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The rink smelled like cold air, sweat, and freshly resurfaced ice, the familiar combination settling heavily into your lungs every time you pushed off the bench and stepped back onto the surface.

Your legs already ached.

The game had turned aggressive halfway through the second period after one shitty call spiraled into another, and now every shift felt sharper around the edges. Faster. Meaner. The kind of game where players stopped caring about penalties and started caring about pride instead.

You preferred games like that, if you had to be honest.

Your ponytail stuck damply to the back of your neck beneath your helmet while you skated toward center ice, adjusting your grip against your stick as the referee dropped the puck between you and the opposing center.

The collision happened almost immediately after that.

Sticks clashed. Skates carved violently against the ice. Somebody shouted from the bench behind you while bodies slammed together hard enough to rattle the boards, but your focus narrowed the way it always did during games until the rest of the rink became background noise.

You stole the puck cleanly and pushed forward.

A defender cut toward you from the left.

You dipped your shoulder, trying to slip around her.

Instead, she drove straight into your side.

The impact sent you hard against the glass with a crack loud enough to echo through the arena, pain blooming sharply along your ribs as the boards shook beneath you.

The crowd reacted instantly, and so did your teammates.

But you barely had time to register any of it before irritation outweighed the pain completely.

You shoved off the glass immediately, stealing the puck back before the defender could recover properly, and skated straight down the ice with enough force behind your strides to make your thighs burn.

Somewhere behind the opposing bench, somebody yelled, “Holy shit.”

The puck left your stick seconds later, and the goal light flashed red.

You barely had time to breathe before gloves slammed against your helmet and arms wrapped around your shoulders, the team crowding around you near the bench while the arena noise swelled louder overhead.

“You’re insane,” your captain laughed breathlessly against the side of your helmet.

You grinned despite yourself, adrenaline still racing violently through your system.

The celebration around you lasted only a few seconds before the line changed again and everybody scattered back into position, skates carving sharply across the ice while the energy in the rink climbed even higher after the goal.

You pushed a hand briefly against your ribs while skating backward toward center, testing the ache already beginning to settle beneath your padding.

It hurt.. not enough to matter, yet.

Across the arena, Logan still had not looked away from you.

He sat forward in his seat slowly, forearms resting against his knees while the rest of the crowd blurred into noise around him. The game continued moving at full speed beneath the arena lights, players shouting over one another while the referees reset the faceoff, but his attention stayed fixed entirely on you.

Dean noticed first, because of course he did.

“You good, bro?” he asked, glancing sideways from his seat beside him.

Logan barely blinked. “Who is that?”

Dean followed his line of sight toward the ice where you were circling near center.

“The defenseman?”

“The one that just got launched into the glass.”

Tucker snorted from Logan’s other side. “That doesn't narrow it down at all. They've been nasty tonight.”

Logan ignored him completely.

You pushed your helmet back slightly while talking to one of your teammates, visibly unfazed by the hit you had taken less than a minute earlier, and something about that seemed to irritate Logan further.

He wasn't irritated with you.

At the fact that nobody else on the ice appeared nearly as bothered by it as he was.

“She’s fine,” Dean said casually, mid bite of his overpriced arena pretzel. “Women’s team plays mean as hell.”

“That wasn’t a casual hit.”

Dean shrugged. “She got back up.”

“Not the point.” Logan groaned, leaning back in his seat and letting his legs spread a bit.

Tucker looked over slowly then, eyebrows lifting slightly as realization started creeping into his expression.

“Oh my God,” he muttered. “You’re obsessed with her.”

Logan finally tore his eyes away from the ice long enough to glare at him.

“I’m not obsessed.”

“You looked ready to fight somebody for checking her.”

“She hit the glass hard.”

“She also scored immediately after.” Dean piped up with a shrug and a wink.

Logan’s jaw tightened slightly.

The game resumed again before Dean could say anything else, but Logan’s attention kept drifting back toward you no matter how hard he tried to focus elsewhere. Every shift you played seemed sharper than everyone else’s. Faster. More aggressive.

You didn’t hesitate.

Most players slowed right before impact without even realizing they were doing it, bodies instinctively bracing against pain before collisions happened.

You didn’t.

You kept driving forward like fear genuinely never occurred to you.

Halfway through the third period, you slammed another player into the boards hard enough that Tucker actually winced.

“Jesus Christ,” he laughed. “She’s terrifying.”

Logan said nothing.

Your helmet turned slightly while backing away from the boards afterward, and for a brief second the arena lights caught the side of your jersey clearly enough for him to see the number stretched across your back.

Twelve.

Before he could make out the name above it, you skated off toward the bench again.

Logan leaned forward immediately.

“Twelve,” he repeated.

Dean stared at him. “What?”

“Her number.”

Dean burst out laughing. “You’re actually trying to identify her right now?”

Logan reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled his phone out without answering.

“Oh, this is bad,” Tucker said, grinning openly now. “He’s gone.”

Dean leaned over slightly while Logan opened the Briar women’s hockey roster, scrolling quickly with his thumb while the game continued in the background.

“Twelve,” Logan muttered quietly to himself.

The roster loaded slowly.

Tucker watched him with open amusement. “You don’t even know this girl.”

Logan’s eyes stayed fixed on his phone. “Working on it.”

Dean laughed under his breath. “You got all this from one hit into the boards?”

Logan finally looked back toward the ice.

You were standing near the bench listening to your coach, one glove hanging loosely from your hand while you nodded along absently, cheeks flushed from exertion and baby hairs sticking damply to your forehead beneath your helmet.

Then you smiled at something one of your teammates said.

Five minutes ago you had looked vicious enough to start a fight in the middle of the rink. Now you looked warm and relaxed. The contrast was something that Logan understood and admired.. something that was also making him constantly reconnect his wifi in the hopes that it would load faster.

Logan looked back down at the roster immediately.

“There,” Dean pointed suddenly, leaning closer. “Number twelve.”

Logan’s thumb stopped scrolling.

Your name sat there on the screen beneath your player photo.

Defense. Junior. The same number stitched across your jersey.

For some reason, finally knowing your name only made the strange tight feeling in his chest worse.

Tucker looked between Logan and the phone before laughing again.

“You’re done for, bro.”

Logan barely heard him.

Down on the ice, you stepped back into play again, completely unaware that a man several rows above the rink had just memorized your name like it was something important.

By the final stretch of the third period, Boston College had stopped looking organized and started looking frustrated.

Every pass they attempted felt rushed, every hit carried just a little too much irritation behind it, and Briar only seemed to feed off the shift in energy. The game had become brutal in the way rivalry games always did once pride got involved, fast and physical and loud enough that the sound of skates carving into the ice blended together with the roar of the crowd overhead.

Your lungs burned every time you pushed off into another sprint, exhaustion settling heavily into your legs beneath the adrenaline, but it barely registered anymore. The ache in your ribs from earlier pulsed every time you twisted too sharply, yet even that felt distant compared to the rush of momentum building around your team.

The scoreboard hanging above the rink read 5–1.

Boston looked furious about it.

You stole another pass near center ice before one of their forwards could recover properly, intercepting it so cleanly that she nearly lost her footing trying to turn around after you. The crowd reacted immediately, noise erupting through the arena while you accelerated down the ice with one of your teammates racing alongside you.

A defender moved toward you.

You waited until the very last second before sliding the puck across the ice.

Your teammate buried it immediately.

The red goal light flashed, and before you fully registered it, the arena exploded.

By the time you reached the boards again, your teammates were already swarming you, gloves smacking against your helmet and shoulders while somebody nearly crashed hard enough into your back to knock you forward.

You were laughing before you realized it, adrenaline making everything feel sharp and electric beneath your skin while the Boston goalie snapped her stick against the post in frustration somewhere behind you.

Several rows above the glass, Tucker stood abruptly from his seat with the kind of dramatic excitement only hockey players seemed capable of.

His hands coming together with immense force as his claps echoed alongside the rest of the cheers in the arena.

Dean laughed immediately beside him, though his attention shifted toward Logan a second later once he realized there had been absolutely no reaction.

Logan had not looked away from the ice.

Not once.

His forearms rested against his knees while his eyes tracked you, a small grin tugging at his lips despite the intent behind his eyes.

Dean noticed it first.

Or maybe he had noticed earlier and only now found it entertaining enough to comment on.

“Y'know,” he said slowly, “most people blink occasionally.”

Logan barely reacted.

“You’re staring at her like you’re scouting for the NHL,” Tucker added, dropping back into his seat.

“She’s good,” Logan answered simply.

It came out quieter than either of them expected.

Not dismissive. Not casual. He was just certain.

Dean glanced sideways at him then before looking back toward the ice again where you were circling near the bench waiting for the next line change.

“That is not a normal amount of interest for someone you’ve watched exactly one game of.”

Logan didn’t answer immediately.

The truth was he had stopped paying attention to the rest of the game almost twenty minutes ago. Every time you stepped onto the ice, his focus shifted toward you without thinking. The speed, the aggression, the complete lack of hesitation every time another player came near you. You played like somebody who trusted herself completely, and there was something about that confidence that had rooted itself beneath his skin almost instantly.

The final buzzer sounded not long after.

Briar won 7–1.

The entire team spilled onto the ice immediately afterward while music blasted through the arena speakers and students crowded harder against the glass cheering. Your helmet disappeared during the celebration at some point, leaving your hair flattened messily around your face while one of your teammates jumped against your side hard enough to throw both of you off balance.

You caught her automatically, laughing hard enough that Logan could see it even from the stands.

Dean leaned back in his seat slowly.

“Oh, you are fucked,” he muttered.

Logan finally dragged his attention away from the rink long enough to frown at him slightly. “Fuck off." He shoved Dean's shoulder while the two of them laughed as Logan's eyes wandered back to the ice.

You were standing near the bench now talking to your coach, your gloves tucked beneath one arm while you nodded along absently. The arena lights reflected faintly against the sweat still shining along your forehead, and even exhausted, you still looked completely awake somehow. Alive in a way that made it difficult to stop looking at you once he started.

After a short victory lap, the team slowly started disappearing through the tunnel beneath the stands while the energy in the arena softened into postgame noise. You lingered near the ice longer than most of your teammates, still talking to someone through the glass while tossing a puck over for a kid with a little Briar hockey jersey on.

Then your head turned slightly toward the stands.

Toward him.

Logan went still.

Even from this far away, he could see the brief flicker of awareness cross your expression as your eyes passed over the crowd and paused for half a second too long in his direction.

It wasn't recognition, despite the fact that he wanted it to be. It was really just awareness.. like you had felt someone watching you.

Before either of you could hold the moment long enough for it to become anything real, one of your teammates grabbed your arm and dragged your attention away again, pulling you toward the tunnel with the rest of the team.

Logan kept looking toward the empty space you had left behind long after you disappeared from sight.

The next morning felt painfully slow after the energy of the game the night before.

Campus had settled back into its usual rhythm by the time Logan crossed the quad toward his lecture hall, students moving in uneven streams through the cold while coffee cups steamed between gloved hands and backpacks bumped against shoulders in crowded walkways.

He barely noticed any of it, all he could think about was crawling back into his bed after his classes wrapped up.

Not because anything was wrong, which honestly only irritated him more, but because every time he closed his eyes he kept replaying flashes from the game in frustratingly vivid detail. The sound of skates against the ice. Your laugh during the postgame celebration. The way you kept getting back up after every hit like it genuinely offended you to stay down.

Dean had called him pathetic three separate times already that morning.

Logan still wasn’t entirely convinced he was wrong.

He pushed open the door to the lecture hall a few minutes before class started, stepping into the familiar low buzz of conversation and keyboards tapping. The room smelled faintly like coffee and winter air dragged in from outside, students already settling into seats while the projector glowed dimly against the front wall.

Logan started down the steps automatically, his hands settled in his pockets while he made his way towards the usual row he sat in.

Then, his steps came to a screeching halt.

Three rows from the front sat a navy blue Briar athlete backpack slouched beside one of the seats.

Women’s hockey was embroidered, and small along the top of the front pocket.

His eyes caught on the small keychain hanging from the zipper almost instantly.

#12.

For a second, he just stared at it. Then his gaze lifted higher.

You sat half turned in your seat talking quietly to the girl beside you, one sleeve pulled over your hand while you absentmindedly highlighted something in your notebook with the other. Your hair was perfect, and despite being beneath a helmet earlier that morning for practice, he was sure it smelled like vanilla.

Without all the gear and arena lights around you, you looked softer somehow. Still pretty enough to make his chest tighten annoyingly hard. Just… real now. Close enough to touch.

Logan stood there long enough that somebody behind him had to awkwardly step around him to get down the stairs.

He moved automatically after that, though his attention stayed fixed on you the entire way down the aisle.

You still had not noticed him.

Part of him almost preferred it that way, because now that he was actually standing in the same room as you instead of watching from the stands, he realized he had absolutely no idea what to say.

Which was new.

Logan was not usually nervous around women. Confident, relaxed, occasionally arrogant if Dean was being honest, but never nervous.

Yet suddenly he was hyperaware of everything. The sound of his shoes against the lecture hall floor. The fact that his heartbeat felt stupidly loud. The way your fingers tapped absently against your pen while reading over your notes.

He passed your row. Kept walking. Then, immediately regretted it and pretended to take a phone call to abort back up a few rows.

By the time he dropped into a seat a few rows higher, Dean — who had walked in behind him at some point — looked close to losing his mind laughing.

“Holy shit,” he whispered while sitting beside him. “You panicked.”

“I didn’t fucking panic.”

“You literally walked past her like a Victorian dude seeing an ankle.”

Logan stared straight ahead. “Shut up.”

Dean leaned back in his chair, visibly delighted. “You’re down horrendous.”

Logan ignored him, though not very successfully considering his attention had already drifted back toward you again.

You were still focused on your notebook completely unaware of the crisis currently happening several rows behind you.

Then, as if sensing it somehow, you glanced over your shoulder.

Your eyes landed on him immediately with a flicker of recognition swiping across your face almost instantly.

Logan watched the exact second you noticed him noticing you. You looked away first, and that was enough to make warmth crawl unexpectedly up the back of his neck.

Dean saw the entire interaction and looked ready to combust.

“You made eye contact,” he whispered dramatically, his eyelashes batting in a playful fashion.

“Please be quiet.”

“Are you in love?”

Logan rubbed a hand slowly over his face.

Class started before Dean could keep talking, though that honestly did not help much, considering Logan spent the first twenty minutes hearing absolutely none of the lecture.

His focus kept drifting. He noticed how you chewed lightly on the end of your pen while reading. The way you fidgeted with your necklace while listening to the professor. You wrote quickly, confidently, barely ever crossing things out or hesitating before moving onto the next line.

At one point, you stretched slightly in your seat and winced.

Subtle and quick. But Logan noticed immediately, of course he did, he was noticing everything you had done for the past 30 minutes.

Your ribs.

The hit from yesterday had clearly bruised you worse than you’d acted like it did. The thought of that was enough to bother him for the rest of class.

When the lecture finally ended, students started gathering their things immediately, backpacks zipping loudly while conversations picked up around the room.

Logan watched you zip your backpack shut carefully before standing. Then he watched two different guys notice you at exactly the same time.

One of them moved before he was able to finish fumbling to put his laptop away.

Of course he did.

Tall, confident-looking business major type. The kind of guy that was probably in a frat with a snap score of at least 2 million.

Logan felt irritation spark instantly.

The guy smiled at you while adjusting the strap of his backpack. “Hey, you’re on the hockey team, right? You played last night?”

You looked up politely. “Oh-.. uh, Yeah.”

“You were really good.”

Logan hated how genuine the compliment sounded, he was expecting this douche to be superficial and just ask for your snap to add to his roster.

You smiled softly anyway. “Thank you.”

The guy opened his mouth again, clearly gearing up to continue the conversation.

Then Logan stood.

Dean looked up immediately with the kind of excitement usually reserved for live sporting events.

“Ho-ly shit,” he muttered.

Logan ignored him completely before heading down the stairs.

He wasn’t entirely sure what his plan was, only that the idea of walking out of this room without talking to you suddenly felt impossible.

The guy was still talking by the time Logan reached the bottom of the stairs.

Something about study groups, or maybe coffee. Logan honestly was not listening closely enough to tell the difference.

Your attention stayed politely fixed on him while you adjusted the strap of your backpack higher onto your shoulder, though there was something slightly distracted about your expression, like your mind was already somewhere else entirely. Exhaustion lingered faintly beneath your eyes from the game the night before, softened only slightly by the fact that you still looked unfairly pretty standing there in your Briar hockey sweatshirt and sweatpants.

The small keychain hanging from your backpack zipper knocked lightly against the fabric every time you moved.

#12.

Logan’s eyes caught on it again before he could stop himself.

“You play unbelievable, by the way,” the guy continued. “That goal in the third period was insane.”

You smiled politely, surprised that this guy actually had gone to the game, and wasn't just using it as an excuse to hit on you. “Thanks, Boston's never an easy opponent.”

The conversation should have ended there.

You clearly wanted to end it there.

But the guy kept standing in front of you anyway, lingering just enough that Logan recognized the strategy immediately. Stretch the interaction out long enough and eventually it becomes something else.

Normally he wouldn’t have cared.

Except now he did, annoyingly so, at that.

Before he could overthink it, he stepped closer.

“You should probably ice your ribs.” The words came out naturally, low and calm, though the moment they left his mouth, you turned toward him immediately.

Recognition crossed your face faster, and it wasn't just vague familiarity, but rather memory this time.

You had seen him in the stands last night, and Logan got to watch the exact second it clicked for you.

“The guy from the game,” you smiled before seeming to realize you had spoken out loud.

Your voice sounded rougher than he expected, slightly worn at the edges from yelling over rink noise the night before.

Something about it settled heavily in his chest.

“Yeah,” Logan answered quietly.

For a brief second, the other guy still standing beside you looked deeply confused by the interaction happening in front of him.

“You know each other?” he asked.

“No,” both of you answered at the exact same time.

That seemed to catch you off guard a little because your mouth twitched faintly afterward, like you were trying not to laugh.

Logan felt warmth spread unexpectedly through his chest at the sight of it.

The other guy looked between the two of you again before apparently deciding he was suddenly no longer part of the conversation.

“Well,” he said awkwardly, adjusting his backpack strap, “I’ll see you around.”

You smiled politely again. “See you.”

The second he disappeared into the crowd of students leaving the lecture hall, silence settled briefly between you and Logan.

Up close, he noticed details he hadn’t been able to see clearly from the stands. A faint bruise near your jaw partially hidden beneath your hair. The exhaustion lingering beneath your eyes. The slight stiffness in your posture every time you shifted your weight too quickly.

You were definitely hurting more than you wanted people to notice.

“You really should ice those ribs,” he repeated more quietly this time.

Your eyebrows lifted slightly. “You could tell?”

“You flinched during class.” The answer seemed to surprise you, no one besides your roommate paid enough attention to notice when you had an injury you were insistent on downplaying.

Heat crawled faintly into your expression before you looked away for half a second, adjusting the sleeve pulled over your hand.

“It’s fine,” you murmured. “Just bruised, at least nothing's broken. ”

Logan frowned slightly. “That hit looked bad.”

“It was bad.”

“Yet, you got right back up. Scoring after nearly breaking the glass is some insane shit.”

Something softer flickered briefly across your face then.

“Kind of have to in hockey.” You shrugged in amusement, a smile tugging at your lips that was much more genuine than with the frat guy from a few moments ago.

And Logan was taking that as a win.

Students continued filtering loudly around the two of you while the lecture hall slowly emptied, but Logan barely registered any of it anymore. His attention stayed fixed entirely on you, on the way you shifted your backpack higher against your shoulder or how your fingers tapped absently against the strap while thinking.

“So, you came to the game? There was more turnout than usual for our game's last night, it was fun.” you asked after a second.

The question sounded casual, though curiosity lingered beneath it.

Logan nodded once. “Yeah, I went with some of my roommates, we decided last minute because one of them wanted a fucking pretzel.”

“And now you’re giving medical advice to strangers?”

A smile tugged unexpectedly at his mouth. “You don’t really feel like a stranger.” The sentence slipped out before he could stop it, and immediately his eyes squinted a bit in regret, and his brows furrowed.

Your eyes lifted back to his immediately.

For one horrible second, Logan considered the possibility that he had just sounded insane, but your expression softened instead in a very subtle way.

“Well,” you hummed quietly, “you still don’t know me.”

“I know your name.”

The moment he said it, your eyebrows lifted again.

“I-... uh, looked up the roster.” Logan had the decency to look slightly guilty as the words left his mouth.

You stared at him for half a second longer before laughing softly under your breath, and the sound hit him with the same force it had the night before in the arena.

It was soft and warm, to anyone else it would be like music to their ears, but to Logan? It was dangerous.

“That’s a little insane,” you told him, playfully putting on a disapproving face that quickly dissolved into a smile.

“Yeah, no, for sure.”

The honesty of the answer seemed to catch you off guard enough that you laughed again, shaking your head while starting toward the aisle leading out of the lecture hall.

Logan naturally fell into step beside you without thinking about it. From across the aisle, Dean held up two thumbs-ups and mouthed 'Fuck yeah,' which Logan was happy to drown out with the conversation that was slowly building between the two of you.

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Your parents had to work. That’s what you had told your teacher and all of the other parents when they asked why yours couldn’t attend. It wasn’t really a lie. Both of your parents did have to work that day. What you didn’t tell them is that you hadn’t even bothered to give your parents the newsletter your teacher had sent home about the spelling bee, because you already knew the chances of them actually showing up were slim to none.

They likely would have to work. And if by some miracle one of them didn’t have to work, they’d have some other prior obligation that would take precedence over a school party. One of your grandparents would need help getting to a doctor’s appointment, or one of your siblings would be sick. There would be car troubles, or one or both of your parents would have an appointment that they just couldn’t find a way out of.

As an adult, you now realize that their excuses were usually somewhat reasonable on the surface. But it wasn’t ever the excuses themselves that hurt, it was the absence that you learned to expect. Damn near every time.

It only got worse with age. When you were little, they would at least tell you that they were going to make an effort to show up to whatever party, ceremony, recital, game or graduation you had coming up. But as soon as you started to approach your teen years, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement: you kept expectations low, and they stopped bullshitting you.

They came to the bigger events - the ones that their coworkers and acquaintances would side-eye them for missing, like high school and college graduations. But even then, they did the bare minimum of showing up. There were no parties thrown in your name, no thoughtful gifts or handwritten cards signed with love and well wishes for your future.

The closest thing you ever got to a celebration was the Facebook post that your mother made when you graduated from Penn Nursing. But that was for her. Not for you. She had to let everyone know that she raised someone smart enough to graduate from one of the most prestigious nursing schools in the world.

She didn’t even bother to tag you in it. God forbid she gives you credit and takes the spotlight away from herself.

That was years ago, and the last time that you tried to include her (or anyone else in your family for that matter) in any life event that one would normally excitedly text or call their closest family members about.

Moving to Pittsburgh and getting your own apartment. Starting your first official “big girl” job at PTMC. Obtaining your SANE certification.

And, most recently, being nominated for your first Daisy award.

⋆｡°✩

“Hey,” Dana calls as she walks past where you’re staring up at the patient board, checking out exactly what you’ve walked into this morning. “Walk with me for a sec.”

She doesn’t wait for you to respond before she’s walking in the opposite direction, leaving you to follow.

And follow. And follow. Until you reach the empty break room.

“Listen,” you start, your thoughts spiraling with reasons she could be taking you somewhere private at the very beginning of the shift, “if this is about the anti-vax mom that didn’t want to let her toddler get a tetanus shot after stepping on a rusty nail yesterday, I already told you. I did not call her stupid. I asked her if she’s stup—”

“Relax,” Dana cuts in dryly. “We’ll deal with that later. This isn’t about that.” She pauses, just long enough for confusion to grow on your face. “This is about the little girl you gave blood to during the PittFest mass casualty.”

You blink in surprise, the eight year old’s face appearing clear as day in your mind . “Ellie? What about—?” Your heart sinks to your stomach. Your voice rises an octave in panic. “What happened? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, thanks to you,” Dana assures. The momentary relief that washes over you when you hear that she’s alright is quickly replaced by the fear of something else - something that has been looming in the back of your mind since the day of the mass casualty.

“Look,” you sigh, lowering your voice slightly when Cassie steps in to put her lunchbox in the fridge. “I know what I did was against protocol, but she was going to die. We were out of O-Neg and we didn’t have time to wait for more to arrive. Her mother agreed, and Dr. Abbot gave me verbal consent to—”

“Jesus,” Dana interrupts, shaking her head. She’s smirking with a kind of glint in her eyes that isn’t out of the ordinary for Dana but you can’t begin to decipher right now. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions? I’m trying to tell you that Ellie’s family has nominated you for a Daisy Award.”

For a split-second, the room is filled with the kind of silence where a pin drop could be heard.

“Wait. I’m not in trouble?”

Dana scoffs. “Not unless you keep bullying anti-vaxxers.”

A Daisy Award. The last thing you expected when Dana pulled you into this room. Some nurses go their entire careers without ever receiving a Daisy, you never would have guessed that you would be nominated for one so early in yours.

It makes sense, you suppose. If breaking about a dozen different rules and protocols by donating your own blood to a dying child in the midst of a mass casualty incident didn’t get you nominated for the award, then you doubt anything ever would have.

You exhale slowly, your brain still buffering. You’ve yet to take two sips of your coffee, so this is a lot for seven o’clock in the morning.

“Wow,” you breathe, your face suddenly warm. “I…don’t even know what to say.”

“No one ever does when they’re receiving their first Daisy,” Dana shrugs with a proud smile. “I just wanted to give you a heads up before Robby gets in and makes a whole production out of it.”

Your stomach instantly sinks to the floor. You had been so taken off guard by the news that you’re receiving a Daisy Award that you had completely forgotten what receiving a Daisy Award normally entails.

A pinning ceremony. A speech from the chief or director. All of your coworkers. Everyone in the room, staring right at you. Clapping. Pictures. Congratulations, and congratulations, and more congratulations.

“Oh, no.” You shake your head. “No, that isn’t necessary. He doesn’t need to do all of that.”

Dana folds her arms, unimpressed. “All of that is the standard procedure for a Daisy Award, kiddo.”

“Really, it’s fine,” you insist, trying to conceal the panic from your voice. “Everyone is busy enough as it is without stopping what they’re doing for me. Robby can just give me the pin and certificate and whatever else when he has time in between patients. I don’t need…” You gesture vaguely, “…a whole thing.”

She stares at you for a moment, head tilted and lips pursed like she’s trying to psychoanalyze you. “You sure?” She finally asks. “This is a big deal, you know. It’s okay to let people celebrate you for a few minutes.”

You drop her gaze. “I just…don’t want an audience. I’m good. Really.”

The look on her face says that she wants to protest, but the look on yours must convince her otherwise. “Alright,” she concedes. “Whatever you want. I’ll let Robby know before he drags half the department into the conference room.”

You exhale in relief, managing a small but grateful smile. “Thanks, Dana.”

She wraps an arm around shoulders on your way out of the break room. “Congrats, kid. We’re lucky to have ya.”

You just smile at her and nod, because those words sound like a foreign language that you’re still in the process of learning and aren’t quite comfortable speaking yourself yet.

Cassie catches up to you just moments later, on your way back to the nurse’s station. You had noticed her slip into the break room while you and Dana were talking, and judging by the smirk on her face, she definitely overheard the gist of the conversation.

“Hey, Daisy Girl,” Cassie hums under her breath as she catches up to you, lightly bumping her shoulder against yours. “Congratulations.”

You roll your eyes but the corners of your mouth threaten to betray you. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Oh, I’m absolutely calling you that,” she grins. “You deserve it, you know.”

You shrug, choosing to look up at the patient board to avoid her stare that is entirely too motherly. “I don’t know. It feels weird to be given an award for donating blood. People donate at blood drives all the time and get nothing in return.”

“I suppose,” she sighs. “People don’t always donate blood while actively performing CPR on the recipient, though. In the middle of an unprecedented mass casualty—”

“Okay, okay,” you shush her, looking around to make sure she isn’t drawing anyone’s attention. Princess and Perlah stand a few feet away, talking amongst themselves, and Jack sits at his desk, working on his charting from the night shift he’s finishing up.

As far as you can tell, he isn’t paying any mind to the two of you, but the last thing you want is to draw any unnecessary attention - especially from the doctor who is perfectly within earshot. Your cheeks blaze at the thought. “You’ve made your point. Keep your voice down.”

She shakes with silent laughter, a knowing look in her eyes. She lowers her voice. “So, what are you gonna do to celebrate?”

“Nothing,” you mumble. “I just told Dana that I don’t want a pinning ceremony or anything.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” Cassie snorts. “I mean what are you going to do to celebrate yourself.” She raises her brows. “An overpriced coffee? A pedicure? A new pair of those tennis shoes that you’re always hyping up? Take-out from your favorite restaurant? All of the above?”

You sigh, knowing that she won’t relent until you give in. “I have to buy groceries after I get off work tonight. Maybe I’ll get myself some flowers or something at Trader Joe’s.”

She smiles, accepting that’s the best she’s going to get from you. “Good. Start there.”

Dana calls her name and she walks away, leaving you alone with your thoughts for the first time since you stepped through the hospital doors this morning.

Of all the days that you’ve worked here, PittFest is by far one of the most traumatic. But it’s also the day that Ellie’s life was saved. The day that a mother didn’t have to watch her little girl bleed to death on an operating table. And that’s thanks to you.

You, and Jack Abbot backing you up.

⋆｡°✩

“She’s lost too much blood. We need O-Neg stat!” Whitaker’s voice calls through all of the chaos surrounding you. He looks over his shoulder towards Dana. “What’s the ETA on the donor blood?”

She checks her radio, her face paling. “Still twenty minutes out.”

You stare at the monitors - at Ellie’s stats that are rapidly plummeting - and then at Ellie, motionless on the table, her skin growing grayer by the second. “She doesn’t have twenty minutes,” you murmur to Whitaker, too low for Ellie’s mom to hear you. “She’s not going to make it that long. There’s no way.”

Whitaker looks around for an available attending or senior resident while you look to Ellie’s mother. “Ms. Martin, do you know Ellie’s blood type?”

“B-Positive,” she manages through a sob. “She’s - she’s B-Positive.”

You’re moving before the thought fully forms. Darting around the room, yanking open drawers, frantically searching for an empty blood bag, tubing, a sterile needle, everything that you could possibly need—

“Uh—” Whitaker freezes as you slam the supplies onto a rolling tray. “What are you doing?”

“She’s B-Positive. I’m B-Positive.”

“We can’t - we can’t just give a patient unscreened blood,” he sputters, his voice as panicked as the expression on his face. “There’s too many risks—”

“The risk right now is her dying if she doesn’t get blood immediately.” The words come out louder than you intend, earning another sob from Ms. Martin, and the attention of Dr. Abbot.

“Fill me in.”

He isn’t talking to anyone in particular. His focus is on the little girl laying on the gurney in front of him, taking in her current state - the gunshot wound in her abdomen and the increasingly concerning stats displayed on the screens beside her.

You open your mouth to answer, but Whitaker beats you to it. “Ellie needs blood. She wants to donate hers. I told her we can’t—”

“Please,” Ellie’s mother cries from behind him. “Please let her. I can’t lose her. Please, do whatever you can, whatever you need to do. Anything.”

You haven’t worked with Dr. Abbot very much. He’s covered a few day shifts here and there since you started at PTMC, and you’ve worked a couple night shifts when needed, but for the most part, you don’t see him outside of shift change in the mornings.

But you’ve heard a lot about him. And in the years that you’ve worked here, you’ve never heard a negative word.

In fact, just earlier today, you overheard a conversation between Robby and Dr. Collins. You hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, it just happened - clear as day, you heard the words from Robby’s own lips: So, what are you saying? That Abbot low-balled his measurements to help a teen get the abortion that she wants?

If that’s true - and you’re willing to bet that it is - then that tells you everything you need to know about the kind of doctor that Jack Abbot is.

The kind that not every patient is fortunate enough to have on their side. The kind who always has his patient’s health, safety, and best interest in mind - even if it breaks protocol, even if it goes against the standard of care, even if it later comes back to bite him in the ass.

If it were any other attending or senior resident standing here right now, you might shrink. You might think that arguing your case is a lost cause. Because Whitaker isn’t wrong - there are risks with transfusing unscreened blood. It isn’t standard protocol, and most doctors would probably shut it down.

But something in your gut tells you that Jack Abbot isn’t most doctors.

“Ellie is B-Positive like me.” You turn to Jack, looking up at him, earnest and pleading. “I donate blood every six months. I’m clean. I don’t do drugs, I don’t smoke. The the donor blood is still twenty minutes out. She needs this now.”

Jack stares at you for one tense, loaded moment. You wouldn’t be able to read his expression even if you had the free time to stand here and try to figure it out. Then, he gives you a tight-lipped, curt nod before looking to Ellie's mom for consent.

The following fifteen minutes feel like something out of a fever dream.

One minute Perlah is inserting a needle into your femoral vein so that you can still have use of both of your arms and the next, Whitaker is yelling that Ellie is crashing and you’re starting compressions while blood is still being siphoned from the lower half of your body.

Jack all but pulls you off of her to take over so that Perlah can withdraw the needle from your leg. Warm blood trickles down your thigh before she has a chance to press gauze hard against the site but you barely register anything except the sound of Jack’s voice speaking low to Ellie, telling her to hold on.

Suddenly, the room around you begins to go fuzzy. The people, the monitors, everything shifts and your ears start to ring, making the voices that you’re desperately trying to pay attention to sound like you’re listening through water.

“Sit. Now,” Perlah orders, already guiding you to the closest empty stool while keeping pressure on your leg. The adrenaline that has been coursing through you for the last ten minutes begins to crash all at once, leaving your limbs feeling jellied and useless.

It takes every ounce of focus to register that Ellie has stabilized and the transfusion is now in progress. The pit of nausea in your stomach lessens the tiniest bit as Jack steps back, letting Whitaker and Cassie take over.

He turns to you now. You’re slumped in the stool, sweating, with your pants still positioned awkwardly at mid-thigh as you hold the gauze in place while you wait for Perlah to return with a bandage.

“I’m fine,” you mumble automatically, but the words sound breathless and slurred. “I’ve just gotta wait for Perlah to secure a bandage around this and then I’ll get back up—”

“No way,” he breathes, crouching down to get a better look at you. “You’re benched for twenty. You need fluids, and—”

“But—”

“No buts.” His voice is gentle but firm, leaving no room for objections. “You just lost a lot of blood in a very short amount of time. We need you out there, okay? I can’t have you passing out on me.”

The intensity of his stare is enough to make the room spin all over again. So much that all you can do is nod.

“What you just did took a lot of guts,” he says, voice low. “And it took heart. You saved a life today. Ellie’s mom won’t ever forget that. And I know I won’t, either.”

⋆｡°✩

At approximately 10:15 in the morning, you’re flushing an egregious amount of wax out of a ten year old’s ear when you see Lupe walk past the room with a colossal bouquet of flowers.

Daisies, specifically.

It causes you to momentarily lose focus and accidentally spray the kid in the face.

Daisies. A giant bouquet of daisies, on the day that you’ve received your first Daisy Award. It would be quite the coincidence if they were for someone other than you, now wouldn’t it?

But who knows. Maybe they’re not for you. Victoria has gone on a few dates with that one guy she’s been telling you about at this point. Maybe daisies are her favorite flowers. Maybe it’s someone’s anniversary and their husband sent them flowers, and they just happen to be daisies. Maybe they are for a sick patient. It is a hospital, after all.

All you know is that you don’t have anyone who would send you flowers. Dana, maybe, if you hadn’t already expressed your wishes to be as lowkey as possible with receiving your Daisy Award.

Word had still gotten around the ED, and there was no shortage of congratulations. Perlah and Princess, Whitaker and Santos, Victoria and Samira. You didn’t mind the sweet sentiments, truly. You appreciated all of them, even if the special attention is unfamiliar.

But flowers? Would someone really send you flowers?

Your question is answered by the look on everyone’s face as you walk towards the nurse’s station.

Dana, Perlah, Princess, Victoria and Santos are all huddled around the extravagant bouquet of daisies, baby’s breath and various greenery. You freeze when they all turn their attention to you, smirks and toothy grins confirming your suspicion before any of them can say a word.

“Don’t worry,” Santos snorts, holding out a small envelope. “We didn’t read the card.”

“We decided it would be much more fun to watch you open it,” Princess adds.

“And because it would be rude,” Dana says with a pointed glare.

You exhale before reluctantly taking the envelope from Santos. Your name is written across the front. Without saying a word, you open the tiny envelope and pull out the card stock note.

(And, because no one has ever done anything like send you flowers to your place of employment, your hands shake an embarrassing amount).

Your eyes skim over the words written on the note. And then you read them again. And again, and one more time for good measure.

You can buy yourself flowers, but you shouldn’t have to.

You flip the card over, expecting a signature, but it’s completely blank.

You can feel five pairs of eyes staring holes into you, just waiting for an answer to the question that you have no more of an answer to than they do.

“There’s no name, you noseys,” you sigh. “It isn’t signed.”

“What?” Princess gasps. “They’re anonymous? This bouquet had to cost more than my car insurance, and they aren’t even going to take credit?”

“You really don’t know who they’re from?” Victoria asks.

“Nope. I mean, it has to be someone here, because I haven’t told anyone outside of work, but….I don’t know who.” You shrug, glancing back down at the handwriting you don’t recognize. “Lupe didn’t say who brought them in?”

“Sorry, kid,” Dana answers. “The florist dropped them off. All she told Lupe is that they’re for you. We know as much as you do.” She smirks, her eyes crinkling in the corners. “Whoever sent them must be really fond of ya.”

And have money to blow, you think to yourself.

To your relief, they all disperse and go back to doing their jobs, leaving you with the vase of dozens of daisies and an unsigned card. You stare at the words as if you can will them to change and reveal the identity of the sender.

You can buy yourself flowers, but you shouldn’t have to.

Suddenly, your earlier conversation with Cassie echoes in your mind. In an attempt to appease her, you had told her that you might buy yourself some flowers when you go grocery shopping later today. You had no true intention of actually doing that, so you forgot the promise by the time you saw your first patient of the day.

You find her hunched over an iPad reading x-ray results.

You stand beside her, your elbows braced on the counter. “I take you didn’t believe me when I said I was going to buy myself flowers?”

She freezes, cutting her eyes to you. “What are you talking about?”

You can’t tell if she’s fucking with you or not. You stare at her for a long moment to see if she’s going to break composure. “The shit ton of daisies at the nurse’s station? The card? You can buy yourself flowers but you shouldn’t have to? Ringing any bells?”

Cassie straightens, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the nurse’s station, realization and amusement blooming across her face. She lowers her voice a smidge. “You think those are from me?”

“Who the hell else would they be from?”

She laughs. “Your guess is as good as mine, but they aren’t from me. I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

You groan, raking your hands down your face in frustration. If they aren’t from Cassie, then you really don’t fucking know.

“I assume there’s no card?”

“There is,” you sigh, pulling the card from the breast pocket of your scrubs. You lay it down on the counter. “It’s not signed. Lupe said the florist dropped them off at check in.”

Cassie stares at the words, her eyes narrowing in thought. “Was the florist a man by chance?”

“Uh - no. I don’t think so. Why?”

She snorts a laugh, turning her attention back to the clipboard in front of her. “Because that’s definitely man-writing.”

Man-writing. Man…handwriting. The words replay over and over again in your mind for the next few hours.

Cassie’s right. The handwriting does appear to be on the more masculine side. It isn’t illegible by any means - you can make out each word. But it’s somewhat scrawled and untidy in a way that reminds you of a stereotypical doctor’s scribble.

The thought occurs to you as you’re wheeling a patient to radiology. Man-writing. Doctor’s scribble.

Jack. Jack had been sitting at his desk this morning, just feet away as Cassie had so lovingly lectured you about treating yourself for receiving your first Daisy. She hadn’t been talking too loudly, and Jack had given no indication that he had been listening to your conversation, but it isn’t impossible. He could have overheard, even unintentionally.

But that’s crazy, right?

Jack wouldn’t send you such an extravagant bouquet of flowers. Would he? For that to even cross your mind as a possibility is simply wishful thinking.

Jack, who makes your brain short-circuit in ways that are entirely, utterly irrational every time he greets you in the mornings. Jack, whose mere occasional and fleeting presence makes you realize that it’s for the better that you typically work opposite shifts because you are unable to think straight when he’s near. Jack, who you’ve had a big, fat, embarrassing crush on ever since he looked you in the eye and told you that he would never forget what you did for Ellie.

For a while, you were in complete denial that the way you feel about him is indeed a crush.

At first, you chalked it up to something in between appreciation and admiration. Appreciation because he’d given you the go ahead to donate your blood to Ellie when Whitaker had tried to stop you, and admiration because he’s one of the best doctors that you’ve ever known.

Then, you even tried to blame the feelings on daddy issues, for lack of a better term, because that was easier than being honest with yourself about your feelings. An older man supporting you and vocalizing that he’s impressed with you? It makes perfect sense that would have a lasting emotional effect, seeing as your own father has the emotional range of a teaspoon.

But months have passed since the PittFest MCI and no amount of attempted rationalization or therapy has stopped your heart from racing a little faster anytime you’re in the same room as him.

⋆｡°✩

Approximately sixteen hours into your double shift, you’re remembering exactly why you hardly ever volunteer for double shifts.

The day had been a series of unfortunate events since the moment you opened your eyes - nearly twenty minutes later than you were supposed to. You had forgotten to plug your phone into the charger and it died during the night, so your alarm didn’t go off. You were in such a rush to make it to work on time that you left your lunch box sitting on your kitchen counter.

Then you realized your gas tank was damn near empty, so you had to stop for gas, and then you got stuck in traffic. So, you ended up being fifteen minutes late for work, anyway.

It didn’t even dawn on you that you had left your lunch box at home until earlier this afternoon, when you managed to find five minutes in between patients to try to scarf down a few bites of the leftover lasagna you had packed. You opened the break room fridge to find only the same old McDonald’s bag that has been sitting on the top shelf for the last month, a Tupperware of something that looks like a biohazard, and a camo lunchbox that definitely is not yours.

Therefore, it was cafeteria corn dogs for lunch. Now, it’s nearly midnight and your options are limited to vending machine snacks.

You end up settling on a bag of pistachios and a Slim Jim.

You’re eating the last few nuts when Jack walks into the break room.

He’s only a few hours into his shift and he already looks exhausted. Still as handsome as ever, but exhausted. You briefly wonder when his last full day off was, between being here at night and working with the swat team during the day.

He acknowledges you with a small nod and a tired smile before opening the fridge and pulling out the only lunch box inside.

“Please tell me that’s not your dinner.”

You glance up as you’re dumping the remaining pistachios into the palm of your hand. He’s watching you from over the fridge door, his eyes darting between you and the empty Slim Jim wrapper on the table. The back of your neck suddenly burns hot.

You huff a tired laugh. “I woke up late this morning. I was in a rush and forgot my lunch box. Then I got talked into working a double when Mateo called out, so…” You shrug. “I’m making do.”

He stares at you, a look that says “you’re joking, right?” on his face as he unzips the lunch box without looking away from you. Then, he closes the fridge door and walks to the table, standing opposite of where you sit. He reaches in the sack, pulling out a sandwich in a ziploc bag.

“Take this,” he says, sliding it across the table.

You shake your head immediately. “No, I’m okay. Really. I’ll survive until morning.” You lean forward, pushing the sandwich back across the table. “Thank you, though.”

You expect him to protest, but instead, he reaches back into the lunch box and pulls out something wrapped in wax paper.

“Do you like chocolate croissants?”

You snort a laugh. “I mean, yeah…but I’m fine. I don’t want to take your food from you—”

“I packed two,” he says, pulling out another croissant, now holding one in each hand. “Take one. If you don’t, I will eat both of them, and I do not need to eat both of them.”

You hesitate for a second longer, your stubbornness putting up a losing fight against the fact that you are, in fact, still starving.

“If you insist,” you sigh, reaching for it. He smiles, obviously satisfied with the small win.

“You won’t regret it. Best chocolate croissant you’ll ever have.”

You unwrap it, revealing the flaky croissant with chocolate oozing out of the layers. “Did you make them yourself?” You ask, bringing the pastry to your lips.

“God no.” He takes a seat in the empty chair across from you. “They’re from a bakery not too far from here. Madeleine’s. They’ve been one of my favorite places for years.”

You’re only halfway paying attention to what he’s saying because it tastes so fucking good. Your eyes close to savor the flavor, humming in approval.

“See? Told you.”

You nod, mouth still too full to verbally agree. He stretches his legs out under the table and watches you chew, his face relaxing in a way that makes you think your ongoing streak of bad luck today has finally come to an end.

⋆｡°✩

“Your secret admirer strikes again.”

Cassie’s voice makes you look up from your current task of restocking a crash cart. Your face must give away the surprise you feel at seeing the small brown paperboard box in her hands, because she looks thoroughly amused, unable to stop herself from giggling at you as she walks towards you.

“What the hell,” you sigh under your breath, taking a step closer to inspect the box. There’s a sticker on the lid that says Madeleine Bakery & Bistro. You instantly recognize the name to be a popular bakery here in Pittsburgh.

“Having any luck figuring out who it is?”

“Not really,” you grumble as you lift the lid. “I mean, I have a suspicion, but there’s no way—”

You freeze mid sentence.

“What?” Cassie asks, confused by your abrupt pause. “What is it?”

“Holy shit.”

Inside the box lies a half dozen chocolate croissants.

Right away, your thoughts go back to that night in the break room only a month or so ago. The night you were sixteen hours into a double shift and making a meal out of vending machine snacks when Jack insisted that you take one of his chocolate croissants - the best chocolate croissant ever, as he had claimed.

The chocolate croissant from Madeleine’s.

You’re staring at the pastries, mouth agape, when you notice a folded note taped to the inside of the box. You grab the note and unfold it, ignoring Cassie's continuous questions until you’ve read the words written in the exact same handwriting as the note that came with the flowers you received.

Tradition says that Daisy recipients get cinnamon rolls. I don’t know if you like cinnamon rolls, so these felt like a safer bet - J

“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on? What does it say?”

You exhale a laugh in disbelief and hold up the note to let her read it. Her eyes skim the words, her brows furrowing together. “Remember when I told you to lower your voice this morning? Who had been sitting just a few feet away from us?”

“J…” She murmurs, glancing back and forth between you and the note, the gears in her head turning as she pieces it together. Then, realization comes over her face - visible shock that mirrors your own.

“Jack?”

⋆｡°✩

Jack.

You were right. You couldn’t fully believe it even as you were staring down at a box filled with chocolate croissants.

No, you didn’t fully believe it until you read the note inside the box and saw that it was signed with a singular initial. J.

There’s no denying it now. The daisies and the chocolate croissants were both Jack’s doing, and there’s no combination of words in the English language to accurately describe exactly how that makes you feel. The only word that begins to come close is surreal.

Surreal because no one has ever sent you flowers. No one has ever sent you baked goods. Let alone both on the same fucking day, and to your job. No one has ever gone out of their way to celebrate you so intentionally. The level of thoughtfulness is completely foreign.

So foreign, in fact, that you aren’t even sure how to approach him about it.

Of course you’re going to say thank you. But should you call him? Text him? Wait until you see him in person again? He doesn’t work tonight, so you won’t see him at shift change, and then you’re off work for the next several days. You won’t see him again until the beginning of next week at the earliest, and that feels like an awkward amount of time to wait to say thank you.

Thanks to a work group chat that Robby made forever ago so everyone could have easy access to coworker’s phone numbers if anyone ever found themselves needing to get in touch with someone, you already have Jack’s number.

But you’ve never texted him outside of messages exchanged in the group chat on rare occasion, so when you type a message in a private message thread, you read it at least twenty times before actually pressing send.

Hi. I hope it’s okay I got your number from the work group chat. I didn’t want to wait until next week to tell you thank you…so thank you. For the flowers and the croissants. You really didn’t have to do that, but it means a lot.

And then, like a fucking idiot, you send a second text clarifying that it’s you, as if he wouldn’t be able to deduce that using context clues and common sense.

The message gets marked as read within a matter of seconds. Jesus, does this man ever sleep?

He types. And types. And then the dots at the bottom of your screen disappear. And then reappear, and he types some more. It’s silly and childish, but your heart is racing as you wait for a response to come through. You’re about to give up for the time being - you’ve been sitting in the bathroom for so long that you’re surprised no one has come looking for you yet - when a new message finally appears in the thread.

Of course it’s okay. You don’t have to thank me, but you’re welcome. Next time you’re planning to buy yourself flowers, just give me some advance notice.

Before you can even start to process that, a second text comes through.

How committed are you to your plans to go grocery shopping after work tonight?

Your phone falls out of your hands and clatters against the bathroom floor.

“Shit,” you hiss under your breath, scrambling to pick it up.

Don’t seem too eager. Don’t seem too eager. Don’t seem too eager. Be cool.

Well, my fridge is pretty bare bones right now, so I’m only committed to those plans if I want to eat dinner tonight.

The bathroom door creaks open then, drawing your gaze away from your phone screen as you press send. Dana’s voice calls your name. “You good in here? Or did you fall in?”

“Yeah!” You squeak. “I’m here. I’ll be right there. Sorry, I’m uh…little backed up.”

Dana is silent for an awkward, loaded second. Long enough for you to physically recoil at your choice of words. Really? Constipation? That’s your excuse?

“Alright,” she huffs, a noise somewhere between amusement and annoyance. You can so clearly picture the expression on her face at this moment. “Sorry I asked.”

The door shuts a moment later. When you glance back down, your heart palpitates at the realization that Jack replied. Simple and straight to the point.

I could take you to dinner instead, if that sounds better than grocery shopping and cooking for yourself after a twelve hour shift.

⋆｡°✩

You do let him take you to dinner, and it is far better than grocery shopping and cooking after a twelve hour shift.

You’d be lying if you were to say that you hadn’t been nervous. That your fingers didn’t shake as you replied saying yes, and as you gave him your address, and as you agreed upon a time for him to pick you up.

You’re out of practice as far as the dating game goes. When you first moved to Pittsburgh, you knew no one. You’ve made a few friends (okay, Cassie and a couple other coworkers), but for the most part, you’ve kept to yourself. Focused on your career, furthered your education by becoming a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, and spent your free time investing in your hobbies and interests.

There have been a few random dates here and there, but nothing worth remembering. Nothing that made you desire a second date. They either talked too much about themselves and didn’t seem interested in you as a person, or there simply wasn’t that telltale spark that one hopes to feel on a first date.

Basically the complete opposite of this date with Jack so far.

He picked you up - right on time. Opened the car door for you, and the door at the restaurant he decided on - one that happens to serve your favorite kind of food. You aren’t sure if that was a lucky guess on his part or if he’s overheard you talking about food that you enjoy at some point in the last few years and happened to remember, but either way, it gives you the kind of butterflies that you haven’t felt in a long, long time.

The fact that he looks even more handsome in clothes that aren’t scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

Jack sets his drink down, fingers tapping lightly against the table like he wants to say something but can’t find the right words. His mouth forms a nervous smile, but he doesn’t break eye contact. He hesitates for a split-second more before speaking. “I have a small confession to make.”

Your stomach flutters, suddenly as nervous as he appears to be. “What is it?” You ask softly.

“The day of PittFest…” He trails off, shaking his head slightly. “You inspired me.”

Your brows raise in surprise. Despite your actions during PittFest being the reason you received a Daisy Award - which lead to Jack sending you flowers, which then lead to the two of you being here right now - neither of you have actually mentioned that day until now.

“I’m O-Negative,” he continues simply. “I’ve donated before. Plenty of times. But that day, in the middle of all that chaos…you didn’t even hesitate. You didn’t care about rules, or protocol, or repercussions. All you cared about was saving a life. And it inspired me to do the same.”

The admission takes you completely off guard. “It did?”

He nods. “After Ellie stabilized, I donated. Drew from my femoral vein while working on another patient. Just like you.”

For a moment, you can only stare at him, warmth settling into your bones at the revelation. “I didn’t know that,” you murmur.

He gives a small shrug. “I just thought that now would be a good time to tell you. You deserve that award. For acting selflessly and saving Ellie’s life, of course. But you also…made me a better doctor that day.”

Your throat tightens with emotion. You reach across the small table, placing your hand on top of his and giving it a gentle squeeze that you hope conveys just how much his words mean. “Thank you,” you whisper. You don’t pull your hand away. “I have a small confession of my own,” you add with a nervous laugh.

“Oh, yeah?” He places his other hand on top of yours, sandwiching yours between his own and rubbing lazy circles over your skin with the pad of his thumb. “What’s that?”

You take a deep breath before speaking. “I’m not really used to this. Being celebrated. By myself or by others.” You glance down at where your hands are joined because it’s easier than looking him in the eye while you try to find the right words. Words you’ve never really said out loud. “I usually just do what I need to do and move on. I don’t let myself dwell on it for long enough to wonder if anyone else is going to be proud of me. It’s easier that way. Saves me from a lot of disappointment.”

“I only told Cassie I would buy myself flowers because I knew she’d keep nagging me about it if I didn’t do something,” you admit with a humorless laugh. “I wasn’t really going to.”

Jack remains quiet, giving you time and space to say whatever you want to say. His grip on your hand tightens ever so slightly. Just enough to let you know that he’s absorbing every word.

“But then you sent flowers. And the croissants.” You look back up with a shy smile. “And it caught me off guard. In a good way. I didn’t realize just how much I needed someone to notice me. Until you did.”

He leans forward, the tea light candle in the center of the table making his hazel eyes twinkle. The way he looks at you, so intensely and so sincere, makes you feel seen in a way that is entirely unfamiliar but not at all unwelcome.

“I would very much like to keep showing you just how much I notice you. If you’ll let me.”

And for the first time maybe ever in your life, you think you’ll let yourself want that, too.

⋆｡°✩

Your head snaps over your shoulder. Your tired eyes widen at the sight of your attending sliding in beside you. Jack Abbot is still donned in his scrubs, you find, as he leans against the bar — black uniform, brown undershirt, and navy pants — like he dressed himself in the dark before he came into work. His freckled biceps strain against the short sleeves as he folds them across the polished wood. 

There are two glasses half-full of amber liquid before him. He lifts one in his right hand and eyes you over the top of it. “How long has it been?” he quips with narrowed eyes before taking a quick sip.

You blink away the shock of seeing him here, all casual, like he wasn’t just elbows deep in a trauma with you.

“About…” You lilt and glance at the clock behind the bar. “Half an hour ago, I think?”

His mouth curves with a slow, suspicious smile as his steady gaze refuses to waver. “What are you doing here all by yourself, huh? Gotta hot date I don’t know about?”

You scoff a quiet laugh and turn away, looking down at your untouched glass as you spin it in an anxious hand. “Yeah— If that’s what you wanna call watching Trinity and Mel butcher Alanis Morisette’s entire catalog…”

Your head tilts to your shoulder to flash him a lazy grin, which falters at the edge when you catch his unflinching stare. You clear your throat, remember that you’re talking to an attending, and stammer out, “Uh, what— What about you?”

Jack bounces a lazy shoulder and lifts the glass in his right hand. “This was the nearest place to get a good whiskey, so…” he trails off before taking another sip.

His eyes never leave yours as he peers at you from over the rim of the glass, studying you almost, analyzing you in a way that makes your skin feel too tight.

Your nose scrunches in protest of his staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?” you wonder through a breathless chuckle.

“I don’t know…” he admits, quieter now. “It’s just the first time I’ve seen you out of your scrubs…”

His light eyes flicker over your form again — from your bare shoulders and exposed chest, to where your dress clings to your ass and stomach. 

“It’s different…” he hums. “A good different…”

Heat crawls up your neck. You turn away on instinct, finding it very suddenly difficult to meet his stare, as a disbelieving laugh slips from your mouth.

“What are you laughing at?” Jack presses with a chuckle of his own.

“Nothing,” you dismiss with a shake of your head. “I just… I think you might be a little tipsy there, Dr. Abbot…”

“This is only my second glass, I’ll have you know,” he argues, playfully offended. “What? You think I can’t handle my alcohol.”

He straightens slightly and takes a step closer. Still leaving several inches of space between you, though it takes a lot of strength from you not to slide off your bar stool entirely.

“No! I just—” You stumble over yourself as the words tangle on your tongue. “I just feel like you probably wouldn’t be talking to me like this otherwise.”

“I talk to you every day,” he scoffs.

“Well, yeah, but you don’t flirt with me every day.”

His brows raise as something short of amusement flickers across his face. “Oh. So you think I’m flirting with you?”

An awkward silence drops like a leaden weight upon you, like an anvil in one of those ancient cartoons. It knocks the breath out of you accordingly.

“…No,” you answer after a few long moments. “Of course not.”

Your grip tightens on your drink as you turn away from him again. You hardly think twice before bringing it impulsively to your mouth, downing two long sips of the watered-down gin and tonic. Your face screws at the bitter taste and at the burning sensation on your tongue, which turns into a dull sparkle when it settles in the pit of your stomach.

“Well, I was, so…” Jack quips, too casual for his own good. “I guess I’m gonna have to try a little harder now, aren’t I?”

His eyes cut to you, expecting you to laugh at him, or to stammer out another one of your painfully shy replies. You forget to respond entirely, though, too focused on the way the alcohol singes your tongue. (You spend a long moment debating whether or not it’s numb or swelling in your throat with a thousand-yard stare.)

Your silence is not reassuring.

“Unless—” Jack’s voice tightens slightly as he clears his throat. His charming resolve slips as he stammers, “Unless you don’t want me to. Obviously. Then I can just, you know, fuck off—”

“No, it’s not that!” you blurt. “It’s just…”

He leans in, just slightly. “Just what?”

You hesitate for a moment, calculating the words, though they seem to slip off your tingling tongue before you can stop them.

“I feel like I haven’t… learned how to be a real person yet, you know?” you confess with a sheepish, lopsided grin. “Like… People my age are supposed to go out for drinks, and sing karaoke with their friends, and flirt with cute guys—”

You don’t notice your slip-up, but Jack does, and he hides his smile behind his glass.

“But I think I’ve just been working so much that… That I don’t know how to do anything but work, you know?”

“Yeah…” he hums softly. “Trust me. I know the feeling—”

There’s a distant call of his name. A faint “Abbot,” half-swallowed by the thrumming music and surrounding conversation. Your head turns in the direction of the sound to find Dr. Al-Hashimi appearing from the crowd. Her fluffy brown curls are out of their usual clip, languishing now at her shoulders. Her lavender jacket is gone, too, to reveal her lean body beneath her slim scrub top.

You blink owlishly at her for a few moments, unused to the sight of her outside the white walls of the E.D.

“You were supposed to be bringing me a drink,” the woman quips drily, smiling as she reaches for the touched whiskey next to Abbot. “Not holding it hostage.”

“Shit…” Jack exhales. “I’m sorry. I-I got distracted…”

“Dr. Al,” you greet with a waver in your voice. “I… I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yeah, well…” she shrugs. “I heard this was the best place to get a glass of whiskey, so…”

You nod slowly, suddenly unsure of yourself — of what to do with your hands, your voice, with Jack. You swallow hard as your eyes flit wildly between the two attendings standing before you. You struggle to shake the feeling that you’ve interrupted something.

“I’ll, uh— I guess I’ll get out of your hair then…”

You muster an artificial smile and abandon your gin and tonic as you slide off the bar stool.

Jack calls your name, but it gets lost in the crowd that swallows you whole as you disappear out of sight.

You stomach through one and a half more songs that Mel and Trinity shout into the void of the private karaoke room. They take a quick break from “You Oughta Know” to sing a strikingly heartfelt rendition of “Head Over Feet” that very nearly brings a tear to your eye. 

It’s not their sloppy singing, exactly, but rather the reminder of how alone you feel just now — the only audience member on the pleather sofa, bathed in the strobing neon glow from the overhead lights, watching the fun from afar while your friends forge an unlikely bond. 

While Jack and Dr. Al laugh over drinks together— 

You rise abruptly and catch them between verses to tell them you’re heading out for the night. Their protests come wrapped in song.

“But we’re having so much fun!” Trinity whines in drunken slurs, then locks in when the chorus hits. “You’ve already won me over, in spite of me! So don’t be alarmed if I fall, head over feet—!”

The song follows you the entire way out of the bar, where the night air outside washes over you like fine silk. You catch yourself humming the tune as you shrug on the brown bomber jacket you borrowed from Trinity’s closet — just in case you felt the need to hide. You falter when your fingers brush something in the front pocket.

You reach in with a pensive twist to your features, surprised to find a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter shoved inside. You stare at it for several long moments and wonder briefly what it would feel like to smoke one. (You’re unable to shake the impulsive thought from your brain until you’ve done it.)

You pull one cig free and stick the orange filter between your lips. You flick the lighter three times before it finally strikes. You hold your free hand over the flame like they do in the movies and inhale when it finally lights.

You regret it instantly. 

Grey smoke billows from your mouth as you cough. You double over on the worn sidewalk like a total loser, eyes watering and chest burning as your lungs rebel against your very poor life choices.

“Those things kill, you know—?” Jack’s voice cuts in again.

(He has a way of finding you in the most embarrassing situations, it seems.)

You blink away the tears in your eyes and turn to find the older man standing just a few feet away with his hands in his pockets. He watches you attentively, with something close to amusement twisting his scruffy face.

“I can tell—” you rasp as your coughing fit ebbs. “There’s no way this is enjoyable for people.”

“Eh,” he shrugs. “It’s not so bad when you get used to it.”

His sneakers scuff the cracked pavement as he saunters over to you, holding his hand out with a glittering look in his eye. “Can I?”

You don’t think twice before passing him the lit cigarette.

“By all means...”

Jack pinches the stick between his thumb and forefinger. He places his mouth around the filter, inhales once, holds the breath, and exhales through his nose a second or more later. 

You can’t seem to stop staring at the silver hair on his tilted chin; or the tendons in his corded neck; or the singular vein in his freckled forearm when he snuffs the cigarette out on the brick wall. He drops it into the receptacle there when he’s done.

“So…” He exhales the remaining smoke from his mouth, which leaves in grey wisps that hang in the air between you for a few lingering moments. “I guess you’re headed out now?”

“Yeah…” you sigh. “Guess so…”

He observes the empty sidewalk for a moment before wondering casually, “Want me to walk you home?”

“No, it’s okay,” you shrug. “You’re busy, and I… I only live, like, a block down the road, so—”

“So, then, it’ll be quick?” Jack presses with raised brows.

Your eyes narrow. “…You’re not gonna take no for an answer here, are you?”

Jack shakes his head, lips smoothing into a knowing grin. “Not this time, kid. No.”

The walk back to your place feels borderline suffocating, though you can’t exactly place why. The air is made of thick satin as the heat of the day washes away, leaving something silken and breathable in its wake, as the wind ripples in your dress. Everything smells very distinctly of summer — of dewy grass, and gunpowder from distant fireworks, and the faint sweetness of something that’s just been barbecued. 

You can hear the fireworks crackling somewhere in the distance, though you struggle to see them from the buildings overhead. You can feel each thundered boom in your chest, along with the heavy bass of a passing car playing music far too loud as it barrels by.

There’s something oddly peaceful about it. Intimate, even, as your shoulder brushes Jack’s broader one with each step. The silence is not particularly awkward, but you can’t shake the feeling that you should say something. You rack your brain for a conversation starter, and end up blurting out the one thing you didn’t want to say out loud— 

“So…” you lilt, tripping over the conversation like a loose wire. “You and Dr. Al…?”

“…Are very good coworkers, yeah,” Jack nods, silver curls turning gold beneath the amber streetlights. He catches your uncertain gaze and shrugs. “She had a tough first day, you know? Figured I’d treat her to a few drinks.”

“That’s nice…” you murmur with an averted gaze.

“It was nothing,” Jack assures you.

Your apartment building comes into view around the corner, painted a garish canary yellow with vivid orange doors, aptly named Sunset Tower. It used to be a motel, you assume from the layout, probably before you were born; and was renovated into an apartment complex likely not too long after you were born.

You don’t think twice before starting up the rusty staircase to your third-floor apartment — not until you notice the slight hitch in Jack’s step as he follows behind you, favoring his prosthetic limb more than he realizes. It must be hurting him, you figure, after being on it for hours at the PTMC. 

“Shit,” you huff. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”

“Told me about what?” Jack scoffs despite his grimacing as he swings his leg another step. “I can handle a few stairs…”

“I can’t make it up on my own, if you—”

“Hey,” he snaps, a little harsher than he means to, as he glances in your direction. A far-off firework glimmers in your gaze, soft and sympathetic around the edges in a way that makes his chest ache. “I’m good. Don’t worry about me, alright?”

You continue the ascent despite your better judgment, despite the way Jack’s steps lose rhythm just beside you. You catch him stumbling in the corner of your eye when he steps up a beat too early. His prosthetic twists unnaturally, angering the already raging skin of his amputated knee. 

You’re at his side without blinking. Your hands reach for his arm, steady him with your fingers cradling his wrist and elbow. 

Jack nearly protests, but stops himself short.

You hold onto him the rest of the way up.

Your place is exactly how he imagined it would be — not that he’d been picturing what the inside of your apartment looked like, of course, because he’s not a total creep. He just finds a very apt representation of you wedged with the quaint walls of the old, old building. It’s cluttered but not messy; with numerous blankets and books and potted plants strewn about. There are half-used candles littered on just about every surface, filling the air with a sweet scent of musky-vanilla-raspberry.

The grass green couch pushed against the wall caves under his weight when you ease him down onto it. It smells like a mixture of your perfume and the side of the road you must’ve pulled it from when you moved in.

“Wow…” Jack hums, if only to conceal his wincing as he adjusts himself on the cushion. “Nice place…”

“No, it’s not,” you scoff an awkward laugh and stand to full height above him, adjusting the skirt of your dress from where it had ridden up. “Do you, uh— Need anything?” 

“No. I’m good.”

“‘Cause I have some first aid supplies if your prosthetic is bothering you—”

“Really. I’m good,” he echoes. “You don’t mind if I take it off, though, do you?”

“Of course not!” you blurt. “I’ll, um… I’ll go get you some water.”

You scurry the short distance to the kitchen. The hissing faucet pervades the silence as you fill two glasses at the sink, along with the soft clanking of the heavy prosthetic as Jack unscrews it from the limb. You find him massaging the scar when you return.

“Do you— Do you need me to call you an Uber, or…?”

Jack tilts his chin to smile up at you. A playful laugh tumbles from his mouth. “Wow… Trying to get rid of me already, huh?”

Your face floods with horror. “No! O-Of course not! I just— With your leg, I— I don’t want you to walk all the way home, you know?”

“I think I can make it, sweetheart,” he tells you, and only vaguely notices his slip-up. “I just needed a second… Thank you—” He nods in appreciation when you set the water down on the coffee table in front of him.

You keep several inches between you on the sunken couches as you sit gingerly at his side — very palpably tense, like you’re a stranger in your own home. You wring your clammy hands together in your lap as a long silence stretches thin between you.

“And I wasn’t— I wasn’t trying to… kick you out. Or anything,” you add, softer now.

“I know, kid,” Jack assures.

“Good…” you breathe a sigh of relief. “‘Cause I— I don’t want you to leave… Wait, that sounded weird— I just meant that… I like your company. I’m not, like, trying to hold you hostage or whatever, I swear.”

Another awkward laugh spills from your mouth.

Jack’s lip quirks with a smile as he sits up straight again. “I wouldn’t mind it if you were, to be honest…” he hums, only halfway joking. “But unfortunately, I do have SWAT early in the morning, so… If you could free me around 6 a.m,  that’d be great.”

“Oh, right,” you scoff and bring your water to your mouth. “The side hustle where you get shot at for fun?”

“It’s good to have a hobby,” Jack shrugs and leans back against the sofa, throwing a strong arm around the back of it, as he studies you with narrowed eyes. “What do you do for fun, hm? Outside of work, I mean.”

You think for a long moment, spinning the glass between your fingers. “…I once watched Love Island for thirty-one straight hours. That was pretty fun.”

Jack snorts. “So what I’m hearing is, you don’t have any hobbies?”

“Work is my hobby.”

“So what do you do to… unwind?”

“…Have panic attacks in the supply closet at work,” you confess. “What about you?”

“Get shot at,” Jack quips in the same gritty tone.

“Well, at least you get to do something outside of the E.D…” you monotone with a far-off stare. “This is the first time in months I’ve been somewhere other than here and the PTMC. I mean, I have my groceries delivered now— I’m too boring to even go shopping...”

“What do you mean?” he scoffs. “You’re young— You should be going out every weekend.”

“Well, I don’t…” you huff mournfully and slouch back against the sofa. The thin sleeve of your velvet dress slips off your shoulder, giving Jack a brief glance of the top of your breast before you adjust it back over your collarbone again.

“What about dates?” he presses with his chin to his shoulder. “You don’t go on any of the apps?”

“Well, first of all, no one calls it the apps. And second of all, god no,” you laugh drily, then flash him a sheepish look from the corner of your eye. “What about you?”

“Nah…” Jack shakes his head. “I haven’t been on a date in about… Eight years—”

“Eight years?!” you blurt before he can properly get the words out, leaning forward with wide eyes. “Jesus. How does a guy like you go around without getting hit on for eight whole years?”

(You’re starting to think those three sips of gin from before are getting to you now.)

“Well, it’s a lot easier than you think,” the older man deadpans. ‘Cause it’s not like he was actively avoiding dates; he just wasn’t exactly seeking them out. 

He lost the urge to after his wife died, and then, when the urge to live came back around, he’d catch himself flirting every now and then, but never wanting to do much more than that. Then he blinked, and eight years had passed without him noticing.

Eight years with nothing but his own hand to get himself off — though, it only starts to seem pathetic when you look at it that way.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” you scoff. “The last time a guy showed even a modicum of interest in me was… in med school, probably.”

“Okay, well, that’s just not true,” Jack argues. “That vitrectomy patient from earlier definitely had a crush on you.”

Your eyes narrow in a cynical squint. “He was drunk. With half a bottle rocket stuck in his eye. That hardly counts.”

“Well, I’ve had… About a whiskey and a half,” Jack calculates. “Do I still count?”

The air thins in an instant, or maybe his words have just knocked it all straight out of your lungs.

Your skin burns red hot beneath the dress that feels suddenly way too tight, ‘cause you think he must be joking — that taking the piss out of your obvious crush on him is his idea of playing around.

“That’s not funny,” you tell him with a wavering smile.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” the man insists with a scoff. “I haven’t been funny since 1994.”

Another laugh sputters from your mouth. A real one this time — not the fake ones you’ve been giving him just to fill the silence, or to try to seem less nervous than you really are. It makes him smile wider than he probably realizes.

“There you go…” Jack hums with a proud nod.

“There I go, what?”

“You’re unwinding…”

You scoff, still grinning wide despite yourself. “Am I?”

“Yeah,” he hums. “And you’re doing a great job so far— a solid B-minus.”

“B-minus?” you echo. “I’ve had a 4.0 GPA since I was in fourth grade.”

“Well…” Jack shrugs with a knowing grin. “Better step it up then, kid.”

Something inside you tips in that moment. It’s his teasing, maybe, or just the way he’s looking at you. Either way, you catch yourself leaning forward before your brain has properly thought it through. You close the distance between you in a flicker — brushing a chaste kiss to his mouth before pulling away just as fast.

You can feel your pulse pounding in your throat as you quip, “What does that get me?”

Jack blinks for a second, momentarily caught off guard. He fights the urge to lick his lips, to try and actually taste you. “Probably a couple HR violations?” he jokes after a few moments.

Your stomach drops. You find yourself praying that this old couch swallows you whole, or that the world would just end altogether, because even that would be a kinder fate than this.

“Oh. Shit. I-I thought that— I thought we were... Fuck, I totally misread this whole thing—”

You turn away entirely and drop your face in your hands, utterly mortified. 

His laughter doesn’t make it any better.

You feel the sofa caving beneath you as Jack shifts to your side. His hands are warm and softly calloused as they cradle your wrists in a firm and gentle grip, urging them downward so he can see your face again. He ducks his head to meet your wet eyes and flashes you a reassuring smile.

“You didn’t misread a damn thing,” he assures you with a shake of his head, voice lower and smoother than honey. “Of course, I want to kiss you— I always want to kiss you.”

The mournful twist in your features never wavers. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because it’d be wrong,” he shrugs. “I’m your attending. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that I— that I pressured you into something.”

“Well… We both know you didn’t, right?” you argue softly, eyes glittering with hope as they dart back and forth between his. “And, I mean… It’s not like anyone else would have to know. We’re not getting married, we’re just… unwinding. Right?”

“…Yeah,” Jack hums, softer now, with something mischievous squinting his gaze. “Right...”

You’re not making it easy for him.

Jack’s trying not to cum in his pants before you’ve ever even touched him, and you’re making it damn near impossible. 

He drags you into his lap when you lean in to kiss him again — for real this time, licking sweetly into his mouth so he can taste you truly — and you knee him right in the thigh before you can straddle him properly. You pull away with a smack when he groans in pain against your mouth.

“Shit…” you pant with his spit still on your lips. “I’m sorry.”

Jack shakes his head until the words catch up to him. “It’s okay,” he assures through uneven breaths, knotting his fingers in your hair to pull you into him once more. He kisses you again, hard, like it’s muscle memory for him — from a life he hasn’t let himself live in a long, long time.

He cradles one hand over the crown of your head and the other just over your spine, where your dress dips down in the back. He keeps your warm weight pressed flush against him while the kiss turns languid and heavy, full of tongue and teeth and spit. You curl your fingers into his greying curls to keep him impossibly close all the while.

You feel his chest hitch with a startled breath beneath you when you grind down over his lap. Your velvet dress rises over your hips from the angle as you move down his thighs and up again — you can feel the ghost of his erection hardening beneath his scrubs with every pass. 

There’s a noticeable hesitance in the way you move. It’s not graceful or entirely practiced. It’s laced with a palpable uncertainty, rather, as you struggle to navigate the honeyed moment you’ve stumbled so suddenly into.

And Jack can hardly take it. ‘Cause hasn’t let himself want like this in years; he hasn’t let himself reach out for anything other than his grief or his work. For so long, his life has been defined by restraint and the careful art of not needing anything. And now you’re here, moving clumsily on top of him, completely undoing him.

It hits him all at once, how suddenly sensitive he is, after so long ignoring the touch of another. The friction, the pressure; the smell of you, the taste of you. It’s all too much. He knows he won’t last long if he keeps going this way, so he pulls back.

And he hates himself for it.

“Hey—” He clears his throat when the word comes out a little rough. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. His glassy eyes dart back and forth between both of yours as he peers up at you through a layer of honey. “Hey, you… You have condoms, right?”

You blink back at him for a long moment, slightly dazed at the sight of your spit on his rosy mouth. You nod with a stuttered breath. “Uh, yeah. Yeah— I think— Somewhere…”

(There’s an unopened box collecting dust under the sink in the bathroom, but he doesn’t need to know that.)

He mourns your warmth when you slide off his lap, rushing off down the hall with your dress still caught around your hips. The sight of your plain cotton underwear cradling the curve of your ass makes his chest tighten as you disappear down the dim hallway. You toe off your shoes halfway down, and the sound of your padding footsteps echoes in the quiet.

“Jesus Christ…” Jack huffs and slouches further into the couch. 

He drags his hands down his face and tries to regulate his breathing, tries to think of anything other than the aching erection in his pants. He stares up at the ceiling and attempts to will his body into something resembling composure when you return.

Your dress has fallen back down over your hips, but the right sleeve is still slipping down your shoulder when you stand before him. You’re not sure what to do with the condom in your hand, so you toss it to him over the coffee table. Jack catches it against his chest.

“Take that dress off…” he tells you with a voice like honey. “I wanna see you.”

You try and fail to reach for the zipper, which Mel had helped you with at Trinity’s place before you left for the bar. So, instead, you worm your arms out of the sleeves and shove the fabric down your hips with trembling hands. It hits the floor around your bare feet with a dull thud, leaving you in a heart-patterned bra you’ve had since high school and a pair of plain pink panties.

You’re hardly a thing worth looking at, really, but Jack didn’t seem to get that memo.

He beckons you forward with heavy eyes. “C’mere…” he murmurs.

You take slow, tentative steps towards him.

His calloused hands are warm and slightly trembling when they curl around the backs of your thighs. He leans in to press his mouth to the silk bow in the middle of your underwear, and his mouth waters at the wet spot gathering in the center of the cotton.

His scruffy chin brushes your stomach when he turns to look up at you, lidded eyes glimmering with a desire you didn’t know you were capable of drawing out of a person.

“I wanna make you cum with my mouth,” Jack murmurs. “Can I?”

You nod wordlessly, and can’t shake the feeling that you’re dreaming when his pointer finger hooks through the hem of your panties. You feel a little cold when he slides the cotton to the side, only for him to press his warm mouth there a second later. 

Your knees threaten to buckle when his tongue slots through your silken folds, and Jack doesn’t miss a beat. He braces your ass in one wide hand while his other slips down to the bend of your knee, urging you to prop your foot on the couch beside him. Your moan swells throughout your empty apartment at the new angle, which allows him to lick at your sensitive clit with greater precision.

He forgets to take things slow with you, too busy trying to make up for this time. He drags an orgasm out of you like the world’s soon to end, and the last thing he wants to do on this earth is to taste you on his tongue. 

You cum on his mouth with your head tipped back and with your fingers knotted in his hair. He’s wearing your glittering slick down to his chin when he’s done with you.

You fall gracelessly into his lap when your legs turn to jell-o. You straddle his waist, ball his shirt into your fists, and bury your burning face into his neck — still whimpering as your high is slow to ebb. 

Jack cradles you against him the entire length of your comedown, running his warm hands up and down your spine. His scruff brushes the delicate skin of your shoulder when he presses a chaste kiss there.

“That wasn’t too much, was it?” he pants into your ear.

You shake your head until the words catch up to you. “No… No, it was— It was good…” you stammer through uneven breaths, and pull just far enough away to meet his eyes. “I wanna ride you now… Is that okay?”

And who is Jack to deny you of a damn thing?

You brace yourself on his shoulder with one hand and use your free one to line his bulbous tip at the entrance of your weeping pussy. His cock drools an embarrassing amount of pearly precum — he can feel it all underneath the condom — and he’s momentarily grateful that you can’t see any of it. 

You exhale a wavering, punched-out breath as you sink down over him and take a long moment to get used to the distant stinging sensation.

Jack’s grateful for that, too.

His jaw hardens to choke down the groan that rumbles in the bottom of his throat. He tilts his head against the back of the couch and squeezes his eyes shut to fight away the overwhelming desire to explode entirely. He holds you in place when you try to move again, with fingers that threaten to leave bruises on your thighs.

“You okay?” you pant, eyes darting wildly over the pained twist on his scruffy features.

Jack nods, jaw clenched tight. His words come out half-strangled. 

“Yeah, yeah. I just… I wasn’t lying about the whole eight-year thing.” He exhales a hard breath through his nose that’s supposed to be a laugh, though there isn’t really a smile to accompany it. “I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna cum too soon, you know? I wanna— make it good for you. That’s all.”

Your fingers brush over his temple and through his silver curls, in a touch so gentle it nearly makes him cum right then.

“It’s already good for me,” you assure him. “I want it to be good for you, too.”

You grind over him with the same hesitance from before, down his thighs and back again, slowly finding your rhythm. Jack’s hands grip hard at your hips, like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. He can just barely find the strength to keep his eyes open to watch you chase your orgasm on top of him.

His eyes flit from your blissed-out features to where his cock disappears inside of you. The thatch of curls above his cock glistens with your honey — he can feel it wetting the hem of his scrubs from where they’re shoved beneath his heavy balls. You’re bound to cum just as quickly as he is, no doubt. 

He can feel it in the way your pussy flutters around his twitching length — in the way your pacing falters slightly on top of him.

“Nuh-huh. Don’t run away from me,” Jack mutters in your ear as he shifts underneath you, slouching further to hit somewhere deep inside of you. He cradles your head with one hand and grips hard at your ass with another, helping you move on top of him. 

Your whine gets buried in his sweat-slick neck.

Jack smiles into your hair. “Yeah. There it is, honey. There you go…”

He feels a little proud of himself when he manages to hold off just long enough to feel you cumming around him, twitching against his chest and tugging hard at his silver curls. He follows right after — going rigid underneath you a second later as his cock jerks wildly within your fluttering confines.

His groan mixes with your whining as you milk him of his orgasm, in a sinful symphony that swells throughout your silent apartment.

Then the room goes quiet, with only the sound of your heavy breathing to fill it. You rise and fall with each of Jack’s panted breaths beneath you. Your limbs are loose and borderline boneless; tension ebbs from your body like an unwinding thread. You think you’d turn into a puddle on top of him without his hands smoothing up and down your back, molding you back together again.

It’s the only way Jack can stay anchored, really — with his hands on you, and with your weight settled on top of him. It’s foreign and familiar all the same: the strange absence of urgency he feels underneath you. The way his body, usually wound tight with panic, dissolves in time with yours. For the first time in eight years, he feels his heartbeat finally steady.

Until a far-off firework rattles the walls and sends the two of you jerking against each other.

The honeyed moment shatters in an instant. Jack holds you tighter when you flinch on top of him, laughing through a grumbling moan as you clench instinctively around his softening cock. 

“You okay?” Jack mumbles against you, before pressing a brief kiss to your temple.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you nod, half-breathless, as you pull away from him for the first time in several minutes. 

You blink away the haze of your dwindling orgasm while Jack swipes drool from the corner of your mouth with his thumb. You lean instinctively into his palm and exhale a breathless laugh. 

“I just… I don’t know what normal people do in this situation…” you confess through uneven pants. “Like, I feel like we should… high-five or something.” 

Jack scoffs a tired breath but doesn’t say a word.

There’s a fleeting moment, then, where you worry you’re maybe being too much. Your stomach aches with it, too, because you think your stupid half-joke would’ve ruined the moment for anyone else. Anyone other than Jack. His hand slips from your back and lifts lazily for a high-five without a second thought. 

You cage your bottom lip between your teeth and clap your palm against his.

Your breathless laughter fills the quiet apartment.

“We make a good team, don’t we, Doc?” Jack hums with heavy eyes.

“Well, you make a good teacher…” you answer sheepishly, pulling at a rogue thread in his scrub top. “You know, helping me unwind, or whatever…”

“Right, well…” Jack trails off, mouth curling into a sly half-smirk as his eyes narrow into thin slits. Your stomach pools with red-hot warmth once more at the look he gives you, then, and at the words that spill from his lips like honey. “I think I still got a few more lessons in the chamber, sweetheart…”

The front door is only steps away.

Your shoes stick to the stuffy frat house’s floor, temples throbbing in response to the earsplitting music and overlapping conversations. You cup your sorority sister’s elbow as she walks ahead of you to not get separated within the tight crowd.

You enjoy parties. Until they get to this point. It’s way past midnight, when most people are so wasted that they can hardly speak, when your fatigue catches up with you and demands that you lie down.

Jada swings open the door and the night breeze presses against your cheeks, offering you a hint of relief. But it’s ruined once you feel a nudge against your shoulder, followed by a frigid wave of moisture down your back.

You stiffen, anger flooding through you, realizing someone just spilled their drink on you. And then you hear it. He’s laughing.

“Shit,” a man chuckles behind you.

“How’d that even happen?” another guy shouts over him through a drunken laugh.

You turn to see the person responsible for dunking you in what smells like beer. He towers over you, throwing his head back in defeated amusement, a sloppy grin on his face and a half-empty solo cup in his hand.

It’s the same guy you grew up around back home on the island. The same guy you spent so much of your life avoiding. A grade ahead of you, close enough to always be around, but just far enough that your worlds never really intersected.

You were thankful for the distance. Because, clearly, Rafe Cameron’s reputation for being an immature asshole precedes him; instead of apologizing like a decent person, he finds this funny.

It’s infuriating. That and the fact that of all the colleges he could’ve chosen, he picked yours. You’re a sophomore now, but you still remember the first time you spotted him back in Kildare wearing a shirt stamped with the emblem of your top‑choice school.

At least it’s a massive campus. And even though he’s in a frat and you’re in a sorority and your social circles overlap a lot, you’ve managed to avoid crossing paths with him. Until now.

“You’re not even going to say sorry?” you snap loudly, glaring up at him.

His brows raise a little, the laughter of his friends lifting over the noise. Frustration trickles into his features, but it’s quickly replaced with amusement again.

“Are you always so sensitive?” he chides. His attempt to make his friends laugh, to get them on his side again, works. He grins as he looks back at them, just another fratboy eager to please his social circle. What a loser.

You refuse to let it slide. Before you can think twice, you tip the cup towards Rafe, watching what’s left of his drink stain the front of his white t-shirt.

His jaw tightens. You smirk and make your way outside, muttering to Jada about what a waste of breath he is.

・・・・・

“What a bitch,” Mac hollers the last word loudly as they step out onto the front porch.

Rafe’s eyes land on your back as you pace away from the frat house and reach the sidewalk. His damp shirt sticks to his abdomen and when you look over your shoulder to give him and his friends a death stare, he’s sure it’s in response to Mac’s insult.

And he’s glad you heard.

He tripped. It wasn’t on purpose. You didn’t have to spill the rest of his drink on him, but he should have expected as much from you.

“Yeah, everyone says that about her,” Rafe replies, purposely just as loud.

He and his friends have finally made it outside after talking about going out to smoke for the last ten minutes. What luck to trip into you on the way out.

Even though you’re constantly orbiting each other here just like you did back home, you’ve never spoken.

You’re both on a campus hundreds of miles south from the island, somewhere hotter and brighter, but that’s the only thing that’s different. The way you dodge each other is exactly the same.

“Oh, yeah,” Cooper recalls, his eyes following you. Rafe had mentioned that he knew you a while ago when Cooper pointed you out at a party with the plan to approach you. Rafe huffed a laugh and told him all about your reputation. “You know her.”

“Were you guys together or something?” Mac asks.

“Fuck no,” Rafe mutters with a laugh.

He’d be a liar if he said he never thought about it. All the Kooks back home know you for being a stuck-up princess, but he can admit that you’re insanely hot and your attitude wouldn’t keep him from having some fun with you if you let him.

“So, what happened?” Mac presses. He lights a joint, taking a deep inhale before passing it over to him.

“Nothin’,” Rafe responds with a shrug. “She’s always been like that. She has a stick up her ass and she makes it everyone’s problem.”

“She’s bad, though,” Cooper murmurs, taking the joint from Rafe when he offers it.

“The crazy ones always are,” Mac adds.

Rafe looks back out towards the avenue lit up by streetlights again, watching your silhouette as you continue down Greek Row with your friend.

He’s still pissed off at your stupid little rebuttal, but the liquor blurring the edges of his senses and the lingering effect of you talking to him, of looking at him so with such intensity for the first time, is numbing it.

You’re untouchable. Always have been. You hardly ever gave any of the guys back home any attention, and if you did, you strung them along just to drop them. Everyone knows you as the girl who either wastes a guy’s time or snaps at him for even saying hi.

Rafe always kept his distance. It wasn’t worth the trouble when he can practically get any girl. The way they light up when he gives them even half a second of attention tells him everything. He’s used to getting what he wants without having to work for it.

But when Cooper pointed you out at that party a while back, Rafe let his familiar desire pull to the surface. He always thought you were a perfect ten. And you’re ungettable. And a deep part of him has always wanted what he can’t have.

“She just needs some fun,” Rafe says with a smirk, indulging in the fantasy.

“What, with you?” Cooper asks.

He looks over at his friends, both staring at him with cocked brows. A competitive fire burns in him suddenly, not liking the apprehension in their faces. Rafe’s never handled doubt well.

“You don’t think I could get her?” Rafe says.

“Bro, were you not there?” Mac says, pointing to the front door behind them where you had your tantrum. “She hates you.”

Rafe smirks, the promise of a challenge burning through him. He’s always loved a chase, a thrill. It’s what keeps him going in every way.

“Wanna bet?” Rafe asks.

Mac chuckles again, squinting in thought as he takes another pull from the joint.

“Fifty bucks says you can’t hook up with her,” he says.

Rafe snorts in amusement. He doesn’t need money. But he’ll take every chance he gets to prove himself.

“Deal.”

“I mean all the way,” Mac clarifies.

Rafe breathes a chuckle, imagining it. Imagining his hands on you. Imagining your pretty face softening into pleasure. He wants it so bad that his pulse picks up.

“Easy,” he agrees.

“Good luck,” Cooper says.

Rafe is sure he doesn’t need it.

・・・・・

It’s the Friday night before fall break and you’re back in Kildare. The air is cool, but not cold enough to keep anyone home. People are everywhere, scattered across the sand, most of them back from their mainland colleges.

The mid-October breeze coming off the water has a bite to it, but it’s comforting. The sea wind drifts over your face, reminding you of how you’d grown up on these beaches, of how much you loved being close to the ocean.

You came closer to the shoreline to fill up your drink at the keg, but now, you’re taking a second to gaze out at the setting sun and the funneling waves before you head back to your friends.

“Hey.”

You look up at whoever just interrupted your moment of peace. Rafe is gazing down at you, blue eyes lingering. Your chest twists with frustration, thrown right back to last weekend, when he laughed and jeered at you.

“What?” you say sharply.

The corner of his mouth curls into a small smirk. He adjusts the dark blue baseball hat sitting backwards on his head, the brim brushing the edge of the hoodie he’s wearing. He looks out at the water for just a second, then back down at you, noticing the full cup at your hand.

“Can we talk?” he says. “Without spilling any drinks this time?”

You scoff and shift to return to your friends, but he steps in front of you, tall and broad and annoying.

“Listen, I’m sorry about the other night,” he says. He’s flashing a cocky smirk, as if he can soften you to forgive him.

“It’s not going to work on me,” you respond.

“What?” he says, still wearing that stupid grin.

“Your sad attempt at charming me.”

Rafe tilts his head.

“You think I’m charmin’ you?”

“That’s exactly my point. I don’t.”

He breathes a soft laugh, and you hate that you notice how nice of a smile he has.

“I was wasted, alright?” he says. “I tripped. I should’ve said sorry.”

“Next time, don’t trip,” you reply. “That way, you won’t have to say anything to me.”

You step to the side, but he does the same, blocking you again and rasping your name.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says.

“Don’t bullshit me. I heard your friend call me a bitch, and I heard you agree,” you reply. “If you really want to make it up to me, fuck off.”

You don’t look at his reaction as you brush past him and find your way back to Ivy and Alayna.

“What did he want?” Ivy asks as you approach, clearly having seen your unexpected encounter with Rafe by the shoreline.

“He spilled a drink on me at a party a while ago and laughed about it,” you explain. “He just gave me a half-assed apology and said that he wants to make it up to me.”

“And?”

“And I told him to fuck off.”

“Really?” Alayna says, gazing past your shoulder. “But he’s hot.”

“He’s psychotic,” you reply. “And he’s not that hot.”

“Me when I lie,” Alayna says.

You shake your head. Fine. You won’t admit to it out loud, but Rafe is easily one of the best looking guys you’ve ever seen. He always has been. But he ruins it with his personality.

“I’m not interested,” you mutter. As you take a sip of your beer, Ivy squints in thought as she stares at you.

“But he is,” she says. “He obviously likes you if he forced out an apology.”

“Lucky me,” you scoff.

“What if you went along with it?” Ivy says. “Like, if you dated him as a joke?”

You grimace in confusion.

“Oh, my God,” Alayna laughs. “I love this idea.”

You’re speechless, your gaze darting between them.

“You’re always talking about how much guys like him never get what’s coming to them,” Ivy says with a shrug. “You could humble him.”

“You make me sound so spiteful,” you respond amusedly.

“I’m the same way.”

You nod in agreement. Ivy has had her fair share of heartbreak. Watching one of your best friends go through so much pain over the years made it feel like your own at times. You’re convinced men do nothing but lie.

And she’s right; you’ve complained a lot about how most guys, specifically the wealthy ones on this island, are assholes who never face any consequences.

“Wouldn’t it feel good to mess with him?” she continues.

“I can tell you’re trying to manipulate me,” you say with a playful scowl.

“Is it working?” Alayna asks.

You chuckle as you roll your eyes.

“You guys know me,” you remind them. You’ve had meaningless flings and noncommittal hookups, but relationships have always been off the table for you. “I don’t date. Especially not assholes like Rafe.”

“That’s why he’ll never see it coming,” Ivy says. “It’d be so satisfying to watch you break his heart.”

“I doubt he even has one,” you huff, but admittedly, the idea is intriguing.

“Well, it’s not like he could break yours,” Ivy continues. “If anyone can do it, it’s you. Whatever happens, you’d walk away without a scratch.”

You finally look over your shoulder. In the distance, Rafe is in the crowd with his buddies now, in a different social circle like he’s always been. You don’t know them that well, but enough to be certain they’re all jerks.

You always stayed close to your girlfriends. Especially Ivy and Alayna. They were around when you found out your dad cheated on your mom. When he left.

Even though they were with you through it all, you never talk about how deep the wound it left in you is.

It’s why Ivy’s right. You’d walk away unharmed if you started something with Rafe. Because you learned at a young age not to trust men. Not to let anyone into your heart. You’ve always kept your distance, having your fun and leaving guys before they can leave you.

But isn’t going along with this letting Rafe think he did charm you? You could tell with the way he approached you just now that he thought that an apology and an offer to make it up to you would have you swooning.

“This is a guy who thinks he can get everything he wants,” you murmur to your friends. “Giving into him just validates that.”

You tilt your head, considering it. Teasing him would be easy. Entertaining. You bet he’s so used to girls folding that the idea of not giving him exactly what he expects ignites something in you.

“Unless I don’t give him everything,” you add.

Ivy laughs, clearly agreeing.

You continue to watch Rafe, chuckling at something one of his friends said. He’s attractive, but he’s a total asshole.

You’ve seen his outbursts. You’ve noticed how he carries himself like he’s entitled to whatever he wants. You’ve even heard about how he starts fights with guys from the Cut, simply because they weren’t born into wealth. He genuinely thinks he’s better than them.

You quietly stare at him, letting yourself dip into the thought of how satisfying it would be to hurt him.

And how getting close to him with no strings attached would be hot as hell. You hate everything about Rafe, but you could look past it for the physical pleasure that you’re sure he’d be happy to give you.

This would be easy. Emotional detachment comes naturally. Your friends joke about wanting lessons from you on how to not care about guys. There’s nothing to lose here. Like every other fling, your heart wouldn’t be in it at all.

“She’s considering it,” Alayna sing-songs.

You can’t help but chuckle at the way she’s narrating, looking back at your friends again.

“You know what?” you say. “Fine. Whatever. I bet I can do it.”

“I’m not betting against you,” Ivy says. “But, sure. Let’s just say I am.”

“Only if he keeps annoying me, though,” you clarify. “I’m not chasing after him.”

“Of course,” Ivy agrees. “He’s chasing after you.”

“Yeah,” Alayna says in amusement. “Waste his time.”

“This is so stupid,” you laugh, but the excitement curling in your stomach keeps building.

・・・・・

This is Rafe’s favorite part of being in a frat. There’s always a party to go to, always noise to block his thoughts out. And when he’s back on campus and notices you from across the packed living room, he’s glad to have another opportunity to approach you.

You’re with a couple of girls, probably from the same sorority as you, talking and looking so good that it’s kind of driving him crazy.

He’s going to have to play the long game. You glared up at him with so much anger the other night at the beach that he could tell it won’t be easy to get you to like him.

Admittedly, it bruised his ego. But he’s not one to take a loss and simper away to lick his wounds. He’ll just have to play this carefully. You want all the power. He’ll let you think that you have it, but at the same time, he can’t let you walk all over him.

It’s going to be a game of manipulation, but Rafe’s a good liar. It’s how he hides the truth from his friends.

He pretends to be the type to like shallow hook-ups with random girls, that this bet is the kind of shit he does all the time, but truthfully, the rush he gets from meaningless sex has always been short-lived.

He prefers to feel something real. Sex is different when the way a girl touches him means something. And he hates it about himself. How goddamned soft he is.

He just wants to be treated like he matters and that’s what makes him such a pussy. His dad has always told him to toughen up. The advice will stick some day. It has to. If he keeps acting like he doesn’t care about anything, it’ll become the truth.

He shakes away the thought and downs the rest of his drink. He tells his friends he’ll be right back, spotting a game of beer pong before he reaches you.

Rafe gently brushes his fingers against your forearm, then pulls away, knowing by now that he can’t be too forward with you. Your smile fades when you turn to realize it’s him.

“Hey,” he says, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “You still mad at me?”

You stare up at Rafe. Your instinct is to dismiss him like you did last time. But the bet you have with your friends back home spins in your memory. You can’t blow him off. You need to give him a hint of an opening.

“Depends,” you respond. “Do you always drink so much that you can’t even stand?”

He flashes that confident smile of his, framed by deep dimples. It’s irritating how it makes your stomach twist. You can keep your emotions locked up easily, but the pull of lust has always been hard to ignore.

Rafe licks his lips, reminding himself that his usual way of flirting won’t work with you. He likes to tease, but right now, he needs to be agreeable.

“Not always,” he responds. “How good are you at beer pong?”

Your brows furrow as you ask, “Why?”

“I need a teammate.”

You huff, his arrogance irritating you once again. He’s so sure you’ll do what he wants.

“Ask one of your loser friends,” you reply.

“Come on,” Rafe says, the gentle whine to his tone making your core curl with heat again. You did always find a little bit of desperation hot. It means a guy will be easy to toy with.

You cross your arms and it takes everything in him not to stare at your chest, where your shirt has dipped over the swell over your breasts. Now that he’s this close to you again, you’re even hotter than he realized. The way you carry yourself is something else entirely.

“Is that supposed to convince me?” you ask.

Rafe chuckles, stepping an inch closer, towering over you.

“Please?” he says, his deep, low voice just a little sweetened.

If it weren’t for the bet, you’d laugh in his face. But you sigh and agree, holding up your forefinger to your friends to tell them you won’t be gone long.

・・・・・

Your arms are crossed again as Rafe sets up the solo cups on your end of the table. If he’s going to drag you into this game, he can do all the work.

“Was it hard to pick?” he asks over the noise, briefly looking over his shoulder.

“Pick what?” you ask as you gaze at the way his shirt stretches over his back.

“Your sorority.”

It’s strange to hear him asking a genuine question. You know how to play this; you always give enough information to intrigue a guy, but never enough for him to learn anything too personal.

“It’s more like… they picked me,” you reply. “You know what I mean?”

“Nah,” he replies with a chuckle.

His rush week was over two years ago now, but he still gets irritated thinking about it. A lot of frats care way too much about academics and event planning. He hated pretending like those things matter to him.

And he figures if he’s going to get you to put your guard down, he’s going to have to be sincere when he can.

“It was a bitch to get recruited,” he says.

“You love that word, huh?” you respond.

He straightens and turns to face you all the way. You’re thinking about Mac’s comment the other night.

“I should’ve told him to shut up,” Rafe replies, shaking his head.

“Sure,” you say, not bothering to pretend you believe he would. Guys like him only care about what their stupid friends think.

You’re expressionless as you brush past him to pick up a ping pong ball. The couple on the other side of the table has finished setting up.

The game begins, and it’s even for the most part. With every point the other team scores, you get Rafe to drink instead of you. He obeys.

Once there’s only a couple of cups left on both sides of the table, your team and theirs miss a few times. Until you don’t, sinking a ball into one of their cups and earning their defeated groans.

Your skin pricks when you feel big, warm hands on your waist. Sharp cologne wafts over you as he grips gently, leaning closer from behind you to murmur, “I knew you’d be good at this.”

While the guy on the other team downs his drink, you turn to look up at Rafe. He immediately lifts his hands off you, as if he’s worried about how you might react.

“How does bullshit come so easy for you?” you murmur, cocking your head.

“What do you think I’m bullshitting?”

“I think you talk to every girl the same way you’re talking to me,” you respond.

You said it to challenge him. To give him a sense that he needs to prove himself to you. But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead, Rafe says something that strikes a nerve.

“What, you think I don’t like you?”

“That’s not what I said,” you respond with a laugh, playing it off and looking ahead.

The deeply buried truth is that he’s right. You’ve always quietly feared that nobody would like the real you. Men like the persona you put on, they like the way you look, but they don’t see you. You never give them the chance to.

“Hey,” Rafe says. You tilt your chin up towards him and meet his heavy gaze again. His eyes soften, his smirk teasing. “I like you. Even though you’re mean.”

There’s truth there. He’d take brutal honesty over fakeness every day. But while his attraction to you is undeniable, he’s lying about liking you.

He’d never like a girl who acts like she’s doing him a favor by talking to him. Feeling inferior is something he runs from, not chases. The way to win this bet is to get you in his bed, though, so he’ll say what he needs to.

You chuckle and roll your eyes in response. Mean. It’s a compliment. If a man thinks you’re mean, he knows that you don’t care about his opinion of you.

“I know we never really talked before,” he adds, “but I always wanted us to.”

“That makes one of us,” you say, but a small smile tugs on your lips to show you’re messing with him.

Warmth rises through Rafe, desire stirring in him. You’re undoubtedly flirting, and even with all the assumptions he’s made about you, it feels really damn good to be getting your attention like this.

You linger in the moment together, the charge between you palpable, until a ping pong ball falls at your feet. The couple on the other side missed. With only one of their cups left, Rafe throws the ball. And he wins the game.

He shouts in celebration and it reminds you of all the things you’ve seen back home. This is boisterous, cruel Rafe. He’s just trying to sweeten you up now. And the best thing you can do is to leave him wanting more.

“Alright,” you sigh with a shrug, turning on your heels. “I’ll see you around.”

Rafe’s brows furrow. He trails you as you push through the crowd towards the staircase where you left your friends.

“I don’t have your number,” he says, catching up to you.

You stop to look up at him, his face partly shadowed by the frat house’s dim lights, your ears ringing from the music and the noise of the party surrounding you.

“Maybe you can get it another time,” you reply. “I’m going back to my friends now.”

A faint sting of being dismissed settles in Rafe’s chest as you walk away. He’s left alone, wondering how the fuck he’s supposed to get past your attitude. Because clearly, you’re not going to make it easy for him.

(to be continued)

He was elbow deep in a chart, his mind already calculating the supply of stimpaks for the next shift when the shouting started. "She just dropped mid-sentence!"

Jack didn't look up immediately, distractions were a luxury he didn't permit himself, until he heard your name. His pen snapped.

He was over you in two seconds. Your head was lolled back, your skin a sickly pallid color that looked wrong under the fluorescents. Your breathing was what caught his clinical ear first: deep and labored, like your lungs were trying to run a marathon while you slept.

"Get her on a trauma 2! Now!" Jack screamed in a way that sent the junior medics scrambling.

He leaned over you, his fingers pressing into the side of your neck. Your pulse was frantic under his touch. "Talk to me, c'mon." he commanded, though he knew you couldn't. He peeled back an eyelid; your pupil was sluggish, staring vacantly at something you couldn't see.

Then, the smell hit him. A sweet chemical scent on your breath—like rotting fruit and acetone.

His stomach dropped into a cold, hollow pit.

Ketoacidosis.

"I need a finger stick," he snapped, his hands moving with a mechanical precision that masked the tremor in his chest. "And get me her bag. Someone find her kit."

He watched a nurse prick your finger. The small digital screen blinked for a moment before flashing a single word: HIGH.

Jack closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, anger lancing through his body. He knew you. He knew the meticulous care he’d taken to secure your insulin supply in a place where such things were worth more than gold.

He’d trusted you when you told him your numbers were stable. He’d trusted you when you said you’d taken your morning dose while working.

"The kit is unused," Santos murmured, tossing your bag at the foot of the bed.

Jack rifled through it. No used pen. No used finger sticks. The last log was four days ago.

"Damn it," he hissed, the sound more of a broken prayer than a curse.

"Start an IV. I need an insulin drip ready in ten seconds. Move!"

He looked at your body, searching for the tell-tale bruising of recent injections, but found nothing but unmarked skin.

You’d been lying to him.

The logs you showed him, the stable numbers you told him about over breakfast was all a ghost story. You’d been walking around with sugar thickened blood, your organs screaming for the insulin you’d forgotten to give them and you’d looked him in the eye and told him you were just sleepy.

"You idiot," he whispered as he adjusted the oxygen mask over your face. "You absolute idiot."

He was the best doctor at ER, a man who could stitch a soul back together with nothing but rusty tools. But as he watched you, he felt powerless.

He didn't leave your side. He didn't even take off his gloves. He just sat there, his eyes fixed on the monitor, waiting for the person he loved to wake up so he could tell her exactly how much he hated her for making him watch her almost die.

-

The steady sound of the heart monitor was the only thing keeping Jack from losing his mind. He hadn't moved away from you for hours.

When your eyelids finally flickered, you groaned and your hand drifted toward the oxygen mask over your face.

"Don't touch that," Jack’s voice cracked through the silence.

It wasn't gentle. It was like a whip.

You blinked. Your head felt like it was filled with wet sand and your tongue was a lead weight in your mouth. "Jack?" you croaked. "Where… what time is it?"

"It’s one in the morning," he said, standing up. He didn't lean in to kiss your forehead. He didn't squeeze your hand. He stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest, looking down at you with a gaze that could have melted steel. "You’ve been unconscious for hours."

You tried to sit up but the world tilted violently. "I… I was telling Dana about some kid with a rare cough. I must have fainted." You looked around, confusion clouding your eyes. "I just need some water. I’ll sleep it off."

"You aren't going anywhere," Jack snapped. He stepped forward, grabbing the medical chart from the foot of the bed. "You didn't faint because you were tired. You fainted because your blood was literally turning into acid. Your glucose was over 600. And I have no doubt that it has been like that for days. Do you have any idea how close you were to a coma? To your heart just… stopping?"

A sigh left your throat, the harshness of his tone hitting you harder than the physical illness. "I… I’ve been busy, Jack. You know how it gets here sometimes. I probably just missed a dose. I don't really remember."

Jack let out a cynical laugh that lacked any humor. "yeah? You told me you were just sleepy. I asked you to your face if your numbers were okay and you lied."

"I didn't mean to—"

"I found your kit." he roared. "Or rather, I found your unused kit. No logs for days. You weren't forgetting, you were stopping. You didn't track your numbers for days and just… what? Decided you are not diabetic anymore?"

The silence that followed was suffocating. You looked down at your hands, tears stinging your eyes. The truth was: work was exhausting. Managing a chronic illness in a place where stress was constant had finally broken you. You had stopped caring because it was easier than fighting.

"You are a nurse, for God's shake." Jack whispered.

"Jack, please—"

"The IV and insulin drip stays until your results are stable. You aren't leaving this bed without my signature," he said, regaining his cold professional mask. "And until you decide you actually want to stay alive, don't expect me to talk to you as anything other than your doctor."

He turned on his heel and walked out.

-

Jack tried to work. He’d spent the last hours attending his patients but his mind only focused on replaying the sight of your pale face.

When he came back, he didn't check the monitors first.

He looked at you.

You were curled on your side, as much as the IV would allow, your shoulders shaking in silent tremors. The pillow was wet and your eyes were swollen and bloodshot.

The sight of you, not as a patient, but as the woman who held his cold heart in her hands, broke him.

"Sweetheart..."

"Hi..." you whispered. "I’m sorry about this. I just... some days, I’m just so tired. The patients, the noise, the shifts... and then this. I just wanted to stop thinking about it for a second. I just wanted to live without the needles or having to track my numbers."

Jack didn’t say anything at first. He sat down and reached out, his hand settling over yours.

He let the weight of his palm anchor you to the present.

"This is a part of you. You know that. I know that. We can fight for every thing of normal we can get from this, but you can't survive it by ignoring it." he said.

"I know," you choked out, a tear trailing through your cheek. "But it's every single day, Jack. Every meal, every hour. Sometimes I just... I forget because I don't want to think about it."

Jack let out a breath. The anger was still there but it was being drowned out by your explanation of how much weight you had been carrying lately.

"If you're tired, tell me," he pleaded. "If you forget to check, I'll remind you. If you're too exhausted to think how many units are for a sandwich, I'll do the math. But don't ever hide from me again. Not this. Especially not this."

He reached up, his thumb brushing a tear from your cheek.

"I can't lose you," he muttered. "Let me help you."

You nodded, a sob catching in your throat as you reached out to catch his hand.

"Okay," you whispered. "I will tell you next time I forget."

-

Later, Jack set a tray on the rolling table and checked your vitals one last time.

"Your numbers are better," he murmured. "And you need to eat. Slowly."

He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a new insulin pen from his pocket. He didn't hand it to you immediately; he held it between his fingers, looking at it as if it were both a weapon and a lifeline.

"We’re going to do this together," he said firmly. "I've brought you some freshly made applesauce."

He watched as you reached for the pen. He didn't intervene, he stayed close enough that his shoulder brushed yours. As you dialed the dose, he let out the breath he’d been holding.

You injected yourself with the required units and for the first time in weeks, it didn't feel like a chore you were too tired to finish. Jack waited, counting the seconds with you before you finished the injection.

"Good," he whispered. He picked up the spoon, dipping it into the applesauce and holding it out to you. "Now, eat. I’m not leaving until the bowl is empty."

⋆｡˚☤🩺✧˖°.｡⋆💉

maybe if it was just that one time, the both of you wouldn’t be where you are now. but it wasn’t just that one time. what was meant to be a casual, convenient, fun way to blow off steam turned into spending the night more often than not. it was “five more minutes” in bed together, kissing in the car before walking in separately into work, and wordless coffee drop offs when charting.

jack couldn’t get you out of his head. he found himself seeking you out more than he knew he should, but he wanted to. he wanted to be the one you went to after a good shift or a bad one. he wanted to keep making you laugh. he liked buying you things and taking care of you. he just wanted you. that's how he knew he was getting in too deep, but he was your superior, your boss, technically speaking, and the lines were becoming blurry. he wasn’t ready, or at least he thought he wasn’t. so he started to pull away. he put boundaries up.

you didn’t put up a fight, you even beat him to the punch by ending it before he could under the guise of “keeping things professional”. you switched to day shift when you could, but that wasn’t working out too well for you. he didn’t want to lose you, but it seemed like it was going to happen anyway so at that time he didn’t protest.

you couldn’t avoid him altogether, after all he was still your boss and you had a lot to lose career wise if you messed up, but boy if you didn’t try. it didn’t work too well for you when an attending was needed though.

“i need an attending for my case in trauma 2, are you free?” you waltz up to the charting station, internally hoping that robby could help you out.

“i’m a little tied up right now, but looks like Abbot is about to be free?” he answers, giving you a knowing look.

“robby.” you respond back flatly, trying to control your face and voice from breaking out into protest. trinity, who’s watching from the other side of the station, laughs and you raise your hand to hit her but she backs away.

“you need an attending, he’s an attending, is he not?” robby doesn’t back down, instead he crosses his arms across his chest momentarily to stand his ground. “can’t avoid him all the time, doctor.” he says with a slightly lowered, but stern, voice to you before getting up and diverting his attention to other matters.

before you can protest again, jack walks over.

"someone need an attending?" he asks, his eyes floating from robby to land on you. his gaze doesn't waver and it's soft and warm, it always is, and you hate it.

"i do, but it can wait, if you're busy?" you sigh, but you can't take your eyes off of him either.

"always got time for you." he smiles all smug, and you hate that too.

you open the chart for your patient, angling it towards him. he leans into your space anyway, a hand on your lower back that is just barely there, as an acknowledgment that he's listening. but he's actually flirting when you're trying to be professional. you don't know if you want to kiss him or yell at him.

"if the cut is a deep as you say, flush it out then put a few dissolvable stitches underneath and then some lighter stitches on top to minimize scarring. i'll check on it after you're done to sign off." jack advises you. he got a quick look at the patient when they came in, and he trusts your skills.

"got it. thank you, dr.abbot." you emphasize "doctor" as to make a point that this is supposed to be professional. the hand that was on your lower back now moves to squeeze your shoulder as he crosses to the other side of the ER.

jack still wants you. he just hasn't gotten over his pride yet to do anything about it except flirt with you. you won't be the one to force him.

you temporarily shove your face into your arms as you lean against the nurses station.

"so...are you guys like back together or..." trinity speaks up again and you manage to actually hit her this time. "hey! this is workplace violence!"

"we would have to had been something to be anything now. which we are not. he is an attending, that is all." you hiss, but there is no denying that the atmosphere is charged even if with jack out of your current line of sight.

"i would normally insert myself here and tell you how wrong you are, but thought you'd like to know who's coming." princess interupts, gently directing your attention to mateo, who is walking towards you with a smile and an extra coffee in hand.

you glare at trinity and princess, signaling to them to zip it as you change your expression to greet him.

"nurse diaz, you're early for your night shift." you joke lightly, smiling as he approaches.

"i thought i'd take my chances to see my favorite day shift doctor." he teases, handing you a coffee. you take it, ignoring the purposeful brush of hands from him.

"you didn't have to bring this for me, again, you know."

"i know, but i am the one who switched to a night shift today which messed up our plans. it's the least i can do for missing out on taking you out." mateo points out, and it's hard to deflect his teasing.

"i already told you that it's no big deal. we'll reschedule, right?" you offer, trying not to grimace as the words leave your mouth.

" 'course. as if i'd miss the chance to see you outside this ER." he smiles, leaning into your space a bit and shoving your arm playfully. it does get a laugh out of you though.

mateo is sweet. when you're on the same shift, if trinity is taking longer than usual or whitaker is planning to go to the farm and you don't feel like waiting for them, mateo brings you home. or he comes over for dinner. sometimes joining you, trinity, and whitaker for it. sometimes just you and him.

you guess you could say you're seeing each other? it's only been a few outside of work hangouts, or dates, that have occured in the last couple weeks since whatever it is with you and jack came to an end. it's unlabeled and you're trying to keep it that way for as long as you can. you don't sleep at mateo's, but once or twice you guys have fallen asleep watching a movie in the living room at your place. he's kissed you, polite and soft, on your doorstep once or twice. you decided to ignore that you felt nothing after.

he's uncomplicated. he's close in age. he's going at this pace because you set it. you should like him. you should. but do you?

"just don't let these patients get to you. they're fiesty today. something about the holiday brings out the worst in people" you brush him off, again, but not without a convincing smile.

from across the ED, just out of your sight, jack watches the whole interaction. he watches the passing of coffee, the way nurse diaz makes you laugh and you nervously brush your hair behind your ear. it creates this uncomfortable tightness in his chest. for weeks, he has convinced himself that he was doing the right thing by stepping back, even if every part of him was screaming to pull you close instead of push you away. he has no right to feel any type of way about you seemingly moving on. but he does, and he's feeling his regrets extra hard right now.

"dr.abbot you're bending that ng-tube." robby says from behind him. jack snaps out of whatever daze he was in and relaxes his grip on the tube. "you were glaring by the way."

"i don't know what you're talking about." jack scoffs, returning to what he was doing while still sneaking glances at you.

"fine. it's none of my business. but for what it's worth i don't think they're serious. " robby slides that last part in there casually, and jack perks up.

"you keeping up with hospital gossip now?" he teases before glancing back at you and back to robby "what have you heard?"

"you're in deep, brother." robby laughs shaking his head. "according to santos, he's been over at their place a few times. but santos says that your girl isn’t wanting more from whatever it is between them and it’s more friendly than anything."

jack mulls that over for a bit as he watches mateo leave to go on rounds. he thinks that he could possibly take his chance to go talk to you.

robby places a hand on jack's shoulder, looking over at you as well. "normally i wouldn't be in favor of a workplace romance between two of my doctors, but i can see how much you care about her. and i do think you were out of your mind to let her go, but if there's any chance you can get your head out of your ass and get her back then i think you need to.”

robby leaves jack alone, hoping that he’s gotten through to him.

jack positions himself slightly closer to your side of the ED, still out of your view but now in earshot of the conversation you’re now having with whitaker, santos, and javadi.

“how long are we gonna pretend that he doesn’t like you?” whitaker says helping you scan charts since the electronic system is now up and working.

“until she admits that she doesn’t like him, huckleberry.” santos puts bluntly as she starts shredding.

“he’s really nice!”

“but he’s not you know who.” javadi says softly, lightly resting her head on your shoulder as she comes up next to you, earning a sigh from you.

“you know who, doesn’t want me. am i supposed to wait around until they do? after all, i was probably the one who thought it was more than what it was.”

upon hearing this part, jack has to hold himself back. you think he doesn’t want you? you thought you were the only one that wanted more, or felt like it was more?

“if he doesn’t want you then why does he still flirt with you? why does he always linger? maybe cuz he’s old he doesn’t know how to handle you cuz you’re young and hot.” santos adds once again. he pretends not be offended at the use of “old” but everything else she’s said is true. he does want you. more than he can explain.

“i don’t know guys. i’m not saying i need some grand gesture, but it’s gonna have to be more than lingering and flirting from you know who for me to believe that it would go anywhere beyond what it was. even if i want that.” you explain finishing up your shredding before getting up to check on a patient.

jack watches you go, but as he does javadi and santos notice him. he makes a particular kind of eye contact with them that says something like if you don’t do something then you’re gonna miss your chance.

so he waits. waits until there's no disasters coming in and you're not tied up with a patient, and he comes to you.

"hey, i heard there's a trauma coming in, can you come out to the ambulance bay with me?" he asks you. no flirtation in his voice, no hand touching you. you narrow your eyes at him, not quite believing that there's a trauma coming in. you look to your fellow doctors watching, and they shrug, so against your better judgement you follow him.

you know right away there is no trauma incoming when you get outside. but you don't leave immediately either because this is the only true time you've been alone with him in some weeks.

"well, dr.abbot, now that i can see there's no trauma coming, what is it that you really brought me out here for?" you cross your arms over your chest in an effort to protect yourself from the emotions you're feeling. it certainly doesn't help that the way he towers over you and looks at you still has your heart beating faster than normal.

"i just need five minutes for you to hear me out." jack starts, and maybe if you were more mad you'd shut him down, but you don't and you listen.

"for weeks, i have been trying to convince myself it was for the best that we didn't continue what we were. and i know that you're probably thinking that's bullshit, it's just that i'm finally realizing that it is bullshit. it is bullshit because i can't stop thinking about you. i haven't stopped thinking about you from the minute i found you in the kitchen that first morning after. " he's sincere, and the thought of that night and the morning after, every night and morning shared, brings heat to your cheeks. he takes that as a good sign so he continues.

"it was never just casual for me. i wanted more. i still do. i wish i never gave you up in the first place because maybe we'd actually be together by now. i didn't think i was ready, and that's not an excuse, but it is the truth. and i'm sorry that i didn't say that before. i also might be jealous of a certain nurse i've happened to hear that you're seeing...as embarrassing as that is to admit too. "

you laugh a bit as he scratches the back of his neck.

"you, jealous, of mateo?"

"maybe. yeah. it's embarrassing, but it just may have been the last thing to push me to get my head out of my ass and tell you that i miss you. "

"oh." you aren't quite sure what to say to that last part. it's nice to hear, it's what you've been wanting to hear. but taking it in right now is a bit unexpected.

"if you have a good thing going with him, i'm not going to get in your way. i just wanted you to know how i really feel, and on the off chance you still want to be with me, i'll hang around a bit longer after the shift ends and we can figure that out."

"i'll think about it." and you mean that. it's just a lot.

"good. that's good. i'll be here." he turns his head to look at you and he musters up a smile. you smile too but only before returning to check on some remaining patients.

upon your return, you try to get through the rest of the shift without thinking too hard. you find yourself comparing jack and mateo, but truthfully you and your close friends know that your heart isn't in it with mateo anyway. you don't need them to tell you that, but the pitiful look whitaker gives you when you walk back in is enough for you.

before the end of your shift, you tell mateo you think it'd be better if you guys remain friends. he understands, because of course he does, and he promises to not make it weird. you feel relief almost instantly, which leaves just one thing.

you grab your stuff and head back outside. not to your surprise at all, jack is leaning up against his truck waiting for you. he tries not to smile but can't help it the closer you get.

"offer still good?" you say to jack as you approach, a smile creeping up on your face too.

"if it means i get to keep you." he jokes, pushing up off the truck and meeting you half the distance.

"i think we could come to an agreement." you grin now and you don't stop yourself from letting your arms wrap over his shoulders and around his neck.

"i think so too." jack smirks, his bag hands pulling you in by your waist before kissing you. you don’t have any complaints.

maybe for once both of you will stay.

⭑.ᐟ

a/n: yoooooo idk what happened here or if it makes any sense but yet another fic i made cuz i was listening to a song...plz lmk your thoughts! i love jack abbot heheh <3

You have been the perfect day shift intern for five months. Five freaking months of listening to mostly constructive criticism, five months of adapting and learning on the go with not a single complaint voiced, five months of diligent note-taking, studying, and practice. Five months of weaseling your way into the list of interns-slash-young-doctors that your residents actually respect. Five months of grueling shifts, hard losses, and never saying no when someone needs you to do something.

Five months of being the untouchable, “perfect” intern. Robby’s newest addition to his growing list of “work-wards.”

Five months of unflinching effort and dedication and it took four hours of your third night-shift to reduce you to a miserable, snotty mess on the supply closet floor. Tucked into the space between the two shelves, just the toes of your blood and snot and god knows what else covered shoes peeking out, the rest of you obscured.

Five months, four hours, and back to back fuck-ups that escalated into Dr. Jack Abbot, the man you may or may not have had the hugest crush on since beginning your intern year, removing you from a case. Five months, four hours, and two parents screaming at Dr. Abbot, telling him that you’re not fit to be a doctor.

Tonight isn’t the first night a patient has yelled at you. Tonight isn’t even the first time you’ve been removed from a case. It’s not the first time Dr. Abbot has had to correct you, and it’s certainly not the first time you’ve made a mistake.

You’re an intern. It’s your job to fuck up, learn from it, and keep going. That’s what Dr. Mohan said to one of the other interns awhile back. They’d ended up flunking out, but oh well. It was good advice. It wasn’t meant for you, but hell if you don’t say it to yourself every night like a prayer.

But right now, the usual calming mantra is doing absolutely nothing. You’re stifling ugly sobs into the tops of your knees, arms wrapped around and squeezing as tight as you can, your chest shaking and shuddering with the force of your complete and total freak-out.

The patient isn’t dead. Despite your mistakes, they didn’t die. There’s really nothing to cry about. Nothing to hide in the supply closet for.

And yet, here you are.

Your first mistake wasn’t terrible, but it was ridiculously stupid and incredibly embarrassing. Triage room, emergency measures being taken. And you, tired and off kilter from being so used to the day-shift, broke the sterile field. Like some dumb medical student, not a fairly seasoned intern who’s drilled sterile protocol into her head until it’s muscle memory.

For a scalpel. You dropped a scalpel. Arguably the worst thing to drop. And then, like an idiot, you picked it back up.

And, well. There’s no time to re-scrub, so there wasn’t a need for you in the triage room anymore.

Your second mistake was equally stupid and avoidable, if you’d focused more. Dr. Garcia was kind enough to let you scrub in on an emergency appendectomy.

It was a test. Not your first.

And you ripped the fucking purse strings.

Once again, you were unceremoniously booted from the room (being kicked out of an OR feels a hell of a lot worse than being kicked out of a triage room) and sent back to the pit. Dr. Abbot immediately caught wind of it and demoted you to scut work until “you get your head back in the game.”

And, well. You tried really hard to devote yourself to your new task, but you had to keep blinking tears out of your eyes every five seconds and you absolutely refuse to cry in front of literally any of your coworkers, lest they think you some weak-willed weak-stomached intern who can’t handle some criticism and correction. You’re a hard worker. You’re good at this. You have to be.

So yeah. Crying in the supply closet.

You’ve always been a frustrated cryer, which is annoying on a good day and downright awful on a bad one (case in point.)

You’re just so upset with yourself. You’re better than this. You know you are. You’ve proven that you are. You don’t drop scalpels. You don’t break the sterile field. You don’t rip purse strings.

But you did tonight. And maybe one day you’ll laugh, but today is not that day.

You just don’t get it. Day shift? Incredible. Manageable. You’re on top of things, put together, and worthy of Dr. Robby’s respect.

But tonight? Quite literally the exact opposite.

You can’t be burning out, right? That’s not how burn out works. There’s like, signs, and you start to feel terrible and awful and exhausted and sure you definitely feel all of those things, but that’s because you work in medicine. And you’re an intern. You’re supposed to feel terrible and awful and exhausted. But maybe you’re not? You do enjoy your work, and it’s exhilarating, especially when you try something for the first time and execute it well, because you always do, you always get things right on the first try, obviously, so that means that this can’t be burn out. You don’t burn out. That’s not you. Right? No. Of course not.

You gasp a particularly rough sob into your knees, air feeling like knives as you inhale, making you cough horrendously. You must be quite a sight.

Unfortunately, due to your alternating hacking coughs and dramatic crying, you don’t quite hear the door open.

You do, however, hear the quiet “Oh.” that’s mumbled a few moments later.

Of-fucking-course.

You scramble upright, aggressively wiping at your face and attempting to make it look like you weren’t just crying on the ground.

“Dr. Abbot! I’m so sorry, this is very unprofessional and I know you have me on scut work but I promise I’m still working on it—“

He holds up a hand, and you slam your jaw shut with an audible click.

“Just needed some four by fours, kid.”

Always one to be helpful (especially to the guy you have a crush on who also happens to be your boss, aka the same person who professionally told you to get your shit together about forty minutes ago) you reach beside yourself and hand him the package of gauze, an awkward smile fixed on your face.

“…Those are three by threes.”

Bitch. Motherfucker. Fuck your life.

“Right,” You mumble, dragging your hand down your face. “I’ll just get out of your way. Sorry.”

You turn to walk past him, attempting to go quick enough that he might not notice the new tears shining in your eyes before a hand lands on your shoulder.

“Look,” Dr. Abbot starts. “You’re one of Robby’s adopted interns, right? Robby-Junior?”

“That is one of the rumors Santos has been spreading, yes.”

His hand is on your shoulder. His hand is on your shoulder. (!!!)

You don’t know what to do. He’s looking at you. Your boss doesn’t fluster you. You’re chill. You’re normal. You’re cool as a cucumber, yep yep yep.

“Robby doesn’t adopt interns lightly. Don’t let one bad shift mess you up. It happens to everyone.”

You purse your lips. You should let it go. Take his advice. Thank him.

The all-consuming-guilt and ever-present-need to prove yourself itches too painfully to ignore.

Dr. Abbot seems to notice, and he catches your gaze again.

“What, it doesn’t happen to you?”

A jolt of panic stabs your chest. “No! Of course it happens to me, I didn’t mean to imply that I’m like, above making mistakes or having bad shifts at all—“

Genuinely what is wrong with you. Why the fuck does he do this you. You’re a smart, confident woman who apparently chucks her brain into the garbage bin whenever her boss is around.

Dr. Abbot, probably picking up on a pattern of behavior by now, levels you with another look that shuts you up fairly quickly. He’s got a sort of impish grin on his face, and it shouldn’t be hot, but he’s got his hand on your shoulder and you’re having a ridiculously shitty night. Does anything matter anymore?

“Usually, we try to mix up interns schedules so you don’t get into a rhythm on one specific shift so that when you inevitably switch, the change doesn’t mess up your flow. But I'm sure your knack for keeping your head down and doing good work let you fall through the cracks.”

He takes his hand off your shoulder and shoves it into his pocket, but you almost don’t notice because he said you do good work.

Abbot gives you another grin. “And I didn’t stick you on scut as a punishment. Mindless work tends to be calming, which in turn helps focus your mind.”

“But I ripped the purse strings,” You blurt like a Catholic school girl in a particularly rife confessional, “Like an idiot.”

“You ripped them like an intern doing something for the first time.”

“I practiced hundreds of times to make sure it didn’t happen!”

He tilts his head, almost cat-like. “Did you also practice on a live person in a higher stakes situation while your body is messed up from a sudden and huge sleep schedule change?”

“…No?”

He snorts. “Exactly. Dr. Garcia probably won’t hold it against you. She’ll give you shit for it, but it’s not like she’s never going to give you another chance.”

You wipe the last bit of wetness of your cheeks with the back of your hand, embarrassment heating your face. Despite the awfulness of being caught crying in the supply closet, the beginnings of pleasant warmth is spreading through your chest, Dr. Abbot’s reassurances echoing in your head.

“Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Um. Sorry about the crying. I promise I don’t usually do that.”

Dr. Abbot snorts as he saunters towards the door. “Wouldn’t judge you if you did, kid.”

—

Dr. Jack Abbot is bored.

He has his work, which is great. He became a doctor after being discharged because he’s always been the kind of man that needs something to do. Something to mind, something to watch, something to fix. Robby and him and much the same in this way.

Working at the ED was enough for a while. There was a certain challenge to it, an unpredictability that itch sated, kept him sane. And, well. Now he’s an attending. Night shift lead.

He started to get restless again.

He thought a pet might work. He was going to get a dog, but it didn’t sit right with him to get an animal built for companionship and then leave it at home for over twelve hours a day. Then he thought a cat might do the trick. He looked online first, saw beautiful, well bred felines that could probably compete and win for best in show for whatever the cat equivalent is for the Westminster Dog Show.

And then he made the mistake of going to the shelter and seeing an old, one eared tuxedo cat that stared at him with something in between fear and spite and its eyes. And well. The shelter attendants assured him that the cat in question prefers being left alone and having its own space, but might warm up eventually, and he brought him home that day.

And then it was just Jack, occasionally Robby, and now his asshole cat who might not love him back.

That also worked for a while. Having Charlie was fun. It was nice having another living creature in his house that wasn’t him. Even if he did have a habit of chewing on power cords when left unattended and eventually progressed into attempting to destroy Jack’s stethoscope if he left it anywhere he could find.

Minding the cat gave him something to do that wasn’t tedious, and it was a special sort of bonus to wake up every now and then and see the cat sprawled at the foot of the bed, snoring away. He didn’t actually know cats could snore like that.

Around the time that the itch came back and Jack was considering adopting a second cat from the shelter (well on his path to becoming a crazy cat lady, as Robby said in the park over beers) he met you for the first time.

Sometimes Jack slips quietly into the ED and watches the chaos of day shift’s conclusions. He’s picked up a very special language of gauging what he’s getting into based on the body language and behavior of the rest of the hospital staff. Robby had told him about the latest intern— a motivated, stubborn sort of girl that frequently went toe-to-toe with Santos but without any of the pushback when receiving correction or criticism. He’d heard that you were smart, capable, and well on your way of becoming a great doctor.

Robby failed to mention that you were pretty.

He’d watch you, comparing notes with Mohan with a certain intense focus on your face, worrying your lip between your teeth and repeatedly tucking a piece of hair behind your ear because it’d fallen out of your disheveled pony tail he thinks ‘Oh.’

And then, a few months later, he finds you crying in a closet, subtly confessing fears of failure and falling short of expectations, and then he thinks ‘Well, there’s something to do.’

Jack tries not to think about you, at first. You, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes, bottom lip jutted out just a bit, hugging your knees. He tries not to think about how you’d looked at him when he’d assured you that you did good work, the awkward thank you, and the way that for the rest of the shift, all the annoying menial tasks that get forgotten in the chaos were all mysteriously taken care of.

He tells himself that he’s just going to keep an eye on you. For Robby’s sake. He’d do the same for Whitaker.

The next time you have a night shift, you’re clearly more prepared for the exhaustion, and when he finally sees you in true, proper action, he understands immediately why Robby likes you and Mohan frequently attaches you to her cases. Skill, patience, and focus.

When he watches you trach a patient with a certain ease that only comes from practicing hundreds of times, Ellis shoots him a knowing look. Raised eyebrows and smirk. When she passes him in the hall a few hours later, she jabs her thumb behind her shoulder at where you’re diligently filling out a chart.

“That one yours, then?”

Jack shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You make me sound like a creep.”

Another raised eyebrow. “Sure it isn’t.”

“She’s Robby’s intern.”

“Mhm.”

“She’s way too young.”

Parker shrugs. “She’s good.”

“She is.”

The senior resident cuts a glance back to you. “Think she’ll burn out?”

“Maybe.”

Parker crosses his arms. “Are you gonna let it happen?”

“She’s not my intern.”

Up to three Parker Ellis looks and counting.

“It’s an HR nightmare.”

Parker shrugs. “You just said she’s not your intern.”

He narrows his eyes. “You know what I meant.”

“Do I? It’s been awhile, Jack. No one would really judge you for having some fun.”

“Parker.”

“Jack.”

He shakes his head, walks towards the boards. “You’re the worst.”

Parker just laughs. “Sure I am.”

To your credit, he doesn’t find you crying in a supply closet again to see evidence of you doing so for a solid few weeks. But, like most things in the ED, the peace doesn’t last.

You came into work soaking wet, which is odd, considering the fact that he knows you drive, and the walk to the parking lot isn’t far enough to account how you’re shivering in your freshly changed scrubs. He brushes it off, chalks it up to freakish Pittsburg weather.

Some night shifts are relatively slow and mild. Tonight is not one of those shifts. Patients are extra irritable at late hours, which is to be expected, but what he’s not expecting is to walk by South 15 and see a 50-something year old man slap you.

Jack blinks, and in the next second he’s in the room, standing in between you and the patient.

“Excuse me, what the fuck is going on here?”

Gloria will probably give him shit for his language later, but right now all he can think about is the startled look on your face and the echo that the contact made.

“I said I want a real doctor, not this fucking—“

“Get the fuck out of my hospital.”

Shen peaks his head in. “Security’s on their way.”

Jack reaches behind him to where you’re still standing, your hand covering your cheek, and gently pushes you towards Shen, towards the door. You stumble over your feet a bit, but truly, Jack’s never been more thankful for his residents because then Parker is right there, ushering you out the door with a hand on your shoulder. Jack resolutely ignores your mumbled “I’m fine, really, he just surprised me.”

Thankfully, security doesn’t take that long to get to the room, and the second Jack is finished explaining, he’s out the door and scanning the ED for your face. Nurse Young jerks her head towards the break room, and he thinks he manages to give her what he hopes is a thankful smile before he’s beelining for it.

When he opens the door, you’re sitting on the floor again, holding an ice pack to your cheek with one hand and dabbing at your lip with a paper towel. Like you’ve never heard of medical protocol in your entire life.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

You jerk your head up, a kid caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

“Dr. Abbot!”

Lowering himself to the ground is awkward, physically. Prosthetics don’t lend to much mobility and he’s too old to be doing this, but he just. There are little beads of blood collecting and then sliding down your chin, dripping onto the leg of your scrubs. At the same angle of the split in your lip, there’s a little cut he can see peaking out from under the ice pack.

He reaches forward, fingers itching towards the deep scarlet dripping steadily. He pauses, remembering things like words and questions and sees the wild look in your eyes.

“Can I…?” Jack’s voice trails off, the words clunky and useless in this bubble that’s seemed to form around the two of you, on the probably disgusting floor of the ED break room.

You slowly drop the napkin, let the ice pack lower to your lap and nod.

“He had a ring on. I guess it caught me. I didn’t really notice until I got here.”

“Parker and Shen didn’t notice?”

You look at your lap. “I told them I was fine… And covered it with my hand. There are other patients. It’s just a little cut.”

Jack’s fingers finally reach your face, and he almost takes them back when you flinch on the initial contact, shaking ever so slightly.

But then, with noticeable effort, you relax into his palm, his fingers curling around the side of your jaw. He should grab gloves. He should get up, take his hand off your face.

Anyone could walk in right now and call Gloria on his ass.

His thumb sweeps across your cheekbone, just below the cut, which does have some faint bruising around it. And truthfully, the split in your lip doesn’t look that bad either.

But there’s still little dots and trails of scarlet and he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to calm down until he fixes it. He needs to fix something.

“If I leave you here so I can get supplies,” He starts, voice a little rough, “Can I trust that you’ll stay here and not do anything stupid?”

“Uh, yes? Should I move to a real chair though?”

Jack huffs as he hauls himself to his feet. “That’d be preferable.”

Later, when he’s at home in his bed, he’ll assure himself that the night shift wasn’t truly that busy and he trusts his residents to handle things while he’s busy.

No one stops him on his way to the medical supply closet (the irony of the location is not lost on him) and he makes it back without interruption. Upon opening the door, you have in fact moved to a chair, and it seems the bleeding slowed in his absence.

What he should do is sit down in the chair opposite of you and handle this situation like a professional, like the Dr. Abbot, night shift attending, not Jack who’s got a thing for fixing.

He does try to remove his emotions and feelings from the situation, he really does. It’s something he’s generally very good at —which is where he and Robby differ; Robby would prefer to feel too much and Jack would prefer to feel nothing at all— but you’re looking up at him and there’s something really dangerous in the air and it must’ve gotten into your blood stream or something cause it’s swimming in your eyes and he realizes that removing his feelings is not going to be possible.

He decides he could at least tone it down. You’re an intern. Robby’s intern. So what if you’re bleeding all over the break room? Jack’s just doing his job as the attending to look after the doctors and nurses under his jurisdiction or whatever. That’s all.

“Tilt your head up.”

He sets to work cleaning up the cut and split as detached and clinically as possible, even puts on gloves so there’s no skin to skin contact, just protocol, but he can feel the warmth of your skin through the latex and you keep sucking in these tiny little breathes when something stings and he can’t get the sound of the slap out of his head and it’s all just kind of a lot.

He readjusts his hand on the side of your face, sort of holding your forehead now to have better access and control over the cut on your cheek and wow. Your skin is really warm. It kind of feels like you’re burning up.

Jack tosses the piece of gauze he was using and rests the back of his hand against your forehead. Shit, you are burning up.

He thinks back to you, walking in today, soaked to the bone.

“Did you walk to work today?”

You wince. “My car kind of died? On the way here? I was only a mile away. But I called a towing company, so I didn’t just leave my car in the middle of the road.”

He blinks.

“Your car died, so you had it towed and walked a mile to work, in the rain, late at night, and didn’t tell anybody?”

You just keep staring at him, brows furrowed.

“Yeah? I carry a knife and I’ve taken self defense classes, and my car was just towed back to my place, so. I had a shift to work.”

There’s… a lot to unpack in your answer.

“Kid,” He starts, wondering why Robby never thought to give him a heads up before you started working more night shifts, “What was your plan to get home?”

“Walk, probably. I was thinking about taking the bus. Dr. King knows the bus schedule, so I’m probably going to text her.”

Jack decides to just finish cleaning you up, before he does something stupid like shake you by your shoulders and ask why you didn’t think to let your boss know that your car broke down and you’d be walking home in the rain. Or that when a patient slapped you in the face, his ring cut your face and lip open.

God.

“It’s really fine though,” You say, gesticulating animatedly with your hands. “My place isn’t that far, and it’s not the first time my car’s died. The battery’s kind of shot, but I guess my car has a weird battery, and it’s like, crazy expensive to get a new one, so. Besides, I like walking. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my audiobooks.”

He wishes you’d stop talking so he’d stop hearing things that make him want to do things he can’t and shouldn’t do. Like find out what car you drive so he can buy you a new battery. Or buy you a new car all together.

Christ, you have him wrapped around your fucking finger.

“I’ll drive you home. If you’re fine with that.”

Jack has to fight a grin at how comically wide your eyes grow at his suggestion.

“Oh no, you really don’t have to. I promise I’m—“

“Please stop saying you're fine,” He begs, “You don’t have a working car, a patient slapped you in the face, and I think you’re coming down with something.”

The smile that’s seemed permanently fixed on your face since he came into the break room falters, for a bit.

“Well,” You grimace, hands fisting the hem of your scrub top, “Things certainly aren’t… great, but I’ll survive. I’m not like, incapable, or anything.”

Jacks quiet for a bit, not just mulling over your words but the way you said them; the cadence and tone.

He hums. “Is that what you think? That I or someone else here will think you’re not competent or that you’re weak if you take a break or ask for help?”

Your face falters again. “No, no, of course not I just… I don’t know. I’m an intern. It’s my job, supposedly, to mess up and have to be looked after in case I accidentally kill someone and stuff like that. I just don’t want to be someone that people think they have to worry about. I need— internships are competitive. They’re competitions, really. And I want to win.”

Jack Abbot knows what it’s like to want to win. That need to prove yourself, prove that you’re capable and strong and unfailing.

So Jack also knows how quickly that can all go south.

“You’re a smart kid,” He says, voice ever so slightly soft in the quiet tension of the break room, empty except for the two of you, “And you’re going to make a great resident, and one day, a damn good attending. But none of that means shit if you burn out or get run yourself into the ground before you get there.”

He avoids eye-contact while he carefully applies the bandage to your cheek. “This industry will chew you up and spit you back out if you don’t take care of yourself. I get it. We’re doctors. We make the worst patients. But you got slapped in the face during a shitty day. It’s okay to… not be okay for a minute.”

You huff a watery laugh. “Isn’t that what energy drinks are for?”

He shakes his head. “What, trying to die faster?”

“Anything to shake those student loans. Can’t be in debt if you’re dead.”

“Don’t they just pass it to your family? Next of kin or whatever?”

“I don’t think they can give student loans to a cactus. I mean, I consider her my daughter, but I hardly think it’ll hold up in court.”

Jack mentally files that information away for later. What later is, he isn’t sure.

He stands, pulls off his gloves and tosses all the used gauze and shit in the trash can.

“I gotta get back out there,” He jams his thumb towards the door, “But feel free to take five. No one’s judging you. Matter of fact, as your boss, I’m telling you to take a break.”

You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, Dr. Abbot. But thank you. For the…”

You gesture to your bandaged cheek and lip. “…And for the advice.”

He shrugs, like taking care of you hasn’t become a persona fantasy he may or may not fall asleep imagining most nights. Like it doesn’t matter, like he’s just doing his job.

“Offer for the ride’s still open. Just let me know by the end of shift.”

And with that, he’s out the door.

It’s the end of shift, and you’re staring at the double doors that lead to the outside world, and beyond that, absolutely fucking miserable weather for walking, a dead car, and cold as shit apartment.

You’re not exactly rushing out the door.

You’re clutching at the strap of your bag, regular clothes on, still damp despite the fact that it’s been over thirteen hours since you originally took them off, begging the universe to strike you down where you stand. Spontaneous lightning bolts happen indoors too, right?

The doors just stare back at you, unchanging in their miserable-ness, and after a solid ten minutes of staring, you feel rather than see Jack sidle up next to you.

“Still raining out there?”

“Yep. Looks worse now.”

“Not great weather to walk in. Especially considering the low-grade fever.”

“Mhm.”

“Did you text Dr. King for the bus schedule?”

“No. I didn’t want to wake her up.”

Jack huffs a breath, then jerks his head towards the doors that lead to the employee parking lot.

“Come on, kid.”

The ride is quiet and awkward. Well. Dr. Abbot probably doesn’t think it’s awkward, because he seems like the kind of man not to be bothered by long stretches of silence. Or silence at all.

He’d been kind enough to turn the heat on full blast (you started shivering the moment you stepped outside) and the radio is softly playing, and it’s only thanks to Sabrina Carpenter’s voice that you don’t feel like completely freaking out.

You mouth along to the lyrics, quietly humming the chorus under your breath.

“—I get wet at the thought of you being a responsible guy—“

“—Treating me like you’re supposed to do, tears run down my thighs—“

By the time you’ve realized that perhaps this isn’t the best song choice to sing along to, considering the situation and who’s car you’re currently riding in, the words “I get wet” have already left your mouth so there’s no real point in stopping.

On a completely unrelated note, Dr. Abbot starts smiling a little bit when you hum.

Pittsburgh traffic is terrible, so the drive kind of drags on. The radio is playing Chappell Roan now. Casual specifically. You’re considering changing the radio station because god.

“So,” You start, just to say anything that drowns out “knee-deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?”, “Did you… have a good shift?”

That was a terrible question. Jesus. What the hell is wrong with you? How did you get through medical school?

Dr. Abbot snorts. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

Ah. Right. The Incident.

“I told you I’m—“

“Didn’t I tell you to stop saying that?”

Your lap has never looked more interesting. Wow, is that a loose thread on your sweats?

He continues. “Fine or not, a patient assaulted you. Even if he didn’t leave a mark, that’s still shitty.”

“Have you been hit by a patient before?”

He huffs. “Hell yeah. It happens to everyone eventually. It’ll happen again. You get better at keeping your cool.”

“Sorry you had to step in. I’ve been hit by a patient before and I was fine.”

“Oh yeah?”

You nod. “It was during my Pedes rotation, actually. I’ve always known working with kids probably wasn’t going to be for me, but, well. Kid came in for intussusception, and she was screaming and writhing in pain, and I failed to restrain her properly.”

“What, did she slap you too?”

“Nope. Kicked me in the chin. Ended up biting almost clean through my tongue.”

“Fucking hell, kid. What’d you do?”

You shrug. “Kept my blood in my mouth until we finished sedating the patient. Ended up with three stitches.”

Dr. Abbot lets out a low whistle. “Always the patients you least expect.”

“The importance of proper patient restraint was thoroughly impressed upon me, I assure you.”

The silence after your short conversation is slightly more comfortable, and thankfully the radio station has decided to play less pointed music.

Between the warmth of the car, the smell permeating the seats that smells distinctly like Dr. Abbot, and the drumming of rain outside, it doesn’t take long for drowsiness to begin to overtake you.

Your last thought before falling asleep is that you don’t remember if you gave Dr. Abbot your address or not.

Someone is gently shaking your shoulder, and you feel like shit.

“What?” You attempt to say, but the side of your mouth is pressed against the seatbelt and your shoulder so it comes out sounding like: “Whamfgh?”

Opening your eyes is a herculean task, like someone sewed miniature weights to your eyelids while you were asleep. You’re absolutely freezing, despite the steady hum of the car's heat, still on high, and you vaguely recognize the street the car is currently parked on.

Oh right, your apartment.

“Oh,” You yawn, hauling yourself semi-upright, aiming for woman who has it together, and less disheveled swooning woman in a Baroque painting.

Dr. Abbot is staring at you with equal parts humor and concern.

You rub at your eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Little over forty minutes. You looked like you needed it.”

“It doesn’t take that long to drive to my place, even with traffic.”

Your brain is moving like molasses, so it takes you a second to catch up with the implication of his statement.

“Did you just… park in front of my house? So I could keep sleeping?”

He just shrugs. “Like I said. You looked like you needed it.”

Embarrassment and a touch of something else floods through your body, hot and cold at the same time.

“Sorry. You didn’t have to wait.”

“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have.”

Still moving slowly, you gather up your bag from where it partially spilled on the floor all over your feet, shoving old receipts and pads and chapstick back in with the reckless abandon of a person who isn’t nearly aware enough of social cues to be in a car alone with their hot boss.

Whilst you're grabbing and shoving, Dr. Abbot reaches into his back seat, rifles around for a bit, and then drops something rather unceremoniously over your head and shoulders. After a quiet “hey” you pull it into your lap, and then that hot feeling is back in full force.

It’s a rain jacket. Clearly Dr. Abbot’s. You can see his name written on the inside pocket. It’s nice too. Definitely not the kind of rain jacket you could afford on an intern’s budget.

“For the next time your car dies,” He clarifies, as if the jacket’s purpose is the thing that’s stupefied you, not the fact that he’s the one giving it to you, “In case of rain.”

“You really don’t have to,” your words are rushed and clunky in your mouth, tumbling over each other in your haste to say something, anything, “I mean, I can just buy my own—“

“First of all,” He cuts you off, voice smooth and rough at the same time, “Do I seem to be the kind of guy in the habit of doing things I don’t want to? And second of all…”

He tilts his head, gaze sharp. “Are you really going to buy one for yourself?”

Your mouth goes dry.

“I was planning on looking online—“

Dr. Abbot interrupts you. “Now you don’t have to.”

Like it’s that easy. Does he want it to be?

“Dr. Abbot, I—“

“Jack.”

His grin goes from mild to shit-eating as you stare at him, obviously radiating confusion.

“Jack,” you start, testing out the name in your mouth, hearing how it sounds in the air. “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to give me your jacket. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

“Kid—“

The prickling of perceived weakness makes anger spark in your chest.

“Don’t call me kid like I’m stupid.”

Dr. Abb— Jack seems simultaneously impressed that you interrupted him for a change and vaguely put out.

He holds up a finger, effectively silencing anything else you were thinking of saying.

“I don’t call you kid because I think you’re stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid. You’d know if I thought you were stupid, because I would tell you. ‘Kid’ is a…” He trails off, free hand tapping thoughtful rhythms on the steering wheel, “…Nickname. Term of endearment. Whatever you want to call it, but it’s not derogatory.”

Jack holds up a second finger.

“You have not been taking care of yourself. If you were, you wouldn’t have a low grade fever, and you would’ve called me as your boss or one of your friends to drive you instead of walking after your car died. You’ve been surviving. There’s a difference.”

Shame burns white hot through you— all your recent failings laid out by the person you want least to notice them. Clearly, he has.

Possibly out of pity in response to your no doubt miserable expression, Jack continues.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’d be an honest-to-god miracle if any intern managed to properly take care of themself. Hell, residents don’t do it either, and neither do attendings. Does Robby strike you as the kind of man who takes perfect care of himself?”

“That depends. Is my answer going to make it back to him?”

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Exactly. Doctors make the worst patients, in and out of a hospital setting. Knowing better doesn’t actually make us all that inclined to do better. Terrible misconception.”

He nudges the jacket on your lap. “So just take the jacket. One less thing to worry about.”

Emboldened by his recent streak of kindness towards you and the flush of fever running through your veins, you look over to him.

“You worry about me?”

Something dances in his eyes for a split second, gone before you can blink.

“I worry about all the interns and residents on my service, but especially the ones my best friend has taken a liking to.”

Right. Of course. He only cares because of Robby. And Robby only cares so he can add another doctor to the already short-staffed PTMC. It’s not like Jack actually likes you or anything.

You clutch the jacket to your stomach, finally finding the energy to get out of the car. Jack’s car.

“Well. Thanks for the ride, Dr. Abbot. And the jacket.”

“No problem, kid.”

And if later on that evening, in the safety of your tiny apartment, you take in the deep, fresh, almost spicy smell that makes up Jack, lingering on the jacket, that’s no one’s business but yours.

—

From that night on, it feels like Jack Abbot is everywhere.

Whether it’s something he’s doing on purpose or you’ve just developed a heightened sense to his whereabouts— it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s a whiff of his cologne (eerily similar to Dior Sauvage, which makes you shudder. Certainly he didn’t choose a cologne similar to the number one male manipulator scent on purpose?) or seeing his handwriting on a whiteboard or his notes in a chart, he’s there.

You’re being scheduled for night shifts fairly regularly now, in addition to the 24-hour shifts you have the pleasure of being put on as an intern.

Working a double isn’t horrific, really. Exhausting, sure, but Robby and Jack’s solid presence makes the shifts more bearable. Plus, you’re quickly becoming friends with the fresher residents, Whitaker and Santos, plus some of the older residents like Mohan and King. Even Dr. Langdon gives pretty solid advice and mentorship, despite the tension in the air whenever he happens to be working with or near Robby.

Normally, 24 hour shifts are grueling, but not impossible. Somewhere around the 15 or 16 hour mark, the sleep deprivation hits, and you can just coast on stress-induced inertia and a healthy does of energy drinks and mania.

Today, though, has been particularly fucking awful. Maybe it’s the fact that the fever never really went away, or the fact that you started your period the day before (being sick on your period should be illegal.) It’s probably both of those things.

But there isn’t really anything to do but grin and bear it. The day will pass, and you have the next two days off anyways. Just survive the next however-many hours of the shift and then you can go home, dress in exclusively fluffy clothes, and binge watch tv whilst eating heart-stopping junk food.

You’re distracted from your charting, propped up on the counter at the nurses station by a light tap on your shoulder and someone saying your name.

Dr. Langdon has sidled up next you, voice hushed.

“Hey, uh. I just wanted to let you know that you seem to have… bled through.”

If a spontaneous earthquake could open a chasm beneath your feet and swallow you whole, now would be the time.

“Fuck fuck-ity fuck fuck,” You mumble, wiping your hands down your face. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Thank you for letting me know.”

In a moment that is as mortifying as it is kind of sweet, Langdon passes you a hoodie that is clearly his.

“To tie around your waist,” He clarifies, holding the object out across the meager space between the two of you, voice a bit awkward and stilted, like you might decide to spit in his face or something.

You don’t actually know what it is that Dr. Langdon did before your arrival that makes the break room go quiet when he walks in (unless Dr. King is there) but you don’t particularly care. If it was truly something horrific that you should be worried about, he wouldn’t be working here. Robby wouldn’t let that kind of thing slide.

So you take the offered hoodie with a strained smile (can this shift just be over) and speed-walk to the break room, praying no one decides to snag you on the way there.

What you should do is go to your locker where your stash of pads, tampons, spare underwear, and extra scrubs are, and then probably the bathroom to get changed, so you can keep on going but you also just saw Dr. King go into the break room and you just really need a hit of her specific brand of optimism.

The woman in question perks up when she notices your arrival, hastily eating the same snack she always eats around this time— a tiny bag of pretzels.

She watches as you collapse into the chair across from her, letting your head thunk onto the table.

“Bad shift?”

“Bad life,” You grumble. “Dr. Langdon had to give me his hoodie to tie around my waist because I bled through onto my scrubs. Like a middle schooler who doesn’t know what pad sizes are for.”

Dr. King nods thoughtfully. “He asked me if it would be weird of him to let you know and offer his hoodie. To which I replied that periods are a normal bodily function and he’s a doctor.”

“Here here,” You half-heartedly cheer, any actual cheer or enthusiasm severely lacking in your voice. “How did you survive your intern year, Dr. King?”

“We’ve been working together for awhile, you can call me Mel,”

She pops another pretzel in her mouth before answering. “But to answer your question, I mostly just kept telling myself that failing wasn’t an option. Which. Probably isn’t helpful, or good advice, but it worked for me. Something that’s nice is if you have a fellow intern or doctor that you enjoy working with. I know the other two interns who matched into the PTMC dropped out of the course, so it’s just you, but you have Dr. Robby, right?”

You nod, picking absently at a spot on the table and ignoring the way that it wasn’t Robby who popped into your head, but Jack.

Your teeny, ignorable crush on him has become a full-blown thing, with semi-weekly dreams about him in various… situations, and casual daydreams at all hours of the day of what it would be like to just be with him, or hear him, in any capacity that couldn’t be qualified as work or a boss checking on his employee. Intern. Whatever.

Hormonal and fever-ish, you suddenly feel like you’re going to explode and die if you don’t have someone to confide in right this very second. You haven’t heard Mel really talk about anyone you work with outside of professional doctor-to-doctor conversation, not even about Dr. Langdon, who she seems almost suspiciously close with.

“Mel,” You start, voice a little too thick and watery to just be talking about your stupid, annoying, one-sided workplace crush, “Can I tell you a secret?”

She seems to consider the pros and cons first, and looks fairly caught off guard, but she answers. “Um. Sure?”

“Have you ever had a crush on a coworker before? Or like, a boss or mentor?”

Mel sets down her bag of pretzels. “Is this about Dr.—“

“I have the biggest crush on Dr. Abbot and I think it’s ruining my life.”

The words burst out of you all at once, and Mel’s expression goes from shocked, to confused, before finally settling in abject amusement.

“Ah,” She says, sliding the pretzels across to you. “Um. Well I personally don’t have a crush on Dr. Abbot, but I think I understand the sentiment.”

You bury your face into your hands and groan. “It’s awful. It’s so cliche. It’s so fucking Grey’s Anatomy.”

“I’ve never actually seen that show. Becca likes it though.”

Mel allows you a few moments of wallowing and pretzel eating before she speaks again.

“Have you… acted on it?”

“No!” You snap your head up. “I mean. No, I haven’t. I’m not naive enough to think that he would reciprocate. He’s an attending and I’m an intern.”

She leans in. “But…?”

“But sometimes… I wonder? I don’t know. I’m probably crazy. He drove me home the other day, cause my car died, and it was raining, and I got slapped by a patient, and that was when I first came down with this stupid fever, and like, that’s normal, right?”

Mel nods. “Fr— Langdon drives me to work when we share shifts, and sometimes when we don’t. I think Dr. Santos and Dr. Whitaker carpool too. So maybe?”

“Right. Yeah.”

She takes the pretzel bag back. “Is there more evidence that makes you feel crazy?”

Your skin flushes hot at the memory alone.

“He gave me his rain jacket. To keep.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Mel once again takes a few minutes, and the rest of her pretzels before responding.

“I’m honestly not the best person to ask for advice about this. I’ve been told I can be… dense when it comes to romantic endeavors.”

You shrug. “You’re a great listener, and you haven’t steered me wrong in the past.”

She brightens. “That’s good! I think my advice would be to talk to Dr. Mohan. She has experience with your… particular situation.”

Mel tosses the empty pretzel bag and heads toward the door. “I’ll let Robby know you’re taking ten, so don’t worry about someone looking for you while you’re changing.”

“You’re the best. I love you.”

The resident flushes at your gratitude, and then ducks out the door, leaving you alone to stew on her advice.

—

Talking to Dr. Mohan proves difficult, at first. How exactly do you start that conversation? “Hey, I heard you had advice on having a world-ending crush on your boss, got any tips?”

Additionally, she’s kind of hard to track down. You greatly respect Dr. Mohan’s work ethic and truly aspire to her unflinching devotion to patient care at the PTMC.

After a few days (which turns into a few weeks, because you are an emotional coward) of trying (and failing) to find a moment to talk, Dr. Mohan actually ends up finding you.

“Hey!” She jogs up to you as you’re walking to your car, a too-bright smile on her face for the fact that you both just got off a fourteen hour shift.

“Sorry to be that annoying coworker who talks to you in the parking lot, but I wanted to catch you before you left. Mel said you wanted to talk to me?”

“Right!” You stammer, slightly mortified. You admire Dr. Mohan so much and really want her to think you’re capable but you really need some advice on Jack Abbot as a whole, and it sounds like she’s the only expert around. “Yes. That. It’s a really normal question, you know.”

Dr. Mohan just nods, a smile still fixed on her face, like this is a totally normal conversation. “Uh, sure?”

There’s a beat of silence where you both stare at each other, and then she gasps.

“This is about Abbot, isn’t it?”

You groan, throwing your head back in defeat. “Am I that obvious?”

She laughs goodnaturedly. “No. Probably not. You’re just the only intern in the ED right now so I try to make it a habit to keep an eye on you. Plus, Mel is literally the only person in the world who knows about my now-dead crush on him, so. I just connected the dots.”

“He’s so hot, Dr. Mohan. I feel like I’m dying.”

She makes a noise of sympathy. “He is. It’s fucking annoying, at a certain point.”

“Thank you!” You shout, “Like it’s just so there. It should be illegal to just walk around and look like that. I should be focusing on like, studying and learning, but instead I’m just harboring this stupid crush on an attending.”

“Have you ever seen Grey’s—“

“Yes. I know. I can’t be Meredith. Meredith was like, always a mess. Am I a mess?”

Mohan purses her lips. “Well. You did just say you felt like you were dying.”

“I know,” You sigh. “It makes me feel… shallow. I like being a doctor. I was so excited to get matched into the PTMC, and this stupid crush is throwing me off my game.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“On my first night shift rotation I dropped a scalpel, picked it back up, and then ripped the purse strings on my first appendectomy.”

She winces. “Oh. That’s not… great.”

Your hand finds its way to your comfort necklace. “He found me crying in the supply closet like some medical student, and then he comforted me. It was terrible.”

Mohan starts ambling towards the direction you assume her car is in. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve been caught crying in the supply closet several times. I think it’s a right of passage. And as for that second part…”

She shrugs. “Abbot gives credit where credit is due, but he won’t coddle you. If he actually offered real comfort or advice or whatever, then he meant it.”

“That’s what he said. It just didn’t really help the whole crush-on-him part. And then there was the slapping incident, and he drove me home, and now I have his rain jacket in my backseat in case my car dies again.”

Mohan actually looks taken back.

“Okay. It sounds to me like this is a situation that is in serious need of wine. Do you drink?”

“Whenever I have a spare twenty dollars.”

She grins. “I happen to have a couple bottles at home that might do the trick. Follow me back to my place?”

“Yes please.”

Wine and, eventually, takeout at Samira’s is much more enjoyable than you expected— considering the fact that you’re an intern and she’s a resident. She confides that she doesn’t have very many friends outside of the ED and was excited at the opportunity to have “real girl-time”.

She shares how she weathered her own seemingly life-ending crush on Jack, gasps and screams at the appropriate times when you tell her about the slapping, the events that occurred in the break room afterwards, the drive home, and the jacket.

You leave her apartment feeling lighter than ever. Like life might be worth living. Like you could survive your intern year.

Maybe everything will be okay.

—

Everything is not okay.

You’re now two full weeks into a never-ending fever, you keep getting stuck with shitty shifts (how many times a month can one person possibly be scheduled to work a double?) and top it all off, you’ve been pissed on not once, but twice in the same fucking shift.

Santos snorts when she sees you go by in your third set of scrubs for the day.

“Careful. You’re gonna replace Huckleberry pretty soon.”

You shoot her a look. “Supportive as ever, Dr. Santos.”

“I try.”

You sink into the chair next to hers, taking a moment to press the heels of your hands into your eyes and maybe, like, take a thirty second nap.

It doesn’t help much.

There’s a particular misery in watching the day-shift rotation handoff with the night shift and not being able to join in the process. Because you’re still there. And will be, until you see them again for your handoff, in twelve fucking hours.

Patients tend to get bitchier the later it gets, and it’s one of those nights where every patient bleeds into the next in a never-ending sea of complaints, pain, and fixing.

The fixing is fine. You like the fixing.

You’re just… having a hard time keeping up with everything while the fever perpetually runs you down. It’s the kind of thing where no amount of sleep can help you. Unless it was for 48 hours straight and then you got another 48 hours off after that to relax while you’re awake, and then another 48 hours to be productive.

A vacation. A week off. You’re describing taking a week off work. It’s comical, actually. Imagine requesting a week off from work. Gloria or whoever it is would never grant that. Not as an intern.

You notice Jack lingering around your general vicinity, which is fairly normal on a night like tonight. Technically, as the only intern on shift, you’re the only liability he has to really worry about.

Somewhere around the eighteen hour mark, he slides into the chair next to you while you’re charting.

“You’re flagging.”

Your eyes burn as you tap information into the tablet, then check on the computer in front of you. “I’m fine. I just need a Redbull or something.”

He slides the tablet out of your hands. “Part of being a good doctor is knowing when to take a break. Can’t be a good doctor if you’re falling asleep during the exam, right?”

“I would never fall asleep during an exam.”

He shrugs. “I’ve seen it happen.”

Jack jerks his head towards the break room. “Take five. Get an energy drink or whatever. Then I want you on chairs for at least an hour.”

“Yes sir.”

He rolls his eyes. “Get going.”

Chairs don't prove to be as uneventful as you (and probably Jack) hoped it would be. You get vomited on by a teenage girl, who apologizes profusely when she finally manages to stop throwing up, narrowly avoid a swing from a patient that quickly becomes a behavioral case, and become an unwilling participant in another patient’s doctor fantasy.

Security had to get involved with that last one. It was. Something.

Your shift ends with little fanfare. It’s honestly a miracle you survived. You’re exhausted, achey, and still feverish. The only thing you can think about is crawling into your bed, indulging in a rare expense of turning your heat up, and sleeping until your next shift.

Walking into your apartment ends up being a slap in the face. First of all, it’s fucking freezing. As if you left every single window open while you were gone. Secondly, it’s dark. Like, not even the clock on the microwave is on.

“Fuck,” you mumble under your breath, tears beginning to burn with unshed tears digging through your bag and fumbling with your phone, about to text your landlord when you see that he’s already texted.

Eric (Landlord): Power and AC is down. Might take some time to fix. Power should be back on by tonight.

And that’s just the last straw, really.

You slam the door behind you, not even bothering to go inside your apartment at all, chest tight and face hot, you race down the stairs, trying to find Samira’s contact through blurry eyes. When you think you’ve found it you click call, collapsing on the curb with your body doubled over, crying like a crazy person into your knees, at something like nine in the morning.

The phone rings for a bit, and you’re about to give up when the line finally stops and somebody picks up.

“Hello?”

It’s not Samira who answers. It’s Jack.

You sniffle. “Why are you answering Samira’s phone?”

“I didn’t. I answered my phone. Because you called me. Are you okay?”

“Oh,” You decide to ignore his question, “I meant to call Samira. Sorry.”

“Wait,” Jack’s voice comes out all rough and tinny through the speaker, but even distorted through a phone, you could listen to it for hours, “Answer the question. Are you okay?”

Your bottom lip wobbles dangerously.

“The power’s out in my building. And the heating went out too. My landlord said the power won’t be on until tonight, and I just wanted to go to sleep, but it’s cold and I'm tired and this stupid fever won’t go away.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

Always a man of action, Jack is.

You shrug, then make a non-committal noise when you remember he can’t see it. “I was supposed to call Samira and see if she’d let me sleep on her couch.”

“I have a guest bedroom.”

The statement hangs in the crisp morning air. You think of Jack’s encouraging advice, Jack’s steady presence, Jack’s warm car and his nice smelling rain- jacket. Jack, Jack, Jack.

“Jack?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your address?”

The drive over involves bawling your eyes out to Vienna by Billy Joel. It’s just that kind of day.

You have no problems finding parking (miraculously) and no one stops you as you head up to Jack’s apartment as directed.

It’s… fancy. Like, polished floor lobby, lounge area adjacent to the front desk fancy.

The actual building itself isn’t very tall, nothing like a skyscraper, so it’s not exactly surprising that Jack’s apartment is the penthouse. It’s just suddenly very awkward standing in front of the door, in the same sweatshirt you’ve had since high school, sweats that have seen better years, looking exactly like the kind of girl who sobbed on the ride over to Billy Joel.

Jack opens the door almost immediately after you knock, and.

If seeing him in scrubs was bad, it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to him in a tight, army green shirt and grey sweatpants. Grey sweatpants. That couldn’t have been intentional, right? Is he online enough to know these things? God.

His features soften when he takes in your tear-streaked face and disheveled appearance.

He makes a low noise in his throat.

“Oh, you poor thing. Come here,”

Jack had actually been gesturing to the apartment, saying ‘come inside’ but the dam breaks the moment he says “poor thing” and you don’t have the wherewithal to think anything more complex than “Jack=Comfort and Safety".

Your bag drops with a dull thud onto the ground and then you’re crashing into him, face pressed into his chest and arms wrapped around his middle. You can barely find it within yourself to be embarrassed.

Jack doesn’t react at first, going completely stiff in your hold, and you think maybe you’ve gone and fucked this up too, like everything good in your life, but right when you move to pull away a hand finds its way to the back of your head, and another rubs circles on your back.

“Poor girl,” he murmurs, voice a soothing rumble with your ear close to his chest, “They been running you ragged?”

You nod uselessly, feeling raw and cut open— like you’ve been smashed against a rock and everything you keep tucked inside is spilling out and you can’t stop it.

“I’m so tired.” You half-mumble-half-sob into him, a sentiment that feels too light to convey everything that’s happened since you became an intern at the PTMC, and everything else you don’t talk about that happened before.

“I know sweetheart, I know,” Jack is solid beneath your cheek and arms, a lifeboat in a storm. “How about we get you inside and get you warm, huh? That sound nice?”

At the promise of warmth you finally detach from him, shame burning through you when you eye the wet spot on his shirt.

“Sorry,” You say, voice barely above a whisper. “I think I got snot on your shirt.”

“Trust me kid, it’s seen worse.”

He grabs your bag before you can even make a move for it, and you trail behind him into his apartment, attempting to ground yourself by looking around his apartment.

It’s nice. Lived in, not sterile. It doesn’t, actually, look the inside of a dentist’s office, like you were half expecting. Most new apartments have that doctor’s office lobby feel. Not exactly comfortable when you’re a doctor and the goal of home is to not remind you of your job.

Jack hangs your bag on a hook by the door, right next to his own. Something twinges in your chest at the sight.

There’s a feeling under your skin you can’t place as you shuffle into his apartment, something warm and skittish that aches for this to not be a one time thing, to be able to compare the pale morning light you’re watching now to late afternoon sun. To know where he keeps his mugs, what drawer the silverware is in, if he’s got a junk drawer with random shit in it, and what the random shit is. What it feels like to be in his kitchen, shoulders brushing.

But that’s a lot of complicated things to name or voice just past the threshold of the foyer, so you wrap your arms around yourself and toe your shoes off, then pad quietly after him.

Jack is— inviting, or maybe enticing; all those words that beckon the skittish thing closer and it feels just on the tip of danger to obediently sit on the couch he ushers you to.

“By the way,” Jack says somewhere behind you, maybe in the kitchen? “I have a cat. His name is Charlie. He probably won’t come near you, but be warned, he’s an asshole when he wants to be.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I like cats. Especially the asshole ones.”

“That explains a lot of things.”

His statement is kind of loaded, chock full of subtext you don’t care to parse through at the moment.

“Um,” You start, feeling a bit unsteady, “Is— Do you mind if I shower? I kind of smell gross probably, and I feel… grimy. Your apartment seems clean and I’d hate to get my hospital grime on anything.”

Jack just chuckles. “One, I wouldn’t care if you got ‘hospital grime’ on anything because that would be a very hypocritical thing to care about, and two, of course you can shower. Do you have spare clothes?”

“I might’ve forgotten to grab those.”

Another huffy laugh. “That’s fine. You can borrow some of mine. I’ll leave them on the bed.”

That’s like. Wow. Yeah. You’re just gonna borrow some clothes from him. From Jack. You’re going to shower in Jack’s shower and use whatever bodywash he has (hopefully not 5-in-one) and then put on his clothes and you are totally capable of being Completely Normal about these things.

“I already started on dinner when you said you were coming over. Should be done by the time you get out of the shower. Chicken noodle okay?”

Damn Jack Abbot and damn your shitty emotional regulation and damn your life for putting you in these situations.

“Yeah,” You croak, thinking about things like soup and family and being cold and strong and alone, “Yeah that’s fine. Thank you.”

Jack politely does not comment on the fact that soup is reducing you to a tangled heap of emotions and tears, and instead directs you to where his shower is and says to use whatever you want and take however long you want. He says want, not need. You’re not sure if there’s an intention behind the word choice.

Once in the shower, you allow yourself time to cry, to feel awful and self-pitying and all those things that are terrible to go through in front of another person. His shower is expensive and the water is warm and he does not have 5-in-one. There’s a litter box nestled next to the toilet, and it’s not funny, but it kind of is, because Jack would be the kind of guy to look at a litter box and put it right next to the toilet. Everything in its place.

Maybe that’s your problem. You haven’t felt like anything is in the right place in years.

You want to stay in the shower, in the bubble of protection it provides, but the idea of running up Jack’s water bill is enough to guilt you into getting out. You shiver, dry, aggressively attempt to make yourself look less like a wreck at the sink, and then tip-toe into the attached bedroom and carefully pull on the clothes Jack left for you on the bed; a faded, oversized college shirt, and a comfy pair of sweatpants.

They smell like him. You smell like him, like his body wash. The house smells like him. Everything you take in is a pleasant assault of Jack, Jack, Jack.

Enough guilt to fuel an entire room of ex-Catholic’s is the only thing keeping you from snooping around his room. The idea of stumbling upon something private or hidden away makes you feel slimy and gross, so you exit the bedroom and pretend like you don’t feel like a foster dog on its first night home from the shelter.

(Do shelter dogs miss the shelter? Do they miss its familiarity? Do dogs miss anything at all?)

The apartment smells of more spices and good smelling food than you privately thought Jack capable of. You’d read him as the kind of guy to subsist on takeout and maybe like, protein bars. But he’s dutifully stirring a metal pot with all the diligence of the military man that he once was.

Quietly, as if he might throw the wooden spoon he’s stirring with if you make too much noise or take up too much space, you carefully pull out a barstool in front of his kitchen island, the one closest to the door, and haul yourself onto it.

He gives you an examining glance over his shoulder, turns a knob on the stove, then rests his forearms on the island counter across from you. His rather delicious looking forearms, you might add.

“Feeling better after your shower?”

You hum an affirmation, folding your arms and resting your chin on them.

“Isn’t it kind of weird to make soup for breakfast?”

He shrugs. “It’s dinner for us. Or, well, me. I’m not sure your body knows what meal it is.”

He taps a pointer finger rhythmically on the counter. “Any word from your landlord?”

“No. Sorry for… all of this. I know you’re tired.”

“I wish you’d stop apologizing for things I don’t mind doing for you.”

You don’t really know how to respond to that, or what to do with how it makes you feel, so you elect to save it for later. Good at compartmentalizing, ED doctors are.

You clear your throat. “I can call Samira whenever. She’d probably be excited to have girl time. So you know. Don’t feel like— I have other options. If or when you want me to leave.”

“Do you want to leave?”

You wish he’d stop asking questions you don’t want to answer.

You try to play it off, smother your fear and exhaustion with humor. Robby’s kid, through and through.

“Well, I can’t have you getting sick of me. You’re the only person I know who has a very rob-able house if this whole internship doesn’t pan out.”

Jack straightens, shoulders pulling and flexing. “Who said I’d get sick of you? Maybe I like the idea of you in my house.”

“Do you?”

You ask the question before you’re aware of how terrified you are of the answer. But you’ve already said it, and it feels nice to be the one asking the hard question instead.

Jack, likely experienced in this sort of thing, doesn’t look outwardly bothered by it, but he gets a sort-of-sad look on his face, almost like he’s disappointed that you had to ask.

“Have I given you any reason to think otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” You look down, picking at a hangnail to avoid his expression and his eyes and his everything, “I don’t want to assume anything.”

“You’ve already assumed quite a bit.”

You scrunch your face. “That’s different. Those are safe assumptions.”

“Are they?”

“Obviously, it’s safer to assume that you don’t want me to stay here, or at least not for very long, because if I assume that I do I’ll bother you and I want you to—“

You cut yourself off, jaw shutting with a firm click, but the end of the sentence hangs in the air unspoken anyways. It’s not hard to figure out what you were going to say.

I want you to like me.

Jack sighs, and alarm blares are going off in your head and your chest starts to feel tight and cold despite the warmth of his apartment, and then he’s rounding the island and you turn your body to follow him —never turn you back, never let your guard down— and then he’s standing in front of you, over you, and you’re not sure if you want to run or metaphorically curl up at his feet, tail tucked.

It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing. It’s impossible to ignore.

(What does a shelter dog think, on that first night? Do they hope? Do dogs hope?)

He raises a hand, slowly, giving you a chance to lean away, and when you don’t, it comes to rest on the side of your face, his thumb swiping at the barely-there wetness from earlier tears.

It’s cleaning the cut from the slap, it’s a kindness you can curl into, and it might be a threat. Might be bad, might turn harsh and painful, might leave without a word.

Unlike that day in the break room, there’s no fluorescent lights to suck any heat out of the room and no gloves as a barrier; as a reminder of who he is, of what you are, of how things work.

It’s just you and Jack, in Jack’s apartment, wearing Jack’s clothes, and pretty soon you’re going to eat food that Jack made. Just for you.

And you think maybe, possibly, if he stops here you could kind of hold onto this moment for the rest of your life and it would get you through being alive and strong and alone, and you’d make it through this, whatever this is, if he stops here.

He doesn’t. He starts talking.

“I like knowing that you’re safe. That you’re taken care of. I like knowing with certainty that these things are true because I’m the one making sure of it.”

Your breath hitches in your chest.

“That’s kind of a lot of work, though.”

He hums. “It is. Luckily, I just so happen to be a pretty hard worker.”

Everything about the current situation is a lot and your nerves are over-taxed and dialed up to hundred, so it’s not surprising that you start crying again.

Jack brings up a second hand to the other side of your face and gently wipes away the tears as they come. It feels sort of like the physical version of everything he’s been doing for you since that day in the supply closet.

“You don’t have to do anything, or say anything, or make any kind of decision right now, okay? We can do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”

There’s the word choice again; want, not need. Is there a difference? What does the difference mean to him? What does he mean? Why is he doing any of this?

Jack's phone goes off in his pocket, and he steps back, drops his hands, and goes back to the stove.

Jack said you don’t have to make a decision right now, but you kind of feel like if you don’t do something you’re going to be sick with everything that’s swirling and clawing inside you, threatening to burst. Like the very essence of you is going to explode, and your soul will be painted on Jack’s perfectly decorated walls.

That would be something, wouldn’t it.

You stay seated at the island, turning to stare at Jack’s back while he adds the final touches to the soup. He doesn’t talk anymore, but he keeps looking back every few minutes, like he’s making sure you’re still there.

Eventually Jack turns the stove off, dishes up a bowl of soup for you, and sets it gently in front of you. He uses his pinky to cushion the placing of the bowl, so there’s no loud clinking noise when he sets the bowl down.

There’s a tiny sprig of parsley on top of the soup, right in the center. Like a Panera ad for soup in September.

You start crying again, in earnest.

“I’m sorry,” You gasp, pressing the heels of your hands into your eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m— I don’t know. I don’t know.”

You’re hoping the last sentence encompasses an entire lifetime of events, accidents, mistakes, and memories that have never been able to find a place in your head except dead center, at the forefront of your mind at all times, stamped on your forehead for anyone with eyes to see.

Your life hasn’t been wants or choices for a very long time. And here Jack is, giving you an array of both, and saying things like he wants you to want.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Hey, hey hey hey, shhh,” Strong arms wrap around you, tucking your head into a warm chest, effectively shutting off all sensory input that isn’t Jack. “You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay, I got you.”

He rubs circles into your back, then switches to tracing shapes, and he lets you cry into him again and he doesn’t tell you to stop, or to calm down, or you’re being too much too fast.

“You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay sweetheart. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

—

You, embarrassingly, fall asleep right there, sitting at the kitchen island over a bowl of soup and twenty-something years of holding up your life with hands that never quite seemed big enough to do it.

You wake up in Jack’s bed, his comforter pulled up to your chin and the clock at the bedside table reading 8:17 p.m. There’s the muffled sound of several voices coming from beyond the door.

Holy shit. What the fuck.

Deciding to ignore the implication that Jack carried you to bed, you mentally take stock of what’s around you.

In front of the clock is your phone (plugged in to charge), a glass of water, and a note with Jack’s handwriting on it.

Kid-

I’ll probably be in the ED for the night shift by the time you wake up. I called Mohan (who called Mel, who was with Langdon, for reasons unknown) to go to your place and grab you some things. There may be people in the apartment when you wake up. You are in no way obligated to interact with them. They have to leave eventually.

Charlie is in the room with you because he hates strangers, but he probably won’t leave the bathroom. Probably. Drink water and eat something, if you can. Text me if you need anything.

The voices beyond the door are, more than likely, the aforementioned individuals who have now seen the glorified closet you call home. It’s not ideal, but you’re wrung out and don’t have the energy to really care. Besides, Samira and Mel are too nice to judge you that hard (you hope) and from what you’ve heard, Langdon isn’t really in a place to say anything.

On one hand, going out there requires socializing. Which, ew. On the other hand, Samira and Mel are the best. Langdon is maybe okay.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you shuffle out of bed and then continue shuffling to the door, hoping that whatever you look like isn’t too terribly awful.

Samira, Mel, and Langdon are standing around the kitchen island, various takeout containers and bottles of alcohol littering the space. For some reason, Trinity, Dennis, and Robby are also present.

Samira and Langdon are engaged in what looks to be a rather animated discussion-slash-argument, and Mel is standing just a little closer to Langdon than what could be considered normal for friends. Trinity is very obviously ignoring Langdon’s general existence, bickering with Dennis on the couch, and Robby is seated in the armchair by the window, nursing a beer and watching both conversations unfold.

You sniff aggressively, and all heads snap to you.

“There are more of you here then there’s supposed to be,” You grumble, scrubbing at your face. “Why are you all here?”

Mel is the first to speak.

“It was Frank actually!” Trinity rolls her eyes, and part of you wants to share the sentiment, “He figured Trinity would be upset that something happened to you and he knew and didn’t tell her, so Trinity decided that me and Samira would get your stuff while everyone else stayed here in case you woke up before we came back!”

Wow, okay, that’s. A Lot.

You squint. “That doesn’t explain why you’re all here. I mean it does, but only like, why you’re here physically.”

Robby frowns. “We heard that you were going through a rough time and you had to stay with Jack, so we came.”

Trinity snorts on the couch and Dennis, next to her, looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

Robby shoots her a look, but continues. “We care about you. We— I don’t want you to feel like you have to do everything on your own. In or out of the ED.”

Trinity blows out a loud sigh and low whistle. “Jee-zus Robby, give the woman some time to wake up before trying to induce tears again.”

Robby does look a little apologetic, maybe a teensy bit chastised (and annoyed that Trinity was the one doing the chastising) and turns his deep brown eyes back to you.

"Sorry. Can't help these Dad tendencies, you know."

Your face gets hot, maybe a tiny, wet prickle behind your eyes forms while Robby smiles, and the tension leaves the room all in one go, and you start to think that maybe things are in the right place.

–

At the ED, Jack Abbot, who's been checking his phone whenever he gets a free moment like a highschooler with a crush, opens the first text that pops up on his screen after hours of waiting.

It's a picture from Robby. You, with your head thrown back in a cackle of a laugh, not a single bit of stress evident in any of the lines of your body. There's one text accompanying the picture:

Please don't make me give you a shovel talk. I think you already know what's at stake here.

Jack snorts and pockets his phone, because yeah, he does.

–

When Jack finally gets back to his apartment, he's half-expecting to see the kind of mess that a large grouping of obnoxious people leave behind. Trash, maybe a few red solo cups, empty takeout containers, someone asleep on his couch, someone passed out on the floor.

He's not expecting to see a clean space. The only evidence that people were there at all is some rearranged pillows, a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter, and some new takeout menus on his fridge.

And then there's you. You're lying on the couch, eyes glued to the TV, watching a show he doesn't really recognize. There's a well-loved backpack on the floor, just under the coffee table. The shocking bit is Charlie, his resident asshole, is 'loafing' right on your chest, purring away.

You lift your head when you hear the jingle of his keys, a smile immediately brightening your face. He mentally takes a picture, right there, so he can remember this exact moment forever.

"What'd you bribe him with?" Jack says instead of something much more neurotic, like 'You don't have to go back to your place when the power comes back on.'

You shrug, unaware of his emotional and romantic pain. "You were right. He came out from under the bed after everybody left. He kind of growled at me for a little bit, but once I settled down here he just kind of... came right up."

You plant a little kiss to the top of his head, right in between furry ears. Great, now Jack's jealous of a senior cat with one ear who licks his own butt. "How could I resist this face? I see why you brought him home."

Jack rounds the end of the couch, shuffling by, and Charlie opens his eyes just enough to shoot him a look that Jack takes to mean: If you make her get up and move me, I will kill you in your sleep.

Jack does not disturb his cat as he sits down on the couch. There's a moment when things almost get hairy- you pull your legs back when he goes to sit, slightly jostling The Asshole, who pins his only ear back in annoyance.

Jack solves this problem by taking your legs, clad in some soft flannel pajama pants and pink fuzzy socks, and lays them across his lap. There. Problem solved.

The warmth of your legs on his lap and the look on your face is reward enough for him. He can't think of a way he'd rather spend his time.

Jack, in a rare show of mercy, does not tease you, and decides that you've probably had enough excitement for one day.

"So," He says instead, looking up at the TV and grimacing at the mutilated corpse on the screen, "What are we watching?"

He watches you shrink into yourself. He hates it when you do that. He hates that you feel like you have to.

"Uh, Bones. I can turn it off, though. I'm sure you don't want to watch this."

He doesn't answer the question you've not-subtly voiced, instead choosing to redirect the conversation.

"Why did you put it on?"

You start chewing on your lower lip. Your signature 'I don't want to answer this question so I'm going to think really hard about it' move.

"It's kind of my comfort show? I don't know. I watched it a lot growing up. We didn't have cable, but the hotels I stayed at sometimes did. I'd wait until my dad fell asleep and then I'd turn on the TV and watch from the sci-fi or drama channels. Watched a lot of Bones. Supernatural too, and sometimes Doctor Who, if it was on. But Bones was my favorite."

The characters on the screen are involved in some sort of car chase now, police siren flashing on a black SUV. Jack isn't paying attention to that at all, because this is the first time since the day you walked into the PTMC and introduced yourself that he's ever heard you talk about your childhood.

"How come?"

"I don't know. I've always liked procedural shows. Had a huge House MD phase. Death and bones and corpses and stuff has never really grossed me out, which is part of the reason I became a doctor. But also..."

You point to the male character. "You see him? That's Booth. Seeley Booth. They all have kind of crazy names. He's an FBI agent, and his partner is that woman there. Temperance Brennan. Booth calls her Bones."

"She doesn't look like an FBI agent."

You smile. "She's not. She's a forensic anthropologist, but she consults on murder cases and stuff like that because she's kind of a genius. She's smart, strong, and capable. She and Booth don't always get along, because they both can be headstrong and stubborn. But he respects and trusts her, implicitly. No matter what. They love each other."

Your throat bobs, but your voice is steady when you speak.

"And when Brennan needs him, if she's in trouble or she needs him by her side, even if she doesn't know she does, he's always there. He always saves her."

Jack can picture it, in his mind. You, small and alone, watching these characters on some shitty hotel TV and getting it into your head that this kind of thing only exists in TV shows. He pictures you dreaming of having a Booth, of having someone to be there for you, to pick you up when you fall. He thinks of you crying in the supply closet and how quietly you'd done it. Almost silent.

He thinks of what happens to a person to make them learn how to cry without making a sound.

He rests a hand on your ankle, fingers instinctively drifting towards the pulse point there- posterior tibial. He keeps two fingers on it, even though he can't feel it through your fuzzy socks. With his thumb he makes circles, because he's seen how you lean into Robby's shoulder grabs, how you preen at physical and verbal praise, how you'd slumped like a marionette with its strings cut into his arms just yesterday.

"Jack?" Your voice is tentative, unsure.

"Hmm?"

"Am I..." You start chewing your lip again, "Are you— I don't to assume anything. So if I fuck this up and make you uncomfortable—"

"I want to kiss you."

Jack has learned how to speak fluent you. He knows how to stop an incoming spiral, how to soothe old wounds rearing their heads.

He continues when you don't speak.

"I want you to wear my clothes. I want to take care of you. I want you, in whatever way you'll let me."

"Oh."

"I was laying it on pretty thick, kid."

You look away from him, and this is another moment he'd like to keep forever.

"I thought I was just reading into things!"

"Do you think I call every intern sweetheart?"

Jack is positive Charlie's presence on your stomach is the only thing keeping you from actively squirming in place.

"I thought maybe you were just one of those guys. Samira said it was possible!"

He rolls his eyes. "You can't ask Mohan for romantic advice. She's you in a different font."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

You turn back to your show, losing yourself in the plot for a while. When the murderer has been caught and the credits are playing, you look at him again.

"We don't. Um. Can we just keep doing this? For now?"

For the first time since meeting you, Jack gets to say exactly what he's thinking.

"We can do this forever. We can do whatever you want."

Your first week, you were bright-faced and buzzing with nervous energy, practically vibrating with inexperience and caffeine. You came early, stayed late, introduced yourself to everyone, nurses, techs, environmental services, even the attending who barely glanced up. You practiced your greeting before approaching Langdon. Professional. Confident. Approachable. You found him at a workstation, scrolling through labs like they personally offended him, jaw set, blue-gray eyes moving fast over the screen. You stepped forward anyway.

"Hi, my name is-"

"I need an ECG for room 5."

It wasn't loud. It wasn't rude. It was simply... final. He brushed past you mid-sentence, shoulder almost clipping yours, eyes already locked on another screen. No smile. No acknowledgment. Not even a nod. Just a task.

You stood there half a second too long, blinking at the empty air where he'd been, your prepared words shriveling in your mouth. Okay. Maybe not the best first impression. But you've had ego-driven seniors before, surgeons who bark, residents who talk over you, fellows who treat interns like background noise. You told yourself it wouldn't get to you. Some doctors treat interns like walking clipboards. It's nothing personal

Except with Langdon… it feels personal.

Not because he snaps or belittles you, he doesn't. He simply erases you. He moves around you like you're part of the furniture, like the crash cart or the supply cabinet. You'll present a patient and he'll redirect his gaze to the monitor before you finish your second sentence. You'll stand beside him in a trauma and he'll hand instruments past you like you're a gap in space. He never mispronounces your name because he never says it. The only acknowledgment comes when he orders scans or assigns the tedious exams no one else wants: "Full neuro exam. Rectal. Document everything." No inflection. No praise. No irritation. Just efficiency.

You begin to wonder if you've offended him somehow, if you said something wrong in that half-finished introduction, if he's already decided you're incompetent.

And worse is when he decides to quiz you. In front of everyone. It happens without warning. You'll be mid-sentence presenting, heart pounding but voice steady, and suddenly: "What's the mechanism of action? What's the dose adjustment in renal impairment? Why are we not worried about this potassium?" The entire workstation goes quiet. Monitors beep, keyboards click somewhere distant, but around you there's silence. You can feel everyone watching, feel the heat climbing your neck before the question's even finished. And he stands there, arms crossed, head tilted slightly, not cruel, not mocking, but unrelenting. Observing you like a case study, like pressure applied to see where the structure cracks.

Sometimes you get it right. Relief flickers through your chest. Sometimes you stumble, your brain scrambling because under his gaze the information feels locked behind a door you can't open. And when you stumble, he doesn't rescue you. He waits. Eyes steady. Clinical. Almost like he gets off on watching your ears slowly turn red.

You hate that your body betrays you like that, heat creeping up your neck, settling in your cheeks. You hate that your pulse pounds so loud you're convinced he can hear it. You hate that he notices. Because he notices everything: your hesitations, your second guesses, the way you grip your pen too tight, the way your breathing changes when you're unsure. He doesn't smile when you're right, just a short nod and a quiet "Good," as if competence is the baseline and approval unnecessary. But when you miss something, his correction is precise and sharp: "You're thinking too small. Don't anchor. You're not listening." Not cruel. Just exact.

You go home some nights replaying his voice in your head more than your patients. You'll be brushing your teeth and suddenly hear, “Diagnosis?” You'll lie in bed thinking about the way he narrowed his eyes when you hesitated. You tell yourself it's educational, that this is how you get better. And the worst part? You can't even say you dislike him.

He's brilliant.

You've watched him drop central lines like it's muscle memory, smooth, controlled, no wasted movement. Watched him read an EKG in three seconds and call a cath lab activation before anyone else saw it. You've seen attendings defer to him without realizing they're doing it. He moves through the ER with sharp assurance, diving into cases with quick, bold moves. He thrives here. The chaos seems to hum in tune with him, like he's tuned to the same frequency as crashing vitals and overhead pages. He requires little to no supervision. He makes sound judgment calls. He is a natural. Patients stabilize under his hands. Nurses trust his orders. Other residents watch him the way you do, carefully.

And you? You are just trying not to drown. You're triple-checking doses, replaying histories in your head, second-guessing your differentials, trying to look composed while your insides buzz with constant self-evaluation.

You tell yourself it doesn't matter that he's never asked where you're from. Never asked how you're settling in. Never once used your name unless it's attached to a task. You tell yourself you don't care that when other attendings laugh at something you say, he doesn't even glance up. That when you stay late to finish notes, he leaves without looking back. You tell yourself it's better this way. Clean. Professional. Unattached.

Except safe is a lie you tell yourself when you don't want to admit you're lonely.

By the end of that first week, your throat is raw from swallowing questions. Your feet ache in a way that makes you feel older than you are. You’ve learned the geography of the department, where the crash carts hide, which nurses will teach you without making you beg, which attendings like bullet points instead of paragraphs. You’ve learned how to move quickly without looking like you’re running.

What you haven’t learned is how to exist here as a person.

Because Langdon doesn’t leave room for personhood. Around him, you become a set of tasks. A pair of hands. A voice delivering data. And when he erases you, you start erasing yourself too, tightening your smile, shrinking your presence, making yourself smaller so you can be overlooked on purpose instead of by accident.

So when someone finally looks at you like you’re not just another intern-shaped obstacle in the hallway it hits harder than it should.

The other intern starts paying you attention in a way that feels deliberate.

It begins so small you almost convince yourself you imagined it.

His chair nudges closer when you’re both charting. Not close-close, not touching, but enough that the wheels squeak and the gap between your elbows becomes a suggestion instead of a fact. He angles his screen a fraction toward you like you’re a team. He asks questions he could absolutely look up himself.

“Hey,” he says one night shift, voice pitched low over the constant chorus of monitors and overhead paging, “what did you put for your differential on the syncope in 12?”

You blink at him. “Uh. Orthostatic, arrhythmia, anemia… dehydration… PE because she’s on oral contraceptives and -”

He grins. “See, that. Your brain. I like it.”

You stare at the note you’re writing, suddenly unable to remember how to spell dehydration.

Dating is the last of your worries. You’ve got exams that sit like bricks in your stomach, the kind you can’t chew through or swallow, just carry. You’ve got skills checklists. You’ve got a list of procedures you’re terrified you’ll never get smooth at. You’ve got attendings with eyes like scalpels and nurses who have seen every brand-new intern fall apart at least once.

You do not have time for any of it.

“You’re doing fine,” he adds, as if he can read the thought scrawled across your forehead. He swivels his chair another inch closer. “Seriously. First week is brutal. I nearly cried in the supply closet.”

You snort despite yourself. “You?”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning in like he’s telling you a secret. “Because I couldn’t find the right size IV catheter and a trauma rolled in and I thought I’d end up on the news as ‘intern who killed a man with incompetence.’”

Your laugh escapes you before you can trap it. It feels warm in your chest. Dangerous.

He keeps talking. About normal things. Safe things. The cafeteria coffee that tastes like someone tried to brew despair. The bizarre number of adults who come in convinced they’re dying because they ate a gummy vitamin on an empty stomach. The way the overhead voice always sounds slightly disappointed in everyone.

You find yourself relaxing around him in the same way you relax when you finally take off shoes that have been pinching you all day. It’s not romantic, you tell yourself. It’s not like that.

It can’t be like that.

Because the ER is a world that eats softness for breakfast.

And because Dr. Langdon is still moving through it like a blade.

Dr. Langdon notices.

You don’t see it at first, because you’ve trained yourself not to look at him unless you absolutely have to. Not because you’re terrified, though there’s a small, humiliating part of you that is, but because attention from him has never meant anything good.

Attention from Langdon means scrutiny.

It means: Why didn’t you order that? Why is this missing? What’s your plan?

It means: Say it. Out loud. In front of everyone.

It means the slow, creeping heat up your neck while the other interns suddenly become very interested in their keyboards.

So you adapt.

You keep your eyes on your work. On your patients. On the numbers. On the tiny order sets and lab trends and checkbox decisions that feel like they weigh a thousand pounds when you’re new and everything could be a mistake.

You make yourself smaller around him.

Efficient. Neutral. Unremarkable.

You do not look at him.

But you feel him anyway.

You feel him the way you feel a storm building, pressure shifting, air charged, something metallic under your tongue. The sense that if you glance up, you’ll find his eyes already there.

It’s subtle at first.

You’re at the central station, charting. The department hums in the background, monitors beeping in uneven rhythms, a stretcher rattling past, the overhead pager clearing its throat before announcing another consult.

Evan slides his chair closer.

Not obvious. Not dramatic. Just enough that the wheels squeak softly against the floor.

His knee bumps yours under the desk.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

He doesn’t move away.

“Mm,” you reply, eyes fixed stubbornly on the screen like the sodium level in room twelve is the most fascinating thing you’ve ever seen.

Evan leans slightly toward you, pointing at your note. “You’re writing like… a lot.”

“It’s thorough,” you say defensively.

“It’s pretty,” he says, too earnest.

You roll your eyes, but your mouth betrays you and tilts upward. “That’s not a word anyone’s ever used for my documentation.”

He shrugs, smiling. “First time for everything.”

You both laugh, quiet, contained, like you’re not sure laughter is allowed here.

It’s small. Harmless. Normal. And that’s why it stands out.

Because normal doesn’t live here very long.

Across the department, someone calls, "Trauma to bay two!" The world shifts instantly, chairs scrape, nurses move, someone swears, a monitor alarm spikes. You and Evan stand in tandem, chairs skittering back. Your pulse jumps ahead of you, already in trauma mode. You grab your stethoscope, brain switching gears so fast it almost hurts.

You jog toward the bay and nearly collide with Dr. Langdon.

He's moving in the opposite direction, purposeful and fast, like the chaos parts around him by instinct. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't slow. You misjudge the distance. Your shoulder clips his chest, solid, unyielding, and the impact sends a sharp jolt through you. Your balance tips backward, stomach dropping as your heels slide against the polished floor.

And then his hands are on you. Both of them. Firm and strong. One gripping your upper arm, the other catching your opposite shoulder, fingers spreading instinctively to steady you before you can tumble. The contact is automatic, reflexive, controlled, but solid enough that you feel it everywhere. Through the thin cotton of your scrubs, straight to your pulse. His grip is steady, grounding, decisive. For a breath, you're chest to chest, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that your brain blanks entirely.

You look up. He's already looking down at you. Not annoyed, not amused. Focused. His jaw tightens slightly, eyes scanning your face as if confirming you're upright, intact.

"You need to watch where you're going," he says, voice low and even. But there's something under it, sharper than irritation.

Your hands are still half-raised from the impact, fingers curled against the front of his scrub top. You hadn't realized you'd grabbed him.

"I- sorry," you breathe.

He doesn’t release you immediately. His hands remain at your arms a fraction longer than necessary, like he's making sure you're steady, like he's reluctant to let go before he's certain you won't fall. Then, slowly, his grip loosens. His fingers slide away from your sleeves. The absence of his touch feels abrupt.

"Room five's ECG?" he asks.

Back to business. Back to clinical tone. But your skin is still buzzing where he held you. And you're suddenly very aware that in a department full of motion and noise, he was the only thing that didn't move. This time he's not looking past you. He's looking at you. Really looking.

"I ordered it," you say quickly, throat tight. "It should be-"

"It should be done," he cuts in. Same tone, same efficiency. Except his fingers don't leave your elbow right away. You become acutely aware of everything, how close he's standing, how steady his gaze is, how your skin feels too tight.

"Go," he says.

You nod, stepping out of his grip. The loss of contact is almost as noticeable as the touch itself.

Behind you, Evan says, "Hey-" and then stops, like he's just realized he shouldn't have spoken. You risk a glance back. Evan is staring at Langdon the way you stare at a dog that hasn't decided whether to bite. Langdon doesn't look at him at first. Then he does. Brief. A glance. But it's cold and direct and unmistakably territorial. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.

He turns away, already moving toward trauma bay two with that confident, clipped stride, quick, bold, certain. Gloves snapping onto his hands as he walks. Voice cutting cleanly through the noise as he calls for airway equipment.

But as he passes the central station, his gaze sweeps the desk where you and Evan had been sitting. Where the chairs were too close. Where your knees had touched.

He slows. Just a fraction. Barely perceptible.

And then he's moving again.

The thing about Langdon is that he exists in two speeds, with no comfortable middle ground. One is absolute stillness, standing at the foot of a bed, hands in his pockets, watching monitors like they're about to confess something. The other is sudden, decisive action: gloves snapping on, voice cutting through chaos, ordering the room into obedience without ever raising it. You've seen him drop a central line like it was nothing, intubate like breathing, read an EKG and decide someone's fate in seconds. You've also seen him stare blankly when a patient cries, like he's waiting for the crying to finish so the real conversation can continue.

You don't know what he is right now, stillness or action. He's leaning against the nurse's station, coffee in hand, pretending to read a chart. But you know he saw. He saw Evan's chair close to yours. He saw Evan leaning in. He saw you laughing. It shouldn't matter. It's ridiculous that it does. But you feel the weight of his attention anyway, heavy and wordless, pressing against the back of your neck like a hand you can't brush away.

That night, you find yourself in the supply room, restocking IV kits. It’s a small, quiet way of being helpful, trying to be useful, trying to be the kind of intern people don’t regret letting into the room. The space is narrow and overbright, shelves stacked to the ceiling with gauze, syringes, saline flushes, and IV start kits in plastic-wrapped bundles that crinkle when you touch them. It smells faintly of antiseptic and cardboard, and the fluorescent light hums overhead like it’s tired too. You count under your breath as you stack the kits, one, two, three, because if your hands are busy, your brain doesn’t spiral.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, the sound too loud in the small room. You hesitate before pulling it out, as if you already know who it is. You coming to grab coffee after? – Evan. You stare at the message like it’s a trick question, like there’s a correct answer and you’re about to choose wrong. You want to say no. You want to say you don’t have time, that you have to go home and study and sleep and prepare for tomorrow like you’re about to climb a mountain barefoot. You want to be disciplined, focused, untouchable. But you also want to say yes. Because you’re lonely. Because the ER is loud and relentless, and you’re new and trying so hard not to make mistakes that you’ve stopped breathing properly. Because every interaction with Langdon feels like a test you didn’t know you were taking, while Evan’s attention feels easy. Dr. Langdon’s attention, on the other hand, feels like a spotlight you can’t escape.

You type: Maybe. I’m still on shift. The three dots appear almost immediately. I’ll wait. Your heart does something annoying and fluttery at that, something you don’t have time for. You tuck the phone away quickly, as if someone might see it and confiscate it, and grab another box of saline flushes.

You step sideways to reach the upper shelf, and nearly walk right into Dr. Langdon. He’s standing in the doorway, blocking most of the light like a cutout, like he’s been there long enough to watch you but not long enough for you to notice. Your pulse spikes. He’s in navy scrubs, sleeves pushed up slightly, forearms bare. He looks less like a physician and more like something carved sharp and deliberate out of the chaos. His face is the same calm mask you’ve come to resent, composed, impassive, unreadable, but his eyes flick briefly to your pocket, then back to your face.

“Busy?” he asks. You blink. “Uh… no. Just restocking.” Your voice sounds thinner than you’d like. A pause stretches between you. He steps inside, and the room feels smaller instantly, the shelves feel closer. You’re suddenly hyperaware of how narrow the space is, how there’s nowhere to step without brushing against him. Your brain tries to supply a reason for him to be here and comes up empty. “I need a 20-gauge,” he says. You nod too quickly and point toward the upper drawer. “Top left.”

He doesn’t move. Not immediately. Instead, he looks at you, not through you, but at you like he’s trying to read a label you forgot to attach.

“You’re doing a lot of socializing,” he says. The words land hard. Not loud or angry, just extremely personal. It hits you like a slap, not because it’s cruel but because it means he noticed.

Your mouth opens and nothing comes out for a second. “I’m- what?” you manage. His gaze doesn’t waver. “At the station.”

Heat floods your face, immediate and humiliating. “We were charting,” you say, defensive before you can stop yourself. “And talking. It’s not, I mean, it’s not like I’m neglecting patients.”

“I didn’t say you were,” he replies. There’s a faint, dry edge to his tone, not mocking, not quite, but more like something sharpened and carefully controlled. “Though I can see why you’d jump to that conclusion.” Your nails dig into your palm. “Why are you even-”

He moves then. Steps closer. Close enough that you have to shift backward slightly to avoid bumping into the shelving behind you. He reaches up past you to grab the 20-gauge catheter. It’s on the top shelf, which means he has to lean in, one arm braced lightly against the metal shelving beside your head, the other reaching over your shoulder. His chest is inches from yours. You can feel the warmth radiating off him, the faint brush of fabric as his scrubs shift, the subtle scent of antiseptic and coffee and something clean and sharp that is just him.

You’re in his bubble. Or maybe he’s in yours. Either way, it’s too close. Your breath catches. His fingers close around the catheter, but he doesn’t rush to pull away. For a second, his arm is still braced beside you, his head angled slightly downward, close enough that if you tilted your chin up, you’d…

You swallow hard. He straightens slowly, stepping back just enough to create space again. He slips the catheter into his pocket.

“You’re new,” he says, voice quieter now, controlled. “Distractions don’t help.” You stare at him.

“So you’re what,” you say, pulse still unsteady. “Giving me advice?”

“I’m telling you to keep up,” he replies. There it is, the familiar tone. Cold. Professional. Precise.

He turns to leave, then stops in the doorway, like something invisible caught him by the collar. Without looking back, he adds, “Evan’s not as helpful as he looks.” You blink, thrown. “What does that mean?” His shoulders tense, just slightly, a small, betraying movement.

“It means,” he says, voice flatter now, tighter, “that not everyone who smiles at you is doing it for you.” The words hang in the air, heavy, layered. And then he’s gone. Just like that. You stand there among the saline flushes and IV kits and fluorescent hum, staring at the doorway like it might explain itself. Your pulse is still racing, your skin still buzzing where he leaned too close.

Your phone buzzes again. You almost drop it. Still alive? – Evan. You swallow. Your fingers hover over the screen longer than they should. Yeah. Just busy. You hit send. And you don’t know why your hands are still shaking.

When you step back onto the floor from the supply room, the noise hits you all at once. Monitors chirp in uneven rhythms, someone argues with radiology over a delayed scan, a stretcher rattles past with a patient clutching an emesis bag. It should feel grounding, familiar chaos, something you can disappear into, but your skin still hums where Langdon leaned in, where his arm braced beside your head, where his voice dropped just enough to make his warning feel less like professional advice and more like something else entirely.

You tell yourself to shake it off. You adjust your badge, smooth the front of your coat, force your shoulders back into something resembling composure. You are fine. You are not a first-year med student flustered by proximity. You are a resident. You have patients waiting.

Evan is at the central station exactly where you left him, perched sideways in his chair with one elbow hooked over the back. He looks up immediately when you approach. His expression changes in a way that’s almost imperceptible but unmistakable, his smile softens, his brows knit slightly.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

You busy yourself with logging back into the computer, grateful for the barrier of the screen. “Just inventory,” you reply. “Thrilling stuff.”

He doesn’t laugh. He studies you instead. “Was he in there?”

You glance at him before you can stop yourself. “Who?”

Evan’s mouth tilts knowingly. “Come on.”

You don’t answer, which is answer enough.

He swivels his chair closer, lowering his voice. “Did he say something?”

Your fingers hover over the keyboard. You could tell him. You could repeat Langdon’s line about distractions, about not everyone smiling at you for the right reasons. You could admit that it rattled you more than it should have. Instead, you shrug.

“It was nothing,” you say. “He needed a catheter.”

Evan’s jaw tightens just slightly. “Of course he did.”

There’s a beat of silence before he nudges a paper cup toward you across the counter. You hadn’t noticed it sitting there.

“Coffee,” he says. “I grabbed you one earlier. Figured you’d say yes eventually.”

You stare at it. You hadn’t agreed. You’d said maybe. There’s something about that, about him assuming, that makes you hesitate.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” you say carefully. “After shift. I have notes. And I should probably—”

“Study,” he finishes for you, smiling gently. “You always say that.”

You do hesitate. You feel it, how easy it would be to say no and retreat into the safe, disciplined version of yourself. But you’re tired. Your throat still feels tight from swallowing everything Langdon didn’t quite say.

“Maybe,” you repeat, softer this time.

Evan’s smile widens. He takes it as encouragement, as progress. “I’ll walk you to your car at least,” he says. “You don’t have to decide about coffee yet.”

Before you can respond, a voice cuts across the station.

“Room twelve’s repeat labs?”

You recognize his voice before you register the words. It cuts cleanly through the background noise of the department, steady, level, impossible to ignore. You hadn’t seen him approach. One second it was just you and Evan and the low murmur of shared conversation, and the next Langdon is there at the opposite end of the counter, close enough that his presence shifts the space.

He rests one hand lightly against the workstation, long fingers spread against the surface as he studies the patient board. He doesn’t look at Evan. He doesn’t even look at you at first. His gaze moves quickly over the columns of names and times and pending labs, absorbing everything in a way that makes you feel like the board itself is reporting to him.

“They’re pending,” you answer immediately, your voice sharper than you intend. You are suddenly very aware of how close Evan’s chair is to yours, how the paper coffee cup sits near your elbow like evidence.

Langdon’s eyes lift then.

Not the familiar quizzing look that pins you in place and demands an answer. Not the dissecting one that strips your plan down to bone. This is different. Quieter. Slower. His gaze settles on you with a kind of measured consideration that makes your stomach tighten.

“Call the lab,” he says. “They’ve been slow all night.”

There’s nothing in his tone to object to. It’s practical. Sensible. You nod and reach for the phone without argument, grateful for something concrete to do.

Beside you, Evan shifts. “I can call—”

“I asked her,” Langdon replies.

He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t sharpen it. The words are delivered evenly, almost mildly, but they land with the weight of a closed door. Controlled. Clean. Final.

Evan stills.

You feel the change in atmosphere immediately, a subtle tightening that hums between them. It’s the kind of shift that might go unnoticed by anyone not standing inside it, but you are standing inside it, and it makes your pulse stutter.

Langdon’s gaze drops briefly, and for a moment you think he’s returned to the board. He hasn’t. His eyes flick downward, not to your face, but to the space between you and Evan. To the angle of your chairs. To the proximity that had felt harmless a minute ago. To the coffee cup by your hand.

Then his eyes return to you.

“Room eight needs reassessment,” he says. “Now.”

You almost tell him you were about to go. The words rise instinctively to defend yourself, to prove you’re not distracted, not careless. But something in his expression holds you back. It isn’t irritation. It isn’t disappointment. It’s something more tightly drawn, something that feels less like critique and more like containment.

“Yes,” you say instead.

You push your chair back and stand. Evan stands too, instinctively falling into step with you. “I’ll come with—”

“No,” Langdon interjects smoothly. He shifts his attention to Evan for the first time, though he doesn’t fully face him. “You’re with me in bay three.”

Evan hesitates. “I thought I was—”

“You’re with me,” Langdon repeats, already turning away as if the matter is settled.

He doesn’t look back at Evan again. He doesn’t need to. The authority in his tone is enough.

You walk toward room eight with your heartbeat drumming faintly in your ears, acutely aware that Langdon didn’t accuse you of anything. He didn’t comment on the coffee. He didn’t mention Evan by name. He didn’t need to.

He simply rearranged the room.

And in doing so, he separated you.

Through the glass panels, you catch a glimpse of him in bay three. He stands beside Evan now, posture relaxed, one hand tucked into his pocket while the other gestures lightly toward the monitor. His voice carries in low, measured tones, the same voice he uses when he’s instructing, when he’s teaching without humiliation. Anyone watching would see nothing unusual. Just a senior resident guiding a junior.

But there’s a tightness in his jaw that wasn’t there before. A slight tension at the edge of his mouth.

Evan listens, nodding stiffly.

For a brief moment, Langdon’s eyes lift from the monitor and travel across the department.

They find you. It isn’t accidental. It isn’t wandering. It’s deliberate.

His expression doesn’t change, but there’s no clinical distance in that look. No impersonal assessment. It feels direct in a way that makes your breath catch, as if he’s measuring something that has nothing to do with lab values or vital signs.

You look away first.

You tell yourself it’s because you have a patient waiting.

For the rest of the shift, the undercurrent remains. It isn’t loud or explosive. There’s no confrontation. No raised voices. Just presence.

Langdon appears at your shoulder more often than strictly necessary, leaning in to review your notes and correcting details that are technically fine. He redirects you to different rooms whenever Evan drifts too close, assigning you tasks in that calm, unarguable tone. When he asks you questions, they sound casual to anyone listening, but there’s weight beneath them, a focus that feels personal.

He doesn’t touch you again. He doesn’t mention Evan. But he watches.

And you can feel it, steady and unrelenting, like a hand hovering just at the small of your back.

Over the next few shifts, the changes are subtle enough that you can almost pretend they aren’t happening.

Evan’s chair ends up beside yours more often than not. If there’s an open workstation further down the counter, he ignores it. If someone else sits near you, he finds a reason to hover. It starts with proximity and the easy comfort you’d already let yourself accept. His knee brushes yours under the desk during charting, and at first you assume it’s accidental. The second time, he murmurs a soft apology without moving away. By the third time, you realize he’s angling his body toward you deliberately, his thigh resting just close enough that you’re aware of the contact even when you’re trying not to be.

When you pass charts back and forth, his fingers graze yours. The touch lingers half a second longer than necessary. He smiles each time, casual, like there’s nothing loaded in the gesture at all. It would be easy to dismiss it as friendliness if you weren’t starting to feel the pattern.

He compliments your work constantly, and at first it’s harmless. “Your notes are always the clearest.” “You think through things better than most of us.” It’s validating in a way that feels almost dangerous after the steady pressure of Langdon’s scrutiny. Where Langdon finds gaps, Evan highlights strengths. Where Langdon pushes, Evan reassures.

But then the compliments shift.

“You know,” Evan says one night as you’re both reviewing labs, “you’re wasted trying to get his approval.”

You glance at him. “What?”

He nods subtly toward the far end of the station where Langdon stands with a nurse, reviewing imaging. “You work harder than anyone here. And he acts like you’re just barely keeping up.”

Your jaw tightens. “He doesn’t act like that.”

Evan raises an eyebrow. “He doesn’t even look at you unless he’s quizzing you.”

The words hit closer than you want them to.

You turn back to your screen. “He looks at everyone like that.”

“Not like he looks at you,” Evan says quietly.

You don’t respond, but you feel it settle somewhere uncomfortable in your chest.

Langdon does look at you differently. You’ve felt that shift. The attention that lingers a second too long. The quiet assessments that feel less clinical lately. The way he rearranges assignments without explanation.

You tell yourself it’s professional.

Evan doesn’t seem to think so.

“You deserve someone who actually sees you,” he continues, softer now. “Not someone who treats you like a project.”

The comment is too personal. It crosses a line you hadn’t agreed to draw. You let out a short laugh to deflect. “I’m not looking for someone.”

“I know,” he says. “But still.”

There’s something in his tone that makes your skin prickle.

Across the department, Langdon shifts position. You don’t mean to look, but you do. He’s no longer focused on the imaging. His posture has changed slightly, weight angled toward the station. His gaze isn’t openly fixed on you, but it isn’t random either. It passes over the counter, over the cluster of residents, and lands briefly on Evan’s hand where it rests too close to yours.

He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t have to.

The escalation continues in increments small enough that no one else would notice.

When you’re presenting a patient, Evan steps closer than necessary, shoulder brushing yours as he leans in to “add context.” When Langdon moves into the space to ask a question, Evan shifts just slightly to remain between you and him, like it’s instinctive. It’s subtle positioning, but you feel it every time.

One afternoon in the hallway outside radiology, Evan reaches for your elbow to steer you toward a case. His grip is light, but it’s firm enough that you stop walking. “You don’t have to impress him,” he murmurs. “You know that, right?”

You pull your arm back gently. “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

“You always tense up when he’s around,” Evan says. “You don’t do that with me.”

There’s a reason for that. Being around Evan feels easy because there’s no risk of humiliation. No sudden questions. No razor-sharp corrections. With Evan, you’re not constantly bracing.

With Langdon, you are always aware.

And lately, Langdon seems just as aware of you.

He appears beside you mid-conversation more frequently. He asks for updates directly from you, even when Evan has just spoken. When you and Evan are reviewing imaging together, Langdon inserts himself with quiet authority, leaning over your shoulder to point out a finding. His arm doesn’t touch you, but the space between you shrinks until you’re hyperaware of the heat of him.

“Your interpretation?” he asks you, ignoring Evan entirely.

You answer. He listens. The intensity of his focus feels different now. Less about exposing flaws. More about pulling something from you specifically.

Evan notices.

You can see it in the way his jaw tightens when Langdon interrupts. In the way he lingers afterward, stepping back into your space the second Langdon walks away.

It becomes a pattern.

If Evan leans in, Langdon appears.

If Evan touches your wrist while handing you a pen, Langdon assigns you to a different room.

If Evan positions himself at your side during a trauma, Langdon directs him elsewhere with a calm, unarguable instruction.

“Bay four,” he’ll say, not looking at Evan. “You’re needed.”

He never references you. He never mentions what he’s doing.

He just rearranges the board.

And every time, his gaze flicks to you afterward, measuring something.

The tension builds in layers. Easy warmth on one side. Controlled intensity on the other.

Evan grows more confident in his closeness. He stands a little nearer. Lets his hand rest at the small of your back when guiding you through a crowded hallway. Compliments your appearance once, casually, like it’s nothing. “You look good today,” he says, eyes lingering just long enough to make it clear he means more than your documentation.

You laugh it off. You tell yourself it’s harmless. But you’re aware of the way Langdon’s attention sharpens when it happens.

He doesn’t confront Evan. He doesn’t confront you. He simply watches. And that might be worse than if he did.

Because there’s no explosion. No scene. Just a steady tightening of something unspoken. His presence becomes heavier, his proximity more deliberate. When he stands beside you now, it feels intentional. When he corrects you, it feels personal.

The contrast becomes impossible to ignore.

Evan offers ease. Soft praise. Physical closeness.

Langdon offers pressure. Focus. A gaze that feels like it sees straight through you.

And the more Evan pushes, the more Langdon’s silence grows charged.

The shift is nearing its end when it happens. The waiting room has thinned, the chaos dulled into a tired hum. It’s that strange hour where the ER exhales but never fully sleeps. The overhead lights feel harsher somehow, casting everything in pale fluorescence. You tell yourself you just need to get through the last few tasks, med reconciliation in room nine, discharge paperwork in twelve, restock the airway cart because no one else will.

You duck into the medication room to grab antiemetics for a patient who hasn’t stopped vomiting since triage. The space is narrow and poorly ventilated, shelves packed with labeled drawers and locked cabinets. The lighting is softer in here, slightly dimmer than the hallway, giving everything a muted edge. The door swings shut behind you with a quiet click.

You’re reaching for the ondansetron when you hear it open again.

You don’t have to turn around to know who it is.

“Hey,” Evan says quietly.

You glance over your shoulder. He closes the door more firmly this time, not aggressively, but enough that the latch catches.

“I just needed to grab something,” you say, gesturing vaguely at the shelves.

“Yeah,” he replies, stepping inside. “I figured.”

There’s less space now. The room was small before. With him in it, it feels close.

You turn back to the cabinet, trying to keep it normal. “Did you need something?”

“Actually,” he says, and his voice is different. Softer. Intentional. “I wanted to talk to you.”

You feel your shoulders tighten. “About?”

He exhales slowly, leaning back against the counter behind him. “About us.”

Your stomach drops.

“There isn’t an us,” you say lightly, trying to defuse whatever Ethan thinks is going on.

He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Come on. You’ve been giving me a chance.”

You hesitate. That word. Chance. You remember the coffee. The maybe. The way you didn’t shut him down cleanly because you didn’t want to be harsh.

“I said maybe to coffee,” you reply carefully. “That’s not—”

“It’s not nothing,” he interrupts gently. “You didn’t say no.”

He pushes off the counter and steps closer. Not abruptly. Not threateningly. Just closing the distance inch by inch.

“You’ve been leaning in,” he continues. “Laughing. Staying. You could’ve walked away.”

Your back brushes lightly against the shelving. You hadn’t realized you’d stepped backward.

“I was just being friendly,” you say.

“And I was being more than that,” he says.

There’s something in his tone now that makes your pulse spike. Confidence. Assumption.

“You deserve someone who actually sees you,” he adds quietly. “Not someone who only talks to you when he wants to correct you.”

Your chest tightens. You know who he means. The comparison feels like a hook under your skin.

“That’s not fair,” you say, though you’re not entirely sure who you’re defending.

“I see you,” Evan says. “I see how hard you work. I see how he looks at you like you’re a problem to solve.”

You don’t answer. He steps closer again. This time, there’s no pretending it’s accidental.

Your brain blanks for half a second. It’s not violent. It’s not forceful. But it’s not invited either. The shock of it steals your breath. You freeze, muscles locked, trying to catch up with what’s happening.

“You don’t have to impress him,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to prove anything.”

He leans in. You see it coming. You know what he’s about to do.

And still, you hesitate. Because you don’t want to make a scene. Because you don’t want to hurt him. Because you hate confrontation more than almost anything.

His other hand comes up to your shoulder, fingers curling gently but possessively. His face is inches from yours now.

And then he kisses you.

It’s not rough. Not aggressive. But it’s claiming.

Your body doesn’t respond. There’s no spark. No pull. No answering shift. There’s only heat flooding your face and the sudden, sharp realization that this is wrong.

In a spilt second you shove him back.

It’s not dramatic. It’s not a slap. Just a firm push against his chest that creates space between you.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt immediately, the words tumbling out on instinct. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”

He stares at you, stunned.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asks.

“Because I didn’t—I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.”

“You didn’t,” he insists. “You were into it.”

Your stomach twists.

“I wasn’t,” you say, stepping sideways so you’re no longer pinned against the shelving. Your voice is quieter now, but steadier. “I wasn’t.”

His expression hardens slightly, confusion edging toward defensiveness.

“I was tired,” you say, the embarrassment burning up your neck. “And I thought we were just—”

“Just what?”

“Colleagues,” you finish.

Silence stretches between you.

You feel foolish. Guilty. Like you’ve somehow created this misunderstanding even though you know you didn’t ask for his hand on your waist.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, because it feels easier than standing firm.

Evan exhales sharply. “I thought you wanted this.”

“I don’t,” you say. The words land heavier than you expect.

He studies your face for a moment, searching for something, doubt, regret, invitation. Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it.

“Is it him?” he asks quietly.

Your heart stumbles.

“What?”

“Is it because of him?”

You don’t answer. The door handle rattles suddenly from the outside. Both of you look toward it instinctively.

And when it opens, it isn’t a nurse who steps inside.

It’s Langdon.

His gaze moves once, slow and deliberate.

He takes in Evan’s position first. The way Evan is standing too close to you. The way your back is angled toward the shelving instead of toward him. The small but unmistakable distance you’ve created since pushing him away. The tension still held tight in your shoulders.

Then his eyes lift to your face. There is no surprise in them. No visible anger. No flare of temper. Only calculation.

For a moment, the three of you exist in a suspended pocket of silence. The ventilation hums softly overhead. The fluorescent light flickers faintly. Your pulse is loud in your own ears.

Langdon doesn’t ask what’s going on.

He doesn’t look at Evan again immediately.

He looks at you.

“Room nine is asking for you,” he says evenly.

His voice is steady, measured, perfectly professional. Anyone overhearing it would hear nothing but routine workflow. But you know the board. You know no one paged you for nine. The lie is clean enough that no one else would question it.

You swallow. “I was just—”

“I know,” he says.

The words are quiet, but they land with weight. Not accusatory. Not sympathetic. Just certain.

Evan shifts beside you. “She’s with me.”

Langdon’s head tilts slightly, though he still hasn’t fully turned toward him. There’s a faint tightening at the edge of his mouth, so small it would be easy to miss if you weren’t watching him.

“You’re needed in CT,” Langdon replies.

It’s the same tone he uses when ordering imaging or redirecting a consult. Calm. Unimpeachable.

Evan frowns. “We were in the middle of something.”

Now Langdon looks at him.

It’s not a glare. It’s not heated. It’s colder than that. The kind of look that strips away assumption and leaves nothing but hierarchy.

“She’s needed,” he repeats, and then his gaze shifts back to you.

“Now.”

He says it to you, not to Evan.

The emphasis is subtle, but unmistakable. His eyes hold yours when he says it, steady and unwavering, as if waiting to see which direction you’ll move.

You don’t hesitate this time. “Okay.”

The word feels small in your mouth, but you step forward anyway. As you move past him, you’re acutely aware of his presence in the doorway. He shifts slightly, not enough to block anyone outright, but enough that Evan would have to brush past him to follow.

Evan doesn’t try.

There’s a flicker of irritation in his expression as he steps back. “Fine,” he mutters.

Langdon doesn’t acknowledge the tone. He doesn’t need to. He simply turns and walks into the hallway, assuming you will follow.

You do.

The ER noise crashes back in around you, bright and unrelenting. A nurse near the station glances up as you and Langdon emerge from the med room together. Her eyes linger half a second too long, curiosity sparking. Another resident pauses mid-sentence, gaze shifting between the three of you.

No one says anything out loud.

But the shift is felt.

Langdon moves through it as if nothing is unusual. His posture is relaxed, shoulders loose, one hand slipping casually into the pocket of his scrubs. If someone were watching from a distance, they would see only a senior resident redirecting a junior. Efficient. Ordinary.

Except you were just inside that room.

You know it wasn’t ordinary.

“Room nine,” he says again, as if reinforcing the fiction. “They’ve been waiting on reassessment.”

His tone leaves no space for debate.

You nod and move ahead, but he doesn’t immediately peel away to another task. Instead, he remains within a few steps of you, close enough that you feel the steadiness of him at your back.

Evan reappears near the central station, jaw tight, watching. Langdon doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t address him again. The dismissal is complete.

As you reach the workstation to pull up room nine’s chart, Langdon stops beside you. He leans one hand on the counter, close but not touching, his gaze fixed on the screen.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

The question is almost clinical in delivery, but there’s nothing clinical about the way his eyes flick over your face.

It’s the first time he’s asked something like that.

You nod automatically. “I’m fine.”

His jaw shifts slightly, as if he’s weighing the truth of that statement.

“If I wanted to embarrass you,” he says, voice low enough that it doesn’t carry beyond the two of you, “I would have asked what was happening in there.”

Your breath catches.

“I didn’t,” he continues. “That was intentional.”

There’s no triumph in his tone. No self-congratulation. Just fact.

Heat spreads up your neck, but this time it isn’t humiliation. It’s something more complicated.

“I didn’t need rescuing,” you reply, the defensiveness rising before you can stop it.

His gaze sharpens slightly at that.

“I know,” he says.

The simplicity of the answer unsettles you more than any argument would have.

“Ethan must’ve missed the importance of the consent talk in medical school,” he says quietly, almost under his breath.

He saw enough. Not the kiss but enough to step in. And he did it without raising his voice, without making a scene, without staking a claim in words.

A nurse calls his name from across the station. “Dr. Langdon, they need you upstairs. A helicopter’s arriving.”

His expression shifts instantly, smoothing back into its usual controlled neutrality, the personal sealed away behind professional focus. He nods once toward the nurse, already recalibrating.

Then his eyes return to you.

“Walk with me,” he says.

It isn’t a request.

He doesn’t wait to see if you hesitate. He turns, already moving toward the elevators, long strides confident and unhurried. For half a second you consider staying where you are, consider letting the moment dissolve back into workflow. But something in the way he said it, quiet, direct, deliberate, pulls you forward.

You follow.

The department parts around him as it always does. Nurses step aside without being asked. A tech moves a stretcher just enough to clear his path. You trail half a step behind at first, then fall into stride beside him. He doesn’t look at you as you walk, but you are acutely aware of his presence. Of the contained energy in his movements, the tension held just beneath the surface.

When you reach the elevators, he presses the call button once. The doors open almost immediately.

He steps inside and turns, holding the door with one hand as it begins to slide closed.

“Inside,” he says, his gaze locking onto yours.

You step in. The elevator doors slide shut with a muted thud, sealing you into a narrow metal box that suddenly feels far too small for both of you. The noise of the ER is cut off mid-breath. No monitors. No overhead paging. No nurses moving past with charts. Just the low mechanical hum as the car begins to descend.

Langdon stands opposite you at first, hands loosely at his sides, posture composed as ever. The fluorescent light overhead casts sharp lines across his face, emphasizing the hard set of his jaw. He doesn’t look at you immediately. He presses the button for the lower floor with the same calm precision he uses to order imaging or start a procedure.

“You can’t let people corner you like that,” he says, tone level, controlled.

It sounds clinical. Detached. As if he’s discussing airway management.

You stare at the brushed steel wall instead of at him. “I wasn’t cornered.”

He shifts his weight slightly, and you feel the movement even without looking. “You were,” he replies. “And you didn’t shut it down fast enough.”

Heat flares in your chest. “I handled it.”

“You froze.”

The word lands hard.

You turn to face him fully. “You don’t get to dissect that.”

His eyes meet yours then. Steady. Assessing. There’s no mockery in them, no satisfaction at catching you off balance. If anything, there’s tension threaded beneath the surface.

“You’re here to work,” he continues. “Not to manage other people’s feelings.”

Something in you snaps.

“Why do you care?” The question comes out sharper than you intended, but you don’t pull it back.

His expression doesn’t change. “I don’t.”

It’s automatic. Defensive. Too quick.

You let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Right.”

The elevator hums as it moves downward. You can feel the faint vibration through the soles of your shoes.

“If you don’t care,” you press, stepping closer despite yourself, “then why do you always target me?”

That hits. You see it. The smallest tightening at the edge of his mouth. The brief flicker in his eyes that suggests you’ve struck something real.

“I don’t target you,” he says, but the certainty in his voice isn’t as solid as it was a moment ago.

“You quiz me in front of everyone. You call on me when you could call on anyone else. You make me feel like I’m constantly one mistake away from being exposed.” Your voice is rising, not loud, but intense. “You humiliate me in front of the entire station and then act like it’s teaching.”

The elevator jolts slightly as it slows, then continues moving. Neither of you look at the floor indicator.

“I push you because you can take it,” he says quietly.

“That’s not an answer.”

“You want an answer?” His composure fractures just enough for you to see the strain beneath it. “You’re capable. More than you think. And you waste time trying to make people comfortable instead of being right.”

“You think I care about making people comfortable?”

“I think you apologize when someone crosses a line instead of setting one.”

Your breath catches.

He steps closer.

Not abruptly. Not aggressively. Just enough that the space between you narrows from several feet to a breath and a half.

The elevator lurches and comes to a temporary halt between floors. The lights flicker once, then steady. The mechanical hum shifts into a strained whir.

You both feel it.

Neither of you mention it.

“You warned me about him,” you say, your voice lower now, more deliberate. “Why?”

His gaze sharpens. “Because he doesn’t see you.”

The answer is immediate.

You swallow. “He does.”

“He sees attention,” Langdon corrects. “He sees access. He doesn’t understand what you are.”

“And what am I?” you challenge.

He hesitates for the first time.

The pause is small but seismic.

“You’re not naive,” he says finally. “But you don’t always recognize when someone is positioning themselves to own a piece of you.”

The words hang heavy between you.

“You don’t get to decide who gets me,” you reply, heart pounding so loudly you’re sure he can hear it.

His jaw tightens.

“I know.”

The admission is quieter than anything he’s said so far.

The elevator remains stalled, suspended in that strange mechanical limbo. The air feels warmer. Thicker.

You take another step forward before you can stop yourself. Now there’s barely space between you. You can feel the heat of him, the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“You act like I’m incompetent,” you continue, but your voice has lost some of its edge. It sounds almost unsteady now. “Like I’m a liability you’re constantly monitoring.”

His eyes darken slightly.

“If you were incompetent,” he says, “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

It’s blunt. Unvarnished. Entirely him.

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

Your breathing shifts. You’re aware of it. A little faster. A little shallower.

He notices. Of course he does.

“I don’t humiliate you,” he says, voice lower now. “I refuse to let you hide behind being new.”

“And what does that have to do with him?” you press.

His gaze drops briefly to your mouth, then returns to your eyes.

“I don’t trust him with you.”

The honesty of it knocks the air from your lungs.

The elevator hum deepens as it prepares to move again, but the car remains suspended for a few more seconds that feel longer than they should.

“You don’t trust him,” you repeat slowly. “Or you don’t trust yourself?”

The question lands harder than you expected.

His hand flexes slightly at his side.

“You think this is about me?” he asks, but there’s no heat in it. Only tension.

“I think you care,” you say. “And you don’t know what to do with that.”

Silence fills the space between you. Dense. Charged.

The elevator jolts back into motion, but neither of you break eye contact.

“You don’t get to claim me because you noticed first,” you continue, voice barely above a whisper now. “You don’t get to decide who gets close.”

He inhales slowly.

“I’m not claiming you.”

The lie is softer this time.

The elevator slows as it approaches the next floor. The subtle deceleration shifts your balance forward slightly. Instinctively, his hand lifts, hovering near your waist as if to steady you, though he doesn’t quite touch.

Your eyes drop to the space between you.

Then back up.

“You stepped in,” you say. “You redirected him. You separated us.”

“Yes.”

No denial.

“And you’re telling me that wasn’t personal?”

His jaw tightens again.

“It was necessary.”

“For what?” you demand.

His gaze burns into yours.

“For you.”

The word lands in your chest like a weight.

Your breathing falters. The space between you shrinks further without either of you consciously deciding to close it. The elevator hum is the only sound now, mechanical and distant.

“I don’t need protecting,” you whisper.

“I know.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“Yes.”

The silence between you stretches so tight it feels like it might snap.

The elevator hums as it descends, but the sound is distant, mechanical, nothing compared to the sound of your own breathing. You're standing too close now. You don't remember stepping forward, and yet there's barely an inch of space between your bodies. The fluorescent light above flickers faintly, washing his face in pale sharpness, jaw clenched, eyes darker than they were moments ago.

"You don't get to decide who gets me," you say again, but the edge in your voice has thinned into something more fragile. More honest.

His chest rises slowly, deliberately. "I know."

He says it like it costs him something.

You hold his gaze, refusing to look away this time. "Then stop acting like you do."

Something shifts in his expression then. Not anger. Not control. Something far more dangerous.

"You think I don't know that?" he asks quietly. His voice is lower now, rougher around the edges. "You think I don't know I don't get to—"

He cuts himself off.

The elevator jolts slightly as it slows, the mechanical tension mirroring the strain in the air between you. You feel the deceleration pull you forward a fraction. His hand comes up instinctively to steady you, fingers wrapping around your waist before he can stop himself.

The contact is firm. Unthinking. You both freeze. His grip tightens.

For a split second, neither of you move. Your hands are hovering near his chest, your breath caught halfway between inhale and exhale. His thumb presses into the small of your back, anchoring you there.

His eyes drop to your mouth.

And something in him snaps.

His hand leaves your waist only to slide upward, fingers curling around your jaw. Not gentle. Not tentative. His palm is warm and solid against your skin as he tilts your face up toward his.

The kiss is sudden.

It isn't careful. It isn't sweet.

It crashes into you.

His mouth finds yours with a force that steals the air from your lungs. There's no soft lead-in, no hesitant brush. It's hunger and frustration and restraint breaking all at once. His grip on your jaw tightens just enough to hold you in place, to keep you there.

For half a second, you freeze.

Shock flares through you, bright and blinding.

And then you kiss him back.

Your hands fist into the front of his scrubs, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away. The world narrows to heat and breath and the solid line of his body pressed against yours. The kiss deepens, not slow but desperate, like something long denied finally breaking free.

He makes a low sound against your mouth, almost angry, almost undone.

"Tell me to stop," he breathes, the words rough against your lips. But his mouth doesn't leave yours, can't leave yours, and his hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair. "Tell me you don't want this."

You don't tell him anything. You can't. Your brain has stopped functioning entirely, reduced to nothing but sensation, the heat of his palm against your skin, the press of his body, the way his breath hitches when you tug him closer.

His other hand slides back to your waist, pulling you flush against him. You can feel the tension in him, the battle between control and want playing out in the way his fingers flex against your side. He kisses you again, harder this time, deeper, like he's trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, like he's been thinking about this far longer than he'll ever admit.

"You have no idea," he murmurs between kisses, voice frayed, "what it's been like. Watching you. Every single day."

His lips trail to the corner of your mouth, then to your jaw, hot and insistent.

"Watching him touch you."

His teeth graze your pulse point, just enough to make you gasp.

"Smile at you."

His hand presses harder against your lower back, arching you into him.

"While I stood there. Pretending I didn't notice."

You can barely breathe. Your fingers twist tighter into his scrubs, knuckles brushing the warm skin of his chest where the V-neck gaps.

"Dr Langdon—"

The kiss slows then, just slightly. Just enough to feel every point of contact, every slide of tongue, every shared breath. His thumb traces slow circles against your hip, grounding you both.

It is not gentle. It is not careful. It is everything you both tried not to let happen.

The elevator dings.

The sharp chime slices through the heat between you, dragging reality back into the small metal box.

Langdon pulls away first.

Not gently. Not reluctantly.

Abruptly.

His hand drops from your face as if the contact has burned him. He steps back, putting a fraction more distance between you, though the air still feels charged and thin. His chest rises and falls harder than you’ve ever seen outside of a code, breath controlled but not steady. His jaw is set tight, a muscle ticking faintly near his temple. His eyes are bright, too bright, and there’s something raw there, something unguarded that he would hate anyone else seeing.

“This is a mistake,” he says, voice rougher than usual, like the words have scraped their way out of him.

You don’t trust yourself to speak. You nod, staring at the closed doors in front of you, trying to slow your breathing, trying to gather whatever professionalism you have left and stitch it back into place.

The doors slide open.

Noise floods in, voices overlapping, monitors chiming, the distant whir of a stretcher being rushed past.

You step out first.

He follows.

For a few steps, you walk side by side without touching, without speaking. He has already rebuilt the mask, shoulders squared, expression composed, the efficient senior resident returning to his post as if nothing has happened. If anyone were watching, they would see nothing but hierarchy restored.

You make it halfway down the corridor before curiosity gets the better of you.

You glance back. Just for a second. You expect to find him cold again. Distant. Regretful.

Instead, you catch him watching you.

And he is trying, very clearly trying, not to smile.

It’s subtle at first. The faintest curve threatening the corner of his mouth. The tightness in his jaw isn’t anger anymore; it’s restraint. Not of temper. Of amusement. Of satisfaction.

Your heart stumbles painfully in your chest.

For all his talk of mistakes, he doesn’t look like a man who regrets what he just did.He looks like a man who has finally stopped pretending.

The sight cracks something in you. You feel it before you can stop it, the answering lift at the corner of your own mouth. You try to suppress it. You fail.

Your eyes meet fully this time and something unspoken passes between you. The tension breaks.

A quiet, breathless laugh escapes him first, low, almost disbelieving. It pulls a matching sound from you, soft and incredulous and a little wild. You both turn your faces slightly away as if that will make it less obvious, less dangerous, but the laughter lingers in your eyes.

No one around you notices.

To everyone else, this is just another shift. Another trauma incoming. Another page overhead.

But the axis has shifted.

He straightens, composure sliding back into place, though the ghost of that almost-smile remains.

“Helicopter’s landing in two,” he says, voice steady again, but warmer somehow.

You nod, pulse still racing.

Everything has changed.

And as you fall into step beside him, the chaos of the hospital helipad rushing up to meet you, one thought threads clean and undeniable through the noise.

♡ liked by badbunnypr, carlossainz55, charles_leclerc and 12,394 others

y/nsainz me encanta puerto rico (i love puerto rico)

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user1 my favourite couple

user2 they're so hot together i'm in love with both of them ⤷ user3 definition of bi panic

carlossainz55 ¿más que españa? (more than spain?) ⤷ y/nsainz esto no es una competición (this is not a competition)

user4 everytime i see you two on my fyp i start giggling and kicking my feet

user5 i love you two please don't ever break up

♡ liked by badbunnypr, carlossainz55, scuderiaferrari and 15,384 others

y/nsainz extrañé mi españa (i missed my spain)

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user6 posting that last picture in the same photo dump as ones with your brother is crazy work y/n

user7 that last picture of bad bunny is making me salivate

user8 oh y/n you've really won in life

user9 my heart is aching for a love like y/ns and benitos

user10 y/n including benito in every one of her posts is my kind of love

♡ liked by badbunnypr, carlossainz55, iamrebeccad and 14,948 others

y/nsainz citas nocturnas en españa (date nights in spain)

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user11 couple of the year award goes to y/n and benito

user12 spectacular give me fourteen of them

user13 their love is so beautiful

user14 both of them raw. next question

user15 they compliment each other so well <3

♡ liked by 283,484 people

celebsnews BREAKING NEWS: Y/N Sainz dies in a plane crash.

Click the link in our bio to read more about this article.

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user16 my heart is breaking...

user17 rest in peace y/n, i know you'll bright up heaven the same way you did here on earth

user18 i can't imagine what everyone's families are going through right now

user19 such devistating news, i hope the victims' families are taking their time to cope with their losses

user20 i'm in tears, this is absoluetly awful. we lost an angel way too soon

♡ liked by carlossainz55, charles_leclerc, iamrebeccad and 2.273.948 others

badbunnypr debí tirar más fotos (i should've taken more photos)