Operation-619

There’s that tone. The one he uses with residents when they’re dancing around something obvious. Not unkind. Just… direct. Your breath catches for half a second. Not nerves exactly—more the weight of being looked at like that. Seen through, a little.

Jack glances at you, something softer there now. A small nod. Go on.

You shift in your seat, tucking one leg under you slightly, grounding yourself before you speak.

“It’s not… open,” you start, careful. “We’re not looking to—change anything. Not really.”

Robby watches you the whole time. Doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t fill the silence for you.

“It’s just—” you exhale, a small, almost embarrassed huff of a laugh, “—we trust you. Both of us do. And you’ve been… there. With us. For a while.”

“Unfortunately,” he mutters.

Jack snorts. “Speak for yourself.”

But Robby doesn’t look away from you.

You hold his gaze. “It’s not random. It’s not… about finding some person to fool around with. It’s you.”

That lands. You see it in the way his jaw shifts, just slightly. The humour doesn’t disappear, but it tightens around the edges.

“…Right,” he says, slower now.

Jack leans forward, elbows on the table, finally stepping back in. “It’s not a free-for-all,” he adds, dry. “We’re not pitching some kind of ER orgy.”

“Shame,” Robby says flatly.

You almost laugh, tension breaking for a second.

Jack shoots him a look. “Be serious for one second in your life.”

“I am serious,” Robby says. Then, to you—“I’m just making sure I understand what the hell you’re asking me.”

His gaze drops briefly—to your hands, the way they’re curled loosely around your glass—then back up again.

“What are you actually offering here?” he asks.

You hesitate—not because you don’t know, but because saying it out loud makes it real. Jack shifts beside you. You feel his knee press into yours, steady, grounding.

“It’s not just sex,” you say, quieter now.

Robby’s brow lifts. “No?”

You shake your head. “It’s… us. Still us. Just—” you glance at Jack, then back at Robby, “—with you in it. Sometimes. If you wanted that.”

There’s a long beat.

Robby leans back again, dragging his hand over his mouth, thinking. Really thinking.

“You two have been together, what,” he says, glancing at Jack, “two years now?”

“Nearly three,” Jack corrects.

“Nearly three,” Robby repeats. “You know, you… you live together. Don’t kill each other. That’s impressive.”

“Thank you,” you say, dry.

His gaze shifts back to you again, softer this time—but heavier, too.

“And you’re both telling me this doesn’t… complicate things.”

Jack answers this time, steady. “Everything’s already complicated. This wouldn’t change what we’ve got. We’ve talked, we trust each other, we trust you.”

Robby studies him for a second longer than necessary. There’s history in that look. Long-standing, unspoken understanding. The kind you only get after decades of knowing someone.

“…You’re serious,” he says finally.

“Yeah,” Jack says.

Robby exhales, a quiet, disbelieving laugh under his breath. He tips his head back for a second, staring at the ceiling like he’s trying to reset his brain.

“Jesus Christ.”

You don’t rush him. Neither does Jack. When he looks back at you, it’s different now. Less amused. More… considering.

“You’re asking about the three of us…” he tries, trailing off.

You nod. “Yeah.”

His eyes flick, just briefly, to where your leg is still angled toward Jack’s, the easy closeness of it. Then back to your face.

“And you’re both just- you’re… good with it,” he says.

Your voice is quieter when you answer. “Wouldn’t be sitting here if we weren’t. You’re attractive, smart, funny. And I think you’ve always secretly had a thing for at least one of us. Maybe both, but, one way to find out, I guess.”

Robby drums his fingers once against the table, then stills them.

“...Christ,” he mutters again, but there’s a hint of something else in it now. Not just disbelief.

Interest. He looks at you properly then. Not the quick, passing glances from before. This is slower. Measuring.

“You always this persuasive?” He wonders.

You tilt your head, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “Only when it matters.”

That earns the faintest huff of a laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can see that.”

Jack shifts beside you, not tense—but alert. Watching the shift happen in real time. Robby notices that too. His mouth quirks, just slightly.

Your phone buzzes—once, twice, then a string of messages lighting up your screen.

You glance down, already half-standing. “I’ve gotta go. Park needs me—Isla called in sick.”

Jack doesn’t even hesitate. He’s already reaching into his pocket, keys in hand. “Take the car. I’ll ride back with him.”

You take them, brushing his fingers briefly. “Thanks, baby.”

You lean down—meant to be quick, but it doesn’t quite stay that way. Your mouth presses to his, warm, familiar. He lets you, hand coming up to your cheek, thumb catching just under your jaw, holding you there for half a second longer than necessary before you pull back.

There’s a flicker of something in his eyes when you do. You straighten, turning— Robby’s already looking at you. Not subtle about it. Rarely is.

“Michael,” you say, softer, a small nod.

He repeats your name—flatter, rougher, like he’s testing how it sits in his mouth.

You don’t linger. You head out.

The door swings shut behind you.

Jack watches it a beat too long. Then exhales, leaning back into the booth, dragging a hand over his mouth like he’s resetting.

Robby doesn’t look at the door. He looks at Jack. There’s a slow, almost amused curve to his mouth. Not mocking. Just… processing.

“Alright,” he says. “Who’s idea is it?”

Jack doesn’t bother pretending. “Mine.”

Robby lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“When?”

Jack shrugs, reaching for his beer. “Remember that detox sexless cult thing she did a few months back?”

Robby snorts. “Yeah. You turned into the most unbearable version of yourself I’ve seen in twenty years. Which is saying something.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Walking around like—” Robby gestures vaguely, “—like a cat in heat.”

Jack huffs a laugh despite himself. “Yeah, well. After you left that morning, we had our… you know, usual great sex - not adding as part of the pitch, you already know how good the sex is -”

“-get to the point,” Robby says, with a slight snicker.

“Some point, I mention… I don’t know, marriage, foreplay, a third. We finish up, and… we’re just talking.”

“Talking,” Robby repeats, deadpan.

“Yeah. Try it sometime. With a professional, even, they do that.”

“Hard pass.”

Jack ignores him, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. “It came up. Not seriously at first. Hypotheticals. What we’d be into, what we wouldn’t.”

“And you landed on me,” Robby says.

“Yeah.”

Robby watches him for a second. Longer than usual. “…Both of you.”

“Both of us.”

That lands differently.

Robby leans back, dragging a hand over his jaw, thinking. Really thinking now—not just reacting.

“That’s your girl,” he says finally. “You’ve built something there. I’m not—” he shakes his head slightly, “—I’m not interested in screwing that up.”

Jack’s expression doesn’t change much, but something in it settles. He nods once.

“I wouldn’t be asking if I thought you would.”

Robby glances at him, sharper now. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“No,” Jack agrees easily. “But I do know you.”

A beat.

“And I trust you,” he adds.

it hangs there. Robby exhales slowly, gaze dropping to the table for a second before coming back up.

“…Yeah,” he mutters. “That’s the problem.”

Jack’s brow lifts, faintly amused. “That I trust you?”

“That I don’t take that lightly,” Robby shoots back.

Silence stretches for a second. Then Robby leans forward slightly, forearms braced on the table, voice dropping a notch.

“And you’re fine with it,” he says. Not a question. “Me and her.”

Jack doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

“Really.”

“Yeah.”

Robby studies him—searching for cracks, for ego, for something careless. Doesn’t find much. Jack kept his pride in check. He wasn’t a jealous person, not really. He was secure in himself. Something Robby envied, sometimes.

“…She’s—” he starts, then cuts himself off, jaw tightening slightly. “You know what she is.”

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Yeah. I do.”

“Twenty-something,” Robby continues. “Smart. Looks like—” he gestures vaguely, then shakes his head. “You’ve seen her.”

Jack smirks faintly. “I have, yeah. A lot of her. It’s great.”

Robby’s mouth twitches despite himself.

“And she looks at you like you hung the moon half the time,” he adds.

Jack’s expression softens just a fraction. “Sometimes.”

Robby nods once, slow. Then—

“…You really telling me you’ve never thought about it? About her” Jack asks, casual—but not careless.

Robby lets out a quiet breath through his nose, leaning back again.

“That’s not a fair question.”

Jack tilts his head at his friend. An insistence in his eyes to go on.

Robby tips his head back slightly, staring at the ceiling for a second like he’s debating how honest he wants to be.

Then he looks back at Jack.

“…Well I’m not blind,” he says.

Jack doesn’t react much. Just watches him.

“She’s—” Robby exhales, searching for a word, then gives up and settles for, “—she’s a lot. Sweet.”

Jack’s mouth ticks. “She is… You ever think about her while jerking off?”

Robby lets out a low breath at that, clicking his tongue at his friend's bluntness. Fuck it, they’re being honest. “Yes.”

Robby’s a little surprised when he sees the slow blink from Jack, a nod. Maybe irritable. 

“What?” Robby scoffs. “You’re cool with the prospect of me fucking your girl? But what I do with my hand in my spare time is… what, some sort of line being crossed?”

“I didn’t say anything, alright. I’m all good here. Just didn’t think you’d admit it,” Jack nods with insistence. “What about during sex? Thought about her then?”

“...On occasion, yes, I’ve- she’s popped up there, yeah.” Robby admits with brief hesitance. 

That’s as far as he pushes it—but it’s enough. Jack nods once, like this one he expected. Like it doesn’t threaten anything.

“Fair,” he says.

Robby glances at him, something like disbelief creeping back in. “You’re taking that a lot better than I thought you would.”

Jack shrugs. “She’s hot. You’re not dead. Tells me you’ve got a working dick, at least.”

Robby lets out a short laugh at that, shaking his head.

Jack took a sip of his beer, then—because he wasn’t finished, because he never really was with Robby—tilts his head slightly.

“What about me?”

Robby scoffs immediately, too quick. “Oh, come on.”

“No, seriously,” Jack says, glancing at him sideways. Casual on the surface, not casual underneath. “No shame, total honesty here. Twenty years, no secrets, all that bullshit.”

Robby drags a hand over his beard, already feeling the trap closing. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Have you?” Jack asks, like he was asking about the weather.

A pause.

Robby stares at the table, jaw working once.

“…You first,” he mutters.

Jack doesn’t even blink. “Yeah.”

Robby let out a slow breath through his nose, eyes dropping, like he was doing the math on how much of himself he was willing to hand over tonight.

“Man, it’s not even—” Jack went on, shrugging a shoulder. “Half the time that shit doesn’t mean anything. Brain just throws things at you. Doesn’t make you anything.”

Robby let out a short, humourless huff. “Right.”

“What,” Jack presses lightly, “you worried about the gay implications?”

Robby shot him a look. “Don’t—”

“—What? Say ‘gay’?” Jack says, not unkind, but not backing off either.

Robby glances up as a couple walks past, waits them out, then leans back in his seat, voice lower.

“We’re talking about whether I’ve jacked off thinking about another guy,” he says, flat. “Yeah, the… ‘gay’ of it all crossed my mind. Excuse me.”

Jack just nods, like that was fair.

“I just… I guess, I didn’t realise—” Robby starts, then stops, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I mean, you know, are you—”

Jack shrugs, easy. “I’ve been with a few. Never made a whole thing out of it. Don’t really care to.”

Robby gives a small, disbelieving shake of his head. “Figrues. Army man.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack mutters. “You don’t have to slap a label on it, Rob. Doesn’t have to mean anything bigger than it is.”

“I’m aware,” Robby says, maybe a little sharper than he meant to. Then, quieter—like it cost him something— “…It’s crossed my mind.”

Jack’s mouth pulled into something faintly smug. Not cruel—just… satisfied.

“Crossed your mind,” he repeated. “Interesting wording.”

“Don’t start,” Robby warns, but there was less heat in it now.

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “It was easier getting you to admit you think about fucking my girlfriend half our age than it was getting that out of you. That’s saying something.”

“Fuck you,” Robby mutters, rolling his eyes—but there was a reluctant grin there now, breaking through whether he liked it or not.

Jack shrugs, taking another sip. “Options apparently on the table.”

Robby shakes his head, but didn’t argue. Didn’t fully look away, either.

Something in the air had shifted—subtle, but real. Not a line crossed, exactly. More like one finally acknowledged.

Robby studied him for a second, longer than necessary. There was history there—years of it, unspoken things sitting just under the surface, things neither of them had ever had to name.

Jack didn’t push. Just leaned back, easy.

“Think about it,” he tries. “Or don’t. Nothing changes.”

Robby nods once, short. “Yeah.” A few seconds of quiet. “…You still need that ride home?” he asks.

Jack snorts. “Oh, a ride home? Wow. Subtle.”

“Shut up.”

“Flirting now, are we?”

“You are not a funny man, Jack Abbot, don’t think otherwise,” Robby says, but he was already smiling, just a little.

★★★

2 WEEKS EARLIER

threesomenoun — three·some — ˈthrē-səm

1: a group of three persons or things : trio

2: a golf match in which one person plays their ball against the ball of two others playing each stroke alternately

3: a sexual encounter involving three people

“Are you trying to say you wanna play golf?” Jack says from the stove, not even turning around as he stirs the pan like it personally offended him.

The kitchen smells like garlic and butter—onions already softened down, carrots and capsicum still holding a bit too much bite. He’s got one hand on the wooden spoon, the other braced on the counter, solid and steady in that way he always is.

You’re perched up on the counter, one leg swinging lazily, phone in hand.

“Yes,” you say dryly, scrolling. “I’m deeply passionate about golf. The balls. The stroking of the balls—”

“—I get it,” Jack cuts in. “You want a threesome.”

You look up at him, unimpressed. “I don’t want a threesome. I love twosomes. Specifically with you.” A beat. “But I’m not opposed to… expanding the sample size.”

Jack snorts, finally glancing over to you. “Expanding the—Jesus. That’s how you pitch wanting to fuck my best friend?”

“You brought it up,” you shoot back, pointing your phone at him like evidence. “Don’t act like this wasn’t your idea. ‘Oh baby, we should add a third, Robby would give me notes’—”

“I did not sound like that.”

“—If anything,” you continue over him, “I think you wanna fuck your best friend.”

“Alright,” Jack mutters, turning back to the pan. “Not what I sound like. And c’mon—you know you’re all I wanna fuck.” He nudges the vegetables again, frowning. “I think these are done.”

“They’re not.” You don’t even look up when you say it. “Anyway… I doubt he’d even be down for it,” you say. “I barely think he likes me as a friend.”

Jack lets out a quiet scoff at that.

You narrow your eyes. “What?”

“I think he’d fuck you in a heartbeat if I said I was okay with it,” Jack says, like it’s obvious. Then, distracted again—“I really think these are done, hon.”

“Test the carrot,” you say, still scrolling. “If it’s soft enough, it’ll break with pressure.”

He presses the spoon into one. It doesn’t budge.

“…Needs longer,” he admits.

“How do you know that?”

“I just did what you said, I—”

“No,” you interrupt, looking at him properly now. “How do you know Robby would fuck me?”

That slows him down.

Jack exhales through his nose, shoulders shifting as he leans back slightly against the counter, thinking.

“I know him,” he says. “Twenty years of it. And I know you.” A beat. “There’s something there. A thing. You’ve always had good chemistry.”

You huff lightly. “A vague… thing, maybe.”

You hesitate, then—because you don’t really do half-truths—

“I did have a bit of a crush on him,” you admit. “Before I met you.”

Jack stills. Not dramatically. Just enough.

“I don’t anymore,” you add quickly. “It faded. Pretty fast, actually. It was early—before I started coming down to ED properly. He’d come up sometimes, consults, whatever. I think it was just…” you shrug, searching, “…older. Authority. Bit of an asshole.”

Jack’s mouth pulls slightly at that, something between amused and unimpressed.

“Glad to know you don’t have a type,” he mutters.

You lean in closer from the counter, nudging his shoulder lightly with your knee.

“Hey,” you murmur. He glances up at you. “I like them a little shorter,” you say softly.

Jack blinks.

Then rolls his eyes, a huff of laughter slipping out despite himself as you grin and go back to your phone.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters, turning the heat down, a small smile at the corner of his lips. 

★★★

The thing about a third—about this third—was that it… kind of just felt natural. Like there was so little reason to not do it, to not try it, invite it.

It wasn’t sudden. It was something that had been sitting under the skin of things for so long it stopped feeling foreign the second it was named.

Robby had never been separate from Jack. 

Not really. People liked to pretend friendships had clean edges—this is where I end, this is where you begin—but that had never been the case with them. 

Too many years. Too many nights that blurred into mornings, too many arguments that never quite resolved but never quite broke them either. 

They’d dragged each other through their twenties, stumbled into their thirties, and settled—somehow—into their forties without ever untangling.

They knew each other in ways that made distance feel artificial.

And Robby had always lived in that tension.

He didn’t soften easily. Didn’t trust softness when it showed up uninvited. Jack had always been the exception to that rule—steady enough to withstand it, patient enough not to demand more than Robby could give. But patience didn’t mean absence.

There were things between them that had never been said out loud. Not because they didn’t exist, but because saying them would’ve required a kind of clarity Robby had spent most of his life avoiding. 

It was easier to file it under something else—loyalty, history, proximity. Easier to laugh it off, to redirect, to let it sit in that grey space where it didn’t have to be examined too closely.

Then you came along. And you didn’t disrupt that balance. You just seemed to understand it. 

You didn’t wedge yourself between them, didn’t ask Jack to choose, didn’t look at Robby like he was something to tolerate or compete with. You moved through it like it already made sense to you. Like there was room.

And God—there was something about you.

Not just that you were beautiful—though you were, in a way that made people look twice without meaning to. Not just that you were younger, brighter, sharper at the edges in a way that made everything feel a little more alive. It was the way you saw people.

The way you saw Jack—fully, without flinching, without trying to fix him or soften him into something more palatable. The way you leaned into him like you trusted him to hold the weight of that. The way you touched him without hesitation, like affection was a language you spoke fluently.

And worse—

The way you looked at Robby sometimes, like you were trying to figure him out and already had.

He’d noticed it long before anyone said anything. Of course he had. The small things. The way your attention lingered just a second longer than necessary. The way you didn’t pull back when he got too close, didn’t flinch at the edge in him that made other people cautious.

You met it. Sometimes you even matched it. And that—more than anything—was what made him careful. Because wanting you was one thing.

That was easy enough to dismiss, tuck away under instinct, under biology, under the thousand other justifications people used to avoid looking too closely at themselves.

But wanting you like this—in the context of Jack, with Jack, because of Jack. That was something else entirely. It brushed up against things he didn’t have neat categories for. Things that felt uncomfortably close to lines he’d spent years pretending weren’t there.

And Jack…

Jack, who didn’t do anything halfway, who didn’t offer things he wasn’t sure about—was sitting across from him like this was just another extension of something already solid. Like this wasn’t a risk so much as… an opening.

That was what threw him. It wasn’t the sex or the implication, it was how Jack totally trusted him. With you, with this, with Jack himself.

And Robby didn’t trust himself nearly that much.

That was the problem. Beneath all the deflection, all the dryness and sarcasm, the sharp edges, there was something undeniably real threading through all three of you. Not clean, not simple—but real in a way that resisted being dismissed.

Jack had never been particularly private about you. Not with Robby.

Not in the way people usually were about relationships—careful, curated, keeping the good parts polished and the rest tucked away. Jack wasn’t built like that. He didn’t gush, didn’t sentimentalise—but if he’d had a couple drinks in him and it’d been a long week, you came up. Inevitably.

Not in a soft-focus, hearts-and-flowers way.

In details. In fragments. In the way you got under his skin and stayed there. 

The way you kissed him, made him feel every ounce of his own flesh and blood, grounded, and above at once. In how much he adored your figure, or some ridiculous position, some ridiculous story of stamina and libido, your mouth, his mouth, your hand, his hand.

Robby had learned, over the years, to let it wash over him. Half-listening, half-not. It wasn’t discomfort exactly—more like… he didn’t know where to put it. There was something about hearing your name in Jack’s mouth like that that sat strange in his chest. 

“What the fuck do you mean six times?” Robby had said once, a laugh breaking through despite himself as he tipped his beer back.

They were sprawled out on the grass like they hadn’t aged out of it—backs damp against the ground, shirts sticking, the heat of the day still rising up through the dirt. The city hummed around them, distant enough to ignore. It felt like being twenty something again, except their knees ached when they stood and everything they didn’t talk about sat heavier.

It was one of those nothing nights, sometime back in Spring. End of a shift. A few beers. Waiting for you to finish upstairs while Jack pretended he wasn’t being watched over by the hospital.

Jack didn’t even open his eyes. “I mean she came six times,” he said, easy. “Working up to eight.”

Robby snorted. “You’re talking like it’s a personal best.”

“It is,” Jack said. “You don’t set goals, you stagnate. That’s what my therapist says.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Jack grinned faintly, still flat on his back, arms folded behind his head like he had nowhere else to be. “What’s your number?”

Robby shrugged, taking another sip. “I don’t know. I don’t have a number.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Nope.”

“Bull.”

Robby dragged a hand over his mouth, already regretting engaging. “…Four. Maybe.”

Jack turned his head slightly, considering that like it mattered more than it should. His fingers tapped absently against the neck of the bottle.

“Four,” he repeated.

“Some of us aren’t treating it like a competitive sport,” Robby muttered.

Jack huffed. “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s her. She’s a natural.”

“She really that good?” Robby had slipped as a question. Maybe for his own curiosity, maybe because he knew Jack would’ve gotten to it at some point. Both, likely.

There was a beat.

Robby stared up at the sky like it didn’t matter either way. Jack shifted slightly, something quieter settling into him now.

“She’s—” he paused, like he was trying to find a word that didn’t sound ridiculous and failing. “She pays attention. Like she’s studying you. Figures out what works and then—just… doesn’t let up. Like I’m constantly high around her. And man, she-” Jack cleared his throat. “She does this thing with her tongue.”

Robby exhaled through his nose, slow.

He didn’t say anything.

“She swirls it, right around the underside, traces it—the entire thing with the flat part. Goes between, you know, broad strokes, little ones, then she’ll—fuck,” Jack had mused. “…She’ll use the space beneath her tongue, suck, and still use her tongue at the same time. I can’t describe how good it feels,” Jack had explained, his words slurring slightly but still carrying a strange clarity. “Fucking… incredible.”

Robby couldn’t have helped but picture it. The image of you, on your knees, long lashes batting at him, as you brought him to the edge. He sipped his beer, fingers a bit tighter around the neck of the glass.

“She makes the prettiest noises, like a… I don’t even know,” Jack added, quieter now, almost to himself. “Moans and screams, and so… Christ. Like she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it, possessed.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Robby cut in, not sharply, but firm.

Jack just smirked, eyes still shut. “You asked.”

“I didn’t ask for a breakdown.”

“Semantics.”

Robby shook his head, but there was a faint smile tugging at his mouth despite it. He finished the last of his beer, letting the cold settle something in his chest that had nothing to do with the heat.

A pause stretched between them. Jack sipped his beer. Then—

“What’s the deal with you and Noelle?” Jack asked, casual in that way that wasn’t casual at all.

Robby’s jaw shifted.

“She’s… fine,” he said.

Jack cracked one eye open. “That sounds promising.”

Robby huffed. “It’s not—” he cut himself off, shook his head. “Don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

Jack watched him for a second. Then nodded, like he’d expected that. He handed Robby his own beer, watching as Robby took it after a moment, sipping from it himself

“Yeah,” he said. “Bummer.”

Another beat. Robby sat up, bracing his forearms on his knees, their shared beer dangling loose between his fingers.

“Don’t think I’m built for it,” he said finally.

Jack didn’t move. “For what?”

“This,” Robby gestured vaguely. “Relationships. The staying. The… showing up part.”

Jack was quiet for a second.

Then—

“Now that’s bull,” he said, not unkindly.

Robby glanced at him, a faint, tired smirk pulling at his mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “We’ve known each other, what—twenty years? You’ve stuck around that long.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

Robby didn’t answer that. Jack pushed himself up onto his elbows now, looking at him properly.

“You don’t get to pretend you can’t do something just because you haven’t done it right yet,” he said.

Robby scoffed lightly. “Didn’t realise you were gonna get philosophical on me.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack muttered, reaching for his beer. “Hate to break it to you, man, but you’re not some unfixable case.”

Robby laughed at that—short, real.

“Garcia said I’d make a good ex-husband,” he said.

Jack snorted. “See? Even she thinks you can commit.”

“That’s not what that means.”

“Close enough,” Jack sighed. “Lie down, will you. You’re so damn tense.”

Robby let out a low groan but did it anyway, dropping back into the grass beside him, one arm flung over his eyes like he could shut the world out for a second. 

The ground was still a little damp from the morning rain, cool through his shirt, the air thick and warm in that late-night way where everything feels slower, looser.

They went quiet after that. Easy quiet. The kind that only comes after years—no need to fill it, no need to perform.

“Aw, you two are so cute.”

Jack sat up immediately.

You stood a few feet off the path, lit half by a flickering streetlamp—scrubs wrinkled, hair a mess like you’d been running your hands through it all day, hoodie tied loose around your hips. One of Jack’s old military backpacks hung off your shoulder like it belonged there. 

For a while there, Robby had forgotten the whole reason they’d been in the park to begin with was to wait for you.

“Hey, baby,” Jack said, voice softening without him meaning it to. “You finish alright?”

You just nodded, already moving toward him.

You didn’t hesitate—never did. Leaned down, pressed a quick kiss to his cheek that turned, halfway through, into something closer to his mouth. Warm. Familiar. You lingered just long enough that he had to chase it a second.

“Miss me?” you murmured, barely pulling back.

“Always,” he said, easy. A little drunk, a little honest.

Robby watched it happen from the ground, not even pretending not to.

You dropped down in front of Jack, cross-legged, close enough your knees brushed his thighs. His hands came up immediately—instinct, habit—sliding over your arms, grounding, checking. 

Then his mouth found your neck, a soft press just under your jaw, before his hands settled at your shoulders, working slow circles into muscle that had no business being that tight at your age.

You exhaled like you’d been holding it all day.

“Jesus,” you muttered. “Keep doing that.”

“Yeah?” Jack hummed against your skin, a little smug.

“Mhm.”

You tipped your head slightly, giving him better access without thinking. He took it.

Across from you, Robby shifted, propping himself up on his elbows now, watching the two of you with that same look he always got—half amused, half something else he never quite named.

“Robby,” you said, glancing over at him, “how the hell are you drinking after that shift? You guys were slammed.”

“Sometimes a drink’s all you get,” he said. His voice was steady, but his eyes flicked—brief, involuntary—to where Jack’s hands were still working into your shoulders. Then back to your face. “Ortho must’ve been a dream, though.”

You let out a dry laugh. “Oh yeah. Absolute paradise. Park was being a complete asshole to one of the R1s. Kid looked like he was gonna cry.”

“Sounds about right,” Robby muttered.

Jack’s hands slowed, thumbs pressing deeper into a knot that made you suck in a breath.

“Careful,” he said. “You’re gonna fall asleep right here.”

“Honestly?” you said, eyes half-lidded now, “tempting.”

There was a beat. Quiet again—but different this time. Fuller.

You shifted slightly, leaning back into Jack without thinking. Your hand found his knee, resting there, absent, like it belonged.

Robby noticed that too. Of course he did.

You glanced up at Jack then, studying him for a second longer than necessary.

“…You been talking about me?” you asked.

Jack snorted, immediate. “What?”

“You’ve got that look,” you said, squinting at him. “And he’s looking at me weird.”

“I always look at people weird,” Robby said, flat, from the grass.

You didn’t even look at him. “Yeah, but this is a different weird.”

Jack huffed a laugh under his breath, shaking his head like you were ridiculous, even as his mouth betrayed him. “We were just talking about your—what was it—immense beauty. Your sex appeal. Your many talents.”

His mouth brushed your neck again as he said it, like he couldn’t quite help himself.

Robby let out a quiet breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh. Something drier. “It’s not far off.”

You stilled. Then slowly turned your head, looking at Jack properly now.

“What did you say to him,” you murmured, low, dangerous in a way that wasn’t entirely serious—but not entirely not.

Jack leaned in, said something under his breath—too quiet for Robby to catch. Your reaction was immediate.

You smacked his leg—right on the prosthetic—with a sharp thwack.

“Jack.”

He barely flinched, just grinned, caught your wrist before you could do it again.

“If you actually told him that,” you said, pointing at him, “I swear to god I’ll take this thing off and beat you with it.”

“That’s dramatic,” Jack murmured, still holding your hand. “And also physically unlikely.”

“It’s true, though,” he added, softer now, mouth near your ear again. “You’re very good at it.”

You rolled your eyes, but your shoulders had loosened, leaning back into him again despite yourself.

Robby watched the whole thing like it was a film he hadn’t agreed to sit through, but couldn’t quite look away from either.

“So the tongue thing’s real then?” he asked, almost idly.

Jack groaned. “Alright. We’re done here.”

You laughed—bright, cutting through the heaviness of the day shift still clinging to all three of you—and turned into Jack properly this time.

It wasn’t quick. Not really. Soft at first, then deeper, your hand coming up to his jaw, holding him there. He responded without thinking, one hand sliding to your waist, pulling you closer, grounding himself in something he knew.

Robby looked away. Not fast enough.

You pulled back eventually, brushing your nose against Jack’s.

“I’ll drive,” you said quietly. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” he said automatically.

“You’re pretty drunk,” you corrected.

A beat.

“…Alright. Could be a little drunk,” he conceded.

You smiled, already reaching into his pocket for the keys like it was second nature. He let you. Fingers brushing yours as you took them, just for a second longer than necessary.

“Don’t lose the car,” he muttered.

“No promises.”

You stood, stretching slightly, then glanced down at Robby.

“You good?” you asked, softer now.

He met your eyes, something unreadable passing through his expression before it settled back into something easier.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good.”

You nodded like you believed him.

“Night, Michael.”

There was a flicker at that—something small but real.

“Night,” he said.

Jack let you haul him up, weight shifting automatically to his left as he got his balance, your hand steady at his arm without making a thing of it. He adjusted, rolled his shoulders like he always did, then followed your lead without argument.

“Text me when you get home,” he called back to Robby.

“Sure. Have fun with your girl.’ Robby had said, lying back down.

“I definitely will,” Jack nodded.

You were already walking, his shoulder brushing yours, easy. He leaned down slightly as you hit the path, murmuring something low against your hair that made you let out a quiet, breathy laugh—something private, something just for him.

Robby watched you both go.

Didn’t move.

The grass was still damp under his back when he lay down again, staring up at a sky that refused to give him anything clear.

He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his mouth.

So, when you and Jack finally put it to him—cornered him in that quiet, deliberate way the two of you had—Robby wasn’t as hung up on the logistics of it as he probably should’ve been. The dynamic, the risk, the aftermath—those were the things a smarter man might’ve led with. But that wasn’t where his mind went first.

It went somewhere simpler. Sharper.

Just how pretty were the noises you made? How soft was your tongue? Would you like it if Robby was cruel—if he held your head down and made you choke on him?

And Jack… steady Jack. What did he look like when he finally came? Did he like being teased, kept right on that edge until it snapped? Would he grip Robby’s hair, or would he stay controlled even then, taking it without losing that composure?

It wasn't an abstract curiosity. It wasn’t even entirely sexual, not at its core. It was about access.

About seeing something of both of you that no one else did. About being let into a space that already existed—intimate, closed, complete—and being told there was room for him inside it.

And that—more than anything else—was what made it difficult to dismiss.

★★★

Ortho is down for a consultation when you get called in.

The patient is already under—intubated and sedated, leg secured in traction. The CT is up on PACS, the fracture obvious even before you zoom in: a displaced mid-shaft femur, clear shortening, classic muscle pull deformity.

“Yeah, that’s a transverse mid-shaft femoral fracture,” you say, pen tapping the screen. “You can see the displacement here, and the overlap—this is why the leg looks shortened clinically.”

Santos leans in, her eyes slightly wide. “Fuck.”

You shake your head. “It looks dramatic, but it’s stable from what we’ve got. No obvious vascular compromise on imaging. Ortho will likely take her for an intramedullary nail.”

Santos lets out a breath.

You scroll through the scan again, adjusting the windowing. “We’ll just want to repeat neurovascular checks pre-op and post-reduction. But she’s straightforward.”

“Thank god,” Santos mutters. “I was so not bothered to call for another consult.

A knock on the glass interrupts you. You glance up.

Robby.

He’s already halfway through sanitising his hands when he steps in, eyes flicking once to the screen before landing on you.

“Ortho’s down in ED?” he says.

“Yeah,” you answer, a little too aware of him in the doorway. “Santos messaged me. Femur fracture.”

He leans in beside you to look at the CT, close enough that the space shifts—clinical, but not entirely neutral. He’s tired in the way only long shifts make you, sleeves pushed up, forearms marked faintly by pressure lines from his undershirt.

“Looks like a clean nail,” he says.

“Assuming ortho behaves,” you reply.

He huffs something like a laugh. “They won’t.”

“No,” you agree. “We never do.”

Santos clears her throat. “While I’ve got you—Huckleberry and I are having a Parisian party next Friday. At our place. You should come. You and Abbott, of course.”

You pause slightly.

“A Parisian party?” you repeat.

“Yeah,” Santos says, warming to it. “Paris-themed. Like… French food, wine, decorations. The Eiffel Tower and shit.”

Robby makes a quiet sound behind you—almost a laugh, quickly disguised.

You glance at him, but he’s still looking at the scan like nothing happened.

Santos continues, mildly confused. “Have either of you been to Paris?”

“No,” you say.

Robby: “Nope.”

Santos nods like that still tracks logically. “Yeah, me neither. Barely even been to Canada.”

There’s a beat.

“Anyway,” She adds, already backing toward the door, “You’re invited too, Robby. Maybe the three of you come together or something. You’re all close”

“...Sounds good, Santos, we’ll let you know,” Robby says with a nod. “North Twelve?”

“Consider it done.” Santos says dry, nodding.

The door shuts behind her. Silence settles back in—clean, clinical, familiar. Except Robby is still standing close enough that you’re aware of him in a way you shouldn’t be during a trauma consult.

He glances at the CT again. “Paris-themed party,” he repeats flatly.

“Don’t even,” you say immediately, because you can hear it in his tone already, trying to hide your own smile.

“What?” he says innocently.

You turn slightly toward him. “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

He finally looks at you properly now, mouth twitching. “I’m not thinking anything.”

“You’re absolutely thinking something and at work nonetheless? Inappropriate.”

“I’m thinking Santos should never be allowed to plan anything,” he says.

“Liar.”

That earns you a brief, quiet exhale of amusement. You finish with the scans and walk out, Robby hot on your heels as you head to the nurses station.

“You think you’ll go?” he asks.

“No,” you say. “Jack and I have the night off. We’ll be busy.”

“Right,” he nods.

A beat.

“You?” you ask.

“I’d rather not spend my night around a bunch of drunk residents,” Robby says with a quiet exhale. “So, no.”

“Come over then,” you offer, stopping at the nurses’ station.

Robby gives you a look. “Thought you said you two were busy.”

“You can be busy with us,” you say, looking up at him, pen tapping lightly against the chart. “Or just Jack. Or just me. He told me you’ve thought about it either way.”

A faint sigh leaves him. “Right. I forgot he can’t keep anything to himself.”

He leans against the counter, lowering his voice slightly as his eyes flick briefly across the station—Dana watching from a few bays away, already narrowing her gaze like she’s clocking something she hasn’t labelled yet.

“Have you?” he asks softly.

“Thought about you? In that way?” you clarify.

He nods, a slight tilt to his head, curious.

You hesitate just long enough to make it honest.

“Yes,” you admit. “You’re tall. Kind. Your beard’s nice. You’re probably a little meaner than Jack, which interests me.”

That earns the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Something deeper in him satisfied.

“Abbot’s a lover boy at heart,” Robby says. “Gives in easily. ‘Specially for you.”

You nod, like that tracks. “Most of the time, yeah.”

That earns a quieter look from him. A pause that sits just slightly longer than professional. Then, more carefully, “Is it true you had a crush on me?”

You tilt your head. “God, he really just— Doesn’t keep anything to himself.”

Robby exhales through his nose. “Not at all. I’ve been subjected to that man and his inner workings for too long.”

You bump his shoulder lightly with yours, just enough contact to make the space between you feel intentional.

“Was it a yes?”

“To the crush?” You consider it. “Yeah.”

That makes his eyebrows lift slightly.

“Before Jack,” you add, like it matters in a technical sense. “Older, authority figure, slightly emotionally unavailable… I think I might just have a pattern.”

Robby hums, low. “Tracks.”

There’s a beat where neither of you moves away. Then he says, quieter, “And now?”

You don’t look away when you answer. “Now, it’s just… different.”

That hangs there. From somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeps sharply, breaking the moment just enough for it not to tip into anything else.

You glance back down at the chart, already half-moving on.

“I’ll let you know when we get a room open for the femur nail lady.”

And then you’re gone—already walking toward the elevator, the conversation left hanging in the air behind you. Robby watches you go.

A quiet breath leaves him through his nose. He taps his fingers once against the counter, then pushes off it, turning back to the screens like he needs something solid to land on.

Dana appears beside him a second later, sliding into the space like she’s been waiting for exactly this moment.

“What’s with that?” she asks.

“...What’s with what?” he replies, arms folding loosely, eyes still on the monitor bank.

“I mean,” she says slowly, “what’s with flirtin’ with Abbott’s girl in front of everybody?”

He doesn’t look at her when he answers.

“That’s not flirting,” he says evenly. “We were just talking.”

Dana hums, unconvinced. “Talkin’ real close.”

Robby exhales, already shifting focus. “New patient?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding toward the bay. “Just rolled in. Need you over there.”

“Alright,” he says.

And he follows her down the hall, expression already reset.

★★★

“—Hey. Hold on a second,” Jack says, breath a little uneven.

“No, don’t—don’t hold on,” you protest, already moving, frustrated at the interruption. Your hips roll, trying to sink deeper, but his hands clamp down on your waist—firm, grounding, stopping you.

“Hey. Easy.” A breath. “Just—gimme a second, alright?”

You huff, but you stop. Barely. Your thighs tremble, hovering just above his cock, the tip brushing against your wet slit.  “This better be good.”

He lets out something like a quiet laugh, more breath than sound. “Yeah, I’ll try not to waste your time.”

A beat. He looks at you properly now—focused, a little too clear-headed for the situation. His thumb traces a slow circle on your hipbone, soothing, but his eyes are sharp.

“Just… wanna get this straight,” he says.

Your hands shift on his chest, nails dragging lightly. “Okay. Then say it.”

He nods once. “He can be there. He can watch, he can fuck you.” A pause. “But there are lines.”

You tilt your head, watching him. “Such as?”

His grip tightens just a fraction—not enough to bruise, enough to mean something. “Such as—you don’t forget who you’re with.”

You raise a brow, a smirk pulling at your lips. “Hard to forget when you’ve got your dick in me half the time I’m not at work.”

“Smartass,” he mutters. Then, quieter—“I’m serious. He doesn’t get to know how you taste. That’s mine.”

“Uh-huh…” You roll your hips lazily, not sinking down, just letting the head of his cock nudge against your clit, making him hiss. “So this is allowed?” You lift up, then lower just an inch, teasing the tip against your entrance.

“Yeah, allowed,” Jack nods, his jaw tight.

“Mm. This?” You lean down and kiss him—sweet, slow, your tongue brushing his lower lip before you pull back with a soft pop.

He nods into the kiss, groaning when you start to move again, lifting your pussy off him completely. The air hits his wet shaft and he shudders.

“Yeah? What about this?” You wrap your hand around his cock, giving it a slow, deliberate stroke from base to tip, slick with your own arousal. You squeeze just a little, watching his eyes flutter.

“All allowed,” he grates out, “but his mouth isn’t getting near this, alright, that’s all—” He cuts off as he grabs you by the hips, guiding your pussy back down, lining you up and shoving it back in with a single, brutal thrust. Your moan rips out of you—loud, breathy, grateful. His cock fills you so deep you feel it in your throat.

“Yeah? That good with you?” he asks, voice rough.

You nod, already starting to ride him—slow at first, just a rock of your hips, teasing the angle. “What about you and ’im?” you ask, breath hitching as you grind down.

Jack shrugs—or tries to. “What don’t you want?”

“No blowjobs either, then,” you say, voice a little strained as you lift up and drop back down, feeling every ridge. “’S for me.”

“Sounds good to me.” His hands find your hips again, but he doesn’t guide—he just holds, letting you set the pace. Letting you take.

You pick up speed, thighs burning, your clit grinding against his pubic bone with each roll. The room fills with the wet sound of your pussy gripping his cock, and you tilt your head back, letting him see the arch of your throat.

His hand comes up, thumb brushing along your jaw, pulling your focus back to him when you drift.

“Right here,” he murmurs.

You meet his gaze. That same look—steady, a little rough around the edges, but sure. His.

“Good,” he says, softer now. His thumb drags across your lower lip, and you part your mouth, just enough to suck the tip of it in. His eyes darken.

And when you move again, it’s slower. You rock forward, letting his cock hit that deep, sweet spot, and you moan against his thumb. You pull off it with a wet sound, then lean down to kiss him again—dirtier this time, tongue and teeth, whimpering into him.

“Yeah,” he breathes against your lips. “That’s better.”

★★​​★

It’s late into the evening on Friday when you hear Jack on the phone.

“No, can’t,” Jack says, pacing your living room, phone tucked to his ear while he half-heartedly folds laundry and gives up halfway through. “I’m home. She’s cooking. Smells like I’m about to get fat and happy.”

“Baby, can you come try this?” you call from the kitchen.

“One sec,” he says, then quieter, back into the phone—“What’d you wanna do?”

“Nothing,” Robby mutters. “I… I don’t know, man. I don’t feel like crashing Santos and Whitaker’s… house party. We could go for a drive. Hike.”

Jack stops mid-step. “A hike,” he repeats. “At nine-thirty at night.”

A beat.

“Yeah, not happening,” he decides, dropping the laundry basket and heading into the kitchen.

You’re at the counter in that barely-there nightgown—soft, short, riding up your thighs as you lean forward, aggressively chopping an onion like it personally offended you. Eyes glossy, blinking through it.

Jack pauses in the doorway for half a second longer than necessary.

Then—business as usual.

“Alright,” he says, stepping in behind you, close enough that his hand brushes your hip on the way past. “What am I trying?”

You nod at the stove. “Carbonara.”

He leans over, tastes it, hums—low, approving.

“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “She’s showing off.”

You bump his arm lightly. “I am not.”

“You are,” he says, kissing you quick, easy, like he’s done it a thousand times. “It’s working.”

You smile despite yourself, wiping at your eyes.

On the phone, Robby exhales. Rough. Tired.

“Hike’s dumb,” Jack says, shifting tone without making it obvious. “What’s actually going on.”

“Nothing,” Robby says. “Just… can’t sit still. Garcia was on my ass all day, Al-Hashimi wouldn’t shut the fuck up—”

“—Hey,” Jack cuts in, calm, steady. “Take a breath.”

You glance over at him. He’s not looking at you anymore—focused now, locked into that mode.

“You’re good,” he says. “You’re not thinking anything dumb, right?”

A pause.

“…No,” Robby says. “Just need to… get out of my head, I don’t know.”

Jack hears it. You do too. That edge. That restless, pissed-off with nowhere to put it thing.

“He can come here,” you say, like it’s obvious.

Jack looks at you—quick, assessing—but there’s no resistance there. Just a flicker of something else.

“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “Come over. Food’s ready soon.”

“I don’t know, man—” Robby starts.

You reach over and take the phone straight out of Jack’s hand.

“Hey, Michael.”

There’s a beat.

Jack watches you now, not even pretending to focus on the onions anymore.

“…Hey,” Robby says, slower. “Heard you were cooking.”

“Mhm,” you hum, leaning back against the counter, bare leg brushing against Jack’s where he stands beside you. “Plenty to go around.”

Jack’s hand settles at your hip automatically. Not possessive—just there.

Robby hears the shift anyway.

“This a setup?” he asks.

You smile slightly. “You always this suspicious, or just with me?”

A quiet scoff from him.

“You should come,” you add, softer—but not innocent. “You sound like you need it.”

A beat. Jack’s thumb presses lightly into your hip. Grounding. Present.

Robby exhales. “Yeah. Guess I can make it.”

“Guess you can,” you say easily.

Silence again—but it’s different now.

You glance at Jack.

He nods once.

“Door’s unlocked,” you say. “Twenty minutes.”

You hand the phone back.

Jack takes it, fingers brushing yours briefly, then brings it back to his ear. “You heard her. No pressure.”

A pause.

“…Alright,” Robby says.

The line clicks dead.

Jack sets the phone down on the counter, then looks at you properly. A slow once-over. Not subtle.

“What?” You raise a brow.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ll finish the laundry.” He gives you a deep kiss to your neck, hands trailing over your figure as he mumbles into your skin, fingers gently pushing aside the light material. “You gonna stay in this?” He asks.

“‘S that alright?” You wonder, leaning into his touch.

He inhales sharply against your skin, lips leaving your skin. “Sure.”

★★★

You’re out on the balcony when it comes up.

Jack’s place sits high enough that the city feels almost staged—Pittsburgh stretched out in warm light, bridges lit up in clean lines, traffic moving steady below like it never really stops. It’s one of those late summer nights where the air sticks just slightly to your skin, warm but not suffocating. There’s music drifting from somewhere down the block, a party you can’t see but can feel in the background.

The balcony’s not small—wide enough for a proper table, a few chairs, space to lean without feeling cramped. Jack had insisted on that when he bought the place. Said if he was going to spend money, it’d be on something worth standing still for.

Your plates are mostly cleared, carbonara half-finished, wine and beer sweating into the wood.

“Have either of you done this before?” Robby asks.

Jack shakes his head immediately. “No.”

You don’t answer.

You’re thinking—actually thinking, head tilted slightly, finger lifting to tap against Jack’s arm like you need him to hold on a second. That’s when it hits him, belated and faintly incredulous, that this apparently hadn’t come up when the idea itself had.

“…Have you?” Jack asks, turning to you, already suspicious.

“I am thinking,” you murmur, brows pulling together like this is a serious recall exercise.

Robby raises a brow, watching you now, something amused creeping in despite himself.

“What do you mean you’re thinking?” Jack presses. “That’s not… I don’t know, something you half do or something. You’d know.”

“Or something,” Robby mutters under his breath.

You shoot him a look, then roll your eyes. “Okay—no. I don’t think I’ve had a threesome.”

“How can you not think you’ve had a threesome?” Jack wonders.

You lean back slightly, folding one leg under you, the fabric of your nightgown shifting higher on your thigh without you bothering to fix it. You don’t notice how both men’s gaze drop there.

You exhale, already regretting engaging. “Because—technically—no one actually got fucked, there was no penetration by anybody, so, grey area?”

There’s a beat.

Robby’s mouth twitches.

Jack blinks. “...Right.”

“Okay?” you continue, defensive now. “It was—hands. That’s it. Group situation, but not… full commitment.”

Robby huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “Group situation,” he repeats.

“Shut up,” you mutter.

“Another guy or girl?” Jack asks, too quickly.

You hesitate just long enough to make it interesting. “…Both.”

Jack leans back like you’ve just told him something deeply inconvenient. “...Huh.”

Robby lets out a low whistle through his nose. “So not a threesome. Just… poor project management.”

You laugh despite yourself. “Oh my god.”

“That’s a foursome that lost direction,” he adds, dry.

“Whatever,” you shrug. “Med school was fun for me. Sorry I had range.”

Jack eyes you, something between amused and slightly thrown. “I’m just saying, that’s a hell of a thing to casually drop over dinner.”

You smirk faintly. “I’m surprised you haven’t.”

Jack scoffs. “I’ve had opportunities.”

“Mm,” you hum, unconvinced.

Robby glances at him sideways. “That sounds like a lie.”

“It’s not a lie,” Jack says, defensive now. “I just—never felt the need.”

“Right,” Robby says. “Till now.”

Jack gives him a look. “Till now.”

Something passes there—quick, familiar, not entirely friendly as Robby sips his beer.

After, you step out to the edge of the balcony, forearms resting against the railing. The city hums below you, the air warmer now, carrying the smell of food and distant smoke.

Inside, you hear Jack moving—plates, running water. Robby’s voice low, asking something, already familiar with the space.

“Thanks, baby,” you say when Jack comes back out, taking your plate.

You lean in, press a quick kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, hand coming up to your hair, messing it slightly with a small, easy smile.

You push him away lightly. “Don’t start.”

Robby watches it for a second before picking up the empty bottles, holding them loosely by the necks.

“Next to the fridge?” he asks, like he hasn’t been here a hundred times already—like tonight isn’t slightly different.

“Yeah,” you nod. “Recycling. Thank you.”

He gives a short nod and turns— You catch his wrist. It’s not forceful. Just enough.

“Hey,” you say, softer.

He looks down at you.

There’s a pause—his eyes dragging, just briefly, lower before coming back up. You’re close enough now to feel the heat off him, the faint roughness of his breath after a drink, after a long day.

You use his forearm to pull yourself up just slightly— and kiss him. It’s not rushed. It’s far from tentative either. Close. Testing.

His beard scratches lightly against your skin, rough in a way that makes you more aware of it, not less. He stills for half a second—then responds, mouth softer than you expected, hand hovering like he hasn’t decided where it’s allowed to land. 

Your teeth catch his bottom lip briefly. That’s what does it.

“Starting without me?” Jack’s voice cuts in, dry. “Bit mean.”

Robby pulls back instinctively, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t—even though—

Even though.

You smile a little, letting go of his wrist as he clears his throat.

“Next to the fridge,” Jack adds, nodding toward the bottles.

Robby nods once, wordless, moving past him.

Their shoulders brush as he goes. Not accidental. Jack doesn’t move out of the way.

He watches Robby for a second longer than necessary, then looks back at you.

You end up on the couch.

It happens naturally—plates abandoned in the sink, TV flicked on for noise more than anything else. Some late-night rerun playing low in the background, colours shifting across the room, low lamps lighting the room.

Jack’s in the middle, halfway through some story from work—one of those cases that stuck with him. Complicated, strange, the kind he can’t quite let go of.

You’re tucked into his side, knees curled under you, your hand idly playing at the back of his neck—fingers brushing through his hair, absent, familiar. You nod along, half-listening, more focused on the rhythm of his voice, the warmth of him.

Robby’s behind you. Close enough that you can feel the heat of him through your back, even before his hand settles on your thigh—slow, absent movement, like he’s not even fully aware he’s doing it.

Up. Down. Not pushing. Not asking. Just there.

Jack keeps talking.

You lean in without really thinking about it—your lips brushing along his jaw, then just below it. Light. Familiar. Not rushed.

Jack’s hand comes up to your lower back automatically, pulling you in a fraction closer, steadying you there.

Robby’s hand doesn’t stop. If anything, it shifts—just slightly higher, fingers brushing warmer skin now where the fabric gives way.

Jack feels it. His hand stills for a second at your back—then relaxes again.

He doesn’t pull you away. Doesn’t say anything. You exhale softly against his neck, your breath warm there, your fingers tightening slightly where they rest behind him.

And for a second—just a second—you’re aware of both of them at once.

Jack in front of you, steady, grounding. Robby behind you, quieter, heavier—watching more than speaking.

Jack’s gaze lifts. Meets Robby’s. There’s a beat. Not long. But long enough. Something passes between them—wordless, measured. Something you can’t read.

Jack gives the smallest nod. Barely there. Robby’s jaw shifts slight. Then Jack looks back at you.

Your hand slides from his neck to his jaw, turning him slightly, and you kiss him properly this time—slow, deliberate. He leans into it without hesitation, one hand firm at your waist.

When you pull back, it’s not far. Just enough. Just long enough to turn.

Robby’s already looking at you. Not surprised. Not really. Just watching. You close the distance like it’s nothing—like it’s always been this simple—and kiss him too.

Different. Not softer, not harder—just new. Testing. His hand stills on your thigh for half a second before it shifts, coming up to steady at your side, like he’s grounding himself in it.

There’s a quiet breath from him—almost a huff, almost disbelief.

“This is fun,” You murmur.

You don’t give him time to overthink it.

You lean back between them again, tipping your head slightly, and they follow without being told.

Jack’s mouth finds one side of your neck, familiar, certain.

Robby hesitates for a fraction of a second— then doesn’t.

The other side. Slower. More deliberate. Like he’s learning something he’s not used to having.

You exhale, a soft sound you don’t quite hold back this time, and your hands come up instinctively—one finding Jack’s hair, the other Robby’s, fingers threading through both, holding them there.

For a second, it stays like that. Balanced.

Then you shift, just slightly—hands tightening, guiding as you move the two of them, their lips almost naturally coming to find one anothers, moving them like ken dolls, before you drop your hands, watching with a small smile, as Robby's immediacy for control goes against Jack's. Robby’s hand deepening into your thigh, grip tight as he kisses Jack.

Jack pulls back first, breath uneven but still controlled, his eyes flicking to yours like he’s checking in—like he always does.

His hand slides up your spine, slower now, deliberate where it had been absent before. His palm is cool against your overheated skin, the contrast making you shiver as it traces upward, then back down again, lingering just enough to feel intentional.

You lean back into him, lips finding his neck again—dragging slowly over the roughness of his skin, the faint scrape grounding, familiar. You press a little firmer this time, less thought, more instinct.

When you pull back, it’s only barely. Your breath catches—not dramatic, just… aware. Of him. Of Robby. Of both.

Jack’s hand presses more firmly into your back, keeping you close, steadying you like he can feel the shift too.

“Baby,” he murmurs, voice low, softer than before. “Feeling needy?”

You nod against him, answering with your mouth instead—kissing along his jaw now, slower, more deliberate.

“Yeah,” he exhales, a quiet sort of understanding in it. “I know, hon.” A beat. Then, quieter—“You want me, or him?”

You hesitate. Not long—but long enough to matter.

Robby’s hand shifts on your thigh, moving from the outside to your inner thigh, firm but unhurried, easing you open just slightly—testing, not taking. Waiting to see what you’ll do with it.

“It’s alright,” Jack starts, voice still calm, like he’s talking you through something he already trusts. “Go ahead. She likes it when you—”

“—I’ll ask you for help if I need it, alright?” Robby cuts in, low and even.

They exchange a look—brief, sharp, understood.

You lean over, pressing a quick, soft kiss to Jack’s cheek—something sweet, grounding—before shifting your weight and climbing into Robby’s lap.

He stiffens for a second. Just a second.

Robby’s always been hard to read. Time’s etched itself into his face, but there’s still that wall there—something held back, something controlled. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s you. His best friend’s girl, sitting on him like this—close, warm, curious.

“You okay there, Sasquatch?” you tease, tilting your head up at him.

His hands find your thighs again almost immediately, like muscle memory kicking in. His gaze flicks—down, over you, then back to your eyes. Briefly to Jack. Then back again.

“Sasquatch? Really?” he murmurs, one hand moving up to cup your breast through your top. His palm is warm against you, sending a shiver down your spine. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“Beard, tall… same thing, no?” you shrug lightly.

That earns the faintest hint of a smirk.

“She always cracking jokes before getting fucked?” Robby asks, giving your breast a firm squeeze. His other hand slides lower, ghosting over your stomach before cupping your mound through your panties

“Depends,” Jack admits. “One time I got G.I Joe for an hour.”

“He was in uniform, in my defense,” You defend, brief before you try moving your hips over Robby’s fingers, eager. “Come on, Michael.” 

Robby's fingers press harder against your core, rubbing slow, firm circles that have you arching into him, a sweet whine escaping your lips, his eyes enamoured with how your mouth parts, breath warm against him. 

“What a cute noise you make, sweetheart,” Robby murmurs. “Ask me nicely now.”

You hesitate, desperate as his fingers continue to move achingly slow over your wetness.

“Ask or I give Jack my hand right now instead and you can wait your turn for another hour,” Robby tells, voice low and soft, not looking away from where his fingers glide over your seeping core.

“Please,” you murmur, voice breathy and desperate. “Please fuck me with your fingers.”

You crash your lips to his—harsh, messy, tongues thrusting quick and slick, his beard scraping rough red trails across your cheeks and chin. He growls low into your mouth, yanking your panties aside with brutal force, calloused fingertips dragging through your dripping folds, parting your lips wide before ramming two thick fingers knuckle-deep into your clenching pussy—no mercy, no prep.

You gasp ragged into the kiss, a high-pitched moan ripping free as your lips break away, saliva trailing shiny strings from his mouth to yours. You latch onto his neck, teeth grazing the salty skin, sucking hard as you grind down fierce onto his invading digits—walls squeezing tight around the stretch, juices flooding hot over his palm.

“Move your fingers toward her ventral,” Jack instructs from the side, voice calm but edged with that teasing know-it-all tone, his hand sliding warm along your spine.

Robby exhales sharp through his nose—mild irritation flashing in his eyes at the unasked advice, jaw clenching as he shoots Jack a quick, heated glare. But he curls his fingers obediently upward inside you, knuckles grinding rough along your front wall to hammer your g-spot precise and relentless. Your moan swells louder, body jolting as fresh gushes of slick coat his hand, pussy slurping obscenely around each pump.

“Christ, you’re making a mess on me, aren’t you, kid? Huh?” Robby rasps, voice gravel-thick with mean delight, eyes locked on the filthy sight—your swollen pussy lips gliding and sucking greedily over his plunging fingers, riding them frantic. 

He twists his wrist sharp, scissoring the digits wide to pry your hole open, thumb mashing down hard on your throbbing clit with every brutal thrust—wet schlicks echoing loud, your thighs trembling slick against his forearm, arousal trickling warm down to soak his jeans.

He adds a third finger suddenly, forcing the burn deeper, stretching your cunt taut as he moves, hooking mercilessly on that spongy spot. 

“You getting close?” He asks, low and rough, listening closely to your moans, how they become pitchier, breathier, as sweet as Jack described. You nod, a loose yes, focused only on how your core winds up to the edge. “That right?”

Your cries pitch wilder, back arching as he pinches your clit between thumb and knuckle, rolling it rough while his fingers churn your insides, coil tight in your core.

“What else she like?” Robby asks Jack, glancing over at his friend now, fingers never slowing their rhythm inside you.

Jack taps his index and middle digit to his lips, nodding toward you. Robby nods back, hums at the sight of you, curious.

Robby yanks his fingers free abrupt—your pussy clenching empty, a whine tearing from your throat at the aching void, hips bucking needy for more. He brings those soaked digits up to your face, gripping your chin firm to still you, watching hungry as you part your lips instinctively. 

His fingertips tease your bottom lip, smearing your own cream glossy, before you suck them in deep—tongue swirling eager around the thick lengths, lapping every tangy drop, hollowing cheeks as saliva drips messy down your chin.

“Atta girl, you’re a fuckin’ mess now aren’t you?” Robby murmurs, gaze glued ravenous to your bobbing mouth, cock throbbing harder under you. “You wanna cum?”

You nod, frantic around his fingers, eyes pleading.

“Not yet,” Robby denies, voice almost gentle, yet harsh at once. “Barely seen what you can do.”

You exhale shaky as he pulls his fingers out with a wet pop, trailing spit from your chin before cupping your whole face possessive, holding you locked on him.

“Go over to him. Make him feel good,” Robby orders, jerking his chin at Jack.

You nod, movements sluggish from the edge he left you on.

“On the floor, knees, now,” Robby snaps, voice brooking no argument.

You slide off his lap reluctant, crawling back to Jack beside him on the couch. He smiles soft at you, fingers threading gentle through your hair, cupping your cheek as he brushes strands aside, gaze roaming tender over your flushed skin.

“You alright there?” he asks nicely, thumb stroking your jaw.

You nod eager, hands diving straight to his sweatpants, palming the rigid bulge straining there—heat pulsing under your touch. 

You tug the waistband down, freeing his cock—thick shaft springing up heavy, veins bulging, head slick with pre-cum. Your fist wraps tight around the base, pumping slow firm strokes up to the tip, twisting slick over the crown to spread his leak.

Jack inhales sharp, but you drop fully to your knees between his spread thighs on the rug, the rough weave biting into your skin. You lean in, lips parting wide to swallow his cockhead first—tongue flicking the slit to lap salty pre, then sliding down inch by veiny inch, throat relaxing to take him deeper.

“Look pretty down there,” Jack murmurs with a small smile, hand light in your hair, just cradling.

“You’re so soft with her,” Robby remarks from beside, voice mixed with mocking and earnestness as he watches you work, his own tenting obvious.

Jack shrugs, a quiet groan escaping as you hollow your cheeks, sucking vacuum-tight while bobbing steady—saliva pooling at the corners of your stretched lips, dribbling down his balls. Your hand strokes what your mouth can't reach, twisting wet on the upstroke, tongue pressing flat along the underside to trace every ridge.

Robby's gaze burns hot—flicking over your arched back, your drool-slick chin, eyes that dart between Jack's tense face, Robby's hungry stare, then flutter shut as you deepthroat him full, nose burying in his pubes. He fixates on Jack's cock vanishing slick between your lips, throat bulging visible. Then up to Jack, whose fingers grip tighter into your scalp—not shoving, just anchoring as his neck cords tense.

“Good job, sweetheart,” Jack praises breathy, hips twitching minimal into your rhythm. 

Your moan vibrates around his length, humming deep to make him shudder, spit bubbling messy as you pop off to lick sloppy stripes up his shaft, sucking each ball into your mouth turn before plunging back down.

He groans low, head lolling back, “Fucking… perfect. So perfect, always.”

Tension crackles thicker between them—Jack's free hand drifts casual at first, then deliberate, palming Robby's thigh before cupping the massive bulge in his jeans, squeezing firm through denim. Robby stiffens, eyes meeting with Jack's, breath hitching as Jack rubs slow circles over the thick outline, thumb pressing the zipper ridge where pre darkens the fabric.

“You alright there, man?” Jack scoffs, a light smile. “Can’t handle it?”

It’s a challenge. It always is with them. Has been since they were twenty something.

Jack knows exactly what he’s doing—knows the tells. The slight tilt of Robby’s head, the way his weight shifts more onto one side, the flicker of something sharper behind his eyes. He’s seen that look in bars, in fights, in operating rooms when things went sideways.

Robby doesn’t back down from anything. Least of all him.

Then Robby exhales slowly, something almost like a laugh under it, eyes locking onto Jack’s—steady, unflinching.

“Oh, I can handle it just fine,” Robby agrees with his own smile. “Go ‘head.”

Jack groans at your relentless mouth—fast and wet, then slowing perfect against him—his hand stroking over Robby’s clothed cock, deliberate and slow, denim rasping under his palm. He leans in first, crashing his mouth to Robby's—sloppy, urgent, tongues battling fierce right above you, beards grinding rough, wet sucks and grunts filling the air. Jack's fingers knead Robby's bulge harder, unzipping halfway to delve inside, wrapping firm around the hot shaft through boxers.

You pull off Jack with a gasp, spit stringing from your lips to his glistening tip, replacing your mouth with your fist—pumping slick and steady along his veiny length, thumb swirling over the slit to smear pre-cum. Your eyes lock on their kiss, Jack's hand slowing on Robby as your thumb teases tentative over his own sensitive crown, tongue darting out to lap the edge of his slit.

“Oh fuck,” Jack moans into Robby’s mouth, breaking away to watch you lick him sweetly, hips bucking light into your grip.

Your free hand joins Jack’s on Robby’s cock, fingers overlapping his as Robby undoes his belt buckle with a metallic clink, shoving jeans and boxers down his thighs. His thick cock springs free. You spit thick into your palm, slicking it hot before gripping him base to tip, stroking in tandem with Jack—your hand twisting wet on the upstroke while his squeezes the root, veins pulsing under your combined pressure. 

Robby hisses through clenched teeth, thighs tensing as you both jerk him off rough, pre dribbling over knuckles, your mouth still working on Jack’s cock.

Jack's strokes on you falter to lazy pumps, his fist gliding easy over your saliva-lubed skin as he watches Robby swell thicker in your shared hold. “Fuck, feel that grip? She’s got hands made for this,” he rasps, voice husky, eyes dark on Robby's face.

Robby grunts approval, thrusting shallow into the double stroke. Jack pulls back suddenly, nodding down at you. “Let him feel how good your pretty mouth is, baby.”

You release Jack reluctant, his cock twitching angry-red in the cool air as he takes over—fist flying fast over his shaft, slick echoing. You shift on your knees, turning to Robby, who grips his base and taps the fat head heavy against your cheek—wet smacks on flushed skin, taunting drip of pre-painting streaks.

“Dreamt about this once,” he admits, voice low. “The way Jack described it, you’d think you have the mouth of an angel. That right? You an angel?” He wonders.

You lick your lips in anticipation, hand between your legs, fingers gliding over your folds.

“Oh, baby, you’re touchin’ yourself too?” Robby notices. “God, so desperate.”

“Seemed pretty desperate for my boyfriend there too,” You remark, not looking away from Robby’s gaze.

His jaw tightens. “He’s pretty good with his hand, but I think you can do better with your tongue.”

You part lips wide, tongue out flat as he slaps his cock deliberately across it, underside dragging salty over your tastebuds before shoving in brutal—half his length in one thrust, stretching your jaw. 

You gag wet but suck hollow, cheeks caving as you bob frantic, hand pumping the rest in sync. Saliva floods fast, bubbling down his sack as you swirl tongue under the ridge, hollowing deep to milk him. Your fingers are quick against your wetness, dripping between your thighs, your other hand planted at Robby’s thigh.

“Shit—yeah, like that,” Robby growls, free hand fisting your hair to guide rough, not forcing but controlling the pace—pulling you off to tap his cock on your tongue again, smearing spit and pre glossy before ramming back in. 

He fucks your face shallow, hips snapping precise, balls swinging to nudge your chin while Jack jerks himself faster beside, groans syncing with yours muffled around Robby's girth.

You sweep the underside of your tongue around Robby’s cock, soft wetness coating him, slow, then fast, hearing how Robby’s hand tightens harder in your scalp.

Jack leans close, breath ragged as his fist blurs over his cock, tip weeping steady. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Fuck off,” Robby mutters, focused on your mouth, your eyes as they look up at him, wide, watery.

Your fingers slip between your thighs, dipping into your soaked pussy, rutting slow circles over your clit as you kneel between them, mouth stuffed full on Robby's cock. Spit drips messy down your chin, mixing with the slick from your own folds as you finger yourself deeper, chasing that tight coil building low in your belly.

“I’m good,” Jack rasps, eyes locked on your hand working your cunt, his fist pumping steady over his own cock. “Slow down, sweetheart.”

Your fingers comply, easing to lazy drags through your wetness, eyes flicking up to watch Jack slow his palm in sync, thumb circling his flushed tip. His free hand drifts back to Robby's thigh, squeezing hard muscle as he watches you deepthroat—throat bulging obscene with each plunge, gags turning wet and rhythmic.

Robby's taunts rumble gravel-deep: “Fucking hell, you gonna let me cum in that mouth, honey?” He pops free with a gasp, cock throbbing inches from your face, tapping insistent on your cheek—left, right, smearing sticky pre over flushed skin—before you dive back voluntary, nose grinding into his pubes as you swallow him full, humming vibration to wrench a guttural curse from his chest.

“She can take it,” Jack murmurs, voice thick. “Can you, baby? Come on, speak now.”

You moan muffled around Robby's girth, pulling off with a slick pop, resting your head against his still-clothed thigh as your fingers plunge back into your pussy, rutting frantic. “Mhm.” You kiss alongside his shaft, tongue tracing veins lazy, lips brushing hot skin.

“So damn sweet now,” Robby murmurs, hand loosening from your scalp to pet gentle through your hair, watching your fingers disappear knuckle-deep. “That feel good?”

You nod against his thigh, licking slow stripes up his cock, pumping your pussy deliberate—thumb flicking your clit, hips rocking into your hand, edge creeping close, breath hitching sharp.

“No more of that, alright?” Robby nods down, eyes sharp on your body. “Yeah? You listening?”

You groan, fingers curling harder inside yourself. “Fuck you—you wanna cum, I get to cum too.”

Robby tilts his head, that piercing look—the one Jack knows spells trouble, before ripping into a resident. Jack nearly laughs, slowing his strokes to a tease. “Not how it works,” Robby says flat, voice dropping steel.

You glance at Jack, pleading.

“Don’t look at him,” Robby orders, tone snapping stricter, hand fisting your hair tight to force your gaze back. You gulp, thighs clenching empty as you pull your fingers free, pussy clenching needy on nothing. “Put both hands behind your back if you’re gonna act like a fuckin’ brat.”

Reluctant, you clasp your hands behind you, knees aching on the floor, tits heaving with each breath. Robby nods approval, gripping his base to feed his cock back past your lips—slow at first, letting you savor the stretch, then thrusting deeper as you hollow cheeks vacuum-tight.

Your tongue flattens under his shaft to lap the frenulum relentlessly, swirling wet around the head on every upstroke before slamming down throat-deep, gag reflex crushed to nothing. Saliva floods obscenely, bubbling at the corners of your mouth, dripping strings to his balls as you bob frantic—suction pulling groans from his gut, nose buried in coarse hair, throat milking him like a fist. 

You hum constant vibration, eyes watering up at him, popping off to spit thick on his length before sucking one ball then the other into your mouth, rolling tongue heavy before plunging back down full.

“Jesus Christ—yeah, there we go…” Robby snarls, hips snapping erratic, free hand clamping your nape to hold you buried as his cock swells impossibly thicker, balls drawing tight. 

He floods your mouth suddenly—hot spurts painting your tongue thick and salty, cock pulsing ropes down your throat as you swallow greedily around him, not spilling a drop. He rides it out shallow thrusts, groaning ragged until spent, pulling free with a wet schlick.

“Fuck,” he pants, watching your tongue swipe clean over his softening head, lapping the last beads from his slit.

You fall back onto your heels, knees throbbing, core dripping wet and aching empty down your thighs. Swallowing his load thick, you stand shaky, and lean down to Robby, core exposed from your barely there nightgown. You grab him by his jaw, fingers at his chin, watching as his hand catches your wrist.

You smile at that. “Go on,” Your fingers linger near his mouth, covered with your wetness. “Jack prefers the real deal. You shy all of a sudden, Mikey?”

Robby reluctantly opens his mouth, trying and tasting your wetness, sucking your fingers clean.

“Atta boy,” You say sarcastically, moving them out of his mouth. “You think you can still fuck me, old man?” You whisper.

“Watch it,” Robby murmurs.

“You can, in the corner, while Jack finally makes me cum.” You whisper. “Jack,” you grab Jack’s hand, walking away with him as Jack follows suit behind you.

“Up and at it,” Jack tells Robby over his shoulder as he follows you.

“Fucking hell,” Robby mutters, taking a second before following after.

You hum satisfied, leading them stumbling to the bedroom, the air electric behind you.

In the dim glow, you strip your nightgown overhead, leaving ruined panties—crotch soaked dark—and a lacey bra barely containing your tits. Their eyes burn hot as you climb onto yours and Jack's bed, kneeling center.

Jack follows instant, standing at the edge, hands cupping your jaw rough-tender, leaning down to crash his mouth to yours—passionate and devouring, tongue fucking deep to taste Robby's cum lingering salty. You moan into it, hand snaking to grip his cock again, stroking firm base-to-tip.

Behind Jack, Robby's hands roam his back, trailing firm over shirt fabric before gripping the hem, yanking it up and off in one pull. Jack moans muffled into your kiss when your fist pumps faster, hips bucking into your grip, but he breaks away gasping as cool air hits his bare chest.

Robby presses close from behind, chest flush to Jack's back, beard scraping his shoulder as lips latch onto Jack's neck—sucking a mark deliberate.

“Baby, lie down for me,” Jack instructs.

You nod, lying down on your back, knees spread apart like second nature. He tilts his head, as Robby’s lips trail over his skin.

“Enjoying yourself?” Robby echoes Jack's earlier words, hand meeting at his cock briefly, feeling Jack stiffen and inhale sharply at that. “You gonna make your girl cum, or do I have to do that?”

“Fuck off,” Jack murmurs. “Go sit in a corner and wait, or somethin’,” Jack mutters, hands dragging you by the underside of your knee, gently towards the edge as he kneels on the bed, as Robby steps back with a chuckle.

“Think I got her ready, though, so, shouldn't take long,” Robby says. “Unless you’re not as skilled as you’ve been bragging to be.”

“Oh, my god, one of you make me cum or else I’m doing it myself, Jesus,” you whine.

“Oh, baby,” Jack murmurs, kissing at your inner thighs. “I’m leaving you waiting here.”

“She’s being a brat. Have some patience, honey,” Robby insists, tilting his head at you in mock. “But she’s right, hurry up, Abbot, Christ.”

Jack swipes his tongue along your core, and you moan, your wetness ready and eager from Robby's fingering and your own arousal. He licks slow and firm, teasing your sensitive flesh. 

Robby watches from the side, his cock still tucked away in his jeans, as he observes you writhing under Jack's talented tongue. His expression is heated, hungry, clearly enjoying the show. 

"Mmm...you look like a-" you moan, too lost in sensation to finish the thought. "A fucking nun, Michael," you finally manage, nodding towards his henley. "You aren't hot in that? Take it off already, fuck," 

Robby clicks his tongue, a light roll of his eyes. "You could ask me nicely. Here I thought you were so polite and sweet," he chides.

Jack’s tongue is a relentless, wet invasion, fucking into you with a rhythm that steals your breath. You clench around him, a tight, pulsing grip, your fingers tangled in his silver curls, thighs locked around his head like a vise. 

Your eyes stay fixed on Robby’s as he discards his shirt, the fabric whispering to the floor. The snick of his belt sliding free from the loops makes you tighten your legs around Jack even more, a shiver of anticipation racing up your spine, as Jack laps at your pussy.

“Wider,” Jack grunts, his voice muffled against your pussy. He pushes your thighs apart with his hard biceps, one big hand splayed over your hipbone, pinning you down. “Stop squirming. Take it.”

From the foot of the bed, Robby watches, arms folded over his bare chest. He looks like a professor observing a dissection—calm, analytical, utterly in control. “How close are you?” he asks, his tone clinical.

“Mm, close,” you manage, the words breaking on a moan as Jack’s tongue flicks hard over your clit.

“You make such pretty sounds. He was right about that,” Robby hums, stepping closer. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his calloused hand coming up to cup your cheek. His thumb strokes your skin, sweetly, but his brow is furrowed, his gaze intense. “Callin’ me a nun, and you still got this thing on, honey.” He hooks a finger under the strap of your bra and flicks it sharply against your skin, a sting of sensation.

Jack’s tongue plunges deep again, and you arch off the bed, a choked cry leaving your lips. Your eyes don’t leave Robby’s as his hand slides down, cupping your breast through the lace. He admires the weight, the shape, his fingers tracing the curve.

“Want me to fuck you first, or GI Joe there?” Robby recalls, a smirk playing on his lips. 

He doesn’t miss the way your mouth curves in a smile, even as your eyelids flutter shut. Jack quickens his pace, his hands now gripping your thighs like he’s holding you together.

You’re too close, teetering on that blinding edge. Words are impossible.

“Answer me,” Robby instructs, his voice dropping low and stern. His hand kneads your breast, then slips inside the cup of your bra, his fingers finding your nipple. He rolls it, pinches it just shy of pain. “Who do you want first?”

“You,” you gasp, the answer torn from you instinctively, desperately.

Robby’s smirk widens. “You hear that, Abbot? I get to break her in first.” He doesn’t look away from you as he says it.

He leans down, his hand sliding between your legs. Jack pulls back without a word, letting Robby’s fingers trail through your soaked folds, delivering a slap to your clit. You shiver violently, a string of high, needy moans escaping as he collects your wetness on his fingertips. He brings them back to your mouth, his other hand still working your nipple.

“I was right,” you murmur, breathless. “Knew you’d be mean.”

“Yeah? You like it?” Robby wonders, though he already knows.

You bite your lip, refusing to answer.

He pushes his wet fingers past your lips, pulling your jaw open with a firm pressure. The look he gives you is pure command—dark, expectant. Obey.

“I like it,” you moan around his fingers, the admission almost reluctant. Your grip tightens in Jack’s hair. “Fuck—I’m gonna—oh fuck—”

“Yeah?” Robby hums, petting your hair now, his other hand still at your breast. He watches your mouth hang open, watches the pleasure wreck you. “Eyes on me. Come on. No, no. No closing them. You keep ’em right here.” His gaze holds yours captive. “Good girl… good girl, aren’t you? Bratty, but you just needed to cum a little, isn’t that right?”

You whimper as Jack’s tongue sweeps over your oversensitive clit one last time, lapping up your juices as you shatter. Your orgasm crashes through you, white-hot and convulsing, your body bowing off the bed as you cry out.

“Good job, baby. Fucking hell,” Jack mutters against your thigh, his voice rough with praise. 

He comes up your body, his hand replacing Robby’s on your breast, kneading possessively. His lips find yours in a messy, wet kiss, tasting of you. Tongues swiping, teeth clashing briefly as you chuckle into the kiss, wet and sloppy as he moves to your neck, sucking hard around your jaw, yoru neck, hand trailing over your figure, squeezing, gentle, rough all at once.

“My favourite girl in the world, you know that,” he murmurs against your skin, kissing at your collarbone.

You grin, feeling as Robby captures your mouth with his own, a brief pause as he watches Jack worship your figure. Jack slides a finger over your core, feeling as your back arches, how you gasp into Robby’s mouth.

“You aren’t a brat, are you baby?” Jack murmurs, rubbing tight circles at your clit, hearing how you whimper at the feeling, fresh from your orgasm. “No, honey, not for me, isn’t that right? Yeah, I know, I know… my sweet girl,” He replaces Robby’s mouth with his own, dragging over yours as you nod into the kiss. 

“Told you. Lover boy,” Robby remarks to you.

You grin into the kiss, before Jack pulls away and naturally seems to find Robby’s lips.

You watch, a strange heat pooling in your belly, watching as Jack immediately leans in and kisses Robby. It’s harsh and sweet all at once—a clash of teeth and soft sighs. You thought you might feel a spike of jealousy, but instead, a warm, possessive pride swells in your chest. 

Robby stands, briefly cupping Jack’s jaw in a gesture that’s both dismissal and affection before pushing him gently aside. Jack moves from between your legs, sprawling onto his back on the bed. Robby’s hands are on your waist, and you yelp in surprise as he manhandles you with effortless strength, flipping you onto your stomach.

He drags your ruined panties down over your ass, off your legs, and sends them flying to a corner of the room with a flick of his wrist. Your bra is next; he unclips it with one practiced hand, and the lace joins the panties.

“Ass up, sweetheart,” Robby instructs, his voice thick. He lands a sharp, stinging tap on your bare ass cheek. He has one knee on the bed, the other foot planted on the floor.

You obey, pushing yourself up onto your knees and elbows. Jack is lying in front of you now, his gaze heated. You reach for his prosthetic leg, helping him with the quick-release mechanism. Robby hands you the second one without a word—a seamless, understood exchange. Jack kisses you, sweet and grateful, as he sets the limb aside.

"That's it," Robby mutters, positioning himself behind you. You feel the blunt head of his cock pressing against your slick entrance, teasing, and then he thrusts forward in one brutal, seamless motion.

Filling you so completely the air leaves your lungs in a whoosh. He sets a punishing pace immediately, each thrust driving you forward toward Jack.

Robby inhales sharply at the feeling of you. You adjust to him, moan loud and silent all at once at the feeling.

“Shit,” Robby mutters. “Fuckin’ hell, you know much Jack’s raved about this pussy? Callin’ it the treasure of the fucking ocean.”

His hands grip your hips like anchors, fingernails digging into your soft flesh as he sets a merciless rhythm—pounding into you with a force that drives your body forward with each impact, making the headboard knock rhythmically against the wall. “Perfect fucking pussy, sweetheart, you know that?”

You moan at his words, clenching even tighter around him. 

“How the fuck do you leave home, Jack— Jesus Christ,” Robby says as he quickens his pace slightly, watching as your ass moves from the harsh contact of his hips against you.

“Life or death, and that’s it,” Jack says. 

“Come on, give him some love, kid,” Robby tells.

Jack’s cock is hard and leaking against his stomach. You lean down, taking him into your mouth, swallowing him deep. He groans, his hands coming up to cradle your head. “Fuck, just like that,” he rasps.

You’re split between them—Robby fucking into you from behind with deep, possessive strokes, and Jack’s length hitting the back of your throat. The dual sensation is overwhelming. Robby’s hips slap against your ass, the sound filthy and wet. 

“You like being used like this baby?” Jack wonders, your moans vibrating against him. 

You don’t answer, focused on the sensation of Robby’s cock harsh within you.

“He asked you a question,” Robby pants, moving his hand to your hair, tight as you look up at Jack, watery eyed.

“Uh-huh,” you nod. 

“See? Not so hard,” Robby groans.

Jack smiles a bit at that, caressing your face as you occupy your mouth with Jack’s cock. He groans. The taste of salt and heat floods your tongue as you take him deep, your lips stretching around his girth. You hollow your cheeks, sucking hard as you bob your head, letting him feel every ridge of your throat as you swallow him down. Your nose presses against his pelvis, and he groans, his fingers threading through your hair.

"Just like that… Just like that," Jack chokes out, his head falling back as his hips buck up involuntarily, his hand tightening on your jaw. His thumb presses against your cheek, forcing your mouth wider, and you feel every ridge and vein of his cock sliding deeper down your throat. "Come on now, so close."

The words vibrate through you, but before you can double down, Robby leans over your arched back, his chest sweaty and hot against your spine, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "Make him wait."

You pull off Jack's cock with a wet pop, a thick strand of saliva and pre-cum stretching between your lips and his glistening tip before breaking. Jack's frustrated groan cuts through the room, his hips twitching in empty air.

"Fuck off, Mike," Jack growls, but his hand remains gentle in your hair, fingers stroking through the sweat-damp strands as you whimper from the brutal pace behind you. 

Robby's cock is driving into you with relentless accuracy, the head of him hitting that deep, spongy spot inside you with every thrust, sending electric jolts through your core. Your inner walls flutter and clench around him, helpless against the assault.

"You gonna be a brat too, then?" Robby says, shooting a lighthearted glare at Jack over your shoulder. 

Before Jack can retort, you clench down hard around Robby's shaft, a desperate whine escaping your throat. Robby's rhythm stutters for half a second, a low curse spilling from his lips. "Fucking—hell, god, doll. You are so goddamn tight, y'know that?"

His pace becomes brutal, each thrust driving deeper, harder, the angle punishing. His balls slap wetly against your clit with every impact, the sound filthy and rhythmic. You feel the slick heat of your own arousal coating his shaft, dripping down your thighs with every punishing stroke. 

"She's close," Jack murmurs, his voice softer now, almost reverent. 

You shift forward, pressing open-mouthed kisses across his stomach, your tongue tracing the soft lines of his abs, tasting salt and skin, over the light freckles. You moan into his flesh, the vibration making his muscles jump, and then his palm cups your cheek, thumb brushing over your bottom lip, holding you warmly.

"Look at you," Jack whispers, his eyes dark and soft at once. "So beautiful like this. Taking us both. You're doing so well, baby."

“Go ahead, cum,” Robby growls into your ear, his hand snakes around your hip, his fingers finding your clit. He rubs tight circles against the swollen nub while he continues to pound into you, and the sensation is electric—each thrust driving his fingers harder against that sensitive bundle of nerves. “Now.”

You moan around Jack’s cock as you break, your pussy clenching wildly around Robby’s thrusts. The convulsions milk him, and with a low groan, he buries himself to the hilt and pulses inside you, hot and deep.

"Fuck," he breathes, his forehead pressing against your shoulder blade, his body shuddering through the aftershocks.

He pulls out slowly, and you feel his cum begin to seep from you. 

“Goddamnit,” Robby murmurs, a pant. 

Before you can even catch your breath, he spits into his palm, the sound crude and purposeful. He reaches down, slicking up Jack’s cock, which is already hard again and straining against his stomach. Jack groans, a deep, ragged sound at the touch.

“Your turn,” Robby tells him, his voice rough with use.

But instead of letting you face Jack, Robby guides you. His strong hands on your hips turn you, maneuvering your spent body until you’re straddling Jack, but facing away from him. Your back is to Jack’s chest, your ass pressed against his hips. You can feel Robby’s cum, warm and wet, slicking the way as you settle over Jack’s length.

Jack’s hands come to your hips, steadying you. “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmurs, but his voice is tight with need.

From the foot of the bed, Robby watches. He’s kneeling there now, his eyes dark and hungry, fixed on the place where your bodies move against one another, well practiced. Jack’s fingers slide between your legs, through the slick mess Robby left behind. He gathers it on his fingertips, his touch making you shiver, he brings those wet fingers to your lips.

You open for him, tasting Robby’s salty tang on Jack’s skin as he slips his fingers into your mouth. You moan around them, your tongue swirling. Jack’s eyes never leave Robby’s as he then pulls his fingers free, back to your cunt, a slight shudder once more, and brings them to his own lips, sucking them clean, tasting his best friend.

Robby watches this whole exchange, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Atta girl,” Jack pants against your ear, his hands tightening on your hips.

Then he guides you down, and you sink onto him with a broken cry. He fills you completely, the stretch delicious, the sensation of being stuffed so soon after your last climax making your head spin. You’re so sensitive it’s almost painful, a sweet, overwhelming ache.

You begin to move, rising and falling on his cock, finding a slow, grinding rhythm. Your hands brace on Jack’s thighs behind you for leverage. The angle is deep, each descent hitting a spot that makes you see stars.

“That’s it,” Jack encourages, his voice a rasp in your ear. His hands roam your body—gripping your waist, palming your breasts, thumbing your nipples.

You increase your pace, bouncing on him, the wet sounds of your joining filling the room. Your head falls back against his shoulder, your eyes fluttering shut.

“Eyes open, sweetheart.”

Robby’s command cuts through the haze. Your eyes snap open. He’s moved closer, kneeling right beside the bed now, his face level with where you’re joined with Jack. He’s watching every slide, every glide, his expression one of rapt fascination.

“Look at you,” Robby murmurs, his voice thick. “Takin’ him so well."

His praise fuels you. You lean more back, hands coming up behind you to Jack, angle pushing him even deeper, as you whimper, sharp gasps, teetering on the edge again.

“Baby, I’m gonna cum,” Your moan, soft.

“Fucking- shit, go ahead, honey, cum f’me,” he moans. 

Your orgasm crests, a silent scream trapped in your throat as your body tightens. You clench around Jack, a series of violent, fluttering spasms that milk his length.

Jack curses, his hips bucking up into you. “Fucking—just like that—”

As you’re pulsing around him, Robby leans in. He captures Jack’s mouth in a sudden, fierce kiss over your shoulder. You can hear the wet slide of their lips, the soft grunts and sighs. It’s raw and intimate, and it sends another shockwave of pleasure through your oversensitive nerves.

Robby breaks the kiss. “Lift up for a second, kid,” he breathes against your skin.

Dazed and pliant, you raise yourself up, Jack’s slick cock sliding almost all the way out of you. Robby’s hand replaces you, wrapping around Jack’s shaft. He gives him a few rough, efficient strokes, his thumb smearing the pre-cum beaded at the tip.

“Missed the taste of you,” Robby mutters to Jack, his eyes locked on his friend’s face as he works him.

Jack just groans, his head thrown back, his hands gripping your thighs. Then Robby guides you back down, easing you onto Jack’s cock until you’re fully seated once more, stuffed to the brim.

“Go ahead, finish,” Robby growls, his command for both of you.

You begin to move again, a slow, rolling grind now, utterly spent but driven by the need to feel Jack lose control. He’s close—you can feel the tension in his body, the way his breath hitches.

“Come on, Jack,” Robby urges softly, his hand returning to your clit, applying just enough pressure to make you whimper. “Fill her up. Give her what she needs.”

That does it. With a shattered cry, Jack’s hips piston up once, twice, and then he stills, buried deep inside you as he comes. You feel the hot pulses of his release joining Robby’s already there, flooding you.

Jack kisses at your shoulder blades, near your neck, as you relax your body entirely, shaky breaths with your back against his chest. His arm coming around you automatically, instinctive, like it always does. His hand slides up your arm, slow, grounding, fingers brushing your shoulder, your collarbone—checking, not asking out loud but asking anyway. 

Robby puts a hand to your jaw, tapping your cheeks lightly with his fingers, watching as your eyes lazily find his.

“You alright?” he murmurs, voice rough, softer than it’s been all night.

“Mhm,” You nod, catching your breath.

“There she is,” Jack murmurs against you, pressing a kiss into your hair, lingering there a second longer than usual.

Robby doesn’t move right away.

He’s sitting beside you both, elbows on his knees, head tipped slightly forward, breathing steadier now—but there’s something in his posture, something looser than before. The edge is gone. Or at least… dialed down.

You shift, peeling yourself gently from Jack, turning toward Robby. For a second, there’s that flicker—uncertainty, maybe. Not doubt. Just… recalibration.

Then you lean in and kiss him. It’s different now. Slower. Softer. No urgency behind it.

Robby’s hand comes up to the back of your head, not guiding, not demanding—just holding you there, thumb brushing lightly at your hairline. He exhales through his nose, a quiet thing, like he didn’t realize he’d been holding onto something.

When you pull back, you stay close.

“Hey,” you say, softer.

“Hey,” he echoes.

Jack watches the two of you. His hand still rests low on your back, thumb moving in slow, absent circles like it always does when he’s settling you.

Jack kisses gently at your bare back, “Be right back,” he murmurs against you, before you hear him leave the bed, putting on his temporary prosthetic. 

You hear him leave, pulling away from Robby who watches Jack as he leaves the room, headed for the hall.

You groan and flop onto the bed, Robby moving the blanket over you, maybe suddenly prudeish as he picks up presumably Jack’s shirt and hands it to you. You hum, put it on.

“Jesus,” you murmur, voice soft, wrecked. “I think my legs might actually fall off.”

That gets a quiet huff out of Robby.

He’s sitting up at the edge of the bed now, dragging a hand down his face, then through his hair. He looks… different, a little. Looser. The usual edge sanded down.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Think you’ll live.”

You glance over at him, managing a small smile.

He’s already reaching for his boxers, pulling them back on, movements unhurried. The gold chain at his neck catches the low light—the Star of David resting against his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. There’s something grounding about it. Familiar. Normal.

There’s a beat.

Then, softer—

“…You good?” You ask.

He turns your head toward you. “Yeah.” He thinks for a moment, a shake of his head as he lets himself admit– “Needed that. Needed to be… not alone, I think.”

You watch him for a second—something thoughtful in your expression.

“That something you’d wanna do again or is this a one and done situation?” You wonder earnestly, rolling onto your side as you look up at him. “

Robby doesn’t answer straight away. He looks at you—really looks, like he’s trying to figure out what the question actually means underneath what you asked.

Your hair’s a mess, Jack’s shirt slipping off one shoulder, eyes soft but steady on him. Hickies across your neck. Not fragile. Not asking for reassurance. Just… asking.

His jaw shifts slightly.

“…You always this direct after something like that?” he mutters.

You huff a quiet laugh. “I’m an ortho resident. I don’t have time for interpretive dance.”

That almost gets a smile out of him. He exhales, leaning back more fully, one hand rubbing absently at his chest like he’s trying to settle something under the surface.

“It’s not—” he starts, then stops. Tries again. “It’s not really a ‘one and done’ kind of question.”

You tilt your head slightly. “Why not?”

He glances at the door—where Jack disappeared—then back at you.

Because Jack’s not just some guy. Because this isn’t just sex. Because there’s history here that predates you by decades and still manages to feel unfinished. Because he already feels it sitting somewhere in his chest, heavy.

You seem to pick up where his head is at, a nod. “Do you have… like, real feelings for him? Or me?”

Robby scoffs a chuckle. “I don’t have time to think about that.”

“Just time to fuck us though. Well, not Jack, sure he’ll give me a complaint about that later.” You murmur.

Robby smiles a bit. “You two are… perfect for each other. I still don’t get how he found you.”

“I don’t know either, to be honest,” You admit. “But he cares about you. Like a lot. And so do I. And it’s not just because your dick is great, promise. You’re always welcome with us, whether its sex, comfort, food, all three. We aren’t picky people.”

“Picked up on that,” Robby nods, quieter now. “What are your plans? With him, I mean. He mentioned something about marriage.”

You smile a little—more to yourself than anything—your hand drifting, almost unconsciously, to your left ring finger.

“No idea,” you admit. “However long he wants me around, I guess.”

Robby huffs a soft breath, leaning back against the headboard. “Well, if age’s anything to go by, you’ve got a good couple of years.”

You smack his arm lightly. “You’re literally older than him.”

“I’m not marrying you,” Robby shoots back, deadpan.

“You’re an ass,” you sigh.

That earns you a small smile.

The door opens.

Jack steps back in, towel slung over his shoulder, a glass of water already in hand. He pauses just inside, taking in the room in one sweep—quick, practiced. You, curled on your side in his shirt. Robby at the edge of the bed, quieter than usual.

“My leg’s killing me,” Jack mutters, like it’s an afterthought, already moving back toward the bed.

You push yourself up onto your elbows, frowning. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, dismissive in that way he gets, like pain’s just background noise. He hands you the glass. “Drink.”

You take it, still watching him. “You say that about everything.”

“Because everything’s fine.”

Robby snorts under his breath. “Yeah. That’s a healthy coping mechanism.”

Jack shoots him a look as he sits down, stretching his leg out carefully. “Oh, I’m sorry—did you want to compare notes?”

Robby raises his brows. “Not particularly.”

Then Jack exhales, leaning back into the headboard. His hand finds your thigh automatically—absent, grounding, like he needs the contact without thinking about it.

His gaze flicks between the two of you, lingering on Robby for half a second longer than necessary.

“What’d I miss?” he asks.

You shift, settling back into him, your cheek brushing his shoulder. “Marriage.”

Jack huffs. “One night with my girl and you’re already trying to steal her? Alright. Good to know.”

Robby lets out a quiet chuckle.

“With you, idiot,” you correct.

Jack glances down at you. “Oh, him and I are getting married now?”

You roll your eyes and, just to be difficult, shift toward Robby instead—curling lightly into his side.

It lasts all of two seconds.

Jack’s arm hooks around you and pulls you straight back against him.

“Relax,” he mutters, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, holding you there against his chest.

Robby watches that, something unreadable flickering across his face before it settles again.

Robby stays the night.

Not in the same way—there’s a natural rhythm to it. He gives you and Jack space without being asked, drifting out into the living room, the quiet murmur of the TV carrying faintly down the hall. At one point you hear the balcony door slide open, then shut again.

He’s not intrusive. Never has been.

But he doesn’t leave, either.

if u havent read it, i'd recommend reading my (wo)man on willpower! this is a spin off of that, i suppose. focuses more on jack x reader, though. :D

a/n: girls i have another like 700 words i had that as a short scene of santos speculating why u didnt make it to her paris party (oh my god im so funny paris because threesome haha i know right, please dont click off this), and i might post that later, but my ao3 will get the full thing if u wanna just see what it was. the 1000 block limit on tumblr genuinely my opp fr.

His hands frame your head as he kisses you. He groans and rolls his pelvis. The rumble deep in his chest makes you tingle and that tingle makes you question yourself.

He drags his lips off of yours and kisses along your cheek and jaw. He drifts under your chin and down your neck. His thumbs press into your temples as he purrs. He shifts further down and his lips dance on your chest. He nuzzles between your tits and bites on your bra.

You quiver and flatten your palms to the downy blanket beneath you. He hums as he brushes a hand down to flip down the cup of your bra. His thumb flicks across your nipple and he takes it in his mouth. You spasm and clap down on his broad shoulders.

You look at his blond head as he tugs down the other side of your bra. The band pushes up your chest as he fondles you, his mouth doting on the swell of flesh. He growls and his large hands curve around your ribs. He lifts you slightly so you arch your back.

“You’re so sweet, doll,” he purrs as his saliva stains your stomach.

You heave as goosebumps speckle over you. He shifts back on his knees and pushes yours apart. He holds them wide as he bends between them and purrs against the top of your panties. He drags his nose down the fabric and inhales.

He drones out a hot breath that gathers beneath the weave. He curls his shoulders as he opens his mouth and wets the front of your panties with his tongue. He pushes between your folds, wetting you through the cotton. 

You twitch as his hands slide up to your thighs. He kneads your sensitive flesh and snarls. He rolls his head, the pressure sparking a heat within you. You tilt your hips as your eyes close on their own. A shivery sight escapes you.

He hooks his fingers under your panties and rolls them down your legs as he reluctantly pulls away. He dips his head through the space between the cotton and your cunt and plunges back in. You yelp in surprise as his cool tongue glides between your lips.

He scoops his hands under your ass and lifts your pelvis off the bed. He laps at you eagerly, rocking his head as he dives into you. He smears your delight around his tongue and smears it down his chin. His fingertips curl into your flesh, his thumbs pressing deep into the crease beneath your ass.

He sucks on your clit and you squeal. His tongue flicks around furiously as you tremble and twitch. He groans as he keeps going, his intensity building each time you let out a noise.

He raises your hips higher until your weight is centered on your shoulders. He has your body as an angle as he sits up, neck bent as he drinks you in. He grips your hips as he circles his tongue around your clit then flicks back to your entrance, dipping into you slightly.

He trails back to your clit and swirls around as your thighs quake. You clamp them against his face as you clench the blanket in your hands. You moan and writhe as you try to contain the thrumming heat. Your pleasure erupts all at once as your muscles knot around your nerves. You puff and pant through your orgasm, head spinning at the vibrant peak of energy.

He growls and gently lowers you back to the bed. You’re breathless as you grip your head, your eyes loose in your skull. He wipes his wet face on your pelvis as he sits up, twisting your panties down your legs as he strips them off entirely. He balls them up and buries his nose in them, inhaling deeply.

“You taste as good as you smell, sweetheart,” he intones as he watches himself toy with your panties. 

He grins and looks down. You follow his gaze down to his boxers, tented over his arousal. He tugs them down and his dick springs out. He groans as you gape at his size. He wraps your panties and his hand around himself.

He pumps and the muscles of his chest tighten. You watch him senselessly as he strokes himself with the wrinkled cotton. You shiver and push yourself up on your elbows. You drag yourself up the mattress and he snarls.

He lets go of his dick and grabs you. He wrenches you back down the mattress. You gasp as he holds you by your hips, pinning you until you’re still. He inhales and flings your panties onto the pillows. He shoves his boxers down to his knees and gets closer.

He grabs your legs and lifts them against his torso. Your feet lean against his chest as he shifts even closer. He grips one ankle as his other arm snakes down. He guides his tip against your cunt, watching as he teases you, spreading your slickness over his taut flesh.

He hums as he presses against your entrance. You can feel his thickness just as he tests your resistance. You reach with your fingertips, barely grazing his stomach as you curl your shoulders. He ignores your feeble attempt and pushes himself into you with his thumb.

He grunts as you whine, feeling how you strain just to take his tip. Your stomach and walls clench around him. He frames your hip with his large hand, his other still on your ankle, and he slides you down the bed onto him. You whimper with each inch, his blue eyes blazing at the size of your bodies joining.

When he stops, you shake and spasm. You struggle to breathe as you dig your nails into the downy duvet. He guides your legs together, leaning them against one shoulder and thrusts. You yelp and he bends, just a little, the back of your legs tight and hot.

He slaps one hand on your chest, groping you as he rocks. His other hand takes yours and weaves your fingers with each other. He clings to you as he carries a deliberate motion.

It moved like a living thing, curling round the hull and wrapping its fingers round the masts like the groping limbs of some drowned thing clawing up from the deep. The sun had not burned through the veil in over a week. Even the most steadfast sailors were starting to look more often toward the quarterdeck for reassurance. 

Captain Steve Rogers never had been one for theatre or fear, and his calmness had steadied men through far worse than fog. 

His uniform - navy blue once, now leached to charcoal by weather and time - clung damp to his frame, the gold buttons dulled by brine. Occasionally, the blond hair tucked so neatly beneath his hat stirred loose in the wind. And it fell across watchful blue eyes rimmed with sleepless red, ceaselessly scanning for a horizon that no longer existed.

It was as though the ship had sailed into a world that was not finished being made.

Compasses spun like a drunkard, refusing to point anywhere true. The charts made no sense; every calculation put them somewhere they couldn’t possibly be. They had passed the last familiar isle two days before the fog arrived. The coastline should be visible by now, but like the sky, it remained elusive.

The only thing that had not abandoned them was the blinding pall that devoured distance and sense alike.

Until the lighthouse. That damned lighthouse. 

“Captain!”

Brock Rumlow’s voice cut through the mist like a knife, half disbelieving, half warning. Steve stepped out from under the canopy and squinted up into the fog, just making out his Executive Officer in the crow’s nest.

“There’s a light, port side. Thought it was a trick of the mist at first, but, sir, it’s steady.”

Steve moved to the rail, peering into the drowning grey. It was faint, at first, no more than a shimmer through the fog. Then it blinked. Once. Again. A slow, pale rhythm, like something breathing far away. Every rotation came with the same muffled pulse of light, bleeding through the mist - not bright enough to guide, but just enough to feel its watchful presence. Just enough to pull you in. 

Each time the light passed, the tower emerged like a stuttering apparition. Black against grey. It loomed with a kind of dreadful elegance, a single void on the horizon. The fog clung to its ribs like flesh on bone, never fully revealing the surface. Just the ceaseless rotation of that pale, pulsing eye.

Steve’s brow creased, just slightly. “There’s no record of a lighthouse in these waters.”

Rumlow clambered down from the rigging, boots thudding softly against the deck. “Maybe it’s new?” he offered, with the brittle edge of someone trying to believe it.

“Or we’ve drifted much farther than we think.” Steve muttered, mostly to himself. He didn’t sound alarmed, but thoughtful, maybe even cautious in the way a man becomes when the sea starts behaving like something unfamiliar.

Behind him, the crew had fallen quiet, looking towards the lighthouse like it might be some kind of saviour. No more talk of omens or charts. Just the deck creaking like arthritic bones, the ropes above groaning in their rigging like tired muscles. They had been in this fog far too long. The sails sagged with damp. Salt gathered on every surface in thin, crystalline veins, as if the ship itself were beginning to ossify.

Steve turned to Stark at the helm. “Hold course. We don’t approach until we know what kind of land that is - if there’s land at all.”

The crew exchanged uneasy glances, the silence between them louder than the groan of the ship. Steve’s order had not sparked protest, but surprise. The kind that simmers just beneath the surface, waiting for a crack in the calm.

Rumlow stepped in closer, his voice pitched low, meant for the captain alone. “Sir, with respect, the crew are getting nervous. And that light, it’s steady. Clearer than anything we’ve seen in days. Don’t you think maybe it’s where we’re meant to go?”

Steve didn’t answer at first. His gaze stayed locked on the sweep of white that cut across the mist.

“I think visibility’s down to nothing,” he said at last, his voice calm, measured. “And I don’t want us running aground on some reef that doesn’t show up on a map.”

With a tight jaw, Brock swallowed and nodded once. But something in his gaze lingered on the horizon, to the lighthouse buried in the fog.

Steve didn’t look away from it either. His head tilted slightly, as if trying to puzzle it apart, to parse its rhythm, its source. But the longer he watched, the more it felt like the light was watching him back. Each rotation passed over the Nomad like a tongue of pale fire, licking at wood and rigging as if tasting what had come to it.

Rumlow’s voice dropped even lower, “You think maybe that’s where the Valkyrie went?”

The Valkyrie. Just the name alone was enough to make Steve pause. The Nomad’s sister ship. Missing three months now, seemingly vanished near these waters. Commanded by a good man - Captain James “Bucky” Barnes. 

Officially? Presumed lost to storm. The Admiralty had called the search a waste; gone too long, gone too far. But Steve had disagreed, insistently. He knew Bucky, sailed with him since they were boys, before anyone gave them men to lead. And Captain Barnes would not have gone down easy. Not to wind. Not to fate.

“If there’s even a chance they’re still out there,” he’d urged, “we owe it to them to look.”

That was how he’d always been. Never leave men behind. Never bury a crew without a body. He’d volunteered himself to take the Nomad out - retrace the route, follow the last ghosting of the Valkyrie’s known course.

Just a recovery mission, they’d said, a duty. And they’d assigned him a crew that was not his own, to ensure he didn’t linger too long in the hunt. His men would have followed him to the edge of the world without question. These ones, they’d hoped, would make him turn back when the search turned fruitless. 

But now, here they were. No stars. No wind. No world but fog. And the only shape left in it was a lighthouse that should not exist.

Steve blinked, finally tearing his gaze from the light. His eyes met Brock’s, tired but steady. His shoulders rose with breath, slow and measured, before he spoke.

“If the Valkyrie went there, she might’ve had reason. Damage. Crew injured. But we’re not crippled, and we’ve got no map to guide us in. I’m not going in blind, not yet.”

He turned back to the water. Fog pressed against the world like wool over the eyes. The lighthouse blinked again. 

Steve nodded once, resolute in his decision. “We stay careful and wait for the fog to shift.” He placed a hand briefly on Rumlow’s shoulder.  “I won’t risk my crew chasing shadows in fog that thick.”

“Aye, Captain.” 

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

When the watch was changed and orders were repeated, Steve stepped down from the quarterdeck and made his way back to his cabin below. 

The air was heavier in the belly of the ship, thick with damp and rusted salt, every timber groaning like it ached in its bones. His quarters were dim. A single lantern swung with the slow sway of the ship, casting shadows that seemed to move before the flame did. 

Charts were spread across the desk, dotted with bearings and notations, all meaningless now. Steve sat hunched over them, sleeves rolled, brow furrowed. He’d stripped off his coat but still felt damp; the fog had crept into everything. Dragging a calloused hand through his hair, Steve blinked down at the compass lying beside the map. Still useless. Still turning in lazy circles like a drunk sailor remembering a waltz. 

None of it made any damn sense. Every heading led to nowhere. No drift patterns lined up. He reached for his logbook, intending to write, to record something, anything that might bring order to the chaos. But the ink seemed to bleed too quickly on the page. The candlelight blurred at the edges. His fingers slowed.

Sleep gathered at the edges of him like a restless tide, luring him under.

He resisted at first, his mind too restless to sleep. Rubbed the back of his neck. Shifted in the chair. But the heaviness was strange, not exhaustion, exactly, but pull, thick and difficult to resist. His head dipped once. He snapped upright, jaw tight.

Then it started. Soft, barely a sound. 

The echo of something melodic seeping through the walls of the ship, through the brass fittings and soaked oak beams. It threaded into his mind, quiet and patient, settling amongst the fog of his thoughts, carving out a hollow and making itself at home. And still, it pushed deeper, curling warm and low in a place just below his sternum, where longing and memory and fear all reside together. He was dreaming. Or falling. Or maybe both. 

Visions of the sea rose up in his mind, yet not the familiar cold expanse that prowled outside the hull, not the greedy grey that clung and gnawed and wished to drag all things down. This sea was warmer, velvet dark, soft as the inside of a mouth.

Steve was drifting through it, though he couldn’t tell if he floated or sank. The world had no up or down, only pull. A constant, inexorable lure toward only one thing: the lighthouse. It loomed above him now, vast and depthless, its crown haloed in light that somehow did not illuminate his surroundings. He was so close he could feel it, the warmth of the light, the snatch of currents curling around his limbs like hands, immobilising. 

The water rippled, revealing eyes, open in the deep. Unblinking. Watching. Reflecting that same cursed light from above the surface. Too close, and yet impossibly far. 

As if the sea itself had grown a face and turned it toward him.

Steve jerked awake with a violent gasp, the world slamming back into place - the cramped cabin, the sharp scrape of wood as his chair skidded beneath him, the rush of breath filling his lungs.

The cabin lantern guttered low, throwing frantic shadows up the walls. His skin was clammy, his pulse feral. The taste of salt lingered in his mouth, as if he’d swallowed the dream and brought some of it back with him.

He turned, slowly, gaze drawn to the porthole. The light was still there. Each rotation of the lighthouse beam slid through the fog and across the glass like a spotlight, searching. Still watching.

But the hum was gone. The cabin had fallen back into silence, save for the low groans of the ship as it shifted on the still, breathless water. Rising from the desk slowly, Steve shook his head, as if to rid himself of whatever had slithered into him during sleep. Just a dream. That’s all it was. He was exhausted. Worried. Minds under pressure look for patterns and he’d been thinking about that damn lighthouse too long. Of course it had found its way into his dreams.

He paced once, twice, boots thudding dully against the floorboards, then turned for the door. He needed air. Needed salt and wind and human company to steady his mind.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃 ˙˳⋆

When he stepped back out onto the deck, the world had not changed. 

The fog had not lifted; still wound tight around the ship like a shroud. It pressed in close, slicking across his skin with a dampness that clung to his clothes. The cold bit into him slowly, teeth sinking through his skin.

For one disoriented beat, he wondered if time had moved at all. If, instead, it had simply curved back on itself like a wave folding under, dragging him into the same moment. Same air. Same fog. Same towering blot on the horizon, casting its glare across the sea like a curse. It was not growing closer. It was not receding. It simply remained, waiting, as though the world now revolved around it.

His watch betrayed the illusion. He’d slept, if it could be called that, just over an hour. And yet it was as though nothing had moved.

Except his crew.

Warm lantern light carved trembling circles through the mist, casting his men in golden haze and long shadows. They were gathered along the starboard rail, clustered together like crows around carrion. Overlapping voices floated across the deck, carrying a ripple of unease.

Brow furrowing, Steve strode across the deck, boots striking the planks with measured weight, the sound of voices growing sharper with every step - too many, too loud, voices that carried the sour heat of argument and something darker beneath.

“I’m telling you,” came one voice, low and suspicious, “it’s not right. She don’t belong here.”

“Pretty little thing though, would be a shame to let her go back under,” another drawled, peering through a spyglass.

“Shouldn’t bring her aboard,” grunted another, older, voice chewed to bone by years at sea. “Bad luck. All this fog, compasses spinning, and now this? She’s a Jonah. Let her drown.”

“Enough,” Steve’s voice cut through the tangle with ease and the muttering fell away at once. 

They parted almost instantly, and Steve stepped toward the rail, spyglass in hand. The fog swirled beneath the low light provided from deck, pooling thick and low across the water’s skin, and for a moment all he saw was drift. It just looked like wreckage, driftwood, rope, a scrap of sailcloth tangled in splintered timber. But then it shifted.

A human form. A woman. You.

Drifting limp across the water, draped half-conscious over a splintered slat of hull like an offering. Limbs slack, pale, boneless in the cold. Mouth parted faintly. Salt clinging to skin like frost. Yet there was movement, just. The soft rise and fall of ribs was the only indication of life.

A seaweed of wet hair tangled around a body wearing nothing but a half-buttoned shirt - unmistakably a sailor’s standard issue. It clung to every curve with the intimacy of breath. White, soaked through, and thin as gauze, it gaped wide at the collar. Its hem dark with water and barely brushing thigh. Every inch of it transparent.

One of his men gave a low whistle, appreciative in a hungry sort of way. Another muttered something crude under his breath.

Steve’s breath hitched. “Jesus.”

He opened his mouth to issue the order, to call his men to help him and do something other than just watch as the sea claimed another victim, but something caught the edge of his vision.

Dark wood, warped and slightly swollen, but unmistakable. Carved faintly into the grain was the faded insignia of the Valkyrie. Faint and weather gnawed, but clear enough to make the blood slow in Steve’s veins. He stilled, the sight striking something low and solemn in him, pulling his thoughts inward, toward darker waters. It held him there a breath too long, until the voices of his crew, sharp and human, tore him back to the surface.

“Women on ships are bad luck,” someone spat. “They call the sea to swallow us. You want to bring that aboard?”

“She’s a woman,” another scoffed, lascivious and oily. “That’s all I care about. And she’s practically naked. I’d say that’s luck enough.”

A ripple of laughter broke the tension - thin, uneasy, edged with hunger. Steve’s hand tightened around the spyglass until the brass bit into his palm. His voice, when it came, was low and absolute.

“I command a ship, not a brothel,” he warned, words edged with ice. “You see a woman half dead and the first thing out of your mouth is filth?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. 

“Help me get her aboard,” Steve continued, low and final, every syllable hard with command. “Now.”

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

They pulled you from the water like salvage. Like a treasure they'd found instead of the trap you were.

The rope they lowered wasn’t elegant - a thick loop knotted fast at its end, more sling than harness. It hit the water with a dull splash beside you, bobbing once, then slackening as someone above braced the rigging. You made no effort to move to it, still draped over the driftwood, barely conscious. Or so you looked.

From the deck above, voices filtered down, rough and indistinct, before the groan of the rope ladder. Someone was coming down. A broad shouldered shadow fell over you through the fog, moving with care. When he reached you, the voice came first. A low rumble, roughed by cold and command, yet still laced with warmth.

“It’s alright,” he spoke, as though speaking to a wounded animal. “We’ve got you. I’m going to secure the rope, just stay with me.”

Then hands. Warmer than they had any right to be. Callused palms, sure fingers, touching only what they needed and not a single inch more. You flinched, of course. Twitched like something helpless. He hushed you again. “Easy,” he coaxed, “it’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Safe. How quaint.

The sling was adjusted around you, tugging tight beneath ribs that housed lungs which had never once known the ache of oxygen, had never felt the brutal, mortal pull of drowning. Still, you let a strangled choke slip from your throat, perfectly convincing. Your head lolled to one side, limbs limp with the art of false exhaustion, as the line above drew taut and began to lift.

The pulley system groaned, and you rose, slow and swaying, through the breathless dark. Fog clung to your limbs like it was loath to let you go. The deck appeared in pieces: boots, knees, hands reaching. The hiss of anticipation from men who had not seen softness in months.

You kept your eyes half shuttered, lashes fluttering weakly against your cheeks. The picture of something fragile, plucked from the depths by the mercy of men. Mercy, you knew, that always came with a price. 

The rope jerked slightly as they manoeuvred you over the side of the ship. You stirred, just enough, letting soft, whimpering moan escape past your lips. Bait on a hook. Several boots scraped closer to you, and you could practically smell their hunger.

But it was the same steady hands that enveloped you once more, lifting you clear of the rope and the greedy eyes that didn’t care to hide their hunger for your softness. He drew you against him without effort, anchoring you to his chest, against his warmth, as though you belonged there, shielding you instinctively from the others. 

"Easy," he said again, close to your ear now, voice achingly gentle. "I've got you.”

You let your fingers curl into the lapel of his coat, just enough to seem desperate. He carried you easily across the slick boards of the deck, accompanied by the murmur of men who hadn’t remembered their decency. 

When he reached the quarterdeck, he lowered you slowly onto a barrel, his hands still gripping you until he was certain you were steady. You made sure weren’t, of course. As if on cue, your body swayed forward, tilting into him like gravity had a grip on your bones. Your cheek brushed the hard plane of his chest, and he caught you instantly.

“Hey,” he murmured, crouching down in front of you, “Hey, can you look at me?”

Warm palms cradled your face, so large that they eclipsed your cheeks entirely. Thumbs brushed your hair aside with aching gentleness, the pad of one brushing your parted lips. You let out the faintest shiver, as though cold, though it was really restraint burning beneath your ribs. Eyes flickering open, you blinked up at him through pathetic, fluttering lashes.

Oh.

He was beautiful. Not in the brash, swaggering way of most mortal men, but in the quiet, devastating way that would’ve made your breath catch if you were capable of such a thing. He didn’t belong at sea, not looking like that.

His eyes met yours at once. Blue. Too blue. Luminous against the dimness, limned with the soft ache of worry, and framed by eyelashes far too long and too pretty for a man’s face. A loose strand of blond hair clung to his brow, damp with fog, brushing the furrow of his temples. 

And those lips. God, those lips. Full and plush, turned down in something too earnest to fake. They were a softness unsuited to cold orders and colder seas. Lips like that were made to ruin.

And yet, for all his beauty, he still bore the sea’s mark. Fair skin kissed pink along the bridge of his nose and the rise of his cheekbones - the ghost of sun long since vanished from these skies. A man shaped by wind and water. Weathered but unbent.

You blinked again, slower this time. Half dazed confusion. Half something else.

Still, you waited for it, that inevitable shift. The drop of the eyes, the slow souring of concern into something uglier. Desire, or even ownership. A hunger you could sink your teeth into. You’d seen it a thousand times. Men were simple creatures; they always turned.

But his eyes stayed on yours, never even tracing the curve of your breasts through the wet, transparent shirt clinging to your skin that you’d stolen from some long dead sailor. They remained blue and beautiful and impossibly sincere. And it made you ravenous.

Something cruel stirred in the hollow place where your heart should have been. You wanted to crawl into that gaze and poison it. To splinter that softness beneath your hands, and make him beg through those perfect lips. You needed to know what it would take to break something that gentle.

A low whistle sliced the silence, sharp and lewd. Your eyes flicked past the broad shield of his shoulders to where the rest of the crew still clustered, hungry-eyed and unrepentant. 

They craned for another glimpse. A pale flash of thigh. The ghost of a shoulder. Or your nipples, dark and peaked beneath fabric turned to gauze by the sea. 

They drank you in with the aching greed of men who hadn’t seen a woman in weeks. And even then, never like this - bare legged, shivering and wearing nothing but a transparent shirt. To mortals, an exposed ankle was a scandal. This was a damn invocation.

Their greedy stares crawled over you, hands twitching at belts, eyes sharp with the kind of cruelty that came easy at sea. One of them licked his lips. Another chuckled low under his breath.

You let a trembling whimper pass your lips and drew your arms across your chest as if the gesture could protect you. White knuckled fingers curled into the ruined fabric, as though you were ashamed and human enough to care.

But then the man in front of you moved. Without a word, he shrugged off his coat and draped it around your shoulders, firm and unceremonious. Heavy, coarse wool settled over your shoulders, warm with his heat. Far too large, it drowned you in fabric that smelled of salt and something deliciously alive. He pulled it closed around you with firm, efficient hands.

“That’s enough,” he barked over his shoulder, the edge of command hard and unmistakable. His gaze swept across the crew, lingering on the ones who hadn't looked away quickly enough.

“Back to your posts.” he said, quieter now but no less protective. “You’ll leave her be. Anyone who forgets that will answer to me.”

There it is. That claim. Perhaps he wants you for himself, and this is just personal hunger cloaked in chivalry.

The crew dispersed, slow and muttering, but they obeyed. Even the boldest among them turned away in the end, though not from guilt, just the command of a man.

And then he turned back to you, face softening again like it hadn’t just been carved from iron a second before. He reached for the coat slung across your shoulders and adjusted it with careful hands, tugging it higher to shield your neck from the cold and from their stares alike. His fingers brushed your collarbone as he worked, knuckles grazing damp skin, but the touch was nothing but reverent.

“I’m sorry for their behaviour,” he said quietly, eyes not leaving yours, “but you will be safe here. You have my word as captain of this vessel.”

Captain. Of course. So this is what held out against you. 

You’d felt that resolve in the dream, touched the edges of his mind, tasted the knotted tangle of duty and grief in his soul.

Most men came willingly. They came with hunger, lust, and darkness already peeling them apart from the inside. Their souls were already loosened, rotted at the edges, ready to be swallowed.

The song was a mercy to them - a velvet leash they begged to wear. You didn’t always need it; sometimes the lighthouse was enough. The pulsing light on the horizon, a suggestion of warmth in a world gone cold with fog and dread.

You hadn’t had anyone resist your lure in a long, long time.

Not the lighthouse keeper who’d torn his shirt off and dropped to his knees at the first note of your voice. Not the deckhand who’d fucked you in the bilge, pressing your hand to his chest like a confessional even as he wept for the wife he’d left on shore. And certainly not the captain who’d begged as you dragged him under, saltwater filling his lungs before your lips ever touched his.

Oh yes, a man’s soul could be consumed in two ways, but both require him trembling at the edge of himself in a moment of surrender. 

One you take in the water, lungs flooding, heart thrashing, the soul straining against the body’s last breath as terror carved it clean. The other you take in bed, just before ruin, when he is blinded by want, and the soul slips loose without a fight. Drowning or fucking - ecstasy and fear blurred so sweetly at their seams, and both left you wet-mouthed and lit from within.

And with this one? With something this pretty? There was no question which method would taste sweeter on your tongue.

But so far, this captain clung to himself like wreckage. The call went out from the lighthouse and he turned his back on it. The song curled round him and he did not answer.

“Come,” he said, breaking the spell of your thoughts. “Let us get you out of the cold. There’s warmth waiting below.”

You didn’t move. Not right away. Just let the tremble run its course, every delicate shiver accentuated by the size of the coat drowning you, as though the cold were sinking deeper than skin. You knew well how to feign fragility and become something that invited protection. You looked up at him, dazed and blinking slowly, lips parted like you could not quite grasp the words he’d spoken.

“Can you stand, do you think?” he asked, with that maddening, patient gentleness that made your skin itch with the desire to ruin it.

You made a soft sound and shifted, lifting yourself just barely from the barrel’s edge, biting your lip like it might hold you steady. Your bare feet touched the deck, wet wood slipping against your soles. The moment your weight tipped forward, your legs crumpled beneath you with theatrical grace. 

His arms caught you before you touched the deck.

“Steady now,” he murmured, catching you before you could collapse. Strong arms swept beneath you once more, one beneath your knees, the other curled firm around your back, holding you close against the solid breadth of his chest. “There we are. I’ve got you.”

You sagged against him, still half unconscious. He adjusted his grip, carrying you with an ease that sent a different kind of hunger curling low in your belly, and turned without hesitation toward the steps that led below.

He was taking you to his quarters.

You let yourself go soft, resting your head against his chest to feel the delicious steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath your cheek. The coat slipped just enough to expose the curve of your shoulder beneath a tear in the shirt. And though you felt a slight hitch in his breath, his grip never wandered.

It was almost admirable, but he’d come around. You could feel it already. The tightness in him. The restraint. He wanted. Of course he wanted. That was why he carried you, why you wore his coat, and why he scolded his men. He wanted you untouched because he wanted you for himself. 

The ones who thought themselves kind took you somewhere private first, told themselves they were being noble, protecting you, even. They would speak softly, perhaps even brush the hair from your face before their mouth met yours. And then they'd reward themselves for your rescue. They always did.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

The captain’s quarters were quiet. A single lantern burned low, swaying faintly on its hook and casting golden veins across the walls. Its light curled into the grain of old wood, flickering across naval maps and shelves of worn books, softening the sharp edges of a captain’s space into something gentle.

His long stride crossed the room easily, slowing before the wide berth at the back of the room. His bed. 

He set you down amongst the folds as though laying a relic upon an altar. 

The bed gave beneath your weight with a low sigh, the layers parting to cradle you in their dense, lived-in warmth. A patchwork of textures met your skin: coarse-stitched navy blankets, a heavy fur throw that might once have belonged to some northern creature, sheets of worn linen, sun bleached to ivory and softened by use. The covers still held the faint heat of his body, the press of his shoulders marked faintly in the blankets’ rise and fall - a hollow twice your size. 

You lay curled in the ghost of his shape and gave a small, pitiful shiver. Without a word, he was moving again, hands pulling another blanket from the foot of the bed before gently setting it across your legs.

Behind him, through the small porthole, the lighthouse pulsed. Patient.

Looking up at him through lashes still heavy with faux exhaustion, you parted your lips in a breathless kind of mute gratitude. He lingered there, caught in your gaze, for just a breath too long.

You saw it, the stutter in his composure, the second blink that came slower than the first, the flicker of something heat flushed across the high plane of his cheek. His gaze did not drop, not quite, but it faltered, hovered somewhere near your mouth. For one aching second, you thought you had him. That you’d slipped into that crack in his restraint, and finally hooked your fingers in the seams of him and started to pull.

But then he shifted. A subtle straightening of his spine, a quick drag of air through his nose, and the spell broke.

“Captain Rogers,” he said abruptly, almost like it had burst out unbidden. The reflex a man who’d just remembered himself after nearly forgetting. The words landed too stiffly, and he seemed to realise it the moment they left his mouth. A flicker of something self-conscious passed across his face.

“That’s, uh, that’s my—sorry,” he added quickly, shaking his head, almost sheepish now. “That’s… my title. It’s not—I should’ve…” he paused, a breath, then, “I’m Steve,” he corrected finally, softer now, but more certain, like he’d found his footing again, “You can call me Steve.”

He—Steve—looked at you properly then, as though trying to offer something gentler in place of command. “Sorry. Ma raised me with better manners than forgetting to give my name.”

And then he turned away, stepping over to a chest near the wall. His movements were brisk, purposeful, trying to rid himself of whatever had overcome him for that moment. Fingers busying themselves with the latch, Steve rummaged for something without looking back.

Your hunger purred louder beneath the surface. 

Because now you’d seen the flicker. You’d felt the heat coil off him like a warning. You could taste the want in the air around him. But he didn’t reach for you like every other man before him, possessed with the kind of goodness men so often wrapped themselves in to feel righteous as they stripped you bare. It was unlike any experience you’d had before, but it made your mouth water all the same. 

Back at the chest, Steve drew a folded bundle of cloth. They were plain garments - his clothes. Trousers cinched with twine, and a shirt softer than the one that still clung wet to your skin. He brought them to the edge of the bed and set them down without fanfare or a glance below your collarbone.

“These are clean,” he said, head tilted with concern. “They ought to be warmer than what you’ve got. If you feel strong enough to change?”

You let your fingers ghost over the fabric, trembling just slightly. Then, lifting your gaze to him, you gave a small nod.

“I’ll step out,” he murmured, quieter than before, “Let you dress in peace.”

Already he was turning, gaze fixed politely away, moving toward the door. His hand paused at the latch.

“I’ll see if Cook’s left anything warm. You’ll need food. Strength.” A glance over his shoulder, not quite meeting your eyes, but close. “You’re safe here. Take your time.”

For a moment, you didn’t react. Just stared at him, lashes low, like your brain was still climbing back toward language.

Then you let it tremble out, breath first, then sound, “Thank you… Steve,” you whispered, voice hoarse, as though scraped from a throat unused to air.

He paused a moment, like the sound of his name in your mouth had startled him. His spine loosened, shoulders lowering a fraction, as something gentle folded into the weather worn lines of his face. A small, almost boyish smile, and it suited him far too well.

“Of course,” Steve replied, the words entirely earnest. A quiet nod followed, punctuating the moment like a full stop. Then he turned back to the door.

And just like that, he left you alone. No weighted silence thick with male expectation. Just the soft click of the door. 

You stared at the wood as though it might open again, half expecting to catch the glint of hunger in his eye as he returned, pretending some false errand only to find you bared and shivering. But no hand turned the latch. No boots lingered on the boards. His footsteps faded into the ship’s bones, until nothing of him remained but the coat around your shoulders.

For a long moment, you didn’t move. Was it shyness? Modesty? Some strange, stubborn honour? Whatever it was, it was unbearable and addictive all at once. It made your teeth ache and your thighs clench.

Still. There were other ways to catch a thing that wouldn’t bite. Most men liked their prey helpless, some trembling thing in need of rescue, but some needed to be seduced rather than begged.

And that, too, you could do.

You slipped from the bed, the coat slithering from your shoulders like a shed skin. The shirt beneath was still soaked, still clinging, and you peeled it off slowly, letting it fall to the floor with a wet sound. The lantern light found your skin, greedy as a sailor’s gaze, kissing the shine of saltwater left across the soft swell of your breasts and the curve of your thighs. It haloed you in something mythic. Lure or not, you were a vision.

Then there was a knock. Followed by the captain’s voice, low and gentle, muffled through the wood.

“Ma’am?” A courteous pause, then, “I’ve brought something to eat. Would it be alright if I come in?”

You stayed silent, letting the pause yawn wide. Naked now in the golden hush, you made no effort to cover yourself, no scramble for modesty. The silence lengthened; you could almost feel his hand hesitating on the latch. The knock came again, a little firmer this time, the shape of your absence already sharpening his worry.

“Ma’am?” He called again, more urgent, voice a note higher, gentleness cut now with genuine fear. “Are you alright in there?”

You still gave him nothing. You could almost hear the decision happen behind the door, the quiet warring of his better instincts. He cursed quietly to himself. 

Then, finally, a third knock. Harder. “I’m coming in,” Steve warned, the words gentle but laced with an urgency that left no room for argument.

And then the door swung inward

You gasped, feigning shock, hands darting too late for the shirt that lay on the cot. Your hair spilled across your shoulders, beads of water sliding the length of your bare skin.

He froze. There was a beat of stunned silence. Crimson flooded his cheeks. Panic flared wide in his eyes. Then he scrambled to recover, voice and hands unsteady with mortified haste.

“Oh—Christ, I—” Steve’s voice cracked low in his throat as he spun around so sharply he nearly spilt the content in his hands. “I knocked and I didn’t hear you answer, I thought something might’ve—I’m sorry.”

He stood rooted, mortified, eyes fixed anywhere but you. The lamplight burnished the edge of his jaw, the muscle there ticking with strain.

“No, forgive me, Captain,” you breathed, though inside you’re reeling, half-hoping he’ll try to look, then half-astonished that he does not. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I didn’t hear you knock.”

You finally pulled the shirt he’d left you over your head in slow, deliberate motions, the fabric falling heavy with his scent. It swallowed you whole, hem brushing mid-thigh, sleeves hanging long past your wrists. You left the trousers untouched where they lay folded on the bed, a calculated omission. 

Just enough modesty to allow him to look. Just enough indecency to make him desperate for it. 

Steve remained frozen near the door, spine stiff as a masthead, though his head hung slightly, eyes fixed somewhere on the floor. “I didn’t mean—” he began, voice ragged at the edges, “I—my apologies, ma’am. I shouldn’t have—”

You moved before he could finish, bare feet over old wood, closing the space between you. Your fingers found the edge of his sleeve, just at his wrist. His skin was warm. Alive. You let your thumb rest against the bone, just long enough to feel the beat beneath. He let out a stammered breath at the contact, relaxing into it. 

“I don’t blame you,” you cooed softly, peering up through lowered lashes. “Truly. You’ve been nothing but kind. I owe you more thanks than I can speak.”

Cheeks still flushed pink, Steve turned. Slowly. Warily, like a man half-expecting a trap but drawn anyway. His gaze lifted, cautious, catching only your face at first. 

Then, for the briefest moment, his eyes flicked downward, just far enough to catch the pale length of your bare legs beneath the hem of his shirt. His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking hard in the hinge, before his gaze snapped back to yours and held there, unflinching, as if sheer will alone could burn the image from his mind.

He cleared his throat. “It’s not much,” he murmured, finally breaking the silence, nodding toward the bowl he’d nearly spilled. “Just broth, but should help you feel better.” His voice was low, almost apologetic, as though the offering were meagre, rather than more kindness than most men ever thought to give.

You’d met hundreds of men who’ve fed you nothing but themselves and expected you to moan for the taste.

You watched as he set the food down on the nightstand, this captain with his broad shoulders and his careful hands and his infuriating, impossible goodness. Now you were certain - he meant it. The shame, the apology. His kindness was not, as you had assumed, the pantomime of virtue donned to soothe his conscience before indulging himself. He simply was that good.

Because this wasn’t how men behaved. Not sailors, not captains, not the devout nor the damned. Not when faced with something half-naked and grateful in their quarters, looking at them like salvation.

And you wanted him worse for it. 

It was insatiable. You had not desired like this before. Not truly. Hunger was different. Hunger was instinct, necessary and sharp. But this was no longer simply appetite.

You wanted to feel him break, to ruin what made him so good. To see that perfect mouth open in surrender. To feel defiance rot into desperation. To lean close, breathe him in as you tore his stubborn soul loose from the sinew of his body, bright and so achingly alive, and swallow it whole.

Easing yourself gracefully back down onto his bed, you slipped into the same hollow of throws he’d laid you in before. You curled your legs between you, letting the oversized shirt ride high along your thighs - a flash of bare skin that went wilfully unseen as he pretended to busy himself with something that didn’t need doing. 

The broth waited untouched on the nightstand beside him, steam still coiling faintly from the bowl. But as the scent reached you, your stomach tightened. Dead sustenance. It was a scent that turned the sea in your blood.

“Steve?” 

He turned toward you again and you met his gaze with a sweet, sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured, voice still touched with that wounded lilt. “I think I’m still a little unwell from the sea. The broth smells lovely, I just…” You trailed off, pressing a hand lightly to your stomach, eyes low. “I’m not quite myself yet.”

He was at your side again in an instant, crouching, eyes filled with worry that made him easier to devour.

“Don’t force it,” he said. “I can fetch you something else later. Tea, perhaps.”

“You’ve been so very kind,” you replied, voice warm with pretend gratitude. “So gentle. So… sweet.” You leant forward, just slightly, eyes big and round, lower lip caught between your teeth. “How ever could I repay you?”

His breath caught. You could feel his restraint. His gaze slipped again, toward your lips, so you pushed, just a little more. Your hand rose like you barely noticed it and found the line of his forearm where it rested on his knee, fingers brushing his skin, warm and solid beneath the rolled cuff. His body shivered in response.

His gaze flicked once more, unsteady, back toward your mouth, then your eyes, then your mouth again. 

You edged just a little closer, palm still resting light against his arm, and whispered, “Isn’t there something I can do for you?”

And for a second, he hesitated. Heat, confused and uninvited, pooled in his gaze. The lighthouse beam swept through the porthole, illuminating his face for one breath, jaw tight, eyes dark with want. Finally, the soft place beneath all that control. 

But then it was gone, swallowed by guilt, or principle, or both. He pushed back on his heels slightly, as though that inch of distance could cool the heat you’d stoked between you. Then he exhaled slowly, gaze steadier now, but you could see the strain in it, the quiet war waged behind his eyes.

He pulled a chair across the cabin with a low scrape of wood on wood, and settled into it opposite you, resting his large hands lightly on his knees. The lantern above cast his face in gentle shadow, catching on the furrow between his brows, the tired edge in his eyes.

“You owe me nothing,” he said, low and sure, though his voice was a little rough at the edges, like he’d had to clear something from it first. “But, if it’s not too much to ask,” he added, softer still, “might I know your name?”

There it was again. That unbearable sincerity. That goodness that made your mouth water with the desperation to peel it from him with your teeth.

You tilted your head, lashes sweeping low in something that looked like shy surprise. “My name?” you echoed, soft, as though the question itself startled you. The smallest frown tugged at your lips.

“I…” You started, letting the word hang, then, “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

It slipped out in a hush, a scared tremor to your voice. Tears welled in your eyes, limning your lashes with the sheen of salt.  You watched the sorrow bloom in Steve's face, how it called him forward like a prayer dragging a sinner to the altar. He leant in again, unthinking, his hand rising to your cheek as if summoned, wiping away a tear before retreating again. 

“That’s alright,” he murmured. “You’ve been through something awful. It’ll come back to you in time.”

He leant back further, elbows to his knees. When he spoke again, his voice was even more gentled.

“The wreckage we found you on, it looked like it belonged to a ship we were looking for. The Valkyrie.” A beat. “Do you remember anything from before we found you?”

You let confusion cloud your features as you drew your knees in a little, making yourself purposefully smaller.

“There was a storm,” you whispered. “Rocks. The ship was… breaking.” You swallowed, as though the memory cut your throat on the way up. “I remember screaming. Wood splintering. And then just… water.” Your breath shuddered, trembling in your chest. “Only water.”

When you lifted your gaze, Steve’s eyes were already on you, full of grief, raw and unguarded. The corners of his mouth were curled tight with a sorrow he tried to hide. Something greedy unfurled in your chest at his expression. This was your in.

He didn’t press you. He only nodded once, small and heavy, accepting something he had not wanted confirmed.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “Were the crew important to you?”

He drew a long breath, chest rising slowly beneath his shirt. His eyes did not leave yours now; they held you as if you were the only fixed point in a shifting world.

“The Valkyrie was our sister ship," Steve replied, though the words came out quiet and worn at the edges. "Went missing some weeks back. Her captain—" His voice caught. Stopped. Started again. "Captain Barnes. Bucky. He was... he was my brother in all but blood.”

Oh, you remembered Captain Barnes. Dark-haired, silver-tongued, easier to unravel than this one. 

Oh yes, you remembered the way his mouth had moved when he asked if you were some dream sent to bless him or a devil come to collect. You’d answered with your mouth on his. Dragged him under with salt on his lips. Felt his soul flutter loose like a bird with broken wings. He’d begged, near the end. Not for life, or his crew. Just for another touch.

And now, here you sat, bare-legged and aching, watching his closest friend mourn him from the same mouth that would soon tremble against yours. Strange, how fate always liked to stitch its cruelties with silk thread. 

Once, a lifetime ago, fate had sewn its threads through your flesh too. You had not always been a wave-wrought thing, built of hunger and longing. But the sea takes and takes, until you are hollowed into its likeness - a tide with a heartbeat, a hunger with a face, pulling all things toward your depths.

And your hunger had teeth now, clawing up your throat. You were losing control of it against the heat of Steve’s soul, flickering bright and untouched against the wake of his loss, begging for you to break it.

Steve had fallen quiet, grief settling over him like a shroud. One forearm braced the armrest, his other hand lifting to rake through his hair, dragging it back from his face in a slow, tense sweep. His eyes blurred at the edges as he pinched the bridge of his nose, just before his gaze dropped.

You slid from the bed, the hem of his shirt skimmed your thighs as you stepped between his thighs, so close the heat of him rolled over your skin, that his breath brushed against your sternum. 

A shiver passed through you like a tide, an aching mixture of desire and restraint.

For a moment he didn’t move, just sat, large hands splayed over his knees, shoulders hunched as though to ward off a blow.

You reached for him. One hand cupped his cheek, the other brushed back the unruly hair at his temple. The lamplight burnished his blond strands to a pale gold that pooled around his head like a saint. You coaxed his face up to yours with a pressure so gentle it barely existed, but he followed it, looking up at you, eyes like a summer sky long vanished from this sea, mouth parted in surprise. 

He was heavenly like this. All that strength, all that command, undone in a breath.

For the first time, you wondered if you could even touch it. If you could drown a soul this bright. 

Yet even he couldn’t hide the shake of his breath, or the way his throat moved as he swallowed. The beautiful, terrible struggle of a good man trying so hard not to be anything else. To stay tethered to his impossible compass of a heart.

But you had him in your claws now. Your desire was sharpening further with each touch, each trembling denial. You ached to have him, to feel him fill you, to taste him shatter.

“Steve,” you whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, tried to gather himself, tried to be a captain again. “No,” he rasped, his voice rough and uneven with restraint, “I—I’m sorry. You’ve been through hell, and here I am—”

You shushed him softly, thumb sweeping across his cheekbone, feeling the warmth bloom there. You leant in just slightly, enough for your hair to brush his brow, “It’s okay, Steve. You’re allowed to grieve. You’re allowed to miss him.”

He stilled a moment, and you watched his body process the words - the ripple through his shoulders, the breath stall in his lungs, the slow collapse of the last of his armour. He leant his head closer to you, seeking your warmth. A surrender, finally. The kind of surrender only kindness could coax from a man like him.

“You’re a good man, Steve Rogers.”

And God, the way he looked at you then. Not as a captain. Not as a saviour. Not even as a man. But as something softer, lost at sea, craving someone to hold him.

He was trembling, you realised. Quietly, almost imperceptibly. The kind of trembling that comes from being starved of warmth and affection for too long. Your fingers slid down from his jaw, and his lips quivered at the loss, tilting his head into the absence of your touch, chasing it.

But your hand found his, and you drew it up to your face, guiding his palm to your cheek. The rough warmth of him made you ache, heat blooming low in your belly despite the innocence of the touch. His palm was so large, so gentle against your cheek that your thighs pressed together without meaning to.

You turned, lips brushing the heel of his hand. Just the faintest, testing whisper of contact. His breath hitched, a quiet, ragged inhale, and his eyes widened with a hunger he seemed half-ashamed to own.

“Let me help you,” you whispered into his palm, letting the need in your voice lure him further. “You’ve been so good to me. Let me—”

“You don’t owe me—” he interrupted, voice already crumbling, but the protest died in his throat the moment you slid into his lap, thighs bracketing his, baring your exposed, aching core to the hard press of the growing need in his trousers. 

The groan that left his mouth was pure need.  “Christ,” he cursed. 

His shirt bunched around your hips, baring the moonlit length of your legs. Steve’s hands shot to your waist, instinctive and steadying, before freezing. A man grasping a the final edges of his strength.

He looked up at you, pupils blown wide, eclipsing the blue entirely. The muscle in his jaw twitched, set against want. 

“This isn’t—” he breathed, throat tight, “We shouldn’t—”

You rolled your hips, deliberately letting your dripping pussy rub against his cock, already hard and betraying his restraint, and the sound that broke from his throat was nearly a sob.

He stifled a moan, hands tightening on your waist as though to hold you at bay.

“Why not?” you murmured, all innocence and invitation.

His hands, meant to push you away, to set you aside and return propriety to the room, stayed exactly where they were. Gripping. Holding. Burning through the thin fabric that separated skin from skin. His head dropped forward, forehead pressing to your collarbone, as though the proximity might ground him. Might make this feel less like falling. 

“Because you’re— I’m—” he tried again, but couldn’t finish, the words dissolving between you.

“Because I’m what?” you murmured. “Grateful? I am.”

Your hands rose to his face, thumbs brushing the flush on his cheeks, dragging back through the tousled gold of his hair, damp from sweat and sea air.

“Because you’re a gentleman?” you whispered. “You are.”

His eyes fluttered, lashes casting long shadows against his cheeks. He looked so young in that moment. So breakable. So yours. You leant in, slow and sure, until your foreheads touched. His breath mingled with yours. You let your eyes fall half-lidded, the ghost of a smile brushing your lips.

“But I don’t want a gentleman right now, Steve.” Your voice fell to a hush, pressing a hand to his sternum, his pulse beating strong against your palm. “I want you.”

Then your mouth crushed into his, your lips meeting in a collision that tasted of heat and want and the sea itself. His breath caught hard in his chest, and for one weightless beat he didn’t move, frozen by shock, by need, by the collapse of everything he had fought so hard to hold back.

And then, God, he kissed you back.

His lips parted beneath yours with a soft, desperate sound and you drank him in. It wasn’t greedy or performative in the way a rake might take his pleasure, pressing and biting and claiming. Just aching, desperate want. His fingers clutched at your waist now, involuntary, digging just slightly into your flesh as if you were slipping from his grasp even while you sat still in his lap.

He groaned into the heat of your mouth as your hips rocked, your soaked cunt grinding against the hard line of him still trapped beneath cloth. You felt him twitch against you, felt the throb of him pulsing hot and needy.

Still, he tried to be good.

“Tell me to stop,” Steve rasped into your mouth, the words trembling between each kiss, even as his hands slid lower, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs like he was trying to remember what it felt like to touch something warm. "Christ, please, just tell me to stop.”

His mouth left yours only to drag over your jaw, your neck, the soft dip beneath your ear, kissing as though your skin were the only holy thing left in the world.

“Please,” he murmured, lips brushing your throat. You felt the ache in it, this man who had likely begged for nothing in his life, begging now, not for himself, but for your escape. “Just say it… and I will, I swear I—”

You answer with a moan, followed by another needy grind, arching against him, dragging your heat along his clothed cock again and wringing a sharp groan from the chest that usually carried command.

“Don’t stop,” you growled against his throat, open mouthed and wanting. “Fuck, Steve, don’t stop. I want you.”

That, finally, broke the captain.

He surged up into the kiss like it was oxygen and he’d been drowning. His hands found the curve of your ass and gripped you tight, easily pulling you closer, until there was nothing between you but damp heat and his pounding heart. The chair creaked beneath you, wood straining beneath the press of two bodies drawn too close. And the light passed through the porthole again, licking over you both, before returning the darkness.

Your hips rolled with wicked purpose, seeking friction, feeding it.

His tongue licked into your mouth with reverence turned desperate. But he let you guide it, let you taste him, let you press him deeper into the heavy chair, his legs spread beneath you as you straddled him like a throne.

You shifted your hips again, slowly now, the slick drag of your pussy soaking the seam of his trousers, and his jaw clenched hard against your neck. He let out a sound halfway between a whine and a curse, muffled against your shoulder where his mouth had now fallen. You felt him tremble. He was so fucking warm. So alive. So solid beneath you, thighs like stone braced between yours, his cock aching beneath thick navy cloth.

Your hands fisted in his hair, tugging until he looked up at you again.

He was panting, lips parted and wet with your kiss, blinking up at you, dazed and so gone, those striking blue eyes wild and wide with devotion. The pretty blush staining his cheekbones turned fever bright. You felt his breath catch when you licked into his mouth again, shameless now, swallowing every gasp.

Beautiful. And entirely at your mercy.

A shaky breath hitched from his chest. “You’re perfect,” he breathed, throat working around a swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing hard like the words had caught on the way out, too big and full of want to pass clean, “so perfect.”

You ground down harder in reply, the damp friction nearly unbearable now. You were so wet, it was obscene. The front of his trousers was dark with it. His hands fluttered uncertainly against your hips like he didn’t know what to do with all this wanting.

So you guided him. Your fingers threaded with his, and slowly, deliberately, you slid his hand between your legs. You pressed his palm against the hot, soaking centre of your need, grinding into it with a soft, keening whimper. His whole body jerked as his fingers slipped through the wetness staining your inner thighs.

“Feel that?” you gasped, rocking into his hand as you pressed your mouth to his ear. “That’s all for you, Captain.”

The groan that cracked out of him was raw, startled, dragged from the very centre of his chest. “Oh—fuck.”

His thumb twitched, his fingers flexed on instinct, and without needing to be told, began circling your swollen clit, spreading the slickness he found. Your mouth fell open, hips canting, and he chased the movement instinctively, before sinking a finger inside.

“There,” you urged, eyes hooded. “Just like that. Good boy.”

You clenched around him, and the broken noise that left him was pure need. Like your words had melted something inside him. Like he’d been starving for that, for praise, for softness wrapped around hunger, for someone to see how hard he was trying to be good.

“Christ, you—you’re so tight,” Steve rumbled, voice breaking open.

His free hand gripped your waist, grounding himself as he worked the first finger deeper, then added a second thick digit, stretching you just enough to burn in that delicious way.

His fingers curled, searching until they found that aching, tender spot inside you, and pressed. You cried out softly, hips stuttering, thighs tensing where they cradled his waist. That sound made him move faster, made his breath stutter against your cheek. His thumb circled your clit now in slow, deliberate swirls, just firm enough to make you squirm.

You let your head fall back, lashes fluttering, and he took it like reward. The wet heat of his mouth found your throat once more. You tilted your head to bare more of it to him, clutching your fingers in his hair as he curled his fingers just so, finding that place inside you that made stars claw behind your eyes.

“You’re good,” you whispered, stroking his hair. “You’re so good, Steve.”

He whined.

Actually whined for you, pulled from the back of his throat, fingers still stroking and curling like he wanted to crawl inside and stay there. You were dripping for him, every thrust sending slick sounds into the air between your bodies, obscene and perfect.

“Such good hands,” you purred, tilting his face up to yours again. His eyes were dark now, unfocused and glazed with heat. “Made to please, weren’t you? I could let you touch me like this forever.”

Steve moaned wantonly. His cock twitched beneath you, thick and trapped beneath too many layers.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” you cooed. “Me, dripping all over your fingers, riding your hand, as you listen to how wet I get for you.”

He nodded his head eagerly, lips parted, breathless, “I want it—I want all of it. Want to make you feel good. Want to feel you fall apart on me.”

You’d never taken a man like this before. Never drawn it out. Never let yourself enjoy it, always too consumed with the end, with the soul, the devouring.

But oh, he made you greedy. For more than just the taste. For the whole experience of him. For the way his mouth trembled against your skin, the way his fingers moved in you, chasing your pleasure. He was so responsive. So good. Not crude in his want, not possessive or pushing, just offering.

He wasn’t chasing his own pleasure, he was chasing you. Your sounds, your body, your release. He wanted you to come. He wanted you to use him. He wanted to give himself away. You’d never felt anything like it. And it made you feral, twisting the craving inside you into something sweeter. Meaner. More desperate.

You wanted to sink your claws into his soul and hold it forever.

You kissed him again deeper this time, opened him like floodgates, and he poured into you without resistance. Your tongue pushed further into his mouth, wet and possessive, tasting him, claiming him. And he let you. He kissed you back with all the fervent, broken worship of a man on his knees before a God he didn’t understand but needed more than air.

He groaned into it, so sweet, so full of need it made your clit throb, your own need spiralling over.

You ground down on him, fucking yourself on his hand, and he watched you, devastated, awestruck, jaw slack and lips parted as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

His fingers were relentless now, stroking deep with every thrust with deliberate eager pressure, like he wanted to memorise you by feel. His thumb never left your clit, and the pads of his fingers were soaked, slick dripping from your pussy down to his wrist, glistening in the lamplight.

“Fuck, just like that, Steve,” you hissed, moaning softly as he grazed that spot inside you again. “So good for me. You want me to come on your fingers, sweet boy?”

Your walls fluttered again, the coil inside you tightening, threatening to snap. He felt it, that telltale clench of your cunt sucking greedily around his fingers, and his breath broke into something rough and urgent.

“I—fuck,” he rasped, barely more than breath. “Please.”

“What is it, Captain?” you teased, grinding down on his hand harder, and you felt the tension twist in your belly, drawing taut. “Want something?”

His lips were on your throat again, open and reverent, as if kissing the words into your skin. “Want to make you come,” he groaned. “Please. I want—need—to see you.”

“Good boy,” you whispered, the praise dripping from your tongue like honey, and God, the sound he made.

A low, shuddering whimper, muffled against your skin. His fingers twitched inside you, deeper, more desperate now, and finally, you came undone.

Your eyes rolled back, hips jerking, muscles clenching around his fingers as tumbled desperately over the edge. Steve held you close, one arm around your waist as you shuddered through it, letting your pleasure soak his hand, your thighs trembling around him.

You rode it out with your mouth parted, breath catching in your throat, your grip tight in his hair as you came with soft, wet sounds and possessive praise. When you finally stilled, he was trembling beneath you, mouth pressed to your sternum through cloth, his breath scorching.

He eased his hand from you with aching care, your arousal coating his fingers in shining streaks. His eyes lowered, and he brought those fingers to his mouth without hesitation. A light, pleased sound escaped him, and he licked the last of you from his knuckles like he was afraid to waste a drop.

You curled your fingers beneath his chin, tilting his face up. His lips were pink, kiss bitten, and his pupils were blown wide with need. Unable you resist, you leant down and kissed him, tasting yourself on his tongue. 

“You want inside me, pretty boy?” you purred into his mouth. “You want me to let your cock feel my pussy now?”

He whimpered, nodding furiously, “God,” he breathed. “Please—yes.”

Oh, you were going to ruin him. He was so beautifully wrecked already and you weren’t nearly done with him. You dragged your thumb slowly across his lower lip. It trembled beneath your touch.

Your hands found the fastenings of his trousers and made short, deliberate work of them. His breath hitched when your fingers brushed against the damp front of his briefs, his cock hard and straining. You hummed softly, pleased.

“Oh,” you murmured, drawing the fabric down with slow, indulgent care, “look at you.”

His hips lifted obediently, letting you strip him, dragging the fabric down just enough to free him. And Christ, he was beautiful. Big, thick, flushed dark at the tip, veins like carved marble, twitching in the cold air. Your mouth watered.

You wrapped your hand around the base and heard his sharp inhale, followed by the whimper that he tried, and failed, to swallow. His thighs tensed beneath you, muscles drawn tight as rigging in a storm.

“Is this all for me?” you whispered, teasing your thumb over the weeping head. You felt the way his pulse stuttered under your fingers. “So hard, pretty boy. You’ve been aching this whole time, haven’t you?”

He choked on a sound, nodded. His fingers clenched on the arms of the chair. “I—yeah—please.”

“You did so well for me, going to reward you now,” you muttered against his skin. “My sweet Captain.”

He was panting now, almost shaking under the weight of it all - your praise, your hand, the sheer unbearable pleasure of being wanted. His head tipped back against the chair as you shifted forward, letting his shirt that you still wore fall from one shoulder.

“You love hearing that, don’t you?” you cooed, stroking him him in a steady rhythm, “Pretty boy. Sweet boy. My good, good Captain.”

He whined, nodding helplessly, hips grinding up into your hand. “Please. I need you—need to feel you—please, I’ll be good.”

The plea was so soft, so unlike the guttural demands of others, that it made your pussy clench around nothing, eager for the stretch of him. You released his cock then, and let it slap wetly against his stomach where his shirt had rumpled up. The sound was obscene, and the sight even better. Thick and flushed and leaking for you. 

Rising slightly, you guided the head of his cock through your soaked folds until he was panting beneath you, his knuckles white in their grip now.

His hips jerked. “Oh God, please,” he panted.

“I know, Stevie,” you hushed. “I know you need it. You’ve been so, so good.”

You angled your hips and began to sink down.

He was so thick. You felt the stretch immediately, your walls hugging him inch by inch as you lowered yourself down with deliberate, excruciating grace. His head dropped, breath stuttering against your shoulder as his hands moved from the armrest to your waist. His mouth fell open in a silent moan as your heat enveloped him.

“Oh—oh God—,” Steve gritted out, utterly lost in the feel of your heat, so tight and wet around him. 

You gasped, head falling back, your walls fluttering around him, drawing him in deeper. “So big,” you panted, “so fucking deep.”

Steve whimpered, barely holding on.

And when you finally sank fully down, taking him to the hilt, you stayed there, tight around him, letting your cunt throb with every desperate pulse of his cock, every ragged breath, every reverent moan like it was the tithe he owed you just for the privilege of being inside.

You leant in closer, your breasts brushing against his chest, your breath ghosting over his parted lips. His head tipped back automatically, offering himself up without thought. And when you dipped your head and licked a slow line up the sweat slicked tendon of his neck, you felt him melt.

“Feel how well you fit inside me, Captain?” you breathed against his throat. “Like you were made for this. Made for me.”

His groan was broken. Devotional. And you kissed him until breath became an afterthought.

He moaned into your mouth like it was pulled from somewhere deep, dragged out past the bones, his hands trembling as they slid up your back, holding you close like he was afraid you’d vanish. 

You rolled your hips just right, grinding down in a way that made your clit drag against the base of him and his cock press into that spot inside you that made cry out. Steve gasped into your mouth, eyes fluttering, and you caught the rumble in his throat, deep and broken, the sound swallowed between your lips as he bucked once, unable to help it, his whole body shaking with need.

“That’s it, pretty boy,” you urged. “Just like that. You’re doing so well for me.”

You were so wet that every grind of your hips sounded slick and obscene, your arousal coating him, sliding down the thick base of his cock as your walls flexed around him again and again.

He moaned again, sharp and high in the back of his throat. “You’re so tight, and warm, and—God, please, please don’t stop.”

You arched against him, dragging your cunt up and back down again, digging your nails into his shoulders as your walls rippled around him. His breath caught at the feeling, eyes fluttering. He looked at you like you were a vision, like a holy thing. Something between worship and ruin.

He was so deep inside you, thick and hot, pulsing against your walls like he belonged nowhere else. Like he’d been made for the sole purpose of being taken by you, here, like this.

“Does it feel good, sweet Captain?” you murmured. “Being inside me like this?”

He nodded again, frantic, gasping softly. “Yes… God, yes, feels like—” His voice caught, another desperate moan pouring from his lips. You kissed his throat, let your teeth graze the delicious, pounding pulse beneath the skin.

“Feels like what?” You bit the words, punctuating each one with a roll of your hips, slow and cruel. “Tell me.”

His hips bucked once, before restraint tugged him back down into the chair. His jaw clenched. Sweat glistened at his hairline, in the hollow of his throat.

“Feels like I’m gonna lose myself,” he whispered, hoarse and half-drunk on you. “Like I’m not gonna come back.”

You smiled, slow and sweet and predatory, and rocked down harder. The soft, broken sound he made was punched straight from his lungs, and it made your walls flutter around him.

“You won’t,” you promised, lips brushing his. “Not all the way.”

He moaned once more, a sound dragged up from deep in his chest, and let his head fall back, scrunching his eyes closed.

His body trembled beneath yours. He was so strong, so beautiful, his thighs flexed under you, his arms holding you steady, but it was all yours now. He was all yours now.

He was so close already, on the very knife’s edge of surrender. The bright heat of his pleasure bloomed in the air around you like blood in water.

You felt it when he started break open. Not just his body - though that, too, was a marvel, the way his breath stuttered in your mouth, how his hands gripped your hips like he needed something to hold onto or be swept under. But no, it wasn’t that. Not entirely.

It was the moment his soul cracked open. The moment your lips grazed the hinge of his throat, and some part of him unraveled and let you in. You felt it. Not like slipping inside flesh, but like falling into light.

His stubborn soul was finally right at the surface, soft and shining.

You looked down at him then, really looked, and it was still there, that same maddening goodness that hadn’t dulled no matter how much you’d tried to seduce it away. Even now, right on the edge of release, his heart spilled quietly through his eyes, like you were something to be adored.

Oh, and you could taste it. That sweet core of him, lit golden and trembling and so open now, almost yours, bleeding into your skin, leaking through his tongue, his cock, his fingers.

It wasn’t purity, nor innocence; he’d seen too much for that. But a light. A weightless light that clung to his soul even as his body trembled and gave under yours. Every time your cunt gripped him, every slow press of your hips, you could taste it more - that glowing centre of him, this honest, golden want.

It poured to the surface, aching and alive and so human, braided with grief and hope and everything he’d held together with trembling hands. And you, who had tasted countless, who had consumed kings and sailors and men who begged you for death, found yourself still.

And starving. You could take it. It would be delicious. All that goodness, all that impossible light, collapsing into you like a sun drowned beneath your skin. You could drink him down in a single breath and let the sea carry his bones into myth.

But you didn’t. Because for the first time, you didn’t want to end a soul. You wanted to own it.

You wanted to feel that light flicker against your ribs for the rest of eternity. You wanted to trap that impossible warmth beneath your skin and keep it. To bury it in your darkness and keep it safe, selfish and sacred. To make his goodness yours, until the world rotted, and the sea dried, and the lighthouse finally blinked and died.

You rolled your hips with exquisite pressure, and he shuddered.

“You wanna drown in this pussy, pretty boy?” you murmured, voice coated with your need. “Wanna sink so deep inside me you forget which way is up? Wanna be lost in me forever?”

“Yes,” he begged, shameless and ragged, and he dropped his forehead to your shoulder, teeth biting down gently against the slope of it. “Please—let me—please, I want to drown in you, I want to—,” but the sentence never ended. It bled into another moan, this one muffled against your skin, 

“Mmm,” you hummed. “You wanna come while I’m milking your cock, while my sweet little cunt’s got you locked down so tight you’ll never get free?”

He whimpered, loud, desperate, and you clenched around him, watching his eyes roll back, as fingers clawed at your hips - just trying to hold on as you coaxed his pleasure out like a riptide. You were soaking him now, your pussy a hot, tight sheath around his cock, pulling him in, dragging him under.

“My pretty Captain. Mine.” You reaped, voice low and rough with hunger as your teeth grazed his throat. “Say it. Let me keep you.”

“’m yours, please, I want to be—I am—,” he babbled, utterly gone for you, “just let me feel you, want to be yours, forever—please.”

A gasped moan tore free from your lungs at his vow, low and wretched, punched straight from the pit of your hunger. You clamped around him again and he sobbed, just once, pulled from his throat, cracked and quiet.

Your body bucked, hips stuttering above him as your cunt fluttered, aching, coiling tight around the promise of another release. It was too much, the way he said it, so broken and sincere. He gave it freely, that vow, not knowing the shape of the thing he’d handed you.

Forever.

“Good boy,” you praised, riding him a little faster now, the sounds wet and obscene, your slick soaking his cock and thighs. “I’ll be so good to you.”

He whined in answer, cock throbbing inside you. It was twitching with every roll of your body, and still he held back, held on, waiting for you, needing your permission to fall apart.

You curled forward over him, hands bracing on his shoulders, and let yourself grind down hard, chasing that high with a needy gasp. The chair groaned beneath you both, wood whining like it knew something sacred was being defiled.

“Please” he choked, voice breaking. “Please, let me, please—I need—”

The desperation in his voice pulled another high pitched moan from your chest. His soul trembled against the surface, pressed so close it was blinding. His hands shook where they held you, knuckles pale, and you could feel the tension building just beneath his skin.

You leant forward, kissed the corner of his mouth with a gentleness that made him tremble, and whispered, “Come for me, Stevie. Let me have it.”

He broke as soon as the words left your mouth.

He spilled into you with a gasp like a man drowning, clinging tight to your waist as if your body might anchor him against the tide of ecstasy. His whole frame shuddered beneath you, cock pulsing deep inside your cunt as you tightened around him, milking him, letting his pleasure flood you. 

His groan was long and helpless, cracked open at the edges, as you followed him over the edge. Your orgasm tore through you like a storm cracking open the sea, flooding every hollow inside you with heat.

Your lips found his and you sucked at his mouth, hungry, greedy, moaning against him like you meant to drink him in. And oh, how he tasted. 

His soul, sweet as sunlit water, ached with grief and hope and everything you’d never known in all your time beneath the waves. You moaned against his mouth, helpless, delirious, hips still twitching as the aftershocks pulsed through you. It would’ve been so easy to take his light. 

But you resisted. You wanted all of him.

Instead, you opened yourself, freeing the cold, bottomless hollow where a soul should have lived. It spread wide with hunger, aching with want, and you let the black thread of your essence slip into him through the kiss.

It slithered down his mouth, his throat, his ribs before sinking into his chest, coiling tight and possessive around his light. Outside, the lighthouse pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Steve gasped softly at the intrusion, but he didn’t pull away. If anything, he opened further, welcoming. And you, starving, drew the smallest thread of gold back with you. Just a sliver. Just enough to live in you.

You kissed him through it, breath panting and broken, as you marked him from the inside out. As your dark thread wrapped around his light like a lover’s arms. He whimpered into your mouth, dazed and trembling, still sheathed inside your body, still pulsing softly. 

He was yours now, forever.

Still panting beneath you, Steve’s breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat. The light in his eyes flickered like a candle too close to the wind, barely holding. And all of it for you.

You dragged your hands down the flushed, trembling lines of his chest through his shirt, damp with sweat. You could feel his cock softening inside you, the last of his release spilling from where your bodies joined, seeping down your thighs like a claim. Your claim.

Your cunt, soaked and twitching with the last vestiges of climax, throbbed gently around him, reluctant to let go.

“Good boy,” you whispered, possessive and low, the praise more spell than sound. Your fingers traced his jaw, and he leant into your touch. “You did so well for me, my pretty Captain. Took me so well. Gave me everything.”

He made a small, broken sound at that, something between a whimper and a sigh. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, lips parted, still pink and swollen from your kisses, and the light in his chest pulsed with the echo of you inside it.

You watched him. The way his lashes trembled. The slow, stuttering drag of his breath. He looked spent, like a man who had finally laid down his armour.

Leaning down, you brushed your lips across his temple, a whisper ghosting soft against his skin. “Take me to bed, Stevie.”

His eyes found yours, barely. Dazed and shining and so full of you. He nodded, wordless at first, like he’d forgotten language. 

Then, soft and thick with worship, “You’re perfect.”

He shifted slowly, carefully, and you lifted yourself from him, and his cock slipped from you with a wet sound. He gasped at the sensation, already aching at the loss of your warmth. You watched, pleased and possessive, at how his flushed length twitched against his thigh, glistening with your slick and his seed.

He tucked himself away with trembling fingers, still panting, eyes on you the whole time like you might vanish if he looked away.

And then he gathered you into his arms like you weighed nothing. That strength of his, which he’d kept so leashed before, curled beneath you and lifted you with ease. 

“You feel like heaven,” he muttered, more breath than word, tucking you close as he stood. His lips brushed your temple as he carried you the few steps to the bed. “Like something I’ve been waiting for and didn’t even know I needed.”

The words stirred something low and dark in your belly. Not lust, not anymore. Something worse. A kind of longing so deep it felt like a wound.

You curled into his chest as he settled you down, his body a broad, sturdy shield at your back as his warmth enveloped you. One strong arm banded around your waist, and a leg tangled with yours. You could feel the tender touch of his other hand along your thighs, your hips, your waist.

He tucked you in further against him, fitting himself round your body protectively. His mouth nuzzled the curve of your shoulder, still murmuring soft nothings against your skin. How soft you were. How sweet. How perfect.

Fools’ words, the lot of them. 

Yet you stayed silent and soaked up his worship like something that deserved it. It was a selfish, terrible greed that belonged to dragons coiled around their golden hoards.

But you’d never had this before. There had never been after. Never any body left warm beside you. Never breath, never praise, never touch that lasted longer than the moment before their heart stopped.

And if your heart hadn’t rotted away long ago, maybe you would’ve felt guilt, or shame, or grief for what you took. But you just felt warm.

Like something ancient and wicked curled deep in your chest had finally opened one greedy eye and stretched, purring. You felt his breath against your skin and wanted more of it. His arm draped over your waist and you wanted it tighter. You wanted his pulse. His praise. His bones. You wanted to burrow inside the cradle of his ribs and make a home there.

You shifted in his arms slightly, twisting to face him, watching how his lashes fluttered against his cheek as sleep tried to claim him. You brushed your thumb across his bottom lip, and he sighed softly, leaning into your touch like a man starved.

The air felt heavy, like something was watching. Perhaps the lighthouse. Perhaps the sea. Perhaps something older still.

“Sleep, my good Captain, let the waves take you,” you whispered, voice low and honey sweet, your thumb still stroking the soft swell of his lip. “Let them rock you down beneath. I’ll protect you.”

His lashes fluttered once, twice, before they stilled, his breath deepening, chest rising and falling against yours in a slow, steady rhythm. The tension in his brow eased. One of his hands twitched where it rested against your hip, then stilled too.

Through the porthole, the lighthouse continued its vigil, pale light sweeping across his peaceful face, claiming him. You watched the last of his awareness slip under, watched the final thread of resistance slacken.

“Good boy,” you murmured, just above a breath, lips at the shell of his ear. “So easy now. So soft. So mine.”

And Steve, obedient even in sleep, exhaled like he’d heard you. As though he belonged to you even in his dreams.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

Steve woke to screaming. 

Screaming and blood in his mouth and the taste of iron in the air. The sea cradled the lower half of his body like it meant to drag him down. A dark, unfeeling mass that offered nothing and took everything. His upper half clung to a rock; he could feel the sharp bite of barnacle-slick stone tearing at his uniform.

The fog hung thicker than ever. Sight was smothered to mere metres. But the rest of Steve’s senses still forced a dreadful vision upon him. One of blood, and thrashing, and splintering wood, and wretched cries.

The Nomad was dead.

Steve’s voice cracked through the air, rough and broken, calling the names of his men. But he was met only with their screams.  

The lighthouse now loomed closer than ever. No longer a silhouette in mist, but a vast black monolith. So close Steve could almost reach out and touch its slick, decaying stone if he had the strength. The light still turned at its crown, pale and pulsing, the same ghostly sweep, slow and mechanical, like the breath of some giant godless lung.

And with each pass, it cut through the fog to reveal a piece of hell. And all Steve could do was watch. 

First, it swept across Stark, battered and bloodied, lungs snatching for air as he clung to a piece of driftwood. His mouth screamed, but no sound carried. Then the beam passed. And he was swallowed by the fog.

When the light turned round again, there were bodies, two - no, three - floating limp in the water.

Panic surged up Steve’s spine, and a sickening weight curled around his ribs. His body ached, scraped and bruised, and yet it felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else entirely.

Movement stirred beneath him.

Not the tide. Not driftwood. Something darker. Long and glistening like a leviathan’s tongue. Sleek, fast, and far too silent. 

Then the light found two more, Rumlow and Rollins, locked together in a desperate grip over the same piece of wreckage. The surface trembled. The sea quivered like something alive. Then Rollins was snatched beneath the black with a strangled scream. A spray of red bloomed across the water as his replacement.

The light passed. Gone. 

Steve’s breath caught, blinking hard, breath heaving shallow and fast. It had been a violence so swift his mind lagged behind what his eyes had already seen.

He tried to move, pushed against the stone, but his limbs were molasses, heavy and wrong. His hands slipped on the rock. His heartbeat was too loud in his ears. Or maybe that was more screaming. Distant and high, warbling like a gull, but human. Definitely human.

His vision pulsed with the rhythm of the lighthouse. Flash, horror, then dark. Flash, another name he knew, torn from life mid-scream, then dark.

The fog concealed it all again the moment the light moved on. There was no time to process, only to see and lose. See and lose. Another soul torn from the sea like meat. Each glimpse a needle under the fingernails. Each moment of darkness a breath that could be his last.

Then the next sweep of light revealed something different.

Just above the surface, almost human-like in shape, shoulders just breaching the waterline, hair trailing behind like a veil spun from ink. But it moved like no human. 

Steve squinted, chest tightening, bracing himself.

The creature plunged through the sea with a predatory grace. Easy and purposeful. Locked on another target. The man splashed in desperation, arms flailing, mouth sputtering, perhaps to cry out a prayer or plea. But then the creature cooed at him, soft and delicate.

He leant towards the silhouette, and its lips brushed his in a mockery of a kiss. And then it bit. Teeth sank into his mouth and ripped. The blood pulsed from him in thick, arterial sprays. The ocean drank it greedily.

He thrashed once, twice, then the body jerked backward like a puppet with its strings cut, arms splayed wide, the neck bent back too far. A gurgle escaped what was left of his face before the sea swallowed him whole. The light swung away, unremorseful.

Steve choked. A stuttering gasp ripped from his lungs. Salt filled his nose and throat, and the taste of iron doubled, trebled, nausea twisting in his gut. His heart punched against his ribs, mouth open, drawing sharp lungfuls of air as bile rose high and sour in his throat. 

But it was silent now. The screams had stopped. And that felt worse.

The light swung back again, over the creature. A suggestion of form mostly submerged, half-made by the dark. And it was moving towards him.

Then the fog parted, and Steve’s heart stopped. It was you.

A creature of sea and bone and abyss. A gorgeous horror. Your skin pale and slick with saltwater sheen and blood, glistening across your bare chest, streaking down your chin, your collarbones, and your breasts like tears of ruin. Mouth as red as a split pomegranate, lips wet with someone else’s end, the sharp white of your teeth just visible behind the plush curve of your smile.

Below the surface, he made out the movement of dark, sinuous muscle, flexing slow with each tilt of your hips beneath the waterline. The tail was as thick as his chest, scaled and ridged with spines. The water quivered around it like the sea itself deferred to you. You truly were a marvel of monstrous design. 

Your eyes met his, catching the faint beam of the lighthouse like polished obsidian. But the hunger in them sharpened into something possessive as they trailed over him.

He should have recoiled. Should have pushed back, screamed, fought. Should have begged whatever tattered holy thing he had left to shield his soul from what now stood before him. 

But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Something in him refused.

You were beautiful. Not soft, nor safe. No. There was no prettiness in your bloodied grace, no kindness in the divine geometry of your face. You were beautiful the way shipwrecks are beautiful - glittering ruin, strewn with bones and treasure. 

And yet, your face was serene, even bared in your monstrous glory. A beauty so terrible it demanded reverence. The kind of beauty men drowned for. Death made flesh.

The moment your fingers brushed his cheek, turning him to you, still wet and stained with another man’s blood, something inside Steve settled. 

He let out a breath like something in him had loosened. Like the storm in his chest had found its eye. The uneven, panic struck jerks of his breath subsided. His ribs stopped straining like they meant to crack open. Instead, warmth spread through his spine.

You leant in close, so close the tips of your fangs almost brushed his cheek.

“There you are, my sweet thing,” you murmured, voice like a lullaby, “Still here. Still mine.”

Your hand moved from his cheek to his throat, thumb brushing where his pulse thundered. His head tilted toward the touch like it was instinct.

“You did so well. My brave Captain,” you crooned, and something inside him cracked. His eyes fluttered, breath catching not with fear but pleasure. “Held on so tight. Watched so much. Poor, brave boy.”

Steve moaned.

A soft, broken thing, barely audible, as his body sagged against the rock, strength bleeding out of him. But he didn’t care. He was watching you like you were the last thing that made sense in the world.

You pressed Steve back, gently, until his spine met the cold stone and your breasts brushed his chest, blood-slick skin against his soaked uniform. He didn’t resist, and his hands found their home at your hips, fingertips gently brushing your scales.

“Let go now,” you purred. “It’s done. They’re gone. You’re safe. You’re mine.”

You kissed him, lips still blood-warm, tongue sweeping through his mouth - yours now. He breathed into it, slipping past fear, past thought, and into the dark your touched summoned, fastening to you with the certainty of something claimed.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃˙˳⋆

They found him adrift in the fog, clinging to driftwood long since worn smooth by salt and time.

His body was half in the water, half out, slack with exhaustion, skin pale and blooming with bruises. The uniform that once marked him a captain had frayed to shreds, threads of navy and gold dissolving into the sea.

They hauled him aboard with ropes and careful hands.

He told them his name was Steve Rogers. That he had captained a ship - “The Nomad, yes, that’s right,” - and that it had gone down in uncharted waters after a storm.

His voice was quiet, ragged from salt and sea, but certain. His gaze steady, even kind. He smiled when they offered him a blanket. Thanked them with pale lips and soft words that didn’t quite match the bruising on his throat or the hollowness in his eyes.

They mentioned the fog, how it had swallowed the stars, that it had eaten their charts alive. Steve nodded, “Yes, it comes and goes around here.”

And when one of them spoke, hesitant and anxious, of the lighthouse they could just make out through the shifting grey, its pale eye pulsing in slow, even breaths, Steve’s smile deepened.

“You should go there,” he spoke softly, but still edged with that captain’s authority that made men listen. “If you’re looking for safe waters. It’s the only thing still standing.”

They murmured amongst themselves, nodded, then adjusted the sails.

The fog began to close in.

Steve hummed as they turned the bow. A low, tuneless thing, carried off in snatches of wind. His eyes never left the horizon, fixed on the slow, mournful glow of the tower in the mist. His body was still, but his expression remained gentle.

“Soon, my love,” he breathed. “Soon you’ll feast again.”

“Listen,” Victor rasps. “Please.”

The Creature bends closer.

Victor shuts his eyes, steadying himself. When he opens them again, they are wet.

“I was not… only your creator,” he says. “But I was father to another.”

The Creature doesn’t move. He barely breathes.

Victor swallows, the sound harsh in the quiet cabin. “A daughter. Born of my foolish youth. My secrecy.” His voice catches. “My shame.”

The Creature’s brow furrows. “A daughter.”

“Yes.” Victor nods once, trembling. “She lives. I have wronged her. As I wronged you. As I wronged everyone who ever loved me.”

He coughs, agony tearing through his chest. The Creature’s hand steadies him, instinctively protective. For a moment, Victor leans into it like it’s the only solid thing left in the world.

“Find her,” Victor gasps. “Not to comfort me… but to give her what I cannot. To tell her the truth I buried. To—”

His voice breaks.

“To ask her forgiveness, as you have given me yours.”

The Creature feels something cold and unfamiliar thread through him. 

Responsibility.

Purpose.

Victor’s gaze blurs, drifting toward a memory only he can see. “You are the only one who can carry this,” he whispers. “Promise me.”

The Creature grips his creator’s hand more firmly. “I will find her.”

Victor’s breath stutters. “And?”

“I will ask for her forgiveness.”

A faint, shaking exhale escapes Victor. Relief. Gratitude. Regret woven into all of it.

Outside, the wind howls against the wooden hull like a creature in mourning.

Victor looks at him one last time. “Thank you… my son.”

His fingers go slack.

The lantern flickers.

The ship creaks.

And for the second time in his life, the Creature kneels beside the body of the man who created him.

× × × × 

It is dusk, the hour when candles are lit and the town exhales after its long day. You sit by the window above the bakery, needle moving in steady strokes as you mend your mother’s only Sunday dress. Flour dust drifts through the floorboards from below; the scent of warm bread clings to everything you own.

Your world is small, but it is yours.

You don’t hear the knock at the door.

You only feel the faint tremor of the floorboards beneath your feet, then see your mother freeze in the doorway—her work apron still tied around her waist, sleeves rolled up, hair pinned in the haste of a long day.

Her hand lifts to her mouth. Her eyes widened. And then you see the letter pressed into the stranger’s gloved hand.

Thick paper. Red seal. Wealth written all over it.

Your mother snatches it as if it might vanish, nods shakily to the courier, closes the door with trembling fingers.

She turns toward you.

And the look in her eyes… You have never seen that before.

Something like hope. Something like disbelief. Something like salvation arriving too late yet exactly in time.

You frown, setting the needle aside. “What is it?” you ask, brows knit.

She doesn’t answer back.

Instead she walks to you, slowly, as though afraid the moment will dissolve. She places the letter on the small table, then gently lifts the dress from your lap and sets it aside.

Her hands take yours.

Warm. Shaking.

Tears gather in her eyes.

“My heart,” she whispers, voice cracking, “your life has changed forever.”

You stare at her as she squeezes your hands tighter, tears spilling now—relief and fear and joy tangled together. You want to ask more, but she only shakes her head, unable to speak, pressing your knuckles to her lips as if giving thanks for something she thought would never come.

From the bakery below, the bell on the shop door rings, as ordinary as ever. But your mother’s trembling smile tells you nothing—nothing—is ordinary anymore.

Three long days after. . .

The carriage rumbles up the long stone path, wheels crunching through gravel you’ve never walked before. You sit beside your mother, clutching the faded bag that holds everything you own: three dresses, your mending kit, and a handful of keepsakes.

Three acreages.

Three plantations.

And the vast Frankenstein estate.

You try not to think of it. You still feel like a girl who lives above a bakery, paid in bread and a cot by the window.

When the carriage stops, the door swings open and a man in a worn but tidy coat steps forward. The groundskeeper. He bows—an actual bow—and says your name as though it belongs to someone far grander.

“Welcome home, Milady.”

Home. The word feels so out of place.

You step out onto the gravel.

The estate rises before you like something carved from a dream—massive, pale against the fading sky, windows dark as watching eyes.

You move to the base of the stone steps, your mother just behind you. The air is colder here. Sharper. It prickles the back of your neck.

You pause.

The world quiets.

Something crawls up your spine, subtle and instinctive. The feeling of being observed. A weight on the air, the kind that tells you you are not alone.

Your gaze snaps to the treeline.

Tall pines stand in rigid rows, shadows stretching long between them. You scan the dark shapes between the trunks, waiting for something—movement, breath, the glint of an eye.

Nothing.

Just the forest. Just the estate. Just the wind brushing the hem of your dress.

Still… the feeling lingers. Watching. Waiting.

The groundskeeper clears his throat gently. “Milady? Shall I show you and your mother inside?”

You turn back toward him, trying to shake off the strange tightness coiled in your chest.

But before you follow, you glance once more at the trees.

No movement. No sound.

Yet something—someone—is out there.

And you feel it.

Even if you cannot hear it.

× × × ×

The Manor swallows you whole.

It is enormous. High ceilings stretching into dark rafters. Corridors branching like arteries. Rooms large enough to echo even your footsteps.

You stick close to your mother, because one wrong turn and you could vanish into this place forever.

The air smells faintly of old books, polished wood, and time. The groundskeeper leads you down the grand hall. And then—

You stop.

A portrait hangs above the nearest staircase. Tall, gilded frame. Heavy with importance. The man inside painted with a solemn expression, dark curls, haunted eyes.

Victor Frankenstein.

Your father.

Your mother’s breath stutters; she looks up at the portrait like it’s a ghost. The groundskeeper pauses too, seeing where your attention has landed.

You tilt your head, arms crossing loosely as you study the painting.

Then, casually—almost politely—you speak, “Are we allowed to remove that?”

The groundskeeper nearly chokes.

“Excuse me, Milady?”

You gesture at the portrait again. “The painting. May we take it down?”

Your mother stiffens beside you. Her eyes widen so sharply it is a miracle they don’t fall out of her skull.

The groundskeeper blinks, utterly baffled, as if this is the first time anyone has ever dared to ask such a thing.

You look between both of them, confused by the sudden tension. “What? It is not as though he was—”

Your mother lunges forward.

“She jests!” she blurts out, grabbing the groundskeeper’s arm with a nervous laugh. “She is… merely overwhelmed by the grandness of the place!”

You frown. “I am not jest—”

Your mother’s hand slaps over your mouth so fast the wind from it practically knocks your bonnet askew.

You blink at her.

She gives a smile—wide, trembling, painfully desperate—to the groundskeeper. “You know how young ladies are. Playful with their words. She means nothing by it.”

You pull her hand off your face. “Mother,” you hiss, “I meant it.”

Her palm slaps over your lips again. Even harder this time.

The groundskeeper is caught somewhere between amusement and horror, his eyes darting between you two like he’s unsure if this is a private family dispute or a spectacle he should politely ignore.

At last he clears his throat and says, carefully, “The master’s portrait has hung there for decades, miss. It is… rather significant to the estate’s history.”

You lift your brows, prying your mother’s fingers off your mouth one by one. “Yes. I can see how significant a man must be to have such a large portrait after telling his own daughter she was a mist—”

Your mother clamps both hands over your face.

You let out a muffled, insulted noise.

The groundskeeper’s jaw drops.

Your mother’s smile becomes so tight and strained that it could snap. “She is… exhausted from travel.”

You nod behind her hands, eyes narrowed in betrayal.

“Well,” the groundskeeper says, flustered, straightening his coat. “Let us… continue the tour.”

Your mother drags you away before you can speak another syllable, whispering furiously,

“Can we please arrive before you cause a scandal?”

You smother a glare and glance over your shoulder.

The portrait still stares down at you.

And for the first time, you stare back without fear.

Only indifference.

× × × × 

The house sleeps like a beast.

Every corridor, a throat. Every doorframe, a rib. Every painting, an eye.

You lie in your enormous, unfamiliar bed, sheets cold against your skin. The moon spreads a silver path across the floorboards, and the wind rattles the balcony shutters just enough to keep your pulse awake.

At first you think the shape is part of a dream.

A shadow. Tall. Broad.

Standing just beyond the glass balcony doors, unmoving, like it had been waiting there long before you looked.

Your breath catches.

You blink.

The shadow does not.

It is a figure. A full, human silhouette. Shoulders too wide. Height wrong in a way your brain cannot quite accept. Not just a man. Something… larger.

Your throat tightens.

Slowly, you sit up, the mattress creaking beneath you. The figure turns — or you think it does — tilting its head as though listening to something.

Your heart slams against your ribs.

And then it moves.

One step back.

Then another.

Then gone, swallowed by the darkness just beyond the balcony rail.

You fling off the blankets and hurry across the cold floor, push open the glass doors, breath fogging in the night air.

Nothing.

Only the empty balcony.

The whisper of pine trees beyond the estate.

And a coldness that feels like someone had just been standing exactly where you are.

You wrap your arms around yourself.

You know what you saw.

You know.

You close the doors, latch them firmly, and return to your bed — but sleep will not come. Every creak feels pointed. Every painting feels watchful.

You lasted an hour before you gave up.

You pad down the hall, nightdress brushing against your ankles, bare feet whispering against the wooden floor. Soft candlelight glows beneath your mother’s door. You knock first out of habit, even though she may not hear the faint tap.

You let yourself in.

She is awake, propped against the pillows, reading her worn Bible by a stub of candle. Her face softens when she sees you.

You climb into the bed beside her and curl into her warmth like you did as a child.

“Can’t sleep?” she murmurs.

You shake your head. “It feels cold,” you whisper. “And it feels lonely. And…”

You hesitate.

“And I feel as though I’m being watched.”

Your mother snorts a soft laugh, closing her book. “In this grand place? With its rooms and its shadows? My dear heart, that’s nerves. You’re old enough to stop frightening yourself with ghost stories.”

You lift your head sharply. “I am not making it up.”

She gives you that indulgent, tired, fond look — the one she uses when she thinks your imagination has taken the reins.

You sigh and pull her arm around you, needing the contact. “When I tried to sleep, the paintings felt like… like a hundred eyes staring at me. And I saw a shadow on the balcony.”

“When you opened the door,” your mother says, smoothing your hair, “was anything there?”

“No.” But your voice is thin, uncertain.

She chuckles again. “Then there was no one, my love.”

You sit up a little. “You do not understand. I know what he did.”

“Who?” she asks.

“Victor.” His name tastes like metal. “I know his reputation. You let me read his notebook, remember? The one with those grotesque drawings… the bodies… the pieces he stitched together.”

Your mother’s expression flickers — guilt, regret, something protective.

You continue anyway, voice dropping to a whisper. “What if the souls of those corpses are after me? What if they follow blood? What if they know I am the only living thing connected to that man?”

She bursts into a laugh before she can stop herself.

You glare.

She wipes her eyes, still smiling. “Forgive me, my heart. You speak of it so seriously. But you truly expect the dead to climb out of their graves simply because you share a wicked man’s blood?”

“Yes,” you say simply.

Her laughter fades, replaced with gentler softness. She cups your cheek with a warm, work-calloused hand. “No one is coming for you. Ghost or otherwise. You are safe. The house only seems frightening because it is new.”

But you are not convinced.

And when she blows out the candle and the room folds into darkness, you cling to her a little tighter.