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yakshxiao · 2 months ago

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FIVE MINUTES AT A TIME ; JACK ABBOT

wc; 9.3k synopsis; You and Jack only ever see each other for five minutes at a time — the tail end of day shift and the start of night shift. But those five minutes? They’ve become the best part of both of your days. Everyone else in the ER has noticed it. The way you both lean in just a little too close during handoff. The way both of you leave a drink and a protein bar next to the chart rack. The way neither of you ever miss a single shift — until one day, one of you doesn’t show up. And everything shifts.

contents; Jack Abbot/nurse!reader, gn!reader, medical inaccuracies, hospital setting, mentions of injury and death, slow burn, found family, mutual pinning, mild jealousy, age gap (like 10-15 years, reader is aged around late 20s/early 30s but you can do any age), can you tell this man is consuming my every thought? tempted to write a follow-up fic lemme know what u guys think.

You only see him at 7 p.m. — well, 6:55 p.m., if you’re being exact.

You’re already at the nurse’s station, chart pulled up, pen poised, pretending you’re more focused than you are — just waiting for that familiar figure to walk in. The ER is barely holding itself together, seams straining under the weight of another long, unsparing shift.

You’ve witnessed Mckay go through two scrub changes — both stained, both discarded like paper towels. Dana’s been shouted at by too many angry patients to count, each new confrontation carving deeper lines into her already exhausted face. And if you see Gloria trailing behind Robby one more time, arms crossed, mouth already mid-complaint, you’re sure you’ll have front-row seats to the implosion of Robby’s self-restraint.

The end-of-shift exhaustion hangs in the air, thick enough to taste. It seeps into the walls, the floor, your bones. The scent of bleach, sweat, and cold coffee hangs over everything, a cocktail that clings to your skin long after you clock out. The vending machine’s been emptied of anything worth eating. Your stomach gave up asking hours ago.

The sun is still trying to claw its way down, its last rays pressing uselessly against frosted windows, too far removed to touch. The ER isn’t made for soft light. It lives under fluorescents, bright and unfeeling, leeching color and kindness from the world, one hour at a time.

It’s then, right on time, he arrives.

Jack Abbot.

Always the same. Dark scrubs, military backpack slung over his shoulder, the strap worn and fraying. His stethoscope loops around his neck like it belongs there and his hair is a little unkempt, like the day’s already dragged its hands through him before the night even starts.

He walks the same unhurried pace every time — not slow, not fast — like a man who’s learned the ER’s tempo can’t be outrun or outpaced. It’ll still be here, bleeding and burning, whether he sprints or crawls. And every day, like clockwork, he arrives at your station at 6:55 p.m., eyes just sharp enough to remind you he hasn’t completely handed himself over to exhaustion.

The handoff always starts the same. Clean. Professional. Efficient. Vitals. Labs. Status updates on the regulars and the barely-holding-ons. Names are exchanged like currency, chart numbers folded into the cadence of clipped sentences, shorthand that both of you learned the hard way. The rhythm of it is steady, like the low, constant beep of monitors in the background.

But tonight, the silence stretches just a little longer before either of you speaks. His eyes skim the board, lingering for half a second too long on South 2. You catch it. You always do.

“She’s still here,” you say, tapping your pen against the chart. “Outlived the odds and half the staff’s patience.”

Jack huffs a quiet sound that’s almost — almost — a laugh. The sound is low and dry, like it hasn’t been used much lately, “Figures.”

His attention shifts, following the slow, inevitable exit of Gloria, her unmistakable white coat vanishing around the corner, Robby sagging against the wall in her wake like a man aging in real-time, “I leave for twelve hours and Gloria’s still haunting the halls. She got squatters’ rights yet?”

You smirk, shaking your head and turning to look in the same direction, “I think Robby’s about five minutes away from filing for witness protection.”

That earns you a real smile — small, fleeting, but it’s there. The kind that only shows up in this place during the quiet moments between shift changes, the ones too short to hold onto and too rare to take for granted. The kind that makes you wonder how often he uses it when he’s not here.

Jack glances at the clock, then back at you, his voice low and dry. “Guess I better go save what’s left of his sanity, huh?”

You shrug, sliding the last of your notes toward him, the pages worn thin at the corners from too many hands, too many days like this. “Too late for that. You’re just here to do damage control.”

His smile lingers a little longer, but his eyes settle on you, the weight of the shift pressing into the space between you both — familiar, constant, unspoken. The clock ticks forward, the moment folding neatly back into the rush of the ER, the five-minute bubble of quiet already closing like it always does.

And then — 7 p.m. — the night begins.

The next few weeks worth of handoffs play out the same way.

The same rhythm. The same quiet trade of names, numbers, and near-misses. The same half-conversations, broken by pagers, interrupted by overhead calls. The same looks, the same five minutes stretched thin between shifts, like the ER itself holds its breath for you both.

But today is different.

This time, Jack arrives at 6:50 p.m.

Five minutes earlier than usual — early even for him.

You glance up from the nurse’s station when you catch the sound of his footsteps long before the clock gives you permission to expect him. Still the same dark scrubs, the military backpack and stethoscope around his neck.

But it’s not just the arrival time that’s different.

It’s the tea. Balanced carefully in one hand, lid still steaming, sleeve creased from the walk in. Tea — not coffee. Jack Abbot doesn’t do tea. At least, not in all the months you’ve been on this rotation. He’s a coffee-or-nothing type. Strong, bitter, the kind of brew that tastes like the end of the world.

He sets it down in front of you without fanfare, as if it’s just another piece of the shift — like vitals, like the board, like the handoff that always waits for both of you. But the corner of his mouth lifts when he catches the confused tilt of your head.

“Either I’m hallucinating,” you say, “or you’re early and bringing offerings.”

“You sounded like hell on the scanner today,” he says, voice dry but easy. “Figured you’d be better off with tea when you leave.”

You blink at him, then at the cup. Your fingers curl around the warmth. The smell hits you before the sip does — honey, ginger, something gentler than the day you’ve had.

“Consider it hazard pay,” Jack’s mouth quirks, eyes flicking toward the whiteboard behind you. “The board looks worse than usual.”

You huff a dry laugh, glancing at the mess of names and numbers — half of them marked awaiting test results and the rest marked with waiting.

“Yeah,” you say. “One of those days.”

You huff a laugh, the sound pulling the sting from your throat even before the tea does. The day’s been a long one. Endless patient turnover, backlogged labs, and the kind of non-stop tension that winds itself into your muscles and stays there, even when you clock out.

Jack leans his hip against the edge of the counter, and lets the quiet settle there for a moment. No handoff yet. No rush. The world is still turning, but for a brief second it feels like the clock’s hands have stalled, stuck in that thin stretch of stillness before the next wave breaks.

“You trying to throw off the universe?” you ask, half teasing, lifting the cup in mock salute. “Next thing I know, Gloria will come in here smiling.”

Jack huffs, “Let’s not be that ambitious.”

The moment hangs between you, the conversation drifting comfortably into the kind of quiet that doesn’t demand filling. Just the weight of the day, and the knowledge that the night will be heavier.

But then, as always, duty calls. A sharp crackle from his pager splits the stillness like a stone through glass. He straightens, his expression shifting back to business without missing a beat.

You slide the last chart across the desk toward him, your hand brushing the edge of his as you let go. The handoff starts, the ritual resumes. Vitals. Labs. Critical patients flagged in red ink. Familiar, steady, practiced. A dance you both know too well.

But even as the conversation folds back into clinical shorthand, the tea sits between you, cooling slowly, marking the space where the ritual has quietly shifted into something else entirely.

And when the handoff’s done — when the last name leaves your mouth — the clock ticks past 7:05 p.m.

You linger. Just long enough for Jack to glance back your way.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asks. The question light, but not casual.

You nod once, the answer already written.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

After that, the handoff’s change. Tea was only the beginning.

It’s always there first — sometimes waiting on the desk before you’ve even finished logging out. The cup’s always right, too. No questions asked, no orders repeated. Jack learns the little details: how you like it, when it's too hot or too cold. When the shift’s been particularly cruel and the hours stretch too thin, he starts adding the occasional muffin or protein bar to the offering, wordlessly placed on the desk beside your notes.

In return, you start doing the same. Only you give him coffee. Black, bitter — too bitter for you — but it's how he likes it and you’ve never had the heart to tell him there’s better tasting coffee out there. Sometimes you give him tea on the calmer nights. A granola bar and an apple join soon after so you know he has something to eat when the food he brings in becomes a ghost of a meal at the back of the staff fridge. A post-it with a doodle and the words “I once heard a joke about amnesia, but I forgot how it goes” gets stuck to his coffee after an especially tough day shift, knowing it’ll bleed into the night.

It’s quiet, easy. Half-finished conversations that start at one handoff and end in the next.

You talk about everything but yourselves.

About the regulars — which patient is faking, which one’s hanging on by more than sheer luck. About the shows you both pretend you don’t have time for but always end up watching, somehow. About staff gossip, bets on how long the new hire will last, debates over whose turn it is to replace the break room coffee filter (spoiler: no one ever volunteers).

But never about what you two have. Never about what any of it means.

You pretend the lines are clear. That it’s all part of the handoff. That it’s just routine.

But the team notices.

Mckay starts hanging around the station longer than necessary at 6:55 p.m., her eyes flicking between the clock and the doorway like she’s waiting for a cue. Dana starts asking loaded questions in passing — light, but pointed. “So, Jack’s shift starting soon?” she’ll say with a knowing tilt of her head.

The worst offenders, though, are Princess and Perlah.

They start a betting pool. Subtle at first — a folded scrap of paper passed around, tucked in their pockets like an afterthought. Before long, half the ER staff’s names are scribbled under columns like ‘Next week’, ‘Next Month’ or ‘Never happening’.

And then one day, you open your locker after a twelve-hour shift, hands still shaking slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep, and there it is:

A post-it, bright yellow and impossible to miss.

“JUST KISS ALREADY.”

No name. No signature. Just the collective voice of the entire ER condensed into three impatient words.

You stand there longer than you should, staring at it, your chest tightening in that quiet, unfamiliar way that’s got nothing to do with the shift and everything to do with him.

When you finally peel the note off and stuff it deep into your pocket, you find Jack already waiting at the nurse’s station. 6:55 p.m. Early, as always. Tea in hand. Same dark scrubs. Same unhurried stride. Same steady presence.

And when you settle in beside him, brushing just close enough for your shoulder to graze his sleeve, he doesn’t say anything about the flush still warm in your cheeks.

You don’t say anything either.

The handoff begins like it always does. The names. The numbers. The rhythm. The world still spinning the same broken way it always has.

But the note is still in your pocket. And the weight of it lingers longer than it should.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe never.

The handoff tonight starts like any other.

The same exchange of vitals, the same clipped sentences folding neatly into the rhythm both of you know by heart. The ER hums and flickers around you, always on the edge of chaos but never quite tipping over. Jack’s there, 6:55 p.m., tea in one hand, muffin in the other — that small tired look in place like a badge he never bothers to take off.

But tonight, the air feels heavier. The space between you, thinner.

There’s no reason for it — at least, none you could name. Just a quiet shift in gravity, subtle enough to pretend away, sharp enough to notice. A conversation that drifts lazily off course, no talk of patients, no staff gossip, no television shows. Just silence. Comfortable, but expectant.

And then his hand — reaching past you to grab a chart — brushes yours.

Not the accidental kind. Not the casual, workplace kind. The kind that lingers. Warm, steady, the weight of his palm light against the back of your fingers like the pause before a sentence you’re too scared to finish.

You don’t pull away. Neither does he.

His eyes meet yours, and for a moment, the world outside the nurse’s station slows. The monitors still beep, the overhead paging system still hums, the hallway still bustles — but you don’t hear any of it.

There’s just his hand. Your hand. The breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding.

And then the trauma alert hits.

“MVA — multiple injuries. Incoming ETA two minutes.”

The spell shatters. The moment folds back in on itself like it was never there at all. Jack pulls away first, but not fast. His hand brushes yours one last time as if reluctant, as if the shift might grant you one more second before it demands him back.

But the ER has no patience for almosts.

You both move — the way you always do when the alarms go off, efficient and wordless, sliding back into your roles like armor. He’s already at the doors, gloves snapped on, voice low and level as the gurneys rush in. You’re right behind him, notes ready, vitals called out before the paramedics finish their sentences.

The night swallows the moment whole. The weight of the job fills the space where it had lived.

And when the trauma bay finally quiets, when the adrenaline starts to bleed out of your system and the hallways return to their usual background hum, Jack passes by you at the station, slowing just long enough for your eyes to meet.

Nothing said. Nothing needed.

Almost.

Weeks after the same routine, over and over, the change starts like most things do in your world — quietly, without fanfare.

A new name slips into conversation one morning over burnt coffee and half-finished charting. Someone you met outside the ER walls, outside the endless loop of vitals and crash carts and lives balanced on the edge. A friend of a friend, the kind of person who looks good on paper: steady job, easy smile, around your age, the kind of life that doesn’t smell like antiseptic or ring with the static of trauma alerts.

You don’t even mean to mention them. The words just tumble out between patients, light and careless. Jack barely reacts — just a flicker of his eyes, the barest pause in the way his pen scratches across the chart. He hums, noncommittal, and says, “Good for you.”

But after that, the air between you shifts.

The ritual stays the same — the teas and coffees still show up, the handoffs still slide smooth and clean — but the conversations dull. They're shallower. You talk about patients, the weather. But the inside jokes dry up, and the silences stretch longer, thicker, like neither of you can find the right words to fix the growing space between you.

The new person tries. Dinners that never quite feel right. Movies that blur together. Conversations that stall out halfway through, where you find yourself thinking about Jack’s voice instead of the one across the table. It’s not their fault — they do everything right. They ask about your day, they remember how you take your tea, they show up when they say they will.

But they aren’t him. They never will be.

And the truth of that sits heavy in your chest long before you let it go.

When the end finally comes, it’s as quiet as the beginning. No fight. No grand scene. Just a conversation that runs out of steam and a mutual, tired understanding: this was never going to be enough.

You don’t tell Jack. Not directly. But he knows.

Maybe it’s the way your smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes that night, or the way your usual jokes come slower, dull around the edges. Or maybe it’s just that he knows you too well by now, the way you know him — a kind of understanding that doesn’t need translation.

He doesn’t push. He’s not the kind of man who asks questions he isn’t ready to hear the answers to, and you’ve never been the type to offer up more than what the job requires. But when you pass him the last of the handoff notes that night, his fingers brush yours, and for once, they linger. Just a second longer than they should. Long enough to say everything neither of you will.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. Neutral. Studied, “You get any sleep lately?”

It’s not the question he wants to ask. Not even close. But it’s the one he can ask, the one that fits inside the safe little script you’ve both written for yourselves.

You lie — both of you know it — but he doesn’t call you on it. He just nods, slow and thoughtful, and when he stands, he leaves his coffee behind on the counter. Still hot. Barely touched.

And that’s how you know.

Because Jack never leaves coffee unfinished.

The next handoff, he’s already at the nurse’s station when you arrive — ten minutes early, a tea waiting for you, exactly how you like it. There’s no note, no smile, no pointed comment. Just the small, familiar weight of the cup in your hand and the warmth that spreads through your chest, sharper than it should be.

You settle into the routine, pulling the chart toward you, the silence stretching long and comfortable for the first time in weeks. Jack doesn’t ask, and you don’t offer. But when your fingers brush his as you pass him the logbook, you don’t pull away as quickly as you used to.

And for a moment, that’s enough.

The world around you moves the same way it always does — busy, breathless, unrelenting. But somewhere in the quiet, something unspoken hums between you both. Something that’s been waiting.

They weren’t him. And you weren’t surprised.

Neither was he.

It’s the handoff on a cold Wednesday evening that brings a quiet kind of news — the kind that doesn’t explode, just settles. Like dust.

Jack mentions it in passing, the way people mention the weather or the fact that the coffee machine’s finally given up the ghost. Mid-handoff, eyes on the chart, voice level.

“Admin gave me an offer.”

Your pen stills, barely a beat, then keeps moving. “Oh yeah?” you ask, as if you hadn’t heard the shift in his tone. As if your chest didn’t tighten the moment the words left his mouth.

The department’s newer, quieter. Fewer traumas. More order. Less of the endless night shift churn that has worn him down to the bone these last few years. It would suit him. You know it. Everyone knows it.

And so you do what you’re supposed to do. What any friend — any coworker — would do. You offer the words, gift-wrapped in all the right tones.

“You’d be great at it.”

The smile you give him is steady, practiced. It reaches your lips. But not your eyes. Never your eyes.

Fortunately, Jack knows you like the back of his hand.

He just nods, the kind of slow, quiet nod that feels more like a goodbye than anything else. The conversation moves on. The night moves on.

You go home, and for him, the patients come and go, machines beep, the usual rhythm swallows the moment whole. But the shift feels different. Like the floor’s shifted under his feet and the walls don’t sit right in his peripherals anymore.

The offer lingers in the air for days. No one mentions it. But he notices things — the way you're quieter, the way you seem almost distant during handoffs. Like the weight of the outcome of the decision’s sitting on your shoulders, heavy and personal.

And then, just as quietly, the tension shifts. No announcement. No conversation. The offer just evaporates. You hear it from Robby two days later, his voice offhand as he scrolls through the department’s scheduling board.

“Abbot passed on the job.”

That’s all he says. That’s all you need.

When your shift ends that day, you linger a little longer than usual. Five minutes past the clock, then ten. Just enough time to catch him walking in. Same dark scrubs, same tired eyes. But this time, no talk of transfers. No talk of moving on.

You slide the handoff notes toward him, and when his fingers brush yours, neither of you let go right away.

“Long night ahead.” you say, your eyes lock onto his.

“Same as always,” he answers, soft but sure.

And maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s everything.

But he stayed.

And so did you.

The holiday shift is a quiet one for once.

Not the kind of chaotic disaster you usually brace for — no code blues, no trauma alerts, no frantic scrambling. The ER hums at a lower frequency tonight, as if the whole department is holding its breath, waiting for the chaos to pass and the clock to turn over.

You’ve been working on autopilot for the last few hours. The patient load is manageable, the team is mostly intact, and the usual undercurrent of stress is more like a murmur than a shout. But there's something about the quiet, the softness of it, that makes you more aware of everything, every moment stretching a little longer than it should. It makes the weight of the day feel more pressing, more noticeable.

As the last patient leaves — nothing serious, just another sprain — you settle into your chair by the nurse’s station, the kind of exhausted calm that only comes when the worst is over. The clock inches toward the end of your shift — 6:50 p.m. — but you’re not in any hurry to leave, not yet.

As always, Jack walks in.

You look up just as he passes by the station. His usual tired look is softened tonight, the edges of his exhaustion blunted by something quieter, something a little more worn into his features. The shadows under his eyes are deeper, but there’s a kind of peace in him tonight — a rare thing for the man who’s always running on the edge of burnout.

He stops in front of you, and you can see the small, crumpled bag in his hand. It’s not much, just a bit of wrapping paper that’s a little too wrinkled, but something about it makes your heart give a funny, lopsided beat.

"Here," he says, low, voice a little rougher than usual.

You blink, surprised. “What’s this?”

He hesitates for half a second, like he wasn’t sure if he should say anything at all. “For you.”

You raise an eyebrow, half-laughing. "We don’t usually exchange gifts, Jack."

His smile is small, but it reaches his eyes. "Thought we might make an exception today."

You take the gift from him, feeling the weight of it, simple but somehow significant. You glance down at it, and for a moment, the world feels like it falls away. He doesn't ask you to open it right then, and for a second, you think maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll leave it unopened, just like so many things left unsaid between you two.

But the curiosity wins out.

You peel back the paper slowly. It’s a leather-bound notebook, simple and unassuming. The kind of thing that makes you wonder how he knew.

“I... didn’t know what to get you," Jack says, his voice soft, almost sheepish. "But I figured you'd use it."

The gesture is simple — almost too simple. But it’s not. It’s too personal for just coworkers. Too thoughtful, too quiet. The weight of it sits between the two of you, unspoken, thick in the air.

You look up at him, your chest tight in a way you don’t want to acknowledge. "Thank you," you manage, and you can’t quite shake the feeling that this — this little notebook — means more than just a gift. It’s something that says everything neither of you has been able to put into words.

Jack nods, his smile barely there but real. He takes a step back, as if pulling himself away from something he doesn’t know how to navigate. The silence stretches. But it’s different this time. It’s not awkward. It’s soft. It feels like a bridge between the two of you, built in the quiet spaces you’ve shared and the ones you haven’t.

“I got you something too,” you say before you can stop yourself. When you reach into your pocket, your fingers brush against the small, folded package you had tucked away.

His brow furrows slightly in surprise, but he takes it from you, and when he unwraps it, it’s just a small, hand-carved keychain you had spotted at a market — simple, not much, but it reminded you of Jack.

He laughs, a short, quiet sound that vibrates in the space between you, and the tension between you two feels almost manageable. “Thank you,” he says, his fingers brushing over the little keychain.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The noise of the ER seems distant, muffled, as if it’s happening in another world altogether. The clock ticks, the final minutes of your shift inching by. But in that small, quiet space, it’s as if time has paused, holding its breath alongside the two of you.

“I guess it’s just... us then, huh?” he says finally, voice softer than before, quieter in a way that feels like more than just the end of a shift.

You nod, and for the first time in ages, the silence between you feels easy. Comfortable.

Just a few more minutes, and the shift will be over. But right now, this — this small, quiet exchange, these moments that don’t need words — is all that matters.

The day shift is winding down when Jack walks in, just before 7 p.m.

The usual rhythm of the ER is fading, the intensity of the day finally trailing off as the night shift prepares to take over. He arrives just as the last few nurses finish their rounds, their faces tired but steady as they begin to pass the baton.

But something feels off. The station is quieter than usual, the hum of conversation quieter, the buzz of the monitors almost unnaturally sharp in the sudden stillness. Jack glances around, noting the lack of a familiar face, the way the department feels a little emptier, more distant. He spots Dana and Robby at the nurse’s station, exchanging murmurs, and immediately knows something’s not right.

You’re not there.

He doesn’t immediately ask. Instead, he strides toward the counter, his mind racing to calculate the cause. A sick day? A last-minute emergency? Something’s happened, but he can’t quite place it. The thought that it’s anything serious doesn’t sit well in his chest, and yet, it presses down harder with every minute that passes.

It’s 6:55 p.m. now, and the clock keeps ticking forward.

By 7:00, Jack is halfway through his handoff, scanning the patient charts and mentally preparing for the usual chaos, but his focus keeps drifting.

Where are you?

He finally asks. Not loudly, not with urgency, but quietly enough that only Robby and Dana catch the edge in his voice. “Have they called in tonight?”

Before he even has a chance to follow up with your name, Dana looks up at him, a tired smirk on her face. “No. No word.”

Robby shakes his head, looking between Dana and Jack. “We haven’t heard anything. Thought you’d know.”

He nods, swallowing the sudden tightness in his throat. He tries not to show it — not to let it show in the way his shoulders stiffen or the slight furrow between his brows. He finishes up the handoff as usual, but his mind keeps returning to you, to the way the shift feels off without your presence, the absence weighing heavy on him.

By the time the rest of the night staff rolls in, Jack's focus is split. He’s still mentally running through the patient roster, but he’s half-waiting, half-hoping to see you come walking to the nurses station, just like always.

It doesn't happen.

And then, as if on cue, a message comes through — a notification from HR. You’d left for the day in a rush. Your parent had been hospitalised out of town, and you’d rushed off without a word. No call. No notice.

Jack stops in his tracks. The room feels suddenly too small, the quiet too loud. His fingers hover over the screen for a moment before he puts his phone back into his pocket, his eyes flicking over it again, like it will make more sense the second time.

His mind moves quickly, fast enough to keep up with the frantic pace of the ER around him, but his body is still, frozen for a heartbeat longer than it should be. He doesn’t know what to do with this — this sudden, heavy weight of worry and concern.

The team, in their usual way, rallies. They pull a care package together like clockwork — snacks, tissues, a soft blanket someone swears helps during long waits in hospital chairs. A card circulates, scrawled with signatures and the usual messages: thinking of you, hang in there, we’ve got you. It’s routine, something they’ve done for each other countless times in the past, a small gesture in the face of someone’s crisis.

But Jack doesn’t sign the card.

He sits quietly in the break room for a while, the weight of his concern simmering beneath the surface of his usual calm. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel — concern for you, for the situation, for how the ER feels without you there. The package is ready, and with it, so is a quiet, unsaid piece of himself.

When the others step away, he tucks something else inside, sliding it between the blanket and the box of cheap chocolates the team threw in at the last minute — an envelope, plain, unmarked, the handwriting inside careful but unsteady, like the words cost more than he expected.

Take care of them. The place isn’t the same without you.

Short. Simple. Honest in a way he rarely lets himself be. It isn’t signed. It doesn’t need to be. You’d know.

The team doesn’t notice. Or if they do, they make no comment on it. The ER continues to move, steady in its rhythm, even as Jack’s world feels like it’s been thrown off balance. The package is sent. The shift carries on. And Jack waits. He waits, in the quiet space between you and him, in the absence of your presence, in the weight of things he can’t say.

The clock ticks on. And with it, Jack misses you a little more that night.

Two weeks.

That’s how long the space at the nurse’s station stayed empty. That’s how long the chair at the nurse’s station sat empty — the one you always claimed without thinking. Nobody touched it. Nobody had to say why. It just sat there — a quiet, hollow thing that marked your absence more clearly than any words could’ve.

Two weeks of missing the familiar scrape of your pen against the chart. Two weeks of shift changes stripped down to bare-bones handoffs, clipped and clinical, no space for the soft edges of inside jokes or the quiet pauses where your voice used to fit. Two weeks of coffee going cold, of tasting far more bitter than it did before. Two weeks of the ER feeling off-kilter, like the clock’s gears had ground themselves down and no one could quite put the pieces back.

When you walk back through the automatic doors, it’s like the air catches on itself — that split-second stall before everything moves forward again. You don’t announce yourself. No one really does. The place just swallows you back up, the way it does to anyone who leaves and dares to return.

You clock in that morning. The shift goes on as normal, as normal as the ER can be. The others greet you like they’ve been told to act normal. Quick nods, small smiles. Robby pats your shoulder, light and brief. Dana leaves an extra coffee by the monitors without a word.

When the clock hands swing toward 6:50 p.m., you’re already at the nurses station. Sitting at the desk like you’d never left. Like nothing’s changed, like no time has passed at all. Like the last two weeks were some other life. Scrubs pressed, badge clipped at the same off-center tilt it always is. But your hands hover just slightly, resting on the chart without writing, pen poised like your mind hasn’t quite caught up to your body being back.

The air feels different — not heavy, not light, just suspended. Stalled.

And then you hear them. Footsteps.

Steady. Familiar. The cadence you’ve known for months.

Jack.

He stops a few feet from you, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, the faintest crease between his brow like he hasn’t quite convinced himself this isn’t some kind of trick.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he.

No patient names. No vitals. No shorthand. The handoff script that’s lived on your tongues for months goes untouched. Instead, you stand there, surrounded by the soft beep of monitors and the shuffle of overworked staff, wrapped in the kind of silence that says everything words can’t.

It’s a strange sort of silence. Not awkward. Just full.

For a long moment, the chaos of the ER fades to the edges, the overhead pages and the low mechanical hums turning to static. You look at him, and it’s like seeing him for the first time all over again. The small lines around his eyes seem deeper. The tension at his shoulders, usually buried beneath practiced calm, sits plainly in view.

You wonder if it’s been there the whole time. You wonder if he noticed the same about you.

His eyes meet yours, steady, unguarded. The first thing that breaks the quiet isn’t a handoff or a patient update.

“I missed this.”

The corner of his mouth twitches into something that doesn’t quite make it to a smile. When he replies, it’s not rushed. It’s not easy. But it’s the truth.

“I missed you.”

Simple. Honest. No side steps. No softening the edges with humor. Just the truth. The words sit there between you, bare and uncomplicated. For a second, the world feels smaller — just the two of you, the hum of machines, and the weight of two weeks' worth of things unsaid.

His gaze shifts, softer now, searching your face for something, or maybe just memorizing it all over again.

“How are they?” he asks, voice low, careful. Not clinical, not casual — the way people ask when they mean it.

You swallow, the answer lingering behind your teeth. You hadn’t said much to anyone, not even now. But his question doesn’t pry, it just waits.

“They’re stable,” you say after a moment, the words simple but heavy. “Scared. Tired. I stayed until I couldn’t anymore.”

Jack nods once, slow and sure, as if that answer was all he needed. His hand flexes slightly at his side, like there’s more he wants to do, more he wants to say — but this is still the space between shifts, still the same ER where everything gets held back for later.

But his voice is steady when he replies.

“I’m glad you were with them.”

A pause. One of those long, silent stretches that says everything the words don’t.

“And I’m glad you came back.”

You don’t answer right away. You don’t have to.

And then, the clock ticks forward. The night shift begins. The world presses on, the monitors start beeping their endless song, and the next patient is already waiting. But the weight of those words lingers, tucked just beneath the surface.

And this time — neither of you pretend it didn’t happen.

But it’s still not quite the right time.

Jack’s walls aren’t the obvious kind. They don’t come with sharp edges or cold shoulders. His are quieter, built from small hesitations — the steady, practiced way he keeps his distance, the careful deflection tucked behind dry humor and midnight coffee refills. And at the center of it, two stubborn truths: he’s older, and he’s widowed.

Being widowed is a quiet shadow that doesn’t lift, not really. It taught him how easily a future can disappear, how love doesn’t stop the world from taking what it wants. He doesn’t talk about her, not much — not unless the shift runs long and the coffee’s gone cold — but the space she left is always there, shaping the way he looks at you, at himself, at the idea of starting over. Jack tells himself it wouldn’t be fair. Not to you. Not when you’ve still got years ahead to figure out what you want. Not when he’s already stood graveside, watching the world shrink down to a headstone and a handful of fading memories.

You’re younger. Less worn down. Less jaded. He tells himself — on the long drives home, when sleep refuses to come — that you deserve more time than he can offer. More time to figure out your world without him quietly shaping the edges of it. It’s the sort of difference people pretend doesn’t matter, until it does. Until he’s standing beside you, catching himself in the reflection of the trauma room glass, wondering how the years settled heavier on him than on you. Until he’s half a sentence deep into asking what you’re doing after shift, and pulling back before the words can leave his mouth.

Because no matter how much space he tries to give, the part of him that’s still grieving would always leave its mark. And you deserve more than the half-mended heart of a man who’s already learned how to live without the things he loves.

And you?

You’ve got your own reasons.

Not the ones anyone could spot at a glance, not the kind that leave scars or stories behind. Just a quiet, low-grade fear. The kind that hums beneath your skin, born from years of learning that getting too comfortable with people — letting yourself want too much — always ends the same way: doors closing, phones going silent, people walking away before you even notice they’ve started.

So you anchor yourself to the things that don’t shift. Your routine. Your steadiness. The hours that stretch long and hard but never ask you to be anything more than reliable. Because when you’re needed, you can’t be left behind. When you’re useful, it hurts less when people don’t stay.

Jack’s careful, and you’re cautious, and the space between you both stays exactly where it’s always been: not quite close enough.

So you both settle for the in-between. The ritual. The routine. Shared drinks at handoff. Inside jokes sharp enough to leave bruises. Half-finished conversations, always interrupted by codes and pages and the sharp ring of phones.

The ER runs like clockwork, except the clock’s always broken, and in the background the rest of the team watches the same loop play out — two people orbiting closer, always just out of reach.

The bets from Princess and Perlah are at the heaviest they’ve ever been, and so are their pockets. There are no more ‘Never happening’ — everyone’s now in the ‘Next week’ or ‘Next Month’. The others have stopped pretending they don’t see what’s happening. In fact, they’re practically counting the days, biding their time like a clock ticking in reverse, waiting for that moment when everything finally clicks into place.

At first, it’s subtle.

One less handoff cut short by timing. One more overlapping hour “by accident.”

You and Jack work together more and more now, whether it's trauma cases, code blue alerts, or the quieter moments between chaotic shifts when the floor clears enough to breathe. The careful choreography of your daily dance is starting to wear thin around the edges, like a well-loved sweater that’s a little too threadbare to keep pretending it’s still holding together.

The soft exchanges in the middle of emergency rooms — the handoffs that are always clean and professional — have started to bleed into something else. You don’t mean for it to happen. Neither of you do.

But you find yourselves walking the same hallways just a bit more often. You swap shifts with an ease you hadn’t before. Jack’s voice lingers a little longer when he says, “Good night, see you tomorrow,” and the weight of that goodbye has started to feel a little like an unspoken promise.

But it’s still not enough to break the silence.

The team watches, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but neither of you says a word about it. You can’t, because the truth is, it’s easier to let things stay where they are. Safer, maybe. To just let the rhythm of the shifts carry you through without the sudden plunge of vulnerability that might shatter it all.

Still, they see it.

Dana, ever the romantic, gives you that knowing, almost conspiratorial look when she catches you making eye contact with Jack across the floor. “You two need a room,” she’ll joke, but it’s always followed by that soft exhale, like she’s waiting for the punchline you won’t give her.

Princess’ and Perlah’s bets are always louder, and always in a language neither of you understand. Every shift, they pass by the nurse’s station with sly grins, casting their predictions with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about.

“Next month, I’m telling you. It’s happening in the next month. Mark my words.”

Neither you or Jack respond to the teasing. But it’s not because you don’t hear it. It’s because, in the quietest corners of your mind, the thoughts are too sharp, too close, and there’s something terrifying about acknowledging them.

The room holds its breath for you both, watching the space between you become thinner with every passing minute. You can’t feel the ticking of time, but the team certainly can.

And so it goes. Days blend into each other. Hours pass in a blur of frantic beeps and calls, hands working together with that comfortable rhythm, but always keeping just a little distance — just a little bit too much space.

But it’s getting harder to ignore the truth of what everyone else already knows. You’re both circling something, something that neither of you is brave enough to catch yet.

Almost.

Almost always. But never quite.

The shift is brutal.

The ER’s pulse is erratic, like a heart struggling to maintain rhythm. The trauma bays are full, the waiting room is overflowing, and the chaos — the relentless, grinding chaos — is a constant roar in your ears. Alarms bleed into each other. The phone rings off the hook. Machines chirp, beds squeak, someone shouts for help, and the scent of antiseptic is powerless against the metallic undertone of blood lingering in the air.

It’s the kind of shift that makes even seasoned hands tremble. The kind that swallows hours whole, leaves your back sore and your mind frayed, and still, the board never clears.

At some point, you’re not sure when, maybe after the fifth code blue or the eighth set of vitals skimming the edge of disaster, Robby mutters something sharp and low under his breath, peels his phone out of his pocket, and steps away from the desk.

“Calling Abbot,” he says, voice tight. “We’re underwater.”

Jack isn’t due for another two hours, but the call doesn’t surprise you. The ER doesn’t care about schedules. And Jack — he shows up twenty minutes later.

His eyes meet yours across the station, and there’s no need for words. Just a nod. Just the quiet understanding that this isn’t going to be easy, if such a thing even exists.

The clock ticks and skips, seconds folding into one another, meaningless, until finally, the worst of it comes.

Trauma alert.

A car accident. The usual chaos.

Rollover on the interstate, the kind that dispatch voices always sound too steady while reporting. The kind where the EMTs work in grim silence. Two patients this time. A married couple.

The usual chaos unfolds the second the gurneys crash through the double doors — shouting, gloves snapping on, IV lines threading, vitals barking out like a list of crimes.

But this time, it’s different.

You notice it before anyone says it aloud: the husband’s hand is tangled in his wife’s, their fingers blood-slick but still locked together, knuckles white with the sheer force of holding on. Their wedding rings glinted under the harsh fluorescents, a tiny, defiant flash of gold against the chaos.

Neither of them will let go. Even unconscious, the connection stays.

You’re already in motion. Jack too. The usual rhythm, muscle memory sharp as ever. But something in the air feels different. He glances once at the woman, blood matted in her hair, her left hand still clutching the man’s. The rings. The way their bodies lean toward each other even in a state of injury, as if muscle memory alone could keep them tethered

And for just a second, he falters.

You almost miss it, but you don’t.

Jack works the wife’s side, but her injuries speak for themselves. Her chart is a litany of injuries: internal bleeding, tension pneumothorax, skull fracture.

You watch Jack work the case like his hands are moving on instinct, but his face gives him away. It’s too quiet. Too closed off. You see it all in real-time — the silent war behind his eyes, the years catching up to him in the span of a heartbeat. The lines around his mouth tightening, the weight of something too personal rising behind the clinical routine.

You know who he’s thinking about.

It’s her — it’s her face he sees.

Jack’s gloves are stained, jaw tight, voice steady but clipped as the monitor flatlines for the third time. You watch. You press hands to bleeding wounds that won’t stop. You call out numbers you barely register. But the inevitable creeps in anyway.

At 6:41 p.m., time of death is called.

No one speaks, not right away. The monitors fall silent, the room too. The husband, still unconscious, is wheeled away. His hand finally slips from hers, left empty on the gurney.

It’s Jack that calls it. He stands over the woman’s bed for a beat too long, the silence of it all thickening in the air. His shoulders sag ever so slightly, the weight of it settling in — the anger, the grief, the helplessness. There’s no denying it, the hours and hours of labor, of lives teetering between life and death, have begun to take their toll.

You watch him and know the exact moment it breaks him.

He doesn’t even need to say it. You can see it in the way he moves — stiff, distant, a bit lost. His hand hovers by his stethoscope, his fingers curling slightly before dropping. The tension in his face is the kind you’ve seen only when someone is holding themselves together by a thread.

He catches your eye briefly, and for a moment, neither of you says anything. There’s an unspoken understanding, a shared grief between the two of you that’s settled like an old wound, reopened. He turns away before you can even ask, stepping out of the trauma bay and heading toward the on-call room, his pace a little slower than usual, weighed down by more than just the fatigue.

The shift drags on, but the tension, the heaviness, only grows. Finally, when it seems like it might never end, you make the decision. You leave your post, quietly slipping away from the chaos, and find your way to the on-call room where Jack is already sitting.

It’s dark in there but you don’t need to see him to know what’s there. His chest rises and falls with a weary sigh. There’s nothing to say at first. Nothing that would make this any easier, and you both know it.

You sit beside him in silence, the space between you both filled with the weight of the night, of the patient lost, of the things neither of you can change. You don’t push. You don’t ask. You simply exist in the same room, the same quiet, like two people who are too exhausted, too worn, to speak but too connected to stay apart.

Minutes pass. Long ones.

It’s Jack who breaks the silence, his voice a little rough, like it’s been buried too long.

“I kept thinking we’d have more time,” he says. It’s not addressed to you, not really — more confession than conversation, the kind of truth that’s spent too long locked behind his ribs.

You don’t answer right away, because you know the ache that lives under those words. You’ve felt it too. So you sit there, listening, the silence making room for him to say the rest.

And then, softer, barely above a breath —

“She looked like her. For a second — I thought it was her.”

The words hang in the dark, heavier than any silence.

You reach over, placing a hand gently on his. Your fingers brush his skin, warm, steady. You just sit there, the two of you, in the dark — the only light seeping in from under the door, pale and distant, like the world outside is somewhere neither of you belong right now.

Minutes pass, slow and shapeless, the kind of time that doesn’t measure in hours or shifts or chart updates. Just quiet. Just presence. Just the shared, unspoken ache of people who’ve both lost too much to say the words out loud.

When he finally exhales — long, steady, but still weighted — you feel the faintest shift in the air. Not fixed. Not fine. But breathing. Alive. Here.

When his gaze lifts, meeting yours — searching, fragile, waiting for something he can’t name — you finally offer it, soft but certain.

“We don’t get forever,” you whisper. “But we’ve still got now.”

And it’s enough. Maybe not to fix anything. Maybe not to make the night any less heavy. But enough to pull Jack through to the other side.

He exhales, slow and quiet, the tension in his chest loosening like it’s finally allowed to. The moment is small — no grand revelations, no dramatic declarations.

Just two people, breathing in the same quiet, carrying the same scars.

When the next shift change arrives, the rhythm of the ER doesn’t quite return to normal.

The pulse of the place still beats steady — monitors chiming, phones ringing, stretchers wheeling in and out — but the handoff feels different. Like the pattern has shifted beneath your feet.

The familiar routine plays out — the smooth exchange of patient reports, the clipped shorthand you both know by heart, the easy banter that’s always filled the spaces between — but now it lingers. The words sit heavier. The pauses stretch longer. The politeness that once held everything in place has softened, frayed at the edges by the weight of what’s left unsaid.

You stay five minutes later. Then ten.

Neither of you points it out. Neither of you needs to.

The silence isn’t awkward — it’s intentional. It hangs easy between you, unhurried and unforced. The kind of silence built on understanding rather than distance. Like the quiet knows something you both haven’t said out loud yet.

The rest of the team doesn’t call you on it. But they see it. And you catch the glances.

You catch Dana’s raised eyebrow as she clocks out, her expression all knowing, no judgment — just quiet observation, like she’s been waiting for this to finally click into place. Robby doesn’t even bother hiding his smirk behind his coffee cup this time, his glance flicking from you to Jack and back again, as if he’s already tallying another win in the betting pool.

And still, no one says a word.

The ER lights flicker, humming softly against the early morning haze as the next shift trickles in, tired and rumpled, faces scrubbed clean and coffee cups refilled. The world moves on — patients, pages, paperwork — but Jack doesn’t.

His glance finds you, steady and certain, like an anchor after too many months of pretending there wasn’t a current pulling you both closer all along. There’s no question in it. No hesitation. Just quiet agreement.

And this time, neither of you heads for the door alone.

You fall into step beside him, the silence still stretched soft between you, your shoulder brushing his just slightly as you cross through the automatic doors and into the cool, early light. The air is crisp against your scrubs, the hum of the hospital fading behind you, replaced by the quiet sprawl of the parking lot and the slow stretch of a sky trying to shake off the dark.

The weight you’ve both carried for so long — all the almosts, the what-ifs, the walls and the fear — feels lighter now. Still there, but not crushing. Not anymore.

It isn’t just a handoff anymore. It hasn’t been for a while, but now it’s undeniable.

You glance toward him as the quiet settles between you one last time before the day fully wakes up, and he meets your look with that same soft steadiness — the kind that doesn’t demand, doesn’t rush, just holds. Like the space between you has finally exhaled, like the moment has finally caught up to the both of you after all this time skirting around it.

His hand finds yours, slow and certain, like it was always supposed to be there. No grand gesture, no sharp intake of breath, just the gentle slide of skin against skin — warm, grounding, steady. His thumb brushes the back of your hand once, absentminded and careful, like he’s memorizing the feel of this — of you — as if to make sure it’s real.

The world beyond hums back to life, ready for another day beginning. But here, in this sliver of space, between what you’ve always been and whatever comes next — everything stays still.

You don’t speak. Neither does he.

You don’t need to.

It’s in the way his fingers curl just slightly tighter around yours, in the way the last of the shift’s exhaustion softens at the edges of his expression. In the way the air feels different now — less heavy, less waiting. Like the question that’s lived between you for months has finally answered itself.

The first thin blush of sunrise creeps over the parking lot, painting long soft shadows across the cracked pavement, and neither of you move. There’s no rush now, no clock chasing you forward, no unspoken rule pushing you apart. Just this. Just you and him, side by side, hand in hand, standing still while the world stumbles back into motion.

It’s the start of something else.

And you both know it. Without needing to say a thing.

©yakshxiao 2025.

#jack abbot x reader #the pitt x reader #the pitt fic #the pitt fanfiction #the pitt hbo #shawn hatosy #the pitt #dr abbot #jack abbot #michael robinavitch #dana evans #cassie mckay #x reader #dr abbot x you #jack abbot x you #the pitt max #the pitt imagine #the pitt x you #jack abbot imagine

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bugbeast · 1 year ago

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Self promo for my newest card game, Jewel Thief; but you can play it for free! First, though, let's cover the basics...

TL;DR - Its a 4+ player competetive card-matching game with four rule variants; buy it here or look for the orange text in this post to learn how to play it with a regular deck

"What is Jewel Thief?"

It's a card matching game with a villain; one player tries to match jewels in a 36 card grid while their opponent, the titular Jewel Thief, periodically steals cards from the board. You can check out its page on The Game Crafter for more information, but it'll spoil the rest of this post

"What makes it special?"

The game's turn structure would theorettically allow you, perhaps via some kind of infinite cloning machine, to play a round of Jewel Thief til the heat death of the universe. While I wouldnt recommend that, its lack of a player cap (and ease of set-up; seriously, all you do is put cards on a table) makes it a good party game choice.

But that's not all!

There are three extra rule variants that drastically alter the gameplay while keeping card matching and stealing as main mechanics. I believe the cards are versatile enough to allow for many custom games, too

"Okay, but why should I buy a silly game from some bug nerd?"

First off, ouch. Second off, that's the best part; you dont have to buy it to play it! Jewel Thief can be played with a standard 52 card deck. Here's how:

Step 1. Remove the 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Jokers

Step 2. Download the free rules from the shop page

Step 3. Play the game, matching cards based on their values. You'll need to designate a value as the Diamond jewel for game 4

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That's it for my little self-promo. If you dont buy the game, I hope you'll at least give it a try and consider supporting my future projects.

I also post art and photography, which you can find under the bugbeast art and bugbeast photos tags. I hope you check them out

Thank you for your time <3

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Edit (Mar. 25, 2024) : Thank you to everyone who liked and reblogged this; if you play the game I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments and/or reblogs (even if you hated it). Feel free to share any custom games or house rules you come up with, too. I'd love to try them!

Edit (Aug. 10, 2024) : Final edit most likely; gonna blaze this one more time for good luck then maybe start work on a postmortem for the project, maybe give a little backstory for anyone who cares. Life is a little rough right now, but fate willing, I'll be able to work on/post about my future projects, including the future of Jewel Thief itself

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a-pute11as · 21 days ago

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serendipity - kika nazareth

word count - 6.9k | summary - a ray of sunshine stumbles into your quiet cafe one morning, with heart shaped latte art and the added bonus of gaining a new english teacher, she decides to make it her everyday stop, even when your ex decides to pull a stunt. part 2.

warnings - mentions of toxic relationships - please take care of yourself <3

the small bell attached to the door dinged as it was pushed open, alerting you to a new customer entering the cafe.

“buenos días” you greeted, not yet turning around, still busy cleaning the coffee machine behind the counter, “qué le gustaría?” (good morning, what would you like?)

when you turned around you were greeted with someone who looked like she’d stepped out of a different world and landed, somehow perfectly, in the middle of your quiet café. she was tall, lean but strong, wearing a matching hoodie and joggers like she’d just come from some kind of gym session. her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her scrunchie wrapped round her hair, a few strands curling around her face. her eyes met yours with the kind of focus that made it feel like the rest of the room had gone quiet.

there was a little half-smile playing at the corner of her mouth, like she’d caught you off guard and knew it. not cocky, just effortlessly aware. you didn’t recognize her, but something about her made you feel like you were meant to know who she was. maybe it was the barcelona logo that sat prominently on her clothes, yet you still couldn’t place her name.

“uhhh hablas catalán?” she asked, her fingers tapping on the counter as she looked up at the menu boards that hung above your head. (do you speak catalan?)

“no, lo siento, solo inglés o español.” you smiled lightly. (no, sorry, only english or spanish.)

“that’s perfect!” she beamed, “can i practice my english on you?”

you raised your eyebrows in slight shock. since moving to barcelona you had had a lot of english customers, mostly ones that butchered every kind of pronunciation when ordering, yet someone who seemed to be a spanish natural wanting to speak english? that was new. “i think that’s the first time anyone has ever asked me that.”

a grin tugged at her lips as she laughed slightly at your response, “well i need to get better so my friends stop bullying how i say words.”

“your pronunciation?” you questioned, tilting your head slightly.

“yes that! pronunciation” she copied, “but i’m not good at saying that word.”

you let out a soft laugh, charmed with her effort and determination, “you actually said it pretty well.”

she smiled at you over the counter, a genuine smile, “thank you, i’ve been watching a lot of tiktoks.”

“that's the best way to learn,” you agreed, “so english practice, what’s your order?”.

she took a moment, scanning the board again like it was a test she wanted to pass. “i will have… an oat milk flat white, please.”

you blinked, “that was pretty perfect, have you been practicing on someone else?”

she grinned, visibly proud of herself. “i had to repeat it a lot in my head before i said it, but they make fun of how i say ‘flat.’ i say it like - ‘flaaat.’” she exaggerated the vowel, pulling a face as she did so.

you laughed slightly, her accent clear in her words, even when she tried to hide it, “well i think it was good.”

“thank you, my new english teacher.” she smiled, small dimples showing in her cheeks as she grinned.

you turned around and started working on her order. you didn’t rush it, she was the only customer in the shop, other than your usual regular who sat reading his newspaper out the front. so you wanted to get it exactly right. the right measurement, temperature of milk and the prettiest heart in the middle of the latte.

as you perfected her coffee you heard her fingers tapping away at the counter, not impatiently, but curiously, as if she was wanting to say something but was working up the courage.

“sooo, how long have you lived here?” she hummed, the finger tapping stopping briefly as she spoke.

“not long, only 3 months.” you responded.

“did you move here for erasmus?” she asked, curiosity clearly getting the better of her.

you laughed lightly, shaking your head, “no no, life just bought me out here.”

now wasn’t the time to tell kika your whole backstory about moving to barcelona. she didn’t know that you moved here to be with your girlfriend of 3 years just to find out she had been cheating on you for the last year and a half, and she certainly didn’t need to know about the way you walked in on her cheating on you on your birthday after only a month of living in barcelona. or even the way your now ex-girlfriend wouldn’t stop texting you, gaslighting you into thinking you were in the wrong, or the way she somehow saw every interaction you had with a pretty girl and accused you of doing the exact thing she had you crying over for weeks.

things you would never do.

but, obviously, she didn’t need to know all that.

you picked up a brown paper napkin, along with a nearby sharpie and as you placed her coffee gently on the counter, you scribbled something quickly before sliding it toward her with the drink.

in perfectly scripted handwriting, it read: “oat milk flat white – 10/10 english. very proud teacher.”

when you looked up, her eyes were already on the note. she let out a laugh, quiet and surprised, before biting her bottom lip in a way that made your stomach flip.

“i need a picture of this.” she mumbled, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she positioned her coffee slightly diagonal to the note, before holding her phone above it. snapping the perfect picture before putting it back in her pocket.

she picked up the napkin carefully, like it was something delicate.

“i’m gonna keep this,” she said, slipping it into the front pocket of her hoodie. “proof that i’m improving.”

“next time, there’s a sticker chart,” you teased, leaning your arms on the counter as you rested your chin on your hand.

“ohhh, dangerous,” she said with a mock-serious nod, “i love rewards.”

“you seem like someone who’s very competitive,” you said, watching the way her eyes crinkled with amusement.

“you have no idea,” she replied, grinning. “but i think i could be convinced to behave if the teacher is nice.”

you laughed, shaking your head, and tried not to let the flush in your cheeks betray you.

the quiet rhythm of the café wrapped around you both again. outside, the sun filtered through the windows, painting soft golden lines across her face. it was almost cinematic, the kind of moment you didn’t realize you’d remember until much later.

kika didn’t leave right away. she pulled out a chair at the table closest to the counter, and sat with her coffee in both hands.

you turned to rinse out a few mugs behind the bar, but her voice called your attention back after a few minutes.

“so, teacher,” she said, resting her chin in one hand while she swirled her coffee with the other, “is there an english word for when you meet someone and they make the whole day better?”

you glanced over at her, your heart beat suddenly picking up in pace, her question didn’t feel as casual as the way she asked it. it felt as if it was more than a question, more like a statement.

“serendipity,” you said quietly.

she repeated the word under her breath, eyes locked on yours, “ser-en-dipity,” she murmured. “that’s pretty. i like that.”

you gave her a small smile. “me too.”

she stayed a while longer, asking little questions here and there between glances at her phone, how to pronounce ‘squirrel’,” why ‘laugh’ was spelled so weird, and whether ‘rain check’ actually had anything to do with weather.

by the time she stood to leave, she had her coffee finished, your napkin still tucked into her pocket and whilst you didn’t know her name, and she didn’t know yours, you had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time seeing her.

“have a good day, teacher” she smiled, already backing toward the door, still facing you as she did

you just nodded, amused and curious and undeniably intrigued, “you too a-plus.”

the bell over the door jingled again as she slipped out into the street, and you stood behind the counter, staring at the spot where she’d just been.

serendipity.

the bell above the door gave its familiar chime, softer, but still altering. you looked up from the espresso machine just in time to see her step inside, hoodie up, shoulders hunched slightly against the early chill.

she caught your eye immediately and smiled, tired yet still warm. “morning, favourite teacher.”

“sucking up isn’t going to get you a better grade,” you teased, already reaching for a cup. “oat milk flat white?”

“please,” she said with a grateful sigh, leaning against the counter as she watched your every move.

“didn’t peg you as a morning person.” you spoke, pouring the espresso into the cup with precision.

“i’m not,” she murmured, rubbing a hand across her face, “had to be somewhere early, figured i’d get a head start.”

you handed over the coffee, and she took it like it was the best thing to happen to her all morning, “god, this is good,” she mumbled, cradling the cup like she was trying to soak up its energy.

she lingered by the counter, the steam from her cup curling around her face as she tilted her head, eyes still heavy with sleep but alert enough to hold your gaze.

“do you always make them this perfect?” she asked, sipping again, “or am i just the chosen one?”

you smiled, leaning on your forearms across from her, “maybe a bit of both.”

she chuckled under her breath, then glanced at the clock behind you, “we’ve only got a short lesson today, but i wanted you to remind me of that word from yesterday.”

you tilted your head, “which word?”

she thought for a moment before speaking, “the one about making my whole day better.”

you picked up a napkin, scribbling the word on it.

serendipity.

you slid it toward her, “there, now you have study material.”

she read it slowly, then tucked it carefully into her jacket pocket, “you really are my favourite teacher.”

and before you could even respond, she was gone again, disappearing out into the quiet street with her coffee and your napkin, leaving only the soft jingle of the door behind her.

you were just finishing up the midday prep when your phone buzzed sharply in your apron pocket. the familiar weight of it shifted against your side, and you almost ignored it. your coworker had just come in to take over the afternoon shift, and you were minutes away from freedom.

but something about the timing felt... off.

you wiped your hands on a towel and slid your phone out.

bea.

you hesitated, thumb hovering, heart ticking up a notch. then tapped.

[1:56pm] bea - i saw you smiling at her today, again. you know the one with the tracksuit and the ponytail with the scrunchie. cute.

your breath caught mid-read.

[1:57pm] bea - you were definitely already talking to her before we broke up. i’m not as stupid as you think i am.funny how you used to look at me like that, too.

a chill threaded through you, even in the warmth of the café kitchen.

scanning the handful of tables still occupied, no one familiar, no one watching. yet you turned your body slightly, like instinctively shielding yourself.

[1:58pm] bea - especially after all those lies about me cheating on you, yet you were doing it the entire time.

you typed out a reply. deleted it. tried again. deleted that too.

you leaned against the edge of the counter, swallowing hard, your other hand instinctively gripping the rag you’d just used, knuckles turning white. the words stung, not because they were true, but because they echoed every twisted manipulation you’d grown used to for the last 3 years. every time she flipped things around. every time she made you feel like the villain.

you’d been the one who walked in on her. you’d been the one who moved out. you’d been the one who stayed quiet.

and now, here she was again, reappearing only when she sensed something slipping from her control.

the afternoon air felt colder than you'd expected, grey clouds pressing low over the rooftops, filling the sky with the same dread that was filling your body. you pulled your jacket tighter, hands buried deep in your pockets, steps quick without even thinking about it.

you’d done this walk more times than you could count, the same route as usual, yet it didn’t feel as calming as it usually was.

your thoughts drifted to yesterday. the way her laugh had softened the rest of your day, or how her dimples stuck in your mind ever since you saw them. the way being near her felt easy and safe, as if you could simply exist without feeling shame.

you didn’t even know the girls name, but bea didn’t need a name to twist something good into a weapon. a tool to belittle you, something to make you feel small.

the bell above the door chimed, and you glanced up just in time to see kika walk in, yet there were two people just behind her. this time she wasn’t in the crested tracksuit you had seen her in previous days, rather a dark pair of jeans, a black hoodie and a red cap covering her head.

“good afternoon” kika greeted, smiling as her eyes met yours, “i’m surprised you’re still here.”

“it’s your lucky day then, my shift finishes at 3.” you grinned back to her.

“so we really got here just in time for the best coffee in all of barcelona,” she tilted her head slightly, leaning against the counter as usual, “and i bought friends this time.”

you couldn’t help but laugh at her compliment, cheesy but it still made your heart flutter.

“ah so you’re the famous nameless barista.” the shorter brunette smiled, her eyes racking you up and down momentarily.

“famous?” your eyebrows raised, looking between your a+ student and the two new girls.

“apparently your english lessons are as good as your coffee.” patri added with a smirk, “i think i might need to start coming here too.” she winked. you almost missed the way kika shot her quick look, a look of unease before patri’s smirk changed into a teasing smile.

“well what can i get you guys?” you asked, breaking the short silence that had built.

“three oat milk lattes, please.” kika requested, her gaze shifting to yours.

you sent her a nod before turning around to work on the order, jana and patri drifting over to a comfortable sofa in the corner of the cafe, kika still leant against the counter.

“i still haven’t got your name.” she stated, fingers tapping as usual.

you glanced over your shoulder, lips curving just slightly. “i’m starting to think you like the mystery.”

kika let out a soft laugh, “i like knowing the name of the person who makes my day start better, serendipity remember.”

you rolled your eyes lightly but gave in.

kika repeated it under her breath, like she was trying it out for herself. “it suits you.”

you tried not to let the smile that tugged at your mouth show too much as you finished steaming the milk, “and what’s yours?”

“my what?” kika questioned, her head tilting with confusion, before a look of realization snapped, “oh my name, kika.”

you turned around, placing the drinks in front of her, “it’s pretty,i like it.”

you had made the three with differing patterns of latte art, but the one with a heart you pushed forward in her direction, “enjoy.” you smiled.

she laughed lightly before making her way over to the corner where her friends sat. jana gave her a smug look whilst patri whispered something about being a flirt. kika, for the most part, ignored them both but you could see the slight red glow in her cheeks as she angled her seat just slightly, in your direction.

you pretended not to notice the way she stole one last glance your way as she sat down, fingers wrapped around her cup, the heart still intact in the foam.

you were stuck behind the counter, doing anything to look busy, you wiped it down and organised the cups. but your eyes flicked over occasionally, just quick enough to catch jana mouthing something exaggerated that made kika throw a sugar packet at her, and patri laughing behind her hand.

your shift had technically ended five minutes ago, but you were still tidying up, well more like delaying. the cafe had thinned out, a few of your regulars still hanging about, as well the three friends who were still deep in conversation.

from the corner, jana leaned back in her chair, eyes finding yours over the rim of her coffee cup. “chica,” she called casually, “your shift’s done, no? come sit. your star pupil should buy you a coffee, like a date.”

“jana.” kika hissed, her cheeks highlighting red.

“you were taking too long to make a move, she had to say something.” patri shrugged, taking a sip from her coffee.

you wiped down the last corner of the counter, biting back a smile. the warmth of embarrassment rolled off kika, visible even from across the café. you tucked the cloth under the bar, pretending to consider the invitation for just a second longer than you needed.

“i’ll guess i can make some time for you,” you smiled, walking towards the empty chair at their table, “but i’m good for a drink.”

patri watched you for a beat too long, then smiled like she knew something you didn’t, “so, serendipity?”

you blinked, “what?”

“that’s what she’s been calling you,” she said, flicking her head toward kika, “kika doesn’t usually get poetic, so she must really like you.”

kika groaned into her hands, “stop talking.” she mumbled.

“she says your english lessons are better than the catalan lessons she’s getting from the team tutor.” jana added with a small laugh.

your face scrunched a little at the mention of a ‘team’, and then it clicked, the matching tracksuits, the famous football club barcelona logo on each of their chests. there was no way it was a coincidence, maybe they just worked for the club?

kika just shook her head, cheeks red and glowing now, but her eyes flicked to yours with that same softness she always carried when she looked at you.

you let yourself hold her gaze. maybe just for a second longer than you should have.

and just as you were about to ask the question that was circling your brain, it all came crashing down.

the door swung open with a violent jingle of the bell, louder than it had any right to be, your head turned and suddenly you were on your feet.

your blood ran cold.

she didn’t wait. she walked straight toward you, voice already raised.

“you really don’t waste time, do you?”

your body tensed as the air in the room shifted.

a few people looked up, curious but cautious. you glanced toward kika and her friends, their conversation had stopped. kika had straightened in her seat, eyes narrowed slightly, jaw tight.

you forced a breath through your nose, standing up slowly, “bea, not here, i’m at work.”

her eyes flicked past you, to the corner table, then back again, “why not? thought you liked an audience.”

your face burned, not from embarrassment but the sharp sting of something you’d been trying to outrun for months, “i don’t want to speak to you, just leave, please.”

tears were threatening to fall from your eyes, your hands were starting to tremble as you watched her face light up as if she was enjoying this.

bea let out a bitter laugh. “no, you don’t get to say that. you don’t get to act like the injured party when i’m the one who got left!”

your jaw clenched, holding back everything that was threatening to spill, “you didn’t get left. you got caught.”

there was a heavy silence, followed by the scrape of a chair against the floor and then kika was on her feet.

“okay,” she said, stepping forward. her voice was calm, but her posture said otherwise, “you’ve said enough, it’s time to go.”

bea scoffed, eyes narrowing as her arms crossed, a mocking smile curling on her lips as she took a step closer, her eyes drifted to kika momentarily before they were back on you. “oh now you have a saviour?” she sneered, voice dripping with something that could only be described as venom, “cute, is she your rebound? gonna fix you huh, clean up your mess?”

her expression twisted into something crueler, “you act like i’m a monster, like you didn’t just walk away and erase all those years we had together. but sure, blame me, make yourself a saint. it’s easier than admitting you were never committed to us, to me…”

“i made one mistake, one, but you couldn’t handle it. you used it as an excuse to run, an opportunity to get out, just like you wanted. don’t pretend you didn’t want to leave me long before that.”

she looked around the room as if it was a stage, the deafening silence gave her power, “so go ahead and play the victim. let her defend you, but we don’t know the truth, don’t we?”

you stood frozen for a moment, the buzz of the cafe like static in your ears. your hands trembled as you took a step back, brushing past kika with a quiet ‘i need a minute’ and headed for the door. chest tight and vision blurring at the edges.

bea saw it.

you didn’t have to look to know. she saw the way your shoulders curved in, the way your breath hitched and the way your pain was clawing its way to the surface. the same pain you had spent a long time trying to bury.

and just like that, her entire demeanor shifted.

gone was the snarling, spiteful ex as she morphed into someone new entirely, “hey… wait.” the change in her tone was nauseating, it became gentle, as if she was still someone you could trust. like she hadn't just tried to humiliate you in front of a room full of people.

“you're upset, i get it.” she continued, voice laced with faux concern. “but you always do this, remember. run off all emotional. you always break and then you need me to pick up the pieces. that’s what we do, it’s why we work so well.”

bea smiled, too soft, too rehearsed. “just let me talk to you. alone. we can fix this, we always do.”

that’s when kika stepped between you two, no hesitation, “no, you don’t get to twist this,” she spoke, her tone cool and calm. “she’s upset because you made her this way, and you don’t get to feed off that anymore.”

bea’s eyes flicked to kika, as if she was debating whether she would be able to take her on and come out successful. but after a few moments she backed down and then turned her gaze back onto you.

bea’s expression twisted, mouth curling into a smirk that didn't quite reach the eyes. she took another step forward, lowering her voice just enough to make it more threatening than loud.

“oh you don’t want to leave me,” bea spoke, tone mocking. “then maybe i should tell everyone what you were like at the end. all those nights crying on the bathroom floor, begging me to stay, the fucking pathetic texts. the way you…”

bea reached for your arm, fingers latching on with a grip that was too tight. nails digging in.

“maybe everyone would like to hear about how you couldn't even sleep alone without…”

but before she could finish, kika was there, shoving bea back with both hands hard, “back off!”

the force knocked bea a step or two back, almost stumbling over her own shoes. the tension in the room increased, crackling like static in the air. a few gasps broke out from nearby tables.

kika stood in front of you now, solid. her voice was low but lethal, “touch her again, and i promise you’ll regret it.”

jana and patri stood up too, “you better leave before you see how fast three footballers can throw you out of the building.” patri added.

bea stared, blinking as if she couldn't believe what has just happened. her mask cracked, just for a second, and the bravado on display faltered.

her eyes lingered on you for one final moment before she stepped back with a muttered curse, turned, and stormed out, the bell above the door marking her exit.

kika didn’t move until the door had fully swung shut. only then did her shoulders loosen slightly, her attention turning back to you.

“are you okay?” her voice quieter, her face painted with a look of empathy that surprised you. you weren’t used to it, it made your mind stutter.

you shook your head faintly, “i - i’m sorry, i need to go.” with that you grabbed your bag from behind the counter and ran straight out the door.

the next day you called in sick. you couldn’t face kika, your regular customers, or your coworkers after the scene bea had pulled in front of everyone.

you laid in bed staring at the ceiling, your body was riddled with anxiety. the silence in your apartment was suffocating, but the idea of filling it felt like too much.

your phone buzzed once. you didn’t look.

then again.

and again.

you peered at it, your coworkers name lighting up from your bedside table.

you rolled over, clutching your pillow to your chest. you weren’t sure if it was guilt or shame or some mix of both settling in your stomach. sure bea was gone, but her words and the impact they had weren’t.

none of it was true, but that didn’t dull the sting.

you thought about kika. the way she stood between you and everything ugly, the way her voice had cut through the noise. how she put herself on the line for you, protected you from something she knew nothing about.

but then you thought of her seeing you like that, completely frozen and helpless.

you hated it.

so you stayed in bed, hardly moving, in the quiet where you could avoid everything.

but when the next day came, you couldn’t stay bundled up forever. so you pushed yourself out of bed, and went to work.

you were doing your usual morning routine.

grinding the coffee beans, wiping the counter, checking the milk fridge, pretending your hands were shaking as you reached for the cups.

it was too early for your regulars but too late for the commuters. just you and the ache in your chest that hadn’t let up since bea decided to flip everything upside down.. again.

you moved slower than usual, like your body hadn’t quite caught up to the fact that it was safe again, as if bea was still somewhere, watching.

the bell above the door didn’t ring, but your eyes kept flicking toward it anyway, like your brain couldn’t help bracing for impact. you didn’t even know if she’d come in.

but then she did.

you didn’t look up right away, you told yourself it was a habit, that you were just focused on wiping down the steam wand.

“morning.” her voice was soft, careful, as if part of her was hesitant to speak.

you looked up. kika stood just inside the door, her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, her eyes on you with something unreadable behind them. she wasn’t smiling like she usually would, but there was a gentleness in her expression, like she was waiting for permission to be there.

“i didn’t see you yesterday.” she said after a beat, stepping forward slowly, like approaching something fragile, “i still came in, your coworker doesn’t make coffee as well as you do.”

you couldn’t help but smile faintly at her compliment, knowing your co-worker wouldn’t have spent the extra time perfecting the latte art or making sure the milk was at just the right temperature that kika liked.

the quiet settled for a moment before you attempted to speak, “i didn’t think you’d come back,” you muttered, quieter than you meant to.

she tilted her head, eyes narrowing just slightly, “why?”

“i was worried she scared you off,” you started, your hands rubbing the cloth in your hand between your fingers, “she has a habit of ruining things that make me happy.”

she leaned her elbow on the counter, eyes still on yours, her voice dipping a little, playful but steady, “i train against some of the best football players in the world, i don’t get scared easily.”

your head tilted slightly as you tried to decipher what she was saying, eyebrows scrunching, “so you play football?”

kika’s lips quirked, a soft curve that was half a smirk, half a dare, “i mean yeah, i run around a field with a ball for a living, so yeah.”

you blinked at her, brows still drawn, processing, “like for an actual team?”

her smile widened, like she was enjoying watching you put the pieces together, pointing to the barcelona crest that sat on her chest, “mhmm.”

the tracksuits, the subtle discipline, the confidence, the way jana and patri had joked. you felt your mouth part slightly. how did it take you that long for you to put the pieces together?

you exhaled a soft laugh, stepping back slightly with a stunned look. “and you didn’t think to mention that before?”

she raised an eyebrow, “you never asked.”

“i have so many questions.” you admitted.

yeah you weren’t necessarily ‘into’ football, your friends had dragged you to a game before but you spent most of it taking pictures of the cat mascot on the sidelines. barcelona breathed football and yet somehow the footballer who had been visiting you went right under your nose.

“perfect english practice then.” she grinned.

you made kika her usual, before drilling her with every football question you could possibly think of, including a very slowed down version of the offside rule.

you leaned on the counter, chin resting in your palm and a smile across your face as you watched her arrange the sugar packets like defenders and a spoon as the striker. her brows furrowed in concentration, tongue poking slightly out the corner of her mouth as she adjusted the layout so it would finally make sense.

“so,” she said seriously, tapping one of the sugar packets, “this is the last defender. if the striker, the spoon, is beyond this point when the pass is made, that’s offside.”

you stared at it, eyes narrowing. “but what if the spoon was, like, moving back behind the sugar?”

kika looked up at you slowly, “you’re trouble.”

you smiled sweetly, “i’m just trying to understand your world.”

she gave a small laugh, brushing a hand through her hair and shaking her head. “i can’t believe this is how i’m spending my recovery day.”

“you chose to come here.” you pointed out, nudging the napkin she’d used as a goalpost.

“i really did,” she murmured, eyes flicking up to meet yours again, softening at the edges, “i didn’t feel like being anywhere else.”

the words sank between you.

lika leant back a little, letting her hand drift across the counter in a casual sweep. “and now you owe me.”

“i owe you?”

she nodded firmly, “you made me explain the offside rule with props, that deserves something.”

you tilted your head, amused. “what do i owe you then?”

“your number.” she grinned, a spark of mischief lighting in her eyes as if she set up that entire interaction perfectly.

a soft smile pulled at your lips, “very smooth kika, very very smooth.”

“what can i say? i obviously need some online english tutoring.”

you laughed slightly before grabbing the napkin she had used as a goalpost and a pen, scribbling down your number before sliding it across the counter towards her.

kika caught the napkin with a quick smile, her fingers brushing against yours for a moment longer than necessary.

“looking forward to our next lesson.” she smiled, voice low and teasing.

you felt your cheeks warm but managed a confident nod, with that she was gone.

it had only been 20 minutes before an unknown number lit up your phone,

[unknown number] - guess i’m a good teacher too, after that beautiful offside explanation

you couldn’t help but laugh at her message, quickly changing her number into a contact, before responding.

you - are you trying to steal my job?

kika - nothing could ever compare to your incredible english lessons

something in you was feeling bold, far bolder than you had been to kika in person.

you - careful… i don’t think you’re meant to flirt with your teachers

kika - then i don’t want to be your student

you caught yourself smiling, the kind that crept in slowly and made you warm. her message lingered on your screen, your thumb hovering just above a reply, heart skipping.

before you could type anything, the bell above the door chimed, sharp and familiar. you slipped your phone beneath the counter like it had caught fire, straightening just in time for the midday rush to pour in, pulling you back into routine with both hands.

serving what felt like hundreds of customers, the sudden rush filling the cafe swept you off your feet.

the end of your shift arrived quicker than expected, and very typical for you the sunny barcelona weather had taken a turn. the once cloudless sky was now covered in a dark grey layer, one that had rain pounding against the pavement.

you tried getting an uber, but of course it was nearly 25 euros for a 5 minute ride, so a 20 minute walk in the pouring rain seemed more ideal.

pulling your hood over your head, you left the cafe and stepped out into the downpour, the kind that soaked you instantly. cold drops ran down your neck as you tugged your jacket tighter and started walking, head down, shoes already slipping against the wet pavement.

you’d only made it halfway down the street when a car slowed beside you, creeping just a little too perfectly in time with your steps. you glanced over, ready to ignore a stranger, until you saw her.

kika leaned across the passenger seat, window already down despite the rain.

“you weren’t going to text me back?” she said, one brow lifted, a teasing edge in her voice that was just soft enough to make your stomach twist.

you blinked, caught somewhere between disbelief and amusement, “you came all the way here just because i didn’t answer?”

“well my ego didn’t know how to handle it so i had to come check on you,” she gave you a crooked grin, “but now i see i’ve turned up at the right time, so get in because i’m not letting you walk home in this.”

you hesitated for half a second, until a gust of wind blew your hood back and rain trickled down your spine. with a quiet sigh, you climbed into the passenger seat, water dripping down your sleeves.

kika reached over instinctively, tugging the heater dial up before glancing at you with a soft shake of her head, “you really were about to walk the whole way, huh?”

you shrugged, trying not to shiver as you pulled your sleeves down over your hand, “it’s only like 20 minutes, and it wasn’t exactly my first choice.”

she glanced sideways at you, her voice lower now, “next time, just text me, i’ll show up faster.”

you let out a breath of a laugh, heart skipping, “and here i thought footballers were busy.”

kika grinned, eyes back on the road as the car pulled away from the curb, “not too busy for you, put your address in my phone.”

you did as was asked and typed in your address before sitting back in the seat, “so do you always drive around rescuing baristas from the rain?” you teased, a grin across your face.

“only the ones who put little hearts in my coffee… and then ignore my texts.” she grinned back.

you laughed slightly, rolling your eyes, as a comfortable silence fell between you before you spoke up again, “thank you, for yesterday and today and just everything.”

“you never have to thank me,” she smiled lightly, “you deserve the same kindness you show people, and i’ll make sure i’m here to remind you.”

you gave her an appreciative hum, unsure of what to say other than thanking her again, but her words were running round your head at full speed.

kika pulled up slowly to the curb outside your building, putting the car in park but making no move to rush you out. you turned to her, hand already on the door handle, then paused.

“i know you’ve just told me not to say thank you, so i appreciate you driving me home.” you smiled softly.

she hesitated for a moment before speaking, “can i walk you in?”

you blinked, surprised at the shift in her voice, a little more uncertain than usual.

“yeah,” you said gently, “of course.”

the two of you stepped out into the drizzle, kika flipping her hood up as she jogged around the front of the car walking in time with you.

inside, the building was quiet, the soft hum of the elevator filling the silence between you. kika stood close, your arms just brushing as you were comfortably close.

when the doors slid open on your floor, she followed you down the hallway, her gaze scanning the space before flicking back to you.

you stopped outside your door, turning back to face her. her hands were tucked in her jacket pockets now, and her brows drew together slightly like she was working up to something.

she let out a soft breath, glancing down for a second before meeting your eyes again. “i’ve got a game next week, a home game.”

you tilted your head slightly, you had a feeling you knew what was going to be asked, but you couldn’t help but tease her anticipation, “oh yeah.”

“yeah,” she nodded, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth, “i’d really like it if you came.”

there was a short pause before you answered, “i’d really like to.”

her smile widened, warm and full of something unspoken, “i’ll text you the details.”

“looking forward to it,” your voice barely above a whisper but certain.

neither of you moved at first. then, slowly, she stepped back, still watching you like she didn’t quite want to leave just yet. she gave a small wave, backing down the hallway toward the elevator with a grin that stayed with you even after your door clicked shut.

inside your apartment, the silence felt safe. you stood still for a moment, a smile painted across your face as your heart fluttered.

you had gotten so used to shrinking yourself down for someone who refused to let you live in happiness, apologising for taking up space as if you were never good enough no matter what you did. you were always wrong, never said the right thing, didn’t love correctly. even after moving cities, 700 miles away from everything you knew, everyone you loved, and you still become a second option to whatever was easier in the moment.

yet kika made you feel the opposite. she was a ray of light, like a beam of sun that shone around her every where she went. you felt warm around her, safe, protected from everything negative your past could throw at you.

you kicked off your shoes and hung your jacket, still damp from the rain, before moving to the kitchen and flicking on the kettle. the hum of it filled the space as your phone buzzed in your pocket.

kika - i meant what i said by the way. you deserve good things, and people who show up for you.

you - i’m starting to think you don’t need my english lessons anymore

kika - no entiendo ingles, ¿puedes enseñarme por favor? (i don’t understand english, can you teach me please?)

you couldn’t help but smile at your phone, warmth filling in your chest despite the rain still tapping softly against the windows. finally you felt a moment of peace, a moment where you weren’t concerned that a bulldozer was going to run through your life yet again, because in your little bubble, it was just you and her.

a/n - part 2 can be found here. i wanted to separate the angst of r's past from the real fluff of kika! thank you for reading, any feedback/requests can be left in my inbox! and ofc thank you @earpskeeper for your incredible help with the angst <3

#woso #woso x reader #woso oneshot #woso imagine #kika nazareth #kika nazareth x reader #kika nazareth imagine #barcelona femeni #barca femeni #barcelona femeni x reader #fcb femení #futfem

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solar-sunnyside-up · 9 months ago

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Just found out one community association near me has a community toy library. Basically a community toy store where you sign out toys like you would library books.

And it really woke up how badly I want a library economy.

Cosmetic libraries in place of salons and make up stores- sign out hair accessories or jewlery, sign up for a haircut/makeup day with a vollunteer that you mesh with, etc..

Toy libraries to replace toy stores, holidays and birthdays now bring you down to borrow bikes and stuffed animals that have been loved by others, to borrow dolls and dollhouses and their endless closests and accessories.

Craft libraries filled with sewing machines and looms and supplies to make things, classes to learn how to do it, making clothes for friends never been so easy because the endless amount of patterns available. The craft clubs that would bloom from it. The ceramics and painting and welding art that could come out of it if we just all had time and access.

Engineering and woodworking libraries. We could be living in a real animal crossing Era of furniture! The weird and cool lighting and other oddities that would come from it!

Clothing libraries that are busy during the season change but also regular shopping. I dont use this dress I love anymore so I'll return it to the library and get something in this new color pallet for myself.

Kids libraries that yes, filled with toys but also cribs, highchairs, walkers, jumpers, pumps, bottles, cups, etc.. things that kids use less then a year at a time and never really get fully used before passing it onwards. Oh to be able to borrow a well loved crib or rocking chair for your newborn

#solarpunk #hopepunk #sunny says #libraries #library economies

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phantomrose96 · 1 year ago

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The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

#chrissy speaks

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sparklingchim · 9 months ago

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game on | jjk

pairing: jungkook x oc

word count: 2.2k

tropes: footballer!jungkook, fake dating, f2l

rating: pg

warnings: koo gets scolded for sleeping around 🥺, playboy jk <3, hints of a threesome 🫢, oc fights w a laundry machine

summary: jungkook is in desperate need to polish up his playboy image, and naturally, he turns to you for help.

a/n: hii my pretty besties!!!! it's my bday😋 so i wanted to share this silly piece i've been having so much fun writing!!! love uuu n treat urself to smth nice for me today <3 mwah😙

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Jeon Jungkook is a charming man – and he is well aware of the fact. He plays that card effortlessly.

Most of the time, it works in his favour. Gets him what he wants, opens doors, soften blows.

But sometimes, it backfires. Spectacularly.

Which is why, right now, he’s standing in front of his fuming manager, who is radiating enough anger to fill the entire office.

The sight isn’t foreign to Jungkook. He wouldn’t say he is used to it, but he has found himself often enough in this situation to recognise the signs of deep trouble.

It’s not just Jungkook’s charm that’s making things complicated. It’s also the fact that he is famous.

He doesn’t flaunt it – never brags, never name-drops. That’s not his thing. But he’s not stupid either. His name (dare he say it) carries a bit of weight, and he’s learned how to use it. Quietly. Casually. Just enough to make things go his way.

Bending the world to his will... until the world pushes back.

And right now, it’s pushing back hard.

One thing Jeon Jungkook does enjoy about being a pro footballer, though, is the way women obsess over him.

He knows they love him – sees it in the comments they leave on his ig posts, sees it in the DMs flooding his inbox daily, and experiences it firsthand at public events, where hordes of fans scream his name. Jungkook thrives on that attention.

However, something he doesn’t love, and what he was never prepared for, is the media. The way they scrutinise his every move, how his face ends up on every headline anytime he does something remotely noteworthy.

And now, thanks to his latest shenanigan getting caught by the press, here he is. Getting chewed out by Taesung, his manager, while Jiwoo from PR watches with that tight-lipped expression that always means bad news.

Jungkook’s eyes are downcast, bracing himself for the scolding that’s already begun.

“You’ve gone too far this time, Jungkook.”

His manager speaks in a flat, monotonous voice, void of even the slightest hint of disappointment, as if he’d long since given up expecting anything different.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean up the mess you leave behind?”

A sense of guilt creeping up on Jungkook, even though he knows if he were just a regular guy, none of this would matter at all. And he finds it a bit unfair.

But to survive in this business, you can’t complain about unfairness.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” Taesung barks.

Jungkook remains silent. He forces himself to.

“If there was more involved than just alcohol-”

“No! Nothing like that,” he denies, his response firm and immediate. “It was just alcohol – and, well, just good vibes because we won the last match, and with the World Cup being next, everyone was just really excited.”

If he had known what kind of trouble a simple, innocent celebration of his team’s win at a club would bring, he would’ve gone straight home yesterday. He would’ve skipped the rounds of drinks, the flashing lights, the loud music, and definitely the attention. But hindsight was useless now.

“Good,” his manager says. “I’m glad you were happy.” Mock sympathy drips from his voice. “Perhaps the last time you are going to be happy this year.”

Jungkook nods, accepting the gravity of the situation. No more clubs, no more parties, no more girls.

At least, not for a while. His reputation had taken a few hits recently, and this latest mess wasn’t helping. He could almost hear the whispers: reckless, irresponsible, unprofessional. The kind of things that could ruin him if he didn’t get a handle on it.

He clenched his jaw. No more distractions. From now on, it was all about the game. He needed to remind everyone why he was Jeon Jungkook — the best on the field, not just the headlines.

“You’re no longer in for the World Cup. You’re out.”

His head snaps up at that. Did he hear that right?

“What?! What do you mean?”

“Myungbo doesn’t want you on the team anymore.” Taesung’s words sound heavy and final.

Jungkook’s heart pounds in his ears.

His world tilts. The room seems to spin, the edges of his vision darkening. This wasn’t just a setback — it was a disaster. The World Cup was everything to him, and now it felt like it was slipping through his fingers. The crushing weight of the news settles on his chest, making it hard to breathe. One silly night is all that happened.

He can’t believe that a single photo of him leaving the club with two girls clinging to each arm has cost him his spot on the national football team. He went home with two girls – so what?

But he doesn’t voice his frustration. He knows better than to add fuel to the fire. Speaking his mind now would only escalate the situation and make things worse. Jungkook knows from experience.

He swallows hard, forcing himself to stay calm. His pulse is still racing, but he takes a deep breath, focusing on controlling his emotions. He has to keep a level head if he’s going to find a way to fix this.

“There has to be a way to fix this.” His eyes move to Jiwoo, his PR agent. “Right?”

His manager fixes him with a stern glare. “Jungkook, remember the promise you gave everyone a few months ago?” Taesung reminds him.

Jungkook cringes. When he made a promise to avoid actions that might damage his reputation, he didn’t think it’d be that serious. He cut back on going out, made the effort to play the role of the “good boy” but really – come on. He can’t maintain that facade for an eternity. Especially after a triumphant victory like yesterday’s.

Taking away his spot on the national football team? He didn’t think that was possible.

“How many more times do we have to fix your problems, because you don’t care enough? How many times do we have to repeat this scenario?”

“I promise I’ll better myself,” Jungkook pleads desperately, looking back and forth between the two of them. Someone has to believe him, help him.

“Do you genuinely believe this country wants to be represented by a 20-year-old boy, who can’t keep his personal life under control?” Taesung asks, eyebrows deeply pinched together. “This isn’t just about you, Jungkook. It’s about the team, the fans, and the nation. They need a role model, not a scandal waiting to happen.”

“I know. I know.” Jungkook scrambles for something convincing to say, desperate to sway their decision. This can’t be it. He won’t let his career take a hit because of something like this. “But – but this isn’t too bad. This is fixable. I can fix this.” His voice quivers with a desperation he barely recognises as his own. “Jiwoo.” Jungkook turns to her with pleading eyes. “You always know what to do. Please, help me?”

“I did propose an idea but-”

“We’re not doing that,” Taesung cuts in. “It’s off the table.”

“What is it?” Jungkook’s eyes bounce back and forth between them. “I’ll do anything. This is – this is everything to me. You have to give me a chance.”

Taesung scoffs. “A chance? As far as I know, you have been given countless chances.”

Sweat coats the back of Jungkook’s neck.

Taesung understands just how much Jungkook has fought to secure his place on the national team. He’s well aware that it’s one of Jungkook’s greatest dreams, a pinnacle of his career that he’s poured countless hours of hard work and sacrifice into. That’s why, each morning, when he wakes up to the latest news of Jungkook’s escapades, he feels a deep sense of disappointment, texting Jungkook with a dejected shake of his head to visit his office first thing in the morning.

When it’s all he wants, like Jungkook claims, why doesn’t he act like it?

“If the head coach won’t give me a chance now, he’ll never do. This is my last opportunity to change his mind, make him rethink. I need to at least try.”

Jiwoo looks at Taesung, waiting for his approval. He nods.

“Very simply put: you need a girlfriend,” she says.

For a second, Jungkook is at loss for words.

“A girlfriend? How’s that going to help?” Jungkook tilts his head in confusion. This is not how he thought Jiwoo was going to save him.

“You need a girlfriend to help polish up your image as a player. It’ll make you appear more like a gentleman, softer and nicer. We need to completely shift public perception and counter the negative image they’ve formed about you. It’s all about changing the narrative,” she explains.

“And that is not something we can easily achieve,” Taesung interjects. “Rebranding your entire persona is not feasible at this stage. You’ve been projecting what kind of boy you are to the media for the past two years. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to make a sudden shift look genuine.”

“No! We — I can make it seem real. This is my only chance,” Jungkook insists, his voice gaining a hint of determination. For a moment, breathing feels a bit easier again. “The World Cup is just two months away. That’s enough time to shift public opinion and prove I’m worthy of representing the country on the team.” There’s a hopeful lilt in his voice as he speaks, clinging to the belief that he might not have to bid farewell to his biggest dream after all.

But Taesung doesn’t look as hopeful as Jungkook feels.

“How are we going to find a girl who will agree to this? Someone who isn’t an obsessive fan, understands this is purely professional, and can keep quiet? You won’t be able to pull this off.”

“I was actually thinking-” Jiwoo starts, but she’s cut off.

Jungkook hesitates, glancing between them before speaking. “Actually... I think I already have someone in mind.” His voice is more measured now. “That’s not the issue.” Jungkook doesn’t need to think twice.

Taesung sighs while Jiwoo looks at Jungkook apologetically.

“You can’t rebrand your entire persona from a playboy to a lover boy within a month, Jungkook. This is over.” His manager shakes his head, a sense of finality glimmering in his eyes.

One thing that Jungkook forgot to mention is that he is an extremely competitive man, too.

“This is ridiculous.”

You kick the laundry machine in frustration, but all you end up doing is yelping and clutching your aching foot.

“That’s the third time this month,” you mutter under your breath. “What did I even spend all that money on if it’s just going to break down whenever it feels like it?”

You shoot a death glare at the machine, teetering on the edge of losing your mind.

“Guess I’ll have to use the public laundromat again,” you sigh, grabbing the overflowing laundry basket filled with your and your roommate's clothes, and heading out of the bathroom with a huff.

On your way to the front door, the doorbell rings.

Please, you think. You were hoping for some quiet, uninterrupted time to deep-clean your dorm on this peaceful Sunday with no one around.

But when you peek through the peephole and see Jungkook standing there, your frustration melts away. You swing the door open, the laundry basket tumbling to the floor beside you in your haste.

“Jungkook!” you exclaim. “You’re timing is perfect! Can you please fix my laundry machine again? It’s been acting up, and I’m getting frustrated.” You groan annoyed.

Jungkook doesn’t share the same excitement upon seeing you.

You grow smaller and take an indecisive step back.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, noticing the tension in his features. “Did you lose the match yesterday? I couldn’t keep up because I had too much cramming to do last night.”

While studying medicine had always been your dream, the reality is less exciting. Right now, it means sleepless nights and relentless pressure. You know that pursuing this path will offer you many privileges later in life, but you have to suffer first.

“I need your help.”

His dark eyes, usually bright and full of energy, seem clouded with worry, and his hair falls messily over his forehead, like he’s run his hands through it a hundred times in frustration.

“Are you okay?” You study him closely, scanning his face for any signs of injury. Physically, he seems fine — still tall, muscular, and as fit as ever. But something is clearly off.

“You need to do something for me.”

“I can help,” you reply, your voice soft with concern. ‘But what is it…?”

“Don’t call me crazy for it.”

“Just tell me.”

“Can you be my girlfriend?”

You blink, repeatedly.

“Huh?”

You start giggling when he doesn’t add more. You expect him to clarify or laugh along, but Jungkook stays serious, stepping closer and gently taking your hands in his. You look down at them, then back up at his face, utterly bewildered.

“You’re silly, Jungkook. If someone on the team made you do this, tell them you did the punishment and quit acting so weird.”

It’s too early in the morning for Jungkook’s nonsense.

“No, ___, you don’t understand.” He squeezes your hands when he feels you trying to pull them back. “I actually need you to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Fake date me.”

#jungkook drabble #jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenario #jungkook x reader #jungkook smut #jungkook scenarios #jungkook x you #jungkook imagine #jungkook #jeon jungkook #bts #bts scenario #bts fanfic #bts scenarios #bts smut #bts x you #bts x reader

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matt-murdockk · 3 months ago

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Sweet Nothing

pairing: matt murdock x reader

words: 5.1k

warnings: cussing, slow-burn, angst if you really squint but it's just fluff mostly, lack of proofreading (rip), pretty descriptive making out

summary: This is the story of how Matt Murdock met the love of his life one fateful day at the NYPD precinct.

a/n: guess who finally learned out how to make emdashes on Mac— hehehehe. some fluffy slow-burn for you <3 (i tried not to use pronouns for the reader but I'm so sorry if i accidentally used she/her anywhere)

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While Matt was charming, romantic, and thoughtful, historically— he hasn't been the best at relationships. Flings were okay, short-term was fine, but a proper relationship? Matt didn't think he deserved to be in one until he met you.

To him, you were a breath of fresh air from all his previous exploits. Elektra was a rush of adrenaline, a thrill, certainly an experience, but he knew he didn't like the side of him that she brought out. Karen was too close a friend to lose over a relationship and Claire, well, he had way too much respect for her, he wouldn't do that to her.

You, on the other hand, were what he swore was the right person at the right time. The right amount of calm and the right amount of chaos. He didn’t go looking for you. But you found each other anyway— almost by accident, almost like it was fate.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A regular phone call from Brett Mahoney about a possible case for Nelson & Murdock brought Foggy and Matt to the precinct one day. From outside, Matt quietly observed you before going in. You were in the holding cell, handcuffed, busted lip, and bruised knuckles. For all that you looked like you'd been through, Matt noticed that you were oddly calm.

Brett opened the door to let Matt and Foggy inside, the confusion in your face did not go unnoticed by the people in the room. "10 minutes, Foggy." The door shut behind him as he left, giving them a knowing look.

"You know it, Brett." Foggy helped Matt into his seat and took the empty seat beside him.

"Miss (Y/l/n), my name is Matt Murdock, this is my associate Foggy Nelson." Foggy gave you a half wave and smiled.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"Before we begin, have you been assaulted while in custody?"

"No, I have not. Listen, I didn't ask for a lawyer."

"We understand that you have been accused of assaulting a police officer. You have opted not to seek legal representation, is that right?"

"First of all, there has been a huge misunderstanding. Secondly, I still don't know why you're here, Mr..."

"Murdock," he reminded you.

"Right. Murdock. Sorry."

"We run a practice at Hell's Kitchen. Our firm is interested in representing you. And please, call me Matt," he clarified, presenting a warm, genuine smile.

"Well, Matt, while I am certainly thankful for your interest in representing me, I'm sorry to disappoint you, I don't need a lawyer."

"Trust me, you're going to," he said, amused at your confidence that you'll be fine.

"Oh, I know, I just already have one."

"Well, our job here's done. No cigars for Bess next time," Foggy retorted, as he got up, ready to leave.

"Foggy, sit down. Miss (Y/l/n)—"

"(Y/n), please."

"Very well. (Y/n), I understand that you already have representation. Probably from a big-time firm with 5 times the number of defense attorneys than we do. But here’s the thing. Those firms? They see cases. Numbers. Profiles. Headlines. They’re already calculating how your situation fits into their win column. I don’t work like that. My firm doesn’t work like that. We don’t take every case. We don’t chase the press. What we do is show up— completely. We sit down, we listen, and we fight like hell for the people who trust us. No fluff. No posturing. Just the work, and the truth, and someone in your corner who actually gives a damn about what happens to you next. So if you want the machine— fine. But if you want someone who’s going to look past the charges, past the headlines, and actually see you? Then you want Nelson and Murdock."

"Wow, okay, so, great sales pitch, love the energy, I really do. There's just one problem."

"What is it?"

"My boss is already on his way to represent me."

"I'm sorry— Boss?" " Yeah, what is it you do, exactly?" enquired Foggy.

"I'm a senior associate at Pearson Hardman."

"Well, that crashed and burned splendidly. Happy now, Matthew? We're poaching clients now. Oh and not just from any firm. No, sir. From Pearson fucking Hardman, Unbelievable."

"Foggy, it's okay. So, (Y/n), is your boss any good? Or..."

"I work for Harvey Specter."

"And that's our cue to leave."

Matt finally admitted defeat and got up to leave, following Foggy who was already at the door. While he was certainly ambitious, he knew he couldn't compete with that.

"Thank you for your time, (Y/n)."

As Matt turned toward the door, he caught the subtle quickening of your heartbeat— hesitant, uncertain, like you were rethinking your decision. His hand was just about on the doorknob, ready to leave but not quite gone, when your voice stopped him.

“Wait.”

Out of your line of sight, he let the faintest smirk curl at his lips. He just loved being right.

“What is it?” Matt asked, turning back to face you.

You hesitated for a beat, eyes flicking between him and Foggy, then down to your bruised hands in your lap. “I... I want you guys to represent me.”

Foggy blinked, taken off guard. “Really? Just like that?”

You exhaled slowly, the edge of defiance in your tone softening into something a little more tired. “Let’s just say… I’ve worked long enough at firms that care more about damage control than people. I don’t want a firm that’s already prepping their PR statement. I want someone who’ll actually give a shit.”

Matt nodded once, quietly. His expression didn’t change, but there was something solid behind it. Something settled.

Foggy let out a low whistle, then grinned. “Well… welcome to Nelson & Murdock.”

Cut to a little while later— Nelson & Murdock office. You, Matt, and Foggy sat around the table, the arrest report open in front of you. The air buzzed faintly from the overhead light, the hum of late-night tension settling over the room.

Foggy skimmed through the statement again, frowning. “Okay. Walk us through it. From the top.”

You leaned forward, elbows on the table, tone clipped but calm. “I was on the subway platform. Late. Waiting on the C train. There were maybe three other people around, none of them close.”

Matt tilted his head slightly, tuning in. Not just to what you were saying, but how you said it— measured, unflinching. No panic. No dramatics. Just facts.

“This guy comes over, starts making small talk. I make it clear I’m not interested. He doesn’t take the hint. Gets closer. I step back, tell him to stop. He grabs my wrist.”

“Forcefully?” Matt asked.

“Firm enough that I couldn’t just shake him off,” you replied. “So I pulled away. He grabbed me again. That time, I reacted. Hit him once, hard, in the face.”

The rhythm of your pulse didn’t spike when you said it. No guilt. Just certainty.

Foggy nodded slowly. “And then?”

“He goes down, pulls out a badge. Says he’s NYPD. I get cuffed.”

“He never identified himself before that?” Matt asked.

“No. Not verbally, not visually. No badge, no warning. He was in plainclothes, no backup, no indication he was on duty.”

Matt exchanged a look with Foggy, then turned his attention back to her. That steady confidence. The way you answered questions like you were already anticipating the next three.

“That’s a serious problem for their case,” Matt said, flipping through the paperwork. “Use of force in response to a perceived threat is protected— especially when there’s no identification of authority.”

You shrugged. “It won’t stop the department from backing him, though.”

Matt’s brows lifted just slightly. YOu knew exactly how this would play out— too many steps ahead for someone just hoping to walk out clean. You were smart. He liked that. Maybe more than he should.

“No,” Foggy agreed. “But it gives us a strong narrative, especially if we can get security footage or eyewitness statements from the other people on the platform.”

There was a beat as Matt closed the folder and set it aside.

“You’re sharp,” he said, more thoughtful now. “You know the statute, you know your rights, and you’re quoting case law off the top of your head.”

You looked at him, just a little amused. “That’s because I’ve spent years doing the same thing you do.”

A flicker of something moved across Matt’s face. He leaned forward just slightly.

“Why exactly are you not representing yourself?”

You smirked. “Because representing yourself while you’re the one in custody is a logistical nightmare. And because even good lawyers know when to bring in reinforcements.”

Foggy shook his head, amused. “Okay. That was... a good answer.”

You smiled, leaning back in your chair. “Now let’s go win my case.”

Matt smiled slightly. “Glad you picked us.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They won.

Not easily, and not without a few uphill battles, but the charges didn’t stick. Between the platform security footage, two credible eyewitness statements, and some rather unflattering internal complaints about the arresting officer, the case quietly unravelled in court. Matt made his arguments clean and precise. Foggy handled the media brushback with that classic Nelson charm. You? You sat through the whole trial stone-faced and unshakable— until the verdict came in, and Matt swore he could hear the way your shoulders finally loosened.

You kept in touch after that.

Not constantly, no regular meetings or phone calls— just the occasional email. A few sarcastic text exchanges. One time, you sent Matt a voicemail of you laughing because Foggy had apparently called you "the one that got away." Matt saved it. He never said that part out loud.

It was about six months later when Foggy floated the idea.

“We could use another good lawyer,” he told Matt, over a plate of lukewarm takeout. “She’s smart, she’s sharp, and she gets us.”

Matt didn’t disagree. He didn’t say much at all, really. But the next morning, you got a call from him— short, polite, a little too formal— inviting you to "grab a coffee and talk opportunities."

You left Pearson Hardman three weeks later.

Karen was the first to greet you when you walked through the door on your first official day. She had already cleared space on the shared bookshelf, left a fresh legal pad on your desk, and warned you not to get caught in any of Foggy’s snack traps. You settled in like you were always meant to be there.

The four of you fell into rhythm faster than expected— late nights, tight wins, inside jokes. Karen became one of your closest friends before your second week was out. Matt had a habit of lingering in your doorway on the days he claimed he "wasn’t eavesdropping," but his smile always gave him away. You pretended not to notice. He pretended not to care."

The firm did better that year than anyone had predicted.

And you? You’d finally stopped feeling like just another cog in someone else’s machine. You felt like you were home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was late.

Most of the lights in the office were off except for the one at Matt’s desk, and the faint glow of your screen across from him. Karen had bailed with a yawn and a pointed “Don’t stay too long, you two.” Foggy left not long after with a granola bar and a salute.

Now, just you and Matt.

A few open case files, cold takeout, empty coffee cups.

“Your typing slows down when you’re annoyed,” Matt said, breaking the silence without looking up.

You didn’t even pause. “Your voice gets smug when you’re fishing for attention.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Because it’s not flattering?”

“Because I don’t need to fish for attention,” he said. “Not when you give it up so easily.”

You looked up, unimpressed. “Oh no. You have caught me.”

“Seriously, that's how you respond to my flirting?”

You closed your file and leaned your elbows on the desk. “I didn’t realize ‘mild workplace bullying’ counted as flirting now.”

Matt tilted his head, listening closely. “That wasn’t a no.”

You smiled. “Murdock, if I were flirting, you’d know.”

“Oh?” he leaned forward, just slightly. “Go on, then.”

You mirrored the movement. “You sure you want to start something you can’t finish?”

His smile flickered into something smaller, quieter. “I’m not worried.”

“You should be.”

The banter fizzled for a second into silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Just... full. Like both of you were waiting to see who would blink first. Then you reached for the leftover fries between you.

“See, this is where you should’ve swooped in and offered to share,” you said, picking one up.

“I was being polite.”

“You’re full of it.”

Matt chuckled, leaning back in his chair again. “You make work a lot harder than it should be.”

You smirked. “If you’re blaming me for your lack of focus, I feel like that’s a you problem.”

He tapped a knuckle against the folder in front of him. “Pretty sure you’re a walking conflict of interest.”

“Oh, I am,” you said, popping a fry into your mouth. “But you already knew that.”

Matt bit back a smile, quiet again. Listening. After a moment, he said, “You know you could’ve gone back to a hundred bigger firms. Why stay?”

You glanced at him, surprised by the shift in tone. “Because this place feels like... me. Like it's mine, you know?”

Matt nodded slowly. “Feels like mine, too.”

There was something honest in his voice when he said it. Something unguarded. And for a beat— just a beat— you weren’t just two coworkers trading late-night barbs. You were something else. Something that lived in the space between laughter and hesitation. He broke the silence first.

“If you keep looking at me like that, Karen’s going to start planning our engagement party.”

“She already has,” you said. “She’s terrifying.”

He laughed, bright and real. You laughed too, leaning forward again, close without touching. And that was it. Just a moment. Not a confession. Not a move. But later, walking home, you’d think about it again— about how easy it felt, how his voice softened just for you, how neither of you pulled away.

Matt sat at his desk long after you left.

The city hummed outside the windows, faint and familiar— footsteps, traffic, a distant siren splitting the air somewhere on the west side. The kind of night New York never ran out of. But his attention was still in the office. Still in that moment.

You’d laughed. That real kind of laugh that started in the chest and softened everything around it. And for a second, he wasn’t Daredevil or Matt Murdock, the guy with a double life and a thousand reasons to keep people at arm’s length. He was just a man sitting across from someone who made him forget about all of it.

He hadn’t expected you. Not just the sharpness, or the way you fit in so seamlessly, or how you never once treated him like he needed to be handled. It was the way you challenged him. Matched him. Made the air feel lighter, even when the work was heavy.

And tonight— he’d heard it in your heartbeat. That shift. That hesitation. The quiet hope. It mirrored something in his chest he didn’t want to name. Because if he named it, it would be real. And real things could break.

He ran a hand down his face, exhaling slowly. He’d been careful. Always careful. With you, maybe too careful. Always toeing the line between professional and personal, between harmless teasing and something far messier.

But tonight? Tonight, the line blurred. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way you said this place felt like yours. Like you’d claimed it. Like you belonged here— next to Karen, Foggy... and him.

Matt had spent most of his life believing that the things he loved either left or got hurt. And yet, here you were. And he was terrified. Because the thought of you staying scared him more than the thought of you leaving.

Because for the first time in a long time, he wanted something he couldn’t fight for in court. Couldn’t earn by bleeding for it.

He just... wanted you.

And wanting had never ended well.

He leaned back in his chair and turned his head toward where you’d been sitting hours ago, the ghost of your laughter still echoing softly in the corners of the room.

He didn’t know what came next. But for the first time in a very long time, he hoped. And that was dangerous.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matt had been trained to keep things close to the chest. To be quiet. Composed. Measured. He’d made a whole life out of it— knowing exactly how much to say, how much to feel, and how much to hide. But lately? He was starting to slip.

It started with small things. Lingering a second too long outside your office. Finding reasons to walk the long way around the building just so he wouldn’t pass you in the hallway. Not looking up when you said his name. Not teasing you like he used to. It was subtle. Barely noticeable to anyone else. But Foggy? Foggy clocked it immediately.

“Are you avoiding (Y/n),” he asked one day, without even looking up from his sandwich, “or just trying to die alone with dignity?”

Matt didn’t dignify that with a response. Which, of course, was the response.

He tried to get a handle on it. He really did. But every time you walked into the room, something short-circuited in his chest. It wasn’t just the way your laugh stuck with him hours later, or the way you challenged him in court, or how you always saved the last of the coffee for him without saying a word. It was everything.

It was the way being near you made him feel like maybe he was allowed to want more. And that terrified him. So he did what Matt Murdock always did when he felt too much— he shut down. Smiled less. Talked less. Pulled back.

From your side, it made no sense. One minute, Matt was your closest friend at the firm— bantering with you over contracts and flirting shamelessly during late nights at the office. And then suddenly, he was stiff. Cautious. Civil, but distant. Like someone had flipped a switch and now you were radioactive.

You asked Karen once if you’d done something. She blinked, confused, then immediately said no. Foggy just smirked and shook his head like he knew something he wasn’t telling.

It wasn’t until the case came in that everything started to unravel.

A mugging gone wrong. Client said Daredevil saved her. That wasn’t unusual, not in Hell’s Kitchen. But Matt had disappeared halfway through the intake. No explanation, no warning.

When he came back, he looked… off.

There was a stiffness in his step. His jacket was damp. You noticed a bruise blooming along the edge of his jaw, half-hidden beneath his collar. And the excuse he gave? It was nothing. Too easy. Too rehearsed.

That was the first moment you really looked at him. And from that moment on, it didn’t stop. You started noticing everything.

It started small. A scrape on Matt’s knuckles one morning when he swore he just "bumped into a railing." A bruise along his jaw two days later that hadn’t been there the night before. The fact that he always knew when sirens were about to pass. That he sometimes winced at conversations happening across the street and flinched when someone behind him opened a soda can too loud.

The way his hands sometimes trembled when he thought no one was watching. The bruises that never quite added up. The way his hearing— his attention— seemed to stretch too far, too focused. His absences. His silences.

You weren’t stupid. You were a lawyer, after all-- your entire job revolved around reading people, noticing what others missed. So you paid attention. Not obsessively. Not yet. But enough. Enough to clock that he disappeared some nights without explanation, always coming back the next day with a carefully worded excuse and that same “don’t ask” look in his eye.

And then came the clincher.

A client— a woman being threatened by her landlord— was suddenly protected. Completely. No restraining order had gone through. No legal intervention. But the man stopped showing up. Cold turkey. When you asked, she just said, “That guy in the mask. The Devil. He said I’d be okay.”

You stared at her.

Later that night, while Matt was in his office pretending not to eavesdrop, you walked in and dropped the case file on his desk.

“She said ‘the Devil.’ Not a devil. The one. Hell’s Kitchen’s own.”

Matt didn’t look up. “Lot of people throw that name around.”

“She also said he was calm. Polite. Knew her name. Said she had nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

He was quiet.

You folded your arms. “She said he didn’t sound scary. Said his voice was warm.”

That made him pause.

“You’re not even going to deny it?”

Matt finally leaned back in his chair and sighed. “...hi?”

You blinked. “Hi?”

He shrugged. “It’s concise.”

You just stared at him.

“Matthew,” you said flatly. “What the fuck.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When? When I saw you parkour off a fire escape in a three-piece suit?”

“I— look, I didn’t want this to change anything. I didn’t want you to change how you looked at me.”

“Look, I’ve been working beside you for over a year. And you didn’t think, at any point, to maybe mention that you moonlight as a one-man SWAT team?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Well, good job, Matt. Really nailed it.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then leaned forward slightly, voice lower. “Listen, I know you're upset. I would be too. I didn’t tell you only because I care about you. Because this thing, what I do— it’s brutal. And if anyone ever found out how much you mean to me...”

You blinked. That shut you up. For a second.

“Oh, so I mean something to you now?”

“I think that’s been fairly obvious.”

Matt noticed the way your heartbeat changed when he said you meant something to him. He figured this was a bad time to bring it up, although he smiled to himself at what that meant.

“I’m not mad that you’re Daredevil.”

That made him pause.

You went on. “I’m mad that you didn’t tell me. That you didn’t trust me enough to know. But... I get it. I really do.”

Matt didn’t say anything. Just listened. Really listened.

“You protect people. That’s who you are. And I don’t mean the mask or the fists or any of that— I mean you. The guy who goes to court for tenants getting pushed out of rent-stabilized apartments. The guy who sits through paperwork and trials and still somehow finds time to help people when the system doesn’t. So yeah, I get why you kept it quiet. I would’ve done the same.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t this.

You stepped a little closer. “Would it have been easier to hear it from you directly? Sure. But I also understand why you didn’t. You’re trying to keep people safe. That’s kind of your whole thing.”

“I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

You gave him a look. “Matt. I’m a defence attorney in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m already in danger.”

He huffed a laugh, tension slipping just slightly.

“And besides,” you added, “it’s not like you told everybody.”

Matt winced. “Karen and Foggy know.”

“Splendid,” you muttered. “I’m last to know. That feels great.”

He opened his mouth to explain, but you waved him off.

“It’s okay. Really. I get it. You didn’t think I could handle it, or maybe you were just scared of what it would mean. Either way, I want you to know I still look at you the same way. Hell, I think I respect you more now."

His expression softened— like something in him untangled all at once.

“And Matt?” you said, quieter now. “I'm still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

That undid him more than any kiss could have. Matt Murdock was already in love with you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weeks passed. Then months.

You slipped into the parts of his life he never thought he'd share with you— quiet nights on the couch with cold tea and warmer glances, half-finished cases strewn between your desks, your voice low and steady on the phone as you helped him stitch up a gash at 2AM because Claire was out of town. You didn’t flinch at the bruises anymore. You stopped asking where they came from. Not because you didn’t care— because you knew he’d tell you if he could.

You joked that you were his unofficial dispatcher. He joked that you were the only one keeping him alive. It was good. Better than good, most nights. You were steady, sharp, present in a way that grounded him even on the worst days. You kept him tethered.

But even the strongest anchor can’t keep something from drifting if the pull is strong enough. It had been building.

After a particularly brutal stretch— three back-to-back nights of Daredevil coming home bleeding and bruised, a botched sting, a kid who didn’t make it— Matt changed.

He got quieter. Tense. He stopped calling when he was out late. Stopped dropping by your place after patrols. Stopped letting you patch him up. When you showed up with food one night and found his apartment dark, he didn’t even text to say thanks. You let it go. Once. Twice. Then you stopped letting it go.

It was almost midnight. The city was soft and silver around you, the streetlamps humming like old secrets. You’d waited for him— on the pavement outside the office, case files abandoned inside, takeout cold and forgotten. When he finally turned the corner, hoodie up, bruised along the cheekbone, your blood was already simmering.

You stood before he could say anything.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

Matt paused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit,” you said. “You’ve been dodging me for weeks. You come back barely stitched together, and suddenly I’m a stranger? What, I only exist when you need to be sewn back together?”

“You knew what you were getting into.”

That hit harder than it should’ve.

You crossed your arms. “I told you I could handle this. That I was here because I wanted to be. You don’t get to push me out every time things get hard.”

Matt’s jaw tightened. “I never asked for your help.”

You stared at him. “Wow.”

“I didn’t,” he said, voice lower now. “You inserted yourself. You wanted this. You stayed.”

“Because I care about you, you idiot,” you said incredulously.

He looked away. “If this isn’t working for you—”

“Don’t,” you warned. “Don’t turn this around on me.”

“You don’t have to stay.”

You flinched. “So that’s it? You’re just giving me an out?”

“I’m saying,” he said, sharp now, “if you don’t want to keep doing this, you can stop. I’m not going to hold you here.”

Your chest burned. “Right. Got it. Loud and clear, Murdock.”

“Good. Glad we're on the same page.”

"Fine."

“Fine.”

You turned. He turned. The silence between your retreating footsteps felt louder than anything either of you had said.

You made it maybe ten steps before you turned on your heel. At the same time, Matt doubled back from the other end of the block. You both stopped mid-step.

“This is stupid,” you said.

“I know,” he echoed.

You walked back to each other like it hurt to be apart even for that long. Stopped just a few feet shy of touching.

Matt ran a hand through his hair, exhaling hard. Then, after a second— calmer now, but still visibly unraveling— he said, “You do realize what’s going on, right?”

You tilted your head. “You mean us shouting at each other in the middle of the street like deranged theatre kids?”

He gave you that small, crooked smile, the one he only let slip when it was just you. “I mean this,” he said, gesturing to the space in between you.

A beat. Then you laughed, soft and breathless. “Oh yeah. For two Ivy-educated lawyers, we are extremely oblivious people.”

“Painfully,” Matt said, taking one slow step closer. “Embarrassingly.”

You looked up at him, heart thudding. “Do we keep pretending? Or...”

“I don’t want to.”

“Oh, thank god,” you whispered.

And then he kissed you.

It wasn’t hesitant. Wasn’t cautious. It was months of built-up tension, late nights, shared space, quiet devotion, and almosts finally snapping into something real. His hands cupped your face. Yours gripped the front of his jacket. He kissed you like he’d been waiting for permission— and now that he had it, he wasn’t wasting time.

Before you could breathe, your back hit the wall. The brick was cool, sharp against your spine— nothing compared to the heat of him. His mouth crashed into yours, rough and hungry, all the restraint he’d held onto suddenly gone.

You gasped, and that was all he needed. His body pressed flush against yours, arm braced beside your head. One hand slid down, catching your waist and holding you there like he wasn’t letting go anytime soon. You kissed him back just as fiercely, your fingers threading into his hair, tugging. That made him groan— low and quiet and right against your lips.

The kiss deepened— messier, more desperate. He was everywhere. Warm mouth, steady grip, chest rising hard against yours. You barely registered the moment your hand slipped beneath his jacket, over the fabric of his shirt, just needing to feel something more. When you finally pulled back— barely— your forehead rested against his.

“That was…” you started, still catching your breath.

Matt laughed, voice rough and low. “Yeah. That was.”

You smiled, eyes fluttering shut for a second. “We are going to be so annoying now.”

He grinned, thumb brushing along your jaw. “We already were.”

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