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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-”
summary: dex is the perfect boyfriend. at least, he makes you forget the things that would prove otherwise.
pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), brief description of sexual acts, obsessive behavior, codependency, manipulation, toxic/unhealthy relationship dynamics, mention of firearms
word count: 1.5k
A/N: surprise!! i didn't want to leave you guys without any Dex while i'm on my trip before the next week's chapter of North Star :) so here's a treat from me to you! technically part of the North Star universe, but can be read separately from the series. i like to think of this as a little interlude, a peak into Dex and reader's relationship before chapter seven. hope you enjoy!
divider by: @uzmacchiato
Dex will never leave you alone. Proximity, to him, is worship.
Standing at the stove making dinner? He’s pressed behind you, arms looped around your waist, chin hooked over your shoulder as he watches you stir whatever you’re making that night.
Grading papers on the couch? He’s sitting there too, reaching over to take your legs and place them over his lap, idly running his hands up and down your calves as he waits for you to be finished.
Getting ready? He’s leaning in the doorframe, watching you apply your makeup in the mirror, already starting to conjure up some excuse as to why you shouldn’t be going out to dinner with your friends that night.
And worst, the shower.
You made that mistake once before. After a long day at work in the dead heat of summer, you trudged home covered in sweat and misery, wanting only to take a shower, get a moment of peace, and slide between your sheets clean as a whistle.
You managed to do that, actually. In rare form, Dex had been stuck late at the field office for God knows what. He had texted you multiple times earlier to inform you of that.
Hey, going to be late tonight. I’m so sorry. Do you want to meet me at the office and then we can go to dinner? I hope you had a good day. I love you.
Did that dad from parent teacher conferences email you again?
Actually, just wait at school. I don’t want you riding the subway alone.
[ 2 missed calls ]
Call me when you see this.
Are you still in your classroom?
Hello?
[ 4 missed calls ]
Are you mad at me?
Who are you with right now?
I love you
Baby?
Are you not going to answer my call?
[ 17 missed calls ]
Oh, Dex.
Unfazed at this point in your relationship by his reactions (and sometimes, a little bit flattered), you had promptly called him back and assured him that no, that dad from parent-teacher conferences hadn’t emailed you again, no, you weren’t going to ride the subway alone, yes, you loved him, and no, you weren’t mad at him.
Finally, you had settled on assuring him you would come straight home after work. It wasn’t like Dex didn’t already have your location, anyway. He would pick up food on the way home.
You just hadn’t told him you had changed plans halfway through and decided a shower and bed were a better fit. It was no big deal, you thought.
How wrong you were.
You were in that limbo between deep sleep and waking when you distantly heard the familiar jangle of keys, then the heavy sound of footsteps moving down the hallway. Your bedroom door creaked open.
“Hey, baby.”
You cracked open an eye. Dex stood in the doorway, illuminated by the hallway light. A black figure cut in the pale backdrop. In one hand, he held a plastic bag– your favorite Chinese takeout, likely.
“Hi, honey,” you yawned, stretching your arms out and watching as Dex disappeared, likely putting the takeout on the kitchen counter (he despised food being anywhere other than the kitchen). A moment later, he reappeared and sat on the bed beside you, his weight dipping into the mattress.
Dex’s calloused hand found yours on the sheets, squeezing once. He had to touch you as soon as he saw you, always. Like he was checking if you still existed.
“You’re already in bed? Are you feeling okay?”
You hummed and sank back against the pillow, eyes heavy as you looked affectionately upon your boyfriend. He was so cute when he was concerned. “Mhmm. Just tired.”
He brushed his free hand over your forehead, pushing back some of your hair. Then he leaned forward, skimmed his lips over your forehead, and–
Dex stilled.
You felt him stop breathing. His hand stayed in his hair, his mouth close to your skin. Dex’s nose brushed your hairline, and then he inhaled.
“...Did you already shower?”
You blinked. Dex’s face hovered over yours, only inches away, but the expression on it had gone strangely blank. Empty, almost. Like blood had drained from him and left only a mask. It made your stomach tighten.
“Um…yeah,” you stuttered, taken off guard by his sudden change in demeanor. “I got really sweaty walking home. It was kind of gross so–”
“Are you mad at me?”
What? You pushed yourself up from the pillows onto your elbows. Dex remained in place, watching you too closely with that flat expression. “Dex, what? It was like, ninety-five degrees out.”
He scrubbed a hand down his jaw. Something was building, you could sense it.
“It wasn’t ninety-five today,” he said flatly. “It was eighty-nine.”
…was he fucking with you? Your mouth opened, and then closed. “Dex.”
Suddenly, Dex stood from the bed and began pacing the bedroom. In the low light, you could see red blooming beneath the collar of his shirt. He was still dressed for work: white button-up, sleeves rolled to his forearms, gray slacks, holster at his hip. His gun was still in it.
“I don’t–” Dex dragged both hands behind his head, fingers pressing hard into the back of his neck. “I just don’t know why you would lie to me.”
“Dex, I didn’t lie–”
He kept rambling, almost like he was talking to himself. “You’ve never showered without me. I mean, not since we– I don’t know why you do that and not tell me. I-I would tell you.”
“Dex, stop.” You pushed the comforter off of you before you could think better of it. Dex turned sharply towards you at the sound of your bare feet padding against the floor, like the small movement had startled him. His chest was rising and falling too fast, his hands still locked behind his neck, elbows drawn wide. In the dark, his eyes looked almost black. “I’m not mad at you. I promise.”
His jaw worked. “We always shower together.”
Dex was right. Since your relationship had become official, since the first time you slept together and suddenly apartment 415 ceased to exist, Dex had more or less moved into 416. You realized you hadn't showered alone in weeks.
You would rise from the couch, or the dining table, or the bed, and on instinct, Dex would too, following you down the hall as you made your way to the bathroom. It was like he had Pavlov-ed himself to the sound of the shower head turning on. The second the water started, he knew it was time to join you.
You were still in that glorious haze of the early days of your relationship, where being joined at the hip felt romantic instead of suffocating. Where you wanted to spend every moment either snuggling, whispering cringey words of affection, or fucking like rabbits. The shower tended to be the latter.
“I know, honey.”
“And it’s not even–” He cut himself off, swallowing. “It’s not about sex. I don’t need it to be about that. I just…I just like taking care of you.”
Looking back, you should have countered that. You should have said something about how taking a shower wasn’t a betrayal, and you were allowed to be alone. That you didn’t need him in you or on you constantly.
But Dex was upset. And that fact alone hurt you. Because you loved him.
So instead of doing something smart, you reached for him.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered softly as your hands cupped his twitching jaw. Dex’s shoulders loosened the second you touched him. “I didn’t know it would upset you this much.”
His breath left him all at once, shaky and relieved. “No, no, don’t–” Dex’s hands came up to hold onto your wrists, thumbs moving over your pulse. “Don’t apologize, please. I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to freak out.”
“It’s okay.”
“I know I get…” His eyes flickered between yours. “Intense.”
“A little.” You gave him a small smile. “But I like it.”
Dex huffed a thin laugh that quickly disappeared. His eyes had gone watery.
“I just love you,” he said. “That’s all. I just… I love you so much that sometimes it hurts, and I just– I don’t know what to do with it.”
Your heart squeezed. How could it not? How could you look at this handsome man, who bought you your favorite food and gave you mind-numbing orgasms and listened to you and wanted you with such total devotion, and be mad at him when he said he loved you so much he couldn’t stand a second without you? You were only human.
“I love you too,” You kissed the corner of his mouth gently, then fully on his lips. “I’ll make it up to you.”
And just like that, as you took a second, unnecessary shower with your perfect boyfriend, you didn’t think once about that silly little fight. You couldn’t, with your cheek pressed to the glass door, his hips snapping against your ass, his cock hitting that perfect spot in you over and over again as his mouth was at your ears, telling you how he loved you. Dex always made you forget those things when he had you like this. He made you forget the blank look in his eyes. He made you forget how any sane person would have broken up with someone over that. He made you forget the loaded gun that had been holstered at his hip for the entire conversation. He just made you…
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summary: dex finally gives you all of him. every. single. inch.
pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT!! with feelings, unprotected p in v sex, cunnilingus, loss of virginity, finishing inside, multiple orgasms, mentions of daredevil, suicidal ideation (brief but multiple mentions), technically reproductive coercion, manipulation, stalking, delusional dex as usual, some fluff <3
word count: 8.6k (...guys...i'm tired lol)
A/N: well...it's finally here. hope y'all enjoy because i certainly enjoyed writing it. also, housekeeping note-- you may notice that the next chapter won't be published until 7/10. mr. roxxmo and i are taking a nice long vacation! hoping i can get something to you before then, but we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming once home and i'll try and get around to asks while i'm out. thank you as always for the love on this whole series, i've had such a good time writing it and seeing that you guys love this absolute pathetic freak of a man as much as i do makes me all warm inside :)
divider by: @uzmacchiato
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MASTERLIST
next chapter → (COMING 7/10)
Dex was doing well.
“Well”, by his standards, at least.
Being your boyfriend gave him purpose. “Boyfriend” was a loose term, admittedly– you hadn’t called him that specifically, and you had only been seeing each other for a month. To Dex, the word felt too small for what you were, anyways. “Soulmate” was probably closer. Still, “boyfriend” seemed like the most socially acceptable term and Dex was trying very hard to be socially acceptable for you.
There was structure in it. Just like the FBI, or the Army before that. A role to fill, a routine to follow.
His life finally, finally had purpose. And because of that, everything felt better. Dex was sleeping more. He was eating better. At the field office, he was sharper, less prone to that constricting feeling in his ribcage when too many things were happening at once. He could talk to other agents and remember what his face was supposed to be doing. The old Mercer cassette tapes and headphones that used to anchor him were collecting dust in the drawer of his coffee table. He didn’t need them anymore, because he had something better.
You.
After your first date, Dex committed himself to becoming the perfect partner. Like all things he excelled at, he approached it with an alarming amount of discipline and research. Advice columns, psychology blogs, old nineties rom-coms, classic romantic novels– he consumed every piece of information he could get his hands on to learn how he could make you stay.
The morning after your first date, he had caught you (as usual) in the elevator. You had shyly given him your number, like you didn’t give him the most transcendental moment of his life the night before by kissing him outside apartment 416. Like Dex hadn’t been on his way to the jewelry store on 12th Street to buy you a diamond ring and claim you forever.
“Maybe we can go out again?” you had asked quietly, batting your eyelashes as you finished typing your number into his embarrassingly empty contacts and handed his phone back. Maybe? Dex would’ve thrown himself off the roof if you didn’t go out with him again.
“Yeah,” he stuttered. “Of course. I mean– definitely."
He already had your number memorized, of course. Alongside a plethora of other information, including your social security number. But you giving it to him willingly? Dex still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Then again, he couldn’t comprehend most things about you. How kind you were, how perfect you were, how beautiful you were, how real you were. What remained most incomprehensible, however, was the fact that you seemed to want him, too.
Dex did whatever he could to keep you wanting him. He read online that women liked good morning texts, so he texted you good morning. He learned that they liked compliments, but didn't want to be overwhelmed by them or for them to be insincere, so he chose carefully. He complimented your hair if you wore it differently, or told you he liked your earrings, or the color of a dress or skirt you wore. Specific compliments were better, he had learned, because they show attentiveness. Dex was nothing but attentive.
He knew that women liked it when men took initiative, too, so he planned your next dates and told you what time he would pick you up from across the hall. You liked that. You especially seemed to like when he paid for the dates, even though you would pretend to argue with him about it.
“Dex, seriously,” you had attempted to complain on your third date. Dex had seen you post on your Instagram about wanting to see a new sci-fi movie that had just come out, so he suggested it as nonchalantly as he could possibly manage two days later.
You both stood at the box office, and Dex was pulling out his wallet while you frowned at him. “You paid for dinner the first time, then coffee on our last date. I seriously can’t let you pay for this. My friends are going to start saying you’re my sugar daddy.”
Dex didn’t know what a “sugar daddy” was. He looked it up afterwards; shouldn’t a man want to pay for everything a woman needed if he loved her? Wasn’t that the point? To make sure she never had to ask anyone else for anything? To make sure she never needed anyone else?
He only shrugged and swiped his card. “It’s no problem. I like taking you out.”
Your only response was to roll your eyes and thread your fingers through his as you walked towards the theater.
There were things about being a good partner that were harder for him, though. The first was trying to appear less eager than he actually was. On the same relationship forum where Dex had read about the good morning texts, he also learned that he shouldn’t respond too quickly. That was easier said than done. Sometimes, after hearing his phone ping with a message from you, he would have to literally set a timer to keep himself from answering. Fifteen minutes, usually. Enough time to seem attentive. Enough time to seem like he was doing something other than waiting pathetically by his phone, pacing until the timer went off.
The worst was the ring. Dex had bought it the morning after your first date. A perfectly symmetrical two-carat diamond perched delicately atop a thin gold band. Beautiful. Permanent. The black velvet ring box sat in the coffee table drawer next to the old Mercer tapes, both of them untouched. He would’ve proposed that very morning. He wanted to, desperately. And if God had any mercy on his mottled soul and you said yes, he would’ve marched you straight to city hall and made it official right then and there.
Apparently, though, it was not considered “socially acceptable” to propose after the first date. That was “too soon”. Dex disagreed. Because what was “too soon”, really? Your relationship? To Dex, whatever the two of you had did not start when you asked him to dinner in the lobby that fateful morning. It began when he opened the door to you holding that frog-colored plate of chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe, it began before that. Maybe it began when you moved into apartment 416 and rearranged his mundane, miserable, structured world. Maybe it was before then, too. Maybe you both had always been connected, somehow, someway.
So, Dex told himself he would wait. But as much discipline as he had, Dex knew that when it came to you, he wouldn’t be able to wait forever.
Physical intimacy between the two of you was a whole different matter. The two of you had kissed since that first night. Several times, in fact. Sometimes outside your apartment door after a night out, inside the elevator in the morning, on street corners after dinner when you looked at him with your lips stained from whatever bottle of wine you two had shared. Sometimes the kisses were quick and sweet. Sometimes, they were not.
Sometimes you would lean into Dex until your breasts were pressed against his chest, your fingers curling into the edge of his shirt collar while his hands spanned the small of your back and dipped lower and lower until they met soft flesh, and Dex would have to remind himself of every single discussion thread he had read about patience. About not pressuring a woman, even though every single fiber of his being was made from pulverizing pressure.
He tried his best to wait for you.
But tonight, Dex knew it would be different.
Dinner had gone well, as it usually did these days. You laughed whenever he attempted a joke, complained about lesson plans, asked about the field office even though Dex would have much preferred to talk about you, and, after your second glass of wine, you spent the entirety of the meal staring at his mouth like you thought he wouldn’t notice. Dex noticed everything.
By the time you both stood outside your apartment door, he could feel the shift. You had been quieter on the walk home, holding his hand tighter than usual, your hand squeezing him again and again like you were trying to work up the nerve to say something.
His pulse had steadied into something strong and restless as he watched you fish your keys out of your purse. You unlocked the door, and then paused with your hand on the knob.
You looked at him. “Do you…want to come in?”
Dex had been in your apartment before. Many times, though you didn’t know it, of course. As a matter of fact, he had been inside it only nineteen hours ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the corner of your room as he watched you softly snore.
But beyond your request for him to water the fern in your living room, never had he been invited in.
Dex felt his mouth go dry. “Yeah. I’d love to.”
You stepped to the side and let him in.
When the door closed behind Dex, he realized how different it felt to be inside your apartment as a wanted guest. Everything felt warmer, softer this way. From the lamps by your couch to the scent of the vanilla candle you kept by the stove, it was like Dex had all the pieces to the puzzle of your life spread before him, arranged perfectly, but only on your invitation had he been able to connect them and see the whole picture. And the whole picture was even better than he imagined, because he was in it.
You brushed by him, toeing off your heels as you stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink? Water? Wine?”
Dex suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands as he followed you into the kitchen he had paced so many times before. He shoved them in his pockets. “Uh, wine is fine.”
“Would you get the glasses?” you asked, opening your fridge and peering inside. “They’re in the–”
Before you could finish speaking, Dex was already opening the cabinet above your sink. The one with the wine glasses. You blinked at him, bottle of Pinot Grigio in hand.
“Oh. You found them.”
Dex froze with his hand around the stem of a glass. Fuck. “I…I keep mine there, too.”
You raised an eyebrow.
Fucking fuck. He tried for an easy side smile and hoped it landed. “FBI intuition, I guess.”
For one horrible second, you only stared at him. Then you giggled. It worked.
“I guess I should be careful dating an agent,” you teased as you took the glass from him and poured wine into it. “I’m never going to be able to hide anything from you.”
Dex laughed. You were right.
Wine poured, you nodded towards the soft velvet couch in the living room. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
Dex walked behind you and tried not to stare at the bare line of your calves under your dress as you settled onto the couch and tucked a leg under yourself. Stiffly, he sat beside you at what he believed was an appropriate amount of space between your bodies. You looked at the space with what seemed like annoyance, then at him, and shifted closer until your knee brushed his thigh. Dex took a long sip of wine and hoped his face was arranged normally.
You fidgeted with the stem of your glass, eyes moving from his face to the dark television screen across the room. Dex realized you were nervous.
“Do you, um–” you gestured towards the screen. “Should we put something on?”
“Sure,” Dex said, though he had no idea how he was supposed to watch anything when you were sitting close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off your body. Close enough to smell that intoxicating citrus shampoo. The same kind he had bought for his own shower.
You grabbed the remote from the coffee table and clicked the TV on.
“...and in Hell’s Kitchen tonight, locals are reporting new sightings of a masked vigilante some are claiming may be Daredevil–”
You frowned as the grainy news broadcast footage showed a blurry, dark shape on a rooftop. “I thought that guy was dead.”
Dex’s eye twitched as he watched the screen. “Even if he is, there’s always going to be some idiot trying to copy him. Half of the shit he does is illegal but because he’s wearing a mask, everyone thinks he’s a hero.”
You raised an eyebrow and flipped the channel. “I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about him.”
“It’s just…” Dex paused. For some reason, the conversation made his skin feel tight. He didn’t know why. “Guys at the field office complain about it a lot. People like him make our jobs a lot harder.”
“Hmm.” You changed the channel again until you landed on some mindless standup comedy special. “Hopefully the FBI doesn’t have strong feelings about comedians, too.”
Dex huffed out something close to a laugh because that felt like the right response, and felt you ease yourself into his side. The laugh track filled the room but he didn’t register a single joke. All he could hear was your breathing. Dex watched as you took a sip from your wine glass, the tip of your tongue darting out to catch a stray droplet on your lip. He couldn’t stop staring.
Surely, the heat of his gaze had bored into the side of your face, and finally you tipped your head up to look at him. The blue light from the screen moved softly over your face, catching on the little crease between your brows.
“I can feel you staring, you know.”
Dex felt like a hand was around his throat. “I am.”
Your voice had gone hushed when you spoke again. “Why?”
There were hundreds of answers Dex could’ve given you. Because I love you. Because I’ve been watching you sleep every night for the last two months. Because I never stop thinking about you. Because there’s a ring waiting for you just across the hall. Because I wish I could crawl into your skin and live with you forever. Because you belong to me.
All were the truth, but each answer felt too big. Instead, he gave you a small amount of honesty, though it was the most genuine Dex had ever been with you.
“I just…I can’t believe you’re real.”
The crease between your brows smoothed as your expression changed. Your eyes darted away, and then came back to meet his. “Well, last time I checked… I’m real.”
“I know you are.”
You looked at him for another moment, like you were trying to decide whether he was joking. He wasn’t. Slowly, like you were trying not to startle a skittish animal, you leaned forward and set your wine glass on the coffee table. Then you settled back on the couch, but this time your body was twisted to face him. Your hand came to rest against his chest, right over his thumping heart.
“I’m…not always good at this stuff, but– I really like you, Dex,” you whispered.
Something inside him shattered. All at once, the discipline in him– the articles, the forums, all the research into how to be a man you stayed with– left him. Every breath scraped like sandpaper through his ribs. Every organ was twisting in on itself until the only thing that would make the ache stop was touching you.
This time, though, he didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t wait.
So, Dex touched you.
His mouth crashed onto yours, all urgency and need and no hesitation. You moaned against him, lips parting so his tongue could slip inside to meet yours. Dex could taste the white wine clearly, like he was drinking it straight from you, licking it off the enamel of your teeth. Your hand had migrated from over his rapidly swelling heart to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into the coarse blond hair on the nape of his neck. He wanted you to pull it, to yank it out of his scalp. But in order to ask you to do that you would have to stop kissing him, and Dex couldn’t risk that.
Grabbing the soft flesh at your waist, he pulled you until both of your legs framed his hips and you straddled him on the couch. As you settled over his crotch and let your weight sink onto him, Dex suddenly understood with terrifying clarity that tonight would be different from the sweet little kisses you two had shared before. He would finally, finally have you. He would have something no one else had ever taken from him and give it to the only person he had ever wanted to receive it: you.
And in return, you would give yourself to him. No matter what happened after tonight, you would never be able to rid yourself of the proof that he had been here.
Dex would give his virginity to you.
“Dex,” your breathless whine brought him out of his stupor. In his haze, he had moved his mouth from your lips to your collarbone, sucking and biting hard enough he knew with all prideful certainty it would leave marks the next morning. “Can you…please…”
He felt you grind your clothed cunt helplessly against the tent that had formed against his jeans. Dex was already so hard, so aching, he felt like any movement from you would send him over the edge. He stilled your moving hips with his grip.
“What?” His lips ghosted over where your shoulder met your neck. “What do you need?”
Dex would do anything for you. You should’ve known that.
Your face was flushed. You dipped your head down so your lips skimmed the shell of his ear. “My room. Take me there.”
Dex stood immediately. One arm around your back and the other under your ass, he lifted you like you weighed nothing. Your mouth was already on him again, pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses to his jaw, his cheek, the crinkle of his eye, any patch of skin you could find.
You didn’t tell him where to go, because he didn’t need you to. Still holding your writhing form against him, Dex moved down the short hallway, past the framed photos of your life before him, past the bathroom door, straight to your bedroom– the same path he had taken silently in the dark more times than he could count.
You were too busy acting like a bitch in heat to notice.
Dex nudged the bedroom door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. Your room was the same as it had been nineteen hours before. But never had he allowed himself to fully, truly imagine it in the light of all that was to happen. With a single invitation, the room had mutated. No longer was it a sanctuary; it was an altar.
Reverently, Dex lowered you onto your mattress, holding himself up above you on his hands. You stared up under him, hair spread wildly against the pillow, mouth swollen and red from him. You were more beautiful than anything he had ever thought possible.
Both of your hands came to frame his face and he nuzzled into your touch like a neglected animal.
“Maybe this is embarrassing to admit, but– I’ve thought about this before,” you murmured, tracing your fingers across his brow bone. “I’ve thought about it so much.”
Dex could feel his breathing go ragged. He wanted to die. He buried his face into the crook of your neck.
“W-what…what did you think about?” he asked shakily, voice muffled against you. Dex knew what you were going to say and still didn’t know if he could survive hearing it aloud.
Your fingers carded back into his hair. “... What you would feel like. On me. In me.”
He could only groan in response. You tugged on him, ever so slightly but enough it stung so fucking good, guiding his face back to yours. Dex followed helplessly, mouth finding you again, sloppy and uncoordinated before he forced himself to slow down.
Your hands slipped from his hair to your dress, fingers searching blindly for the zipper at your side. Instinctively, Dex caught your wrist before you could find it.
You pulled back from his mouth, confusion flickering through your wild eyes.
Dex stared at your smaller hand in his, then at your dress clinging to your body like a second skin. His voice was thin when he finally managed to speak.
“...can I?”
Your expression softened for just a second before a flash of something he hadn’t seen before passed. “Can you…what?”
He wanted to light himself on fire. “T-take it off. Of you.”
You waited patiently. He wanted to light himself on fire and then stab himself.
His fingers scrambled for the zipper, fumbling with it because he couldn’t stop shaking. Finally, he caught it, and moved it down the track, each tooth giving way, inch by inch by tortuous inch.
Dex watched the fabric loosen around you, watched as the dress began to fall open beneath his hands. Finally, it was loose enough he could pull the straps down off your shoulder, then down, down, down until it bunched at your hips. You lifted them, and Dex slid the dress the rest of the way off and tossed it somewhere behind him, forgotten before it hit the floor. Only then did he allow himself to sit back on his heels and look at you fully.
Like a figure from a painting, you lay back on the pillow, arms twitching at your sides like you couldn’t decide if you wanted to cover yourself or let him see you. Your bare breasts rose and fell with each breath, full and soft with peaked nipples beginning to stiffen in the cool air. Dex forced his eyes down, over the dip of your sternum, the softness of your stomach, and lower still. There was still one barrier between you– a pair of lace panties the color of the morning sky. He knew them. He had seen them folded neatly in your drawers before, had skimmed his hand over the fabric. He always wondered what it would be like to feel them warm and damp from your arousal, or to smell your scent on them, or to taste you through them. To be honest, he had thought about taking them with him many times. But now, Dex was glad he didn’t. Because no stolen relic would be able to come anywhere close to the honor of doing what he was about to do.
A sound more animal than human left him, and instinct forced him to lean down, hands opening your thighs. Before you could even register what was happening, he placed a kiss on your clothed cunt.
“Ooh, shit–” you gasped, hips bucking against him.
Dex did it again, sloppier this time, needier. Like he was thanking you. Each kiss wetting the fabric, each kiss a gesture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You were close to trembling as you put your hands on each side of his face, practically having to pull him back.
“Dex, please…” your eyes met his, nearly black with want. “No more teasing. Take them off, now.”
A command. He was familiar with them. Words barked across a firing range, across a battlefield, across a rooftop with his scope trained on a life he was about to end with one clean pull of the trigger. But never had Dex wanted to obey an order as badly as this one.
His hands moved from holding your thighs open to slipping under the band of lace. Once he slid that final piece of fabric off you, there was no more script. Technically, he knew what happened next. Dex was a man and had seen what men like to see; he wasn’t a prude and he certainly wasn’t stupid. He had been in the Army, for fuck’s sake. He had been there when men opened their phones in the barracks and played videos of women pretending to find pleasure beneath men with comedically long penises. He had watched them pass around half-naked pictures of girls back home and brag about what they could do with their mouths.
Dex knew where to put his hands, his fingers, his tongue, his cock. But knowing how to do something isn’t the same as wanting to do it. Dex had never had the desire. What was the point of doing any of that to someone he didn’t care about? What was the point of pushing himself inside a body that meant nothing to him? A body that wasn’t yours? A body that didn’t belong to his North Star? Maybe that’s why he waited all this time– because in his whole thirty-three years on this planet, you were the only person who had ever made desire feel like it was worth obeying.
Dex hooked his fingers beneath the lace and pulled. He tried to be slow, but the starving, caged animal in him was screaming at him to just rip them off, bury his face in your cunt, and finally learn if you tasted the way you smelled: sweet and oh-so human. But his hands shook too badly for that, so he watched in agony as the lace made its slow descent down the curve of your hips. Dex eased the panties down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves, until they slipped free around your ankles and landed in his hand.
You whispered his name.
He looked up, and you were bare. Completely. Your flushed thighs had fallen back open, exposing your wet, swollen pussy to him, the soft curls between your legs damp and glistening with arousal.
Dex wanted to cry. Instead, he dipped his head back to you and brushed his nose against the soft crease where your thigh met your pelvis. He inhaled deeply, letting the heady musk of you infiltrate his senses, and groaned aloud.
Maybe he should’ve felt humiliated, scenting you like a dog. But this was the holiest experience he had ever had. His lips pressed a gentle kiss to your inner thigh. Then again, higher. Then another. Until finally, his lips hovered over the swollen nub at the top of your cunt.
The tip of his tongue darted out, placing a careful lick directly to your clit.
“Fuck!” you cried out, hand flying over to cover your eyes like you couldn’t bear it.
Dex did it again, and then again. And then again, and again, and again, until your hand had moved from over your eyes to clutch at his hair. Dex lifted his gaze to see your eyes rolling into the back of your head, the whites of them showing like you had become possessed.
He didn’t know if he was doing it right. Dex knew how to study, though, and how to become accurate. He had built his life around noticing and correcting until he found that exact target. He could execute. Dex could, would do the same for you.
He moved from those small, careful licks to longer ones, slowly dragging his tongue from your dripping entrance to the sensitive bundle of nerves above it. Softer, then faster. Slower, then with more pressure. Adjusting, correcting, narrowing in. He learned what you liked. Your moans became louder when he circled your clit with the edge of his tongue, so he did that. Your thighs trembled when he sealed his mouth over you and hummed, so he did that. Your body spoke, and Dex listened.
“Oh my– Jesus fucking Christ, Dex,” you gasped. Your moans had become garbled and near incoherent at this point.
He lifted his gaze again and met your eyes as he continued drawing tight, slow circles over your swollen clit. Your face was twisted in what could only be described as pleasure and agony, mouth open, brows pinched, tits heaving with every labored breath. Dex couldn’t look away.
“Mmm… I’m gonna–” your thighs tightened around his face, trembling against his ears. “Fuck, how are you doing that?”
He only hummed in response, and your back arched off the mattress.
“Dex,” you cried, hand fisting at his hair, pulling so hard it sent a shock through him. “Please, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna– oooh, fuck–”
Dex felt your cunt pulse underneath his tongue, your whole body spasming as you came with a broken sob. He held you still through it, mouth never stopping as much as you seized. He tried to watch you as much as he could to memorize this very moment, the trembling in your muscles, your eyes fluttering, the shape your mouth made as his name left it over and over.
Dex, Dex, Dex.
He could have stayed, face buried into your pussy, for days. Weeks. Months, even. Hell, Dex would have happily died of suffocation if it meant never having to take his mouth off of your still-convulsing cunt.
You, though, did not seem ready to kill him yet. Oversensitive and still twitching with aftershocks, you pried his pussy-drunk face away from you with trembling hands until he reluctantly released your cunt from the suction of his mouth. He kissed a trail back up your body, stopping to press his mouth in a grateful kiss to each peak of your breasts before finally reaching your mouth again. The second your lips met, you let out a quiet gasp at the taste of yourself on his tongue.
“Dex,” you mewled against his lips. Your breath was still shallow, though the fact that he kept sucking softly at your lower lip probably did very little to help you recover. “I think that was…shit. That was definitely the best orgasm I’ve had. Like, in my entire life. Where the fuck did you learn that?”
Dex paused only briefly, his hand stopping on its way from your waist to paw at the soft flesh of your tit. “I, uh– practice. And I pay attention. I guess.”
Apparently, you found that answer sufficient, because you gave only a girlish giggle and pulled him back down into another kiss. Your hand moved from his jaw to the cords of his neck, then lower still, over his chest, his stomach, until your fingers paused at his belt.
“Hmm,” you looped one finger through the leather. “I think we’re a little unbalanced here.”
You were right. You were bare, as naked as the day you entered this world and were bound to him. Dex, hovering above you, was still fully clothed from head to toe.
You tugged once at the belt. “Off.”
Another command he was more than happy to oblige. He sat back on his heels, first wiping the mess of your arousal off his chin before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it over his head before tossing it to join your dress on the floor. You sucked in a quiet intake of breath at that, though Dex wasn’t sure exactly why.
His hands moved to his buckle, and Dex could feel your eyes on him as he worked the leather free. They were everywhere, the dusting of dirty blond hair on his pectorals, the trail of darker hair that extended from his stomach to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. It felt like you were cataloging every single piece of him.
Dex shoved his jeans down his hips, kicking them off once they pooled around his ankles.
It should have made him nervous. Dex had spent his whole life finding ways to hide, behind roles, structures, masks, anything to avoid truly being seen. But this didn’t feel like exposure. It felt like…recognition. Like his body was already yours. A part of you. You two were equal, but opposite. The same soul in different skins.
His North Star.
The thought alone made his cock throb.
As if you sensed it, your eyes dropped to the bulge beneath his black briefs, and your lips parted into a small “o”. He was so hard it hurt, the fabric stretched tight. Dex had been hard because of you before. Alone in his apartment, the blue light of his laptop illuminating the screen that showed a smiling picture of you stolen from one of your social media accounts. In the shower, sniffing the exact citrus shampoo he had bought after finding the bottle in your bathroom. Sitting in this very bedroom, watching you toss and turn under the covers.
But never had he touched himself to you.
Dex wasn’t a saint, obviously. He would lay there, every fiber of his being aching for some sort, any sort of relief to the coil building low in his gut. He could never do it, though. Every time his hand would hover lower, even graze his pulsing member, a wave of disgust would come over him so strongly it forced his hand back. It would have been…false. Blasphemous. Like kicking dirt over an act of salvation.
He saved himself for this exact moment. Once he took off his briefs there was absolutely no going back. There would be before, and then there would be after. Nothing in between.
You pushed yourself up, folding your knees underneath you, rising until you were level with him again. You put your hand on his chest, delicate fingers trailing across his chest, brushing his nipples, and then lower. His abdomen braced as you skimmed your fingertips past the hard ridges, until finally, you placed your palm over his cock.
He gasped your name, head dropping to your shoulder. He hadn’t touched himself in months. No one, no one had touched him like that. Ever.
Your hand moved again, fingers closing around him through the fabric, and his hips jerked forward before he could stop them. Dex was so far gone from the taste of you and the sight of you and the knowledge that you wanted him like he wanted you that the light pressure shot through him like a bullet.
Your face turned into his, lips slotting into each other again before Dex could collapse against you. It was slower than before, your tongue exploring his mouth like you had all the time in the world. Like he wasn’t seconds away from spurting ropes of cum into his briefs when you hadn’t even actually touched him yet.
Dex kissed you back desperately, one hand fisting your hair to hold you close, the other grabbing at your waist. He could feel your hardened nipples brushing against his chest, your hand stroking him softly. He was going to cum. Just from that.
“Wait.”
With what seemed like great effort, you pulled back from Dex’s mouth. A thin, translucent string of your mingled saliva followed you until it snapped, landing against your chin. Dex resisted the urge to lick it up. Your palm still cupped the twitching length of him through the fabric of his briefs.
“Do you…” Your eyes flicked briefly away from his. “Do you have…protection?”
Dex stared at you in silence. You huffed, though your cheeks were already beginning to burn. Were you…embarrassed? Even after all he just did to you? For you?
“What?” Dex asked. He knew what you meant.
“A condom. Do you…have one?”
Technically speaking, no. Not on him, at least. There was, however, a small box of unopened condoms under his bathroom sink. He bought it exactly four weeks ago, on the afternoon before your first date. Not the thought something was going to happen that night, obviously. But Dex was always, always prepared. He had thought maybe, eventually, something like this could happen. But now…it was happening. And the idea of something stopping this, something coming in between the two of you, it was unbearable. Disgusting, even.
After everything that had already kept him from you, after all the doors and walls and locks and rules that had made him stand on the other side, waiting and waiting and fucking waiting, did he really want another barrier?
Absolutely not.
Dex leaned in and placed a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Uh, n-no. No, I don’t.”
You chewed on your lip, eyes darting down to where you still held him. You were considering something.
“I…I don’t think we have to use one, if you don’t want to,” you began slowly. “I’m on birth control.”
He knew that. Dex had found the little foil packet of pink pills in your bedside drawer weeks ago. He stared at it, and it stared back at him like it had a personal vendetta. That would be dealt with another time.
“And…I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Of course you weren’t. If you had been, Dex would’ve taken care of that, too. You wouldn’t need to worry yourself with the details.
You looked back up at him, eyes wide and cautious. “Unless…you’re seeing someone else?”
Dex felt genuinely offended. He would have rather disemboweled himself and let vultures pick at his organs than even think of someone other than you. He genuinely didn’t think he was physically capable of wanting anyone else.
“What? I– no, no, of course not,” he sputtered, his grip on your waist tightening before he could stop it. Did you think so low of him? “Do you think I am?”
You shook your head quickly. “Dex, no. I didn’t think you were. I just meant…obviously, it would be okay if you were, I just–”
“I’m not seeing anyone else. I won’t be seeing anyone else.” Just like you won’t be seeing anyone else, he wanted to add.
Something in his tone made you go quiet. After a few seconds, you blushed and nodded your head. “Okay. I believe you.”
You placed one tender kiss on his lips, as if that was the final confirmation you needed, and then slipped your hand into the band of his briefs.
This was it. The final wall between the two of you.
Your fingers paused, brushing the coarse hair on his pubic bone. “...can I?”
Dex didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded.
You pulled the briefs down slowly, and Dex had to steady himself with against you. His cock sprang free, veined and girthy, and slapped against his stomach, head red and drooling with precum just below his navel.
Your eyes bulged. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s going to fit.”
His whole body pulsed at your words. He knew he was…big. Solders had made jokes of it in locker rooms. He felt it. But he had never cared before. Now, he did. And he was going to make himself fit, one way or another.
Dex kicked the briefs the rest of the way down, and your hand wrapped back around him before he had a chance to prepare himself. Your fist moved up, thumb tracing the vein underneath the head, before it moved back down the silky shaft, all the way to the base, and then back up–
Quickly, he put his hand over yours. “I–you should probably stop.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t…I don’t think I’ll last,” he admitted sheepishly. “If you keep doing that.”
Your expression softened, which only made the humiliation worse.
“Oh,” you whispered, pressing your lips to his jaw. “That’s okay. We can go slow.”
Dex nodded weakly, and guided you back down onto the mattress with blood rushing in his ears. Your thighs opened once more, this time wrapping around his hips, heels pressing into the dimples of his back.
Slowly, shakily, he lowered himself down. The heat from your cunt was radiating. Only a few centimeters of air lay between your sexes. Only a few centimeters of air before he would be forever changed. A part of him would be inside you, and even after he left, even after you washed him from your skin, Dex would know the truth.
It had to be perfect.
Dex wrapped a trembling hand around himself and guided the sensitive head of his cock slowly to your entrance. The first touch made his whole body seize. You were so hot, so wet. He wasn’t going to last. He had to control himself.
Dex's eyes squeezed shut, face twisting. He needed to breathe. In…and out.
“...Dex?” you asked, breath hitching. You looked genuinely concerned. “Are you–”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I just–” What was he supposed to say? I’m about to lose my virginity? My life is going to be forever changed? For the first time in my life, I’m scared?
Dex roughly exhaled through his nose, then regrouped himself. It would be perfect. He brought his leaking head back to your pussy lips, dragging himself through your slick. The tip bumped your clit, and you moaned.
“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbled, though he didn’t know anything anymore.
Finally, Dex lined himself up with your entrance, jaw clenched so hard he thought it might shatter. The head of his cock pressed against you, and stars swam in his vision.
Dex could have researched, read, and studied all he wanted, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for this.
He pushed forward, and the world ceased around him.
“Oh my God,” you whined as the head of his cock slipped inside you.
He barely had an inch of his cock in you, and already it was too much. Your cunt was tighter than he could have ever imagined, so much so that he started to think maybe you hadn’t been lying when you said he wasn’t going to fit.
Dex’s forehead, beaded with sweat, dropped to yours. He couldn’t think. Nothing existed anymore.
“You’re so…tight,” he panted. “I… I don’t think I can–”
“Please, Dex,” Your voice was shaking, your hips bucking like you could draw him deeper by sheer force. “Want you to fuck me. Want it so bad, Dex. Keep…keep going. Please.”
He obeyed. Dex pushed forward a little further, easing another inch of his cock into you. Your mouth fell open, brows pinching together as your nails dug into the muscles of his back.
It took every ounce of self-control he had to not give in to every primal instinct ingrained within him slam himself forward. He didn’t want to hurt you. Every inch, every shift, you would whimper, head tossing against the pillow while you adjusted. And Dex wanted to last. Patience, he reminded himself, teeth gritted. He would be patient with you.
Finally, after minutes of feeding you one inch after another while you whined and whimpered and begged for more, while Dex nearly bit his tongue off to keep from losing control, it was done.
One small thrust forward, and Dex bottomed out with a groan. He was buried deep inside you, the pulsing head of his cock brushing your cervix.
It didn’t feel real.
“I’m…I’m inside you.”
“OhmyfuckingGod,” you slurred, raising your head off the pillow to peer down at the obscene sight of him fully sheathed inside you, slick smeared across both your thighs, your bodies joined completely. With one trembling hand, you pressed below your navel. “I can feel you.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
In disbelief, Dex raised his hand and placed it over yours. There it was-- the long shape of him evident even under your skin. Him. Where he would live forever.
“P-please, Dex,” you dug your nails again into his back, dragging him back to reality. “Fuck me.”
He obeyed.
Dex drew his hips back an inch, terrified of leaving you completely, then pushed back in. Your head fell back onto the pillow, eyes closing in total ecstasy.
He eased himself out, a little further this time, then slowly back in. Again, then again. Again. Again. Again.
On one of his thrusts, Dex felt something spongy drag against the sensitive ridge near the head of his cock, and your eyes rolled back.
“Oooh, shit, Dex,” you whimpered, hands moving to claw at his shoulders. “Dex, right there, again, again, please…”
Dex braced his forearm beside your head and angled his hips slightly until he felt that spongy muscle once more. Your moans were getting louder, more high-pitched, with every perfect thrust. Even like this, even with his body threatening to come apart too soon, Dex could still learn you.
You were close, he could tell. Dex slipped a hand between your bodies, the pad of his thumb finding the swollen pearl he already knew was key to your pleasure. At the same time, he dipped his head and captured one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking it between his lips and rolling his tongue over the tight bud. He rubbed tight circles over your clit, trying to match the rhythm of his hips, the rhythm of how you liked his tongue only minutes earlier.
“That’s– oh, God. It's so good. You’re gonna make me come again,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me come–”
“Yeah? You’re gonna come on my cock?” He raised his eyes, releasing your breast from his mouth with a soft pop. His voice was strangled, panicked and relieved at the same time. For the first time in his life, it was Dex’s turn to command. “Come for me.”
Your body began to convulse, back arching off the mattress, muscles of your perfect cunt clamping down around him so tightly his vision went white at the edges. It was like all language had left you, and the only thing you still knew was his name.
“Fuck,” he groaned, thrusts becoming uneven as the erratic spasms of your pussy pulled him deeper, dragging him closer to the edge. His body was winding up, the coil in his gut bracing for what he now knew was inevitable. Dex wasn’t going to last. It was too perfect. You were too perfect. “I’m close, I’m–”
Your hand shot from his shoulder to the back of his neck, dragging his face down closer to yours. Even with tears brimming at your lower lids, your eyes were clear. Focused.
“Come in me, Dex,” you whispered, world narrowing to only the slap of flesh against flesh and your hushed voice. “Do it.”
Your final wish, your final command. It was over. Every practiced act of self-restraint, of control, of trying to restrain himself, had vanished.
His hips stuttered as he tried to bury himself deeper into your organs, deep enough to leave an imprint. His mind had gone blank, feral. Dex grabbed at your chin, squishing your face between his fingers because he needed you. Needed to see you. Needed you to know.
“I love you.”
With his final utterance, the only truth he could ever fully tell you, Dex came.
His hips pushed forward, shuddering as he spilled his seed into you. He couldn’t stop the words.
“I love you,” Dex gasped again, grip tightening on your face. He couldn’t stop coming, couldn’t stop saying it, couldn’t stop the truth from pouring out of him and into you. “I love you, I love you, I– fuck–”
He collapsed onto you.
In…and out.
Dex smelled your shampoo, your sweat.
In…and out.
He felt the cool cotton of your twisted sheets, your sweat-slick breasts against his chest. His cock still twitching inside you, the warmth of his release beginning to leak out around him in a pearly track.
In…and out.
In…and…
With sudden clarity, he remembered all that he said.
Fuck.
Dex’s eyes shot open. He scrambled backwards on the bed, his softening cock slipping out of you as panic tore through him.
“I’m– I don’t know why I said that, I–” His heart rate was beginning to climb frantically, splotches of red blooming on his chest. He dragged a shaking hand down his face. “Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry, I just–”
You followed after him, pushing yourself up on the bed from where you lay, limbs heavy and still shivering.
“Hey, hey. Dex,” You took his face in your hands, thumbs smoothing across his cheekbones. Soothing him. “Dex, it’s okay. Look at me.”
Eyes bleary with tears, he met your gaze. He fucked it up. He hadn’t done what he practiced. He was too eager. Too quick. Too honest. Too himself. It would be over now. You would send him out of your room, laugh at him, do what everyone else had done to him his whole life and abandon him.
There was no point in continuing if you did that. No purpose for Dex. No point in living if you weren’t his North Star.
He would end it all.
“Dex,” you said his name again. Dex managed to blink the hot tears from his eyes, and he saw you clearly. You were…smiling.
“It’s okay,” you whispered, voice soft and sweet. “I feel the same.”
He stilled.
Did you– no. No, surely he hadn’t heard you correctly. Surely the blood was still rushing throughout his body so loudly that he misunderstood.
“I…I don’t…” He stumbled over his words, throat tight. “What?”
Your smile grew wider. The same smile you gave him when he first opened his apartment door and found you standing there. The same smile that made him feel like his eyes had finally opened for the first time in his life.
“I love you, too, Dex.”
His breath, which he hadn’t realized he had been holding, left him in a shaky exhale. You loved him. You wanted him. You needed him. You felt what he had been feeling this entire time.
Your thumbs moved on his cheeks again, this time wiping away tears Dex hadn’t realized had fallen.
“I know it’s early,” You paused, and then laughed softly, like you couldn’t believe what you were saying. “It’s probably insane. And maybe it’s partially the life-changing orgasm still talking, but…”
You bit your lip bashfully, but looked deep into his eyes. “I mean it. Seriously. I care about you, and I just… I like what we have.”
Dex opened his mouth, but no sound came out. You seemed to understand anyway.
You pressed one tired, affectionate kiss to his cheek, then two to his lips, before patting his chest. “So…stop freaking out and get back into the bed so we can sleep, okay? And hopefully I can still walk in the morning.”
Dex tried to laugh. The two of you moved clumsily back beneath the sheets, bodies sticky with sex. You turned onto your side, snuggling into him and guiding his arm around your waist. You placed one last kiss to his chest, just above his heart, and closed your eyes with a sigh.
The room fell into silence.
You loved him.
Dex had been in this room so many times before, had seen the moonlight move slowly over your sleeping face with every hour that he watched over you. He had often wondered what it would feel like to finally cross the distance between you, to climb under the covers. To hold you.
Now, he was finally here.
Dex’s hand crawled from your waist to splay over your ribcage, feeling your breath begin to even out.
In…and out.
The rhythm that had once belonged to him had transferred to you.
He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Dex had lied, he had murdered, he had felt nothing but emptiness in spaces he should feel empathy. He had spent years convincing himself there was nothing in him but flesh and bones. No soul. Nothing worthy of mercy.
And yet, here you were. Holding onto him, sleeping like you trusted him…because you did. More than that, even. You loved him.
Dex would do whatever he could to keep you. Nothing would take you from him. Even if the world separated you, he would remain in your life. You would never be rid of him. Ever.
He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to your shoulder. His hand drifted from your chest to rest over your belly.
summary: dex finally gives you all of him. every. single. inch.
pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT!! with feelings, unprotected p in v sex, cunnilingus, loss of virginity, finishing inside, multiple orgasms, mentions of daredevil, suicidal ideation (brief but multiple mentions), technically reproductive coercion, manipulation, stalking, delusional dex as usual, some fluff <3
word count: 8.6k (...guys...i'm tired lol)
A/N: well...it's finally here. hope y'all enjoy because i certainly enjoyed writing it. also, housekeeping note-- you may notice that the next chapter won't be published until 7/10. mr. roxxmo and i are taking a nice long vacation! hoping i can get something to you before then, but we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming once home and i'll try and get around to asks while i'm out. thank you as always for the love on this whole series, i've had such a good time writing it and seeing that you guys love this absolute pathetic freak of a man as much as i do makes me all warm inside :)
divider by: @uzmacchiato
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Dex was doing well.
“Well”, by his standards, at least.
Being your boyfriend gave him purpose. “Boyfriend” was a loose term, admittedly– you hadn’t called him that specifically, and you had only been seeing each other for a month. To Dex, the word felt too small for what you were, anyways. “Soulmate” was probably closer. Still, “boyfriend” seemed like the most socially acceptable term and Dex was trying very hard to be socially acceptable for you.
There was structure in it. Just like the FBI, or the Army before that. A role to fill, a routine to follow.
His life finally, finally had purpose. And because of that, everything felt better. Dex was sleeping more. He was eating better. At the field office, he was sharper, less prone to that constricting feeling in his ribcage when too many things were happening at once. He could talk to other agents and remember what his face was supposed to be doing. The old Mercer cassette tapes and headphones that used to anchor him were collecting dust in the drawer of his coffee table. He didn’t need them anymore, because he had something better.
You.
After your first date, Dex committed himself to becoming the perfect partner. Like all things he excelled at, he approached it with an alarming amount of discipline and research. Advice columns, psychology blogs, old nineties rom-coms, classic romantic novels– he consumed every piece of information he could get his hands on to learn how he could make you stay.
The morning after your first date, he had caught you (as usual) in the elevator. You had shyly given him your number, like you didn’t give him the most transcendental moment of his life the night before by kissing him outside apartment 416. Like Dex hadn’t been on his way to the jewelry store on 12th Street to buy you a diamond ring and claim you forever.
“Maybe we can go out again?” you had asked quietly, batting your eyelashes as you finished typing your number into his embarrassingly empty contacts and handed his phone back. Maybe? Dex would’ve thrown himself off the roof if you didn’t go out with him again.
“Yeah,” he stuttered. “Of course. I mean– definitely."
He already had your number memorized, of course. Alongside a plethora of other information, including your social security number. But you giving it to him willingly? Dex still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Then again, he couldn’t comprehend most things about you. How kind you were, how perfect you were, how beautiful you were, how real you were. What remained most incomprehensible, however, was the fact that you seemed to want him, too.
Dex did whatever he could to keep you wanting him. He read online that women liked good morning texts, so he texted you good morning. He learned that they liked compliments, but didn't want to be overwhelmed by them or for them to be insincere, so he chose carefully. He complimented your hair if you wore it differently, or told you he liked your earrings, or the color of a dress or skirt you wore. Specific compliments were better, he had learned, because they show attentiveness. Dex was nothing but attentive.
He knew that women liked it when men took initiative, too, so he planned your next dates and told you what time he would pick you up from across the hall. You liked that. You especially seemed to like when he paid for the dates, even though you would pretend to argue with him about it.
“Dex, seriously,” you had attempted to complain on your third date. Dex had seen you post on your Instagram about wanting to see a new sci-fi movie that had just come out, so he suggested it as nonchalantly as he could possibly manage two days later.
You both stood at the box office, and Dex was pulling out his wallet while you frowned at him. “You paid for dinner the first time, then coffee on our last date. I seriously can’t let you pay for this. My friends are going to start saying you’re my sugar daddy.”
Dex didn’t know what a “sugar daddy” was. He looked it up afterwards; shouldn’t a man want to pay for everything a woman needed if he loved her? Wasn’t that the point? To make sure she never had to ask anyone else for anything? To make sure she never needed anyone else?
He only shrugged and swiped his card. “It’s no problem. I like taking you out.”
Your only response was to roll your eyes and thread your fingers through his as you walked towards the theater.
There were things about being a good partner that were harder for him, though. The first was trying to appear less eager than he actually was. On the same relationship forum where Dex had read about the good morning texts, he also learned that he shouldn’t respond too quickly. That was easier said than done. Sometimes, after hearing his phone ping with a message from you, he would have to literally set a timer to keep himself from answering. Fifteen minutes, usually. Enough time to seem attentive. Enough time to seem like he was doing something other than waiting pathetically by his phone, pacing until the timer went off.
The worst was the ring. Dex had bought it the morning after your first date. A perfectly symmetrical two-carat diamond perched delicately atop a thin gold band. Beautiful. Permanent. The black velvet ring box sat in the coffee table drawer next to the old Mercer tapes, both of them untouched. He would’ve proposed that very morning. He wanted to, desperately. And if God had any mercy on his mottled soul and you said yes, he would’ve marched you straight to city hall and made it official right then and there.
Apparently, though, it was not considered “socially acceptable” to propose after the first date. That was “too soon”. Dex disagreed. Because what was “too soon”, really? Your relationship? To Dex, whatever the two of you had did not start when you asked him to dinner in the lobby that fateful morning. It began when he opened the door to you holding that frog-colored plate of chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe, it began before that. Maybe it began when you moved into apartment 416 and rearranged his mundane, miserable, structured world. Maybe it was before then, too. Maybe you both had always been connected, somehow, someway.
So, Dex told himself he would wait. But as much discipline as he had, Dex knew that when it came to you, he wouldn’t be able to wait forever.
Physical intimacy between the two of you was a whole different matter. The two of you had kissed since that first night. Several times, in fact. Sometimes outside your apartment door after a night out, inside the elevator in the morning, on street corners after dinner when you looked at him with your lips stained from whatever bottle of wine you two had shared. Sometimes the kisses were quick and sweet. Sometimes, they were not.
Sometimes you would lean into Dex until your breasts were pressed against his chest, your fingers curling into the edge of his shirt collar while his hands spanned the small of your back and dipped lower and lower until they met soft flesh, and Dex would have to remind himself of every single discussion thread he had read about patience. About not pressuring a woman, even though every single fiber of his being was made from pulverizing pressure.
He tried his best to wait for you.
But tonight, Dex knew it would be different.
Dinner had gone well, as it usually did these days. You laughed whenever he attempted a joke, complained about lesson plans, asked about the field office even though Dex would have much preferred to talk about you, and, after your second glass of wine, you spent the entirety of the meal staring at his mouth like you thought he wouldn’t notice. Dex noticed everything.
By the time you both stood outside your apartment door, he could feel the shift. You had been quieter on the walk home, holding his hand tighter than usual, your hand squeezing him again and again like you were trying to work up the nerve to say something.
His pulse had steadied into something strong and restless as he watched you fish your keys out of your purse. You unlocked the door, and then paused with your hand on the knob.
You looked at him. “Do you…want to come in?”
Dex had been in your apartment before. Many times, though you didn’t know it, of course. As a matter of fact, he had been inside it only nineteen hours ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the corner of your room as he watched you softly snore.
But beyond your request for him to water the fern in your living room, never had he been invited in.
Dex felt his mouth go dry. “Yeah. I’d love to.”
You stepped to the side and let him in.
When the door closed behind Dex, he realized how different it felt to be inside your apartment as a wanted guest. Everything felt warmer, softer this way. From the lamps by your couch to the scent of the vanilla candle you kept by the stove, it was like Dex had all the pieces to the puzzle of your life spread before him, arranged perfectly, but only on your invitation had he been able to connect them and see the whole picture. And the whole picture was even better than he imagined, because he was in it.
You brushed by him, toeing off your heels as you stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink? Water? Wine?”
Dex suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands as he followed you into the kitchen he had paced so many times before. He shoved them in his pockets. “Uh, wine is fine.”
“Would you get the glasses?” you asked, opening your fridge and peering inside. “They’re in the–”
Before you could finish speaking, Dex was already opening the cabinet above your sink. The one with the wine glasses. You blinked at him, bottle of Pinot Grigio in hand.
“Oh. You found them.”
Dex froze with his hand around the stem of a glass. Fuck. “I…I keep mine there, too.”
You raised an eyebrow.
Fucking fuck. He tried for an easy side smile and hoped it landed. “FBI intuition, I guess.”
For one horrible second, you only stared at him. Then you giggled. It worked.
“I guess I should be careful dating an agent,” you teased as you took the glass from him and poured wine into it. “I’m never going to be able to hide anything from you.”
Dex laughed. You were right.
Wine poured, you nodded towards the soft velvet couch in the living room. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
Dex walked behind you and tried not to stare at the bare line of your calves under your dress as you settled onto the couch and tucked a leg under yourself. Stiffly, he sat beside you at what he believed was an appropriate amount of space between your bodies. You looked at the space with what seemed like annoyance, then at him, and shifted closer until your knee brushed his thigh. Dex took a long sip of wine and hoped his face was arranged normally.
You fidgeted with the stem of your glass, eyes moving from his face to the dark television screen across the room. Dex realized you were nervous.
“Do you, um–” you gestured towards the screen. “Should we put something on?”
“Sure,” Dex said, though he had no idea how he was supposed to watch anything when you were sitting close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off your body. Close enough to smell that intoxicating citrus shampoo. The same kind he had bought for his own shower.
You grabbed the remote from the coffee table and clicked the TV on.
“...and in Hell’s Kitchen tonight, locals are reporting new sightings of a masked vigilante some are claiming may be Daredevil–”
You frowned as the grainy news broadcast footage showed a blurry, dark shape on a rooftop. “I thought that guy was dead.”
Dex’s eye twitched as he watched the screen. “Even if he is, there’s always going to be some idiot trying to copy him. Half of the shit he does is illegal but because he’s wearing a mask, everyone thinks he’s a hero.”
You raised an eyebrow and flipped the channel. “I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about him.”
“It’s just…” Dex paused. For some reason, the conversation made his skin feel tight. He didn’t know why. “Guys at the field office complain about it a lot. People like him make our jobs a lot harder.”
“Hmm.” You changed the channel again until you landed on some mindless standup comedy special. “Hopefully the FBI doesn’t have strong feelings about comedians, too.”
Dex huffed out something close to a laugh because that felt like the right response, and felt you ease yourself into his side. The laugh track filled the room but he didn’t register a single joke. All he could hear was your breathing. Dex watched as you took a sip from your wine glass, the tip of your tongue darting out to catch a stray droplet on your lip. He couldn’t stop staring.
Surely, the heat of his gaze had bored into the side of your face, and finally you tipped your head up to look at him. The blue light from the screen moved softly over your face, catching on the little crease between your brows.
“I can feel you staring, you know.”
Dex felt like a hand was around his throat. “I am.”
Your voice had gone hushed when you spoke again. “Why?”
There were hundreds of answers Dex could’ve given you. Because I love you. Because I’ve been watching you sleep every night for the last two months. Because I never stop thinking about you. Because there’s a ring waiting for you just across the hall. Because I wish I could crawl into your skin and live with you forever. Because you belong to me.
All were the truth, but each answer felt too big. Instead, he gave you a small amount of honesty, though it was the most genuine Dex had ever been with you.
“I just…I can’t believe you’re real.”
The crease between your brows smoothed as your expression changed. Your eyes darted away, and then came back to meet his. “Well, last time I checked… I’m real.”
“I know you are.”
You looked at him for another moment, like you were trying to decide whether he was joking. He wasn’t. Slowly, like you were trying not to startle a skittish animal, you leaned forward and set your wine glass on the coffee table. Then you settled back on the couch, but this time your body was twisted to face him. Your hand came to rest against his chest, right over his thumping heart.
“I’m…not always good at this stuff, but– I really like you, Dex,” you whispered.
Something inside him shattered. All at once, the discipline in him– the articles, the forums, all the research into how to be a man you stayed with– left him. Every breath scraped like sandpaper through his ribs. Every organ was twisting in on itself until the only thing that would make the ache stop was touching you.
This time, though, he didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t wait.
So, Dex touched you.
His mouth crashed onto yours, all urgency and need and no hesitation. You moaned against him, lips parting so his tongue could slip inside to meet yours. Dex could taste the white wine clearly, like he was drinking it straight from you, licking it off the enamel of your teeth. Your hand had migrated from over his rapidly swelling heart to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into the coarse blond hair on the nape of his neck. He wanted you to pull it, to yank it out of his scalp. But in order to ask you to do that you would have to stop kissing him, and Dex couldn’t risk that.
Grabbing the soft flesh at your waist, he pulled you until both of your legs framed his hips and you straddled him on the couch. As you settled over his crotch and let your weight sink onto him, Dex suddenly understood with terrifying clarity that tonight would be different from the sweet little kisses you two had shared before. He would finally, finally have you. He would have something no one else had ever taken from him and give it to the only person he had ever wanted to receive it: you.
And in return, you would give yourself to him. No matter what happened after tonight, you would never be able to rid yourself of the proof that he had been here.
Dex would give his virginity to you.
“Dex,” your breathless whine brought him out of his stupor. In his haze, he had moved his mouth from your lips to your collarbone, sucking and biting hard enough he knew with all prideful certainty it would leave marks the next morning. “Can you…please…”
He felt you grind your clothed cunt helplessly against the tent that had formed against his jeans. Dex was already so hard, so aching, he felt like any movement from you would send him over the edge. He stilled your moving hips with his grip.
“What?” His lips ghosted over where your shoulder met your neck. “What do you need?”
Dex would do anything for you. You should’ve known that.
Your face was flushed. You dipped your head down so your lips skimmed the shell of his ear. “My room. Take me there.”
Dex stood immediately. One arm around your back and the other under your ass, he lifted you like you weighed nothing. Your mouth was already on him again, pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses to his jaw, his cheek, the crinkle of his eye, any patch of skin you could find.
You didn’t tell him where to go, because he didn’t need you to. Still holding your writhing form against him, Dex moved down the short hallway, past the framed photos of your life before him, past the bathroom door, straight to your bedroom– the same path he had taken silently in the dark more times than he could count.
You were too busy acting like a bitch in heat to notice.
Dex nudged the bedroom door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. Your room was the same as it had been nineteen hours before. But never had he allowed himself to fully, truly imagine it in the light of all that was to happen. With a single invitation, the room had mutated. No longer was it a sanctuary; it was an altar.
Reverently, Dex lowered you onto your mattress, holding himself up above you on his hands. You stared up under him, hair spread wildly against the pillow, mouth swollen and red from him. You were more beautiful than anything he had ever thought possible.
Both of your hands came to frame his face and he nuzzled into your touch like a neglected animal.
“Maybe this is embarrassing to admit, but– I’ve thought about this before,” you murmured, tracing your fingers across his brow bone. “I’ve thought about it so much.”
Dex could feel his breathing go ragged. He wanted to die. He buried his face into the crook of your neck.
“W-what…what did you think about?” he asked shakily, voice muffled against you. Dex knew what you were going to say and still didn’t know if he could survive hearing it aloud.
Your fingers carded back into his hair. “... What you would feel like. On me. In me.”
He could only groan in response. You tugged on him, ever so slightly but enough it stung so fucking good, guiding his face back to yours. Dex followed helplessly, mouth finding you again, sloppy and uncoordinated before he forced himself to slow down.
Your hands slipped from his hair to your dress, fingers searching blindly for the zipper at your side. Instinctively, Dex caught your wrist before you could find it.
You pulled back from his mouth, confusion flickering through your wild eyes.
Dex stared at your smaller hand in his, then at your dress clinging to your body like a second skin. His voice was thin when he finally managed to speak.
“...can I?”
Your expression softened for just a second before a flash of something he hadn’t seen before passed. “Can you…what?”
He wanted to light himself on fire. “T-take it off. Of you.”
You waited patiently. He wanted to light himself on fire and then stab himself.
His fingers scrambled for the zipper, fumbling with it because he couldn’t stop shaking. Finally, he caught it, and moved it down the track, each tooth giving way, inch by inch by tortuous inch.
Dex watched the fabric loosen around you, watched as the dress began to fall open beneath his hands. Finally, it was loose enough he could pull the straps down off your shoulder, then down, down, down until it bunched at your hips. You lifted them, and Dex slid the dress the rest of the way off and tossed it somewhere behind him, forgotten before it hit the floor. Only then did he allow himself to sit back on his heels and look at you fully.
Like a figure from a painting, you lay back on the pillow, arms twitching at your sides like you couldn’t decide if you wanted to cover yourself or let him see you. Your bare breasts rose and fell with each breath, full and soft with peaked nipples beginning to stiffen in the cool air. Dex forced his eyes down, over the dip of your sternum, the softness of your stomach, and lower still. There was still one barrier between you– a pair of lace panties the color of the morning sky. He knew them. He had seen them folded neatly in your drawers before, had skimmed his hand over the fabric. He always wondered what it would be like to feel them warm and damp from your arousal, or to smell your scent on them, or to taste you through them. To be honest, he had thought about taking them with him many times. But now, Dex was glad he didn’t. Because no stolen relic would be able to come anywhere close to the honor of doing what he was about to do.
A sound more animal than human left him, and instinct forced him to lean down, hands opening your thighs. Before you could even register what was happening, he placed a kiss on your clothed cunt.
“Ooh, shit–” you gasped, hips bucking against him.
Dex did it again, sloppier this time, needier. Like he was thanking you. Each kiss wetting the fabric, each kiss a gesture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You were close to trembling as you put your hands on each side of his face, practically having to pull him back.
“Dex, please…” your eyes met his, nearly black with want. “No more teasing. Take them off, now.”
A command. He was familiar with them. Words barked across a firing range, across a battlefield, across a rooftop with his scope trained on a life he was about to end with one clean pull of the trigger. But never had Dex wanted to obey an order as badly as this one.
His hands moved from holding your thighs open to slipping under the band of lace. Once he slid that final piece of fabric off you, there was no more script. Technically, he knew what happened next. Dex was a man and had seen what men like to see; he wasn’t a prude and he certainly wasn’t stupid. He had been in the Army, for fuck’s sake. He had been there when men opened their phones in the barracks and played videos of women pretending to find pleasure beneath men with comedically long penises. He had watched them pass around half-naked pictures of girls back home and brag about what they could do with their mouths.
Dex knew where to put his hands, his fingers, his tongue, his cock. But knowing how to do something isn’t the same as wanting to do it. Dex had never had the desire. What was the point of doing any of that to someone he didn’t care about? What was the point of pushing himself inside a body that meant nothing to him? A body that wasn’t yours? A body that didn’t belong to his North Star? Maybe that’s why he waited all this time– because in his whole thirty-three years on this planet, you were the only person who had ever made desire feel like it was worth obeying.
Dex hooked his fingers beneath the lace and pulled. He tried to be slow, but the starving, caged animal in him was screaming at him to just rip them off, bury his face in your cunt, and finally learn if you tasted the way you smelled: sweet and oh-so human. But his hands shook too badly for that, so he watched in agony as the lace made its slow descent down the curve of your hips. Dex eased the panties down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves, until they slipped free around your ankles and landed in his hand.
You whispered his name.
He looked up, and you were bare. Completely. Your flushed thighs had fallen back open, exposing your wet, swollen pussy to him, the soft curls between your legs damp and glistening with arousal.
Dex wanted to cry. Instead, he dipped his head back to you and brushed his nose against the soft crease where your thigh met your pelvis. He inhaled deeply, letting the heady musk of you infiltrate his senses, and groaned aloud.
Maybe he should’ve felt humiliated, scenting you like a dog. But this was the holiest experience he had ever had. His lips pressed a gentle kiss to your inner thigh. Then again, higher. Then another. Until finally, his lips hovered over the swollen nub at the top of your cunt.
The tip of his tongue darted out, placing a careful lick directly to your clit.
“Fuck!” you cried out, hand flying over to cover your eyes like you couldn’t bear it.
Dex did it again, and then again. And then again, and again, and again, until your hand had moved from over your eyes to clutch at his hair. Dex lifted his gaze to see your eyes rolling into the back of your head, the whites of them showing like you had become possessed.
He didn’t know if he was doing it right. Dex knew how to study, though, and how to become accurate. He had built his life around noticing and correcting until he found that exact target. He could execute. Dex could, would do the same for you.
He moved from those small, careful licks to longer ones, slowly dragging his tongue from your dripping entrance to the sensitive bundle of nerves above it. Softer, then faster. Slower, then with more pressure. Adjusting, correcting, narrowing in. He learned what you liked. Your moans became louder when he circled your clit with the edge of his tongue, so he did that. Your thighs trembled when he sealed his mouth over you and hummed, so he did that. Your body spoke, and Dex listened.
“Oh my– Jesus fucking Christ, Dex,” you gasped. Your moans had become garbled and near incoherent at this point.
He lifted his gaze again and met your eyes as he continued drawing tight, slow circles over your swollen clit. Your face was twisted in what could only be described as pleasure and agony, mouth open, brows pinched, tits heaving with every labored breath. Dex couldn’t look away.
“Mmm… I’m gonna–” your thighs tightened around his face, trembling against his ears. “Fuck, how are you doing that?”
He only hummed in response, and your back arched off the mattress.
“Dex,” you cried, hand fisting at his hair, pulling so hard it sent a shock through him. “Please, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna– oooh, fuck–”
Dex felt your cunt pulse underneath his tongue, your whole body spasming as you came with a broken sob. He held you still through it, mouth never stopping as much as you seized. He tried to watch you as much as he could to memorize this very moment, the trembling in your muscles, your eyes fluttering, the shape your mouth made as his name left it over and over.
Dex, Dex, Dex.
He could have stayed, face buried into your pussy, for days. Weeks. Months, even. Hell, Dex would have happily died of suffocation if it meant never having to take his mouth off of your still-convulsing cunt.
You, though, did not seem ready to kill him yet. Oversensitive and still twitching with aftershocks, you pried his pussy-drunk face away from you with trembling hands until he reluctantly released your cunt from the suction of his mouth. He kissed a trail back up your body, stopping to press his mouth in a grateful kiss to each peak of your breasts before finally reaching your mouth again. The second your lips met, you let out a quiet gasp at the taste of yourself on his tongue.
“Dex,” you mewled against his lips. Your breath was still shallow, though the fact that he kept sucking softly at your lower lip probably did very little to help you recover. “I think that was…shit. That was definitely the best orgasm I’ve had. Like, in my entire life. Where the fuck did you learn that?”
Dex paused only briefly, his hand stopping on its way from your waist to paw at the soft flesh of your tit. “I, uh– practice. And I pay attention. I guess.”
Apparently, you found that answer sufficient, because you gave only a girlish giggle and pulled him back down into another kiss. Your hand moved from his jaw to the cords of his neck, then lower still, over his chest, his stomach, until your fingers paused at his belt.
“Hmm,” you looped one finger through the leather. “I think we’re a little unbalanced here.”
You were right. You were bare, as naked as the day you entered this world and were bound to him. Dex, hovering above you, was still fully clothed from head to toe.
You tugged once at the belt. “Off.”
Another command he was more than happy to oblige. He sat back on his heels, first wiping the mess of your arousal off his chin before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it over his head before tossing it to join your dress on the floor. You sucked in a quiet intake of breath at that, though Dex wasn’t sure exactly why.
His hands moved to his buckle, and Dex could feel your eyes on him as he worked the leather free. They were everywhere, the dusting of dirty blond hair on his pectorals, the trail of darker hair that extended from his stomach to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. It felt like you were cataloging every single piece of him.
Dex shoved his jeans down his hips, kicking them off once they pooled around his ankles.
It should have made him nervous. Dex had spent his whole life finding ways to hide, behind roles, structures, masks, anything to avoid truly being seen. But this didn’t feel like exposure. It felt like…recognition. Like his body was already yours. A part of you. You two were equal, but opposite. The same soul in different skins.
His North Star.
The thought alone made his cock throb.
As if you sensed it, your eyes dropped to the bulge beneath his black briefs, and your lips parted into a small “o”. He was so hard it hurt, the fabric stretched tight. Dex had been hard because of you before. Alone in his apartment, the blue light of his laptop illuminating the screen that showed a smiling picture of you stolen from one of your social media accounts. In the shower, sniffing the exact citrus shampoo he had bought after finding the bottle in your bathroom. Sitting in this very bedroom, watching you toss and turn under the covers.
But never had he touched himself to you.
Dex wasn’t a saint, obviously. He would lay there, every fiber of his being aching for some sort, any sort of relief to the coil building low in his gut. He could never do it, though. Every time his hand would hover lower, even graze his pulsing member, a wave of disgust would come over him so strongly it forced his hand back. It would have been…false. Blasphemous. Like kicking dirt over an act of salvation.
He saved himself for this exact moment. Once he took off his briefs there was absolutely no going back. There would be before, and then there would be after. Nothing in between.
You pushed yourself up, folding your knees underneath you, rising until you were level with him again. You put your hand on his chest, delicate fingers trailing across his chest, brushing his nipples, and then lower. His abdomen braced as you skimmed your fingertips past the hard ridges, until finally, you placed your palm over his cock.
He gasped your name, head dropping to your shoulder. He hadn’t touched himself in months. No one, no one had touched him like that. Ever.
Your hand moved again, fingers closing around him through the fabric, and his hips jerked forward before he could stop them. Dex was so far gone from the taste of you and the sight of you and the knowledge that you wanted him like he wanted you that the light pressure shot through him like a bullet.
Your face turned into his, lips slotting into each other again before Dex could collapse against you. It was slower than before, your tongue exploring his mouth like you had all the time in the world. Like he wasn’t seconds away from spurting ropes of cum into his briefs when you hadn’t even actually touched him yet.
Dex kissed you back desperately, one hand fisting your hair to hold you close, the other grabbing at your waist. He could feel your hardened nipples brushing against his chest, your hand stroking him softly. He was going to cum. Just from that.
“Wait.”
With what seemed like great effort, you pulled back from Dex’s mouth. A thin, translucent string of your mingled saliva followed you until it snapped, landing against your chin. Dex resisted the urge to lick it up. Your palm still cupped the twitching length of him through the fabric of his briefs.
“Do you…” Your eyes flicked briefly away from his. “Do you have…protection?”
Dex stared at you in silence. You huffed, though your cheeks were already beginning to burn. Were you…embarrassed? Even after all he just did to you? For you?
“What?” Dex asked. He knew what you meant.
“A condom. Do you…have one?”
Technically speaking, no. Not on him, at least. There was, however, a small box of unopened condoms under his bathroom sink. He bought it exactly four weeks ago, on the afternoon before your first date. Not the thought something was going to happen that night, obviously. But Dex was always, always prepared. He had thought maybe, eventually, something like this could happen. But now…it was happening. And the idea of something stopping this, something coming in between the two of you, it was unbearable. Disgusting, even.
After everything that had already kept him from you, after all the doors and walls and locks and rules that had made him stand on the other side, waiting and waiting and fucking waiting, did he really want another barrier?
Absolutely not.
Dex leaned in and placed a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Uh, n-no. No, I don’t.”
You chewed on your lip, eyes darting down to where you still held him. You were considering something.
“I…I don’t think we have to use one, if you don’t want to,” you began slowly. “I’m on birth control.”
He knew that. Dex had found the little foil packet of pink pills in your bedside drawer weeks ago. He stared at it, and it stared back at him like it had a personal vendetta. That would be dealt with another time.
“And…I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Of course you weren’t. If you had been, Dex would’ve taken care of that, too. You wouldn’t need to worry yourself with the details.
You looked back up at him, eyes wide and cautious. “Unless…you’re seeing someone else?”
Dex felt genuinely offended. He would have rather disemboweled himself and let vultures pick at his organs than even think of someone other than you. He genuinely didn’t think he was physically capable of wanting anyone else.
“What? I– no, no, of course not,” he sputtered, his grip on your waist tightening before he could stop it. Did you think so low of him? “Do you think I am?”
You shook your head quickly. “Dex, no. I didn’t think you were. I just meant…obviously, it would be okay if you were, I just–”
“I’m not seeing anyone else. I won’t be seeing anyone else.” Just like you won’t be seeing anyone else, he wanted to add.
Something in his tone made you go quiet. After a few seconds, you blushed and nodded your head. “Okay. I believe you.”
You placed one tender kiss on his lips, as if that was the final confirmation you needed, and then slipped your hand into the band of his briefs.
This was it. The final wall between the two of you.
Your fingers paused, brushing the coarse hair on his pubic bone. “...can I?”
Dex didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded.
You pulled the briefs down slowly, and Dex had to steady himself with against you. His cock sprang free, veined and girthy, and slapped against his stomach, head red and drooling with precum just below his navel.
Your eyes bulged. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s going to fit.”
His whole body pulsed at your words. He knew he was…big. Solders had made jokes of it in locker rooms. He felt it. But he had never cared before. Now, he did. And he was going to make himself fit, one way or another.
Dex kicked the briefs the rest of the way down, and your hand wrapped back around him before he had a chance to prepare himself. Your fist moved up, thumb tracing the vein underneath the head, before it moved back down the silky shaft, all the way to the base, and then back up–
Quickly, he put his hand over yours. “I–you should probably stop.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t…I don’t think I’ll last,” he admitted sheepishly. “If you keep doing that.”
Your expression softened, which only made the humiliation worse.
“Oh,” you whispered, pressing your lips to his jaw. “That’s okay. We can go slow.”
Dex nodded weakly, and guided you back down onto the mattress with blood rushing in his ears. Your thighs opened once more, this time wrapping around his hips, heels pressing into the dimples of his back.
Slowly, shakily, he lowered himself down. The heat from your cunt was radiating. Only a few centimeters of air lay between your sexes. Only a few centimeters of air before he would be forever changed. A part of him would be inside you, and even after he left, even after you washed him from your skin, Dex would know the truth.
It had to be perfect.
Dex wrapped a trembling hand around himself and guided the sensitive head of his cock slowly to your entrance. The first touch made his whole body seize. You were so hot, so wet. He wasn’t going to last. He had to control himself.
Dex's eyes squeezed shut, face twisting. He needed to breathe. In…and out.
“...Dex?” you asked, breath hitching. You looked genuinely concerned. “Are you–”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I just–” What was he supposed to say? I’m about to lose my virginity? My life is going to be forever changed? For the first time in my life, I’m scared?
Dex roughly exhaled through his nose, then regrouped himself. It would be perfect. He brought his leaking head back to your pussy lips, dragging himself through your slick. The tip bumped your clit, and you moaned.
“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbled, though he didn’t know anything anymore.
Finally, Dex lined himself up with your entrance, jaw clenched so hard he thought it might shatter. The head of his cock pressed against you, and stars swam in his vision.
Dex could have researched, read, and studied all he wanted, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for this.
He pushed forward, and the world ceased around him.
“Oh my God,” you whined as the head of his cock slipped inside you.
He barely had an inch of his cock in you, and already it was too much. Your cunt was tighter than he could have ever imagined, so much so that he started to think maybe you hadn’t been lying when you said he wasn’t going to fit.
Dex’s forehead, beaded with sweat, dropped to yours. He couldn’t think. Nothing existed anymore.
“You’re so…tight,” he panted. “I… I don’t think I can–”
“Please, Dex,” Your voice was shaking, your hips bucking like you could draw him deeper by sheer force. “Want you to fuck me. Want it so bad, Dex. Keep…keep going. Please.”
He obeyed. Dex pushed forward a little further, easing another inch of his cock into you. Your mouth fell open, brows pinching together as your nails dug into the muscles of his back.
It took every ounce of self-control he had to not give in to every primal instinct ingrained within him slam himself forward. He didn’t want to hurt you. Every inch, every shift, you would whimper, head tossing against the pillow while you adjusted. And Dex wanted to last. Patience, he reminded himself, teeth gritted. He would be patient with you.
Finally, after minutes of feeding you one inch after another while you whined and whimpered and begged for more, while Dex nearly bit his tongue off to keep from losing control, it was done.
One small thrust forward, and Dex bottomed out with a groan. He was buried deep inside you, the pulsing head of his cock brushing your cervix.
It didn’t feel real.
“I’m…I’m inside you.”
“OhmyfuckingGod,” you slurred, raising your head off the pillow to peer down at the obscene sight of him fully sheathed inside you, slick smeared across both your thighs, your bodies joined completely. With one trembling hand, you pressed below your navel. “I can feel you.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
In disbelief, Dex raised his hand and placed it over yours. There it was-- the long shape of him evident even under your skin. Him. Where he would live forever.
“P-please, Dex,” you dug your nails again into his back, dragging him back to reality. “Fuck me.”
He obeyed.
Dex drew his hips back an inch, terrified of leaving you completely, then pushed back in. Your head fell back onto the pillow, eyes closing in total ecstasy.
He eased himself out, a little further this time, then slowly back in. Again, then again. Again. Again. Again.
On one of his thrusts, Dex felt something spongy drag against the sensitive ridge near the head of his cock, and your eyes rolled back.
“Oooh, shit, Dex,” you whimpered, hands moving to claw at his shoulders. “Dex, right there, again, again, please…”
Dex braced his forearm beside your head and angled his hips slightly until he felt that spongy muscle once more. Your moans were getting louder, more high-pitched, with every perfect thrust. Even like this, even with his body threatening to come apart too soon, Dex could still learn you.
You were close, he could tell. Dex slipped a hand between your bodies, the pad of his thumb finding the swollen pearl he already knew was key to your pleasure. At the same time, he dipped his head and captured one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking it between his lips and rolling his tongue over the tight bud. He rubbed tight circles over your clit, trying to match the rhythm of his hips, the rhythm of how you liked his tongue only minutes earlier.
“That’s– oh, God. It's so good. You’re gonna make me come again,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me come–”
“Yeah? You’re gonna come on my cock?” He raised his eyes, releasing your breast from his mouth with a soft pop. His voice was strangled, panicked and relieved at the same time. For the first time in his life, it was Dex’s turn to command. “Come for me.”
Your body began to convulse, back arching off the mattress, muscles of your perfect cunt clamping down around him so tightly his vision went white at the edges. It was like all language had left you, and the only thing you still knew was his name.
“Fuck,” he groaned, thrusts becoming uneven as the erratic spasms of your pussy pulled him deeper, dragging him closer to the edge. His body was winding up, the coil in his gut bracing for what he now knew was inevitable. Dex wasn’t going to last. It was too perfect. You were too perfect. “I’m close, I’m–”
Your hand shot from his shoulder to the back of his neck, dragging his face down closer to yours. Even with tears brimming at your lower lids, your eyes were clear. Focused.
“Come in me, Dex,” you whispered, world narrowing to only the slap of flesh against flesh and your hushed voice. “Do it.”
Your final wish, your final command. It was over. Every practiced act of self-restraint, of control, of trying to restrain himself, had vanished.
His hips stuttered as he tried to bury himself deeper into your organs, deep enough to leave an imprint. His mind had gone blank, feral. Dex grabbed at your chin, squishing your face between his fingers because he needed you. Needed to see you. Needed you to know.
“I love you.”
With his final utterance, the only truth he could ever fully tell you, Dex came.
His hips pushed forward, shuddering as he spilled his seed into you. He couldn’t stop the words.
“I love you,” Dex gasped again, grip tightening on your face. He couldn’t stop coming, couldn’t stop saying it, couldn’t stop the truth from pouring out of him and into you. “I love you, I love you, I– fuck–”
He collapsed onto you.
In…and out.
Dex smelled your shampoo, your sweat.
In…and out.
He felt the cool cotton of your twisted sheets, your sweat-slick breasts against his chest. His cock still twitching inside you, the warmth of his release beginning to leak out around him in a pearly track.
In…and out.
In…and…
With sudden clarity, he remembered all that he said.
Fuck.
Dex’s eyes shot open. He scrambled backwards on the bed, his softening cock slipping out of you as panic tore through him.
“I’m– I don’t know why I said that, I–” His heart rate was beginning to climb frantically, splotches of red blooming on his chest. He dragged a shaking hand down his face. “Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry, I just–”
You followed after him, pushing yourself up on the bed from where you lay, limbs heavy and still shivering.
“Hey, hey. Dex,” You took his face in your hands, thumbs smoothing across his cheekbones. Soothing him. “Dex, it’s okay. Look at me.”
Eyes bleary with tears, he met your gaze. He fucked it up. He hadn’t done what he practiced. He was too eager. Too quick. Too honest. Too himself. It would be over now. You would send him out of your room, laugh at him, do what everyone else had done to him his whole life and abandon him.
There was no point in continuing if you did that. No purpose for Dex. No point in living if you weren’t his North Star.
He would end it all.
“Dex,” you said his name again. Dex managed to blink the hot tears from his eyes, and he saw you clearly. You were…smiling.
“It’s okay,” you whispered, voice soft and sweet. “I feel the same.”
He stilled.
Did you– no. No, surely he hadn’t heard you correctly. Surely the blood was still rushing throughout his body so loudly that he misunderstood.
“I…I don’t…” He stumbled over his words, throat tight. “What?”
Your smile grew wider. The same smile you gave him when he first opened his apartment door and found you standing there. The same smile that made him feel like his eyes had finally opened for the first time in his life.
“I love you, too, Dex.”
His breath, which he hadn’t realized he had been holding, left him in a shaky exhale. You loved him. You wanted him. You needed him. You felt what he had been feeling this entire time.
Your thumbs moved on his cheeks again, this time wiping away tears Dex hadn’t realized had fallen.
“I know it’s early,” You paused, and then laughed softly, like you couldn’t believe what you were saying. “It’s probably insane. And maybe it’s partially the life-changing orgasm still talking, but…”
You bit your lip bashfully, but looked deep into his eyes. “I mean it. Seriously. I care about you, and I just… I like what we have.”
Dex opened his mouth, but no sound came out. You seemed to understand anyway.
You pressed one tired, affectionate kiss to his cheek, then two to his lips, before patting his chest. “So…stop freaking out and get back into the bed so we can sleep, okay? And hopefully I can still walk in the morning.”
Dex tried to laugh. The two of you moved clumsily back beneath the sheets, bodies sticky with sex. You turned onto your side, snuggling into him and guiding his arm around your waist. You placed one last kiss to his chest, just above his heart, and closed your eyes with a sigh.
The room fell into silence.
You loved him.
Dex had been in this room so many times before, had seen the moonlight move slowly over your sleeping face with every hour that he watched over you. He had often wondered what it would feel like to finally cross the distance between you, to climb under the covers. To hold you.
Now, he was finally here.
Dex’s hand crawled from your waist to splay over your ribcage, feeling your breath begin to even out.
In…and out.
The rhythm that had once belonged to him had transferred to you.
He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Dex had lied, he had murdered, he had felt nothing but emptiness in spaces he should feel empathy. He had spent years convincing himself there was nothing in him but flesh and bones. No soul. Nothing worthy of mercy.
And yet, here you were. Holding onto him, sleeping like you trusted him…because you did. More than that, even. You loved him.
Dex would do whatever he could to keep you. Nothing would take you from him. Even if the world separated you, he would remain in your life. You would never be rid of him. Ever.
He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to your shoulder. His hand drifted from your chest to rest over your belly.
life… changed…. My life is changed forever…….. reading this in the darkest setting in my phone at the Cracker Barrel…. But I should have turned it up… they deserve to read it too….
Jokes apart, I hope you’re doing well and I’m really proud of you for taking the time to focus on yourself.
🥹:( I’m sorry! It’s been a rough month over here in erwinsvow land. I actually did take my big exam but I don’t find out for a month and it was rough so I am feeling scared. If everyone could send the good vibes over here that would be great. thank you so much you are so sweet!!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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i bet shane also gives you a nice, unwilling creampie
shane has a funny game he likes to play where no matter what happens he’s cumming inside of you and he likes to see you get antsy in the week leading up to your period like he gets a kick out of it. he likes thinking he’s marking his property but also when it doesn’t happen he just tries again. very much of the no shane we can’t and who are you to tell me no variety
Shane noncon downward dog forest with a reader who happens to be lost in the forest and y'know what, finders keepers. and shane found you
Shane’s favorite saying is find ‘er keep ‘er and he really means it. yummmmmmm I need to get back on my writing grind Shane is really inspiring to me. so is any man who would chase you through the forest but I digress
he would. HE WOULDDDDDDD HE WOULD!!!!!!!!!!!! yummmm new vocab word of the day is Shane noncon downward dog forest.
hate to admit it but u know who else got in my noncon downward dog propaganda. ormund. (finally watched the episode this morning in my hotel room …. he’s a freak confirmed)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
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summary: you finally let dex in. don’t be surprised when he decides to stay.
pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), stalking, invasion of privacy, obsessive thoughts, mentions of masturbation, sexually explicit content, delusions, brief mention of cancer, canon-divergent, no use of y/n
word count: 4.6k
A/N: i got tipsy on margaritas and wrote this :P FINALLY earning our 18+ warning here yippee! this is actually my first time ever writing anything remotely sexually graphic despite only ever reading smut in my free time so i apologize in advance if it seems clunky. i SWEAR i know how a dick works!! and you all will find that out in future chapters :-) thank you again for all the love on the previous parts and i hope you enjoy this one! this is genuinely just the tip of the iceberg for dex and northstar!reader and i cannot wait for y’all to see how insane it gets in the upcoming chapters.
divider by: @uzmacchiato
masterlist
A North Star only works if you know where to find it.
And that’s what you were. A North Star.
His, to be exact.
Dex should’ve known it from the moment he opened the door to see you holding that frog-colored plate. He should’ve known it when you blushed and apologized for talking too much before handing him your heart, battered and baked into perfectly symmetrical cookies. He should’ve known it when you bared your teeth in that bewitching little smile you did and said “good morning” like you didn’t know you were made for him. He should’ve known.
But you see, love takes time. Dex was still learning that.
So, he adjusted. That’s what lovers do, don’t they? They compromise. And Dex was not one to compromise easily, which should’ve gone to show you just how sorry he was to not have recognized your purpose sooner.
After that night, after Dr. Johnson and the shooting range and the creased pink note that was still the centerpiece of his makeshift altar to you, he understood exactly what Mercer had meant all those years ago. It was difficult in the moment, being so young and filled with hate and confusion in the hellhole that was the Riviera Psychiatric Institute. For the longest time, he thought Mercer was speaking about herself. Maybe she was, in a way. She cared about him. She wanted him to succeed. She tried to teach him right from wrong. She gave him tools to adapt, and for that, he was thankful. But she had left him anyway.
Cancer, Mercer had told him. As if naming it made it hurt any less.
If Mercer was his North Star, his true North Star, why did she not fight to stay?
You would fight for him. Dex knew that, deep in the pit of his soul. You were caring, selfless. The kind of person who went out of your way to help neighbors you barely knew, who still called your parents, who taught little children and looked after friends. He had never known that a woman like you existed.
And more than all of that, you were good.
No one had ever successfully explained the difference between good and bad to Dex. Mercer had tried, as futile as it was. But Dex now knew why no one could teach him what good was…because you were the only one who showed it. That was what a North Star should be. Someone who was good not only in theory or out of obligation, but in genuine action.
It was your goodness that regulated him more than any breathing exercise ever could. Dex soon learned that in the days after you left that note outside his door.
It was difficult at first, naturally. Change always was. He’d still get a little twitchy when he left the house thirty-two minutes later than when he usually did. Or when he had to adjust the route of his daily jogs so he could follow you on Sunday mornings to the bakery two blocks away (“follow” was an ugly word; he preferred to think of it as “observing”).
But it was so, so worth it.
He knew that on the very first morning of his newfound strategy. After he had waited to hear the click of your doorknob and stepped out just as you were locking your own door. You had greeted him, seemingly pleasantly surprised, and Dex felt his face morph into a smile that copied yours.
You both had entered the elevator after, side-by-side. It was a cool September morning, but Dex could still feel sweat beginning to soak the cotton of his shirt. You just had that effect on him.
As the elevator ticked slowly down each floor, you gave a sigh, crossed your arms, and finally turned to look at him. “Okay. Be honest with me. The lasagna was horrible, wasn’t it?”
“I– no,” Dex stuttered. He felt a droplet of sweat drip down his back. Why couldn’t he stop sweating? “No, of course not. It was good. Thank you.”
The corner of your mouth lifted. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I-I’m not.” He would never lie to you. Well…about that, specifically. You should’ve known that.
“Okay, okay.” You raised your hands in mock defeat and giggled. “I’m glad it was edible. I hope it made your night a little better. You looked pretty ragged.” You stopped yourself and Dex watched hopelessly as your face flushed. “Sorry, I don’t mean you looked bad– I just… I’ve had my fair share of bad days before, so…I thought maybe you had one, too.”
See? This is what Dex was talking about. “I did. Have a bad day, I mean.” Dex fiddled with his cuff buttons. “It’s fine, though.”
You nodded patiently. “What do you do for work?”
“I work with the FBI. The uh, Crime Division.”
“Wow.” Your eyes widened. “Seriously? Like, the FBI FBI?”
“…Yeah.”
“That explains the suits, I guess,” you said. “Probably a much more stressful job than dealing with third graders, huh?”
Before Dex could answer and tell you, no, your work was more important, your life was more important, the elevator gave a quiet ding and its doors slid open. You hoisted your tote bag back up onto your shoulder and Dex watched helplessly as you put one foot out of the car.
“I’ve got to run if I want to catch the bus on time,” You paused, and glanced back at him. Your eyes softened a fraction and Dex felt it in his bones. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
You were gone.
Take care of yourself.
God, he wished he could. He had spent years trying. But Dex couldn’t help himself. Only you could take care of him. Your presence. Your smile. You.
That short elevator ride was only the beginning. Dex had become very good at finding you.
Each pass in the hallway, every quick comment on the weather or last night’s Knicks game, every time Dex just so happened to be sorting his mailbox when you came to check on yours, every time he passed the bakery you frequented Sunday morning and prayed you wouldn’t notice him through the window…it fueled him. It was more addictive than any drug imaginable. Your presence grounded him.
A few seconds of seeing you, or better yet being near you, or if God was good, talking to you, it was rejuvenating. He felt more…complete. More human. He did better at the field office, slept better, ate better. You were good for him.
But Dex had become greedy. He needed more than just glimpses or a few casual words exchanged. He needed to know you. Understand what made you the way you were.
So at night, he would wait patiently for the jazz in your apartment to turn off. Wait until he could no longer hear the pattering of your feet or the running of the water from your bathroom (Dex had always hated how thin the apartment walls were. Now he found himself grateful for them). Once he imagined you were snuggled and safe in your bed, fast asleep, he would make his way to the desk in his bedroom, open his laptop, and begin his research.
At first, it was simple things. A quick Google search of your name unveiled a plethora of information already. Dex scrolled through the page.
First link: your Facebook. A profile picture of you at your college graduation with what must have been your mother and father (he would have to look them up after, of course). Shifting down the profile, he saw posts about school fundraisers, attending friends’ weddings and baby showers, birthdays, childhood pets, holidays… All the painfully ordinary things Dex had always wished he could be a part of.
The Instagram was a slightly different story. You had a profile, yes, but it was private. Dex didn’t have an account before, but now he had a reason to create one. A burner, obviously. No profile picture, just random letters and numbers. Heart in his throat, he sent a follow request, and…you accepted it. Hmm. He would really need to talk to you about internet safety, one day.
Perusing through your profile, it became clear to him that Facebook was for family, and Instagram was for friends. You uploaded photos of mimosa-fueled brunches where your smile was loose and your eyes shiny. Or posted song links to your story late at night. His favorite post from you was from just a few weeks before you moved into 416: a collection of photos from the start of the school year. Your classroom in Harbor View Elementary that you had obviously put hours of hard work and poured your own money into decorating for your students, a view of the sunset from your old bedroom window, an expensive-looking matcha latte next to a dog-eared copy of The Secret Garden, and then…a picture of you. Taken by one of your friends, most likely. You were sitting, cross-legged on a picnic blanket somewhere in Central Park. Mid-laugh, your hand was frozen halfway in the air like you were trying to cover your mouth.
Dex liked that photo. It made something pool within him, warm and fresh and childlike. Happiness, maybe.
If it was a particularly long day or he hadn’t gotten to see enough of you, he would sit there in his dark bedroom and just…stare. He would stay there, basking in the blue light of his laptop, until he felt that warm feeling again. Sometimes it would be minutes. Sometimes hours.
Still, it just wasn’t enough. More, his brain would demand. So, he kept digging.
Your Pinterest board with lesson-planning templates and pastry recipes.
Your school staff page with your classroom bio.
The wedding website of your childhood friend where you were listed as her Maid of Honor.
The baby registry for the same childhood friend where you bought her a pack of swaddles with ducks on them.
The rental listing of your old apartment.
The Venmo requests you sent to old college friends with captions like “Friday Uber” and “December utilities” and “girls night!! 🥂”.
Your parents’ address.
Your phone number.
Your driver’s license photo.
Your Social Security number.
It was never enough.
Dex was contemplating this one morning as he waited in the apartment lobby, mindlessly shuffling through the same stack of bills and junk mail that he kept recycling through his mailbox. By now, he knew it was only a few minutes until you’d emerge from the elevator as you did on Friday mornings.
He knew the basics of you by now, daily whereabouts included. But there was more to you than that or the snippets of information he had scraped together online. What was the name of the jazz album you played in the evenings? What kind of ground coffee did you buy? Did you like paperback books, or hardcovers? What side of the bed did you sleep on? What was the name of that intoxicating, citrus-smelling shampoo he could sometimes smell wafting from you?
Of course, Dex knew there was a very easy way to find those answers. An apartment like yours would be almost laughably easy to break into. A simple bobby pin twisted and turned just right, and then he could finally have what he wanted.
Oddly enough, though, the temptation didn’t sit right with him. He didn’t want that. Dex didn’t want to be a thief in the night; he wanted to be invited. He wanted you to open your door wide and ask him to stay forever.
The mailroom’s elevator dinged. Right on time.
When the doors slid open, you were there. Tote bag in tow, thermos in hand. Just as Dex knew you would be.
Your eyes lit up the moment you saw him.
“Dex!” You trotted over to him, the canvas bag thumping against your hip. “I was hoping I would see you this morning. I have a huge favor to ask.”
He felt like he had been shot in the heart. Dex imagined he would remember those words for a long, long time. You? Hoping for him? Plus, he was honestly a little offended, because did you really think he would say no? He would do anything for you. Hell, if you asked him to cut off his own hand, he would’ve sharpened the knife and asked which one, left or right?
“I– uh, yeah,” Dex stuttered, mail forgotten. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’m going home this weekend to my parents, it’s my dad’s birthday,” you began to explain. Ah, of course. He knew your dad’s birthday was coming up. And your parents’ home, too. From sale price to square footage to the lilac-painted room that you grew up in. “I’ll be back Monday evening, but my friend just gave me this beautiful fern that’s like, a total diva. It has to be watered every couple of days or it’ll drop dead. Would you be able to come by while I'm out and water it for me?”
Dex blinked. For a brief moment, he genuinely wondered if you were a mind reader. Because honestly, what were the odds? Fate, he decided.
Yes, it was that moment, standing in the apartment’s lobby holding a pile of dated junk mail he kept in his mailbox for the sole reason of seeing you, that Benjamin Poindexter finally realized he believed in fate.
How else? Why else would something so impossible fall directly into his hands?
“Of course,” Dex said immediately. He tried to keep his voice from shaking. “Of course, I– yeah, I can definitely water your…fern.”
You clasped your hands in relief. “Thank you. My fern should be safe with an FBI agent watching over her.”
His eye twitched.
You continued on, oblivious. “I’ll just leave my key under the doormat, okay? You can just put it back once you’re done.”
“Okay.”
“Great!” You turned on your heel and started walking to the lobby’s front door, waving at him over your shoulder. “I owe you one!”
Dex didn’t sleep that night.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself standing in apartment 416. Surrounded by your photographs, your books, your smell, your…everything.
He would roll over in his bed, trying to force himself to think about anything else, but twenty minutes later he would be imagining it in perfect detail all over again.
After tossing and turning the whole night, Dex was at least awake to hear you shuffle out your door when the sun was barely up. It was hard not to worry as he listened to your footsteps pass by. Were you driving home? Taking the train? Who was picking you up, your father? Your mother? What if something happened? What if you needed him? Not knowing was killing him. Dex had a brief thought that maybe he should just go with you–
No.
He tried to rein it in. You should spend time with your parents. That’s what someone like you did, anyways. Still care about the people who created you, because they deserved it. They didn’t take one look at you, just a helpless little wailing infant, and decide, “Hmm, maybe not”. They raised you with love and affection, and maybe that was why you were lucky and he was not.
But there was no need to feel bad for him.
Because Dex was lucky in his own way, too.
You needed to leave because this was fate’s greatest gift to Dex: the literal key to have complete access to your life.
Dex spent the morning pacing his living room floor. His hands were clammy, his body practically vibrating with anticipation. He tried futilely to tell himself to be normal about this– water the fern, maybe take a quick look around, then come back to 415 and spend the rest of the weekend being miserable until you returned. Dex knew, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.
Finally, having mentally fortified himself as much as he could, he exited the apartment and walked the three steps across the hall. In front of your door lay a small mat, prints of daisies decorating the edges and “Please leave by 9!” stamped in the middle.
He crouched, and lifted the mat. A small silver key lay under it, identical to his own apartment key.
If anyone had ever found a key to heaven, the discovery would have felt less transcendental than this.
He gingerly retrieved the key and stood up. It took a few tries to slot it in the lock with how much his hands were trembling. Eventually, the key slid in, turned, and the door gave way.
Instantly, Dex was hit with a wave of familiar scents– citrus, something sweet and sugary like a pastry, a hint of coffee beans, the smell of paper and markers, and…you.
He had to physically grab the door frame to steady himself and take a deep breath.
In…and out.
Dex focused his eyes on the floor until the world stopped swimming around him. Okay. Okay. He could do this. Duty first, reward later.
He straightened himself. Directly across the room under your living room window, a collection of potted greenery was arranged on the floor. In the middle of the group was a fern. You were right. The plant was beautiful.
Dex forced his feet to move one in front of the other, his gaze fixed on the plants, willing himself to just focus. A small tin watering can was on the windowsill. He picked it up– seemingly, you had already filled it up for him, because you were thoughtful like that.
Dex tipped it over the fern. Glug, glug, glug.
Once he was satisfied with the plant’s hydration, he set the can back onto the windowsill.
And slowly turned to face the room.
The morning light cast soft rays across the floor, blanketing the whole apartment in a soft golden haze. A green velvet couch was scooted against on the far end of the wall, a warm, patchwork quilt folded over the back. The coffee table in front of it held a small homemade vase, slightly crooked and decorated with unevenly painted smiley faces. It looked like it might’ve been made by a child. Folders, notebooks, and some half-graded math worksheets were stacked neatly next to it. A record player was sitting on a side table near the couch, a crate of organized albums below it.
On the other end of the apartment, a small oak table with two matching chairs was tucked into the corner. The kitchen was similar to his own, but instead of the sterility of Dex’s, assorted colors of pots and bakeware and cooking tools were placed wherever there was space– over the fridge, on the countertops, hung on hooks above the stove.
The walls were decorated with photos of you with friends, you with family, framed posters from movies and bands, and vintage artwork prints.
Dex never knew a place could feel so…warm. Alive.
He felt like a man starved all his life and set before a feast. Like someone dragged out of a cave and shown the sun. Or, perhaps most accurately, like a sinner on death’s door, crawling into a cathedral for absolution.
Apartment 416 was his chapel, and you were his God.
His North Star.
It was overwhelming, honestly. Standing there in the soft pale glow of the sunrise, surrounded by you. It almost made him want to…cry.
He hadn’t cried since Mercer.
But now was not the time. The greedy, insatiable thing inside him had lifted its head, recognizing the opportunity for something more than scrolling through your photos in the dark of his bedroom.
Dex began with the thing closest to him. He opened the record player to see an album still on the mat. A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. Dex paused over it, thumb hovering just above the sleeve. Even your music seemed to understand what fate had brought you to apartment 416 for.
From there, his attention drifted to the stack of papers on the coffee table. Still grading on a Friday night? Of course you were. Looking more closely, he saw the worksheet on top of the pile. “Great job!” you had written in purple ink, a smiley face next to the words. “Proud of you!”
His heart swelled.
Dex walked into the kitchen. For a moment, he could imagine it clearly: you at the stove, sleeves pushed up, stirring something while Coltrane’s saxophone played softly in the background. A quiet evening. Two plates on the table.
And maybe, Dex.
More, the dark pit in his mind commanded.
That mental image opened something in him, an urgency. A daze, almost. He kept moving. He opened your cabinets. Your coffee, some small-batch blend from a farmer’s market. Your cereal. Your preferred brand of bread. Next cabinet. Your plates. Cups that had been touched by your lips. He ran his fingers over one of the rims.
More.
In a trance, he drifted out of the kitchen, down the hall, past the photos and posters. They stared back at him. You as a young girl, squeezed in a tight embrace with your mother on a playground. You at your middle school graduation, gangly-limbed and mouth full of braces, posing with your father. A toga party from college. A group portrait of you and friends at a wedding. Years of you. Years he had missed.
More.
Dex pushed open the door to the bathroom and flipped the light on. It was narrow and clean. A small tortoiseshell dish held a bar of hand soap. Next to it, a cup for your pink toothbrush. He opened the medicine cabinet. Ibuprofen, nasal spray, Band-Aids, a hair comb. Certainly more empty than his own, which held little besides a plethora of orange prescription bottles. He opened your striped shower curtain. A set of blue bottles waited for him. Dex picked one up and twisted the cap off, bringing it to his nose.
Oh.
Your shampoo.
He inhaled again, deeper. There it was. It smelled like oranges and the sun. Like your hair when you passed him in the hall.
Dex considered taking the shampoo with him, but then realized how rude that would be. Instead, he made a mental note of the brand and decided he would have to do some shopping later.
By the time he staggered to your bedroom door, he felt drunk on it. That citrus smell of you still lingered in his nostrils. Dex knew that if he went into your bedroom, he would not be coming back. No, because this was your inner sanctum. And he wanted in, so fucking badly. All reason had left his mind. No caution remained. No pretending that this was casual cataloging. Only the need for more.
More.
And so, abandoning all pretense of humility and honor, he opened your bedroom door.
For a second, Dex could only stand there.
Your bedroom. Your bed. A sweatshirt hanging off a chair. A pair of earrings in a little ceramic tray. The ordinary evidence of a life interrupted, of a body that had been here hours ago and would return again soon.
The pillow on your bed still held the faintest impression of where your head must have rested. Dex stared at it until his eyes burned and his vision blurred at the edges. He shouldn’t. Mercer would say no. She would say stop. She would say this was wrong.
But Mercer was dead.
His legs moved before he gave them permission. One clunky step. Then another. Then his knees were sinking down into the edge of the mattress, one hand braced against your sheets, breathing too hard and too loud. The bed dipped beneath his weight. He crawled forward, drawn in by that greedy thing inside him that he knew would never be satisfied.
Finally, Dex lowered himself face-first into the bed until he was smothered in the sheets. He would have died happily if he suffocated like this. Because this was more than your shampoo. This, layered with detergent and cotton, was the scent of you.
He dragged it as deep into his lungs as it would go.
In…and out.
This was where you slept. Where you dreamed. Maybe where you sat in your pajamas, talking and laughing with friends on the phone. Where you read until you fell asleep, pages still open against your chest.
Where you touched yourself.
His fingers tightened in the sheets and his breath stuttered. Yes. This was the place. Where you lay at the end of the day, body hot and aching with need. Where your hand might drift beneath the waistband of your pajama shorts.
Would you tease yourself? Would you take your time, fingers tracing over the swell of your breasts, over the softness of stomach, over your hip, along the inside of your thigh until you were slick with want?
Or would you be impatient? Would you go straight to it, pad of your index finger circling your swollen clit until your hips shifted against the mattress? Until you had to stifle your moans of pleasure into the very pillow Dex was lying on?
Dex had grown hard, cock throbbing painfully in the confines of his jeans. He pushed his face deeper into the pillow and groaned.
“Fuuuck.”
It would have been easy, so easy, to find relief. The smell, the vision, the unbearable mercy of finally being this close to you, it had already brought him close enough to his peak that one simple thrust into the mattress would have sent him over the edge.
But Dex couldn’t. The shame, the disgust with himself still lingered underneath the infatuated haze. And deeper still, that insatiable monster knew it wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t want to spill in his pants like a teenage boy. He didn’t want to go back to his apartment and jerk off in the dark like the pathetic thing he was. He wanted you. Always, always you. Your body, your mouth, the heat of your cunt pulling him in deeper and deeper still until there was no telling where he ended and you began.
And so, he took one last inhale of your pillow and slowly peeled himself off the bed, cock still aching against the zipper of his jeans. The absence was immediate, cold air hitting his face and the room brutally returning around him.
Ignoring the pulse in his groin, he took care to smooth the bed and adjust the pillow where he had disturbed it. He stepped back, his own heartbeat settling, and heard the bedroom quiet.
Dex had overstayed his welcome. He knew what he needed to know. It was time to leave. He made sure the cabinets were closed, the lights turned off. Double-checked, then triple-checked everything for good measure. And finally, he returned to 415.
The weekend passed without incident. Dex did his morning jogs, he read the newspaper, he did his stretches and his one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups. He did not enter your apartment again, as strong as the temptation was. Years of denial still existed within him and Dex knew how to exercise restraint when required. When it was what you needed from him.
By Monday evening, you were back in the hall, standing in his doorway while you thanked him for watering your fern and complained about how long it took you to get back into the city with all the traffic. He nodded, assured you it was no problem, and wished you a good night as he watched you retrieve your key from under the doormat.
“Seriously,” you said as you unlocked apartment 416. “You’re a lifesaver.”
You closed the door behind you.
For a moment, he remained in the open doorway, staring at the place where you had just been. Then he reached into the back pocket of his jeans. The copy of your key was warm against his palm.
my life was CHANGEDDDDDDDDD benjamin your creepy yet charmingly sweet methods have bewitched me body and soul. i looooove the way you write him and his internal monologue you are so talented!!!!! i am chomping at the bit to see where you take the story and i love this chapter so much!!!!
Summary : Dex tries to leave you for your own good. You both know it won’t last.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : FREAK4FREAK, makeup sex, no anatomical detail but still explicit, angst-ish jealous!Dex, stalking-ish, kidnapping mentioned, injury, murder, blood, car sex, morally dark romance, unsafe coping mechanisms, not a healthy relationship but then again both Dex and Reader are batshit insane, food, brief mention of suicidal ideation. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 7k
Notes : I think I’m currently on a jealous!Dex mindset. Enjoy!
Dex broke up with you like he was doing you a favor.
He stood in your kitchen with his hands folded in front of him, shoulders stiff, eyes fixed somewhere over your head because he knew if he actually looked at you, he wouldn’t be strong enough to do it.
So, even though it felt like putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, splattering brain matter all over the white wall, he said it anyway.
“I’m not good for you.”
It was shaky, but it was a good effort. He had been thinking about how he would say it all morning, the second it left his lips, it tasted like poison.
You blinked at him.
For a second, Dex thought you might cry.
Instead, you laughed.
It was jarring, too bright in your cute little apartment, with your pink mugs drying beside his perfectly arranged knives by the link and one of his shirts hanging over the back of your chair because you had worn it to bed the night before. The whole place was full of him: his order tucked into your chaos. His clean routines stare against your glitter and mess. His life was already so carefully arranged around yours, it was funny to think he would ever walk away.
“Oh, baby,” you said, pressing a hand to your chest, fake-hurt and saccharine in nature. “Is that what we’re doing? You’re saving me?”
Dex flinched.
Because yes! Yes, he was. He was a good guy now, and as selfish he might be, he would rather have you alone without him then dead with him. He could stalk you, watch you, keep you safe from a distance, even if you broke up. He couldn’t do it if you were fucking deceased now, could he?
“They took you last night to get to me,” he said, fidgeting with nothing in his fingers. “You’re in danger because of me.”
He was right, of course. Some rogue task force agents had figured out Bullseye had a girlfriend and decided you would make good bait. They bound, gagged, bruised, shoved you into the back of a van and drove you to an empty warehouse.
They didn’t tell their superiors, of course. They said get Bullseye first, kill him, bring the dead body to Powell, and get a promotion. That way, nobody else got to take the credit for their work right?
Dex had gone supernova and found you an hour later.
And you had been so sweetly delighted to see him, even like that. He was your beautiful, blood-soaked rescue dog with murder in his eyes and hands that killed your captors.
He had held, cradled, and unbound you, asked you if you were okay, and all you did was smile at him with blood trailing up your mouth and asked “what do you want for dinner baby?”
Fuck.
He had carried you back and watched you sleep. He was awake all night with a pistol in his grip, watching the door, the windows, the hallway, the rise and fall of your chest. Every breath you took felt like a reprieve he hadn’t earned.
By morning, he had convinced himself that leaving you was the only good guy option he had left.
Your smile dropped.
Because that, unfortunately, was the thing about Dex. He could be cruel by accident. He could stand there with those sad eyes and talk like loving you was a crime, talking down on you as if any man could tell you what to do for your own good. Please.
You frowned, stepping closer. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I already did,” he sighed.
There it was. He felt like he had slit himself in the wrist saying that.
For a second, you looked genuinely wounded.
Dex saw it, he wanted to move toward you. His hands wanted your face, your waist, your bruised wrists, wanted to hold every hurt place and swear he would drown every task force officer in the city before anyone touched you again.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Dex loved you like a weapon. He loved you so much it made enemies out of strangers. It turned you into a target.
The spiralling thought crawled through him, sick and relentless: if he stayed, they would come back. If he stayed, someone would use you to get to him again. If he stayed, one day he wood be mate and you would be dead and you death was the one thing he cannot be responsible for, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he fucking can’t!
But then your frown disappeared.
It turned… glossy. Your mouth was pressed into a right pretty line, and you tilted your head as if you had just remembered you were supposed to be the fun one in the relationship.
“Okay,” you said sweetly.
What?
Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” You patted his cheek once, almost condescending. “Go be noble, handsome.”
He looked confused then, even when he was heartbroken beneath it. He had expected some emotion. A fight maybe.
Your anger would have made sense. Your grief would have made sense. Some sick part of him had pictured you crying so hard you couldn’t breathe, hands fisted in his shirt, nails scraping his skin as you begged him not to leave you. He had imagined you shoving him, cursing him, maybe even dragging a chair across the kitchen and threatening to tie him to it just to keep him there.
But you only smiled.
And fuck, the rotten, possessive monster in him was insulted.
Like how dare you let him do exactly what he said he’d do? How dare you stand there calm and pretty while he was ripping himself out of your life with his bare hands? How dare you not make him bleed for it? Dex wanted punishment. He wanted proof. He wanted you to lose control so he could feel your undying love.
Instead, you gave him permission.
You even grabbed his wrist and walked him to the door.
Dex followed because he had started this and because stopping now would mean admitting the truth: that every step away from you felt wrong.
His eyes dragged on everything as he moved: The mug he always used. The little smear of red polish he hated on the counter from when you had painted your nails there. The chair where he had sat last night cleaning blood from under his fingernails while listening to you rant about your kidnapper’s bad manners.
He had spent so long trying to root himself in your life.
Now you were opening the door like he was nothing but a guest.
“If you want to leave,” you said, still smiling, “then leave.”
Dex stopped in front of you.
He wanted you to make it impossible. He hated himself for that. He wanted the door slammed shut, he wanted any proof that this wasn’t as simple as walking out. But you only stood there, beautiful as even m in his shirt, looking at him like you had already decided what came next for the both of you.
His chest felt too tight, his throat felt raw. He told himself this was good. This was better. You were letting him go, so that should’ve been mercy.
So why did it feel like punishment?
He looked down at your mouth, at your split lip. He had kissed you so carefully there just hours before. You caught the front of his shirt and pulled him down into a kiss soft enough to make him sigh.
It was a goodbye kiss, he realised. At least you wanted him to think that.
For one breath, Dex tried not to kiss you back. Then he failed, because he was Dex, and you were you, and there had never been anything normal about the way you loved each other. His hand came up to cup your face, careful around the bruise on your cheek, careful around the split in your lip, careful even now while he was leaving you.
When you pulled away, he followed for half an inch before catching himself.
You smiled against his mouth.
“There,” you whispered. “Now go be noble.”
Dex stepped into the hallway like every inch of distance cost him his sanity.
You didn’t stop him.
You only stood there in the doorway, bright-eyed and terrible, watching him leave like this was not killing you, too.
At the elevator, he looked back.
You smiled and waved at him.
The doors closed between you.
Dex stood there with empty hands and a heart that would not stop clawing at his ribs, telling himself this was right. This was love. This was what a good man would do.
At least you were making it easy… Right?
—
Three days later, he found a package of all of his stuff on his doorstep, though he didn’t know how you found his new address so quickly.
He was sure he’d been subtle, and yet, you continued to surprise him.
It had been left exactly in the blind spot between the hallway camera and the stairwell mirror, where no one would have seen you drop it off. Smart girl, he thought, then immediately hated himself for thinking it.
He opened the box to see that you had wrapped his knives individually, blades oiled, handles cleaned, each one placed parallel to the next. His spare ammunition case was taped shut with some strawberry washi tape. His toothbrush was sealed in a little plastic bag. His socks were folded the way he folded them, which felt more intimate than if you had thrown them loose into the box.
Dex crouched in the doorway for a moment, staring down at the package like it might bite. Like you might be hiding inside it somehow, waiting to laugh at him for flinching.
There was no note, though you had never needed a note to make a point.
He carried the box inside and unpacked it thoroughly, every item coming out like evidence. These were all proof that he had lived in your apartment. Proof that you had let him. Proof that, for a while, he had been stupid enough to believe he could have nice things. A world's best boyfriend mug, a box of tea you bought him, a book he had read just because you had written little comments in the margins and he liked hearing your voice in his head.
Then he found the shirt. The one you had been wearing when he broke up with you.
It was his shirt, technically. It was grey and soft from too many washes, still creased in the shape of your body. You had folded it carefully and placed it there like a final insult.
Dex picked it up.
He should have put it away. He should have washed it. He should have thrown it out if he was really as noble as he had tried so hard to be.
Instead, he pressed it to his face before he could stop himself.
It still smelled like you.
Like cinnamon, sugar, the faint trace of your shampoo. He missed you so much and so stupidly that for a second he forgot he was standing alone in a studio apartment he hated, holding a box of proof that you had accepted his leaving better than he had.
At the bottom of the package, beneath his things, was a burner phone, fully charged, with one number saved.
Dex stared at it.
Fuck.
He should crush it and throw it away. Instead, he puts it on his bedside table.
—
That night, he tried to sleep with the lights off and failed. The apartment was too empty. There was no sound of you moving around in the kitchen, no music playing low from your phone, no drawer half-open because you had taken out a bread knife and forgotten to close it. You weren’t there to cuddle up to him. No evidence of anyone alive but him.
He told himself this was good. This was the whole point of leaving, right?
You were away from him, and therefore away from the target on his back.You were alive. You were safe. Maybe you were angry, maybe you were already plotting something awful but you were breathing somewhere he couldn’t ruin you.
Still, Dex laid on his side with your unwashed shirt gathered in his hands. He hated himself for it. Hated the way he pressed his face into the fabric and inhaled desperate lyrics like an addict. Hated that his body relaxed when he did. Hated that even after walking away, some animal part of him still believed your scent meant home.
He must have slept eventually, because the burner phone lighting up felt like a gunshot in the dark.
Dex opened his eyes and reached for it before he could talk himself out of it.
The first thing you sent was a photo of yourself in that red dress.
Oh.
The dress was obscene. He had always loved it, but he pretended to disapprove of it. He said it was too tight. It showed too much of your cleavage, your shoulders. This time, your lips were painted to match.
He remembered standing behind you once, hands on your waist, looking at you in the mirror and saying, very calmly, that you were not wearing that outside.
You had laughed then and called him possessive.
He hadn’t denied it.
Now you were wearing it for someone else.
Underneath, your message read:
date night!!! don’t worry he’s probably only committed tax fraud and like, three white collar crimes. character growth for me xoxo
Dex stared at the photo until the edges of his vision sharpened.
The room seemed to narrow around the screen and your bare collarbone and the curve of your smile.
He fucking hated the the idea of some man sitting across from you, looking at you in that dress, thinking he had earned the right.
Then the phone buzzed again.
You had sent a location, followed by a screenshot of a Tinder profile.
Dex clicked it before he could stop himself.
The man was too old for you, and definitely too smug. He had an expensive suit in the first photo, dead eyes, a bio full of words like entrepreneur and traditional values and looking for someone feminine.
Dex could see exactly what you had picked him for. Obviously, this man was designed in a lab to make Dex want to put his fist through a wall.
Twenty years older than you, at least.
His thumb hovered over the screen when the message came through.
trying soooo hard to date normal men now that my scary ex boyfriend dumped me for my own good :(
Dex sat up, your shirt was still in his lap.
The stupid, rational, noble part of him tried to tell him not to answer. It told him this was bait. It told him you had always been clever enough to turn his own jealousy into a leash.
Then Dex stared at the phone until it buzzed one more time.
he keeps looking at my chest btw. very empowering for me as a single woman
Ugh.
Dex got out of bed.
—
He didn’t go to seek you out.
Pfft.
That was what Dex told himself.
He didn’t grab his coat because of you. He didn't take the burner phone with him because of you. He didn't go across the city with his teeth clenched so tight it hurt because you were sitting pretty, smiling at a man old enough to know better and stupid enough not to.
He was just passing by.
That was all.
He just happened to end up outside the restaurant while going on a walk. He just happened to cross the street with his hands in his pockets with head down.
He didn’t go inside.
That was progress.
That was him being so fucking noble it made his him wanna vomit.
Dex stopped by the window.
Inside, the restaurant was dim and expensive in that hollow, tasteless way. You sat near the back, of course you did, angled just enough that he could see you.
And there you were, beautiful as the day he left you, which was like, last Tuesday.
Your date leaned toward you, talking at your mouth instead of your face.
Dex’s hand twitched.
You looked bored, actually. You had your chin in your hand, eyes dull, smile fixed in that polite little shape Dex knew meant you had mentally killed someone six different ways and found all of them uninspiring.
Then your eyes flicked toward the window, and you saw him.
You smiled, knowing there was an audience now.
And suddenly, magically, you were interested in your date.
You sat up straighter and twirled a piece of hair around your finger. You tilted your head at the man like whatever he had just said was fascinating instead of probably criminally stupid. You even laughed the kind of laugh Dex had once heard against his own throat in bed.
The man smiled wider, encouraged. He leaned closer.
Too fucking close.
Dex’s hand furled into fists, nails digging into his palms. He didn’t even realise he had bled until he heard a little drip on the pavement. He wanted to fucking out his head through a mirror, but he didn’t.
Because killing him would give you exactly what you wanted.
And Dex might have been a psychopath, but he wasn’t stupid.
You wanted him to make a scene. You wanted him to walk in and ruin your date and prove, in front of everyone, that he had never really let you go. You wanted blood on the white tablecloth and his hand around your wrist and that furious voice telling you that you were done.
He knew you.
He knew the trap because he wanted to step into it so badly.
So before he did something stupid, he left.
He walked back down the street, breathing evenly.
Then he saw the man’s car. He recognised it from his dating profile.
Dex stopped.
It was parked near the curb, glossy and obnoxious, exactly the kind of car a man like that would own. He looked at it for one long second.
No.
He was not going to kill him.
That would be unreasonable.
Instead, Dex took out his knife and slashed his tyres.
There.
Now the man couldn’t take you home.
Dex wiped the blade, folded it away, and walked back to his car feeling almost sane.
—
Two days later, the burner phone lit up in the dark while he was sitting on the edge of his bed, still awake, still pretending he was not waiting for it.
He picked up the phone pathetically quickly, and a photo loaded.
Dex went very still.
It was a rooftop bar, with city lights behind you, gold light on your skin. You were perched beside a man in a suit too expensive to be tasteful, eyes glittering toward the camera like you knew exactly what you were doing to him.
Worse, you were kissing the man on the cheek.
You weren’t really kissing him. Dex could tell. Your mouth barely touched his skin. It was theatrical, a pose, a cute little murder weapon aimed straight at Dex’s ribs.
It worked.
The man was handsome in that dead-eyed finance way. He had an empty smile and hair. He had an expensive Cartier watch on his wrist. He looked like the sort of man who looked like he laughed too loudly at his own jokes and gave waiters weird nicknames even after reading their name tags.
Dex hated him immediately.
Then he read the message underneath.
this one said vigilantes are bad for the economy :( thought you’d hate him
For a moment, all Dex could hear was his own breathing. It was controlled, but not controlled enough.
He texted back before his pride could stop him.
Go home.
Your reply came almost instantly.
you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Dex. you broke up with me, remember?
Fuck, he remembered.
He remembered your kitchen. Your pretty face, the pretty smile you had when you had decided not to beg. He remembered your mouth on his. He remembered walking out while every devoted part of him screamed to turn back.
He remembered thinking you were making it easy. He had been an idiot.
Then another message came through.
unless you wanna come get me?
Dex turned the phone face down. He stared at the back for five seconds.
Then ten.
Then he picked it back up.
He wasn’t going to give you what you wanted, he thought as he pulled on his jacket, and checked the address you had very helpfully attached to the next message. He wasn’t going to storm in. He wasn’t going to put his hand around your wrist and tell you the date was over. He wasn’t going to break the man’s nose against the bar just because his cheek had your lipstick on it.
He was better than that, even if he fantasised about it all the way there.
When he arrived, he didn’t go inside. He stayed near the service entrance, where the light was dimmer and the staff moved too quickly to look at him for long.
Through the glass, he saw you.
You were laughing, but not your real laugh. Dex knew the difference, and somehow that was worse. You were performing now, all sweet tilt of your head, slow fingers tracing the rim of your glass.
Your date said something, and you smiled like it amused you. Then your gaze slid past him, toward the service door, toward the shadow where Dex stood.
He knew you saw him when your smile changed.
Then, because you were evil, you turned back to your date and touched his arm.
Dex’s hand flexed once at his side.
Dex really didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of killing him so Dex only looked harder.
The man had a badge clipped carelessly to his belt, half-visible beneath his jacket when he stood to order another drink. Corporate, he saw, at a finance firm. He was too proud of it and too stupid to hide it. His watch flashed under the bar lights every time he moved his hand, begging to be noticed.
Men like that always had something to ruin.
Dex only had to find it.
It didn’t take long for him to find his name on the reservation. The name on the reservation led to a company profile. The company profile led to a Facebook profile. The Facebook profile led to a wife not nearly half as beautiful as you, Dex thought, so that was understandable. Then came the corporate card attached to the table, and the Hinge profile that shouldn't have existed.
Dex stared at all of it, and sent the proof where it needed to go.
Less than a minute later, the man’s phone started buzzing.
Dex watched him check the screen. He smiled when the colour drained out of his face.
You leaned forward, all pretty concern, chin in your hand, lashes fluttering like you hadn’t built the entire night to end exactly here: proof that Dex cared.
The man stood too quickly. His chair scraped against the floor. His hand went to his hair, then his watch, then his phone again as if touching enough expensive things might keep his life from falling apart in public.
Dex watched you bite your lip before realising that you were trying not to laugh.
Then, because he was still Dex, because restraint had limits and his limit was apparently a smug man wearing a watch that ugly near you, he made one more small adjustment to the evening.
He took a cocktail stick from a service cart and aimed.
A second later, the clasp of the man’s watch snapped, slipped from his wrist and dropped neatly into his glass of red wine.
The splash was small, but the humiliation was not.
The man stared at it as if he was going to lose it.
You looked toward the service door again. Your smile widened because you knew Dex was proud of himself.
—
He finally snapped three days later, when you sent him a photo from a date with an anti-vigilante task force agent.
Not a finance guy. Not some smug older man with a LinkedIn bio full of lies. Not someone Dex could ruin with an email or a slashed tyre.
A task force agent.
Fuckin’ one of them.
One of the very same people who had taken you.
Dex stared at the photo for a long time, so still he barely looked alive. You were smiling at the camera from the passenger seat of a sleek black car, wearing a little black dress and vicious amusement. Beside you was a man Dex didn’t know by name yet, but he knew the type immediately. He had dark hair, a leather jacket, a thin mouth, the kind of face made for press conferences and bad decisions.
You had your cheek pressed near his shoulder, his task force badge clearly visible.
The agent had one hand on the wheel.
Dex’s stomach twisted, and not just from jealousy.
No, this was worse.
This was you going on a date with danger on purpose. This was you putting your pretty little hand back in a bear trap and smiling when it closed. This was you looking at the same tribe of man who had violently gagged you, bound you, bruised your wrists, and deciding, with horrifying cheer, that they would make excellent bait.
Dex knew you were a freak before, obviously. He had known from the way you treated murder like flirting when it came from him. But this was insane, even for you.
And the worst part was that it worked.
It fucking got to him.
The burner phone buzzed again.
look baby!!!! i’m dating someone age appropriate and employed by the government. healthy choices :)
Dex bit the inside of his cheek until it bled but did not answer.
Then, you send another message.
he says vigilantes are unstable men with hero complexes. thoughts?
Dex’s teeth clenched.
The room around him seemed to tunnel until there was nothing but the phone in his hand and your stupid, delighted little face glowing up at him from the screen.
Then, he felt another buzz.
he keeps asking if i have any exes. should i tell him you’re shy?
Dex stood even before the next message came through.
he says he’s gonna take me home! do you think i should let him come inside me too?
Dex’s fist closed around the phone so hard the screen cracked. No. No no no no no! How dare you fucking say that? How fucking dare you even suggest such a vile thing?
The final message buzzed in.
i mean, you were the only one who ever got to. but you wanted to be noble, right? gotta learn to share if you wanna be a good guy.
And that was the moment the monster in him shifted from jealous to possessive. Not because he thought you were helpless. Not because he thought you were stupid. You were on the pill; he knew that, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that until now, he had been trying to tell himself he had no claim over you anymore. That leaving meant letting go completely. That loving you from a distance was still love.
Then he read those words, and every decent, self-sacrificing thought in him went out the window.
Because no.
He did not want to share.
He did not want to be good.
He wanted you to be his.
So he read it again.
Then again, until fire burned through him
By the third time, his hand was already around the keys.
He found you twenty-three minutes later in the parking garage beneath a hotel too expensive for an agent’s salary. It was the kind of place with cameras in all the wrong corners and concrete floors that reflected the fluorescent lights in pale, ugly strips.
He found the car on level four.
The engine was still running.
Music played low through the speakers, bass muffled under the soft mechanical hum of the car. The windows had fogged at the edges, turning the back seat into a blurred confession booth. Dex saw you through the glass first, perched over the agent’s lap, still fully clothed, thank fuck.
Still, your dress had ridden up just enough to be suggestive. His jacket was still on. Your hands were planted on the leather seat on either side of him instead of touching his chest, like you were holding yourself there because you didn’t touch him anymore than you had to.
The agent didn’t notice.
He had one hand at your waist, fingers too sure, too familiar, his face tilted up toward yours as he tried to kiss you, hungry in a way that made Dex’s jaw lock. The man kept chasing your mouth, and you kept giving him just enough to keep the act alive.
You looked bored, thank god.
Dex could see the little glaze behind your eyes, glossy and false. He knew you were uncomfortable by the stiffness in your shoulders and the way your knees pressed into the seat instead of settling against him. He knew from the way your fingers dug hard into the leather, not his hair, not his coat, not anything that would make this real.
The agent thought you were teasing him.
Dex knew you were enduring him.
Your body stayed half an inch away every time the man tried to pull you closer. Your mouth turned at the last second when he went for a real kiss. Your lashes fluttered like flirtation, but your eyes flicked once toward the window because you were waiting.
You were just trying to sell every ugly second because you knew Dex would come.
And because some terrible, freaky little part of you wanted him to see exactly what happened when he tried to leave you unclaimed.
And it worked, because now his blood was boiling like a volcano before an explosion.
Dex harshly pulled the car door open like he wanted to rip it off its hinges.
The agent turned, irritated first, then confused. “What the—”
Dex dragged him out by the collar and slammed him against the side of the car hard enough to make the frame jolt. The agent’s head snapped back. His mouth opened, ready with some badge-brave threat or official little command.
That was when he saw Dex properly. The colour drained from his face.
You watched it happen from the back seat, lips parted, eyes glittering.
Imagine his face, really. Imagine being this anti-vigilante task force golden boy, handsome and government-funded, thinking you were taking some gorgeous girl home for the night. Imagine realising, way too late, that her ex was none other than Bullseye.
“Fuck,” the agent breathed.
Dex smiled, but it was most definitely not a nice smile.
“You asked about me?”
The agent’s hand twitched toward his weapon, but Dex reacted.
He slashed his throat as the agent made a choked sound, more shocked than loud, and then Dex let him drop beside the car, limp like he deserved to be.
For a second, there was only the engine humming.
Then you gasped. It sounded so fucking fake.
Dex looked at you.
You were still in the back seat, dress riding high, lipstick smudged, one hand pressed to your mouth like you were horrified. But your eyes betrayed you, because they were bright and thrilled.
“You killed him,” you whispered.
Dex stared at you, breathing hard through his nose.
Your mouth trembled, but not from fear. You were trying not to smile.
Dex stepped closer to the open door. The garage lights cut his face into harsh lines, made him look even more ruined than he already was. He looked furious, heartbroken, and possessive all the same.
“Why the fuck,” he barked, “did you go out with a task force agent?”
You blinked up at him, feigning innocence. “I’m broadening my horizons.”
“He was one of them.” And what he meant by that was that one of them hurt you, one of them kidnapped you, one of them had harmed you.
“You left me single,” you pouted. “What was I supposed to do?”
His eyes went dark, and that was when you knew he had snapped.
All that faux-noble restraint and self-punishing distance, All those nights alone with the shirt that still smelled like you, all of that pretending he could walk out of your life and call it love? Gone.
Dex leaned into the car, one hand gripping the doorframe, the other reaching for your chin. He held you still, firm enough to make your breath hitch.
“You could have gotten hurt.” This time, though, he sounded genuinely worried.
You only batted your pretty lashes, though. “I knew you’d come.”
That was almost worse than the date. Worse than the photo. Worse than the agent dead on the concrete, because you were right.
You had known.
You had known exactly how to pull him back. You had known jealousy would get him halfway there, but fear would finish the job. You had known Dex could barely survive seeing you with a bad man, but he could not survive seeing you in danger with one.
“You’re sick,” he said.
You smiled then, soft and awful. “Yeah.”
Dex’s thumb brushed your cheek, gentle and comforting. Because you should know better. In fact, you did, but chose not to care.
That scared you more than the rage. You knew he was genuinely upset with you. He was disappointed.
“We’re going home,” he said.
You gave him a little pout, your stomach filling at the mention of your shared home. “Are we?”
“Yes.”
You didn’t move.
Dex sighed. “Get out of the car.”
“No.”
Oh?
Suddenly, this stopped being about the task force, the breakup, the game you had both been losing on purpose. It became much more honest.
Dex looked at you like he wanted to shake you. Kiss you. Lock you in a cabin forever to keep you safe.
“You don’t get to do this,” he said.
“You broke up with me.”
“You don’t get to make yourself bait.”
“But you left!” Your voice was softer now, the bratty edge thinning out. “According to you, I’m not bait anymore, am I?”
Dex went still, because fuck did you have a point. That was the whole reason he left you, right?
You looked up at him, still glittering, but there was a crack now, a wounded thing peeking through the performance.
Dex’s mouth tightened as your smile flickered.
His shoulders dropped, as he frowned, ruching his thumb over your cheek. “I don’t wanna see you get hurt, baby.”
Aw. How cute.
You stared back, mouth trembling, the whole act finally splitting open enough for him to see the hurt underneath.
Not fear or guilt. Hurt, that you had refused to show him at the door. Hurt, the whole reason you were acting out and apparently, borderline suicidal for.
Then, very softly, almost small, you said, “Then don’t leave me.” You shook your head. “Please.”
Dex closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them, the noble man he tried to be was fucking gone, never to return again.
Then he climbed into the back seat with you and slammed the door shut.
He kissed you like he had finally stopped lying to himself.
Oh, how you’ve missed his lips.
The windows fogged quickly at the edges, blurring the parking garage into streaks of white light and concrete shadow. Outside, the agent’s body was still slumped against the side of the car, a problem for later. Every faint shift of the vehicle knocked the corpse, every soft rock making a dull little sound.
Dex felt it too. He had a sudden awareness of where you were, what he had done, what you had made romantic because neither of you had ever known how to love in a way that did not look a little like a crime scene.
For one second, you thought he might stop.
Then your fingers slid into his hair and you whispered his name.
Whatever. He’ll just kill anyone that walked in.
He kissed you again, gentler this time, like your mouth was the only place in the world that had ever known what to do with him.
“There you are,” he whispered against your lips. “There’s my girl.”
All the glittering cruelty drained out of you. All the bratty little texts, the bad dates, the cute dresses, the performance. It fell away under his hands until there was only the aching truth: you had missed him so much it had made you mean.
Of course Dex knew from the start. It didn’t mean he was unaffected.
His hand slid to your waist, the dress bunched high. Your leg was hooked to the side, your back pressed into the leather, your hands trailing against his shoulders. Dex shifted his weight so he wouldn’t crush you. He even tucked one hand beneath your head so you would not hit the door. He kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the sensitive beneath your ear, lingering there like he had spent eight days starving and had finally been allowed to taste home again.
“Missed you,” he breathed.
You closed your eyes.
Dex’s mouth brushed your skin. “Missed you so much. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe right without you.”
Your fingers tightened in his hair, and the sound you made was small, broken, and you would have been embarrassed if it had been anyone else. But it was Dex. Your Dex, who could kill a man for touching you and then sigh like he was the one being saved when you pulled him closer.
He had lasted almost a full eight days before he completely lost the plot, and in some ways, you were proud of him. That man missed you after two hours of you in the gym.
But this time, he had lasted a whole week and one day of him pretending he could be good without you. A week and one day of him sleeping badly, eating worse, telling himself you were safer while his body mourned you. A week and one day of you smiling at other men because if Dex was going to leave you, then you were going to make it hurt.
And now he was back, kissing you like an apology, holding you like a vow.
“Don’t leave me,” you whispered as you felt Dex hook your black lace panties aside and undo his own belt just enough to do the job.
His forehead rested against yours, all the anger stripped out of him until only the love was left. “I won’t.”
“You promise?”
His free hand came up to your face again. His thumb brushed your cheek so gently it made your heart ache.
“I promise,” he said. “Never again.”
You believed him.
Maybe that was stupid. Maybe you were both stupid. Maybe that was the whole point.
And then he pushed in and stretched you out, and suddenly you were too drunk on him to even think.
You kissed him, needy, and Dex made the most helpless little sigh, almost a whimper, into your mouth. His hand gripped your waist. Yours slid down his back to trace his scar over his shirt, pulling him closer until there was no space left for either of you to pretend you had survived time apart.
The car rocked faintly under you, the windows going completely white now.
“Mine,” he whispered, but it didn’t sound like ownership this time. It sounded like relief.
Dex kissed the words out of your mouth before you could say anything cruel. He kissed your little mewls quiet. He kissed your wrist, too, the place where the bruises had been days ago, when they took you.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against your skin.
You shook your head.
He kissed the inside of your wrist again.
“I’m sorry,” he said anyway, more of an apology to himself than to you, “For making you feel like I wanted to leave.”
You hated being seen that clearly, so you just pulled him down and kissed him until his apology turned into another broken sigh.
Finally. Finally.
When Dex reached his high with you, he did it quietly, almost sweetly, his face hidden against your neck, arms locked around you like he was afraid the world might still try to take you if he loosened his grip. He breathed your name once, and then held you through the shivering aftermath like I got you, baby.
You stroked his hair as the car settled beneath you and your heartbeat calmed with his. Dex’s breath warmed your throat, his body still curled protectively over yours.
Then, very carefully, he lifted his head.
His hair was a mess, mouth swollen. His eyes were still dark and a little wild, as kissed your cheek once.
Then your nose.
Then your mouth, so tenderly it made a terrible night feel almost normal.
“Do you wanna get dinner?” You asked dreamily.
He blinked at you, then scowled when he realised. “The dickhead didn’t feed you, did he?”
You huffed, breathless and offended now that he just knew. “He took me to some stupid fancy small plates restaurant. I’m still hungry.”
Dex’s eyes gentled so much it made you want to cry.
There he was.
Your psychopath boyfriend. Your man, sitting with you in a fogged-up dead agent’s car, still bloodied, still ruined, and yet still thinking about whether you had eaten enough.
He brushed your hair back from your face.
“Anything for you, baby,” he said.
So he got you your favourite takeout, kissed the sauce from your lips with a fond laugh, and by morning, his toothbrush was back in your apartment as if he had never been stupid enough to leave at all.
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