No one of importance

“what the fuck, bren!” you complain, finding your not boyfriend but something you don’t know how to name with a small, pleased smile on his face.

you met brendon on your first shift as a first year resident, on a day very similar to this one. everyone had warned you about the stoic “park the shark”, but your nonchalant personality and the way you didn’t buckle under his stern gaze was enough to have him take a liking on you, and have you at the end of the night in his bed.

“the influx is high and the patient is stable. robby asked me to stay and keep an eye on him.”

“alright. present.” he tells you as he starts to take the limb out of the bag.

you take a deep breath and exhale. “patient arrived conscious but we chose to sedate him due to the pain. cefazolin and gent administered as he walked in. arm is double bagged on ice. sterile saline on the inner bag, ice water in the outer bag, no ice-on-skin contact, obviously. clear chest, abdomen and pelvis.”

park takes a look at the x-ray. “good. good.” he turns to you. “missed you last night.”

you give him a shy smile. “shift was hard, i passed out as soon as i got home.” park gives you a side eyed look. “missed you too.”

“wound is clean, no crush injury and the perfect transport time. reimplantation is a go.” he turns to the red phone, murmuring something you can quite catch, but imagine it being about the OR. “room is booked. where is the saline?”

you point out to the cabinet near him. “what are you doing?”

“we’re irrigating this with three litres.” he tells you, setting the bags on a tray.

“don’t you have somewhere to go?”

“i’d rather be here helping you.” brendon says when he starts pouring the liquid over the arm. “you coming home with me today?”

nodding eagerly, you say “yeah.”

You hold the thin sheet to your bare chest and shift further up the headboard, bending your knees to accommodate his body when he sits on the edge of the mattress to tie his laces. Your eyes soften, waiting for him to look back at you.

He never does.

More quietly, you tell him, “I asked if you wanted to order food. ‘Cause I don’t really feel like cooking right now and, depending on what you want, we should probably wait to order ‘cause Love Island doesn’t come on for another hour, and—”

Jack’s scruffy chin brushes the thin fabric of his shirt as he turns his head slowly to look at you. There’s a distance in his eyes that cuts you off, like you’re a quick fuck that doesn’t know when to stop talking, like he’s waiting for you to stop so he can get away.

“I think I’m gonna head out now, actually,” he tells you, then returns to knot his laces.

“Oh…” you hum, half-breathless, and pretend his foreign dismissiveness doesn’t tear your chest in two. “Are you… Are you okay—?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs and rises from the mattress. “I’m fine. I just— Need to get home.”

You follow him with wet eyes as he rounds the bed for the opposite side, where his phone and wallet sit on the nightstand and his branded rucksack rests on the floor. “Well, do you want me to wait to watch it with you? ‘Cause then I have to text Princes and tell her not to spoil it for me in the morning—”

“Go ahead,” Jack shrugs, with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, as he slides the camo strap over his broad shoulder. “I think I’ll survive a week without it.”

Your frown deepens at his joke.

“Did I do something?” you wonder in a meek voice that makes his chest ache.

“No,” he scoffs. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know…” you murmur shyly, shifting on the mattress and grimacing slightly when the sticky sheets cling to your thighs. “You never leave right after we have sex, so I— I didn’t know if, maybe… It wasn’t good for your something, or if I said something—”

“No, it was great—” Jack interjects, but cuts himself off quickly thereafter, like he was about to say something he shouldn’t.

The word ‘honey’ was about to roll off his tongue the way it always does when he’s talking to you, but it feels wrong to say it now, for a reason he still can’t name that threatens to strangle him all the same.

“I just gotta go now. Okay?”

At a loss for what else to do, or what else to say that might make him stay, you just nod with a sad smile. “Sure…”

Jack leaves with a polite nod — like the sex was some sort of mindless transaction he’s thanking you for and not something you’ve done quite regularly for the past several months. He doesn’t speak another word to you when he walks out, and doesn’t look back at you once when he shuts the door behind him.

You stew in his absence and forget to eat.

Your tired body functions the following day on nothing but heartache and half a granola bar.

You drown in the bustling emergency department, and in the void of the white screen ahead of you, where you try and fail to do your charting. You can’t quite garner the strength to use your hands, much less use your brain to put letters on the screen that’ll just look like alphabet soup to you anyway. You’re stuck idling in the emptiness inside of you, where your heart withers along with your stomach.

Robby watches from afar, studying you as he flits between patients and residents requiring his attention. He has, self-admittedly, quite the soft spot for you — because you’re the smartest person on this floor and the most sensitive, too, which makes for a great doctor but very often the saddest person you’ll ever meet. He waits for you to correct yourself before he has to step in, and potentially make your day worse than it’s obviously already going.

You don’t move for six minutes straight.

He timed it.

“What is going on over here?” Robby wonders slowly, leaning over the top of the desk and peering down at you with a pair of stern brown eyes.

You blink rapidly to clear the haze of rumination from your vision and shrink into your cushioned seat like a scolded child. “Charting…” you answer with an unconvincing waver in your voice.

“Looks like it,” Robby scoffs with a hint of a smile that gets lost in his greying beard. He taps the desk with his palm and stands to full height again, nodding his head and urging you to follow him. “C’mon. Walk with me.”

He saunters off in the opposite direction of the work station, taking a tablet that Dana hands to him as he goes. It takes a long moment for his words to compute, and you scramble to your feet when he throws you an expectant look over his shoulder. You fall into step with the older man as he drags his glasses from the shirt pocket of his black scrubs.

Robby sets the black frames on the bridge of his nose and wonders aloud with his gaze turned to the screen in his hand, “What’s going on with you today, kid?”

“It’s nothing,” you shrug dismissively, sticking close to the man’s side as you weave within the crowded hall.

He flashes you an unenthusiastic glare in return. His eyes dart between your furrowed brows, to your anxiety-bitten lips (where your teeth dig into the delicate skin even now), to where you wrench the hem of your long-sleeved undershirt into trembling fists. Whatever it is, it’s very clearly not nothing.

“I’m not asking to be polite, kid,” the older man tells you, firm but not entirely unkind. “I can tell something’s wrong, and it’s affecting your work, so— Just tell me.”

You swallow hard and struggle to find the courage to speak, or to meet the man’s gaze as your eyes dart everywhere but back at him.

“It’s about your friend…” you confess in a sheepish murmur that gets lost in the droning of the bustling E.R.

It takes Robby a moment or more to catch your meaning.

“Jack?” he presses, because he knew the two of you were seeing each other, but not that it was quite so serious to warrant the off-day you’re having now. He makes a mental note to ream Abbot out for it the next time he sees him — ‘cause he can’t have any of his residents upset, least of all you.

You nod with an averted gaze. “He’s just… been off—”

“He’s always off,” Robby scoffs.

“Well, not with me,” you tell him, foreignly firm in your quiet argument. “And now he’s not talking to me, and I have no idea what I did…”

“Well, knowing Jack, you probably didn’t do a damn thing,” Robby concedes with a heavy sigh and flashes you a sympathetic look as you turn the corner. “Just give him some time, alright? He’ll come around. He always does. For now, you’ve got a patient in 8 that’s asking for you—”

Before you can make a guess on who it is — though you think you already know the answer — a strong hand wrenches suddenly around your wrist.

The man’s fingers are warm, calloused, and unwavering against your delicate skin. Your heart lurches into your throat at the sudden panic as your chin snaps towards the man towering over you. He’s tall, bearded, rugged, and so angry he’s red in the face.

“I have been waiting out there…” the man starts, taut voice wavering with a withheld fire. “…For four hours. When the hell am I gonna see somebody?”

“How did you get back here?” is the first thing you think to squeak out, because you vaguely recall McKay sending him back to Chairs after taking his vitals some time ago.

Robby steps in then, cutting between you and the stranger to urge him backward and away from you. You rub at your tender wrist when the man’s brutal touch is gone.

“We’re seeing the sickest patients first, sir. So count yourself lucky you aren’t back here,” Robby explains in an even voice, sounding much calmer than he really feels. “But touch anybody in here like that again, and you won’t be seen at all. Got it?”

The man caves with a heavy breath and with his weathered palms splayed in surrender. “I was just asking a question, man…”

“I’ll handle it, boss,” Ahmad cuts in, rushing towards the three of you after catching sight of the altercation from down the hall. He steps between the two of you and the angry patient and ushers him back toward the waiting room.

“Don’t touch me,” you hear the man spit, but complying anyway.

“Trust me, man,” Ahmad quips. “I don’t want to.”

It takes you a long moment thereafter to catch your breath.

It was certainly not the first time you’ve been grabbed by an unhappy patient, and it would certainly not be the last, but you can never quite get used to the fear. The panic is slow to ebb from your veins, even as the man is escorted back to Chairs. You find him sneering silently at you when you catch his eyes, moments before the door shuts behind him.

Robby steps into your tunnel vision, ducking down to meet your gaze with dark eyes glimmering with worry. “You alright, kid? Did he get you?”

“I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory and muster a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “I’ve seen my fair share of assholes, Robby. Today, even.”

“Well, yeah,” the man scoffs playfully. “You’re with Abbot— I’m sure you’re an expert at dealing with assholes by now…”

By all accounts, you were not supposed to have favorites at the PTMC. And you didn’t really; everyone who stepped foot into the E.R. got the same level of medical care from you — even the assholes. But Louie Cloverfield was different, special. He was the first patient you ever saw as an R1, and when he kept coming in, and you kept picking up his cases, he became your patient.

If Louie was in, and you were on shift, you were the one tending to him. Always.

So, you stay by his side when he loses his pulse, even when the rest of the E.R. reduces to the inevitable chaos of the afternoon rush — even when you know the rest of your co-workers could probably use your help out there now — even when you know there’s nothing more you can do for Louie to keep him alive.

Sweat beads on your forehead as you kneel at his bedside, pounding firmly at the man’s chest in a feeble attempt to keep his heart beating. You’ve lost feeling in your arms now — they’ve gone from aching, to burning, to utterly numb — but your attempt at resuscitation never stops, not even as dark crimson blood spits from his breathing tube; the clearest sign of blood in his lungs.

Robby watches from the back of the room, keeping a close eye on you and the bodies donned in camo outside the window — as the TEMS unit treats a trauma patient across the way, with Jack Abbot among them. He catches the man glancing around the crowded E.R. for a moment, peering over passing heads for a glimpse of you, before the work inevitably drags him away.

Robby knows you have not yet noticed Jack’s presence.

You’ve got the sort of tunnel vision you always get in a crisis, when you refuse to move on until you’ve helped the person in front of you first — which has undoubtedly made you the very backbone of the PTMC patient satisfaction score, though at a detriment to yourself perhaps. Because you never know when to stop; and then, when you inevitably have to, you’ll always find a way to blame yourself for it.

“Three minutes since the epi,” you hear Perlah say, over the sound of your pounding heartbeat in your ears.

“Hold compressions,” Robby commands.

You stop on instinct, and feel the ache done into your bones. You exhale heavy breaths as you wipe sweat from your brow with the back of your gloved hand, careful to avoid the drops of blood spotted there. You feel like your chest is tearing in two when that same, menacing beeping sound fills the air.

“Aystotle,” Robby sighs. “Resume compressions.”

“Give me another amp of epi— and more suction,” you say through panted breaths, situating your palms back over the older man’s sternum. You look past the rogue flyaways falling over your eyes and the nurses crowded around you, peering at Robby with a determined but no less pleading gaze. “What do we do? Should we— Should we give PCC?”

Robby shakes his head with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, it’s too late for that…” he hums sympathetically. “And he’s not an ECMO candidate, so—”

“Well, can you tell me something that we can do?” you snap, harsher than you mean to.

Robby only softens further, dark eyes going tender around the edges as he tells you, “There’s nothing else we can do for him, kid…”

“Robby,” you whimper, flinching like he’s hurt you, but never once stopping your compressions. “C’mon. Please, we can— We can think of something— We still have two more rounds of epi, maybe it’ll—”

“He’s gone, kid…” Robby tells you, voice taut. “It’s okay.”

You exhale a punched-out breath, like not being able to save Louie hits you like a fist to the stomach. Your aching arms tingle with numbness when you part from the unconscious man. That wretched beeping fills the air once more, ringing through your ears and pounding skull.

“12:07,” you hear Robby announce the time of death, as Perlah’s soft hands grasp gently at your shoulders.

“C’mon. I’ll clean up,” the woman tells you, sniffling. “You take a second.”

“I’m fine,” you shrug, half-strangled, as you slip the bloodied gloves from your half-numb hands. You blink back burning tears as you walk them to the trash.

“You’re not,” Robby murmurs, head bowed to meet your averted gaze. “And that’s okay. Just take a second.”

You remind yourself to breathe — in for seven beats and out for eight — as the muffled exam room breaks away into the chaotic E.R. The rest of it becomes a blur in your tunnel vision, and the calls for concern turn to inaudible slurs in your ears.

“Whoa… you okay?” you only vaguely hear Trinity ask as you storm past the work station.

“Fine,” you squeak on instinct, despite the obvious.

“Oh, yeah, he totally croaked in there,” Ogilvie murmurs, as though to gossip with her, but forgetting to be subtle about it.

“Do you ever think before you speak?” Santos quips. “Or is the stupidity genetic?”

Your heavy eyes search for an empty room to duck into, to at least muffle your screams before you cry in front of everyone. There is no patient in the bed in Central 15, so you burst into that one, still struggling to catch your breath.

Your much-needed inhale gets caught in your chest at the sight you find in the corner of the room — Jack Abbot, stripped off his shirt and wiping blood from his stomach, with Samira standing just behind him, tending carefully to the scrape on his back.

Your sneaker scuffs the tile as you still suddenly in place.

The sound of your sudden presence makes them freeze, too. Their heads dart in your direction, gaping with wide eyes and parted mouths as if you’d just caught them doing something terrible. In a way, it feels like you have.

It feels like you’ve stumbled upon some achingly tender moment between them, of which you had been deprived for some time now — because even when Jack was with you, he was a thousand miles away. You wonder if, maybe, a part of him wanted to be here — with Samira, perhaps — and if that’s why he had left you so abruptly last night, as if it had only occurred to him then that you were no longer what he wanted.

You wouldn’t have blamed him for it, if that were the case. You just wish he would’ve told you before now, so it would feel like less of a white-hot knife lodged into the center of your sternum to find him this way.

“Sorry,” you just barely manage to choke out, though it gets lost in a whimper as you fight back the urge to cry.

Jack’s scruffy chest pinches with worry at the crack in your fragile voice and the visibly frazzled sight of you, all wild-haired and glassy-eyed. It hurts him far worse than the wounds burning red-hot on his pale skin now.

“What happened?” he asks, greying brows lowered in concern.

Samira stills with her soft fingers on Jack’s broad, freckled shoulder, touching him with a tenderness he hasn’t let you give him in some time.

“Are you okay?” she wonders, soft with a worry that is always sincere coming from here, but finds you more like a slap in the face just now.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you answer on muscle memory, then sniffle as you shake your head at yourself. “I’m not, actually— I don’t know why I said that— Louie just died. Pulmonary hemorrhage. And I was just looking for an empty room to cry in, I didn’t mean to… to interrupt…”

“You didn’t,” Jack assures you, parting from Samira to take a step closer to you.

It takes quite a lot of strength from you to turn away from him, instead of leering at his shirtless form or cowering at the gentle look in his light eyes. “I-I’ll see myself out,” you stammer hopelessly. “Sorry…”

You just barely hear Jack calling your name before the heavy glass door shuts behind you.

With nowhere else to go, and not willing to face the embarrassment of walking back the way you came, you make a beeline for the ambulance bay. The automatic doors part for you, and the cool air outside takes your breath away a second later.

Your chest hitches as you inhale a sniveling breath, trying and failing to regulate your breathing. You stand at the edge of the curb with one hand balled into a fist and one hand clutching your aching chest. Your heart’s telling you that you’re having an embolism and you’re about to keel over at this very moment; your brain’s telling you that you’re just having a panic attack and you need to suck it the hell up.

“Hey,” a man calls from further down the sidewalk.

Your head snaps in the direction of the familiar voice. You tense at the sight of the man who had grabbed you earlier, and your aching heart forgets to beat when you see him storming over to you. You find he’s wearing a smile on his bearded face when he’s close enough, but it looks more cynical than kind.

“You’re the nurse who got me kicked out earlier, aren’t you?” he asks.

You don’t have the breath or the bravery to correct him now.

“I’m sorry, sir…” you sniffle, wet-eyed, and turn away. “It’s just… It’s been a long day, okay? I didn’t mean for you to get escorted out. You just scared me, that’s all. I’m—”

You turn to face him again when he’s standing ahead of you. But before the words of an apology can spill from your mouth, his weathered fist collides with your nose.

You hear a sharp crack, a wet whoosh, and then the dull slap of your body hitting the pavement. You grimace when the back of your skull meets the concrete, and struggle to blink away the black spots from your vision.

The very first face you see is Langdon’s, though you’re not quite sure how long it’s been since your eyes have closed — a few seconds, maybe, or several minutes. You’re still lying on the rough pavement when you come to, with Frank’s gentle fingers brushing the hair out of your eyes with one hand and shining his penlight into your eyes with the other.

“There you are…” the man coos. “What happened to you out here?”

You hardly hear him, like he’s speaking to you from underwater. You answer him with a question of your own, lifting your trembling fingers to the dull throbbing sensation in your nose.

“Is… Is it bad?” you wonder aloud, half-slurring. You grimace first at the wet feeling on your cupid’s bow, then at the bright scarlet blood staining your fingertips. You whisper, voice breaking. “Ow…”

“Whoa, careful there…” Mel wavers, rushing from behind Langdon to help you when you try to sit up on your own. She crouches down beside him and takes you by the elbows in a pair of gentle hands. She squints behind her glasses when your inhale rattles in your chest. “Did you fall on your back?”

“Did somebody hit you?” Langdon presses from her other side, bushy brows lowered in worry.

“Wow…” you mumble, blinking hard, and wincing when you taste blood in your mouth. “So many questions…”

Mel and Langdon share a panicked look you don’t see.

“Yeah, c’mon. Let’s go,” the older man sighs, urging you up by the elbows and steadying you when you sway softly in place. “Come with me…”

“I can walk,” you protest through your ragged breaths, and through the blood dripping from your cupid’s bow and into your mouth. You pull your arm out of his grasp when the strength to do so returns to you, and stagger the rest of the way to the entrance until you regain your footing. “Just… Be normal, alright?”

“Right…” Langdon scoffs and fights back the urge to laugh — because you obviously have no idea how you look right now, with the lower half of your face all covered in blood, as if you’ve just been rescued from a bar fight. There’s hardly anything normal about that.

You try to be, anyway, as you stroll through the crowded E.R., hoping to be blanketed by the chaos inside. Everyone’s too busy charting or rushing to patients to notice your being there. You’re five or more steps away from making it to the bathroom when Robby’s eagle-eyed stare locks in on you from behind his computer.

“Jesus fucking Christ…” the older man blurts, sliding off his glasses and rising from his chair. He abandons his work without a second thought and rounds the workstation to rush to your side.

“I’m okay,” you tell him with a dismissive wave of your hand, pressing onward even when you hear his footsteps nearing you. He stops you with a gentle hand on your shoulder and steps in front of you to block your path.

“What the hell happened to you?” he wonders aloud, looking past you to Langdon and Mel as he drags a pair of gloves from his scrub pockets.

“We found her like this,” Frank shrugs.

“I told you to take a break, not get into a bar fight.”

“Ha-ha,” you monotone, then flinch when it hurts to smile. “Ow…”

“Who did this, huh?” Robby asks, cupping your bloodied face in his gloved hands. He runs his fingers over the back of your head first, to make sure you have no wounds there, before pressing his thumbs gently to the apples of your cheeks. “It wasn’t that asshole from before, was it?”

“I didn’t see him,” you lie through your teeth.

“Any trouble seeing? Any double vision?”

You shake your head against his hands, then inhale another rattling breath.

“Did you fall on your back?” he asks you then.

You nod once.

“What about a headache?”

“I always have a headache,” you answer. “I’m fine, Robby. I just need to get cleaned up—”

“Look at you— You’re not fine,” the man snaps. “Now, c’mon. You’re coming with me.”

You have no choice but to follow him when he wraps a firm, gentle hand around your arm, ushering you to walk ahead of him. You ignore the looks and calls of concern from the coworkers around you, except for Mel’s voice, which comes from behind you.

“Should I find Dr. Abbot?” she wonders aloud.

Your head snaps over your shoulder to look at her, and it makes your vision swim.

“Absolutely do not do that,” you answer, a little harsher than you mean to.

“O-kay…” she stammers and trails off.

“In here,” Robby urges, swinging open the door to the nearest empty room. He keeps a steady hand on your back to keep you stable and turns back to Mel before he follows you inside. “Find Abbot,” he tells her.

You lie on your back on the hospital bed while Robby does an impromptu exam. He presses the cold chestpiece of his stethoscope to your skin and listens to your breathing until it evens out again, from where the air had rushed out of your lungs after the fall. He finds your pupils both equal and reactive, and your nose free from swelling or cracking — “Nothing that mother nature can’t fix,” he says, and takes to cleaning you up instead.

“These beds are so hard,” you murmur, shifting uncomfortably with an icepack pressed to your nose, which Princess had brought by some minutes ago. “We should really get new ones in here. How are patients supposed to be comfortable in these?”

“Yeah, I’ll go tell Gloria,” Robby scoffs, dabbing at your nose with a wet wipe. “I’m sure she’ll get right on that…”

He parts from you to chuck the red-tinted napkin into the bin at his side and waits for you to laugh at his stupid joke. You stay silent. You don’t even give him a pity giggle, and you always, at the very least, give him a goddamn pity giggle. His brows furrow in a mixture of confusion and concern.

“Can I ask you a stupid question?”

“Better than anyone I know, Dr. Robby…”

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, reaching for another wipe with a gloved hand. It’s freezing against the burning skin of your neck as it dabs it gently there. “Why didn’t you want me telling Abbot about this, huh?”

“Because he doesn’t care…” you mumble cynically, almost inaudibly so.

“Oh, c’mon,” Robby scoffs. “Even you don’t believe that.”

You don’t. Not really. You know Jack cares, if only because it’s in his blood to do so. His basic human empathy is what made him such a good doctor. You just aren’t sure that he cares about you in the way you thought he did — in the way you wanted him to — and you’re not quite sure how to voice that to Robby now.

“He’s busy right now,” you answer instead, still half-hidden behind the icepack. “Too busy for me, and I don’t wanna bother him, so… Just drop it.”

Robby flashes you a sympathetic smile that you don’t see as he swipes at the last bit of blood from your skin. “I know he may not act like it, kid, but he does care about you.”

“You’re right,” you mumble. “He doesn’t act like it—”

Jack Abbot bursts into the room like a red-hot flame through a burning house. His broad chest heaves with panted breaths beneath the thin navy shirt he wears in place of his tactical gear, though his camo pants still sit heavy on his waist.

His wild eyes scan your form. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he blurts.

You glare at Robby from behind the icepack. “I hate you.”

“Yeah, I know…” the man sighs, dropping the crumpled wipe into the trash beside him.

“What happened?” Jack presses, more firmly this time.

“Nothing,” you murmur shyly, unable to meet his gaze when he towers at your bedside with his hands on his hips. “It’s not the first time someone’s swung at me—”

“Yeah, but it’s the first time it’s been this bad. Bad enough that someone had to come get me,” Jack argues, made a bit harsher with the concern pinching at his chest. His head whips over his shoulder. “Who the hell did this?”

“Some guy from Chairs, I think,” Robby shrugs. “Name’s Driscoll. Ahmad’s already handling it. He’ll deal with the police.”

“Good,” Jack nods, firm in a way you’ve always adored about him. He was inherently resolute where you were perpetually indecisive. It mostly came in handy when you struggled to figure out what to eat for dinner, not usually in situations like this. “‘Cause we’re pressing charges on this asshole, alright?”

“Honestly, Jack, I don’t care what you do…” you sigh. “But my head is really starting to hurt, and I really don’t feel like handling this right now.”

“On it,” Robby nods, taking the hint and stalking out of the room. He shuts the curtains after him and dims the light as he goes. The noise of the Pitt muffles again when the door closes behind him, leaving you and Jack alone in the not-quite-silence and the not-quite-dark.

“Here. C’mon,” the man urges suddenly, motioning with his chin. “Make room for me.”

“What?” you ask, eyes squinted in confusion as the man turns to sit on the edge of the twin-sized bed, adjusting his prosthetic to swing it over the side.

He gives you an expectant look over his shoulder. “Scooch,” is all he says, in a strangely strong voice despite the very silly command.

You shift on the thin mattress despite your better judgment to make room for him. Jack urges his right leg up first, then his left one second. He settles in beside you and urges the railings up to keep him from falling off the side. You try to do the same, though you possess a lot less strength with only one hand than the man beside you.

Your breath catches when he reaches over you with a strong hand, helping you lift the barrier the rest of the way.

“Thanks…” you mumble, half-shy.

“Don’t mention it,” he huffs politely, with one arm on his stomach and the other curled around your shoulders, keeping you close to accommodate both your bodies on the twin-sized bed. He smells of sweat and musky cologne and antiseptic. It takes everything in you not to melt into his warmth. You remain tense beside him, feeling slightly strange in his hold in a way you never have before.

“I’m sorry about, Louie—”

“You don’t have to do this—” you blurt simultaneously.

His head snaps over to you. He has to jerk his scruffy chin back to look at you properly from the dwindling proximity between you. His eyes dart between your averted gaze and the slowly melting icepack you fidget with like a stress ball.

“Do what?” he asks.

“I didn’t mean to walk in on you and Samira, okay?” you confess quietly, ‘cause any octave higher, and your voice will start to shake. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to make it a whole thing, you know? So you don’t have to come in and pretend to be all nice just because you think I’m upset, ‘cause I’m not.”

(Your rambling is hardly convincing in the matter, but he makes no mention of it.)

“Okay. I hear you,” Jack murmurs gently, always so patient with your rambling, even though he can only halfway comprehend it a lot of the time. “But I’m still not sure what Mohan has to do with this—”

Honey, he wants to say, but doesn’t allow himself.

“If you want to be with her, that’s okay— Or if it’s just because you don’t wanna be with me, that’s okay, too,” you explain in a strangely even voice. “But I wish you would’ve just told me, instead of bailing on me last night—”

“I didn’t bail on you—”

“—So then I wouldn’t have to catch you and Samira doing…” you trail off, face screwed. “Whatever the hell you were doing back there.”

“Catching us?” Jack echoes with a laugh you can feel rumbling against your shoulder. “That would imply we were doing something worth getting caught. She just walked in on me while looking for her patient, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well…” you hum, gaze averted to the icepack in your lap. “It seemed pretty intimate…”

“It wasn’t.”

“More intimate than you’ve been with me,” you argue sheepishly.

“Well, not to be crude here, but…” Jack trails off with an audible smile in his voice. “We literally had sex last night.”

“Yeah, and you left,” you spit, turning to look at him for the first time since he stormed in. You wear a wet look in your glassy eyes and a bruise blooming on the bridge of your nose. “And I cried myself to sleep about it. Which means I didn’t get to watch Love Island, which means I forgot to eat, which means I’m running on fumes on what has arguably been the worst shift of my whole life.”

You take a much-needed breath when the words are gone from your mouth.

Jack does not jump immediately to defend himself. He knows he doesn’t deserve it now. He just lets himself stew in your fiery words instead, so you know they’ll have a real impact on him before he responds.

“You’re right,” he sighs after a few long moments. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” you shake your head at his apologetic tone. “Just don’t… Don’t be so mean, you know? If you don’t wanna be with me anymore, why can’t you just say?”

“Because I do want to be with you,” he answers, weathered features screwed in offense. “How would you ask me that?”

“Because you aren’t acting like it—”

“Because I almost told you that I loved you,” Jack blurts suddenly, in a stern tone of voice that snatches the breath from your lungs. He swallows hard and continues. “Last night, I mean, when we… I almost said it… Because I felt it, but then I… I realized I hadn’t said that to anyone since my wife passed, and it freaked me out.”

“But…” you start in a broken whisper. “Why does that have to be such a bad thing?”

“‘Cause it makes me feel guilty,” Jack answers. “The way I love you makes me feel guilty, like I’m abandoning her. And I… I don’t know what to do with all that… grief.”

You feel your heart aching, for the third or hundredth time that day. You notice Jack’s right hand hanging on your shoulder, how his fingers fidget anxiously there, and how his left hand scratches at the rough fabric of his camo pants — made overwrought by his confession, and unsure what to do with it now.

“Why don’t you just give it to me?” you wonder quietly, then shrug at the confused look Jack gives you a second later. “Your grief, I mean. I can take it. You know, make it a little more bearable for you. So you don’t have to carry it all on your own.”

The softness of your words knocks the breath from Jack’s lungs.

The corner of his mouth quirks in a wavering smile as he blinks burning tears out of his eyes. “Jesus, we're a couple of goddamn sad sacks, aren’t we, honey?” he scoffs a sad laugh and runs his free hand down his scruffy face.

Your lips twitch upward, feeling giddy but fighting it. “That’s the first time you called me that in two days…” you observe distantly.

“What?”

“Honey.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for that, too…”

“Don’t be sorry,” you repeat, this time with a smile. “Just— kiss me or somethin’…”

“Gladly,” Jack says with a wider grin.

You tilt your chin up to meet him halfway when he leans down to kiss you. His nose bumps into the side of your bruised one, as your hand reaches for his wounded shoulder. You flinch against each other in tandem.

“Ow,” you whimper.

“Ouch,” Jack winces. “Shit, honey— Sorry.”

“Are you okay?” you ask with a sympathetic scrunch to your features, cupping his scruffy face in your delicate hands. “I haven’t checked in on you yet, I know you’re hurt—”

“I’m fine,” he assures with a shake of his head, leaning instinctively into your touch. “I got a little banged up, but… I’m good now.”

“Promise?” you whisper, swiping an eyelash from his cheek with your thumb.

“I promise. I'll tell you about later,” he nods once and smooths his calloused fingers across your temple, looking at you with a tenderness you’ve been craving all day. “What about you, honey— Are you okay?”

You inhale sharply through your bruised nose and nod on a slower exhale.

“I will be,” you answer honestly for the first time all day.

He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He’s never been a smoker, but if he were, would that really be worse than being addicted to benzos? It’s not like American Spirits or cotton candy flavored vapes would drive him to steal from his job.

Yeah, yeah. Cancer. Lung cancer, esophageal cancer, all the cancers. Gum disease and tooth decay. He is still a doctor, even if it took him a long time to start feeling like one again. He knows the risks. And that is exactly why he hasn’t tried filling the void with nicotine.

He works out just enough to be able to say that he does and it not be a complete lie, but he’s never understood how people can get addicted to exercising. He understands the science behind it, but every time he steps on a treadmill, it just feels like an opportunity to think too much about every mistake he’s made in the last few years.

Video games have never really been his thing. He’s still paying off his stint in rehab, so betting and gambling are off the table. Alcohol, of course, is out of the question for obvious reasons.

When he hit one hundred days of sobriety, he really thought he was in the fucking clear. He let himself breathe a little for the first time in a long time, thinking he had finally learned his lesson.

Never did it cross his mind that he could become addicted to a person. Least of all one that he isn’t even supposed to like.

Least of all you.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

“This is a really fucking bad idea.”

Frank grunts, bottoming out as he fills you so full of him that it takes your breath away.

He stills, looking down at you in the glow of your living room television. His hands were on you the second your apartment door clicked shut - the two of you didn’t even make it down the hallway to your bedroom before you were pulling him onto the couch by the collar of his scrubs, his lips chasing yours with a degree of desperation that you might have found laughable if it weren’t for the fact that you had to bite back a moan the second that his tongue slipped between your lips.

He huffs a half breathless laugh. “We can stop if you want to, but I’m already inside you, so it’s a little late to realize this is a bad idea.”

You wiggle your hips, grinding down where his body meets yours. His eyes roll shut at the sensation, his muscles tensing beneath where your fingers grip his biceps.

“Didn’t say that I wanna stop,” you breathe. “Just said this is a bad idea. It’s called an observation.”

Frank snorts, retaliating by hiking one of your legs over his hip to deepen the angle. You hiss, your walls clenching around him. “You didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea when you were drenching my face a few seconds ago.”

You aren’t surprised in the least that his argumentative nature carries over into sex, but the dirty mouth on him does take you by surprise.

“So, what?” You hum, part challenge and part genuine curiosity. “You don’t think this is a bad idea?”

He shakes his head. He snakes a hand between your bodies, his thumb finding the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of your folds. “It’s definitely a bad idea. I’m just finding it really hard to give a shit right now.”

You whimper at it all - the rough timbre of his voice, the the soft pad of his thumb brushing over your clit, the way he somehow still smells like musk and allspice even after working a full twelve hours in the emergency department and how his kiss-swollen lips glisten from his time spent between your thighs.

Come morning, you’ll regret this. Twelve hours from now, when you can’t concentrate on a routine intubation because you’re having flashbacks of pretty cerulean eyes peeking up at you as he brought you to climax with only his tongue, you’ll regret this. When you can’t take two steps tomorrow without the ache between your thighs reminding you where he’d been, you’ll regret this.

Probably should’ve thought about that before deciding that the best way to cope with stress of an exceptionally shitty day was by kissing him in the empty parking garage and inviting him back to your place, but you’ll deal with the aftermath of that when he’s no longer buried half a foot inside you.

You take his chin in your hand, stilling his face in front of yours. “Just so we are clear, this is a one time thing.”

Frank looks like he’s fighting the urge to laugh, a familiar, cocky smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You know you’re the one who kissed me and practically ripped my clothes off, right?”

Your hands ghost over the planes of his shoulders and up his neck before settling at the base of his skull where your fingers thread through the short locks of his hair. “Don’t let it get to your head. You were the closest conventionally attractive man I could find after that shitshow of a shift. Don’t confuse convenience with desire.”

He cocks a brow. “What I’m hearing is that you think I’m attractive.”

You roll your eyes, pulling your hands away from his hair and playfully shoving his shoulders. You don’t bother denying it, though. He is attractive. Annoyingly, irritatingly, frustratingly attractive.

“I’m serious. One time, Langdon.”

He doesn’t verbally respond right away. Instead, he leans down, closing the space between your lips and his. You taste yourself on him, sweet and salty with a hint of the gum he had been chewing when you first kissed him in the parking garage. It’s slower than the first time, and the second, and the third, making heat bloom where he’s hard inside you.

He pulls back just enough to murmur the words against your lips.

“One time.”

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Two months ago, Frank Langdon kissed you and swore that he was only going to fuck you one time.

Two months ago, he lied through his teeth.

The good news is that you’re as big of a liar as he is.

Because one time turned to two, and two to three, and now the Pittsburgh winter has turned to spring and he’s forgotten all about that broken promise.

He knew before the words had fully left his lips that they were bullshit. How could he mean them when your kiss tasted like watermelon lip gloss and being bare inside you made him feel the best he’s felt since he got sober?

But still, he tried. For a whopping seven days, he tried his hardest.

One week. That’s all it took for him to feel like he was going to lose his fucking mind if he didn’t touch and taste you again.

Then, in a moment of weakness - the kids were at Abby’s, he’d spent his day off cleaning his entire apartment in an attempt to keep himself busy, he’d already gone to an NA meeting earlier that afternoon, and he couldn’t get this one specific sound you had made when he nipped at the column of your throat out of his head - he did something he’s never done before.

He texted you.

Are you off work yet?

Short and vague, but you’re far from being dumb. He was confident that you could read between the lines without him having to spell it out for you.

Much to his relief, you replied before he could overthink the simple text message.

Keeping track of my work schedule now?

He scoffed to himself, smirking down at his phone. As if you haven’t worked the same set schedule the entire time he’s known you. At least, that was his excuse for knowing you’d be leaving work at approximately that time.

You replied fast. I take it that you are off?

He stared down at the screen as you typed, grateful that technology doesn’t allow you to see him waiting for your response in real time.

Leaving now. But if you’re about to say what I think you’re going to say, then you should know that I have been both puked and peed on today.

That should have deterred him, but it didn’t. In fact, it only further encouraged him, because you didn’t immediately tell him to fuck off like he halfway expected you to.

I happen to have a shower.

Then, before you can type a rebuttal, he sends a second text with his address.

You didn’t even reply, but twenty-three minutes later you knocked on his front door.

(It goes without saying that yes, you insisted on showering, and yes, he insisted on joining you, and yes, he ate you out until your legs turned to jelly and he had to help hold you up).

After both of you were thoroughly spent, he expected you to say something similar to the first time - when he had you pinned to your couch, balls deep inside you, and you told him that it would be a one time thing. He expected you to insist that what just happened would not be happening again, that it was a mistake for you to come over, and that he should lose your number entirely.

So it took him by surprise when you got out of his bed, put your clothes back on, and said, “it goes without saying that this stays between us, right? If this is going to be a thing, the last thing I want is Perlah and Princess spreading it all over the hospital.”

“Please,” Frank had scoffed, pulling his own t-shirt over his head. “Like I want the entire emergency department making a bunch of ridiculous bets about us. Trust me, this stays between us.”

And that was that. There was no further discussion of what exactly this is, but Frank knows.

He knows what it is, and he knows what it isn’t. For two months now, you’ve been on the same page. He comes to your place, or occasionally, you’ll go to his. One time, you even rode him in the backseat of his dad mobile, as you had referred to the midsize SUV.

But work is off limits. You have made that abundantly clear by acting indifferent to his existence anytime a coworker or patient is within ten feet of you, which happens to be damn near always. When the two of you are at work, he pretends like he doesn’t know that you clench around him every time he tells you how well you’re taking him or where your birthmark is located.

As soon as he walks out of those hospital doors, though, all the pretending comes to a stop.

It most often happens after long shifts, when one or both of you needs to decompress and not think of whatever horrors had been witnessed that day. But every now and then, like that day you and Frank both broke the initial agreement of this being a one time thing, he’ll find himself alone with thoughts of you that are a little too loud and unrelenting.

So instead of only thinking about the way your breathy, fucked out voice sounds saying his name when you’re on the verge of coming apart, he calls and hopes that you answer.

And, for some reason that Frank refuses to let himself dwell on, you always do. He knows that there will inevitably come a day that you don’t.

But he doesn’t let himself dwell on that, either.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

“Meet me in the empty on-call room in fifteen minutes.”

The words are murmured low enough for only him to hear. He glances up from his charting, utter disbelief on his face. He opens his mouth to question you, but you’re already walking away.

You’re weak. Spineless as a damn jellyfish, really.

And it’s all Frank Langdon’s fault.

If he didn’t kiss you like you’re the air he needs to breathe, go down on you like you’re the last thing he’s ever going to taste, and fuck you like he’s trying to ruin all other men for you, then it wouldn’t be so embarrassingly easy for you to go back on your word.

But here you are. Going back on your word. Again.

The first time it happened - when he texted you his address a little over two months ago and you wasted no time driving to his apartment even after telling him and yourself that you would not be hooking up with him again - you forgave yourself. You allowed yourself the small comfort of knowing it was him that reached out. It was him who caved first, even if you had thought about doing so every day since you first slept together.

But this time? Telling him to meet you in an empty on-call room in the middle of the day at work? Where any of your coworkers could potentially catch you? This boundary being crossed is all on you.

You must have a competence kink. That’s the only logical explanation for why you’re willing to let this happen right here, right now.

Your watch reads 2:17. He’s two minutes late.

Two more minutes. If he isn’t here in two minutes, then you’re leaving this room and forgetting that you ever even considered doing this.

The door creaks open and he slips in with only twenty seconds to spare.

“Wasn’t sure if you were actually going to come,” you hum from where you’re perched on the edge of the mattress.

Frank locks the door behind him. He still looks as confused as he did when you first told him to meet you here, but there’s now a hint of amusement on his features, too.

“Sorry,” he huffs a laugh, slowly walking towards you with his hands shoved in his scrub pockets. “I came as quickly as I could. My patient in Central 14 pulled up WebMD on his phone to try to argue about his diagnosis so I got a little tied up with that.”

You snort. “Don’t you love when they do that?”

“So…” he drawls, eyes glancing around the small room, empty save for the two of you. He comes to a stop directly in front of where you sit on the bed. “You gonna tell me what we’re doing in here right now?”

You look up at him from beneath your lashes. “What do you think?” Then, before he can answer, your hands go to the waistband of his pants. You don’t look away from his face, blue eyes dilating and pretty lips parted in surprise.

“Seriously?” He breathes, looking around the room again as if there’s anyone around to catch you in the act. “Here?”

You shrug, tugging his pants down just enough to expose the soft patch of dark curls below the waistband. “What can I say? Watching you perform that closed cervical reduction really did something to me.”

He blushes. Even with the curtains closed and only a small bedside table lamp illuminating the room, you can see pink bloom across the apples of his cheeks.

“That’s all it takes to make you stop avoiding me like the plague while we’re here?” He scoffs low. “A closed cervical reduction?”

You hum a laugh. “Sorry, does it hurt your feelings that I don’t spend my shifts fawning over you like every early-to-mid twenties female that walks into this place?”

Frank chuckles lowly. “Not quite.” He cups your face in his hands, thumbs brushing against your cheekbones as he leans down far enough that his lips hover just above yours. “You might not fawn over me, but you’re the one who got me alone just so you can give me head.”

Under normal circumstances, you’d keep going until you get the last word. But right now, you have a list of patients who need tending to and a boss who has already been on your ass about patient satisfaction scores today.

And as much as it physically pains you to admit, he isn’t wrong.

“Mm-hm,” you hum in agreement. “I did. Now are you going to let me or not?”

With your fingers still hooked into the waistband of his pants and boxers, you pause. It’s not like he’s ever said no to receiving head from you before - and the unmistakable bulge behind the fabric of his scrubs would normally be enough of an answer - but he is just now finding his way back into Robby’s good graces, so the risks here may outweigh the reward.

He exhales a shaky laugh, his nose brushing against yours as he nods slightly. “If I ever say no to that, page neurology, because something is very wrong with me.”

You roll your eyes, pretending you aren’t slightly charmed by the dorky remark. “Sit down, then.”

The two of you trade places. He lowers himself onto the edge of the mattress, and with help from you, his scrubs and boxers fall to a puddle at his feet. You spread his thighs gently with your palms, nestling yourself between them. You take his hard length in your hand, giving a few languid strokes as you look up at him.

“I mean it, you know,” you murmur, voice uncharacteristically earnest. For a moment, you drop the sarcastic facade. “The closed cervical reduction was very impressive. You were incredible.”

He swallows thickly, his cock twitching in your hand as he stares down at you in the dim lighting. Despite the truth to your words, you expect him to brush the compliment off with a cocky grin and smartass retort that undercuts the rare instance of genuinity between you.

Instead, he leans forward without a word, takes your face in his hands, and crushes his lips against yours. He tilts your head slightly, sweeping his tongue across your bottom lip to encourage you to open up for him. You can’t help but lose yourself in the effortless familiarity of his kiss that you’ve grown to crave more than you ever thought possible.

When he pulls back, he doesn’t release the careful hold on your face. “Thank you,” he murmurs, his breath warm against your lips. “Means a lot coming from you.”

For one impossibly long second, the two of you stare at each other until the sincerity of the moment starts to feel suffocating.

And because you don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do with that, you swallow it down and do what you came here for.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Frank sees you before he finishes parking his car next to the ball fields.

At first, he thinks he’s seeing things. It must be someone who looks like you - someone with the same hair color and skin tone as you, who just so happens to be roughly the same height - because it couldn’t possibly actually be you.

Why the hell would you be at a Pee Wee soccer game bright and early on a Saturday morning?

He knows exactly why he’s here - it’s one of Penny’s last games of the season and between a pain in the ass custody arrangement and an even bigger pain in the ass work schedule, Frank has only been able to attend a few of his daughter’s soccer games this spring season. He would have missed today’s game, too, if Robby hadn’t agreed to him switching a couple shifts around and Abby hadn’t been willing to let him take Penny for the day during her week with the kids.

You don’t have children, though. He’s sure enough of that. There’s no way you wouldn’t have said something about having a kid at some point during your time spent together these last few months. He’s been over to your place enough times to have noticed toys scattered around the living room or sippy cups in the sink or tiny clothes left lying on the bathroom floor.

But as Penny sprints ahead to join the rest of her teammates and Frank crosses the field to where all of the player’s families sit in lawn chairs, he realizes that his eyes are not playing tricks on him.

Even from behind, he knows it’s you. He’s spent enough collective hours memorizing the curves of your body to recognize you anywhere - even wearing something so different than what he normally sees you in: scrubs or nothing.

He comes to a stop a couple feet behind you to take you in. It’s an unseasonably warm day, with temperatures already in the mid 70s before nine o’clock in the morning, and you’re dressed to match the weather. His gaze trails from your polished toes that peek out of your sandals and up the expanse of your legs before settling on the sun-kissed skin of your shoulders.

You’ve yet to notice his presence as you wave to a kid in the distance as all of the players start to take their positions on the field. “Good luck, Holly!”

He smirks, his eyes darting back and forth between you and the little girl with curly pigtails.

“Who’s Holly?”

You jump as if you had been electrocuted, your head snapping to look in his direction. He can’t see your eyes well because of your sunglasses, but he can clearly picture the look of surprise on your face.

“Jesus, Frank. What are you doing here?”

He snorts, coming to stand beside you, as he brushes off the fact that you called him Frank instead of Langdon. “My daughter is playing. What are you doing here?”

“My niece is playing.”

He looks back out to the field - your niece, Holly, you had called her - is standing right beside Penny. They’re wearing matching jerseys. Same team.

“Huh. I didn’t know that you have a niece.”

Now it’s your turn to snort. You cross your arms over your chest with a shrug. “We don’t exactly spend very much time talking about our personal lives, do we?” You glance around, seemingly looking for something - or someone. “Where’s Abby?”

“Oh,” Frank clears his throat, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants just so he has something to do with them. “It’s Abby’s week with the kids, but she let me take Penny for the day. She’s uh…she’s not here. She’s spending some quality time with Tanner today.”

You nod, your posture relaxing slightly. He isn’t sure if he’s just imagining things, but he can’t help but think you look a little relieved to hear that his ex wife isn’t here.

Not that he’d blame you for not wanting to see the ex wife of the man you’ve been casually fucking on a regular basis for months now. He definitely wouldn’t want that, either, and feels extremely relieved himself that Abby isn’t here to witness this interaction.

“That was very nice of her,” you say after a beat of silence with a small smile. “I’m sure Penny is happy that you’re here with her.”

Frank glances around now. You had been standing alone when he approached you, and you don’t seem to be here with anyone else. “So, is Holly your sister’s…or brother’s…kid?”

He mentally curses how fucking awkward he sounds. He knows what the most intimate parts of you taste like, knows what you sound like when you come for a third time in a row because of him, but he doesn’t know how to ask you a straight forward question about your personal life.

But he wants to. He shouldn’t, but he does. He wants to know if you have siblings, and how many, and if you have other nieces or possibly nephews. He wants to learn things about you because he asks and you answer or because you volunteer the information freely.

He wants to know what you do after a hard day at work, when you aren’t doing him after a hard day at work. He wants to know things because you want him to know things. Not just the shit that he observes at work (like how you take your coffee) or during the ten minutes that he lays in your bed after finishing inside you (like that you have a white noise machine that is basically always on).

“She’s my brother’s,” you answer, looking away from him to watch as Holly, Penny, and a few other girls all sprint after the soccer ball. For a second, he thinks you’re going to leave it at that, but then you continue. “He and Holly’s mom are going through a pretty nasty breakup. He only has Holly on weekends right now, and he works a lot, so…I’m just trying to help him out a little.”

“Ah,” Frank hums, surprised by the answer for more reasons than one. “Yeah, that’s tough. I know firsthand how…messy that kind of thing can get.”

“Yeah,” you agree with a sigh. “It sucks. But it’s probably for the best. They weren’t good together. I’m just hoping they can learn to co-parent for Holly’s sake.” You pause, eyes cutting back to him. “Seems like you and Abby do a pretty decent job with that.”

He has to refrain from laughing at that. He exhales slowly through his nose, gaze drifting back to the field. There’s a lot he could say in response to that - about lawyers and custody hearings and the same arguments that he doesn’t know if he and Abby will ever stop having - but if he starts then he might not stop, and he highly doubts you care to hear all of that. You’re here to watch your niece play soccer. Not listen to your fuck buddy trauma dump about his divorce.

“We try,” he settles on instead. “It’s still a work in progress, but we’re figuring it out.” Then, so you don’t feel pressured to respond in any particular way, he glances down at the lawn chair that he brought, still folded and tucked between his arm and side. “You uh - you want to sit? I brought a chair.”

He unfolds the chair, not giving you the opportunity to object as he takes a seat on the still slightly dewy grass right next to the chair.

The rest of the game continues with the two of you sitting side by side, watching the girls in an unfamiliar but not uncomfortable kind of companionship. He cheers for Holly, and you cheer for his daughter just as much.

You even introduce herself to her when Penny runs over to where Frank sits for a sip of water. As his coworker, of course. Because that’s what you are, even if the relationship title rubs him the wrong way for reasons he won’t let him think about for long enough to have to be honest with himself.

Still. It’s nice. Much different than how time with you is normally spent - working together to save someone from a pulmonary embolism, or naked between bedsheets - but this doesn’t feel wrong. It’s unexpected but pleasant, Frank thinks.

He tries not to think about how you feel about it, instead focusing on Penny chasing and kicking the soccer ball (sometimes in the wrong direction, but she’s four, so it’s cute).

When the final whistle blows, the swarm of four and five year olds erupts into excited shrieks. Penny and Holly spot the two of you at the same time and sprint over - Penny with her white tube socks stained green with grass and Holly with hair falling out of her pigtails.

Holly reaches you first, practically launching herself into your lap. “We won! We won! Did you see how far the ball went when I kicked it?”

“Of course I did,” you answer cheerfully. “You were amazing. I’m so proud of you. You did so great too, Penny.”

Before he has a chance to recover from the way the softness in your voice made his chest tighten, Penny starts jumping up and down, chanting daddy, daddy, daddy.

“Daddy, can Holly go with us to get ice cream?”

Oh. That’s right. He had promised his daughter ice cream after the game.

“Uh—” Frank hesitates, just for a second, glancing over at you. With your sunglasses now resting on the top of your head, he can see your wide, slightly panicked eyes. “We…we don’t know if Holly and her aunt already have plans, sweetie,” he says gently, not wanting to disappoint her but also giving you the out that he’s almost certain you’ll take.

But Holly is already looking up at you with pleading eyes. “Please, please, please can we go get ice cream?”

You let out a small laugh, eyes darting between Holly and Frank. He offers a small smile of his own, shrugging as if to say the ball’s in your court.

“Why not?” You sigh. “Sure. Ice cream sounds good to me.”

Frank might not show it in the same way that the girls do - with wild cheers and shrieks of laughter - but he’s just as pleased that you said yes.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

More and more often, you find yourself wishing that you met Frank Langdon when you were younger.

Not because you wish you met him before he got married or before he had children or before he fell into addiction. None of that deters you, actually.

Maybe it should. It probably should. But it doesn’t.

No, you wish you met him when you were still an optimist. When you still welcomed love with open arms and wore your heart on your sleeve and believed that everyone you met had as good of intentions as you do.

You wish you met him before your past tainted the mere idea of relationships and romance and trust.

You know it’s irrational. Things are the way that they are for a reason. If you had met him in med school, you probably would’ve thought he’s such a douche that you never would have even entertained the idea of kissing him.

But sometimes you still can’t help but wonder…

If you had met him at a different time, would there be more days like today? Early morning sunshine and soccer games and ice cream instead of late night booty calls that turn into mornings where you still wake up all alone, breathing in the scent he leaves behind on your pillow?

It’s fun to imagine that things could be different.

Then you remember the hurt and the heartbreak that comes with loving, and you shut those thoughts down. Back to sporadic, unplanned hook-ups and the illusion of control that they give you.

You suppose you can still allow yourself to sniff the scent of him that lingers after he leaves your bed, though.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

There’s a gradual shift in your and Frank’s dynamic over the weeks following Holly and Penny’s soccer game and the subsequent ice cream date that somehow ended in you and Frank sharing a chocolate soft serve.

It’s so subtle that at first, the changes don’t register as out of the ordinary.

You’re a little more reluctant to put your clothes back on and leave his place after sex. You stop ignoring each other at work, even exchanging jokes at the nurse’s station. He compliments you openly when you do something impressive with a case, not caring who might overhear the praise. When it’s his day off, you’ll randomly text him to tell him about something crazy that he missed at work. He starts opening up more - about his recovery, about his divorce, about his children. Not all at once. Just little pieces of his life bit by bit that you weren’t privy to before.

And you open up to him, too. Without realizing it. Without even meaning to.

It slips out by accident. You can’t even recall exactly what you’d been talking about at the time, but you tell him that he’s the first person you’ve slept with since your ex.

Your ex that you broke up with nearly two years ago.

He’d looked surprised when you revealed that. But he didn’t laugh, or say anything to tease you. He just turned to lie on his side, propped his head in his hand, looked down at you lying beside him, and asked you the same question that you’ve asked yourself on more than one question but have never answered.

“Why me, then? If you waited that long to…be with someone again. What made you kiss me in the parking garage that night?”

You stare up at him for a moment before answering, your fingers teasing his chest hair. “I’m not really sure,” you answer honestly. “Maybe I thought you were having as shitty of a day as I was, and that you looked like you needed someone as badly as I did. Maybe I thought it would be a good thing for both of us.” You pause. “Or maybe I just thought you looked like you’d be good in bed.”

He exhales a shaky laugh. One hand rests on your hip, fingers drawing lazy circles across your skin. It’s too dark to tell with only the moonlight from your open curtains illuminating the room, but if you had to guess, you would say that he’s blushing. It takes practically nothing to make him blush, a fact that you often take full advantage of because you think he looks pretty when he blushes.

“And were you right?”

“About which part?” You murmur, your hand stilling against his chest.

He gives a half shrug, hesitating just long enough for you to know exactly what he’s asking without him saying it. “The part about me being good in bed,” he says instead, with no trace of his normal humor in his voice.

“Frank.” You cup his face in your hand, swallowing down the answer to the question he won’t ask. “You know you are.”

It wasn’t a lie. He’s more than good. He’s the best you’ve ever had, and that’s exactly why you’re blind to the most damning way the lines begin to blur.

What started as stress relief, as a coping mechanism for a shit day, turned into something that started to feel less like an escape from reality and more like something that feels terrifyingly like love.

Just coworkers with benefits turned friends with benefits don’t stare into each other’s eyes during sex like they’re trying to see into each other’s souls. They don’t touch you, hold you, and kiss you like you’re their lifeline. Like you’re the air they need to breathe.

They definitely don’t call you baby when they’re telling you to come for them.

But then Frank goes and does just that.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Frank’s hips slam into yours, repeatedly hitting that sweet spot deep inside you that makes you croon his name against the sweat-slicked skin of his throat.

You weren’t supposed to come over tonight. He had come to your place last night, and the two of you have never hooked up two nights in a row before.

You’ve also never hooked up when his children are sleeping in their bedrooms just down the hallway.

But he called you, right as you were leaving the hospital, and told you that he wants to see you. That he misses you. He even said please in a low, sleepy voice that made heat bloom down your spine.

And you pictured him - skin flushed and dewy from his shower and dark gray sweats hanging low on his hips - and then next thing you knew, you were driving the route to his apartment that has become as familiar as the route to your own.

He noticed you were tired as soon as you walked in. Laid you down in his bed, undressed you, and kissed down your body until stopping between your thighs, where he spent even more time than he usually does - so much time, in fact, that your legs were shaking around his head when you pulled him up to you by the tops of his arms and all but begged him to fuck you.

And he did. Is.

Sounds of flesh on flesh and his bed frame creaking fill the room as your nails scrape down the skin of his back and his teeth dig into the meat of your shoulder, the familiar fiery coil in your core dangerously close to snapping again.

“Frank,” you breathe, voice unrecognizable. “Fuck, I’m close. I need - I’m gonna—”

He gently shushes your incoherent babbling, slanting his lips over yours with a sloppy, open mouth kiss that makes you cry into his mouth.

“I know,” he grunts low and breathless when he pulls away. Skilled, slender fingers find the swollen bundle between your folds, coaxing you to climax. “I can feel it. Squeezing me so fuckin’ tight. You’re so close, just let go for me, baby.”

The foreign pet name falls from his lips so effortlessly that it sends you over the edge - warms you from head to toe, white-hot pleasure coursing through you as he fucks you through your orgasm and his own.

Baby, baby, baby.

You barely register the fact that he pulls out and collapses beside you on his mattress, his thigh brushing against yours.

Every nerve in your body vibrates with the typical post-coital blend of oxytocin and serotonin but the bliss is background noise to the word he’d murmured so pretty against your skin.

It flashes in your mind like a neon sign. Baby.

Suddenly, everything leading up to this moment begins to play like a highlight reel.

The touches that linger for a split-second too long, the random texts throughout the day, the just because kisses that don’t necessarily lead to sex, your favorite vending machine snack randomly appearing on your desk at work when you’re having a hard day, how you know his go-to take-out order by heart, baby, baby, baby—

You bolt upright, cutting Frank off in the middle of a sentence that you hadn’t registered a single syllable of. You throw your legs over the side of the bed, reaching down to pick your underwear and scrubs up off the floor.

“Uh—” He lets out a soft, confused laugh. “You okay?”

You pull your shirt over your head, unable to bring yourself to look at him. “Yeah,” you say, your voice unnaturally high. “It’s just late. I’ve got work in the morning, so I should get going.”

“O…kay,” he draws the word out, obviously unconvinced. “You sure that’s all it is?”

You jump up, yanking your pants into place. “Yep. Just tired.”

He’s silent for a moment, as if trying to gauge the sudden shift in your demeanor. Then, he clears his throat. “I mean, if you’re tired, you can sleep here. Probably shouldn’t drive—”

“What the hell are we doing, Frank?”

He pushes himself up on one elbow, eyebrows knitting together. “What are we doing?” He repeats. “Same thing we’ve been doing for the last few months, I thought.”

You’re shaking your head before he can finish the sentence.

“It’s not the same. It’s not the same and you know it.”

He sits up straighter, blue eyes boring into you like he’s trying to read your mind. It feels like an eternity before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is low and restrained. “Where is this coming from?”

You make a vague, exasperated gesture with your hands. “It’s coming from…all of it. You call two nights in a row and I come running. People at work are starting to talk because we barely even try to hide it. Your kids are sleeping right down the hall and you’re offering to let me spend the night—”

“Okay, okay,” he interrupts gently. He exhales slowly, dragging a hand through his hair. “Okay. You’re right,” he admits. “Things aren’t exactly the same. Haven’t been for a while now.” He pauses, the intensity of his stare keeping you glued to the spot where you stand next to his bed. “I just don’t see why that’s a bad thing.”

Your chest constricts at the way he doesn’t try to argue. Doesn’t get defensive, just wants to understand.

“Because it was never supposed to be…this.” Your gaze drops to the floor. “It was supposed to be casual. No strings attached. No feelings. But now?” You look back up to find him still staring at you, jaw clenched. You mentally will your voice to stay level, but emotion still slips through. “Cuddling all night then having breakfast with your children in the morning? Calling me baby like I’m yours? That’s not casual, Frank. That’s—”

He cuts you off with an incredulous laugh. “That’s what this is about?” He pushes the covers off of him, grabbing his underwear as he jumps out of bed to yank them on. “Me calling you baby?”

You’re silent as he walks over to you, stopping when his still bare chest is just inches from yours. He looks at you, unblinking, as he waits for you to answer.

You stare up at him, offering a small shrug. “Tell me it didn’t mean anything. Tell me it just slipped out and meant nothing and I’ll let this go.”

He lets out a breathy, humorless laugh and shakes his head. “I’m not going to lie so you can stay in your comfort zone,” he says, voice dangerously low. “It wasn’t just a slip. I called you baby because that’s what you are to me. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but at least be honest with yourself about why it upsets you.”

His words hit you square in the chest, knocking the air from your lungs and causing you to take a small, involuntary step back. “And why exactly do you think it upsets me?”

He leans in slightly, his eyes darkening. “Let me ask you this. Are you really that pissed off that I called you baby? Or are you upset that me calling you baby made you come harder than I’ve ever felt you come?”

You laugh at that. Cackle, really. Louder than you probably should at this hour when his children are sleeping with only walls in between you.

“Wow,” you exhale. “Okay.” You nod. “You’re a dick, and I am leaving.”

You don’t wait for a response before you’re grabbing your tennis shoes and bag off of his floor, not even bothering to put the shoes on your feet before storming out of the bedroom and making a beeline for the front door.

You’re aware of footsteps trailing after you, of Frank calling your name in a desperate whisper-shout, but you don’t stop. You aren’t thinking, you aren’t processing what just transpired, you just want to go back to your place, scream into a pillow, and hope that when you wake up in the morning, your heart is no longer doing gymnastics in your fucking ribcage.

“Please,” he breathes, his hand blanketing yours over the doorknob when you go to turn it. “Hear me out for just a second, okay?”

You don’t look up. His palm feels like wildfire against your skin and your brain is screaming at you to yank your hand away but you’re frozen in place.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he starts, voice a notch above a whisper. “If you want to leave, you can leave. But I can’t let you walk out of here thinking that this is still just sex to me. It was at first. I don’t know exactly when that changed for me, but it did. And I think it did for you, too.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. All of the words that you know you should probably say pile up in your throat.

I can’t be what you want me to be. I don’t know how.

I’m scared of hurting you. I’m scared of getting hurt.

It’s easier for me to shut down than to admit how I really feel.

I don’t remember how to let someone in. I wish I could.

For you, I wish I could.

You swallow them all down.

But you don’t tell him he’s wrong, either.

“I’ll see you at work, Frank.”

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Though the cravings have yet to subside, Frank is now a month sober from the exact thing his therapist had warned him about in the earliest days of his recovery.

Unlike when he got clean from benzos, this specific brand of newfound sobriety isn’t his choice. It’s yours.

He would never choose this for himself.

But still, he has surprised himself. Hasn’t reached out, no matter how much he has wanted to. Hasn’t texted you, no matter how many drafts he’s typed and deleted. Hasn’t called, even though it has killed him inside to watch your name get lower and lower in his call history. He’s given you space at work and has only talked to you when it pertains directly to a case.

He’s hated every fucking second of it, but he can officially say that he is thirty days clean. If the past thirty days have taught him anything, though, it’s this: he’d happily fall back into old habits, if only you’d give him the chance.

Because it isn’t the sex that he misses most. The sex doesn’t even crack the top ten things he thinks about when he’s trying to fall asleep at night.

It’s the way you’d occasionally forget a hair clip or chapstick on his bedside table and he’d find little pieces of you when you weren’t around and smile. It’s the way he’d get a text from you when he least expected it. It’s the way you’d ask about his children, and make a point to celebrate his recovery milestones even when he didn’t.

And now he’s here, thirty days without you, and one thing has become abundantly clear to him: he didn’t fall back into addiction, he fell in love.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

The news comes on a random Tuesday.

Temple University Hospital. Philadelphia. An internal medicine based fellowship you had impulsively applied for the night after you slept with Frank for the last time.

You had already made peace with the fact you weren’t going to get it. Didn’t think you even stood a chance, really, and you were okay with that. You had already been offered a pediatrics fellowship here in Pittsburgh, anyway.

Then the email appears in your inbox on a random Tuesday morning while you’re at work.

Suddenly, you have what most doctors approaching the end of their residencies don’t have: options.

And because you can’t talk to the one person you most (selfishly) want to talk to about it all, you talk to Cassie, instead.

“Wait. Temple?” She exclaims. “As in Philadelphia? I didn’t even know you had applied! What happened to pediatrics here in Pittsburgh?”

You sigh, taking a seat on the concrete curb in the ambulance bay. “It was really last minute. I didn’t say anything because I really didn’t think I’d get it. And as for the peds fellowship…” You shrug. “I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

“Oh my god,” she laughs, sitting down beside you. “That’s amazing. Do you know how hard it is to get into that program? They’re crazy selective.”

You force a smile. “I know.”

Cassie’s smile falters into concern. “Why does it seem like you aren’t thrilled about this?”

“I am,” you answer way too quickly, hugging your knees. “I’m just…surprised, that’s all. It’s big news.”

She stares at you as if you’re a patient who’s lying to her about how much pain they’re in. “You sure that’s all?”

Before you can bullshit a response, the automatic doors to the hospital slide open, and the very reason that you find it impossible to jump for joy right now steps outside.

He’s saying something to an EMS worker, completely oblivious to you watching him from across the bay, but the mere sight of him makes your heartbeat stutter and palms go clammy.

“I’m sure,” you force out, your eyes still glued to Frank. “It’s just…”

“Just…?” Cassie prompts, then follows your gaze. A few seconds of heavy silence pass between you before the pieces click into place. “Oh.”

You nod slowly, your throat tightening. “Yeah. Oh.”

She clicks her tongue. “So that’s why you submitted a last minute application for a fellowship in Philly.”

You can’t deny it. Not when you know she’s right. Not when you’re staring right at him with every feeling you’ve been trying to bury since the very first time you kissed him bubbling to the surface.

“I really fucked things up, Cass.”

You finally look away from him, your eyes burning with the threat of all of the unshed tears that you’ve refused to let spill for the last month.

“Between you and Langdon?” She asks gently.

You let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. I completely shut down the second things started to get real. He told me how he felt and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I feel the same. I just ran like I always do and…”

“And now you’re thinking about running to Philadelphia.”

Again, you can’t even deny it. Not in any way that would be halfway convincing.

“Temple would be a great opportunity,” you mumble instead, looking down at your shoe.

Cassie purses her lips. “It would be,” she agrees. “But moving five hours away isn’t going to magically erase your feelings. You have great opportunities here, too. And I don’t just mean peds.”

She nods in Frank’s direction. You glance back over to where he still stands chatting with the EMS worker. At the same moment, he looks up and his blue eyes meet yours.

You exhale, hoping that he doesn’t have a hidden talent for reading lips. “I don’t know if he even wants to talk to me at this point.”

She snorts. “Please. If the way he’s been moping around like a dejected puppy for the last month means anything, then you have nothing to worry about.” She pauses. “Look, if you really want to go to Philly, then I’ll help you pack. But if you’re gonna go, go for the right reasons. Not because facing your feelings scares you more than the thought of moving three hundred miles away.”

You hate that she’s right. But not as much as you hate the fact that you know she’s right, and still might take the easy way out, anyway.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

What hurts Frank more than anything is that he doesn’t hear the news directly from you.

He isn’t supposed to hear it at all, actually. He only finds out because he happens to be standing a few feet away at the nurse’s station, and Victoria’s voice carries.

“I heard about your fellowship offer from Temple,” Victoria practically sings. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you. Internal medicine, right?”

Frank doesn’t even look up from his tablet at first. He isn’t sure who Victoria is talking to, but he has no reason to believe it’s you. You didn’t apply to any fellowships in internal medicine. You’ve always been interested in going into emergency pediatrics—

“Oh—” Your nervous laugh causes Frank’s eyes to shoot up. Your back is to him, so he can’t see your facial expression. “Yeah, thanks,” you tell Victoria, your voice an octave higher than it typically is.

He doesn’t register the rest of the conversation because of a shrill ringing in his ears that makes him bolt to the restroom.

It’s been one month since his last legitimate conversation with you, and now you’re moving to Philadelphia? For a fellowship in internal medicine, which you’ve never expressed interest in during all the years you’ve worked together or months you slept together?

And you didn’t even tell him yourself. He heard it from Victoria talking so loudly that patients in fucking triage probably heard the news.

Not that you owe him anything. Of course you don’t have to run your life decisions by him. He was just blindsided is all.

Blindsided, and more devastated than he probably has any right to be.

He wishes he could be as happy for you as Victoria is. But no matter how much Frank works on himself, no matter how much time he spends in therapy or how many self-help books he reads, he’s always been a selfish man when he’s in love.

But you aren’t his to be selfish over. He knows this. He’s painfully aware of it every time he sees you at work and every time he feels your absence when he’s alone at night.

So when he sees you walking to your car in the parking garage after work that night, he tries to do the right thing even though it feels wrong.

“So, Philly?”

You come to a halt beside your car, slowly turning around to face him. You purse your lips in the way that Frank knows that you normally do when you’re nervous, adjusting your bag over your shoulder.

“You heard about that, huh?”

Frank stops a couple feet away from you, one hand on the strap of his backpack and one crammed in his pants pocket. “Yeah, Javadi doesn’t exactly whisper.”

“Ah,” you breathe. Then, with a small laugh, “No, I suppose she doesn’t.”

An awkward beat of silence passes between you as it dawns on Frank that this is damn near exactly where he stood months ago when you first kissed him. The realization makes his gaze flash to your lips.

God, what the hell is he doing?

He clears his throat and starts to take a step back. “Well, I just wanted to say congratulations. Temple will be really lucky to have you—”

“I haven’t decided anything yet,” you interject quickly, the words nearly running together. “I just found out yesterday so I…I don’t really know what I’m going to do yet.”

Frank hopes that his face doesn’t show the sudden relief he feels to hear of your indecision.

“But I’m sorry you found out that way,” you add in a smaller voice, not meeting his eye. “I was going to tell you, once I made a decision.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says softly. “You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to be happy. Even if it’s not here.” He pauses and adds the words that taste like bile when they leave his mouth. “Even if it’s not with me.”

But goddamn, do I wish it was, he thinks.

A storm of different emotions flicker across your face in the span of about two seconds. For one of them, Frank thinks you might step toward him.

But it’s just wishful thinking, or maybe the shitty parking garage lighting.

“Thank you, Frank.”

Anything else he could possibly say would be solely for his own benefit, so he nods.

And he doesn’t want to risk ruining the moment, knowing there’s a chance that he may not have many more with you.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

The words on the screens in front of you bleed together.

The email you received yesterday morning from Temple University Hospital is open on your laptop screen. The iPad in your hands displays UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s website.

You’ve scanned and scrolled as if the answer you’re searching for will appear in bold letters across one of the screens, but since you got home from work a few hours ago, the only decision you’ve succeeded in making is chamomile over peppermint tea.

You thought taking a hot shower might help you clear your mind. All that resulted in was remembering all of the times that you ended up at Frank’s or he ended up at yours after work and you’d shower together, washing off the long day with your hands and lips on each other the entire time.

After cutting your shower short, you figured eating something other than a protein bar would help you gain at least a little mental clarity - but then you opened your fridge to see leftover takeout from the Italian place down the road that you know Frank likes, and completely lost your appetite.

The following hours weren’t much different.

Put on body lotion - remembered how much Frank loved the smell of it. Turned on music - the first fucking song that played on shuffle was by an artist that Frank introduced you to. Searched through a pile of laundry for a cardigan - found a t-shirt Frank accidentally left at your place over a month ago that you can’t bring yourself to give back to him.

He’s still everywhere. It’s been a month and he’s still occupying spaces that he hasn’t been in weeks. In your apartment and in your brain and in your heart.

And to top it all off, the words that he had said to you in the parking garage tonight won’t stop replaying in your head.

I just want you to be happy. Even if it’s not here. Even if it’s not with me.

But what if it is? What if it is here? What if it is with him?

You sigh, rubbing your eyes, but it does little to improve the quality of the words on the screens in front of you. Maybe, if you put on your reading glasses, everything will become clear to—

Your hand freezes on a piece of paper in your bedside table drawer as you’re searching for your glasses.

A bright blue, wrinkled sticky note. You don’t even have to flip it over to remember what it says but you do, anyway.

Stop overthinking. You made the right call. You always do.

Also, stop scowling.

Frank’s handwriting. He’d scribbled the words, crumpled the paper up, and flicked it at you across your desks while charting after a particularly brutal trauma that he knew you were beating yourself up over.

It had been the first thing to make you smile that whole day. It was a reminder that you desperately needed at that moment. And it was from Frank. Of course you kept it.

And now here it is. At the exact moment you so desperately need that reminder once again.

Stop overthinking.

So that’s exactly what you do. You stop overthinking, and do what you should have done a long time ago.

He’s probably already asleep, but you put on your shoes.

There’s a voice in the back of your mind telling you that you’re probably too late, but you grab your car keys and make the short drive to his place.

And there’s a tight ball of anxiety in the pit of your stomach that begs you to turn around, but you raise your hand and knock on his front door.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Frank is convinced that he must be dreaming.

He didn’t actually hear a knock and open his front door to you standing outside at midnight.

There’s no way this isn’t his subconscious playing some cruel joke on him. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve appeared in his dreams, but it is by far the most realistic he’s had. He can feel the chill of the night wind as it blows the familiar scent of your body lotion in his direction and it is all so, so lifelike.

It doesn’t register that he is very much awake and you are very much here until you speak.

“Shit.”

It’s the first word out of your mouth.

“I’m sorry,” you huff. “Are the kids here right now? I hope I didn’t wake them up. I didn’t really think this through. I just got in my car and drove here before I could chicken out because I’m tired of chickening out and—”

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, stepping over the threshold of his doorway. He almost reaches out and touches you, but stops himself at the last second.

You’re here. You’re actually fucking here right now. It’s the middle of the night and you’re in your pajamas and slippers and he has no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re here.

“What’s going on?” He asks gently, unable to keep obvious concern from his tone. “It’s…after midnight. Is everything okay?”

You nod. “Everything is fine. I’m sorry to freak you out. I just…I told you that I was going to tell you whenever I came to a decision.”

Frank stares at you, his mouth slightly agape. You did say that…approximately five hours ago.

The shock and the hope he had initially felt upon realizing that you’re standing on his front porch is quickly replaced with dread at what you might say next.

He swallows, his voice rough. “So…you made a decision, then? About Philadelphia?”

Another nod, followed by a smile that he can’t quite read. “Philly sounds great. I mean…the Eagles, the Liberty Bell…cheesesteaks.” Your shoulders lift in a small shrug. “And the internal medicine program at Temple would be a really great opportunity.”

Frank drops your gaze, bracing for what surely comes next.

“But Philadelphia does not have the guy that I love.”

His eyes shoot back up. You’re staring at him, eyes wide and closer to tears than he thinks he’s ever seen from you. Before he can speak, you take a step closer and he forgets how to breathe.

“It doesn’t have you.”

Frank knows it defies all science and logic, but he swears the entire city freezes around you two right then and there.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt before his brain has a chance to catch up. “Frank, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have walked out on you like I did. I shouldn’t have shut you out, I shouldn’t have taken this long to get my head out of my ass—”

“Hey—” he tries gently, but you’re on a roll now.

“—and I should have told you that you were right. It wasn’t just sex to me, either. I don’t think it ever really was. And I get it if I’m too late. I get it if you can’t give me another chance. But I’m not going anywhere, I’m done running away from what I feel, and if I have to prove every day that I love—”

That’s it. He won’t listen to another word.

Not that he doesn’t love the sound of them coming from your lips because goddamn, he does. Every word, every apology, every promise you’re willing to give, Frank will take.

But he can’t just stand here and watch the way your hands are starting to shake and listen to your voice begin to tremble when every part of him that has missed you for the last month screams at him to pull you close, so that’s exactly what he does.

It only takes a fraction of a second for you to process that his lips are moving against yours.

Your hands fly to his hair, his own dropping from your face to your waist to pull you flush against him. You gasp into his mouth, a pretty noise that Frank is happy to swallow down. It takes no time at all for the kiss to turn fervent, a clash of tongue and teeth that makes him grateful that it’s the dead of night and all of his neighbors are asleep.

“—you,” you finish when you reluctantly break apart, your breath warm against his lips. “I love you.”

The three words are everything he’s been waiting to hear since the first night you kissed him. He just didn’t know it at the time.

“I love you, too, baby,” he murmurs low. A smirk forms on his kiss-swollen lips. “It is okay that I call you that now, right?”

You let out a sound that is half laugh, half sob at the words. You grab his face in your hands and pull him down again for one more kiss, this one shorter but just as sweet.

“Please,” you sigh, smiling up at him. “Because you weren’t wrong about the effect it has on me.”

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Jack switching over to day shift when you found out you were pregnant with your daughter was a game changer. You no longer had to force yourself to wake up earlier than you needed to just to get an extra 20 minutes with him, and Jack no longer needed to speed through handoffs in order to rush home. Now, mornings were spent getting ready together while you and your baby girl waved Jack goodbye, knowing you'd have the nighttime to be with him.

When your baby was born, you, along with Jack, made the decision that it would be best if you stayed at home. Not only did he make enough money to support your little family on his own, but with Jack's sometimes unpredictable hours, it only made sense to stay home instead of relying on babysitters or family members at the last minute. Besides, you had always dreamed of being a mom, so getting to stay home and cuddle and love on your little girl 24/7 was really the best case scenario.

Now, your baby girl was nine months old and she was nothing but pure love and cuteness all around. Jack could spend hours peppering little kisses all over her chubby little face while her tiny hands yanked at his curls. Your heart was even more full every time you looked at her due to how much she resembled Jack. Not only did she have her own red-ish curls like her dad did when he was young, but her eyes were the spitting image of Jack; not to mention her cute button nose that she would scrunch whenever you tickled her belly.

However, this particular day, your daughter seemed a little more down than usual. When you and Jack went to the nursery this morning, baby girl was a lot clingier than usual and fussy as she ate her breakfast. Of course Jack worried as he always did and suggested he should stay home and be with you. After some back and forth that everything would be fine and that he should get going, Jack relented and made sure to give your daughter some extra kisses before heading out.

That was around five hours and three meltdowns ago. Soon after Jack left, you had checked her temperature and it was certainly higher than usual. You tried to comfort her as best you could, not wanting to go through the hassle of a hospital run and have her be around even more sick people, but after hearing your baby cry for so long, it was the only logical solution.

Checking her temperature once again, you cursed lightly under your breath as it climbed even higher than before. Your baby girl continued to cry as you got her loaded up in the car on the way to PTMC. You tried to call Jack but it kept going to voicemail and you even went as far as calling Robby but his was the same too. You figured they must be swamped right now but you tried not to think too hard about it and focus on your little girl as she whimpered and fussed on the backseat.

Parking as quickly as you could, you made the split decision to enter through the ambulance bay like Jack told you to. You knew staff hated it when patients did that but the rules were always bent when it came to family.

Walking in, all you saw was chaos. Nurses and doctors were running around and you couldn't find anyone you knew, which meant they were all probably with a patient. As you balanced your baby girl on your hip, you tried giving Jack another call before a voice caught your attention.

"Excuse me ma'am, you can't just barge in here through the ambulance bay. They're for ambulances only, hence the name"

Turning around, you were met with a tall, lanky doctor with curly brown hair. The condescension was heavy in his retort and he had a look on his face like he was waiting for you to challenge him. Granted you hadn't met all of Jack's coworkers before, you couldn't fault him for not knowing you, but the way he spoke to you certainly wasn't alright; you were going to have a conversation with Robby later on about his doctor's bedside manners.

"I didn't barge in here" you started, "I'm just looking for--"

The man cut you off, "oh but you did, didn't you. You came in through those doors when patients are supposed to go through triage before getting called in."

You took a deep breath before responding, not wanting to completely explode in the middle of the ED, "Look, my daughter is sick and I am just trying to get a hold of her--"

He cut you off once again by ushering you back towards triage. "Look ma'am, we take patients in by how sick they are and from the looks of it, your baby isn't all that bad, so wait here and stop trying to cut the line."

You were speechless by how curt and dismissive he was of you. You tried to argue again as he continued to walk you into the waiting room but he kept shutting you down and waving you off. How dare he disrespect you like this? Regardless of you being Jack's wife or not, he had no right to speak to any patient like this. Before you could make one last argument, the man turned around and the door to the ED shut behind him.

You huffed as you watched the door close on your face. If this was about literally anyone else or even yourself, you would have taken his advice and checked in with the desk but you knew Jack would blow a fuse if he knew his baby girl sat waiting in chairs and no one told him.

Continuing to comfort your daughter as she cried in your arms, you looked behind the desk and didn't see anyone you knew. The times you'd come in to visit Jack, Lupe would usually be at the desk and would wave you in through the doors. Now, the only person that sat there was a young woman you hadn't met.

Deciding to just go for it, you waited in line in order to speak to the lady. In the 10 or so minutes that you waited, you tried multiple times to call Jack again. His phone continued to go to voicemail and you were starting to feel frustrated as your daughter got worse and worse and everyone around you coughed or sneezed or moaned about the wait time. Once you finally made it to the front, you wasted no time before asking for Jack.

"Oh I'm sorry ma'am but I think Dr. Abbot is busy. Besides, we don't usually allow patients to pick who their doctor will be, we just assign you to whoever is free first" she replied nicely. "Would you like to tell me what brought you here though?"

Tired of being given the same answer, you were just about to give up and just wait before you caught sight of Dana behind the glass walking out of a patient room with Mateo.

"Dana" you shouted, while waving your hand in order to get her attention.

The lady at the desk was about to comment on you distracting the charge nurse before Dana quickly made her way over.

"Sweetheart, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Oh thank god Dana. She's been feeling sick all morning and I tried to get in there but I got sent out here by one of the doctors. I haven't been able to reach Jack, do you know where he is?"

Dana nodded along to everything you said before turning back to the lady at the desk, "Let her through, she's Dr. Abbot's wife."

Sighing as you were finally getting somewhere, you welcomed the hug that Dana gave you as you walked through the door.

"Hey sweet girl" Dana cooed at your daughter, "Not feeling too good huh?"

Your daughter continued to whimper as tears streamed down her face. You gave her kisses to try and calm her down, explaining to Dana how high her temperature was the last time you checked as she led you over to a patient room.

"It's been a hell of a day here, not surprised Jack hasn't been able to call you back. But you just wait here and I'll go find him for you."

You let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding as you finally settled your little girl onto the bed. You hummed a little song to her as you brushed her hair out of her face, now content knowing that your husband was on the way.

Your little peaceful moment was ruined however when the curtain was yanked back harshly and the man from earlier stepped in.

"Look lady, I tried being nice last time but I know for a fact that you did not go through triage because there is no baby listed on the board as a patient."

Before you could reply, he beat you to it again, "I don't know why you think you're entitled to special treatment but you can't just take a room from somebody who actually needs it."

You were about to unleash hell on this guy before a low and stern voice spoke from behind him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing."

Both you and the man turned towards the door where Jack stood eerily still, dark eyes locked on the doctor in front of you.

"Dr. Abbot, I am so sorry about this lady. She came in earlier through the ambulance bay and I told her she couldn't do that so I made her go to the waiting room. I just now found her in this patient room where she definitely wasn't assigned and--"

"This lady," Jack stated, eyes never leaving the man, "is my wife. And that baby is my daughter. I've heard the voicemails she's left me and if you would have given her the chance to speak, you would've known that."

The atmosphere in the room shifted dramatically. You could see the moment the young man realized he screwed up and the look in your husband's eye was terrifying. The only thing that snapped Jack out of his simmering rage was the quiet cry your daughter let out in the bed. Immediately, Jack shouldered past the man and was at your baby's side instantly.

"Hey sweet girl, what's the matter hm? Not feeling good?" Jack whispered to your baby, putting a comforting hand on her belly and rubbing gently.

The other doctor, whose name you still didn't know, stood silently by the door with a terrified look on his face. He looked as though he was about to say something before Robby walked in.

"Hey, I heard my little niece was here, what's going on" Robby asked, but stopped as soon as he saw Ogilvie standing frozen by the curtain.

Robby lifted an eyebrow towards him, "Ogilvie, is there a reason you're just standing there?"

Before he could respond, Jack beat him to it, "Yeah he's going to explain to me why he kicked my wife out of the ED and told her that our daughter wasn't a priority"

Robby's mouth dropped open at that and a confused look passed over his face as he made eye contact with you.

"Okay" Robby answered slowly, "Why don't I just take a look at baby girl here and see what's going on."

Jack and Robby switched places as Jack marched over to the young man. You called out his name to try and calm him down but he wasn't listening. Jack got toe to toe with Ogilvie and despite your husband being a few inches shorter, it did nothing to help lessen his intimidating presence.

"While I may not be able to fault you for not knowing she's my wife, I can fault you for how you spoke to her. Regardless of a patient's relationship to any of us, that does not give you the right to berate a woman who is terrified for their child. You are not allowed to just dismiss a patient's feelings and do not ever let me hear you tell another parent again that their child is not sick enough to be a priority, do you understand me."

Even from where you were standing, you could see the tears starting to well up in the young man's eyes. Even though you had also wanted to tear into him earlier, you didn't actually want to see this guy cry.

"Jack" you called softly, "that's enough. Come here please."

You held your hand out for Jack to take as he waited another second before turning away from Ogilvie. Once his hand found yours, all his attention was back on you and your baby girl. From your periphery, you saw how Robby gestured for Ogilvie to step out. Turning your focus back on your daughter, she seemed to calm down now that her dad was here.

"Her temp is still up, so we'll get some medication going for her and run a few labs just to make sure nothing else is going on behind the scenes" Robby said, smiling down at your daughter before turning to Jack, "you good brother?"

"Yeah I am" Jack nodded, "you mind carrying on without me, I wanna stay here."

"Of course" Robby smiled, "Wouldn't let you back to work even if you wanted to." Robby pulled you in for a quick hug before stepping out of the room again. Now that it was just your little family, the weight of the day was starting to weigh on your shoulders. You and Jack laid on either side of your daughter, facing one another as she finally started to settle down.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you at work my love, I just didn't know what else to do" you sighed.

"Honey, do not ever apologize for taking care of our daughter, you did the right thing. If anything, I'm sorry for how Ogilvie treated you, that kid's been a pain ever since he got here" Jack huffed.

You let out a small smile as you looked at Jack, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder, "He's definitely got a lot to learn still, but he's got a good teacher" you teased.

Jack let out a small laugh at that before looking down to peer at his little girl, "I'm glad you brought her here. I hate being away from you two."

He looked back up at you as you cupped one side of his face, "Looks like she just needed her daddy to feel better" you replied softly.

The two of you continued to lay like that, going back and forth between looking at your daughter and each other. No words were spoken, all you knew was that everything would be okay now that Jack was here and that Jack would do anything to make sure it stayed that way.

ED was at its usual chaotic energy. You were tucked behind the nurse's station with a warm cup of tea and trying to ignore the dull ache in your lower back.

You were thirty four weeks along and the "taking it easy" memo from your OB-GYN had apparently been replaced with a high volume shift.

"I can take the chart for Bed 4, Jack," you said, reaching for the tablet as Dr. Abbot, your precious husband, rounded the corner.

He didn't hand it over. Instead, he held it just out of your reach, his eyes sweeping over you with a precision that usually preceded a lecture. "Bed 4 is a suspected spinal precaution. Which means a log roll. Which means lifting."

"I can assist," you countered, putting on your best I'm fine face. "I’m pregnant, love, not made of glass."

Jack stepped into your space, his hand dropping to the small of your back, his thumb tracing a soothing circle over the scrubs. His expression softened but his resolve didn't waver. "You’re thirty four weeks. Yesterday was a long shift. Today, you’re staying behind the desk."

"Jack—"

"No," he said, his voice dropping to a protective tone that made you huff. "I need you, and the little one, to stay out of risk until labor. Take it easy. ED will survive if you just handle the coordination for a few hours."

You opened your mouth to argue but a sharp kick to your ribs from the inside made you winced. Jack’s eyes widened, his hand immediately moving to the front of your bump.

"See?" he murmured, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Even she agree with me. Sit. Drink your tea. If I see you trying to move a patient, I'm calling Lena to personally escort you to the breakroom."

"You wouldn't dare," you gasped.

"Try me," he winked, leaning in to press a quick kiss to your forehead before turning back toward the trauma bays. "I’ll bring you a snack in twenty minutes. Don't move!"

You watched him go. You leaned back into your chair with a sigh, resting your hands over the spot where he’d just been touching.

"Your father is a menace," you whispered to your stomach. "He’s very bossy and currently treating me like a high risk intake. But I suppose we can give him a pass this time, right babygirl? Just for the extra snacks."

As if on cue, yoyr baby gave a solid thump against your palm, a clear vote in favor of the snack plan.

True to his word, Jack reappeared twenty minutes later. He wasn't empty-handed; he had a plastic container of sliced green apples with honey and a cold bottle of juice.

"Delivery for my girls," he announced, setting everything down in front of you.

"You actually found the good apples," you noted, reaching for one. As soon as the first bit of sugar hit your system, the baby went into overdrive, performing a series of enthusiastic somersaults.

"Whoa," you gasped. "Okay, someone is very excited about the apple with honey thing."

Jack’s eyebrows shot up. He walked around the side of the desk and kneeled. You reached out, taking his hand and guiding it to the right side of your bump where the movement was most frantic.

The moment Jack’s palm made contact, a sharp kick connected right with his thumb. Jack’s entire face transformed. He let out a soft laugh, leaning his forehead against the side of your stomach.

"Hi, babygirl" Jack murmured, his voice vibrating against your bump. "You like the sweet snacks, huh? Just like your mom. Keep growing big and strong, but maybe stop using her body as a punching bag for a few hours, okay? Give mama a break."

He looked up at you, his eyes bright with a mixture of emotions. "She's really active today."

"She’s definitely a fan of your catering," you teased, running your fingers through his hair.

Jack pressed a firm kiss to the center of your bump. He stayed there for a long moment, grounded and unbothered, making it very clear to the entire ED that his most important patient needed his attention.

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Azriel is itchy. It's an all-encompassing feeling, an anxious thrum to his very blood that makes his fingers twitch and his muscles ache. He hasn't had a moment alone with you in days, and it's worn his nerves thin. He's not sure when this snuck up on him- probably when the mating bond snapped, but even then he can't remember if he needed to be by your side so constantly, or if he just wanted to. It was probably both, and probably still is, which is why a whiff of your scent on the staircase to his bedroom makes him take the steps two at a time.

He opens the door quietly because that's who he is, but he thanks the mother for his natural spying abilities because you're passed out in his bed. You have your own room, two floors down and three hallways apart that feel like torture in the dead of night. But he loves it when he finds you like this, sprawled out over his massive bed in nothing but one of his shirts, legs tangled in his sheets and face pressed into his pillows.

Another one of his t-shirts is gripped in your fist.

It looks like you'd fallen asleep clutching it, and Azriel's heart nearly bursts in his chest, swelling an uncomfortable amount until he feels the need to clutch at it. He rubs at his pec, trying to ease the ache there until he breathes deeper and catches something heady in the air, a sweat-salty scent that deepens into a musk that makes his mouth water.

You smell like sex.

Not penetration- there's no lingering traces of Azriel's own lust between your barely-spread legs, nor, thank the mother, is there notes of anyone else's. He realizes with another layer of saliva coating the inside of his mouth, pooling there beneath his tongue that you'd made yourself cum, the fingers that aren't fisted in his shirt just barely poked beneath the hem of your panties. You smell clean, like you'd shuffled to his bathroom and wiped yourself down, but Azriel knows for certain that you'd fingered yourself in his bed, and he feels his cock stiffen against the unforgiving fabric of his training leathers.

His eyes rove over your sleeping form, your head nestled into his pillow, your hair trapped uncomfortably beneath your shoulders. Your occupied hand is holding his t-shirt just beneath your chin, and he has sudden visions of you holding it against your nose with your hips grinding against your fingers so dizzying he stumbles as he walks towards the bed.

He catches himself on the foot of the bed, breathing in the strong scent of what can't be described as anything other than pussy filling his nose. It's intoxicating, he has to swallow down that spit that's gathered on his tongue, begging to wet you. His forearms clench against the footboard and he eyes your panties, dragged back into place up your thighs from where you'd nudged them aside earlier.

He'd planned on finding you hunched over a book- sneaking a shadow up the back of your shirt and catching you as you flailed with a squeal at the way it would have tickled your skin. He was going to haul you into his arms, probably sideways or upside-down, just to see your eyes sparkle as you tried escaping the head rush. Then he'd have tossed you down on the bed and kissed you silly, all over the face, against your flushed cheeks, on the tip of your nose, in the crevice between your chin and chest as you desperately tried pinching your shoulders to your ears to evade him. It had never been his intention to walk in and pounce on you, he'd just fantasized about finally holding you after so many days of stolen kisses between errands, so many nights of crawling in bed and finding the other already asleep. But this- he can't ignore the smell coming from between your thighs, he can't stop imagining you pressing his shirt to your nose, he can't get the idea of you touching yourself in his bed out of his mind.

He blinks and realizes he'd sunk to his knees at the edge of the bed. Your feet are near his face, and he takes a brief few seconds to admire the pretty pink paint you'd chosen for your toes. He wonders once again when he'd fallen so deeply in love with you to be admiring your pinky toe, but he doesn't care and he takes your ankles in his scarred hands, gently pulling you down the mattress and making his shadows keep his pillow beneath your head. You don't wake, and the smell of your cunt hits Azriel ten times stronger now that it's mere inches away from him, your thin panties doing nothing to mask your scent.

You smell like you'd prepped for him. Like your orgasm hadn't been its own event, like you'd done it to open yourself up for his thick, long cock. It's what he has to do most nights to prepare you, and his teeth dig sharply into his lower lip at the thought of you imagining your fingers were his own rough ones.

He feels divinely lucky to be able to press his lips to your calves, sliding his shoulders beneath them and nestling his nose into the thin skin behind your knee. He kisses there for good measure, just to tuck his love into a spot he doesn't usually get to, and drags his nose along your thigh, lips parted as a hot, ragged sigh melts against your skin.

There's traces of your arousal on your thighs. You'd cleaned yourself up, but you'd probably done it in a hazy, sleepy hurry, missing splotches here and there along your legs where your sticky fingers had brushed accidental smears of wetness or you had simply leaked past your knuckles and soiled the bedsheets. He has to clench his eyes shut not to cum at the thought, using every ounce of willpower he possesses to shove his impending orgasm down before he even tastes you. He drops his head to your stomach in desperation, his nose pressed against your clit as he breathes in the heady smell of your clean, wet, ready cunt.

it doesn't help him gain control of himself, but it's so fucking intense, so fucking sinful that he can't pull himself away. You don't stir at all- you must have really tired yourself out earlier, so he takes a moment to press his forehead against your pelvis, thanking the mother in a silent prayer that he gets to have every inch of you flush against his mouth like this. He puckers his lips and kisses against the fabric of your underwear, feeling your sex beneath it, warm and semi-stiff with lingering arousal. Your lips are parted and he nearly forgets your panties are even there, the urge to burrow straight into your cunt with his tongue so strong.

He tests the waters by pressing a few more sweet kisses to the pad of your panties, and when a soft sigh escapes your mouth he has to freeze once more, teeth bared and hands clenched in the comforter at your feet. He grunts with the effort of restraining his orgasm, panting slightly as he opens his eyes again and wills his hands steady to remove your underwear.

The smell of the cotton covering your cunt is gone, and a gush of saliva floods Azriel's mouth. He sighs reverently at the sight of your pussy, still swollen from your former orgasm and he wastes no more time before sticking the tip of his tongue past his lower lip, leaning in to swipe it gently up through your primed cunt.

He has to jam a hand over his bulge the second he tastes you. He has to touch himself, he can't take the maddening lack of stimulation as every other sexual fuse in his body is lit. He smells sex, he sees sex, he tastes sex, he even hears it in the slick of his tongue against your folds and the way your breathing quickens in your sleep. But he doesn't feel it, and he squeezes himself through his leathers so viciously he's surprised he doesn't injure himself.

He's digging his palm into his groin to satiate his need for touch, but the real pleasure comes from dragging his tongue in fat, wet stripes through your bared cunt. You're clearly ready for a second orgasm, your pussy responding quick to his tongue and shining with hot wetness as soon as he gets a steady rhythm going. He groans as your arousal bleeds onto his tongue, burrowing it further into your sex, pushing it as far as it can go into your pussy and flicking it there to draw a broken whimper out of your mouth. His nose digs into your clit and he pulls back to pant against your labia, lips pressed to your sex even when he's coming up for air. You're still sleeping, but you're reacting to his touches, hands squirming and inadvertently knocking his shirt back over your face. He has to concentrate on loosening the clenched tightness of his jaw so that he can lick you again, tongue laving against you before breaching your slit and dragging your leaking arousal up towards your clit. He scoops it onto his tongue there, flicking the tip of the muscle against your clit in a way that makes you nearly sob in your sleep. Your thighs begin tightening around his head, pressing against his ears so that sound is muffled, but he doesn't need to hear you to know you're beginning to stir.

He unclenches his hands from the bedsheets to grab hold of your hips, pushing forwards beneath your thighs to seal his open mouth against your cunt. He plunges his tongue inside, wriggling it further and further until it's nestled in that tight spot again, squeezed by warm wetness that pulses to the beat of your heart. He begins working it in and out, in and out, in and out until you wake with a startled cry- something Azriel doesn't see but feels as your hands fly to his hair and yank. The mating bond between you sings with pleasure as he ravages you, pure, unadulterated bliss washing over him at the feeling of you clamping your thighs shut on his face, pulling his hair and pulsing around his tongue. He doesn't let up as your orgasm begins, and soon your fingers curl against his scalp, scratching and holding him in place instead of tugging him off. He fucks your pussy with his tongue, his nose nudging your clit until you're twitching rather than riding, overstimulation beginning to take hold. When you begin pulling again at his hair he reluctantly breaks himself away, realizing belatedly that some of the bliss he'd experienced in the moment had been his own orgasm, his palm sticky and his leathers stained.

He honestly hadn't noticed.

"Azriel," You pant, his shirt laying crumpled on your stomach where it had fallen when you'd shot upright. You stare down at him with wide, hazy eyes, noticing the sheen of bliss spread over his own hazel ones. He's covered in your slick, his chin and cheeks glistening, his nose reddened and his breathing heavy. His chest heaves as he drags in lungful after lungful of air, of your scent, of sex, shoulders remaining steady beneath the weight of your thighs despite the post-adrenaline crash beginning to hit the two of you.

He looks like sex incarnate, and it's making you want another round before you can even clean this one up.

"Sorry for waking you," Azriel pants, the words falling hot against your skin and making you jolt as the air hits your sensitive cunt, "I saw you sleeping with my shirt, and I smelled you- I put two and two together."

"Oh." You recall your pre-nap endeavors, your fingers pressed together between your legs in Azriel's bed, and heat rushes to your face, "I'm- I'm sorry, that wasn't very... polite of me."

Azriel scoffs, nothing but another gust of hot breath against your kissed thighs, "I don't care. Actually- I do. I want you to do it again. Whenever the urge hits you," Azriel begins standing, taking your legs in his palms and lifting them with him so that your feet rest beneath his chin, both of your ankles circled by one of his hands as he holds your legs in the air, "Come to my room and do it in here. Use my shirts, use my leathers, I don't care. Get it on the sheets." Azriel dips down to kiss against the bone of one of your ankles, then tilts his head to kiss the other, "Make such a mess of yourself that the room reeks of your cunt. I walked in and I almost passed out," He recalls, clenching his teeth and trying to calm his voice from the growl it had become, "Don't deprive me of seeing you like this."

Your eyes are wide and your cheeks are flushed. Azriel is beautiful, and he's in love with you, and he's telling you to fuck your fingers so good you leak all over his bedsheets. Your head is spinning and your core is throbbing, and you feel the still-prominent bulge in Azriel's trousers brush up against your exposed core as he keeps you folded in half against him, your breath hitching and your mouth watering.

"Please?" He asks, and you realize you've never answered him, nodding jerkily against his pillows.

"Okay." You answer obediently, willing to do whatever it takes to make Azriel happy, to please him, and his eyes roll back in his head, lashes fluttering and eyelids falling shut at the sound of your compliance.

"Thank you," He manages, reverent, polite, proud, as his shadows slip beneath your arms and begin dragging you back up the bed, "Which hand did you use?"

You brandish your fingers at him as he fumbles with the clasps of his leather pants, shucking them as fast as possible and kneeling before you on the bed, cock hard and heavy and waiting.