of you flinched away from your own mouth even as the rest of you reached for the next one. “Don’t ever get that twisted.”

His thumb stopped on the bag.

“And you don’t get to ask me for anything. Not when you can’t even say why.” Your voice came out even, which took everything and cost more than crying would have. “You want it? Say one true thing.”

He didn’t. Down through the floor came the muffled bassline of the couple below you, the ordinary Wednesday of people whose lives didn’t face the same detonation every day. Kevin had given up on the walk entirely and was now turning to his side on the threshold, pawing at the ground.

“Right,” you said, nodding.

He stood in the frame of your door with the food against his hip, and that one muscle going in his jaw, and you wanted to take it off his face with your bare hands, wanted to get under the flat of him and find the thing it was sitting on top of, the way you used to be able to, the way only you ever could.

“That’s funny,” you said, teeth grinding slightly. “You had a lot to say once.”

You watched the color go out from under his stubble in that same downward draining, the blood leaving a face by degrees, and his hand came up off his hip an inch and hung in the air of your kitchen with nowhere it was allowed to come down.

Because there had been one time in five years Jack got a sentence out whole and clean on the first pass. The one time he’d looked at you across a living room of the house you no longer drove past and said the thing he meant, all of it, so evenly. 

You’d asked for it; you’d stood in front of him with your hands shaking and begged him to tell you, and he had. Of every sentence caged in him, of everything he might have finally let out, he'd been articulate about that one. On his first try with no problem at all.

You’d asked for honesty and he’d handed you the single cruelest true thing he owned, and then he’d gone quiet again for the rest of it and made you do the housekeeping; the divorce, the paperwork, the saying-out-loud. Because apparently that was the deal, he’d said the unsurvivable thing and made you carry it the rest of the way.

“You know I didn’t mean that,” he said, voice hoarse.

“I don’t,” you said, heat building up behind your eyes. You’d go back down on the floor before you’d cry in front of him again. “I really, really don’t, Jack.”

Some part of you had wanted him to fight it. Some animal part that had been hoping for a wall to throw yourself against, and he’d given you what he always gave you instead, which was the absence of one, the open air where resistance should have been, so that you went through it and kept going and there was nothing on the other side but the cold.

“I’ll have him back before six on Friday,” he said to the bag. “If that’s—if that works.”

“It works.”

Kevin, hearing the word Friday, hauled himself up with a groan and pressed his skull into Jack’s knee. You watched Jack’s hand go down to the dog’s head without looking and he scratched the spot behind the left ear, the bad one, and Kevin leaned his whole stupid weight into it. For a second, the two of them just stood in the doorway, the man and the dog, the only easy thing left between the two of you.

You cleared your throat. “Get the ear looked at.”

“I will.”

He clipped the leash and straightened. There was a moment—you felt it coming—where he looked like he might try one more time, might reach back into himself for the sentence he'd left in halves on your kitchen tile.

“Alright,” he said finally, which was nothing. He got the dog to the door. The cedar of him moved past you in the chokepoint of the hall, close, close enough that your body did the unforgivable thing it always did and tipped a half-degree toward the warmth before you caught it and stood it back up straight.

At the top of the stairs he paused without turning around. You saw his shoulders rise with one of those breaths he took that bought him a second he didn't have, and you braced for whatever it was.

Then he let the breath go without anything riding out on it, and went down, the right side favored, the uneven weight you'd have known in the dark in any building in any life, the tags ticking, the dog’s nails on the stairs, the whole sound of him getting smaller by degrees until the street door went and took the last of it.

Stupid.

That’s the only word you’ve been able to use to describe yourself for two whole days.

So stupid it hurts.

You’re gripping the lip of your bathroom sink hard enough to ache just to ground yourself to some semblance of reality as you try to convince yourself not to call off work. This is a stupid reason to call off work. It’s a stupid thing to be so upset about in the first place. You’re being stupid, stupid, stupid. You wash your face robotically, scrubbing hard enough to roughen your cheeks until they sting, and wipe your skin harshly with an old towel. You’re trying to make your face look alive instead of half-dead like it’s been since Friday night.

Digging through your dirty laundry, you find the most acceptable pair of Figs you can, maroon from last Thursday, and tug them on. You didn’t do your laundry this weekend. Couldn’t. The scrubs barely cover the bruises at the tops of your arms, a fading reminder of when you still had hope for a new dynamic that could give you what you want. Need. If you’re being honest. You imagine in excruciating detail someone at work catching you with bruises. Fuck, is that a hickey above your neckline? Dammit, you told the guy not to do that. Stupid, desperate, useless – and in med school. Good work, Lefty.

Turtleneck it is.

The whole bus ride over – you miss the first one, of course – you’re just trying not to cry. Eyes burning, breaths shallow, little old ladies glancing your way with concern on their faces. You fidget with your sleeves, pick at your hang nails, anything to avoid checking your phone for the billionth time to see if he’s messaged you or returned your calls or done anything but give you the radio silence that’s had you questioning yourself every second of every day since he left you in your bed.

Pushing into the hospital, you take a few deep breaths and try to let the familiar sterile smell steady you. The clock in the locker room nags at you for being half an hour late. The tears nip at your waterline again and you focus on the deep breaths, giving yourself mental orders to keep your head on straight. Open your locker. Put your bag away. Clip on your badge. Head to the nurse’s station. Plaster on an apologetic smile and beg.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” you say as you check in with Dana. “I missed my bus by, like, thirty seconds and-”

“Save it, kid, we need you working ASAP.”

She hands off your clipboard with notes from the day shift and you pore over it as quickly as you can. With embarrassment burning your lungs, you mumble, “Right. Of course. Thank you.”

You turn around – and walk directly into Langdon after not even three steps.

“There’s my favorite fourth year,” he sighs sharply. “Late and careless; strong start to the night as usual, Lefty.”

“Sorry, Dr. Langdon, I just-”

“Can it. We’ve got an MVC five minutes out and I need you to take my patients in six and nine.”

You nod quickly and take a step back from him because you can’t breathe all of a sudden. “No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“From you?” He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure I won’t.”

It cuts you deep. Frank’s been sharp with you for years now and usually it slides right off your back; most nights, you can even match him and reach a point where he borders on respecting you. But not tonight. Tonight, you take the charts from him and walk away, meek as a mouse. Your heart’s pounding and your palms are sweaty just from the way he looked at you. Like you’re stupid.

Because you are.

And everyone knows it.

The universe apparently can’t even give you one second of pity, though, because the next person you walk into – shoulders bumping too hard – is Dr. Abbot. Unlike Langdon, though, he immediately steps back. “Shit, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Oh god. You can’t look at Dr. Abbot right now. Sweet, intense, gorgeous Dr. Abbot. His eyes are always too sharp, seeing right through you, with that edge of paternal kindness that makes your knees weak. With your eyes anywhere but his face, you grimace and reply, “All good. Don’t worry.”

I always worry about you. He gives your shoulder a soft squeeze and says, “It’s good to see you, ace. Didn’t see your check-in on the shift board earlier.”

Your eyebrows pinch together. You miss the first half of the greeting, of course, brushing past anything nice anyone could have to see about you because it couldn’t be true. Instead, that familiar coil of guilt wraps tighter around your throat. “Fuck, I know, I’m sorry, it was just a really slow start to the day and I was running for the bus and I missed it by like thirty seconds and…”

As your voice trails off into self-conscious awareness, he presses gently, “And?”

He’s the first person so far who hasn’t interrupted you. So you have to stop yourself because what would’ve come tumbling out would be way too much for the workplace and especially for Dr. Abbot specifically. You force a half-smile. “Nothing. Just a hard weekend. But, y’know, Dr. Langdon asked me to take his patients, so I’m getting back on the horse.”

He shakes his head. “Hand those off to Javadi; we’ve got an MVC coming in.”

You hold onto them like a lifeline, though. “Dr. Abbot, I, um, I think I’d like to keep Dr. Langdon’s patients instead. If that’s okay with you, I mean.”

He studies you for the spare few seconds he has. “Are you sure? I’m guessing Langdon was just being a dick. We could use you.”

“No, I- I don’t mind.” Before he can prod, you avert your eyes and stammer out, “I’m, um, I’m kind of still recovering from the weekend. Need to, I dunno, warm up a little, I guess.”

Jack tilts his head at you. Curious. Eyes narrowing. “Alright. I’ll page Javadi.”

Relief floods you.

The last thing you need right now is pressure. A life in your hands.

Precisely why it was stupid of you to take a risk like you did on Friday. You can’t act like this in emergency medicine and you know it. You know it but you still decided to be selfish and desperate and pathetic and-

“I can see you overthinking something from here.” Jack’s hand goes to your shoulder and your eyes snap upwards at the interruption to your derailing train of thought. Suddenly his tone lowers and he takes one small step closer to you. You smell his sharp aftershave. Then he says in that perfectly gravelly voice of his, “You know you can talk to me, right?”

You hear your voice threatening to break as you reply, “Of course. Thank you.”

But he doesn’t move his hand. And he doesn’t drop his eye contact. Your heart rate starts to pick up because you can see the care in his eyes and it’s too much for you to cope with. You need to be small, invisible, a crack in the wall he walks past without paying attention to. But he goes on, “I mean it, ace. Everyone has their off days, especially in this job. Find me if you need someone to talk to.”

His offer is so human it borders on hysterical. You honestly want to laugh. Off days. This isn’t an off day. This isn’t a normal med student having a normal slip in their composure. This is your own fault and you just have to get through it. So you try to muster your courage and assure him, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t always have to be,” he murmurs softly. Then the sound of sirens at the nearest bay takes his attention. You don’t catch him cursing under his breath as if the incoming trauma is nothing more than a distraction from being able to talk to you first and foremost. Finally his hand leaves your arm and he repeats, “Find me if you need me, okay?”

With your heart pounding against your chest, you nod. “Okay, Dr. Abbot. Thanks.”

And, finally, blessedly, you can escape.

For once, you’re thankful that Langdon was being a dick. He’s pawned off two incredibly easy cases to you, which means you can breathe and calm down as you check on them. You definitely give too much attention to the nervous, heavily pregnant patient who has nothing wrong with her but needs reassurance. And you listen to every single concern from the man whose wife took a fall and broke her wrist. She’s healthy as a horse otherwise, as she repeatedly insists, but there’s something soothing about helping him eliminate everything from the mental checklist that’s been driving him crazy with fear for hours on end. You manage to make it all the way to your lunch break without being snatched into any life-or-death situations, hiding in the comfortable shadows of scut and stitches.

Meanwhile, in every quiet moment of supervising the trauma, Jack replays your conversation. Something about your expression felt too familiar to him. The darting of your slightly glassy eyes, stuck on a skipping record going between thoughtlessness and overthinking a million times a second. Too far away but also claustrophobically close. One hand twitching at your side while the other gripped the chart for dear life. Too many contradictions to fit inside your precious, shallow-breathing body.

As soon as both his patients are stabilized and headed up to surgery, Jack’s scanning the ED for your familiar silhouette. He’s done two full laps before deciding concretely that you aren’t with any patients and you aren’t handling any traumas. He finds you in one of the breakrooms, standing with the fridge door open and your brows furrowed.

Just to start the conversation, Jack puts on a soft lilt and tries a joke first. “Whitaker forget his leftovers in there again? You’re mean-mugging the shelves.”

Slowly, robotically, you close the fridge. Still looking at the handle, you reply, “I thought I packed myself a lunch, but I guess I didn’t.”

He doesn’t miss how absent your voice sounds. Like a glass shattered on the kitchen floor that you’re trying to piece back together without nicking your bare hands.

That’s when Jack realizes.

The hesitation in your movements. The foggy way you’re speaking.

You’re dropping.

Well, more accurately, you’ve dropped. You’re in the middle of it now.

Jack’s been a dom since soon after he left the army. He missed the structure, the protocol, the sense of control. In emergency medicine, he’s always putting out fires that someone else started. When he’s with a sub, he gets to break someone down and build them back up, to make the decisions and get the rewards that come from them, to be the center of someone’s universe for even a few moments. More importantly, he has someone to care for. That matters more than he would’ve admitted when he was a cocky 25 at one of the local kink clubs.

He’d had suspicions about you before. How you puff up your chest at the slightest praise, how you crave rules and rewards in equal measure, how you’re always so hesitant to answer questions about your personal life and especially your dating life. All things that he could write off easily – but, now, with your eyes clearly searching for something you can’t find, the details are slotting into place.

With you still frozen in place, Jack takes his own lunchbox from the fridge. Then he touches the small of your back, nods at the nearby table, and tells you firmly,  “Sit with me. Have half my sandwich and we’ll both get something from the vending machine after. The good one on the third floor.”

You stare at him for a second. Gears grind against each other in your mind. Autopilot flicks on. “That’s okay, Dr. Abbot, I can just- It’s alright. I’ll order something to the hospital.”

“You won’t,” he counters. Soft. Certain. You’re lying to him and he knows it. His expression says you won’t be getting away with that. He pulls out a chair at the table and insists, “Sit.”

It’s uncomplicated. Direct. Clear.

Your current haze has turned even the most mundane tasks into foreign mazes, but Jack’s decisive, simple instruction feels like a map to get out.

So you sit.

He sits with you.

You try to argue again when he cuts the sandwich in half on the diagonal, but a single look from him quiets it. He slides it over on a hospital paper plate and asks, “Where’s your water bottle?”

Staring at the objectively delicious-looking sandwich – Jack goes all out with fancy bread and farmer’s market fillings – with no semblance of hunger, you tell him, “I left it in my locker. I’ll go and grab it in a minute.”

He shakes his head and stands. “I’ll get it now. Does your locker have a lock on it?”

The answer settles heavy in your gut. You whisper, ashamed, “I forgot to put it on this morning.”

Christ, he wants to strangle whoever left you alone like this. He doesn’t know what’s going on in your personal life – if this is a breakup, a hookup, a mistake – but he knows a good partner wouldn’t leave someone who looked even a fraction as broken as you look right now. Most of your coworkers are surely assuming this is just ‘one of those days.’ Even Abbot had thought that at first. But now he can see the splinters in your irises. You can’t push through this on your own. You need someone else to put you back together.

Not wanting to overstep or push prematurely, he gently touches the top of your head and says, “Just eat. I’ll be right back.”

Jack swears he’s never made the walk to and from the locker room faster. No matter how fast he goes, though, he can’t outrun your racing thoughts. When he returns, you haven’t touched a bite of the sandwich, just picking apart tiny pieces of the crust. In that moment, he guesses you haven’t had a full meal since…whenever this started. He saw you at work on Friday, so sometime this weekend. He sits down across from you and hands over your water bottle. “Here. Drink some.”

You take a few small sips of water and mutter a thank you.

Jack doesn’t say anything, but the way he looks at the tiny mountain of crumbs you’re creating on your plate bores through your skin. He knows you’re putting off eating. When he lifts his own triangle to his mouth, you do the same, mirroring his movements. You don’t want to disappoint him, too. He swallows, you swallow. He takes a swig of water, you take a swig of water. He doesn’t push you to talk, least of all to interrogate you about your mood, but his presence anchors you.

Before you know it, you’ve actually finished eating. You hadn’t felt hungry, but you somehow notice its absence.

Then Jack smiles at you. Sincere and warm. “Good job. I’m proud of you.”

The words open up a dusty window in your chest. A touch of warmth and light breaks through the mildew and cobwebs. Objectively, you know it’s silly. Proud of you for…eating half his food? For doing the absolute bare minimum to keep yourself alive? But that’s not what your brain’s saying right now. Your mind is begging for more of his soft affirmations. All you can manage is a soft, “Thank you.”

Jack watches you incredibly closely from there. He’s not sure if he should bring it up to you. That he knows. It would seismically shift the dynamic of your relationship. If he plays it wrong – makes you feel embarrassed, ashamed, afraid – then you’re never going to see him as anything but a dom and you as a sub, a permanent power imbalance that goes far deeper than mentor and student ever could. You’ll always feel like a weak, pathetic little thing if he doesn’t handle your drop correctly.

While he decides whether or not to reveal his hand, he resolves to help you in a way he knows only he can. Sure, you could go to Dana the way you often do when you need something. You can vent to Whitaker or lean on Ellis. But there are ways he can support you that are unique. That’s what he tells himself as he scribbles your name in the journal he’s kept for his past subs, writing out his observations about your current state and how he thinks he can address it. He always makes sure to keep himself in order first and foremost. If he brings his best self to you, he’ll inherently help more than if he didn’t dedicate time to it.

He resolves to guide you as much as he reassures you, to praise you twice as often as he corrects you, to watch out for you and shield you. And he’ll make sure you eat, take your breaks, and don’t push yourself too hard. That’s what you need to get through this. Someone to see you. Someone to care for you. If he’s careful, you won’t even notice the role he’s going to step into until you’re sure on your feet again.

He tells himself it doesn’t have to mean anything. That this isn’t an admission of the feelings for you that he’s been shoving deep down for – if his drunken confessions to Robby are anything to go by – years. You’re older than most of the students in your year, more sure, and kinder. Life has made you kind the same way it’s made you vulnerable. He needs that in his life, a compliment to his closed-off brashness. You bring out his ability to be open with patients and softer with his doctors.

So helping you through this certainly isn’t about his feelings. It’s for the good of the night shift and the hospital as a whole, really.

Really.

After another shit day of sleep and half-finished breakfast, you’re more irritated than anything the next night when you clock in. At least you’re on time today, so there aren’t any jabs about your arrival – which is good, considering you’re ready to bite the head off anyone who bothers you. You felt it before you even fell asleep this morning, restless and sweaty. Your racing thoughts have stopped pulling you under and now they’re just pissing you off. You’re fidgety and annoyed with fingers that flutter absently at your side and a jumpy heart rate that leaps when anything catches you off guard.

While you flip through the charts left by the day shift, Jack strolls into the ED with two boxes of donuts from a shop he knows you like. He breezes past, giving you a warm smile, and takes them straight to the breakroom. Unsurprisingly, a row of ducklings follows him to snag their favorite ones. You don’t bother; your stomach still feels more like a twisted fist than something you actually want to put a meal into. You’d made it through half a bowl of cereal before your shift, which is the best you’ve done on your own since Friday.

But, as you start to put together an order of operations for the first half of the shift, Jack approaches you with his hands behind his back. “Morning, ace.”

“Evening, Dr. Abbot,” you reply without looking up.

“Just wanted to make sure I let you know how good of a job you did yesterday with Mrs. Jacobs yesterday. The pregnant patient with anxiety. She filled out a patient satisfaction survey-” which Jack had personally asked her to do “-and you got tens across the board.”

That perks you up slightly. “Really?”

He nods, happy to see you on the verge of smiling, and grabs an iPad from the charging station. You don’t notice him setting down a small box so he can handle it. After tabbing through for a minute, he reads off, “‘When I left, I felt heard, like she actually cared about me as a person. It’s the most validated I’ve felt by a medical professional in a long time.’” Jack’s smile is affectionate. Proud. Like he’s really seeing you for who you are. “Great work. Bedside manner is one of the hardest skills for doctors to master. Keep it up.”

Trying not to let your lip wobble, you near-whisper back, “Thank you for telling me. It means a lot to know I didn’t screw everything up yesterday.”

Moving his large hand to your arm, he corrects, stern in a way that makes you bite your lower lip inadvertently, “You didn’t screw up anything.”

“But I didn’t help with that car crash and-”

He shakes his head. Something in the way he does it – maybe the tiny scoff under his breath, maybe the way his silver hair catches the light, maybe just the fact that he’s slowing down your inner monologue – makes you shut your mouth to listen to whatever he’s going to say. He gives your arm one more gentle squeeze and tells you seriously, “Being a good emergency medicine doctor is about more than scrubbing in for complicated, impressive procedures and saving lives with beating hearts in your hand. Your notes were perfect, you cared about your patients, and you showed up. It’s the beginning of your career; I’d say that’s damn good.”

After biting back tears for a minute, you put on a semi-teasing smile and nudge him. “You’re being awfully nice today, Dr. Abbot. Compliments, donuts.”

“I’m always nice,” he replies, smirking conspiratorially. He nods back towards the breakroom and asks, “What’s your go-to?”

Grimacing, you reply, “I usually get a bear claw, actually.”

“I’m glad I remembered correctly.” Jack takes the smaller box he’d set down and opens it to flourish a big, fluffy, thickly-glazed bear claw like a proud magician, holding it out to you with wax paper. “Got one for you special.”

Your irritation at the day so far breaks. When you look up at Jack, it’s with eyes that are innocent and wide. You take the bear claw from him like it’s an engagement ring or something even more precious. A crown jewel. Your voice goes a little breathless as you ask, “You remembered my favorite pastry?”

He chuckles, “The gray adds ten years; my mind’s not going on me yet. Maybe I should dye it so people stop assuming I’m ancient.”

You giggle, “No, the gray is sexy.”

You only realize you’re saying it when it’s already tumbled out of your mouth. As pink creeps into Jack’s cheeks, you snap your lips shut and avert your eyes. Fuck, you’re so disoriented you actually said it out loud instead of keeping it in that apparently very, very smooth brain of yours. Stupid. The word that’s been haunting you just keeps on knocking around your psyche. You stammer out, “Sorry, Dr. Abbot, that was- I’m sorry. I’m still, um, waking up.”

Then he reaches forward and tilts your chin up with his thumb and forefinger. The gesture is way too intimate for standing in the middle of the ED, but the world has just narrowed in to the two of you and nothing else, so you don’t care in the slightest. God, his hazel eyes. They’re smoldering with warmth. You want to curl up by his feet. To have him hold you. To rest under his protection. When he’s satisfied at your eye contact, he slowly withdraws his hand and says, low and firm, “Don’t apologize. Eat.”

There’s no way out of eating the hearty pastry – it’s not like you can put it in your backpack or trash it right in front of him – so, even though your brain is still screaming that you don’t deserve to eat by not sending hunger cues, you take a bite. If nothing else, the soft sugary flavor is nice. Jack doesn’t move and you can tell it’s a silent order, like when he ate lunch with you yesterday. So you force yourself to take another bite and then another. When you finish it, you lick the sugary glaze from your fingers and Jack prays you don’t notice how his eyes are glued to your pretty lips.

After rolling his shoulders, Jack praises, “Good job. We can get going now. You’re shadowing me today.” Nodding in another direction, he informs you, “We’re starting off rounds in trauma four.”

He didn’t offer you any other options, so you can’t go searching for them. The thousand directions your day could’ve gone in fizzle away into one path: You’re shadowing me today. His clarity is pure relief compared to the chaos of your mind. 

You follow behind him obediently and start the shift.

Things make more sense when you’re under Jack’s direct supervision instead of Langdon’s or even Dana’s. You feel more like yourself, like you can trust your own hands because you know there’s a second pair waiting in case you fail. Any time he lets you take the lead on a minor procedure, even something as simple as sutures, he places a hand on your back or your waist or your arm, never holding you too close or too hard to be suspicious. It doesn’t melt you; it builds you. He’s scaffolding.

You’re just starting to feel like your feet are firm beneath you when all the attendings are pulled into a major trauma, leaving you unmoored without the north star of Jack for you to follow. You’re taking a rare moment to fill your water bottle and drink it when you hear Langdon’s voice a few rooms down.”

“Lefty, get in here!” He sounds seriously urgent, in his gown and gloves, so you jog over right away. He’s tying on your gown before you’ve even gotten a look at the patient. “You’ve done a vaginal delivery before, yeah?”

Gloving up, you nod and confirm, “A handful – supervised.”

He leads you back into the room where a barely-conscious patient with a gnarly head wound is in very, very active labor. There’s a lot of blood around her head and neck; you can’t tell what’s wrong. But Langdon focuses you: “OB’s on the way from her house, but I have to focus on getting mom stabilized up here. She’s nearly crowning; we’ve gotta get the baby out.”

Standard vaginal delivery. You run through the steps mentally, visualizing the ones you’ve both observed and assisted. “How far apart are contractions? Where’s she at?”

“Two and a half minutes. Fully effaced and dilated.” He gives you a pointed look as he resumes his work on the patient. “Should be simple.”

“Got it.” You take your position in front of the stirrups, checking over the equipment that a nurse has prepared for you. After checking the fetal vitals and taking a second to compose yourself, you guide the mother through the next contraction. Despite her obvious exhaustion and pain, she’s able to push and make progress. You smile and praise her louder than Langdon’s gruff grunting, “Head is out. You’re doing great, mama, just stay focused on your breathing, okay? A couple more contractions and we’ll be done and you’ll both be on the road to recovery.”

She gives you a woozy nod and half a smile. No matter how hard she’s fighting it, you can tell she’s tethered to consciousness by thread thin as floss.

You watch the next contraction wash over her – and the baby’s head doesn’t move. His chin tucks forward a little. Shit. His shoulder is stuck behind her pubic bone. Keeping your voice calm, you tell Langdon, “Doctor, I think I’m seeing shoulder dystocia.”

Distracted at her chest, he replies quickly, “You’re going to need to deliver the posterior arm.”

The posterior arm. Right. In this position, you aren’t even sure which one that is. You haven’t done your OB rotation yet. So you offer, “Should I go and get-”

The patient slips out of consciousness before the question’s out. Langdon curses as the monitors go off. He snaps at you, “Just pull!”

“No, that’s-”

He’s not listening to you.

He’s not listening to you and the baby can’t take a breath yet.

I know that’s not the right thing to do. That’s not the right thing to do. But what the fuck is the right thing to do?

You know the situation requires very specific maneuvers that you just can’t do, especially not without someone very heavily guiding and supervising you. “Dr. Langdon, I really think we should switch places at the very least. I can handle stabilizing while we wait for the-”

Sweat on his brow, he shouts back, “Shut up and let me focus.”

You nod. Try to steady yourself. As careful as you can be, one shaky hand slips to your pager on your waist while the other desperately tries to stay in place. Your mind races. The baby’s face is still nice and pink, not yet going dusky, so you know there’s time. But that time is ticking by fast.

You know it’s more dangerous for you to try something you’ve never been trained in than to find someone else to take over, even if it uses up the sixty seconds you have before things get serious. So you look at the baby’s straining face and whisper, “It’s okay. Just hang on, alright? Dr. Abbot’s gonna come and help you. He always comes when I need him.”

After a deep breath, you try again, more firmly this time, “Dr. Langdon, I don’t know how to do the McRoberts maneuver by myself and I can’t move from this spot without someone else stepping in. I really, really think we need to-”

Langdon slams a hand down on the table where his equipment is laid out. “You don’t need to think anything! Just fucking get it done!”

The door shoves open behind you, cold air rushing into the claustrophobic space. Jack storms in, grabbing his gown and gloves and moving superhero comic book fast. “What the hell is going on that I’m getting an emergency page for a vaginal delivery?”

Langdon’s hands keep working over the patient as he starts to admonish, “Seriously, Lefty? You paged our-”

You manage to find the courage to cut him off, informing Jack as clearly as you can with your heart in your throat, “Baby’s presenting with shoulder dystocia. OB is on the way but I- I need help. I can’t do this. I don’t know how.”

Jack rapidly scrubs and assesses the situation. Seeing that Langdon’s doing procedures you could’ve handled while other help came, he barks, “Langdon, why the hell haven’t you switched with her?”

“Because I thought your star pupil could handle one goddamn-”

“She’s a fucking student, Frank!” Jack shouts back and drops down onto his knees next to you. He places his hands over yours, prepping for the maneuver, and says, “You can let go, ace. I’ve got him now in plenty of time.” You collapse backwards from the relief as the nearest nurse moves in to assist Dr. Abbot. Your heart’s pounding and tears bite at your eyes. In the split second before he gets to work, Jack makes determined eye contact and orders, “Go get some air. You did the right thing. I’ll find you after.”

It’s another half hour before Jack’s able to go searching for you. On a normal day, he would’ve expected you to bounce back, take a quick break, and jump to another patient, probably seeking out Shen to get your hands on something interesting from the ambulance bay. But not this week. Definitely not this week. Jack knows a handful of your usual hiding places, so he scouts through them going from the closest to the patient's room out, using his last break of the night for you.

He finds you in a far, seldom-used stairwell, underneath the first set of steps so you’re completely invisible. The only sign of you is quiet sniffling; Jack opens the door quietly so the sound doesn’t startle you. He’s met by your soft, tentative voice carefully peeking out from behind the stairs. “Dr. Abbot?”

Following your voice, he tucks into the dusty corner and sighs. You’re sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around your knees, eyes puffy from panicky tears. You haven’t stopped crying since you left the delivery; he’s sure of it. “Hey, ace.”

“You shouldn’t call me that,” you whisper. “Not when I keep fucking up whenever someone needs to rely on me.” Before Jack can contradict the self-hatred, though, you swallow hard and ask, “How are the patients? Did the baby- Did you deliver him okay?”

“Baby’s up to the NICU for monitoring, mom’s in surgery.” Jack sighs – heavier than you’ve ever heard – and tells you, “Langdon shouldn’t have put you in a position like that knowing full well you’re a student and not a doctor yet. He wanted to make the dramatic save, not deliver a baby. Selfish prick could’ve cost both their lives for his own goddamn ego. I’m filing a report.”

You shake your head and pinch your eyes closed. “I should’ve-”

“Should’ve what? Ripped a baby’s arm off trying a complex delivery? Let him go hypoxic? Risk a maternal hemorrhage?" Jack leans down and offers you his hand, hoping that you’ll take it so he can pull you back out of the ocean of doubt. As he helps you off the floor, he urges gently, “You did exactly the right thing. You questioned the doctor who was giving you bad orders. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to listen, you called for help. Langdon’s gonna take it poorly because he’s an ass, but you were perfect. That was a master class in handling yourself well under pressure.” He touches your cheek, just enough to get your attention, and adds, “Makes me even more certain you’re going to be a great doctor.”

You can’t even say thank you. Your throat’s too thick with how badly you needed to hear his sweet and true affirmation after Langdon shouting at you and making you second-guess everything you’ve been taught. The problem, though, is that your brain keeps pushing back against it. Your lungs are hot and tight as you struggle to even breathe. Jack’s eyes are just too warm, too kind, too lovely for you to possibly deserve. You hang your head and try to focus on breathing as your thoughts move too fast for you to even get a look at them.

Seeing you falling apart beneath the praise, Jack touches your chin to make eye contact. There are a thousand questions on his lips, but ultimately he asks the simplest one: “Can I hug you?”

It hangs for just a moment too long. Jack doubts himself for a split second.

Then you nod. It’s tiny, meek, hesitant.

But when he wraps his arms around you, strong and steady, you break. The sobs come hard and fast and frantic as a child lost in a store. You’re weak and small. You ball your fists up in Jack’s shirt and heave out wicked, fast tears so intense they make you want to throw up. Everything shakes like the chase scene in a horror movie. It hurts.

With his arms absolutely locked around you, Jack orders, stern but soft, “Match your breathing with mine for a minute. In and out. You can do it.”

You keep sobbing and shaking against his chest, but he stays steady. His chest rises and falls. His breaths are warm and slow against your ear. And eventually the rhythm pulls you out of the fear and the doubt and the panic. Your breaths are trembling and hiccuping, but you manage to force them to calm down.

As you begin to come down, Jack rubs your back and murmurs, “Good. That’s good.”

“Jesus, this is so stupid.” You sniffle, pulling away from him a bit, and swat at your tears like they’re parasites. He hates how rough you are when you touch your own skin. He’d never show you anything but softness. You ramble on, “Sorry for being so – I don’t know– ridiculous the last few days. This isn’t- I promise I’ll be better. This is- It’s a temporary thing. I promise.”

Jack takes your face between two hands. They’re calloused and experienced but perfectly and completely gentle. He vows, “I’m here for you – even if it isn’t.”

You’re silent for a long time. The only sound is the soft whooshing of the vents in the stairwell, the cinderblock walls insulating all the chaos of the ED. Realizing slowly that Jack is still holding you close, you whimper, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Jack almost scoffs. “Because you deserve it.”

The response is so immediate you have to believe it: “I don’t.”

Sensing that this might be his one opportunity, he asks with nothing but sensitivity on his lips, “Who made you think that? You were fine last week; what happened?”

You drag in one more breath that wavers. Shame is heavy in your gut but you’re spilling it out like vomit, unable to hold it all by yourself anymore. “I- I had this date on Friday night and he- We were having a really good time- What I expected. And then I needed- I needed him to stay but he- he left. And I was alone and I know that doesn’t make sense and it sounds crazy compared to how I’ve been acting but-”

“It doesn’t sound crazy.” He cups your face in one hand. His calloused thumb brushes your cheek so sweetly it makes your throat tighten up. He’s treating you like gossamer. “I understand.”

Biting your lower lip, you reply, sound small and alone, “You don’t. I’m sorry, but you don’t.”

Jack takes a step forward, his body pushing yours, so you’re pressed against the wall.

Placing one hand on the side of your head, he rakes you over with a gaze that burns.

In one look, your whole body turns to melting wax and drifting smoke, burned to the bones by how completely and totally dominant he looks in this moment. It’s not frightening and you can tell he’s not even trying to be as sexy as he is. Which is very, very sexy. His biceps push against his short sleeves and his jawline is tight and you’ve only ever caught flickers of this particular darkness in his eyes. Little moments over the years – protecting one of his doctors, advocating for a patient, taking command of a crash – you’ve seen a flash of how he’s looking at you right now.

But you never realized what it is.

Then he repeats, “I understand.”

And it’s clear as day after a long night shift.

“I’m here for you, ace, because I understand completely.” He wraps his arms around you one more time, tight and fast, and says, “Until you’re through this, I’m here for whatever you need. You can always come find me. Got it?”

The relief that washes through you is nothing short of heavenly. You needed this. Needed someone to know. Even if Jack isn’t your dom, he still sees the truth of what’s happening. That’s enough to matter a hell of a lot. You take a breath – no shaking – and give a tiny smile. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”

“Jack,” he corrects gently. “I want you to call me Jack from now on.”

Dr. Abbot – Jack – wipes your tears, leads you through a few more breaths, and then guides you back to the ED and through the rest of your shift. He makes it perfectly clear that, until you feel back to normal, your job is to stick to him like glue, only leaving his line of sight if absolutely necessary. With that order in your mind, the night ends easily. Your charts are immaculate, your notes clear, your sutures straight as an arrow. All because Jack sees you. Every layer of you.

As you’re collecting your backpack from the locker room – you haven’t been changing at work this week because of the bruises all over your body – Langdon approaches you. Jack, idling a few paces away as he waits to walk you out, stiffens up as soon as Frank’s shadow eclipses your light.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he says quietly. Quickly. Like it’s a shameful secret. “I was in over my head, too, and all the attendings were out, so I just- I snapped. I’m gonna have to do a review and everything so, just, y’know, first steps. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, doctor,” you reply, barely above a whisper. “I understand.”

“Alright, good. We’re cool, then. Great.” He runs a hand through his hair, touches your shoulder, and says, “See you tomorrow, Lefty.”

You sigh and force a smile. “Bye, Dr. Langdon.”

As Langdon heads out, not even able to look at Abbot, Jack nods for you to join him. You fall into step on the way to the staff entrance and he asks, “Why do they call you that anyway? You’re right-handed, yeah? Must’ve started on day shift; I never heard the story.”

The familiar embarrassment of the nickname you can’t shake warms your neck and chest. Trying not to sound affected by it, you begin, “Langdon started it. As a joke, I guess, not that it- I don’t think it’s funny, obviously. Maybe it is and I just- Whatever. At the end of my first handful of shifts with him. I don’t think people even remember why anymore. They just hear a nickname and repeat it. Like Crash.” You shrug a bit, grimace, and explain, “Lefty. Because I can’t do anything right.”

Jack rolls his shoulders and sucks in a sharp breath.

Rage shreds his ribs apart.

He doesn’t exactly need more reasons to loathe Langdon – having him stuck in nights the last month has made him seriously debate his ‘no groveling to Robby’ rule – but he knows one thing for certain: Nobody’s calling you that in his ED again. Nobody’s going to make you feel small. Not while he’s dedicating himself to building you back up.

Out of nowhere, Jack turns on his heel, takes you by the elbow, and says, “Come on, let’s go to the skills lab. I’ll get us food after. I’m gonna teach you the damn McRoberts maneuver.”

You don’t freeze because you’re in Jack’s orbit, once again following your sunshine, but you still ask, “What? Why?”

Jack doesn’t even have to look at you; you can feel the intensity in his words. The protectiveness. This is personal to him. He growls back, “Because you’re not fucking stupid.”

By Sunday night, the last shift of your seven on, you’ve actually gotten a full night’s sleep and eaten a breakfast with real protein and carbs. And honestly? You’re doing it because you know that Jack’s going to glow with pride when you tell him. Stepping off the bus and into the light, you feel most of the way to being a person. Being yourself.

Jack’s waiting at your bus stop.

You hop into his field of vision and laugh. “What are you doing here, Jack?”

“Thought you could use some company for your walk,” he replies effortlessly. He takes your backpack from your hand and slings it over his own shoulder. “Weather’s gorgeous and I thought we could use a minute to check in before the day starts.”

You can’t contain the grin that comes with Jack going out of his way for you. Heading toward the hospital, you ask, “Anything in particular we need to check in about?”

He starts simple: “How’d you sleep?”

“Pretty good, actually. No nightmares for once.”

Jack nods, making a mental note. “What did you have for breakfast?”

“Eggs on toast,” you tell him. The way it feels like you’re reporting back to a teacher about finishing your homework helps your brain get itself in order for the day ahead. Wanting your gold star sticker, you tell him, “And I packed a big lunch with a couple snacks for my breaks.”

“Good job. Really good job.” He gives you a smile that’s nothing short of hunky. “I know you wanted to do laundry last night. Any luck there?”

You shake your head meekly. “I was way too tired. I didn’t shower before my shift, either.”

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yeah, and flossed.”

“That’s enough for today,” he assures gently. Pushing through the staff entrance, he asks, “Have any plans for your week off besides R&R?”

“I think I should probably take it easy,” you admit with a sad little sigh. “I want to catch up on cleaning and get back into my self care routines.”

“That sounds like a plan. I’m off, too; we can call when you need accountability.”

You smile and look at your sneakers, thankful that he can’t see your heart stammering for more and more of his attention. “Perfect. Thank you.”

He hands your bag over again before you reach the locker room, not wanting to catch any wayward eyes. “It’s no trouble, ace.”

The way he says it, you believe him. He really doesn’t mind carving out space in his life to help you, even if it feels silly and stupid and frivolous at times. He’s too human to let you fall. The two of you put your bags and lunches away. You fall into step behind him as usual, following him like a puppy to the nurse’s station where he goes through handoff with Robby. You listen intently as he gives orders to everyone, catching up on patients and procedures that need to be tended to.

Once the ED starts churning for the night shift, you go to check on one of your patients from yesterday who’s still admitted. At the same time, Langdon’s approaching you with a fresh chart, his step peppy. “Evening, Lefty, ready to-”

Jack’s bark – from more than ten feet away at the nurse’s station – interrupts him: “Langdon, c’mere a second.” Despite cutting him a suspicious look, Frank walks over to Jack at the nurse’s station. You follow slightly behind, curious. Jack was listening to Langdon with borderline military skill, trained in on a conversation far on the periphery just because you were in it. When Langdon’s close, Jack says, short and direct, “I don’t want to hear any of that nickname shit anymore. No Crash, no Lefty. No more putting each other down. Job’s hard enough as it is.”

Langdon laughs and puts on his puppy dog eyes, gazing over at you as if that could help him get off Jack’s shit list when he’s already deep in it. “Aw, but Lefty doesn’t mind, do you?”

Jack slams his hand on the counter and snaps, “If I hear you call her that one more time, we’re going to have a serious problem.”

You try to squeak out, “It’s okay.”

When he turns to you, all the anger leaves his face. There’s nothing but softness, that desire to help you right at the surface. “It’s not. It’s really, really not okay with me. Give us a second, ace.” After you scamper away, headed back to your intended patient (suppressing a smile because you know Jack is about to ream Langdon on your behalf), Jack tugs Langdon close by his scrub top. Frank’s never seen his eyes so dark. “Don’t say it again. Or you’re gonna be ‘Righty.’”

Langdon rolls his eyes to hide his nerves. “And what’s that mean, gramps?”

“You’ll have nothing left when I’m done with you.” Jack lets go of Langdon’s shirt and shoves the center of his chest. “Better yet? Stay away from her. Until HR’s reviewed your case from yesterday, I don’t want you within six feet of her.”

“I think that’s a little bit of an overreaction to-”

“You don’t want to see me overreacting,” Jack bites back. His words are gravel to be picked out of an open wound. “Do your job. That’s it.”

The shift is a killer. The kind you’ve been dreading all week. It’s non-stop energy. As a med student, you spend the whole night running around from doctor to doctor, nurse to nurse, jumping in wherever they need you and clearing up paperwork and doing all kinds of scut. The flow is intoxicating and stressful at once, both rejuvenating and draining. You feel your adrenaline spike every time the exhaustion threatens.

But, every step of the way, there’s Jack. He’s a whirlwind, but he’s always there. A touch to your waist, a quick word of affirmation, maybe just a brief moment of eye contact to ground you. Even when he’s not actually by your side, you hear his voice in your head. Great work, ace. Smooth and steady. You know this. You’ve got this. Somewhere amid the chaos, that voice mingles with your own. You start to actually believe in yourself again. Jack’s been the scaffolding, but you’re still the structure he’s been repairing. Your breaks have been mended, your scars patched. And in the surfing wake of Jack’s healing, you’ve remembered that you’re worth something on your own. Even when you lose sight of it, that can’t truly be taken from you.

You’re so deep in the rhythm of the shift that you barely notice the night passing. By the time Dana taps your shoulder to remind you to take your last break, you’re practically glowing because you’re so proud of yourself for getting through emergency after emergency without breaking down. With your Gatorade and granola bar in hand, you peek around for Jack and frown when he isn’t in any of the usual spots. Because it’s become commonplace, you shoot him a text: i cant find you anywhere :(

His text back is almost instant. Just enough time to take his phone from his pocket and type. Roof.

You’re in the elevator within seconds. The ride up feels ten times as long as usual and the final set of stairs to the roof access is even worse.

Jack’s right where you expect. Where he often is this time of night. Watching the sunrise over the city. His silver hair is illuminated by glowing pink and orange, making him positively radiant as he smiles at you. “Good morning, ace.”

You join him by the railing, taking in the sunshine and opening up your granola bar with a smile stained to your lips. “Morning, Jack.”

His eyes trace every line of your face. A tiny smirk plays with his lips as he notices, “You’re smiling again.”

“I’m happy,” you hum in return. “I did a thoracostomy all by myself. Shen said I was perfect.”

Jack has to bite his cheek to resist the urge to scoop you up and spin you around. He’s been fighting all week to see that self-assured smile he loves so much. “I’m sure you were. That’s my girl.”

Those two words reverberate around your chest, warm and cozy. The two of you stand in comfortable silence for a minute, you finishing off your granola bar and him admiring either you or the city depending on if you’re at risk of catching him staring or not. As you tuck your trash in your pocket, you nibble your lip a moment and then tell him, “It’s been really nice working so closely with you this week, Jack.”

Eyes linked with yours, he assures, “The feeling’s mutual.”

You want to ask if that’s the only feeling that’s mutual.

But you can’t bring yourself to. The fear of his rejection is too heavy. After days of coming to rely on his strength, you can’t imagine blowing it and losing the foundation you’ve built. Anxious all of a sudden, you ask him softly, “You really don’t think it’s kind of, I don’t know, pathetic to be so affected by some shitty one-off dom ditching me?”

Jack scoffs and turns toward you properly. “Pathetic?” He gives your hand a quick squeeze, shakes his head, and explains, “When you open yourself up like that to a partner, it’s sacred. It means everything. You’re saying, ‘hey, here’s all of me,’ even if it’s new. For someone – anyone – to take that trust and use it up and then leave without building it back up…” He swallows hard and runs a hand through his curls. You can tell he’s choosing his words carefully. “Honestly, that makes me fucking sick. You’re not pathetic in the slightest. He is. If you were my- I would never treat my sub like that. Never.”

You wrinkle your nose like a bunny. “Sounds like I might need to raise my standards.”

“If the standard is basic aftercare and courtesy, I’d definitely agree.” He leans against the railing, tries not to imagine you as his, and asks, “Where do you even meet a chucklefuck like that?”

“FetLife.”

“Figures.” Jack takes a long pull from his water bottle like it’s a beer. “He block you on everything right after?”

You cringe and confirm, “Mhmm.”

“What a dirtbag.” 

“Mostly I’m just mad at myself,” you admit sheepishly. “I was being-” at his challenging eyes, you quickly adjust your wording “-irresponsible. I skipped steps that I usually follow. I wasn’t as thorough as I’ve been in the past. All just because I really need to be-”

You close your mouth and laugh at yourself. Yeah, as close as you and Jack have gotten this week, he definitely doesn’t need to know how that sentence was going to end.

It still goes straight to his cock.

Because he knows.

I really need to be hurt.

I really need to be punished.

I really need to be worshiped.

I really need to be dominated.

Spanked, slapped, bruised, beaten, adored, ordered around, tied up, kissed, devoured, owned.

Jack takes a deep breath and sighs it out. No matter what you need from a dom, he knows exactly how he’d give it to you. But this isn’t the time nor the place to broach the possibility of that. He just tells you, “We’ve all done shit like that when times are tough. The important thing is bouncing back and learning.”

You giggle at the idea. “You’ve made some reckless kinky decisions?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he laughs. “Last one? Summer 2021. Post-pandemic munchies, if you will.”

Your eyes widen. Jack’s being playful with you. It’s…everything. “Seriously?”

“Ended up hogtied suspended from the ceiling.” He shakes his head at himself again. The way he chuckles is worth drinking down. “I had to use my Alexa to call Robby to get me out. Never gonna live that one down.”

Your brain’s positively tingling. “You’re a switch?”

“No,” he confirms, saying it like the idea’s ridiculous, “but I like to try things out myself before I have a sub do them. Call it a safety obsession. I don’t screw around with unnecessary risk. Submission is a gift; I protect that gift. Treasure it.”

Fuck, that’s hot.

You want to drop to your knees.

He can taste it in the air.

Into the way-too-thick silence, Jack urges, “So stop punishing yourself. We all crave that connection and sometimes it gets the better of us. Just keep yourself safe; that’s all you can do.” Then he opens up his arms and offers, “C’mere.”

It’s impossible not to slide into the embrace. The morning air nips at your ears but Jack’s warmth counteracts everything. Your hands settle just below his ribs; you can feel the taut muscles beneath his shirt where you fist your fingers in the fabric. He sighs into the hug, deepening it with his breath, and you just breathe together like that for a minute. Maybe two. Maybe five. In, out. Jack, you.

“You’ve done such a good job this week. It’s so hard to put yourself back together when someone takes advantage of you,” he murmurs against your ear. “I’m so proud of you.”

Sweet and placid as soothing chemicals bristle through your body, a mix of lightness and laughing and desire, you coo against his impossibly broad chest, “Thank you, daddy.”

The moment you hear the word tumble from your lips, you stagger away from him like you’ve been shot. Anxiety strangles you. All of the calm, earned confidence of the previous moment sloughs off and sheds at your feet, leaving you raw and exposed. “Oh god- Oh god I- I’m so sorry. That wasn’t- I don’t know why I said that. I was just feeling so safe and- I promise that- Fuck fuck fuck I’m so-”

“Don’t you dare,” he almost snarls, the sudden flare not directed at you but at anything that’s ever made you believe it. The low rumble of his voice is downright possessive. “Don’t you dare call yourself stupid again after all the progress you’ve made this week.”

Jack takes your hand and tugs you back to face him. Close. No disgust in his eyes like you’d feared. Tears flood your cheeks and land on your chest, darkening your shirt. You’re on the verge of hyperventilating now. You can’t bear to look at him, the shame too hot and too alive, so he bends down, catches your eyes, wipes your tears. He pulls you into an embrace and kisses your hair, over and over, until you realize he’s not shutting you down but letting you in.

When he feels you shaking from the intensity of your vulnerability, he rests his chin on your head, creating a cocoon with his body, and breathes, “My sweet, sensitive girl. I hate that you’ve had to be so scared and so brave when all you need to thrive is someone to take care of you.” Touching his forehead to yours, he pleads tenderly, “Would you let me take care of you?”

Your heart’s fast-beating in your throat.

The sun’s risen now and the sky is blue.

The sky is blue.

Jack’s pager goes off and he sighs, checking it with furrowed brows. The bubble of the moment pops. Still, he doesn’t move. He holds you. Lets the intensity fade naturally. He urges, “I need to get back onto the floor, sweetheart. Would you come home with me so we can talk?”

“I think-” You swallow hard and try to tamp down the butterflies whirling around inside of you at a thousand miles a minute. Deep breath. You bite your lower lip a minute, then smile, then nod. “I think I’d like that, Jack.”

He kisses your forehead. It lingers a moment. Like he’s breathing you in to fortify himself for the rest of the shift. “Wait by my car at the end of your shift.”

It’s actually Jack who ends up waiting for you, but he doesn’t seem to mind as you jog up to his truck with a bashful smile. Sweat clings to your hairline from the last few tasks of the night and your scrubs are rumpled and you know you look like hell, but Jack’s gazing at you like a damn princess on a throne. He wraps you in a quick hug and confirms, “You still okay with this?”

“Completely and totally,” you confirm – but your voice shakes a bit. It’s a mix of nerves and excitement and adoration and so many more things you don’t even have words for.

Jack notices. Of course he does. He makes sure nobody can see the two of you around his truck and then leans in, hand going gingerly to the side of your face. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m nervous,” you admit, biting your lip for a moment.

Jack touches his thumb to the place where your teeth connect. “We need to work on that habit.”

Your cheeks warm, especially hot where his hand lingers. “We?”

He gives you a cute, sly smirk. “I have a funny feeling that I’m going to be holding you accountable very soon.” Dropping his hand, he walks you around to the passenger’s side, opens the door for you, and then goes back to slide in next to you on the bench seat. Turning over the engine and heading out of the parking lot with his arm slung behind your shoulders, he urges, “Tell me what you’re nervous about.”

It takes a minute to recover from the feeling of Jack’s arm hair tickling the back of your neck, so simple and so sexy it’s hard to think straight. When you’ve finally accepted that Jack is comfortable with touching you so easily now, you glance at him sideways and reply, “I just like you, honestly. A lot. And I feel like maybe this could be, y’know, something big. Something good and important and- and real.”

His eyes flick over to yours. His expression manages to be both teasing and warm. “And that makes you nervous.”

“Yeah.” You stifle the corresponding laugh that threatens. “Really nervous.”

His hand slides from the back of your neck, down your arm, and to your thigh. Even through your scrubs, the touch sparks with electricity. “I’m sure I can fix that in no time.”

Your breath catches in your throat and a nervous laugh makes its way out. “Touching my thigh certainly isn’t helping with the nerves.”

“Your nerves aren’t a bad thing,” he replies simply. His hand slides toward your inner thigh, pinky brushing the seam. “That just means you care about how this goes. You’ll feel better the more comfortable you get and you’ll get more comfortable when you realize I’m not going anywhere.” Then, as he pulls off into a lush neighborhood full of old, cozy family homes surrounded by spring blooms, he tells you, almost whispering, “I’m nervous too, if that helps.”

You scoff, torn between wondering which of these expensive houses belongs to Jack and actually paying attention to him. “What could you possibly be nervous about? You’re the hot salt-and-pepper doctor who always swoops in to save the day. I’ve seen enough Grey’s to know where that gets you.”

He eyes you and chuckles. “Brain dead due to a delayed CT scan?”

“I meant more ‘able to fuck any med student you want,’ but I’m absolutely thrilled to know you’ve seen the show.”

As he parks the truck in the driveway of perhaps the cutest storybook house you’ve ever seen, he replies modestly, “Well, I’ve never wanted to fuck a student before.”

Giggling so that you don’t have to acknowledge the butterflies once again launching into your chest, you tease, “I don’t believe you for a second.”

Jack snickers; the idea is so ridiculous to him. “Cross my heart.”

He gets out of the truck and then opens your door, offering a hand to help you down the step. When you’re on your feet, he grabs your backpack and shoulders it along with his own. Then he leads you inside the front door, which opens into a living room outfitted in soft fabrics and neutral tones. You’d pegged Jack for being modern and industrial, lots of leathers and woods, but the reality is far more intimate and endearing.

Like he can read your mind, Jack mutters, “Don’t be too impressed; I hired some lady who wore too much turquoise to pick all the stuff out when I bought the place.”

“It’s nice,” you say, really only speaking so that you don’t retreat back into your nerves.

He nods toward the nearby couch – plush boucle like a cloud – and says, “Sit down; I’ll bring you something to eat and then you can shower.”

“I don’t have a change of clothes.”

He sets both your bags on the floor and says, “I’ll grab you something of mine to wear.”

Once you’re sitting on the couch, your posture a little too stiff, Jack kneels in front of you. He methodically unties each of your shoes and then slides them off your feet to set by the door where he’s abandoned his. Your heart stutters. He’s so fucking gentle with you. After pressing a kiss to each of your knees, he stretches himself upwards and instructs, “Just relax for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

As he leaves the living room for the adjacent kitchen, you try to get comfortable. You imagine Jack curled up here with a book or his laptop, walking up the nearby stairs to his bedroom, which has a lofted split-level balcony overlooking the living room. Fuck, his bedroom. You’re going to find out what Jack Abbot’s bedroom looks like. Does he have a soft mattress or a firm one? Does he sleep on one side or in the center? Does he make his bed before work? Shit, of course he does. That’s obvious from, well, everything  about him.

Jack returns with two steaming plates of fried rice and orange chicken, already apologizing as he sits by your side. “Not the sexiest meal I could’ve offered, but I didn’t think we’d be doing this tonight.”

“Leftover takeout is fucking perfect after tonight,” you assure him, digging in right away. After you’re satisfied by a few bites, you nudge his knee with your own and ask, “Didn’t think we’d be doing it tonight or didn’t think we’d be doing it at all?”

“Tonight,” he replies. Blunt. Immediate. “I didn’t want to push you. Or do things too soon. Be too much. But I wasn’t going to let you go home thinking you’d made a mistake by calling me-”

“Don’t say it,” you blurt out. “It’s too embarrassing.”

“I’m not allowed to say it?” Mischief lights up his eyes and he turns his body properly towards you, setting his plate on the coffee table. Then he says, way too sexy for his own good when he’s being torturously cutesy, “Daddy, daddy, daddy. Thank you, daddy. Hi, daddy. Yes, daddy. I need it, daddy.”

You shriek, hands flying over your face. “Jack, please!”

“Oooh, I love that one,” he purrs, pouncing on you like a leopard. You lean onto your back as he cages you between his arms. A grin splits your lips open even if you’re way too exposed to meet his eyes. His knee slots between your legs, right against your core, and delight bubbles up in your core. He nips up your neck and teases mercilessly, “Please, daddy, stop it, daddy, I’m so embarrassed, daddy, it’s too much, daddy.”

Your face is absolutely burning and you squirm in your skin, covering your silly grin because Jack’s lightness is so delicious you can hardly stand it. “Fine, fine! It’s not embarrassing, you win!”

Finally he relents, letting you breathe in the laughing quiet, and says, “I liked when you called me daddy. A lot. I hope it wasn’t for the last time.”

And then you’re kissing him.

You physically can’t stop yourself from pulling him down by his scrub top, letting him bracket you with his weight, and crashing your lips into his. You’ll forever remember the way he laughs into that first kiss, bright and vibrant, not shying away from being as silly with you as he is sweet and stern. When you pull back, a little breathless, you insist, “It definitely wasn’t the last time.”

He kisses you again. Slower this time. Tongue gentle but insistent. Hand on your waist, over your stomach, in your hair. Against your lips, he murmurs, “Good girl.”

And you know you’re done for. You’re soaking wet from thirty seconds of teasing and your mind is a serene summer lake. He’s got you. Hook. Line. Sinker.

Jack maneuvers himself off of you, shaking his head and laughing under his breath one more time.

The two of you finish eating in a charged but comfortable silence, legs brushing, smiles threatening, everything becoming easy. Your nerves are still beyond present but they’re hotter now, sharper, more exciting. You don’t dread; you want.

After clearing your plates – he insists that you don’t need to do anything – Jack offers you his hand and says, “C’mon, sweetheart, let’s go upstairs.”

You take his hand eagerly. Outside of the hospital, you don’t have to worry about anything when it comes to Jack. Neither of you ever mentions this being an out-of-bounds relationship, whether because of age or status, because it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but Jack’s hand around yours, leading you up the stairs toward his bedroom suite.

It’s perfectly neat, which you’d expected, but there are undeniably more signs of Jack here. It’s his sanctuary. The books on his shelves downstairs are neat and new; the ones in here are dog-eared and leafed through time and time again. Elbow crutches lean against the wall next to the bed. On the nightstand, there’s a pair of reading glasses, a folded plug-in heating pad, a small black Moleskine notebook, and an old-school analog alarm clock.

Jack opens up the door to the spacious en suite bathroom and the closet before telling you, “Have a shower. I’ll use one of the guest bathrooms.” He throws a wink at you and adds, “Figured you’d like a chance to snoop uninterrupted.”

You scrunch up your face. “Okay, you’re not wrong, and I hate you for that, but what about your shower chair? Pull bars? Don’t make things harder for yourself for me.”

“You’re so considerate,” he sighs affectionately. A little quieter, he adds, “You’re so fucking special; you have no idea.” After another beat, he goes on, “All the showers in the house are accessible, though, so don't worry. Lots of other stuff around the place, too – lower table and counters so I can use my chair while I cook, pull-down shelves so I don’t have to strain, voice-activated lights so I don’t have to move. New construction perks.”

“That’s awesome,” you say, sounding almost drunk, very distracted by the fact that he’s stripping off his shirt and tossing it in his hamper. Absently, you add, “I’ll have to think about what I can do in my apartment to make things easier.”

He smiles to himself again. Considerate. He loves loves loves that about you. Even though he wants to say ‘just stay here with me whenever you want,’ he’s grateful for your thoughtfulness. You’ll make the perfect little plaything for him, always eager to please. If it were any other day, he’d tease you unrelentingly for how you’re ogling his bare chest, make you list off every pathetic thought you’re having when you see him, but this morning, he has other goals. So he just repeats, “Shower. The towels on the rack are clean. Take whatever you want to wear from the closet. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

You nod obediently, feeling yourself slipping into a soft headspace with Jack watching out for you every step of the way. He gives you one more soft kiss before leaving you alone. Since he invited you to, you decide to do just a little snooping. The bathroom is categorically boring. There’s supplies for caring for his residual limb, a perfectly organized skincare routine that impresses you, and a medicine cabinet that screams of order. Medication labels facing out – an antidepressant and a blood pressure pill, not particularly surprising – next to a pill case that’s clearly never experienced a missed dose. Naturally, Jack Abbot is a religious floss pick and mouth wash user.

Showering with Jack’s products is weirdly and wonderfully intimate. You’re wrapped up in his scent, all woodsy and sharp and masculine, as steam curls around your body like a lover’s touch. The water pressure is amazingly harsh and there are shower heads on both far walls. It’s built for showering together. God, you’ve never met someone who manages to be so hot when he isn’t even in the room.

After your shower, it’s time for snooping in the closet. The surface level is boring – how could one man own so many white, gray, black, and navy clothes? – but you find some hidden gems. For example, most of his boxer briefs are patterned. Red hearts, peaches, bumble bees, dinosaurs. There’s so many you wonder if he has one of those subscription services for new cute ones every month or something. He’s also got a collection of old band tour tees. If these are all from concerts, he must’ve spent a few years dirtbagging following bands around. Green Day, Nirvana, Oasis, Blink-182. You tug on a Rage Against the Machine one, worn and soft, and some heather gray boxer briefs.

Once you’re dressed, you discover an entire dresser in his closet dedicated to kink gear, neatly organized and methodically maintained. Ropes in different colors and materials, sets of restraints from cuffs to straps, implements you only recognize from the couple of clubs you’ve visited where more experienced people did scenes for everyone. Crops in more than one size, a bamboo paddle full of holes, a many-tailed flogger, a fiberglass cane. An entire range of sensations waiting to be inflicted. A ball gag, a bone bit gag, a ring gag with a large opening. The toy collection is particularly impressive. Dizzying almost. A flight of butt plugs in different sizes alongside small and large beads, different clit-sucking toys, vibrating wands from pocket-sized to plug-in beasts. Your nightstand drawer pales in comparison, even with your blindfold and bunny tail plug at the ready.

Your whole body’s tingling with anticipation.

Suddenly Jack’s voice behind you snaps you back into reality. “Snoop to your heart’s content?”

You turn to him, eyes widening when you see him still shirtless, gray sweats slung low, the outline of his soft cock mouthwatering. You give a sheepish smile and admit, “I absolutely did.”

He takes a step closer. Predator to prey. “Find anything you like?”

“Mhmm.”

“Want to share with the class?”

You shake your head and giggle, “Uh-uh.”

“Keeping your cards close to your chest I see.” He smirks and closes the distance between you, hands going to your waist. Discovering the slope of your hips. His thumbs rub circles along yours sides. His eyes devour you. He runs his fingers lightly beneath the hem of the tee, checking to see which one you’re wearing, and praises, “You look good in my clothes.”

“You look good. Period.” Finally, you let yourself touch him. Careful. Your fingertips on his stomach. You can feel the strength of his stomach beneath a soft layer of comfy middle age fat. His chest hair is wispy and silver. Freckles dust his shoulders, sparkling down his chest and arms. You dip down and kiss a few particularly enticing clusters, just needing to taste his skin, clean and yielding. He hisses in a breath when your lips make contact with his collarbones. You feel his abs flex beneath your hands like he’s holding himself back from demolishing you. Lifting your eyes again, you tell him, “You’re really beautiful, Jack.”

“And you’re exceptionally sweet,” he replies. Studying your expression like only he can, Jack checks in, “How are you feeling? Tired? Nervous?”

You shake your head and nudge up onto your toes so your lips are even with each other. You wrap your arms around the back of his neck, give him a soft kiss, and murmur, “Horny.”

As he chuckles – you’re getting addicted to his low raspy laugh – you deepen the kiss and press yourself against him. The warmth of his chest, the safety of his arms. His hands go to your waist and then they part, one going to loop around to your lower back and the other cradling the back of your head. Embracing you. Cradling you. Cherishing you.

You feel his cock hardening against your hip and try not to smile too self-satisfactorially. Honestly, it boosts your ego a bit to know you get him as worked up as he gets you. You reach down to palm him through the sweats with a hungry little moan when you feel how thick he is.

Then Jack’s hand covers yours. When your eyes open in surprise, he lifts your hand to his lips and kisses your fingers, telling you, “Not today, baby.”

Your eyes water immediately. Your headspace is so vulnerable that rejection feels unbearably heavy, especially from Jack. Blinking back the tears that make you feel pathetic, you manage to whimper out, “You don’t want me?”

Jack shakes his head ardently, seriously, and assures, “I want you, sweetheart. I want you more than anything.” Touch as soft as if he were handling a Fabergé egg, his thumb traces your cheek and his eyes stay on your face. He explains, low, slow, serious, “But I’m not going to fuck you today. Right now, you don’t need my dick; you need someone to take care of you. I want to be that someone for you from now on.”

Hope and gratitude pools inside you. “From now on?”

He smiles at you, so warm it’s like a home-cooked meal in the dead of winter. “This week I’ve realized I can’t go on pretending I don’t want you to be mine – and only mine.”

You repeat gently, “Yours.”

“Mine.” His first finger drags along your jawline. Inspecting. Discovering. “If you’ll have me.”

You give a tiny nod and gently whisper, “I need you. I want you.”

“Then I make the decisions today. I decide what you need from me and when – because you obviously need me to tell you what to do, you silly little thing.”

As you start melting beneath his intense, owning gaze, he positions you in the center of the room. Trying not to squirm under his gaze, you ask, “If you’re not going to fuck me, what are you going to do?”

Jack’s lips trace the tendons of your neck. The only contact between you. He places feather-soft kisses that make your toes curl. When his lips reach your pulse point, just beneath your ear, he breathes out, “I’m going to worship you.”

“Jack, I-” You swallow hard and let out a deeply pathetic high-pitched whine as his breath tickles your rising goosebumps. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything,” he replies easily. You can tell he’s being so sincere and so wanting as he insists, “Let me do all the thinking. Just let go for me. Let me take everything for you. Can you do that?”

Despite your shaking breath, you tell him, “I’ll try.”

“That’ll do for now,” he assures, pressing another soft kiss to your forehead. Then he steps back and informs you, “I’m going to take a good long look at you now. I want to learn every inch of my new favorite toy. Is that okay?”

“Very okay,” you confirm breathily. The word ‘toy’ has sent you through the stratosphere and into the stars. “And you don’t have to ask permission.”

“I do,” he corrects, eyes roving along your limbs instead of meeting yours. Though you can see the lust plain as day in the pink of his cheeks and the quickening of his breath, his gaze is more scrutinizing than desiring. Clinical. Doctor Jack Abbot. “Until we establish your safewords and I learn to read you, I’m always going to ask when I start something new. You’re in charge here.”

Even though you nod, you definitely don’t feel in charge when he starts to examine you like a piece of furniture he’s thinking about buying. First, he takes your shirt off. It’s borderline unceremonious; the fabric is nothing more than a distraction between him and his possession. That’s what you feel like. A possession. His hand-selected treasure to keep and cherish and know. When the air conditioning perks up your nipples, your breaths get heavier and you squirm, shifting your weight eagerly from foot to foot just to get some friction against your clit.

In that gravelly voice of his, he orders,“Be good.”

God, he’s reading your mind.

Then he lifts one of your arms, turning your hand over to expose your pulse, where he places a kiss that embeds itself into your veins and pumps straight to your heart. Then he lifts your arm with one hand and drags the other down your side, tracing the entire length of you from fingertip to hip, stopping only at the waistband of your underwear. When he grazes the side of your breast, not paying attention to the sensitive skin but just skating by, you can literally feel wetness pooling between your legs. Which is new. You usually have to use lube or a hell of a lot of foreplay with a new partner, but you have a feeling that getting you wet isn’t going to be an issue for Jack.

And he’s noticed.

Of course he has.

On his way to the other side of your body, he taps your inner thigh and orders, “Widen your stance.”

Once you do, his fingers drag up the damp center of his own gray boxer briefs, darkened with your wetness, eyes locked to your face to memorize every reaction. He bends down to kiss your stomach and then over your hip, tongue writing in cursive along the stretch marks you’ve had since puberty. He runs his index finger underneath the waistband of the underwear, still refusing to touch you anywhere that you really crave. He smiles, almost to himself, and coos, “You’re already being so good for me, baby. I’m going to have so much fun with you.”

Breathily, you moan, “Jack, if you’re not gonna fuck me, you should probably stop turning me on so much.”

His movements still and he gazes back up at you with challenging eyes. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to get you off.”

You whimper. Literally whimper.

Jack tugs down the underwear, carefully sliding them down your legs and then helping you step out of them. His hands roam all along your legs, bristling every single hair follicle and goosebump and nerve, the whole time he’s talking. Unrelenting touch. “Look, baby, sometime soon – very fucking soon if I have anything to do with it – we’re going to sit down and have a good long talk. I’m going to write down all of your limits and commit them to memory and tell you mine. You’re going to tell me all about your history with doms and vice versa. You’ll tell me every single thing your brain and that pretty little pussy of yours want – no matter how embarrassed that makes you. And I’m going to use all that information to be the best fucking dom you’ve ever had. The kind you actually deserve.”

With your breaths speeding up and shallowing, Jack finally touches your nipples. One thumb on each. So gentle. So fucking stupidly awfully gentle. Barely more than a ghosting breath. Somehow that’s way sexier than if he shoved you onto the bed and took you as hard and as fast as you know he’s craving. His self control is honey.

Standing up again, Jack rests his hands on your waist, kisses you, and says, “Until then – until I know everything I need to know – you have to be good and take what I’ll give you. No brattines or begging. Because the most important thing to me is always going to be keeping you safe, princess. You’re still coming out of some really nasty sub drop; I’m not going to do anything intense to you right now that might send you back under. And I’m always intense when I’m fucking.” His eyes own yours and he goes on, “I’m just gonna get you off enough times to know you’ll sleep well in your new daddy’s bed. That sound good to you, sweet girl?”

You nod eagerly, chest rising and falling with lust as he plays with you.

Jack tuts, the sort of sound you’d make at a puppy having an accident. With his dominant fingers teasing gently through your pubic hair, he instructs, “You have to use your words with me. You’re gonna figure it out soon enough on your own, but I’m big on talking. Wanna hear that sweet voice say the filthiest things. Tell me what you want.”

You bite your lower lip until his eyes catch you red-handed. You’re so desperate for him that you’re stupid all of a sudden – stupid in the best way. Not the ‘stupid’ you’ve been weaponizing against yourself. No, this thoughtlessness is safe and breezy. It’s anticipation and toes curling and trust. You’ve never had a dom place so much focus on you. Not just tossing you around and calling you names but getting inside of your head and making you viscerally present in the moment. It has you tongue-tied and wide-eyed.

Jack crosses his arms over his chest and insists, “I’ll wait as long as it takes. Deep breaths.”

You match your breathing with his for a minute, one thing that always makes you calm down. He notices, slowing his breaths, guiding you without saying a word. When you can finally come up with the words, they’re so wanting and breathless it honestly surprises you even in your current state: “Touch me, daddy.”

Pure want blows Jack’s pupils wide and dark and all-consuming.

“There’s my good girl,” he purrs, closing the small distance between your bodies. “On the bed. Spread your legs and get comfortable. And I mean actually comfortable – don’t try to pose yourself for me. I promise you’re always going to look sexiest when you’re not overthinking it. Understood?”

With lust filling your every nook and pore, you sit back on the large, comfortable bed’s silky soft linens and tell him, mustering the confidence you know he wants, “Understood.”

He gives you an approving nod – so you get comfortable. You move his many pillows around until you’re fully supported and relaxed. Legs spread. His eyes are locked onto your glistening pussy, so inviting to him it might as well be his drug of choice. He sits in front of you on the bed and breathes, “Jesus, your body is…fucking perfect. No other way to say it. I’ve imagined this so many times I can’t believe you’re even more gorgeous than I pictured.”

“You’ve pictured me naked?”

Unashamed, he grabs rough handfuls of your inner thighs just to watch you gasp and writhe as he answers, “Absolutely. I’ve spent hours and hours on these thighs alone.”

Jack bends down and drags his teeth over your sensitive flesh. His canines dig in just slightly, clearly testing the waters, learning your sensitivity. He lets up only when you let out a sharp cry, nowhere near your personal limit but enough to discover your first pain threshold.

“And your hips,” he croons, kissing one as he grips the other. His hands are so strong and commanding; you can’t help imagining how good that exact grip would feel wrapped around your neck while he pounds into you. As his thumbs rub circles into your waist, he sighs, “You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined bending you over just so I can grab these perfect fucking hips. Look so good even in your damn scrubs.”

Then he finally lets himself gaze at your tits. He’s looking at your body like you’re a piece of meat. You never understood that phrase until now; Jack Abbot looks like he wants to devour you. Stone-cold serious, he nods and remarks, “These may be the prettiest nipples I’ve ever seen in my twenty years as a doctor.”

You let out a self-conscious laugh. “That’s your medical opinion?”

“Purely objective, I assure you,” he replies, wearing that sexy smirk of his. Then he bends down, one palm by your head, and wraps his lips around one of your nipples. The way his eyes flutter shut spikes your confidence like little else ever has. He’s positively rapturous. He really has been envisioning this moment longer than you would’ve let yourself dare believe. When he sucks hard, he pinches and rolls the other side between his thumb and forefinger. Instinctively, your legs snap up to wrap around his hips as you gasp. With a satisfied groan, he lets up and confirms, “Yup, the best. Objectively the best.”

Then he gives you a slow, unhurried kiss. His index finger tilts your chin upward and he tells you, voice like a lullaby, “Only thing better is this pretty face of yours.” His thumb parts your lips, gently brushing the tender places where you bite your lower lip. “I’m going to take the best care of you, princess. Treat you better than you even thought possible.”

You believe him.

You believe him.

In response, you open your lips further and take his thumb into your mouth. When you swirl your tongue around the digit, he fights to suppress a moan. You see it in the flex of his stomach and the setting of his jaw. He admires the shape of your lips wrapped around him, imagining how lovely it’ll be to watch them stretch around his cock. Soon, he reminds himself so that he can stay calm. As he withdraws his thumb slowly, he poses, “Fuck, you’re gonna take care of me, too, aren’t you?”

You nod, all mischievous and coy. “I’m gonna be your new favorite hobby.”

“I don’t have a single doubt about it,” he chuckles. Drawing his hand down once more – your neck, your chest, your stomach, your pubic hair – he orders, “Now look me in the eye while I fuck you with my fingers for the first time.”

He knows you’re fucking soaked, so there’s no question of whether or not you can happily and comfortable take his two fingers sliding into your entrance. As he gradually pushes them inside, you let out a sound that starts as a moan and turns into a squeaky, pathetic little thing that lights Jack’s brain on fire with need. Your eyes start to roll back from finally getting the attention you need, but Jack grabs your jaw with his free hand and forces your face to center. “I said look at me.”

Your doe eyes lock onto his.

He curls his fingers back toward himself, right against your g-spot, and your mouth falls open with pleasure and need. His thumb moves upward to find your clit effortlessly, adding firm pressure. You nearly weep out, “Thank you, daddy.”

Jack smiles in earnest. “You’re welcome, baby. You can relax now. Just enjoy yourself for a while.”

You half-giggle/half-moan, “Yes, sir.”

Jack snickers. “Mmm. That’s what I like to hear, pretty girl.”

Then the time for talking and flirting is over. Jack shifts his weight so he can focus completely on getting you off. He twists his wrist so that you feel the full thickness of his two middle fingers as he works them in and out of you, not so much thrusting as massaging. At the same time, the fingers of his other hand replace his thumb, adding more precise pressure around your clit in methodical circles. You go between watching Jack’s rapt face, locked on your swollen pussy, and closing your eyes, lost in the way his fingers stretch you and please you.

You feel the orgasm building for a hell of a long time before Jack finally lets you fall over the precipice into pleasure. It’s slow and controlled, the way he works you up, like carefully turning a corkscrew. So when he does finally decide you’re ready to cum – you’re grinding against his hand, moaning and whining, babbling out cute little pleas – it’s champagne. You burst into a million bubbles that run down Jack’s greedy hand and wrist.

The whole time, there’s his voice. Insistent and low. Good girl, that’s it, right there, huh? Joining you all the way through. Never letting you get lost. When you open your eyes at the peak, you find his hazels staring back at you. His tousled hair. His freckles. His everything.

When you’ve finally simmered through all the aftershocks, you expect Jack to pull back and put you to sleep. But he doesn’t. He leans forward and replaces one of his hands with his mouth, tongue effervescent on your over-sensitive clit. You whine out his name and he just grunts into your pussy, making it perfectly clear that he won’t be letting up any time soon. Not until he’s satisfied with how totally blissed out he can get you using nothing but his mouth and hands. It’s an ego high like no other to have you losing yourself all over his tongue. His high-strung, deeply competent student turned into nothing but babbles and whines like a needy toddler.

With you falling – no, leaping – into that perfectly simple headspace where nothing exists but the bliss between your legs, Jack lets himself get drunk on your taste. Bitter and sweet, creamy and sharp, like a custom cocktail of summertime and holidays. He’s finding himself dipping in deeper, nose on your clit, tongue deep in your cunt, just chasing the high  of you.

He feels a fresh wave of wetness and your pussy fluttering around his fingers and he knows you’re close again. Your moans get deeper and slower. You’re relaxing into him now – no hiding, no acting, just pure admission of need. He can feel you becoming his as surely as he can feel the muscles of your thighs tightening around his ears and neck. No better accessory than a woman getting off. Jack focuses his tongue’s attention on your clit, staying firm and strong against it, while his fingers speed up and grow more intense. Curling. Insistent. Fuck, his forearms look so good when he’s pumping his hand like this. When he adds a third finger to your hungry cunt, your whole body shudders, back arching, thighs clamping, fingers in Jack’s hair, moans rolling out of your mouth and down your body and straight into Jack’s ears.

You cum again and think that has to be it – you’ve never even been together before, for Christ’s sake – but Jack doesn’t let up. Not completely. His turns his touches slow and light, caressing instead of consuming, but you’re the exact opposite – bucking like a bronco from the overstimulation of him latching onto your swollen, sensitive clit. You whimper out, “Too much, Jack. I- I can’t-”

Because it’s new and you’re at where you’re at, Jack listens. He carefully withdraws his fingers from inside of you, licks them clean, and moves up the bed. On top of you not, propped on his hands, he plants blooming kisses over your face, your warm cheeks and your sweat-sheen forehead. In between gentle kisses, he asks you, “Think you can do one more for me, baby girl?”

Eyes wide and hazy, you reply, “I- I dunno, daddy. Dunno anything.”

He smirks and runs his thumb across your lower lip, all swollen and cute from biting while you got off. He checks, “The good kind of ‘dunno anything’ or the bad kind?”

“Good kind,” you giggle back, all bashful and sweet as you nudge up to catch another kiss. Then you nuzzle into his shoulder, pulling him down to embrace you and breathing in his scent. “Feel really good, Jackie.”

“Jackie,” he repeats with a chuckle. “Been a hell of a long time since anyone called me that.”

You pull back and look at him with eyes on the verge of watering. “Is that okay?”

He places a firm kiss on your forehead and assures, “Honey, you can call me whatever the hell you want as long as you’re mine. You’re too good and too cute for me to deny you anything.”

You give him a silly grin. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely.” He turns you both onto your sides and asks, “Now, do you want more or do you want to get ready for bed?”

You shake your head, still buried in the crook of Jack’s shoulder, and murmur, “You pick.”

“Uh-uh,” he tuts. After kissing your temple, he insists, “Not this time. We’re not skipping any steps here; I can’t learn what you need when you need it if you don’t know and tell me first.”

You go still for a minute and then look at him with something close to anxiety in your eyes. Jack clocks it: Fear of rejection. “I think I’m ready to be done and go to bed. Is that okay?”

Jack feels that familiar flicker of protectiveness in his gut. He holds your chin and his expression turns serious. “You are always allowed to be done. Even when we reach the point where I’m making all the decisions and you’re just my dumb little slut following orders, you’re safe to tell me whatever you need whenever you need it.”

You poke him in the chest and giggle again, “You’re whipped already, Dr. Abbot.”

“Yeah, I am,” he admits freely. “All I want is to be yours.”

Jack stands up next to the bed, loops his arms beneath your body, and lifts you like it’s no big deal. You squeal out of a laugh and he smiles back, the perfect mix of silly and strong. 

He takes you into the en suite bathroom, sits you on the low countertop next to the sink, and orders, “Open your mouth, sweetheart.” You do so without question and get met with another lovely ‘good girl’ that makes your heart dance, more of a waltz than a tango now that you’re coming down. Jack’s brow furrows in concentration like he’s performing a complex procedure as he brushes your teeth, covering each quadrant with military precision. His free hand holds your chin carefully so he can tilt your head based on the teeth he’s cleaning.

Once he’s satisfied with his work, he lifts a cup of water to your lips and says, “Swish and spit.”

Again, you follow his orders. Folding into Jack’s guidance is so natural for you. It’s easy. And in a life where so many things are so fucking hard, that’s worth everything. Then he winds floss around his fingers and you sleepily offer, “You don’t have to do all that.”

“I’m going to,” he responds plainly. Opening up your mouth again and getting to work, he says, “I take care of what’s mine. When you’re with me, you don’t have to do anything for yourself unless you want to.” He throws the floss out and kisses the tip of your nose. “I always tend to my pet.”

“Fuck, Jack- hck- wait- wait!” You choke out, crawling up the bed but it’s no good.

“You sure you wanna quit baby cakes?” His other hand is at the small of your back, arching your back into him as he slowly pulls his length out to the top. “Look at how she won’t even let me go, clinging on t’me like she needs it.” He shudders, pre blending in youth your dripping wet cunt.

“Sure you want me to stop?” He asks innocently.

Your chest is heaving, sweaty, the old man has basically fucked you into the mattress, you’re curls sprawled out and frizzy from the way he has been giving you the meanest and sweetest strokes of your life. Running your hands through his greying curls, hands going down his freckled back from the pain and the pleasure, all you can think about is Jack, Jack, Jack—

“—Jaaack.” Your mewl out, you’ve got that glint in your eyes he can read a mile away. Biting the inside of your lip, head all tilted to the side.

He almost cracks a smile at you, calloused hands caresses down your tummy, right where he could press and feel his cockhead pressed uo against your cervix not too long ago. He lets his hand travel further up, circling a finger around your hardened nipple, “Your words sugar.”

You whine, pouting and those pretty and glossy brown eyes staring up at him, unconsciously wiggling your hips, god you’re too damn adorable, “Jack- mmph- Jack- I-I need you.”

“There you go,” his voice is so sweet in your ears, smooth, ramming back into you with a snap of his hips. “You’re my gooood girl baby.” He croons, taking your legs above his shoulders.

His thrusts are relentless, deep, he’s aiming for your sweet spots like a damn target, spreading your swollen pussy lips to see the way you’ve got his manhood glistening with your juices. He’s still holding your hips up and in place, watching how you claw at his forearms, mouth slack while you let out such pitchy and breathless moans, “Aaangh! Jack! Fuuck- nnngh-”

And then you feel his give your pulsing bud a little pinch, tears pricking your eyes, shaking your head “Please, please- ‘s too much-”

“ ‘Please, please, please give me more Dr. Abbot’ “ he teases in a high tone ever so lightly, smirking down at you, “And I am, you’ve got it sweetheart, just gotta ride it out f’me. Know you can.”

It’s too much at once, the way Jack grinds right into that gooey g-spot of yours that has those fat tears streaming down your face that he’s been itching to get for weeks. His thumb presses down your button, rubbing it that makes your body jolt and shake. Sobbing out his name as you squeeze onto the pillows holding your head for dear life, your legs shaking.

“I knoooow baby, I knooooow, shiiit- ‘a lot, doin so good though honey- fuck, so good.” he coo’s, but this fucking maniac is still pistoning his length through your walls, only getting harder the more you tremble and cry. You’re stunning when you’re fucked out, only thinking about your boyfriend and how he can fix you in this moment. Too damn sexy for your own good. The way you babble for him to hold you, and he does with a loud groan, wrapping your arms around his neck and rocking into you while the bed creaks with every thrust. Kissing your wet cheeks and then slipping his tongue down yout throat till he feels your pussy grip onto him like the life line he is.

And he’s got sparks in his eyes, slipping himself out of your pulsing cunt while his cum paints your stomach.

He’s panting, “Good job sugar, shit, did so well,” he cups your face, wiping your tears while your body goes limp in his arms. You murmur his name once more, just to feet his weight press down against your body. Holding you in his warm and loving arms.

“So pretty like this gorgeous.”

The ER was chaos.

Not unusual chaos — not the manageable kind where everyone moved quickly but knew what direction they were running in. This was the kind that left the entire department buzzing like exposed wiring. Ambulance sirens screamed outside every few minutes, nurses were moving at near-sprinting speed between bays, and somebody in triage had apparently thrown up on a police officer.

Twice.

You’d been on your feet for eleven hours already, your coffee had gone cold somewhere around midnight, and your scrub top had a stain on the sleeve you were trying very hard not to identify.

Jack looked worse.

Not that he’d ever admit it.

He leaned against the nurses’ station beside you, flipping through a chart while rubbing a hand over his jaw. His curls were a mess from dragging his fingers through them all day, and exhaustion sat heavy beneath his eyes.

Still annoyingly attractive.

Still unfairly calm.

Still somehow capable of making every nurse in the emergency department straighten slightly when he walked past.

You were trying not to look at him.

Which was difficult because he kept standing so close.

“You alive over there?” he asked without glancing up from the chart.

“Barely.”

“Mm.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Good. Builds character.”

You shot him a tired glare. “I have enough character. What I need is eight consecutive hours of sleep and an iced coffee the size of my head.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“Jack,” you deadpanned. “I’m one difficult patient away from eating drywall.”

That finally earned a real laugh out of him.

Low.

Warm.

Dangerous to your emotional stability.

You hated how much you liked making him laugh.

A trauma alert suddenly sounded overhead, the intercom crackling loudly through the department.

Everybody moved at once.

Jack straightened immediately, exhaustion disappearing beneath sharp focus as he started toward the ambulance bay. You followed close behind him automatically.

“Twenty-year-old male, MVA,” a paramedic shouted as they rolled the gurney through the doors. “Possible internal bleeding, decreasing BP en route—”

The next fifteen minutes blurred together.

Voices overlapping.

Gloves snapping into place.

Vitals shouted across the room.

You worked beside Jack without thinking, both of you slipping into that strange rhythm healthcare workers developed together under pressure. Efficient. Fast. Instinctive.

At one point you reached for gauze at the exact same time.

His hand brushed yours.

Neither of you pulled away immediately.

Then the monitor alarm screamed.

Everything snapped back into motion.

By the time the patient stabilized enough for surgery, your adrenaline had completely crashed. You leaned heavily against the counter outside the trauma room, scrubbing a hand over your face.

Jack stepped beside you a second later.

“You okay?”

“Mhm.”

“You look like you’re about to pass out standing up.”

“I might.”

“You eaten today?”

Silence.

His eyebrows lifted slowly.

“Oh my God.”

“I had a granola bar.”

“At what time?”

“…Seven?”

“It’s almost one in the morning.”

You shrugged weakly. “Time is fake in the ER.”

Jack stared at you for a long moment before sighing through his nose. “C’mon.”

“What?”

“You’re eating something before you fall over and become my paperwork problem.”

You followed him mostly because you were too tired to argue.

The staff lounge was unusually empty for once, lit softly by buzzing fluorescent lights. Rain hammered steadily against the windows outside, turning the entire hospital grey and muted.

Jack dug through the vending machine with the seriousness of a surgeon.

“This place is criminal,” he muttered. “Why are there seventeen kinds of pretzels but no decent chocolate?”

“You’re very passionate about this.”

“You should be too, sweetheart, this is a humanitarian crisis—”

Silence.

Complete silence.

Jack froze mid-sentence.

You froze staring at him.

And then you felt it.

Heat exploded across your face so fast it was physically painful.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Jack looked horrified.

Not because he regretted it.

Because he realized exactly what it did to you.

Your entire face burned hot enough to qualify as a medical emergency.

He stared.

You stared back.

Neither of you spoke.

The vending machine hummed innocently in the background while both of you visibly short-circuited.

Jack recovered first, barely.

A slow grin started pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Well,” he said carefully, voice rougher now.

You covered your face immediately. “Don’t.”

“Oh my God,” he laughed softly. “You’re blushing.”

“I know.”

“Like, aggressively.”

“I know, Jack.”

“That might be the hardest I’ve ever seen somebody blush.”

“You are making it worse.”

“I kinda wanna do it again.”

Your head snapped up so fast you almost got dizzy.

Jack was leaning back against the vending machine now, looking entirely too pleased with himself despite the faint color creeping into his own cheeks.

“You’re blushing too,” you accused.

“Am not.”

“You absolutely are.”

“Little bit,” he admitted.

Something shifted then.

Tiny.

Fragile.

But unmistakable.

The teasing faded slowly from his expression, replaced by something softer. Something more careful.

His eyes stayed on yours for a second too long.

“So,” he said quietly. “Sweetheart, huh?”

Your stomach flipped violently.

“You did that on purpose.”

“No,” he admitted honestly. “Actually didn’t.”

Which somehow affected you more.

Because that meant it had slipped out naturally.

Like he already thought of you that way.

Jack looked at you for a long moment before stepping closer, just enough that your pulse started acting stupid again.

“You know,” he said softly, “I’ve been trying very hard not to flirt with you at work.”

You blinked.

“What?”

His laugh was quieter now, almost nervous. “Thought I was being subtle.”

“You are not subtle.”

“Damn.”

“You literally stare at me across the nurses’ station.”

“I thought that was mysterious.”

“It was medically concerning.”

He grinned at that.

Then his expression softened again.

“You never seemed uncomfortable,” he said carefully. “So I kept doing it.”

Your heart thudded painfully against your ribs.

Rain rattled softly against the windows behind him.

The hospital noise felt far away now.

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” you admitted quietly.

Jack studied your face like he was trying to decide whether he was allowed to believe you.

“And the blushing?”

You groaned.

His grin widened.

“Sweetheart.”

Your face immediately reignited.

Jack actually laughed this time, full and warm and delighted, one hand covering his mouth like he couldn’t believe he’d discovered your fatal weakness.

“Oh, that’s dangerous information.”

“You’re evil.”

“No,” he corrected, still smiling. “I’m in love with you.”

The words hit the room so gently you almost thought you imagined them.

Jack looked equally surprised they’d come out.

But he didn’t take them back.

Didn’t look away.

Your chest tightened painfully.

“You—”

“I know,” he said quickly, softer now. “Bad timing. Weird place to say it. But honestly? I think I’ve been in love with you for months and apparently all it took was one accidental sweetheart to ruin my self-control.”

Your eyes burned suddenly.

God.

You were exhausted and emotional and completely wrecked by this man.

“You absolute idiot,” you whispered.

Jack smiled carefully. “That a good idiot or a bad idiot?”

Instead of answering, you stepped forward and kissed him.

He made a small startled sound against your mouth before immediately kissing you back, one hand sliding instinctively to your waist while the other cupped gently against your jaw.

Warm.

Careful.

Like he’d wanted to do this for a long time.

When you finally pulled apart, both of you breathless, Jack rested his forehead lightly against yours.

“You have any idea,” he murmured, “how long I’ve wanted to do that?”

“Probably about as long as I’ve wanted you to.”

His eyes softened completely at that.

Then his grin returned slowly.

“So hypothetically,” he said, “if I called you sweetheart again—”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Sweetheart.”

You hid your burning face against his shoulder while he laughed quietly into your hair, arms wrapping around you tightly as the storm raged outside and the ER chaos continued somewhere beyond the lounge doors.

Brett has you caged in beneath him, holding himself up on his hands so he can get a good look at the pretty, decorative harness he's tied around your torso with soft rope.

He likes the way it looks against your skin as you move, the way parts of it catch the light, and he particularly likes the way it digs in, ever so slightly, when you take deep, shuddering breaths.

The way you are now, in fact, as he stuffs you full of his cock, giving you deep, steady thrusts, making sure you feel every. Single. Inch. Of him as he moves.

Given the way you're moaning for him, wrapping your thighs tight around his hips, back arching off the mattress, he'd say you're feeling it just fine.

Leaning over you, pressing you into the mattress, he picks up his pace.

He's just establishing a nice rhythm, getting you closer and closer to release, if the way your cunt is tightening around him is any indication, when his phone starts ringing.

Considering he has the damn thing on Do Not Disturb, and he has exactly four people set for it to override, one of whom isn't speaking to him and another- being you- is currently beneath him and full of his cock, it's probably an emergency.

You whine as he slows down, leans over to grab his phone from the nightstand. Fucking Sharon. Of all the times she could be calling him...

He tries to tell himself it's either an emergency, or she's finally decided to give him a job at 42.

"Noooo, please don't stop-" you beg all needy and whimpering, making him seriously consider whether he needs to answer his phone. The responsible part of him wins.

Brett lowers himself down onto one forearm, brushes his lips across yours, still giving you shallow little thrusts.

"Can you stay quiet if I take this call?" He asks, voice a low, almost seductive purr.

You nod eagerly, mime zipping your lips shut, even as he gives you a doubtful look.

He figures that you probably can, so long as he doesn't give it to you too hard while on the call; his solution is to roll you over so you’re on top of him, giving you a warning look when you moan again, before he answers the call.

"Hello?"

You have to admit, you're impressed by the fact that he doesn't even sound out of breath. Of course, he keeps his body in peak physical condition; while he carries the signs of his age in his cinnamon sugar curls, in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, he's still stronger than most men half his age.

Based on the way he nods as the person on the other end – Sharon, you think – is talking, it’s a serious conversation. You don’t care, not when the hand that isn’t holding his phone to his ear is smoothing over your body, up your thigh, over your stomach, tracing the rope expertly woven around your torso, brushing his fingers over your nipples.

You have to fight not to react, force yourself to stay silent as he shifts beneath you, trying to get comfortable, you think. Regardless of the reason, the result is the same; the movement temporarily has him pressed deeper inside you.

As you bite down on your bottom lip, Brett raises his eyebrows at you. You can kind of hear what Sharon’s saying down the line, something about staffing and shuffling the decks and making it work without stepping on toes.

You’ve met the division chief before, once or twice, at social things, because whilst you may be a little younger than Brett, he doesn’t hesitate to show you off. Doesn’t leave you with any doubt that you’re his, and that he has no shame about the age difference.

Sharon’s nice enough, but she doesn’t do a good enough job of hiding her judgement. You still remember the way she’d looked you up and down when you’d first met her, the way she’d said you weren’t what she was expecting.

There’s a part of you that’s pretty sure she just wants to be in your place instead. Not that you can blame her at all, so you always try your hardest to be polite, to be nice, because you don’t want to play into the idea of a younger than her partner woman who gets irrationally jealous.

You know that Brett loves you. Know how hard he worked to get himself to a place where he was comfortable building a relationship again, let alone with someone a little younger.

That doesn’t mean that you aren’t slightly tempted to let an audible moan out as Brett listens to her talk, answers with little mm-hmmand uh-huh sounds as she goes on and on about how she’s managed to fit him into 42, if he wants it, somewhere between a Captain and a Chief role, until there’s a space in one of the other surrounding stations to Edgewater.

You really do try not to be petty, but she’s drawing the conversation out for far too long. It doesn’t help that her son, Bode, annoys the hell out of you, too. He’s hotheaded and disrespectful, and he’s asked you more than once what a pretty thing like you is doing with some boring old guy like Richards?

You and Brett have more in common than people would suspect. You both prefer your quiet hobbies; the company of books, animals and a garden over socialising. Never mind the fact that after his wife had passed, Brett had gone through an entire… journey… of self discovery.

The kind of journey that’s resulted in the pretty rope harness woven around your torso, accentuating your tits. The same tits you cup in your hands, teasing him by playing with them before you plant your hands back on his chest.

Not trusting yourself to ride him properly and stay quiet, you start slowly grinding against him, letting the coarse greying curls at the base of his cock rub against your puffy clit.

It feels good, better than you expected. The pleasure that you get from it is evident in the expression on your face, in the way your eyes briefly drop closed, nose slightly wrinkled, lips parted.

All the while as you keep up this slow grinding, you lightly drag your nails across and over his chest. Over the light sprinkle of hair that dusts his pectorals. Down his abs, which honestly, you think are obscene with how defined they are.

Running your nails back up, you watch in satisfaction as his eyes briefly drop closed; Brett loves when you use your nails on his chest, his shoulders, his back.

It’s probably cruel of you to do while he’s on an important phone call, but you start moving properly, lifting yourself up an inch or so and then back down, slow, so there’s no lewd sound effects that the phone mic will pick up.

“Yeah,” he says in response to whatever Sharon’s saying, voice just a little ragged as he continues, “that sounds great.”

Narrowing his hazel eyes at you, he smoothly rolls his hips up, making you gasp; his free hand moves to cover your mouth, muffling the filthy moan that escapes you.

“Is now a bad time?” Sharon’s voice is vaguely audible through the speaker; a jolt of satisfaction rushes through you when you realise she may have heard you.

“What? No, now’s a good time, but we can always go over the details on Monday.” Voice even, Brett keeps rolling his hips, steadily fucking up into you, keeping his hand gently resting over your mouth.

Most of your little moans and mewls are muffled into his palm, quiet as he finishes his conversation. You have no idea whether Sharon has caught onto the fact that something’s up, but you also don’t care, are beyond caring.

He hangs up, tosses the phone aside, releases your mouth so he can hear your filthy moan as he rolls you again, pins you beneath him.

“I thought you were going to behave,” he purrs, plants an open mouthed kiss to your throat.

“You told me I needed to stay quiet, not to behave.” You counter, eyes sparkling with mischief as he shakes his head.

Luckily, he isn’t actually irritated with you, loves you too much to care that you disobeyed him… this time.

“Mm, well.” He braces one hand beside your head.

You can’t help but giggle a little, half embarrassed and half because you can just picture him blushing under interrogation. Brett smirks, not actually annoyed, hikes your thigh up around his waist and drawing high pitched moans out of you, grunting softly as he starts to move.

“You’re not the one that has to have a very awkward conversation on Monday.”

You had been enjoying a rare and well deserved day off, tidying up a bit your apartment before indulging in some ice cream while you occupied your hands with crafts.

Your new hobby, not that you had had much time to get to it with your work and everything, had been crocheting. You went from one hobby to the other every few months and spent all your time and money on it in that time period.

So obviously, your place was now pilling up with colored yarn, multiple crocheted beanies you couldn't seem to stop making and some unfinished projects laying around.

Another loud noise boomed upstairs making you pause your show and look up as if you had been suddenly blessed with x-ray vision.

Jack happened to live right above your apartment, and though you didn't know which room was above which, you had come to the conclusion that his bedroom was mainly above your living room.

So when the noise echoed again you stood up not really knowing what to do next.

Sure, he was supposed to be sleeping, and he didn't make any noise at this time of day usually since he, well he worked nights, and he wasn't even a noisy neighbor. So surely all this ruckus was a least a little worrying ?

You stood in the middle of your living room for a minute, yarn and hook in one hand, a spoon that previously held some ice cream in the other.

You couldn't just go up and knock because you had heard some noise.. could you?

You weighted up the options before settling on sending a quick text. You started typing up, before deleting it, before typing it out again, letting your thumb hover over the send button.

Finally, in a surge of impulsiveness, and before you could change your mind, you pocketed your phone, slipped your feet into your worn out crocs and left your apartment, door slamming behind you.

You skipped the elevator and went straight for the stairwell and a minute later you were standing in front of his door, hand hovering in the air, wondering if it was all a good idea.

But before you could talk yourself out of it, you forced your knuckles against the door and called out for him after the seconds of silence that followed.

As you were about to knock again the knob rattled, making you freeze in place.

The door creaked open revealing a quite.. disheveled looking Jack.

His hair was all messed up, his prosthetic seemed to have been put on in a hurry seeing his sweatpants had caught on it, his hand gripped tightly the door as though he needed the feeling of the wood pressing into his palm to ground himself. And his eyes, usually so keen on maintaining eye contact, were hazy, missing their usual fire and instead jumped from one point to the other, unable to settle on you.

"Jack.?" your voice came out small but it seemed to catch part of his attention as he quickly flicked up his eyes on you, before looking down again.

"What are you doing here?" he muttered in a gruff voice, gripping the door a little tighter.

"I- I heard a noise, I wanted to make sure you were alright." you tried to take a step forward but he shifted back almost in a flinch.

"I'm fine. Now go." he briefly locked eyes with you before going to close the door.

Without thinking, you jumped to stop him, bracing your hand against the doorframe and making him stop short just before the door could slam on your fingers.

Instinctively, his hand shot out to brush your fingers, as if to make sure it didn't hurt you but he quickly removed it, taking a step back again.

"What are you doing? I told you to leave." he mumbled again, but his breathing was growing increasingly erratic, his chest heaving as it rose and fell dramatically.

Before you could stop yourself, you reached for his hand, fully stepping into his apartment.

He seemed like he was trying to say something but the words wouldn't leave his lips, his breath catching in his throat.

You distractedly shut the door with one hand before taking in the darkened hallway despite the early hour of the afternoon. Further down the corridor, a small table had been knocked over, the vase previously sitting on it now lying shattered on the floor.

You looked back at Jack, who was struggling to contain whatever anxiety seemed to be taking over him.

"Jack, can you hear me?" you softly placed a hand on his arm as you spoke. "It's me, you're alright. We're gonna sit down okay?" you gently pushed down on his arm, gesturing for him to sit, mindful of his leg.

He was still mumbling under his breath, his eyes looking straight through you, keeping him locked away in some far memory. His breathing was still panting and your face scrunched up in helplessness.

You tried to brush your hand soothingly over his bare arm but you could feel him shaking under your hands.

Long gone was the confident doctor front, leaving before you a vulnerable man, shaking in your hold and struggling to catch his breath.

You pushed down the lump in your throat and sat between his opened legs.

"Jack, what you're seeing isn't real. You need to come back. Come back to me." you found yourself almost imploring, taking his face in your hands in the hope that he would finally see you.

But when his eyes settled on you, they were only full of fear.

"It's okay, it's over. Breathe okay? Follow me."

You placed your hand over his thundering heart and placed his over yours. You took deep breaths, slowing when his own caught in his throat and made his chest shudder.

You muttered small encouragement and comforting words as a few tears escaped his eyes and his breath progressively slowed down to match yours.

Your hand had fell down to his side where your thumb was stroking back and forth over his clothed skin, while your other hand gently dried his tears.

After a long while, he finally looked up to you, his eyes finally cleared, seeing only you and nothing behind.

You mustered a small smile and grabbed his hand settled on his extended leg.

Your breaths intertwined as your head rested on your drawn up knee, sitting so close to him when he felt so far away just seconds ago. Your eyes quietly sank into his, allowing him time to compose himself.

After a little bit you finally spoke up.

"Feeling better ?"

His eyes fluttered close as his head fell back against the wall, a heavy sigh letting the pain evade the body.

"Yeah."

The silence settled over both of you for a minute before he broke it again.

"You shouldn't have stayed."

You slipped your hand out of his and opened your mouth to apologize but his hand quickly gripped yours back as his eyes opened again.

"But I'm glad you did... thank you."

You looked up at him with widened eyes, while he looked straight back at you, quietly conveying everything he couldn’t say at loud.

"Don't thank me. I'm happy I stayed. If it helped, I mean." you whispered bashfully, fidgeting with his shirt still in your hand.

"It helped." his rough voice filling your ears as his warm gaze settled on you.

You kept your eyes down as you asked, "Does it.. happen often ?" you feared the answer as much as you expected it.

"I- Yeah. More than I'd like I guess." he took a deep breath and played with the hem of his pants as he spoke. "My therapist tells me it should ease up the more I talk about it and accept it. But some days it doesn't feel like it will."

His eyes fell back on you, "Other days it feels more bearable."

You pressed his hand and leaned in the smallest bit,

"Thank you for telling me."

After lingering into his eyes, you looked away and your eyes fell on the destroyed vase again.

"I see we both have a knack for destroying our own furniture." you chuckled, looking back at him. "Do you need help cleaning it up?"

"Nah it's okay. You should get back to your place, I took enough of your time." he answered with a voice that carried much more emotion than just an apology for taking up your time.

"Ah don't worry, it's my day off. I wasn't doing much anyway." you shrugged with a smile.

He helped you up, his hand lingering in yours before you went to leave. He opened the door ready to thank you again but you turned back suddenly.

"Wanna come down eat ice cream with me? I know the cold helps with the anxiety" you offered abruptly, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Later, when you're both eating on your couch, crochet projects pushed aside, you're rambling about the show playing on your tv, not noticing his eyes on you

When it's silent again, he busies himself with his ice cream bowl as he asks,

"How did you know? About.. everything, how to deal with it."

"I get them too." you explained easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I learned how to deal with it a long time ago. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." you let a spoonful of vanilla ice cream melt on your tongue as your eyes wandered back on the tv.

Jack studied you for few minutes, trying to grasp the fact that you just admitted having panic attacks too. You, his beautiful, sunshiny neighbor that crochet and scrapbook on her days off.

Well, he imagined you couldn't have guessed the crippled gruff doctor upstairs was having panic attack either.

You definitely made quite the pair.

But before he could dwell on it, he settled back into your couch and let his hand fall closer to you than needed to.

And if he spend more time sneaking glances at you than at the show, that is only for him to know.

You whip your head around at the sound of your name being called.

"What are you doing here ? Are you alright ?"

And sure enough, Jack Abbot himself is walking towards you in big strides as he was apparently about to leave, if the bag slung over his shoulder is anything to go by.

"Oh- Hi ! Thank God I caught you !" you exclaim ignoring his concern. "I hope Doctor Shen hasn’t left yet either ! And is the day shift already here ?"

"Shen ? Why do you need Shen ?" he answers with a little bitterness in his tone, maybe a little immature for someone his age he’ll think a little later.

Still absorbed in your ramble, you continue "I wanted to thanks everyone for last time, they were all so kind ! And I know was a handful to deal with." you laugh depreciatingly and Jack would’ve cut you there if you were listening because he can’t think of a worst way to describe how it feels to take care of you -but he may be biased.

"Anyway- sorry, I’m rambling and you must be tired from your shift. What I meant to say is that I brought pastries for everyone !" Only then does his eyes fall from your face to the rather large boxes you’ve stuffed in multiple bags.

"I stayed up so I could catch you at shift change and I tried to guessed it and thank God I’m right on time, that would’ve been awkward if I had missed you. Also I didn’t know if anyone had allergies or food restrictions so I made sure to label the vegan, gluten free, no nuts, halal and regular boxes so it suits everyone. I hope I’m not going against any policies ? I thought it would be like bringing cupcakes to firefighter but if-"

"Hey, slow down. It’s perfect, I’m sure everyone will be grateful." he stops you with a hand on your wrists and a smitten smile that only Lupe behind the glass has the chance to catch with wide eyes.

And just like that he’s leading you towards the double doors he just came out of as he takes the bags from your hands in the most natural way.

Dana is the first to spot you, and she makes sure to let it be known.

"If it isn’t our head lac girl ! How you doin’ kid ? Hope you’re not here for an injury again."

Blood rush to your cheeks and you must look deeply embarrassed because, as you answer, you feel the warm reassurance of Jack’s hand on your lower back, his thumb moving in a soothing pattern.

"God no ! I’m really sorry about last time." you hide your face in your hand as you speak and subconsciously subtly lean into Jack’s side, not enough to touch but enough for you to feel the warmth radiating off of his body.

You peek through your fingers to look at him when you hear the rumble of a laugh as he shake his head, looking back at you.

You remember where you are when Dana speak again, and if she notices (which she definitely did) the moment between you she doesn’t say anything.

"Nonsense, that’s what we’re here for. And you brought us Abbot out of his cargo for once ! That’s some never-seen-before stuff." The day of your.. unfortunate accident Jack had rushed to your apartment then drove you to the hospital before getting properly dressed and resulted to him showing up in the ER in sweatpants and a faded vintage tee. "But what are you doing here if you’re not injured ? God knows no one wants to spend any more second than is necessary in this cursed place."

You jump, remembering the reason of your visit "Oh ! Right, I wanted to thank all of you for being so kind the other day, and I thought food was the best way to thank everyone !" You turn towards Jack to get the bags but he is already taking the boxes out to pass them to you.

"Wooo are we having a celebration here ?" Dr Robby suddenly appears behind you and claps Jack on the shoulder "Back so soon br-" he interrupt himself as he catch a glimpse of you beside Jack. "Ooh you brought the head lac girl ! I’m Robby, but we’ve already met." he greets you with a warm smile.

You feel once again heat radiating from your face from how embarrassed you feel but shake his hand nonetheless and give him your name.

"Yeah, I know, Jack must’ve mentioned it in passing." he trails off with a poorly concealed grin, earning himself a glare from the man.

"I was just dropping off some pastries as a thanks for last time." you explained, feeling the need to say something.

Robby looked speechless for a microsecond before smiling wildly at you, making the corner of his eyes crinkle.

"You didn’t have to but I’m sure the team will be more than grateful, thank you." he lightly settle his hand on your shoulder and let go of your hand after a second, feeling Jack’s stare out the corner of his eye.

Suddenly, you’re taken from his side and ushered into the break room by Princess and Perlah while they probably assail you with questions that must’ve been burning their tongue since you came in with a very worried-looking Abbot at your side.

"So- She’s your neighbor ?" Robby starts, feigning nonchalance.

"I think we’ve established that, yes." he answers curtly.

"And… is there anything to know ?" he drags out the and, waiting for Jack to add something but the man looks to be enjoying the moment and answers innocently.

"About what ?" his lips stretching into a pleasant smile.

Robby take the hint and chuckles, shaking his head. After a few seconds he turns to Jack again, tapping his back, "I need to check on a patient. But I’m happy for you brother."

In your absence, Jack let himself smile at that and turn his gaze to the break room door behind which you had disappeared and he manage a bye to Robby before making his way to you.

When he gets there the door is opening already and Shen -dressed to go home too- is leaving with a cupcake in hand.

He got a bit of frosting on his lips when he pass Jack and bid him goodbye not without whispering a quick "Don’t hesitate to bring her more often."

As he enters the small room he realizes it’s packed with nurses, resident, doctors and you in the middle of all this chaos, all colors and bright smiles in a sea of black and grey scrubs.

You’re laughing at something Santos is telling you and the sight make his heart clench with something he can’t bring himself to acknowledge in this setting.

But nothing can stay peaceful too long in the ER (he has shared you enough for the day) and his voice echoes with authority when he speaks.

"Don’t you all have patients to attend to ?" and just like that the room empties as they all grab one last item, but not without thanking you one last time, which seems to make you shrink on yourself shyly.

When Santos bid her goodbye too, you’re left alone with Jack, who’s looking at you with a smile he shouldn’t be able to muster after a long shift.

"Alright, let’s get you home now that you’ve made me look bad in front of all my colleagues."

You giggle at that "Well, who can say no to pastries." and the light in your eyes as you look up at him, with a smile bright enough to put the sun to shame, make Jack weak in the knees and he can’t even put it on the account of the hours he spent on his sore leg.

He really can’t help himself when he guide you by the small of your back towards the exit and let his hand wander on your waist.

He find himself so lost in.. his thoughts of you that you’re the one who waves goodbye to Dana at the nurse station before he guide you out, only sparing a glare at his smirking colleague.

Safe to say that as soon as you left, the white board was cleared and the betting board prepped, a too proud looking Ahmad beside it.

"Jack..?" if you weren’t so out of it you would’ve realized how delirious you sounded because next thing you knew his voice had sobered up.

"It’s me, are you alright ?"

"Hi, Um so- I know you’re tired and- sorry I probably woke you, I know you work nights and I wouldn’t call you if it wasnt- God I’m sorry I really shouldn’t have."

"Hey, take a deep breath. What’s going on ? Did something hap-"

"There’s blood." you blurted out suddenly. "A lot. Sorry, I just- I think I fell and I passed out, and now there’s blood and I don’t know what happened and-" a sob broke out of you and if he didn’t know any better Jack would’ve thought the clenching he felt was his heartstrings getting ripped out.

"Sorry, I just woke up and I panicked I think- well I still am, panicking I mean but-" you drew in a shaky breath, preventing yourself to apologize for the umpteenth time and in the absence of answers you checked your phone thinking Jack had hung up. Maybe it had been too much, he had thought you were playing a prank on him and went back to bed.

No. He wouldn’t do that.

Just a few weeks ago, you were sharing an elevator ride, and he had noticed a burn mark on your arm that you had just put under cold water and brushed off. He had insisted on giving you burn cream and showing you how to properly bandage it. He was incredibly selfless and the most caring man you knew.

"Um- Jack ?" you tried in a small voice, threatening to break again.

But all you could hear was a sort of fussing of materials and keys.

As you tried calling out for him again, a thud of footsteps echoed.. in your corridor ? Or was it the pulsing in your head echoing louder than was healthy.

Suddenly, a voice called out your name.

"It’s Jack, where are you ?" his voice echoed around your apartment sounding winded and almost…panicked ?

"Ja-" you voice broke, forcing you to clearing it out before calling out again. "I’m in the bathroom." you blurted out at his sudden presence, forgetting that he didn’t know the layout. But your voice seem to lead him and a moment later his knuckles rasped against the door.

"Are you decent ? Is it okay if I come in ?"

You looked down at the old oversized tee you wore to sleep and your flannel pants -now covered in blood.

"Uh yeah- yes." you replied after a moment, during which Jack’s heart had lurched in his chest at the idea that you had lost consciousness again. His heart rate hadn’t slow down since he heard you panic about the blood that you were apparently covered in.

He appeared as the door opened slowly, like he wanted to make sure he didn’t hit you with it. He suppressed a gasp with a deep inhale and a twitch of his jaw as his eyes took in the scenery before falling on you.

You could imagine what it looked like, blood on the sink and floor, products spilled open, laying around after you, from what you could guess, had tried to catch yourself on a shelf. And you, propped against your shower, looking a mess with blood running down your neck, temple and everywhere really.

He dropped to his knees, scanning you all over, his hands usually so sure, shaking a bit as he lifted them over to your face.

"Hey, you’re alright, you’re alright. I’m here." he muttered as much to himself as to you. "Tell me what happened." he seemed to shift back into his doctor self, as he began carefully checking you over.

Somehow you couldn’t come up with an answer as you looked into his eyes and lifted a hand to loosely tug at his sleeve.

"I thought you had hung up. That you thought I was lying." you admitted suddenly, in a voice so small he almost missed it over the thundering of his heart in his chest.

"What ? No. I was coming to you." he interrupted briefly his check up to brush his thumb over your cheekbone. "Now, I need you to focus and answer questions for me. Can you do that ?" he locked eyes with you as he asked, making sure yours weren’t drifting anywhere. Making sure you were here with him.

"Y-yeah, sure."

"Good." Another brush of his thumb. "You told me you passed out."

"I- Yes I did."

"Okay, what were you doing before ?"

"I was feeling weird. My head was hurting so I wanted- I thought I should take some painkillers."

"And did you take any ?" he asked in a soft voice as his hand pressed various places on your legs, tickling you a bit.

"No, I tried to- but then I couldn’t see anything- I fell." you stared off, like trying to recount the events in your mind, and your eyes seemed to lock on your bloodied hands. "And I don’t remember anything after. I woke up and there was blood running down my head- and everywhere. Why is there so much- Wh-" you hands rubbed at each other frantically while your breath quickened coming out in quick huffs.

"Hey. Take a deep breath. You’re doing perfect, sweetheart. I promise." Jack captured your hands in his, gently prying them away from each other and took a minute to help you regain your breathing.

His voice rumbled near your ear in a soothing cadence as he leaned in to lightly press different spot of your face and skull, so painfully gentle in his movements and careful not to hurt you. "You hit your head against the sink when you fainted, which I think is from dehydration. And head injuries tend to bleed a lot and look worse than they really are, leading to some panic. But you did so good. You called for help and now I’m here and I’ll make sure you get better in no time."

He leaned back being seemingly done with his quick exam and he lifted his hand back to your face, whipping the stray tears that must have spilled earlier. He let his other hand holding yours inch toward your pulse point and exhaled a small, relieved breath, he seemed to have been holding.

"Now. I’m going to apply a bandage to your head to stop the bleeding, then I will drive you to the ER and from there we’ll do a CT scan and all the procedures necessary to make sure you’re alright. Is that okay ?"

You opened and closed your mouth a few times before taking a deep breath.

"No, I- you should go back to sleep. I can call someone to drive me." you struggled to find your words and your head was still pounding with a headache, as a treacherous voice whispered about how badly wanted him to stay. "You have a shift tonight." you forced the words out anyway.

He fought back a laugh as he looked at you rattling your brain worrying about him when you so clearly needed help.

"If you rather have someone else stay with you I’ll call them and explain them everything you need but if it’s only because you think you’re bothering me. You’re not. Please, let me stay with you."

His plead hung between you for a second as you looked at him.

"Are you sure ?" you pressed in a small voice, looking into his eyes for an ounce of disingenuity.

"Certain." A moment passed as you continued to gaze at each other. "I won’t be able to sleep without knowing you’re alright." he confessed finally, his face closer than you remembered.

You stared at him for a few more seconds, lost in his words, before nodding warily, your lips still slightly downturned.

"Plus, if I’m the one bringing you in, I’ll make sure you receive extra special treatment from everyone." he added with a playful wink.

"Right.." you sighed, a chuckle escaping you.

Relief washed over him as he quickly stood up to rummage through your pharmacy cabinet, which he found alarmingly under supplied.

And as he carefully wrapped your head in soft cotton, you looked up to him through your lashes, grasping his shirt.

"Thank you. For answering."

"I’ll always answer to you. Make me your emergency contact." he mumbled, with a little too much seriousness underlying what was meant to be one of his usual light joke.

You giggled, "I might just take you up on that."

And in a surge of affection he pressed a kiss to your forehead, wishing to be the one you called everytime.

Jack Abbot is not a man who forgets things.

Especially not things like that.

So when, weeks later, you’re shoved into a car with him for what’s supposed to be a quick retrieval mission—tracking down Robby before he spirals too far—it feels like the universe has a cruel sense of humor.

Because out of everyone?

You get him.

And he gets you.

The drive is… tense.

Not openly hostile. Not even unfriendly.

Just careful.

Measured.

Like you’re both constantly aware of the space between you.

Jack drives, one hand steady on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift. His movements are practiced, controlled—no hesitation, no visible strain. If anything, he moves with a precision that makes your earlier comment feel… smaller. Meaner.

You try not to look at his leg.

Which, of course, only makes you hyper-aware of it.

“You gonna say something,” he finally mutters after nearly an hour, “or just keep sighin’ like that?”

“I’m not sighing.”

“You are.”

You press your lips together. “…Sorry.”

He hums, noncommittal.

Silence settles again.

It shouldn’t feel this heavy.

By the time you find Robby, it’s late.

Too late to head back.

Too late for anything except damage control and a place to crash.

The motel you end up at looks like it’s seen better decades.

Flickering neon sign. Stained carpet. A receptionist who doesn’t ask questions.

“Two rooms,” you say quickly, fishing out your wallet.

The guy behind the desk doesn’t even glance up. “One left.”

Of course.

You close your eyes briefly. “…Right.”

Jack doesn’t argue.

Doesn’t even react.

Just takes the key when it’s handed over and starts toward the stairs.

You follow.

The room is exactly what you expected.

And worse—

There’s only one bed.

You stop in the doorway. “…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jack glances at it, then at you.

“Take it,” he says simply, already shrugging off his jacket. “I’ll take the chair.”

“That chair looks like it might collapse if you breathe on it wrong.”

“Wouldn’t be the first thing that’s tried to take me out,” he replies dryly.

You hesitate.

Something twists uncomfortably in your chest.

“…We can share,” you say finally. “It’s fine.”

He pauses.

Looks at you for a long second.

Like he’s weighing something.

Then—

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Alright.”

You lie on opposite sides of the bed.

A careful distance between you.

Not touching.

Not even close.

And yet—

You’re acutely aware of him.

The steady rhythm of his breathing. The faint shift of the mattress when he moves. The way the room feels smaller somehow, like the air itself is heavier.

You stare at the ceiling.

“Jack?” you murmur.

“…Yeah?”

“Why do you hate me?”

The question slips out before you can stop it.

There’s a long pause.

“I don’t,” he says.

You let out a quiet, humorless breath. “You barely talk to me. You shut me down every chance you get. You—”

“You think that’s hate?”

You turn your head slightly, frowning. “What else would it be?”

Another pause.

Longer this time.

Then—

“Self-control.”

You blink. “…What?”

He doesn’t elaborate.

Just shifts slightly, turning away from you.

Conversation over.

Or so you think.

It doesn’t stay that way.

Because the next day—

Robby runs.

And everything goes to hell.

By the time you catch up to him, tempers are high, patience is gone, and the fragile thread holding everything together finally snaps.

“You’re not listening!” you snap at Jack as Robby disappears again down another street. “You’re pushing too hard—”

“And you’re not pushin’ enough!” he fires back.

“I’m trying not to make it worse!”

“And I’m tryin’ to fix it!”

“Yeah, well maybe your way isn’t working!”

That does it.

Something in his expression shifts—sharpens.

“Funny,” he says, voice dropping, “comin’ from you.”

You falter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He steps closer.

“Means you’ve got a lotta opinions for someone who don’t know what the hell they’re talkin’ about.”

Your chest tightens. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I did,” you snap, anger flaring now. “I just didn’t realize you thought I was incompetent.”

“I think,” he says, each word deliberate, “you make judgments real easy.”

The words hit harder than they should.

“…What is that about?” you demand.

He doesn’t answer.

Just looks at you.

And something clicks.

Your stomach drops.

“…Oh.”

Silence.

“Oh my god,” you whisper. “You heard me.”

His jaw tightens.

“Jack—”

“Yeah,” he cuts in. “I heard you.”

Guilt crashes over you, hot and immediate. “I didn’t mean—”

“Didn’t mean it?” he echoes, stepping closer.

You instinctively step back.

“Didn’t mean what?” he continues. “Didn’t mean that I’m slow? That I can’t keep up?”

“I didn’t say that—”

“You didn’t have to.”

Another step.

You retreat again.

“I was tired, I was overwhelmed—”

“And that makes it okay?” he challenges.

“No, it doesn’t,” you admit, voice cracking slightly. “I was wrong.”

He doesn’t stop.

You keep backing up.

“I didn’t know you,” you add, desperate now. “I didn’t understand—”

“You didn’t try to.”

Your back hits the wall.

Nowhere left to go.

He’s right there.

Close.

Not touching.

But close enough that you can feel the heat of him, the tension rolling off him in waves.

For a second, neither of you speaks.

Then, quieter—

“You got any idea,” he says, “what it takes to keep up the way I do?”

Your throat tightens. “…No.”

His gaze holds yours.

“Every step,” he continues, voice low, controlled, “every shift, every hour on my feet—I feel it.”

Your chest aches.

“But I don’t stop,” he says. “I don’t slow down. Not ‘cause I can’t.”

A beat.

“Because I won’t.”

The weight of that settles over you.

Heavy.

“I know,” you whisper. “I see that now.”

He studies your face.

Like he’s searching for something.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say, more firmly this time. “And I’m sorry I didn’t before.”

Silence stretches.

Then—

“I never thought you were weak,” you add softly. “I just… didn’t understand how strong you actually are.”

Something shifts in his expression.

Not gone—never gone—but… softer.

Less sharp.

He exhales slowly.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Well.”

For a second, it feels like he might step back.

Put the distance between you again.

But he doesn’t.

His hand comes up—hesitates—then rests against the wall beside your head.

Not trapping you.

Just… there.

Close.

“I don’t hate you,” he says again, quieter now.

“I know.”

Another pause.

“And I don’t wanna,” he adds, almost like it costs him something to admit it.

Your heart stutters.

“Then don’t,” you say.

His gaze flicks to your lips.

Then back up.

“You make that hard.”

“Why?”

He huffs a quiet breath.

“‘Cause I started carin’,” he admits.

The words land between you.

Heavy.

Real.

“And I didn’t think I should.”

Your voice softens. “Because of what I said?”

“That’s part of it.”

“And the rest?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

Just looks at you.

Then, finally—

“You deserve someone who doesn’t hesitate,” he says.

Your chest tightens.

“Then stop hesitating,” you reply gently.

Something in him falters.

Just for a second.

Then—

He leans in.

Not a rushed move.

Not impulsive.

Deliberate.

Careful.

Like he’s choosing it.

Like he’s choosing you.

And when his lips finally meet yours, it’s steady. Grounded. A quiet kind of intensity that feels like it’s been building for far too long.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests briefly against yours.

“…Still think I slow you down?” he murmurs.

You shake your head, breath unsteady.

“Not even close.”

And this time—