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Jack is elbow deep in someone’s chest cavity when his phone buzzes, cutting straight through the controlled chaos of consequences befalling a man rushed into his trauma bay after poor seatbelt choices and an accident straight out of Final Destination.
It starts as a faint tremor in the pocket of his scrubs—more vibration than sound—but even beneath layers of sterile gown and adrenaline, he feels it.
He doesn’t acknowledge it.
He can’t. His hand is currently cradling some guy’s inferior vena cava like it’s made of glass, and one wrong twitch means this guy is leaking faster than a bullet-addled DC-10.
But the buzzing doesn’t stop.
It goes off again.
And again.
The third time it happens, Ellis glances toward the tray table. “Dr. Abbot, your phone—”
“I know,” he says, voice calm but clipped. “Ignore it. I need suction.”
It’s not that he isn’t curious. Of course he is. Jack’s phone never rings this much unless something’s on fire—or worse, you tried using his gas stove again.
But there’s a heart in his hand, so it can wait.
Probably.
Hopefully.
God willing.
And then it fucking goes off again.
“Oh my God,” he breathes out, entire body stilling with disbelief. “Can someone please answer that?”
There’s a small shuffling as Ellis obeys his command, maneuvering around the occupants of the room towards the small metal tray. Tugging off one red-streaked glove, she shimmies the small phone out of his back pocket and swipes across the screen, unlocking it.
It presses against Jack’s ear.
Silence bleeds through from the other side, softly broken by the static of a breath.
“Hey, Jack.” You voice drifts out, half-articulate, and followed by a soft smack like you were mid-snack and had a prophetic vision of him at the most inopportune moment and decided to blow up his phone. “What’s up?”
Jack blinks down at his blood-soaked gloves—at the fucking cavern his hand disappears into.
What’s up?
“Nothing crazy,” he replies mildly. Catching someone’s eye, he nods down where his hands disappear, demanding more suction. “Are you dying?”
“Only to talk to you.”
Jack sighs, wedging the device harder between his shoulder and cheek.
“Honey, I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back.”
“No, you won’t—you always say that. There’ll be some emergency you have to tend to.”
“An emergency in the emergency room?” he asks dryly. “Imagine that.”
The doctor hears you snort, the microphone picking up the soft sound of your socks scuffling across the porcelain-disguised-as-wood floor before you grunt.
Hopping onto the counter in the kitchen, Jack assumes.
He shifts his weight, the blue fabric of his gown crinkling as he carefully pinches the artery between his fingers to further constrict blood flow.
Glancing up, he meets Ellis’ eyes and mouths, where the fuck is surgery?
Two minutes, she mouths back.
Jack huffs a breath that fogs up his glasses for a split second.
“Jack? You still there?”
“No, actually—”
“Alright, obviously you are. Anyway,” the doctor groans, but you continue as if he didn’t even have vocal chords with which to make the noise. “Medical opinion. Skipping backstory because someone is feeling bitchy today. Do penguins have depression?
Jack’s brain short-circuits.
Shaking his head minutely trying to generate any energy that would restart any mental faculty, a disbelieving laugh—more of a hwa, really—escapes him.
“What?”
“They can’t fly. Are they, like, sad because of that? I think I would be.”
He cannot fucking do this right now.
His leg is starting to ache, and his shoulder is starting to cramp from the awkward fucking position he finds himself in trying to stabilize this patient long enough to get him to surgery, and he has to subtly shift his weight in a futile attempt to relieve any of that tension—though, if he’s honest, most of that tension is coming from you—and his shoes make a sickening shweck sound when the soles of his boots slide across the blood-slicked ground. And through it all—the faint pulsing of the blood through the vein in his hand and the scent of iron wafting through the air, stealing all breath from his lungs—you’re on the other side of the phone, miles away, chirruping about the presumed mental state of Antarctic birds.
Jack’s eyes slide closed for a beat, and he takes a deep, should-be calming breath.
And then he cuts you right the fuck off.
“Sweetheart, I’m chest deep in someone who tried to merge with a semi-truck,” he bites out. “I have the only thing keeping his blood pressure in the double digits in my hand. My resident looks like she’s about cut my arm off and use it as a puppet, and I’m almost positive I just heard you lick a spoon.”
Jack takes another deep breath.
“And you called me,” he confirms slowly, the syllables taut with barely-there restraint, in an attempt to find the fucking sense in them, “to ask me if I think penguins get sad because they can’t fly?”
Someone stifles a snort across the room.
The tendon in his jaw flexes as he attempts to rein in his annoyance.
Someone's heart is literally in his hands. You’re calling inquiring about the possible chemical imbalances that may afflict flightless avians. And now there is laughter in his trauma room.
Jack makes a note for later—clean-up detail, entirely comprised of that one fucking guy. Why shouldn’t the janitor get a nice hour off?
“Yeah," you say simply. "Do they?”
“Honey. Sweetheart. Light of my life. I’m mid-vascular anastomosis,” He tilts his head, carefully balancing his phone between his cheek and his shoulder. Like a switch is flipped, his voice becomes laden with frustration. “I cannot stand here and opine on the emotional state of penguins,” Jack snaps.
The line goes silent. Jack almost feels bad.
Almost.
Then your voice—your once again snack-addled voice, thick with peanut butter or something, Jack guesses—cuts back in.
“Jack, it’s a simple yes or no,” you sigh.
Like he’s the crazy one for not wanting to have this conversation right now.
“I’m hanging up,” he decides.
“Okay, rude ass—”
“Kid, I love you,” he cuts in, catching Ellis’ eyes and shrugging the shoulder with his phone on it. “But I’m hanging up.”
Ellis grabs the phone from him, an extremely amused smile on her face.
Leaning over to him, she whispers, “I’ll make sure to chart that call as ‘urgent,’ Abbot.”
The moment Jack opens your door, he’s ready to fight.
He spent the entire drive rehearsing what he was going to say, so he could at least try to make it hard for you to twist his words and win an argument.
Jack would bring up the fact that the phone call was completely irresponsible. He would concede that, yes, you’re right, he could have hung up at any moment. He would also assert that you knew he was on-shift and that, barring any injury, major or minor, or you winning the lottery, communication should be confined to text.
He had it all planned out.
He, of course, forgot to account for the fact that your front door seems to squeak when it opens no matter how many cans of WD-40 he puts on it—he suspects that he’s keeping Home Depot in business from that alone—and the entryway looks directly into your kitchen.
His foot hovers over the threshold to your apartment, and Jack sees you freeze, half-eaten bagel hovering in the air, one of his old hoodies draped over your body barely covering your shorts, and one sock scrunched down by your ankle while the other remains glued mid-calf.
You don’t even turn toward him, but he sees your wide eyes locked on his figure from your periphery.
Without removing his eyes from you, the doctor hangs his backpack on the little hook he installed for himself.
His right foot brings him one step closer.
Then his left.
And then he starts stalking toward you.
Slowly, as casually as possible with no sudden movements, you toss your bagel down to the plate with a ping from the hard bread meeting ceramic. To your right, your arm slides across the kitchen island, your body turning toward him as it melts into the granite while your feet slink in the opposite direction.
Finally, your body reaches maximum stretch, and Jack rounds the island to rest opposite of you.
The island of burnt bagels and granite.
His new battleground.
You throw him a lopsided grin.
“Heyyyyyyyyy, Jack,” you nervously laugh out. “Looking goo—”
And suddenly, he’s angry.
Very angry.
He's angry that you can look so cute and be so nonchalant when you’ve caused him major turmoil in the past four hours. Not to mention teasing from Shen.
“Four in the morning,” he barks out.
Your shoulders hike up to your ears, smile melting down and baring your teeth in a distinct haha, you got me expression.
“You called me at four in the morning,” Abbot reiterates, “to ask me if I thought that penguins get sad because they can’t fly.”
He sticks a finger in your face. “Four in the morning.”
“Okay, well, do you—?”
“Four.”
“Established! But,” your finger lazily draws a circle on the counter, “you’re still not answering.”
Your name vibrates out of his chest in a groan. “You of all people should know the legal ramifications of stopping an emergency procedure for a phone call.”
He pauses.
Then, “Especially ones that are penguin based.”
“I don’t…” your eyes dart to the side before snapping back to him.
You squint, weaponizing confusion. “Jack, I’m not sure why you think the law explicitly prohibits penguin discussions amid emergency operations.”
“That’s not— my point is—”
“Give me one statute,” you demand.
“What?” he flounders, caught off guard.
“One. Statute.” You raise your eyebrows and shrug. “I’ll wait.”
1. Bring up the fact that the phone call was completely irrespons–
“That’s your job—” he hears himself saying instead.
What the fuck is happening right now? Where did his bullet-points go?
“Oh, alright,” you laugh out, crossing your arms over your chest. “So, you admit you came into the operating room with zero legal grounding.”
“What? No—”
“So you knowingly performed a high-stakes medical procedure without ensuring full compliance with potential,” your voice hesitates, the last syllable wavering as you battle amusement, “penguin-related clauses in state and federal code. That’s…” You push yourself clear off the island and wave two disbelieving hands in a what the fuck gesture. “Well, that’s bordering on gross negligence, Jack.”
“I didn’t— there are no penguin clauses—”
“Oh, okay.” You nod slowly. “So now you’re just assuming legal precedent, then. On what basis? Gut feeling? Ornithological jurisprudence?”
“You’re making things up,” he snaps.
“I’m doing my job.”
“What job? It’s eight in the morning on a Saturday and you—” he hisses out, jabbing a finger in your direction, “—you’re in Whataburger boxers and mismatched socks.”
“Typical Sunday best,” you dismiss with a shrug.
Stand your ground, Jack.
“It’s Saturday, not Sunday,” he grinds out.
“Saturdays are Sundays of the weekend, everyone knows that.”
And what the fuck does that mean?
Jack groans, rubbing his temples like that’ll somehow buffer him from your logic.
“You know what?” he snaps. “I hope penguins are sad. Deeply, irreparably sad. Because if I have to suffer, they do too.”
“Wow.” You blink, head slinking back in astonishment. “Bold stance for someone claiming to be pro-bird.”
“I never claimed that!” he insists, the tendon in his neck flexing, almost to the point of pain, while he fights for his life in a court of bird law that doesn’t even fucking exist.
And, if it does, it sure as fuck isn’t taught in medical school.
“Oh, so you’re anti-bird now?”
“No! I just— God, what is happening right now?” he explodes, gesturing wildly. “You called while I had my fingers in someone’s heart to debate whether Emperor penguins have some sort of evolutionary seasonal affective disorder—”
“Well, do they?”
He closes his eyes.
Breathes in.
Out.
You lean forward, elbows on the counter in full cross-examination intensity.
“You said—and I quote—‘You of all people should know the legal ramifications.’ So, I asked you a legal question. And now,” your hand comes to rest on your heart, “I’m the bad guy?”
“I said that because you were going to kill that guy.”
“I was going to do no such thing,” you say mildly. “Because I. Respect. The law.”
The older man stares at you, jaw working, a silent plea to whatever higher power might be listening for the patience to survive this conversation.
A strange sense of calm washes over him—one that accompanies your specific brand of arguing technique.
He thinks maybe you have a point with all that amen, brother shit you throw around half-seriously.
“You know what I meant,” he says, each word a slow, deliberate exercise in self-restraint. “You can’t just twist my words because you’re bored and running on two hours of sleep and orange juice.”
You don’t bother to hide your smirk.
“I’m not twisting your words. I’m clarifying the record for the court. You know, in case this comes up during your deposition.” The sentence cuts off abruptly as you blink, holding a finger up while a thought belatedly comes in on the fax machine in your brain. “Also. I cannot drink orange juice. It interacts with my Focalin.”
“I’m not on trial.”
When he says it, he really, really tries to keep his tone resolute—clinical and I’m Mister Doctor who does doctor things.
You prod a finger at the air between you.
“Not yet. But the jury,” you gesture to the half-eaten bagel on the counter, “isn’t looking great for you, doctor.”
But, unfortunately, he's not doing doctor things. He's off the clock.
Jack stares at you for a long beat—at your wild hair that kind of resembles a lion’s mane right now, and at the amusement simmering in your eyes.
The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of this entire conversation hits him full force, all at once. Five hours ago, he was in the emergency department actually saving lives; now, he’s standing in your kitchen, tired and resigned and helpless to you, standing there wearing Whataburger boxers and arguing avian psychology with the composure of a Supreme Court justice.
Ruth Bader Gins-bird, Jack's brain helpfully supplies, inner-commentary sounding suspiciously like you.
A slow, helpless twitch tugs at the corner of his mouth. He tries to swallow it, but it’s too late. His shoulders betray him with a single shake, a breathless puff of air escaping him as his head drops forward.
You pivot on your back foot, twisting your body to put distance between the two of you, in confusion.
But when Jack looks back up, whatever annoyance—anger, whatever—that was there is completely gone. The wrinkles by his eyes deepen with an amount of affection that is, frankly, a little embarrassing.
“You’re a nightmare,” he laughs, but the bite is entirely replaced by a soft, thread of fondness, wrapping around each word. He begins a leisurely walk towards where you’re standing, before he reaches out and catches the side of your jaw. “A literal, legal nightmare.”
Looking down, he sees your cloth-enclosed toes shuffle forward until they bump his shoes. His eyes make the ascent, trailing across your socks, and your fuckass shorts, and his hoodie, until they lock onto your own.
The apartment is silent as your soft breaths mingle with his.
Jack’s thumb traces down the line of your jaw, hooking on your chin before it smooths down to rest right above your collarbone.
Slowly, he tilts your head up.
Even more slowly, because proximity to you is now just downright Pavlovian, his eyes slide shut.
Distance between the two of you becomes non-existent, the bridge of his nose gently nudging your forehead.
He’s not thinking about the semi-truck or the first-year resident he’s definitely going to be overworking tomorrow or your extremely frustrating way of doubling down even when you know you’re wrong.
He’s thinking about how your forehead feels against his and how, despite his best efforts to be a serious professional, his heart is currently doing an extremely unprofessional skip.
“I’m going to lose my license because of you, you know that?” he whispers.
Against his throat, he feels your low, vibrating hum of surrender, lips grazing the sensitive skin.
“Not even because of that stupid fucking phone call,” he says. “But because I’m currently standing in the kitchen after my shift arguing about the legality of penguins with my extremely stubborn girlfriend instead of sleeping.”
A small puff of laughter dances across his skin, goosebumps following in its wake. “Girlfriend, huh?”
Jack hums.
And then lets out a long, very self-suffering sigh as the mockery of adrenaline evaporates from his system, leaving only the comfortable weight of being home. Carefully, his body sinks into yours, nudging one foot between yours and anchoring himself to you.
“For the record,” he whispers, lips brushing your skin with every word, “your little jury is biased. I would like to request a mistrial.”
Your arms snake around his waist, hooking together and finding comfortable resting place on his spine.
Jack abruptly pulls back and you whine, a pathetic where are you going whine that tugs at his heart.
“And I want a bite of that bagel as a peace offering,” he demands.
Small arms—deceptively strong small arms—pull him back to you.
You shake your head like your trying to burrow in.
“That’s literally your bagel,” you say, words muffled from where your face presses into his chest. "I made it for you."
Jack blinks.
“You were just eating it.” He turns his head and looks at what’s left of the offending breakfast item. “I watched you eat it. It’s literally half-eaten.”
“Ohhhh my god, you are bitchy today.”
"Kid, that's not even a bagel anymore. It's a piece of cardboard."