Big Bucky Fan

You watch your reflection closely in the mirror as you apply one last coat of mascara.

Tonight there was a reunion event for Brendon’s graduating class from medical school. 

You had seen the invitation in the mail and insisted he go and see some familiar faces. And also throw around some bragging rights as the one of the east coast’s top orthopedic surgeons.

After some top tier convincing, he finally agreed but only if you went with him. Now it was you who had to be convinced.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘱 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 

"𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘰."

"𝘉𝘢𝘣𝘺 𝘤'𝘮𝘰𝘯," 𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥 "𝘐𝘧 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘥𝘰."

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 "𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘯..."

"𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦?" 𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘭𝘺

"𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘯, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘸. 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘴𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘩'𝘴 𝘣𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘢'𝘴 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘬𝘦𝘺."

𝘏𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴.

"𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘐'𝘮 𝘰𝘬𝘢𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦. 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘪𝘧 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦'𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘶𝘺 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦."

𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘢𝘻𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯.

𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 "𝘖𝘬𝘢𝘺, 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘦. 𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘰."

𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘶𝘮𝘱𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺.

"𝘞𝘦𝘪𝘳𝘥𝘰" 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦.

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Brendon watches you get ready from the doorway of the bathroom. If he could stare at you all day long he would.

When he met you, you were the fresh faced nurse starting out in the pitt.

It only took him overhearing you talk about your interest in orthopedics once for him to fight day shift tooth and nail for you.

With a promise to Robby that he would watch out for you, you were moved to orthopedics.

You were brilliant and young, eight years younger than him and completely out of his league.

You still were out of his league now.

Yet as soon as he asked you out for the first time back then, you immediately said yes.

He often worried with the age gap people would have things to say. That those words would drive you to be with someone closer to your age.

Even though you always reassured him that would never be the case, you both agreed to keep things under wraps at work and discreetly out in public.

You never minded, only wanting to ease his mind. You’d do anything for him

Brendon was glad to have you on his arm tonight but he still worried just a tad that you’d catch the eye of someone who may try to steal you away.

—-

You and Brendon walk into the event room, your hand holding onto his bicep.

“Wow..” you say looking around at the beauty and decor of the room “it’s gorgeous in here.”

Brendon’s gaze lingers on you as you admire the space “Yeah, sure is.”

You turn your head and catch him staring, rolling your eyes with a smile.

He chuckles at your reaction as you both make your way to the bar.

“Hey! Look who it is! If it isn’t Park!”

The voice makes you both turn your heads.

To the right of the bar in a seating area towards the back are a few guys, all smiles as they wave in your direction.

Brendon waves back as he leans close to you.

“Some guys I studied and hung out with most of the time in med school.” he whispers

He gently leads you towards them.

A taller guy greets you guys first when you get closer.

“Well well well if it isn’t Pennsylvania’s most sought after ortho surgeon” he smiles and then his gaze turns to you.

“Well hello there, and you are?”

You smile politely and introduce yourself.

“You a doctor too, sweet stuff?” 

Brendon’s hackles go up at the flirtatious tone and pet name.

“No, I’m a nurse for orthopedics at ptmc with Brendon.” you share

The guy briefly glances at you and Brendon and notices your intertwined hands.

A giant smirk works its way on his face.

“Ohhh shit! Guys!” he grabs the attention of the other men sitting close “Our buddy here brought his O.R. nurse and girlfriend!”

Your face warms in slight embarrassment from the attention as all the men start whistling and yelling at the introduction.

Brendon’s hand moves from yours to your waist, pulling you close.

A waiter walks by and offers you both drinks.

Thank god.

You both needed one.

Brendon grabs a whiskey and you grab a wine glass.

The friend closest to you guys beckons you over to sit.

Casual conversation flows and Brendon adds in here and there, glad that the attention is off of you.

Or so he thought.

Brendon glances around the group subtly and notices a few of the guys eyeing you and looking you up and down, not so subtly.

His jaw clenches at how they unashamedly stare and gawk at you.

“Hey baby,” he whispers to you “could you grab me another drink? Maybe a snack we can split?”

You smile at him and kiss his cheek quickly.

“Yeah of course. Be right back, baby.”

He watches you as you walk off and turns back to the guys and sees they’re also watching you walk away.

“Yo Park, your girl is fine as fuck” one guy says with his eyes still on you in the distance.

Brendon’s composure is slowly crumbling.

“Yeah,” another guy chimes in “if I had her in my O.R.? Shit, not a damn thing would be getting done except for her.”

The man breaks into a fit of laughter as the other guys high five him and agree.

Brendon frowns at the jokes being made, gripping his thigh hard to keep from decking the men.

He doesn’t like the idea of anyone else having you. 

You're his.

—--

On the other side of the room you're grabbing new drinks.

It’s like you can feel his brooding attitude from across the room.

You turn to look for him and you see the irritation clear across his face as he swirls the whiskey around in his cup.

After the bartender hands you the drinks you make your way back to him.

His buddies quickly glance at you as you walk past, not being discreet enough with their comments about you.

“Fuck, the things I’d do if I had her.”

“She could have anyone and she chooses old man over here.”

“I bet he had to pay her to be here. No way she’s actually dating him.”

The smiling assholes aren’t subtle when they say it and it’s clear that Brendon hears it too when his frown gets even worse.

Luckily you can squash the talk and reassure Brendon all at once.

Brendon is sitting on a leather couch. So you place your left leg between his and then place your right knee on the cushion on the outside of his leg.

The placement has you practically straddling his thigh with your dress riding up dangerously high.

Brendon must notice because his hands grab your ass and hold you closer to him, shielding what’s only his to see.

“Hey baby” you greet him sweetly.

He gives you a “hey”, frown still in place.

You lean in closer so your mouth is right by his ear.

“I know what they’re saying, Bren. You also know that none of it is true. As far as I’m concerned,” you whisper “they’re not the ones who get me in their O.R. every day. You do.”

Your hand makes its way to the back of his head where you lightly scratch through his hair.

A weakness of his.

“They’re also not the ones who are gonna get to fuck me at the end of the night. You are. So, how about you turn that frown upside down and we go home to our own party?”

You hear his breath hitch at your words and a slight groan escapes him.

“Y-Yeah. Yeah let’s fucking do that” he grits out “But can we wait a few minutes?”

Your eyebrows furrow at the question.

“I mean yeah but wh-” 

Your words are cut off as he pulls you flush against him. 

More so against his hard cock.

“Aaah okay baby” you laugh a little.

“Thanks sweetheart.” he groans as he leans his head back against the couch.

—-

Unbeknownst to you both, your audience had watched the interaction with rapt attention.

Eventually they all had silently slipped away to collect themselves and let their jealousy spill over elsewhere.

You made it clear you were Brendon’s and they had finally gotten the message.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Jack looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head as his hands went to rest on his hips. When he looked back down, he found you walking toward the nurse and it suddenly made complete sense. 

He let out a sigh. “This has to be a joke.”

His eyes, as they did more often than was appropriate, caught on you, hair coming down loose from where you’d pinned it, the scrubs lopsided at one hip, riding lower than where they’d started at the beginning of the night. You turned to say something to the guy quickly, and the movement caught the slip, your scrub top moving up half an inch, and Jack’s eyes went there before his brain could tell him that was wrong, some groove in him that noticed you before it noticed anything useful. He had a second of pure, unhelpful distraction before his brain reminded him that he was an attending and had things to do. 

“I actually think it’s funny,” Lena said, shrugging.

Of course it had something to do with you. He should’ve figured it out the second he saw the guy standing there with his hands in the pouch of his scrubs, rocking heel to toe like the floor was just too exciting to be standing on. Nobody loitered around the ambulance bay at midnight for good reason. People came through those doors bleeding or they didn’t come through them at all, and this guy had shown up with nothing wrong with him, except maybe a case for some lovesickness. 

“I’m gonna make this stop,” Jack said, already pushing himself away from the nurse’s station.

Lena’s eyes widened slightly. “Don’t say anything that gets you sat down with HR.”

“She can goddamn try me,” he said, and went. Also because Jack was fairly sure you would never report him to HR. 

He crossed the floor and caught the tail-end of your conversation as he closed in.

“ — just tell me when you’re free, that’s all I’m asking,” the guy was saying.

You were already half-turned, already gone as you waved a hand loosely beside you. “I don’t know, I just don’t think we should try again.” 

Jack blew out a breath, standing a few feet short of you, your back facing him. Why was he not surprised? He’d been keeping tally without meaning to, and he knew that was embarrassing. There was the radiology fellow who’d started hand-delivering films that very well could’ve gone through the system; the travel nurse who’d washed through in six weeks and left the floor faintly weird in his wake; the anaesthesia resident who now took the long way around the department if he saw you at the end of it, as though he were a dog who’d learned the fence was electric. And now this one, apparently, Peds with his whole hopeful heart hanging out in Jack’s department. 

“You’re so sweet for coming down here,” you practically crooned at him, shifting on your heels, eyes flicking down to the form in your hand. “But I really do have a whole long night ahead of me, and I know my answer’s not gonna change, so I won’t make you wait around for it, okay?” 

Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes when you said the words with the upward lilt of a woman sending a toddler back to his mother. He wanted to laugh a little when he saw that the guy had taken it standing up like it was a gift. 

The hell of it was that Jack understood the man. He understood every last one of them because he stood next to you fifty hours a week, had been doing so for three years, and whatever the department thought of him after his consistent therapy, he was not carved out of stone. 

Jack was afraid that if he hadn’t been your attending these last four years and a little younger, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he’d have been eating out of the palm of your hand. 

You gave the guy a there-there pat, and it was only then did his eyes land on Jack, who he probably knew was your fucking attending. You turned then, and immediately said, “Oh, Dr. Abbot, I’ve got the guy in six’s labs back, the potassium —”

“Mhm.” Jack’s hands came up and landed on your shoulders before you’d finished the sentence, squaring you off the spot where you stood and turning you bodily back toward the floor like you were a gurney. 

“It is four-point-nine, but the EKG’s good, so I was gonna recheck in —” 

“Let’s recheck it now,” he said. He kept you moving, his palms broad through the cotton of your scrubs, steering you a few feet till your own feet caught onto the idea. 

You grumbled something under your breath, and once he’d stopped you right in front of six, you turned to face him with your brows raised.

“Say something?” he asked, tipping his chin down.

“You seem like you’re mad at me,” you said. 

“Huh. I do?” He let go of your shoulders — noticing, distantly, the exact second his hands came off and suddenly felt too empty — and reached past you to pluck six’s chart off the tray, more to have something to do with them than needing it. “You’re right. You should recheck in ten minutes.”

“You’re mad at me,” you said again, crossing your arms over your chest. 

He blew out a breath, and suddenly felt just a little silly at getting worked up over a nurse by the doors when there was a large, glowing board behind him full of names that needed his complete, undivided attention. 

You were a senior resident, after all, four years deep, one of his sharpest — you’d treated the guy in six, hadn’t you, you’d flagged it and called for the EKG and made the right call on the recheck before he’d even asked, all while dismantling some man’s hopes. Somehow, your mess and competence ran on the same current. You never let the first touch the second. He’d have loved, some nights, to have an excuse to be mad — a missed lab, a blown line, anything he could write up and point at — and you kept declining to hand him one. All of this meant he was left with this vague swampy irritation, and Jack wasn’t the sort of mentor who liked to hound upon that. 

“No, sweetheart, I just love it when you get random men hanging around the department,” he settled on saying, feeling his shoulders visibly loosen a fraction.

You winced, eyes darting over to the emptiness in front of the doors now. “Sorry.” 

“You’d say it won’t happen again, but we both know better.” He shrugged. Then, he reached out his hand — he wasn’t sure why, except that it just happened naturally — and patted you once on the shoulder, then on the second turned you to face the curtains leading to your patient. “Doctor up.”

And you did, the loose, embarrassed shape of you being replaced in the space of a single breath, being replaced by something Jack had watched grow into you over the years and still hadn’t quite gotten used to. 

Trauma called it in nine minutes later, an MVC, unrestrained driver, GCS dropping in the field. Jack was working on a laceration in four when he heard the crackled warning, and by the time he’d looked up out the curtains, you were already moving, gowned and at the head of the bay calling out assignments like you’d been doing this for a decade.

“I need two units O-neg before he rolls in,” you said, voice pitched high enough to carry without yelling, cutting clean through the perpetual noise of the department. “Somebody get me a second eighteen-gauge ready, and I want an ultrasound in here.”

Donnie and Mateo were already moving, and so were the people around you, falling into your orbit like the room had easily reorganized itself around your voice the second it went up. Jack stood by the curtain, gloves from the lac still on, and found he couldn’t make himself move just yet.

The doors banged open. EMS wheeled the stretcher through fast, calling out vitals over each other, and you were already on the patient’s side before the gurney had fully stopped moving, hands moving on his neck, chest, eyes scanning his pupils in a matter of ten seconds. He began walking over, catching your voice as you called out your reads as someone hung the blood and someone else prepped the ultrasound wand. “Page neuro now.”

“On it,” Mateo said, already moving.

You had both hands on the patient, running the primary survey quickly, confirming, checking, discarding possibilities out in short, clipped sentences Jack recognized as the sound of your brain running six steps ahead of your mouth. Sweat had started on your hairline. You called out for OR to be on standby, eyes flickering around the room and landing on Jack. “OR, please,” you said, aimed at him, brows going up. 

“On it,” Jack said, because there was no way he was going to let you be wrong about needing something and didn’t make sure you got it.

The next six minutes went by fast and loud, in bursts and then suddenly quiet, the room narrowing down on functionality. You stood at the center of it; you called it and ran it. You got the man upstairs stable enough that Walsh didn’t sound worried for one second, and that was a compliment from her. 

Jack watched the whole thing from four feet back, arms crossed, and chipping in when your brain had snagged. He was feeling a heat in his chest helplessly and entirely unprofessional, it was always present when he was able to see, in real-time, how far you’d come from your first day of residency when your hands were a second too slow on the central line and how your voice would pitch up at the end of every read, asking for permission every time instead of stating it like a fact, eyes finding him across the room each time, checking.

There was none of that left in you now, he realized, had done so a long time ago. He thought, watching you now, that this was the closest thing he’d let himself do to falling in years, standing uselessly riveted as he watched a woman he’d taught outgrow the need for him in real time, and finding that instead of the loss he’d expected to feel when the day finally came, all he felt was warm and terrifying and too much like pride. 

When the room had started clearing out, he watched your mouth drop open as you let out a heavy breath, eyes going over to him. The second he watched you realize he was still there, your face shifted, the relief turning into something sharper. 

“Why didn’t you jump in?” You crossed the floor toward him in four hard strides, gloves already peeled off and balled tight in one fist, snapping the second one free with a motion that looked terrifyingly like it wanted to be aimed at him. “His pressure tanked for thirty seconds and you just watched.”

“You had it.”

“You didn’t know that,” you said, voice going up an octave, adrenaline still thrumming through you, hands coming up the gesture at the blood-streaked floor. “I could’ve missed something. You’re the attending, Jack, you’re supposed to catch if I missed something —”

“I would’ve,” he interrupted, stepping in close enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep glaring at him properly. “The second you needed me, I would’ve stepped in. I wasn’t gonna take it from you before you did.” 

“You can’t gamble like that with a patient —” Your chest was rising and falling fast, gloves now crushed in your fist, and he could see the fear catching up now that everything around you had gone quiet enough to let it, something that looked more like fear of yourself than for the patient. “What if I’d frozen —?”

“I knew you wouldn’t.” He reached his hand out, thumb catching a smear of the blood at your jaw you’d accidentally smeared on yourself, wiping it off carefully with the pad of his thumb, and felt you go still under it. “You don’t trust my judgement?”

“You know I do. You just could’ve said something.”

“I could’ve. He dropped his hand from your jaw only to catch your wrist instead. “Didn’t wanna interrupt you being brilliant. Kinda liked watching it happen.”

Your mouth opened, surely to let out some unnecessary retort, and died there when he pressed one slow stroke of his thumb against your wrist, raising a brow. 

“Relax,” he said, voice going rough as he leaned in a little, forcing you to meet his eyes properly. “Just take the win. That’s an order.”

“Now you wanna give orders,” you mumbled.

He barked out a short laugh, letting go of your wrist. “Only when you’re being stubborn for no reason.”   

It was sometime during the second year of your residency when he’d started catching your drift. It had started with a random Friday shift. He’d seen you at the station, elbows on the counter, telling Lena something conspiratorially. Jack was meant to be reading a chart but couldn’t help how his ears had perked up. Anything to get through the shift, he supposed.

“ — no, but he was perfect on paper,” you were saying, “kept his house clean and everything. He told me he kept his plant alive for six years —”

“So, what happened?” Lena said flatly, like she already knew what you were going to say but wanted to hear anyway. 

“He wanted to take me bowling on the second date,” you said through a sigh. “I know how it sounds, but you’ve gotta hear me out —”

“I’m genuinely not going anywhere.”

“ — for the first date, bowling’s fun. But he took me to a nice dinner the first time, he set a standard, and then the second date he goes bowling, which means the effort’s already —” You created a little downward slope with your hand. “And if it’s already sliding on date two, where’s it at on date two hundred? I can already see my marriage with him and it’s bad.”

It seemed you had a criteria, Jack learned then. It was proven even more when he’d heard you talk about your other failed dates, seen them, and learned — without ever wanting to — what they were, to an extent. 

He knew you couldn’t stand a man who ordered for you without asking. He knew you’d written off a fellow for the way he talked about his mother, and another one — an accountant, a rare specimen who had no clue what an EKG was — over a text message you’d read aloud to Ellis in a voice of complete horror, though Jack had never caught what it actually said, only your face while you read it. He knew you gave people precisely three dates, that this was a rule you held if the first and second date went well, three apparently being the magic number at which a person could no longer hide the demon they were going to turn out to be (your words).

He knew, too, that you only allowed one kiss after the first date, if even that. It was never up for negotiation, no matter how beautifully the night had gone, for you never wanted to end up “emotionally overdrawn on an account you hadn’t even opened yet.”

He knew you a man lost real points if, over the three dates, if it involved drinks, he ordered the same one. He knew a man gained them, silently and instantly, for being able to sit in a lull without narrating his way out of it, and that you considered this the single rarest trait in modern dating.

He knew you were looking for something you had no name for and would recognize on sight, which struck him as a hell of a way to run a search.

He’d have told you, if you asked, that he tuned most of the station chatter out as a matter of survival, for while he enjoyed the occasional gossip, he couldn’t very well absorb everyone’s business. And that was true about everyone’s business but yours, apparently, because yours came in clear.

Your business he retained against his own better judgement, and he realized — once, during a slow shift — that he could’ve drawn you a better map of your taste than you seemed to carry yourself. He could’ve told you, if you asked, exactly the kind of man who’d finally clear your bar, and exactly why he had yet to show up. 

It was almost nice, some nights, watching you try anyway. The ER was a place where everyone was kept tethered to the world by a thread, and everyone who worked in it long enough to develop some version of the same calluses. Jack had grown his years ago, and he wore them invisible, occasionally aching, and had come to terms with it being permanent.

Love, for Jack, had stopped being a real noun before you’d shown up, somewhere between things he used to want and things he’d decided weren’t for him anymore.

You still believed in it. You’d watched this place take everything soft out of grown men twice your seniority and somehow walked through the same fire hopeful, still convinced, against every scrap of evidence, that somewhere there was a person worth all that hoping.

For that reason, he had decided to not interrupt your endeavors, not until now, when he noticed you during hand-off before your night shift with him started, in front of Robby, of all people. 

While Jack loved Robby like a brother, he had a documented, department-wide, actuarially reliable seven-week expiration date on every woman he charmed out of this building. He’d heard intra-departmental gossip about him. There was, Jack was fairly sure, a running joke about it that predated your residency by years. 

He knew you definitely were not finding love in his best friend. But Jack felt the buzzing in his mind go quiet and mean watching how you with him.

You laughed at something and Jack lost, for one humiliating second, the thread of what he’d walked over to say. It happened sometimes, more than he’d admit to anyone. Ordinary noises out of you hit him somewhere in his chest before the better part of him flagged it as a problem, and he had to physically clear his throat before finding his footing again. 

“ — Italian’s always good after pulling a double,” Robby was saying. “But I do love some microwave ramen, too, when I’m missing my med student days.” 

“Oh, so your standards have been raised being chief?” you said, and Jack could hear the smile and wariness in it. 

“For sure —”

Jack let out a huff, something resembling a laugh, as his feet planted him between the two of you. He was close enough that his shoulder nudged yours and you had to step back to keep your balance. He felt your weight land for a second against him with a satisfaction he had no, absolutely no business feeling for something so small. So childish.

He turned to Robby, spreading his hands wide, mock outrage. “My resident.”

Robby looked mildly amused, unbothered, so Jack added, before he could respond, “Go home before I report you to HR.”

“You’d do that to me?” 

“In a heartbeat. Have some shame.” Jack kept his shoulder where it was still angled half in front of you, an old, unexamined instinct keeping the line drawn even though Robby had already backed off.

He tipped his head toward the doors, toward the gold light coming up in them, the day shift draining out around you both. “There’s a whole rich life waitin’ for you out there.”

Robby just smiled and pushed off the counter, giving you a small wave before he left.

Jack turned to you then, brows furrowed. “Seriously?”

You let out a short laugh. “Work hard, play hard?” 

“Soundin’ a lot like a frat brother right now. Never have those words been said in an ER,” Jack said. 

“I wasn’t actually going to do it,” you said, rushing the words out with something more honest in them. “For the record. I know what — he’s got a reputation.” You picked at the counter. “I was just talking to him. He’s funny.”

Jack had to recalibrate for a second. “You were talkin’ sweet to him.” 

“I talk sweet to everyone.” You lifted a shoulder, completely unbothered. “You should try it sometime.”

He rolled his eyes at that. He reached over for your cup of coffee sitting between you — closer to his elbow than yours — and drank a sip, eyes going up to the ceiling at the sheer volume of syrup you’d decided you needed in your bloodstream today. “The hell?” he muttered, turning the cup slightly as if that would help. “Are you trying to embalm yourself?”

“Give it back.”

“In a minute.” He took a second sip, slower this time, and watched you over the rim of the cup. Then, he set it back a few degrees off how you’d had it, just to see your jaw tick.

You pulled the cup back in, thumbed it around until the lid faced you again, and drank from it without breaking your explanation. “I’m offended you think I’ll get wine and dined by the chief attending.” You tilted your head. “Give me some credit here. I won’t be his seven weeks.”

“Huh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was warm. “Well, good. Don’t think he’ll clear your bar anyway.”

“See, you get it,” you said, pointing a finger at him. “At least someone around here does.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his head slightly forward that even he hadn’t realized that he had shifted the distance just slightly. “Better than most.”

Your eyes widened slightly at that, and Jack took that as his cue to step back, clear his throat, as he jerked his chin toward the board.

“Alright, time to work. Stop the play,” he said, trying to get his voice the right level. “Go look at chest pain on three.”

“So bossy,” you said, but you were already turning around to go to three.

Well, that’s what he was, wasn’t he? For some reason, he had to remind himself that. 

It was what he had to remind himself as his hands hovered your trembling ones as you tried to pump air into Mrs. Foley’s lungs, knowing she was already gone — had been for a while now, if he was honest — longer than it took you to admit. He knew it, he’d grown the grim ability to recognize when a body stopped being a patient and being someone you were performing compressions on for the family’s sake, for your own need to have done everything. 

He’d let it run anyway, because you hadn’t accepted it yet, and he’d wanted to give you that extra minute to arrive at it on your own. 

Mateo had come up to Jack’s side, snapping his gloves off, the sound of it overshadowed by your own heaving. 

“She has to call it,” he murmured. “You want me to —”

“No.” Jack’s eyes, he felt, could not move away from your distress. “I’ve got her.” 

Mateo looked at him for a moment longer than the moment warranted, and then he stepped back and let Jack be. You were still going, your compressions had gone harder, faster, less like genuine medicine and more like you were pleading with Mrs. Foley herself now. Sweat had gone to the hair at your temple. Your jaw was set in a clench Jack recognized all too well, and for a moment, Jack wished that he didn’t have to be so acutely tuned into watching what the job did to others, the same way it did to him. 

He stepped in behind your shoulder, close, and brought his hand down over yours where they were locked on the old woman’s chest.

“Look at the clock,” he said quietly into your ear.

“One more round —” 

“You’ve done plenty.” He pressed, gently, until your hands stilled under his, and felt your entire body resist it. “You know she was gone before we could’ve even done anything —”

“She’s been my patient for years —” 

Jack knew then that while you may have been an excellent doctor, his senior resident that had bloomed under his mentorship but still could’ve gone without him and done just the same, it wasn’t a good feeling to wonder if the job would dim you the way it had him. 

“I know.” He kept his hands over yours with enough pressure so as to not let you drive them down again. “That’s why it’s yours to call. But you’ve gotta call it, Doctor.”

Your breath hitched as you turned your neck to face him, and there was a pool brimming on your lashline that you kept at bay, nodding. Your hands under his stopped straining upward, and he felt the exact second you accepted it, for it moved through your shoulders and down your spine and left you a little smaller standing there, the fight trickling into the moment after, which Jack always thought was worse. 

“Time of death,” you said, forcing your voice back into the procedural tone, “oh-three-forty-one.” You peeled your gloves off finger-by-finger.

His hand found the small of your back after taking the minute, leading you to the little family consult room with the boxed tissues and fake ficus with a couch that had absorbed more bad news since longer than you or he had worked there. He shut the door with the flat of his hand and let the floor’s noise cut to a hum through the drywall. 

You stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed, holding yourself, and stayed silent. 

Jack propped himself against the table, arms folded, as he breathed out a small sigh through his nose. He knew you weren’t a talker after the bad ones. Some residents came out of a loss with their mouths running, narrating it into something survivable, and some went quiet and small and had to be waited out, and you were the second kind. So he waited.

You broke it eventually, like he always knew you would have. “I’ve got a butterscotch she gave me seven months ago in my locker still,” you murmured, craning your neck so you were looking at the ceiling. You wiped under your eyes with the heel of your hand roughly. 

“Think I’ve got one, too,” he murmured, wincing as he tried to shift his weight. 

It had been building up for the past few hours, a hot ring of wrong down below the knee where the socket had gone slick and furnace-warm because it was past hour fourteen, when he’d sweated the fit and never changed the liner because there’d been no window that wasn’t already accounted for. He shifted his weight off it, trying again, and reached down to thumb the release, breaking the seal. 

He let out a short, punched out sigh as he pulled himself down onto the chair behind him, one hand balancing himself on the table. “Sorry,” he gruffed out, jaw clenching. 

Your eyes flickered down to the prosthetic limb he was balancing against the pole of the table and you were already moving before he could finish apologizing. You never asked if he needed a hand. You’d learned sometime during your second year that asking him gave him a chance to say no, and you’d quit handing him that chance sometime during your second year, so now you just came. You went down on one knee at the pole of the table.

“Don’t say sorry,” you mumbled, eyes not meeting him.

His jaw stayed tight and he didn’t fight it, fight you. That was a formality and you both knew it, a thing he did with his shoulders and not his hands, but he watched the top of your head and thought — like he always did, each time, and never said out loud — there was no one else on god’s green earth he’d let do this in the way you did. Not the prosthetist, who did it clinically. Not the VA, who did it tired. You did it each time like it was nothing and everything at once, as though this something not worth remarking on. 

He very badly wanted to thank you, despite how small he always felt when you did this. He wanted to tell you that you were, without question, better at this than anyone who was paid to do it.

Your fingers found the socket and went for the liner because you knew the fit went bad and the sweat before it went bad anywhere a person could see, knew he’d have to run it slick and furnace-hot than spend the fourteen minutes off the floor. You rolled it back with the flat of your thumb, easing the trapped heat out of it, and he felt the pressure of the ring of raw below his knee and had to clench his jaw to not let the relief show on his face. You spared him anyway by keeping your eyes down where they’d been.

“You’ll strip your skin doing this,” you said conversationally, the roughness still present in your voice from the code. “You know that. You keep running it past twelve and one of these nights it’s cellulitis and I’m admitting you.” 

“If only I could be so lucky.”

He ducked his head slightly, a part of him wanting to catch the reaction, and he saw how one corner of your lip was barely turned up. 

You thumbed a line of red where the socket’s edge had bitten in, checking it, and your touch went careful around there. “This is new. The edge is catching higher than it was.”

“Went to a new liner last month,” he said, voice low. “Not broke in yet.” 

“Then you break it on your days off. Not on a fourteen hour.” You finally looked up at him, shaking your head with this flat, fond expression he’d come to realize was your favorite way to look at him. “You’d write me up for less.” 

“I’d write you up for a lot less,” he agreed, thinking back on the time you’d fought him tooth-and-nail over staying through a migraine, refusing, point-blank, to hand off a soft rule-out chest pain at eleven when the migraine had started very visibly began creeping up on you. 

He’d caught you before you’d said a word about it because you’d begun squinting at the numbers and pressed the heel of your hand against one eye for a moment too long between patients, thinking nobody was watching. He was, he realized, always watching you in some way.

“Go home,” he’d said quietly, catching you by the elbow outside the curtain. “That’s not a request.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve got a migraine.”

“I’ve got a job.” Your jaw had clenched, stubbornly, and Jack had thought that even if he’d put all his strength into it, he wouldn’t have been able to unclench it for you. “I’m not handing off a chest pain because my head hurts. This guy has waited long enough for a bed. I’m not the priority here.”

He’d wanted to tell you that you were, actually, that you were exactly the priority, and watching you white-knuckle forms with your pupils blown different sizes from pain scared him more than any board full of critical pains ever had. But he’d just pulled down the light two notches, told the nurses to shadow eleven’s discharge, and put a bottle of water and two Tylenol on your desk without a word. And thank god, you’d taken the Tylenol and finished the shift standing up because sitting made the room tilt worse, and only taken on non-critical cases. You’d refused until the end that you should’ve gone home three hours earlier.  

Now, you huffed something that was nearly a laugh, your first real once since the code, and went back to setting. And Jack sat there with his arms crossed in the dark with your hands on the worst-guarded part of him and the door shut against the whole floor, and thought about how he believed nobody deserved you. People were vile and sucked and cut in line and let doors swing shut behind them, and you handed out three dates to men who wrote sonnets in your voicemail and couldn’t clear a bar you’d never once lowered for anyone. He’d thought, more nights than he liked to admit, that these people had no idea what they were auditioning for. 

His eyes snagged on you because there was nothing else in this small room worth looking at. There was still salt dried in your lashline from the code. You were a wreck and you were fixing his leg anyway, still half-shaking from a woman you couldn’t save, and it hadn’t occurred to you to stop and put yourself back together first. It never did. Jack had seen the care run out of you before you ever decided to spend it. 

“I’m sorry about Mrs. Foley,” he said.

You shook your head, face still angled down, thumb pausing mid-motion. “I’ll be okay,” you murmured, lifting up one shoulder. “I just hate that she couldn’t get here sooner.”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said plainly. “Family said she’s been feeling off for two days now.”

“I know.” Your voice cracked, betraying the flatness you were trying to present. “Doesn’t make it easier.”

You lifted your head for a moment, then, looking at him with a sad smile he knew you were painting on to get him to stop talking.

He nodded stiffly, tipping his chin down. “Alright. Finish my leg and we’ll run this floor together.”

Up in radiology a few nights later, Jack had gone himself to sort out a reading that had been sitting long and he’d cornered a tech and got what he needed and was already halfway out the door, jacket sleeves still rolled from the last set of compressions, when he saw the guy standing off by the light boxes. 

Younger. A resident, he supposed, in scrubs a size too crisp for someone who’d actually been on the shift long enough to earn wrinkles in them. He’d been watching Jack the whole time — Jack could feel it, the itch of being observed — shifting his weight heel to toe against the linoleum floor. 

“Somethin’ on my face?” Jack said flatly because he really did have to get back to the floor.

“You’re — sorry, you’re Dr. Abbot, right?”

“Last I checked.” 

The guy’s hand came out of his jacket’s pocket, and there was a piece of folded paper in it. Jack looked at it like it was a spider, hoping — no, praying — it had something to do with work.

“Could you give this to her?” the guy asked, and Jack’s hope died, as he stepped closer. “The senior resident on your shift. She’ll — she’ll know who it’s from.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack murmured, brows pulling in together. “You ever heard of texting, kid?” 

“I did,” he said, and Jack could practically feel the heat radiating off of him. “She stopped answering, so I figured, maybe on paper, she’d actually —”

“Take the hint,” Jack grumbled, snatching the paper out of his hand. Then, as he turned to the door, he said, “You know I work in the ER?” When the guy only nodded quickly, he added, “You know she works in the ER?” 

“I — yeah. Obviously.”

“Then you know she doesn’t need this.” He held up the paper between him and the guy. “She’s got enough on her plate without some guy too chicken to call her handing me a note like I’m her mailman.”

The guy opened his mouth, nose scrunching at Jack’s words, but nothing came out. 

“Yeah.” Jack was already walking, note tucked in his pocket, done with the conversation. “Try calling next time. Or don’t.” 

The guy looked at least a little sheepish, a little ashamed, and Jack thought good, he should feel ashamed. He wasn’t sure what the protocol in dating was now — he’d been just a little rusty and out of the stretch for a stretch of years he preferred not to count in single digits — but he was fairly certain that whatever the rules had curdled up to, this could not possibly be inside them.

He rode the elevator down with the note in his pockets, and he could feel the small stiff square of another man’s hope pressing over the outside of his thigh. 

He found you at your desk, hands running restlessly through your hair as you spoke into the microphone, charting. The words were coming out of you bluntly, mechanic and after saying the same variation a thousand times over. There was a pen behind your ear you’d forgotten about and the residue of a lab value gone blue across the back of your hand where you’d scrawled it hours ago and never washed off.

He stood there for a second before you noticed him, and thought — not for the first time and with the same low irritation he always felt about it — that he had no earthly business being the man this got routed to.

Jack leaned down so his head hovered beside yours, scanning your work on the screen, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, head tilted to read your screen at an angle that had nothing to do with actually needing to see it. 

“The man wants an espresso martini?” he asked, furrowing his brows as he read over your notes, right by your ear. 

You jumped just slightly and swivelled on your stool to face him, then back at the screen. “Shit — Jack. Announce yourself.” You scanned the words on your notes, shaking your head and already backspacing. “No, that was me talking to myself. Stupid mic picked it up.”

“Long as it’s just the one,” he drawled, staying there in your space a little longer, watching the side of your face instead of the screen now. “Those things sneak up on you.”

“Speaking from experience?” You turned on your stool to face him fully, chin tilting up to meet his eyes, something playful and a little challenging in it. 

“I’ve got a couple decades on you. Everything’s snuck up on me.” 

You held his gaze a little longer, then looked away first, tongue coming out over your lips for a second. He took a small satisfaction in not being the one who blinked first. 

He blew out a breath through his nose, remembering, with reluctance now, what he’d actually come here to do. “Speaking of sneaking up.” He pulled out the note from his pocket. “I got something to deliver to you —”

You furrowed your brows when he handed it to you. “Secret admirer?” you asked jokingly. 

He barked out a short laugh. “Nothin’ secret about it. You ignoring some radiology fellow?”

You grimaced, opening the note and scanning over the words quickly. He could’ve left, but stayed instead and watched you read it. The frown only pulled deeper, and he saw your eye twitch once as you scanned the words.

Against his better judgement, he murmured, “That bad?” 

“Uh — no, it’s okay.” You shrugged stiffly. 

“Huh,” he breathed out, studying you outright now. “Wonder what you’re doin’ to these guys to get them so wound up.”

You chuckled, mostly to yourself. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”  

His chest tightened at that. It was unfair how you could make anything to him sound like something he’d been waiting to hear. He swallowed. “Suppose I would.”

“That an offer, Dr. Abbot?” 

“Might be,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. 

You laughed — surprised, the tension in your shoulders breaking slightly — and shook your head, folding the note back up. “You’re ridiculous. Well, thank you for getting it to me. I’m sorry he bothered you with this —” You swivelled, placing the note on your desk before picking up your phone. “That’s really weird.” 

“That’s one word for it,” Jack said, and left it there, because you’d already turned and had your phone in one hand and the microphone in the other. The small furrow was back between your brows, and he’d learned there was a point past which pushing you got him a brighter, smaller version of whatever you were covering. 

He drifted toward the far end of the station where Mateo was crouched at the crash cart running his palm along the drawers, checking seals, restocking and checking the fact of it on slower nights like this. 

“She okay?” Mateo asked, snapping the drawer, seemingly having caught the interaction. 

“Oh, you know.” Jack leaned a shoulder into the wall, arms crossing. “The belle of our ball. Can’t clock in without collecting a proposal.”

Mateo huffed. “She loves love.”

“That she does.” Jack watched you across the station, the phone lit against your ear now. “Don’t know why she keeps doing that to herself, though.”

“She’s an optimist.” Mateo clicked a seal into place, then moved down the cart. “Thinks someone’s gonna turn out different.”

Jack hummed, then, because the question had been sitting low and unlovely for a couple hours, he asked, “You two give it a run ever?” 

Mateo turned his neck to look up at Jack. “Me and —” He jutted his thumb behind him to vaguely gesture at you. “Her?”

“Mhm.” Jack kept his eyes on you. “You’re close.”

“Nah.” Mateo went back to the cart, shaking his head as he chuckled softly. “I don’t think I’d pass a single one of her tests. Besides, I got my eye on someone.”

“Apparently I don’t make the list either, I guess,” Jack murmured.

Mateo laughed through his nose, eyeing Jack with something new now. “You want to?” 

Jack caught it, reaching his palm and smacking it against Mateo’s curls with no force. “No. Now, do your job.”

“I am —” He laughed through the words, eyes scanning over Jack’s stiffened posture now. “It’s good you don’t, then. Couldn’t handle her anyway.” 

“Sure, I could,” Jack said immediately. 

Mateo’s head turned again, lips curving upwards at Jack’s words, and he felt momentarily blindsided by his own mouth, entirely too honest for something that had started as a joke. 

“Sure, you could,” Mateo teased, drawing out the words.

“Shut it.” Jack grabbed a box of gloves off the cart and set it down two shelves lower than it needed to go, purely to do something with his hands that didn’t involve reaching for Mateo’s collar. “Wasn’t a real question.”

Couldn’t handle you? As if he didn’t know, without having to think about it, that you took the stairs two at a time instead of the elevator when you were annoyed and needed somewhere to put your extra energy, or that you’d started drinking your coffee black on nights a patient reminded you of someone, syrup and cream abandoned, like sweetness felt wrong to have that shift. As if he hadn’t noticed, months ago, that you hummed the same four off-key notes from a jingle neither you nor Jack could place when a chart was boring you to death, or that you double-checked every single IV line now, ever since one bad mistake in your first year. He could very well handle you, he simply hadn’t been given the chance to do so.

Most of the time, Jack was fine with watching your love life play out in 3D. More often than not, he knew they’d never work out. You were just too good for anyone who came sniffing, and there was a grim comfort in that, in knowing the fellows and the nurses would wash through and out and leave you exactly where he found you, three feet down the counter from him, close enough to keep.

Tonight the comfort wasn’t coming. Mateo’s accidental interrogation had rubbed Jack wrongly, somewhere he had yet to fully locate yet, and was sitting in his chest like a splinter he kept forgetting was there until he turned the corner over the night, saw you, and noticed it was there. He should’ve let it stay as nothing, but his brain had apparently decided three hours later was the correct time to relitigate the whole exchange, turning it over at odd intervals between patients like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth.

It was the bad sort of slow in the ER, the sort that let his brain fill up with things he’d have no time for on a real night. Ellis had wandered over to your desk with two energy drinks and placed her arms loosely beside your computer.

Jack was distantly aware he had misplaced labs to hand back to you because they’d gotten lost in the system, and he told himself that was the whole reason his body had started moving in your direction. 

“I got a rundown from Marge,” Ellis said, dropping into an empty stool beside you. “Apparently he wrote it out of the OR.”

“You’re joking,” you muttered. “I don’t understand it.” 

Jack stood there with the labs in his hand, close enough to hear it. 

“I’m still wondering if I should respond,” you were saying, half into your hands. “Is this romantic? This one’s never happened before.”

Ellis laughed slightly with you, and the two of you had built one of those small pockets that slow nights sometimes allowed, thirty seconds of being people instead of clinicians.

Jack set the labs down at the edge of your keyboard harder than he meant to, the papers slapping flat against the desk, and both of you looked up at him like he’d grown two heads. Fuck — had he? It sure felt like he was operating off of whatever chemical cocktail his brain had whipped up for nights like this, some ugly little compound of jealousy and exhaustion. He was fairly sure if you pulled his labs right now they’d look like a man in the middle of a bad reaction to something not yet figured out in the scientific world. 

“Labs on eight got lost.” His palm stayed on the sheet for a few seconds too long, some instinct telling him to keep his hand on something solid before the rest of him did something stupid. “You’ll want to recheck the trop.” 

His eyes cut, against every ounce of better judgement he had left, to the note still folded in your hand, the same one he’d carried down like it was radioactive, the same note that had clearly done something for you that four years of Jack standing next to you clearly hadn’t. An unreasonable, low feeling creeped up behind his ribs at the sight of it, hot and out of proportion to a piece of folded-fucking-paper. 

Ellis’s smile went uncertain as he felt her gaze snag on him. 

You blinked up at him, and whatever had been sitting easy in your face a second ago curdled itself away, the corners of your mouth retreating. He knew this same retreat, had watched you recalibrate your muscles, swiftly, built to be unreadable against anyone who hadn’t spent four years learning your face. 

His stomach dropped and heat climbed up the back of his neck, jaw tightening on its own. He hated that his body had learned to answer you the way it answered a motor alarm. He hated more that some raw, cornered part in him — still smarting about Mateo’s offhand comment and sore from that folded note — felt it wasn’t soothed.

You blinked up at him, and the laugh faded off your face, and you said, easily, warm, “Yeah — course. I’ll get right on that.”

He shrugged up one shoulder, lips pressing into a thin line. He turned, already walking away. “Whenever there’s a gap on your social calendar, I guess.”

He heard the small silence that opened behind him, and he could practically imagine you and Ellis looking at each other. Then, he heard you push back from the desk, the stool wheels catching, and your footsteps coming after him like he’d known they would, because you were the last person to let something like that go. 

“Hey.” You fell into step beside him, voice pitched low, still giving him more benefit than the doubt had earned in the last ten seconds. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.” He tilted his neck up slightly to do a quick scan of the board, some stubborn muscle in his neck refusing to let him meet your eyes. “Got a department to run.”

“And you’ve been running it great. You just became weird right now.” He could feel you working it over beside him, shifting on your feet as you toed the line between resident and the hard-won territory neither of you had ever named. “Jack.” 

“You want to laugh about your shitty dates, that’s your business,” he said instead of letting it go, sounding too far from the man who’d had his hands hovering over yours an hour ago, watching you put in a chest tube, telling you that you’d done well. “Do it a little quieter. This is an ER, not a lunch table.”

His words stopped you for half a step. Jack kept walking, an ugly, cowardly momentum carrying him three more steps before you caught back up.

He heard you recalibrate your voice in real time when you said, “I was charting on a slow shift,” carefully. “You’ve made worse jokes when it’s even more busy. What’s this about?”

“It’s about you treating this place like it’s your dating pool and not your place of work.” The words came out much uglier than he meant, and he didn’t have it in him to call them back. “It’s not professional. It reflects on the department. Reflects on me. Somebody’s gotta say it, and apparently that’s me, since you clearly enjoy it too much to stop.” 

You stopped walking altogether this time. He turned to face your stillness whole, then, and found your eyes narrowed at him, looking like you’d been hit from a direction you hadn’t been completely guarding against. 

He let out a breath, fingers going up to his forehead to wipe at sweat that wasn’t there. “I’m just saying what —”

“I’m sorry,” you said, voice going level and courteous, as you nodded quickly. “You’re right. You’re my attending, it reflects on you. I’ll keep my personal life out of work.” 

“That’s not —” he tried, but you were already turning away, shoulders squared and chin level, professional armor snapping into place just like he’d told you to. It should have made him feel better to watch you take it so cleanly, to not make a big deal out of it. All it made him feel was like something had been surgically removed from him. 

“Stop —” he tried again, to your back now, and the sentence died somewhere between his teeth and the air. That was okay. There was no end to the sentence that didn’t sound worse than the beginning anyway. 

He blew out a sharp breath through his nose, standing in the middle of the floor with his hand still half-raised toward you, fingers curling back into his palm when he realized you weren’t there to reach. Jack felt, distantly, uselessly, like the only thing standing still in the entire building. 

“Great going,” he heard Lena say, trailing past him, a tray tucked against her hip, not even breaking stride. “You got rid of the one entertainment we’ve got around here.”

His shoulders stiffened, and he caught up with her in three steps, jaw working around words that wanted to spill out defensively and came out simply tired. “It’s not entertainment if she keeps getting hurt,” he grumbled. “She’s not a show. Stop treating her like one.” 

“Didn’t look like she was the one getting hurt tonight,” she said, rounding a corner and leaving him standing there.

Jack let out a low groan, running a palm down the lower half of his face, and dropped his hand only when he’d scrubbed enough friction into his jaw to feel it sting a little, which was at least a sensation he’d chosen, at least tonight. He stood there a second longer, staring at nothing in particular. His hands found his hips on reflex. 

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and dragged both hands back through his hair, gripping once at the roots before letting go. 

He rolled his neck, felt it pop unsatisfyingly, and pushed off the wall he hadn’t even realized he was leaning against. His leg fucking ached, the burn starting behind his knee. He ignored it like he always did and started walking anyway, jaw still held tight, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he could physically hold himself together with the seams of his own black scrubs.

It was by the lockers after hand-off that Jack saw you next. Both of you had conveniently managed to work over-time; he because there was nothing to get home to, and you — he’d heard through the grapevine — because one of your patient’s little sister was coming in toward close, and you simply wanted to talk with her instead of handing the situation off to one of the day residents.

Usually, nobody had asked you to stay when you did. Most times, there was no version of staying that showed up in your favor; he and Shen were gone, so there was no attending grading you on it; no hours that counted. It was just for a kid who was going to get bad news from a face she’d seen before, so you cost yourself hours of sleep you most definitely needed to be the soft spot for a stranger’s little sister, and hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, and he knew you would’ve been embarrassed if he brought it up. 

He found you using the little mirror inside your locker to apply some kind of pink-tubed gloss with one hand while the other ran its fingers through your hair. Jack pursed his lips, eyeing you from the doorway, because he was pretty sure you’d done something different to it in the last ten minutes. 

“Look nice,” he tried, biting the bullet and walking toward his own locker. “Goin’ somewhere?” 

You caught his eyes in the mirror instead of turning around. “Just breakfast,” you said, and there was none of the earlier lilt in it, the warmth that you’d always aimed at him gone functional. You capped the gloss with more force than it needed and dropped it into your bag. 

Jack stood there a second too long with his hand over his own locker without opening it. He’d expected — and he knew he was more optimistic than usual for doing so — your easy back-and-forth, his slip-up from earlier forgotten. He wasn’t sure what to do with the quiet or you not looking at him properly, hairbrush working through your hair in short strokes. 

He’d saved around thirty lives tonight, and that was what he was good at. He was not good, and had never claimed to be good, at the aftermath of hurting a person he’d have put his own body between a stretcher and wall for, without meaning to, over something that had never been about the radiology fellow at all. 

He opted out of opening his locker and chose instead to lean his bicep against the locker, eyeing you in front of him. “Mad at me?” he murmured. 

You let out a short breath, shaking your head, and he tracked all your micro-expressions through the mirror. “On the clock?” 

“Well, we’ve both been off it for a while now,” he said, watching the shape of your mouth in the mirror, waiting for it to give something away. It didn’t. “But no. Asking as your —” He stopped himself, because ‘friend’ seemed not to be the honest word though it was the first one that popped up. “Off the clock. Whatever I am to you right now.”

You set the hairbrush down on the little shelf with more care than the moment needed. “It’s okay, Jack,” you said, shaking your head.

“Don’t think it is. Try again.”

You watched him for a second in the mirror, then you turned. 

“It’s just embarrassing,” you said, and the words came out smaller than anything he’d heard out of you in years. You crossed your arms over your chest. “I respect you and I hate that you’d think for one second I don’t take this place seriously.” Your voice cracked on the last word, just barely, and you pressed your lips together. “So, yeah. It’s embarrassing to have my attending confirming I’m exactly what people think I am.”

He was shaking his head before you could even finish the sentence. “Nobody thinks —”

“You do,” you said, voice rising slightly. “So, off the clock, I’m embarrassed, and tonight, I’m going to be your resident. Because I agree with you. It’s been unprofessional of me to keep dating within the hospital —” You threw your arms up halfway by your side, and you let out a short laugh that came out dry and wrong. “And I hate that you’ve probably been thinking it for four years.”

“I haven’t,” he said too fast. God, he’d come here to make tonight better for you, not to make you re-evaluate all your years working with him. “Sure, I thought it was none of my business how you spend your good nights off. Didn’t stop me from thinking they didn’t deserve ‘em.” 

You rolled your eyes. “You’re just saying that now ‘cause you feel bad.”

“Wish it were that simple,” he said, and chose to leave it unelaborated because it wasn’t that simple and he had no intention of explaining exactly why. “Half the time, you know it’s not gonna work out. You’re breaking my heart by making me watch you break yours.” 

You blinked, and he watched the fight loosen out of you by inches. “It’s just a free breakfast, Jack. Nothing to get your heart broken over.” 

Jack let out a huff through his nose, mouth opening to say what, he didn’t know. “Is that all? ‘Cause I can get you free breakfast for the rest of your life.” 

You laughed, disbelieving, through your nose, some of the night’s weight finally cracking off of you. “You’ve got a weird way of apologizing.” 

“Just to my favorite resident.” He pointed his index finger at you, lazy, and pushed himself off the lockers. His shoulder blades left a faint dust-print on the metal where he’d been leaning. He thumbed in the combination without looking at the dial — muscle memory, years of the same locker — and the door swung open with a rusted squeak. He pulled out his bag. “So?” 

“So what?” 

“You ditch the fellow.” He slung the bag up over his shoulder, close enough now that he caught the tail-end of the perfume you’d lightly spritzed over yourself. “I buy.”

You looked at him for a second too long, lips pushing to one side, as though you were gauging whether this was a bit or not, another line he’d tossed and wanted to let die on its own. He stood there, jaw set and features relaxing to show you he did mean it, more than he wanted to admit, if he was being honest with himself. 

“You’re serious.” 

“Do I look like I’m not?” He nodded once at your locker, your bag sitting on the shelf. “Grab your stuff. We’re going.” 

“Fine,” you said finally, reaching over and zipping your backpack all the way before throwing it over one shoulder. “Can you drive? I’ve been taking the subway.”

“Why?” he asked drily. “You’ve got a car.”

Jack realized, as he watched you slide in across from him and folding both hands around the coffee before it was all the way poured, that he’d never once been on a date where the woman had no idea it was one. 

It wasn’t lost on him what that made him, a man old enough to know better, letting a thing be one thing on his side of the table and another thing entirely on yours, saying nothing to square the difference. But he’d meant what he’d said, and he was going to feed you. 

You ordered a short stack, eggs, hash brown, decaf on loop. She wrote it down, definitely having heard worse from better.

“Thanks for the treat, Jack,” you said when Dina left, bringing the rim of your cup to your lips. “Don’t think I could’ve done another breakfast to let him down gently.”

“We have to make some changes to your lifestyle,” Jack replied, voice rough, as he eyed you. 

“Oh, yeah?” you murmured. “We?” 

“Well, I did have to deliver a note to you today. In all my life working here, that’s never happened.” 

You laughed around the rim of your cup. “In my defense, I don’t think anyone’s wrote me a note out of an OR either. That’s a first for both of us.”

“Glad we share the experience.”

Dina came by with a pot and topped you off without being asked, and placed the food in front of you. Jack watched you reach for the salt before your fork had even touched the eggs, shaking it twice over the plate.

“You’re gonna give yourself a stroke by forty.”

“You’re gonna give me a stroke right now if you comment on my food.” But you set the shaker down after the third shake, which he noticed and had to bite back a smile.

Dina dropped his plate in front of him — bacon, eggs, no pancakes — and you were reaching for it with a piece of your fork before she’d even finished setting his fork down. He gave you a faux-frown, picking up his fork and, without looking, spreading a piece of your hashbrown off the opposite plate in trade. He wasn’t sure when the two of you had started stealing bites and sips off of each other’s stuff, only that it’d started somewhere and calcified into something neither of you mentioned. 

“Rude,” you said, mouth already full.

“Learned it from you,” he muttered, nudging his plate an inch closer to your side of the table, which you took full advantage of. 

Dina’s radio crackled through something twangy and close-to-familiar behind the counter, competing with the clatter of a skillet somewhere in the back, the whole place smelling like batter and grease soaked into decades of countertop, syrup that had dried a hundred small amber rings nobody had ever fully scrubbed off. 

“I’ve never been here before.” You absentmindedly cut the hashbrown in half as your eyes raked over the place. “This a regular spot for you?”

“Since before you joined,” he said easily, but his brows furrowed as he realized he’d been coming here alone for years. He was in the same booth when he could get it, ordered the same order, and it struck to him only now, watching you eat your hashbrowns, how much smaller and less lonely a booth felt with you taking up the other half of it. “Used to be the only quiet I got on some weeks.” 

You hummed. “And now?”

“Guess the quiet’s pretty negotiable.” He shrugged. “I can go without it.”

You smiled down at your plate, something easy working at the corner of your mouth. A thread of syrup had gathered at the seam of your lips — you hadn’t noticed, too busy considering his answer — and before he’d cleared the impulse with the rest of himself, his thumb was already moving, catching it at the corner quickly, no different than when he swiped under your lashline for salt after a bad night.

You stayed still, having gotten used to his hands somewhere during your residency.

“You’re a mess,” he said, wiping his thumb off on the paper napkin folded under his elbow. 

“You’ve got coffee on your scrub top,” you said, eyes flicking down to his chest. His brows furrowed and he looked down, and you were right. “Pot, kettle.”

He’d been about to say something else, he could’ve sworn it, but had lost every word of it watching you smile so unguarded, free enough to let him look at you. He had to reach for his coffee just to have something to do with his hands. 

When the check came, folded in its little plastic tray, you both reached for it at once. Your hand landed flat over his knuckles. Neither of you moved it for a second, for his hand stayed exactly where it was, broad and unmoving under yours, and something unspoken passed through the two inches of fornica between your faces as he raised a brow at you. He slid the tray out from under you slowly.

“Said I’m buying,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

The drive back had been quieter than the one there had been. It was nearing ten in the morning, and he knew both of you had stayed up longer than intended, especially for two people who had to clock back in in a shorter amount of time than he deemed plausible to reset completely.

He’d cracked the window down an inch, and the air coming through carried the smell of wet pavement and the sound of a garbage truck grinding its gears three streets over. Your neighborhood, he was learning, woke up slow; there was a paperboy on a bike, a guy in scrubs different from yours locking up his own car after a shift that wasn’t at the PTMC, and Jack drove through it with two fingers loose over the wheel. Neither of you had bothered with the radio.

You’d gone somewhere billowy around your third cup of decaf, all the sharp edges of the night replaced with something looser and sleepier, and you gave him directions in a voice gone thick from exhaustion as you were likely starting to feel it behind your eyes. 

He pulled his car along the curb and let it idle, one shoe braced against the floorboard, watching the numbers of your building.

“Gonna sleep?” he asked.

“Gonna try.” You were already working the bag strap over your shoulder, hair falling loose out of the knot you’d put it up in at some point at the diner, strands of it catching the early light. “I’ve got no idea how you do this then take SWAT calls.”

“You’d be able to do it, too, if I put you on the field.” 

You mumbled something, letting your head drop against the window for a second, before picking itself back up. “Stop threatening me, Jack.” 

He watched you fight your eyelids, his mouth pulling up at the corners at the sight. “C’mon. Get inside before I gotta carry you up.”

You snorted, half-hearted. “You can’t. You’d throw your hip out.”

“Try me.” He was already rounding the hood before you’d gathered your bearings, boots loud on the quiet street, and you let out another laugh and let him get there first, too tired to argue about who gets to open what.

He walked you up the cracked path, palm settling at the small of your back, and you leaned back into it, half your weight given over without you noticing it. 

At the door, you fumbled with your keys out from under a granola wrapper and a capless pen, missed the lock twice, and gave up trying on the third. You turned to face him instead with your back against the frame and your bag slowly sliding off one shoulder.

“Thank you,” you said, words coming out loose and filtered by the exhaustion even as you tried to meet his eyes head-on. “For the — everything. The explanation. And the breakfast.” 

Jack felt his lips curve up, fingers flexing at his sides. “Anytime.” 

“And for driving me there — thank you. And for the drive back.” 

“Uh-huh. You gonna go inside?” he said, voice going quieter as he looked down at the ground, at how the toes of your shoes were almost touching. “Or keep thanking me until you fall asleep standing up?” 

You cocked your head to the side, your lips moving upwards into a fuller smile. His own mouth curved as he shifted on his feet slightly, closing the barely-there inch between his shoes and yours. 

“Jack?” 

He hummed, and you went up slightly onto your toes before he’d finished deciding what to do with you. Or maybe he’d moved in first, or maybe there was no real order to it at all. His mouth found yours somewhere in that uncertainty, slowly despite it, because he’d already worked out every version of this moment and this one had simply appeared in front of him.

His hand came up to cradle the side of your jaw, thumb settling into the soft hollow just beneath your ears. Your skin was warm despite the cold snap in the air, much softer than he’d let himself imagine, and he felt the exact second your breath caught against his mouth, a small stutter that made his fingers curve around your jaw, index resting against your cheekbone. 

He kept it slow, it was the only thing he had any real control over right now, the pace of it instead of the fact of it. He used what little he had left, dragging his mouth against yours, like he could somehow make up for four years of nothing by refusing to rush the first thirty seconds of something. His other hand found your waist, and his palm felt how your back curved into him, the hitch of your ribs on an inhale, and he pressed you back the last inch against the doorframe more to ground himself. 

Your fist found the front of his canvas jacket, dragging him in the last stubborn space he’d been too careful to close himself, and a sound came out of his chest that embarrassed him a little. He felt you smile against his mouth, and his entire body felt warm at having been caught enjoying this entirely as much as he was. 

He tilted his head so his forehead pressed against yours and pulled his mouth away. His lips jutted out slightly, feeling suddenly empty and unwilling to put the full distance back between the two of you.

Your eyes were still shut, and you were breathing unevenly. “Thank you,” you murmured. 

He huffed a short laugh, and in it, realized how breathless he, too, was. 

You tipped your chin back up, already chasing him.

Jack felt the want knot up inside him, greedy and unreasonably leaning back in to meet you halfway before the rest of him had caught up and made him stop. He made a small sound in his throat and pinched his eyes shut, letting you get right up to the edge of it, breath already tangling with his, wanting so badly to just let it happen, before his finger came up between you, pressed light against your bottom lip to stop you a hair short. It was more for his own sake than the words he remembered you telling someone years ago ringing in his head.

“Ah-ah.” His voice came out rough with want, entirely at odds with his actions. “Your rule. Only one kiss after the first date. I’m trying —” he exhaled hard, almost dramatically, “— trying real hard here to make it to the second.”

“Huh?” Your eyes peeled open. “This was a date?” 

“Best one you’ve had I’m guessing, with the way you’re breaking your rules.” His finger stayed right where it was, and he watched your eyes struggle to focus, still glassy from the kiss. He could feel the warm huff of breath breaking unsteady against his fingertip, could feel your mouth soft and parted underneath it, waiting on him. 

You pressed a peck against his finger instead, your mouth barely dragging against his skin as a shy smile formed behind it that he felt more than saw. “Maybe.”

“Well, good.” He smiled, despite himself, and pushed himself off your forehead, opting instead to press his lips there. “Get some sleep,” he murmured against your hairline, lips lingering a little longer there. “Might be able to get a full seven hours.” 

“Will you?” 

“Doubt it.” He pulled back enough to look at you properly, thumb tracing a line along your cheekbone — his touch feather-light, tracking the exact curve of it, memorizing the route — before he made himself drop his hand entirely, fingers curling loosely at his sides because suddenly he had no idea what to do with them without you under them. “Kinda got a lot on my mind now.”

“Yeah?” You bit back a smile, still not quite steady on your feet. “Anything you wanna share with the class?”

“Not a chance.” He bent a fraction and hooked two fingers under the strap of your bag where it’d slid down to your elbow, dragging it slowly back up to your shoulders, knuckles grazing your arms the whole way. “You’ll find out. Eventually.”

He forced himself to step off the mat — one step back, then the second, putting real distance between you now — forcing ease into his expression that he definitely wasn’t feeling. He stopped a few feet away from you anyway, unable to fully commit to walking away, watching you stunned and still in your doorway, mouth a little kiss-soft. He felt so completely helpless and pleased at the sight. “Text me when you’re up and I’ll get to planning date two.” 

You raised a hand into a wave, fingers curling in the air.

“Bye, Jack,” you said, and his name came out of your mouth softer than you probably meant it to, smooth and cushy the way it never sounded on shift.

The black metal band on his finger was clear as day. You could see it from nearly across the room, glinting in the hanging lights where his weathered hand wrapped around his lowball tumbler. She must have been able to see it with how intently she gazed at him, drinking him in as if she’d never seen a man before. 

That made it all the worse. Accidents happened, a stumble turning into brushed shoulders that could be laughed off, but this, this, was purposeful. It was a choice she was making, to cozy up to Jack, to not look at his wedding band as if it would merely poof out of existence.

Fuck that.

You were storming over before you realized it.

Jack’s face lit up as he spotted you, still a few feet away.

“There’s my girl,” he greeted warmly. His arm was outstretched, welcoming you against his side, the spot by your stool still occupied by the pretty brunette woman who’d had her hands all over him.

“Hi, baby,” you said sweetly, stepping into his embrace and leaning even closer, one hand cupping his cheek to steady him as you kissed him deeply. He made a small sound of surprise in the back of his throat, but kissed you back without hesitation, his arm wrapping further around you to hold you close. His eyes were dark when you parted, a faint questioning look passing behind them as you grinned at him coyly, bottom lip caught between your teeth. 

“Making friends?” you asked lightly, settling yourself sideways on his lap, making sure to favor his good leg before you pressed one more kiss to his temple, your fingers combing through the thick curls at the back of his head. When you turned to face the woman, smiling overly sweetly at her, you felt a sick twinge of satisfaction to see the way her lips pursed together tightly.

“Sweetheart, this is Jessie,” Jack introduced, gesturing to the woman. His words lilted with faint humor, like he was watching his favorite reality show and the drama had just gotten good. “She was just complimenting my shirt.”

You laughed weakly. Of course she was. Just the thick flannel, surely it had nothing to do with the way he filled it out with his broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps. 

“It looks like really good quality,” Jessie said, desperately trying to sound neutral. “What is it, cotton?”

Jack hummed, looking to you with a faint smirk. “I wouldn’t know,” he admitted. “This one bought it for me.” His arm tightened around you for a moment, giving you a slight squeeze. 

You frowned, your hand running up and down his chest to feel the fabric as you thought. She wasn’t wrong, it really was a good shirt. You’d always loved the soft feel of it under your hands when you ran your hands over his shoulders, sometimes bunching the fabric in your fists when he caught you off guard with an especially deep kiss. 

“I don’t remember.” You chuckled, giving her an easy smile. “Guess I’ll have to check later when he takes it off.”

Jessie nodded once in silent understanding, swallowing thickly before she picked up her drink from the counter. It was so close to the one you’d left Jack to look over for you that it had left a ring of condensation on the edge of the napkin you used as a coaster. 

“Right, well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she said, doing her best to paste on a cheerful smile to match her overly chipper tone. Her words sounded hollow, her finger tracing the rim of her glass as her eyes moved between you and Jack.

You only nodded, giving her an almost sympathetic smile to watch her go from your perch on Jack’s lap, fingers still twirling through his curls in a way you knew from countless hours curled up together that he loved. You picked up your own glass to sip, and Jack had to duck his head into the crook of your neck to muffle the sudden laugh he let slip at the way her eyes widened when she saw your wedding ring. 

A flicker of pride went through him, glad that even after so long together, he had made the right choice that day. Hours of designing had gone into your set of rings, months spent deliberating every curve of the band and cut of the stone before he finally showed you, wanting to make every detail perfect for you, to give you something as beautiful as you were that you would never want to take off. And you never did. 

“Have a good night, Jessie!” you called as she retreated. 

Jack gave you a warm look when she was out of earshot, dark hazel eyes trailing over your face like he wanted to catch every detail of it.

“You handled that mildly,” he drawled, amusement curling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes glimmered, the corners creasing the way they always did, bearing the weight of his hidden smile for him. 

You laughed, adjusting your position on his lap to wrap both arms behind his neck. 

“Careful, Jack,” you teased. “I might think you liked seeing me all possessive.”

He only hummed, the deep vibration carrying through his chest and into your side pressed against it, lifting one shoulder before letting it down into a small shrug. 

“You expect me to be upset to have you all over me, playing with my hair?” He gave you a cocky smirk, gaze lowering for just a moment to your lips before flicking back up. Your breath caught, and he noticed, head tilting slightly as he looked up at you through his lashes that had no business being so thick. 

“Thought for a moment you might smash a bottle over her head,” he continued, though his voice had dropped. His hand gripped your thigh, pulling you higher up his lap as he adjusted how he sat on the barstool. It couldn’t have been comfortable for him, but he was far from complaining. “That what you want, honey? Me having to stitch her up?”

The thought of his hands on her made you angry enough to bite your tongue. 

“That’s exactly why I didn’t,” you pointed out smugly, nestling even closer until the tip of your nose brushed the bridge of his. “I’d much rather keep you as my private doctor, Jack.”

He laughed through his nose, his unblinking gaze meeting yours without dropping. “I’ll be your anything, baby, but I don’t think I should be your doctor.”

You rolled your eyes, giving his scruffy cheek a kiss before fully melting against him, nuzzling into the side of his neck.

“Have it your way then. I’ll just make Robby my emergency contact.”

A sharp laugh left Jack before he could stop it. 

You didn’t say anything and you knew Robby wanted you to, he wanted a reaction. He wanted you to go after him but that was done. You held Jack’s arm and shook your head “Let him be, chances are if you try to go talk to him he’ll just push you away” Jack nodded “Okay” “I don’t think we should’ve kissed” you admitted “No offense of course” “Non taken” he held his hands up “I saw the chance and took it, that being said…can I take you out sometime ? Maybe this weekend ?” Chuckling you rubbed your arm and finally nodded after a bit “Okay, can it be Sunday though ? College gameday is Saturday and my friends are in from college and they really want to go” “Sunday it is,” Jack nodded with a smile “You wanna pick or you want me to pick ?” “You pick dinner and I pick dessert” you grinned “Deal ?” “Deal, let’s shake on it” he offered his hand to you You reached and shook it, lingering a little longer than usual as you took in his features. His hair was greying more at the temples but it was still full of curls, his skin perfectly freckled as if it had personally been kissed the sun and his eyes resembled emerald jewels that caught the perfect shine under the moonlight “Uh, do I have dinner on my teeth ?” he asked softly “That damn caesar salad, I knew it”

“No, no. You’re fine” you shook your head “Sorry, I doze off” He sighed softly “I think you should maybe go talk to him, I think he wants you to” “Well I don’t” you shook your head “This is not the time or place and quite frankly I think he’s the one who made it pretty clear. If anything maybe it’s best we don’t talk” “Okay” Jack nodded as he put his suit jacket over your shoulders  “Let’s head back inside, gonna be over in a bit anyways. Gameday should be fun, I went a couple years back and it was cool” “If I get too fucked up can I call you ?” you met his eyes “Preferably before you get shit faced” he winked

Back inside the event was finally coming to an end. You said your goodbyes to the board members, hugged your father when he congratulated you on the overwhelmingly positive response to your designs and promised Jack you'd text him when you got home

He had been reluctant to let you leave alone, insisting on walking you downstairs despite your teasing that he was becoming annoying as can be 

"Occupational hazard," he laughed before hesitating a bit and pressing a kiss to your forehead outside the elevators “See you tomorrow, get some rest”

“See you” you grinned

The hotel lobby was beginning to empty when you made your way outside to the valet stand. The cool air felt nice for it being summer, you looked back when you heard footsteps and sighed looking ahead to see if your car was almost back 

“Ignoring me” Robby nodded “Funny” “There’s nothing comical when it comes to you Michael” you answered back “You know I tried to talk to you and you didn’t let me, instead you’re shacking up with Jack now. Who does that ?” “Not that I owe you an explanation but no, I am not…shacking up with Jack whatever that old fucking phrase means and second of all, you’re quite literally here with Noelle, so what exactly is your deal ?” you sighed “Honestly it’s been a night and this weekend is gonna be busy” “Yeah because going to some football game is such a hard job” he scoffed “Here we fucking go, you know what go back inside. I’m tired and I wanna go home” you sighed “Do you like him more than you liked me ?” he asked suddenly Rubbing your forehead you shook your head “Michael, go inside. Go back with Noelle please.” “She left” Robby answered “And can you please call me Robby, Michael is what my mother used to call me and that’s not really what I want to be referred as right now” “Please do not, do NOT bring up your mommy issues right now” you snapped back sternly “You know what ? Forget it, I’m out. Have a good night with Abbott, make sure you do that thing you do with your mouth on his dick, I’m sure he’ll love that” Robby looked you in the eye

You weren’t a violent person but in that moment you stepped forward and slapped him across the face as hard as you could “Fuck all the way off and get therapy you weird, manipulative piece of shit”

“You’re fucking insane” he rubbed his cheek “Batshit insane” “At least I can actually admit it and don’t have to go around being some asshole” you responded calmly “I’m not the one going on some suicide mission because I can’t accept help. I’m not the one being cruel to colleagues simply because I can’t handle the fact that maybe just maybe they care about me. That’s you and truth be told, maybe it’s time you walk the walk instead of doing all the talk because quite frankly you acting like a martyr is just getting old and annoying. Face your demons or get on with life Michael” “What the fuck do you know about life ? What do you know about hardship ? Nothing !” he exclaimed “Not a damn thing !” “Oh here we fucking go” you threw your purse on the floor “It’s not my fault that I was born into privilege and I’m not gonna stand here and let you of all fucking people berate me for it. Yes my parents have money, yes I went to amazing private schools and an amazing private university and got to travel all over the world on their dime and had really special opportunities most people my age don’t. But you know what ? That’s what happens when two people get together and have a child they actually wanted. That’s what happens when a child is loved and doted on, they get spoiled” You shook your head and picked your purse back up after a while of silence and let out a sigh “I am sincerely sorry you were dealt with a rough hand in your upbringing but you cannot, you will not” you met his gaze “Use that to project all your anger and insecurities on me. I was your friend, before we hooked up we were friends, genuine friends. You encouraged me to be uncomfortable with things, to face my discomforts and then you wanted sex when you realized you couldn’t just be my friend. You’re the one who pursued me to no end, who laid next to me in bed after that first night and told me how being with me was the only time you felt peace, then you wanna turn around and paint me out to be some whore when you’re the one sleeping around ? Which one is it, Michael ? What am I ? Am I some whore who sleeps around or am I the girl who gave you peace ?”

For once Robby was speechless, you didn’t see him like that ever. He always had a response to everything, good or bad. It sucked that things had to get to this level but quite frankly you were tired of it. His hot and cold demeanor had you at your wits end, especially when he chose to bring it up during a night that should’ve been special for everyone at the hospital

“Nothing” you whispered as your car was brought in “Just as I assumed. Stay away from me and don’t say a word to Jack. Weirdly enough he still cares about you when you don’t give a rats ass about him” Driving back to your apartment felt like hell. Robby deserved every bit of the tongue lashing you had given him yet the pit in your stomach told you otherwise. You pushed it out of your mind the best you could as you got ready for bed and thought about the weekend, knowing it’d be the perfect distraction you needed

Saturday- Gameday

Saturdays were always statistically the worst day for the emergency department, Robby wasn’t superstitious at all but the day had been weirdly calm. It was nearing 4 pm and things had been surprisingly normal as far as the level of patients they had. He was in the middle of sipping his coffee when he saw Dana walk towards him “Ready to go home ?” she asked “Sure” he shrugged “Been up since 4 so I might need a nap”

Dana had known him for years, way too long. He had just finished his residency at Big Charity hospital when he had first gotten to PTMC, the first day on the job he had met her and soon realized she’d be his life long friend. She was upfront and honest while still staying kind after more than 20 years as a nurse and seeing things that he still couldn’t deal with properly

He watched as her phone rang abruptly, her face changing as she hung up and looked up at him “What’s wrong ?” “Set up triage, there’s an incident and we’re gonna have a lot of hurt people coming in” she said “Let’s go” “What happened ?” he asked concerned walking back inside with her “There’s been a shooting at the local college” Dana informed him “I don’t know how many are hurt but they said the shooter’s still at large and police are coming to make sure we’re safe. Let everyone know” Robby felt his stomach drop and shook his head as he stopped walking and leaned against the wall “She’s…she’s at gameday” “Who ?” Dana asked confused, suddenly realizing who he meant “Call her right now, please” He took out his phone with shaking hands and quickly found your contact as he dialed, letting out shaky breaths in between each ring only for it to go to voicemail. He rubbed his forehead and sighed “She’s not answering” “She’s probably fine” Dana said softly “She knows what to do” Robby dialed your number again and again, he sent you text messages that weren’t delivering and you weren’t responding, he did so repeatedly until it was starting to take a toll on him He had no time to calm himself down before cars began pulling in with bloodied victims who were crying and writhing in pain, he along with the others did the best they could in stabilizing them and assigning them to the appropriate triage station. When he saw Jack pull in he walked over and pulled him aside “Please tell me you’ve talked to her” he whispered “Please” “No” Jack whispered, shaking his head “She won’t answer a text or call, I’m just…I’m just hoping all is well and it probably is man, just…just think positive okay ? Everything's gonna be okay”

“Okay” Robby agreed “You’re-You’re right” He moved back outside to help unload more patients when he heard your voice and quickly rushed over “They’re all stable” you panted holding a teenage girl in your lap “Get in quick, she stopped responding to me and I did my best to control her bleeding, she was cohesive and breathing just a few minutes ago” Robby nodded and quickly got a gurney and had the others take her inside, he watched as you wasted no time and helped carry every other person onto a stretcher “Hey…your shirt…you need one” You looked down at yourself in your bralette “I took off my shirt and ripped it to makeshift bandages for people who were bleeding, get me a top, anything” “You’re not a doctor you can’t help, you need to-” “I know how to stabilize wounds, I know how to insert IV’s, I can do stitches and I can keep people distracted. You guys are short nurses and doctors and they’re not gonna let them come by this way because the shooter still hasn’t been found. I can help Robby, I can do this” you met his eyes “Go inside and get scrubs, you do not go inside any surgery room and you only help in cases that are non fatal. You stick by Whitaker and Santos and check in for everything it is that you need to do, is that understood ?” “Understood” you said back going to change quickly “Take her boyfriend with you” he said softly when you got back “Please” You put your arm around the teenage boy and helped him out until you got him in a wheelchair “Come on, we just gotta clean you up and get you stitched up, call your mom while I do this” “But…But I need to be with her” he whispered “Take me to her, please” “She’s with a really good doctor” you said softly “He’s the best of the best and she’s in good hands, don’t worry about her” How you were able to get him to calm down, you didn’t know but somehow it had worked. When his mother got there you left him in her care, accepting her sudden hug and assuring her you’d see them again. You made your way to the cafeteria that had turned into the waiting room full of concerned family members and friends who were looking for their loved ones. Your head turned towards the children that were with them, all with wide eyes and scared looks as they huddled in the furthest corner of the room focusing on one ipad “Hey, Dennis….do we still have that abandoned wing on the 8th floor ?” you asked “We do” he looked up “Should I transfer some patients up there ? I can get some beds ready if you give me like 10 minutes” “Actually it’s not for patients” you shook your head “Go take some beds up there along the old tv’s and kids videotapes that are stored away up in the hospital storage room. We’re gonna take the kids up there. I’m gonna go get juice and snacks from the cafeteria and I’m gonna print out some coloring pages and grab some crayons. They can stay up there away from all this chaos and we can have a nurse and a security guard up there with them to make sure they’re safe while the families of the victims and patients wait to hear what their status is”

“That’s really smart” he said softly with a nod “I’ll get to it quick, I’ll be back soon” “And Dennis ?” you looked at him “Make sure to get your things and put them in the lounge, once it’s time to go home you can crash at mine. I’ve got an extra room that is all yours” With that you spotted Jack and practically speed walked over to him, sighing softly when he looked you over and pet your cheek “You didn’t answer calls or texts, what the fuck ?” he whispered “My phone died” you said quietly “When it all….when it all started I was buying a water bottle and the cashier had me and everyone else who was in line get behind the counter. After about 5 minutes it was silent but when we got out bodies were everywhere, I couldn’t just leave them there so I did what my dad had taught me years ago. I stabilized those who could and jumped in a truck with them to here” “Are you hurt ?” he asked, concerned “Did they check you over ?”

“I’m fine” you answered “I’m fine, I promise. I just wanted to see if I could donate blood. I heard Dana say they’re down O-neg and that’s me”

“Go” he nodded “I’ll find in a bit”

You felt like adrenaline was running through your veins as you made your way to a nurse and took a seat as your blood got drawn, chewing on granola bar she had given you to keep up your energy On the other side was Robby who was simply looking at you, daydreaming in a way to distract himself from the utter chaos that was going on around him. He looked over at Jack who was doing the same thing he was. Both of them were looking in your direction and you were too focused to ever notice “Call it” a nurse suddenly interrupted his thoughts “She’s gone, we couldn’t get the pulse back” “What ?” Robby whispered “She has a pulse, I just heard it” he took the machine and moved it towards her neck “It was just there, she had one” “Robby we don’t have time for this” Jack said gently “You spent over half an hour giving her chest compressions, she’s gone” “She’s 16 and healthy ! I heard her fucking pulse !” Robby snapped “I heard it, it was strong ! It was there ! Start compressions again” “She’s gone” Jack repeated “She’s gone and we’re gonna hand her over and move on to someone else that needs us so she can be placed in peds where the makeshift morgue is an” He felt his skin crawl at the mention of the peds room and shook his head “You….you’re putting dead bodies in the peds room ?” “It’s all we have man” Jack responded gently “I know it’s bad and I know that’s where….that’s where he last-” “Don’t” Robby pointed a finger at him “Don’t fucking mention him. Do not fucking bring his name up” You turned your head towards the now noticeable yelling in the corner and quickly got up for your chair, making your way and taking Robby’s arm gently in your hold “Dr.Robby…you’re needed somewhere else” you lied, giving a look at Jack who nodded in approval You didn’t make much distance before Robby shook you off and walked away in the opposite direction, knowing it’d just be more drama you let him go and went back to Jack “He’s upset that we’re putting bodies in peds” he let you know “That’s where Adamson was, where he passed away” “Oh god” you whispered “I only had met him a handful of times when I was a kid but he was always so kind, my father started his residency here around the time Adamson was still an attending so he knew him for years. I never knew Robby was….was here during covid. I was still in college then” “Robby’s the one who stayed with him” Jack nodded “He would spend all day with other patients but after his shift ended he’d stay in that peds room with Adamson, sometimes sleeping there. He loved him, he worshiped him and one day someone else needed a machine. It was down to helping a little girl or keeping Adamson on the machine, he knew the chance of Adamson getting better was nonexistent but it still hurt him. The kid and Adamson both didn’t end up making it…that hurt him more than anything” “I…I didn’t know” you whispered “If you weren’t here around that time chances are you’d never know, only a few of the residents and Dana know and now you” he said softly Suddenly everything made sense but you were left with no time to digest it as more and more people kept coming, some stable that just needed you to stitch or bandage them up and some that needed more than what you could handle “We need Robby” you said to Dennis as he helped you take off your gloves “Any idea where he’s at ?” “I saw him walk down the hall but haven’t seen him since” he shook his head

“He’s probably taking a piss or sitting on that stupid motorcycle” you sighed “I’ll go find him” Deep down you were grateful to take a breather, you had been going nonstop and you knew somehow when your father found out that he’d be proud. You also knew your mother would push the idea of you going to nursing school and doing what she dreamed of you doing but for now your focus was finding Robby You walked and peeked into the lounge and bathrooms, stopping when you spotted him sitting down with his chest to his knees rocking back and forth in the peds room. This wasn’t what you could handle, this wasn’t what you wanted to see. You debated calling Jack or maybe even someone from psych but you knew he’d hate for you that so instead you gently opened the door and walked in and heard him quietly chanting Shema, Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad

Baruch shem kevod malchuto le'olam va'ed

He was repeating it over and over as he covered his face, not even realizing you were in the room with him. You didn’t want to scare him so you stood in the corner quietly giving him some time as he continued to do it over and over finally going to next to him and offering your hand “Hey…I found you” you lied “Come on, they need you” Robby looked up at you and shook his head “I’ll have Abbott and Shen handle it, I can’t do it”

“Okay…okay then come with me somewhere else” you said softly “Come on, let’s get you out of this gown and gloves” Surprisingly he did as told and allowed you to remove them, he looked at you as you dabbed his cheeks with the back of your hand and fixed his hair “You gotta look presentable where we’re going, we got critics” you tried to joke He looked confused but followed as you both went in the elevator and headed towards the 8th floor, his face softening when he saw the ward filled with beds and blankets and pillows on the floor with kids watching some old disney movie on the tv’s he hadn’t seen in years “Who did this ?” he whispered “She did” a security guard grinned at you “They’re not as nervous or scared anymore, parents can focus on their family members and it’s all good and secure. Perlah just left but she’ll be back too”

“I figured it’d help the kids not feel as stressed” you nodded as you cleared your throat “Hey guys, remember how I said I’d bring a doctor ? This is…my friend, his name is Dr.Robby and he’s been helping make all your family members and friends all better” you smiled “Can you all say thank you to Dr.Robby ?” “Thank you Docta Wobby !” the group of toddlers and little kids all said at the same time “That was so sweet, can you guys show Dr.Robby what you guys made for him ?” you grinned Robby felt his vision get cloudy as one child took it upon herself and held up a large piece of construction paper full of handprints and scribbles “This for you” “Oh” he whispered taking it “Thank you, how nice” “You welcome” she grinned big and hugged his legs For a moment Robby froze and then gently patted her back with a small grin “I need to….get back to helping people but thank you for this” he held up the paper “I will put it in my desk so I can see it every day” “Everyone say bye bye, keep being good for Mr.Ahmed and Ms.Perlah please, let’s be good listeners as well when we go home” you waved them goodbye and walked back out with Robby “They had been asking if they could see a cool doctor who saves lives and I knew just the right person for the job” you said softly “You ready to back out there ?” “Yeah…Yeah I am” he nodded “Thanks for that…do you think maybe we could talk after tonight ? Really talk ?” “I think that’s a good idea” you agreed “For now you go do what you need to do and I’m gonna make sure everyone in the cafeteria has seen their family and friends” Reaching up you kissed his cheek, not because you wanted to give him an idea that there was a chance with you but because he needed some gentleness. He needed to know someone was looking out for him and his wellbeing even with all the bullshit from the other night. You walked away and made your way towards the triage where Jack was standing with a blood IV attached to his leg “You shouldn’t be donating” you chastised “Jack seriously ?”

“What I’m O-neg ?” he shrugged “I’m good, I had a good breakfast and I’m hydrated. I’m perfectly fine to donate some blood” “Yeah you’re sweating” you shook your head and grabbed a nearby towel as you dabbed his forehead “Take a seat please, things look to be like everything is now mostly wound care and not as many critical patients so take a breather” “Only because you say so” he sighed and did as told, sitting with you as he looked around “I got scared when you weren’t getting back to me” “I’m sorry” you apologized “No need to say sorry, it wasn’t on you” Jack murmured “You alright ?” You nodded “I’m not bleeding or injured, no cuts or bruises”

“That’s not what I mean” he looked into your eyes “Are you okay ?” “I will be” you assured him leaning on his shoulder “You okay ?” He shrugged “Eventually I will be but for now….this shit is terrifying.” “They haven’t caught the person who did it, my dad texted me how when he got here to scrub in that it was chaos on the streets” you nodded “Shooter is still out there hiding somewhere” He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and kissed your head “Don’t think about that, we’re safe. We’re gonna stay safe and be okay. Things are getting better” You wanted to believe him, you wanted to take in his comfort but truth be told you were scared out of your mind. Every time a car pulled in or someone else walked in the emergency room you felt yourself tense up terrified they were a shooter. Your direction turned to Robby who was outside with Dr.Shen and Ellis as you heard a car screech in and watched as Robby pushed them behind him “Gun !” he called out loudly as he shielded them You didn’t have time to react as Jack quickly protected you and put his arms around you protectively while police quickly went over to the car and took out the driver, only to realize he was also a police officer who had been injured “Safe, all good” they called “All clear” “Your leg…” you whispered to him “Jack your leg, you’re crushing it” He realized how his leg was positioned and shook his head “It’s…it’s a prosthetic, I-I lost it back during combat” “I..I didn’t know” you shook your head “I’m sorry” “Don’t be sorry for something you didn’t know” he quickly fixed it and got up, offering you a hand “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner tomorrow” You chuckled taking it and smoothing out your jeans “Oh man well in that case pick somewhere really good” “Watch out, Gloria’s back” he whispered, abruptly turning you around “She’s pissed that we took blood donations without properly screening”

“No one was around to properly screen, it was mostly other doctors and nurses and the small number of family members that are here. We took their word for being clean and I don’t think they’d lie to us during a moment like this” Like bad luck Gloria called over Robby and they got into it, you and Jack stood there acting distracted as they both went over safety protocols and procedures. Not once did she ever thank Robby for his efforts or tell him she understood why he approved certain orders, instead she complained and nagged until finally you had enough “Gloria, people could’ve died” you looked at her “We could’ve had more dead bodies if it weren’t for Robby approving blood donations. Everyone donated and that’s the reason lives were saved today. Can we just drop it ?” She shook her head “That’s not the point here, there are protocols that need to be measured for everyone’s health and safety and they weren’t followed. We just screened and tested some of blood we got and low and behold there’s a pregnancy” “What-What type ?” you asked “O-neg” Gloria sighed “Only two bags, they had this” she showed you the sticky note attached to it with your birthday and the time that you had labeled in case anything had gone wrong “the time written says it got donated about 3 hours ago, luckily we screened it and found that out so now I have to find out who donated blood while pregnant” “Pregnant ?” Jack asked joining you guys “Who’s pregnant ?”

Robby said nothing as he looked at you and that was all it took for Jack to understand the situation. He didn’t react as he took Gloria aside and assured her he’d handle things, leaving you and Robby alone in the hallway “You’re….” He couldn’t even finish his sentence before he saw your eyes roll back and caught you just in time as you passed out 

Having friends had never been something you'd taken for granted.

You'd never been one of those people who seemed to be getting along with everyone without even trying, managing to have a place in all different kinds of friend groups or waking up to a load of notifications from friends who wanted to include you without having to think about it.

In high school, when you'd been at the age where teenagers saw every single thing about their looks and their character as a flaw that had to be fixed, you'd tried so desperately to fit in, there hadn't been much left of you when you'd finally accepted that this kind of world was never something you would be a part of.

And the older you got, the more you learned that it might not be as much of an issue as you always thought it was.

You had your friends, after all.

Sure, you didn't have a dozen of people in your close circe, but if there was one thing that adulthood had taught you, itt was that with all the responsibilities it brought, you actually didn't have that much time to spend with your friends either way.

By now, you'd accepted that you could count the amount of people that were actually your friends off on one hand, that your plans always included the same few people and that Bucky knew all of them by now because there hadn't exactly been a lot to introduce him to.

You'd come to peace with it, mostly.

Still, you couldn't deny that there was still this part of you, the one that had developed when you’d been twelve years old and crying about everyone in your class going to a party you weren't invited to, which told you that your worth depended on what others might think of you.

Because if nobody liked you, what even was the point?

And even though you weren't that kid anymore, the desire to be liked had never really left.

It wasn't as intense anymore, sure, but deep down, you knew that it was as much a part of you as the heart beating in your chest, so you accepted it with the kind of resignation that people developed when their doubts took over and fighting them felt like a task too hard to manage.

When you had first started to receive even less messages than you usually did, you'd just thought your friends were busy. You knew damn well that with how hectic life could get, social contacts were hard to manage sometimes.

It was fine. Surely, it was just a phase that would pass again soon.

Except it didn't pass, not really. That's what made it so bad.

Whenever you reached out to your friends, whether it was texting them individually or sending the location of a new café into the group chat, the reactions were… sparse, to put it lightly.

At first, you'd thought that you had done something wrong and they were mad at you, but when you'd asked them about it, the only answer they gave you was that they were busy.

And they weren't lying.

That much you could see in their Instagram stories, the ones you went through more often than you would ever admit.

Pictures from a party on one account, a vacation dump on the other.

They were living their lives and you loved that your them, you really did, but you still couldn't help but notice that all the plans they made were with people you didn't know.

Friends they had, ones that had nothing to do with you because their social circle wasn't even close to as small as yours was.

You figured that with all the friends they had, having one person more or less in their life didn't really make a difference to them.

And all you could do was obsess over how them leaving was your fault.

Maybe, if you would've just managed to step out of your comfort zone a little more, this wouldn't have happened.

After all, interesting people were never the ones that got abandoned, right? That just happened to the ones who weren't entertaining enough to leave an impression.

Maybe, if you would've talked less and laughed at their jokes a little more, you would've been more likeable.

Maybe then you would still have friends.

Honestly, it probably wouldn't hurt so much if you hadn't tried so hard.

You had, though.

You'd tried so hard to be exactly the kind of friend they might want you to be, the one that was always available, the one that answered texts quickly and gave the right kind of advice no matter the situation.

But apparently, that still hadn't been enough.

You'd tried to hide how much this had been affecting you over the last weeks, but you could only do so much.

And with a boyfriend as perceptive as Bucky, you knew that it would only be a matter of time until he would pick up on your change of mood.

The two of you were currently sitting on the couch in his living room, eating dinner together whilst the soft thud if rain hitting the windows provided some comfortable background noise.

Honestly, the scenario would've been comforting in any other situation.

Bucky had spent the last two hours in the kitchen, cooking a warm and comforting meal that made up for the stormy weather outside perfectly, especially because you could enjoy it from the warm living room with the man you loved sitting right next to you.

He'd been so proud of dinner when he'd plated it up for the two of you, you couldn't help but feel guilty for the way you were just absentmindedly pushing it around on your plate.

It tasted good, that wasn't the issue. Bucky's cooking skills had improved so much since you'd first started to teach him how to navigate the kitchen again after he'd admitted that he didn't actually know how to do something so domestic anymore.

You really wanted to just enjoy it with him, to have a nice and cozy evening without letting your stupid insecurities destroy it.

But you couldn't.

The heaviness in your heart was even worse today than it usually was, not because anything in particular had happened but because you knew that it was only a matter of time until you wouldn't have anyone anymore.

It wouldn't take much longer until Bucky would realize that he could do so much better than what you had to offer, and then he would leave.

And with him, the Avengers would be gone too, which would leave you completely and utterly alone and there was nothing you could do about it.

You could try, sure, but there was nothing you could do to stop the inevitable.

You were so deeply lost in thought, you didn't even notice that Bucky had been staring at you for the last few minutes already.

"Do you not like it?"

Your head snapped towards your boyfriend, who was looking at you with an expression that usually meant he was trying to understand something he couldn't exactly figure out yet.

"What?"

"The food," Bucky clarified, gesturing to your full plate. "You barely ate anything. I figured there might not be enough salt in it for you but-"

"Buck, no. It's perfect. I'm just… not hungry, that's all."

The fact that he was now thinking that you didn't like his cooking only made you feel worse, because that wasn't it at all.

The knot in your stomach was just too tight for you to have any kind of appetite.

Unable to look at him any longer, you lowered your gaze to your plate again, forcing yourself to take a bite just for the sake of it.

Bucky really wasn't having it, though.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see how he put his plate down on the table before he got up from where he was sitting, moving so he was kneeling in front of you, gently taking your plate away from you aswell.

"C'mon sweetheart, talk to me. What's going on?"

Sometimes, his attentiveness really was a curse more than it was a blessing. And with him sitting in front of you like that, his beautiful eyes so full of worry and concern, you couldn't keep this from him any longer.

"I just… I'm not really much of an interesting person, am I?"

Bucky's brows pulled together in confusion, his expression turning a little disbelieving now. "Of course you are, doll. Where is this coming from?"

You could already feel your throat tighten uncomfortably, the way he said it so convinced and certain, like he didn't even have to think about his answer twice whilst it was all you've been thinking about over the last few weeks.

"Well, I'm not exactly the person with the biggest amount of friends, am I? And the few friends I do have don't really hang out with me anymore, so there has to be something I'm doing wrong, right? I wouldn't be this unlikeable otherwise."

The words were all but tumbling out of your mouth now, the dam that had been holding every single one of your doubts and insecurities back finally breaking. 

"Everyone's leaving, Bucky, and I really don't know what the hell I am supposed to do to stop it and-"

You couldn't help the way your voice broke, the hitch in your breath dangerously close to a sob as Bucky pulled you into his arms, properly sitting down on the floor so he could put you down in his lap, completely wrapping his arms around you like that was enough to top you from falling apart.

Unfortunately, it really wasn't.

Tears were streaming down your face now, shoulders shaking with the sobs that were ripping from your throat, your boyfriend's embrace giving you exactly the kind of comfort you needed.

And Bucky didn't try to stop you from crying, neither did he try to fix anything right now.

He just… held you. He gave you the oppurtunity to just let go for a moment, to share those ugly and raw thoughts with him and show you that he was there for you anyway.

The two of you just stayed like that for a very long time, how long exactly you couldn't tell, though. It was always like that with Bucky, like his embrace was more than enough to stop the concept of time from making sense anymore.

And Bucky didn't rush you. He just gently rocked you back and forth, his metal arm soothingly moving up and down your back as his other hand cradled your head to his chest.

When the tears finally slowed and you pulled back just enough to look at him again, he carefully brushed some hair out of your face, eyes running over your features like it would help him understand what exactly was going through your head right now. "I need you to listen to me now, alright sweetheart?"

Only when you nodded did he go on, his voice serious in a way you've never heard before.

It wasn't the kind of seriousness that you knew from when he talked about missions.

This felt more personal, like he was talking about something that meant way more too him than anything work related ever could.

"There is nothing wrong with you, and it kills me that you think there is. You are one of the most amazing and interesting people I know, and I love you. If your friends can't appreciate that, that's on them. But I won't let you make yourself small because other people can't see how much of a special person you are."

You knew that Bucky meant what he was saying, you really did, but words somehow still meant so little when words had failed you so often already.

"You're biased, though. Also, I'm your girlfriend. You have to say that kind of stuff."

That made him laugh a little now, a soft smile carefully pulling at his lips.

It wasn't the kind of laugh that was mocking or invalidating your feelings, though. Just the kind which showed that he meant what he said, and that the mere idea of it being a lie a little amusing to him.

"Pretty sure I don't have to do or say anything anymore, love. I'm telling you this because it's true. If you think that my love for you makes me unqualified too answer that question, though, I'm sure that the others would tell you the exact same thing."

You knew that he meant the Avengers by that, but honestly, you weren't sure if that was necessarily true.

"They are your friends, though, not mine."

It wasn't really much of a reasonable explanation, but it made sense to you. To them, you had to feel like an extension of Bucky, which meant that they couldn't exactly say anything bad about you.

Bucky didn't seem to think that at all, though. "Sam told me last week that he would personally kick my ass off the team if I ever managed to mess things up with you. I think it's safe to say that they like you more than they like me by now, sweetheart, and I can't even blame them."

He seemed to notice that you weren't entirely convinced yet, so he just kept going. "I get the feeling of thinking that you aren't enough for people to stay. Trust me, I do. But I also have a very smart and wonderful woman in my life who once told me that my worth doesn't depend on the amount of validation I get from others, because that would never manage to make me feel like I’m enough. And I feel like the things that count for me count for you too, don't they?"

Bucky wasn't wrong- you had told him that, but telling other people things like that was always easier than to believe them yourself. "Well, saying stuff is always easy, isn't it?"

"It is," he agreed. "But you got me and you got the others, doll, and i think it's safe to say that all of us would be more than happy to remind you of how much you mean to all of us as much as you need- especially me. Okay?"

Honestly, it wasn't really okay yet, but after what Bucky'd just said, maybe it was going to be. Sure, there were still going to be days where the feeling of not being enough swallowed you whole and the loneliness felt like a burden too heavy to carry.

But now you knew that you didn't have to carry it alone anymore.

Losing friends was never going to be easy, and honestly? You didn't even want it to be.

Friends were people that you carried close to your heart, which was exactly the reason why it hurt so much when the left.

But you weren't just going to stop caring to avoid the consequences, not when it was such a big part of you- a part that others appreciated, even though you couldn't always see it that way.

And losing yourself over other people leaving? 

That sure as hell wasn't going to happen.

Especially not with your boyfriend still looking at you like that, convincing you that maybe, everything was going to work out just fine.

Your fingers twist in the hem of your sleeve as you sit on the couch, angled just slightly toward him. Bucky’s sprawled beside you, long legs stretched out, one arm hooked over the back of the couch like he owns the space without even trying. There’s a quiet movie playing on the TV, something neither of you are really paying attention to. His attention keeps drifting back to you anyway—little glances, soft and curious.

You notice every single one of them.

You always do.

Your knee bumps his accidentally and your heart jumps like you’ve done something wrong. He doesn’t pull away, though. If anything, his leg shifts just a little closer, pressing more firmly against yours.

God.

You swallow.

“Buck?” you try, and immediately want to hide.

His head turns toward you instantly. “Yeah, doll?” His voice is soft, warm in that way that always makes your chest feel too tight.

You open your mouth.

Nothing comes out.

Because suddenly the words feel embarrassing. Too needy. Too much. What if he doesn’t want to? What if he’s comfortable like this and you mess it up? What if—

You shake your head quickly. “Nothing. Sorry.”

You turn your attention back to the TV like you didn’t just implode right next to him.

There’s a beat of silence.

Then, quieter, closer—“Hey.”

His hand finds your wrist. Not grabbing, not forcing. Just there. Thumb brushing gently over your pulse like he’s checking in.

“You sure?” he asks.

You nod too fast. “Mhm.”

Another pause.

His thumb keeps moving.

“Because,” he says slowly, like he’s choosing his words with care, “you’ve been fidgeting for the last ten minutes. And you keep lookin’ at me like you’ve got somethin’ to say.”

Your face burns.

“I—no, I haven’t.”

Bucky huffs out a quiet, amused breath; eyes twinkling in fondness.

“Doll.”

And that’s it. That one word, all warm and coaxing, and you crumble.

“I just—” you start, and your voice immediately gets smaller. “I was just wondering if, um—if you maybe wanted to—like, if you’re not busy or anything—”

His brows pull together, not in frustration, just confusion. “Not busy,” he repeats gently.

“Right, yeah, I know, I just mean—if you didn’t want to, that’s totally fine, I just—”

“Hey.” His hand slides up from your wrist to your arm, grounding. “Slow down. What’re you askin’ me, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart.

You might actually pass away.

You take a breath, staring determinedly at a spot on the couch instead of at him.

“Can we… cuddle?” you mumble, so quiet it barely counts as sound. “Just for a little bit. If that’s okay.”

Silence.

Oh God.

You knew it. You knew you shouldn’t have asked. You start to pull back, already preparing to laugh it off, to say you didn’t mean it, to pretend—

“Oh.”

It’s soft. Almost breathless.

You risk a glance up.

Bucky looks like you just handed him something precious.

His expression has completely melted. There’s no other word for it. The sharp lines of his face have gone soft, eyes wide and warm and a little bit awed, like he can’t believe you just asked him that.

“Yeah,” he says immediately. Then, a little stronger, like he needs to make sure you hear him properly, “Yeah, of course we can.”

Your shoulders loosen just a fraction. “Really?”

“Really?” he echoes, almost incredulous. “Doll, you never gotta ask like it’s a big favor.”

“I just didn’t wanna bother you,” you admit, voice small again.

That does something to him.

You see it, the way his jaw tightens just slightly.

“You could never bother me,” he says, quiet but firm.

Before you can overthink it again, he’s already moving.

His arm drops from the back of the couch, sliding around your shoulders, guiding you gently into him. Like he’s giving you every chance to change your mind, even though you never would.

You go easily, curling into his side.

And the second you settle against him, it’s like something in him gives.

He exhales, long and slow, like he’s been holding that breath all day. His arm tightens around you, pulling you closer until you’re practically draped over him. His hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, pressing you into his chest.

“There we go,” he murmurs, more to himself than anything.

You can hear his heartbeat. Feel it under your cheek—steady, strong.

Safe.

Your hand curls against his shirt, bunching the fabric lightly as you relax into him. The earlier nerves start to fade, replaced by something warm and soft that spreads through your chest.

“You okay?” he asks after a moment, voice low.

“Mhm,” you hum. “Sorry I made it weird.”

He lets out a quiet laugh, the sound vibrating through you.

“You didn’t make it weird,” he says. “You made my day.”

You tilt your head just enough to look up at him. “I did?”

“Yeah.” His thumb starts tracing slow, absent circles against your arm. “You askin’ for this? Means you want me close.” A small pause. “I like that.”

Your face heats again, but it’s softer this time. Less panic, more… something shy and happy.

“I always want you close,” you admit.

That completely ruins him.

You feel it in the way his hold on you tightens, not enough to hurt, just enough to keep you there. Like he’s not letting go anytime soon.

“Then c’mere whenever you want,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head. “Don’t make yourself nervous over it, alright?”

You nod against his chest.

“Okay.”

His fingers drift through your hair, slow and careful, and the movie continues playing in the background, forgotten.

You stay tucked against him, warm and quiet, listening to his heartbeat.

“No don’t do that thing where you act like you didn’t have a choice” you snap, hair sticking to the nape of your neck in swirls. He draws his head back with offence “excuse me?” His lips press together, pulling off his glasses in an agitated move and pointing them at you with accusation that made your heart thud even louder in the name of adrenaline.

You and Robby arguing was a rare sight. Discussing, yes. Disagreeing, it happens. Snapping on the worse days, but not this kind of argument where you don’t have time to pull into a secluded corner with muffled voices. You’re putting on a show in the middle of central bay but there’s such a flurry of workers, victims and god knows who else that decided to cram up behind your white walls, that people hardly notice you. His accusation doesn’t slip past his lips before you’re interrupting.

“Yes excuse you! I was in total control of the situation and you overruled me and now Whitaker’s doing heart massage instead of being out in triage!”

It smells of chlorine and plastic and blood.

He shakes his head adamantly before running a hand down his face with a disapproving sound as he looks around “I don’t have time to consider your goddamn medical pride in a mass casualty, Hastings! I overruled you, I made a decision as your attending that I deemed necessary and now you need to move on instead of feeling sorry for yourself. In case you haven’t noticed, people are dying no matter who makes the decisions right now, and if Whittaker isn’t in triage, then how about you step in and do your goddamn job” he yells, the gravel in his voice become more prominent with each bitten out sentence, his eyes diverting from you to every other dilemma that’s just waiting for his beck and call. And you understand, of course you do, cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and anger and injustice alike. Something presses behind your eyelids and your tongue.

“Yes sir” you say, nothing subservient about your tone and he knows it. But neither of you have the time nor strength to do anything other than walk off with a last look that says you’re both willing to die on your respective hills. So be it. You shoulder your way through. Seemingly everyone has been called in, Lena trying to file out and organize the people like she does the charts, her voice booming over the mass in a way you didn’t know her lungs were efficient for, ordering anyone who wasn’t close relatives or victims to get the hell out of the ER.

“I’ll take over” you said behind your teeth to Whitaker who was bent over the patient, hair amassed in one sweaty curl on his forehead. “Go back to triage, you have an overview there” you order as he looks up, sweat beading on his forehead. He nods, swallows the humid air down as you slide your hands into the chest cavity of the patient and manually start pumping her heart with your hands while Princess updates you on the victims status.

“Can we cram another patient in here?”

You look up to see Jack Abbot with one hand on the doorframe and the other on a gurney. You hadn’t seen him at all amidst this chaos, only heard his name or voice in your periphery. Something eases in his look when you meet his eyes and you nod once, sharp. He taps the gurney to signal them to wait as he steps into the room. You walk backwards while him and princess maneuvres your patient bed as far to the left as you can to make space, your hands close to cramping around the heart in your hands. He looks up through his glistening brow, grey streaked curls sticking out around his ears. “How long have you been here?” He asks as he waves in his other trauma patient, eyes assessing your victim with a narrowed focus you’re always impressed by.

“Since before electricity was invented” you mutter and he has the sparse energy to huff, a flicker of amusement in his eyes before you both snap into focus and away from the familiar banter. Seems you both needed the ten second refuge of kindness in this space of loss and fear.

“Still no rythm” princess mutters close to your ear. Jack looks up over his glasses. He came in on his day off too it seems, swat gear on, no time to change into something more practical. His mouth purses in that way it always does, a question in his eyes. You ignore it, looking back down. You know you should move to another patient. Call it. But you’d called it three times already today and each one felt like it took a part of you with. You were half a man at this point. But Robby had been right, none of this was about you. Still you appreciates that Jack chose to do nothing more than look your way. He didn’t order you to hurry up, didn’t command. He knew you were capable, and left you to make your own decision. Which in the end was what pushed you to let your aching fingers flex one last time before pulling out.

“Time of death 11.43” you said, stuffing the cavity and letting your eyes linger on her face before pulling the sheet to shield her from the fluorescent blinking. McKay was already with another gurney without a home, in the hall. You had to move. With a nod to princess, she got help from the EMT’s to roll the woman away to the morgue. With a swipe of your brow you waved in McKay and pulled of your gloves, hands molten underneath. “Need help?” You asked her, but she shook her head. “All good”

No one had time to look each other in the eye, really. “Get over here” Abbot said instead, nodding his way and you made your way around both dried and fluid pools of blood, your shoulder pressing against the military badge on his. Together you stabilized the patient, called down Garcia while you started intubation. Mateo took over and they rolled the gurney up to the OR. You winced, hand cramping, fingers twitching painfully as the muscles pulled and released from the combined heart massage and intubation. Jack frowned and grabbed your wrist, using his other hand to carefully flex your fingers backwards, gliding his thumb up your palm to stretch out the muscles. It was unusually attentive in the middle of broken bloody limbs, fixing a cramp. He looked up through his brow again, protective swat glasses low on his nose. With your free hand you took them off for him and set them aside without looking away. “Thanks” he muttered lowly, back to stretching your fingers.

“You good?” He asked, releasing your hand as the cramping stopped. He didn’t comment on it. You didn’t either. This was how you worked, often with understanding silence as you fixed things for each other like it was second nature. “Mhm” you said with a long inhale, smoothing hair from your face.

“Saw you and Robby going at it” he muttered casually, trying to inquire respectfully, always making sure you understood that you never owed him anything. Which was why he was easy to talk to.

“He’s an ass sometimes. So am I. Two fuckin assholes” you commented, mumbling more and more as you look to the back of Robby’s head somewhere down in south. Jacks eyes follow your line of sight. A heavy hand sprawls on your shoulder and squeezes briefly.

“He’s a considerably bigger asshole than you” he mutters, lips directed to your ear as he offers you a side glance, trying to ease the stiffness of your disposition. Your smile is half-hearted, mind too far off. Your eyes wander out on the mess around you, hands on your hips to gain some semblance of control.

“I’m gonna help out in triage” you say, swallowing the lump in your throat, ever present today. The woman’s face lingers on the backs of your eyelids and you start, walking off before he can say more. He gives a curious, lingering glance on your back. The distress was obvious in your posture, more so than usual, but then again; a mass casualty will do that to most.

The umpteenth hour continues into the night, and slowly but surely the heat of the masses die down, people simmering out, patients being admitted or walking or home or rolling down to the cold chapels. At 03.00 you have your certified last patient with a bitten off plastic scrap lodged in his stomach. “Check stats and bilateral flow” you call out, the words somehow effortless, on autopilot and your lungs as strident as when you clocked in. You press the ultrasound prod to the man’s stomach, eyes narrowed at the screen. It blurs slightly, but with a hard squeeze of burning eyelids, you focus back in, using your elbow to wipe sweat from your brow. Jack steps in and the status update falls from your lips without you even hearing yourself. “We need to get it out now” you mumble, seeing the laceration in his side that’s already doing internal damage, no time to wait for the OR. “Do you need me to-“ Jack offers

“I got it” there’s defensiveness in your tone that isn’t usual, everybody on edge to do their best. Especially you. Opening up the laceration, pulling out the lodged plastic carefully causes a ray of blood to spurt at your face, down your gown. Jack reaches over with a small woah, packing the wound as Perlah and him stabilize it while you take a step back to make room. A forced step back. “Jack I got this” you said, grabbing the bottom of your scrubs and wiping blood from your eyes. He didn’t listen, or didn’t hear you, moving with precision in front of you.

“Dr. Abbot step away” you said firmly and pressed your way to his side again, a wild look in your eyes. You had to save at least one more patient. Every single person in your care today had struggled tremendously. He turned to look at you fully for a beat. “Right now I’m more capable than you” he said. “You’re covered in blood- I’m not” his voice wasn’t unkind, wasn’t like Robby’s superior scolding. Still you had to swallow it down, wincing slightly as you took a defeated step back again. He wanted to say more but the time wasn’t there.

You stepped out of the room, eyes glassy and dull. “Honey go take a shower and get some new scrubs on ya” Dana said as she peered over her glasses with sympathy, tapping her clipboard. “We’ve got it under control down here.” She assured. You nodded tightly, lips pressed together as you didn’t trust your own tongue. But instead of beelining for the doctors lounges, your feet carried you out to the ambulance bay. You’d forgotten how dark it was outside, only a few stars visible in the busy city light pollution. The brick wall met your back, your knees protested as you sat down against it, head tipping back. You don’t know how much time passed before the ambulance bay doors slid open. You didn’t have the energy to crack an eye open.

“Thought we’d lost ya” Jack slides down the wall next to you, his swat vest discarded, green undershirt catching on the rough bricks. You hum dryly, finally opening your eyes. The sun is rising somewhere behind city blocks, casting a strange kind of light on his tired face. His brows scrunch, eyes darting across your face. A knuckle comes up, brushing your cheekbone so barely that you almost don’t feel it before it falls in his lap again. “You look like a warrior” he mumbles. You remember all the blood that must’ve dried in streaks on your pale skin. You feel it crease as your lips move.

“Don’t feel like one” you say, voice dry and garbled. He hums, still studying you and you look away, starring at the asphalt marred with tire tracks and bathed in purple morning hues.

He tips his head forwards slightly. “Robbys doing a farwell circle in there if you want to join” he says, clasping his hands and resting them on his knees. You shake your head. “He’s mad at me” you sigh, flicking dirt off your shoe.

Jack shakes his head too “No he’s not. Don’t let it get to you.”

Hot tears gather behind your eyelids and you despise it, squeezing your eyes tight and pressing the pad of your thumb and forefinger against them to try and stop the waterworks. Jacks lips tug downwards, surprised by how deep his discomfort is at watching you tremble. Automatically he reaches for you, but pauses mindfully, knowing how sensitive you could get in these situations;

“Can i touch you?” His voice it hoarse. You nod, eyes still closed and shoulders hunched. He reaches over your shoulders and gently push you into his side until your head falls to the crook of his neck, and his chin can rest on your head. He exhales deeply, hoping to render your nervous system to his, to let you borrow some of the ease to your frayed ends. You allow yourself to slump, feel the heat from the skin of his neck. “So many died today” you mumble, feeling him nod. “And most of them were my patients” you add quietly and it cut through you to say it out loud. You sit up before he can hold onto you “I need to look through all of the cases again- make sure I didn’t miss something, because if-“

“-hey hey hey,” he says and sits up with you. He often finds himself copying your movements, for some strange reason. “None of it was your fault” he assures and you turn your head back to look at him with a desperate and incredulous look.

“How do you know? A million things could’ve made it my fault. I was tired, stressed, things went fast-”

“-I looked.” He uttered, looking away briefly to the sole ambulance in the bay before looking back, like he was shy to admit it. Your face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I looked through all your cases today. Dana told me it’d been rough for you and I knew you’d blame yourself and spend the rest of the night going over all the journals. So I checked it all out. You did everything perfectly, on every single case. Even bold moves that were right despite things not panning out.” He said, feeling heat in his cheeks and ears to confess his own meticulous work that he had no obligation to do. You’re still for a while, the furrow of your forehead smoothing out.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me” you say with surprise more than anything else. You squashed the urge to check for yourself, choosing to put your faith in his words. There’s a stunted silence where Jack feels the back of his neck burn and something exposing itself between his ribs that he has no control of. Suddenly you twist your body backwards, reaching for something under a broken off brick, your leg kicking out. He has to catch it with one hand, “You’re gonna knock out all my teeth” he huffs, holding onto your ankle.

“Sorry” you come back upright, huffing hair from your face as you open a busted pack of cigs. He gives you an incredulous look, brow raised and head pulled back with that scolding assessment. You give him a glare “-give me a break. Dana and I hide these for emergencies only. I don’t smoke” you say as you place a long, thin cigarette between your lips, cupping your hand around the end of it as you light it up.

He hums “this tops any moment you’ve ever lied to me” he says, having half a mind to snag it from you. You shrug, squinting as you put the pack back in its hiding place.

“If you tell anyone, Dana will hide them somewhere else and won’t ever trust me with ‘em again” you say before watching his lip tug upwards. You realise your mistake and point the toxic thing at him. “It’s my one guilty pleasure after killing five people, don’t take it from me” you say.

His face falls again. “Don’t say it like that” he looks out at the morning traffic that’s slowly coming to life in the metropolis. You suck in hard, eyes up. The tears seem to be ever present, lingering and ready to run any minute. He purses his lips; he really should take that thing from your hand and squash it under his shoe. He’s your attending, this is a teaching hospital. An attending who should get up and go back inside. An attending who doesn’t move an inch.

“How do you do it?” You ask with a bitter taste in your mouth. He sighs, rubbing s hand over the bottom half of his face to buy himself a second. He stored every hard death somewhere, and sometimes it felt like it got easier; sometimes it didn’t and felt like the first time seeing life leave someone’s eyes all over again. He shook his head in thought.

“You have to remember the good things” he said but it sounded wrong out in the air between you, and your flat hum was confirmation of that. “I don’t know it-“ he runs a hand over his face again, shoulders sagging “you really do have to remember the wins. Remember the reasons you do this, the fact that you tried more than anyone else.” He says, more earnest. You nod slowly. He slaps his thighs, groans as he gets up wrongly on his prosthetic, still offers a hand. You finally twist the cig into the ground, marking a spot of your existence there before accepting his hand. He squeezes it before letting go, “Get cleaned up. Look a mess” he says. You huff dryly and shoulder past him with a grumble.

-

The shower does little to wash away the mental drag you feel, but it’s efficient at washing off the blood. You scrub your skin raw, wring your hair dry. A message from Robby. You ignore it, choosing peace as you drag your own clothes back in place. He manages to find you still, before you can sign out. The ER has died down significantly.

“I uh- wrote a recommendation of you to ER medicine. If you wanna get into that” he said, scratching his neck and forcing himself to keep eye contact with you. Your brows raised; clearly this was his way of apologising but it was a pretty good guilt offer and you nodded gratefully.

“Thank you. I’m seriously considering it” you said and he nodded, head cocked, “we could use you down here. Permanently.”

You huff a weak smile. He opens his mouth to say more “I don’t want to talk about today.” You interrupt with a hand mid-air and he closed his lips quick and nods in understanding. You steer for the door.

Outside Abbot and Matteo lean against a pillar. Your eyes drag down to the six pack of cheep beer dangling off two of jack’s fingers. He looks up when he sees you, lifting the beers with a nod to the park. You chew on the inside of your cheek, mulling it over because your bed and a long cry was really calling to you. Jack had the urge to fight for you staying but bit down on his tongue. Santos, Ellis and Whittaker came out behind you.

Ellis’ hand finds your neck “You’re having a beer” she decided and you shrug, following along the group. “Whatever you say goes I guess” you mumble, and she snickers triumphantly. Jack sits on the bench, the glow of the streetlamp on its last leg before they turn off and the sun replaces their light.

You take the beers from his hand “get that leg off” you mumble and open them up, handing everyone a can.

“Beer at 5.30, in the morning, not what I thought I signed up for. But I’m not complaining” santos said before cracking hers open. Ellis chuckled, “welcome to the Pitt”

Jack propped his prosthetic against the bench and accepted your beer with a small thanks, purposely scooting a little to the side. You sit down, tugging your knees to your chest with an exhale. “You look like shit” Santos says after her first sip, the quiet apparently not what she was on board with.

Jack gave her a disapproving look, brows low “how about you play the quiet game until you finish that beer” he says flatly. She rolls her eyes, turning to Whittaker who’s mid gulp and therefore can’t stop her stream of words his way.

Jack leans in, still looking forwards “I think you look great.” You tuck your chin back and tip your head as you look at him, incredulous. He shrugs and takes a steady sip, keeping his eyes on you. “How’re you holding up?”

“Robby wrote me a recommendation for emergency medicine.” You said.

Something twitched in jacks face, his finger toying with the metal cap “I could’ve done that if you’d asked” he said, aiming for a flat voice but something else fissured through the cracks. It amused you, slightly.

“I know. Two attending recs wouldn’t hurt” you said, with a head tilt. He looked up, the bratty expression softening from his features.

“Don’t be so offended, I didn’t ask Robby. He just felt bad.” Jack hummed, taking a sip.

“You planning on staying around?” He forced his voice to be neutral, lifting his chin and kicking his foot out in front of him. You take a look at the group, at everyone’s red rimmed eyes- everyone who should be home and sleeping but somehow all your individual choices had led you to be here at this hour instead.

“If it’s possible” you say with fondness. His shoulders sink a fraction, that same place under his ribs throbbing softly.

“Could join the night crawlers for good” he suggested. You took your bottom lip between your teeth

“you recruiting me already?” Your chin rests on your knee. He holds his beer to his mouth, pressing the coolness there.

“Don’t let it get to your head” he rumbles. His free hand slings over the back of the bench. The conversation migrates to one big group circle. It’s easy, it’s about anything else than the hospital, a pretend game where you don’t mention what’s burning in the back of your head, the losses and wins of the days all alike. Instead you talk about new movies, stupid bets, the news, your families. Eventually the talk falls back to today’s events, though; it always circled back around, when someone couldn’t keep it on the backburner any longer.

“Hey didn’t all your patients like die today?” Santos says, trying to be humorous in a show of sympathy, and perhaps also letting the second beer loosen her tongue. Your chest tightens inexplicably.

“Help me with my leg?” Abbot says quickly before you muster up a proper response or reaction. His fingertips brush your arm. “Sure” you mumble, standing up.

You both know he doesn’t need help to put on the damn prosthetic, he’s been doing it on his own for years, every day. Still you crouch down, and he lets you despite the dignity in him that the situation chips at. He doesn’t care. He tried meeting your eyes but you stay firmly on his leg before standing up, tossing your can in the trash.

“See you guys” you sigh, rubbing your eyes and waving half heartedly with the other. Whittaker mutters something to Santos, slapping her arm. Abbot givers her a warning look too before he strides up to your side.

“Thank you” you mutter, yawning. He hums in response

“she’s mouthy.” He says with narrowed eyes somewhere behind you.

“She’s learning” you correct, kicking a rock. “She wants friends”

“She has a funny way of making them.” He adds, walking with you down the road despite his apartment being the other way.

“Like you’re so predictable yourself” you say, watching the sun finally say hello over the lowest buildings. It’s golden, just grazing the edges of jacks tired curls. His lip tugs upwards, eyes following the pavement along with yours, hands hidden in his pockets.

You loop yours into the empty space between his elbow and ribs and he lets you, with a soft side glance as to not scare off the touch. He should reject it, but decides to revel in it as his own guilty pleasure, his reward for a hellish shift. You seem to give it a second before you let your arm relax around his when he doesn’t retreat. “You aren’t either” he says through a breath, causing you to crack an eye his way. He meets it the same way. “How so?”

He pushes his lips to the side in thought, eyes drifting off. He wants to say a lot of things about how unpredictable his nervous system is around you, his no man’s land. He swallows it down.

“Didn’t take you for a filthy smoker, for example” he says dryly. Your eyes roll, making a tsk sound with your tongue and tugging on his arm so his shoulder dips against yours

“there are way worse habits I could’ve picked up. I don’t drink-“ his brow raises and a side eye burns from your face and down to the hand that held a beer a couple minutes ago “-that often” you add defensively. “And I’m not going to at all these next months. I have to apply for a residency. I have to focus” you say with determination and a youthful hope that strikes him.

You’re young, way young compared to his old ass, not even in residency yet, and here he is locking arms with you instead of writing you a professional recommendation. But at the Pitt you were pretty much installed as an ER resident already, they gave you the responsibility and independency amounting to one, at least. No one hovered over your decisions like they used to. But in technicality you weren’t quite there yet.

You stop in your tracks, in front of the steps to a brownstone apartment building where you live. It snaps him from his inner works as his arm slips from yours. The sun is starting to warm up, stabil and almost down to your eyes. The sky is brighter, the city is bustling more and more with the diverse population of Pittsburg waking up, the rare crowd just now going home. A breeze blows a stray strand into your eyes and you snatch it away with a finger, looking at the flush of jacks cheeks. You’re so tired, so sad but so happy that he’s here, that you didn’t go home and let the bed swallow you up. It’s a strange euphoria when the sun rises after you feel like it might never, like the horrible night will drag on and take you with it. Here people are, to-go cups in their hands, phones at their ears, children in the car. Life goes on.

He’s about to pull away, the knot in his stomach, the stupid realisation that keeps catching up to him about how hypocritical and wrong he’s being tearing at his nerves, fraying the ends and pushing on his chest. Pushing him away. But you’re too caught up in the moment, in the way he carried you through the aftermath of today.

You seize his wrist gently to anchor yourself, raising yourself to your toes and pressing your lips against his, feeling the tickle of his grey stubble on your pale skin. You give it a second, but his lips don’t seem to move at all and with a heartbeat so violent it hurts you move back, heels in the ground with wide eyes. He swallows thickly, opening his mouth but nothing comes out because it’s all he’s wanted and all he shouldn’t, his foot moving back until it hits a mailbox. Everything’s a flame inside of him, his hands fisted so hard in his pockets that it ached up his tendons. “I’m so sorry Jack I thought-“

“It’s okay-“ he assures, his voice barely coming out, which you obviously mistake for discomfort. Which is was, but not at all in the way you clearly figured with the way your lips quiver. He has to look away “it’s okay I promise it’s just- it’s not a good idea to- I didn’t-“ he says, trying his best to convey but he’s never felt so useless before, so teenage.

“Forget I did that. Please. Don’t tell anyone. I’m- I’ll go now. I’ll see you. Sorry, I’m really sorry” your hands fumble as you open the door, keys rattling in your hands. He doesn’t stop you, cursing under his breath as he forces one shoe in front of the other, not daring to look back. He knows how unfair he’s being, taking without giving. He’s been selfish for it, letting himself wallow in your laughs and touches, your refuge in the storm, and now retreating like a coward. He should have drawn a line the second the two of you started knowing each other a little better than the rest, purposeful or not. He didn’t mind teaching, but it wasn’t usual for him to take a liking to any new people the way he did you. You found a rythm fast, learned each others habits in a symbiose others noticed but didn’t comment on. He shouldn’t remember what syrup you like or what book you read, the nervous tick when you have to deliver hard news.

He should’ve let himself forget, but he opened up a space for it that he regrets now, trying to wire it shut.

————————————————————————

You want the ground to swallow you up. Digest you, even. It was bad enough that you were half dressed, hair tousled in an un-subtle way; there was no doubt what sent you here and even though the nurses were lovely - you knew you had made their night.

And then they sent in a sexy silver fox in a pair of scrubs to check you over. Worst. Night. Ever.

"Marcie tells me you took a tumble - you might be concussed?"

"Uh, yeah," You manage out, throat dry as all hell. You wished your partner had been considerate enough to grab you a drink and some snacks before heading for the hills. "Fell off my bed."

"I'm the night shift attending, Dr.Abbot." He says with a friendly smile. "I'm just going to shine a torch in your eyes and check that there's no swelling behind the eye or dilated pupils, okay?"

You nod. He makes a hissing sound as he sees the bruise swelling beneath your brow bone, where a small but deep cut sits. He shines a small torches into your eyes, moving it to and fro quickly, and you wince.

"That looks like a pretty nasty bruise for just falling off your bed." His voice is playful, however, there's a steely undertone you can't miss. An friendly opening for you to elaborate or perhaps confess the true nature of why you have such a nasty bruise.

No wonder your bed-friend had bolted.

Steeling yourself, you sigh but you can't help the heat that rises to your cheeks.

"I fell off my bed and hit the corner of my bedside table." You say candidly.

His eyebrows raise, mentally painting himself a picture, but before he can finish piecing it together, you're giving him the answer.

"During sex."

He stares at you. You stare back, frowning slightly. And then he cracks ever so slightly, with a huffed laugh and a wide grin.

"Ah. That would do it." He says matter-of-factly, trying not to laugh.

You smack your lips together. "Tell me about it."

"And your partner didn't-?" he raises a brow and you shake your head.

"No, he didn't do it. And no, he didn't stick around after dropping me off."

Abbot nods and then offers another warm smile. "Well, the good news you don't need stitches. I'd like to keep you for a little bit longer just to be safe. I'll send an a nurse around with tylenol and an ice pack."

"Thanks, Dr. Abbot." You smile weakly, sighing as you retire yourself to the uncomfortable hospital bed.

"No worries." Before he leaves, he flashes you another smile. "I'll try and check in on you later."

You watch casualties and emergencies of varying degrees of severity rush past your open room. Dr Abbot occasionally barks orders, but over the hub-bub his voice is drowned by beeps, bloops and screams of pain.

You manage to fall asleep once your ice pack melts to a lukewarm temperature, however, you are rudely awoken by the blaring alarms of a patient crashing in the next curtain cubicle over. There's a lot of commotion; shouts of medical jargon, shoes squeaking on linoleum, silence as a long beep stretches through the curtain to your ears.

Then it repeats.

After the third repetition, a familiar voice says "call it" and a soft, female voice announces the time of death of you curtain-neighbour. You don't realise you've been holding your breath or how tight your chest feels, despite not knowing the person that was less than two metres away from your sleeping body.

It's a strange sensation. You're still groggy, someone somewhere in the ER is screaming, more beeps, more yells and yet… there's an eerie quiet behind your curtain partition and next-door's. Your heart aches for the stranger. You wonder if they had family, if they were loved. You're overwhelmed with the urge to leave the ER. Someone else needs your bed. Someone out in the fray.

Someone who was screaming.

You were on your feet before you could talk yourself out of it, grabbing what few things your lover had managed to scrounge together for you before leaving you at the doors. The beeping persists, ringing in your ears as you throw back the curtain and walk straight into a hard back.

Dr Abbot turns slowly towards you, or at least it seems that way as you sway on your feet. A wave of nausea hits you so hard you stagger backwards but thankfully Dr Abbot already had his hands out to catch you and hold you steady. Could he really move that fast?

"Woah there," his voice is soft. "I was just about the check in on you. Where d'you think you're goin'?"

You blink slowly. Your head throbs. Your eyes hurt. You squint at him. He looks different. Why is that? Sluggishly, your brain orders you to drop your head and take him all in… His scrubs are covered in blood, so are his hands, and specks of it are on his face and neck. The voice, the one who commanded a T.O.D, was his.

You meet his eyes. How long had you been asleep? His eyes were now mirthless; still soft but serious.

Even when you puked over his shoes.

Head CTs weren't as cool as they looked in TV shows. You were cold, oddly vulnerable, and all alone. There were no speakers for the doctors to speak with you, no microphone for you to speak to them. Just you and the rumbling of the moving machine.

Dr Abbot had been a saint. You assumed he had to be because of his profession but you knew that once whatever drowsiness had passed, you would be re-living the moment puke was on his shoes forever. Even if he smiled and joked about it after.

God. That was embarassing.

Porters wheel you back to your small section of peace quickly once you're done with your CT. No one is speaking to you about the results and you cannot decide if that's a good or bad thing. Once you're back and safely nestled, you make a grab for your phone. No missed calls or texts from… Anyone.

Cool.

Great.

You wonder if you should let your family know and then opt against it. You don't need to worry them. It's nothing.

You hope.

An hour of doomscrolling passes by in a nauseating ebb and flow of ER casualties until Dr Abbot reappears with fresh scrubs and a small smile. You don't feel like smiling, but you somehow manage one.

"Good news," He says, coming to stand at the side closest to you. "CT is normal. So, most likely you had a concussion."

You raise an eyebrow at him and he looks sheepish. "Sometimes a concussion doesn't present for hours, sometimes days." Then he flashes you a grin. "Got me back good though. I needed a new pair of shoes."

You groan into the side of your pillow at the reminder. "You're welcome."

He snorts a little and presses some keys on the monitor beside you. "Don't beat yourself up about it. Puke is better than some other bodily fluids."

Like blood? You want to say, but press your lips together and hum non-committally. You doubt he needs that reminder.

"How are you feeling?"

"About as good as I look." You sigh, flexing your fingers in front of your face idly.

"Well, you look pretty good to me." Abbot says. He's not looking at you when you whip your head up. He taps something else into the monitor. "And you're awake and speaking, so that's a bonus."

You open your mouth and close it again. Did he just say what you thought he said?

"We'll up your fluids and monitor you a bit longer. You may be discharged tomorrow sometime or the day after."

"Okay." You say blinking at him like he's a dream.

He turns to you again. "Why were you trying to leave?"

"Huh?"

"Before," he says, resting his arms on the side of your cot. "You looked like you were in a hurry."

You swallow the last of the spittle in your mouth and look away from him. In the quietest voice you can muster, you tell him why.

"I heard what happened next door."

At first you don't think he heard you, and you're about to change your answer to something less honest when he sighs gently. His shoulders slump, his demeanour more exhausted than relaxed, and his hands open and close tightly.

"Yeah. Sorry about that."

"I'm sorry." You blurt suddenly. "I... your job... it's..." You curse the concussion that muddles your brain. You want to be able to ease the burden of his role, but you know he's heard it all before. You sigh, slumping into your uncomfortable cot pillow. "You did the best you could. I just felt anxious. Like someone else could have needed this bed more than me."

"Thank you." There's a sincerity in his tone that warms your chest. A little something to ease the sounds of the E.R. "That's not entirely true though. If you'd left you could have collapsed in the street, or at home, and choked on your own vomit." He says matter-of-factly and then smiles a little. "At least with you here, I get to keep a close eye on you."

More beeps and bloops sound and someone calls his name but it feels like time stretches. You watch him. He watches you. And for a moment, you could swear this is a little more than a doctor-patient interaction. You dismiss your doctor with a half-hearted wave and a small smile when his name is called again. "Go get 'em, Doc. You're dismissed."

He snorts in disbelief before playfully saluting you as he steps out into the chaos. "Yes, ma'am."

Abbot returns another five times before the end of his shift. He says it's to check in on you but you think it's for reprieve of the cluster-bomb that is the emergency room. Each time, he arrives tired and each time he leaves slightly more envigorated.

"Why would he just leave?" Abbot says, brows furrowed in disgust. It was his third visit, clearly emboldened by the events that had transpired beyond your curtain partition.

"You gotta ask him that, Doc." You say with a half smile. He looks so sweetly baffled by the prospect of someone leaving you after being part of the cause that sent you to the E.R., that you feel a tug in your chest that you hope isn't an underlying condition.

"Oh, believe me. If he calls come find me. I have a few choice words for him." He harumphs.

"Easy Tiger," You tease with a knowing smirk. "I don't think he will be calling anytime soon."

He coughs, pretending to clear his throat as he checks your charts, but by the rosy cheeks and his smile - you know your tease was a success. Perhaps this thing you had going on wasn't all in your concussed head.

"Good." He swallows. "It isn't my place to say but if I were you, I'd be breaking up with my girlfriend over something this."

You raise your eyebrows at him and a half-manic grin spreads across your face. "He wasn't my boyfriend." You say.

"Oh." Abbot's eyebrows raise too.

"Yeah." You say, watching him. "I dodged a real loser."

"You most certainly did." He says, snapping the thin folder shut. Something about his expression seems strange; not in a bad way, more that his brain had realised there was a second option he had not yet considered. He opens his mouth to say something and grimaces as his name gets yelled from the ambulance bay doors. "I'll be right back."

You nod and watch him jog away, before hearing him intercept a patient on their way to a bay, cussing them out for yelling at the nurses. You bite back a smile; somehow the hospital visit is turning out to be better than you expected.

You've managed to sleep a little more and are far less nauseated than you had been earlier in the nigh; all good signs according to Dr Abbot, though you tell him you wished you had a cappuccino in hand. As the clock creeps closer to 7 a.m. you see Abbot less and less as he prepares handover for day shift. It's a strange feeling. You feel like you're going to miss him but you also feel stupid for feeling such a thing towards a doctor, whose literal job it is to take care of you.

The curtain opens and Abbot's face appears, grey curls sticking out in odd directions and a warm smile on his face. Behind him is another man, another doctor, of a similar age but with darker hair, a beard and a sad Droopy-esque demeanour. They play off eachother wonderfully.

"This is dayshift attending Dr Robinavitch," Abbot tells you, and Dr Robby nods behind him, hiding a smile into folded arms. "He'll watch over you for me."

"Call me Dr Robby," the doctor behind Abbot says.

You struggle to keep a straight face. "For a concussion?"

Dr Robby half turns away from you, unable to keep a grin underwraps and shakes his head. Dr Abbot shrugs and, at a very endearing attempt at acting nonchalant, tells you that it's protocol. When they leave, you can hear Robby's sarcastic tone carry back through the curtain,

"Protocol?"

Day-shift was somehow worse than night-shift. The noise was unbearable, and with only luke-warm hospital food to keep your hunger at bay and no Dr Abbot to brighten your mind-numbing hours in the hospital bed, you were so far beyond agitated you didn't know what to do.

To Dr Robby's credit, he checked in where he could. But unlike his night-shift counterpart, he was curt and quick. Other, more pressing matters needed his attention.

At 2pm, you were asking every nurse or student doctor to be released. Each one told you they would ask Dr Robby. Each time, they never came back with an answer. It wasn't until 3pm that you heard there had been a major pile up and emergency traffic was being redirected to the hospital, as it was closest. At 4pm, you heard a familiar voice rushing in through the ambulance bay, emergency bed wheels squeaking as they were pushed and pulled around the E.R.

You got up to peek through the curtain, half convinced that you had made up hearing Abbot's voice. However, he was there, helping a patient breathe through a balloon and barking orders at student doctors. It was a sight to behold. You couldn't do what he was doing, but you respected it. You thought about when you'd last seen him hours ago. He looks a little rested, though not much. He must have been called back to help.

Once the patient was stable, Abbot handed the patient over to the nurses and porters to move them into a room. He sighed to himself and then glanced up, meeting your eyes across the E.R.

Then, he smiled.

Your hand gripped the curtain tight as you forced yourself to not whip it closed. Your face was burning up - but not from a fever - and you managed a smile that you knew looked incredibly bashful and waved with your free hand. He half raised his back when someone called his name and he was gone again. Hyperfocused on another patient.

You back into your cubicle, grateful you don’t have a heart monitor attached to you. You can't be making this up. But then again, even if you were reading into it too much, had you not already embarassed yourself to the point of no return? What would adding one little question to test the waters do?

You hum to yourself, mind made up, before marching out of your cubicle to the charge nurse.

Dana, the dayshift charge nurse, was a sassy blonde haired woman that instantly captured your heart. She commanded the E.R. and it's staff in way that left you awestruck, and she still managed to joke and tease along her way.

"I only have a concussion," you tell her as more casualties wheel in.

"Only a concussion?" Dana retorts sarcastically. "Where's your icepack?"

You wave her question away. The thought of another icepack gives you a headache. "I need to be out of that cubicle."

"No can do, honey." Dana sighs. "Head injury-"

"I'll sit in a chair, nearby." You interject quickly. "I won't leave. But-"

Abbot's voice cuts through, calling for a place for his next emergency patient. Before Dana can reply, you shout over pointing to your vacated cubicle.

"Use mine!"

He's about to argue, flabbergasted you're even suggesting such a thing, but Dana snorts from beside you and hurriedly directs to nurses in to whip away your old sheets and disinfect the bed. As Abbot pushes the cart past you, patient groaning in pain, he shoots you a concerned and almost disappointed look, before telling you to stay put.

The noises from behind the curtain blend into the monstrosity of noise where you stand, gripping the few of your belongings. You can't tell how long the minutes stretch, but then Abbot and two student doctors reappear relieved. Abbot directs them to the colourful screen before making a beeline for you.

"You shouldn't have-"

"He needs it more than me."

You both stare at eachother for a second before breaking into shy smiles. The flutter in your stomach this time around doesn't make you worried for Abbot's shoes.

"Thanks." Abbot says. "How're you feeling?"

"Better now that you're back." You instantly cringe at your response, but Abbot chuckles. You can feel at least three pairs of eyes watching you both, and a creeping sensation rises on your neck. You don't want to bottle out from nerves but with so many people around-

"Glad to hear it." His name is called again, and he looks agitated. "If you can wait around a little bit longer, I'll do a last check up and discharge you. Princess will find you a chair."

As he weaves through the busy rush of patients, visitors, doctors, nurses and porters, he turns back to look at you. "Don't go anywhere."

Don't plan to, you think as you watch him disappear.

Watching Abbot is mesmerising. Now that you're a bit more lucid, and have a front row seat to the E.R. chaos, you can truly appreciate the fast and strenuous work the doctors, nurses and porters do. Abbot hypes up his team, barks orders and then dips into room after room, dealing with case after case.

A couple of nurses gossip in hushed tones when Abbot comes past and shoots you a wink or a smile. You are well aware you're staring after him with a scorching face. If only you were hidden away behind your curtain again.

For a while, you don't see him. You're too busy doomscrolling again and messaging loved ones to let them know your condition, hoping they don't worry too much. Just as you begin wondering how much longer he'd be, Dr Abbot rounds a corner and holds up two to-go cups. He almost crashes into another patient being wheeled elsewhere in the building, only avoiding them by standing on his tiptoes and raising the cups above his head like a rather comical ballerina. When he reaches you, he checks the cups and hands one that has cap scrawled onto the side in black marker.

"You remembered." You say, taking the cup from him.

"I did." He says with a boyish smile. "But it may be cold by now. People just keep getting injured and it's almost like it's my job to fix it."

You chuckle lightly and take a sip. It is indeed cold but it's both the best and worst cappuccino you have ever had. "Thanks. For the coffee and, well," You shrug awkwardly. "Taking care of me."

Abbot taps his medical badge to where it reads doctor in block capital and you feel yourself smile again as you look at the cup in your hands.

"Well, as of," he checks his watch, "-Two minutes ago, you are no longer my patient."

"Ah." You're about to ask if you can go home but he continues.

"And as of two minutes ago, I'm on my break." He nods his head towards the exit doors. "I'll walk you out."

The evening air is lukewarm but it's cooler in comparison to the Emergency Room nevertheless.

You sip your cold coffee and fall into step alongside Abbot. "Will you be staying until your next shift is over?"

"Most likely." He says.

"Yikes." You shake your head in disbelief. "I do not envy you."

"Most people do." He says, sipping his drink. "I think it's the silver fox look I have going on rather than my shift pattern though."

You snort. "Mmhmm. That sounds about right."

"How're you feeling?" He asks after a beat. "Head ok?"

"I've been told my head's great," you joke and he half chokes on his coffee. "But yes, I feel a lot better being out in the fresh air."

"In that case, I can confidently send you on your way home." He says with a grin. "Although, I will say take some rest rather than romps for a few days."

"Where's the fun in that?" You say to the sky. Abbot huffs a half laugh. "I promise to be a good girl, Doc. No fun for me for a while."

"I didn't say anything about not having fun," Abbot says playfully. "And call me Jack. I'm not your doctor anymore."

You spare a glance over at him, eyebrows partially raised in questioning; Does that means what I think it means? He meets your glance with raised eyebrows of his own, a smile and a tilt of his head that says, "Yes - it's exactly what you think it means."

Nodding, you hide a satisfied smirk behind your cup. "So, what happens now?"

"For starters, you go home and rest." Jack says seriously. "Then when you feel up to it, give me a call." He points to your cup and you turn it slightly, where there's a number scrawled on the other side.

Oh, he's too smooth.

You can't believe you missed it and you shake your head with a laugh. "Do all of your patients get this special treatment?"

"Only the pretty ones." Jack says it playfully but from the glimmer in his eyes, something tells you it was a rare occurrence. "And not all of them get coffee."

"You are unbelievable." You scoff. "But I suppose having a doctor on-hand for other sex mishaps would be beneficial."

"If it means you boost my hospital rating then, yes, yes it is." Jack nods, placing a hand over his heart. "Patient care and comfort is the most important thing to me."

You chuckle, taking another sip of your drink. "I heard you telling a patient to shut the fuck up."

He shrugs, and swigs the dregs of his drink, before checking his watch. "Eh. Deserved it, he was insulting the nurses."

"Very deserved." You agree. "Need to head back?"

He looks disappointed but nods, resigning to his duty as a doctor. "Yeah. It's going to be a long shift. Let me know when you get home safe."

"I will." You tell him, loading up Uber on your phone. "And Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." He grins at you, and you can't help but grin back. "Again."

"You can thank me again over dinner sometime." He replies as he walks back towards the road. "Consider the coffee a free trial."

"A free-?" You laugh as he rushes across the road as an ambulance sounds in the distance. "Oh my God. What have I gotten myself into?"

End

Follow @grems-library for reblogs of my fics or join my taglist here

it was something you rarely noticed half the time. you could have made a list on when jack clicks his tongue.

every time he’d slip his cock inside of you, every time you had an orgasm, every time you did something he usually would correct (both in bed and at work), and every time you let out a whimper because he had done something you’d particularly enjoyed.

you never questioned it. either because you were too caught up in your pleasure to care, or you were too caught up in your pleasure to hear.

no matter the reason he did it, you didn’t care to ask or know. it was just another one of your boyfriends weird quirks to you.

today was the day you found out why.

you were doing your normal rounds of patients in the ER, talking to the ones who seemed lonely and making your visit quick and simple for the ones who wanted to do anything but talk.

you bumped into jack while you were walking down the hall, head down and distracted by the chart you were reading in your hands.

jack reached out to steady you by your shoulders, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

“it would be helpful if you looked where you were going.” he teased, but you gave him a half smile in response. it was nothing against him or something he’d done, you were simply distracted in returning some results to the nurses station.

jack knew this is exactly the moment he’d been waiting for ever since he started clicking his tongue when you were around.

he discovered clicker training by complete accident. he had overheard two patients talking about it when he entered their exam room, and his curiosity got the better of him. he asked them what that was, assuming it was for their pets at home.

his curiosity and interest only grew when they pair flushed and became avoidant with their eyes and answers. he didn’t push the couple, but it was the first thing he researched when he got off his shift.

and that’s how jack abbot formed the idea to attempt to clicker train his girlfriend.

and he was about to find out if his months of discreet training had paid off.

jack shook his head and clicked his tongue, watching with a smug smirk as you instantly straightened up and met his eyes with almost alarming attention.

“what?” you asked sharply, shifting nervously. “i’m sorry, jack. i’ll pay proper attention next time.” you apologised profusely, trying to ignore the sudden rush of heat in your cheeks and the pulse between your thighs.

you looked confused and nervous when jack started laughing. “what?” you urged, biting your inner cheek as he crossed his arms. “what are you laughing at?”

jack didn’t respond, he only reached up his hand to ruffle your hair in a way that felt condescending. “nothing, sweetheart. i’m just glad i didn’t do all of that work for nothing.”

that made you frown even harder. “what does that mean?” you demanded, pushing his bicep teasingly.

jack bent down so he was close enough to whisper in your ear. “just continue with your rounds. maybe if you’re good i’ll tell you later.” he murmured.

you watched as he turned to walk away, a puzzled expression taking over the embarrassed one.

you only realised what he was referring to when he clicked his tongue again, and you realised how immediately you straightened yourself.

your boyfriend had clicker trained you without you knowing.

you’re half-dressed and cradling your daughter against your chest. one of your hand cups her perfect little head while the other strokes her back in a steady rhythm.

her soft, wet suckling fills the quiet, punctuated now and then by that tiny sigh she makes when she pauses for air.

you’re tired now. but in that floaty, dazed way that’s oddly peaceful, like your body knows you’ve just made a whole human and is demanding your stillness.

the robe you’re wearing parts a little, when you shift on the bed, exposing the warm skin to the night air. one breast is out, full heavy and leaking, the other still tucked away. your belly is softer than before. your thighs, too. and yet you’ve never felt more powerful than in this moment: feeding someone that grew inside you.

something moves in your peripheral vision, and you don’t have to take another look to know that it’s your husband.

the wedding band glints at his finger, as he stares at you. again. and he’s not being very subtle about it.

he’s leaning in the doorway like he’s forgotten how to move. like someone pressed pause on his brain and he’s just stuck there.

you don’t look at him for a while. you just let him watch. it’s become a quiet game between you lately. he studies you, drinks you in like he thinks you’ll vanish. and you pretend not to notice until the weight of his hunger becomes impossible to ignore.

you clear your throat softly, but your eyes remain on your daughter. “you’re staring again.”

“i know.” there’s no apology in it. it’s just the truth, like it’s just a fact. his gaze slides down your body and drags its way back up, lingering far too long on the breast not currently occupied, albeit it being covered. “i can’t help it.”

you finally glance at him.

he looks like a man with his hands tied. like he’s trying to be respectful, like he’s trying to wait until you give him permission.

but there’s just something wild just beneath his stillness.

you tilt your head, just a little. “what is it, baby?”

you let your eyes drag down his body now. there’s the evidence of barely-there outline of his cock already thickening beneath the fabric of his pants. your eyes find his face again, he’s red in the cheeks, breathing real slow he’s trying to will himself not to get hard watching you feed your child.

you feel the wicked little grin tug at your lips before you can stop it.

“do you want a taste?”

you ask it so damn lightly. like you’re offering him a sip of your latte.

his mouth actually opens a little. but nothing comes out other than air. his arms uncross and his hands hover at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them anymore.

“what?” his voice is croaky, like he’s forgotten how to speak entirely, and english sounds more like an inconvenience rather than a language he’s fluent in.

“you’ve been staring for twenty minutes like you want to get on your knees and suck it.”

bucky makes a noise in his throat that’s somewhere between a gasp and a groan. his eyes drop again, then snap back up, like he’s afraid he’ll come just from looking too long.

“you’re—you’re not serious.”

“oh, but i am.”

you shift your daughter slightly, stroking her tiny back as she continues to suck lazily in her sleep-heavy rhythm. “you’ve been walking around this house like a kicked puppy for a month. you’re hard every time i take my robe off. flustered every time i bend over. and don’t think i didn’ notice how long you stood outside the door last night just listening to me pump.”

his lips part again. nothing. just breath, yet again.

“fuck.” he finally manages to drag one word out of his throat.

“you want to taste what your daughter gets, don’t you? you want mommy to feed you, too.” you say the latter like it’s a statement, not a question.

you don’t know what came over you when you uttered that word, what spurred you to actually say it. but the way he reacts tells you he’s into it.

in fact, he’s very much into it because he whimpers. actually whimpers.

“say it. say what you want, baby.” your voice is barely a whisper, excited to see what might come out of his mouth. because not everyday does a six foot super soldier look like the ground has been ripped away from him.

his eyes flutter close like he’s in pain. “i want—fuck. i want to suck your tits, mommy.”

you smile like you’ve won something. hearing him call you that is a different type of arousal, one that you hadn’t felt before, but now embraced it fully. he’s exactly where you want him.

“good boy,” the two words leave you way too easily.

your husband moves without thinking. crawls onto the bed like he doesn’t remember how his knees work. when he’s finally kneeling beside you, his hands hover again, like he’s uncertain.

you’re still feeding your daughter. she’s still latched, little sucks slower now, fading more towards sleep.

bucky, on the other hand, is breathing hard.

“you want to wait until she’s done? or do you want the other one now?” you ask sweetly, like you’re not short-circuiting your husband in real time.

his eyes flick down to your boobs, and then back to you, then down again, as though he’s weighing his options. “now.”

you reach up and tug the robe down off your other shoulder, letting the soft fabric fall completely. you’re bare from the waist up now.

you bring your hand to the full breast he’s been staring at and squeeze just slightly. a thin stream of milk beads at the tip.

a moan rips out of him. and you haven’t even touched him, nor has he touched you. yet.

“open,” your voice is way too soft for an order.

his lips part instantly, like he’s waited enough.

you guide his mouth to your nipple, and he latches as though he’s the one who’s starving. his hands go to your waist, gripping you tight like you might float away. the groan he lets out when he tastes the first trickle of milk is obscene.

there’s no hesitation in the way he suckles, it’s just him, his mouth, his tongue and soft suction.

“good boy,” you whisper again. “drink.”

you stroke his hair, like you’re petting something loyal. you can feel the tension leaking out of him with every suck. and the unmistakable strain of his cock against his sweats now that he makes no effort to hide it.

“that’s it,” you coo. “you missed mommy, didn’t you?”

he nods against your skin, mouth never leaving your breast.

“you’ve been so patient and sweet. helping me every day. putting our daughter down. kissing me goodnight and walking away with your cock hard, haven’t you?”

he pulls off for half a second with a gasp, mouth still wet and swollen with saliva and milk. “i tried to be good.”

you smile and guide him back to your nipple.

“you were. that’s why i’m letting you drink.”

his groan vibrates against your skin and your whole body spikes with heat. you’re soaked between your legs now, your thighs clenching every time he pulls more milk from you.

there’s precum leaking through his pants that you can clearly see now.

your daughter unlatches with a little sigh, drunk on milk and sleep, and you shift carefully to lay her in the bassinet beside the bed.

bucky doesn’t stop sucking. he just follows you, stays latched, hands on your hips like he thinks you’ll take it away if he lets go.

you chuckle breathlessly and run your fingers through his hair. “you’re really needy, huh?”

he just nods.

“you wanna make mommy come first?”

he looks up at you, with stark black eyes and lips impossibly pink.

“please.” he pops off your breast to utter the word and goes right back to it, like that’s where he belongs.

you stroke his hair again, watching his eyes flutter. his tongue moves slower as he sucks you, almost softer now, more worship than hunger. his grip on your hips is tight, like you’re his anchor.

“god, you’re a mess. look at you.” your voice is thick with both affection and arousal.

another groan slips past him as he pulls back slightly, tongue dragging along your nipple as he breathes out. your breast is wet with milk and spit, your nipple flushed and shiny and swollen. he looks up at you like he’s drowning in it.

“i c—can’t think when you say it like that,” he stammers, “you say it and my brain just… shuts off.”

you grin down at him. “good. i don’t need you thinking right now. i just need your mouth.”

you lean back against the headboard, spreading your legs slowly, watching the way his eyes drop and his jaw tightens at the sight of your bare cunt.

you’re soaked. well, no surprise there. you’ve been aching since the second he looked at you like that. since you saw his cock twitch behind the fabric of those old sweatpants.

“you still remember what i like?” you spread yourself for him with two fingers. “it’s been a while.”

bucky exhales like he’s about to cry. “i remember everything, mommy.”

the word, even uttered for the hundredth time today, brings a new wave of arousal between your thighs. “then show me.”

there’s no hesitation inn his movements as he crawls between your legs and settles there.

the first touch of his mouth is soft. his lips part and he exhales hot against your folds before dragging his tongue up in a wet line that makes you moan and buck your hips upwards.

“ohhh, fuck—yes, just like that, baby.”

he groans in response as he licks deeper, the tip of his tongue pressing just enough to tease before flicking against your clit.

he’s slower than he used to be. maybe careful is the word. like he knows your body’s changed and he’s not here to rush it. he’s here to worship every inch of you.

he spreads you with his thumbs and sucks your clit into his mouth slowly, and your hand flies to his hair.

“there’s my good boy—ahh—keep going.”

he moans again, hips rocking down into the mattress like he can’t help it, like he’s trying to grind through the fabric just to relieve some of the pressure.

his tongue slides down to your entrance to tease and circle, and then goes right back up to your clit.

“fuck, bucky, don’t stop—don’t you dare stop—”

he mumbles something into your pussy and it takes you a second to realize he said, “won’t stop, mommy.”

you tug his hair harder. “say it again.”

he obeys you in an instant as he looks up with half lidded eyes, “i won’t stop, mommy.”

your cunt clenches around nothing, and you laugh. maybe it’s a little mean what comes out of you next.

“you’re so fucked out and you haven’t even had your cock touched yet.”

he whines. genuinely whines. he actually rocks his hips down again like he’s going to lose it just from licking you. you decide to test that theory.

“you gonna come in your pants like a good little mommy’s boy?”

he lets out a strangled sound and sucks harder, tongue swirling over your clit until your whole body arches off the bed.

“jesus— yes, baby, right there, don’t stop—”

he’s locked in now, moaning into you and grinding down. very desperate and obedient of him.

you just ride his mouth like you own it. because you do. every inch of him. every twitch of his tongue and clench of his jaw belongs to you.

your orgasm hits like a wave. sudden and earth shattering after the abstinence.

you cry out and pull his face into your cunt, grinding down, letting him drink every last second of it from your body.

a moan tears off him like he’s the one coming.

when it finally passes, you loosen your grip on his hair and stroke his scalp gently. breathing hard, he pulls back slowly. his entire face is wrecked.

“did you…?” you raise your eyebrows in question.

he swallows. “i—almost.”

you glance down and see the wet patch on the front of his pants. cupping his face, you lift his jaw up, “you want to come, sweet boy?”

without waiting for his answer, you push his back towards the headboard. he leans back, sweats still on, cock still straining hard against it, like it aches.

“pull down your sweats, baby,” you order him and he obeys without wasting a second. there’s no thoughts behind his eyes, only desperation.

when his pants are discarded to the floor, you gaze over him. his cock stands proud, a little bent towards his abdomen, smearing precum.

the tip is flushed, a delicious shade of pink, begging to be tasted. but you have other plans for him.

you slide up higher to where he is, bracketing his thighs with yours.

he watches the whole thing like he’s watching the moon rise. his hands come up automatically, gripping your hips, trying to hold you steady.

your swollen, aching cunt is hovering over his dick. when you cannot support your body so much, you feel yourself sitting over him, more like, right over his dick.

a hiss leaves his lips as your pussy makes contact with his cock. but he makes no effort to move you, only supporting you by your hips.

“mommy, please i need to be inside you,” his voice is a wreck when it does come out.

you thoroughly ignore his request, as you drag your cunt over his cock once. he whimpers like it actually hurt him, and your hand flies to his cheek.

“are you okay, baby?”

“no—aah, fuck, mommy, i’m gonna cum if you keep—keep doing that.”

you trail your fingers up his abdomen, smearing a bit of cum as you go. his abs clench under your touch. you’re not even trying to be cruel, but the effect is devastating.

the flesh arm leaves your hip to find your tit, and he brings it to his mouth. even wrecked, he needs to be drinking.

you lean forward a bit, making it easy for him to nurse. carding your fingers through his hair, you pull him towards you, and he comes to you without hesitation.

he squirms a little under your touch, and you pull back to see his lips glistening.

“what is it, baby boy?”

“ah—fuck, mommy, it hurts! please— please do somethin’,” his voice is hoarse, and you grind down on him, maybe just to torture him a little more, thus pulling a whimper out of him.

he buries his face in your neck and mumbles, “please, mommy.”

you think he might cry if you keep this up.

“aw, you’re so needy, baby,” you coo and run your hands through his hair. a whine leaves him as he nuzzles closer to you.

you sit back up slowly, watching the way his eyes track your every movement. you reach for his cock and wrap your hands around the base, gently, so gently, that touch equals torture.

he lets out a soft, broken sound in the back of his throat.

“you’re so full, baby,” you marvel at your husband.

you stroke him slowly, barely moving your wrist. the pressure is feather-light, more tease than anything. the tip of his cock is angry-red, veins flushed up along the shaft, pulsing under your hand.

his hips twitch, like he’s trying not to fuck into your fist.

“i’ll come if you do that, mommy, aaah, please.”

“i thought you wanted to cum, sweetie.” your eyes flick up to his face. he’s flushed from the neck to his ears. his head tips back into the headboard, so much so you think it might hurt, but then you remember he’s a super soldier and that he can probably take it.

“i do—i do, i just— i wan’ to cum in you, mommy.”

“you poor thing,” you stroke him slow and steady now, your palm gliding over the slick head with every pass. “did i let it build too long? should i have let you cum sooner?”

“please please let me inside you—nnngh—please mommy.” he’s trembling now. his whole body is reacting, like you’ve bypassed his brain and gone straight to the part of him that just feels.

deciding that you’ve tortured him quite enough, you lift yourself from his thighs and let your cunt hover right over his cock.

his hands grip your hips, in an attempt to push you down, but you hold yourself together as you slide his cock up and down your pussy until it catches your entrance, earning another groan from him.

a broken sigh emerges from him when you finally lower yourself fully on his cock, and you’re seated snug on his lap.

his head slumps towards your body as you start slowly grinding on top of him.

greediness engulfs him as he takes one of your nipples in his mouth, his tongue working circles over it until his lips wrap around it fully, followed by which there’s a soft suckle.

the dual assault on your body is too much, especially since this is the first time you’ve welcomed him inside you after delivering your babygirl.

like he’s read your mind, his metal arm grips your hip tighter, while his flesh arm snakes down between your legs to find your swollen clit.

the sensation of him rubbing slow circles on your aching nub is almost too much, and you feel yourself slipping away, falling into another mind blowing orgasm.

all while, he hasn’t taken his mouth off you, drinking languidly. you feel his cock twitch inside you, and your walls clamp down on him, both of you reaching the sweet release at the same time.

the milk let down increases when his latch doesn’t waver, but only strengthens as he spills hot cum inside you.

breathing grows heavy on both sides, until you cannot do anything. not even move. wrapped up in one another, like there’s no possibility of space between you.

he lifts his face from you, and that’s when you catch sight of him. utterly gone. milk and spit and the remnants of your cum adorn his face, lips flushed pink, and irises completely eclipsing his pupils.

you lean down and kiss him, tongue slipping into his mouth with lazy ease.

“you’re okay, baby,” you whisper. “you did so good.”

he doesn’t even speak. something like a groan comes out of him and you nuzzle against his cheek, still smiling.

“i love you,” he whispers, looking down at your chest, eyes dragging over the shiny, slick skin of your breasts. “you’re still leaking. fuck. mommy, you look edible.”

edible isn’t a word you’d use to describe yourself, but whatever floats his boat. you roll your eyes at him, but your thighs clench.

“wanna suck it again,” he mutters, dragging his thumb across the side of your breast. “lick it up and swallow every drop. god, you taste so good—so warm—”

you press your hand flat against his stomach. “you’re literally trembling.”

“i know.” he laughs breathlessly. “my legs don’t work. my balls are empty. my brain is gone. i’m just a mouth now. just a mouth and a cock actually.”

you snort into his skin.

“god, you’re disgusting,” you whisper, but there’s no heat to it, you punctuate the sentence by placing wet kisses to his collarbone.

he turns his face toward you, brushing his nose against your temple. “i mean it. the second you said i could have a taste—fuck, something in me just broke.”

you could feel his cock slightly harden in you by the second, and he looks at you like he’s just realised that too. but he also knows you don’t have enough in your body to give him another orgasm.

you try to nuzzle close to him, try to grind down on him despite being wrung out, but he gently lifts you off him and you both silently hiss.

"can we just lie down?" to which you reply with a kiss to his lips. he takes that answer eagerly and curls into your side.

he's half on top of you now, one arm slung across your waist like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he lets go. his face is pressed against your chest, lips brushing the swell of your breast.

the stillness doesn't last longer as he twitches every now and then, little aftershocks still rippling through him.

you think he’s drifting. until he shifts slightly and murmurs, voice barely above a whisper, “can i…?”

you glance down. he’s looking at you with that dazed expression again. completely blissed out and somehow still wanting. he nuzzles your breast, dragging his mouth lazily over your skin, and repeats it, "mommy… can i just… can i nurse again?”

you smile and kiss the top of his head. “of course, baby.”

shifting slightly, you guide him to the soft weight of your breast, your nipple already stiffening at the feel of his breath. he’s gentle, so damn gentle it almost breaks something in you.

he opens his mouth slowly, presses his lips to you, and latches without a word.

you realise there's no hunger or desperation this time, like earlier when he was moaning and grinding and trying not to come.

this is something else. this is soft. and soothing. and soft.

his tongue drags lazy circles around your nipple. he sucks lightly, rhythmically and his cheek is pressed to the curve of your breast like it’s the only place he ever wants to live.

you wrap your arm around his head, fingers sinking into his hair, just to hold him closer.

you feel the letdown and the warm ache. the subtle sting that comes just before the release.

but you just watch him without a word.

he moans softly, the sound vibrating against your chest.

“tastes so good,” he murmurs, voice muffled. “so fucking warm. feels like you’re feeding me straight from your heart.”

quiet laughter ripples through you. “i might be.”

he sucks again, deeper now, lips sealed around your nipple, his tongue moving with slow precision like he never wants to stop. your other hand finds the back of his neck, rubbing gentle circles there, keeping him grounded. keeping him yours.

“i love this. i’d live here if you let me.”

you smile and tilt your head to kiss his forehead. “you already do.”

his hand slides over your belly, stroking the soft skin, fingers tracing the stretch of you, the weight you still carry.

“i love this body,” he whispers. “you made me everything in it. you feed me from it. you fucking break me with it.”

a slow exhale leaves you, and he just keeps nursing.

you can feel his cock— not hard, but not soft either —resting against your thigh. it twitches every now and then like it’s remembering earlier. like it’s responding just to the taste of you in his mouth.

he shifts a little, pulling your breast deeper into his mouth, moaning as he suckles like he’s trying to coax every last drop from you.

his tongue flicks gently, then presses firm. you can feel the tug low in your belly. your nipple aches, your core pulses, but you stay still and let him take what he wants.

let him keep drinking.

“am i gonna get addicted to this?” he mumbles around your skin.

“you already are, baby.”

“i don’t wanna stop.”

“you don’t have to.”

you look down again. he looks so peaceful. so full of want and contentment at the same time. he shifts his legs a little, then presses closer, curling into you like he’s trying to melt into your skin.

you whisper into his hair, “you want to switch sides, baby?”

he hums. “mmhm.”

you gently ease him off your breast. his lips make a soft, wet pop as he pulls away, and he actually whines. his tongue darts out to lick the corner of his mouth, already chasing the taste again.

you guide his head to the other side, lift your arm so he can tuck beneath it, and he latches just as eagerly as the first time. maybe even more.

this nipple’s still wet from earlier, still sensitive, and the moment his tongue touches it, you shiver.

he groans.

“god, mommy,” he mumbles. “still leaking.”

you run your fingers through his hair, stroke the curve of his jaw.

he keeps sucking. messy now. even drooling a little. he's moaning like it gets better the longer he stays latched. and it might.

you’re not sure where the pleasure ends and the intimacy begins anymore. it’s all blended together—this soft, sticky need that just keeps pulsing between you.

your thighs are slick again. you don't have to voice it out for him to know that.

he pulls off suddenly, just for a second, eyes dazed as he looks up at you. his lips are swollen, and you feel him shaking.

"i love you so much," it's a statement, that holds more love than it could ever express.

"i love you too, baby," you caress his hair and pull him closer to you.

a smile spreads on his lips and he kisses the side of your breast. then latches again, eyes fluttering shut. and drinks.

my masterlist .ᐟ

extras | aight i’ve been summoned to hell. i’ll see myself out. i genuinely forgot that the baby existed, so if we can collectively imagine it’s in the next room fast asleep, that would be terrific! taglist | @devililithh @buckyfmd @sheriff-bodecker @houseofhyde @umbreoni @bckyslover @kqtholins @54nboo @amoremarveloustime @barnesandashes @colettebarnes @barnes-babydoll @miraclediviner @of-sanguine-eyes @flockoff-featherface @biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @manly-man-whore @indigo123789 @wasa-bby @biggestfangirl @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysbunnny @highhopes1008 @castielscaplan @grumpysunnybarnes @pinksplace @luvyoupxmimi @slutdier @yes-ilovetowrite @cautiouscas17 @astridphantom @delusionalwomsn @cinnamon-girl-writes @wherewinterblooms @stifflyspeedyquirk @sassandscribbles @marvelouslyme96 @tw1sters @stesha02 @floatingvalhallasea @goobers-mcgee @t1redphoenix @vickynguyennn @bluellamacheesecake-blog @serenityrjd @pitabread79 @galaxygoddess30 @biggestfangirl @chenoadouble-o7 + to get added to the taglist .ᐟ

A/N: this is not the breeding kink one-shot I was talking about in the poll, but this was already finished and unfortunately yesterday something happened and I’m not in a good place rn mentally. hope you’ll enjoy🥛sorry but it’s not really edited.

Bucky shivers as the usual warm weight pressed against his side is missing. He lethargically extends his arm to bring your plush body back to his, yet his fingers only meet wrinkly, tepid sheets. His eyes fly open, only to find your side empty. 

It’s the middle of the night and your baby boy is sleeping soundly in the crib he assembled months ago, tucked close beside your bed. This allows Bucky to reach him the moment the faintest whimper slips from his lips—one of the many advantages of having enhanced senses. He can see the exhaustion pressing down on you, and still, you try to cram as many chores as possible into your schedule, nowadays reduced to feedings and diaper changes. But Bucky would do anything to make you feel like you’re keeping up.

These days your husband is always repeating the same thing: that he’ll handle the house, that you don’t need to push yourself like this. But you do anyway, unable to shake the guilt of leaving everything to him when he’s already the one waking in the night to take care of your son.

“I’m a super soldier, you pretty mama,” he promptly reminds you, his voice gentle against the bare skin of your shoulder. “Why would I leave this stuff to my beautiful wife when I don’t need that much rest in the first place?”

The ensuite is empty, which means you’re either in the kitchen pumping or the living room wide awake.

Bucky pushes himself up slowly, leaving the bedroom door open behind him—just in case. He could hear his son cry from miles away, but even the former Winter Soldier can’t quite shake the instinct to run to his son in case of potential danger.

The kitchen light catches his attention the moment he steps into the hallway, spilling across the floor in a warm glow. He follows it without thinking, but the sight that greets him makes him freeze on the doorway.

Bucky has always reserved particular attention to your chest since the first time you started fooling around while dating.

But this is different.

He never could have imagined that one day the mere sight of your nipples leaking milk would leave him stiff in his pants and drooling. That something as natural as your body providing for your child could feel so intimate. During your pregnancy, your breasts had grown fuller and heavier, often sore enough to make you whine in pain against his shoulder. More than once, you’d sighed in frustration at the milk that soaked through your bras, inconvenient and relentless.

And each time, Bucky had to suppress the instinct to clean you up. With his tongue.

He might be over a hundred years old, but he knows his way around the internet since the first time he grumpily announced he was going to look up what a creampie was, while you were in stitches on the couch. You still tried to warn him through your amusement, explaining that the internet is a treacherous place, one where everything should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The shame curling hot in his stomach is inevitable when he looks at your chest with his pants uncomfortably tight, but this fantasy only intensified with time, to the point where he feels like imploding at the slightest mention of you pumping.

Bucky gulps thickly, frowning in animosity at the two devices attached to your tits that peak out from your sports bra. He really wants to suckle on your nipples and feel your sweet milk bless his senses, however, despite all the years of dating and marriage, asking would probably feel like walking straight in front of a freight train running at full speed. 

His tongue unconsciously licks his lips as you pour some of the freshly pumped milk in a baby bottle, before going through the motions of setting the devices back in place. The wearable breast pumps had been his idea, actually, after months spent buried in books, articles, and a concerning amount of online forums for new moms. He read everything he could get his hands on, determined to make things easier for you. Multiple people praised these over traditional ones for their gentler suction and better angles, so one day Bucky’d shown up with his laptop open to the website of a famous online store specialized in hands-free pumps, already halfway through his research and entirely ready to start measuring your breasts.

Your chest aches more often than not nowadays. You hadn’t expected to produce this much milk, or how constant it would feel. Not just during the day, but at night too, when you find yourself half-asleep at the kitchen counter, filling bottle after bottle while your body begs you to lie down.

Bucky knows everything got more sensitive and swollen for you since you got pregnant, so he often finds himself wondering if he could make you come just by stimulating your tits alone. 

Shaking his head to calm himself down before entering the kitchen with a full hard-on, Bucky slowly approaches you, wrapping his arms around your waist from behind. He doesn’t miss the way your body automatically relaxes under his touch.

“Was wondering where my beautiful wife went.” He whispers, resting his chin on your shoulder to eye the battlefield of spilled milk and paper towels. “How are you feeling, lovely?”  

“Tired.” You murmur around a yawn as your head falls back against his chest. “And aching.”

In this new position, his blue eyes can comfortably admire your cleavage. His stare on the plump skin of your chest spilling out from the tight sports bra is intense, though he clears his throat before his cock takes over his common sense and his teeth end up sinking in your tender flesh.

“Mmh… I can help, you know?” You glance back at him, eyebrows furrowed.

“No baby, you already do so much. Besides, these things are amazing! They do everything by themselves, I just have to empty them.” Bucky swallows, before gently turning you to face him.

“No, I meant—I want to help help you.” Your eyebrows raise, still not understanding.

“I want to taste it, doll.”

Oh.

Oh.

Your eyebrows shoot up stunned, before a small grin threatens to take over your lips.

“James Buchanan Barnes, you want to nurse on my breasts?” A pretty blush takes over the apples of his cheeks at your bluntness. Your husband has never looked so boyishly pretty before.

“Don’t say it like that.” His affronted voice wavers, pulling a chuckle out of you that makes your tits jiggle alluringly. His eyes promptly fall on them, before he flushes violently upon noticing you have caught him drooling red-handed.

“But that’s what you want, right Jamie?” You tilt your head teasingly, cradling his cheeks in your soft hands.

He nods expectantly, eyes sparkling despite the scorching embarrassment pooling into his belly.

“Okay, but let me remove these first.” His breath hitches at your nonchalant reaction. 

Your husband’s chest heaves in anticipation as he waits for the electric pumps to finish, unable to stay put behind you like an overhyped puppy waiting for his treat. Bucky knows you are taking your time in storing the milk away on purpose—it’s not your fault he gets so adorable whenever he loses grip on the composure he is so proud of.

When you are done, you barely have time to turn around before his strong arms pick you up to place your butt on the counter, so he can be closer to your chest. He kisses you desperately, kneading your waist and thighs until you are left warm and moaning.

Eventually his lips end up tracing a trail of wet kisses down your throat, finally allowing his nose to gently graze the skin of your breasts. He helps you remove your bra with shaky hands, gasping when your torso is finally bare for him to toy with.

“Look at you.” His large hands encompass the swell of your tits, gently kneading the flesh to not hurt you. Your quiet whimper stops him instantly, looking up at you to catch any sign of discomfort. But he only receives a weak nod, your hands desperately gripping his biceps as his fingers reprise their exploring. 

“They are so full, my love. I bet they hurt, right?” His eyes glass over, spellbound as the pads of his thumbs delicately circle both of your turgid nipples, drawing a few stray drops of milk. Bucky instantly brings the digits to his mouth, eyelids fluttering shut at the flavor blessing his taste buds.

“Fuck, you really are sweet everywhere, doll.” You shudder at his growled praise, your tired body extremely sensitive as his fingers keep stroking your nubs.

Your loud gasp is swallowed in the nick of time in fear of waking your son up, yet you stop yourself from flinching when Bucky’s lips finally engulf your right nipple. His mouth is hot and his tongue eager against the tender surface; you’ve always enjoyed the care and time he puts in worshipping your chest, but this time it feels completely different with the way his palms caress your tits, and his tongue patiently grazes your nipples with serenity written all over his features.

“Bucky—” You interrupt him as he starts sucking. It’s too soft, just like him, you think fondly. And it’s not that you don’t love it, but your milk will barely come out if he doesn’t get a little rougher.

“C’mon, honey, you can suck harder.” You encourage quietly, the only answer you get is him dazedly blinking up at you through his long, dark lashes. 

His hand fondles the breast his lips aren’t occupying, while his vibranium arm wraps around your back to bring you impossibly closer. Fingertips dig into your supple skin as he obeys, his eyes rolling back at milk finally filling his mouth. The gentle licks soon transform into harsher suckles, and one of your hands goes straight to your mouth with a resounding smack to stop a loud whine from potentially reaching your neighbors. 

Yes, it happened before—definitely too many times for you to comfortably look them in the eye without your cheeks going on fire.

Bucky can smell your arousal, but his mind is clouded with his own pleasure to understand what’s happening around him.

He’s finally doing it, he’s drinking your milk directly from the source. This might potentially be the hottest thing you’ve ever done.

Well, apart from that time you fucked in one of the empty meeting rooms in his office. 

Now that Bucky thinks about it, you probably conceived your baby boy that time. He remembers too clearly how aroused the both of you were. His body was on fire that day, he felt like a fucking animal in heat trapped in a cage after he was urgently called by his secretary as he was slowly thrusting his cock into your half-asleep body that morning. And you… well, it was actually your idea to have sex there.

You showed up at his workplace, calling him Congressman with that whiny voice of yours, and claimed you needed to have his cock inside you so bad as you both stood in front of his two secretaries hurriedly fixing his schedule around you, since it was a well-known fact that Bucky would abandon anything if his wife needed him.

Then you dragged him in one of the empty rooms by his tie, and God, he still shivers at the memory of how you rode him on that damn chair, only wearing that stupid little sundress he bought you on his last work trip, just because it looked cute. And fuck, now it was hanging loosely from your waist as you moaned loud enough for his whole staff to hear when he finally came inside you, stuffing you with his cum as you cried and trembled around him, his cock refusing to soften so Bucky picked you up and brought you to the conference table to roughly thrust inside you, making you squirt all over his pants—

Yeah... that’s a story for another time. 

One of your hands cups the back of his head, slightly pulling at his hair as you lean forward with a whimper. 

“Jesus Christ.” Your man groans through a mouthful of you.

“Yeah? Is it good?” You tease, giggling at the eager nod he gives you. 

“So good, pretty girl.” He whines, pulling away from your nipple only to move onto the other. 

His tongue plays with the hard peak, moaning when a quiet whine falls from your lips. The lewd, wet sounds of his licking and sucking prompt you to wrap your thighs around his hips and push against him, your nails digging into the meat of his shoulders to try and find a crumb of stimulation against his belly for your pussy. It’s so messy your arousal soaks through your thin shorts, now sticking uncomfortably to your damp skin.

Despite Bucky being completely lost into his own bliss, he still finds the mental strength to tighten his hold around your waist to keep you still against the counter and enjoy his midnight snack peacefully. 

Your nipples are tender by now, abused and wet by one very hungry super soldier. Your head falls back unconsciously, a little embarrassed at the fact that you are probably ready to come and your pussy has been touched a total of zero times.

His large palm languidly slides down your thigh, until it cups your pussy, the vibrations of his low moan further stimulating your nub as your slick coats his fingers through the fabric. You urge him on, grinding onto the heel of his hand.

Two fingers finally travel under the waistband, the rough pads working over your clit, firm but not too fast, just how you like it.

Pleasure burns hotter and hotter with each press of his fingers against your nub, until they find your entrance, delicately rubbing over your folds and collecting your wetness before he nudges them in. Your jaw slackens around a silent moan as they stretch you out so deliciously, curling and rubbing that sweet spot that always makes you gush so prettily around him.

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose, still suckling on your nipples as your hole hungrily swallows his fingers. He is borderline dizzy from how good he feels with his fingers in your pussy and your milk down his throat.

“Feels good, doll?” The words are nothing short of a murmur against your skin. “She’s so needy for me, hm? Doesn’t wanna let go.”

Your cheeks are on fire, and he receives only a quick nod as an answer. The touch his lips leave across your chest burn, causing your lips to prettily open around a silent moan.

“Jamie, just like that, fuck—” You sigh blissed out, flinching when his thumb slowly goes back to toying with your puffy clit. Bucky didn’t realize how much he missed the way your core would turn all swollen with arousal.

“Missed this so much, missed you, honey.” A needy whimper claws out of his throat. “Talk to me, tell me what you wanna do to me.”

“Fucking hell,” he takes a deep breath, pressing soft pecks over your breasts. “Wanna fill you up, sweetheart. Can’t stop thinking about it, how gorgeous you looked all full with my baby.” His eyes briefly close in a futile attempt to ward off the painful throbbing of his cock pushing against his sweatpants.

You clamp around him, shivering when his other hand squeezes your hips.

“‘S all I can think about. Day and night.” He rambles brokenly. “So perfect, my perfect wife with her perfect pussy and her perfect tits—” His words dissolve into a low groan, still softly massaging your walls, the stretch so good it makes your legs tremble around his hips.

“Jamie, more.” You mewl, your hips twitching up helplessly. “Wanna feel you inside, need you to come over and over until it takes again. Jamie, pretty please?”

Bucky grits his teeth.

You can’t stay stuff like that, not when it’s only been two months. Not when he’s been desperate to see you round with his baby once more. Not when you are leaking milk from your breasts while begging for his cock.

“Can’t, babygirl.” He pants. You make your displeasure known loudly with a little wail, clinging tightly onto his shoulders.

“Please, Jamie.” Tears form at the corners of your eyes as your orgasm builds steadily in your belly.

“I know doll, I know. ‘M sorry, ‘m so sorry.”

Your body goes rigid for a second before turning pliant under his calloused hand abandoning your hips to properly take care of your swollen clit. Your pussy clenches, little squeaky moans slipping from your lips and muffled into his hair as you hug Bucky closer to your chest, sagging against him.

“Gonna make it up to you, baby, I swear.” He slurs out dizzily. “Wanna keep this pussy full and give my pretty wife all the babies she wants.”

“Jamie! Close—‘m so close, don’ stop.” He desperately focuses on matching the rhythm of his fingers thrusting inside with the ones rubbing your clit, savoring the eager twitches his cock gives at your pussy tightening.

Bucky then parts his lips, blindly mouthing at your skin until they finally latch onto your nipple once more, and start sucking like a wounded man seeing water after days spent under the scorching sun.

At the intense pressure around your sensitive nubs, the knot in your belly gets tighter and tighter. Your toes curl, and your orgasm finally hits you violently. You come with a gasp, the tension in your belly shattering all at once as your head falls back. Your chest pushes against his greedy mouth, flinching and panting as you find yourself stuck in a limbo of maddening pleasure with Bucky’s fingers still relentless on your pussy, even when small tears run down your cheeks.

And then, your husband grunts loudly, harshly exhaling against the fat of your chest. 

“Fucking—shit.” His mouth leaves your nipple with a wet pop, and his head slowly lifts up, leaving your wet nubs exposed to the cold air of the kitchen. You shiver at the change of temperature, slumping against his shoulders as you feel your tits tingle with overstimulation.

He is gentle in removing his fingers from your puffy core, finally embracing you as you mourn the loss. His chin lazily rests on the top of your head for a bit, small kisses swarming your glistening forehead in hopes of easing the trembling of your limbs.

That’s when you see it. Opening your eyes with effort, you are directly met with the sight of a huge stain right on Bucky’s crotch, the grey fabric of his sweatpants darker in that exact place. 

“Did you just come in your pants, baby?” You raise your head to look at him with a little grin.

Bucky’s already flushed cheeks flame up, and his eyes refuse to meet yours. Instead, he buries his face in the valley between your tits, hugging you tight. 

“Sorry.” He mumbles. “Are you okay? Does anything hurt? Was it good?”

“No need to be sorry.” You hum. “It was so hot, Jamie.” Sighing satisfied, your arms wrap around his neck to caress his hair. 

“I’ll help you from now on.” He adds solemnly, looking straight into your eyes. “After you pump out the milk for Bean, I get the last bits.” You can’t help but burst out laughing before pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

“Alright, alright. But baby, you are at work until late in the afternoon.”

“Don’t care.” He grunts, nuzzling your neck like a cat in need of cuddles. “I’ll do it at night.” Your eyes widen, immediately protesting.

“Bucky, no. You already take care of Bean when he wakes up throughout the night, then wake up early to go to work… I won’t wake you up just to—to drink my milk.” Your cheeks heat up at the absurdity of your statement.

Bucky huffs, coming out of his hiding place with an offended wrinkle between his brows. 

“Doll,” he whines just like a kid trying to convince his mom to stay up later on a school day. His head falls back tiredly. “I’m a super soldier. The super soldier. I don’t need to rest.”

With a sigh you shake your head at his apparently innocent eyes, vaguely reminding you of Alpine when she’s trying to soften you up after pushing something off the table that probably ended up shattering on the floor. 

“Please, please, please!” He attacks you with kisses, delicately holding your pliant body in his arms as his lips travel from your face to the slope of your neck, and then back up again.

Your attempts at keeping your laugh down are awful, but you can’t help it when your husband is being this adorable. 

“Alright alright! Hey—okay stop, please stop! Stop!” Your lips press together to avoid releasing any loud noise that could potentially interrupt this rare, peaceful night.

Finally, Bucky relents, one hand cradling your cheek while the other massages your lower back with purpose.

“Promise?” His eyebrows raise expectantly and you just have to kiss him. 

“Yeah yeah, promise, you hungry super soldier.” 

“Good.” He mumbles against your mouth, following your lips for another kiss. “Now, let me properly take care of my wife.”

“What—Bucky!” You gasp as he picks you up, making his way towards the couch.

A devious grin blooms on his handsome face when you whimper at the way he deliberately moves your hips so your puffy folds brush against his imposing bulge with every step he takes. 

“Tell me sweet girl, since I can’t fill you up yet, where do you want it? Face or tits?”

— ⟢ END NOTES: thank you so much for reading! my masterlist → winteryn's masterlist

You had no ill intentions when you sought Jack out on the beach. Truly. None whatsoever.

Your conscience was pristine. Clean enough to eat off of, if a person were inclined toward that sort of thing. And Jack would more than likely be inclined toward that sort of thing.

Which is neither here nor there and definitely not the point.

The point is that he happened to be the first available person you spotted who wasn’t elbow-deep in the cooler, manning the grill, hauling folding chairs closer to the water or otherwise occupied in some way that would’ve made your request an imposition.

He happened to be seated in the shade, sand-dusted calves stretched out and both hands conveniently free. You happened to wander over with your sunscreen and your very normal, very defensible need for help reaching the center of your back. 

Never mind that your eyes tend to find him first everywhere.

Your first choice, always. In the hospital, in crowded rooms, in Friday-night bars, and now here, on a stretch of beach sand full of towels, melting ice cubes and boozy coworkers.

If Jack is there the geometry of the universe settles. 

Noise levels drop. Potential catastrophe politely steps back in line. Statistically, things improve by, what, twenty percent when he’s within arms reach?

The only time Jack’s presence ever seems to tip from reassurance into danger is when Robby is nearby.

Your brother, his best friend, currently planted beside the grill with a pair of tongs in one hand and a beer sweating in the other, wholly unaware of just how intimately you know the man sitting a few yards away from you reading a book. 

No idea that you even know Jack beyond hospital stories and holiday small talk. No idea that you’ve counted the freckles on Jack’s torso the way other people count blessings. No idea you know the small mole just above Jack’s hip because you’ve watched it disappear beneath the push of his own thigh when he’s folded you open beneath him. No idea you know how his forearm looks when it flexes beside your head, that raised vein appearing when your heels hook into his back and he grunts your name into his mouth. No fucking idea you know the pale scar on his ribs that becomes your personal tactical obsession whenever he cages you against a doorframe and breathes against your ear, quiet, sweetheart, unless you want your brother to ask questions. 

You slip into the little wedge of shade cast by Jack’s umbrella, hip brushing the arm of his chair. 

It takes half a second for Jack’s gaze to lift. First to your face, because he is decent, or because he has spent forty-nine years perfecting the performance of decency and can probably do it under sedation.

Then his eyes dip lower, catching on your chest and the heroic and doomed labor of your bikini top, the poor thing doing its absolute best with limited resources and no meaningful administrative support, and for one brief, gorgeous second, Jack Abbot’s whole face goes blank. 

You unscrew the sunscreen cap with the patience of a saint and the moral character of someone much worse, pretending you don’t see a thing. It’s easy. You’ve been playing dumb your whole life, and Jack happens to make it especially rewarding. 

“Hi, Jack.”

He blinks as though dragged out of a dream he has no intention of describing in mixed company. 

The paperback folds around one finger; he swallows civility into a single neutral “Hey,” though his ears are flaming traitors. 

You bounce once on your toes just to watch his eyes track the up-and-down movement. “Mind helping me with my back?”

A phantom movement ripples down his arm, the muscle memory that usually ends with his thumb sliding up the tender inside of your knee.

Half-second later he remembers the clause you made him swear to the night before you left, the one you recited while sitting on the edge of his bed in nothing but your earrings and a very serious expression: no contact during this trip. Not in front of Robby. Not in private. Not even the little absent-minded touches Jack was so fond of giving and so terrible at pretending were accidental. 

He had listened with the patient, faintly amused face — oh, of course, let’s discuss boundaries — all while his hands were already easing your thighs apart, palm spanning half your quads. “That’s smart, sweetheart,” he had murmured, barely out of his mouth before he fucked you so hard you spent the first two days of this trip remembering him every time you sat down, crossed your legs, climbed stairs, breathed wrong, existed.

Day one started with Robby squinting at the careful, not-at-all-in-pain way you eased into the passenger seat. 

“Pull something?” he asked, suspicion crinkling the corners of his eyes. 

Jack, loading your suitcase into the trunk, had only said, “She’s fine — just overdid the beach volleyball warm-up.”

Now, beneath the umbrella, he eyes the bottle in your hand.

“You’re asking me to put sunscreen on you while I’m currently under express orders not to touch you,” he clarifies, mouth twitching. “Little contradictory, don’t you think?”

“It’s medicinal, Jack. Doctor-ordered sun safety. That puts it squarely under the ‘acts of basic care’ exemption we definitely agreed on.” 

There is, of course, no exemption. But you say it with such polished confidence, such gorgeous little liar convocation, and Jack’s eyes keep distractedly slipping to your cleavage, you figure you might be able to gaslight him into believing otherwise.

Jack tilts in, voice dropping to bedside-manner dark. “Preventive exams are also acts of basic care, sweetheart. I offered to give you one last night. Head to toe. Very thorough. You didn’t seem to keen on the idea. Funny how selective you are with these exemptions.”

He knows perfectly well keenness was never the issue.

Keenness had been present and accounted for, actually, sitting upright in bed with a racing pulse while Jack spent nearly forty minutes vibrating your phone off the nightstand at one in the morning, apparently deciding the no-contact was less a boundary and more a diagnostic puzzle he could brute-force with persistence, semantics, and an irresponsible number of filthy hypotheticals. 

How firm is the rule?

You had answered, Very.

Define very.

Jack.

I’m serious. Are we talking legally blinding or more of a strong suggestion? 

I can’t sleep knowing you’re down the hall.

I keep thinking about your ass in that tiny fucking bikini.

And your mouth.

And the noise you make when I’m tasting your pretty pussy.

So if "very" has any flexibility, now would be an excellent time to disclose it.

You had flushed at that, instinct dragging your hand south, fingertips tucking beneath the elastic of your pajama shorts, privately checking how much trouble you were in.

Spoiler: a lot. Still, you forced your breathing steady and tapped out the grown-up response you promised yourself you’d give him.

Too risky. Robby’s awake. 

Riskier to ignore symptoms.

You seemed flushed at dinner, baby. Could be heat exhaustion.

Standard protocol is immediate evaluation. Full tactical assessment of any sensitive areas.

Better I handle it now than you collapse tomorrow, right? 

“The walls here are paper thin. I just didn’t want everyone to hear you,” you murmur, eyes flicking toward the grill where Robby still holds court. 

Jack’s gaze drags over your face, patience fraying.

His head cants. “Me?”

An accusation rather than a question.

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning too hard.

It’s bullshit.

Jack makes sounds in bed, sure, these low rough little things he tries to swallow down into silence, but you are, historically, the problem. You are the one who forgets walls even exist, who gets whiny and breathless, saying his name too sweet and loud.

Still, riling him up is half the fun.

“Mhm. All those grunts you do? Very compromising. You really should work on that. I was just protecting your reputation.” 

His mouth tugs into that bare-bones smile, parched and cutting, like a fence post bleached under Georgia sun. 

“That’s interesting, doll, because I seem to remember you nearly getting us thrown out of that hotel in Atlanta.” He pauses, eyes steady on yours. “Had to clamp a palm over your mouth halfway through just so the folks next door would quit pounding on the wall.” 

You make a thoughtful, entirely disingenuous sound. “I don’t recall.”

Liar, you think, but only to yourself, because the scene is seared onto the backs of your eyelids: big palm, slick with sweat; your own pulse popping under his thumb.

“Convenient,” he says. “Concerning, too. Memory loss at your age.”

The urge to fire back — your age, grandpa — sparks under your tongue, but you swallow it, knowing you’ve already won.

He’s picturing that night, too. You can see it in the way his jaw resets, in the way his fingers flex like they’re aching to reprise the role of impromptu gag. 

“Memory loss and melanoma.” Your fingers skim your collarbone, then your shoulder, making a tiny show of your poor exposed skin. “That’ll be on your conscience, and you have so many sins already, Jack.” 

Jack’s glare fractures, concern muscling past amusement. 

“Turn around,” he orders.

His palm resignedly lands on your back and the first sweep of cool lotion is an instant balm, a hush in every raw, sun-tight cell that’s been screaming since day one of this self-inflicted separation.

Water to a dying flower. Oxygen after a held breath.

The peppermint chill kisses the nape of your neck, then fans outward in broad strokes, each pass ironing the ache right out of your skin. 

Three whole days without his hands, seventy-two hours of pretending you didn’t need this, and now his thumbs slip beneath your bikini straps like they own the territory, tracing the warmed skin that’s been begging for him with every salty breeze. 

“Missed you,” you murmur under your breath, words a little wobbly and petulant.

He huffs a soft laugh and bends to brush his mouth against your shoulder blade. “Yeah, missed you, too, angel.”

He smooths another cool ribbon down your spine.

You angle yourself towards the grill to allow him better access only to see Robby nudging the spatula at Mateo like a relay baton. Take over, man.

Mateo blinks, grabs the grill tools, and Robby wipes his palms on a dish towel as he starts striding across the sand.

Panic sparks hot in your belly. Abort, abort —

Jack’s fingers press reassuringly at the base of your neck. “Easy.”

Robby arrives, squinting against the glare. 

Jack doesn’t miss a beat, straightening just enough to greet him over your head, palms still settling the lotion. “Need a second set of tongs, man? You were talking about that pineapple glaze.” 

“Yeah, figured you could baste while I flip,” Robby says, oblivious.

“Sure thing.” Jack rubs the last of the lotion on your shoulder before flicking the cap back on the bottle. 

Robby tips his chin at you, hooks an arm around Jack’s neck like a big brother claiming turf. “And watch it, man. Give her an inch and she’ll have you painting her toes next.”

Jack shoots you a wink. “Wouldn’t put it past her, bit on the spoiled side, isn’t she?”

You don’t get to be alone with Jack again until later that evening.

After a twelve-hour gauntlet of being herded from one little duty to the next, karmic punishment apparently being less fire-and-brimstone and more Robby glued to your elbow, Samira asking about plates, Dana hunting for towels.

The house had stayed swollen with noise, doors opening, voices carrying, bodies constantly moving through every room, leaving nowhere private enough to breathe, let alone get a second with your secret boyfriend. 

And you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like torture, spending the whole day brushing past Jack close enough to catch bits and pieces of him but never close enough to keep it, catching his stare across the deck and breaking first because if you hold it too long, even for one more second, your face will say everything your mouth has forbidden to.

By the time you get into the shower, you’re wound so tight you feel one wrong move might split you straight down the middle. Steam flattens the bathroom, fogging the mirror in milky layers while condensation beads along the floor beneath your heels. 

The water comes down nearly scalding over skin still balmy from the sun, rinsing the day off you in slow, glittering streams. Salt, sunscreen, sweat, sexual frustration, little crescents of sand, all of it spiraling together toward the drain. 

You brace both palms against the wall and hiss when the spray finds the tender knot tucked between your shoulder blade and spine.

You don’t have time to decide whether the sting is pleasure or pain because suddenly the door latch is clicking.

You spin, palms crossing over your breasts, ready to apologize for… something (what, exactly? You’re not sure, because last time you checked you weren’t the person barging into an occupied bathroom.) 

But then the silhouette resolves into Jack and the apology dies on your tongue.

He shuts and locks the door with a soft snick, arching a brow through the haze.

You hiss under your breath, “What — Jack, what are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He just looks. His gaze drags leisurely, like a hand down your body, over your breasts, the water-glossed dip of your waist, the slick shimmer on your thighs, then hovering at your bare pussy before climbing back to your face. 

He looks utterly unhurried. A man content to feast with his eyes first and speak when the hunger becomes unbearable. 

Fire pools low in your belly and you shift, thighs pressing together in a useless bid for modesty. “Seriously, what if someone saw you come in?”

He closes the distance until your breath clouds a small circle on the glass pane between you.

“Just grabbing my razor,” he says, offhand, like you’re the one overreacting as he tips his head toward the shelf behind you. “Promise I’ll be two seconds. In, out.”

You give him a long, squinting once-over, as though you can spot the lie on his skin. He just wiggles his fingers — see? Harmless — so you huff a tiny laugh and shift aside. 

“Fine. Two seconds,” you mutter, watching him carefully.

You pull the slider door open.

The instant rush of cooler air leaves gooseflesh in its wake, and Jack’s shoulders seem suddenly much broader than you remember as he steps through. 

“Appreciate it, honey.”

He ducks under the spray, and the stall feels two sizes too small.

Jack plants himself in front of you, torso filling your peripheral vision, trunks plastered to powerful thighs.

He doesn’t touch you, but the warmth radiating from his body seems to crowd every spare inch of space.

When his chest rises you feel the ripple in each breath through yours.

“You okay?” His tone drips false innocence as he reaches around you for the razor, the damp fabric of his trunks gliding over the sensitive swell of nerves between your legs in a feather-light pass.

You suck in a harsh breath.

He straightens as if nothing happened, twirling the razor between his fingers, eyes glinting with pleased mischief.

Dick-Face.

Your vision goes momentarily starry, the lost friction leaving you empty.

You rally with a shaky grin. “‘M fine.”

“Mind if I shave in here, then? Better water pressure and keeps the sink hair-free. Know you hate that.”

You squint up at him, water streaking your lashes. 

“Jack…” One elongated syllable loaded with I know exactly what you’re doing. 

“Relax, angel. Two seconds,” he reminds, though the slight tilt of his hips say otherwise. 

He angles the razor at his jaw, drawing the first careful stroke. You watch the silver path he leaves on skin, the way tiny beads of water race after the blade. His face, stripped of stubble in increments, is almost too handsome. Straight nose, freckles you could count, lips made for kissing yours. 

He catches you gawking and smirks. “Gonna nick myself if you keep staring like that.”

You tilt your chin, droplets collecting at the curve of your collarbone, mustering your usual sparkle, “Then focus, doctor. I won’t be held responsible for self-inflicted injuries.”

He lets the razor dangle forgotten at his side as he studies you a beat longer. His hand slides forward, knuckles skimming the silky bloom of your hip, then dipping inward to follow the hollow where muscle meets bone.

A shiver flutters through you. He feels it and grins, this slow, predatory spread of lips.

“Focus is a tall order,” he says, thumb brushing a streak of water off your stomach. “Pretty as you are.”

Your breath stutters as his thumb skims lower, and you grab his wrist. “Uh-uh. Hands to yourself, remember?”

“Don’t make me beg, sweetheart.” The husk in his voice slips through you from head to toe. “Because I will, if that’s what you want — say please a thousand times, just to prove how badly I need you.”

Before you can answer, he sinks to his knees.

Once again he doesn’t touch, free hand splayed on the grout, but his mouth hovers near the crease of your hip, close enough that every exhale fans liquid fire over your pussy. 

His eyes flick to yours, desperate, waiting for the single syllable that will break every rule you set.

“I can keep my hands to myself, if that’s the rule. Just let me use my mouth, please. Need to taste you, angel.”

“I — Jack, we said —” 

Your grip on his wrist feels fragile, ceremonial.

“That a yes, baby? Gotta hear the word.”

Steam curls between your bodies and it’s almost suffocating now, filling up your throat and nose and ears until you start to feel a little dizzy.

Rules clang in your skull — not here, not now — but the week-long ache in your belly chants louder: need, need, need.

You bite your lip hard enough to taste copper, eyes slipping shut.

When they open again, the answer is already there, shining in resignation. “Yes. Please — yes.”

He doesn’t waste another second.

He dives in like a man reprieved from drought. Three days and three nights and water turned to wine in his tongue. He presses it flat, dragging through your folds until your knees threaten to buckle.

The first targeted flick to your clit punches a helpless cry out of your throat and the second has you clawing for purchase on the handlebar to your left.

Jack mumbles something that feels like so sweet against you, vibration sparkling up your spine, then seals his lips and sucks hard, alternating pressure in prodding intervals.

You don’t think you’ve ever gotten to that blissful edge so fast before, seconds away from splintering, vision tunneling as pink and blue stars flare behind your lids.

It all comes crashing down when a brisk tap-tap-tap cuts through your near-climax.

Jack freezes, mouth still full of you and hot on your cunt but now motionless, eyes snapping up to meets yours. Beautiful eyes with pupils blown.

Santos’s voice filters through: “Whoever’s in there, hurry up!” 

The pulse that was about to break erupts into silent, aching stasis instead. You bite your fist, whole body trembling on the cliff-edge he’s left you hanging from. 

You choke back a whimper and call, “Be out in a sec!” 

And like you said, you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like pure fucking torture.

Jack tries to remind himself that he has, by every measurable standard, survived worse things than this.

War, for one. Heat that cooked straight through the soles of his boots, nights sawn open by rotor blades and gunfire. The terror of deciding who needed his hands first when everyone needed them at once.

He lost a leg and learned how to walk again, then somehow went back to medicine because apparently nearly dying had not cured him of the instinct to run toward other people’s emergencies. He has cracked chests, led resuscitations, talked shaking interns through their first patient death, spent his free time embedded with SWAT because golf had always seemed both dull and something he wouldn’t thrive at. 

He knows pressure. He understands discipline. He has built an entire life around refusing to be governed by fear, pain, adrenaline, or lesser impulses. 

None of those facts seem to feel reassuring right now as he watches you from across the bar.

You’re burrowed into the center of a brand-new constellation of people you just met, telling one of your well-worn stories with the same sparkling conviction you gave it the first time, chin tipped up, bracelets chiming as your hands sketch the scene into the air.

Jack knows every beat.

Knows when your eyes will widen, when your mouth will pull into that scandalized little O, when you will pause just long enough to make everyone lean closer before delivering the line that sends the table into laughter.

And they do lean closer. Even the bartender’s polishing rag pauses mid-swipe.

That is the thing about you. You make strangers feel chosen. Make a whole room feel handpicked, lit from within, as if you opened the door just for them and meant it. Then you’ll drift away, leaving them there in the aftershocks, still facing the space you occupied like worshippers after the god has already one.

Jack knows exactly how dangerous that is because he has made that mistake himself.

More than once.

Sat across from you and read too much into every smile, every soft little lock of your focus, every gooey, honey-thick stretch of your attention. Mistook being seen by you for being chosen.

And then life, perverse as ever, let him be chosen after all. Let him earn the real thing. 

Which only makes watching other men bask in the counterfeit version feel worse.

The feeling metastasizes when one of the men catches the opening after your final line and moves into it, all expensive veneer-looking teeth and effortless posture, bending toward you as though the room has naturally made space for him there.

He says something Jack cannot hear over the bass, punctuates it with a small, self-satisfied shrug, and wears the expression of a person who thinks being near you is already a kind of accomplishment.

Jack studies him. 

Young. Smooth. Unscarred, at least where the world can see. A body that has probably never needed to be negotiated with before something as simple as walking barefoot across a beach. No prosthetic to strap on before dawn, no phantom pain flaring where flesh ends, no inventory of what still works and what must be accommodated. 

He looks right beside you. No one would glance twice, no one would do the math. Robby could clap him on the shoulder, laugh at his jokes, maybe even approve.

Certainly wouldn’t have to excavate a grave under the rental deck. 

Jack counts that as strike three.

“Jack.” Robby’s voice breaks across the table, dragging him back by the collar. “Tell ‘em I’m not making this up.”

Jack blinks, wrestles his gaze off you, and pretends he’s been part of the conversation all along. Dana and Baran blink back at him.

“You’re usually making something up,” he says and it earns Victoria’s laugh, though he hasn’t the faintest idea what improbable tale he’s just failed to corroborate.

It seems to be enough of an answer for Robby though, because he laughs too, his hand thumping Jack’s shoulder hard enough to slosh the liquor.

Jack drinks anyway, holds the bourbon like a tongue depressor to his worst instincts. Swallows. The burn chars every jittery nerve that wants to turn around and see if Mr. Linen Shirt is still siphoning oxygen out of your orbit.

But he wants to know. Wants to know whether the man has moved closer, whether you’re still smiling, whether Jack is about to make a decision that leaves the bastard sipping his own drink through a wired jaw. 

He shouldn’t go that far. Healing hands and all. But he can make exceptions.

He lets boredom rasp across his tongue as he clears his throat. “Your sister know those guys?”

Robby looks over on reflex. Jack doesn’t move. Doesn’t need to. Robby’s face will tell him everything. “What guys?”

“Dunno. Thought one of ‘em looked familiar.”

Robby squints past the crowd.

“Nope. Don’t think I recognize any of them.” Robby decides, pushing a tired breath through his teeth, knuckles rasping over two-day stubble. “She does this everywhere she goes. Draws attention like wildfire. I swear, half my blood pressure medication is because of her.”

Jack’s arteries would corroborate that, but he lets the confession smolder unheard behind the rim of his glass. 

“Well, can you blame ‘em? She looks like that.”

And Dana’s comment is the invitation he’s been waiting for. Lets him gorge on the sight without raising suspicion.

The little dress, the glossed-up lips, the endless stretch of your legs under the bar light. Your hair falling loose around your shoulders, your face animated as you talk, every feature sharpened by laughter into something almost indecently alive.

A cherry-red straw clacks against your teeth when you sip your rum punch, each drag leaving a perfect lipstick crescent on the plastic rim.

You are beautiful in every standard category and several highly specific ones Jack suspects may exist solely to inconvenience him. 

“Don’t mean she needs a swarm,” Robby grumbles, waving his bottle at the cluster around you. “She treats everybody like they’ve known her ten years, then acts shocked when half the room starts trailing after her. And somehow I’m the prick when I tell ’em to give her some space.”

“I don’t mind being the asshole,” Jack pipes up. Across the table, Dana’s attention narrows, and Jack realizes, half a beat too late, that he may have sounded a little too willing. So he adds, “If you’re tired of the job, I mean.”

Robby snorts. “You’d scare the hell of ‘em.”

“That’s generally the point.”

He lifts his bourbon before the thought can show on his face, lets the rim conceal the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth.

Robby, thankfully, is already smiling, visibly seduced by the prospect of outsourcing his least charming brotherly obligation. 

“Be my guest,” he says. “Tell her I sent you.” 

Jack tips his glass, drains what remains, then taps the rim against the tabletop.

Signal received. Assignment accepted. He doesn’t need to be told twice.

By the time he is halfway across the room, you’ve already noticed him.

Your eyes flare with a brightness he can feel from here, and whatever polished little nothing Mr. Smooth is feeding you dies unattended between one word and the next. 

He keeps talking anyway, poor guy, unaware that you’ve left the conversation without moving an inch. By the time Jack reaches the bar rail, your attention has funneled to one point, him, and nothing else.

It stirs something dormant in him, the same dark pull he felt in the shower, his pants suddenly tighter, less cooperative. He sees exactly what he would do without the table of coworkers and one eagle-eyed best friend behind him. 

He would hook a hand around the back of your neck, pull you flush to his chest, and kiss every little thought clean out of your head. Kiss you until the gloss smeared, until your lipstick feathered over his mouth, until your lips went swollen and every polished stranger nearby understood, without needing it explained, who had put that dazed look in your eyes. 

Instead, he leans one forearm against the bar and says, pleasantly, “You drinking enough water, sweetheart?”

“I could be persuaded to drink more.” Your lips curl around the straw again, eyes fixed on Jack with a private little shine.

The younger man follows your attention to Jack and gives him an affable nod. “Man, your dad’s on top of it. Mine would’ve let me dehydrate out of spite.”

Jack nearly coughs up his previously swallowed drink.

He can feel every one of his years arrange themselves in descending order between you. The gray at his temples. The scars. The apparently paternal concern over your fluid intake. 

Fuck’s sake.

He parts his lips to correct the record, a dry little execution already waiting on his tongue, but you beat him to the trigger. 

“Oh, he’s the best,” you gush, peering at him sideways. “Always checking on me. Sunscreen, hydration, curfew. Super over-protective.”

Jack gives you a long, level look, one that says he knows exactly what you’re doing and plans to deal with it later.

“She keeps me busy. Full time job, most days,” he finally says, playing along.

And it is a full-time job.

Just not remotely in the way this poor kid is imagining. You are a twenty-four-hour on-call position with no protected sleep and an astonishingly generous benefits package.

You need to be kissed before he leaves the room, touched whenever he passes within arm’s reach, listened to with grave concentration while you explain some internet drama involving some show he’s never watched and a man named Sincere he will never meet.

Then there is the other hunger, the one that wakes beside him already stretching toward his body, that has you squirming into his lap after dinner or whispering again against his mouth when any reasonable person would be asleep.

Jack is always on his toes with you, anticipating needs you have not articulated yet, figuring out whether a pout means hungry, horny, tired, or all three braided together.

It is exhausting in the way a life worth living is exhausting.

He has never minded work when the work matters, and taking care of you has become the most selfish labor he has ever loved.

The younger guy clears his throat, trying to recapture the momentum. “Anyway, like I was saying about the jet-ski tomorrow —”

“Actually,” Jack interrupts, “we’ve got to get back. Curfew, you know.” He aims a polite nod at the man, who now looks decidedly dejected, then drapes a guiding hand along the back of your stool in perfect over-protective-father form. “Appreciate you keeping her company.”

Your mouth twitches around the straw. Jack can already tell you’re going to make him suffer for this. The prospect improves his mood considerably. 

He starts to walk you back to the table, when he spots Robby, who’s laughing much too loudly at something the new intern just whispered in his ear.

The girl is angled toward him, smiling with that shy, pleased little tilt people get when they think they’ve successfully surprised him, and Robby, miracle of miracles, looks genuinely interested. 

That is information worth preserving. Worth interrogating later, too.

But for now he takes that opportunity for what it is and herds you into a corner out of view.

As soon as you’re tucked between a stack of surfboards and the dim EXIT sign, his fingers close over the curve of your backside, giving a quick pinch.

A startled “hey!” pops out, alcohol-loose and breathy, and you bat at his knuckles.

He catches your wrist, holding it against his chest as amusement darkens his gaze. “You’re testing me, angel. Missed me so much you had to start getting other men’s attention just to see if I’d come take you back?”

“Missed who? The pervert or the overprotective dad?”

Jack clicks his tongue and leans in until the tips of your noses nearly touch, crowding the joke right back into your mouth. 

“Hated every damn second of that. Couldn’t lay a finger on you while that kid flirted his ass off. And you knew exactly what you were doing. Wanted to see how fast you could make your old man lose his cool?”

“Thought you liked being challenged?” You tilt your chin, lashes dipping. “Besides, you’d been ignoring me all night. What was I supposed to do, sit there looking pretty for no one?”

“You know that isn’t how it is. I’ve been following the rules you set, angel. Your rules.”

“Yeah, well, last night kind of blew those up, don’t you think?” You lean closer. “The line’s already smudged. Seems silly to keep pretending we can still see it.”

“Trust me, sweetheart, I’ve got no attachment to that line. I’ve wanted my hands on you from the second I saw that dress.” He leans closer, voice dropping into something meant only for you. “But you’d better mean it. You don’t get to rile me up all night and then act surprised when I collect.”

Your eyes flick toward the neon Restrooms sign, then back to him, lashes heavy. “Meet me by the bathroom in sixty seconds. If you’re late, I’m starting without you.”

One quick sweep confirms the coast is clear.

“Bought and paid for, angel. Be there in fifty-nine.”

You giggle, turning on your heel with a bounce that sets your dress fluttering. He tracks every inch as you stroll off, head cocked like you know he’s staring; the last thing he sees is the curve of your ass rounding the corner.

He waits just long enough not to make it obvious, then starts toward the hall, pulse already ticking off the seconds.

Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.

“Jack.”

Shit.

Dana catches him mid-stride. When he turns, she is watching him over one lifted brow, empty glass raised loosely in her hand. “You getting another round?”

His gaze flicks toward the corridor before he can stop it. Mistake. Dana follows it, then looks back at him.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says.

“Could’ve fooled me. You look like you’re on a mission.”

And what can he say to that?

Yeah, Dana, good eye. I am on a mission to follow my girlfriend into a seedy beach-bar bathroom and fuck the living daylights out of her before Robby notices either of us are gone. By the way, she is his little sister and young enough that, from a distance, strangers apparently assume I helped raise her.

So Jack does what any sensible man would do under pressure.

He lies. 

“Just gotta take a leak.”

Dana lets out a low hum, the kind that says she believes exactly none of him. “Sure.” And Jack thinks that’s it, but suddenly she shakes her head. “Just do yourself a favor and be careful.”

“Careful about what, exactly?” Irritation flicks hot across his scalp, mostly because it coats the thin, unfamiliar ache of fear. 

She tips her chin, eyes dull with shift-long exhaustion, offering him nothing but that tired little smile that says You already know. 

“Don’t make me say it out loud.” Her gaze dips toward the restroom sign, subtle enough that anyone else would miss it. Jack doesn’t. “I don’t care about the sordid details. But secrets like this don’t stay contained forever. People get hurt when they come out.” Her expression softens by a fraction. “And she has more to lose than you do.”

He doesn’t get the chance to answer before Dana slips past him, already lifting two fingers toward the bartender and calling for another round. 

She has more to lose than you do.

Jack knows that. Or at least, he should’ve.

He is established. Difficult to shame in any lasting way. People already know who he is, have decided what sort of man he is, and most days he can live with that. 

You, meanwhile, are still being decided. Every room you enter is another jury, every mistake fresh evidence for peers and others alike. 

And men tend to survive a scandal differently.

Jack might lose Robby, take a hit to his reputation, become the subject of a few whispered conversations at work. Then the weeks would pass, another crisis would arrive, and people would remember he was useful. 

The world permits men to outlive their mistakes.

It does not extend women the same courtesy.

You would be remembered through it, reduced to it. People would search backward through every bright smile and short skirt as if the proof had always been there, call you foolish where they called him weak, promiscuous where they called him lonely.

Even the people defending you would talk as though you needed defending from your own decision.

Jack suddenly feels sick because Dana is right, and because somewhere along the way he let himself pretend the risk belonged equally to both of you.

Half his, half yours. Fair.

It never had.

Jack lets the sixty seconds expire and stays exactly where he is, rooted with his hands by his sides and the first honest understanding of what protecting you might actually require.

Tonight, when you go looking for Jack, your intentions are not merely ill.

They are terminal. Premeditated. Your conscience is nowhere to be found, certainly not sparkling, certainly not clean enough to eat off.

Whatever small moral voice usually lives in you has been smothered beneath a white-hot blend of anger and a bruised ego, two things currently holding hands and skipping merrily through your bloodstream. 

The house has only just begun to settle after several hours of drunk postmortems, everyone still riding the bar’s momentum and apparently determined to delay sleep through sheer noise pollution alone. Somebody had thrown up in the upstairs toilet, although nobody was admitting to it and Whitaker had somehow staggered into Jack’s room and passed out starfished across his bed, fully clothed, one shoe still on, leaving Jack exiled to the downstairs couch.

It’s almost completely dark when you creep down the stairs.

A small lamp glows beside the sofa, casting a little island over Jack and the book open in his hands.

The rest of the room dissolves into shadow, cluttered with the aftermath of everyone else’s good time: cups lined along the coffee table, half-empty glasses, plates abandoned with crusts and smears of dip.

You ghost past him without a glance, feet soundless on the hardwood.

Only when he murmurs, “Can we talk?” do you pause, but only long enough to throw a breezy, “Later — busy,” over your shoulder.

Jack pushes off the sofa, trailing you a step. “Busy with what, exactly?”

Busy making your life a living hell, you think, scrubbing dried food from a plate. Busy returning the favor. Busy ensuring he experiences even a fraction of the private humiliation you swallowed in that bar bathroom, standing beneath a flickering light panel while sixty seconds stretched into two minutes, then five, your invitation curdled into foolishness.

And when you had finally emerged, Jack was back at the table with the others, but every stiff line of him betrayed where his attention really was. Fresh drink in hand, barely touched. Shoulders set. Gaze locked on the corridor.

He had chosen not to come, but he had not stopped watching.

Jack would sooner lose his other leg than abandon you tipsy in a strange bar, and even furious, you knew that. He had been keeping vigil over the door, tracking who went in, who came out, waiting for your face to appear. But that garnered no brownie points from you.

When you approached, confused and annoyed and still stupidly hopeful, he had only leaned close enough to breathe, “Later,” against your ear.

As if it were of no significance. You were of no significance.

You snatch up another abandoned cup and tip its watery remains into the sink.

“This,” you say. “Some of us respect shared spaces.”

“Mm. At two in the morning?” Jack leans one hip against the counter, arms folding over his chest. When you dont stop, he adds, “All right. Scoot over. I’ll help.”

Jack has never encountered a mess, emotional or otherwise, that he did not believe could be improved by putting his hands on it. A wound, a crisis, a woman mad enough to scrub ceramic like she means to erase the glaze. Same instinct. Reach. Steady. Fix.

You turn before he can.

Dishwater slips from your fingers in clear little tracks, the oversized sleep shirt grazing high over your thighs as you square yourself toward him. 

“No, thank you.” Your gaze stays fixed on his. “I’ve learned I can manage without help.” 

He comes closer, and closer still, until your damp fingers have nowhere sensible to go except flat against the edge of the sink. 

“That’s very independent of you, honey,” he says. “Always loved that about you.” His hand lands beside your hip, bracketing you in. His gaze searches your face, lightening at the edges. “But I don’t think we’re talking about dishes anymore, are we?”

You tip your chin up, refusing to let the gentling in his eyes sand down your irritation. “No, we’re not. We’re talking about you saying one thing and doing another. Apparently promises are more of a loose suggestion when they’re coming from you.” 

“Give me a chance to explain, sweetheart.” The words slip out on a breath, softer than the rattle of the faucet.  “You can be mad after. Hell, you probably still will be. Just hear me out first.” 

You do not want to hear him out.

Explanations are unpredictable things, doors that open both ways, and you already have the sickening suspicion that whatever is waiting on the other side will hurt worse than not knowing. 

Because yes, objectively, Jack failing to follow you into a bathroom means very little.

No fidelity breached, no grand betrayal, no concrete proof of anything beyond bad timing and worse communication.

But the small flutter in your stomach does not care about what your mind tries to litigate away. 

It knows this feeling. Knows this small retreat before someone leaves, the subtle cooling, the moment affection starts becoming obligation. 

Maybe he has simply had his fill of you. Maybe the novelty wore off and now you are no longer the bright, entertaining little thing he wanted to sneak around with, only a woman who talks too much and needs too much and has begun expecting permanence from something built in shadows.

And maybe now he has seen enough of the real thing to know he cannot imagine building a life around it. 

So you do not give him the chance. 

“Nothing to explain,” you say, seizing the sponge and escaping the cage of his arms for the opposite counter.

You start cleaning with theatrical diligence, collecting bottles, stacking plates, wiping crumbs into your palm as though the fate of the rental deposit rests entirely on you. 

But you did not come downstairs to rescue countertops. You came because you need proof that Jack still wants you.

Any kind of proof. Emotional, physical, desperate, selfish. You would take whatever he gives you.

And if you cannot bring yourself to ask whether he still sees a future with you, then you can at least find out whether he still wants to put his hands on you.

So when you bend to retrieve a fallen fork from the ground, you let the hem of your sleep shirt climb unchecked over the backs of your legs until it bares you completely, exposes that you are wearing no underwear, your thighs parted just enough for Jack to see every soft, private inch you left uncovered for him. 

Cool air brushes your pussy.

His stare burns hotter.

“Jesus Christ, honey.” The words leave him rough and disbelieving, dragged up from the well below his throat. Behind you, the counter creaks faintly beneath the sudden weight of his hands. “What the hell are you doing?” 

You count to one before straightening. 

You turn with the fork still balanced between two fingers, arranging your face into its sweetest approximation of confusion.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Right,” he murmurs. “Must’ve imagined the whole thing.” 

You drop the fork into the sink with an accusing clatter. “Probably. Memory goes with age, remember?”

He steps in behind you before you can turn away, chest brushing your back, one palm flattening over your stomach while the other slides beneath your shirt.

His knuckles skim the soft inside of your thigh, then settle exactly where you’re naked. 

“Yeah,” he growls against your ear. “Didn’t imagine a damn thing.”

A whimper threatens and you bite it back so hard your jaw aches. In that stilled heartbeat the fight drains out of your muscles and your body answers him first, arching back, begging in the only language it trusts. 

But the panic bubbles back up in fiery waves.

“Please don’t,” you say, and the plea is not the one he expects.

Jack’s hand freezes.

You close your eyes. 

“If you’ve changed your mind about me, just say it.” Every word hurts your throat. You turn your face just enough for him to see what the anger has been hiding all night. Fear. “If you don’t want me anymore, then don’t touch me like you do. Don’t make it harder than it already is.” 

Jack’s hand vanishes so abruptly from beneath your shirt, your knees dip with the loss.

Then he’s turning you, big palms framing your cheeks, thumbs parked just under your cheekbones. Your own slick glosses his knuckles. He tips your chin up so you can’t look anywhere but straight into the brown storm of his.

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, baby?”

Your mouth opens, but what escapes first is a wet, hitching breath.

The tears rise fast, flood-waters breaching the levee before you can blink them back, Jack’s outline smearing into watercolor.

“I don’t know,” you hiccup, which is not true at all. You know too much. “You left me there. And then you acted like I was being dramatic for expecting you to show up when you said you would.” Your fingers curl around his wrists, not pushing him away, just holding on. “And maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s about how easy it would be for you to wake up and realize I’m not… serious-person material. I’m fun, I know that. I’m pretty and I make you laugh and I’m good in bed, but that’s not the same as being someone you actually want a life with.” Your lips tremble. “People always like me better at first.” 

Immediately his face caves, all the structure in it imploding: brows hitching, mouth parting, a stricken slackness that makes him look ten years younger and infinitely more breakable.

“Don’t say that,” he says, too sharp at first, then immediately dampens. “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. Say whatever you need to say. I’m just…” He shakes his head, jaw tight, eyes shining with something close to a fear that matches yours. “I hate that I made you feel like that.” 

His hands slide from your face to your shoulders, holding you there as if he needs you to understand this with your whole body. 

“You are serious to me. More serious than anything I’ve let myself have in a long time.” He exhales shakily. “You think I don’t picture a life with you? I picture it constantly.” 

You just stare, lungs cinched tight, tears marooned mid-cheek as though gravity’s on pause. The room narrows to the pulse thudding in your ears. 

“You’re… you’re serious about me?”

Jack makes a quiet, wounded sound. His hands come back to your face, thumbs stroking the wet tracks beneath your eyes. 

“Christ, baby. Yes. Of course I am.” He bends closer, as though proximity might help drive the truth into you. “I don’t know how I let you believe otherwise… I didn’t follow after you tonight because I got scared for you, not of you. I should have told you. I should have found you, explained, apologized. Instead I left you alone with your worst thoughts. That was cruel, even if I didn’t mean it to be. Please let me fix it.”

Another hiccup rattles through you as you try to process the words at face-value. “Scared for me how?” 

“Because if this blew up, I didn’t want you caught in it.” He says it simply, like there is no question which of you matters more. “I don’t give a damn what people think of me, baby. I care what it does to you.” 

You shake your head inside the cradle of his hands.

“I don’t care what people think either. I don’t care about any of it.” Your voice snags, but you push through. “I love you, Jack. That matters more.” 

His eyes close for half a second, like the words are almost too much to take standing up.

When they open again, he kisses you senselessly soft, both hands still holding your face as though you might vanish.

He kisses you once, twice, a third time, each one a little messier than the last.

“Love you too, baby,” he whispers, lips brushing yours. “Love you so much it scares the hell out of me.”

The brine of your tears slick the seam of your mouth. Jack doesn’t flinch, drinks it in like proof of living.

You surface for one ragged sip of air, barely enough, your lips still grazing his, fists knotted in his shirt like ballast against weightlessness. 

“You mean it? You’re really serious about me?” you whisper again, softer this time, almost shy with it. 

Jack lets out a low, guttural sound and grazes the corner of your mouth. 

“So serious, honey.” Another kiss, deeper now, his hands sliding from your face to your waist, pulling you flush. “Want to put a ring on that pretty little hand. Want a house with your clothes everywhere and your shoes in places I’m gonna trip over.” His mouth finds yours again, swallowing your gasp before he adds, rougher, “Want a kid, if you want one. You want a baby with me, angel?” 

“Yes, please, Jack.”

The words are still warm in the air when he fits his mouth to yours, a groan vibrating through both of you.

His palms squeeze your waist, then lift, your stomach swooping as he sets you on the cleared stretch of counter. Cool laminate kisses the backs of your thighs, shocking against the furnace heat of him stepping between your legs.

Your sleep-shirt scrunches between his hands, creeping, creeping, until the hem gathers at your hips and you’re bared to him again.

“Yeah?” he murmurs against your lips. “You’d give me that?”

You nod so eagerly the room tilts, fists in his collar, yanking him closer. “Anything.”

“My perfect girl,” he breathes, kissing you again, softer now, as if the tenderness makes what follows any less filthy. 

His hand slips beneath the gathered cotton at your waist, fingers gliding south until one settles between your folds. He drags the wetness up in a lazy sweep, humming appreciation that burns brighter than the touch itself.

“And what’s all this, hm?” he asks, studying your face while his finger toys idly with your clit. His eyes darken, attention dropping to where his hand disappears between your legs. “You sittin’ here imagining me filling you up with a baby, sweetheart?” 

Your hips lift helplessly into his hand, chasing pressure he has no intention of giving you yet. 

“No teasing,” you whimper, breath breaking around the words. “Please, Jack. I need you inside me.” 

Jack swears under his breath, hand leaving your clit only long enough to undo his pants. The zipper drops. Fabric loosens. Then he is back between your thighs, dragging the thick head of his cock through your folds once, twice, gathering the wetness you have made for him.

The sight of him nearly makes you stupid.

It has only been a few days, which is nothing, really, barely enough time for a normal person to miss anything, but your body has become accustomed to him, used to the heavy stretch of his cock at least once a day, sometimes twice when neither of you has somewhere to be. 

You’re practically drooling, inner muscles fluttering around emptiness while he takes his sweet, sweet time wetting himself in what you’ve made for him. 

You shift on the counter, thighs widening of their own accord, a needy sound slipping free when the head catches against your entrance and pulls away again. 

“I know, honey. I know.” His voice roughens as he traces the head up your inner thigh. “Should’ve given you what you needed hours ago.” 

Then he finally does. 

He braces one hand at your hip and pushes forward in one long, steady stroke, the thick head breaching you first, then every heavy inch following.

Your cunt flutters, welcoming, molding around him until there’s no space left unexplored. 

The counter shudders with the low sound that tears out of both of you. 

The inexorable pressure sutures the empty ache that’s haunted you, stuffing it full until there’s no room for jealousy, no space for worst-case scenarios.

There is only Jack.

Your thighs cinch hard around his waist, heels gouging into the backs of his legs like spurs demanding more.

He doesn’t stop until pelvis meets pelvis, forehead thunking against yours while both of you gasp as if you’ve sprinted a mile in the sand. 

He retreats a heartbeat’s width and your walls seize around him, possessive. He curses under his breath.

“This tight little cunt missed me, didn’t it?” he asks, already driving back in.

He starts pumping into you at a saint’s tempo, each drag of his cock thick and thorough, his hips grinding flush against you at the end of every thrust.

Your arms lock around his shoulders as your body rocks with him, bare thighs trembling against his sides. 

Pleasure gathers everywhere at once, starting at your pussy and climbing until your whole body feels tuned to the rhythm of his hips.

You try to tell him that. Try to say yes, missed you, feels so good, but what comes out is a breathless spill of syllables, half his name and half a sound you would be embarrassed by if your brain were still capable of embarrassment. 

His hand slips between your bodies, two fingers finding your clit. 

“You’re mine, aren’t you? All mine,” he growls, cock still working inside you. “And I’m yours. Never gonna be anybody else’s, you hear me?”

Your answer is a helpless chain of nods and breathy mewls, but he isn’t satisfied with that.

He catches your jaw, thumb pressing your cheek until your eyes snap to his. 

“Look at me. Hear me.” 

“Y-yes, Jack… yours — love you, love you s’much,” you babble.

“Love you, angel.” He presses a kiss to your trembling lips. “Want me to fill this pretty pussy up? Want me to leave every drop inside where it belongs?” 

“Yes, please. Need it — need you — m’so close.”

The first warning licks up your spine. A trembling in your calves, nipples pebbling hard against your shirt.

Pleasure stacks in breath-stealing layers, so heavy it feels like quicksand pulling you under. 

Jack’s tells flare with yours. His hips snapping hard, hands tightening on your waist until his knuckles blanch.

Sweat beads at his hairline, drops down to your skin, and your walls clamp down in greedy pulses, each flex beginning for the flood he’s a second away from letting go.

“Keep looking at me,” Jack pants, curling a hand from your waist to the back of your neck. “Need to watch you fall apart.”

“Can’t — can’t hold it,” you whimper, thighs shaking.

“Don’t hold a damn thing,” he growls. “Give it to me, come on, baby.”

The quicksand finally liquefies and the world folds to white noise.

Jack breaks with you, a strangled — fuck — on your lips, thrusts turning short as he empties himself in thick bursts.

You cling to one another, quake for heartbeat after heartbeat, until the tremors fade into breathless, boneless warmth. 

When Jack’s breathing finally steadies, his mouth roams in slow increments. First your collarbones, up the column of your throat, over the quiver of your lips. 

He eases back only to reach for a paper towel, thumb already swiping at the mess seeping down your thighs. 

“Don’t,” you plead, catching his wrist. “Wanna keep it.”

Jack huffs a low laugh before moving to kiss away your protest. “Sweetheart, you’re not making it five steps up those stairs with that sliding down your legs.” 

Even as he says it, he dabs gently between them.

The light friction has your hips ticking forward, little whimpers breaking free. 

“Sensitive, huh?” he tuts. 

“Thought you wanted to put a baby in me?” you argue.

Jack’s thumb circles your thigh. “Oh, I plan on it — but not until there’s some extra hardware shining on your hand. One thing at a time, yeah?”

Old-fashioned as he is, you probably should’ve expected that.

Jack Abbot is the kind of man who still opens doors, calls restaurants instead of booking online, and apparently requires jewelry before intentional procreation. There is probably a proper sequence filed away in that stubborn head of his: ring, vows, house, baby. 

You find, to your own surprise, that you do not mind the order at all. 

You tap his chest with a teasing finger and dopey smile. “I can live with that. I do love shiny things, after all.”

What he does not tell you is that the shiny thing already exists, hidden in his sock drawer, waiting for the right moment. 

You won’t find that out for another two months, until after the two of you finally sit Robby down and tell him everything, until after Jack takes one clean punch to the face without even trying to dodge it, because fair is fair, and until after Robby’s anger burns itself down into something survivable. 

By the time Jack slips the ring onto your finger, his lip is healed, your brother is calling him Jack instead of Dick-Face (you can’t be sure where he learned that insult from), and the future no longer feels like something borrowed.

It is yours. 

MARIA NOTE this lowkey was supposed to be like 1k words and the ideas just kept flowing and it turned into a full psychological case study on why making ur brother's best friend jealous is both a terrible idea and, unfortunately, very effective. also jack saying ring first, baby later made me briefly black out. hope u enjoyed!! <3