Chapter Text
There comes a time in every man's life when he is overcome with an insatiable need to destroy.
You read that in some book some time ago, struck by its simplicity; you saw the truth of it, the words visceral on the page, you saw it in the way your male peers in your youth would find joy in knocking over your stacked blocks, destroying your caterpillar and rolly polly homes you'd build on the playground on the field near the chainlink fence you’d walk up and down.
You've always known yourself to be desperately intimate. To know the ins and outs of a person without them really even knowing you'd cataloged their being at all. You prided yourself on that — in being too observant for your own good.
In third grade, your English teacher told you that ‘you were too young to be worrying’ when you described the weight of the world as heavy. And somewhere down the line, in middle school, you’d figured she was right. Too young to change anything yet irrevocably anxious – you lost your youth that way. Too concerned with the weight of a daughter’s role. The guilt of an older sibling.
As you got older, you’d be struck by those words in that book you forgot years ago. You’d see them in the way young men would tear you apart and somehow convince you to build yourself up just for them to do it all over again. You saw it in the way your friends' boyfriends spoke to them and the way you were overshadowed by any man in your classes, doing half the work, asking half the questions. Saw it in the way your friends chose their boyfriends over you. The way men leered at you in class, around corners, in the aisles of grocery stores – like there was something undeniably wrong with you. Something everyone but you could see. And you especially saw it in the way Robby watched you tonight.
The words coming back to haunt you in the back of your mind. Sickly broken record. Makes you think of the last time you and Robby spent the night together, he'd taken you apart too roughly — pent up from a long day and irritable from impatient patients. It was rough and fast and too much and yet somehow, somewhere deep inside of you, despite the way he kissed you goodbye in the morning, despite the way you knew something had changed, the way you were fucking praying he’d text you, bother you at work, anything to heal the ache of the way he left you raw and sore and seeking for any piece of him in your sheets to try and pretend he wasnt abandoning you.
───────
"Someone must've been in a bad way to abandon you, huh, little one."
You remember how your heart sank to your stomach when Robby said that. Pressed up against the painted wall of Peds, watching him cradle the small thing, bouncing her about and cooing soft words too low for you to hear, too sweet to be for you. Most of all, you remembered how Samira made this face you wouldn't quite recognize until later — just knew she wore it uncomfortably sad, absent, and despondent.
───────
You used to torture yourself with the idea of being something important. Something influential. Maybe you’d been raised that way – expected to be something larger than you were. You suppose it can't all fall on the blame of your parents. Maybe it came with this job – helping people on the worst days of their lives, holding hands with patients, and praying they didn't see right through you.
But now, with your hands shaking in your lap and bile rising up the back of your throat, you understood everything Samira didn't say in Peds. You wear her face over yours. Stricken by something rotted and someone who'd abandoned you.
You'd spent your whole fucking life running from the weight of it. That simmering feeling beneath your ribs — a pressure in your lungs threatening to pull you under. Spent your whole fucking life running from something that caught up to you in the memory of a face, the utterance of a few gentle words, in the way he reminded you so much of the person who’d carved that gaping hole inside you, the way he reminds you of your father — you figure it's only right that he left too. It all caught up to you in the one place you'd spent building walls to protect yourself — distraction after distraction after distraction to soothe the gaping void you refused to fully fix.
You'd remembered all those moments where Robby had drawn that incredulous line — separating the two of you into two different worlds. Making you into something separated from him. Something different. Something unnecessary.
That night, you tried to cuddle up with him after the night had just gone plain wrong. Everything was too much for him. He told you it felt like he was pretending, the words weren't coming out fast enough, and his hands felt too big. Felt like a fucking monster the way you bruised and sobbed under his palm.
You remember the way he gathered your face up in one of his big hands, deft fingers sinking to the bone under your skin. The way you just gave up, tears streaming down your warm cheeks, hair a mess, eyes hardly opened. He didn't let you get close to him for a while after that. Told you with red eyes and quivering lips, "s'important we have boundaries."
Still, that night you had followed him, reached for him when he stood up from the bed, half-dressed, face flushed, hair disheveled, tears brimming his big brown eyes. And he pushed you right up against the bedroom wall when you'd grabbed the hem of his shirt. Not rough but enough to jolt you. Enough to remind you who was in charge – enough to remind you to mind your tone, your touch. Enough to remind you that this was something other than you'd thought.
No longer were the soft touches, sweet kisses, gentle words that you were his sweet thing, his baby, his girl, something worth protecting. He didn't spend nights with you after that. You’d never felt further away from him than that night – you could hardly sleep, anxiety swirling in your head, making you sick with it.
Now, you were just the insolent indigent girl he had pushed up against her bedroom wall and told her "no." While she cried out for him. Cried out for her daddy when she felt the weight of him slipping away again.
───────
There's a repugnant taste in needing someone. It's a bitter bile that simmers in the back of your throat, threatening to spill past your lips and pillage you of all decency. Losing the replacement of one you once knew is much worse. You’ve ripped that father wound more than once now. Filled the void that's grown two times its size and watched it be ruined without a word.
Suddenly, all those soft shared looks with Samira started to make more sense. It wasn't a pity. It was knowing of you.
Her brows furrowed, and big eyes pouted when she'd catch you looking at Robby for a little too long after he'd turned his attention away from you for the day — looking back, you suppose that was the cruelty of it. You were always going to be more committed to the idea of a relationship with him than he was. You’d seek him in everything and hoped he saw you too. You were a tool. Something made precious after he'd decided you were worth something. You fucking idolized him. He was everything. Your whole world. Your mentor. Your father. Your Robby.
You'd followed him to the Pittsburgh ED after he'd visited your undergraduate school as a guest speaker. You were that desperate to be in his presence. To be known by him. To be named as worth something in his image. You wanted him to be proud of something. If you couldn't be for your parents, maybe you could be for him.
And ultimately, it's all too little too late. Two months late, to be exact. Two grueling months of playing random moments between Robby and you back and forth in your head like a kaleidoscope of self-loathing.
The way he said your name in those last few hours of your shared shift before he left for the road — your last name hissed through teeth and groans. You were a poisonous thing. Once precious, it turned sickly and rotted and needed to be cut off. The memory makes your stomach coil with wet guilt, and you feel like something akin to a burdensome thing raised on misfortune and the hope that things might change. That whatever sickness you have’ll heal itself on its own. And when it’s much too late, and all too far gone, you understand what Samira was saying.
'Don't do this to yourself. Anybody else but him.'
Everything darkened in the months leading up to Robby's leave —you couldn’t help the sickening feeling that wrapped itself around you, constricting, pulling tighter, choking off airflow with every missed call, dismissed by late hours, naps, busy workloads. His touch, once a comfort– warm and gentle, guiding, became distant and cold — anxiety pooling in the heat of your stomach when the two of you shared the same space. Like you're impeding. A sick and disturbed rot settled within you, its roots clawing themselves up your throat whenever he asked you a question, your name a hiss on his lips – strained, as though the very thought of your presence pained him.
Transformed into a completely different person. A separate entity from the man who'd once held you in his arms when things got a little too overwhelming, whispering that he’d never let anything hurt you, not you, not his girl. He'd once sat with you, cooing to you and soothing your tears for four straight hours, and then made you dinner. He doesn't even acknowledge you anymore. Don't even read your texts. He’s leaving you, and it scares you.
You hate the way he's done this to you. Turned you wrought and unkind. Anxious-ridden nights spent not eating and losing sleep. It all breeds a sickly ecosystem within you — one that mirrors Robby's ruthless treatment of you. Robby can be fucking cruel when he wants to, downright hateful. You'd never thought you'd be at the hands of it.
And it feels like he changes over night with cruel words and rough hands, like he's working for it — working to find a part of himself that's still simmering deep beneath the surface of this masquerade and burn it off, trying to convince you and himself that it was never there to begin with.
You should've known better than to get involved with Robby — knew where it was ultimately leading to, you had a difficult time accepting the harsh reality of the less-than-savory truth. The truth is that Robby wasn't good for you. You knew it. Your friends knew it. It felt like the universe worked against you in every way it could when you first started seeing him, your days filled with flat tires on your way to his house, spilled drinks on your new clothes, bad hair days, and that God-forsaken dripping noise you keep hearing in your apartment that persists no matter how many times you call maintenance.
At one point things had been good — exactly what you were looking for; noncommittal, trust, a synthetic father figure working to temporarily soothe a deep-set wound riddled by time and hurt through sweet words, gentle touches, big hands, Robby's new balances next to your leather Mary Janes in the entryway of your apartment. The smell of him on your sheets, the weight of him against you, the way he'd silently fill the space and accommodate your being; fixing your hair, pulling at your shirts and skirts when they ride up, tying your shoes, picking pickles off your burgers cos he’d remembered you once said you didn't like them and the poor worker misheard you — but Robby remembered.
And you know that's why it hurts so much when your calls stop going through around the three-week mark, and the only notifications you get from him are that your texts are no longer being delivered. Whether you're blocked or his phone is off, you don't know for sure.
The pain is fucking debilitating. You shrivel into a smaller, regressed version of yourself. Something — someone — you haven't seen in years. Some part of you is thought to have been buried far inside you and left behind. You switch to night shifts to ease the ache. To stop yourself from looking for him around corners and empty rooms. So you don’t have to listen to Trinity and Dennis giggle over inside jokes in his absence.
Robby worked as a structural foundation for you. Kept your head screwed on just right, kept you responsible, let you float off to the soft and honeyed place in your head when you need it, when it all got to be too much. And maybe it got to be too much for him, too.
With him gone, you thought you might die. For the first few days, you powered through; days too busy, nights too late, codes too often to even have a second to think of anything but the sound of a monitor and Lena directing you to your next patient.
Your days mould you brainless. Emotionless. Exhausted. An empty shell of what you once were. You don’t even know who you are anymore. You wonder if your coworkers notice, if your friends see what you feel in your hollowed cheeks and watery eyes. If they do, they don't say anything.
Work. Shower. Eat (if you can stomach the anxiety). Sleep. Repeat.
But something happens around the end of your shift, Friday evening, during shift exchange when Shen makes some offhand comment about Robby. Something or other about Robby sending him a photo of a sunset. Shen told Robby that the view dangerously close to the edge of The Pitt roof was better.
And suddenly your head feels like it's underwater. Tears sting at your lashline, threatening to spill over. You feel like such a fucking idiot.
Dennis notices the shift in your demeanor almost immediately, pausing his charting to look you over when you don’t force a giggle at Trinity’s joke she’d made about one of her patients from earlier. The way your eyes gloss over, recognizing that empty look in your eyes, all too well. Lowers his voice so nobody but you can hear and asks, "hey... you alright?"
You can’t even fucking breathe. Your heart sinks to your stomach — achy and exhausted and sick, and you feel like puking. You're trembling, and you wish you could make it stop, but a part of you wonders if you're so delirious that it's all a dream — only your mind could come up with something this masochistic. Drool begins to pool in your mouth, bile rises in your throat, and you know it’s definitely not a dream.
It's humiliating — this whole fucking thing.
Dana's words come crashing back in your mind when she meets your eyes from behind the hub, concern riddled in the furrow of her brows.
"Be careful."
Trinity's hand comes to rest on your shoulder, and you jump slightly, ‘Woah, there sparky,” her laugh fills the quiet space. She and Dennis share a look when you don’t react, “Heeeyyy… everything alright?”
Across the room, your eyes land on Jack, who’d just entered through the door to the ambulance bay, black utility bag slung over his shoulder. You’re not sure why or how you manage to find him in the rushing sea of scrubs and patients, but you do.
He doesn’t notice you at first. Hand stuffed into the pockets of his camo pants, eyes tracing over the patient board. He happens to look down, eyes landing on you with a smile that falls when he registers your empty, spaced-out expression. There’s something intrinsically haunting in the way Jack looks at you from across the busy room – and the way the room blurs around him, lips pouted, and brows furrowed when he meets your wide, tearful eyes. You feel like he’s looking right through you – like maybe you really did disappear; still fighting the urge to defend Robby’s cruelty in any way you possibly can.
He’s still there, in the middle of the messy chaos of the ED. Silver brows furrowed in worry. Jack’s gaze is softer, stern all the same like Robby’s, but there's a firm and heavy layer of worry that graces his freckled features, the corners of his eyes crinkling, his head follows you as you stand up and stumble your way out of the chaotic swarm of staff and patients. He threatens to come closer, stepping up to the counter of the nurse's dock, resting an elbow on the ledge, eyes following you as you turn and rush out before anyone can stop you.
───────
A week later, you find yourself in Samira's apartment, sharing memories over tea and a charcuterie board she'd laid out on her coffee table.
The sun had since set, a cool blue settling over the living room, your faces illuminated by the amber of lamps — a fireplace ambiance playing on the TV.
“Abbot and I... we had this… thing for a while." Samira tugs the blanket over the tips of her toes, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.
And for a moment, you feel like an outsider looking in. Like observing photos on a wall of a family you don't quite know yet, but they know you, like they've been watching you, learning you all the same. It's voyeuristic in a way that makes you trip on your words and catch your breath, awaiting something unknown that's been ready for you unbeknownst to your being — the guilty weight of Robby's abandonment.
"You and Abbot had... what?" You tuck your knees further under you, lips pulled into a nervous and prying smile that doesn't quite reach your eyes.
Samira cringes, shoulders bunching up to her ears as she anxiously toys with the shag tweed of her throw blanket — it looks out of place among her other belongings. The fabric is thick and hoity.
It's odd, the way she regresses into something smaller, malleable, and submissively giddy at just the mention of Abbot. It's familiar in a way that makes you immediately tense.
"Okay," she sighs, defeated, "But you have to promise me you won't tell anyone. Not a soul. Not even Trinity." She offers her pinky to you, leaning towards the small coffee table that separates the two cushioned chairs.
You lean forward, locking your pinkies together for just a moment before retreating.
"Do you remember when I was going through all that stupid shit with my mom. She's selling the house, moving, all that, yada, yada, yada."
You nod, tracing the lit-up strands of hair that escape her bun, framing her features with pretty coils that bounce and curl against her skin.
"Well, Abbot kinda..." She looks to the ceiling, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands, "He kinda helped me get through some of... it...?" She winces through a tight smile.
You swear your heart’s about to beat out of your chest.
"Samira..."
You're not even sure why you react like that. Uptight and prissy about the idea of your friend sleeping with one of your bosses, as if you too hadn't been, as if sleeping with your boss wasn't the entire reason you were here at 10:00 pm sipping warm Earl Grey and gossiping about your attendings. You suppose it's jealousy. That she had been wanted, and you had not.
Your name comes back just as tight and a warning on Samira's tongue, "You don't get to do that." And it's true. It's so fucking true it makes you wanna rip your hair out, and it kinda makes you wanna sink into the cushions and disappear, and it especially makes you want to forget the whole last year even happened.
The jealousy for her seethes on your tongue and boils in your blood. The very idea that you'd been suffering similar hardships and pain. She just got lucky, and it makes you want to cry. It makes you feel abandoned again, abandoned by the world and all that it could've been for you.
"I—" Before you're able to apologize, she beats you to it.
"We're both tired. M'sorry. I know how much Robby meant to you," she leans forward, reaching her hand out across the small coffee table. And you hate the way she says it. Like he's dead. Like he's never coming back. "I know it can't be easy to be left like that, to move on from what he did to you. I'm sorry."
Your breath is shaky in your throat, and your heart beats unsteadily in your chest, making your head all fuzzy like you're underwater. You take a shaky inhale, nodding and grasping her hand in yours against the cool tabletop.
A few moments of quiet pass. You close your eyes in the ambiance of the gentle jazz playing from her record player and the synthetic fireplace on the TV, and the tick of the clock on the wall, the gentle stroke of Samira's thumb over your knuckles.
"Listen... he'd want to help," is all she says before she's reaching with her free hand to grab the notebook that lies on the cushion next to her, grabbing her pen next to the two of your hands linked at the table. She scribbles something down and releases your hand to rip the page out, folding it methodically four times before handing it to you and drawing a little ♡ on top.
"Samira... I don't know—"
"You don't have to."
"Yeah, but... I mean–"
"I know you're hurt, you have every right to be," she takes your hand the holds the folded paper in hers, the paper slipping between the warmth of your shared palms, "s'alot, I know, but he's... he's a good man," your name comes quieter, as do her next words, "he wants to help you."
You don't miss what that implies, though she covers it quickly with a smile. "Does he even know about... Robby and I, and..."
"Does he have to?" Her brows furrow, “Does it matter?”
"Maybe not."
The rest of the night is filled with comfort and cups of Earl Grey and the sound of crackling flames from her speakers. The fog of everything becomes lighter, the grief less impending, less dark. However, the weight of the four-folded paper with Jack Abbot's number scribbled down with a ♡ drawn on top — like there's the hope of something new, like you're worth something, does not
───────
"So..." Jack sucks his teeth, falling into the leather chair across from you, cracking open a beer, "Which one of 'em sent you?" his voice pairs against the carbonated hiss, opulent leather groaning beneath his weight.
Even just the smallest of movements — purposeful or not- are a reminder of just how much bigger he is. He commands the room through a stillness. A calm and warm comfort that suggests your need to relax if this is going anywhere, so you try your best to do so. With deep breaths and fluttering eyes that shift about the room in an attempt to distract yourself and know him all the same — see if you can protect yourself from what might be coming, if there's some signifying art piece that suggests he, too, might abandon you.
The shift in power settles over you quietly, not crushing so much as enveloping—something you feel more than you can name. You’re sinking in the heavy weight of it. It leaves a warm flutter low in your stomach, your hands a little unsteady as you wring them in your lap nervously, your mouth dry, breath hitched in a way you hope he doesn’t catch. But he does. He watches you with a calm, almost knowing softness, as if this isn’t the first time he’s seen someone lose their footing in the quiet, overwhelming weight of his presence. As if he understands exactly where you are in your head, and he’s patient enough to let you find your way back to him.
Your ears ring. Has he done this before? Not just Samira?
"S-samira did–...” You take a breath, “She said you could…help me?" You try not to cringe at the way your words feel embarrassingly vulnerable.
Jack nods, running a big hand over his jaw thoughtfully. His next question surprises you, "She pressure you at all?"
You don't answer, averting your eyes.
"S'okay. Don't need to tell me," he leans further back onto the chair, "but I'll find out." That makes you look at him almost instantly, earning a hearty chuckle from the older man as he tucks his arm behind his head.
"Relax, neither of you girls is in trouble. M'just teasin'." He takes a sip from his beer. Droplets of condensation trickle down his wrist and land on his watch. “What else did she tell you?”
"Uh... she told me you could help me maybe… kinda like you knew what was goin' on with Robby n'me."
Jack watches you carefully, leaning further back into the leather, spreading his legs, narrowing his eyes, "Like what?"
You look about the room, debating whether or not to move forward with this.
Talking about your sexual relationship with an attending to another attending, albeit didn't seem like the smartest move, yet here you were, in Jack’s house, on Jack’s leather couch that probably cost half of your first year of med school, imploring about his sexual relationship with one of his senior residents. You look about the den, taking in vibrant warm colors from the lamps. It reminds you of Samira's apartment. His house is colorful – more soft and rich with life than Robby’s. Your eyes stop on a framed photo of Jack and Robby in a sea of pictures on his wall, shrugging a little.
Jack follows your line of sight, turning around slightly, eyes landing on the photo of the two of them. He turns back around.
"Oh."
You nod, still looking at the photo, and say, "Yeah."
"Was not aware of that,” He drops his arm from behind his head to cross over his chest, “But I did have my suspicions..." There's a silence that follows that you register as him realizing you hadn't noticed him or Samira observing you in full these last couple months, the weight of grief seemingly larger than he'd anticipated, he continues, words carefully chosen, "certain things you do… say. easier to see if you're actively looking for it in a person."
"Things I do?"
"Sure." He shrugs as if it's the simplest of things, "Samira had asked me to…” he tilts his head from side to side, as if debating the flavor of his words, “to keep an eye on you. I guess she was really convinced you wouldn't reach out."
"Really?"
"Really," he smiles at you, takes another sip of his beer, "I told her to give it a little time."
───────
The second time you meet, it’s at Jack’s again. With you sat at his kitchen bar, nursing a textured glass filled with ice water – he’d made you. You think he chose the glass on purpose, maybe to ground you, you're not sure, you don't ask.
He'd asked you to meet again after you took a couple of days to sit with everything. He wanted it to be your decision to come to him. He made it clear he wasn't going to choose for you, that you need to know that you'd trust him to take care of you.
Jack told you to pick a drink, it didn't matter what type, but that you would be drinking something and finishing it by the time you were done talking today. Spent the afternoon “learning” your tells, how you reacted, what you were willing to push, and what you let him take control over, laughing when you outwardly cringed at retelling intimate stories from college that didn't end well, confiding that maybe sex just wasn't a thing that worked for you until you met Robby.
Jack stands across from you, leaning against the counter that connects beneath the marble bar. Asking you about yourself, what you do outside of work, getting a sense of who you are, what you need. Samira gets brought up when you mention extracurricular activities.
"That girl..." Jack chuckles, shaking his head before looking upwards, "Yeah, her recruitment methods are... less than favorable for my taste.” He puckers his lips, “She’s too direct sometimes.”
You nearly choke on your water, "recruitment?"
Jack drops his eyes back down to yours, leaning forward on both elbows atop the marble. There's a soft demeanor about him that washes over you. "M'not doin' this all the time, if that's what you're thinking." He drags his hand over his stubbly jaw, "s'kinda like doin' a favor."
"For me or for her?"
"Can't it be both?"
“I guess.”
You watch each other for a soft moment that passes comfortably slow. Looking over one another. You note the way the sleeves of his navy polo tighten around his freckled biceps when he crosses his arms, the thick of them bulging against the fabric. The way his nails are cut short and buffed, the way his rosy lips fall into a natural pout, whites sprinkled into his beard decorating his freckled skin like confetti. The way his dark eyes seem all the more bigger under his round glasses in the cool light of his kitchen at 9 pm.
You finish the last of your water, shifting the glass back and forth between your hands against the marble bartop. Jack takes the glass from you with a knowing smile. Tells you “Thank you for finishing that.”
You don't say anything, but something soft and relaxed washes over you.
“Will you follow me to the den? He asks, standing back from the island and already making his way into the amber of the living room through the arched entrance to the kitchen. You don't say anything but you follow.
Once you reach his side in the den, he urges you towards the couch, “C’mere,” he says, a large hand on your arm, leading you to sit.
He stands there for a moment. Letting the automatic difference in height settle, he pulls a hand from his pocket and pushes a loose piece of hair behind your ear. He runs the backs of his knuckles down your temple to your cheek. "Has anyone ever felt you out, sweetheart?" He strokes the soft apple of your cheek with a warm smile, brown eyes looking you over, "When was the last time anyone ever took their time with you?"
‘I-” your breath catches in your throat, “I can’t– I don’t–” and you’re not even sure why the words won't come out. It feels like they're trapped in a web of hurt in the back of your throat. As if telling him your secrets, revealing the abandon would forever doom you, trap you in the cycle of hurt. "Does Samira know that–"
"Shhh," his voice is not at all stern, just gentle, grounding, "I'm not here to talk about Samira…” The pad of his thumb pulls your bottom lip down.
"But–"
Tears well at your lashline, lips quivering when he takes your chin in his warm hand and coos a soft “shhh, shhh” down his nose at you. You whimper and wrap your small hand around his wrist, thumbing a blue vein beneath his skin. You hope he understands.
Jack strokes the pad of his thumb over your chin, saying soft and low, “It’s okay.” his thumb presses up against your plush bottom lip, pulling it down some, tracing the soft of them as you part your lips slightly.
“This alright?” he asks you, gentle and slow.
You hum, looking up at him with wet eyes leading his hand closer to you by the wrist, letting his thumb slip past your lips. The weight of his digit on your tongue and the taste of him nearly makes you sob.
You’d been so alone. So scared and wrought with sadness. Tears stream down your cheeks, you hum around his finger. He lets you have it for a moment longer, stroking the bottom of your chin with his forefinger before pulling his digit from your mouth, holding your cheeks softly.
"Thank you.”
You’re not quite sure for what, but you tell it to him anyway, and he seems to understand as he nods and ducks down, pressing his lips to yours. The kiss is quick, but it's soft and gentle in the most perfect of ways. And it makes you fucking ache.
You follow him when he pulls away, but he holds you there, hand on your face. Not at all hard, but enough to remind you that he’s in charge.
You feel like he's expecting something. A confession, an apology for being this difficult. For being damaged goods, being something he has to fix.
“I don't wanna talk about Robby again.” is all you can muster, and you hope it’s enough.
Jack tilts his head above you, brows cinched, "We don’t have to talk about anything you don't want to."
"I've never been so alone." You confess, eyes heavy with the marrow of the stripped spine of anguish Robby left you with. You wring your hands between your legs, teeth chattering.
"You're not alone." Jack mends. His voice low and gentle, as though not to disturb the frightened and cornered animal he beckoned near, "You're not alone,” your name is soft on his breath as he kneels to your height.
It shatters you so. The proclamation that you’re worth something. That maybe you aren’t damaged in the way you thought – irreversibly ruined and shattered, like some children’s fable about a lesson you’ll never quite learn cos the world has always been too heavy for you.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t know why I’m like this,” you sob. You try to bury yourself in his neck. Something Robby had let you do countless times. Let you hide away from the world, and him. But Jack holds you firm, brown eyes searching yours.
"You deserve better than anyone..." he watches your eyes with an intensity that makes heat swirl in your tummy, his eyes search yours for acceptance of that fact, his hands a grounding roughness at your cheeks, holding you steady as tears well over your lashes.
"You hear me?"
You nod, bottom lip trembling in a mournful pout, and eyes wet with tears before you let them flutter closed, tears breaking free to trickle down your warm cheeks.
He waits till you open your eyes again, angling to meet your eyes once more, searching you again, "don't let anyone tell you any different."
You nod again, fighting the sob that curls up your throat.
"You understand me?"
"Yes. Yes." You nod in his hands, letting the tears fall freely, "Yes, sir.”
───────
"You seem chipper," Cassie Mackay says with a smirk, hoodie hanging off the curve of her shoulder. “Somethin’ happen I should know about?” she teases, brushing loose strands of auburn hair that've fallen from her braid back behind her ear. She’s stationed at the hub, clocking out.
You click your tongue with a smile, continuing to file away a chart, "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about." You refuse to meet her eyes as you scribble something down.
"Alright," you can hear the smirk in her voice.
You catch Samira from behind her, lips pulled into a soft, knowing smile.
And it's true. You were chipper. Happier. Less... absent. The world had seemed to open back up to you in light of all that Robby had ruined you with. Some days were hard still, but each morning, the weight grew lighter.
You and Samira don't talk about it, there's no need, but it's there, and it's weightless.
───────
Seeing Jack becomes routine.
Every Friday evening, he would take you to his place after your shift and make you dinner while you told him about what you did that week outside of work, what you were looking forward to. You’d eat and then shower separately before heading to bed.
Jack wanted you to share his bed. To know it was your space too. He’d run his fingers up and down your spine until you fell asleep.
When the two of you woke around late afternoon, he’d feed you a snack and come what may.
It’s often on these nights that you’d find yourself lying out at the edge of Jack’s bed, with his head between your thighs, or sitting in his lap with his fingers circling languidly at your clit.
Tonight is no different.
Jack kneels at the foot of his bed, one of your legs thrown over the arch of his broad shoulder. He kisses his way down the inside of your thigh, two deft fingers gathering wetness between your folds and drawing them up to circle deliciously slow around your clit.
"S'this what you were talking about?"
"Hmm?" You force your closed eyes open just a bit — the silver of his hair meets your gaze first.
"About being lonely?"
You don't answer, you just run a hand through his hair, gathering silver tendrils in your grasp, holding softly. "When was the last time someone took care of you?"
You move to your elbows, "I don't wanna talk about—"
"M'not talking about him." Jack steadies your gaze, holds a hand at your knee, grounding, gentle yet stern. "M'not talking about that."
You watch him closely, unsure.
“What can I do?” he asks, pressing another kiss to your knee, “Need you to work with me here.”
“I like being with you.”
You can tell by his expression that he knows there's more. The way he looks up at you under his brows before pushing you back down and slotting his tongue against your folds. You both know there's more.
You’re just not ready.
───────
Progression is oftentimes not linear. It ebbs, and it flows, and it sinks, and it plateaus. Jack has a funny way of knowing you. He reads people too well. It scares you sometimes.
You don't mention anything to Samira but you decide that his version of “helping” you is far different than the version that helped her. There's more… paternal help he saddles you with. Reminding you to eat right, making you food and feeding it to you while you’re sitting on his lap at his table, him tucking you in at night, lying behind you and telling you how special you are and how proud you make him while he runs his hands over your hair.
He’s good at deconstructing exactly what you need without you really even noticing it. Never having outwardly told him things that work for you, things that make you smaller, gentle, make you sink into that honeyed place in your mind where the rest of the world floats away and you can just be Jack’s little girl. But he learns it nonetheless, dissects you while he spoonfeeds you at the table, fingering your cunt and pressing kisses to the curve of your jaw when you mewl and tremble, murmuring, “Big girls finish their food.”
───────
One night, while Jack’s got you laid out against him on the couch, the word threatens to fall from your lips. It's right there. Ruminating on the tip of your tongue. Jack stops you, fingers stuffed past your sopping folds pause, and he holds your knee in his hand, massaging your skin.
“Don’t give it to me.”
You nearly stutter at that. Brows furrowing and eyes searching his.
“Don’t say it unless y’mean it.” he kisses the inside of your knee, “Don’t say it just cos.”
You whimper under him, spreading your legs wider in his grasp.
“I trust you,” you say softly, dropping a hand between your legs to hold his wrist.
“I know,” he nods, “N’you make me so proud.”
───────
When the world does fall from your lips, it's after a hard day – a shift that seemed endless. You’d tripped over something, and Jack had seen it, checking on you as soon as he had the time. You had a headache cos you didn't drink enough water, and to top it all off, Jack had to intervene when a patient began to harass you over wait time.
There was just too much going on, and you could feel yourself slipping off. Head growing fuzzy and absent as the day droned on, you got sluggish, spacey.
Jack noticed pretty quickly, “punished” you with charts to try and get you to come back a little. And it somewhat worked, forced you to focus on something other than the shitty day you were having, it let you be alone for a little bit.
Jack stopped by here and there, checking in softly.
“You okay?”
“Mhm, just… spacey, I think,” you slur.
“I can see that. Just a little longer, ‘kay?” he ran a finger down your arm softly, “think you can do that for me?”
“Yeah da–”
“Jack, we need you in South 15!” Lena shouts from the end of the hub.
You jump a little, and Jack smoothes a hand down your spine, covertly enough.
“I’ll come check on you again, ‘kay?”
You nod, looking up at him with glossy eyes.
───────
The rest of the shift had passed by just as slowly. You hadn't ever really come out of that heavy fog. The weight of it is still ruminating at the edges of your brain, sinking into your head.
You lean on the crook of Jack’s elbow as he drives, stroking what bit of hair he can reach from that angle, playing soft music for you as the dusky morning filters through the truck windows and the buzz of traffic whizzes by.
The rest is somewhat of a blur; you can recall bits and pieces of showering and Jack forcing you to finish half of a burrito he’d picked up for you before you passed out in his lap on the couch.
When you wake, you're slumped on the couch, legs held in Jack's lap, and he runs the tips of his fingers up and down your shins.
You mumble something, maybe his name, you're not sure, and you're still a little fuzzy.
“Hey, sweetie,” Jack coos. The smile in his voice makes you hum. He leans over you, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, “How are we feelin'?”
You shrug; words aren't really working right now. Still too sluggish, too in your head.
“Okay, so we're not ready for words right now.” He teases softly, kissing your cheek.
He tickles you a bit, nibbling at the curve of your jaw just to see the way you squirm and wriggle in his arms. He holds your legs down to his lap with a large hand when you try to kick up against them.
He laughs with you, pulling back and pecks your lips, then your nose, then your lips again.
You look up at him under your lashes. You whimper a little when he moves to sit back, tapping your lips expectantly.
“Ask me nicely.” He says softly, stroking his hand down your knee, “c'mon.”
The word simmers on your lips again. Warm and gentle, rolling over you like honey. Pulling your bottom lip between your teeth, you watch him nervously, twisting your hands into the fabric of Jack's t-shirt.
And he's so gentle it makes you wanna cry. A freckled hand folds over yours, pulling your hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to your palm.
“It's okay.” He says, voice low and soft.
“I'm– mhhm,” you whimper brokenly, tracing your fingers over his mouth and cheeks.
“It's okay, honey.” He says again, kisses the tips of your fingers.
You're not sure what you need — but Jack does. A tethered line keeping you grounded to everything you'd kept to yourself since Robby. Despite all the ways Jack knew you, he hadn't once asked for this part of you — wanted you to give him that part of you on your own terms. He was so different from Robby that it made you want to open your soul to him and let him devour you.
“You're not alone.” He reminds you, thumb pulling your lip out from under your teeth.
The word comes faster than you can stop it. Some unconquerable urge to spill yourself raw to him and let him know the way your heart would bleed dry if it meant him loving you forever.
“D-daddy,” comes out as a sobbed gasp, reeling in tears when he grabs you and pulls you into his arms.
“Yeah, baby. Yeah, yeah. Daddy's here, daddy's here.” He tells you, a hand to the back of your head.
You've never felt safer than when he rocks you gently, cooing to you as you cry in his arms. Whether it's tears of relief, grief, or the understanding that you'd finally moved on, you're not sure, but you let yourself feel all of it in the warmth of Jack's arms and the soft timbre of his voice.
The moment passes gently and without rush, Jack's hand a steady anchor at the back of your skull until you pull away and look at him with teary eyes.
“Thank you.”
Jack smoothes your hair back behind your ears, clears his throat a little, “What for?” The tears in his voice float a little. You don't say anything. You just smile up at him.
“For loving me.”
Jack nods and tucks you near again. Kisses your forehead so you don't see the stray tear that trickles down his cheek.
“Can I still have a kiss?” you mumble into his chest.
A chuckle rumbles through Jack's chest, and he pulls back, sniffling a bit as he says, “course y'can.”
You don't miss the way the world bends to him. Like something in the way the world lives and breathes knows what he is to you – knows what he’s become, your father, savior, teacher all in one, steady in the unfathomable shake of the world and what it's done to you.
His lips are soft against yours, plush as he angles his head to take more of you in, tongue slipping past your lips and stroking the roof of your mouth.
You moan against his lips, grasping onto him in any way that you can, nails digging into the warmth of his arms, biting flushed crescents into freckled auburn constellations.
He slips a hand between your thighs, cupping your heat in a large hand, pressing kisses to the column of your neck.
Your breath hitches, and he coos to you softly, “just let me in,” he presses a hand down the index of your breasts, heavy and steady on your sternum, “let daddy make you feel good.”
When you nod and turn your head to meet him in a kiss, he drops his hands down to your hips, sliding over the globes of your ass, spreading the fat of them, rocking up into you with a groan.
He pulls you back into a wet kiss, lips slotted against yours, nose stroking your cheeks when he sinks back into the couch and angles his head to deepen the kiss.
The bulge of his cock presses up against your heat through your pj shorts. You break away from him with a hiss, a string of drool connecting your swollen lips.
Jack slides a warm hand up the length of your spine, leading you down flat against the couch, pulling a pillow over and under your head.
He meets you in a kiss again, quick and sweet, before trailing down the column of your neck, pulling the hem of your shirt up and over your head, throwing it into the middle of his living room.
“Wanna give you everything.” he kisses your collarbone, slipping further down the couch, pulling one of your legs up and over his shoulder.
He pulls your shorts down your legs and slips your panties to the side, groaning at the way a string of your slick sticks to the fabric.
“Gonna kill daddy, baby.”
You whimper at that, reaching a hand down, you weave your fingers through silver tendrils, the soft of them pairing prettily against your skin.
Jack's always been slow and methodical when it comes to rewarding you — his thumb circles over your swollen clit, spreading the lips of your pussy apart to watch the way your slick webs.
“Daddy—”
“I know, I know.” Jack kisses the inside of your thigh, “got such a pretty pussy. Robby's an idiot.”
You sob at that, legs cinching upwards when Jack slips his hands beneath your thighs and presses them up into your chest.
“Hold yourself open for me.”
You nod, “Yes, Daddy.” Hands coming down to hold the underside of your thighs, spreading yourself open for him.
Jack presses a kiss to your clit, slipping a finger past your folds and curling it back towards him. He adds another and licks a flat stripe up your cunt.
You moan, head falling back against the pillow beneath your head.
He moans into your cunt, brows furrowed, nose bumping up against your clit, chuckling some when your breath hitches.
Jack pulls up from between your thighs, whiskered chin covered in slick, he lays himself flush against your chest and kisses you, his lips wet and swollen against yours.
“I love you.” He whispers against you.
You nod up at him with wet eyes, holding onto his arms, begging him to see right through you.
“I love you, daddy.”
He hums and pecks your lips.
“Can daddy fuck you, baby?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” you sob.
“You are just the sweetest thing, y'know that?”
You smile up at him, flushed and sheepish, lashes batting against your warm cheeks.
“Yeaah, you do,” Jack smirks, pulling back to unzip his pants, pushing his boxers down, stroking his chubby cock over the waistband.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, baby?” Jack lines the head of his cock up to your folds, pressing teasingly against your sopping entrance.
“Can I have another kiss?”
Jack hums, “course y'can.”
He presses into you slow and gentle, letting you take him inch by inch until he's sheathed to the hilt, circling the pad of his thumb over your swollen bud.
“That feel okay?”
You nod through a wet whimper.
“Feels so good, oh my god–”
“Yeah,” Jack's voice comes out strained and tight. Balls pressed up against your wet folds, sticking to your folds when he pulls back and sinks into you again, “c'mere,” he nods to you, “give daddy a kiss.”
Your lips meet his, tongues warm against one another, swallowing each other's moans when he rocks his hips into yours.
Jack hums against your lips, pulling away and pressing his thumb up against your swollen lips.
You part your lips, letting his digit sink into your mouth, resting deliciously on your tongue.
"Yeaahhh just like that. Whose pussy is this?" He curls his thumb on your tongue, looking down his nose at you when you whimper a garbled "yours, daddy, s'yours," around his salty digit.
Jack groans above you, leaning back on his haunches to watch the way your pussy swallows his length whole, tight around his veiny girth.
Slipping a hand between your thighs, you part your folds with your fingers around his length.
Jack chokes from above you.
“Christ.”
“Think m'gonna cum, m’gonna cum.” You warn, thighs trembling and teeth chattering.
Jack lies himself flush against you, stomach soft against yours, and he brings you into another kiss, moaning into your mouth.
“Go ahead,” he kisses the corner of your mouth, “cum for daddy, baby.”
White-hot pleasure rolls through your body, eyes rolling into the back of your head, and back arching up off the leather of Jack's couch with a gasping sob.
Jack follows right behind you, tucking himself into your neck and spilling into you with a broken groan, hips still rolling into yours.
───────
“I'd give you the world if I could.” Jack strokes a finger beneath your chin, tipping your head up to meet his gaze.
“Thank you for everything.” You say quietly.
“Hey,” Jack coos, “you okay?”
You sniffle, nodding.
“Everything's okay.”
And when Jack tucks you into his chest, presses a kiss to the top of your head, and strokes a hand down the length of your arm, auburn light filtering through the windows of his living room as the sun sets, you decide that it's never been you.
Jack squeezes your shoulder comfortingly.
You turn and look up at him, leaning your head against his shoulder, pressing a kiss to his freckled skin.