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summary: dex tells you it's all going to be okay. you have no choice but to believe him.
pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT!, unprotected p in v sex, toxic relationship dynamics, obsessive behavior, implied surveillance, stalking, allusions to birth control tampering, pregnancy scare, impact play, ownership kink, intoxication/alcohol use, emotional distress, no use of y/n, canon divergent
word count: 6.6k
A/N: happy to be back at the Dex factory 🫡 hope y'all enjoy this one!! i actually kind of struggled with writing this chapter, what does it say about me that i think it's easier to write Dex POV now lmao. i think all who are familiar with Bullseye can see something has changed at the end of this chapter...
divider by: @uzmacchiato
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Years later, people would ask you when you knew.
Officers, lawyers, therapists, friends, family. They would sit across from you with that horrible look on their faces, pity and judgment masked as sympathy. They would tut, shake their heads, lower their voices like they were speaking with a child, and say stupid things like, “God, that must have been horrible.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Like you had been waiting for them to ask, like you had some dramatic single moment prepared for them. The kind of moment people knew from movies and books but turned a blind eye to in real life. Real life, of course, was both far less exciting and far more complicated.
Because the truth was, Dex had been an amazing partner. And you loved him dearly.
There was nothing horrible. You didn’t want to leave. You didn’t want help. He was everything to you: a lover, a best friend, a constant in your life you could always depend upon.
After you first slept together, you and Dex had become practically inseparable. I became we, mine became ours. It was natural and more than welcome. Nothing could beat the feeling of leaving school at the end of a hard day and finding Dex already waiting outside the main gate, your favorite coffee in hand. Or waking in the morning with him beside you, arm slung across your waist, his mouth already pressing soft, sleepy kisses onto your face and neck as the morning light crept through the bedroom window.
Meals for one had shifted to meals for two. Sunday morning trips to your favorite bakery down the block were better when he was with you, holding your hand as you strolled in the park afterwards. Life with Dex was just…better.
He loved you, and you loved him. Dex made that quite clear the first time you had sex, when he had confessed his feelings at the height of his climax. Chloe had been shocked when you admitted you said it back.
“Girl,” she had sighed, running both hands down her face like a disappointed parent. “Be so fucking serious right now. You were literally dick-notized into telling him you loved him.”
You had shrugged, because maybe it was a little true, and countered that it didn’t change what you felt for him. Yes, maybe it was a little quick. To go from stranger to neighbor to boyfriend to “I am in love with this man” in a matter of three months could be seen as fast, but…it was true.
You loved each other, and despite the questions others would pester you with years down the line, nothing had made you question that fact. If anything, every action Dex took seemed to reinforce it.
Especially when, about two months into your relationship, your period was six days late.
Every day that passed, every time that stupid notification had pinged on your phone reminding you, Hey! Your period is late and you’re probably pregnant!, the pit in your stomach grew. Your cycles were never perfectly regular, but six days was abnormal. You were on the pill, but…it wasn’t perfect. Some days you were late. Other days you would reach for that little tin foil packet in your nightstand drawer only to find it missing, then miraculously discover it hours later on the bathroom sink or the kitchen counter. Oh well, you had thought, popping a pill well past the scheduled time. Work was hard, you were forgetful. Dumb excuses like those.
Normally, this disruption wouldn’t have been a problem, considering you had been quasi-celibate (if you didn’t count your fingers) for months before Dex. But, of course, Dex happened. And so did endless rounds of earth-shattering, mind-numbing, world-changing sex on every available surface in your apartment. Rounds that almost always finished with him inside you.
So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise that your period was late. But for something like that to happen so early, literally two months into your relationship? You wanted to vomit.
You spent the entire school day circling the possibilities in your head. Any minute not occupied by work was filled with dread over the impending dissolution of your new, amazing relationship. You had to tell him. But what would you even say?
“Dex, remember all the times I begged you to come inside me? Well, about that…”
Surely, he would break up with you. He was a man, after all. And most men, or at least the ones you knew, would have died at the prospect of that kind of commitment.
Dex, of course, was not most men.
The last bell signaled the end of the school day. You took extra time gathering your things, dreading the conversation waiting for you outside. Finally, you emerged from school, and sure enough, Dex was in his usual spot by the front gates, styrofoam coffee cup in hand.
“Hey, baby,” he greeted you with a peck to your cheek before pulling you into a tight hug, like he hadn’t just seen you eight hours earlier. “How was school?”
You tried to muster a smile as you hugged him back. Was this the last time he would hold you like this? “Um, fine. Boring, I guess.”
Something in your voice gave you away. Dex pulled back, hands still on your shoulders, concern already etched across his face. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Dex, I’m fine, I just–” you took a deep breath, trying to steady yourself. You had to tell him. There was no other way. “I need to tell you something.”
Dex’s fingers tightened on your shoulders. A flicker of something unreadable passed through his eyes. “...what is it?”
You swallowed. No going back now. “My period is late.”
Dex didn’t move. His hands stayed on your shoulders, grip so tight you couldn’t move if you tried. His face was still fixed on yours. His eyes didn’t blink once.
“Dex?” you asked, stomach dropping.
He blinked in rapid succession, like he just realized he was still present in the conversation. “Sorry, I– how late?”
“...Six days. According to my app.” The anxiety was building in you. It was going to be over. Dex would freak out, he would run, it would all be over. That fear spilled out of you like lava as the words suddenly rushed out of your mouth. “But I–I haven’t taken a test yet. It could be nothing, like, my cycle gets weird sometimes, and I just wanted you to know, so we could–”
Dex said your name firmly, attempting to interrupt you, but you kept rambling.
“--and I mean, worst case scenario, I don’t want you to feel like I’m, I don’t know, like, trapping you or something–”
“Baby.”
Your rambling stopped. With embarrassing clarity, you realized that hot tears had welled up in your eyes. You gave a choked laugh and ducked your head, avoiding Dex’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m just…really scared.”
Without another word, Dex pulled you into him, holding you tight in his arms. One of his hands reached up to grab the back of your head, stroking your hair. For once, the roles had been reversed and he was the one soothing you.
“You don’t need to be scared,” Dex murmured. “Everything is okay.”
Jesus, why did he have to be so perfect? A small sob escaped from you. “But it’s literally not okay, Dex. We practically just started dating. Everything would change. But…I know there are options so–”
The hand in your hair stopped moving. “...Options?”
Your throat tightened, and you buried your face deeper into his chest. He smelled like your laundry detergent and vaguely of gunpowder. You wondered, briefly, if he had gone to the shooting range that day. “I mean…yeah. Options. I don’t know, whatever we’d decide on.”
“There’s nothing to decide on.”
Your throat tightened. Dex must have sensed the confusion, or the first small seeds of protest growing in your mind, because his hand started moving again, slow and careful against your hair.
“What I mean,” he continued, voice soft, “is that you don’t need to scare yourself right now, baby. You don’t need to stand here thinking anything bad is going to happen. If you are pregnant, then it’s going to be okay.”
His mouth brushed your temple. “I love you. I’m not going to leave. I would never do that.”
“You promise?” you sniffed.
He kissed the side of your head. “Promise.”
And so, the two of you had walked back to your apartment, hand-in-hand, and you knew with absolute certainty that Dex was right. He would never leave you. No matter what happened, it was going to be okay, because he would always be there for you. In fact, for one brief moment on that walk, you allowed yourself to imagine a life: the two of you walking just like this, except with someone small between you, swinging from both of your hands. Maybe with Dex’s hazel eyes and your smile. It was a quick image, but it made you happy.
All your worries, and all those tentative future imaginings, quickly disappeared when you returned to the apartment and changed into pajamas that evening, only to find a patch of blood on your underwear. You emerged from the bedroom victoriously, waving the bloodied pair of panties in the air like a trophy.
“Guess who’s not pregnant!” you had whooped.
Dex had looked up from the book he was reading on the couch, and for a second, nothing on his face moved. He slowly set the book down. Your smile had faltered a bit as he stood and crossed towards you, eyes fixed on the fabric in your hands with such strange, concentrated focus that you became aware of how ridiculous you surely looked.
He stopped in front of you, and stared down at the blood like it was evidence. Like he was trying to understand it.
You laughed awkwardly and pulled your hand back. “Sorry. I realize that’s probably super gross, waving period panties around. I just…wanted you to know.”
Something passed over his face like a shadow. You didn’t know what it was in the moment. Disappointment, maybe? No, it was sharper than that. Colder.
But then Dex blinked, and you thought maybe you had imagined it all. His mouth arranged into that careful smile you loved so much.
“You’re probably cramping,” he said casually, already reaching for you. His hand settled at your waist. “Do you want me to get your heating pad? Tea?”
You exhaled and leaned into him. “Yeah, thank you. That would be nice.”
Dex kissed your forehead, became your perfect boyfriend once again, and soon, you forgot about the whole thing. He was good at that.
You would have thought that, after the pregnancy scare, you would’ve learned your lesson. Wrap it up. Try to stop your birth control packet from vanishing every other day. Maybe cut back on the rabid fucking. That would’ve made sense, right?
Wrong.
You did not learn your lesson. In fact, if anything, the ordeal made you want to jump Dex’s bones even more than you already did (if that was humanly possible).
Just like Dex’s presence, sex was constant. Waking up in the morning? His mouth was already open and hot against your neck, his fingers sliding under your sleep shorts to toy with your already-wet pussy. Making dinner? You’d take a break halfway through chopping ingredients so he could bend you over the counter and fuck you from behind. Taking a shower? You made the mistake of showering without him once and learned your lesson. Showers were the perfect place for Dex to whisper how pretty you were while he hiked your leg over his hip and slowly slid his cock inside you, suds still clinging to both of your bodies.
Before bed? Sex. Watching a movie? Sex. Just got off the phone with your parents? Sex. Trying to grade papers? Sex.
Sex, sex, sex.
More often than not, you walked with a limp and had bruises from his hands on your hips. You had never been in a relationship where sex was such an anchor, but you wouldn’t have had it any other way. Your sexual chemistry was out of this world. He was so precise, so focused while he fucked you, it felt almost supernatural. There were times you reflected on how Dex must have learned how to be so good with other partners and became quite irrationally jealous that any other women got to have him the way you did now. Because, Jesus Christ– if you had Benjamin Poindexter even just once, surely all other men were ruined for you. It wasn’t every reason you loved him, but it certainly helped. Any moment you could have him on you or in you, you wanted it. Maybe it was just because it was so good.
Or maybe it was because, when Dex was inside you, hips driving into yours, hands pinning your wrists above your head while he panted against your skin, you felt like he was finally being himself.
In daylight, outside the sheets, Dex was careful. He closed up when you asked too directly about the orange prescription bottles he had moved from his apartment’s bathroom cabinet to yours, or when you talked about his time in the Army, or wondered what his family was like. He gave you pieces, never the whole thing.
You learned he didn’t have a good childhood and that his parents weren’t around much. He enlisted in the Army as soon as he turned eighteen, and that’s how he got recruited to attend Quantico after he left. With these facts, you deduced he certainly had some mental struggles, which would explain the frequent need for reassurance, the anxiety about small things like you taking the train alone or not responding to his texts, and the medication. But who didn’t have their own problems? You didn’t want to pry, you just wanted to accommodate. You didn’t need to know or analyze every single piece of him to love him.
But in bed, Dex gave you everything.
It was like it was the one place where he could stop being so careful. It didn’t matter if the kisses were sloppy with saliva or you knocked teeth, or if Dex was too loud when he would spill inside you, or if he got too excited and finished within seconds. He was just him in those moments, the honest version who didn’t need to be perfect, and you loved it.
Though, you would admit that the honesty could be a lot, at times.
There was one instance in particular. You had flaked on Chloe (again) for your usual Friday wine-and-pizza after Dex had come home and seemed disappointed you wouldn’t be able to spend the evening with him.
“I feel like we barely got to see each other this week,” he had murmured into your neck, clinging to you from behind as you attempted to sort laundry on the bed. “Besides, work has been shit… I was really looking forward to spending time with you.”
Who were you to say no to that?
So, after one quick text to Chloe with the usual excuse along the lines of “my sexy FBI boyfriend has a hard job and loves me too much :(”, both your previous plans and hopes of folding laundry were forgotten as you straddled Dex and sank onto the hard, veiny length of him.
Soon, the only sounds in the room were the slap of skin against skin and your mingled moans of pleasure.
Dex’s hands gripped your hips, urging you to ride him faster and faster until the rhythm became uncharacteristically aggressive.
You gasped, air knocking out of your lungs, as he met your downward movements with a thrust, his cock hitting deep enough in you to send a spark of both pain and pleasure through your entire body. When you finally regained your breath and looked down at him, Dex’s face had gone strange beneath you. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, mouth parted as he stared up at you like he was witnessing something holy.
“Dex?”
His hips jerked up into you, desperation bleeding through the movement. “Don’t stop, please.”
The words made your pussy flutter around him. “Babe, I’m not–”
“No, I know, I know, I just–” he panted, and suddenly you felt his hands shaking where they held you. He thrusted up again, making you moan. “Just– fuck, just tell me.”
“I’m not going to stop.”
His throat bobbed, and his relentless movements of forcing you to bounce on his cock faltered. “I…I mean, I want you to tell me that… That I’m yours.”
Startled at this seemingly random request, you tried to stop yourself completely, settling onto his hips, but Dex chased the movement and bucked his hips back into you.
“Please,” he said, voice cracking around the word. “Please, baby. Tell me.”
…if that’s what he really wants, you thought. Odd, but not completely unusual. You’ve heard of worse requests while getting pounded.
You leaned forward, bracing yourself on your forearms by his head as he continued to drive into you. Your lips brushed his. “You’re mine.”
His eyes rolled back, a broken groan leaving him as his head flopped against the pillow.
“Again, please.”
“You’re mine, Dex.”
“Ooh, fuck. Tell me you own me, baby, please.”
Your pause as you tried to think, even in your cock-drunk haze, as to why your docile boyfriend was now wanting to be treated like property. The hesitation was not acceptable to him, apparently. His fingers dug into the flesh of your hips, hard enough you were sure it would be purple in the morning.
“Please, baby,” he whined, eyes wide and wet. “Please tell me I belong to you, I’m begging you.”
Normally, you would have stopped and tried to have a conversation with him about why he wanted to be treated like property in a relationship you very much attempted to make equal. But Chloe was right– in moments like this, it was like you were hypnotized by him.
You were still bent over him, your breasts pressed to his chest, your mouth open against his as he split you open again and again. When you looked down between your bodies, you could see his cock, shiny with your slick, plunging in and out of you. The sight made your thoughts scatter. Your mind went fuzzy, overwhelmed by heat and the frantic way Dex was looking at you.
“Dex, fuck–” Your voice came out breathless and rough. “I own you. I own you.”
His reaction was immediate and violent. His eyes squeezed shut as a full-body shudder rippled through him.
“Again,” Dex begged. “Please, again.”
“I own you.”
“Yes,” he choked. “Yes, baby, fuck–”
“You belong to me.”
Dex made a sound you had never heard from him before, something primal and almost painful. His hands clawed their way up your back, pulling you down harder until there was no space left between you, until his breath was hot and damp against your mouth.
Then, so quietly you almost missed it, he whispered, “Hit me.”
Your hips stuttered. What the fuck?
“Dex, w-what?”
His eyes opened. It was like the mossy color of them had shifted into something radioactive and feverish.
“Hit me,” he repeated, more frantic this time. “Please. Just–just make me listen.”
Even in your lustful fog, you knew this was an unusual request. Your beefy FBI boyfriend wanting you to…hit him? “Dex, I don’t know if I should…”
“Please.” His voice broke. He looked like he was going to cry. “Please, baby. I need you to. Tell me I’m yours and slap me.”
You should have stopped. You should have known better.
But Dex thrust up hard, grinding against the deepest part of your cervix, and the pleasure punched the thought clean out of your skull. You moaned, nails scraping against his shoulder, your cunt clenching around him as he stared up at you like he would die if you denied him.
You lifted your hand before you could think better of it.
The first slap wasn’t hard. More shock than force, your palm catching his cheekbone with a sharp little crack that made both of you go still.
Dex reacted like you had just shown him the entrance to heaven.
His hips snapped up into you, a strangled moan tearing from his throat as his cheek began to flush beneath the mark of your hand.
“Fuuck,” he sobbed. “Fuck, yes. It’s so fucking good, baby.”
Your pulse roared in your ears. He had stopped his upward thrusts into you, so you took control, grinding yourself down onto him. Instead of bouncing up and down, you switched the rhythm to a steady but vicious rock, grinding against him, his cock still fully seated and twitching in you. The coarse hair on his pubic bone tickled your clit with every grind against him. You were using him, and he liked it. You couldn’t stop. “You’re mine.”
“Yours,” he gasped immediately. Dex’s hands had gone still on your hips, gripping but letting you move. He wasn’t in charge anymore. “Only yours.”
Your body had separated itself from your mind. There was no rationality left, only the chase for pleasure. Your palm came down hard on his face once again, and his whole body arched beneath you.
“You belong to me.”
Dex nodded fervently with his reddened face, looking up at you with the most adoring expression like this was the only truth he had ever understood.
“I belong to you,” he sputtered. “I belong to you. I love you.”
It didn’t take long for both of you to finish after that, your cunt spasming around him, milking his cock as he groaned your name and repeated again and again: “I belong to you. You own me. I love you.”
So…yes.
Maybe the honesty could be too much at times. But, fuck it. It was hot, right?
Sex was just a reflection of your connection, your devotional and adorational and absolutely loving tether to Dex. Everything about him, about what you had, was so simultaneously intoxicating and grounding that it became easy to let your life fold around him.
Everything just kind of…narrowed down. To only you and him.
Dinner with friends became coffee with friends, long calls became texts, and then apologies about how busy school was. Solo errands became easier when Dex came too. Your phone stayed closer to your hand, because Dex got worried when you didn’t answer. Your apartment was strange and too quiet when he wasn’t in it.
But still, none of that felt like you lost anything.
It just meant, in the mind you would later think of as warped, that you gained love. You gained Dex.
Which was why it felt so strange, almost unnatural, the first night Dex told you he couldn’t come home until the next morning.
He had told you while standing in your living room, already dressed for work in his FBI jacket and gray slacks, holster slung across his waist. You hated when he wore that jacket because it made you stupid and wet.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” Dex said, checking the watch on his wrist for the third time in five minutes. “It could be early morning.”
You looked up from where you were curled on the couch. “Early morning? Must be important.”
Dex’s mouth tightened. “It’s just a…work thing.”
“Work thing,” you hummed, tapping your finger to your lip like you were very seriously considering what a ‘work thing’ could mean. “Very specific. Thank you.”
That earned you a small smile, but it didn’t last. Dex was distracted and cagey in that way he got when whatever was happening inside his head had pulled him somewhere you couldn’t follow.
“So…what kind of work thing?”
“Just a protective detail,” he answered, shrugging nonchalantly. “Nothing serious.”
Your eyebrows lifted. “You? I thought you were more of a…you know.” You mimed holding a rifle.
Dex huffed. “That’s exactly the point. It’s kind of complicated.”
“FBI stuff?”
“FBI stuff,” he confirmed, then glanced away.
You watched him cross the room to the window, where the precious fern that you should probably thank for your relationship sat on the sill in its little terracotta pot. Dex touched one of the drooping leaves, frowning.
“I think it needs better light…” He turned the pot slightly. He adjusted one of the leaves, then another, shifting the pot until it faced more toward the room than the window.
You didn’t think anything of it. Dex had always been particular about things and also had become the de facto plant-whisperer in apartment 416, remembering to water everything you would have probably let die. He noticed details you didn’t, fixed little problems before you even knew they existed. It was just another way Dex loved you.
He turned back to you. “Chloe’s still coming over tonight?”
“Yep!” You sat up on the couch, crossing your legs under you. “I think she’s pretty excited. It’s been like, what, maybe three weeks since she’s been over? She keeps joking you’re holding me hostage.”
Dex’s cheek muscle twitched, and you rolled your eyes. He could be so sensitive sometimes.
“Babe, you know she’s joking. She loves you!” You opened your arms up. “Now, stop pouting and give me a kiss goodbye, please.”
Dex obliged, coming to the couch and leaning down over you, one hand braced on the cushion beside your hip. He pressed his lips to you slowly, lingering like he didn’t want it to end. He tasted like toothpaste.
“Text me if you need anything,” he murmured, lips still against yours. “And don’t forget the lock the door.”
You pulled back, then swooped back in to press one last quick kiss. “I always lock the door.”
“Remember to check it twice.”
You sighed fondly. “Yes, sir.”
Dex kissed your forehead and straightened. Before the door clicked shut behind him, he looked back at you one last time. “I love you.”
You knew he did. Everything told you that. “I love you too, Dex. And be safe, okay?”
Dex nodded. And then, he was gone.
For a few minutes, you just sat there, staring at the closed door and wondering what exactly Dex was walking into. You tried not to think too hard about it. He was FBI. He had been doing this for years. He knew what he was doing.
Still, you hoped he would be okay, and whatever “protective detail” meant was just that it would be a boring night.
Before the apartment could start feeling too empty without him, Chloe showed up like the Tasmanian Devil, bursting through your door with a greasy box of pizza in one hand and a $6 bottle of wine clutched victoriously in the other.
“You bitch,” she announced, kicking the door shut behind her. “You can totally tell your apartment has a man in it now, and it’s disgusting.”
You blinked. “Um…hello to you too?”
“No, seriously.” Chloe set the wine and pizza on the kitchen counter and looked around the apartment with a horrified look. “It’s like I can feel him here. Like a fucking FBI ghost or something.”
You laughed, getting up to lock the door behind her. Then, because Dex’s voice had already lodged itself in your head, you checked it again. “I already feel like you’re going to be in rare form tonight.”
“Rare form?” she mused, opening up your cabinets and helping herself to a wine glass. “I think that should be expected, considering I haven’t seen you in years because Mr. Blonde and Handsome is, like, brainwashing you into forgetting you can leave the apartment.”
You sucked your teeth.
Chloe had made it…known (for lack of better words) that she wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of Dex before. Mostly, her complaints centered around him being the reason the two of you didn’t see each other as much anymore. You understood, but at the same time– you had your own life. She was your best friend, but she wasn’t entitled to every single spare second of you. You lived with Dex, for God’s sake. Of course you were going to spend more time with him.
Still, you wanted to mediate the two of them. You wanted Chloe to like him. Or, at the very least, stop acting like he was some kind of parasite slowly absorbing your social life.
“He’s not brainwashing me, Chloe,” you tried to keep your voice light as you took the glass she had filled to the brim with white wine. “It’s a new relationship, you know how it goes. It’s the…honeymoon stage, or whatever they call it. We just like being around each other.”
Chloe huffed and continued filling up her own glass. “Sure.”
You desperately wanted to change the subject. You lifted up your glass. “Okay, enough about Dex. I love you, we haven’t seen each other in weeks, so let’s just have fun tonight, okay? Let’s cheers.”
A smile finally broke across Chloe’s face. “Aww, you know I can’t stay mad at you when you say cute shit like that.” She raised her glass. “Fine. No more boy talk. Cheers!”
The two of you managed to stay true to that rule for a good portion of the evening, stuffing your faces with pizza, downing the entire bottle of Moscato before cracking open another from your fridge, gossiping about old classmates from college, and discussing crappy reality TV with the kind of passion usually reserved for political elections. For a second, as you watched Chloe animatedly explain her winning strategy if she ever got selected for one of those dumb dating competitions, it felt like it used to. Before Dex.
You even checked your phone and saw only one text from him.
Dex: Lock the door, baby. Please.
You: already did twice!! love you be safe please ❤️
Dex: Good girl. I will. Love you too.
Things were good.
That was, until you reached the bottom of the second bottle of wine.
Chloe was sprawled across one end of the couch, swirling around her fourth glass. There was a glint in her eye beginning to form that warned she was ready to be a little too honest with you.
“No,” you said immediately, wagging a finger at her.
She raised her eyes in mock surprise. “What? I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re doing…that face.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hummed, taking a long sip from her glass. “Besides…I’m surprised you even remember what my face looks like…”
There it was. “Chloe, stop. I thought we said no more talking about Dex.”
“I’m just joking with you, babe,” she drawled, sitting up a little straighter. She pointed an accusatory finger right back at you. “Besides…I didn’t say anything about him. You’re the one who brought it up, which kind of implies you feel like–”
“Chloe, I’m serious.” You put your glass down with a thunk on the coffee table, maybe a little harder than needed. This was all so…Chloe. You dragged your hands down your face, which had already become flushed with wine. It certainly didn’t help this conversation that you were more or less drunk at this point. “Dex is my boyfriend. I love him. I love you, too. Can you just, like…be happy for me?”
Chloe scoffed. “Happy for you? I mean, yeah, I guess I’m happy you’re getting good dick every night. But how am I supposed to be happy if I never see you anymore? Besides, I haven’t even met Dex–”
“Which is exactly why you need to stop talking about my relationship like you know him,” you interrupted her. Your face was more than flushed now; it was hot. Something was bubbling inside you, sharp and mean.
“You’re right. I don’t know him,” Chloe stood up from the couch at this point, hands on her hips. She was pissed. Her mouth was starting to do that twitchy thing that only happened when you were in nightclubs and someone spilled their drink on her shoes. “I don’t know him, because I’ve invited both you and him out multiple times, and every time you say no. I have made every effort to try and get to know him, be his…I don’t know, a friend or some shit. And Dex has made zero effort, because he wants you to himself, obviously.”
“That’s not true, Chloe. Dex is shy,” you stuttered, rising from the couch to meet her. “He…he has anxiety, he gets nervous meeting people–”
“Okay, I’m sorry, but it’s not my problem your boyfriend is a fucking weirdo–”
That was the line. You set one boundary, and Chloe had crossed it. Drunk or not drunk, what happened was irreversible. Something snapped in you, and whatever had been bubbling began to spill out. You marched straight up to her, eyes twitching. You were furious.
“You know what, Chloe? I think you’re just jealous,” you snapped, spit flying from your mouth, only inches from her face. “You’re just jealous because something good finally happened to me. I have a partner who actually loves me, who actually wants to come home to me at night, and you’re mad because you don’t.”
The second the words left your mouth, Chloe’s face changed. The twitch in her mouth stopped. You saw, in that moment, not the sarcasm and wine-fueled bravado. You saw your best friend.
“Wow,” she said softly. Then, she nodded, like she had just decided something. “Okay.”
Your stomach dropped. “Chloe–”
“No, it’s fine.” Chloe went to the door, her movements stiff and unsteady as she grabbed her purse and shoved her shoes on. “You’re right. Clearly I’m...I'm just some pathetic, lonely, jealous bitch.”
She yanked the door open, then paused in the hallway, one hand still on the knob. You thought she might say something cruel back, even the score. Instead, she just looked at you.
“I seriously hope he’s worth it.”
Then she left.
You stood, frozen in your spot in the middle of the living room, staring at the door.
You knew you had fucked up.
Even drunk and defensive, still shaking with anger, you knew that was a fact. You knew those words would hurt her, so you used them. But what she had said about Dex? Chloe had sat in your apartment, laughed with you, then acted like the person you were in love with was some kind of freak. She crossed a line, period.
You tried to repeat that to yourself as you gathered the dirty plates and empty glasses from the living room with trembling hands.
You weren’t wrong. Dex wasn't wrong. Chloe was wrong.
By the time you dumped the wine dregs into the sink and tossed the pizza box into recycling, your anger had already started to blister into something worse. Guilt, maybe. Or hurt. Or worse, clarity.
You turned off the living room lamp, and went straight to bed. You were still drunk enough that the hallway tilted when you walked, but not drunk enough to avoid the hot tears that began streaming down your face as you tucked yourself under the covers. Even as you drifted off into a thick, wine-clumsy sleep, you were still crying. Muffled and pathetic, your face pressed into Dex’s pillow because it smelled like him and because you wished he was there to make it better, like he did for everything else. You wished Chloe hadn’t ever come over in the first place. You wished it really could just be you and him. Forever.
Hours later, you were brought out of your restless slumber by a sound at the front door. A key sliding into the lock, then the door creaking open.
Dex.
You didn’t move, too exhausted, heavy with sleep and a pulsing headache. The bedroom was still dark, but the beginnings of bluish light had crept in under the curtains. Early morning.
You heard Dex pause outside the bedroom, something soft but weighty hitting the floor. His shoes, probably.
The mattress dipped behind you, and Dex climbed into bed. You could feel that he hadn’t changed– the cool buttons of his shirt brushed against your shoulder as he settled behind you. He didn’t kiss your cheek or ask if you were awake like he usually did. He just slid his arm around your waist and pulled you back, flush against him with an involuntary grunt.
“Dex?” Your throat was hoarse, wrecked from crying and sleep.
“Hey, baby. I’m here,” he murmured. There was something off with his voice. It sounded strained, thin. He tucked his face into the back of your neck before you could turn to face him, his breath hot against your skin. Dex pressed his lips against the nape of your hairline. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
You sniffed. “I missed you. Did…everything go okay? With work?”
Silence.
“...Yeah. It was nothing.”
You knew that was a lie. But you also knew not to pry. So instead, you intertwined your fingers with Dex’s hand that had found its way beneath the oversized shirt of his you were wearing, resting against your stomach.
“Okay,” you said, voice hushed. “I’m just glad you’re home.”
Dex gave a shaky exhale. His body stayed curled tightly around yours, tense in a way that didn’t match the soft circles his thumb had begun rubbing against your skin.
“You fought with Chloe.”
You opened your eyes in the dark. His thumb kept rubbing circles. “How…how did you know?”
“Your voice. You’ve been crying.”
Of course he had noticed. Dex always noticed. You turned your face into the pillow, the cover of it still damp with your tears. “It was stupid. Just…just her being Chloe, I guess. She doesn’t know you.”
Dex’s hand moved up from your stomach to your ribs, holding you more securely against him. “She hurt you, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but…I said something really awful to her,” you whispered, shame twisting your organs. “Like, really awful. I’m…I don’t think I’m a good friend.”
Dex was quiet for a moment before he finally said in a low voice, “She hurt you first.”
It should have made you feel better. Dex was right. Chloe said a horrible thing about the man you loved. She took what he couldn’t change about himself and used it as a knife. But, did that give you the right to do the same thing to her? Your best friend?
“I-I don’t know, Dex.” Your voice had gone wobbly. “Maybe I should apologize.”
Dex’s arm tightened around you. A reminder that it was him, warm and real and wrapped around you, while Chloe was gone. It was just him. Him and you.
“Don’t think about her right now, baby,” his mouth moved against your neck, words vibrating against you. “She made you feel bad about us, and you don’t need that.”
You heard a noise from outside, a car passing over wet pavement, the soft hiss of tires floating up through the dark.
“You don’t need her.”
A tear slid silently across the bridge of your nose and into the pillow.
You should have told him that wasn’t true. That Chloe had been there before him, that friends fought. You should have asked him why he never wanted to meet her. You should have asked him where he had been all night, why he still had his clothes on. Why his voice was changed.
But you didn’t. You just felt another tear trickle down the same path, but this time it landed on your top lip. Your tongue darted out, tasting it. It was salty. It made you want to speak, so you did.
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maekar i targaryen x reader
wc: 8.7k
summary: You had jewels, and more gold than you could count. You had dresses and slippers and cloaks, and all the amusements you could hope for. There was nothing Maekar could give you that you wouldn't already have; and though you would no doubt be perfectly pleased with strings of rubies or pearls, he simply wouldn't have it — his pride would not allow for it.
tags: older man/younger woman, some mild canon typical classism, pre-wedding tension >:3
masterlist / read on ao3 / previous part
It was a thought spoken aloud. Maekar hardly realised his mouth had moved, staring broodingly out across the courtyard.
Your dowry was a hefty one — an armada of newly-built warships and skilled men to man them, as well as the simple prospect of your father's ear and support. In return, your father gained a stronger foothold in the Seven Kingdoms, a relationship with the monarchy and the realm that would benefit both the Iron Bank and his family beyond all sense — but what would there be for you?
You had jewels, and more gold than you could count; you had dresses and slippers and cloaks, and all the amusements you could hope for. There was nothing Maekar could give you that you wouldn't already have; and though you would no doubt be perfectly pleased with strings of rubies or pearls, he simply wouldn't have it — his pride would not allow for it.
Aerys said nothing; it was as if Maekar hadn't spoken at all. Baelor gave a hum, and tapped his fingers against the table. 'Twas Rhaegel who first spoke, soft and song-like.
"Gifts for a young bride," he said, head rocking idly from side to side. He tapped his fingers along the arms of his chair, humming. "Gifts for a girl…"
"What is proper?" mused Baelor, then. He leaned back in his seat and smoothed a hand over his jaw, writings abandoned upon his desk. "I would imagine she is no stranger to all manner of finery…"
There was a scowl upon Maekar's face. "Therein lies my predicament."
"You'll find none of us particularly well versed in such matters," continued Baelor. "I, especially, am… out of practice. Perhaps you might ask mother?"
He thought about it. Yes, it was perhaps the best course of action… It was only his pride which had prevented him from doing so. Running to mother for help with his bride felt entirely juvenile; he'd hoped that his brothers would bear more bounteous fruit.
Aerys remained quiet for a long time. Only the sound of Baelor's quill against parchment was to be heard as he returned to his missives. Then, just as Maekar had given up on the thought altogether, he spoke:
"I do believe us all entirely capable of preparing an assortment that will please Maekar's bride." Maekar perked up, gaze intent. "We shall begin thusly…"
─── ༻⋅☼⋅༺ ───
1. A feast — for what is more suitable for a gregarious young bride than a chance to be celebrated? So says the King and Queen.
"My lady," purred Lord Baratheon, seizing your hand in his. "You are entirely radiant this evening, may I say. If you would do me the honour of a dance…"
Within a sennight of your announcement, a feast was prepared by the King and Queen's insistence. A gift, they said, before the wedding proper.
Relatively hasty though its preparation was, it was masterful in execution; the Great Hall was adorned in all manner of ornamentation, from banners and cloth-of-gold wreaths to bouquets of exotic flowers; multiple pigs were put to spit in a crust of herbs and salt, and there were pheasants and beef and goose, and a whole plethora of dishes to go with them. It was a marvellous display of abundance that sent both the serving wenches and courtiers into a flurry of awestruck gossip — even Maekar, dour as he was to endure the court, was exceptionally pleased.
Those seven days allowed the most important lords of the surrounding areas to gather: those from the closest stretches of the riverlands and the Reach, as well as the stormlands and crownlands. All came with their suites in tow, proud and haughty, and the air was abuzz with excitement — a royal engagement, it seemed, was worthy of a spread rivalling that of the King's name-day celebrations. Maekar wasn't particularly overjoyed to see half of their smug faces, but your excitement eclipsed his annoyance.
Dinner (with all its courses and toasting and well-wishes) had not long passed before you were whisked away to dance by Syrah — your betrothed had grumbled, but relented his time with you. It was then that Rhae had decided that she wished to follow, content to be spun and tugged every which way between the two of you. You couldn't remember the last time you'd laughed with such zeal, dizzy with wine and dance.
And then — in the middle of twirling her like a spinning top—
"Lord Baratheon," you said, a smile upon your face. "A pleasure, truly — I missed you at the King's name-day tourney, did I not?"
(Maekar, you found, had very little fondness for the man. Upon reading through the list of guests confirmed to attend, he'd let out a long-suffering groan, and collapsed back in his seat.
"Fucking Baratheon," he'd muttered, staring into the distance. "I'd rather have the Grey Lion at my table.")
The Laughing Storm had come with a retinue twice the size of most others, and was wholly unabashed by the audacity of it; among them was a troupe of Dornish puppeteers, whom he had apparently been hosting in Storm's End for many moons. Apparently, he'd offered their services with all the fawning and praise a man of his status could muster.
(Syrah was incredibly happy to be the one to tell you of his alleged infatuation with one in particular — a pretty girl, you were told, though entirely beneath his station. It did gladden you to know you weren't the only person sending the nobility aflutter with scandal.)
"A fault completely my own. A spin with the guest of honour?" asked the man. You had no desire to be rude, being the lady of the evening; and in truth, you found him entertaining, this Lord Baratheon, with his mischievous eyes and sociable nature. Thus, you allowed him a dance — a single dance, you warned — and urged Rhae back to her father's side.
His teeth were a shocking white when he smiled, sharpened like fangs. And smile he did — laughing raucously as he pulled you straight into the fray, not bothering to wait for the ongoing couples to finish. He spun you so fast the faces around you began to blur, twisting you this way and that. "Had I known a woman so radiant resided in the King's court, I would have stolen you from under your dragon's nose!"
"Lord Baratheon!" you said, a surprised laugh leaving you before you could stop it. "Have you no shame?"
You were not offended. If rumour served, Lord Baratheon had his puppet-girl, and he was no doubt well aware of the might of Maekar's ire. The Laughing Storm seemed to find great glee in stirring the pot, is all.
"Oh, I'm terrible," Lord Baratheon said. He guided you around the other couples at breakneck speed, narrowly avoiding the shoulders of a lord whose face you hadn't the time to register— "When I take Storm's End, my dear, I shall raze it to the ground with my debauchery."
"May your lord father live long, then."
"Ah, a wound from a lady cuts deeper than any sword."
"Well, I hear a mace leaves a terrible mark."
Lord Baratheon's grin turned keen — and he made to spin you once more, hands tightening around you, when—
"Baratheon," said Maekar through gritted teeth, voice hard and forceful. "Allow me a dance with my wife."
Your head was still whirling — the stop was incredibly abrupt — but even then, you could detect the distinct displeasure on Maekar's face. He had never seemed a small man, but beside Lyonel (who was already as big as a man could be) he seemed to loom.
(A dizziness came over you — decidedly not from the dancing.)
You wondered how he'd got there so quickly. The dancing was a good distance from the high table.
"Wife?" Lyonel echoed, smiling lazily. "Why, I seem to have missed the wedding."
Maekar glared.
"But of course, lord dragon," Lyonel continued. He still had a grasp of your hands — as quick and decisive as anything, though, Maekar simply reached over and jerked your wrist away. You tried not to think of how his fingers clasped so easily over the entirety of it, moving you back to your rightful place at his side. "Oh, worry not, my friend. I have no desire to start another war — the ashes of the last have barely settled."
At that, the excitement dimmed, and your smile with it.
You had heard tales of the Blackfyre rebellion from Maekar's own mouth; the rest of the court — nay, the realm — seemed to speak around it, like the very thought of it could fester. It had been years since Daemon Blackfyre fell upon the Redgrass, and yet the scars remained, blackened and rotten. The ghosts of the war roamed, still, among the living, and a celebration of love was certainly not the place to invoke them.
You wished, suddenly, that you hadn't taken Lord Baratheon's hand at all.
Maekar's scowl worsened, his displeasure curdling like sour milk upon his face. He took a daring step forward, placing himself before you in such a way that you were shielded almost entirely — a dog poised to snap its terrible teeth in service. You almost let him. It wasn't the place for it, though, and the repercussions would far outweigh the satisfaction. You couldn't imagine the King or Queen would be very pleased if tensions overflowed — and Summerhall was ever so close to Storm's End, was it not?
You wound your arms around Maekar's elbow.
"Come, my love," you said, your cheek flush against the silken arm of his doublet. His arm tensed beneath you, before relaxing. "Shall we have a look at the puppeteers in the courtyard? I hear Lord Baratheon is very fond of them."
Maekar did not move. His glower was an enduring thing. You were glad to not be on its receiving end.
Lyonel's grin took a cold edge. "Fond is a word for it, I suppose."
"And tell me," you said, "which is your favourite?"
His smile widened — though, perhaps smile was the wrong word entirely. This was a baring of teeth, and those fangs of his seemed more troubling than ever. Lord Baratheon was not fond of any disrespect towards his puppet-girl, it seemed, which was alright with you. You yourself were not fond of disrespect towards your husband-to-be, no matter how slight. Yielding was not an option — you would die, you thought, before rolling over for any man other than your betrothed.
"Story, that is," you added after a long pause. "Your tales and fables are so different from those we have back home."
There was a moment in which Lyonel simply stared. The weight of his gaze was immense; pupils so stark against the blue of his irises that you felt, for a moment, as if you were pinned in place. Maekar had not moved — he simply remained at your side, ever watchful, regarding Baratheon with narrowed, distrustful eyes.
The moment passed. And then, as if the words were cut from him, Baratheon spoke. "Durran Godsgrief, my lady. He who erected the castle at Storm's End against the ire of the gods — we are an ever defiant bunch."
Your smile widened. He would not go quietly, but your point had been made. "Marvellous. Come, my love."
Terse goodbyes were exchanged, before you turned on your heel, and Lyonel Baratheon disappeared into the crowd. You released a breath, your heart thudding in your chest — despite yourself, there was some relief in turning away from him. A dragon you may have had at your side, but facing the stag still daunted.
You could feel Maekar's eyes upon your cheek as you trailed slowly towards the exit, arm in arm.
"I know," you said, pursing your lips. "Far too intrepid of me. I should have smiled and said naught — 'tis embarrassing to have your bride order you about like a stableboy, I am sure."
The next step you attempted was firmly refused — Maekar stood as still as stone, forcing you to turn and look at him.
"Do not deign to speak for me," Maekar said. You peered up at him through the cover of your eyelashes, and met his gaze. To anyone not versed in the peculiarities of him, they might think him angry — eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, his lips turned down at their corners — but you knew better. You could spy that particular shade of scarlet starting at the tips of his pale ears. The bob of his throat beneath his white whiskers. You blinked in surprise. "You held your own. I… appreciate such qualities."
"Oh?" you said. His eyes cut away — found some nondescript point in the distance amongst the crowd — but your hand darted up to the side of his neck, and they returned to you. Your smile had taken on a note of smugness. His skin was warm, pulse skipping under your palm. "Do continue, Lord Targaryen. Which other qualities of mine do you so appreciate?"
Maekar rolled his eyes. His hand engulfed your own as he promptly removed it from his neck, and it remained as such — held surely, tightly within his — as he began to walk once more. "If you want to see these blasted puppets—"
"I shan't embarrass you any longer, my lord," you said airily. "I know your desire for me eclipses all sense."
There was a scoff.
(But he did not deny it.)
─── ༻⋅☼⋅༺ ───
2. A book — for what good is a life without knowledge? So says Aerys.
There was a great thud as something heavy and fabric-bound dropped to the table before you. Your cup rattled gently against its saucer at the disturbance.
"Oh? What is that?"
Maekar didn't answer; he simply groaned as he dropped into the chair opposite you, slumping into the cushions, arms bracketing the headrest. His weary gaze found your window, where the sun was near setting. "My head is addled."
Ironically, as the wedding neared, your time was spent further and further apart; dress fittings, invitation writing, and all manner of arrangements needed your input. Maekar was similarly engaged with the wedding tourney, which was looking to be a grander and grander affair by the day. In the two days that had passed since the engagement feast, you'd spent perhaps an hour together, and had missed his little ones entirely, occupied with their lessons as they were. You were trying very intently to not let it irritate you.
"Not particularly fond of flower arrangements and table settings, my love?"
He shot you an unimpressed look, before his eyes fluttered slowly shut.
"Yes, well, I feel the same," you said, setting aside the parchment you'd been scrawling upon. "In truth, your mother has been doing most of the work — her, Aelinor, and Alys — and still, I find myself weary. "
A tut. "I cannot look upon another ceaseless list. I despise half the cunts on them."
A soft laugh left you — and, using his lethargy to your advantage, deftly slid over and tucked yourself into his side. He blinked at the press of your weight on the cushions beside him, gaze firmly tacking you in place. "What is it?"
"Must there be something wrong for me to sit at my husband-to-be's side?"
He scoffed, though it was fond. He returned to rest once more. "There usually is."
"How terribly you lie."
For a while you sat like this, side by side, fatigued by the sheer volume of things which must be done for any respectable wedding. Every time you blinked, you swore you saw bunches of peonies and lilacs, heard Queen Myriah's voice — now, which will go most with your dress? It would be best for Lord Lannister to sit near the dais. And where shall the minstrels play? Yes, yes, that sounds adequate.
It seemed strange to imagine a time after this. A quieter time, in Summerhall, where your husband and children would be your most pressing company. Rhae with her birds, Daella with her sewing. Daeron and his wine, and Aegon's mischief. You hid a smile — or, rather, were in the process of hiding a smile, when a grumbling snore snapped you from your reverie.
You blinked. "Maekar?"
There was a grunt, but he remained as he was — softened by not-quite-sleep, splayed over his seat like a great, big cat. Suddenly, you were overcome with a terrible wave of affection, and, grinning, reached over to brush his hair back. The circles beneath his eyes were darker than usual, you noted. Sullen grey against his pale complexion, the lines and wrinkles beneath caused by more than age alone.
"You poor man," you crooned. "How horribly they've run you ragged."
His usual response — an abashed sort of annoyance that would have him swatting away your hands or chastising you for treating him like a child — was markedly absent. Instead, he pressed his head deeper into your hand, and you knew then that he was more spent than you'd thought. It was with this knowledge that you reached over and cupped his whiskered jaw, pulling him slowly to face you, his exhalations hot against your palm.
Maekar's eyes opened, just slightly; half-lidded and heavy, so dark their violet appeared more indigo. The weight of his gaze was a dizzying thing. It halted your heart in your chest and seized your impulses. If he would have requested something of you, in that moment, you did not think yourself strong enough to deny him.
"Shall I leave?" you asked quietly.
A frown. "No."
"I'd rather you sleep in a bed, my love. Your old bones are not what they used to be."
He turned his face away to give a loud yawn — and yes, he must be tired indeed to not rise to your provocations. When he turned back, it was with a wave of his hand towards the table. Towards that mysterious package, which had quite honestly escaped you. "A gift for you, by way of Aerys."
Quirking an eyebrow, you turned towards it, your question finally answered. There was little doubt of what it was; 'twas rectangular in shape, clearly, and if you knew anything about Maekar's elder brother, it was his fondness for reading. You leaned forward to peer at it.
(A large, warm hand fell from the headrest to your back.)
The fabric was a deep, warm red, brocaded with what appeared to be orange and yellow silk, and tied into a large knot at its top. You tugged at it gently, and undone it came; and what sat beneath was a thick, tall tome, suitably dusty and worn. You flipped to the first page.
Chronicles of the History of Westeros Vol. I, by Archmaester Aren.
You hummed, hauling the book onto your lap. "Fitting."
"Knowledge is next to godliness, he says."
"I suppose I cannot disagree." The pages were rough beneath your fingertips, and smelled, as all old books did, of dust. It was a comforting smell, familiar.
"He says it might bring comfort. To — familiarise yourself with your new home."
"That is… kind of him." It was. Aelinor and Myriah did not need to make implications of Aerys' aversion to people, for you saw it easily. He did not enjoy gatherings or feasts or any such occasion that would require conversation of him; he preferred the library, and his study, and — if anything — the company of maesters. You turned another page, idly beginning to read.
"In the year 49 AC, Rhaena Targaryen wed Androw Farman, the second son of the Lord of Fair Isle. It is said the Queen in the West's choice in husband was borne not of love for him, but for her husband's sister, Elissa—"
The leather of the chair creaked and squeaked, suddenly, as Maekar began to move — further and further down, groaning all the while, before his head took its place upon your lap, right below the book. You paused.
"Comfortable, are we?"
A grunt. "You may continue."
With a shake of your head — and a grudging laugh — you did exactly that.
─── ༻⋅☼⋅༺ ───
3. A companion — for what is more enduring than the bond between two living things? So says Rhaegel.
The next day saw you sitting across from Queen Myriah and her ladies-in-waiting, reviewing — for the nth time, it seemed — the meals for the celebration. If you'd thought the engagement feast grand, the wedding was looking to outshine it; mostly because of Myriah, you thought, who was most pleased to see her youngest son marrying again.
("If only Baelor would allow himself the pleasure," she had sighed once. "Alas.")
The menu was ever-growing; roasted boars, pheasants baked in a crust of herbs and Dornish lemons, beef stewed in a rich, savoury gravy, and numerous dishes to compliment them. There would be bread baked with the Reach's finest grain, and cakes and sweets abound, and fiery peppers stuffed with cheese from Dorne, and the most excellent wines… And then there was the wedding pie, of course, which would be filled with birds — most likely doves, according to Myriah, though the fowlers had noted a strange influx in jays…
Once the menu had been sent away to both the King and Maekar for approval, you deflated in your seat. Myriah shot you a fond look over her chalice.
"I fear I will never be able to repay you, my Queen," you said. "Had I tried my hand at organising any of this alone, I would have run it into the ground."
"How often must I tell you?" she replied, tutting. "Myriah. I have all sons, you know, and each daughter I have gained has been more lovely than the last. Cassella — more wine, if you will."
You watched her as her cup was filled. They said that Baelor took after his mother most, and this was true. He had her dark hair and sallow skin, and kind smile. Rhaegel had her hair, but his father's colouring; Aerys, similarly, looked Daeron's twin, but thinner. But Maekar had a certain softness to his face that came by way of Myriah — it was not obvious, and he would no doubt scoff if you told him, but you could see it. When his mind was away and unencumbered, he took on a particular lightness; his frown eased, his scowl softened, and Myriah's likeness shone through.
"I am gladdened," you said eventually. "Braavos is a long journey, and… well, I shan't see my own mother as often as I would hope."
Her eyes raised to you again, knowing. "Many say the worst of marriage is the troubles that come after; the disagreements, or the coldness of the marriage bed, or love — which is oft slow to grow. But for us — for the women, who leave our homes and everything we know behind — this is our burden."
You had come to terms with this, perhaps even before you'd stepped foot upon Westerosi soil. It was the fate of any woman who was to marry; you shed your identity, your home, your culture, and adopt those of your husband. It was expected of you — not by Maekar, perhaps, but by the very world you inhabited. You could not prevent your living in Westeros, or the distance that would surely grow between you and your family, or the mannerisms and habits you would no doubt adopt — but you would treasure that which you could keep. Your songs and tales and traditions. Your Braavosi tongue. Your strange, eastern quirks. This, you swore.
You opened your mouth to say something — an agreement, maybe, or a gentle prise into Myriah's own troubles — but before you could, the doors to the Queen's solar were knocked upon.
"A courier from Prince Rhaegel, Your Grace."
Myriah raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Yes, allow him entry."
The courier was a young man, and in his arms a simple wooden box. There was a lid atop it — and as he sat it down (not on the table, mind, but on the floor) you swore it jostled itself.
"Your Grace, my lady," said the man, finally bowing low. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. "A gift by way of Prince Rhaegel for Prince Maekar's bride. There is a note…"
You met Myriah's gaze, eyes wide. "For — for me?"
"One of the more delightful aspects of marriage. The husband may get the dowry, but the wife gets the gifts," the Queen said, smiling. A small piece of parchment was proferred from the messenger's pocket, and with some hesitance, you took it. "And my sons are particularly welcoming."
You opened the note, and looked upon Rhaegel's looping hand.
Companionship is a gift most treasured, read the note. Thus, it is my gift to you! Delight in her! She is named Chestnut for her coat, and is blessed with a kind and generous temperament.
"Oh, gods," you breathed, a smile growing on your face. "Rhaegel, he—!"
The box gave another rumble — and yes, it had moved by itself. This time, the top went flying off, and there was a startled little yip! from its interior. Gasping, you stood, and chanced a look inside.
"Oh, gods," you repeated. "My Queen — Myriah, look at her!"
Chestnut was small and plump — belly still round with milk — with fur a deep, red-brown, and floppy ears, and a little pink nose. When you reached inside she greeted you with all the unguarded enthusiasm of a pup, nudging at your hand with a wet snout, and peering up at you with dark, shiny eyes. She could not have weighed any more than a feather pillow. Her cold little paws dug gently into your skin as she pushed herself up to nudge at your cheek.
"How darling," cooed the Queen. She chuckled, then. "The first of many children, I hope."
Your smile was blinding. "Oh, Maekar will be delighted."
─── ༻⋅☼⋅༺ ───
4. A symbol of unity — for what is a marriage, if not this? So says Baelor.
Maekar was decidedly undelighted with Chestnut.
He had given Rhaegel multiple firm and unyielding no's, apparently. He had little fondness for the pup; she annoyed him, making a habit of chasing playfully after his boots as he walked, curling up at his feet, and clambering into his lap whenever he sat (despite the fact that he always very promptly removed her). Her nose — which she greatly enjoyed shoving into the nearest face — was irritatingly cold, and she required far too much attention for any one creature, according to him.
Chestnut was not happy about this, being that she was entirely enthralled by him, but she did not take his rejection personally.
Between your chastising and the children (who were incredibly fond of Chestnut, in that simple, enamoured way that all children are fond of small, fluffy creatures), Maekar begrudgingly accepted Chestnut as the newest member of the household.
You doted on her. She ate only pheasant poached in beef broth — shredded for her convenience, of course — and carrots and peas and pumpkin, when the kitchens allowed for it. Every day you brushed her lovely brown fur and took her for walks around the gardens; every night she curled up upon a pile of pillows at the foot of your bed, though she had a great fondness for trying (and failing) to hop in beside you.
Rhaegel had been right — during such an overwhelming period, what balm soothed better than a companion? And overwhelming it was, despite how much had already been accomplished. Your family would arrive in less than a week, and their apartments were prepared; your dress had been fitted, your wedding jewels sourced, and all the great lords and ladies of the realm were trickling, slowly yet surely, into the Keep.
You would soon be a married woman — it was hard to conceptualise, even now, even with the long and arduous journey you'd taken to it. You thought deeply on this as you pet the downy fur between Chestnut's ears, gazing intently into your fireplace.
This would be the rest of your life. Summerhall. Children and Chestnut. Keeping the house as Maekar's wife. Spending your days horse-riding and reading and tending to all those things a woman usually tends to. And, of course, the… the marriage bed.
Your cheeks were suddenly hot. Chestnut gave a gentle grumble, and you realised suddenly that you'd stopped petting her. A grievous mistake, to be sure.
"My apologies, little princess," you teased quietly. "I shan't stop again, if I can help it—"
There was a sudden, swift knock on the door. You cast Chestnut a sorry glance as the guardsman cleared his throat.
"'Tis the Crown Prince, my lady."
You pushed yourself up from the floor with such force, you almost tripped over your hems.
Baelor?
It seemed you were seeing more and more of Maekar's brothers these days — which, to be sure, was not unappreciated, nor totally unexpected — though they did seem to come at the most unanticipated times. It was terribly late. Night had fully come, and you were but half an hour from bed.
But it was the Crown Prince. You'd be a fool to turn him away.
Baelor Breakspear looked entirely perfect in your doorway. To be sure, you'd never seen the man with a hair out of place; fatigue did not seem to plague him, despite rising earlier and sleeping later than most. He went to great trouble, you thought, to maintain such a manicured facade. You may have spent most of your time in the Kep besotted with Maekar, but you had noticed much of Baelor, too. He diffused even the most tense of moments with practiced ease; he greeted everyone with the same regal graciousness; he even took great care to enjoy things with just the right amount of zeal, never too little or too much. The Baelor in Maekar's war stories seemed another animal entirely.
You smoothed your skirts. "My Prince."
"My lady," said Breakspear. His hands were clasped politely behind his back, eyes fixed on you. It was another thing you'd noticed about him — the man gave his full, undivided attention to whomever he was speaking. It was incredibly nervewracking. "If I may…"
"I — I apologise. If I had known you meant to visit, I might have…" You trailed off. You weren't sure what you might have done. Prettied yourself up? Prepared a platter of tea, so he could hum just-so, regardless of whether he liked it or not?
"Please, accept my gravest apologies. I understand this is hardly the best time, but I feared this would be the only moment I might catch you alone."
He stepped further into the room, that gentle smile of his on his face. This close to the fire, his eyes seemed to sparkle. One a dark, impenetrable brown. The other, blinding blue.
"Alone?"
"Mm." You hardly noticed you'd moved, naturally following Baelor's lead as he moved throughout the room. As you sat upon the chaise, he came to kneel before you, smoothing a hand over Chestnut's head. You had more than half a mind to urge him up. To have the Crown Prince kneeling before you, no matter the reason, was less than appropriate. "I see my brothers have been far more punctual with their gifts than I."
"She is delightful." Your voice came quiet. Heat rolled off him in waves, and you could feel it against your knees, though no part of him truly touched you. His head was bowed, his profile illuminated in fiery orange. You watched him for a moment as he indulged the pup, open affection blooming upon his pretty face. You could see Maekar in him, sometimes. "And Aerys' gift was well-appreciated."
He made a humming noise, and — as if you'd come to some unspoken, mutual agreement — you let silence trickle in. For a few moments, everything was quiet between you. The fire crackled, and Chestnut snored her little self away, and Baelor breathed slow and steady, and no words were said.
It was a mindless, tired huff from Chestnut that seemed to rouse Baelor from his thoughts.
"My apologies. I shan't keep you long," he said, then. "'Tis better late than never, I suppose, where gifts are concerned."
You felt your cheeks warm. It wasn't that you hadn't expected it, but — but Aerys and Rhaegel both had had their gifts delivered. You had thanked them, of course, but they were not present to watch as you opened the boxes and undid the knots; they did not place themselves at your feet, or examine your every move meticulously. "I am flattered, my prince, though it really isn't necessary — I have more than enough. Maekar makes sure of it."
(Of course you wanted a gift. Only fools did not want gifts. But it was unladylike to not show a small bit of hesitance, you told yourself.)
Baelor's eyes flickered up to you. "A marriage is a means of giving," he said. "From husband to wife, and wife to husband, and family to family. It would do me a great honour if you would accept my gift."
"I — I will, of course. I only…" You shook your head. "I shall, my prince."
"In quieter company, I would insist you call me Baelor. We are to be family, after all." He lifted that large hand from Chestnut's head, then, and reached inside the inner pocket of his doublet. You watched intently as he pulled something out — and, confusion furrowing your brow, you bowed your head to look at it.
'Twas clearly a dagger for its shape and size, curved like the tooth of a great beast. It was contained within a scabbard of gold, embedded with jewels and smooth, coloured glass, the metal engraved masterfully with all manner of ornamentation. The pommel appeared to be a simple, dark green — but when Baelor proffered it gently to you, and the firelight shone upon it, you realised it was completely transparent. A great chunk of some precious stone, faceted with 8 faces.
"My prince — Baelor — this is…" Your gaze flickered between the knife and his eyes, which remained fixed on the blade in your hands.
It felt… strange, in some way, to accept it. You were no stranger to jewels or gold or pretty things, but even you could tell that there was some otherworldly weight to this strange little dagger. It was not simply a knife — Baelor was handing you something bigger, something heavier, and you were wholly ignorant to what it was.
You were helpless to deny him, a slave to both his whims and your own curiosity. The scabbard was cool in your hands, the engraving rough and textured when it brushed over your skin. You slid the knife from its holder and watched, fascinated, as the gold of the blade shined in the light. So polished was it that you could see yourself, wide-eyed and lips parted, in its gleaming surface. You didn't want to touch it. You'd never seen something so perfect — completely flawless, save for a thin line of engravings down the centre. With a squint you tried to read the script, but it was foreign to you.
"Before Aegon conquered Westeros," Baelor murmured, "and before my father united it, Dorne was a kingdom proper. There were the First Men and the Andals, of course, but there were Rhoynar, too. They fled to Dorne when their homeland was taken, and brought with them all manner of traditions."
"Your mother's people," you recalled. "House Nymeros Martell; of the line of Nymeria. She married Mors Martell, and they united Dorne."
"Precisely."
The sharpened edge shimmered in the firelight. "I do not recall the Rhoynar being a particularly violent people."
A low laugh. "Yes, well. It is not the most convenient blade, I must say, for its use was largely ornamental. It stood as an assurance, from husband to wife — from… family, to wife. Protection, wealth. A symbolic tool with which to ensure her safety and prosperity."
A marriage is a means of giving. From husband to wife, and wife to husband, and family to family.
You'd known it. Felt it even while ignorant, the severity of the blade in your hand. The promise it bore. You swallowed, and it was sticky in your throat. "I… I would hope to have no need of it, Baelor."
He hummed. For the first time since meeting him, he looked more his age than ever. There were lines beneath his eyes; a solemness that presented itself in the corners of his lips. His hand moved unconsciously upon Chestnut's head. The grey in his hair shone like silver.
"You will have no need of it," he promised. "Not only do I swear it, but your betrothed unmistakably does. 'Tis simply an old custom — one even my mother may scorn as blasphemy, though I have always held great fondness for it, regardless."
His voice had taken on an edge of something soft. Wistful. That cloak of composure was wearing away, eating itself from the inside, and you were helpless to do anything but watch.
"And what does it say here — along the middle?" You looked up from the knife. He was already watching you.
"Love comes with a knife," he said. "Not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation."
"Oh."
"A union of love is a wondrous thing," Baelor continued. His stare filled you with a graceless sort of nervousness. What did he see when he looked upon you? A wide-eyed girl, her emotions written on her face? Ignorant and green, puzzled by his gift, and his proximity, and the softness in his voice when he spoke to her? "A divine blessing. There exists no man more deserving of it than Maekar. It… goes without saying that I wish you both the best."
You cleared your throat in a poor attempt to steady yourself.
"Thank you, Baelor." The dagger was heavy in your hand, and you met your own eye in its reflection. "I do not think I can ever hope to repay this kindness."
"Repayment is not necessary, my lady." With a final pat to Chestnut's head, he stood, and in the midst of your musing, you had only the mind to sit, peering up at him. "..In truth, I had once hoped to bestow such a gift upon my late lady wife, but was dissuaded — such customs are frowned upon in the Faith, you see. I have… I have always carried the regret with me. The simple sight of your approval is gift enough."
A wave of sorrow overcame you. Even the heir to the throne, it seemed, could not have the freedoms he desired. You stood, and the movement seemed to sober your companion — he stood straight, suddenly, a warm chuckle rumbling in his throat.
"Forgive the ravings of an old man, if you will, my lady," he said, watching you from beneath his eyelashes.
"You do yourself a great injustice, Baelor, speaking of yourself like that."
A smile. "You are too kind. It relieves me to know that you are marrying Maekar. He… requires some patience." His hands were clasped again. The facade returned with vigour, as perfect as ever. "As you well know, he can be… waspish, at times."
"Yes," you said, quickly sheathing the dagger once more. It felt wrong to even set it down; you grasped it tightly in both hands as you walked Baelor slowly to the door. "His greatest charm."
"I am glad you think so."
Needing no command, the guards opened the door as you neared.
"Well, then," Baelor said, giving you one last smile. "The gods give thee good night, my lady. I apologise again for disturbing you."
"'Twas no disturbance, my lord. I shall treasure your gift for as long as I live. Thank you, and — and good night."
His eyes remained on you for only a second longer — and then he nodded politely, and turned on his heel. The moment his eyes left you, you felt your breath return. In truth, you hadn't realised it had left.
For a moment, you stood in place. A strange sort of sadness pulled at your gut, but you could not linger on it; it was late, and you would be married in only a few days, and your bed was calling.
You peered down at your gift, glinting even in the low light.
Love comes with a knife. A smile pulled at your lips. You liked that.
─── ༻⋅☼⋅༺ ───
5. A tooth from an old dragon, conquered and made humble.
"If the winds hold, my family might arrive tomorrow," you said.
Since becoming engaged, you had taken many meals in Maegor's Holdfast; as time passed, the table only grew more and more full. Aerion and Daeron had arrived from Summerhall only the day prior — the former, you were markedly ignoring —, and Aemon three days before from the Citadel. Between Maekar's brood, Rhaegel's children, and the excitement of the gathering, there was not a dull moment at the table.
It was no small wonder that you felt, for the first time that night, you were getting a proper word in with your husband.
(Betrothed, you reminded yourself. Not-yet-husband.)
"My father is kind," you added, peering up at him. "You needn't worry, my love."
"Worry?" Maekar gave a sharp laugh, rife with disbelief. "I do not fear your father, girl. We are peers, or have you forgotten?"
"Your age?" you asked breezily. "No, of course I haven't."
"…How you test my patience."
"You would be ever so bored without me."
The wedding ceremony was to be held in two days, and a full sennight of tourney-games and revelry were to follow. A raven had been sent ahead of your family, and they weren't far from the Western coast. The idea of seeing them after so long away was a nerve-wracking one. It was the melding of your two selves: the girl you were with your family, and the woman you were in the Keep. The eldest daughter and eastern lady.
You closed your eyes, resting your head against Maekar's shoulder as you walked.
"The maester says the sun should hold," you said, stifling a yawn. "Your gods must be awfully fond of our union."
"Hm."
"I do wonder what my bride's cloak will look like," you added. "Father is — yawn — partial to Qartheen silk, though I prefer its Braavosi counterpart, and mother has never known a day of subtlety in all her years—"
Another yawn cut you off — louder, this time, and so entirely mighty that it stopped you in your tracks. When it was finished, you blinked up at Maekar, eyes watering. "I shall sleep for ten days and ten nights when this is over."
He snorted at your declaration, nudging you back beside him. "Had you nothing to spend your time doing, you'd be irate."
In silence you left Maegor's Holdfast and crossed its lengthy drawbridge. With a nod to the Kingsguard posted at its end, Maekar turned you towards the wing which housed your quarters.
"You have been training hard," you said suddenly, voice quiet. His arm tensed as you ran your hand from his elbow to his bicep, smoothing your palm over him. You chanced a glance up at his face, and found his jaw hardened. A smile tugged at your lips. "I hope you do not wear yourself out too much. I worry, you know." A pause. "We will have to consummate our marriage, of course, and at your age—"
There was a loud groan, but he was smiling, despite himself. It was helpful in its own way; as you entered the wing, and began up the stairs towards the next floor, almost everyone you passed had no desire to stop and talk. The uncharacteristic happiness upon your beloved's face turned away even the most terrible of drivellers. "Do you only know how to jest when it comes to my age?"
"I fear you may already know the answer to that, my love."
Before long, you were turning the corner towards your apartments. The hallway filled you with a sense of nostalgia. It wasn't so long ago that you were coming to this place for the first time, stepping upon these floors, ignorant of the future that awaited you in the Red Keep; learning the bricks and rugs and tapestries, until, one day, you knew them intimately.
Within a few days, you'd most likely never return to these quarters again — no, if you were to visit the Red Keep again, your quarters would be in the Holdfast, shared with your husband.
"Need I remind you," Maekar continued, "you are the one marrying me."
You rolled your eyes as you came to a stop at your door. Your guard lingered at an appropriate distance, as usual — thus, you found no shame in turning to your husband-to-be, smoothing your hands up his arms until they rested upon his shoulders. Your smile was sharp when you purred, "Oh, I need no reminding."
His ears were reddening — and no matter how hard he tried to grimace, you could see the pleasure behind it. "You are terrible."
"Yes, very. Have you anything else to say before I retire, Maekar?"
You were not expecting a yes — thus, you began to turn towards your door, hands sliding from him. Usually he left you with a very stilted goodbye, as if he were embarrassed by the mere prospect of dropping you at your own door — sometimes, if he'd been at the wine, or was in a particularly good mood, he'd stand and dawdle, clearly not wanting to leave, but unable to open his mouth and ask it of you. Mostly, the idea of showing any public displays of affection seemed to fill him with equal parts embarrassment and hunger. It was an incredibly entertaining thing to witness.
"Wait," he commanded.
Your brow raised. "Hm?"
"I… have something, for you," he said, the words coming out begrudging. He was glaring again, that way he did when he was embarrassed, hand fishing in the pouch at his hip for something. "…If you would accept it."
"Oh?" You were reminded of Baelor's gift, only the night prior. You had told Maekar of the knife the morning after, and he had already known of it; albeit, he did not seem entirely pleased. Acceptive, perhaps — happy to have indulged his beloved brother, but annoyed at the prospect of you being the recipient. You wondered if it had bothered him enough to…
He said nothing more. From the pouch at his hip he withdrew an even smaller silken bag, a silvery grey in colour and tied shut with thread-of-gold, and held it out. He watched you intently, that frown still on his face, as you took it in hand and tugged it gently open.
At first, you were unsure of what it was, bundled up and dark as it was; but it poured out into your hand, cold and heavy, and you realised, then.
A delicate chain of blackened silver, studded with bloody garnets along itself. Hanging heavily at its centre looked something like a metal tooth, dark like burnished steel. You brought it closer to yourself, eyes searching. It was not smooth, but marred by marks and striations; it had not been treated gently, clearly.
You recognised it, somehow, despite the plainness of it — looked upon it, its particular shape and size, the weight of it, the colour.
A tooth, you realised. A tooth from an old dragon. Your throat suddenly tightened.
"Where did you take this from?" you asked, eyes trained upon it. You could hardly raise your voice above a whisper. "Your shoulders, or your spine?"
"The shoulder." You realised how close he was, then; whether he had moved, or you had, you didn't know. You were both staring at the necklace in your hands, knowing it meant more than he could perhaps ever say aloud. His head was bowed towards you — his entire self, really, the whole bulk of him arched towards you like a flower towards the sun. "From the face of the right pauldron."
Light caught on the shimmering facets of the garnets. It was stunningly beautiful. Delicate and feminine and yet, intense in its ferocity. Fire and blood. Unbowed, unbent, unbroken. A token befitting the wife of the Anvil of the Redgrass Field.
You looked up at him through your eyelashes, and found his gaze scalding. "And now your armour is missing a tooth."
His jaw clenched. "It has found a more deserving place."
You held the necklace out, and with no further prompting he took it in his hands. You turned your back to him, and lifted your hair from your nape; and you felt the heat of him as he stepped closer to you, chest to your back. With a delicateness at odds with the size of him, his hands came to your front, fingers brushing against your clavicle. The chain was cold as it settled against your skin. Cold, but familiar, hanging about your neck as intimately as any other part of you.
You had no looking glass to see how the necklace pressed against your collarbones, the tooth hanging low upon your bosom; but you turned and met Maekar's eyes and saw the hunger in them, a reluctance in him to turn his gaze from you. Pleasure stirred something terrible in your stomach. You liked when he got like this — when he was left unguarded, unsure of what to do with all he felt, powerless to do little other than stare and frown and grit his teeth. The power of it was intoxicating.
You did this. You put this gleam in his eye and this flush upon his cheek. 'Twas you who walked arm in arm with him, and you who whispered in his ear, and you who drew those laughs from him, and you who could test and push his patience.
"Of all the gifts that I have received, this I shall cherish most," you whispered. "I — I shall never take it off."
"Hm." That pleased him. You could see it on him, clear as day; self-satisfaction pulled at the corners of his mouth, puffed his chest out.
"I am only ashamed that I have nothing to give in return."
"Seven hells, woman. Were the warships not enough?"
You said nothing, gazing down at the tooth against your skin. After a pause, Maekar exhaled.
"…The only thing I require of you is your happiness," he muttered. "'Tis gift enough."
The tooth was warmed against you. You remembered your hands drifting over them in Maekar's tent what felt like an age ago. He had been fearsome. Terrifying. A man hardened by blood and bone, and you had set your hands upon him and tied your pretty green ribbon around him. And he had looked at you like he was looking at you now, this man who had crushed and killed more than you could fathom — who was spoken about in perpetual buts.
A great warrior, but a terrible speaker.
A magnificent fighter, but easy to anger, and quick to annoy.
An asset on the battlefield, but not in court.
A mind for the war tent, but not for the solar.
You felt such an urge to touch him, then, that you had to dig your fingers into your palms, anchoring yourself to the pinching pain that came with it. He was yours. He was yours, all of him, and yet you could not touch him until you had wed. You had no personal qualms with having your way with him — but with the most important people in the realm gathered, the embarrassment of such a tryst would displease your mother and father-in-law. And they did say that patience was a virtue…
"You say that you are unlearned in the ways of love," you could only say, swallowing your desire, "and that you are prickly and mannerless — but I have seen more gentleness from you, Maekar, than from most men. More love, more affection…"
He blinked down at you. No words escaped him. His astonishment almost looked like disgust — lips parted, brow furrowed — but that dumbfounded silence spoke more than any words could.
"Two days," you said, squeezing your palms tighter. The weight of the tooth rose and fell with your breathing, and you took comfort in its heft upon your chest. "Two days, and then... and then I shall be able to kiss you as I want to now."
For your own sake — and the sake of your willpower — you pretended not to see how his body swayed towards you as you left; you pretended not to feel his eyes, even when the doors closed behind you.
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A Maekar Targaryen fic inspired by erwinsvow's Baelor Targaryen fanfiction, called hopelessly devoted; genuinely one of the best pieces of fanfiction I've ever read; I highly recommend it if you're a fan of romance!
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After sustaining a head injury at the Ashford tourney, Maekar forgets not only his youngest children, but his new (heavily pregnant) wife as well.
TW: head injuries/amnesia, lustful thoughts, mutual pining, pregnancy (reader is heavily pregnant), thoughts of infidelity but no actual infidelity (it makes sense in context), Aerion's an insensitive little shit, death, child birth, angst and fluff, allusions to smut (and eventual smut)
“Who the fuck are you?”
The sound of your husband's voice should startle you (you're supposed to be hidden away after all, out of sight, out of mind, until they could ever so gently break the news of your very existence to poor Maekar), but it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. This was bound to happen, you had warned everyone; keeping him locked up was only going to make him restless, cagey, even more surly than he already was. You pity the maesters who tend to him as much as you envy them.
With a heaving sigh, you look at him.
It's natural to assess him. Even if you're not publicly his wife anymore, you still love the old dog, you want him to be well, but you can't see his injuries through his baggy black sleep clothes. Still, it's good to see him, as he stands tall, proud, angry in the dim light of the nursery. The vein in his forehead throbs as he glares at you, scowling in a way that makes you beam.
At least he’s well enough to glower, you think fondly.
“What? What the fuck are you smiling at?!” Maekar demands, uncertain why your bright expression makes his heart skip a beat. “And what the fuck are you doing here?!”
Oh, right. Reality bites at your heart like the most vicious dog. Tears prick at your eyes and you quickly drop your gaze to the embroidery hoop that rests on your swollen belly. Sliding the needle into the linen, the shoulder you lift is limp. “This is the nursery, my Prince.”
“Yes, I'm aware,” Maekar snarls. “You shouldn't be here!”
Tired, exhausted really, you lift your gaze to his. “Where else should I be?” You ask plainly.
It seems everyone has an opinion on what to do with you; the council said you were best kept close, but Baelor had been ready to ship you off to Summerhall the moment the name Dyanna fell from Maekar’s lips. The death of his own lady-wife still so fresh, Baelor couldn't imagine his poor brother having to relive the loss, not while he was recovering, so he tucked you away.
Not forever, the eldest Prince had assured you as the maids hurriedly packed your belongings, stripping Maekar's chambers of every trace of you, just until he remembered-
“Not in here!” Markar snaps, blue eyes blazing in the fire light.
“Hush,” you snap right back, tossing your hoop into a basket at your side as you ready yourself to stand. “You'll wake my girl.”
“Your girl?” He sneers, eyes narrowing as he watches you struggle to your feet. Awkward, he tries not to look at you directly; it's improper, seeing an expectant mother alone, seeing a woman in your condition in her night dress, the material thin, clinging to your curvaceous form, making your heavy (breasts) belly even more striking. “What girl?”
Oh, that breaks your heart. You pray Rhae doesn't wake; she's been so very eager to see him these last weeks, to see him and not be able to keep him would break her little heart even more. Cringing, you shake your head. “Go back to bed. You need your rest.”
He straightens almost hesitantly as you stand before him, bare foot, your robe too big, much too big, almost reaching the floor. A man's robe, he realizes, black and red, Targaryen colors. He likes it, how it hangs open to reveal your low cut night dress, the thin material clinging to your full breasts, the cut designed to flow over your swollen belly and whisper around your lovely legs. His cock twitches and a rush of shame crosses him.
He had only found out this afternoon that his Dyanna had passed. In a fit of rage, Aerion had finally broke down and screamed- “She's dead! She's fucking dead! She's not at Summerhall, you stupid old man! She's been dead for fucking years-”
The maesters had the King’s guard drag the boy off, and Baelor had been called, sent to comfort him, but Maekar had been irate. Called him a liar, accused him of treating him as feeble, before the younger Prince had heaved a book at him and finally forced his brother from the room.
He had only come to the nursery for a reprieve, for a chance to mourn his loss and have a fucking moment to himself-
“Maekar?”
He blinks, surprised to find your hand on his arm, and stranger still, a concerned frown on your lips. Shaking off the flood of warmth that spreads through his chest, he steps back from you with an uncertain frown.
Hurt, but unsurprised, you force a smile and try to gently steer him away from Rhae's bed; thankfully her thick red canopy covers her well. “Do you need me to walk you back to your chambers, Maekar?”
“Don't get familiar,” the Prince snaps, jaw so tight it aches as he orders, “Now, tell me why it is you haunt me so?!”
Oh, you shouldn't be so proud of that, but the acknowledgement also hurts in a strange way. Torn between a smile and a frown, you settle for a limp, “I haunt you?”
“I saw you,” he hisses, color rising in his pale pock-marked cheeks, the red just visible under his white beard, “that first morning at my bedside, weeping like a war widow, blubbering on with that girl-”
“Don't,” you warn, eyes flashing in the dim light as your heart begins to pound. “Don't speak ill of her, Maekar, please-”
“Whose bastard is she? Hm? Daeron's? Aerion’s?” Maekar paces restlessly, just out of your reach. Hands balled into fists, he can't stand still, as visions of you flash through his mind; on your back, hair splayed out in the pillows, your slack lips kiss bruised and flushed, and it makes him sick to imagine someone else on top of you, to even think of someone else drawing the sweetest of sounds from your throat. He jerks a nod toward your swollen stomach and sneers, “who's bastard is that?”
“Neither are bastards, I assure you.” The words are almost curt, as you look up at him with-
With what, Maekar thinks, the expression itching at the back of his mind. He knows that face, those eyes, those lips, but he can't-
Something doesn't-
Something isn't right.
“I want to go back to my room,” he says lowly, uncertain of the painful throb in the back of his mind, or why it worsens as your pretty face falls.
“Of course, my Prince, whatever you need.”
Humming, he eyes you, skeptical, anticipatory, even more confused as you look away from him, back toward the fireplace. He can see the tears unshed in your eyes, and they pain him for a reason he cannot place. “You're upset.”
“I've been upset for weeks, what difference does it make now?” You ask, not so much snide as simply sad, as you spin your wedding band absently.
Maekar thumbs his own in reply, uncertain why he wore two now; his classic gold band for Dyanna, strong and certain, and then a thinner band of silver that sat atop it. “You shouldn't be worrying about anything in your condition.”
“Oh?” A smile twinges at the corner of your mouth, and he desperately wants to touch it, to thumb the tender curve, but he resists, and scolds himself for his impropriety. What an old fool he was! Lusting after a taken woman! An expectant mother, no less! Face hot, he demands, “So who do you belong to, then? Hm? Who's been keeping you locked away?”
Coy, your head tilts. “Who would suit me best?”
His eyes narrow as your hand raises to smooth his sleep tussled hair from his brow. The soft scent of jasmine and powder on your wrist almost breaks him, but the familiar touch is so much worse- “Stop it,” he whispers firmly, but he makes no move to step away as you edge a little closer. In fact, damn him, he leans into you, slow, careful, drawn to you like a moth to a flame as you offer a husky chuckle, full of warmth and familiarity.
“Who do you think I belong to, hm?” Your eyes sparkle with tears as you tease mirthlessly, “Who would I look best under?”
A red hot flash of heat surges through him at the very thought. Daeron the drunk, Aerion the sadist. “They don't deserve you!” He hisses, snatching you up by the arms and yanking you to his chest. “Any man who would hide his love away to wallow-”
Fuck, his body is just like his temper, it always runs so hot, it makes you twitch, makes you forget, just for a moment, just like he has-
He falters as your thumb finds his bottom lip, shutting his mouth so quickly he teeth click.
“I told you,” you murmur, leaning up to nose his jaw. He smells like summer sweat and musk, and that queer woodsmoke scent that always lingers around Targaryens, and a fire strikes in your belly as you tap his (rock hard) chest with the tip of your finger. “Don't wake up my girl.”
“My girl,” he barks, mocking you as he leans down to meet the gentle nuzzle, confusion knotting his brow. With every beat of his heart, his head pounds harder and harder. Married, you're married, to whom, who could you belong to, and why would you touch him so freely if he couldn't keep you? How cruel could you possibly be-
“I may not have birthed her, but yes, she's mine, heart and soul.”
His brow knits. His head aches, but yes, he can almost see it, a little one in your lap, only a toddler then, peering up at you with such love as you read fables to her in the gardens. The thought warms his chest, though he doesn't know why. “Circumstances of birth…” his hands slowly lower, smoothing down your arms to take your hands. "Don't always a family make.”
The smile you give is bright, warm and true. “I agree.”
His gaze skirts over to the canopy bed. “She…she lost her mother?”
“Aye,” the sigh is passive, sad, and you instinctively rub his arm, as if soothing him from the truth. “The maesters…they gave her mother a choice, and her mother chose the life of the babe over her own.”
“Very noble of her,” he murmurs, heartsick at the thought.
You nod, a tear slipping from your eye as you remember Dyanna, her exhaustion and her fight, how she held on just long enough to see her sweet Rhae, to name her, before she passed. “It's a pity, is what it is. She was…the finest of us.”
His fingers find his aching temple. Maekar sighs. “I…rushed to judgement. It has been…a tiring day, forgive me.”
Pensive, you purse your lips. “Did something happen?” The question is too gentle to be truly probing.
His gaze drops back to yours. “My wife is dead,” he tells you needlessly, surprisingly cold.
Your eyes widen, but only slightly. Your heart breaks for him, for the low acceptance in his voice, the rage in it. “Aye. She is, ser.”
“Everyone knew but me, they knew the whole time and they let me play the fool for weeks-”
You take his right hand in both your own, rub it in a way the Prince finds more soothing than placating, much to his surprise. “They didn't want to hurt you,” you tell him, smoothing your fingertips along the back of his hand. It takes everything in you not to kiss it. “You were so fragile-”
“They wanted to keep me in the dark!” Maekar snaps, cheeks going red under his white beard again. “Keep me compliant-!”
“Shh!”
Maekar blinks as your fingers clip his chin, forcing his mouth shut.
“Do not wake-” you hiss in pain as the little one in your womb wakes with a swift kick to your ribs.
“What? What's wrong?” His blue eyes widen in fear as you bend. Quick, anxious, he guides you backward toward the rocking chair you had been in earlier.
The roaring fire in its helm casts a warm orange shine over you, your silhouettes long on the carpet, and you sit a bit harder than you mean to. “Oof!”
Panic swells in him. “What?! What is it?! Is it time?!”
“Nothing so urgent,” you laugh, a bit uncomfortable, a bit breathless. “The babe is restless, thus so am I.”
His lips twitch in empathy. Humming, he takes your hand a moment and gives it a careful squeeze of comradery. “The final weeks are always the hardest.”
“Hm,” Touched by his gentle words (Gods, how you missed him, his gruff voice, his rough hands, his sharp tongue-) you smile absently, wincing at the next kick.
“I remember when Dyanna was expecting Daeron…”
You blink with surprise as he sits in the rocking chair across from yours. The orange light of the fire reflects across his face, his skin so pale it almost seems to glow in the dim light. He eyes the fire idly, nostalgia softening his sharp features as he goes on lovingly.
“The first time he kicked, she drove her knee into my back.” He chuckles, fond, wistful. “Woke me up out of a dead sleep, I thought the worst had happened.”
A snicker leaves you as you try to settle into the chair, but the padded cushion does nothing.
“She was so excited.” He stares at the flames a moment, thoughtful, before he looks back to you, expectantly. “Is this your first?”
You nod, a small proud smile on your lips.
“You're…older, than most of the new mothers, are you not?” He tries to say it casually, but it comes out a bit stilted, a bit awkward. Not judgemental, just curious.
Your smile widens. “I…yes, I am,” you admit with a laugh that warms him. Your forearms cradle your bump protectively, and you pat it fondly as you confess, “My second husband was kind enough to share his family with me for many years before this little surprise came along.”
“An unexpected miracle is still a miracle,” he assures you, his nod of approval, or perhaps understanding, making your chin dip. “Most of my children were…unexpected.”
That makes you snort. “Oh?” Your teasing turns his cheeks pink again. “You're telling me you didn't set out for six?”
“Six?” He echoes, and your smile falls. “Four. I have four children.”
“Right, right, my apologies, sir,” you bow as best you can to him without getting up, babbling as panic grips your heart. What a fool you were! “I misspoke, I was thinking of-”
His head cocks. His head throbs. Six? Six children? Ludicrous- “Why would you say six?”
You lick your lips, blood rushing so loudly in your ears you can barely hear yourself stutter, “I- I was thinking of…ouch!”
Maekar jumps to his feet as you clutch your side dramatically. “What?! What's wrong?!”
“Oooh. Oh. Oh, uh, no,” you feign a moan and he all but crumples to his knees, his blue eyes wide with horror. “I- I should go to the, um, maesters.” Fuck! Insolent little fool! Batting your eyelashes, you lay it on thick as he peers up at you with such unadulterated fear. Shit, the guilt would eat you alive, if you weren't so eager to change the subject. “Could- could you help me get to them?”
“Of course! Of course,” he doesn't hesitate, just slips a careful hand under your back and guides you to your feet. “Easy now, easy…”
You let him brace some of your weight as you limp along, out of the room and down the hall, and up the stairs, and to the left, across from the courtyard. You know the walk well, you make it every night, just before dawn usually. You'll make the walk, but never go inside the healing chambers where your husband makes his home now. You just stand outside his door and try to imagine him asleep behind it. With an ear pressed against the thick wood, you can almost convince yourself you can hear his snores, but in your heart you know you can't.
“Easy now, easy,” he repeats, over and over throughout the walk. His hand shakes slightly in your grasp, but yours is steady-
Grounding, your hands are chapped from hot water, dry from folding linens all day, familiar in a way he can't place. In fact, now that you're out of the room, you seem almost calm. The odd grunt leaves you as you toddle up the stairs, but they're few and far between. You actually seem kind of-
He freezes as you raise your hand to knock upon the healing chambers door, a quick confident knock that confirms his suspicions. His brow furrows. “You tricked me.”
“I did,” you agree, straightening up with a sad smile as the door swings open.
Baelor’s mismatched eyes widen at the sight of you together. They flicker between you two, disbelief turning into annoyance as he addresses his brother with a firm, “I'll take your apology now.”
“My- my apology?!” Maekar bellows, but neither of you so much as flinch.
The familiar sound of its father's voice makes the baby kick, no doubt still accustomed to it from all the time he had spent reading to you in the early months of your pregnancy before it was known, and the long-winded conversations (usually a long list of complaints about his day or his sons or his duties, etc. etc.) Maekar had with your bump before the unfortunate accident at Ashford's tourney. It kicks again, right under your ribs. This grunt is real, and you rub your side with a scowl. Baelor eyes you sympathetically, and ushers his brother inside.
When you don't move to follow, Maekar pauses. His scowl shifts, lightening, but only so much, as he frowns, reaching for your hand. “Come on then.”
Uncertain, you stumble, “I…” Your gaze flicks to Baelor's, a silent question of permission passing between you.
“You've come all this way,” Maekar huffs, visibly twitching with agitation as he takes your hand in his (fuck, you've missed his hands-) again, his strong fingers insistent. “You best let the maesters check the babe-”
“Something is wrong with the babe?!” His brother asks urgently; there's no resentment between you, you understand he only tries to ease his brother's suffering, but as he steps forward, as he takes your other forearm gently and starts steering you into the room, a small flash of embarrassment goes through you.
“Oh, please,” you murmur, cheeks warm as Baelor looks you up and down, as his kind gesture breaks your hand from your husband's; you immediately miss Maekar's warmth, even though Baelor runs with the same heat, it's an unfamiliar one, and it unsettles you. “I’m fine. Simply some…enthusiastic kicking.”
Baelor doesn't look convinced. He knows how stressed you've been, knows a pregnancy at your age isn't always the easiest to begin with, and he frets; somewhat from guilt, you know. “Maekar is right.”
The (slightly) younger man's chest puffs up, as he tries to dismiss the coolness of your fingers against his own; he knows those hands, that touch, how does he know them?! His fingers twitch as his brother slides a hand over your shoulders.
“You've come this far, best you see the maesters.”
You wave a hand, but allow yourself to be fussed over a bit, knowing he means well. “Nonsense.”
“Please,” Baelor smiles, charming, benevolent, a bit of well-meaning condescension in his voice. “For my sake of mind.”
A small twinge in your back decides for you. The walk from the nursery isn't long, but in the last few days it has become more tiring… “Perhaps I could use a seat, for a moment.”
“Splendid, please,” he offers his arm, and you huff as you take it. Voice low, he praises, “You're radiant, by the way. Positively glowing.”
“I'm fat.”
Baelor snorts and Maekar suddenly feels very out of place. His brother, of course, he had been told of Jena's death, but not his own lady-wife's, his brother, of course-
The revelation should bring relief, but instead, disappointment floods him.
Of course you were Baelor's, sweet Baelor, gentle Baelor, deserving Baelor, of course it was his steadfast older brother who found himself a second love, a beautiful soul to lean on in his grief.
Maekar hates him, just a little bit, the envy so overwhelming a moment he can barely stand to look at him, but he can't tear his eyes from you-
You really are radiant, he thinks with a hint of mourning, his heart sinking low in his chest as he takes in your smile, your messy braid, your tired but fond eyes-
“Here we are, sit tight.” Baelor pats your hand placatingly, and you chuckle and take a seat before he rushes off to find (you both) a maester.
Alone again, Maekar swallows as your gaze lands back on him. Eyes sparkling in the brighter torchlight, you're a vision of loveliness, and his stomach tightens, his spine straightens, as you speak.
“You'll forgive my little deception, won't you?” You ask, a teasing little lilt to your tone as you play the role of the Mother, patting the top of your round belly almost smugly.
He turns his chin away. “Hmph.” Fuck, he can still see you out of the corner of his eye, fuck, you're his fucking sister-in-law, his mind rages, his blood is so hot-
Voice soft, diplomatic, very Queen-like, he thinks, you try again, “I meant only to-”
“Change the subject, that's what you wanted to do.”
Your smile falls. Caught, you bite your lip a moment before you confess, “So what if I did? It's not my place to-”
“To tell the truth?” His angry blue eyes flick back to you, accusing.
They almost make you swoon, but you manage a weak, “To speak of a life that I had no part of.”
No real part of, anyway. You had only been a handmaid at the time, only a glimmer on the lake of his life, barely a sparkle, there and gone before you could make a splash.
The babe kicks as if punishing you for your deceit. Wincing, you let out a huff, and despite his annoyance, despite his stormy expression, Maekar finds himself crossing over to you.
“Hm.” His mouth sours. “There was no need to lie.”
“I'm sorry, m’lord.”
“Maekar,” he corrects, taking your hand absently, reassuringly. It may be improper, he thinks, but it feels right. Giving your fingers a faint squeeze, he bows his head and mutters his congratulations on your pregnancy; “May the Seven bless you and keep you both.”
Touched, your vision goes misty as you offer a low, “Thank you, Maekar.”
It kicks and kicks and kicks-
This could be your last chance to be alone with him, you realize, your last chance to share a moment together before the baby arrives. Tears well in your eyes a moment, but you fight them back with a lick of your lips. Maekar had missed so much of the pregnancy already…surely Baelor wouldn't begrudge you just one little moment of intimacy with your husband?
Heart pounding, you steel your nerve and ask, “W-would you like to feel?”
“Feel?” His brow knits.
“They have a mighty kick.”
Oh. Your smile is so proud, as you guide his hand down to your side. He swallows and bends to one knee without thought, kneeling beside your chair so he can be eye level with you, which is so much harder for some reason. His stomach tightens, as you press his fingers just under your ribs, the silk of your robe smooth and cold, but he barely feels it. His expression tense, he doesn't breathe as you gently prod his fingertips around, until he feels something shift under your flesh.
Yes, yes, yes, of course Jena had shared her pregnancies with him too, but her touches hadn't made his blood burn, she had never looked at him like that-
“There, that's the foot,” you whisper, afraid to spook your husband, afraid he might think you too forward, too brazen, but the Gods knew, the Mother knew, this pregnancy has been so hard to do alone, and his hand is so warm, he always ran so much hotter than you-
The babe inside replies to his touches with gusto, and Maekar grins at the quick powerful thumps. “Strong,” he says approvingly.
Fresh pride swells in your chest. “You think so?”
“Oh yes,” he promises, smirking as the kicking against his fingers goes on and on, as if the little one had a point to make. “Very strong. Dragons always are.”
Hope blossoms so bright in your chest it actually hurts-
“Baelor must be so proud.”
And your world comes crashing down again. “B-Baelor, ser?”
He nods, but before he can speak, the man in question strolls back into the room. The maester follows close behind him, shuffling at a pace that quickens when he sees the position Maekar is in. “Space!” The old man grunts, waving the Prince away. “Give her some space!”
Scowling at the intrusion, Maekar glances at you one last time, holding your tender stare a moment longer than he should. Jaw tight, he huffs as he removes his hand.
The babe kicks again, as if searching for their father's heat. You rub a hand over your bump soothingly as Baelor urges Maekar to bed, but-
His words are stern as he slowly raises to his feet, “I'm not going back to that room.”
“Brother, please, you need your rest-”
“What I need is everyone to stop treating me like a fucking invalid!”
Baelor sighs, his eyes rolling over to you. You two share another smile, his exasperated, yours patient-
Fuck! Maekar's heart pounds, unsure why that stings so much, why the small moment of intimacy between husband and wife hurts him so- “Why didn't you tell me about Dyanna?”
Baelor cringes at her name.
“Everyone knew. Everyone was…everyone was aware, except me. I was made a fool of at my weakest, why?! Why didn't you tell me about her death?!”
“I…” he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I thought it best the memories return on their own.”
Maekar's eyes narrow. “Bull shit.”
That makes you smirk (and swoon a bit, God's, you have missed your ornery, unagreeable man!).
Baelor doesn't. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. You didn't want to be the bearer of bad news,” Maekar accuses with agitation. “Coward.”
Baelor's mouth twitches, the same annoyance on his face as his brother's. “Fine. I suppose that's fair.”
The soft sound of the maester’s hum gives the men pause, and they turn their attention to you. The old man pokes at your belly, humming and hawing and nodding to himself-
“What?” The younger brother demands, bristling like a wet cat, which to be fair, was his usual way.
“She's in fine health, sers, just fine.” The maester takes the pulse at your wrist, holding still a moment, then nods. “Very very good, just wonderful.”
Unsurprised, you still beam with relief; good news was so rare these days, any little bit of it was welcome.
“Should be any day now.” The old man tells you, patting your hand encouragingly. “Best we get you back to bed, Princess.”
With a nod, and his help, you rise to your feet.
Maekar is the first one to make a move. He only manages to take one step forward. “I'll walk you back-”
“No,” Baelor says immediately, his hand snapping out to brace his chest. “You should rest. I'll walk her.” His glance told you there was much to discuss.
“Nonsense,” Maekar waves a brisk hand, knocking his arm away. “I'm wide awake-”
“You've had a trying day, ser,” you try, but your husband will have none of it.
He shrugs the hand Baelor tries to place on his shoulder away. Voice gruff, he tells him, “I said I'm walking her. You can come if you like.”
“Fine,” his brother agrees placatingly.
“Do I get a say in this?” You joke.
Baelor's cheeks go pink. “Of course. We…we should all go together, just in case you need a hand getting back from the nursery, brother.”
“I know the way,” Maekar spits, pure venom in his tone at the insinuation.
“Of course you do! I merely-”
“Baelor,” you tease, stepping forward to gently right the collar of the Hand’s robe, your eyes pointed and pleading at once. “Don't be over-protective. Maekar, don't be difficult.”
“I wasn't,” he grumbles.
“You were a little,” Baelor argues.
Chuckling, you pat Baelor's arm affectionately. “Maekar will walk me, I'm certain he can manage his way back to his chambers after that.”
The elder Prince frowns, but inclines his head. “Very well.” His eyes twinkle with fondness in the torch light as he inclines his head. “But only because I know better than to argue with a Dragon in your condition.”
Chuckling, you allow him to place a gentle kiss to your forehead, chin dipping with a hint of resignation. He means well, you know. He always had Maekar's best interest at heart, but he was still grappling with the death of his own lady-wife, and sometimes, that grief clouded his judgement. “Goodnight, Baelor.”
“I'll visit soon,” he assures you, passing you carefully off to his brother. “We have much to discuss on Maekar's progress.”
“I'm standing right here,” the younger Prince grumbles, but to those who know him best, he simply pouts.
Your eyes roll. “Of course, ser, my deepest apologies, ser.”
Baelor snorts, and when Maekar shoots him a dark glance, he tries and fails to cover it with a cough. Not wanting to be the center of one of their many petty bickerings (not that there was anything wrong with that, brothers were ought to do such things, even ones as close as them, but you were growing tired; the sun would be up soon and so would Rhae), you slide your arm into Maekar's and tug him along.
“Come, my Prince. Let me lead the way.”
“I-! I can lead the way!”
“Very well,” you turn, walking backward toward the door as you tug him along. “So lead.”
Baelor forgotten, he grunts, “I shall.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Very,” you tease, voice sparkling as you guide him out the door.
He follows helplessly, drawn to your smile like a siren's song.
It's quiet, but not uncomfortable, he notices, as you hum softly, idly, absently eyeing the pitch black courtyard across the way, your arm safe in his.
“You shouldn't be out so late,” he finally says, breaking the quiet with a soft voice.
You flash him a cheeky smirk. “You shouldn't have bothered me.”
“I didn't mean to.”
“I'm glad you did. It's…it's been so very nice to see you, Maekar dear.” You take his hands as you approach the door to the nursery. Squeezing his long beautiful fingers, you want to tuck them under your chin and sigh, but of course you can't, so you just smile-
But it looks so fucking sad, Maekar thinks morosely.
“We've been so worried about you, me and Rhae-”
“Rhae?” He interrupts with a smile, “A fine Targaryen name.”
“Yes,” you laugh. “Through and through Targaryen that one is.”
“Hm.”
You edge a little closer, and then a little closer still, until your swollen belly brushes his firm one, just barely. “We've missed you, and hearing about your progress isn't the same as seeing it, and she's been so scared for you, we all have.”
Maekar listens with a heavy heart; his chest tight, he can't tear his eyes from your face. He thumbs the tear that falls from your eye away without thinking. Thoughtful, firm, he tells you, “I will see you at breakfast tomorrow, you and your girl both.”
“Will you?” Doubt twinges your tone; Baelor won't like that.
His gaze sharpens. “Family should be together.”
Your nod is certain. “I agree.”
“Tomorrow, than.” The bow he offers is slight, respectable-
And it makes your heart race. No! You can't say good-bye, not so soon- “You-!”
He arches a brow, pausing his step back as you reach out in a flash to take his elbow.
Voice a croak, you try to be firm, as you tell him,“You'll have to be gentle with her, my girl.”
He smirks at the order, and how flustered you seem to be to give it. “Oh?”
“All these weeks alone have made her…shy, skittish maybe, I'm sure…”
He smirks. “And I'm hardly the most delicate flower.”
“Yes!” You laugh, relieved, a pleasant little sound that makes his stomach flutter. “Tell me you'll be patient with her.”
He smiles, almost boyishly, and you want to touch him, to smooth his hair back, touch the joint of his jaw under his beard, and kiss him soundly on the mouth, but you don't. “I'll be on my best behavior,” he promises.
“Good,” your fingers flex as you dismiss the urge, and instead tighten the belt of your robe. “Goodnight, Maekar.”
“Goodnight, dear sister.”
Fuck!
“I'll see you in the morn.” It's instinct, to take your shoulders under his hands, to kiss your brow as Baelor did, but he doesn't. Even the urge makes him sick, disgusted with himself, for this silly foolish infatuation he has with you, so strong already…
“Remember,” you pop the door open, but can't resist touching him one last time, poking him in the chest, in the little bit of flesh you can see under the laces of his night shirt. He's so warm, you can't help easing a bit closer to him as you tease, “Best. Behavior.”
His heart skips a beat at the teasing twinkle in your eyes. “Yes,” he breathes, “I swear it.”
“Good,” you chirp, a little forced, a little lightheaded, as you step back. “Now go get some sleep before your brother wets himself.”
Snorting, Maekar nods, his smile broad and fond as you drift inside the nursery. The latch clicks quietly.
For a long moment, each of you lingers, the door between you so thin and so very thick at the same time.
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SUMMER’S IN THE AIR AND BABY, HEAVEN’S IN YOUR EYES ✺
when you end up drunk and alone on a beach, pope drops everything to bring you home and tries very hard not to want more than he should.
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MASTERLIST | RULES | INBOX
PAIRING pope cody x bunny!reader
WARNINGS 18+ MDNI dark themes, obsessive behavior from pope, stalker like behavior (tracking location), morally gray relationship dynamics, pre-relationship pining, pope has thoughts of killing people, alcohol usage, drunk!reader, reader has shitty friends, sexual tension, implied nudity, reader wears a bikini and a dress, erection mention, inappropriate thoughts, caretaker!pope, coercive attachment undertones, boundary issues, reader is a ditz!, romantic if you ignore the psychological warefare
WC 2.9k
You were never the type to make friends easily. And you’d never been quite sure why, exactly.
You were friendly. You smiled at strangers in grocery store lines and remembered people’s coffee orders and laughed when you were supposed to, even when you didn’t always understand the joke.
But somehow girls your age always seemed to know something you didn’t, some secret rhythm to being casual and clever and wanted in groups, while you lingered at the edge of things with your lip gloss in your pocket and your hands folded too neatly in your lap.
Most of the time, people liked you in passing. They liked your clothes, your laugh, the way you listened with your whole face. They liked you best in small, shiny pieces.
So when a couple of girls you’d met in the boutique dressing room downtown, squealed over your sandals, asked for your Instagram, and invited you to their beach party, you said yes before you could talk yourself out of it.
You didn’t have any work to do for Smurf tonight and even though you aren’t really the party type, the thought of sitting alone in your apartment on the Fourth of July just seemed pathetic.
Now you’re standing on the beach with your bare feet half-buried in the cooling sand, drawing idle, uneven patterns while the tide breathes in and out somewhere ahead of you.
The party had spread out around you in noisy, glittering bits: someone laughing too hard near the waterline, music crackling from a speaker, fireworks popping somewhere down the coast.
You’re perched on the low wooden stoop of the lifeguard tower, knees tucked close, a melting liquor-infused red-white-and-blue bomb pop dripping steadily down your left hand and into the crease of your wrist.
With your right, you try to type Pope’s contact name into your phone. This is a much larger undertaking than you expected. Herculean, even. Pope was only four letters and, frankly, you have managed harder things. Probably.
But your vision blurs every time you look down, the letters doubling, then swimming apart.
Alcohol, you decide solemnly, is not the friend to women that those girls made it out to be.
When you finally manage to find his name, it only takes two rings for him to answer.
The line crackles, wind and distance swallowing the first half of his greeting.
“Yeah?”
You picture him blinking at the ceiling, sheets still tangled around his hips, and at once feel terribly small for plucking him out of whatever peace he’d managed to find.
“Oh. Hi, Pope.” Your voice comes out rounded at the edges by the cold and the awful, floaty feeling behind your eyes. “Were you sleeping? I hope you weren’t sleeping. Well, no, actually, I hope you were sleeping because you don’t sleep enough and that’s bad for your brain. I read that somewhere. Or maybe Smurf said it. Wait, no, Smurf said a woman sleeps better when somebody wears her out first, which I thought meant, like, exercise, but she laughed at me, so maybe not —”
“Where are you?” Pope cuts in.
Something shifts on his end of the line: sheets, you think, then a rough little bed-creak, then breathing harder through his nose.
“At a party,” you say, then hiccup, then wince like he can see it through the phone. “At the beach. I was with some girls, but I don’t… I don’t really see them anymore. So I thought maybe you could come get me? I was gonna walk, I promise, but I wore those wedges with the little bows, and they’re cute, but they hurt to walk in.”
There’s silence for a long second. You chew at your bottom lip to compensate.
“You telling me nobody’s with you right now?” His tone is ice-cold, all the softness ripped out. A door slams on his end. “Listen carefully to me, please. Stay put. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll be there in ten.”
It takes him five.
It might’ve taken three if he hadn’t spent the first two tearing through his apartment in a blind fury, shoving his feet into boots without socks, grabbing the wrong keys, then the right keys,
then patting himself down for a phone already pressed hot against his ear.
If worst-case scenarios hadn’t kept unspooling in his head faster than he could outrun them. You on the beach at one a.m. You at a party with people you barely know. You drunk, which he could hear plain as day in every hiccupy little detour your voice took.
You don’t drink. Which means your tolerance is low, your judgement’s lower, and you’re out there with fucking strangers. Strangers who might look at a sweet tipsy girl alone on the beach and see opportunity.
He would kill someone for less. Anyone who touched you. Anyone who followed you. Anyone who smiled too long and stood too close and mistook all that sugary softness for permission.
He thought it while pulling up your location, that you don’t know he has, on his phone.
And he thinks it now while cutting across the beach, while fireworks split open over the water, while people move past him in flashes of red cups and flip flops and cheap cologne.
Continues to think it until he sees you sitting where you said you’d be.
You’re wearing a tacky little red gingham sundress. One that makes you look a little like a holiday decoration someone forgot to bring inside.
His boots sink and crunch in the sand as he gets closer, close enough to see the blue bikini straps peeking out beneath the dress where the neckline gapes.
Your name comes out rougher than he intends it to when he calls out for you, scraped low from the back of his throat.
You look up with a delayed little flinch, eyes unfocused before they find him. Drunk, his mind supplies. Too drunk. But then you light up, and the whole beach seems to tilt around it.
You hop down from the stoop, nearly catching your foot wrong in the sand, and he’s already moving, already reaching, already annoyed with you and everyone else and the impossible fact of distance.
You crash into him with arms wide open, pulling him into a hug before he can decide whether to grab your shoulders or your face or shake sense back into you.
His body locks around the impact.
Candied pears and vanilla rise from your hair, pretty and familiar, ruined slightly by the bite of vodka on your breath.
He closes his eyes, lets one hand unclench, then the other. When he finally touches you, it’s with a restraint that feels violent, palms spread over your back, nose buried at your crown.
Fine, he tells himself, breathing you in until his lungs hurt. You’re fine.
When you pull back, there’s a lopsided smile on your face.
“Hi,” you say, like the two of you have bumped into each other at the grocery store and not after he drove through three red lights to get to you. Your fingers curl in the front of his shirt. “I’m so happy to see you. Like… sooo happy. I’m always happy to see you. D’you know that?”
Your lipstick has slipped into a red half-moon near the corner of your mouth, and his thumb twitches with the sudden need to wipe it clean before anybody else notices. Before anybody else gets to think about your mouth at all.
There’s also glitter freckling your temple like spilled sugar, catching the firework light in sharp little flashes, disappearing and returning every time the sky blooms over the water.
He sees you in pieces: mouth, cheek, lashes, throat, the blue string at your shoulder. Each piece intact. Each piece his mind checks and checks again.
His expression doesn’t change, his hands do. One tightens at your back. The other catches your wrist, careful around the sticky mess of what he assumes to be leftover popsicle drying between your fingers.
“Don’t say shit like that.” His eyes flick over your face again. “Makes it hard to stay mad.”
“You’re mad at me?”
“No.”
And he means it. Mostly. He’s mad you came here with girls whose names he doesn’t know, girls you must not know well either if you’ve never mentioned them before.
He’s mad the world keeps proving him right for wanting to keep you close. For wanting to shrink your life down to manageable dimensions: his truck, his apartment, Smurf’s house, the short walk between places where he can see you. It would be so simple, really, to make everything the size of his reach. To make himself the first call, the last stop, the wall at your back and the lock on the door both.
“Good,” you sigh, shoulders dipping in visible relief. “Your mad face is scary, and I like your normal face. Let’s stick with your normal face.”
“Let’s get you —”
You barrel over him.
“And you have such a nice face, Pope.”
Your sticky fingers rise before he can dodge, thumbs skating across the hard shelf of his cheekbones. He ought to flinch at the tacky feeling, should mutter about germs, but all he feels is the lightning of your touch detonating under his skin. Twenty-thousand wings beating stupid fast in his gut while the world shrinks to the warm smudge of your palms.
His eyes drop to your mouth again.
Bad idea. Bad, bad fucking idea.
Christ he really wants to fucking kiss you. Wants to bend, gather the sweetness off your lips, swallow every sloppy little giggle you’re trying to hold back. He wills himself against it.
Because right now, you’re loose-limbed and glass-eyed, floating in the aftermath of other people’s bad decisions, and he refuses to make the next one.
So he breathes, counts to four, lets the want settle into a promise instead of an action: another night, another version of the two of you where you’ll remember exactly how it felt when he finally let himself kiss the innocence away.
“Truck,” he mutters finally, voice stripped to the bone.
One arm bands around your waist to keep you steady while he stoops, plucks your abandoned wedges from the sand, and shoves them under his elbow.
You sway against him, and he has to half-lift you the last few steps to the passenger door.
The hinge groans and he sets you on the seat, then decides to buckle you in himself — click, pull, tug — because he’s not sure your coordination is cut out for it.
“Keep this on,” he instructs.
“Okay, okay,” you whisper, smoothing the webbing flat against your dress. “I’ll be the best seat-belt wearer you ever saw.”
You offer him a solemn thumbs-up, eyes bright with earnest pride.
Pope’s mouth twitches. Barely. So small it could pass for annoyance if anyone else saw it.
Then he knocks the door shut with his hip and rounds the hood before the sight of you smiling at him through the window can soften him any further.
He ends up taking you to his place.
The thought of you drunk and alone three blocks away is worse than the thought of you under his roof, he decides. For your own good, he thinks.
But the second you cross the threshold with bare feet squeaking on the laminate and humming some pop song under your breath he regrets it.
His apartment has always been plain enough to disappear into. Blank walls, old couch, a singular chair, curtains that don’t let in much light even in the middle of the day. It’s a place for sleeping. For nothing else, really. He doesn’t need much else. And even that, he doesn’t get much of here.
Bad for his brain, you had said. You were bad for his brain. All this worry you cause. The wrinkles that now overtake his face since he’s met you.
You belong where color has somewhere to go. In gardens gone slightly wild. On porches with chipped paint and too many potted plants. In bright, warm places where things climb and bloom and turn their faces to the sun.
You don’t belong in the stale dark of his apartment, where everything feels like it learned long ago to survive without light.
His regret multiplies tenfold when you reach for the straps of your dress.
At first, he thinks you’re just fussing with them, your fingers clumsy at your shoulders.
Then one slips down.
Then the other.
The gingham loosens around you in degrees, revealing flashes of skin he has no right to look at and every reason to turn away from. His jaw snaps.
The dress slips lower, a slow collapse of red cotton and white trim, and he catches pieces of you in the corner of his eye before he can make himself look away. A shoulder. The curve of your hip.
What’s left is cobalt swim fabric and miles of soft body, the damp seat of your bikini practically winking at him as you wander deeper into the apartment.
“Jesus,” he mutters, turning his back. “Put that back on.”
You twist, one hand braced on the doorframe, and peer back at him over your shoulder.
“It was sandy, Pope. It’s driving me crazy — here, feel.” You scrape your nails along the back of your thigh like proof, then lift the leg toward him, all generous sweep of skin and reckless trust.
Pope’s head tips skyward as if the ceiling might hand down mercy. Wishful thinking.
“M’not touching you,” he grits out. “You can use the shower to wash off.”
Though he knows you’d probably hate the experience of using his shower.
There’s nothing in there except a military-grade bar of soap and some shampoo he stole from J’s bathroom months ago because his own had run out and he couldn’t be bothered to buy more.
There’s no soft towels. No good smells. None of the little things women seem to collect in bathrooms, the bottles and jars and razors and foamy stuff with names he never reads but still notices when they’re yours.
You probably have all of that at home. A whole routine. Something sweet-smelling. Something you rub into your legs after, standing on that little bath mat in your apartment with one hip cocked and your hair dripping down your back.
His cock twitches in his pants.
“Don’t wanna shower,” you mumble, already disappearing into his room. “Just wanna sleep.”
A moment later the triangle of your bikini top tumbles back into view, tossed to the ground with a wet thump. It’s followed by the matching bottom scrap that had covered so much less than it should. The mattress groans.
He can’t see anything else but the fabric on the floor, but that’s more than enough. Enough to picture the rest, and the implication that comes with it.
You.
Naked.
In his bed.
The floor tilts beneath him as adrenaline and hunger vie for dominance in his gut.
He exhales through his nose, forces every muscle into a calm he does not feel, and walks to the kitchen. One glass, ice-cold tap, aspirin bottle from the medicine cabinet. Keep your hands busy, keep your eyes forward, keep your thoughts off her skin. He repeats it to himself like a mantra.
He turns to walk down the hallway and when he gets to the doorway he pauses, counts three, then four, then five, as if numbers can blunt the sight of you warm and bare beneath his blanket.
Before he can step inside, your voice floats out from the dark, soft and slurred around the edges.
“Your bed’s really nice,” you murmur. “I thought it was gonna be hard because you’re all…” A pause. The blanket shifts. “You know. Like that. But it’s cozy.”
He clears his throat. “That’s great. You — uh — you decent in there?”
“I think so,” you say after a second. “Most of me is covered. Probably the important parts.”
The room is mostly dark enough that most of you are mercifully hidden, the blanket dragged high, the shape of your body blurred into soft suggestion.
But not all of you. Your bare collarbones catch the dim spill of light from the hall. One arm lies loose over the sheet, hair fanned wild across his pillow like the bed had been waiting all along for something prettier to happen to it.
“Got you water,” he says. He sets the glass and aspiring on the nightstand without looking too hard, then straightens, spine rigid, refusing to let his gaze drift lower than your throat.
You look too pretty for a night like this, too soft for a bed that’s never held anything but nightmares and empty hours, and part of him hates that the first person to see you here, sunk into his pillow and sighing like you belong, is him.
He forces his hands to his pockets. “Aspirin’s by the glass. Drink all the water. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
He starts to turn towards the doorway, but your hand snakes out of the dark and closes around his wrist.
The blanket sags with the movement, sliding off your shoulders, and he lunges to catch it with his free hand, fingers splaying across the warm slope just above your breast.
“Could you… maybe sit with me til I fall asleep? Please?”
He makes the mistake of looking at your face. One soft plea blooming in those eyes and every argument he’d rehearsed goes slack. A smarter man would draw a line right here. He’s not a smarter man.
“Five minutes,” he warns, easing himself into the chair beside the bed.
“Five minutes, promise,” you echo, voice sing-song as you shift.
You avert your gaze just long enough to settle onto your side, blanket clutched in one fist, then peek back through your lashes. Both hands disappear beneath your cheek, the coverlet resting scant inches above the peaks of your nipples.
Your eyes drift half-shut, lashes heavy against your cheeks. “Wish I could sleep in your bed every night.”
Pope doesn’t move.
A second later your mouth softens, your breathing evens, and he’s left alone with the sentence like a knife he has to pretend isn’t in him.
A lone firework bursts beyond the window. Silent through the glass but bright enough to paint pyrotechnic petals across the ceiling, for an instant crowning your form in color.
Pope exhales, lets the echo of that light fade, and settles in to keep watch until morning.
MARIA NOTE this was my attempt a 4th of july fic and somehow there are no pool parties, no wholesome firework kisses, just bunny getting tipsy off hardly any alc and pope having to fight for his life in a sad man apartment. whoops. thank u 4 reading ily!!! 🌀🍓💌
summary: you're too young for me and this is wrong and i'm supposed to be teaching you float around jack abbot's head. but every time, knowing that he shouldn't, he still leans in to kiss you.
word count: 17.9k
tags: first year!reader (but no age mentioned + she has a stupid nickname), illicit workplace relationship, lots of guilt/we shouldn't do this (mostly from jack), yearning/pining, shea's version of slowburn and a bubbly reader and much too much dialogue, regular hospital talk/mention of injuries/death and fourth of july special scene <3 maybe out of character for the other doctors but i tried my best!, smut (fingering, orgasm denial, dirty on-call room sex, creampie because.. duh).
note: based off of the intern baking for jack during his bad week blurb, also known as i can't help myself
jack abbot stares at you, then down at the containers in his hand filled with cookies that you baked for him after he spent the better part of a week yelling at you, and then back at you.
and then he laughs for the first time all week and wonders to himself—what the hell am i going to do with you?
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-”
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