MARIA

SUNSHINE READER X MICHAEL ROBINAVITCH

PRINCESS READER X MICHAEL ROBINAVITCH

NERD READER X FRANK LANGDON

ER BARBIE READER X FRANK LANGDON

this was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

“I don’t know why you thought that was a good idea,” you mutter, watching Frank nudge your foot more securely onto his thigh. 

He’s been treating you with the same brisk, unsentimental competence he applies to everything, like your body is not a person-body but an issue-body, a small wandering inconvenience he found in the hallway and now has to return to factory settings.

His fingers close around your heel, adjust, pause. 

“I’m serious,” you say, because this is important.

History is written by people who successfully assign blame, and you did not spend all those years developing a near-pathological memory just to let the record show that you did this to yourself. 

And to your credit it was his idea.

You were just present. Present does not mean culpable. Present is not consent to being made responsible for consequences. You were a witness. A soft-bodied, academically gifted witness with poor proprioception and, apparently, too much faith in Langdon’s confidence. 

Which is, yes, perhaps a generous interpretation of events, but it is also the one you are committed to, so.

Frank huffs a laugh, swiping the antiseptic-soaked cotton over your calf in a slow pass. “You seemed pretty convinced it was a great idea when you were holding onto me for dear life.” 

You make an indignant squeak. 

“That’s not — that was entirely pragmatic,” you sputter, cheeks suddenly feverish. “Bodies merging at speed become a single aerodynamic unit — like birds, okay, or Olympic cyclists — and my weight placement was crucial for gravity’s sake. Purely scientific. It was not,” you add, hearing your own voice get thinner, “anything else.”

He arches an eyebrow slowly, cotton poised mid-air. “Huh. Funny, then, how your aerodynamics ended with both of us eating gravel.”

“Well,” you mumble, “science has a long history of failed early trials.” 

In hindsight, it really was objectively a stupid idea to “borrow” someone’s unattended rental scooter, and even stupider to let Frank convince you to get on the back. 

You keep trying to frame it like some baffling lapse in judgment, some temporary lesion of the common-sense cortex, like wow, how strange, what shadowy external force seized control of your motor planning and ethical reasoning and piloted you directly into a minor municipal offense?

As if you, a person with a functioning frontal lobe, a high board score, and a lifelong fear of being perceived as troublesome in public, had simply been swept away by some dark Romantic current, some gothic wind, some little fever of recklessness. 

Except you know exactly how it happened. You just have a hard time admitting it.

There was no dark force. There was Frank. Frank standing under the bad yellow streetlight with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at the scooter, then looking at you like you were already halfway to agreeing. Frank smiling and dropping his voice into that low, rough register that always sounds half amused and half certain. 

Trust me, I’ve done this before followed by C’mon, just live a little. 

As if your caution were not reasoned and correct, but some overdeveloped reflex, some stale little survival habit you had failed to outgrow.

As if your whole life had tilted too far toward restraint, toward clean hands and returned library books and reading every waiver before signing it, and tonight, just this once, you could afford to be frivolous. 

And apparently your moral constitution, once exposed to Frank for more than twelve consecutive seconds, ceases to be a constitution at all and becomes carnival glass. Melted sugar. A decorative substance with no practical load-bearing capacity whatsoever. 

He pinches a shard of gravel from your calf and you jerk on instinct, a hiss catching between your teeth as you try to pull back from the sting. 

“Sit still, please.”

And because apparently your body is a treacherous little province that recognizes him as its sovereign ruler, you sit still. 

Your shoulders go stiff. Your mouth settles into a line with distinct sulking potential. You glare at a crack in the paint on the wall.

“Starting to suspect bedside manner isn’t exactly one of your specialized skill sets,” you mutter under your breath.

Frank doesn’t look up. “You want bedside manner or you want the gravel out?”

“I can want multiple things. I’m cognitively gifted.” You adjust yourself on the bed.

“Then use that gift to sit still.”

You glare harder at the wall.

The crack remains unmoved, but you feel it is on your side.

Langdon sighs, dips his head enough to intercept your glare and drag it back to him. “And anyway, if you wanted good beside manner, maybe you shouldn’t have picked the guy who got you injured in the first place.”

You point at him immediately, which is a mistake, because sudden movement makes your calf sting, and also because pointing at Langdon feels like pointing at a thunderstorm and expecting it to apologize. 

“So you admit it’s your fault?”

“Wasn’t exactly trying to plead innocence here.” 

“Well — no, but that’s not the same as taking responsibility,” you argue. “Admitting fault can be passive. Taking responsibility implies an active ethical position. Remorse, repair, possible restitution. There’s a whole difference between, like, yes, I caused the fire, and here is my plan for rebuilding the barn.” 

“Alright, point taken.” He drags the pad of his thumb once, absentmindedly, against the inside of your ankle before reaching for the antiseptic again. “I am sorry. Believe me, seeing you scraped up and bleeding definitely wasn’t on my list of ways to impress you tonight.”

You perk up at that.

“You were trying to impress me?”

It comes out softer than you mean it to, all the irritation leaking from the sentence until only wonder is left.

Your head tilts, hair spilling into your eyes, and you bite back a smile badly enough that it is no longer really bitten back at all. 

“Wasn’t it obvious?”

He presses a neat bandage over the worst part, which, to be fair, is only the worst part in the sense that one paper cut may technically outrank another. Medically, this is barely worth the packaging it came in. 

A superficial epidermal abrasion, maybe skimming low enough to annoy the skin into a little dermal complaining, but nothing serious. No tissue loss. No wound-edge separation. No alarming depth. Just the unsexy reality of friction doing what friction does best, which is remove a thin layer of your dignity along with a thin layer of skin. 

Honestly, it barely qualifies as an injury. Frank knows that as well as you do. Better, probably. 

“Um, no? Definitely not obvious. Actually pretty unclear — your intentions, I mean. Why would you try and impress me?”

Frank frowns.

“Why wouldn’t I?” As if you are the strange one. As if the question is not only unnecessary but faintly ridiculous, like asking why someone might put pressure on an arterial bleed or wash their hands after using the bathroom. “Seemed like a worthwhile use of my time.”

“Oh.” You blink in rapid succession. “I just — okay, that doesn’t feel entirely accurate? Not that I’m saying I’m not worthwhile. I’m not doing some weird self-esteem thing right now, to be very clear. I am pro-myself in theory. I support the concept of me. I just mean the situation itself seemed to have a pretty poor success rate, so I don’t totally understand the evaluation criteria you were working with.” 

Langdon snorts, ducking his head down briefly as both hands come to cradle your calves, warmth seeping through the pads of his fingers. 

“Right, right,” he drawls, eyes lowered, mouth almost amused. “Clearly I’m the one who’s not making sense here.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.” His thumb brushes once over the bandage, checking the edge, before he gives your knee a gentle pat. “There. You’re officially good as new.” 

You look down at the bandage, then back at him.

“I was never bad as old.”

He snorts again. It’s a funny sound. A half-commitment to a laugh, like his body accidentally lets one slip before the rest of him can shut it down.

His nose crinkles. His face does this brief, reluctant little contortion that feels so human it almost distracts you from the fact that he is, in fact, making fun of you. 

Then his gaze moves to the clock on the bedside table.

He eases upright from his crouched position, and you watch him with narrowed eyes, expecting a flicker of discomfort. A wince. A hand at his lower back. But there’s nothing. Maybe his back has been doing better. Maybe that explains the improved mood.

Or maybe it’s the vacation. The sea water. The salt air. The fact that nobody has paged him in seventy-two hours, which is maybe the closest anyone gets to spa treatment. 

“I should get back downstairs before somebody notices we’re both missing. Think you can manage staying upright for a while without supervision?” 

You draw yourself up slightly. 

“Well, removing the primary hazard from the environment,” you say, “which is you, to be clear, should improve my odds considerably.” 

Frank’s mouth twitches. 

“Cute,” he says, in a tone that suggests he means annoying and cute and is unwilling to choose between them. He gives the bandage one last glance, then the rest of you, like he’s checking for any obvious remaining damage. “Stay off it for ten minutes.” 

He leaves before you can make it worse, which is probably for the best, and you sit there listening to his footsteps fade down the hall, pretending the warm, stupid flutter in your chest is relief. 

Relief that your leg is fine. Relief that the scooter incident did not end in the emergency department.

Relief that has nothing whatsoever to do with Frank Langdon trying to impress you and then staying long enough to patch you up.

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

Jack Abbot has the nicest lips you’ve ever kissed. 

And yes, maybe that would sound more profound if you had a wider frame of reference.

What you do have to compare him to amounts to a few teenage makeouts under splintered bleachers, some smattering of questionable judgment calls at frat parties, and then essentially nothing once medical school dragged your life into an alley and shot it dead.

Still. Even a limited sample can yield a clear, uncontestable result, and the result is Jack. 

Jack, whose kisses arrive so confidently, like he has never once doubted where his mouth belongs, golden and fizzing, like champagne left to bloom in the heat of summer while your whole body hitches in open-mouthed amazement just to feel it.

Even now, even when the cool air whispers in through the balcony door and skims over your legs beneath tangled sheets, raising goosebumps in delicate lines along your thighs. 

Jack notices instantly, the faintest smile warning against your lips as he shifts closer, chasing off the chill and dimming everything else until he is all you know.

When he kisses you again, it’s slower, lush and lazy, every nerve in you waking and stretching toward him, and when he pulls back, it’s only far enough that his lips barely graze the corner of your mouth.

Waiting, poised, always right there if you need more.

And you always seem to need more.

“C’mon,” he urges, his voice raspy from sleep, infused with a smugness you’d like to resent — because he knows he’s won this round. “Tell me again how much better I am than everyone else.”

You laugh before he can kiss it back out of you, a warm burst of affection filling in the little space between you.

“Such an ego trip,” you mutter softly. “But, unfortunately for literally every other man on earth, you are kind of ruining the curve here, Dr. Abbot.” 

“That’s what I thought.” 

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling anyway. “See, that confidence really shouldn’t be as attractive as it is —especially since you spent all last night watching Victoria and Samira scout alternatives for me.”

His fingers tense slightly against your waist, pulling you that much closer as his brows lift with genuine offense. “Should I have been worried?”

“Maybe a little,” you tease, unable to help yourself. “They were getting ambitious by the end there.”

He exhales, voice husky and low. “Let them get ambitious. They’ll just have to get used to being disappointed.”

You cant your head to the side and let your lips skim the sharp, firm line of his jaw, feeling the small catch in his breath as it happens.

That tiny lovely moment that reminds you all that swagger is something wonderfully human, something you can touch and affect and undo a little.

“They just don’t know the position’s already been monopolized.” 

“And it’s a position I’m extremely attached to, baby.” His lips twitch as his thumb keeps tracing small circles into your skin. “Although,” he murmurs, “there are a few other positions I’m equally invested in exploring with you.”

“Cheeky.”

The accusation loses most of its force when you can feel the tips of your ears burning.

You don’t wait for him to answer. That would only give him room to keep going, and he is very good at that, good at pressing exactly where you are weakest until you dissolve on contact. 

So you put a hand to him instead and guide him back, trading positions until his shoulders are against the mattress and he is looking up from the pillows.

He lets you do it without a fight (the only way you could manage it), only smiling as he runs his hands along your naked sides in long idle strokes until his palms settle against the valet of your chest.

After that you have to look away. Or rather, down. It’s easier to fold yourself against him than to hold his gaze when it gets like that, open and intent and almost too knowing.

Better to focus on the terrain of him. The freckles and beauty marks and scattered dark points across his skin that your fingers can follow and reorder into something legible. A constellation, naturally. Andromeda before they put her back up in the night sky where everyone could stare and nobody could touch. 

A sudden knock at the door jolts both of you apart, but you barely make it half an inch away from Jack before the door swings open anyway, accompanied by a voice you would recognize in any state of consciousness. 

“Babe, please tell me you’re awake, because we’ve all been dying to hear if you liked that guy from last night. Also, we found his Instagram and —” Victoria’s voice dies on the spot.

You make a tiny, strangled sound of pure horror.

Thankfully, Jack reacts for you, rolling you back into the mattress and yanking the sheet up over your head like that is somehow going to undo the last ten seconds instead of simply turning you into a very obvious person-shaped lump.

Which also doesn’t solve the larger issue, namely that there is a very naked senior attending what is meant to be your bed, in your room.

So much for plausible deniability.

“Oh,” Victoria says. Then, apparently finding that insufficiently expansive: “oh my god.” Beneath the sheet your face goes so hot it feels chemical. “Wow. This is —” She breaks off. You can practically hear the competing impulses at work: decorum on one side, unrestrained glee on the other. “I mean, congratulations, but also wow.”

Jack does not even have the decency to sound flustered. “Thanks.”

You sigh. At this point you’re not sure there’s really anything left to do but surrender gracefully to the smoking ruin of your secret. 

“Would you believe he’s just here for a really, really thorough rounds update?” you ask, peeking out from the sheets with what you feel is a very convincing amount of innocence. 

“On vacation?” she asks flatly. “Wow. Healthcare workers are getting more and more dedicated.”

Jack settles further back against the pillows. “Patient care never stops.”

Victoria presses her lips together tightly. It’s obvious she is fighting for her life not to laugh, and maybe not even fighting that hard.

“Right. Message received. I’m gonna give you two your privacy. Samira owes me forty bucks, so I need to go collect on that anyway.”

She slams the door shut behind her. 

You drop the sheet at last and look up at the ceiling, momentarily unable to imagine a more useful direction in which to direct your face.

“So,” you say, sitting up and giving Jack what you mean to be a stern glare, “I think the secret aspect of this relationship may be over.” 

He glances at you. “Did we even have a secret, really?”

“Maybe for like, a week.”

He kisses you again. The thesis remains intact. Jack Abbot has the nicest lips you’ve ever kissed, and now, apparently, that is no longer private research.

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

It’s too bright out today. Blindingly so. Like the sun crawled out of bed nursing a petty grudge specifically against your corneas and decided today was the day it would exact revenge.

Your palms form an ineffective visor above your eyes, everything still burns despite this.

The sand throws light back at you in sharp, splintering flashes, like someone crushed up a chandelier and scattered it along the shore, sea spread out before you in that lurid, too-perfect blue that does not look real anywhere outside of vacation brochures and edited Instagram posts.

You squint toward the shoreline, blinking against the glare until Emma and Joy emerge in pieces.

A moving arm. Emma springing up and down at the edge of the surf. Joy beside her, louder, both hands around her mouth with the grave urgency of someone trying to rescue you from land.

Which is ironic because you are on land. And land is safe.

Land is reasonable. Land is not going to seize your ankles with freezing water and stop your heart out of spite.

Whitaker’s speaker thuds behind you, the bass breaking open in the breeze as Joy yells, “Stop being such a wuss!” and Emma adds, a little gentler, “Come on, it’s really not that cold!” 

“They're just gonna keep bugging you, you know,” Jack butts in, flipping another page of his book with a flick of his wrist. “Might as well rip the band-aid off.” 

You glance sideways at him, stretched beneath the umbrella like some indolent deity, skin still glistening from the generous layer of sunscreen you smeared into his chest earlier, fingertips skittering shyly over muscles and bones as he tolerated it with begrudging patience.

His shoulders, however, still blush pink at the edges, a physical monument to yesterday’s disregard for your very detailed and considerate planning.

Jack Abbot would rather burn a little than admit you might know best. The eternal martyr, sacrificing comfort at the altar of pride.

You didn’t give him the chance today.

“But the sand,” you protest, words coming out a little more whiny than intended, each syllable a tiny balloon of anxiety popping mid-air. “It gets wet, Jack, and then it sticks in between my toes, and dries in weird little crusty patches, and then I’m stuck thinking about that all afternoon instead of, I don’t know, enjoying myself, which is the entire point of a vacation — at least as far as I understand vacations, and —”

Jack’s book snaps shut decisively, interrupting your spiraling train of thought.

He stares at you, expression caught somewhere between amused tolerance and weary affection, as though he’s watched you spin yourself dizzy like this too many times before. And he has.

“Hey.” His voice is level, gently pulling you back to earth by the scruff of your neck. “We’re at a beach. Sand is inevitable. Rinse it off, dry your feet, move on. You’re preemptively ruining your own day, you realize that, right?” 

A helpless little pout blooms across your mouth, the tired-and-true expression you reserve for only the direst emergencies. Which, admittedly, occurs more often than you’d like to acknowledge.

It’s practically foolproof.

And the way Jack’s gaze softens in increments demonstrates that.

He sighs in response, an unconvincing performance of irritation, eyes half-lidded in exaggerated exasperation.

“Look,” he mutters, resignation thickening his voice, “if it gets that bad, just come back up here and I’ll...I don’t know, help rinse the sand off myself, if that’s what it takes.” 

“Kay,” you mumble, the concession melting off your tongue in the most petulant way possible, fingers fussing at the edges of your cover-up, dragging it upwards.

“There we are,” he drawls, squinting to look at you. “Atta girl.” 

You resist the urge to stick out your tongue at him as you pull it fully off.

And when you do, a sudden, piercing wolf-whistle splits emerges from somewhere in the sea of your peers.

You reel backwards until the backs of your legs nearly knock into Jack’s chair.

You freeze when you get your bearings, cover-up still bunched in your fists, shoulders crawling toward your ears as Dana’s voice sails across the beach.

You think it might be loud enough to alert passing boats.

“Well, damn. Didn’t have you pegged as the type.” 

For a second you think she means the bikini, which is revealing, yes, but nothing crazy.

And that would be bad on it’s own, honestly, because it’s weird enough to have your coworkers perceive you in swimwear, but then Santos gasps from your left.

“Little Miss Prim-and-Proper has a tramp stamp?”

You can feel your eyes double in size.

You release a strangled little laugh. At least, you meant for it to be laughter. You think it sounds more like a sparrow smacking headfirst into a glass window.

“Oh, it’s — it’s nothing,” you insist, swatting a hand. You hope no one notices that the pitch of your voice has risen several octaves. “I honestly forgot it was there.” 

A lie. A terrible one at that. Because yes, obviously, people forget about permanent body art all the time. Perfectly normal. Perfectly believable.

You turn so your back is toward the ocean, blocking the majority of everyone’s view of the damning evidence as your palm flutters helplessly near your hip.

Whitaker rolls slowly onto one elbow from his spot on a towel, eyes narrowing. “Is it, like, supposed to be symbolic?”

“Is — what?” 

“The tattoo,” he elaborates, waving a hand in your general vicinity, like he’s reluctant to approach it directly, wary of frightening you off. Valid concern. You do feel like a flight risk at this exact given moment. “Does it represent something meaningful?” 

Dana snorts into her drink. “Yeah, kid. It means she had a wild semester and access to eighty dollars.”

You part your lips, words half-formed. Explanations or possibly just meaningless static. More likely the latter.

Because with everyone’s eyes suddenly looking at you waiting for you to say something, the attention feels a little too overwhelming.

“It’s a pomegranate,” Jack announces suddenly, rescuing you from yourself. You could kiss him right then and there. “For Persephone. Rebirth, renewal, growth, all of that. She got it sophomore year of college.”

“Yeah,” you agree faintly. You glance helplessly from face to face, feeling every glance bounce painfully between you and Jack, dissecting the air between you into tiny, fragile pieces. “It’s, um — exactly that.” 

Samira’s the first one to offer a reassuring smile. “Oh, that’s actually really beautiful.”

You release another round of nervous laughter, shoulders inching down cautiously. A little uncertain whether you’re in the clear just yet.

Apparently not. 

Langdon jerks his head toward Jack in one jerky movement, sunglasses nearly tumbling from the bridge of his nose. “Hang on. Why the hell does he know that?” 

Your stomach does a violent drop. Like someone yanked a trapdoor beneath you and forgot to cushion you fall.

Shit.

Of course. Why wouldn’t this happen?

Because clearly, the tattoo itself was only a minor humiliation, the polite opening number before the headline act of Jack publicly revealing his encyclopedic awareness of the ink approximately one inch above your ass.

But this is salvageable, right? It’s plausible that you would’ve told him this on a night shift after too much adrenaline and too little sleep.

Your gaze swings toward Jack, wordlessly pleading, imploring him to explain this all away, practically mentally gripping him by the collar and begging for mercy, but he only shrugs. Lazy and indifferent with the tilt of his burnt shoulders.

“Kind of hard to miss from certain angles.”

You watch everyone’s faces go slack jawed.

You don’t wait around the witness the dawning realization behind you.

There’s no need; you can feel it spreading through the air like spilled ink soaking silently into paper.

A terrible little chain of silence, then gasps, then hissed laughter like matches flicking alight one by one. You’ll never live it down, you think.

Someone’s voice calls after you, but you’re already moving towards the ocean.

Suddenly, wet sand seems acceptable. Inviting. Wonderful, even.

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

“Do you do this for all the girls?”

You’re a drowned thing perched on porcelain, damp and ungainly and trying very hard not to think too hard about the fact that Frank Langdon is standing between your knees with a hairbrush in his hand.

A sight for sore eyes if you’ve ever seen one.

Your hair hangs wet down your back while he works through it in sections, slower than you expected, rougher than necessary, and still somehow not rough as you would like. 

But that’s an inside thought.

He catches on the knots, drags them loose with a muttered exhale, then smooths the strands down with a concentration that feels almost insulting in its sincerity.

Like this is annoying. Like you are annoying. Like he is being dragged through some inconvenient act of service by the cruel hand of fate and his own intact moral code. And maybe he is. You can’t remember in truth.

All you know is he looks very nice like this.

Sun-burnished and tired and quietly put-upon, with that hard mouth of his set in a line severe as a coastline in winter. 

And you, with your pink little arsenal of good perfume and brighter smiles and the ability to joke your way out of almost anything, are suddenly defenseless under the close-up precision of him.

Every crease at the corner of his eyes. All of it too distinct. Too lovely.

“I don’t do this for you, either. You were standing there looking helpless.”

Which is rude, first and foremost. Rude and also difficult to dispute.

You don’t even have a real comeback ready because your brain is still trying to reconstruct the chain of events that got you here.

You’d only come inside to assess the damage, meaning a quick mirror check, maybe a mournful little silence for the state of your hair, and suddenly there he was in the mirror behind you, a cloudfront of shoulders. Like the patron saint of disapproval had decided to manifest in broad shorts.

Then there were words. Something cutting and dry from Frank, something sparkly and defensive from you, words back, words forth, words that shouldn’t mean anything at all.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, in the strange conversational undertow you two are always getting dragged out by, the distance closed without permission, and he ended up with a brush in his hands and between your legs.

How many times can you mention this before it gets old? You’ll test it to find out.

You puff a dramatic little breath out through your nose. “Helpless is such an ugly word, you know. I prefer temporarily glamor-compromised.”

His brows furrow.

“Fine. Temporarily glamor-compromised, then. Doesn’t change the fact that you were still standing there like a drowned kitten, obviously needing someone to step in.”

He drags the brush through the ends of your hair with slow, unhurried strokes, and the mismatch of him is almost enough to make you dizzy. His voice still carries that rough scrape to it, but his hands are built and used with such care.

You wonder if this is what he’s like in action at work. You’d never seen it, really, given your aversion to anything gross and scalpel-y. You avoid the trauma bay at all costs.

But it’s a nice thought to imagine, if you scratch out the gruesome parts and just focus on what his hands would be like under such pressure. Careful and precise and exacting.

You lean forward before you can think better of it, knees knocking into his sides, and lift a finger to tap the tip of his nose.

“I think,” you murmur, watching his face up close like it might tell on him, “you might just enjoy fussing over me.”

He doesn’t flinch like you thought he would.

Instead, his fingers gather the strands at the nape of your neck and give a small pull, bringing you that fraction closer.

Close enough that the rest of the room drops away. Close enough that your eyes snag on the places the sun has kissed and then, apparently, bitten him a little.

Cheekbones lit with more warmth than usual, and sprinkled across both, so faint you almost miss at first, are freckles.

You stare for a second too long, because really, what is that about? What bureaucratic failure in the heavens allowed this man to be built with that level of unnecessary ornamentation?

“And I think,” he says, lowering his voice an octave, “you enjoy being fussed over.”

You feel your mouth run dry, taking an unnecessary swallow to try and reduce some of the swelling.

“Maybe I do —”

The bathroom door swings open. 

Perlah stops dead in the threshold.

Her gaze moves once. Up your glistening legs, to your perch on the marble counter, to Frank standing squarely between them with one hand still tangled in your hair like this is a normal occurrence. Like this is some totally reasonable use of departmental time and resources. 

Whoops. Might be hard to explain this one.

One of her eyebrows lifts in a slow, gorgeous arc, the expression of a woman upon whom fate has just bestowed a gift basket full of gossip. 

“My mistake,” she says with a sweet as poison grin. “Didn’t realize Mr. and Mrs. Langdon had the bathroom occupied.”

“It’s actually Dr. and Mrs., if we’re being tradi —” you start at the exact time Frank says, “Leave.”

She lifts her hands in surrender as she starts to back out.

“Leaving.” There’s a sing-song quality to her voice.

The door swings shut behind her.

You imagine the entire Airbnb will know about your made-up transgressions in approximately 0.3 seconds.

You clear your throat. “For the record, Mrs. Langdon really does have quite a nice ring to it.”

Frank’s stare is pointedly blank. A stare so incredulous it could stop a pulse at twenty paces. The kind that should, by all logic, make you behave. 

It does not.

“Get down from the counter.”

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!