˚₊‧꒰ა 𓂋 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

Your mouth purses and you drop your eyes, instead taking his index finger and twisting it petulantly between yours, first one way and then the other until Jack has to let his hand go limp.

“I dunno,” you mumble.

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Is it interfering with your ability to work?”

“…Yes.”

Interfering might actually be putting it mildly. The question was largely ceremonial and both of you know it. You have done fuck-all since nine except follow him around from room to room like an imprinted duckling who has mistaken an attending physician for its mother.

“Tell me exactly what you need and maybe I’ll do something about this little crisis of yours.”

Jack has to work not to laugh when you immediately retreat. An entire evening spent attached to his hip, and now that he has finally asked you to name the obvious, you suddenly cannot bear to have a face.

You take his hand and hide behind it instead, pressing his palm over your mouth while your burning cheek fits itself into the cup of it.

Jack indulges you, fingers spreading gently along your temple.

“Need you, please,” you say eventually, muffled against his skin.

That is good enough for Jack. Several minutes later, he has the nearest consult-room locked behind you.

He sits you on the edge of the exam table and takes care of the rest himself. He would just like his functioning girlfriend back sooner rather than later.

Never mind that he gets to achieve that goal with his favorite activity — his fingers between your dripping thighs. One arm keeps you close, his mouth brushing your temple while he alternates praise with firm reminders that Shen is working close enough to hear you if you get careless.

“Quiet, angel. C’mon. You asked me to take care of you, let me do it.”

By the time he is fixing your underwear and smoothing your skirt back into place, you have gone pleasantly boneless beneath his calloused hands.

Jack checks you over once with intolerable satisfaction and says, “There. Think you can survive until we get home now?”

MICHAEL 'ROBBY' ROBINAVITCH notices the second you start to hover.

Suddenly his desk becomes the only viable place in the entire emergency department to sit, every trip past him requires some unnecessary little brush of your fingers over his arm, and tasks that should send you back to the front desk somehow end with you standing beside him again, blinking up saccharinely and asking if there's anything else he needs.

So very industrious and thoughtful. And entirely coincidental, surely. As though Robby hasn't learned your tells by now. That when you start taking your secretarial duties this seriously, what you actually want has very little to do with paperwork.

He has no intention of sharing that information with you, though.

That would be idiotic, handing you the answer key to your own behavior when half the fun is knowing what you want hours before you finally muster the courage to ask for it.

Much better to keep quiet. Much better, too, not to satisfy you immediately.

There is a particular sweetness to letting the problem marinate, to watching ordinary want become restless, fidgety desperation under his neglect.

He'll usually pull you somewhere private, like he's doing now, just to wind you tighter. Hand beneath your skirt, mouth against your ear, giving you exactly enough attention to make you think you'll get what you want, then he stops.

Smooths your skirt back into place, thumbs flat the little wrinkle he made at your hip.

Your face when you realize is almost worth the inevitable whining. Almost.

“Back to work.” He tips your chin up when you stare at him, wounded and incredulous. Fucking cute. “And don’t touch yourself. I mean it.” One last squeeze to your waist before he opens the door. “I’ll check later, sweetheart. You better be able to tell me you listened.”

His method has always been control. But not deprivation as you so often claim it to be.

Robby gives you plenty, eventually, but he likes deciding when you get it, likes watching your entire demeanor reorganize itself around the promise.

And it works well.

You spend the rest of the shift behaving beautifully. Phones answered, paperwork handled, not one smart comment when Frank starts needling you, because every so often Robby materializes beside your desk, bends down to look at you over his glasses, and asks, “Still being good for me?”

You nod every single time. A little quicker as the hours drag on.

By the time another quiet-ish stretch finally opens up, he decides you have suffered enough. And Robby is generous when generosity has been earned.

He takes his time despite having almost none of it, hands spreading your thighs wider while his mouth works between them with languid attention, licking through the slick mess of your pussy you have been carrying around all afternoon.

Every little attempt to squirm away from his tongue gets corrected with a firmer grip. He knows exactly what he withheld from you and apparently intends to repay it with interest.

“Knew you could listen,” he says when he finally looks up. His mouth is wet. “Much nicer like this, isn’t it? When you behave.”

FRANK LANGDON has very little tolerance for your neediness because it tends to expose his own.

Wanting you is manageable when you’re across the department, reduced to glimpses between curtains and the occasional flash of your smile over somebody’s shoulder. Those he can quarantine alongside hunger and exhaustion, banal inconveniences he will deal with later.

It becomes harder when you follow him into the supply room and wrap both arms around his waist before the door has even settled shut behind you.

“Missed you,” you say against his back.

Frank keeps looking at the shelf in front of him, though he has stopped reading any of the labels.

“We saw each other twenty minutes ago.”

You make a small, unconvinced sound and edge nearer, fitting yourself along his spine, turning breathing into a shared activity.

Your mouth rests just below his shoulder blade; he can sense the question gathering there before it arrives, “Didn’t you miss me?”

“I think we need to start working on this attachment issue of yours,” Frank snorts, though the hand that finds the lock does so with pathetic urgency. “You’re spoiled, you know that? Nobody ever taught you you can’t get everything the second you want it.”

The lecture might carry more authority if he weren't already turning around and walking you backward, one hand closing around your waist until your shoulders meet the wall.

“What’re you gonna do when I take a vacation?” he asks, mouth grazing your cheek.

His fingers are already working his belt loose. He gets the button open, drags his zipper down and pushes his pants lower with one impatient shove, proving absolutely nothing about which of you missed the other more.

Frank maintains the fiction anyway.

Every little sound you make against the supply-room wall while he fucks you earns some irritated huff against your cheek, a muttered Jesus, baby, like your whining is an inconvenience being inflicted upon him rather than the entire reason his pace keeps changing whenever he finds one he particularly likes.

The hypocrisy lasts all the way through, right up until he walks you back into the department himself with you looking very obviously debauched, prompting Robby to stare at him and Jack to ask whether Frank understands the meaning of discretion.

Frank does not.