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Nights spent pacing the garden of Smurf’s house, bare feet on the cold ground, counting his steps to keep his mind occupied. It never did. He tried to outrun the memories of his actions, to drown his pain at the bottom of the pool. But on those nights, his torment wore the faces of his ghosts.

First there was Julia, then Cath, quickly followed by Baz. And Smurf. Always Smurf. A cycle of misery that makes his ribcage feel as though it might collapse under the violent pounding of his heart.

Some days, seated at a table with his family, Andrew had felt he could scream until his throat gave out, and no one would have heard. He imagined falling into the pool, slipping under the surface, water closing over his head and staying there, lungs burning just long enough for the noise to finally fucking stop, no one coming to pull him out because nobody would have noticed he disappeared.

There were moments when the thought settled heavy in his bones: he would not survive another day in his family, he didn’t want to. He kept straining toward a bond that no longer reached his end…if it ever did.

Over the years, Andrew had grown accustomed to his role. Weird Pope, Creepy Pope, the family’s guard dog: asking for nothing, obeying to the beatings, the killings and never, never, mentioning the ghosts hunting the corner of his eyes each night.

He remembered Smurf’s voice, years ago. “Pop him a few pills and he’ll follow your commands, baby.” She said it to Baz like it was nothing, like he was nothing. This was before prison, before Andrew felt deep in his bones that the other half of his soul left this merciless Earth without him.

Sometimes he let himself think about Julia, since no one else did. He hoped that at least one of them had finally found peace.

Then, you happened.

And Andrew can’t make sense of it, no matter how much he turns it over in his head, how a girl like you ends up being friends with Craig and therefore, near the Cody brothers: you are sweet, kind, nothing but soft edges, and innocent. Almost like the world has spared you the knowledge of what men like him are capable of.

Whenever you are in the house, his gaze follows you from room to room. He tells himself that it’s vigilance and habit that pushes him to act like that. Except he doesn’t need to memorize the way you tuck your hair behind your ear, or how he can recognize the distinct sound of your footsteps in a heartbeat.

He learns and catalogues each of your reactions: the faint frown of your nose at the smell of a particular brand of coffee (gone from the house and replaced before sunset), the soft curl of your lips whenever you are kindly refusing his offer to make you a sandwich.

(He wouldn’t be bothered if you took a bite of his.)

To see you is a special kind of hell and an indescribable heaven, like pressing on a bruise just to make sure it still hurts.

Lately, you shift the air of the house by simply existing in it. Your laugh, in the rooms where Smurf had once lived, seems to almost cleanse the walls of her memory.  And Andrew knows. He knows that’s why Craig is friends with you. Because each day, the sun seems to finally be able to reach the house, even his own room.

It frightens him.

His body instinctively adjusts around your presence, his mind reassessing new rules (the glasses on the bottom shelf so you can have access to them, checking how many drinks you have at Deran’s bar). He memorizes your schedule, notes which books you are bringing with you in your bag, times how long it takes you to get home, parks far enough that you can’t notice his truck but close enough that he can reach you if something goes wrong.

All his life, Andrew had survived by wanting nothing. By hollowing himself out until the obedience Smurf wanted from him fitted neatly inside his ribs, because wanting had always been a liability, a weakness someone could press a knife into.

But now…now that life seems finally good and breathable, that he has the skatepark and his siblings and an almost regular life (if one exists for men like him) without Smurf’s claws on his throat, Andrew finds himself cornered by a simple, terrifying truth: he wants you.

He swallows it. Buries it deep inside, trying to drown it with numbness and even more repetitive actions when you are near: chopping, tidying the house, scrubbing counters that are already clean, fixing hinges that doesn’t squeak… Anything to keep his hands busy so they don’t reach for you.

No, Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.

──────────

You remember telling yourself that the house felt wrong before you ever understood why.

Craig had asked you to come meet his brothers and from his tone alone, you knew it was a big deal. That something was at stake.

You showed up at four sharp, even if he hadn’t given you a specific time (something you would soon realize was typical of Craig), a paper bag pressed to your chest, palms already sweaty. You stood outside for a full minute before knocking, taking a few deep breaths, and stepping over the threshold with a smile as he wrapped you in a hug with his tall frame before dragging you straight into the kitchen.

That’s when you saw him.

Broad shoulders, dark curls on a face held tight, back straight and hands braced on his thighs, his posture so still you almost thought he was a mannequin.

“My brother Pope,” Craig said. “Don’t mind him, he almost doesn’t bite.”

His gaze was already on you, unblinking, steady in a quiet unnerving way, like he was committing every detail to memory, a look so intense it coaxed words out of you before you could stop them.

“H-Hi,” you stuttered, giving your name as you tried to stay composed. You extended your hand toward him, and he stared at it for a moment. The pause stretched long enough for doubt to creep up your spine (maybe he didn’t shake hands? maybe you had already broken some invisible rule?).

You swallowed, blood rising to your cheeks, drawing your hand back to clutch the paper bag as you tried not to stammer on your words. “I brought pastries. I didn’t know what you all would like so…I kind of…guessed,” you hated how small your voice sounded.

He stayed silent, brows faintly furrowed, as if he was processing what you had just said. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”

His tone was quiet, almost a hum, pulled from the depth of his chest, the sound settling low in your stomach, warm and heavy, and your first thought (unwelcome and strange) was how that vibration would feel beneath your palm.

Craig sighed with desperation at the conversation with a quiet “Stop being weird, bro!” while his other younger brother, unbothered, simply ignored the awkwardness, nodded as an introduction and handed beers around.

It was a welcome distraction, the cold liquid sliding down your throat, and buying you time to think on what to say next, but the youngest, Deran, beat you to it, asking you about your job and how good a surfer you were.

“You fuckin’ with me? You live in Oceanside and can’t stand on a board?” he laughed and couldn’t stop the slight condescending tone from his voice. “No worry, me or mister El Craigo here will introduce you to it. You’ll only swallow, like…a gallon of water before you get it.”

“Oh, um…I don’t think…”  you tried to say, though it was mostly ignored.

Pope hadn’t looked away once, hand gripping tightly enough on the beer that you could see his knuckles whitening. There was something careful about the way he held himself: still, contained.

Your eyes met his again and you smiled tentatively.

“Um…Pope,” you started, uncertain, the name tasting strange on your tongue. “Can I ask you…”

“Andrew.” He interrupted, the tone firm enough to stop you mid-breath.

You suddenly became aware of your heartbeat, your chest lifting as it rattled against your ribs. Your gaze dropped at the intensity. Had you done something wrong? You suddenly felt foolish for the pastries, for the outstretched hand, for trying so hard, and an absurd urge to apologize rose in your throat, even if you didn’t know what for.

When you looked up, he was already halfway out of the kitchen.

You never finished your question.

Later that night, when you slipped into your bed, the sheets cold but familiar in their welcoming loneliness, you turned from one side to the other, eyes pinched shut without any release to exhaustion, realizing that you couldn’t remember what you had meant to ask.

Only that you wanted to hear his voice, just one more time.

──────────

The house is too loud. It always is when there are people over.

It reminds him of being a kid, hiding with Julia, hands intertwined, avoiding the drunk and high grown-ups. Whispering that everything would be alright. That no one would find them. Not even Smu-

(Bad thought. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on the kitchen counter.)

The volume of the music is pushed too high for his comfort, a constant buzz under the conversations in the house and near the pool while Andrew stands in the kitchen, hands deep in soapy water, scrubbing a glass that is already clean.

He finished the dishes ten minutes ago, but he is still washing, still drying, rearranging things that don’t need rearranging because it gives him somewhere to put his hands, to put his eyes. Because the alternative is the living room. And you.

(You, in that white dress. He has the stupid thought that you look like an angel and immediately hates himself for it. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the droplets dripping from his fingertips.)

He tells himself that he is staying in the kitchen because it lets him see everything in the house, because parties mean unlocked doors, strangers who could wander into rooms they shouldn’t be in. And there are the habits he can’t shake off: watching the exits, the unfamiliar faces, counting heads (Deran, Craig, you), noting who is drinking too much, who is getting loud, who might break something.

He dries the same plate twice in a row before setting it down on the kitchen counter and looking up without meaning to.

You are by the couch, perched on the armrest while Craig, bare chest and shameless about it, tells you the story about the time he smuggled a burrito full of drugs across the Mexico border, story he knew you heard a dozen times these past three months. But still, you are laughing, head tipped back, hair falling down your spine (he wonders what they would feel like underneath his fingertips), one hand wrapped around a bottle you haven’t drunk from in a while, like it has more to do with keeping your hands busy while you are listening.

Andrew noticed it the first week he met you.

But the moment your lips wrap around the drink, he looks away and goes back to washing clean and dried plates, hands in the ice water, soap stinging the small cut on his knuckle.

(Good. Something sharp. Something real. Better than counting for now.)

“I bought you a new pair of gloves.”

Your voice is closer than he expected and his head snaps towards you before he can stop it. You are standing at the edge of the counter, smiling, so close that he can smell your shampoo despite the soap and the lingering smell of weed (it’s so clean, so soft, he wants to drown himself in it).

 “Why?” He asks, his nostrils flaring at his own bluntness.

You shrug, small. “I know Craig threw your pair away yesterday. And, um… I know you like wearing them when you clean.”

“Why?” his voice repeats, breaking at the word.

Of course, you ignore his question, and he can’t help but spiral (why did you do that? do you realize how much the gesture is affecting him? no one ever cared about his gloves. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the freckles on your nose.).

“I got the good ones,” you add, beaming. “So the soap doesn’t mess up your hands.”

While your eyes drop to his hands, his are still enraptured on your face, studying every single feature (you really do look like an angel. and you act like one too. maybe you are his salvation. stop, he needs to fucking stop but he no longer knows what to count.).

Andrew swallows what feels like an anchor in his throat because you look like you worry about him (you have done that for a while now, which still baffles him). Nobody worries about him: they worry about what he might do, not whether he is hurt.

“’m fine.” He mutters, not convincingly enough, judging by the look on your face.

You are still looking at his bruised hands and your fingers twitch on the counter like you had the sudden urge to reach for him, like you might take his hand to look at it.

(He has the overwhelming need to know what you would do with his hands in yours. Hold them? Kiss them better? One. Two. Three- would you let his hands run along your hair? He knows what it’s like to touch you when you need help, but he feels that this would be very different.)

“They are under the sink,” you say above the music and Andrew can’t do anything else but stare, not trusting his own voice.

You linger for a moment at the counter and Andrew wants to ask you to stay (in the kitchen, in his life, doesn’t matter), but Craig shouts your name from the living room and suddenly he has some homicidal thoughts. You glance over your shoulder, then back at Andrew, and you look…reluctant.

“I’ll…”

“Yeah.”

You don’t move. Neither does he.

“Thanks.” He finally says, his gaze still tracking every shift of your expressions, trying to burn your smile in his retina, hoping one blink would not be enough to erase it.

“Of course, Andrew.”

Andrew. For you, he is Andrew and that’s all that matters because you are the only one calling him by this name and you make it sound like it belongs to you ever since you first said it by the pool.

With one last little smile, you walk away and his eyes follow you until he knows you have reached Craig but even then, he doesn’t look away, afraid you might disappear, just like every good thing always did.

And Andrew learned, a long time ago, that if you wanted something to stay alive and safe, you watched it. Guarded it. Didn’t blink.

Andrew didn’t blink.

──────────

You stepped outside because the house had started to feel too small, suffocating all at once, Craig and Deran’s voices stacking over each other in the open kitchen, arguing about a job - a part of the Cody brothers’ lives you knew existed but mostly chose not to look at too closely.

You told yourself you only needed a second of quiet, just enough space to breathe properly again after a long day at work full of aggravating customers, meager tips and a coffee spilt by a coworker on your bare legs.

The noise softened once the door closed, letting you draw in a deep breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

“Fucking hell.” You muttered, exhausted by the shouting.

You hadn’t noticed him at first, too busy staring at the pool and ignoring your inner voice telling you to jump straight in the pool fully clothed, a thought that you were soon pulled out of when you heard a sound that didn’t belong to the wind or the trees.

That’s when you saw him, seated at the edge of a lounge chair, head bowed, a skateboard turned upside down across his thighs, one hand spinning a wheel while the other oiled it with slow, precise movements.

“Not a fan of the shouting matches?” you asked, trying not to startle him.

He glanced up, shook his head before going back to the board. “No.”

“So…not keen on loud noises either?”

“No.”

For a moment, you simply watched him, struck by how different he looked when he was doing something he seemed to…enjoy. Less folded into himself, the usual tightness of his posture easing (was it because of the board? the sound of the pool? the absence of his brothers? whatever it is, the view looked precious enough for you to want to capture it).

You lowered yourself onto the warm concrete next to him, your back resting against the lounge chair, knees pulled to your chest, neither of you speaking for a while.

That’s when you noticed his hands: knuckles swollen and red, the skin split near the thumb, a faint line of blood reopening every time the skin stretched.

“They look like they hurt. Y-Your hands, I mean.”

He shrugged without looking at you. “They’re fine.”

Your eyes drifted from them to his profile: from his hazel eyes fully focused on the board to the tight set of his mouth and you caught yourself distracted by his lips for a second too long before forcing your eyes back to the floor, warmth creeping up your neck (don’t think about that, don’t think about that).

“Andrew?”

The wheel immediately stopped spinning. Not gradually, just…stopped.

The entire yard suddenly became too quiet as his face snapped towards you, something unreadable flickering across his face and vanishing just as quickly, and you felt the realization settle in slowly that you had finally said his name after almost a month of avoiding it.

“Do you think I could learn how to skateboard? I…” the words got stuck between your throat and your lips while you searched for the courage to finish your sentence without tripping over yourself. “I mean…I wanted to know if you could help me. Learn it, I mean. If you wanted to. You don’t have to, I just…” (fuck. why? why were you so weird?)

Your fingers picked at the hem of your skirt and pulled on a thread to busy your hands, and from the corner of your vision you caught his brief smile, and the warmth that spread was so shamefully immediate that you bit your tongue until you tasted metal just to keep from blurting out something along the lines of ‘i really, really, fucking love your smile, please do it again so my day goes from moderately shitty to embarrassingly close to perfection.’

“Give me your phone.” he said, and you didn’t hesitate, fishing it out from your pocket, and placing it in his palm.

“There’s no password on your phone.”

“Yeah…I know.”

“It’s dangerous.” His thumb hovered over the screen, nose flaring. “Anyone could get into it. Your photos. Your messages. Your address. Everything is in there.”

You barely heard the end of it, too focused on the pull in your chest as his words kept coming, just for you.

“I haven’t thought about that.” You murmured, feeling foolish while he muttered to himself something that definitely sounded like ‘I did.’

He tapped his number in before going through the settings while you were still struck by his intensity and that he was doing this for you without being asked.

“Six digits. Not birthdates and not something simple like six zeros.” He handed your phone back, his fingers lingering for a second too long before pulling away. “Put one.”

This time you knew it was an order and you didn’t hesitate a second as you followed it, typing something in, suddenly hyperaware of how close he was standing, your shoulder almost brushing his calf, your pulse loud in your ears and a slow, humiliating heat pooling low in your stomach that you refused to think about at the moment.

“Good.” He said after you saved the password. “Text me your work hours.”

“So, it’s a yes? Really?”

He grunted and whether the dusting of crimson over his freckles was real or something you imagined, you couldn’t tell, you were too busy feeling as light as a leaf.

“Yes. And…”

His words were cut off by the screen door banging open, leaning back abruptly just as Craig made his way toward you both with a grin that meant whatever the fight with Deran had been about, he had won.

“Deran agrees for Friday night. And you,” he tapped your forehead. “didn’t hear shit.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s my girl. Now get your ass in the pool.”

Craig was already running to the pool before you could respond, clothes coming off mid-step.

“I can’t believe this man has a kid. Has you brother always been a shameless nudist?”

 “Unfortunately…yes.”

You snorted before murmuring. “Thanks, by the way. For the password thing. And for agreeing to teach me. I promise I’ll only be like…average terrible.”

“You’ll be fine,” he shrugged. Then, quieter, “I’ll make sure.”

His gaze dipped briefly to your mouth when he said it, before snapping back up, and something in your stomach turned warm and gooey, a reckless part of you hoping he might add something else. Or step closer again. But he didn’t, just nodded once, before muttering. “Go.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you to your board, Andrew.”

You made it halfway to the pool before you glanced back. He was still watching, not even pretending not to, looking like a leopard ready to jump. Like if you slipped, he would already be moving.

And lying awake that night, window cracked open and the ocean humming somewhere in the dark, you muffled his name into your pillow, trying to quiet yourself, imagining his hands instead of yours. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.

──────────

Andrew is used to ending his nights alone because wanting people to stay never goes well for him.

So, when the party finally ends at four in the morning, he does what he knows best: throwing the bottles into the trash, making sure no one is passed out in the backyard or asleep in one of the bedrooms and…cleaning.

First the diving board, even if Craig is still making out on one of the lounge chairs with a girl whose name Andrew can’t remember and doesn’t try to (he knows best). Next, the counter, twice in a row for good measure. Then the sink, while Deran claps a hand on his shoulder with a “Don’t stay up too late, okay?” before heading out.

(One. Two. Three. Four. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. He counts the second you spend in the bathroom.)

He stands in the kitchen for a moment before realizing it might look strange and make you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing he wants.

He rushes back to his room (he wouldn’t exactly call it ‘sprinting’. sprinting would mean he is trying to avoid you. which he is not. not at all.).

He doesn’t bother turning on the light when he decides to lie on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling because he knows that sleep won’t come. It never does.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks.)

Every time he closes his eyes, something crawls up from beneath his ribs and he is once again plagued by his ghost: Julia’s voice, Cath’s smile, Baz’s forgiveness. Smurf’s words cutting straight through him.

He thinks about the pool and how easy it would be to let the water close over his head. How all the voices would finally be silent forever, his own included.

(Bad thoughts. One. Two. Three. Four. He recites the number of cameras in the bank for the incoming job.)

He forces himself to think of something else.

Of you, earlier, laughing at Craig’s story (and the immediate, unwelcome ache in his chest as he wonders if there’s something between the two of you, if this will end the way things always seem to, if you’ll be another Cath: close to him before preferring his brother).

Then he thinks about the way he made you laugh on your first skateboard lesson, all because he wanted to make you feel safe and seen, how the simple feel of your waist had nearly made him press his forehead to your shoulder and beg for you to stay and keep looking at him like that.

He thinks about that night when you called him for help, and how he didn’t hesitate for even a second when reaching for his keys, truck already running before you even finished explaining because the simple thought of you alone somewhere in the dark, waiting and frightened, had felt like acid running through his veins, the kind of fear that made him beg to the sky “Not here, not her, not again. I won’t fail her”.  

He presses his palms against his eyes until he sees bursts of purple light.

(Breathe. One. Tw-)

A faint knock against the door makes him freeze.

Nobody knocks in this house, his brothers just…barge in.

He is already on his feet before he realizes it, his hand finding the handle before he opens to find you there.

Barefoot, hair loose and messy, the mascara smudged at the corners of your eyes and the dress wrinkled. Earlier, Andrew thought you looked like an ethereal angel, something untouchable and holy.

But now…now you just look human, real and warm, which is worse because real things like you can stay as well as leave.

“Hey.” You murmur, leaning against the doorframe.

He grips the handle tightly to steady himself.

“Something wrong?”

“I was supposed to sleep on the couch,” you begin, talking with your hands the way you always do when you try to explain a situation, “but signor El Craigo has decided that it’s now his new make out spot with Sam and I really don’t need that image burned into my brain. And of course, I thought about taking his room in retaliation, but I don’t trust his conception of hygiene,”

That makes him huff.

“So…” you add, rubbing your arm, almost shy which doesn’t make sense in his mind because you haven’t been shy with him in a long time with the skatepark lessons or with the ‘hallway accident’ you both had together, “Can I stay here tonight?”

You don’t say ‘with you’ nor ‘in your bed’, but Andrew understands and he is pretty sure his brain short circuits for a second or two.

You didn’t text Deran or try to Uber home. You just came to him. Because you trusted him.

“Yes.” He replies too fast, stepping back from the door.

“You sure?”

He nods to avoid confessing that he would give you the bed. The room. The house. The air in his lungs.

You slip past him into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed before looking back at him and asking gently, “You’re not sleeping, right?”.

“No. Not…not really.”

“Yeah, figured.”

You lie down beneath the covers first, curling onto the side of the bed closest to the wall, leaving him space.

“Don’t think about staying on top of the covers, Andrew.”

The warning in your tone almost makes him laugh so he complies, lying down beside you, fully clothed and aware of every inch separating the two of you.

He stares at the ceiling again.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breathing.)

The mattress shifts while you slowly roll onto your back before turning fully toward him, your shoulder brushing his arm.

“Sorry,” you mumble sleepily. “’m cold.”

“It’s fine.” He says it like the ghost of your breathing over his collarbone didn’t just set every of his nerves on fire, like he was not terrified to shift even an inch.

After a few minutes, you drift closer in your sleep, chasing warmth without thinking, your knee pressing against his thigh, your hand sliding across the sheets until your fingers come to rest on the fabric of his shirt, right over his heartbeat and for a moment he genuinely forgets how to breathe.

Your palm is so warm, and he is painfully aware that you can probably feel how hard his heart is pounding.

Nobody has ever touched him like this, like he is something safe and out of everything that has happened to him: the underground fights, the prison, the jobs…none of that ever made him feel this defenseless.

His eyes suddenly burn because he wants to turn so much to see your peaceful face, tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, pull you closer to know just once in his life what it’s like to hold something good without destroying it, to press his face into your hair and breathe until the ghosts quiet down, but he doesn’t.

He stays exactly as he is, lying in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breaths again. Then the seconds between them. He thinks about the fact that you’re here and the miracle of it.)

Sleep doesn’t come, but for the first time in years, the night doesn’t feel empty. Because you’re here. Warm. Alive. Trusting him.

So, Andrew stays awake until morning, guarding the only good thing that ever chose him.

──────────

You were so, so late.

You had told Andrew on the phone that you would be at his skatepark at 5:15 sharp after work, and it was now 5:42 and you were sprinting the half mile that separated the coffee shop from there, bag smacking against your hip, your lungs burning, already sweaty before you even reached the entrance, trying to slow your breathing with a few useless deep inhales, hands braced on your knees, pretending that you were not seconds away from passing out.

(First lesson and you were already late and a disaster. Great. Very impressive.)

You straightened, wiped your forehead, and stepped inside, scanning the park before finding Andrew, board tucked under one arm, sleeves riding up his biceps, curls messy from the wind and sweat and you were now positively sure that you had some drool at the corner of your mouth (the universe had decided to sabotage you and that was fucking unfair.)

You watched the tiny smile he had as a girl showed him her board, proud and beaming at him like he had personally hung the sun in the sky (no, you didn’t need to think about him being good with kids. you didn’t need to picture him with kids, him gentle, him…stop. shut up.).

The second his head lifted and locked eyes with you, you were pretty much done for. It was ridiculous, really, how one look from him could short-circuit every coherent thought in your brain, how your feet just…moved, carrying you toward him instinctively, dropping your bag by the fence without breaking your stride as he met you halfway.

His gaze dragged over you once: your face, your hair, your chest.

“You ran here?”

“Yes. And I’m sweating…a lot. Please don’t judge me.”

He took a few seconds, a storm passing through his eyes before he added.

“You’re late.”

“I know,” you rushed, your hands quickly moving and your words tumbling over each other like they always did when you got flustered around him. “but a guy ordered for his whole ‘cheaper by the dozen’ family like three minutes before we closed. I’m probably sure he sensed my despair and fed on it.”

A small huff escaped him. “You didn’t have to run.”

You shrugged, eyes to the ground. “Didn’t want you to think I bailed on you.”

You felt it, his head tilting down just enough to catch your gaze again, stubborn about it.

“I wouldn’t. Now you ready?”

“Born ready.” You lied through your teeth.

“You look terrified.”

“I can do both, you know,” you shot back quickly. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

There was the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, Whitman.”

“Y-You know Whitman?”

A pause.

“I mean…not that I don’t believe you or think you can’t read poetry or anything…that’s actually super hot, so good job!” you gave him a thumbs-up, aware you had just lost every ounce of dignity you had ever possessed. “It’s just that last week Craig asked me if ‘Pride and Peace’ was a good book to impress a girl, so…my bar was very low.”

Andrew stared at you for a moment. “Pride and Peace.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not…”

“I know, I know. But don’t worry, I did a good deed for society and told him not to mention any book ever. You and Deran are safe from now on. You’re welcome.”

And there it was again: that quiet amusement on his lips, the roll of his eyes like he couldn’t help himself, making you feel the stupid and dangerous need to continue to jest (keep talking, say anything, make him do it again).

He shook his head once. “C’mon Whitman. Let’s see what you got.”

You trailed after him without thinking and the first few attempts were…humiliating to say the least: your balance was nonexistent, your feet refused to cooperate, your arms stood uselessly at your sides, and you had absolutely no idea where you were supposed to look while Andrew hovered nearby like he was ready to intervene at any moment.

“I look stupid!” you complained.

“You’re fine.”

“I’m not fine! This is deeply humiliating. I can barely stay upright and there are twelve-year-olds doing tricks behind me! Tricks, Andrew!”

“You’re doing good.”

“I almost died.”

“You didn’t.”

“Socially, I assure you I did.”

Your heart did a stupid little skip when a tiny, amused sound escaped him.

(You could bottle that sound and live off it. You were now pretty sure you would commit crimes for it.)

“Makes sense you’re friends with Craig,” he muttered. “Dramatic.”

You gasped, unable to contain your grin. “Excuse you mister Cody, but I am layered! I am complex!”

He looked unimpressed and repeated “Dramatic.”

You opened your mouth to argue before your foot slipped, the board shooting forward, and for one horrible second you thought that worse than falling off in front of children was falling off in front of the guy you had a crush on.

But you never got to know the feeling before his hands were suddenly there, at your waist, catching you fast and steadying you while you became acutely aware of every nerve under his palms, of his thumbs grazing your hipbones, of his breath brushing your cheek as heat pooled between your legs.

He moved behind your back, still holding your waist before murmuring “Don’t lean and bend your knees.”

(You were starting to suspect he was fucking with you on purpose.)

But still, he adjusted you gently, palms rotating your hips and guiding your stance before kneeling to help place your legs on the board and you couldn’t stop yourself from blurting:

“I haven’t shaved my legs. Sorry.”

“Me neither.” He huffed, his breath warm on your calf and the faintest hint of amusement threading through his voice.

(Was that…a joke? Was he joking? Since when was he doing that? You liked that. You wanted that.)

Andrew pushed himself back on his feet, stepping away just enough for you to feel the sudden absence of his body, leaving you oddly cold, like you had stepped out of the sunlight.

“Try again.”

You nodded, realizing that his joke had somehow shaken the worst of your nerves away, before pushing off, your knees bent like he had shown you, your weight centered and the board rolled.

“Oh my God, I’m doing it! Andrew, I’m really doing it!” you exclaimed happily.

“You are.”

You risked a glance over your shoulder, and he was watching you with his usual careful intensity, hands half-raised and prepared to catch you, like protecting you was the only thing on his list right now.

So (naturally), you did the dumbest thing possible and tested him. Just a little bit. Just to know.

You leaned and let your weight tip forward just enough to know if…

His hands immediately caught you, his hands on your ribs, scanning up and down if you had been hurt, “You okay?”

You swallowed, realizing that you had never doubted a second he would be there. And that settled something warm and terrifying in your chest.

It was not a silly crush, not your friend’s brother that you thought was hot and interesting, no. It was falling. Headfirst, no parachute.

And judging by the way his hands hadn’t moved from your waist yet, you weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t falling a little too.

──────────

You are screaming and he is too late.

He is always too late.

Your voice breaks into something small and terrified, the kind of sound that doesn’t even feel human anymore, and he is running but his legs don’t cooperate, move in slow-motion, the floor stretching longer and longer beneath him and the house smells like chlorine, metal and something sour he recognizes too fast.

You’re in the pool, face down and the water is red. And you are so, so still. He tries to move, to drag you out, but he can’t.

You turn toward him, eyes open and your mouth spilling blood.

“You were supposed to be there, Andrew. Why weren’t you there?”

He jerks awake, his whole body snapping upright while air refuses to enter his lungs, a pain in his ribcage so intense he thinks it might split him open from the inside out.

He doesn’t understand why at first: why his pillow feels cold and damp to the touch, why his throat burns, until he drags a shaky hand across his face and touches something wet, the realization feeling nauseating.

He has been crying in his sleep for God knows how long.

He presses his palms hard into his eyes like maybe the pain will help him, like maybe if he suffers enough the images will disappear. That you won’t be floating face down in the pool, covered in blood, your blood, your voice joining all the others, the same disappointed tone he’s memorized over the years with his ghosts.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He tries to count but it doesn’t work.)

The house is quiet for once, too quiet, and Andrew has this awful, crawling sensation lodged under his sternum, something cold and irrational that he can’t help but spiral into.

(What if…No.)

He is already moving, because lying back down would mean closing his eyes again and he can’t, he fucking can’t risk seeing you like that again, can’t hear the sound of your voice pleading and begging for him to save you when you are already gone, can’t add you to the long list of ghosts that wait for him every night.

Halfway down the hall, he gets as quiet as he can manage, moving through the house like he is on a job, because it feels the same: this sick, urgent need to verify something, to be sure that you are here, that you are safe.

The living room is glowing faintly blue before he even steps in, the light spilling on the floor and he hears it: a narrator speaking about sharks and the distant sound of recorded waves.

You always pick sea life documentaries when you stay over.

He doesn’t know when you figured out he liked them.

He stops at the threshold and sees you: curled on the couch, hidden beneath a blanket and alive.

(Your chest rises. Then falls. Rises. Falls. You’re not floating. You’re not gone.)

His lungs finally unlock and he breathes sharply, the sound loud enough that you look up immediately, like you sensed him there, like you are now tuned to him in a way he doesn’t understand, and your expression softens the second you see his face.

“Hey,” you say, voice thick with sleep. “Everything okay?”

He nods automatically but knows that he can’t bullshit you.

“You don’t look okay.”

“I’m fine,” he manages, but the words come out wrecked and dragged through his throat.

Your eyes examine him slowly and it clicks behind them. “Nightmare?”

(Oh, he hates this word. Hates how small it makes him feel. Hates how childish it sounds. Hates how accurate it is.)

His jaw locks so hard it aches and he can’t force out anything more than a stiff, miserable nod, his nails digging crescent moons in his palms as he braces himself for questions, for having to justify why he is standing there at three in the morning, shaking over a bad dream. But you don’t push.

You just scrub a hand over your tired face before moving your legs and lifting the blanket, creating space beside you.

“Come here.” You mumble, looking at him, patient.

He crosses the room slowly, the couch dipping under his weight as he lowers himself beside you, hyperaware of every inch of distance, of your arm brushing his, of the warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of your shirt, of how close your knee is to his thigh and how easy it would be to accidentally touch.

Your hand bumps his and even if he should pull away, he doesn’t. The contact is small, just skin against skin but for Andrew, it’s the closest to heaven he’s ever been.

Your fingers linger, uncertain, like you’re giving him time to decide, like he is allowed to decide. His thumb moves before he can stop it, brushing lightly over your knuckles, slowly, reverently, like he needs to make sure you are solid and not a trick of his mind. You feel warmer than him.

(Alive warm. Not water cold. Not bloody and floating. Not like in the pool.)

The memory hits so hard it hurts.

He jerks his hand back abruptly, his breathing going wrong again, shame creeping hot and fast because for a moment he wanted something and asked for it, letting the walls go down.

But you don’t comment, don’t tease and don’t pull away in response to his neediness and instead, you shift closer and you help settling the blanket over both of you, your arm following, tugging him in gently, like there has never been a version of this world where he wasn’t permitted to be here.

He stiffens when your hand finds the back of his neck and he wants to reassure you that it’s not because he wants it to stop but because he wants it too much, and he doesn’t deserve it. But your fingers brush his scalp, and suddenly he is nothing but starving for it, leaning toward it instinctively.

You guide him down gently, so gently and he can’t win this fight tonight, his ear pressing against your chest.

(Your heartbeat. Steady. There. One. Two. Three. Four. It’s there. You’re alive.)

The documentary keeps whispering about tides and sharks, but he barely hears it now because all he can focus on is the rhythm under his cheek and the way your fingers keep caressing his curls in slow strokes like you were calming a frightened wild animal.

He wants to move. To slide his arm around your waist. To press his face into your shirt and breathe you. To hold you tight enough so nothing could ever take you away.

But he stays still, terrified of ruining it and breaking something with the weight of his want.

Your fingers drift lower to cradle the back of his head while your other arm tightens around him and pull him fully into you, closing the remaining space between your two bodies. His relief is immediate and overwhelming, pulling a whimper out of him, emptying him of his thoughts.

His chest caves inward on a shaky exhale, his hand finally moving hesitantly until it rests lightly on your waist, barely touching and giving you room to pull away if you want to, but you don’t. You tuck him closer, your chin brushing his hair.

 “I’ve got you. You’re okay, Andrew, I promise. I’m here.”

The words land deep and it takes him a moment to realize he is sobbing in your arms, the tears soaking your shirt while he presses his forehead closer to your chest, just to confirm that the heartbeat under him is real.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your heart now.)

“Shh…It’s going to be okay, Andrew.”

The storm in his head – the ghosts, the pool, your voice – slowly quiets for the first time all night, dissolving under the simple, undeniable fact that you are here and breathing under his cheek, speaking to him, comforting him.

And somewhere, between one beat and the next, his body finally gives up the fight, his sobs stop, exhaustion dragging him under gently this time, no drowning, no screaming, just the steady rhythm of you and your quiet voice drifting above him.

“I’m not leaving Andrew.”

He knows that for tonight at least, no nightmare will come at him.

You promised.

──────────

“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.”

Craig was the worst and you were absolutely going to kill him. Not even metaphorically, but in the sense where you would pick up the nearest heavy object and aim for his head the next time you saw him, if only you were able to find him right now instead of wandering through a house you didn’t know that smelled aggressively of weed and alcohol.

Deran and Andrew would forgive you, you were sure of it, if you murdered their brother under these circumstances. Hell, they might even help you bury the body. Because you could have had a regular evening at home, watching for the hundredth time Shawshank Redemption but no, you had to be alone in a stranger’s kitchen, trying not to panic.

The party had shifted, you felt it about twenty minutes ago.

It had stopped being loud fun and started being loud wrong when little bags started to be passed around, people disappearing in rooms and coming back with pupils blown wide and white powder on their nostrils.

You had looked for Craig. Texted him. Called. Nothing.

You had found someone who vaguely resembled one of the friends he introduced you to earlier, and when you asked if they had seen him, they laughed and replied something about “upstairs with Renn so it might take a while, Sweetheart,” and you stood there for a second, scared. Really scared.

Because you didn’t know anyone there, not really. And you were now surrounded by idiots who were snorting cocaine.

(Okay. Calm down. Breathe. Don’t cry. It doesn’t help your situation at all.)

A guy you didn’t recognize slid a drink toward you with a grin that lingered too long, and the fact that your very first thought was ‘I wonder if he put something in that’ made your decision for you: you were leaving. Immediately. Whatever Craig was doing upstairs with Renn was officially no longer your problem.

The night air hit your face, making you regret for the lack of jacket.

You stood on a sidewalk for a moment, trying to calculate the distance back to your apartment. You were too far, with no car and a phone at nine percent.

“Craig is dead. He is fucking dead. I will kill him myself,” you muttered under your breath as you started walking anyway, heels dangling in your hand, bare feet against the cold concrete, just to put some distance between you and the house.

But the further you got, the louder your heartbeat became, pounding in your ears, the fear crawling up your spine.

Still, you kept walking, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, repeating ‘You’ll be fine,’ over and over to your brain.

(You were not fine. You were alone. In the middle of the night. Walking barefoot down a street you didn’t know. Why were you like this? Why didn’t you just stay? Why didn’t you drag Craig out by his stupid hair to drive you back home?)

You didn’t want to try to call Craig again and waste your last percentage of battery on someone who would not answer.

And before you could talk yourself out of it, before you could rationalize or be embarrassed…your thumb was already pressing Andrew’s name.

(If you called him, he would come. He wouldn’t hesitate. You knew it.)

The phone only rang once before he picked up.

“Yes?”

That was all it took for you: the sound of his steady and low voice to make something inside your chest collapse, the fragile composure you had been clinging to dissolving instantly as you let out a shaky exhale, thanking all the Gods above for Andrew Cody’s existence.

“Andrew,” you said, your voice betraying you immediately with a crack right through the middle of his name. “I-I’m sorry. It’s late, I know. I just…”

“What happened.”

You swallowed, trying to force the tears to back down. “I’m at this party and…and Craig left. I mean…he is upstairs with Renn doing I don’t know what and he won’t answer me. I left the house because it got weird there and I’m trying to walk home but I think that was a stupid idea and I just…”

(You hated how your voice wobbled. How small it sounded. You should have bought pepper spray.)

“I’m so scared.”

In the background, you could hear keys jangling, a door closing and his truck starting.

“Where are you?”

No ‘why’, no ‘what were you thinking’. Just that.

You gave him the street name and the closest intersection you could see, wiping your face with the back of your hand and trying to steady your breathing so you didn’t sound like you were seconds away from a breakdown.

“I’ll be there in five.”

You let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. “It’s at least ten.”

“Five.”

The line went dead before you could argue, the call cutting off abruptly as your screen went black. Dead battery.

You stared at your reflection for half a second on the dark screen, heart hammering while you counted the seconds in your head, hoping that somehow it would summon him faster.

It took less than three hundred for you to see headlights cut around the corner of the street faster than the required speed limit, relief crashing into you. He didn’t even fully stop before the driver’s door was already swinging open, crossing the distance to you in three long strides, eyes sweeping over you from head to toe then past you to the houses.

“You okay?”

You nodded too quickly and he stared at you, jaw locked so hard you could see the muscles twitching. He looked furious.

“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door, one hand braced on the roof as he helped you climb up into the seat, taking your shoes to put them in the back seat.

You stayed silent, not wanting to know to whom his anger was directed at. It was only once you were down the street that he finally spoke again, eyes flicking between the road and you.

“Did anyone hurt you?”

You blinked at him. “No.”

“Touch you?”

“No.”

“Follow you?”

You shook your head, watching his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.

“Say anything to you?”

“Just…offered me stuff,” you admitted quietly, wrapping your arms around yourself again. “But I said no. I would never do that. You know I would not.”

You weren’t sure why you felt the need to add that, why you wanted him to understand that you hadn’t been reckless. That hanging out with Craig didn’t mean being like him. That you wouldn’t caught yourself in drugs. You knew better.

The streetlight caught the side of his face and for a split second you saw something raw there before it slipped behind his mask of control. The silence continued to stretch, heavy.

“Are you angry at me?”

The truck slowed to a stop at a red light, allowing him to turn his head toward you fully, eyes dark and intense in a way that made your whole body pulse in response, not from fear but from the weight of being seen.

“I’m not angry at you,” he said, holding your gaze. “I’m angry you were there alone. Angry that my stupid brother left you. Angry that I wasn’t there sooner. But not at you.”

The light shifted to green, but he didn’t move right away. His eyes remained locked on yours, unblinking, making sure you understood the distinction.

“You call me,” he added quietly. “The second you have a problem, you always call me. Okay?”

You nodded, fingers twisting in the fabric of your dress. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You don’t.”

And there was something in the way he said it, like he was wounded at the idea you thought you might ever be an inconvenience to him, that made you blush.

The truck finally rolled forward, but the air between you felt different, heavier in a way that you’ll only be to shake off with a cold shower.

You watched the way his shoulders remained tense all the way to your home and understood then that he had come because he had been frightened, that the thought of you alone in the dark had unsettled something in him, and that he had needed to fix it.

And the scariest part was that something warm and traitorous inside your chest responded to that.

You liked that he had been scared.

You liked that he came in less than three hundred seconds.

That he didn’t even hesitate when you admitted you were frightened, he simply moved.

And you liked the way he refused to let you walk barefoot to your apartment, carrying you, as if the idea of your skin touching the cold pavement was something he would not allow.

He didn’t put you down immediately. No, he held you all the way from his truck to your doorway, one arm firm beneath your legs and the other steady at your back, your shoes dangling loosely from his fingers, your body tucked close enough to feel his breathing through his shirt, making you aware of how easily you fit there.

When he finally set you down at your threshold, his hands lingered at your waist a second longer than necessary.

“You’ll be good?” he asked quietly, handing you your shoes, your fingers brushing his in the exchange.

You nodded, incapable of trusting your own voice, because if you opened your mouth, you were fairly certain that something reckless would fall out, something dangerously close to ‘stay’ and you were overwhelmed enough by the urge to step over, to reach for him and press your forehead against his chest just to see if his heart was still beating as fast as yours.

He was still staring at you, something unspoken passing like electricity.

“Good night,” he whispered, the softness of it almost undoing you.

“Good night, Andrew.”

You closed your door slowly, pressing your back against it, listening to his boots on the pavement, realizing that he hadn’t moved until he heard the lock click.

Only then did he walk back to his truck.

You would maybe not murder Craig after all.

──────────

Andrew spends the entire day watching for the moment you are going to change your mind and run from him.

And you don’t act differently when you wake up: you drink coffee while humming along to the songs on the radio, trying to coax a laugh out of him, but he keeps waiting for it anyway: the flicker in your eyes that says you’ve seen too much of him now, that holding him while he sobbed was enough to scare you off for good.

He replays the night while you are in the shower. How he cried in your arms. How your fingers combed through his curls. How you held him pressed against your chest. How he let himself need you.

He wonders if he should apologize, or explain, or at least even just…acknowledge that you saw him at his weakest and that he was thankful it was you.

Instead, he washes the dishes twice in a row to calm his brain, avoiding looking directly at your body when you step back into the kitchen in your coffee shop uniform, hair damp.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on his mug.)

You ask him if he is still taking you to the skatepark after your shift, and he wants to say no. The word sits right there on his tongue, ready to spill, because the park means proximity and proximity means touch and desire which always ends with something being taken away from him.

But you smile at him in such an open and easy way, and if it was something you really wanted to do, far be it from him to deny you after last night when you held him like he was something that could be saved, that was worth saving.

So, he nods and the way your whole face lights up makes him think, not for the first time, that he would probably give you anything you asked for.

That is the part of himself that scares him.

And now that he is finally at the skatepark with you on this late afternoon, he knows that he should be tracking your stance and foot placement the way he always does, but today he notices different things about you instead: how you are not pulling away from him, not avoiding him, how you stand close when you talk, lean into his space without hesitation.

And somehow that unsettles him more than distance would have. Because, if you are not afraid of him, if you are not stepping back after seeing what he is like during his worst nights, then what does that mean?

You sway on the board.

He sees it, but his brain is still half-caught in the memory of your heartbeat under his ear, still waiting for the recoil that doesn’t come and by the time his body reacts, you’re already too far from his reach.

You hit the concrete hands first, palms slamming down on instinct before your knees follow, the skin scraping on the ground with a sound that makes his stomach drop. The impact steals the air from your lungs and for a fraction of a second you manage to hold yourself up before your face strikes the ground with a sickening thud.

Andrew is already moving before you even understand what happened, the board rolling behind you while he drops to his knees so fast, he doesn’t register the sting tearing through his own skin, doesn’t feel the way his jeans split at the knee or how his knuckles scratch raw when he catches himself, because none of it matters to him. He is scanning, assessing and cataloguing the damage, forcing his mind to clear before he dares to touch you.

Your palms and knees are damaged through the torn denim, but it’s the blood beginning to run from your eyebrow that makes him feel abruptly cold. It gathers at the edge of your lashes and runs along the curve of your nose, bright red against your skin, and for a second, the world tilts.

(Blood. So much blood. He knows blood. Knows how to stop it. How to clean it. How to stitch it close. Pope is good with blood.)

The thought lands with cold precision, and even if he hates the name, even if it sounds wrong in his own head, he can’t afford to hate the part of himself that steps forward first right now - efficient Pope, steady Pope, the one who does not panic.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and his voice is low, measured, trying to reassure you the way you reassured him last night while he broke apart against your chest, even though his heart is hammering through his ribs.

Your eyes flutter, dazed, before you try to sit up, but he is already there, placing one hand at the back of your neck and the other on your shoulder to help you.

“It’s okay sweetheart, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay,” he murmurs, and there is something almost pleading behind his words that has less to do with your eyebrow and more to do with the memory of the pool and your voice accusing him of being too late.

He swipes his thumb gently beneath the cut to assess its depth, his other hand moving to brace your jaw so you don’t move, and when fresh blood coats the pad of his finger, he feels the familiar switch inside him flips into place.

(His breathing slows. His hands stop shaking. This he understands. This he can control.)

“It’s not deep,” he says after his inspection, even though he knows you’ll need stitches. “You still with me?”

Your hand lifts and finds his wrist, fingers curling around it, and the contact sends something through him that is not adrenaline and not fear but softer that frightens him more because it makes him aware of how much he needs you to be okay.

“I’m fine,” you whisper, though your voice is small.

He shakes his head once, tearing a strip from the hem of his shirt. “Let’s get you home so I can clean this properly, okay? Keep pressure there,” he instructs, guiding your hand back to your eyebrow and pressing it into place.

You nod, and that’s enough for him.

He slides one arm behind your back, his broad palm spanning the length of your shoulder blades, the other slipping beneath your knees to lift you, ignoring the sting of his knees and the sticky blood drying across his knuckles because none of it is important compared to the steady rhythm of your breath brushing his collarbone.

He carries you toward the truck, opening the door and lowering you carefully into the passenger seat, one hand coming up to your jaw, his thumb resting lightly on your cheekbone to make sure your eyes focus on him.

“Stay with me,” he says softly.

Your lips twitch despite the pain. “Bossy.”

He goes to buckle your seatbelt, adjusting the strap and closing the door gently before circling the truck, wiping his bloody hand against his jeans.

While driving back to your apartment, his eyes keep darting to you every few seconds.

“Talk to me,” he says after a moment.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

You take a moment before starting to talk about your day at the coffee shop, just mindless little moments. He doesn’t interrupt, he listens and nods at the right moments. You are grounding him on purpose, he realizes, dragging his thoughts back to something ordinary, something alive.

(You are not in the pool. You are breathing. You are not telling him he failed you. He counts your breaths.)

Inside your place, he works methodically, like he always does when someone comes back from a job hurt and bleeding – controlled, shutting everything else out. He lays out all your medical supplies on your desk with a precise spacing: first gauze then antiseptic, needle, sewing thread…The order is important. Order means control.

 You sit on the edge of your bed, looking at him and continuing the pressure of the piece of his shirt against your eyebrow.

“Alright,” he says quietly, stepping between your knees so he can reach your face properly. “Hold still.”

He cleans your palms first, his concentration absolute because his entire world has narrowed down to the square inch of skin beneath his fingers.

“I should have caught you.”

“It’s not your fault, Andrew. Don’t punish yourself for it, okay? I’m fine, I promise I’m fine.”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t trust himself to.

Instead, he goes silent and returns to the work in front of him, bandaging thoroughly your hands before taking off your pants and doing the same with your knees, making sure everything stays in place.

Finally, he allows himself to look fully at your face again, examining the cut on your eyebrow and tilting your chin upward with two fingers, feeling your breath ghosting on his lips in the small space between you.

“You’re going to need stitches,” he murmurs.

You study him for a second. “You’re very serious about this.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not dying, Andrew.”

“I know.”

“You look at me like I am.”

His jaw tightens and for a moment, he almost says it. Almost tells you that in his head, he’s already seen that version of you, floating and gone, but he swallows it back.

“Hold still,” he says instead.

He cleans the wound carefully by dabbing away the dried blood, and when you flinch, his free hand comes up automatically to steady the side of your head, thumb resting near your temple, not commenting on the way you lean into that touch.

The first puncture makes you inhale sharply.

“Breathe,” he says low, “Just breathe slow for me.”

You obey, focusing on him rather than the pull of the thread, your eyes locking on his face. He works carefully, tying each stitch with precision, trying not to falter at your gaze and even less at the reckless, intrusive thought about pressing his mouth to your brow to undo the wound.

When he finishes, he doesn’t move right away. He studies the line of the sutures, checks for tension, checks for bleeding or anything he might have missed before studying you.

“You’re okay,” he says, trying to convince himself.

You give him a small, tired smile. “I told you. I’m tougher than I look,” you say before your gaze drops, narrowing as you notice what he has been deliberately ignoring. “Andrew.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

He shrugs, dismissive, trying to pull his hand back so you can’t look too closely. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing,” you murmur, reaching for him before he can retreat, your fingers tracing carefully over his knuckles, making him go still. “You can’t patch me up and ignore yourself.”

He swallows, and before he can argue, you’re already reaching for the antiseptic with your bandaged hand, fumbling slightly. He catches the bottle before you drop it, his other hand covering your instinctively.

“You shouldn’t…”

“None of that,” you interrupt, and there is a flicker of stubbornness there that makes his mouth twitch despite himself.

You tug his hand toward you, and this time he lets you clean the scrape on his hands. He doesn’t look at the wound. He looks at you.

At the crease between your brows as you concentrate. At the way your lips press together. At the way you treat his injuries as if they matter. No one ever does.

Your fingers tie the bandage clumsily but securely, and when you finish, you don’t let go right away. Your thumb lingers, stroking slowly over the back of his hand. He is not sure how to breathe. The room feels so much smaller now. Quieter?

You lift your eyes up to him and whisper. “Can you stay? Just for a bit. So…we can check on each other.”

He could tell you it’s starting to get late and he was supposed to meet Deran and Craig for their next job. He could tell you he’ll call you tonight to see how you feel.

But there is nothing in him that wants to leave this room.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I can stay.”

He helps you shift properly onto the bed, careful of your knees. When you lie back against the pillows, you reach for him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt.

It takes him a second of hesitation before lying down beside you, stiff at first, but you roll toward him, your bandaged hands pressing against his chest as you settle close, your head finding the space beneath his chin.

He exhales through his nose before lifting his arms and resting them around you.

After a few minutes of silence, when he thinks you might already be drifting, you murmur. “I like it when you called me sweetheart.”

He presses his mouth lightly into your hair.

“Go to sleep now.”

You nod, your body going slack after a few minutes while he stays wide awake, his hands moving slowly along your spine.

“You scared me,” he whispers into the quiet, once he is sure you’re gone.

His fingers move to brush lightly just above the stitches of your brow.

“I can’t lose you,” he breathes, pressing his forehead gently against yours.

(He counts your breathing. One. Two. Three. Four. Not because he is afraid. But because he simply likes knowing the rhythm.)

When sleep finally comes at him, he knows there won’t be any nightmare.

Because you’re there.

──────────

You did not mean to end up alone with Deran.

In fact, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you had carefully avoided being alone with him since you met, not because he had been hostile to you, but because he seemed to have this unnerving habit of seeing through people and you were not a fan of subjecting yourself to that.

Craig had dragged you to the bar “just for a bit,” (which in Craig language meant ‘indefinitely’) before promptly disappearing with a girl, leaving you at the counter, nursing a soda because you had work in the morning.

Deran was wiping down the bar in front of you.

“El Craigo has already left?” he asked without looking up.

“’Flee’ would be a better word to describe what happened.”

“And so now you’re just…” he gestured vaguely toward you with the cloth, “…miserably contemplating on drowning yourself in your drink?”

“It’s a soda.”

“You know what? That’s so much sadder.”

You exhaled, dragging a hand over your face before saying, “Can I ask you something without you telling Craig?”

That caught his attention immediately, making him glance up.

“Depends how embarrassing it is.”

“It’s not embarrassing,” you protested automatically, then faltered. “Fine. It’s…a little embarrassing.”

“A little?”

“A lot,” you admitted.

He huffed once, almost amused, tossing the cloth over his shoulder. “Fine. What?”

You took a breath, suddenly aware of how absurd this was and how you were feeling like you were sixteen instead of twenty-nine. “It’s…” you cleared your throat. “It’s about Andrew.”

(Fuck. This was so deeply humiliating. But Craig was not an option. He would weaponize the information and never let you live it down.)

Deran blinked once before leaning his forearms on the counter, a smirk spreading on his lips. “Oh, I see.”

You groaned immediately. “Oh, please, can you not react like that? You’re making this worse.”

“I haven’t reacted! I’m just…not quite surprised about this discussion. Come on.” he waved a hand. “What’s your question?”

“It’s just…” you stopped. “I don’t know how to tell if he…”

(Oh my God. You had faced worst things than this. You could finish a sentence.)

Deran tilted his face slightly, with a shit-eating grin that you absolutely hated. “If he…what?”

“If he likes me,” you blurted out in one breath.

The silence fell for exactly two seconds before he let out a short, incredulous laugh.

“You’re fucking with me. Right?”

Your face burned instantly. “Okay, great. Never mind, I’m just gonna dig my gra-”

“Easy tiger. Don’t get your panties in a twist. He’s obsessed with you.”

You stopped, your stomach flipping violently.

“That’s not true.”

“It is deeply true,” Deran replied flatly. “He reorganized the shelves in the kitchen.”

You blinked. “Well…I thought he just liked order.”

“Oh yeah, he does. Trust me, he fucking does. But…not that much.”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Surely that doesn’t mean…”

“He drove across town at three in the morning to get you out of a party,” Deran continued, counting off on his fingers now. “He cancels family meetings to go to the skatepark with you. He did his ‘scary stare’ to me the last time I drank in your mug.”

Heat crept up your cheeks as you stammered, throat dry. “B-But he doesn’t…He doesn’t say anything.”

Deran snorted. “Yeah, that’s Andrew.”

“It’s just...sometimes I don’t even know what he’s thinking.”

“Neither do we,” he deadpanned. “Welcome to the family.”

You exhaled, frustration spilling over. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”

Deran considered you for a moment. “Just…let him try to go at his own pace here. He is not good at the whole…relationship thing.” he said, his voice stripped of its usual sarcasm before adding. “And for the record, the way you look at him? Not subtle. Like, at all.”

You nearly choked on your own spit. “I am subtle!”

“I mean, yes,” he conceded dryly. “You are subtle…for Andrew and Craig. So don’t be proud about it. That’s the lowest level of subtility possible.”

“I hate you, Deran.”

“Yeah?” he replied with an amused smile. “Well, get in line.”

There was a pause before he said quietly. “You’re good for him. Just…don’t screw it up. You’re in the tribe now. Which means I have to tell you this…”

You straightened slightly.

“…if you’re not sure about this, about yourself, you go now. Not in a few months. Not after he lets himself think this might be real. You don’t get to backpedal if it gets complicated. He wouldn’t recover from it.”

You shook your head immediately. “I swear, I won’t hurt him. He’s…he’s-”

You stopped, because the word felt too large to say aloud. But Deran looked at you intensely enough for you to finish.

“He’s important. To me. I don’t want to fix him, because I don’t think he’s broken. I like him the way he is. I...I think I wouldn’t recover from losing him too.”

Deran held your gaze for a long moment. “Alright.”

You tilted your head. “Alright?”

“Alright,” he repeated. “You pass.”

“Was-Was it an interview? Are you serious?”

“Yep. And congrats, you got the job.”

You rolled your eyes, but your chest felt lighter than it had in quite some time while Deran smiled, a real full grin, almost boyish, making it easier to see the younger brother under his usual cryptic attitude.

“I forgot what it was like,” he said after a beat.

“What?” you asked.

“Having a sister you can annoy.”

“That’s…extremely sweet of you.”

“Don’t ruin it,” he warned, pointing the towel at you. “I will absolutely deny this conversation ever happened if you mention it to my brothers.”

You laughed despite yourself, shaking your head.

Then, he leaned forward and whispered to you. “And if you hurt him, I’m stealing your car and slashing your tires.”

“O-Okay.”

He had a little smile before straightening up. “Welcome into the family.”

──────────

He has not told you.

No one has told you about the job.

Craig said it wasn’t necessary, that you would make a big deal out of it. Deran said it was cleaner that way, the less people know, the less risk and Andrew didn’t argue, telling himself it was better if you didn’t know the details, better if you didn’t have to sit there, waiting for them to come back and spiraling about what could be happening to them.

He told himself that ignorance would keep you safe.

The screen door slams and your voice, sharper than he has ever heard it is rising against Craig, who’s following you in the backyard like a kicked puppy.

Andrew doesn’t turn immediately from his spot, staring at the water of the pool. He closes his eyes, preparing himself for the loud noises.

(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the tiles of the pool.)

“You asked me to babysit Nick,” you’re saying, your voice shaking like you are about to start crying, “and you made it sound like it was for a date or something stupid! You didn’t say it was because you were going to fucking rob a jewelry store!”

“Jesus, lower your voice.”

“Lower my voice? How about you shut your mouth you liar!”

It isn’t only outrage in your voice, Andrew feels it. It’s fear. A raw, unfiltered fear for them. For him. And he doesn’t know what to do with that because no one has ever been afraid of losing him. When he went to prison years ago, his family moved on, sold his place and went on with their lives. For them, it was an inconvenience, for him, it was three years in Folsom.

Andrew turns then.

You’re standing a few feet from Craig, hands still bandaged, the thin line of stitches above your eyebrow visible, pointing a finger at Craig angrily while he tries to stay calm, running a hand through his hair.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re breaking into a jewelry store, Craig. That’s not exactly Disneyland.”

“We’ve done jobs for years,” he snaps. “We’re good at it.”

Andrew watches the way your shoulders rise and fall too fast with your breath, the way your fingers flex like you’re resisting the urge to grab something and throw it at Craig.

“You know what happens if you get caught, right? You know what that would do to Nick?”

Craig’s jaw tightens. “We don’t get caught.”

You let out a bitter sound that is half a laugh, half a sob.

“Repeat this in the eyes of your brother, I fucking dare you. That’s not how life works, and you know it. You can get caught.”

Andrew feels the words hit him in the chest and rip something out of him. He doesn’t know when you learn about it. Doesn’t know who told you or the extent of your knowledge about those three years of fights and isolation.

If you know – truly know - why aren’t you running away? Why are you still here?

(He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. It’s too much. It’s too little. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks on the floor.)

“We’re not idiots, just trust us, okay?” Craig argues, rolling his eyes.

“You left me alone at a party in a house full of people doing coke,” you fire back, your finger jabbing hard against his chest. “You are the exact definition of an idiot, Craig.”

Craig winces. “We don’t have to do this right now, okay? I already told you I was sorry about it. Pope, back me up.”

Both of you turn toward him at once, the weight of the fight landing on his shoulders. He doesn’t move immediately. Doesn’t speak either. Andrew has never been good at splitting himself in two, at giving his opinion. He was raised to follow orders.

Craig gestures toward you. “She’s acting like we’re amateurs.”

You slap his arm, wincing, forgetting for a moment about your bandage. “Fuck.”

Andrew walks up to you, checking your hand while you keep repeating him. “I’m okay, Andrew. I promise.”

He lifts his eyes to yours, angling his head to catch them, and when your gaze finally locks with his, he holds it, stubborn and unblinking. Your eyes shine brighter tonight than they usually do, so he doesn’t give himself permission to look away.

(You’re about to cry. It’s his fault. It must be his fault. He should have been better. But the voices are too loud. He doesn’t like when it’s too loud. One. Two. Three. Four. He remembers your breaths when you sleep.)

“I just…I thought you all trusted me,” you say, your voice breaking halfway through, fighting back tears of frustration.

Craig’s shoulders drop while Andrew’s thumb strokes over the back of your hand, grounding himself.

“We do,” Craig says, less combative now. “That’s why I asked you to watch Nick.”

“That’s not making me feel like you trust me. It’s making me feel like I’m a convenience.”

The word hangs there, making Andrew feel like he failed something. He has never wanted you to feel like this. He wanted you to be protected.

His gaze doesn’t waver as he keeps your hand in his, stroking over the bandage.

Craig looks between the two of you, seeing the hand, the closeness and mutters, “Jesus, bro, this is the worst time,” under his breath.

“Okay,” he exhales finally, turning fully toward you. “I fucked up. Massively. About the party. About not telling you. About…probably a million other things. I didn’t mean for you to feel unsafe.”

You don’t look convinced.

“Trust me,” Craig adds quickly, throwing Andrew a sideways glance, “I got my ass kicked enough by Pope to regret this party for the rest of my life.”

Your lips twitch a little, trying to keep it contain.

“Now, if you could hand me back my brother, I would be very grateful because we have a job to do, and you have a kid to entertain,” Craig says, rolling his eyes and retreating inside the house.

Andrew doesn’t let go of your hand, refusing to blink and terrified of losing a moment of you. He has the irrational feeling that if he does, something will waver on your face, the moment when you realize what this life looks like and he won’t be able to see his failure in time.

 “We’ve planned it,” he murmurs finally.

You hold his gaze. “And if something goes wrong?”

He doesn’t answer right away because he knows the answer to this, and he is certain you don’t want to hear it.

(If something goes wrong, he goes down first. He makes sure Deran and Craig are safe. He doesn’t come home because he won’t ever go back to prison. He prefers to die trying to escape than go back in a cell. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your eyelashes.)

You are still waiting, searching his face.

“Then I handle it,” he says quietly.

You shake your head, your jaw working as if you’re trying to physically hold yourself together. “Promise me to come back safe.”

His hand lifts before he can stop himself to settle against the side of your face, his thumb resting just beneath your eye, making you go very still, waiting for what he will do next.

His thumb caresses your cheekbone once, just enough to fill his mind with the memory of your skin.

“I won’t let anything happen to me,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if it’s meant as a vow or a lie he’s trying to force into becoming true. “I promise,” and before he allows himself to overthink it, he presses a careful kiss to your forehead, his lips brushing just above the line of stitches.

He can hear you catch your breath and it makes him pull back, his lips tingling at the contact. He knows it now: if he stays longer, if he lets himself feel the warmth of you, he might not leave at all.

He memorizes the sight of you like this: looking like losing him would break you and it does something unfamiliar to his chest. No one has ever been scared at the thought of him disappearing. No one has ever demanded that he come back.

He turns quickly, putting distance between the two of you before he changes his mind, the promise he made echoing in his head.

He hears it when Deran cuts the alarms. Promise me to come back safe. When he cuts through the back entrance. Promise me. And when Craig tries to improvise. Promise. He is not one to do reckless things but tonight, he is particularly unyielding each time the job almost goes sideways.

He knows you are in the house with Nick, probably pacing the kitchen and waiting to see the outcome of his word. So, when he finally reaches the main display room, he is quick to reach for the highest value pieces that will be cut down and reshaped. No traces or evidence will be left, they have done this long enough to know how to make everything disappear completely.

Andrew’s hand hovers for half a second over a particular velvet cushion before picking up the thin gold chain, a small heart-shaped pendant set in the center. It’s delicate and quiet, reminding him how it feels to bask in your light. He turns it between his fingers once, twice, imagining it resting just below the hollow of your throat, his thumb brushing over it absentmindedly while you are both sitting on the couch and watching a documentary.

He slips it securely into the inner pocket of his jacket, pressing it flat against his chest for a brief second before stepping back into motion and leaving with his brothers without any alarms or police sirens cutting through the night.

And when they get at the warehouse to stash the duffel bags, Andrew doesn’t stay like he usually would to make sure about getting his fair cut of the job. He nods once, quiet, ignoring their snickers and comments about him being ‘down bad’ all the way to his truck.

The house is dim when he enters, a soft glow coming from Craig’s bedroom and before he sees you, he hears your voice. It’s so soft.

“And baby whale swam all the way across the ocean to find mama whale,” you murmur.

He quietly walks up to the threshold to see you sitting on the bed with Nick lying, his eyes dropping with sleep, his thumb in his mouth and clutching to his monkey plushie. You slowly close the illustrated book before pressing a kiss onto the his hair and something expands in Andrew’s.

(You would be good at this. At building something steady. He can picture you pregnant, swelling with a child. His curls and your smile on a being that would never know the kind of hurt he had to go through.)

You stand up from the bed and see him, the relief crossing your face so achingly tender it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.

“Andrew.”

He nods once, trying to convey his feelings, “I came back.”

You smile, closing the bedroom door behind you and stepping close to him, scanning for injuries the way he did for you at the skatepark. He lifts his hands, showing you his palms.

“I’m fine. I promised you I would.”

Your shoulders drop in a way that tells him you’ve been holding yourself rigid for hours, managing a barely audible, “Thank God.”

His lips tilt upward before reaching into his jacket’s pocket, “Turn around,” before adding a quiet, “Please.”

“Bossy,” you reply, amused, before turning your back to him.

He closes the one last step between you, pulling out the necklace from his pocket, careful not to let his hands shake as he lifts your hair to expose the back on your neck. He fastens the chain, the clasp clicking softly into place and for a second he doesn’t step away, the pad of his thumb grazing at the nape of your neck.

“Andrew,” you whisper, turning back toward him, your fingers lifting to trace it. “It’s…It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

He keeps staring at the pendant who rests exactly where he imagined it would be, then at your mouth before quickly going back to your eyes. You are close enough that he can feel your breath on his face, the world narrowing to the space between you.

He wants to close the distance, to press his mouth to yours.

Instead, he rests his forehead gently against yours, grounding himself with your scent, refusing to close his eyes.

“You should sleep,” he murmurs.

You smile softly and suddenly, Andrew wonders how he can extract a memory and preserve it forever in resin.

Because this moment feels like the dawn of his existence.

──────────

When Andrew was seven years old, the house was already too loud.

Somewhere down the hall a door slammed hard enough to be heard from the bedroom he shared with Julia, who was sitting on the floor with a deck of cards spread between them while he lined them into exact rows instead of playing War.

He liked the rows and the symmetry of it. It calmed him each time the edges were precisely following the pattern of the carpet. With this, he didn’t need to count.

In the backyard, someone shouted about money, making the twins flinch in fear. Julia reached for his hand, and they sat like that for a long time: her fingers curled tightly around his, his eyes fixed on the the cards. (Hearts. Diamonds. Clubs. Spades. Everything will be all right.)

Smurf emerged in the doorway with her bright smile, eight months pregnant with their little brother, tilting her head, “My baby is a strange one,” she whispers to his new stepfather, “But useful.”

Andrew heard it. He didn’t know what strange meant exactly, but he knew it was something you said when you didn’t want to say wrong.

At school, boys kept snatching his skateboard, tossing it across the asphalt because he rode the same loop over and over during recess, memorizing how many pushes it took to reach the fence.

(Fourteen. Fourteen every time. An even number. He liked them. That’s why he always counted till four.)

The first time a boy shoved him and called him a freak, Andrew didn’t respond. Just took back the board and kept doing his loops. The second time, when the board got kicked away and Julia was not there to held his hand, Andrew swung without warning. He couldn’t remember deciding to, just the sound of the impact and how the noise inside him went blissfully silent.

After that, teachers called him difficult, the kids stopped approaching him and Smurf congratulated him with a kiss on his mouth.

At night, when Julia was asleep beside him, Andrew kept staring at the ceiling, wondering something he couldn’t say out loud to his mother or his sister: would anyone ever see that he was trying? Trying to keep himself together so he didn’t explode? Trying to be good? Trying to stop the noises in his head?

-

When you were seven years old, the house smelled like warm cookies.

You were sitting on the couch, your small arms cradling your cousin, afraid to drop her. You didn’t know how to act with a baby. Your parents had sat you down a few months ago at the kitchen table and told you that you were their little miracle, that Santa sometimes forgot things and that maybe it would always just be the three of you – which sounded a little sad until your father had squeezed your hand and told you that three was already perfect.

But it was alright, because now, you had your cousin’s fingers clutching onto your hair, “She’s holding me!” you squealed, delighted and in awe because here, in this house, you were allowed to be amazed and to grow at your own pace.

The day you scraped your knee on the sidewalk, trying to teach yourself how to roller skate, you cried for less than a minute before your mother knelt in front of you, cleaning the wound and kissing the sting away. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said, and you believed her.

At school, you had a best friend who whispered to you how babies were made, and that made you giggle all day, the teacher shaking his head and calling you incorrigible, even though you had no idea what that meant and decided it must be something wonderful if it made you laugh that hard.

And the day you asked what you could be when you grew up, no one laughed. “You can be anything my little monkey,” your father had told you, and you thought about it for the whole day. Because anything was a lot for your brain: a teacher, a vet, a marine biologist. You always circled back to the same answer: something to help people.

And at night, as you looked at your glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, you wondered about other things: would someone look at you the way your father looked at your mother when she was singing in the kitchen, with that love that said I am home?

──────────

Deran’s bar is louder than usual tonight, crowded by sports fans watching a game between Los Angeles and Atlanta. Craig has tried to tell him why it was so important to win at least five times since their arrival, but Andrew’s attention remains elsewhere entirely, watching you from across the room the way he has been watching you for four months now: trying to read something in your posture or in the tilt of your head that could give him an answer.

Because the truth is…he doesn’t know what you are after last night and if what happened in the hallway, or every night you’ve spent wrapped together, mean the same thing to you that they mean to him. He wants to ask, to spill the question out before it eats him alive: what are we?

Andrew hates not knowing. On a job, he knows every camera, every blind spot, every possible way things can go wrong but with you, there’s no map. And he hates that he can’t predict your next move.

You are standing at the bar, ordering a drink, your back half-turned to him and wearing a dress that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public. It makes his pants grow tighter and has him readjusting on the stool, trying to pretend he isn’t affected while his brother sits three feet away and would never let him live it down if he knew.

And he knows he shouldn’t be staring, but you keep touching absentmindedly the necklace, your fingers tracing the pendant as it moves with your breathing, and before he can stop himself, he’s counting it.

(One. Two. Three. Four.)

You had said thank you last night in a way that felt like you meant something more, had let him secure the necklace around your neck and had met his eyes when you called it beautiful as if you were promising you would always wear it.

Always.

(Oh, how he doesn’t trust that word. Doesn’t trust anything that implies staying. He knows better. He should know better.)

And yet, there you are, wearing it for everyone to see, which does nothing to steady his accelerated pulse, and leaning across the counter to collect your cocktail from Deran. The movement doesn’t reveal much more of your skin, but it still sets ablaze Andrew’s brain, his lips going dry as he tries to resist the urge to walk up to you and beg for you to tell him that he isn’t the only one picturing rings, and a cradle in a quiet house and your head on his chest until he is old and grey.

“You’re not being subtle, you know that?” Craig says, cutting through the haze of his thoughts.

“Don’t start.”

Craig raises his hands innocently. “Jesus, relax.” He immediately reaches for the bowl of peanuts on the table, and Andrew feels his jaw tighten at the thought of how many unwashed hands have touched that bowl already. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you tonight?”

What’s wrong is that he just stole diamonds worth more than all of the jobs he did last year and it doesn’t compete to the way you look with the chain resting against your collarbone.

What’s wrong is that he would give back every dollar from last night if it meant waking up beside you for the next fifty years.

What’s wrong is that he is one second away from walking across that bar and lowering himself at your feet for your hands to baptize him clean, as if loving you were the only absolution worth asking for because whatever heaven exists for a man like him begins and ends with you.

And what’s wrong right now is that a man slides into the empty space beside you, leaning too close and touching your arm to get your attention. You turn toward him politely, your lips curving into the small smile you once called your ‘customer smile’.  You had explained it to his brothers and him: that you always kept the worst-case scenario in the back of your mind and that a smile felt safer than a hard no since it could mean the difference between walking away or not.

(Andrew doesn’t know the names or the faces of those who made you feel like that but he wants to find them. He wants to press them on the ground and feel their pulse panic under his thumbs. He wants them to understand what fear tastes like when it turns metallic into the mouth. He wants the air stolen from their lungs the way it must have been stolen from yours when you felt scared. He no longer wants to count. He wants to hurt. To see this man’s blood on the bar.)

Andrew starts walking towards you before he even formulates the thought, shoulders squared, already calculating how much force it would require to grab the stranger by the collar and steer him outside of the bar.

His vision narrows as he sees the stranger laughing, his hand lifting to linger near your elbow as if he was testing whether he can push for more and that makes Andrew’s vision blur at the edges. He is three steps away. Two.

Your eyes find his instantly, and something shifts in your expression. Your hand leaves the cocktail and you smile at him. It’s not the customer smile. No, it’s the real one that unravels him each time.

“Hey, honey,” you say brightly as your arm wraps around his neck and you press a kiss to his cheek, your hand traveling down his side before sliding into the back pocket of his pants, settling against him.

Andrew is almost sure he died at some point on the way there because he is pressed against you and now, he is no longer Andrew or Pope. For a brief moment, he gets to just be honey, and the word makes him happier than any name ever has.

The stranger glances between you. “Oh. I didn’t realize…”

“My boyfriend,” you cut him off with a smile, looking up at Andrew’s face.

His eyes were already on yours, searching for the smallest flicker of fear. Because if the man has dared put some in them, Andrew would dig an unmarked grave without blinking. When he finds none, his hand comes to your waist, his thumb strolling along your hip as he dips his head and presses his mouth above the faint line of stitches on your forehead.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs, low enough that the word belongs only to you.

He feels your breath hitch against his skin before turning to the man and saying lightly. “No worries, he always gets a little intense about men crowding me,” you tilt your head, thoughtful. “Not sure if it’s the boxing or the prison time. But don’t mind him…he almost doesn’t bite.”

The stranger’s smile falters just enough to satisfy something dark in Andrew’s chest. “Oh, um…yeah. Sorry man, I didn’t know she was taken.”

Andrew doesn’t raise his voice or move, he just stands there with your hand in his pocket, letting the silence stretch until it feels suffocating. “She is.”

“Right. I’ll go back to…the match.”

Andrew doesn’t blink and keeps track of the man’s back until he is laughing again at his friends’ table like nothing happened and only then does he let his focus shift back to you. You, who’s still close and warm, holding onto him like you have no intention of letting go.

His hand remains at your waist as he turns toward you, the movement bringing your faces close enough that your noses almost brush and your breaths mix between you. He lowers his head slightly, almost enough to kiss you.

“You okay?” he murmurs while his thumb keeps its slow movement on your hip.

You nod, your mouth curving up in that smile he loves. The real one. The one that you have at the skatepark each time you manage to stay upright a little longer than the day before: proud, bright and stubbornly pleased of yourself. And he can’t help but think about those lips and the way they said ‘honey’.

(He wants to hear it again. Wants to hear it softly. Wants to hear it moaned in the dark and against his mouth. He wants to kiss them every day for the rest of his life. To learn them. To know how they would part as he pounds into you. Stop. He has to stop.)

He blinks twice, grounding himself in the feel of your waist.

“Andrew. I’m good, I promise,” you murmur, sliding your hand out of his pocket and lace your fingers with his instead, interlocking them. “Let’s get out of here, please. It’s too loud.”

He doesn’t say it out loud, but relief settles at your suggestion. The bar feels too loud, too crowded and the idea of how many unwashed hands like Craig’s have been over the counters keeps coming back at him. So, when you tug gently at his hand and turn toward the door, he follows without hesitation, grateful that you were the one saying it.

The door swings shut behind you and the noise from the bar dulls instantly, reduced to a muted thud. The air is cooler than inside, smelling like the salt of the ocean mixed with your shampoo and he doesn’t understand how he gets to still have your hand in his and your thumb moving across his knuckles.

It’s only when you stop beside the truck and turn toward him that his eyes drop to the thin gold chain resting around your neck. His free hand lifts carefully to brush the chain first, following it down until the pad of his thumb rests over the pendant itself, flattening it against your skin.

“Still got it on,” he murmurs, tracing the outline of the pendant.

(He imagines doing this, years from now. In the kitchen. In bed. In the shower. Adjusting it before you leave the house. Brushing it aside before he kisses the curve of your throat. Seeing it against your skin when you are carrying his child.)

“Looks better on you than it did in the store,” he adds.

Your fingers slide slowly between his, guiding his hand so it settles flat over your heartbeat. He can feel it beating loud and fast under his palm, matching his own.

You tilt your face enough to find his eyes back. “Thank you for what happened in there, Andrew. You were good.”

His eyes slip shut for half a second because he doesn’t trust himself to survive the way you are looking at him, smiling at him with such warmth he shivers of pleasure.

(Good. You think he is good. If that’s what you want, he can be good. He can kneel. He can find how to rebuild himself from the bones if it means you keep calling him good.)

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he says under his breath.

“Why?”

“Because I’d do anything if you asked.”

Your fingers start to caress the back of his hand. “Anything?”

He nods, his gaze unwaveringly focused on your eyes. “If you told me to walk away from the jobs, I would.”

Your hand pauses against his.

“Andrew…” you murmur, but there’s no panic in it, no immediate rejection. “You know why I wanted to reject him, right?”

He doesn’t answer, too scared of startling the moment with another word.

“You know why I’d reject any other guy in that bar and why I wanted him to know?”

“Know what?”

“That I’m not available.”

“You’re not?” he asks, as his mind races.

“I don’t know,” you say softly. “Are you?”

The question hangs there, in the small space between your bodies, his mind fumbling with a thousand overlapping questions.

(Are you with him? Calling him yours? Defining what this was? Finally answering the question that has been rattling his brain for weeks?)

“Are you available Andrew?” you repeat gently, your hand lifting up to cup his face.

He exhales slowly, trying not to whimper at the contact, shaking his head.

You lean closer, your nose brushing his and your voice dropping lower. “No?”

“No.”

Your thumb traces patterns along his cheekbone and it takes him a few moments to realize that you were mapping his freckles. “How long?” you whisper.

He feels too weak to reply, overwhelmed by the tenderness of your touch. If his heart had not been already yours, he would lay it at your feet right there, so long as you promise to treat him with this gentleness and care for the rest of his life.

“Before the party? When I called you to help me?” he nods. “Before our night on the couch?” another nod. “Before our first skateboard le-?”

 “When we met. And you brought pastries,” he replies, on the verge of a sob, shameful to confess that he keeps thinking about you on top of him, under him, any way you want it as long as he could disappear into your light and be drown whole by your grace to wipe out every horror he has ever seen or done for the sake of others.

“Andrew. Honey. Please, look at me.”

He keeps his gaze darted to the ground, like looking anywhere but you might prevent him from saying anything more revealing about the depth of his feelings, before his eyes close on their own instinctively, only realizing a heartbeat later that it’s because your lips found his.

And for the first time in Andrew’s life, that deep pit of misery in his heart goes completely silent, frozen for a flash before kissing you back.

Your lips are warm and a little reckless, tasting like mint and something entirely yours that he knows he will crave for the rest of his life. Your fingers thread into his curls, pulling a groan he can’t control out of him. He moves closer without thinking, his hand sliding along your waist until your back meets the metal of the truck door.

The second he registers the force of it, he pulls back just enough to search your face, to scan for any sign that he has gone too far, but the pause barely lasts a breath before your fingers tighten in his hair, guiding him back down as your body arched into his, slipping his tongue past your parted lips.

You are an oasis and he is nothing but a thirsty man wandering in the dark who gets to finally know what it’s like to drink every drop of it. You taste dizzy and intoxicating and he knows that he has been feeding on scraps of affection all his life and now…now he understands what it means to be full.

He is about to tell you how much sweeter you taste than in his fantasies before you bite down on his lower lip, drawing another sound of his throat.

You tilt your head, your arms wrapping fully around his neck as his drop to your hips, steady and sure, to raise you higher against the door, a gasp spilling out of you that he swallows eagerly and your dress hiking up as your legs wrap around him, denying any space between your bodies.

He feels you pull away for air by an inch or two, making him whine at the loss of contact, but he quickly recovers as he sees the flushed smile on your kiss-swollen lips. “Show off.”

“Yeah?” he asks while one of his arms tightens under you, anchoring your body to the door while the other frees itself to trail up your body and adding a smug, “Yeah,” skimming your inner thigh and marveling at how many sounds he can coax out of you, wondering how much more he’d pull if he could trace his thumb along your heat. But instead, he cups again your cheek, tracing slowly the bow of your lips.

“Dimples,” you murmur.

“What?”

“Dimples, Andrew,” you repeat, delighted, like you’ve just discovered something rare. “I didn’t know you had them.”

(Oh. Of course. You can see them because he is smiling. For real. A real one. Not the tight, guarded version. Not the twitchy one. A full unguarded smile. When was the last time he did that?)

“I do,” he says, trying and failing to smooth it away. “So do you.”

Your eyebrows lift. “I do not.”

“You do,” he insists quietly, shifting his hold slightly to keep his arm secure around you, his thumb pressing gently at the corner of your mouth. “Right there…”

Inside the bar, the crowd erupts in a wave of shouting, making you glance at the door before erupting in laughter, eyes wide.

“Oh, fuck,” you whisper, incapable of stopping your giggles. “I forgot.”

Andrew exhales through his nose, trying to calm the blood pumping hard all the way down his length. He knows that you’ve been feeling him against you the whole time, your hips still rubbing together, and for once in his life, he doesn’t want to excuse himself or feel ashamed of his desires, of how much he wants. He has spent too many nights thinking about how you’d taste, how you’d moan. Too many cold showers to try get rid of his hard-on whenever he was picturing you.

“Maybe…” you murmur against his mouth, pecking soft kisses along his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”

He looks at you, at the way your lips are still swollen and glistening from kissing, at your panting and the tremors of your legs.

He nods, lowering you carefully back onto your feet, his hands still trailing along your sides to still have some ways of being connected to you before reaching for the door handle of the passenger seat and helping you in.

He feels, walking around to the driver’s side, that he is still smiling. Dimples and all.

──────────

“Maybe…” you sigh, struggling to keep your composure and pressing kisses along the freckles dusting his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”

The intensity of his eyes on you, trailing along your body and taking in your rampant arousal, feels like he is on the verge of taking you against the door. You are pretty sure that if he’d ask you for permission, you’d grant it promptly. You want him. You want to know how long it would take for his unwavering hazel eyes to become pleading wet just by your lips telling how good he is to you.

But he just nods, jaw tight before lowering you carefully back onto your feet, making you bite down a protest at the loss of contact, like even the air feels like too much distance, until you feel his fingertips dragging over your waist.

He opens the door for you and not so long ago, you would have described his current behavior as controlled and cold, but now that you know him…you recognize a man who’s trying to contain himself, like a wild animal finally freed.

(Devour. You want him to devour you. To ruin you. Four months of trying – miserably – to have a date with him and it took only a gross man and a ‘honey’ to get him to kiss you like that and tell you he would quit everything?  Fuck. Focus.)

He starts the engine, snapping you out of your thoughts, before pulling out of the parking lot, still smiling. You stare at his profile: the line of his jaw that has now faint traces of your lipstick, the way his tongue briefly drags across his lower lips like he can still taste you and his hand on the gear shift that slowly drifts to your thigh.

Your breath stutters the moment his palm settles just above your knee, the pads of his fingers tracing patterns over it while he keeps his eyes on the road. That definitely doesn’t help your craving for more.

(How much can be a fine for having sex in a car anyway? Andrew has money. Plenty from what you understand so…that would just be a drop in a bucket, right?)

You slide your fingers over his, intertwining them on your lap and stilling his slow, absent movements. He glances at you immediately, probably to understand why you stopped him. But the look you give him is enough to answer his question.

His eyes trail your face a fraction too long before looking back to the road, purposefully, the streetlights passing by a little faster.

“We’ll be there in five,” he declares without looking at you.

“Andrew, it’s at least ten minutes away,” you say, with a barely contained smile.

“Five.”

“I’m timing you, you know,” you smirked, pointing at the car clock.

The truck moves through an intersection just as the light turns yellow - once, then again at the next block – while Andrew doesn’t do so much as blink.

“See?” he says, the hint of a smug smile on his face when the car finally parks home.

You check the dashboard clock. Four minutes.

You shake your head, laughing as you both unbuckle your seatbelts. “Show off.”

Of course, you should know better now, he is not a man to stop there. So, when he opens the door for you before you even reach for the handle, and offers his hand, you should see it coming.

He helps you down carefully and for half a breath you think that maybe this time he’s not going to do it. No, you definitely should know better cause the moment your feet hit the ground, his arm slides behind your knees, sweeping you off while the other moves behind your back.

A breathless gasp escapes your mouth. “Andrew!”

(God you are so fucking gone for him. Is this what it would feel like? Crossing a threshold with him as a young bride? Completely besotted in a white dress? No. Not would. Will.)

He shuts the door with his hip, adjusting you against his chest as your arms loop around his neck automatically, your body relishing his touch as the thought slips out before you can stop it: “I feel like your bride right now.”

His steps slow on his way to the door, just enough for you to notice and wonder if you should just tell him to brush off your stupid words. That you are just drunk (you barely had the time to drink a sip of your cocktail earlier) and tired (you just spent two nights in a row sleeping like a baby in his arms).

The garage light flickers as he reaches the front door. “You are.”

He carries you inside like he’s done it in a million other lifetimes while you are still gaping, mouth wide open at his words. You shake your head a bit wobbly before moving your hand from the nape of his neck to the place on his cheek where you know a dimple is hiding.

“Careful,” you murmur, smiling softly. “Keep talking like that and I might start looking for a dress rea-”

Your words are being cut off by his mouth, kissing you like he is trying to drown in the sensation, tilting his head to fit you better, to take more of you, and you can’t stop the moan passing your lips. It feels like stepping into the fire and realizing you don’t ever want to be pulled out.

Your feet carefully find back the ground as his hands slide along your backbone, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades. His lips part yours with the same confidence he has when he catches you at the skatepark. You feel him everywhere and you still want more.

(Is it ever going to stop? This feeling? This whole tremor that dances under your skin every time he touches you? Every time he kisses you like he means forever?)

He pulls away just enough, heavy breath mingling with yours, hazel eyes half-lidded in pleasure and his nose brushing yours softly with your foreheads pressed together, “We can just kiss. If that’s what you want. I don’t need more. Just you,” he murmured in a broken voice.

The words settle deep in your chest, heavy and large as if they have roots. It makes you want to answer him with your mouth, to kiss him until his doubts leave his bones entirely. You bring your fingers to the bow of his lips and he kisses them gently, one after the other, the softness of it making you tremble.

“Andrew,” you say quietly, smiling despite your racing pulse. “Take me to bed.”

He regards you for a long moment, his eyes moving slowly over your face as though he is searching for hesitation and when he finds none, a smile begins at the corner of his mouth, enough to carve that rare, gorgeous dimple into his cheek. “Bossy,” he smirks before lifting you back by the waist so your legs can wrap up around his waist, walking around the house guided only by his memory since his lips are too busy coaxing moans out of you.

You are almost blacking out from the lack of oxygen when the kiss suddenly breaks. In the soft lighting of his bedroom, you distinguish most of his expression: lustful and bewildered that this is finally happening.

“I want to taste you. Please,” he breaths and you nod, not trusting yourself to reply.

The look that passes through his hazel eyes is hazy, fingers finding the hem of your dress and carefully pulling it up.

“Don’t want to mess it,” he says, folding it neatly on his chair. “You look pretty in that.”

You sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to feel too self-conscious about being only in your underwear, braless as he kneels down to the floor, still fully clothed and face a few inches lower than yours, prying your legs apart.

“Andrew,”

He doesn’t respond, pressing his lips to the inner corner of your thigh and moving further up between your legs.

“You don’t have to Andrew.”

He only lifts his gaze up to yours, unwavering as he continues his kisses, “You don’t want it?”

“I…I’m not saying that. I just…I don’t want you to feel obligated to it. I know it’s not…what men like the most,” you gasp, your hand finding his curls and twisting them around your fingers, making him grunt.

“It’s what I want to do the most, right now,” he says with a sinful gaze. “Can I?”

“Yes. Okay. Sure,” you choke, closing your eyes and lying down as he continues his torturous path, his hands slowly tugging the last piece between him and your pussy.

You don’t think you have ever been this wet with a man. Or a woman. Or anyone at all. Normally, you feel a bit uncomfortable with men going down on you cause they never seem to know what they are doing or are too impatient of having ‘real sex’ to let you finish. But here with Andrew, you are nothing but pleasure, his lips fiddling with you like you are an instrument that he is tuning to his own harmony.

You gasp as his tongue finally probes your folds stopping just underneath your clit, earning from him a low whimper.

“You taste delicious,” he goes, coming up for air by an inch. “Just like how I dreamt,” he adds, making you feel close to delirious.

He lowers his face again, tongue working its way up your pussy again, finally reaching for your clit and rolling over it, making you shudder and writhe on the bed, incapable of keeping your moans down and your hands running through his scalp.

“Andrew, please. Just like that. It’s perfect,” you praise him, feeling how it makes him pick up the pace.

Your last straw is the sight of his face between your legs, eyes burning with nothing but want, his hands used to stealing and hurting now holding onto your legs to keep them open and making you come with a hoarse cry. If there’s a heaven on Earth, you know now that it must only exist in this man. In his hands, his chest, his mouth, his eyes. He is nothing but your sanctuary, your promised land and your altar.

When your orgasm subsides, you feel Andrew crawling over you and pressing his lips against you, making you taste yourself on his mouth as you slip your tongue in it. The small noise of pleasure from the back of his throat is the most delicious sound you’ve ever heard.

“You,” you breathe against him, your lips brushing his, pupils probably wide. “I want you. Like right now. So please…take off those clothes. I love them. Really. But take them off.”

His lips twitches again to the side, “Anything.” as he starts to undress, folding them before going above you, his hard cock pressing against your heat.

His eyes keep searching your face, looking for an ounce of backtrack in your eyes before slowly entering you. That’s when you realize how grateful you are for the previous climax because in any other situation, you would have probably wince at his thickness. Thankfully, he seems to catch on with it - probably due to his gaze not leaving your face and refusing to blink – and takes his time to be fully inside you.

For a couple of minutes, the two of you don’t move, give you the time to marvel at how good he feels inside of you. You know now that you’ll have other days and nights to ask him to stay like this for hours, just to be one.

Andrew presses his forehead against yours, lips brushing yours as he whispers. “I love you.”

The word hums through your body. Love. Love. Love. Andrew loves someone and it’s you. From your scalp to your toes, you can feel it resonating through you. Love. Love. Love.

“I love you, Andrew. My Andrew,” you murmur happily, moving a drenched curl from his forehead. “So good to me.”

His face ends up in your neck, trying to cover his reaction to your words. “You really think I’m good?”

“Of course you are. Look at me, honey,” you say, holding onto his chin to bring back his face close to yours as your legs wrap around his waist. “You are good. You are kind. You keep making me feel safe. And…I’m so lucky to have you,” you add, rolling your hips and making him shiver.

You drink in the sight of him: his sweaty hair sticking to his head, curls messy from where your fingers had run through, the freckles dusting his chest and the traces of old wounds that you’ll ask about one day. But the most important of all is the way he is looking at you – as if he loves you. Because he does. He said it. I love you. I love you. I love you.

You keep whispering sweet nothings into his ear, just to see the flush spreading on his cheeks, his ears, his chest and encouraging his thrusts to go harder, deeper. Soon enough, you are quivering around him, your nails digging in his skin as you bite on his lower lip in retaliation for making you wait so long for this moment.

He lets out a desperate moan. “I won’t…last long. ‘m sorry. You feel so…”

“It’s okay,” you encourage him. “I want you to come.”

He slams his cock one more time and goes. “Wh-Where?”

“In me,” you beg, and you know you have hit the right nerve from the way his whole body trembles.

“Really?” he breathes.

“Please.”

The sight of his body, eyes fighting to not shut tight from the pleasure, mouth pursuing yours, mixed with how good he is making you feel, is too much. Your back arches as you reach your second climax tonight, quickly followed by Andrew, clinging to you as his warm load fills you up. Both of you are gasping for one another, time almost freezing as your eyes are sharing the same thought. I love you. I love you. I love you.

After a couple of minutes, Andrew slips out of you and lays most of his body against your side, putting his head above your breasts, on your heartbeat, intertwining your hands together.

“Tomorrow,” he says.

You brush a kiss on top of his head. “What?”

So by the time you’d pushed open his office door, Jay was already running on a shortened fuse. You’d noticed it the moment you’d walked in, the frigid air doing nothing to relieve the anxiety that felt like it was coursing through your veins.

Jay nodded, extending his hand and motioning to you to have a seat.

You nodded quietly, slipping into the chair that was across from him.

Jay pushed the document file towards you. “Explain this to me.”

You blinked at the procurement documents in front of you before looking up into the green eyes that felt like they could penetrate right through you.

“The date isn’t filled in. The request form is submitted at the same time as the order?”

You held back a sigh.

This was all Laura’s doing - insisting on a shortcut in order to lessen her work, even though it was against policy. You’d tried bringing it up for discussion before, but you were shot down within a minute with justifications of efficiency and other big words you didn’t bother committing to memory. The department never had any power to talk about from the beginning, but saying all that just felt like you were making excuses.

And then you realized you’d just been sitting in silence while your new boss was waiting for an answer.

You bit the inside of your cheek like a habit before you spoke.

“It was a decision made by…”

“Stop.” Jay snapped, making you flinch.

Jay paused, inhaling to regain some composure and trying to keep his voice at a moderate level. “Don’t you dare tell me that this decision was made by someone else or so help me…”

You should have known.

“It’s just the truth. Next time I’ll ask if you want the bare truth or the politically correct answer, sir.” You couldn’t help snapping back even as your stomach coiled with semi-regret.

To hell with this.

You’d called your friends a week ago and started to put feelers out for a new job, so you were just hoping to get out of this hellhole as soon as you could. There was a limit to how much a girl could tolerate.

Jay raised an eyebrow.

“Everyone here knows that Finance calls the shots. Call it an unspoken rule. I’ve tried to change this.” You pointed at the document on the table now. “Tried and failed. Multiple times. No one in senior management wanted to touch this issue so I’ve accepted this.”

“So this is your process, but you can’t do anything about it. Is that what you’re telling me?” Jay asked, irritation seeping back out.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Laura’s now the head of administration. Has she not briefed you on this?”

Seriously, you needed this meeting to end before you actually lost what little composure you had left.

Jay didn’t respond, merely nodded at you as a dismissal.

“Y/N, right?” He said again, just as you got up from your seat.

You didn’t respond, just looked back at him.

“I don’t know how you did things before, but I’m telling you now. We follow the rules. Remember that.”

You resisted the real urge to roll your eyes. “Yes, sir.”

Jay sighed as the door closed behind you. The way things were done here was a real problem.

The moment you crossed the threshold of your apartment, you sunk into your couch, wanting nothing more than to stay in there, the folds of the cushion feeling like a giant hug.

Reaching out for your phone, you turned one of your favorite playlists on, letting the soft beats from the music fill your quiet apartment.

As the melody slowly crescendoed, you sank further into the cushions, feeling the tears well up in your eyes like you’d expected and kind of wanted. You just needed to let it all out for the day, so you could go back to work with an empty brain and empty feelings tomorrow to face a new day.

You didn’t know how long you lay there huddled in your couch cushions, crying softly, but when you finally felt the frustrations slowly leave your tired body, you sighed, turning onto your back to stare up at your ceiling.

This was one of the times you were glad you lived alone - no family, no roommates, nothing. Just left to your own devices, the privacy of your own home to let out all the negative feelings without having to consider anyone else.

You only crawled out after you felt satisfied that most of your emotions were all cried out, and you had a new plan - you were leaving. You were going to get out of this hellhole the moment you found another job. Meanwhile, you would keep your head down, you weren’t going to talk to anyone, make any decisions, or give any opinions. Staying out of everyone’s way sounded like a great idea.

At least until your new boss thought it’d be a great idea to call for a meeting about policies and single you out with a “what do you think, Y/N?”

Trying your hardest to control your sass like you’d done almost every single day in this office, you looked up from your laptop.

Jay raised an eyebrow quietly at you, waiting for you to speak. “No wrong answers here, I just want your opinion.”

You wanted to give him a short dry laugh. That assurance wasn’t much of one, especially when you saw the look on Laura’s face as if she was daring you to disagree with whatever she had just said, or even the other exchange of looks from the unfriendly faces in the room.

The exasperating thing about you was that even at a time like this, you couldn’t speak against your conscience. Not even to save your own ass.

“I think if we do this on the website, we might be sending the wrong message,” You said, looking straight ahead at Jay, even though you didn’t really want to look at him either. But you figured the safest bet was the lesser of the many evils.

So, you swallowed and offered an alternative suggestion.

To no surprise at all, you’d barely reached your desk when a sarcastic comment from Laura reached your ears. You couldn’t tell what Jay was thinking, but if you didn’t know better, you would think he kind of liked what you had said.

But you knew better.

Things wouldn’t get better. Not here. Not by a long shot.

Things fell into a weird kind of routine as you got used to the new way of things.

Nothing much had changed except that you could tell Jay seemed to be trying to subtly change things around the office, including the current workflows.

You hadn’t had much one on one interaction with him ever since that less than productive discussion on procurement shortly after he’d taken over, and you kind of hoped things stayed that way.

But now you had more important things to worry about.

“I need you to do it.”

You looked back up at Edward, trying your hardest not to glare or show any trace of emotion on your face.

You raised your eyebrows. “I handle internal communications. I don’t think I’m supposed to…”

He didn’t let you finish. “I’m about to go in to an important meeting. No one else is available. Just go down, meet him and see what he needs. I have to go.”

“Wait…”

But he wasn’t waiting.

Biting down a few curse words, you looked around the office. No one else was around to help and technically, you were the one who took care of visitors or walk-ins because there was no one else.

Left with little choice, you grabbed your notebook and headed out of the office, going straight to the lobby on the ground floor.

“Mr. Fisher. I’m Y/N. What brings you here?” You asked, extending your hand for a handshake.

You didn’t particularly like the glint in his eye as he smiled and took your hand, his hand lingering on yours for a bit longer than a normal handshake.

Even so, you swallowed down that weird feeling, directing him towards a table at the cafe in the lobby of your office building. “Black coffee?”

Declan Fisher nodded back at you with a smile and you went to get the drink, smiling at the part-timer behind the counter.

As you put a cup of coffee down for him, you were reminded that you hadn’t done this ever since Edward had been brought in to head an entire team just for this purpose. You didn’t even have enough information about the client to be down here.

Sure, you used to do this when the team had been at half the strength they were at now. There’d been no one to take on extra responsibilities, so you’d pitched in as much as you could. But what was the point of hiring an entire team if this was going to happen?

Even so, you knew you had to clear your mind and focus.

“I haven’t seen you before.” He said, bringing his voice lower.

You gave him a polite smile. “I don’t usually sit in on client meetings.” You offered, as some sort of explanation. “You can share with me any concerns or requests you may have, though. I’ll make sure the right team gets it.”

He nodded back at you. “Not worried in the slightest.”

That was kind of a weird response but you didn’t react, flipping open your book as he told you about some big idea he had for a project he said was new, listening as he told you he was even more sure about working with Blossom after meeting you.

You tried to ignore the comment as you wrote down as much detail as possible, reminding yourself to have it out with Edward when you got back.

“Sure, I’ll get this to the team and get them to call you for another meeting so that you can discuss the creatives further.” You answered with a smile, slipping your pen back into the holder that was attached to the book.

Fisher didn’t look like he was ready to get up though, glancing at you. “Stay until I finish my coffee?” He asked.

Before you could even respond, he leaned over to put his hand over yours.

You felt the sinking feeling in your stomach, pulling your hand away instinctively.

Not even fazed, Fisher reached over further, putting his hand over yours again, his thumb grazing over your knuckles.

Without even thinking, you pushed your chair backwards as you shot to your feet, the chair clattering to the ground behind you as the table shook, the black coffee spilling onto the table and inevitably onto Fisher’s suit.

Now, Fisher just look pissed.

Biting back a few well-chosen words that were hanging off the tip of your tongue, you chose not to apologize for the mess. “Someone will call you, Mr. Fisher.”

Your skin still crawled from the physical contact so you turned, escaping through the lobby and through the gantry that prevented non-employees from walking through without a pass.

Jay tapped his fingers on his desk as his eyes roved over the company website, rolling over the ideas and discussions from the meeting a few days ago.

His thoughts unconsciously drifted towards you, especially since you’d once again surprised him.

Calling someone out in a meeting like that wasn’t something he did regularly, but he wanted to see how you handled it. You’d passed with flying colors, surprising him with a well-chosen suggestion that he felt no one else had seen coming either, even though they’d been working with you for a while.

Before Jay could get any further, he was interrupted by a knock at his office door.

“Edward, right? Come on in.” Jay said as Edward opened the door.

“Jay, we have a problem.”

Jay raised an eyebrow. “What kind of problem?”

“I just got off the phone with Declan Fisher from Triumph Systems,” Edward said, glancing up at Jay uncertainly. “He just told me he wants to pull his projects. We’re just about ready to sign the contracts, and it’s a big sum.”

Jay sat up a little straighter. “Did he say why?”

Shaking his head, Edward looked up. “He just said that the girl he met was extremely rude and he’s never been this insulted in his life.”

“Girl?” Jay asked, his voice slightly sharper.

Edward nodded. “Y/N met with him an hour ago.”

A silence fell in Jay’s office before he spoke again, nodding. “I’ll handle this.”

As Edward closed the door behind him, Jay held back a sigh and pressed the numbers on his phone.

“Y/N, can I see you in my office? Now.”

THANK YOU FOR READING!! PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THIS!!

Angel Recipe Here

Bishop-Recipe Here

Bottles-Recipe Here

Chibs-Recipe Here

Clay-Recipe Here

Coco-recipe Here!

Creeper

EZ-Recipe here

Gilly-Recipe Here

Guero-Recipe Here

Halfsack-recipe Here

Happy-recipe Here!

Jax

Juice- Recipe Here!

Kozik*Recipe Here

Manny-Recipe Here

Nestor- Recipe Here

Opie-Recipe Here

Ratboy-Recipe Here

Tig-Recipe here

Angel

Bishop

Bottles Recipe Here!

Chibs Recipe Here!

Clay

Coco Recipe Here!

Creeper Recipe Here!

EZ Recipe Here!

Gilly Recipe here!

Guero Recipe Here!

Halfsack Recipe Here!

Happy

Jax Recipe here!

Juice

Kozik-recipe Here!

Manny- Recipe Here!

Nestor

Opie

Ratboy Recipe Here

Tig

At the end of the street, hidden by an old stone wall and a slouching willow, sat Willowbrook cottage. The lawn was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers and mossy cracks exploded from underneath the paving stones that led to an old wooden door that looked surprisingly pristine.

The roof was bowed - decades of rain and the attempt to keep heavy willow branches from entering the attic had given the small cottage an almost heart-like shape and the white paint had gone cream with age and black spots of mulch and dirt had attached themselves at random areas like leeches.

Surveying the work laid out before you as you dragged your suitcase over the step and the iron gate clattered shut behind you, you sighed.

You had fond memories of the cottage; summers spent in sunshine, picking fruit and berries in the forest beyond the brook at the end of the garden. No one had been surprised that Great Aunt Flora left you her home - they knew you were her favourite. She didn't make much of an effort to conceal it.

An eccentric yet wizened old woman, who lived well-beyond anyone's expectation, Great Aunt Flora was a kind soul. Even if she did leave out milk and honey for make-believe creatures. Somehow you hoped that the kindness she offered to the fairies that lived in her mind, had made her last few years on this Earth happy ones.

The inside of the house wasn't as bad as the outside. In a cruel twist, most of Aunt Flora's home had been gutted for silver, antiques and other items with modicum of value by your family. Larger items like her bed, wardrobe and dining table were abandoned for you to find, along with photo albums and a variety of books on the occult and supernatural.

The only thing you truly cared about, that thankfully remained in its place, was the velveteen armchair that sat by the fire. It was a lush green like that of strawberry leaves, and thanks to Aunt Flora's care, had managed to remain in excellent co dition despite being next to the fireplace. Fond memories flooded back; of you perched on Aunt Flora's lap as she read a book about flower fairies to you on an Autumn's night. You wipe tears from your eyes as you remember asking her if she knew any fairies, and she'd very enthusiastically responded yes, rattling off a litany of strange names and some normal.

Once upon a time you were convinced you could see fairies - although, Aunt Flora never let you run in the woods alone with your imaginary friends, but summer days were spent with childlike whimsy that you couldn't help but feel just a tad nostalgic for.

You wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on and peered through the overgrown sweetpeas covering the window that viewed the backgarden. Aunt Flora was always good at growing plants but never taming them, however, you couldn't complain with colourful view of white, pinks and purples tangled between thick twisting green stems. At the furthest end of the garden, where the fence to the river and forest sat, blackberry bushes had spread over the perimeter. The mass of thorns had crushed the old fence, crumbling whatever structure was left in the rotten wood. Yet another thing for you do add to your list of things to fix.

The kettle clicks and you move way from the window to make your tea with a shiver. Maybe a chill was beginning to settle, but there was an underlying sense of unease nagging at you. You decide that it's the nerves of starting a new life.

Sipping at your tea, you opt to begin tidying away your things from your suitcase. You'd unpack your car the following morning, before the movers arrived with the belongings and furniture you couldn't fit in your car. You take one last look around your new kitchen with a smile, basking in fond memories once again, before turning out the lights and heading up the short stairs into the main bedroom with your tea clutched in the fingers of your one hand and your suitcase in the other. As you climb the stairs you begin to understand why your Great Aunt never left this idyllic post-card-esque home and look forward to working to make this house your home over the next few months.

Bucky had been walking the perimeter to the forest, the sound of the brook on his left adding a relaxing - if not a little sleep-inducing - ambience to his evening walk. The water rolled over the stones like soft chimes, clicking gently in the rush and Bucky considered turning back and heading home to his cold bed for a moment but the warm light of a kitchen window flicking on caught his attention.

He vaguely knew of the old woman that had previously lived in the cottage encroaching on the forest - the brownie that lived there previously had sung her praises for the variety of treats that were left for him and other fairies and sprites had said similar over the years. From what he had heard though, the old woman died months ago, and humans had been flitting to and fro to remove her belongings. So, who was this?

He wasn't usually so curious about humans but nothing else exciting was happening in his life so he may as well investigate. He jumped along the larger rocks littered in the brook and with one final leap, reached the small shore of pebbles before climbing the steep stone steps that led to an old, rot-ridden wooden gate hidden under monstrous blackberry bushes. Bucky waved his right hand carelessly, and the plant parted enough for him to step through.

Sweetpeas had marred his view to the kitchen but they could be easily moved with his hand. But what he hadn't expected to see was the most ethereal woman he had ever seen and he did a double take - staring dumbly through the pane. You were wearing some sort of trousers that were baggy and long, but looked incredibly soft, with an equally soft-looking baggy jumper that perched on top of your ass. You had your back to him, stirring into a mug with a shiver that made Bucky lick his lips with a hunger he had never felt before.

You were perfect - for a human. Bucky supposed that in the grand scheme of things it could be forgiven and as he watched you turn was more, with a soft smile on your face he knew you weren't just perfect; but perfect for him. He didn't move away from the window until you left the kitchen, hiding yourself away from him. Bucky clicked his tongue in disappointment.

Walking back through the blackberry wilds Bucky promised himself he would do everything he could to make you his. And when he crawled into his empty bed, he fell asleep imagining you next to him.

Part 1 END

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A/N: Believe it or not this took me over a YEAR (idea and snippets in Aug. 2024) to post. It was actually something I had been working on with Forget-Me-Not Blues and other WIPs I had before I posted regularly. I'm glad to finally have it out in the wild for you guys to enjoy 🫶🏻

The original doc was maybe 4.5k (look at me cutting things down!) But after so many rehashing I think ive decided on my fav version 🙈

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The Kingdom fell into a deep silence when it was announced that the ruler of Charming, King John Teller, had died. 

It was a shock to all, and a tragedy to most. The King had fallen ill, and he made his family and those close to him keep it hidden, so no one tried anything in his weakened state. 

He’d become ridden with an unknown illness, his body slowly shutting down, and no one knew how to help him. No one knew how to save him. 

There was a brief moment where things were looking up, like maybe he would pull through, but then things took a turn for the worse, and John Teller died at the age of sixty four, after forty decades of ruling Charming.

And then Jax Teller, Prince of Charming, was given the throne, and he became the new King. It was a lot at once; losing his father, being given the crown, becoming the only person the people of Charming looked up to, and having all this responsibility and expectations he had to live up to. 

John Teller was a man almost everyone admired. He was a good King, and a great father, and he made decisions for the better of Charming, even if some strongly disagreed with him. He didn’t have many enemies, and those who were his enemy weren’t given that title by choice. They simply didn’t agree with him, and that caused some bad blood to form. 

His first priority was his Kingdom, with his family in close second. John loved his family more than anything. He adored his wife, Queen Gemma Teller, who had been by his side for the better part of the last forty years. Together, they made every decision, created every law, every rule, and dealt with everything life threw at them together. 

They loved fearlessly and fiercely, and put their son on a pedestal at such a young age - because it was inevitable. Jax Teller would become King one day. 

Granted, everyone thought that day would be another few years from now, but that wasn’t how life turned out. 

That day was today. It was now. It was Jax’s turn, and it was his time to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was up to him to be a good King now. 

Once the shock of the loss faded away, Gemma put on a brave face, and she stepped in when Jax became overwhelmed. She took him under her wing, gave him advice, lectures, and tips she’d picked up over the years. 

But that could only last so long, because every King needed a Queen. Every King needed a family, a child to pass the throne onto so the bloodline could continue. 

Jax’s ‘freedom’ had come to an end, and yet the thought of not getting to ravage any more of the girls in town, or flirt his way into the servants quarters, didn’t fill him with dread. The thought of proposing marriage to a girl and settling down to start a family didn’t either. It filled him with a sense of purpose. Like it was something he was meant to do at this point in his life.

He’d long since grown tired of seeking release from the women in town. While they always seemed satisfied and sated and giddy that the Prince chose them to fool around with, it didn’t do much for Jax. It left him feeling unfulfilled, empty, and kind of regretful. And while he was also left pretty much satisfied, it also made him feel a little used, even though he was the one who sought out these women. But it wasn’t like they hadn’t thrown themselves at him in the first place, he was simply giving them what they wanted. 

A taste of the Prince. 

Well, the Prince was the King now, and the King wanted to settle down. 

He was done letting anyone he thought was good looking enough have him. He was ready to be a one woman man. 

And the one woman he wanted was you. 

Jax has had his eyes on you from the day he met you, a whole year ago. He never sought you out as one of the girls he fooled around with, because he held you to a higher standard. He respected you, and he wanted to do right by you. 

He thought you were the most stunning girl he’s ever seen, and he knew from that first day that he wanted to marry you. He wanted you to be his, and he wanted you to rule Charming by his side when the time to do so came. 

Now that the time is here, he didn’t waste another second. He asked your parents for your hand in marriage, and they were all too thrilled to accept. 

He’d spoken to you only a handful of times over the year after he met you. Even when he was the Prince, he still had his duties and responsibilities, so it wasn’t like he could just go into town and find you to start a conversation. Though he did do that, but only a few times. The other times he saw you were fleeting moments, quick and over with before he could even blink, but each one left him reeling for you. It left him wanting more. Wanting you. 

But now you are his fiancée. His bride to be. Soon to be the new Queen of Charming. And Jax was sworn to you. He wanted only you, and he was determined to give you everything you never thought you could have, but now can since you’re engaged to him. You’d become his everything, and he would protect you with his life forever. 

You live with him in the castle now, his bed becoming yours as had everything else. And even though it was frowned upon and heavily criticized for two people to share a bed without being married, Jax didn’t care. He just wanted you near him all the time. 

He’d become completely obsessed with you. You were younger than him by quite a few years, but you were so smart and mature and more level-headed than most people he knew.

You were also sweet and kind and friendly, and there was something so innocent about you. That was probably because your parents didn’t let you leave the house very much, nor did they let you branch out and meet new people or do anything to make something of yourself. 

You’d been kept inside, hidden away, and that should’ve made you come off as reserved, but you were like a ray of sunshine every time you entered a room. You were so sweet to everyone you talked to, and you were so interested in everything you saw. 

Jax knew that if your parents didn’t let you leave the house that first day he met you in town, he most likely would’ve never seen you at all. He would’ve never fallen head over heels, and you wouldn’t be a few weeks away from becoming Queen. While he wasn’t very fond of your parents, he was grateful for them, simply because they made you, and he adored you more than anything. 

Since you weren’t allowed to branch out very often, that meant you didn’t have the best social skills, and you definitely didn’t have any experience with men. You’d never been kissed or touched or tasted by a guy. Well, except for Jax, that is. 

The first night you were at the castle and in his bed, you confessed your inexperience to him, and Jax was all too eager to be your first everything. Even though it was so against everything he was supposed to abide by, he just couldn’t help himself. 

He tried to refrain himself, he really did, but it was inevitable. 

That night, after talking to you for hours on end, in the dead of night in his dark bedroom, he took your virginity. And it was probably the best night of his life, because he owned that part of you now. Forever. 

He’d never felt anything like it. You were small, tight and so damn addictive, he’d been hooked since that first night. 

You were supposed to be staying in one of the many other bedrooms the castle has, but everyone who lived in it knew you were sleeping with Jax in his bed. It was yours too, even if you and he weren’t going to be wed for another few weeks. 

But no one questioned it, no one judged it, and no one talked about it. The guards, the servants, and his mother all minded their business, and he was grateful, but he was also sure he wouldn’t care if they did have something to say about it. 

You were going to be his wife. If you wanted to stay with him a little earlier than planned, then that’s exactly what you were going to do. 

While Jax had been forced to take over his father’s responsibilities during the last few weeks of his life, being King was a lot more pressure, and a lot harder than he thought it would be. A whole Kingdom was counting on him. They were expecting him to be their leader, their protector and their King. 

It was a lot, and yet when he thought about who was going to be by his side, helping him through it all, making the decisions with him, and being his other and better half, it didn’t seem so scary after all. 

-

It was late, and the open windows let in no light at all, just a cool chill from the night air. 

Candles were scattered around the bedroom, and Jax was laying in the massive bed that dominated most of the space in the room. The walls were stone, as was the floor, so it was quite cold, but Jax’s body ran hot, so he didn’t mind it. 

He was leaning back against the pillows, the sheets pooled around his waist as he looked up at the ceiling. The chandelier candles were not lit, but the metal reflected off the ones that were. His chest was bare, only a pair of boxers on his body and nothing else. 

His hair was slightly damp since he’d just finished washing up. He ran errands today, then did a bit of sword training with Opie, who insisted he was more skilled than Jax was, but he ate those words quite quickly once Jax had a sword in his hand. His back was hurting a little bit, but he was in great shape, so he knew a good night’s sleep would fix that ache no problem. 

Even though he was in bed, his eyes were wide open, because he was waiting for you. 

He hadn’t seen you for most of the day, and to say he was craving your presence would be an understatement. Right around this time, you’d be with Gemma, eagerly listening to all the tips she’d give you about becoming Queen since that day was coming soon. It was nice, and it warmed his heart that his mother took you under her wing and accepted you fully.

Jax couldn’t wait for the day he marries you. Putting that big, diamond ring on your finger was one of his proudest moments to date, and he couldn’t wait to have a matching one with you on his own finger. 

The door creaked as it opened, and he lifted his head and watched as you stepped into the room. There was a pretty, sheepish smile on your lips as you closed the door behind you, and Jax shifted as he took you in. 

You were wearing a long nightgown, silky and soft and thin, and Jax could see all your curves through the fabric. Almost instantly, he was reaching for you, beckoning you to him with a curl of his finger. “Come here, darlin’,”

The smile on your face grew as you shuffled your feet across the cold stone floor. Your eyes trailed over his bare chest, lingering on the dips and lines of his abs, and Jax smirked as he held his hand out to you and helped you onto the bed. 

It was tall since Jax was a tall guy, so you often had trouble getting up onto it, that and the fact that you’d been sleeping on just a metal frame and a thin mattress on your family’s living room floor all your life before this. 

You kneeled next to his hips and looked down at him. “I’m late, I’m sorry,” you apologized, resting one of your hands on his abs as you gave him a half smile, and your eyes reflected off the candles as well. “Your mother kept me. And I’m still trying to find my way around this place. It’s hard to see when it’s so dark out.”

Jax reached for your wrist, and he pulled you closer so you were straddling his lap. His hands settled on your hips, thumbs drawing lazy circles onto the material of your nightgown. “Don’t be sorry, baby. I know this place is like a maze during the day, and it’s even worse at night,” he murmured, sliding one hand up your back until he was pushing on your shoulder blade so you were laying on his chest. “You’re here now, that’s all that matters. I missed you today.”

You smiled at him, and it only grew when his other hand slid under the thin material of your gown, thick fingers resting rather possessively on the curve of your ass. “No one has ever missed me before. Everyone always said I’d die a lonely woman, or that I’d work myself into an early grave as a housewife,” you confessed, your voice so quiet, he almost didn’t hear you despite being so close. “But I missed you too. It’s… much harder than I thought it’d be… being away from you all day.”

There wasn’t an inch of space between you and Jax, your chest flush against his and your face inches away from his own. As you reached up and cupped his jaw in your small hands, Jax’s expression softened, and his arms wrapped tightly around your middle. 

“No more talk of loneliness or dying alone,” he muttered, his voice deep and firm, and yet it held a certain softness that was solely reserved for you. “That won’t happen to you, not as long as I’m breathing. You’ve got me now.”

He hated the way you were living before, hated the lifestyle you were used to, and hated the way no one cared about you. You were walked over, told to work at a young age, and forced to stay inside for most of your life. People didn’t think you were worth a second look, but Jax hadn’t been able to stop looking at you since the day he met you. 

No one saw the real you, the sweet, kind and full of life girl you’d always been. But Jax saw it from that first moment. He saw your kindness, the light in your eyes, the beam of your smile. You were never meant for a lonely life or to fade away with no one noticing. You were meant to be given a real shot at life, and Jax had been the one to give you that chance. 

You weren’t made for a life in which you end up alone. You were made for him. You were made for this. 

“You’re mine now. And while being Queen won’t be easy, you won’t be alone. You’ll never be alone again, I promise you that. There will be no working yourself to death,” he murmured, one hand coming up to grip your jaw, his thumb stroking along your cheekbone. “I’ll take care of you. I always will.”

He leaned up and kissed you deeply, his hand sliding into your hair as he pulled you closer. You kissed him back, desperate and needy. Your lips clumsily moved against his, your inexperience still coming through since you and he have only shared a handful of kisses since the proposal. 

Your hands slid up into his hair, a soft moan leaving your mouth and entering his own as you pressed yourself impossibly closer to him. Your tongue slid against his, messier than normal, but it was to be expected. And Jax went feral for it. 

You were so innocent, so pure, and the fact that he’s the only man who has ever touched you did wonders for Jax’s ego. He was your first and only kiss, your first and only lover. 

He groaned into the kiss, the way you were so unsure yet so eager only igniting and bringing out his possessive side. His hands gripped your waist, guiding you to roll your hips against his. “You sound so pretty, baby,” he muttered against your mouth when you let out another soft moan. His fingers bunched up the fabric of your nightgown around your wait, then his hands were covering your ass. “I want you.”

“Wait,” you braced your hands on the pillow at either side of his head as you pulled back, your eyes wide as you sat up on his lap. One strap of your nightgown fell down your shoulder, and the look in your eyes was far too innocent for the picture you were currently painting. “I want… want to be the one to make you feel good. I just… need you to tell me how. If you want me to. Can I…?”

You gave a slow roll of your hips, testing out the position you’d never been in before. The few times you and Jax have done this since you began living with him, he was the one on top. That was pretty much a given since he was much more experienced than you are, but you still wanted to try, and that made his cock twitch beneath you. 

His hands slid up your thighs, his thumbs brushing along your hipbones as he shifted under you. “You don’t need to ask for permission, baby. I want your hands on me, and I don’t want you to hold back,” he rasped, lifting the hem of your nightgown up your body until it was completely off and discarded on the floor. His eyes greedily drank you in, your soft breasts, the tremble in your body, your glistening folds between your thighs. “So goddamn perfect. Just keep doing that, darlin’.”

His hands returned to your hips as you rolled your body again, this time with a little more force than before. You bit down on your lip, your eyes a little wider now as you reached for the fabric of his boxers, and you tugged them down his legs, letting him kick them the rest of the way off. 

Your hands moved to his chest, your fingers running along the crevices of his abs. You lifted your body just slightly so you were rubbing your bare pussy along the length of his cock, and your breath hitched as you did it again. “Like… like that?” you questioned, the uncertainty in your voice making Jax go out of his mind, because you were already making him feel so good, and you weren’t even moving that much. 

His hips buck upwards against his will, a deep grunt of approval leaving his mouth. “Just like that, baby. You’re a natural. Feels so goddamn good,” he praised, his hands coming up to palm your breasts, his thumbs and index fingers teasing the hardened peaks of your nipples. 

A shaky gasp left your lips, your body trembling a bit as you rubbed yourself faster along him. “You feel good too,” you whispered, and the blush on your face had that possessive feeling coming back even stronger. 

Jax reached down and gripped the base of his cock, guiding it to your entrance and holding it in place as his other hand grabbed onto your waist. “Whenever you’re ready, darlin’, just sink down on me. Nice and slow,” he instructed, “Don’t be nervous, baby. I’ve got you, I promise. You’re doing so well, making me feel so good already.”

You nodded slowly, giving him a shy smile as you braced your hands on his shoulders. You looked down in between yours and his bodies, watching the way the head of his cock parted your folds, as if it had a mind of its own even though Jax was waiting as patiently as ever. 

Then you were slowly sinking down onto him, the stretch making you wince a bit from your first time trying this position. You were so tight, so warm and wet and barely able to fit him. Your teeth sunk into your lip, but you kept going, slowly taking every inch until he was all the way inside you. “Oh, my God…” you trailed off, your eyes squeezing shut. 

In the limited positions you and he had done this in so far, this one was definitely the one where the stretch felt the tightest. Jax’s hands grabbed onto your hips, his grip tight as a strangled groan left the back of his throat. “God, baby… you feel so good. So tight,” he mumbled, head falling back onto the pillow. “Breathe through it, darlin’. I want to watch you ride me.”

His hips twitched under you, his body trying to move despite him letting you set the pace. He couldn’t help it, you felt better than anything he’s ever felt in his entire life - and he’s been around for quite a while. 

Jax’s eyes were locked on where you and he were joined, your thighs shaking at either side of his hips as you adjusted to having him inside you. Your head nodded again, your eyes staying shut for a few more seconds before you opened them again and looked down at him. 

Your hands slid up and down his arms, touching him all over just like he wanted you to, and then you slowly started rolling your hips against his. Your movements were uneven and uncertain, but you kept going, your hands moving back to his chest, bracing them there for support. 

Jax groaned, the sound coming out deeper than he normally sounds. Your inexperience made him even more riled up. He wanted to be the one to teach you everything, to learn with you and make you feel things you’ve never felt before. He wanted to give you everything, and he wanted to be the only man you’ll ever have. He couldn’t wait to make you his wife, to have this every night for the rest of his life. 

This was all he’d ever wanted.

“That’s it, baby. Just like that. You’re doing so well for me, taking me so well,” he praised, one of his hands grabbing onto your waist while the other slid up your back and gently pulled you closer. “You’re so beautiful. Gonna make me lose my goddamn mind.”

He leaned up and wrapped his lips around one of your nipples, running his tongue along the hardened peak as he helped guide your movements just a little. He wanted to let you completely set the pace and have full control over everything, so he kept his own movements to a minimum. 

Jax pulled back and looked up at you, watching your face intently for all your reactions. “Feel good, darlin’? I want this to be so good for you,” 

You moaned and nodded, your breasts swaying softly against his face with every roll of your hips. Your hands pressed flat against the pillow at either side of his head, your movements growing a little more confident. “Feels so good,” you murmured, twisting the fabric of the pillow in your hands. “I want it… want it harder. Can you… will you show me how? Tell me what I need to do.”

Jax grunted, hands firmly grabbing onto your waist as he nodded. “Alright, baby,” he cooed, slowly lifting you up until you were nearly all the way off his cock, then he guided you back down, setting a harder and faster pace than before. He helped you do it a couple more times before gentling his grip on you. “Just like this, darlin’. Just keep doing this.”

You pressed your lips together and hummed, all too eager to accept his guidance. You did what he showed you, and your moans grew louder as Jax slid one hand up your back and tangled in your hair. He leaned up and pressed open mouthed kisses along your neck and throat, muffling his own sounds against your skin. 

When he moved to sit up, you wrapped your arms tightly around his shoulders as you repeated the movement over and over again, finding a steady and deep rhythm that had you both moaning loudly. 

“Jax,” you gasped, tipping your head back and giving him more room to kiss along your neck. “Am I… does this feel good?”

You sounded a little desperate for his answer, and Jax pulled back so you were looking at him. “Feels so goddamn good, baby,” he rasped, sliding one hand up your body until he reached your breast, and his fingers began rolling your nipple as you rode him. He leaned up, brushing his lips against your ear as he whispered, “I could do this all day, darlin’. You feel so perfect, gonna make me lose it. Gonna make me cum so hard.”

His thumb found your clit, and you gasped, wrapping your arms tighter around his shoulders. You were growing tired, he could tell. Your movements became a little sloppy, and your breathing was a little harsher, but you never stopped. “Feels so good, Jax,” you moaned, your hands tangling in his hair as you pulled on it just hard enough for it to be pleasurable. 

You were getting tighter and tighter, your moans becoming louder and louder, and he knew you were there when you cried out softly, burying your face in his neck as you writhed on his lap. Your body jerked as your muffled sounds became lost to his shoulder, your warmth coating him like a second skin. 

Jax’s head fell back as you gushed around him, your release triggering his own. It didn’t take much, because even though he’d done this more times than he’d ever want to admit, especially to you, you felt better than anything, and he was embarrassingly close quite early on before he got himself under control. He always wanted you to let go first. 

He came inside you, filling you up entirely. It was risky, because you could become pregnant before the wedding, and that would cause a massive problem, but as he breathed heavily against your neck, and as you whimpered and weakly rolled your hips against his, he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

He kissed your sweaty neck, working his way up to your mouth before he fell back on the pillow, bringing you with him so you were sprawled across his chest. His hand stroked up and down your back, coaxing you to come back down as his other hand stayed wrapped tightly around your waist. 

Your pants were harsh against his shoulder, your body still gently trembling on top of his. Jax turned his head and pressed a lingering kiss to your forehead, his lips curving upwards in a grin he’d only ever had around you. “You were so perfect,” he murmured, lips brushing against your skin with every word. “Did so well.”

After a few moments, he shifted and slowly guided you off his body, his cock sliding out of you as you settled beside him. He reached for the cloth on his nightstand and then reached down to clean you up, making sure to be gentle since he knew you’d be a little sore down there after that. 

Once you were clean and comfortable, he tossed the cloth aside to deal with later, then he was pulling you back into his arms. “How are you feeling? Are you sore at all?”

You cuddled up against him, resting your head on his chest. “A little,” you answered quietly, “But not as sore as the first time. This was something new. I think it may take me some time to get used to it. I also think I might prefer having you on top a little more. You make me feel so safe and so good and so… wanted.” you mumbled, turning your head and pressing a kiss to his pec. 

Jax hummed, tightening his hold on you as he pulled you impossibly closer. “Baby, you are wanted. You know you’re wanted and special. And you know I’ll keep you safe for as long as I’m alive,” he promised, one big hand splayed across your lower back. He leaned down and kissed you gently before pulling back just a bit. “And I’ll be on top whenever you want me to be.”

You smiled up at him and nodded, tangling your legs with his. He reached down and pulled the sheets up and over both your bodies, his chin resting on top of your head. 

“Get some sleep, darlin’,” he whispered, pressing one final kiss to your temple. 

Jax watched as your smile began to fade as the sleep took over, your body melting against his, and he let his gaze linger on you for a while longer before he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, and he too fell asleep with one thought in his mind;

He would do anything in the world for you.

-