✮ REQUESTS are open for pope cody, jack abbot & frank langdon
maria ✰ 23 ✰ she / her ✰ fanfic enthusiast / writer ✰ professional yapper ✰ bimbo reader defender ✰ full of love and southern charm ✰ pitt survivor ✰ possessor of feminine intuition & intelligence ✰ mrs. pope cody
⋆⭒˚.⋆ RECENTS shed some light on me • half of my heart is in your chest • daddy figure • sugar on the trigger • hell on you • pearl necklace • 7k celebration masterlist
ᯓ𝄞 ˎˊ˗ CURRENTLY LISTENING forgive you by leon bridges
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Frank’s half listening to a “post-rehab integration” briefing (HR, risk-management, even a hospital lawyer into one oxygen-starved side room) when something buzzes under on table. He palms the phone below the folded sobriety metrics. The screen glows with your text: Miss you, daddy.
pope goes to smurf's house only to find you playing dress-up in lingerie
bet u wanna MEET THE READER! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING pope cody x bunny!reader
WARNING 18+ MDNI explicit language, sexual tension, male-gaze objectification, lingerie/revealing clothing, voyeuristic framing, possessive behavior, jealous pope, power imbalance (age & authority), internal monologue with some violent thoughts, smurf's coercive caretaking, family dysfunction/toxic dynamics, obsessive attraction
WC 2k
Well, that sucked.
By the time Pope gets back, the rush has leeched out, leaving only that deep-kernel ache that seats itself behind his eyes and chews on the hinges of his knees.
Two straight hours of Craig’s bullshit. Handling one of his messes: steal a box truck, ditch it by the frontage weeds, ferry a duffel that sloshes like loose change in hell.
And that kid — peach-fuzz jaw, barely old enough to drive, hands rattling on the wheel — kept chirping, They get the plate? You think the cops got the plate? Until Pope finally told him to Shut the fuck up.
It should’ve been simple. And it was. But now his shoulders have ratcheted up to his ears, boots scraped with dried roadside clay, and something electric still zings along the wire of his veins, buzzing rest right out of reach even while his muscles sag for it.
He ought to drive to his own apartment. Strip, shower, face-plant into bed. Instead, he hooks the wheel into Smurf’s driveway, jaw hooking and unhooking as the tires snap and grind.
His place has felt wrong lately. Like stepping into a church long after the candles are snuffed, all the heat siphoned off, air too neat, too unlived-in.
He skips the confession that he knew you’d be here tonight.
You’d told him earlier you were going over to Smurf’s after dinner, helping finish month-end paperwork for one of the Cody businesses because half the receipts were missing, the books didn’t match, and Smurf liked having someone patient enough to untangle the mess without asking too many questions.
Pope kills the engine and sits there for a second, both fists locked on the wheel, eyes tracking the jaundiced porch light as if it might blink out.
The notion of finding you perched on the counter, hair pulled back, tongue caught between your teeth while you tame Smurf’s math brings him a molecule of relief.
Maybe if he can stand close enough, let that warmth bleed off you and into him, that static in his body will finally ebb.
But when he steps inside the kitchen he doesn’t find you there.
Instead the room is empty except for a lamp left on and a stack of folders spread across the island.
He’s halfway to calling your name when your voice drifts down the hallway.
“No, I don’t know if this one fits right.” A heartbeat of silence, Smurf’s gravelly reply lost in drywall, then you again, soft and rueful: “It’s weird in the shoulders.”
His boots are already angling down the hall before the thought finishes forming. A prickle climbs the back of his neck. Pre-impact warning, he thinks.
He rounds the doorway and when he sees you, the whole room seems to swim in distorted colors.
Every sane impulse collapses into a pinhole centered on you. Balance? Shot. Vision? Down to one shaky frame. All he can do is absorb the hit and pray his face doesn’t show it.
You’re standing barefoot in the glow of Smurf’s vanity lights, one arm over your chest, gigglinh a little while Smurf fusses with the back clasp of a dove-gray lingerie set that leaves most of your spine exposed.
Lace webs your hips, throwing sparks of silver thread catching every twitch of light, sketching a glittered arrow that drags Pope’s gaze downward before he can marshal a single thought.
His palms twitch, desperate to chart every raw continent of skin in front of him. He’s never seen this much of you outside a bathing suit.
His zipper strains as his cock twitches in his jeans.
And still he’s motionless, swallowing hard, worship curdling into something closer to panic because if you turn and see what’s in his eyes, you’ll know things he’s barely admitted to himself.
You twist, a startled little oh hitching out as gravity helps sink the lace a fraction to frame your breasts in shadowed leafwork.
Pope’s eyes bite down, brutal and starving, then wrenches upward to your face, forcing itself past you to Smurf.
She waits with that fox-like smile, the one that says she laid the snare hours ago and knew exactly which wolf would step into it.
“What the fuck is this?” he barks.
“Langauge.” Smurf reminds, tapping your hip like you’re a showroom dummy.
“You got her parading around like that in the middle of the house?”
“She’s not parading,” Smurf corrects. “We were having fun.”
You hunch your shoulders like a breeze just cut through, never mind that the motion only lofts your chest higher in the fabric, and offer him a sheepish half-smile.
“Smurf was just helping me pick out some… stuff,” you say, as if the word covers feathers and dynamite alike.
Stuff. Harmless, cute, nothing to see. At least that’s the story you seem to be trying to sell.
What use do you have for lingerie? Especially the kind that looks like sin stitched up?
A boyfriend? Somebody you’re texting while he’s too busy mopping up Craig’s mistakes to notice? Far as he knows you’re not seeing anyone, but the idea of that sweetness wrapped up for anyone else pours molten lead straight into his head.
“You don’t need —” he falters, fingers flexing like they might crumple the air — “stuff like that.”
He knows it’s a selfish claim. The idea that lingerie is pointless unless he is the one unhooking it, unless his mouth is the one to learn every inch of you that the fabric covers. Anything that decadent belongs behind a door he locks, the key warm in his fist, an invitation meant for him alone.
Smurf lifts a single painted brow. “Need’s got nothin’ to do with it, baby. A girl gets to feel pretty just because.”
Pope scoffs.
“She’s already plenty pretty —” His eyes flick to you. “ — you’re already… you’re fine without all this.” He swings his glare back to Smurf. “Whatever game this is, it’s not what you hired her for. Cut it out.”
You wet your lips, nervously looking between the two Codys. “Pope, it’s okay.”
His name, or the semblance of it (he’s not sure you even know his real name at this point), from your lips while you’re dressed like this feels like blasphemy.
In an instant he’s seeing the bodysuit rolled down slow, edges snagging on goose-bumped thighs while you try to stay modest, him kissing away the apologies that rise in your throat, laying you back across the vanity bench so he can have his way with you.
Sweat beads at his hairline. He pinches his nose, swallows broken glass. “Go put somethin’ else on.”
“Don’t bark orders at her,” Smurf chides, the words lazy.
He pretends he didn’t hear her; only when his eyes meet yours do they soften, apology threaded through the glare. “Go on, please.”
You nod at that and hurry back down the hall. Pope’s body tilts to follow the sway of your hips before he yanks it still until the bathroom lock snicks closed.
When he turns, Smurf is already studying him the way a jeweler studies a flawed diamond, looking for cracks, head tipped, eyes sharp.
He offers nothing, no twitch of the mouth or flinch, just the blank slate he’s spent years perfecting.
She finally concedes and pushes off the dresser.
“Think I’ll fix myself a sandwich,” she murmurs, “Try not to devour the poor girl before I’m back.”
Her hand lands on Pope’s chest in a mock-pat; he jerks away and she chuckles low as she saunters past him, heels clicking all the way down the hall.
He wipes a palm down his jeans, trying to scrape off the phantom of her touch.
Devour — that’s her word, not his. And as much as he wants to do that, what he feels for you is bigger than hunger.
It’s blueprints and scaffolding, a whole cathedral of intention he barely dares to name. Smurf can’t fathom that depth. She pokes at the surface and calls it knowledge, never understanding the miles of dark water beneath.
The bathroom door creaks open and you step out, head ducked, hands smoothing a cotton sundress the color of lemon ice.
The hem flutters modestly around your knees, though you still tug it lower.
“Sorry,” you breathe, a nervous puff of air.
The word pricks at him. He wants to say there’s nothing to be sorry for, that the fault lies in his own head, in Smurf’s games, in every inch of distance he keeps for your sake.
A knot in his shoulders eases. “Don’t apologize.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, because after the way he’s treated you, how would you know you didn’t have to?
He presses the heel of his hand over his mouth, scrubbing like he could wipe the taste of the whole night away. His eyes flick to the dirt still crusted on his boots, grit he suddenly can’t stand around you, and scuffs one sole against the other as if that’ll fix anything.
“C’mere.” The request is low, ragged, and you obey without hesitation. Always a good listener for him.
As you step into the slice of light between you, he lifts one broad hand, slowing it at the last second to straighten the twisted strap at your collarbone.
His touch is rough in theory, calloused pads snagging silk, but in practice it’s feather-light, reverent, as though he’s afraid you’ll bruise if he breathes too hard.
The tiny contact is a fuse and a salve all at once. The instant your warmth bleeds into him the restless buzz he’s been carrying dims, a far-off generator finally cut.
He draws back just enough to meet your eyes. “You don’t gotta let her play dress-up with you like that.”
“I don’t mind — honest,” you say, giving a tiny shrug.
“I mind,” he says, the line grating rough. Even he seems surprised by the bite, lips pressing thin as he exhales.
Your shoulders dip. “You didn’t like it?”
The downward curve of your mouth guts him. He curses under his breath.
“I… yeah, I liked it.” Too damn much, he thinks. “...It’s just the kind of thing that’s supposed to be private, y’know? Meant for one set of eyes.”
“Private as in… like, saved for a boyfriend?”
He schools his face, but inside he’s turning over every recent memory, searching for the invisible man who might already have his hands on you.
“Yeah… like for a boyfriend,” he murmurs. “And only when you’re good and ready. Don’t let some jerk fast-talk you into giving him what he hasn’t earned.”
“He wouldn’t,” you say, like the question never existed.
Your eyes lift to his like you’re lining up a target, lashes barely fluttering.
There’s no shimmer of shyness now. Just concentrated fire, sliding over his cheekbones, jawline, the slight stubble he didn’t bother shaving. It feels like you’re pocketing measurements for later, mapping angles with the same precision he uses to load a round.
Hallway light glints off your pupils, then pools into rich shadow.
Pope’s next breath sticks in his throat; he isn’t used to being seen like this — like the whole world has funneled down to just him, and you’re perfectly happy living inside that narrow beam.
And it’s strange when you just confirmed his suspicions. Proof there is someone out there who’s already earned that privilege, someone so gentle you can declare his goodness without blinking.
It should reassure him. Instead it tastes like rust and gun-oil, sparks off a terrible instinct that wants a name, an address, a reason to break knuckles until the picture stops existing.
Possession floods his lungs. He forces it down, masks the scorch as nothing more than a normal breath.
“Good,” he manages through grit teeth. “Just… promise me you’ll keep your eyes open. People aren’t always what they say.”
Your fingers toy with the strap he’d fixed. “Promise.”
Your gaze drops briefly to his mouth, just a flicker, before sliding back up, a soft smile playing at the corners as if you know a secret he hasn’t caught.
Something in it says the good man you vouched for is already standing here, but Pope’s too busy counting heartbeats to see the answer staring him down.
MARIA NOTE thank u for reading!!!!! u get a gold star and a juice box !! if u r craving more bunny antics (or want pope to suffer in new and interesting ways), requests are open!! and reminder that feedback feeds the gremlins, and the gremlins write the fics :-) 💛⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ 🌼
pope goes to smurf's house only to find you playing dress-up in lingerie
bet u wanna MEET THE READER! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING pope cody x bunny!reader
WARNING 18+ MDNI explicit language, sexual tension, male-gaze objectification, lingerie/revealing clothing, voyeuristic framing, possessive behavior, jealous pope, power imbalance (age & authority), internal monologue with some violent thoughts, smurf's coercive caretaking, family dysfunction/toxic dynamics, obsessive attraction
WC 2k
Well, that sucked.
By the time Pope gets back, the rush has leeched out, leaving only that deep-kernel ache that seats itself behind his eyes and chews on the hinges of his knees.
Two straight hours of Craig’s bullshit. Handling one of his messes: steal a box truck, ditch it by the frontage weeds, ferry a duffel that sloshes like loose change in hell.
And that kid — peach-fuzz jaw, barely old enough to drive, hands rattling on the wheel — kept chirping, They get the plate? You think the cops got the plate? Until Pope finally told him to Shut the fuck up.
It should’ve been simple. And it was. But now his shoulders have ratcheted up to his ears, boots scraped with dried roadside clay, and something electric still zings along the wire of his veins, buzzing rest right out of reach even while his muscles sag for it.
He ought to drive to his own apartment. Strip, shower, face-plant into bed. Instead, he hooks the wheel into Smurf’s driveway, jaw hooking and unhooking as the tires snap and grind.
His place has felt wrong lately. Like stepping into a church long after the candles are snuffed, all the heat siphoned off, air too neat, too unlived-in.
He skips the confession that he knew you’d be here tonight.
You’d told him earlier you were going over to Smurf’s after dinner, helping finish month-end paperwork for one of the Cody businesses because half the receipts were missing, the books didn’t match, and Smurf liked having someone patient enough to untangle the mess without asking too many questions.
Pope kills the engine and sits there for a second, both fists locked on the wheel, eyes tracking the jaundiced porch light as if it might blink out.
The notion of finding you perched on the counter, hair pulled back, tongue caught between your teeth while you tame Smurf’s math brings him a molecule of relief.
Maybe if he can stand close enough, let that warmth bleed off you and into him, that static in his body will finally ebb.
But when he steps inside the kitchen he doesn’t find you there.
Instead the room is empty except for a lamp left on and a stack of folders spread across the island.
He’s halfway to calling your name when your voice drifts down the hallway.
“No, I don’t know if this one fits right.” A heartbeat of silence, Smurf’s gravelly reply lost in drywall, then you again, soft and rueful: “It’s weird in the shoulders.”
His boots are already angling down the hall before the thought finishes forming. A prickle climbs the back of his neck. Pre-impact warning, he thinks.
He rounds the doorway and when he sees you, the whole room seems to swim in distorted colors.
Every sane impulse collapses into a pinhole centered on you. Balance? Shot. Vision? Down to one shaky frame. All he can do is absorb the hit and pray his face doesn’t show it.
You’re standing barefoot in the glow of Smurf’s vanity lights, one arm over your chest, gigglinh a little while Smurf fusses with the back clasp of a dove-gray lingerie set that leaves most of your spine exposed.
Lace webs your hips, throwing sparks of silver thread catching every twitch of light, sketching a glittered arrow that drags Pope’s gaze downward before he can marshal a single thought.
His palms twitch, desperate to chart every raw continent of skin in front of him. He’s never seen this much of you outside a bathing suit.
His zipper strains as his cock twitches in his jeans.
And still he’s motionless, swallowing hard, worship curdling into something closer to panic because if you turn and see what’s in his eyes, you’ll know things he’s barely admitted to himself.
You twist, a startled little oh hitching out as gravity helps sink the lace a fraction to frame your breasts in shadowed leafwork.
Pope’s eyes bite down, brutal and starving, then wrenches upward to your face, forcing itself past you to Smurf.
She waits with that fox-like smile, the one that says she laid the snare hours ago and knew exactly which wolf would step into it.
“What the fuck is this?” he barks.
“Langauge.” Smurf reminds, tapping your hip like you’re a showroom dummy.
“You got her parading around like that in the middle of the house?”
“She’s not parading,” Smurf corrects. “We were having fun.”
You hunch your shoulders like a breeze just cut through, never mind that the motion only lofts your chest higher in the fabric, and offer him a sheepish half-smile.
“Smurf was just helping me pick out some… stuff,” you say, as if the word covers feathers and dynamite alike.
Stuff. Harmless, cute, nothing to see. At least that’s the story you seem to be trying to sell.
What use do you have for lingerie? Especially the kind that looks like sin stitched up?
A boyfriend? Somebody you’re texting while he’s too busy mopping up Craig’s mistakes to notice? Far as he knows you’re not seeing anyone, but the idea of that sweetness wrapped up for anyone else pours molten lead straight into his head.
“You don’t need —” he falters, fingers flexing like they might crumple the air — “stuff like that.”
He knows it’s a selfish claim. The idea that lingerie is pointless unless he is the one unhooking it, unless his mouth is the one to learn every inch of you that the fabric covers. Anything that decadent belongs behind a door he locks, the key warm in his fist, an invitation meant for him alone.
Smurf lifts a single painted brow. “Need’s got nothin’ to do with it, baby. A girl gets to feel pretty just because.”
Pope scoffs.
“She’s already plenty pretty —” His eyes flick to you. “ — you’re already… you’re fine without all this.” He swings his glare back to Smurf. “Whatever game this is, it’s not what you hired her for. Cut it out.”
You wet your lips, nervously looking between the two Codys. “Pope, it’s okay.”
His name, or the semblance of it (he’s not sure you even know his real name at this point), from your lips while you’re dressed like this feels like blasphemy.
In an instant he’s seeing the bodysuit rolled down slow, edges snagging on goose-bumped thighs while you try to stay modest, him kissing away the apologies that rise in your throat, laying you back across the vanity bench so he can have his way with you.
Sweat beads at his hairline. He pinches his nose, swallows broken glass. “Go put somethin’ else on.”
“Don’t bark orders at her,” Smurf chides, the words lazy.
He pretends he didn’t hear her; only when his eyes meet yours do they soften, apology threaded through the glare. “Go on, please.”
You nod at that and hurry back down the hall. Pope’s body tilts to follow the sway of your hips before he yanks it still until the bathroom lock snicks closed.
When he turns, Smurf is already studying him the way a jeweler studies a flawed diamond, looking for cracks, head tipped, eyes sharp.
He offers nothing, no twitch of the mouth or flinch, just the blank slate he’s spent years perfecting.
She finally concedes and pushes off the dresser.
“Think I’ll fix myself a sandwich,” she murmurs, “Try not to devour the poor girl before I’m back.”
Her hand lands on Pope’s chest in a mock-pat; he jerks away and she chuckles low as she saunters past him, heels clicking all the way down the hall.
He wipes a palm down his jeans, trying to scrape off the phantom of her touch.
Devour — that’s her word, not his. And as much as he wants to do that, what he feels for you is bigger than hunger.
It’s blueprints and scaffolding, a whole cathedral of intention he barely dares to name. Smurf can’t fathom that depth. She pokes at the surface and calls it knowledge, never understanding the miles of dark water beneath.
The bathroom door creaks open and you step out, head ducked, hands smoothing a cotton sundress the color of lemon ice.
The hem flutters modestly around your knees, though you still tug it lower.
“Sorry,” you breathe, a nervous puff of air.
The word pricks at him. He wants to say there’s nothing to be sorry for, that the fault lies in his own head, in Smurf’s games, in every inch of distance he keeps for your sake.
A knot in his shoulders eases. “Don’t apologize.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, because after the way he’s treated you, how would you know you didn’t have to?
He presses the heel of his hand over his mouth, scrubbing like he could wipe the taste of the whole night away. His eyes flick to the dirt still crusted on his boots, grit he suddenly can’t stand around you, and scuffs one sole against the other as if that’ll fix anything.
“C’mere.” The request is low, ragged, and you obey without hesitation. Always a good listener for him.
As you step into the slice of light between you, he lifts one broad hand, slowing it at the last second to straighten the twisted strap at your collarbone.
His touch is rough in theory, calloused pads snagging silk, but in practice it’s feather-light, reverent, as though he’s afraid you’ll bruise if he breathes too hard.
The tiny contact is a fuse and a salve all at once. The instant your warmth bleeds into him the restless buzz he’s been carrying dims, a far-off generator finally cut.
He draws back just enough to meet your eyes. “You don’t gotta let her play dress-up with you like that.”
“I don’t mind — honest,” you say, giving a tiny shrug.
“I mind,” he says, the line grating rough. Even he seems surprised by the bite, lips pressing thin as he exhales.
Your shoulders dip. “You didn’t like it?”
The downward curve of your mouth guts him. He curses under his breath.
“I… yeah, I liked it.” Too damn much, he thinks. “...It’s just the kind of thing that’s supposed to be private, y’know? Meant for one set of eyes.”
“Private as in… like, saved for a boyfriend?”
He schools his face, but inside he’s turning over every recent memory, searching for the invisible man who might already have his hands on you.
“Yeah… like for a boyfriend,” he murmurs. “And only when you’re good and ready. Don’t let some jerk fast-talk you into giving him what he hasn’t earned.”
“He wouldn’t,” you say, like the question never existed.
Your eyes lift to his like you’re lining up a target, lashes barely fluttering.
There’s no shimmer of shyness now. Just concentrated fire, sliding over his cheekbones, jawline, the slight stubble he didn’t bother shaving. It feels like you’re pocketing measurements for later, mapping angles with the same precision he uses to load a round.
Hallway light glints off your pupils, then pools into rich shadow.
Pope’s next breath sticks in his throat; he isn’t used to being seen like this — like the whole world has funneled down to just him, and you’re perfectly happy living inside that narrow beam.
And it’s strange when you just confirmed his suspicions. Proof there is someone out there who’s already earned that privilege, someone so gentle you can declare his goodness without blinking.
It should reassure him. Instead it tastes like rust and gun-oil, sparks off a terrible instinct that wants a name, an address, a reason to break knuckles until the picture stops existing.
Possession floods his lungs. He forces it down, masks the scorch as nothing more than a normal breath.
“Good,” he manages through grit teeth. “Just… promise me you’ll keep your eyes open. People aren’t always what they say.”
Your fingers toy with the strap he’d fixed. “Promise.”
Your gaze drops briefly to his mouth, just a flicker, before sliding back up, a soft smile playing at the corners as if you know a secret he hasn’t caught.
Something in it says the good man you vouched for is already standing here, but Pope’s too busy counting heartbeats to see the answer staring him down.
MARIA NOTE thank u for reading!!!!! u get a gold star and a juice box !! if u r craving more bunny antics (or want pope to suffer in new and interesting ways), requests are open!! and reminder that feedback feeds the gremlins, and the gremlins write the fics :-) 💛⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ 🌼
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
pope goes to smurf's house only to find you playing dress-up in lingerie
bet u wanna MEET THE READER! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING pope cody x bunny!reader
WARNING 18+ MDNI explicit language, sexual tension, male-gaze objectification, lingerie/revealing clothing, voyeuristic framing, possessive behavior, jealous pope, power imbalance (age & authority), internal monologue with some violent thoughts, smurf's coercive caretaking, family dysfunction/toxic dynamics, obsessive attraction
WC 2k
Well, that sucked.
By the time Pope gets back, the rush has leeched out, leaving only that deep-kernel ache that seats itself behind his eyes and chews on the hinges of his knees.
Two straight hours of Craig’s bullshit. Handling one of his messes: steal a box truck, ditch it by the frontage weeds, ferry a duffel that sloshes like loose change in hell.
And that kid — peach-fuzz jaw, barely old enough to drive, hands rattling on the wheel — kept chirping, They get the plate? You think the cops got the plate? Until Pope finally told him to Shut the fuck up.
It should’ve been simple. And it was. But now his shoulders have ratcheted up to his ears, boots scraped with dried roadside clay, and something electric still zings along the wire of his veins, buzzing rest right out of reach even while his muscles sag for it.
He ought to drive to his own apartment. Strip, shower, face-plant into bed. Instead, he hooks the wheel into Smurf’s driveway, jaw hooking and unhooking as the tires snap and grind.
His place has felt wrong lately. Like stepping into a church long after the candles are snuffed, all the heat siphoned off, air too neat, too unlived-in.
He skips the confession that he knew you’d be here tonight.
You’d told him earlier you were going over to Smurf’s after dinner, helping finish month-end paperwork for one of the Cody businesses because half the receipts were missing, the books didn’t match, and Smurf liked having someone patient enough to untangle the mess without asking too many questions.
Pope kills the engine and sits there for a second, both fists locked on the wheel, eyes tracking the jaundiced porch light as if it might blink out.
The notion of finding you perched on the counter, hair pulled back, tongue caught between your teeth while you tame Smurf’s math brings him a molecule of relief.
Maybe if he can stand close enough, let that warmth bleed off you and into him, that static in his body will finally ebb.
But when he steps inside the kitchen he doesn’t find you there.
Instead the room is empty except for a lamp left on and a stack of folders spread across the island.
He’s halfway to calling your name when your voice drifts down the hallway.
“No, I don’t know if this one fits right.” A heartbeat of silence, Smurf’s gravelly reply lost in drywall, then you again, soft and rueful: “It’s weird in the shoulders.”
His boots are already angling down the hall before the thought finishes forming. A prickle climbs the back of his neck. Pre-impact warning, he thinks.
He rounds the doorway and when he sees you, the whole room seems to swim in distorted colors.
Every sane impulse collapses into a pinhole centered on you. Balance? Shot. Vision? Down to one shaky frame. All he can do is absorb the hit and pray his face doesn’t show it.
You’re standing barefoot in the glow of Smurf’s vanity lights, one arm over your chest, gigglinh a little while Smurf fusses with the back clasp of a dove-gray lingerie set that leaves most of your spine exposed.
Lace webs your hips, throwing sparks of silver thread catching every twitch of light, sketching a glittered arrow that drags Pope’s gaze downward before he can marshal a single thought.
His palms twitch, desperate to chart every raw continent of skin in front of him. He’s never seen this much of you outside a bathing suit.
His zipper strains as his cock twitches in his jeans.
And still he’s motionless, swallowing hard, worship curdling into something closer to panic because if you turn and see what’s in his eyes, you’ll know things he’s barely admitted to himself.
You twist, a startled little oh hitching out as gravity helps sink the lace a fraction to frame your breasts in shadowed leafwork.
Pope’s eyes bite down, brutal and starving, then wrenches upward to your face, forcing itself past you to Smurf.
She waits with that fox-like smile, the one that says she laid the snare hours ago and knew exactly which wolf would step into it.
“What the fuck is this?” he barks.
“Langauge.” Smurf reminds, tapping your hip like you’re a showroom dummy.
“You got her parading around like that in the middle of the house?”
“She’s not parading,” Smurf corrects. “We were having fun.”
You hunch your shoulders like a breeze just cut through, never mind that the motion only lofts your chest higher in the fabric, and offer him a sheepish half-smile.
“Smurf was just helping me pick out some… stuff,” you say, as if the word covers feathers and dynamite alike.
Stuff. Harmless, cute, nothing to see. At least that’s the story you seem to be trying to sell.
What use do you have for lingerie? Especially the kind that looks like sin stitched up?
A boyfriend? Somebody you’re texting while he’s too busy mopping up Craig’s mistakes to notice? Far as he knows you’re not seeing anyone, but the idea of that sweetness wrapped up for anyone else pours molten lead straight into his head.
“You don’t need —” he falters, fingers flexing like they might crumple the air — “stuff like that.”
He knows it’s a selfish claim. The idea that lingerie is pointless unless he is the one unhooking it, unless his mouth is the one to learn every inch of you that the fabric covers. Anything that decadent belongs behind a door he locks, the key warm in his fist, an invitation meant for him alone.
Smurf lifts a single painted brow. “Need’s got nothin’ to do with it, baby. A girl gets to feel pretty just because.”
Pope scoffs.
“She’s already plenty pretty —” His eyes flick to you. “ — you’re already… you’re fine without all this.” He swings his glare back to Smurf. “Whatever game this is, it’s not what you hired her for. Cut it out.”
You wet your lips, nervously looking between the two Codys. “Pope, it’s okay.”
His name, or the semblance of it (he’s not sure you even know his real name at this point), from your lips while you’re dressed like this feels like blasphemy.
In an instant he’s seeing the bodysuit rolled down slow, edges snagging on goose-bumped thighs while you try to stay modest, him kissing away the apologies that rise in your throat, laying you back across the vanity bench so he can have his way with you.
Sweat beads at his hairline. He pinches his nose, swallows broken glass. “Go put somethin’ else on.”
“Don’t bark orders at her,” Smurf chides, the words lazy.
He pretends he didn’t hear her; only when his eyes meet yours do they soften, apology threaded through the glare. “Go on, please.”
You nod at that and hurry back down the hall. Pope’s body tilts to follow the sway of your hips before he yanks it still until the bathroom lock snicks closed.
When he turns, Smurf is already studying him the way a jeweler studies a flawed diamond, looking for cracks, head tipped, eyes sharp.
He offers nothing, no twitch of the mouth or flinch, just the blank slate he’s spent years perfecting.
She finally concedes and pushes off the dresser.
“Think I’ll fix myself a sandwich,” she murmurs, “Try not to devour the poor girl before I’m back.”
Her hand lands on Pope’s chest in a mock-pat; he jerks away and she chuckles low as she saunters past him, heels clicking all the way down the hall.
He wipes a palm down his jeans, trying to scrape off the phantom of her touch.
Devour — that’s her word, not his. And as much as he wants to do that, what he feels for you is bigger than hunger.
It’s blueprints and scaffolding, a whole cathedral of intention he barely dares to name. Smurf can’t fathom that depth. She pokes at the surface and calls it knowledge, never understanding the miles of dark water beneath.
The bathroom door creaks open and you step out, head ducked, hands smoothing a cotton sundress the color of lemon ice.
The hem flutters modestly around your knees, though you still tug it lower.
“Sorry,” you breathe, a nervous puff of air.
The word pricks at him. He wants to say there’s nothing to be sorry for, that the fault lies in his own head, in Smurf’s games, in every inch of distance he keeps for your sake.
A knot in his shoulders eases. “Don’t apologize.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, because after the way he’s treated you, how would you know you didn’t have to?
He presses the heel of his hand over his mouth, scrubbing like he could wipe the taste of the whole night away. His eyes flick to the dirt still crusted on his boots, grit he suddenly can’t stand around you, and scuffs one sole against the other as if that’ll fix anything.
“C’mere.” The request is low, ragged, and you obey without hesitation. Always a good listener for him.
As you step into the slice of light between you, he lifts one broad hand, slowing it at the last second to straighten the twisted strap at your collarbone.
His touch is rough in theory, calloused pads snagging silk, but in practice it’s feather-light, reverent, as though he’s afraid you’ll bruise if he breathes too hard.
The tiny contact is a fuse and a salve all at once. The instant your warmth bleeds into him the restless buzz he’s been carrying dims, a far-off generator finally cut.
He draws back just enough to meet your eyes. “You don’t gotta let her play dress-up with you like that.”
“I don’t mind — honest,” you say, giving a tiny shrug.
“I mind,” he says, the line grating rough. Even he seems surprised by the bite, lips pressing thin as he exhales.
Your shoulders dip. “You didn’t like it?”
The downward curve of your mouth guts him. He curses under his breath.
“I… yeah, I liked it.” Too damn much, he thinks. “...It’s just the kind of thing that’s supposed to be private, y’know? Meant for one set of eyes.”
“Private as in… like, saved for a boyfriend?”
He schools his face, but inside he’s turning over every recent memory, searching for the invisible man who might already have his hands on you.
“Yeah… like for a boyfriend,” he murmurs. “And only when you’re good and ready. Don’t let some jerk fast-talk you into giving him what he hasn’t earned.”
“He wouldn’t,” you say, like the question never existed.
Your eyes lift to his like you’re lining up a target, lashes barely fluttering.
There’s no shimmer of shyness now. Just concentrated fire, sliding over his cheekbones, jawline, the slight stubble he didn’t bother shaving. It feels like you’re pocketing measurements for later, mapping angles with the same precision he uses to load a round.
Hallway light glints off your pupils, then pools into rich shadow.
Pope’s next breath sticks in his throat; he isn’t used to being seen like this — like the whole world has funneled down to just him, and you’re perfectly happy living inside that narrow beam.
And it’s strange when you just confirmed his suspicions. Proof there is someone out there who’s already earned that privilege, someone so gentle you can declare his goodness without blinking.
It should reassure him. Instead it tastes like rust and gun-oil, sparks off a terrible instinct that wants a name, an address, a reason to break knuckles until the picture stops existing.
Possession floods his lungs. He forces it down, masks the scorch as nothing more than a normal breath.
“Good,” he manages through grit teeth. “Just… promise me you’ll keep your eyes open. People aren’t always what they say.”
Your fingers toy with the strap he’d fixed. “Promise.”
Your gaze drops briefly to his mouth, just a flicker, before sliding back up, a soft smile playing at the corners as if you know a secret he hasn’t caught.
Something in it says the good man you vouched for is already standing here, but Pope’s too busy counting heartbeats to see the answer staring him down.
MARIA NOTE thank u for reading!!!!! u get a gold star and a juice box !! if u r craving more bunny antics (or want pope to suffer in new and interesting ways), requests are open!! and reminder that feedback feeds the gremlins, and the gremlins write the fics :-) 💛⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ 🌼
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Frank’s reply is a dry, almost inaudible “Real rich, coming from you,” but the tail end mutters itself into “— jackass” as he adjusts his grip on your hips. His knee bobs once, bouncing you just enough that your T-shirt shifts, neckline dipping. Robby’s gaze snaps there like iron to a magnet. He tips his beer to hide a grin, but the swelter in his stare is anything but subtle.
pope goes to smurf's house only to find you playing dress-up in lingerie
bet u wanna MEET THE READER! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
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PAIRING pope cody x bunny!reader
WARNING 18+ MDNI explicit language, sexual tension, male-gaze objectification, lingerie/revealing clothing, voyeuristic framing, possessive behavior, jealous pope, power imbalance (age & authority), internal monologue with some violent thoughts, smurf's coercive caretaking, family dysfunction/toxic dynamics, obsessive attraction
WC 2k
Well, that sucked.
By the time Pope gets back, the rush has leeched out, leaving only that deep-kernel ache that seats itself behind his eyes and chews on the hinges of his knees.
Two straight hours of Craig’s bullshit. Handling one of his messes: steal a box truck, ditch it by the frontage weeds, ferry a duffel that sloshes like loose change in hell.
And that kid — peach-fuzz jaw, barely old enough to drive, hands rattling on the wheel — kept chirping, They get the plate? You think the cops got the plate? Until Pope finally told him to Shut the fuck up.
It should’ve been simple. And it was. But now his shoulders have ratcheted up to his ears, boots scraped with dried roadside clay, and something electric still zings along the wire of his veins, buzzing rest right out of reach even while his muscles sag for it.
He ought to drive to his own apartment. Strip, shower, face-plant into bed. Instead, he hooks the wheel into Smurf’s driveway, jaw hooking and unhooking as the tires snap and grind.
His place has felt wrong lately. Like stepping into a church long after the candles are snuffed, all the heat siphoned off, air too neat, too unlived-in.
He skips the confession that he knew you’d be here tonight.
You’d told him earlier you were going over to Smurf’s after dinner, helping finish month-end paperwork for one of the Cody businesses because half the receipts were missing, the books didn’t match, and Smurf liked having someone patient enough to untangle the mess without asking too many questions.
Pope kills the engine and sits there for a second, both fists locked on the wheel, eyes tracking the jaundiced porch light as if it might blink out.
The notion of finding you perched on the counter, hair pulled back, tongue caught between your teeth while you tame Smurf’s math brings him a molecule of relief.
Maybe if he can stand close enough, let that warmth bleed off you and into him, that static in his body will finally ebb.
But when he steps inside the kitchen he doesn’t find you there.
Instead the room is empty except for a lamp left on and a stack of folders spread across the island.
He’s halfway to calling your name when your voice drifts down the hallway.
“No, I don’t know if this one fits right.” A heartbeat of silence, Smurf’s gravelly reply lost in drywall, then you again, soft and rueful: “It’s weird in the shoulders.”
His boots are already angling down the hall before the thought finishes forming. A prickle climbs the back of his neck. Pre-impact warning, he thinks.
He rounds the doorway and when he sees you, the whole room seems to swim in distorted colors.
Every sane impulse collapses into a pinhole centered on you. Balance? Shot. Vision? Down to one shaky frame. All he can do is absorb the hit and pray his face doesn’t show it.
You’re standing barefoot in the glow of Smurf’s vanity lights, one arm over your chest, gigglinh a little while Smurf fusses with the back clasp of a dove-gray lingerie set that leaves most of your spine exposed.
Lace webs your hips, throwing sparks of silver thread catching every twitch of light, sketching a glittered arrow that drags Pope’s gaze downward before he can marshal a single thought.
His palms twitch, desperate to chart every raw continent of skin in front of him. He’s never seen this much of you outside a bathing suit.
His zipper strains as his cock twitches in his jeans.
And still he’s motionless, swallowing hard, worship curdling into something closer to panic because if you turn and see what’s in his eyes, you’ll know things he’s barely admitted to himself.
You twist, a startled little oh hitching out as gravity helps sink the lace a fraction to frame your breasts in shadowed leafwork.
Pope’s eyes bite down, brutal and starving, then wrenches upward to your face, forcing itself past you to Smurf.
She waits with that fox-like smile, the one that says she laid the snare hours ago and knew exactly which wolf would step into it.
“What the fuck is this?” he barks.
“Langauge.” Smurf reminds, tapping your hip like you’re a showroom dummy.
“You got her parading around like that in the middle of the house?”
“She’s not parading,” Smurf corrects. “We were having fun.”
You hunch your shoulders like a breeze just cut through, never mind that the motion only lofts your chest higher in the fabric, and offer him a sheepish half-smile.
“Smurf was just helping me pick out some… stuff,” you say, as if the word covers feathers and dynamite alike.
Stuff. Harmless, cute, nothing to see. At least that’s the story you seem to be trying to sell.
What use do you have for lingerie? Especially the kind that looks like sin stitched up?
A boyfriend? Somebody you’re texting while he’s too busy mopping up Craig’s mistakes to notice? Far as he knows you’re not seeing anyone, but the idea of that sweetness wrapped up for anyone else pours molten lead straight into his head.
“You don’t need —” he falters, fingers flexing like they might crumple the air — “stuff like that.”
He knows it’s a selfish claim. The idea that lingerie is pointless unless he is the one unhooking it, unless his mouth is the one to learn every inch of you that the fabric covers. Anything that decadent belongs behind a door he locks, the key warm in his fist, an invitation meant for him alone.
Smurf lifts a single painted brow. “Need’s got nothin’ to do with it, baby. A girl gets to feel pretty just because.”
Pope scoffs.
“She’s already plenty pretty —” His eyes flick to you. “ — you’re already… you’re fine without all this.” He swings his glare back to Smurf. “Whatever game this is, it’s not what you hired her for. Cut it out.”
You wet your lips, nervously looking between the two Codys. “Pope, it’s okay.”
His name, or the semblance of it (he’s not sure you even know his real name at this point), from your lips while you’re dressed like this feels like blasphemy.
In an instant he’s seeing the bodysuit rolled down slow, edges snagging on goose-bumped thighs while you try to stay modest, him kissing away the apologies that rise in your throat, laying you back across the vanity bench so he can have his way with you.
Sweat beads at his hairline. He pinches his nose, swallows broken glass. “Go put somethin’ else on.”
“Don’t bark orders at her,” Smurf chides, the words lazy.
He pretends he didn’t hear her; only when his eyes meet yours do they soften, apology threaded through the glare. “Go on, please.”
You nod at that and hurry back down the hall. Pope’s body tilts to follow the sway of your hips before he yanks it still until the bathroom lock snicks closed.
When he turns, Smurf is already studying him the way a jeweler studies a flawed diamond, looking for cracks, head tipped, eyes sharp.
He offers nothing, no twitch of the mouth or flinch, just the blank slate he’s spent years perfecting.
She finally concedes and pushes off the dresser.
“Think I’ll fix myself a sandwich,” she murmurs, “Try not to devour the poor girl before I’m back.”
Her hand lands on Pope’s chest in a mock-pat; he jerks away and she chuckles low as she saunters past him, heels clicking all the way down the hall.
He wipes a palm down his jeans, trying to scrape off the phantom of her touch.
Devour — that’s her word, not his. And as much as he wants to do that, what he feels for you is bigger than hunger.
It’s blueprints and scaffolding, a whole cathedral of intention he barely dares to name. Smurf can’t fathom that depth. She pokes at the surface and calls it knowledge, never understanding the miles of dark water beneath.
The bathroom door creaks open and you step out, head ducked, hands smoothing a cotton sundress the color of lemon ice.
The hem flutters modestly around your knees, though you still tug it lower.
“Sorry,” you breathe, a nervous puff of air.
The word pricks at him. He wants to say there’s nothing to be sorry for, that the fault lies in his own head, in Smurf’s games, in every inch of distance he keeps for your sake.
A knot in his shoulders eases. “Don’t apologize.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, because after the way he’s treated you, how would you know you didn’t have to?
He presses the heel of his hand over his mouth, scrubbing like he could wipe the taste of the whole night away. His eyes flick to the dirt still crusted on his boots, grit he suddenly can’t stand around you, and scuffs one sole against the other as if that’ll fix anything.
“C’mere.” The request is low, ragged, and you obey without hesitation. Always a good listener for him.
As you step into the slice of light between you, he lifts one broad hand, slowing it at the last second to straighten the twisted strap at your collarbone.
His touch is rough in theory, calloused pads snagging silk, but in practice it’s feather-light, reverent, as though he’s afraid you’ll bruise if he breathes too hard.
The tiny contact is a fuse and a salve all at once. The instant your warmth bleeds into him the restless buzz he’s been carrying dims, a far-off generator finally cut.
He draws back just enough to meet your eyes. “You don’t gotta let her play dress-up with you like that.”
“I don’t mind — honest,” you say, giving a tiny shrug.
“I mind,” he says, the line grating rough. Even he seems surprised by the bite, lips pressing thin as he exhales.
Your shoulders dip. “You didn’t like it?”
The downward curve of your mouth guts him. He curses under his breath.
“I… yeah, I liked it.” Too damn much, he thinks. “...It’s just the kind of thing that’s supposed to be private, y’know? Meant for one set of eyes.”
“Private as in… like, saved for a boyfriend?”
He schools his face, but inside he’s turning over every recent memory, searching for the invisible man who might already have his hands on you.
“Yeah… like for a boyfriend,” he murmurs. “And only when you’re good and ready. Don’t let some jerk fast-talk you into giving him what he hasn’t earned.”
“He wouldn’t,” you say, like the question never existed.
Your eyes lift to his like you’re lining up a target, lashes barely fluttering.
There’s no shimmer of shyness now. Just concentrated fire, sliding over his cheekbones, jawline, the slight stubble he didn’t bother shaving. It feels like you’re pocketing measurements for later, mapping angles with the same precision he uses to load a round.
Hallway light glints off your pupils, then pools into rich shadow.
Pope’s next breath sticks in his throat; he isn’t used to being seen like this — like the whole world has funneled down to just him, and you’re perfectly happy living inside that narrow beam.
And it’s strange when you just confirmed his suspicions. Proof there is someone out there who’s already earned that privilege, someone so gentle you can declare his goodness without blinking.
It should reassure him. Instead it tastes like rust and gun-oil, sparks off a terrible instinct that wants a name, an address, a reason to break knuckles until the picture stops existing.
Possession floods his lungs. He forces it down, masks the scorch as nothing more than a normal breath.
“Good,” he manages through grit teeth. “Just… promise me you’ll keep your eyes open. People aren’t always what they say.”
Your fingers toy with the strap he’d fixed. “Promise.”
Your gaze drops briefly to his mouth, just a flicker, before sliding back up, a soft smile playing at the corners as if you know a secret he hasn’t caught.
Something in it says the good man you vouched for is already standing here, but Pope’s too busy counting heartbeats to see the answer staring him down.
MARIA NOTE thank u for reading!!!!! u get a gold star and a juice box !! if u r craving more bunny antics (or want pope to suffer in new and interesting ways), requests are open!! and reminder that feedback feeds the gremlins, and the gremlins write the fics :-) 💛⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ 🌼
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when you overhear a comment frank makes to mateo, you decide to back off. frank doesn't like that one bit and does everything in his power to get your attention back.
bet u wanna meet the reader! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING frank langdon x er!barbie!reader
WARNINGS overheard conversations, miscommunication, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, girly!reader, post-rehab frank langdon, recovery themes, yearning to the max, repression also to the max, flirtation as a coping mechanism, kissing!, making out on the job!
WC 3.9k | REQUEST here!
“The new intern claims Barbie’s been doodling your name with little hearts all over her forms. Somebody’s got it bad.”
Mateo’s statement floats over the nurses’ station diver.
It manages to slam straight into your self-image. Delicate tissue at the best of times, wedged between your left ventricle and the tiny circuit that compels you to adopt every sad house-plant at Trader Joe’s.
Yes it’s true, you do, for the record, employ thematic embellishments. A heart here. A flourish there. (Morale matters; medicine is bleak). That is not the same thing as ‘having it bad’.
But the problem is apparently people can’t make that distinction, and now you can see it too clearly, a pack of first-years huddled together, snickering over your smittenness, spider-webbing a hairline crack right through the high-gloss competence you spent seventy-eight paychecks shellacking.
It’s that eighth-grade deja vu: the day Jack Harrison caught you tracing Mrs. Jack Harrison in bubble letters on your planner and passed the page down the row like contraband.
The heat that bursts behind your ears now is the exact temperature of that day, when the whole cafeteria seemed to sync with your cardiac rhythm — thump, she likes him, thump.
You straighten behind the med cart, ready to emerge and correct the narrative before it mutates any further, when Frank speaks first. “Ignore it. It’s just noise — I’m sure she’ll lose interest soon enough.”
Oh.
Something clamps shut inside you so abruptly it almost audibly clicks.
Like you’ve been fizzing under pressure all shift and someone, somewhere, has just screwed the cap on tight. The carbonation tears around blind, frantic for an exit.
Noise. The word expands until it feels the whole corridor. Noise, as in background nuisance, as in easily tuned out, as in the thin electrical whine of a dying bulb that nobody bothers fixing until someone from maintenance finally rips it out and tosses it.
So that’s what he hears when you talk? A squeaky hindrance he tolerates out of courtesy?
The lively back-and-forth you stored under maybe someday morphs, in one breath, into you pawing at a deadbolt while he waits for the scratching to stop.
You pivot on silent flats, slip down the side corridor before Mateo or Frank registers movement.
Three steps in, a shoulder clips yours — McKay, clutching a stack of imaging requests. Clipboards explode across linoleum.
“Whoa, road-runner much?” she laughs, stooping. Her grin falters when she meets your deer-in-the-headlights stare. “Hey, you good? You’re kind of… vibrating.”
There’s no better word for it. Your fingers keep sparking against each other, your chin keeps twitching toward the main hall, and every nerve ending chants the same directive: bolt, wounded-fawn style, into the nearest underbrush before the hunter looks up.
You drop to your knees, paper edges nicking your skin as you herd the spill into something vaguely stack-shaped.
Out of the corner of your eye, Frank and Mateo both turn at the clatter. Frank’s brows notch, mouth already forming the silent You okay?
You slap the stack into McKay’s hands.
“Peachy!” you babble, already sidestepping to block Frank’s sight-line. “Totally good. Very busy. High-priority sticker emergency. Life or death if you’re, like, six and waiting for discharge.”
Your shoes squeak as you bolt.
There are several indicators, in Frank’s opinion, that suggest you’ve come down with something terminal, and the first arrives in the form of his inbox.
Or rather, the absence of its usual infestation.
When he finally gets ten uninterrupted minutes to wade through his overnight emails, there is only one from you.
A curt administrative note about revised intake-labeling protocol, plus an attached spreadsheet for the week’s front-desk coverage.
It is concise. Properly punctuated. Horrifyingly lucid.
Frank stares at it a full second longer than necessary, as if more of you might reveal itself under scrutiny.
Because, usually, by this point, there are at least twelve.
They arrive in glitter-bomb bursts throughout the day. A few carry actionable intel. Most are digital magpies’ nests: random URLs, blurry memes, rogue exclamation points, and the kind of half-formed shower-thought nonsense you apparently consider too important to trust to your own mind.
He spends longer than he’s willing to admit at the computer waiting for more emails to come in.
They never do.
The second indicator presents itself when he swipes into radiology and, for the first time in recent memory, does so alone.
No sudden apparition at his elbow, no imploring eyes, no breathless little “oops, forgot mine again,” delivered as though this is an unforeseeable act of the gods rather than a behavior pattern.
He tends to just hand the badge over without questions.
There is no point doing otherwise. If not him, you’ll simply latch onto the next available soft touch with security clearance, and Frank would rather it be him.
He frowns when the reader spits its green light at an empty hallway.
The third, and by far the most worrying, indicator arrives in the break room.
Frank boxes himself into a stolen minute, pours a cup, looks up too late, and finds you standing at the same counter.
Usually this is your opening. Your preferred habitat.
You’d reach across his body for sugar you absolutely do not need (you’re sweet enough as it is), clip his front with your ass, crowd his elbow while stirring, then look up like none of it was intentional, like he’s just a piece of furniture placed unfortunately in your path.
He braces for impact. Nothing happens.
Instead you give a brisk nod, measure out a generous amount of creamer into your cup, and keep your radius fanatically intact.
You leave before he can tally the damage.
The space beside him turns freezer-aisle cold. Frank’s fingers blanch on the mug handle. He blames the overzealous hospital ventilation for about half a second, then hears the excuse rattle around his own head and die there.
He has half a mind to go after you. Catch you by the wrist before you get too far, steer you into a vacant bay, and do the whole thing properly since apparently no one else is treating this personality drop as emergent.
History, exam, differential. What’s been siphoned out of you, and can he replace it?
In a better universe, that line of inquiry earns him one of your usual responses, “Should I unbutton for the stethoscope, Doctor?”
But he can’t do that. Can’t go stalking after you like some lovesick asshole with a savior complex and a death wish.
Especially not now when he is, at best, one bad headline away from vaporizing the fellowship he’s been clawing toward for years. He needs HR to stop looking at him like one more incident will finish the job rehab failed to.
And beyond that, he’s been trying to starve the gossip before it gets any bigger. Partly for himself, sure. Mostly for you.
This place has a long memory when it comes to his mistakes and a short one when it comes to anything decent he’s ever done.
He’s not about to hand the hospital a fresh excuse to staple your name to his and let people act like you’re just another piece of collateral from the mess he made of himself.
But shit he misses you. He wants your attention back on him. And the flirting and the smart mouth and the little collisions of your body with his like you’ve forgotten where one of you ends and the other begins.
So if he can’t be obvious, he’ll be strategic. He’ll do what he does best. Lay the bait and wait for you to come to him.
At two he messes with the thermostat.
There’s a woman in Facilities who’ll adjust it for him without putting in a work order, no questions, an ongoing favor from the time she showed up in the ER with split knuckles and a story about slipping while replacing a vent cover.
Frank stitched the cut closed in under six minutes, declined the point out that the wound looked a lot more like she’d punched through something than brushed against it, and earned himself a useful little pocket of goodwill in the process.
And, more often than not, Frank squanders that usefulness on you.
A degree warmer in the mornings, sometimes two if the night crew has left the department with all the ambient warmth of a crypt, timed just before you blow in the front doors, already looking faintly wounded by the concept of central air.
It’s at sixty-six now.
Low enough to summon you, high enough that no one can accuse him of weaponizing infrastructure for attention.
Although that is precisely what he’s doing.
But it takes longer than expected for you to appear in his line of sight. And when you finally do, you pay him no mind.
You putter through the department in several layers: cardigan, coat, fleece, thermal tights, hands tucked into your sleeves.
You look pissed. You look adorable. Frank resents learning those two things can coexist so easily.
He tries to catch your eye but you just keep moving through the pit like an overdressed cumulonimbus radiating indignation at every ceiling vent, refusing to seek him out.
It makes no sense. You should have filed a verbal complaint with him by minute eight.
And at minute forty-five he watches (sourly) as Garcia slides up beside you, a still-steaming warmer blanket perfectly folded over her arm.
“You look frostbitten,” she murmurs, settling the plush square around your shoulders.
You exhale a blissed little thank-you and lean into her, soaking up the heat Frank had planned to supply by proxy.
Garcia lifts her gaze, finds him across the pit, and winks. Problem solved, ER Ken, she mouths, fluffing the blanket with exaggerated care just to make sure he clocks her fingerprints all over his failed experiment.
Problem not solved. In fact, freshly enlarged.
Frank later lumbers down the hallway toward your office like a kicked senior dog chasing the last scrap of affection from its owner. He clutches the print-outs in his hand so tight they rasp with every step.
He finds you at your desk, hair fallen in stray ribbons across your face, mouth pulled down at the corners while the monitor paints you blue. Concentration or maybe displeasure. Hard to tell from this angle.
He hovers, suddenly unsure whether to knock on the actual door or just the wall of silence you’ve erected.
He opts for the literal door, two knuckles, two quick knocks.
Your head lifts. Something bright like excitement sparks across your face then the expression collapses, shutters down to business. Like you remembered all at once the circumstances surrounding him and whatever stupid hope had leapt up before you could stop it.
He hates that expression immediately. Hates that it exists. Hates even more that he can’t quite sort out why seeing it on your face feels like a personal failure.
“Need this form revised,” he says, lifting the mangled stack. “Thought maybe you could escort me to radiology? Could use the company, and you terrify the techs less than I do.”
It’s needy and transparent and he knows. He doesn’t care how it sounds as long as you say yes.
“I’m, uh, really busy at the moment, Dr. Langdon. Pending labs, two admits… might be a while.” You rattle it off too fast, like reading a grocery list you just wrote in your head. He knows every item is invented on the spot.
“Humor me, okay? I’ve had seven hours of people telling me to wait my turn. I need one cooperative face before I implode.”
You worry the inside of your lips, eyes flicking to the doorway.
Finally you nod. “Fine.”
One syllable, and it hits like epinephrine. He can’t stop the microscopic lift of his chin, lungs taking in a fuller breath as if permission itself has oxygenated the air.
He angles toward the hallway, offering the smallest tilt of his shoulder so you can merge.
“Thanks,” he says, voice pitched towards casual.
“Sure.”
He glances at you to his left. Goosebumps litter the expanse of your arms. He eases his stride so you’re shoulder-to-shoulder instead of half a step behind. “You cold?”
“Nope. Perfectly comfortable.” You answer while simultaneously yanking your sleeves down to your knuckles.
He snorts. “Yeah and I’m the post child for impulse control.”
You stop mid-stride, eyes narrowing. “That’s not funny, Frank.”
His first name. That’s progress, he thinks. Even laced with contempt, hearing it from you feels like an exhale after hours underwater.
He knew you wouldn’t like the joke. Made it anyway, cheap currency to buy a spark out of you. If spark equals fury, so be it. Fury beats indifference every time.
“Yeah, poor taste. Reflex, I guess.” He winces, thumb rubbing the knot at his collar.
You huff through your nose and pivot forward again, pace clipped. Frank falls in step a half-pace behind, then edges closer.
“Cardigan looks new,” he ventures. “Color suits you.”
“It’s old,” you say, eyes still on the hallway ahead.
Frank smothers another wince. Stupid. By this point the day has offered him more than enough evidence that the usual methods are dead on arrival.
Compliments, bait, orchestrated coincidence, all of it useless now that you’ve apparently decided to treat him like a mildly inconvenient coworker.
That’s the part he likes least. The sudden sense that he can’t locate himself in relation to you anymore.
The part he likes least changes when he finds you twenty minutes later, stationed beside some orthopedic meathead, looking luminously alive.
No longer wan or withdrawn or visibly dying of whatever new strain of virus you’ve contracted. But smiling. A laugh bubbling out, fingers corkscrewing a curl the way they do when you’re charmed.
Apparently you can still flirt. You can still sparkle. You just can’t seem to do it anywhere near him.
Before his cortex can veto, he’s crossing the floor, stopping dead at your shoulder.
“Just need a status update on Mrs. Carlson’s tib-fib before radiology locks the board.”
Mrs. Carlson, insofar as he knows, is fictional, but her imaginary fracture buys him two startled glances and three precious seconds inhaling the vanilla-and-alcohol warmth of your laugh.
Meathead flips through pages. “Um… we don’t have a Carlson today.”
Frank fakes a thoughtful frown. “Huh. Alias, then. Happens every weekend — patients think we’re the witness-protection program.”
Ortho squints. “I can pull the day-sheet again —”
“Good idea,” Frank says, nodding like a supervising attending. “Check PACU and the boarding queue; wouldn’t want to miss an imaging window.”
The guy mutters agreement and slinks off, shoulders hunched in duty. Frank turns to you, expression suddenly softer.
Crossing your arms, you cock a hip where Ortho had been. “Impressive diversion tactic. Did Mrs. Carlson spring fully formed from your imagination, or is she a previous imaginary friend?”
The fury’s back again.
Frank scratches at his jaw. “Didn’t think it through.”
“You think plenty. Maybe just tell me what you want instead of throwing Jason under a bus.”
Jason. Stupid name for a stupid guy, he thinks.
What he wants is one honest conversation and maybe your ass back where it belongs — in his personal space. He can’t say that last part though, so he settles for the first in the only terms he knows how.
“What I want is a five-minute consult with you. Somewhere quieter.” He flicks a glance at the empty bay down the hall, then back to your crossed arms. “Please.”
You study him for a moment, then nod once.
“Bay twelve’s open. Five minutes, then I’m due back at my desk.”
Frank files the claim under Questionable. You treat workstations like bar stools — occupied only until something shinier beckons. It’s not the desk ticking in your head; it’s the idea of being walled in with him past the half-life of your composure.
He watches tension climb your scapulae as you march ahead, timing yourself like a patient on a stress test.
Bay 12 yawns open and swallows you both.
The instant the noise of the corridor seals off, Frank feels his pulse redeploy to places it has no business patrolling. Temples, wrists, the hollow just above his sternum.
For one beat you stand opposite like combatants in a children’s-duel-turned-board-meeting: arms folded, backs straight, pretending neither of you can feel the static in the air.
“Right.” He claps once (why did he clap?) and immediately regrets it. “Consult.”
Your brows tip up, perfectly polite, perfectly guarded. “On our imaginary tib-fib?”
Frank’s ears go hot.
“Yeah, about that. I might have — misallocated resources.” He forces a laugh that sounds like a cough that sounds like a car refusing to start. “Look, I just —” A breath, steady, like he tells interns before a lumbar puncture. “I’ve noticed you’ve been… different. Quieter. Less —” he gestures vaguely, like there’s a medical term for starlight. “I thought maybe I’d done something.”
“Frank, I’ve been at this hospital for three years. You’ve existed in approximately one and a half of them. If I’m different and you assume it’s about you, that’s either breathtaking narcissism or —” a small, lethal smile “— maybe something else.”
Something else. He recognizes your own bait and still lunges.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Quiet. Direct. No place to hide in it. “Maybe I did assume it had something to do with me because I wanted it to.” His knuckles sweep his jaw. He never looks away from you. “Because if it’s not that, then I’m standing here making an ass out of myself for no reason, and I’d actually prefer the narcissism.”
You hesitate. “I’m just… giving you a little breathing room, okay?”
“Breathing room?” He moves toward you impulsively before catching himself, eyes wide, almost pleading. “I don’t — fuck, I don’t want breathing room. What are you doing that for?”
“What do you think?” You laugh, but it’s hollowed out completely. He doesn’t like the sound. “I spend half my shift practically trailing after you. Everyone sees it. I just —,” you purse your lips. “I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have.”
He frowns at that. You’ve never once moved through this place like someone worried about looking foolish.
You flirt when you want to flirt, laugh when you want to laugh, and say things most people would bury alive before letting them leave their mouths. You leave little traces of yourself everywhere. Lip gloss prints on coffee lids. Heart-dotted notes. Sweaters draped over chairs that aren’t yours. There is nothing cautious about you, nothing particularly governed by social survival.
Even your embarrassment tends to be theatrical, temporary, burned through fast and replaced with another bad idea. He has never known you to care this much about the audience.
“What are you talking about?”
He watches as your eyes break off and land somewhere past his shoulders, as if the answer might be stapled to the wall.
“I heard what you said earlier.”
Frank’s brow furrows harder, causing a headache. “What?”
“With Mateo.” Your arms tighten across your middle. “About me being ‘just noise.’ About how I’d lose interest soon enough.” Your eyes flick up to his for a second. “So I thought maybe I should help you out with that.”
Blood sluices out of his skull, then surges back so hard his vision pulses.
For a beat, Frank just stands there, knocked completely sideways by the realization that you heard that, heard those exact words with none of the context that had made them make sense in his head. Christ.
No wonder you pulled back. No wonder you’ve been different. He’d been cornered by Mateo outside the med-supply cage, half-listening to him gleefully recycle some intern gossip thread like it was harmless entertainment, and all Frank had been trying to do was kill it fast.
Shut it down. Mateo was fishing for a reaction, for confirmation, for anything he could carry back into the staff room and let breed.
Robby’s got a disciplinary file half built with his name on the tab. One more thing and he’ll be back in that carpeted purgatory explaining how “post-rehab Frank” was just a limited-time offer.
The only thought had been do not feed this. Do not let you become a bigger target than you already are.
“No, that’s — fuck.” He breaks off, already hating how badly he’s said everything. “That’s not what I meant. I called the intern noise. The gossip. The whole stupid conversation. I meant she’d get bored and move on if I didn’t exacerbate it. I did not mean you.”
If anything, the entire point had been to avoid throwing you under the bus by acting like there was nothing there to poke at. And somehow that attempt has landed here, in front of him now, having done exactly the opposite.
You look at him for a second like you’re trying to decide whether to believe him and coming up short.
“I can handle it, you know. I’m a big girl. If I’m too much, or if I’ve been making you uncomfortable, you can just tell me.” The flat seam of your lips is more withering than any shout. “I’d rather hear it straight than keep walking around here feeling like some joke everybody else is already in on.”
“I know you could,” he says, too fast, like he needs to get there before you decide otherwise. “I know you could handle it. And if that was what this was, I would’ve said it, yeah?” His chest keeps punching at the scrub top, lungs over-ventilating around the terror of being misunderstood. “I don’t want you to stop flirting with me. I don’t want you to stop hovering or talking or… any of it. I — I fucking need it — You.”
“Frank…”
His eyes flick down to your mouth, then up again, like he hates that you can see him thinking it.
“If I do something stupid right now,” he says, voice low, “are you gonna slap me?”
He’s half begging for the hit, half begging on the green light.
Your exhale stutters into a breathy laugh. “Depends how stupid.”
Stupid wins.
Frank closes the last inch and touches his mouth to yours.
Soft at first, like he’s half-afraid you’ll vanish. You don’t. You stay… then soften… then melt, and everything inside him rushes forward. The second your lips part, the kiss deepens. Hunger and apology braided tight.
His hand rises to the back of your neck, thumb stroking the hair there, and the kiss tips from cautious to greedy in a single heartbeat.
He’s been starving himself on purpose, convincing the ache it was dietary. You don’t feed a craving that noble, he’d told himself in a dozen graveyard-shift pep talks. Now the craving is kissing back, and his resolve crumbles like a sugar packet.
You curve forward, spine bowing until his shoulders hit the curtain and the metal rings screech on the rail, but the world past the vinyl may as well be orbiting another sun. You both break into breathless laughter, but neither of you stops.
They warned you about selfish addicts, a voice needles.
This is exactly what they meant: taking the one thing that makes the ward bearable and unintentionally hurting its feelings to keep it safe — then stealing it anyway.
He swallows the guilt, chases it with another taste of peppermint.
Frank pulls back just far enough to speak, foreheads still touching. “No more breathing room, okay?”
You pretend to ponder, then glance at the inch (maybe) separating your bodies. “Pretty sure you just repossessed every cubic inch of it.”
“Good,” he says, thumb stroking the tendon at your nape like he’s checking his own pulse there. “I’m keeping it.”
Selfish, a reprimand flickers, but he can’t imagine surrendering the warmth that’s finally tugged his chest open.
Then the hallway pager shrieks, reminding you that the world still exists and someone probably needs a doctor who isn’t currently making out behind a curtain.
You both straighten, slower than necessary, Smooth hair, reset badges.
As you step through the divider he catches your hand, gives it a quick, secret squeeze.
You squeeze back, and the grin you trade in that split-second says everything the rumor mill never could: whatever this is, it’s no longer background noise.
MARIA NOTE hi hi hi thank you for reading and witnessing er barbie and franks FIRST KISS!!!!!!!!!! behind a questionably sanitary curtain, no less. may their pager batteries die forever so we get more smooch time. ₊ ⊹🪻 ✧˚. ᵎᵎ 🪴
when you overhear a comment frank makes to mateo, you decide to back off. frank doesn't like that one bit and does everything in his power to get your attention back.
bet u wanna meet the reader! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING frank langdon x er!barbie!reader
WARNINGS overheard conversations, miscommunication, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, girly!reader, post-rehab frank langdon, recovery themes, yearning to the max, repression also to the max, flirtation as a coping mechanism, kissing!, making out on the job!
WC 3.9k | REQUEST here!
“The new intern claims Barbie’s been doodling your name with little hearts all over her forms. Somebody’s got it bad.”
Mateo’s statement floats over the nurses’ station diver.
It manages to slam straight into your self-image. Delicate tissue at the best of times, wedged between your left ventricle and the tiny circuit that compels you to adopt every sad house-plant at Trader Joe’s.
Yes it’s true, you do, for the record, employ thematic embellishments. A heart here. A flourish there. (Morale matters; medicine is bleak). That is not the same thing as ‘having it bad’.
But the problem is apparently people can’t make that distinction, and now you can see it too clearly, a pack of first-years huddled together, snickering over your smittenness, spider-webbing a hairline crack right through the high-gloss competence you spent seventy-eight paychecks shellacking.
It’s that eighth-grade deja vu: the day Jack Harrison caught you tracing Mrs. Jack Harrison in bubble letters on your planner and passed the page down the row like contraband.
The heat that bursts behind your ears now is the exact temperature of that day, when the whole cafeteria seemed to sync with your cardiac rhythm — thump, she likes him, thump.
You straighten behind the med cart, ready to emerge and correct the narrative before it mutates any further, when Frank speaks first. “Ignore it. It’s just noise — I’m sure she’ll lose interest soon enough.”
Oh.
Something clamps shut inside you so abruptly it almost audibly clicks.
Like you’ve been fizzing under pressure all shift and someone, somewhere, has just screwed the cap on tight. The carbonation tears around blind, frantic for an exit.
Noise. The word expands until it feels the whole corridor. Noise, as in background nuisance, as in easily tuned out, as in the thin electrical whine of a dying bulb that nobody bothers fixing until someone from maintenance finally rips it out and tosses it.
So that’s what he hears when you talk? A squeaky hindrance he tolerates out of courtesy?
The lively back-and-forth you stored under maybe someday morphs, in one breath, into you pawing at a deadbolt while he waits for the scratching to stop.
You pivot on silent flats, slip down the side corridor before Mateo or Frank registers movement.
Three steps in, a shoulder clips yours — McKay, clutching a stack of imaging requests. Clipboards explode across linoleum.
“Whoa, road-runner much?” she laughs, stooping. Her grin falters when she meets your deer-in-the-headlights stare. “Hey, you good? You’re kind of… vibrating.”
There’s no better word for it. Your fingers keep sparking against each other, your chin keeps twitching toward the main hall, and every nerve ending chants the same directive: bolt, wounded-fawn style, into the nearest underbrush before the hunter looks up.
You drop to your knees, paper edges nicking your skin as you herd the spill into something vaguely stack-shaped.
Out of the corner of your eye, Frank and Mateo both turn at the clatter. Frank’s brows notch, mouth already forming the silent You okay?
You slap the stack into McKay’s hands.
“Peachy!” you babble, already sidestepping to block Frank’s sight-line. “Totally good. Very busy. High-priority sticker emergency. Life or death if you’re, like, six and waiting for discharge.”
Your shoes squeak as you bolt.
There are several indicators, in Frank’s opinion, that suggest you’ve come down with something terminal, and the first arrives in the form of his inbox.
Or rather, the absence of its usual infestation.
When he finally gets ten uninterrupted minutes to wade through his overnight emails, there is only one from you.
A curt administrative note about revised intake-labeling protocol, plus an attached spreadsheet for the week’s front-desk coverage.
It is concise. Properly punctuated. Horrifyingly lucid.
Frank stares at it a full second longer than necessary, as if more of you might reveal itself under scrutiny.
Because, usually, by this point, there are at least twelve.
They arrive in glitter-bomb bursts throughout the day. A few carry actionable intel. Most are digital magpies’ nests: random URLs, blurry memes, rogue exclamation points, and the kind of half-formed shower-thought nonsense you apparently consider too important to trust to your own mind.
He spends longer than he’s willing to admit at the computer waiting for more emails to come in.
They never do.
The second indicator presents itself when he swipes into radiology and, for the first time in recent memory, does so alone.
No sudden apparition at his elbow, no imploring eyes, no breathless little “oops, forgot mine again,” delivered as though this is an unforeseeable act of the gods rather than a behavior pattern.
He tends to just hand the badge over without questions.
There is no point doing otherwise. If not him, you’ll simply latch onto the next available soft touch with security clearance, and Frank would rather it be him.
He frowns when the reader spits its green light at an empty hallway.
The third, and by far the most worrying, indicator arrives in the break room.
Frank boxes himself into a stolen minute, pours a cup, looks up too late, and finds you standing at the same counter.
Usually this is your opening. Your preferred habitat.
You’d reach across his body for sugar you absolutely do not need (you’re sweet enough as it is), clip his front with your ass, crowd his elbow while stirring, then look up like none of it was intentional, like he’s just a piece of furniture placed unfortunately in your path.
He braces for impact. Nothing happens.
Instead you give a brisk nod, measure out a generous amount of creamer into your cup, and keep your radius fanatically intact.
You leave before he can tally the damage.
The space beside him turns freezer-aisle cold. Frank’s fingers blanch on the mug handle. He blames the overzealous hospital ventilation for about half a second, then hears the excuse rattle around his own head and die there.
He has half a mind to go after you. Catch you by the wrist before you get too far, steer you into a vacant bay, and do the whole thing properly since apparently no one else is treating this personality drop as emergent.
History, exam, differential. What’s been siphoned out of you, and can he replace it?
In a better universe, that line of inquiry earns him one of your usual responses, “Should I unbutton for the stethoscope, Doctor?”
But he can’t do that. Can’t go stalking after you like some lovesick asshole with a savior complex and a death wish.
Especially not now when he is, at best, one bad headline away from vaporizing the fellowship he’s been clawing toward for years. He needs HR to stop looking at him like one more incident will finish the job rehab failed to.
And beyond that, he’s been trying to starve the gossip before it gets any bigger. Partly for himself, sure. Mostly for you.
This place has a long memory when it comes to his mistakes and a short one when it comes to anything decent he’s ever done.
He’s not about to hand the hospital a fresh excuse to staple your name to his and let people act like you’re just another piece of collateral from the mess he made of himself.
But shit he misses you. He wants your attention back on him. And the flirting and the smart mouth and the little collisions of your body with his like you’ve forgotten where one of you ends and the other begins.
So if he can’t be obvious, he’ll be strategic. He’ll do what he does best. Lay the bait and wait for you to come to him.
At two he messes with the thermostat.
There’s a woman in Facilities who’ll adjust it for him without putting in a work order, no questions, an ongoing favor from the time she showed up in the ER with split knuckles and a story about slipping while replacing a vent cover.
Frank stitched the cut closed in under six minutes, declined the point out that the wound looked a lot more like she’d punched through something than brushed against it, and earned himself a useful little pocket of goodwill in the process.
And, more often than not, Frank squanders that usefulness on you.
A degree warmer in the mornings, sometimes two if the night crew has left the department with all the ambient warmth of a crypt, timed just before you blow in the front doors, already looking faintly wounded by the concept of central air.
It’s at sixty-six now.
Low enough to summon you, high enough that no one can accuse him of weaponizing infrastructure for attention.
Although that is precisely what he’s doing.
But it takes longer than expected for you to appear in his line of sight. And when you finally do, you pay him no mind.
You putter through the department in several layers: cardigan, coat, fleece, thermal tights, hands tucked into your sleeves.
You look pissed. You look adorable. Frank resents learning those two things can coexist so easily.
He tries to catch your eye but you just keep moving through the pit like an overdressed cumulonimbus radiating indignation at every ceiling vent, refusing to seek him out.
It makes no sense. You should have filed a verbal complaint with him by minute eight.
And at minute forty-five he watches (sourly) as Garcia slides up beside you, a still-steaming warmer blanket perfectly folded over her arm.
“You look frostbitten,” she murmurs, settling the plush square around your shoulders.
You exhale a blissed little thank-you and lean into her, soaking up the heat Frank had planned to supply by proxy.
Garcia lifts her gaze, finds him across the pit, and winks. Problem solved, ER Ken, she mouths, fluffing the blanket with exaggerated care just to make sure he clocks her fingerprints all over his failed experiment.
Problem not solved. In fact, freshly enlarged.
Frank later lumbers down the hallway toward your office like a kicked senior dog chasing the last scrap of affection from its owner. He clutches the print-outs in his hand so tight they rasp with every step.
He finds you at your desk, hair fallen in stray ribbons across your face, mouth pulled down at the corners while the monitor paints you blue. Concentration or maybe displeasure. Hard to tell from this angle.
He hovers, suddenly unsure whether to knock on the actual door or just the wall of silence you’ve erected.
He opts for the literal door, two knuckles, two quick knocks.
Your head lifts. Something bright like excitement sparks across your face then the expression collapses, shutters down to business. Like you remembered all at once the circumstances surrounding him and whatever stupid hope had leapt up before you could stop it.
He hates that expression immediately. Hates that it exists. Hates even more that he can’t quite sort out why seeing it on your face feels like a personal failure.
“Need this form revised,” he says, lifting the mangled stack. “Thought maybe you could escort me to radiology? Could use the company, and you terrify the techs less than I do.”
It’s needy and transparent and he knows. He doesn’t care how it sounds as long as you say yes.
“I’m, uh, really busy at the moment, Dr. Langdon. Pending labs, two admits… might be a while.” You rattle it off too fast, like reading a grocery list you just wrote in your head. He knows every item is invented on the spot.
“Humor me, okay? I’ve had seven hours of people telling me to wait my turn. I need one cooperative face before I implode.”
You worry the inside of your lips, eyes flicking to the doorway.
Finally you nod. “Fine.”
One syllable, and it hits like epinephrine. He can’t stop the microscopic lift of his chin, lungs taking in a fuller breath as if permission itself has oxygenated the air.
He angles toward the hallway, offering the smallest tilt of his shoulder so you can merge.
“Thanks,” he says, voice pitched towards casual.
“Sure.”
He glances at you to his left. Goosebumps litter the expanse of your arms. He eases his stride so you’re shoulder-to-shoulder instead of half a step behind. “You cold?”
“Nope. Perfectly comfortable.” You answer while simultaneously yanking your sleeves down to your knuckles.
He snorts. “Yeah and I’m the post child for impulse control.”
You stop mid-stride, eyes narrowing. “That’s not funny, Frank.”
His first name. That’s progress, he thinks. Even laced with contempt, hearing it from you feels like an exhale after hours underwater.
He knew you wouldn’t like the joke. Made it anyway, cheap currency to buy a spark out of you. If spark equals fury, so be it. Fury beats indifference every time.
“Yeah, poor taste. Reflex, I guess.” He winces, thumb rubbing the knot at his collar.
You huff through your nose and pivot forward again, pace clipped. Frank falls in step a half-pace behind, then edges closer.
“Cardigan looks new,” he ventures. “Color suits you.”
“It’s old,” you say, eyes still on the hallway ahead.
Frank smothers another wince. Stupid. By this point the day has offered him more than enough evidence that the usual methods are dead on arrival.
Compliments, bait, orchestrated coincidence, all of it useless now that you’ve apparently decided to treat him like a mildly inconvenient coworker.
That’s the part he likes least. The sudden sense that he can’t locate himself in relation to you anymore.
The part he likes least changes when he finds you twenty minutes later, stationed beside some orthopedic meathead, looking luminously alive.
No longer wan or withdrawn or visibly dying of whatever new strain of virus you’ve contracted. But smiling. A laugh bubbling out, fingers corkscrewing a curl the way they do when you’re charmed.
Apparently you can still flirt. You can still sparkle. You just can’t seem to do it anywhere near him.
Before his cortex can veto, he’s crossing the floor, stopping dead at your shoulder.
“Just need a status update on Mrs. Carlson’s tib-fib before radiology locks the board.”
Mrs. Carlson, insofar as he knows, is fictional, but her imaginary fracture buys him two startled glances and three precious seconds inhaling the vanilla-and-alcohol warmth of your laugh.
Meathead flips through pages. “Um… we don’t have a Carlson today.”
Frank fakes a thoughtful frown. “Huh. Alias, then. Happens every weekend — patients think we’re the witness-protection program.”
Ortho squints. “I can pull the day-sheet again —”
“Good idea,” Frank says, nodding like a supervising attending. “Check PACU and the boarding queue; wouldn’t want to miss an imaging window.”
The guy mutters agreement and slinks off, shoulders hunched in duty. Frank turns to you, expression suddenly softer.
Crossing your arms, you cock a hip where Ortho had been. “Impressive diversion tactic. Did Mrs. Carlson spring fully formed from your imagination, or is she a previous imaginary friend?”
The fury’s back again.
Frank scratches at his jaw. “Didn’t think it through.”
“You think plenty. Maybe just tell me what you want instead of throwing Jason under a bus.”
Jason. Stupid name for a stupid guy, he thinks.
What he wants is one honest conversation and maybe your ass back where it belongs — in his personal space. He can’t say that last part though, so he settles for the first in the only terms he knows how.
“What I want is a five-minute consult with you. Somewhere quieter.” He flicks a glance at the empty bay down the hall, then back to your crossed arms. “Please.”
You study him for a moment, then nod once.
“Bay twelve’s open. Five minutes, then I’m due back at my desk.”
Frank files the claim under Questionable. You treat workstations like bar stools — occupied only until something shinier beckons. It’s not the desk ticking in your head; it’s the idea of being walled in with him past the half-life of your composure.
He watches tension climb your scapulae as you march ahead, timing yourself like a patient on a stress test.
Bay 12 yawns open and swallows you both.
The instant the noise of the corridor seals off, Frank feels his pulse redeploy to places it has no business patrolling. Temples, wrists, the hollow just above his sternum.
For one beat you stand opposite like combatants in a children’s-duel-turned-board-meeting: arms folded, backs straight, pretending neither of you can feel the static in the air.
“Right.” He claps once (why did he clap?) and immediately regrets it. “Consult.”
Your brows tip up, perfectly polite, perfectly guarded. “On our imaginary tib-fib?”
Frank’s ears go hot.
“Yeah, about that. I might have — misallocated resources.” He forces a laugh that sounds like a cough that sounds like a car refusing to start. “Look, I just —” A breath, steady, like he tells interns before a lumbar puncture. “I’ve noticed you’ve been… different. Quieter. Less —” he gestures vaguely, like there’s a medical term for starlight. “I thought maybe I’d done something.”
“Frank, I’ve been at this hospital for three years. You’ve existed in approximately one and a half of them. If I’m different and you assume it’s about you, that’s either breathtaking narcissism or —” a small, lethal smile “— maybe something else.”
Something else. He recognizes your own bait and still lunges.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Quiet. Direct. No place to hide in it. “Maybe I did assume it had something to do with me because I wanted it to.” His knuckles sweep his jaw. He never looks away from you. “Because if it’s not that, then I’m standing here making an ass out of myself for no reason, and I’d actually prefer the narcissism.”
You hesitate. “I’m just… giving you a little breathing room, okay?”
“Breathing room?” He moves toward you impulsively before catching himself, eyes wide, almost pleading. “I don’t — fuck, I don’t want breathing room. What are you doing that for?”
“What do you think?” You laugh, but it’s hollowed out completely. He doesn’t like the sound. “I spend half my shift practically trailing after you. Everyone sees it. I just —,” you purse your lips. “I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have.”
He frowns at that. You’ve never once moved through this place like someone worried about looking foolish.
You flirt when you want to flirt, laugh when you want to laugh, and say things most people would bury alive before letting them leave their mouths. You leave little traces of yourself everywhere. Lip gloss prints on coffee lids. Heart-dotted notes. Sweaters draped over chairs that aren’t yours. There is nothing cautious about you, nothing particularly governed by social survival.
Even your embarrassment tends to be theatrical, temporary, burned through fast and replaced with another bad idea. He has never known you to care this much about the audience.
“What are you talking about?”
He watches as your eyes break off and land somewhere past his shoulders, as if the answer might be stapled to the wall.
“I heard what you said earlier.”
Frank’s brow furrows harder, causing a headache. “What?”
“With Mateo.” Your arms tighten across your middle. “About me being ‘just noise.’ About how I’d lose interest soon enough.” Your eyes flick up to his for a second. “So I thought maybe I should help you out with that.”
Blood sluices out of his skull, then surges back so hard his vision pulses.
For a beat, Frank just stands there, knocked completely sideways by the realization that you heard that, heard those exact words with none of the context that had made them make sense in his head. Christ.
No wonder you pulled back. No wonder you’ve been different. He’d been cornered by Mateo outside the med-supply cage, half-listening to him gleefully recycle some intern gossip thread like it was harmless entertainment, and all Frank had been trying to do was kill it fast.
Shut it down. Mateo was fishing for a reaction, for confirmation, for anything he could carry back into the staff room and let breed.
Robby’s got a disciplinary file half built with his name on the tab. One more thing and he’ll be back in that carpeted purgatory explaining how “post-rehab Frank” was just a limited-time offer.
The only thought had been do not feed this. Do not let you become a bigger target than you already are.
“No, that’s — fuck.” He breaks off, already hating how badly he’s said everything. “That’s not what I meant. I called the intern noise. The gossip. The whole stupid conversation. I meant she’d get bored and move on if I didn’t exacerbate it. I did not mean you.”
If anything, the entire point had been to avoid throwing you under the bus by acting like there was nothing there to poke at. And somehow that attempt has landed here, in front of him now, having done exactly the opposite.
You look at him for a second like you’re trying to decide whether to believe him and coming up short.
“I can handle it, you know. I’m a big girl. If I’m too much, or if I’ve been making you uncomfortable, you can just tell me.” The flat seam of your lips is more withering than any shout. “I’d rather hear it straight than keep walking around here feeling like some joke everybody else is already in on.”
“I know you could,” he says, too fast, like he needs to get there before you decide otherwise. “I know you could handle it. And if that was what this was, I would’ve said it, yeah?” His chest keeps punching at the scrub top, lungs over-ventilating around the terror of being misunderstood. “I don’t want you to stop flirting with me. I don’t want you to stop hovering or talking or… any of it. I — I fucking need it — You.”
“Frank…”
His eyes flick down to your mouth, then up again, like he hates that you can see him thinking it.
“If I do something stupid right now,” he says, voice low, “are you gonna slap me?”
He’s half begging for the hit, half begging on the green light.
Your exhale stutters into a breathy laugh. “Depends how stupid.”
Stupid wins.
Frank closes the last inch and touches his mouth to yours.
Soft at first, like he’s half-afraid you’ll vanish. You don’t. You stay… then soften… then melt, and everything inside him rushes forward. The second your lips part, the kiss deepens. Hunger and apology braided tight.
His hand rises to the back of your neck, thumb stroking the hair there, and the kiss tips from cautious to greedy in a single heartbeat.
He’s been starving himself on purpose, convincing the ache it was dietary. You don’t feed a craving that noble, he’d told himself in a dozen graveyard-shift pep talks. Now the craving is kissing back, and his resolve crumbles like a sugar packet.
You curve forward, spine bowing until his shoulders hit the curtain and the metal rings screech on the rail, but the world past the vinyl may as well be orbiting another sun. You both break into breathless laughter, but neither of you stops.
They warned you about selfish addicts, a voice needles.
This is exactly what they meant: taking the one thing that makes the ward bearable and unintentionally hurting its feelings to keep it safe — then stealing it anyway.
He swallows the guilt, chases it with another taste of peppermint.
Frank pulls back just far enough to speak, foreheads still touching. “No more breathing room, okay?”
You pretend to ponder, then glance at the inch (maybe) separating your bodies. “Pretty sure you just repossessed every cubic inch of it.”
“Good,” he says, thumb stroking the tendon at your nape like he’s checking his own pulse there. “I’m keeping it.”
Selfish, a reprimand flickers, but he can’t imagine surrendering the warmth that’s finally tugged his chest open.
Then the hallway pager shrieks, reminding you that the world still exists and someone probably needs a doctor who isn’t currently making out behind a curtain.
You both straighten, slower than necessary, Smooth hair, reset badges.
As you step through the divider he catches your hand, gives it a quick, secret squeeze.
You squeeze back, and the grin you trade in that split-second says everything the rumor mill never could: whatever this is, it’s no longer background noise.
MARIA NOTE hi hi hi thank you for reading and witnessing er barbie and franks FIRST KISS!!!!!!!!!! behind a questionably sanitary curtain, no less. may their pager batteries die forever so we get more smooch time. ₊ ⊹🪻 ✧˚. ᵎᵎ 🪴
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when you overhear a comment frank makes to mateo, you decide to back off. frank doesn't like that one bit and does everything in his power to get your attention back.
bet u wanna meet the reader! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
MASTERLIST | RULES | PINTEREST
PAIRING frank langdon x er!barbie!reader
WARNINGS overheard conversations, miscommunication, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, girly!reader, post-rehab frank langdon, recovery themes, yearning to the max, repression also to the max, flirtation as a coping mechanism, kissing!, making out on the job!
WC 3.9k | REQUEST here!
“The new intern claims Barbie’s been doodling your name with little hearts all over her forms. Somebody’s got it bad.”
Mateo’s statement floats over the nurses’ station diver.
It manages to slam straight into your self-image. Delicate tissue at the best of times, wedged between your left ventricle and the tiny circuit that compels you to adopt every sad house-plant at Trader Joe’s.
Yes it’s true, you do, for the record, employ thematic embellishments. A heart here. A flourish there. (Morale matters; medicine is bleak). That is not the same thing as ‘having it bad’.
But the problem is apparently people can’t make that distinction, and now you can see it too clearly, a pack of first-years huddled together, snickering over your smittenness, spider-webbing a hairline crack right through the high-gloss competence you spent seventy-eight paychecks shellacking.
It’s that eighth-grade deja vu: the day Jack Harrison caught you tracing Mrs. Jack Harrison in bubble letters on your planner and passed the page down the row like contraband.
The heat that bursts behind your ears now is the exact temperature of that day, when the whole cafeteria seemed to sync with your cardiac rhythm — thump, she likes him, thump.
You straighten behind the med cart, ready to emerge and correct the narrative before it mutates any further, when Frank speaks first. “Ignore it. It’s just noise — I’m sure she’ll lose interest soon enough.”
Oh.
Something clamps shut inside you so abruptly it almost audibly clicks.
Like you’ve been fizzing under pressure all shift and someone, somewhere, has just screwed the cap on tight. The carbonation tears around blind, frantic for an exit.
Noise. The word expands until it feels the whole corridor. Noise, as in background nuisance, as in easily tuned out, as in the thin electrical whine of a dying bulb that nobody bothers fixing until someone from maintenance finally rips it out and tosses it.
So that’s what he hears when you talk? A squeaky hindrance he tolerates out of courtesy?
The lively back-and-forth you stored under maybe someday morphs, in one breath, into you pawing at a deadbolt while he waits for the scratching to stop.
You pivot on silent flats, slip down the side corridor before Mateo or Frank registers movement.
Three steps in, a shoulder clips yours — McKay, clutching a stack of imaging requests. Clipboards explode across linoleum.
“Whoa, road-runner much?” she laughs, stooping. Her grin falters when she meets your deer-in-the-headlights stare. “Hey, you good? You’re kind of… vibrating.”
There’s no better word for it. Your fingers keep sparking against each other, your chin keeps twitching toward the main hall, and every nerve ending chants the same directive: bolt, wounded-fawn style, into the nearest underbrush before the hunter looks up.
You drop to your knees, paper edges nicking your skin as you herd the spill into something vaguely stack-shaped.
Out of the corner of your eye, Frank and Mateo both turn at the clatter. Frank’s brows notch, mouth already forming the silent You okay?
You slap the stack into McKay’s hands.
“Peachy!” you babble, already sidestepping to block Frank’s sight-line. “Totally good. Very busy. High-priority sticker emergency. Life or death if you’re, like, six and waiting for discharge.”
Your shoes squeak as you bolt.
There are several indicators, in Frank’s opinion, that suggest you’ve come down with something terminal, and the first arrives in the form of his inbox.
Or rather, the absence of its usual infestation.
When he finally gets ten uninterrupted minutes to wade through his overnight emails, there is only one from you.
A curt administrative note about revised intake-labeling protocol, plus an attached spreadsheet for the week’s front-desk coverage.
It is concise. Properly punctuated. Horrifyingly lucid.
Frank stares at it a full second longer than necessary, as if more of you might reveal itself under scrutiny.
Because, usually, by this point, there are at least twelve.
They arrive in glitter-bomb bursts throughout the day. A few carry actionable intel. Most are digital magpies’ nests: random URLs, blurry memes, rogue exclamation points, and the kind of half-formed shower-thought nonsense you apparently consider too important to trust to your own mind.
He spends longer than he’s willing to admit at the computer waiting for more emails to come in.
They never do.
The second indicator presents itself when he swipes into radiology and, for the first time in recent memory, does so alone.
No sudden apparition at his elbow, no imploring eyes, no breathless little “oops, forgot mine again,” delivered as though this is an unforeseeable act of the gods rather than a behavior pattern.
He tends to just hand the badge over without questions.
There is no point doing otherwise. If not him, you’ll simply latch onto the next available soft touch with security clearance, and Frank would rather it be him.
He frowns when the reader spits its green light at an empty hallway.
The third, and by far the most worrying, indicator arrives in the break room.
Frank boxes himself into a stolen minute, pours a cup, looks up too late, and finds you standing at the same counter.
Usually this is your opening. Your preferred habitat.
You’d reach across his body for sugar you absolutely do not need (you’re sweet enough as it is), clip his front with your ass, crowd his elbow while stirring, then look up like none of it was intentional, like he’s just a piece of furniture placed unfortunately in your path.
He braces for impact. Nothing happens.
Instead you give a brisk nod, measure out a generous amount of creamer into your cup, and keep your radius fanatically intact.
You leave before he can tally the damage.
The space beside him turns freezer-aisle cold. Frank’s fingers blanch on the mug handle. He blames the overzealous hospital ventilation for about half a second, then hears the excuse rattle around his own head and die there.
He has half a mind to go after you. Catch you by the wrist before you get too far, steer you into a vacant bay, and do the whole thing properly since apparently no one else is treating this personality drop as emergent.
History, exam, differential. What’s been siphoned out of you, and can he replace it?
In a better universe, that line of inquiry earns him one of your usual responses, “Should I unbutton for the stethoscope, Doctor?”
But he can’t do that. Can’t go stalking after you like some lovesick asshole with a savior complex and a death wish.
Especially not now when he is, at best, one bad headline away from vaporizing the fellowship he’s been clawing toward for years. He needs HR to stop looking at him like one more incident will finish the job rehab failed to.
And beyond that, he’s been trying to starve the gossip before it gets any bigger. Partly for himself, sure. Mostly for you.
This place has a long memory when it comes to his mistakes and a short one when it comes to anything decent he’s ever done.
He’s not about to hand the hospital a fresh excuse to staple your name to his and let people act like you’re just another piece of collateral from the mess he made of himself.
But shit he misses you. He wants your attention back on him. And the flirting and the smart mouth and the little collisions of your body with his like you’ve forgotten where one of you ends and the other begins.
So if he can’t be obvious, he’ll be strategic. He’ll do what he does best. Lay the bait and wait for you to come to him.
At two he messes with the thermostat.
There’s a woman in Facilities who’ll adjust it for him without putting in a work order, no questions, an ongoing favor from the time she showed up in the ER with split knuckles and a story about slipping while replacing a vent cover.
Frank stitched the cut closed in under six minutes, declined the point out that the wound looked a lot more like she’d punched through something than brushed against it, and earned himself a useful little pocket of goodwill in the process.
And, more often than not, Frank squanders that usefulness on you.
A degree warmer in the mornings, sometimes two if the night crew has left the department with all the ambient warmth of a crypt, timed just before you blow in the front doors, already looking faintly wounded by the concept of central air.
It’s at sixty-six now.
Low enough to summon you, high enough that no one can accuse him of weaponizing infrastructure for attention.
Although that is precisely what he’s doing.
But it takes longer than expected for you to appear in his line of sight. And when you finally do, you pay him no mind.
You putter through the department in several layers: cardigan, coat, fleece, thermal tights, hands tucked into your sleeves.
You look pissed. You look adorable. Frank resents learning those two things can coexist so easily.
He tries to catch your eye but you just keep moving through the pit like an overdressed cumulonimbus radiating indignation at every ceiling vent, refusing to seek him out.
It makes no sense. You should have filed a verbal complaint with him by minute eight.
And at minute forty-five he watches (sourly) as Garcia slides up beside you, a still-steaming warmer blanket perfectly folded over her arm.
“You look frostbitten,” she murmurs, settling the plush square around your shoulders.
You exhale a blissed little thank-you and lean into her, soaking up the heat Frank had planned to supply by proxy.
Garcia lifts her gaze, finds him across the pit, and winks. Problem solved, ER Ken, she mouths, fluffing the blanket with exaggerated care just to make sure he clocks her fingerprints all over his failed experiment.
Problem not solved. In fact, freshly enlarged.
Frank later lumbers down the hallway toward your office like a kicked senior dog chasing the last scrap of affection from its owner. He clutches the print-outs in his hand so tight they rasp with every step.
He finds you at your desk, hair fallen in stray ribbons across your face, mouth pulled down at the corners while the monitor paints you blue. Concentration or maybe displeasure. Hard to tell from this angle.
He hovers, suddenly unsure whether to knock on the actual door or just the wall of silence you’ve erected.
He opts for the literal door, two knuckles, two quick knocks.
Your head lifts. Something bright like excitement sparks across your face then the expression collapses, shutters down to business. Like you remembered all at once the circumstances surrounding him and whatever stupid hope had leapt up before you could stop it.
He hates that expression immediately. Hates that it exists. Hates even more that he can’t quite sort out why seeing it on your face feels like a personal failure.
“Need this form revised,” he says, lifting the mangled stack. “Thought maybe you could escort me to radiology? Could use the company, and you terrify the techs less than I do.”
It’s needy and transparent and he knows. He doesn’t care how it sounds as long as you say yes.
“I’m, uh, really busy at the moment, Dr. Langdon. Pending labs, two admits… might be a while.” You rattle it off too fast, like reading a grocery list you just wrote in your head. He knows every item is invented on the spot.
“Humor me, okay? I’ve had seven hours of people telling me to wait my turn. I need one cooperative face before I implode.”
You worry the inside of your lips, eyes flicking to the doorway.
Finally you nod. “Fine.”
One syllable, and it hits like epinephrine. He can’t stop the microscopic lift of his chin, lungs taking in a fuller breath as if permission itself has oxygenated the air.
He angles toward the hallway, offering the smallest tilt of his shoulder so you can merge.
“Thanks,” he says, voice pitched towards casual.
“Sure.”
He glances at you to his left. Goosebumps litter the expanse of your arms. He eases his stride so you’re shoulder-to-shoulder instead of half a step behind. “You cold?”
“Nope. Perfectly comfortable.” You answer while simultaneously yanking your sleeves down to your knuckles.
He snorts. “Yeah and I’m the post child for impulse control.”
You stop mid-stride, eyes narrowing. “That’s not funny, Frank.”
His first name. That’s progress, he thinks. Even laced with contempt, hearing it from you feels like an exhale after hours underwater.
He knew you wouldn’t like the joke. Made it anyway, cheap currency to buy a spark out of you. If spark equals fury, so be it. Fury beats indifference every time.
“Yeah, poor taste. Reflex, I guess.” He winces, thumb rubbing the knot at his collar.
You huff through your nose and pivot forward again, pace clipped. Frank falls in step a half-pace behind, then edges closer.
“Cardigan looks new,” he ventures. “Color suits you.”
“It’s old,” you say, eyes still on the hallway ahead.
Frank smothers another wince. Stupid. By this point the day has offered him more than enough evidence that the usual methods are dead on arrival.
Compliments, bait, orchestrated coincidence, all of it useless now that you’ve apparently decided to treat him like a mildly inconvenient coworker.
That’s the part he likes least. The sudden sense that he can’t locate himself in relation to you anymore.
The part he likes least changes when he finds you twenty minutes later, stationed beside some orthopedic meathead, looking luminously alive.
No longer wan or withdrawn or visibly dying of whatever new strain of virus you’ve contracted. But smiling. A laugh bubbling out, fingers corkscrewing a curl the way they do when you’re charmed.
Apparently you can still flirt. You can still sparkle. You just can’t seem to do it anywhere near him.
Before his cortex can veto, he’s crossing the floor, stopping dead at your shoulder.
“Just need a status update on Mrs. Carlson’s tib-fib before radiology locks the board.”
Mrs. Carlson, insofar as he knows, is fictional, but her imaginary fracture buys him two startled glances and three precious seconds inhaling the vanilla-and-alcohol warmth of your laugh.
Meathead flips through pages. “Um… we don’t have a Carlson today.”
Frank fakes a thoughtful frown. “Huh. Alias, then. Happens every weekend — patients think we’re the witness-protection program.”
Ortho squints. “I can pull the day-sheet again —”
“Good idea,” Frank says, nodding like a supervising attending. “Check PACU and the boarding queue; wouldn’t want to miss an imaging window.”
The guy mutters agreement and slinks off, shoulders hunched in duty. Frank turns to you, expression suddenly softer.
Crossing your arms, you cock a hip where Ortho had been. “Impressive diversion tactic. Did Mrs. Carlson spring fully formed from your imagination, or is she a previous imaginary friend?”
The fury’s back again.
Frank scratches at his jaw. “Didn’t think it through.”
“You think plenty. Maybe just tell me what you want instead of throwing Jason under a bus.”
Jason. Stupid name for a stupid guy, he thinks.
What he wants is one honest conversation and maybe your ass back where it belongs — in his personal space. He can’t say that last part though, so he settles for the first in the only terms he knows how.
“What I want is a five-minute consult with you. Somewhere quieter.” He flicks a glance at the empty bay down the hall, then back to your crossed arms. “Please.”
You study him for a moment, then nod once.
“Bay twelve’s open. Five minutes, then I’m due back at my desk.”
Frank files the claim under Questionable. You treat workstations like bar stools — occupied only until something shinier beckons. It’s not the desk ticking in your head; it’s the idea of being walled in with him past the half-life of your composure.
He watches tension climb your scapulae as you march ahead, timing yourself like a patient on a stress test.
Bay 12 yawns open and swallows you both.
The instant the noise of the corridor seals off, Frank feels his pulse redeploy to places it has no business patrolling. Temples, wrists, the hollow just above his sternum.
For one beat you stand opposite like combatants in a children’s-duel-turned-board-meeting: arms folded, backs straight, pretending neither of you can feel the static in the air.
“Right.” He claps once (why did he clap?) and immediately regrets it. “Consult.”
Your brows tip up, perfectly polite, perfectly guarded. “On our imaginary tib-fib?”
Frank’s ears go hot.
“Yeah, about that. I might have — misallocated resources.” He forces a laugh that sounds like a cough that sounds like a car refusing to start. “Look, I just —” A breath, steady, like he tells interns before a lumbar puncture. “I’ve noticed you’ve been… different. Quieter. Less —” he gestures vaguely, like there’s a medical term for starlight. “I thought maybe I’d done something.”
“Frank, I’ve been at this hospital for three years. You’ve existed in approximately one and a half of them. If I’m different and you assume it’s about you, that’s either breathtaking narcissism or —” a small, lethal smile “— maybe something else.”
Something else. He recognizes your own bait and still lunges.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Quiet. Direct. No place to hide in it. “Maybe I did assume it had something to do with me because I wanted it to.” His knuckles sweep his jaw. He never looks away from you. “Because if it’s not that, then I’m standing here making an ass out of myself for no reason, and I’d actually prefer the narcissism.”
You hesitate. “I’m just… giving you a little breathing room, okay?”
“Breathing room?” He moves toward you impulsively before catching himself, eyes wide, almost pleading. “I don’t — fuck, I don’t want breathing room. What are you doing that for?”
“What do you think?” You laugh, but it’s hollowed out completely. He doesn’t like the sound. “I spend half my shift practically trailing after you. Everyone sees it. I just —,” you purse your lips. “I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have.”
He frowns at that. You’ve never once moved through this place like someone worried about looking foolish.
You flirt when you want to flirt, laugh when you want to laugh, and say things most people would bury alive before letting them leave their mouths. You leave little traces of yourself everywhere. Lip gloss prints on coffee lids. Heart-dotted notes. Sweaters draped over chairs that aren’t yours. There is nothing cautious about you, nothing particularly governed by social survival.
Even your embarrassment tends to be theatrical, temporary, burned through fast and replaced with another bad idea. He has never known you to care this much about the audience.
“What are you talking about?”
He watches as your eyes break off and land somewhere past his shoulders, as if the answer might be stapled to the wall.
“I heard what you said earlier.”
Frank’s brow furrows harder, causing a headache. “What?”
“With Mateo.” Your arms tighten across your middle. “About me being ‘just noise.’ About how I’d lose interest soon enough.” Your eyes flick up to his for a second. “So I thought maybe I should help you out with that.”
Blood sluices out of his skull, then surges back so hard his vision pulses.
For a beat, Frank just stands there, knocked completely sideways by the realization that you heard that, heard those exact words with none of the context that had made them make sense in his head. Christ.
No wonder you pulled back. No wonder you’ve been different. He’d been cornered by Mateo outside the med-supply cage, half-listening to him gleefully recycle some intern gossip thread like it was harmless entertainment, and all Frank had been trying to do was kill it fast.
Shut it down. Mateo was fishing for a reaction, for confirmation, for anything he could carry back into the staff room and let breed.
Robby’s got a disciplinary file half built with his name on the tab. One more thing and he’ll be back in that carpeted purgatory explaining how “post-rehab Frank” was just a limited-time offer.
The only thought had been do not feed this. Do not let you become a bigger target than you already are.
“No, that’s — fuck.” He breaks off, already hating how badly he’s said everything. “That’s not what I meant. I called the intern noise. The gossip. The whole stupid conversation. I meant she’d get bored and move on if I didn’t exacerbate it. I did not mean you.”
If anything, the entire point had been to avoid throwing you under the bus by acting like there was nothing there to poke at. And somehow that attempt has landed here, in front of him now, having done exactly the opposite.
You look at him for a second like you’re trying to decide whether to believe him and coming up short.
“I can handle it, you know. I’m a big girl. If I’m too much, or if I’ve been making you uncomfortable, you can just tell me.” The flat seam of your lips is more withering than any shout. “I’d rather hear it straight than keep walking around here feeling like some joke everybody else is already in on.”
“I know you could,” he says, too fast, like he needs to get there before you decide otherwise. “I know you could handle it. And if that was what this was, I would’ve said it, yeah?” His chest keeps punching at the scrub top, lungs over-ventilating around the terror of being misunderstood. “I don’t want you to stop flirting with me. I don’t want you to stop hovering or talking or… any of it. I — I fucking need it — You.”
“Frank…”
His eyes flick down to your mouth, then up again, like he hates that you can see him thinking it.
“If I do something stupid right now,” he says, voice low, “are you gonna slap me?”
He’s half begging for the hit, half begging on the green light.
Your exhale stutters into a breathy laugh. “Depends how stupid.”
Stupid wins.
Frank closes the last inch and touches his mouth to yours.
Soft at first, like he’s half-afraid you’ll vanish. You don’t. You stay… then soften… then melt, and everything inside him rushes forward. The second your lips part, the kiss deepens. Hunger and apology braided tight.
His hand rises to the back of your neck, thumb stroking the hair there, and the kiss tips from cautious to greedy in a single heartbeat.
He’s been starving himself on purpose, convincing the ache it was dietary. You don’t feed a craving that noble, he’d told himself in a dozen graveyard-shift pep talks. Now the craving is kissing back, and his resolve crumbles like a sugar packet.
You curve forward, spine bowing until his shoulders hit the curtain and the metal rings screech on the rail, but the world past the vinyl may as well be orbiting another sun. You both break into breathless laughter, but neither of you stops.
They warned you about selfish addicts, a voice needles.
This is exactly what they meant: taking the one thing that makes the ward bearable and unintentionally hurting its feelings to keep it safe — then stealing it anyway.
He swallows the guilt, chases it with another taste of peppermint.
Frank pulls back just far enough to speak, foreheads still touching. “No more breathing room, okay?”
You pretend to ponder, then glance at the inch (maybe) separating your bodies. “Pretty sure you just repossessed every cubic inch of it.”
“Good,” he says, thumb stroking the tendon at your nape like he’s checking his own pulse there. “I’m keeping it.”
Selfish, a reprimand flickers, but he can’t imagine surrendering the warmth that’s finally tugged his chest open.
Then the hallway pager shrieks, reminding you that the world still exists and someone probably needs a doctor who isn’t currently making out behind a curtain.
You both straighten, slower than necessary, Smooth hair, reset badges.
As you step through the divider he catches your hand, gives it a quick, secret squeeze.
You squeeze back, and the grin you trade in that split-second says everything the rumor mill never could: whatever this is, it’s no longer background noise.
MARIA NOTE hi hi hi thank you for reading and witnessing er barbie and franks FIRST KISS!!!!!!!!!! behind a questionably sanitary curtain, no less. may their pager batteries die forever so we get more smooch time. ₊ ⊹🪻 ✧˚. ᵎᵎ 🪴
OMGG WAIT MARIAAA this was literally soo cute. i’m actually such a sucker for the miscommunication trope and you literally executed it perfectly 🤭 I LOVED THISSSS
HALI!!! 🥲🥲🥲🌷🌷🌷 thank u thank u i was lowkey nervy about getting the miscommunication plot plot correct… i feel like im trash at conflict resolution so i am so happy for the feedback ILY 💫💫💫💫
|| rabbot x reader || smut mdni 18+, pwp, not a single lick of plot here folks, pinv, anal, dirty talk, pet names, threesome, double penetration, creampie x2, slightly mean!robby and softdom!jack, fingers in mouth, teasing, boyfriends kissing, praise, just silly girly things ||
a/n: heavily unedited, word vom, a little spank bank idea I had today and had to deliver to you
wc: 1.7k
"please—"
it wasn't the first time you'd begged. you'd begged for many, many things in this same position, truth be told. robby behind you, jack below. both of their cocks splitting you open. jack was thick, just like the rest of him—thick fingered, thick bodied, thick cock throbbing and twitching where it stuffed your pussy. robby, on the other hand—long and curved up to the right—enjoyed fucking you in your tight puckered muscle, making you whine and squirm beneath him.
robby laid down over you, crushing you further into jack's chest, who moaned with you at the change in angle. robby’s breath was hot against your ear, his lips pressed into the shell.
"please what, baby? hmmmm?" he groaned, his voice hoarse and cracked, his chest wiry with hair against your slick back.
you brought your hand up to fist in his hair, holding on tight as he pulled his length from you almost to the very tip before thrusting slowly back in.
"oh my god," you heard jack curse, his hands tightening at your hips, his mouth opening in a gasp.
both of them were to the right of you—your face laid down on jack's collarbone, robby's chin hooked over your right shoulder. they were so close. breathing one another's air, enough that you could feel jack’s breath leave him and robby’s cheek shift against the side of your head when he opened his mouth to kiss the crest of your shoulder.
you tightened your grip in the latter's hair.
"wanna see you kisssss—"
jack let out a breathless little laugh, robby chuckling into your shoulder.
"baby, we talked about this—" jack said, his voice hardly more than breath, his chest heaving under yours.
"—but it would be so hottttt," you whined.
robby ignored you. "how's she feel, brother?"
jack's head tipped back into the pillow beneath him, and you watched the rough scruff of his unshaved neck shift as his adam's apple glided up and down, swallowing around the broken gasp he pulled in.
"so god damn good—go a little harder, she squeezes me so fucking tight when you really give it to her, mike."
you barely had time to register the gleam in robby's eyes before he was swinging his hips back again, this time thrusting hard against you, his skin slapping hard, balls clapping right above where jack's cock was buried deep inside.
you squealed and jack groaned loudly. your hand hung on tighter to robby's hair, your other hand digging into jack's shoulder beside your head.
"ohhhh fuck—" you mewled. "so—so deep, robby, oh god—"
"she sounds so pretty when she makes those little noises," jack strained to say, turning to kiss you on the nose. "huh, honey? robby's dick feel good like that? yeah? gimme a kiss."
you tilted your chin, pushing into his lips lazily, your tongue reaching out to lick at his, wet muscles sliding together. when you began to drool out the side of your lips, you brought robby's head down closer, resting your cheek back to jack's chest.
"your turn—" you murmured sleepily, your brain fucked out of any logic.
nothing passed through you but the ecstasy of having these two men and being sandwiched between them and their weight pressing in around you. jack began jerking his hips up into you, making you hiccup and whine, his thrusts getting erratic, his breath heavier.
robby's cock pushed deeper into you too, the pressure of both of them at the same time making you feel so content, so full, so cock drunk.
"please, please," you chanted. "wanna see you kiss so badly—"
"she really does beg so cute, doesn't she?" robby murmured, kissing your shoulder.
"yeah—" the other breathed, a light groan strangling the word as both of them slid in and out of you in tandem—full of jack's cock, then robby's, empty. then again, both of them filing you at the same time. the rhythm made your jaw go slack, your thoughts thinning. it felt so right, with jack below you, robby behind you, both of them too big, too hot, too much. still, you wanted more. wanted this so badly the need burned behind your eyes.
"like this—" you said, ignoring their cooing, and you craned your neck, pressing a chaste kiss to robby's lips.
it was hardly a second, your brain too foggy to make it anything more.
"that's it, huh? that's what you want, honey?" robby murmured, voice even hoarser with mirth as he smiled at you.
"yesss!" you whined, kicking your feet into the bed beneath.
"not good enough to have both of us, huh?" he teased. "such a needy little girl."
"be nice, mike—" jack moaned. "she's a good girl."
his praise always effected you—making you flutter around him, and you knew he could feel it, even with the increased fulless from robby deep inside you with him. he cracked a little knowing smile between moans.
"oh, i know she's a good girl, brother," robby said, and his mouth dragged over the back of your shoulder. "no doubt about it. but we've spoiled her. she thinks she can have whatever she wants."
you pouted, the prick of tears in your eyes not from him denying you, but from the utter fullness of their cocks punching in and out of you. from the easy back and forth of them—robby pretending there wasn’t a soft spot in him you could reach with the simplest look. and jack caught it every time and teased him for it.
"enough talking—" jack cursed. "fuck, fuck, she's tightening up on me— think she's gonna come, mike, oh god—"
"please—" you moaned louder, thrashing a little bit out of frustration.
"fuck it—" robby growled.
he leaned down and placed a kiss on the corner of jack's mouth.
they didn't stop entirely when robby pulled his lips away from jack's. their thrusts only softened into shallow rocks, jack's hands tightening on your skin, both his and robby's throbbing lengths still pressed deep enough inside you that every quiet breath made you feel the stretch of both of them. you held yours without meaning to—waiting, feeling both of them still around you.
robby's chest pressed heavier against your back as he breathed through his nose. you felt jack's beneath you, his ribs expanding, pressing against your breasts.
"yes," you whispered, though not wanting to rush them. your mouth brushed jack's skin when you said it, soft against the damp hollow below his collarbone. "more."
"you're right—" jack huffed a little laugh that shook his chest on the way out. "she really is needy."
robby smiled, as if grateful for the lightness, "told y—"
but he couldn't say anything else, because jack's lips were suddenly on his.
a deep, harmonized groan passed between the two of them, and it did something terrible to you. your stomach dropped, your hips jerked. even a little lick of jealousy flamed in you, warming your skin, but they looked good together. so good. exactly as you pictured it. it made you moan and writhe to see their mouths slot against one another, lips parting, tongues sliding, jack's stubbled jaw working under the rough scrape of robby's beard.
"oh my god," you whispered.
when they paused their kissing, a string of spit connected them, shiny and wet.
"d'you feel that?" robby whispered.
"yeah," jack answered, his one hand squeezing your hip while the other came up to robby's hair along with yours. "her pussy is gripping me like a vice—"
"yeah, she really tightened up—fuck, c'mere."
robby's hand went up to jack's hair too, fisting in the messy graying curls. jack's mouth fell open in a guttural groan, and robby's other hand came to the nape of your neck in answer. he pulled you into himself harshly, his tongue sliding against yours as your mouths met.
it was slick and wet and lewd, and just when you began to moan in earnest, their thrusts picked up again. harder now, less patient. jack fucking up into you from beneath, robby driving into you from behind, the bed frame knocking against the wall harshly again and again.
then you felt a second tongue at the corner of your mouth.
you pulled back only enough to welcome it—jack's tongue sliding against yours, robby's flicking against the two of you together.
the room filled with louder moans and the thick slap of skin, the wet drag of mouths, jack's rough little curses disappearing against your lips. robby's hand stayed tight at the back of your neck, holding you there for it, making you take the kiss you had begged for. you gushed around them, pussy fluttering and convulsing in pleasure.
"come for us, baby," robby whispered between kisses. "come for jackie. he wants you to come all over his big cock."
jack groaned under you, his hips jerking up harder, his member punching even deeper.
"I wanna feel it too," robby said. "c'mon now, gave you what you wanted. now I get to feel this perfect little ass take my come."
"just wanted your boyfriends to kiss, huh, baby?" jack cooed, his hand moving up to grip your face, forefinger and thumb squeezing your cheeks. his thumb hooked into the tender hinge of your lips, sliding along your molars to pry your mouth open wider for the two of them.
you cried out around his salty skin, and he pouted in mock pity as he looked at you.
"come on my cock, baby," jack moaned, leaning in to keep licking and nipping at your lips. "know you wanna, come on my cock now—gonna fill you up so good, mmmm—"
"i'm—i'm—i'm coming—oh, god, oh god—"
"yeah, that's it, that's it—oh fuckkk—" robby groaned, his thrusts slamming harder, turning erratic before he froze up, jaw unhinging, breathing hotly against wanton mouth.
jack's opened too, in shock, in awe, and when you looked at him you saw his eyes go wide before they rolled back behind his eyelids.
your orgasm ripped through you, a heady pressure down your spine and tightening your hips, making your legs lock up before it crested you like an ocean wave swelling and crashing. your hand clenched in robby's hair as your mouth fell open around jack's thumb. both of them groaned in tandem, trapping you between them, both buried deep while your body squeezed down, making jack curse and robby bare his teeth.
as the euphoria eased and your body went loose with the oxytocin flooding your blood, the three of you kept kissing—gentle little nips, soft flicks of tongue, spit sliding and glistening at the corners of your mouths, collecting where lips met and parted. jack retreated his thumb from your mouth to gently pet at your cheek, and they let you have as much as you wanted, just like always. spoiled thing, they'd tell you again afterwards, while they washed your hair in the bath and cleaned you up.
but for now, you kissed them as your eyes grew heavier and heavier, your breathing deepening against jack's chest. robby's weight behind you felt heavy and comforting, tucked between two men, utterly spent and completely content.
wrote this at 8pm posted at 9:30pm so please ignore any typos or mistakes lol my horny lil mind couldn't be stopped
