my bookmarks

You looked down, in the firelight of the bonfire, your hands were stained as red as the deepest embers, the blood dripping onto the harsh earth below your feet. Your eyes burned with hot tears, your gaze tearing away from your hands as a rippling growl tore through the clearing.

Somehow, knowing what you'd find, you tried to keep your eyes fixed to the earth- even as an invisible hand seemed to pull your gaze up and up. Your body shook, your breath hitched, staring back at you were the ochre eyes of a monster. You knew those eyes, didn't you?

The creature lunged, the snap of jaws echoed, your scream snuffed out like the last candle before the darkness of eternal slumber took you.

You woke with a jolt, a sheen of sweat clinging to your skin.

"Another bad dream?" Your boyfriend asked from the doorway.

It took you a moment to blink away the terror of your death. Even if it had only been a dream. "Wha- Oh. Yeah. I guess." You muttered.

He walked across your tiny loft floor to your side of the bed, handing you a luke warm cup of coffee. "Y/n you should really see someone about these dreams." He said. That patronizing lilt to his words that made your insides boil.

You scowled at him. "They're not worth therapy. It's just a nightmare."

He turned with a shrug, taking a swig of his hot coffee. "Yeah. The same nightmare every night. That's definitely not worth a visit to a shrink."

You ran a tired hand over your face. "Just drop it please." You sighed as you set your untouched coffee down on the nightstand.

He rolled his eyes at you and padded over to the bed again. Grabbing you by your chin, he kissed you - it was about as romantic as making out with a wall. He broke away from you, all smiles and zero charm. "I'm gonna take a shower babe. Make sure you're pretty for the banquet tonight m'kay?" He called over his shoulder.

You watched him go, your face contorted in irritation. As you heard the faucet burst to life, you flopped back against the mattress with a groan. Praying with all your might that this day would just be over already.

"I mean... It can't get worse than this right?" You asked aloud to no-one in particular.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The event hall was spectacular. Chandeliers that seemed to hang down in crystalline spirals for acres glitered above your head. The soft glow of candlelight swayed seductively between sauntering couples on the dance floor.

You raised your champagne flute to your ruby-red lips, your eyes scanning the crowd for anything more interesting than waiting for your boyfriend who'd apparently flaked on you at the last minute. You gleaned this from the series of illiterate texts that you watched blow up your phone from where it sat on the bar counter.

"Bad night?" An enticingly rich British accent asked from beside you.

"Try bad year." You laughed mirthlessly as your gaze flickered to your companion. He was handsome, you'd give him that, in a rugged sort of way that you bet left most girls begging for more. You were undecided as you let your eyes shamlessly wander his figure.

From the stubble that kissed his hard jaw, to his plush pink lips, to his mesmerizing eyes. Eyes so familiar it stultified you mid-sip. "Uh, do I know you?" You asked dumbly, your jaw slackened with surprise.

He seemed equally as startled because it took him a beat to reply. "No. You most certainly don't. Excuse me." He brushed past you, his hand grazing your skin for only a moment, but that was all it took.

Suddenly hundreds of memories flooded into your vision like someone had burst a dam wall of time and space in the epicenter of your brain. You keeled over, the pain unbearable; as images of medieval tents on hot summer days - to brutal winters in French court spun around your consciousness like a whirlpool of the past.

You felt a hand at your shoulder, your one life line in an ocean of misery. "What..." You choked, your vision darkening at the edges. You turned, catching his dark expression as you faded into blackness. "Klaus?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Louisiana was hot this time of year. New Orleans? Worse. The humidity nawed at your skin like tiny flecks of flame. The only reason you knew you were in New Orleans is because you heard it before you saw it. The fast approaching night life.

Blearily, you blinked your eyes open, the setting sun burning your vision as it cast its rays down on you from the open french doors onto a balcony.

Lifting your head slightly - even though it felt like heaving a bag of stones - you watched a figure pace, his shoulders set in tension as he listened to another voice you couldn't see.

"Niklaus." The voice soothed, even tempered and icy, like the rising of the tide before an epic tsunami. "To repeat the mistakes of the past is one thing. To bring the girl here borders on imbecilic." The voice continued.

"Do not lecture me on poor choices brother. We both know how that ended the last time you told me to stay away from her." The pacing man yelled. Though you couldn't see his face, you watched the way the vein in his neck bugged in his tantrum. You didn't know why, but the sight made you smile. It was almost like you were used to his outbursts.

You recoiled at yourself, the thought surprising you. How could you know that?

"Brother," The voice spoke again, louder this time to outmatch his pacing opponents rage. "I do not believe I have to remind you what has become of that poor girl lying on your bed each time you rap her up in our lives." The voice warned, its coolness sending a shiver you didn't understand running down your spine.

There was a beat. A moment where the very air seemed to charge with the weight of some unspoken decision, yet to be made.

"She remembers." The figure whispered. His shoulders slackening with what seemed to be relief as the poisonous words finally lifted from the darkest parts of his soul.

The voice scoffed instantaneously. "Do not fool yourself Niklaus. That is impossible."

The figure righted himself, determined. "I heard her Elijah. Before she collapsed. She recognized me. I heard her." He demanded. Seeming more convinced with every word.

The silence was almost as loud as your pounding headache.

"If that is true..." The voice, Elijah, trailed off.

"It is true." His brother spat.

"... If that is true, then this may be what we have been waiting for." Elijah finished. His words like the last call to the gallows.

Despite the pain, the effort and the fear of getting caught, slowly you got off the bed. Tip-toeing over the creaky floor boards.

The door, paint-chipped and effortlessly antique was almost close enough to touch when, creeeeakkkk. The floor beneath you cried out in the same agony you were hopelessly trying to keep bottled up.

"She is awake." Elijah said.

You barely had time to turn around before you felt the gust of wind sweeping you off your feet. The two men towered above you, Niklaus at your side in a heartbeat.

"Can you stand?" He asked, attentive in a way you couldn't comprehend.

"Must you coddle her?" Elijah, his sharp suit glistening in the twilight almost as dangerously as his eyes. Fixed to yours.

Ignoring his brother, the man at your side asked again, more forcefully this time, "Can you stand, love?"

"I think so. Can you two explain why you've kidnapped me?" You deadpan, the seriousness of your predicament not quite landing as you watch these two very strange men share a look.

"Think of it more as a, relocation. " Elijah offered, any sense of humor awry.

" Okay." You turned to Klaus, somebody you felt could tell you something logical. "Why have I been relocated 1000 miles from a banquet in DC to Goddamn Louisiana?" You shouted, your heart beating a mile a minute the longer you thought about how crazy your life had become in a matter of seconds.

"It's- complicated." Was all she was afforded.

"What my brother means to say is that we might be wise to appraise you of your situation before we divulge any further information." Elijah continued, shooting a warning glare at his brother.

"Yes. Right. Of course, because that makes sense." You huffed, standing shakily, your legs feeling like jelly beneath you. "So let me take a gander, and you tell me if I'm appraised enough. Yeah? Okay, good."

You pointed a finger, "Firstly, I have probably what is the worst headache I've ever had in my life." You raised another finger as you continued to list,"Secondly, I've been kidnapped by two hoity-toity British idiots who seem to believe I'm some sort of Holy Grail." The vampire next to her, Klaus, she remembered, recoiled at that. "And finally, I had 1000 years of memories of the Mikaelsons and co. lazer-beamed into my brain, not 24 hours ago. So, moral of the story," You glared at the brothers. "I'm informed. Now talk."

"You know Niklaus." Elijah spoke in a practiced falsetto. "I think she remembers."

"Yes. Yes, I'd say she does." Klaus returned, equally stunned.

"Why don't we move this to the parlor room, Miss-" Elijah suggested.

"Y/n." You offered icily.

You allowed yourself to be led out the door and down the hall, not missing how Klaus seemed to wince as your name fell from your lips.

"Please. Sit." Elijah gestured to a stately arm chair as he poured a golden liquor, presumably scotch from a crystal decanter.

You sat, your nerves spiking with every creak of the old house and with every shadow you just missed out of the corner of your eye.

"Where, uh," You began as you scanned for any sign of your temper-tantrumed savior.

"Niklaus. But my brother prefers Klaus in these modern times." Elijah spoke cooly as he handed her the glass. She took it, careful for some reason to not touch his skin.

"Yeah. Klaus. Where did he go?" You asked.

"You must understand Miss Y/n, this is a very... difficult situation for him." You watched as he took the seat opposite you, his face neutral.

"No. I don't understand." You slammed your glass down on the side table. Your brows furrowing as you shot up and began pacing in front of an old marble fireplace. "Why do I remember having a different life. Lives, actually. Plural. A different name, a different body! That's crazy right? I mean that's the stuff you see on paranormal documentaries and, and ghost hunting shows."

Elijah, ever the composed gentleman, snorted. Covering his mouth with a pocketed handkerchief, as he too set his glass aside. "Y/n, as difficult as it may be to comprehend right now. You have lived before. And more importantly, your path, in every life, crosses with our family's."

"Yes. But why?" You pleaded, the lack of a straight answer driving you nuts.

"Because of a spell." You turned to find Klaus leaning against the door frame into the parlor room. Lurking. "Because of me." He paraded into the dimly lit room, waving his hands in the air as he snarled at his brother, "Isn't that what you wanted me to hold off telling her, brother? That our fates, our souls are bonded through eternity? That no matter her mortality, our paths always cross. One life to the next." He raged.

" Niklaus." Elijah warned.

"Wait, bonded? But how is that possible?" You ask, your head reeling.

"Our mother." The brothers said at the same time.

"Hang on boys. I'm already feeling like Alice down the rabbit hole here, and now you're telling me that this weird magical bond thing is just, family drama?! " You shriek, utter nonplussed.

"Yes." Klaus answers smugly.

"No." Elijah returns firmly.

You groan, your headache worsening a thousand fold.

"Leave us." Klaus commands, the distant crackle of fireworks somewhere filling the tense silence.

"I'll be retiring then. Y/n. Brother. " Elijah spits venomously as he skirts around Klaus, closing the parlor doors behind him.

In a flash, Klaus is beside you. "I know..." He begins, faltering as you look up at him. "I know how world-crashing this must be. I have had this conversation with you too many times to count over my existence. Of course, you never remembered."

"So why do I now?" You asked, your gaze beseeching. "What- What am I Klaus?"

"I don't know." He states simply. Truthfully, and you both know he could've lied just as easily. You turn away, the weight of his words crushing you.

You startle, your cheeks reddening as you feel his finger tip your chin towards him, his forest eyes beaming into yours. "But what I do know, is that you're the woman I love. No matter the face you wear, or the name you're born with. Time and time again, you are my soul."

Your eyes flutter closed as your lips brush agaisnt his, his hand wraps around the back of your neck, drawing you in for a kiss as world shattering as your day as been, only, with Klaus, it's as though he becomes your world. Consuming you as his tongue pries your lips apart, fighting for dominance as you whimper into his mouth.

He pulls you onto him, your hips stuttering over his as the electricity of his touch makes your stomach flip a hundred times in a second.

You take a handful of his soft curls, breaking apart for a moment, breathless and wanton. "I don't know what to do with that information." You confess, your voice sounding small and shaky to your ears.

He smiles up at you, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. "Do nothing." He smirks deviously.

"Except let me ravish you."

You swear your heart stops and then- brrring, brrring, brrring, brrring. "Is that my phone?" You ask.

Seeming incredibly upset, vaguely contended by the fact that you were still in his arms, he pulled your phone from his pocket and handed it begrudgingly to you.

"Who the bloody hell has to talk to you at this hour?" He demands, his tone seething.

You gape at the caller ID. Dumbstruck. "Uh, my boyfriend." You say numbly.

"Your what?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Masterlist

I know, I know. Sorry for the cliffhanger. If anybody cares I might do a part 2.

Also if anybody cares I may be persuaded to do a smutty version of this

Quaritch stares openly. His pupils blow wide when your scent drifts past. His tail tip twitches in slow, predatory arcs. Varang notices everything—the flare of his nostrils, the flex of his fingers around his rifle, the way he shifts like he’s already imagining you under him.

She smiles, sharp and dangerous.

As you pass near the throne, Varang’s hand snaps out and catches your wrist. You freeze, but you don’t pull away out of awe and respect of your Tsahík. The camp quiets instantly.

“Little ember,” Varang purrs with a voice made of smoke and gravel, “our Sky Demon guest can’t stop staring at you.”

You lift your chin, meeting her gaze fearlessly. “Many stare. Few dare touch.”

Varang laughs, low and approving. She pulls you closer until you stand between her thighs. One hand slides up the back of your leg, possessive and firm, while the other gestures toward Quaritch.

“Colonel,” she calls, eyes still locked on you. “Come closer. I want to see if your hunger matches your reputation.”

Quaritch rises, bare feet dusted in ash. He stalks forward, then stops beside the throne, his gaze rakes over you—breasts, waist, the way your thighs press together under Varang’s grip.

“Beautiful,” he drawls, his accent rough with that human edge. “And untouched. That’s a damn shame.”

Varang’s long fingers dig into your thigh, smearing red paint, hard enough to mark yet soft enough to tease. “She waits for something worthy,” she explains, smirking sharply. “Or someone.”

Quaritch steps closer, reaches out, and brushes the backs of his knuckles along your jaw. “You let her touch you,” he murmurs. “Do I get the same privilege?”

Varang answers for you. “Only if I allow it.”

She yanks you down suddenly, pulling you onto her lap so your back presses to her chest, legs straddling hers while the rest of the clan keeps watching and celebrating.

Your ass settles against the heat between her thighs. Varang grinds up once—slow, deliberate—drawing a sharp breath from you.

Quaritch’s tail lashes. His hand slides to your throat—not choking, just holding—thumb pressing over your racing pulse.

“Look at her,” Varang murmurs. “So pretty when she tries not to beg.”

You glare over your shoulder, but the effect vanishes when Varang’s hand slips between your thighs, fingers finding you already slick behind your loincloth. She circles your clit once, twice—teasing—then pushes two fingers inside without warning. You gasp, back arching, head falling against her shoulder.

“There it is,” Varang purrs against your ear. “My pretty little ember… dripping for both of us already.”

Quaritch leans in until his lips nearly brush yours. “Tell me, sweetheart,” he rasps. “You want us to share you tonight? Want me to fuck you while she holds you down? Want to feel us both inside you, stretching that tight little cunt until you scream?”

Your breath hitches. Varang curls her fingers deeper, stroking that spot that makes your thighs shake uncontrollably.

“Say yes,” Varang whispers with a sharp nip to your neck. “Make me proud.”

You look between them—Varang’s cruel smile, Quaritch’s predatory smirk—and the last thread of resistance snaps.

“Yes,” you mewl, breath coming out shaky.

Varang laughs, triumphant, and shoves you forward onto your hands and knees on the furs in front of the throne. Quaritch is already unbuckling his cargo pants, cock emerging from its sheath—long, thick, and slightly curved—as he kneels in front of you.

Varang sits on her haunches behind you, yanks your leather aside, spreads your slick cunt open with rough fingers while you press your face into the furs, shame and molten arousal waging war inside you.

It’s an honor to be chosen by the Tsahík herself; you just didn’t expect her to take you in front of the whole clan.

“Hold still, ember,” she hisses. “We ruin you tonight.”

Quaritch grabs your queue at the base of your skull—firm yet careful—lifting your face to guide your mouth to his length while Varang sinks her elegant fingers back inside you.

Your tail lashes with a soft snarl before you lick at his dripping slit, then suck at the thick tip.

Quaritch exhales through his teeth while the tendons in his neck flex. “There we go, sweetheart,” he groans shamelessly. “Atta girl.”

Two predators. One precious prize.

And you—beautiful, untouched, desired by the entire clan—finally claimed by the only two who are worthy.

The fire keeps burning low yet steady. The feast turns into a ritual of fertility and claiming.

And by dawn, every Mangkwan knows exactly who you belong to.

You were crouched beneath a leaning pillar of old wood, shoulders tight, attention fixed on something beyond Varang’s first glance. When she stepped forward, she saw it. Him. Sapok.

The elder’s breaths were slowing, the chest rising more from will than its usual habit. A man held together by tendon, and even those were loosening.

You lifted your gaze to her, a soft frown creasing your features.

“It’s time.”

Those two words carried the finality of the situation. The kind that meant a soul would not return through the roots of the Tree, not tonight, not ever. Time meant the moment Eywa reclaimed what was left—unless, as in Sapok’s case, He refused. 

Sapok had been split open long before his body began to fail—grief hollowing him when fire took his children, then his grandchildren, then the home his mothers grandmother had woven and built. Some wounds refused to close.

Grief had rotted him from the inside, until madness carved out his eyes with his own hands.

“I curse Eywa,” he’d spat at Varang once, voice shredded. “Do not let me return. Let my energy be mine, and mine alone.”

And she had promised.

Varang lowered herself beside you, knees against the soft earth. With deliberate care she drew her blades—curved shypers that caught what little light seeped through the smoke. Sapok could not see her, could not know whose hand would free him—but she swore his breath steadied, as if some part of him knew she was there.

She angled the blade.

Then she opened his throat.

With a second practiced motion, she severed his queue. The neural tendrils sparked with a frantic, chaotic flutter before collapsing.

Varang laid the queue against her hip, another to the collection.

“To the fires we will see you,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to the cooling skin of his brow, “and in the ash of your remains, we will carry you.”

You joined her in the ritual. Together you washed his body in ash, coating every wound, every ridge, every piece of him that grief had kept. You bound the flesh with cloth and quiet hands, sealing him for the journey he had chosen.

Tradition demanded quiet before the flames rose, and so you held your breath. Thinking.

Varang leaned in first (she always did) and brushed a soft kiss to the curve of your neck. You shifted, shy. “Not now,” you muttered.

But she only hummed and wrapped an arm around your waist anyway.

“Why not?” she whispered against your skin. “Life should be savored when death sits so close, no?”

You shot her a look. Annoying. So annoying. You gathered your tools, bowls—your things, and packed them into a hollowed gourd. “Do not be like this.”

One ear flicked. “Like what?”

“Crude,” you snapped.

Varang smiled. She always smiled. It never meant anything except whatever she wanted it to.

“You’re angry,” she said. She caught your hand and pressed her mouth to each knuckle, slow, though her eyes never left yours. “Tell me. What have I done?”

Your lips thinned. Your tail gave you away.

“The sky-person,” you grumbled. “The one with the strange voice and the uglier face.”

Varang paused. And for the first time, her smile shifted into something fond. Now that angered you. You pulled your hand away and turned, jaw tight.

“Oh. Him?” she said at last. “Miles Quaritch.”

She reached for you again, palms gliding up your forearms, barely touching. She tried to catch your eye again.

“Him?” you mimicked her airy tone. “Yes. Him.” With a sudden twitch to your tail you groaned. “Eywa preserve me. I will not have a lovers quarrel beside Sapok’s dead body.”

“He would laugh,” she offered lightly.

You hissed and shoved her back with a flat hand. She pouted, and somehow that made it worse. “I need to do some things.”

You slipped out of the hut, brushing past the hanging beads. Of course she followed. Her stride matched yours.

“That is very vague, Y/n,” she said, tone almost sing-song.

You turned your head back, hands failing about. “Oh that's very vague?! You-”

You suddenly hit someone's chest. “Oh!”

Your eyes looked up. Golden eyes, hair along the brows and a meatier, softer impact. Who else other then:

“Miles Quaritch.” You said his name clumsily. It was the demon language, English. But it earned something of a smile from him. Like Varangs, cocky. Unlike Varangs, surprisingly warm.

“Watch where you’re going, cupcake.”

You barely understood him. Varang seemed to, though. Her demeanor changed, she tilted her head. “Demon.” She briefed a nod, and he tilted his head back, gesturing to a nearby Yurt.

“We got some things to discuss.” He grumbled.

Varang soothed a hum, before gently taking a strand of your hair and pinching it. “I’ll see you in the evening.”

You watched as she led him, and glared at Miles Quaritch, who eyed you before following her.

Great.

.

.

.

You had seen death stare at you.

It wore a woman’s face—pleasant, almost gentle. Golden-amber eyes that caught the light, hatred folded neatly behind patient lips. Black against black: wax-dark hair braided with bones of past loves.

Death came as kisses pressed to your cheek, as queues offered in submission, heads bowed. Death had a name here.

Varang.

Quaritch was not death, but the feeling curled similar in your chest. It lodged beneath your ribs and dragged its way down your spine, coiling into your legs until instinct screamed. Move, idiot. Move until he catches you.

You stared at him as he stared at you, the bonfire crackling between. Varang had told you his story: human once, died, reborn na'vi. That's why the pair made sense together, you supposed—he'd crossed the threshold and returned, and if Varang was death itself, then he must be the one who guards her door. Gatekeeper. Guardian. Something worse.

Now the spirit would not stop looking.

You turned away first, fixing your attention anywhere but him. Your mouth pulled into a soft pout as you drank from the skull-cup—nectar cut with water. Too sweet, you felt your teeth ache.

“Your pet has a staring problem.” You grumbled. 

Varang lifted an eye, her smile widened, and she played with your beaded top. “He is curious.”

“He should be curious somewhere else.”

“Now, Y/N,” Varang chided softly, “do not be hostile.”

You almost laughed at that. Do not be hostile. When has Varang ever uttered such words?

You flickered back at him, and he winked. His lips quirked up at your sneer, too-perfect-teeth reflecting the orange of the fire. Like stained blood. Then he drank from his cup, and then lifted up.

You had actually flinched at the movement, cocked your head to Varang in slight panic, but she only laughed. He moved, settling heavy beside her. “Evenin’, girls.” He tipped his head in your direction. You scowled back. “Mhm, not so touchy huh?”

“She does not understand you, Quaritch.”

He paused, cup halfway to his mouth. "Huh." A beat, then that grin widened. "Well. Guess I oughta teach her. She'll be talkin' to human grunts soon enough."

Varang's grin widened. She glanced at you, and you felt the weight of her attention like a hand at your throat. "He says he will teach you the demon language, Y/n." You knew that tone. "Take it."

"But Varang—"

And there it was. 

The shift. The moment her eyes turned sharp and her smile crooked just enough to bare a hint of fang.

Your ears flattened. You looked at Quaritch—that stupid, shit-eating grin still plastered across his face—and swallowed every word clawing up your throat. Barely managed it. 

Varang's fingers—meanwhile, found your hip, she dug in hard enough that tomorrow you'd wear the shape of them in bruises and adorn them like a kiss. That’s all you could do, anyway. She wouldn’t allow for anything else.

You bowed your head before you could stop it, face twisting despite yourself.

"F-Fine."

You turned the glare on Quaritch instead. Poured every drop of frustration and helpless fury into it, let it burn there where Varang couldn't track it. Never at her. Never where she could see. She wouldn't forgive that.

Her grip released. She rose—graceful and already dismissing you. She shoved you toward him with one careless hand. The push sent you stumbling forward before you caught yourself with Quaritch’s bicep.

"She'll do it, Quaritch."

"Atta girl," he drawled around a mouthful of meat.

You hissed at him. “Teylupil,”

.

.

.

Quaritch was everything you'd imagined and worse—arrogant, obtuse, swaggering through life with the blissful ignorance of someone who’d never met a problem his fists couldn’t solve. Worst of all, though? The man was charming, and with the several weeks spent between you two… fond.

You'd never say it aloud. Eywa could strike you down first. His ego needed no more compliments, it was swollen enough to crowd a room. Yet there it was: he made you laugh.

"Aww, c'mon. Like this." His tongue curled with exaggerated precision. "Patient. Pati-eee-nt. Feel that? The tongue goes up, not back."

You mimicked the shape of his mouth, lips pulling awkwardly. "Pati-eee-nt."

A low chuckle rumbled from his chest. His palm landed twice against your thigh—approving pats. "That's right. Good job."

Your ears flicked traitorously forward. Heat crept beneath your skin as a smile tugged at the corners of your mouth. Varang had never been this patient, this rewarding. Good things from her meant extra morsels of food. But Quaritch kept a pocket full of those wrapped things—candy, he called them, and handed out those small, colorful spheres when you or another na’vi did something good. 

"Patiee-nt. Patiee-nt," you murmured again, testing it.

One brow arched. His mouth quirked. "You're picking up my accent. That's a Kansa's special right there."

"Accent?" The word felt strange on your tongue. Your grasp on this language remained amature at best. You frowned. "Accent... what?"

"What's an accent," he corrected, softening his tone. "What is an accent, you mean, doll."

You tipped your head forward, eyes wide, a question within the angle. Something in that expression pleased him—his thumb caught your chin, tugging playfully. "It's like... hm. Well, not everyone talks the way I do." A laugh escaped him, warm like the sun. "S'funny, actually. You and the other Na'vi pickin’ up my way of speaking. All of you runnin’ around sounding like cowboys. The guys'll lose their minds if they hear you."

"Funny." You paused, tail curling uncertainly behind you. "Not... normal?"

He nodded, something careful entering his expression. "You ever listen to Wainfleet talk?"

"Bald one?"

Quaritch barked a laugh. “Yeah, the bald one. But don't let him hear you say that or he'll yank your tail."

That drew a smile, even if you struggled processing the words.

"Speak—" your tongue was slow and clumsy against the language. "—sloowwwlly." You tapped at your flickering ears. "Hear. Is trying to."

He hummed, tilting his head in consideration. "Yeah, that's right. Alright, I think that's done for the day." He lifted himself up and carefully reached for your hand.

The fourth finger still felt strange against your palm—foreign in the way the knuckle was twice your size. But it was nice, too. Bigger than any of the other males in your clan. No wonder Varang liked holding it. She always liked different.

"You're a quick learner, cupcake. Better than I ever was learnin' Na'vi." His voice carried some old frustration. "My boy, Spider—he tried getting it through my thick skull. An' I could barely string a sentence together."

"Spider. Son." You gave a distant nod. Varang had mentioned him once. He had a son. Wanted him back. No harm to come to him, you remembered that much.

"Mhm." His gaze drifted somewhere past your shoulder, through the woven walls to a place you couldn't follow. For once the mask of bravado slipped, and beneath it was grief of missing someone.

You didn’t really care. That was his business. And yours…

Your lower lip jutted forward in a small pout. Hand reaching out, expectant.

That snapped him back. The grin returned, easier now, and he dug into his cargo pants before pulling out the small bag. "You really like Skittles, huh?" He poured a few into his palm, fingers sorting through the colors before plucking out the red ones. You seemed to really like those. "There you go, little lady."

The taste was different from anything on Pandora, but you liked it. "Mh, good." You nodded. You immediately plopped them into your mouth and chewed. Yum.

He watched you for a long moment—longer than necessary—then bit his lower lip and reached over to tug gently at your cheek. "You're the cutest of the bunch, y'know that? Not so bad when you're like this." His thumb brushed the edge of your jaw, voice dropping quieter. "No wonder Varang keeps you around."

"She is, isn't she."

Varang sauntered through. Her body shifted like the dancing of flame, but you knew her enough. You saw her for the fire, not the warmth. You bowed your head and drew your shoulders in. Small gestures for necessary ones.

Varang's mouth was a thin, bloodless line—aimed directly at Quaritch.

She stepped to your side and pressed her hip against yours. You felt the decorative bones pricking your side, stabbing your soft skin. The contact pinned you there while her gaze carved into him. "I told you to teach her."

"And what am I doing?" Quaritch's head canted, dismissive. He wasn't the yielding type.

“Making her weak.”

He scoffed—an amused sound that bubbled into genuine exasperation. His hand found your forearm. “Hm? And how am I makin’ her weak, buttercup?”

Varang hissed.

That surprised you both. 

She hauled you back, fingers tight enough to bruise. "You may see. Not touch." Then she stepped closer to him, and the tension in her shoulders melted into something silk-smooth. Run, Quaritch. You tried telling him with your eyes. You are prey. But Varang had a way about her, captivating.

"Besides," Varang murmured, trailing one finger along the freckles of his throat, "you already have me." her lips ghosted over his pulse, and her fingers trailed down to cup the front of his pants. He hissed, a different one—a pleased one. "Do well to remember that."

She turned then, and the sultriness drained from her the moment her back faced him. Her hands found your arm again and you winced as she dragged you forward. 

You cast one glance back at Quaritch. His face had gone stony.

Her grip on your arm tightened and you winced, allowed yourself to be turned.

"Varang—" you began, stumbling to keep pace.

She didn’t slow. She dragged you into her yurt, shoving you down onto the woven mat with a force that knocked the breath from your lungs. Firelight dnced along the walls, casting her in molten gold as she paced before you.

You breathed slowly, words aching to come, yet withheld under her stare.

She paced forward, steady. You lowered your head, looking anywhere but her—the woven floor, the yurt’s wooden beams, the way ash fell between the light. Her fingers found your chin, and forced your face upward. "See me."

You did. You looked up. "I... I do see you."

That made her calm, just a bit. Her heart gentled and her expression softened into something sweet. She tilted her head, studying you with the intensity of someone memorizing a dying lover, before pressing a kiss against your lips. Her eyes never shut. They watched for your reaction, golden and unblinking, and you knew exactly which one to give.

You closed your own eyes, kissing her back, hands gripping her shoulders. Warmth bloomed where skin met skin—hers fever-hot, yours clammy. "You make me weak," she finally whispered against your mouth.

That gave you pause. She either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Varang." You tilted your head up, felt her lips brush underneath your jaw, trailing heat. Your eyes felt particularly hazy—fatigue, pain, something else entirely. She slowly brought her own queue over her shoulder, and your eyes caught the restrictive tie wrapped around the tendrils.

You glanced, freckles flashing in slight embarrassment. "R-Right now...?"

She gave a nod.

You brought your own queue forward with trembling fingers, a headache already forming. She let the tendrils bond together. The both of you shuddered. Her anger crashed over you first—the frequent memory of the volcano. The screams of her mother, the passive voice of her father: “If it is Eywa’s will, Varang… be like your sister, Varang.” Then her hate followed, the taste of salt and rock.

But underneath it lay something girlishly needy, embarrassingly seeking. A vulnerability she showed no one else. Only you were allowed such a look into her soul.

"Hm."

She walked backward then, pulling you with her until she hit the hammock. It swayed under the combined weight as she settled, then drew you into her lap, tugging at your hair. “Shhh,” She cooed.

Varang pressed a hand underneath the wrapping of your top, lifting it to kiss the skin there. You’d pierce your nipples months ago, and the bone that settled between the nubs made her mouth water. “Such fear,” she whispered against your damp skin. “But you love me. I see it. I know it.”

She licked a broad wet stripe across the sensitive areola, then drew the tight bud between her mouth, swirling her tongue around the piercing and faintly tugged. 

You whined, frowning, fingers finding the ridges of her collarbone. "You always question it."

"Naturally." She nuzzled your shoulder, breathing in the ash still clinging to your skin. Her lips switched to its twin, finally fluttering her eyes close to gently suck, saliva coating your breasts. You grinded against her thigh, pressing your face against her shoulder. “Such a needy little thing, come—”

“Tsahik,”

Yepa stood where the privacy cloth was, eyes cast down. He knew better than to interrupt Varang when she kept you to herself. Her eyes sharpened, fingers pausing where they'd been toying with the piercing.  Heat crawled up your neck. You looked away, cheeks burning. 

"Speak." She said.

Her hand drifted lower, tracing the edge of your loincloth, circling just above your mound while her mouth pressed dizzying kisses along the curve of your cheek. "Forgive me, Tsahìk," Yepa murmured. "We've spotted a new caravan. The windtraders."

Varang exhaled through her nose. Her touch stilled. For one fleeting moment, she looked at you—something almost apologetic flickering behind her eyes.

Then it was gone.

You made a soft, plaintive sound, fingers curling around her wrist. "Stay." The word came out smaller than you meant it to, and you hated yourself for it. Varang despised weakness. You were weakness.

She pushed your hand away with her usual ease. "Others hunt the meat you eat, Y/n." She didn't look at you again, said it in a cooing tone that made it all the worse.

You rewrapped your chest with fumbling hands, tail lashing hard enough snap at the air. You shoved past Yepa without meeting his eyes, head bowed low.

Not fair. The thought curled bitter in your head. She could refuse you. You could never refuse her.

Around you, the clan stirred with new activity. Warriors readied their ikran, voices risingto prepare. Blades were sharpened, the new demon-weapons brandished with eager hands. 

You weren't allowed on raids. Varang forbade it.

So instead you sat on the edge of camp and kicked rocks, watching them disappear into the embers of the sun.

"You're not going?"

You froze mid-motion, glancing back.

Quaritch.

Your frown deepened.

"Varang angry," you said quietly. She’s angry, and doesn’t want you near me. Is what you meant to say. But how could you? He was an idiot. Or maybe it was you, for not knowing how to say it.

You moved to walk past him, but his hand caught your shoulder—firm, four fingers pressing and encompassing most of it.

"So?" He snorted. "She throws a hissy fit and what? Law doesn't apply to me."

They do. Your eyes narrowed. You are one of us now. They apply.

But you didn't say it. Instead, you sighed and looked away, fingers tapping absently against the skin where your heart was underneath. "I…" You hesitated. "Weak. Not strong. Varang worry."

A pause.

"Don't tell," you grumbled.

Quaritch gave a slow nod, tail tracing a lazy arc. He leaned forward, weight shifting onto the balls of his feet. "You ever use a gun?"

You blinked. "Gun…?"

He lifted one of those compact metal bows from his holster, blocky and compact—nothing like the carved wood your people used. "Yeah. A gun. You've seen Varang use it." He jerked his chin toward the distant yurts. "Come on. I'll show you. Just don't blow my tail off."

Your gaze drifted to Varang's yurt, then skyward where the war party had departed hours ago, her Ska'avum among them. She'd be gone until dusk at least. You pressed your lips together.

"Yes. Okay."

.

.

.

The first shot made you jump, ears pressing flat against your head.

"Yeah! Booyah!" Quaritch's hands landed on your shoulders, shaking hard into your frame. "Clear damn shot. You're a natural at this, kid."

He thrust his palm upward, some human gesture you'd never seen before. 

You stared at it, confused.

Then lifted yours suspiciously, mirroring the angle.

His hand met yours with a sharp smack.

"High-five. Well—high-four," he amended, grinning wide enough to show molars. His palm found your spine, a push that was encouraging and commanding. "Come on. Again. Let's see if it was a fluke."

He was close now. Close enough that if Varang were here, if she saw—

You swallowed the thought. No. This isn't about Varang.

You adjusted your stance the way he'd shown you: shoulders angled, weight forward, breath held. The target swam into focus. You squeezed.

Bullseye.

Your tail betrayed you, wagging before you could stop it—then his hand cracked against your ass and you squealed. "Ngh!" The hiss tore from your throat, glaring at him. You almost forgot he was an asshole first, friend second.

He was already moving past you, plucking the gun from your slack grip. "And she calls you weak." A scoff.  He studied the target, grinning like some prideful mentor. "Feel pretty powerful, huh?"

You nodded slowly, studying the cluster of holes punched through the painted target. When you glanced back, he was counting the rounds with his usual efficiency.

"Think we'll add firearms to your training rotation." He didn't look up. "No point wasting time on that bow sissy-shit when you've got real stopping power available."

You stepped closer, watching his hands work. "What doing?"

"What are you doing," he corrected. "Grammar, kid. Makes me sound like some kind of assh-shat teacher." He whistled. "Anyway, I’m cleanin’ and reassembling. Maintenance. All this volcanic shit clogs the mechanisms. Messes with the equipment."

This was news to you. You paused.  "Varang…knows?"

The question landed betwene you two.

His lips peeled back—too much teeth. "Nah." He didn't look up. "Keep it that way."

A secret. You had a secret now. The thought bloomed warm, and Quaritch must have seen it written plain across your face because he chuckled, low and knowing. "You're a little minx, aren't'cha?"

You didn't know what that was, but nodded anyway.

He dug into his pockets again, fingers closing around the crinkled bag. Your hand shot out before you could think to stop it, palm up, giddy. 

He caught your wrist to steady it—the tips of his fingers padded in callouses. “You’re spoiled, you know that?” He shook the bag near your ear, grinning. "Never had much of a sweet tooth myself. Spider did, though." A pause. His jaw worked. "I traded my good socks for this."

The silence came. Then he pressed the entire bag into your palm, closing your fingers around it like it was something precious.

"Just keep it." It came out rough, almost embarrassed. "And don’t let the others see." He looked away.

You stared at the bag. Bright red plastic stamped with the strange alien letters from his world. Red. Yellow. Orange. Green. Purple. You traced each color with your eyes before lifting your gaze back at him.

You didn't know what you were thinking.

You kissed his cheek.

Quaritch actually stumbled back half a step. His ears snapped forward, eyes gone wide and startled as a spooked hexapede's. Before he could recover, you pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth. You felt reckless, daring. The power that Varang held, you wield it now.

You skittered backward, clutching the candy to your chest, a shy smile blooming despite yourself.

"Thank you, Quaritch," you whispered.

His lips quirked, just a bit. He tilted his head back, pushed air between his teeth in a low whistle that might've been a laugh. "Yeah," he muttered, but you think it was more to himself than you. "Yeah, alright."

You left then, the bag pressed tight against your chest, tail swaying in wide arcs all the way back to the yurt.

Another secret.

.

.

.

Things were different now. You felt different, you supposed.

This shared secret between you and Quaritch had festered into something physical. It lived in the space between breaths, in the pause before he spoke your name.

And Quaritch? Quaritch was all physical.

You couldn't walk past him without a slap to the rear or a pinch to your side, something too boyish for a man his size (and his age, as you liked to remind him). But there it was anyway, that grin splitting his face, the wink that followed. "That's it, baby girl." The words dripped easy, thick as the molasses you once tasted.

The lessons were no different. Or rather—no different in how he touched you now. Instead of sweet candy he'd nudge your lips apart and kiss.

"Say it. Patient."

"Patient."

Quaritch just grinned against your mouth. "Still got that accent. It's cute." Your eyes fluttered shut. You licked away the chapness of his lips, tasted salt and something faintly bitter.

Evening meals were distant, of course. Formal. When Varang sat beside you, eating whatever meal she'd presented—she’d present a kuru, sometimes several, gifts of power and affection—you'd accept with the usual grace. The usual smiles.

And later, after you'd ignored him through dinner and feigned disinterest, Quaritch would return. That all-too-easy smile waiting for you in the dark.

Varang wouldn't know. You were happy with that.

"Stop moving," you grumbled.

You painted the whites and reds against his face in careful strokes, slapping his hands when they wandered.

"It's damn cold," he hissed. But he remained still, huffing through his nose. The pigment was thick, it had to be. Smelling just a bit of crushed minerals, rendered fat, and berries. You had to change the recipe for him, he sweat too much and smeared it everywhere—too impatient to let it dry.

You rolled your eyes. The two of you were tucked beneath the newly constructed yurt. Varang had moved everyone to the RDA base, and Quaritch had been more than eager to accommodate the clan into the facility's sprawling guts. If he wasn't with her, or the strange pink-skins, then he was with you.

"It's cold because you take too long." You swept your thumbs in parallel lines along his cheeks, forming a sharp V that cascaded down the bridge of his nose. The pattern was traditional, though your hand trembled slightly as you worked. 

You watched him through your lashes, heat creeping up your neck when you realized he'd been staring back. "What?"

Quaritch clicked his tongue, angling his head low. He pressed his cheek against your palm, the paint smudged just a bit, but you didn’t correct him. "Nothin'... just—sweet is all. You're sweet."

Your fingers drifted to your songcord almost unconsciously, tracing the amber bead you'd added most recently. Inside, suspended in golden resin, a single red skittle.

"I didn't think you'd be so sappy," you murmured, a smile tugging at your mouth.

"Sappy? Now where'd you learn that word?"

"Lyle." You said innocently. “The bald one."

Quaritch grinned, and his hand found your back—thumb pressing the base of your tail. "Course it was. The bastard—"

"Do you think I am a fool?"

Your tail went rigid mid-sway, ears swiveling before the rest of you caught up. You turned, careful, already knowing what you'd find.

Varang stood at the threshold, stripped of her usual paint and accessories. She looked exactly as she had when you were both girls and the forest still held its green—Vulnerable.

"Varang," you started, placating. "We were almost—"

A hiss tore from her throat. Her nose wrinkled, lips peeling back from her teeth. "Do not." She lifted one hand, fingers curling through the air in a white-knuckled clench.

You'd never seen her this furious. Not even since—

Your ears flattened against your skull.

"You do not ask permission, sky-man." She began to circle Quaritch now, and her hands drifted to the twin buugeng blades strapped at her hips. 

Quaritch's expression didn't shift. If anything, it settled into something lazier. Bored, almost. He tracked her with his eyes, then let out a low chuckle that rumbled through his chest. "And when have you?"

He rose slowly, joints popping, and your handprint still blazed red across his cheek.

Varang faltered as she eyed the paint. For just a heartbeat—her brows pinched into something wounded—but then she shook her head, and the mask slammed back into place.

"Seems to me, cupcake," Quaritch drawled, stepping into her space, "that you and I are too similar."

His gaze slid to you.

Then his hands found Varang's shoulders, turning her to face you instead. "She don't seem too concerned." His voice dropped rough, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. "And I bet she'd take both of us sweetly. Hm?"

Varang stared. Her expression smoothed into something unreadable, eerily calm, yellow eyes locked on yours.

"Have you two bonded?"

Your stomach dropped. "No. Varang, we—"

"Nah." Quaritch's answer came quicker than yours, easier. "We haven't. You can keep that if you want." His lips grazed the curve of Varang's neck, breath hot against the delicate skin there. His hands slid lower, palms molding to her waist, then dipping to the swell of her hips. "If it makes you feel special."

He grinned.

Varang twisted free in one fluid motion, closing the distance between you in two strides. Her hand fisted in your hair, dragging you close enough that you could see every fleck of amber in her yellow eyes. "You smell like him."

Then she kissed you.

Hard. 

Her canines caught your lower lip, tugging until you tasted copper. A sound escaped you, swallowed just before it turned pitiful..

Behind you, Quaritch shifted closer. You couldn't see him, but you felt the heat of him, the broad wall of his chest almost brushing your shoulder blades. His hand came down heavy on the curve of your ass, grabbing an absolute fistful.

And you, you felt multiple hands now. Varang's fingers worked the braided top, peeling it free until your breasts were bare beneath her palms. They bounced just a bit, purple nipples perking. Behind you, Quaritch's thumbs traced the curve of your ass before lifting the weight of each cheek. He let them plop down, and groaned.

"Fuck," he muttered, voice dropping to gravel. "Won't you look at that." His knuckles grazed the stripes that contoured around the flesh, mesmerized.

Miles…" You turned your head, the syllable half-formed. Instinct seeked his face, but Varang's fist caught your braids and wrenched you back. 

Her teeth found your lower lip.

"Not at him." The growl rumbled against your mouth. "Me."

Quaritch's laugh was low, almost lazy. "Think she likes me better. I ain't so punishing." His palm cracked against your rear—only once, but something purple was already forming. "Say my name again, doll."

"Miles—" But Varang swallowed it, mouth sealing over yours, and she shot him a look that could've drawn blood.

"You ain't playing fair," He had that smile, you knew he did even if you couldn’t see it.

Both hands rose to cradle your jaw, now. Thumbs stroking the jaw where tension pooled. She pressed kisses all over—the corner of your lips, the hollow of your throat, the slope of your shoulder where your scent glands were located. Marking you with her own scent.

"If you can only win by fairness," she whispered, lips brushing your shoulders "you are no true warrior."

Then she kissed you again

Quaritch's mouth twitched. Without warning, he hauled you back against him, fingers sinking into your hips, grinding you into the hard line of his pelvis. "So you wanna play like that?"

Varang pulled back with a hiss, chest rising. She looked at you—just once—then stepped forward. She wore seduction in her hips now, curling her lips, tasting her skin. "Only if you think yourself capable."

"Hm. Challenge accepted." His attention dropped to your chest, dismissive for just a moment before he took another look. He pinched a nub. "Fuck, baby girl. You had these the whole time?"

He flicked the other with his thumb, feeling the bone piercing. Your body jerked, a gasp wriggling out. “O-Oh…” His mouth went lower, descending a hot trail while his hands lazily hooked your loincloth to the side. His calloused fingers found your clit, the rough pad of his thumb circling.

"Miles, please…" Your head fell forward, brows pinching together, and the sound that left you was barely coherent.

Before you, Varang sank to her knees.

You'd never seen her like this—all that fierce pride folded into something softer, reflective of her soul. Her palms smoothed up your thighs, reverent. When she looked up at you through dark lashes, blinking slow, you blushed.

“You beg for him,” She undid your loincloth properly now, throwing it over her shoulder to the fire nearby. “Now you will beg for me” She simply lowered her mouth and licked—a long, flat, possessive stripe from your entrance to your clit, pushing Quaritch’s thumb aside with the force of it. 

He only grunted. His fingers traced your ribs, mapping each curve, each rise of skin. Up, then down. Feeling. Always feeling. He nudged your legs apart. Varang needed room, afterall.

She took it.

Varang nudged her face, nuzzling the purple flesh and mouthing your pussy. Suckling the flesh. When she looked up, her eyes were hazy with peace—and if you dared to call it—love. You watched her tail sway behind her. A soft huff escaped you.

She spread your pretty pussy lips with her thumbs, then spat. You watched the silver strand descend, sliding down your slit in complete arousal.

“So pretty,” she cooed. “You like this, yes?”

Her finger brisked along the opening, pinching your folds together. They were undeniably swollen, plump. She always liked how engorged they became when you were aroused. Like a dumpling. She thought.

She pressed one fingertip to the left lip, and watched it bounce back. “Varang.” You pushed your hips forward, pouting.

Both chuckled. “What did I say?” Quaritch mused. “Spoiled. Absolutely spoiled.”

He lifted you—just slightly—and chucked his loincloth aside. You glanced down.

Your mind emptied of everything but his cock.

Your hands flew to his forearms, fingers digging into the muscle there just as your legs kicked in a brief instinctive pedal. “Wait—wait!”

He went still, swallowing. “Somethin’ the matter?” He glanced over your shoulder to look at Varang, who now leaned back on her hands, head cocked into something teasing.

He settled you on his thick thigh instead, tracing numbers over your stomach. 

You dragged your gaze back down, helpless. It was… big. Long, thick, veined with ridges that made your mouth water and your lips tremble all the same. The head was a broad, blunt crown, flushed a deep, violent purple, and below, his balls were heavy and full. 

A low, involuntary sound escaped you as you gave a tiny, shameful shuffle, the slick heat of you grinding against the muscle of his thigh. You bit your lower lip until you tasted the copper hint of blood.

“Well… it’s…”

“She’s never taken a man.” Varang’s murmur was matter-of-fact. Her eyes shifted to you, her smile softening.

For once, he seemed surprised. “What? But you and her have—”

“I have never allowed a man to touch her.” Varang’s scoffed, as if the idea was ridiculous. “Any who’ve tried I’ve killed myself.” She leaned forward now, before going on a crawl. Her eyes, now heavy-lidded, inspected his cock. 

She bit her own plump lip, then leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to the tip. Her eyes fluttered shut as she did it, and above you, Quaritch hissed—no doubt pleased.

“It doesn’t bite, Y/n.” Varang stroked your trembling thigh, her touch gentling, before she turned back. She opened her mouth, suckling the broad head, wetting it thoroughly, then licked a long, torturous stripe from root to tip. The sound was obscenely wet.

“Ngh, fuck…” The groan was torn from Quaritch’s chest, you never thought you’d hear such a sound from him.

It felt right, strangely.

He buried his face against the junction of your neck and shoulder, his arms locking around you, binding you to the solid wall of his heat. His breaths came in uneven puffs. His large, warm hands splayed across your stomach, fingers pressing in rhythmic, almost absent-minded taps. “Not so much now…” he managed, voice strangled.

Varang only scoffed around him, the vibration earning another jerk of his hips. She bobbed her head, taking him deeper, her cheeks hollowing. “This is not for you,” she shot back, pulling off with a wet sound. “So weak. Cannot even last.”

That earned a guttural grunt. He fluttered his eyes open, the yellow within them hollowed by the black of his pupil.

He turned his head and bit the shell of your ear. “You listenin’ to her?” he hummed. You felt his pout. “So mean to me. But you ain’t, darlin’. You’re good. All good and sweet stuff.” He nuzzled, then placed a softer, startling kiss on your cheek.

You both watched, mesmerized, as Varang returned to her work. Your own hands reached and took what she couldn’t. He groaned then, thighs bouncing, dragging against your clit. 

“Ngh,” You whined.

Finally, she withdrew with a slick, echoing pop. She slowly unraveled her tongue, giving one last lon lick from across his shaft.

“There.” Her cooed. “Nice and wet for you to sit on, my beloved. A proper throne.”

“T_Thank you, Varang.”

You thought it was so strange, how someone like Quaritch could be so… gentle at times. His hands found the back of your knees, planting a squeeze against the delicate hinge. Then, he pressed your cheek against his.

“You ready, buttercup?”

You felt the vibration of his voice against your back, rumbling from his chest to your bones. He was like that, of course—all consuming.

Your eyes found themselves downward before you managed the smallest nod. “Y-Yes.”

It was all he needed. “Good girl.” The praise sent warmth all around your body. “Knew you could.” He pat your thighs.

Then he lifted. It was an easy strength he had, lifting as if it were nothing. He shuffled, bringing your knees to your breasts, cocking his head to the side to see. Instinctively, your hands flew behind you, fingers searching for the anchor of his shoulders.

You felt it first, the wet head jutting against your cunt. The broad slick head grazing your slit, parting it just enough to make it audible. Your pussy clenched, and you drew in your breath. 

“Shh… relax.” He cooed. “I won’t move until you want to.” 

He began the slow work of getting you used to it. His hips rolled in a shallow, circular tease, moving his hips so his dick coated itself with your slick. 

Then, with a controlled shift, he gathered both your knees in the vice of one formidable arm, the other hand wrapping around the base of his shaft. 

A groan, raw and deep, tore from his chest as he notched himself at your entrance.

Varang watched, transfixed at the sight.

He pushed.

The burn was instant.

Your eyes flew wide, seeing nothing and everything. “Big—it’s big, Miles—” You babbled, already trying to claw away.

He grunted, and his teeth found the end of your flickering ear.  “The more you squirm, the more it’ll hurt. Shh… shh, it’ll be okay, sugar.”

You tried to obey—really you did, but you couldn’t help the tears that flowed down in wet fat blobs. “Thats it.” He settled you down slow, inch by inch. “See? Its not so—Fuck!”

Varang pushed your hips down, and naturally you screamed, suddenly impaled. Miles, caught off guard, bucked upward with a startled hiss, his ears pinning flat against his skull. Varang’s giggle was a light, airy thing that quickly boiled over into a full-throated laugh.

“So weak,” she snarled, the sweetness evaporating. She patted your trembling thighs before pushing them wider, folding you open and giving herself a perfect, obscene view of either sex.

“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” Miles breathed.

Your belly was full of him. A distinct, visible bulge swelled at your lower tummy. Your cunt was stretched to a painful pink halo around the thick blue of his cock. You just breathed, glancing down—at her, at him.

“Ngh… j-just go…. Please, Miles.”

The words left you in spent sigh, so fragile.

He shuddered where he held you—and nodded. “Alright, buttercup.” He pressed a single fat kiss to the crown of your head, then moved.

Miles Quaritch did nothing by half-measures. His hands locked around the curve of your hips, fingers biting into flesh as he pulled you down and drove himself up. You swore you could feel the tip bristle against your cervix. 

“Oh… fuck.” The curse was low, a rumble you absorbed through your spine. “So fuckin’ tight.”

The force of him made your world condense to sensation. To the deep, stretching fullness, the slap of skin, the dizzying bounce of your breasts. One of his palms slid up to capture a peak—holding it to a squeeze.

And then, because he relished in it, he buried his face against your shoulder, his breath coming in delicious puffs. You could feel every stifled groan turn into a grunt, only to dissolve into a moan.

He likes this. He likes me. You blushed.

Varang shifted closer. Her cool fingers traced the sweat-slicked tension of his balls, cupping the heavy weight before her tongue swept over your clit.

You squealed. “Oh!” You pressed both hands over her head, eyes wide. 

“You look so pretty, Y/N,” she murmured, her voice a honeyed smoke against your fevered skin. “So perfect, split open like this.” You heard the rustle of her loincloth, the wet sound of her own fingers working between her legs, the slick rhythm of her thumb on her clit. 

Her moan was low, and the vibration of it against your most sensitive nerve sent pure pleasure tearing through your core.

“I love you—” The confession was a needy thing, meant for both, owned by neither. But they knew, you were sure they did. “I’m…ah…!”

Miles stole most of your speech, dragging your hips to meet his punishing pace, folding your body to fit him deeper. The angle was brutal, perfect. “Fuck. Gonna cum inside this pussy,” he growled. “Gonna flood you.”

Varang’s mouth left you with a soft pop. “No,” she hissed. “You will not.”

He laughed, somehow teasing and joyful…maybe a bit disbelieving. “Fuck yeah, I will. Gonna pump this tight cunt full. Gonna fuck a baby right into her.” He was sneering at her, a direct challenge even as his hips began to lose their rhythm, succumbing to a ragged, urgent pounding.

“Thrones do not talk, Quaritch.”

“T-This one does.” A stutter from him, a victory for her.

You could feel it. The ache of release. His balls drew up tight against you. Varang felt it too. Her hand tightened around a ball sack, vise-like warning.

He hissed. “Agh—Shit! Woman, don’t you—!”

And then you clenched. Not a voluntary act, your inner muscles clenching around him in a series of frantic, milking pulses. 

A broken yelp escaped you as you came, turning liquid and mindless around his huge dick. Now he was trapped: between Varang’s iron hand and your sweet, convulsing vice.

“Ngh—Christ!” His whole body locked, eyes rolling back in a spasm.

Varang moved, she wouldn’t allow him. She hauled you off him, a gasp torn from your lips at the sudden emptiness, and her fist was around him, stroking, pumping, directing. His release shot in thick, pearlescent ropes across her cheek, her chin, the proud arch of her neck.

She blinked slowly, unimpressed. A single, sticky strand dripped onto her collarbone. She caught it on a finger, flicked it away with utter disdain. “You will not get her pregnant,” she stated, and it was final.

Miles was a spent force, chest heaving. He let out a winded puff, then a low, sated laugh. One eye slid open, crinkled with admiration. “You’re evil,” he rasped, pulling your boneless form against his solid thigh. He nuzzled into your hair, both hands coming up to weigh your breasts, holding you to him as if claiming spoils. 

You on the other hand were dazed, trying to remember how to breathe.

Varang scoffed. “Well.” In one smooth motion, she took your wrists, pulling you from Mile’s slackened grip toward her. He yielded with a grunt, shifting heavily on the mat, already feeling exhaustion in his bones.

“Our turn,” Varang said. And she smiled, a true sweet thing.

You blinked. “...Uh… What?”

She laid you back on the woven mat, the fibers imprinting on your sweat-slick skin. Her loincloth fell away. “You haven’t made me come yet,” she pouted. “It’s no fair.”

You offered a weak, sheepish smile. “Let me—Oofmp!”

She pushed you flat, and climbed over you. “Shhh…” Her thigh brushed your cheek, then she settled her weight, the hot, musky scent of her arousal enveloping you. She sank down onto your waiting mouth with a soft, shuddering moan.

Then she glanced over at Miles, already snoring softly. She scoffed, rolling her eyes, and her hips began a slow, commanding grind against your lips.

“Weak.”

Clark – Flying Robb – Corset Rip, Praise Daemon / Jace – Cuckold, Teaching, Breeding Kol – Vampire!Reader, Blood Drinking Jace / Cregan – Praise, Hair Pulling, DP

Klaus – Praise, Daddy, Dom/Sub, Cockwarming Elijah – Breeding, Blood Drinking, Somno Clark – Oral Fixation, Size Kink Jon / Elijah – Breeding, Squirting, Cuckolding Clark – Masturbation, Voyeurism

Klaus – Plus!Reader, Overstim, Dom/Sub, Mirror Sex Sandor – Size Kink, Bathing, Cockwarming Jace – Overstim, Praise, Mutual Masturbation Elijah / Klaus – Voyeurism, Threesome, Anal, DP, Choking, Blood Drinking Rhaenyra / Rebekah – Tribbing, Oral, Squirting, Fingering

Elijah – Bondage, Dom/Sub Clark / Robb – Threesome Klaus / Stefan – Sub!Klaus, Dom!Reader, Voyeur!Stefan, Bondage, Wax Play, Cumplay, Orgasm Denial, Facesitting, Cowgirl Jon – First Time, Overstim, Oral, Hair Pulling, Facesitting, Praise Elijah / Damon – Threesome, Spanking, First Time, Blood Drinking

Daemon – Breeding, Public, Dom/Sub, Cockwarming Clark – Squirting, Overstim, Toys, Inexperience Jace – Corset Rip, First Time Elijah / Damon – Threesome, Rope Play, Cumplay, Dom/Sub, Spanking, Oral, DP, Anilingus, Switch Dynamics Daemon – Masturbation, Teaching

Jon / Robb – Threesome Cregan – Spanking, Breeding Clark – Oral Fixation, Begging Elijah / Rebekah – Overstim, Praise, Blood Drinking, Voyeurism Jon – Cockwarming, Mirror Sex, Overstim, Inexperience, Teaching Klaus / Kol / Elijah – Threesome, Overstim, Hair Pulling, Squirting, Blood Drinking, Masturbation, Mirror Sex

I hope you’re ready to become a specimen to be studied because that’s exactly what’s gonna happen once Rocky lays his eyes on you. You're no Eridian; he doesn’t know your biology that well, and Rocky being Rocky… he’ll be curious about everything. He'll ask you about every bodily function you have and how it works; he’ll ask permission to touch you maybe during the first few days, but after that, he’ll decide on his own that you’ve become “comfortable” enough with his inquisitive nature that you’ll just be down to answer any query he might have about your body.

Grace tries to mediate between the two of you. He was sort of sore with jealousy at first when he realized that he might have to share you with Rocky, but he really isn’t the type to not budge when Rocky asks for something — what Rocky wants, Rocky gets — well, he should learn how to share, really; but Grace will teach him about that too. He knows he’s got a bit of an advantage here; you’re both human; you’re more comfortable with Grace, and he knows how to navigate situations that you two find yourselves in. Perhaps not as well as when his head is spinning while you two are making out in the lab after you’ve both bared your feelings to each other… He’s like Rocky in this sense; he’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that you like him back. He'll come around.

The first batch of questions from Rocky is quite tame: “what this body part for, question?”, “why have protruding muscle in feeding orifice, question?” — but you’ll find out right away that Rocky is touchy even in that earlier stage. You once had to spend at least five minutes explaining why he can’t just tug at your tongue so he can get a better look at it, or that he can’t have you sit on his lap so he can study your scalp and find out how your hair is attached to your skin. So Rocky negotiates, and you end up perched on one of the lab benches as he stands between your thighs, parted just enough so he can be as close as possible to you. Rocky is, by no means, rough: he knows through Grace that you’re equally fragile, so he does his best to be gentle. He'll ask you to lean into his palm as he examines your face, knowing you’ll get tired from holding one pose for an extended period of time.

But even with all of that tenderness, he’s still got that glint in his eyes while he explores you. It's a strange, arousing mix of his curiosity and some kind of hunger, because really, Rocky wants to know how you feel against him; how you’d feel on him, around him, especially in this human form he’s taken. he’s so taken yet still so appalled by how much fluid the human body makes for specific reasons and situations, so that’s the experiment that he wants to conduct next. It'll be easy, he’d think. He has Grace to guide him through you.

The set-up goes like this: you’re laying on the mattress that they’ve set out on the dormitory floor — bare from the waist down — with your back resting against Grace’s chest as he holds you from behind, reassuring you that he’ll tell Rocky what to do, and that there’s nothing to worry about. Rocky, ever the eager individual that he is, has his palms spread atop your thighs, already giving the plump flesh little squeezes; even after all this time, he’s unable to fathom how soft you are; so abundant with curves and openings that he could sink into you every day if he wants. So, so warm, and so, so slippery against his own skin.

Rocky begins with your mouth, as always. The Eridian-Human disconnect regarding the attitudes toward eating has long been a favorite source of humor for the three of you; however, in this case, Rocky cares more about understanding why you’re gushing down south as much as you were producing spit around his fingers as he thrusts them into your mouth. he presses on a particular spot on your tongue, and you moan around his digits. Your eyes flutter shut, lips closing in around him as you suck. Grace runs his hands down your trembling arms, traveling up your sides and catching the curve of your breasts. He tells you to relax, and it doesn’t take much of you to do so, as you’ve associated the sound of his voice with comfort already. you don’t miss how his cock twitched against the skin of your lower back at all, though — you have half a mind to reach behind the two of you to stimulate him, but you put that thought aside for now. 

Rocky watches intently as he continues prodding into the wet cavern of your mouth. His other hand steadily creeps down to brush against your folds, and you make that sound again; only louder this time, and this pulls an overjoyed purr of a laugh from Rocky. He withdraws his fingers from your tongue to focus on your pussy. The shame of missing him against your lips washes over you, but that’s replaced by the bolts of pleasure he gives you as he gathers strings of slick that you so generously made for him: glistening nectar from the fruit of his labor. he lays prone on the mattress, all inhibitions and courtesy of asking permission cast aside when Grace verbally tells him it’s okay to lick — he should, actually, because Grace knows you’ll like it. Rocky sings as he gets a taste of you, and you shiver at the feel of his tongue running up from your seam to your clit. 

Grace snakes a hand over you and uses his fingers to spread you open, presenting your clit to Rocky. You gasp at the cool air of the dorm hitting your sensitive skin. “This is called a ‘clitoris’,’ he explains. “it would make [name] feel really good if you touched her here, Rocky.” 

You brace yourself as the Eridian stares at your sex, mulling over whether he should use his fingers or his mouth. he asks Grace this, and he’s told that either would feel nice. So Rocky tries with his fingers first, and your back arches against Grace as he rubs up and down, and up and down your clit, stimulating the nerve endings like he was setting fire to all of them. He looks up at you from between your legs, elbows supporting his upper body as he smiles at you with so much of that innocent wonder he has about human biology, even if what he was making you feel was anything but innocent. He’s even more delighted when your whimpers come out in jagged succession; he’s switched to drawing slow ovals over your clit now, and you’re sure that you’re about to come in the next few moments. When he brings you there, Rocky is quick to catch your release with his mouth, much to your surprise; he laps up everything and tastes it intently on his tongue. He decides that he likes it.

Grace gets the privilege of penetrating you first. He kisses you as a reward for being such a sport for Rocky’s bit of the “experiment”, and also as a way to get his fill of you. He places you in supine, sliding a pillow beneath your lower back to ease you off the flat surface of the dormitory floor, and positions himself between your legs. He has to demonstrate this part to Rocky first, not wanting him to hurt you on his initial inexperienced trial. Having been fingered and eaten out, you accommodate Grace easily. He bows his head as he slips inside of you, the glide only making him feel closer to the edge. He wills himself to hold that back, and starts to thrust, all while telling Rocky that this is what he’s supposed to do: begin with a slow pace, have patience, and ask if he can do more later on. You’re none-the-wiser to Grace and his diligent teaching methods at this point, because all you can really focus on is how good each drag of his cock feels against your walls. Your hands switch between holding onto his arms, sides, and thighs for support, or anchor to reality; it’s hard to think rationally when your dirtiest fantasy is finally happening to you, with the addition of a very, very excited Eridian who wants to experience you in the same way, too.

You have to hold onto the sheets when Grace snaps his hips into you; a result of your own doing, since he asked you if he can go faster. He leans forward, closer to you so he could kiss you, and your legs wrap around his waist to draw him nearer. Rocky whines from the compulsion to be in contact with you again; he’s been stroking himself for the past couple of minutes, so when you briefly snap out of the haze that you and Grace were sharing, you beckon him towards you. He rushes to your side, and lets you wrap your hand around his cock to touch him yourself. His body curves forward; his fingers grip your wrist, steering you so you could stroke him the way he wants you to. Grace finishes at the sight of both of you — his hips pummel into you erratically as he fills you up, sighing as he empties himself within your addicting heat. 

Rocky practically positions you according to his preference like a doll once Grace tells him that it’s his turn. You hold onto Grace as he sits up against the adjacent wall; your body’s bent over while Rocky is on his knees behind you. Rocky is a little bigger than Grace, you find; he’s stretching you more as he slots himself into your cunt, and remnants of Grace’s release drip out from where you’re both connected. Rocky wants to do that too; to give you his own release, to feel it wrap around him and paint you inside with it; and he wants to do it without Grace’s help next time. He’s a fast learner, and he aims to do good. It’ll be his first practical test, and he only needs you to tell him how well he’d do.

You don’t even get to savor the struggle of keeping your jaw from hanging slack at the feeling of being so full of Rocky, because he’s decided on his own that you’re ready to take him in such a brutal rhythm. He dips down to wrap his arms around you as he resumes that same tempo.

“[Name] feel so good; good, good, good,” he trills into your ear. He licks the shell of it, and chuckles brokenly. “Can [name] promise [name] will do it with Rocky only later? Want to get you alone, want you all to myself…”

Grace kisses you, swallowing your noises as Rocky plunges into you over and over again, catching you as your arms begin to give out. He croons, telling you that you’re doing so well while he’s pumping his own cock at the same speed as Rocky who’s fucking you in wild abandon. 

You announce not long after that you’re going to come again, and Rocky is more than happy to be the one to bring you to another exquisite peak. 

“Yes, yes, [name], come for Rocky one more time,” he coos into the damp skin of your nape, “wanna hear you sing again, please, please, please…”

You cry out his name as your second release rips through you, shaking in his embrace as you fuck back into his cock in faltering pulses. Rocky takes it all, and sighs as he does the same, spilling every drop within you like he always wanted. He presses his cheek against your shoulder, panting from exhaustion and satisfaction. You’ve got yours on Grace’s, and he’s dotting your forehead with gentle pecks. You tiredly lift your head, meeting his lips in a sloppy kiss.

You came to PTMC in January, which is, in retrospect, the worst possible time to move to Pittsburgh. The city in January is gray in a way that feels personal, a low flat gray that sits on everything and muffles sound and makes the days feel like they're happening inside a cotton ball. You grew up in North Carolina. You were not prepared.

What you were prepared for was the job, because the job is the one thing that has always been straightforward. You are good at this. You have always been good at this, from your first day on an ambulance at twenty-two to the charge nurse position you'd held at Durham Regional for four years before the particular series of events that led you to Pittsburgh. You don't think about those directly if you can help it. You've filed them under necessary change in the organizational system of your own history.

PTMC's night shift ER is a different animal from what you knew. Bigger, faster, with the specific energy of a teaching hospital, residents everywhere, the constant low-level hum of people learning under pressure. You'd worked in teaching hospitals before. You understood the rhythm.

What you didn't anticipate was the attending.

Your first shift, you're given the standard orientation rundown by the outgoing charge nurse, a woman named Delphine who has clearly been doing this long enough to have developed a personal shorthand for everything, delivered at speed. She covers the board system, the trauma bay protocol, the supply room situation, the attendings. When she gets to Jack Abbot, she pauses in a way that isn't quite a pause, more like a breath, like she's selecting the right words.

"Night shift lead," she says. "Ex-military, Army. Left leg prosthetic, below knee. He'll never mention it, don't mention it either unless he brings it up or it becomes a clinical concern. He runs a tight floor. He's fair. He doesn't raise his voice." She looks at you over the top of her reading glasses. "When he gets quiet is when you should pay attention."

"What does quiet mean?" you ask.

"You'll know," she says, which is not an answer, and turns out to be completely accurate.

You meet him properly at the start of that first shift, in the handoff briefing. He's already at the board when you come in, reviewing overnight census with the precision of someone who has been doing this long enough to read a board the way other people read a sentence. Whole, not word by word.

He's, you notice him the way you'd notice a weather system. Something that occupies space differently from the things around it.

Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark hair with gray through it, more at the temples. The kind of face that would be called handsome in a way that's about structure rather than prettiness, strong jaw, lines around his eyes and mouth from years of squinting into the sun or the middle distance. He's in scrubs and a white coat and he wears both with the unconscious uprightness of someone whose posture was trained into them young and stayed.

When he turns to acknowledge the incoming shift, his eyes do the thing Delphine warned you about. A quick systematic read of the room, everyone clocked and filed in seconds. When they land on you, they pause one beat longer. New face. Catalogued.

"Charge nurse?" he says.

"Yes," you say. "First shift."

"Durham Regional before this?"

"Six years before that as a paramedic."

Something registers in his expression. Not warmth exactly, more like the slight adjustment of a person recalibrating an estimate. "Good," he says, and turns back to the board.

That's the whole introduction.

Later you'll understand that good from Jack Abbot in the first thirty seconds of meeting you is the equivalent of a lengthy written endorsement from anyone else.

The first month is learning. Not the job, you know the job, but the floor, the people, the particular language of this specific place.

You learn: Lena at the main desk has worked this floor for nineteen years and knows where everything is, has ever been, and probably will be. Consult her before the supply room. Resident Santos is sharp and combative and improves dramatically when you treat her like the intelligent adult she is rather than a medical student who needs managing. Resident Whitaker is careful and slow and will get there, he just needs more runway than the others. Dr. Parker Ellis is the senior resident who has, apparently, been trying to get Jack to take a vacation for three consecutive years.

You learn Jack in layers, the way you'd learn a complicated patient history. Not all at once, but accumulating, building toward a picture.

He takes his coffee black and too hot, and he has opinions about the ER coffee machine that he has apparently been voicing to facilities since before you arrived. He reviews charts standing up, always, unless it's the end of a long shift and he thinks no one is watching, at which point he will occasionally, briefly, sit. He has a particular way of delivering bad news to families. Not scripted, not the sterile clinical distance some doctors put on like protective gear, but present. Actually in the room with them. You've watched him do it three times in your first month and each time it's the same: he finds a chair, he sits at their level, he doesn't rush the silence.

He is, in ways that are professionally inconvenient, exactly the kind of person you find most difficult to be indifferent to.

You do your level best anyway.

The pain thing comes to a head on a Thursday in February.

The weather has been bad for a week. Pittsburgh winter, which turns out to be a different category of winter than North Carolina winter, with a wet cold that gets into everything and a wind off the rivers that has a personal quality to it, like it knows where you're going. You've been told by multiple people that you'll acclimate. You're skeptical.

The floor has been brutal. A multi-car pileup on 376 sent four traumas in under an hour, and the residual administrative chaos of that is still reverberating five hours later. You've been moving without stopping since the shift started, and you're aware, in the background-noise way you're aware of your own physical state during hard shifts, that your feet crossed the threshold from tired into genuinely unhappy about two hours ago.

You're at the medication cart at hour seven when you notice Jack at the far end of the hall, reviewing a chart. The weight distribution is wrong. He's putting almost nothing on his left side, and the line of his back is carrying a tension that wasn't there at the start of shift. He's been on his feet for the same seven hours, plus whatever time he was here before handoff, and the socket that connects his prosthetic to his residual limb has a tolerance for hours-of-use that you know from six years of working with amputee veterans is finite and individual and frequently ignored by the person most affected.

You finish with the medication cart. You think about it for another minute. Then you go to the supply room.

When you come back, you find him at the hub.

You set a heat pack on the counter next to him, the kind you crack and shake, runs for about forty minutes. You don't say anything. You go back to your charting.

A long pause.

"What's this for," he says. Not a question. The sentence has the quality of someone who knows exactly what it's for and is deciding how to handle it.

"Residual limb pain responds well to heat when it's cold-triggered," you say, eyes on your screen. "Particularly after extended weight-bearing. I've got four amputee veterans in my contacts from my paramedic years and two of them told me that independently."

Silence.

"Your weight's been on your right side for two hours," you say. "I noticed."

More silence. You type something. You can feel him looking at the side of your face.

"I didn't ask for—" he starts.

"You didn't," you agree. "I didn't offer it as a commentary on your ability to do your job. I offered it as a heat pack." You look at him then, briefly, level. "You don't have to use it."

You go back to the screen.

Another pause. Then, in your peripheral vision, he picks it up.

He doesn't say thank you. He goes back to his chart.

You don't expect him to. You weren't doing it for the thank you.

About twenty minutes later, a cup appears next to your keyboard. Coffee, from the good machine at the other end of the floor, not the hub machine. Hot.

You look at it.

You look toward the board, where he's standing.

He's talking to Ellis about a consult. He doesn't look over.

You drink the coffee.

This becomes, without either of you naming it, a language.

Not every night. Not predictably. But the small offerings accumulate, the coffee, the heat pack on the bad days, a granola bar left near your station during a brutal stretch when you haven't eaten since before shift, a specific piece of information relayed in a way that makes your job marginally easier, the quiet appearing at your shoulder on the nights that earn the particular designation of hard rather than just busy.

You do the same back. It comes naturally. Six years of paramedic work teaches you that care is often most useful when it's practical and doesn't require the other person to acknowledge receiving it.

The first conversation that isn't about the floor happens in the break room, five weeks in.

You're eating dinner at eleven PM, or what passes for dinner, which is the depressing collection of vending machine items that constitute nutrition during a long night shift, when he comes in for coffee. He does the microwave thing. He leans against the counter while it runs.

You eat your crackers.

"Durham," he says. "What made you leave?"

He's not looking at you, looking at the microwave, thirty-eight seconds remaining on the display.

"Needed a change," you say.

"From the job specifically?"

"From a version of myself I'd gotten stuck in."

The microwave beeps. He gets the cup. He turns around and leans against the counter facing you now, and the expression is attentive in the particular Jack Abbot way, not performing interest, just actually interested.

"What version," he says.

You consider how much of this you want to hand over to someone you've known for five weeks. Then you consider that you're in Pittsburgh in February eating crackers at eleven PM and your options for honest conversation are limited.

"The version that had gotten very good at the job," you say, "by removing herself from it. Technically excellent. Clinically appropriate. Completely sealed. You do the thing for long enough without adequate processing and it just," you tap the side of your head, "goes somewhere it shouldn't. Calcifies."

He's quiet.

"Paramedic work specifically does something to you," you say. "You're first in. By the time a patient reaches an ER, there's a team, there's protocol, there's structure. On a scene it's you and your partner and whatever you find when you get there. No buffer. You absorb a lot." You pause. "I absorbed a lot."

"And you stopped processing it."

"I stopped having the bandwidth. And then I stopped noticing I'd stopped. And then one day a woman in the waiting room asked me if I was okay and I realized I genuinely didn't know how to answer."

He makes a sound that isn't quite a word.

"You know that version of the problem," you say. It's not a question.

A beat. "I know a version of it," he says. "Different origin. Same architecture."

"Military."

"Yeah."

"When."

"Three deployments. Third one ended the career." He glances down at his leg without looking like he's glancing down at his leg, a micro-movement you'd miss if you weren't watching carefully. "By which point I'd been not-processing for about eight years."

"How'd you get out of it?"

He makes a quiet sound that has some irony in it. "Badly, at first. Then therapy. Then time. Then finding something worth being present for."

"Medicine."

"Among other things."

The break room is quiet. The vending machine hums. From outside the door, the distant sounds of the floor.

"Pittsburgh was supposed to be temporary," you say. "I was going to do a year, get my head right, figure out the next thing."

"And?"

You look at your crackers. "Still figuring."

"How long have you been here?"

"Seven weeks."

"Give it till April," he says. "The city looks different when the gray lifts."

"That sounds like the beginning of civic propaganda."

"It sounds like someone who came here for temporary reasons and then stayed," he says, and picks up his coffee and goes back to the floor, and you sit in the break room for another few minutes thinking about the specific weight of that sentence.

March is when the floor gets to know you.

Lena starts leaving notes for you at the start of shift, small intelligence briefings on the state of the floor, the status of the supply situation, which residents are having good nights and which need watching. Santos, after an incident involving a difficult patient and your intervention on her behalf, starts bringing you coffee exactly once a week in what you understand is her version of a significant gesture. Whitaker asks you questions in the tentative way of someone who has been burned before by asking the wrong person, and you answer them straight, and he relaxes.

Parker Ellis tells you, on a Tuesday in March, that you're good for the floor.

"How so," you say.

"You stabilize things," she says. "Some charge nurses manage the floor. You hold it. There's a difference."

You think about this later. You think about the version of yourself in Durham who was excellent at managing and terrible at holding, and whether Pittsburgh is teaching you something or whether you arrived already changed and the city is just the location of the change.

You think about a lot of things lately that you'd stopped thinking about for a couple of years.

Jack is not incidental to this. You'd be dishonest with yourself if you tried to argue that he was. There's something about the quality of his attention, the specific way he notices without making the noticing a performance, that has begun to unlock things. Things you sealed up and labeled later and then ignored.

You don't know what to do about this, exactly.

You file it under pending.

The night it shifts is a Wednesday in late March.

A warehouse fire on the South Side sends three critical patients in under forty minutes. It's the kind of night that strips everything down to function, no room for anything except the work, the sequence, the next right thing. You've been in these nights before. You know how to move through them.

What you haven't navigated before is moving through one of these nights and simultaneously being aware, in some registered but unaddressed corner of your attention, that Jack Abbot is running on something that isn't all right.

It starts small. The tells are minor. He's been on his feet longer than he should, the cold has been bad this week, the socket issue you've been watching for two months has been a recurring problem and he's mentioned the new fitting exactly once in the dismissive tone of someone who made an appointment and then cancelled it. On a normal night you'd leave a heat pack and a coffee and consider the conversation managed.

This isn't a normal night. This is eight hours of controlled emergency, and by hour six you can see, if you're watching, if you've been watching for three months, that the pain is running high enough to be a factor.

He doesn't show it in the work. That's the thing that makes it worse, in a way. The work is impeccable. The decisions are right, the communication is clear, the patients are managed with the same steady competence that they always are. Whatever he's dealing with, he has put it somewhere else with a proficiency that speaks to long practice.

But you've been a paramedic. You've seen people push through pain until their body stops accepting the instruction, and you know what that looks like in the seconds before it happens.

At hour seven, during a lull between the second and third trauma, you find him at the hub. You don't ask how he's doing. That's not the language.

"I need you to do something for me," you say.

He looks at you.

"Sit down for twenty minutes. I'll cover."

"I don't need—"

"I know you don't need to. I'm asking you to do it for the floor." You hold his gaze. "You're eight hours into a shift that's had three traumas and you've been compensating your gait for the last two hours, which means the socket is causing problems, and if you end up off your feet involuntarily in hour nine because you didn't sit down in hour seven, that's a floor problem. So I'm asking you, as charge nurse, to sit down."

A long pause.

"That was very tactical," he says.

"I spent six years on ambulances. I learned to frame requests so people would take them."

Something almost moves in his expression. "Twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes."

He goes to the break room. You cover the floor. Twenty-three minutes later he's back, and the gait is better, and the tension in his jaw has reduced to something closer to baseline, and he doesn't say anything about it and neither do you.

But at the end of shift, when the floor is winding down and you're both at the hub finishing charting, he says, without looking up from his screen: "How did you know it was the socket and not the phantom pain."

"Phantom pain doesn't change your gait," you say. "Socket fit does."

He's quiet.

"You cancelled the fitting appointment," you say. Not a question.

"How do you—"

"You mentioned it in February. You haven't mentioned it since, and the problem's gotten worse, not better." You save your chart. "I'm not asking you to explain yourself. I'm observing that the appointment would probably help."

A pause. Then: "You're very annoying."

"I know."

"In a," he stops. Starts differently. "It's useful. The annoying."

"High praise."

The almost-sound, the one that isn't quite a laugh. You've been hearing it for three months and you've started to understand that it's the version of warmth he allows himself in professional settings, the suggestion of it, the controlled release. You've started to notice when you prompt it.

You're aware this is information with implications you haven't fully processed.

April arrives and the gray does lift, like he said.

It happens incrementally, a morning here, an afternoon there, the river catching light in a way that Pittsburgh in January made you doubt was possible. The city reveals itself differently in April. Older neighborhoods with the particular architecture of a place built by people who intended to stay. Bridges everywhere, connecting things.

You take a different route to work and find a diner and start stopping there before night shifts, and the routine of it, the specific booth, the same server who brings coffee without being asked after the third visit, grounds something that has been unmoored since January.

You're better, you realize, in April.

Not fixed. Not resolved. But better, in the specific sense of being present in your life rather than passing through it at a remove.

You tell Jack this, one night in the break room, because the break room has become the place where you say the things that don't fit on the floor.

"You were right about April," you say.

He's at the table with a chart, paper, one of the few remaining paper charts, a particular older patient who prefers them and for whom Jack has apparently been maintaining the practice without comment for two years. "Was I."

"The city looks different. You were right."

"Mmm." He makes a note. "How's the diner?"

You look at him. "I haven't mentioned a diner."

"You come in before some shifts with powdered sugar on your jacket," he says. "There's a diner on Penn Avenue that does beignets until four AM. It's the only place within walking distance of the parking structure."

You look at your jacket. There is, in fact, a trace of powdered sugar on the lapel.

"That's," you start.

"Observational," he says. "Same thing you do."

You sit down across from him. He turns a page in the chart. The break room is quiet.

"How long did it take you?" you ask. "After you moved here. To feel like Pittsburgh was where you actually lived and not just where you were."

He thinks about it. "Two years, maybe. Closer to three before it felt like home."

"What made it feel like home eventually?"

He's quiet for a moment. Then: "People. The floor. Having something that mattered."

"Not the city itself."

"The city's just the container," he says. "What you put in it is the part that matters."

You look at the table. "I haven't put very much in it yet."

"You've been here four months."

"I know. In Durham I had ten years of putting things in. People, places, a version of myself that knew how to be there. Starting over is," you look for the word.

"Expensive," he says.

You look at him.

"It costs something," he says. "Starting over. People underestimate that. They think fresh start means free, but it's actually the opposite. You pay for the fresh start with everything you built before it."

"Was yours worth it?" you ask. "The cost."

A long pause. He closes the chart. He looks at you with the expression that isn't quite neutral, the one you've seen a handful of times, the careful one, the one that's managing something.

"Most days," he says. "Yes."

The night in April that you file under the night things changed is less dramatic than you'd expect.

It's not a bad shift, particularly. Moderately busy. No catastrophes. The kind of night where you move steadily and finish on time and feel, at the end of it, tired in the clean way rather than the hollowed-out way.

What happens is this: at two in the morning, during a quiet stretch, you're in the hallway outside the storage room and your phone rings with a call you've been half-expecting and fully dreading.

It's your sister in Raleigh. Your mother's been asking about you. It's been three months since you visited. When are you coming home.

You stand in the hallway and have a version of the conversation you've been having for a year, the one where you explain, without explaining, that home is a complicated word right now and that you're figuring things out and that yes, you'll visit, you just need a little more time. Your sister is kind about it. She's always kind about it. The kindness makes it worse, somehow.

You hang up and stand in the hallway for a moment with your hand flat against the wall.

"Bad news?"

You turn. Jack is at the other end of the hall, heading toward you.

"No," you say. "Just family. It's fine."

He slows as he reaches you, reading the hallway the way he reads everything. He doesn't keep walking. He stops, a few feet away.

"You don't have to," he starts.

"I know." You lower your hand from the wall. "My mom wants me to come home for a visit. My sister was relaying the message. Nothing bad happened. I just,"

you stop. You're not sure how to finish the sentence.

"Don't know what home means right now," he says.

You look at him.

"You said in March, starting over costs what you had before. I think one of the things it costs is the easy answer to that question."

Your chest does something complicated. "Yeah."

"That gets easier," he says. "Not because you answer it definitively. Just because you get better at living in the ambiguity."

"That sounds terrible."

"It's better than it sounds."

You lean back against the wall. He stays where he is, which means he's about three feet from you, and the hallway is empty and quiet and it's two in the morning in Pittsburgh and you've known this man for four months.

"Jack," you say.

"Yeah."

"Can I ask you something personal?"

A pause. "Probably."

"After you came back from the last deployment, the one where you lost the leg, who took care of you?"

The question sits in the hallway. He's very still.

"Why are you asking that," he says. Carefully. Not defensively.

"Because you're very good at it," you say. "Taking care of people. Not in the managing way. In the actual way. And I've been trying to work out if that's just who you are, or if someone taught you by doing it for you."

A long pause.

"My platoon medic," he says. "Before I became one myself. Man named Curtis. He had a way of treating the person that had nothing to do with treating the injury. Used to drive the MOs insane. He'd spend ten minutes just talking to someone. Being there. And they'd come through things they statistically shouldn't have come through." He pauses. "I asked him once why he did it that way. He said the body takes cues from being witnessed. That knowing someone is there changes the physiology."

"He was right," you say. "That's documented."

"I know that now." He looks at the floor for a second, then back up. "After I came home the last time, after the leg, no one took care of me, specifically. I didn't allow it. I had a version of that problem you described. Sealed up. Handled." He says handled with the specific irony of someone who has been in enough therapy to know what they were actually doing. "I took care of myself because the alternative meant admitting I needed it."

"How'd you crack that open?"

"A therapist with considerably more patience than I deserved," he says. "And time. And losing enough by refusing to let anyone in that eventually the cost of refusing was higher than the cost of letting."

"What did you lose?"

He's quiet for a moment. "That's the longer story."

"Okay," you say. You don't push.

He looks at you. The careful expression, the managed one, and then, for just a second, something shifts in it. Like a held breath, released.

"My wife died," he says. "Seven years ago. And I'd been so shut down, for so long, that I almost missed the last year of her life because I was performing fine for everyone including her. Including myself." A pause. "I don't, I'm not putting that on the table as a bid for sympathy. I'm answering your question about who taught me by doing it for me. She did. Once I finally let her."

The hallway is very quiet.

"I'm sorry," you say.

"Thank you." Said simply. Not deflecting it, not managing it. Just receiving it.

You stand in the hallway for another moment.

"That's not a shorter story," you say, finally.

The almost-sound. The not-quite-laugh. Warmer than usual. "No," he says. "It's not."

"Thank you for telling me."

"You asked an honest question," he says. "You get an honest answer."

He pushes off from where he's been standing and moves back toward the floor. At the hallway junction, he pauses.

"You should go visit," he says. "Your mom. It doesn't have to mean anything about home. It can just mean going."

You look at him.

"Pittsburgh will still be here when you get back," he says, and turns the corner.

You stand in the hallway for another thirty seconds.

Then you go back to the floor and do your job and don't think about it. Or try not to.

You fail, mostly.

May.

You go to Raleigh for four days, which is the longest you've been away from the floor since January, and which reveals something you hadn't fully understood: you miss Pittsburgh when you're not there.

Not the winter. Not the gray. But the diner and the particular quality of the morning light over the river and the floor and the people on it. Lena and her comprehensive institutional knowledge. Santos and her weekly coffee tribute. Whitaker finding his footing. Parker Ellis's running commentary on everything.

And Jack. You miss Jack, which you acknowledge privately and then immediately file under to be examined later while you eat your mother's cooking and sit on your sister's porch and allow yourself, for four days, to be someone's child and someone's sister and not a charge nurse running a trauma floor.

When you come back, you are, measurably, better. Something that was wound has loosened. Something that was held at distance has been permitted to be close.

You walk into your first shift back and Lena says "welcome back, honey" and Santos gives you a nod that is the Santos equivalent of a standing ovation, and Whitaker tells you about a case he managed well while you were gone with the barely-suppressed pride of a kid showing a parent a test score.

Jack is at the board when you come in. He doesn't turn immediately. You do the handoff briefing, get caught up on the floor status, settle into the shift.

An hour in, he ends up beside you at the hub.

"How was Raleigh," he says. Not looking at you. Looking at the board.

"Good," you say. "It was good."

"Your mom."

"Good. She kept feeding me."

"Sounds right."

"How was the floor," you say.

"Functional. Ellis covered competently. Whitaker had a good week."

"I heard."

A pause. He marks something on the board.

"You look better," he says. Still looking at the board.

"I feel better."

"Good." He caps the marker. And then, still not looking at you: "Pittsburgh felt different with you gone."

You go very still.

He puts the marker in the tray. He still doesn't look at you. The floor noise continues around you, the steady background hum of a functioning ER, monitors, voices, the distant sound of the ambulance bay.

"I'm not sure what to do with that," you say, very carefully.

"You don't have to do anything with it," he says. "I'm just saying it. For accuracy."

You look at the side of his face. The line of his jaw. The gray at his temple.

"Jack," you say.

He turns, finally, and looks at you.

"I need you to be clearer than that," you say. "Because I have been working very hard for five months to be professional about something and if you are saying what I think you might be saying I need you to actually say it."

A pause. Something in his expression moves through several registers, the careful controlled neutral, the managed version, and then the version underneath it, the one you've seen a handful of times. The unguarded one.

"I think about you," he says. "Outside of work. I think about whether you're sleeping enough, whether the diner is open when you need it to be, whether whatever you're still carrying from Durham is getting lighter." He looks at you steadily. "I'm aware of the position. I'm not asking you for anything. I just, you said you needed me to be clear."

You breathe.

"I think about you outside of work too," you say.

The hallway with your sister calling. The four days in Raleigh and the shape of what was missing. The floor at two AM and the particular way he told you the longer story because you asked an honest question.

"I think about how you are the first person in a long time who has not asked me to perform anything," you say. "Who takes me as I am and doesn't need me to be more okay than I am, or less damaged than I am. You make it easier to be actually here. And I don't know what to do with that either, but I'm done pretending I don't know what it is."

He's very still.

"I don't know what this looks like," you say. "Practically. Given,"

"The floor."

"The floor."

"You're charge nurse," he says. "I'm the attending lead. There's no direct supervisory,"

"I know."

"It would require,"

"I know."

A pause.

"I'm not impulsive," he says. "I need you to know that. I don't do things halfway. If this is something, it's something. I can't do the version where it's ambiguous. I'm not built for that anymore."

"Okay," you say.

"Okay?"

"I don't want ambiguous either." You look at him. "I moved to Pittsburgh because I needed to stop being a recording of myself and start being actually present. And whatever this is," you gesture slightly, the small inadequate gesture for the thing you've been building for five months in a language of heat packs and coffee and two AM honesty, "it's the most present I've felt in two years. I'm not interested in backing away from that."

The floor continues around you. Someone calls for a consult at the other end of the hall. A monitor beeps its reassuring rhythm.

Jack Abbot looks at you with the expression that has no performance in it.

"There's a restaurant," he says. "On the North Side. It's good. I've been meaning to," he stops. Tries again. "Would you have dinner with me."

"Not a shift," you say.

"Not a shift."

"When."

"Saturday. You're off Saturday."

"How do you know my-"

"I know the schedule."

You look at him. He looks back. The door, which has been ajar for five months, is open.

"Yes," you say.

He nods. The expression does the thing, the almost-laugh, warmer than you've ever heard it, and then, briefly, the real one. Quiet and genuine and entirely devastating.

"Back to the floor," he says.

"Back to the floor," you agree.

You go in opposite directions. You don't smile until you're around the corner.

Saturday is April in Pittsburgh, which means cool and bright, the city wearing its best version of itself. The restaurant is on the North Side, small and warm, with the kind of menu that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you've walked into a performance.

He's there when you arrive. He's early, you realize. Of course he's early. He's been running tight logistics his entire adult life.

He stands when he sees you, and the simplicity of the gesture does something unexpected to your chest.

"Hi," you say.

"Hi," he says.

You sit down. The server comes. You order wine. He orders water and then looks at the wine and changes his order, and you file this as the first new thing you're learning about him outside of the hospital context. There will be many more of these. The prospect of them is something you haven't felt in a while.

The dinner is easy. Which is not what you expected, exactly. You'd anticipated a version of the careful managed conversation of the floor, the professional language, the deliberate navigation.

But off the floor he is still Jack, still precise, still honest, still the person who answers real questions with real answers, but something has been set down. Some part of the management. He talks about his sister in Columbus who calls him too often and who he would not trade for anything. He talks about what it was like to go to medical school in his mid-thirties, post-military, post-amputation, in a class full of people a decade younger, and what he learned from that and what it cost. He asks about your paramedic years with the genuine curiosity of someone who wants to understand the timeline of a person, not just the resume.

You tell him about the car accident that started your paramedic career. The one you were first on scene for at twenty-two, the one where you didn't know what you were doing and did it anyway and everyone survived and you sat in the ambulance bay afterward for forty minutes understanding that this was what you were supposed to do. He listens to the whole thing.

"That's how you know," he says, when you finish. "When you can't explain the why and you don't need to."

"Is that how it was for you? Medicine?"

"After the leg," he says. "I needed something to fix things with. I'd been breaking things, one way and another, for long enough. I wanted to be on the other side of it."

"And?"

He looks at his glass. "And it worked. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

He looks at you. "There are still nights."

"I know," you say. "I've seen some of them."

"You have," he agrees. "You see things very clearly. I found it uncomfortable at first."

"And now?"

The expression. The real one. "Now I find it," he considers the word carefully, "restful."

You look at him across the table in the warm light of this restaurant on a Saturday in April and you think about five months of a specific language built of small gestures in a hospital at two in the morning, and how the thing you came to Pittsburgh to find, the presence, the being actually here, has arrived from a direction you weren't expecting.

"Can I tell you something," you say.

"Yes."

"I came here to stop being a recording of myself and I'm not sure when exactly it stopped being a risk, but I think it was early. Earlier than I wanted to admit."

He waits.

"I think it was around the time I started leaving pens near your chart station," you say.

The almost-laugh. The real one. Warm and quiet and brief, and you're close enough now, across a restaurant table on a Saturday night, that it's not at a professional distance anymore.

"Around the same time," he says.

"The heat pack?" you say.

"Before that, actually."

"When?"

"Third shift," he says. "You were in bay seven with a patient who was frightened and escalating and you were completely still. Not frozen. Still. Like someone who has been in frightening rooms before and knows that the stillness is what the other person needs, and who can provide it without it costing them anything in the moment. I'd seen nurses do that before. Not like that."

You don't say anything for a moment.

"And then I walked away and told myself it was a professional observation," he says, dry, "and I was extremely convincing. To myself. For about two weeks."

"Then what?"

"Then you left a heat pack on the counter without making it an event," he says. "And that was harder to file away."

You look at him.

He looks at you.

"Jack," you say.

"Yeah."

"I'm not very good at this part. The saying the thing part. I spent a lot of years being good at everything else."

"I know," he says. "I'm not either. I've been told I communicate like a situation report."

"You don't, actually."

"Only with you," he says. Simply. "Only recently."

The restaurant is warm and the wine is good and Pittsburgh is outside the window doing its April thing, and you reach across the table and put your hand over his.

He turns his hand over.

His thumb moves across your palm, once, and you feel it in your sternum.

"We're figuring it out," you say.

"We're figuring it out," he agrees.

Here is what you know, by the time the summer comes.

The diner on Penn Avenue knows your order. The server, whose name is Gloria, asks after Jack on the mornings you come in alone, because you came in together twice and once is a coincidence and twice is a data point and Gloria has been reading data points for thirty years.

The floor is still the floor. The work doesn't change, the long nights don't change, the particular weight of the hard ones doesn't change. But there is a shift in the architecture of the hard ones. The knowing that at the end of them there is a person who will not require you to perform recovery, who will simply be there while the shift processes through you like weather.

You go back to Raleigh in June and this time you don't feel the pull of the departure the way you did in May. You feel it on the return, the Pittsburgh-shaped gravity that has been building since January, that you understand now is not the city itself but what you've put in it.

You call your mother from the airport and she asks how things are going, really, in the tone of a woman who reads her children accurately from two states away.

"Good," you say. "Really."

A pause. "There's someone," she says. Not a question.

"There's someone," you confirm.

You can hear her smiling. "Does he deserve you?"

You think about a man who answers honest questions with honest answers. Who said restful and meant it as the highest thing.

"I think we deserve each other," you say. "Which is different."

"That's better," she says. "That's the right answer."

Jack is on a Saturday morning in July, in your apartment, drinking coffee that is actually hot because you got a machine that does it correctly, reading something, when you come in from your run.

You are, in the clinical vocabulary, a lot. Red-faced, sweaty, approximately nine miles of July heat in your joints.

He looks up. He looks at you. The expression, the open one, the unguarded one, the one that stopped being rare sometime around April, sits on his face with the ease of something that lives there now.

"There's water," he says.

"I see it."

"You look like you ran somewhere unreasonable."

"Nine miles."

He shakes his head. Returns to his book. "Statistically inadvisable."

You get the water. You sit on the other end of the couch, legs folded under you, drink half of it and look at him.

"Jack."

"Hmm."

"I rescheduled the fitting appointment."

He looks up from the book.

"The socket's been giving me problems," he says.

"I know."

"I cancelled twice."

"I know that too."

A pause. He looks at you. The expression is the one that means he's deciding how much to say.

"Thank you," he says. Quietly. "For staying on it."

"You stayed on mine," you say. "The processing thing. The being-present thing. You stayed on it without making it a project."

"That's different."

"It's not."

He holds your gaze for a moment. Then the almost-sound, warm and real.

"Annoying," he says.

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

You lean over and take the book out of his hands and put it on the coffee table, and he watches you do this with the mild expression of someone who is not going to object.

"We have four hours before you have to be at the hospital," you say.

"I'm aware of the schedule."

"Then stop reading and pay attention to me."

The actual laugh, brief and quiet and entirely devastating, the same as the first time you heard it and every time since.

"You're the most presumptuous person I've ever met," he says, and puts his arm around you when you lean into his side, and outside the window Pittsburgh is doing its summer thing, green and warm, the rivers catching the light.

You're learning that this is what it's supposed to feel like.

You're learning it's worth the cost of getting here.

Author's Note:

jack abbot has been living in my head rent free for longer than i'd like to admit, and at some point i had to do something about it. so here we are.

this one is slow and quiet and a little bit about learning to let people see you. if that's your thing, i hope you like it.

for everyone who's been fine. you know the kind.

“you still breathing?”

his arm fell from his face. the harsh white hospital lights made her look like an angel in his bleary vision. jack grumbled and pulled his arms over his head, stretching himself taunt. “oh good i thought you finally croaked,” she quipped.

as he lifted his arms his black tee drew up his stomach. his stomach was defined, but not to an unnatural extent. she wanted to sink her teeth into that bit of pudge around his hips. she caught a glimpse of the silver hair dusted along his abdomen, trailing up his navel and disappearing beneath the black cotton of his shirt. he was impossibly thick. he nearly filled the space of the hospital bed.

“you’d miss me too much,” he groaned. her eyes flew back up to his face. an undeniable heat slowly seeped down her spine and settled in her tummy. he crossed his large arms against his chest. she would happily spend hours kissing every one of the freckles there.

“it’s my nap time, old man,” she smiled, fidgeting with her fingers. the physician scowled, “i’m pulling a double.”

“yeah i know because so am i,” she pulled the railing down on the side of the cot. it snapped with a shrill squeak. he flinched sleepily at the noise.

jack sat up. her knees brushed the edge of the limp mattress. “you’re not getting my bed,” he insisted, pink knuckle roughly rubbing at his eye.

it was childish. but it worked like a charm. she puffed out her cheeks and pouted, “do you hate me?”

“what?” jack laughed. the crows feet at the edge of his eyes deepened. that smile. prodding against his cheeks like her personal vice. he shook his head, running a broad hand through his hair. he suddenly looked much more awake.

she shrugged helplessly, “you want me to go sleep in my freezing car in the snow,” she whined. jack stared at for a moment, just grinning. it was like she put him on pause and the gears in his head were working double time to keep him from doing something. what that something was, she wasn’t sure.

he huffed, “okay. c’mon.” he sat up a bit in an attempt to make space for her but his thighs nearly filled the entirety of the seat of the bed. her heart pattered a bit in her throat. an invitation to be as close as professionally possible. or maybe they were breaking a few rules. she grinned and leaned in, “you wanna cuddle?”

jack scoffed, “go sleep in your car.” she shook her head, “scoot over, asshole,” she giggled.

he listened. he pressed himself against the opposite rail, but there still wasn’t much room for her. she sat down and pulled her legs to her chest, reaching down and pulling up the rail. he was turned on his side, arms still crossed, legs crowding her own.

“you look real comfortable,” he muttered. when she looked to him his eyes were flitting about her face. he was so close. he had been this close before - leaning over her shoulder or whispering a dirty joke in her ear - but he had never looked at her like that. she teased, “oh so you do wanna cuddle?” her voice came out an octave too high. she bit her lip.

jack gently tapped her folded leg. “relax,” he whispered, tone husky and low, “i don’t bite.” her stomach was flipping with nerves. he had that catlike smirk on his lips and for once she couldn’t read his mind. he was so warm. so close. it made her brain fuzzy.

she sighed shakily. he licked his lips. she sunk into the bed, shifting awkwardly to ease the aching of her overworked joints. she turned her back towards him and her legs mirrored the curl of his own. she placed an arm under her head. she could feel the material of his scrub bottoms brushing against her ass. if she just backed up-

“you smell good,” he muttered. she looked over her shoulder to him with a knotted brow. it was like he was trying to kill her.

jack frowned, “what? go to sleep.”

“you’re cruel,” she huffed as she shimmied her shoulders to reposition her head. he laughed suddenly, “what did i do? i’m sharing my bed with you -“ his lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “you should be grateful.”

she turned her head a bit. the warmth of his breath tickled her cheek. his eyes had a bit of brown in them. “see. you’re mean,” but she was smiling because there was a wetness flooding the space between her thighs.

jack’s head reared back a bit. his brows ticked and eyes narrowed. he was offended by her disobedience. “c’mon, say thank you, doctor abbot.”

her heart dropped. she chuckled dryly, “shut up,” and turned her gaze back toward the wall.

jack grabbed her by the jaw, fingers digging in to her plump cheeks and forcing her lips to pucker. her eyes widened and heat flooded over her body. he made her look at him. half his body weight rested on her side. blazing like a sun. something snapped in her. it wasn’t a joke.

he looked scorned or maybe aroused. she couldn’t tell what lived behind his cheshire grin. “be a good girl. say thank you, jack, for being so kind to me.”

her cunt was throbbing now. “th - thank you, jack,” she managed to choke out. his grip tightened. jack shook his head lightly, “no, no. i know you’re a good listener. that’s not what i said.”

“thank you for being so - so kind to me, jack,” she mumbled. he smiled once more, nodding, “good girl. so smart.” his hand fell from her jaw to her throat. his calloused fingers slowly ghosted over the column of her neck before trailing down between her breasts, then over her stomach, and sliding beneath the waistband of her scrubs. his hand froze there. hot and oddly heavy against her abdomen.

“you want this?” he whispered. she nearly laughed. like she hadn’t shown him just how much she wanted him the past few months of their working relationship. she nodded enthusiastically, lip caught between her teeth.

the older man straightened up a bit. he slinked his other arm around her shoulders and she followed his lead - scooting up the bed flat on her back to make her body more accessible to him.

head resting against his bicep, she looked at him through her eyelashes. though his eyes were on her’s his gaze was heady and his mouth was just slightly agape in focus. the flat of his palm slid down her abdomen and cupped her mound. she whimpered, “jack.”

she was practically dripping. his fingers prodded at the patch of slick seeping through her panties. “fuck. you’re so wet,” he groaned. jack pressed his forehead against her temple, lashes fluttering against her skin as he closed them in ecstasy. he pressed one big, fat finger between her clothed folds. his fingertip began to ever so slightly dip in and out of her wet cunt.

she was whining, rolling her hips against his big hand. he pressed a chaste peck into the apple of her cheek. “d’you know how long i’ve wanted to get my hands on you? hm?” she screwed her eyes shut, holding back a squeal.

the calloused pads of his fingers dragged along her skin as he pushed her panties to the side. the heel of his palm pressed into her clit. two fingers swirled around her entrance then up and down her sensitive folds, collecting her arousal and using it as lubricant to play with her sex. “little pussy’s so wet and puffy,” he was all gravelly. “feel like velvet, pretty girl. s’this pussy just as pretty as you?”

she hummed. her mind was static. stuffed full of jack. jack’s musky cologne. jack’s breath against her. jack’s big bicep curling against her side. the outline of jack’s big hand completely, impossibly covering her lap through her bottoms. the freckles on his skin. the weight of his body against her.

“i could play with your cunt forever. but that would be mean, huh?” his voice dripped with faux sympathy. his touch stalled against her slick hole. she held her breath. “‘m not that mean. no,” he cooed. she could feel a bit of spittle on his lips. he was drooling. “‘ll fuck you with my fingers. how about that, kid?”

he was gross and perverted and decades her senior and she moaned like a whore, hips jutting instinctually. jack hummed against her hair. he pressed a wet kiss against her head and whispered a yeah before he slipped his finger in.

the digit curled against her gummy walls over and over. just one but it made her cunt ache. she was whimpering, panting, and he was shushing her.

“sh, sh, sh, babygirl. someone’ll hear.”

she opened her mouth to argue but euphoria scrambled her brains, “but i - feels g - s’good, jack. good, jack.” her words were airy. it made him laugh. he pressed his cheek against her and watched his hand as he slipped in another finger. she gasped at the stretch.

“i know, baby,” he cooed. lust was knotting a tight band in her tummy. the meaty heel of his palm was grazing her clit in tandem with the rhythmic thrusts of his wrist and curls of his knuckles. she was edging on release in such little time and jack knew. and he was losing his mind.

jack’s fat bulge was pressed against her hip. he ached with need. all that blood in his cock made him lightheaded.

she turned her head to him, watery eyes meeting his glassy ones. “jack m’gonna cum if - if -“ she cut herself off with a small moan. he was moving faster, brushing against that perfect spot in her pussy with his perfect fingers.

“want you to cum. make a mess on my hand, baby. i’ll clean it up, c’mon. jack’ll clean it up for you, baby.” his perverse encouragement had her on the edge.

then he pressed his lips to hers and everything felt hot. his tongue swiped against her own lazily. her hips stuttered and a sweet rhapsody of release trickled through her body. they moaned into each other’s mouths, jack lightly humping her leg, soiling the layers between them with ropes of sticky cum.

she rode his hand through her high. their lips finally parted with a wet tch. for a moment they passed back and forth the same hot breath. jack finally pulled out of her ruined pants.

he brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked on the two digits. his eyes fluttered shut. he moaned like a teenage boy. she lightly giggled, still trying to catch her breath. jack pulled them out and pressed them to her smiling lips. she opened to taste the mix of his spit and her cum on his fingertips.