are you angry?

Jack Abbot hates the rain.

Back when he didn't wake, fingertips reaching out for a body that was no longer there, or an itch without a source, he would happily submit to a sudden downpour. Let it wash over him: mind and body. It had been a welcome change from that smothering dryness of the desert.

He relished afternoons spent beneath layers of scratchy blankets and a warm pair of legs stretched languidly across his lap. He never minded the cramps, either, although he’d dramatically complain every time he reluctantly stood to refill the chip bowl. Jack would’ve gladly let both legs go numb for days if it meant she was there with him, sleeping safely.

But that was then. A lifetime ago, it seemed.

In this new life that he finds himself in, rain is no longer romantic: the heel of his prosthetic slips against slick asphalt, and phantom aches bloom beneath the pressure of the storm.

So, he stopped walking to work at even the tiniest threat of a downpour. Started driving instead, one hand loose against the steering wheel while the city blurs in grey and yellow beyond the windshield. His stomach still lurching each time a headlight reflects off his left hand.

Somewhere along the way, you’d fallen into the habit of leaving your umbrella by the front door. This morning was no exception, despite the storm that had loomed over Pittsburgh since you'd woken for the day shift.

Slowly, almost without either of you noticing, the passenger seat beside Jack becomes occupied more often than not. By now, it feels natural: Jack waiting outside your apartment before sunrise, two coffees balanced precariously in the cupholder, the low murmur of the radio carrying you both to and from PTMC.

It’s been a couple of months now, but you still think he sees you as something wounded and uncertain, all stumbling limbs and creased scrubs. At first, the rides home had felt clinical in their politeness, the kind of thing a man like Jack would offer to any young, vulnerable woman walking home alone. An attending physician making sure one of his nurses gets home safely after a shift. Nothing more.

Yet, somewhere between winter bleeding into spring and spring bleeding into summer, rides home become rides to work too. Not that you’d expected it of him. The first time he texted I’m outside before dawn, you stared at your phone for nearly a full minute, assuming the message had arrived by mistake. Truthfully, the time spent beside him at the beginning and end of each day had quickly become your most cherished part of the week, though admitting that aloud would probably kill you instantly.

There is just something about the quiet intimacy of it all. Knowing the inside of Jack Abbot’s truck by heart feels strangely sacred, like stumbling accidentally into a part of him no one else gets to know. You know the cracked leather smell of the seats, the faint bite of industrial-strength antiseptic soaked permanently into the fabric of his jackets, the pine-and-smoke air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror that he pretends not to notice, replacing every few weeks.

You know he taps twice against the steering wheel whenever he’s stuck at a red light too long. That he drives one-handed when he’s relaxed enough. That he always leaves the radio low enough to talk over, even if neither of you says much at all.

Sometimes he leaves you alone in the truck while he pays for gas inside, and you find yourself sitting there in the strange quiet intimacy of his absence, surrounded by discarded receipts and the lingering warmth of him in the driver’s seat.

When he finally relented and handed over control of the Bluetooth, you started building entire playlists around songs you thought he might like. Older songs, mostly. The kind that sounded right played low through sleeping streets and rain-heavy mornings.

The first time a Jeff Buckley track played through the speakers, Jack glanced sideways at you so abruptly you nearly laughed.

“Kid,” he’d said, one corner of his mouth twitching despite himself, “how the hell do you know about Buckley? Were you even alive when he was making music?”

“Wow,” you’d muttered, feigning offence while staring pointedly out the windshield. “That doesn’t make you sound ancient at all.”

A quiet huff of laughter escaped him then, brief enough you almost missed it. “Answer the question.”

Warmth had spread embarrassingly fast through your chest. “My dad had all of his records,” you admitted. “He would play them every Sunday morning, without fail. Coffee brewing, windows open, the whole house smelling like burnt pancakes.”

Jack had gone strangely quiet after that. “Sounds nice,” he’d said eventually, voice softer than before.

You remembered thinking, stupidly, that you would spend the rest of your life chasing the feeling that single sentence gave you.

This morning, however, Jack had nearly rear-ended a Prius at a stoplight when Otis Redding flooded suddenly through the speakers.

“Fuck––” he braked hard, enough for the coffees to slosh dangerously against their lids.

You burst into laughter immediately, fumbling for the skip button. “You trying to kill us before shift, Abbot? I didn’t realise you felt that strongly about Otis Redding.”

Something unreadable crossed his face then. Quick enough, you almost missed it. “I’m sorry,” was all he had replied.

Of course, you were entirely oblivious to the fact that he’d once held his wife close to that same song in the soft yellow light of a rented reception hall.

Suddenly, he had been twenty-nine again, one hand at his wife’s waist, convinced happiness might actually last forever. He can still remember the weight of her against him. The damp curl of her hair at the nape of her neck from dancing too hard, too long. She’d laughed when he stepped on the hem of her dress, all breathless disbelief, like she couldn’t understand why someone as solemn as him had chosen her.

Someone had told him once that wet knots were harder to untie. Jack remembers hearing it the morning of his wedding, while rain hammered against the reception hall roof and guests stumbled inside carrying dripping bouquets and ruined umbrellas.

Later on, he’d watched as water dripped from his wife’s eyelashes, dress plastered against her knees, and kissed her beneath a storm-dark sky. Of course it is, he’d thought. Nothing on this earth could pull us apart.

Despite the steady pull of nightfall, the remnant heat of the day still presses hard against the windows. A couple of hours into your shift, the air conditioning had finally coded after years of being on the brink; also known as Gloria's so-called "to-do list". Now, every surface feels like it's sweating, and every fluorescent light buzzes too loudly.

In the room next to you, somebody bleeds onto the floor of trauma three.

Outside of ordering around overheated interns, Jack has barely spoken for the entirety of your shift, not that the others have picked up on it. To everyone else, Jack Abbot is always stoic, vaguely irritated, and entirely in control. It's part of his whole thing. But you'd come to learn the difference between Jack's tiredness and absence.

Even exhausted, Jack keeps the music low on the drive to and from PTMC. He still asks what you’re doing for dinner afterwards, still tucks away pieces of his day to tell you during the quiet stretches between traffic lights.

But this version of him, with all that vast, unreachable space that leaves you fumbling blindly in the dark, prefers the low hum of the road instead. You think it steadies him. Quietens whatever is clawing around inside of him.

Tonight, Jack is somewhere else.

You watch as he moves through the department with clipped efficiency, jaw locked so tight it hurts just looking at him. He answers questions with one-word responses, broad shoulders tense beneath black scrubs, already darkened with sweat between the shoulder blades and armpits.

Twice, you catch him staring blankly at nothing after trauma pages. The third time, you find a moment to slip beside him, fingers skimming his arm against his behind the privacy of paperwork.

“Hey,” you whisper. He blinks hard and sucks a breath deep between his teeth, like you'd dragged him up from underwater. “You okay?”

For a second, something unfamiliar to you flicks across his face. “I'm fine.”

His hand flexes once against the counter between you, silver flashing beneath fluorescent light. A stupid ache twists unexpectedly beneath your ribs. He isn’t yours, and you’re not even sure he ever could be.

Around you, monitors beep. Someone shouts for respiratory. Rain hammers steadily against the ambulance bay doors with sudden force.

Jack is already turning away. “I’m trying to work.”

The sentence lands clean between your ribs. Heat lightning pulses silently behind dark clouds.

“Right,” you say quietly, resting your hands on the desk in front of you. "Of course."

By the time the words fall from your lips, he's already gone.

The storm breaks fully an hour later. Thunder rattles the entire building hard enough to shake already wobbling ceiling panels loose, while half the waiting room complains about flickering lights. Ambulances keep coming anyway. Wet footprints mesh with stray drops of blood that fall from passing gurneys, streaking across the tile.

You stop looking for him. Stop drifting unconsciously toward whichever trauma bay he’s ruling over. You make the conscious decision not to double-check if he’s eaten, if he needs coffee, if he remembered to take something stronger than aspirin for the headache he’s been nursing since noon.

And the ER continues to move around both of you in frantic bursts: trauma pages, crying parents, soaked paramedics tracking rainwater across the floor. But now there is something strained and invisible stretching between you; it hums louder than the fluorescent lights overhead.

Dana corners you near the nurses’ station while peeling off a pair of latex gloves with her teeth.

“You two fight or something?”

You nearly fumble the stack of charts in your arms. “What?”

Dana snorts softly. “Please. The air pressure in here dropped ten degrees the second Abbot snapped at you.”

“He didn’t snap at me.”

“Mm.” She arches a brow. “I hope you remembered your umbrella.”

Despite yourself, your gaze flickers instinctively across the department.

Across the ER, Jack stands with one hand braced against the trauma board while an intern stumbles through a patient presentation. You can't help but let your eyes fall to his broad shoulders, tense beneath dark scrubs. His wedding band catches briefly beneath harsh fluorescent light.

You know about his wife; you understand enough to know this has never really been about rejection. The problem is almost worse than that. Because sometimes, in the quiet moments between shifts and traffic lights, it feels painfully possible that Jack wants you too.

Dana follows your line of sight before nudging your shoulder lightly. “He’s been in a mood all day. I doubt it's you, kid.”

As though he feels you looking, his head turns. Your stomach knots stupidly, and you look away first, busying yourself reorganising charts that don’t need reorganising. “He was fine this morning.”

“Fine for Jack or fine for a normal person?”

Despite yourself, a small laugh escapes through your nose.

“No, I mean…” You hesitate. “He was okay. We were talking like normal in the truck.” Your chest tightens unexpectedly. “And then something just switched.”

Dana’s expression softens slightly. “What happened?”

You think of the way his face closed the second you touched him. Like a door slamming shut.

“I don’t know.” The words come out quieter than intended. “Dana... Sometimes I can’t tell if he actually wants me there or if I’m just…” You trail off.

“Just what?”

You stare toward the ambulance bay, where rainwater runs in shimmering rivers beneath harsh fluorescent light.

“A distraction, maybe.”

Even saying it aloud feels ridiculous. Jack isn’t yours to lose. There’s no relationship to question, no promise sitting between you waiting to be broken. Just shared rides to work, lingering glances, coffee cups balanced between the seats of his truck. A thousand tiny things that you so dangerously wish meant something more.

Dana snorts immediately. “That man looks at you like you hung the moon.”

“Sometimes I think he likes needing me more than he likes… me.”

“Maybe at first,” she admits carefully. “Men like Jack… they cling to whatever keeps them standing.”

Your stomach drops. Dana watches the expression cross your face and immediately sighs.

“Hey.” Her voice softens. “That’s not what I meant.”

“It kind of sounded like what you meant.”

“What I mean,” Dana says softly, “is that Jack’s been drowning for a long time.”

The rain batters harder against the ambulance bay doors, loud enough now to shake through the walls.

“And?” you ask quietly.

She glances across the department before answering. “And people who’ve been drowning long enough don’t always realise they’re allowed to want more than just survival.”

Your throat tightens painfully, and for a moment, neither of you speaks.

“I loved her too, you know.”

“Dana—”

“I’m serious.” Her expression gentles. “She was my friend.”

Guilt blooms hot and immediate beneath your ribs, ugly enough to make you feel suddenly sixteen instead of twenty-six. Dana must see it on your face, because she reaches over and briefly squeezes your forearm.

“Oh, honey. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

She lowers her voice slightly. “Loving him doesn’t make either of you disloyal to her.”

Your chest aches so sharply it almost pisses you off.

"I never said that I—"

Before you can finish, a parademic calling out a trauma page cuts violently through the hallway.

Your head snaps up instantly, and just like that, the moment is over.

By the time handover finally arrives, the storm has swallowed the entire city. Water pours in silver sheets beyond the ambulance bay, gutters overflowing enough to sound like rushing rivers. Somewhere miles away, thunder groans low and endless.

You pull your bag onto your shoulder without looking toward the trauma board. You can still feel him anyway; that awful magnetic awareness.

Jack appears beside you silently a moment later, keys spinning once around his finger. He always does that when he’s tired; an unconscious little movement that grows faster the longer his shifts run.

Usually, the sight of it softens something in you instantly. Tonight, it feels mocking.

“You ready?” he asks.

You zip your jacket slowly. “I’m going to walk.”

Jack’s brow furrows immediately. “What?”

“I said I’ll walk.”

Outside, heat lightning fractures the sky in white bursts.

For a second, he just stares at you, genuinely confused, like the possibility never occurred to him. Somewhere along the way, your place beside him had become inevitable. Passenger seat. Coffee cup. Shared silence before sunrise.

“Don’t be crazy,” he says. “It’s pouring.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Another roll of thunder shakes the garage.

You should let him drive you home. You know that. The walk to your apartment isn’t exactly safe in weather like this, and Pittsburgh streets flood if somebody sneezes too hard near the river.

But something ugly and wounded still twists beneath your ribs.

Dana’s voice echoes unpleasantly in your head, and maybe she's right, but people look at beautiful things all the time without intending to keep them.

“You’re tired,” he says flatly. “Just get in the truck.”

“Goodnight, Jack.”

Before he can answer, you push through the garage doors into the storm.

The rain is brutal immediately.

Cold water soaks through your scrubs within seconds, hair plastering to your skin as thunder cracks somewhere overhead, sharp enough to make you flinch. Cars hiss past through flooded streets, headlights smeared gold against rain-slick asphalt.

Anger keeps your spine straight for almost half a block. After that, exhaustion starts creeping in around the edges.

Your soaked scrubs cling uncomfortably to your skin with every step. Water fills the seams of your shoes. Somewhere above you, old fire escapes rattle in the wind hard enough to sound like distant applause.

Rainwater splashes around your ankles as you step off the curb. Five minutes later, headlights appear beside you through the storm.

Jack’s truck crawls slowly along the flooded curb lane, and the passenger window lowers with a mechanical whine.

“You’re being insane,” he calls over the rain.

You don’t look at him.

“Go home.”

The truck keeps pace beside you as thunder rolls overhead.

“Please get in the truck.”

Rain batters violently against the hood as the truck crawls beside you. You wipe water from your face angrily, though it’s useless.

“I said no.”

Jack exhales sharply through his nose, fingers tightening against the steering wheel. “Jesus Christ, what is this about?”

The question stops you cold. Because that’s exactly it, isn’t it?

He still thinks this is sudden. Like your hurt appeared out of nowhere instead of being carved slowly into you over months of almosts and maybes and careful little silences.

You turn toward the open window, finally. Rainwater drips from your jaw onto the pavement below.

“I’m sorry that I snapped at you earlier.”

“That’s not the point.”

Something flickers across Jack’s face then. Frustration. Confusion. Fear. You can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. For a second, he just stares at you through the storm.

Then the truck shifts abruptly into park, and the engine dies. Jack shoves the driver’s door open hard enough for rain to blow immediately into the cab.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath as he steps out into the street.

Water darkens his shirt within seconds while he comes around the front of the truck toward you, expression tight with something dangerously close to desperation now.

“Help me out here, kid,” he says. “What is this really about?”

Thunder cracks overhead hard enough to rattle nearby windows.

Your laugh comes out thin and disbelieving. “You pull me close every time you want something to hold onto, and then the second it feels too real, you shove me back out again.”

“That’s not fair.”

Lightning flashes somewhere overhead, bleaching the entire street white for half a second. In the sudden brightness, Jack looks exhausted.

Your anger falters dangerously before hardening all over again.

“No?” Your voice rises despite yourself. “Then what exactly are we doing here, Jack?”

Rain streams from his hairline now, dampening the collar of his shirt where the storm blows through the open window.

“You think you’re protecting people,” you say, quieter now. “But you’re not. You’re just hurting them before they get the chance to hurt you.”

Jack’s jaw tightens visibly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Something hot and furious twists suddenly through your chest.

“No,” you snap. “You don’t get to do that.”

His expression hardens. “Do what?”

“Act like you’re the only person on earth who’s ever had something terrible happen to them.”

The words disappear instantly beneath the storm. Rainwater drips steadily from the edge of the truck roof between you both. Somewhere nearby, thunder groans low enough to vibrate beneath your feet.

You can see the exact moment he starts to answer automatically — defensive and wounded, ready to shut the conversation down entirely. Then, something in your expression stops him.

“What does that mean?” he asks finally.

Your throat tightens. You hadn’t meant to say that much. “Nothing.”

“Hey, don’t do that.”

A sharp laugh tears out of you before you can stop it. “That’s funny coming from you.”

Jack ignores it, eyes fixed entirely on your face now. Rain darkens his shirt collar, curls damp against his temples.

“What happened to you?”

The question lands like a bruise; not because nobody has ever asked before, but because Jack asks it like he already knows the answer will hurt him, too.

You fold your arms tighter across yourself instead, fingers digging hard enough into your sleeves to ache.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if—”

“No.” Your voice cracks sharply enough to surprise both of you. “No, Jack, it doesn’t.”

Heat rushes suddenly beneath your skin despite the freezing rain.

“Because that’s not the point.”

Jack’s expression shifts again. You look away from him first.

Cars move through flooded streets behind you both, headlights smeared gold and white against rainwater. The entire city feels blurred at the edges.

“You think I don’t understand fear?” you ask quietly.

Jack says nothing.

“You think it’s easy for me to let people touch me?” The words scrape painfully against your throat. “To trust them?”

His face changes instantly, and you laugh again, softer this time. Bitter around the edges.

“Yeah.”

Jack opens his mouth, then closes it again. Windshield wipers drag furiously across the glass beside him, rhythmic and desperate.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Every day,” you continue, staring hard at the sky, “there’s this feeling—”

You press a fist briefly against your sternum.

“Like somebody left a knife inside me and every time a person gets too close, it twists a little deeper.”

Jack’s entire expression crumples for half a second before he catches it.

“But I still try,” you whisper. “I still wake up every day and make the choice to trust people anyway.”

Your eyes finally meet his again through the rain.

“I’m sorry, Jack.” Your voice shakes slightly now, exhaustion bleeding through the anger. “I really am.”

He looks away immediately. Rainwater drips from the edge of his jaw while one hand comes up briefly, rubbing hard across his mouth like he’s trying to physically hold himself together.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” you continue quietly. “I’m sorry the love of your life died, and I can’t even begin to imagine what that did to you, and what it continues to do to you.”

His nose scrunches sharply for half a second, pushing away the first hint of pain before it gets the chance to reach him.

“But you can’t have it both ways.”

Jack’s eyes close briefly.

“You can’t pull me close every time the silence starts feeling too heavy and then shove me away the second you remember why you’re scared.”

The storm presses around both of you in violent sheets of rain.

“I can’t be the person who makes you feel less lonely when it’s convenient and then take the brunt of your grief every time it catches up to you.”

He flinches, and you think it might be the first time you’ve ever seen him look genuinely ashamed.

Your throat aches around the next words.

“You have to be brave enough to let this be real,” you whisper. “Or you have to leave me alone.”

Rainwater streams steadily down Jack’s face now, impossible to separate from anything else.

When he finally looks back at you, he looks devastated.

Jack stares at you through the rain for so long you start to feel hollowed out by it.

His chest rises once beneath soaked black fabric.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says finally.

The words come out rough and stripped raw. He shakes his head once, hard enough to send rainwater scattering. “You don’t understand.”

Something inside you splinters quietly as he laughs once under his breath. The sound is horrible.

“I buried my wife.” The sentence seems to fight its way out of him.

“I had to stand there while strangers asked me what kind of wood she would've wanted for her casket.” His eyes unfocus somewhere beyond you. “I had to pick flower arrangements. Do you understand what that does to a person?”

You stare at him for a long moment, rainwater dripping steadily from your chin. "No, I don't."

“But, Jack... I can’t keep standing in the doorway of your life hoping you’ll eventually let me inside.”

Your voice breaks softly then. Worse somehow than yelling.

“And I love you too much to let it turn me into someone who begs for scraps.”

Jack physically recoils like the words hit him somewhere vital.

When he still says nothing, that’s how you know it’s over. Thunder rolls somewhere far above the city, softer now. Tired. Your chest hurts, and now that the adrenaline has worn off, you can feel the cold seeping into your bones.

You wipe uselessly at your face with a soaked sleeve before stepping toward the passenger door. The handle sticks slightly before finally giving beneath your grip.

Jack looks over immediately, startled.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m cold, and I want to go home,” You say quietly.

The words sound exhausted rather than angry now.

You climb into the truck without waiting for permission, soaked scrubs sticking unpleasantly against the leather seats. The interior smells faintly like rainwater, old coffee, and pine.

Home. The feeling nearly makes you nauseous.

Jack says nothing as you pull the door shut, just hauls himself inside, next to you but far away, and shifts the truck into drive.

Rain hammers steadily against the roof while Pittsburgh slides past in blurred reflections of red brake lights and flooded sidewalks. Somewhere near downtown, a traffic light flickers weakly against standing water.

You stare straight ahead the entire drive.

Once, at a stoplight, Jack opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but quickly thinks better of it.

Twenty minutes later, the truck pulls to a stop outside your apartment building. Neither of you moves.

Your fingers tighten slowly around the strap of your bag. “Goodnight, Jack.”

His jaw flexes.

“Kid—”

You can’t survive hearing whatever he has to say right now.

“Don’t.”

The word comes out smaller than intended, and Jack falls silent immediately.

For one awful second, you almost take it back. Almost lean across the centre console and kiss him just to stop this feeling from happening.

You force yourself to open the door instead. Cold air rushes instantly into the truck.

“I meant what I said,” you whisper without looking at him. “You have to leave me alone if you can’t be brave about this.”

Then you step out into the rain and close the door behind you.

Jack watches you disappear into the apartment building without moving. He stays parked there long after the hallway light above your door finally clicks off.

By the time Jack gets home, the storm has started to weaken. Rain still falls steadily, but softer now. Exhausted around the edges.

His prosthetic clicks dully against the front steps as he climbs toward the porch, each impact softened by waterlogged carbon fibre. Somewhere nearby, gutters overflow in uneven streams.

The house greets him in the same empty way it always does.

Water drips steadily from the hem of his jacket onto hardwood floors she once insisted were charming because of the scratches. Jack had argued about refinishing them for almost a year after moving in.

She’d laughed outright. “If a house looks like nobody has ever lived in it, what’s the point of having one?”

His chest caves suddenly around the memory. Jack shuts the front door behind him and abruptly cannot breathe.

Both fights replay violently in fragments behind his eyes.

You stood in the rain, water running down your face in silver streams beneath flashing streetlights, being braver than he had ever been.

The look on your face when he told you he couldn’t do this. His chest tightens hard enough to hurt.

He reaches automatically for the kitchen counter and misses. His keys hit the hardwood first, then the rest of him follows.

Jack sinks heavily onto the kitchen floor with one hand crushed hard against his mouth because the sound trying to crawl out of him feels unbearable.

He hasn’t cried like this since the first night without her.

Not at the funeral or while signing paperwork. Not while packing her clothes into boxes that lie dormant in the guest bedroom.

Only once. The night he rolled over half-asleep and reached for a body that was no longer there. The memory of it still lives inside him like a wound that never scarred correctly: cold sheets, darkness, and the split second before remembering.

A broken sound tears violently out of him before he can stop it.

“What am I supposed to do?” he chokes helplessly into the empty house.

Rain taps softly now against the kitchen windows. Jack lowers his head hard against the cabinet behind him, shoulders shaking beneath soaked fabric.

“Please,” he whispers.

He doesn’t even know who he’s talking to anymore. God? His wife? The version of himself that existed before grief hollowed him out from the inside?

Outside the kitchen window, the storm has finally broken apart. Water still drips steadily from gutters and telephone wires, but above them, the clouds have started to split open. Pale gold light bleeds softly through the darkness beyond. Jack stares at it through blurred vision. And suddenly, horribly, he remembers her laughing beneath the awning outside their wedding venue while rain soaked the hem of her dress.

Rain always stops eventually, Jackie.

The memory lands differently this time; alive enough in his mind that for one impossible second, Jack can almost feel her hand slipping damp and warm into his. God, she would’ve been furious with him for mistaking loneliness for love all these years. Furious that he’d turned surviving her into the only thing left of himself.

Jack lets out a breathless sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, rubbing hard at his face with the heel of his hand. And for the first time since she died, the memory of her does not feel like being dragged under. Rather, it feels like somebody reaching back for him through the dark.

✧ hello! i'm dee. she/her. i currently write for joel miller, clark kent, jud duplenticy, michael robinavitch, and jack abbot✧ my requests are open

✧ i do not have a taglist, so please follow my updates blog @sempersirenswrites to be notified each time i post a new fic

✧ last updated: 07/06/2026

✧ all fics are 18+ and have specific content warnings for each chapter. no use of y/n, implied afab reader in all fics. mdni

jack abbot ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

✧ these arms of mine | widower!jack x f!reader

what if you were a WIDOWER and you had COMBAT TRAUMA and a DEAD WIFE and there was a STORM but the WOMAN that you're IN LOVE WITH wouldn't let you DRIVE HER HOME but she's also TRAUMATISED and did i mention there's a STORM

michael robinavitch ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

✧ i still dream of violence, angry at the waiting game

during a flare of pmdd, you arrive in dr robinavitch's emergency room

clark kent ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

✧ freeze | corensupes x journalist!reader

after a traumatic train ride, clark does everything in his power to ensure you don't blame yourself

jud duplenticy ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

✧ genuflecting ghost | part one - part two - part three

ongoing. when two people starved of being truly seen meet across a vow neither of them chose lightly, restraint can only hold for so long

joel miller ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

✧ bambi | jackson!joel x teacher!reader

when ellie’s instincts tell her something is wrong, joel follows them into a morning that refuses to stay quiet. what begins as concern leads him into the private violence of a house built on fear and righteousness, where belief is used as a weapon and love becomes possession

✧ raising hell all over town | bfd!joel x younger f!reader | part one - part two

completed. you've been a friend of sarah's since you were old enough to steal bottles of her dad's whiskey for parties. sarah was always the sensible one in your friendship, getting you out of the trouble you usually started. but now sarah has gone off to college, who else but joel could pick up the pieces?

✧ party 4 u | dbf!joel x f!reader

you and joel have been in a secret relationship for almost a year, but fear soon seeps into the cracks when you get an offer you can't refuse - and all comes to a head at a party thrown for you by your dad

✧ daughter lessons | preachers daughter!reader x jackson!joel

would it kill joel to just touch you?

✧ yes, chef | au chef!joel x f!reader | part one - part two - part three - part four

completed. joel miller is the head chef of a prestigious michelin star restaurant in the city. after working for him for over a year, you're determined to not let his ill-temper and cutting words dampen your spirit and love for your career. you won't give in at chipping away at his tough exterior, living in the hope of finding something sweeter below the surface

✧ sun bleached flies | chapter one - chapter two - chapter three - chapter four -chapter five - chapter six

(please read with caution of warnings) stumbling upon the settlement of jackson whilst 4 months pregnant had almost felt too good to be true. for the past seven years, you had been able to raise your daughter, mia, surrounded by a safe and supportive community. however, your small slice of paradise comes tumbling down the day joel miller arrived. despite only crossing paths for a fleeting encounter all those years ago, you would never forget the face of your daughter's father

✧ strangers in the night | series masterlist - part one