lu 𝄞⨾💿✮˚.⋆

"Let's set the scene, it's 2009: James Cameron's "Avatar" was just released, Susan Boyle tops the charts with "I Dreamed a Dream" and Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. What the world didn’t know yet was that somewhere in London, the next music sensations were being born. 

Seeing a gap in the UK music market for a wholesome “boy next door” boyband, Chris Dixon (most known for managing Sidemen, and Becky James before she founded her own girl group, The Bambinos,) started the search for the next big boyband. With auditions held all over the country, talented hopefuls showed off their skills to Chris and CEO and producer of HotRodd Records, Will Lenney. From thousands, 4 stood out. George Clarke, 26, from Bristol, Arthur Fredrick, 30, from Jersey, Arthur Hill, 27, from Buckinghamshire and Isaac Smith (affectionately known as Bach, an inside joke this reporter is told) 25, from Crawley were chosen. The group not only showed impressive vocals on their own, but were able to find their harmony after a few sessions together. The chemistry they share is undeniable, with producer Will Lenney saying, “There was just magic when they were in a room together. They gravitated towards each other. I remember Chris and I shared a look of like, ‘yeah this is it’.” 

Dixon and Lenney weren’t the only ones impressed, Sidemen members TBJZL (Tobi Brown), Vikkstarr (Vikram Barn), W2S (Harry Lewis) and Zerrka (Josh Bradley) saw similarities in their new label mates. “We’re similar ages with them, it’s so cool, like we’ve got little brothers to look out for, make sure they’re taken care of, you know?” explains Vikstarr, “We’re rooting for them all the way!” adds W2S. 

August 2009 saw the group’s first EP “Heartbreak Hotline” debut at #3 on the UK Album charts, with its lead single of the same name peaking at #6. An incredible feat for such a new group. The foursome embarked on their first UK wide tour, which started in November 2009 and concluded in February 2010, just in time for their second EP, “The Space Between” to reach #2 on the charts, with the title track “Inside Out” to become the group’s first #1 single, holding onto that spot for 5 weeks! The success isn’t without controversy, with many of the group’s critics expressing their formation as ‘unnatural’ and ‘forced.’ However, the group takes this in their stride, settling on the name Friends From Work as a tongue-in-cheek response to the naysayers. “Yeah, we might’ve not all grown up together like Sidemen did, and that’s good for them, but we’re different. We’re not going to deny or fake our start together. Amongst all the other boys there, we found each other.” Friends From Work’s unofficial spokesman, George Clarke, shuts down any criticisms. “Like, it’s crazy, before we even released our first EP, people were saying we’re like colleagues who don’t get on outside of work. So, after endless hours of brainstorming for a name, Friends From Work came to us.” Arthur Fredrick goes on to explain further, “It took a while for Chris and Will to come round to it, but eventually they liked the sound of it and the meaning behind it.” 

The band have just announced their first full album, "Friends From Work", along with a tour of the UK and Europe. The expected release is May 2011, with the tour starting in June. The first opening act, James Marriott has already been announced, with the second act's identity being kept under wraps for now.

With so much buzz from fans (fanclub name TBC) and the industry, will their first album set them apart from their peers and labelmates, or could they fall as quickly as their rise to success? With a lot riding on this release, this reporter will be waiting with bated breath and be the first on the scene with all the gossip. To close out the interview, Arthur Hill had some words for their fans and supporters, “Just a massive massive thank you, this has been a rollercoaster so far, and we can’t wait to make so many more memories with you all.” Isaac chimes in, “We hope to make you all proud, this album is very special to us, we hope you love it as much as we do.” - report by Meadow Grace for Stars on Pop magazine, 2011

____

Full credits to @ghostwrittenbygrace for all covers/graphics made, and for encouraging me to write this. Click here to take the official Friends From Work dating quiz! 

Left: Friends From Work debut album cover and tracklist

Right: Friends From Work official tour poster

You’ve always had a somewhat fraught relationship with imagination. People say you lack it, to put it plainly. They say you’re too literal. As if being literal isn’t the reason airplanes stay in the air and bridges remain standing. 

But you just happen to find reality plenty beautiful. More than beautiful, actually. Reassuring. There is dignity in a thing that can be tested, reproduced, and counted on.

Newton’s law. The sodium-potassium pump. Entropy. Even the grimmer systems at least are consistent if nothing else.

So naturally, medicine was what you pursued in college. Everything means something. Everything is attached to something else. Symptoms are not random; bodies are not whimsical.

Even if an answer is hidden, it exists, and if you are willing to stay with a problem long enough, turn it over enough times, peel it apart layer by layer and build it back from the inside out, eventually it reveals itself.

Fiction does not afford you that courtesy. Fiction wants you to tolerate blank spaces and gaps. You hate gaps. You love knowing.

Fiction gives you half a scene and waits expectantly, like congratulations, now you do the labor.

Build the room. Place the bodies. Infer the angles. Ignore, apparently, that the human body is not an abstract concept but a heavily regulated system of hinges and limits and gravity and very obvious spatial constraints. 

You are experiencing one of those gaps now, staring so hard at the page your eyes begin to sting a little, focus tightening to a punitive little point. You think if you look at it severely enough the scene might resolve into something you can understand.

The book says the woman is “on top,” which should be clear enough on its own, except the next sentence immediately ruins that clarity by describing angles that do not, as far as you can tell, exist in three-dimensional space. 

And you have so many questions.

Is there a bed involved here? A couch? A floor? Any surface at all?

You reread the line. Maybe you overlooked a prepositional phrase hiding in plain sight. A detail that will clarify whose leg is bent and why it apparently now has the range of motion of a paper clip.

Nothing. No luck. Still opaque.

Possibly more vague now, because repetition has begun to dissolve whatever confidence you had in your own reading abilities.

It is difficult to overstate how humiliating it is to be bested by mediocre smut. 

You sigh and look to your watch. 9:18 p.m. Late. The bus is always late. That’s why you have this book in your hand in the first place, wanting to turn dead time into something educational. Unfortunately that’s not how it’s going.

You blow out a breath as another gust of wind snakes over the exposed strip of skin between your socks and the hem of your jeans.

They used to hit lower on your ankle, but courtesy of your building’s shitty communal dryer, they don’t do that anymore.

“Interesting reading choice.”

It is not a voice you prepared yourself to hear. You weren’t prepared to hear a voice at all, really.

So when you hear the familiar pitch of Landon, your body overcorrects, sending you backward like a startled deer losing traction on ice.

You see the next ten seconds in a flash: the hollow thunk of your head on the pole behind you, the stuttering apologies delivered as your vision tunnels, the concussion protocols that will surely haunt you for weeks, months, possibly forever.

But those ten seconds never actually happens.

Instead, you cautiously peer up into the flat, coolly appraising expression of Langdon, whose hand is placed behind your head, taking the brunt of the impact.

“Oh. Hi. Dr. Langdon. I, um, this isn’t — I’m not —” You’re already floundering, trying to assemble something defensible out of a situation that is not defensible. “It was recommended,” you say at last, which is true, though not in a way that sounds remotely exculpatory once spoken aloud. “By Javadi. She said it was good, which I assumed meant, like, well-written, not — this. Which I know sounds — I hear it, I hear how it sounds, but I didn’t just, like, seek this out independently. I was curious from a clinical standpoint.”

Shit.

You just lobbed Victoria under the bus didn’t you? And unlike the literal bus, this metaphorical one arrived enthusiastically on time, probably even honked.

You add it to the growing ledger of things you owe her. Coffee, at the very least. Something artisanal, thoughtful, handcrafted.

A note, handwritten in apology, because email would be cowardly and texting would feel insufficient, and really — after what you’ve just done, you’re not sure anything short of ink, paper, and a tangible record of shame could suffice.

He removes his hand, the pressure at the back of your head disappearing as he shifts to rest it along the bench behind you instead.

“Clinical,” he repeats. His eyes flick briefly to the book in your hands, then back to you, unimpressed. “And what have you concluded so far, doctor?”

“Not a doctor yet,” you point out. Not sure why you do. “But, um, just that it’s just not very clear? Like, the scenes move really fast, and I feel like I’m missing steps in between, so I keep trying to visualize what’s happening and I just end up getting stuck on, like… where everything is supposed to go and —” You stop, frowning now. “You — you probably didn’t actually want an answer to that, did you?”

His mouth pulls just enough to suggest he’s entertained despite himself. “Not initially.”

You nod. “Okay, good, because I definitely wasn’t planning to provide detail. Just, you know — general plausibility stuff. Realism concerns.”

“Let me see,” he says, and before your frazzled brain can form an adequate objection, he's already reaching forward, extracting the paperback from your suddenly slackened grasp.

You stand abruptly, the bench scraping in a terrible sound against concrete as you reach for the book.

“You really don’t have to do that.”

A correct statement. Useless, however, as he lifts the novel out of reach without even looking at you, arm extending just enough to make it clear that this is not a negotiation, and also, somewhat insultingly, not even difficult.

You briefly consider climbing him. Scaling him like a distressed, socially compromised marsupial and retrieving the book by force.

It feels like a viable solution. You dismiss it only on the grounds that in the last five minutes alone, accumulated enough embarrassment to sustain a normal person for at least two lifetimes.

And theoretically there should be a cap.

There is not, apparently.

Because after a brief glance at the page, he starts reading aloud: “She sank down on him with an aching slowness, savoring the stretch of it, the sweet friction that made her pulse flutter faster with every roll of her body. His hands gripped her waist, guiding her, keeping her there while the pleasure mounted in teasing waves until she was shaking with it, desperate and almost there.”

You feel the heat spark up your spine and towards you neck before saturating your face. The intensity momentarily blurs your vision.

Your hands tighten uselessly at your sides, a strange, unfamiliar tightness coiling low in your stomach.

You try your very hardest not to let your mind start making substitutions. You try not to let the faceless bodies on that page acquire identifiable features. A chin dimple, for instance. You try not to let the voice in front of you fuse itself any further to the text than it already has.

You wrench your gaze upward, fixing it somewhere behind his left ear, hoping that physical distance might somehow dilute your newfound imagination that just five minutes ago you were bashing.

He closes the book with a snap, eyebrow arched. “Sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“I mean, maybe,” you respond, a little too quickly. “If there were just… more specifics? Like, about the positioning. The angle, or where —” You take a quick breath. “Never mind.”

“And exactly how would you clarify it?”

“I’d probably just… add another line,” you say. “Like, specify that her hips are lower, or that her weight is shifted forward so her center of gravity is closer to his. Just so it’s clear what’s actually happening.”

He doesn’t say anything right away and when his eyes flick forward again, they look a little different beneath the dark of the sky, the blue of them deepened into something richer. A little less straightforward, you think. Lapis held in low light, saturated in silver strips and a little too pretty.

You watch as his tongue drags across his lower lip, the briefest glimpse of moisture highlighting the subtle contours and fine, shallow ridges of texture there.

“If you’re that concerned with accuracy,” he murmurs, “I’m sure there’s ways to run a practical demonstration.”

You have a hard time understanding what he means by that and when your mind does attempt to furnish the words with imagery, you have to recoil from your own thoughts.

Does he mean with him?

No, surely not, that is not where he wanted this conversation to go, and besides, that interpretation feels reckless, egotistical even, considering he is almost certainly saying it in the most neutral, solution-driven sense possible.

If that’s what he’s saying at all. He might not be. You can’t tell.

He is offering a suggestion for you.

You are the one making it weird.

“Oh. Well, it’d probably end up being more complicated than it’s worth. I’d need a controlled setup, probably multiple attempts, and at that point it’s less a demonstration and more a full reconstruction.”

A muscle feathers along his jaw as he tips his face towards the moon-lit sky. He seems to do that a lot. Like he’s appealing to some higher power for fortitude to deal with you. Or maybe not you specifically, which would be preferable, expect it does feel rather like you are the central to the current crisis, you just aren’t sure how.

Then he exhales a small laugh, thin with disbelief, and shakes his head once. 

“You’re right,” he says, voice deadpan. “Clearly I wasn’t thinking this through. Practicality first.” He glances pointedly at his watch. “It’s late. I’ll give you a ride home.”

You accept his offer without arguing, you’d be a fool not to, and trail him out toward the parking lot. A step behind, then a half step, then back again. You can’t quite decide on the appropriate proximity.

When you reach the row of cars, you realize you’ve never seen his before.

It’s nice. Grey, practical, a four-door SUV that screams fiscal responsibility and weather-appropriate footwear, a vehicle with divorced-dad energy so specific you can practically invent the rest of the man around it: patient at youth soccer, quietly resentful in a grocery store parking lot, pretending not to be wounded by logistical disappointments. 

The interior only deepens the impression. It is clean, but not in a forbidding way, not scrubbed of personality.

There is a toy in the cupholder, a crumpled napkin tucked into the side compartment, a few fast-food receipts scattered near the floor like the residue of a life conducted at speed.

It feels lived in, which is somehow more intimate than if it had been spotless.

It is, disconcertingly, human. More human than you expected from a man who often carries himself like a sealed document. 

Nice, you think again, and then, unhelpfully, him, the two notions beginning to blur together before you can stop them.

It’s a relatively quiet drive to start. The radio tuned to some Catholic station it must have picked up nearby, murky and hard to decipher, while streetlights drift past in bands of orange and green, staining the inside of the car with color and then taking it back.

“Javadi really recommended that?” Frank asks suddenly, piercing the silence.

“Yeah,” you admit, then wince almost immediately. “Well, sort of. I mean, I probably should not make it sound like she shoved it into my hands in some kind of corrupting-the-youth campaign. She mentioned it, but I was already curious. It was not not my idea.” You glance down, suddenly very interested in your own hands. “I’ve just been trying to do a little research, I guess.”

His fingers tap once against the steering wheel.

“And what, specifically, are you hoping to learn?”

Your mouth presses thin for a second. You’re not sure if you should continue.

“I was mostly just trying to get a better sense of... how certain things work in real life,” you say, picking each word carefully. “As opposed to in theory. Or in whatever version of reality people usually pretend is self-explanatory.”

He says nothing at first. Then through grit teeth: “You mean because no one’s explained it to you?”

You glance over, caught a little off guard by the question. “Well, not in any useful sense.”

His jaw flexes. 

“And the alternative,” he says slowly, “was assigned reading.”

You wince. “When you phrase it like that, it does sound bleak.”

“When I phrase it like that, it sounds like you’re trying to teach yourself something most people learn by experience.”

“Well,” you mumble, “yes. More or less.”

The light changes and he brakes, the red wash from the signal pouring through the windshield and across his face, tinting his skin rose-gold.

He screws his eyes shut for a brief second, hands drawing tighter on the wheel before he exhales.

“In that case,” he says, opening his eyes again, “I’m not entirely convinced that’s the most reliable educational resource.”

“Why?” you ask, with enough sincere confusion to make it clear you are not arguing so much as requesting clarification. 

The light turns green.

“Because it’s not source material. It’s entertainment.” His tone stays level, but only just. “It takes whatever is most dramatic, most flattering, most appealing, and presents it like it’s standard. It leaves out the parts that are inconvenient or unsexy, which means if you treat it as educational, you’re going to come away with a very distorted sense of how any of it actually works.”

“I guess that makes sense,” you say. “There were definitely sections where I kept thinking, surely that cannot be how that happens. Or at least not without significantly more preparation, flexibility, or orthopedic intervention than the text was willing to acknowledge.”

“So I gathered.”

You fall quiet after that, though not for lack of further questions. In fact the opposite is true, because now he has accidentally positioned himself as a person with knowledge of how sex works.

But that would be inappropriate on at least six different levels. 

He is driving you home as a favor, not volunteering to become some kind of after-hours consultant on the mechanics of sex, and there is no universe in which asking for elaboration would make you seem anything other than catastrophically unwell.

You almost ask him anyway. 

But before you can make what would almost certainly be the worst possible decision available to you tonight, the car slows, turns, and then stops. 

You stare at the windshield, disoriented by the fact that you are suddenly at your apartment.

“Right,” you say, gathering your bag with the abrupt, clumsy movements of someone trying to recover from her own thoughts. “Thank you. For the ride.”

He gives a brief nod, one hand still resting on the wheel. “It was no trouble.”

You do not believe that for even a second. Still, you murmur goodnight and let yourself out, hurrying inside with as much dignity as can be salvaged after a conversation like that.

A couple days later, you’re sitting in the breakroom with your head propped in your palm, devoting a frankly heroic amount of effort to not drop face-first into the laminate.

You are exhausted, which is surely unrelated to the fact that you stayed up too late conducting what can only be described as independent research.

There is, it turns out, an astonishing amount of positions.

More than seems necessary, honestly. Far too many names. Far too many diagrams. So many that appear to require either exceptional upper body strength or a level of mutual coordination that feels statistically unlikely in the average civilian population. 

Some are perfectly straightforward. Many are not. Several seem just down-right wrong.

The door opens and you glance up, prepared to offer some vague nod of recognition to whoever has come to interrupt your private collapse. 

Langdon.

“Oh,” you say, straightening a little too quickly. “Hi, Dr. Langdon.”

That seems to be your automatic response to his presence.

His eyes narrow. “Rough morning?”

You give a small shrug. “M’fine.”

“You’ll have to excuse my skepticism.” He drags the chair across from you and sits.

“Just stayed up too late.” 

You hope that doesn’t inspire follow-ups.

He slides something across the table toward you. A book. You stare at the cover. Then at him. 

“This,” he says, tapping two fingers once against the cover, “is at least designed to explain things.”

Slowly, as if touching it too fast might make this more real, you pick it up and turn it over.

The back is dense with tidy paragraphs about desire, arousal, and the science of how women’s bodies actually work, all written in the reassuring language of expertise, which would be comforting if your pulse were not currently behaving like it had something to hide.

“That’s… unexpectedly thoughtful,” you murmur. “Thank you.”

“Don’t make too much of it.”

“I won’t,” you say, which is a lie so poorly constructed it barely qualifies as one.

You are, in fact, almost certain to make too much of it later, probably in bed, probably while staring at the ceiling. 

Then the door opens again. You nearly jump. You pull the book against your chest like you are protecting classified material. Langdon’s eyes narrow a fraction.

Garcia steps inside a second later, pauses, and looks between the two of you.

“...Am I interrupting something weird?” she asks.

You stand so quickly the chair legs scrape against the floor.

“Nope,” you say. “Not at all. Nothing weird. Not even slightly.” You clutch the book tighter. “I do, however, suddenly need to go be elsewhere. For work-related reasons. Very legitimate ones.” You nod once. “Okay. Bye.”

It’s late when you finally start to read the book Langdon gave you. Your first mistake, really. You have to be up in four hours. Four.

But the book turns out to be more useful than expected. It has information. Real information. Terminology and diagrams and explanations that move in a sequence a human brain can follow, one thing leading intelligibly to the next instead of that gauzy, vague, everyone-just-knows-what-to-do, magical event nonsense.

And this all should, theoretically, be enough to satisfy you.

Except every answer you get splits open into three more questions, hydra-style, the whole thing multiplying the second you think you have a grip on it.

And yes, sometimes Google is enough. But sometimes it is not.

Too broad, too contradictory, too many tabs open at once, too many Reddit posts written by men with misplaced confidence.

So now you are sitting on your bed staring at your phone, typing a message, deleting it, retyping it, deleting it again. Because this is weird. It is weird to text him.

But then again, he did hand you the book.

He did, in a very real sense, amplify this situation. And maybe giving you additional reading material counts as tacit approval for further questions. A follow-up. Continuing education.

You hit send.

hi dr. langdon. sorry. i have a question about the book!

It takes only a couple seconds for him to answer.

Go ahead.

You sit up so fast the book slides off your leg and drops onto the bedspread with a soft thump.

You stare at the screen.

You expected eventuality, a response tomorrow morning maybe, sometime after sunrise, sometime under the polite cover of daylight when everybody involved could collude in pretending this was a normal academic exchange and not you texting a senior resident after dark about sex-adjacent material like you were requesting clarification on electrolyte imbalance.

You glance at the clock and frown.

What is he even doing up?

Surely you didn’t wake him. You cannot imagine he sleeps with his ringer turned up loud enough for that. No, he feels like a phone-on-silent, notifications-curated, emergency-contacts-only kind of man.

You spend four minutes composing the question. You send six words.

what does “building sensation” actually mean?

Need more context than that.

You photograph the page. You send it. You put your phone face down on the quilt and do not look at it for a full minute.

When you finally make yourself turn the phone over, he’s answered.

It’s the physiological buildup to orgasm. Increased blood flow, heightened sensitivity, pelvic muscle tension. Sustained and constant stimulation. The sensation compounds on itself.

Your thumb catches idly on the hem of your pajama shorts, worrying the fabric back and forth while you stare at the screen. It takes a long amount of time to realize you’re doing it. You stop. Then start again without meaning to, fingertips slipping under the edge to press against your thigh. 

is consistency about location or pressure or both? the book implies they're interchangeable.  

Both. Generally location first, then pressure. If you keep changing where you’re touching, it’s harder to build anything. If the location is consistent but the pressure is erratic, same problem. They’re related, but not interchangeable.

Your free hand has drifted north to the waistband of your shorts, thumb pressing little crescent moons into overheated skin. Almost feverish.

Location first. 

An unfortunate instruction to receive while being aware of the exact location in question, muted now by two thin layers of cotton.

You should stop there. Obviously.

You should set the phone down, turn off the lamp, go to sleep, and revisit all of this in the morning when you are less suggestible. 

Instead your hand keeps moving, slow enough that you can perhaps pretend you have not consciously decided anything, slipping lower until it hovers over your underwear, where your clit presses back against the fabric. Swollen. And then lower than that, wet.

That startles you more than anything. From what, exactly? A sex manual? A few texts? Him?

No. That last one is inadmissible. Wildly inappropriate.

So you drag your mind back to the book instead, using it as a kind of corrective, something technical to blunt that he is, however indirectly, implicated in this. 

Start with indirect stimulation. Let the body acclimate. Don’t rush the thing. Let the thing, apparently, arrive on its own like a skittish woodland creature you are trying not to scare off.

Fine. Whatever. 

You press your thumb down and make a circular motion, sucking in a breath so sharply it almost hurts, mostly because the sensation is immediate and strange and good. You wouldn’t say overwhelming. Though maybe you would. You can’t think straight. Surprising, then. Concentrated.

Like pressing a bruise, except the complete inverse of that, if they lit up instead of aching. It makes you want to do it again.

So you do.

Small circles. Experimental. Testing the waters.

And it’s not like this is technically new. You have tried before.

But before was rushed and graceless and was the sort of thing done half-curiously and abandoned quickly, with no patience for your own body.

You were raised sheltered, and beyond that, serious. Preoccupied with things that seemed more pressing, more worthy of your attention, as though this part of yourself could be indefinitely postponed without consequence. 

You pick the phone back up with your unoccupied hand.

okay. that makes sense.

You stare at it, dissatisfied. Too final. Too capable of ending the conversation. You add another line before you can overthink yourself out of it.

and if the sensation is building, when are u supposed to switch? like to inner stimulation, i mean. or are you not supposed to unless what you’re already doing stops working?

The typing bubble appears instantly.

You don’t have to switch. That’s the first thing.

External stimulation is usually more important, especially early on. Inner stimulation is optional, not a required next step.

Little gasps keep escaping you as you refine the motion, not changing much, just enough pressure to sharpen it, back arching into the mattress.

It feels good. You don’t remember it ever feeling this good.

Maybe because before did not involve a very attractive doctor explaining your own body back to you in real time.

It is getting harder to text. Harder to think in complete sentences. Still, you manage, so if it’s working, is it better to not change anything? even if it starts feeling a lot more sensitive?

Your phone starts ringing.

You freeze when Frank's name flashes across the screen.

For a moment you can only stare. Your pulse jumps in your throat, fluttering there like something trapped, and then you are yanking your hand from your shorts and grabbing for the phone with fingers that suddenly seem to belong to someone much less coordinated than you.

“Hi —,”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” you ask, though your voice already sounds guilty, chest rising and falling unevenly. “I’m — nothing. I’m just reading.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

You frown at the dark ceiling. “I hate the confidence with which you say things.”

“It’s usually earned.”

You make a face at that, even though he cannot see it.

“I wasn’t prepared for a pop quiz,” you mutter. “You called out of nowhere.”

“A call seemed appropriate,” he says through the soft buzz of static.

“Why?”

Your whole body feels keyed up now, strung too tight, humming with a surplus of energy like you have been plugged into the wall and simply left there to glow.

It's hard to keep still under the blankets. Harder with his voice in your ear, that low grain of it roughened by the hour, touched with that tired edge that makes him feel closer than he is. He sounds warm. He sounds half-undone.

You can picture him without trying. In bed. Hair rumpled from sleep or from his hand shoved through it one too many times, one stray piece fallen near his eyes. Maybe in pajamas. Maybe not. Either option is equally disruptive. You brain offers a shirt pushes up a little, one arm behind his head, a strip of stomach, a line of hair disappearing into plaid boxers.

You shift on the mattress. Your hand trails back down your front, fingers resuming their place on your underwear.

“Because your last text didn’t read like a theoretical question,” he says. “I wanted to hear whether I was right.”

The words move through you, like he has reached through the phone and pressed a hand flat to your lower stomach.

“And were you?”

Your hips shift on the mattress again, angling into your own touch.

You bite your lip around the small throb of pleasure that follows.

“Yeah. I was.” His voice comes through coarser now, the line fuzzing around it, but not enough to hide the change. “And if I’m hearing you correctly, you haven’t stopped.”

You squeeze your eyes shut.

“...maybe.”

There's a brief pause on the line. You hear the rustle of him moving, before he speaks again. “Tell me exactly what you're doing.”

“I’m, uh…” You mouth goes dry. “I mean, you know.”

“I can’t tell you what to do if you won’t tell me what you’re doing,” he says. “You need to be specific.” 

You swallow.

“I’m touching over my underwear,” you admit finally, the words coming out hushed and a little uneven. “Just with my thumb. I’m not really… doing anything more than that.”

A soft exhale crackles through the phone.

“That’s good,” he murmurs. “Tell me if it feels good.”

Your lashes flutter at the words. Your thumb keeps tracing the same spot, a little more rhythmically now, and every so often your hand falters when the sensation catches unexpectedly bright, a live wire under your skin.

Flashing hotter and hotter and hotter until you can barely stand it.

Your thighs draw in on instinct, then ease apart again, restless, unable to decide whether they are trying to hold the feeling or escape it.

“Mhm.” It’s all you can manage. 

You start to picture him again. Existing in real time in the dark on the other end of the line now.

It sends the throbbing in your cunt up tenfold, sharp little bursts of color flying behind your eyelids, green and orange and something almost gold.

You use your imagination to conjure up the image of him doing the same. Him with the phone in one hand and the other moving in lazy unhurried strokes around his cock, like this is no great strain for him, like he is as controlled in private as he is everywhere else.

You wonder what it looks like. His cock. Probably big and pink and veiny.

You know, rationally, that he is probably not doing that at all. He is probably just lying there in the dark, listening, talking, being composed for both of you.

But it is a nice thought anyway. More than nice, really. Your body answers it before you can caution it otherwise, your clit going heavier and more swollen, as you move to touch yourself without the barrier of your panties. It’s more sensitive that way. And your whole lower half seems to lean vainly into your own hand, practically preening toward the touch.

“Now I’m, um, touching myself directly.”

“Alright. Want you to try something. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah,” you say quickly. A little too eager. “I can.”

“Good girl.” The praise makes your stomach tighten. “Want you to slide two fingers into yourself a little. Not all the way, just enough to get them wet, okay? Then bring them back to your clit and keep using your thumb, or your fingers if that feels easier. Same pace as before.”

You nod even though you know he can’t see it and slip two fingers down, enough to feel the sticky warmth of yourself, coating your digits.

You bring it back up, smearing it over your nub.

“Oh,” you mumble breathily.

“Yeah?” he teases quietly. “That better?”

“A lot.”

“Good. It’s easier like that. Less friction. If you’re getting more sensitive, too much drag starts working against you.”

He’s right. He’s always right. You feel a little strange and floaty now, like your whole body has narrowed down to one incandescent point.

“How do you know all this?” you prod.

A pause. Then, “Experience.”

“Right. That.” Another circle, another spark of pleasure down your spine. “I don’t exactly have that.”

“I gathered.”

Something in his tone makes you go a little still. Not enough to stop, but your hand falters, tightening around a thought before you can even identify it.

He notices immediately. He has some terrifying sonar for you specifically, some private frequency calibrated to every tiny shift in your breathing, every dropped beat, every half-second hesitation.

“Hey,” he says pointedly. “Don’t get in your head now. Never said it was a bad thing. Keep going. Think about something else.”

“Such as?” you whisper.

There’s the sound of breathing from the phone before he answers, “that’s up for you to decide.”

You suck in a sharp breath, squirming as you adjust phone closer to your ear

“Can you just… keep talking to me?”

There’s a huff on the other end, almost a laugh. “That’s not very specific.”

“I know.” You’re sure you’re not making much sense right now. “I just — don’t stop. Please. Just wanna hear you say anything.”

He’s quiet for a second, like he’s trying to decide what, exactly, you’re asking for. The problem is, you’re not entirely sure either.

You only know there’s a strange, tightening warmth low in your stomach, something gathering there, and his voice seems to nurture it instead of breaking it apart.

You hear something clang on the other end of the phone.

“Fuck. Okay. First need you to breathe, okay? You're tensing up, I can hear it. Relax your legs.”

You try to do as you're told.

In. Out. In. Out.

Each breath feeding the whole thing oxygen, driving you nearer and nearer to the vanishing point until your eyes threaten to roll back and your body feels like on extended nerve.

“I —” A breath. “Sorry, I just —” Another one. “Frank I think I'm — I'm close, I think, I don't — It's really intense and I don't know what I'm —” You lose the thought entirely. “I just don't know what I'm supposed to do when it starts feeling like this. Do I stop, or —”

“Shit baby, you've never gotten there before? Not even —”

“No,” you manage.

“Oh, poor thing.”Quiet. Almost to himself. “Okay. ‘S okay. Don't stop. I need you to stay with me and just let it happen, can you do that?”

“I think —”

“Don't think,” he cuts you off. “For once in your life, don't think. Just feel it.”

Something in you finally gives.

You feel all of it at once.

Your orgasm peaks so fast it almost feels like losing power everywhere at the same time, every room going dark together, and your back comes off the pillows and your hand presses harder before you even mean for it to and a gasp tears out of you, high and helpless and so unlike anything you have ever heard from yourself that for a second it barely sounds like yours.

“That’s it,” Frank says, low in your ear.

It rolls. That's the only word for it.

It rolls outward from your pussy in a slow, stunned series of tremors moving through your thighs, your spine, your chest, each wave its own distinct thing and yet not distinct at all, each one its own event, its own brief undoing.

You cannot do anything except lie there and take it, receive it as it passes through you, because there is nothing else available to you now, no other function left online, no thought, no dignity, no language, only this long bright aftershock and your body answering it whether you understand it or not.

Your breathing takes a while to come back to anything recognizable.

At first it is just air dragged in and let back out. Sweat has glued a few strands of hair to your forehead. Your hand has gone slack.

“You still with me?”

That is when your brain comes back. All at once. Hard. Fast.

Because now you are not just a body coming down from an orgasm.

Now you are yourself again. And Frank Langdon just talked you through getting off.

Frank Langdon, your coworker. Frank Langdon, your superior. Frank Langdon, whom you have just used as a combined anatomy instructor, practical demonstration guide, and live sex education resource.

“Yes, yeah, sorry.” You swallow, wipe at your forehead with the heel of your hand. “I'm here.”

“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Your sensitivity's going to be elevated for a minute, so just let your muscles relax and let your breathing even out. If you feel shaky, that's normal. If you heart's racing, also normal. Get some water when you can. Sit up slowly if you're going to move.”

“Okay,” you murmur, because he sounds so certain that for a second it is easy to borrow some of it. You try to unclench by degrees, thighs, stomach, shoulders, one thing at a time. “I am a little shaky, which is good to know is normal and not, like, a sign that I’ve accidentally broken something."

“No,” he says, and there is that low note of dry amusement under it now, just enough to catch. “You didn’t break anything. If you had, trust me, we’d be having a very different conversation.”

“Right, no, I know. Though sex-related injuries are not exactly unheard of. Do you remember that girl in the ER who had a condom stuck in her for over two months and didn't realize it? That would suck."

"Mm. It would," he agrees. "Protection is important. Equally important to make sure it actually comes back out with you."

You let out a small giggle at that and shift on the bed, drawing yourself up a little slower this time, careful like he told you to bed. The quilt bunches under your legs.

A quiet opens up. And it might be comfortable if it with anyone else. But it is not with anyone else.

You break first.

“So what happens now?” you ask, trying for light and missing by a little. “Do we pretend this was a totally normal educational exchange and never speak of it again?”

“I don’t think you’re capable of pretending that,” he says.

You flush hot all over.

“And you are?”

A pause.

“No.” The room goes still around you. You wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t, but he does say: “You should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Probably.”

You have to be up in three hours now. Have to see him in four.

Another beat. Neither of you hangs up.

Then, very quiet, very even, he says, “Next time, ask sooner.”

“Next time?”

“If you’re going to use me as a reference source,” he says, all dry composure again, though now it feels a little put on, “I’d prefer a more reasonable hour.”

Your cheeks heat with the power of a thousand suns.

“Oh, well, Dr. Langdon, I think —”

“Goodnight.”

The line clicks dead.

You lie there staring into the dark, phone still pressed to your ear, and understand with awful, perfect clarity that this has not ended anything at all.

More gaps in your knowledge.

And you really hate gaps.

A/N: this has been sitting in my drafts 4 ten thousand yrs!!!!!!!! thinking about writing a part two but we shall see. anyway thanks for reading!! love ya always

The dam breaks eventually, you’re not sure how long the cracks have been there, but you’d have to be blind not to notice the shift between you and Frank. It was slow, at first. Almost touches, when you were standing at the stove, you wouldn’t notice the way his hand hesitated at your back. Or when you went grocery shopping, he took the bags from you, fingers brushing yours for a second too long. You think the dam must have burst the day you got sick, your first day as an R3, of course.

You had awoken with a fever, the vomiting had come shortly after. You didn’t think you’d ever called out of work before, but you had no other choice. You exiled yourself to the couch, and Frank stayed to aid you despite all of your protests. Just when you were about to drift off, you felt the warmth of his mouth on your forehead.

That—that was when you think the dam broke.

It was hard to believe you’d been roommates for years, how you lived without him before was beyond you. Having a built-in best friend and co-worker was a blessing, and a curse. Because the moment Frank had kissed your forehead, he had made it much more impossible to deny those feelings.

You weren’t sure how long you’d been in love with him, maybe a part of you always had been.

Things were different after, not bad but there had certainly been a change. At home, you would stand shoulder to shoulder as you cooked, your eyes would meet over the dinner table, you put your head on his shoulder when you cozied up on the couch. You weren’t sure what this was, it definitely couldn’t be a normal roommate situation, but neither of you had said anything. Ever. Was it some sort of undisclosed agreement? Was it all in your head? Or was he as much in love with you as you were him?

You didn’t have any intention of asking him.

At work, you saw him try to keep a distance, though it never really translated properly. You’d stand at the nurse’s station, he would pop right up next to you, arm braced on the counter next to yours. He always sat next to you when charting, kicking your feet under the desk. Once, he grabbed your hand to lead you into the lounge when you’d told him your breakfast had been a Red Bull and a granola bar. The hospital staff talked about that one for weeks.

Dana would question you. Samira demanded the truth, Mckay shot knowing looks. You had nothing to tell them. What would you share? Yeah, you shared a bed that one time, and he made your favorite meals, and yes, his family loved you. Sometimes you fell asleep on him at the couch, and yeah, you thought about kissing him more often than you should. But what good would sharing that do, anyway?

You knew what it meant for you. But you had no idea what was running through Frank’s head, which was remarkable considering you knew him better than you knew yourself. His love for dogs, his bizarre obsession with milk, the length he cooked his salmon at for his version of perfection. You knew his favorite lines from his favorite movies, you knew what size shoe he wore and how he took his coffee. You knew the brand of his cologne, of his shampoo, that he stole your body wash instead of buying his own because he loved the smell. You knew his favorite band, his hatred for tuna salad, that his left Airpod always died so much earlier than his right and it drove him insane when he went on his jogs. But you did not know what was going through his mind, not when it came to you. You didn’t know if this was reciprocated, if you were simply his best friend and roommate that occasionally he brushed hands with.

You knew it wasn’t going to change, not unless one of you started dating. The thought made you sick to your stomach, actually. The idea of Frank with someone else in your apartment, hiding away in his room that you had help put together. You picked out the shelves on his wall, and you kept the plants on his windowsill alive.

And when Dr Robby confronted you about it one day, a particularly long shift that had you clinging to Frank in a dark hallway, desperate for some kind of comfort, the only thing you could say was: “He’s my best friend.”

The words tasted bitter as they left, and you knew your attending hadn’t believed them, either. Fortunately for you, he didn’t press it.

Whatever this was between you and Frank, you would never jeopardize it, he was far too important. You could settle for the quick squeezes, the couch naps and the carpool rides if it meant he got to stay yours—unofficially, that was.

Your plan was perfect, until it wasn’t. Until you were shook from your thoughts as the paramedics rolled in a middle aged woman who was wailing. Immediately, you sprang into action, forgetting your charts and joining Langdon at the scene.

“Talk to me,” you demanded, snapping on your gloves.

“42 year old woman with abdominal inflammation and fever. Started this morning.”

“Hey, Mrs Band,” Frank greeted as the two of you navigated and parked her into a room. He introduced you, and himself shortly after. “Eat anything out of the ordinary?”

“No,” the woman rasped. “Nothing.”

As Langdon questioned her, you went to work, pressing on her stomach, her skin tender beneath your gloves.

“Any problems urinating lately?”

A groan when you touched a specific section. You shared a look with Langdon as she nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I haven’t been peeing as much.”

“And how long have you had a fever?”

“Just this morning. I threw up, too.”

You nodded to a nurse, gave the instructions for morphine and how much, immediately watching Mrs Band ease at the lack of pain.

You regrouped with Frank at the door, watching him swipe his badge to the computer, fingers typing miraculously fast. “What’re you thinking?” you asked.

“Mesenteric ischemia, diverticulitis, peritonitis, maybe sepsis.”

“Negative on sepsis,” you said, quickly, throwing a glance over your shoulder. “Her pain is sectioned at her lower abdomen, she retracted when I touched it.”

“Let’s not rule anything out. Uh..” he turned back to the screen. “Ordering vasopressors and blood cultures.”

“Ordering vasopressors is a waste, I’m telling you it’s not sepsis. Look at her. Lack of urination and vomiting? I’m leaning toward peritonitis. If she’s had an organ rupture it would explain the blockage and her pain. Order an ultrasound.”

He said your name, sounding close to exasperated, and you were too. You were already nine hours into your shift, irritable and tired, but he never spoke to you like this.

“I’m not a med student anymore,” you snapped, your voice lowered.

“I’m still your senior resident,” he said, sharper than he clearly intended, because his brows immediately furrowed and he opened his mouth to quickly take it back, but you were already stepping away.

“Wow,” you gaped. “Wow. That’s how it is?”

“No, I-”

“Order the ultrasound, Langdon. I’m going to check on south 15.”

He called after you, sounding more desperate than he ever had before, but you pushed the door open and allowed it to swing shut behind you, marching to the other side of the ED and forcing your hurt and annoyance away.

You were lucky enough to have avoided him for the next hour, even when the results for Mrs Band came back, and all signs pointed to what you thought: peritonitis. You discharged her with instructions and antibiotics, bid her a goodnight, and nearly managed to escape your shift on-time just before a patient from triage abruptly went critical.

It was all hands on deck, you rushed into the trauma room and brushed by Frank without a second glance, aiding Robby with compressions and ignoring the glances you were being shot.

“Call for respiratory!” Someone shouted, you think it was Abbot.

“We don’t need respiratory,” Frank said, across the cot from you. All heads snapped in his direction, and you saw how he gesturing to something. “He came in for Osteoporosis, right? Look, he has an abscess, definitely untreated.”

“Cancel respiratory,” Robby yelled. “Push for Clindamycin. Good catch, Dr Langdon.”

You were still annoyed, but you couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride for him, too. Your adoration for Frank outshone any negative feelings, as unfortunate as it was.

It felt like hours before you changed out of your scrubs, your hair loose from the updo you’d had it in. Back at the lockers, you joined Samira and Mckay, who grinned as you approached.

“Hey,” Samira waved. “We’re thinking of going out. Would you care to join us?”

“God, yes. I could use a drink.”

Mckay wrapped an arm around you, laughing. “I knew she’d say yes. Cmon, Langdon is waiting.”

You tried not to stiffen. “Frank is coming?”

“Yeah,” Samira regarded you strangely. “Is that a problem?”

“No. No, of course not.”

That didn’t seem to convince either of them, and you pretended not to notice the look they shared behind your head. The Uber there was definitely even less assuring, you sat in the passenger seat away from Frank as he climbed into the back, and didn’t speak when he was involved in the conversation.

You were relieved when you finally reached the bar, one you’d been to dozens of times. You knew your way around, you think you even recognized the bartender when you gave her your order. Your friends found a table toward the back as you accepted the tray of glasses, sliding them to each of them.

“God, I needed this. I got peed on today,” Samira groaned, sipping her drink. You, however, caught Frank’s eye and downed yours in one sitting.

“Jesus!” Mckay snorted.

“Anyone need another round?”

“What are you, the WWE for drinking?”

You forced a smile, hopped to your feet and made your way to the bar once more. Only this time the line ahead of you was long, and you wound up waiting a while longer than anticipated.

“Hey,” someone said from behind you. You were half expecting to see Frank standing there, but you didn’t smell his cologne, and you didn’t immediately feel soothed by his voice, so you knew it wasn’t him. Instead, it was a decent looking man in a Carthart jacket with a nice smile.

“Hi,” you replied, a little uncertainly.

“You order yet?”

“No. I didn’t want to bother her. She looks busy.”

“She’s never too busy for a pretty girl. Hey, Lottie!” He shouted, and the bartender turned. “Expedite this lady’s drink. What’d you get, sweetheart?”

You tried not to preen at the name. “Uh, Malibu Bay Breeze, please.”

“And another round for me,” he said. “Great having your sister as a bartender, aye?”

“Oh, she’s your sister? That’s neat.”

“Yeah. Irish twins, if you can believe it. I’m Walker.”

You introduced yourself in return, and you weren’t uncomfortable, not really, but you felt like you were crawling out of your skin being so close to a man. A man who wasn’t…

Your gaze caught Frank’s from across the pub. His glass was empty on the table before him, his fingers white-knuckled around it. Samira and Mckay were busy chatting up some of your other co-workers who had also decided to join you, but you weren’t focused on them. You could only stare at him, at the way his lips were pursed, how his usually bright eyes were dull as he glanced between you and Walker.

You knew what he was asking—are you okay? And yeah, you were, but there was something else there, something in the set of his jaw and how he abruptly moved to down his drink. Whatever it was, it made your stomach warm, your brain a little fuzzy. You liked it, seeing that look in his eye. You’d never seen it before. Your goofball best friend and the man who never failed to make you laugh disappeared before your eyes, turned into something much sexier and something you had yet to title.

Then, you shook your head. Immediately, Frank clambered to his feet, and you turned back to Walker as your drink was handed to you.

“So sorry,” you blurted, interrupting Walker. “My boyfriend is asking for me.”

“Your-” Walker’s gaze caught something behind you, and a second later, you felt him. Not physically, but you still knew he was there. Then, he was draping an arm around you, standing tall from beside you and making your entire body light on fire.

You sipped on your Malibu, flashed a smile as you laced your fingers between Frank’s with your free hand, hand woven with the one that was dangling over your shoulder. “Thanks for the drink,” you told Walker, tugging Frank back in the direction of your table, which was now deserted except for a few empty glasses.

The two of you slid into the booth, Frank’s arm was still around you as you swallowed down the drink. Your knees bumped under the table, and Frank shielded you completely from the fellow customers at the bar, cornering you against the wall. Your heart did a funny little flip as your mouth found the straw, watching his gaze drop to it.

“Thanks for rescuing me,” you said. You couldn’t believe how fuzzy your brain was after two drinks, and how when Frank ordered yet another round from a wandering waitress, that he was tipsy after his second, too. You guessed it made sense, you both didn’t get to drink much.

“Anytime,” he told you, fingers flexing in yours.

“I’m not mad at you,” you told him, suddenly. You watched his brows raise. “Well, anymore.”

“I should have listened to you. I don’t want you to think I don’t trust your judgment. Or your skills.” His eyes found yours, expression earnest. “Because I do.”

“I know you do,” you whispered. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you, either. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. You weren’t sure when the two of you had gotten so close. “You saved that woman’s life.”

“And you saved Mr Colkin’s. Don’t undermine your success because of one lapse in judgment. You’re still a good doctor.” You paused. “And you saved me, too. From bar-dude and from being roommate-less. But if you undermine me again I will cut off your balls.”

Frank grinned like that was some sort of compliment. “I wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.”

It was the second time you’d been called it that night, but this time, the effect was completely different. You would’ve liked to blame it on the alcohol, how you squeezed your thighs together and tried not to let your mouth part.

“Better not,” you managed to grit out.

“I hate it when you’re mad at me,” he said. It was so quiet compared to the rest of the noise of the bar. “Though I do love that little crease between your eyebrows that forms whenever you’re glaring at me. Yeah, that one.”

You shoved him, a grin overtaking your features instead. “Shut up.”

“I like that more.”

You cocked your head to the side. “Like what?”

“Your smile.” For a moment, you were rendered speechless, and you had no choice but to watch as he leaned in, pressed a kiss to your jaw and immediately turning your face warm. “Your laugh.”

“Frank,” you whispered. As if he realized what he’d just done, he pulled away, rapidly. His eyes were wide, horrified, and just as he opened his mouth to blurt out an apology, you interrupted him. “Let’s go home,” you said.

His gaze searched yours, but there was no moment of hesitation in your expression, nor in his. He called another Uber, pulled out a couple of twentys and slapped them on the table, pulling you out of the bar with a lame goodbye shouted to your friends.

The drive home couldn’t have taken any longer, you were anxious with anticipation, the tension nearly suffocating you. It didn’t help that Frank’s fingers were inching up your thigh, his other hand glued around your waist.

You both stumbled up the stairs to your apartment, giddy and breathless with nervous giggles. You fumbled with the keys, especially with how he was pressed against your back, kissing below your ear and making your knees weak. You think you would’ve crumbled to the ground if he hadn’t been holding you upright.

Kissing Frank Langdon had been something you dreamt about longer than you’d like to admit, and the moment the door closed behind you both, he was on you. It wasn’t like anything you imagined, it was better. Mouth warm on yours, tongue scraping your teeth, the quiet groans that were elicited from him when your hands found his hair. The sound thrilled you, the pool of warmth in your stomach expanding by the second.

Together, you were a mix of panting and rushed shredding of clothes. You tripped over your sneakers, then over his, laughing into his mouth as he moved to catch you. His room was first, you think you pulled him, or maybe he led you into it, you weren’t really sure. He didn’t flick on the light, he didn’t even make any moves to close the blinds. You were on the third floor, anyway. And you couldn’t find yourself to care.

The back of your knees met his bed, you didn’t break the kiss, pulling at the hair that you could reach. He murmured your name, whispered it so much that it almost didn’t sound like it belonged to you anymore.

You fell back, landing on your elbows and watching him stare you down from where he stood. You couldn’t remember when you’d lost your shirt, if it was hanging on the doorknob or on the floor somewhere. Additionally, you didn’t care about that, either, not when you got to watch him lift his own shirt, tugging it over his head before he perched himself over you.

Desperately, you arched against him, your smooth skin brushing his chest and evoking a moan from your throat that would have embarrassed you the following morning if it hadn’t been for the way he twitched against you, erection hard as it pressed against your thigh.

“Frank,” you whispered, it was the first time you’d gotten to come up for air, and he’d only left your mouth to kiss your neck, to suck at the sensitive part on the juncture of your jaw before he moved again. Further down this time, hand slipping beneath your bra while he scattered hot kisses over your collarbone, trailing them down your stomach.

He peeled your pants off of you in an instant, your underwear gone with them. Your chest was heaving, watching as he ducked his head between your thighs and immediately making you bulk against him. Your fingers fisted in his sheets, eyes squeezed shut as you cried out, suddenly worried about a noise complaint from your next store neighbor. You didn’t have time to dwell on that, you heard him grunt, muffled by your legs and forcing your attention back to the heat that felt ready to burst out of you.

You hadn’t even gotten the chance to warn him, it happened so fast, your thighs clenching around his head and no opportunity to say anything. Your breathing slowed, momentarily, eyes opening as you watched him pull away, a hungry look on his face like he couldn’t get enough of you.

He captured your lips again, you had met him, pushed up and impatient to remember what he tasted like. Unlike before, his hands were not on your face, in fact, you heard the rustle of his pants falling to the floor, and there the two of you were, naked in front of each other, in your shared apartment, in Frank’s bed.

You wondered if you would regret this. Worse, if he would.

But Frank was on you again, positioned above as he aligned himself. One hand cupped your cheek, kissing you deeply just as you felt the stretch. Your moan was drowned out from the sound of his own, your fingers moved to claw at his back.

“Fuck,” he gritted out. “Fuck-”

You kissed him again, hearing his voice made it all too real, you weren’t sure if you could handle it. This was your best friend—your best friend who was quite literally thrusting inside of you, rocking your world and summoning another goddamned orgasm from you. Honestly, horrors aside, the way he was panting and flushed above you made it all worthwhile.

“I’m-”

“Me too,” he said, just as you gasped into his mouth. You felt it, all of it, the warmth as he finished, the way his pace slowed, and the way your heart stopped when he said: “I love you.”

You were both still drunk, you tried to dismiss it in your head, but the shift happened immediately, when he rolled off of you, helped clean you up before falling asleep blissfully beside you. It was easy to join him, the comfort of his body next to yours, his patterned breathing, but even as you slipped into unconsciousness, his words echoed into your dreams.

***

You woke first the next day, earlier than your alarm clock, which, very soon, you realized you were not even in your room. It all came flooding back, and you took a quick sweep around the room, still bare and pressed against Frank. Thankfully, he was still asleep next to you, which saved you from the mortification.

As gently as you could, you pried his arm off of you, fixed the blanket back onto his chest, and slipped out of the room. You snagged your pants and bracelet quickly, oblivious to how Frank was staring at your back. The moment the door closed behind you, he turned to stare at the ceiling, running a hand over his face and scrubbing his eyes for probably way too long.

You couldn’t get any of it out of your head, the sex, who it had been with, the I love you. Not to mention the fact that you still had to work with him that day.

Idiots. Both of you.

Your shower was quick, you washed the bar from your hair, the alcohol from your mouth, before finding a clean pair of scrubs from the dryer and bolting from the apartment.

You’d lingered at his door for three minutes before ultimately deciding to leave. It was stupid and reckless and possibly immature, but the thought of facing him was too overwhelming compared to ignoring it entirely. You would talk to him eventually, you had no choice. But it was too fresh and too early, your shift didn’t even start for another two hours. You had to get out of there, too scared to hear what he had to say—scared of regret, of him leaving, and worst of all, him not meaning what he’d said.

You got coffee, you drove around Pittsburgh and burned too much gas, you even sat in the parking lot of PTMC for an hour before the inevitable came. You watched his car roll into the parking lot, but he didn’t pull next to you.

Somehow, that was a relief. You switched the vehicle off, ducked under the wheel as he climbed from his car. You waited five minutes before going in after him, heart in your throat, but he was nowhere near the lockers when you arrived, and you quickly found out that he had requested to be on triage.

That made the overthinking start again, your swirling thoughts occupied your mind as you treated patients, did your charting, and ignored Dana’s stares.

“How was your night?” She asked.

“Fine,” you replied, focusing on the device before you. “Yours?”

“Well, I didn’t get laid, so probably not as good as yours.”

Your head snapped up, mouth open. “He told you?”

“Honey, he called me at three in the morning last night panicking that he’d messed everything up. He didn’t have to tell me.” She peered at you over her glasses. “Did he break your heart?”

“..No?”

“Did you break his?”

“I.. I don’t know. What?”

“Then go talk to him,” she waved you off. “He came in sulking like a puppy, and you look like you just ran over a cat. Not good for the work environment.”

You gnawed at your lip. “Well, what else did he say?”

Dana gave you a look. “I’m not the messenger.”

She left you alone at the station shortly after that, you were gawking at her back before someone shouted and you sprang back into action. You knew Dana was right, you were an adult, and you’d slept with your best friend. You needed to talk to him, no matter what your fears were telling you.

Only with Frank’s self banishment to triage you didn’t get to see him—at all. You caught glimpses of him when he snuck away to the bathroom, and you’d made eye contact once in passing, and you grew desperate to talk to him. But you were pulled left and right the entire day, with Collins out sick and a new intern starting that day, it didn’t feel like you were ever going to get the chance. Your head was screwed on backwards for the entirety of your twelve hour shift, and when you finally got to clock out, Frank was long gone.

His car, too. You were deflated on your way out of the hospital, this was your first time in years that you’d ever left by yourself.

You had to make it up to him, for sneaking out that morning and offering no explanation. So you drove to his favorite seafood place, ordered a salmon with mac and cheese, told them his exact specifications and tipped them extra good on your way out.

You exhaled upon seeing his car parked at home. With the bags in your hands, you fumbled with the keys to the door, pushing it open with your knee and coming to a sharp stop once you spotted him in the living room. On the coffee table was a range of all of your favorite foods, from pasta to that dessert you loved, even a pint of ice cream and a large drink you could only assume what was inside.

He caught sight of the bag in your hand, mouth quirking. “That for me?”

“Yes,” you answered, a little defensively. “It seems you have beat me to it. And one upped me.”

He stood, awkwardly, still in his scrubs and his hands tucked into his pockets. You admired his dimple, his crooked, hesitant smile, and felt all of your worries disappear.

“Can we talk?” Frank asked, weakly. “About..”

“Let me go first,” you said, moving toward him and dropping the bag on the table. “I shouldn’t have ran out on you this morning. I’m sorry. I freaked out. Not because I regretted it, but..” you shook your head. “Frank, you’re the most important person to me in the world. I couldn’t bear losing you over last night. So I bolted. I didn’t want to know if you regretted it, if you regretted it so much that you would move out-”

“-I would never-”

“So that’s why I left, because the thought of you wanting nothing to do with me after something I have wanted for so long was the worst possible outcome.”

Frank took a step toward you, and you suddenly felt like your feet were cemented to the floor, eyes wide as he neared you, hands outstretched. “That’s not an outcome.”

“What?”

“None of that was ever even a possibility. Did you miss the part where I said I love you?”

Hearing it again made you flatline. You felt dazed, staring at him. “No,” you whispered. “I heard it. But I thought-”

“I don’t just say it for fun,” he went on. “I didn’t blurt it out meaninglessly. I said it because I meant it, and I thought it would help reassure you that I wouldn’t regret any of it in the morning. Look how that turned out,” Frank added, lightly. You felt yourself smile, allowing him to take your hands. “I think I’ve been in love with you since the day you asked if I was a serial killer.”

“That’s romantic,” you said, dryly, but it came out more breathy than anything.

“You’re the only person who sees me,” he said, voice lowering. “You’re my best friend, the best person I have ever known. And we already live together.”

You felt yourself soften, molding into him. “Yeah, we do. And we’re co-workers. Think Dana is right?”

“About what?”

“That we’ll get sick of each other?”

“Nah,” he shrugged, brushing a strand of hair from your face. “Not a chance. So.. we’re doing this?”

You tucked yourself into Frank, chin planted on his chest as you gazed up at him. “Yeah. I love you. We’re doing this.”

His cheeks were red by the time the two of you were finished kissing. He gathered you in his arms, turned so that you were both facing the living room, and made a face.

Your first month as a resident was the busiest you’d ever been. It felt as if you never got a moment to yourself, training new interns and running around the ER like a headless chicken. The only thing that kept your head level was knowing that your friends were in the same boat, that even though you were all struggling, at least you were doing it together.

Frank worked overnights Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you worked them Fridays and Mondays. You hated not seeing him, how your work schedules were almost opposite. You didn’t get to vent about your shift, to binge a new show or help him cook in the kitchen.

When you did see him, it was in passing. You were clocking out, and he was coming in. You would give all of your patients to him, you trusted him the most. Then, you would go home and sleep the day away.

The months had blurred together before the two of you were on day shift again. Thankfully.

Sat on the toilet seat, you had a knee drawn to your chest, nail polish in your hand as you painted your toes. You weren’t sure what time it was, but when Frank appeared in the doorway, sweatpants loosely hung around his hips, you felt yourself perk.

“Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“Nah,” he dismissed. You watched him turn on the sink, moving to grab his toothbrush. You resumed your painting, lower lip snagged between your teeth as you concentrated. Frank spit out the toothpaste, wiped his face, then turned to you. “It’s lease renewal day.”

“I know,” you answered. “I have the document on my laptop.”

He quirked a brow. “You didn’t sign for me?”

“Well, how was I supposed to know you wanted to keep living with me?”

Frank rolled his eyes. “I would’ve thought the answer was obvious.”

“Aw,” you cooed. “You love being my roommate.”

He held up his floss stick, pointing it at you. “As if the feeling isn’t mutual.”

You felt your mouth quirk involuntarily. He was right, only you were becoming worried you liked being his roommate a little too much—when he slept shirtless some nights, when he cooked you breakfast and made you laugh. You could have played it off as platonic, but really, deep down, you knew. You just weren’t sure if you were ready to accept it yet.

“I can’t believe we’ve already been living together for a year,” you mused.

“Yep. Next step is proposing.”

Your heart fluttered, but you shot him a look. “Ha.”

Frank flashed you a grin, turned off the faucet and headed to the door. In the hall, he paused and glanced at you over his shoulder. “Want pancakes?”

You closed the cap on your nail polish, moving to stand. “Yes. But I’ll make the batter. You always make them-”

“Too thin,” he finished for you, watching you flick off the bathroom light to step closer to him. His hand briefly found the small of your back as he guided you to the kitchen. It wasn’t like you were going to get lost, the room was four steps away, but you said nothing and allowed him to handle you anyway. “I know.”

You opened the fridge, grabbing the ingredients, when you turn to hand them to him, he was already watching you. “What?” you asked.

“Nothing,” he said, quickly. “I’m just.. I’m glad you’re my roommate.”

“Me, too,” you told him, handing off the egg carton to him. “I’m glad you’re actually not a serial killer.”

Frank laughed, nudging you with his elbow. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go sign your name on the lease renewal, nerd.”

He made a face at you, you thought it was supposed to be mocking, but really you found it cute, how his hair had fallen into his face, that his lips pursed, and how your eyes lingered on the indent of his chin. You were suddenly breathless as he left the kitchen, listening to him type your password in, and you had to stop your hands from shaking as you cracked open an egg.

Falling for Frank Langdon was apparently the inevitable, the easiest thing you could have ever done. As he returned to the kitchen, boasting about something, you knew the next step wasn’t so simple: keeping your feelings under wraps.

***

You met Frank’s family on a Saturday, his parents in the early morning and his sisters at dinner. They had requested help moving their big furniture into their new house, a little lot right off the main road. You and Frank had lugged in the couch, a television stand, and many other objects that were too heavy for them.

“Think they’ll pay us for this?” Frank asked, heaving.

You wiped the sweat from your brow. “I’ll be happy with an uninterrupted nap.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“I’ll lock you in your room,” you threatened.

Behind you, someone laughed. You turned to see both of his parents there, his dad’s intense gaze scanning you, and his mother, who was smiling like she was lost in a memory while watching you.

“Frank,” his dad gestured to the door. “Help me with these flower pots while your mother gets your girl something to drink.”

“Oh, I’m-” you started to say, but Frank cut in front of you before you could finish.

“Yep, coming.”

You watched them go, a little bashfully. You were led to the kitchen, a quaint room with lots of colors. It was no wonder where Frank got his personality from. From inside, you heard him laugh with his dad. His mom, Linda, appeared next to you, offering you a glass of lemonade. “Thanks,” you said.

“Thank you,” Linda nudged you. “Frank has said a lot of things about you.”

“Oh, God,” you groaned. “They’re not all terrible, are they?”

She laughed. “Goodness, no. If anything, the opposite. He likes you a lot. I was a little weary when he first told me how he was going to move in with someone he didn’t know. But I’m glad it worked out. He’s very.. he’s much happier.”

“Really?” You felt your face light. “You think that’s because of me?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s because of the thankless job.”

“Hey, it’s not entirely thankless,” you quipped. “Just eighty percent of the time.”

Linda laughed, and you joined her. You cast your gaze back outside and met Frank’s gaze through the window. His lips turned upward, and you felt yours do the same.

When you returned home that night, Frank was chained to the couch. You’d done your best to assist him with the injury that came from helping his parents move, but it seemed that your doctor skills were no match.

“Do we have Advil?” he groaned.

“I’m looking,” you called from the kitchen, shuffling through the medicine cabinet. You’d never seen him like this—defeated, brows furrowed in pain. He was curled like a child, eyes squeezed shut. You felt a twinge of relief flood through you when you finally found the bottle, shaking out a few pills and grabbing him a water.

You were at his side in an instant, kneeling on the floor and pressing the pills to his lips. You aided him with drinking the water, despite his protests.

“My back hurts, I’m not immobile.”

“Oh, shut up and let me help you.”

So he did. You’d grabbed your heated blanket, draped it around him. He was asleep before you had the chance to fix him a tea. You heard his steady breathing, watched the rise and fall of his chest, and perched yourself on the edge of the couch next to him.

His fingers twitched near yours, you thought you must’ve imagined it. But then his mouth was parting, and he whispered: “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you murmured back, inhaling deeply when he latched his hand onto yours, fingers soft and rubbing against your palm. You could only stare then, your eyes locked on how they intertwined together, slotted like two puzzle pieces.

“I’m so grateful for you,” he said again, and your heart leaped. You said nothing, his eyes were still closed and you weren’t entirely sure if he was even fully conscious. An incoherent mumble came after, but the only thing you could make out was: “…my everything.”

You’d detached yourself after that, heart pounding in your ribcage. You made sure he was still covered with the blanket, that his water was full, and switched off the lights before scurrying off to your room. You flattened yourself against the door, your room dark except for the candle you had going from your nightstand, illuminating the book you had cracked open.

You squeezed your eyes shut and prayed for the day you stopped having feelings for the most important person to you.

***

You stand in the ambulance bay, your first day as an R2 was officially over. It hadn’t been terrible, but the charting was certainly a pain. You didn’t know how Frank and Samira did it. You knew you’d learn how to balance everything, but between the training, charting, and cases, you were ready to drop everything and run to the west coast.

The bay was covered in a soft sheet of snow, the flurries large under the light from the lamppost. You heard the doors slide open behind you, but you didn’t have to turn to know who it was.

“Ready to go?” Frank asked you, stuffing his hands in his big puffer jacket that you always teased him about.

“Think the storm will be bad?” You asked him instead, glancing to him for assurance. You didn’t dislike the snow, but it wasn’t your favorite, either. You were mostly worried about driving to work when you didn’t share a shift with him.

“Nah,” he shrugged, lifting an arm to rub your shoulder. You exhaled, allowing him to lead you to his car. “Who cares what the meteorologists say, anyway? They’re always wrong.”

You laughed, hoping he was right.

But it turned out, Frank was so deeply incorrect. By the time you reached home, the snow was much thicker than a simple sheet. You showered, changed into something warm, and he did the same.

You’d made the two of you hot chocolate, turned up the heat, and when he returned from the bathroom, you turned on the weather.

“There goes our Christmas plans,” he mused, eyes caught on the screen that revealed ten inches of snow.

“Like we had anything other than the Pitt to entertain,” you deadpanned. He sighed, bumping his mug against yours. “Think they’ll shut down the ED?”

Frank snorted. “Yeah. Not a chance.”

You opened your mouth to reply, but the entire apartment went dark. The TV flickered off, the lights too. Immediately, you two shared a look.

“Have I ever told you how much I hate storms?” You asked.

He squeezed your knee. “You and me both.”

The two of you did all of the necessary precautions, gathered batteries for flashlights, lit scentless candles, tried for any light source you could possibly find.

By the third hour of no power, you were freezing. You and Frank had bid one another goodnights nearly thirty minutes ago, but you were shivering under your covers, and you knew the idea was stupid. But you were also sure you were ten minutes away from freezing to death, and Frank ran warm. Always.

You grabbed your laptop, snuck out of your bed and crept into the hall. It took you about five tries before you actually wound up knocking on his door.

His response inside was immediate. “Yeah? You okay?”

You cracked the door open, feeling like a child. You gave him a sheepish smile. You never ventured into his room, not unless you were helping him find his keys or to pick him out an outfit for a party. You especially never went in at night, fearful where your imagination would take you when it realized you were standing in his room with no sunlight.

“I’m freezing,” you whispered.

He didn’t hesitate, he lifted the covers and motioned for you to get in. You could hardly believe it, but you scrambled to his bed before you could pivot. The smell of his cologne and aftershave overtook you immediately, but it wasn’t a scent you minded. It was the opposite in fact, and you wondered how the hell you would be able to function after finding out what his bedsheets smelt like.

Your body warmed instantly beside him, your teeth chattering ceased.

“Sorry,” you said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No,” Frank smiled, faintly. You were face to face, you were certain if you moved a centimeter, your noses would be touching. “I knew it was a matter of time. You’re always cold.”

“You know me so well,” you said.

You meant it as a joke, but his gaze softened. “Yeah. Too well.”

“I brought my laptop. If you wanted to watch a movie.”

“I’m beat. But you can watch one.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

He laughed, quietly. You shifted, your limbs skimming his. You were in sweats, and he was, too, but it was remarkable how touching him through clothes still had such an affect on you.

“You’re so far,” he muttered after a moment. You had just almost drifted off. It must’ve been why you didn’t realize what he was saying, or what was going to come next. You missed the way he hesitated, as if he needed to encourage himself before he reached to pull you in closer. His big hand on your waist, wrapping around you and evoking a quiet, satisfied groan from you.

Frank watched you, your head tucked under his chin, his arm rubbing circles on your back. His gaze snapped to the ceiling, as if just having a realization.

“Dr. Abbot,” Dana calls, peering over the top of her glasses. “You’re early.”

Beside her, you glance up from your tablet, meeting his eyes across the ER with that same soft smile.

“Dr. Abbot,” you say, like you can’t quite help yourself.

Jack squares his shoulders and starts toward the nurses’ station, determined not to let Dana and her all-knowing, all-seeing bullshit clock exactly why he’s at work almost two hours earlier than he needs to be.

“Yeah, I’ve got some stuff I didn’t get to wrap up this morning,” he lies.

Princess pops up from behind the desk. “I thought you said you stayed back this morning to make sure everything was sorted?”

Jack’s gaze cuts to her. “Yes. But I forgot something.”

Dana narrows her eyes. “Mhm. What’d you forget?”

“A few notes from the three a.m. GSW,” he replies quickly—too quickly.

It’s weak and he knows it, but there’s nothing else he could think of with Dana watching him like that and your warm, sleepy gaze still lingering from across the desk.

Dana nods slowly, adjusting the chart in her hands. “Right. Two hours early for a few notes.”

Jack just shrugs, avoiding her gaze as he walks past—and he doesn’t look back until he’s safely around the corner, standing in front of his locker. Only then does he risk a glance, just briefly over his shoulder, quick enough to catch a glimpse of you disappearing down the North hall.

God. It’s ridiculous, really. He’s a grown man.

More than that—he's an old man.

Yet here he is staying late at work and coming in early just to see more of you. Because ever since you swapped from nights to days, Jack doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Sure, he could barely concentrate when you were on shift together, but who knew not having you around would be even worse?

He spends the first half of his shift hating himself for being so hung up on someone so young and so impossibly out of reach—then spends the second half anxiously awaiting your arrival for the day shift.

And it’s only been two weeks.

But the absolute worst part?

He doesn’t even know why you swapped shifts. You never even spoke to him about it. You just told him at four a.m. two Saturdays ago that you were switching to day shift. No reason. No explanation. That was it.

At first he wondered if it was his fault—if maybe you’d simply decided you didn’t like working with him.

But you still greet him every morning and every evening with that same warm smile. You still look to him first whenever someone asks for an attending and he’s still around. You still text him whenever the ER cat shows up outside the ambulance bay—which apparently happens much more often during the day shift.

And Jack still buys a packet of freeze-dried liver treats every Sunday to keep in the cupboard above the break room fridge—because he knows how much you love feeding that cat.

“What’re you doing here?”

Jack’s head whips around at the sound of his friend’s voice.

“I—uh—came in early to fix up a few notes,” he says, turning back to shove his bag into his locker.

Robby’s brows lift. “Two hours for notes?”

Jack sighs, slinging his stethoscope around his neck and shutting his locker before turning to face his fellow attending. “Are you of all people really going to lecture me about not having a life outside of this ER?”

Robby chuckles quietly, lifting both hands out of his pockets in surrender. “I wasn’t judging.”

“Good,” Jack mutters, already starting back toward central. “Anything I need to know?”

Robby falls into step beside him. “North Three’s waiting on a CT for possible appendicitis. Kid in Five came in with chest pain but his labs look clean so far. Dana’s still fighting with bed control about moving the pneumonia admit upstairs.”

They both stop at the nurses’ station, glancing up at the board.

“Otherwise it’s been unusually calm,” Robby adds. “Which probably means you’re about to get slammed.”

Jack gives him a flat look. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Robby claps him on the shoulder. “Oh—and that R2 you gave me?”

“What about her?”

Robby shrugs. “She’s great.”

“I know,” Jack says, keeping his voice carefully even.

Robby studies him for a second, eyes narrowing just a fraction, the corner of his mouth threatening to lift. The man might be a disaster when it comes to his own feelings, but he has an uncanny talent for spotting everyone else’s.

“We’re alright out here if you want to catch up on your notes,” he says after a moment, already turning away. “Or go make the rounds. Get some very thorough handovers from the residents.”

Jack keeps his eyes fixed on the board. “I hate you.”

Robby huffs out a quiet laugh. “Then why are you here two hours early?”

Jack exhales sharply and steps forward, pulling one of the tablets from the rack.

“Notes,” he says, a little louder than necessary.

Robby just shakes his head, still smiling faintly as he disappears down the North corridor.

For a moment, Jack doesn’t move. He lingers at the nurses’ station, tablet in hand, pretending to analyse the board while ignoring the incredibly unsubtle looks from Perlah and Princess—both of them watching him with the kind of interest that usually means someone’s about to become the subject of a very entertaining conversation.

Then, with a polite nod to each of them, he clears his throat and steps away, turning toward the break room—trying very hard not to hope he runs into you on the way.

And trying not to be disappointed when he doesn’t.

The break room is empty when he steps inside, the noise of the ER dulling as the door falls shut behind him. He sets his tablet on the table—next to someone’s half-eaten lunch and a discarded Lean Cuisine container—and grabs a clean mug from the cupboard, pouring the last of the coffee pot into it.

Then he drops into the seat furthest from the door, his back to the bulletin board, and taps the tablet awake, pulling up the notes for the three a.m. GSW. The same notes he already finished in detail while staying back this morning—before Robby told him to get the hell out of his ER and get some sleep.

He barely makes it through two lines of the chart before the door swings open again.

“Shit, sorry,” you say quickly, stepping toward the table.

Jack’s pulse does the same stupid thing it always does whenever he sees you, making his chest feel hot and his head a little fuzzy.

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, as if it isn’t obvious.

You’ve already stacked the Lean Cuisine container on top of the half-eaten bowl of something grey and mushy-looking and are halfway to the sink with them.

“I only got, like, a five-minute break today and had to run out for a trauma, then completely forgot about my lunch,” you explain, cheeks flushed as you glance down at the bowl. “This is gross. I’m so sorry.”

Jack shifts in his chair. “I’ve seen worse in here, I promise.”

You glance over your shoulder as you turn on the tap, the corner of your mouth lifting just slightly. “Really?”

He nods. “Really.”

He could almost swear your smile lifts a little higher before you turn back to the sink, scrubbing hurriedly at the bowl of slop that probably shouldn’t be going down the drain anyway.

Jack clears his throat. “But—uh—Lean Cuisine? Really?”

You look back at him again, brows drawn. “What’s wrong with Lean Cuisine?”

“Nothing,” he says lightly. “If you’re trying to survive a very stressful twelve-hour shift on only four hundred calories.”

You huff a quiet laugh, turning back to the sink. “I actually managed to eat lunch today. That’s already a win.”

“It’s mostly sodium and sadness,” he adds, almost absently. “Not much protein.”

You finally turn the tap off and spin around, leaning a hip against the counter. “Alright, Dr. Abbot. When I find the spare time to start meal prepping between my very stressful twelve-hour shifts, I’ll let you know.”

Jack opens his mouth—then closes it again. Because what he wants to say is ridiculous.

But it comes out anyway.

“…I cook.”

You blink.

“You cook?”

Jack clears his throat, suddenly very interested in his coffee mug.

“Yeah. Well.” He shrugs. “I’ve been told I’m reasonably good at it.”

You stare at him for a second, brows knitting slightly as you clearly try to figure out where the hell that came from.

“Well,” you say with a quick smile, “I guess your dinner guests are pretty lucky.”

Before he can respond, you grab the Lean Cuisine packet, toss it in the bin, and step toward the door.

“Sorry again for the mess.”

Then you’re gone—leaving Jack alone with his coffee, his notes, and the growing suspicion that there might actually be something seriously wrong with him.

-

“Is that Dr. Abbot in the break room?” Santos asks, falling into step beside you.

You keep your eyes fixed on your tablet.

“Yep.”

She leans closer, steering you out of the way of a gurney.

“But night shift doesn’t start for like two more hours.”

“I’m aware.”

“So, why is he here?”

You exhale sharply and finally look up from your tablet. “I don’t know, Trin. Maybe because the universe hates me.”

She snorts. “Or maybe because he likes you.”

You roll your eyes, turning toward the South corridor. “Please don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything,” she insists. “I seriously think that old man has a thing for you.”

“Don’t call him that,” you mutter.

“Okay, fine. I seriously think that hot, older man has a thing for you,” she says, stopping beside you at the South desks. “And we all know how you feel about him, so—”

“No,” you snap. “We don’t all know how I feel about Ja—Dr. Abbot.”

She presses her lips together to keep from laughing.

“Besides,” you go on, dropping into a chair. “I swapped to day shift so I could stop being distracted by my attending and actually focus on being a good doctor—so could you please stop distracting me?”

She leans a hip against the desk, completely ignoring you. “And don’t you think that’s a little strange? I mean, you swapped to day shift—what, two weeks ago?”

You glance at her from the corner of your eye. “And?”

“And,” she says dramatically, “for the past two weeks Dr. Abbot has been staying back every morning and coming in early every afternoon.”

Your gaze slides back to the computer. “So?”

She sighs, exasperated. “It’s not a coincidence.”

“Actually, I think it is,” you argue.

She stares at you for a second, eyes narrowing. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re annoying.”

She rolls her eyes and pushes off the desk. “Whatever. You’re still coming out tomorrow night, right?”

Your fingers hesitate over the keyboard. “Uh—I’m not sure yet.”

“Dr. Ellis is the only person from night shift that’ll be there,” she says.

You let out a quiet sigh of defeat.

“Fine,” you mutter. “I’ll come.”

“Good.” She grins, already turning away. “Come to my place around six. We can get ready and pregame.”

“Why can’t I get ready at home?” you ask.

“Because,” she calls over her shoulder, “I get to pick what you wear.”

And before you can argue, she slips into a patient room, effectively ending the conversation.

“Great,” you mumble, turning back to the computer. “Can’t wait.”

It’s not like you’re not looking forward to finally joining in on a night out now that you’re no longer on the night shift.

You are. You’re just... nervous.

Nervous, perpetually stressed out, and still adjusting to life as a day-walker. And Santos knows that. She probably knows you better than anyone else at PTMC—even though you’ve spent the better part of ten months working opposite shifts.

Which is exactly why she’s pushing you to join this night out. Because she knows you need it. She knows you need to relax, forget about work, and do something other than obsess over the night shift attending who’s had you completely undone since the day you first met.

God.

Jack Abbot. The single most dangerous man in Pittsburgh.

Not only is he stupidly hot, but he’s also annoyingly competent, irritatingly attentive, and has the starring role in every single one of your most inappropriate fantasies.

He’s also the very reason you’re terrified of having to redo your second year of residency, because that man affects your focus so much you literally can’t function. Like three weeks ago, when you walked straight into the glass door of Trauma One because you were too busy watching him take his jacket off.

His damn jacket.

That was the moment you finally decided you needed to swap shifts—because Dr. Shen couldn’t look at you for the rest of the night without bursting into laughter.

Jack Abbot is a liability to your health and wellbeing—which means he is a liability to your career. And even though asking Dr. Robby to swap to day shift was one of the most ridiculously difficult things you’ve done since starting at PTMC, you stand by the fact that it was the right decision.

The smart decision. The professional decision. Even if… it might not be working yet.

Because now you can’t just glance across central anymore and see Jack leaning against the desk, talking through a case with Lena. You can’t have him step up beside you when you’re unsure about something and quietly walk you through it. He’s not the one across from you in the trauma bays. And there isn’t a coffee cup that magically appears in front of you during the three o’clock lull.

Now you just… think about him instead.

But it’s only temporary. You’re sure of it. You just need to get used to the day shift and figure out how to get Jack Abbot out of your head.

Which… you have a sneaking suspicion is what Santos plans on helping you with this weekend.

You’re pretty sure you overheard her the other day telling Whitaker that the only way to get over someone is by getting under someone else. And maybe that’s exactly what you need to do—get under someone else so you can stop thinking about the maddeningly hot man who’s nearly twice your age and most definitely does not have a thing for you. Regardless of what Santos seems to think.

You spend the rest of your shift catching up on charting and trying very hard not to think about Dr. Abbot.

When someone asks for an attending, you call Dr. Robby. When you hear his voice just around the corner, you change paths as quickly and inconspicuously as you can. And when your notes are up to date and night shift starts rolling in, you find Dr. Ellis and give her—and only her—the rundown on your patients.

By the time you shut your locker and sling your bag over your shoulder, the sky outside is dark and there are only a few day shifters left lingering around the nurses’ station.

“Did you drive today?” Whitaker asks, shutting his locker only a moment after you.

“Yeah,” you reply. “Need a ride?”

He nods sheepishly. “That’d be great. Santos left already, said I was taking too long.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, I bet it had nothing to do with whatever she and Garcia were whispering about in the stairwell.”

Whitaker winces. “I just hope they’re at Garcia’s tonight.”

You huff a small laugh and hitch your bag higher. “You ready?”

He nods.

You both turn and start back toward central—but just as you reach the nurses’ station, his steps slow.

“Do you need to…?”

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

You frown. “Need to what?”

He hesitates. “Don’t you normally say goodbye to Dr. Abbot?”

Your eyes widen slowly. “Uh—no. Why would you say that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just thought you two were close.”

“We’re not close,” you say, a little too quick.

“Sorry,” he mutters, raising both hands in surrender. “I just—I don’t know. I thought because you were his resident you two were… close.”

“I’m not his resident,” you snap. “I’m just… a resident. I don’t belong to him.”

“Okay,” he says slowly, brows drawing together. “I’m sorry, I just thought—”

“You thought wrong,” you mutter, glancing over your shoulder to make sure no one is listening.

Thankfully, the two nosiest nurses in the ER have already gone home for the day.

“Let’s just go.”

You grab his wrist and walk quickly toward the ambulance bay doors, giving Ellis and Shen a small nod as you pass—completely missing the middle-aged attending who just overheard most of your conversation.

The car ride to Santos and Whitaker’s isn’t long. Whitaker fills most of it anyway—rambling about the shift, about the kid in Five and whether night shift is going to get slammed, about how Dana looked like she was two seconds away from strangling bed control by the end of the day. And every few minutes he circles back around to apologising for making you drive him home.

You wave him off each time.

“It’s fine, Whitaker.”

“Seriously though,” he says as you pull up outside their building. “I really appreciate it.”

He slings his bag over his shoulder and climbs out of the car, pausing on the sidewalk to give you one last wave before heading toward the front door.

The moment the passenger door falls shut, the quiet settles in. You let out a long breath, tipping your head back against the headrest and letting your eyes fall shut for a moment. And immediately—inevitably—your brain drifts straight back to the same place it always does.

Jack Abbot. Of course.

You scrub a hand over your face before shifting the car back into gear and pulling away.

The rest of the night passes the way most nights do—with a quick shower, something vaguely edible scavenged from the fridge, and half-heartedly scrolling through your phone until exhaustion finally drags you to bed.

When your head finally hits the pillow, you tell yourself you’re too tired to think about him. It’s been a long day—long week—and all you need right now is sleep, not fantasies.

But that doesn’t stop your brain from doing it anyway. Because sometime in the early hours of the morning, Jack Abbot shows up in your dreams. Not in the ER. Not standing beside you at the nurses’ station or leaning over a chart.

He’s in a kitchen. Cooking.

Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, moving around the stove with the same quiet confidence he carries through the hospital—like he knows exactly what he’s doing and expects the rest of the world just to trust him.

And in the dream, you do.

You lean against the counter and watch him the way you sometimes watch him in the trauma bays, telling yourself you’re just observing. Just curious. Just learning.

He glances over his shoulder eventually, catching you staring—and says something you can’t quite hear over the soft clatter of the pan. But he’s smiling.

Then the dream shifts the way dreams tend to—logic slipping sideways until suddenly you’re standing much closer than you should be. Close enough to smell whatever he’s cooking. Close enough that when he turns toward you the space between you disappears entirely.

His hand settles at your waist like it belongs there.

Your back meets the edge of the counter.

And when his mouth brushes your neck—

You wake with a sharp inhale, staring up at the ceiling, heart racing.

“Fuck,” you mutter, dragging a hand over your face.

So much for getting him out of your head.

For a while, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, watching the first pale line of sunlight creep across until it touches the wall opposite your window.

At some point you realise you’re still replaying the dream in your head.

The kitchen. The way his hand had felt at your waist. The warmth of his mouth against your neck.

You groan quietly and drag the blanket over your face.

“Get a fucking grip.”

Then you throw the covers back and force yourself out of bed, heading straight into the kitchen in search of coffee.

Your small apartment is always quiet—but this morning it feels too quiet. Too still as you silently sip your coffee, one hip leaned against the kitchen counter. Which, unfortunately, leaves far too much room for your brain to wander right back to its favourite topic.

Jack Abbot.

After coffee, you take yourself for a long walk around the block, hoping the cool morning air might help clear the remnants of the dream from your head.

It doesn’t.

But by the time you make it back to your apartment, your legs feel loose and your mind feels a little quieter, and for the briefest moment you almost manage to convince yourself that you’re excited about tonight. That you’re going to be able to do what Santos is clearly angling for and go home with an attractive stranger so you can stop draining your vibrator battery with inappropriate thoughts of your attending.

The rest of the day drifts past in a slow blur of small, forgettable things. Laundry. Answering a couple of messages in the group chat. Half-heartedly reviewing a few notes from earlier in the week before deciding you absolutely refuse to think about work on your day off.

Eventually the afternoon light begins to soften and stretch across the floor, which means it’s probably time to start getting ready if you’re actually going to make it to Santos’ place before she decides you’re bailing and comes knocking to drag you there herself.

So you shower, change, pack a bag, and throw it over your shoulder on the way out the door—trying very hard not to feel disappointed that Dr. Ellis is the only person from night shift who’s going to be at the bar tonight.

It really is for the best.

You, alcohol, and Jack Abbot in the same room is a terrible idea.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Santos announces, finally stepping out of the bathroom.

You, Javadi, and Whitaker—who have spent the last twenty minutes on the couch chatting and sipping beer—look up.

“Aw, I wish I could do winged eyeliner like that,” Javadi says. “It just doesn’t suit my eye shape.”

“Don’t look too close,” Santos mutters. “It’s super uneven, but I don’t have time. I still have to fix this one before we go.”

She tips her chin toward where you and Whitaker are sitting on the opposite end of the lounge.

Whitaker’s eyes go wide. “Me?”

Santos scoffs. “Not you, Huckleberry. God, I don’t have enough time in the world to fix whatever’s going on there.”

Whitaker frowns, glancing down at his navy-blue button-up shirt. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Everything,” Santos says, already turning away.

Whitaker lifts his head, glancing between you and Javadi. “Is it really that bad?”

Javadi leans forward, lowering her voice. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Whitaker. You look great.”

You pat his shoulder. “It’s fine, really. She’s just—”

The words die on your tongue as Santos reappears, holding what can only be described as a sparkly scrap of fabric on a hanger.

Javadi tilts her head. “What’s that?”

Santos grins. “A dress.”

Whitaker chokes on his beer. “That’s… not a dress. That’s a glittery napkin.”

“Oh my God.” Javadi snorts. “My mom would kill me just for buying that.”

“I didn’t buy it,” Santos says lightly. “A friend in college gave it to me, but it’s never fit quite right.”

She steps forward, extending the hanger toward you.

“But I know you’ll be able to pull it off,” she adds, her grin sharpening.

You stare at it—glinting in the low evening sun spilling through the windows.

“Santos… this is a work thing,” you mutter.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not a work thing. It’s just an outing with people from work.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Whitaker asks.

Santos sighs. “No, it’s not. And are you forgetting our main objective?”

You blink at her.

“To get you laid.”

Javadi giggles nervously, trying to hide it behind a swig of beer.

“Come on,” Santos says. “Just put it on and if it doesn’t work, we try something else.”

You hesitate, staring at the glittery thing like it might catch fire at any moment. Which, given enough sunlight, it probably could.

“Fine,” you say at last, pushing off the couch. “I’ll try it on, but that does not mean I’m wearing it.”

Santos’ eyes sparkle with excitement. Or maybe it’s just the dress.

“That’s my girl.”

You take the hanger from her and trudge into her room, nudging the door shut behind you. It takes a minute for you to figure out how the glittery napkin is supposed to go on—but once you do, you shed your comfortable clothes and shimmy into the most sparkly piece of fabric you’ve ever worn.

And somehow, the shimmering scrap of nothing turns out to be an actual dress—short, sparkling, and just structured enough to stay where it’s supposed to while still feeling mildly illegal.

With a deep breath, you turn away from the mirror and open the door, stepping back out into the lounge room.

“So?”

For a moment, no one says anything.

Whitaker’s mouth falls open.

Javadi’s eyebrows lift. “Oh.”

Santos, meanwhile, tilts her head appreciatively, one hand on her hip, eyes gleaming as she looks you over from head to toe.

“I knew it,” she says smugly.

Whitaker blinks. “That is not a dress.”

Javadi elbows him. “Stop talking.”

You tug awkwardly at the hem—which doesn’t actually move much because there isn’t very much hem to tug.

“Santos,” you say carefully, “I’m not sure—”

“Relax,” she says. “You look incredible.”

She circles you slowly, like a stylist inspecting her work.

“And you’re definitely going to get laid.”

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here,” Whitaker mutters, his face bright red.

Santos rolls her eyes. “You’re only here because you live here, Huckleberry. Now go grab that bottle of tequila from on top of the fridge—we’re going to need some liquid courage before we head out.”

After two shots of tequila and Santos’ finishing touches to your makeup, you all head out the door. Whitaker calls an Uber, the four of you pile in, and you carefully keep Santos’ leather jacket wrapped around yourself for some semblance of modesty.

You don’t really plan on taking it off for the rest of the night—even if it isn’t that cold.

The ride to the bar isn’t nearly long enough. Javadi spends most of it excitedly talking about how she can finally go out drinking now that she’s twenty-one, which Santos encourages with the enthusiasm of someone who clearly intends to make the most of that milestone.

You mostly just stare out the window. Trying not to think about the dress you shouldn’t have agreed to wear and the night shift attending you definitely shouldn’t be missing right now. Because if someone asked you where you’d rather be tonight—the bar or the ER with Dr. Abbot—your honest answer would be incredibly depressing.

Who would rather be at work than out with their friends on a Saturday night?

“We’re here,” Santos announces, nudging your side a little too hard.

You all thank the driver before climbing out, gathering yourselves on the sidewalk in front of the familiar establishment Santos loves dragging everyone to.

“Relax,” she says, dropping a hand on your shoulder. “You don’t need this.”

She tugs at the leather jacket, pulling it off your shoulders until it’s bunched at your elbows.

“I feel naked,” you mutter. “Like this is some nightmare where I show up to work in my underwear.”

Whitaker snorts. “Not far from it.”

Santos rolls her eyes. “Well, you’re not at work. You’re at a bar. And this is supposed to be fun.”

Right. Fun.

That is the entire point of tonight. Go out. Have a drink. Meet someone who isn’t Jack Abbot. Ideally forget Jack Abbot exists for at least a few hours.

Completely achievable.

Right?

“Fine.”

You draw a deep breath and drop your arms, letting the jacket slide off completely. Santos grins as you sling it over one elbow, trying not to instinctively hold it in front of your body like armour.

“See?” she says. “Much better.”

“Let’s just go inside before I change my mind,” you mutter, already starting toward the door.

Javadi loops her arm through yours. “You look amazing. Seriously.”

You give her a small smile, trying not to feel quite so awkward as Santos leads the way toward the main entrance.

It’s just a bar. Just a normal Saturday night. You’ll be fine after a few more shots of liquid courage.

You glance through the front window as you approach—more out of habit than anything else, your eyes drifting lazily over the crowded room inside.

People. Low lights. Patrons lingering around the bar.

And—

Your brain stalls.

Because there’s a man leaning against the bar with one elbow braced on the countertop, his shoulders broad under a tight black shirt, head tipped slightly as he talks to someone beside him.

A familiar someone.

Dr. Ellis.

And the man—

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Your stomach plummets.

Jack fucking Abbot.

Your feet stop moving, your whole body suddenly forgetting how to function.

Your pulse kicks violently against the inside of your throat as a wave of heat rushes up the back of your neck, sudden and dizzying and sharp enough to make the edges of your vision blur for half a second.

Because he looks—

He looks so good.

Relaxed in a way you’ve never seen at work. One hand curled loosely around a glass as he frowns slightly at something Ellis is saying, that small crease between his brows you know far too well.

And suddenly you are extremely, violently aware that you are standing outside a bar wearing approximately three square inches of glitter.

“Hey,” Javadi says beside you. “What’s—”

“Santos.”

She doesn’t stop.

“Santos,” you say again, your voice almost breaking.

She glances over her shoulder. “Hm?”

“You knew.”

She stops, her hand hovering near the door.

Whitaker glances between the two of you. “What’s happening?”

“Technically,” Santos says slowly, “I didn’t know. I just... suspected.”

“You said Ellis was the only one from night shift who’d be here.”

She winces. “I did, but what I meant is… Ellis is the only one who actually told me she’d be here.”

You stare at her. “So you did know?”

“I knew it was his night off.”

“Santos, I—” You glance back at him through the bar window. “I can’t go in there like this.”

“Like what?” she asks. “Smoking hot?”

“Half naked.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, you can.”

“I will actually die.”

“No, you won’t,” she says firmly. “You’re an adult. You can wear whatever you want, talk to whoever you want, and just because your incredibly inconvenient attending crush happens to be inside does not suddenly revoke your civil liberties.”

She pulls the door open.

“Now stop panicking and get in the bar.”

-

“He swore the chest pain had nothing to do with the seven energy drinks he’d had that night,” Ellis says, still rambling about a patient who pissed her off two nights ago, “which was a bold position to take with a heart rate of one-forty.”

Jack snorts softly. “And did you believe him?”

Ellis’ eyes go wide, and she takes a long drink before continuing her rant about night shift patients and the strange confidence people have when explaining why their terrible decisions definitely have nothing to do with the symptoms they’re currently experiencing.

Jack nods along, offering the occasional comment or question where needed, meeting her gaze now and then—but mostly keeping his attention on the door. Waiting. Because he’s not stupid enough to ask anyone if you’re going to be here tonight, but he is naïve enough to hope you will be.

He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight—his first night off in two weeks.

He was supposed to be at home, cooking something decent for dinner, enjoying the rare luxury of not wearing scrubs, and inevitably indulging in his favourite guilty pleasure—involving nothing but his hand and some very inappropriate thoughts of you.

But he’s not.

He’s here. In a crowded bar, sipping cheap scotch, listening to Ellis complain about the night shift patients and their weird confidence, just… waiting.

For you.

He’d wanted to ask you yesterday if you were coming to the bar tonight—before he agreed to join—but he’d barely seen you before the end of your shift. And you didn’t even say goodbye. Which isn’t unusual, given how chaotic the ER can be, but then he’d overheard your conversation with Whitaker—and something about it made his chest feel too tight.

It wasn’t anger. Not exactly. Not jealousy, either. It was just... wrong. Not because what you said was wrong, but because he hates that it was right. That you don’t belong to him. Even if Robby calls you ‘his R2’ and Whitaker thinks you’re close because you’re his resident—none of it changes the fact that he has no real claim over you.

Which is ridiculous. He knows it.

He shouldn’t feel territorial. He shouldn’t want this. Want you. And yet, his chest still feels too tight—a slow, hot coil of frustration and longing curling up into his throat, and he hates it. Hates hearing it out loud, hates how much it matters, hates that he can’t make it not matter.

“Oh.” Ellis glances over her shoulder. “Looks like Santos and the others are here.”

Jack’s gaze flicks back to the door.

He tries not to react, not to straighten, not to square his shoulders as if he’s bracing for something—but he can already feel his composure slipping.

Santos steps in first, her head turned slightly as she talks to Whitaker, who walks in behind her. Then it’s Javadi, an unusually wide smile on her face as she looks at—

You.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Jack stops breathing.

His chest burns. His stomach flips. His hand tightens dangerously around his scotch glass.

It’s you. Of course it’s you. You’re perfect.

But then—

That dress.

God.

That dress—short, sparkling, clinging just enough to make every nerve in his body snap awake. It shimmers under the low lights as you move, and he hates himself for noticing every subtle curve, every shift of fabric, as if time itself has slowed just to torture him.

It’s all too much.

He can feel his pulse in his throat, heat burning beneath his skin, blood rushing in the one direction it really, really shouldn’t be right now. In public. In front of his coworkers.

He blinks, finally tearing his gaze away from you.

And that’s when he notices the rest of the bar. All staring. All stunned.

He hates them all.

He hates that they can even look at you. Hates that the universe allows it. Hates that they might see even a fraction of what he sees—and feel a fraction of what he feels.

And he hates, more than anything right now, that you’re not his.

“Dr. Abbot,” Robby says, appearing beside him and slinging an arm across his shoulders. “What’s your poison tonight?”

Jack lifts his drink, knuckles still white around the glass. “Scotch.”

Robby claps his shoulder, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. “You might not want to have too many of those.”

Then he slips past both Jack and Ellis and raises a hand to flag down the bartender.

“Alright,” Ellis says, pushing off the bar. “I’m going to go grab a seat before the table gets too crowded.”

Jack nods, but he doesn’t follow. He stays beside the bar, rigid now, eyes fixed on the group of men at a high table just a few feet from the front door. They’re muttering to each other, leaning in, voices low—but nothing about it is subtle. Their gazes are glued to you as you weave through patrons and tables to greet the rest of the PTMC crew gathered in a booth near the back.

One of them—the dumbest looking one, Jack’s already decided—slowly slides off his stool, nodding along while his friends murmur their advice.

Jack glances back at you, now standing beside McKay, sliding your arms into the leather jacket you’d been carrying. Santos grabs your wrist, tilting her head toward the bar as she starts dragging you with her.

And, like a fourteen-year-old boy with a crush, Jack’s pulse starts racing.

“Dr. Abbot,” Santos says, grinning as you both approach the bar. “Fancy seeing you somewhere other than the ER on a Saturday night.”

“I do have a life outside of work, you know,” he says dryly, lifting his drink and looking anywhere but at you.

“Like playing bingo at the senior centre?” Santos asks, resting both forearms on the bar.

You step up on her other side, squinting at the shelves of liquor on the back wall like they’re the most interesting thing in the room.

“Bingo’s on Wednesdays,” he says mildly. “Try to keep up.”

Santos snorts, shaking her head as she reaches for the small leather-bound bar menu. But out of the corner of his eye, Jack sees your head dip—just slightly—and you try to hide a small laugh against your shoulder.

Jack feels it like a punch to the ribs.

Because you’re listening.

And apparently… you think he’s funny.

“Alright,” Santos says, lifting a hand. “I think we need some tequila over here.”

The bartender steps away from where he’d been serving farther down the bar, but his attention quickly drifts past Santos and lands on you. He leans in, resting one palm flat against the bar while he wipes down the counter with a rag that doesn’t really need wiping.

“So,” he says to you, not Santos. “What are you drinking tonight?”

Santos blinks.

“I just told you,” she says flatly. “Tequila.”

The bartender barely glances at her.

Jack’s jaw tightens.

You look briefly confused, glancing between Santos and the bartender.

“Uh—whatever she orders is fine.”

“Yeah. Tequila,” Santos repeats, slower this time.

The bartender laughs like she’s joking—and Jack sets his scotch down slowly. Carefully.

His eyes stay locked on the man now lining up four small glasses in front of you, still completely ignoring Santos. The way he’s watching you is too much. Too close. The faint curl at the corner of his mouth makes Jack want to punch the smirk right off his face.

And by the way you shift a little closer to Santos—pulling your jacket tighter around yourself—he knows you’re uncomfortable.

His hand clenches at his side.

Robby pauses as he walks past, a beer in each hand.

“Easy, tiger,” he mutters. “She can handle herself.”

“I know,” Jack says, voice low. “Doesn’t mean she has to.”

Robby gives him a look—a brief, knowing glance, somewhere between amusement and warning. “Careful.”

Jack doesn’t respond. He just turns back to you and Santos, watching as you each knock back two shots of tequila, your nose scrunching as the burn hits. And he can’t help the small twitch at the corner of his mouth, because the face you make as you set the second glass down is ridiculously cute for someone wearing a dress like that.

“Okay,” Santos says. “I need a vodka soda before I start making bad decisions.”

The bartender nods, already reaching for another glass—and before he can even ask if you’d like another drink, someone else steals your attention.

“Hey,” the guy says, stepping up beside you. “Can I get you another one?”

He leans in, just enough to be heard over the noise—but it’s still too close.

You shift slightly, angling toward him. “Oh. Uh—sure.”

Santos presses her lips together, clearly fighting a smile as she turns back to the bar, suddenly very invested in whatever the bartender is doing. The second he sets the vodka soda in front of her, she scoops it up and drops a few bills on the counter.

She lifts the drink to her lips as she turns away, pausing just long enough to glance at Jack over the rim of the glass.

Her brows lift. “You really gonna let that happen?”

Jack frowns. “What—”

But Santos is already gone, drink in hand, halfway back to the booth where everyone else is.

Where Jack should be headed too—because there’s no reason for him to stay here. No reason for him to linger, to hover, to make sure you’re okay, to stand there glaring at the guy buying you a drink like that’s going to change anything.

It’s not like he can blame him. If Jack thought he had a shot with you, he’d take it too. The difference is, Jack wouldn’t need the dress. Or the drinks. Or the crowd. He’d take that shot with you even when you’re tired and stressed out and covered in blood at the end of a bad shift in the ER. He’d take it any time. Any place.

But Jack doesn’t get that shot.

Because you’re young. You don’t have baggage. And you’re a resident—maybe not his resident, but still a resident.

It’s just too inappropriate.

Jack sets his glass back on the bar a little harder than necessary—and the bartender glances over, brows raised as if silently asking if he’d like another, but Jack just shakes his head.

His eyes flick back to you. To the way you’re smiling now—soft, not uneasy. To the way you seem to have forgotten about keeping your jacket closed, and now the idiot talking to you is looking anywhere but your face.

Then you laugh—light, easy—and something in Jack’s chest tightens again.

He looks away. He can’t keep standing here. He’s not going to stand here and watch you flirt with some idiot at the bar like he has any right to care.

With a deep breath, he forces himself to turn away and start walking back to the table.

Where he should have been five minutes ago. Where he plans on staying for the rest of the night.

Half an hour later, most of PTMC’s day shift staff are gathered in the booth, half still wearing their scrubs after coming straight from the hospital. The volume of conversation builds with the growing collection of empty glasses in the middle of the table, voices overlapping, getting louder with every round—but Jack doesn’t order another scotch. At some point, Ellis sets a beer in front of him, which he nurses until it’s too warm to enjoy.

Every now and then, he makes a point of nodding or laughing or glancing at someone across the table—pretending to follow the conversation, pretending he’s paying attention—when really, all he can focus on is you. You and your smile. And your laugh. And the way your hand settles lightly on a man’s bicep when he says something that makes you blush.

Not the same man as before, either. No—this one is new. This one swooped in when the first one excused himself to take a phone call, and now that one is back at the table with his friends, sulking.

Kind of how Jack is right now, sitting at the table with his friends. Sulking. Glaring. Plotting.

He knows he shouldn’t. He knows it’s none of his business. But he can’t stop himself from trying to come up with an excuse to interrupt you. To get you away from those men and their lingering stares.

Not that he’s any better.

“Abbot.” Robby nudges his side. “Hungry?”

Jack blinks, finally dragging his gaze away from you to where Ellis is standing, looking expectant.

“Hm?”

“Are you hungry?” Ellis asks. “I’m going to order some wings.”

Jack frowns. “Uh—no. I’m good. Thanks.”

Ellis nods once and turns away, heading straight for the bar.

Robby huffs a quiet laugh beside him. “You might want to turn your hearing aids up, old man.”

Jack doesn’t even look at him. “Funny.”

“I’m serious,” Robby says mildly. “You’ve missed, what, three questions in the last five minutes?”

“I heard her,” Jack mutters. “I was just... thinking.”

Robby hums like he doesn’t believe that for a second.

Jack shifts, pushing his chair back as he sets his warm beer on the table. “I’m gonna hit the head.”

Robby’s brows lift, slow and knowing, his gaze flicking briefly toward the bar.

“Mm,” he says. “Sure you are.”

Jack does, in fact, turn toward the bathrooms first—mostly because he needs a second away from all the music and chatter to try and clear his head. To try and stop himself from doing what he really left the booth to do.

He locks himself in the accessible bathroom—not that he needs it, but it’s more private than the men’s—and stands in front of the vanity. He presses his palms into the porcelain sink, shifting his weight forward with a deep, steadying breath.

This is ridiculous, and he knows it.

He’s a grown man. He shouldn’t be acting like this.

This is trivial shit, for God’s sake. Jack is a vet. A seasoned ER doctor.

So why is a goddamn crush undoing him like this?

Why are you undoing him like this?

He lifts his head and stares at his reflection—jaw tight, shoulders rigid—trying to get a grip. Trying to remember that he is a grown ass man, not some idiot who can’t keep his shit together.

His gaze drifts across his face—the day-old stubble, peppered hair—then to the reflection of the bathroom behind him. The graffitied walls, covered in stickers and spray paint, a chaotic collection of late nights and inebriated thoughts. He wonders, briefly, how many people came in here intending to leave something behind.

Then he spots something scrawled in the corner of the mirror in thick black marker.

HESITATE AND SOMEONE ELSE WON’T.

Jack tilts his head.

That’s not exactly... subtle.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it?

He doesn’t hesitate.

Not in the trauma bay. Not out in the field. Not when it matters. Not when someone’s life is on the line and everyone else is waiting for someone to make the call.

So what the hell is this?

This… standing back. Watching. Letting it happen.

Like he doesn’t know what he wants. Like he hasn’t already made up his mind.

He drags a hand over his mouth, shaking his head once—sharp, annoyed.

“Jesus Christ.”

It’s not caution. It’s avoidance.

With another deep breath, Jack reaches for the tap and braces his hands beneath the stream. He scrubs them together—quick and thorough—then turns off the water, grabs a paper towel, and dries his hands with more focus than necessary. He tosses the towel in the bin on his way out the door, his gaze sharpening as he scans the bar—finding you immediately.

You’re still standing where you were, maybe a few steps closer to the back of the room. There’s a new guy in front of you now, closing you in, crowding your space just enough to make Jack’s eyes narrow.

The man’s hand settles at your waist, a little lower than what could be considered innocent. And anyone else watching might think you’re okay with it—but Jack knows you. He sees the small flicker of discomfort that crosses your face, the subtle drop of your shoulder as you try to angle yourself away without seeming rude.

Good thing Jack doesn’t mind being rude.

He’s already moving before he’s fully decided to. Just a few long strides and he’s there—close enough to cut through the space between you and the guy without touching either of you, his presence alone enough to interrupt whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

He looks at you. Just you.

“Hey.”

Your head turns immediately—and the shift in your expression is instant. Relief.

“Oh—hey,” you say, a little breathless.

And then you step into him. Not too close. Not in a way that draws attention or suggests anything—but enough to make Jack’s pulse jump. Enough for him to feel your warmth and the way it settles under his skin.

“Hey, man,” the guy says, holding out a hand. “I’m Trent.”

Jack ignores him.

“You alright?” he asks you.

You nod slowly. “I am now.”

Your fingers curl into the back of his shirt, just for a second—like you didn’t even think about it. Like you just needed something solid to hold onto.

Jack goes still.

Trent clears his throat. “Sorry—uh—who are you?”

You glance at him with a tight smile. “This is my attending.”

Jack likes being called your attending.

Trent frowns. “What?”

“Remember how I said I was a doctor?”

Trent just stares at you.

“Well, Dr. Abbot is my attending,” you go on anyway. “He’s like my supervisor. I’m his resident.”

His resident.

“Right,” Trent mutters, eyeing Jack. “Cool. So—you’re a doctor?”

Jack doesn’t even look at him. His eyes stay fixed on you.

“Are you hungry?” he asks. “Ellis is ordering wings—we can grab a menu.”

“Starving,” you reply, the corner of your mouth lifting slightly as you look up at him.

“Great.” His hand settles at your shoulder, firm but casual. “Let’s get back to the others.”

“Wait,” Trent says. “Are you—”

“It was nice meeting you,” you cut in, flashing him one last tight-lipped smile before Jack steers you away.

He keeps his arm around your shoulders until you’re halfway back to the booth of PTMC doctors and nurses. Only then does he pull back, clasping his hands behind his back like he needs the physical restraint.

“Thanks for that,” you murmur. “He just wouldn’t take a hint.”

Jack nods. “I noticed.”

He doesn’t look at you as he turns back toward the other end of the table, toward his seat beside Robby—because if he did, he might not be able to leave your side. From the corner of his eye, he sees Santos reach for you, already asking what happened as she pulls you into the seat between her and McKay.

And for twenty blissful minutes, Jack feels okay. The most okay he’s felt all night.

Because you’re here, at the table, talking to Santos and McKay—and not some idiot who thinks he deserves a chance with the prettiest girl in the room. In the world, according to Jack.

But only for twenty minutes—because once you finish your drink, Santos drags you back to the bar.

Another shot. Another drink. Another guy.

Jack shifts in his chair, trying to listen to whatever it is Ellis and Mateo are arguing about, but he can’t focus—not when your hand settles lightly on this new guy’s shoulder. And especially not when it slides down his bicep, flirty in a way that makes Jack want to get out of his chair.

He tells himself he’s not going to. That he shouldn’t.

But the second the lights dim and the music gets louder, he pushes out of his seat.

He finds you at the edge of the dancefloor, catching your wrist before you can disappear into the crowd.

“Hey,” he says, voice raised over the music.

Your head whips around, your brows lifting slightly in that soft, expectant way—like you’re waiting for him to say whatever it is that’s so important he had to stop you right here.

Jack clears his throat. “Have you been drinking water?”

You frown. “Um. Not really.”

“You should really drink some water,” he says, tipping his head toward the bar.

You hesitate, glancing back over your shoulder at the man waiting for you to follow him into the crowd.

Then you look back at Jack.

“Uh, yeah. Okay. Water.”

He knows he shouldn’t have done it. He knows it was stupid and petty and jealousy-driven—but he can’t help the flicker of satisfaction when you follow him to the end of the bar with the self-serve water tower.

The music is too loud for conversation—and even if it wasn’t, he’s not sure what he’d say. Not when you’re looking at him like this. A little drunk. A little curious. Your brows drawn, your skin glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, your lips wet from the water.

God. This has the be the finest form of torture.

Because here you are—so young and so sweet, so trusting in Jack that he’s just trying to look after you, when all he can think about is the fact that you’re not his. That they think you’re fair game. That every man in this room thinks he has a chance.

And the fact that he’s not going to let them anywhere near you.

-

The third time Jack Abbot appears at your side, he catches your elbow just as you’re about to step out the door with a man named Leo. Not to leave the bar—just for some air—but then Jack says something about Mateo buying a round of shots and guides you back inside.

You don’t mind. Not really. Especially not when a free drink is involved.

So you line up beside your coworkers and sink another shot of tequila with a grimace before Santos drags you back to the dancefloor.

The fourth time Jack Abbot intercepts you, you’re just about to start dancing with a handsome stranger Santos accidentally made you bump into—but before you can even take the man’s hand, Jack pulls you away, insisting you take a seat for a minute and drink more water.

Which, fine. Whatever.

But by the fifth interruption, you’re starting to notice a pattern.

And you’re getting a little annoyed.

“Oh my God,” Santos says, her eyes going wide as the opening notes to ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! start blaring through the speakers. “We have to dance. Come on!”

You barely have time to scoop your drink up off the bar before she’s dragging you onto the dancefloor—into the throng of warm bodies all moving to the beat beneath the single, sparkling disco ball.

The music pulses through the floor beneath your feet, the bass thrumming in your chest as Santos drags you deeper into the crowd. Somewhere between Mateo’s round of shots and your tenth song on the dancefloor, your jacket disappeared—and now your dress catches the light with every movement, glittering under the shifting colours as bodies press in from all sides.

The bar is still pretty full, even if the PTMC booth has already lost a few soldiers. There are still plenty of prospects—plenty of strangers who might offer to take you home and make you forget all about Jack Abbot. Which is still very much the plan.

If only the man himself would stop interrupting every interaction like he’s doing you a favour.

At some point during the second—or maybe third—chorus, Santos subtly steps away and a guy ends up in front of you. You’re not even entirely sure how. One second you’re dancing and screaming the lyrics, the next he’s there—close enough that you can feel the heat of him, his hands hovering like he’s trying to decide where to put them.

You let it happen. Because this is what you want, right?

This is the plan.

He leans in and says something you don’t quite catch over the music, but you laugh anyway—more out of obligation than anything else.

Then his attention shifts.

His eyes flick past you. And just like that—he falters.

It’s subtle, but you feel it. The hesitation. The way his body pulls back a fraction, like something just snapped him out of it.

“Uh—actually,” he mutters, already stepping away. “I—yeah. Sorry.”

Then he’s gone.

You blink, frowning slightly as you glance over your shoulder and—

Of course.

Jack Abbot, standing just beyond the edge of the dancefloor, drink in hand, eyes locked on you with a look that makes your stomach drop.

Not angry. Not exactly.

But intense. Sharp. Focused in a way that feels… deliberate.

You stare at him for a second—frustration flickering across your face—then turn back to Santos, who is still dancing with her vodka soda lifted in the air.

You lean in, raising your voice just enough to be heard over the music. “Your plan isn’t working!”

She turns to face you, frowning. “What do you mean it’s not working?”

You stare at her. “The plan to get me laid? It’s not working.”

“Why not?”

You huff out a laugh, incredulous.

“Because of him,” you say, nodding toward Jack. “Because I let him save me from one bad interaction and now he’s just—hovering. Interrupting. Scaring people off.”

Santos’ mouth twitches.

“I think he thinks he’s being helpful,” you add, shaking your head. “Like he’s doing me a favour or something, but—God, I’m never going to get a stranger to take me home with a hundred-and-ninety-pound war vet glaring over my shoulder every five minutes.”

Santos just looks at you for a second—then smiles. Slow. Knowing.

“And what part of my plan isn’t working?”

You frown. “Are you even listening to me?”

“I said I was going to get you laid,” she says, lifting her drink to her lips. “I never said anything about going home with a stranger.”

It doesn’t land straight away.

You blink at her, still frowning as you try to follow the logic—because that doesn’t make sense, that’s not the plan. If you’re not going home with a stranger, then who—

And then it clicks.

Your stomach drops.

“Wait—Santos,” you start, eyes widening. “You don’t mean—”

Santos just looks at you over the rim of her glass. Calm. Patient. Smiling faintly, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment all night.

You glance toward the side of the dancefloor again—to the man still focused on you in a way that feels far too intentional now. Arms folded, jaw set. He doesn’t even pretend to look away when you meet his stare.

“Actually,” Santos says, her hand closing around your wrist. “I think my plan is working perfectly. Now, come on—” she nods toward the booth where everyone else is, “let’s play a game.”

A game?

Before you can argue or even question it, Santos is dragging you off the dancefloor toward the booth at the back of the bar. The thrum of the music dulls the further you get from the crowd, and by the time you both slide into empty seats at the table, you no longer feel like you need to yell just to be heard.

The PTMC crew has thinned since you were last sitting here. Robby, Dana, and Donnie are gone, and McKay is holding her purse in her lap like she’d been trying to leave when Mateo cornered her with another rant about how no patient actually seems to understand the pain scale.

“Alright,” Santos announces, picking up someone’s abandoned drink and taking a sip like she owns it, “we’re playing a game.”

Whitaker leans forward. “A game?”

“Yes, Huckleberry. A game.” Santos glances around the table with a lazy half-smile. “It’s called Never Have I Ever.”

Mateo snorts. “That’s a middle school sleepover game.”

“Great,” Santos replies. “Then it should be easy for you.”

There’s a ripple of laughter around the table, but no one else seems to object.

“Can I start?” Mohan pipes up beside Santos. “I’ve got a good one.”

Santos nods. “Be my guest.”

You’re not entirely sure when Jack rejoined the table, since he’d been at the edge of the dancefloor just a few minutes ago, but now you’re suddenly very aware of his presence across from you. Like the few people that called it a night have unintentionally left a smaller, more intimate group behind—and now Jack Abbot is almost directly across from you while you play one of the most notorious, tension-raising middle school games of all time.

“Okay,” Mohan says, sitting up a little straighter. “Never have I ever… called in sick when I wasn’t actually sick.”

McKay laughs. Mateo groans. Almost everyone at the table lifts their drinks.

“Really?” Santos says. “That was your good one?”

Mohan shrugs. “I thought—”

“Never mind,” Santos cuts her off. “My turn.”

Her gaze moves slowly around the table before landing on you, the corner of her mouth lifting just slightly.

“Never have I ever,” she starts slowly, “fantasised about someone else sitting at this table.”

Your pulse jumps.

McKay snorts.

Mateo leans forward. “Like, intentionally. Or…?”

Whitaker frowns. “You’ve accidentally fantasised about someone here?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes the wrong people pop up, you know?”

Santos rolls her eyes. “Oh my God. Whatever. Intentional or not.”

Mateo nods once and lifts his drink. Javadi sinks lower in her chair as she lifts hers—and you try not to look around at the rest of the table as you bring your own up to your lips.

Beside you, McKay drops her purse to the ground and straightens, clearly invested now.

“Alright, I’ve got one,” she says, grinning. “Never have I ever… faked it.”

Javadi chokes, Santos snorts, and across from you, Jack huffs out a quiet laugh.

“Never?” Ellis asks, eyes wide. “So you always—”

“Oh, God, no,” McKay laughs. “Definitely not. I just refuse to fake it.”

Laughter moves through the table again, a little louder this time, and everyone takes a second to decide whether or not to raise their drinks.

You lift yours slowly, looking anywhere but at Jack.

“Okay, my turn,” Ellis announces, shifting in her seat. “Never have I ever… hooked up with someone at work.”

The table reacts around you, a mix of laughter and quiet protest, but it all blurs at the edges when you finally glance up—because Jack is already looking at you.

Not surprised. Not amused.

Just… watching.

He doesn’t laugh or say anything. He just lifts his drink, slow and deliberate.

And something sharp twists in your chest.

“What’ve you got, Langdon?” McKay asks, nodding at him across the table.

Langdon strokes his chin thoughtfully for a moment—then sighs.

“Alright, I already know I’m going to get shit for this, but—” He clears his throat. “Never have I ever… had sex in public.”

McKay laughs, loudly, and lifts her drink to her lips without hesitation. Ellis and Santos drink too, while Mohan laughs into her hand and Javadi sinks even lower in her chair.

Across from you, Jack sips his drink again like it’s nothing.

And that sharp twist in your chest doesn’t ease.

Because of course he has. Of course there are other people. Other women.

And you—

You catch Santos’ gaze from the other end of the table—sharp, knowing, daring.

Your grip tightens slightly around your glass.

And before you can talk yourself out of it—

“Okay, my turn,” you say lightly, sitting up a little straighter.

Everyone turns to you, but you keep your eyes fixed on your glass.

“Never have I ever,” you say slowly, “…finished during sex.”

For a second—nothing.

Then the table erupts.

“What—no—” Mateo is already laughing, leaning forward like he thinks you’re joking. “You’re kidding.”

Javadi chokes on her drink, coughing as she turns toward you. “Wait, seriously?”

“Oh my God,” McKay says, half-laughing, half-staring at you like she’s trying to figure out if you’re lying.

Langdon huffs out a quiet, disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “Well… that’s unfortunate.”

Whitaker just blinks at you, caught somewhere between surprised and confused, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that information.

Santos doesn’t say anything. She just leans back in her seat, watching you over the rim of her glass with a slow, satisfied smile.

And across from you—

Jack just goes still.

Completely still.

His expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes does—sharp, dark, focused in a way that makes your stomach flip.

It takes you a minute to remember how to move. How to breathe. How to laugh and sip your drink and keep playing the game that doesn’t stop just because it feels like your heart did.

Eventually, everyone eases off the third-degree on your embarrassingly real confession, and Mateo pipes up next with something ridiculous that makes the table groan. Then Javadi comes out with something surprisingly rebellious—and blushes hard when Mateo flashes her a wink.

And so it goes on.

You know it does.

You can hear it—voices overlapping, laughter breaking out again, someone arguing over what counts, someone else swearing they’re being misrepresented—but it all feels… distant.

Like it’s happening a few steps away from you instead of right here at the table. Because now, all you can focus on is Jack. On the way he’s hardly moved. Hardly spoken. Hardly looked away from you.

At some point, he mutters his own confession with a small smirk and everyone laughs—but you don’t catch the words. You’re too aware of everything else to hear them. Too aware of your pulse pounding in your ears, the thrum of the music beneath your feet, the way Jack’s jaw ticks every time you glance back at him.

Another round starts. Then another.

Someone groans. Someone laughs too loud. Santos says something that earns a chorus of reactions—but it all slips past you, unimportant, forgettable.

Time stretches. Blurs.

Your drink empties, refills, empties again.

People shift in their seats. Someone stands. Someone leaves.

Then suddenly—

“You ready?”

You blink.

Santos is standing beside you, brows raised.

“Ready?” you echo.

She nods toward the door. “Time to go. Most of us have to work tomorrow.”

You glance around at the empty table. “Oh.”

Santos is already halfway to the door by the time you gather your things and catch up to her. You’re still pulling your jacket on as you step outside, bracing against the cool night air that nips at every inch of exposed skin—which, in this dress, is a lot of skin.

“The Uber’s just around the corner,” Whitaker says.

“Great,” Mohan mutters, hugging her jacket tighter. “I’m freezing.”

You’re not sure if it’s the alcohol or just the heat lingering beneath your skin from the way Jack had been watching you earlier, but you’re not nearly as cold as you should be.

“You sure you don’t mind if I stay over tonight?” Javadi asks, glancing between Santos and Whitaker.

Santos shrugs. “As long as you don’t mind the couch—and Dr. Shamsi isn’t going to have us arrested for kidnapping.”

Javadi lets out an awkward laugh. “Uh—no. It’s totally fine. I told my dad.”

“Are you working tomorrow?” Whitaker asks.

Javadi shakes her head. “Day off. You?”

Whitaker sighs. “Yeah.”

“So am I,” Santos adds. “And if I don’t get at least five hours sleep, I cannot be responsible for other people’s lives.”

“That’s reassuring,” Jack mutters, almost startling you as he steps out of the bar.

He buries his hands in his pockets, hardly sparing you a glance as he steps closer to the group. There’s a faint hitch in his step—something you recognise from the waning hours of a night shift, when he’s been on his feet for too long and starts to favour one leg.

“This is us,” Whitaker announces, nodding toward the car pulling up at the curb.

Mohan hurries forward first, yanking the door open and climbing into the back seat—and Javadi is next, flashing you a smile before she ducks in beside her. You step forward—then hesitate. Whitaker is already holding the front passenger door open, and Santos is standing at the curb, about to join the others in the back.

“Wait.” Your pulse jumps. “There’s too many—”

“You’re with Dr. Abbot,” Santos says lightly, her mouth twitching like she’s trying not to smile.

Your stomach drops.

“I—I’m what?”

Santos shrugs. “Javadi’s staying over and Mohan’s place is on the way to ours. Just makes sense.”

Then she climbs into the car, shuts the door, and rolls the window down.

“See you tomorrow!”

There’s a chorus of goodbyes from the others before the car pulls away from the curb—and the cool, quiet night settles in too quickly. The only sound is the dull thrum of music from the bar, and the pounding of your pulse in your ears.

For a second, you don’t turn around. You can’t. Not now that you’re alone with him.

Then—

“I’m this way,” he says, voice low and rough and maddeningly hot.

You nod, but don’t dare look at him as you start following the line of parked cars up the street.

The night air feels sharper now, cooler the further you get from the bar—and it makes you pull into yourself, arms folded tightly while your jacket barely does anything to help.

Jack keeps an easy pace beside you, not crowding you, not touching you, but close enough that you’re aware of him anyway. Of the space he takes up at your side. Of the way he adjusts slightly so you’re walking on the inside of the path, further from the curb, without making a thing of it.

Neither of you says anything.

It’s not awkward. It’s just… quiet in a way that feels heavy, like the silence is holding onto everything that happened inside instead of letting it go.

Your heels click unevenly against the pavement, catching slightly every few steps, and you’re suddenly, painfully aware of everything—the way your dress shifts as you move, the cool air against your skin, the way your pulse hasn’t quite settled.

You feel too sober. Too aware.

When his car finally comes into view, he moves ahead of you just slightly—just enough to reach the passenger door first and hold it open.

God. He’s so annoyingly considerate.

You give him a small, tight smile before climbing into the passenger seat.

The car is still warm, still holding onto the heat from earlier in the day, and it smells like him in a way that’s subtle but unmistakable—clean, familiar, something faintly sharp beneath it that you can’t quite place but instantly recognise. The seat gives slightly beneath you, softer than you expect, and for a second you just sit there, hands hovering like you’re not entirely sure where to put them.

It’s his.

All of it.

The way everything is exactly where it should be, nothing out of place. The faint scuff on the console. A pair of sunglasses tucked neatly into the centre compartment. His backpack thrown into the back seat like he’d discarded it in a hurry and never thought about it again.

The sound of the driver’s side door opening almost startles you.

You drop your hands into your lap, shifting slightly and smoothing your dress down over your thighs like that might ground you somehow.

The car immediately feels smaller when Jack climbs in. More intimate. Closer in a way that’s almost stifling.

You keep your eyes fixed out the windshield.

Waiting.

For the engine to start. For the car to move.

But nothing happens.

The silence stretches, thick and suffocating, settling into every inch of the space between you.

And then—

“You can’t say shit like that around me.”

You blink, finally turning toward him—and regretting it immediately. He’s so irritatingly handsome, so annoyingly gorgeous in a way that makes you want to be stupid and reckless and climb across the console into his lap.

“Say what?” you ask, your voice embarrassingly thin.

He looks at you—not fully, just turning his head slightly.

“You know what,” he says, his voice low and rough with something that sounds a little too close to control slipping.

And you do.

You know exactly what he means.

But before you can say anything else, he turns the key and the engine rumbles to life. The radio crackles a little before some late-night news station fills the silence—and he doesn’t move to turn it off, doesn’t even turn it down. He just drives.

The radio reporter’s voice hums through the car like white noise, talking about something you’re not really listening to as you try to focus on keeping your breathing even.

You can still hear his voice.

You can’t say shit like that around me.

The way he said it. Low. Controlled. Like it cost him something to keep it that way.

Your fingers shift slightly in your lap, smoothing over the fabric of your dress again without thinking, and your mind starts turning his words over before you can stop it—pulling at them, testing them, trying to make them mean something that makes sense.

Because what does that even mean?

You glance at him, quick, like you might catch something you missed—but he’s focused on the road, jaw set, one hand loose on the wheel like nothing happened. Like he didn’t just change everything with eight little words.

You look away again.

No. He didn’t mean it like that.

He’s just—he’s your attending. He’s responsible. Of course he’d say something. Of course he’d—

Except he didn’t say it like that.

Your stomach tightens as your thoughts circle back, slower this time, more deliberate.

The way he kept pulling you away from people tonight. The way he’d been watching you. The way he didn’t laugh, didn’t joke, didn’t let it go.

The way he said it.

Around me.

Not here. Not in front of people.

Around me.

Your breath catches slightly, and you shift in your seat, suddenly very aware of the space between you—of how close he is, of how easy it would be to just turn your head, lean in and—

No.

No, that’s not—

You swallow, gaze fixed stubbornly ahead.

You’re just reading into it. You have to be.

Because the alternative—

Your pulse jumps.

God. The alternative is too much to even consider.

But the thought lingers anyway.

It settles in the back of your mind, quieter now, but heavier—pulling at everything he said, everything he did, everything you might have missed until now. The words circle back, sharper this time—until—

The car stops—and you blink.

For a moment, you don’t move. You can’t.

Then Jack clears his throat.

“Oh—uh—thanks,” you mutter, reaching for your seatbelt buckle.

He nods once. “Anytime.”

You push your door open before you can think too hard about it, stepping out into the cool night air that hits a little harder this time. Your heart is still beating in your throat, your pulse still too loud, your thoughts are still circling those eight words—eight little words that feel like they weigh far more than they should.

You hesitate—one hand on the door, the other gripping your keys in your jacket pocket.

God.

This is stupid.

This is reckless.

This is—

“Do you—” You clear your throat, the words catching slightly before you force them out. “Do you want to come up?”

He stares at you for a second, then lets out a short, disbelieving breath, like he’s not quite sure he heard you right.

“You can’t be serious.”

Heat rushes up your neck, quick and unwelcome, and for a second you just stand there, wishing you could take it back—rewind a few seconds and keep your mouth shut.

What the hell were you thinking?

“Yeah,” you say, a little too quickly. “No, that was—that was stupid.”

You turn away before he can say anything else, pushing the door shut harder than you mean to as you step back onto the sidewalk. You don’t look back. You refuse to. You just keep walking toward the lobby door, drawing your keys from your pocket and fumbling through them to find the right one.

It takes longer than it should, but eventually you find the lobby key and wriggle it into the lock.

This door has never been your friend. It’s old, a little rusted, and the lock has always been janky—but now your hands are shaking, and this stupid old door seems to think that’s funny, because it won’t budge.

You jiggle the key and try again, but nothing changes.

Then—

“Here.”

His voice is low. Close.

Your hand stills as he steps in behind you, not touching, but close enough that you can feel the heat of him at your back—the solid line of his chest just shy of pressing into you as he reaches past your shoulder.

His fingers brush yours as he takes the key—and the lock turns easily this time.

Of course it does. Traitorous fucking door.

His arm lingers there for a second longer than it needs to—then he pushes the door open.

You don’t even glance at him as you step inside, already turning back to grab your key before the door swings shut—but he’s still holding it, barely a step behind you.

He tilts his head slightly, nodding toward the lobby. “Go.”

It’s quiet. Controlled.

Not a suggestion.

Your breath catches, just for a second, and you hesitate—long enough to feel it, whatever this is, tightening between you—

Then you turn and keep walking.

And he follows.

He follows you across the lobby, up the fire stairs, down the corridor, all the way to your apartment door. He stands a little closer than necessary as you unlock it—almost like he doesn’t think you know how doors work now—but the key turns smoothly this time.

You push the door open and step inside.

The apartment is quiet, dim, and you shrug out of your jacket without thinking. You can feel him watching you as you drape it over the arm of the sofa, and it’s a little... thrilling. Dangerous. Because Jack Abbot is in your goddamn apartment right now, looking at you like he’s a man on the edge—

And you’re daring him to jump.

“Drink?” you offer, keeping your voice light—innocent.

He clears his throat. “Water, please.”

You can’t help the small smirk on your lips as you brush past him, a little closer than necessary.

“So polite,” you murmur.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t shift—but you can feel him there, tense just beneath the surface.

You open the fridge and bend over to grab a bottle of water, letting your dress ride up the backs of your thighs in a way that’s totally unnecessary. Jack clears his throat again, just a little too sharp, and when you glance back toward him, he’s turned away completely.

You press your lips together to keep from smiling too wide as you straighten again.

“Here,” you say, stepping toward him and holding the water out.

He turns hesitantly, taking it. “Thank you.”

Your eyes catch his, a slow smile tugging at your lips before you bite the corner gently, just enough for him to notice. He looks away quickly, jaw tightening as he focuses on uncapping the water bottle.

You brush past him again, still a little too close, and move toward the sofa, dropping onto it and leaning forward to take off your shoes.

Jack takes a long swig of water, then clears his throat for the third time.

“Are you working tomorrow?” he asks.

You glance up, still leaned forward, and it’s hard not to notice the way his eyes dip from your face.

“Isn’t that something you should already know?”

The corner of his mouth twitches, like he can’t quite help himself.

“You’re impossible. You know that?”

Heat rushes up your neck at the way he says it—short, sharp, loaded—and you bite back a grin, letting your eyes glint just a little as you straighten.

“Am I?” you murmur, tilting your head just slightly. “Only one way to find out.”

He freezes for a second, shoulders tight, hand curling slightly around the water bottle—and it crackles softly under his grip. His breath hitches, just barely.

“I should go,” he mutters, voice low and clipped.

He takes a step toward the door—and you shoot up from the sofa, heartbeat racing.

“Wait—uh—before you go,” you say, stepping toward him, “could you help me with something?”

He hesitates, turning slowly, as if every second in here is costing him something.

You move until you’re almost between him and the door, looking up at him through your lashes.

“Could you help me out of my dress?”

The second the words leave your lips, you forget how to breathe.

Jack’s jaw tightens, his shoulders coiling ever so slightly. His fingers twitch around the bottle, just a whisper of movement, as if holding himself together by force. His eyes catch yours, dark and sharp, taking in the faint scrunch between your brows, the small pout on your lips, the way you’re offering him something he never thought he’d be allowed to have.

He nods once—careful, controlled—but the tension radiating off him is almost unbearable.

Your stomach flips.

Without a word, you turn, sweeping your hair out of the way while your pulse hammers in your ears.

You feel him shift, his warmth, and the ghost of his touch at the nape of your neck. And that first, tiny contact sends a shock straight through you—hot, sharp, impossible to ignore.

He pauses, just a heartbeat, and you catch the tiniest hitch in his breath.

Then he moves again, slow, deliberate, dragging the zipper down almost painfully slow, his knuckles grazing your skin—warm, rough, controlled, just enough to make your heart pound in your throat.

“How do you do it?” you whisper, voice catching slightly. “How are you always so… unaffected by everything?”

“Unaffected?” he murmurs, almost tasting the word, as if testing it against himself.

His knuckles brush the small of your back, pausing where the zipper ends—but he doesn’t stop. His fingertips graze your skin, deliberate, teasing, tracing the line of your spine upward again, slow enough that it drags your breath with it, sharp enough that heat blooms through every nerve.

“You have no idea,” he whispers, voice low and rough, almost breaking, “how much you affect me.”

Your breath catches, sharp and sudden. Everything in your chest pulls tight, something hot and dizzying blooming low as his words sink in.

You turn before you can stop yourself—and he’s closer now. Close enough that you can feel the warmth of him, the shift of his breath, the space between you narrowing into something fragile and dangerous.

For a second, neither of you move.

And then his hand finds your neck—

Not rough, not rushed—just firm enough to anchor you there, thumb pressing under your jaw like he needs to feel that this is real, that you’re real. His other hand tightens where it still holds the loosened fabric of your dress at your back, fingers curling into it like restraint is slipping through his grip.

He hesitates, just for a breath. Like he’s giving himself one last chance to walk away.

Then he kisses you.

It’s not tentative. There’s nothing careful about it. It lands like something he’s been holding back for too long, all that control finally snapping under the weight of you standing here, asking for him, looking at him like that.

His mouth is warm and certain against yours, a sharp inhale breaking through you as you lean into him without thinking, your hands finding him just as quickly—his stomach, his chest—anything to hold onto as the world tilts. He makes a low sound, barely there, but you feel it more than you hear it, the vibration settling deep in your chest as his grip tightens.

You melt before you can stop yourself.

Your head tilts back, giving him more, and he takes it immediately, deepening the kiss with that same quiet intensity that steals the breath right out of you. His thumb shifts along your jaw, not lingering, just enough to guide you where he wants you, and the control of it—God, the way he still tries to control it after everything, after all that restraint—makes something in your stomach flip hard.

His hand at your back slips under the loosened zipper, fingers pressing into your bare skin now, warm and steady, but there’s tension in it. You can feel it in the way his grip flexes, like he’s still trying—still—to hold the line even as he pulls you closer.

It doesn’t work.

Not when you press into him like this, not when your fingers curl tighter in his shirt, not when you kiss him back without hesitation, without thinking about consequences or lines or anything except how he feels against you.

He exhales against your mouth, sharp, like you’ve just undone him, and for a second the kiss falters—not because he’s pulling away, but because he’s trying to.

You feel it. The conflict. The split second where he almost stops.

Your hand slides up to his jaw, fingers catching there, holding him in place before he can even try.

“Don’t,” you whisper, barely pulling back, your lips brushing his as you speak.

And something in him gives.

You see it in the way his eyes darken, in the way his hand tightens at your back, pulling you flush against him this time, the last inch of space gone like it was never allowed to exist in the first place.

When he kisses you again, it’s deeper.

Less restrained.

Like he’s finally stopped pretending this isn’t exactly what he wants.

It’s different now—harder, hungrier, like something in him has shifted for good. His hand slides from your jaw to your waist, gripping tight as he steps into you, crowding you back without breaking the kiss, without giving you a second to think.

Your back meets the door with a soft thud.

He doesn’t stop.

If anything, it only makes him sharper, more certain, his mouth moving against yours with a kind of urgency that steals the air right out of your lungs. You barely get a breath before he takes it again, and you let him—God, you let him—tilting into him, giving him everything he reaches for.

His hand tightens at your waist, then slips lower, dragging you flush against him again, like he needs to feel exactly how close he can get before he loses control completely.

And you can feel it—how close he is.

It’s in the way his grip flexes, in the way his breath turns uneven against your mouth, in the way the kiss keeps deepening like he can’t quite stop himself from taking more.

Your fingers find his shirt again, pulling him closer, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to drag in a breath, his forehead almost brushing yours, like he’s trying—one last time—to get a handle on this.

He doesn’t.

His hands are on you again, immediate, sliding up your sides, pushing the straps of your dress from your shoulders in one smooth, decisive motion. The fabric gives easily, slipping under his hands like it was never meant to stay there in the first place—and it falls to the floor, pooling at your feet.

His breath catches, and his gaze drops—just for a second, but it’s enough.

“Tell me to stop,” he says, voice low, rough—nothing steady about it now.

You meet his eyes, chest rising and falling fast, heat still sparking under your skin.

“Bedroom,” you murmur.

For a second, he just looks at you.

Something in his expression shifts—tightens—like that word landed exactly where it shouldn’t. His gaze searches yours for a moment, checking for hesitation, for doubt.

But he doesn’t find any.

He nods once—and you turn, already moving toward the bedroom. You can feel him right behind you, close enough that his hand finds your waist again before you’ve even taken two steps, steady, grounding, like he’s not about to let you get too far ahead of him.

It’s barely a walk.

More like being guided—pulled—across the apartment toward your room, your pulse loud in your ears, every step charged with the knowledge of what you’ve just set in motion.

The door barely makes it closed before he’s on you again.

Not rushed—never rushed—but certain, like the decision has already been made and there’s no point pretending otherwise. His hands find you first, steady at your waist, turning you back toward him before you can take another step into the room.

Your breath catches as you look up at him. There’s something in his expression you’ve never seen before. It’s not soft, not gentle—just stripped of whatever distance he’d been holding onto all night.

Gone.

His gaze drags over you, slow and deliberate, and this time there’s nothing in the way of it—nothing to hide behind, nothing to buffer it—and the heat in it settles low in your stomach, heavy and immediate.

“Still want this?” he asks, voice rough, quieter now—but it lands heavier here.

You don’t answer. You just step into him.

And it’s all the permission he needs.

His hand tightens at your waist as he pulls you back into him, and the kiss this time is slower, deeper in a way that feels intentional—like he’s choosing it, not chasing it. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of controlled hunger, every shift measured, every breath deliberate, like he’s letting himself feel it fully instead of fighting it.

Your fingers curl into his shirt, and he exhales against your mouth, something unsteady finally breaking through.

His grip shifts—firmer now—guiding you back a step, then another, not hurried, not careless, but unrelenting all the same. You feel the edge of the bed behind your knees before you fully register moving at all, your focus too caught in the way he’s kissing you, the way his hand anchors you like he’s not about to let this get away from him.

His mouth breaks from yours just long enough to draw in a breath, his forehead pressing briefly to yours.

Not hesitation. Control.

Or what little he has left of it.

“Last chance,” he murmurs, quieter now.

You drop back onto the bed, gaze locked on his, breath still uneven.

“I’m not the one holding back.”

You barely have time to move up the mattress before he’s there, crowding over you, hands braced on either side as he follows you down. The mattress dips under his weight, the space between you gone in an instant—replaced by the solid heat of him, the firm press of his hips against yours.

His mouth finds yours again, hot and insistent, teeth catching your bottom lip just enough to pull a soft sound from you—but it’s different now. Slower. Not restrained, but deliberate. Curious, almost.

Like he’s learning you.

The way you react. The way you move under him. The way you give.

Your hands slide up his chest, fingertips digging in as heat coils low in your stomach—but they don’t stay there long. He shifts his weight slightly, steady, controlled, one hand lifting off the mattress to catch your wrist.

His fingers close around it—not tight, not forceful—just certain, guiding.

He lifts your hand above your head.

“Jack,” you whisper. “I—”

He shushes you.

“Let me do this, okay?” His voice is rough, thick with something unsteady beneath it—something that makes your stomach knot. “I’ve got you.”

And you believe him.

His hand slides down your body, slow and sure, brushing over your chest, your waist, the curve of your hip—each touch deliberate, like he’s taking his time even now, even like this. His fingers hook at the inside of your thigh, grip firm as he nudges your leg wider.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Good girl.”

The words go straight through you.

You can already feel the damp heat between your legs, the slick fabric pressed close, but the way he says it—the way his voice drops—makes your hips shift up instinctively, chasing something you can’t quite reach.

Chasing him.

And he notices. Of course he does.

You only just catch the faint lift at the corner of his mouth before his lips are back on yours, swallowing the breath from you as your back arches, pressing yourself up into him without thinking. Your fingers curl into the sheets above your head, tension pulling tight through your body as everything narrows down to where he’s touching you—where he isn’t touching you.

His hand drags back up your thigh, slower this time. Intentional. And when his fingers finally press against you through the thin fabric, you gasp.

He takes the sound from you immediately, mouth moving against yours, deeper now, like he’s feeding off it, like every reaction just pushes him further. His fingers start to move—slow, circling, testing—while his mouth leaves yours to trail along your jaw, your cheek, the side of your neck.

With your mouth free, the sounds slip out before you can stop them.

Soft. Unsteady. Needy.

And he loves it.

You feel it in the way his breath shifts, in the way his grip tightens just slightly, in the way his hips rock—slow, controlled, a subtle pressure of denim that’s more suggestion than friction.

“Jack—” your voice catches, breaking on his name. “Please. I want—”

“Tell me, sweetheart,” he murmurs, mouth brushing your shoulder, voice low and coaxing.

“More,” you manage, breath shaking. “Need more.”

He groans against your skin, the sound low and rough, his body settling heavier over yours like any space between you is something he can’t stand.

Then his hand shifts.

Your breath catches as his fingers slide beneath the damp fabric, dragging through your wet heat in one slow, deliberate stroke.

Your whole body jolts. “Fuck—Jack—”

The reaction pulls something from him—a sharp inhale against your neck, his mouth pressing there like he needs to ground himself for a second before he loses it completely.

You’ve never felt like this before. Never this hot, this open, this aware of every inch of your own body.

And you’ve never wanted anyone like this before.

“God,” he murmurs, voice thick, lips tracing back up your throat. “You’re so wet for me, sweetheart.”

All you can do is nod, whimpering softly, your hips lifting without permission, chasing him, asking for more without the words—and he gives it to you. Of course he does.

His finger slides inside you, slow at first, letting you feel it—the stretch, the heat—before he pushes deeper, and the sound that breaks from you is swallowed instantly as his mouth finds yours again, your back arching beneath him as he starts to move. Not fast. Never fast. He sets a rhythm instead, steady and controlled, curling his finger just enough to make your breath catch, just enough to make your hips move against him again.

And when you press into it, when your body starts to chase that feeling properly, he adds another finger, the stretch pulling a broken sound from your throat as your hands tighten in the sheets and your body rolls beneath him, helpless to it now, completely caught in the slow, deliberate way he works you open.

Every movement is intentional. Every curl hits deeper, sharper, building something tight and aching low in your stomach that makes your whole body tremble, your breath coming out in uneven gasps as you press into his hand, chasing, needing.

Then his thumb finds your clit, and the contact is immediate—devastating.

You cry out, sharp and breathless, your whole body tightening as he starts slow, deliberate circles that send heat spiralling through you, your hips lifting again, desperate now, unable to stay still under him.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice rough, barely steady. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

You can’t answer—not when his mouth is everywhere, your throat, your jaw, the corner of your mouth, like he can’t decide where he wants you most before he finds your lips again, and this time the kiss is different again. Hungrier. Messier. His tongue presses into your mouth just as his fingers push deeper, his thumb working harder, more deliberate now, and the moan that tears from you is swallowed whole.

“Please,” you whimper against his mouth, breath breaking. “Please, I—need you.”

He lifts his head, dark eyes searching yours, brows pulling together just slightly.

“You sure?”

You stare at him, trying not to whimper as your whole body clenches around his stilled fingers, the sudden stillness almost worse than anything he was doing before.

“Never have I ever finished during sex, remember?” you manage, breathless but steady enough to land. “You gonna fix that, or what?”

Something feral flickers across his face.

And then it’s gone—replaced by something heavier. Something decided.

He kisses you again before you can catch your breath, all teeth and tongue, the restraint he’s been clinging to snapping clean in half as he groans into your mouth, the sound dragged straight from his chest. You feel the loss of his fingers immediately, your body protesting it, but it’s replaced just as quickly by the slow, deliberate roll of his hips, the friction of denim against your soaked panties making you gasp against him.

“Fuck,” he breathes, like he can’t quite believe it.

He pulls back just enough to shift, bracing himself on one arm while the other moves to his belt, not rushed but far from steady now. There’s a hitch in his breath, a tension in the way his fingers work at it, shoving his jeans and briefs down just enough to free himself, and your gaze drops before you can stop it.

He’s already hard—fully, heavily—flushed and slick at the tip, and the sight of it sends a sharp pulse of heat straight through you, your mouth going dry even as your body reacts in the complete opposite way.

“Fuck—” he chokes, the word breaking out of him. “I haven’t been this hard in—” His eyes flick back up to yours, dark and molten, and whatever he was going to say changes. “—ever.”

It hits you low and deep, twisting something tight in your stomach that makes your hips shift under him without thinking. You finally let go of the sheets, your hands finding him, sliding up to wrap around his neck as you pull him back down, needing him closer, needing him everywhere.

Your legs come up around his waist, drawing him in, urging him forward, and his breath stutters as he presses in, his swollen tip dragging against the damp fabric between you. The contact is just enough to make your head fall back, a broken sound slipping from your throat as he tries—tries—to hold himself up, one arm braced, the other moving between you.

You can feel the strain in him now, the way everything is slipping in real time, in the slight shake of his arm, in the uneven rhythm of his breathing as his hand hooks into the waistband of your panties.

“I’ll buy you new ones,” he murmurs against your mouth, voice rough, almost distracted, like the thought barely registers before it’s gone. “Promise.”

And then the fabric gives.

The sound of it tearing—sharp, sudden—goes straight through you, your breath catching hard as he pulls the fabric out of the way, the last barrier gone in an instant.

It shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

But it is.

Jack Abbot—controlled, composed, always holding the line—losing it enough to rip your panties off you?

Fuck.

He sinks into you in one steady thrust, and both of you gasp at the stretch—the sudden, overwhelming closeness, the way want crashes hot and heavy between you. Your pulse hammers in your ears, that dizzy edge of fear and urgency tangling together until all you can think is him—here, now, inside you.

For a moment, you just breathe—pant, really—eyes squeezed shut, hands locked on his shoulders as your body clenches around him, like you’re trying to keep him right there, like you never want to let him go. He drops his head to your neck, breath hot against your damp skin, and you feel the way it shakes out of him.

“You—fuck—you’re so tight, sweetheart,” he pants, voice rough and muffled where his mouth presses into you. “I’m not gonna last—”

“Then don’t,” you murmur, your voice softer but no less certain. “Just fuck me. Please, Jack.”

A groan tears out of him, low and wrecked, and you feel it through his chest as he shifts above you, hips pulling back, his cock dragging against your walls in a way that makes your stomach coil tight, sparks chasing across your skin. You suck in a sharp breath, your grip tightening on him—and before you can brace, he drives forward again, deeper this time.

“Fuck—” you cry out, the sound breaking loose without warning. “Jack—”

He doesn’t stop. His hips roll back again, slower now, controlled in a way that almost makes it worse, his head lifting so he can look at you, really look at you, like he’s checking, like he needs to see it.

“You ready, sweetheart?” he asks, voice low, rough, barely holding together.

The anticipation coils tighter in your chest, sharp and electric, lighting up every nerve in your body until it almost hurts.

“Mhm,” you manage, breath unsteady, nodding as your arms wind tighter around his neck, pulling him closer, needing him closer, like it still isn’t enough.

For a second—just a second—you’re distracted by something stupid, the feel of his shirt between you, the barrier of it, the way you want it gone, want skin on skin, want to see him, feel him, all of him—

And then he thrusts forward again. Harder again. And the thought disappears completely.

Your body jolts beneath him, every movement knocking the breath from your lungs, and the sound that leaves you is loud—too loud—echoing back off the walls in a way that would make you self-conscious any other time.

But not now.

Right now, you don’t care who hears. Not when it feels like this.

His name spills from your lips in broken gasps, tangled with raw cries, and he answers with a rough sound against your shoulder, biting it back as his hips drive into you at a relentless pace. He’s barely holding himself up now, his weight pressing into you in a way that feels like too much and somehow still not enough, the strain in him obvious in every uneven breath, every sharp exhale against your skin.

His hand drags down your side, back to your thigh, fingers digging in as he pushes your leg wider, and the shift—small as it is—hits something deeper, sharper, your vision flashing white as your head tips back and the knot in your belly pulls tight. His grip slides to your hip, anchoring you there, holding you in place so every thrust lands exactly where it needs to, deep and unrelenting, the sound of it filling the room, wet and rhythmic and impossible to ignore beneath the broken sounds you’re both making.

And then his hand moves between you.

You feel it immediately—the change, the focus—as his fingers find your clit in the slick mess between your bodies, steady despite everything else, despite the way he’s losing himself in every way. Your back arches, breath catching sharp as his touch turns deliberate, circling, pressing, coaxing, sending jolts of sensation straight through you until it’s too much, not enough, everything all at once.

“Jack—” you whine, the sound falling apart as soon as it leaves you. “Fuck, I—”

“I know, sweetheart,” he mutters against your jaw, voice wrecked. “Come on my cock, yeah?”

Your hips lift to meet him without thinking, chasing the rhythm he’s set, chasing the pressure, the friction, the way he’s working you with a precision that feels almost cruel now. His hand doesn’t falter, his fingers moving with intent, building and building, every touch sending sharp bursts of pleasure up your spine as the tension in your stomach pulls tighter, tighter, until it feels like it might snap.

It’s never felt like this before. You’ve never felt like this before.

Your whole body tightens, back arching, legs trembling around him as your hips grind up against his, desperate, chasing something you can’t hold onto. He keeps hitting that same spot, again and again, relentless, his pace rougher now, less controlled, while his fingers stay locked on you, steady, practiced, pushing you right to the edge and holding you there.

You cry out, the sound raw, breaking from your chest as everything finally tips.

The release hits all at once—sharp, overwhelming, tearing through you in a rush that steals your breath and leaves nothing behind but heat and tension snapping loose. Your body locks up around him, tightening, pulsing, your hands gripping at him as your legs shake, your hips still moving against his like you can’t stop, like you don’t want to.

“Fuck,” he groans, burying his face in your neck, his voice wrecked as he keeps moving inside you—slower now, but deeper, like he’s chasing every last pulse of you, like he doesn’t want to miss a second of it. “That’s it. That’s my girl.”

His rhythm falters, hips stuttering, and then he loses it completely—a broken sound tearing from him as he drives into you one last time, deep and hard, spilling inside you as his whole body tenses, shuddering above yours.

You feel it—every part of it—the way he comes undone, the way he clings to you through it, like he needs something to hold onto just as much as you do. Your bodies keep moving together, slower now, instinctive, chasing the last fading edges of it as your breathing stays uneven, your chests rising and falling in sync, skin slick and overheated where you’re pressed together.

It takes a moment to come back down—a long one.

But eventually, the tension drains from him and he collapses almost fully above you, face buried into your shoulder, his weight heavy and grounding as he exhales, slow and spent. It makes it a little harder to breathe—but you don’t mind.

Not when you can feel his heartbeat against your chest, strong and real, still racing like yours.

-

For the first time in two weeks, Jack Abbot isn’t stupidly early for his shift. He couldn’t be, really. Because he’d woken up late this morning, limbs tangled with yours in warm sheets that smelled so much like you it made his head spin—and that had thrown off everything else he needed to get done today.

If it was up to him, he wouldn’t have left at all—but he had to. He had police paperwork to finish, a neighbour’s cat to feed, and sleep he should’ve caught up on before being back in charge of an entire emergency department for twelve hours. But on the bright side? He knows you have a swing shift today, which means he doesn’t need to be early to see you, because you’re going to be stuck at PTMC until at least ten p.m. tonight.

With him.

And he really shouldn’t be looking forward to that as much as he is.

“Afternoon, Dr. Abbot,” Dana says, glancing over the top of her glasses. “Wasn’t sure we’d see you today. Aren’t you usually here by now?”

“I’m on time,” Jack mutters. “I’m a busy man.”

Dana hums, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly as her eyes drop back down to the tablet in her hands.

Jack tries not to appear too conspicuous as he scans the department, glancing toward the trauma bays and South corridor as he passes the nurses’ station. He shouldn’t be this anxious to see you again—not in the apprehensive kind of way, but in the way that makes it feel like his lungs won’t quite fill until you’re near him again.

“She’s not here,” Dana says without looking up from her chart. “Wasn’t feeling well, so Ellis came in early.”

Jack spots Ellis across central, exiting one of the rooms with Santos at her side, and he opens his mouth to say something—defend himself, maybe, lie about what or who he was looking for—but he hesitates, unsure what he could say that wouldn’t incriminate him further.

So instead, he just drops his head and keeps walking, fumbling for his phone in his pocket.

He’d seen you this morning. Just this morning. You were sleepy, had a headache, so he got you water and Tylenol and kissed you before he left—but you hadn’t said anything about feeling so unwell you were going to call in sick.

Jack doesn’t stop until he reaches the lockers, then turns back to survey the ED one last time before leaning a shoulder against the wall and pulling up his text thread with you. He hadn’t texted you today because he knew he’d see you tonight and didn’t want to seem… overbearing. Even now, he’s not sure if he should—but he feels off in a way he hasn’t in years, like he’s waiting on something he can’t control and it’s making him feel sick.

What if last night hadn’t meant what he thought it did? What if you regretted it? What if it was just—

“Hey, kid,” Dana calls from the nurses’ station. “Big night?”

Jack’s head snaps up—and there you are.

The relief hits before he can stop it, sharp and instant, loosening something in his chest he hadn’t realised was wound so tight. He swallows it down just as quickly, his expression settling before anyone can clock it.

“You don’t know the half of it,” you mutter.

Dana huffs a short laugh. “I have a feeling I don’t want to know.”

Jack can’t help but watch as you cross the floor toward him, your backpack hanging from one shoulder while the other hand presses two fingers to your temple, like you could massage the headache away. There’s a smug little smile on your lips when you reach him, slowing your steps until you pause just beside him—not too close, but enough to make his breath catch.

You glance down at his phone, at the open message thread where his thumb is hovering, and your smirk curves a little higher.

“Miss me?”

Jack locks his phone and tucks it back into his pocket.

“Thought you were sick.”

You lift one shoulder. “A little hungover, so Ellis swapped with me.”

For a second, neither of you move. He just looks at you—and you look right back, like you both know exactly what’s changed, even if neither of you is about to say it out loud. Not here. Not now.

“And I missed the night shift attending,” you say finally.

Then—before he can respond, before he’s even fully processed what you said—you lean in and press a quick kiss to his cheek. Only brief. Barely anything.

But it feels like everything.

And just like that, Jack Abbot is done pretending he isn’t yours.