Tobi

His warmth still tingled on your lips, the scratch of his stubble against your skin. You groaned. How were you supposed to make it to work now? 

Your social work internship - unpaid, no living stipend - and now, somehow, complicated by a ridiculous work crush. You hadn’t thought you’d develop feelings for him. That old man. He carried enough issues to keep your social work brain busy for years. Enough that you found yourself diagnosing him every time he spoke.

You did three night shifts a week for experience, all while clocking full time at a dead-end job that had nothing to do with social work. Your life felt like an endless grind, the finish line nowhere in sight. 

Two years of full-time classes plus unpaid fieldwork, on top of a bachelor’s that somehow took five and a half years, then the giant exam covering everything you’d learned, and two more years of supervised practice. And today was only day two. Day one had been an absolute shit show.

You watched your supervisor tell three patients their insurance wouldn’t cover treatment. You learned how to report neglect through the proper channels. You filed stacks of paperwork for free. You sat in on a family being told their mother had died. Then you endured meeting after meeting after meeting. Just when you thought it was over, you and your supervisor got paged to a psychiatric patient brandishing a scalpel.

Of course he zeroed in on you.

You were obviously the newbie. One wild swing nicked your forearm. Not deep, but enough to leave a mark. Enough to bleed. 

That’s when you met Mr. PTSD - the grizzled veteran who charged in like a knight in scrubs, tackled the guy, dosed him with Midazolam, and ended the ordeal in under a minute. Then he led you to a private room and stitched you up himself. Two stitches. A battle scar, if you were feeling dramatic.

All you could think about were his hazel-green eyes, locked on the task, and the way his salt-and-pepper hair, mostly salt, let’s be honest, was mussed from the scuffle. He was everything your life didn’t need right now. And you already knew he was going to ruin your fucking life.

By the time you made it to the hospital, you had a very solid, very rational explanation for the dream.

Sleep deprivation did things to people. Strange things. Everyone knew that.

You badged in and exchanged tired nods with the day shift staff on their way out.

As you walked, you rubbed at the wound on your forearm without thinking about it. It was warm. Warmer than yesterday, maybe. It ached in a low, persistent way that you filed under problems for later.

You rounded the corner toward your supervisor's office and walked directly into a person.

Solid. Immovable. Definitely not a wall.

Hands caught your arms before you could bounce off completely.

"Morning."

You looked up.

Jack Abbot.

"Oh, God," you said.

One eyebrow climbed. "That bad?"

"No - sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Careful. Could've been a bed coming around that corner."

"Right. Sorry, Dr. Abbot -"

"Your arm." His attention dropped to your forearm, his grip shifting, careful. "How's it feeling?"

You looked down at it. "Fine. Sore. A little warm, but -"

"Let me see it before your shift?"

You glanced up and caught yourself looking at his mouth for half a second too long. "Sure."

He led you to one of the high-needs rooms and gestured at the bed.

You sat. He pulled over a stool and settled in front of you.

Close enough that you caught his aftershave.

You didn't comment on that.

He unwrapped the bandage without a word. After a moment, his frown deepened.

"It's infected." He pressed lightly around the stitches. "Should've put you on antibiotics yesterday."

You weren't really listening. You were watching the way his focus narrowed. The slight drop of his lashes, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver coming through in his beard more than the brown now.

"You know what?" he said.

"What?"

He didn't look up yet. "Coming back the day after that, no paycheck, straight off a day shift." He glanced up. "That's not nothing."

The heat reached your ears before you could stop it.

"How did you know about the day shift?"

"Asked your supervisor."

Your stomach turned over.

"Wanted to check on you." He was already reaching for the fresh bandage. "And I was curious about you." He said it like it was obvious. Like it wasn't a thing.

He finished wrapping your arm and gave it a brisk pat.

ThThen he leaned back on the stool, elbows on his knees.

"So," he said. "When do you sleep?"

You blinked. "Sorry?"

"You're pulling day shifts, three nights here a week, and grad school on top of it." He looked at you. "So. When do you sleep?"

"I sleep."

"When?"

"Sometimes."

"Not an answer."

You shrugged.

"Lunch breaks for class. Then five-thirty to seven-thirty before I come in. Midnight to seven-thirty after."

Something moved across his face.

"Jesus."

"It's temporary."

"Sure it is."

You opened your mouth, then closed it.

"Personal life?" he asked. "Friends? Anything?"

You laughed. "No."

"I'm not joking."

"Neither am I."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Dating?"

Your stomach dropped. "What?"

"Boyfriend?" A pause. "Girlfriend." Another pause. "I don't -" His ears went pink. "Partner. That's the word."

That made you laugh. He exhaled, visibly relieved.

He reached for his prescription pad and scrawled something down.

"Here."

You looked at it. "Antibiotics?"

"Antibiotics."

"Thrilling."

"You got stabbed on day one."

"Sliced, technically."

He gave you a look. "Try not to get stabbed again."

"I'll do my best."

"No." Flat. "Do better than that."

A knock sounded at the door before either of you could speak. It swung open and the night social worker stepped inside. "There you are."  

Her eyes immediately found you. "Well, I’ll be damned."  

You blinked. "What?"  

"I honestly didn’t think you’d be back tonight."  

Your hand went to the fresh bandage on your arm. "Oh."  

She tapped it. "Most people don’t get stabbed with a scalpel on their first day and then show up for round two."  

Abbot snorted. "Told 'em the same."  

"Thanks," the social worker said, nodding to him. "See? The adults are worried about you."  

"I’m right here," he grumbled.  

"Exactly."  

Despite yourself, you laughed. She shook her head. "Seriously, though - how’s the arm?"  

"Infected, apparently."  

Abbot held up the prescription pad. "Taken care of."  

"Good." Her expression softened. "You don’t have to prove anything. Nobody would blame you for taking a few days off."  

Her concern caught you off guard. "I’m okay."  

She gave you a look that said she wasn’t convinced but wouldn’t push it. "Well, since you’re here, might as well put you to work."  

Abbot groaned. "There it is."  

"We’ve got a veteran in room twelve," she said, the joking atmosphere vanishing instantly.  

"He came in during day shift for a psychiatric crisis," she continued. "Agreed to a safety plan, promised he’d see his therapist tomorrow, and was discharged."  

"And?" Abbot asked.  

She sighed. "He got home and came right back about an hour later."  

Abbot’s shoulders slumped. "The urges got worse?"  

"He says they’re overwhelming." She folded her arms. "No support system. No family nearby, no friends he feels comfortable calling."  

"Any active plan?" Abbot pressed.  

"He’s being cagey."  

That wasn’t good.  

"He did the right thing coming back," she said. "But he keeps apologizing, convinced he’s wasting everyone’s time."  

Silence fell. Then she looked at Abbot. "I’d like you there."  

His eyes narrowed. "Because he’s a veteran?"  

"Because you’re a veteran."  

After a moment, Abbot nodded. "Okay."  

She turned to you. "And you’re coming too."  

You pointed at yourself. "Me?"  

"It’s your second day."  

"Exactly."  

"Perfect time to learn."  

You glanced between them. "What am I supposed to do?"  

She smiled. "Watch. Listen. Learn."  

Abbot stood, pushing his stool back. "That’s social worker code for ‘try not to say anything stupid.’"  

She pointed at him. "See? Already learning."  

You rolled your eyes and climbed off the bed. The three of you headed down the hall toward room twelve.

Room twelve was silent when you stepped in. Too silent.  

The veteran perched on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor. He looked about late thirties, early forties. A ball cap lay beside him. His fingers were so tightly interlaced his knuckles had turned white.  

Sarah, the social worker, tapped gently on the open door. "Hey, Mark. Mind if we come in?"  

He shrugged without looking up. "Not like I can stop you."  

She offered a small, encouraging smile. "I’m Sarah. Remember, we met when you arrived. This is Dr. Abbot, and this is my intern."  

Mark glanced up just long enough to register the three of you, then dropped his gaze again. "Great. More people."  

He didn’t sound angry. Just worn out.  

Sarah eased into a chair across from him. "I know you’ve already talked to a lot of folks."  

"Yeah."  

"And I know that’s frustrating."  

He let out a bitter laugh. "Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover it."  

She nodded. "Fair enough."  

Quiet settled. You shifted your weight, uneasy. Sarah didn’t flinch. Abbot sat unmoved.  

Finally Mark exhaled. "I shouldn’t have come back."  

Sarah waited. "What makes you say that?"  

He rubbed his face. "I was here before. I told everyone I’d be fine, that I’d see my therapist tomorrow."  

"You did."  

"And then I got home," his voice cracked "made it maybe an hour."  

You and Sarah and Abbot stayed silent.  

"The second I walked into my apartment…" He shook his head. "It just got loud again."  

You caught Abbot’s eyes. Something in his expression tightened ever so slightly. Nothing dramatic, but you noticed.  

Mark laughed without humor. "‘Loud.’ Doesn’t even make sense."  

"It makes sense," Abbot said softly. "To me."  

Silence fell. Then Mark looked up - really looked at someone for the first time. Abbot leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, no hint of judgment or pity. Just understanding.  

"You served?" Mark asked.  

Abbot nodded. "Army."  

Mark studied him. "What’d you do?"  

"Medic."  

A short laugh escaped Mark. "Of course."  

You saw Mark’s shoulders drop a fraction, just enough.  

"Then you know."  

"Yeah," Abbot replied. "I know."  

You tried to track Sarah’s technique, how she validated Mark, guided him toward safety plans, but every time you looked away you found yourself watching Abbot. He never took over. He rarely spoke. When he did, it was concise, thoughtful, exactly what Mark needed.  

Bit by bit, the tension in the room eased. By the time Sarah was outlining overnight admission, follow-up care, and community resources, Mark looked less like a man drowning and more like someone ready to accept help. And through it all, Abbot stayed steady, present.  

You knew you should focus on the social-work lesson unfolding. Really, you did. But each time your eyes wandered, they always landed back on Dr. Abbot.

The door clicked shut behind the three of you.

Sarah turned to you immediately. "What'd you notice?"

"About -"

"The interaction."

You glanced at Abbot. He looked entertained.

"Don't," he said.

"I wasn't -"

"You were."

You looked back at Sarah. "He opened up more once Dr. Abbot mentioned his service."

"Good." She kept looking at you.

There was more. Of course there was more.

"Dr. Abbot was validating him without…" you searched for the phrasing, "without centering himself."

"Also good." Sarah started moving down the hall. You followed. "Anything else?"

You thought about how little you'd actually been paying attention to Sarah.

"Active listening," you said.

"There you go."

Abbot put his hands in his pockets.

"See? Learning."

"Being interrogated."

"Same thing," he said.

Sarah shook her head. "You're both wrong, actually."

Abbot raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

She pointed at you. "You're learning to be a social worker." Then at him. "And you're teaching without realizing it."

He grimaced. "God."

"Mm."

"Does that make me old?"

"You were already old."

You laughed. You couldn't help it.

Abbot looked at you like you'd betrayed him. Then something shifted in his expression. Not the careful, measured look he'd worn in room twelve. Something looser. Unguarded.

It lasted only a second.

It was, unfortunately, a very good second.

----

The rest of the shift blurred by. Fortunately so, given how vividly you remembered being stabbed on your first day. You helped several patients sort out their health coverage. Sarah coached you on approaching someone you thought might be a trafficking victim, only for it to turn out to be an entirely different situation. 

You sat in on a talk with a recovering addict, observed discharge planning, and mediated between a doctor and the family of an incapacitated patient. It was a good day. A busy day. An exhausting day. By the time Sarah finally sent you off, your brain felt like mush.

You should have gone home. Instead, you found yourself standing in the ER, staring into space. You needed a buffer between the hospital and the rest of your life. A chance to breathe. A chance to think. A chance to stop thinking.

Your eyes drifted to the elevators. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you stepped inside. The floor buttons lit up in sequence. You scanned them until you saw one labeled "Roof." It needed badge access. Worst case, it simply wouldn’t register. You swiped your badge. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the light turned green. "Oh." The doors slid shut, and you went up.

When they reopened, you stepped onto the roof. 

A cool evening breeze hit your face and you inhaled deeply - for the first time all shift. The city stretched below you, lights still shining against a night sky. A long breath escaped you, turning into a small, relieved groan. Maybe this was exactly what you needed.

"Whoa there." You nearly jumped out of your skin. Spinning around, you saw Dr. Abbot standing a few feet away, his toes alarmingly close to the edge. "What are you doing up here?" he asked.

You stared at him, then at how close he was to the ledge. "I could ask you the same thing," you said.

His mouth twitched. "Fair."

You stepped over and stood beside him, nowhere near the brink. Abbot noticed. "Smart."

You glanced down. "Unlike some people."

He chuckled. "I’ve been coming up here for years."

"Seriously?"

He nodded. "Whenever the shift gets particularly bad."

"How often is that?"

He looked out across the city lights. "More than I’d like."

You sank down onto a near low wall, leaned back, and watched the city breathe beneath you.

The quiet between you wasn’t awkward. Just still.  

After a moment, he exhaled. "That veteran really struck a chord."  

You turned to him. "Because he was ex-military?"  

"Partly," he said without looking away from the skyline. "Mostly because he did it the right way."  

You knitted your brow. "What are you getting at?"  

"He asked for help." He answered at once. "He realized he couldn’t manage alone, walked into an ER, and admitted he was terrified."  

Abbot shook his head slowly. "Most people don’t do that."  

His gravity made your throat tighten. Before you knew it, you’d fallen into case-worker mode. "So you’re -"  

He groaned.  

"- frustrated?" you finished hesitantly.  

"No."  

"What?"  

"Don’t start social-working me."  

A laugh slipped out. "You don’t want to talk about your feelings?"  

"Not at all."  

"You know that’s not healthy."  

"I’m aware."  

"You always tell your patients…"  

"I know what I tell them."  

You gave him a small smile. "And?"  

"Stop diagnosing me."  

"Social-working."  

"Whatever."  

For a moment you both cracked a grin. Then your smile fell.  

"Still, he’s going to be alright."  

He glanced at you. "The veteran?"  

You nodded.  

"He asked for help."  

On the rooftop, wind scoured your face as you stared at the distant city lights, blurring in the night.  

"I didn’t."  

You felt his expression shift before you dared look.  

"Three times."  

The words tumbled out before you could stop them.  

He spoke so softly you almost missed it. "Three times?"  

You nodded again. "The last was in 2020, during the pandemic."  

Abbot said nothing, didn’t fill the silence, and you found you preferred it that way.  

"It all just... fell apart at once." You shrugged, trying to make it sound insignificant. "I was angry for a long time that it failed."  

Your confession hung between you, raw and vulnerable. When you finally met his eyes, they were unwavering.  

"I’m glad it didn’t work."  

His simple words landed heavy. You looked away first - you didn’t trust yourself to keep looking at him.  

Silence settled again, carried away by the wind and the muted hum of the city far below. Minutes passed.  

At last you cleared your throat. "I should get going. I’m on duty at eight."  

"Yeah."  

His voice was rougher than usual. Neither of you moved.  

Finally you rose, slung your bag over your shoulder.  

"See you tomorrow, Dr. Abbot."  

His lips curved in a brief, hesitant smile. "See you tomorrow."  

You stepped toward the elevator, feeling his eyes on your back. Just before the doors closed, you glanced over your shoulder. He was still there. 

Watching the city, watching you go.

--

Weeks passed. Then months.

The pattern established itself without any particular decision on your part. Shift ends, bag over shoulder, badge still clipped to your chest, elevator button for the roof. Sometimes you'd find Abbot already up there, still in his coat, hands in his pockets, looking out at the city like he was waiting for it to explain itself. Sometimes he'd arrive later, slightly out of breath, muttering something about a consult that ran long. Sometimes the roof was empty when you got there and stayed empty all night.

You'd started keeping a fleece in your locker for the colder evenings.

Pittsburgh at dusk had a particular quality you'd never noticed before. The way the bridges lit up in sequence, the way the rivers caught the last of the light before the city swallowed it. You and Abbot talked about everything and nothing up there. The weird bureaucratic logic of insurance denials. What it had been like to do field medicine. Whether the vending machine on the third floor had always been broken or if something specific had happened to it. Abbots late wife. Your suicide attempts. 

On other nights neither of you said much. You'd sit against the half wall and let the exhaustion breathe out of you slowly, the way it couldn't anywhere else in the building.

The nights you came up alone were a different thing entirely.

On those nights, sometimes, you'd walk closer to the edge than you otherwise would. You were aware of doing it. You were aware of why. There had been a version of you where a rooftop at night was not a neutral place - where the pull of an edge was something other than wind and vertigo. That version felt far away now. Far enough that you could stand here and feel the distance like something solid underfoot.

You never walked to the edge when Abbot was there. You weren't sure he'd understand that it wasn't what it looked like. Or maybe you were sure he would, and that was somehow worse.

---

The last fifteen minutes of your shift were supposed to be the easy part.

You were halfway through your notes when the overhead page came through. Overdose, incoming. You finished the sentence you were typing. Answered a question from Sarah. The night had been full of worse things.

Then the doors opened.

The room moved the way it always did: nurses converging, someone calling out vitals, someone else already on the phone. The particular controlled urgency of an ER doing what an ER does. You'd seen it a hundred times.

The patient was maybe sixteen.

Someone said suicide attempt. Someone said there was a note. After that the words stopped registering individually. You were aware of staring. You were aware that you shouldn't be. The kid looked so young on the stretcher. So scared. So…

The room kept moving around you. Loud, then far away, then loud again.

They stabilized quickly. The attempt hadn't worked. Barring something unforeseen, they were going to be fine.

The staff visibly exhaled. Someone made a quiet joke. The tension broke the way it usually did after a good outcome.

You exhaled too.

You were glad. You were genuinely, completely glad.

That wasn't the problem.

For the remainder of the shift you ran on autopilot. Helping where you could, answering questions when asked, and ticking off every task Sarah gave you. You were convincing enough that nobody pressed you when you insisted you were fine. Finally, Sarah glanced at the clock and told you to head home. You nodded, packed your things, and lied outright when she asked if you were okay.

The moment your shift ended, you walked straight to the elevators. You skipped your locker. You skipped coffee. You didn’t pause to think. You just needed the roof. When the doors slid open and cool air washed over you, the pressure in your chest became almost too much. You stepped out, crossed the concrete without slowing, and only realized how close you were when you found yourself standing inches from the edge.

Below you, the city flowed in rivers of headlights and neon. The wind tugged at your clothes as you shoved your hands in your pockets and stared at the skyline. But the teenager’s face wouldn’t leave your mind. 

Sixteen.

You shut your eyes, and memories came flooding back: hospital rooms, frantic phone calls, the looks on people’s faces afterward: the disappointment, the relief, the shame. You hated how fast it all returned. 

After years of work, therapy, and just surviving, one terrified kid on a stretcher was enough to drag it all up again.

You lost track of time. 

Then a voice cut through the wind. "Move." 

You snapped your eyes open. Abbot stood a few yards away, his face carefully neutral but his eyes filled with something you’d never seen before. 

"Excuse me?" you said. 

"Move away from the edge." You frowned. 

"I’m fine." 

"I know." 

"Then what’s the problem?" His jaw tightened. "

You’re six inches from a six-story drop." 

Instinctively, you looked down. He was right, you hadn’t realized how close you’d gotten.

"You think I’m going to jump?" 

"No," he said immediately. Firm, certain. 

"Really?" 

"No." 

Some tension slid from your shoulders. "Then why are you freaking out?" 

He let out a short, humorless laugh and looked away toward the city. "I’m not freaking out." 

"You absolutely are." 

His eyes closed for a moment, as if he’d revealed more than he meant to. 

When he looked back, his expression had softened. "You told me you’ve tried three times." Suddenly the rooftop felt small. "You said the last one was during the pandemic," he added, voice steady but careful. "And now I find you standing on the edge after a rough shift." 

You looked away first. "Oh." 

"Yeah."

The wind swept between you, carrying the sounds of distant traffic up from the streets below.\

"How'd you know it was rough for me?"

Abbot stared at you for a moment, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"I knew it would be the second we got the call on that kid."

You swallowed.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

For a moment, you both stayed silent.  

Then a realization hit you.  

"You were there?" you asked, his brow lifted.  "In the room?"  

"Yeah."  

You tried to summon the faces around the teenager’s bed - the nurses, doctors, respiratory techs, security staff - but they all blurred together: movements, voices, fragments.  

You frowned. "I don’t think I remember anyone who was there."  

Abbot’s expression softened instantly. "Exactly."  

That one word landed in your gut like a stone. It wasn’t blame, it was confirmation. He’d watched you dissociate, drift somewhere he couldn’t follow, and he’d waited until you came back.  

"You stopped hearing people about halfway through," he added quietly.  

Heat crept up your neck. "What?"  

"You had that look," he said, searching for the right words. "The same expression you wore the night you told me about the attempts."  

He’d noticed. He’d catalogued your every expression. It hit you harder than you expected.  

"I was worried," he admitted, voice low. "Not just as your doctor. As… me."  

The unspoken weight of "me" hung between you. Not Dr. Abbot - Jack.  

"Come sit," he said, nodding at the low wall where you usually perched. "Away from the edge."  

You slid down onto the concrete, hugging your knees. He settled beside you, closer than usual but not touching. The space between you thrummed with unsaid words.  

You sat like that for a while, listening to the city pulse below, oblivious to the small, monumental moment unfolding six stories up.  

"There was someone," he said suddenly, voice rough. "Here. At the hospital."  

You kept your eyes on the skyline. "Go on."  

"Nothing serious. Just… physical. No strings, no expectations. Easy."  

Each word pricked you. You reminded yourself: you were an intern, he was your superior, you’d only shared one kiss… in a dream.  

"I ended it this afternoon," he said, finally looking at you.  

Your head snapped around. "What? Why?"  

He let out a humorless laugh. "Why do you think?"  

Your heart pounded. "Don’t say things you don’t mean, Jack."  

"When have I?" he countered, eyes locking on yours in the dim light. "Since the day I stitched your arm, all I could think was tracing your jawline instead of cleaning your wound."  

The air between you thickened, charged with years of unspoken longing.  

"I changed my schedule," he continued. "Picked up an extra night shift… one that overlaps with yours, starting next week."  

You could barely breathe. "This is a really bad idea."  

"Probably," he agreed, sliding his hand over yours on the cold concrete and lacing his fingers through yours deliberately. "But I’m tired of pretending I don’t want this."  

His other hand rose to cup your cheek, impossibly gentle. It was the same hand that had steadied you when he stitched you up, but now it felt softer, more personal.  

"We could get fired," you whispered, even as you tilted your face into his palm.  

"I know," he murmured, leaning closer, eyes flicking to your lips and back. He hesitated, giving you one last chance to pull away.  

You met his gaze, saw the same conflict and desire you’d known in your dream, and let a small, defiant smile appear.  

"You can kiss me, you know," you whispered.  

His tension melted. His eyes closed briefly, then opened dark and certain.  

"Fuck it," he breathed.  

Then he kissed you.

Hungry, urgent, nothing like the tentative dream version. His hand tangled in your hair, angling your head, and you returned his kiss with equal desperation. The scratch of stubble against your skin was everything you’d imagined, and infinitely more.  

When you finally broke apart, both of you gasping, he rested his forehead against yours.  

"We’re going to be in so much trouble," you said, though you didn’t care.  

"Probably," he agreed, thumb tracing your jawline. "But I think it’s worth it."

You let him kiss you again, let him guide your jaw and teeth and tongue this time. You leaned into the heat of it, the bristle of his beard, the solid press of his palm at the nape of your neck. You wanted to swallow him whole. Every cell in your body wanted to climb into his lap, to grind and take and fuck until the sky itself splintered and rained down you and Jack Abbot together.

He tasted faintly of bitterness - coffee and exhaustion, maybe - and his hands were restless, sliding from your waist to your ribs, up under your jacket, palms broad and greedy and shaking a little. You popped the first button of his shirt, couldn’t stop yourself. He made a noise, half-protest, half-caving, and then he was kissing you harder, more urgent, as if he needed to bite you to prove this was real.

He grabbed your wrists, trapping them in his large hands and held them against his chest, against the frantic drum of his heartbeat. Then he pushed back, just enough, his breathing ragged and uneven. "Wait. Stop."

Your stomach dropped. Instantly. The way it always did. That sick lurch, that reflexive flinch. You’d done something wrong. You always did something wrong. The button, the grabbing, the wanting. Too much, too fast, too obvious. You pulled your hands free and scrambled to your feet, concrete scraping your palms. "I should go."

"Hey - no." His hand caught your wrist, gentle but firm, and tugged you back down. Not roughly. Just enough. "Don’t. That’s not… that’s not what I meant."

You stood there, half-crouched, heart hammering against your ribs. His thumb moved in slow circles over your pulse point, and you hated that he could probably feel how fast it was.

"Listen to me." His voice was low, rough, stripped of every clinical layer you’d ever heard him wear. "I want you more than you can fucking imagine. You understand me? I want to take you right here on this filthy concrete and fuck your pussy until neither of us remembers our own names."

The words hit you like a wall of heat. You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

"But I’ve got two and a half hours left on this shift." He dragged a hand down his face, and the sound of his palm scraping stubble was obscenely loud in the quiet. "And this roof is - Christ - it’s disgusting. Pigeon shit and cigarette butts and God knows what else. You deserve better than that."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key ring. Three keys, a small silver fob, a worn leather tag. He pressed them into your palm and folded your fingers around them. His hand was warm. Steady. Yours was not.

"Meet me at my place." He was already pulling out his phone, thumbs moving across the screen. Your phone buzzed in your jacket pocket. "I’ll text you the address. Door code’s the last four of my cell. I’ll be there by two. Make yourself at home. Eat whatever you find. Shower. Sleep. Whatever you need."

You stared at the keys in your hand. They were warm from his body. Real. Not a dream this time you were sure, because dreams didn’t have the weight of metal or the smell of hospital antiseptic clinging to someone’s fingers.

"Jack -"

"Don’t overthink it." He stood, brushing grit off his scrubs, and you caught the way his jaw tightened. Like he was physically holding himself back from touching you again. "Go home. My home. I’ll see you in a few hours."

You nodded. Couldn’t trust your voice. The keys dug into your palm, and you clutched them tighter, as if they might evaporate.

He leaned in. Close, so close you could feel the heat radiating off his skin and pressed his mouth to your forehead. Not a kiss, exactly. More like an anchor. Something to tether you to the earth while the rest of you threatened to float away.

"Go," he murmured against your skin. "Before I change my mind about the concrete and let it tear up your skin."

You went. Down the stairwell, through the busy corridors, past the front desk where the night receptionist barely looked up from his phone. The cold night air hit your face in the parking garage, and you gasped, finally breathing again. Your phone buzzed again - the address, a second text with the door code, and then a third:

Don’t drive if you’re tired. Take a cab. I’ll pay for it.

You stood there in the fluorescent glare of the garage, keys clutched in one hand and phone in the other, and you pressed the screen against your chest like it was something alive. Something that could keep.You didn’t call a cab.

You walked to your car on autopilot, slid behind the wheel, and sat there for a long moment with the keys still warm in your palm. His keys. Three of them, and a fob, and that worn leather tag that you couldn’t stop running your thumb over. The parking garage smelled like oil and cold concrete and your own stupid perfume, which you’d sprayed twelve hours ago and which had long since given up.

Two and a half hours. That’s what he’d said.

You started the engine. The radio blared, some late-night talk show you’d left it on, and you stabbed the power button until the silence was deafening.

Your apartment was twenty minutes in the wrong direction. You knew that. You also knew you couldn’t show up at his door smelling like hospital antiseptic and old sweat, wearing the same pair of jeans you’d pulled on at five-thirty in the morning and a shirt with a coffee stain you’d stopped noticing around hour ten. You couldn’t show up looking like the same exhausted, underpaid, barely-surviving mess he’d just kissed on a roof.

So you drove to your apartment.

The streets were empty at this hour, just the occasional delivery truck and the wash of amber streetlights sliding across your windshield. You parked crooked in your usual spot behind the building, took the stairs two at a time because the elevator had been broken since August, and fumbled your own keys at the door twice before the lock caught.

Inside, you dropped everything, his keys, your phone, your jacket, onto the kitchen counter and stood in the middle of your tiny living room with your hands on your hips, breathing hard, like you’d just run a marathon instead of driven twenty minutes.

What the fuck are you doing.

You didn’t have an answer. You just moved.

The shower took three minutes, you were too wired to stand still any longer than that, scrubbing hospital grime off your skin with the cheap lavender soap you’d bought in bulk. You shaved your legs in a hurry, nicked your ankle, swore, kept going. Toweled off with the thin bath sheet that barely covered your thighs and stood in front of the closet with wet hair dripping down your spine.

What did you wear to the apartment of the man who’d just told you he wanted to fuck you until you forgot your own name?

Not a dress. Too much. Not your usual rotation of oversized sweaters and black leggings: too you, too much of the exhausted intern he already knew. You dug past the hangers, past the stack of fieldwork-appropriate blouses, and pulled out the black jeans you saved for the rare occasions when someone dragged you to a bar. They fit like they’d been painted on, tighter than anything you’d wear to the hospital, tighter than anything you’d worn in months, really. You had to lie on the bed to zip them.

Then the top. The dark green one, silk-blend, the one with the neckline that dipped just low enough to make you feel like you were getting away with something. You’d bought it on clearance two years ago and worn it exactly once, to a wedding where no one had looked at you twice. It felt different now. It felt like armor and invitation at the same time.

No bra. You couldn’t find one that didn’t ruin the line of the fabric, and the thought of him seeing the outline through the silk made something hot and reckless coil low in your belly. You pulled on the good underwear instead, the black lace pair you’d forgotten you owned, buried in the back of the drawer, and told yourself it was for you, not for him, which was a lie so obvious you almost laughed out loud.

Mascara. A swipe of the lip stain that came off as more of a flush than a color. You ran your fingers through your damp hair and decided against the blow dryer. You let it fall how it wanted, messy and half-dry, the way it looked when you rolled out of bed. The way it had probably looked on the roof.

You looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror. The woman staring back was someone you almost recognizedcheeks flushed, eyes too bright, the green silk clinging to every line of your body like it had been waiting for this exact night. You looked like you were about to do something stupid and necessary and irreversible.

Good, you thought. That’s the point.

You grabbed your phone, his keys, your jacket, even though the silk top was ridiculous for November, you’d be indoors in twenty minutes, and locked the apartment behind you.

His address was in a part of the city you didn’t know well, the kind of neighborhood where the buildings had doormen and the streetlights were softer. You plugged it into your phone and followed the robotic voice through quiet streets, past closed storefronts and bars letting out their last stragglers. The radio stayed off. The silence felt important.

His building was brick and understated, six stories, with a glass entrance and a small courtyard visible through the lobby windows. You parked across the street, killed the engine, and sat there for a moment with your hands still on the wheel. Your pulse was doing something absurd in your throat. You pressed your palm flat against it, as if you could physically calm it down.

He gave you his keys. He told you to shower. He told you to eat. He told you he wanted you more than you could fucking imagine.

You grabbed your things and crossed the street.

The lobby was warm and smelled like cedar and someone’s distant cooking. The doorman - older, gray-haired, reading a newspaper behind a small desk - glanced up as you approached. You held up the keys like a talisman, and he gave a slow nod and went back to his paper without a word. Either Jack had called ahead or the man had seen enough late-night visitors to stop asking questions.

The elevator was mirrored on three sides. You caught your own reflection from every angle. The green silk, the black jeans, the messy hair, the lip stain already bitten half off. You looked like a woman who’d dressed for someone. You looked like exactly what you were.

Fourth floor. The hallway was carpeted and quiet, lit by sconces that cast everything in warm gold. You found his door, 4C, and stood in front of it with his keys in your hand, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your teeth.

The door code. Last four of his cell. You pulled out your phone, found his text and punched in the numbers. The lock clicked. You turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The apartment was dark except for the city glow filtering through floor-to-ceiling windows. You stepped inside and closed the door behind you, and the quiet hit you like a physical thing. Thick and warm and smelling faintly of coffee and cedar and something underneath that was just him, that same scent you’d caught on the roof when his mouth was on yours.

You found the light switch by the door and flicked it on.

The apartment was… surprising. Not in a bad way. Cleaner than you’d expected, for one thing. A lived-in couch, dark leather, worn in the right places. Bookshelves crammed full - medical texts on the lower shelves, paperbacks on the upper, a few framed photos you couldn’t make out from this distance. A small kitchen with an espresso machine on the counter and a cutting board that still had bread crumbs on it. A dining table with one chair pushed slightly back, as if he’d been sitting there recently.

No television. That struck you. Just the windows, the books, the quiet.

You dropped your jacket on the arm of the couch and walked further in, running your fingers along the back of the leather as you passed. The bedroom door was half-open, and you could see the edge of a bed. King-sized, impeccably made, dark sheets rumpled. You looked away quickly, heat climbing your neck.

He sleeps there. He sleeps in that bed, and in a few hours he’ll be in it with you…

You pressed your palms flat against your thighs and exhaled through your nose. Not yet. Not yet.

You found the bathroom - clean, white tile, a shower with good water pressure if the head was any indication. A razor on the sink. A toothbrush in a ceramic holder. A bottle of something woodsy and expensive-looking on the shelf. You picked it up, uncapped it, and pressed it to your wrist without thinking. The scent bloomed warm and dark against your skin, and you closed your eyes.

This is what he smells like when he’s not at the hospital. This is what he’ll smell like when he’s pressed against you in that bed.

You set the bottle back exactly where you’d found it, like you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t have.

Back in the living room, you sat on the couch. Stood up. Sat again. Picked up a paperback from the side table -  A Man Called Ove, a few pages were dogeared, you made note to read those pages later - and set it back down without reading a word. 

Your phone said 12:47. He’d said two. That was…

You did the math. An hour and thirteen minutes. An eternity.

You pulled your knees up and tucked your feet under you, the leather cool through the thin silk of your top. The city glittered beyond the windows. Thousands of lights, thousands of lives happening simultaneously, none of them knowing that you were sitting in Jack Abbot’s apartment wearing his cologne on your wrist and waiting for him to come home and ruin you.

Your phone buzzed. You lunged for it so fast you nearly knocked it off the cushion.

Traffic. Construction on 5th. Be there by 1:30. You eating?

You stared at the screen. Your thumbs hovered, then typed:

Not hungry. Your apartment is nice. Very you.

Three dots. Then:

Define "very me."

You smiled despite yourself. Clean. Quiet. No TV. Books everywhere. Smells like cedar and that cologne on your bathroom shelf that I definitely did not put on my wrist.

The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

You put my cologne on your wrist.

I did.

I’m going to think about that for the rest of my drive and it’s going to make it very difficult to focus on the road.

Good.

You set the phone face-down on the couch and pressed both hands over your face, like you could physically contain the sound trying to escape your mouth. A laugh, maybe. Or something closer to a sob. The adrenaline was doing something complicated to your nervous system, and you couldn’t tell if you wanted to scream or sleep or crawl into his bed and bury your face in his pillow.

You did the third one.

You told yourself it was just to sit,  just to perch on the edge and wait, but the second your weight hit the mattress, the exhaustion hit you like a truck. The sheets smelled like him, that same cedar-and-coffee-and-something-deeper, and your body went soft and heavy without your permission. You lay back. Just for a moment. Just to breathe.

The ceiling was white. The room was dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the curtains. Your arm ached where the stitches had been - a dull, warm throb - and you pressed your palm against it absently, the way you’d caught him doing to his own scars sometimes when he thought no one was watching.

Two stitches. Two stitches and a rooftop and a man who ended a casual relationship because he’d been thinking about you since day one.

You closed your eyes. Just for a second. Just to rest them.

---

The next thing you knew, a key was turning in the front door.

The lock clicked, then the deadbolt, and then the door swung open, harder than it needed to, the handle hitting the wall with a soft thud. His footsteps were fast, urgent, and you heard his keys hit something - the counter, maybe, or the table - and then his voice, rough and carrying through the apartment.

"Hello?"

The worry in it was unmistakable. Not the clinical, measured concern of Dr. Abbot in room twelve. This was something rawer, something that lived in the back of his throat and tightened around the vowels. He’d come home to a dark apartment and an empty couch and no sign of you, and his voice said everything his face probably looked like right now.

You pushed yourself up on your elbows, the sheets sliding off your bare arms, and called out toward the bedroom door.

"In here."

The footsteps changed. Faster. The leather couch creaked - he’d brushed past it, you could tell by the sound - and then he was in the doorway, filling it, one hand braced against the frame. His scrubs were rumpled, his hair pushed back like he’d been running his fingers through it for the entire drive, and his eyes found you in the dim light and stayed there.

You watched his chest rise and fall. Once. Twice. The tension in his shoulders didn’t dissolve so much as shift. His sharp edge of alarm softening into something slower, heavier, more deliberate. His gaze moved from you face to the sheets tangled around your hips to the green silk pulled taut across your chest to the bare skin of your arms, and you saw his jaw work once, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble.

"You fell asleep," he said. Not a question.

"I closed my eyes for a second."

"On my bed."

"On your bed."

He didn’t move from the doorway. You could hear the sound of his breathing, still a little too fast, still carrying the residue of whatever had been running through his head on the drive over. The construction on 5th, the empty couch, the dark apartment, the silence where he’d expected to find you waiting.

You sat up fully, letting the sheets pool at your waist. The silk top had shifted in your sleep, the neckline dipping lower on one side, and you didn’t adjust it. You watched him watch you do it.

"You were worried," you said.

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "I walked in and you weren’t on the couch. Your jacket was there. Your phone was there. Your shoes were by the door. But you weren’t…" He stopped. Drew a breath through his nose. "Yeah. I was worried."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be." He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room in four long strides, and then he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, close enough that you could feel the heat coming off him, close enough to smell the hospital still clinging to his scrubs underneath the cold November air he’d brought in from outside. His hand found yours on the sheets - not grabbing, not cupping, just settling there, palm up, an invitation you took without thinking.

His fingers closed around your. Warm. Steady. Still a little rough from the antiseptic.

"You fell asleep in my apartment," he said. His thumb moved across your knuckles. "In my bed. Smelling like my cologne."

"You told me to make myself at home."

"I did." His voice had dropped to something low and rough, and he turned your hand over in his, pressing his thumb into the center of your palm. You felt the pressure of it everywhere. In your chest, in your stomach, lower. "I didn’t expect you to take it quite so literally."

"I’m a fast learner. You said so yourself."

That got the smile. The real one, the one that creased the corners of his eyes and softened everything about his face. He brought your hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to your palm, and the warmth of it traveled up your arm and settled somewhere behind your ribs.

"You’re going to kill me," he murmured against your skin.

"Probably, old man"

His gaze lifted to your, and the green flecks in his eyes caught the streetlight coming through the curtains. You could see the exhaustion in him. The same deep-bone weariness you carried, the kind that no amount of coffee or adrenaline could fully mask, but underneath it was something hotter, something that had been building since the roof and the concrete and the words he’d said out loud because he couldn’t keep them inside anymore.

He released your hand. Both of his came up to frame your face, thumbs brushing along your cheekbones, and you leaned into the touch like you’d been waiting your whole life for it.

"I need to shower," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I’ve been in these scrubs for fourteen hours and I smell like a hospital."

"You do."

"But if I get up right now and walk into that bathroom, I’m not sure I’m going to come back out with any self-control left."

Your pulse was doing something stupid and loud in your ears. You reached up and wrapped your fingers around his wrists, feeling the tendons shift under your grip, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse against your fingertips.

"Jack."

"Yeah."

"I didn’t put on this outfit and drive across the city at one in the morning because I wanted you to have self-control."

The sound he made was low and broken, almost a laugh, and his forehead dropped to yours the way it had on the roof and you could feel the warmth of his breath against your mouth.

"You’re sure?"

You answered by pulling him closer, by tilting your chin up until your lips brushed his, and the kiss was nothing like the rooftop. Slower. More deliberate. His mouth was warm and careful against yours, and you could taste the coffee and the exhaustion and something underneath that was just him, just Jack, the man who’d given you his keys and told you to eat and worried when you weren’t on his couch.

His hands slid from your face to your neck to your shoulders, and you felt his fingers curl into the silk of your top, gathering the fabric, and then he was pulling back. Just barely, just enough to look at you.

"Stay right here," he said. His voice had gone rough at the edges. "Don’t move. Don’t… just stay."

You nodded. Couldn’t speak. An obedience settling in your core.

He stood from the bed, and you watched him walk to the bathroom. The set of his shoulders, the way his hand dragged through his hair one more time, and then the door closed behind him, and you were alone in his bedroom with the sound of water starting and your own heartbeat hammering against your ribs.

You pressed your palms flat against the sheets on either side of your hips and breathed. The water ran. You could hear it through the wall. The shift in pressure when he stepped under the spray, the muffled sound of his hands against tile.

You stayed where he’d told you to stay. You didn’t move. You didn’t think about the ethics or the age gap or the hospital or what Sarah would say or what would happen when the internship ended in six months. You thought about his hands on your face and his mouth on your palm and the way he’d said you’re going to kill me like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The water stopped.

A beat of silence. Then the bathroom door opened.

Steam rolled out first, a warm, cedar-scented cloud that curled into the bedroom and softened the edges of everything. And then Jack.

He stood in the doorway with a towel slung low around his hips, water still glistening on his chest and shoulders, his hair pushed back and dripping dark against his forehead. The bathroom light behind him threw his body into sharp relief. The broad chest, the scar tissue mapping his left side in pale, knotted lines, the trail of dark hair below his navel that disappeared beneath the towel.

And his left leg. Or what was left of it.

The prosthetic was gone. The stump, below his knee, clean and surgical and real in a way that the polished carbon fiber never was, was bare and still slightly pink from the shower. He’d set the socket on the bathroom counter; you could see it through the doorway, propped against the mirror, the metal components catching the light.

You hadn’t moved. You’d done exactly what he asked: stayed on the bed, palms flat on the sheets, legs still tucked beneath you where he’d left them. The green silk was rumpled from sleep, the neckline still dipping low on one side, and your hair was a mess from the pillow and the humidity and the fact that you hadn’t bothered to fix any of it.

You watched him take you in. The way his gaze traveled from your face to your bare arms to the silk pulled tight across your chest to your hands, still exactly where he’d told you to put them. His chest expanded with a breath that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his lungs, and his jaw tightened not with tension, not with the clinical restraint he wore like a second skin at the hospital, but with something raw and open and completely unguarded.

"You stayed," he said.

His voice was wrecked. Not rough the way it had been on the roof. No, that had been controlled, deliberate, a man rationing what he allowed himself to feel. This was something else entirely. This was a man who’d expected to come out of that shower and find you on the couch, or in the kitchen, or pacing the living room. The man who’d expected, maybe, that the hour alone in his apartment would have given you enough time to overthink yourself out the door.

You hadn’t moved. Not an inch.

"You told me to," you said. “Old man.”

Something shifted in his face. A fracture, a crack in the careful architecture of his composure. His throat worked, and you watched his Adam’s apple dip and rise, and the hand that wasn’t braced against the doorframe curled into a fist at his side. The towel was doing very little to hide what was happening below his waist, and he didn’t seem to care. Hell, he didn’t seem capable of caring about anything other than the fact that you were still here, still exactly where he’d left you, still waiting.

"You actually stayed," he said again, and the disbelief in it made your chest ache.

You held his gaze. Didn’t look away. Didn’t look down at the stump or the scars or the towel. You kept your eyes on his - those damned green-flecked, exhausted, wanting eyes - and you said, very quietly, "I told you. I’m a fast learner."

The sound that came out of him was barely human. Low and rough and broken open, and then he was moving. Crossing the room in three uneven strides, the asymmetry of his gait more pronounced without the prosthetic, his weight shifting from his right leg to his hand balancing him on the wall, then dresser, then bed to get to you without his prosthetic. You barely had time to register the movement before his hands were on your face again, cradling your jaw, tilting your head back, and his mouth was on yours.

This kiss was different from all the others. Not hungry the way the roof had been, not careful the way the bed had been. This was something desperate and grateful and almost reverent, his lips moving against yours like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth through touch alone. His thumbs pressed into the hollows of your cheeks, and you could feel the slight tremor in his fingers, not from exhaustion this time, but from something far more dangerous.

You reached up and wrapped your hands around his wrists, and you could feel the tendons jumping beneath his skin, the heat of him still radiating from the shower. His chest was damp against the silk of your top, and the fabric clung to both of you where skin met skin, and you made a sound into his mouth that you didn’t recognize as your own.

He pulled back just enough to breathe, his forehead pressed to yours, his eyes closed. Water dripped from his hair onto your collarbone and traced a slow line down between your breasts, and you shivered. Not from cold.

"I’ve spent two weeks convincing myself this was a bad idea," he said. "Two weeks of telling myself you were too young, too tired, too - Christ - too everything. That I was too old, too broken, too -" His hand dropped to the leg, a reflexive gesture, his palm pressing against the scarred skin. "And you’re sitting in my bed in that shirt looking at me like…"

He stopped. Drew a breath. His eyes opened, and they were dark; the green almost swallowed by the black of his pupils, blown wide and unfocused.

"Like what?" you whispered.

"Like none of it matters." His thumb traced the line of your collarbone. "Like the leg doesn’t matter. The age doesn’t matter. The hospital, the ethics, the - fuck - the fact that I’m standing here half-naked, old, with one leg and you’re still looking at me like I’m -"

He couldn’t finish. You watched him try. Watched his jaw work, watched the muscle in his cheek jump, and then he gave up and kissed you again, slower this time, his hands sliding down to your waist, fingers curling into the silk at your hips.

You broke the kiss just far enough to speak against his mouth. "Jack."

"Don’t." His voice was rough. "Don’t say anything that’s going to make me think. I’ve been thinking for weeks and it almost killed me."

You pulled back enough to look at him, really look at him. The water still dripping from his hair. The scar tissue mapping his side. The way he held himself, slightly tilted, his weight distributed unevenly, one hand braced on the mattress beside your hip for balance.

You reached down and pressed your palm flat against the scarred skin of his calf, just above where the amputation began. His breath caught - audibly, sharply - and his hand shot out and wrapped around your wrist, not pulling it away, just holding it there, his fingers tight and warm.

"Don’t," he said again, but it came out differently this time. Less a warning and more a plea.

"I want to touch you," you said. Simple. Direct. The way he’d been with you on the roof. "All of you."

His grip on your wrist tightened. You could feel his pulse through his fingers. It was fast, erratic, nothing like the steady clinical rhythm he maintained at the hospital. This was the real Jack Abbot. The one who’d been hiding underneath the scrubs and the stethoscope and the carefully measured distance.

"Then touch me," he said.

He pulled back. Not far, just enough to stand upright, his hand finding your shoulder, his fingers curling around the curve there. The grip was steady, balanced, his weight shifting to his right leg as he found his center of gravity without the prosthetic. He stood in front of you like that, towel slung low, water still trailing down his chest, one hand on your shoulder and the other hanging loose at his side.

His gaze dropped to where your fingers rested on the edge of the towel. The white cotton, damp from the shower, the corner you’d caught without realizing you’d reached for it. He didn’t move. Didn’t adjust. Just stood there, his breath coming slow and controlled, and let you take it.

You pulled.

The towel came free in one smooth motion, the fabric sliding over his hips and dropping to the floor in a wet heap. His cock sprang free. Half-hard already, thickening even as you watched, the head flushed dark and already wet at the tip. He was bigger than you’d expected. Thick and heavy, the vein along the underside prominent, the hair at the base dark and damp.

You didn’t look away. Couldn’t. Your mouth went dry and your pulse kicked hard against your throat, and you dragged your gaze up the length of him until you found his eyes. Dark. Blown wide. Waiting.

You looked up at him from the edge of the bed, your hands back, flat on the mattress on either side of your hips, and said it. Suddenly, everything was a lot. You didn’t know where to begin.

"Tell me what to do."

The sound that left him was not a word. It was something between a groan and a curse, torn from somewhere deep in his chest, and his hand on your shoulder tightened until his knuckles went white. His cock jumped against his stomach. You watched it happen, watched the way his whole body responded to those simple words like you’d detonated something inside him.

His jaw clenched. His throat worked. You could see the muscles in his neck standing out in sharp relief, could see the way his nostrils flared with each ragged breath.

Then he spoke, and his voice was nothing you’d ever heard before. Low and wrecked and absolutely certain.

"Get on your knees."

You moved. Slid off the edge of the bed, your bare feet hitting the carpet, and dropped to your knees in front of him. The position put you eye level with his cock, and you could see every detail - the way it was fully hard now, jutting out from his body, the head glistening.

His hand left your shoulder and found the back of your head. Not pushing. Just resting there, his fingers threading into your hair, still slightly damp from the shower you’d taken hours ago.

"Open your mouth," he said. "Look at me while you do it."

You opened your mouth. Looked up at him through your lashes, the sharp line of his jaw, the stubble catching the light, the way his chest was rising and falling too fast. His hand tightened in your hair, and he guided himself forward, the head of his cock pressing against your lower lip.

"Wider."

You obeyed. He kissed your lips, the taste of him hitting your tongue, salt and skin and something faintly bitter, and you closed your mouth around him, your lips stretching around the width of him. The sound he made above you was guttural, primal, his hand flexing in your hair.

"Good." The word came out strangled. "Now take me deeper. Slow. Use your tongue, press it flat against the underside."

You did. Dragged your tongue along the vein as you took him deeper, feeling him thicken against your palate, feeling the weight of him on your tongue. Your jaw ached already and you’d barely started, but you didn’t pull back. You looked up at him the way he’d told you to, and his expression was devastating. Eyes half-closed, mouth open, every line of his face carved with want.

You had done this before, of course. Undergrad being deemed your "slutty days." But something about being told what to do made this seem all new. Your pussy throbbed at the concept.

His hand guided you - not roughly, but with absolute authority, setting a rhythm that was slow and deep and relentless. You felt him hit the back of your throat and your eyes watered, but tried not to gag, to pull away. The carefully applied mascara began to run down your cheeks. You breathed through your nose and let him push further, your throat finally opening around him, and the sound he made - a broken, reverent "fuck" - vibrated through your skull.

"Use your hand," he said. His voice was barely recognizable. "Wrap it around what you can’t take."

You brought your hand up and wrapped it around the base, your fingers barely meeting, and squeezed the way he’d told you. Always obedient. Twisted on the upstroke, your tongue still pressed flat against him, and he groaned, a sound that seemed to come from the very bottom of his lungs.

"That’s it." His hips shifted forward, a shallow thrust that you felt in the back of your throat. "Don’t stop. Don’t - Christ - don’t pull away unless I tell you to."

You didn’t. You kept the rhythm he’d set. His hand in your hair controlling the pace, your hand working the base, your tongue dragging along the underside every time you pulled back. Drool was running down your chin and you didn’t care, couldn’t care, not when every sound he made went straight through you and settled between your thighs.

His free hand found your cheek, his thumb pressing against the corner of your stretched mouth, feeling where you stretched around him. "You’re doing so well," he murmured, and the praise hit you like a physical blow. "So fucking good for me. Take a breath, deeper this time. I want to feel your throat."

You breathed in through your nose, steeled yourself, and let him push forward. He filled you completely - the head of his cock pressing into your throat, the stretch almost unbearable - and you swallowed around him, and the vibration of it made his whole body shudder.

"Fuck." His hand tightened in your hair to the point of pain. You yelped. "Fuck, you feel… I’m not going to last if you keep -"

You pulled back just enough to breathe, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his cock, and looked up at him with your eyes watering and your lips swollen and your chin wet, and you didn’t stop. You took him back in, deeper than before, your hand working in counterpoint to the rhythm of his thrusts, and you could feel him getting harder, thicker, the vein beneath your tongue pulsing with every beat of his heart.

His breathing changed. Got faster, sharper, the rhythm of his hips losing its careful control. His hand left your cheek and found the back of your head with both hands now, fingers threaded deep into your hair, and he held you there. He wasn’t forcing, but guiding, the pressure of his grip telling you exactly what he needed.

"Don’t stop," he ground out. "I’m going to come in your mouth and I want you to take all of it. Every drop. Can you do that for me?"

You made a sound around him to let him know that you were willing and able, and doubled your efforts, your hand twisting harder, your tongue working faster, and you felt the exact moment he broke.

His hips snapped forward once, twice, and then he was coming, his cock pulsing against your tongue, hot and thick and endless. You swallowed, and swallowed again, your throat working around him, and the sounds he made above you were sounds you’d never heard a man make - raw and broken and completely undone.

You didn’t pull away. You stayed exactly where he’d put you, your mouth still full of him, your hands braced on his thighs and you took everything he gave you until he was shaking, until his grip in your hair loosened, until he finally pulled back with a ragged exhale that sounded like it had been torn from his chest.

You sat back on your heels, breathing hard, your lips swollen and glistening, and looked up at him. You wondered how the rest of the morning would go. He was an old man; could he continue? Was he spent? Did he need a little coaxing to continue?

Jack was staring down at you like he’d never seen anything in his life. His chest was heaving, his hands still hovering near your head as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop touching you, and his expression… 

God, his expression was something you’d carry with you for the rest of your life. Awe. Devastation. Gratitude so profound it looked like pain.

Then his hands were on you - not hovering anymore, but gripping, solid and sure - and he was pulling you up off your knees with a strength that stole the breath from your lungs. Your legs were unsteady, your knees aching from the carpet, and you stumbled forward into his chest, your palms flat against the warm, damp skin over his sternum.

He didn’t give you time to find your balance. His arm hooked around your waist and he turned, and then you were falling. Not far. Onto the mattress, the dark sheets cool against your back, your hair fanning out across his pillow. The impact was soft, the bed catching you, and you looked up to find him standing over you, his hands already moving.

"Off," he said. The word was rough, stripped down to nothing. His fingers found the hem of the silk top and gathered the fabric in his fists, and then he was pulling it up over your ribs, over your breasts, over your head, and the cool air hit your bare skin and you shivered. He tossed the shirt somewhere behind him without looking, and his gaze dropped to your chest and his throat moved.

"Jesus Christ."

His hands were everywhere. On your waist, your ribs, your breasts. His thumbs dragged over the nipples until they hardened into aching points. You arched into the touch, a sound escaping you that you didn’t recognize, and his mouth found your neck. Open, hot, his teeth scraping the tendon there.

"These too," he muttered against your skin, and his fingers hooked into the waistband of your jeans. You lifted your hips without thinking, and he dragged them down. Slow, too slow, the denim catching on your thighs, on your hips, on the curve of your ass, and his hands followed the path of the fabric, mapping every inch of skin as it was exposed. His palms were calloused and warm and impossibly greedy, squeezing your thighs, your hips, the soft flesh below your navel.

The jeans joined the shirt somewhere on the floor. You were left in the black lace panties and nothing else, your skin pebbled with goosebumps despite the heat radiating off both of you. He knelt on the bed beside you, his weight making the mattress dip, and his hand slid from your stomach to the edge of the lace, his fingertips tracing the line where fabric met skin.

"Look at you," he said. His voice was wrecked. Absolutely destroyed. "Look at what you did to me."

You turned your head on the pillow and found his face inches from yours. His eyes were dark, the green nearly swallowed, and his breathing was still ragged, still uneven, and you could see the pulse hammering in his throat. His hand hadn’t moved from the edge of your underwear, his thumb pressing into the crease of your hip, his fingers splayed across your lower belly.

"I didn’t do anything," you whispered. “Old man.”

His laugh was a broken thing, warm against your cheek. "You drove across the city. You put on my cologne. You stayed in my bed. You got on your knees and…" He stopped. Swallowed. His thumb pressed harder into your hip. "You think I’m spent? You think an old man can’t keep going?"

Heat flooded your face. You hadn’t said it out loud… had you? Had you thought it loudly enough that he’d heard it somehow? Or did he just like the idea of being strong enough to keep going?

He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slid beneath the lace and his fingers found you warm and already wet, and the sound that left him was something between a groan and a prayer.

"Fuck," he breathed against your neck. "You’re soaked."

You were. Embarrassingly, achingly soaked, and his fingers slid through it without resistance, two of them pressing against your entrance while his thumb found your clit and dragged across it in a slow, deliberate circle that made your spine arch off the mattress.

"I’m going to show you exactly how spent I am," he said, and then he was moving. Sliding down your body, his mouth trailing a hot, open path from your collarbone to the swell of your breast, his teeth catching your nipple. He took it into his mouth without preamble, suckling hard, his tongue flattening against the peak. And you cried out, your hands flying to his hair, your fingers gripping the damp strands.

He released your breast with a wet sound and kept going. Down. Over your ribs, your stomach, the sensitive skin below your navel. His hands hooked into the waistband of your underwear and pulled them down. Not slowly this time, but in one quick motion that left you bare and exposed on his sheets, and you felt the cool air hit your most intimate skin and then the heat of his breath replacing it, and your thighs fell open without conscious thought.

Jack looked up at you from between your legs. His eyes were dark, his mouth wet, his stubble catching the streetlight. One of his hands pressed your thigh further open while the other settled on your stomach.

"Stay," he said. The same word from before. The same command. "Don’t move."

You nodded. Couldn’t speak.

The first touch of his tongue was flat and broad and devastating. A long, slow stroke from your entrance to your clit that made your hips jerk off the mattress despite his hand pressing you down. He made a sound against you. Approval, maybe, or satisfaction. And did it again, slower this time, his tongue dragging through the wetness with deliberate, agonizing patience.

"Jack -" Your voice cracked on his name.

He didn’t respond with words. He responded by wrapping his lips around your clit and sucking hard, relentless, his tongue flicking against the swollen bud in quick, rhythmic strokes that had you gripping the sheets in both fists. The sound he made, low and vibrating against you, sent shockwaves through your entire body, and your back arched off the mattress so hard you felt the strain in your abs.

His hand on your stomach slid lower. One finger, just one, pressed against your entrance and pushed inside, and you were so wet, so ready, that he slid in to the knuckle without resistance. The stretch was minimal, but the sensation of being filled while his mouth worked your clit made your vision blur at the edges.

He added a second finger. Curled them. Found the spot inside you that made your entire body clench, and pressed against it with merciless precision while his tongue never stopped its rhythm.

You were making sounds you didn’t recognize and your hands had migrated back to his hair, gripping and pulling and pressing him closer because you couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop yourself from chasing the building pressure behind your navel. His fingers moved inside you. Scissoring, curling, thrusting in a steady rhythm that matched the strokes of his tongue, and the wet sounds of it filled the quiet bedroom, obscene and perfect.

"Don’t stop," you gasped. "Please, don’t stop -"

He didn’t. If anything, he doubled down, his fingers driving deeper, his mouth sucking harder, his free hand pressing your thigh so wide open you felt the stretch in your inner muscles. The pressure was building in thick, rolling waves, each one cresting higher than the last, and you could feel yourself tightening around his fingers, feel the heat pooling and coiling and threatening to break.

And then his tongue changed. Slower. Broader. Dragging through your folds with deliberate, aching pressure before circling your clit in tight, precise rotations, and his fingers pressed that spot inside you and held, just held, and the wave broke.

You came apart. Not gracefully. Violently, your body seizing, your thighs clamping around his head, a sound tearing from your throat that was half sob and half his name. He didn’t pull away. He kept his mouth on you through every pulse, his tongue gentling but not stopping, his fingers still pressed inside you, and the aftershocks rolled through you in long, shuddering waves that seemed to go on forever.

You finally went limp against the mattress. Boneless, trembling, your chest heaving and he lifted his head. His chin was glistening. His lips were swollen. His eyes were dark and satisfied and still burning with something that hadn’t been extinguished.

He turned his face and pressed a kiss to your palm. Then he was moving up your body, his weight settling between your thighs, and you felt him against you. Hard. Already hard again, thick and insistent, pressing against your soaked entrance with a heat that made your freshly sensitized nerves sing.

You looked down between your bodies. His cock was fully erect, maybe harder than before, if that was possible, the head flushed dark and wet, and you could feel the pulse of him against you. The recovery had taken mere minutes. The time he’d spent between your legs with his mouth and his fingers had been more than enough.

"You… " You started, and your voice came out ruined.

"I told you," he said against your mouth. His hips shifted, the head of his cock sliding through your folds, gathering the wetness there. "I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. You think one orgasm is going to take care of that?"

His hand found your jaw, tilting your face up to his. His eyes searched yours - checking, you realized. Making sure you were still with him, still present, still okay.

"Tell me you want this," he said. Quiet. Rough. The most clinical thing he’d said all night, and somehow the most intimate. "Tell me, or I stop right now."

You reached between your bodies and wrapped your hand around him. Thick. Hot. The vein beneath your palm pulsed against your fingers. You guided him to your entrance and pressed - just the head, just enough to feel the stretch beginning - and looked up at him with everything you had.

"I want this," you said. "I want you. All of you."

His eyes closed. His forehead dropped to yours. And then he pushed forward. It was slow, deliberate, filling you inch by inch, and the sound that left both of you was something that existed outside language entirely.

He was inside you completely now. Every thick, pulsing inch of him and you could feel him trembling with the effort of holding still. His forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in ragged bursts across your lips, and his hands were braced on either side of your head, his arms locked, holding his weight off your body with a carefulness that bordered on clinical.

He started moving. Slow. Deep. Each thrust deliberate and measured, his hips rolling forward with a gentleness that made your chest ache. His mouth found yours, soft, reverent, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips before slipping inside, and the kiss was nothing like the desperation of the roof or the wreckage of the shower. This was tender. Almost careful. The kind of lovemaking you’d read about in novels and never quite believed existed.

And something about it felt wrong.

Not the tenderness, God, the tenderness was devastating, his lips moving against yours with a sweetness that made your throat tighten. It was the restraint. You could feel it in every muscle of his body, the way he held himself above you, the way his thrusts stayed shallow and controlled, the way his hands hovered over your skin without gripping, without taking. He was holding back. Deliberately, systematically holding back, and the realization hit you like a bucket of cold water.

He was being careful with you. Gentle. The way you’d be careful with something fragile. Something breakable.

You weren’t breakable.

You locked your legs around his waist like a vise, your calves crossing at the small of his back, and pulled him deeper. Your hips lifted off the mattress, meeting his next thrust with enough force to drive him an inch further, and you felt the head of his cock press against something inside you that made white light flash behind your eyelids.

His breath stuttered. His hips faltered, just for a second, and then he adjusted. Pulled back. Kept the rhythm slow, kept the depth controlled, kept everything measured and careful and wrong.

He was someone else right now. Not the man who’d told you to get on your knees. Not the man who’d come in your mouth with sounds that belonged in a church. This was Dr. Abbot. The one who stitched arms and ended relationships and worried about pigeon shit on concrete. The one who held himself at a distance because the alternative was too much.

Apparently, to Dr. Abbot, oral was one thing, but fucking you was something different. Something to be gentle about.

But you didn’t want Dr. Abbot. You wanted Jack.

You waited for the next thrust. Felt the careful roll of his hips, the controlled withdrawal, and then you moved. Fast. Your hands found his shoulders, your legs tightened around his waist, and you used the momentum of his own careful rhythm to flip him. One sharp twist of your body, your weight shifting, and suddenly you were on top. Straddling his hips, his cock still buried inside you, his hands flying to your waist in reflex.

His eyes flew open. Wide. Shocked. His mouth fell open, you could see the confusion, the surprise, the way his clinical brain was trying to catch up with what had just happened, and you didn’t give him time to process.

Your hand found his throat.

Not roughly. Not violently. Just your palm, pressed flat against the column of his neck, your fingers curling around the sides. You could feel his pulse hammering against your palm. Fast, erratic, nothing like the steady rhythm he maintained at the hospital. His skin was hot under your hand, the stubble rough against your fingers, and you could feel the tendons in his neck go taut.

"Where’d you go," you asked. "You’re here. With me."

The words came out steady. Calmer than you felt. Your thumb pressed into the vein of his throat, just enough pressure to make his breathing change. A sharp intake, a stutter in the rhythm, and you squeezed. Gently. Just enough to feel the give of his trachea beneath your palm, just enough to watch his pupils blow wider.

"I just -" Jack gasped. "I haven’t… not since…"

He glanced at his hand. His wedding ring was gone, you’re sure he must have taken it off during his shower, leaving behind a tan line on his finger. You instantly knew what he meant: he’s fooled around a bit since his wife died but this is his first time having sex.

His hands were still on your hips. You could feel his fingers pressing into the flesh there, not gripping yet, just resting. His chest was heaving beneath you, his cock twitching inside you, and his eyes - those damned green-flecked, devastating eyes - were locked on yours with an expression you couldn’t fully read.

Shock. Definitely shock. But underneath it, something darker. Something that hadn’t been there before.

You squeezed again. Tighter this time. His breath caught and his hands tightened on your hips. Not bruising yet. But close.

"You’re being careful with me," you said, and your voice dropped lower, rougher. "I don’t need you to be careful, Jack."

Something broke in his expression. A crack in the careful architecture, the same one you’d seen on the roof and in the doorway and every time he’d let himself be something other than controlled. His jaw clenched. His nostrils flared. And then… 

God, then…

A sound came out of him that you’d never heard before.

A growl. Low and rough and absolutely feral, rumbling up from somewhere deep in his chest and vibrating through you.

His hands on your hips became something else entirely. Bruising. Grip tightening until you could feel the individual points of his fingers digging into the soft flesh, the pressure sharp enough to leave marks she’d find tomorrow. And then he was moving you.

Not letting you set the pace, not letting you control the rhythm. His hips driving up off the mattress while his hands forced you down, a brutal counterpoint that punched the air from your lungs.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

His thrusts were relentless, deep, punishing, nothing like the careful missionary he’d been performing thirty seconds ago. Each one drove him to the hilt, his pelvis grinding against your clit, and the wet sounds of your bodies meeting filled the room. His hands held you in place, fingers digging into the meat of your hips, and you could feel the strength in them, the kind of strength that came from years of holding himself together, now being used to pull you apart.

And your hand never left his throat.

You kept the pressure steady. Not cutting off his air completely, just enough to make every breath a conscious effort, just enough to make his pulse hammer against your palm like a trapped bird. You could feel the vibration of his growls through your fingers, feel the way his throat worked beneath your grip as he swallowed, as he gasped, as he took what you were giving him and came back for more.

His eyes were wild. Unfocused. The green almost completely swallowed by black, and you watched the shock cycle through his expression in real time. The disbelief, the confusion, the dawning realization that he liked this. That the pressure of your hand on his throat was doing something to him that nothing else ever had.

He’d never been choked before. You could see it in his face, the way the sensation was new and overwhelming and completely destroying whatever was left of his composure. His hips stuttered, his rhythm faltering for just a moment, and his hands squeezed your hips hard enough to make you gasp.

"Don’t stop," he ground out. The words were rough, barely recognizable, scraped raw by the pressure of your palm. "Don’t you fucking stop."

You didn’t. You squeezed tighter, felt his pulse jump, felt his cock throb inside you, and rolled your hips against his in a slow, grinding circle that made his back arch off the mattress.

His hand shot up from your hip and wrapped around the back of your neck. Not pushing, not guiding, just holding you there, and then he was kissing you. Hard. His mouth crashed against yours with a desperation that obliterated everything else.

The rhythm, the pressure, the careful architecture of who was in control. His tongue swept into your mouth and you tasted yourself on him, salt and musk, and your hand slipped from his throat as the angle changed.

He used it. The shift in your center of gravity, the way your grip loosened. 

He rolled, one smooth motion that leveraged his weight and the give of the mattress, and suddenly you were on your back again, the air leaving your lungs in a surprised rush. His cock slid free of you, the sudden emptiness making you gasp and whine, and then he was moving, repositioning, his hands finding your knees.

You barely had time to register what was happening before he was pushing your legs up. He folded you in half, your knees pressed against your chest, your hips tilted skyward. The position left you completely exposed, spread open, every inch of you on display under the streetlight bleeding through the curtains. You could feel the cool air against your most intimate skin, could feel the slick trail of his release still glistening between your thighs, and the vulnerability of it - the raw, unguarded openness - made your face burn and your pulse hammer.

He knelt between your thighs, but he didn’t push inside immediately. Instead, he leaned forward, bracing one hand on the mattress beside your head, and used the other to grip himself. You felt the blunt head drag along your folds - slow, deliberate, the ridge of him catching on your entrance before sliding away. He traced the seam of you, the wet heat of your pussy, and then lower. Down, past your entrance, along the sensitive skin between, until the head of him pressed against something tighter, something untouched.

Your asshole. 

The pressure was light, barely there, but the sensation sent a jolt of electricity straight up your spine. Your breath hitched, and you watched his face above you, watched the way his eyes tracked the path of his cock against your body, watched the hunger sharpen into something almost feral.

He dragged himself back up. Over your entrance again, the head catching on your swollen lips, and then he was pushing forward, driving into you in one deep, punishing thrust that bottomed out and made your vision white out at the edges.

He pulled back. All the way. You felt every inch of him withdraw, felt the cool air rush into the space he’d occupied, felt the emptiness so acute it bordered on pain. Then he slammed forward again. Hard. The impact drove your hips up off the mattress, your knees pressing harder against your chest, and the sound of skin meeting skin cracked through the quiet bedroom.

Again. Out all the way, the head of him barely inside, and then in. 

Deep. 

Devastating. 

His hips snapped forward with a force that rattled the headboard against the wall, and each thrust punched a sound from your throat. High, broken, involuntary. He wasn’t gentle. Wasn’t careful. Wasn’t Dr. Abbot holding himself at a distance.

This was Jack. Raw and unfiltered and absolutely wrecked, his hand gripping your hip hard enough to leave bruises, his rhythm brutal and relentless, his eyes locked on the place where his cock disappeared inside you over and over and over.

You couldn’t think. 

Couldn’t breathe. 

Couldn’t do anything but take it, take him, your hands gripping the sheets, your back arching, your body clenching around him with each thrust. The pleasure was building in thick, rolling waves, each one cresting higher, each one pulling you closer to the edge you’d already been pushed to once tonight.

His pace never faltered. If anything, it accelerated. His hips pistoning, the bed frame creaking beneath you, the wet sounds of your bodies meeting obscenely loud in the dark room. You could feel him everywhere. In your chest, in your stomach, in the places his cock reached that made your toes curl and your vision blur.

You were close. So close you could taste it - metallic and electric on the back of your tongue. Your muscles were tightening, your breath coming in sharp, desperate gasps, and you could feel the same tension building in him. The way his thrusts were losing their precision, the way his hand on your hip was shaking, the way his jaw was clenched so tight the tendons stood out like cables.

He felt it too. You could see it in his face: the dawning realization, the shift from pure want to something more urgent. His rhythm stuttered, just once, and his hand left your hip. He reached down between you, his thumb finding your clit in the mess of your bodies, pressing hard, circling fast, and the combination of his cock driving into you and his thumb on your clit and the pressure of your own knees against your chest was too much.

You broke first. 

The orgasm hit you like a freight train: violent, all-consuming, your body seizing around him so hard you heard yourself scream. Your vision whited out completely, every nerve ending firing at once, and you felt him pulse inside you before he caught himself.

He was pulling out.

You could feel it.

The shift in his weight, the way his hips were already withdrawing, his hand leaving your clit to brace himself, his face contorted with the effort of control. He was going to pull out. He was going to come on your stomach, on the sheets, anywhere but inside you, because he was a doctor and he knew better and the condom that should have been there wasn’t.

"No." The word came out before you could stop it. A whimper, broken and desperate, your hand flying to his hip, your fingers digging into the muscle there. "Don’t - please -"

He stopped. His cock was halfway out, the head still inside you, and you could feel him trembling, every muscle in his body locked in the agonizing tension of holding back.

"I’m on the pill," you gasped, the words tumbling out between ragged breaths. "I’m on it - I’ve been on it for years. That’s the whole point, I like - please, Jack, please don’t pull out…"

Something shattered in his expression. 

The last restraint, the final wall, crumbling into dust. His hips drove forward. One final, devastating thrust and he buried himself to the hilt as the orgasm ripped through him. You felt every pulse, every hot, thick wave of him emptying inside you, his cock throbbing against your walls, his body shuddering above you with a violence that seemed to come from the very core of him.

His forehead dropped to your chest. His breathing was wrecked. Deep, heaving gasps that shook his entire frame, and his hands found yours on the mattress, his fingers lacing through yours, gripping so tight your knuckles ached. You could feel his pulse through his palms, still hammering, still racing, and your own heartbeat answered in kind, the two rhythms syncing in the quiet aftermath.

For a long time, neither of you moved. The only sounds were your breathing and the distant hum of the city beyond the windows. 

His weight settled on you gradually. Not collapsing, but easing, his body going soft and heavy against yours in increments. You could feel the sweat cooling between your bodies, feel the mess of his release still warm inside you, feel the ache blooming in muscles you hadn’t known you had.

His lips moved against your sternum. A word, maybe. Your name. You couldn’t tell, the vibration was too faint, his mouth too close to your skin.

You lifted a trembling hand and buried it in his hair. The strands were still damp from the shower, matted down now with sweat, and you carded your fingers through them with a gentleness that felt like the only thing your body had left to offer.

He turned his head. Pressed his mouth to the space between your breasts. Then he was moving, pulling out of you with a wince that you felt more than heard. The sensation of emptiness was immediate and acute, and you felt him spill out of you. It was warm, thick; running down between your thighs and pooling on the sheets beneath you.

Neither of you acknowledged it. Not yet.

He shifted his weight, rolling to the side, and you felt the cool air hit your skin where his body had been. Your knees were still pressed to your chest, your legs still folded, and you let them fall open slowly. The stretch in your inner thighs makes you wince. Every muscle in your body felt like it had been put through a wringer.

Spent.

Jack’s arm found your waist. He pulled you against him, your back to his chest, his hand splayed across your stomach and the position tucked you into the curve of his body like you’d been designed to fit there. His chin settled on the crown of your head, and you could feel his breathing gradually slowing, the frantic hammer of his heart against your spine softening into something steadier.

The sheets were ruined. You were both ruined. The room smelled like sex and cedar and the faintest trace of hospital antiseptic still clinging to his skin.

You pressed your palm flat against his hand on your stomach. His fingers twitched, then interlaced with yours.

"You’re going to have to move eventually," you murmured. Your voice was wrecked - hoarse, barely above a whisper. "You’re crushing me."

His laugh vibrated through your back. "Give me five minutes."

"Five minutes."

"Maybe ten."

You closed your eyes. The city pulsed beyond the windows. Thousands of lights, thousands of lives, none of them knowing that you were lying in Jack Abbot’s bed with his come between your thighs and his heartbeat slowing against your spine.

His thumb traced a slow circle on your stomach. Over and over.

The verse wouldn’t stay still.

Sam stared at the page until the words warped, trembling under the weight of his own thoughts. The Bible lay open in front of him, pristine and familiar, yet foreign as stone. Every word felt like it had a barb hidden in it, catching when he tried to read past it. His hands were clasped in what passed for prayer, the rosary wound around his fingers like a tether - knotted too tight.

He whispered the words again, trying to force them into meaning: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The next line blurred. “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses…”

He couldn’t say the rest. Couldn’t choke it out.

The rosary dug into the pads of his fingers, a pinprick reminder of discipline. Weakness. He knew it well. It lived in his belly and tongue and hands, in the space behind his eyes where memory refused to go dim.

Outside, laughter spilled into the sanctuary from the side door. Gabriel’s voice, high and easy, chased by another he didn’t recognize. Sharp, younger. A girl? Then a hoard of other voices followed.

He closed the Bible gently. Pressed his thumb to the crucifix and didn’t move.

The weight of the collar itched against his throat like a bruise. He sat there in silence until the light shifted on the floor and the ache in his knees told him he hadn’t moved in over an hour.

He told himself he was just stretching his legs when he finally stood. Just passing through.

But he didn’t walk to the nave.

He walked to the archway overlooking the open sanctuary, where the pews had been pulled back, tiles half-laid across the floor like a broken path. The light was thick and gold. Dust hung suspended like incense.

And there they were.

Gabriel was kneeling beside a bucket of mortar, sleeves shoved to the elbows, golden forearms flexing as he worked. His hair was tousled, shirt damp with sweat, and in the slant of afternoon light, he looked like both sin and salvation  -  a thorn dressed as an angel, beautiful enough you might press your hand to it just to be closer.

He was surrounded by teens, though the rest milled about in the background, making noise and chaos. These three stayed close.

A blonde girl lounged across the steps like a fox in the sun - sharp, restless, eyes constantly scanning. Claire, Sam would learn. Next to her knelt a tall boy with quiet gravity, eyes too kind for seventeen, his hands already smoothing grout like it was sacred. Jack.

And tucked just behind them was a smaller teen, not by size, but by energy, a soft-spoken gravity folded inwards. They wore a purple beanie despite the heat, sleeves tugged over their hands like armor. They didn’t speak. Just nodded. Listened.

They weren’t just working. They were present. Rooted. Real.

Claire gestured wildly with a trowel, barking out laughter at something Gabriel said. Jack smiled, soft and knowing, before returning to the floor, every motion deliberate. The one in the beanie watched them all, expression small but steady - like belonging didn’t have to be loud to be true.

And Sam -

Sam stood just beyond the archway. Silent.

Watching.

Not moving.

The ache in his chest was soft at first. Familiar. The kind that curled under his ribs and whispered in his father’s voice: What makes you think you deserve peace?

He thought of rope. Thought of small, bleeding hands. Of being ten years old, tying a tarp to a broken fence while Dean cursed at the wind and their dad lay passed out in the cab of the truck, bottle still clutched in one hand. He thought of how good it had felt to get the knot just right. How proud he’d been of something so stupid and small. He thought of how Dean had taught him in the garage while their father cursed at the TV in the next room.

He rubbed his thumb against the knots of his rosary. One he made in seminary school out of leather rope and two carpentry nails. He had ground the tips of the nails down against stones, just blunt enough to not accidentally harm anything, but just sharp enough to remind Sam of where he is - the life he now leads. Leather holds the nails together perpendicularly to form the cross. From there the leather is braided neatly and then knotted six times for each round of Hail Mary’s. Sam didn’t realize how much the leather would act as a grounding tool for him.

He thought of how Dean had ruffled his hair after, said, You’ve got good hands, Sammy. That’s worth something.

His mother never said prayers at bedtime. His father did - drunken, slurred, strange. The Bible wasn’t sacred in their house. It was a weapon. A shield. A last-ditch hope against a kind of emptiness Sam had spent most of his life trying to name.

And now here he was.

Watching people - kids, mostly - build something with ease. Laughing like the world wasn’t ending. Like love wasn’t something sharp.

The jealousy was unexpected, like a thorn catching in cloth  -  small, but enough to stop you short.

Not ugly. Not rageful. Just quiet. Slow.

It slid in like cold air under a door. Not of what they had, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to be like them, but of how they fit together.

And of how easily Gabriel moved among them. Like this was his church, not Sam’s.

Gabriel stood, stretching his back with a groan, and Sam’s breath caught. Just for a moment. He knew the shape of Gabriel’s body already, knew the heat of it, but in the daylight, there was something more dangerous about it. More... real.

“You’re gonna get caught staring like that,” Claire called, without even turning around.

Sam flinched.

Gabriel turned too, grinning as if he’d known Sam was there the whole time. “Well, well,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. “The Great Holy Boy emerges.”

Claire twisted toward him, smirking. “We’ve got a spy.”

Sam cleared his throat, stepping down from the archway like it didn’t mean anything. “I wasn’t spying.”

“Sure,” Claire said, clearly unconvinced. “Your Honor, is that how they train you in priestly school? Secret surveillance?”

“It’s Father,” Sam corrected with a sigh. “Your Honor is for judges. And I went to seminary school, not priestly.”

“Whatever,” Claire said, tossing a tile scrap toward the bin and missing. “Still sounds dramatic.”

Gabriel chuckled, stepping closer, eyes crinkled with sunlight and dust. “Don’t worry. We won’t make you confess. Not yet.”

“I’m not-”

“Tell you what,” Gabriel cut in, already fishing a spare pair of gloves from his bag. “Your penance for spying is helping us finish this section. We wrap early if you do, and these ravenous beasts get dinner early. Kaia over there’s famished.”

Sam’s eyes flicked to the tool bag leaning against the wall. The leather was worn but still bore a discreet, high-end brand stamp.

Gabriel caught him looking and shrugged. “Gift from my dad. Last one I’ll ever get.” He moved on before Sam could ask.

Sam let out an exasperated scoff.

Jack glanced up from his work. “It’s not hard. I can show you.”

Claire, predictably, rolled her eyes. “Careful, Jack. If you teach him something useful, he might explode.”

Sam sighed. “Fine. Just for a bit.”

Gabriel tossed him the gloves. Their fingers didn’t touch, but the smile Gabriel gave him still felt too close. “Welcome to the holy labor force, Father.”

----

They worked for over an hour, the light thickening into amber around them. Jack was quiet but attentive. Claire kept up a steady stream of sarcasm like it was oxygen. Gabriel moved between them and the other youth with unbothered grace - correcting, encouraging, mocking with affectionate ease.

It shouldn’t have felt good.

But it did.

For the first time in days, Sam wasn’t thinking. He was doing. Hands pressed against tile, breath even. His thoughts slowed to the rhythm of the work, the scrape and press and silence in between.

Eventually, Jody arrived with a plate of neatly wrapped sandwiches and bottles of water. Gabriel swiped a sandwich from the top of them pile, “You sweet, angel of a woman. Thank you.”

“Oh, please, flattery…” Jody laughed. “Will get you another sandwich.”

Gabriel smiled, taking another and passinging it to Sam. No comment. Just a look, and a quiet nod.

Jody then scolded them for not drinking enough water and threatened to confiscate Gabriel’s hammer.

“God gave me this hammer,” Gabriel protested.

“He didn’t give you the sense to stop working yourself to heatstroke,” Jody replied. “It might be August, but it’s not fall yet and God sure doesn’t pay the air conditioning bills here.”

Sam sat with them on the steps, unwrapping his sandwich slowly. Letting himself be still.

When it was done, when the last of the snacks were packed away, Claire announced she was “absolutely not carrying another goddamn bucket”, and the group of teens ran off to have a ‘break.’ Which meant them probably snooping around the church. 

Gabriel shifted, crouching against the tile to line it up just so. A low, ragged groan slipped out. “Father Sweetcheeks… if I can drop a nugget of wisdom on your holiness: never start a labor-centered charity in your thirties when you were a lazy rich kid who once strained a finger opening a soda. My knees have never screamed this loud in my life.”

Sam smiled faintly. “Right… I’ll keep that in mind. Ten years from now, when I’m supposed to be better at this… stronger… wiser…”

He hated the hollow sound of his own words. Ten years. Sam’s thirties versus Gabriel’s forties. He’d thought getting older would make everything easier, that pain would dull, that desire would settle into something manageable. But around Gabriel, none of that seemed true. Even watching him crouch, careful and precise, made Sam’s chest ache with a mix of something tender and unnameable, something that refused to be rational.

Gabriel didn’t reply. His eyes flicked up, catching Sam’s, and for a moment the teasing vanished, leaving only a quiet, unspoken understanding - of limits, of exhaustion, of wanting, of not knowing how to reconcile it all.

Sam let the silence stretch, brushing off his hands at last. “Evening prayers,” he murmured. “I should probably…”

“You should,” Gabriel said softly, his usual edge gone.

Sam didn’t answer. He turned, footsteps echoing against the stone as he headed back toward the rectory, carrying the weight of his own aging body, his own stubborn desires, and the uncomfortable, persistent pull Gabriel left in their wake.

----

The sanctuary was quiet. Sam lingered by the sacristy stairs. Jody was vacuuming the steps with a certain practice ease. Sam visualized himself tumbling down the steps if he even attempted the maneuver.

“You okay, kid?” she asked over the sound of the vacuum, not looking up as she took a step down, working on the next step.

“Just tired.”

She gave him a side-eye that could pierce armor. “Tired’s not what you look like.”

Sam didn’t respond. He just stood there, looking like a man halfway drowned as Jody stepped onto the bottom landing with the vacuum, next to Sam.

Jody sighed through her nose, then pointed to the bench beside her. “Sit,” she said. “I’m gonna tell you something I don’t tell many people.”

Sam obeyed. His hands stayed in his lap, tight and fidgeting. Her voice softened. Not fragile, but raw. Weathered.

“I had a family once. A good one. Not the one I came from, no, that one was a nightmare. My dad was a mean drunk, and my mom... well, he hit her so often she started thinking I was the reason. That I brought the devil into the house just by breathing.”

She paused. Her jaw flexed, like the memory still had teeth.

“But I got out. Built something better. Found a man who loved me right. We had a boy - smart as hell, sweetest laugh you’ve ever heard. We made something good. Something real.”

Another pause. Deeper this time.

“And then they died. Just like that. Gone before I could even say goodbye.”

Sam’s breath caught in his throat.

“I hated everything after that,” she continued quietly. “God. The church. Every happy family I passed on the street. I begged Him to bring them back. Screamed at the altar until my voice broke. Asked Him to take me instead. To take me too.”

Sam stared down at his hands. He didn’t realize he had been shaking.

Jody tugged at the stuck wire, her hands sure and steady. “It wasn’t the church that saved me,” she said after a long silence. “Wasn’t prayer. Wasn’t grace.”

She looked at him, her eyes steady.

“It was people. Good ones. Stubborn ones. Kind ones who sat with me even when I didn’t want company. People who handed me thread when I didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

Plopping onto the bench beside Sam, she dug into a bag that sat propped against a nearby wall and pulled something soft and bright from the depths: a skein of golden yarn and a half-started chain.

“Wanna learn how to crochet?” she asked, offering it like a lifeline.

He blinked at it. “I don’t-”

“It helps. When the shakes get bad. When you want to scream but nothing comes out.”

Sam stared at the yarn. Then nodded once. “Yeah. Okay.”

They worked together for a long time: Jody showing Sam the basics of crochet and then getting him started with a small chain.

----

Evening had crept in while Sam wasn’t paying attention, and now the air inside felt heavier, golden at the edges. The lights had been left off, but enough sun still filtered through the stained glass to cast fractured bands of blue and amber across the floor.

He hadn’t meant to come back.

That was what he told himself, anyway.

The worksite was mostly packed. Tile buckets rinsed and stacked near the side door. The scaffolding stripped. The Build Harbor teens were gone now - he’d heard them leave in a clattering wave of laughter and sarcasm. A full group of them, six or seven at least, and all far louder than Gabriel. Claire had taken up the rear, still arguing about music with one of the others, while Jack had offered a quiet goodbye and a lopsided smile on his way out. They'd been a blur. A chaotic, bright, living blur.

Gabriel, though, had stayed.

Sam found him near the front of the church, crouched low and shirtless now, sealing tile by the chancel. His hoodie had been thrown over one of the altar chairs. A faded undershirt and a utility belt lay in a heap beside him.

Sam stopped in the back pew. He should have said something.

He didn’t.

He just watched.

Gabriel’s skin was warm in the low light, glistening with the sheen of a long day's work. But it was the ink that made Sam’s throat catch.

Tattoos sprawled across Gabriel’s back like scripture in a language Sam couldn’t read  -  holy text etched on the hide of a tempter.

A delicate set of wings, etched in stark black between his shoulders, ghostly and seemingly unfinished. A compass rose over one shoulder blade, detailed and sharp. A burning heart - classic, not kitsch - wreathed in vines, just over the curve of his ribs just besides the large bandaid covering the wound from yesterday. Lines of text peeked from beneath one arm, too small to read from a distance. Symbols and sigils were tucked in unexpected places, winding down his upper arms like wards or spells.

And then, just above his waistband, dead center and proud, was a 90s-style tramp stamp.

Barbed wire. Faded ink. A little crooked.

Sam blinked at it, shocked into something like awe.

Of course Gabriel had that. Of course he did.

He should have looked away.

He didn’t.

There was something about seeing it all laid bare, the constellation of story and chaos across Gabriel’s skin, that made Sam ache in a place too deep to name. The tattoos were personal. Intimate. They told a story he didn’t have the right to know but wanted to anyway. Like he’d stumbled into a sacred space and forgotten to take off his shoes.

Gabriel moved, reaching for a tool, and the muscles along his back shifted, alive beneath the ink. A flash of gold caught the light. Just a sliver of chain around his neck, mostly hidden by his shoulder. Sam stared at that too, stupidly. Hungrily.

You’re not supposed to want this, he thought. Not this way. Not again.

But God, he wanted.

Not just sex. Not just the body. It was the ease. The openness. The way Gabriel wore his history on his skin and laughed. The way he worked with kids like he gave a damn. The way he wasn’t afraid to stay behind and finish the job, even if it meant getting dirty. Alone. Quiet. Real.

Sam swallowed hard.

Gabriel straightened slowly, stretching with a wince, one hand pressed to the small of his back. His head tipped back, neck exposed, eyes closed for a moment like he was listening to something Sam couldn’t hear.

Then he opened them.

And caught Sam staring.

A beat passed.

Gabriel didn’t startle. Didn’t smirk.

He just looked at him, calm and tired, golden in the half-light.

“Evening, Father,” he said softly.

Sam didn’t answer right away.

He stepped forward, slow and uncertain, until he stood just a few feet away. “You stayed late.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Somebody had to finish the job.”

Sam’s gaze dropped, unwillingly, to the ink again. “You’re… covered.”

Gabriel looked down at himself, then back up. “Oh. That. Yeah. Occupational hazard of being young and dumb with a fake ID, lots of daddy’s money, and a lot of emotions.”

He smirked then, tired but real. “Most of ’em are meaningful. Some are just cool. And one-” He turned a little, tipping his hips to flash the barbed wire again. “- was the result of a breakup, three wine coolers, and a very persuasive goth named Balthazar.”

Sam huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s awful.”

Gabriel grinned wider. “Isn’t it, though?”

They stood there in silence a moment longer. The church breathed around them.

Then Gabriel’s expression sobered. “You okay?”

Sam blinked. “What?”

“You’ve got that post-funeral look… Dazed, not grieving, just… off.”

Sam hesitated. Then: “I… don’t know.”

Gabriel nodded once, slow. “Fair enough.”

He turned back to the floor without another word, crouching low again with a soft grunt, reaching for the bucket of sealant beside him. The tool slipped easily into his hand. His focus returned like a flipped switch.

Sam didn’t leave.

He should have. He meant to. But something held him there, still as stone, feet rooted to the floor. The quiet buzz of the church was louder now. The ticking of old radiators. The settling creak of wood. Outside, the light was nearly gone, blue creeping in where gold used to live.

Gabriel moved with the same easy grace he always had, efficient and grounded, but now Sam saw the effort behind it. The low stiffness in his back, the way he paused to breathe every few strokes. The weight of the day was catching up to him. He flexed one hand, fingers twitching like they cramped.

Then the bucket tipped.

Literally.

A slow, oozing glob of gray sealant sloshed over the side, trailing toward the half-laid tile and creeping toward Gabriel’s boot.

Gabriel sighed. “Shit.”

Before Sam could think about it, he was kneeling beside him, grabbing a roll of paper towels from the work cart. “Here.”

Gabriel blinked. “Thanks, Paul Bunyan.”

Sam bristled, just a little. “Sam.”

A corner of Gabriel’s mouth lifted. “Sammy, it is.”

They worked in silence, shoulders bumping once as they both reached for the same edge of the spill. Gabriel’s skin was still warm from the work, faintly damp. Sam’s hand brushed his side - just above the waistband, just below the tramp stamp - and it felt like touching a live wire  -  the same shock as pressing a thorn deeper, knowing it’ll bleed and doing it anyway.

He flinched away, but not fast enough.

Gabriel didn’t react. Just kept wiping. “You’re twitchy tonight.”

“You’re not wearing a shirt,” Sam muttered.

Gabriel laughed under his breath. “Yeah, I do all my best work naked.”

The joke didn’t land. Sam’s breath caught in his throat.

Gabriel noticed. He turned, slow and deliberate, their faces now too close. His voice gentled. “Hey.”

Sam looked at him.

Big mistake.

Up close, Gabriel wasn’t just beautiful. He was unbearable.

Sweat at his hairline. Dust on his jaw. Ink on his skin like scripture. His eyes were soft now, unreadable, rimmed with exhaustion and something Sam couldn’t name.

Gabriel didn’t move.

But it felt like he might.

Sam’s heart stuttered. His mouth parted.

Gabriel’s hand twitched, just slightly, like it thought of reaching for him.

And that was enough.

Sam bolted.

He stood too fast, muttered something that wasn’t even a full word, and walked away. Not out of anger. Not even fear. Just raw instinct. Flight.

Gabriel didn’t call after him.

He didn’t have to.

----

The night had bled quiet around the church, all candle smoke and cooling stone and clean air, as Sam stepped out onto the newly finished front porch. The Build Harbour teens had left a mess again - paper cups stacked like leaning towers, cookie crumbs scattered across the new floorboards. Sam rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a nearby cleaning bucket with water, trying to pretend that scrubbing frosting off the railing counted as pastoral duty. Anything to keep moving. Anything to keep from thinking.

Jody leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him with that small, knowing half-smile. “You know you don’t have to play janitor every week, right? We’ve got volunteers.”

He shrugged, not looking up. “They’re kids. The volunteers mean well, but they don’t see the way Claire smuggles cookies to Jack when she thinks no one’s watching, or how half of them clean up just to have an excuse to stay a little longer.” His rag paused mid-swipe. “It feels wrong to leave that behind.”

Jody chuckled softly. “You’re a strange priest, Sam Winchester. Most would lock the doors right after benediction and call it a night.”

“Maybe I like the noise,” he said, quieter now. “When they’re here - when he’s here - it feels like the place is still alive. Messy. Loud. But alive. That’s… worth getting my hands dirty for.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. The hum of the old porch lights buzzed above them, steady as breath.

Then Jody nodded, voice gentled by something close to pride. “Well, Father, if the Church had a few more men who thought like that, we might actually save the world.”

He smiled, faint and tired. “One at a time.”

She left him there, the sound of her boots fading into the church. Sam watched the doorway long after she was gone. Around him, the silence swelled - not empty, but holding traces of laughter and sugar and sawdust. The kind of mess worth keeping.

He wrung out the rag, wiped the last smear of frosting from the table, and finally let himself breathe.

----

Later, the sanctuary felt hollow.

Sam moved through it slowly, the old ring of keys heavy in his palm as he checked the doors and extinguished the last votive lights. The teens were long gone. Jody, too. Only the echo of laughter remained, soft and distant in the corners of the church.

He paused near the altar. The tiles were still drying.

He breathed in the scent of grout and incense, of old wood and dust. Beneath it, faint but distinct, was something else - sweat and warmth and worn cotton.

Gabriel’s hoodie.

It had been left slung over the altar chair, just as before. Forgotten. Or not.

Sam reached for it.

His fingers hovered over the worn fabric for a moment. It was soft. Well-loved. Faded olive green. The front was blank, but when he lifted it, the back caught the candlelight.

Stanford.

The letters were cracked, white peeling slightly around the edges. Sam remembers considering Stanford before seminary school.

Sam stared at them like a confession. A sharp flash of something flared in his chest: recognition, bitterness, longing. A life he hadn’t had. A life he hadn’t let himself want.

He held the hoodie tight.

I’ll return it in the morning, he told himself.

But he didn’t put it back.

The rectory was cold.

Sam didn’t light a candle. Didn’t open his Bible. Didn’t kneel.

He locked the door behind him and stood in the stillness for a long time, the hoodie clenched in both fists like contraband. His fingers curled into the worn cotton, thumb brushing the frayed edge of the kangaroo pocket. It was heavier than he expected. Warmer. As if it still held heat from Gabriel’s body.

He should have folded it. Left it on the chair. Promised to return it tomorrow like a decent man would.

Instead, he sat on the edge of his narrow bed and pulled it into his lap.

Stanford.

The letters stared back at him like a secret he had stumbled upon. Gabriel had gone there once. Maybe as a boy with soft hands and ambition. Maybe as the man he was now - tattooed, weary, forged in the kind of fire that left scars.

Sam didn’t want to picture that version of Gabriel.

He wanted this one. The man who laughed too loud. Who touched teens on the shoulder with careful affection. Who stripped off his shirt and knelt in the sanctuary like it was his home.

Slowly, Sam lifted the hoodie to his face.

The scent hit him immediately.

It wasn’t strong. Wasn’t soap or cologne or anything intentional. It was just him. Sweat and dust and sun and something sweeter, barely there - like cheap candy or the ghost of strawberry lube on skin.

Sam inhaled. Long. Deep.

The air caught in his chest. His lungs seized around it. He kept breathing anyway, each drag slower than the last, dragging the fabric across his nose, then his mouth. Until it covered him.

He pressed it against his nose, shoving a bit into his mouth. A gag. A wound.

The warmth of it made his skin prickle.

His other hand dropped to his belt. He hesitated - only a moment - then unbuckled it with shaking fingers. His pants slid down with a whisper. He sat there in silence, boxers tented, cock already twitching, hard from nothing but memory and want and the scent of a man who didn’t belong to him.

He didn’t touch himself yet.

Instead, he pressed the hoodie tighter to his face and rocked forward slightly. Breath fogged into the fabric. His thighs trembled. His whole body felt overheated.

He let the images flood him.

Gabriel bent over tile. Gabriel’s back slick with sweat. Gabriel’s hands, strong and calloused, cradling the back of his neck. Gabriel’s voice in the confessional: “You’re not a statue. You’re still alive.”

The words lodged in Sam’s throat like a thorn.

He shifted, boxers dragging down just far enough to free his cock. It slapped against his stomach, flushed and aching. He hissed through his teeth, jaw tight beneath the press of cotton. He reached blindly for the rosary - half buried beneath the folds of his coat where it had fallen - and looped it around his wrist, pulling it tight. The braided leather bit into his skin, the nail crucifix pressed against the pulse at his inner arm like a brand.

Punishment. Reminder. Anchor.

Finally, he wrapped that same hand around himself.

The jolt was immediate. His hips jerked up off the mattress, breath stuttering.

“Fuck,” he whispered, as if confessing.

He stroked slow at first - deliberate, heavy passes from root to tip, palm twisting just under the head. The friction was almost unbearable. Each pass brought him closer to the edge of something raw and dangerous.

He tightened the hoodie around his mouth like it was penance. Choking out most of his breath.

With every drag of his hand, he saw Gabriel clearer. Heard him clearer.

“Come on, big guy.”

“You’re good.”

“My good boy.”

Sam groaned, too loud, and bit down hard into the cloth to muffle it.

His pace quickened. His hand clutched the hoodie, knuckles white. The cotton soaked in the sound of his breathing, sharp and shallow. His hips bucked helplessly into his hand, chasing something he couldn’t name.

Shame curled beneath it. Familiar. Acidic. Holy. The thorn never left  -  it just pressed deeper, hidden under skin where no one else could see.

He clenched his eyes shut and leaned forward, bending over his lap until his chest nearly touched his knees. The hoodie clung to his skin, damp with sweat, humid from the air he kept losing into it.

“Please,” he gasped, though he didn’t know what he was asking for.

His strokes grew desperate. Sloppy. Pre-come smeared across his palm, slicking every motion. His thighs trembled with restraint he no longer had. His whole body was a string wound too tight.

And still he didn’t stop.

Couldn’t stop.

His mouth opened beneath the fabric, panting into it like he was drowning in heat and want and memory. The scent clung to him now. Gabriel was in him, somehow, threaded through his breath and blood.

It wasn’t about orgasm anymore. It was about obliteration.

Take it. Take it all. Just-

He came with a broken cry, hips snapping up, come striping across his stomach and wrist and the hoodie. The orgasm tore through him like a storm, full-body, devastating.

It didn’t feel good.

It felt like falling off a cliff.

When it ended, he stayed there. Bent, gasping, hoodie still pressed to his mouth.

His hand was sticky. His thighs ached. The room was silent again, but the blood still roared in his ears.

The rosary had left marks. Faint, red, crescent-shaped indents bloomed on his wrist where the leather had bitten too deep. A few had split. Tiny, bright lines of blood welled beneath the skin.

He stared at them for a long moment.

Then he wiped himself clean with the corner of towel, each motion deliberate, as if scrubbing away something unholy. He rinsed the rosary with water from the sink, dried it like it was holy, then laid it carefully on the nightstand - cross side up.

The hoodie lay in his lap, damp with sweat and breath and something worse. He held it like it could forgive him.

Eventually, he rose and moved slowly, like each joint had to remember how to work.

The rectory hallway was dark. The silence felt heavier than it should.

Down the corridor, through the small kitchen, to the laundry room.

He folded the hoodie. Stared at it. Threw it in the washing machine.

He turned off the light and left the hoodie there, spinning.

The next morning came too fast.

Sam hadn’t slept. Not really. He sat through morning prayers hollowed out, face a mask of calm, hands trembling only when no one was watching.

The church was already alive with sound by the time he stepped into the rec room hallway - Claire shouting about toast, Jack humming something under his breath.

He moved toward the group, the hoodie back in his arms, newly washed and folded.

Claire leaned against the doorway like she’d been waiting for him, sipping from a can of Mega Monster.

“Hey, Father.” She nodded toward the hoodie.

Sam stumbled then stiffened. “I was just coming to return this.”

“Mmhm.”

She didn’t say anything else until he passed her.

Then, softly, like a dagger: “You look at him like he’s going to fix whatever is wrong with you.”

Chapter 2

“Let the Dead Bury Their Dead” 

Matthew 8:22

The air inside the church was cool and still.

Not empty, but hushed, like the air in a crypt, where the living don’t belong. Light poured through tall, narrow windows in gold slants, illuminating dust motes that drifted like ash over a grave. It smelled like old wood, beeswax, and something even older still. Something sacred. Likely Iincense from the last Mass lingeringed like a ghost, curling in the corners of the vaulted ceiling.

Sam paused in the entryway, his boots just over the threshold, and let the heavy oak door fall shut behind him with a low thud.

It echoed down the nave like a warning.

He squared his shoulders and, walked forward like a man headed to confession, or maybe execution. His steps were slow, deliberate, echoing against the stone floor with each careful press of leather against tile. He could feel the collar snug against his throat, the stiff linen of his clerical shirt scratching faintly beneath the crisp lines of his coat. It itched in places that had never known this kind of weight before. 

He clasped one of his trembling hands in the other.

A woman stood by a the folding table in the adjoining fellowship hall, arranging Styrofoam cups and a plate of homemade sugar cookies. She was maybe in her forties, with kind eyes and the sort of short silver hair that had an air of rebellion behind it. She looked up at him and smiled like she’d been waiting just for him.

“Father Winchester,” she said warmly. “We’re so glad to have you here. There’s coffee and refreshments before Mass. Just some mingling, nothing formal.”

He nodded, polite. Managed a tight smile. “Thank you.”

She told him her name - Jody - but the sound of it slipped away as soon as it was spoken, drowned by the swell of greetings that followed. The small congregation had turned out in full force, it seemed: old couples, young families, a few teens in wrinkled dress shirts scrolling on their phones and flashing some definitely not Christ-like memes to each other. They came to him in soft clusters, smiling, curious, gentle.

And surprised.

“You’re the new priest?” a white-haired man asked with a skeptical squint. “You look about twelve.”

“Oh, he’s just young,” Jody cooed beside him, patting his arm like he was something she’d baked herself. “How old are you, Father?”

“Twenty-six,” Sam said with another polite smile.

A low murmur of impressed eyebrows and hushed “so young”’s followed him wherever he turned. As if youth was both a miracle and a warning sign.

Hands were shaken. Names exchanged. Questions asked about his journey to priesthood, about the seminary, about where he grew up and what drew him to “the cloth.”

He answered them all like a man reciting a liturgy he’d memorized in another life.

Yes, it had been a calling. Yes, he was grateful to serve. No, he didn’t mind the weather; he liked the lake. And yes, of course, he was happy to be here.

Their kindness felt like cotton in his throat. Too soft to hold onto. Too thick to breathe through.

He adjusted his collar again, fingers twitching at the starched edge. It didn’t help. The thing itched like it knew it didn’t belong there.

Then movement near the back of the hall caught his eye.

And the air thickened.

Gabriel leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, one hip slung lazy against a metal toolbox like he belonged to the building more than the floor did.

He handed a gallon ice cream tub full of bright orange tile spacers to a teen in a purple beanie, then mock-shoved them away with a playful kick, grinning like the weight of the world didn’t touch him.

He was all contrast and contradiction  -  and against the still, preserved quiet of the church, Gabriel looked scandalously alive. His bare forearms, the sweat, the heat in his eyes  -  like something freshly pulled from the earth while everything else here stayed buried: white t-shirt streaked with paint, jeans dusted from knees to cuffs, a smear of something - grout? dirt? - cut across his cheekbone like a war mark he wore without shame.

His forearms were bare, golden in the morning light, muscles flexing with casual grace. Tattoos curled from under his sleeves like half-told stories. Tools glittered beside him, scattered like offerings.

He didn’t look like the man from the motel. Not really.

But Sam knew that mouth. That smirk. That heat.

He was no longer the sharp-dressed man with pink condoms and strawberry lube; but somehow, standing there, undone and dust-covered he was even more dangerous.

Gabriel didn’t look shocked. He didn’t look confused or panicked or even mildly uncomfortable.

He looked amused.

That same crooked smile played across his mouth, like he knew a secret Sam didn’t. Like he’d been waiting for this.

Sam’s breath punched out of him like a fist to the gut. His feet moved before his brain could catch up. Three long strides and he was there, face flushed, voice low and sharp.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“Morning, Holy Beanpole,” Gabriel beamed without even a blink. “Tiling the floor - your floor, I guess. What’s it look like?”

Sam’s eyes flicked to the pile of flooring panels stacked nearby. His brain caught up with the details: tools, gloves, a branded duffel with the logo of some expensive brand Sam never cared about.

“You said you weren’t from here.”

“Yeah, I lied,” Gabriel shrugged. “I love telling little lies to strangers; it’s almost better than the hot hot sex in motels I’m renting because my apartment is was being fumigated.”

“You didn’t tell me you were -”

“A priest?” Gabriel interrupted, brows lifted, eyes dancing. “You mean you didn’t tell me you were a fucking Catholic priest.”

“I wasn’t… technically,” Sam muttered. “Today is my first actual day.”

Gabriel gave a low whistle, stepping in close enough for Sam to smell sawdust and sweat and something faintly sweet like… strawberries. “God doesn’t love liars, Sammy.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m sure He doesn’t love…” Sam attempts back, “you..?”

“What?” Gabriel gasped, bemused.

“I don’t know,” Sam all but whines.

“Christ. I gave a stupid priest head in a motel. What a sexy, hot, horny, delicious cliché.”

“Keep your voice down.”

But Gabriel wasn’t done. His grin softened - just slightly. “You’re really twenty-six?”

Sam stiffened. “Yeah.”

“Damn,” Gabriel said, looking him over like he couldn’t quite believe it. “I’ve got ten years on you.”

Gabriel didn’t look much older, but in the light of the church, he felt older. The way he carried himself, grounded and slick all at once, like someone who’d been through hell and decided to flirt with it instead of run.

“So, you’re from here, then?” Sam asked, quieter this time.

Gabriel shrugged, the motion looser this time, but without the smirk.

“Yeah. Grew up just outside of town. These days I’m with Build Harbor - nonprofit, trade skills, all that. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry - stuff you can actually build a future on. Next week I’m taking a crew to a restaurant so they can get some custodial and kitchen work under their belts.”

His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “We keep the lights on thanks to rich, guilty donors - my parents used to be in that pool - and a handful of community folks who still give a damn.”

Sam blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

“These kids?” Gabriel went on, voice softening. “Most of ’em got tossed out or just… slipped through the cracks. Queer kids. Runaways. Foster care chewed ’em up and spit ’em out. We give them a bed, job training, maybe a second chance if they’ll take it.” His grin came back quick, fond. “They’re the best damn kids you’ve ever met. Sharp. Funny. Mouthy as hell. Survivors.”

“That kidKid named Jack? Whiz with wiring,” he added, and this time the grin didn’t feel like a weapon. “We’re fixing up businesses and community spaces the ice storms wrecked last winter. Pipes burst, floors buckled. Yours just happens to be one of the worstfirst on the list. Might take a while, so we might as well start now.”

Sam didn’t know what to say to that, so Gabriel filled the silence. “Did you know about 40 percent of homeless youth identify as queer? They’re just like us, but younger, rawer. They haven’t had a chance yet. We made it through. Well… mostly.”

Sam’s jaw tensed. “Keep your voice down,” he snapped, eyes scanning the room. “There’s no us.” But no one seemed to notice. An old man fussed with the coffee pot. A teenager handed out missalettes with barely concealed boredom. “I’m not - I’m not like you.”

Gabriel leaned in, voice dropping to something both warm and dangerous. “You can pretend all you want, Father, but we both know what you did last night. And I know, it wasn’t a sin. It couldn’t have been.”

Sam’s fists clenched at his sides.

Gabriel reached for him, light, easy. His fingers skimmed Sam’s hand, just a graze, knuckles brushing in a touch so casual it almost passed for nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing.

Sam recoiled like he’d been burned, jerking back so fast it knocked Gabriel off balance. Gabriel stumbled sideways, his momentum carrying him straight into the edge of the tile cutter. His ribs slammed into the cold metal with a sickening jolt. A loud clang rang out; the scrape of skin on steel, the sharp tear of fabric giving way.

“Shit,” Gabriel hissed.

Sam’s eyes dropped just as Gabriel lifted the hem of his shirt to check the damage.

The fabric rose slowly, catching for a moment on the sweat at his lower back before revealing skin that seemed almost too golden for the fluorescent lighting; sun-warmed and weathered, the kind of tan that spoke of years working outside. His chest was broad, dusted with fine blonde hair that caught the light, and his torso - solid, not sculpted - carried the kind of strength that didn’t come from gym mirrors or protein shakes. This was a body shaped by effort, by repetition, by labor and life.

The faint curve of his stomach softened the lines of muscle beneath, making de him real in a way that was somehow more compelling than perfection. Sam’s gaze caught on the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath one sleeve - something dark and intricate winding around the curve of his upper arm, just hidden enough to make Sam want to see more. Another flash of ink appeared near his waist, not quite on his torso, hinting at stories pressed into skin just out of view.

Then he saw the scrape.

A raw bloom of red across Gabriel’s ribs, angrier and deeper than it first appeared. Blood welled in a thin, glistening line that trailed along the curve of his side. Sam felt his stomach twist.

And not just from guilt.

He stared, horrified at himself and yet unable to look away. Want roiled low in his gut, sharp and shameful. The flash of Gabriel’s skin. The heat still lingering from his touch. It all coiled under his collar like a noose.

Gabriel’s eyes lifted as he reached into his duffle for a first aid kit, catching Sam in the act. His gaze was knowing. A little amused. A little wounded.

Sam didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

His throat worked around the weight of a dozen confessions he couldn’t speak aloud.

“I have to get ready,” he said hoarsely.

Then he turned and walked away, footsteps too fast, too loud on the tile.

---

The sacristy was small - just a narrow room with a wooden counter, a few drawers, and a crucifix nailed to the wall like it was watching him.

Sam sat heavily on the edge of the bench, fingers trembling as he tied the cincture around his waist. The white alb beneath his chasuble clung uncomfortably to his damp skin. His collar still itched.

His heartbeat was a steady roar in his ears.

This is fine, he told himself. You’re fine. It’s just nerves.

But it wasn’t just nerves.

The weight of it all settled on his shoulders like the vestments were made of stone. He couldn’t catch a full breath. His hands kept twitching, and his mouth was dry, and the room felt too bright and too small all at once. Like the walls were folding in.

He pressed his palms together and squeezed his eyes shut.

He’d spent years preparing for this. Seminary classes. Spiritual direction. Silence and study and scripture. And now, here he was: on the edge of everything, and he couldn’t stop shaking.

God is testing you, he thought.

You made vows. You said yes. You.

He pulled in a shallow breath and let it out slowly.

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to trust Him.

His hands finally steadied.

And then the bells rang.

The entrance hymn echoed softly as he stepped out into the sanctuary, every step like walking into open flame. The church wasn’t packed, but it was full enough - faces turned toward him with quiet expectation. Some smiling. Some reverent. All watching.

His heart thudded so loudly he was sure it echoed in the rafters, loud in a place that seemed built to muffle the sound of anything living. He thought of the verse  -  let the dead bury their dead - and wondered if this was what it meant: to stand among the faithful while his own pulse betrayed him. The golden light caught in the curve of the stained glass, spilling red and violet across the floor like spilled wine.

His hands locked around the lectern like it was the last solid thing in the world. The wood was cool beneath his skin, polished to a sheen that caught the light, unyielding beneath the tremor in his grip. His fingers curled tighter, until the knuckles stood out stark and white, until the edges dug in hard enough to leave little half-moons in his palms.

If he let go, he wasn’t sure his legs would hold him.

“My name is - uh - Father Sam Winchester.” The words came out low and uneven, as if they had to be dragged past something lodged in his throat. “And this… this is my first Mass.”

The room stirred gently around him. A muted rustle of clothes. The familiar sigh of wooden pews adjusting to new weight. Heads tilted, a few small smiles offered from faces expecting to be inspired. Somewhere toward the back, a tissue slipped from its packet, the faint crinkle loud in the hush. Someone already convinced the tremor in his voice was awe.

They didn’t know.

They couldn’t.

“I never thought I’d actually be here,” he said, each word weighed down, slow enough to feel the pull of gravity on his tongue. “Wearing this collar. Standing here in front of you. I didn’t come from a family of priests. I didn’t always know God - not like I do now. My childhood…” He stopped, drew in a breath that felt too shallow. “…didn’t make faith easy.”

The truth scraped in his chest, sharp and dry. “For a long time, I didn’t know what I believed. I knew right from wrong. I knew pain. I knew anger. I knew… longing. But God? God was something I hunted for in books, in questions, in the long, empty hours where no one answered back.”

Silence swelled in the space between his words. Heavy. Slow. Almost physical in its weight. He closed his eyes for a moment, pulling in air like a drowning man pushing toward the surface, and when he opened them again, there was no going back.

“I thought I knew who I was going to be. I had plans. Dreams. A life I could see stretched out ahead of me. And then…” His voice wavered. “Then something happened. Or maybe it was slower than that. A loosening. A thread pulled free, then another. Until the whole thing came undone. Until one day I woke up and realized… the life I was living wasn’t the life I was meant for.”

His lungs tightened, the air catching jagged in his throat.

And then, without meaning to, his eyes drifted toward the back.

At first, all he saw was shadow. The dim light from the side windows falling away into darkness.

Then… there. A shape. Still. Watching.

It took his mind a beat too long to accept it.

Gabriel.

Half-shrouded in the gloom, like a flame locked in a cold stone crypt. The rest of the chapel seemed embalmed, unmoving; only he seemed to breathe in color. A hoodie covered his torn shirt, shadowing part of his face, but the set of his mouth was visible, unsmiling. His eyes were steady, unwavering. They caught Sam and held him there, pinned without effort. A duffel bag rested next to him on the pew. He looked like a man waiting for something that would never come.

Something in Sam’s chest pulled tight, so tight it hurt to inhale. His ribs felt too small for the ache inside them.

“There was a moment,” he said, his voice splintering in the middle, “when I thought… maybe God had made a mistake. Maybe He’d called the wrong man. Because how could someone like me - someone who wanted so many other things - someone who lived the life I lived - belong to something this sacred?”

He didn’t dare glance at the congregation. Their belief in him might crush him.

So he looked at Gabriel.

At the man who had once kissed his collarbone like it was scripture.

Who had laughed against his throat, warm and unguarded.

Who had held him as if he were already whole.

“I didn’t become a priest because I was holy. Or because I was brave,” Sam said, his voice raw. “I became one because, no matter how many times I tried to walk away, God kept pulling me back. When my father died… and my brother-” He faltered, breath catching. “I couldn’t ignore the call anymore.”

The tremor in his words deepened. Gabriel’s brow drew together, a crack in the stillness of his expression, his mouth parting as though to speak. He didn’t.

“And I realized,” Sam said, slower now, each word like it cost him something, “I wasn’t being asked to be perfect. I was being asked to be faithful. Even when it hurt. Even when it cost me. Even when I didn’t know who I was without the things I had to leave behind. Even when I… didn’t want to try.”

The tears came quietly. Hot. Relentless. And he didn’t lift a hand to stop them. He let them fall, each one carrying a piece of himself away.

“And I said yes,” he whispered.

The congregation saw a holy moment. A man overcome by divine love. Heads bowed, hearts softened.

But Gabriel knew.

He knew how grief could hollow a man in silence. How sacrifices made in shadows could weigh more than the ones made in daylight. He knew Sam wasn’t weeping for joy. Sam was mourning the boy who believed love was holy enough to fight for. The man who had tasted freedom in a single motel night and buried it like a sin. He was grieving the part of himself he would now lock away, maybe forever.

Finally, Sam tore his gaze from Gabriel and looked upward. The vaulted ceiling arched far above him - ancient, unreachable, like a heaven that would never lean low enough to touch him. His chest ached with the thinness of the air.

His voice cracked on the last word.

“Amen.”

And then the moment passed.

He moved through the rest of the Mass like he was underwater. The prayers came - rituals etched into his tongue - but they felt like someone else’s words. A part in a script he no longer believed in, not fully. Not cleanly.

He could still feel Gabriel’s eyes, even as the weight of them faded, softened into something less solid. Less real.

A memory. A temptation. A life already gone.

The Lord is testing me, he thought, over and over, like a mantra. He is testing my devotion. My obedience. My heart. I just have to trust Him. I just have to endure.

The Agnus Dei passed in a blur - “Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world..." - and then the Eucharist was distributed.

He held the host up to each bowed head, voice calm, detached.

“The Body of Christ.”

Amen.

Again and again, like clockwork. Faces, hands, tongues. So many eyes. None of them Gabriel’s.

You will be okay, he told himself, knees bending during the final prayers. You will be happy. This is what God wants for you. This is what love looks like. Love is sacrifice. Love is surrender. God’s love is all that matters.

The recessional hymn rose in the background. People smiled at him on the way out, warm and grateful. They touched his hands. Thanked him for his beautiful words. Jody even hugged him.

He didn’t feel it.

His mouth smiled. His body moved.

But something inside him had gone silent.

Afterward, he sat in the darkened confessional, his breath barely stirring the stillness. The scent of incense still lingered in the walls, soaked into the wood. Frankincense. Myrrh. Dust.

He rested his forehead against the edge of the screen, eyes shut, trying not to shake. He had listened to five confessions already - sins of gossip, sugar addiction, petty envy, skipping daily rosary, porn. He offered penance in automatic tones.

He felt nothing.

This is where I belong. This is right. I am strong enough to carry this. I will find joy in this eventually. I will learn to forget. I will learn to love only God. That will be enough. 

That has to be enough.

His fingers twisted in the hem of his cassock, white-knuckled. An hour passed, and Sam prepared to retreat back to the sacristy, hoping that his congregation had finally cleared out.

He is testing me. That’s all this is. The Lord is testing my heart. He is forging me in fire. I just have to survive it. I just have to survive. Just hold on. Just hold on. Just -

A creak on the other side of the screen.

Then a voice, low and unmistakable:

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Time stopped.

Sam’s lungs stopped.

Everything stopped.

Because Gabriel was in the confessional.

And suddenly, the words Sam had been whispering like a lifeline cracked down the middle. Fell away like ash.

He didn’t speak. He couldn’t.

The silence hung there between them, hot and tense and trembling.

Gabriel shifted, the bench creaking under his weight.

“It’s been a while,” he said softly, like he wasn’t sure what tone to use. “I don’t really… know how to do this part.”

Sam stared at the grain of the wood. His pulse thundered in his ears.

“I think I’m supposed to say how long it’s been since my last confession,” Gabriel continued, with a hollow laugh. “But I’m not sure if ‘never’ counts.”

Still, Sam said nothing.

“I guess God would say that we…” Gabriel sighed. “That I sinned last night, but I don’t think it was a sin. What we- What I did couldn’t have been a sin. I just don’t think it could be. It was silly and beautiful and kind and dirty. If anything, it was holy. I refuse to believe that it was a sin.” That tore through Sam like lightning. His spine stiffened. His hands curled into fists in his lap.

Gabriel’s voice softened again. “I didn’t mean to freak you out by sticking around.”

Sam’s breath stuttered.

“Or maybe I did,” Gabriel admitted. “Maybe I wanted to. Because I thought if you saw me… I don’t know.”

Silence. Sam hadn’t moved.

“I’m sorry, Sammy.”

That broke something.

The name. Said with so much quiet, aching care. Not Father Winchester. Not Father. Just Sammy.

And now he was back in his body. All of it. The weight. The breath. The sting behind his eyes.

Still, he couldn’t speak. His throat had closed.

So Gabriel kept talking, voice like a hand on the edge of a cliff.

“I came here to fix the floor. I didn’t know I’d walk into your Mass. I didn’t know I’d see you like that. I didn’t know it’d feel like…” He exhaled. “Like you were already gone. Like I had lost you somehow even though you aren’t mine.”

The words lodged deep. Maybe I am gone, Sam thought. Maybe I’ve already buried myself and just haven’t stopped moving.

Sam’s chest burned. His fingernails dug crescents into his knees.

“You looked like that alter owned you,” Gabriel said. “But I know the truth. You belong to yourself. You’re not some relic, Sam. You’re not a statue. You’re still alive.”

Another pause.

“I know it’s not my place. I know I don’t get to ask you to feel something you don’t want to feel. But I needed to say it. I needed you to hear me.”

Then the soft scrape of wood as Gabriel adjusted, now facing the screen that separated them. He rested his forehead against the cold metal screen.

“I’ll go,” he whispered. “Unless… unless you want me to stay.”

The silence stretched. One second. Two. Sam’s throat worked, but no sound came.

Then…

Barely louder than a breath. Broken. Fragile.

“…stay.”

The word was hardly there, but it hit like a lightning strike.

Gabriel sat frozen for a moment. Then he moved. Quietly stepped out, planting himself outside of Sam’s side of the confessional. “Sammy, can you let me in?”

Sam, once again, found himself unable to move.

Gabriel sighed. “Look, I know you think this is wrong. That you’ve got to be perfect or obedient or whatever the hell they drilled into you. But I saw your face this morning. I felt your hands. I know what it did to you.”

Sam’s breath trembled. His throat ached. Every word Gabriel spoke coiled around the truth like a rope - tight, sharp, pulling.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Gabriel murmured. “I just… needed you to hear me. To know I’m not ashamed. That I don’t regret a damn thing.”

Silence, for a beat.

Then Sam stood so quickly his knees cracked. The screen shuddered in its frame.

He stepped out of the confessional and found Gabriel already standing there on the other side. Closer than he should be. Eyes wide. Unreadable.

They stared at each other for a long breath.

Then another.

Gabriel’s eyes drifted downward, caught on the rosary looped through Sam’s belt. It was rough, handmade - braided leather cord with a crucifix fashioned out of actual nails. Jagged edges. Industrial metal.

“That’s not store-bought,” he murmured.

Sam hesitated. “No.”

Gabriel traced the air near it, not touching. “Control?”

Sam’s breath hitched. The word landed heavy, unspoken memories uncoiling.

Dean’s voice, steady and sure: “Knot it ’til it holds. If it slips, you didn’t do it right. Try again.” Small hands gripping thick rope. Rough fingers guiding his own.

Sam blinked. “Something like that.”

There’s an awkward beat until:

Sam’s voice was hoarse when he finally murmured, “Come with me.”

Gabriel followed, silent, heart thrumming, the ghost of Sam’s breath still warm on his neck.

Sam didn’t look at him. Just walked, long strides, purposeful, down the side of the nave toward a side door. Gabriel hesitated only a second before following him into the old sacristy, the heavy door closing behind them with a soft thud.

The room was small, narrow, dusty with disuse. A crucifix hung askew on the far wall, and a faded stole lay draped across a kneeler. The air smelled faintly of incense and linen.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t careful. It was like something snapped and he was falling into it, into him, the same way he’d fallen the night before with desperation and gravity and something too ancient to name. His hands fisted in Gabriel’s shirt and slammed him back into the nearest wall, the heavy thud of it swallowed by the thick plaster and the wood of the wainscoting.

Gabriel gasped, half surprise, half arousal, just before Sam’s mouth crashed into his.

The verse flared again in his mind  -  let the dead bury their dead. But Gabriel’s mouth on his was proof he wasn’t fully in the ground yet. Not if he could still burn like this.

It was filthy. There was no gentleness to it. No priestly restraint. Sam kissed like he was drowning, like Gabriel’s mouth was the only air left in the world. Hands harrassed. Tongues tangled. Sam groaned low in his throat, raw and honest and wrecked.

Gabriel’s hands scrabbled under Sam’s robes, yanking down his pants and the fabric of his cassocks up with practiced ease, finding bare thighs and muscle and the very clear outline of Sam’s need pressed hard against the front of his black boxer briefs.

“Jesus,” Gabriel breathed, eyes gone dark. “You’re such a beautiful boy.”

Sam shoved him again for saying it out loud, but his face was flushed and his cock throbbed at the sound. “Shut up.”

Gabriel’s grin turned slow, wicked. “You like this. You want it like this. Back of the church, collar still on, heart pounding like a goddamn hymn.”

“Don’t talk,” Sam groaned, kissing him again, more desperate this time. He fumbled with Gabriel’s jeans, popped the button, and shoved them down far enough to get his hand in. Gabriel was already half-hard, already slick with want, and the groan he let out when Sam wrapped a fist around him made Sam see stars.

“Fuck - Sammy-”

“Don’t say my name.”

“Oh right. ‘Father,’ then?”

Sam nearly bit his shoulder. “I said, don’t talk.”

Gabriel just laughed, gasping as Sam stroked him rough, unrelenting. “This is so sacrilegious. You gonna confess it later? Tell God how good it felt to jerk off the dirty contractor against the church wall?”

“Shut up,” Sam hissed again, but his voice cracked on it.

He was unraveling. There, fully clothed but undone, grinding his hips into Gabriel’s thigh like a man possessed. His whole body sang with sensation. Heat, friction, sin.

Gabriel’s hand found him next, shoved past waistband and robe to grip him tight. They both moaned at the same time.

“This is insane,” Gabriel panted, eyes locked on Sam’s.

“I - I know,” Sam choked, but he didn’t stop.

They kissed again, filthy and open, rutting against each other like teenagers behind the bleachers. Heat built between them fast, too fast. Sam's hips jerked. Gabriel bit down on a groan.

Sam licked his lips, staring down at Gabriel’s cock. Pretty and pink. “Are you clean?” He gasped.

“What?”

“You know,” Sam whispered. “Have you gotten tested?”

Gabriel paused, looking over at his Sam with gentle eyes. “I haven’t touched anyone in months,” He breathed, stuttering as Sam suddenly dropped to his knees. “But yea, I - I’m clean.”

That was all Sam needed to get to work. He grabbed a decorative pillow off of a chair, wedging it between his weeping cock and the water damaged floor. He whimpered at the friction, “Promise?”

“I promise, baby.” Gabriel smiled, running a hand through Sam hair.

Sam ran his palm up the length of it, slow and reverent, like he couldn’t help himself. Gabriel hissed. Sam didn’t speak. He just leaned in and dragged his tongue along the underside, slow and shaking.

Gabriel cursed, fisting Sam’s hair tighter.

Sam licked again, this time from base to tip, gathering the slick at the head with a swirl of his tongue before finally taking him into his mouth.

Gabriel’s knees nearly buckled.

Sam moaned at the taste, the heat, the scent. He began to move: slow at first, deliberate. Letting himself sink into it. The wet sounds echoed in the quiet room, obscene and holy all at once. He hollowed his cheeks, pulled back, then sank in again.

Gabriel let out a strangled sound, hips jerking forward. “Fuck, Sammy-”

“I said don’t. Say. My name.”

He began to grind against the pillow as he sucked Gabriel deeper, the rough friction making him gasp around the length in his throat. His moans vibrated through Gabriel, making him shudder and twitch in his mouth.

Sam groaned, pulling off with a wet pop, his eyes closed in shame; cheeks flushed, mouth slick and red. Sam opened up, tongue out expectantly, hand guiding Gabriel forward. Waiting for him to understand what Sam was too ashamed to beg for.

Gabriel gasped, “You want me to fuck your pretty boy mouth?”

Sam didn’t say anything, didn’t even to bother telling Gabriel to shut up. He just sat there, waiting.

Gabriel groaned, stepping closer. “You’re… insane.”

Sam took him in again, deeper this time, until his throat clenched and his eyes watered. He moaned, cock rutting against the pillow like he couldn’t bear not to be touched.

Gabriel buried his fingers in Sam’s soft brown hair, pulling slightly at the roots, guiding him back up his length. He started slow, hips rolling gently at first, then a little harder, deeper. Sam took it all, hands braced on Gabriel’s thighs, body rocking, wrecked with pleasure and shame and need.

“I’m close,” Gabriel warned, allowing himself harder and more deliberate thrusts. “Fuck, I’m so close-”

Sam sucked harder and ground down onto the pillow, chasing his own edge.

Gabriel’s hands curled further into Sam’s hair, pulling more. “Now, Sam. I’m gonna -”

“Me too - fuck -” he groaned, mouth full, hips jerking.

They came like that: Gabriel shuddering deep in his throat, Sam grinding against the ruined pillow, his body trembling. He swallowed, nearly choking, then gasped for air.

The room went quiet, just the sound of ragged breathing and the slow return of clarity.

Gabriel stroked Sam’s hair as he pulled back, soft and tentative. “You okay?”

Sam didn’t answer. Just sat back on his heels, breathing hard, lips wet.

Gabriel, still flushed and breathless, opened his mouth to say something -

And then a door slammed.

Too close.

Sam froze.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway just beyond the sacristy.

Gabriel’s eyes went wide. “Shit,” he mouthed.

Sam moved fast, yanking Gabriel by the arm, pushed Gabriel against the far wall, locking both doors to the sacristy. They were barely protected, breathless and flushed, when Jody’s voice called out.

“Father Winchester? You still here? Just wanted to drop off the visitor schedule for next week.”

Sam frantically straightened his robe, swiped a sleeve over his lips. Gabriel clamped a hand over his own mouth to keep from laughing.

“Just… a moment!” Sam called out, voice cracking like a teenager.

“Oh, take your time, honey,” Jody replied, her voice fading down the hall. “I’ll leave it on your desk.”

Silence.

Sam looked at Gabriel.

Gabriel looked at Sam.

Then, quietly, helplessly, Gabriel grinned.

“Man, I love Jody.”

Sam groaned, head falling back against the wall. This time, Gabriel didn’t laugh. He just reached out, brushing a thumb along Sam’s jaw, “You ok?”

The bar wasn’t lively, and that was exactly what Sam Winchester needed.

The place smelled of stale smoke, spilled beer, and something sweeter: pipe tobacco maybe, or the ghost of someone’s cologne. An indie-folk track crackled through the speakers on a loop. Even the jukebox sounded tired.

Sam nursed his second whiskey, elbow braced on the bar, collar popped against a chill that didn’t belong to late summer. The glass was warm in his hand. He liked that - heat in a place that had otherwise gone cold.

Dean used to say whiskey kept the cold out. Sam had only ever seen it keep him in one place for hours.

Just one more night, he told himself. One more mistake. Like pretending he hadn’t already fallen too far.

He didn’t look around. Didn’t want company. But he felt it anyway: a shift in the air, a press of warmth at his side, like someone stepping into a story already halfway told. A presence that leaned in close, sure of its place.

“Mind if I sit?” The voice was warm where the bar was cold, smooth and careless in a way that refused to be ignored. Too bright for a place like this. Sam felt it catch on him like a hook.

He glanced over and froze.

The man wasn’t at all what he expected. Shorter, mid-thirties maybe, honey-gold hair and a face with too much emotion - expression - for this bar by a mile. His coat was sharp, olive green over a burgundy shirt left open at the collar like he was inviting trouble. But it was the eyes that kept Sam still: bright, amused, gold like sunrise through stained glass.

And the way that mouth curved when he caught Sam looking… that wasn’t just a smile. That was a hook.

Sam cleared his throat, aware he’d been staring. “Free country.”

“Alright, Stretch,” the man groaned, sliding onto the stool beside him. He flagged down the bartender with two fingers and a wink, then turned back to Sam, head tilted like he was trying to puzzle him out.

“You looked lonely. Or tragic,” he said, tongue curling around the words like he needed to taste them first. “Mostly both.”

Sam huffed - barely a sound. “That your usual line?”

“Nope.” The man flashed a grin like a dare. “That one’s special. Just for you, big guy.”

The bartender slid a glass in front of him - neon, citrus-bright, practically glowing. Sam lifted a brow, “what the hell is that?”

“Cotton Candy Martini. Wanna taste?” he challenged.

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself, whiskey man.” He took a sip, utterly unfazed, then offered his hand across the narrow space between them. “Gabriel. Gabe if ya’ nasty.”

“I’m not nasty.” Sam hesitated anyway, then reached out. Warm hand. Steady grip. Too confident for a stranger - practiced. “Sam.”

“No last names. Good.” Gabriel nodded, pleased with himself. “I like keeping a little mystery. Like Cher… Or God.”

Silence settled between them - not awkward, just… quiet. Sam stared into his glass, watching the amber slide in slow circles. Gabriel propped his chin in his palm and studied him with that unsettling mix of softness and sharpness, like he was listening for something Sam hadn’t said yet.

“So,” Gabriel said eventually, voice dropping low, smooth, “what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this? You’ve got the look of someone with something to confess.”

Sam let out a tired, humorless laugh. “That obvious?”

Gabriel’s grin sharpened. “Only to professionals.”

He took another sip, eyes skimming over Sam - the posture, the quiet, the shut-down stare. “Let me guess. You’re running from something. Bracing for impact.”

Sam didn’t answer. He drained his drink instead, setting the glass down harder than he meant to. The weight in his chest didn’t lift, but it shifted.

“You from around here?” Sam asked.

Gabriel’s gaze flicked to Sam’s mouth, slow and deliberate, before returning to his eyes. “No. I’m at a motel up the street.” A beat. “Wanna get out of here?”

The air between them buzzed - electric, uncertain, dangerous in that way that felt like relief.

Sam’s fingers curled around the empty glass. His mind whispered don’t. This was a mistake. A detour. Another thing to regret when the sun came up.

But his body was tired of cold sheets. His heart was tired of silence.

He nodded.

----

He didn’t let Gabriel speak; just slammed him into the door, and swallowed Gabriel’s startled gasp with his mouth. Tongues tangling in a fight neither of them meant to win, each taste sharp enough to be dangerous.

The kiss was all need and desperation - violent, holy, and obscene. Gabriel melted into it like he’d been waiting, like he’d known this was coming the moment he saw him.

“Easy, cowboy,” Gabriel panted between kisses, grinning against his lips. “You’re acting like the world ends tomorrow.”

Sam’s voice was wrecked, a growl torn from deep inside. “Maybe, it does.”

Gabriel’s eyes gleamed. “Hot. Apocalyptic edging. Very on-trend.”

The space between them felt loud, like the echo after a slammed door. Sam could still taste him, a heat that refused to fade.

Sam shut him up with another bruising kiss, hands pulling at clothes with frantic purpose. The world blurred around them, coming off in pieces. Sam's shirt, Gabriel's belt, Sam’s moral compass, Gabriel kicked off his trousers with a breathless laugh as Sam shoved him toward the bed, eyes burning like a storm. 

Gabriel began to pull his shirt off when Sam stopped him: “Keep it on,” he smirked. “You look so… cute like that.”

Gabriel dropped back onto the mattress, cock already hard against his wine colored shirt. But his gaze didn’t stray from Sam, who stood at the foot of the bed like it was judgment day - towering over him, silent, his chest heaving. Chewing his inner cheek.

“Take it out,” Gabriel’s voice turned soft, playful, reverent and the way the words slid from his tongue felt like they carried their own venom.

Sam didn’t move.

“Come on, big guy,” Gabriel cooed, nudging Sam’s hip with his foot. “Don’t be shy.”

With clenched jaw and trembling hands, Sam undid his belt, shoved his jeans and underwear down, and gripped his cock - flushed, leaking, and heavy with the weight of everything he wasn’t supposed to want. Gabriel’s breath hitched. His smile went molten with hungry eyes to match.

Then, without a word, Gabriel crawled to the edge of the bed and climbed onto his knees to reach Sam.

Eyes locked.

And he spit.

The thick strand of saliva fell, slow and obscene, landing right on Sam’s flushed head. Gabriel caught it with his fingershand, slicked it down Sam’s length in long, lazy strokes, never breaking eye contact. Sam groaned, muscles tight like he was holding back a scream. He graspedbraced his free hand on the back of Sam’s neck, pulling him close but not kissing him. Gabriel leaned in even more, voice syrup-sweet, breath fanning against Sam's agape lips. “There. Doesn’t that feel better?”

Sam swallowed hard, fingers twitching at his sides.

“Such a naughty boy,” Gabriel teased, eyes staring as if into Sam’s soul. Sam all but whimpered back, shaking his head as he stared into Gabriel’s eyes. “No?”

“No,” Sam gasped, voice rough, desperate.

“Oh,” Gabriel murmures, brushing Sam’s hair from his face. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Sorry, my good - good - boy.”

The words split something open in Sam.

He growled, shoved Gabriel back. With a hungry groan, Gabriel flopped onto his stomach, ass in the air, not looking at Sam.

“What are you doing?” Sam growled lowly, rubbing his hand down the silky shirt on Gabriel's back.

“Um…” Gabriel stuttered, looking over his shoulder at Sam. “I thought we - do you want to stop?” “No,” Sam whispered, pushing Gabriel to flip to his back again. “I just… you’re too pretty not to… watch.”

Gabriel’s eyes blew wide open as he settled onto his back. Sam crawled on top of him, their bodies sliding together, sweat-slicked and shaking. Their mouths clashed again - hungry, reverent.

“You got…?” Sam rasped, breath hitching.

Gabriel didn’t answer with words. Just reached into the mess of clothes on the floor and tossed up a tiny pink bottle and a matching foil packet.

“Strawberry,” he said with a breathless grin. “Classy as hell. Also, pretty pink condoms.”

Sam stared at him for a long, breathless moment, like a drowning man memorizing the shape of the wave about to take him under. Then he leaned in, kissed Gabriel again. Slower this time, aching as he slipped the condom down his cock.

“See, pretty,” Gabriel smiled, watching, ravenous, as Sam then uncapped the bottle and squeezed the glossy, strawberry-scented slick onto his fingers. Sam didn’t look away, not even for a second. He watched Gabriel stare at the luscious substance with a filthy hunger, licking his lips. His eyes stayed locked on Gabriel’s as he suddenly brought those glistening fingers to the other man’s lips.

Gabriel moaned low in his throat, parting his lips without hesitation and sucked Sam’s fingers, obscene and slow. He held the gaze like a dare, tongue swirling around the sweetness, dragging it out like a serpent savoring the taste of its own poison, tasting him like sacrament.

Sam’s breath hitched. His cock twitched against his stomach.

When he pulled his fingers free, slick and shining, Gabriel licked the wicked grin across his lips.

Sam went back for more, squeezing another line of syrupy pink onto his fingers, then hooked one of Gabriel’s legs on his free arm, stabilizing it onto the bed. 

Finally, with a sigh of relief from both, Sam reached between Gabriel’s legs. The moment his fingers breached him, slick and sure, Gabriel arched off the mattress with a gasp, hips stuttering, thighs trembling.

One finger. 

Then two. 

Then three, working deep and relentless with precision.

He was so tight. So needy.

“Fuck,” Sam breathed, jaw clenched, watching him unravel. “You’re perf -.”

Gabriel cut him off with a moan. His head tipped back, spine bowed as Sam’s fingers curled just right, pressing into that spot that made him whimper, clawing at the sheets, and writhe like something possessed.

Sam could barely breathe. “Jesus, Gabriel… you're perfect.”

“Come on, Gigantor,” Gabriel teased, voice wrecked but sweet. “Make me feel something real.”

And Sam did.

He did with every inch, with every thrust, with every ragged gasp torn from his lungs as he moved inside him. There was no world beyond this. No motel, no sky, no sins or second thoughts. Just Gabriel’s body wrapped around him like fire, like home.

The rhythm of them was wild, chaotic  and divine. Every thrust carved something open in Sam. Each slide of heat and friction, the slick sound of skin on skin, the way Gabriel’s back curved  and his lips parted like he was offering prayers in broken syllables.

The stretch and pulse, the raw ache and liquid pleasure - it overwhelmed him, swallowed thought and breath alike. Gabriel met him thrust for thrust, mouth agape in want, gaze locked and feral.

“Sammy,” he moaned, the name like a sin soaked in sugar. “Fuck me.”

Sam choked on a sound, a half-growl, half-whimper. His rhythm stuttered, thrown off by the weight of his request. That name. That voice.

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped but his voice cracked down the middle, trembling with something far more fragile than anger.

Gabriel’s eyes glittered, wild and bright, pupils blown with lust and something deeper, something knowing.

“Make me, big guy,” he gasped, grinning through the wreckage, taunting and breathless. “Come on, Sammy. Make me.”

And Sam broke.

With a snarl, he slammed into him, hard and deep; all fury and need, no space left for second guessing. He caught Gabriel’s mouth with his, kissed him like he could silence the shame, erase the name, rewrite the moment with teeth and tongue and bruising want.

But Gabriel kissed him back harder.

He moaned into his mouth, gripping Sam’s hair and pulling him closer, tighter, devouring him. There was no escape. Not from this. Not from him.

Sam's hands roamed blindly. Gripping Gabriel’s hips, his thighs, his face as if grounding himself in flesh would keep him from unraveling. His pace grew erratic, unrestrained, hips snapping forward like he was trying to bury every last flicker of doubt inside Gabriel’s body.

“You want to be good?” Gabriel whispered between kisses, voice shaking. “Then take it. Feel how good you are. Give in.”

Sam didn’t respond.

He couldn’t.

His whole world had narrowed to the heat beneath him, the pull and slide, the gasp of Gabriel’s breath in his ear, the tight clutch of his body around him like he belonged there. Every thrust felt like punishment and prayer. Every moan Gabriel made was a tether, a rope anchoring him to the present, keeping him from spiraling into the dark.

And still, he wanted more. Needed more. Needed to be destroyed by it.

Without a moment's pause, Sam pulled both of Gabriel's knees up, using the underside of Gabriel's own thighs to open him wider, press him deeper into the mattress. Still, he needed more.

Gabriel dropped a hand between them, finding his strained cock. Frantically, he pumped himself tightly in his hand. He was close - so close - his body taut with need, mouth open around broken sounds and filth. His free hand scrambled for purchase around Sam’s throat, nails digging white crescents into his skin as he moaned, “Right there. Please, Sam… don’t stop, don’t stop.”

Sam’s rhythm never faltered. He drove into him with an intensity that bordered on desperate, drowning in the way Gabriel writhed under him, clenching around him like he was made for this. Made for him. Made for sin.

Suddenly, with his head thrown back against the pillow, Gabriel whines. “Fuck - Sammy, I’m -fuck-”

It hit him like lightning.

Gabriel cried out as he came, thick ropes painting his shirt, thighs trembling, eyes fluttering closed, hand clenching more around Sam’s throat. His body arched like a bow, every muscle drawn tight as pleasure tore through him. He was beautiful like that: flushed and wrecked, his whole frame shuddering in Sam’s arms, hips still rocking with aftershocks.

Sam watched him, stunned. Devoured him with his eyes while Gabriel's hand fell from his throat.

He’d never seen anything so undone. So alive.

And then it hit him.

The heat. The pressure building like a storm in his spine, in his gut, in every frantic, needy thrust. Sam chased it, let himself feel it, get so close, but then it came. That flicker.

That terrifying split-second of clarity.

What the hell am I doing?

This isn’t me. This isn’t supposed to be me.

With a man. Inside him. A stranger. I’ve tried so hard to not be this.

He faltered.

His rhythm stuttered, panic flashing in his eyes like lightning behind a cloud. Shame rose in his throat like bile.

Gabriel felt it.

Even in the haze of bliss, he saw it - knew that look too well. He reached up instantly, cupping Sam’s face with both hands, thumbs brushing against his cheeks.

“Hey,” he whispered, breathless but steady. “Look at me.”

Sam did. Eyes wide, wild, fiendish.

“You’re here,” Gabriel said, voice steady and low, like prayer. He leaned up, kissed his cheek, then his temple, his jaw, his mouth. Gentle. Steady. Real.  “You’re not in the past. Not in your head. You’re with me. Right now. Just this. Just us.”

Sam nodded quickly, trying to convince himself it was true.

“Come on, Sammy,” he murmured. “It’s okay. Let go. Cum for me.”

That did it.

The dam finally broke. Sam gasped, voice raw, and slammed into him one last time - deep and culminating - as pleasure overtook him. He came hard, shaking, clutching at Gabriel like he might disappear.

Every wave of it was shattering.

Every second, a little death.

He collapsed onto Gabriel’s chest, panting, fingers trembling where they gripped his shoulder.

Gabriel wrapped his arms around him instantly, murmuring nonsense into his hair - praise and comfort and soft, broken laughter. “That’s it… just like that. You’re good. Such a good boy.”

Time unraveled.

Eventually, Gabriel guided them under the sheet, sticky and spent. He settled against Sam’s side, head tucked beneath his chin, hand tracing light patterns on his ribs.

His breath slowed.

He pressed one last kiss to Sam’s chest, and then he was gone. Quiet and stuck in his own head.

Sam didn’t move.

He stared at the ceiling, hand trembling on Gabriel's shoulder. He stared at the yellowed water stain directly overhead, blooming like guilt. His body hummed from the crash, from release, from warmth. But inside, quietly, the ache returned. Soft, but insistent. Not guilt exactly, just the echo of it. He didn’t know what this night meant, if it meant anything, but he knew he’d remember it.

Every sound Gabriel made. Every breath they shared. Every inch of that ruinous, perfect fall.

For one moment the ache in his chest had quieted. The guilt had gone still but not for long.

It came back slowly, like smoke curling under a door: thin at first, then suffocating. Sam’s body was still humming from the fall, skin flushed and nerves raw, but his mind was already spiraling. The silence wasn’t peace. It was pressure building behind his ribs.

Gabriel shifted beside him, propping up on an elbow to peer down. “You good?”

Sam didn’t answer.

“Sammy?” Gabriel’s voice was warm with sleep, soft around the edges. He curled closer, head resting on Sam’s chest, fingers idly tracing shapes over skin still damp with sweat. The ceiling fan above them buzzed its uneven rhythm, and their breaths mingled, slow and steady.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked again, quieter this time. Drowsy, but aware. His golden eyes searched Sam’s face, concern flickering in their depths. “You’re pretty quiet up there, Gigantor.”

Sam blinked. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Gabriel tilted his head, lips quirking into a lazy smile. “I didn’t, like… break you, did I? You seemed like you needed it. In that way. Like, harder.”

Sam didn’t laugh. Instead, he reached up and gently pushed a strand of hair off Gabriel’s forehead. A small, aching gesture. Too tender, too much.

Gabriel leaned into the touch without hesitation.

They lay there like that, wrapped in warmth and silence, heavy with things neither of them knew how to say.

“I don’t usually do this,” Gabriel murmured after a while. “Hookups. Bars. Random guys. I came prepared, sure, but it’s not… normal for me.”

Sam exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. Me neither.”

Gabriel shifted again, elbow propping him up, eyes skimming Sam’s chest like he was trying to memorize it. Not lust, not anymore. Something quieter.

Gabriel followed Sam’s gaze up to the stain on the ceiling. “Yikes,” he said with an exaggerated gag. “This place is filthier than my old boarding school dorm. Just nasty.”

“So,” Sam whispered. “Why tonight?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. He looked away. “Because… tomorrow, everything changes.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “What, like you’re moving?”

Sam nodded slowly. “Something like that.”

A pause.

Gabriel smiled. Crooked, soft. “Well. Guess the timing worked out.”

Sam didn’t answer. He just watched him - really watched him - taking in the scruff on his jaw, the curl of his mussed hair, the way his body draped in loose folds beneath the sheet. Like if he stared long enough, maybe it would last.

“Hey,” Gabriel said gently, nudging him. “This doesn’t have to be a thing. No pressure. No weirdness. We both needed something tonight. You’re allowed that.”

“I know,” Sam said, though his voice was quiet and hollow.

Gabriel kissed him again. Slower. Not with hunger, but with reverence. Like a thank you. Like goodbye.

It was almost unbearable.

Gabriel drifted to sleep first, his hand curled lightly on Sam’s chest. Sam stayed awake. Counting the cracks in the ceiling. Listening to the world beyond the window. Trying not to feel the shame clawing its way back into him.

When the sky began to pale with morning, Sam moved. Carefully, he slipped from Gabriel’s embrace. Dressed in silence. No buttons fumbled this time.

He looked at him once more. Just once. Then he pulled a motel notepad from the nightstand and scribbled a note, folding a twenty to slide underneath.

        For breakfast.

        (Not because you’re a prostitute.)

        - Sammy

Then he opened the door. Stepped into the chill of early morning. Didn’t look back.

The late summer sun crept low across the parking lot, casting everything in a pale, golden hush. The streets were empty. Still. Like the whole town hadn’t woken up yet. Sam walked without direction, hands in his coat pockets, head bowed like maybe the shame would roll off him if he just kept moving.

And then he saw it.

A corner café tucked between two brick buildings. Its windows glowed with warm light, and rainbow flags fluttered gently in the breeze. A hand-painted sign on the door read All are Welcome Here!

It stopped him cold, but he stepped inside without knowing why.

The space was small and warm, full of mismatched chairs and the smell of cinnamon and coffee. The barista wore a crop top and a “QUEER LOVE IS SACRED” button. The walls were plastered with Polaroids and notes scrawled in Sharpie: You belong. You’re not alone. Words as an antidote to the poison he’d been carrying for years. Be Gay - Commit Felonies Against The Rich.

Sam ordered a black coffee with two sugars.

He sat by the window and sipped in silence. Around him, the world was soft and real. Laughter. Lavender syrup. The clatter of mugs. A flyer by his elbow advertised an upcoming queer clothing swap. He tried not to stare at it. He tried not to want anything.

But the ache bloomed in his chest anyway, a longing he didn’t have language for. A life he wouldn’t, couldn’t, let himself imagine. 

When the coffee was gone, he rose and slid the empty cup into the bin. Pulling his coat tighter, he stepped back into the morning.

The streets were exceptionally quiet. 

Two more blocks… and there it was.

A small, whitewashed church, ivy climbing up white painted wood, and the stained-glass cross catching the sunrise like fire. The sign out front read:

        St. Sebastian’s Catholic Church         Service to Welcome Father Winchester         Sunday - 9:00 a.m.

Sam stopped at the gate, took one breath, then reached into his bag and pulled out the stiff white collar. When he slipped it into place, it settled against his throat like a weight. Like a promise.

He looked up at the cross above the door.

Then lowered his eyes.