Surviving The Shark - As Part of The Shiver Collection
Jack Abbot x Reader, Brendon Park x Sister!Reader
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What's a girl gotta do to entertain herself when her leg's broken?
Forced to be benched for the next few months.
Boredom festers. Restlessness grows.
Until an idea sparks.
One that leads you to hang out in PTMC's ER.
Under the ruse that you're simply bringing in some food for some of Pittsburgh's hardest workers...
When really, you're just there to gossip.
The Pittlings jump on the chance to learn more about the Shark of PTMC. And how Jack handles him as a brother in law...
Notes: strong language. established relationship. medical inaccuracies. injuries. Jack being relentless when it comes to teasing his brother-in-law. overprotective Shark. Nosy Pittlings. Gossip fuels The Pitt.
Word Count: ~4.3k
If anyone were to ask Brendon or Jack about you.
One of the first things that would come to mind is the fact that you always needed to be doing something.
Sitting still just wasn’t something you were accustomed to.
Mind stagnant while you stay still.
Especially for hours on end.
TV shows and films only occupying your attention for so long before you would grow restless.
It was why when both men learnt that you would have to be on bed rest for at least a few weeks.
They were a little worried to say the least.
Hovering over your every move. Making sure you were ok and comfortable.
For the first few days you complied.
You listened to doctors’ orders.
The advice from both your husband and your brother.
Who hovered over you relentlessly.
Whether it be Jack’s insistence to do everything for you.
Hell he even nearly tried to offer to brush your teeth for you, before you swatted him away, jokingly stating, “Honey, my arm’s not broken, I can brush my fucking teeth”
“I just want to help–”
“I know, but I’m not a child, I can still do a few things for myself right now, just like you,” You send a pointed look to him, eyes darting down to his own leg.
Before your tone softened, taking in a deep breath letting your frustration leave your body,“…Thank you though.”
His shoulders dip, with a small sigh, “You just tell me what you need me to do”
Smiling at his consideration, you lean in to press a quick kiss to his cheek, “Maybe if you could make me some tea before you head out for your shift?”
“Consider it done,” he nods, moving swiftly to leave the bathroom.
“And a slice of that brownie you made,” you call out.
“With ice cream and strawberries?” you hear him ask.
“Yes please!”
“Heated?” he follows up.
“Like you even need to ask,” you say, just about to brush your teeth.
And then his voice enters your ears again, a knowing lilt in his words, “Might want to reconsider brushing your teeth, sweetheart.”
Brows knitting, you mutter, toothbrush stopping short in the air, “Fuck, he’s right.”
Turning around you make your way to the lounge.
Where he waits for you, tea made, brownie neatly plated in a bowl.
A heated blanket already sprawled onto the couch and switched on for your comfort.
Trying it’s best to substitute the warmth you felt when wrapped up in Jack’s arms.
He sets you into place, all comfortable, crutches placed aside, just in reach.
He leans down to kiss you once more, while he had taken a few nights off from work to help you adjust.
Tonight he was scheduled to be back on shift…even if all he wanted to do was cuddle beside you and hold you tightly, tucked into his arms.
Gently caressing your side as he lulls you to sleep with the sound of his heartbeat whilst your head laid on his chest…
…Maybe he could call in sick?…
He shakes those thoughts away, reluctantly leaning away.
“Love you sweetheart, call me if you need–”
You squeeze his hand.
“I’m ok.” You reassure him.
His brows furrow as they look at you a little expectantly.
You let out a soft sigh in exasperation, “But if it makes you feel better, yes I will call you if I need to–which I won’t. But if I do, you’ll be the first to know”
He hums in satisfaction.
“...Are you sure you don’t want Brendon to come over, just in case–”
You push him away, “Did you seriously ask if I wanted my brother to baby sit me?”
“No–I’m just suggesting he come over to keep you company,” he argues lightly.
“At night? When I’m about to go to sleep in a few hours”
He shrugs, “Maybe..” tone a little unsure.
“If it helps you keep your mind at peace, I’ll give him a call? A happy compromise”
“Fine. But just know that I’ll ask Brendon if you actually did call him,” he arches a brow towards you, hand now clasping at his bag.
Slowly making his way out of the house.
Cutting it fine, timewise.
You laugh at his seriousness, “I can’t believe you two are in cahoots now”
He shrugs, a small smile creeping onto his features, glad to see you smiling, laughing, “We’re simply uniting against a greater evil.”
“And what evil is that?” you asked intrigued.
“A stubborn you,” he retorted.
“Ok, you can get out of here now before I throw the remote at you,” you pout.
He throws his hands up in defense.
“I love you!” he says finally.
“Love you too, dear husband of mine, now go be with your fellow nightcrawlers. Hooha! And all that jazz,” you wave goodbye.
The last sound you hear is the rumbling of his laughter.
Before soon you’re enveloped into a peace.
You sigh, relaxing into the couch, humming in satisfaction as you dig into the brownie, the ice cream beginning to pool around it.
Just as you begin flicking through the TV trying to find something to occupy you before bed.
As though Brendon knew that you needed to call him.
His contact lights up on your phone.
“Heyo” you greeted, words muffled as you enjoyed a spoonful of the delicious dessert.
“What are you up to?” he asked. Faint humming of some tv show in the background of his call.
“Probalbly the same as you–trying to drown my sorrows with good food and a good show”
He hums, sarcastically replying, “That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m definitely hunkering down on a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a slice of cake”
“Ok Brendon, we get it, your body is a temple, no room for chocolate,” you retort catching onto his sarcasm.
He mutters defensively, “You know I eat chocolate…”
Humming you reply, “Yes 80% dark chocolate”
“It counts”
You click your tongue. “One day I am going to get you to eat some cake, even if it's the last thing I do”
The running gag having existed since he had first started becoming a gym bro.
It simply never stopped.
Even if Brendon had indulged in a little cake now and then. You still liked to tease him over it.
Before you could continue he switched the conversation.
“Where’s Jack?”
“First night back at work since my accident”
Brendon hums in understanding, as you catch him mutter to himself, “So that’s why he messaged me to call”
You huff with a whine, “I told him I’d call you”
“But were you actually going to?” he asked, knowing you too well.
“...No.” You answer, “I was probably going to say I fell asleep before getting around to call you”
He snorts from your response.
Leaning back you prop the phone onto your chest, phone now on speaker.
Arms folded behind your head. Eyes drifting close as you talk.
You let him ramble on about his day.
The surgeries.
The residents and nurses on his team. Even a little bit about the gossip he had picked up on.
“It seems like your husband’s ER staff are harassing my scrub nurses to get more info”
“And how do you know that?”
“Cheryl told me she was cornered at the cafeteria”
“And?”
“Well Cheryl’s worked with me long enough to know better than to run her mouth. She pretended to not know me”
You laughed as he retold the story. Knowing full well that your brother ran a tight ship when it came to his OR. But that didn’t mean they weren’t all good friends.
His steely facade reserved for those he wasn’t close with.
But deep down he was a real softy.
“Oh, speaking of Cheryl–did she finally break up with that guy? You know the asshole who just didn’t know when to shut up”
“Yep. Dane finally convinced her to leave the douche.”
“Takes one to know one–” you quipped, referring to Brendon.
“Shut up,” he said, before continuing, “And now she’s asking if you have anyone from your crew you can set her up with…”
You two go back and forth with whatever comes to mind.
Before soon the inevitable happens.
Just as your eyes grow bleary, and tired.
Just as predicted.
Just as usual.
Like every other conversation Brendon has had with you lately over the past few days, he had taken it upon himself to almost constantly check-in with you.
Calling between surgeries asking if there was any swelling, changes in appearance, and always without fail he would ask…
“Any discomfort?”
He just couldn’t help himself, slipping into doctor mode with the tone of an overly concerned brother laced all together.
This was now the 6th time he’d ask that
So you had quipped back with a, “Yeah, there’s a real pain in my ass”
“Did you take the meds–” he said with concern dripping into his tone.
“I’m talking about you, Brendon…The pain in my ass is you.” You replied dryly.
He had huffed heavily over the phone, as you could practically imagine the knitted brows and unamused frown upon his face.
Before sighing, as you state, “I promise I’m ok–and if I wasn’t I would tell you or Jack immediately”
“Fine…but if anything changes–”
“I knowww. It’s not my first broken bone, I’ve been through this before. I’m sure you’ve got things to do”
For a moment the line is silent.
A silent stand off.
Both just as stubborn as the other.
“...Love you”
“Love you too, even if you’re a pain in my ass,” you said, full sincerity behind the words love you. The bite lacking behind your retort, just the usual teases often thrown between you both.
He chuckles over the phone before one final goodbye and the phone hangs up.
With a sigh, you shuffle off the couch, balancing the plate and mug, as you place them in the sink before making your way back to the bedroom, ready for sleep to envelope you.
But not before brushing your teeth.
Stomach settled. Soothed by the tea and sweet treat.
Humming in delight as the early morning hours bring you Jack slipping into bed by your side, his strong arms curling around you, with a gentle kiss to your forehead.
Soft murmurs of missed you and I love you.
Warming your heart.
Content to have him near you once more.
So happy to be able to relish in this softness…
But after 3 weeks had passed.
You were growing stir crazy.
While Jack was home during the day, you mostly had to shove him into bed to get the rest he needed.
And Brendon was often in the midst of surgeries at work.
You were growing tired of the same four walls.
And there comes a point where talking to your tv becomes a little concerning.
So you tried your best to occupy your mind.
Whether by walking around the house or even around the block for some fresh air.
Sifting through storage boxes, supposedly doing a little spring cleaning only to walk down memory lane.
Trying your hand at gardening, only to remember why you didn’t even do this when your leg wasn’t broken.
So you had taken to cooking and baking.
Perhaps a little too much cooking and baking.
Whilst you often shoved containers into Jack’s arms for him to go take to work. To share with his colleagues.
An idea sparked in your mind.
A small ah-ha moment.
You were in dire need of some company.
And…
Perhaps.
A little gossip.
So while you can’t exactly be back to work just yet.
You decided to find another avenue of entertainment.
And that included making a little trip to PTMC’s ER.
…Perhaps a few little trips to the ER.
Swearing Robby and Dana to secrecy, bribing them with good snacks and decent coffee.
As far as Jack knew. You were out walking, taking it easy.
Definitely not picturing you sitting at the nurses station gossiping with his coworkers from the dayshift in passing.
With snacks and treats in hand. Making sure to pack a little extra for those coming in for the night shift.
And the med students and interns jump on the chance to thoroughly grill you on all that you’d been holding out from them.
Probing you with any and all questions that come to mind.
All of them had already known the details of you meeting Jack for the first time, you and Jack had spoken about it fondly many times.
He never failed to grin whilst stating the fact that at first sight of you he thought you were smoking hot. Everyone usually rolled their eyes at his little joke.
But overall they found it sweet as you’d explain the meeting. How it had almost slipped through your grasp.
How if you didn’t bump into him in the coffee shop you might never have met the love of your life.
But that was old news.
The questions that they really had on their mind now.
Was about finding all they could about the Shark of orthopedics, and what that meant growing up as his sister.
From questions about what Shark was like as a kid?
Not much different, just a lot less hair gel.
Has he always really been that menacing?
Yes. Our mom said he was pretty much scowling when he was born–but he’s about as ruthless as a daisy.
Santos folded her arms over her chest, Whitaker munching on the cookie you had brought in.
“I still can’t believe neither of you told us,” she said, looking at you expectantly.
Shrugging, “It just never came up–and none of you asked so…”
“We were talking about the troubles that come with having siblings, even though we love ‘em, it’s tough. Especially with stubborn siblings,” you say, offering Mel a fistbump in solidarity.
“Ok, but what about the night shift? How come they knew?” Mohan added.
“It’s really not a big deal,” you try to calm them.
Only for them to look at you with furrowed brows.
Bating your eyes with an innocent look.
Throwing your hands up in defense, “What can I say, my husband just loves to talk about me.”
You grin cheekily, “And well, when it’s a little you know the q word.” You say with raised brows. Knowing better than to jinx the place.
“Jack is just a total gossip. Don’t tell him I said that. He’d deny it. But it’s true…seriously he’s always asking me about what’s happening with my colleagues. And well it’d surprise you to know just how much he knows about some of you guys here…” your words wavered off, before laughing a little to yourself.
Biting your lip, remembering some of the things he’s mentioned.
Their eyes widen at your words, leaning in, hanging on your every word.
“What!?”
“Spill!”
You zip your lips, “Nope. Gotta keep some things to myself don’t I?” you tease.
“Anyway, uh. Yeah, Jack just happened to mention my brother to the night crawlers”
“That’s not an explanation.” Santos looks at you unimpressed.
“Well that’s what you’re getting–” you cut yourself off laughing, “Actually there was this one time, where in the midst of a trauma Jack was in the middle of joking about his leg and the fact that a shark took it, when Ellis full on snapped her fingers in his face stating, ‘Yes, we get it, your brother in law is Shark. He took your leg. Now focus!’ It was honestly the funniest thing.”
Now if either your brother or husband knew of the stuff you were telling their colleagues, you could be guaranteed that they would do all that they could to keep you out of there.
But for the moment.
Your little visits remained hidden from them…
Until one day.
Whilst you had been swapping a few more stories. Brightening up the ER with your funny little jokes.
Revealing sides to the two, rather mysterious doctors, that no one knew existed.
The very Shark himself had come down for a trauma consult.
Only to come to a stop.
Eyes darting over to the hub as he hears your voice.
Brows deepening.
Lips pulled thin.
He stalks over.
A deadpanned look crossing his features.
Arms crossed.
Whilst those around you fall into two categories.
Flight or freeze.
Some scatter away whilst others can’t do anything but stand still. Not wanting to catch his attention.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?” his low voice draws your attention, whilst you look up at him with a smile. Biting into the cookie you had brought.
“I am...” your voice heightens slightly.
A tad sheepish.
“Sure. That’s definitely what this looks like,” he gestures to you.
Shrugging you retort, “I’m just trying to get the blood moving”
“In the middle of an ER?” He asks dryly.
You quip back, leaning into the chair, not standing down, “So I’ve chosen to be a Saint and feed the needy, is that a crime?” you gesture to the boxes of food you had brought.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing, “Does Jack know you’re here?”
“What is he, my keeper?” You raise a brow at him.
“No. But I feel like he’d probably like to know that you’re okay”
“I’m in the best place possible. If anything happens there’s a doctor less than a metre from me,” you joke.
He sighs.
The fight leaves his body.
Already knowing that you never failed to have the last word.
Triumphant in your efforts you instead extend a hand, tempting him, “Cookie? They’re your favourite, dark chocolate and bittersweet”
He hesitates for just a second.
Whilst you wave it in his face.
Before he reluctantly takes it, giving in, before giving you a pointed look, “But I’m telling Jack you’re here”
“Go ahead. I don’t mind.” You shrug. “Tell him I said hi, and that I love him,” you call after Brendon.
The grin on your face, unable to be wiped off, whilst you wave goodbye.
He shakes his head, trying his best to hide the slight twitch at his lips.
A smile threatening to form on his face. Before he disappears in the lift
Everyone watching simply in total awe in the way you handle him.
“Teach me your ways,” Whitaker pleaded. Simply wanting to know how to withstand his piercing gaze.
While the others all agree.
All wanting to know how you were able to so easily go toe-to-toe with PTMC’s notorious Shark.
The very shark that might have made even Ogilvie tear up…
You laugh, “Sorry, ain’t something I can teach, it’s something you must develop on your own.”
They groan at your words.
Small murmurs of complaints.
Swearing that you were holding out on them.
There just had to be some sort of trick.
“So how did Jack develop it?” Mohan piped up.
“Oh now that is a fun story. It all began when I forced them to meet for the first time…”
The memory brings a wide grin to your face in reminiscence.
“It was a tense meeting at first. I had dragged Brendon over for dinner to meet Jack. And as it turned out, they knew each other from here of course–I didn’t even realise it, never once thought that they worked together even if they were in the same hospital,” you explained.
“So what did Shark do?” Santos asked, raising a brow in question.
“You should’ve seen him, he was so on edge, practically glaring at Jack. Trying to be all overprotective of me–”
“And what did you do?”
“What’d you think?” you folded your arms over your chest, “I told him off”
They snorted as you spoke.
Finding the image of Brendon being told off by you so completely amusing they couldn’t help but laugh.
“He was being a real jerk by not being nice to my boyfriend, now husband, and so I told him off–He’s not the only Park who can do a harsh stone cold glare,” you stated.
Snorting you add, “Jack told me once that Brendon tried to give him a classic brother to boyfriend stern talking too, but–”
You cut yourself of with a laugh.
“-But it was after Jack had seen Brendon become putty with me, so he just couldn’t take him seriously.”
…
Brendon had tugged Jack outside.
Eyes narrowed. Arms crossed over his chest as he practically puffs up.
Trying to appear intimidating.
“So you’re the guy my sister’s decided to date?”
And yet.
All Jack can think of. Is your voice filtering into his mind, joking about how Brendon does this thing to look intimidating where he swells up his chest. But all you can see is him becoming a pufferfish.
With that in mind, Jack cracks a fraction from the sight. The slightest twitch of his mouth in amusement.
Brendon raises a brow at him.
Jack clears his throat trying to regain composure, “Uh–yes. Yes I am”
“And what makes you think you deserve her?”
“I don’t–” Jack sucks in a deep breath, “But I’ll never stop trying to deserve her–to make sure she’s happy”
Brendon hums.
Not quite clear if it was one of satisfaction or not.
But the clasp of his hand on Jack’s shoulder.
The small nod.
That told Jack everything he needed to know.
…Brendon Park the Shark approved of him.
And Jack knew that Brendon’s opinion was important to you. Even if you denied it at times. Jack knew how important this would be to you.
And Brendon knew that Jack would never do anything to hurt you willingly.
That with Jack, you would be in safe hands.
That you would be happy.
And truly.
That was all Brendon could ask for.
…
“It all worked out in the end. They ended up getting along as you know–even if they still poke fun at each other,” You said with a wide smile beaming across your face.
“This is changing everything I thought I knew about them,” Santos replied. Whilst the others hum in agreement.
“Ok, story times over,” Robby clasped his hands, ushering everyone away. Pushing them to disperse.
Before he turns to look down at you, “Happy with yourself?”
“Very,” you grinned. Before plucking a cookie, holding it out to him, “Cookie?”
He stands for a moment.
Before clasping the cookie with a sigh as a smile creeps up onto his face, “What’ll be next? The story of how Jack and Brendon went ring shopping for you”
“All in due time, don’t want to make their heads explode from all the information,” you chuckle lightly.
He rolls his eyes, before adding, “I think you’ll find you might have someone waiting for you outside”
Your brows furrow for a moment, before a sparkling smile forms on your face.
Packing up your things you call out to Robby to keep some of the cookies aside for the night shift, and before long with your crutches in hand your leaving the ER, waving bye at everyone.
Exiting through to the emergency bay.
You’re met with the sight of your loving husband.
A small arch of his brow, sleep still vaguely fogging his eyes, hair scuffled from his nap.
Whilst your smile only widens.
“Hey handsome,” stopping before him.
He smiles softly at you, “Hey love”
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did,” he nodded before adding, “Until I got a call from Brendon that you were in the ER”
You drop your head onto his shoulder, with a huff, “Please tell me he didn’t just say I was in the ER”
“I was probably halfway here in a complete panic, until I called Robby who said you were just gossiping with the staff”
You chuckle, nuzzling your head further into his shoulder, “Just trying to keep my brain active with a bit of socialising,” before tilting your head up to look at him, whilst his arms curl around your waist to help support you.
“They had a lot of questions”
“Let me guess. Were they about your brother and I”
“It’s some pretty juicy stuff, you’ve got to admit–”
He chuckles softly, before pressing a kiss to the top of your head, humming in vague agreement.
“–Besides, you don’t have the time to talk about it during changeover, so I took it upon myself to inform your colleagues”
“How thoughtful of you,” he remarked sarcastically.
“I know, aren’t I?”
Twisting slightly, the smile still plastered across his face, he shifts so he stands by your side. “Ok, let’s get you home, I’ll make your favourite for dinner, how does that sound?”
“Sounds perfect”
As you walk away together, you add, “I can’t believe my brother tattled on me–”
“He just cares about you”
“I know–but that doesn’t mean he’s not a snitch” You mutter.
He chuckles at your words.
Glancing over to you.
Eyes softening.
Just so full of love for you.
For you and your confident nature.
Your fearlessness.
And cheeky humour.
“I love you,” he said.
You look over to meet his eyes, raising a brow. “What brought that on?”
He shrugs, “I just wanted you to know that”
Smiling at him, “Well, I love you too.”
…
“...Even if you and my brother are totally conspiring against me.”
Jack huffed out a laugh.
Any worry he felt over you and your broken leg now faded.
Clearly you were going to be just fine.
And Jack was grateful for it.
More than happy to put up with your shenanigans and your 'scary' brother.
So long as you let him love you.
That was fine by him.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. I imagine you literally use cookies to disarm people whenever you can (just like with Brendon and Robby) haha. Was really fun to explore more of these guys and their dynamics! and I loved the idea of you and Brendon gossiping over the phone - he totally gets along with those in his OR hands down. Both Jack and Brendon just love you so much that they fret, even if they know you're strong and capable, they can't help but worry. ♥️
Also the idea of Jack and Brendon going ring shopping for you is just so funny to me - You can imagine what it looked like to have these two guys with stern expressions looking through sparkling rings and everything.
The poor sales person being subjected to that all.
Especially cause your brother can be very particular and well obviously Jack wanted it all to be perfect.
So they would've been very thorough.
(might do a little Drabble of this idk)
Let me know what you thought ✨
Comments, Reblogs and Likes are welcomed and appreciated 💕
For more Jack Abbot Works check out my series below!
Such as my Dr Jack Abbot x Reader Who Would've Thought series here💖
Or my fic Based on Waitress the Musical, Dr Jack Abbot x Waitress!Reader Sugar, Butter, Flour series 🥧
Or for a lil bit of hurt with eventual comfort check out Jack and the reader create a bond through being widowers,I Know You're Hurting series
Or Find My Pitt Masterlist here
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Summary : Dex loves being a father, but one child-free weekend is all it takes to remind you he’s always going to be your embarrassingly needy husband first.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her) | you and Dex have a son called Leo
Warnings/tags : dad/husband!Dex x mom/wife!reader, fluff-ish! explicit sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual), service switch!Dex dirty talk, possessive behaviour, tracker mention, praise kink, light power dynamics, hair-pulling/scratching, overstimulation, implied all-day sex. A character called Jonathan is mentioned to be your best friend. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 4k
Requested by : anon
Notes : Please bear with me, I’ll try to get through all the comments for this series ASAP, feel free to send more ideas in the meantime. Enjoy!
Could be read as a one-shot, but you can read more stories in this universe here!
Dex loved Leo.
He loved his son so much it made him twice as dangerous and three times more paranoid. He checked the windows multiple times at night. He could identify three different kinds of “Daddy!” from across the apartment and tell you whether it meant hungry, sleepy, bored, or trying to climb something he should not be climbing.
He loved Leo.
He also missed you.
Not in the sweet, sentimental way, though there was plenty of that, too. But he was satisfied in that department. After all, he now spent most of his evenings cuddling up to you and Leo, being a father, being a family.
No, he missed you in the way that made his teeth grind when you walked past him in one of his old shirts that had gotten too tight for him. He missed you in the way his hand would find your hip in the kitchen, fingers digging in for half a second before Leo came barrelling in with a toy dinosaur and a very urgent question about whether sharks had friends.
You had a sex life. It was just… hidden, as it should be with a child in the house. It had become a series of quickies instead of what Dex called “proper” sex.
Sometimes, it was a hand over your mouth in the ensuite bathroom when Leo had his one-hour naps. Sometimes, it was Dex on his knees between your thighs during Leo’s nursery hours, one eye still half on the clock because pick-up was at three. Sometimes, you were bent over on the mattress with the TV just to hide the sound, Dex pressed against your back, breathing hot against your ear as you whispered, “we have to be quiet, baby.” After all, it was two AM and Leo was fast asleep.
He hated it.
Well, not the sex. Never the sex.
He hated having to hold back. He hated having you biting your own wrist because you couldn’t make noise. He hated stopping when you were both still coming down from a high because the nursery called to say Leo had eaten half a crayon. He hated pretending he didn’t want to drag you back to bed every single time you smiled at him over your coffee.
So when Jonathan finally moved in with his boyfriend and mentioned, casually, that the second bedroom was finally set up, Dex said, “Leo could sleep over there.”
“Oh, baby,” you said, nearly melted. “You’d let him do that?”
Dex blinked.
You looked at him like this was growth. Like this was him learning to trust the world, one sleepover at a time.
“You trust him,” you said, smiling, folding one of Leo’s tiny shirts, looking at him like he had just taken some huge emotional step forward. Like he was healing. Like this was about trust and healthy boundaries and letting your son spend time with people who loved him.
Dex stared at you for one long second. Then he said, “Yes.”
Which was not technically a lie.
He did trust Jonathan because you trusted Jonathan.
That was how Dex’s world worked. He didn’t really believe in people. He believed in you. If you said Johnathan was safe, then Johnathan was safe enough. With precautions.
After all, already had a tracker in Leo’s shoe.
Just in case.
But you didn’t need to know that right then, because you were smiling at him like he was becoming a better man, and Dex didn’t have the heart to tell you that his intents were significantly less noble.
You bit your lip. “That’s really good, Dex.”
Dex nodded once, solemnly, like his motives were not currently dragging themselves through every filthy thought he had been forcing down for months.
You asked Jonathan if he could take Leo for one night.
Then Dex, with absolutely no shame, asked for two.
Jonathan squinted at him and said yes, as if saying I know what you’re doing but I just can’t prove it yet.
“Two?” you asked later, amused.
Dex adjusted Leo’s overnight bag like the placement of his pajamas was a matter of national security. “He likes Jonathan.”
That was how Leo ended up being picked up by Uncle Jonathan on a Friday night. You kissed Leo goodbye at the door and told him to be good. Dex crouched down, fixed the strap on his bag, and said, very seriously, “Call Mommy if you need anything.”
Leo nodded. “Okay, Daddy.”
“And don’t open the door when Uncle Jonathan’s not there.”
“I know.”
“And if there’s an emergency—”
“Dex,” you said gently.
Dex stopped.
Leo hugged him around the neck. “I’ll be okay, Daddy.”
For one second your heart ached because he really was trying. He really did love him. He really was letting him go.
Then the door shut, and the apartment was quiet.
You turned to Dex with a kind smile. “I’m proud of you.”
Dex lifted his eyes to you, sheepish and loaded all at once, though the former didn’t last very long.
And that was when you realized.
Oh.
Oh.
That was not the look of a man reflecting on his progress as a father. That was the look of a man who had just successfully cleared the house.
“Dex,” you said slowly.
He stepped toward you.
You tilted your head “You did not send our son to my best friend’s place just so you could—”
“Yes.”
Your mouth fell open. “Benjamin.”
“You trust Jonathan,” he said, calm and absolutely shameless, even though you only called him that when you were annoyed. “Leo is safe.”
You folded your arms. “And?”
Dex’s eyes dropped to your mouth. “And I miss my wife.”
That shut you up. Because fuck, when said it like that...
It wasn’t charming or teasing. It wasn’t even fully dirty at first. Just honest and hungry in a way that made your stomach turn over.
“Dex…” you whined a little as his arms wrapped around you.
“I’m sorry,” Dex said, the apology coming out almost muffled against the side of your neck. His hands were gripping, careful at first, like he was trying to prove he could behave even while every part of him clearly had no intention of doing so.
Fuck.
“Mmm. I’m sorry, baby,” he murmured again, mouth brushing the sensitive place beneath your ear. “I just wanted time alone with you.”
You were supposed to stay mad.
Really, you were.
Because he had let you stand there, proud of him, all wide-eyed with affection, while he stood in front of you pretending this was some great parental milestone and not a tactical operation.
“You are unbelievable,” you said, but your voice had already lost too much of its edge.
Dex noticed and used this time to slide under the hem of your shirt, palms warm against your waist, thumbs pressing into skin like he had been thinking about doing it all day. Maybe all week. Maybe for months.
“We have sex,” you managed, even as your head tipped back before you could stop it.
Dex kissed down your throat, devastatingly patient. “Not like this.”
Your breath caught.
He lifted his head just enough to look at you, and the expression on his face was too soft to be smug and too hungry to be innocent. His eyes moved over you like he was remembering every version of you he had ever had.
“Not like before,” he said. “Not like the old apartment.”
Your mouth went dry.
“The old apartment?” you repeated, weakly, because apparently your body had decided to betray every principle you thought had.
Dex’s fingers flexed against your ribs, trailing the line of your bra, pawing and unhooking it at the back.
“Yeah,” he said, and there was a little smile in his voice now, like he knew exactly what he was doing to you. “When I could have you wherever I wanted.”
“Dex.”
“The couch,” he said, kissing the corner of your mouth. “The kitchen counter, the hallway, that stupid little table you kept saying we were going to break.”
You swallowed. “We did break it.”
Dex’s smile finally fully formed on his mouth. “Yeah.”
You should have pushed him away. You should have told him that this was not the point, that he could not just send Leo away for two nights and then look at you like that and expect you to forget you were annoyed.
But his hands were under your shirt now, and his mouth was on your jawline, and his body was crowding yours back against the door like he had been waiting forever to stop pretending he was a reasonable man.
“You used to make so much noise for me,” he murmured.
Your stomach flipped. “Benjamin.”
“I know,” he said immediately, smaller this time. One hand came up to cup your face, thumb brushing your cheek with a tenderness that made the heat tummy pool low. “I know. I’m sorry.”
And he was.
He was sorry. He knew he had been selfish. He knew this had been more about him than he had let on. But he also looked at you like he had missed you so badly it had been eating him alive .
“I love being his dad,” Dex said, forehead pressing to yours. “I do. I love him. I love him so much I don’t know what to do with it half the time.”
“I know,” you whispered.
His eyes shut for a second. “But I miss you,” he said. “I miss this. I miss not having to stop. I miss not having to listen for footsteps. I miss having you without half my brain waiting for Leo to wake up.”
Your anger dipped so fast it was almost embarrassing.
Because you knew Dex loved Leo completely. He loved being a father in the only way Dex could love anything, which meant his entire nervous system had become a weapon.
But he loved you first. He had loved you before the nursery bags and bedtime stories and little shoes by the door. He had loved you before this spine was inhuman, before Fisk took you. He loved you in that old apartment, on every surface, in every second for the rest of his life.
And he missed his wife. Not Leo’s mommy. No, he got her every day. And though he loved you now more than anything in the world, he missed bratty, whiny, car-sex-in-the-FBI-garage you.
“You could have just told me that,” you pouted.
Dex opened his eyes. “Would you have said yes to two nights?”
You stared at him and sighed, though your lips twitched before you could stop them. “Unbelievable.”
“I know.”
“You put a tracker on him, didn’t you?”
Dex went very still, and you sighed.
“It’s a very small tracker,” he managed.
“Oh my God.”
You wanted to be mad again. You really did. You wanted to lecture him about boundaries and normal parenting and how other fathers managed sleepovers without turning them into covert security operations.
But then he kissed you again, sweet and apologetic, and your hands slid up his chest anyway.
Why were you mad again?
Something about growth. Something about trust. Something about your husband being a paranoid, tactical, emotionally stunted man who loved your son so much it scared him and wanted you so much he had apparently planned an entire weekend around it.
“You’re still in trouble,” you whispered against his mouth.
Dex nodded. “Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to just fuck your way out of this.”
His hand slid around your waist, pulling you closer.
“No?” he asked, unconvinced.
“Hmm,” you said, already breathless.
Dex kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. Then, he nipped at your lower lips.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Then I’ll make it up to you.”
—
Five minutes later, you were on the kitchen counter, thighs trembling around Dex’s shoulders, one hand braced behind you and the other twisted helplessly in his hair.
He had gone to his knees like worship.
He was not even pretending like he was anything other than starved for you. His hands gripped your hips hard enough to keep you exactly where he wanted you, dragging you closer every time your body tried to squirm away from the intensity.
“Dex,” you mewled, and your voice cracked on his name.
Your hand flew to your mouth out of habit. Out of pure, pathetic muscle memory.
The second you did it, Dex stopped.
Not fully, but just enough to make you feel the loss, enough for his mouth to hover against your core while he made the most wrecked, desperate sound you had ever heard from him.
A whine, you realized, frustrated and almost hurt.
His fingers closed around your wrist, gentle but firm, pulling your hand away from your lips, pinning them to the marble.
“No,” he breathed, voice ruined. “Baby, don’t do that.”
You stared down at him, already dizzy, already too far gone for this conversation.
“The neighbours,” you whispered.
Dex’s eyes lifted to yours, deeply devoted, “they won’t hear.”
You blinked. “What?”
He kissed the inside of your thigh, tender enough to make you shiver.
“They won’t.”
Your brain struggled through the haze of his tongue lapping you, like kitten licks for now. It would be adorable if it wasn’t somewhere so fucking obscene. “Dex. What does that mean?”
“I soundproofed the shared walls.”
For one second, everything stopped. From your breath to your thoughts to your ability to pretend you were still even remotely in control.
“You what?”
“Last week,” he said, as calmly as if he had changed a lightbulb. “When you were at work.”
You stared at him. And the bastard looked up and looked proud.
“Oh my god,” you whispered. “You had a whole fucking game plan.”
His hands tightened around your thighs. “Hmm.”
“So you could hear me?”
His eyes shifted, almost wicked. That was the wrong question. Or maybe it was exactly the right one.
Dex’s mouth parted slightly, his breath warm against you, and suddenly he looked less like your husband and more like a man who had been surviving on scraps for months and had finally been given permission to feast.
“So I wouldn’t have to stop,” he said.
Your whole body went weak.
Fuck, it worked.
“You’re insane,” you said, but it came out like praise.
Dex smiled against you.“I know.”
“You’re actually insane.”
“I know.”
You opened your mouth to argue. But then he pressed his tongue flat against you and the argument died immediately.
Your fingers tightened in his hair, head tipping back. The first real sound that left you was small, shaky, almost embarrassed.
Dex groaned like it hurt him.
“Mm, there,” he murmured, dragging the word against your skin. “That’s it.”
You tried to look down at him, but the sight nearly undid you.
Dex on his knees in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, hands spread possessively over your thighs, face flushed with hunger and triumph. He looked focused, like the entire world had narrowed to you, your body, your voice, and the way you fell apart when he refused to let you hide from him.
You made another sound, louder this time.
His eyes shut.
“Fuck,” he breathed, almost reverent. “I missed that.”
The heat in your face burned worse than anything else.
“Dex—”
“No,” he said, and his hand slid up to your waist, holding you steady when you nearly slipped against the counter from all the slick mess you were making. “Don’t get shy now, baby.”
You shuddered.
He kissed you down there again, slower, meaner, sweeter somehow, like he was proving a point.
Fuck, he was right.
You’d forgotten how loud you used to be.
You’d forgotten the old apartment, the nice one Dex used to have before you, the thin curtains, the table, the way Dex used to fuck you in every surface and like he needed to mark the whole place with proof that you loved him. You’d what it felt like to have nowhere to be quiet for.
You broke on a gasp, and this time you didn’t cover your mouth.
Dex looked up at you like you had given him something holy. “That’s my girl.”
And then he kept going.
After that, Dex got worse.
Because once you stopped covering your mouth, once you let him hear you, he lost whatever restraint he had been pretending to have.
After you came on his mouth on the counter, he wasted no time bending you over.
When you yelped, he only smiled.
“That’s it,” he said, voice rough. “Don’t hide from me.”
“Dex—”
“Missed this,” he said, stretching in you as you let out a lewd whine. “Missed you being needy for me.”
There were rules, of course.
Leo’s room was out of bounds, obviously. It was a no brainer. The couch was out too, because Leo played there too much, built pillow forts there, watched cartoons there, fell asleep there with sticky fingers and his dinosaur blanket.
Most everything else was fair game.
The whole weekend became heat and orders and laughter that kept turning into gasps. You were on top of him half the time, because he asked you to. You scratched your nails down his back hard enough that his breath caught and his eyes went unfocused for half a second.
Then he laughed, pleased with himself. Clearly, it didn’t take much for you to get back into form.
“Oh,” he murmured, almost smiling as he tried to edge himself in you yet again. “T-there she is.”
“Shut up.”
“No.” His hands found your hips. “Fuck, I missed you mean.”
He got worse when you pulled his hair. Worse when you told him what to do. Worse when you got impatient and shoved at his shoulder, because Dex, terrifyingly, liked being handled by you. He liked being told where to go. He liked being praised when he listened. Still, he would switch the roles in a heartbeat if that was what you wanted.
“Come on, baby,” he murmured later, voice ruined against your ear, fingers deep in you. “You can give me one more.”
“Dex, I…”
“You used to be so good at this, huh? Going again when I tell you to.” His mouth brushed nipped at your jaw. “I know you still are.”
Your whole body went hot. “You’re disgusting.”
“I know.”
“Filthy.”
“I know.”
And that was the thing. He kept saying it so shamelessly, knowing he had nothing else to hide behind. Fuck, he looked so conceited once he realise he’d pulled this off.
By Saturday night, you were wrecked and giddy and half-feral, wearing his shirt badly and telling him he was the most deranged husband alive.
Dex only kissed your shoulder and said, “But I’m yours.”
As if that explained the way he melted when you praised him, then got worse when you pulled him closer and told him not to be so gentle.
By Sunday morning, the apartment was ruined in invisible ways.
There was no evidence left, because everything had to be spotless before Leo came home. The sheets were changed. The counters were wiped and bleached. The hallway was clear and the bathroom was scrubbed. So really, nothing was out of place except the ache in your thighs, the scratches on his back, and the marks you both left on each other's bodies.
But hey. Mission accomplished, right?
Dex laid beside you, one hand on your waist, looking pleased with himself.
“You’re smug,” you mumbled.
“I’m happy.” He smiled into your shoulder.
You closed your eyes, exhausted, sore, and deeply annoyed by how peaceful you felt.
Then you thought to yourself, traitorously: Leo was gonna have sleepovers once a month.
—
Leo came running in that afternoon, bag bouncing against his little back, dinosaur clutched under one arm.
“Mommy!”
You crouched just enough to catch him, kissing the top of his head as he barreled into you. “Hi, baby. Did you have fun?”
He nodded quickly, already halfway through his report before you had even finished hugging him. “I had pancakes and Mark has a biiiig plant and I slept in the blue room and I wasn’t scared.”
“That sounds amazing,” you said, smoothing his hair back.
Leo pulled away just enough to look at you properly. Not at your clothes or at anything obvious. He just looked at your face, with that strange little focus he got.
His brows pinched together. Maybe it was his superhuman precognition, knowing your legs would hurt when you got up. Maybe you just looked a bit… drained.
“Mommy’s tired.”
You went very still. Behind you, Dex froze, too.
Jonathan, still standing by the door with Leo’s overnight bag in one hand, looked between all three of you and raised an eyebrow.
You smiled too quickly. “A little bit, sweetheart.”
Leo turned to Dex with the full seriousness of a child delivering medical advice. “Daddy, we should let Mommy rest today.”
“Good idea, Leo.” Dex’s mouth curved up, but he recovered quickly, pressing a kiss to Leo’s temple like he was not the entire reason Mommy needed rest in the first place.
Jonathan looked at Dex. Then at you. He raised his hands and stepped back with a sigh like, I knew it.
The order came down early enough in the shift that the lab was still settling into its rhythm. One unit of packed red cells, non-urgent, Trauma Three. Attending name Abbot.
You pulled it without thinking much about it, logged the temp, printed the paperwork. Routine. The secured door buzzed thirteen minutes later. Longer than it usually took him. Jack came in first, one hand catching the door. But this time there was a second figure behind him, hovering just inside the threshold with the nervous energy of someone who had been told to follow and wasn’t entirely sure what they were following into.
He was young. Twenty, maybe twenty-one, with the slightly shellshocked expression common to medical students in their first weeks on a night rotation. His scrubs were too new and his badge lanyard was twisted and he had both hands tucked into his pockets like wasn’t sure what to do with them. And he had a septum ring. A large one, well-stretched, sitting wide and confident in the center of his face.
You looked at it. Then you looked at Jack.
He was already watching you with an expression of such practiced innocence that it told you everything immediately. There was no clinical reason for a med student to observe a routine product pickup. There was no reason for this at all, except the one standing in the doorway with a stretched septum and visible nerves. He’d brought the kid down here the same way someone carried a stray kitten to the one person in the building they trusted not to startle it.
You also noticed with some private amusement, what Jack did when he reached the counter, which was nothing. No kiss hello. None of the easy proprietary warmth that had become standard procedure over time. He took up a position of careful professional distance, signed the paperwork like a colleague, and gave you a look over the clipboard that said, as clearly as if he’d spoken student present, behaving myself. You gave him a look back that said noted, and very funny.
“One unit packed red cells,” you said evenly. “Verified and logged.”
“Thanks.” Jack took the cooler, set it on the counter, and made absolutely no move toward the door. The student had drifted a few steps further in, eyes moving carefully around the room, taking in the refrigerators and the labeled racks, trying to look like he was simply observing his environment and not actively using it as an excuse to avoid eye contact with anyone.
You recognized the behavior.
“First night rotation?” you asked, directing it toward him without any particular weight behind it. He looked up, slightly startled at being addressed directly.
“Third,” he said. “But first time down here.”
“Most people don’t come down voluntarily,” you said. “What’s your name?”
“Collins. Uh. Danny.”
“Danny.” You nodded once. “You can come closer. The equipment doesn’t bite and neither do I, no matter what Jack tells you.”
A very faint smile crossed his face. He stepped up to the counter, and his eyes dropped almost immediately to the rings along your hands, then lifted to the metal in your face. And then, with the involuntary recognition of someone who spoke the same language, to your eyes. Something in his posture shifted, barely perceptible, like a window opening a crack.
“Those are dahlias,” he said. Not quite a question. Someone identifying something they knew.
“They are.”
“How long have you had them?”
“A few months. Fully settled now.” You tilted your head slightly toward his septum. “Yours took commitment. What size are you at?”
He told you, and you told him where you’d started, and the conversation moved the way piercing conversations always did between people who shared the language. He was at a 2g, wanted to go bigger. You told him how yours had been stuck at 8g for years. His shoulders came down by degrees. By the time you’d gotten to jewelry materials he was leaning against the counter with both hands resting easy on the surface, the defensive posture entirely gone.
You noticed Jack had not said a single word in approximately four minutes. You glanced toward him. He was standing slightly back with his hand on the cooler, watching the two of you with an expression he wasn’t bothering to school into anything, insufferably pleased with himself.
“You did this on purpose,” you said.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to,” he said, in the tone of a man who knew exactly what you were referring to. Danny looked between the two of you with the alert curiosity of someone filing information away.
“He talks about you,” Danny offered, a little tentatively. “Upstairs. Like, a lot.”
“Danny,” Jack said.
“You do, though.” Danny seemed to realize he was committing some violation but had apparently decided the truth had momentum now. “Like last week you spent the whole suture demonstration explaining how the blood bank verification protocol works, and it wasn’t even relevant to the suturing, and Dr. Ellis said-”
“Danny.”
“-she said ‘here we go,’ and everyone laughed, and I didn’t get it then.” Danny looked at you, then back at Jack, the picture of guileless completion. “I get it now.”
The lab was quiet for a moment.
You looked at Jack.
Jack was looking at the middle distance with the dignity of a man who had brought a witness to his own trial.
“Pull up a stool, Danny,” you said warmly. “Tell me more about the suture demonstration.”
“Don’t pull up a stool, Danny.”
Danny, displaying the survival instincts that would one day make him an excellent physician, looked at Jack, looked at you, and pulled up the stool. Jack exhaled through his nose, the sound of a man accepting the consequences of his own decisions, and stayed anyway, leaning against the counter while Danny asked you genuine questions about temp logging. Under the nerves he was actually curious, actually sharp, and you walked him through the basics while Jack watched the two of you quietly. When his pager finally went off, he straightened and picked up the cooler.
“Danny. Two minutes.”
Danny slid off the stool, and the difference between how he moved now and how he’d come in was almost remarkable. Still young, still new, but the wound-tight anxiety was gone.
“Thank you,” he said to you. Genuine and simple, the way young people said things when they meant them. “This was the best part of the rotation so far.”
“Come back if you have questions. The lab’s open all night.”
He smiled, and headed for the door.
And then Jack, who had spent the entire visit maintaining the careful professional distance of a man behaving himself in front of a student, crossed back to the counter, took your face in one hand, and kissed you goodbye.
Unhurried. Soft. Entirely deliberate.
Completely in front of Danny.
You heard, from the direction of the door, a small sound like a med student attempting to become structurally part of a wall. Jack pulled back, his hand lingering at your jaw for a moment, his expression making no apology for anything.
“So much for behaving yourself,” you said quietly.
“I behaved myself for forty-five minutes,” he said. “It was unsustainable.”
“You realize he’s going to tell the entire department.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and the smile that arrived was warm and settled and not remotely concerned. “I know.”
He picked up the cooler and headed for the door, where Danny was studying the ceiling with the ferocious concentration of someone pretending to have witnessed nothing.
“Not a word until we’re in the elevator,” Jack told him.
“Yes, Dr. Abbot.”
The door clicked shut behind them.
You sat in the hum of the lab, and gave it about ninety seconds. Your phone buzzed.
He made it eleven steps before talking.
You laughed out loud, alone, where no one could see, and pulled the next order from the queue.
The lab line rang at 12:25.
“Blood lab, go ahead.”
“So,” said Doctor Shen, in the unhurried tone of a man settling into something he intended to enjoy, “interesting evening up here.”
“Is it?”
“Mm. We have a med student who came back from a routine product pickup approximately two hours ago and has since told, and I want to be accurate about this, every single person on this floor.”
“Told them what, John?”
“Oh, I think you know what.” You could hear the smile. “Although the story has already evolved in the retelling. One of the nurses is now describing it as very very romantic.” A pause. “Danny disputes this characterization. Danny’s eyewitness account has been overruled.”
You pressed two fingers to the bridge of your nose, which did nothing about the smile underneath them.
“It was a goodbye kiss. Not even the first one.”
“Not according to the night shift, it wasn’t.” Another pause, rich with satisfaction. “Ellis heard the story third-hand, by the way. Came out of room six, listened to about half of it, said ‘finally,’ and went back into room six. That was her entire contribution.”
“Finally,” you repeated.
“Direct quote. Possibly the most nicest thing she’s said all week.” John’s voice shifted then, the teasing changing into something warmer, the register you remembered from a phone call months ago, from a card left on a counter.
“For what it’s worth, and then I’ll let you work, everyone up here is happy to hear it. The kid talks about you like you hung the moon, and Jack’s been walking around all night failing to look like a man who isn’t happy. It’s been very good for morale. We’ve had worse epidemics.”
“Goodnight, John.”
“Goodnight, blood lab.”
The line clicked.
You sat for a moment in the humming quiet, the fluorescent light, the refrigerators steady in their rows, the whole familiar architecture of the place known, now, upstairs. Visible. Someone Jack Abbot kissed goodbye in front of witnesses and made no apology for.
The old version of you would have needed a minute with that.
You checked, pressing on the thought like a bruise to see what it did. Nothing. It didn’t hurt anywhere.
Your phone buzzed one more time.
Ellis just told me “finally” to my face. I’ve never been prouder of anything.
You smiled at the screen,typed back
Everyone happy to hear it??
Three dots, then nothing, then dots again.
Yes. I’m happy too.
You put the phone down, still smiling, and pulled the next order from the queue.
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Your beautiful daughter has recently discovered the ability to compare. Robby's lucky enough to be there to witness it in the living room, maybe looking too comfortable in Jack's house for Jack's liking.
He decides to forget that he invited him over for...something, then made coffee, then let you insist that he stay for lunch. Cause that implies he's contributed to his own suffering.
Okay. He usually does. He just really doesn't have the energy to admit to that today.
"Big cup. Little cup."
"I'm assuming the little cup is yours, of course."
She toddles everywhere, and you and Jack are sure she's toddler-high on the attention she's receiving from you three.
"Dada chair over there, my chair here. Mommy shoe is long, my is...not long. Not, not long. Small."
It's heart-burstingly adorable until it's not, when she pulls on Robby's arm.
"Uncle Wobby skinny."
Robby looks down at himself, then at you on the couch. You can only let out a surprised laugh.
"Beautiful, that's a little too unreserved for Mommy's liking."
And when you see Jack coming from the kitchen, Robby decides to snort rather than notice your smile flickering before you can stop it.
"It's okay. Thank you, I think? Very, uh, astute observation of me."
Maybe that's a mistake---to encourage the kid, cause she lights up when she turns to Jack.
"And Dada big."
You freeze, but only because you hear every possible wrong way Jack can take that.
She points up at him while the ways make weight, as if his thick-necked, broad-shouldered body isn't something you worship and instead tolerate. Ha. Oh no.
"Dada bigger."
Your daughter reaches both hands up toward her father's chest while standing on her tippy toes. His face doesn't change enough, but his hands flex as his head lowers.
"Dada bigger. You got big neck. Uncle Wobby neck not big."
Jack looks down at her.
She beams.
"More wide belly, Dada."
Jack takes one slow breath through his nose.
And you...can basically see him leave the room through his brain because of the toddler you share with him, holding up a mirror of honest baby words.
He gives a curt nod, and it looks like it takes everything in him to do that.
"Good observation, sweetheart. Just as astute as the one you gave Uncle Robby."
She claps at the praise she can't read the undertones of. "Dada belly---"
You come in between Jack and whatever sentence he's laid out for himself. You take the hand of his that comes up to his own neck. You squeeze. You smile down at your baby.
"Bodies are different, huh, baby? Uncle Robby's body is his, and Dada's body is Dada's. And whatever they look like is wonderful, how like how you look wonderful. You always will, no matter what you look like."
"I'm getting roasted by someone who isn't even two."
You ignore Robby's mutter as you try to stop Jack from leaving. He tries to leave too quickly. Without a word as his mouth thins out and curves into something so slight. But you know his heart well enough to find it's pulse in the lines of his face.
Only you. You're very proud of that.
"I'm just gonna check on something in the garage---"
"Dada. Up!"
You see the breath Jack can't take properly. Maybe there's logic to his battle this time, that he should leave before he bleeds his insecurity all over the floor. But how can he when you baby is reaching for him?
Robby's silent, finding the floor very interesting. Good. Good man. You squeeze Jack's shoulders.
"She wants you, Dad."
He sighs low.
Right. Okay. Don't fuck this up.
He lets his daughter want him by letting her just jump right into his arms when he crouches. It's total, greedy trust that he has to catch against his chest.
She tucks himself into the curve of his neck.
His big neck. His husky body. His old, broad, thick, embarrassing, beloved body.
You watch Jack's face change when your baby nestles in. Not enough to heal him, of course. Jackie would never be that convenient, but it's obvious that something in him falters under the weight of her comfort, and that's more than enough make your heart swell wildly.
She pokes his cheek.
"Dada big and warm."
You can hear Jack swallow. You can feel your eyes sting.
How could she ever mean anything that's cruel? How could she ever mean anything that isn't meant to eat at your and Jack's heart?
"Yeah?"
His voice is rough as she nods into him, and apparently, Robby has no self-preservation left.
"That's a five-star review, man---"
But when Jack shoots him a look, he knows to find some more. He lifts both hands.
"Sorry, sorry."
You baby pulls back enough to look at her dad's face as she grabs at both sides of his jaw, squishing his cheeks with chubby hand authority.
"No skinny Dada. Nooooo."
...And how could your baby say anything that isn't genuine and also hilarious?
"What's she saying?"
As if you can translate your toddler's language.
...You can.
"She's saying she likes that you're big, Jack."
And you must be an expert, because your babygirl nods.
"You hold me good, Dada. Uncle Wobby skinny. No hold good."
She points at Robby. He slaps a hand to his chest.
"Uh...Okay. Wow. I have been nothing but kind to you."
She shakes her head as she burrows against Jack again. He gives you a warning look as you kiss his neck, like he knows you're about to make him feel something and he'd rather die.
It's your job, as his lover and wife and mother of his child, to ignore him.
"Our daughter has spoken, she doesn't want a skinny dad. She likes you just the way you are."
"For the record, I can hold children just fine---"
"Robby, not now."
Jack laughs at your demand. It's gruff and barely there, but it's enough to let you know what's sifting in him. He will still be insecure. It all lives too deep inside him to be toddled away by one compliment. He will still compare with worse intentions that his daughter.
But she settles her cheek against his shoulder like he is the best-shaped thing in the world.
And you know you're looking at him like you agree.
"Well, baby...I try my best to hold my girls good."
"Good, Dada."
Robby stands slowly, rubbing his knee. He doesn't know how he feels like he's interrupting something that he was invited to, but he is.
"Well, I’m just gonna head out tand recover from being body-shamed by a toddler."
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Summary: Jack Abbot is going to propose to you. That part is easy. The harder part is honoring your very serious, definitely-binding request that your best friend be consulted on any future ring purchase or proposal plan. Which is how Jack ends up in a coffee shop with John Shen, four ring photos, one proposal plan, a folder labeled Proposal Committee: Preliminary Review, and a cinnamon latte that may or may not become evidence in a future homicide investigation. But when the ring finally arrives six weeks later, Jack realizes the plan was never really about the candles, the takeout, or the timing. It was always about knowing you.
Warnings: fluff, proposal, engagement, emotional intimacy, established relationship, Shen being Shen, best friend/work husband chaos, brief lingerie mention, Jack being deeply in love, crying, happy tears, mild language
Author's Note:
The clause saga continues, and this one is pure proposal chaos with a deeply emotional center. Jack is trying so hard to be normal. Shen is taking his advisory role with terrifying seriousness. The reader is, of course, two steps away from figuring everything out at any given moment. This is for everyone who wanted Jack to honor the best friend clause, survive the proposal committee, and still get his perfect kitchen proposal. I hope you love it.
Xoxo, Del
Previous Parts: The Work Husband Clause & The Best Friend Clause
Jack Abbot was going to propose to you. He had known that for a while now. Not in the vague, distant, maybe-someday way people talked about marriage when they were trying not to scare themselves with the size of what they wanted. Jack had passed that point weeks ago. Months, maybe. It was hard to track the exact moment when wanting forever with you had stopped feeling like a thought and started feeling like a fact. Maybe it had been the first time you fell asleep on his couch with one hand tucked under your cheek and one foot pressed against his thigh like you had decided he was furniture.
Maybe it had been the morning you stole the last sip of his coffee, kissed his jaw, and told him you loved him before walking out the door wearing two different socks. Maybe it had been the night you looked at him with a straight face and told him that your best friend needed to be consulted on any future ring purchase or proposal plan. Jack had laughed. Briefly. Naively. Like a man who did not yet understand that you and John Shen could turn a joke into binding infrastructure if given enough time, caffeine, and access to the Notes app. But Jack loved you. God help him, he loved you enough to take the request seriously.
Which was why he was sitting in the back corner of a coffee shop on his day off with a black coffee, a notebook, four ring photos, and a level of preparation that would have embarrassed him if he had not been so determined to get this right. He had chosen the table carefully. Back corner. Clear sightline to the door. Not too close to the register. Not too close to the bathrooms. Not in your usual section of the café, because apparently, he now had to account for your caffeine habits as if planning a covert operation. There were easier ways to buy a ring. Jack knew that.
Normal men probably went to jewelry stores. Normal men probably texted a sister or a friend, asked a few questions, picked something beautiful, and moved on with their lives. Normal men did not arrange a committee meeting with their girlfriend’s work husband, best friend, former contractual betrothed, and active proposal advisor. Jack looked down at the top page of his notebook. Advisory Only. He had underlined it twice. Then the front door opened, and John Shen walked in wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap, and a jacket collar pulled high enough to suggest either espionage or a deeply suspicious errand. Jack stared at him.
In one hand, Shen carried a folder. He scanned the café once, spotted Jack, and crossed the room with the grim focus of a man approaching a hostage negotiation.
Jack waited until Shen reached the table. Then he said, “Absolutely not.”
Shen did not sit. “Meeting here was a tactical error.”
Jack looked at the sunglasses. Then the hat. Then the folder.
“Was the tactical error the coffee shop,” Jack asked, “or whatever this is?”
Shen removed the sunglasses and set them carefully beside Jack’s black coffee. “The coffee shop.”
Jack leaned back. “Why?”
Shen’s eyes moved once toward the counter. “She can sense when I’m getting coffee without her.”
Jack stared at him. Shen stared back.
“That is ridiculous,” Jack said.
Shen glanced toward the menu board. “I need coffee.”
Jack’s brow furrowed, “You just said meeting here was a tactical error.”
“Yes,” Shen replied. “The error has already occurred.”
Jack watched him walk to the counter. He was thirty seconds into the meeting, and Shen had already arrived in disguise, declared the location compromised, and left Jack alone with a folder labeled in neat black marker. Jack looked down.
Proposal Committee: Preliminary Review
God give me patience. He thought. At the counter, Shen ordered something Jack could not hear. The barista nodded. A minute later, Shen returned with a cinnamon latte. Jack looked at the drink. Then at Shen.
Shen sat down. “Seasonal offering.”
Jack picked up his black coffee. “Of course.”
Shen’s phone rang. Both men looked down. Your name lit up the screen. For one perfect, terrible second, neither of them moved.
Then Shen said, very quietly, “Oh no.”
Jack looked from the phone to Shen. “Answer it.”
“I can’t,” Shen said.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
Shen looked genuinely alarmed now, which was, frankly, more unsettling than the sunglasses. “She’ll kill me if she finds out I got coffee without her.”
Jack stared at him. Shen stared back. The phone kept ringing. Shen’s gaze dropped to it.
“Answer it,” Jack said. “Or she’ll get suspicious.”
Shen looked at him as if Jack had just suggested walking directly into traffic.
Jack pointed at the phone. “Dunkin.”
Shen exhaled once, then picked up the call with the stiff posture of a man accepting his fate.
“Hello,” Shen said.
Jack immediately closed his eyes. Shen’s voice was too calm. You were going to hear it.
“Hey,” you said, bright and easy on the other end. “Jack had to go to some hospital meeting, so I’m bored. Do you want to get coffee?”
Shen’s eyes went wide. Jack’s head snapped up. Shen looked across the table at Jack like this was somehow Jack’s fault. Jack mouthed, No. Shen blinked at him. Jack shook his head once, sharper this time. No.
“No,” Shen said.
Jack’s eyes widened. There was a pause on the other end.
“You can’t get coffee?” you asked.
Shen sat perfectly still. “Correct.”
Jack dragged one hand down his face. God give him strength.
You were quiet for half a second. Then, suspiciously, you said, “John.”
Jack pointed sharply at Shen and mouthed, Errands. Shen’s gaze flicked to him. Jack mouthed it again, more aggressively. Errands.
“I am running errands,” Shen said.
Jack gave him a tight nod.
“Oh,” you said. “Great. I wanted to stop at the mall. We could meet up there?”
Shen froze. Jack froze with him.
“The mall?” Shen asked.
“Yeah,” you said. “Victoria’s Secret is having a sale, and I wanted to pick something up to surprise Jack.”
Jack’s forehead dropped to the table. Not hard. Not enough to hurt. Just one quiet, controlled thunk against the wood. Why? He thought. Why did his girlfriend tell Shen these things? Why did Shen receive these things like standard operational updates? Why was this his life? Jack asked any higher power with relevant insight. At this point, he wasn’t picky. Across the table, Shen’s eyes widened.
“John?” you asked.
Jack stayed face-down beside the ring photos. Shen stared at him.
“John,” you said again. “What was that?”
Shen lifted one hand and knocked twice on the table beside Jack’s head. Jack did not move. Shen knocked again, faster this time. Jack turned his head just enough to glare at him with one eye. Shen pointed sharply at the phone. Jack mouthed, Fix it.
Shen straightened. “Nothing.”
There was a pause.
“That was not nothing,” you said.
Shen’s grip tightened around his phone. “ I’m at the grocery store.”
Jack slowly closed his visible eye.
You were quiet for half a second. Then you said, “John.”
“I have to go,” Shen said quickly.
“What?” You asked, confused.
“Groceries, checking out, ” Shen said. “Bye.”
“Okay, talk to you lat—”
Shen ended the call and lowered the phone to the table with extreme care. Neither of them spoke. Jack still had his forehead pressed to the table. Shen waited. Jack did not move. Finally, Shen lifted one finger and knocked once beside his head.
Jack’s voice came muffled against the wood. “Do not knock on me.”
“I knocked near you,” Shen said.
Jack lifted his head slowly. “Why does my girlfriend tell you these things?”
Shen adjusted the folder in front of him. “Because we are best friends.”
Jack stared at him.
Shen added, “Best friend clause active.”
Jack pointed at him. “Do not invoke the clause during a Victoria’s Secret incident.”
Shen nodded once. “Boundary noted.”
Jack leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. This was his life. This was how he was planning to propose to his girlfriend. Sitting in a coffee shop across from John Shen, surrounded by ring photos, proposal notes, and the knowledge that you were apparently out in the world, attempting to buy lingerie while Jack attempted to behave like a composed adult. Fan-fucking-tastic. He thought. Shen’s phone lit up. Both men looked down.
You: If I find out you went and got that new cinnamon latte without me, I will murder you.
A second text appeared.
You: Jack will help me hide the body.
Jack stared at the screen. Shen stared at the screen. Then, slowly, both of them looked at the drink Shen had ordered. The cinnamon latte. Untouched. Obvious. Damning.
Jack’s eyes lifted to Shen. “You got the cinnamon latte?”
Shen’s expression remained perfectly still. “It was a seasonal offering.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “She specifically named it.”
“I did not know she had surveillance capacity,” Shen replied, clearly distressed.
Jack dragged a hand over his mouth. Shen turned the phone face down.
Jack leaned back in his chair. “She’s going to kill you.”
Shen adjusted the folder with great care. “You are named as an accomplice.”
“I am not helping her hide your body,” Jack replied.
Shen frowned, “The text suggests otherwise.”
Jack looked at him. “Dunkin.”
Shen looked down at the latte again. Then he slid it across the table toward Jack. Jack looked at the cinnamon latte. Then down at his own black coffee. Then back at Shen.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“Drink it,” Shen said.
Jack’s eyes lifted slowly. “No.”
Shen’s eyes widened in panic, “We have to get rid of the evidence.”
“I have coffee,” Jack replied, lifting his coffee.
Shen pushed the latte closer, “This is different coffee.”
Jack pointed at the cup, “This is a murder latte.”
Shen looked mildly horrified. “It is not a murder latte.”
Jack shrugged, “My girlfriend just threatened homicide over it.”
“She threatened my homicide,” Shen said. “You were listed as logistical support.”
Jack stared at him.
Shen pushed the cup another inch closer. “Drink it.”
Jack pushed it back with two fingers. “Absolutely not.”
“Abbot.” Shen pleaded.
Jack sighed, “Dunkin.”
Shen glanced toward the front windows, then back to the latte. “If she finds us, the latte becomes material evidence.”
Jack looked at the latte. Then at Shen. Then at the proposal folder. God give me strength. He thought. Jack loved you. That was the thing. He loved you enough to consult John Shen before buying your ring. He loved you enough to honor the ridiculous best friend clause. He loved you enough to sit here while Shen treated a cinnamon latte like contraband in a federal investigation. He did not love anyone enough to drink the murder latte.
“I’m screwed, aren’t I?” he muttered.
Shen paused. Then he picked up his pen. “Emotionally or logistically?”
Jack looked at him. “Do not write that down.”
Shen wrote something down.
Jack pointed at him. “Dunkin.”
Shen did not look up. “Noted.”
Jack closed his eyes. For one second, he let himself imagine proposing to you in a world where none of this was happening. A quiet room. Your hand in his. The ring in his pocket. Your face when you realized what he was asking. No folders. No committee language. No seasonal beverages with criminal implications. Then Shen opened his folder. Jack heard the soft scrape of paper against paper. He opened one eye. There were tabs. Internally, he said, God give me strength. There were tabs.
Shen clicked his pen. “We are already behind schedule.”
Jack stared at him. “Behind whose schedule?”
Shen looked down at the folder. “The proposal committee’s.”
Jack sat forward and flattened both hands on the table. “There is no proposal committee,” he said.
Shen glanced at the ring photos. “Then why am I here?”
Jack held his stare. Shen held it back. The cinnamon latte sat between them like evidence.
Finally, Jack exhaled through his nose, “Advisory only,” he said.
Shen nodded once. “Limited strong advisory.”
“Do not start,” Jack warned.
Shen looked down at his folder. “Starting is item one.”
Jack stared at him. Shen slid a printed page across the table. At the top, in clean, merciless lettering, it read:
Proposal Committee: Preliminary Review
Jack looked at the page. Then at Shen. Then at the murder latte.
“I should have proposed in private and lied to everyone,” Jack said.
Shen picked up his pen. “She would have known.”
Jack hated that he believed him. Shen looked down at the page, then toward the front windows.
“We need to get down to this before she finds us,” Shen said.
Jack stared at him. “Do not make my girlfriend sound like an approaching weather event.”
“She is mobile, suspicious, and under-caffeinated,” Shen said.
Jack hated that Shen was right. You were out there somewhere. Mobile. Suspicious. Under-caffeinated. Potentially armed with a Victoria’s Secret bag and the ability to detect cinnamon-based betrayal through walls.
Jack dragged a hand over his mouth. “Fine,” he said. “We start with the ring.”
Shen nodded once. “Agreed.”
He opened the folder. Jack saw the tabs immediately. Ring Preferences. Proposal Constraints. Wooing Requirement. Embarrassment Avoidance. Post-Proposal Notification Protocol.
Jack pointed at the last one. “What the hell is post-proposal notification protocol?”
Shen glanced down. “I assume you will notify me after she says yes.”
Jack paused. “After,” he said.
Shen looked up. “I am not asking to be present.”
Jack relaxed by two percent.
Then Shen added, “Unless requested.”
Jack pointed at him. “You will not be requested.”
Shen nodded once. “That seems likely.”
Jack dragged one hand over his mouth again. “This is already too much.”
“You asked for advisory input,” Shen said.
Jack pointed at him, “I asked for limited advisory input.”
“Yes,” Shen replied. “We should begin with the ring.”
Jack looked down at his own notebook, then at the ring photos stacked beside his black coffee. Fine. That was why they were here. Not the latte. Not the tabs. Not the fact that Shen had arrived dressed like he was about to commit a minor felony. The ring. Jack pulled the photos closer. Shen’s gaze dropped to them, then shifted briefly to Jack’s notebook.
Jack covered the page with one hand. “No.”
Shen blinked. “I did not say anything.”
“You were about to,” Jack replied.
Shen frowned, “I was observing.”
“Observe the rings,” Jack said.
Shen nodded once. “Reasonable.”
Jack slid the first photo across the table. “Start there.”
Shen picked it up. For all the nonsense, for all the committee language and the cinnamon latte currently threatening to become a crime scene, something in the air shifted when Shen looked at the picture. Jack felt it immediately. This was why he was here. Not because he could not choose a ring. He could. He had. Mostly. But you had asked for Shen to be consulted, and Jack had listened. Because he loved you. Because Shen mattered to you. Because forever, apparently, came with advisory obligations.
Shen studied the first photo for half a second. “No,” he said.
Jack blinked. “No?”
“No,” Shen repeated.
Jack frowned, “You looked at it for half a second.”
“That was sufficient,” Shen said.
Jack’s jaw flexed. “Reason?”
Shen set the photo down. “It is trying too hard.”
Jack looked at the ring. Then at Shen. “It’s a ring.”
“It is a ring with anxiety,” Shen said.
Jack stared at him.
Shen folded his hands. “She would feel obligated to like it.”
Jack looked down at the photo again. Annoyingly, that made sense. He hated it when Shen made sense. Jack slid the first photo aside and picked up the second one.
“Fine,” he said. “Next.”
Shen accepted the second photo.
This time, he looked at it for three seconds. “No.”
Jack leaned back. “You’re going to have to start using more words.”
“She would like this for someone else,” Shen said.
Jack frowned. Then, against his will, he understood exactly what Shen meant. The ring was pretty. Elegant. Clean lines. Not too much. The kind of thing you would point out in a store window and say was beautiful. For someone else. Jack took the photo back without arguing.
He slid the third photo across the table. “This one.”
Shen picked it up. He did not reject it immediately. That was something. Jack kept his face still, but his fingers tightened once around his coffee. Shen studied the photo longer than the others. His eyes moved over the center stone, the setting, the band, the details Jack had looked at for far too long the night before.
Finally, Shen set it down. “Closer,” he said.
Jack’s chest tightened. “But?”
Shen tapped the edge of the photo with one finger. “Still not hers.”
Jack looked down at it. He had known that too. It was close. Closer than the others. Romantic without being loud. Pretty without trying to announce itself from across the room. But not quite right. Not quite you. Jack exhaled through his nose and moved it aside.
Shen watched him. “You already knew.”
Jack did not answer.
Shen’s expression did not change, but his voice shifted slightly. “You brought comparison options.”
Jack looked up. Shen looked back at him calmly.
Jack’s jaw moved once. “I brought options.”
“You brought one option,” Shen said. “And supporting evidence.”
Jack stared at him. Shen waited. Jack reached for the final photo. He did not slide it across right away. For a second, his thumb rested on the corner of the paper. He had found it last. After hours of looking. After too many tabs open on his laptop. After too many rings that were beautiful and wrong and almost and no. He had found this one and gone quiet in his kitchen with his phone in his hand because, suddenly, he could see it. Your hand in his. Your fingers brushing his jaw. The ring catching light when you reached for his coffee. Your face when you realized what he was asking. Jack slid the photo across the table.
Shen picked it up. This time, he said nothing. Jack did not rush him. The coffee shop moved around them, quiet and warm and ordinary. Someone laughed near the counter. Milk steamed behind the bar. The murder latte sat between them, untouched and irrelevant for the first time since Shen had ordered it.
Shen looked at the ring. Then he looked at Jack. “That one,” Shen said.
Jack’s chest loosened before he could stop it. “Good,” he said.
Shen held the photo out.
Jack took it back carefully, his thumb brushing over the edge. “That’s the one I liked best.”
Shen nodded once. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Shen said, “Then you did not need me.”
Jack looked down at the photo. The ring was not flashy. Not plain, either. It had detail where it mattered, small and intentional, something you would notice more the longer you looked at it. Like you. Like the life he wanted with you.
“I didn’t need you to choose it,” Jack said.
Shen waited.
Jack looked up. “I needed to ask.”
Shen went very still. It was subtle. Almost nothing. A pause in his hands. A slight shift in his eyes. The kind of reaction most people would miss. Jack did not.
Shen looked down at the photo again. “She will like that.”
Jack glanced at the ring. “The ring?”
“No,” Shen said. “That you asked.”
Jack’s throat went tight before he could stop it. He looked down at the picture again because that was easier than looking at Shen. Then Shen picked up his pen.
Jack’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Do not write down that I’m emotionally evolved.”
Shen paused.
Jack stared at him. “Were you going to?”
“No,” Shen said.
Jack did not believe him.
Shen looked back at the folder. “I was going to write that ring selection is complete.”
Jack leaned back. “Good.”
Shen turned another page in his folder. “Proposal plan.”
Jack looked up. “I have one.”
Shen paused with his pen over the page. “One?”
“One,” Jack said.
Shen studied him for a second. “You brought four ring options.”
“Three comparison options and one ring,” Jack corrected.
Shen’s mouth barely moved. “Progress.”
Jack ignored that and opened his notebook to the page he had written the night before. There were not three plans. There were no backup locations, alternate timelines, or a ranked list of restaurants based on privacy and lighting. There was one plan. Because every time Jack tried to imagine asking you anywhere else, it felt wrong. Too staged. Too public. Too much like he was trying to perform forever instead of ask for it. Shen leaned forward as Jack turned the notebook around.
Jack tapped the page once. “At home.”
Shen looked down. Jack watched his face carefully.
“Dinner,” Jack said. “Her favorite takeout. Not something too formal. Candles, but not too many. Flowers, but not some apology-looking arrangement.”
Shen’s eyes flicked up.
Jack looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Shen said.
Jack narrowed his eyes. “That was not nothing.”
Shen glanced back at the page. “You accounted for apology flowers.”
“She hates arrangements that look like someone is trying to apologize,” Jack said.
Shen nodded once. “Correct.”
Jack hated how good that felt.
He moved his finger down the page. “Music. A playlist, songs she actually likes. Songs from us.”
Shen kept reading. Jack’s thumb rested near the last line. He did not tap it right away.
Then Shen looked up. “Location?”
Jack exhaled through his nose. “Kitchen.”
Shen went still.
Jack bristled on instinct. “What?”
Shen’s gaze stayed on him. “Why?”
Jack looked down at the page because that was easier than explaining it while Shen watched him like that.
“Because she always ends up there,” Jack said.
Shen did not interrupt.
Jack’s voice went quieter despite himself. “She sits on the counter when I cook. Steals food off the cutting board. Drinks my coffee even when she has her own.”
Shen’s expression did not change, but his attention sharpened.
“If she’s upset, she stands by the sink and pretends she’s getting water until she can talk,” Jack said. “If she’s happy, she dances there. Sometimes badly.”
Shen blinked once.
Jack glanced up. “Do not write badly.”
Shen looked down at the folder. “I did not.”
Jack did not believe him. He kept going anyway.
“She thinks the kitchen is where nothing big happens,” Jack said. “Which is why everything does.”
Shen was quiet. The coffee shop noise moved around them. Milk steaming behind the counter. A chair scraping against the floor. Someone laughing near the door.
Jack looked down at the notebook. “I can’t really imagine doing it another way.”
Shen looked at the page for another second. Then he nodded once. “Good.”
Jack lifted his eyes. “Good?”
“This is perfect,” Shen said.
Jack went still. Shen did not soften the words. He did not make them bigger than they needed to be. He just looked at Jack across the table and said it like a fact.
“She will know what it means,” Shen said.
Jack’s throat tightened before he could stop it. He looked back down at the notebook. The word kitchen sat there in his own handwriting, underlined once. He had written it because it felt like you. Because when he pictured asking, really pictured it, he did not see a restaurant or a scenic overlook or some perfectly orchestrated setup with strangers nearby and flowers arranged by someone who did not know you. He saw you barefoot in his kitchen. He saw you laughing at something he said under his breath. He saw your hand on his chest. He saw himself reaching into his pocket because he could not wait one more second.
Shen tapped the page once. “The goal is not to make it look like a proposal.”
Jack looked up. “That is the point.”
“No,” Shen said. “The point is to make it look like you know her.”
Jack went quiet. There it was. The thing he had been circling for weeks. Not spectacle. Not performance. Not proof for anyone else. Just you. The way he knew you. The way he loved you. The way he wanted to ask in the middle of an ordinary place because nothing about loving you had ever felt ordinary to him.
Jack swallowed once. “Kitchen,” he said.
Shen nodded. “Kitchen.”
Jack pointed at him. “No committee language.”
Shen looked down at his notes. “I will avoid it during the proposal.”
Jack stared at him. “During the proposal?”
Shen paused. “Before and during the proposal.”
“Better,” Jack said.
Shen made a note.
Jack leaned forward. “What did you write?”
“Kitchen plan approved,” Shen said.
Jack looked at him.
Shen added, “No committee language.”
Jack sat back. “Good.”
Shen wrote one more thing.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Dunkin.”
Shen did not look up. “I am writing that the wooing requirement is satisfied.”
Jack closed his eyes. God give me strength. By the time Jack left the coffee shop, the ring was no longer a photo. It was purchased. Ordered in your size. Expected to arrive in six to eight weeks. Jack had stared at the confirmation email in his car for a full minute before putting his phone facedown in the cupholder and breathing like a man who had just done something irreversible. Which, technically, he had not. He had not asked yet. You had not answered yet. The ring was not even physically in his possession. But it was yours. That was the part that got him.
Somewhere, in some warehouse or workshop or carefully organized back room, there was a ring being prepared for your hand. Jack sat in the driver’s seat and let that fact settle into him. Then he drove home, hid every piece of evidence with the kind of precision usually reserved for narcotics and classified documents, and spent the next ten minutes making absolutely certain there was no chance you would find the folder, the notes, the receipt, the confirmation number, or the phrase ‘Wooing requirement satisfied’ written anywhere in his home. Only then did he let himself come looking for you.
Your shoes were by the door. One heel tipped sideways near the entryway. Jack looked at it and \ immediately thought of Shen’s story about the emotionally load-bearing heel. God help him, even your shoes had lore now.
“Baby?” Jack called.
“Bedroom,” you answered.
There was something in your voice. Jack stopped with one hand on the back of the couch. Not suspicious. Not exactly. But soft. Warm. Waiting. His pulse shifted before he could talk himself out of it. Jack walked down the hall, still carrying the leftover tension from the coffee shop in his shoulders. The ring. The confirmation email. Shen’s folder. The murder latte. Advisory capacity. Limited strong advisory. The exact shape of forever. He had been thinking all day. Planning all day. Trying to keep every secret tucked safely behind his teeth.
Then he reached the bedroom doorway. And every thought in his head went silent. You were sitting on the edge of the bed. For one impossible second, Jack did not understand what he was seeing. Then he did. The bag from the mall was folded on the chair beside you. The receipt was on the dresser. You were wearing something soft and pretty, something that held your body in a way that made Jack’s heart forget what it was supposed to do. Something you had picked for him. That was the part that stole the breath from his chest.
Not just the lace. Not just the delicate straps or the way the bedroom light touched your skin. You had stood in a store, thought of him, and chosen this. For him. Jack stopped in the doorway. All day, his mind had been full. Now there was nothing. No thoughts. No schedule. No committee. No higher power accepting inquiries. Just you.
Your smile started small. “Hi.”
Jack stared at you.
You tilted your head. “You okay?”
Fuck no. He thought. Absolutely not. I am not okay. Jack opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Your smile widened. “Jack?”
He blinked once. Then, very carefully, he said, “I need a second.”
You laughed softly. “A second?”
Jack nodded once, still staring. “Maybe several.”
Your expression softened, but the amusement stayed at the corner of your mouth. “Bad meeting?”
Jack let out a low, helpless laugh. Complicated did not begin to cover it. He had spent his afternoon with John Shen in a coffee shop, choosing the ring he was going to put on your finger and planning the night he was going to ask you to keep him forever. He had listened to Shen say the words ‘wooing requirement’ with a straight face. He had ordered a ring. He had hidden the evidence. He had come home prepared to act normal. And then there you were. Sitting on his bed in something you had bought with him in mind, looking at him like he was exactly where you wanted him.
“Complicated,” Jack said.
“With administration?” you asked.
His eyes lifted to yours. The lie sat there for half a second.
Then Jack walked toward you. “Something like that,” he said.
You watched him come closer, your smile shifting into something softer, warmer, almost shy now that he was close enough to touch. Jack liked that too much. He liked all of it too much.
You reached for the front of his jacket and hooked your fingers there, drawing him between your knees. “You look tense.”
“I was tense,” Jack said.
You raised a brow, “Was?”
His hands settled at your waist. You were warm beneath his palms. Real. Here. His. Not officially. Not yet. But soon. God, soon. Jack looked down at you, and the thought hit him so hard he almost had to close his eyes. He had spent the whole day trying to plan the moment he would ask you to marry him. And now you were in front of him, soft and warm and smiling, and the question felt almost ridiculous. Not because it mattered less. Because in every way that mattered, it was already true. You were his future. You were sitting in his bedroom wearing something meant to surprise him, and Jack could barely remember how to breathe.
Your fingers smoothed over the front of his jacket. “You’re thinking too much.”
Jack looked down at you. For the first time all day, that was not true.
“No,” he said, his hand sliding along your waist. “I’m really not.”
Your smile went quiet. Jack bent and kissed you. Slowly at first. Carefully. Like he had time. Like he had all the time in the world. Your hands moved up his chest, and Jack felt the last of the day leave him. The coffee shop. Shen’s folder. The tabs. The timeline. The ordered ring tucked somewhere safely out of reach. All of it went quiet. You made a soft sound against his mouth, and Jack’s hand tightened at your waist. There you are, he thought. Not the proposal. Not the plan. Not the future arriving in six to eight weeks. Just you. Right now. Jack pulled back only enough to look at you.
Your eyes opened slowly. “Hi.”
His mouth curved. “Hi,” he said.
You touched his jaw. “You’re better now.”
Jack’s thumb brushed over your side. “Yeah.”
You smiled, pleased with yourself. “Good.”
Jack looked at you sitting there, soft and beautiful and entirely unaware that somewhere in the world, a ring was being made for your hand. He pressed another kiss to your mouth. Then one to your cheek. Then one to the corner of your jaw, just because he could.
Your fingers slid into his hair. “Jack.”
His eyes closed for half a second. He loved the way you said his name. He loved that you had no idea what was coming. He loved that even if you did, Shen would probably claim you had known because of abnormal detection patterns, and Jack would probably have to hear about it for the rest of his life. He smiled against your skin.
You leaned back slightly. “What?”
Jack lifted his head. “Nothing.”
Your eyes narrowed with familiar suspicion. “That was not nothing.”
“No,” Jack said, his hands warm at your waist. “It was good.”
You studied him for another second. Then your suspicion softened into something sweeter.
“Okay,” you said.
Jack bent and kissed you again before you could ask anything else. Because he could keep the secret. He could. For six to eight weeks, he could keep this tucked safely inside his chest. He could wait for the ring. He could plan the kitchen. He could survive Shen’s advisory committee. Probably. But standing there with you, looking at him like that, Jack knew the truth. The ring was coming. The question was coming. The rest of his life was coming. And for once, he was not thinking too much. He was only thinking yes. Six weeks and four days later, the ring arrived.
Jack knew because he had checked the tracking more often than was medically reasonable. He had checked it before work, again between patients, once in the parking lot, and one final time while standing outside his front door with his keys in his hand and his heart somewhere dangerously close to his throat. Delivered. A single word on the screen. Small. Ordinary. Absolutely devastating. For one second, Jack just stood there.
He had known it was coming. Obviously, he had known. He had ordered it. Paid for it. Read the confirmation email until the words started to blur. Spent six weeks pretending he was not thinking about the ring every time you reached for his hand. But knowing it was coming was different from knowing it was here. The ring was no longer a photo. No longer a plan. No longer a coffee shop conversation with John Shen, a murder latte, and the phrase ‘Wooing requirement satisfied’ haunting him from a folder with tabs. The ring was real. The ring was here. The ring was yours.
Jack found the small delivery box exactly where the notification said it would be, tucked near the side door, hidden enough that you would not have noticed it first if you had come home before him. Jack stared at it for half a second too long. Then he picked it up, unlocked the front door, went straight to the bedroom, and hid every trace of the packaging with the focus of a man handling evidence.
Box broken down. Shipping label removed. Receipt tucked away. Jewelry box transferred to the inside pocket of the jacket he had already laid out for the night. Confirmation email archived. Deleted from the visible inbox. Recently deleted cleared. Then checked again. God give me strength. He was proposing marriage, not committing wire fraud. Still, with you, caution felt appropriate. Only when the evidence was gone, and the ring box was safely hidden, did Jack let himself breathe.
Then he went back to the kitchen and started setting up. He had done exactly what he said he would do. Favorite takeout ordered. Candles, but not too many. Flowers, but not the kind that looked like someone was apologizing. Music playing softly from the speaker by the cookbooks. Not proposal songs. Not anything obvious enough to make your eyes narrow the second you walked in. Songs you liked. Songs from the two of you. A real date night at home. Private. Warm. Specific. The kitchen plan. Shen had called it perfect. Jack had tried not to care about that. He cared.
The front door opened before the food arrived. “I’m home,” you called.
Jack’s hand stilled near the wineglasses. For one impossible second, he forgot what he was supposed to be doing. Then you appeared in the doorway, still in your coat, your bag on your shoulder, your eyes moving over the kitchen with immediate suspicion and a slow, pleased smile.
“Oh,” you said, softer now. “You meant date night.”
Jack looked at you. “I said date night.”
“You say a lot of things,” you said, stepping farther into the kitchen.
His mouth curved. “Do I?”
You set your bag down on one of the chairs. “You also say them in your serious voice, and then I have to decide if you mean dinner or a medical emergency.”
“This is not a medical emergency,” Jack said.
Your eyes moved over the counter. The candles. The flowers. The wine.
Then your gaze came back to him, warmer than before. “Good.”
Jack held your eyes for one second too long.
You noticed. Your head tilted slightly. “You okay?”
Jack turned toward the drawer before you could see too much on his face. “I’m good.”
“You sound weird.” You replied.
Jack looked at you, “I’m getting silverware.”
Your brow furrowed, “That does not usually affect your voice.”
Jack opened the drawer. “Maybe I care about presentation.”
You laughed and crossed the kitchen toward him. “You do not care about presentation.”
“I care about presentation for you,” Jack said.
That quieted you. Jack felt it happen before he looked at you. When he did, your expression had gone soft in that way that made his chest feel too full for the space inside it. Jack’s hand tightened around the silverware. God. Six weeks and four days. He had waited six weeks and four days. He could wait through dinner. He could. That was the plan. You moved closer, rose onto your toes, and kissed the corner of his mouth. Jack closed his eyes for half a second. No. No, he probably could not. The doorbell rang before he could make a catastrophic decision in the middle of the kitchen.
You pulled back, smiling. “Saved by takeout.”
Jack looked at you. “Temporarily.”
Your eyebrows lifted. Jack took the opportunity to turn away before you could ask him what that meant.
“I’m going to change,” you said, already stepping back. “Give me five minutes.”
Jack nodded once. “Take your time.”
You narrowed your eyes playfully. “That sounded suspiciously patient.”
“I am capable of patience,” Jack said.
You smiled as you backed toward the hall. “Sure.”
Then you disappeared into the bedroom. Jack stood still until he heard the door close. Then he exhaled. Jack tipped the delivery driver too much, locked the door, and carried the bags into the kitchen with both hands. This was it. Favorite takeout. Candles, but not too many. Flowers that did not look like an apology. Music low by the sink. The ring in his jacket pocket. Six weeks and four days of waiting, and now he was arranging containers of noodles and rice like his entire future depended on whether the dumplings went near the vegetables. God give me strength. He set out plates. He opened containers. He poured wine.
The bedroom door opened down the hall. Jack turned. You came back into the kitchen barefoot. That was what did it. Not the candles. Not the wine. Not the music. Not the ring sitting heavy in his jacket pocket. You. Barefoot in his kitchen, smiling. You had changed into jeans and a sweater, your hair tucked behind one ear, your sleeves pushed to your elbows like you were ready to steal food off the counter before he finished setting it out. You looked comfortable. Happy. Home. Jack stopped with a takeout container in his hand. He was not making it through dinner.
You came closer, eyes dropping to the open containers on the counter. “Oh my God, you got my favorite.”
Jack set the container down. “Obviously.”
“And extra sauce?” You asked hopefully.
He nodded. “Obviously.”
Your smile went bright. “I love you.”
Jack looked at you. He knew you meant the food. Mostly. Probably. It did not matter.
“I love you too,” he said.
Your expression softened again, but then the music shifted, and your smile came back. You reached for the wineglass he had poured for you, took a sip, and climbed onto the counter like you had done a hundred times. Jack watched you settle there, one knee bent slightly, your bare feet kicking lightly against the cabinet beneath you. You bounced your shoulders a little to the song playing from the speaker. Just once. Barely anything. Enough to ruin him completely.
“This smells amazing,” you said.
Jack stared at you.
You took another sip of wine and looked over at him. “What?”
Nothing. Everything. The ring was in his jacket pocket. The kitchen was warm. You were sitting in front of him, barefoot and happy, moving to the music like the whole world had narrowed to this one room and this one night and the woman he could not imagine living without. Jack let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“I was going to do this after dinner,” he said.
Your feet stopped moving. The wineglass lowered slowly from your mouth. “Do what?”
Jack looked at you for one more second.
Then he shook his head, helpless against it. “I can’t wait.”
Your lips parted. Jack turned, reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, and felt the box fit into his palm like it had been waiting there forever. When he turned back, you were completely still.
“Jack,” you whispered.
He stepped closer. “I had a plan,” he said.
Your eyes dropped to his hand. Then back to his face. “You did?”
Jack smiled faintly. “A whole one.”
You made a small, shaky sound that might have been a laugh if your eyes had not already started to shine. Jack moved between your knees, close enough now that he could see your breath catch.
“I was going to let you eat first,” he said.
You blinked quickly.
“I was going to be patient,” Jack continued.
Your mouth trembled.
“I was going to wait for the exact right moment.” He looked around the kitchen, then back at you.
Then his voice softened. “But this is the exact right moment.”
Jack opened the box. For half a second, the world went very, very quiet. Your hand flew to your mouth.
“Yes,” you said immediately.
Jack froze. Then he laughed. It broke out of him before he could stop it, startled and breathless and happier than he had any right to be when he had not even gotten the question out.
“Baby,” Jack said, smiling so hard it almost hurt. “At least let me ask.”
You were already crying. “Okay.”
Jack took a breath. You nodded at him, helpless and eager and already reaching for him even though he still had the box in his hand. Jack’s chest went tight. He loved you so much it was almost inconvenient.
“I love you,” he said.
Your face crumpled.
Jack’s voice stayed low. “I love this. I love coming home to you. I love finding you in our kitchen, stealing my food, drinking my coffee, dancing badly when you think I’m not watching.”
You laughed through the tears. “Badly?”
“Beautifully badly,” Jack said.
You pressed one hand over your heart. Jack looked at you sitting there in the kitchen, your wine forgotten beside you, your eyes wet, your whole face open and shining like you already knew every answer he could ever ask of you. His throat tightened.
“I love the life I have with you,” he said. “I love every quiet part of it. And I want all the rest of it, too.”
You made a small sound.
Jack held your gaze. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” you said again.
Then you launched yourself off the counter. Jack caught you with one arm around your waist, the ring box still clutched safely in his other hand, as you wrapped yourself around him. Your mouth found his, messy and smiling and wet with tears. Jack kissed you back, laughing against you, holding you so tightly your feet barely touched the floor.
“Yes,” you said against his mouth.
Jack’s arm tightened around you. “I heard you.”
“Yes.” You said again.
Jack exhaled a happy laugh, “I heard you the first time.”
You kissed him harder. Jack let himself have it for another second. Two. Three.
Then he pulled back just enough to breathe. “Baby.”
You chased his mouth. “What?”
He laughed softly and lifted the box between you. “Let me put it on you.”
You looked down at the ring like you had forgotten there was a step after saying yes.
“Oh my God,” you whispered.
Jack took your left hand. Your fingers were trembling. So were his. He slid the ring onto your finger slowly, carefully, watching it settle exactly where it belonged. It fit. Of course, it fit. Shen would be unbearable about that later. But Jack could not care about Shen right now. Not when you were staring down at your hand, crying and laughing at the same time, turning your fingers slightly so the kitchen light caught the ring.
“Oh my God,” you said again.
Jack looked at it. Then at you. Then back at the ring. His chest went tight and full and almost painful.
“It’s perfect,” he said, his voice rough.
You looked up at him. Jack shook his head a little, like he still could not believe he was seeing it outside his own imagination.
Your mouth trembled. “The ring?” you asked.
Jack smiled, helpless and sure. “You.”
You looked down at the ring again. For a few seconds, neither of you said anything. You only held your hand between you, fingers trembling slightly, turning it one way and then the other so the stone caught the kitchen light. Jack watched your face. Not the ring. Not really. The ring was perfect. He knew that. He had known it when he saw the photo, when Shen confirmed it, when he opened the box in the quiet of your bedroom after it arrived. But this was different. This was your face while you wore it.
This was you crying in your kitchen, wine forgotten on the counter, takeout going cold behind him, your bare feet still tucked close to his on the floor. This was everything.
You lifted your eyes to his. “We’re engaged.”
Jack’s smile came slow and helpless. “Yeah.”
You let out a laugh that broke halfway into another sob. “We’re engaged.”
Jack’s hands found your waist. “Yeah, baby.”
You looked down again, then back up at him, like you needed to make sure both things were still true. The ring. Him. The life suddenly opening in front of you.
“You asked me to marry you,” you said.
Jack brushed his thumb over your side. “I did.”
“In the kitchen.” You continued.
His mouth curved. “I did.”
You beamed. “With my favorite takeout.”
“Romantic,” Jack said.
You laughed wetly and pressed your forehead to his chest. Jack wrapped both arms around you, holding you there, his chin dipping toward the top of your head. He closed his eyes for half a second. There it was. Quiet. Finally. No tracking updates. No hidden receipts. No Shen folder. No committee language. No murder latte. Just you in his arms, your ringed hand curled against his shirt, saying yes over and over again without saying a word. Jack breathed you in. Then you went very still. He felt it immediately.
Jack opened his eyes. “What?”
You lifted your head. “John.”
Jack closed his eyes again. “No.”
You pulled back enough to look at him. “Yes.”
“No,” Jack said, more firmly.
“He needs to know.” You insisted.
Jack groaned, “He can know in the morning.”
Your eyes widened like he had suggested something deeply unethical. “Jack.”
“We have been engaged for less than five minutes,” Jack said.
“And he has post-proposal notification rights.” You replied.
Jack’s eyes opened. He stared at you. You stared back, beautiful and tearful and absolutely serious.
“I knew that tab was going to ruin my life,” Jack said.
You were already reaching for your phone on the counter. “This is not ruining your life.”
“It is interrupting my life.” Jack amended.
You shrugged, “It is part of your life now.”
Jack pointed at you. “That sounded like Shen.”
You smiled through your tears. “Best friend clause.”
Jack grimaced, “Do not invoke the clause during our engagement.”
You lifted the phone. “Too late.”
Jack dragged a hand over his mouth as you tapped Shen’s contact and started a FaceTime call.
“Can we have one private moment before committee notification?” Jack asked.
You looked up at him with watery, sparkling eyes. “We did.”
“That was thirty seconds,” Jack replied.
You nodded seriously, “It was a very meaningful thirty seconds.”
Jack stared at you. You smiled. God give me strength. He thought. The call connected on the second ring. Shen’s face appeared on the screen. He was in scrubs, standing somewhere that looked suspiciously like a hallway at PTMC, his expression flat and expectant in a way that told Jack he had absolutely been waiting for this.
“Accepted?” Shen asked.
You made a strangled sound. “John.”
Shen blinked once. “That was not an answer.”
You laughed and cried at the same time, turning the phone so your face and Jack’s shoulder were both in frame. “Yes.”
Shen’s expression did not change much. But Jack saw it. The slight softening around his eyes. The small release in his jaw. The way his gaze flicked from your wet face to Jack and then back to you, as if confirming that you were happy before allowing himself to react.
“Good,” Shen said.
You laughed again. “Good?”
Shen nodded once. “Expected, but good.”
Jack leaned closer to the phone. “Expected?”
Shen looked at him. “Yes.”
Jack’s brows lifted. “You couldn’t give me that level of confidence six weeks ago?”
“You did not ask for reassurance,” Shen said.
“I asked for advisory input,” Jack replied.
Shen shrugged, “Different category.”
Jack pointed at the phone. “Dunkin.”
You wiped under your eye with your free hand. “Look.”
You held your left hand up to the camera. For the first time since he answered, Shen went completely still. His eyes dropped to the ring. You turned your fingers a little so he could see it properly. Shen studied it for two seconds.
Then he nodded once. “Correct.”
You let out a watery laugh. “Correct?”
Jack closed his eyes. “Of course, that’s what he says.”
Shen looked at you through the screen. “It is the correct ring.”
Your mouth trembled.
Shen’s voice softened by the smallest degree. “It’s perfect.”
That did it.
Your face crumpled again. “Oh, John,” you whispered.
Jack’s annoyance disappeared before it could fully form. Because Shen was quiet on the screen. And you were looking at him like the little piece of history between you had just folded itself into this new thing, this future Jack had asked for, this life that somehow had room for all of it.
Shen cleared his throat once. “Are you happy?”
You nodded quickly. “So happy.”
“Good,” Shen said.
Jack’s hand settled at your waist.
Shen’s gaze shifted to him. “Well done.”
Jack went still. You looked up at him.
Jack looked at Shen through the screen. “Thank you.”
Shen nodded once. “The kitchen was the correct choice.”
You froze. Jack froze. The kitchen went silent except for the music still playing low by the sink. Slowly, you turned your head toward Jack. Jack looked down at you. Your eyes narrowed.
“John knew,” you said.
Jack closed his eyes. “Here we go.”
“John knew?” you repeated.
Shen looked between you two on the phone. “I was consulted.”
Your mouth fell open. “You were consulted?”
Jack opened his eyes. “Advisory only.”
Shen added, “Limited strong advisory.”
Jack pointed at the phone. “Do not help.”
You stared at Jack, then at the phone, then back at Jack. “You asked John to help plan my proposal?”
Jack’s jaw shifted. “You told me to.”
Your expression changed. The shock softened first. Then the realization. Then something so tender crossed your face that Jack forgot how irritated he was supposed to be.
“You listened,” you said.
Jack’s voice went quieter. “Of course I listened.”
Your eyes filled again. Shen looked down briefly, giving you privacy in the only way he knew how.
Jack touched your cheek. “You said he needed to be consulted.”
You laughed through another tear. “I was mostly joking.”
Jack’s thumb brushed under your eye. “I wasn’t.”
You stared at him. For one second, Shen did not exist. The phone did not exist. The food did not exist. Only Jack’s hand on your face and the ring on your finger and the knowledge that he had taken every ridiculous, silly, sacred piece of you seriously.
Then Shen said, “The wooing requirement was satisfied.”
Jack’s eyes closed. “Dunkin.”
You gasped softly. “A girl needs to be wooed.”
Shen nodded once. “Correct.”
Jack looked toward the ceiling. Any higher power currently accepting inquiries, this was still a good time.
You looked at Jack, glowing now. “You satisfied the wooing requirement.”
Jack’s eyes dropped back to you. “I proposed to you in my kitchen.”
“Our kitchen,” you corrected softly.
Jack stopped.
Your smile trembled. “Our kitchen,” you said again.
Jack’s hand tightened at your waist. Something in his chest gave way. He looked at you for a long second, then bent and kissed you, because there were only so many words a man could survive in one night. You kissed him back, smiling against his mouth.
On the phone, Shen cleared his throat. “Post-proposal notification protocol is complete.”
Jack pulled back just enough to glare at the screen. “Goodbye, Dunkin.”
Shen looked at you. “Congratulations.”
Your smile softened. “Thank you.”
Shen paused.
Then he said, “You were never going to die alone.”
The kitchen went quiet. Your breath caught. Jack felt it. He remembered the story from the bar. You on the floor with pizza. One heel still on. Shen sitting across from you with the worst comfort imaginable and somehow exactly enough of it. Your eyes filled all over again, but this time your smile was different. Older. Softer. Grateful.
“I know,” you said.
Shen nodded once. “Good.”
Jack could not even be annoyed at that. Not this time.
You held up your hand again. “I’m getting married.”
Shen’s mouth barely moved, but it was almost a smile. “Yes.”
“To Jack.” You added.
Shen looked at Jack through the phone. “Also correct.”
Jack shook his head. “That’s your blessing?”
Shen paused, “That was my factual acknowledgment.”
You laughed.
Jack reached for the phone. “And that’s enough.”
“Wait,” you said, pulling it away.
Jack looked at you. “Baby.”
You turned back to Shen. “I love you.”
Shen went still. Jack’s hand paused at your waist. On the screen, Shen blinked once.
Then he said, quietly, “I love you too.”
Your mouth trembled. Jack kissed your temple.
Then Shen looked at Jack. “Take care of her.”
Jack’s expression shifted. He did not make a joke. He did not bristle.
He only nodded once, steady and sure. “Always.”
Shen studied him for a second. Then he nodded back. “Committee adjourned.”
Jack closed his eyes. “There it is.”
You burst out laughing. Shen’s mouth twitched.
Jack finally took the phone from your hand. “Goodnight, Dunkin.”
“Goodnight, Abbot,” Shen said.
Jack ended the call.
You looked up at him immediately. “That was rude.”
“We are engaged,” Jack said, setting your phone facedown on the counter. “He’ll survive.”
You smiled and wrapped your arms around his neck. “We’re engaged.”
Jack’s hands settled at your waist. “Yeah.”
You looked down at your ring again. The kitchen light caught it. Jack watched your face soften.
Then you looked back up at him. “Our kitchen?”
His throat tightened. “Our kitchen,” he said.
You smiled. Jack kissed you again, slow and certain, his hands warm at your waist, the takeout cold on the counter, the flowers catching candlelight beside the sink, the music still playing softly around you. No committee. No notes. No hidden evidence. No higher power needed. Just you. Your ring. His kitchen. Your kitchen. And the rest of his life saying yes.
Summary: After being honourably discharged from the Army, you arrive in Pittsburgh with a half-finished residency, a body you are still learning how to live in, and a past you have no intention of unpacking. Dr. Jack Abbot is supposed to be a professional contact, nothing more. But he notices too much, understands things he should not understand, and carries himself with a familiarity you cannot quite place. What begins as professional tension slowly becomes something harder to ignore.
Word Count: 15.6K (ish)
Masterlist
Warnings: ⚠️ MINORS DNI ⚠️ This chapter contains smut (mature/explicit content toward the end). 18+ only, please.
age gap, mentor/mentee relationship, medical trauma, military trauma, PTSD symptoms, grief, spouse death, widowhood, amputation, prosthetic limb adjustment, survivor’s guilt, emotional repression, panic/nightmare episodes, captivity/torture references, violence, blood/injury, medical procedures, concussion, alcohol/smoking, age gap, complicated healing, smut (M solo), 18+, MDNI, swearing
Author’s Note: Thank you all for your patience ♡ I really challenged myself writing this chapter, mostly from Jack's POV, and it took a lot longer than I expected. That said, I think it'll be, at the very least, engaging. As always, comments and reblogs mean the world, even just a little reaction lets me know you're out there. See you in chapter 5 :)
Format changes: (1) I use a new divider (once) to symbolize the transition from flashback to flashback (I will likely use this in the future). (2) The small, bold, slanted text near the end represents visual and auditory senses over internal monologue.
Jack's POV
The elevator opened on the top floor and, without discussing it, we both turned left.
We had done this enough times that the building seemed to expect it. The long corridor. The door at the end with the push-bar. The concrete stairwell behind it that climbed two more flights before it gave us up to the roof. Robby went first. I gave him a few steps letting him lead.
He hit the door at the top with his shoulder and held it for me.
Pittsburgh in late July was already decided by seven in the morning. The heat came up with the sun and didn't negotiate about it, that thick wet warmth a river city wore in summer, the kind that got into your clothes and the back of your throat and the flat silver surface of the Monongahela if you stood at the right angle to see it. We crossed to the far edge, where we always went. Years ago we'd started climbing through the safety bar to sit on the outer ledge, facing the city, a single step from a very long drop, and neither of us had ever said a word about why two grown men who'd spent their lives keeping people off ledges chose to sit on one. Robby ducked under the rail and lowered himself down. I followed. The view had stopped registering as a view a long time ago. I'd have noticed instantly if it changed yet I almost never noticed it at all.
Below us the city was already running. Traffic stacking on the bridges. A barge on the river, unbothered. A siren somewhere, then nothing.
Robby leaned back against the bar with the ease of a man who'd been doing this long enough to forget the height.
He didn't look at me, "tonight was your first shift with the other Dr. Abbott."
"Yeah."
He waited for my answer, shifting uncomfortably beside me in the one kind of silence he could stand, the kind that was waiting on someone else.
I looked at the river, "she did well," which was true and was not the whole sentence, and Robby had known me long enough to hear the part I left off. I tried to give him more of it anyway, "It's--she's--"
I stopped.
Like looking in a mirror.
I didn't say that. "She's carrying a lot under the surface," I said instead, "more than she lets out. But she worked clean all night. Didn't freeze until the MVC, and even then she came back fast," I paused, "considering."
"Considering," Robby said, in the tone of a man who knew more than I did and was deciding how much of it to spend, "that she lost a leg, took an honourable discharge, and has been hauling around God knows what since she got back?" He cut his eyes at me.
Honorable discharge.
I'd assumed. Sawyer hadn't put it in those words, but she would have told me if it was anything else. Hearing it stated flatly, from Robby, the way he stated things that were simply true, it landed somewhere.
"And she's got the face," he added.
"What face?"
He gestured at me, vaguely, the way you pointed at something too obvious to name, "that face."
I narrowed my eyes at him.
"The almost-angry-but-actually-just-thinking face. The one you've worn since the day I met you. The one that makes a brand-new resident think you're about to fire them when really you're deciding between the turkey and the Italian."
"I do not--"
"You absolutely do," he wasn't unkind about it, he was never unkind about this kind of thing, "and she's got it. Plus the leg, plus the posture, plus Sawyer's fingerprints all over her career. Which makes her--"
"Don't."
"I'm observing."
"I know what you're observing."
"Then finish the sentence," he was taunting me.
I looked back at the river and let the quiet run. I'd have let it run all morning. There was a peace in it, in the darkness and the height and the not-talking, that I'd stopped trying to explain to people a long time ago. Robby was shifting again, ruthlessly restless. He never could just sit in it. Where I went quiet to find the bottom of something, he filled the silence before it could close over his head.
"I'm not anyone's pseudo-father figure," I broke it, "before you go there."
"I wasn't going there."
"You were thinking about it."
"I was thinking," Robby said, carefully, "that Sawyer pushed her the same way she pushed you. And that she looks at Sawyer the way you used to look at Sawyer."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I closed it and exhaled, "that's fair."
Down in the street a delivery truck pulled up and double-parked with the magnificent indifference of a vehicle that had given up caring what anyone thought of it.
"Has she told you anything?" Robby asked. "About what happened over there?"
"No. Sawyer gave me an outline. Said the rest was hers to give."
He nodded slowly. Then, in a different register, "I could tell you. I was in the meeting with Gloria. And you're her supervising physician, which technically means--"
"No."
He stopped.
The word had come out of me before I'd finished deciding it and once it was in the air I knew it was the right one.
"She tells me when she decides she wants to," I ran a hand down over my jaw, the stubble three days past where it should have been, "not because I read her file."
Robby looked at me for a moment. Then he looked back out at the water, "alright."
It was the alright he used when he respected something. I'd learned the difference between his alrights years ago.
The city kept moving under us. A small ferry crossing. The heat settling in for the day like it had nowhere better to be.
"I hope you and your mini-me are at least getting along," Robby said.
"Don't call her that," my head dropped back, eyes rolling at the sky, "she's not a mini-me. She's a colleague." I brought my eyes level with his and held them. Stern.
That's all she is.
"Mm-hm," Robby nodded, "whatever you say, brother."
I looked at him. He was staring at the skyline with the smug face of a man who'd won something small and was being gracious about it.
"You ready for today?" I asked.
He breathed out through his nose, long and slow, the exhale of someone whose tiredness had stopped being about sleep a long while back. The smug look he'd had on his face a second ago now skewed into something else. He rolled his shoulders once, a movement so worn-in it had stopped being a movement resembling something more like a tic.
"No," he paused, "but I'm here."
I looked at the river.
"Yeah," I said, "I get it."
Then he ducked back under the bar and turned for the door. I followed him in.
Your POV (Four Days Later)
It had been four days since your first shift.
The integration plan was a sequence somebody in administration had clearly felt good about: one shift, then a day, then a shift, then a day, and now you'd apparently "graduated" to the big leagues with two shifts back to back starting today.
Thrilling.
The day off after that first shift you had spent the way it demanded to be spent. On the couch in one of Adam's sweaters, prosthetic off, your residual limb tucked up under you. The folded burial flag held to your chest. His urn within arm's reach. His wedding band loose in your palm.
Not crying, at first. Just sitting with him. Holding the weight of the flag they'd handed you in the waiting room and letting the apartment go quiet around it. Then the crying started, soft and controlled, the kind you could still have talked through. Then it stopped. Then it came back louder, uglier, the snotting, wailing, fold-yourself-in-half kind that doesn't ask permission and doesn't take it back. Then quiet again. Not the gentle kind. The kind that sits down in the room with you and doesn't move, so complete you half wonder if you've gone deaf, if anything is still out there making sound at all.
Which was as close as you'd ever gotten to an honest definition of grief--not the crying, but what it leaves behind.
You'd been carrying his death close to a year. The weight was familiar. You knew its edges.
The burial flag was the new part. The fact of it. The formality of it. The way it had all happened out loud, in the lobby of The Pitt, at seven in the morning, in front of Dr. Shen, Dr. Ellis, Mateo, Dana, Dr. Abbot, and thirty people you'd barely met and were still quietly hoping to impress. That was what was new. Not that you were a widow. You'd known that.
It was that they knew it now.
That was the part you hadn't been ready for.
You sat with it anyway, because there was no alternative, and because you'd learned that most of the things you weren't ready for arrived on their own schedule.
Your second shift, the day after you'd re-grieved Adam on the couch, had been almost identical to the first. Same rhythm, same floor, same sense of learning the room from the inside. The medicine was the medicine. The rest of it was hospital geography, the names, the faces, the personalities that made up a department you were slowly being let into.
Dr. Trinity Santos you'd clocked early on, she was abrasive in the efficient way of someone who didn't have time for the social performance of not being abrasive, which you respected more than most people's warmth. She'd introduced you to Dr. Javadi, who looked young enough that you briefly checked the back of your own hands for age spots, and Dr. King, who went by Mel and had a quiet settled air of competence around her.
Santos had also been your source on the tall fair-skinned man with the blue eyes you'd hit like a door in the locker room on your first night. You described him to her and without blinking Santos spilled, "oh, that's Langdon. Frank Langdon. He was probably rushing off to pee in a cup." There was, apparently, a story involving benzos the prior year. Santos offered more. You decided you didn't need it.
Then there was Dr. Huckleberry, who looked like her was in the early stages of realizing the job was harder than the degree had implied. You couldn't help but have a soft spot for the poorbguy, even when, especially when, he had the misfortune of a name like Huckleberry.
Today, just under two hours before your third shift, you were on the couch with your good leg tucked under you, looking at the bookshelf.
The afternoon light had moved across the room making its way towards Adam's frames, the three of them in a row, his face waiting to catch the golden beams the same way it used to catch them over the base perimeter in Salerno.
You were just sitting with him. Letting yourself appreciate that he had somewhere to be now. A spot on the bookshelf dedicated to just him.
The funeral came back without warning. Arriving in your body before it arrived in your mind, a tightness behind your sternum, a coldness in your hands, and then you were there.
You were in a wheelchair.
You were so ashamed of it. You'd spent a career around people who needed them and felt nothing but tenderness toward every single one. Now that you were the one in it, things were different. The visibility of it. The way it announced that something bad had happened to you in a room where everyone already knew tragedy had struck.
Though nobody knew the shape of it, so they filled in the shape with the chair.
You spoke to almost no one. Tissue pressed to your nose rubbed raw. It wasn't hard to avoid people, because most of them took one look at the chair, at the face you were wearing, the shell of a woman who had been allowed to fall in love and know him just long enough to start a life before it was ripped out of her grasp, and decided, mercifully, to let you be.
Some greeted you anyway.
His parents stood with you and took the condolences you couldn't, a buffer made of his family.
His mother's face you would carry for the rest of your life. She put her hand against your cheek and held it there, the way a mother touched someone she had decided to claim. In that one touch was the whole of her. A woman who had raised a son into someone extraordinary and was trying to hold on to every last thing that had ever defined him, including you. "He's my boy. I can only imagine what this is doing to you, and I am so sorry, sweetheart." She didn't say it out loud, she didn't have to.
At the ash distribution, held in a smaller room after the service, she asked you, quietly, if you remembered what he'd wanted.
Your voice went flat. Tears ran silent down past your raw cheeks into the puddle they'd already made in your lap, "he wanted to go everywhere."
His father laughed, a short wet sound. His mother smiled the smile of a woman who was not surprised. Not even slightly.
It had been his idea. He'd brought it up out of nowhere, no lead-in, no occasion to attach it to. But there was nothing casual about it. He said it directly, without dressing it up, like he'd been carrying it quietly for a while and had simply decided it was time to say it out loud.
You were sitting on the perimeter wall in the late afternoon, the base laid out below in the long orange of the desert evening. Adam on his back along the wide concrete ledge, one arm behind his head, watching the sky change. You sitting with your knees pulled to your chest, watching the same sky from a slightly different angle.
The two of you, forever doing the same thing in slightly different ways.
He'd been quiet a while. Long enough that you knew something was coming.
"Hey," he said, not looking over.
"Hmm."
"If anything ever happens to me--"
"Adam."
"I mean it. Just--"
"I don't want to have this conversation."
"I know," he turned his head and gave you that look he had, the patient warm certain one, "but I do. For one second. Then we never talk about it again."
You looked at the horizon, "fine."
He looked back to the sky, "I want to go everywhere," he said simply. "That's it. I don't care about the ceremony, I don't care about the arrangements, I don't care about any of the official stuff. Your judgment's better than mine on all of that anyway." His mouth curved. "But wherever you go. Whatever missions, whatever trips, whatever the next idiotic mandatory redeployment to some base in Kuwait--"
"That was one tim--"
"Bring a little of me," he talked over you, easy, "just a tablespoon. Less, if you're flying carry-on. Spread it. Let me see it too."
You were quiet a long moment.
"Anywhere?"
"Anywhere."
"Kuwait?"
"I said anywhere, I meant anywhere."
You looked at him, admiring the profile of him against the orange, the comfort of a man fully at peace with what he'd just said.
"Okay," you agreed, thinking in the moment you would never have to follow through on this promise.
"Okay?"
"Yeah," you turned back to the horizon, "okay."
You were still looking at the sky when you heard it. The unmistakable click of a shutter, the quick flash going off behind you. You turned. He'd taken a photo of you against the sunset. Of course he had. He was already lowering the little camera with that look on his face. You smiled. You leaned over and kissed him.
He reached out without looking and found your hand. You let him hold it.
The photo with your head turned away was in front of you.
You'd come back to the present without quite registering how you got there. The small album that was only him, only the two of you, was open across your knees.
There you were against the sunset, twenty-something and unaware, the orange you'd grown to love behind you the exact orange you'd watched change a thousand times. The version of the sky he'd been looking at the second he decided to keep you forever in a four-by-six.
You had spread some of him at Salerno before they flew you out. Early morning, the wheelchair maneuvered somehow to the edge of the perimeter wall, your face turned up into that same sky. His ashes sat unceremoniously in your lap. You reached in and took just a small amount, because he'd already spent years there with you, and let it go into a gust of wind and sand.
You'd spread some of him in Washington too. The garden outside the rehabilitation unit where you'd spent most of the spring. Where you went every morning the weather allowed. A dry warm April afternoon, the garden empty except for you. Near the flowers you thought were most beautiful. Just a tablespoon, the way he'd wanted.
His parents had spread some in his hometown. They told you at Christmas, in a card written by his mother's hand, which you had read more times than you could count.
The urn on the shelf held what was left. About three-quarters of what you'd started with.
There was still so much of the world to show him.
The bookshelf had taken two days to get right. Not two full days. Two days the way a thing took two days when you did it slowly on purpose, when the doing was as much the point as the finished product.
You'd started at the bottom and built up. A sequence. A structure. Something that would hold.
The shelf itself was solid wood, thick and dark, the kind that didn't complain when you set something heavy on it. One of Kalista's finds, bought your second week and left standing empty too long.
It wasn't empty now.
The bottom shelf you'd given to the trailing plants, deep green things whose stems spilled over the edge and reached for the floor, soft and loose, growing with their own opinions about which direction to go.
Above that, your books. Medical texts you'd kept not because you needed them but because you might want them again, spines out, ordered by no system anyone but you could name.
Above that, the photo albums. First the ones of your family, then, medical school, the deployments, the whole life that existed in prints and Polaroids and glossy four-by-sixes, sorted roughly by date and event, but mostly by the private logic of memory.
You'd driven to a craft store for the right albums. Fitting the loose prints from Sawyer's package into pages one at a time had been a strange kind of therapy. Sad and funny and angry and nostalgic, the slow procession of every version of you there had ever been. All the faces you'd worn across all the years, arranged into something you could hold in your hands and call a life.
Until the whole shelf said what you needed it to say: This happened. Here is the proof.
Then the shelf for Adam.
You stood back and looked at it.
Three frames, arranged with the care of someone who'd thought about this for a long time.
The first was the Polaroid, framed properly now. Adam on promotion day, that contained proud smile, and if you tilted it toward the light at exactly the right angle, the faint ghost of his lips lived in the gloss. Your own kiss on the back was no longer visible, but you knew it was there, which was all you needed.
The second was the wedding photo, taken by someone you would never be able to name, though the angle gave them away as tall and patient and good with a lens. The two of you leaned into each other, foreheads nearly touching, both in your army uniforms because a base in a war zone didn't offer much in the way of venue and neither of you had cared even slightly. Confetti thrown by everyone who could be spared that afternoon, because Adam had always had the kind of friends who showed up. Both of you laughing at something that had happened a half-second before the shutter. Not posed. Caught. The best kind.
The third was him alone. A squad photo, flat midday light, looking straight down the barrel of the lens with the face he wore when he was wholly at ease. Not performing. Just there. Him as the subject. Him as the whole point of the frame.
Behind everything, standing upright against the back of the shelf, the folded triangle of his burial flag. Red and white stripes precise at the edges, the blue canton at the peak tight and even, bearing the full formal weight of what it was and what it had cost.
Beside the frames, tucked away but not invisible, his urn. Dark ceramic, plain, the way he'd have wanted it. Behind it, an incense holder you'd found and couldn't have explained wanting. A small pale-grey ceramic mountain with a channel carved into it so the smoke ran down instead of up, a slow grey waterfall pooling at the base. You'd sat and watched it the first time you lit it, this thing that fell when everything about smoke said it should rise, and found it, for reasons you couldn't get to words, exactly right.
On the shelf above, the dark oak box with ABBOTT engraved across the face of it in clean block letters, turned outward so anyone walking by could read it. Three small urns set around it. The worn little photo book of before, balanced half-open and standing upright against the side of the box.
Leafy green plants spilled over every edge. In the afternoon, as the sun crossed the back windows and started to fall, the light caught the whole thing and soaked it through with gold.
You'd sat and watched it happen the day before, eyes red and full, the warmth moving across the hardwood floor until it reached the shelf and lit everything from below with the unhurried certainty of something that had been doing this forever and intended to keep doing it.
You'd built something. Not a memorial, exactly. Not a shrine, in the sorrowful untouchable way the word wanted to mean. Something closer to a chair being pulled up to the table for someone who hadn't come yet.
A place in the room that said: These people were real. They are still real. They are allowed to be here.
You made one small adjustment. Stepped back. Made another. Checked it. Adjusted again, the way you'd checked sutures and field dressings and the seating of a tourniquet, until you were sure.
When it finally felt right you turned around.
Two envelopes sat on the coffee table. The last thing left. The final object in the apartment that wasn't put away, the last thing standing between you and being, officially, moved in. You'd shifted them off the bookshelf earlier in the week to make room, and now they sat one on top of the other with the patient air of things that had been waiting a long time.
Ninety-nine percent done. You've got this.
You took a slow breath and sat on the couch, both envelopes in front of you.
The larger one official, sealed with the finality of something that had passed through several sets of hands before yours. Sawyer's letter on top of it, smaller, one corner bent from weeks of being moved and not opened.
You picked up Sawyer's first. It felt more approachable. More like a person and less like a process.
You turned it lengthwise in your hands, an old habit, and tore the top in one clean line. You slid the pages out.
Her handwriting was tight, slanted, unmistakable.
Y/N,
I've started this letter more times than I'll admit. Every time I get to the part where I try to be useful, I remember who I'm writing to. A doctor, a soldier, one of the most clear-eyed people I've ever known. And I remember you already know everything useful I could say. So I'm going to stop being useful and try to be honest instead, which I'm worse at.
You changed something in me. I spent thirty years in a place that has opinions about feelings, that has a way of convincing you that you don't have any, that you handed them in at the recruiting office with your civilian clothes. I believed that for a long time. Then you walked into my unit, eighteen and furious about being underestimated, and it turned out I had something to feel after all.
I won't write that I'm proud of you, because you'll read it in my voice and roll your eyes and it'll lose all meaning.
But maybe you'll hear it anyway.
When the report came through that eight people had been captured at the perimeter and I couldn't locate you, something in me knew.
I need you to know I tried. I need you to know that trying wasn't enough, and I will carry that for the rest of my life. I have spent my whole career fixing things. I couldn't fix this one.
You lost your leg. You lost Adam. And all I could do was stand on the other side of a desert and be too late. And "sorry" is too small a word for what I mean.
You are alive. You are in Pittsburgh. You are starting over.
Which is the hardest thing a person is ever asked to do, and you are doing it whether or not it feels like it from the inside. I keep coming back to that. I have to.
I have two things to ask of you:
1. Trust the place I sent you.
2. Trust the man on the ground.
His name is Jack. I knew him before you were born (yes I'm old, save it) he is more like you than either of you is going to enjoy admitting. He has lost the things you've lost and he found a way through. Not cleanly, not quickly, not in a straight line. But through. Let him show you the parts of the map he's already walked.
That's all I've got, kid.
I love you. (Don't tell anyone.)
Sawyer
You read it twice.
You didn't cry. Something settled in your chest instead, not happiness exactly, but a near neighbour of it. The warmth of being known inside and out by someone who chose you on purpose. The knowledge that far away, in a place you'd left behind, the people who shaped you were still standing in it, still holding their post.
You set the pages on the cushion beside you and let them sit.
Then you picked up the second envelope.
Heavier. Not dramatically, just the density of official things, of documents processed and filed and signed across several departments before they came to rest in your lap. You worked the flap. Inside, a stack clipped together, and clipped to the top of it a typed contents sheet, the kind someone generated so nothing important went missing in transit.
CONTENTS — HANDSCOMBE, ADAM J. / SGT
DD Form 1300 (Report of Casualty)
AR 15-6 investigation summary (redacted)
SGLI disbursement record; beneficiary designations; death gratuity
DIC reference Sealed: account credentials (see attached)
Personal effects: 1 item
You went through it the way you'd been trained to go through anything. Top to bottom, no skipping.
The DD Form 1300 you didn't read. You'd seen it during discharge. His name in the field where his name went. His military identification number. The date and the place of his death. You set it aside.
The investigation summary you didn't read either. Portions of it had been read to you in a debrief. Portions of it you had given--your account of the twenty-seven days folded into the record in the clean passive grammar the Army used for the worst things that ever happened to a person. You set it on top of the form.
The financial packet. The accounts, the beneficiary lines filed the week you married, the gratuity and the DIC you'd already learned to navigate in Washington. A small sealed envelope inside the big one, labeled in someone's unfamiliar hand: passwords and accounts. You set it aside for a practical day.
Today wasn't that.
Then your fingers found something at the bottom that wasn't paper.
A small clear bag. Inside it, a flash drive. Black casing, no brand. A strip of masking tape along one side, three characters written in a hand you didn't recognize.
H2A
You held it in your palm.
Not on the contents sheet. Not official. Slipped in by someone, off the record, in handwriting that belonged to no one you could place.
Something in you started to reach toward what it might mean. You caught the thought before it could finish forming and set it somewhere you kept the things you couldn't get to yet. Not because you were afraid. Because you weren't ready to be right about it.
Not today. Not yet.
You set the drive aside, sealed, unplayed.
At the very bottom, a second clear evidence bag, this one sealed at the top. Inside it, two tags on a single chain.
Stamped metal, the edges worn soft from years against skin.
His name. His blood type. His religion.
You opened the bag and took them out.
You had your own set. You'd worn tags for ten years. You knew exactly what they weighed, knew the small cold sound the chain made pooling into a palm, the way the stamped letters caught under a thumbnail. None of that was unfamiliar.
What was unfamiliar was the arithmetic of it. That these were his, and that now they were yours, and the only reason both of those things could be true at once was that he was dead. The weight in your hand was the same weight it had always been, but everything around it had changed.
You sat with them for a while. No tears. Just the memory of him held quietly in both hands.
Then you got up, crossed to the bookshelf, and draped the chain over the corner of his frame. The squad photo, him looking straight out, wholly at ease. The chain settled against the wood. The tags hung against the glass, his face visible behind them and through them.
You stepped back.
There.
That's what had been missing.
The afternoon light had moved while you read. It sat at the foot of the bookshelf now, starting its slow climb, the gold rising the way it always rose, certain of exactly where it was going. You watched it find him. Warm beams pouring across his face the way they used to stream across yours at Salerno, except this time there was no camera--no click. Only you, and the room, and the light doing what light did.
You looked at the time. 5:56.
You had to go.
You turned to your room to change quickly and grab extra scrubs, your stethoscope and your bag. Contents mostly unchanged--an extra liner, backup shrinker, the ibuprofen that you shook into your palm and dry-swallowed before zipping the bag shut. Getting ahead of the swelling before twelve hours of standing made it a problem.
You opened the door to leave. No bye to Kalista tonight, her door was shut and the apartment was quiet on the other side of it. She was probably already out for the evening. You turned toward the elevator, the shift already starting to arrange itself in the back of your head. Tonight felt different from the first two. You weren't sure why yet.
God. How long does credentialing take?
The elevator doors binged and let you enter.
You parked on the third floor, still refusing the handicapped spaces on the ground level of the structure, the placard still buried in your bag where it would stay.
You had the whole night crew now, all of them confidently. The day shift you were maybe halfway through. You'd pick up a few more at handoff if the universe was cooperative.
You sat down on the bench in the locker room and dragged your hands down your face, scrubbing off the last day and a half of grief like it was something that could be physically removed. You did not like to let it surface in public. It didn't always cooperate, but the intention mattered. You pulled in a breath and pushed it out slow.
Then you reached down and rolled your left pant leg up to look at the sleeve. You had to tug hard on the scrubs to just barely see the mark. There on the inner thigh, where the top edge of the silicone suspension sleeve rolled up over the knee and onto the lower thigh, a welt was coming up red and angry along the line where the silicone met skin. The size and temperament of a friction burn, which was exactly what it was--an edge working the same patch of skin for hours, every step, a fit that had never been quite right and had gotten worse the longer you'd ignored it.
You knew the band-aid wouldn't hold under the sleeve. You knew it would bunch and slide and probably make things worse. You put it on anyway, smoothed it down with your thumb, and fought the pant leg back into place. It was a field fix. The kind you reached for when the right fix wasn't available, which lately was always.
You stood and crossed to the mirror. Turned the prosthetic a few different ways, checked the drape of the fabric, the line of the pant leg, the place where most people's eyes would go.
No visible sign of a fake leg.
You reached for the door.
It opened first.
A body came through with the full momentum of someone who'd badly misjudged the timing of an empty room, and you had half a second before his chest met your face. Two hands gripped your waist, certain and immediate, and you both stilled.
You looked up.
Hazel eyes, just slightly wide with surprise, the pupils adjusting to the new distance between you. Salt and pepper curls that fell just past his ears, faintly damp at the edges. A jaw that was defined and deliberately structured, maybe two days of silver-threaded stubble sitting well against it. The breadth of him across the shoulders and chest was something you registered at this distance whether you meant to or not, the scrub top pulling across it with the particular tension that happened when a frame had been built through use and the fabric hadn't been cut to accommodate it. His hands on your waist, large and certain, the grip already softening from a catch into something steadier.
He was not Adam's height. You registered that the way you registered it about everyone now, like a reflex, and then registered something underneath it: that you didn't mind. You put that second thing, unnamed, somewhere it couldn't cause trouble and left it.
A huff of air left you on contact. You had no idea what your own face was doing. His had already moved out of the surprise into something easier his grip had softening to a steadying hold, warm through the fabric of your top.
Normally, you would have had a line for this. A comeback, the reflexive volley you ran on anyone who gotten too close too fast. But you'd spent the last twenty minutes scraping a dead husband off the surface of yourself and came up empty. No line. No punchline. You just stood there in the half-circle of his embrace and let the silence go a beat too long.
"You with me, Abbott?" He waved a hand gently across your eyeline, "can't lose you this early into a shift." He stepped back, releasing your waist glancing at his watch. "It's 6:34. You've got time to pull yourself together if you--"
"I'm fine," you straightened, shoulders back, chin level. The automatic geometry of a soldier's posture. "Just," you stepped back too, giving him room to get to his locker, hands finding the stethoscope at your neck, "things can get tough. You know."
He turned from his locker to you, "that's vague," he said. And then nothing else, just waited, like he had all night and the rest of the week to talk about it.
"I finished his spot today," you said. You watched it land in him without a name attached, watched him fit it to the burial flag and the two soldiers and the 7 AM ceremony in the ED few days prior--he'd been there, he'd seen it. You didn't give him more than that. "It was tough."
A woman of many words, you were.
"Did it help?"
"Help what?"
He tilted his head, considering you, "we haven't talked much outside of the floor. I've been keeping my focus on the medicine, on getting you onboarded. That's the supervising part of the job," he shuffled through his locker, leaving a small pause, "but there's a part that isn't in the job description."
You shifted to face him, "what would we even talk about, off the floor?"
He looked at you like you'd said something faintly insulting, "when I lost my leg," he said, "I had someone. The whole way through. And it was," he caught your word and set it down carefully between you, "tough. But there was someone there every day for the practical things. The shower. The fit. The hundred small adjustments you make to a body that moves differently now." A brief pause. "That kind of help is not nothing. That was most of it, actually."
You held still.
"It's good that it's done," he went on, easier now, like he'd decided to risk something, "his spot. That's real work, finishing something like that," he shrugged, like it cost him nothing, which you suspected was untrue, "the part nobody warns you about is that finishing it doesn't mean it's over. It just means they have somewhere now. A shelf. A countertop. Somewhere in the room you can see them and can't change it. Somewhere they are allowed to be," what he said next was specific in a way that could only come from personal experience, "that's not nothing either," he turned to look you in the eyes, "I'm just trying to help."
You had your hand on the door.
And selfishly, because you were tired and hadn't finished grieving yet and didn't know what to do with the particular thing he'd just said, you said, "nothing will help."
True.
And you walked out.
Jack's POV
"Nothing will help," and the door snapped shut behind her.
I let out a breath in the now empty room.
I understood it. Really. When I lost Claire I'd been a disaster in ways I still didn't enjoy revisiting, and that was a different shape of loss entirely. Claire hadn't been in the service. Hadn't worked beside me. Hadn't died for a country in front of God and everyone. This woman had a lost limb stacked on top of a lost husband, and somewhere under all of it a story that the burial flag and ceremony had only sketched the outline of. I knew there was a floor to it. I hadn't reached it yet.
Her last shift, two days back, she'd done well. Same as the first. Still half-amazed by the supply rooms. Still reaching for a kit that wasn't on her body before she caught herself and recalibrated. I remembered the exact same disorientation, the phantom reach for equipment that didn't exist, learning all over again to trust that the room would answer. The medicine had been the same. The method had changed.
The problem wasn't her medicine.
How do I break into that?
Her walls were poured, not stacked. No visible gaps. She ran off exactly two settings: ruthlessly honest or ruthlessly avoidant, nothing in between, and I didn't know her well enough yet to read which one was load-bearing and which was the trap.
I'd never tried to reach someone from this particular angle before. In Kosovo, Sawyer and I had been the surrogate parents of a young squad, not in that way, never in that way, more like a brother and sister keeping a household from burning down--and Sawyer hadn't exactly been a fountain of emotional technique. But Sawyer knew this woman down to the foundation. If anyone had a crowbar, it was her.
I pulled out my phone before I left the locker room and typed.
The walls she's got up are concrete. You need to give me something. A seam, a soft spot, anything. Or this is going to take ten years I don't have. Throw me a bone, Sawyer.
I hit send, pocketed the phone, and went to work.
They were already gathered at the nursing station.
We had this thing that resembled tradition but fell closer to ritual. A huddle that hadn't started as a huddle but evolved into one over time, the way the best rituals did, accreting out of habit until somebody would've objected if it stopped. Practiced. Worn smooth. But tonight there was an addition to it whose presence made something in my chest shift in a way I hadn't named yet.
Maybe it was recognition. Maybe it was seeing my own posture standing across the room wearing a different face.
Robby said she had the same face I did. When I looked at her though, I saw more than stoicism. I saw the flicker behind her eyes that she'd gotten very good at covering. The tell. The small leak of pressure that said a person wasn't calm, just sealed, and that the seal had a rating it hadn't fully tested at yet.
She was mid-conversation with Santos, back turned to me.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
I interrupted.
"Nightcrawlers." I grabbed both ends of my stethoscope and slung it behind my neck and she turned. I did not miss Santos's small efficient eye-roll. "Quick one before you scatter. Cruz, night before last, witnessed an arrest in the waiting room, downtime was under two minutes because somebody was paying attention. Good compressions, early shock, ROSC on the floor before the rig was even cleared. That's the job. That's it exactly." A few nods. "Ellis, angioedema that went from a fat lip to a closed airway in about ninety seconds. Read it early, didn't wait for it to get ugly, surgically cleared the airway--clean. Patient is upstairs breathing through their own neck because she didn't blink." Ellis tipped her head. "That's two people who saw the problem before it was obvious, which is the entire game down here. Everybody else, match that."
I let it sit a beat, then leaned in.
"We're the nightcrawlers. We get the weirdest and the wildest. Because-!"
They came back without missing, "We are the weirdest and the wildest of them all!"
"That's right." I clapped once. "Go get some!"
"HOOAH!"
And to my right, just under everyone else's, a half-second behind and quieter, "hooah." I heard it. I tried not to look but my eyes found hers for exactly one second before I let go.
The huddle broke. She didn't move with them. She turned back to Santos.
"So his name isn't actually Huckleberry?" I couldn't see her face.
"Not technically, no," Santos said, with the long flat look you gave a dog you'd decided to put down, aimed across the bay at Whitaker.
"I can't believe you," she nudged Santos, "I called him that to his face."
Santos laughed louder than I'd ever heard her speak, "Dr. Huckleberry. I am absolutely using that. So, how's nights treating you?" her eyes moved up and over y/n's shoulder to me, because I was hovering, and I knew I was hovering, and I kept doing it.
"Um. Hi?" Santos said, eyebrow raised with an attitude.
"Hello." I replied, flat.
Y/n turned, the confusion on her face quickly bleeding into something nearer to curiosity.
"Hey," she said leaning a hip and an elbow against the desk, loose.
I haven't seen you lean before.
Not a large thing. It registered anyway, because you were always squared up, always standing like there was a sergeant somewhere behind you.
"You waiting on me?"
I tilted my head, "yeah. But if you're busy, you can find me."
"Oh, no, I think we're done," she glanced at Santos, "right?"
"Yep. Got a brand-new nickname to ruin somebody's night with and a stack of charts." Santos pushed off toward a free computer. "Later, 2.0."
Y/n's head dropped back and I watched her roll her eyes behind a closed lid, "why did I agree to that."
"What? You don't like it?" I stepped into the space Santos had left.
"No offence to your branding, but for the last decade I've been Abbot(t). The one and only. The original recipe," she made a small gesture, "now I've got a number after my name. It's strange."
"Hate to be the one to tell you this, but I knew Sawyer before she knew you. So technically you've always been the second Abbot(t)."
"Ha. Shut up," she knocked my shoulder with hers as we started for the board, "Sawyer never even mentioned you."
"Well," I put a hand flat over my chest and turned to her as we reached the board, "that hurts."
"Oh, come on," another eye-roll then her eyes came back to mine and her face did something deliberate, a put-on softness, a mock-tenderness, "you need a waaahmbulance?"
It got me. I laughed a real laugh--loud and full--loud enough to turn heads at the station. I shook it off looking at the floor while something in my stomach turned over quietly.
"I think I'm okay," I said, looking back up.
"You sure?" She still had the mockingly soft face on.
Her hands came up and her fingers settled at my left wrist, two of them on the inside, the lateral edge below the thumb, finding the radial pulse in a flat second. Her other hand braced my forearm. She didn't break eye contact. I could practically hear her counting through her eyes.
"Pulse is climbing," she said, the put-on softness shifting into something more genuine, "wait-" her brow drew, "it actually just shot up." She pulled my wrist closer to get a cleaner feel but I pulled my hand back.
"I'm fine," I said, "just keyed up for tonight."
That's true.
I tried to convince myself it was true. But my heart was doing things it had no business doing at quarter to seven, and the cleanest explanation available was the start of a shift, so I took it.
She looked at me a beat longer than that explanation needed, "whatever you say."
I didn't answer.
I looked at the board.
I was cherry-picking, I was allowed, it was a privilege of the position and one of the few perks that came with it. I ran my eye down the column until I found something I wanted.
My pocket buzzed.
Please let that be Sawyer.
"How about this," I said, "South 11. Twenties, called in blue. Sats reading low and not coming up on oxygen, but they're sitting up talking. No real distress to match the number."
"Sounds far-fetched," she said, "you think it's what I think it is?"
"If it is, I think I've got it in me," I started us walking.
We didn't talk for a few steps. I noticed her gait was off today, the specific hitch I recognized from the inside, the tell of a day when the leg was winning. Mine had been behaving lately. Good fit, low complaints.
Hers clearly wasn't.
"How are you doing with being on your feet twelve hours a day?" I asked.
"First of all, I don't have feet. I have a foot," deadpan, dead level, "second, fine. Some soreness. Nothing Tylenol and Advil won't handle."
She turned her face forward, shoulders set, chin up.
I wonder if that's what I look like.
"How's the prosthetic?"
I caught the start of a twist in her face before my peripheral vision lost the detail.
"It's a prosthetic," she said.
We reached South 11. I put my hand on the door and looked at her.
"And how's it fitting your residual limb?"
That got her.
She stared at me. I stared back. My hand stayed on the door--one of us was going to break first, and it wasn't going to be me. I kept my face out of angry, aimed it at curious, and hoped I'd landed it. Her face ran through a short sequence then settled, unfortunately, on exactly the expression Robby had named on the roof. The "almost-angry-but-actually-probably-thinking" scowl that we apparently shared.
Those walls are reinforced.
I let her win this one, turning to open the door tablet in hand.
The patient on the bed was dusky. The blue-grey you didn't see often and never forgot once you did. Lips and fingertips the wrong colour entirely, and yet sitting up, irritable, fully oriented, complaining mostly about the mask. The pulse ox glowed at 85 and would not move no matter what we did with the oxygen, which was the whole tell. The number wouldn't budge because the meter was reading a pigment that wasn't carrying anything.
"Saturation gap," she said quietly, half to herself, already there, "what's the gas show?"
A nurse had sent blood earlier. When it came back, the draw was the giveaway. Dark, the brown of old chocolate, the colour that meant the iron in the hemoglobin had been oxidized into a form that couldn't hold oxygen and wouldn't release what it had. Methaemoglobinaemia. Co-oximetry confirmed the level. Somewhere in the history was the cause: a numbing spray, a party favour, something topical that had quietly converted his blood chemistry out from under him.
"Methylene blue," I said, "one to two milligrams per kilo, IV, over five minutes."
She watched it go in. Watched the colour come back. The kid pinked up from the centre out as the dye performed its strange chemistry handing the hemoglobin its job back.
"Huh," she said soft, watching the line where blue became not-blue on his hand, "I've read about it. Never seen it in real life."
"They don't walk in often," I countersigned her order, "that's part of why I picked it. Wanted to see your face."
She gave me a look. But the corner of her mouth curved upward.
I filed that the way I'd been filing everything about her all night without quite admitting to the filing.
12:50 AM
"I NEED A GURNEY!!"
Her voice came through the ambulance bay doors and cut the department in half. Loud, square, pitched to carry to everyone who was listening, the voice you learned in places where being heard was the difference.
What stopped me wasn't the volume.
It was the blood.
It was all over her. Soaked into her hands, the dark saturated red of it covering them past the wrist. Sprayed in a fan across one cheekbone. Spattered across her neck, the black of her scrubs now a shade of burgundy that read almost invisible even under the bay lights, still obviously wet--a few drops still moving across her skin.
She'd gone outside for five minutes. She'd gone outside to breathe.
What happened out there?
Henderson was already running. My feet went before the thought finished. A gurney came up behind me with Mateo pushing it. I dropped back half a step to help guide it through the doors, then I saw the rest of it.
A man had walked to the entrance. The blood trail leading to him told the story--a long dark path from somewhere past the bay's edge, a stagger that had somehow covered at least 30 meters delivering him here. His abdomen was open. Not bleeding-from-a-wound open. Open. A transverse slash through the abdominal wall, his hands the only thing keeping the inside of him from becoming the outside. Loops of bowel pushing between his fingers, a fist of omentum visible between a gap, the dark red-brown shine of liver catching the light where the wall had given way. He was screaming. Screaming meant airway. Screaming meant pressure.
"Oh my god," Mateo breathed behind me.
She was already moving. "Trauma one. Two large-bore, sixteen-gauge, both ACs. Type and cross, four units to start, activate massive transfusion." One hand on the man's shoulder, guiding, her voice flat and fast and completely level over the top of his screaming, "Sir, we've got you. I need you to keep your hands exactly where they are. Don't push. Just hold," to the room, "nobody reduce it. Moist saline gauze, occlusive cover on top. Keep him warm. TXA on the clock, somebody get it drawn," then lower, to the man only, "you walked here. That was the hardest part. You already did it."
We got him through the doors and onto the table, the room filled around him. Henderson on the right line, Mateo running products, Ellis at the head with the airway kit. The monitor started giving numbers, none of them were good but they were numbers, which meant we still had something to work with.
"Pressure's 80 over 40 and dropping," Ellis called.
"Surgery is paged, scrubbing now, two minutes to the table," Henderson said.
She had the abdomen. Gauze down, soaked saline, her hands working under the man's and taking the weight off his grip with a gentleness that didn't look like speed and got everything done. Then her shoulders changed. I knew that change before she said anything.
"He's got an arterial bleeder in the mesentery," her voice dropped into the register people used when they'd stopped talking to the room and started talking to the problem. "Spurter. Upper mesenteric, I can see it pulsing. He's going to empty before surgery gets here. I can clamp it right now and buy him two minutes on the table instead of giving them a cod--"
"No."
She didn't stop. "Are you serious, he is bleeding faster than we can hang it, the pressure is telling yo--"
"No. You clamp blind into an eviscerated mesentery, you sacrifice bowel he might have kept, you contaminate the field that surgery needs clean--they are two minutes out," pressure infuser, products, keep him moving toward the table, it is the right call, the same call I'd make for anyone, "pressure and product. We get him there breathing and we let the people in the OR do the rest."
"He doesn't have two minutes," she had a Kelly clamp in her hand, God knows where she'd gotten it, her body already angling it, "I have done this in a tent with a headlamp. I can do it clean in eight secon--"
"You don't have privileges to do it at all."
"That's what you're worried about right now? Privileges? While he's bl--"
"ENOUGH! I AM THE ATTENDING." It came out loud and harsh, loud enough that it cut through the monitor and the screaming and everything else in the room, "your actions are my responsibility. Do not make me regret taking that on."
I was staring her down, she knew it, the room knew it.
Every head turned. Henderson's hands froze on the IV line. Ellis looked up from the airway. For one full second the only sounds were the monitor and the man's laboured breathing, and what I'd said sat in the air between us--not a military command, not a reflex, something more specific than that. A thing said in front of everyone that named exactly what this was and what it cost me.
She went still then straightened, slowly, and her face closed like a hatch. She peeled the gloves off, one and then the other, and placed them in the bin with a control that was somehow worse than throwing them. She gave me a look that I felt in my back teeth. Then she turned and walked out of trauma one, fast, but even when moving quickly I could see the limp. The leg winning in front of God and everyone. And she didn't slow down for it, didn't hide it and that was the part that got to me.
"Pressure infuser on the second unit," I said to Henderson, and put my eyes back on the man on the table, because there was a man on the table and he was the entire point. "TXA in. Where's surgery?"
"Doors," Ellis said.
They took him through 90 seconds later. Still bleeding, still breathing, still a patient and not yet a code. Which had been the whole argument. But it didn't make me feel like I'd won anything.
I came out of trauma one and made for the nursing desk, scanning the bay. She wasn't there.
Gone to change out of those blood soaked scrubs I bet.
I went to Lena and opened my mouth but she beat me to it, "you looking for Abbott 2.0?"
I nodded.
"Said she was getting clean scrubs. My money's on the locker room."
"You okay if I step off the floor a minute?" I asked, because I ran nights and it was a real question and not a courtesy.
"I think we'll survive. I'll page if it's a 911."
I nodded and turned off.
On the way I finally did what I'd been failing to do for hours and checked my phone.
One text from Sawyer.
She takes pictures. A lot of them. Digital camera and polaroids, no phones. Her father was a photographer, it's how she keeps people. She drives a thrice dead man's car and won't let it die. If you want a seam, Jack, it's the past, not the present. She'll defend and deny the present to death. But she's already mourned a lot of the past, so she'll let you near it. Don't be obvious. She'll smell obvious from across a room.
Print photos. Dead men's cars. She's attached to what she has lost.
I got to the locker room, badged in, pushed through. I went around the second bank to her locker. She was sitting on the bench, back to me, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. She didn't move. She knew it was me.
I didn't move either, for a moment.
She straightened without standing and turned half toward me. Still covered, the blood had dried dark on her neck and hands, soaked through the shoulder of her scrub top by the look of how much had set.
"I can't get into the shower," she said it calmly, like I hadn't just screamed at her in front of the whole department. She wouldn't look at me,"I brought extra scrubs. I didn't think about the shower."
I took a few steps toward her. She still didn't look.
"Want me to show you a very well-hidden secret?"
Her head came up. Those eyes I'd been failing not to stare into all night came with it. I sat down beside her.
"What kind of secret?"
"You have to agree to keep it a secret before I show you."
"What? Why?"
"Because if I show you and you haven't promised," I kept my voice flat, deadpan, "I'd have to kill you. That's the rule. Non-negotiable."
She looked at me for a beat, then almost despite herself, a smile. Close-lipped and tired but real, "how can I say no to that?"
"You can't. Follow me. Bring your stuff."
We left the locker room, her bag over her shoulder. I led.
Third floor, a couple of turns most people never took just past Respiratory, past the back of the old materials-management corridor, down the route that went nowhere on any current floor plan in this building. I nodded at the two people we passed because I knew everyone here, which was its own kind of camouflage. Down a hallway that narrowed and went dim and finally just ended. Two supply carts parked against the wall and a janitor's closet, the kind of dead end that collected forgotten things and asked no questions about them.
She turned a slow circle. "Where are we?"
"Remember. You promised."
She raised her left hand and drew an X over her heart with her right index finger, "scouts honour."
I motioned her to the side and walked toward the door marked Maintenance 3B. She followed, eyes moving around the dead end the way someone looked at a place when they were trying to understand what they were missing. I tapped the panel the sign was mounted on. It shifted slightly, the whole face of it swinging out on a hinge that nobody would ever find if they weren't looking for it, and there behind it was the sign that had been there originally, before whoever redrew the floor maps decided this hallway didn't exist anymore.
A handicapped accessibility symbol. The small white figure on blue, slightly dusty, completely unbothered by the years it had spent hidden behind a maintenance placard.
She went still.
Then the smile broke across her face, wide and open and entirely unguarded, the kind I hadn't seen from her yet and wasn't prepared for, and I held up the key before she could say anything.
"Oh my god," she said, and stepped forward. Shock and awe in equal measure and something that looked, just for a second, like genuine delight.
"Accessible call room," I said, "left off the floor map years ago, after some minor renovations and somebody redrew the layout never putting it back. I found it by accident one night looking for somewhere quiet to not exist for twenty minutes," I held up the key, "and before you decide I'm some kind of phantom of the opera, anyone with the right credentials could pull a key for the call rooms. There's no magic. I've just been the only one who knows this one exists. And I've been careful about keeping it that way," I unlocked it and swung it open, "I'm just an adrenaline junkie who works too much and needs somewhere to crash that nobody can find. That's it."
That was not it. Not the whole of it anyways.
She followed me in and I shut the door behind us.
Inside: a single bed instead of the usual four. A private bathroom with a real shower, a built-in chair, a sink with an outlet beside it. I'd made it a little mine over the years. New sheets had been the first thing, a charger in the outlet, a spare stethoscope on the hook by the door and a half-read paperback on the nightstand.
Even Robby didn't know about this room.
"What is this palace?" her voice raised at the question.
"It's my secret. Now it's our secret," I turned and found her eyes and held them. She was still smiling it was just more contained now. "There's a shower chair in there. Soap, shampoo, all of the good stuff. It's mine though so you're going to come out smelling like a man, but you've got bigger complaints right now, so," I kept it light on purpose. "there's lotion on the shelf too. The good kind. For the limb."
"The good kind? What do you mean?"
Now I was confused, "what do you mean what do I mean?"
"For the limb?"
"Yea the good lotion doesn't just sit on the surface, it absorbs, keeps the skin from breaking down where the liner pulls against it," I said it like it was weather, "you put it on after you doff every time, like brushing your teeth."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Taking the leg off," I clarified. "Donning is putting it on. Doffing is taking it off. Standard terminology."
Her face filled with recognition, "Yeah... I don't do that."
I gave her a look, "you don't doff, or don't put lotion on?"
"The lotion. It's--" she shrugged one shoulder, "it's not for me."
"Not for you?" I looked at her steadily. "You don't have a foot. The list of things that get to be "not for you" has gotten shorter, whether or not you've accepted that."
"Well, I still don't."
"Maybe that's why you've been limping all night."
That earned me an eye-roll and a pointed limp over to the bed, where she sat down with an audible hmph.
"I've been limping," she said, "because this sleeve," she gestured at the prosthetic with pointed irritation, "digs into me. And some days I cannot stand it."
"Let me see."
Her brows pulled together, "What? No."
"Look I'm not trying to push," I kept my voice even, "but you are clearly in pain, and I am the only person in this building who has been through anything remotely similar. My first prosthetic was a disaster. Yours will be too unless someone looks at it. That's not an opinion. That's just the sequence these things follow."
Her face, the thinking scowl we apparently both owned, softened at the edges.
"So let me see," I held her gaze and didn't look away, "let me help." It came out quieter than I intended and more honest than I planned.
She sighed muttering something under her breath that I didn't try to catch. Then she nodded at the floor, which was the closest thing to a yes that I was going to get.
She reached down and grabbed the hem of her scrub pants rolling it upward. But the fabric bunched at the knee coming to a halt. She tugged once, hard, it still wouldn't clear the socket. She tried again, pulling with both hands now but the pant leg refused to give. I watched her jaw tighten at the indignity of it, this small ordinary thing that should have taken three seconds just wouldn't cooperate.
She let go. Looked at her lap. Didn't look at me.
"It's further up than that," she said, "the mark."
"Do you have something to change into in that bag?"
"Just another pair of scrubs."
"I'll step out. Cover yourself with the blanket." I was already heading for the door. Professional. Clinical. The same register I'd use with any patient.
She made another comment quietly, something along the lines of "this is ridiculous," but she agreed.
I stepped out.
I went to the supply rack in the corridor to grab a few things: non-adherent pads, a roll of soft gauze, tape, antiseptic solution, the things you used to dress a friction wound cleanly before anything else touched it. She was about to shower and she'd need the dressing after. I gathered it without overthinking.
I knocked as I came back in.
She was sitting on the bed half-turned away from me, reaching for something on the far corner of the mattress. My book. The black scrub top was gone she was in just an athletic shirt now, burgundy, and lifting with the lean, riding up from her waist. She hadn't put the blanket across her lap. Instead the new scrub pants were folded in half, a small rectangle of fabric sitting just above where a low waistband would fall, and with the way she was turned they were not covering what they were meant to cover.
I couldn't look away. The slope of her waist, the curve of her hip falling away from it and where the fabric ended and her skin didn't, a black lace thong, thin enough that it was less a garment and more a suggestion, the dark edge of it sitting against her skin like a line drawn deliberately.
I tore my eyes away.
I did it fast, holding the dressings in my hands looking at them with the desired focus of a man reading the most important document of his life.
She hadn't noticed. She straightened back up, book in hand, and turned toward me.
I had my eyes up and my face composed by the time she did.
Half a second. Maybe less.
I set the supplies on the bed to her right. She had straightened back up. In her hand was my book, turned cover-out, facing me like evidence.
"Seriously," she said, "A Man Called Ove." She looked at it. Looked at me. Rolled her eyes with her whole face. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Ironic, right?" I kept my voice straight. "May as well have called it A Woman Called Y/N Abbott."
"Oh my god," she dropped her head back, "ugh," she stuck her tongue out and made a sound that was unmistakably fake-vomiting, brief and committed. She turned the book over once in her hands, looked at it one more time like it had personally offended her, then tossed it over her shoulder. It landed somewhere on the bed behind her. "
"You don't want to read that book. I promise you it is not very interesting."
"Something in me says that's not true," my eyes narrowed at her.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She closed it and gave me a look that was half offended and half something else she wasn't going to name.
I knelt down in front of her, "okay," I said, and motioned her forward.
She shifted to the edge of the bed and watched me with the wariness of someone about to let a person see the thing they didn't let people see.
I rolled my own right pant leg up in two motions and let her look. The pylon, the foot built for long shifts on hard floors, the whole unbeautiful, unhidden reality of it.
"I've got my own, this is nothing new to me. There's no version of this where I'm surprised," I reached for the suspension sleeve, "I'm going to take it off. You don't have to watch. Just let me."
She turned her face away. I caught the brightness at the lower edge of her eye before she turned it out of view--the brimming that hadn't fallen yet.
I worked with the precision and care the moment required. Released the suspension and eased the socket off the residual limb slowly, supporting the weight of it, not letting it drop. Then I rolled the liner off inside-out the way you're supposed to, peeling rather than pulling. I took down the sock plies one at a time, then the sleeve rolling it down.
There it was.
It was a clean amputation. Military clean, the kind that came from a team that knew what it was doing under pressure. Sawyer had said infection.
Probably sepsis moving fast.
I could see the evidence of decision making. The doctor that amputated had likely gone several inches above where the tissue would have been compromised, sacrificing length to get clear margins, clean vascularized muscle for closure.
The right call.
The only call, if the infection was bad enough. I recognized the work, transtibial, well-shaped residual limb, the closure scar sitting where a military surgical team would put it, the kind of clean lines that came from people who had done this before and would do it again before the week was out.
I'd been laying on that table once. Different theatre, different team, same math.
I looked at it the way I looked at myself in the mirror on the hard mornings. Not with pity, not with anything that required a name, just with the recognition of someone who knew what it had cost to get here and what it cost every day after.
Then the rest of it came into focus.
The limb was angry. Red where the socket had pressed too long, the skin shiny and irritated along the socket lines. And there on the inner thigh, where the top edge of the sleeve had been working against the same patch of skin for hours with every step she'd taken, a blister had come up and burst. The skin around it raw. The band-aid placed earlier bunched uselessly off to one side.
"Who's been managing your adjustments?" I asked.
She took a sharp breath, "no one."
I looked up at her, then back at the limb, "is it okay if I touch you?"
She still had her face turned away. She let out a heavy breath and nodded, fast.
I put my hand to her skin carefully. Assessing the heat of it, the give around the blister, the alignment of where the socket had been sitting versus where it should sit. A poorly fit first socket with no adjustments, a stubborn patient who hadn't gone back for the dozens of small corrections any first prosthetic needed.
All of it fixable, which was almost the worst part of it, because it meant she'd been hurting for nothing.
"Okay," I said quietly, "first, this gets cleaned and dressed before anything else touches it. Shower and I'll take care of it after, while it's clean. Don't scrub it, just let the water run over it."
I'd set everything she'd need within reach and looked at her, at the turned-away face and the wet she wasn't letting fall.
"And then I'm taking you to my prosthetist. Not a referral you'll lose in your inbox. I'll drive you myself. Because this," I gestured at the raw welt on her thigh, "is not what it's supposed to feel like. It's fixable you've just deciding not to fix it."
She didn't answer. But she nodded a single tear falling before she could catch it--she wiped it before it cleared her jaw. Then pretended she hadn't. I let her have the pretending.
I helped her up and got her to the bathroom door where she took the wall and waved me off the rest of the way.
Which was right.
Which was hers to do.
The door shut and a moment later the water came on.
I sat back down on the edge of the bed letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Trying to capitalize on the unplanned escape from the ED I let my mind wander.
That was my mistake.
With my hands empty and the sound of the shower on the other side of the door, it came back. Not the blood, not the wound, not the limb I'd held with clean clinical hands and a clean clinical head.
The half-second I'd tried to forget.
The curve of her hip. The black lace at the edge of everything.
Coming back with no medicine in it at all, lighting something in my chest that had no right to be lit. The same something that had kicked my pulse up under her fingers at the board, the thing I'd called "keyed up" because that was the nearest available lie.
Stop.
I dragged a hand down over my face trying to wash the image from my mind.
She is half your age. She is your junior. She is a grieving widow you met three weeks ago who you are, at this exact moment, supervising.
I looked at the closed bathroom door, the water was still running.
She's a colleague.
I'd said it to Robby on the roof like it was a settled fact.
That's all she is.
I did not believe a single word of it.
I forced myself think of other things: the box score from Tuesday's game, the trade rumour I'd read about that morning. I replayed the game in my head.
I got approximately two innings in before the image of her ripped through my thoughts. And I let it because fighting it was getting me nowhere.
The specific, unhelpful, completely uninvited image of her that had lodged itself somewhere behind my eyes and showed no interest in leaving.
Her waist, the way it lead to the curve of her hip and the black lace sitting against her skin like it had been put there specifically to ruin my concentration.
I knew it hadn't been, which made it worse somehow, the total indifference of it. She hadn't been thinking about me at all. She was reaching for a book.
And I was sitting in a room I'd made my own years ago for the specific purpose of having somewhere quiet to think. Yet I was not thinking quietly about anything.
I stared at the wall.
The wall was not interesting enough.
The lace sitting soft against her skin, patient and vivid.
I gave up on the box score entirely.
I was still sitting in it when the door handle moved, then stopped.
"I don't want to put the scrub pants back on," her voice came through the door, careful, "can you close your eyes and I'll come sit?"
"Yeah," I said covering my eyes with both hands and shut them tight.
The irony was immediate. The second my eyes closed, she was right there.
The way her waist dipped. The black lace. The specific, unhelpful detail of all of it, uninvited, with absolutely nowhere to go.
Stop. Right now.
I heard the door open. Heard her navigate the space between, the careful sound of someone moving on one leg. Felt her weight settle beside me on the bed.
"Okay," she said. Her voice was smaller now. Almost scared.
I uncovered my eyes and moved to kneel in front of her.
She had the scrub pants folded across her lap again, this time slightly off centre. So slight that if I hadn't spent the last ten minutes consumed by the thought of that lace, it never would have registered. But I had, so it did.
The burgundy shirt from before was gone, replaced with one that looked exactly the same in every way except the colour, a deep navy. It pulled tight across her chest and shoulders the way shirts made entirely of spandex tended to. Leaving very little to the imagination of a man who was already working too hard to keep his imagination out of the room.
I looked at the wound.
The wound was the point. That was the only point. I am a doctor and she is, in this moment, my patient.
She was sitting with her hands loose in her lap and her face balanced somewhere between braced and exhausted.
I reached for the antiseptic and began cleaning the wound with deliberate, unhurried hands.
Very professional, very doctor-patient.
Those were the rules of this room and I intended to follow them.
Her skin beneath my fingers was soft. The kind of soft that arrived as a surprise, something you noted and set aside. I set it aside.
"This is going to sting," I said.
"It's already stinging."
"More, then."
She made a small sharp sound through her teeth as the antiseptic hit the raw skin. Then, as I worked, my thumb pressing firmly at the edge of where the sleeve had been sitting hardest, I found it, a deep tension knot in the muscle of the upper residual limb. The size and density of a month's worth of skipped adjustments and compensatory loading. Something that had been building silently under the skin without anyone pressing into it to find it.
I pressed into it.
"Ah! No, tha--" she flinched hard, "that hurts."
"I know. It's a tension knot. It's built up because the fit's been wrong and your muscles have been compensating for it. It needs to be worked out. It's going to hurt for about ten seconds."
"That's what everyone s--"
"Ten seconds. Trust me."
She went quiet.
I held the pressure, working in a slow deliberate circle. I felt the exact moment it began to shift, the muscle was slowly releasing what it had been holding.
Ten seconds. Maybe twelve.
She exhaled.
Long and loose, a low sound from somewhere deep in her chest. The kind that had nothing polite about it, the sound of something that had been held tight for a long time finally giving way all at once.
Her whole body dropped back against the bed. One arm went over her eyes. The scrub pants shifted with the movement and the hem of her athletic shirt rode up with the lean of her.
I could see the sharp jut of her iliac crest, the narrow strip of skin at her waist, the edge of black lace sat just above the mons.
Just sitting there. Not by design, just the geometry of a person who had stopped thinking about what position they were in.
I looked at the wound.
She shifted slightly, a small involuntary adjustment of comfort and I looked up.
I looked back at the wound.
She shifted again, settling and my eyes went up before I could tell them not to.
I looked at the wound. I kept working.
"Oh," she said, still to the ceiling. "Oh, god."
I said nothing. I kept my hands moving and said absolutely nothing and focused on the dressing with the intensity of a man whose entire career had prepared him for high-pressure situations and none of it for this one.
"How did you do that," she said.
"Tension knot," I said it too quickly, "you've probably got a few of them. That one's broken up now but the others won't work themselves out on their own." I reached for the non-adherent pad, "if you don't stay on top of them they only get worse."
"You have to show me how to do that myself."
"That's what the prosthetist is for."
"The prosthetist isn't here."
"No," I taped the last edge of the dressing, "they're not."
I sat back on my heels and looked at my work.
Clean. Covered. It would heal fine with a properly fitted socket and about a week of rest.
I looked at her. Still on her back, still staring at the ceiling with a shockingly peaceful expression. The folded pants doing a somewhat reduced job of covering her at this angle.
The lace at her waist is still visible.
You are a medical professional Jack.
I stood up and picked up the spent antiseptic wrapper from the floor.
My pager went off.
I looked at it.
911 — Trauma 2 — all attendings.
I looked at her.
"Go," she said, sitting up, already reaching for her prosthetic, "I'll be right behind you."
I picked up the packaging, "I'm serious about the prosthetist."
"I know."
"Not a suggestion."
"I know. Go."
I turned for the door. I was halfway through when she called.
"Dr. Abbot."
I looked back.
"Thank you," said quietly, directly, without dressing it up, "genuinely."
Something in my chest settled at the simplicity of it.
"Don't skip the lotion."
Then I went.
The rest of the shift went by in fragments.
A woman in her late twenties, abdominal pain she'd called heartburn with right shoulder pain she'd almost forgotten to mention.
Y/n asked about it first, before I could. When the answer came back she said, quietly and precisely.
"Diaphragmatic irritation. That's free fluid."
The FAST confirmed it--free fluid everywhere it shouldn't be. A ruptured ectopic, bleeding into her abdomen from a tube she hadn't known was compromised.
We had her in the OR in eleven minutes.
In the brief quiet after, I was reviewing the chart on the cart and became aware, at some point, that I'd stopped reading it.
I looked back at the board.
A while later, a young man brought in by friends who'd said he was drunk. Nystagmus running in a pattern that didn't match any intoxication I'd catalogued, ataxia, confusion, the specific triad of a brain being starved of something it had no way to produce on its own.
Y/n tilted her head, watched his eyes track for three full seconds, and said, "Wernicke's? Look at the ophthalmoplegia." I did.
She was right.
Thiamine 500 IV. Not Narcan. Not a psych hold.
She was right before I'd finished the differential, and she ran it cleanly without showing off about it, which was its own kind of impressive.
I stood back and let her work. I watched her with the attention I'd been paying her all night without fully accounting for it.
After that it didn't let up. Cases kept coming in waves. It was the kind of night where the board never fully cleared before the next ambulance called ahead. I'd lost count somewhere past fifteen. I'd lost count of her too, in the sense that I'd stopped tracking her every movement and started just feeling where she was in the room.
Then the board updated again.
A teenager was brought in by his roommates with a petechial rash that was still spreading when we first assessed him, non-blanching, his neck stiff, his temperature climbing fast. The photophobia was clear before we even dimmed the lights.
Meningococcemia.
No time to deliberate. She was already calling for the lumbar tray, already talking to the patient in the voice made for exactly this level of urgency, steady without being soft.
"I know it's scary. We're going to take care of you. Hold very still for me."
Ceftriaxone. Dexamethasone. ICU on the line. Contact precautions. Public health notified. The two of us moving around each other in the trauma bay with the coordination of people who'd been paying close attention to how the other one worked.
We got him upstairs.
In the hallway at one of the mobile units afterward I was supposed to be finishing a chart.
I was thinking about black lace against her skin.
She was walking away from me down the corridor toward the nurses' station and my eyes were already moving before I could stop them.
Shoulders.
Waist.
Lower.
I had stopped pretending I wasn't watching.
She turned back for a pen she'd left on the unit and caught my eyes exactly where they shouldn't have been.
Her expression moved through something dry to knowing in about half a second.
"Anything interesting back there?" she asked.
"Chart," I said. I looked at the chart.
"Mm-hm," she said turning back towards the station.
I looked at the chart very intently for several more seconds.
7:04 AM
The day team started filing in and the handoff assembled. I went through the board with Dana, flagged the ectopic for surgical follow-up, noted the meningococcemia admission. Handed off the overnight.
Y/n stood a few feet away doing the same with the incoming resident, professional and contained, the shower and clean scrubs covering everything the night had done to her.
I need to get out of here.
At 7:13 I came through the staff locker room doors and made my way down to the ED. I didn't normally rush out like this but I needed out of the building.
I was passing the nurses' station and she was still there, unmoved since I'd left, now talking to more than just the one resident. I jutted my chin at her, the small upward motion that passed for a greeting between people who'd spent enough time overseas.
It got her attention.
"Hey," I said, "good shift." Because it had been. That was true and she'd earned it.
But I needed to leave before I said something else.
"Prosthetist," I added, more pointed than I meant it, "I'll text you a time."
She tucked her chin--the same gesture back.
I adjusted my bag on my shoulder and left.
I was home by 8:15.
I stood in the kitchen reheating whatever was in the container on the second shelf because I couldn't remember what I'd made and didn't particularly care. I ate at the counter. Washed the container. Put it in the dishwasher.
Then I stood in the kitchen.
She's never called me Jack.
The thought arrived sideways with the quality of a detail you'd missed on a first read but suddenly couldn't let go of.
The whole shift, every exchange, every room we'd stood in together "Dr. Abbot," every time.
Professional.
The correct formal distance for a junior with a supervising attending.
"Dr. Abbot."
It echoed through my head--loose and low. I could almost hear her. I put the dish away and went to take a shower.
I moved through the routine of showering. Crutches against the wall where they always were, the angle worn into the habit of my hand by now. Sat on the tub edge, released the prosthetic, set it aside. Shower chair already in position, because it had been in position for years. Grab bar where it needed to be, non-slip mat, towel within reach. None of it required thought anymore. That had been the entire point of building it this way.
A cold shower was a sensible response to a long hot shift and an unreasonable amount of thinking about a woman I supervised.
It helped, the way cold showers helped--immediately and for approximately six minutes.
I got out. Dried off. Got into bed.
I stared at the ceiling.
The room held the quiet it always held. I'd made my peace with that quiet years ago. Right now it had a quality to it I couldn't attach to anything reasonable.
I thought about the box score. I thought about the rotation question for the next board meeting. I thought about Robby on the roof.
I thought about the lace.
The way it had just sat there. Plain and unbothered, like it had no idea what it was doing to me.
I told myself not to. Several times, in the specific internal register of a man who had made his position clear and expected compliance.
A decision had been made on a level I couldn't identify.
My hand moved, wrapping around myself. I let it. Because there was no version of stopping that felt like it belonged to me anymore.
Stop.
I didn't.
The image came back without invitation, and this time it didn't fade. It sharpened.
The black against her skin. The sound she'd made, low and unguarded, the sound of someone who'd lost control for one single second and hadn't known I was close enough to hear it.
My breath had already gone short and rough. My hand moved slow, at first.
I could picture her arching back. The line of her spine, the way her whole body would curve into it.
I quickened my pace, just a little.
Her falling back against the bed. The squirm of her hips, restless, the black lace shifting with it.
I was not gentle with myself. I had lost the patience for gentle.
The sound echoed in my head, low.
"Oh."
Then the rest of it followed, the thing I had no right to want but wanted anyway.
"Dr. Abbot."
That was mine. I'd added that. She had never called me anything else, not once, not all night, and some part of me had apparently been keeping score, because that was what came back to me now.
Her voice, my title--in a context that it had never existed in before.
Heat built, low and fast.
The mons. The lace. The iliac crest, the soft jut of it under my palm if my palm had been there. The squirm. The "oh."
I pressed my head back into the pillow, my mouth open, jaw tight.
I'd stopped pretending this wasn't happening. There was no way out of it now. There was only through, and through had already started, low in my throat, my breath laboured and building toward something I didn't have a name for yet.
Black Lace. A breath catching in her chest. The shape of her under that navy shirt.
All of it, half-formed and soaked with the ache of wanting her. Someone I had absolutely no business wanting, this badly, this soon, this completely--at all.
"Oh god," her long unraveling exhale, "Jack."
I had no right to imagine her moaning my name.
It pushed everything over the edge faster than I wanted. My head pressed back hard into the pillow, my whole body went tight, my back came up off the mattress.
"Fuuuuckk Y/--"
My breath went out of me all at once, ragged, release moving through me in a wave that left nothing behind but the quiet.
For one full second there was nothing else in the room. Nothing else in the world.
Just her.
Just the want.
Just the falling away of it.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time after that.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked the room.
A rhetorical question. I already knew.
I lay there for a moment, breathing, eyes closed. Then I reached for the shirt I'd discarded on the floor and wiped myself off and the whole thing, the heat of it, the want of it, collapsed instantly into something a great deal less poetic.
A man in his late forties, alone in his bed at eight in the morning, cleaning up after himself like a teenager who'd gotten caught by his own hand. I felt, distinctly, like fifteen-year-old. I felt like an idiot.
The ceiling offered nothing useful. Pittsburgh moved quietly outside, running its early morning routine. Completely unbothered by the fact that I was lying in my own bed having apparently misplaced every scrap of professional judgment I owned over a woman I had known for three weeks. Whose hands I had held while she bled and while she didn't, whose name I had been one syllable away from saying in the dark.
I closed my eyes.
Get it together.
Sleep did not come quickly.
AN: If you made it all the way through this one, thank you, genuinely. This chapter asked a lot of both of them (and a lot of me, lol), and I hope it landed the way I wanted it to.
summary: One glitchy tablet, one HR email, and suddenly you’re married to your attending, Jack Abbot. HR thinks it was intentional and has already started merging your records. Claim it was a mistake, and your residency could be delayed. With only three months left until you're an attending, Jack agrees to play along. Pretending to be married might save your career—but can your heart survive the side effects?
tags: accidental marriage, slow burn romance, HR involvement, nosy coworkers, reader is a PGY-4 resident, jack is not a widow in this fic, possible medical/legal inaccuracies, mutual pining, fluff
word count: 4.4k
a/n: thank you all for still being here! we're nearly at the end :(( but it's been so much fun!! i appreciate you lots and LOVE reading your comments <33 i hope you enjoy! <33
i'm not keeping a tag list for this series!
Diagnosis: Married | Masterlist
The Pitt | Masterlist
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You wake to the sensation of soft kisses brushed against your skin—your forehead, your cheek, and your chin. It's the best sleep you've had in months, muscles warm and at ease. The feeling grows with each kiss as you're reminded of the fact that last night was real.
Jack loves you.
It wasn't just a vivid dream; the tender kisses he places on your skin confirm that. You're tempted to pretend to stay asleep just to enjoy more of this, but you instinctively scrunch your nose as his lips land on it, his scruff tickling you gently.
"Morning," he murmurs warmly, his voice husky with sleep, as he breathes against your cheek. You can feel his smile before your eyes fully open as he presses another soft kiss to your face.
Jack rests on one elbow, his hair tousled, with the soft morning light catching the strands that are more white than grey. God, he's handsome.
Yesterday, you might have convinced yourself that this look of adoration he’s giving you is just a figment of your imagination, but today, you know it’s real. He’s actually gazing at you like this, as if nothing else matters—not your messy morning hair nor yesterday’s mascara remnants around your eyes. He simply looks like he’s glad you’re here with him.
"Morning," you grin back, stifling a yawn into your hand.
His smile broadens. "Hi."
You chuckle softly. "Hi."
He keeps staring at you with a smile on his face. His other hand finds your waist, and your cheeks flush in response as he drags you closer. Although his touch isn’t new, the familiarity feels different now—seeing as you now know the intent behind it means what you want it to.
"What?" you ask, a bit self-conscious, rubbing your eyes in hopes of wiping away the stubborn mascara stains.
"Nothing," he shrugs, yet the grin on his face suggests otherwise.
"Jack." You pout at him and watch as his gaze drops down to your lips.
"I just..." he laughs lightly and shakes his head. "I can’t believe this is real."
You know exactly how he feels, and you hope he's able to see it in your eyes. If he doesn't, then you hope he feels it as your hand brushes through his wild strands. His eyes flutter shut under your touch, and when he opens them again, you’re convinced he does.
You both lock eyes for a moment before he leans forward. At the last moment, you turn your head, and his kiss lands on your cheek instead. He makes a comically disgruntled noise.
"I haven't brushed my teeth yet," you lament, though unable to suppress your laughter at his pouty face.
"I don't care," Jack says, placing a kiss against your jaw.
"Jack," you giggle louder. "I’m serious. My breath stinks."
"I've wanted to do this for months," he says, pressing another kiss to your cheek. "A little morning breath won’t stop me. Honestly, you could have rotten teeth, and I’d still kiss you."
"Ew," you grimace, but he just laughs and plants another kiss at the corner of your mouth.
You debate it for a second, then your cringe morphs into a grin as you lean in, stealing a quick kiss from his lips.
When you pull back, Jack stares at you with wide eyes. You can see when realisation hits him; his eyes darken, and he leans in quickly, giving you no chance to dodge him again. His mouth meets yours, soft yet persistent, each kiss lingering a bit longer than the last. He swallows your giggles with his lips, but he can't help but laugh, too.
Eventually, he presses his forehead against yours, and you stay there for a little while, wrapped up in each other, letting the reality of last night fully settle. The room is quiet except for your breathing, and for the first time since yesterday, the silence feels comfortable.
"I missed waking up next to you," Jack confesses, his voice low in your ear.
You press a kiss to his cheek before resting your head against his shoulder. "Me too."
You breathe in, nose buried deep in the crook of his throat, and his arms tighten around you when he realises what you're doing—breathing in the scent that's purely him. You've never been able to do this freely, and it feels surreal to be able to be this close with no excuses needed.
The moment's broken when your alarm rings softly. Jack shifts to turn it off while still holding you close, and makes no move to let you go or get up.
"We need to get up," you say after a minute, trying to pull back.
"Says who?" he answers cheekily, pulling you in even closer.
"Check-out, for one," you reply, pushing gently against his chest. "And I’d like to shower before we have to sit in an enclosed space for two hours."
"What if I like the way you smell?" he says, and usually, your stomach would be fluttering at a sentence like that, but you know him too well—
"—Fritos are my favourite chips," he continues. His chest bounces a bit as you playfully swat him.
"Rude," you grin, and this time he allows you to slip out of his grasp. "And you’re a liar. I know your favourite isn’t Fritos."
"Says who?" he repeats with a grin as he watches you sit up. You move to the edge of the bed, and he sits up to be able to see you better.
"Says the several bags of Doritos in your cabinets," you counter with a raised eyebrow. You move to slide off the bed, but he catches your arm, pulling you back over to him.
"Ja-ack," you laugh as you land against his chest.
"Those are for Robby," Jack says, and before you can argue, his mouth captures yours again. He keeps you there for another five minutes before your alarm blares again.
"Fine," he concedes when you pull back again. "Just leave me all alone here."
You shuffle forward, but pause at the doorway to the bathroom, meeting his eyes with a mischievous smile. "You could always join me."
Jack freezes, and you can see him process the offer—the way his eyes darken and the slight swallow as his gaze trails over you.
"Or not," you shrug, stifling a grin as you turn away.
He's got his crutches in his hands before your sentence finishes.
The checkout line is ridiculously long, and under normal circumstances, you’d complain about it—after all, how hard can it be to hand over a keycard and walk out? But with Jack’s arm wrapped around your waist and soft kisses peppered onto your hairline, you just can’t find the energy to care.
Even as Jack offers to give you his car keys, so you can wait in the car, you shake your head. You want to stay close to him despite the line barely moving. The lobby is crowded, and it really makes no sense for both of you to be standing here. Still, after spending weeks keeping your distance, torturing yourself, the thought of being apart now feels absurd.
Jack doesn’t push the issue; he simply nods and pulls you closer again. You're plastered to his side for the ten minutes it takes before you finally reach the desk.
"Hey," a warm voice greets you just as Jack hands over the keycard. Jeremy stands off to the side, a bag slung over his shoulder, sunglasses pushed up into his hair.
"Hi," you respond with a smile, stepping out of the queue to approach him.
He returns your smile. "I’m glad I caught you—you left before I could tell you how nice it was to see you again yesterday."
"Oh, sorry about that," you start, embarrassment flaring at the reminder of your jealous outburst. "I had—"
"We had some stuff to do," Jack interjects, slipping an arm around your waist again. He gives Jeremy a tight smile.
"Oh, don't worry about it," Jeremy responds. "Warren was asking about you, but honestly, I’m not sure she even remembers anything now." He leans in a little closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. "I had to extend her hotel room for her—she got pretty wasted after you left. The ushers had to escort her to her room after she threw up in the plants in the hallway."
"What? Really?" Laughter bubbles out of you. "Well, that's very professional."
Jack squeezes your waist admonishingly but still huffs an amused breath.
Jeremy grins. "Anyway, it was great to see you again. You’ve really done well for yourself, Sleepy." He nods at you, then glances at Jack, offering him a nod as well.
"You too," you say, and you mean it. Jeremy was a great guy in med school, even if he wasn't the best at relationships back then, but you're sure he's grown up more. You certainly have.
You're more certain of what you want, more certain of what you deserve, and somehow, that has landed you with Jack.
"Maybe we'll see you around," you finish. Presby isn't that far from PTMC after all.
"Yeah, I hope so," Jeremy replies, pulling his sunglasses down. He smiles at you one last time before he walks off. "Get home safe."
Jack grumbles something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like 'yeah, I hope so' as he steers you towards the exit. He keeps a neutral face until you're outside, where it turns sullen. A laugh escapes you the moment you’re near the car, and away from prying eyes.
Jack narrows his eyes at you as he pops open the trunk. "What’s so funny?"
Another laugh leaves you. "You're just a silly, jealous man."
"I'm not silly," he replies immediately as he places your bags inside the trunk before shutting it again.
"That's the part you focus on?"
"I'm not jealous," he insists, crossing his arms.
You tilt your head, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm not."
"Hey," you say, stepping closer. His arms drop the moment you gently press down on them. You curl your fingers into the front of his t-shirt. "You have nothing to be jealous of."
Jack huffs, staring at your hands.
"Jack."
His eyes lift to yours.
"I love you." The words still feel new in your mouth, but no less right.
His eyes search yours, still checking after everything revealed yesterday that you mean it. The tight line of his mouth softens when he finds a satisfying answer.
You draw him in closer. "Okay?"
"Okay." His hand slides to your cheek and you meet him halfway, your lips pressing together in a tender kiss.
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth when he pulls back. "Let's go home."
Coming home feels strange.
Not in a bad way, but it feels different than it did when you left. The air has shifted inside, the furniture moved without being an inch out of place, and the smell is different, and yet everything is exactly the same.
Jack's sweater still hangs over the back of the dining room chair. Your blanket is still draped across the couch, unfolded in that way Jack always grumbles over, but never does anything about.
Everything feels new and somehow the exact same. The only different thing is you and Jack. There's finally nothing unspoken between you, with all cards on the table. No uncertainty, no wondering, no pretending.
There's still the question of what this means for you, but it doesn't feel pressing. It's just there in the background, waiting until the moment feels right. There's no rush to speak.
You're free to enjoy this moment for what it is. The pleasantness from the drive, where Jack spent the entire trip with his hand firmly planted on your thigh, carries into the house.
The bags get unpacked together, clothes thrown into the washer by four hands rather than two. You follow Jack to the bedroom when he puts the bags away; he follows you into the bathroom when you put your toiletries back. You make lunch together, hips nudging, shoulders brushing—a task that normally takes ten stretches into thirty because neither of you can stop talking and laughing.
He keeps looking at you like he still can't believe it's real. You can keep leaning in close to prove to him that it is.
The day settles eventually as you both curl up on the couch with books. The laundry tumbles quietly in the background as warm sunlight spills in through the living room windows.
You're leaning against his chest, reading, but more focused on the hand that's trailing slowly up and down your arm. Every so often, you glance at him out of the corner of your eye, catching the scruff on his jaw that's slightly longer than usual, the way he scrunches his nose at passages in his book, and how his face is relaxed in a way you haven't seen before.
As if sensing you, he glances over at you. His mouth immediately curves into a smile when he catches you swiftly looking away. He huffs a little cute sound, squeezing your shoulder.
You grin into your book, nudging his leg with your hand. You try to refocus on the pages, but it doesn't take long before you're blinking heavily. Without even really thinking about it, you slide down until your head is resting on his lap instead.
Jack's hand follows soundly, petting your head softly and lulling you to sleep.
By evening, neither of you has spent more than a few minutes apart.
Dinner comes and goes. The dishes get washed. The laundry gets folded. Around you, the house gradually darkens, shadows stretching across familiar rooms. You try to stay awake as long as possible, hoping to drag your sleeping schedule back toward something resembling normal before your next shift. By the seventh yawn in under a minute, Jack gives you a look.
"Okay," he says with an amused huff. "Time for bed."
You grumble half-heartedly but still let him steer you toward the bedroom. Blearily, you grab at clothes in the closet. Jack doesn't comment on the fact that you grab one of his shirts, just glances at it with a pleased smile before he heads into the bathroom.
When he's done, you brush past him in just his shirt and underwear that he can't see, biting back a smile at when he swallows harshly. You don't fight the grin once you're alone in the bathroom, letting the giddy feeling take over.
Your phone vibrates against the counter, just as you've put your toothbrush into your mouth.
>> Hello??? Are you alive?!
It's Olivia. Fuck. She's already texted you three times earlier today, and you'd ignored her, unsure of what to say that won't reveal everything immediately.
<< Yes
>> That's it??
<< Yes, I'm fine <3
You add the heart, toothbrush hanging loosely from your mouth as you try to act normal.
>> Uh huh. How did it go?
You can picture her narrowed eyes when you read it. Your thumbs hover over the screen for a minute, thinking of what to say.
<< It was fine. Nothing worth mentioning.
You can see her typing, deleting, then typing again several times.
>> And what about Jack?
<< He's fine, too.
You pause before adding:
<< We're fine. Things are okay again.
>> What does that mean??
You take too long to answer her, but her following text shows that it doesn't really matter anyway—she knows you too well.
>> oh😏
When you reemerge, you've decided to keep this to yourself until the morning. No need to reveal to Jack that the plan has failed immediately. This can still be just yours tonight.
He sits against the headboard, prosthetic off, and duvet covering his lap. He looks nervous. "Are you gonna—?" He gestures vaguely toward the empty side of the bed before clearing his throat. "I mean..."
The uncertainty in his voice surprises you. You'd just spent the entire day together, and he's unsure if you want to share the bed. It's kinda cute.
"Yeah," you say softly. "If that's okay?"
His answer comes fast. "Of course it's okay." He pauses. "I just didn't know if—" he shrugs, trailing off.
You climb into bed, into the arm that was waiting for you. You both sink down until your head settles against his chest, listening to the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat.
You guess this is as good a moment as any other to finally have the conversation.
"I...uh—" you start. "I have the divorce papers printed on my desk."
Jack goes very still.
"I also still have that apartment viewing on Thursday." You stare at a loose thread on his shirt. "I know we've done this in a weird order. Getting married, moving in together, and then confessing."
You force out a laugh. "If you want to do this properly, we can."
The room goes quiet. Jack's arm tightens around you. "Properly?"
"You know." You shrug. "Dating. Separate places. Normal people stuff."
For a moment, he doesn't say anything; then, he says: "Do you want that?"
The question catches you off guard. You hesitate but answer truthfully. "No."
Jack lets out a breath. Just a small exhale that sounds suspiciously like relief. "Oh."
You lift your head. "Oh?"
Jack's mouth twitches. "I don't either." He rubs the back of his neck. "But I don't want you staying because you think you have to."
Your chest squeezes. "Jack."
"You've spent months trying to make decisions based on what you thought I wanted." His fingers trace idle patterns against your arm. "I'd rather know what you want."
You stare at him for a second. "I want to stay. I want to stay here."
His eyes soften immediately. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "We don't have to rush to figure things out. I like having you here. We can't figure the rest out later."
"Yeah?"
"Mm," he hums, his grip tightening around you. "I slept like shit when you weren't here. I'd prefer not to do that again."
You huff a breath. "Me too."
Even though the apartment had been nicer than the others you'd looked at, you really didn't want to move. You're happy he feels the same as you do. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do this in an order that doesn't make the most sense—as long as it makes sense to you, that's all that matters.
The room quiets again until Jack speaks again. "Can I ask you something?"
Your chest tightens, but you still nod.
"Why Lily?"
You knew he was going to ask eventually, but it doesn't make it any less embarrassing. You sigh into his chest. "That day—" you don't have to specify which, he already knows. "The way you ran inside looking terrified—"
You swallow. "And how you yelled at me after..." The memory of it still stings now, even after his countless apologies. "It was the difference in how you treated me and her."
"I'm sorry," he says again.
"I know."
"No." His voice is quiet. "I need you to understand what happened."
You lift your head enough to look at him.
"I got there seconds after—" His jaw tightens. "I barely managed to pull you away. I was already petrified when I heard the code being called. I could only imagine you—" he stops, breathing heavily. "...I can't explain what that felt like."
He continues, "When I realised it wasn't you, I was relieved. And then I felt guilty for being relieved because someone had still gotten hurt, but all I could think about was how happy I was that it wasn't you."
The confession lands heavily between you.
"I was scared out of my mind. Angry at the patient. Relieved that you weren't hurt. Guilty that I was relieved. All at once. And I took it out on you. I'm sorry."
You squeeze his hand.
His eyes find yours. "It was never about Lily."
You believe him. Now, you do. But back then? Back then, you'd been drowning in uncertainty.
You shrug helplessly, revealing more of how you felt. "After that, I started noticing every little thing. The way you talked to her. The way she made you laugh."
"You make me laugh," he says firmly.
You roll your eyes at him, a slight smile tugging on your lips. "I think I was trying to make peace with losing you. If I wasn't the one for you, then she could be. She could be better for you. Kinder than me. Easier than me."
Jack's face falls. "Sweetheart..."
Your mouth twitches sadly, looking down at his shirt again.
"You genuinely thought that?"
You nod.
His hand comes up to cradle your cheek, lifting your gaze back to his. "Do you have any idea how much time I spent wishing you'd look at me the way I looked at you?" His thumb brushes across your skin. "It was always you."
You close your eyes, leaning into his touch. You sigh. "We wasted so much time."
"Yeah."
Moments stolen by fear and assumptions and bad timing. You think about every dinner that could have been a date. Every movie night spent pretending not to notice how close he sat. Every almost-confession. Every chance that slipped away.
But now, everything's finally out in the open. The conversation drifts after that. You talk about everything. The first dinner. The first kiss. The kiss cam. The bar. Every misunderstanding. Every moment one of you had walked away convinced the other didn't feel the same.
Sometimes you laugh until your stomach hurts. Sometimes you bury your face in a pillow because neither of you can believe how oblivious you've been. Sometimes there's silence while you mourn all the things that could have been.
By the time the conversation finally slows, pale morning light is spilling through the curtains. Your eyes burn with exhaustion, but your chest feels lighter than it has in months.
You don't know what happens next.
You don't know what being married and newly confessed and hopelessly in love is supposed to look like. But for the first time, that uncertainty doesn't scare you. You'll figure it out together.
Beside you, Jack shifts closer beneath the blankets until there's barely any space left between you.
His lips brush your hair. "I love you."
You smile immediately. The confession still feels unreal. "I love you too."
The smile you feel against your forehead is warm and content. And wrapped in his arms, with the future still unwritten and endless possibilities stretching ahead of you, sleep finally finds you both.
The next evening finds you faster than you'd like.
As you step in through the door to the hospital, side by side, it reminds you of the first time you walked in carrying a secret on your shoulders—only this time, your shoulders are light, and your stomach is fluttering with happy jitters.
Somehow, you manage to make your way to the lockers without meeting anyone. With your bags dropped, you sneak a brief kiss against the door before you reenter the Pitt. Jack's hand brushes yours, your pinky catching his for a second, before you take a step apart.
You try to bite back the smile that threatens to break through. If you want this work, you need to stop acting like a lovestruck teenager. It's incredibly hard, though.
Robby stands at the hub, tablet in hand and a frown on his face.
"Rough day?" Jack says, clapping his back. He leans against the counter as you trail closer.
"Yeah... Good luck." Robby rubs his face, dropping the tablet on the counter. When his eyes open, they narrow in on the space between you and Jack—or rather the lack of it.
You shift to the side, trying to act nonchalant, but Robby's a hound. His eyes follow the movement immediately, nose twitching as he tries to sniff out everything you're trying to keep quiet.
"How was the conference?"
"Fine," Jack replies, glancing up at the board. He taps his fingers rhythmically on the counter.
"It was?" Robby raises an eyebrow, staring at him. Jack nods at him, shifting his gaze away quickly. Robby watches him for a moment, then turns to you.
"Mm," you nod, offering a tight smile. "The usual."
Robby stays silent, shifting his gaze from Jack to you, and then he grins widely. He chuckles, "If you so."
"Yeah," Jack nods with an awkward smile.
"Well, that's good." Robby keeps grinning as he pats the counter twice. "I'll see you later." He salutes you, still smiling, then walks off without any further questions.
You stare at his disappearing figure with a sense of dread. With a hand around Jack's wrist, you pull him into a quiet corner, hissing: "He knows."
Jack frowns. "How could he? We were acting normal."
You stare at him. "Normal? If you call 'you not looking at him at all' normal, then yes. Very normal."
"I did look at him."
"For two seconds. Normally, you don't look away at all," you counter.
Jack crosses his arms. "Well...You gave it away to Olivia."
"I didn't—I told her nothing."
"Exactly!" Jack points out. "That's not normal for you."
You stare at him with pinched eyebrows and then sigh. "...Yeah, okay. Maybe I did."
Jack sighs, too. "I guess I did, too." He shrugs, a smile tugging at his lips as he leans closer. "But to be fair, I think we forgot that they've spent months dealing with our sorry asses. Of course, they know. They knew we were in love before we did."
"—Abbot, there you are! Stop hiding in corners with your missus—trauma incoming," Lena interrupts with a wink. She doesn't even look back as she disappears down the hallway.
Jack squeezes your hand briefly on the way out, sending you a soft smile. "See you on the other side."
You watch him disappear around the corner before you head after him. The familiar knot of anxiety never comes. For weeks, every shift had felt like walking a tightrope. Every glance from Jack had meant something, and every action had been dissected. Now, the uncertainty is gone.
The Pitt is still loud. Still chaotic. The same as it always was. It's you who is different.
Across the department, Jack glances back. Just for a second, but long enough to catch your eye. Long enough to smile, and then he's gone into a trauma room.
And for the first time in a very long time, you're looking forward to the shift ahead.
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Summary: Jack Abbot is not jealous of John Shen. He is grateful you had someone before him. He respects the friendship. He understands that Shen was there for the supply closet breakdown, the horrible date extraction, the pizza debrief, and the birth of the deeply cursed domestic partnership contingency agreement. He simply objects to the phrase “contractually betrothed” on legal, emotional, and deeply personal grounds.
Warnings: fluff, established relationship, Shen and Reader being menaces, work husband lore, fake marriage pact, bad date mention, alcohol/drinking, suggestive jokes, Jack being emotionally evolved under protest.
Author's Note: @honeyteanocoffee wanted lore, so here it is. The lore behind the work husband clause is here, and yes, Shen and Reader are somehow worse when they have espresso martinis and an audience. This is a companion/sequel to The Work Husband Clause, but it can probably stand on its own if you’re willing to accept that John Shen has advisory privileges and Jack Abbot is suffering beautifully.
Xoxo, Del
By the time the nachos hit the table, Jack already knew the night was going to become a problem. Not a real problem. Not a medical problem, a staffing problem, or the kind of emergency department problem that required gloves, pressure, and someone yelling for another unit of blood. A you and Shen problem.
Which, in Jack’s professional opinion, was often worse.
It was rare enough for the night shift crew to have the same night off that everyone had treated the plan like a minor miracle. No one was in scrubs. No one was holding a chart. No one had a pager clipped to their waistband. For once, the five of you were tucked into the back corner of a bar instead of circling the nurses’ station under fluorescent lights, loose-limbed and hungry and pretending you had not all checked the department group chat at least twice.
The booth was large enough for everyone to fit and small enough for everyone to steal from the same plates. Nachos sat in the middle of the table, already half-destroyed. A basket of wings had migrated toward Crus. Fries were scattered across three napkins, and the cheese curds were disappearing at a rate Jack found medically concerning.
Ellis had claimed the outside edge of the booth with a drink in one hand and a fry in the other, already looking too pleased with herself for anyone’s safety. Crus sat beside her, close enough to the wings to defend them and far enough from responsibility to deny involvement in anything that happened next.
Shen sat across from you, calm and composed, his sleeves pushed to his forearms and an espresso martini in front of him like he had come to the bar for hydration, judgment, and legally questionable caffeine.
You had one too.
Jack had noticed. He had also noticed the way you and Shen had ordered them at the same time without discussing it, which apparently meant something to Ellis, because she had stared at both glasses for a full three seconds before looking at Jack with open delight.
Jack ignored her. He was trying very hard not to reward the behavior.
You were tucked into Jack’s side on the opposite bench, your thigh pressed against his, his arm stretched along the back of the booth behind you. His hand rested near your shoulder, fingers loose and warm, not quite holding you in place. He did not need to. You had settled against him like you belonged there.
Jack liked that.
He liked it a dangerous amount.
Ellis pointed between your glass and Shen’s. “Do you two always order the same drink?”
“No,” you said.
“Yes,” Shen said at the same time.
Jack looked down at you. You lifted one shoulder. “We’re sluts for coffee.”
Jack closed his eyes.
Crus made a choking sound into his beer.
Shen considered the phrase. “Crude, but not inaccurate.”
Jack opened his eyes and looked at him. “Do not agree with her when she says things like that.”
Shen lifted his espresso martini. “I believe in precision.”
“You believe in making my life worse,” Jack said.
Shen paused. “Also accurate.”
You smiled into your drink and took a sip. Jack’s thumb brushed once against your shoulder, a quiet warning or a quiet admission that he was already losing. It was hard to tell with him sometimes. Across the table, Shen reached for a cheese curd at the same time you did. Your fingers bumped over the basket.
You both stopped.
Jack looked down.
Shen looked up.
You looked at Shen.
For one brief, terrible second, the two of you held eye contact like a treaty was being negotiated.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t,” he said.
You turned your head toward him, innocent. “Don’t what?”
Jack looked pointedly at your hand, still hovering near Shen’s over the cheese curds. “Whatever this is.”
Shen withdrew his hand by one inch. “Appetizer coordination?”
“You know that is not what I mean,” Jack said.
Crus leaned forward. “No, wait. Let them do it. I want to see where it goes.”
Ellis nodded, already smiling. “Same.”
You pressed closer to Jack’s side and stole the cheese curd first. “Nothing is happening.”
Shen picked up the next one. “Agreed.”
Jack looked between you. “That’s worse.”
You bit into the cheese curd to hide your smile. Ellis watched the three of you for another second, then set her drink down with purpose. “Okay. I have a question.”
Jack exhaled through his nose. “No.”
Ellis looked at him. “I didn’t ask it yet.”
“I know where this is going,” Jack said.
Crus grinned and dragged the wings closer. “I don’t. Ask it.”
Ellis leaned her elbows onto the table and looked between you and Shen. “I still don’t understand the work husband thing.”
Shen’s expression did not change. Yours brightened.
Jack felt it happen against his side. “No,” he said again.
You patted his thigh under the table. “It’s fine.”
“It has never been fine,” Jack said.
Shen folded his hands on the table. “That is subjective.”
Jack pointed at him. “Dunkin.”
Shen looked mildly resigned. “There it is.”
Ellis ignored them both and focused on you. “I need the timeline.”
“The timeline?” you asked.
“Yes,” Ellis said. “Were you two always like this, or did the ED do this to you?”
Crus lifted his drink. “Important question.”
Shen considered that. “The ED accelerated preexisting conditions.”
Jack turned his head slowly. “Preexisting conditions?”
You nodded. “Mutual stubbornness.”
“Poor sleep hygiene,” Shen added.
“Unreasonable confidence in hospital coffee,” you said.
“Poor emotional disclosure,” Shen continued.
You pointed at him. “That was mostly you.”
Shen looked at you. “You cried in a supply closet and called it allergies.”
Jack’s hand stilled behind your shoulder. For half a second, the table quieted.
Then you pointed your cheese curd at Shen. “That is privileged friendship information.”
Ellis’s eyes widened. “Supply closet?”
Crus sat forward. “Crying?”
Jack looked down at you, his voice softer than it had been a moment before. “You cried in a supply closet?”
You glanced up at him. “It was before you.”
That did not make Jack like it more. It only made something in his chest pull tight and quiet. Shen noticed. Shen noticed everything inconvenient.
“It was early in her night shift tenure,” Shen said, evenly. “She had been yelled at by three families, one drunk patient, and a man who tried to remove his own IV because he believed the saline was government tracking fluid.”
Crus nodded slowly. “Classic.”
You looked at Shen. “And the cafeteria had run out of fries.”
Ellis looked between you. “So Shen found you crying?”
“I was not crying,” you said.
Shen looked at Jack. “She was crying.”
You turned back to him. “I was having a private emotional reset.”
“In a supply closet,” Shen said.
“Exactly,” you replied. “Private.”
Shen picked up his water. “It was a public supply closet.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. Shen took a drink. Jack watched the exchange, his hand moving from the back of the booth to your shoulder. His fingers brushed there once, gentle and grounding. You felt it. He knew you did, because your body softened almost instantly into his side.
Ellis leaned closer. “What did you do?”
Shen set his glass down. “I needed gauze.”
Crus blinked. “That’s what you did?”
“I got gauze,” Shen said.
You rolled your eyes. “He opened the door, found me crying—”
“Emotionally resetting,” Shen corrected.
You pointed at him. “Do not use my words against me.”
Shen tilted his head. “Then use better ones.”
Jack looked at him. “Dunkin.”
Shen glanced at Jack. “She appreciates honesty.”
“She appreciates many things,” Jack said. “Choose another one.”
Your mouth twitched.
Shen looked back at Ellis. “I got the gauze. Then I got her water and vending machine pretzels.”
You lifted one finger. “Peanut butter crackers.”
Shen’s brow furrowed. “Pretzels.”
“Crackers,” you said.
“Pretzels,” Shen repeated.
You leaned forward slightly. “John.”
Shen held your gaze. You held his.
Jack looked between you again.
Then, slowly, Shen reached across the table, palm up. You put your hand in his with grave solemnity.
Jack looked down at your joined hands. “No,” Jack said.
Ellis covered her mouth. Crus whispered, “Oh my God.”
You looked at Jack. “This is a sacred friendship dispute.”
Jack pointed at your hand in Shen’s. “Release my girlfriend.”
Shen’s expression remained perfectly neutral. “We are honoring the origin story.”
“You can honor it verbally,” Jack said.
You squeezed Shen’s hand. “It was a difficult time for us.”
“It involved sodium,” Shen said.
Jack stared at him. “Release her.”
You sighed dramatically and withdrew your hand. Shen let go at the exact same time, calm as ever. Jack’s arm settled more firmly behind your shoulders.
Ellis looked like Christmas had come early. “This is already better than I hoped.”
Crus pointed at you with a fry. “So he brought you pretzels-slash-crackers, and that was it? Friendship?”
“No,” you said.
“Yes,” Shen said.
You looked at him. “No, it grew.”
Shen nodded. “Regrettably.”
You kicked him lightly under the table. He did not react, which meant you knew he felt it.
“It grew,” you repeated, looking back at Ellis. “He started noticing things.”
Shen looked down at his drink. “You were inefficient at self-maintenance.”
Jack’s eyes shifted to him.
You smiled faintly. “He means I forgot to eat.”
“I mean she forgot to eat,” Shen said.
Ellis’s expression softened. “John.”
Shen shrugged one shoulder. “Someone had to notice.”
Jack was quiet. The table felt it, but for once, no one jumped in to ruin it.
You looked down at your hands for a second. “And I noticed things back.”
Shen glanced up.
“You hate when people talk to you before coffee,” you said.
Shen nodded. “Most people.”
“You like the corner computer because nobody stands behind you there,” you continued.
“Correct,” Shen said.
“And if you go completely silent after a bad case, it does not mean you want to be left alone forever,” you said. “It means you want someone to sit nearby and not make it worse.”
Shen looked at you for a beat too long. Then he nodded once. “Also correct.”
Jack’s hand found yours under the table. You looked down as his fingers slid between yours, warm and steady against your palm. He did not say anything. He did not need to.
Crus cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with sincerity lasting more than four seconds. “Okay, so when did this become legally weird?”
Your smile came back all at once. Jack closed his eyes.
Shen picked up his glass. “The horrible date.”
Ellis gasped. “There was a date?”
“There was a man,” you said.
Shen considered that. “Barely.”
Crus put both hands on the table. “I need everything.”
Jack opened his eyes and looked at you. “Do you?”
You squeezed his hand beneath the table. “You’re doing great.”
“That was not an answer,” Jack said.
Shen took a calm sip of his espresso martini. “It started with a rescue request.”
Jack looked at him. “A what?”
You grimaced. “I texted John from the bathroom.”
Ellis leaned forward. “During the date?”
“I had to,” you said. “He said women in medicine were intimidating but hot.”
Crus made a face. “Oh, no.”
“It got worse,” you said.
Jack’s thumb moved once over your knuckles. “How much worse?”
You glanced at him. “He asked if my job made me too tired to be feminine.”
Jack went very still.
Shen looked at him. “That was when I was summoned.”
Jack’s voice went flat. “Good.”
You patted his hand. “See? This is why John rescued me.”
Jack looked at Shen. For one second, his expression was not annoyed. Not exasperated. Not territorial. Grateful.
Then Shen ruined it by setting his glass down and saying, “Your husband is here.”
Jack blinked. Ellis blinked. Crus blinked.
You groaned. “No, don’t start there.”
Shen looked at the table. “That is where the rescue began.”
Jack turned fully toward him. “You said what?”
Shen’s hands folded again. “Your husband is here.”
Crus stared at him. “To the date?”
“Yes,” Shen said.
Ellis slapped a hand over her mouth.
You dropped your forehead briefly against Jack’s shoulder. “He walked right up to the table and said it like a police notification.”
Shen’s brow furrowed. “It was effective.”
Jack looked down at you. “Your husband.”
You lifted your head. “In my defense, I was also alarmed.”
Shen nodded. “She recovered quickly.”
You pointed across the table. “Because I am adaptable.”
“You said, ‘John, thank God,’” Shen replied.
Crus was laughing now. “What did the guy do?”
“He said, ‘Husband?’” you answered.
Shen nodded. “With concern.”
Jack stared at Shen. “And what did you say?”
Shen took a fry from the basket, apparently needing nourishment before ruining Jack’s night further. “I said yes,” Shen replied.
Jack’s jaw flexed. You squeezed his hand. “Baby.”
Jack looked down at you. “I’m fine.”
“You look upset.”
“I’m grateful,” Jack said.
“You look grateful in a violent way,” Crus said.
Jack did not look away from Shen. “That happens sometimes.”
Ellis leaned toward Shen. “And then?”
Shen looked at you. You looked at Shen.
Jack’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Do not reach across this table.”
You leaned back into his side. “We weren’t going to.”
Shen paused.
Jack looked at him. “Were you?”
Shen picked up his water. “Not anymore.”
Ellis laughed into her drink.
You sighed and continued. “Then I grabbed my purse, told my date I had to go, and left halfway through dinner.”
“She had not eaten,” Shen said.
Jack looked back at you. “You left before dinner?”
“He had just explained that he preferred women who could be independent but not argumentative,” you said.
Jack’s expression went blank.
Shen nodded. “I paid for her appetizer.”
You blinked. “You did?”
“Yes,” Shen said.
You softened. “John.”
Jack watched that too. The softness. The surprise. The history sitting there between you and Shen, old and strange and real.
He did not hate it.
That was the thing.
He hated the words. He hated the paperwork. He hated the hand-holding theatrics and the fact that Shen could weaponize a neutral expression better than most people could weaponize a scalpel.
But he did not hate that Shen had shown up for you.
Jack’s hand tightened around yours.
Crus pointed at Shen. “So where did you go after the fake husband extraction?”
You and Shen answered at the same time.
“Her apartment,” you said.
“Pizza,” Shen said.
Jack looked up.
Ellis slowly smiled. “Oh, this is getting good.”
Jack looked down at you. “Is it?”
You took a careful sip of your espresso martini. “Depends on your definition of good.”
Shen set his glass down. “It was a productive evening.”
“It was the worst date of my life,” you said.
“Before the extraction,” Shen clarified.
Crus leaned into the table. “I need to know why you went to her apartment.”
Jack’s hand tightened around yours under the table. Not hard. Just there. You looked at him, but his eyes were on Shen.
Shen looked back at him calmly. “She had not eaten.”
Jack blinked. That, apparently, was enough of an explanation.
“She left before dinner,” Shen added. “The date had compromised the meal.”
Crus nodded. “Emotionally or physically?”
“Both,” you said.
Shen glanced at you. “Primarily emotionally.”
You pointed at him. “He ruined the bread basket for me, John.”
Jack’s expression went blank. “What did he do to the bread basket?”
You looked up at him. “He said carbs were why women got tired after thirty.”
Crus made a sound of pure disgust.
Ellis lowered her drink. “No.”
Shen nodded once. “That was when I paid for the appetizer.”
Jack looked at Shen again. Grateful. Still a little violent about it. But grateful.
Shen either did not notice or had the decency to refrain from reacting to it.
“So,” Ellis said, settling in with visible delight, “you rescued her from the date, then went back to her apartment for pizza.”
“Correct,” Shen said.
You nodded. “I changed into sweatpants.”
“She took off one heel in the entryway,” Shen said.
Crus frowned. “One heel?”
“The other was emotionally load-bearing,” you said.
Jack looked down at you. “That means nothing.”
You frowned. “It meant something at the time.”
Shen lifted his espresso martini. “She also said love was a scam.”
You winced. “I was processing.”
“You said romance was a marketing scheme created to sell candles and expensive pasta,” Shen continued.
Ellis stared at you. You shrugged. “I stand by part of that.”
Jack’s mouth twitched. “You do love candles,” he said.
“And expensive pasta,” you said.
Shen took a sip. “Contradictory data.”
You looked at him. “You were eating my pizza.”
“I paid for half,” Shen replied.
“You rescued me,” you said. “The pizza should have been included in the service.”
Shen tilted his head. “Rescue services and pizza reimbursement are separate categories.”
Jack closed his eyes. Crus pointed at him. “He’s doing really well.”
“I’m aware,” you said, patting Jack’s thigh beneath the table.
Jack opened his eyes and looked down at your hand. Then he looked back at Shen. “Continue.”
Shen set his glass down. “She sat on the living room floor.”
You leaned into Jack’s side. “Because the couch felt too formal.”
“And said she was going to die alone,” Shen finished.
Ellis’s smile softened at the edges. Jack’s thumb moved once over your knuckles. You glanced down at your joined hands and tried not to let the warmth in your chest show on your face.
“It was dramatic,” you said.
“It was inaccurate,” Shen replied.
You looked at him. “You didn’t know that.”
“I knew enough,” Shen said.
The table quieted for half a second. Then Crus, because he had the survival instincts of someone allergic to sincerity, lifted one hand. “Wait. Are we getting a flashback or a transcript?”
Shen considered that. “The transcript would be more accurate.”
“No,” you said.
Ellis nodded. “Flashback.”
Jack sighed quietly. “Of course.”
You smiled into your glass. And, because the night had apparently become an official oral history, you gave them one.
Your apartment had smelled like rain, takeout menus, and the vanilla candle you lit every time you wanted to convince yourself your life was under control. It was not under control. Not that night. That night, you had kicked one heel off by the door and left the other on because taking it off felt like a commitment to the collapse. Shen stood in your entryway holding a pizza box and a two-liter bottle of soda, his coat still on, watching you with the careful neutrality of a man observing a patient who might bolt.
“You can sit,” you told him.
Shen looked at the couch. You looked at the couch. Both of you looked at the single abandoned heel in the middle of the floor.
“I’ll stand,” Shen said.
You dropped onto the living room rug instead. “I’m going to die alone.”
“No,” Shen said.
You looked up at him. “That was very fast.”
Shen stepped around the abandoned heel and set the pizza box on your coffee table. “It was an easy correction.”
“You don’t know that,” you said.
“Statistically, it is unlikely,” Shen replied.
You stared at him. Shen stared back, apparently comfortable with being deeply unhelpful in your living room. “That is not comfort,” you said.
Shen glanced down at the pizza box. “Pizza might be.”
You held your hand out. Shen opened the box, lifted a slice onto a paper towel, and handed it to you with the solemn care of a man distributing medication. You took one bite and immediately felt worse because it helped.
“I hate that this is working,” you said.
“You were hungry,” Shen said.
You pointed the slice at him. “I was emotionally devastated.”
Shen sat down on the floor across from you, still too upright, still too composed, his shoes carefully avoiding the edge of your throw blanket. “And hungry.”
You chewed angrily. Shen picked up his own slice and folded it with clinical precision.
You watched him do it. “Why are you like that?”
“Effective?” Shen asked.
“Unsettling,” you said.
He considered that. “Practice.”
You huffed a laugh despite yourself. Shen looked at you for a second, then lowered his gaze to his pizza. “You are not going to die alone.”
You looked down at the slice in your hand. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” Shen agreed. “But I know you.”
That made you quiet. You hated that too. The apartment hummed around you, the refrigerator too loud in the kitchen, the rain ticking against the window, the candle flickering on the coffee table like it had not just witnessed you declare love fraudulent in one heel.
You picked at the crust. “What if this is just it?”
Shen’s brow furrowed. “Pizza?”
You looked up at him. “Dating. Men. Love. All of it. What if I never find someone?”
Shen went quiet. That was when you learned one of the most dangerous things about John Shen. He was at his most alarming when he was trying to be helpful.
“Okay,” Shen said.
You narrowed your eyes. “Okay, what?”
“How about this?” he asked.
“No,” you said immediately.
Shen paused with his pizza halfway to his mouth. “You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“I know your tone.”
Shen set his slice down on the paper towel with care. “If neither of us has found a long-term partner by forty, we enter a domestic partnership.”
You stared at him. He waited. You kept staring. Shen added, “For logistical purposes.”
You put your pizza down. “John.”
“Yes?” he replied.
“Are you proposing to me over pizza?” you asked.
“No,” Shen said. “I am offering a contingency plan.”
You frowned. “That is worse.”
“It is more accurate,” Shen said.
“You’re trying to comfort me with tax strategy,” you said.
“Among other things,” Shen replied.
You blinked. “Among other things?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. You watched, horrified and fascinated, as he opened the Notes app. “What are you doing?” you asked.
“Drafting,” Shen said.
You leaned forward. “Drafting what?”
“The contingency plan,” he replied.
You raised your brows. “Right now?”
Shen looked up from his phone. “You seem distressed by uncertainty.”
“I am distressed by men,” you corrected.
“That is less easily solved,” Shen said.
You pointed at him. “Do not be reasonable with me in my own apartment.”
Shen titled the note with his thumb. You leaned closer to read it.
Domestic Partnership Contingency Agreement.
You sat back slowly. “You are the least romantic person I have ever met.”
“It is not romantic,” Shen said.
“That is obvious,” you replied.
He shrugged. “It’s practical.”
“John,” you said, offended now. “If I am entering a backup marriage at forty, I deserve romance.”
Shen looked up from his phone. “Why?”
You gasped. He blinked. “Why?” you repeated.
“It was a question,” Shen said.
You frowned. “It was a terrible question.”
Shen looked back at the note. “Romance is not necessary for the stated objective.”
“The stated objective is not dying alone,” you said.
Shen nodded once. “Correct.”
“A girl needs to be wooed, John,” you said.
Shen’s thumbs paused. “Wooed is vague.”
You glared. “It is not vague to women.”
“It is vague contractually.”
You reached across the pizza box and grabbed the phone from his hand. Shen let you, which meant he had either accepted defeat or was gathering evidence.
You started typing. “Contractual romance.”
Shen leaned slightly forward. “That is not a standard category.”
You grinned. “It is now.”
“What are you adding?” he asked.
“Quarterly flowers,” you said.
Shen frowned. “Why quarterly?”
“Because annually is insulting,” you replied.
Shen looked confused. “Flowers die.”
“So do all of us,” you said. “Stay focused.”
Shen blinked once. “That was bleak.”
“I just survived a date with a man who blamed pasta for aging,” you said with a shrug.
He nodded. “Proceed.”
You typed again. “Monthly date night,” you said.
Shen glanced from your face to the screen. “In a non-romantic domestic partnership?”
You nodded. “In my non-romantic domestic partnership.”
“That seems contradictory,” Shen said.
“You offered to be my backup husband,” you said. “Suffer.”
Shen watched you type. “Birthday recognition cannot be limited to a text?”
“Correct.”
Shen frowned. “What if the text is thoughtful?”
“No,” you replied instantly.
Shen sighed. “What if it contains an itinerary?”
You looked up from the phone. “Especially no.”
Shen went quiet.
Your eyes narrowed. “Were you about to suggest a birthday itinerary?”
“It could be useful,” Shen said.
You pointed at him with his own phone. “This is why the clause exists.”
Shen took the phone back and read silently for several seconds. Then his brow furrowed. “No,” he said.
You lifted your chin. “Yes.”
He looked up. “Annual passionate lovemaking?”
You folded your arms. “For morale.”
Shen stared at you. You stared back. The rain hit the window. The candle flickered. Your abandoned heel lay in the entryway like a fallen soldier.
Finally, Shen looked down at the note again. “This is poorly drafted.”
You sat up straighter. “That is your concern?”
“Yes.”
You raised a brow. “Not the passionate lovemaking?”
Shen’s eyes stayed on the screen. “That is part of the drafting issue.”
You made a strangled sound. “John.”
“What constitutes annual?” Shen asked.
You stared at him. “Once a year.”
“Calendar year or year of agreement?” he asked.
You stared harder. Shen kept reading. “If the agreement begins in April, the obligation period requires clarification.”
“I cannot believe you are editing my sex clause,” you said.
Shen looked up. “I cannot believe you wrote one with no definitions.”
You sighed dramatically. “It was supposed to be romantic.”
Shen clicked his tongue. “It was vulnerable to interpretation.”
“Good,” you said. “Romance should be.”
Shen’s face tightened like that sentence had caused him physical discomfort. You smiled for the first real time all night. “There,” you said. “That’s the contract.”
Shen looked down at the note again. Then he typed something.
You leaned across the pizza box. “What are you doing?”
“Revising,” he answered.
“John.”
“Annual intimacy maintenance,” Shen read.
You stared at him. “Absolutely not.”
Shen kept his eyes on the phone. “It is clearer.”
“It sounds like an oil change,” you said.
“It defines the function,” Shen replied.
You reached for the phone. Shen lifted it out of reach.
You narrowed your eyes. “Give me the romance back.”
“You used the phrase passionate lovemaking,” Shen said.
You shot back, “You used intimacy maintenance.”
Shen glanced at the screen like the answer was obvious. “It is more precise.”
“It is more horrifying,” you said, reaching for the phone again.
Shen considered that. “Both can remain.”
You paused. He looked at you. You looked at him. Then, despite yourself, you laughed. Shen’s mouth did not move much, but his eyes shifted in the way they did when he was pleased with himself.
“Fine,” you said. “Both can remain.”
“Good,” Shen replied.
“But I want the record to show that a girl needs to be wooed,” you added.
Shen typed. You frowned. “Did you just write that down?”
He nodded once. “Yes.”
“As a clause?” you asked.
“As a note.”
You held out your hand. “Read it.”
Shen looked at the screen. “Addendum: a girl needs to be wooed.”
You nodded, satisfied. “Perfect.”
Shen saved the note. Then he handed you another slice of pizza. And somehow, impossibly, you did not feel like you were going to die alone anymore.
Back at the bar, Crus was staring at both of you as if you had just delivered congressional testimony.
Ellis had both hands over her mouth.
Jack had not moved. Not once. His hand was still wrapped around yours under the table, but his expression had gone very still in the way that meant he was processing too many competing feelings at once.
You squeezed his fingers. “You okay?”
Jack looked down at you. Then he looked at Shen. “I’m trying very hard to remain grateful,” Jack said.
Shen nodded once. “That seems appropriate.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do not make me regret it.”
Shen picked up his espresso martini. “I rarely control that outcome.”
Crus let out a laugh and leaned back against the booth. “So let me get this straight. You wrote a backup marriage contract after a bad date and pizza.”
“Contingency plan,” Shen corrected.
“Contractual betrothal,” you added.
Jack immediately said, “Void.”
You looked up at him. “Suspended.”
“Void,” Jack repeated.
Shen looked at Jack over his glass. “Currently suspended due to Abbot.”
Jack pointed at him. “Do not say it like I’m a scheduling conflict.”
Shen considered that. “Due to your active romantic claim.”
“Worse,” Jack said.
You patted Jack’s thigh. “He means because I love you.”
Jack looked down at your hand, then back at Shen. “He can say that instead.”
Ellis was nearly vibrating. “I need to see the clauses.”
“No,” Jack said.
“Yes,” you and Shen said together.
Jack closed his eyes.
Crus lifted his beer. “I want to know more about annual intimacy maintenance.”
Jack opened his eyes. “Absolutely not.”
You leaned into his side, smiling sweetly. “For the record, the clause is obsolete.”
Jack looked down at you. “It is?”
You took a slow sip of your espresso martini. Then you looked up at him through your lashes.
“I’m getting more than annual intimacy maintenance now that I have you, Jack.”
The table went dead silent.
Jack stopped breathing.
Crus lowered his beer. “Oh.”
Ellis whispered, “Wow.”
Shen blinked once. “That does render the prior clause redundant.”
Jack turned his head slowly. “Dunkin.”
Shen looked at him. “I was agreeing with you.”
“Do not clinically assess my sex life,” Jack said.
Shen nodded. “Boundary noted.”
You smiled into your glass. Jack looked down at you, his ears pink now, his hand still locked around yours under the table.
“You,” he said, voice low, “are trouble.”
You leaned closer to him. “You knew that.”
His thumb brushed over your knuckles. “I did,” Jack said.
Shen lifted his glass. “For what it’s worth, the contingency plan was always unlikely to activate.”
Jack looked at him.
Shen’s expression stayed calm, but something in it gentled. “She was never going to die alone.”
Your smile softened. Jack’s did too, just a little.
Then Shen added, “But legally, I felt better with a backup.”
Jack pointed at him without looking away from you. “Void.”
Shen nodded once. “There it is.”
Crus was still staring at Shen like he had just discovered an entirely new category of person.
“So wait,” Crus said, setting his beer down. “Are you two actually best friends, or is this just a tax thing?”
You opened your mouth.
Shen set his glass down first. “That depends,” he said.
You frowned. “Depends on what?”
Shen looked at you. “Whether you are prepared to acknowledge the previous harm.”
Crus pointed between you and Shen. “I want the harm.”
“You do not,” you said.
“I do,” Crus replied. “I very much do.”
Shen folded his hands on the table. “She once introduced me as her coworker.”
Jack blinked. You dropped your head back against the booth. “John.”
Shen did not look away from Jack. “Her coworker.”
Ellis gasped quietly. “Oh, that’s cold.”
“It was not cold,” you said.
Crus shook his head. “No, that’s cold.”
You looked at him. “You don’t even know the context.”
Shen lifted one finger. “The context was after the supply closet incident, the horrible date extraction, the pizza contingency plan, and the printer failure.”
Jack’s brows pulled together. “Printer failure?”
You pointed at Shen. “Do not add new lore right now.”
Shen glanced at you. “It is relevant.”
You frowned. “It is not relevant.”
“It was emotionally significant,” Shen said.
Jack looked between you. “A printer was emotionally significant?”
Crus leaned toward Ellis. “I believe it.”
Ellis nodded. “Same.”
You sighed and looked up at Jack. “It was a hospital fundraiser.”
“You were standing in the corner silently holding shrimp,” you said.
“I had been abandoned,” Shen replied.
You stared at him. “I was talking to a donor.”
“You introduced me as your coworker John,” Shen said, deeply wounded.
Jack’s mouth twitched. You saw it immediately. Your eyes narrowed. “Do not.”
Jack looked down at you. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought something.”
“I did,” Jack admitted.
You sat up a little straighter. “You’re taking his side?”
Jack’s hand moved on your thigh, warm and apologetic. “On this? Yes.”
Your mouth fell open. Shen nodded once. “Justice.”
Jack pointed across the table without looking away from you. “Temporary alliance.”
“Noted,” Shen said.
Ellis was smiling so hard it looked painful. “Wait. What should she have introduced you as?”
Shen looked at her. “Friend.”
You looked across the table at him. For once, he did not say it like a joke. He did not even say it like a correction. He said it as if the answer had always been obvious. Something in your chest went soft.
Then Crus ruined it by lifting a wing and asking, “Best friend?”
Shen’s gaze shifted to him. You took a sip of your espresso martini. Jack looked down at you. You avoided his eyes.
Ellis’s smile widened. “Oh.”
“No,” you said.
Crus leaned in. “No, what?”
“You all have faces,” you said.
Jack’s mouth curved. “We do?”
“You especially,” you told him.
Jack’s thumb moved once over your thigh. “What face am I making?”
“The face that says you are about to be emotionally reasonable, and it is going to ruin my fun,” you replied with a frown.
Jack looked at you for a second. Then, very dryly, he said, “God forbid.”
Shen picked up his glass. “For accuracy, the designation is best friend.”
You turned toward him. “John.”
He took a calm sip of his espresso martini. Ellis made a delighted little sound. “Designation?”
“It was added after the coworker incident,” Shen said.
Jack closed his eyes. “Of course it was.”
Crus pointed at Shen. “To the contract?”
“No,” Shen said.
You nodded. “Yes.”
Shen looked at you. “It was not part of the domestic partnership contingency agreement.”
“It was in the same shared note,” you said.
“That does not make it part of the agreement,” Shen replied.
You leaned forward. “It was under Friendship Clarifications.”
Jack opened his eyes. “Friendship Clarifications.”
Ellis put both hands around her glass. “I need this note more than I need air.”
“No,” Jack said immediately.
“Yes,” Crus said at the same time.
You smiled at Shen across the table. Shen looked back at you.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do not.”
You and Shen both reached for each other’s hands at the same time. Jack’s hand came down gently over yours, pinning it to the table.
You looked up at him. “Excuse me.”
Jack did not look away from Shen. “Preventative medicine.”
Shen glanced at Jack’s hand over yours. “You interrupted a historically accurate reenactment.”
Jack looked at him. “Use puppets.”
You laughed so hard you had to lean into Jack’s side. His hand softened over yours immediately, fingers slipping between yours.
Shen’s eyes flicked to the movement. Then he looked at Jack. For a second, the humor eased out of his face. “For clarity,” Shen said, “I am not competition.”
The table quieted. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just enough.
Jack’s thumb stilled against your knuckles. “I know,” Jack said.
Shen studied him. You stayed very still against Jack’s side.
“She was my friend before she was your girlfriend,” Shen said.
Jack nodded once. “I know that too.”
Shen’s gaze shifted to you, then back to Jack. “I took care of her.”
Jack’s hand tightened around yours. The pressure was small. Steady.
“I know,” Jack said again.
Shen folded his hands around his glass. “Dating you should not mean losing me.”
Your throat tightened before you could stop it. Jack looked down at you. His expression softened immediately.
Then he looked back at Shen. “It doesn’t.”
Shen’s face went still in that way it did when he had heard something more important than he was ready to show.
Jack’s voice stayed even. “I’m glad she has you.”
You stopped breathing for half a second. Across the table, Shen blinked once. Ellis looked down at her drink like she was giving the moment privacy. Crus, for once in his life, did not say anything.
Shen nodded, small and quiet. “Me too.”
Jack held his gaze for another second.
Then Shen added, “Seniority recognized.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do not make me regret personal growth.”
Crus broke first, laughing into his hand. Ellis pressed her lips together, losing the fight almost immediately. You dropped your forehead against Jack’s shoulder and laughed, even though your eyes felt warm. Jack’s arm came around you at once.
Shen lifted his espresso martini. “I am simply acknowledging the timeline.”
Jack looked at him. “You are acknowledging nothing.”
“I was there first,” Shen said.
Jack’s hand flexed at your side. “I’m going to be there last.”
The table went quiet again.
You lifted your head and looked at him.
Jack did not look away from Shen at first. Then his eyes dropped to you, and his expression changed. Not embarrassed. Not uncertain. Just sure. Painfully sure.
“When you want that,” he said, quieter.
Ellis stared into her drink like it had suddenly become fascinating.
Crus whispered, “Damn.”
Shen took a slow sip of his martini. Then he set it down. “Future claim noted.”
Jack looked back at him. “Does that mean the previous claim is void?”
Shen considered him. Then, with great reluctance, he nodded. “Emotionally superseded.”
Jack paused. You looked between them.
Jack’s jaw shifted. “Acceptable.”
Shen nodded once. “Progress.”
You leaned back into Jack’s side, still holding his hand under the table.
Crus let out a long breath. “This is the weirdest dinner I’ve ever been to.”
Ellis shook her head. “No, this is art.”
Shen reached for a cheese curd. Jack watched him.
Shen paused with his hand hovering over the basket. “Appetizer coordination only.”
Jack stared at him.
Shen withdrew his hand. “Understood.”
You smiled into Jack’s shoulder. Jack looked down at you, his expression soft despite himself.
“You okay?” he asked.
You nodded against him. “Yeah.”
His mouth brushed your hairline, quick enough that no one else would have noticed if Ellis had not immediately made a sound.
Jack looked across the table. “No.”
Ellis lifted both hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to,” Jack said.
Crus pointed at Ellis. “She absolutely was.”
Shen picked up his glass again. “For the record, the best friend designation remains active.”
Jack sighed. You smiled. Then Jack looked at Shen and said, “Fine.”
Shen stilled. You did too.
Jack’s arm stayed warm around your shoulders. “Best friend designation active.”
Shen stared at him. Jack pointed one finger across the table. “Contractual betrothal void.”
Shen’s mouth twitched. “Accepted,” he said.
Ellis slapped the table lightly. “I cannot believe I witnessed treaty negotiations over cheese curds.”
Crus lifted his beer. “To the best friend clause.”
You lifted your espresso martini. Shen lifted his. Jack looked at all of you like he loved you and regretted every one of his choices. Then, finally, he picked up his drink.
“To the void contract,” Jack said.
Shen’s eyes narrowed. “That was hostile.”
Jack’s mouth curved. “Good.”
The toast did not end the argument. It only relocated it.
By the time the five of you made it outside, Crus was still asking whether “emotionally superseded” had any real contractual weight, Ellis was insisting the shared note should be entered into evidence, and Shen was explaining, with the patience of a man who had never once considered simply letting something go, that the phrase had been chosen for precision.
Jack walked beside you a few steps behind them, his hand warm at your lower back, his thumb brushing there once every few seconds. The night air was cool after the bar, damp enough to make the streetlights blur slightly against the pavement. You tucked yourself closer to his side, and Jack’s arm came around you immediately.
Ahead of you, Shen said, “Emotionally superseded does not erase prior documentation.”
Jack looked over your head. “Void.”
Shen did not turn around. “Superseded.”
“Void,” Jack repeated.
You smiled into Jack’s shoulder. “You know he’s never going to give you void.”
“I know,” Jack said.
“You’re still going to keep saying it?”
Jack nodded once. “Yes.”
You laughed softly. Jack looked down at you, and whatever dry argument had been sitting in his face eased into something quieter. The streetlight caught the color in his eyes, turning them softer at the edges. You thought about him at the table, his voice calm when he told Shen it did not mean losing him. You thought about his hand around yours when he said he was glad you had someone. You thought about the way he had looked at Shen and said, with no hesitation at all, that he was going to be there last.
Your chest warmed all over again. “You meant that?” you asked.
Jack’s brow shifted. “Which part?”
You slipped your arm around his waist. “Being there last.”
Jack stopped walking. Because Jack never did anything halfway. He did not make the moment dramatic on purpose. He simply stopped beside you on the sidewalk, his arm still around your shoulders, his whole attention settling on you like everyone else had gone quiet and distant. Ahead of you, the others noticed. Ellis stopped first. Crus nearly walked into her. Shen stopped last, then turned with visible suspicion.
Jack ignored all of them. “Yes,” he said.
Your breath caught.
Jack’s eyes stayed on yours. “When you want that.”
You smiled before you could stop it. Soft at first, then a little wicked.
Jack’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Why did your face change?”
You blinked up at him. “My face?”
“That one,” Jack said.
You frowned. “What one?”
Jack sighed. “The one where you are about to make my life difficult.”
Crus leaned toward Ellis. “He knows her so well.”
Ellis nodded. “It’s beautiful.”
You ignored them and smoothed one hand over Jack’s shirt. “I just think it’s good that you’re already thinking ahead.”
Jack looked down at your hand, then back to your face. “I am.”
“I respect that,” you replied.
His mouth curved faintly. “Do you?”
“I do,” you said.
Shen’s voice came from several feet away. “That phrasing feels intentional.”
Jack closed his eyes. You smiled wider.
Then you looked up at Jack and said, “But if you are planning on making a formal replacement to the void contract, Shen needs to be consulted.”
Jack opened his eyes. No one moved. For one perfect second, the sidewalk went completely still.
Then Jack said, “No.”
At the exact same time, Shen said, “Yes.”
Jack turned his head slowly. “You were not invited into this conversation.”
Shen folded his hands in front of him. “I was invoked.”
Crus made a sound of pure delight. Ellis pointed between all three of you. “Ring committee.”
Jack looked at her. “Absolutely not.”
You leaned into his side. “He knows my taste.”
Jack looked down at you. “I know your taste.”
“He knows my ring taste,” you said.
Jack’s jaw shifted. “Since when?”
Shen adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “There was a Pinterest incident.”
Jack closed his eyes again. “Of course there was.”
“It was extensive,” Shen added.
“Do not elaborate,” Jack said.
You patted Jack’s chest. “He should also be consulted on the proposal plan.”
Jack’s eyes opened. “Proposal plan?”
You nodded, solemn now. “A girl needs to be wooed, Jack.”
Shen nodded from the sidewalk. “Established clause.”
Jack looked between you and Shen. For a second, he seemed genuinely caught between wanting to kiss you and wanting to personally delete the Notes app from every phone in a ten-mile radius.
“I am going to regret allowing the best friend designation to remain active,” Jack said.
You tilted your head. “Are you?”
His arm tightened around you. Jack’s expression softened despite the glare he was still aiming in Shen’s direction. “No.”
Your smile went warm. “No,” he said again, quieter. “I’m not.”
Ellis made a tiny sound. Crus looked at her. “Are you crying?”
“No,” Ellis said immediately.
Shen looked at her. “You appear emotionally compromised.”
Ellis pointed at him. “Don’t ruin this for me.”
Jack looked back down at you. “For the record, I can pick a ring.”
“I know,” you said.
“And plan a proposal,” Jack added.
You smiled. “I know.”
“And ask your best friend for input without giving him veto power,” Jack continued.
Shen lifted one finger. “Advisory authority traditionally includes—”
Jack looked at him. “No.” Shen paused. Jack’s voice stayed calm. “Advisory only.”
Shen considered him for a beat. “Strong advisory.”
“Advisory,” Jack repeated.
You slid your hand into Jack’s. “Maybe strong advisory.”
Jack looked down at you. You smiled up at him. His jaw flexed once.
Then he looked back at Shen. “Limited strong advisory.”
Shen nodded. “Acceptable.”
Crus stared between them. “I cannot believe I just watched proposal governance happen in real time.”
Ellis wiped under one eye. “I can. This is exactly them.”
Jack ignored both of them and looked at you. “Anything else I should know?”
You pretended to think about it. “No public proposals.”
Jack nodded immediately. “I know.”
“No ring in food,” you added.
His brows pulled together. “Obviously.”
“No sports arena screens,” you continued.
Jack looked offended. “You think I would do that?”
“No,” you said, smiling. “But Shen would ask for confirmation.”
Shen nodded once. “I would.”
Jack sighed. You squeezed his hand. “And it should feel like us.”
Jack’s irritation softened into something else. Something private. “It will,” he said.
Your heart stumbled.
Shen, to his credit, did not interrupt that part. Not immediately. Then he said, “I will require a planning timeline.”
Jack did not look away from you. “You will receive what I give you.”
Shen looked at Ellis. “Hostile committee environment.”
Ellis nodded. “Noted.”
Crus lifted both hands. “I’m just happy to be here.”
You rose onto your toes and kissed Jack’s cheek.
His attention snapped fully back to you. “What was that for?” he asked.
“For being emotionally evolved,” you said.
Jack’s mouth twitched. “That’s what that was?”
You smiled. “And for accepting the best friend clause.”
His arm settled around your waist. “I accepted it under protest.”
You shrugged. “You accepted it.”
“I did,” Jack replied.
Shen lifted one hand from the sidewalk. “Best friend clause active.”
Jack looked over your head. “Void contract.”
Shen’s mouth curved, barely. “Active committee.”
Jack pointed at him. “Dunkin.”
You laughed and tucked your face against Jack’s chest. Jack kissed the top of your head, still glaring at Shen over you like a man who had just agreed to share classified information with the enemy. But his hand was gentle on your back. His mouth was soft against your hair. And when you held onto him, he held on right back.
“Come on,” Jack said, voice low near your ear. “I’m taking you home.”
You looked up at him. “Advisory committee approved?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Then he glanced at Shen. “You objecting?”
Shen looked at you. Then at Jack. Then he nodded once. “No objection.”
Jack’s hand tightened around yours. “Good,” he said.
