Reading materials.

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

By the time Titus Danforth slid the wedding ring onto your finger, it was already too late to run.

You’d understand that later—hours later, with candlelight shivering over diamond and platinum, with his hand wrapped around yours like the last quiet step in a ritual already underway, with the whole grotesque machine of his family already grinding forward around you too smoothly to stop.

But that night, at the start of it, you still thought there was time.

You still believed, in some stubborn, furious part of yourself, that there had to be a line somewhere. Some point at which even people like them—people with too much money, too much blood behind their names, too much rot hidden under the veneer of polished manners—would finally hear the word no and be forced to reckon with it.

Time to refuse.

Time to humiliate your parents into calling the whole thing off.

Time to make enough of a scene that even the Danforths would decide you were more trouble than you were worth.

That illusion lasted exactly as long as the drive up to Danforth mansion.

The estate rose out of the dark like a stronghold, not a home—severe lines, old stone, and the kind of wealth that had long ago stopped caring whether anyone found it welcoming. Warm light glowed low behind the windows, but nothing about the place felt soft. It was beautiful in the way old money always was: shadowed, expensive, and built to make everyone entering it feel smaller than the family that owned it.

Rain had fallen earlier, and the world still smelled of it. Wet earth. soaked box hedges. iron-rich soil. The cold that slipped in through the cracked car window had bite, but it did nothing to clear the weight pressing behind your ribs. The closer the family car rolled toward the house, the more the estate seemed less like a home and more like a mouth opening, ready to swallow anyone who approached whole.

You sat back against the leather seat and watched it loom larger through the glass.

Beside you, your mother kept both hands folded in her lap so tightly the tendons stood out.

She hadn’t said much on the drive over. Neither had you. There hadn’t been anything worth saying after the call that afternoon. Not after the clipped, bloodless way your father had informed you there would be a dinner at the Danforth estate, that attendance wasn’t optional, and that you were expected to be on your best behavior.

As if that hadn’t been enough to curdle your stomach on instinct.

As if anyone in this city ever got summoned to a Danforth table unless the family meant to take something.

The car rolled to a stop beneath the portico. One of the doors opened before the driver had fully climbed out, a servant already waiting beneath the spill of amber light. Efficient. Silent. Trained to move around wealth the same way one moved around lit matches and open gasoline—carefully, without drawing attention.

You stepped onto the wet stone and tipped your chin up, taking in the house one last time.

The front doors were open.

That, somehow, felt worse than if they’d been shut.

Inside, warmth hit you first. Not comfort—just heat gathered in old walls, thick with beeswax, smoke, old perfume, and polished wood. The house didn’t open up so much as close around you. Low golden light burned from wall sconces, catching on dark paneling, antique tables, and the carved edges of chairs that looked more ceremonial than comfortable. Portraits watched from the walls in heavy frames, generations of Danforth faces rendered in oil and shadow. Every room felt arranged rather than lived in, as if comfort had never ranked very high among Danforth priorities.

Dead Danforths, all of them.

Or soon-to-be, if there was any justice in the world.

A servant took your coat. Another offered a tray of drinks. Somewhere deeper in the house, a string quartet was playing low enough to be mistaken at first for the hum of the building itself.

You didn’t take a drink.

Your mother did. Fast.

You glanced at her. “Comforting.”

“Don’t start.”

“I haven’t started anything.”

Her mouth tightened. “Please.”

You almost laughed at that. Please. As though this were one of those evenings that could still be guided into civility if only everyone used the right cutlery and kept their voices down.

As though you hadn’t spent the entire drive here feeling like livestock on the way to a very expensive slaughterhouse.

A third servant appeared, older than the others, spine straight as a blade.

“They’re waiting in the council room.”

Of course they were.

Not the dining room. Not the conservatory. Not any space with warmth or softness in its name. The council room.

You followed the servant through corridors that seemed designed to remind guests exactly whose house they were in—dark wood, arched thresholds, muted rugs softening every footstep, and pools of amber light that never quite reached the ceiling. The place had the hush of a church and the intimidation of a courtroom. Nothing garish. Nothing modern. Just old money and older control pressing in from every side.

By the time you reached the double doors at the end of the hall, your pulse was a hard, steady thing.

The servant opened them.

Conversation died.

The room beyond was formal without being grand, the sort of space built for family decisions no one else was meant to question. Dark walls drank the light. Amber sconces and shaded lamps threw a low glow across polished wood, heavy chairs, and a patterned rug worn soft beneath generations of expensive shoes. Nothing in it looked accidental. Every object seemed placed to frame authority. Several faces turned toward you and your family with the flat attentiveness of people already halfway through deciding what your life was worth.

You knew most of them by sight. You’d grown up in orbit around these people, at galas and funerals and charity auctions and whispered afterparties your parents thought you were too young to understand.

Danforths at the far end. A few representatives from other old families arranged like chess pieces around them. Lawyers. Advisors. Men who’d spent their whole lives confusing cruelty for refinement.

And there—

He sat to the left of the head chair, one elbow hooked over the armrest, looking as if the room had been designed around him rather than the other way around.

Titus Danforth.

You’d seen him before, of course. At distance. Across rooms. Once, years ago, on the courthouse steps with blood drying in a neat crescent along one cuff while reporters shouted questions no one had the spine to repeat once he’d looked their way.

But proximity was different.

Proximity made it clear why people lost their nerve around him.

He wasn’t the loudest person in the room. Wasn’t even pretending to be. He sat in dark formalwear cut so sharply it made everyone else look rumpled, one hand curved around the stem of a glass, the fire gilding the planes of his face. There was no impatience in him. No restless movement. Just a kind of waiting stillness that was somehow more threatening than temper ever could’ve been. The kind a predator had when it already knew the outcome and was merely letting the moment arrive in its own time.

His gaze touched your face and stayed there.

Not appreciative. Not exactly.

Assessing.

As if he’d been expecting you.

Your father cleared his throat beside you. The sound landed weak.

“Thank you for receiving us.”

One of the older Danforths smiled without showing teeth. “Please. Sit.”

You didn’t move.

“Before I do,” you said, “I’d like to know why I’m here.”

Your mother made a tiny, horrified sound under her breath.

No one else seemed especially surprised.

At the head of the table sat Chester Danforth, old and dry and ghastly elegant in black. He folded his hands and regarded you the way some men regarded racehorses before purchase.

“Direct,” he said.

“I come by it honestly.”

That earned the faintest flicker at the corner of Titus’s mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the thought of one.

You hated that you noticed.

Chester gestured to the empty chair opposite Titus. “Sit, and we’ll spare ourselves theatrics.”

“I’m not the one staging an ambush in a room called the council chamber.”

Your father hissed your name. You ignored him.

For three long seconds no one moved.

Then Titus set his glass down with a soft click.

The sound was quiet. It still cut through the room like piano wire.

“Let her stand,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Every other voice in the room simply vanished around it.

You looked at him.

He was still watching you with that unnerving steadiness, one hand resting loose on the arm of his chair, expression impossible to read in full. Calm, yes. Mild, even. But there was something underneath the mildness that felt sharpened and deliberate, like velvet laid over a blade.

Chester inclined his head as though the matter had been settled by a higher authority.

Of course it had.

“Very well,” he said. “You’re here because the Danforth family requires an alliance. Your family requires protection. In light of recent events, both interests are best served by unity.”

You stared at him. “That could mean anything.”

“It means,” said your father, not looking at you, “an engagement has been arranged.”

The room went perfectly still.

For a split second, all you heard was the fire.

Then you laughed.

It came out once, sharp and unbelieving, and then stopped dead when you realized no one else was joining you.

Your eyes went to your father. Then your mother. Then back to Chester.

Then finally, unwillingly, to Titus.

He hadn’t moved.

He looked exactly the same as he had a moment ago. Same posture. Same terrifying calm. Same gaze on your face, unreadable and fixed. As if he were watching the first inevitable crack spread through glass.

“No,” you said.

No one answered.

Your pulse kicked harder. “No.”

Chester folded his hands tighter. “This benefits everyone at the table.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Mind your tongue,” your father snapped.

You turned on him. “You don’t get to sell me to these people and then talk to me about my tongue.”

“Enough.”

That came from your mother, but it landed with none of the force she probably meant it to. Fear had already thinned her voice.

You looked back at the table. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re entirely serious,” Chester said.

“You think I’m going to agree to this?”

At that, Titus finally rose.

It was almost nothing, just the smooth shift of a man unfolding from a chair, but every eye in the room tracked it. He set one hand lightly on the table and regarded you across the candlelight.

He moved like someone who’d never been hurried in his life.

“You misunderstand,” he said.

His voice was low, polished, almost gentle. It should’ve sounded civilized. Instead it slid over your nerves like something expensive and lethal.

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

Silence.

Your throat went hot with fury.

He came around the table without urgency, passing the candelabra, the gleam of silver, the motionless figures seated on either side. Everyone made room for him instinctively, their bodies yielding before he even reached them.

He stopped a few feet away.

Closer now, he was worse.

There was nothing overt in his expression. No vulgar leer. No obvious satisfaction. If anything, he looked maddeningly composed, his dark tie immaculate, his cufflinks catching firelight, his face set in the kind of attentiveness most men only pretended to possess. The menace was in the precision of him. In the way he looked at you as though the rest of the room had ceased to matter.

You lifted your chin. “Then you can marry someone else.”

“I could,” he said.

The words were smooth as poured whiskey.

“I won’t.”

A silence opened between you, dense and ugly and charged.

You felt everyone in the room listening.

You also felt, with a sudden and vicious clarity, that Titus knew exactly what he was doing to you by answering this way. Not pushing. Not raising his voice. Not giving you anything easy to fight. He was refusing the argument by acting as if it had already ended.

You hated how effective it was.

“I’d rather die,” you said.

At that, finally, his mouth curved.

Not kindly.

Not much.

But enough.

“I know,” he said softly.

The words settled in your chest like a verdict.

Chester cleared his throat, too loudly this time, as if even he felt the room tipping out of his control and disliked it.

“The engagement will be announced within the week,” he said. “Preparations are already underway.”

You rounded on him. “You can go to hell.”

“Likely,” he said. “But you’ll still be married before we get there.”

Your father stood. “That’s enough.”

“No,” you sneered, not taking your eyes off the Danforths. “I think we’re all done pretending there’s a respectable version of this.”

Your hand was shaking. You curled it into your palm before anyone could see.

Titus noticed anyway. Of course he did.

He stepped aside at last, giving you a clear path to the door with the kind of grace that was more insulting than restraint.

“You’ve had a long evening,” he said. “You should rest.”

The dismissal in it lit something white-hot behind your ribs.

“Don’t speak to me like I belong here.”

He tilted his head just slightly. “Not yet.”

You left before you did something reckless enough to get your family buried in the gardens.

The door shut hard behind you. The corridor outside seemed colder than before, though the house was warm. You stood there for one sharp breath, then another, fighting the humiliating urge to pace like an ensnared animal.

Footsteps sounded behind you.

You turned, already furious.

Titus had come out alone, closing the council room doors with one hand. The sound of voices inside dimmed to a muffled murmur. He was nearer now than he’d been across the table, and the effect of that closeness was immediate and deeply inconvenient. His cologne was faint, expensive, something dark and resinous threaded with smoke. Beneath it clung the cleaner scent of starched cotton and cold night air, as if he’d come in not long before you had.

You hated that you could pick any of it out.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“No?”

“No.”

He regarded you for a beat. “You seem upset.”

That nearly did it.

A laugh broke out of you, sharp as cut glass. “Upset?”

“I’m trying to be charitable.”

“Try harder.”

For the first time, he looked almost entertained.

It made him worse.

He leaned one shoulder against the wall opposite you, casual in a way that felt studied enough to be its own kind of violence. The corridor light turned the edge of his face gold and left the rest in shadow.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“I’m furious.”

“Good.”

You blinked. “What?”

“I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.”

His gaze dropped, briefly, to your hand at your side—as if he could still see the tremor you’d hidden in the room—then rose again.

“I have no use for timid women,” he said.

The words should’ve sounded like flattery. Somehow they didn’t. Somehow they sounded like he was selecting a weapon.

“You don’t have any use for women at all,” you snapped. “You have uses.”

Another tiny curve at his mouth.

“Sharp,” he murmured. “That’s one of the reasons.”

You stared at him. “Reasons for what?”

Now he pushed away from the wall and closed the distance between you in two measured steps.

Not enough to touch.

Enough to make the corridor feel suddenly, suffocatingly smaller.

“For choosing you.”

Your breath caught despite yourself, more from disgust than anything else, and he saw that too. Saw everything. His attention was surgical. There was nowhere to put your face that didn’t feel noticed.

“You’re insane.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You think that makes this sound romantic?”

At that, something shifted in his expression—subtle, but real. Amusement thinning into something cooler.

“Romance,” he said, “is for people with the luxury of illusion.”

You opened your mouth. He kept going.

“This is better.”

His voice had gone quieter. Not softer. Quieter. A difference you felt in your blood.

“This is honest.”

You wanted to slap him.

You wanted, with equal intensity, to force him to lose that impossible composure just once, just long enough to prove he was made of the same ugly nerves and blood and temper as everyone else.

Instead you said, “I’m not some jewel you can buy and put in a case because the room looks empty without it.”

“No,” he said.

Then, before you could decide whether he meant to mock you, his hand lifted.

He touched the inside of your wrist.

Just that.

Two fingers over the pulse point, light enough that he could’ve pretended it was accidental if he’d been anyone else. It wasn’t. The contact was deliberate down to the last fraction of pressure. Warm. Gloveless. Intimate in a way a grope never could’ve been.

Your whole body went rigid.

He looked down at where he was touching you, not hungrily, not greedily, but with the awful, proprietary interest of a man appraising workmanship.

Then he lifted his gaze back to your face.

“You’re something much rarer,” he said.

You jerked your hand away so hard your bracelet bit your skin.

His expression didn’t change.

“Don’t touch me.”

A beat.

“As you wish.”

He stepped back.

That should’ve made you feel victorious. Somehow it didn’t. Somehow it felt as though he’d only let go because he’d wanted you to feel what he could do with almost nothing.

“I'm not gonna marry you,” you said.

He studied you in the silence that followed, eyes dark and steady, the corners of his mouth gone neutral again.

Then he said, “Get some sleep.”

You stared at him.

“You’ll look better rested in the ring.”

You might have hit him if a servant hadn’t turned the corner just then, carrying folded linens and immediately freezing at the sight of the two of you in the corridor.

Titus stepped away from you at once, immaculate again, every trace of intimacy wiped clean so thoroughly it made you feel briefly insane for sensing it in the first place.

He nodded once to the servant, then to you.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll have the heirlooms brought out.”

And just like that he was gone, walking back toward the council room as though he hadn’t just upended the axis of your life with all the emotional investment of a man confirming dinner plans.

The heirlooms came out the next afternoon.

Of course they did.

No miracle intervened overnight. No late-breaking scandal. No sudden attack of conscience among your parents. By morning the engagement had already taken on the slick, polished inevitability of something handled by people with too much money to imagine failure. Your mother wept in private and avoided your eyes in public. Your father busied himself with logistics. Flowers appeared. Fabric swatches. Guest lists. Security arrangements.

By noon you wanted to burn down half the city.

Instead you were brought to another formal room at Danforth mansion, quieter than the rest and no less oppressive for it. Low light slid across burnished wood, old upholstery, and display cabinets crowded with the sort of antiques families like this mistook for legacy. The air carried old linen, polished wood, and the dry velvet hush of jewelry kept shut away more often than worn.

At the center of the room waited three attendants and an open lacquered case lined in dark blue silk.

Jewels lay inside.

Diamonds. Emeralds. Pearls yellowed faintly with age. Rings in settings so old they looked less designed than inherited by force.

You stopped in the doorway. “No.”

One of the attendants offered a brittle smile. “Just the fitting, miss.”

“I said no.”

“Titus said yes.”

You turned.

He was already in the room.

You hadn’t heard him enter.

He stood by the windows in shirtsleeves and dark trousers, suit jacket draped over the back of a chair, hands loose in his pockets. The stripped-back look should’ve made him seem more human. It didn’t. It just made him look less ceremonial and somehow more dangerous for it, as if this was what he was underneath the polish and the cufflinks and the family theater—something patient, expensive, and impossible to shame.

“You dismissed my answer yesterday,” you said. “Don’t expect a different one today.”

“No,” he said. “I expect consistency. It’s one of your better qualities.”

The attendants looked studiously at the floor.

You hated this room. Hated the sun in it. Hated the flowers on the sideboard. Hated the neat arrangement of rings waiting to be tried on your hand like shackles dressed as heritage.

Most of all, you hated that Titus looked entirely at ease in your fury.

He crossed the room and stopped before the open case.

“Leave us.”

The attendants vanished with near comic speed.

The door clicked shut.

For a few seconds, all you heard was the tick of the mantel clock.

“You enjoy this,” you said.

“I enjoy certainty.”

“You enjoy watching people realize they’re trapped.”

He glanced over the jewels, then chose a ring without hesitation. Platinum, old-cut diamond, severe and devastatingly beautiful.

“No,” you said again.

He turned, ring held between two fingers.

“Come here.”

You laughed once, flat and incredulous. “Have you mistaken me for someone obedient?”

“No.” His gaze swept over you, unhurried. “That would bore me.”

The heat that rose in you then was almost worse for being useless. Anger, yes, but threaded through with something rawer—the fury of being seen too clearly by someone you wanted to despise in simple terms.

You didn’t move.

Titus did.

He closed the distance without any visible tension, as if walking toward you in a locked room was the least dramatic thing in the world. When he reached you, he took your hand before you could snatch it away, not rough, not hesitant, fingers closing around yours with a confidence so complete it felt like the roughness had been moved somewhere subtler and more humiliating.

Your breath caught.

“Let go.”

“In a moment.”

His thumb pressed once against your knuckles, angling your hand toward the light. Then he slid the ring down your finger.

It fit.

Perfectly.

Too perfectly.

For one hideous second neither of you spoke.

The diamond flashed cold fire.

You looked at it and felt something cavernous open beneath your ribs.

Titus didn’t release your hand right away. He turned it slightly, studying the ring where it sat on your finger, his expression unreadable except for the terrible concentration of it.

“There,” he said at last, voice low. “That’s better.”

You yanked your hand back.

The ring stayed where it was.

Panic flared mean and hot and stupidly physical.

“It’s too tight.”

“It isn’t.”

“I want it off.”

He lifted his eyes to your face.

“No,” he said.

A silence stretched. The clock ticked on. Somewhere outside the window, crows were making ugly sounds in the bare trees.

You curled your fingers into your palm, as if hiding the ring might somehow lessen it.

Titus watched the movement.

Then his gaze went to your mouth.

When he spoke again, it was quieter than before.

“You wear my name beautifully.”

The words hit like a slap.

You stared at him, pulse suddenly loud in your ears.

“Go fuck yourself.”

He smiled then—really smiled, though only with his mouth, and the sight of it was so unexpectedly handsome and so deeply wrong on his face that your stomach dropped.

“There she is,” he murmured.

He reached past you, only to lift the veil draped over the nearby chair—ivory lace, antique and absurdly delicate. For one surreal second he held it between his hands as though testing weight, texture, history.

Then, without asking, he raised it and let the fabric fall over your hair.

The world turned cream and shadow.

You froze.

Through the sheer lace, his face blurred and sharpened with your breathing.

He stepped in just close enough that if you leaned even a fraction you’d hit him.

“This,” he said, almost conversationally, “is what they’ll remember.”

Your mouth had gone dry. “Take it off.”

“One day,” he said, “you’ll stop mistaking resistance for power.”

Then he lifted the veil again, careful as a priest with a relic, and laid it back over the chair.

He walked past you toward the door, collected his jacket from the chair, and shrugged it on with neat, effortless movements.

At the entryway, he paused.

You hadn’t moved.

You weren’t sure you could.

Without turning fully back, he said, “Dinner at eight. Wear the ring.”

Then he left you standing in the middle of the dim room, hand curled around a diamond that felt like a brand, staring at the closed door and listening to the old house settle around you.

That night, when the servants finally left you alone in the dressing room and the last pin came out of your hair, you stood in front of the mirror and looked at yourself for a very long time.

The ring caught the candlelight.

The silk of your evening gown whispered when you breathed.

Somewhere downstairs, laughter floated up through the vents—soft, cultured, inhuman.

You touched the diamond once with your thumb.

Then you lifted your eyes to your own reflection and understood, with a sickening clarity that settled all the way into your bones, that this was happening.

Not as threat. Not as theory. Not as one more grotesque performance among powerful people.

As fact.

And worse than that—worse than the ring, worse than the veil, worse even than the way Titus looked at you like the ending had already been written—was the unbearable knowledge that he’d barely touched you at all.

A wrist.

A hand.

A veil lowered over your hair.

And still he was everywhere.

In the room. In your pulse. In the hard little silence that followed you even when no one was speaking.

You should’ve felt only rage.

You did feel rage.

But beneath it, humiliating and hot and impossible to deny, was the raw edge of anticipation.

As if some part of you had looked into the mouth of the trap and, for one terrible heartbeat, admired the craftsmanship.

You shut your eyes.

When you opened them again, your reflection was still there—dressed in silk, ringed in candlelight, already half transformed into something you didn’t recognize.

A bride in all but vows.

And somewhere in the house, calm as ever, Titus Danforth was waiting for the moment it became irreversible.

By the time they came for you, the house had already dressed itself for the ceremony.

That was the first thing you noticed when the door to your room opened and the morning’s hush gave way to movement—servants carrying white boxes and tissue paper, polished shoes whispering over the rugs, the faint drift of incense winding in from somewhere deeper in the estate. Danforth mansion had worn darkness well the night before. In daylight, it looked no less sinister. If anything, the low gold burn of lamplight against old wood and stone felt stranger with morning pressing at the windows, as though the house had refused the sun on principle and built its own atmosphere in defiance of it.

No one spoke above a murmur.

No one asked how you’d slept.

No one asked whether you still intended to go through with it.

By now, apparently, even the illusion of choice had been set aside.

The dress waited on a stand near the hearth.

White silk. Old lace. Long sleeves that narrowed at the wrist. A high collar fastened with tiny pearl buttons. Not soft. Not romantic. It was too severe for that, too deliberate in every line. It looked less like something chosen for a bride and more like something selected for an offering.

You stared at it until one of the women gently asked you to raise your arms.

You did.

Not because you’d surrendered. Not because you’d accepted a single goddamn thing about this day.

Because refusal had become useless in increments so precise you’d barely felt them happening.

First the dinner. Then the announcement. Then the ring. Then the veil lowered over your hair by the same hand that would, by nightfall, claim you before a room full of witnesses and call it sanctified because rich families had always known how to dress violence in ceremony and get away with it.

Layer by layer, the dress closed around you.

Silk sliding over skin. Lace hugging your throat. The snug draw of the fitted bodice. Fingers at the back fastening button after button until you could feel the weight of yourself altered by craft alone. Someone arranged your hair. Someone else fitted earrings at your ears—diamonds old enough to have belonged to women who’d probably smiled through their own ruin with better posture than yours.

You stood still through all of it, hands loose at your sides, face turned slightly toward the mirror without truly looking into it.

Only when one of the women reached for your left hand did your attention sharpen.

She paused when she saw the ring already there.

Of course she did.

A servant behind you lowered her voice. “Mr. Danforth said it wasn’t to be removed.”

A strange silence followed that.

No one looked directly at you after that.

When they were finished, the room emptied in stages until only one woman remained to settle the veil over your hair. The lace spilled cool and weightless down your back, brushing your shoulders, your spine, the backs of your arms.

She stepped away.

The door shut behind her.

At last, you were alone.

You lifted your eyes to the mirror.

For a long moment, you didn’t breathe.

The woman staring back at you looked composed. Expensive. Untouchable in the way statues were untouchable—seen, admired, paraded, and entirely at the mercy of the hands that placed them where they stood. The silk gave you an elegance you hadn’t asked for. The veil softened nothing. The ring flashed like a hard little fact.

You looked like you belonged to the house already.

Your mouth tightened.

A knock sounded once at the door. Not tentative. Not loud. Just enough.

Before you could answer, it opened.

Titus entered alone.

He shut the door behind him without taking his eyes off you.

For a second neither of you spoke.

He was dressed in black.

The sight of him in it did something ugly to your pulse.

Not because black was novel. Men wore black every day in houses like this and called it timeless. But on Titus it looked less like formality and more like a decision. The cut of the suit was ruthless. The white at his throat only made the rest of him darker by contrast. Every line of him was composed down to the smallest detail—cufflinks, watch, the fall of the jacket, the gleam of his dress shoes. Not a hair out of place. Not a flicker of nerves visible anywhere.

As if weddings were nothing.

As if forcing a woman to the altar were only monstrous when poorer men did it badly.

His gaze moved over you once, slowly.

Not leering.

Worse.

Appraising.

And, beneath that, unmistakably pleased.

“You look right in it,” he said.

Your fingers curled at your sides. “That’s a disgusting thing to say to someone on their wedding day.”

“If you were interested in pretty lies, I’d have chosen someone else.”

“You keep saying things like that as if I’m supposed to be flattered.”

“No,” he said.

He crossed the room at the same maddening, measured pace he brought to everything, then stopped behind you rather than in front of you. In the mirror, you saw him lift one hand toward the veil where it fell from your hair.

He didn’t touch it yet.

“Flattery is cheap,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Your throat went dry with anger.

“And the truth is what, exactly?”

His eyes met yours in the glass.

“That you were made for this room better than most of the people born into it.”

Silence rang between you.

The words should’ve sounded manipulative. They were manipulative. That didn’t stop them from landing with a sharpness that made your stomach knot.

You hated him for knowing how to speak to pride instead of fear.

You hated yourself a little for listening.

His fingers finally closed over a fold of lace, adjusting the fall of the veil with careful precision.

“I’m not walking willingly into this,” you said.

“No,” he answered. “Willingness was never the part I required from you.”

You turned then, fast enough that the veil stirred around your shoulders.

His hand fell away.

“Do you hear yourself?” you demanded. “Do you ever once hear the things that come out of your mouth and think 'maybe I sound like a fucking monster?'”

His expression didn’t change.

“No.”

The bluntness of it nearly made you laugh.

Instead you said, “You should.”

“Would it help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would make you less unbearable.”

He considered that as if you’d offered him a practical question rather than an insult.

Then, with the faintest ghost of amusement: “I doubt it.”

A noise escaped you—somewhere between a scoff and a disbelieving breath.

He studied you for another second, then reached up and rested two fingers beneath your chin.

The contact was light.

Still, your body went taut at once.

He tilted your face slightly, not enough to be rough, just enough to make the gesture impossible to mistake for anything other than control.

“You can glare at me all the way to the altar if it eases you,” he said. “I won’t object.”

Your gaze locked on his.

“And after?”

His eyes were very dark at this distance. Steady. Inhumanly patient.

“After,” he said, “you’ll have the courtesy to stop acting surprised.”

He let go.

A knock sounded again—this time from outside, followed by a servant’s careful voice letting Titus know the family was assembled.

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at you one last time, gaze dropping briefly to the ring, then returning to your face.

“Come along, then,” he said softly. “You’ve kept them waiting long enough.”

The room they’d chosen for the ceremony wasn’t a church.

That would’ve been almost comforting in its hypocrisy.

No, this was worse.

It was one of the larger formal chambers at the heart of the estate, transformed not into something holy but into something that wanted to be mistaken for holiness by people who’d spent generations believing money, blood, and repetition could manufacture sacred things where none existed naturally. Rows of chairs had been arranged in exact lines beneath amber sconces and shaded lamps. Candles burned in clusters on tables and ledges, their light wavering against dark wood and old stone. White flowers had been brought in, but even they couldn’t soften the room. They only sharpened the hush of it, their perfume drifting too sweet through air that still carried incense and polished furniture and the cold mineral smell of old walls.

At the front of the room stood a narrow dais.

On it, beneath the low gold burn of the lights, waited Titus.

For one traitorous moment, you forgot how to breathe.

He looked as though the whole room had been built for the sole purpose of framing him here—black suit, white shirt, hands loosely clasped in front of him, face composed into something calm enough to pass for reverence if a person were stupid enough to want to believe in it. He didn’t shift when you entered. Didn’t smile. Didn’t do anything theatrical to mark the moment. He simply watched you begin the walk toward him with the same certainty he’d brought to every other stage of this from the start.

The aisle felt longer than it should have.

The veil softened the edges of the room but sharpened everything that mattered. The drum of your own pulse. The whisper of silk around your ankles. The flicker of candlelight on brass and crystal. Faces turning to look. Families gathered in ordered silence, all of them dressed in mourning colors and jewels as if they’d come not to bless a union but to witness a sealing.

Your father escorted you only halfway.

That had been decided without your input too.

At the midpoint he stopped, his fingers pressing once at your arm before withdrawing. He didn’t look at you when he let go. He looked at Titus.

Like a man delivering something expensive and breakable into the hands of its new owner.

You wanted to scream.

Instead you kept walking.

Titus stepped down from the dais to meet you before the final few feet had been crossed.

Again, not showy. Just controlled. Precise in his timing. He offered his hand.

You looked at it.

The last time he’d taken your hand, a ring had gone onto your finger and stayed there.

Every instinct in you recoiled.

Every eye in the room waited.

At last, you placed your hand in his.

His fingers closed around yours at once, steady and cool, not squeezing, not stroking—just holding, as if the contact itself were enough to announce the rest.

Then he led you up to stand beside him beneath the candles.

The officiant—one of the council men, grey-haired and grave in a dark suit—began to speak.

You barely heard the first part.

Something about alliance. About continuity. About two houses joined in mutual strength and common purpose. About the preservation of legacy and the solemn duty of those called to steward it. The usual poison dressed as tradition.

Your attention kept snagging on smaller things instead. The warmth of Titus at your side. The line of his shoulder just inside your vision. The weight of the ring on your finger. The scent of wax and flowers and the faint resinous cologne that clung to him whenever he leaned the slightest bit nearer.

Then came the vows.

The officiant prompted Titus first.

Of course he’d go first.

Titus turned toward you fully, and the room seemed to recede in a single slow pulse.

You braced yourself for prettiness.

He gave you none.

“I take you before these witnesses,” he said, voice low and even, carrying cleanly through the chamber without ever needing to rise, “to stand at my side, to bear my name, and to be kept under my protection as long as I draw breath.”

Your heartbeat stuttered.

The officiant should’ve interrupted. No one did.

Titus went on, eyes fixed on yours.

“What is mine, I keep. What I keep, I defend. Before family, law, and God, I bind myself to that duty.”

A murmur, almost too soft to be called one, moved through the guests and died.

You stared at him.

He had not improvised those words in the moment. You knew that instantly. He had chosen them. Considered them. Brought them here intact.

Protection.

Keeping.

Duty.

Not love. Never love. Something older and harder and far more dangerous in a man like him because it asked for nothing tender in return.

When it was your turn, the officiant prompted you too quickly, as if fearful of giving anyone more time than necessary to think about what had just been said aloud.

Your own repeated words tasted strange in your mouth. Ancient. Formal. Sanded smooth by a hundred dead brides before you, none of whom had likely been allowed the comfort of saying what they meant either.

You spoke them anyway.

What else was left?

By the time the ring exchange came, your hand was colder than the diamonds.

Titus took it again.

His thumb brushed once across your knuckles before he adjusted the ring already there, turning the stone minutely until it caught the light. The gesture was so small that no one but you could’ve understood it for what it was.

Not placement.

Possession.

The officiant said the last words. The room held its breath.

Then, with solemn satisfaction: “It is done.”

Done.

Not blessed. Not celebrated. Done.

Titus lifted the veil from your face.

The lace slid back in a whisper.

For one suspended second, with the room silent and the candles throwing gold around both of you, his hand stayed at the edge of your jaw.

Then he leaned in and kissed you.

It was brief.

Formal.

It should’ve been nothing.

Instead it landed with devastating accuracy—mouth firm against yours, measured enough to be publicly appropriate and intimate enough to feel like a warning. No fumbling hunger. No softness. Just the terrible confidence of a man sealing a contract in front of Mr. Le Bail and witnesses.

When he drew back, the room returned all at once.

People rose.

Applause began, muted but insistent.

And you stood there in white silk with Titus Danforth’s hand at the small of your back, feeling the whole world slide one inch further off its axis.

The reception took place in an adjoining room that had been rearranged for dinner.

Long table. Candlelight. Crystal. Flowers in low arrangements pale as bone. More guests than before, though still not enough to pretend this was anything other than a tightly controlled family affair. The house had shifted its posture for the occasion, but it hadn’t softened. Laughter never rose very high. Music from the quartet stayed low and bloodless. Even the servants moved differently now—quicker, quieter, as if aware that some threshold had been crossed and the air itself required more caution.

You were seated beside Titus at the center of the table.

Of course you were.

Your chair had barely been pushed in before the procession of toasts began. Chester first, speaking about continuity and the strength of old alliances. Another council member after him, congratulating both families on their wisdom. Someone from your side talking about endurance in terms so neutral they might as well have been discussing architecture.

Through all of it, Titus remained maddeningly composed.

He didn’t drink much. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t lean into the performance the way lesser men would have. He listened when required, inclined his head when politeness demanded it, and kept one hand resting lightly against the back of your chair as if the gesture cost him no thought at all.

It cost you plenty.

Every time his fingers shifted against the carved wood behind you, you felt it.

Every time someone addressed you both as if this were a union freely entered, your jaw tightened a little further.

At one point Chester lifted his glass and toasted “to the new Mrs. Danforth.”

Your stomach turned.

Without looking at Titus, you reached for your wine and drank.

Next to you, he said very quietly, “You’ll make your teeth ache if you grind them any harder.”

You set the glass down. “I hope that’s what ruins the evening for you.”

“My evening is going extremely well.”

You turned your head a fraction. “I hate you.”

His expression didn’t shift. He lifted his own glass, took one measured sip, and set it back down.

“I know.”

The calm with which he said it made you want to stab him with the dessert fork.

Instead you faced forward again, eyes on the flowers, on the crystal, on the slow moving reflections in your wineglass.

A beat later, you felt his thumb brush once along the back edge of your chair, impossibly close to the bare stretch of skin at your neck where the veil no longer covered you.

Not quite touching.

Worse than touching.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured.

“I’m restraining myself.”

“So am I.”

The words dropped into your lap like lit coals.

You went very still.

To anyone watching, nothing had changed. The new husband and wife sat side by side beneath candlelight and public approval, speaking quietly as refined people did at refined tables. No one would’ve guessed that your pulse had gone ragged or that Titus, without so much as lifting his voice, had just made it brutally clear how thin his own leash was running.

You looked at him then.

He was already watching the room again, not you.

The side of his face gave away nothing.

And somehow that was the worst part. That he could put words like that into your blood and then look away as though the act required nothing of him.

Dinner stretched.

Courses came and went barely tasted. Congratulations arrived in tidy lines, most of them spoken to Titus first and you second. He accepted them with cool ease. You endured them. The ring on your finger felt heavier with every passing minute.

At last, after coffee was poured and the last formal toast had died, Titus rose.

The room quieted.

He offered no speech.

No grand gratitude.

He simply placed one hand over the back of your chair, and the collected company seemed to understand all at once what that meant.

The evening’s public portion had ended.

Your chair scraped softly as you stood.

No one tried to stop you. No one looked shocked. Not one face in the room betrayed even a flicker of discomfort. Why would it? This, after all, was what the entire day had been arranged to culminate in. The silk. The flowers. The vows. The blessing. The dinner. All of it had been a polished corridor leading neatly toward one private room and the man waiting to take you there.

Titus settled his hand at your back.

The gesture was light.

It might as well have been a brand.

“Goodnight,” Chester said, in the tone of a man concluding excellent business.

You looked at him and thought, very clearly, that if there were a hell deep enough for families like this, it ought to have separate wings.

Then Titus guided you out.

The corridor beyond the reception room was quiet enough to hear the house settling around you.

No quartet here. No voices. Just the soft drag of your skirt over the rugs and the measured tread of Titus’s shoes beside your own, the low amber light along the walls, the old wood and stone holding the evening’s warmth close.

He didn’t hurry.

That, more than anything, began to fray your composure.

If he’d dragged you off in triumph, if he’d shown one crude crack of appetite, you could have despised him cleanly for it. But he moved through the corridor with the same composure he’d brought to the altar and the dinner table, as if what waited at the end of this walk were not a wife he’d cornered by increments but merely the next solemn duty in a day of solemn duties.

You hated how much more frightening that made him.

At the first turn in the hall, you stopped walking.

His hand fell from your back.

He turned to look at you.

“No.”

The word came out low, hard, breathless with everything you’d held in all night.

For the first time since leaving the reception, his attention sharpened fully onto you.

“No?” he repeated.

“You don’t get to act like this is just another room.” Your voice shook once and steadied. “You don’t get to walk me through your house like I’m already trained to it.”

He watched you in silence.

The amber sconces lit one side of his face and left the other in shadow. His collar was still neat. His expression still controlled. Only his eyes had changed, going darker somehow, more focused.

“Have I given you the impression I think tonight is unimportant?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Interesting.”

You laughed once, ugly and tired. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I mean it.” You stepped closer before you could stop yourself, rage making you reckless. “You stand there acting like the most monstrous thing about you is your honesty, when really it’s the calm. It’s the way you do all of this”—you gestured between him, the house, the dress, the ring, the whole suffocating architecture of the night—“like you’ve already forgiven yourself for it.”

His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.

“I haven’t forgiven myself for anything.”

The quiet certainty in that landed harder than denial would have.

You stared at him.

“Then what exactly do you call this?” you asked.

His answer came without hesitation.

“An inevitability.”

Something about that word, spoken there in the hush of the corridor with the whole house closing around it, made your anger slip briefly into something more dangerous. Not fear exactly. Not surrender. Something sharper. The vertigo of standing too near the edge of a decision already made by someone else.

You should’ve stepped back.

Instead you stayed where you were.

Titus took in the fact of that and said, very softly, “Ask me what you’ve been asking yourself all day.”

You frowned. “What?”

His eyes never left yours.

“Why you.”

The breath left you in a quiet rush.

For a second the only sound was the low hiss of one of the wall sconces.

Then, because the question had been clawing at you in one form or another since the council room, you said it.

“Why me?”

No smile touched his face this time.

No indulgence either.

When he answered, it was with a steadiness so complete it almost felt cruel.

“Because you’re the only person in either family who looked at me and saw the cost before the reward.”

Your throat tightened.

He took one step nearer.

“Because you know what rooms like these are made for, and you walk into them anyway with your head high.”

Another step.

“Because you’re not soft enough to bore me, not foolish enough to flatter, and not weak enough to break usefully.”

The words should have insulted. Somehow they didn’t. Not entirely.

His gaze dipped to the ring on your hand, then returned to your face.

“And because when I thought of the seat beside mine,” he said, “I found I had no interest in seeing anyone else there.”

Silence.

It hit deeper than any prettier answer could have. Not because it was tender. God, it wasn’t tender. But because it sounded horribly true.

You swallowed.

“That isn’t a reason,” you said, though your voice no longer had the strength it had a minute ago.

“It is to me.”

Then he reached for your hand.

You let him.

Maybe because the fight had shifted. Maybe because the entire day had stripped choice down so thin that this no longer felt like the battlefield to spend it on. Maybe because some ruined part of you wanted to see what his face would look like if he touched the ring now, here, with no witnesses left to perform for.

His fingers closed over yours and lifted your hand between you.

He turned the ring once more in the light.

Then, without breaking eye contact, he pressed his mouth to the stone.

Not your knuckles.

Not your skin.

The ring.

The gesture was so restrained it nearly undid you.

When he lowered your hand again, his thumb moved once along the inside of your wrist.

“Come with me,” he said.

Not a command barked out for effect. Not a plea.

Something worse.

Something spoken like fact.

You went.

The room at the end of the corridor was not the sentimental bridal chamber of old stories.

Nothing in Danforth mansion would ever allow itself that kind of softness.

It was large, yes, and beautifully appointed in the cold, curated way every room in the estate seemed to be—dark wood, old stone, low lamps, a bed hung with pale fabric, an antique wardrobe, a fire banked low in the hearth. Candles glowed on the mantel and bedside tables, their light turning the silk coverlet and the lace at your sleeves to shifting gold and cream. Somewhere incense had been burned earlier. The air still held the fading trace of it under the cleaner scents of linen and polished furniture.

The door shut behind you.

The click of the latch ran through your body like a second pulse.

You stood just inside the room, veil trailing behind you, hands at your sides.

Titus remained by the door for one measured second, watching you.

Then he crossed to you and stopped close enough that you could feel the warmth of him through layers of fabric.

Neither of you spoke.

The room had gone intensely quiet.

At last he lifted a hand and touched the edge of the veil where it fell over your shoulder.

“This first,” he said.

He drew it back slowly, letting the lace slide free from your hair and shoulders in a long soft waterfall. When it was clear of you, he laid it aside with a care that felt almost obscene in its contrast to the violence of the day.

Then his hands returned to you.

One at either wrist.

Not pinning. Not rough.

Only holding for a moment, as if acquainting himself with the fact of you in this room, under his name, in the clothes chosen for this exact hour.

Your breathing was no longer steady.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You’re angry,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

It almost made you laugh.

“Is that still your favorite thing about me?”

“No,” he said.

His thumbs shifted once against your pulse points.

“That changed when you walked toward me.”

The room tipped very slightly around the edges.

You looked up at him. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Say things like that now.”

A flicker—not amusement, not quite, but close—moved at the corner of his mouth.

“Now,” he said, “is exactly when I mean them.”

His right hand released your wrist and rose to the pearl buttons at your throat.

He paused there.

Waited.

You could have stepped back.

You didn’t.

One by one, he opened the collar o f the gown.

Each button slipped free with a tiny sound that seemed to echo. Cool air touched your skin where the dress loosened. His knuckles brushed your throat once, then the line beneath it. No haste. No fumbling. Just that same devastating patience he brought to everything, as if he intended to prove that he had all the time in the world to watch every last defense come apart.

When the last button at the collar was undone, he let his hand rest briefly at the base of your throat.

“Still surprised?” he asked.

You hated how breathless your answer sounded. “No.”

“Liar.”

The word was almost gentle.

You stared at him.

Then, because pride was the one thing still reliably yours, you said, “I’m not afraid of you.”

His gaze held yours for a long beat.

“Not in the way you expected,” he said.

And because that was true—because that was the worst truth of the night, that fear had been joined by something hotter and more humiliating and infinitely more complicated—you said nothing at all.

He looked at you for another second.

Then he angled his head toward yours, mouth near your temple, your hair, your ear.

When he spoke, his voice was so low it seemed to belong to the room itself.

“That’s enough pretending.”

And then his mouth was on yours. It’s nothing like the chaste, public kiss at the altar. This was wet and sloppy, his tongue pushing past your lips before you could even think to deny him. You taste the expensive whiskey he drank at the reception, the sharpness of it, and something else—something just him. Your head spun. Your hands came up, flat against the hard wall of his chest in his tailored jacket, but you don’t push. You can’t. The fight has bled out of you, leaving a hollow, accepting ache.

One of his hands leaves your face, slides down your spine, over the intricate beading of the wedding gown. It finds the curve of your ass and grips, hard, fingers digging into the silk and the flesh beneath. He groans into your mouth, the sound vibrating through you. He pulls your hips flush against his, and you feel the thick, hard length of him straining against his dress pants, pressed against your belly. A shudder runs through you, involuntary. Your body betrays you, a flush of heat spreading low in your stomach.

He breaks the kiss, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his. His breathing is ragged. “Look at you,” he says, his voice a rough, velvet baritone. “My wife.”

His fingers find the hidden zipper at the side of your dress. The sound of it parting is the sound of your last defense falling. The heavy silk gown slumps, and he pushes it from your shoulders. It pools at your feet, a puddle of white and silver on the dark patterned rug. You stand before him in only your lace-trimmed stockings, garter belt, and a pair of delicate silk panties. The air in the chamber is cool on your bare skin, raising goosebumps. His gaze is a physical weight, traveling over your breasts, your stomach, the juncture of your thighs.

“Perfect,” he breathes. It’s not a compliment. It’s an assessment.

He shrugs out of his own jacket, lets it fall carelessly. His fingers make quick work of his cufflinks, his shirt buttons. He strips to the waist, revealing defined muscle underneath. You’ve never seen him like this—not a politician, not a strategist. Just a man. A predator in his den. He steps forward, closing the distance, and his bare chest brushes against your nipples. You gasp. They’re already tight, sensitive.

He doesn’t kiss you again. He lowers his head, his mouth finding the slope of your breast. His tongue flicks over one nipple, once, twice, through the lace of your bra. Then his teeth graze it. You cry out, a short, sharp sound. Your hands fly to his hair, the greying strands surprisingly soft between your fingers. You don’t know if you’re pulling him away or holding him there.

He answers by unhooking the front clasp of your bra. It falls open. His mouth is on you instantly, hot and wet, sucking your bare nipple deep. The pull is exquisite, a sharp pleasure that arrows straight to your cunt. You feel yourself getting wet, a slick, embarrassing heat. You’re panting. Your head falls back.

“So responsive,” he murmurs against your skin, switching to the other breast. His hand comes up to knead the one his mouth left, pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “This belongs to me now. This body. This sweet gasp.” He sucks harder, and your knees buckle. His arm bands around your waist, holding you up. “Say it.”

You can’t. The words won’t form. You just moan, a broken, needy sound.

He straightens, his lips glistening. His hands go to the fastening of his trousers. “On the bed, darling. On your back. Legs spread for your husband.”

The command brooks no argument. The formality of ‘Eleanor’ in the midst of this filth makes your stomach clench. You move to the massive four-poster bed, the dark velvet coverlet cool under your back. You look up at the canopy, the Danforth crest embroidered there. You spread your legs. The cool air touches your wetness through the silk of your panties. You’re exposed. You’re his.

He pushed his pantsand briefs down, his cock springing free. It’s thick, flushed an angry red, the head slick with pre-cum. He’s fully erect, veins standing out along the length. He strokes himself once, his eyes locked on where you’re laid out for him. “Look at you waiting for it.”

He climbs onto the bed, kneeling between your thighs. He hooks his fingers in the waistband of your panties and pulls them down, slowly, dragging the damp silk over your hips, your thighs. He tosses them aside. Then he just looks. At your bare cunt, glistening and already swollen for him. His jaw tightens. “Beautiful. So fucking wet for me already.”

He doesn’t use his fingers first. He lowers his head. His breath ghosts over you, hot. Then his tongue, flat and broad, licks a slow, firm stripe from your entrance to your clit. You jolt, a full-body spasm, a choked sob escaping your throat. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

He eats you like a man starved. His tongue circles your clit, flicks it, then pushes inside you, fucking you with it. The wet, obscene sounds fill the silent chamber. Your hips lift off the bed, seeking more pressure, more of that devastating friction. One of his hands pins your hip to the mattress. The other slides up your body, his thumb finding your mouth. “Suck,” he orders.

You open your mouth, take his thumb inside. You suck on it, the salt of his skin on your tongue, as his tongue fucks you deeper. The dual sensations unravel you. The coil in your belly tightens, a terrifying, inevitable pull.

“That’s it,” he growls against your cunt, his voice muffled by your flesh. “Come on my tongue, wife. Let me taste it.”

His words are the final trigger. Your orgasm crashes over you, a silent, seizing wave. Your back arches, your cunt clenching around nothing, around his tongue, pulses of pure, mindless pleasure wracking you. You cry out around his thumb, the sound swallowed by the room.

He doesn’t let you come down. As the last tremors shake your thighs, he rises over you. The broad head of his cock presses against your soaked entrance. He’s not asking. He’s positioning. You’re still spasming, oversensitive, when he pushes inside.

The stretch is breathtaking. He’s so thick, filling you in a way that borders on pain. You gasp, your nails digging into the velvet coverlet. He sinks in slowly, relentlessly, until his hips are flush with yours, until he’s buried to the hilt. You feel him throbbing inside you, a deep, insistent pulse. He’s so deep. You’re so full.

“Mine,” he grunts, the word punched out of him. He pulls back almost all the way, then drives back in. The pace he sets is brutal, possessive. Each thrust is a claiming. The wet slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed, his ragged breaths—it’s the only music. He watches your face, his eyes burning. “Take it. Take your husband’s cock. This cunt was made for this. For me.”

You can’t speak. You can only feel. The drag of him inside you, the delicious friction, the building pressure again, already, so soon after your first peak. Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. You surrender to it. To him. This is your fate. This is your marriage bed.

His thrusts become erratic, harder, deeper. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Gonna fill you,” he pants. “Gonna put my heir in you. Right now.”

He slams into you one final time, burying himself as deep as he can go. You feel him pulse, then the hot, sudden flood of his release filling you. It’s thick, so much of it, spilling inside you, marking you. A low, guttural groan tears from his chest, and he collapses his weight onto you, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

You lie there, joined, his cock still lodged inside you, his cum leaking out around where you’re stretched around him. The smell of sex, of sweat, of him, is overwhelming. Your body is humming, spent. The defiance is gone. In its place is a hollow, terrifying acceptance. You are his wife. You are carrying his seed.

He shifts, pulling out of you slowly. A gush of his release follows, warm on your inner thigh. He rolls onto his back beside you, one arm thrown over his eyes. His chest rises and falls steadily. After a moment, his hand finds yours on the bed between you. His fingers lace through yours, holding tight. He doesn’t speak.

Afterward, the room looked altered.

Not destroyed. Titus wouldn’t have allowed destruction in the vulgar sense. But changed. The veil half fallen from where he’d placed it aside. Candlelight guttering lower. Silk drawn into new creases. One earring missing from where it had once sat at your ear, now glinting faintly near the edge of the coverlet. The air warmer than before, touched through with the fading incense, the spent sweetness of candles, the sharper living heat of skin.

You lay against the pillows, breathing slower by degrees.

Titus sat beside you, one forearm braced along the mattress as he looked down at you with that same impossible composure he’d worn all evening—except now there was something else in it too. Not softness. He did not become soft. But satisfaction, yes. A terrible, settled kind of satisfaction, like a lock finally turned all the way home.

His hand closed lightly around your left hand where it rested atop the coverlet.

He turned the ring once beneath his thumb.

The diamond caught the candlelight.

“There,” he said quietly.

Your eyes lifted to his face.

“There what?”

He looked at the ring, then at you.

“Now it looks earned.”

You should have told him to go to hell.

The words didn’t come.

He raised your hand and pressed his mouth, this time, to your knuckles. A brief touch. Almost formal. Worse somehow for that.

Then he lowered your hand again and settled it back against the coverlet, leaving his own over it.

“My wife,” he said.

The title moved through you differently now.

Not easier. Not cleaner. But deeper.

You stared at the canopy above the bed for a long moment, listening to the fire settle in the hearth, to the quiet breath of the old house around you, to Titus’s silence at your side. Somewhere under the ache in your body and the rage still glowing stubbornly in the corners of you, something else had begun to take root. Not peace. Never that.

Recognition, maybe.

Of what he was.

Of what this was.

Of the fact that the cage had shut, yes—but also that he had never lied to you about the bars.

At length, you turned your head to look at him.

He was already watching.

Of course he was.

That dark, unreadable gaze met yours, and for the first time since the council room, you didn’t look away.

Whatever he saw in your face then made something shift, almost imperceptibly, in his expression.

Approval.

Not because you were meek. Not because you were broken.

Because you were still there.

Still proud. Still furious. Still looking back.

His thumb moved once over your ring.

“You understand now,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

You should have denied it.

You should have laughed in his face, turned away, spit the title back at him like poison.

Instead you lay in his bed with his name on your hand and his scent in the sheets and met his eyes long enough for the silence itself to become an answer.

Outside the closed door, the house remained what it had always been—old, watchful, merciless.

Inside, candlelight trembled against the walls, and Titus Danforth looked at you like the long wait had finally ended.

Somewhere in the distance, far below the room you now occupied, the estate settled deeper into its foundations.

And beside him, still wearing white gone warm in the dark, you understood with sudden, terrible clarity that the most frightening thing about the night was no longer that it had become irreversible.

Then the next night Jack had to split up you and the R4 in the middle of the hub. "What in the actual fuck are you two doing?" His presence had been enough to put some distance between the both of you, but you were pissed and the R4 was not letting it go.

"She walked all over my case."

"Because you were fucking it up! That girl did not have time to wait, and I told you that three times."

"And I told you to stay in your lane, I'm your senior resident."

"You are a dipshit, that was going to kill that girl by lack of action."

"Enough." Jack didn't yell. He didn't need to. He stood, hands clasped behind his back, face hard and waited.

"Dr. Abbot, she has authority issues, and it's interfering with her patient care and everyone elses."

"I don't have an issue with authority," If looks could kill the R4 would have dropped dead. Then you turned that look on him and it didn't have the venom in it, but the fight was there, that unwavering confidence, "I have a problem with misplaced authority."

Jack had held your gaze as you'd said it then nodded. He'd sent you both on your separate ways and excused himself to the bathroom where he took a leak and then stood with his hands braced on the sink as he stared himself down in the mirror. "What the fuck?" He whispered to himself as he rocked side to side and shook his head at his own reflection. He should've been annoyed at you two, not himself, but something about that look you had given him. It was like it had flipped some sort of switch. Like suddenly you weren't just his best resident, you were also…

The bathroom door swung open, "Dr. Abbot, we have a code blue coming in, ETA 5 minutes."

He nodded, "Set up trauma two."

Every shift after that he caught himself thinking things he should not be thinking about his resident. Yes you were his best resident, talented and dedicated, but you were also gorgeous. Not that he had never noticed, but now it was something he couldn't help but pay attention to. In between patients, when you passed by him or stood a little too close, he felt his pulse quicken. He couldn't help but watch you a little closer, the way you were so soft and calm with nervous patients, the way you didn't take shit from the combative ones. The confidence you had in your abilities and the drive you had to be better.

Your eyes. Those beautiful fucking eyes that never shied away from him. Your smile. Not big and bright or soft or sweet. No, the one that drove him fucking crazy? That was the tiny one, the barely there tick of your lips, up to one side before you could fight it back. That one was his favorite, because it felt like he had to earn that one. Like he had done something, just enough, to get you to crack. Like there was something you were trying to keep to yourself and if he said the right thing, did the right thing, you'd show him what it was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been a long night. A long week. Jack had gone up for some air and some quiet. He had his back leaned against the railing and hands in his pockets, eyes trained on the horizon.

The access door opened and he furrowed his brow. Robby wasn't working today.

When he looked over his shoulder the last person he had expected to see was you, just standing there with one of your easy smiles. "Need me, you could have called."

You just shrugged as you came closer. "Don't need anything, Day shift is trickling in." You came to lean next to him. Close enough to touch. "You good boss?"

Jack glanced sideways at you. Your hair was falling down, eyes tired, smile careful. He had to fight the urge to lean towards you, close that distance just to touch, even if it was just your shoulder against his. He shook his head, "Just one of those nights. You good?"

You nodded, leaned over the railing carefully to look down, "Do you actually think about it? When you come up here or is it just... a thing you do?"

He's not sure he would have been more surpised if you had slapped him. He looked at you long and hard. When you didn't flinch, didn't shy away, he shrugged. "Depends on the day." Jack cracks a little smirk for you, to ease the tension.

You smile back at him, unphased, as you stood up a little straighter. His eyes track your every move as you lean across the railing.

Jack had been wrong when he thought he couldn't be more surprised if you'd slapped him. Becuase the last thing he would have ever expected was that you would lean across the railing and kiss him.

It wasn't anything crazy. A quick brush of your lips over his. Not long enough. When you didn't pull back all the way he watched you close. Studied you. "Just in case." You shrugged as you finally stepped back.

You were about to turn and leave when he asked, "In case what?"

You gave him another smile, this time with something in your eyes that you didn't try to hide from him as the sun crept up over the skyline. "In case tonight was one of those nights."

It wasn't. It was one of those nights, but not one of THOSE nights. Jack liked that it hadn't been some big thing. Quick and light. He liked that you hadn't hesitated. He liked that if it had been one of those nights, you thought a kiss would have changed something. It changed everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You know, the park beers is really more of a day shift thing."

You turned to the side and inwardly scolded yourself for not hearing him approach. "No beer." You shrugged but didn't offer up anything else.

Jack took another step closer, "Thinkin' about that kid?" He shrugged his backpack up higher and waited for your response.

You looked him over and even after the night you'd had, you had to fight back a smile because he looked good. This was your favorite version of Dr. Jack Abbot. Cargo pants, hair a mess and he'd pulled his scrub top off at some point and had worked the last couple hours in just atight, black t-shirt. You took a deep breath, "You goin' to tell me I did everything I could?"

He shook his head, "You already know that."

You nodded, "Yep."

"C'mon, I'll give you a ride home."

"Why?" You looked up at him, skeptical.

The grin he gave you washed all that away, "Just in case."

You thought maybe it would be awkward, letting Jack drive you home after what you'd done on the roof four shifts ago. It wasn't. Then when he had pulled up in front of your building, you thought for sure it would be awkward, but it wasn't. He just put the truck in park and tipped his head to catch your eye, "Go get some sleep okay." When you didn't move right away, he gave you a little nod, "I'll see you tomorrow."

You felt sick to your stomach suddenly, like you had been very wrong. "Jack…If I…"

He draped his wrist over the steering wheel and his eyes were soft, "Tomorrows a new day."

"Get that from Robby?" you tried to swallow down the bile in your throat, force a smile.

Jack shrugged, gave you a smirk. "Maybe. I mean it, get some sleep."

You had started to climb out of the truck, but your hand paused on the handle. You were always something of a go big or go home kind of girl. So, you turned back, leaned across the console and didn't give yourself or Jack the chance to think twice. You kissed him again. More than a quick peck this time and the air rushed out of your lungs when his lips moved with yours, slow and steady.

You were about to pull back when you felt the hand that had been draped over the steering wheel cradle the back of your head and keep you there.

When Jack did eventually let you pull away his eyes locked onto yours. "What was that for?"

You whispered, scared to get your hopes up, "Just in case I don't get another chance."

He dropped his head back against the headrest and held your gaze, "If I promise you'll get another chance, will you go upstairs and get some rest?" When you nodded he cracked a little smile, "I'll see you tomorrow."

~~~~~~

Giving you a ride home became a thing, not after every shift but more and more.

It felt like you both just craved that little bit of time alone, together. It wasn't even something seedy or scandalous, he would just... drive you home.

Sometimes you'd kiss him, sometimes he'd reach out for your hand and hold it the whole way to your apartment. At some point it turned into drive thru coffee. He didn't just pull up out front anymore, he'd park in a spot and you would talk.

Jack told you about his wife first. The broken part of him figured; get the rough stuff out of the way first. If you were going to change your mind that would do it, and he'd rather deal with it sooner than later. He told you and you had just held his hand, your thumb working circles over his palm with tears in your eyes. "I don't have the words Jack, God I wish I did..."

He didn't need you to have the words. The look in your eyes unwavering and the grip on his hand was enough. He had just shaken his head, throat still hoarse and had lifted the back of your hands to his lips. That was enough.

He told you about his leg. You never flinched once and this time it was him that stroked his thumb over your palm. Back and forth, where they rested together on the console. You had just leaned forward, held his gaze and told him it made him more of a man.

He told you about his PTSD, explained his little visits to the roof, told you about his therapist. You said you were proud of him, and leaned over to kiss him and steal the last bagel bite out of his lap. Jack had grinned, watched the way your face lit up to see it, even if your eyes were a little misty. "I want to tell him about you..." Jack waited, watched you like his life depended on it. Because, even then he knew this couldn't be casual, not for him, and if it was real he was going to do it right.

You had laughed and he panicked for half a second before you leaned in to kiss him again. "You mean, we've been working together this long and you haven't already complained about me to your therapist?"

He laughed, and God it felt like a gulp of air. He sank his hand into your hair and slammed your mouth to his. Kissed you like you'd never been kissed before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The morning you had whispered, "Come upstairs?" He'd thought he might combust then and there. He had searched your eyes. Those gorgeous fucking eyes that never wavered under his. He'd never forget the pretty way you bit your lip, or the way your eyes flashed with something he hadn't seen yet when he gave you one more quick kiss and turned off his truck.

Any lingering thought or rationalization that you could be something casual went out the fucking window the moment you let him press you up against the inside of your apartment door and kiss you the way he'd been wanting to for months.

The way you gasped and moaned so pretty for him when he pinned your wrists over your head with one hand and slipped the other inside your scrub pants. "Jesus Christ sweetheart..." He murmured into your ear when he felt how hot and wet you were for him.

"Jack," Your eyes fluttered closed as he eased the first, thick finger inside you, "Shit." You fidgeted, tried to chase his hand with your hips, but you didn't fight his hold on your wrists or the way he pressed you into the hard surface. You groaned, showed your teeth in something between a smile and a snarl as he gave you a second finger, but did not change his rythym.

He kept his strokes slow, steady, deep. Kissed every part of you he could reach at this angle. Your neck, the hollow of your throat the shell of your ear, before always returning to your mouth. "Feel good?"

You nodded, frantic, gave him an airy, 'Mhmm."

"Yeah?" He mouthed at the soft spot just below your ear as he finally sped up his movements and felt the way your pussy quivered and clenched around his fingers. Jack smiled as he moved up to rest his forhead against yours, "Yeah..." He answered himself as he studied your face, felt the warm puffs of air as you panted and gasped, his palm resting over your clit as he drove his fingers deeper.

"Oh shit, shit," Your words cut off with a groan as he pressed against the little bundle of nerves harder.

"Yeah?" He licked his lips and fought back a smirk as he kissed you softly, pulled his fingers out and circled them over your clit. Firmer, faster. "Going to cum for me already, aren't you sweetheart?"

"Yeah." You chased after his kiss like you needed it to breathe, your weight sinking into his hand begging for more.

Eyes locked on yours, foreheads together he gave you a little nod, "Yeah, go ahead," He sped up the circling of his fingers until both of you were breathing heavy, "Go ahead, sweetheart, go ahead."

When your eyes fluttered and rolled back Jack didn't stop, only pressed you harder into the door and kissed you in the most unholy way as you came apart for him.

Slowly as you can back down he eased off the pressure of his fingers, slipped them back inside of you and relished in the little convulsions he felt as he gave you long, slow, steady strokes. He teased at your lips, kissing and nipping until you giggled and he finally released your hands from above your head. "Good girl." He whispered as he gave you a final kiss and pulled back.

The look in your eyes told him this probably couldn't be casual for you either.

You laughed when he ducked, lifted you up by the thighs and carried you towards your bedroom.

"Don't laugh, I'm not that old." He chuckled with you into the hollow of your throat. A chuckle that turned into a groan when you carded your fingers into his already messy curls and tugged.

He had laid you down on the bed and stripped you naked as fast as possible. Desperate to get his hands, his mouth on every inch of you until you whined his name and fisted your hand in the back of his scrub top.

Jack smiled against your hip, "What?"

"Off."

"What?" He asked again as he sucked a little bruise into the smooth skin before him.

You groaned, half annoyed and half giddy, and shoved at him until he looked you in the eyes, "Take your fucking shirt off."

He chuckled, gave you a grin and rose up to his knees so he could reach behind him and pull his scrub top and undershirt off in one go. Jack couldn't help but take that half a second, to watch you hum happily and chew on your lip, to let it stroke his ego, before he buried his face between your legs.

~~~~~~

He had put it off as long as he could, shoved the thought aside and focused all of his attention on you. But, eventually, you had pulled and clawed at him until he crawled over you to cover your body with his and kiss you properly again. Jack let you take some of his weight as he kissed you, soaked in the warmth and the feel of you under him.

He knew he'd have to take his pants off, that the prosthesis would be some sort of jarring reminder and this would all be over.

He focused on your hands and how fucking good if felt as you stroked up the muscles of his back, hooked your fingers over his shoulders and pulled him closer. The way your fingertips skimmed over his arms, squeezing his biceps and smiling under his kisses like you enjoyed the way he felt. It had almost been involuntary. The jerk of his hips when you had skated your nails low over his sides, too low, too close to the waistband of his boxers where the band peeked up over the top of his pants. The way he had rolled his hips against yours and gave you a hint of just how badly he wanted you.

You made that happy little humming sound again and stroked your hands up over his back and down again. FIngertips leaving little divots under them as they moved. "Jack," Your voice was soft, airy and tight, "Am I gonna have to tell you to take your pants off too?" You fought for his eye contact and for the first time he couldn't give it to you.

Jack buried his face in your neck and kissed over your pulse, whispered his answer there instead, "Sweetheart," He breathed deep and Jesus you smelled like sex and sweat and soap and everything good in this world. "Only way this really works, is if I take the leg off." He waited. Expected the worst.

When you tugged on his hair he caved, lifted his head and looked you in the eye. You held his gaze and opened your eyes wide like you were about to make a point and wanted it to land, "Then take the fucking leg off," You cracked a smile, "Or I'm going to do it, and I have no clue how it works so..."

Jack fucking loved you. He knew he loved you, because he had said the first thing that came to mind, "Want me to show you?" With a chuckle and a nod you kissed him and with no hesitation answered, "Yeah, kinda."

So, as awkward and unsexy as it was, he showed you.

He showed you how the mechanism worked, grinned at you and shook his head as you tried to pull it off the first time. He'd turned an embarrassing shade of pink when he'd warned you, "It's not going to smell good. You know that right?"

You had scoffed, rolled your eyes at him. "I'm a doctor. I'm sure I can handle it."

Jack couldn't remember the last time he had laughed this hard. Especially not in bed, with a sexy, young woman, where ten minutes ago the only thing on his mind had been fucking your brains out. Now, you were collapsed on his chest and cackling uncontrollably with his prosthetic leg in one hand dangling off the side of the bed. All he could do was cradle the back of your head and try to catch his breath, because even as you were laughing, you were peppering kisses over his chest and he swore that if this didn't scare you away he would never let you go.

When you caught your breath and sat up, you set his prosthesis down by the nightstand and leaned in to give him a quick kiss. "Now, take your pants off."

His eyes followed you as you crawled off the bed and walked naked to the bathroom. He tried to fight down the nerves as he did shuck his other shoe, sock and his scrub pants off, then pushed himself up to lean against your headboard. He listened to a cupboard open and close, water run. When you reentered the room and tossed a bath towel on the bed and crawled back to him with a warm, soapy rag in your hand he furrowed his brow.

"I fucking dare you to make one sponge bath joke. I swear to God." You didn't hesitate as you knelt in front of him and began to run the rag over what remained of his lower leg. Your fingers massaging the aching muscles as you went.

All Jack could do was shake his head side to side as he let his eyes fall closed and his body sink deeper into your pillows.

~~~~~

Jack hadn't meant to zone out, but Christ it had felt too good. Your soft, capable hands working over the tension in his leg after a long shift. The relief it brought, physical and mental, was unbelievable. He barely noticed you had stopped until you had moved to straddle his lap and kiss up the side of his neck.

"Fall asleep on me?"

He chuckled, "Almost." and wrapped his arms around your waist to drag you closer.

"Feel good?" You copied his question from earlier, whispered it against throat.

"Too fucking good." His cock had softened some from the relaxation, but when he pulled you down to settle against him fully he could feel himself harden by the second. "You're too fucking good for me." He caressed from your knees, over your thighs, up your waist and ribcage, until his fingers traced over the line of your arms where they had wrapped around his neck.

"Don't say that." You kissed him, deep, and rolled your hips over him. Whined a little that his boxer briefs still kept you seperated from what you both wanted. The whine turned into a squeal as he flipped you over without warning, Put you on your back like you had started.

Jack hovered over you braced on strong arms. "You still want this?" He rocked his hips into yours and searched your eyes. He could see that you knew what he meant. Not just this, not just the moment, not just sex. Him. HIs past, his baggage, all the complications that a relationship with your attending would bring.

"Yes. All of it." You looked him in the eye and smiled. Cute and sweet. Drastically at odds with the way your hands were shoving his underwear down over his hips.

Then he watched those pretty eyes roll back in your head, because he wasn't going to waste another second not knowing what it felt like to be inside you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack had panicked the first time he'd said he loved you.

He'd thought it from the start, but it had always felt to soon, too real, too say it out loud. To risk it.

Then he had woken up late one afternoon, after a restless few hours of sleep and you weren't in bed beside him. His mind, already primed for the worst case scenario after a long week, worried that you'd finally had enough. That he'd scared you away and you'd snuck off while he was asleep but, then he'd found you in the kitchen.

He paused at the corner and breathed deep as he watched you. Your back turned to him, in some t-shirt of his you'd dug out of a drawer to sleep in, hair tosseled from sleep. You were glaring at the coffee maker, arms crossed and swaying side to side, as if you could force the machine into expedience. He could feel the anxiety seep out of him as he watched you. Made his way to you.

"Where are your crutches?" Was how you greeted him, your voice rough and exhausted like him.

Jack just slid his arms around you waist and kissed the back of your head. Relished the feel of you sinking more of your weight back into him. "Bedroom." He shifted to place a kiss closer to your neck.

"Ja-ack"

"Wha-at?" He copied your tone and squeezed you tighter. He liked that you worried. With one hand he swept your hair to the side so he could kiss your neck and chuckled against it when you groaned. Annoyed, not aroused. "Been gettin' around just fine for over a decade baby."

You had grumbled, rolled your eyes, but leaned into him and smoothed your hands over his forearms, your thumbs traced the furrows in the muscle. "I know."

The coffee maker beeped, but you made no move to reach for a cup. Jack liked that you worried. He liked that you took up space in his home, in his life. He liked that you'd taken over half his bathroom, that his sheets smelled like you, that your car had a spot in his garage. He liked that you'd started teasing him about trying to get out of your lease as much time as you spent at his house. Hell, he'd pay off your fucking lease if it meant he could have you here, with him, all the time.

He wrapped his arms around you impossibly tighter and squeezed, smiled at the content little hum you let you and the way your head dropped back against his shoulder. His lips pressed against your temple, barely a kiss, "I love you."

There was no shocked expression on your face, no teary eyes, or fumbling words. Just that little smile, that ticked up in one corner, the one that he'd loved from the start. "I've been patiently waiting, but you were starting to make me nervous." You stood up and turned around in his arms. Smile wider as you wrapped your arms around his neck and your eyes flickered when he tightened his grip on your waist again. Locked you against him, arms flexing the way you always liked. Your lips brushed his briefly and then you pulled back to look him in the eye, "I love you too."

Saying it, finally, felt amazing. Like a weight off of his chest.

Hearing you say it, knowing that you meant it... felt like CPR, something bringing a piece of him back to life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two of you had mismatched shifts all week because you had covered some days for Cassie while she had court. So, if you saw eachother it was only in passing, at home or at the hospital. This would be your last shift on days before a weekend off and you would be back on nights, with Jack. Where you belonged.

Jack caught a glimpse of you as he walked in, but continued towards the hub where Robby was already packing up his bag like he was in a hurry.

"Hey brother, sorry but I got a thing, I got to run." Robby picked up his bag and met Jack at the corner of the station. "Your girl is goin' to do the handoff." He gave his friend a smug look as he held his fist out.

Jack scoffed, gave Robby the first bump, but gave him a shove with it. "Don't do that, and don't act like I don't know what your 'thing' is." Jack stared him down, "Let me know how it goes."

Robby nodded, "Yeah, I will. Have a good night man."

Lena and Dana looked up at Jack in unison as he dropped his bag into the chair and together they said, "She's in fifteen."

Jack scowled at the two of them, "Why are you all like this?"

Lena just chuckled and ducked out to get to work. Dana grabbed her jacket and wrapped her hand around Jacks arm, "Just a heads up, someone, I won't name names, has been hounding her all day. Playin' twenty questions about Dr. Abbot, so… she might be a little salty."

With a deep breath he shook his head and draped his stethoscope around his neck.

Dana chuckled, "She doesn't know… so, it's harmless. Just watch your step with your girl. she's had a long one." She grabbed her bag and paused as she moved to step around him, "For what it's worth, the sooner you start wearing a wedding around here again the better for all of us I think." She gave him a wink.

Jack leaned down just enough they were eye to eye. "Dana… go home."

She gave him a smile and a wink, smiled a little wider when his scowl cracked, "Fifteen."

Which is exactly where he found you, right outside the room typing on one of the portable stations.

Work had always been work and honestly he loved you even more for that, because there was something sexy about the fact that you had the self control to keep home and work seperate. Most of the time. You were still his best resident, by far, and now his senior resident. It was fun for him to see you thrive with that responsibility. It was also fun for him to occasionally toe that line, get that little rise out of you that he'd pay for later.

Today, he felt like pushing that boundary. So, he took a quick glance around before he stepped up close, bumped your shoulder with his and tipped his head to whisper.

"Think carefully about what you're about to say, Dr. Abbot."

He bit back a smirk, definitly feisty tonight. "Ready to come back to nights?" He leaned a little closer than necessary and dropped his voice, "Where you belong."

You continued to type, never even looked at him, "What's it worth to you?"

"How about you finish up here, go get some rest, and I'll show you when I get home?"

That got you a little, he could tell by the way you bit the inside of your cheek and a little color appeared on your neck.

Jack bumped your shoulder with his again as he turned to leave, "Come on," His voice back to normal, "GIve me the rundown so we can get you out of here."

~~~~~

When he got home he heard his police scanner going and smirked to himself. You had given him shit about it at first, but now you used it like a white noise machine.

He moved quietly through the house until he found you asleep on the couch in the living room in your comfy clothes. Jack knew that meant you had tried to stay up as late as possible, get your sleep schedule back on track. He leaned his right knee on the couch next to you and braced his hands on either side of you, one against the back of the couch the other on the cushion. Carefully he leaned in and kissed your cheek, "Hey sweetheart." Something in him loved that you didn't flinch, didn't jump awake, only grumbled slightly and then smirked as you awoke.

"Hey." Your voice was raspy with sleep and Jack couldn't help but move to kiss the side of your neck. You hummed and shifted to your back as you cracked your eyes open, "How was your night?"

Lips never leaving your neck he gave a simple answer, "Fine." His kisses moved, higher up towards the hinge of your jaw, "Ready to have my best girl back."

You chuckled, stretched under him and let your head roll to one side to give him more access, "Oh yeah?"

"Mhmm." his kisses became more and more involved, mouthing and sucking at your neck until he left a mark.

Wide awake under his attentions your eyes focused, "Ugh, no fair."

Jack chuckled as he pushed himself up, hovering over you at arms length. "What's not fair?"

Shifting to get comfortable you pouted, unconciously letting your legs fall open for him, as you tugged at the front of his tight, dark t-shirt. "I missed a sexy Dr Abbot night."

He couldn't help the wide smile as he shook his head, still not fully comprehending what it was about wearing cargo pants and a Tshirt instead of scrubs that did it for you. Jack was, however, man enough to admit that you liking it did something for him. "Sexy Dr Abbot night huh?" He shifted his weight, hIs left hand settling on the strip of skin that appeared just above your waistband as your shirt rode up.

You rolled your eyes but smiled, tugged on the shirt again, "Mhmm."

Jack caved, still smiling as he moved to lay down over the top of you, his smile widening as your hands moved under the t-shirt and stroked over his back, "Did you miss your sexy Dr. Abbot?" He teased as he kissed you, slipped his knee between your legs and pressed it against your core as he settled into you.

A little groan escaped between chuckles as your fingers dug into the muscles of his back, on either side of his spine. "Stop it."

"You're the one that said it." Jack chuckled with you as he shifted his weight slightly, drug his right hand the length of your body. From your throat, over a breast where he paused for a moment, palming it through your shirt in time with the way his tongue slid against yours. Then your hips began to move, of their own accord, grinding against his thigh ellictiing a moan, your lips separating from his as you threw your head back.

"Mhmm," Jack murmerd into your exposed throat, "Sure seems like you missed me." He smiled against your pulse as your hands scrambled with the bottom of his shirt. He let you drag it up over his head and then before you could pull him back into a kiss he peeled your bottoms off. Taking his time to toss them aside and then slowly caress his way from the arch of your foot, over the back of your knee and higher. "God you are gorgeous." His grip on you changed, hardened as he moved back over you. "Tell me you missed me baby." He mumbled into your mouth, groaning as he felt your hands move to unbotton his pants.

"You know I did." You smiled, nipped his top lip and watched him as your fingers wrapped around his cock.

"Oh, fuck..." His forehead dropped to yours, eyes closed and breath coming out in warm pants. "Fuck." He repeated as you stroked him, hand firm and confident, from base to tip and back. The muscles in his arms bulged and flexed as he held himself over you, fists clenching and unchlenching against the couch cushion as his cock hardened to your touch. "Baby..."

"What did you say earlier? Something you were going to show me?" You giggled, closed the short distance to brush your lips over his.

Jack smiled, ducked his head to kiss you properly and moved your hand aside so he could shove his pants and boxers down. Just far enough for him to enter you without preamble. Guiding his now achingly hard cock where it belonged. "God you feel too good sweetheart." He breathed the words into your mouth as he bottomed out, lowered the rest of his weight into you. "Too good."

Your whole body trembled underneath him as you moved to wrap your arms around his neck and keep him as close as possible. You dug your fingers into his hair, into the muscles of his shoulders and back, your legs wrapped around his hips as they moved against yours. "Jack..."

"Yeah baby?" Jack asked as he dropped a hand to your thigh, thick fingers digging into your flesh as he held you closer, fucked you just a little harder. "What's wrong?"

You let out a half chuckle half groan, your nails digging into the back of his shoulder blade, "Absolutely nothing." Your chuckle turned into something like a breathy giggle as he rewarded you with a particularly deep thrust. "Just, shit," you writhed under him as he moved the hand at your thigh between your bodies. His thumb working slow, teasing circles over your clit in time with his thrusts. "Just, you don't wanna take your prostthetic off?"

He smirked against your clavicle as he mouthed his way across to the opposite side of your neck. "Don't need to be comfortable right now baby," He picked up his pace, his thrusts and his thumb over your clit, moved harder, faster, "I need to feel you cum for me." Jack wasn't taking it slow after that, and the sounds you were making for him only motivated him to fuck you harder, faster, like he hadn't had you in a month not just a week. "So be a good girl and cum for me," The hand not playing with you slid under the back of your neck, grabbing it from behind, cradling you and applying pressure in a way that had your eyes rolling back and your back arching up off the couch. Lips against your ear, his own breathing ragged, "Need to feel it baby."

"So close, i'm so close, please, shit, Jack, I'm so close." You scrambled, tried everything in your power to drag him into you.

Jack just grinned, "I know, I know." He dropped a kiss against the shell of your ear, "Trust me," His voice was strained but his tone still steady, still soft and clinging to control. "You know I'm gonna take care of you baby, you know." When you nodded enthustically his grin widened, "Take a deep breath." When you didn't respond, he slowed his thrusts down, short and shallow, and when you whined, jack repeated himself, "Breathe. Relax and breathe."

As soon as you shuddered underneath him and took a long, deep breath, eyes slipping closed as you tried to do as he said, Jack whispered, "Good girl." HIs thumb stroked up the line of your carotid once and then settled over it, applied the perfect amount of pressure that made your head swim.

"Oh fuck...." Your mouth hung open and you moaned out his name.

Slowly Jack picked up his pace again, "Another deep breath baby."

You sucked in the air through your nose and moaned because you knew what came next. Because there was a timer running in Jacks head from the moment his thumb pressed down, and once that timer started there was no more teasing or playing, only fucking you as hard and as fast as he could. The whole time murmering every dirty thought that had ever crossed his mind. How you were his good girl, his best girl, all the depraved things he wanted to do to you, how you took his cock so well, and felt so fucking good. How you moaned his name so pretty, how he wanted to fucking ruin you, fill you up and never let you go.

When that timer in his head hit zero, he'd lift his thumb, let the blood rush back to your head and drive his cock into you as hard and as fast as he could, rubbing your clit furiously until you would shatter.

Your nails would dig into his back and you'd gasp for air, and for more. Then he'd snap, his ears would ring with your highpitched whines and his back would ache and he would empty himself inside of you. His hips never stopping until his vision cleared and he could feel the scratch of your fingertips through his hair, the hammering of your heart against his own.

"Jesus Christ," You whispered it, a sexy, satisfied giggle behind it, "I still don't understand how..." You paused for a deep breath and your pussy shuddered around him, "It happens so fast when you do that." You smile as he mouths at the side of your neck.

"Which is why," He tips your face to his so he can kiss you properly before he manhandles you around, swapping places with you so he's on his back and your draped over top of him, "I only do it when I know i'm not going to fucking last." He laughs at himself, drags you down into a vulgar kiss as he reached down to shift your hips and settle you properly. His softening dick still inside you and mess between you.

Jack laid there for a moment and closed his eyes, listened to you breathing slow to match his, a wave of comfort washed over him as he wrapped his arms around you and held you close. You settled into his grasp and hummed, a happy little sound in the back of your throat as you curled around him. Both of you half naked and spent on his living room couch. He smiled, kissed the top of your head, nowhere else he'd rather be in in that moment than right there.

~~~~~~~

His fingertips stroked slowly over your back, under your shirt, when you break the post-coital silence. "Can we talk about something?"

Swallowing down the fear rapidly rising in his throat Jack nods and kisses the top of your head, "What's up?"

"My residency is almost over."

He nods, lays the hand flat and wide over the small of your back like his subconcious is trying to keep you where he felt you belonged. "Thought about what you're going to do?"

"That's sort of what I want to talk to you about." You sit up and the both of you make a face at the way your bodies shifted together. You watch as Jack settles a hand on your thigh and you reach for the other. You take his hand in both of yours and started to massage away the stiffness you knew would be there after a long shift. "There's no guarantee I get the open attending spot here, and if I don't… I just… I guess I just want to know what you think I should do."

Jack took a deep breath and studied your face intently, held your gaze. "I'm hesitant to tell you what I think because, I don't think I can be impartial, not really. I want you to make the best decision for yourself and not let me… being selfish… affect your decision."

That made you take a moment, consider as you watched him. Your thumbs still moved in soothing circles over the knuckles and palm of his hand. "I'm not asking you to be impartial. I'm asking you, someone whose opinion matters to me deeply, to discuss a very important decision I might have to make."

It hits him in the gut to hear you say that, because he knows what he wants. He knows he could tell you. He doesn't know with certainty what you want though. "Okay, well, as your attending. You are an incredibly talented and valuable emergency physician and there's plenty of hospitals that would fight to have you. I think we would be idiots to not fight to keep you here, because you are good, you're steady and fast and you're a leader, but also because we have poured a shit ton of time and resources into developing you. It would be irresponsible to let you go, but you could go anywhere you wanted and be extremely successful."

You had to fight back tears at his praise and he must have seen it because Jack stroked his hand over your thigh with a little extra pressure and a tight grin.

"As the man that loves you…because God I fucking love you and I love working with you, but either way that's going to change soon, I want you here with me. Even if that means something other than the Pitt. And… I acknowledge, as much as it sucks, that might not be what's best for you, or even be what you want."

You're chewing on your lip hard, trying to keep your own emotions in check. You love Jack, but he is also your mentor and you value his opinion and he is honestly the only one you could imagine having this conversation with. "I don't want to go anywhere else, I want to stay where I am… I'm just terrified I … What if I put in for the open spot at PTMC and don't get it?"

Jack gives you the most encouraging smile he can without giving himself away and moves to sit up. Taking you with him as he twists around to sit on the couch properly and wrap his arms around you. "Sweetheart that's fine, if you don't work for us you'll go somewhere else. There's six trauma centers in Pittsburgh, there's 52 in the state. Hell there's over 200 level ones in the country and baby you could run any of them. I know you could." He fidgets for a moment and seems to look everywhere but you before he can get locked in. He looks you in the eye, "If you want my opinion you could go anywhere, but I want you here. I just don't want to be the reason you settle for less."

Your breath caught in your throat, "Jack…"

He can't help the thought that he's going to have to talk to his therapist about the look on your face, the weight in his chest as he sits with you on his lap, dick still just a little hard inside you, the mess you made together sticky between you and every fiber of his being is fighting the urge to beg you to stay because he needs you.

"On what planet is being here with you considered less? Don't say that." You kiss him hard, then pull back, "If I apply for the slot… they're going to look sideways at both of us."

"Let 'em. Baby, that's goin' to come down on me not you."

You scoff, "We both know it doesn't work that way. If they want to raise hell about me being in a relationship with my attending that shit could follow me."

Jack hates that that's true, even if it happens in every fucking teaching hospital in the country. "To be fair, I'm tenured and I make enough for both of us. Worse comes to worse. Fuck 'em."

"Not helpful." You smack him on the chest, but chuckle despite the tension.

He shrugs, "There's ways to go about it, so maybe we haven't made it obvious, but not like we've been keeping it a state secret either, and it's not some abuse of power, hasn't affected either of our performance. I'm still going to be with you when you're an attending, or hell, when you're the chief for that matter. If i'm still around that long. Honestly… if you want to be shady about it between me and Shen, Robby is the chief, I'm willing to bet we can rig it in your favor."

"Also not helpful!" You kiss him though, "I do find it oddly attractive that you're so willing to bend the rules though."

"I know you do." He kissed you back. "Promise to play by the rules for a change."

You smile, "So, what If I told you I wanted to stay here after my residency? What if I want the attending spot at the Pitt and to stay with you?"

Jack shook his head, squeezed you tighter, "Don't ask me baby, tell me. Is that what you want?"

"I want you. If I can have you and the Pitt, perfect. If not, I'd work anywhere if it means we are together." You kiss him again, trying to get your point across, "That doesn't feel like settling to me Jack. Not even close."

How he felt in that moment was something he couldn't name, because no matter how ecstatic it makes him to hear you say you want him a piece of him is drowning in the guilt that you could be giving up something so much better.

You run your hands over his bare chest, his shoulders and then slide them up the side of his neck to hold him in place. "Is that… Is that okay?"

Like so many times before Jack shoves that doubt aside and figures, fuck it. He thinks about that first fleeting kiss on the roof, the one in his truck, all the rides home, the coffee and conversations, the morning you had asked him to come upstairs. All the times you were the one that took that leap of faith, because he couldn't. He'd been trying not to jump for years.

He kissed you, long and slow as he thinks and then whispers against your lips. "Sweetheart," He kisses you again, "Do me a favor and go grab my bag?"

You look confused, rightfully so, but smirk and duck your head to nip at the meat of one of his pecs. "You know, I'm not supposed to be able to walk after you fuck me like that."

Jack groans and feels fucking ancient, but can't help the need to swat you on the ass and give you a little push, "Love to watch you try though."

Because, yeah, you are still a little unsteady and you both trembled as you had raised up and his semi hard dick had slipped out of you. He watched you walk out of the living room and tucked himself back into his boxers before he did up the fly of his pants. The conversation you were about to have was one he couldn't have with his dick inside you, no matter how good it felt.

When you came back his eyes drank you in, shirt askew and hair a mess, a sheen between your legs that made the blood in his veins rush south again.

"Here you go." You hold out the camo backpack as you round the end of the couch.

"Need you to grab something for me, out of the liner pocket on the inside." He smirked at the way you arch your brow at him, but still come back to sit on his lap. He holds his breath as you set the bag on the couch next to you and pulled at the zipper. Jack had to try not to stare at the patch velcroed to the front. Abbot. He lets his hands settle on your thighs while he waits, thumb stroking over your femoral artery.

"What exactly am I…"

"You'll know." He cuts you off.

You stop.

He feels your heart rate skyrocket under his thumb, every muscle in your body goes rigid and he watches as your eyes blink rapidly like you're trying to clear your vision. "That's what I want sweetheart."

Your eyes are the only part of you that moves. They jump from what you found in the pocket, to his face and back. "How long have you had this?" Because what you're holding, it's not something bought on a whim.

Jack can't help but laugh at himself, "Awhile." Is all he'll tell you right now. He fights for your eye contact, but for one of the only times he can remember, it's like you can't quite hold it. Your eyes keep flicking to him and away again.

"Why?"

"Just in case."

You look at him then, really look at him, and don't look away. Give him that eye contact he craves and he sucks in air like he can breath again, head above water for just a moment. You smirk at hearing him repeat your own words back to you from so long ago. Your voice shakes, "Just in case what?"

He smirks right back at you as he moves the backpack out of the way with one hand and then holds it out, palm up. You carefully put what you had found in his hand, unopened, because the simple presence of the small, shiny, sleek, perfectly square, black box had told you everything you needed to know. Jack makes sure to brush your fingers with his as he takes the box from you and pops it open. "Just in case you ever decided to go back to dayshift, thought I might have to bribe you."

You choke out a laugh and Jack smiles, but his throat is dry and the way you look like you're about to cry really isn't helping.

He repeats himself as he pulls out the ring, rolls it carefully between his thumb and forefiner, "This is what I want sweetheart. Then he chokes out a laugh of his own, "I don't give a shit where you work baby, wherever you want. Only thing I give a fuck about is that they call you Dr. Abbot." He cracks a smile when you laugh with him and he can feel you relax, your weight sinking into him as you lean in to kiss him. Clumsy and sloppy and with a smile.

"You're fucking ego sometimes."

"You can hyphenate if you want."

"Oh, I can, can I? So generous."

Every word between you is murmured between kisses. He diesn't have to hear you say it, he knows the answer.

He doesn't have to tell you he's had the ring your entire fourth year of residency. Just waiting for you to say you wanted to stay.

You're really shaking when he slips the ring on your finger and of course it fits perfectly and of course it's exactly what you would have picked, because it's Jack. Becasuse this has never been casual for either of you, not for one single moment.

You pull back from kissing him with a laugh and an evil grin, "You suppose I'd be more or less likely to get the attending position with your last name?"

Jack laughs with you and drags your hips closer, because as soon as this conversation is finished he's taking you to bed and doing terrible, filthy things to you the rest of the weekend. "Look me in the eye and tell me this is really what you want baby."

He can feel the metal of the ring on your finger as your hand presses against his jaw, "This is what I want Jack. This is exactly what I want."

Your noses bump together as he kisses you and nods, "Have something else I need to tell you then." He kissed you again, before you can panic. "You don't need to apply for the attending position."

You put some distance between you and for the first time in a long time Jack has to gently stop you, guide you away from putting too much pressure on his right knee at this angle. You murmur a little, "Sorry." as you scoot closer. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Arms locked tight around you Jack keeps a straight face, tells you something he's wanted to tell you since you started this conversation. "It's not going to come down to whether you get the job or not. Robby already tagged you for it."

You blink, "What?"

Jack rubbed his hands over your thighs, putting in the pressure and the warmth to keep you grounded, "It's going to come down to whether you want the job or not, because they're going to offer it to you once you complete your residency."

"You're fucking with me right now."

He chuckles, "I am not fucking with you right now. It's like I told you; we'd be stupid to let you go anywhere else."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" He's almost laughing outright now, "They asked us for our recommendations, every single one of us said you. Obviously I'm not supposed to tell you, but…"

"So you were just letting me stress out about all of this!? About the fact that I might lose you, because I wasn't going to get the job, that I was going to have to leave and, and move to the opposite side of the country or something!"

"I was trying to stay out if it. In case being here isn't what you wanted." He left the 'if I wasn't what you wanted' out of it.

"Jack!, I mean Jesus, c'mon! We've been together for almost two fucking years. How would you even begin to think this isn't what I wanted!?" You're yelling at him, but you're laughing and crying and have a death grip on the back of his neck.

Jack takes a deep breath and deescalates. "My therapist says I plan for the worst case scenario as a coping mechanism, as a way to try and protect myself from the pain of unforseen loss."

Taking his lead you take a deep breath, lower your tone. "Yeah, he also says it's one thing to be prepared for emergencies and another to try and plan for the worst possible outcome to a conversation, that you haven't even initated, therefore running the risk of 'planning' that worst case outcome into existence." You scowl at him.

Sometimes he hates that you're so in tune, so invested and involved in his mental health, because it's annoying to hear his therapist come out of your mouth. He smirks though, because he also loves it a little and can't imagine anyone else holding him accountable the way you do.

"Since you brought your therapist into it, have you told him you've been carrying around my engagement ring in your backpack next to a three day supply of MREs?"

He doesn't answer you because you know he hasn't, you're just making a point. Jack smirks and smooths his hands up your back, "Sure you wanna marry me?" His chest hurts at the way you light up as he watches your eyes flick back to the ring he slipped on your finger.

"Very sure." You looked him in the eye like you were daring him to doubt you and gave him that little smirk. The one that had started this all, where it tipped up to one side like you were trying not to show him something.

Jack waited for you to lean in and kiss him, waited for your fingers to comb into his curls and your tongue to chase after his, and then he grabbed you tight and pushed to his feet. Chuckling at the way you still squeaked and giggled, no matter how many times he's carried you to bed that way. Or to the couch, the shower, the nearest wall or flat surface.

Later, when you're both exhausted and the blackout curtains are keeping the afternoon sun at bay, you're laying beside him with your head on his shoulder, one leg draped over his and your left hand on his chest. Neither of you can stop staring at the faint glint that is the ring in the dim light of the room.

"Are you sure?"

Jack chuckles, presses a kiss to the top of your head and murmers, "How many times you going to ask me that?"

You bite your lip and turn your face into his neck, "Just making sure."

He closes his eyes when he feels you trace his collar bone with your lips and he moves to cradle the back of her head, holding you close. Jack thinks again about those first two kisses, about the way you had explained yourself. 'Just in case.' He tips your head back so he can kiss you, deep and with emotion he still can't quite process out loud. "I'm sure sweetheart." He kissed you again.

There was something extremely appropriate about the phrase, 'just in case.' he thought and for the rest of his life, every time he kissed you, touched you, told you he loved you, in the back of his mind he'd think. 'Just in case.' Because he knew better than anyone, there was no way to know what time would be the last.

"Hey," Your voice was soft, half asleep when your hand rested against his jaw to pull him out of his thoughts, "I love you." You said it like you knew where his thoughts had gone.

Jack kissed you, holding you close like he'd never let you go. "Love you too."

Competent, smart, helpful without being showy. The kind of doctor who made chaos look organized just by stepping into it. You had started as an intern on days, spending three straight years under Robby’s orbit before asking to switch to nights for your final year. Apparently, you wanted the full ED experience before finishing residency.

Jack had heard about you long before he properly met you, mostly from Robby.

At first it was little things, slipped into handoff reports or post-shift complaints over stale coffee.

"She caught the PE before cards did."

"She stayed four hours late to help clear the waiting room."

"I didn’t even ask her to comfort that kid; she just knew what to say."

Then it became constant.

Robby talked about you the way attendings talked about once-in-a-career residents — with equal parts pride and disbelief. How you could run a trauma without freezing. How nurses trusted you instinctively. How med students followed you around like ducklings because you actually taught them instead of using them as free labor. Apparently you could calm psych patients, charm consultants, and somehow convince surgeons to answer pages without starting a fight.

Jack had assumed Robby was exaggerating.

Not maliciously. Just… Robby loved mentoring. Loved finding potential and polishing it until it shined. Every few years he picked up a resident he swore would become the future of emergency medicine. Jack figured you were simply the newest addition to the collection.

Then he worked a crossover shift with you. And, annoyingly, Robby hadn’t been exaggerating at all.

You moved through the department like you belonged there. Not rushed, not frantic — just steady. You remembered every nurse’s name, every patient’s lab values, every family member lingering anxiously by a doorway. You anticipated orders before attendings asked for them. You caught mistakes quietly, corrected them without embarrassing anyone, and somehow still found time to explain things to terrified interns.

The thing that got him, though, was that you never seemed aware of how good you were.

No ego. No performance. No desperate need to prove yourself smartest in the room.

Just competence.

Jack hated how quickly he noticed you after that.

The occasional shifts when you covered nights started becoming something he looked forward to. He’d walk into the ED expecting the usual grind and find you already there, coffee in hand, updating the board with that focused little crease between your brows. Sometimes he’d sub into days and catch glimpses of the life you’d built there — nurses lighting up when you arrived, Robby throwing you impossible cases because he knew you could handle them, med students practically competing for your attention.

Even Santos, who disliked nearly everyone on principle, admitted you were “annoyingly reliable.”

By your fourth year, Jack knew your habits better than he should’ve. The way you bounced lightly on your heels when waiting for any results. The fact you always stole strawberry popsicles from pediatrics during rough shifts. How you tucked loose strands of hair behind your ear while concentrating. The soft, exhausted smile you gave environmental services workers at 3 a.m. when everyone else had definitely forgotten they existed.

Then you switched to nights permanently. Just after the start of your R4 year.

And Jack was done for.

Somewhere between watching you run a multiple-GSW trauma with blood on your shoes and complete calm in your voice… and hearing you laugh in the ambulance bay at five in the morning, sleep-deprived and radiant under ugly fluorescent lights… admiration turned into something far more dangerous.

Because the worst part was that you fit into nights effortlessly.

The night shift could smell weakness. It chewed people up. Burned out good doctors in months. But you walked into the madness like you’d always belonged there beside them — beside him.

And Jack, who rarely impressed easily and trusted even less easily, found himself watching you across crowded hallways with something dangerously close to reverence.

Robby, unfortunately, noticed immediately.

A week after you officially switched to nights, during handoff after a particularly rough shift, Robby glanced over at Jack while they stood at the board.

“See?” he said quietly, smug satisfaction written all over his face. “Told you she was special.”

Jack had rolled his eyes, muttered something to get Robby off his case, and gone back to talking about handoffs.

x

Tonight the ER was unusually still for a Tuesday. A couple minor cases, one drunk college kid with a sprained wrist insisting he was “built different,” and otherwise the kind of eerie calm that made everyone suspicious the universe was winding up for something catastrophic around 3 a.m.

Which was probably why he found you asleep in the break room.

Your cheek was squished against your folded arms at the table, hair slightly mussed from sleep, your abandoned energy drink sitting untouched beside you. The overhead fluorescent lights softened everything just enough to make the scene feel strangely intimate.

Jack paused in the doorway longer than he should have.

It was ridiculous, really, how fond he’d gotten of looking at you.

Not in a creepy way, he told himself immediately. Christ. He was forty-nine years old. He was your attending.

He just… appreciated you.

That was all.

The fact that he’d recently downloaded TikTok under a fake name to “understand references” meant absolutely nothing. Neither did the Spotify playlist currently saved on his phone called Not Your Grandpa’s Rock, courtesy of a laughing Santos who’d almost choked trying not to tease him about it.

He’d even asked one of the nurses what “lowkey” meant earlier this week. Humiliating.

Your watch beeped softly. You jerked awake with a tiny inhale, blinking blearily around the room for a second like you’d forgotten where you were.

Jack immediately turned toward the coffee machine so it didn’t look like he’d been staring at you sleep.

Smooth.

Behind him he heard you stretch, the quiet rustle of scrubs filling the silence.

“You want some?” he asked, gesturing vaguely with the stale hospital coffee pot. Casual. Totally casual.

“I’m okay right now, thanks, Dr. Abbot.” Your voice was still rough with sleep, and somehow that did something deeply unfortunate to his heartbeat. “Nothing like a suspiciously slow Tuesday to try to catch up on some sleep.”

“Yeah, don’t say that too loud,” he muttered, sitting across from you. “The universe hears arrogance.”

You smiled sleepily at him, rubbing at one eye. “Sorry Parker let me crash in here. She said she’d drag me out if a trauma came in.” You and Parker had developed a really close friendship, even before you switched to nights. He couldn’t blame Parker, honestly. You were hard not to like.

“You’re fine, kid.” His mouth twitched. “Half of this department has slept in worse places.”

You laughed softly, and he found himself mentally saving the sound before he could stop himself. There’d been a time when every conversation between you stayed strictly clinical. Differential diagnoses. Labs. Consults. Efficient. Professional.

Lately, though, he kept finding excuses to linger. A question that didn’t really need asking. A comment stretched a little longer than necessary. Tiny conversational bridges thrown between you because, against all common sense, he wanted to know you outside of medicine. Which was dangerous territory.

You were 29, of course you’d be chronically online in the way that made his brain hurt. He’d been psyching himself up for days. Keep up, old man. Don’t be the dinosaur they all think you are. He cleared his throat. “Alright. Important question.”

You looked up expectantly.

“You kids and your weird internet language. I've had cases where I don't really get what the kids are saying. So I was looking some of it up you know? To make sure I understand them better when they're in my ED? ” This was the lamest excuse he could find, and he leaned back in his chair trying to make it seem like he was genuinely curious about this and not just finding any excuse he could find to talk to you. “Hit me with some slang. I can keep up. I’ve been practicing. ”

Your eyebrows shot up immediately, delighted. “Are you serious?”

“I’m evolving.”

“This I have to see.” You sat up straighter. “Okay. What’s ‘rizz’?”

“Charisma,” he answered instantly. “Game. Flirting ability.”

“Okayyy, Dr. Abbot!” Your eyes widened a little and you gave him a lopsided smile. He tried not to look too smug.

“What about ‘brain rot’?” You carried on.

“Too much internet so your brain feels dead?” He tried to remove the unsure tone from his voice but wasn't sure if he'd managed. Why was he so nervous? It was just you.

“Been there. ‘Aura?’”

“Confidence. Presence.”

You stared at him for a beat longer now, squinting your eyes, suspicion creeping in. “Did you actually study this?”

“No.” He scoffs. A pause.

“…That sounded like a lie.”

Jack took a sip of coffee to hide the fact that it absolutely was. He had used some flashcards he still had at home. Turns out memorizing medical terms was not all that different from… whatever this was.

You laughed lightly, shaking your head. “Alright then. ‘Skibidi.’”

He pointed a finger at you. “That one’s fake! It doesn’t mean anything! You people made that up specifically to torture everyone over forty.”

You nearly choked laughing. And God, there it was again—that feeling in his chest. Warm and dangerously addictive. You were just adorable, his brain supplied unhelpfully. No. Absolutely not. You were young and brilliant and kind and deserved someone uncomplicated. Someone without old scars and ghosts and a limp that acted up in the rain sometimes. Not him.

He set his coffee down on the table in front of you, leaned back, crossing his arms and looking at you with a small smile. “See? I’m not hopeless.”

You tilted your head, with sleepy amusement still lingering in your expression. “You’re trying really hard.” You finished with your small lopsided smile again. “It’s cute.”

Jack felt his ears heat and he looked away from you. Cute. Jesus Christ. He was forty nine. He was a widower and had a prosthetic leg from a war injury and a permanent scowl that made residents scatter. He’d been called intimidating. Gruff. Occasionally terrifying. One intern had once described him as “emotionally haunted in a hot way,” which he was still pretending he never heard. He was absolutely not cute.

“Alright, smartass,” he muttered, pulling out his phone mostly to regain control of the conversation. “I even got music recommendations.” 

Your grin widened instantly. “No way.”

He ignored the sudden urge to throw his phone directly into the Allegheny River.

“One of the nurses made me a playlist,” he admitted reluctantly. “Current stuff.” He would never admit how much he had talked to Santos about all of this.

“You have a playlist?” you repeated, visibly trying not to laugh.

“They told me it's related to TikTok or something? That slang comes from the songs too and that I had to learn this stuff.” And then he pressed play before he could lose his nerve.

Some aggressively auto-tuned song filled the break room, all distorted bass and lyrics that sounded vaguely threatening toward women. He didn’t really like it but he was being strong and powering through.

Jack lasted about twenty seconds before he noticed your expression slowly turning skeptical. Were you laughing? No… you were scrunching your nose and looking…midly bored?

“…What?” he asked defensively 

“This is… technically music.” You looked genuinely distressed trying to be polite. “But I think this is objectively terrible.”

Relief washed through him so fast it was embarrassing.

You stood abruptly and moved around the table toward him, phone already in hand. “Scoot over.”

Jack obeyed before his brain caught up, moving his chair so you could pull up another chair next to him. The second you sat beside him, your shoulder brushing lightly against his arm, every coherent thought in his head immediately packed its bags and evacuated the premises.

You smelled faintly like vanilla and the hospital soap.

This was fine. Totally fine.

You scrolled through your phone for a second before familiar sounds filled the room.

He expected whatever the algorithm had told him was “hot right now.” Instead, you played Abbey Road on your phone, and he was surprised to hear Come Together from your phone.

“Forgive the terrible speaker of my phone, I have a much better sound system at home.”

The Beatles?

Jack blinked at you. You grinned without looking up. “What? You thought I only listened to stuff from TikTok?”

“I had a whole speech prepared,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “About broadening my horizons.”

“That’s adorable.”

There was that word again.

You laughed softly, brushing your hands on your scrub pants. “That’s nice? I guess? But… I basically only listen to music from before I was born,” you confessed. “Beatles, Queen, Zeppelin, Bee Gees. Santos tries to “educate” me on newer stuff but mostly I ignore her.”

Jack stared at you.

You tugged at your scrub shirt up — there was a vintage Queen tee, the News of the World robot faded but unmistakable. “I pretty much only wear only band tees. Ask Whitaker and Santos. Thrift stores are my happy place. I have 1971 White Album pressing at home. You’d be surprised at the quality of the record, only a couple minor scratches.”

His brain finally catches up to all you've been saying. “You’re telling me I spent a week listening to that glitch-pop nightmare for nothing?”

Your smile softened.

“It's nice that you tried?” you said softly, shruging one shoulder.

And there it was again—that dangerous warmth low in his chest. Because suddenly this didn’t feel like casual break room conversation anymore. Closer. He was close enough now that he could see the different shades in your eyes beneath the fluorescent lights. Close enough to notice the faint crease sleep still left against your cheek.

Jack was a bit loss for words. “All this time I’ve been killing myself trying to figure out what people even see in this stuff—”

“Couldn't tell you, by the way.” You say with a smile his way again.

“—and you’re over here with better taste in music than I had at your age.”

“I only know current slang from talking to Santos and Javadi and the others. Otherwise I’m probably reading books or the news on my phone.”

His pulse was loud in his ears. Before he could say anything back to you the song changed.

George Harrison’s guitar filled the room, warm and aching and familiar. Something.

You smiled faintly at your phone over the opening chords. “Frank Sinatra called this the best love song ever written.”

Jack swallowed. The irony was not lost on him.

“Did he?” Jack cleared his throat, voice a little lower than he meant it to be.

“Mhm.”

You were fiddling absently with your ID badge now, suddenly quieter yourself. And for one completely insane second, Jack wondered if you could feel it too—that strange charged pull settling between you. Dangerous territory. Very dangerous. You were just sleepy. It couldn't possibly be anything else. Nope. It couldn't. So he tightened his grip on his coffee cup instead.

He wanted to say more. He wanted to lean in, to tell you that your laugh cut through his exhaustion better than any coffee. That the way you lit up talking about music just now made his day. Instead he stayed rooted in his chair, one hand gripping his coffee cup like an anchor.

“We’ve all seen you trying to speak Gen Z with Santos, by the way,” you added after a moment, glancing at him again. “You’re not nearly as out-of-touch as you pretend to be.”

He huffed softly, suddenly very confident. “You been paying attention, huh?” He couldn’t help the slight teasing.

Your eyes dropped back to your phone immediately, fingers stilling against your badge. You seemed to… were you blushing? It couldn’t be.

“You know me Dr. Abbot,” you said quietly. “I'm always paying attention.” That did not help his situation at all. 

Then you looked back up, and the teasing in your eyes was just enough to save him from drowning in the moment entirely.

“Are you gonna keep pretending you’re into whatever glitch-pop nonsense Santos told you to listen to, or are we gonna put on A Night at the Opera and you’ll prove to me that you actually know all the words to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?”

Jack gasped theatrically. “You questioning my knowledge of Queen right now?” 

Your eyes gleamed with mischief. 

“Shen told me that apparently you and Robby killed it at the last Pitt karaoke night,” you said. “I told him I needed proof.”

He leaned in just a fraction, “I’ll have you know I was 15 when Wayne’s World came out, thank you very much. ”

“I’’ll believe it when I see it.” You challenged with a smirk.

He leaned in more before he could stop himself, now close enough that your knees touched.

“I know every word,” he said quietly, smirk on, staring down your eyes with a confidence he didn't know he had in him right now.

“Even the operatic part?” He wasn't sure if you were just teasing or if you actually doubted him.

“C'mon kid,” he murmured, with a little shake to his head, brows furrowed, “don’t insult me.”

And for a moment neither of you moved.

Just music humming softly through terrible phone speakers. The distant hospital intercom crackling somewhere outside the break room. Your eyes holding his a beat too long, soft, teasing smile still on your face.

Jack could almost imagine crossing the remaining inches between you. Could almost imagine what it would feel like to touch your face, to kiss that teasing smile right out of existence.

Instead he leaned back in his chair before he did something catastrophically stupid.

“I should warn you,” he said roughly, “my air guitar skills are elite.” 

You grinned wide immediately. “Oh, this I need to see.”

“And if Joy calls me cringe one more time, I’m filing workplace harassment paperwork.”

Your laughter filled the room again, bright and easy, the sound making his chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with the long shift. And somewhere deep down, beneath every warning siren still going off in his head, Jack realized he was already in far too deep.

You stare at the window and crisp, frosted night trimmed around the panes. You yawn once more and sit up. Perhaps it is just that you are so far from home. That must be it.

You close your eyes and hear a voice you’ve not known in over a decade. Oliver laughs as you pull the lump of coal from your stocking. You pout and stick your tongue out at him. He waves the wooden doll at you from his bed. He’s switched out Father Christmas’ wares; or rather, stolen the figurine carved by your da’s own hand.

You flinch and open your lashes. You twist onto your back and sit up. You miss your brother every day but you’ve not missed him so deeply as this one. Seeing his name in the stone gave you peace, but all the same, rubbed the raw spot sore.

You glance at your husband. He looks asleep. You brush his arm then turn away. You stand and wade through the dark. You keep your feet light as to not disturb him. He drove all that way, arranged the hotel, and dinner, too. He deserves rest.

You enter the bathroom and softly shut the door behind you. You go to the tub and crank the faucet, water splashing down from the high tap. You put the stopper in place and stand. You strip off your night gown and stand by the porcelain brim. It’s a rather large basin.

You lean on it for a moment and feel the steam plume around you. Before you came to the city, you bathed in the river, or boiled water to fill the big tin tub dragged in from behind the house. There are moments still where you cannot fathom the luxury all around you.

You lift one foot over the side then the next. You lower yourself into the hot water and exhale. You grip the edges and lean back carefully. You relax against the cold porcelain as your skin warms it. Goosebumps smooth as the water rises higher and higher.

The water laps over your toes as you close your eyes. You inhale the balminess coiling from the surface. Already, your unease retreats. You’ll remain for a time yet. You are too comfortable to tear yourself from the water.

You sit up to twist off the pronged-crank then lean back again. You shut your eyes once more and let the night wash over you. It’s still and silent, but for a subtle creak. You ignore it, staying as you are, one arm jutting out over the brim of the tub to cool you.

“Did I wake you, Mr. Shelby?” You ask without opening your eyelids.

Your husband’s rocky laugh rattles over to you. “Not unpleasantly so.”

You open one eye and turn your head. You narrow your eyes as his try to see beyond the porcelain. He leans in the doorframe, in only his undershorts. His arms are crossed as he tilts his head. His brow arches.

“You cannot sleep?” He asks.

“I tried,” you say and close your eye once more, turning your head up. “The gales call my name and the stars watch me. I cannot ignore them.”

“Did you ever think of poetry, hen?” He asks as you sense him come closer.

“I’ve read some.”

“No, composing it. You’ve the plainness and vagueness that competes in the poet’s soul.” He praises as he stops to touch your fingers.

“I wouldn’t know how to begin.” 

You wiggle your digits then turn your hand over. You wrap your fingers around two of his. He winces. You peel your eyes open and gaze up at him.

“I could write a verse of your beauty and nothing else,” he drawls. “Nothing else would merit the words.”

His eyes crawl down your neck and along your chest. You let him go and sit up. You cross your arms over your bosom and turn in the basin, peering up at him. His cheek dimples.

“My own wife hides from me.” He intones.

“I…” you look away and cheeks tinge. “...am.”

“You’ve no reason for it. I cannot help but admire every part of you.” He says. “Even your ears and your knees and your toes.”

“Husband…”

“Yes, I know. I’ve earned such distance.” He utters. “I deserve it all.”

“Husband,” you murmur and stare down at your arms. 

You uncurl your fingers from around your shoulders and cautiously uncross them. You reach for him again. You tug on his hand until he comes closer.

“You are sleepless too. A hot bath will do you well,” you peek up, face on fire.

“It will?” His eyes flit up and down.

“Yes,” you stand and the water slakes down your body. “To warm you.”

“And you?”

“And me,” you affirm.

His lip twitches and he squeezes your hand. He shudders and brings your hand up to kiss your knuckles. With his other hand, he pushes down the waist of his shorts. He wiggles until they fall on their own, catching slightly on his arousal.

He steps into the tub. You swallow as you make room for him. He lowers himself first and pulls you down with him. You lay atop him and guide his arms around you. You rest your head on his shoulder and he kisses your temple.

His hands tickle your stomach and creep up high, stopping just beneath your breasts. He drags his fingertips back down and stills them above your pelvis. He presses his palms to your skin.

“I’m being good, hen.” He growls.

“You are…” you put your hands over his. “Patient, sir. I will try to catch up.”

🚬

You manage some hours of sleep. Your husband nestles close, arm around your middle, nose pluming hot breath into your neck. It does not unsettle you.

The day prior sticks in your mind. That was a side of Mr. Shelby you rarely saw and never deliberately. He didn’t betray his kindnesses. When you were a maid, he disguised them as mindless deeds. Merely passing on the excess of his overindulgent life.

You see him better now. You’re not certain how to balance this side of him with the other. The cruelty, the anger, the violence. The day you went to Shelby manor as a maid, you knew who and what Mr. Shelby was. You accepted that. You already put aside that qualm for your own livelihood.

You might claim to have been valiant in wanting to keep your parents from destitution. The allowance was more than that at city hall, yet it came with the caveat of your morality; of your tolerance. This last month or more has been an attempt to reconcile yourself with Shelby, his sins, and your new life. The one he’s handed you.

It is all you can do. For all the blood and pain he doles out, you will balance with charity and compassion as best you can. Mr. Shelby might legally own you and all your worldly possessions, even your body, but he cannot take all from you. He took your words, your thoughts, the ones written in ink, but he cannot take what you will not give. You will shield your humanity from this man who has shed his so long ago. 

You will accept his sins and your own. You must. This life is imperfect but you can make it tolerable.

You shift and open your eyes. Shelby startles you as he drags his arm back and tickles up your stomach. He tilts his head to kiss your neck then your jaw.

“You’ve been awake,” his rocky voice gristles in your ear. “What thoughts keep you?”

“Useless thoughts,” you put your hand on his. “I think of the day ahead, of going home, of the corners that need dusting and the curtains that need beating–”

“You think too much,” he purrs as his nose grazes your cheek. 

He lifts himself slightly and once more hooks his arm around you, tucking his hand under you. You trail your hand up along his arm. You grip the rounded muscle along his bicep, thumb stroking up and down. There’s a curiosity that plucks in you. About him. About yourself.

He looks down at you and sighs. “You think as a maid would, not Mrs. Shelby.”

“No, I am Mrs. Shelby,” you assure him as you drag your hand up to his shoulder. “I must be certain the house is in order and the maid does good work. I must be sure the pantry is full, that all are fed and warm and tidy.”

“I see why your mind has you so restless,” he purrs. His eyes sparkle as they drink you in. “But it is you that keeps me sleepless. Every night, love. Every day.”

Your lips curve softly. You pet his cheek and he leans into your touch. He dips down and his nose touches yours. He kisses you and you let him. You feel him holding back as he draws away.

“Hen,” his fingers wiggle under your and he watches you. “You’ve no idea how I’d rather have you tearing up my thoughts than what torment came before. Those things that kept me so awake that I was so eager to toil at destruction.” He sighs as he peers down at you, his eyes stuck on you. “I woke in sweat, in tears, afraid, angry. I would take a pipe; opium. Years until I knew I had to be rid of it.

“Then I would distract myself with… people. And drink.” He closes his eyes and inhales. “You found me drowning in the latter. Then you found me stuck in the trenches in the storm.” His ashes flick open. “And then I found I could hide in you, hen.” He slowly lowers his head down as he hugs you closer. “And I’ve never felt safer… or more afraid.”

The Great Stage of Fools by lottielots11

Penelope is finally engaged to the man she has loved for most of her life, and she could not be happier if it wasn't for the secret which hangs over them. And with Colin's reluctance to even discuss Whistledown, how will they ever overcome their differences in order to marry?

Scattered Flowers by Cortlandia33

After her fallout with Eloise and hearing Colin's declaration to never marry her in front of the entire Ton, Penelope left high society and found a cottage in the country. Now, almost three years later, her choice comes back to haunt her when a certain someone begs for her forgiveness... and her heart.

the last one in your corner by my_middle_name_is_awkward

Penelope cannot agree to marry Colin because she knows Eloise will not approve

Kintsugi by Metamorphases

Watch as Colin Bridgerton goes to increasingly mad lengths to keep Penelope Featherington safe and sound (and away from other suitors).

Dark is the world's night without you my love by angellus08

Penelope meets someone from Colin's past and her old insecurities crop up.

Affection by lixabiz

Colin returns to London for the Season of 1815, hoping to reconnect with his friend Penelope - only to discover that everything has changed between them.

Attachment by lixabiz

(Set post S2. Some elements from the S3 synopsis, but not a prediction fic.)

Butterfly's Reverie by CassandraGoth

What might have changed had Penelope told Colin privately that her cousin Marina Thompson was with child? Not an easy scandal from which to untangle himself without the public protection of Lady Whistledown’s society papers.

Foolish One by LeighAnne_Balsdon

Colin announces his engagement to Marina and Penelope doesn't take it very well. She makes a hasty decision to run away from Mayfair, to save her broken heart. When Colin and Eloise find out that Penelope is missing they decide to look for her themselves. What they find, however, is something no one was expecting.

One of us has got to change by itsjustabee

Colin and Penelope accidentally wear matching outfits to the Bridgerton ball

My Give a Fucks are On Vacation by SuzyH_82

It’s just a pity that for the last three years, she’s also been Colin’s ‘friends with benefits’ friend. I mean, it’s not like Colin could ever want a relationship…technically he already has a very public girlfriend…his fellow presenter Marina, on his travel log TV show. However, after their latest hook-up, Penelope overhears Colin talking to the press and realizes Colin is never going to see her as anything more than a friend and she finally decides to move on with her life.

i chose this cyclone with you (my heart exploding) by Vryalys

Well perchance it is I who do not wish to marry you any longer,” she hissed furiously at him, her eyes prickling as she moved away from him to the farthest end of the coach bench. She pulled at his mother’s ring from her finger, where she was sure it no longer belonged. “I will not marry a man who loathes to even look at me.”

The Disappearance of Penelope Featherington by hippiechick7897

Penelope Featherington leaves the many scandals of her life behind to start anew while Colin desperately searches to find her and bring her back home. When they are reunited, Colin finds a threat he had not anticipated and wonders if he's too late to secure the affections of the woman he's just realized is his love.

Violet's Fifth Daughter by kermitthefrogstanaccount

Penelope faints at her and Colin’s engagement dinner and Violet gives a piece of her mind to Eloise about continuing to love Penelope after everything that’s happened.

Ruin by Sea_Dragonfly

Colin wouldn't remember the details of what his mother told him next. He would remember her hand warm on his knee, her eyes wide with concern, her voice gentle as velvet. All of it in stark contrast to the devastating news she shared. Penelope was ruined.

Dishonest Conquest by lilyeval

Colin is such a gracious helper, he ruins Penelope’s every opportunity with her suitors. So protective of her honor, he even lets himself into her very private bedroom.

Just Having Fun by Spartangal22

When Eloise arrives home from Scotland, the very first place she goes is to see her best friend and brother in their home. And since they’re family, the rules of social etiquette need hardly apply. Why should she bother knocking?

her mother's daughter by secretlydelighted

the story where Lord Debling's son is courting Agatha Bridgerton and Colin is not having it, because why is another vegetarian all up in his business?

Meet Me at Midnight by Sevens11073003

Or eight times Penelope runs into a Bridgerton on the way to Colin’s room + the one time she runs into Colin on the way to bed.

have my back, yeah, every day by my_middle_name_is_awkward

Colin had very little patience for Cressida Cowper before he and Penelope were engaged. Now, he must make it clear that he will not tolerate her comments about his soon-to-be wife.

Unreliable Narrator by WhiskeyTinCup

Eloise has a lifelong habit of overreacting to Penelope's love life and everyone knows it, even if she refuses to acknowledge it.

I Do Not Want To Stand By Your Side by magentaverse

She didn’t need a love declaration. She certainly didn’t need him to sign his life to her. She just needed his love. A few smiles and his willing ear. But Colin Bridgerton did what he did best—he changed the course of her life the moment he muttered, "I do not want to stand by your side, Penelope Featherington."

Best Laid Plans meet MissCarriage by sanoiro

Or The unconventional birthing place of - the fated to be Adventurous - Miss Agatha Bridgerton...

Why do fools fall in love by NomDeJeen

Now that they are married, Colin wants Penelope to *win* the heir race with her sisters.

Benedict offers some unexpected advice.

It goes about how you would expect.

of manmade tales & honest lies by cchampdelevande

just saw someone asking "what if penelope finds out she's pregnant right after the lady whistledown fight with colin" and i genuinely think shonda is not above torturing us like that

Newton vs The Bridgerton Men by Lovelymagnolia

In which, Newton figures out Penelope's pregnant before she does, Colin develops beef with a dog, and a longstanding battle between Newton and all the Bridgerton men is unearthed.

Cracks by Vellinae

It’s a winter of firsts for everyone. It’s Colin and Penelope’s first winter as a married couple. It’s Penelope’s first time putting on ice skates and venturing onto the frozen lake with the entire Bridgerton family. It’s Colin’s first time watching the ice crack, just barely out of reach, and seeing his wife disappear into the murky water below.

At Least It Wasn't A Duel by SugMak

When Penelope sends Colin out of the house so she can focus on his journals, he hears Fife and the Toxic Lord crew talking about Penelope's breasts. He doesn't take it well. He's not particularly looking forward to her finding out about it.

Tintiddle Talks by goddammitfandom

Anthony ruins a wonderful family picnic by bringing up Colin's past indiscretions. He gets answers that somehow make him even angrier.

Tried to Pick My Battles 'Til the Battle Picked Me by headphonesbaby

Colin always seems to find an issue with Pen's boyfriends

I Wish You Knew by threefundamentaltruths

 which Colin and Penelope ran away together to escape the queen's wrath.

Visiting A Farm by ancoraimparo_youknowwho

Eloise is back from Scotland and eager to meet Her bestie. But things start on a very wrong note because who the hell does THAT to their wife??!!! Right??

uh-oh i'm fallin' in love (oh no) by stolemystarl17

Colin didn't stop the proposal at the Queen's Ball, but he can stop the banns.

grieving for the living by itwasglorious

Penelope marries Lord Debling and Colin cannot watch. So Colin leaves and Penelope settles into married life. A year later he returns.

Stand By Me by Musicalmidget

Penelope has been keeping another secret from Colin but upon see his family together at Francesca's wedding, she decides it's time to tell him and her plan for Lady Whistledown. This is a continuation of the scene from the study and will continue until the epilogue.

An Honorary Bridgerton by My_middle_name_is_awkward

The Bridgertons have always loved Penelope Featherington as if she was one of them.

Of course, they are all ecstatic that Colin will be making her an official Bridgerton, instead of just one of honorary status.

Scraped up off the pavement by missparker

After Penelope falls out with Eloise over her popular gossip blog, all the Bridgertons cut contact with her. Penelope moves to Scotland and buys a book shop and gets on with her life.

That is, until she spots Colin Bridgerton at the coffee shop next door.

Catch & Release by TonyStarksAngstyHeart

Everyone develops a tiny crush on Penelope as they wait, betting of course, for Colin to pull his head out of his arse.

Spanning 1803-1821

P-E-To-The-T-T-Y by jerrymander

Colin may be coming to terms with Penelope’s family but that does not mean he has forgiven them for their slights against Penelope.

Plenitude by HaveredSolitude

Colin and Penelope are faced with difficult decisions when complications arise during the birth of their baby. With the help of their family, they navigate through memories and feelings, confronting adversity with the strength of their bond.

Bea huffs, shakes her head, and smacks his arm, trying her best to fight off the grin on her lips.

“All I’ll say Rooster, is that you’d best treat her right, or she will hunt you for sport,” you lean in and reply, receiving your own smack for your trouble. Rooster’s face turns bright and he laughs, pulling Bea near with his arm around her.

“I can believe that, yes ma’am,” they look at each other with barely concealed adoration, and it makes your heart clench a little in your chest. You’re quickly distracted though, with the sudden and rowdy approach of six other people, all dressed to the nines like everyone else around you. Rooster seems unfazed by their appearance, though he tears his eyes away from Bea to glance around at the now much larger group you were in.

“Fellas, you all know Bea already, and this is Bea’s friend, Ducky,” he easily introduces you to the six newcomers, all men except for a tall, beautiful brunette woman who looked like she could eat every single one of them for breakfast. A flurry of handshakes and names are exchanged, and you’re surprised by just how quickly you feel totally absorbed by the group of Naval Aviators, like you’d known them all for years and were just catching up again.

“I’m spotting a free table, north west!” the man who held the youngest looking features of the group, Fanboy you believe he’d introduced himself as, pipes up, pointing over everyone's heads to the large round table that was currently being cleaned up. Before you can even process it, the entire group is migrating casually toward the table, Rooster catching the arm of the waiter before he leaves, putting a round in, you assume.

You find yourself next to Bob, who sends you an adorably awkward little grin as he pulls out your chair for you, and you thank him sincerely. Despite the gentlemanly gesture, the moment you’re comfortable, he’s taking his own seat, and once more totally absorbed by the woman you’d learn was named Phoenix, or Nat. You hadn’t noticed it earlier, too distracted by all the new faces, and their excitable personalities, but Bob was clearly, utterly enamoured by Phoenix, and it looked like the feeling was returned, if perhaps a little less obviously

“Hey, Javy, where’s your other half?” Bea is sat a few places down from you, her hand wrapped through Rooster’s arm. A man on the opposite side of the table waves his hand over his shoulder.

“He’s coming, probably caught his reflection in a glass,” Javy snorts.

“I wanted to introduce him to Ducky!” Bea pouts, and her words make you frown.

“Pardon?” you say pointedly, leaning around Bob and Phoenix to look at Bea with a frown. Rooster seems to be matching your expression, and he cocks his head at his partner.

“Ducky is far too nice for him,” Rooster says, but you get the feeling he doesn’t really mean it.

“Oh come off it, Ducks, you could do with meeting someone new!” Bea rolls her eyes, but her voice is imploring.

Your frown deepens just a little bit, but you aren’t too angry. It wasn’t as if she’d tricked you into a double date or anything. There were plenty of other seemingly solo people around that you’re sure any awkwardness could easily be avoided if you managed to stick by Bob and Phoenix.

“I’m afraid that I won’t be able to help you there, Honey Bea,” A smooth male voice purrs from behind you, and you almost jump at the hand that comes to rest warmly on your shoulder. You turn quickly in no small amount of surprise at the person apparently so close, but any further thought is cut off when your eyes properly take in the handsome face smirking coquettishly down at you.

You’re so surprised, you gasp daintily, fumbling to your feet so that you can greet him properly.

“Hangman!” you welcome him excitedly, happily accepting the hand he offers to help you up.

“Jake,” he corrects gently, and you feel foolish for laughing.

“Jake!” you repeat fondly, caught up in staring at him.

“You two already know each other?” Bea sounds put out, but intrigued, and you manage to tear your gaze away from Jake for a few moments to focus on her.

“Oh, Ducky and I go way back,” Jake tells her, at first offering no more explanation.

“We met during the war,” you explain to her, opening your mouth to continue on that he had been a friend of your fiance’s, but you stop yourself. Jake had been your friend long before you’d found out he knew your ex-fiance.

“Best damn aircraft mechanic I’ve ever had,” Jake adds, sounding proud as he brings your hand that he still holds up to his lips. Phoenix jerks then, blinking quickly around the other’s and then up at Jake with a growing smile.

“Wait, you’re the Ducky?! Jake’s Ducky?!” She questions in no small amount of disbelief. There’s a quiet chitter of understanding and awe that briefly overcomes the table, and you’re about to ask what it is she means by that, when Jake squeezes your hand and draws your attention, all the while shooting Phoenix a dirty look.

“Stop interrupting,” he scolds needlessly, and draws you closer.

Your chest flutters, but you’re distracted from the butterflies caused by being described as ‘Jake’s Ducky’, and instead distracted by an odd look on the blond’s face. It quickly turns a little darker, and you can’t help but notice the brief flicker of his eyes down to the hand he still holds.

“Where is the old man, then?” Jake tilts his head at you, and then quickly around at the crowded club, seemingly a little stiff now. You suck in a breath, realising now what he’d been confused by.

Clearing your throat, you take your left hand back from him with only a small amount of effort, before smoothing down your frock primly. Suddenly his closeness was nerve wracking as you feel him studying your features.

“Probably with his new wife. I haven’t exactly been keeping up,” you can’t help but scold yourself for the sass and bitterness in your tone. It just wasn’t classy. Jake seems to jolt as he processes your words, and for several more moments he stares down at you with an unreadable expression, before at last a tiny crease pulls between his brows, and his lips purse.

“I never liked him, anyway,” Jake says the words flippantly, and you know it’s supposed to be a joke, but his still taut expression and lack of humour in his voice tell you otherwise.

“Never good enough for you. To you,” he goes on quieter, so no one else can hear but you. You look down at your skirt, heart thumping away rapidly in your chest even as you shrug.

“Well, it’s probably for the best,” you do your best to shake off any residual foul mood and nerves, straightening up. Your lips curl back into a smile as you look back up at him once more. It felt nearly impossible to be melancholy when you knew Jake was around.

“It’s so good to see you again,” you tell him earnestly, and watch as Jake’s face softens. He takes your hand again, keeping eye contact as he lifts it to his lips and kisses it once more, this time, right where your old engagement ring would have been.

“I imagine,” he smirks, bouncing an eyebrow at you. You scoff, but grin even as you roll your eyes.

“You’re supposed to say ‘you too’!” you scold with no conviction as Jake rounds your seat, not even releasing your hand when, helping you back into your chair before he quickly folds himself into the empty space beside you. He simply shrugs at you, making a point of pulling his chair closer to yours, before his eyes flicker past you to land on Rooster and Bea.

“Sorry to ruin your little setup,” he doesn’t sound very sorry at all, though you doubt Bea was feeling too upset, not with the way she was looking between you and Jake with glee in her eyes.

“Hey, wasn’t my plan. I think she’s too good for you,” Rooster chortles, catching the fist Bea attempts to sock him with, and kissing it instead.

Jake ignores Rooster, and instead cuts his gaze down at you, leaning in so only you’ll hear him.

“How long have you been in San Diego? Are you staying?” he asks, sounding excited by the idea. When you turn to face him fully, his nearness is so much that if only for propriety’s sake, you’re forced to pull back from him as you talk.

“Six months now. I met Bea on the boat coming home from London, she convinced me not to go back to New York after… everything.” you tell him, realising suddenly what incredible luck you must have that you just so happened to run into one another when you’d resigned yourself to never seeing him again.

“I’m glad.” he says, pinning you in place when you feel his hand reach out and take yours from where it rests on your lap. Your heart thumps heavily at his brazenness, but it also sets you alight with a hopeful flame that in recent months you had come to realise you always had, but never allowed yourself to take notice of or indulge before.

The thoughts make your face boil, and you avert your gaze, your free hand shaking just a little as you reach for the glass of water that had been poured for you earlier.

“Oh, Ducky,” Jake sighs affectionately, leaning away from you at last, but tightening his grip around your fingers. You finally get the courage to glance up at him sheepishly, only to find him grinning down at you cheshire-like.

“My little sitting Ducky,” he continues, his smile only continuing to grow.

You know you should probably feel more trepidation about his sudden forwardness, but the only thing that you feel pumping through your veins is the exhilarating thrill at the thought of Jake calling you ‘his’ anything after so long of secretly wishing it to be true.

The way he looks at you feels positively predatory, and under his blistering hunter’s stare, you really are his sitting duck.

1942

The rain batters down against the airfield in what you knew would only prove to be ugly flying weather tonight, and you quickly send out a prayer of luck on behalf of the pilot you know by handwriting alone. Your time as an aircraft mechanic had officially come to an end, not for any good or decent reason, mind you, but for the sole fact that someone had suddenly decided that an active airfield was no place for a woman.

Nevermind that you were the best mechanic in the hangar, your colleagues had stroppily resented your presence from day one, and your true purpose as an additional engineer was forcibly concealed. Instead, you’d had to pretend you were a secretary around any actual personnel, especially the pilots, and once the hangar was clear for the day, you would be at last allowed to perform your actual job.

You’d gotten the impression fairly quickly that your coworkers shunted off the hardest to please, fussiest pilot, onto you, hoping you might fail at the first hurdle under the sheer amount of work this ‘Hangman’ seemed to demand. Unfortunately for them, you’d had no problem meeting the brief, and day after day that the planes were towed into the hangar for repairs, the stack of memos detailing Hangman’s complaints that always accompanied his aircraft grew smaller and smaller.

And then one day, instead of a plane to fix and a list of notes, you had a letter shoved into your hands, the contents of which was a written apology from one Lieutenant Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin, informing you that he’d he’d been shot down, and all your hard work over the past weeks was now engulfed in flame somewhere in Italy. You’d immediately penned a reply, not caring at all about the state of his aircraft, and expressing your relief that he had made it out safely. You’d had to sign it off using a pseudonym, your own name would have gone against your boss’s wishes, and a fake name would be easily found out on an active military base.

You’d gone with ‘Ducky’, the callsign your father had used during the Great War, and from then on out, it had stuck.

Lieutenant Seresin had been sent back to the airfield eventually, and you’d both gone back to business as usual for several months. His battered bomber would be towed into the hangar for repairs, but gone were his blunt instructions, in their place he left short personal letters usually detailing his most recent flights, and only sometimes with requests about fixtures to be made. You would then leave your own reply for him to find when the plane was returned back to the runway, and so on, so forth. 

At least, that's how things had been carrying on until this morning, when you’d been abruptly dismissed by the airfield’s second in command, a snivelling man who had informed you they had ended your auxiliary work here, as it was apparently no place for a woman to be.

You’d wanted to shout and demand explanations, to demand your colleagues defend your worth, but they'd all remained silent, and you’d quickly been escorted off to pack your things with tears stinging your eyes.

You can’t help but wonder if your secret somehow got out, by the doing of jealous coworkers, and if perhaps Hangman hadn’t been so pleased with you upon finding out that you’re a woman.

The heavy rainfall makes it difficult for you and your bags to get across to the waiting transport plane, but the war stopped for nobody, so you’d wound up in the back of the empty aircraft, your clothes and things all but totally soaked. You’d been told the plane wouldn’t leave until the storm died down, so you’d huddled onto one of the benches miserably and tried to get warm, but you felt yourself filled with a deeper coldness than simply the biting european air.

You sit and stare out the back of the plane’s fuselage, simply taking in the distant ebb and flow of the airfield, a flurry of activity that wouldn't stop just because of some rain. It comforted you in a way, to know this place would carry on, but there was a deeper part of you that worried for them. You weren’t a braggart, but you knew you were the best mechanic here, taking not just pride in your work, but joy and passion too. It concerns you what may happen to the pilots in the future.

But, it was much too late for you to do anything else now. Perhaps if you’d been brave enough from the start to demand your recognition all along, this wouldn't be the case, but you think that perhaps they’d have just gotten rid of you sooner.

And then you notice something very odd.

All of a sudden out of the pouring sheets of rain, a covered military jeep comes tearing into sight, its driver in some kind of rush despite the slow lazy movement of everything else in this weather. You blink in surprise as the car skids right up to the plane you’re in, and jump up when it at last comes to a full stop only a few feet from the ramp. You can’t help but take a step back when the door flings open, and you watch as a tall, handsome man bounds out, clearly with urgent business to attend.

The man quickly moves up the plane ramp toward you, ducking out of the rain and taking a moment to fix his hair briefly before he straightens fully again. You stare at him with widened eyes, taking in the aviation uniform he wears, complete with gold wings that seem to glint blindingly despite the lack of sunlight on them. He pauses at the top of the ramp, and you almost jump back again at the intensity of his gaze when his bright green eyes narrow at you.

“Now, now, Ducky, don’t you know it’s rude to leave without saying goodbye?” the lazy southern drawl to the man’s voice surprises you so much that you almost don’t notice the familiarity with which he speaks to you.

“I’m sorry?!” you blurt dumbly. The blonde nods acceptingly, and steps forward, placing his hands on his hips.

“I should hope so! You think Kirk is gonna send me letters the next time I get shot down?” he asks scoldingly, but his casual mention of what would have been certain death for any other pilot is what finally snaps you from your shock.

“You'll get more than just a letter from me the next time you’re shot down!” you say crossly, finding yourself none-too-pleased by his nonchalant attitude toward the subject. Your threat makes a smirk form on the blonde’s lips, and at last he seems to stop his baseless tirade in favour of giving you a very blatant once over. You’re more subtle in your own assessment. A quick glance at the name pinned just below his gold wings confirms your suspicions about who it is you talk to, and when you snap your eyes back to his face, you find he’s already watching you closely.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve known you’re a woman for quite some time,” Hangman says, somehow both seriously and flippantly at the same time, waving his hand dismissively. Your brows furrow and you open your mouth to defend yourself, but shut it again quickly when you realise you’re unsure of what you’d say. “I first suspected when the repair hangar suddenly had a secretary who made terrible coffee. They aren’t sending anyone who makes shitty coffee this close to Italy. No offence.”

You feel like you should be insulted by his words, but truthfully, you’d made the joe that bad on purpose out of pure spite, until they stopped asking you to fetch it. The two of you continue to stare at one another for a few seconds, before you shift your eyes away from him, swallowing thickly as you begin to fidget with your still damp sleeve.

“The other’s thought it best that the pilot’s didn’t know a woman was working on their planes…” you try to explain. Hangman immediately scoffs at your words, and you eye him cautiously as he flings a hand out behind him, toward the entrance of the transport plane and in the vague direction of where the bombers are lined up on the tarmac, their bright colours obscured by the heavy rain.

“Ducky,” he begins dryly, “We paint our planes with women, we name our planes after our women,” he tells you, his smirk tipping up into pure amusement now, an eyebrow following. “Besides, I ain’t ever known a pilot who’s intimidated by a little skirt, especially around our machines,” he purrs, lowering his voice flirtatiously. Your face immediately heats up at his insinuation, and you can’t help but tut disapprovingly at him, even if you did appreciate his other sentiments. You fold your arms over your chest in disapproval while Hangman chortles at your clear bashfulness.

“I mean it, Ducky, please don’t go,” the pilot all but begs you then, his tone suddenly serious. He steps closer again, forcing you to look up at him  in the gloomy dark of the plane.

“I– I’m not leaving because I want to, Lieutenant,” you tell him somberly, dropping your gaze again when you find his stare too intense. “I was told to leave.” 

Hangman scoffs again, and adjusts his stance.

“Right, and I’ve just come from dangling my ass in front of a court martial, or seven, to make sure that order is belayed.” he informs you much too casually. You sputter at his mention of possible charges on your behalf, your arms falling unfolded again as you take a half-step forward in panic.

“W–what?! What did you do?!” you demand, half worried, half furious. 

Hangman grins widely at your clear exasperation, and tips his chin up cockily. You get the sudden feeling he enjoys ticking you off and making you nervous.

“Well, they can’t expect me to remain their best pilot if I don’t have my best girl working on my other best girl,” he tells you slowly, as if it should have been completely obvious already. Your face gets even hotter at his clear flirting, guilt strumming in your stomach at the way your chest flutters despite your relationship status. However, before you’re able to rebuke him by pointing out the ring you wear, the handsome blond makes a show of digging into his breast pocket, and pulling out a crumpled, coffee stained letter, holding it out towards you.

You hesitantly step closer to take it from him, feeling his bright, intense gaze return to yours, as you unfold and quickly look over the typed missive. It’s only a few lines long, and signed at the bottom, so you find yourself hurriedly meeting his eye again.

“You did this for me?” you ask, voice now watery. Hangman stares down at you, looking suddenly less cocky and sure of himself, taken aback by your clear emotional response.

“... Technically, I did this for me.” he corrects unconvincingly, voice lilting to sound dismissive, but you barely hear him, and certainly don’t care for his posturing.

“Thank you!” you gush, feeling a massive weight lift form your chest for the first time all morning. The pilot blinks down at you, stiffly taking in the tears that you try to wipe away with the back of your hand.

“How’re you supposed to drag me back by the ear the next time I get shot down, if you’re not here?” He changes the subject slightly, but only earns a small laugh in reply, not a further telling off, which he’d hoped might distract you from your tears.

“I think that will be the least I owe you after this.” you sniffle. The pilot shuffles uncomfortably, and raises a hand to scratch nervously at the back of his head, unable to sidestep the emotional centre of this interaction like he’d wanted to, but he chooses to wade through it, for you.

“You don’t owe me a damn thing, Ducky, really,” Hangman sighs, speaking tiredly, but firmly. “You’re the best aircraft mechanic I’ve ever had, probably that any of us have had. Shouldn’t matter if you’re a woman.” he hopes he sounds sincere. You hold the belayed order to your chest, and with a wobbling lip stare up at him like he was the sun itself.

You don’t realise this is the exact moment Lieutenant Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin falls completely in love with you, but as he eyes the shiny engagement ring you wear, he does.

1946

You try to ignore the way Bea stares at you and Jake for the next half hour as you catch up, and eventually, you are able to brush off her pointed looks and coquettish smiles. The other Daggers, Rooster and Phoenix particularly, show no such subtly in the way they seem to watch Jake interact with you. Phoenix had even grown a smug little smile in the last few minutes and had begun teasingly questioning Jake about the tender way in which he had taken up your hand and absolutely refused to let it go.

You get the feeling they know something you don’t, but you don’t feel that poorly over it, not when Hangman, Jake, has his hand in yours, his thumb caressing back and forth in little circles everytime you seem to go quiet.

Eventually, tiring of the clear teasing at his expense, Jake rolls his eyes and clears his throat. Fixing you in his gaze fully, he squeezes your hand and gets to his feet.

“I think we’ve both answered more than enough of your questions, Ducky, dance with me?” he doesn’t wait for your answer, but you would have said yes anyway, and, with a final glance back at the table as if to apologise for the sudden exit, you’re tugged gently away and almost immediately find yourself wrapped up on the dancefloor.

“I’m sorry if I’m rusty, it’s been a while since I danced properly,” you say nervously, feeling slightly lightheaded as Jake’s free hand moves to take hold of your waist firmly. His lips flick up, but he fakes a frown anyway, lowering his chin at you. You’re so close now you can feel yourself pressed right against the front of his pristine dress whites, feel the gold buttons through the tulle of your dress.

“I would have thought you’d be out dancing all the time now, fiancee or not,” Jake replies smoothly, making you shift your gaze away from him for a moment.

“It’s hardly wise to spend all my time dancing when I can barely find a job…” you say quietly, chewing on your lower lip, before you finally look back up at him. “If I’m honest, I hadn’t thought I’d still be working, once the war was over.”

Jake’s features lose any of their humour and he purses his lips.

“No, I’d have thought not… you should be being looked after by a good man, living a good life, taken dancing whenever you’d like and you’d never be rusty.” he tells you seriously. You can’t help but smile warmly at him and shrug a little in his hold.

“I think what I should do is adjust my expectations,” you say, inhaling sharply when his hold on your tightens, and he seems to pull you even nearer, if possible.

“I’m afraid that is absolutely unacceptable,” he tells you with a vehement shake of his head. “I think we’re going to have to do something about it, aren’t we?”

Butterflies errupt in your stomach, and unable to bear looking at him any more, you gently pull your hands from his, and wrap them around his neck. Your head rests softly on his chest, Jake quickly adjusting to meet your new stance in a way that suggested to you he’d imagined holding you like this for some time. You squeeze your eyes shut and let out a soft sigh.

“Thank you, Jake.” You say quietly, only knowing for sure that he’s heard you by the way he gently squeezes your waist in response.

“For what, darlin’?”

“For everything. For always coming back like I asked, despite your terrible habit of only ever  returning with about half as much plane as I sent you out with, for believing in me, and fighting for me, and always being there for me, even when Grey wasn’t.”

Jake stays quiet for a beat, his grip on you never wavering, and for a few moments the two of you just sway.

“It never felt right, knowing what I did about him, how he behaved, and keeping it from you… I… I felt so guilty all this time thinkin’ you’d been married to a man I knew didn’t deserve you, knowing I should have said something.”

It’s your turn to stay quiet, though eventually you shift your face up so that you can look at him. For the first time ever, Jake struggles to make eye contact with you, but when you begin gently smoothing over the hair at the back of his neck he meets your gaze. You smile sadly and shake your head.

“I knew,” you tell him, watching how his expression shifts from guilt-ridden to pained, and he opens his mouth, but you cut him off. “I didn’t want to believe it, and if you’d tried to tell me, I wouldn’t have believed you.” You continue stroking the back of his hair as if to comfort him. “And now I can still look fondly back on that time. In my mind, I will always think more of you looking out for me on his behalf, more than I think of him.” you admit.

Jake purses his lips and frowns.

“He never once asked me to do that for you, I couldn’t believe it, even when he knew we were stationed together. I woulda made sure you had someone you could trust, rely on, especially given how the other mechanics treated you.” He sounds so angry, and you can’t help but blink up at him in surprise.

“Grey never asked you to look out for me?” you ask, a fresh sting cutting your heart. You were long over your cheating, good for nothing ex-fiancee, but occasionally on nights like tonight, you felt the hurt once again. Jake takes in your surprise and hesitates for a moment before shaking his head.

“No. I won’t give him credit for that, I’m sorry sweetheart.”

You stop swaying, pausing for a moment to stare up at him, and then you can’t help yourself, you lean up and press a soft kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you, Jake.” you say once more. When you pull away, Jake studies you for a while, before he slides his hands up to take yours, suddenly spinning you out, and then back in, where he catches you seemingly with his entire body, hands quickly wrapping you up securely again as you gasp.

“Why so surprised, honey? I’ve never made a secret of how much I adore you?” He teases you, making you stutter.

“Y-yes well, you were usuaully far more subtle about it!” you attempt to defend. Jake’s face breaks out in a grin, but he eyes you sardonically anyway.

“I’m glad my restraint didn’t go unnoticed. I could easily have seduced you away back then,” he tells you wryly. You frown.

“I don’t think that’s true…” you argue, but Jake only smiles.

“Let me believe, honey,” he implores, making you laugh.

You fall into a comfortable quiet then, and happily let Jake twirl you around the dancefloor, shaking off any rust you may have obtained in the months since you’d last been out like this. After once more spinning you away and catching you again, you meet together with your faces much too close to be proper, but you hardly care with the way he looks down at you.

“The moment I saw you sitting in the back of that transport plane, I knew for sure you were my dream girl, you know that?” he tells you breathlessly. “I spent my entire recovery when I was shot down daydreaming about you, rereading every letter you wrote me.”

“You’re just trying to charm me now!” you accuse playfully. Jake chortles, and shakes his head.

“I told all my nurses about you, how I was going to marry you when the war was over,” he says, making your heart skip several beats.

“And all because I fixed your plane up real good?” you ask, unsure how else to respond. Jake raises an eyebrow and fixes you with an amused expression.

“Clearly you don’t grasp how attractive that is.”

“Clearly I don’t.”

“I hope my being unavailable didn’t hurt you, back then,” you say softly, surprised when Jake only shrugs minimally.

“Other than curbing my ability to seduce you, I knew one way or the other things would work out,” he tells you, sounding oddly serious. You blink at him, but cock your head slightly.

“I suppose they have, haven’t they?”

“I knew you liked me,” Jake says teasingly, leaning his face even closer to yours so that your noses almost touch. You roll your eyes, but don’t move back.

“How could I not? I’ve spent the last year feeling like a fool because I thought I’d never see you again!” you reply, lamenting the wasted time.

Jake hums, making you suck in a breath when he presses a kiss to your forehead.

“I’ve been looking for you, but I didn’t even know your full name, or if you’d had it changed… But I’d never have left you, not when you never left me, no matter how many planes of yours I got shot out of.”

“Please don’t ruin this moment by reminding me,” you scold him, making the blond laugh. After a few beats of swaying together, you wrap your hands back around his neck and lean into him. You feel Jake’s head come to rest on yours, the both of you looking out at the dancefloor, where you spot Rooster and Bea dancing alongside Pheonix and Bob.

“Who do you think will have the wedding bells ringing first?” you ask wistuflly. Jake takes a moment to answer, humming briefly before he replies.

“Us.” He tells you matter of factly.

You can't help but giggle, and blindly smack his shoulder lightly.

“You’re hopeless!” you say, shaking your head where it lays against his chest. Jake only tightens his hold on you.

“Can’t let those nurses down, can I? They told me I had to marry you if you still hadn’t left me after the amount of times I was shot down.”

Against him you grumble, and poke his neck a little more forcefully.

“I wouldn’t recommend tyring that again,” you say darkly. You feel the man straighten ever so slightly, his head bobbing as he nods.

“Yes ma’am.” He affirms. You stay dancing closely, wrapped up in one another until he speaks again. “Will you come down to base tomorrow, look over my plane?” He asks quietly, and you can’t help but grin. Pulling back from him, you gaze into his green eyes, finding pure hope and adoration there.

A/N: I read a simon riley fic in a similar format so i thought i'd give it a shot. im sure there are typos because this was like a fifteen-minute speed write that i read over once. I just felt like posting something tonight because i had part 2 of Not Your Type done and then i decided it wasn't ready. thanks for reading :)

…

Jake clicks the television off and pushes himself up from the couch, joined by his shadow of a German shepherd called Ace. They walk together to the sound of the meek little knock at his front door, Jake’s gym socks padding along his dark wood floors along the way.

It’s late. Too late for whoever is at his front door to be bearing good news. He twists the door handle and pulls it open, rolling back his aching shoulders. This late at night, he has a good idea of who’s going to be standing on his porch.

As expected, standing there and shivering in your dad’s coat and a pair of slippers, is exactly the last person that Jake was hoping to see.

You see, Jake has had a bit of a problem since he moved in to this neighbourhood.

Quite a substantial one, in the grand scheme of things, and one that seems to just be getting worse by the minute.

Suburbia was meant to be Jake’s reprieve from his bachelor lifestyle. His escapades have been worrying his mother to death for going on two decades now, and it came time that even Jake agreed that it was time to wisen up about his love life. With all of the deployments, and all of the time away from home, it had been beyond easy to never fall into anything serious. By the time he was twenty-nine, Jake’s longest ever relationship was two and a half months, which was alarming given the number of women he had encountered by then.

Two things happened that sent Jake here, to this cute little cul-de-sac in suburban San Diego, one — Jake’s job became more secure, and guaranteed that he would spend at least ninety percent of his remaining career here on the west coast. Second, he proposed to a woman. A beautiful woman, that he was so sure he was going to spend the rest of his life with.

She liked his house, it looked like the one her parents had raised her in. So, he bought the house and he bought a dog, and swore that he was going to try to settle down. Six months later, it was just him and the dog. Payton apologised profusely, and she’d apologise even more if he ever ran into her again, he just wasn’t right for her.

Things weren’t so bad though. Jake and Ace liked the peace and quiet, and the guy next door was actually pretty cool. Jack, the airline pilot with a mean golf swing and a great nose for the best sports bars in town. He’s a little older than Jake, with a hell of a lot more to show for it, including three grown up kids.

It’s been a couple of years now, and Jake’s practically part of the family. He knows everything there is to know. He’s there on birthdays, holidays, emergencies — he loves this family. But he has a problem.

His problem was manageable at first. So, Jack’s youngest daughter might have caught Jake’s attention at first. You were visiting home from college and you had stepped out of the car in a tight little pair of shorts and a tank top, and Jake just happened to be standing in Jack’s garage, helping him with a little project, when he first saw you.

And you were funny. Right away cracking some joke about Jake’s less than adept approach to projects around the house. Jake had laughed out loud without even meaning to, and then you’d turned your head and hit him with that mega-watt smile. Bringing new meaning to the term beaming.

God, that pretty fucking smile.

Your humour dances lightly on the nerves of others, like Jake’s, but sweeter. You’re well behaved and back then you had had a dreamy boyfriend who was in pre-med. Perfect in every way.

Even more reason for Jake to keep his hands to himself.

You were Jack’s kid. Jake wouldn’t ever cross that line. It’s just that sometimes… he had to remind himself of this boundary.

He hadn’t ever been close friends with someone where that was even a concern, and truthfully, he had been unprepared for meeting you. In all of the stories Jack told him, you were this cute little kid. Standing before him, you didn’t quite match the image he had of you in his head. This was truly uncharted territory.

Truth be told, there were times when Jake wasn’t so sure you wanted him to hang back. Even when you were still bringing that boyfriend of yours around, Jake caught the way you looked at him.

The way you tug those glossed lips between your teeth and grin around the straw of your drink.

If he was a better friend, or a stronger man, he might have been able to nip his little problem in the bud right away. He had tried, and you were living away from home then, so it was easier. But last month, you had moved back in with your parents and Jake’s life has been nothing but stress ever since.

On occasion, Jake thinks of how he would have to plead his case if someone discovered how he felt. You just don’t know what it’s like when she’s looking at me, man. I swear, I tried to stay away from her, I did.

It’s not his fault that Jack asked him to watch you while your folks were away on that cruise.

Jake’s gaze finally flickers back up to your wounded, hurt baby bunny, expression.

“What’s the matter, cutie? — You alright?” He reaches for you with one hand, gently grabbing at the crook of your elbow and guiding you towards him. That sad little look on your face tugs at his heart strings every time.

“Yeah, I just — I plugged in my phone charger and all the lights went out. I think I tripped a fuse,” All exasperated and frustrated at once, you push your hair back off of your face and frown at him. “Could you come take a look at it for me?”

Jake’s throat grows thick. Under your dad’s heavy work coat, Jake can see the thin white tank top you’re wearing and the blue checkered, boxer style pyjama shorts. But Jack asked him to take care of you.

“Yeah. Of course I can,” Jake nods his head and reaches down to tug at Ace’s black woven collar. “Come in a sec. I just need some shoes.”

There haven’t been too many occasions where you have been inside Jake’s place. Your dad comes here a lot and you’ve been sent over to collect him before dinner on occasion, or to deliver Jake some leftovers.

It’s warm inside, and it smells like woodsmoke and leather. He’s been burning the candle that you got him for his last birthday. You inhale softly, shrugging the coat closer to your body.

In the times that you have been over here, you’re always surprised by how tidy he keeps the place. It’s not what you would have expected of a single guy living all alone.

Jake pulls some sneakers from a tidy shoe organizer disguised to look like an end table and crouches down to put them on his feet. Leaning over, something catches his eye between the heavy fleece of your dad’s unzipped work jacket.

“Did you get your bellybutton pierced?”

The question startles you, drawing attention to the fact that you had been craning your neck and trying to get a look into Jake’s living room. You turn your head, blinking as Jake straightens up and takes a step towards you.

He reaches out and before you know it, his warm fingers are stretching out across your chilled, just exposed navel. His thumb brushes over your soft skin, brows drawing together as he examines the dainty jewelry pushed through your skin.

Swiftly, you take a step back and his hand drops away from your body. “I’ve had it for years.”

There’s a silence between the two of you. Jake’s going to be kicking himself for that for weeks to come. He shouldn’t have reached out and touched you like that. He shouldn’t be commenting on things your father wouldn’t approve of. You’re too grown up for that.

“Huh,” He clicks his tongue, reaching just past your side to grab his house keys from the dish by the door. “C’mon, kid. Let’s go take a look at those lights.”

The shuffle of your slippers cuts through the awkward silence as you cross Jake’s front yard and into yours. It’s late November, and a cold night in particular too. Standing in just a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, the evening chill makes Jake’s arm hair stand on end. As you walk ahead, your back to him, Jake wonders if it has the same effect on you.

Thinking about his best friend’s daughter’s tits. He wishes the shame alone was enough to knock the thought out of his head. He wishes you hadn’t moved home. He wishes you weren’t leading him into your dark, empty house right now.

The entire house is pitch black, but Jake tests the hallway lightswitch in passing anyway. He notes the dubious look you shoot him back over your shoulder. Then, he passes by you as you stop to take off that big coat. It’s not something he wants to hang by and watch.

It’s cold as his shoulder brushes yours, and not just because it’s November. You swallow thickly, staring after him until he disappears into the dark. Your feelings towards Jake are complicated.

Well, they’re not. Your crush on him isn’t the innocent middle school crush that you used to have on an older figure, like a teacher. No, this is far from doodling his name in your journal. This man, and his thick, ridged abs and golden chest hair, is working his way into your dreams.

After the break-up, you had sworn off men for a while — and that was the right decision for you. But, it left certain parts of you yearning. And Jake’s right next door. From your bedroom window, you’ve got the perfect view into his backyard. The same backyard where he’ll work out in the blazing heat, sweat glistening along his tanned skin, along the ridges and valleys of his muscles.

No, this crush is far from innocent. It crossed the border into indecent weeks ago, the first time that you touched yourself thinking about him. It wasn’t your fault; he was tempting you.

You had returned home from work to find Jake hanging out in the living room with your father, not unusual, and you had joined the two of them. Your dad had started with a playful comment about Jake. Jake had returned the favour with a witty remark about your dad. You were just joining in on the fun, poking playfully at Jake’s age.

All too suddenly, he had turned sharply to you and pinched the soft skin between your ribs and hip, leaning dangerously close with a smirk on his face that made your head spin. In fact, you still remember the way your mouth had hung open as Jake had breathed out a chuckle and shot you that playfully warning look.

“You think you’re funny, huh?” He’d challenged, that eager look in those wild green eyes, his cheeks dimpling just slightly, fingers pressing into your side.

Since then, you can’t help but think of him closer, and closer.

“Jake, wait!” You call, dropping the coat onto a hook and kicking off your slippers, starting to rush after him. Jake cranes his neck to look back at you over his shoulder. “You should probably show me what you’re doing. Y’know, in case it happens again.”

“Sure. Come here,” Jake jerks his head for you to join him, extending his hand for you in the dark of the utility room. You swat around until your fingers graze his, falling silent at the brash way he grabs hold of your hand and drags you closer. Your ass briefly brushes his thigh as he guides you in front of him. Jake steps back, clearing his throat. The little red dot on the fuse box illuminates his fingertips as he reaches past you. “This is the switch you want, don’t mess with anything else or your dad’ll kill you.”

The corners of your lips twitch. There are plenty of things your dad would be furious with, if he knew you had done them.

Jake’s fingers curl around the switch. His cologne fills your nose. His massive bicep is inches from your cheek, and everything feels like electric as his other hand comes to rest on the bare space between your shirt and your shorts. You’re trapped between him and the wall in front. If you would push your hips back just an inch or two…

“So, you flip the switch off to reset it,” Jake’s voice is all gravel from yelling at the young pilots he instructs, and shouting over the top of loud music in bars. It drifts past your ears and makes you want to shiver as his fingers curl around the plush of your hip. “And then you flip it back on for the power.”

Suddenly, the lights come back on in the hall outside of the utility room. Jake’s got you cornered against the fuse box really, and with the washer and dryer to your side, the only escape would be to rush out into the hall. You’re not quite ready to make that move. You can hear the amusement in his voice. He can feel the way you’re burning with awkward embarrassment in front of him.

“Oh.” You say quietly. Jake chuckles from behind you, his hand trailing about an inch higher, taking some of the fabric from your tank top with it, pinching playfully at your newly exposed waist.

“Happy to help, kid.” He’s already drawing back, his hand pulling away from your electrified skin, the sound of his shoe hitting the floor and alerting you to the fact that he’ll be leaving before you even know it.

“Could I ask you for one more favour?” You turn to face him, biting sheepishly on your bottom lip.

“Sure. What is it?” He’d retile your entire bathroom for you if you asked him to. That’s what makes him wish he was a better friend.

There’s an art to the way you bat your lashes at him, knowing better than to get too close or put your hands on him. Just that deep, pleading look in your eyes is more than enough. “Will you finish watching my scary movie with me? — Kinda… freaked me out a little bit when the lights went out, is all.”

“… Yeah. Yeah, I guess I can hang out for a little.” You’re a good kid, and it’s just a movie. He can’t leave you over here all by yourself, scared out of your mind, now, can he?

Jake wonders if this is what your father had in mind when he had asked his most trusted friend to just be there for his daughter while they were away.

That same, trusted best friend, sitting on the couch with his chin propped up against his palm, and that daughter’s head resting against his shoulder. You could have sat over on the other end of the couch, or even in your dad’s armchair, but that defeats the purpose of asking Jake to stay.

“Fill me in. What am I missing here?” Jake asks, mostly to fill the silence. His arm stretches along the back of your couch, his knees parted obnoxiously and his neck awkwardly straight to minimise risk of him laying his head against yours.

Your hand comes to rest against his middle, eyes focused calmly on the screen. “So there are two timelines. The present, and flashbacks to like… maybe ten years ago. Ten years ago, the family bought this mirror, and…”

Jake’s fingers inch their way into your hair, trailing softly over your scalp. Your fingers brush over his middle as he massages your scalp. He listens to you explain the plot of the movie like he isn’t thinking about the way your nipples are pressing through the white fabric of your tank top.

“Freaky mirror…” Jake muses over the concept of the plot, squinting his eyes at the screen, his fingers slowing to a halt in your hair as he turns his head to look at you. “You gonna be able to sleep okay tonight if we watch this?”

You meet him back with a sheepish grin and an innocent shrug of your shoulders. “Well, I already started, so I need to see that it ends okay, or I’ll be freaked out.”

“Alright. Just making sure you’re not gonna try crawling into my bed tonight after you have a nightmare.” Jake teases, pushing his knees further apart and sinking down into the comfort of the grey fabric couch he helped the movers bring in here last August.

He didn’t push you away when you sat right next to him and curled against his side. He reached out himself and stroked his fingers along your stomach.

Confidence surges through you like a wave, swelling big enough for you to giggle and press closer to him. “Come on, would that be such a bad thing?”

“What did you say?”

The swell has passed and the wave crashes just like all the others do, breaking over an otherwise calm sea. You swallow softly, growing exceptionally still.

“I was just kidding—“

Jake’s fingers leave your hair and curl instead around the nape of your neck. He turns his head, attempting to get a look at your face. “No, no. Say it again. What did you say?”

You shake your head, pressing it closer against his toned stomach. “I was just joking. You wouldn’t mind it that much if I had a bad dream and had to come sleep in your bed.”

He’s quiet for a moment and the movie draws tense. The main character is creeping around in the dark, the music is building, and Jake’s far too quiet for your liking.

“Don’t joke about that.” Jake says quietly.

“Okay. I’m sorry.” You answer him, hugging your cheek into the dark fabric of his t-shirt. That way, there’s no chance of him seeing the shame on your face. Going after your dad’s best friend— you should be ashamed of yourself.

Jake rubs a palm over the stubble on his jaw, trying to focus on the screen in front of him. This movie can’t possibly take much longer.

He knows he has upset you. You’re uncharacteristically quiet, and he can feel you trying to sit still. He shifts his hips a little, reaching out and resting his palm against your waist.

Your brows draw together as the main character bites into the apple she was eating and glass shards drop to the floor in front of her. Jake feels your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. Sweat beads on the nape of his neck.

His thumb swipes back and forth over the inch of bare skin on your hip.

Jake glances down at you. Laying against his middle like this. It feels all too natural. He isn’t even paying attention to the movie. Truthfully, the only thing on Jake’s mind is how soft your skin feels against the pad of his thumb.

Imagining how soft your body would feel in his palms, every inch of your skin in his capable hands.

You gasp as the camera pans to the main character’s bleeding mouth, and the shattered lightbulb in your hands, twisting your head and burying your face in Jake’s shirt.

Jake flinches, his attention drawn back to the screen as his fingers curl into your skin. His face twists in distaste, groaning at the gore on the screen.

“Shit, you weren’t kidding about this being freaky.” Jake mutters with a soft shake of his head, shifting uncomfortably as his fingers massage at the pillowy skin of your waist. He swallows thickly, eyes dropping down to the way you’re nestled just above his waistband. He tries a weak chuckle, mind racing for something to lighten the mood. “What am I meant to do if I’m up all night after this, huh?”

You laugh softly against his stomach, pressing closer to the warmth of his rigid torso. Jake stares at the screen as he feels your open palm brush over his abdomen, fingertips grazing the waistband of his sweats by mere millimeters. He strokes your skin, setting his knees further apart by an inch.

Even with the score of the movie in front of you, everything feels so quiet. Even with the floor lamp to your right and the table lamp to your left, it all feels so dark. It all feels so slow. Truthfully, you imagine this is as close as you’ll get to understanding what it feels like to tightrope across Niagara Falls.

One misstep, a strong gust, the loss of balance in any capacity and its all over. The best friendship that your father has ever had, thrown away because you made a pass at a man far too old for you to begin with.

Then, Jake’s fingers break their almost surgically precise pattern. The tips stretch just slightly under the fabric of your tank top, reaching for the silken skin of your stomach. It’s brief, before they retreat to the safety of circling the skin that you’ve chosen to expose. You drop your gaze, watching all five of his digits follow their intricate pattern, and stretch under the cotton white of your top once again.

Maybe Jake notices that you’re watching him, or maybe he finally notices it himself, but he stops all at once. Fingers pulling back to rest platonically against your hip, green eyes trained seriously on the television, his lips stretched into a flat line.

“It’s okay,” You whisper without turning your gaze away from the screen. Jake doesn’t look at you. He feels your fingers brush across the top of his, curling through the digits, linking them together. “It’s okay, Jake. You can. I won’t say anything.”

Your parents aren’t going to be home for another eleven days. What’s Jake supposed to do until then, ignore your existence? — Avoid you entirely?

He wants this, and you’re on to him, giving him permission.

“Honey,” It’s caught somewhere between a sigh and a groan, an exhale of restraint and desperation all at once. He wishes he could at least pretend he’s half interested in this movie. “Don’t talk like that.”

Your brows draw together, eyes going wide as a child in the movie creeps through the house, headed for the master bedroom. Bloody sheets on the bed. A smashed plate on the floor. Jake’s hand gripping your hip. The child inches forwards, the music swells, a chill rushes down your back. In frame, the little girl rounds the edge of the bed and someone leaps out, bloodied and frenzied. Jake hasn’t been paying enough attention to gather who.

Neither one of you will care in a few moments.

The surprise makes you jolt, leaping up from your spot against Jake’s stomach, sitting upright all of a sudden, grabbing onto his forearm for support.

“It’s alright, cutie,” Jake breathes out in soft amusement, rubbing a heavy circle on your back. That’s the first thing he called you. When he’d seen you struggling to lift the icebox in the garage. Let me get that for you, cutie. And now, he has the nerve to pretend like it’s just you that has led the two of you here. “Maybe we should turn it off now, huh?”

Your heartbeat is already thudding in your ears and there’s no way you’ll be able to sleep after any of this. Fuck it. You turn, brace your palm against his shoulder, and take the dive.

Jake has thought about what those pretty lips feel like. Every time they stretch upwards into those pretty smiles, each time you sink your teeth into the bottom one. He should be prepared, in theory. Is there any way to prepare for something like this?

“Sweetheart…” Jake mutters against your lips, eyes screwed shut, hands reaching out for your hips. Pained, he gives a slow shake of his head. “Come on, we can’t do this.”

“But do you want to?” Your lips graze his. He feels the way you arch your back, knocking your chest into his, angling yourself in a way that just begs him to grab hold of your waist and drag you into his lap. You close your mouth, pecking softly at his still lips once more. “If you didn’t know my dad… you would. Right?”

Yes. Of course he would. He would be insane not to. He’s driving himself insane trying not to.

“But I do, and… and he trusts me.” Jake turns his head just slightly, but his hands reach for you. His big hands find your hips and grab onto them tight, hard. He just holds you right there. There’s got to be some kind of way he can regain some of the power here.

“I trust you.” You tell him, kissing his jaw tentatively. Delicate fingertips skim along the throbbing vein on the left side of Jake’s throat, reaching for the nape of his neck. Soft, slow kisses lead a trail to his earlobe, passing plains of stubble and angled bone. “I know you won’t hurt me, and I know you want me. It’s okay, Jake, I want you too.

“Fuck.” Jake swears, dropping his head forwards to rest against the curve of your shoulder. His fingers dig into your hips harder and harder. By the time Jake drags you forwards, his grip is so tight that you would have no choice but to follow. You fall into his lap, lips parted and eyes wide as Jake’s deep pine coloured eyes study your face.

You wait for him to speak again, but he doesn’t. Not for a long time. His fingers stretch up from your hips, reaching under the fabric of your tank top, extending across your bare abdomen. He stretches the brushed cotton further, taking it up with a gentle touch.

“Your father would kill me.” Jake muses as his fingertips graze the underside of your breasts, his eyes solely on your face. You smile back at him, only partly because your father is an airline pilot who couldn’t bench half of what Jake does on a good day.

“I won’t tell him if you don’t.”

Jake grits his teeth. It has started to rain outside now. That storm that channel four had promised is starting to roll in. The movie will be over soon. The rain will be the only sound on this entire street. This house is completely empty, beside the two of you. He exhales through his nose and pushes his hips up. He’s half-hard under you, and giving you another disapproving shake of his head.

“Little fuckin’ minx…” Jake curses you, his words fanning out across the span of your exposed neck, hot and cold all at once. “You get off on teasing me like this, or something?”

A smile works its way across those pretty lips. Jake could see more of that smile than he sees sunsets and he would still be pretty damn content. Your nails rake softly through the almost buzzed fade at the back of his head as you give a shake of your head.

“Well, it’s not teasing if we take care of it,” Your shoulders rise and fall in a soft shrug as Jake’s fingers trail further upwards, taking your tank top with them and exposing your breasts to the cool autumn air. The rattle of the air conditioning unit that your dad tells you not to mess with reminds you of the real culprit as your nipples harden and perk with the exposure. You lean back, bracing each of your hands on Jake’s knees, arching your chest out, letting Jake see the newly exposed skin. “If you’ll let me.”

His eyes are pretty when he smiles. When he’s staring at your tits, they’re hooded and hungry, a shade of green that threatens to draw you in and hold you captive. What a happy captive you would be. His hands grab at both of them at once, squeezing roughly at the supple flesh.

All at once, his mouth is on yours too. He’s sucking at your bottom lip, growling into your mouth. He smells of smoked wood and he tastes of scotch. It paints half of a picture. A lonely man sitting in his home alone on a Saturday night, burning a candle given to him by a girl half his age and drinking liquor older than he is himself.

You’re straddling his hips now, your bare thighs squeezing into the fabric of his grey sweatpants, pulling yourself closer with each hungry kiss. Jake’s touch is experienced, expert; he pinches softly at your nipple, anticipates the way your mouth will draw open in a soft gasp, and licks into your mouth the second that it does. He sucks softly at the tip of your tongue, revelling in the feeling of your soft breasts in his hands.

“Arms up.”

You’re such a good girl. The way that you comply with a wordless grin and bite at your lip once the tank top hits the floor has Jake in even more trouble than he was before. He kisses softly at the space between your tits, pushing them together in his hands, opening his mouth and pressing his tongue into your skin.

Men like boobs. Big boobs, small boobs — your shared gossip sessions with friends in college always led to the same conclusion, men don’t care. They bite, suck, grab regardless of size. It shouldn’t be anything new. But then Jake reaches your left nipple. His right hand palms at the underside as his tongue swipes in a circular motion, just before his lips clasp around the sensitive bud.

You know he’s watching you through those esurient green eyes, but you find yourself playing right into his capable hands anyway. Any leverage you may have had in seeming like his charms don’t work on you are washed away with the dulcet tone of your first moan. It spills from your lips, your nails pressing into the nape of his neck as Jake sucks expertly at the sensitive skin.

He pulls away with another ravenous exhale, something between a sigh and a groan. His hands feel heavy on your body as they paw at your chest with a capability you’ve never encountered before. His cologne is expensive and mature, a smokey blend that has you intoxicated and enthralled. His mouth is wet and eager, but oh, so slow as it explores the areas of you he has dreamt about.

The rain outside is growing heavier, like it’s learning to mimic the deepness of each of your breaths. The movie must have finished by now. Neither one of you is going to check.

His stubble prickles, rough and masculine, abrasive compared to the adept caress of his tongue. His right hand grabs forcibly at the nape of your neck, drawing the sweetest little squeak from your already open lips. You knew he would be better than the guys you’ve been with before, but not like this. He hasn’t even touched you yet.

Jake’s lips seem to pinpoint each and every nerve ending in your chest, sucking and licking at your skin through feverish kisses. The tenderness seeping away each time a breathy moan falls from your mouth, fanning out against his clothed shoulder. He pulls away from the top of your breast with his teeth, already knowing, in his years of experience, that that’s going to bruise.

Jake lifts his head, letting his eyes drift shut as you lean forwards and press your mouth to his neck. He can feel your nerves in your trembling fingertips, in the way your chest shivers when it brushes his, in the way your lips suck at his pulse point. But you’re doing so well. Dragging your lips along the length of his neck, biting softly at the skin just above his collarbone, feeling him shiver at the sensation.

“Off.” You demand, grabbing at the bottom of his t-shirt, feeling him grin against your jaw. He complies wordlessly, grabbing at the back of his shirt and yanking it over his head.

You’ve seen Jake shirtless plenty of times, wandering around his property or opening the front door without shame. You’ve always wondered what those muscles, that dusting of golden chest hair, would feel like up close. Forgetting that you’re being watched, your hands explore his toned torso. The line down the middle of his stomach, the sharp divide of his collarbones, the swell of his pecs.

“What’re you thinking?” Jake asks, brushing your hair back from your face tenderly, concern coating his features.

A bashful smile spreads across your cheeks as you watch your fingers ghost along the thick muscle of his shoulder. “That you’re really hot.”

Jake breathes out a chuckle, reaching up and grabbing at the back of your neck to cradle you against him as he pushes up from the couch and turns quickly, planting you on your back and covering your body with his.

“That smile is gonna get me in big trouble, sweetheart,” Jake wastes no time in pressing his mouth to your stomach, holding you by your waist as he sucks filthy kisses into your skin to mark his path downward. “You know that?”

“I know.” You answer back, just to tease him this time. Jake stops at your waistband as you giggle, looking up at you through hooded eyes with a devilish grin on his face. He drags his teeth across your hip, hooking his fingers into the sides of your shorts and tugging them down your legs.

“God, honey, you weren’t wearing panties this entire time?” Jake exhales, eye-level with the most intimate part of you and completely unashamed. Your mind fumbles for an answer, lips getting into position to finally respond when he leans forwards and licks a stripe through your soaked core. Then, he moans. His hands grab fistfuls of your soft waist and he goes in again, lapping hungrily at your excitement, groaning against your sensitive skin.

“O-Oh… Jake.” Your voice trembles, knees trying to press shut around Jake’s broad shoulders. He grabs firmly at your thigh, closing his lips loosely around your clit, flicking his tongue over the sensitive bud and making you jolt against him.

“Yeah, honey?”

“That feels really fucking good.” You tell him, closing your eyes finally.

“Attagirl. Just hold on, girlie, I’m gonna get you there.” He promises without once diverting from his apparent mission. If he’s as devoted to the Navy as he is to making you cum at this exact moment in time, the military is lucky to have him. You’re soaked, excitement pooling between your legs. Jake already knows he’s going to spend tomorrow cleaning this couch, and he wishes he cared enough to make better decisions.

“Look at this,” Jake breathes out as his gaze falls back down to rest between your legs. He couldn’t care less about the fucking couch. You swallow hard, practically aching for his touch. You’ve waited so long already. His index finger dips between your folds, his brows raise as he gathers your excitement on the tip of it. “Making such a fuckin’ mess for your old man’s best friend. Dirty fucking girl.”

He can’t see the way his words make you grin, but he can feel the way you reach for his hair and tug softly at those blonde roots, begging for more. He’s more than happy to give it to you. Jake groans against you, working his tongue in soft circles around the throbbing bundle of nerves. His eyes are still on you. Your eyes are closed — if you look him in the eyes then you’re going to get all embarrassed, and you’ll be damned before you let someone ruin how good this feels. Especially not yourself.

Jake’s hand trails up your naked torso, pawing at your rising and falling tits as you pant into the chilled air, sweat beading on your skin.

He’s gentle between your legs. More gentle than he could be. Pressing his stubbled mouth firmly against your core and working his tongue against you, each languid movement making you keen into him. The tip of his nose bumps your clit periodically. It feels like your head is spinning.

Dragging his mouth back up to your sensitive, throbbing clit, his free hand slides between your legs, he dips the tip of his index finger into you, then slides it in up to the knuckle and curls. Just testing the waters. It’s enough to earn him a moan, enough to have you grab a fistful of his short blonde hair, ensuring that he doesn’t get ahead of himself and lose pace with his mouth.

He slips his ring finger into you alongside his middle whilst his tongue works confidently along your core and back up to your clit. He lets go of your thigh and rests his forearm across your stomach, keeping you nice and still for him. Maybe he should feel ashamed of himself for how much he’s enjoying this.

All of those times he enjoyed the sound of your laugh, and sat with the afterthought of how much he’d enjoy the sound of your moans. It’s hard to be ashamed when it turns out he was right.

He scissors his fingers inside of you, making you gasp louder this time, pulling against him. You tug at his roots, he moans against your clit. You both shiver, and not because of that now thundering storm. Jake’s tongue flattens as he drags it along your core. He pulls his fingers from you and puts them immediately to work, taking over the pace on your clit, burying his face between your legs, curling his tongue into you.

Jake growls against you, his cock growing now uncomfortably hard in the confines of his sweats and his fingers and mouth switch places once again. After all the time he has waited, he doesn’t deny himself the pleasure of looking up at you, writhing at the feeling of him between your legs. All that does is make his sweats feel even tighter again. His fingers fuck into you mercilessly, curling and twisting, making you keen into his touch and arch your back and gasp all at once.

You cum with his name on your tongue and your fingers in his hair. The comedown feels like weightlessness. Jake doesn’t bother to ask if that’s the first time a man has made you feel like that, the adoration in your eyes as he comes in to kiss your mouth tells him everything he needs to know.

His mouth tastes like you, his chin is wet with your slick and his cock is straining against the grey cotton of his sweats, pressing in to your stomach. Jake’s fingers brush your hair back softly from your forehead, a sudden calmness in the green of his eyes as he studies the peaceful euphoric smile on your face.

“We don’t have to go any further—“

“Stop trying to be a gentleman.” You huff, lifting your head and kissing him hard, hooking your legs around his waist. Drawing him closer, you’re both painfully aware that the only thing stopping him from touching you is his sweats. “I want you.”

Jake pauses for a moment. Rain slams against the windows, and the television goes dark as it passes into standby mode. His hands squeeze softly at your waist, eyes darting downward at your naked body under his. He would be a damn idiot to say no to everything he has been fantasising about.

“You keep condoms here?” He breathes out.

Your eyes light up before him, gleaming with mischief. You give a confident nod of your head as a cunning little smirk spreads across your lips.

“There are some in my parents’ bathroom,” You can tell right away that he doesn’t like that idea, but that’s okay, option two was by far your favourite anyway. “Or, you could just cum in me. I won’t tell.”

“Jesus Christ.” Jake drops his head forwards to rest against your naked chest, panting out a dry laugh. His fingers bruise into your middle as he starts to consider the choices that have led him here. Once he feels composed enough to look you in the eye again, he lifts his head and squints seriously. “You did not just say that.”

“I want you to. I’m on birth control anyway.” Long gone is the nervous girl standing on his porch and asking him to fix her lights. There’s a devious, lustful look in your eye and Jake’s pretty damn sure there’s magic in that look. All he knows is that it could make him do just about anything you asked of him. “Please?”

Jake swipes his thumb along the curve of your jaw, studying the depths of your irises for just a moment. He leans forwards and kisses your bottom lip, sucking at the plush skin, pulling away with his teeth. You swallow as he sits back, pushes his sweats down his legs and frees his swollen cock. From under him, you’ve got the perfect view.

Every ridge and valley in those impossible abs, each follicle of hair that lines his tanned chest, trailing down below his navel and sitting neatly around his pubic bone, trimmed just as neatly as his navy-standard hair cut. His cock is a good size, considerable even when he’s got one of his large hands wrapped around its base. Wide too, throbbing red at the tip, bending just slightly to the left.

Just looking has your mouth running dry.

Fisting his cock, Jake sits back on his heels and lets his gaze fall down to your glistening core once again. He looks down at your pretty face, then lowers himself between your legs, pressing his chest into yours, kissing you dizzyingly hard.

“You want it?” Jake asks one last time.

“I want it.” You answer him, smiling softly back at him, squeezing your thighs around his hips.

You’re looking up at him with such trust in your eyes that Jake can barely stand it. His heart thuds in his chest as he guides the tip of his cock between your folds, hesitating just briefly. There’s already no coming back from this. There’s no way to make up for the things he has already done. You’re so special, and he wants this so bad.

Your mouth sucks softly at his throat, quiet, pleased sounds spilling from your lips as he grinds the tip of his cock against your sensitive clit. Jake kisses your shoulder softly, then lowers his head to rest there as he drags his cock down to your warm entrance. You gasp softly as he presses into you, pushing forwards until he’s buried and stretching you open completely.

“Oh,” You whimper against his earlobe, pressing your nails into the swell of his shoulder blade. “You feel really fucking big.”

“So fuckin tight.” Jake grunts, his throat thick with desire as he stills inside of you, thumbs bruising into your hips. “Sweet fucking girl. Feel like you’re made just for me.”

This makes you smile into the curve of his jaw, humming in soft agreement as he starts to slowly rock his hips. Lightning flashes outside of the window, and it doesn’t matter one bit. The rest of the world is a million miles away. In here, it’s just the two of you.

“Oh fuck,” Jake shivers, eclipsing your throat with his hand, pulling you in for a heavy kiss, licking into your mouth as he drags his hips back until it’s just the tip. You gasp sharply against him as he snaps his hips forwards until he’s buried into you completely once. “Fuck. You like that?”

“Yeah. I want it like that.” You whimper into his skin, hugging your legs tight around his hips. You moan eagerly against his lips, the sound catching in your throat as he squeezes at the sides of your neck and drives his hips forwards sharply, drawing an excited squeak from your parted lips.

Jake grunts, rocking himself into you hard and fast. He’s waited so long for this, and so have you. The way you’re clawing at his back makes him want to give it all to you. Leaving feverish kisses along your collarbones, he fills you over and over. You curl both legs tighter around his waist, leaning your head back as far as you can against the couch cushion to give his lips better access to your throat.

The living room is filled with the sounds of your sex. Your desperate moans, panting and hard. Jake’s pleasured grunts, muffled softly by the curve of your shoulder. His skin slapping yours. It smells like him, smoky and mature. Sweat beads along his back and his forehead as he keeps up that merciless pace, fucking you so hard that you couldn’t tell him your own name anymore.

Jake pulls back just enough to grab the backs of your thighs and pin them to your chest, hooking your knees over his shoulders, filling you even deeper than before, making you cry out.

“Jake!” You beg, babbling incoherently into the curve of his shoulder as he goes right back to the pace he set before. Fucking you hard and fast, scrambling your brain to the point that the only thing on your mind is the ravenous way he’s staring down at you.

Your walls are squeezing around him perfectly and the sounds you’re making are just driving him insane. It’s been a long time since Jake felt as crazy about someone as he feels about you. He pants into the crook of your neck as his fingers tug at your hair, making you moan out even louder.

“I’m gonna cum — fuck, honey,” Jake grunts out like he’s been punched, his eyes screwing shut as he reaches between your bodies and rubs uniformed circles around your clit. “Are you close? — Can you cum one more time for me?”

“Yeah,” You breathe out, already trembling as you squeeze your thighs tighter around him. “Just—“ You don’t have the words, so you just reach out and grab his hand. Jake swallows hard as you wrap his open hand around the column of your throat and look up at him with that big, trusting look in your eyes again.

He grits his teeth as he squeezes at the sides of your throat, watching your sweet face contort in pleasure. Your hand dips between your legs and replaces where Jake’s had been, rubbing feverish patterns on your clit. Your stomach tightens in knots, your breathing grows heavy and Jake’s cock drives into you at just about the perfect angle each time. You open his mouth to warn him, but it’s already too late. You couldn’t find the words if you tried.

All you can do is grab onto those thick shoulders and cry out his name against the salty skin of his neck. Jake slows just slightly, offering you some reprieve through your sensitivity. Trying to be a gentleman once again. The brain fog starts to clear, you lift your head and press your lips to your earlobe.

“Cum in me,” You pant out, grabbing his shoulder to steady yourself. Jake groans against your chest, nodding his head feverishly. “Just like that, Jake, please.”

He’s relentless, fucking your through the sensitivity of your post-orgasm haze hard enough that grabbing onto those broad shoulders is the only thing that keeps you down to earth with him. Jake groans desperately. He wraps an arm under your back and pulls you as tight against him as physics will allow. You gasp softly, taking your lip between your teeth as he fills you, his cock throbbing against your walls. He seeks out your lips and kisses you hard, somehow more desperate now.

“Fuck, honey…” Jake breathes out, pressing a lazy kiss to the curve of your jaw. He makes no effort to move at first. “You alright?”

“Better than alright.” You answer contentedly, a soft smile toying at your lips as lightning flashes outside once again. Jake chuckles tiredly, lifting his head and kissing your lips.

He sighs, moving slow as he slips out of you and looks down at his cum dripping from between your legs.

“Oh, shit!” You realize, sitting up quickly and trying to reach around Jake for something to clean it with. He hooks an arm around your waist and pulls you tight against him. Truthfully, from the moment that you had laid your head on Jake’s abs, you hadn’t thought once about the consequences of fucking him right here in this spot.

“Forget it, I’ll — I’ll fix this,” He tells you calmly, already regretting that he’s going to have to live with what he has done on this couch. “Come on, cutie. Let’s go take a shower.”

It’s clear that this is foreign territory for you. Not the sex, but what comes after. He didn’t get up and leave. He didn’t run away with regret for what he did. He ran soap across your body and found your pyjamas for you.

You swallow softly, walking to sit on the edge of your bed. Jake runs a hand along his stubbled jaw as he lingers in the doorway to you room. You can’t help but notice that he got dressed again. Including his shoes. He looks you over, sitting there in fresh pyjamas, staring at him with that worried little look on your face.

He hasn’t ever seen your room here. It’s probably the one room in the house he has never been in. He’s been wondering what it’s like.

But that isn’t why he’s standing there. He sighs softly and crosses his arms over his chest.

“I should go — I mean, Ace is over there by himself.” Jake says quietly. You nod at him. You should probably say something too, but truthfully, not all of your words seem to have come back into your mind yet. “Are you coming with me?”

“Huh?”

“Well, I don’t wanna leave you over here by yourself after that weird ass movie.” Jake answers you with a shrug of his shoulders. “I figured you could just spend the night. If you want.”

Your mouth twitches at the corners as you push yourself up from the edge of your bed, nodding eagerly at him. You’ve got eleven days until your parents get back in town, and Jake permitting, you’re planning on making the most of that.