#attending

Pairing: Attending!Jack Abbot x Resident!Reader

Warnings: Insecure Jack Abbot, Age Gap, Slight Angst

Author's Note: idk man I'm just doing this bcs this man has been on my mind 24/7 and I need to get rid of this thoughts.

Might do part 2 tho so enjoy?

Attending!Jack Abbot who flirts with everyone, but when reader answers his flirt, he actually got flustered his ears gone red.

Attending!Jack Abbot who fully support reader and encourages her through every procedures. He's very protective of his residents and acknowledge the potential of his residents. "You got this" "I believe in you" "great job"

Attending!Jack Abbot who is very happy when reader talks and shares her stories with him. Her hopes, her struggles, her patients. He liked that she talks to him first.

Attending!Jack Abbot who always search for reader everytime he steps in to a room. After treating a patient, after a sip of stale coffee, he wanted reader to know about him.

Attending!Jack Abbot who was very oblivious at first, but when reader had the courage to tell him about her feelings for him, he's gone into his denial stage.

"You can do better than me, sweetheart"

"no, Jack you don't understand. I grew this feelings for you and I think it's getting too serious. I feel comfortable and I really wanted you to know. I thought..."

"no, I'm sorry, sweetheart. You can't... I- I can't.... I can't do this to you"

"Please Jack, listen to me first"

"I'm so sorry, Sweetheart I can't. I can't give you what you wanted. I can't give you what you deserve. You deserve more than this"

pairing: robby x gn! reader

W.C: n/a

content includes: smau, fluff, silly moments, flirty platonic dynamic, brief and mild s*icide joke; proceed with discretion.

You tell yourself that means nothing. You are an intern. Jack Abbott is your attending. That is all it is supposed to be. But the problem is that nothing about the way he treats you feels like oversight or obligation. It feels like attention that has been carefully measured so it doesn’t become something else. And the longer it goes on, the more obvious it becomes that whatever line is supposed to exist between professionalism and something more is not being erased—it is being watched.

It reaches a point where you start noticing the timing of him. How often he appears exactly when things slow down, not in an intentional way, but like he’s been moving through the department on a parallel track that occasionally intersects with yours. You notice how he stops asking you questions that don’t matter, as if he has already decided you are competent enough not to need testing. You notice, worse than anything else, that he stops correcting you unless it is absolutely necessary. As if he has started trusting you. Or something like it.

It should have stayed simple. Work. Shift. End of story.

It doesn’t.

Because one night, after a trauma that leaves the entire department vibrating with leftover adrenaline and the kind of exhaustion that makes everything feel slightly unreal, you find yourself at the edge of the ambulance bay where the air is colder than it should be and the building behind you still hums like it hasn’t finished reacting. You don’t remember deciding to go there. You only remember needing space that isn’t filled with people who are still talking too loudly about things they should have forgotten already.

Jack is already there when you step outside.

Not waiting in an obvious way. Just there, as if he has also reached the point where the inside of the hospital is too much to stay in for even a few more minutes. He doesn’t look surprised to see you, which is its own kind of acknowledgment. You both stand for a while without speaking, letting the noise from inside fade into something distant enough to stop pressing against your thoughts. It isn’t peaceful. It is just less loud.

“You always do that,” he says eventually, not turning toward you fully.

“Do what?”

“Walk out when it gets too much.”

You almost argue, but there is no point in pretending he hasn’t noticed a pattern that you yourself haven’t even fully realized you have. So instead you shift your weight slightly and look out at the parking lot where everything is wet from earlier rain, reflecting the lights in broken shapes that don’t quite settle into anything stable. “It’s not like I’m the only one who leaves,” you say.

“That’s not the same thing,” he replies, still calm, still controlled in a way that makes it impossible to tell where the line is between observation and something more personal.

The silence that follows is longer this time. Not empty. Full of everything neither of you is saying. You become aware of how close he is without either of you having moved. Not close enough to be inappropriate. Not far enough to feel accidental. It is the exact distance that makes you realize distance is something that can be measured too precisely to feel safe.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” you say before you can stop yourself, because something about the quiet is making you reckless in a way you don’t fully recognize.

“I’m not doing anything,” he answers, but there is a tension in it now that wasn’t there before. Not anger. Not denial. Something closer to restraint that is starting to slip.

“That’s the problem,” you say, and even as the words leave your mouth, you realize how much they sound like something that has been sitting unsaid for longer than you are willing to admit.

He finally turns his head toward you, and the shift in his attention changes the air around both of you. It is not dramatic. It is not sudden. It is just complete. Like everything else in the world has been reduced to background noise without either of you agreeing to it.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says quietly.

You almost laugh at that, because it would be easier if it were about asking. Easier if it were something you could define cleanly like that. Instead, what you feel is less like wanting and more like recognition, like something already in motion that neither of you started but both of you have been participating in without naming it.

“Then stop me,” you say.

It comes out softer than intended. Not a challenge. Not entirely permission either. Just the truth of standing too close to something that has been building long enough that stepping back feels more dangerous than stepping forward.

For a moment he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. You can see the control in him, the practiced stillness of someone who has spent years not crossing lines that are easier not to acknowledge. And then that control shifts, not breaking so much as deciding it has been holding long enough to justify letting go.

When he finally closes the distance, it is not uncertain. It is not rushed. It is the kind of movement that has been delayed for too long to be anything but inevitable. His large hands fist your scrubs around your waist, then your ponytail. The kiss is restrained only in the way something is restrained right before it stops being able to be restrained at all, and the moment it happens it feels less like a beginning and more like the acknowledgement of something that had already been true long before either of you admitted it.

It only lasts long enough to change everything.

When he pulls back, it is only slightly, just enough for air to exist again between you, but he doesn’t step away. Neither do you. The sound of the hospital doors opening behind you cuts through the moment like a break in continuity, and his attention shifts almost imperceptibly toward it, not fully gone from you but no longer entirely yours either.

Someone calls his name from inside. Urgent. Real. The kind of interruption that does not wait.

He doesn’t move immediately. Neither do you.

And when he finally turns, it is not with distance or regret or explanation. It is with the kind of look that does not resolve anything at all.

It only confirms that whatever just happened is not something either of you gets to treat as an ending.

Then he walks back inside.