hasta la vista vatos

Jack doesn’t even give you the satisfaction of a raised, mocking eyebrow. Instead, he just hums, finger methodically prodding the skin of your palm.

“Funny,” he finally says completely deadpan, pausing his weird medical morse code on your palm and looking up. The harsh fluorescent lighting overhead flickers once before bathing him in white light. It catches on his silver hair, casting his face in a sharp relief.

You blink, eyes semi-focused on his form, before shaking your head in disgust.

He was kinda… beautiful.

In an art way.

It takes everything in you to not roll your eyes at your stupid-ass thoughts.

When you were younger, you had always wanted to be into art. You wanted to take art classes and go to museums and become the next Rembrandt, given, of course, that you not take a mistress and become completely broke. Instead, you were forced into Latin classes, and fucking macroeconomics, and some course named Societal Foundations in Modernity—whatever the hell that means.

And then you were in law school, you traded in those art books for the cool and functional digital moving pictures. Three years filled with slivers of time neatly penciled in and allocated for the sole purpose of procrastination.

For you, half of those penciled in hours had been spent playing Assassin’s Creed II.

So, when you had just gotten your first big girl paycheck, you decided what better way to celebrate than to procrastinate seeing your family with seeing the real thing? You sent a half-assed apology to your parents for missing Christmas, packed your bags, put in a vacation request, and boarded your flight to Florence without waiting to see if it was even approved.

And while you couldn’t legally traverse the roofs in a cool cloak, and you certainly couldn’t track down the men who killed your family in a bloody massacre, you could visit the Duomo.

Your feet wore paths into the sidewalk outside, circling the building again and again and again, gazing up at the ancient stone and the domed top, and you would wait until the end of the day when no one wanted to visit anymore because they had dinner reservations. The soft click of your shoes against the marble floor would echo throughout the chamber as you slowly stepped inside.

You would spend an hour just staring at Michelangelo’s David. You could never understand how he made stone look so soft, how he could make marble look like flesh.

Staring at Jack, you think maybe you understand a little better now.

Maybe Michelangelo had a war-damaged, semi-active suicide risk that cradled his hands when he got a little careless with his chisel.

Maybe that was his muse.

And maybe you should track down the artist that spent way too long carving Jack’s body into a soft statue and pay penance, pay tithes, pay allegiance in martyrdom.

His amused voice cuts through your pathetic reminiscing. “For someone with a degree in arguing, you’re surprisingly bad at defending yourself against a stationary object.”

Your head whips back in offense. “Okay, actually, one could call this a workplace hazard, Abbot. And just know I will be sending a bill to the, uh…” You wave your hand vaguely in the air before giving up, eyes glued to the line of his cheekbones. “Director people.”

“Director people,” he echoes, the corner of his mouth twitching as he reaches for a small pad of gauze. “I’ll be sure to testify to the director people that their star counsel is currently wasting medical supplies.”

Jack doesn’t even give you a warning.

The gauze, doused in the cold, biting reality of medical-grade liquid, hits the center of your palm.

Fuck Florence.

David disappears.

The Duomo burns down.

The sting of antiseptic pierces through your next smartass comment and patented barrier of deflective humor, your brain fucking glitching as he presses the small pad of wet gauze to your hand. You let out a pathetic sound somewhere between a whistle and a wheeze, muscles reflexively jumping in an attempt to escape his definition of care.

Immediately, Jack’s grip tightens on your wrist, anchoring you to his palm.

Jerkily, your eyes stutter away from the intense focus plastered plainly on his face—no condescending smirk within the vicinity of your zip code, which is worrying enough—finding the little right angle where the wall meets the ceiling directly behind Abbot.

You try to focus on anything but the way an earthquake is currently in control of your hand, small tremors wracking the damn thing—and outing you for being a little bitch about this entire ordeal—and the way the sterile light flickers, each pulse highlighting the bright red pooling under parted skin.

You try to focus on the feeling of Abbot’s hand drifting over your skin with barely-there pressure and the way it feels like he actively doused your hand in kerosene and lit an entire fucking box of matches right above it.

You really try.

But, honestly, the concoction of medical liquid tinged with iron is making you feel ill.

And Jack hasn’t said a word since he verbally assaulted you. Like he’s afraid to double text in conversation all of a sudden.

You wonder if every other patient in the hospital finds silence to be this loud.

“Okay, well, you know where your foot shouldn’t be?” you strike out desperately and way more chalant than you mean it to be. “Directly behind me.”

Way to throw it back on him, girl. And you’re not even in the club.

You’d high-five yourself had your left hand not been Abbot’s coolest, new insect he found under a rock. And, also, if the pain from the high-five wouldn’t make your hand fall off.

But, really, technically, it was Jack’s fault.

Sure, it was also a moment of uncoordinated thoughtlessness on your part, sue you—though you suspect the bastard would testify to every moment of your existence being such a thing. But it was ultimately his foot that tripped you and kicked your ass full speed into a very slicey object.

Really, if you wanted, you could pin all the blame on head counsel, who actually kicked your ass at rock-paper-scissors and sent you down here in her stead.

You should know by now that you can’t throw out paper in her presence. What are you? An amateur?

One moment, you were reluctantly stepping off the elevator with sleep-blind eyes, after having stopped at what seemed to be every level in the entire hospital, and staggering down the never-ending hallway as you attempt to locate your office door.

The next, you were reluctantly forcing your feet back down the never-ending hallway and back onto the elevator because you were abysmal at a fucking children’s game. And you don’t even know what you were braving the never-ending hallway and ratty-ass elevator for.

But honestly? It was seven in the morning.

It was seven in the morning, and seven in the morning meant that your best bad habit, Jack Abbot, was waiting down there with a shirt probably one size too small and hair that is demanding, screaming at you to pat it down.

Reluctant feet and brain notwithstanding, as far as you were concerned, you were ready to materialize in the ED like that guy from Star Trek.

Probably Star Trek. You’ve never seen it.

As soon as your foot crossed a millimeter past the threshold of the trauma room, your eyebrow quirked and some stupid variation of how it’s always hey, what law are we about to break, and never how are you disintegrated—fucking packed its bags and fled—leaving behind just your poor eyes locked on, what you would bet money on being, some dude’s fucking femur bone.

Distantly, you heard Jack arguing with one of his little residents—something about the specific density of cortical bone or who stole his favorite pair of trauma shears.

But all you saw was a visceral, three-dimensional reality of a human bone.

“Oh, no way. Fuck that, dude,” you said, feet already pivoting to get the fuck out of there.

You, however, were not counting on Jack Abbot to take a page out of your book and phase into existence directly behind you.

Feet already bickering about who got to move first, your right one shot out, catching the tip of Abbot’s stupid-ass boot. You stumbled forward, hand instinctively shooting out to the first solid object you could find—regretfully not onto Abbot’s chest, but the shiny tray that was directly in front of you.

The shiny tray with wheels.

The metal rocketed forward from under your hand, throwing your center of gravity into fucking oblivion. An expensive, metallic clang echoed through the room, broadcasting to everyone in the department your current rendition of a cartoon character. You already know Jack had his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth might shatter, trying to stifle the offensive laughter at your flailing.

Your left hand, clearly sensing a leadership vacuum of which limb was currently in charge for finding a modicum of balance, decided to stage its very own intervention, flying out to find the second closest surface to right yourself.

Instead, it found the razor thin welcome of an open lac kit.

As if it’s your fucking fault.

And now you’re going to be behind on work.

And it’s not even eight in the morning.

Ignoring your grumbling, Jack releases one of his fucking paws and reaches to his right, carding through his little pile of supplies to find a tiny amber bottle. But then he pauses, body completely still except from where his fingers wrap around your wrist, thumb mindlessly caressing your pulse.

Looking down at the skin that flutters with your embarrassingly fast pulse, you try to imbue your eyes with as much venom as you can in a demand to stop. You just know Abbot is probably counting each beat and filing it away to throw back at you.

Just humiliating.

From the corner of your eyes, you see his tongue dart out and wet his bottom lip.

His voice drifts out an octave lower than it usually is, apologetic. “I am so sorry—”

 “Thank you,” you sigh exasperatedly. “That’s all I want—”

“—that you have the coordination of a newborn foal,” Jack finishes, eyes cutting sideways to watch your expression.

Apologetic, your ass.

“Give me this thing,” you demand, muscles contracting to wrench your hand away from his grip. Struggling uselessly, you grunt between pathetic sounds of exertion, “I can do this on my own.”

Light glints off his silver curls as he tilts his head up to observe your wriggling.

“Uh-huh,” he deadpans.

Jesus Christ, is he made out of steel?

A single jerk of his arm around your wrist makes you crash to a halt. With an undignified yelp, your knee cracks hard into his as you try to steady yourself.

He raises an eyebrow, fingers momentarily still and suffocating and searingwhere they rest above your pulse. In a moment of delusion, you think you see his eyes drop down to your parted lips before snapping back to your eyes.

“Are you done being a brat?” he asks lowly and rather unamused.

Oh, come on.

You blink once, eyes wide and your brain already going down that rabbit hole.

“Yeah, sure,” you reply absently.

Does he like when you’re a brat? You could be a brat. You have no shortage of brattiness in your body. Would he act like that in—

The doctor unscrews the bottle in his hands, and the smell slaps you back into your body. A weird mix of vanilla and, like, the world’s oldest apothecary shop. You’re sure Abbot was there for the grand opening. The thought forces a single puff of laughter through your nose.

“Honestly, Jack, I think we should just cut it off,” you say, the words floating heedlessly through the air. You nod resolutely. “No big deal. I can handle it.”

A sudden thought zips through you, and you gasp in excitement. “Jack, we could start a club.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you have the vague notion that he’s just humoring you. Bitch. “I’m sure the hospital would love another one of your worker’s comp claims for a self-amputated hand.”

“Self-ampu—? You’d do it, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously, kid.”

Jack removes the little brush from the bottle and starts to paint the oddly sticky liquid onto the skin around the cut. Your shoulders relax minutely. Between the methodic stroke of the plastic bristles against your skin, and the warmth bleeding into your wrist where Jack holds it… You kinda just feel safe. Safe and—

“Ow, you motherfucker,” you hiss, hand reflexively trying to escape his simian grip. The sharp, stinging heat slices through any comfort you felt in his hands.

In a last-ditch effort at taking any sort of revenge, you kick his shin, aiming for one completely skin and bone, and instead colliding with full titanium.

“Oh my G—” Your head falls forward and muffles your words in the black cotton wrapping around his shoulder, too heavy to be supported any longer under the sheer weight of your one-hour workday. Under your head, you feel the low rumble of his chest as he laughs at you quietly.

Your head lolls to the side, cheek dragging against his scrubs, until you’re squinting up at the stubble dusting his jaw and the way too much entertainment dancing in his eyes at your physical state.

“Shut the fuck up,” you order. “Keep cleaning, you glorified janito— ow, you bitch.”

“Sorry. Hand slipped,” he says dryly.

“Bad hands. One foot,” you scathingly take stock of his body. “You’re literally a quarter of a person.”

Jack’s eyes slide to yours, a smug smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I still have the quarter that matters, kid.”

Still tucked safely into the haven of his shoulder, you feel your eyes widen involuntarily as you scramble for anything to say in response. You open your mouth, and every word you’ve ever known evaporates. You shut it again.

Quarter?

You don’t even want to hear what he means by that.

You actually really do want to know.

Should you follow up about that?

You feel dizzy.

Be cool.

You’re cool.

Abbot’s gloved hands come down on your thighs with a crack and you jerk back in surprise to stare at him. Spinning away—and artfully avoiding your scandalous gaze—the actual coldness from the busted hospital AC creeps in, reclaiming the warmth his body had provided.

Fucking get it together. You’re probably going to die in this room.

His broad shoulders obscuring what he’s doing, you hear little clanks and taps as he rummages through medical supplies. Spinning back around, a long, thin little tube safely tucked between his fingers like a cigarette, his eyes slowly drag up your legs, detailing the way your chest expands with each confused breath, and finally settle on your eyes.

“There you go, good as new. It was an open lac kit though, so we’re gonna do Tdap just in case,” he says before squinting disappointedly, already knowing the answer to his next question. “Do you know when your last booster was?”

You blink, the newfound distance allowing your brain to start working again. “Literally, what’s the point of your little system if it doesn’t have that information?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve made a free house call every time you’ve been injured,” he pointedly reminds you. “You’ve never gone into the system.”

“So, then you’re not maintaining compliance with HITECH? That’s kind of embarrassing for you.”

His hand comes up, and pinches his nose between the back of his knuckles, careful not to touch his face. “Kid, it’s just a little shot, and then we’ll give you a band-aid. Maybe even a sticker, if you’re good. You’ll be fine.”

You narrow your eyes.

And then you pause.

Hold up.

A sticker?

No one said anything about a sticker before.

Aww, man, you so want that fucking sticker.

You can be good. It’s literally a physical stamp of him telling you that you did good. You’d be fucking stupid to pass that up.

You can do this.

Just one…

Minor…

Issue.

Circling your finger in the air, you rewind your conversation. “A what now?”

“A sticker?” the bastard repeats innocently.

“Other one.”

“Band-aid?”

“Jack Abbot, you better think long and hard about wanting to prove you have recall skills right now,” you snap.

“Ah,” he says, voice dropping to a hushed rasp. The corners of his mouth turn down in a mocking frown. “A shot?”

“Hilarious,” you breathe, your voice a ghostly, high-pitched thread. “A real comedian. You should take this act on the road, Jack. Far away. Like, another continent.”

Jack reaches for the alcohol prep pad, the sound of the foil tearing open sounding like a gunshot in the quiet room.

“I’ll send you a postcard from the Amalfi Coast,” he murmurs, his eyes flicking up to yours with a challenge that makes your stomach do a somersault. “Left arm. Relax it.”

“Jack,” you say, your voice cracking as you begin the slow, panicked shuffle backward on the bed. “Jack, let’s talk about the sticker again. Let’s talk about the size of the sticker. Is it holographic? Because for a standard matte finish, I really think we’re over-leveraged here—”

He moves the stool forward, the wheels rattling against the linoleum, closing the gap before you can make your break for the door.

“No, nuh-uh.”

You scramble backwards on the bed. In a moment of complete spatial failure, your good hand misses the mattress entirely. You tumble over the edge, tendrils of the thin, pathetic excuse of a hospital blanket sneaking out and wrapping around your ankles like some kind of fuckass cursed pair of wired headphones, tightening with every move.

With a final stumble, you kick free and launch yourself against the wall. Cold brick bleeds through your shirt.

You point an accusing finger at the glint of metal in his hand. “What the fuck is that?”

His eyes narrow in confusion, head tipping to the side. “…Tdap?”

Your voice rushes out, shrill and completely devoid of the humor you wield in every word. “Abbot, I swear to God, stay the fuck away from me with that thing.”

Jack, for all his composure, just blinks in shock, jaw parted as he rises from the stool and tries to register what just happened. As seconds tick by, he just stares at you.

Somewhere in the distance, you hear the clamor of an incoming trauma.

Finally, he smiles, teeth flashing under the harsh lighting. “Are you… scared of needles, sweetheart?”

Your head shakes in exasperation, lips mouthing insults that won’t even come out.

Yeah, Jack, you are scared of needles. And?

You really wish you had something cool to say like people who are scared of heights do. I’m not scared of the height, I’m scared of the fall.

The only fall you feel right now is the one Icarus did when he got too close to the sun, except it’s you and your inability to keep up-to-date on your shots.

“Relax, sweetheart,” the word washes over you like some sort of magical spell that you have to mentally slam yourself into your skull to snap out of. “Do you trust me?”

“Fuck no,” you snap. “Abbot, I’m warning you, one more step and I will not be held liable for any action I might take to subdue you.”

Jack blinks.

His lips twist into a slow smirk.

His voice comes out just higher than a whisper. “I’d really like you to try that.”

Yeah, you would too.

Weak and powerless and pathetic to whatever pheromone has you bewitched, your eyes fall to his now crossed arms and the thick, corded muscle wrapping around them, tapering up and building into what should probably be geologically classified as mountains—or hills at the very least—but are colloquially known as his biceps.

You clear your throat and snap your eyes back to his face, seeing the amused smirk turn into a smug grin.

He takes a small step forward—more of a shifting of his weight, if anything.

You narrow your eyes, safe and sound behind your bed barricade. “Try me.”

What happens next, you firmly decide—and will decide again, and again, and again in front of a judge and jury, if you are so forced—is not your fault. If you’re honest, the only explanation is that you were, for the next ten minutes, possessed by that demon that one guy wrote about in The Exorcist.

Because there is literally no other explanation for the way your body moves.

“I'm coming, kid,” he warns, and if you were of sound mind, you’d probably ask where. But, as it stands, you are not. As an afterthought, he enticingly dangles bait. “Think of the sticker.”

The sticker is no longer enough.

The sticker is a lie.

You don't calculate the trajectory or the legal ramifications of assaulting an ED attending.

Your body simply decides that the only way to neutralize the needle is to neutralize the man holding it.

Jack lunges.

You don’t even have time to think—all you know is that you cannot be in this spot when he reaches you. Your body—your traitorous, treacherously uncoordinated body, who is the entire reason that you’re in this mess to begin with—slams into motion.

Your legs throw you horizontally, sending you rolling over the linoleum floor. Jack’s massive frame cuts through the air and tackles the space you occupied not a millisecond earlier.

“What the—?” His boots pivot, the rubber soles squeaking under him as he catches you desperately scrambling under the bed. With a panicked grunt, you clamber to your knees, head peeking up and snapping over to him to lock eyes over the mattress.

Grabbing the first weapon within your reach, the fingers of your good hand wrap clumsily around the paper-thin, wildly uncomfortable pillow on the exam bed. Too late to realize that it has absolutely zero aerodynamic integrity, you send it like a frisbee sailing at his body.

Both of you watch with bated breath as it tumbles through the space between you. The flat side of it catches the air, putting up less than no resistance and Jack bats it away with a single swat of his left forearm.

Bewildered, you crouch down under the bed to track it as it gently floats to the ground with a small puff.

You shoot back up to look at him, lost.

The veteran slowly slides his eyes from the manufactured ball of cotton on the ground and levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Are you throwing bedding at me?”

A sheepish ha-ha is his only response before you’re on the move again.

In your head, you are a shadow. You are liquid. You are a blade of grass bending in the wind.

You scramble back on your knees, blindly tossing your hand back to find more ammunition. For a second, you feel nothing but air and perhaps an inkling of embarrassment. Before that can set in, your fingertips dance over the small curve of plastic.

With a victorious smile, you launch the kidney-shaped bin at his head. It arcs through the air beautifully, clipping the doctor squarely on the shoulder and bouncing off of his crossed arms. Jack barely even reacts, eyes sliding shut and a deep sigh rattling his chest as he leans his body to the right to escape being hit above the heart.

But you keep going, taking advantage of his momentary blindness to shuffle across the floor on your stomach, aiming for the safe haven of the door.

“How fucking old are you?” You hear him ask. Pausing your movements, you glance back at where he stands, eyebrows furrowed and mouth parted.

“I— uh—” you stutter. “Old.”

“Right.” With a deep, bone rattling tiredness, he sighs again. Lunging forward, he bends down to scoop you up by your waist.

“N— no,” you say forcefully. Frantically trying to put your feet beneath you, you dodge his arms, tottering on your knees into the corner of the room. “Jack, I swear to fucking God—”

Desperately, your arm sweeps the counter beside you, finding a jar of Q-tips conveniently positioned within reach. You don’t even think. Winding back, you throw it directly at him full force.

Yeah, that’s my arm, you think distantly. I’d know that freckle anywhere.

It catches him in the gut.

Jack takes a dramatic, heavy step backwards, hand flying to his chest and eyes widening as a pained grunt escapes his lips. He stumbles slightly, foot hitting the small stool, its wheels rattling violently when it hits the brick wall.

You freeze.

Looking down, you glare at your now upturned hands.

Your evil, evil hands that just threw something at Jack Abbot.

The feral fucking adrenaline fades, replacing it with a smooth, cold dread.

Jesus Christ.

His prosthetic. His war wounds from explosives and other miscellaneous heavy artillery. His likely fossilizing joints and paper-thin skin from his insanely advanced age.

“Jack?” Your voice cracks. “Jack, I’m so sorry—”

You look up from your palms just in time to see his stupidly muscular body fucking airborne as he launches himself at you.

Your voice is shrill. “Woah, what the fuck?”

But there’s no dodging him this time. Paralyzed by rapidly fading guilt from almost killing the man, your knees unlock a second too late. His massive hands lock around your waist, spinning you and slamming his weight on you to force you back onto the mattress of the exam table.

The breath is driven out of you with an oof.

He cages, pinning your shoulders into the bedding with the heavy, unyielding warmth of his upper body, the thick muscle of his thigh slotting between your own.

“Gotcha,” he murmurs, his breath brushing hot over your lips.

Jack shifts his weight onto his right forearm as he tilts his head down.

What the fuck?

Is he about to kiss you right now?

You open your mouth a fraction, maybe to insult him, maybe to capture his lips with your own, you’re not sure. But before you can, there’s a quick, sharp pinch in the meat of your upper arm.

Instinctively, your entire body jerks, trying to escape. “Oh, you motherfucking son of a—”

Jack’s elbow moves and presses into your shoulder, stopping your squirming.

“There,” he pants, voice dropping to a rumble just above your ear. A shiver racks your body that you can’t hide. A huff of laughter puffs against your neck. “You’re officially compliant.”

Compliant.

Right.

You tilt your head towards his and look up at him through your lashes.

He hasn’t moved a millimeter.

His curly hair and confusingly colored eyes still hover inches above you. From this angle, the sharp, rugged lines of his jaw and his tastefully unshaven stubble are overwhelming. You can see the faint flecks of gold in his eyes, the way his hair wants to part at the front, but where he obstinately combs it directly back. His chest falls rhythmically against yours. The space between your mouths is dangerously small.

It would take nothing.

You wouldn’t even have to raise up on your elbows, but tilt your chin up and brush his lips with yours.

In your chest, you feel your heart jackhammering away like it’s on a construction project. You’re almost positive he could feel it under the layers of scrubs and borderline unbusinesslike-business professional.

For one agonizing breath, Jack’s gaze drops to your mouth.

His jaw tenses.

With sudden, deliberate sharpness, the doctor looks away, eyes snapping to the small wires running through the window of the door. He clears his throat—a sharp, gravelly sound that slices through your lungs and diffuses through your veins—and pushes up on his arms, sliding off you abruptly and leaving you at the mercy of the freezing room.

He sits down heavily on the edge of the mattress next to your hip, elbows resting on his knees as his head drops down.

Following his lead, you slowly push up on one palm, forcing your body into an angle approaching upright.

Your soft panting fills the room and, distantly, in some caveman part of your brain that proved resistant to evolution, you really wish your first time sweaty and out of breath with Dr. Jack Abbot was not because he tried assaulting you with a needle and you responded, understandably, with abject warfare.

And then you give a soft chuckle—a single puff of air through your nose that could have been mistaken for a huff, or a sigh, or anything else. But it’s immediately betrayed by the following shaking of the entire bed as you laugh.

Next to you, gruff laughter rumbles deep in Abbot’s chest.

“Oh my god,” you force out. “I assaulted a medical professional. That’s a crime.”

His shoulders shake with one last burst of laughter before they stall. “Want me to handcuff you, then?”

The sorry excuse for lungs in your chest suddenly stop working.

Leaning back on one hand, you throw him a smug glance. “Yeah? You wanna see me all tied u— fuck—”

Your words are suddenly cut off as the heavy metal handle on the door gives a violent clack and is yanked open, the cacophony of the ED spilling into the silence of the room. In your panic, your arm folds like a house of cards. Your foot shoots out as you scramble to stay perched on your precarious position on the mattress.

Looking up, you catch Ellis’ astonished gaze.

“What the hell happened here?” The words are strained and low, barely believing the absolute fucking mess littering the floor around you two.

“Um… creative,” you take a deep breath, the next word a high-pitched squeak, “differences?”

“Between what?”

“Uh, the biological… um, placement of…” trailing off, you glance at Abbot for a lifeline.

“…limbs?” he finishes.

You nod, wide-eyed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, softer.

“Yeah,” Ellis suddenly cuts in, eyes volleying suspiciously between the two of you. “Sure.”

She surveys the room again, eyes catching on the overturned jar slowly rolling across the imperceptibly unlevel ground, a crime scene of Q-tips around it.

You glance at Abbot again.

You throw him a small smile.

He smiles back.

As if sensing a moment of vulnerability, Ellis’ head snaps around with terrifying perception.

“Finish fixing your girl, Abbot,” she orders him, and honestly, if you didn’t work at PTMC, you’d think that he was the resident and she was the attending. “We have an incoming trauma.”

Then she saunters out of the room.

Jack turns to you, grin wide and happy.

“Yeah,” he says, mocking. “Come on, my girl.”

“Noooo,” you whine, rising into a functional sitting position. “Don’t call me— that makes you sound like Gatsby, Abbot.”

The silver-haired man gets up from the bed, boots squeaking as they hit the floor and pulls you up without even offering his hand.

You glare at his abject manhandling.

Eyes falling to your watch, you catch a glimpse of the time.

Three minutes past eight.

 Good Lord.

All that.

“What, um…” You twirl your finger in the air before halting and bringing it to rest on your temple. “Going back to that sticker, though. Is it—”

Jack’s hand reaches out and fucking flicks your forehead.

You blink. “Wh—”

Jack doesn’t even give you the satisfaction of a raised, mocking eyebrow. Instead, he just hums, finger methodically prodding the skin of your palm.

“Funny,” he finally says completely deadpan, pausing his weird medical morse code on your palm and looking up. The harsh fluorescent lighting overhead flickers once before bathing him in white light. It catches on his silver hair, casting his face in a sharp relief.

You blink, eyes semi-focused on his form, before shaking your head in disgust.

He was kinda… beautiful.

In an art way.

It takes everything in you to not roll your eyes at your stupid-ass thoughts.

When you were younger, you had always wanted to be into art. You wanted to take art classes and go to museums and become the next Rembrandt, given, of course, that you not take a mistress and become completely broke. Instead, you were forced into Latin classes, and fucking macroeconomics, and some course named Societal Foundations in Modernity—whatever the hell that means.

And then you were in law school, you traded in those art books for the cool and functional digital moving pictures. Three years filled with slivers of time neatly penciled in and allocated for the sole purpose of procrastination.

For you, half of those penciled in hours had been spent playing Assassin’s Creed II.

So, when you had just gotten your first big girl paycheck, you decided what better way to celebrate than to procrastinate seeing your family with seeing the real thing? You sent a half-assed apology to your parents for missing Christmas, packed your bags, put in a vacation request, and boarded your flight to Florence without waiting to see if it was even approved.

And while you couldn’t legally traverse the roofs in a cool cloak, and you certainly couldn’t track down the men who killed your family in a bloody massacre, you could visit the Duomo.

Your feet wore paths into the sidewalk outside, circling the building again and again and again, gazing up at the ancient stone and the domed top, and you would wait until the end of the day when no one wanted to visit anymore because they had dinner reservations. The soft click of your shoes against the marble floor would echo throughout the chamber as you slowly stepped inside.

You would spend an hour just staring at Michelangelo’s David. You could never understand how he made stone look so soft, how he could make marble look like flesh.

Staring at Jack, you think maybe you understand a little better now.

Maybe Michelangelo had a war-damaged, semi-active suicide risk that cradled his hands when he got a little careless with his chisel.

Maybe that was his muse.

And maybe you should track down the artist that spent way too long carving Jack’s body into a soft statue and pay penance, pay tithes, pay allegiance in martyrdom.

His amused voice cuts through your pathetic reminiscing. “For someone with a degree in arguing, you’re surprisingly bad at defending yourself against a stationary object.”

Your head whips back in offense. “Okay, actually, one could call this a workplace hazard, Abbot. And just know I will be sending a bill to the, uh…” You wave your hand vaguely in the air before giving up, eyes glued to the line of his cheekbones. “Director people.”

“Director people,” he echoes, the corner of his mouth twitching as he reaches for a small pad of gauze. “I’ll be sure to testify to the director people that their star counsel is currently wasting medical supplies.”

Jack doesn’t even give you a warning.

The gauze, doused in the cold, biting reality of medical-grade liquid, hits the center of your palm.

Fuck Florence.

David disappears.

The Duomo burns down.

The sting of antiseptic pierces through your next smartass comment and patented barrier of deflective humor, your brain fucking glitching as he presses the small pad of wet gauze to your hand. You let out a pathetic sound somewhere between a whistle and a wheeze, muscles reflexively jumping in an attempt to escape his definition of care.

Immediately, Jack’s grip tightens on your wrist, anchoring you to his palm.

Jerkily, your eyes stutter away from the intense focus plastered plainly on his face—no condescending smirk within the vicinity of your zip code, which is worrying enough—finding the little right angle where the wall meets the ceiling directly behind Abbot.

You try to focus on anything but the way an earthquake is currently in control of your hand, small tremors wracking the damn thing—and outing you for being a little bitch about this entire ordeal—and the way the sterile light flickers, each pulse highlighting the bright red pooling under parted skin.

You try to focus on the feeling of Abbot’s hand drifting over your skin with barely-there pressure and the way it feels like he actively doused your hand in kerosene and lit an entire fucking box of matches right above it.

You really try.

But, honestly, the concoction of medical liquid tinged with iron is making you feel ill.

And Jack hasn’t said a word since he verbally assaulted you. Like he’s afraid to double text in conversation all of a sudden.

You wonder if every other patient in the hospital finds silence to be this loud.

“Okay, well, you know where your foot shouldn’t be?” you strike out desperately and way more chalant than you mean it to be. “Directly behind me.”

Way to throw it back on him, girl. And you’re not even in the club.

You’d high-five yourself had your left hand not been Abbot’s coolest, new insect he found under a rock. And, also, if the pain from the high-five wouldn’t make your hand fall off.

But, really, technically, it was Jack’s fault.

Sure, it was also a moment of uncoordinated thoughtlessness on your part, sue you—though you suspect the bastard would testify to every moment of your existence being such a thing. But it was ultimately his foot that tripped you and kicked your ass full speed into a very slicey object.

Really, if you wanted, you could pin all the blame on head counsel, who actually kicked your ass at rock-paper-scissors and sent you down here in her stead.

You should know by now that you can’t throw out paper in her presence. What are you? An amateur?

One moment, you were reluctantly stepping off the elevator with sleep-blind eyes, after having stopped at what seemed to be every level in the entire hospital, and staggering down the never-ending hallway as you attempt to locate your office door.

The next, you were reluctantly forcing your feet back down the never-ending hallway and back onto the elevator because you were abysmal at a fucking children’s game. And you don’t even know what you were braving the never-ending hallway and ratty-ass elevator for.

But honestly? It was seven in the morning.

It was seven in the morning, and seven in the morning meant that your best bad habit, Jack Abbot, was waiting down there with a shirt probably one size too small and hair that is demanding, screaming at you to pat it down.

Reluctant feet and brain notwithstanding, as far as you were concerned, you were ready to materialize in the ED like that guy from Star Trek.

Probably Star Trek. You’ve never seen it.

As soon as your foot crossed a millimeter past the threshold of the trauma room, your eyebrow quirked and some stupid variation of how it’s always hey, what law are we about to break, and never how are you disintegrated—fucking packed its bags and fled—leaving behind just your poor eyes locked on, what you would bet money on being, some dude’s fucking femur bone.

Distantly, you heard Jack arguing with one of his little residents—something about the specific density of cortical bone or who stole his favorite pair of trauma shears.

But all you saw was a visceral, three-dimensional reality of a human bone.

“Oh, no way. Fuck that, dude,” you said, feet already pivoting to get the fuck out of there.

You, however, were not counting on Jack Abbot to take a page out of your book and phase into existence directly behind you.

Feet already bickering about who got to move first, your right one shot out, catching the tip of Abbot’s stupid-ass boot. You stumbled forward, hand instinctively shooting out to the first solid object you could find—regretfully not onto Abbot’s chest, but the shiny tray that was directly in front of you.

The shiny tray with wheels.

The metal rocketed forward from under your hand, throwing your center of gravity into fucking oblivion. An expensive, metallic clang echoed through the room, broadcasting to everyone in the department your current rendition of a cartoon character. You already know Jack had his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth might shatter, trying to stifle the offensive laughter at your flailing.

Your left hand, clearly sensing a leadership vacuum of which limb was currently in charge for finding a modicum of balance, decided to stage its very own intervention, flying out to find the second closest surface to right yourself.

Instead, it found the razor thin welcome of an open lac kit.

As if it’s your fucking fault.

And now you’re going to be behind on work.

And it’s not even eight in the morning.

Ignoring your grumbling, Jack releases one of his fucking paws and reaches to his right, carding through his little pile of supplies to find a tiny amber bottle. But then he pauses, body completely still except from where his fingers wrap around your wrist, thumb mindlessly caressing your pulse.

Looking down at the skin that flutters with your embarrassingly fast pulse, you try to imbue your eyes with as much venom as you can in a demand to stop. You just know Abbot is probably counting each beat and filing it away to throw back at you.

Just humiliating.

From the corner of your eyes, you see his tongue dart out and wet his bottom lip.

His voice drifts out an octave lower than it usually is, apologetic. “I am so sorry—”

 “Thank you,” you sigh exasperatedly. “That’s all I want—”

“—that you have the coordination of a newborn foal,” Jack finishes, eyes cutting sideways to watch your expression.

Apologetic, your ass.

“Give me this thing,” you demand, muscles contracting to wrench your hand away from his grip. Struggling uselessly, you grunt between pathetic sounds of exertion, “I can do this on my own.”

Light glints off his silver curls as he tilts his head up to observe your wriggling.

“Uh-huh,” he deadpans.

Jesus Christ, is he made out of steel?

A single jerk of his arm around your wrist makes you crash to a halt. With an undignified yelp, your knee cracks hard into his as you try to steady yourself.

He raises an eyebrow, fingers momentarily still and suffocating and searingwhere they rest above your pulse. In a moment of delusion, you think you see his eyes drop down to your parted lips before snapping back to your eyes.

“Are you done being a brat?” he asks lowly and rather unamused.

Oh, come on.

You blink once, eyes wide and your brain already going down that rabbit hole.

“Yeah, sure,” you reply absently.

Does he like when you’re a brat? You could be a brat. You have no shortage of brattiness in your body. Would he act like that in—

The doctor unscrews the bottle in his hands, and the smell slaps you back into your body. A weird mix of vanilla and, like, the world’s oldest apothecary shop. You’re sure Abbot was there for the grand opening. The thought forces a single puff of laughter through your nose.

“Honestly, Jack, I think we should just cut it off,” you say, the words floating heedlessly through the air. You nod resolutely. “No big deal. I can handle it.”

A sudden thought zips through you, and you gasp in excitement. “Jack, we could start a club.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you have the vague notion that he’s just humoring you. Bitch. “I’m sure the hospital would love another one of your worker’s comp claims for a self-amputated hand.”

“Self-ampu—? You’d do it, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously, kid.”

Jack removes the little brush from the bottle and starts to paint the oddly sticky liquid onto the skin around the cut. Your shoulders relax minutely. Between the methodic stroke of the plastic bristles against your skin, and the warmth bleeding into your wrist where Jack holds it… You kinda just feel safe. Safe and—

“Ow, you motherfucker,” you hiss, hand reflexively trying to escape his simian grip. The sharp, stinging heat slices through any comfort you felt in his hands.

In a last-ditch effort at taking any sort of revenge, you kick his shin, aiming for one completely skin and bone, and instead colliding with full titanium.

“Oh my G—” Your head falls forward and muffles your words in the black cotton wrapping around his shoulder, too heavy to be supported any longer under the sheer weight of your one-hour workday. Under your head, you feel the low rumble of his chest as he laughs at you quietly.

Your head lolls to the side, cheek dragging against his scrubs, until you’re squinting up at the stubble dusting his jaw and the way too much entertainment dancing in his eyes at your physical state.

“Shut the fuck up,” you order. “Keep cleaning, you glorified janito— ow, you bitch.”

“Sorry. Hand slipped,” he says dryly.

“Bad hands. One foot,” you scathingly take stock of his body. “You’re literally a quarter of a person.”

Jack’s eyes slide to yours, a smug smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I still have the quarter that matters, kid.”

Still tucked safely into the haven of his shoulder, you feel your eyes widen involuntarily as you scramble for anything to say in response. You open your mouth, and every word you’ve ever known evaporates. You shut it again.

Quarter?

You don’t even want to hear what he means by that.

You actually really do want to know.

Should you follow up about that?

You feel dizzy.

Be cool.

You’re cool.

Abbot’s gloved hands come down on your thighs with a crack and you jerk back in surprise to stare at him. Spinning away—and artfully avoiding your scandalous gaze—the actual coldness from the busted hospital AC creeps in, reclaiming the warmth his body had provided.

Fucking get it together. You’re probably going to die in this room.

His broad shoulders obscuring what he’s doing, you hear little clanks and taps as he rummages through medical supplies. Spinning back around, a long, thin little tube safely tucked between his fingers like a cigarette, his eyes slowly drag up your legs, detailing the way your chest expands with each confused breath, and finally settle on your eyes.

“There you go, good as new. It was an open lac kit though, so we’re gonna do Tdap just in case,” he says before squinting disappointedly, already knowing the answer to his next question. “Do you know when your last booster was?”

You blink, the newfound distance allowing your brain to start working again. “Literally, what’s the point of your little system if it doesn’t have that information?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve made a free house call every time you’ve been injured,” he pointedly reminds you. “You’ve never gone into the system.”

“So, then you’re not maintaining compliance with HITECH? That’s kind of embarrassing for you.”

His hand comes up, and pinches his nose between the back of his knuckles, careful not to touch his face. “Kid, it’s just a little shot, and then we’ll give you a band-aid. Maybe even a sticker, if you’re good. You’ll be fine.”

You narrow your eyes.

And then you pause.

Hold up.

A sticker?

No one said anything about a sticker before.

Aww, man, you so want that fucking sticker.

You can be good. It’s literally a physical stamp of him telling you that you did good. You’d be fucking stupid to pass that up.

You can do this.

Just one…

Minor…

Issue.

Circling your finger in the air, you rewind your conversation. “A what now?”

“A sticker?” the bastard repeats innocently.

“Other one.”

“Band-aid?”

“Jack Abbot, you better think long and hard about wanting to prove you have recall skills right now,” you snap.

“Ah,” he says, voice dropping to a hushed rasp. The corners of his mouth turn down in a mocking frown. “A shot?”

“Hilarious,” you breathe, your voice a ghostly, high-pitched thread. “A real comedian. You should take this act on the road, Jack. Far away. Like, another continent.”

Jack reaches for the alcohol prep pad, the sound of the foil tearing open sounding like a gunshot in the quiet room.

“I’ll send you a postcard from the Amalfi Coast,” he murmurs, his eyes flicking up to yours with a challenge that makes your stomach do a somersault. “Left arm. Relax it.”

“Jack,” you say, your voice cracking as you begin the slow, panicked shuffle backward on the bed. “Jack, let’s talk about the sticker again. Let’s talk about the size of the sticker. Is it holographic? Because for a standard matte finish, I really think we’re over-leveraged here—”

He moves the stool forward, the wheels rattling against the linoleum, closing the gap before you can make your break for the door.

“No, nuh-uh.”

You scramble backwards on the bed. In a moment of complete spatial failure, your good hand misses the mattress entirely. You tumble over the edge, tendrils of the thin, pathetic excuse of a hospital blanket sneaking out and wrapping around your ankles like some kind of fuckass cursed pair of wired headphones, tightening with every move.

With a final stumble, you kick free and launch yourself against the wall. Cold brick bleeds through your shirt.

You point an accusing finger at the glint of metal in his hand. “What the fuck is that?”

His eyes narrow in confusion, head tipping to the side. “…Tdap?”

Your voice rushes out, shrill and completely devoid of the humor you wield in every word. “Abbot, I swear to God, stay the fuck away from me with that thing.”

Jack, for all his composure, just blinks in shock, jaw parted as he rises from the stool and tries to register what just happened. As seconds tick by, he just stares at you.

Somewhere in the distance, you hear the clamor of an incoming trauma.

Finally, he smiles, teeth flashing under the harsh lighting. “Are you… scared of needles, sweetheart?”

Your head shakes in exasperation, lips mouthing insults that won’t even come out.

Yeah, Jack, you are scared of needles. And?

You really wish you had something cool to say like people who are scared of heights do. I’m not scared of the height, I’m scared of the fall.

The only fall you feel right now is the one Icarus did when he got too close to the sun, except it’s you and your inability to keep up-to-date on your shots.

“Relax, sweetheart,” the word washes over you like some sort of magical spell that you have to mentally slam yourself into your skull to snap out of. “Do you trust me?”

“Fuck no,” you snap. “Abbot, I’m warning you, one more step and I will not be held liable for any action I might take to subdue you.”

Jack blinks.

His lips twist into a slow smirk.

His voice comes out just higher than a whisper. “I’d really like you to try that.”

Yeah, you would too.

Weak and powerless and pathetic to whatever pheromone has you bewitched, your eyes fall to his now crossed arms and the thick, corded muscle wrapping around them, tapering up and building into what should probably be geologically classified as mountains—or hills at the very least—but are colloquially known as his biceps.

You clear your throat and snap your eyes back to his face, seeing the amused smirk turn into a smug grin.

He takes a small step forward—more of a shifting of his weight, if anything.

You narrow your eyes, safe and sound behind your bed barricade. “Try me.”

What happens next, you firmly decide—and will decide again, and again, and again in front of a judge and jury, if you are so forced—is not your fault. If you’re honest, the only explanation is that you were, for the next ten minutes, possessed by that demon that one guy wrote about in The Exorcist.

Because there is literally no other explanation for the way your body moves.

“I'm coming, kid,” he warns, and if you were of sound mind, you’d probably ask where. But, as it stands, you are not. As an afterthought, he enticingly dangles bait. “Think of the sticker.”

The sticker is no longer enough.

The sticker is a lie.

You don't calculate the trajectory or the legal ramifications of assaulting an ED attending.

Your body simply decides that the only way to neutralize the needle is to neutralize the man holding it.

Jack lunges.

You don’t even have time to think—all you know is that you cannot be in this spot when he reaches you. Your body—your traitorous, treacherously uncoordinated body, who is the entire reason that you’re in this mess to begin with—slams into motion.

Your legs throw you horizontally, sending you rolling over the linoleum floor. Jack’s massive frame cuts through the air and tackles the space you occupied not a millisecond earlier.

“What the—?” His boots pivot, the rubber soles squeaking under him as he catches you desperately scrambling under the bed. With a panicked grunt, you clamber to your knees, head peeking up and snapping over to him to lock eyes over the mattress.

Grabbing the first weapon within your reach, the fingers of your good hand wrap clumsily around the paper-thin, wildly uncomfortable pillow on the exam bed. Too late to realize that it has absolutely zero aerodynamic integrity, you send it like a frisbee sailing at his body.

Both of you watch with bated breath as it tumbles through the space between you. The flat side of it catches the air, putting up less than no resistance and Jack bats it away with a single swat of his left forearm.

Bewildered, you crouch down under the bed to track it as it gently floats to the ground with a small puff.

You shoot back up to look at him, lost.

The veteran slowly slides his eyes from the manufactured ball of cotton on the ground and levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Are you throwing bedding at me?”

A sheepish ha-ha is his only response before you’re on the move again.

In your head, you are a shadow. You are liquid. You are a blade of grass bending in the wind.

You scramble back on your knees, blindly tossing your hand back to find more ammunition. For a second, you feel nothing but air and perhaps an inkling of embarrassment. Before that can set in, your fingertips dance over the small curve of plastic.

With a victorious smile, you launch the kidney-shaped bin at his head. It arcs through the air beautifully, clipping the doctor squarely on the shoulder and bouncing off of his crossed arms. Jack barely even reacts, eyes sliding shut and a deep sigh rattling his chest as he leans his body to the right to escape being hit above the heart.

But you keep going, taking advantage of his momentary blindness to shuffle across the floor on your stomach, aiming for the safe haven of the door.

“How fucking old are you?” You hear him ask. Pausing your movements, you glance back at where he stands, eyebrows furrowed and mouth parted.

“I— uh—” you stutter. “Old.”

“Right.” With a deep, bone rattling tiredness, he sighs again. Lunging forward, he bends down to scoop you up by your waist.

“N— no,” you say forcefully. Frantically trying to put your feet beneath you, you dodge his arms, tottering on your knees into the corner of the room. “Jack, I swear to fucking God—”

Desperately, your arm sweeps the counter beside you, finding a jar of Q-tips conveniently positioned within reach. You don’t even think. Winding back, you throw it directly at him full force.

Yeah, that’s my arm, you think distantly. I’d know that freckle anywhere.

It catches him in the gut.

Jack takes a dramatic, heavy step backwards, hand flying to his chest and eyes widening as a pained grunt escapes his lips. He stumbles slightly, foot hitting the small stool, its wheels rattling violently when it hits the brick wall.

You freeze.

Looking down, you glare at your now upturned hands.

Your evil, evil hands that just threw something at Jack Abbot.

The feral fucking adrenaline fades, replacing it with a smooth, cold dread.

Jesus Christ.

His prosthetic. His war wounds from explosives and other miscellaneous heavy artillery. His likely fossilizing joints and paper-thin skin from his insanely advanced age.

“Jack?” Your voice cracks. “Jack, I’m so sorry—”

You look up from your palms just in time to see his stupidly muscular body fucking airborne as he launches himself at you.

Your voice is shrill. “Woah, what the fuck?”

But there’s no dodging him this time. Paralyzed by rapidly fading guilt from almost killing the man, your knees unlock a second too late. His massive hands lock around your waist, spinning you and slamming his weight on you to force you back onto the mattress of the exam table.

The breath is driven out of you with an oof.

He cages, pinning your shoulders into the bedding with the heavy, unyielding warmth of his upper body, the thick muscle of his thigh slotting between your own.

“Gotcha,” he murmurs, his breath brushing hot over your lips.

Jack shifts his weight onto his right forearm as he tilts his head down.

What the fuck?

Is he about to kiss you right now?

You open your mouth a fraction, maybe to insult him, maybe to capture his lips with your own, you’re not sure. But before you can, there’s a quick, sharp pinch in the meat of your upper arm.

Instinctively, your entire body jerks, trying to escape. “Oh, you motherfucking son of a—”

Jack’s elbow moves and presses into your shoulder, stopping your squirming.

“There,” he pants, voice dropping to a rumble just above your ear. A shiver racks your body that you can’t hide. A huff of laughter puffs against your neck. “You’re officially compliant.”

Compliant.

Right.

You tilt your head towards his and look up at him through your lashes.

He hasn’t moved a millimeter.

His curly hair and confusingly colored eyes still hover inches above you. From this angle, the sharp, rugged lines of his jaw and his tastefully unshaven stubble are overwhelming. You can see the faint flecks of gold in his eyes, the way his hair wants to part at the front, but where he obstinately combs it directly back. His chest falls rhythmically against yours. The space between your mouths is dangerously small.

It would take nothing.

You wouldn’t even have to raise up on your elbows, but tilt your chin up and brush his lips with yours.

In your chest, you feel your heart jackhammering away like it’s on a construction project. You’re almost positive he could feel it under the layers of scrubs and borderline unbusinesslike-business professional.

For one agonizing breath, Jack’s gaze drops to your mouth.

His jaw tenses.

With sudden, deliberate sharpness, the doctor looks away, eyes snapping to the small wires running through the window of the door. He clears his throat—a sharp, gravelly sound that slices through your lungs and diffuses through your veins—and pushes up on his arms, sliding off you abruptly and leaving you at the mercy of the freezing room.

He sits down heavily on the edge of the mattress next to your hip, elbows resting on his knees as his head drops down.

Following his lead, you slowly push up on one palm, forcing your body into an angle approaching upright.

Your soft panting fills the room and, distantly, in some caveman part of your brain that proved resistant to evolution, you really wish your first time sweaty and out of breath with Dr. Jack Abbot was not because he tried assaulting you with a needle and you responded, understandably, with abject warfare.

And then you give a soft chuckle—a single puff of air through your nose that could have been mistaken for a huff, or a sigh, or anything else. But it’s immediately betrayed by the following shaking of the entire bed as you laugh.

Next to you, gruff laughter rumbles deep in Abbot’s chest.

“Oh my god,” you force out. “I assaulted a medical professional. That’s a crime.”

His shoulders shake with one last burst of laughter before they stall. “Want me to handcuff you, then?”

The sorry excuse for lungs in your chest suddenly stop working.

Leaning back on one hand, you throw him a smug glance. “Yeah? You wanna see me all tied u— fuck—”

Your words are suddenly cut off as the heavy metal handle on the door gives a violent clack and is yanked open, the cacophony of the ED spilling into the silence of the room. In your panic, your arm folds like a house of cards. Your foot shoots out as you scramble to stay perched on your precarious position on the mattress.

Looking up, you catch Ellis’ astonished gaze.

“What the hell happened here?” The words are strained and low, barely believing the absolute fucking mess littering the floor around you two.

“Um… creative,” you take a deep breath, the next word a high-pitched squeak, “differences?”

“Between what?”

“Uh, the biological… um, placement of…” trailing off, you glance at Abbot for a lifeline.

“…limbs?” he finishes.

You nod, wide-eyed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, softer.

“Yeah,” Ellis suddenly cuts in, eyes volleying suspiciously between the two of you. “Sure.”

She surveys the room again, eyes catching on the overturned jar slowly rolling across the imperceptibly unlevel ground, a crime scene of Q-tips around it.

You glance at Abbot again.

You throw him a small smile.

He smiles back.

As if sensing a moment of vulnerability, Ellis’ head snaps around with terrifying perception.

“Finish fixing your girl, Abbot,” she orders him, and honestly, if you didn’t work at PTMC, you’d think that he was the resident and she was the attending. “We have an incoming trauma.”

Then she saunters out of the room.

Jack turns to you, grin wide and happy.

“Yeah,” he says, mocking. “Come on, my girl.”

“Noooo,” you whine, rising into a functional sitting position. “Don’t call me— that makes you sound like Gatsby, Abbot.”

The silver-haired man gets up from the bed, boots squeaking as they hit the floor and pulls you up without even offering his hand.

You glare at his abject manhandling.

Eyes falling to your watch, you catch a glimpse of the time.

Three minutes past eight.

 Good Lord.

All that.

“What, um…” You twirl your finger in the air before halting and bringing it to rest on your temple. “Going back to that sticker, though. Is it—”

Jack’s hand reaches out and fucking flicks your forehead.

You blink. “Wh—”