all her paths are peace

You were never the type to make friends easily. And you’d never been quite sure why, exactly. 

You were friendly. You smiled at strangers in grocery store lines and remembered people’s coffee orders and laughed when you were supposed to, even when you didn’t always understand the joke.

But somehow girls your age always seemed to know something you didn’t, some secret rhythm to being casual and clever and wanted in groups, while you lingered at the edge of things with your lip gloss in your pocket and your hands folded too neatly in your lap.

Most of the time, people liked you in passing. They liked your clothes, your laugh, the way you listened with your whole face. They liked you best in small, shiny pieces. 

So when a couple of girls you’d met in the boutique dressing room downtown, squealed over your sandals, asked for your Instagram, and invited you to their beach party, you said yes before you could talk yourself out of it.

You didn’t have any work to do for Smurf tonight and even though you aren’t really the party type, the thought of sitting alone in your apartment on the Fourth of July just seemed pathetic.

Now you’re standing on the beach with your bare feet half-buried in the cooling sand, drawing idle, uneven patterns while the tide breathes in and out somewhere ahead of you.

The party had spread out around you in noisy, glittering bits: someone laughing too hard near the waterline, music crackling from a speaker, fireworks popping somewhere down the coast.

You’re perched on the low wooden stoop of the lifeguard tower, knees tucked close, a melting liquor-infused red-white-and-blue bomb pop dripping steadily down your left hand and into the crease of your wrist.

With your right, you try to type Pope’s contact name into your phone. This is a much larger undertaking than you expected. Herculean, even. Pope was only four letters and, frankly, you have managed harder things. Probably.

But your vision blurs every time you look down, the letters doubling, then swimming apart.

Alcohol, you decide solemnly, is not the friend to women that those girls made it out to be. 

When you finally manage to find his name, it only takes two rings for him to answer.

The line crackles, wind and distance swallowing the first half of his greeting.

“Yeah?”

You picture him blinking at the ceiling, sheets still tangled around his hips, and at once feel terribly small for plucking him out of whatever peace he’d managed to find. 

“Oh. Hi, Pope.” Your voice comes out rounded at the edges by the cold and the awful, floaty feeling behind your eyes. “Were you sleeping? I hope you weren’t sleeping. Well, no, actually, I hope you were sleeping because you don’t sleep enough and that’s bad for your brain. I read that somewhere. Or maybe Smurf said it. Wait, no, Smurf said a woman sleeps better when somebody wears her out first, which I thought meant, like, exercise, but she laughed at me, so maybe not —”  

“Where are you?” Pope cuts in.

Something shifts on his end of the line: sheets, you think, then a rough little bed-creak, then breathing harder through his nose. 

“At a party,” you say, then hiccup, then wince like he can see it through the phone. “At the beach. I was with some girls, but I don’t… I don’t really see them anymore. So I thought maybe you could come get me? I was gonna walk, I promise, but I wore those wedges with the little bows, and they’re cute, but they hurt to walk in.”

There’s silence for a long second. You chew at your bottom lip to compensate.

“You telling me nobody’s with you right now?” His tone is ice-cold, all the softness ripped out. A door slams on his end. “Listen carefully to me, please. Stay put. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll be there in ten.”

It takes him five. 

It might’ve taken three if he hadn’t spent the first two tearing through his apartment in a blind fury, shoving his feet into boots without socks, grabbing the wrong keys, then the right keys, then patting himself down for a phone already pressed hot against his ear.

If worst-case scenarios hadn’t kept unspooling in his head faster than he could outrun them. You on the beach at one a.m. You at a party with people you barely know. You drunk, which he could hear plain as day in every hiccupy little detour your voice took. 

You don’t drink. Which means your tolerance is low, your judgement’s lower, and you’re out there with fucking strangers. Strangers who might look at a sweet tipsy girl alone on the beach and see opportunity. 

He would kill someone for less. Anyone who touched you. Anyone who followed you. Anyone who smiled too long and stood too close and mistook all that sugary softness for permission.

He thought it while pulling up your location, that you don’t know he has, on his phone.

And he thinks it now while cutting across the beach, while fireworks split open over the water, while people move past him in flashes of red cups and flip flops and cheap cologne. 

Continues to think it until he sees you sitting where you said you’d be.

You’re wearing a tacky little red gingham sundress. One that makes you look a little like a holiday decoration someone forgot to bring inside. 

His boots sink and crunch in the sand as he gets closer, close enough to see the blue bikini straps peeking out beneath the dress where the neckline gapes. 

Your name comes out rougher than he intends it to when he calls out for you, scraped low from the back of his throat. 

You look up with a delayed little flinch, eyes unfocused before they find him. Drunk, his mind supplies. Too drunk. But then you light up, and the whole beach seems to tilt around it.

You hop down from the stoop, nearly catching your foot wrong in the sand, and he’s already moving, already reaching, already annoyed with you and everyone else and the impossible fact of distance. 

You crash into him with arms wide open, pulling him into a hug before he can decide whether to grab your shoulders or your face or shake sense back into you.

His body locks around the impact. 

Candied pears and vanilla rise from your hair, pretty and familiar, ruined slightly by the bite of vodka on your breath. 

He closes his eyes, lets one hand unclench, then the other. When he finally touches you, it’s with a restraint that feels violent, palms spread over your back, nose buried at your crown. 

Fine, he tells himself, breathing you in until his lungs hurt. You’re fine. 

When you pull back, there’s a lopsided smile on your face.

“Hi,” you say, like the two of you have bumped into each other at the grocery store and not after he drove through three red lights to get to you. Your fingers curl in the front of his shirt. “I’m so happy to see you. Like… sooo happy. I’m always happy to see you. D’you know that?”

Your lipstick has slipped into a red half-moon near the corner of your mouth, and his thumb twitches with the sudden need to wipe it clean before anybody else notices. Before anybody else gets to think about your mouth at all.

There’s also glitter freckling your temple like spilled sugar, catching the firework light in sharp little flashes, disappearing and returning every time the sky blooms over the water. 

He sees you in pieces: mouth, cheek, lashes, throat, the blue string at your shoulder. Each piece intact. Each piece his mind checks and checks again. 

His expression doesn’t change, his hands do. One tightens at your back. The other catches your wrist, careful around the sticky mess of what he assumes to be leftover popsicle drying between your fingers.

“Don’t say shit like that.” His eyes flick over your face again. “Makes it hard to stay mad.”

“You’re mad at me?”

“No.”

And he means it. Mostly. He’s mad you came here with girls whose names he doesn’t know, girls you must not know well either if you’ve never mentioned them before.

He’s mad the world keeps proving him right for wanting to keep you close. For wanting to shrink your life down to manageable dimensions: his truck, his apartment, Smurf’s house, the short walk between places where he can see you. It would be so simple, really, to make everything the size of his reach. To make himself the first call, the last stop, the wall at your back and the lock on the door both. 

“Good,” you sigh, shoulders dipping in visible relief. “Your mad face is scary, and I like your normal face. Let’s stick with your normal face.”

“Let’s get you —”

You barrel over him.

“And you have such a nice face, Pope.” 

Your sticky fingers rise before he can dodge, thumbs skating across the hard shelf of his cheekbones. He ought to flinch at the tacky feeling, should mutter about germs, but all he feels is the lightning of your touch detonating under his skin. Twenty-thousand wings beating stupid fast in his gut while the world shrinks to the warm smudge of your palms.

His eyes drop to your mouth again.

Bad idea. Bad, bad fucking idea. 

Christ he really wants to fucking kiss you. Wants to bend, gather the sweetness off your lips, swallow every sloppy little giggle you’re trying to hold back. He wills himself against it.

Because right now, you’re loose-limbed and glass-eyed, floating in the aftermath of other people’s bad decisions, and he refuses to make the next one.

So he breathes, counts to four, lets the want settle into a promise instead of an action: another night, another version of the two of you where you’ll remember exactly how it felt when he finally let himself kiss the innocence away. 

“Truck,” he mutters finally, voice stripped to the bone.

One arm bands around your waist to keep you steady while he stoops, plucks your abandoned wedges from the sand, and shoves them under his elbow.

You sway against him, and he has to half-lift you the last few steps to the passenger door.

The hinge groans and he sets you on the seat, then decides to buckle you in himself — click, pull, tug — because he’s not sure your coordination is cut out for it.

“Keep this on,” he instructs. 

“Okay, okay,” you whisper, smoothing the webbing flat against your dress. “I’ll be the best seat-belt wearer you ever saw.”

You offer him a solemn thumbs-up, eyes bright with earnest pride. 

Pope’s mouth twitches. Barely. So small it could pass for annoyance if anyone else saw it. 

Then he knocks the door shut with his hip and rounds the hood before the sight of you smiling at him through the window can soften him any further. 

He ends up taking you to his place.

The thought of you drunk and alone three blocks away is worse than the thought of you under his roof, he decides. For your own good, he thinks.

But the second you cross the threshold with bare feet squeaking on the laminate and humming some pop song under your breath he regrets it.

His apartment has always been plain enough to disappear into. Blank walls, old couch, a singular chair, curtains that don’t let in much light even in the middle of the day. It’s a place for sleeping. For nothing else, really. He doesn’t need much else. And even that, he doesn’t get much of here.

Bad for his brain, you had said. You were bad for his brain. All this worry you cause. The wrinkles that now overtake his face since he’s met you.

You belong where color has somewhere to go. In gardens gone slightly wild. On porches with chipped paint and too many potted plants. In bright, warm places where things climb and bloom and turn their faces to the sun. 

You don’t belong in the stale dark of his apartment, where everything feels like it learned long ago to survive without light. 

His regret multiplies tenfold when you reach for the straps of your dress.

At first, he thinks you’re just fussing with them, your fingers clumsy at your shoulders.

Then one slips down.

Then the other.

The gingham loosens around you in degrees, revealing flashes of skin he has no right to look at and every reason to turn away from. His jaw snaps.

The dress slips lower, a slow collapse of red cotton and white trim, and he catches pieces of you in the corner of his eye before he can make himself look away. A shoulder. The curve of your hip. 

What’s left is cobalt swim fabric and miles of soft body, the damp seat of your bikini practically winking at him as you wander deeper into the apartment. 

“Jesus,” he mutters, turning his back. “Put that back on.” 

You twist, one hand braced on the doorframe, and peer back at him over your shoulder.

“It was sandy, Pope. It’s driving me crazy — here, feel.” You scrape your nails along the back of your thigh like proof, then lift the leg toward him, all generous sweep of skin and reckless trust.

Pope’s head tips skyward as if the ceiling might hand down mercy. Wishful thinking.

“M’not touching you,” he grits out. “You can use the shower to wash off.”

Though he knows you’d probably hate the experience of using his shower.

There’s nothing in there except a military-grade bar of soap and some shampoo he stole from J’s bathroom months ago because his own had run out and he couldn’t be bothered to buy more.

There’s no soft towels. No good smells. None of the little things women seem to collect in bathrooms, the bottles and jars and razors and foamy stuff with names he never reads but still notices when they’re yours. 

You probably have all of that at home. A whole routine. Something sweet-smelling. Something you rub into your legs after, standing on that little bath mat in your apartment with one hip cocked and your hair dripping down your back. 

His cock twitches in his pants.

“Don’t wanna shower,” you mumble, already disappearing into his room. “Just wanna sleep.”

A moment later the triangle of your bikini top tumbles back into view, tossed to the ground with a wet thump. It’s followed by the matching bottom scrap that had covered so much less than it should. The mattress groans.

He can’t see anything else but the fabric on the floor, but that’s more than enough. Enough to picture the rest, and the implication that comes with it.

You.

Naked.

In his bed.

The floor tilts beneath him as adrenaline and hunger vie for dominance in his gut.

He exhales through his nose, forces every muscle into a calm he does not feel, and walks to the kitchen. One glass, ice-cold tap, aspirin bottle from the medicine cabinet. Keep your hands busy, keep your eyes forward, keep your thoughts off her skin. He repeats it to himself like a mantra.

He turns to walk down the hallway and when he gets to the doorway he pauses, counts three, then four, then five, as if numbers can blunt the sight of you warm and bare beneath his blanket. 

Before he can step inside, your voice floats out from the dark, soft and slurred around the edges. 

“Your bed’s really nice,” you murmur. “I thought it was gonna be hard because you’re all…” A pause. The blanket shifts. “You know. Like that. But it’s cozy.”

He clears his throat. “That’s great. You — uh — you decent in there?”

“I think so,” you say after a second. “Most of me is covered. Probably the important parts.”

The room is mostly dark enough that most of you are mercifully hidden, the blanket dragged high, the shape of your body blurred into soft suggestion.

But not all of you. Your bare collarbones catch the dim spill of light from the hall. One arm lies loose over the sheet, hair fanned wild across his pillow like the bed had been waiting all along for something prettier to happen to it. 

“Got you water,” he says. He sets the glass and aspiring on the nightstand without looking too hard, then straightens, spine rigid, refusing to let his gaze drift lower than your throat.

You look too pretty for a night like this, too soft for a bed that’s never held anything but nightmares and empty hours, and part of him hates that the first person to see you here, sunk into his pillow and sighing like you belong, is him. 

He forces his hands to his pockets. “Aspirin’s by the glass. Drink all the water. You’ll thank me in the morning.” 

He starts to turn towards the doorway, but your hand snakes out of the dark and closes around his wrist.

The blanket sags with the movement, sliding off your shoulders, and he lunges to catch it with his free hand, fingers splaying across the warm slope just above your breast. 

“Could you… maybe sit with me til I fall asleep? Please?”

He makes the mistake of looking at your face. One soft plea blooming in those eyes and every argument he’d rehearsed goes slack. A smarter man would draw a line right here. He’s not a smarter man.

“Five minutes,” he warns, easing himself into the chair beside the bed.

“Five minutes, promise,” you echo, voice sing-song as you shift.

You avert your gaze just long enough to settle onto your side, blanket clutched in one fist, then peek back through your lashes. Both hands disappear beneath your cheek, the coverlet resting scant inches above the peaks of your nipples.

Your eyes drift half-shut, lashes heavy against your cheeks. “Wish I could sleep in your bed every night.”

Pope doesn’t move.

A second later your mouth softens, your breathing evens, and he’s left alone with the sentence like a knife he has to pretend isn’t in him. 

A lone firework bursts beyond the window. Silent through the glass but bright enough to paint pyrotechnic petals across the ceiling, for an instant crowning your form in color.

Pope exhales, lets the echo of that light fade, and settles in to keep watch until morning.

MARIA NOTE this was my attempt a 4th of july fic and somehow there are no pool parties, no wholesome firework kisses, just bunny getting tipsy off hardly any alc and pope having to fight for his life in a sad man apartment. whoops. thank u 4 reading ily!!! 🌀🍓💌

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-”

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. 

“Your dress,” Dex clarified, voice breaking. “... please.”

Your lips curved. “Yeah, Dex. You can.”

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. 

For the first time in his life, he prayed. 

Please, God, he thought. 

Please let it stick. 

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. 

“Your dress,” Dex clarified, voice breaking. “... please.”

Your lips curved. “Yeah, Dex. You can.”

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. 

For the first time in his life, he prayed. 

Please, God, he thought. 

Please let it stick.