forget me not

“Pleeeeease,” Garcia begs, clasping her hands under her chin. “We need you. You’re from New York, and your playlists are full of 90s bands, and plus, it’ll be fun! Everyone’s going. Even Rossi and Hotch promised to make an appearance.”

You narrow your eyes. “I don’t hang out with coworkers outside of work.”

“That’s okay,” Garcia chirps. “You don’t have to act like we’re your BFFs, you just have to contribute your grungy brilliance. We need a ringer.”

“I’m not a ringer,” you say. “I’m a federal agent. And I have plans tonight.”

“Doing what? Staring at your ceiling alone and judging the drywall?” Emily asks. “Conducting a séance in the dark?”

“Yes,” you deadpan.

Before they can mount a second attack, Morgan strolls by with a file under one arm. He gives you a knowing smirk. “Come on, rookie. You afraid we’ll actually be fun?”

“I’m afraid of being forced into karaoke,” you shoot back.

“I’m afraid of your refusal to embrace joy,” Garcia pouts.

That’s when Hotch passes behind them all, not even slowing as he says, “It’s not optional, Greenaway.”

You stare at his retreating back. “Is that a direct order?”

He lifts a hand without turning around. “Interpret it how you want.”

You look over to the far side of the bullpen, where Spencer’s watching the chaos with that vaguely bemused expression he wears like a second skin. He hasn’t said anything to add onto the attack, but he hasn’t come to your defense, either. Traitor.

You exhale like this physically pains you. “Fine. I’ll stay for one drink. One trivia round. I’m not singing karaoke, I’m not taking shots, and I’m not playing any drinking games.”

Morgan grins. “Good enough for me, sugar.”

You flip him off without looking up. Garcia squeals in delight and Emily mentions pre-gaming with Rossi’s office liquor. JJ mutters something about needing to hydrate.

You rub your temples.

—

O’Keefe’s is louder than you’d like. It’s one of those dive bars with Christmas lights pretending to be ambiance and the faint smell of fryer oil clinging to every surface. Someone’s playing Mariah Carey on the jukebox. Someone else is yelling about baseball stats near the dartboards.

You already regret everything.

The team pours in like they own the place. Morgan leads the charge, claiming a long table near the trivia setup. Garcia’s practically vibrating in her retro-print dress, pointing out the score sheets and little buzzers. Emily heads straight for the bar with a mission: tequila. You linger behind them all, half-tempted to fake an urgent phone call and disappear.

Spencer hangs back, too. Not near enough to make it obvious, but close enough that you feel his presence.

He watches as you survey the place with your arms crossed and your expression unreadable. Your boots stick slightly on the laminate tiles near the entrance and you mutter something under your breath about the existential nightmare of sticky floors. He smiles at that.

“You okay?” he asks, gently.

You shrug, still scanning. “Just trying to map out the fastest route to every available exit.”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “I think there’s another through the kitchen, though I’m pretty sure using it would be a health code violation.”

“I’m willing to take that risk if needed.”

When you approach the bar, the rest of the team is already ordering — beers and shots and colorful sugary things that make you want to vomit on sight.

“Double rye. Neat.”

Garcia stares as the bartender slides the whiskey in front of you. “You really do hate joy.”

You ignore her. She orders something blue and glittery. Spencer, beside you, clears his throat. “Ginger ale, please.”

You raise an eyebrow. “That your typical bar night go-to?”

He doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t quite meet your eyes, either. “I don’t, uh, really drink much anymore.”

Something about the anymore pricks at you. You tuck it away for later. He notices.

“It’s… kind of a long story,” he says, and it almost sounds like an offering. Like an I’ll tell you later.

You nod once. “Noted.”

The drinks arrive and you make your way to the table. JJ’s waving you over, pointing to a plastic clipboard where the team name still reads TBD.

“Suggestions?” she asks, tapping the end of the pen.

“Don’t say Penelope’s Angels,” you mutter. “Garcia’s already pitched it three times.”

Garcia pouts. “It’s cute!”

Morgan suggests cheekily, “The Derek Morgan Fan Club.”

Emily throws a pretzel at him.

You lean forward, glance at Spencer. “Any ideas, Doc?”

He blinks, then shrugs. Then, out of nowhere, says, “E Pluribus Nerdum.”

Everyone turns.

“What?” Emily says, one brow raised.

Spencer blinks, the picture of sincerity. “It’s a pun. On E Pluribus Unum — ‘out of many, one.’ It’s the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, adopted by congress in 1782. Only—this is, you know, “Out of many nerds… us.””

Morgan shakes his head. “You’re such a weirdo, man.”

“But it’s better than your idea,” Emily teases. “I like it. Let the nerds have it.”

You snort into your drink. JJ scribbles it down as the too-perky trivia host starts calling for teams to check in.

The first category is New York City history, and you groan as JJ passes you the clipboard. The questions come fast: Who was the mayor of New York during the 2003 blackout? What was Times Square originally called? What band headlined the first concert in Central Park?

You answer two in a row without hesitation. Spencer looks impressed. Morgan hoots. Garcia says you’re officially forgiven for skipping happy hour two weeks ago.

Later, between rounds, Spencer leans a little closer.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, “but you’re a little scary when you’re having fun.”

You glance sideways. “You think this is me having fun?”

His mouth quirks. “Admit it, you are. And it’s terrifying.”

You pop a fry in your mouth. “It should be.”

But the thing is — you kind of are having fun, in your own, quietly hostile way. And Spencer, you realize, has barely taken his eyes off you all night.

You tell yourself it’s just because you’re a curiosity. Elle’s sister. The new girl who doesn’t smile much. The profiler who isn’t a genius yet still answered half the trivia questions before he could. Nothing more. But the way he’s looking at you — like he sees through all your armor — is starting to get under your skin.

A question about NYC subway planning comes up and Spencer answers it so fast you swear he must’ve been alive in 1904. When Garcia gapes, he shrugs. “I wrote a paper on metropolitan infrastructure patterns when I was eleven.”

You stare at him, baffled and slightly charmed and a little disarmed. “Of course you did.”

He shrugs again. But this time, there’s the ghost of a grin.

—

A few hours pass in a blur of secondhand smoke, ambient jukebox static, and rounds of questions you mostly pretend not to care about.

You order your second drink — a dirty gin martini this time, extra extra dirty — and watch as JJ giggles at something Emily said, Garcia arm-wrestles Morgan with frightening sincerity, and Rossi chats with a table of older gentlemen about cigars. Hotch left about an hour ago after muttering something about needing to get home to Jack.

It’s chaos. Friendly, stupid chaos. And somehow, you’re still here, not totally hating it.

“You want to get some air?” Spencer asks, voice low, like he’s afraid of interrupting the way you’ve been staring at the door for the past three and a half minutes.

You glance at him and nod. “Lead the way.”

The patio’s half-abandoned, just two guys smoking at the far end. Spencer leans against the wooden railing, ginger ale in hand, and you realize his hair looks different tonight — combed through, as if he attempted to style it in the Quantico bathroom after the night’s plans were made, but still sticking out messily in the back. The sleeves of his shirt are crookedly rolled and pushed up to his elbows. It’s like he tries so hard to look put-together but has to fight against the gravitational pull of the universe in order to make it halfway there. You tell yourself it’s not completely charming.

“I don’t usually stay this long,” you say after a beat. “At things like this.”

“I know.”

You turn your head. “You do?”

He shrugs. “You’ve kind of made it clear you aren’t into this sort of thing.”

You narrow your eyes, and he smiles into his glass.

“I’m not going to tell you that you need to try harder, you know,” he says.

That catches you off guard.

“I just mean, you don’t need to be more than who you are. If this is all you can give us, then it’s more than enough. You don’t have to try to be someone you’re not to fit in with this team. You already do.”

You scoff softly. “How very optimistic of you.”

He glances over. “It’s not optimism. Everyone wanted you here, and you’re here. You stayed. You didn’t fake a phone call and disappear out the kitchen door like you clearly considered when the night began. You’re even letting yourself have a little fun.”

You blink. “That’s quite the assumption.”

Spencer shrugs again, a shy grin curling at his lips. “I read somewhere once about this thing called “profiling.” Apparently it can be pretty accurate,” he jokes.

The corner of your mouth twitches.

“You ever think maybe I’m just waiting to find the right moment to make a break for it?”

He tips his glass at you. “I think if you were, you’d have found it already.”

You pause, watching him. Then, before you can talk yourself out of it, you reach out and gently ruffle the back of his hair where it sticks out unevenly. “Your grooming habits are a war crime, Reid.”

He startles. Actually startles, like you’d tased him.

“I—what?”

You smirk. “You missed a spot back there, Doctor.”

Spencer is frozen. You watch him try to recalibrate, blinking like a machine that just got fed the wrong code.

Because you don’t usually touch people. And he knows that. You know it, too. And the realization hits a beat too late.

Shit. What was that?

You pull your hand back like it burned you and take a step to the side, putting space between you again, pulling the drawbridge back up.

“It was bothering me,” you say flatly, walking it back. “So I fixed it. Don’t overthink it.”

“I… wasn’t going to,” he lies, and his voice is softer now. Almost confused.

A long silence falls between you.

Then, maybe to fill it, he says, “You asked me earlier about the ginger ale.”

“I did. But you don’t have to tell me,” you reply sincerely.

“I don’t mind.” He shifts slightly, the toe of his shoe dragging across the concrete. “I used to drink socially, but after last year, I mostly stopped.”

You glance over. He’s not fidgeting. Not avoiding your eyes.

“Yeah?” you ask, soft but not tentative.

He nods. “I got kidnapped during a case in Georgia. The unsub had dissociative identity disorder, and part of the kidnapping involved injecting me with a drug — Dilaudid.” He says it plainly, like he’s reciting a report, not his own history. “I was only gone a few days, but afterwards, it was… hard to stop. It’s been over a year now, and I’m clean, but I try to avoid anything that might make it easier to slip. Alcohol included.”

There’s a beat — not awkward, just still. You nod.

“I’ll still let myself have a drink once in a while,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “But tonight didn’t feel like an occasion that warranted it.”

You look at him again, and something in your chest does that strange, stupid twist you’ve learned not to name. Because he didn’t have to tell you any of that. And he didn’t tell it like a performance, or a bid for sympathy. Just… like it mattered to him that you knew. It’s not lost on you that he told you even though you wouldn’t have asked about it again, or that it’s clear he doesn’t offer up this information to just anyone.

You clear your throat. “I’m really sorry that happened to you, Spencer.”

Spencer. The sound of your own voice echoes in your ears. Have you ever even used his first name before now?

Your unexpected softness seems to jar him, but before he can respond, Emily opens the door to the patio from inside and yells something about ordering loaded tater tots. You both wave her off.

Spencer shifts, then glances at you again.

“I don’t dance,” he says abruptly.

You look up at him quizzically. “O…kay? Thanks for the announcement?”

He chuckles. “I’m just putting that out there before Garcia inevitably tries to drag us inside for a conga line or impromptu salsa lesson. I caught a glimpse of her trying to make something like that happen inside before Emily closed the door.”

You smirk. “Well, I’m not going to dance either, so, strength in numbers.”

“Yeah, I could’ve guessed that.”

You raise a brow. “What gave it away?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “You don’t exactly exude prom queen energy.”

“Not unless the prom ends in arson. Or gallons of pig’s blood dropping from the ceiling.”

That makes him laugh.

You finish your martini and lean a hip against the railing beside him. “So you never dance?”

“Never,” he says with a shake of the head.

You reach out and poke him lightly in the chest with two fingers. “Come on, Reid. You’re telling me no one’s ever dragged you out to the floor for one song?”

He stares at the spot you touched like it was seared into him and blinks a few times before remembering he still needs to answer you.

“No one… who lived to tell the tale,” he mumbles with a quiet grin. Another joke, just for you. You laugh a little too hard before you catch yourself and step back again.

You glance through the window, using it like a mirror to steady yourself. Inside, the team is still going strong. Morgan’s doing impressions. JJ’s trying to win a dare against two losers at the pool tables. Emily’s grabbing another round of shots. Garcia’s dancing on a chair and sipping something bright pink with a paper umbrella hanging off the side.

“We should probably go save Garcia before she sprains something.”

Spencer nods, still blinking like he hasn’t recovered. “Only if you agree not to poke me again.”

You consider for a moment before murmuring, “No promises.”

You duck your head and lead the way inside.

And behind you, Spencer follows — slow, stunned, and still glancing down at the hand you’d touched him with.

—

Back inside, the lights seem a little warmer, the room a little blurrier at the edges. You’re not drunk, not exactly. But the martini fuzzed out some of the static in your head, and now the whiskey in your hand — your final drink, you’ve decided — hums a low current under your skin. You stretch your spine, blink twice, and feel something that almost resembles comfort.

Garcia intercepts you with a plastic tiara and a plea to sing backup on “Like a Virgin.” You stare her down in silence for a full five seconds until she shrugs in defeat and says, “Your loss, babe,” then grabs JJ instead and twirls her toward the mic. Morgan’s trying to scam a free drink from the female bartender using nothing but charm and biceps. Emily is now crushing one of the pool guys in a game of beer pong. Rossi has vanished entirely.

You slide back into your seat and sip the whiskey slowly. Spencer’s beside you again. He nods at your glass. “Second or third?”

“Third. And final,” you say. “Probably.”

He smiles, then observes as you dip a hand into your black leather purse and grab a tube of lipstick, flicking the lid off with practiced ease. You swipe the dark red across your bottom lip, then the top, then smack them together. Your hands are steady. You’ve always been good at precision under pressure.

Spencer watches the whole thing like it’s a card trick.

“That was… impressive,” he says quietly.

You glance at him sideways. “What, my lipstick application?”

“Doing it without a mirror,” he clarifies. “That can’t be something most people are successful at.”

You hum. “I’m not most people.”

“No,” he says quietly. “You’re really not.”

It’s not the words themselves, but the way he says them — like they’re some truth he’s just now understanding. You look away, steadying your glass against your lip before you speak again.

“That sounded dangerously like flirting,” you say, flicking your gaze back to him.

He startles, blinking. “Did it?”

You shrug. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna report you to HR.”

His laugh is soft and awkward, and the tips of his ears go pink. You wonder how many women have ever flustered him like this, wonder what it would feel like to do it on purpose.

You won’t. But you could.

Because the thing is, he sees you. Not just the scowl and the eyeliner and the strategic disinterest — but the rest. The quieter ache you feel beneath it all. And worse, he doesn’t seem scared off by any of it.

Spencer points toward the dartboards hanging on the wall towards the back of the bar. “You any good?”

“At darts?” you reply, eyes sharp, already getting up and making your way towards the boards. “Are you seriously asking me that? Me, sharp objects, and schooling drunk men in bars?” He blinks at you blankly. “Of course I'm good at darts, Reid.”

The battered wood frame is splintered in one corner, one sad dart dangling by the tip. You pull it loose and twirl it once between your fingers.

“Used to hustle college guys,” you say casually. “They always assumed the girl in fishnets couldn’t aim.”

“Did you… wear fishnets to bars specifically to fluster and hustle men?” Spencer asks, half-scandalized, half-impressed.

You throw the dart — bullseye. “What do you think?”

He laughs again, boyish and quiet and a little breathless, then carefully tosses one of his own. It surprisingly lands just left of center.

You raise a brow. “So you’re pretty good, too.”

“It’s mostly just physics,” he says with a shrug.

You roll your eyes with a quiet laugh and take another sip of your drink. The whiskey burns a little now — a reminder to slow down. You’re dangerously close to enjoying yourself, and that’s always when you make the worst mistakes.

You don’t talk for a while. Just throw. Sip. Throw again, before you and Spencer dive back into conversation about nothing and everything at the same time. The bar’s gone quieter now, the buzz of trivia long since faded into background music and clinking glasses. You throw again, then lean against the wall.

You glance past him, back toward the table — now deserted except for Garcia’s tiara and a few empty glasses. The rest of the team is gone, and you didn’t even notice them leave. You glance up at the clock and realize it’s after 1am.

“Guess we closed the place down,” you murmur.

Spencer nods. “Guess so.”

You exhale slowly, feeling the weight of the night settle in your chest. The comfort of it. The danger of it.

Spencer shifts. “This, um… this was nice.”

You glance at him. “You mean the darts, or the part where I threatened to stab Morgan during trivia?”

He smiles faintly. “Both. All of it.”

You grab your jacket and tip your head toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go before Garcia shows back up with a second wind and tries to make us sing karaoke.”

Spencer nods but doesn’t move — just watches you with that weird, quiet intensity he has, like he’s trying to memorize something without being obvious about it.

And suddenly, you’re hyper-aware of the heat behind your knees. The weight of your hair. The way your pulse seems to catch when he looks at you too long. The fact your eyes just lingered on his perfectly pink bottom lip for half a second too long.

You clear your throat. “You’re kind of a strange guy, Reid.”

“You’re kind of a terrifying girl, Greenaway.”

That makes your mouth twitch into a lopsided smirk. But as you both head for the door, you feel it in your bones: a low, unspoken shift in gravity. Like something’s started, and you’re pretending not to notice. Like maybe he’s pretending, too.

The sidewalk outside is slick with a misting of rain, air thick with the smell of beer and city heat. You step up to the curb and wait for one of the cabs down the block to notice you. Spencer’s beside you, not saying anything. He doesn’t fidget, but he rocks slightly on his heels like he’s working something out in his head. Hands tucked in his pockets. Shoulders a little hunched.

“I’m fine, you know,” you say. “You don’t have to stand there doing your best impression of a security camera.”

That earns a small laugh. “I wasn’t.”

“You were. You’ve got that face.”

He squints. “What face?”

“The one that looks like you’re about to quote a peer-reviewed study on post-midnight cab safety for single women in urban areas.”

He huffs, ducking his head. “There is a study, actually."

“Of course there is.”

A cab pulls up with a low whir and a flash of headlights. You open the door but hesitate before climbing inside, one hand still on the frame.

“Night, Reid.”

You half expect him to fumble a goodbye, or spurt out some awkward fact about the history of taxis. But he just watches you go. You slide into the backseat, and for one strange, fleeting microsecond, you wonder what would’ve happened if you’d asked him to come with you.

The driver merges into the street, and you twist in your seat, just once, to glance back.

Spencer’s still there. Hands in his pockets. Shoulders hunched. Watching the cab pull away like he wasn’t quite ready for the night to end.

—

Your head doesn’t hurt, exactly — more like someone turned the contrast up on the entire world. The overhead lights are too sharp, the elevator ding too shrill, the bullpen voices too loud.

Okay fine, it does hurt. Still, you’ve had worse mornings.

You make it to your desk on time, which is more than you can say for most of the team. Once they do start to filter in, Garcia, clad in sunglasses indoors and clutching a jumbo-sized neon green Gatorade, perches herself dramatically on the arm of Prentiss’s chair, both of them visibly suffering.

You’re just starting to get your files open when you notice it: A to-go coffee cup, neatly placed on the corner of your desk. Not the usual break-room sludge you’ve grown accustomed to. No — this is from that little hipster café three blocks down, the one with indie playlists and criminally overpriced lattes. The logo’s inked in soft black on the side. Your name is scribbled in messy letters across the cardboard sleeve. Underneath it:

Bullseye. –S.R.

You stare at it for a second too long. The coffee’s still hot, and it’s just how you take it on your worst mornings — dark roast, black, with an added shot of espresso. Strong enough to punch you in the chest. You close your eyes on the first sip, and it’s exactly what you need to undo that third drink from last night.

“Well, well, well.”

You don’t have to look up to know where that’s coming from, or why. Morgan’s voice is all grin and zero mercy.

“Looks like someone had a very interesting night.”

You open one eye. “Careful, Morgan. I have a headache and at least one knife in my bag.”

He chuckles. “I’m just saying. Last I checked, you and Reid were still at the bar long after the rest of us called it.”

Garcia gasps from across the room. “You closed the bar down? Without me?!”

You arch a brow and sip your coffee. “We were playing darts in the back. No one told us the party was over.”

Morgan wiggles his eyebrows. “Darts, huh? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

You snort. “Jesus, Morgan. You’re worse than a high school rumor mill.”

He grins, watching you like he’s trying to catch a tell. “You’re not denying it. You two end up in the same cab home?” he asks with a wink.

You lean back in your chair and pause for a beat, queuing up your retort. “Oh please. If I’d gone home with him, I’d look a lot more exhausted than I do right now,” you say matter-of-factly.

Clearly, that’s not the type of euphemized denial anyone expected to hear. It gets a choked laugh out of Garcia and an impressed little “damn” from Emily.

Morgan smirks, then raises his hands in mock defeat and whistles. “Alright, alright. Point taken. Nothing happened. But if you’re talking like that, then pretty boy’s got more game than I expected.”

You return to your coffee and pretend not to notice how Spencer’s been listening from the far corner of the bullpen this entire time, head buried in a file until he lifts his eyes to meet yours. You don’t look away. Not immediately.

You tilt your coffee cup towards him in silent thanks, and he nods.

Something about the way he ducks his head — the way his fingers twitch faintly on the edge of his folder — tells you he’s thinking about last night, too. And about what you just said.

You let yourself imagine it for one second too long.

Bullseye.

If he wants to make another shot, you might just let him.

ᝰ.ᐟ

PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!

In the three tentative months you’ve dated, you’ve flirted with him, teased him, even cursed at him, but that word has never made an appearance. 

Hospital gossip had originally painted you as the goody-two-shoes nurse recruit hired on in his absence. Perfect chart audits, day-one competency sign-offs, the one who stayed late to feed a confused geriatric patient applesauce. 

This significantly redraws the saintly portrait. 

Frank swallows whatever’s left of the briefing room’s recycled air and slides his phone face-down, as if the glass might burn through the table.

A saint, he reminds himself, shouldn’t make his cock stir in his pants like this. 

He tries, honestly fucking tries, to go back to risk-management’s droning about consent forms, but now every syllable buckles beneath the weight of that single word on the screen.

Daddy. Five letters have kicked open a door he’s held shut with both shoulders for twelve sober weeks.

His fingers tap out an answer under the table: Hallway by the ambulance bay. Five minutes. He deletes it. Types again. Still in committee. Behave. Deletes that, too.

God, get it together, Langdon. In the end all he manages is a neutral, Be there soon, before the meeting finally adjourns.

He finds you giggling at the nurses’ station printer. The sight hits him like an adrenaline push. One purposeful stride, a curl of his fingers around your wrist, and he’s steering you past the Pyxis before anyone can notice. 

The supply-closet door hasn’t even thunk shut before Frank’s got your spun, spine pressed to cool metal shelving, betadine bottles rattling. 

“You again?” you stage-whisper as his fingers walk the hem of your top north. “This hospital really ought to tighten security.”

“Tried.” Frank’s mouth finds the hinge of your jaw, words vibrating against skin as his other hand moves to tug the drawstring of your scrub bottoms loose. “Seems like your day’s been… productive.”

“Mh-hmm. Pulled a double, saved three veins, I’m kind of a big deal,” you taunt, teeth pulling your bottom lip as you flutter your lashes at him. “Just missed seeing my favorite hot doctor on the floor.”

“Overachiever.” He smirks while one hand skims beneath the waistband, knuckles skating your skin, itching to feel how wet you are; the other fumbles his own pants with impatient passes. “He sounds like a lucky guy to get such attention from a pretty girl like you.” 

Once he has you both free, he wastes no time sinking his length into your cunt in aching inches, forehead to yours, breath hitching at every squeeze of silk-slick muscle. You’re just as soaking as he knew you’d be. So perfect just for him.

“Fuck — Frankie,” you gasp, toes skidding on the tile.

“Try again. Wanna hear this newfound vocabulary of yours.” He bottoms out, hips snug to yours, and waits.

The shelf behind you rings with the tremor in your back. “Daddy.”

“That’s better.” His hand cups the back of your skull, holding you still while he drives the word deeper, each thrust into your soft wet heat a dark punctuation. “Say it like you mean it, baby.”

“Missed you, daddy — oh God — missed you all day.” 

Trading vices, his counselor had warned. Once upon a time he had been considered a star pupil. Now he knows exactly how far off the wagon he’s fallen.

MARIA NOTE agreed. agreed so heavily that i needed to write about it <3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you have so many questions.

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

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

Nothing. No luck. Still opaque.

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

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

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

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

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

“Interesting reading choice.”

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

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

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

But those ten seconds never actually happens.

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

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

Shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You really don’t have to do that.”

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

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

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

And theoretically there should be a cap.

There is not, apparently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And exactly how would you clarify it?”

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

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

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

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

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

Does he mean with him?

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

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

He is offering a suggestion for you.

You are the one making it weird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His fingers tap once against the steering wheel.

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

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

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

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

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

His jaw flexes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The light turns green.

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

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

“So I gathered.”

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

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

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

You almost ask him anyway. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Langdon.

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

That seems to be your automatic response to his presence.

His eyes narrow. “Rough morning?”

You give a small shrug. “M’fine.”

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

“Just stayed up too late.” 

You hope that doesn’t inspire follow-ups.

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t make too much of it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then again, he did hand you the book.

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

You hit send.

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

It takes only a couple seconds for him to answer.

Go ahead.

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

You stare at the screen.

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

You glance at the clock and frown.

What is he even doing up?

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

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

what does “building sensation” actually mean?

Need more context than that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location first. 

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

You should stop there. Obviously.

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

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

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

No. That last one is inadmissible. Wildly inappropriate.

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

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

Fine. Whatever. 

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

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

So you do.

Small circles. Experimental. Testing the waters.

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

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

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

You pick the phone back up with your unoccupied hand.

okay. that makes sense.

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

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

The typing bubble appears instantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your phone starts ringing.

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

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

“Hi —,”

“What are you doing?”

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

“You’re not a very good liar.”

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

“It’s usually earned.”

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And were you?”

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

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

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

You squeeze your eyes shut.

“...maybe.”

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

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

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

You swallow.

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

A soft exhale crackles through the phone.

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

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

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

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

“Mhm.” It’s all you can manage. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” you mumble breathily.

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

“A lot.”

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

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

“How do you know all this?” you prod.

A pause. Then, “Experience.”

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

“I gathered.”

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

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

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

“Such as?” you whisper.

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

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

“Can you just… keep talking to me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

You try to do as you're told.

In. Out. In. Out.

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

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

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

“No,” you manage.

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

“I think —”

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

Something in you finally gives.

You feel all of it at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You still with me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You break first.

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

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

You flush hot all over.

“And you are?”

A pause.

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

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Probably.”

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

Another beat. Neither of you hangs up.

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

“Next time?”

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

Your cheeks heat with the power of a thousand suns.

“Oh, well, Dr. Langdon, I think —”

“Goodnight.”

The line clicks dead.

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

More gaps in your knowledge.

And you really hate gaps.

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