Multifandom

She chuckled, unconsciously leaning into him, glancing discreetly at the box. He caught her gaze and smiled to himself.

“A gift for my lady.” He presented the box to her, simple and made from wood. There was no extravagant and detailed engraving, only the clear hand of an amateur wood carver. 

She took the box from him slowly, twisting it in her hand before slowly sliding open the top panel. There was a simple ring inside, cushioned by what appeared to be silk. The ring was silver and in the shape of a sun. There was a shallow engraving of a snake in the middle of the sun,  but aside from that, the band was plain. 

“It is truly beautiful, Jaquen.”

“Consider it a promise as well as a representation of a formal question.” He said while she put the ring on the middle finger of her left hand. 

“What promise?”

He let out a small hum, looking at the deep smile on her face before answering. "A promise that whenever I see or feel the sun, I will think of you, and, of course, this is me formally asking you to be my life partner and wife."

“Have you spoken to my father?”

“I will ask your permission first. It is a union; of course, I want you to be willing.” She put the box, which was still in her left hand, on her lap and turned to face him. His eyes were wide and his smile soft. There was a certain type of vulnerability that she hadn’t seen on anyone before. 

"The only answer is yes," she took his hand in hers, closing her palms around his larger ones while maintaining eye contact. Take me to your home and show me your culture, freedom, and world. I am and will always be wanting and willing."

He let out a quick sigh, smiling and looking away from her. He muttered something under his breath, but it didn’t appear to be the common language. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips against hers.

The lady jerked backwards slightly before leaning into him. She put a hand on his shoulder and caressed the back of his head with her other hand, tangling it in his hair. He pulled her toward him. They were so close, she thought she could hear his heart beating in time with hers. 

She pulled back slightly and hiked her dress up so that she could straddle his thighs. She pulled him again into a searing kiss, her hands braced on his shoulders. He leaned back a little too far and lost his balance, falling onto the soft grass. She giggled and gave him a soft peck, rolling off of him and looking up at the clouds. 

“Please, tell me about your travels. Tell me what you have already told me and what you have not.” She looked at him with a genuine interest, head cocked to the side, watching his lips with a small smile. 

“In due time, my love. Let me first ask you how your time was spent here without me.”

She sighed and shifted her gaze away from him, not quite in annoyance, but close. “Oberyn is to have another child.”

“Congratulations, he already has one?” The smile that had vanished so easily returned. 

“Two, this will be his third. I think a girl, yet again. I believe that man is incapable of producing boys.”

“And how do you feel?” His words were slow, and his eyes held a kindness that lacked the judgement of a normal man. 

"Of course I'm delighted; this is a new beginning for both him and me. I hope we can settle easily into this new dynamic.” She hoped to convey how much she meant that, but he watched so carefully that she was sure he saw the slight twitch in her smile. She trusted that he would see that as nervousness and not irritation. 

He made a note to himself to ask her again at another time and opted to change the subject instead, “You don’t think it is too soon?”

“Too soon?” She sat up on her left elbow and waited for him to laugh, though when he did not, she giggled and leaned into him, saying, "If my father was to have any say, we would have been formally engaged after our second meeting. Things that are right, that are fate, never come too soon; they only come when the time is just right."

“It sounds like there is much to be learned about your customs, and I look forward to discovering every part that is important to you.” 

She beamed down at him, not noticing how close she had ended up to him, not noting the way his eyes travelled to her lips, and definitely not feeling the light touch of his left hand tracing soft circles on her hip. The only thing she could concentrate on was the promise of his previous words, the pledge to always make an effort with her. She was unsure of what it was about the notion of something so basic that caused her to become lost in images of their future, her eyes fixed on the sea blue hue of his in the waning sun. 

He recognised the look in her eyes—the undercurrent of lust that she, herself, likely did not notice. “My love, the nights these days are cold, I wish for you not to become ill.”

“Jaqen, do you not want me?”

“Is my ring not proof enough?”

"No, but do you not want me?” 

He thought about teasing her with his faux ignorance of her feelings for a little longer, but decided against it. “I only want you; I will only ever want you, but I wish not to disrespect you until I’ve spoken to your father.”

“You will not be disrespecting me. We are not like the others in this kingdom, and I will not be tainted. It is not improper.”

“It would be improper of me not to talk to your father before we join our energies and spirits.” She conceded at that, nodding slowly but still bending down further so that her lips ghosted him.

He closed the distance and kissed her softly, letting their mouths move in languid and quiet motions, pulling her so that she was completely atop him. He let his hands wander conservatively, caressing the small of her back but stopping just before meeting her ass. She let her tongue run across his bottom lip, and he opened his mouth to accommodate her. A hand snaked up to the nape of her neck, and before she knew it, their positions were reversed, Jaqen trapping her on the ground. His lips swallowed her gasp, and his hair tickled her cheeks.

He jerked away, sitting up with his legs on either side of her. He was breathing hard but still took both his hands to the side of her face to kiss her again. She couldn't place the emotion in that kiss—not quite lust but also a certain type of desperation. He once again pulled away and leaned over her, tucking his hair behind his ears. 

“I fear I cannot kiss you any longer. You truly are intoxicating.” She looked up at him with a soft smile, running a finger over her bottom lip. His eyes followed the movement, and his thumb traced her actions. She puckered her lips, but his thumb had left them, instead tracing her jaw gently. 

“Cannot or will not?” He smiled at this, standing up and putting a hand out for her.

“You are a little vixen.” 

She took his hand, pulling herself up a smidge too hard and stumbling into him. “And I fear that you love me for it.”

“That I do.” She couldn't stop herself from leaning into his arm, hiding her face slightly. There was a childlike giddiness in her smile and step, though she could not tell whether he noticed that or not.

She walked through the back doors of her home, scanning the somewhat empty rooms as she led Jaqen to the front door. Her movements slowed, and she peered into one of the corridors that led to the kitchen. The sound of her brother's steps was burned into her memory, and she laughed to herself, pulling Jaqen in that direction instead. 

The kitchen doors were wide open, and the smell the space elicited was almost sickly sweet. “Aneera I think I burned it. I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that.”

“Aneera spun around, putting the rolling pin in her hand down. She winked at the two by the door and walked over to the fire that Oran was standing over. “It's not supposed to smell like that either. I turned around for less than a minute. How did you manage to burn it?”

Y/N gently tugged Jaqen towards the pastry on the table, putting her hands in a bowl of water near it to wash them. “What are we making, Aneera?”

Oran waved without looking at the sound of her voice and grumbled something under his breath. “They were supposed to be pastries, but this is the second time I've burnt the filling, so I’m not entirely sure they’ll have a centre." 

“They’ll be fine. Roll out the dough for me, my dear.” Aneera left the lady to her task and turned to Jaqen, who was watching with a smile, and said, “it is magnificent to finally meet you properly. You are just as handsome as I thought you would be.” 

"Aneera, please,” the lady said, smiling at the light pink tint on Jaqen’s cheeks. 

"I truly wish I could stay and talk to you properly, but I have somewhere to be," he said shyly, bowing his head slightly.

“I know, we have plenty of time to get to know each other properly. And you have plenty of time to practise your wood carving.”

Y/N immediately looked up at the box, which she had left on the far side of the table. “You carved it by hand and didn’t tell me?”

“I forgot; we were occupied with other things.”

"You're disgusting, in the garden, seriously," Oran whirled around, looking between the two lovers.”

“We didn’t do anything, Oran, stop being such a prude.” The siblings traded a look, which made both Jaqen and Aneera chuckle.

Jaqen walked up to the lady, putting his hands softly on her shoulders and  placing a tender kiss on the top of her head. “I am working tomorrow, but you are welcome to come for lunch.”

“I’ll bring some of the desserts if Oran does not burn them all.”

Oran grumbled something under his breath, and though nobody heard his exact words, everyone let out an easy laugh. Jaqen gave her another kiss and walked out of the room, showing himself out. After a minute, Y/N finally spoke up.

“Aneera, will I have children?” Her eyes were glued to her mother, and thus she missed the slight look of concern on Oran’s face. 

Aneera had a smile that became larger and larger until she was laughing to herself. “You, my child, are one of the most fertile women in all of the seven kingdoms. You should be happy about the divine timing of the Gods because you will never have any trouble in that regard.”

The lady's smile came back as quickly as it had left, and she continued to roll out the dough. “Aneera, your feelings for my father are so clear, why do you deny yourself that happiness?”

“I have never seen my own future, nor do I want to. It is the only area about which I am unsure; I guess you could say that I am afraid of the unknown.”

“You should take that leap. Since love is so unpredictable anyway, I guess for once you will be experiencing what the rest of us do. It is too beautiful and too brilliant a thing to deny yourself just because of fear.” Y/N looked at him with a slight surprise but let out a hum of agreement.

“At the very least, move into our home; you practically live here anyway.” Aneera thanked the two of them for their wise words but said nothing more on the subject. 

“I think that the filling is done.” Aneera rushed over to Oran, looking over the pan, and patted his back lightly. 

“I believe it is indeed.”

By the time that there were enough desserts made and packed for the servants and maids, the moon was high in the sky. Aneera retired into her room at the back of the house, leaving Oran and Y/N in the kitchen.

“Have you any plans tomorrow after your morning class?”

“No, why?” She looked into his eyes for any sign of mischief, but there was none. 

“Ayenna is free, and I am busy all day. Perhaps you could deliver these to her and spend the day with her because I remember the last time the day was cut short."

“Of course, Oran.” He smiled, nodding his head slowly. He got up, pulling the lady into a hug, and put the packaged desserts in her lap so that she would not forget. 

The lady studied the wooden box that Jaqen had given her while lying in bed. She hadn't noticed the shallow dips from where he probably tried to carve something but decided against it. She imagined the way he measured the lid and sanded down the sides. She wondered whether there was a reason he had chosen that wood, and that material for the interior. From what she knew of him, everything he did was intentional and calculated. She'd have to ask him about it the following day.  

The next day, she rode quickly after Oran told her that Ayenna wanted to meet her at the bakery. She didn't need an excuse to smell the freshly baked bread and pastries, and she was glad they could spend some time eating at one of her favourite restaurants in King's Landing. 

Ayenna wore a scarf in her hair, likely to keep her hair out of the food. Her brow had a hint of sweat on it, but she seemed calm rather than frazzled. The minute she noticed the lady watching her, a magnificent smile graced her face. 

“Y/N, I made some honeyed bread fresh for you.”

“Ayenna, I pray to the Gods that you stay in our family forever if you continue to spoil me like this.” Y/N swiped the bread from the counter, taking a generous bite. It was still warm and soft, with just the right amount of sweetness to make it seem unbelievably light.

“Did you make this? It tastes different than usual.” She said, tearing off another liberal piece. 

"Oh, if it's not to your taste, I’ll use the original recipe.” 

The lady shook her head in response, trying to finish the piece in her mouth before she began speaking. “No, no, it’s wonderful. Whatever you did, please keep doing it.” 

She thought that Ayenna’s smile could not get wider, but it did and she nodded shyly to herself. The lady finished her meal with a glass of honeyed wine, asking questions about the baking process and the shop itself, as Ayenna shaped dough and pastries with a delicate hand. 

The lady turned at the light footsteps that entered the cafe and saw the familiar face of Ayenna’s mother. “Ah Maliya, your daughter makes the absolute best honey bread.”

“My lady, that is precisely why I am happy it is her rather than her sister who will take over this place.” Maliya’s face revealed a slight frown. She turned to her daughter and opened her mouth to say something more, but decided against it, instead choosing to grumble to herself. 

“I have yet to meet this elusive sister.”

“She was sick the last time we met, and she remains just as evasive to us. That woman is hopeless, truly. The only person who can ever catch her is Ayenna here.”

Ayenna said nothing, instead finishing the batch of food she was cooking before taking off her apron. She whispered something to her mother and excitedly led the lady out of the door. “Is there somewhere specific you wish to go, or shall we wander around the streets of Dorne.”

“I have been meaning to go to the market again. There is something I wish to inquire about.” She began unlacing her horse, but Ayenna stopped her with a gentle hand to the shoulder.

“Oh, is it possible that we do something else today? There is someone I wish to avoid.”

“A jealous past lover.” The lady said with a smile. 

Ayenna smiled politely in return and said, "Something like that.”

“Perhaps a walk then? Down one of the rivers? We can stop by the grape brothel so that I may drop off these desserts to Jaqen. Oh, I forgot to tell you about yours. I left them on the counter.”

“That is fine, my mother would have noticed them, and of course, a walk sounds lovely. It would give us time to talk.” Ayenna was wringing her hands together, fiddling with one of the many rings that adorned her fingers. 

The lady turned to her in an attempt to catch her eye. "Is there something in particular that you wanted to talk about?” 

“Yes, I’ve been meaning to tell you since we met, although I wanted you to get to know me first.” The lady still kept a soft smile on her face, there was no hostility or anger within Ayenna that she could tell and thus she felt as though whatever the problem may be, it would be something that was easily fixed. 

“In your own time, Ayenna.” 

Ayenna bowed her head graciously and let a cheeky smile engulf her features. “Though you seemed extremely cheery this morning.”

The lady took a minute to answer, eventually nodding to herself and saying, “If I tell you, you mustn't say anything to my brother just yet.”

“My lady, I wouldn't dare now, please; I am dying to know.”

“I am formally engaged now. Jaqen designed the ring and carved the box himself; I could not have asked for a better partner than him, and now I am truly to be married." Once the words started flowing out of her mouth, she could not stop. Remembering to hold her gesticulations as her teachers had taught her, she let her excitement show through her smile and tone.

“Well, I never doubted that for a second”

“Yes, well, as much as it feels like I have known you forever, we only met a few moons ago. I never imagined myself in this position or feeling this content. Of course, my mother is well known as an oracle throughout Dorne, and yet I couldn't bring myself to believe her after I fell in love with Oberyn, but this just feels so deeply right; I finally know the direction my life is taking, and I can hope and dream and imagine a different type of happiness."

“That is truly beautiful, my lady, and I am so glad that you feel this way,” Ayenna’s features were soft, not quite displaying the same enthusiasm but still polite and happy.

The lady had not noticed how close they were to the brothel until the women in sheer purple walked towards them in the street. The lady practically ran, with Ayenna chasing reluctantly behind her, and walked into the brothel. The lady gently refused the services of the women she knew and asked where Jaqen was. 

The two were led by a woman, whom the lady did not recognise, into a small office at the back of the building. One would think that Jaqen had wished to keep his business and pleasure separate, but the sheer curtains that led into a room with a plush bed said otherwise. 

The lady shared a look with Ayenna before motioning to the seat at the desk. Ayenna sat down while Y/N looked around the room. It was mostly barren; he clearly didn't spend much time here, and she felt that there were little secrets in this place waiting to be discovered. 

Jaqen walked through the door with a slight flourish, a smile on his face as he made his way to the lady, not pausing to acknowledge Ayenna. He gathered her in his arms and gave her a long kiss before the lady pushed him off, motioning vaguely towards Ayenna. 

“I apologise, my love. We are only here to drop these off.”

“Will you not enjoy them with me?”

“Not this time; I wish to talk to my sister, and I wanted to run this errand first.” Y/N missed the small smile that graced Ayenna’s face. She sat uncomfortably in the seat as though she were waiting for Jaqen to throw her out of it. 

“Is that all I am to you? An errand.” He said slyly, laying a hand lightly on the woman's chin to tilt her head towards him.

"Yes, an errand that I am quite finished with for the moment.”

He scoffed and let her chin go, looking at her with his head tilted and saying, “I shall miss your company until we next meet.”

“No need for the dramatics; you will be waking up next to me every day until we die as soon as we marry.”

“And that will not happen soon enough.” Neither woman could hide the smile at his words, albeit for different reasons. 

Ayenna stood up, drawing attention to herself, and began to leave the room when Jaqen called out, "Ayenna, is it? Sorry, but you look strangely familiar, though I'm almost certain we've never met."

“I have been told I have that sort of face that you see constantly in a crowd. I can assure you, my lord, that we have never met.”

Jaqen's disgust was obvious, and his change in expression made the lady laugh heartily. “Please, I am no lord; I am just a commoner like you, a merchant and traveller. Please do not address me with formalities that are inappropriate for my position."

"You heard him, Ayenna; he is but a traveller," she gestured for Ayenna to leave the room and moved to follow her, Jaqen taking steps in time with her and sliding his arms around her middle. “If the traveller is ever weary enough to warrant a certain type of relaxation, he knows where to go,” she whispered into his ear, kissing his jaw lightly. 

She attempted to slide out of his arms, but he only held on to her tighter, waiting until Ayenna turned back to the two and then moved so that she would leave the brothel. “Must you truly leave now?”

“You are acting as though I am going on a long journey away from you. I will see you soon.”

“It will not be soon enough.”

“You truly have a way with words, my love.”

“And I will make an effort to make you feel this way with them until the end of my days.” He pecked her lips and walked back into his office, allowing the lady to leave the premises. 

She was still in clear sight of the brothel when Jaqen called out to her, “I am taking you for the evening. Be ready by dusk, I’ll pick you up from home.” The lady nodded to convey that she had heard and went on walking with a smile on her face.

“He truly seems obsessed with you.” Ayenna said, walking in time with the lady.

“I suppose, in the way that my brother is with you, correct?”

Ayenna smiled to herself but looked down towards the ground. “He loves differently, but I suppose yes, in his own way he is indeed.”

“Have you met Jaqen? He is not one to forget a face.” Ayenna looked directly at the lady with her response. 

"No, I have not; I truly believe that I must look like someone else that he knows.” The lady looked for any sign that Ayenna was lying but hummed to herself when her face was as honest as she would have expected. 

The two walked across one of the canals, talking about the men in their lives, until the sun was at a point where the lady needed to be home to be ready. Ayenna said that she would walk the lady home so that she could talk to Oran. The lady took this as a chance to ask what she really wanted, as Ayenna would have little time to skirt around the subject before they got to the house.

“Your sister, why is it that I have yet to meet her.”

“I didn’t want to take the chance that you knew each other. I just wanted us to be secure in our relationship first to decrease any possible awkwardness. I hope that she will be less busy soon so that I may properly introduce you to her.”

“Your sister, what is her name?”

Ayenna hesitated, which the lady caught, and she said her name under her breath. The lady hummed to convey she had not heard the woman, and Ayenna said again, louder this time, “Alaiana.” 

The lady searched her mind for recognition in the sound of the name, but there was none. She figured she'd have to talk to Mara at some point to see if she knew who this Alaiana girl was. 

“Sorry to ask so many questions, but you have wanted to tell me something for so long. I fear that if I don’t push for it now, we will never get to the bottom of this matter.”

“Honestly, it was about my sister. I believe it would be better for you to meet her first and then you will know.”

“I had a feeling.” 

“You are known to be something of an oracle or soothsayer. Some say your family is descended from Gods.”

“Do you believe that?”

“If I believed that, I would not be keeping secrets from you like this.” Ayenna smiled nervously, hoping that the lady would understand her tone and how she meant her words. She let out a small sigh of relief when Y/N laughed heartily. 

Oran seemed to get back from whatever he was doing all day at the same time the women did. He rode onto the grounds with a small entourage of people the woman did not recognise but did not question, letting dust and sand gather in the air.

“Oran, do you wish to ruin all of my clothes with your foolery?”

One of the men with Oran laughed and then bowed his head politely at her, saying, “my lady, he was simply losing a race.”

“I won actually,” the other men all grumbled in disagreement as Oran laughed. He lowered himself from his horse and pulled Ayenna into a passionate embrace. 

“I believe I will leave you and your friends to whatever it is you wish to be doing and take my leave.”

"Bye, my lady,” Ayenna said with a grin, and the rest of the men echoed a similar response. 

She walked the winding staircase into her room and flung open the wardrobe to look at the evening dresses she had yet to wear. She called in one of the maids to help her look, and the two discussed what would be good for an evening that you could not prepare for. 

They chose a simple silver gown, which they paired with silver bodice jewellery, the stones Jaqen had gotten her, and a massive gem of a necklace that Oberyn had insisted she own the moment he saw it. The woman looked into the glass on her far wall and decided she reminded herself of the moon. She walked to her balcony to relish the colour of the sun in the clouds. It made her wonder, how those who believe in the Lord of Light, must have looked at the sun and seen its power. She decided it was most likely dusk by now and pulled one of the shorter books that she had yet to finish and read. 

Her immersion in the world provided by the pages, however, was brief, as a servant quickly knocked on the door, saying that her visitor had been accosted by the group of men with her brother. 

She practically ran down the stairs, not being too careful with her steps, and stopped short of the last step right in front of her betrothed. 

“Hi,”

“Hello dearest.” He extended his arms and drew her into a hug off the steps. Neither of them noticed the look that her brother was giving them from behind one of his friends. 

“Stay safe sister.”

“I can handle myself, brother.”

Jaqen held out an arm and led her to his horse, gesturing her to the brown stallion she had seen before but had no name for. “Your horse has a name yes,”

“If he does, I do not know it, when he learns to speak, that will be the first question I ask,” she hit his arm playfully and mounted the horse.

Jaqen sat behind her, speeding the horse through the dirt roads and lush fields. They seemed to go completely out of the city, and the lady just let the wind in her hair lull her into a sense of peace. She would have spoken but was sure he would not be able to hear her, so she leaned back into him, caressing one of his hands that were on the reins, and smiling up at him as gracefully as she could at that angle.

The journey seemed brief, but she was unfamiliar with her surroundings. They were in a clearing, and there were hedges by a river that made the area seem isolated and private, as if it were their own private garden. He'd laid out a large piece of cloth for her to sit on, along with a basket of fruits and two bottles of Dornish wine. The area was lit up with candles, and the basket held a bouquet of flowers. 

He got off the horse first and then helped her down with strong arms. 

“Jaqen, this place is beautiful; where did you find it? Who set it up for you?” The smile on her face was unmatched, and she had to stop herself from gasping every time she took in a new detail. The entire area seemed as though it had come from a dream, and she realised that this was exactly how she was supposed to feel whenever she was around him. 

“I had a few conversations with your brother; he said that he had travelled the area around your home and found it accidentally.” He led her to the cloth on the floor and sat across from her, pouring wine for both of them into silver goblets that were also in the basket. 

"I was so taken with your beauty when I first saw you that I didn't tell you how lovely you are. I cannot wait to see you reflected in the moonlight.”

“You flatter me in a way I am not entirely sure I deserve. You are a God among men, a lover from the legends."

“Must you try to one-up me even in compliments, dearest?”

“I wish to see your cheeks redden and lips pull into a smile as often as I can, Jaqen.”

“You do that simply by existing; I need no flattery from you.”

“And you're complaining about my flattery. By the Gods, Jaqen, I feel as though you wish for me to collapse.” The two laughed heartily, and she began to lay out the fruits but squealed when she saw what was under them. There was a selection of cheeses, some of which she had not seen before. They were a delicacy she was somewhat used to, but Dorne only had so many types, and she was certain she had read about one of them that was from Highgarden, judging by its shape.

“Is everything alright?” He had taken in her expression but misread it, leading to a look of concern.  

“Is this cheese from Highgarden?”

“Yes..” He was unprepared for the force she used to propel herself towards him. She wrapped her arms as tightly as she could around his shoulders as he stumbled back into the grass behind them, taken aback by the gesture. “If I knew something as simple as cheese would have made you act this way, I would not have spent this time courting you.”

“Jaqen, I have hardly known you for a time normal enough to result in a proposal.”

“We, dearest, are not normal people, and thus there is no reason that we should behave as though we are.” She leaned into him, giving him a soft peck, before sitting up and immediately beginning to gorge herself on the foods that he had brought. 

“So tell me, Jaqen, about your travels, and do not leave out a single detail.”

"We'll be here for a long time then," he said softly.

“And I will cherish every moment that I get to be with you.”

By the time she noticed that time had actually passed, the food was mostly gone and the stars were high in the sky. They had moved so that Jaqen lay in her lap; his white hair shone as she would have imagined snow to, and his red waves seemed the colour of blood. She gently ran her fingers through his hair, twirling the ends. 

She looked up at the sky and pointed upwards, “would you like to hear a story, my love.”

“I would like anything as long as it comes from your lips.” She cleared her throat and attempted to hide the smile but by the look in his eyes she knew she didn't well enough. 

“It’s a love story about the north star.”

“Are those not the best kind?”

“The north star is the brightest star in the sky,”

“Yes,” she stopped at the sound of his voice and raised an eyebrow. He put his hands up and laughed to himself.

“It guides us home, and that is all because of a sailor who loved harder than any person thought capable. His wife was a barmaid at a seaside tavern, which is how they met. One time, just before he left, she asked him how he always found his way back to her on time, and he said he just always knew. He closed his eyes and thought of her, and she always showed him his way home. She was pregnant at this point, their first child, and he was to do one final trading journey before he took a break to take care of her. She said she had a bad feeling, but he said that he knew the sea just as well as he knew her, and so he left. ” She looked down at his blue eyes and lost her concentration at the pure and complete attention he was giving her. Unable to stop herself, she bent over, met his plush pink lips, and whispered an 'I love you' before continuing without giving him a chance to speak..

“Anyway, they inevitably blew into a storm. One that was wild and dangerous, more dangerous than any he had encountered in his lifetime of sailing. The majority of the crew survived, but they became so disoriented that this man, who knew the sea better than anyone, couldn't figure out which way to go. He was now panicking because the storm had caused him to be gone for much longer than expected, and he didn't want to miss the birth of his child, but the days turned into weeks and they still hadn't seen land. He accepted the fact that he would most likely miss his child's birth and prayed to the gods to show him the way home. That same night, he had a dream in which his wife told him she loved him and asked him to come home, and when he said he was lost, she told him to look up to the night sky and she would show him the way home. That is exactly what he did. The stars were bright, but there was a new one in the sky, brighter than the moon, and every member of the crew swore they'd never seen anything like it before. They waited for it to move before following it on a whim. It eventually led them home, but what awaited him was a baby with grey eyes like a constellation of stars and the grave of his wife, who had led him home to his son."

“That was rather sad, don't you think?” He sat up, gathering her in his arms so that she sat in his lap.

“It's sad, but it is truly beautiful. Would you become a star for me, Jaqen?" She trailed kisses along his jawline, and he lost his concentration for a moment. 

His right hand came to cup the bottom of her jaw, tilting her head up at him. “I would become the moon if the gods would allow it.”

“And I hope you should never have to ask.” 

“Do you think you will have a love like the stories?”  He asked, cupping her face in his hands. 

“I believe that this is only the beginning of one.”

“You truly have a way with words, dearest.”

“It is from the stories and lives they have allowed me to live.” He ghosted over her lips, but she spoke again before they could lose themselves in each other. “How do you envision your future?”

“That is a big question, dearest. I only wish to love as much as I can and discover the world in more ways than one lifetime will allow. I never knew my true parents, and so I want to live enough lives for them as well.”

She hummed at him and did not allow him to ask her the same question back. Instead, she gave him a soft and slow kiss before she rose, holding a hand out, and said, “It is getting late; I believe that I am due home.”

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who didn’t fight back when you slid the papers over to him one evening. Who nodded and signed without question- he knew this was coming for a while already. The fights over being gone for too long, arguments over how he deals with his mental health, crying and silent screaming matches at 3 am so you don’t wake the kids up. It was too much to handle and after he signed the papers he stood, kissed your cheek- packed himself a bag and went to Robby’s for the night.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who insisted you keep the house- your dream house that he had built as a push present after having your second kid. Irish twins- ignoring your OB entirely when she warned you about how fertile you’d be after having your first. The same house where you brought your third son home another year later because somehow Jack just couldn’t keep his hands off of you. The same house where you call him when there’s an issue- no sense in spending money and hiring someone when Jack knows the ins and outs of his own place. The same house where Jack is sure he’s had you pressed against every wall and piece of furniture- christened with love that he thought would last forever.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who still comes to every game the boys have. Every Saturday morning- pulling up to the soccer field with sunglasses and a dimpled smile that still has your knees weak and heart race. Wrapping an arm around your waist with your youngest in his arms- so proud when your oldest scores a goal that when you press a kiss to the corner of his mouth he doesn’t give you one of his usual smirks. Who joins you for lunch with the boys at home- both of you moving around the kitchen in tandem to feed your kids.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who hasn’t dated since the divorce. Why would he? He still wears his fucking ring. Jack still calls you his fucking wife. In his mind that would be fucking cheating and he’s not that much of a shitty husband that he’d think about being with someone else. Why would he? He has the best thing in the world going on, a beautiful woman who gave him equally beautiful sons- he’s fucked it up enough the first time around. Why push his luck?

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who comes over when the boys are on a camping trip with their uncle Robby. Maybe at Jack’s insistence. Either way- the house is empty and after a bottle of wine and Jack making you dinner he’s on his knees in front of you. Eyes rolling back in his head when you push the curls at the top of his forehead back a few times before gripping because he always knew exactly how to apologize. Flowers forgotten before you could put them in a vase- Jack’s thick fingers working your tight pussy open because it’s been months since you’ve let him fuck you and he’s just making sure you’re prepared before he fucks you into the couch. And the bed. And the floor. And the shower. And the kitchen counter.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who doesn’t forget your anniversary despite being divorced. Because he worked through so many birthdays and anniversary and holidays that- he needs to put you first this time. Who comes through the door of the house he had made for you, with the key he still has, with your favorite flowers and your favorite desserts and tells the boys that he’s taking their mom out for dinner because he loves her. Whose breath gets knocked out of him when he sees you walks down the stairs in some gorgeous dress that reminds him why he put three kids in you. Who sees a familiar glint on your ring finger- smirking when you tell him ‘for the boys-’ that’s the only reason you agreed to dinner. The only reason you’re putting up with his shenanigans. Not because there’s butterflies in your gut or because he looks so good dressed up for you tonight.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who takes their boys for a night so you can go out with some friends. A much needed break- to feel like a woman again and not a mom. Who picks you up from whatever bar or club your friends dragged you to because they wanted to party and you missed your sons- you missed Jack. Who’s mouth goes dry when you drop to your knees for him as soon as you’re through the door- letting you pull down his zipper and throwing his head back so hard with a moan that you can hear the thud when it hits the front door. Who has no idea what’s come over you but he won’t question it. Who has no idea that you rebuffed every man who came up to you that night- taking your wedding from your clutch and holding it up to them with a smug ‘no thanks’. Who has no idea one of your ‘friends’ made a comment on how you were actually divorced- if you’d mind giving her Jack’s number. Yes you fucking mind. That’s your fucking husband.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who silences you with slightly chapped lips against your own- hushed out praise with a soft ‘not too loud sweetheart, the boys are asleep- yeah?’ that night after he crawled into your old marriage bed with need after putting your youngest back to bed after a nightmare. It was hard seeing how fucking good a dad he was- how doting of a father he was to your sons and not remember exactly why you gave him those kids in the first place. ‘Such a good mom to my sons- another one honey? God- just one more fucking baby, you’ll look so good with another one of my babies inside you. I’ll even let this one look like you- yeah?’ Almost a joke- the boys look so much like him that people even questioned if you were in the room when they were born. But you couldn’t answer. Too fucked out to do little more that whimper, than to tighten your thighs around his waist and nod with soft tears sliding down your cheeks because you feel another orgasm rushing through your body when Jack asks to get you pregnant again.

Ex Husband!Jack Abbot who was always good at getting you pregnant. Who was overjoyed when a month later you hold up a sonogram with a little white blip on the radar. Who cried when you asked if he wanted to come back home. Who cried when nine months later your little girl came out looking like you this time around.

The very second that your key is in the apartment door and you're finally home, you find your legs nearly collapsing underneath you as you step inside and kick off your black kitten heels.

"God," you groan, shutting the door behind you before you move to peel your chic new blazer off of your shoulders. You toss it onto the coatrack nearby and bring a handful of your fingers up to your forehead to rub at it tensely, sighing deeply.

It had been a long day at the USTA (United States Tennis Association) office, and all you wanted to do was come home and see your husband.

-

After Art had lost several important and consecutive tennis matches, as well as his confidence on the court (despite his actual tennis skills still being phenomenal -- he just psyched himself out too much), he had decided to give up his life as a professional athlete.

At first, this devastated you. Not only did you love your partner and believe in him throughout his career, as well as believing in his very real ability to eventually win the US Open, but this decision of his also meant that your position as his coach would become obsolete..

You actually became quite anxious about you and Art's future at the time.. you had needed a purpose, and so did he. You both were just those kinds of people; you and him both wanted to feel that you were contributing to something bigger than just yourselves, and that you were being useful to someone or something.

Luckily, his many previous years of successful tennis playing had scored you and him a shit ton of wealth. Like, genuinely a lot. You were beyond grateful, but you still wanted a life of your own. You didn't dare to think about the idea of becoming a stay-at-home wife while he went out and did whatever he wanted. Yuck. It just wasn't for you.

Your fears and inner turmoil about this change in your lives were quickly eased once Art had sat you down about two weeks after he had left his tennis career behind. He had taken your hands in his, smiled softly like he always did, and told you that he wanted to stay at home and take care of everything in it while you went out and continued your career in the field of professional athletics.

Of course, you immediately and excitedly agreed with the idea of this new plan, and then that was that!

You two developed new lives and new roles as people over a short period of time, but it didn't take away from the love you two shared. That always stayed consistent and at the center of everything.

Eventually, after a month or so of coming home from your new job to Art doing things like vacuuming the wooden floors of your guys' expensive New York apartment, or making elaborate protein-packed smoothies for the gym sessions that you two still did together, you came to realize that the whole "house husband" persona was actually kinda hot.

He had realized it too. Quicker than you had, actually. In fact, he can distinctly remember the overwhelming feeling of heat that had pooled deep in his gut the first time he had ever served you a home-cooked meal after you came home from a long day at your new job. He had gently rubbed your sore feet that night while you ate, and then suddenly couldn't find a way to deny how this new practice of.. servicing you.. made him feel.

I mean, God, he loved doing that stuff for you.. cooking.. tidying.. pampering.. washing.. he would do it all. You knew that he worshipped the ground that you walked on—reminding yourself constantly of the time he had admitted to you during sex that he believed he would be "nowhere without you"—and you devoured the increased sense of power that came with it every. single. time. It eventually became very easy and comfortable for you to let him take care of you. You grew hungry for it.

And then this persona of his, over time, dissolved into something much more intimate..

-

After tossing your blazer on the rack and rubbing at your temples, you drag your pantyhose-covered feet across the floor and into the kitchen.

Your nose is instantly filled with the aroma of fluffy, vanilla sweetness and a bit of nutmeg. you sigh happily as you turn the corner and see Art standing over a mess of what appears to be flour and sugar in a large bowl on the kitchen counter. He looks over his shoulder briefly with a smile as he mixes the dry ingredients together with a whisk.

“Hey, hon,” he grins, before turning back to look down at his current baking project.

you shuffle up behind him and hug him, your cheek pressing against his warm upper back as your arms reach to wrap gently around his abdomen. You sigh deeply.

“Hey, babe.. ‘m so tired. It was such a long day.”

He laughs softly, which shakes you a bit as you hold him.

“What’d your colleagues do now?”

You shake your head against him, groaning dramatically.

“I don’t want to talk about it.. what are you baking? It smells good in here.”

“Nothing crazy, it’s just some holiday cookies. I found the recipe online this morning after you left.”

“How many are you planning to make? There’s already some in the oven,” you ask, peeking around his frame from behind to see him set the bowl aside and wipe his hands on the apron he’s wearing. (It was white with small pink hearts by the pockets. You got it for him when he started cooking for you everyday, and he used to feel weird about it. He said it made him feel “slightly emasculated”, but he quickly grew to absolutely adore it. It was just another way for you to claim him as your personal chef. One night before you got home, he jerked off while wearing it, but he would never tell you that.)

“I don’t really know,” he shrugs and chuckles sheepishly, “there are twelve baking right now, but I thought that maybe I could make some for our neighbors.”

You chuckle softly, your hands disconnecting from their place on his stomach to reach down and give his ass a small squeeze. He jumps a little at the feeling, embarrassed laughter bubbling up in his chest.

“Where’d all this holiday cheer come from?” you smirk, pulling back from your position against his back to lean your hip against the counter. You just wanted to look at his pretty face. Your eyes quickly fixate on the fact that he’s got a bit of flour on his flushed cheek.. It’s only a small puff and smear of the white substance near his jaw, but for some reason it starts a flame in your lower stomach. There was just something about the way he got a little messy when he cooked or baked for you.

His cheeks plump up in shape ever-so-slightly as he grins at you.

“I don’t know.. I had time before you got home- I mean, well, before i thought you’d get home, and so i thought I’d just-”

You take a step forward, nodding at his words while your body is now only inches from his. You look up into his glassy blue eyes.

“You thought you’d just.. what?” you purr, your hand coming up to caress his lower back.

He swallows thickly, briefly looking down at the mess on the counter before he looks back to you. His body temperature is steadily rising as he feels your fingertips caress him over his loose t-shirt.

“I just thought I’d make some more,” he whispers.

You lean in, reaching your other hand up to gingerly hold the side of his neck while you press a kiss to it.

“You’re such a sweetheart, aren’t you?”

He nods, slowly, his eyelids fluttering slightly at the feeling of your mouth on him.

“I..I mean, yeah, I guess.”

You lean in a bit more, sucking softly at his neck. His head lolls a bit forward, and you nip at him when the sound of his shaky breathing reaches your ears.

You pull back, a small smirk covering your face as you look up at him.

His focus darts from your eyes to your lips as he reaches both of his hands out for your waist, but he’s rudely interrupted when the timer for the oven goes off— cookies are done.

You both nearly jump out of your skin at the sound; the incessant beeping pulling you both out of the thick fog of tension between your bodies and minds.

“Shit,” he mumbles, flushing pink from his cheeks to the tips of his ears as he turns off the timer at the top of the oven and moves to hastily grab an oven mitt from the lower drawer.

He pulls open the oven door, and you step back to watch him pull the tray out and set it on top of the stove area.

He sighs, pulling off the mitt and setting it aside as he leans over the cookies. His eyes are inspecting each one, and he has a very focused expression plastered on his face. He was as much of a perfectionist in the kitchen as he used to be on the court, that was for sure.

Your body moves in to stand beside him, also peering down at the tray of gorgeous golden-brown cookies. You place a hand on his upper back, rubbing it encouragingly.

“These look incredible,” you say, smiling at him.

He nods, still inspecting them, “They look better than I thought they would.. I actually messed up earlier and accidentally added three-fourths of a cup of sugar instead of two-thirds..”

“They look perfect, don’t stress.”

He looks to you, his gaze meeting yours and then suddenly everything was back to how it was before the timer went off. His hands reach for your waist, squeezing at your hips as he looks lovingly down at you.

“Be proud of yourself, Art.. you did a good job,” you laugh softly, your hands reaching up to cup his face. He pulls you closer.

“I am.”

“Are you?”

“Mhm.”

“Good.”

You suddenly get a very filthy idea.

“Can.. can you tell me what the recipe called for?”

His brows furrow slightly as he seems taken aback by your request, his cock already starting to stir to life in his sweatpants just from holding your body. He didn’t want to talk about the damn cookies anymore.

“What?”

You roll your eyes, one of your hands dropping from his face to reach around the fabric of the front of his apron and grope him over his sweats. Your other hand moves down too, but just to gently hold the side of his torso. His whole body jolts forward and his lips part instantly.

“You’ll like where this is headed, trust me. Just talk to me.. tell me what you did to make the cookies look so perfect..”

He breathes unsteadily, his fingers digging into your waist as he feels your hand start to work his cock up to a full-blown, hot, twitchy erection.

“I.. uhm.. I just..” he breathes out, his eyes growing lidded as he absentmindedly bucks up against your touch, still trying to maintain eye contact as pleasure starts to flood his senses, “one cup of b-butter.. ngh-!.. two cups.. two cups of flour… and then- ugh!- two.. two-thir-r-ds.. of..”

His voice trails off, shaky and low and broken as he hangs his head a bit, leaking incessantly into his boxers. It was that easy for you to work him up.

You frown, “Uh oh.. come on, baby, don’t go nonverbal on me that quick.. we’ve just barely gotten started…”

A small whimper leaves his chest as he tries to finish his words, “Two-thirds, I m-mean- three-f-fourths of a c-cup of.. s-su.. sugar… one teasp’of vanilla.. and.. o-one.. teaspoon of nutm-eg.”

You smile, stroking his cock over the fabric of his pants, “Good boy.. God, you’re so pretty when you’re slurring for me..”

He moans obscenely, melting at the praise while he feels his length grow suddenly intensely hot. A certain kind of numbness starts to creep over his crotch before his hands are flying from your hips to your wrist.

“Wait! W-Wait!” he gasps, his eyes squeezing shut as he blows a concentrated shaky breath from his lips, his fingertips digging into your arm.

Your eyebrow lifts and you smile as you take in the way his body shakes and shudders as he holds it in for you. He knows how to behave.. what would make you happy.. what would make you disappointed.. After all, he’s been trained by you in more than just tennis.

“Close?” you whisper.

His body starts to slowly relax again as he regains some of his composure. He blinks his eyes back open slowly, looking into yours.

“Very,” he groans.

You pull your hands from his body, and he whines softly.

“Take off the apron. Put it on the floor.”

You’re sure you’ve never seen him move so fast— his hands reaching behind his back and undoing the tied string. Then, he pulls the apron off over his head, tossing it off to the side. He watches you study him with parted lips, and he bites onto his own.

“Now take your sweats off for me.”

He does as he’s told; his shaky fingers reaching down to slip his pants down to his lower thighs, and then down to his knees and ankles, and then he steps out of them. He kicks them gently next to where the apron was thrown, now making a mess of grey and white fabric where both items pooled on the kitchen floor.

You step close to his body, cupping his face before running a hand through his messy strawberry-blonde locks. But it doesn’t take long for your eyes to travel solely down to the bulge prominently pressing against the inside of his navy boxer briefs. You run a fingertip up and over the outline of his dick, relishing in the way it makes him shake. He was now just in his tee shirt, boxers, and white socks, while you stayed fully clothed. But not for too much longer.

"My pretty husband.." you coo to him, making his lips part to let out a few uneven breaths. You glance around his frame and notice a bowl off to the side that had remnants of the soft cookie dough from the first batch of the cookies. You smirk.

You lean forward and swipe your thumb along the inside of the bowl, gathering some of the sugary, buttery mixture on your digit. His gaze remains lidded and locked onto your face, not finding any importance in your hand's movements at the kitchen counter. You bring your thumb back in, showing him what you did.

He spares your thumb a quick glance, but then his eyes are back on yours, and then your lips, and then the way that your breasts are peeking out from the low-cut collar of your work top. You bring your thumb up to his mouth.

"Open," you whisper.

He does as he's told, parting his lips further and leaning in to encourage your finger to slip past them.

You push your cookie dough-covered thumb into his mouth, feeling him immediately begin to suckle on it; his tongue swirled over it, and his eyes fluttered shut right after they began to roll back. His brows furrow, and a couple of faint whines bubble up out of him as the taste of his homemade sweetness melts seamlessly on his palate.

While your thumb is in his mouth, you push it down softly on his tongue.

"Knees, baby," you say breathlessly.

Art knew this command like the back of his hand.

Effortlessly and steadily, he dropped down to his knees one after the other, keeping your digit in his mouth the entire time. He didn't dare let it go. He moved to sit on his calves.

"Good job.. good boy..."

He whimpered, the vibrations of his pathetic sounds causing your hand to buzz slightly.

"I want your mouth on my cunt.. can you do that for me, darling?" you purr, running your hand through his hair for a moment. He nods around you.

"Y'sh, m'm.." he mumbled, trying his best to speak while still relishing your touch with enough attention.

You pull your thumb from the heat of his wet mouth, and smirk as you watch his lips chase after it.

"What was that?"

You already had a good idea about what he had murmured, but it was just.. best to be sure.

"Yes, ma'am," he gasps out softly, his eyes glazed over.

He reaches up and pulls at your skirt, shimmying it down and over your ass and thighs, letting it fall to your ankles. You kick it aside, and lean your back against the countertop. Art positions himself on his knees so that he's on the floor in front of you, looking up at you. His hands shakily reach up to the sides of your pantyhose, his tongue licking out over his bottom lip. He digs his fingers into the taut fabric and looks up at you once more, beginning to pull them down.

Immediately you grab his wrists, halting his movements. His eyes look up into yours, worried that he had made a wrong move, but you shake your head with a soft smile.

"You can rip them."

He doesn't even mean to, but he moans when you give him permission to be a little desperate right now.

In an instant, his strong hands are pulling needily at your tights, causing them to rip from your crotch to your lower thighs. He hooks one of his index fingers into the inside of your panties, his thighs tensing up at the feeling of your wetness, and then he's pushing them to the side. His tongue rests out over his bottom lip as he leans in, holding the back of your leg with his free hand as his eyes flutter shut and he engulfs your heat with his mouth.

"Oh, fuck-!" you yelp, reaching down to tangle your hands in his soft curls, "fuck, fuck, that feels good, Art, don't stop.."

He moans, his eyes squeezed shut as he lathes his tongue up and down and over your wet hole. He lewdly sucks and swallows your slick that's quickly spilling over his tongue, trying to focus harder on your pleasure (and less on the feeling of his cock throbbing rapidly in his boxers.. he can feel himself leaking).

You remove your hands from his hair and move to unsteadily grip the countertop, your back pressing hard against it. Art hums around you in his mouth, moving his tongue up to lick sloppily at your clit. He opens his eyes, his brows furrowed, and looks up at you.

"God, you're so good at this.. you're doing so well.. i'm getting.. close.." you breathe out, studying the upper half of his face while the lower half remains buried in your pussy.

He doubles his efforts, smushing his face deeper against you, his lips pursing to suckle against your sensitive nub as his grip on your leg tightens. Art has half a mind at that moment to just scoot forward a bit and slot your ankle between his thighs, but he won't. You came first, in his mind. Literally, and figuratively.

You sling the leg that he's holding over his shoulder, giving him more access, and then you begin to feel an overwhelming, hot numbness creep over your lower half..

"ANGH!" you moan loudly, squeezing your eyes shut as your body begins to shake. Your fingers grip the kitchen counter so hard that you're afraid you'll break a nail.

"I'm going to cum, Art..!"

"Mm! Mm-mm!"

"I'm.. oh my god.... I'm... I'm-! Cumming-!" you whine, feeling your orgasm crash over you.

"MM-!" he laps at your pulsing cunt, squeezing his eyes shut before forcing them open so that he can watch the way your beautiful face moves to contort in ecstasy.

You groan and whine as your orgasm's aftershocks are uncomfortably prolonged by Art's relentless tongue, and your hands release the marble countertop to reach down and grab two soft fistfuls of his hair. You try to tug his head back from your cunt, but he just closes his eyes and presses his nose and mouth further against your core. The repetitive movements of his tongue over your folds cause lewd, wet noises to fill the kitchen.

"Art... A-Art..! Enough!" you slur out as the pleasure from before starts to melt into a prickly sting of oversensitivity.

His eyes flutter open and you shoot him a warning glance as he peers up at you.

"I said enough, yeah?" you snap, "stand up."

He immediately pulls his mouth away from your sticky body and stands up on shaky legs. His eyes look downward, guiltily avoiding your gaze, as he wipes at the clear slick covering his chin with the back of his hand.

You try to catch your breath for a moment, studying his chest as it heaves up and down -- him trying to catch his breath all the same. You reach out and take his lower jaw softly in one hand, forcing him to look at you properly.

"You got a little fucking greedy there for a minute.. didn't you?"

He bites his bottom lip for a second, nervously chewing on the inside of it as he debates what answer he could give that would result in the least amount of punishment from you.

"Did you hear what I said?" you whisper coldly, taking a step closer to him as your hand grazes against the erection standing proudly in his underwear.

His body automatically jolts forward, and he lets out a shaky breath as his brow twitches. "Yeah.. I did.." he huffs out.

You smirk, wrapping your hand around him over the dark blue fabric, "And what do you think, hm? Were you being greedy?"

He looks deep into your eyes, his lips parting as he feels you start to stroke him. He tries to stop it, but his hips start to shallowly buck against your grasp, and now he can't get any words out. He wants to, but he just.. he really can't.

You roll your eyes.

"You know what I want you to say, honey. Use that big brain of yours."

He moans softly, his hands coming up to hold the sides of your upper arms as his eyes grow lidded.

"I'm.. I was being greedy.. I'm greedy," he moans lowly, thrusting into your hand a bit quicker and with a tad bit more abandon.

"Yeah, yeah you are. You're a greedy little whore for this, aren't you?"

He nods slowly but repeatedly as his brows pinch together and his breathing picks up.

"Yesss," he says brokenly, his voice straining a little as his moans start to become whimpers and whines, "I'm.. s' greedy for you.. jus' for you.. mm..!"

You nod and smirk up at him as his face becomes pinker and pinker, "That's it, pretty boy.. good job. You like when I stroke your pretty cock?"

He lets out an obscenely loud moan as his abdomen curls in over itself a bit, his hands gripping the sleeves of your work top and pulling helplessly at the fabric as he feels a spurt of precome burst into the inside of his boxers.

You chuckle a little as you watch him visibly get closer to his climax, but then he suddenly releases the hold on one of your sleeves and urgently grabs the hand that's moving over his clothed length.

You look down to where his hand holds yours, and he lets out a filthy whimper as he pulls your touch off of him and then urgently pushes your hand past his waistband and down into the front of his boxers. You gasp at his seemingly impulsive actions, feeling your fingers finally come into contact with his slicked-up cockhead. Your fingertips just barely brush over his hot, leaking slit.. sliding over a thick glob of pre.. and then he's being sent over the edge. To the average person, the touch would be essentially imperceptible, but not to him.. not to Art. He was just far too sensitive.

Your husband lets out a startled cry as he doubles over your frame in front of him and frantically moans, his whole body trembling and tensing as his balls draw up, "I'm cumming!"

You don't even have time to really process what's happening until you feel your hand being covered in warm fluid, the substance dripping down your fingertips as Art basically comes untouched. You look up at him, dumbfounded, before you feel your abdomen grow warm and tingly. That was kinda.. hot?

"Jesus, baby," you whisper breathlessly as his hips jolt a few more times before stilling as he gulps air down into his lungs, "didn't realize you were that worked up.. that was a little quick, no?"

He moans softly, still feeling your fingers graze him inside of his boxers.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.." he says, his breathing hitching in his throat as he tries to get the words out in spite of the pleasure still thrumming through his veins. He was still rock hard.

You smile, quickly using your clean, opposite hand to pull his boxers down to his lower thighs. His length slaps up lightly against his stomach before bobbing out in front of him, a tiny pearl-like bead of cum still leaking from his tip. He sighs shakily as he looks down at himself, and then up at you. You wrap your cum-covered hand around the base of his shaft, causing Art to jerk forward from sensitivity. He pulls a sharp breath in, his face scrunching up a little as he tries to control his body.

"I'll let you cum again," you start, watching his eyes light up, "but! you need to give me a warning this next time, okay? I want a clear warning, love."

He nods at your words, a more serious expression plastering over his face, "I will, I promise.. I.. I can give you a proper warning, ma'am.." he whispers.

And with that, you slide your hand from his base to his tip in one smooth motion, your thumb gliding over the head.

"GAH-!" he shudders forward, hissing in pain for a moment before he starts to moan again.

"You okay? Can you handle this?" you ask, your tone soft but seductive as you try to tease him but also legitimately check in. You two were always good at looking out for the other's wellbeing during your sessions together; the exchange of love and tender-care came easily to you both-- it was never something either of you had to question.

He nods, "Yeah, yes-ss, I can t-take it.." he slurs a little, watching your hand move up and down over his throbbing length.

"Look up into my eyes, darling," you purr, your hand starting to pick up speed, "does it feel good?"

He meets your eyes, his blue ones swimming with lust and desperation as he felt the beginnings of his second orgasm start to creep in, "Yes, fuck-! Yes! It feels so fucking good--!" he whines.

"Remember what we just talked about?"

He nods fervently, sucking his plump bottom lip in between his teeth as his focus darts from one of your eyes to the other. You speed up your hand, squeezing his shaft a little more to give him some pressure that you assume he needs.

He keens instantly, a loud moan rumbling from his chest as his thighs start to shake and his eyes squeeze shut.

"Art," you murmur in a seductive but warning tone.

He shakes all over, nodding his head, before his back stiffens up and he becomes incredibly tense. You keep your hand moving at the same fast pace, hoping his memory today is as good as his stamina.

"I'm going to cum," he whispers quickly, bringing his hands up to hold onto your shoulders as he pulls you closer.

You smile in approval, leaning in close to his ear and breathing warmly against his skin as you speak softly, "thank you for telling me, angel. do you want to cum for me?"

He nods, whining out a hasty "mhm". He lets out a breathy moan as he feels your hot words against his upper neck.

You press a chaste kiss there, and then you slide your hand up to gently grip his shaft while your thumb moves to rapidly swipe over his frenulum.

"Come."

And he does just that.

Art's back arches as soon as your one commanding word reaches his ears, cumming uncontrollably with an abrupt cry of pleasure. At first, his body is incredibly rigid as he lets go, his brows pinched up together as he feels the first, pulsing waves of his orgasm hit him, but then the full sensation of his release hits him and his whole body shudders deeply. He lets out little breathy moans and gasps as he relishes in the bursts of pleasure rolling over his cock. You slow your thumb down a bit as you watch him spurt rope after rope over your hand and onto the kitchen floor as he comes undone for you a second time.

"Fucking hell," you moan, now going back to stroking him fully instead of just rubbing a digit against his tip.

He grits his teeth in an instant, being pulled from his afterglow by the feeling of your hand forcing him back into a feeling of overstimulation. "Ah-! Ah!.. T-Too much, too much," he whimpers, his hands instinctively reaching down from your shoulders to push at your hand that's currently working him towards a third, uncomfortable orgasm that he's not even sure he wants anymore.

You use the hand that's not stroking him to move his hands away from your occupied one, giving him a small shake of your head.

"Hands behind your back, please. We're not done yet, okay?" you coo.

He quickly follows orders, moving both of his hands behind his back and away from his aching length, although not without letting out a sniffly whine of protest first.

"Please, ma'am.. I'm.. I can't do it I can't do it-- I'm-- AH!"

You cut off his soft moans of agony with a brief squeeze to the base of his dick, looking intently up into his eyes through your lashes.

"If you really want to stop, baby," you tilt your head teasingly, "you can always use the safeword, yeah?"

He bites his lip before he lets out a warped cry, his head lolling backwards in the same instant. You stop moving your hand.

"Art, darling," you whisper to him comfortingly.

He brings his head back upright to look down into your eyes, his face blank with pleasure; he almost looked drunk. His eyes were glazed over, his cheeks were pink, his hair was a mess, and his lips were parted to let out harsh little breaths of air as he tried to regain some semblance of being grounded in his own, ruined body.

You reach your free hand up to cup his jaw, brushing your thumb over the side of his face.

"Does it really hurt that bad? You know that you can be honest," you whisper, now a little concerned that maybe you pushed him too far.

He thinks for a moment before shaking his head slowly and swallowing a bit of drool that he realized has been collecting in his mouth for the past minute or so, "N-Just a little.." he breathes out.

You nod, giving him one soft stroke of his come-covered cock. He gasps and his torso jolts at the sensation, faint tears springing to his eyes.

"Sorry, sorry," you hum, "should we stop here then? I think maybe that would be best for you.. you've already done so well for me.."

The latter half of your sentence, that subtle bit of praise, gives him all the motivation he needs to want to unravel again.

He looks down at his still-hard cock, and then back up at you, and shakes his head. His tongue pokes out over his bottom lip and wets it as he tries to collect his thoughts.

"No.. no, I can do- I can go again, ma'am.. I pro-promise.." he slurs out, thrusting up into your hand.

You raise a skeptical brow at him and his movements, keeping your hand still.

"Are you sure? You know that I won't be upset with you if you want to stop, Art."

He shakes his head again, his lip trembling, "Please."

You smile softly and start to move your hand up and down over his cock again. Despite his previous indications that it was painful, the feeling has now seemed to morph back into unfiltered pleasure as he lets out a high-pitched moan of your name. He babbles endlessly, a mixture of pleas for more, letting out repetitive mumblings of "feels good", and "yes", and an assortment of stuttered expletives.

It doesn't take long for Art to get close again.

"I think 'm gonna come again," he mumbles, letting his eyes fall shut as his head slumps forward against your shoulder. You stroke him quicker, focusing on his hypersensitive tip as you feel a drip of precome come out.

"Oh? You want to come again?" you tease coyly.

You could be cruel sometimes. He had known that this part was coming eventually.

He shakes his head against the crook of your neck with a whine, "don't do this, please.."

You stop your hand at the base of his cock, halting his orgasm just as his load started to rise up his length. Art bites back an obscenely loud moan of protest that is dying to be let out..

"No, no no noo," he squirms against you, repetitively shaking his head as his face remains buried in your neck.

"You know what you need to do, darling."

"Please," he moans, "let me come.."

"You want to come?"

"Yes."

"You do?"

"YES..!"

"How should I make you come?"

"Can y- keep stroking my- I want my cock to be- I-" he mumbles incoherently.

You place your free hand on the back of his head, pushing your fingers pleasurably into his hair as he trembles against you.

"You want me to keep jerking you off? Hm?"

"Y-Yes-ss!" he moans out brokenly, using every bit of restraint within himself to resist the urge to move his hands from behind his back and relieve his aching parts.

He would never do that, though.. no matter how much he wanted to. He would always follow your wants and needs first. Those were most important to him.

"Ask me for what you need again. Nicely; just the way I like it."

"Please, can I come?"

"Again."

He whines, his hips involuntarily bucking up against your stilled hand wrapped around him.

"Please," he sobs, "can I please come for you?"

"Yes, honey, you can come."

You start to stroke his cock once again, and within just a few pumps Art is releasing again. Even though you can't see them because his face is still in your shoulder, his eyes roll all the way to the back of his head as he lets out a couple pitiful squirts of white, sticky liquid over your hand. "Ooh, that's it.. good boy.. are you my pretty little slut?"

When Art hears this, he isn't exactly sure what happens, but it's like the orgasm that's already halfway finished just completely starts over.

"Ohh my fucking- oh my god-dd-! Ugh! HNGH-!"

It's like every single nerve ending in his body is lighting up at once, and he can't do a damn thing about it.. he can't stop it...

His legs nearly go limp underneath him, and he has to lean further into you to prevent himself from collapsing.

Art then releases the most pornographic moans you've ever heard and tenses up in your hold all over again. You're not really sure what's happening until he--

"I'm cumming again! I'm cumm-m-ing-! Again! Ohmyfucking--! GOD!"

He whines and sobs against your body, his arms still held behind his back as you feel his cock jump and pulse in your hand again. This time, nothing comes out. It's odd because it's clear that he's cumming for a fourth time, but there's nothing to show for it.

You slow your hand but continue to stroke his length which is now covered in the creamy-white filth of his previous loads. His cock softens a little, but you're unsure when his orgasm ends because, again, nothing is coming out.

Art's frame suddenly begins to jerk around every time your hand brushes over his tip, and he lets out a hiss of discomfort through his gritted teeth and a sniffle afterwards. As soon as you hear that, you know he's done and you quickly remove your hand. Any extra stimulation and he'd genuinely start to cry. You could save that for another time.. if he wanted you to.

You move your other hand from his hair to his clothed upper back and rub small, comforting circles over it.

"I've got you," you whisper, "you did such a good job, baby. You just came dry for me."

He nods, sniffling wetly and exhaustedly.

You continue to rub his back for a minute or so in silence as he comes back down to earth; the pleasurable waves of his release's aftershocks allowing him to bask in the ebb and flow of it all as he tries to calm his ragged breathing.

"I feel weak," he groans softly.

You nod, "I'm right here, you're okay.. take some deep breaths for me, honey."

He nuzzles deeper against your neck and sighs contentedly, the fuzziness in his head starting to dissipate with your caring words and gentle touch.

"You're my good boy," you whisper, pressing your cheek against the side of his head.

"Mhmm," he hums, "always for you."

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆. ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆. ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆.

notes; WOAH. ok. so this has been like months in the making by now i think..? but i finally finished it :D thank u so much to everyone who has been patiently/loyally waiting for this one after i teased it for over a month on this blog 😭 + thank u to anyone who gave me some kind words of encouragement when i had to put this aside for a while. i luv u guys !! <3

He’s standing outside with a pretty blonde girl, sharing a Marlboro Red and whispering sweet nothings.

And you’re shouting. Laughing, too, slung over the shoulder of a security guard, being kicked out for being disruptive. Whatever the fuck that meant.

For what it’s worth, he sits you back on your feet gentler than you deserve. “Oh, so bitches don’t know how to say excuse me and somehow it’s my fault? It’s fuckin’ bullshit, Dennis, and you know it!”

“Not my call, kid,” Dennis explains with a shrug. “Sorry. See you next weekend.” And without another word, the suited man disappears back into the nightclub, leaving you, and the blonde, and one Tommy fucking Miller.

You’d be embarrassed, if it weren’t for the six shots coursing through your bloodstream.

They stare. Both of them, but in different ways. Her gaze is concerned, maybe a little frightened. But Tommy’s is dark. Excited. Filled with lust, but you hadn’t known that yet.

“What? You never seen someone get kicked out before?”

“Sorry,” the blonde says quickly. “You okay?”

Nice. She was nice. That’s about all you remember. She helps you fix your too-tight dress and goes back inside. Tommy promises to follow her in a minute, once he finishes his cigarette. 

But that doesn’t happen.

Instead, he sweet talks you in the way he’s always been good at. Makes you feel real special. Puts his mouth to your ear and makes obscene jokes, the heat of his breath sending goosebumps down your spine.

He touches you softly at first. A simple brush of his knuckles across your cheekbone. He flashes that killer smile and his hand finds a home on your waist. Drifting lower and lower and before you realize it, he’s slipping it up the back of your dress.

In hindsight, that first night should’ve been the red flag to end all red flags. He’d been at the nightclub with someone else, and somehow you’d wound up in the back seat of his truck with his cock buried deep inside you.

No one had ever gotten you to the finish line before that night. A couple of boyfriends had tried, but mostly, you’d had to ignore their rhythm and circle your clit yourself just to get there.

But Tommy isn’t like that. Not even a little. Seems to know the way around your body better than you yourself do. Lifts you off of him and replaces his cock with his fingers halfway through, and moves them just right until you soak him, only to slide right back in with a deep groan and that prideful grin on his face.

He likes to talk real nasty in your ear. That much never changed. That first night, as the condom swells inside you, he looks right into your eyes and says, “Damn, baby. You’ve got the kinda pussy that’ll make a man go fuckin’ crazy.”

If his girlfriend hadn’t been the red flag, you think that should’ve been.

But you were young and dumb and Tommy was older and exciting and delicious.

So, you give him your number when he asks for it. 

Rookie mistake. 

Two weeks later, you get a text on Friday night.

Going to Club Orchid with some friends tonight. Could use a back seat girl.

Back seat girl. 

It makes you so fucking mad, so irritated that you complain about it to your roommates all day. And they all agree that it was a shitty thing to say.

Sure, Tommy was attractive. Tall and broad and rugged with that big Texas belt buckle that deep Texas drawl and those curls and the fucking mustache. 

But he wasn’t God’s gift to the Earth. And when you and your friends find your way to Club Orchid that night, you seek him out to tell him just that.

And you do. Give him a glare sharp enough to cut and call him an asshole in front of all his friends. You remind him that his access to you is a privilege because it is, and warn that you’ll end up in his dad’s backseat if he’s not careful.

But Tommy takes your insults and threats with ease. Smirks the whole time like you’re putting on his favorite show. Leans back with an elbow against the bar and a glass bottle in hand. Licks his lips when you’re done and says, “You’re fuckin’ sexy when you’re all worked up. You know that?”

You roll your eyes and blow him a kiss with your middle finger before setting out to find someone else to dance with. 

And you do. Some pretty boy from out of town who’s all too happy to let you grind on him in the middle of the dance floor. He buys you and your friends drinks all night and runs his soft hands up your thighs with no fear in him. The kind of boy you’d normally take home. Closer to your age. Nice, but not too nice.

You can feel Tommy’s eyes on you from across the room, though. Catch his gaze every couple songs, hot and lingering. You like the way it felt to have his attention. Like that he could have any girl in the room but he stares only at you.

A little after midnight, you step outside for some fresh air. And you can see him leave the bar from the corner of your eye, fully aware he’s following you and trying to ignore the way your skin prickles in excitement.

You don’t even make it to the backseat that night. Tommy shoves your dress up and your panties down and takes you right on the hood of his truck. Presses your face to the black chrome paint and fucks you hard. Tangles his hand in your hair and says, “Pretty girl got her feelings hurt, did she? S’alright, baby. You got me back good. Lettin’ that little boy touch you all night right in front of me. But pussy this good needs a fuckin’ man, don’t it?”

No one on Earth has ever irritated you more. But no one else has made you feel that good, either. 

Tommy likes it deep. Gives you those fast, punishing strokes that have your eyes watery and your head all fuzzy. He brushes his rough fingers over your clit with expert precision, pulling orgasm after orgasm out of you with ease. Like it’s his fucking day job.

He kissed you afterwards. Rights your dress, squeezes your cheeks between his fingers and presses his lips to yours with such intensity it steals the breath from your lungs. He hadn’t done it the first time, and it leaves you a little confused. 

Enough that you consult the group chat the next morning. Half of the responses conclude that you’ve gotten the man pussydrunk, while the other half insist on blocking his number.

But you don’t, of course. Just chang his contact name to Tommy Miller - DNI. 

You ignore his messages for a while and avoid the clubs and bars you know he frequents.

But it does little to change the course you’re on. 

The next time you see him is at your favorite takeout place. You’ve already ordered and are waiting on the other side of the counter, wearing your comfiest pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt. A far cry from your best look, but it didn’t seem to bother Tommy in the slightest. 

He bypasses the woman behind the counter entirely, coming up to your side instead. He towers over you in a way that’s a whole lot clearer in the daylight. So tall you have to crane your head up to watch him speak. “Nice seein’ you here,” he says. “Best barbecue in Austin. Shame only the locals know about it.”

“I prefer it that way,” you admit, nose upturned, a cold edge in your voice. “Keeps away unwanted advances.”

He smirks at that. “Unwanted, huh? S’that what it was?” His eyes flicker down, right between your thighs. “Didn’t seem that way when she was cryin’ for me.”

You roll your eyes and bite your tongue, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave you be. 

But Tommy only doubles down. Leans in close and says the most obscene thing you’ve ever heard in your life up until that point. “You know, some people would call it cruel, keepin’ a little girl from her daddy.”

“Jesus Christ,” you scoff. “You’re disgusting.”

Tommy smiles real wide. Presses a chaste kiss to the top of your head and says, “I’ll see you later, baby.”

He would not see you later, in fact. You’d make damn sure of it. 

When he returns to the cashier, he tells her the name on his pickup order and you try to drown out the sound of his voice and the way he smiles at the girl behind the counter. Try to ignore the way she smiles back, and slides him a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.

But when your order’s finished, and you pull out your debit card to pay, she informs you that it’s already paid for in full. 

You try not to let it get to you. Try not to convince yourself paying for your food means anything. You didn’t ask for him to buy your dinner, and so you don’t owe him a thank you or the last thirty dollars in your account.

But you have a weird feeling he’ll try to hold it against you. Which is why you open that one sided text thread and send a message, half hoping he’ll leave you on read. 

Thanks for buying my food. Didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it. 

His response is immediate. 

Yeah I did. I always take care of my girl.

His girl. It makes your stomach flip. Makes you feel equally nauseous and elated. 

Not your girl. 

Those typing bubbles pop up, disappear, and then pop up again. He’s hesitating. 

Could be, though.

The hesitation is enough for you to make a decision. Tommy Miller doesn’t seem much the settling down type. You know guys like him. Take pride in seeing right through their facade and turning their own tricks back on them.

And, truthfully, you’re weren’t ready for anything exclusive or serious, anyway. You had no interest in being his girl. No interest in him at all. 

You don’t respond.

But you see him. That weekend at Club Orchid, the following weekend at Frank’s Bar. It seems that no matter where you go, he’s always there. And you try to keep your distance. 

Truly, you do. But it’s like Tommy Miller’s this beacon of light and you’re a brainless little moth. Sometimes he shows up in these too tight t-shirts that barely fit his strong biceps, sometimes he wears this cologne that’s sweet and musky and masculine and mouth watering, and you just can’t help yourself.

You always know he’s around when you walk in some place and you’re given a Jack and Coke before you even make it to the bar. It becomes a running joke between you and your friends. Like it’s his little way of saying ‘hey, baby. be seein’ you later.’ 

And god damnit, you do. 

You christen every god forsaken inch of his truck, the backseat of your friend’s Camry, both the restrooms at Club Orchid, the alley behind Frank’s. He makes you feel like a horny teenager, never satisfied, always hungry.

And it goes on for months. Longer than any other casual hookup you’ve ever had before him.

Tommy has no problem keeping up with you. Even though you always poke fun at him for his age, sometimes offering a viagra when you share a cigarette and ask for round two before you even make it back inside to the thrall of the party.

He says, “I’m thirty five, girl. Not seventy five. Bend the fuck over.”

Each time it’s a little more dirty and a little more depraved. He gets to know you, to really know you. Can hear the difference between a moan that says, that’s good and one that says, Jesus Christ, right fucking there. 

And you come to know him, too. Know just how hard to squeeze his cock to make his breath hitch, know when to suck and when to lick, know that if you look up at him with innocent eyes while he’s halfway down your throat it sends him careening off the precipice of release.

Tommy likes it when you’re sweet to him. He likes when you beg for it, likes when you say please. But you also know he likes the chase. 

Convincing you is half the battle, and if you didn’t know any better you’d assume he enjoyed it more than the sex. He doesn’t embarrass easily, and you find that the meaner you are to him before he spreads your thighs, the harder he is when his cock finds home.

But on one particularly bad Friday, you find yourself at Frank’s alone. Your friends are busy and your roommates bailed last second. Not their fault—food poisoning happens to the best of us.

It’s not bad because you’re alone. It’s bad because you’d been laid off that afternoon and now were in a frantic search for a new job. Something temporary until you made it through the screening process at someplace that paid decently. 

You’re drowning your sorrows when Tommy finds you. Ordering doubles all night and charging it to your credit card even knowing you shouldn’t.

He sits beside you at the bar. Doesn't say a word. Just exists with you in the silence and orders a drink for you both. 

You hate to admit it, but you think it might just be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for you. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong, doesn’t offer to fix it, doesn’t urge you to sneak off to the back to have a quickie. He’s just…he’s just there. 

And, after last call, he gently tucks a piece of your hair behind your ear and says, “C’mon.” 

You don’t know why, but you do as he says. End up sitting in the corner of the couch in his apartment, your dress in a pile on his bathroom floor, wearing a well loved Def Leppard t-shirt from his closet. He makes two cups of microwave noodles, sits beside you, and asks, “You like Pawn Stars?”

All you give is a shrug in response. Have never given a shit about reality television shows, really. But somehow, it’s exactly what you need.

Tommy sits there with you, arm draped around your shoulders, and watches reruns until you fall asleep. Doesn’t press you for answers or ask you for anything. He just…he takes care of you. In a way you’ve never been taken care of before. He’s kind and gentle and good.

He kisses your forehead when he turns the television off and retires to his bedroom alone. But, before he goes, your sleepy voice cuts through the silence. “Tommy?”

His heavy steps pause on the hardwood. “Yeah, baby?”

“Thank you.”

A soft smile curls at the corners of his lips. It’s the first time you see it; the love in his eyes. Not love in the typical way of the word. There’s no expectation tied to it, no hidden intention. It’s just good, simple, pure adoration. Given to you freely from a man who has a good heart but isn’t quite ready to give it away.

You wake up before the sun with a splitting headache and a clearer head. Even fully aware that it’s kind of a shitty thing to do, you slip out of Tommy’s apartment before he wakes. Send him a quick text that just says thanks again, and walk back to your car parked in Frank’s parking lot with your shoes in hand.

A little after you turn twenty six, James takes you by surprise. You meet him at a houseparty in Houston and hit it off quicker than you anticipate. He’s the sort of guy you’d bring home to your parents. And when he surprises you at your new office job with a dozen roses in hand just to ask you on a date, you can’t help but say yes.

He opens every door for you, gives you his jacket in the rain, walks on the outside of the sidewalk. Your friends like him, he’s funny, and he never once gives you any mixed signals. Even admits early on that he wants to take things slow because he’s dating not for fun but with the intent of eventual marriage.

James is a good guy. A really, really good guy. And you like him. Truly.

Which is why, several weeks into your relationship, you think it’ll be fine if you accompany your friends to Club Orchid on his arm.

You should’ve known better.

And you know it’ll be bad when that Jack and Coke is presented to you by a waiter before you’re four feet inside the door. 

Your friends give you worried glances, but you try to shake it off. It’s just a drink. It doesn’t mean anything. And so you simply thank the waiter and sip slowly from the glass and go about your business.

The heavy weight of his stare prickles at the back of your neck. James asks to dance and you say yes, trying to convince yourself you’re not doing it just to get a good look around the room. To find him. 

It takes a couple of songs. Club Orchid is busy, bustling with bodies and spilled liquor and the scent of cigarette smoke. But you do find him.

Sitting at a table near the back, feet extended, arms crossed over his chest and that fucking smirk on his face. He’s got on battered cowboy boots and an old pair of wranglers and that fucking Def Leppard t-shirt. The same one you’d slept in on his couch. 

You’re not a cheater. Would never slip off to the parking lot while James waits for you inside, oblivious that you’re getting your back blown out thirty feet away.

And yet, the image in your brain gets stuck. Roots in deep. Makes a home inside. 

But you’re not like that. You’re not. 

When you tell James you’re going to run to the restroom for a second, he can sense your unease. He asks if everything’s okay, asks if there’s anything you need. His concern only makes the obscenities that haunt you feel that much more depraved. 

You promise James that you’re okay, that you just need a second to yourself. 

But you can feel Tommy’s familiar warmth at your back the moment you step through the door.

The restrooms are dimly lit, dark walls covered in graffiti. There’s a couple making out near the sinks and a young woman beside them fixing her lipstick in the mirror.

You don’t turn to face him. Not until you’re inside of the stall at the end, and he closes the door and latches it behind himself. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Could ask you the same thing, sweetheart,” he says. As if he has any right to.

“I already told you. I’m not your fucking girl.”

Tommy laughs. A deep rumble in his chest. “Mhm. Sure. Keep tellin’ yourself that.” He steps forward, crowding you. And when you take a step back to create much needed space, he just keeps coming until your back is pressed against the painted concrete wall. “You're his girl now, s’that it?”

“Yes,” you tell him. But your voice shakes when you say it.

Tommy catches it. Hears your hesitance. “Fine,” he says with a playful smirk. “I’ll bite. Just answer one question.”

A crease forms between your brows. You cross your arms over your chest and find that your heart is beating so fast you can feel it hammering against your sternum. “What?”

Tommy gently takes hold of your wrists, unfolding your arms. He stares you right in the eye, his gaze filled with so much intensity and darkness it chokes you. He takes your hand in his and presses it against the bulge in his jeans, and asks with a syrupy voice, “He fuck you like I do?”

Though you try not to react, your muscles deflate and a quiet whimper slips past your lips. You know if you lie he’ll taste it like smoke in the air. So, you say nothing instead. Keep your lips sealed firmly shut. 

But your silence is answer enough. Tommy smiles wide and presses a kiss to your hairline. He rests his cheek against the top of your head—such a rare, affectionate caress that you almost don’t notice his free hand begin to gather the fabric of your dress at your hip. 

He keeps the other held firmly against his cock, puppeteering your fingers, stroking the hardness there just how you know he likes.

“Don’t know why I asked. Already knew the answer,” he mutters, fingertips dancing over the elastic band of your panties. He slides them from your hip to that spot just below your navel—back and forth, back and forth, feeling the smooth fabric. “He know about that special spot, baby? Hm? He get as deep as I can? He keep up with you?”

No, no, and no. “It’s better with him.” Lie. “He’s nice to me.” True.

Tommy snorts. “You don’t like it nice,” he says. And then he slides his hand between your legs, middle finger pressed against your slit through the fabric of your panties. “Tell me the truth. Tell me what you want.”

His hand stays there, caressing you, sliding against your clit over and over and over. You can’t think like this. Can’t move, can’t breathe. Your hips tilt against his hand and you can feel his smile as he presses another loving kiss to the top of your head. 

Corrupted.

You’re totally, completely corrupted. 

Fucked in the head because you’re going to let him do whatever he wants to you in this dirty bathroom stall while your boyfriend’s alone on the dance floor.

And then Tommy steps away, leaving you cold and wanting and soaked. 

Clarity comes trickling in and your stomach twists. But there’s a part of you, too, that wishes you’d been bolder. A part that regrets not saying yes faster. 

“S’alright,” he says. “If you want to be with some fuckin’ asshole who doesn’t know his way around that sweet pussy of yours then fine. Be my guest. Suit yourself. But don’t let me see him touch you again, cause I’ll bash his fuckin’ head in.”

The words sound so unbelievable in your ears that you laugh. “You’re insane,” you say through your giggles. “Like, actually fucking crazy.”

He grabs your face, gentle enough not to hurt, firm enough that your laughter dies in your throat. “Do what you want, but I don’t want to fucking see it.”

It’s only then that it becomes clear to you. Behind his anger, there’s injury. You’re hurting him. 

And you’d feel bad if you had a reason to. But Tommy’s not good to you. Doesn’t ask to take you on dates, doesn’t make the effort to get to know you, doesn’t even typically kiss you goodbye after he spreads your legs. 

You deserve better and you know it. You deserve someone more like James.

He leaves you alone in that bathroom stall and you fight off the tears that well in the corners of your eyes.

When you regain your composure, you find James at the bar. He asks again if you’re okay and you admit that you’re not. Tell him you’re just not feeling it, that you’d rather spend the night tucked into bed with him. 

And he’s all too happy to take you up on the offer. He makes you popcorn and rents that new romcom starring your celebrity crush. He gets ice cream delivered at midnight just because you say it sounds good.

You try not to think about Tommy. But that dull, thrumming ache between your thighs persists. As if your traitorous libido had been promised sweet, sweet relief, only to be let down.

And you try with James. Really, you do. You tell him what feels good and he goes down on you for half an hour with no complaints. But he’s…he’s kind. And you can only take so much trying before you’re just tired. You know faking it doesn’t benefit either one of you, but you don’t want to hurt his feelings, either. Because he’s so good in every other aspect and you’re terrified of scaring him off. 

And it’s not that big of a deal, right? It’s not like the sex is bad. It’s just not what you’re used to. Different can be good, can’t it?

After he finishes he’s kissing you and saying goodnight and he’s dead asleep in ten minutes flat. It’s fine if you slink off to the bathroom after he’s started snoring to take care of the ache yourself.

It wouldn’t be the first time and you know it probably won’t be the last.

Except…it doesn’t happen. 

You try every trick in the book. Even let your mind wander to places it shouldn’t, but you just can’t get there. 

Ten minutes go by. Fifteen. Twenty. Forty.

Your desire lingers, hot and heavy and suffocating. The entire night has got you so frustrated and worked up that you could cry. 

And you won’t be able to sleep, not with the pent up arousal that demands attention. So, you make a decision.

Your thumbs hover over the keyboard on your phone. Unsure and yet still determined. You type out the classic you up? text, only to delete it.

You settle on a different phrasing. Still no better, but at least it doesn’t make you cringe as hard. 

Are you awake?

Tommy’s response is instant. Like it always is.

Call if you’re serious.

It makes you roll your eyes and sigh in frustration, but you do it anyway. Move to the couch in James’s living room instead, further away from the bedroom to ensure he won’t hear you. 

And then you call Tommy Miller for the first time in your life. 

He picks up on the second ring. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think you had it in you, baby,” is his greeting. Voice dark and sultry as he taunts you, the word baby sliding through you all soft and sweet and buttery. 

It has your stomach fluttering, warmth slithering through your center. But irritation follows it. “Shut the fuck up,” you bite back. Mean.

Tommy just laughs and you can hear the amusement in his voice when he speaks. “Don’t think you called to tell me that,” he says. “Can I guess?”

His voice. Just his fucking voice.

Your heart rate kicks up, that familiar pressure forms between your legs, painful at this point. And you know it’s wrong but you don’t care. You just need relief.

Tommy continues to speak, even though you offer nothing in the way of an answer. Says, “I think I was right on the nose, huh? He might be nice, but he can’t fuck you right. S’why you’re callin’ me, ain’t it? Got that uppity, rich asshole wrapped around your finger, though. An’ it’s no surprise, really. So goddamn pretty in those little dresses.”

You put him on speaker and lower the volume as low as it’ll go, placing your cellphone on the back of the couch. Freeing up your hands so you can lift your t-shirt with one and slide the other beneath the waist band of your pajama shorts.

He continues, oblivious. “Got those sweet, innocent eyes an’ that smart ass mouth that looks like it was made to fit a cock like mine.”

Your head falls back, sighing as you circle your clit with the perfect pressure, the perfect speed. Pleasure shoots through you, building low in your belly. 

“You let him fuck your pretty mouth, baby? Hm? Tell me. You swallow him down easy? Or do you cry on it like mine? Get all teary eyed and messy?”

His voice is so dark, so deep. But he’s looking for an answer and you don’t have the patience for it, you just want to get there. So in the silence all you can think to say is, “Keep talking.”

Tommy hears it, the breathlessness in your words. The need, the desperation. “Oh, shit,” he hisses. But then he chuckles, low and quiet. “You touchin’ yourself right now, darlin’?”

You don’t answer, too ashamed. But you pick up the pace, press a little harder against the sensitive nerves, and you try to swallow a moan. It comes out as a breathy sound instead, stuck in the back of your throat.

Somehow, the cadence in which he speaks grows darker. Sinister, even. ”Dirty fuckin’ girl. Bet you just had him inside you, huh? He in the other room? Tell me.” 

“No,” you say. But it’s so unconvincing that Tommy laughs. 

“Ain’t gotta lie to me. S’okay, though. I know how you get with that little attitude of yours. Too bad your boyfriend don’t know that all it takes to fix it is to get all up in your guts. Ain’t that right, darlin’?”

“You’re so—hmm—so fucking annoying.” You don’t mean it. Not really.

It doesn’t phase him. “You got your fingers inside yet, baby? Or are you still touchin’ her all sweet and soft?”

“Not…God—not yet,” you breathe out, trying to ignore the way your voice sounds so desperate in your ears. The pleasure coiling around your spine is already better than it was before, heightened just because he’s there. 

Tommy clicks his tongue. “Got two hands, don’t you? Go on, now. Just one, greedy girl. Gotta pace yourself. Make it last, make it good.”

Even though you know he can’t see you, you follow his instructions to the letter. Use your free hand to slide a single finger inside—the middle one, pressing hard in just the right spot. 

Your breath stutters the moment it happens, and you can feel your walls clench and shiver around the digit at the sound of that liquid smooth laugh of his.

“Got no fuckin’ clue how hard I am,” he whispers, voice smokey. “Got my dick leakin’ just thinkin’ about ya. From hearin’ all those pretty noises you make.”

You roll your fingers over your clit faster, chasing relief. Somehow it’s both too much and not enough, and before long you find yourself begging. The way you always do when that thick Texas drawl floods your ears. “Oh—fuck. Fuck, please, Tommy—”

His breath hitches on the other side of the phone. There’s a long, shaky exhale—and you know you’re getting to him. Can feel the sudden shift, can hear the strain in his words. “Christ. Slutty little thing. Sayin’ my name while he’s in the other room.”

The shame of it all makes you whimper, but it only spurs him on.

“S’alright, pretty girl. Ain’t gonna tell. Slide another finger in, baby. Ya earned it. Let me hear you,” he says. 

And though your immediate compliance stirs something angry and irritating inside, you do as he says. Tell yourself it’s not because you have to, but because you want to. Would do it right at this moment even without his words. 

The stretch is sweet and aching, fingertips finding home with practiced ease, warmth pooling low in your belly. Quiet, breathy sounds leave your lips, refusing to remain behind your teeth.

“Ohh, that’s it, ain’t it? This all you needed? Wanted me to talk ya through it. You cum for him like you’re about to cum for me?”

It’s right there, right there—your eyes squeezed tight, thighs trembling, breath getting stuck at the top of your lungs. 

And then he laughs. A low, baritone sound that sends shivers down your spine. He says, “Nah. ‘Course not. That pretty little pussy ain’t his, is it, baby? My fucking girl. Not his. Mine.”

The way he says it—possessive, controlling, certain—sends you over the edge, diving headfirst into bliss. 

You have to turn your head and press your mouth against your shoulder, fighting back the noises threatening to spill out, trying to keep quiet but failing miserably.

“Sound so pretty right now,” Tommy mutters. “Wish I was there with you, watchin’ you make a mess of yourself. Fuck, baby. That’s it.”

The sensation sticks. Lasts and lasts and lasts until you’re fighting for air, until your thighs clamp down tight around your hands between them. 

And even after, as your orgasm slowly fizzles out and your muscles loosen considerably, your skin still tingles. You let your head roll back, falling limp into the couch cushions, trying to catch your breath.

Tommy says nothing for several seconds, but you can still hear him on the other end of the line. Can feel him. The tension changes. Not awkward, exactly. Reluctant. As if he wants to speak but is afraid to.

You’re the one who decidedly ends the silence. “Uhm…thanks. By the way.”

Whatever Tommy had wanted to say gets lost. Tucked away someplace else for a different time. “Ain’t gotta thank me for doin’ my job, darlin’. Told you, I always take care of my girl.”

With a scoff, you roll your eyes and pick your phone back up. Press it to your ear and deny his words, even though something about the way you say them feels like a lie. “Not your girl, Miller. Goodnight.”

You don’t let him get another word in before ending the call. But just before you hang up you can hear him laughing. 

Not long after, you break up with James. Give the classic, it’s not you, it’s me speech and pick up a box of your belongings from his rental a week later. 

It surprises you how relieved you feel afterwards. How little you care about his absence. Because while, yes, James is kind and honest and good—you realize you’ve gotten bored. Have begun to miss the excitement without realizing it. The push and the pull and the heady desire in the middle of a dance floor.

That first weekend, your roommates insist on going out. Say it’s their way of getting you ‘back out on the playing field,’ which you know is just an excuse to drink too much. 

Still, you go. Decide on one of those nightclubs in the college part of town. Too expensive and too crowded and too loud, but somehow it’s exactly what you need.

And it’s the first night in months you spend just for yourself. You dance with your friends and even though your roommate's boyfriend lingers, the energy is good. Youthful and relaxed and healing, the way all girls' nights are.

You don’t see Tommy’s text message that night until several hours after he sends it. 

Hey. Can we talk? 

It makes your stomach turn. Because it feels like one of those messages. The ones you receive right before you block a phone number, insisting they need more from you. More time, more attention, more.

And you’re not ready to give Tommy up before you even go back to him. Not just yet. 

Don’t want to be tied down after just cutting yourself loose, but you don’t want to lose him at the price of freedom, either.

Because he might be annoying and frustrating and too damn full of himself, but you like him. Like the things he does to you, anyway. 

You’d never admit that, though. Not to his face. At least not now. 

So, you wait until morning to text him back. Hope that time has given him some clarity. He asks to take you out for breakfast, and it only stirs up that anxiety once again. 

Because you’ve been here before. Already know exactly what the conversation will entail. 

If it were anyone else—anyone at all—you would’ve cut your losses by now and added his number to the graveyard at the bottom of your contact list. 

But…his dick curves upwards. He eats you like a man starved for it and grabs you by the jaw and looks you right in the eye while he whispers that perverse filth, all while buried deep inside you. 

You agree to coffee. Not breakfast.

Tommy’s already at the local shop when you get there. Leaning against the brick wall outside the door, silver belt buckle catching the light of the morning sun, one brown leather boot crossed over the other, cigarette hanging loosely in his hand. 

He smiles when he sees you. A big, toothy grin. Laughs when you’re close enough to hear and says, “Jesus. Would you fuckin’ relax? Stop lookin’ at me like I’m holdin’ a loaded gun in my back pocket.”

“Stop looking at me like you’d let me point one right between your eyes,” you chide, hoping to set the tone before it spirals. 

But Tommy doesn’t care. He never has. Just holds open the door and lets himself shamelessly ogle you as you walk over the threshold. 

You order first, listing off the specifics of your favorite drink. The one you use as both a hangover cure and a pick me up on those days that like to drag on. You say please and thank you when the interaction permits and try not to feel the way Tommy crowds you, his warmth seeping through the fabric of your jacket.

He orders a simple black coffee. No cream, no sugar. When the young woman with blue hair behind the counter asks if he’s sure, he says, “Definitely. I like ‘em when they bite back.”

Mortification comes fast. “Oh my god, ignore him,” you interrupt. “I’m so sorry. How much?”

Tommy pays. Insists on it. And even though he tips the barista on his card, you take the stray bills at the bottom of your purse and stick them in the tip jar on the counter, too.

Instead of sitting in the cafe, you decide to go on a drive. Tommy’s truck is clean and smells like old leather and the faint scent of pine coming from the tree shaped air freshener hung around the rearview mirror.

“You know, I don’t…” he shakes his head, eyes focused on the road ahead. There’s no traffic and the city is still wet with morning dew. “I don’t normally do stuff like this, so I’m gonna get right to the point.”

You sit there, silently sipping your latte from the passenger seat, feeling more awkward than you ever have in your life.

“I know we…we’ve got a good thing goin’, you an’ I. And I didn’t expect to want more but I like you. Think about you every damn day. Waitin’ by my phone, hopin’ you’ll text.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, completely oblivious to the way your insides begin to twist and turn uncomfortably.

He glances away from the road for a second, letting himself savor the sight of your profile and the way the rising sun paints the sky orange and pink behind you.

You watch his jaw feather, teeth clenched. He’s nervous, you realize.

“I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is I’d like to…I don’t know. Try somethin’ else, if you’re down for that. Take you out on a real date. See you more than just to get off. S’that…s’that somethin’ you’re interested in? With me?”

Even knowing it’s your turn to speak, the words refuse to form in your mouth. Get lodged in the back of your throat, sitting heavy like a stone. You find yourself wishing you would’ve called this off. Told him you were busy today and tonight and every day going forward for the rest of your life.

Tommy laughs. “Relax, sweetheart,” he says. “Assumin’ lookin’ like you’re about to hurl is the answer. I get it.”

You let out a long breath. “Tommy, I’m sorry. I like…” you stop. The word you doesn’t pass easily. Instead, you amend the phrase, saying, “I like what we have now. And I’m just not ready for anything serious so soon.”

“So you did break up with him, then?” He turns to you, a wicked smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. Looking less like he’d just gotten rejected and more like he’d just found out the most satisfying news of his life.

The smug look only serves to irritate you. With a scoff you ask, “Are you saying you thought I still had a boyfriend and asked me out anyway?”

“Wouldn’t exactly call him competition,” he says, eyes narrowed in amusement. “You only liked him ‘cause he was sweet to you. F’ya want flowers and love notes, I can make it happen. The difference between me an’ him is that I can do all that and fuck you right, too.” 

“God. Do you hear yourself when you speak?”

“Only thing I wanna hear right now is you moanin’ my name,” Tommy says.

At first, you think he means it as a joke. Says it to get under your skin in the way he’s always been good at. 

But then his eyes turn molten as he looks over at you, one hand clenched tight around the leather steering wheel, the other laying loosely on the center console that separates you. His gaze drags down your body; over your neck, lingering on the curve of your chest, over your soft thighs. “Why don’t you go’head an’ take those off for me.”

And god fucking damnit, you do. Try to quiet your breathing as he drives, speed increasing with each inch of skin you expose as you roll your leggings down.

He starts off slow. Calloused fingers kneading the inside of your thighs, creeping ever higher. By the time he presses his hand hard against your aching center, over the lace fabric of your panties (that you promise yourself you didn’t wear in anticipation for this very moment), you’re already so wet that he laughs as your slick soaks through.

Tommy teases you for so long that you’re breathless and whimpering before he even slides the fabric aside and dips his fingers through your sticky folds.

As much as you try to fight it off, he gets his wish. Has you moaning and crying out his name in minutes, fingers buried deep inside you, making a mess on his leather seat.

The worst part, you think, is that he doesn’t even ask for you to touch him back. Just gets you off while he drives in the fast lane, as if he’s satisfied with just that. You can see the bulge in his jeans, pressing hard against the denim, but he doesn’t acknowledge it in the slightest.

And once your head falls back against the headrest and you use a handful of napkins he’s got stored in the glove box to clean the wetness between your thighs, Tommy drops you off near your car in the cafe parking lot.

You don’t really know what to say. Goodbye feels weird and formal. See you feels like you’re promising to see him again, even knowing you need to cut him off entirely before this gets too complicated.

So instead, you say, “Thanks for the coffee,” and try to slip out of his truck without another word.

But Tommy doesn’t let it happen. Grabs you by the back of the neck, pulls you close until you can feel his breath against your cheeks. Smirks in that annoying, confident way of his and says, “Don’t let me see you step out with another man.”

The words are said quietly, like a threat. You curse your body for tightening up at the sound of them in his mouth, muscles tensing, needy in a way you try and fail to fight off. “Then I suggest you stay the fuck home.”

His eyes flicker to your mouth. Attention fixed on the curve of your lips, your cupids bow, the glisten of your lipgloss.

But Tommy doesn’t kiss you. He rarely does. Instead, he licks the corner of your mouth and moans like it’s his favorite taste. “You try an’ get with someone else an’ I’ll ruin it,” he whispers. “Promise.”

The way he says it, like his unwanted possession is a form of devotion has you rolling your eyes and shoving his shoulder. “Go fuck yourself, Tommy.”

With an arrogant raise of his eyebrows, he leans over the center console as you climb out of his truck. “Oh, trust me, baby. I definitely will be. An’ I’ll be thinkin’ of you and that sweet fuckin’ pussy you’ve got the whole time.”

You slam the door in his face and return home both satisfied and angry with yourself.

And the worst part is that when you see him that weekend at Club Orchid, there’s a pretty girl sitting in his lap. 

She’s got her arms around his neck and her mouth pressed up against his ear, miniskirt riding high on her thighs, his big hands tracing the cobalt colored edge.

You try not to react. 

Really, you do.

But how is that fair? Promising to ruin every relationship for you just because he didn’t get his way, only to taunt you like this so soon after?

Your friends, God bless them, do their best to distract you. Buy shot after shot and pull you to the dancefloor. Tell you to ignore him, that you deserve better. Say that he’s an asshole and he’s always been. Encourage you to move on.

Tommy doesn’t look at you, and somehow it feels worse than if he had. Because if he touched the girl on his lap but gave you his attention, you’d know he was doing it on purpose. Goading for a reaction. You would know that he still cared.

But he doesn’t. Just tucks the girl’s hair behind her ear and kisses her knuckles and his hand sneaks higher and higher on her thigh.

It makes your stomach turn. 

Even knowing you rejected him and you have no right to be…jealousy is rarely coupled with sensibility.

You try to convince yourself it’s better this way. Better that he find someone else to twist up. To confuse. Tell yourself you shouldn’t feel jealous, you should feel sorry for the girl.

 When you slip away from your friends for some fresh air just before last call, you freeze when you see Tommy standing outside the front door. Cigarette held loosely between his fingers, smoke curling around his face.

Painfully handsome, even in the low light of the street lamp. He stares with his mouth curved at the corners, unmoving, like he’d been waiting for you.

He doesn’t speak, and neither do you. He just waits. To see who breaks first, to see who opens up the path to all that emotion you’ve both been fighting off. His posture is casual, relaxed, but his eyes are anything but. Sparkling with challenge, with temptation, with invitation.

It would be effortless, you know. To fly off the handle, to be mean the way you want to be. Call him easy, ask him if she could taste you on his tongue, to quote his previous taunts and say, ‘Does she swallow you down easy? Or does she choke on it like I do, crying for it just the way you like?’

But you don’t.

You look right fucking past him. 

Find the group of guys just a little further from the door. Slide into their little circle with no resistance, give the tallest one your sweetest smile and ask if you can share a cigarette.

You’re not sure how long Tommy waits before leaving the club entirely to find his truck in the parking lot. Not sure if he hears you introduce yourself to all three men and giggle when they compliment you on your peach colored nail polish.

The next morning, you wake up to a lengthy text message.

An apology. An explanation.

Tommy admits he has feelings for you. Plain and true and honest. Says he was only trying to make you jealous, to make you want him the way he wants you, that he never even kissed her. Couldn’t fathom tasting anyone but you.

He recognizes that the way he went about it was wrong and says this whole thing is new to him, that he’s never wanted to hold on to someone like this. Even confesses that your apathy had hurt him.

With the anger still fresh in your mind, your response is cruel.

Yeah I’m not reading all that.

He doesn’t respond. 

And for months, you stay clear of Tommy fucking Miller.

Focus on yourself. Your career, your health. You start taking vitamins and drinking less and cooking more at home. Get a promotion and a pay raise, and you’re doing good.

Until one fateful Friday night when you go to pick up your order at your favorite take out place.

He’s sitting there at one one of the tables, leaning back, arms folded over his chest, long legs extended and crossed at the ankles. There’s a black suede cowboy hat on his head and he’s wearing a leather jacket with silver hardware that matches the pointed boots on his feet. Starched blue jeans and that belt buckle, looking all big and Texas and devastating.

Like always, he smiles when he sees you. It’s less playful this time, though. Feels more like genuine affection instead of that teasing smirk he always wears.

You try to ignore him. 

But the brown paper bag sitting on the table in front of him has your name on it.

You try to grab for it, to be quick and get it from him so you can leave without speaking.

That doesn’t happen, though. Tommy’s hand flies out to grab your wrist. Not hard, just enough to give you pause. “Please,” he says, a desperation in his voice that you’ve never heard before.

A crease forms between your brows as you assess him, watching the way his jaw flexes, the way his throat bobs as he swallows hard.

“I can’t get you out of my fucking head,” he says. “Please. Just…sit. Have lunch with me.”

You know you shouldn’t.

But you do. 

Sink slowly down into the chair across from him and wait patiently as he pulls your food out of the bag. He sets it in front of you just as the woman behind the counter delivers him a separate order, as if he’d planned this.

And you think maybe he did, because his words are gentle when he speaks. Cautious. “Look, I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this.”

“You mean how to treat a woman like she has feelings?”

You can see the smart remark on the tip of his tongue. But for what it’s worth, Tommy swallows it down. “I should have been better to you from the start,” he admits. “Should’ve done this whole thing the right way, but I didn’t know at the time that I would feel the way I do.”

Unsure of his intentions, you say nothing.

Tommy continues. “The last time we talked, I know you weren’t ready for anything serious. But I…I’ve never felt like this for anyone. And if you could try an’ give me another chance, I swear I’ll be better. Try to be what you deserve. An’ if you still don’t want anything serious, I’ll take whatever you wanna give me. Just friends, if you want. Or we can go back to the way things were before. Whatever you decide, I’ll take it. ‘Cause, Christ, sweetheart. I fuckin’ miss you somethin’ fierce.”

“You just miss the sex. You hardly know me, Tommy,” you say.

“But I want to,” he replies. “An’ you’re wrong. It’s about more than that. F’you want, give me a real chance. Take you out on a few dates. Walk you to your doorstep and bring you those flowers an’ love notes you want. Won’t even kiss you ‘til you say so. Promise.”

There’s so much conviction in his words. So much sincerity. But you know men like Tommy. Know they’re real good at saying exactly what you want to hear and even better at convincing you they’ve changed when really, they’ve just gotten better at lying.

Careful. You have to be so, so careful.

“Let’s just see how lunch goes,” you say.

And much to your surprise, it feels…good. You learn more about him in a single hour than you have in the almost two years that you’ve known him. Learn that his best friend is his brother and that he has a niece named Sarah who his entire life revolves around. 

It’s sort of endearing, the way he talks about her and how proud he was when she won her soccer tournament last week.

But he asks about you, too. About your family and your friends and your job, listening intently as you speak.

By the time you finish your meal, he hasn’t got you convinced exactly, but there’s a little softness around the edges now. He asks if you’d like to go see a movie with him next weekend, and you agree.

Your roommate knows something’s up the moment you walk through the door. And when she pulls the information out of you and the word Tommy falls from your tongue, she’s groaning before the second syllable. 

Still, you go see that movie. He takes you to dinner afterwards, too. And you return home with plans for coffee in the morning and a fresh bouquet of roses in your hands. 

It starts to trickle in slowly; the want. The desire. The need for him to touch you. 

He takes you to a baseball game and splays his big hand on the small of your back, guiding you through the crowd, keeping you safe, touch warm and inviting and possessive in the way that only he can be.

Tommy doesn’t make any moves. But sometimes you can see it in his eyes when you’re talking and he’s watching your mouth, breath hitching in his throat, gaze dark and wanting.

When he takes you out late one night for ice cream, he swipes vanilla cream from your bottom lip with his thumb and sucks the sugar off his finger. Moans quietly at the taste, but doesn’t make the dirty comment you can see swirling in his head.

He starts to text you more often. Sweet, short messages that say good morning, pretty girl and hope you’re having a good day and need anything from the store?

Once, he texts you in the afternoon.

Thinking of you.

And you don’t respond. Not right away. Instead, you wait until the sun sets. Wait until you’re tucked into bed beneath your sheets, thighs pressed tightly together, warmth gathering low in your belly in a way that’s impossible to ignore. 

Thinking of you, too. Wanna come over?

He hesitates with his response, the typing bubbles disappearing three different times before an answer finally comes through.

I’ll bring you breakfast in the morning. Take care of her for me, my needy girl.

You’re not sure if you’re disappointed or satisfied with his response. The offer hadn’t been given with an expectation yet still, it softens you up just a little more.

You drag it out for weeks.

And not even once does Tommy complain.

Things change, though, the night you’re laying in the bed of his truck on top of a mountain of pillows and blankets, trying to see the supposed meteor shower that’s twenty minutes away. You turn on your side and ask, “Are you seeing anyone else? Be honest. I won’t be mad either way.”

You steel yourself in anticipation for his answer.

“Truth?”

You nod.

Tommy licks his lips. “I haven’t been with anyone else since I met you.”

It makes you laugh. You don’t mean to, but the amusement bubbles out of you anyway. “Jesus. You’re fucking lying to my face.”

“I’m not,” he insists. Doesn’t say it with any urgency or frustration, and the tone gives you pause.

You try to search his face. To see an ounce of dishonesty in his eyes. But you come up empty, and Tommy just stares at you. The energy between you turns heavy. Meaningful in a way you’re not used to. “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious,” he says. “You’ve been stuck in my head since that first night. I think about it sometimes.” He chuckles, as if the information is amusing and not the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard.. “I remember that pretty dress you wore an’ the way you’d been screamin’ at the bouncer carryin’ you over his shoulder. Causin’ all kinds of trouble. Stole my heart right then and there.”

“Stole your heart, huh?” You say it with thick sarcasm, but you can’t wipe the grin off your face if you tried.

The realization hits you hard. Sharp and swift.

You want more, too.

More than these nights together. More than sweet gestures and breakfast in the morning and dinner on the weekends. You want to kiss him. You want to hold his hand and sleep in his bed.

You want to be his fucking girl.

Tommy laughs, shakes his head, and playfully shoves your shoulder. “Yeah, stole my damn heart. Fuckin’一thief…s’what you are. Don’t let it go to your pretty head. Forehead’s big enough already,” he teases.

But it’s too late. And you’re moving before you can think better of it, swinging your leg over him, straddling his hips, skin buzzing with anticipation. You take him by the jaw, delighting in the way his eyes darken and the air gets caught in his throat. “You love my big forehead,” you say.

An assumption. A risk.

One that pays off.

Tommy turns his head and presses an open mouthed kiss to your palm. “Fuck yeah I do,” he muses, lips curved at the corners in that way of his, the way that’s always made you weak. “Now c’mere. Let me taste you.”

You lean forward to kiss him, and the intensity skyrockets the moment your tongue touches his bottom lip.

Tommy rests his hand on your throat一not squeezing, just caressing. Feeling your pulse beneath his long fingers. He licks into your mouth, tongue gliding against yours, not just tasting but savoring.

When you start to roll your hips over his, he moans against your lips and his fingers twitch around your neck. “Goddamn, baby. We gotta…fuck. Gotta stop. Wanna do this right. Rose一hm一rose petals an’ shit. Champagne and一”

“I hate champagne,” you whisper, kissing a trail down his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. You slide your hands beneath the soft cotton of his t-shirt and drag your nails gently down his skin, feeling the softness turn to hard muscle, flexing beneath your touch. “But I like you.”

You shove the fabric up, exposing his sunkissed skin, and your lips immediately find it. He tastes warm. Ambery and masculine, like sweat and soap. Your mouth waters, leaving a trail of wetness down his chest, over his belly. When you kiss the left side of his hip, you suck a purplish mark there.

Claiming, without the need for words. 

Shifting lower, you settle between his spread thighs and look up at him through your lashes as you stick out your tongue and lick his bulge through his jeans.

Tommy’s hands fly to your head, twisting in your hair, pulling you back. “Jesus Christ,” he hisses, breathless. “Do you mean that? You fuckin’...you like me?”

“Truth?”

He nods. 

You smile. Can’t help it. “Yeah,” you answer. “I mean it.”

Tommy’s answering grin is full of elation and has you giggling. “My fuckin’ girl,” he states, and you can see the smug look in his eye. Can’t even really be mad at him for it, because there’s satisfaction in the words, too. Happiness.

With practiced ease, you unbuckle his belt and pull the zipper of his jeans down with your teeth. His cock is already hard and aching when you reach beneath his boxers to pull it free.

You start slow一kissing the tip, sliding your tongue over the veins on the underside of his cock. He pulses beneath your touch, his hands in your hair gentler now. Stroking the side of your head softly.

But that softness ends the moment you take him in your mouth and suck. You take him down as far as you can, fighting the pressure at the back of your throat. Wrap your lips tightly around him and watch the way his head falls back and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Shit, baby,” he sighs. “Been dreamin’ about that sweet mouth.” His hand finds the back of your head, pushing you further down.

Your eyes water and you struggle to suck in oxygen, but stay right where he wants you.

“Look so fuckin’ pretty like that, mouth all full’a me.” With his free hand, he swipes away the stray tear that leaks down your cheek with his thumb. “Doin’ so fuckin good.”

When you start to choke, Tommy lets up. Pulls you off of him, hand still in your hair, smiling wide as thick stands of saliva keep you tethered together. Spit coats your chin and your eyes are bleary, but the moment you catch your breath he’s guiding your mouth back to him, his hips bucking, forcing his cock to reach just a little further down your throat.

“Yeah, there you go. That’s it. Slutty little thing. An’ all mine,” he says. “Cryin’ for it. Bet you’re real wet, too. Lettin’ me fuck your mouth like a whore. Takin’ it like one.” You can hear his breath stutter, his grip in your hair tightening. Know he’s close before he even pulls you away again. “Lift up your dress, baby.”

You do just as he says, like you always have. Grab the ends of the flowing fabric and pull it up over your head until you’re sitting there in his truck bed, wearing nothing but honey colored panties, your favorite black bra, and the tears on your cheeks.

This time, you hadn’t anticipated it. Hadn’t anticipated him.

Tommy reaches behind your back and unclasps your bra with deft fingers, pulling the straps down your shoulders. When he traces the elastic band over your waist, he murmurs, “Cute. These, too, pretty girl.”

As soon as you shimmy your panties down your legs and toss them to the side, Tommy’s tugging you up his torso, hands firm on your hips.

“Bring that ass here,” he orders, sinking further down into the blankets beneath you. He pulls you up until your thighs bracket his head, hovering over him. Tommy stares up at you like you’re the most magnificent thing he’s ever laid eyes on, the intensity of it sending a shiver down your spine.

And he doesn’t break stride; holding that eye contact even when his tongue splits you open, flicking over your clit. “Oh, God.”

You can feel him smile against you, stubble scratching lightly against the inside of your thighs. He licks and sucks and leaves no inch of you untouched, tongue circling, your nerve endings spit slick and pulsing beneath his ministrations. 

Though you try to hover, to give him room to breathe, Tommy won’t have it. His arms wrap around your thighs and he pulls you down, pressing you against his face, moaning when you shift your hips and grind yourself against the flat of his tongue. Hot and wet and desperate. “Just like that,” you tell him, your own voice foreign in your ears. “Fuck, yes, Tommy, please一”

He groans and you can feel the rumble vibrate between your legs. His tongue makes obscene sounds beneath you, soft and delicate against your most sensitive parts. He takes your clit gently between his lips and sucks, and you can feel that familiar warmth begin to quickly build.

Tommy’s always known just how to touch you. Has your pleasure down to a science. So it’s not surprising when you thread your hands through his dark hair, silky between your fingers, and your head falls back. “I’m gonna cum一fuck, I’m gonna cum, I’m一ohmygod一”

It hits you hard. Your thighs shake around his head and your vision gets all spotty. Your spine bends, arching against his mouth, seeking the friction that Tommy’s all too happy to give. He just sucks your clit harder, tongue swirling, until the overstimulation becomes too much to bear and you’re pushing yourself up on your knees.

He chases you. Leaning forward to press one last open mouthed kiss to your wet heat. “Fuck, baby,” he mutters, lips glossy with your arousal. “Look so goddamn pretty when you cum for me.”

And even though you can still feel the aftershocks of your orgasm, thighs still twitching, you find yourself insatiable for him. “Tommy,” you breathe. “Please, I need…”

“Tell me,” he urges. “Tell me what you need an’ I'll give it to you.”

“Want you inside me,” you say. “Please.”

You can see the flicker of disquiet as it crosses his face. Not disappointment, exactly, but…something despairing. “M’sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think we were doin’ this tonight. I didn’t bring anything with me. Here一why don’t you lay back. I’ll fill her up with my fingers, baby. Give that pretty little pussy what it needs.”

“It’s okay,” you insist. “I’m…I’m on birth control. If you want we can…” You’re not sure why the suggestion makes you feel shy all of a sudden. You’ve never done this, not with anyone. But you want it with him. With Tommy fucking Miller.

That smug smirk finds its way back to his lips. “You want me to fuck you raw, baby?”

When you nod in response, you swear you can see something shift inside him. As if he wasn’t head over heels for you already, he certainly is now.

“‘Course you do,” he says, tone full of adoration. “Christ, girl. C’mere.”

You straddle him again, sliding his cock through your slick folds, the head nudging your clit in a way that has you panting. You roll yourself over him once, twice一and then you’re tilting your hips at a different angle and he slips right in.

He lets out a groan and pulls you forward, arms wrapped tightly around your middle, chests pressed together. Tommy kisses you hard and begins to move underneath you, cock splitting you open, thick and punishing. “Best fuckin’ pussy I ever had, squeezin’ tight like it wants more. Greedy thing, just like you,” he mutters between kisses, fucking up into you. “So wet for me. No one else can fuck you like this, baby. Can they? Huh? Speak, girl.”

The words don’t come easy, all sense emptied from your brain and replaced with the way he makes you feel. Smothering, everywhere all at once. His heavy hands on your waist, his tongue against your skin, licking up the salty tears on your cheeks, his cock buried so deep inside you you can feel him in your belly.

You shake your head, dragging up the energy to cry out, “No, no one else一just you, Tommy just you一God一!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “Pussy fuckin’ belongs to me. Not even yours anymore, is it? S’all mine. Gonna fill her up, pretty girl. Fuck you full’a my cum till she’s all cute and sticky.”

That warmth builds again. Slower this time, but searing. Burning like a red-hot coil, curling up your spine. The perversion he speaks only heightens your desire, lewd sounds emitting from between your legs.

His thrusts grow sloppy. Harder, bruising. “S’like you were made to take my cock,” Tommy says. “Shit, baby. M’so close. You’re doin’ so good.”

Tommy doesn’t slow, even though you’re a moaning, writhing mess on top of him. His hold on you stays firm and his pace stays steady.

He grabs you by the throat, forcing you to look at him, squeezing just enough to make your head all fuzzy. “Say it. Tell me what I wanna hear. Tell me you’re mine.”

“I am,” you whimper, the truth burning like hot coals in your mouth. You think maybe you have been for some time, but only now are you able to admit it. “M’yours—fuck, feels so—so good. Your girl, Tommy—I’m your girl—” Your words are clipped, forced out in your haze, panting.

You can feel him pulse inside you, can feel the sudden increase in pressure as he empties himself with his cock buried to the hilt. “That’s right, sweetheart,” he praises, pressing his mouth to yours, moaning against your tongue, capturing your lips in an all consuming kiss that makes you feel robbed.

When you begin to pull away, trying to shift off of him, Tommy stops you with a firm hand at your hip. 

“Nuh-uh,” he says. “Not finished ‘til you cum again. Wanna fuckin’ feel it.”

“But you—”

“Still hard, isn’t it?”

You blink, a little startled.

But Tommy just moves his hand around your neck down your chest, pushing lightly, giving him access to slide his fingers between your legs to press them gently against your clit. “Go on,” he urges. “Take it. S’all yours. Fuck yourself on my cock, baby.”

His words are filthy and depraved and make your clit pulse beneath his thumb. One tentative, experimental roll of your hips has him tensing—but Tommy moans low and thrusts up in tandem, giving you what you need, giving you everything.

It’s euphoric—the way he opens himself up to you, letting you take and take and take, letting you be selfish. Encouraging it. 

All yours.

You find a good rhythm, his cock hitting the perfect spot inside you, buried deep. And with his fingers working between your legs it doesn’t take long before shocks of bliss shoot through you. 

Short bursts at first, chasing it, chasing release—

And then he looks you in the eye and says, “Cum for me, baby.”

It barrels into you without warning—unrelenting, strong, intense the way Tommy has always been. The way you’ve always needed.

He fucks you through it, hips slamming against the back of your trembling thighs, thumb continuing to circle your clit. The breath leaves your lungs completely and the only sounds you’re able to form are helpless whimpers. 

Tommy takes it in stride. Holds you upright when you fall forward, muttering all the while with his lips against your ear. “Yeah, that’s it. Fuckin’ take it, pretty girl. Shit—she’s squeezin’ me so tight. You like that? Hm? Cummin’ on my cock like the good girl you are. So damn cute when you get fucked all stupid.”

When you begin to come down, he slows his pace until he’s barely moving—just reverent, rocking movements beneath you. Tommy holds you close, arms wrapped around your waist, his embrace warm and safe and good. 

He kisses your cheek, your temple, the top of your head. The touches are careful, gentle, a stark contrast to the way he was only seconds ago. You find just enough energy to roll off of him, but Tommy doesn’t let you get far. Helps you tug your dress back over your head, tucks himself back into his jeans, and then pulls you back to his side.

The silence feels weighted, but not uncomfortable. Just…different. You lay your head on his chest, heaving with every breath, and his fingers gently trail over the curve of your spine, pressing into the tender muscle and tracing soothing patterns

And then quietly, he admits, “You’re stuck with me now. You know that, right? Gonna piss you off forever.”

It makes you smile. A wide spread grin, paired with a sudden flush that creeps up your cheeks. And even though no one has ever been able to get under your skin quite the way Tommy has, you find yourself with only one thought at the idea of being well and truly stuck with him. 

“Working hours” with this black ops group are loosely defined at best, and entirely nonexistent at worst. And don’t even get started on pay, because you think at this point that you’re only getting comped whatever the pay is for your cost of living, and that’s only really when you’re on the clock. They’ll pay for the hotel room and sometimes the food, but besides that, you’re on your own.

But, back to those working hours. You don’t know when they stopped, but maybe it was around the time your roomie decided to crack open a bottle of whisky and pour out half of it for you into one of the plastic solo cups they provide with the coffee pot. God knows you’re not working anymore, you’re just sort of sitting idle while he rambles about the room, gesticulating with the bottle. Like he does.

(Plus, you don’t think he’s even being paid for this? Adrian is just here for the fun and because he’s available, and the rest of the team just let him tag along because he’s useful. The thought makes you smirk a little bit.)

You admire his profile as he talks, one finger pressed to your smiling lips as your eyes trail him back and forth, thinking he might eventually hypnotize you. He’s so… expressive. And he has dimples and curly hair, which you’ve always been a sucker for. He hasn’t even taken off his suit; blue on silver on black, with a red visor on the mask discarded on the table. You had watched him remove it, and carefully tried to hide the fact that you were staring as he pulled his wire-rimmed glasses out of a hidden pocket.

You’re very pointedly staring now, sizing him up like your next fucking meal (alcohol does that to you), and Adrian keeps on blathering in one long spiel, pacing in circles like hasn’t even noticed your hungry gaze (alcohol does that to him).

“Is that prescription?” you ask, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence, which you’d barely been paying attention to. Something something Twilight, something something cultural reset.

Adrian stops pacing, looking at you with a deer-in-headlights expression. “Huh?”

You nod at the mask laying on the table by the door. “The visor. Is it prescription?” 

He swivels to look at the mask, and then back to you with an almost bashful laugh. “Uh… yeah?”

“That’s sick.” 

“Really?” Dimples. You take another sip of your whisky to calm yourself, and it burns at the back of your throat. Objectively, you should not be feeling this way about your pseudo-coworker, who also happens to be somewhat of a lunatic. But, y’know, he’s… sweet. To you. Which is the odd thing, but you’ve gone beyond worrying about the details at this point. You’re hunting alien butterfly creatures that live in people’s brains, you can get past a couple character flaws.

“I mean, yeah.” You lick your lips, which have taken on the flavor of the peach liqueur in the whisky. “I wear prescription lenses, too, but they’re a bitch to keep clean on the job. If I could afford prescription hardware, I would. Good on you.”

“Yeah, I mean… yeah, it is fucking cool, thank you!” He grins, his eyes crinkling at the corners and making you clench your jaw with how badly you want to reach out and kiss him long and hard at that exact moment. “I was starting to think no one else would notice how genius it is. Y’know, I don’t even think Peacemaker’s noticed, which is totally not very best friend-like of him, but it’s fine, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually, the guy constantly has a lot of shit on his plate. Like I remember one time, me and him got stuck in a Winnebago that was rolling downhill toward a cliff like something out of Looney Tunes because some idiot crack dealer locked us in there with his load, and-”

He’s pacing again, and the amber colored liquid in the square bottle he grips by the neck sloshes against the glass as he continues waving it around emphatically. And you’ve zoned out again, because now you’re thinking about his hands, and how nice they’d feel on your body. You’ve seen him beat the shit out of people, you know he’s packing some major force in those fists, but you haven’t felt them on your own skin, or had the experience of having them wrapped around your throat for yourself. 

“-then, y’know, Eagly’s a fucking badass, I don’t know if you’ve seen him in action, but the little dude can take a guy out in like one peck. Like do not get caught on the wrong end of those talons is all I’m saying. Anyways, he swooped in and yanked the fucking wheel, so the Winnebago flipped. I mean, can you imagine! A bald eagle rolling a camper. That shit’s gotta be, like, legendary-”

And his quads as he walks, Jesus Christ. You’ve never been super partial to burly, buff guys (sorry Chris), but there’s something to be said for muscle in the right places. Adrian’s legs are nice, you can tell just by the way the fabric of his pants stretches around them when he turns, and fuck his ass is so tight. You nearly salivate just staring at it, thinking about how much you’d love to dig your heels into it, or squeeze it to urge him on as he fucks you. 

Your eyes snap down to your solo cup of whisky, and you frown. When did you drink half of it?

“-but like I’m sure you know Eagly pretty well because he loves you, I can tell. He kind of scooches closer every time you sit near him, it’s really cute actually, I mean, I would scooch closer whenever you sat near me too except I feel like you’d punch me in the dick, good thing my suit’s got a reinforced crotch-”

“Wait, what?” You blink up at him, your brain sort of fizzling out and then rebooting as you stare at him. What did he say? 

Adrian doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, the guy who made it was like, ‘That makes no sense, you’re gonna have the worst time trying to take a piss in this,’ and I said, ‘No, dude, have you ever been karate kicked in the nuts before? Shit hurts.’ I still had to pay extra-”

“No, no, what was that shit about scooching closer? To me?” You squint at him. “Babe, are you trying to tell me something?”

He blushes. You know he’s joked about not feeling emotions like other people do, but you wonder how true that really is, because he goes beet fucking red like he’s having trouble breathing as he stares down at his shoes. “I, uh- well, I mean, yeah, I’d scooch closer to you. Theoretically. If- if you wanted me to. And if you weren’t going to punch me in the dick.”

“Why would I punch you in the dick?”

“I don’t know, it’s like… it’s an understandable reaction to someone getting in someone else’s personal space!”

“No, it really isn’t…”

“Well, how was I supposed to know you wouldn’t punch me in the dick?”

You throw up your hand in an exasperated gesture. “When have you ever seen me punch someone in the dick?”

He screws up his face. “UM, I don’t know, you punched Peacemaker in the dick!”

“What? When?”

“When he tried lifting you onto the truck that one time!” 

“That was a misunderstanding, I kneed him because he didn’t give me a heads up!”

“But you did it!”

“Well, the last thing I would want to do to your dick is punch it, all right?”

You both stop and stare at each other for a long moment. You think you might have stopped breathing, too. Yeah, you are definitely tipsy at this point, but you raise a slightly shaking hand to take a casual sip of your drink, as if you aren’t staring at him with bulging eyes like you’re possessed.

He opens his mouth and closes it a few times before he comes out with a response. “Okay.”

You blink. “Okay?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, okay. I mean, what other stuff would you do to my dick?”

“Uh… stuff.” You jerkily stand, nearly sloshing your drink as you try to get your bearings. You set the cup down on the bedside table and turn to look at him with the most awkward, pin-straight posture you could possibly muster, like a high schooler trying to pretend they aren’t drunk in front of their parents. “I’m going to take a shower now. Yeah. I am. I’m going to do that.”

“Oh. Okay.” Adrian looks down at the bottle in his hand, and then shuffles a bit to the side so that you can pass him.

“I mean, unless you wanted to shower first?” You pause at the end of your respective bed, and turn to see him turning down the covers on his own by the window. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in bed,” he says flatly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He reaches up and undoes a latch on his armor that frees the chestplate, and lifts it over his head in one swift move, leaving him in his tight fitting black undershirt.

You stare at him, scatterbrained until you manage to scowl at him, and the two knives he wears crossed against his lower back. “You’re going to sleep with all your weapons?”

“Yeah.”

“With all the dirt and sweat and fucking blood from fighting?”

“Yeah.” 

“You can’t just… you can’t just get in bed with your outside clothes on, dude!” you splutter, leaning your thigh against the end of the mattress before you, and slow your speech carefully as you declare, “It’s… unsanitary.”

“Oh, and who are you, the sleep police?” Adrian turns to sneer at you. “I thought you were going to take a shower.”

“Well I was, but that was before I knew you weren’t planning on it!” You throw your hand out at him. “Why?”

“Because! If I go to sleep with wet hair it dries all weird, okay? Get off my dick!”

“I’m sure you’ll look just as pretty regardless, Adrian,” you tut condescendingly at him, rolling your eyes as you turn on your heels toward the bathroom. “Do what you want, or fucking join me if you change your mind, I don’t care.”

You don’t register the full weight of your words until you turn on the tap. But, by that time, you also don’t get to see the way Adrian stares at the door to the bathroom like you’ve just presented him with the key to the city.

You very rarely opt for lukewarm showers, but you certainly do now. With the way your blood is humming through your veins like electricity, and you feel hot just from the sight of Adrian’s muscles in that tight fucking shirt, you feel a cold shower is in order. Well, colder, anyways. 

The water pressure is complete bullshit, of course. It pathetically trickles out, and it takes longer than usual for your body to get completely soaked. In that time, you lean against the tile and hold your head in your hands as the water drips down your face. How the fuck are you supposed to sleep in the same room as this guy? Between the way you’re just aching to jump his bones, and his inability to stop talking, you don’t think it’s a possibility tonight.

You wonder what he would sound like when you ride him. You wonder if he would finally shut up, or if he would switch to talking to you like a lover instead of a drinking buddy. You wonder if he would beg, or if he’s more dominant than that. 

You’re imagining his head between your thighs. You’re imagining what he’d look like with your hands tangled in his hair. You’re imagining the feeling of his mouth on your skin, the calloused planes of his palms on your breasts and beneath your thighs. You’re… you’re shaking.

The white shower curtain rips open, and Adrian steps in beside you, naked as the day he was born. “Hey, can you pass the soap?”

“What the fuck?” You turn your head to look at him with a bewildered expression, simply refusing to tear your eyes away from his face because you do not want to cross that line and have the image of his dick imprinted in your brain while you try to get to sleep tonight. “Adrian, what are you doing?”

“Well, you said to join you if I changed my mind.” He shrugs, his smile the absolute picture of innocence, but his eyes still rake slowly down your body before finding your face again. 

You blink, searching for a proper response to that. His eyes are green. Jesus Christ, that’s three for three: dimples, curly hair, and green eyes. He’s trying to kill you. 

“I was being sar-” you cut yourself off with a sigh, “yeah, you know what, I did say that. Shit. Fucking… okay. Whatever. Here.” You fumble with the tiny complimentary body wash tube and thrust it toward him. “Go apeshit.”

“You have a really great ass by the way.”

“Adrian.”  

“What? You do. I’m just being honest. I’m not even saying that because this is the first time I’ve seen you naked, I always thought your ass was nice, there just wasn’t a good time to say it.”

Your face is burning. You turn your back on him and try your hardest not to clap your hands over your eyes or do something equally embarrassing. You don’t think Adrian is even fazed by any of this; he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either, and you don’t know how strong his prescription is. You imagine pretty strong, if he needs it in his visor. Maybe there’s a good chance he can’t see the exact details of your tits. Maybe-

He touches your shoulder, and you feel lather running down your back as he starts massaging circles into your skin.

“Are you washing me?” you wheeze, your voice coming out an octave higher, and you really do cover your face again this time. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears, and you can’t focus on anything other than the touch of his hand on your shoulder blade.

“Uh, yeah? I wash your back, you wash mine, right?” He sounds cheery and completely content with everything that’s happening and, despite the sheer oddness of all of it, you don’t really want him to stop. You guess that’s why you haven’t told him to get the hell out, yet.

Maybe you’re just as much of a lunatic as him. “‘Scratch,’ Adrian. It’s fucking ‘scratch.’” 

He pauses. “What?”

“It’s ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’”

“That makes no fucking sense.” He shakes his head in your periphery, his hand resuming its circular motion against your back, moving across to your other shoulder. You feel the soft, wet glide like a molten lava trail.

“Of course it makes sense! Why would it be ‘wash?’”

“Why wouldn’t it be ‘wash?’”

“Because it’s about doing your friends favors,” you argue in a wobbly, strained voice as you shiver while his fingers slide down your spine. It raises goosebumps on your skin, despite the heat in your veins and the cool of the water. “Friends don’t wash each other’s backs, genius.”

“So, we’re not friends?”

His hand pauses again just at the curve of your lower back, where it extends down into your tailbone. You bite your lip, and you can feel his eyes on you, the touch of his gaze almost as real as his hand is. Your thighs clench together involuntarily. You simpering little… weak, desperate thing, you are not going to beg for him to touch you. That’s not it. That’s not how this should go.

But, you could turn around and touch him, too. You could probably kiss him, if you were feeling really adventurous. He just basically implied that he wouldn’t be opposed to fucking you, right? That was where the conversation had been going earlier, if you hadn’t been such a pussy. Neither of you is nearly as subtle as you think you are.

You manage to chew your lip enough to tear a gash in it, and salty, coppery blood hits your tongue. You’re losing it, standing on the precipice of something way bigger than the two of you. You’re just an inch away from becoming more than just friends with Adrian, if you don’t reel it in quickly. Your hand comes up to slam against the wall when his fingers, which seem to be discontented to remain idle, start tracing little shapes on your lower back. A star. A diamond. A heart.

“N… No, I- I mean, we are. But I don’t think we’re going to be, if you keep it up.”

He grunts carelessly. “I’m having a hard time not keeping it up, really.”

“What do you mean?” You turn around, and his hand glides across your lower back and to your hip, because he refuses to stop touching you now (not that you want him to stop, either, if you’re being honest with yourself). Your eyes flick down, and you know exactly what he means, because he’s hard as a rock. 

And also thick, and long, and veiny, but hey. What did you expect?

Your eyes linger on his erection for a long time, and drag your gaze slowly from the burst of dark hair at the base of his cock, up the line of his torso and to his chest. His pale skin is riddled with little scars here and there, from small injuries that weren’t serious enough to slow him down. He has a faint spray of freckles on his shoulders, suggesting that he spends at least some time in the sun. It makes you inordinately flustered to think of him doing some sort of outdoor activities to get that toned body of his. 

You clear your throat as you find his gaze again. “Next dumb question,” you say, and he gives you a wide-eyed, vaguely awestruck look that makes you way more confident than it ought to. “Are you gonna fuck me, Adrian?”

His eyelashes flutter. His cheeks are painted with that sweet pink blush again, like he’s been entirely oblivious to the fact that he’s had you melting for him since he cracked open the bottle of Jim Beam. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a fucking fantastic idea, do you?”  

“Yeah, I do.” And he grabs you by the face to kiss you, and crowds you back against the wall. You give a surprised yelp into his open mouth, your arms coming up to wrap around his neck as your back hits the cold tile. He grunts and brushes his soap covered fingers across your cheeks. “Did you bite your lip?”

“Yeah.”

“...Was that because of me?”

You whimper weakly as he slowly, and very purposefully, traces the length of your bottom lip with his tongue like he’s savoring the taste of your blood. “Yeah.”

“That’s so fucking hot.”

He yanks you up off of your feet, making you squeak and hold in a nervous laugh. Your leg bumps the faucet handle, and the water turns ice cold just as Adrian scrambles to hook your legs around his waist. 

“Shit.” Adrian hisses and smacks the wall beside your hip once or twice before he finds the faucet, because he doesn’t stop kissing you. He’s sloppy and rushed and overexcited, but at least he gets the water running warm against as he presses you up against the wall. “I’ve never done this here, have you?”

“Shower sex? No.” You bite his lip as he hitches you up by the back of your thighs, and he groans as his hips jerk up toward yours. “But I think you’re doing a good job.”

“Wait, fuck. Do we need, like, a condom…?” He blinks at you with a glassy look in his eyes. 

“IUD. I have- it’s all good, you’re fine.” You knock your head back against the wall with a whimper high in your throat as he brushes his cock against your entrance. You can feel the world spinning as you tangle your fingers in his wet hair, giving it a small but sharp tug. “Now, if you don’t fuck me I’m gonna-”

You choke when he drives the full length of his cock into you, pushing your hips back against the wall. Your nails scratch down his neck and across his shoulder blades as he splits you open, your legs tightening around his waist while simultaneously trying to spread wider to accommodate him. Adrian spits a curse into your neck, his teeth grazing a vein there as he ruts up into you, filling you so completely that a cry dies in your throat. 

“God, fuck, Adrian,” you sob toward the ceiling, only too aware of him moaning loudly against your skin. He feels better than you had imagined, stretching you out so perfectly that your toes curl as you try your hardest to draw him forward with your legs alone.

“I knew you’d be perfect,” you catch him whispering into the crook of your neck, just barely audible over the trickle of water over your head.

He doesn’t even give you time to adjust before he starts pistoning his hips into yours, jolting you up the wall. Your skin squeaks against the wet tile, and his grunts echo in the curve of your neck. Tears might actually be streaming down your face, but you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the warm water coming from the showerhead.

Adrian’s hand comes up to brace against the wall beside your head, and he surprises you. “You really think I’m pretty?” He asks with such a genuine note of hope in his voice that you think he must be serious. 

“I think you’re fucking gorgeous,” you breathe, whining when he nips at your jaw with his teeth. You interrupt your train of thought with a series of hoarse cries, because Adrian picks up the pace with less precision, and more just forceful thrusts that drive all the way to the end of you and make you see stars, regardless.

“You’re the most perfect person in the world and I wish I could paint because the only thing I’d be painting is just you over and over and over-” 

He’s blathering into your shoulder, his mouth brushing your skin as it moves and his hips slamming yours back against the wall hard enough that you’re definitely going to be feeling it in the morning. Every bit of desire you have for him surges up inside you like an inferno catching on, like every stroke he makes is stoking that fire within you.

“-so pretty everyone wants you I can’t believe you would let me touch you or even kiss you but you’re letting me do this to you and it’s all I’ve wanted to do since I first saw you-”

It occurs to you to tell him that you’d let him do anything he wants to you at this point, as long as he just doesn’t stop fucking you- but that’s yet another line you refuse to cross for the sake of self preservation. You’re already drunk, and confessing the true scope of your feelings to him in this state would just be a recipe for disaster. 

Oh god, but he’s like a reckoning. You shake your head to compose yourself and scratch your nails along his neck before you take his face in your hands and draw him up to you. His pupils were already blown out, but you think they nearly eclipse his irises when his hips falter and he sucks in a sharp breath. His dark hair is thoroughly drenched, and water drips down his face in little rivulets that you trace with your fingers just before you draw him to your lips.

You feel his small moan vibrate on your lips, and that’s enough. Your legs spasm, and your orgasm suddenly snaps within you like a rubber band, every muscle in your core tightening down on his cock as you see a burst of white behind your closed eyelids. It snuck up on you just as much as it did him.

“Holy fuck-” Adrian loudly gasps against your lips with a startled jolt of his hips, his full weight crushing you up against the wall. His nose nuzzles yours, so intimate in a way that you hadn’t expected from him, and with a few shuddering huffs of breath you feel him come with a rush of warmth deep inside you.

You’re floating somewhere above awareness when he slouches forward, his forehead resting against yours and his eyes closed as he takes deep, steadying breaths. It takes you a moment to realize that he’s just holding you, with his fingers digging into your thighs like he’s just trying to ground himself in your body.

You raise a shaking hand to smooth his wet hair back from his face. “Earth to Adrian. You still with me, babe?”

He grumbles something entirely non-coherent directly in front of your face, and blinks his eyes groggily open at you. 

“The alcohol’s catching up with you, huh?”

He nods.

“Guess I’m washing your back, anyways. C’mon.” You wiggle out of his grip, and you’re only too thankful that you’re smushed up against the shower wall, or else you may have easily slipped and ate shit on the tile. The alcohol is fucking with your head quite a bit now, too, and your movements are a little jerky and uncoordinated as you try to help him get cleaned up.

He’s uncharacteristically quiet. The rest of the shower takes place in complete silence, actually, with the exception of the little grunt he makes when you urge him to bend down so you can get his hair for him. You catch him looking a little dazed as you turn off the water, and he gives you an unfocused stare when you toss a towel at him. You wonder if you actually succeeded in frying the guy’s brains just by fucking him.

But then, back in the room as you clumsily dig through your bag to pull out a night shirt and a pair of underwear, Adrian shuffles directly to his bed and tosses his towel aside before clambouring into it, bare ass to the wind. He flops down face first, and shoves his feet under the turned down comforter.

“Adrian… what are you doing?” You say for what feels like the millionth time this evening. 

“‘M going to bed,” he drawls into the pillow. His entire body shakes as he hiccups, and then turns his head to the side to look up at you with his big green doe-eyes that make your heart do a somersault in your ribcage. “You should tooootally join me. There’s-” hiccup- “lotsa room. We could go again.”

You blink at him as you semi-stagger, semi-walk toward the bed, stooping to pick up pieces of his uniform strewn across the floor as he had, presumably, just ripped everything off as he made his way to the bathroom. “Mm, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Uh, you said it was a great idea,” he argues as you toss his clothes into a pile at the end of the bed.

“That was before the whisky kicked in and we were both staggering… fuckin… drunk-” you accidentally whack your foot against the corner of the bed and bite your lip as you fight not to crumble to the floor. “One of us has to be responsible.”

“I’m-” hiccup- “responstable.”

“Uh-huh.” You stop as your eyes land on the mostly empty Jim Beam bottle on the bedside table. You’re almost positive it had been at least quarter full when you left him to go take a shower. “Adrian, did you drink all that?”

He blinks his eyes open and follows your pointing finger to the bottle. “Oh, yeah. Hhhuuuhh… had to… I lost the cap so we can’t keep it.” When you march forward to snatch it off the table, he grunts dismissively. “Gotta… get rid of it.”

“Guess that’s why you’re worse off than me.” You shake your head and drop the entire bottle into the trash bin. “Aren’t you gonna put something on to sleep in?”

“I don’t have anything.”

You snap your head towards his sprawling, naked form. Your eyes linger on his ass for way too long. “You didn’t bring a single thing to wear?”

“Why… why would I bring a change of clothes to kill bad guys?” 

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Anonymity!” 

He grumbles into the pillow, “I have a mask.”

“Fuck the mask. You can’t sleep in the mask.”

“Sure I can. I fuck in the mask, I can sleep in it. S’a free country.”

You blink, your eyes flicking between Adrian and the mask on the table. “Dude, you fuck in that thing?”

“Hell yeah I do. I could fuck you in the mask. Could do it right now. Go get the mask.” Despite the conviction of his words, he’s slurring them, and his face is still pressed into his pillow as he lies motionless on the bed. 

“I… don’t think that’s gonna happen tonight.” You sigh as you toe forward and grab the end of his comforter, drawing it up over his body. “We’re both way too drunk. We probably… probably shouldn’t have…”

Adrian flops over to look up at you as you, essentially, tuck him in. There’s a note of hurt in his voice when he mumbles, “You regret it?”

You pause, staring down at his expression of confusion and betrayal. Do you regret it? You can’t deny that you hadn’t been hesitant to have sex with him for a litany of reasons- one being that you work with him, and another being that he’s a loose cannon on the best of days. Not exactly relationship material, you think. 

Or, you thought, but now he’s gazing up at you with these wide, dumbfounded eyes, and you’re tucking the comforter up beneath his chin, and he turns his face down and kisses your knuckle even though he looks mildly hurt. And yes, you liked the sex very much. You liked it so much that you can’t trust yourself not to do it again if you don’t shuffle off to your own bed immediately.

“No,” you tell him firmly, combing your fingers through his wet hair as you draw back. “I don’t regret it, but I think we both need to sleep this off.”

“Okay,” Adrian says quietly, his expression relaxing, but his arms come out from under the comforter and he reaches for you with grabby-hands. “Sleep with me?”

You catch one of his hands and give it a gentle squeeze. “G’night, Adrian.”

You hear him sigh in disappointment when you shut off the bedside lamp. His hands audibly plop down onto the mattress as he rasps, “Night.”

You wake from a dreamless sleep sometime in the early hours of the morning, and your throat is bone dry. Smacking at the nightstand a couple times, your phone manages to illuminate and tell you that the time is only 1:30. 

You blink sleep away from your eyes and try to see through the dark as you stumble into the combination vanity, closet, and kitchenette. You knew you brought a water bottle or two, it can’t be that hard to find-

“Hey, what’cha doing?”

You hardly even startle at this point. You’re slowly becoming acclimated to the idea that Adrian is just constantly awake and witness to your every move, which isn’t as disconcerting to you as one might think. “I’m looking for the water. Did you see where I put it?”

“Uhhhhh mini-fridge?”

You reach blindly under the counter and yank the little fridge open, once again smacking around until your hand lands on the shape of a water bottle. “You want some?”

“Yeah, you could spit it into my open mouth-”

“Adrian.”

“What? It would be fucking sexy.” Adrian grunts, and the light clicks on from the main room. Then, he wolf-whistles just before you straighten up from where he’d caught you, bent over in front of the fridge. “Y’know, I was right. You have a really great ass.”

You grumble a half-hearted thanks under your breath as you approach his bedside and thrust a water bottle at him. “I see you’ve sobered up a bit.”

He waves a hand at you dismissively. “Pshh, I wasn’t that drunk.”

“You were drooling all over your pillow.”

“Maybe I always do that.”

“Yeah, okay.” There’s a long pause, wherein you perch on the edge of your mattress and chug an obscene amount of water. Adrian watches your throat work until he, too, succumbs and lifts his bottle to his lips. 

An uncomfortably heavy silence settles between you two, only permeated by the quiet sipping of water and the cheap motel AC unit kicking in. It’s entirely unlike him to be silent and still for more than a couple of seconds, but he’s just sitting there looking despondent and running a hand back and forth over the white comforter, periodically lifting his bottle to take another drink. He doesn’t even really look tired, and you wonder if he ever got to sleep in the first place.

You know that the tension in the air is so thick because you have yet to address the giant fucking elephant in the room; and to address it is to have the most awkward and intimate conversation you can possibly imagine with Adrian, of all people. As much as you love his sense of humor, the idea of baring your soul to him is almost enough to have you running into the bathroom again, and locking the damn door this time.

But, in true Adrian fashion (because damn it all to hell if he ever lets something be), he beats you to the punch. “So, are you? Sober now, I mean.”

You chew your lip again, and reopen the gash you’d put there before. “Yeah. I am.”

He nods, pursing his lips as he looks down at his lap. He was right, his hair does dry… well, not weird, but just rather unruly if he goes to bed with it wet. Dark curls stick up at odd angles, a cowlick on the back of his crown standing straight up and begging you to come over and smooth it down. More curls fall across his forehead and nearly touch the top of his glasses. He blinks slowly, and severe shadows from his lashes cross his face in the golden light of the bedside lamp. You snap your gaze away, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end.

“So… was that a lie? About just needing to sober up?”

Your thumbs twitch on your bottle. To tell the truth, or to lie? You feel like your mouth just stays dry, no matter how much water you drink. “Look, Adrian, I-”

“Also, I have, like, no pride and a ridiculously thick skull, or- or whatever Peacemaker calls it. So, you don’t have to beat around the bush or anything for my sake, you probably won’t even hurt me-”

“Adrian, I like you too fucking much, don’t you get it?” 

That fully shuts him up, and he locks his jaw as he fixes you with a startled look. You suck your bottom lip through your teeth, perturbed at the taste of blood still apparent on it, and dig your heels into the carpet. 

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you. You’re… one of my closest friends, all right? But I’m afraid that if we keep going like this, I’m not going to want to be friends anymore. And I think I’ll fall in love with you really quickly, and that might be a really bad idea for both of us. You just…” You shake your head, your voice dipping in volume as you stare bashfully down at your feet, “you have no clue how much I want you all the time, baby.”

“Why would it be a bad idea?” he asks you plainly.

“What?” You pick your eyes up off the floor to squint at him, finding him staring at you challengingly, a flush already on his cheeks. 

“I mean, honestly. Name a single reason why it would be a bad idea. Bet’cha can’t.” Adrian throws his empty water bottle across the room, and it makes a gentle tap against the side of the television before skittering to the floor. “I think we’d fuck like rabbits and then I’d wake up every morning and make you pancakes, because I’m really fucking good at those, but you’d have to make the eggs because I always burn them. And I think we’d kick ass together as a cool superhero power couple, and I’d carry your gun for you if you got tired, and I could show you where all my hidden knives are. And you could also do anything you wanted to me, like any time, and I’d be totally fine with it and probably also turned on by it, as long as you call me baby like you just did.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m super hard right now. Probably should’ve warned you, I have a thing about that-”

“No, smartass, I mean are you serious about the other stuff?” You tilt your head at him. “I never really took you for the domestic sort.”

“Tsch- yeah! I’m, like, super domestic. I’m like one of those domestic...ated... cats?” He trails off as you step forward and crawl onto his bed, up his legs to straddle his lap.

“Cats?” you repeat with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m… I…” Adrian’s eyes flick across your face, down to your shirt and bare thighs on either side of his, your knees pressing the comforter taut across his lap and (very prominent) erection. “I don’t know, I have trouble thinking when you’re on top of me-”

Nodding, you reach forward and take his glasses by the wire earpieces, and pull them from his face. He goes stock still, his lips parted in awe as you slide them onto your own face, and give him a sweet smile. “I like your glasses. They look good on you.”

“They look good on you.” His voice cracks. “Can you see in them?”

You blink at him, and then turn your head to look across the room. “A lot better than I thought I would. I think our prescriptions are similar.”

“That means you can also wear my mask.” 

You look back at him, and find that he has his million-mile stare on, like he’s completely lost in thought. You smirk. “Do you want me to wear the mask?”

He blinks, and it’s like you’ve flipped a switch and turned his focus back on. “Uh… no. I mean, yes. Maybe later. I want to look at you.” His eyelashes flutter so fast you think he might take flight for a second. “You’re so fucking beautiful I could stare at you all day.”

“You can touch me, too. Don’t be shy.”

He practically vibrates with anticipation as his palms glide up your thighs, hot and big and just a bit rough. His eyes are everywhere at once; your lips, your eyes, your chest, your thighs, where your hips disappear under your oversized shirt. His fingers catch the hem, and he curls it between them.

“You should totally get naked, too. It’s super unfair that I’m the only one naked right now,” he says breathlessly, nodding the whole time like he’s trying to convince himself as much as you.

“So, do it.” You shrug, trailing a finger up his chest. “Take it off, baby.”

Adrian fists the hem of your shirt and rips it in half up the middle with a loud tear. You gasp, shivering as the garment falls from your shoulders and leaves you in just your panties. “Adrian!”

His eyes are trained on your tits. “What? It’s not like you need it tonight, anyways, and tomorrow we’ll be home…”

“What if that was my only shirt?” you retort.

He looks up at you. “Was it?”

“Well, no-”

“Then there’s your answer. Now, can I go down on you? Because I’ve wanted to for a really long time and I think it’s super hot that you’re wearing my glasses so it’s like I’m watching myself eat your pussy.”

He has such a hopeful expression on his face that you have to hold in a manic string of laughter as you nod at him. “Yeah, sure. Are you going to tear up my underwear, too?”

“No, I wanna keep those.”

“That makes perfect sense.” You shake your head before you kiss him deeply, and his tongue dips into your mouth as he rolls over with you, briefly getting tangled in the sheets before he roughly kicks them off. 

You run your fingers through his hair, snickering as he climbs between your legs and his hands deftly tug your panties down. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Depends on how incriminating it is.”

“I’ve never come from someone eating me out before,” you admit quietly, a blush furiously heating your cheeks until you fear that if you touch your face you might burn yourself. 

Adrian fixes you with a deadpan stare, and a slew of emotions cross his face before he lands on something relatively serene and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” 

He nods and grins, like this is the most casual conversation in the world, and his green eyes bore into yours. “Yeah. You should probably, uh… hold on, though.”

You frown in confusion. “To what?”

He rocks back on his knees, picking up your arms by the wrists, and he very simply places your hands on his head, with a little smile that conveys, ‘it’s no big deal,’ but the tenderness with which he does it sends another message, altogether. Your fingers weave between soft, unruly curls, your fingernails digging in just a bit when he lowers himself down between your thighs, and you come to the conclusion that this is just how he is. Tenderness, closeness, hidden behind casual sighs and dismissive shrugs.

You’re learning. Slowly. 

His breath finds you before his lips do, where you’re wet and swollen and slippery like you haven’t been touched in your fucking life. But he has once already, and still his mouth feels like a searing hot brand between your legs. In fact, you nearly jump out of your skin at the first brush of his tongue through your folds, your hands tightening on his hair and tugging as you buck your hips up against him. 

Adrian grasps your hips and slams them down against the mattress. Sometimes you forget how fucking strong he is. His slight frame really doesn’t give justice to the force behind those lean muscles, because he holds you in an iron grip that you can hardly wiggle out of. It makes you feel small, in a way, that he holds you hostage to his tongue and won’t let you move away from or towards him. 

A long, miserable whine rips out of your lips before you can stop it, and you could blush at how pathetic it sounds, except that Adrian mimics it with a groan against your cunt. Your head is flung back against the pillows, but when you just barely tilt up to glance down at him, you find his green eyes trained directly on you. They start off wide as moons, and then narrow like he’s challenging you to look away as he drags the flat expanse of his tongue slowly over your clit, curling the tip just as it skims the mark.

“Oh, fuck you, Adrian, you’re so fucking good,” you grit out through clenched teeth. Your nails dig into his scalp and he shudders, briefly nuzzling his head up into your touch before he dips down to give you his tongue again. Your breath hitches, and your eyes flutter shut when he sucks on your clit long and hard. “So… s-so good… good boy…”

The moan that Adrian makes is overtly pornographic, and his hips snap once against the mattress so hard that the bed shakes beneath you. He breaks away from you to rest his forehead against your thigh, squeezing your hips tightly in his hold as his hot breath billows across your sweat-damp skin.

You loosen your fingers in his hair to stroke it softly, subconsciously struggling to flatten the cowlick at the back that you’d noticed earlier. Adrian’s eyes are squeezed shut, his shoulders heaving while he tries to steady his breath through his nose. “Did you just come?”

The tips of Adrian’s ears glow pink. He gives you a little nod and then a feeble, “Couldn’t help it.”

So, he can’t just take his praise in stride, he has to react to it with fervor. “That’s really sexy of you,” you blurt out, your voice ragged and just this side of adoring. 

He returns with a quiet mmm, rumbling across your skin as he drags his open mouth along the sensitive flesh of your thigh, his eyes drowsily shut. It takes him another moment to catch his breath, but once he does, he’s right back at it again. Dipping his head down and absolutely going for it with no signs of letting up, and you have to suck in a deep stream of air and scramble for a hold on him somehow.

“Oh- oh my fuckin-g god-” your voice comes out without thinking, wrung thin and anguished, as your foot plants itself in his shoulder. Adrian simply grunts, paying no mind to the fact that you’re effectively kicking the living shit out of him as he sucks so hard on your clit that you threaten to break his vise-hold on your hips.

He was right that you needed something to hold onto, because you feel like you might leave the ground. He works at you relentlessly, devouring you with his lips and tongue and teeth like he can’t get enough of you, his fingertips pressing so hard into your hips that his nails are turning stark white. 

“Fuck, you’re so squirmy,” Adrian groans when he pulls away from you for half a second, and struggles to hold you down when you try to chase his mouth. “Should I tie you down?”

“Do you have anything to tie me down with?” you mutter breathlessly toward the ceiling.

A beat. “Nope. Stay still.”

You fight not to jolt as the next touch of his mouth on you. He dips his tongue into your channel, seemingly trying to draw your arousal out of you that way. You start whining when he finally nuzzles his way back up, giving you soft, teasing licks to your clit that edge you closer and closer to the release of the swell of heat you feel building in your core. Your volume turns up a notch when his tongue starts drawing little circles around the swollen flesh. 

And when his lips come down to latch onto it and gently suck, you know you’re just shy of howling. His soft groans vibrate onto your skin as you scratch at his head and pull on his hair, and you eventually find yourself babbling, “Adrian, please, I’m gonna come, please pleasepleaseplease-”

He sucks harder, moaning like it turns him on just to hear you say it. You heave a few rapid breaths, and then come against his face with a cry that crackles and breaks in your throat as your head arches back, baring your neck forward. Your heels digging into his back, hands scratching, hips flailing like you can somehow escape the barrage of hypersensitivity he’s putting you through.

You really fucking hope no one is in the room next to yours.

His fingertips stick to your skin once he releases his grip on you. He’s practically glowing, grinning from ear to ear at you from between your legs, and it’s a better image than you had imagined. 

You drop your head back with a breathless chuckle. “Okay, Mr. ‘I Have No Pride.’”

“I made you come,” he chirps happily.

“Yeah, you did. It was really good, too.”

“So, why didn’t anyone else?” Adrian pushes his head toward your touch when you stroke your hand gently through his hair. 

“I dunno. They weren’t applying themselves, I guess.”

“That’s stupid. You’re, like, the hottest person ever. Hotter than Doja Cat,” he grumbles petulantly, and you can tell by the look in his eye that he’s dead serious. “Want me to kill them? I should kill them.”

“No.” You trail your fingers down the curve of his face, going for his chin, but he turns his face and sucks your two fingers into his mouth before you can manage it. You stop dead as the pad of his tongue swirls around the digits, and he blinks up at you innocently, despite the lewd connotations of the act. “N-no, I… hhhhh… you’re distracting me.”

He bats his eyes at you, and he slowly pulls back along your fingers until they pop out of his mouth, covered in saliva. “How am I distracting you?”

“You’re- you… you little shit.” You grab him by the chin and draw him up from between your legs. He clumsily crawls up the length of your torso with his cheeks smushed between your fingers as you hiss, “I’m going to fuck the ever-loving shit out of you, I swear to god.” 

“You know, that sounds slightly menacing when you say it like that,” he slurs, his jaw working against your hold. 

“On your back, Chase.”

He grabs you before you can protest, and rolls back over so that you plop down on top of him, your hand still jammed up against his jaw. A blast of air comes out of your lungs in lieu of laughter, and Adrian snorts, shuffling his hips so that he moves back against the pillows.

“Okay, look, I really really really like you,” he says as you pick yourself up, straddling his lap, “but if you’re too good at this I might accidentally fall in love with you. Just to let you know what you’re getting into here.”

“Oh, is that so?” 

“Yeah, and I think I might actually, um, ask you to move in with me, like, immediately. Like tomorrow. Do you rent or own? Doesn’t matter, I can put your name on the lease. Maybe if you own a house it can be income property-”

You cast your eyes down and find him, remarkably, hard and leaking precum as he continues babbling about living situations. You tilt your head, letting him get his stream of consciousness out there in the open, as your eyes catch on a dark wad of fabric beside his pillow. Your underwear, which he’d gingerly set aside instead of tossing across the room like you thought he would.

“Hm, Adrian?”

He blinks up at you, his eyes wide and dilated. “Yeah?”

You pick up the wadded up underwear. “You wanted to keep these, right?”

He licks his lips. “Um. Yes.”

“Hold them for me, then.” You grab his jaw and stuff them in his mouth, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull as he makes a noise of protest, but then actually moans when, presumably, he tastes you on them. “You’re so fucking cute, I haven’t even tied you up. You just want my taste in your mouth, huh?” He nods. “Yeah. Pretty boy.”

He predictably moans again, his hands grasping at every part of you they can reach; your arms, your breasts, the expanse of his palms gliding down the curve of your waist and settling on your thighs. You grab one, lifting it and settling his palm against your throat.

“Hold this for me, too?” You ask him sweetly, giving his bewildered expression a devilish smirk in return. You rock forward, sliding your dripping pussy along his erection, and his hand tightens on your throat just a bit. “That’s it.”

You pick your hips up, reaching between your legs to position him where you want him, and when you sink down onto his cock, the underwear in his mouth does nothing to muffle the obscene groan that he makes. His hand flexes on your throat, and his eyes close and open a few times as he tries to maintain a certain amount of control. Something tells you that he’s not really used to taking it lying down. 

You’re already decently sore from the way he effectively fucked your brains out in the shower. This is just ensuring that you’re going to be feeling it for the rest of the week, but you can’t help yourself. You take him in all the way, making agonized noises the entire time, and then jolt your hips down a little more so you can feel him bottom out. 

“Fucking hell, baby, you’re something else,” you snarl down at him, and his eyes go wide again as you squeeze him, every bit of your aching strength bearing down onto his cock until he whines loudly through the fabric and his fingers tighten on the sides of your throat. “Oh, god, I could ruin you. You could ruin me. I want you to, it would be so easy for you, I wouldn’t even be able to walk in the morning.”

And you’re moving, picking up your hips and letting them fall back down in slow, deep strokes that have him writhing, his free hand in a death grip on your thigh. You raise your hand to press against the back of his on your throat, your fingers weaving in between his, and he flexes them back a bit to make room. 

Even when he’s gagged, he’s noisy. Keening and grunting at you, his jaw tightening every once in a while and the tendons of his neck jumping out at you when your hips meet his. Dark curls hang down his forehead, damp with sweat, and you can’t help but feel like the shower was useless.

No, not useless. It brought you here.

Adrian bucks his hips up suddenly, meeting you halfway when you take a particularly long time on the downstroke. You gasp, tightening your hand on his, and your nails dig into his chest. 

“Oh, you want me to ruin you, don’t you?” You murmur at him, baiting him to do it again. And he does, just like you hoped he would. You pick up the pace in retaliation, letting the lewd sounds of your skin hitting his fill the room. “Silly boy, I knew you would.”

He whimpers, blinking up at you slowly, his face screwing up and tightening in earnest when you rake your nails up and down his chest. He makes a couple pathetic, weak groans in the back of his throat like he wants to convey something to you, but he’s not reaching up to remove your underwear from his mouth.

(You wonder if he even remembers that he can.)

“You gonna come for me?” you ask as his whimpers increase in volume. His cock is so hard, twitching and dragging thick inside you, and his chest jumps with every desperate, ragged breath he takes. “Yeah, you are. Go on, baby, make a mess.”

Adrian gives you a curt shake of his head, and paws at your thigh for a second before his hand slides forward, and his thumb touches your clit.

“Oh fuck, Adrian-” you lurch forward, pressing your throat hard against his palm, your legs seizing up on either side of his hips. He makes you come again with a single fucking touch, and it burns through your core like fire, almost more satisfying than the first because you’re able to feel him inside you this time, something warm and hard and thick to come on.

Apparently, that was all he needed in order to let go. His back arches a bit as he jerks his hips up into yours, and he fills your pulsing cunt until his shallow breaths rattle in his throat, his eyes squeezed so tight that you see a tear collecting in the corner of one. He lays with his head driven back hard into the pillow, whimpering and whining like he’s been mortally wounded. 

Too sore to move just yet, you pull his hand away from your throat and kiss his palm. Adrian’s eyes flutter open, and he finds you with a glazed-over stare, like he might either see you or see through you. Still letting out soft whimpers with each harsh exhale. 

“Oh. Sweetheart,” you giggle, and reach forward to pull the wad of underwear from his mouth. It comes out with a long string of his spit attached to it, and you give him a cheeky smirk as you break the string with your finger and lick it off, rather than wiping it on your skin. 

“You… you’re…” You swear his eyes nearly roll back in his skull before he closes them, trying to collect himself. He takes a deep, long breath, and then splutters, “Willyoumarrymeactually?”

You give him your biggest, goofiest grin, a little bubble of laughter wedging itself deep in your chest. “Get a little more whisky in me, and we’ll see what bright ideas I have then.”

“Okay.”

You lift yourself off of his softening cock, and the release comes with a dribble of his cum sliding down your thigh. He groans, but with one look at him you know that there’s not going to be any more action for the rest of the night. 

You shift to the left, and his hand smacks down onto your thigh. “Mmmm no, you sleep with me.”

“Yeah, obviously. But you came all over the sheets earlier, genius.”

“Oh.”

He takes a deep breath in and opens his eyes in time to see you taking his glasses off. You blink a few times, your eyes having adjusted to the slight difference in your prescriptions, and refocus on his face to find him gazing up at you adoringly. 

“I’m gonna take a guess and say you don’t sleep in these, too?” You wiggle the glasses at him. 

He licks his lips. “No, not… not usually.”

You set the glasses on the bedside table, and then slowly slide off of him, off the bed and onto shaky legs. You take his hand and tug just a bit. “C’mon, pretty. Into my bed.”

He follows your lead without a fuss, making the two step journey to the other bed and plopping down face-first. 

“D’you wanna get pancakes when we wake up?” he asks around a yawn as you nudge his ass, prodding him to scoot over. 

You nod furiously, even though you know he can’t see you as you switch the light off and climb in beside him, curling up against his warm back. “Pancakes sound fucking delicious.”

“Not as delicious as your pus-”

“Adrian.”

His saving grace is you. You always are but today in particular because it’s Saturday which means you’re waiting for him at home. It means he can burn off some of the residual adrenaline from his shift before seeking your solace and comfort. There are several ways he could do so. But this morning he wants to with your body. Inside you. Literally.

J - Finally on my way home from the shift from hell. You up?

You’re not quite asleep when your phone chimes with Jack’s text. You’re in that weird space where it feels like you’re awake but in reality you’re in a very light sleep. Light enough that when you hear your phone you reach blindly for it to see who it is and what time it is. You smile when you see Jack’s name, but grimace before you even read the message when you see what time it is.

Once you read his message you sit up. Jack doesn’t call a shift one from hell very often, he’ll call them other things, bad, very bad, annoying, irritating, things like that. But a shift from hell is reserved for the worst. So you know he’s going to need your help, that describing it as such is almost a silent ask for it.

You - Yes sir. What can I do to help? Breakfast? Have a bath ready for you?

Jack groans to himself in a good way at the ‘sir’ in your message. The rest of your exchange is quick.

J - Need you asap and waiting on the couch J - Please

You - Of course

J - Don’t touch yourself

You - Okay

J - I mean it. Be good for me

You - I won’t touch, I promise

J - Good. Love you

You - Love you more 

You slide out of bed and pull on a pair of loose cotton pajama shorts. You’re already wearing one of his t-shirts. You don’t bother washing your face or even splashing water on it to wake yourself up. You know he loves it when you’re still a little sleepy. So you go and settle on the couch to wait for him, try to play on your phone to distract yourself. 

The wait is torturous as your mind runs through thought after thought of what he could do to you. Of what he’s done to you in the past. Of what he’s expressed wanting to do to you in the future. It has you fighting the urge to rub your legs together for some friction. You bite your lip at how wet you already are, can feel how slick and sticky your inner thighs are just from your thoughts when you shift on the couch. It feels like you’re even wetter than normal. If Jack hadn’t spent years telling you how hot he found it when he’d run his fingers through you and find you soaking already you’d be embarrassed. 

When you hear his key in the lock you look at the door knowing he’ll be looking for you immediately. The door opens and he steps in, locks it behind him and then looks at you. He keeps looking at you the entire time dropping his backpack on the credenza and pulls his scrub top off just for you because he knows how much you like the look, tosses it to the side. “Fucking shit show,” he mutters to you as he walks towards the couch. He points to the armrest of the couch. 

“I’m sorry, Baby,” you say softly as you get up and stand by the armrest for him. You feel yourself growing even more aroused for him. He’s sweaty, a few curls stuck to his forehead and the rest a little fluffy from how much he ran his hands through his hair over the course of his shift. 

Jack finishes walking up to you and nods as he kisses you, hard and devouring from the start. He always starts like this, always kisses you first before anything else. His hands find your hips and squeeze, pull yours against his to let you get a little feel of how hard he is for you. You moan into his mouth when he nips your bottom lip, his tongue soothing over it before slipping back into your mouth. 

“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault, just one of those things. Just keep being good for me, yeah?” he pants when he breaks the kiss so you can both breathe. His hands on your hips spin you, one of them moving to run down your back and press you down. You don’t need more than that, bending over the armrest for him happily and propping yourself up on your elbows on the seat of the couch as you spread your legs enough for him to step between. 

“Always.” The second you’re bent over for him Jack’s thumbs are in the waistband of your pajama shorts and pulling them down. Once he’s helped you step out of them and tossed them vaguely in the direction of his scrub top he runs his hands over your ass.

His right hand slides between your legs, two fingers dragging up you, clit to cunt. “Fuck,” he groans, “did you touch yourself?”

“No. I promise,” you moan as he slips two fingers inside of you easily. “Didn’t even rub my thighs together.”

Jack strains against his boxers, left hand starting to palm himself over his scrub pants for a little relief. “You’re so fucking wet already. More than usual.”

“I just thought about you, Jackie.” You let out a little sigh when he pulls his fingers from you and slides them up and down you again. “What you might do to me and what you’ve done to me before.” 

Jack hums at you, slides his two fingers back inside of you. “You’re swollen too.” He clicks his tongue, lowers his voice as he bends over you so his chest is against your back, his mouth right at your ear. “Sure you didn’t touch yourself? Give me your hand.” You lean onto one elbow and hold a hand up for him. He grabs it with his free left hand and brings it to his face, smelling your fingers before taking them into his mouth and running his tongue over them. “The other one.” You shift again and give him your other hand, clench around his fingers inside you when he repeats what he did to your other hand before releasing it. He doesn’t smell or taste you on your fingers, nor does he smell or taste soap that would tell him you’re trying to hide it. “You really didn’t. Good girl.” He pats the side of your ass just a little sharply as he leans back up. 

The praise makes you whimper. “It’s just y-,” your breath catches in your throat when he starts to move his fingers, pumps them in and out of you slowly, crooking them just right. “Just you. The thought of you makes me that wet. Just the thought of existing in your space. The thought of you doing anything to me.”

Your hips are rocking back subtly in time with his fingers. Jack knows you’re probably not even aware you’re doing it. “I don’t think you even need to come to be ready to take me.” 

“No, I don’t,” you’re already panting a little. “I don’t.”

Jack’s fingers pull out of you again and he adds a third when he pushes them back inside of you, making you keen and jolt for him. “You’re going to give me one anyway.” 

“No, please,” you whine, push your hips back in time with his hand a little harder. “Please Jackie, I like, I like it sometimes. Having the first one be on your cock.” 

“Jesus,” he mutters through a breath, working you a little harder and faster with his fingers. “Fuck, you’re so wet.” 

“All for you,” you purr while you’re still coherent enough to. “Take my shirt off?”

“No. I like seeing you in it and how I can smell me all over you already,” he rasps. Jack pulls his fingers from you and you whine just a little from the loss, the knowledge of what’s next soothing you. “You taste,” Jack starts as he licks each of his fingers clean, “so fucking good I could drop to my knees right here.” He finally shoves his scrub pants and boxers down and gives himself a few tugs. “But that’s for later I think because I love tasting us together.”

“Fuck Jack,” you gasp at his words and at the feeling of him finally running his cock through you.

Jack groans. “I could come just from this, you know?”

“You can,” you breathe, turning your head and looking over your shoulder at him as much as you can, nodding. You know you just said you like your first orgasm to be on his cock but you don’t care. He needs you and can do whatever the fuck he wants with you right now and you’ll thank him.

Jack furrows his brows and cocks his head at you as he makes eye contact. “And leave you empty and wanting?” His hips don’t stop dragging him through you.

You lick your lips and raise your eyebrows at him, give him a little shake of your head. “Not about me right now.”

“You’re so good to me. But it’s always about you even when it’s about me, pretty girl. And anyway.” He flicks his chin at you a little and you follow his instruction, facing back forward. You feel him notch himself at your entrance and his hands find your hips. “I want this,” he says lowly as he pushes inside of you. The groan of relief he lets out is so erotic you shiver. You don’t need to see him to know he let his jaw fall open a little, head tipping back and eyes closing in pleasure, though you wish he had let you watch. 

Jack is still but you wiggle your hips a little, both to adjust to him and to tease him. Once you feel ready you rock yourself back and forward a bit on his cock. “Jack,” you mewl.

His hands tighten on your hips as he slowly pulls himself out of you and pushes back in over and over. “God, you feel so fucking good.” 

He doesn’t give any warning that the pace is about to change. He just does it, goes from teasing you with how slow he pushes in and pulls out to leaving you gasping for breath as he pistons his hips against you, his pace frenzied, like you’ll disappear if he stops. 

“I’ve been thinking about this all night,” Jack groans, already lost to your slick heat. “Coming home and using you, using your pussy to feel better.” He needs this, needs you, needs to get it all out of his fucking system.

“Please,” you moan, “please do.” He feels so good like this, the pressure and rub against your g-spot nearly non-stop with the angle and his pace. And he just keeps going and going. 

“Yeah, you love that don’t you?” Jack pants. You feel so unbelievably good, are being so good for him that his shift starts to melt away. The residual adrenaline starts to fade. You feel almost too good to be real, pleasure tingling over this entire body and building in his lower abdomen. “Love me using you to feel better?” 

“So much,” you keen, mind growing hazy from the pleasure he’s giving you, your orgasm building fast and hot as your clit grinds against the couch.

You can tell he’s getting just as close as you are when his thrusts grow a little erratic, pace not as evenly fast as it was. He slams into you abruptly before stilling with his cock buried inside of you. But you don’t hear or feel him come. “Fuck!” he hisses. It was deliberate. He knew he was about to come and stopped. 

“Jack,” you whine. In edging himself Jack’s also edging you. With him still your clit doesn’t grind against the couch and his hands are tight enough to keep you from moving your hips to try and chase your orgasm. You feel it start to fade and drift away from you.

“I know.” One of his hands leaves your hips to rub soothing circles on your ass. He’s just not done with you yet. Needs more. And the edging always makes it so good for the both of you, the test of his control with you helps to center him again. “I know.”

You try your hardest to be good for him and not clench around him too many times as you both come down. His hand continues to rub soothing circles on your ass and lower back as he waits for you to both catch your breath. 

When he decides it has been long enough Jack finally starts fucking you again, slowly building up his pace. This time he’s not as fast, but still more than fast enough. Instead of maintaining the frenzied pace he’d just been fucking you with, he seems to be focused on fucking you hard now, snapping his hips against yours sharply and fucking into you as his hands grip your hips hard enough to bruise and pull you back onto him. 

“Jack!” you gasp, every snap of his hips stealing your breath and sending a shockwave of pleasure through you. It’s too much. He’s too much. 

“Shh,” he soothes, just a hint of a condescending edge to it that makes you clench. “Take it Baby,” he grits out through a hard thrust. “Fucking take it.” 

“I can’t,” you whimper, tears stinging your eyes as the sheer amount of pleasure coursing through you starts to build to a deliciously overwhelming point.

“You can,” he almost growls at you, pace picking up just slightly. “You can take it. I know you can. And you fucking will.”

You can hear in his voice how pussy drunk he is, know that right now you’re the only thing that exists to him. It makes that coil in your abdomen tighten even more. “Please,” you plead with him. You’re not sure if it’s for more or to come or what. All you know is Jack is hitting your g-spot perfectly and your clit is rubbing against the couch just right. 

“Yeah, just like that,” he pants, the pleasure starting to build to a crescendo once more. “Taking me so well. Being so good for me.” He punctuates the ‘good’ with an even harder snap of his hips.

He grows erratic again and you tense, so close to release you can just about taste it. All you need is a little more, you know all Jack needs is a little more. He thrusts into you hard as he pulls you back onto him but again stills, letting out his own groan of protest, face twisting just as hard as yours at the loss. 

“No, Jack, please!” you cry, a few hot tears slipping down your face. 

He’s so strung out on your cunt he almost didn’t stop in time. The way he’s panting so hard is so hot and driving you insane, as is the knowledge that he’s undoubtedly a sweaty fucking mess by now. Jack closes his eyes and gets his breathing closer to normal before he says anything. “Sorry, pretty girl. I just need this.” 

“Don’t apologize. Want you to take what you need.” His hands loosen and you test the waters, rocking your hips against him. “Want you to use me.” 

“I am, Baby, I am. I promise.” Jack’s hands leave your hips and pull his undershirt off and toss it away before finding the hem of his shirt that you’re wearing, pulling the back up and bunching it up at your shoulders. It gives you what you want, the feeling of his skin against yours, and what he wants, to smell himself on you.

Jack kisses up the part of your spine he can reach, even when he starts kissing over your shirt, until he reaches the side of your jaw and has his chest resting against your back. He settles on his elbows with his arms outside yours. “You okay?” he checks in. 

You turn your head in the direction of his the most you can. “More than.” 

“Good. Me too.” He kisses the side of your lips before nuzzling his nose into the side of your face to get you looking forward again.

Jack’s hips drag himself out of you before his hips snap and thrust himself right back inside. It’s far softer and slower than before but god is it so much fucking more than enough for the both of you. 

Where the other two runs were to burn off the residual adrenaline and bullshit of his shift, it’s now about the solace and comfort he can only find with you. About grounding himself with you and in you. About feeling as much of you as possible and hearing every noise he pulls from you. About being as close to one with you as he’s ever going to fucking get.

It’s about reminding himself that even on his worst days he’s coming home to you. That he has you to make everything better and help him. That you’re his, willingly and completely. That despite all the loss he saw today you’re still here with him. That you’re okay. That you’re alive. 

Jack slides his hands so that they cover yours, his fingers slipping between yours and curling in so that your hands are laced together. “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” you breathe, curl your fingers against his. 

He takes his time fucking you now, uses the angle of his hips to make sure he’s dragging over your g-spot as he pulls out and that your clit gets the friction it needs from the couch. He’s taking you and himself apart slowly this time. Jack kisses at the side of your face and jaw softly. “You’re doing so well, Beautiful.” 

It melts you, the way he calls you beautiful like it’s your name, adds to the haze and pleasure high that’s taking over you. “Just want you to feel good. Like you make me feel- god, Jack!” you cry out as he shifts his hips to make it all more intense for you.  

“You always make me feel good,” he groans, pace picking up when you clench tightly around him. “Your pussy always feels so good, shit!” 

There’s a new sense of urgency and desperation in his voice and his movements as he gets closer to completely losing himself in you. His pace picks up a little more and it immediately overwhelms the both of you, each of you moaning loudly.

“Do you need?” It’s not fully formed with how fucked out on your pussy he already is but you know he’s asking if you need more, if you need his fingers on your clit.

“No, no, not if you don’t stop, the couch,” your breath hitches at a particularly sharp thrust. “It’s en-, enough. Just like that, just like that, please. Please, Jack.” 

“Yeah yeah, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he pants. Jack listens to you, doesn’t change a single thing, is careful not to get erratic and maintains the same pace and intensity and doesn’t move his hips to a different angle or position. 

“Please, please, please, don’t stop,” you beg him. You’re not sure you could handle another denial.

But Jack has no intention of denying himself or you this time. If anything he’s worried he’s going to beat you to it and he can’t have that. “Fuck, I need you to, fuck” he grunts, breath hot against your ear and cheek. “Need you to come, Baby.”

“I am, I’m so close,” you manage to force out, high pitched and desperate.

“Come for me.” Jack’s voice falters a little as he staves off his own release in favor of getting you to yours. “Make me come.”

A thrust later and your orgasm crashes down around you, your eyes slamming shut at the intensity of it. It renders you breathless for a few seconds before you’re gasping out a moaned “Jack!” You squeeze his fingers as hard as you possibly can to ground yourself to him as you already start to feel like you might float away. 

Jack comes seconds after you with a shout of your name, before his mouth finds the side of your neck. He bites down a little and sucks hard enough that it’ll leave a bruise as he fucks you and himself through your orgasms. “Fuck,” he groans “fuck, fuck, fuck.” He stills his hips with him inside of you and grinds himself against your ass as he rides out the last of his orgasm. “Oh god,” he pants heavily, his forehead resting against the nape of your neck.

“Yeah,” you pant out just as hard, “yeah, fuck Jack.”

The two of you stay like that for a couple of minutes while you touch back down as much as possible, even your breathing out and find words again. You shiver against each other at times as aftershocks of pleasure roll over you. 

“You,” Jack says through a big breath, “are so fucking good. Six years later and the sex is still as good as it was at the beginning if not better.”

“Better ‘cause we know each other better. And are closer, it’s more intimate.” Jack can hear the smile in your breathy voice. “You’re just as fucking good, Dr. Abbot.” You know he needs to hear it in a completely different way than he heard it his entire shift.

“Fucking christ,” he groans through a laugh. “You had to go to Dr. Abbot.” You can feel him throb inside of you. Because Jack hasn’t softened, he’s still hard for you. 

“Feeling a little better?” you giggle at him in your blissed out state as he peels himself off of you and stands back up. 

“Oh yeah.” Jack’s still panting a little as he pulls out and helps you stand and stretch, rubs your abdomen where you were bent over. You moan softly when you finally get to see him, eyes roaming to take him in. He’s flushed and sweaty all over, curls are stuck to his forehead and droplets of sweat run down the side of his face and neck. Jack looks so hot like this you can feel a little bit of him start to leak out of you as you grow wetter for him. He knows what he’s doing to you just by the look in your eye and smirks at you, gives you the lightest kiss and keeps his face close so his lips ghost yours as he speaks. “But you know I’m not even close to finished with you.”

I hope it was okay and you enjoyed, I always feel so bad about my smut lol. Thank you as always for reading! I love hearing your thoughts and comments, they give me motivation and inspiration!! Liking, replies and reblogging are always so appreciated! My inbox and DMs are open for thoughts, comments, and general screaming or chatting! 🙂

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because truly, you are something else. jack’s seen you in passing during day shift sign-offs at seven pm, and occasionally walking to the lockers a touch early. reflecting back, while placing the yellow tupperware into his own locker, he thinks he’s even seen you as early as six-thirty in the morning some day, if not most days.

he can’t resist—who told you about his sweet tooth, he’s not actually sure—but he opens up the lid. just like you had told him before you walked away to start your shift, the round chocolate-chip cookies don’t have any sea salt on them, not that he minds.

he bites into one and chews on it while trying to remember what else he knows about you—all that comes to mind is your teary eyes day before last when he yelled at you over something he can’t remember right now.

it hadn’t been that big of a deal—there was a patient presenting with disrupted kidney function and you hadn’t discontinued their nsaids on your initial evaluation. the solution, usually, is a stern conversation and to inform you for next time. no ibuprofen for the guy with bad kidneys, something you would have figured out in the next hour even if they hadn’t immediately caught it.

but for some reason (he knows the reason, he thinks grimly) he had yelled instead. raised his voice, caused a scene. every nurse nearby had looked up and started whispering—and he knows how the gossip goes in this place.

even ellis had intervened and dragged you away, glancing back to give him a look something akin to what the fuck, man? 

because he doesn’t yell—it’s not hardwired in him to do so. he was raised in a loud house but he’d almost looked to avoid it everywhere he went, trying his hardest to not become like his father in that way. 

the realization that he never yelled when his wife was still alive hits him like a slap to the face every time. he can’t help it, and he’s sure everyone justifies it for him. even when he’d yelled at you and you’d stood in front of him like a kicked, teary-eyed puppy, he hadn’t realized he’d done it again—taken out his frustration on the nearest thing. he’s sure that parker’s with you in some corner, telling you how he usually never yells and it’s his week from hell and you’ll see the real abbot next week. 

that doesn’t take away from the fact that he made you cry, though. 

nor does it erase the fact that you made him cookies. quite frankly, delicious cookies. maybe the best ones he’s ever had. soft and chewy and made with semisweet chocolate chips. before he realizes it, it’s seven pm sharp and he’s eaten the whole thing, shoving his go-bag into the locker carefully on top of the container you gave him and going out to join you for sign-offs.

and he doesn’t realize it either, not until you stare at him for a moment too long, garnering a cough from mckay as she tries to tell you about the patients from the chairs, the ones that you’ll be following up on and taking care of for the rest of the evening. 

there’s chocolate smudged on his fingers, and he’s licking it off, trying to pay attention to robby—who looks at him confused, and then glances at you, and turns back to jack almost… knowingly—while you’re paying attention to him.

and jack, well, everyone knows about jack’s staring thing. they call it just that—he has a problem with overdoing eye contact. he doesn’t know when he picked it up, though he’s sure it’s another one of those military attributes he pretends he doesn’t have. what he does know is that he’s always been able to tell when someone’s looking at him, like you are now.

jack turns his head just to look in your direction for a moment and he finds you already facing in his direction. your gaze quickly goes from his eyes to his fingers and then back to cassie, and he doesn’t have to be near you to know that you’re flushed.

then he stops himself—he doesn’t have any business digging around in your thoughts, wondering what exactly made you look away, was it the fact that he turned to look or that he already knew you were staring—and for the first time all night, he tries to pay attention to robby.

fuck. is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of your time on nights? resisting the urge to turn and lock eyes with you, to make sure you’re there and make sure you’re looking, even when he knows you are? 

no, no. he’s not that guy. he’s not the guy who obsesses over the nice, pretty intern and accepts her cookies when he’s the one who made her cry to begin with. 

you have a place in this hospital, and it’s to learn and grow and better yourself under his guidance, not stay nestled in his thoughts that linger somewhere between inappropriate and really inappropriate.

no, what jack wants to do is get you alone somewhere quiet so he can apologize, and make sure that you believe him. 

rarely does jack abbot get what he wants.

you’re talking with mckay still, going on about something at a mile a minute, in more of a carefree tone that he’s never been on the receiving side of. every time he’d spoken to you the previous week, he’d been angry and you’d been dejected. it’s not how teaching is supposed to be, especially not jack’s teaching. he’s always been proud of how he treats residents, how they flourish under him, how they end up liking nights like john and parker did. 

he catches the ending half of your conversation with cassie.

“-but the recipe doubles really, really easily, so if you make them and you feel like you want more, because, i mean, i made them for a bake sale once-”

“and it’s always a crowd pleaser?” cassie asks, tilting her head at you, looking as focused as jack has ever seen her. he doesn’t know the context, though he’s sure it has something to do with harrison and his school. 

you, on the other hand, are completely engrossed in the conversation. as though cassie’s son and his school’s bake sale are the most important things on the planet.

“always! it’s so good. but just make a test batch—it’s so easy. half the recipe, try it out, and then if you like it, you can use the extras to let people try it before they buy it-” you’re interrupted, parker calls out your name somewhere in the distance.

the day shift has began to filter out. robby pats jack’s shoulder firmly before muttering i’m outta here, but jack stands frozen in place, wanting for some reason, to hear the end of your conversation.

he didn’t know people could be so passionate about baked goods—but he guesses it makes sense. for you, that is.

“actually, that’s not a bad idea. you sent me the recipe already?”

“yes, i texted it. but i can email it if you want, or i-”

jack actually laughs—you’re so eager to get cassie this recipe. he thinks you have more energy right now than he’s had all day.

he hears cassie thank you, and he gets a glimpse of you beaming at her, a bright, pretty smile, before the charge nurse calls out his name and his shift really starts. 

shen jumps on with him and he sees you somewhere in the distance, probably running through your game plan for some patient in the chairs with ellis. you smile brightly at her too, and for the first time in a long time, jack has a thought that he deems in the category of uncontrollable. 

he’s a disciplined guy, always has been. thoughts don’t consume him like wildfire, rather they run through a series of checks and balances before he even fully thinks them. last week his system had been all off, leading to you getting yelled at in the first place, and right now, the whole thing seems like it’s gone haywire, focused on one thing in particular.

what does he have to do to get you to smile at him like that?

+

the night shift is a place of routine. jack wants to get you on a trauma with him, wants to show you what he’s like when he’s of sound mind and not thinking about how last week, a couple of years ago, he had the worst day of his life. and then a couple years before that, another worst day of his life. 

he has an overpowering urge to show you what he’s like on a normal week. he can even picture it in his head—handing you gloves and asking you questions that help you run the trauma, to get you in the habit of approaching the cases like he does. the questions are to make you believe in yourself—if you know the answers, you could have run this whole thing by yourself. if you get something wrong or don’t know, he throws in an easier one next time. 

you might be a little worried at first but you’d get the hang of it. and then, after the patient was stable and he got to tell you good job, you’d do it. smile at him, beam up at him like you’ve been doing to the others. the kind that makes your eyes light up, makes little lines crinkle in the corners of your face, lets him see your lips—well, that’s not important.

what is important is that you realize that jack abbot is there to help you, not to make things worse. that’s the side of him he wants you to see.

but unfortunately, the night shift is a place of routine. interns are on chairs, getting every move double-checked by a senior resident. there’s enough hands on the day shift to allow first years to jump on every incoming but nights are not nearly as well distributed.

so, you and jack fall into a routine—you both show up early for your shifts, walk to the lockers together in silence. sometimes you stare and he catches you, and other times you catch him. you think about asking him what he thought about the cookies, or if you can get your tupperware back, but then you stay silent and head out into the chaos.

one day at six forty-five, he sees you looking at him while mel is trying to tell you something that you are decidedly not paying attention to. after he looks your way, you turn back to her and start profusely apologizing.

he turns back to robby, missing half of what he said. 

“you okay?” robby asks, gaze flickering towards jack, and then back at you, somewhere in the distance. jack nods. “how’s she been doing?”

he doesn’t have to say your name for jack to know who he’s talking about.

“fine. good. i haven’t gotten much of a chance to teach her, so-”

“right. teach.” robby says it and looks at jack differently—as if he’s amused. 

“what?” jack snaps, suddenly irritated by the line of questioning.

“nothing. this week’s probably gonna be her last on nights, just so you know.” before jack can respond, robby puts his hands up in defense. “don’t shoot the messenger. apparently we’re supposed to be cycling interns and r-twos so they all get to experience nights. something about equality and fairness. i don’t know but you can read the memo.”

“fairness?” jack grumbles, though it’s mostly to himself. he’s annoyed, and he knows why, and he doesn’t like the reason why. “they used to put us on nights for three months at a time and the only memo i ever got was too bad.” 

“careful, jack,” robby says, a little too sing-songy for his current mood. “you keep talking like that and she’s gonna think you’re an old grump.”

jack glares up at robby, wanting to reply but nothing biting comes to mind. 

“you have a good night, jack,” robby says and jack mutters back a yeah, yeah. he turns to watch robby leave, but somehow, his gaze still ends up back on you, like it always does. it’s harder still throughout the course of the night, nerves somehow taking over him every time he wants to tell you to drop whatever patient’s hand you’re stitching and jump on this trauma with him. 

the vision he’s been chasing, aimlessly at that, seems further and further away as the hours pass each night. your shift is filled with first degree burns and sprained ankles and kind-of, sort-of allergic reactions, when it should be spent by his side, learning everything he has to offer you before you’re back with the day shift.

because that’s why he’s so invested in making sure you’re on a trauma with him—because of how much he has to teach. parker and john haven’t said a bad thing about you, and even the day crew during passing exchanges—nothing besides wondering how you have so much energy at seven am without a cup of coffee in your system. 

that is why he’s so invested—right?

on your last shift of nights for this block, you show up a little extra early. you think you can avoid jack by doing so, but he comes early too, wanting to catch you alone, if just for a moment. 

you walk with your hands filled with more tupperware that he recognizes. the very same containers are sitting on his countertop right now, the contents mostly eaten. he doesn’t want to finish the last of your cookies even though they’ll get stale soon. and why that is, he pretends to not know the answer.

he follows you into the break room at six twenty-five while you open the lids and set out napkins. 

“oh,” you say, surprised when you hear the door click behind you. you didn’t think anyone would have noticed you sneaking in there. “dr. abbot-”

“listen, kid, i need to-” jack’s eyes, without intending to, fall from your confused expression to the table in the room. you have more cookies—maybe snickerdoodle—in the containers. “what’s this for?”

“it’s my last day on nights.”

“so you made cookies?”

“it’s to thank everyone,” you ramble on, like you have to justify the idea to jack. “for being so patient with me. interns are already so annoying and then on top of that when they’re not sleeping. i just thought it would be nice. and there’s no nuts or chocolate so it’s more allergy friendly, you know. i-i’m gonna stop talking now.”

“no-” he says, too quickly, and you look just as confused as ever. your eyebrows knit and your mouth opens a bit and he stares at you, while you stare at him. in fact, jack wishes you wouldn’t look at him like this—cute and confused and too nice for your own good. “no, i mean-” 

what does he mean? what he really wants to say is please don’t stop talking, but all that comes out is—

“that’s…nice. i’m sure they’ll appreciate it. and interns, well, they’re supposed to be annoying. that’s how you learn.” jack pauses, thinking he’s done well, that this is a good place to stop. “not that you’re annoying, that’s not what i-”

“thank you, dr. abbot,” you supply, smiling at him. and god, if it isn’t exactly how he thought it’d be—your bright smile feels like it sends a halo of warmth over the person you’re looking at, and this time, it’s lucky him. your face changes too, the confusion and concern melt away and are replaced with sheer joy, like you’re thankful for every bumbling word in a fairly awkward conversation. 

he’s never been like this, he thinks, or maybe the confidence that surged through him during every trauma had nestled somewhere permanently, constantly hitched along into his real life. he’s never considered himself a don juan but he’s not a stranger to women either—and he certainly doesn’t stutter through sentences and backtrack because he’s worried he’s offended you. that doesn’t happen to him. it’s never happened to him.

but he supposes, taking in how you smile with your entire face and what else he can do to get you to stay smiling, that there’s a first time for everything.

“you were saying something? when you came in?” you ask.

“yes, uh-” 

damn it. what was he saying? he can’t remember. it’s distracting—you, the cookies, your radiant smile, all of it. especially when he thinks about a week ago today, when you were standing in front of him with your wet eyes and wobbly chin, when he was angry about something he can’t even piece together right now. right—the apology. 

“i just wanted to apologize for my behavior last week. i-i hope you-”

but before he can finish the sentence the door opens. it’s dana.

“jack, robby’s asking for you. three incoming mvc’s and mckay left early for something with her son and no one else is here yet, and-” she stops, glancing between you, jack, and the cookies on the table. “hey, kid. you jumping in?” 

you glance to jack when dana asks that, big eyes staring at him for permission. you really shouldn’t have done that, because he thinks you’re only making all the rest of this much worse, whatever he’s been pushing down and burying for the last week that seems determined to hit the surface today. 

“tell him we’re coming,” jack says, and though he had more to say to you, he has to stop for now. on the walk to the trauma bay, jack recaps how he runs through traumas with you. he ties your gown while you pull gloves in his size, and then the ones in your size.

when you hand him the gloves, he gets a look into your eyes—pretty, nervous, excited. in that order.

“what do we have?” jack asks, and trail behind him momentarily, taking a big breath before walking out and following him into the trauma bay. robby jumps on the first ambulance with heather and leaves the second to you and jack. you see frank and mel walking towards the third one, still driving up.

the paramedic starts rattling off the vitals and the patient keeps speaking over him, thrashing up and trying to crane her neck despite the c-spine collar wrapped around it. 

you know what you’re trained to do in these situations—listen to ems, treat the patient, figure out what she keeps interrupting for after you’re positive that she’s not going to die on your table. but some part of you just can’t let it sit like that. you can’t stand when someone thinks you’ve ignored a part of their sentence, much less ignore them entirely.

“wait, wait,” you tell the paramedic as they’re wheeling the gurney into one of the trauma rooms. all around you, the nurses have started their work, setting up iv’s and rolling in portable x-rays. they set aside blood and wait by the phone to call for the surgical consult or to clear up ct as soon as you and jack decide the patient needs one.

“excuse me?” he replies, turning to look at jack with an expression that asks are we listening to her? and even jack looks at you a little confused while you get closer to the patient, until you’re in her line of sight and she stops moving so much. the noise around you will never fully go quiet, but it dims down for thirty seconds.

“you have to stop moving so much, ma’am. what are you trying to say?”

“i really think we should-” the paramedic interjects, but you snap your head towards him, trying to figure out how to say shut up without really saying it.

“can you please, just give me a second?”

“my daughter, my daughter, she’s hurt, please-” she responds, not thrashing anymore, just crying.

jack looks between you and the patient for a moment. this case is surgical—she practically went through the windshield. there’s glass that needs to be removed, a concussion, possibly a chest tube, and an airway if she crashes. 

“you guys need hands in here?” you hear trinity ask from somewhere behind you.

jack knows you have a choice here, and he thinks, for a moment, you’ll tell her to find the daughter while you finish this trauma with him. it’s for your own learning, your education. it’s to show you what the some of the worst outcomes from car accidents look like, things to check for in the future even if your patient looks fine.

“i’m gonna find your daughter, okay? but i need you to stop moving so they can take care of you. because she needs her mom, too.” you turn to santos, and trinity jumps in while you walk out. jack catches one glimpse of you before turning to his patient, laying still and compliant, crying silently. 

an hour later, most of the day shift has gone home. trinity even stops at bed 19 where you’re suturing the little girl’s arm while she drinks a juice box and waits for a head ct in case she has a concussion too. 

“when is it gonna be my turn on nights? abbot is so cool. i put in the chest tube and got to bring her up to surgery.”

you get an uneasy feeling in your chest thinking about someone else on nights with jack in your position—not the yelling, but rather the apology he never got to finish. how sincerely he looked at you when you left to find the daughter instead of finishing up with your patient—maybe it was a mistake. maybe he’ll be upset with you, but it doesn’t matter, since it’s your last shift, anyways.

“and those cookies are fantastic. alright, thanks bubbles. i’ll see you back on days.”

“bubbles? wait, those cookies weren’t for you-” you call out after her, but she walks away without responding. you turn back to the little girl.

“there’s cookies?”

“yes,” you sigh, taking your seat again. her arm is nearly done, just needs a bandage. dad is on his way, the social worker is informed, and someone should be coming over to take over to watch her until ct is ready. “i can give you one after your dad gets here, if he’s okay with it. but for now you have to rest.”

she asks you if her mom is going to be okay, and in truth, you don’t know the answer. you should, but you don’t. you excuse yourself when one of the nurses gets there to monitor her, and try to find parker so you can move onto the next. 

jack must be in another trauma, because you don’t see him anywhere and though you’re not eager to get yelled at again, you do need to finish the conversation from earlier.

and you need your tupperware back.

you end up seeing six patients, getting four of them ready to be sent home and two waiting for beds upstairs and consults that are taking far too long. parker pulls you aside while she chews on one of your snickerdoodles.

“can you do nights more often? these cookies are great, bubbles.” 

“okay, when did this catch on? i know trinity likes her nicknames but this is the first time i’ve heard it. also, what the hell does it even mean?”

parker looks at you with a tilt of her head.

“seriously?”

“bubbles? maybe something like, i don’t know, crybaby, i would have understood.” you pause, hesitating, and then glancing up from the screen you’ve been staring at, your half-assed attempt at a proper note. “wait, how long has she been calling me that?”

“since your first day. but it doesn’t sound like nearly as much of an insult as it used to.”

at least parker will give it to you straight.

“can i ask you something? about dr. abbot?” you don’t know where the surge of confidence comes from, but you think you need to ride the wave to some answers before your shift ends. you glance at your watch while parker does the same. almost midnight.

“i’ll give you five minutes. by the way, he was in the break room if you want to ask him directly.”

“really?

“yeah. shoveling down cookies. you’re gonna give him pre-diabetes.”

“really?” and it’s hard to hide your smile, entire face lighting up. “it’s my favorite recipe. well, second favorite, i guess. my roommate in medical school had a nut allergy so i always made snickerdoodles for her, but those brownies i made for him are probably are my actual favorite-”

parker’s expression changes.

“you made him brownies?”

“yeah?” fuck. “it-it was to apologize. for last week, the nsaids thing.”

“he yelled at you.” she pauses, staring at you a little more quizzically. “he made you cry.”

“he was having a bad week?” you offer sheepishly. 

“right.” another pause. “what was your question?”

“i don’t remember. i’m gonna go see a patient now.” you save the contents of your note and decide to finish it later, during the three am lull with a hot cup of coffee and a cookie if there’s any left.

your question was going to be disguised with a ramble of some sort, asking ellis if she thinks jack abbot is the type to apologize for yelling at her or if there was something else he was going to tell her before those traumas came rolling in.

but lucky for you, you get your answer. four am, in the break room, running a little late on finishing your notes, behind on a schedule that you had invented in your own head. the last patient you saw had been really frightened of the hospital, as well as a language barrier that you had to wait thirty minutes to find a translator for at this hour.

you need a coffee, a cookie, and a computer to finish your notes. and then you need to leave the night shift and not be stuck in the hospital with jack abbot for twelve hours.

though there’s a smile on your face when you open the door, at the very idea that jack liked your snickerdoodles enough to shovel them down, or whatever parker had said. you look up and your smile gets replaced with surprise at the man standing in front of you.

it’s mental beetlejuice, or something. every time you think about him, boom, there he is. facing the counter, pouring black coffee into his steel gray tumbler.

“oh. hi.” how can you be so shocked that he’s in here? it’s four am with no incomings and it’s really not that big of a department. you passed the other two doctors on with you on the walk here—parker at central talking to a nurse and shen at a computer eating a granola bar.

“hey, kid. coffee? just made a pot.”

“yes, please.” you walk over, fetching your yellow mug from the cabinet. you glance at the table—your containers empty save for the crumbs of cinnamon sugar on the bottom. “was gonna have a cookie too. i should have made more.” jack pours you a cup and then hands you the creamer and the sugar. you notice that his own coffee is drunk just black though.

“it’s john, i’m telling you. he’s got a sweet tooth worse than mine. and don’t let parker fool you. i saw her in here three times tonight.” jack takes a seat in one of the chairs, but first he pulls one out for you.

you sit down and smile, laughing at his comment.

“well, she said that you were in here shoveling them down, so, i don’t know who to believe.”

“she said that?” you nod, taking a sip of your sweet coffee.

the coffee in the break room is notorious for being just fine. it’s never great, or even just good, it’s just fuel. but it tastes a lot better today.

“i’m gonna plead the fifth on that one.” 

you laugh again. you look over, realizing there’s one cookie left in the container.

“one left. but you can have it,” you say, the caffeine and this conversation doing wonders for your energy levels. “i had a bunch at home earlier today and i make them all the time, so-”

“nah, kid. we’ll split it.” jack breaks it in half and slides it towards you on a napkin, and you smile at him again—warm, generous, compassionate. 

a lot of big words to describe the smile of a resident he just got to know better this week, but he can’t turn it off. the radar in his head alerting him that the person he’s been thinking about for hours is sitting in front of him now, nibbling on half a cookie.

“that was a nice thing you did, earlier. with the mom and the daughter. she was completely compliant after.”

“i figured. i can’t believe the paramedic didn’t listen to her the whole ride in, though.” you take another sip of coffee before putting your mug down on the table. “not that he did something wrong. i know he was trying to help and they’re trained to focus on the patient and all that. but she was moving around in a c-collar, so i figured-well, i’ll stop rambling. they said the surgery went good so that’s all that matters, i guess.” you go quiet, taking another bite just so you stop yourself from talking too much again.

“both things can be true. he should have listened and he did his job. how’s the daughter?”

“good, good. i gave her stitches and she had some minor cuts. i think the mom thought she was bleeding a lot worse. dad’s with her, so…” 

“you had the chance to jump on the trauma but you left to take care of the kid.” jack doesn’t say it with any sort of tone, presents it to you plainly, like a statement.

“is this the part where you’re gonna yell at me?” you blink up at him, worried again.

“no, no. i just-” he pauses, thinking about his words carefully. he smiles, like he’s about to laugh. “it’s just the sort of thing i can’t teach, so-”

there’s a knock on the door, and you audibly sigh. is it the worst thing in the world to ask for some privacy for five minutes in this place, to be able to finish a conversation with your attending for once?

it’s john.

“incoming. three minutes out. aw, man, are those the last of the cookies?”

you do get to jump on the case with shen and abbot, though the man isn’t in bad condition at all. took a spill on his kid’s toys and bruised his tailbone, but his wife called for an ambulance. he waits for a head ct and x-ray and the room clears out, and you wonder if you’ll get a chance to finish out your conversation with jack abbot.

you don’t.

he stays behind to tell robby something and parker and john usher you out for a celebratory latte—decaf, obviously—to finish your first small taste of nights. you carry your empty containers in the tote bag you brought them in, and realize you didn’t even get a chance to tell him to bring your containers back.

(whether you want the containers or an excuse to talk to him again, you don’t know. it’s a can of worms not worth opening now that nights are done—though you’re sure he must have finished the contents by now. the idea of your yellow tupperware sitting on his counter or his kitchen table, well… it leads your mind to wonder about other things.

what does his place look like? did he sit on his couch with brownies and farmer needs a wife, like you had suggested? what about in his bed? jack doesn’t seem the type to have a television in his bedroom, or the type to eat in bed, though sometimes you’ll make an exception for dessert, and maybe he can be convinced.

and then you cut the entire thought out of your head, because it’s downright unprofessional and you have no business spending time wondering about his bed or his couch or anything else. stupid tupperware. and what’s even worse is going home with the realization you might not get to find out what jack was going to say to you in the break room, either time.)

+

if you ask a hundred emergency room doctors what the worst day of the year is, you’ll get a hundred different answers. halloween, thanksgiving, and new year’s are all up there. 

but jack abbot’s answer has never changed—fourth of july. 

a day littered with sunshine, grilling, and sparklers. to any emergency medicine specialist, it’s more about sun-poisoning, choking on hot dogs, and burn injuries from at-home fireworks. the hospital is flooded with back-to-back traumas, ranging from people passing out at the beach in the afternoon to full body burns by the evening.

you had always predicted the worst part is how a lot of the injuries are on children. they’re the ones left unattended while mom and dad drink themselves silly or let them play with firecrackers on the pavement, assuming they’ll be fine. you’ve done two emergency medicine rotations in school and you think you know what the fourth will be like, that you’ll be unnerved the entire day by the sound of crying children and trying to hold back anger on the irresponsible parents.

but walking through the doors of the hospital on your second week back on days, you realize you really don’t know much. 

like, for example, that jack abbot walks in beside you and mel at six forty-five. you look at him confused, and then turn to mel, who doesn’t match your expression but is also confused, you’re sure. jack is quick by the lockers—takes off his backpack and heads straight back out. 

mel speaks up first.

“i didn’t know dr. abbot does days,” she says, taking off her jacket and folding it neatly. 

“i didn’t either. do you know why?” it’s really an unnecessary question—it shouldn’t matter to you at all. but it does, and you’re terrible at burying things. it’s written all over your face that you want to know the answer why.

“well it’s likely just for overflow. i’m sure they’re expecting double the amount of patients today.”

“right. yeah, that makes sense.” 

“though it is surprising-”

“what is?”

“-that he didn’t take the day off, i suppose.”

“why’s that?” you ask, and mel shrugs.

“fourth of july is a usually tough day for a lot of veterans. when i was at the va hospital, some of the other doctors who had served would stay at home with their families. and the noise from the fireworks, too-”

mel goes on, but you have a hard time paying attention to the rest of her story. one thought washes over you, filling you with enough dread to last all day, making your blood feel icy cold in your veins. jack doesn’t have any family to spend the day with at home, so instead he’s here for the day shift, to help with the extra patients.

“i hadn’t thought about that.” you say quietly. you put your stethoscope around your neck and hold the familiar container in your hands.

“that’s okay, a lot of people don’t. i don’t think i did before my year there. wait, are those more cookies?”

it seems that robby shares some of your dread. you head out with mel, putting the star shaped sugar cookies with red and blue frosting in the break room. during sign-offs you tell parker and john to grab a few—just a few! leave some for the rest of us—before they head home. you smile politely at frank, who seems very concerned with making sure mel knows how hectic this holiday gets in the pitt and ask cassie how that bake sale went.

and then robby pulls you aside, leading you in front of central.

“i brought sugar cookies, i hope that’s okay. is something wrong?” you ask, gauging how robby is looking at you right now.

“yeah, everything’s fine.” he looks around distractedly, or maybe like he’s trying to make sure no one is eavesdropping. “listen, i know you just got back from nights-”

“are you sending me back? to nights?”

“what? no, no, we need you on days. i mean, you just finished nights and you were with abbot for a bit. how’d that go, by the way?”

“dr. abbot?”

“nights.”

“oh,” you say, feeling yourself flush. warmth spreads over you despite how cold it runs in the hospital. flustered, you continue. “it was good. um, busy and i learned a lot.”

“and you got to spend some time working with abbot, right?”

“yeah. some-uh, yes. i did.”

“great. because today is a bit of a weird day for him. he’s not used to days and we get overwhelmed pretty quickly. he’s here to help and it’s always great to have extra hands, especially his hands, but-” you zone out for a moment at the thought of jack’s hands. “-he seems a bit off and i want to make sure he’s doing okay, and he’ll just ignore me if i ask. so if you could—?”

robby trails off and you stare at him blankly, blinking after fifteen seconds of silence.

“if i could what?”

“just, check on him, y’know, throughout the day. just make sure he’s alright. thanks a ton kid, i knew i could count on you.” 

“wait, what-” but then robby is gone, and you’re left at central with dana behind you, handing you a tablet with a patient’s name on it and somewhere to your left is jack, immersed in a conversation with heather. you stare at him, and the he notices you looking, and looks back.

any other day, you’d turn and go straight to your patient, but not today.

today your attending has given you a task—check in on jack. make sure jack’s okay. and you are not the type of person to disappoint your superior.

you walk over to them, smile at both, and then watch as heather excuses herself. had robby told her about the task he’d assigned you?

“hey, kid. don’t tell me—america themed cookies?” 

you shirk under his gaze, the idea that felt very cute last night suddenly seeming exceedingly corny.

“it’s just festive,” you argue. “the frosting is made with blueberries and strawberries instead of food coloring. it’s healthier, i mean, it’s practically like eating fruit.”

“i don’t think you’re winning that argument, but sure, whatever you say. if parker and john left any for the rest of us.”

“i made a bunch this time. i figured there’d be more hands on deck today, i guess.”

(you hadn’t figured that. your logic with doubling the recipe and yielding twice as many cookies was that maybe there’d be some leftover for the night shift to take home with them—specifically one salt and pepper attending who already has two containers of yours at his home. what’s a third?)

“smart. we’ll need them. it’s gonna be a busy day.”

“that’s what i’ve heard,” you look up at jack again with a small smile—trying to disarm him without alerting him of your motive from robby. “how are you feeling, by the way?”

jack knits his eyebrows together.

“how am i feeling?”

“are you okay? do-do you need anything? i can go get you a cookie now, if you want, before they’re all gone. it’s not just the night shift, you know, trinity plows through them. and mel doesn’t have as much of a sweet tooth but since it has the fruit frosting, you know, i think she’ll like them.”

jack looks at you with a twinkle in his eyes, like he’s holding back a laugh, stopping it short at just a smile.

“i’m, i’m fine, kid. and that’s alright, i’ll go get one in a bit.”

“oh. okay. well that’s good.”

“are you okay?”

“yeah, why wouldn’t i be?” you lock eyes with him again.

“no reason. well, maybe we can go get that-”

“dr. abbot?” someone says, and you hold back the groan. it’s getting harder and harder to keep it inside. 

the people in this hospital really don’t want you to finish a conversation with your attending.

“yeah?”

he gets pulled up, and you do too—back to the chairs. it’s the usual residual patients from last night, but as the hours pass, you get more injuries related to the holiday. the allergic reactions and sprained wrists turn into burns from the grill and heat exhaustion. 

you find jack three more times in between seven patients—asking him he’s okay, how his patients are, if he wants that cookie now, or maybe water? all these people are dehydrated, it’s no good if their doctors are too, right? 

the next time you do it, he locks eyes with robby right after. you sneak your way past moving gurneys and crying patients, just to tap his shoulder and check in one last time before you sit down to debride a severe burn, one that’ll have you gone for at least an hour. 

“what the hell did you do, robby?” he asks, while they monitor a man who came in on the ambulance after setting half his body on fire trying to grill hot dogs.

“what do you mean? nothing.”

“that kid has-”

“did you try those cookies? they’re fantastic. no wonder you want her back on nights.”

maybe another two hours later, during a surge of ambulances, you realize you haven’t seen jack in a while. 

you pat your patient on the shoulder—a little girl with her mom who took a spill on the pavement while chasing her sister—and tell them you’ll send the nurse over with their discharge papers, and set out to find jack before sitting down with yet another burn—your tenth or so at least so far today. you close the curtain and look at the chaos in front of you—gurneys lined up against walls, patients crying and the entire place smelling of burnt flesh and salt water. 

dr. abbot is by the trauma bay, organizing patients as they come, and the whole thing feels more like a triage unit than it does an emergency room. 

you see trinity seeing the others from the chairs, heather jumping onto an incoming with robby. mel and frank are in one trauma room and jack is standing in the middle of everything.

is it the best time to ask him how he’s doing? no. that much is clear to anyone with a functioning frontal lobe.

but you are not just anyone, you’re you. you get slightly muddled in the head when it comes to jack abbot, and you definitely are not going to disappoint robby when he put you in charge of checking in on him.

you weave your way through the floor, avoiding nurses walking through with supplies in their hands and telling whoever you were supposed to be checking in with that you’ll be right back.

you dodge two gurneys that almost took your knees out just to get close enough to say his name and for him to hear you. you don’t see the one rolling right behind you.

“dr. abbot, are-” you’re interrupted by the sound of your own yelp, when jack reaches out to clasp his hand around your arm. he yanks you hard, pulling you out of the way, and suddenly, all the noises of the emergency room die down.

you hear the paramedic behind you, apologizing as he wheels the gurney out and back to the ambulance bay. you hear dana shouting from central to you—watch out, kid!—and even the wails coming from the trauma room robby and heather are in—a woman crying. 

but you don’t really hear any of it. your eyes are locked on jack’s hazel ones, his fingers still tight against your bare skin. his hands are softer than you’d imagined.

you blink at him stupidly, mouth falling open a little. you must look as dumb as you feel, almost getting hit by a gurney in the middle of a very busy shift. it’s like intern 101—things to avoid doing, especially in front of your attendings.

but jack doesn’t seem mad. he looks at you with concerned, pretty eyes, a focused expression. and then, at the same time—

“are you okay?” 

you both stare at each other for a while. you must look the equivalent of someone starstruck, staring with sparkling eyes, looking almost as grateful for him as you feel. that gurney would have taken you out of commission—at the very least you’d hit your head and be filling out paperwork under gloria’s watchful eye. 

but you’re fine, save for a large bruise forming on your upper arm with each second that passes by as you continue stare at jack.

“you two!” dana shouts over the other commotion, effectively snapping you out of it. all the noises return at once, making you wince, and what’s worse is that people are staring. “incoming, two minutes out. the rest of you, back to work-”

“come on, kid. you’re with me.”

you most certainly are.

+

at around quarter past eight on the fourth of july, you’re seated across from jack abbot at his favorite twenty-four hour diner. 

well, to be fair, you’re making more assumptions in the thirty minutes you’ve been sitting here with him than you have for the entire time you’ve know him. first—that this is his favorite diner. second—that he’s as interested in you as you are in him. and third—that you’ll finally get to finish the multiple conversations you’ve started with him and been unable to finish due to interruptions.

but there’s no interruptions here. post dinner rush, with a group of teenagers a few tables away and a couple in business clothes eating on the stools by the counter. there’s no nosy residents or gossipy nurses or incoming traumas. it’s just starting to get dark out, and you know the fireworks will start soon.

what you don’t know is if jack is going to be completely okay tonight. you don't care if you’re a temporary distraction from the noise, but you do care if you’ll be enough of a distraction for him.

the two of you order enough food to feed the entirety of the night shift at the hospital right now. the short staffing is the reason why you didn’t sit down to eat until seven forty-five, but it’s fine. as long as you’re here with him now.

you justify it mentally while jack steals one of your french fries—the ones he said he didn’t want half of when you asked—that you just need to finish the conversations from earlier. that it’s not wrong or inherently bad to order half the menu with your attending, one that was responsible for all of your anxiety three weeks ago. 

but staring at him like this, you wonder what you had been so worried about. in fact, over the last few weeks, you’ve realized he’s nothing like what you thought at first. 

“okay, i know this must be sound terrible,” you start, setting down your soda and reaching for another salty fry. “but that was amazing. like, the thrilling kind of amazing. does that make sense?” you stare at jack while you await his response.

“yes, it makes sense,” he says, but he can’t contain the laugh anymore. it comes out from his chest—unadulterated laughter, the rumble taking over his entire body.

“you’re laughing at me?” you ask, though you don’t actually seem upset about it. it’s hard to feel any sort of upset when you’re listening to what may be your new favorite sound in the world.

“no, no, i promise i’m not. you’re just so… you. even on a day like today.”

“what does that mean?” you reply quickly, sitting up straighter in your seat, expression turning deadly serious. “god, i’m so sorry. is that completely insensitive? i know it can be a hard day, i mean, well i didn’t know know. but mel brought it up this morning when we saw you and then robby told me to check on you and i thought i was helping until that stupid gurney almost took me out. but i just meant after that! the traumas and doing them with you. i-i hadn’t done any yet, with you, so i-” 

“when do you breathe?”

“sorry,” you sigh. “it’s a bad habit.”

“don’t apologize to me, please. it’s-” jack goes quiet, his mind searching to fill in the blank but coming up empty. 

it’s nice, he thinks. sweet. refreshing. funny. you’re all of those things and more. you don’t bite your tongue and hold back thoughts. you ramble until he can step into your thoughts completely—see it from your perspective like he’s inside your brain.

and jack—well, jack has friends. army buddies, guys he used to study with during medical school, a couple people from his residency that he stays in touch with. he has robby, though his friendship with him is going to be on thin ice after what he put you up to earlier, and dana. his parents are gone and so are his in-laws but he calls his sister when he really needs to talk about something and he checks in with his wife’s siblings once or twice a year, usually around the anniversary of her death.

(he hadn’t done it a few weeks ago, though, and he has trouble figuring out if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. but then he stares up at you, sipping your drink, patiently waiting for him to finish his sentence, before you, undoubtedly, ask him if he’s okay again. like if he tells you that he’s not—because really, he’s not—that you’ll make it your personal mission to make sure that he is. and that, well, what is he supposed to do with that?)

luckily the waitress interrupts the silence with the rest of the food—grilled cheese and waffles and whatever else sounded appealing in a hunger-driven craze—and he doesn’t have to finish the thought.

you two do talk about other things—how he’s sorry about yelling that week and how you completely didn’t deserve it. you tell him it’s fine and that he had a bad week and that you’re not upset, that it would feel wrong to hold that against him. he tells you about how good the brownies and the cookies were, and you beam at him with that smile again.

the conversations ebbs and flows—how it was nice of you to take care of that woman’s daughter. how great you did in the traumas today. how stupid robby is for asking you to check in on him—don’t listen to him ever again, just, come to me first next time. 

and then once the food is eaten and your drinks run empty, and the sound of fireworks is littering your eardrums, you just say it.

“i don’t think you should be alone tonight.”

“i’ve spent lots of july fourths alone, kid. i’ll be fine.”

he probably will be fine. he has noise cancelling headphones and though his apartment is close to the park where the fireworks are held—an oversight he didn’t think of when he moved in—he can distract himself enough to get through the night. he’s been doing it for years—taking care of himself when it comes to things like this.

“no, i-i know you will be. i just don’t think you should be alone.”

and then, for a split second, the force of your caring, of your affection for him hits him like a blow. it rushes over him—the feeling of how easy it might be to let you take care of him. to let someone else do it for once. reality seeps back in slowly, bringing his senses back one by one.

the first thing it does is remind him that you’re an intern.

“kid,” jack says firmly, sitting up straighter in the booth. he rests his elbows against the table, staring straight at you, boring into your soul like he always does. “i don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“why not?”

“well, for one, i’m your attending.”

“oh, who cares about stuff like that? it’s not like i’m gonna tell anyone,” you reply, as though the words had come to you quickly, like you really believed them. 

as if you’d already put some thought into your response before he’d asked you the question.

you don’t seem the least bit hesitant about basically telling him to spend the night with you—whatever that might mean to you. he doesn’t want to assume things, but it’s been a while since he’s done something like this. he doesn’t know what’s changed in the last decade and he certainly has never done something like this with a resident, much less an intern.

the whole thing is seeming much too bill clinton to him. he wants to express the thought to you, though it doesn’t make much sense—he’s not married and he’s not the president but you’re an intern and he was raised right so it feels wrong—and then he realizes it quickly. are you even old enough to remember that scandal? he shakes his head, as though he can dispel the thought by physically removing it.

“i care about stuff like that. there’s a power imbalance here, and-”

“i’m not even on nights anymore!”

“but you will be on nights again in the future. in a few months from now, when you’re a second year. you’ll do a whole month of nights in third year, too.” 

your lips curve up into a playful smile.

“getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?”

“kid-”

“i said you shouldn’t spend tonight alone. you’re thinking three years ahead. i mean, don’t get me wrong, jack, i’m totally flattered, but i think you should scale it down. one day at a time and all that.” his expression changes and so does yours—it’s the first time you’ve ever called him anything other than dr. abbot. “i’m sorry. is that completely unprofessional? oh my god, am i one of those people? is that harassment?” you whisper the last part, as though you’re worried he’ll leave to report you this instant.

jack wants to bang his head against the table. he thinks, not for the first time and certainly not for the last time about what he’s going to do with you. 

the waitress brings the check and he places his card in her hand before you can so much as glance at it.

“i… i just meant that, i think it’s a bad idea if you spend tonight alone. we can watch a movie or make cookies or whatever you want to do. it’s just-” you trail off, suddenly quiet.

“it’s just what?”

“if we both go home alone, i’m just gonna spend the whole time worrying about you, anyways. might as well worry about you while i’m sitting next to you.” you stare at the table the whole time you say it, and then your gaze flickers up at him before looking back down quickly. “that must sound crazy. i’m sorry-”

“stop apologizing to me, kid.” 

it’s hard on a regular day to resist the urge to listen to everything you say, to comply since he knows how good you are. made of a kind of sweetness that he really doesn’t know the first thing about—how you got to be this way, with an abundance of compassion, enough to make him feel like he’ll explode from the sheer strength of it.

what jack does know is that he wants to find out.

you both get up, and you put on your pullover from what can only be your alma mater, grabbing the containers you’d brought into the break room this morning. he swings on his backpack and you both walk outside. it’s dark now, and you can hear fireworks somewhere in the distance. the noise is loud and uncomfortable even to you, and you briefly wonder how it might sound to jack, and decide again that you really, really don’t want him to be alone tonight.

“listen, kid. i don’t want you to waste your night worrying about me. you should-”

“oh, trust me, it’s not a waste. i have an ulterior motive for wanting to go back to your place,” you say, nodding when jack tilts his head at you in confusion, wondering if he’ll bite.

“yeah? and what’s that?”

“i need my tupperware back.”

+

your back thuds against the wall beside jack abbot’s apartment door. you’ve never been here but you try to blink open your eyes to take it in, to see if it’s just as you thought it’d be while his lips—soft and wanton and kissing you—stay against yours.

it’s stupid—why are you worried about his apartment when your attending is kissing you like you belong to him? but then you remember something frank had once told you during your first week, something about adhd and how all of you probably have it, and then you start giggling against jack abbot’s lips.

his fingertips, which were brushing against the skin of your waist after sneaking under your shirt, tighten around the soft skin there. you can feel them digging in, but stupidly, deliriously, and a little light headed, you wonder if you’ll bruise if he pushes hard enough.

“y’know, kid,” he mumbles against your mouth, pulling away for just a second. his breath is hot against your lips and his touch makes goosebumps rise all over you, makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up tall. “i haven’t done this in a while but if you’re laughing, i must be doing something wrong.”

you should say something, say anything, so he stops talking and keeps kissing you, but nothing comes out besides another laugh. 

“i’m sorry,” you say, trying to catch your breath while jack’s hands hover over your hips. “i-” you glance up to lock eyes again, but when you see the way he’s looking at you, you stop laughing completely. 

“if you’re uncomfortable, we can stop. you don’t have to-”

“no! no, i’m not uncomfortable. i-i’m laughing because this is so funny. you’re my attending and now we’re kissing and i’m in your apartment and it looks, exactly how i pictured it. and you’re so nice to me, but it’s the fourth of july and i want to make sure you’re okay because-” 

jack interrupts you with another kiss, his lips pressing against yours. this time he doesn’t let up, his tongue slipping into your mouth while you collapse against the wall, knees suddenly very weak.

but it’s alright, because jack’s got you. he holds you up by your hips and your legs mindlessly wrap around him, his hands going to your ass to hoist you up and secure you around him. he lifts you up and starts walking, and you whine against him, impatient and fairly comfortable where you were.

it’s like he’s a mind reader.

“our first time is not going to be against a wall,” he mutters, mouth on the column on your neck, tracing kisses from your collarbone to your cheek and then back to your lips. you want to reply, you want to tell him that you would have been perfectly content against that wall, or the door, or the couch, or even the floor, but nothing comes out.

you pull away just for a moment to look at him in the dim light of his bedroom—flushed cheeks, breathing heavy, taking a moment to push a piece of your hair behind your ear before kissing you again. and then with his mouth on yours again, you realize that jack abbot has discovered some way to turn your brain off. 

his touch is rough on your skin—when your scrubs got peeled off of you, you don’t actually know. he throws them somewhere on the ground and you paw at his shirt until he gives in and takes it off. 

it should be slower, he thinks briefly, he should slow down and take his time and not even give in and slip inside of you until you’re already a writhing, aching mess. he’s out of practice but he knows how you are, knows what would make you fall apart piece by piece.

that’s what he thinks of when your hands go to the button and zipper of his pants. for everything he knows about you, you’re also impatient. and lucky for you, he is too.

jack is out of practice, but it doesn’t mean he’s forgotten everything.

“c’mon, kid,” he breathes against your collarbone, wrestling your hands away from and then pinning them over your head. “be patient.”

“i’ve been patient—!” you whine, but he doesn’t give in just yet.

“it’ll hurt, sweetheart. i have to stretch you out first,” he says, and you feel dizzy with lust. it washes over you and makes you dumb, and you, for everything you are, are not a dumb girl. at least—not normally.

jack skips the teasing this time, trailing fingers down your chest, between the valley of your breasts and over your stomach. when he gets to your leaking cunt, he collects the wetness there with two fingers, and when you start whining again, impatient and antsy and your entire body humming with want, he does it again.

reminds you to be patient, and then plunges a finger inside of you. a moan leaves your throat—choked and loud, but he wants you to be even louder. you don’t know when he adds a second, and then a third, but you feel the delicious stretch of your walls, how his palm stays in place for you to grind up against. your hips buck up and you’re ruining his sheets and crying for more though you don’t even know what you’re asking for.

and jack takes it all in. how wet you feel against his fingers, how beautiful the noises that you’re making are. so focused on you—the sheen of sweat on your skin and how responsive you are to his touch, the noises outside his walls get drowned out. 

“jack, jack, more—” you plead, but jack doesn’t listen. everything in your body feels ready to finish. your muscles ache, the knot in your belly tightens, and heat washes over you while your toes curl in anticipation.

and then jack just stops.

“no—” you whine, the rush disappearing all at once. “no, no, jack!”

“patience, kid.”

“you’re being unfair-”

“no, i’m not.”

“then why’d you-”

“because the first time i make you finish is going to be when i’m inside of you. understood?”

and for once, you’re silent.

+

“i would have gone to the roof, probably.”

you blink open your sleepy eyes. you’re pressed against jack’s chest, your head resting there while he trails his fingers through your hair. you’re wearing his shirt, sleeping in his sheets, a cup of water that he got you from his kitchen resting on the nightstand.

you can’t feel your legs, but that’s a problem for tomorrow—but at least you know now that you might have bitten off more than you can chew. 

“what do you mean?” you ask quietly. the fireworks stopped an hour or so ago, and the only noise you hear now is jack’s heartbeat thudding against your ear.

“the rooftop, at the hospital. i go there after my shifts sometimes.” 

a lot of the time—but you don’t need to know that. from the way you immediately sit up in bed, his sheets slipping a little and exposing more of your soft skin that you don’t seem to care about, he can tell you’re concerned already. 

his shirt looks good on you. 

“tell me it’s just for fresh air?” you ask, reaching your hand over to run your fingers through the hair near his temple. his eyes close when feels your touch there, and suddenly, it feels more intimate than it has all evening. jack takes a deep breath, and then sighs.

“something like that.”

“jack-”

“it’s just… i don’t know. i got used to it, i guess. at first it was just to see what it felt like being up there. then it just turned into something else. i go up there after a bad shift and look at all the people below and… decide if it’s still worth it, i guess.” his hazel eyes look towards you and jack nestles himself more comfortably against your hand that hasn’t left him. 

“what’s gonna happen if you decide it’s not worth it one day?” you ask quietly, wet eyes sparkling up at him.

teary-eyed and flushed in his bed, all for him. you feel your emotions so strongly that he can watch them flooding your body, taking their course, almost sense them radiating from you. 

that’s the second time you’ve cried because of him, and he decides he’s not going to let it happen a third time.

he takes the hand that you had extended against him into his own and presses a kiss against your palm. 

“i don’t think i have to worry about that anymore.”

+

you get back to your apartment around four in the afternoon—you have a rare day off today. jack’s back on the night shift at seven, and though he offered to let you stay the night while he was gone, you wanted to give him time to get ready before going into the hospital. everyone has a pre-shift routine, even if they don’t recognize it. 

now that you’re back on days, yours consists of waking up early to stretch and eat a big breakfast and leave enough time lay in bed for an extra ten minutes before you actually have to get up.

you don’t know what jack’s is but you’re sure you’ll find out soon enough. 

the two of you slept in, courtesy of his black out curtains. you’re more of a get up with the sun person, but exceptions can be made.

(you’ll be making a lot of them from now on. jack abbot made you cum three times in his bed and once in the shower, and then he washed your body with his soap, the one you can still smell on your skin now. he kissed you while making you breakfast—eggs and bacon—and then told you to stop apologizing every time you accidentally hit your foot against his prosthetic under his dining table. and finally, he gave you one of your containers to take back home, and said he’s keeping the other one here. why? you’d asked. insurance, he’d replied.)

so you go back home, make dinner for yourself and wash your singular yellow tupperware and text jack to have a good shift tonight. 

you set an alarm for five, get out of bed at five-fifteen and get ready for work, more giddy for a shift than you have been since your first day of intern year.

when you walk into the hospital, early like always, you see jack talking to parker. he looks in your direction and even parker can notice his gaze following something, but she doesn’t say anything. you look away before smiling to yourself, the grin being glued to your face the entire walk to the lockers as you recall memories of the last time you saw jack.

one of the perks of always being early is that there’s no one by the lockers when you arrive.

(you’ve never thought of it as a perk until now though.)

jack walks in behind you a few minutes later—right as you’ve tucked away your pullover and your bag and he stands beside you as you reach to pick up your stethoscope. 

“ah, hold on,” he says, taking the stethoscope of your hand and into his. he loops it around your neck carefully, setting it in place for you. “there you go.”

“really?” you ask with a laugh, closing the door to your locker. “when you walked in here i thought i was gonna get a kiss. wait, what did you tell parker-”

“c’mon, kid,” jack says, looking at you with an expression you’re not sure you could ever get tired of. “i’m not that obvious.” you stare at him. “yeah, okay. i told her to go finish the note from the last trauma.”

“lucky for you, i’m your best resident. these other chums don’t show up until much closer to seven. actually, one time, santos came five minutes late. so-”

and for the second time, jack interrupts you with a kiss. he leans in, pressing his lips against yours, and your hands go slack by your side. his mouth tastes like coffee and even after a twelve hour shift he still smells like jack, the way his sheets and his soap and his shirt had smelled when you wore it.

he pulls away, and your eyes blink open slowly, like you’re figuring out where you are. fluorescent lights and the smell of the alcohol wipes they use to clean everything lingers around you.

and, of course, your attending, the one who sneaks into the locker rooms before shift change to give you secret and likely highly forbidden kisses.

“my lips are sticky,” jack says, bringing a finger to his mouth and rubbing it against another. you can’t bear to look at his hands right now, so you look away, at the risk of being useless for at least the next hour.

“it’s this lip peptide thingy. i don’t know, it’s good for them, i think. better than chapstick and they have all these flavors. they say it-” you trail off, staring at jack while he stares at you. he licks his lips.

“tastes good, kid. see you out there.”

oh god. you lean against your locker and watch jack leave. a minute later, mel walks in with trinity.

“i don’t want to hear it, bubbles. i’m here extra early, and not just to prove a point-”

“well, actually, i think it is to prove a point, but not-”

“what’s wrong? did the cat finally get your tongue?”

“i never understood what that meant-”

oh god. it’s going to be a long shift.

and outside the lockers, robby finds jack.

“so?” robby asks, leaning against the counter while jack sorts through tablets. he hands one to parker and then another to john, and they go off to pass on their patients to everyone arriving. 

“am i supposed to know what you’re talking about?” jack replies, noticing you from the corner of his eye. 

you’re coming out with santos and king, a water bottle in your hand. he had filled it for you before you left his apartment, after you’d refused his offer of walking you home. you look in his direction, and then you both look away at the same time. jack picks up his coffee cup to take another sip—if he doesn’t get the taste of you and your lip peptide thingy out of his mouth, he’s going to have a freudian slip in front of robby.

“i’m talking about you and the kid.” jack sputters, choking on his drink mid-swallow. “woah. you okay?”

“f-fine. uh, what? me and the kid?”

“yeah. since the fourth, you know, are you two good again?” 

robby looks at him expectantly, waiting for him to fill in the silence with an answer. 

“uh, yes. yeah, of course.”

“good. that was my goal. she started on nights at a bad time, and uh, i mean no one blames you. but we don't want to scare away all our interns, either.”

“right.” jack looks back at robby. “anything else?”

“no.” robby arches a brow at him. “you sure you’re okay? because she’s back on nights soon, and i don’t want-”

“i’m good, robby.” 

“alright then. where are we with sign-offs?”

you on the day shift is something manageable. something he can handle, something that shouldn’t be too terrible for you two to figure out. you always come early and he always stays a little late, and he’s sure that it won’t look suspicious. 

if you’re on days, then he’s not the one primarily in charge of your post-graduate medical education. that falls to robby and heather and frank, and he can trust that none of them are going to accidentally interfere with you learning everything you need to learn to be a good resident. 

to be a great resident—because he knows you have it in you. you’re made of the stuff it takes to be teaching other interns one day—compassion and kindness and how to treat the person while you’re fixing the patient. 

robby and heather and frank can help you with that. but if you’re on nights, it’s an entirely different ball game. he’s responsible for your education, for approving your notes and questioning your decisions and making you jump onto incoming traumas and justify every choice you make. he’s also responsible for correcting you when you’ve made a mistake. making you drink a cup of coffee if he thinks you’re getting tired. waking you up if you fall asleep at your desk at three in the morning.

and that’s just the problem. for the first time, jack abbot wonders if he can do all of those things if you’re the intern he has to do them to. 

for god’s sake—he couldn’t even wake you up to ask how you wanted your eggs. 

that’s the conundrum he’s facing when you come back home that night, near seven thirty. he’s off tonight and back tomorrow night, which means he gets about eleven or so hours with you until you leave tomorrow morning.

“hi,” you breathe, when he opens the door to let you inside. you’re clad in your pullover and you drop your bag by the front door when you come inside. “it feels weird to not go straight home.”

“oh, sweetheart, you could have gone home. i could have met you there-”

“no, no, it’s okay. i have a noisy neighbor and, well-” you drift off, smiling up at him the way you usually do.

“well?”

“i’d rather wear your clothes anyways.” 

what’s he supposed to do when you say things like that? a couple of words that make him happier than he’s felt in years, lifting the storm cloud that’s been following him around since the conversation with robby this morning. 

but it’s an important conversation, one that needs to be had. jack is a lot of things, but he is absolutely not a meddler in the lives of pretty interns or in the business of hindering their education.

“did, uh, robby say anything to you today?”

“jack,” you start slowly, turning on the couch to face him completely. “he’s not a mind-reader, you know.”

“no, i know. i just meant—well, did he?”

“no. he was normal. he even apologized for giving me side quests on an already busy day.”

“oh. that’s good.” 

you bring your hand to his hair again, running your fingers through it. it’s almost an instinct to him now—jack closes his eyes for a moment and you watch his shoulders relax.

“what’s wrong? what’re you thinking about?” his pretty hazel eyes meet yours.

“i just want us to be careful-”

“hey, you’re the one who kissed me this morning-”

“i know, i know. i need to be careful, too. i don’t want-”

“i understand. i wouldn’t want everyone knowing i’m screwing the intern either. it’s kind of a cliche, honestly, we’re no better than-”

“what? no, no. i don’t want anyone to say anything that could hurt you, or for this to interfere with your education. it is a cliche, and i know you’re close with the others and people can act very differently when they think that-”

“jack,” you start, moving yourself closer until you can crawl into his lap. his eyes flick over you, settling to watch your lips before he locks eyes again.

“yeah?” he asks, his throat dry.

“in five minutes, i’m going to be wet and naked in your shower. you can either keep talking about this or you can come join me.” then you lean in to press a kiss to his cheek. “c’mon, i wanna hear all about how you spend your days off, old man.” 

and then you get up, peeling off your sweatshirt, and then your shirt, and leaving him a trail of your clothes that ends with your panties on his bathroom tile. 

jack is a lot of things. but stupid isn’t one of them—so he follows you in there and leaves the rest of the conversation for another day.

but that day doesn’t end up coming that quickly.

as it turns out, interns on day shift barely get to spend time with their attendings from the night shift. on top of that, he has no idea how anyone manages to have an affair with a resident—they’re at the hospital every single day, pulling eighty hour weeks and coming home, if jack is even at home, completely exhausted.

but he also learns that glimpses of you at shift change and sign-offs at seven am and seven pm are enough to sustain the two of you. 

it starts with conversations in the locker room before your shift starts. he makes sure his residents are distracted before sneaking away to get a kiss or two and leaning against the metal lockers like a lovesick high schooler.

“you know that patient i was telling you about yesterday? with the bleeder? well, i came to change my scrubs and trin was grabbing something and she saw me and asked if i was mauled by a bear.”

“oh, god,” jacks says from his position, watching you do the same thing you do every morning. put away your hoodie, grab your protein bar for later, tell him whatever you’ve been thinking about since he left you yesterday night. “what’d you tell her?”

you smile.

“something like that.” you laugh, so then jack laughs.

“that’s a little dramatic, no?”

“i also told her i’m clumsy, but i think she’s come to the conclusion that i’m a sex freak.” you close your locker, facing your boyfriend-slash-attending.

“well, i mean-”

“shut up. do not-” you start with another laugh, but your smile fades when you see mel walking in with frank.

“uh, make sure to check that with ellis, alright?”

“yes, i will, dr. abbot.” jack leaves, smiling politely at frank and mel and turning back to look at you once. he really shouldn’t but he’s gotten in a bad habit of it, even though one day, someone is going to notice.

“did you just tell abbot to ‘shut up’?” frank questions, and they both look at you, waiting for your answer.

“no! no, of course not. i was just telling him about something a patient said and, um, dr. ellis wants to document it. yeah, she wants, like, really thorough notes, so he was just telling me. about that. um-”

mel looks at you thoughtfully, before bringing her hand to frank’s arm.

“i have noticed that she writes her patient encounters in a very specific format,” she says, and you sigh without realizing it. you let her carry the conversation into how frank’s notes could use some work, and then the two tease each other while you quietly make your exit.

+

another morning, jack stands at central with dana and robby, filling both of them in on two patients who are due to come back in the afternoon and the three patients still waiting for a bed upstairs.

heather and frank are bickering next to the three of them like they always do, like they’re siblings fighting in front of the parents, when he hears what they’re talking about.

“well, now i feel bad, ‘cause she’s mel’s friend, but i don’t even have that kind of energy after two red bulls, so-” frank starts, before heather interjects.

“it’s not about energy, it’s just a conversation about burn-out. candles don’t burn on both ends for a reason.”

“okay, you lost me with the metaphor.”

“you can’t be that nice to every patient forever. at some point you have to pick.”

“be nice or save their life?” frank supplies. “so basically, when is she gonna become like the rest of us?”

“i mean…” heather trails off, turning to dana. “what do you think?”

“i think they call her bubbles for a reason,” dana says, pushing up her glasses. she cranes her neck to stare at the screen of patients, looking for the next empty bed. “and i think north-two needs to be discharged, so if you two are done-”

“let me test our theory,” frank says. he waves over the lot of you coming in for your shift—you, cassie, mel, and trinity. you look over at jack, and he looks over at you, before you focus back on frank. “need someone to discharge this bed and then go grab the next patient from chairs. dana—?” he holds the clipboard and looks over at all of you, but it’s only half a second before you chirp up.

“i can do it,” you say brightly. you smile at frank and dana, reaching for the clipboard, while jack watches it happen.

“thanks bubbles,” trinity says, while the others dissipate. you make a slightly dampened face at the use of the nickname.

“one other thing,” heather asks. “when are we gonna get more cookies?”

“oh! i’m so glad you guys liked them. i guess another holiday, if there’s one coming up? or someone’s birthday? actually, i think there’s just labor day and i don’t know what kind of themed cookies i’d make. well, chocolate chip cookie day is in august, i think-”

“kid?” dana asks. “the patient? north-two?”

“right. i’m sorry. i’ll come check in after i bring the new patient back,” you say, still smiling when you walk away with the clipboard in your hand.

“what exactly were you testing?” heather asks.

“i don’t know, but she’s definitely doing whatever your metaphor meant. are we taking bets yet? i wonder how long she’ll last-”

“alright, enough,” jack snaps. “do you two not have anything better to do? who’s this helping?”

“jack?” robby questions, his eyes flicking towards dana, who looks back at him with a shrug.

“why would you want her to be jaded? isn’t it better for our patients that she stays like that for as long as she can? i thought you’d try to keep her that way, but i guess-”

“jack-” robby interrupts. 

“you two, go help somebody,” dana says to heather and frank, before turning to jack. “what the hell was that about?” 

jack sighs, not realizing when his hand had turned into a fist. probably when your name was brought up.

“nothing, i just- bad night. that’s all.”

“o-kay,” robby whistles. “you going up to the roof, or?”

“no. no, i’m going home.”

jack walks away, not in the direction of the door, but rather towards the beds on the north side, almost instinctively.

“what the hell’s wrong with him?” dana asks.

“i don’t know. since when does he just go straight home after a bad shift?”

“i have no idea.”

(that night at six-fifty, trinity pulls you aside before you two head home. you’re antsy since you want to get a couple of quiet minutes with jack before you have to leave, but when she starts talking, you forget all about it. listen, trin says, i’m sorry about the whole bubbles thing, i didn’t think it was bothering you. but collins told me that abbot was yelling at them about it and he was pretty upset, so i- but sadly, you don’t hear much of the rest of the conversation.)

you walk away from her after she finishes, reassuring her that you’re fine, before setting out to find jack. he’s putting his backpack under the desk at the hub, and you go straight to him, not entirely caring that people can see the two of you, supposing it’s fine as long as they don’t hear you.

“what’s the matter?” jack asks, and then much quieter—”everything okay, sweetheart?”

“you defended me?” you ask softly. you’re normally full of words but it feels hard to find them just now, your head feeling cloudy. 

“no, no, i just told them to knock it off.”

“was it something bad?” you question, your expression knitting into worry. 

this is exactly why he got upset—why he didn’t like their conversation from the jump, why he knew that he wanted frank and heather to stop talking before someone else overheard and jumped in and you found out what they were saying.

it’s not bad, even you wouldn’t think it’s bad. but jack doesn’t like it. he doesn’t like anyone speaking of you in any way that he doesn’t like and he especially hates the idea that you’d be upset when you found out. 

“no. i just-” jack trails off.

“you just?”

“i don’t like anyone talking about you. and i don’t like that stupid nickname, so-”

you smile at him, not the sort of innocent smile one casts at their attending—the result of being told good job on a case or have a good night on your way out. no, you smile at jack the way you do everything—with the full force of every emotion behind it, wearing your heart on your sleeve. 

and jack couldn’t look away from you, even if he wanted to.

(the two of you look like idiots—googly eyed and lovestruck and every other way to describe people who like each other a bit too much. this time it’s dana who sees the two of you. she does a double take on her way to hand a stack of tablets to the night shift charge nurse and blinks twice to make sure she’s seeing the right thing. jack abbot, a regular on the roof, and the intern who they call bubbles, looking at each other like the rest of the hospital has faded away into nothing. and then she walks away, and decides she’ll wait for robby to bring it up.)

+

it’s mel next—she’s incredibly observant as it is, but even more so when it comes to someone she considers a friend, someone like you. trinity jokes about the continual bear attacks that explain the hickies on your neck and chest when you change out of your scrub top and pull on your hoodie, but mel knows it’s more than that.

she’s always known you get to work early, but recently, every time mel comes in to put away her belongings, the space that you usually occupy is already empty. your things put away, locker closed and locked, your yellow water bottle already resting by the computer that you usually write your notes at. 

and after that, it’s just a game of paying slightly closer attention. you walk out from behind a curtained bed and come say hi to mel, ask her how her evening was, how becca is doing. but when mel glances up at the screen to see what patient you were with behind that curtain, it’s empty.

that bed was empty. and well, mel’s not much of an detective (though she has her moments), but it’s worth a shot. waste a few minutes, stare at that curtain to see if she can figure out what, or rather who is behind it. she’s almost about to call it quits, frank was running late but he’s here now and there’s an incoming so she should start moving and then—

dr. abbot comes out from behind that same curtain. he leaves it open, comes to the hub, smiles politely at mel and tells her to have a good day, dr. king, and then he walks away.

more specifically, he walks in your direction. the back of his head moves slightly in your direction. you beam at the tablet in your hands. and then—

“mel? you okay?” frank asks, and she’s snapped out of it.

(she could have figured it out ages ago, she thinks afterward, reflecting on how dr. abbot never used to tell anyone to have a good day or hum while finalizing notes or look up and smile in your general direction before looking back down at whatever’s in his hands. the first time she met him, she thought he was the type of person you categorize in the debbie downer sort of group, whereas from the moment she met you, you were clearly more of a chatty cathy. but you’re her friend. and when she had told you about her feelings for frank, you had listened and supported her and never made her feel that it was anything less than okay.)

so the next time she sees you at seven am, already out by your computer or walking back from around an empty corner, when she notices dr. abbot trailing behind you, she doesn’t say anything. when dr. abbot hangs around late finishing up a trauma and you go ask him for his opinion on whatever patient you’re seeing, even when robby is free just over there, she doesn’t say anything.

even when frank brings it up over dinner with her and becca, a side conversation while they eat spaghetti—you noticed anything different with abbot recently?—she doesn’t say anything. 

in fact, the closest she gets to saying anything is when dr. abbot comes in early—maybe around five-thirty one evening—because they’re getting swamped and heather and cassie have the flu and it’s been a terrible mess of a day.

you and mel have been running around the entire shift, barely stopping to drink water or eat something. when jack shows up and flocks straight to you and leans in to tell you something, your hand moves to touch his arm for half a second before you remember where you are and put it down. jack pulls out a granola bar from his pocket and leaves you with it to jump on the next incoming.

mel watches the encounter and puts her head down when you look her way, pretending that she’s drinking her water and staring at a tablet. when she looks up, you’re gone in another direction, but dana stares at mel, both with an understanding of what they just saw.

and then they go on with their shift.

+

it all comes crashing down, just as it had the first time, after a particularly terrible night shift. it’s always hard when someone dies in the first few hours, leaves a horrible, bitter taste in his mouth that makes him want to walk outside and not come back in. 

it’s even worse when he knows he did everything he could, that there was no way this patient was making it off the table. that the devastated husband and the crying kids were completely unavoidable, that he still has to go back and jump on the next case and start fresh and try to drown out those noises.

drowning, drowning, drowning. he’s always trying to drown out something. if it’s not the fireworks then it’s the kids sobbing over their dead parent, and if it’s not that, then it’s how he relives his own worst day of my life every time someone’s wife dies in front of him. 

it’s been one of those days. you’re due to start on nights in two shifts from now, and he still has no idea how he’ll manage to be any less obvious when it comes to you.

(the last thing he keeps trying to drown out is how wrong this is. the voice in the back of his head keeps reminding him, seemingly unable to stop, no noise being loud enough to get it to stop repeating itself. you’re still a while away from being a second year, but is that even any better? or is that another excuse he’s invented to stop feeling so guilty about the fact that you sleep in his apartment every night and leave cookies for him on the counter so he has something nice to come home to? jack doesn’t know.)

you show up at six-thirty, smiling sweetly at parker and john, telling them to grab a cookie on their way out. parker asks you why and you tell her just because, and you want five minutes alone with your boyfriend before he leaves.

you’re impatient, always have been and always will be, especially when it comes to any and all matters related to jack abbot. you’re eager to go back on the night shift because you think you’ll be able to appreciate it so much more now—learning under his tutelage, being able to discuss those foreign medical journals he shares with you over coffee at four in the morning rather than through his illegible, scribbled print on post-its and your neat handwriting in the margins. 

you want it all, and you want it now.

so you made more cookies—oatmeal raisin—to make jack’s apartment smell nice, and you pack several of them to have a valid reason to distract the others so you can get those five minutes, maybe ten, in peace.

“hi,” you sing, while jack stands in front of you, tablet in his hand and blood on his shoes. “how was your night?” he doesn’t look up, but you don’t wait for an answer. “i made oatmeal raisin last night and i put some in the break room so i think we have five minutes. i want ten but i won’t be greedy, i mean, we’ll be on nights together soon, so at least that’ll be-”

“we need to talk, kid,” jack says, looking up at you with an expression you don’t recognize.

“what’s wrong ja- dr. abbot?” a nurse walks by just as you start your sentence, changing it mid-way. 

“that,” he says, coming out a bit louder than he meant it to. “that’s what’s wrong.” 

“jack?” you say it quietly. he doesn’t mean it like that—he doesn’t want you to be upset and worried about him when you have a whole shift ahead of you, one that you show up early to with distractions so the two of you can have a few minutes alone.

it’s all of it—it’s the fact that you even have to do things like that to get five minutes alone with him. it’s that you can’t let someone overhear you calling him anything besides dr. abbot.

it’s the realization that you deserve much better than what jack abbot can give you. more than five minutes behind a curtain or a couple minutes in the break room or thirty seconds at central hub before the charge nurse comes in with another incoming. 

“come on,” he says, leading you away for a moment. you have twenty-five minutes before your shift starts and he has two senior residents who can run the show until robby walks in. he leads you to the on-call room, four walls enclosing four beds. surgery has rooms of their own, but sometimes the trauma surgeon on deck will crash in there waiting for the next page, so he checks the room before letting you into it, closing and locking the door behind him.

“i thought you were gonna yell at me. this is so much better,” you say.

your mouth has gotten you into trouble before, especially with dr. abbot. in fact, it’s what got you into this whole thing to begin with, but where you expect jack to laugh in the privacy of this room, he doesn’t.

“kid, we need to have a serious talk about this.”

“about what?”

“this. us.”

“oh, jack, come on-”

“no, i-i’m being serious. this is not okay, it’s not sustainable.”

“you’re upset because we don’t see each other? honey, i start on nights in two days, i think we can make it,” you say, coming in closer to bring your hand to jack’s shoulder. “what’s going on? really?”

“don’t you think that… what i’m doing is wrong? you’re an intern. this is about your education, i-”

“why do you think you’re disrupting my medical education just because you’re my attending? i know i get stupid around you but i promise, i’m not gonna stop paying attention to my patient because you’re standing near me. i am a doctor, you know-”

“kid, i-”

“no, stop. half this hospital is dating each other. robby is heather’s attending and i don’t see you storming them into on-call rooms to debate about his influence on her medical education-”

“that doesn’t even make sense-”

“it doesn’t have to,” you sigh, out of breath and a little winded from how loud you’re being. “we make sense. you and me. we’re good together. a lot of things in this place don’t make sense but we do. people die everyday and i don’t want to die wondering what could have been if i’d just-”

“don’t,” jack interrupts, his hands coming to your waist. they feel tight, like the first time he’d help you like this. he brings his face closer to yours, foreheads almost touching. “don’t say that.”

“oh my god. i am so sorry. that must sound so insensitive, i just meant-”

“stop talking.”

“but i-” 

and this time, he doesn’t give you a choice, pressing his lips against yours quickly. you mumble against else against his mouth, but he can’t make it out, choosing instead to ignore it. like always, jack’s mouth tastes like coffee and you take it in—your boyfriend, your attending, and whatever else jack abbot is to you, kissing you like he’s finally realizing that he belongs to you, just as much as you belong to him. 

jack’s fingertips travel under your scrub top, hands roaming the expanse of your back and then settling onto your waist again while you keep kissing, realizing that when you go back out there, you’ll be flushed and warm and your lips will be swollen.

and then you realize that you don’t care, and you let your body lean against jack’s. he pulls away for a moment, but you don’t let him get the chance to stop, leaning in to resume the kiss, desperate to feel his tongue against yours again. 

jack does pull away finally, holding your jaw with his hand.

“this is so much better,” you mumble again.

“kid, we can’t-”

“yes, we can. we have so much time, jack,” you say, trying your best to sound convincing. 

“it’s seven in the morning,” jack argues, though he doesn’t resist when you pull his navy shirt off and over his head, exposing his chest to you. you run your fingers down the exposed skin, pressing your mouth against his shoulder.

“no it’s not,” you reply, leading hot, open-mouthed kisses from his collarbone to his neck, back up to his lips. “it’s six forty-something.”

“someone’s gonna-”

“no one’s gonna,” you say, smiling in that way that you do, the way that makes it impossible for him to say no. “not unless you stop talking, old man.” 

“oh. that’s how you wanna do this?”

“i’m not doing anything,” you say, pulling off your own scrub top, and then your shoes. 

“you’re gonna kill me, kid,” leaves his mouth as your hands go to the tie of his scrub bottoms, undoing the knot. jack brings his hands to either side of your waist and lifts, bringing you down onto one of the beds with all of his strength, making you squeal as your head hits the pillow. 

he starts with a kiss to your jaw, and then your neck, trailing down between your breasts while he undoes your bra. your hands find his shoulders, gripping him tight while he works his way down, littering your stomach with kisses until he gets to the drawstring of your pants. 

his fingers work on undoing it while you whine, and then try to push yourself to sit up against jack’s weight on top of you.

“oh my god, this is so embarrassing. i didn’t know we were doing all this. i have so many matching sets of underwear for this very occasion and the one day-”

“sweetheart, i love you, but you really need to stop talking right now.”

“you love me?” you repeat back. “you love me. oh my god, i-”

you lean in, lips crashing together hard, until jack moves and he’s on top of you again. he slides off your bottoms first, his fingers dancing around the waistband of your panties—navy blue with lace on the sides and he thinks they’re awfully great so he’s not sure what you were talking about—and then you start giggling. nearly uncontrollable.

“kid, that’s twice now you’ve done that-”

“i’m sorry, i’m sorry jack,” you plead, trying to keep a straight face but being unable to stop laughing. “i can’t believe this is how we’re saying i love you to each other-”

“you’re the one who wanted to date your attending-”

you burst into another fit of giggles, which jack effectively silences by kissing you again.

“one day,” jack starts, tugging your underwear down until it’s discarded somewhere by your feet, or maybe somewhere on the floor next to your clothes. “i’ll get to take my time with you again.”

that sentence leaving jack’s mouth makes your entire body tense up, a flood of want washing over you until you feel loopy. 

you pull him in for another kiss, and you feel him against you, memories of the first time he stretched you out on his fingers running through your mind. you two don’t have enough time for that today, and you both know it, but it still makes your cunt throb with anticipation.

jack lines himself up against you, running his thick tip over your opening, collecting wetness and making pleasure course through your body when he bumps against your clit. it’s electric—like a live wire hitting your nerves and making everything feel like lightening.

your limbs already feel like jelly, and you let jack maneuver your legs up onto his shoulders, watching him while he looks down at where you two are connected. 

he pushes inside and you moan—loudly and unfiltered—feeling that ridiculously amazing stretch again, your toes curling and every muscle tensing. jack leans in to kiss you and swallow the noises you make, but you still think it might not be enough.

when he pushes all the way in, your eyes roll all the way to the back of your head. 

“i’m sorry, kid, we can’t be loud,” he breathes, followed by a groan. he uses his hand to cover your mouth, pulling out and then thrusting back in all at once. the bed creaks as jack starts fucking you with an intense rhythm, the thin wooden frame hitting against the wall repetitively. 

you lock eyes with jack, moaning against his hand, feeling how big he is like it’s the first time all over again. 

every ridge and vein makes you see stars while you focus on how full you feel—full of jack, how you want stay like this forever if he’ll let you—in a tiny on call room with the door locked and people looking for the two of you. 

you repeat it against his palm—jack, jack, jack—while he keeps fucking you with an intensity that makes the coil in your belly keep tightening. he’s so deep inside of you that you’re sure you won’t be able to walk after this, let alone finish your shift, but the thought drifts somewhere far away when he changes the angle slightly. 

jack pushes his hand against your lower belly and thrusts back into you, while your back arches and tries to fight him. maybe you’re trying to get away from how good it feels, that overwhelming sensation that the ground is about to give out beneath the two of you. you stare up at jack through teary eyes, taking in how he looks hovering over you, taking care of you and watching out for you and thinking about you first like he always does. 

and then it happens, the hot sensation in your belly tenses, and then snaps, and it washes over you like a current. you feel it—the ringing in your ears feels like it’s making its way through your entire body and your walls clench and pulse around jack’s girth. 

your eyes snap shut but when they open, you keep looking up at jack, finally forcing his hand away from your mouth. 

“jack,” you get out, your throat dry and sore and lips aching. “i love you too-”

you hear jack groan, a noise that makes your walls flutter, and then you feel it again—jack’s hips stuttering, his grip on you tightening, and then warmth filling you, hot streams of cum coating your walls until it’s leaking out of you. 

you take deep breaths, head hitting the pillow while jack collapses on top of you, and then rolls over until he’s beside you. 

the room is silent besides the two of you breathing, until of course, you speak up.

“i can’t believe this is how we said i love you.”

“you already said that, kid.”

“i know. i just really can’t believe it. i figured it would at least be outside of the hospital, but, i guess that wouldn’t feel right.” 

“sweetheart-”

“am i doing it again? the not knowing when to be quiet thing?”

“no, but i-”

“wait,” you cry out, sitting up immediately. “what time is it? oh my god-”

“don’t worry about that right now. i gotta get you cleaned up before-”

“jack, i have never been late for a shift before.” you sigh dramatically before you keep going. “i just knew it. this relationship is completely affecting my medical education-”

jack shuts you up with a kiss before you can finish the sentence, capturing your laugh against his mouth. 

he starts making half a plan in his head, though what he wants to do is take you home with him right now.

“i think i’m ready for you to be back on nights now.”

“yeah? why’s that?”

“because at least we can sleep next to each other if you-”

“jack!” he hears robby’s voice shouting from the other side of the door, followed by three pounds that rattle the wood. “do not tell me that my intern is in there.”

“fuck,” jack whispers, while you stare at him with wide eyes.

“what should we do?” you mouth, while jack gets up, finding your scrubs and pocketing your underwear while he pulls on his own clothes.

“stay in here,” he tells you quietly. “just take your time.” 

“okay,” you whisper back, leaning in for another kiss with a smile. “i love you.”

“i love you too.”

jack pulls on his shirt and unlocks the door, closing it quickly behind him as he steps out to meet robby on the other side. 

“you’re kidding me, right?”

“i can explain, robby. we-”

“i don’t want to hear it. the on-call room? that’s disgusting, you know.”

“robby, i-”

“go talk to hr before gloria gets on my ass about this.” robby walks away, shaking his head. 

you open the door, poking your head out, and jack turns back to look at you.

“gosh. i sure hope hr doesn't think you’re interfering with my medical education-”

He notices it the first time you work a night shift with him. 

Jack has seen you in action before. Hell, Robby has even sung your praises (a rarity). You have sure hands, follow spot-on gut instincts, and you’re great with the patients. You’ve proved that you’re competent and confident here in the EC. 

However, as soon as Jack steps into any room you’re already in, that sugar-laced smile fades. You stutter, you hesitate, your hands start to tremble. 

Initially, he thought it was because he intimidated you. It wouldn’t be the first time, but usually, if a resident is scared of Jack, they’re downright terrified of Robby who’s known to be hypercritical and harsher in his corrections (a side effect of all the stress he’s under, Jack thinks). 

That doesn’t seem to be the case with you. He’s seen how you act around Robby, professional but relaxed. You grin, high five, and Jack is pretty sure he witnessed a warm, work-appropriate side hug shared after a particularly harrowing shift. 

He comes to the conclusion that this is an issue you have exclusively with Jack, and that doesn’t sit well with him. 

He isn’t angry, just curious. 

Also, he can’t have you freezing up whenever he’s even remotely close by; that’s just not good in this line of work. 

So, in the early morning hours of what Jack knows to be your last shift before you’re off for a few days, he catches your attention and jerks his chin to beckon you over to the nurse’s station. The manner in which you look around and over your shoulders, pointing to yourself in disbelief, makes his lips quirk up on one side. 

Jack mouths the word ‘you’ while nodding and watches as you shuffle toward him with wide eyes. 

“Um, what can I—” you clear your throat, “what can I do for you, Dr. Abbot?”

“You have a second to talk?” he asks, and you swallow, head moving up and down in slow, silent affirmation. “Don’t worry. You’re not in any trouble.”

“Okay, do you… do you wanna talk here, or is it—I mean, is it a closed door conversation, or…?”

Jack just does not understand why you get so timid around him. Why is it you can laugh and joke and work with Robby and Shen, but you can’t with him? What has he done to make you so mousy? 

“Wherever you’re comfortable. We can step outside if you want, or we can stay right here,” he offers. You’re in control here. You have the choice. No wrong answers. 

“Outside?” you half suggest, half ask, and Jack motions for you to lead the way. 

It’s about three AM on a Tuesday morning. Not a whole lot of action right now, but you both know that can change on a dime. 

As soon as the doors slide shut behind him, you look at Jack in concern. “Is everything okay?” 

He crosses his arms over his chest, remembers it could come off as defensive or surly, so he drops them to his sides, except that feels awkward and wrong too. No fucking wonder Robby is always rubbing his face and holding the back of his neck. 

Eventually, Jack settles on sliding his hands into his pockets, relaxes his posture, tries not to look like a soldier standing at attention. 

“I wanted to ask you the same question.” 

You frown, not quite pouty, more like you’re having trouble solving a riddle, so Jack continues before you can catastrophize any further. 

“I get the feeling that I make you nervous sometimes,” all the time, “and I want you to know that you shouldn’t be. Nervous, I mean.”

No longer pinched together, your eyebrows shoot up in surprise, your gaze repeatedly flicking to and away from his face. 

“See, that,” he chuckles, “you look like you just got caught stealing drugs.” Then, in an attempt to ease your discomfort, he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial volume and adds, “have you… been stealing drugs?”

It does not make you laugh. It just makes you shake your head urgently, “no, I’d never—Dr. Abbot, s—”

“Hey, hey, calm down. I was just teasin’, kid,” he tries to reassure you while smiling how he usually does, subtle but amused. 

If he’s being honest, though, the deer in the headlights look is kind of endearing. Unnecessary, but endearing. 

Then, Jack sees that wide eyed stare move down to the slight curve of his mouth and remain there for a few whole seconds, more than enough time for you to see that previously subtle curve lift a little higher on one side until it’s more smirk than smile. 

So, that’s what it is. 

Jack tries to clear it from his face, but it’s kind of impossible, especially when you’re able to detect the mirth dancing in his eyes. 

“I should, uh—ya’ know, actually….” You start backing up toward the sliding doors, “you really don’t make me nervous, Dr. Abbot. I think you just… I mean, no offense, but I think maybe you got the wrong idea.”

A self-conscious laugh, then a little huff when you miss the doors and instead back up into the bricks beside them. 

“Right.” 

Jack moves closer, finding too much enjoyment in your tiny gasp when he reaches out and gives you a nudge to the side before placing his hands lightly on your shoulders. 

He turns you to face the pitt, guides you through the entrance as his footsteps echo directly behind yours. 

“Of course you’re not nervous—why would you be?”

You’re absolutely rigid in front of him, even curl forward a tiny bit when Jack gives your shoulders a gentle squeeze before letting go. 

You pivot to hide your face so fast, he’s surprised you don’t tear a goddamn ligament. 

It all makes sense now, he thinks. 

You’re not nervous; you’re smitten. 

How sweet. 

•

You consider begging Dr. Robby to let you come back to days early. It would be out of line and a little pathetic, but you’d much rather deal with that fallout over the very real threat of dropping dead in a trauma room any time Dr. Abbot so much as looks at you. 

A single glance is enough to make your heart skip a beat, and he is doing a bit more than that now, so you have a feeling that your time is about to be up. 

<< Hey, how many more weeks am I on nights? 

You type up some elaborate story about splattering spaghetti all over your dry erase calendar and having to clean it, wiping away your schedule, but the more details you give, the more suspicious Dr. Robby will get. 

>> Is it not on Teams?

Damn. 

<< Missed the window to change my password, so I’m locked out on my phone. 

That seems believable. 

It takes him a while to get back to you, but you almost wish he hadn’t when you read his response. 

>> You’ve still got another 3 weeks

There’s no way you’ll make it that long. You’ll be a nervous wreck by the time you return to the daylight hours of the EC. 

>> Miss day shift? 

<< Maybe. 

<< Yes. 

You also miss working under an attending who doesn’t make you shake like a chihuahua. 

>> I promise I won’t make you stay any longer than you have to, but Abbot and Shen need the help for now

Just reading his name is enough to make something jump in your stomach. 

Three more weeks of surviving Dr. Jack Abbot as he tries his damndest to kill you. 

And, you don’t even know why he’s doing it. You can understand why he’d want to suss out the reason you get so flustered around him, but now he has it. You know he knows because apparently you are incapable of concealing your feelings or even facial expressions when you see that barely-there smile of his. 

The exact moment—you witnessed the exact fucking moment that he figured it out. God, just thinking about it has you mortified all over again. And, then he held your shoulders and he teased you and you still had to work another four hours without passing out from embarrassment. 

From the very first day, or more accurately, the very first shift change, Dr. Abbot had too much of your attention. Something about his eyes and mouth and the salt and pepper stubble and silver curls and dexterous hands and really everything about him. 

He knows that now—maybe not all the details and areas of focus, but he definitely has the big picture. 

And, it amuses him. Entertains him. It’s almost like it brings him joy to make you squirm a little. 

He isn’t preying on you, you don’t think. It doesn’t feel malicious or coercive. Just inconvenient and confusing and really fucking distracting. 

In the shifts that followed shortly after his little discovery, Dr. Abbot just looked at you longer than he did before. Sometimes you’d see the corners of his eyes crinkle with a smile. Unnerving, but something you could cope with. Mostly. 

Now, he’s getting a little bolder, a little closer. Physically. Will come stand right next to you at the nurse’s station or sit at the computer nearest the one you’re using to chart. He doesn’t stare at you when he inflicts this torture. No, the gazes are always from a distance, probably with the purpose of making the back of your neck burn. Here, when he’s right beside you, he just smirks. You think he might try to hide it, but he’s not very good at it, even laughed once when you’d stood up as soon as he sat down. 

It’s just—it’s just rude. So rude. 

The worst part of it all, though, is that it’s helped steady you. You’ve stopped shaking in exam rooms, rarely stutter when giving reports. It’s like some kind of awful exposure therapy, and while it’s made you a more efficient doctor (still not as good as you are during the day), it leaves you in a constant state of mild discomfort, hot all over for twelve straight hours. 

It can’t get any worse, though. There’s no way that Dr. Abbot, revered and respected and selfless, would push things further. 

He wouldn’t. 

He wouldn’t. 

(He does.) 

•

The praise is genuine. Jack doesn’t say it to get a rise out of you; he wouldn’t do that. 

He’s watching over your shoulder as you prepare to put in a chest tube. Your hands are unwavering, nimble fingers counting ribs and controlled around the scalpel. 

In just a couple weeks your confidence in treatment has risen exponentially. He wishes he didn’t have to torture it out of you, but whatever works, works. 

Plus, it’s not like he’s not having some fun with it. You may be well balanced while performing procedures, but around Jack, you’re still wide eyed and restless. 

It’s cute, your little crush. 

Surprising, a little baffling, but mostly cute. 

Jack has been told that he has an… effect… on some women. More than he would’ve thought, and he still isn’t used to it. Fuck, he’s only just now started to notice it. 

Samira, bless her, was able to break it down for him, said he was a ‘silver fox’. Gray hair, fit, “think Anderson Cooper!”

Then, she’d let him in on another secret. 

“Your eyes are your best weapon, though.”

“My eyes?”

“Mhmm. It’s the way you stare. It makes it feel like nothing else exists. Very intense.”

She’s moved on to bigger and better things, as she should. Jack is glad she did, even if he misses having someone to explain the trends and lingo of the modern world. The pitt was never going to be big enough for Dr. Samira Mohan. 

It’s perfect for him, though. Exactly where he wants to be, especially right now as you secure the chest tube just fucking right. 

“Nicely done,” Jack tells you, still eyeing your work from behind you, catching the way your shoulders raise up close to your ears. 

He chuckles, you let out a frustrated, squeaky grunt, and then Jack gives you a little pat on the back and leaves. 

You avoid him as best you can for the rest of the night. 

Apparently, Jack has more going for him than his silver hair and ‘intense’ stares. 

Whether it’s proximity, his voice, or the words themselves, he isn’t sure. He’s more than willing to experiment to find out, though. 

The next chance he gets, Jack stands unnecessarily close to you again. It isn’t enough to raise eyebrows, really just looks like he’s keeping an eye on a fledgling doctor’s technique (which he is!). You’re a little stiff but not nearly as done with him as you were earlier. 

So, you’ve gotten used to him hovering. That’s good. 

“John got everyone lunch,” Jack says, coming to lean against the central hub beside you, voice dipped low and a tad rough. 

If you ask, he’ll just say he’s tired. It won’t be a lie. 

You don’t ask, however, just glance over at him, eyes landing on his mouth for a nanosecond before flicking back up. 

“What, did he lose a bet?” you eventually respond. 

Jack laughs quietly, “yeah, actually.”

“Typical,” you snort, “is gambling a hallmark of every EC or is it just ours?”  

He shrugs then straightens up, “no clue. Gotta find ways to entertain ourselves, right?” 

So far, you’ve seemed relatively unfazed, which is why Jack tosses you a quick wink as he backs away from the station. 

That gets a reaction, like a lightning strike that makes your spine go straight, makes you hide your face and whine, “oh my god, I hate you.”

You can’t see him, what with your head buried in your hands, so you don’t catch Jack’s smug grin as he turns around. 

“Me? What’d I ever do to you?”

He’s pretty sure he can feel your glare burning holes in the back of his skull. 

•

Robby’s birthday finds several faces of the pitt in the bar closest to the hospital. The man behind the counter knows many of you by name and therefore has a line of drinks prepared for you all without even having to be asked. 

You sip on your vodka Sprite—easy, decent taste, shouldn’t get you fucked up unless you really want to get irresponsible. 

And, irresponsible is the last thing you want to be when you can feel a heavy, hazel gaze on you wherever you go. You talk to Trinity, to Victoria, to Donny, and no matter where you move, those eyes follow you. 

It seems a little different tonight, though. Abbot usually watches you with the purpose of teasing. Now, it just feels like he’s watching to watch. 

With two drinks and little food in your system, a nice buzz settles in your head, stomach warm with alcohol and courage—not enough to talk to Abbot, but enough to make your way to the table he’s sharing with Robby so that you can wish the latter a happy birthday. 

“Unbelievable I made it through another year,” Robby says with a tired smile. He didn’t even work today, and the man looks exhausted. 

You grin sideways and tell him too honestly, “I’m glad you did,” then laugh around your straw when he blushes. 

Your eyes flit to Abbot who’s looking over at the other man, but as if sensing your attention, he redirects his to your face. 

“You can’t say stuff like that to Robby,” Abbot jokes, “one day he’s gonna get so red, his head will explode.”

“Shut the fuck up,” comes a groan from behind Robby’s hands, “aren’t you supposed to be nice to people on their birthday?”

“Sorry, were you expecting birthday kisses?” Abbot puckers his lips and acts like he’s really gonna plant them on Robby’s cheek, but he leans back when he’s swatted away, typical half-smile lifting his mouth when he winks at you as if the two of you are in cahoots. 

Robby isn’t the only one blushing now, your face hot as it always seems to be when you’re around Abbot. 

Thankfully, Cassie chooses that exact moment to slide up next to you to do exactly what you had come over here for, grabs the attention of both attendings, allowing you to slip away. 

An hour and two more drinks later finds you at the same booth. You ate the fries off Mel’s plate with the hopes of sopping up some of the alcohol, and while it probably helped, you’re still nice and fucking tipsy where you sit next to Robby, across from Abbot. With little room, you’re actually on Trinity’s lap, her cheek resting against your back as she chats with Robby, who has had enough beer to divulge a few fun stories about one Yolanda Garcia. Naturally, Trinity is eating it up. 

You listen and laugh, happy to be here, happy to see Robby actually relax, and, if you’re being honest, happy to be stared at. 

Eyes a little cloudy, you meet Abbot’s, and your stomach flips in a way that’s less to do with nerves and more to do with attraction. 

He tries and fails to hide a smirk, and you twist your own mouth to the side to keep your smile at bay, look down and laugh as you shake your head. 

You should probably put some distance between the two of you before you say or do something stupid. No way are you gonna let yourself flirt with Jack Abbot in public, especially not with Trinity and Robby so close by.

You slide from your friend's lap with the excuse of getting some water, which isn’t actually a lie. You could definitely use some, and that’s emphasized by how fucking good it tastes and feels when you gulp it down at the bartop. 

“Now, that’s impressive,” you hear from beside you, look to your right to see a man a few years younger than you who is blatantly checking you out. 

With a little frown, you tell him, “it’s not vodka or anything—just water,” immediately getting a bad vibe from this guy who’s probably named Chad or Brad or whatever frat boys go by these days.

“Shame,” he hums, “sober girls are so much harder to pick up, especially the cute ones like you.”

It’s possibly the grossest thing you’ve ever heard, shamelessly fucking predatory, but when you narrow your eyes at Chad, he just chuckles. 

“What’s your name?” he asks, either not recognizing your expression of distaste or ignoring it altogether. 

Hackles rising, you respond, “none of your business,” and turn to walk away. 

When Brad’s fingers wrap around your wrist, you round on him again, your free hand hot with the impulse to clock him right in the jaw. 

“You’re not even gonna talk to me?” he grins, “you should at least give me a chance.”

About to reply with a lecture full of expletives, Brandon lifts an eyebrow, suddenly focused on something or someone behind you. 

The way your neck prickles tells you exactly who’s just walked up, but that sixth sense does not prepare you for the strong arm that curls around your waist. 

“You need to let go before I fucking make you,” Abbot says, tone casual, his body anything but. You can feel the tension radiating from him, a loaded gun with his own finger on the trigger. 

Chadwick drops your wrist, and you flex your hand as if it’ll get rid of the residual sensation of his grip. 

“We were just talkin’, man.”

“Yeah?” Abbot’s fingers curl into the material of your shirt, and your heart starts beating faster for reasons unrelated to the cocky fucker in front of you. “You grab every woman you talk to like some kind of fuckin’ caveman?”

“Bro, chill, I didn’t mean anyth—”

Abbot cuts him off with a glare, “I’m not your fucking bro.” 

His volume doesn’t grow, voice still even, but there’s a certain strain to it, the same strain you see in the muscles of his neck, feel in the flex of his bicep. 

This shouldn’t be nearly as hot as it is, and you are no fucking damsel, but having Abbot stand up for you—get mad for you… 

“Old man lookin’ for a fight?” Brayden challenges, pushing his chest out in an over the top, alpha male way that would make you roll your eyes if it weren’t for the way Abbot’s hand twitches against your hip. 

You glance up at him, that sly smile nowhere to be found as he works his jaw, tongue sliding behind closed lips like he’s counting his teeth in some grounding exercise. 

You’re about to murmur to him that it’s okay. You’re okay. He can take a breath and calm down, but then you’re joined by yet another patron, this one much more level headed than the men staring each other down. 

“Walk away, man,” Robby says, “this guy may be old, but I guaran-fuckin’-tee you, he’ll drop you. You really want that?” Brown eyes are narrowed from the way he scrunches his face up, almost cringing on the other man’s behalf. “You really wanna get your shit kicked in, in front of her?”

Chandler’s eyes flit between Abbot and Robby before he raises his hands in surrender, grumbles something about, “no bitch is worth this bullshit.”

You hear something between a grunt and a growl resonate from Abbot’s throat, his arm around you growing tighter, and at the same time, Robby takes a single step forward, hands still in his pockets, his shoulders pulling back as he bows up on the guy. 

Abbot may be able to control his volume, but Robby sure can’t, basically barks at Broderick, “what the fuck did you just say?” and you look between all three men in complete disbelief. 

What is happening? You’ve got one of your attendings doing everything he can to keep you plastered to his side while another looks like he’s about to knock this guy’s teeth into the back of his throat. 

The sense of security is, admittedly, very nice and oddly endearing, but neither of these men can afford to, a) spend a night in jail, and b) fuck up their hands. 

“Okay, boys,” you call out, slipping out of Abbot’s grip only to grasp him by the forearm (his thick, thick forearm), your other hand reaching out and curling into the back of Robby’s hoodie, “that’s enough, time to go.”

Looking at Chad/Brad/whatever the fuck his name is, you advise, “if I were you, I’d make myself really fucking scarce right about now.”

He looks between all three of you, eyebrows pinching together as he shakes his head. Thankfully, he walks away, likely swearing the whole time. 

You drag both of your bosses out of the bar, claiming, “you two need some fresh air,” then nudging both of them to lean against the wall of the building. 

“While I appreciate the whole white knight thing, you guys did not have to do that. Like at all,” said wide eyed and serious. “I know I’m probably just some baby resident to both of you, but I promise I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

Robby laughs through his teeth, turning his head to look over at Abbot then back at you.

“I wasn’t saving you, sweetheart. I was saving him from stepping into some deep shit.”

“That fucker deserved to get his shit handed to him, and you know it,” Abbot spits back. It’s the first time you’ve heard him like this, genuinely upset, and with that anger comes a different vocal inflection—his words are rough and colored with what you think might be a California drawl. 

Strange. You’ll have to ask him about that some time. 

“Not arguing that,” Robby sucks his teeth, “be really fucking inconvenient if you got hauled into the police station, though.”

Abbot releases a humorless laugh, “ever the pragmatist.”

“Someone’s gotta be.”

You watch their back and forth, caught off guard by how weird it is. You’ve only seen them interact during shift changes, and whenever they do you’re certainly not around—what, with your whole avoiding Abbot mission. 

That seems sort of impossible now. In fact, after that whole display, you don’t think you even want to avoid him anymore, and that poses an entirely new problem. 

•

Jack’s little game has backfired horribly. 

He really should’ve had the foresight to anticipate it happening, but he didn’t. Caught up in his own amusement as well as your flourishing in the EC. 

It’s all been harmless, and if you ever told him to back the fuck off, he would have. He still will. 

It’s just… it’s a lot harder to leave you alone now. 

And, he doesn’t have some savior complex, no unjustified possessiveness. The problem lies with the fact that Jack can’t fucking get your body out of his head, or really, the way it felt against his. What it felt like to hold you. What it felt like to have you let him. 

Sure, he’s had fun riling you up here and there. Watching you get all cute and flustered has brought him a little too much satisfaction, but the dynamic has changed. The rug has been pulled out from beneath him. 

The events that transpired at Robby’s birthday get-together (Jack almost strangling another human) caused a shift in you. You’re more comfortable around him, willing to engage and even banter with him, which is great except Jack experienced a shift within himself as well. 

The game has changed. The goalpost has been moved. He doesn’t care about working you up as much as he cares about making you laugh, seeing your smile, made even better if he’s the cause of it. 

He still stares, and you still catch him, but when you do his characteristic smirk is missing, replaced with a clenched jaw and the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows thickly. 

He still stands too close to you, and you still roll your eyes, but you also bite your lip. You don’t move away. Not even when Jack’s fingers brush your arm in a way that could be accidental if he didn’t do it so often. 

He does not come up behind you in the exam rooms, though. Despite having never been bothered by it before, the forced proximity that comes with most traumas lights his every nerve ending on fire—painful zaps that travel from his fingertips and spread through the rest of his body. 

He’d made the mistake only once, and it was during the shift that immediately followed that night at the bar. Jack moved close enough to look over your shoulder, ready to give feedback and praise for really any reason he could find, but an ultrasound machine getting rolled into the room and into his space had him leaning forward even more until his chest was flush with your back. 

Up until this point, you would’ve gone still, maybe curse him under your breath. Not anymore, though. No, this time, with Jack more or less on top of you, all you’d done was glance back at him, lip caught between your canines, then focus your attention back on the patient. 

He had to stay in that position for a solid five minutes, if not longer, and by the time he was able to move away from you, he’d gone through almost all of the breathing techniques his therapist had taught him. 

So, it goes without saying that this newfound desire is pretty inconvenient. 

Also, he’s fucking delusional to call it that—newfound. It’s not new at all, it just wasn’t so obvious, even to him. 

Jack has been kinda sorta really fixated on you for a while now. He’d been bothered enough to confront you about what he had thought was an issue of intimidation, then interested enough to play with you, for lack of a better term. 

Plus, he’s always found you attractive, cute when stuttering around him, beautiful when you intubate, crouched and squinting as you visualize vocal cords. Downright mouth watering when you scoff at Jack after he says or does something ridiculous (to get your attention), arms crossed with a hip cocked out. 

Enamored doe eyes can narrow into a glare in the flash of a second. Shaking hands can cut through flesh with both strength and precision. A frown can brighten into something that glows so brightly, Jack could swear he feels it in his chest. 

Long story short, he’s fucked, even more so when you ask him about it. 

“You’ve been weird the last couple weeks,” as you sidle up next to him at the central hub. 

Jack looks from the forms in his hands. “How so?”

“You haven’t been nearly as annoying lately,” you tell him with a snort. 

Feeling his mouth twitch into a smile, Jack looks back down at the papers. 

“Don’t tell me you miss it,” he teases, and there’s something oddly comforting about the way you shift on your feet beside him, a habit of yours from back when he could still give you butterflies (or so he assumes). 

“I am definitely not saying that,” you click your tongue, and Jack chuckles. 

“What are you saying then?” 

He signs the last of the paperwork, lines every sheet up then taps them on the counter, straightening them out to near perfection before turning to face you fully. 

“Does someone miss having my undivided attention?”

Your jaw falls open in offense, but a short laugh still bubbles out of you, so Jack isn’t too worried. 

“You, sir,” you jab a finger into his chest, and he burns at the tiny point of contact, “are just a little too bold, you know that?”

His mouth twists from one side to the other, and Jack can literally feel his eyes light up with mischief. 

He tries to keep it inside. Tries to stamp it down, but oh, he needs to see the look on your face when he tells you—

“You really think callin’ me sir is the best idea?”

And, it’s so fucking worth it when that stare grows into something wide, and your shoulders drop to open up your posture and your little hands fidget where they hang by your sides. 

You take a deep breath, then, without even meaning to, flip the script on him when you mumble his name—his first name— “Jack…” so, so quiet he almost misses it. 

But, he’s watching your mouth so he sees the way your lips form that single familiar syllable, and something is trying to escape his throat, a groan or a shout, he doesn’t know what. 

He can barely believe his fucking ears when you deliver the next line, just as quiet, timid as you used to be, “you have to stop teasing me if you’re not gonna follow through.”

You may sound like your former, mousy self, but you still manage to hold his gaze, meaning you see the way his mouth opens in surprise for just a moment before he quickly clamps it shut again. 

“At this point you’re just being kinda mean,” you continue. 

Jack has to exercise every ounce of his self control to keep from surging forward and catching your pouty lips with his. His hand flexes at his thigh, all five fingers stretched out then curled into a tight fist. 

“I didn’t know you were ready for me to start being nice,” he breathes. 

You’re speaking in innuendo, right? He isn’t reading this wrong? 

You make a self-deprecating sound and shake your head. “I’ve been ready for so long it’s humiliating.”

Jack doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, but it is not an option right now, and because of that, because he can’t move to touch you, all the potential energy stored in his hands gets released through his mouth instead. 

“Sleep with me after work,” he blurts, and what the fuck—what is wrong with him? “I mean, shit,” Jack laughs at himself ‘cause if he doesn’t, he’s gonna take the stairs two at a time to get up to the roof. “Come to my house and sleep in my bed,” he tries again.

It’s still not graceful, and definitely worthy of a good, long cringe, but it’s out there, and damn, when’s the last time he felt genuinely nervous? He’s survived fucking war zones, but right now, those pale in comparison to the threat of you laughing in his face. 

“I…”

“You can tell me to fuck off,” he quickly adds. “I probably deserve it after being such a pain in your ass.”

Your eyebrows are still high, but a smile smug enough to rival his own spreads across your face, “oh my god, wait… That’s what it is.”

“What?” He’s breathing too hard. 

“All that, everything you’ve been—” you fucking giggle, and the sound of it makes Jack dumb. “Was that just you, like, pullin’ on my pigtails?”

Jesus, that… yeah, that’s exactly what it was. A schoolboy with a crush, craving the attention of the prettiest girl in the class. 

He has to shut his eyes, clenches his teeth so hard, his molars might splinter under the pressure. 

“That’s one way to put it,” words coming out clipped, as if his jaw is wired shut. 

“And, how would you put it, Jack?”

“Me being a stupid son-of-bitch, something along those lines.”

You hum, hand by your face with your index finger curled against your bottom lip. “Yeah, I’m inclined to agree.”

A few beats of silence pass, and Jack spends every one of them trying not to shake. 

Then, his whole body relaxes when you add, “I guess I could go for a nap after work.”

Oh, Jesus Christ, thank God, praise him or her or whatever might be up there. This is truly a blessing.

“Yeah?” he asks, just to make sure. 

Your smile remains mirthful, but there’s also a softness to it as you nod, “yeah.”

•

Jack’s house is a small, one story not too far from the hospital. It’s about what you’d imagine for a single man in his forties. His military background can be seen in the tightly ordered bookshelves, the sponge and scrub brush by the sink being perfectly aligned, the containers of flour, sugar, and whatever else pressed against the wall from tallest to shortest. 

You thought you would be terrified if ever given the chance to see this very personal part of him. Hell, you’d been terrified of him in general not long ago. 

Now, though… Now you scan your surroundings with a tilt of your head, taking it all in and learning new things about the man you’ve been pining over for too long. 

“You’re making me nervous just staring like that,” he says with a quiet snort. 

When you look back to him, you raise an eyebrow, “nervous, you say? Welcome to my life for the last couple months.”

Jack curls his lip over the bottom row of his teeth, looks sheepish, which is not something you’re used to. On one hand, you feel oddly validated that he’s getting a taste of his own medicine, but you’re not entirely sure you like seeing him… ‘insecure’ isn’t the right word. At a loss, maybe. 

You sigh and step toward him, extend a timid hand to take his, and he lets you, watching as you play with his fingers. 

You’re ready to explode and ready to melt. Want to scream and want to cry in relief. Confused at how you got here but so relieved that you did.

All mixed up over him, like you’ve always been. 

“I’m just trying to get to know you better,” you admit, eyes flicking to his face before returning to calloused, freckled hands. “All I’ve seen is the Jack at the hospital. Dr. Abbot.”

He hums. “That guy’s alright, I guess.”

You grin, and he can probably hear it in your voice when you reply, “yeah, but he’s kind of a badass in the trauma room, which is super fucking annoying.”

“What a dick.”

Giggling in a way you’ve never actually allowed him to see, you find him looking a little dazed. Hazel clouding over, the side of his mouth keeps twitching, smile not quite forming almost like Jack can’t feel the muscles activating, like he’s no longer tethered to himself.

“Can I shower before we lay down?” 

He doesn’t answer at first but eventually blinks a few times. “Huh? Oh, right. Shower. Yes.”

His fingers curl around yours and as he leads you further into his home, you’re wrapped in a certain comfort. This is good. You are safe. He is right.  

Those are inside thoughts, though. No reason to let him know how far gone you are. He has enough of an idea as it is. 

“Let me grab you something to wear. Is—are you alright with one of my T-shirts? And, I have… basketball shorts that should—”

“If you just have a pair of boxers, those’ll work. I don’t like that athletic material.”

Jack stares at you with an intensity you haven’t seen in a couple weeks now. You watch his throat work over a gulp, and he takes a deep breath before croaking, “yeah. Boxers. Got it.”

It’s hard not to shoot him a mocking grin, able to recognize the struggle he’s going through, but you are much more merciful than he is, choose to simply squeeze the hand you’re still holding. 

You enjoy the shower alone, inhaling the familiar scent of Jack’s body wash, his shampoo, the conditioner that keeps those curls looking so soft, and you’re hit with the idea, the excitement, that you might actually be able to feel them, run your hands through his hair, feel his stubble against your palm. 

You didn’t necessarily come here to have sex. If that’s what ends up happening, then you definitely won’t be disappointed, but you mostly followed him home to spend time with him. To learn more. And, maybe you’d get to cuddle with him. Maybe. 

Friends, lovers—whatever this may turn into will be fine with you. Jack has always been attractive to you, even with his incessant teasing, but more than that, he’s always been admirable. 

The most capable person you’ve ever met, cool in a crisis, sturdy and sure. He is a pillar, a titan, a leader, but he’s also witty and goofy and mischievous. 

There’s a reason you fell for him and a reason you keep falling for him. 

The white t-shirt he left smells like him, soft and baggy, and the boxers fit okay once you roll the waistband a couple times. Your hair is wet, and your eyes are dark from fatigue. You don’t feel particularly pretty, but the open domesticity of this whole encounter encourages you to step out into the hallway. 

You’re not here to be pretty. You’re here to sleep. And stare a lot. 

Jack’s room is right across from the bathroom, and you walk into it you find him sitting on his bed wearing only a t-shirt and boxers. He’s in the process of doffing his prosthesis, and you watch what seems like a ritual. His fingers move and massage scar tissue, and there is a voice at the back of your head, a want—to one day be the one to do this for him. To get the blood flowing again, to soothe any aches or chafed skin. 

Probably not quite there yet. You aren’t even sure he wants you to witness this, don’t know if he’s self-conscious about his leg or not. 

With this in mind, you step a little louder to announce your presence, and Jack looks up quickly, doesn’t say anything for a moment as his hands falter in their movements. 

“Uh… probably should have told you…”

You frown at him. “Did you—did you think I didn’t know?”

Mouth pulled downward in consideration, Jack shrugs, “it’s never come up in conversation, and it’s not like I’m using my crutches at the hospital.” He briefly changes the subject, nodding to the clothes in your hands, “you can toss those in the basket if you want.”

You do just that before approaching him, careful not to knock into what is likely very expensive hardware. 

“It didn’t have to come up in conversation. And, you didn’t have to use crutches for me to notice.” He regards you curiously, so you continue slowly, trying to choose all the right words. “You don’t have a limp. You don’t move awkwardly. But, there’s a certain… rhythm… to the way you walk. A kick, I guess, that one leg has that the other doesn’t. It’s really, um… it’s really subtle.”

Jack blushes, but he also smirks. You roll your eyes before he can open his mouth to poke fun. “Yes, I’ve stared a lot. Yes, I’ve watched you like a freak. Fucking sue me.”

“Do I need to file an HR complaint?” 

With narrowed eyes and extreme caution, you slowly slide into his lap, draping your arms over his shoulders, making sure not to put all your weight on him. 

He’s obviously taken aback, stifles a little cough, but his hands still settle on your waist without hesitation. 

“Do you want to file an HR complaint?” 

He’s comically quick to answer, “fuck no,” the words rough as they fall from lips you’re zeroed in on. When his tongue darts out to wet the corner of them, you shiver. 

Jack moves first, but you’re right behind him, meeting him halfway in a kiss that starts with a deep inhale. Your fingers rake through the hair at the back of his head, travel to finally, finally feel those curls, and when they’re just as soft as you imagined, you hum happily—a sound that turns desperate when Jack cups the back of your neck and somehow pulls you even closer than you already are. 

His stubble, though scratchy against your skin, is just long enough to keep from hurting, pleasurably stimulating rather than rubbing like sandpaper. 

You tilt your head, open your mouth, and Jack swiftly slides his tongue against yours, a deep grunt sounding from his chest and reverberating in yours. You don’t know what to do with your hands. Want to touch him everywhere, want to feel everything. He, however, knows exactly what he wants, keeps holding your nape while his other hand curls around your hip and guides you to fully sit in his lap, traps you there as he grinds against your core, and fuck, oh fuck—he’s hard. He’s hard and he’s big and he wants you. 

Jack swallows your little mewl, groans when you roll your hips, but breaks away from you before either of you can get carried away. 

“This isn’t,” he’s already so out of breath, and the fact that you’re the cause of it makes your body flush hot, makes your pussy ache. “It’s not why I asked you to come home with me… contrary to popular belief.”

You refuse to stop playing with his hair even as you speak, “well, I wasn’t—I mean, I wasn’t not expecting it, but it wasn’t my plan either.”

His thumb is stroking over your hip bone, very distracting as you try to keep yourself from shoving him back on his own bed. The hand that was previously on your neck is caressing your cheek, smoothing over the bone, moving to your jaw, the space right below the curve of your lip. 

“You are,” Jack swallows, huffs through his nose, “you’re incredible, you know that?” 

It takes you by surprise. Praise like that from someone like Jack Abbot is something people crave, whether they’re attracted to him or not. He’s never been one to hold back from encouraging younger doctors, one of the reasons everyone enjoys working under him, but… incredible?

“And, beautiful, obviously. Brilliant. Patient—”

“You don’t have to butter me up, you already have me in your bed,” you play, rolling your eyes as if you’re not eating this up. 

“I’m not buttering you up—I’m telling you everything I should’ve when I was too busy pullin’ on those pigtails.”

And, then, for whatever reason, he beams at you, a grin so wide and crooked that it spreads to every one of his features, changes the very shape of him. You see dazzling white teeth all the way back to his molars, and you sort of want to cry into his shoulder. 

He’s—he’s so fucking handsome, it hurts, and you can’t look at him any longer, holding his face in both hands as you kiss him again. 

And, again. 

And, again. 

And, Jack refuses to drop that damn smile, still wearing it even as he twists and turns to maneuver you onto your back. 

It’s finally happening, oh god, you’re finally getting—you finally have your hands on him, sliding under his shirt, lifting and pushing it off entirely. 

His arms, what the fuck, his arms, and his chest, his stomach, his freckles… freckles everywhere, dusting his body like one huge constellation. 

You’re so ready to worship him, only you can’t because Jack is too busy with you, mouthing down your neck to nip at your clavicle, fingers dancing at the hem of his shirt. 

Looking at you through unfairly pretty eyelashes, he questions, “may I?”

“Y-yeah,” you nod, “knock yourself out.”Jack laughs, helping you sit up so that he can tug the t-shirt from your body, and once it’s off he bites his lip hard enough for the flesh to redden. “Talk about a knockout.”

Part of you wants to ‘boo’ the cheesy line, but it’s hard to criticize when he’s staring at you the way he is, even harder when he leans down to pepper kisses over your chest, sucking on one of your nipples until it hardens on his tongue, then caring for the other in the same way. 

Your tits rise and fall with every breath you take, shiny with his spit by the time he begins his descent again. 

Jack leaves marks on your rib cage, a bruise sucked into the soft skin right below your belly-button, one on each hip as he hooks fingers into your waistband and pulls the material down little by little. 

The hickeys don’t stop, numerous dark spots littering your inner thighs, each one making your cunt pulse with arousal, and once the boxers are discarded and Jack is between your legs, he examines his handiwork—bruises first, then your dripping pussy. 

Warm breath cascades over you, a few short puffs followed by a languid lick from your entrance to your clit. 

“Haah—ah—Jack, oh…”

His resounding groan vibrates through you, and you immediately find purchase in those silver curls again. 

His facial hair scrapes your thighs so deliciously, stubble on his chin and around his lips making you gasp and writhe, and you would love to hold him still and ride his face, but you want something else even more. 

“Feels, fuck, feels so good, but—” your back arches when he nibbles on your clit, soothing it with his tongue afterward, “—I want, God, please, want you in-inside.”

And, with those words, Jack fucking whines for you, eyebrows pinched together as he works his jaw, stuck between a rock and a hard place (with a rock hard cock pressing into the mattress). 

He wants to fuck you, good God, he wants to bury himself in you, but your cunt is so sweet and so wet, drenching his face and fluttering just for him. He could do this for fucking ever, quit his job and eat your pussy for the rest of his life. 

But, your hands are urging him back up your body, and Jack really has no business or desire to deny you anything you want from him. 

As soon as he gets to a certain position, one that gives you enough force and leverage, you shove him onto his back and straddle his hips, crushing your lips against his and no doubt tasting yourself on his tongue. 

“Do we need… do we need a condom?” you question, follow with, “I’m clean, I had a—a physical a couple weeks ago—”

You’re asking if he can fuck you raw. Shit, Jack is not well enough equipped to deal with this, to deal with the increase in his heartrate and blood pressure as you start working his boxers off of him. 

You slide down him quickly, but stop at his legs, and when he feels you press what can only be described as a loving kiss to the scar tissue of his residual limb, Jack sucks in a breath so sharp it might lance him right open. 

It’s fleeting, not something you draw too much attention to, but the sensation and the care will stick with him until the day he dies. 

“Healthy as a horse,” his voice cracks when he finally responds to you, and he clears his throat in the vain hope that it’ll heal his grated tone. 

Both of you stripped of every garment and inhibition you slink back up his frame, another question glimmering in your eyes. Jack raises a hand to push hair out of your face and nods. Yes. Please. I’m entirely yours. 

Your hand wraps around his cock, pumping him and making Jack press his head back into his pillows when you run your thumb over his tip to smear the precum drooling from it. 

“Gonna kill me,” he whispers, gazing up at you in awe, his jaw dropping even further when you line him up with your entrance and begin sinking down. 

Your pussy is hot and tight around him, taking Jack deeper and deeper, and the feeling of you squeezing his cock paired with the way you’re moaning for him has his eyes rolling in his head. 

“Fuck, you’re too goddamn good for me,” he groans, and he means it. “Too fuckin’ good.”

But, you disagree with a laugh and a shake of your head right as you settle onto his pelvis. 

He is fully inside of you. Sheathed. Surrounded. Buried just like he wanted to be. 

The thought nearly does him in, and Jack bucks up into you, the action making you bounce, keen, then start your own rhythm. 

Lifting up over and over, you ride him like you were fucking born to, raising yourself and dropping on his cock, then falling to your forearms to work him at a different angle. Your ass bobs up and down, and if he cranes his neck just the right way Jack can see the jiggle of round cheeks. His fingers dig into your plush skin, groping and pulling and using his grip to move you up and down on his cock. 

He’s lost to you, lost in you, and he’s fucking ecstatic about it. Uncontrolled grunts and growls leave him without his knowledge, creating a cacophony of lewdness when mixed with your melodic moans and squelching pussy. 

You brace yourself on his chest and piston your hips, the pace growing into something frantic as his cock rubs against your g-spot. 

Head thrown back, tits pushed out, nails digging into his skin, you’re the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen. 

“That’s it, take what you need, baby, I’ve got you,” he tells you, though it’s really Jack who needs the reassurance. Needs to know you won’t disappear from his grasp, here one second then gone the next. He has you, he’s holding you, and just the idea of letting you go drives him insane.

No. No. 

He coats his thumb in spit before pressing it to your clit, holds it there to apply a steady pressure for you to control more than him. 

Mouth wide open, eyes squeezed shut, you cry while shifting on top of him, an endless dance that eventually has your muscles locking up, your pussy starting to spasm, and Jack can’t tear his eyes away as your orgasm builds, build, builds, his own right alongside it. 

You teeter on that edge for so fucking long, face stuck in the same expression of utter desperation as your body moves almost robotically, your lower half snapping to keep his cockhead against your g-spot, his thumb against your clit, and then, with a beautifully broken moan, your orgasm plows into you, taking Jack along with it. 

In hindsight, he should’ve asked if it was okay to finish inside of you, but he has no control as you milk it out of him, squeezing thick ropes of cum from his cock, his seed flooding your pussy until it starts leaking out around him, leaving a mess between your bodies. 

You take several deep breaths, fuck-drunk eyes heavy and locked on one another until you fall forward onto Jack’s chest. 

He wraps both of his arms around your back, fingers of one hand clasped around his opposite wrist. Your head hangs over his shoulder, face turned into his neck, and Jack angles to kiss your forehead before resting his cheek against it. 

“Mmm, that was… yes,” you say, still mindless. 

Jack chuckles, “yeah, it was.”

“Can we… is that something we can… hm,” you struggle to finish the thought, drowsiness sinking its claws into you. A 14 hour shift and earth-shattering orgasm will do that. 

Lucky for you, Jack knows what you’re trying to ask and answers, “we can do that however and whenever you want.”

He feels you smile into his neck. “Not a one-time-thing, then?”

“Do I seem like a one-time type of man?” 

You make that wordless ‘I don’t know’ sound, “how’m I supposed to know? You could just be teasing me again.”

His arms tighten enough to push some of the air from your lungs. 

“I may be a tease, but I am also” his lips brush the corner of your eye, “a selfish prick—one of my many charming personality traits.”

Instead of being put off by his half-joking, mostly serious confession, you nuzzle into him and gently suckle at a place on the side of his neck long enough to leave a bruise and make Jack’s very tired dick try to twitch back to life. 

“I really enjoy… hm, what am I trying to say? I like that—I like that you want me, I guess. And, I want you to be selfish. And, I wanna be selfish too.”

His chest rises with a short laugh. You could have anyone you set your sights on. Stunning, smart, funny, talented, Jack could go on and on. The fact that you have feelings for him, have had these feelings for longer than two seconds, is nothing short of a fucking miracle. 

“I’m yours for the taking, babe—your loyal dog. I’ll even sit at your feet if you ask me.”

He unlocks his hands from your back to rub his aching eyes, the toll of last night and this morning weighing heavy on his limbs. 

“Will you wear a collar too?” you tease, finger tracing over his Adam’s apple. 

“I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me shower and sleep for a couple hours.”

You do, joining Jack under the spray where he leans against you, your arm looped around his torso to keep him stable, and if he weren’t so damn exhausted, he’d probably insist on independence, but he feels like maybe it’s safe to let his guard down. Maybe he doesn’t have to surround himself with trauma or distract himself with little games. Maybe he can just be. 

With you.