⋅˚₊todi

─── ⋆ CHAPTERS ⋆

PART ONE 𖤓♡ — Jack Abbot values his routine and structure. Work, SWAT, gym... and for the past six weeks, spending his Sunday mornings admiring the enigmatic single mom who's apartment balcony sits across from his. [3k]

PART TWO 𖤓♡ — A scuffle in the hall causes Jack to accidentally take Phoebe’s wallet to work instead of his. He gains himself a new nickname amongst the Pitt and finally learns a thing or two about you and your daughter. [7.3k]

PART THREE 𖤓 — A trip to the ED, a retirement meal, and a phone call with Robby. One leaves you up close and personal with your neighbor, one has Phoebe spilling secrets like it's an Olympic sport, and another has Jack realizing he's got a fucking crush on the single mom in apartment seventeen. [7.1k]

PART FOUR 𖤓♡ — Phoebe's birthday party consists of four sets of eyes ogling Jack from the second he enters your apartment, screaming children, your mom noticing something rather interesting, and a night on the balcony that changes the trajectory of everything. [8.7k]

⤷ PART 4.5 𖤓 — You don't hear from Jack for three days after the kiss. But despite being swamped at the hospital, after he reaches out via text, he doesn't stop. [SMAU]

PART FIVE 𖤓★ — When Jack offers his company in the form of a date to celebrate your book release, he gets to understand the inner workings of your mind a bit more. Unfortunately, it does leave him with an ache he has to tend to using nothing but his own imagination. [7.8k]

PART SIX 𖤓★ — Three months of dating with no label and no real sense of security has you spiralling a bit when Tom demands to meet Jack. And you quickly start to realize that despite your attempts of keeping Phoebe and Jack apart, some bonds form whether you intend for them to or not. [8.2k]

PART SEVEN 𖤓★ — When the double date from Hell roles around, you're left with a new friend while Jack is struggling to come to terms with the type of person Phoebe is stuck with as a father. But despite that, it doesn't stop you and Jack from ending your evening with a bang. [12.2k]

PART EIGHT 𖤓★ — Pizzas, karaoke, movies and a sleepover. All at Phoebe’s request, of course, for Jack to spend Saturday night with them. And when Sunday morning rolls around, she’s got some things that she needs to get off her chest. [7.1k]

PART NINE 𖤓♡ — When Phoebe's field day goes nowhere near as planned, Bella is left to pick up the pieces of your broken heart while Karis goes into labor and Jack and your father have a heart to heart. [10.1k]

PART TEN (FINALE) 𖤓★ — TBA

─── ⋆ BONUS CONTENT ⋆

TBA

─── ⋆ MISC ⋆

#APT.17 (a tag for anything related to this series)

SUNDAY FUNK DAY SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

The crowd there was the worst he’d stood in front of, and he’d grown up in Smurf’s living room, so that was a measurement that meant something. Men who bet money they needed and meant to take the loss of someone’s skin. The air thick enough to chew, smoke and sweat and the bitterness of a room full of people who’d collectively decided this was the night their luck was going to turn. 

Pope wanted to lose just so they’d fuck off. 

It was run by a guy named Leo who’d met Craig at a party, late, both of them lit and certain they were about to make each other rich. Leo had the basement, the crowd, the connections that made cops uninterested, and a way of talking that made one-track-minded guys like Craig feel like they were cut in on something even as he was lifting your wallet. Pope didn’t trust him. Pope didn’t trust anybody, but he distrusted Leo with a specificity that felt like respect. 

Leo ran the place like a man who’d thought about every cent in a dollar twice. Nothing in that basement was there by accident, which was how Pope knew, eventually, that you weren’t either. 

The first night he didn’t put it together. He came up out of the third round with his ears ringing and his knuckles screaming and somebody pressed a wet rag to the back of his neck, and his body did what it always did. He came around with his elbow up and the words already out of his mouth. “Get the fuck off me.” 

You went still. You were crouched down close enough that he could see you’d done your eyes earlier in the night and they’d worn through, smudged soft at the corners, and that should have made you look tired and instead made you look like you’d been left out in the weather, gentled by it. There was a smear of someone else’s blood drying brown along your jaw—not yours, you didn’t have a mark on you, you were the only clean thing in a room built for ruining people—and you hadn’t wiped it off because your hands had been busy all night being careful with men who were far from deserving it. 

“Okay,” you said, and that was all. You stayed crouched in front of him, an arm’s length back now, holding the rag out where he could take it himself if he wanted it. 

He felt like garbage. It all arrived once, the way it did with him, fine one second and then sick with it. You couldn’t have been much more than a bucket and tape to anybody else in that room, just the girl who patched them up, and he’d snapped at you like you were one of the men in the room baying for his blood. 

He took the rag off your hands. 

And you just went back to it. You pulled his hand into both of yours like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t just shown you the worst of himself in the first ten seconds of knowing you, and started cleaning the wreck of his knuckles with a little furrow between your brows. Devotional, almost. Like his hand had been lent to you and you were supposed to return it in good condition. 

It was then he realized Leo had gotten way too lucky with you. He was sure you were used as nothing but a front. You were something soft to put at the edge of all that ugliness so men had a reason to keep their money in the room a little longer. A girl who patched up fighters, sure, but mostly a thing for them to look at, to crowd, to reach for between rounds. 

Pope wouldn’t admit it to Craig, or any of his brothers, ever, that the only reason he came back the next time was to see you again. He knew his words and then his sudden muteness probably made you read him as one more man to be careful around. He’d handed you that impression himself, and now he had to live inside it. 

The second night, you didn’t tend to him. There was another girl near the bucket—older, harder, a cigarette tucked behind her ear and no softness in her hands at all—and she did his corner between rounds like she was wiping off a dusty counter. Pope sat there and let her and looked for you over her shoulder the whole time, which was how he found you across the room, working the cash, the cigar box against your chest as your lips moved over the count. 

Pope hardly believed in coincidences. He was sure he’d snapped and you’d adjusted by putting a body between yourself and the man who’d shown his teeth. It was the smart thing. It was exactly what he’d have told you to do if he were anyone other than the man it was being done to. It sat in his chest all night like a swallowed stone, the understanding that he’d gotten precisely what he deserved and hated every second of it. 

He won. He always did; that was the whole problem with him, the thing that made his Craig rich now and him useful to Smurf and left Pope standing in basements full of people who wanted to watch him hurt somebody. The crowd howled, money changed hands, and Pope barely heard whatever Leo was saying because he was watching you seal the night’s take into a zip bag and press the air out of it with the flat of your hand carefully. 

He found you after, by the stairs, when the room had thinned to the stragglers and the smell of it had gone stale. He came up slow, hands where you could see them. 

“You drew the short straw last week,” he said, the words coming out of him too rehearsed, because that’s what he’d been doing since he noticed you and while getting his guts punched. “Patching me up.”

You looked up at him. Up close, your worn-soft eyes were tired. “I just asked Kate to take your corner tonight.”

So, not a coincidence. He’d already known, yet it did something ugly to him. He already had people who he’d known his entire life scared of him—brothers who were career criminals—and he’d made peace with it, like he had to with everything he couldn’t change. But it landed differently from you, because you didn’t have the years to back the wariness up. 

“Right,” he said, because what else was there to say?

You tilted your head, just slightly, and scanned his face like you were checking it for swelling. He knew there was none, not today. He still held still. He realized he’d have held still for anything you wanted to do to his face.

Whatever you were looking for, it seemed like you hadn’t found it. Or maybe you had. Your gaze caught on his mouth, under his jaw, and you clicked your tongue. 

“You’re not —” You shook your head faintly. “It’s easier,” you said finally, “to not get in the way of guys like you. That’s all. It’s nothing personal.” 

Guys like you. Jesus. He wanted to ask you what that meant, even though he knew. He was guys like him. He’d spent thirty-some years being exactly that. But he wanted, with an intensity that made no sense, to be not that to you. 

Any other guy would have let it go. A smarter man, a less stupid one, would’ve said that was a fair enough explanation and left you to your transparent zip bags and never come back to you unless you did to him. 

“It is though,” Pope said, voice too rough. “Personal. I wasn’t—right, after the third round.” The words, his voice, everything came out clumsy, and he briefly wondered if his eyes had dropped down his face and his nose had turned upside down. “You don’t have to put Kate—or whoever there. I’m not gonna—” He wasn’t sure how he wanted to end the sentence. “I’d rather it was you.” 

He suddenly felt like a complete idiot all over again when he watched your brows furrow slightly and your lips press together as you looked at him almost sadly. Then you let out a disbelieving chuckle as you shook your head as you twisted your neck slightly to look around. 

“Is this gonna be a problem?” you said, lowering your voice, glancing off to the side. Checking, he realized, who was still on the stairs, who might be close enough to hear. 

That was its own answer to a question he hadn’t been able to ask yet. It told him there were people you didn’t want knowing this, even though there was hardly a ‘this.’

“What?” Pope asked, playing dumb just so he could hear the words from you.

“You.” You brought your eyes back to him, and he felt slightly shaken as you pinned him with a glare that seemed almost gentle. “Saying things like that.” Your voice stayed even, but there was an edge working into it now. “I do my job here. I keep my head down—that’s better for me, okay?”

He didn’t get that. Not really. But he heard the need in it. 

“Nobody’s gonna bother you,” he said roughly. It came out flat and certain, it always did when he was truly sure of himself. “Not while I’m here.” 

You just looked at him like that again. “Go home, Pope—”

“Andrew,” he said, and he didn’t even know why he did. 

He hated that name just as much as Pope. It was just another thing Smurf had handed him that never fit anywhere in his growing life. To the room he was Pope. On the cards he counted, he was Pope. He’d been Pope so long he sometimes forgot there was anything under it. But he didn’t want to be Pope to you. Pope was guys like him. Pope was the thing on the cards coked-up wishful men put their money on. He had no clean self to offer you—God knew he didn’t—but he had the name hardly anybody used often, and so he gave you that, stupidly, like it’d be worth something to you. 

His pulse climbed into his throat. He had the sick, racing feeling he got right before things went sideways, the one that had been wrong about as often as it was right and that he'd never once been able to switch off. 

“Andrew,” you said, testing it quietly in your mouth, where Pope felt everything landed differently for some reason. And then you looked at him again, and said, “Go home, Andrew.” 

Thankfully, by some grace of God, Pope realized he may not have done it all wrong when you came to patch him up after the first round the following week. You dropped down onto the concrete in front of him with the bucket and the brown bottle and a roll of tape gone soft at the edges from your thumb. 

You took his hand like nothing had been said, as though the conversation on the stairs had been filed somewhere and this was the conclusion you’d come to on your own time, and Pope felt that he should let that be, instead of pointing it out. He’d learned that much, and tamped down the feeling like his entire week had paid off. 

“You lead with right too much,” you said, looking at his hands. “When you’re tired. You drop the left and lead with the right. That’s how they got your eyebrow.” 

Pope parted his lips and blinked. “You watch me?” 

“I watch the cash.” You pressed the tape down over his knuckle. “Fights are what make them move, but yeah.” You shrugged, and it was stiff. “You drop your left.”

Pope stayed silent for a moment, then asked, dumbly, “You a fighter?” 

It was meant to land as dry, a joke, but it never quite did with him. 

You let out the smallest of chuckles. “I watch men get hit everyday.” 

Pope swallowed, not sure how to respond to that. So he watched the top of your head instead, the part in your hair, the concentration you put into doing a job that probably paid no extra if you did it well. You wrapped him efficiently, all business now, and Pope felt that you’d closed a door he hadn’t realized you’d opened. 

It should have frustrated him. Instead, it made him want to earn that inch back slow, the way you’d coax anything that didn’t trust easy. He knew that wanting. He had it about a dog once, a half-feral thing that lived in the corners of the Cody Compound for a summer, that he’d fed in silence for weeks before it let him near. He’d never told anyone about that dog. He thought about it now, crouched-down you and careful tape, and didn’t enjoy what it told him about himself. 

“You’re done,” you said, and stood briskly. 

“Hey,” he said, the word coming out before he could think it. “Thanks.” 

You looked at him a second, and whatever you found in him, it earned him the corner of a smile. You must not have been used to being thanked very often. Pope flexed his wrapped hand, feeling something close to proudness. He wasn’t sure for what, exactly, but it felt good for the moment.

For three weeks, you rationed out small jokes that he was almost sure you didn’t realize were jokes, taped him up, and left Pope driving home with whatever you’d given him that night turning over in his chest. 

His fight hadn’t started yet. He leaned up against the support post by the stairs, hood up, trying to do everything he could to make himself look very still and very boring so the crowd would forget to look at him. From there, he had a clean line of the cash table, which meant he had a clean line on you, which was the actual reason he’d stood there. 

There was a man at your table. Big, going soft in the middle, a Lakers cap on backward and loose, oozing the sleazy confidence of someone past four beers and good judgement. He’d been talking to you a while, Pope noticed. You were wearing a smile aimed past his shoulder—a small, pleasant, and all around absent thing—and Pope watched you do it with a protective switch under his thumb. 

The man reached over and tucked a bill into your bra, slowly, like it was funny. Two fingers folded the bill below your collarbone, and you went rigid, smile staying in place while everything behind it moving.

You went somewhere way back behind your own eyes the way Pope had watched you go a dozen times, and the man laughed at his own joke and left his hand there a beat too long. 

The trouble with Pope was that most of the time, he never decided. One second he was against the post and the next he had the man’s wrist in his hand and he was bending it back off you, almost politely.

“Wrong,” Pope drawled, plucking the bill out of your collar with his free hand and pressed it to the man’s palm. He closed the man’s fingers over them. “Cash goes in the box.”

“The hell’re you —” The man turned to get a real look at him, and got the whole of him. The hood and the wrapped hands and Pope’s uncanny stillness, and Pope watched the recognition arrive, and the bluster went out of him like the air on your sealed bags. “Pope—hey, man. No harm. No harm.”

“Sure.” Pope let go of the wrist and the guy immediately melted back into the crowd. The whole thing had taken maybe nine seconds and Pope’s pulse hadn’t even climbed, which it should’ve, but some animal thing under him had considered this easy. 

“Why would you do that?” you said, voice quieting. 

“He had his hands on you.” His voice came out defensive, which he hated, because it made him understand that he’d done something wrong before he could even process it. “I’m not standing here watching some creep—”

“That was Reyes,” you said, like it meant something. It didn’t, not to Pope, and your face did something between fury and despair as he realized this. “He runs paper for Leo. You just—” You pressed your lips together and looked around quickly, the same way you’d done on the stairs except this time he could see real fear attached in it. “I don’t—I don’t need people thinking a Cody’s got a thing for me,” you finished, quieter. “You don’t.” 

“What if I—”

“You don’t, okay?” It came out sharper than you’d intended, and he saw how you caught it. “It’s fine. It’s no big deal.” You were already looking away, gathering the cash box against your chest, busying yourself. “I really am better when people don’t worry about me, Andrew.” 

You tucked a piece of hair back, gave him a quick, tired ghost of a smile that didn't reach anything, and stepped back into the crowd with your box like the last nine seconds could be put away with everything else you put away.

There was that horrible feeling tightening in his stomach again. He knew he’d done the right thing, but there was a frustration in him of being right about the wrong thing. The thing he’d done to help you had immediately become another thing for you to be frightened of, clean up, another man’s decision landing on your plate.

You’d probably spent your entire life cleaning up after other people’s choices and he’d just handed you one more.

He fought ugly and won ugly, which was somehow worse than losing altogether. The crowd got what it paid for and then some, and Pope walked out with a rib that clicked when he breathed and a cut over the eye he’d earned by leading with the right all night like the idiot you’d warned him not to be. 

He collected off Leo without a word. Pope wasn’t even sure why the guy even bothered to grin and laugh and talk to him while he counted the money; Pope had said around two words to him and won him more than two grand.

He didn’t bother hearing the compliments—the fake, complimenting bit to make sure he came back—and took his roll of cash and shoved it inside his pocket and left out the back. 

He went up the concrete steps, into the lot behind the building where the air was at least air instead of four hundred people breathing the same lungful. 

He leaned against the cinderblock wall in the dark, in the orange wash of one working lot light, and pressed the heel of his hand under the bad rib and breathed shallow and concentrated on not being anywhere, on going behind his own eyes the way he'd watched you do it, somewhere the night couldn't reach him.

The door opened and shut carefully, and the latter action made him not need to look to know. 

“You walked out without letting anybody look at that,” you said. 

“I’m fine.”

“No, I can tell,” you said drily, almost amused. Your footsteps came across the lot and stopped a few feet off, not crowding him—you never crowded him—and giving him the room he hadn’t asked for and needed anyway. “I basically heard your ribs.”

He huffed something close to a laugh. It pulled at the rib and he stopped. 

Your hands hovered around his body, like you were asking for permission to take a look without saying the words.

“Are you okay?” he asked, forcing the words out roughly. Because he needed to, it’d been gnawing at him for too long. “Is he hurting you?”

Your hands when still where they hovered. You took the rag instead, wet it from the bottle, and reached up to the cut over his eye as though he’d never asked the question. 

“Hold still,” you said. 

“That’s not—” He caught your wrist, palm loose around it, but he caught it. “I asked you something.” 

In the orange light, Pope could see the smudge of your makeup, dark and worn through around your eyes, and the rings on your fingers catching the light each time your hand moved. You let him hold your wrist without pulling away, your eyes dropping to his chest like you’d decided against looking at his face.

He could feel your pulse under his thumb, thrumming. He let go of your wrist with a sigh, and you stepped back into the work, dabbing at the cut, close enough he could feel the warmth coming off you. 

You said, after a moment, evenly, “Don’t try to help me.”

“Don’t try to help me.” 

“I didn’t say—”

“It’s written all over your face.” 

You pressed the rag a little harder than the cut needed and let you, kept his face still, watching yours. You narrowed your eyes at him when he didn’t react to the pressure, as though his stillness annoyed you. Pope didn’t know how you hadn’t realized he’d let you do anything. He’d let you press the rag as hard as you wanted and he’d sit there and take it. He’d stopped having a choice about it a while ago.

That, and the fact that your hands, so small compared to the enormity of him, were the furthest things from the worst he’d taken. 

“Are you trying to hurt me?” he asked, amused despite it all. 

“If I were, you’d know.” But the corner of your mouth tugged, just barely, before you caught it and put it away. You eased up on the rag. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be.”

For a second, it felt easier between you two again. Then, you remembered yourself, and he watched as your lips pursed. 

“I mean it, though,” you said. “Don’t. Whatever you’re sitting there cooking up.”

“You don’t know what I’m cooking up.” 

“Andrew,” you said his name flatly, and he felt like a dog at how quickly it got his neck to tilt up to meet your eyes. You hadn’t even spoke and he was looking at you like you’d asked him a question he wanted to get correct. 

“You’re not the first one to try this,” you said softly. “It always goes the same way.” 

“Yeah?” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Tell me, then.” 

“Either he gets in over his head and screws up.” You wiped the last streak of blood from his brow, your hand coming to rest light against his face to hold him still. He leaned into your palm, the warmth of your hand and him moving into it like it was the most natural thing he’d ever done. 

One of your rings sat cool against his cheekbone and he felt that, too, the small contrast of it, cool metal and warm palm, and he was very aware you were still talking and he was having trouble with that. 

“ —or he sticks around for long enough to figure out it’s too much trouble, gets bored, and quits. He leaves, and either way I’m standing here worse than before,” you said, conversationally, and he did believe it was a tale as old as time for you. 

“I won’t get bored,” he managed to say. “I’m good at what I do.” 

“They all say that, too.” You smiled that sad, soft smile again. 

You took your hand back off his face and he felt the loss of it like air. He was already thinking about how to get you to put it back, which was probably the most pathetic thought he’d ever had, and he’d had some bad ones.

“When do you fight next? You shouldn’t, for a while. For your ribs.” 

He let you change the topic. He noticed you did that often.

“Next week, probably,” he said. “My brother’s already running his mouth about it.”

“Tell your brother your ribs are hurt.” You crouched to gather the bottle, the rag, the soft-edged tape, packing them back into the bucket.

“Where do you go? After this,” he asked.

He watched the careful machinery turn—watched you weigh whether it was a real question or a way in—and then something in you must've been too tired to keep the door shut, because you let it swing.

“Home. My mom’s,” you said. “She’s around, just—not a lot.” You gathered the bucket against your hip. “So it’s me and my brother mostly. He’s eleven.”

The whole shape of you tilted and resettled in the space of the word. Why you watched every dollar like it held something up. You weren't just keeping your own head down. You had a kid behind you, in the blind spot, where the room couldn't reach him.

“He know you’re here?” Pope asked.

“He thinks I wait tables.” The corner of your mouth went up, rueful. “Thinks I’m terrible at it. The tips are all over the place, so.” You shrugged. 

Pope cleared his throat. “Are they?” 

“This week, yeah,” you said. 

“Do you want to?” Pope found himself asking, “Wait tables.” 

You looked at him for a long moment that he almost thought you wouldn’t answer. “It’d be nice, I guess. To have steady cashflow and all that.” 

“Leo pays you enough?”

You shifted the bucket against your hips. “He doesn’t really—” You stopped yourself, then started again. “The tips are what they are.”

Pope hummed. “That cover everything?”

You looked at him sideways, catching what he was doing. “Most weeks,” you said hesitantly.

“This week?”

You looked off past him, and he watched you decide whether to say it. “My brother’s shoes split,” you said finally, and it’d come out in a small voice. “Bottom’s gone right through it, so.” You shrugged, making a small face as you pinched your eyes shut, like you hated saying it.  

Pope took the roll out of the jacket, thumbed off a fold of it without counting and held it out.

You looked at it, then at him. “No.” 

“For the kid.”

“Andrew.” 

“Take it.” He kept his hand out. “It’s shoes.” 

“That’s not—” You stopped. Your jaw worked. He could see all of it going on behind your face, the pride and the rule and the thing you'd spent the last few minutes telling him. “That’s just what I told you not to do.” 

“You said not to help you.” He pushed his hand further toward you. “This is shoes for a kid I never met.”

He watched your eyes rise to look at the sky and you shook your head. “You’re making this really hard.” 

He tipped his chin down. “Just take it. I don’t need it.”

You took it slow, your fingers closing over his for a second before they took the bills, and you didn't say thank you—he was glad, thanking him would’ve made it a transaction—you just held on to his hand a beat longer than you needed to, and breathed out, shaky, and let it go.

“Please don’t make this a thing,” you said, voice thick. “I can’t—I can’t say no to the money. I wish I could.” You looked at the bills in your hand. “I don’t wanna take things from you.” 

He felt himself shrug, eyeing the top of your head as you looked down. “I’d let you.” 

He’d meant to keep that to himself. Or he hadn’t. He didn’t really care, though. The money itself was nothing; what he’d just handed you was a rounding error, less than what his brothers dropped in a single night without blinking. It was the kind of number that moved in the Cody household without anyone thinking to count it; money they’d find between the cushions from five years ago. 

He had more coming in than he knew what to do with and nowhere clean to put it. You had a kid to help out with and yourself to take care of, and the situation was so simple it almost made him angry. 

It became a thing without either of you calling it one. It was a thing, in Pope’s mind, obviously, but he was sure that telling you would’ve spooked you and he wasn’t ready for that. 

You’d started taping him differently. Early on you’d wrapped him all brisk and businesslike, done before he’d thought of anything to say. He had to watch his words in general, but he had to try even harder with you, for he never wanted to say the wrong thing. Somewhere in those weeks, you slowed. You took longer than the wrap needed—smoothing the tape down twice when once would’ve held just fine, turning his hand over in both of yours to check the knuckles you’d already checked—and Pope started to pretend he didn’t notice. 

He’d sit on the folding chair with his hand lent out to you and watch the top of your head and feel his pulse come down out of his throat, slow, the dog talked off the thing. One night, he let his thumb find the inside of your wrist while you worked, resting there against the thrum of you.

He started taking on more fights and ending them earlier. He told himself it was because of his ribs, the cash, any of the reasons a man might want a thing over with. All of it when the reason was that when the basement emptied after, it was just the two of you, and Pope had started living for the after the same way men lived for the fight.

You started watching the fights now—not the cash, him—and he knew because one night he had a bad one, a hook he missed that snapped his head around. He looked for your face before he looked for anything else, and found you already wincing. 

Your hand had come up halfway to your mouth. You caught yourself and dropped it. But he’d seen it and carried it home for a week, a proof of what, he didn’t know.

Pope really, really hated asking Craig anything. He knew that he’d make him pay the toll one way or another. Sometimes by talking for forty minutes about something nobody asked about, or remembering the question to bring it up at the worst possible time. So Pope sat on it for a week; he iced the rib, didn’t fight, and drove past the ring twice without going in. He knew it was fucking pathetic.

Pope found Craig by the pool, sunburnt and shirtless and rolling something on a paper plate. 

“You know the girl,” Pope started, “at the ring, the one who does the cash?” 

He found that he wanted to keep your name to himself, in case Craig hadn’t already caught onto it. 

“Which one?” Craig asked without looking up.

“The one that does the cash, man.”

“There’s like three girls.” He licked the paper and twisted the end. “You gotta be more specific. There’s the older chick, the mean—”

“Younger. Quiet.” Pope forced his voice to stay even. “Patches people up.”

Craig looked up at him then, a slow grin spreading. “Ohhhh.” 

“Don’t.”

“No. No.” Craig held his hands up, waving them slightly, delighted. “Can’t believe you’re asking me about a girl, man.” 

“Forget it.” Pope turned to go.

“Hey—hey,” Craig said, standing from the lounger. “I’m messin’ with you. C’mon. What do you wanna know about her?” 

“Why’s she there?” 

Craig shrugged. “Pretty sure she owes Leo.”

“She owes Leo?” Pope asked, letting the surprise show in his voice. “For what?”

“Pretty sure she’s collateral.” Craig lit the thing, talking around it. “Some guy that was around. Dad. Stepdad. Who knows?” He waved the smoke out of his face. “Pretty sure she’s just workin’ the square until it pays itself off.”

“How much?” Pope asked immediately.

Craig rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Don’t be stupid, man.”

“Just say it.”

“I’m not his accountant,” Craig said. “And she’s not worth it. It won’t work, and I’m pretty sure she’s been working there longer than she hasn’t.” 

Pope ignored that. “It’s not even hers,” he said, quietly, almost to himself. “She’s down there holding it for a guy who took off. Kid at home, no money, and she’s—”

He stopped talking once he noticed the amused and incredulous expression on Craig’s face. 

Craig’s hand moved to the side, waving vaguely in confusion. “She’s got a kid?”

“It’s her brother.”

“Jesus—how much have you talked to this chick?” Craig dragged a hand down his face. “Real talk. You go pay the guy off—say you even can, say he gives you a number and it’s a real one, which it won’t be—you know what happens? He realizes Pope Cody just dropped twenty grand on a girl who pours drinks and puts bandages on people.” He spread his hands. “Best case. Best case, man. We don’t know what else the guy’s got her doing. She’s been there a long time. Girls don’t stay in places like that just counting cash.” 

Pope felt his teeth grind. “She counts cash and she patches people up,” he said, tipping his chin down slightly to pin Craig with a glare. “That’s what she does.” 

Craig looked at him for a moment and shrugged. “Alright, man.” 

“And even if she—she doesn’t just do that. It doesn’t—” 

Pope’s jaw worked, and he had to look away from Craig. He had no words for it. It didn’t matter what you did in the basement, what Leo had you doing or what Craig was implying. You were still you, and Pope knew that. 

If the situation was larger, then Pope saw it as more of a reason to get you out, not less. That was the thing Craig wouldn’t understand. 

“It doesn’t change anything. For me,” Pope said flatly. “She shouldn’t be there, that’s all.” 

Craig’s lips opened like he wanted to say something, then caught the look on Pope’s face, and said, “Yeah, man. She probably shouldn’t.”

He’d hoped that Craig would never have to meet you, at least not in the way he did. 

It happened on a night Craig hadn’t wanted him there at all. Craig had come for the first few of Pope’s fight, and realized he actually didn’t have to see his older brother take down a man twice to know the money was good. He could simply hand over the bet and go do anything else with his night. So most weeks, he dropped his cash with people and disappeared upstairs and reappeared only to collect. 

This week, he hung around the edge of the ring, three beers in, restless, and that was how he was standing right there when Pope took a cut over the cheekbone bad enough you came down to the corner with your supplies before the round was properly called.

Craig noticed it. The dumb piece of shit. One second Pope had your hands on his face, turned away from the crowd so nobody would notice your closeness, and the next he could feel the exact attention of his brother sharpening as he moved down to catch the interaction.

You were too deep in the work to notice Craig, lips pressed flat, that furrow between your brows, going fast because the round was coming. “This one’s gonna scar if you keep splitting it open,” you murmured, tipping his head toward the light. “You’re doing it on purpose at this point. You’re gonna ruin this face.” 

“What do you think about this face?” Pope said before he could think the words through. 

You rolled your eyes, lifting a hand off his face just to smack his shoulder lightly before it went right back to the cut.

“You talk too much when you’re losing blood,” you lied, but the corner of your mouth had gone soft. “Hold still.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“You’re fishing.” You pressed the butterfly closed over his cheekbone, your thumb lingering there a half-second past the job, warm against his face, and you dropped your voice even though there was nobody close enough to hear. “Ask me again when you’re not bleeding on me and I’ll think about it.” 

He felt his mouth want to move closer to yours then, and he tamped down the urge. But he must’ve let something through because when his eyes flicked up over your shoulder, there was Craig, beer halfway to his mouth, forgotten. 

You followed his eyes, found Craig, and Craig found you. Your hand came off his face and your spine went straight. “You know him?” you asked, quietly, gathering your bottle and tape as you stepped back to a safe distance. 

Pope caught your wrist. “My brother. He’s nobody. He’s dumb.”

Your eyes went over the crowd that was distracted. “You tell him anything?”

“There somethin’ to say?” he asked, raising a brow that made him wince. 

You gave him a flat look, unimpressed by the deflection. “Don’t try to be cute.”

Pope generally blamed his anger on a rage that had been planted in him from a tender age. Smurf had put it there the way you put a seed in dirt—patient, deliberate, knowing exactly what it’d grow into—and then spent thirty years acting surprised at the sheer size of it. He never thought about it. Thinking about it wouldn’t beat it away. It was just there—low and perpetual—like a pilot light he’d learned to turn down because the alternative was what happened in the ring when he forgot to. 

He forgot to that night. It had nothing to do with the guy across from him. The guy was a nobody—some gym rat Leo had matched him with, all shoulders and bad footwork—and Pope would, on any other day, put him down clean in two rounds because there was no reason to make it ugly. But Pope had spent a week with a number he didn’t own and a plan he couldn’t run with yours and Craig’s voice saying ‘don’t.’ The whole impossibility of you had stacked up in his sternum with nowhere to go, and when the guy clipped him, caught him good across the mouth first, something in Pope just opened the valve. 

He didn’t remember most of it after, and that was how he knew it was bad. The parts that came back later were wrong-angled and too bright (the kid’s head snapping, the wet sound, the way the crowd’s noise changed, going from hungry to something quieter, pulled back). Crowds like this roared throughout all of it unless they were watching a man go somewhere they wanted to stay back from. 

Somebody got between them. There were hands on his chest and a referee he had no idea even existed shouting something and the guy on the concrete not getting up the way he was supposed to. Pope was standing over it with his chest heaving and knuckles split open through the wrap and no memory of the ninety seconds at all.

The crowd parted for him when he started walking and that should’ve told him something, the way grown men stepped out of his way. He'd looked for you on the way through.

He'd looked for you the way he always did, automatically, and he'd found you at the edge of the cash table with the box held up against your chest, and you'd been looking right back at him.

Pope was distantly and too closely—both at the same time, two things too large for him—able to register you hadn’t looked at him the way you usually did.

You'd looked at him the way the crowd had. You’d gone still and careful, your eyes wide and fixed on him like he was the thing in the room, the dangerous thing, and you'd held that box to your chest like it could go between you and him. Just for a second. Just one. Then you'd caught yourself and your face had closed over it, gone professional. 

He went upstairs, and into the gap behind the stairs where there was a cot and a mop sink. It smelled like bleach. He put his head against the cinderblock and slid down it to the floor and tried to get his breathing under whatever was happening in his chest. 

Pope let himself sit on the floor with his hands ruined, the pilot light still guttering too high, and he let the worst story about himself tell itself all the way through. You’d finally seen the actual thing. You’d patched him up and made jokes and told him things about yourself, and then you had to watch him nearly kill somebody over nothing, and now you knew. Now you looked at him the way everybody did, just the way his mother had intended. 

He heard the door open, and he had to shake his head even though he wasn’t sure you could see it. 

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice came out wrecked. “You don’t have to help me or anything. Go help the guy.”

“Andrew—”

“I mean it.” His hands hung between his knees, split and shaking, and he kept his eyes on them. “Go check on him. I don’t—I don’t need it.”

He heard the door shut behind you, and then your footsteps came across the little room. “He’s up,” you said. “He’s fine. He’s got people. Concussed, probably, but he’ll be fine.” You paused, then added, “I came back here for you.” 

That made his chest pull tighter. “Shouldn’t have.” 

You set the bucket down by his feet, and then you were crouching in front of him, and he could see the toes of those wrong gray shoes in the edge of his vision and still couldn't make himself look higher. “Can I have your hands?” 

“No.”

“They’re split to the bone. Andrew, give ‘em here.” 

He didn’t. The muscle in his jaw ticked as he sat there, and before he could stop himself, he asked, “Are you scared of me?”

You stayed silent for a second, and he felt his chest seize. Then, he felt your hand—cold to the touch—against his face, turning it gently so he’d look at you. He kept his eyes trained to the ground. 

“Look at me,” you said quietly. When he refused again, your thumb slid against his cheekbone. “I’m not.”

When he said nothing, you continued, “You scared me a little out there. But look at you, you’re hiding behind the stairs. C’mon. Scariest man alive.” 

He huffed and let his eyes come up anyway, finally, and you were just looking at him. “You mean that?” 

Your bottom lip pushed the top, and you looked at him as you tilted your head. “Yeah. I mean it.” 

The plainness of the words got him. You said that as though it cost you nothing to mean it when it was the most expensive thing anyone had handed him in years. You had no idea the things he’d done so many times they stopped feeling like anything at all. You’d seen one bad night. And he wanted to tell you that maybe you should have been scared.

He kept his mouth shut. He looked at you looking at him and decided, quietly and completely, that he was going to spend whatever time he had making sure you never had a reason to find out you were wrong.

You were close. You’d been close the entire time, crouched between his knees with your hand cold on his face, and he’d been waiting for you to flinch that he hadn’t realized how close you were.

He felt it now. Like always, he didn’t decide. The same broken wiring in him was pointing somewhere new, because one second he was looking at your mouth and the next his hand had come up, ruined knuckles and all, and curved around the back of your neck. 

He stopped a breath short to give you an inch, some last careful piece left in him left it up to you, hung there close enough that he could feel your breath go uneven, waiting to see if you’d close it. 

You did, soft, slower than he’d expected. He’d always been waiting for quickness and hardness, things that got over with, and instead your mouth settled against his and stayed. Your hand came up light along his jaw, and the split in his lip stung but he didn’t move away from it. He was sure he couldn’t have this without paying for it. 

His hand was still at the back of your neck, knuckles wrecked, and he held you there carefully, just keeping you close. His thumb moved once behind your ear. You made a small sound against his mouth and he felt it more than heard it, felt it go down through his chest.

Your fingers curling at the collar of his shirt, your breath warm and uneven against his cheek between kisses.

His rib ached when he leaned into you. He leaned in anyway. He could feel the warmth of you all down his front, your weight tipped against his knees, your other hand finding his ruined one where it sat between you and holding it. 

It felt like such a stark difference to how you usually held his hand, to clean it, Pope distantly thought.

You broke off to breathe, but neither of you went far. Your forehead hovered over his, and your breath stayed uneven against his mouth. He let his hands hesitantly drift down to your waist, letting his palms run over the shape of you. 

You let them, your waist, the dip of it, the warmth coming up through your shirt, and you watched him do it with your bottom lip caught between your teeth.

“Do you like this?” Pope asked, hesitance creeping into his voice despite how hard he tried to push it out. He hated how it came out, like he had no trust in himself. But he had to know—had to hear it—because he’d just spent too long thinking you’d seen the worst of him, and now you were warm in his hands and he couldn’t quite square the two.

Your mouth curved, soft, and you tipped your forehead down against his. 

“Yeah, Andrew,” you said, like it was obvious. “I like it.” 

Your thumb moved along his cheekbone, and he let his lashes flutter slightly at the feel of your skin against so many parts of him all at once. 

“Been liking you a while,” you added, lower, a little dry, a little shy. “If you wanna know.”

Pope’s hand tightened at your waist. “How long?” 

“Not saying,” you said, smiling when you kissed him again, and he felt it against his mouth, and that was better than the answer would've been anyway.

He kissed you slow at first and then not slow, his hand sliding up your spine to press you closer, the other still spread wide and certain at your hip. 

You shifted down into him and he broke off with a rough breath, forehead dropping to your shoulder, his grip going tight to hold you still.

“Hang on,” he managed to say, low against your collarbone. All the wanting you stacked up behind his ribs with nowhere left to go, and you were so warm and so real on his lap, and he was trying not to be what he always was, too much, too fast. 

“We don’t have to—” you started.

“I know,” he said, voice rough. He lifted his head to look at you. “I wanna. I just—” He pushed his lips around, trying to find the right words. “I don’t want you doing anything back here. In this building.” His thumb moved at your hip. “You’re better than this place.” 

Your hands pressed against his chest, and he registered the smallness of them against his broad frame, and you pulled yourself back slightly and let out a staggered breath. For a second, you looked at him. Stunned, almost, like the words hadn’t landed anywhere familiar, like nobody’d ever told you that before. He watched it cross your face quickly.

One of your hands left his chest and slid up, slid back, fingers pushing slow into the short hair at the nape of his neck, your nails digging light against his scalp. Your fingers worked through his hair and curled at the base of it, and the newness of the touch—the pure uselessness of it, a touch that wasn’t for anything—went through him like a current. 

It got a low and rough sound out of him and his eyes slid shut. His face went hot at the helplessness of it, a man his size coming apart under fingers in his hair, but he couldn't stop it and he didn't pull away. He pressed back into your hand instead, into the slow drag of your nails, chasing it.

“So are you,” you said quietly after a moment.

He fluttered his eyes open halfway. 

“Better than this place,” you clarified.

Pope’s mouth twitched, wanting to tell you he wasn’t. He wanted to tell you every single bad thing he’d ever done. He wanted to lay all of it down between you so you'd see he didn't belong anywhere clean, least of all up against you, you who had never chosen to work in this shithole, you who’d probably never hurt a goddamn fly. 

The words stayed sealed, because he had a feeling you’d hand them all back if he tried. 

“Come on,” he said instead. He shifted under you, wanting to ease into the position while having to force himself to move. “Get your stuff and clock out. I’ll drive you.”

You blinked. “Where?” 

He let out a short-lived laugh. “Wherever you want to go.”

You looked at him like he’d just done a trick. “I have to be home,” you said slowly. “My brother waits up.” 

“Alright.” Pope eased you off his lap, and got a hand against the cinderblock. “So I’ll take you home.”

“You don’t have to—” You were saying from the ground.

“C’mon.” 

He held a hand out to you, then you took it and let him pull you up.

Pope was uncomfortable about everything. His entire life, he’d been uncomfortable, whether it was in his own skin, in his house, in rooms full of people. So it came as no surprise when he had no fucking clue what to do with you. He hadn’t thought this far; he’d wanted to get you the hell out, not get you. And now you were here—or as here as you could’ve been—and he didn’t have the next part. Nobody had ever handed him a good thing and let him keep it. He kept waiting for the catch, turning his pockets out for the cost of it, and the cost wasn’t coming. And that was uncomfortable, waiting for a hit that never landed. 

So he did the only thing he thought he could’ve done, which was keep it quiet and keep it close. 

The cab of his truck. The back room after the basement emptied. Your mouth on his, his hands learning you slow, because he wanted to—Pope wanted to learn you the way other men wanted to win. It was the only ambition he’d ever had that belonged all to him. He wanted the map of you. He wanted to remember the exact spot in your ear that made your breath catch, that he’d found once on accident and gone back to like a man returning to the one warm room in a house that was freezing. The way you said his name, the real one—Andrew—that fit in nobody else’s mouth but yours. 

Pope had to be clear with himself about the fact that it was nothing like a life, even in his own head, because hoping for more than the thing in front of him was how you got hurt. 

When the basement ran late and your house was a long quiet drive, sometimes you’d let him take you back to his place instead, and you’d sleep there. You would actually sleep, hard and deep, in a way you’d once told him you couldn’t at your own home. 

He watched you sleep. He knew it was a strange thing to do but he did it anyway; propped on an elbow in the gray lights off the blinds, because it was the only time your face went all soft. Awake, even with him, you kept some of it back, the watching, the careful, the part of you that—like him—was always waiting for the next bad thing. 

Asleep, you let it all go. You looked younger, and Pope thought this was how you would’ve looked all the time had the world dealt you a different house. 

He must’ve shifted, or his breathing must’ve changed, because your eyes cracked open. You found him in the dark, found him watching you, and your mouth curved, slow and sleep-heavy.

“Creep,” you mumbled into the pillow. 

“Yeah,” Pope said in a whisper. 

You shifted toward him, unhurried, still half in sleep, and your hand came up to his jaw as your fingers traced the line of it. 

“You don’t sleep,” you murmured. You’d noticed it weeks ago.

“No.”

“C’mere, then,” you said, rough, tugging lightly at his jaw, and he came. 

He kissed you slow.

He always started slow—it was the only speed he trusted himself at—and you let him have it slow for a minute, warm and half-asleep against his mouth. Then you weren’t half-asleep anymore, he felt the change in you as your hand slid back into his hair and curled and pulled. The sound that the pull had dragged out of him was embarrassing.

“Quiet,” you breathed against his mouth, throwing his own word back at him—I can be quiet, he’d said once—and he huffed a rough laugh into the crook of your neck and got a hand spread wide and certain against the small of your back to pull you flush against him. 

Your leg hooked over his and your breath went uneven against his ear, and Pope allowed himself to stop thinking.

He dragged his mouth down your throat, slow, to the soft place that made your breath catch, the spot he'd mapped weeks ago and gone back to since like the one warm room in a freezing house. Got there. He felt you go boneless and then not boneless, your fingers tightening in his hair, your hips shifting against his, and he made a low sound into your skin and pressed you down into the mattress with the careful weight of him.

“Andrew,” you said, rough against his collarbone. 

“Yes?” He lifted his head to look at you, and found you already looking at him. 

Your hair was loose around your face and your lips were swollen and your eyes were dark. Pope felt a sort of satisfaction he’d never felt before knowing he’d done that, that you’d come to his bed neat and composed and he’d taken you apart this much already.

Your hand still in his hair tugged him down to your ear. “Take my shirt off.” 

He went still for a second, eyes closing at the words, then he regained himself and pulled back enough to look at you. 

You lifted your arms. He got it over your head and dropped it somewhere and then he just stopped, brain short-circuiting as his body immediately reacted, shifting underneath you. His hand came up and hovered over your bare waist, not quite touching, just close. Deciding where to start.

His hand settled finally, warm and certain against your ribs, thumb brushing the underside of your breasts. He let out a shaky breath. “You’re so pretty,” he murmured. 

You let out a soft breath, and he let his thumb move, again, slow, up and he rubbed over the swell of your breasts through the bra, watching your face with his whole attention.

He pushed himself up onto one elbow to get a better look at you and you let him, lying there with your hair spread out and your eyes on his face. He took his time, and he could tell it made you want to squirm, and his free hand settled on your hip, holding you still. 

“Come here,” you said softly, reaching for him. 

“In a minute.” His thumb traced the underwire of your bra, following the curve of it. His eyes followed his own hand and his jaw was tight the way it got when he was concentrating. 

“Andrew.” 

“Give me a minute.” His mouth came down on your sternum and pressed there, warm, just breathing for a second, his hand still moving over your ribs, your waist, the dip of it. His lips moved to the curve of your breast, the soft skin at the edge of the fabric, and you felt his breath go unsteady against you.

“Can I—” he started.

“Yes.”

He reached around you, unclipped it with one hand—slightly clumsy, which was so unlike him—and drew it off you slowly, and then he just stopped again, forgetting how to move when he looked at you.

His mouth found you properly then, warm and slow, and you let your head tip back and your hand tighten in his hair and he made a low sound against you.

He worked his way back up to your throat, your jaw, found your mouth again, and kissed you slow until your hands were pulling at him and your hips were shifting and you’d stopped being patient entirely. 

You pressed at his chest. He went, rolling onto his back and taking you with him, and you sat up over him in the gray light and watched his face as you settled your weight down against him, and his hands went to your thighs and gripped and his eyes went briefly shut.

You leaned down and kissed him once, soft. Then his jaw, his throat, the way he'd done to you, finding the places that changed his breathing.

His hands moved up your back, down again, restless, unable to settle. You felt him swallow when your mouth reached his collarbone.

You moved lower. His stomach tightened under your mouth and his hand came up to your hair, resting there, heavy and warm, the way he did everything when he was trying to hold himself back. You looked up at him from where you were and found him already looking down at you, jaw tight, throat working.

“Are you—”

“Mhm.” 

You got his briefs off and he lifted his hips to help you without being asked, which made you press your lips together against a smile. You settled between his thighs and took him inside your hand first, and he let out a shaky, breathless sound as your fingers tightened around his length, small fingers tugging slightly. 

You shifted down, and pressed your lips to the inside of his thigh first, just to feel him react, Pope understood. His whole leg went rigid under your lips. You stayed there a moment, and his fingers curled in your hair out of impatience he wasn’t proud of at all.

“C’mon, hey—”

You did it again, the other side, taking your time, and heard him exhale hard through his nose.

Then, you started from the bottom, tongue gliding over him, base to tip, and Pope’s jaw dropped open and stopped pretending he wanted any sort of control in this situation. 

His hands fisted in your hair. Not pushing—he wasn’t going to do that—but holding on, because he really, really needed something to hold onto and you were it, you were all of it, had been all of it for months, and now you had your mouth on him and your small hand wrapped around the base of him while looking through your lashes at him like you knew exactly what you were doing to him—you absolutely did—and he wanted to do nothing about it except lie there and take it.

You took him into your mouth properly and his hips came off the mattress before he caught them, hand pressing down against his own stomach, jaw locked.

“Christ—” It came out mangled, just sound.

You set a pace that was sure to kill him, so deliberate with everything and focused attention on him entirely, and he had the distant thought that he’d never been on the receiving end of attention like this. His thighs tensed around you and his free hand found the sheets.

You pulled off just enough to say ‘don’t’ when his forearm moved toward his face, and he dropped it back, exposed, staring at the ceiling, throat working. Your hand worked what your mouth couldn’t, and he felt his vision go slightly sideways, hand in your hair tightening involuntarily, fingers curling against your scalp. 

“Let me—” He stopped when he noticed how wrecked he sounded, barely his own voice. His grip tugged you up. “Can you—Can I—”

He stumbled over the words, but you still moved up. 

You settled over him, knees either sides of his hips, and he got his hands on your waist immediately. His chest was heaving and he was sure he looked completely undone.

“Can I—” he tried again. His thumb moved against your hip, pleadingly. “I need to—” He tried again. “Will you—”

You looked down at him. “Are you asking me something?” 

“Yeah.” His jaw tightened. “Trying to.” 

“So ask.” 

He took in a sharp breath, fingers digging into the flesh of your ass. “Can I be inside you?” 

You held his eyes a second. “Yeah,” you said. “Yeah.”

The sound he let out at that was quiet and involuntary and you felt it in your sternum. His eyes closed for just a second, like he needed that, you saying it had done something to him before anything had even happened yet.

You reached between you and his breath caught audibly, hands tightening on your hips, feeling it happen, needing to feel it happen somewhere in his palms.

You sank down onto him slow and his head went back and his throat worked and his hands on your hips pulled you down the last inch with a low, helpless sound that he clearly hadn't planned on making.

He’d never felt this way before, so all-encompassed. You were so warm and close in way the months of wanting had never prepared him for, your hands braced on his chest, your weight settled on his lap, and he could feel your pulse where you were joined and his own pulse and everywhere else.

He stayed there a second, both hands spread wide on your hips, breathing. 

“You okay?” you asked, quiet.

“One second.”

You gave him the second. He sat up after that, and his arm banded around your waist and pulled you flush against him and that made you gasp, hands grabbing at his shoulders, his neck.

He was so much bigger than you like this, your knees hardly finding the mattress either side of him, and he held you there, mouth finding your throat.

“Do you like this?” he asked into your skin.

“Yes—yeah,” you said, slightly breathless. 

He bit down lightly at your pulse point, just enough, and your nails raked down his back in response, and the sound that got out of him was dark and satisfied, his hips rolling up into you slow and deliberate.

His hips set a pace after that, one hand spread flat against your lower back holding you exactly where he wanted you, the other gripping your hip, guiding you down to meet each roll of his hips. You could feel everything. He made sure of it, and he knew by the way your walls clamped down on him.

“Andrew—”

“Feels so good,” he said through a groan, mouth set on your throat. “You feel so good.” 

Your nails found his back again and he groaned into your neck and his hips stuttered, losing the rhythm for just a second before he found it again, deeper this time, and you made a sound against his shoulder that you felt him collect, felt him file away, his arm tightening around you in response.

“That good?” he murmured.

“It’s—” you started, breath catching. 

“Yeah?” His hand moved from your hip to the small of your back, adjusting the angle, pressing you down onto him, and whatever you'd been trying to say dissolved entirely into something that wasn't words at all. “There?” 

“Jesus, Andrew—” you said, a punch in your words as he pushed you down onto him. “Where’d you learn this?”

He pulled back to look at your face, and the look on his was almost amused, almost, underneath all the want. “Just wanna make you feel good,” he said, “with me.” 

Your hands coming up to his face without deciding to, cupping his jaw, and he turned into it immediately, that same helpless lean he always did when you put your hands on his face, like he couldn't help it, like you'd found the one soft spot in him nobody else had ever found.

You kissed him then, different from the others — slower, more deliberate, saying something you didn't have words for yet, and he kissed you back the same way, his pace going slow and deep and unhurried, like the night had gotten longer suddenly, like neither of you were going anywhere.

His forehead dropped to yours when you broke off, both of you breathing uneven, his hand moving up your spine, vertebra by vertebra, just feeling you.

“You with me?” he murmured.

“Yeah,” you said. “I am.”

His hand pressed you further into him, like there was any space. “Promise me.” 

It came out rougher than he meant, needier than he'd have liked, and he felt it land between you in the dark and couldn't take it back and didn't try.

You looked up at him. Whatever you found in his face made yours go soft. “Promise,” you said.

He exhaled against your mouth and his hips rolled forward and you made a small sound and your hands slid up into his hair, pulling, and whatever had gone tender between you tipped back into heat, his pace picking up, deeper now, one hand gripping the headboard above you and the other finding your hip, holding you where he wanted you.

Pope had come to the basement earlier, before his fight. He had no good reason for it—the fight was in an hour, the place was half-empty, the crowd still trickling in—but he’d gotten restless at the apartment and figured he’d find you early, steal a few minutes before the room filled up. 

He came down the concrete stairs and heard Leo’s voice before he saw anything, and the sound of it stopped Pope three steps from the bottom. Pope had never once in his life heard the guy yell, lose control, and the voice coming up was low and almost patient, like you’d talk to a child or a dog. 

“ —count it again,” Leo was saying. “‘Cause I counted it, and I’m coming up short. That’s a problem, you know that, right?”

“I counted it three times,” you said, your voice flat and so, so careful it gnawed at him. “It’s all here. I swear, it’s all—”

“Don’t swear to me, sweetheart. Count.” 

Pope came down the last steps quiet. You were at the cash table with the box open in front of you and your hands unsteady on the bills. Leo was standing close to you, like that was the point—looming, using the size of himself—as he crowded you back against the table. He was making you do the math all out in a flat, dead voice, your shoulders up around your ears, and Pope watched you flinch when Leo shifted his weight even though the guy hadn’t done anything.

“You’re light,” Leo said, soft. “You’re light and you’re trying to swear. You know what happens to my count when one of my girls gets light.” He let his words hang, tilting his head. “It comes out of the square. Adds to it. You’re going backwards, sweetheart, after all this time. Going the wrong direction.”

Leo reached and took your jaw in his hand—almost gently, tipping your face up out of the count—and your body went still, and that was the second you saw Pope behind Leo’s shoulder. 

“Don’t touch her,” Pope said, without thinking about it. 

Leo turned, unhurried, his hand still loose at your jaw before he let it drop, on his own time. He was making a point of it, Pope realized. “It’s off.” He spread the hand, easy, showing him. “See? We’re just talking. Business.” 

Then, he turned to look at you, chin tipping down. “You really messing around with this guy? I thought it was just people making shit up.” 

“People talk—” you started to say.

“You were just waitin’ around for some rich guy to come along?” He looked at you, shaking his head. “That it?” Then, he turned to Pope. “She could’ve gotten out a lot earlier—you know that right?” He shook his head, like he was disappointed. “Could’ve taken the back room, cut the number down to nothing in a couple months. Easy. Plenty of guys asking. But no, she just wanted to do it the long way.” He tipped his chin at Pope, lazy. “—And then go and give it away to you. For free.”

Pope’s pulse should’ve been climbing. It had gone flat and slow and cold. “Watch your mouth.”

“Or what?” He asked, almost fond. “You gonna—”

The gun was out before he decided to pull it. His hand went to the small of his back and came around and then the thing was there, level, steady, muzzle a few inches off Leo’s forehead. 

The guy stopped smiling. He didn’t flinch—Pope gave him that—but he went very slow, very careful, his hands drifting up off his sides. His palms were loose and open.

“Okay,” Leo said, quiet now. “Okay. Easy.”

“Are you kidding me?” Pope muttered, shaking his head. “You don’t have a damn gun on you?” 

“I don’t need a gun in my own place,” he said through gritted teeth. His eyes flicked to the stairs, then back to the muzzle. “You wanna put that down before you get stupid over nothing?”

He’d half-hoped that Leo would’ve been carrying, show any sign that he felt afraid. “Her number. Say it.”

“That’s not—” He huffed, almost a laugh, disbelieving. “That’s not how—there’s a process to this, there’s people I gotta answer to.”

Pope’s lips flattened, eyes flicking to the ceiling, annoyed. “You know I’ll do it, man. I don’t care enough not to.” 

Leo’s smile dropped then. “Half the room’s had their hands on her, you know that? She’s not somebody’s girlfriend, man. The second she doesn’t need either of us, she’s not looking back at you any more than she’s looking back at me.” 

Pope let out a short chuckle. “Now you’re getting whatever I’ve got in my pocket or I’m shooting. Your call.” 

“You’re making a mistake,” the guy said, his last call, Pope realized. “You can’t pull a gun on me and —”

“That’s tomorrow’s problem.” Pope’s hand stayed still. “Right now, you take the money, she’s square, she walks.” His head tipped, slight. “Say yes, man. You’re a smart guy. Say yes.” Pope nudged the gun slightly further into his head. He leaned his head closer to the guy’s ear, voice dropping into a register that would’ve been too low for you to hear. “I’ve put people down for less than this. You know that.”

Leo took a beat. “Fine.” The word came out flat, bitten-off. “Fine. The money. She’s square. Get it out slow, I don’t want your fucking hand movin’ fast near me.”

Pope reached into his jacket with his off hand—the gun never leaving Leo's face—and pulled the roll, the whole fight roll, thick and rubber-banded, and tossed it onto the table by the box. It landed heavy. Leo didn't look at it. He kept his eyes on Pope, and his hands stayed up, and the deal sat there in the dead air between them, made.

Leo looked at it, and a long moment passed. He let out a short, disbelieving breath through his nose. “That’s it?” 

“You should’ve said yes the first time. You knew I was good for it,” Pope said. “Say it,” he added. “She’s good. Tell her so she hears it.” 

“You’re square,” he said to you, the words ugly. “You don’t owe me shit. Don’t come back.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Either of you.” 

Pope held the gun where it was a beat longer than he had to—long enough to make it clear the leaving was his idea, not Leo's permission—and then he lowered it, slow, and stepped back, and reached out without looking and found your wrist.

“Let’s go,” Pope said roughly to you. 

You didn’t move at first. He had to tug your forearm once, and then you came, stumbling off the spot you’d been rooted to, and he put himself between you and Leo and walked you up the concrete stairs and out the side door into the lot, into the air that was finally air, with the gun cooling against his back and your pulse hammering under his fingers where he still had your wrist.

Pope let out a shaky breath as he tipped his neck back to look at the sky. He’d assumed that one day, he would’ve figured it out, how to help you—it would have been cleaner, probably, and wouldn’t have happened right in front of you—and he hadn’t thought it’d be fucking today. 

He still had your wrist. He made himself let it go, and turned to look at you. You were looking at nothing, at the chain-link past the lot, your arms coming to wrap around yourself, holding your elbows.

“Get in the car,” he said to you. 

You stayed still.

Pope shook his head once, pressing his lips together. He nodded at the truck. “C’mon. Just get in the truck.”

You stayed rooted there in the orange light, arms folded over yourself, shaking your head faintly—not at him, not a no exactly, just somewhere else, somewhere he couldn't reach you. He felt the impatience climb in him, the adrenaline still draining, the gun still warm against his back and the tomorrow-problem already stacking up behind his ribs, and it came out rougher than he meant.

“Just—get in the damn car.” He dragged his palm down his face and exhaled. 

You went around to the passenger side and shut the door. He got in beside you, and for a second, neither of you said anything. He pulled out the lot and drove the way he always did with you, to his apartment. You sat against the window with your knees pulled up and your arms still around yourself, and he kept glancing over, waiting for it, the thing he could feel build up.

“You mad at me?” he asked, the words coming out choked, almost like he was forcing them out. 

You took in a breath and looked out the window. “Are you gonna be fine?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Don’t worry ‘bout me. I’m safe.” 

You nodded, even though he could tell you didn’t believe it. He wanted to tell you that he was probably the most safe guy in Oceanside, part of a family that would make sure nothing happened to anyone in it, even if they all may hate each other deep down. 

“I didn’t want it to happen like this,” you said a moment later. “I wanted to do it myself.” 

Pope knew what you meant, but he wanted you to talk more, just so he could justify it. “Yeah?”

“I was gonna work it down to nothing,” you continued. “And one day it’d just be done, and I’d—walk out. And it’d be cause I did it. Me. The one thing that was gonna be mine.” 

“You weren’t getting out.” When you snapped your head to look at him, eyebrows furrowed, he forced to keep himself looking at the road. “I’m sorry, but you were never getting out. Don’t be dumb. I know you wanted to.” 

“Don’t call me dumb.”

“Then don’t be.” He shook his head. “You’re paying off a debt that’s not even yours when you could be—what? Working anywhere that gives you an actual paycheck. He wasn’t gonna let you have that. There’s no fucking contract making sure he lets you out.” 

You looked back at the window, jaw tight. “I didn’t want you buying me,” you said quietly. “That’s exactly the thing I didn’t want. Now I’m—I don’t want to owe you, Andrew. I like you.”

“You don’t owe me,” he said, voice rough, trying to ignore what the words did to his chest.

“That’s not how—”

“It’s how it works with me,” he said flatly. “I didn’t buy you. Don’t say shit like that. I bought you out.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “There’s nothing you owe me.”

“I wanted it to be clean,” you said, and Pope almost wanted to shut you up. “Us. I wanted to get out and just be—someone you liked. Not somebody you had to save or something like that.”

“Well, that’s too bad, then,” he rasped. “You can come with me. You can go wherever you want. You’re out, you can choose.” He killed the engine as the car reached his apartment. “You are someone I like already. I never liked who you had to be, but I like you—this, whatever it is. Alright?”

A part of Pope knew he shouldn’t have taken the job. Robberies were always a mess, but Baz had a fondness for them. And Baz had a kid and a whole life balanced on not going inside, and Pope had a girl who he wasn’t even sure was his girl, and no good reason in the world to be holding the bag when it went wrong.

So now there was a phone bolted to a cinderblock wall and a line of men behind him and a number he’d memorized. Thank God he’d memorized. 

It rang twice. 

“Hello?” 

The sound of your voice did something itchy to his sternum. He’d last heard it three weeks ago, before the job, when you’d been half-asleep against his shoulder in the truck outside your place. You’d told him to call you when he got home. 

“Andrew?” you asked immediately, like just an exhalation of his breath, you could recognize. “You’re in jail?” 

He forced out a dry chuckle, because the opposite would’ve gotten him kicked. “Folsom County.” 

“Jesus—why?”

“Robbery. It was a—a family thing—” He kept it short. The line was recorded; half of what he wanted to say, he couldn’t, and the other half, he wouldn’t. Especially not to you, not like this, with a guard at his back and a clock ticking somewhere. 

“Can I visit you?” you asked immediately. The hope in your words tightened something in his chest so hard he had to close his eyes to loosen it even a fraction. “How long are you in there for?” 

“No—don’t. Hey, listen,” he said, voice shaking and he hated it. “You—you gotta be safe, okay? If anything happens, I need you to look for—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t take care of you from here,” he said through gritted teeth. “I need to make sure you’ll be okay.”

“How long are you in for?” you asked, weary, like you’d read somewhere between the lines and realized that you were going to hate the answer.

“Six years,” he said, letting out another sigh. Then, because he couldn’t help himself when he heard you go silent on the other end, he said, “I’m sorry.” He pressed the phone harder against his ear, as if that did anything. 

“Fuck—fuck, Andrew. Six years—?” you said, voice so sharp he could feel it cut through him. He heard you breath, trying to collect yourself. “Okay. Okay—I can come there, to you. Visit you and stuff, alright?”

“You’re not living the next six years meeting me behind a glass, alright?” 

“I don’t care about that.” 

“I do.” It came out rougher than he’d intended. He pressed his forehead to the cold block, eyes shut as his free hand came up to tug at his hair. The line of men and the guards and the whole gray space fell away from him for a second, and it was just your voice in his ear and him trying, failing, to do one right thing for you. “You just got out—I’m not putting you back in. You got out, and you—you can do whatever you want.”

“I don’t want it without you,” you said, voice breaking clean down the middle, and it about took him out at the knees, standing there in his county blues with a telephone crushed to his ear. 

“You’re not thinking right,” he said, trying to get the words out slowly, like saying it that way would make you believe them. “You’re not waiting for me for six years. You know how long that is?” 

Pope was at a loss in this; he’d never had to push someone away before. Every person he’d needed gone, before he even knew he did, he’d made himself ugly enough to push it out. He didn’t have the ugly to use on you; he’d used up every bad thing in front of you already and you’d stayed anyway, and now he had nothing left to drive you away with except the truth, which was that Pope loved you too much to let you do this to yourself.

He couldn’t say that either because maybe then you’d really never leave.

You only breathed on the other end, and he could hear the hitch of your voice when you started to try saying something, then stopped. 

“I won’t like it,” he said, quieter now, “if you wait for me.”

It was a lie and you both heard it. He didn’t try to sell it harder and let it sit there, all wrong, and moved on before you could call him out from it, because he had something he needed you to have more than he needed to win the argument.

“Listen,” he said, forcing his voice to steady. “You got something to write with? Or open something on your phone to get it.” 

“Andrew—”

“Please.” 

Something in his voice must’ve reached you, because he heard you shift. 

“Okay,” you said, voice thick. “Okay.”

He recited the number, slow and twice, so you’d have it right. “That’s Baz. Alright? Barry Blackwell—write that down, too. My brother.” His teeth gritted. “You don’t ever have to call it, but you keep it. And if anything ever—” His jaw worked, and he pinched his eyes shut at the horrible thoughts. “If money gets tight or if people come sniffing around even though they shouldn’t. If you get caught up in anything—somebody gives you trouble, or anything, the car dies, whatever it is. You call him. You say you’re mine, say Pope said to call. He’ll help.” 

“I don’t want your brother to—”

He didn’t want his brother to, either. Baz had a bad track record with people Pope considered his, people Pope loved. He pressed his molars together at the thought of Baz with you, of all people. Despite how much love he held for his brother, he didn’t like the thought. Six years was a long, long time. 

Six years was long enough to forget a voice, long enough for the thing you’d been holding in your hands to shift without noticing, long enough for a warm and present man to become more real than a memory behind a glass. Baz wouldn’t. But he can’t imagine Baz ever meeting you and not seeing what Pope loved about you, what everyone could love about you. 

“It’s the only way I can do anything for you,” he said quickly, making sure you’d understand. “It’ll make me happy.”

He heard you choke slightly on the other end. “Can you call me, then? If I can’t visit you.” 

He wanted to say yes. It would've cost him nothing in the moment and it would've ruined you slow, six years of you living from phone call to phone call, your whole life arranged around fifteen minutes of a recorded line, waiting on a man in a cage. And he knew he’d rightfully deserved to be caged. He’d seen what waiting did to you. He’d pulled a gun to get you out from under exactly that.

“No,” he said. “You stay out. You got out. Stay out of all of it, including me.”

And a part of him believed he was doing you a favor, despite it all. He’d never quite gotten you all the way like he’d wanted—merged your life into his and his yours—and maybe that was for the better. As long as you were wrapped up with him, you would’ve been wrapped up with his family, the jobs, the heists, the next county lockup waiting for him somewhere down the line. 

Your little brother deserved a sister who could come home clean, someone who didn’t have a Cody-shaped problem following her through the door. He’d been told he was the worst of them; he was built up for a purpose and it wasn’t the kind of thing you brought home. Pope cared about you enough to know that; it was hard not to realize it, standing in prison. 

He heard you say a jumble of words in one breath, and he couldn’t quite catch any over the ringing in his own ears. The guard said he had sixty seconds left.

“I’d do it again, I swear,” he said, fast, before your voice cut off. “I’m sorry I couldn’t—it was short.”

Your breath stopped for a second, then you asked, forcing an even voice, “How will I know you’re okay?” 

“I’ll be fine. I got people watching my back, I swear.” 

“Please, just—”

“Bye,” he said, forcing his voice gentle. “Take care of yourself, okay? And the kid.” 

The sound you made—wet and broken, landing like a wound he’d probably carry for six years—was the last of you he let himself take. He set the receiver down slow, like slow made it kinder, before you could say his name again. Because he never would've managed it if you'd said his name again.

The line went dead under his palm.

Nothing screamed.

Nothing bled.

Nothing died.

That was why you had first started coming. Baking had always kept your mind busy, but never still. It was numbers and structure, precision. Weights, percentages, temperatures, chemistry.

A constant series of calculations. Cooking asked less of your head and more of your senses. Taste this. Smell that. Stir until it feels right. Add a little more. Let it simmer. In cooking, you could disappear for a while.

You tied your apron behind your back, tucking a loose strand of hair away as the first of the evening students drifted in. The chalkboard by the door read:

French Cooking for Beginners: Week Three
Mother Sauces, Knife Skills, Tart Tatin

Your idea of heaven. Some cooking. Some baking. Best of both worlds.

You were setting your notebook down when the door opened again and someone entered the kitchen.

He did not look like a man arriving for recreational mother sauces.

His hair was all salt & pepper curls. Not overly tall but thick. Visibly strong in a way that gave him more height than he actually had. Broad-shouldered. Bow legged. White t-shirt tight around his chest and shoulders. The kind of posture that suggested he had spent years in rooms where standing wrong had consequences. His expression was calm, unreadable, bordering stern.

He was noticeably older than you. And devastatingly handsome. Your stomach flipped.

Now is not the time or the place to be thinking inappropriate thoughts about an inappropriately older man.

He carried a knife roll.

An expensive one, by the looks of it.

…To a beginners cooking class.

You bit back a smile.

He scanned the room once, taking in exits, counters, people. Then chose a station near the wall and set his things down with deliberate care.

Interesting.

He looked up.

Caught you watching.

You smiled politely.

He gave the smallest nod in return.

You nearly laughed. You had never seen someone so tense in a cooking class. Half of the students already had a glass of wine in their hands and yet he was surveying the rooms with the intensity of someone whose life was at risk.

“Welcome back, everyone!”

Chef Mireille swept in precisely on time, elegant as ever in her white jacket and red lipstick.

“Tonight we learn knife skills, mother sauces, and if you behave, dessert.”

A murmur of approval moved through the room.

“And because life is cruel,” she continued with a wink to the room, “we are rotating partners”

Groans. Laughter.

You straightened immediately.

Please let me get the stern one.

Something about him was drawing you in. You were known to talk too much, pry a little too far at the best of times. But his rough exterior did nothing to repel you. It only made you want to look more.

Mireille pointed around the room, assigning partners at random.

Then at you.

Then at him.

“You two.”

Perfect.

You crossed to his station, smiling warmly at him.

“Hi,” you said brightly. “This will be fun!”

He blinked once, a little taken aback by your optimism.

“I can’t promise anything will be edible when I’m done with it.” he responded, dryly though there was a glint of something in his eyes.

You laughed “That’s alright, I’m excellent in a crisis”

That got the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he was privy to a joke that you weren’t.

“I’m Jack,” he rasped, reaching a hand out to you.

You gave yours and grasped his hand with your own. It was calloused and so large it engulfed your own. You briefly wondered what they’d feel like on other parts of your body. But shut the thought down as fast as it came around.

“So,” you said cheerfully, “what made you sign up for this?” Your head tilted and you handed him his apron.

“It was… an aggressive recommendation.” he put, watching you as he put the apron on. Your mouth went dry seeing the veins in his arms, visible as he forcefully tied the knot.

“That sounds suspiciously vague.”

His lips pushed to the side like he was trying to hold back a smile.

“From who?”

“Friends. Colleagues. Therapist.”

Your eyes widened a little and you grinned. “An intervention?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t but they all think I need better hobbies and it was either this or pottery. Maybe that would’ve been the safer option” you saw him eyeing the fancy knife set he had brought with him.

You laughed softly.

He shook his head once, but there was the beginning of amusement there now.

“And you?” he asked.

“What made me sign up?”

He nodded.

“I’m work at a bakery” you said. “Thought it was time I learned to make things that don’t rely on sugar. Though Tart Tatin is safely in my comfort zone.”

“You bake professionally?”

“I do.”

“What kind?”

“Pastries, cakes, breads, anything involving butter and unnecessary effort.”

That earned the smallest real smile.

It was entirely worth the wait.

Chef Mireille clapped once for attention, waiting until the room quieted.

“Before we begin ruining perfectly good butter,” she said, “we talk about mother sauces.”

She lifted a wooden spoon like a pointer.

“In classical French cooking, the mother sauces are the foundations. The starting points. Learn them properly, and you can build a hundred other sauces from them. Learn them badly, and everything that follows tastes of regret.”

That got a laugh.

“There are five traditionally recognised mother sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, tomato, and hollandaise.”

She moved down the line of ingredients as she spoke.

“Béchamel is milk thickened with roux. Simple, elegant. Velouté begins with stock and becomes lighter, silkier things. Espagnole is rich and brown and rewards patience. Tomato sauce, in the French sense, is deeper and more structured than many of you expect.”

Then she held up a bowl of cubed butter.

“And hollandaise,” she said, smiling faintly, “is where overconfident people go to be humbled.”

The room laughed again.

“And naturally, that is where we will begin. If you can master this sauce you can master them all. It is an emulsion. Fat and liquid persuaded to cooperate through technique, temperature, and attention. Too cold, it tightens. Too hot, it splits. Too rough, it breaks. Too timid, it never comes together.”

Her gaze swept the room.

“So, like many relationships.”

Even louder laughter this time.

Mireille set the bowl down.

“Tonight, we are learning what they teach: control of heat, patience, texture, and trust. If you can make a good sauce, you can cook. If you can rescue a broken sauce, you can really cook.”

She

“Now. Aprons on. Whisks ready. And if anyone curdles my hollandaise, at least do me the courtesy of telling me before I taste, hm?”

You divided the ingredients between you with the efficiency of someone who had done this enough times to know chaos always began with poor prep.

Jack read the recipe card once, then set it down like he intended to win on instinct alone.

He took the butter and put it on the stove, whilst you got to work whisking the eggs with white wine, a splash of cold water and a pinch of salt.

“So, Jack, what do you do when you’re not being mysteriously assigned hobbies?”

A brief pause as he stared down intently at the melting butter. As if, if he looked away for a second, it would all go wrong.

“Emergency medicine.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Really.”

“That must be intense.”

“Sometimes.”

You laughed.

“Sometimes?”

He glanced at you, then back at the butter.

“A lot of the time.” he admitted.

“II hope you don’t mind my questions. I’m just…. interested.” you said honestly. Because it was the truth. And you wanted to know more.

“In emergency medicine?”

“In you.”

That made him pause, spoon stalling in the pan.

You pretended not to notice.

Then he resumed stirring.

“ER now,” he said.

“Now?”

“I used to be a combat medic.”

Your whisk stopped.

“Well.”

He looked over.

“Well what?”

“That is significantly more interesting than baker.” You held out the eggs for him.

He huffed a laugh and poured the butter into the eggs, placing the bowl over a pan of simmering water.

“I mean… don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’ve never had pastry collapse at six in the morning.”

“Comparable trauma?” he smirked, not turning to face you but you could see his eyes flicking towards you.

“Devastating.”

He laughed then.

Short. Real.

It changed his whole face.

You liked the sound of it immediately.

But the smell… wait? The smell?

Oh no.

Chef Mireille appeared at your shoulder with the uncanny timing of someone who could sense culinary incompetence from across the room.

She looked first at the pan.

Then at Jack.

Then back at the pan.

You craned your neck and got your first look as well. The hollandaise sat in the bowl in glossy yellow patches, butter pooling at the edges, curdled through the middle.

Mireille placed one hand on her hip.

“Well,” she said. “This poor sauce has suffered, it seems. The heat is far too high”

Jack’s brows raised in surprise and then dropped into a frown. You bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself laughing.

Jack glanced down at the bowl. “In my defence,”

“Ah Ah. The heat,” Mireille cut in smoothly, “did not turn up by itself.”

A few people nearby laughed.

Then her eyes moved to you.

“And you,” she said, lifting one elegant brow.

Uh-oh. You swallowed the laughter you had been holding in.

“Were you paying attention?”

You straightened automatically.

“I was just,”

“She was helping,” Jack cut in.

Mireille ignored him with professional ease.

“You are usually one of my star pupils,” she told you, tone playfully stern. “Reliable. Focused. A woman I trust around butter.”

You pressed a hand to your chest. “Chef,”

“And yet tonight,” she continued, gesturing toward the bowl, “you have allowed this man to commit acts of impatience in my kitchen.”

Mireille pointed her spoon between the two of you.

“Start again. Lower heat. Slower hands. Less eye contact.”

Heat climbed your neck.

Now it was Jack who was holding back a laugh.

“We’re just cooking.”

“Mm,” Mireille said. “And I am twenty-five.”

She swept away before either of you could answer.

There was a beat of silence.

Then you turned and nudged Jack lightly in the ribs with your elbow.

“You’re dragging my reputation down.”

He looked at you, deadpan.

“Your reputation must be pretty fragile.”

You gasped softly.

“It was immaculate before you arrived.”

His mouth twitched and he absently rubbed the spot on his torso where your elbow had been.

“Then I’m glad I came.”

One more attempt, this time successful, at mastering the hollandaise, and it was time for the knife demonstration.

Your second batch had come together beautifully. Pale gold and glossy, thick enough to ribbon from the spoon. Chef Mireille had swept past, dipped a fingertip into it, and given a rare nod of approval before gliding on to terrorise another station.

You had tried not to look smug.

Jack had noticed anyway and shot you a subtle wink that made your heart skip.

Now the room gathered around the long central counter while Mireille demonstrated how to peel, core, and slice apples evenly for the Tart Tatin.

“Uniformity,” she said, lifting a wedge between two fingers, “is not about pleasing me, though naturally it does. It is about making sure everything cooks at the same rate. If one piece is too thick and one too thin, one burns while the other stews.”

She set the knife down.

“And grip matters. If you are fighting the knife, you have already lost”

She demonstrated once, swift and elegant, then sent everyone back to their stations with bowls of apples and the promise of shame for anyone who hacked them into rustic chunks and called it charm.

You returned to your counter with Jack beside you.

He picked up the knife immediately.

And held it completely wrong.

Not beginner wrong. Not nervous wrong.

Wrong in a way that suggested years of muscle memory.

His index finger ran high along the spine of the blade, thumb angled close, grip narrow and exact, as if he were about to make an incision rather than cut fruit.

You stared.

“That,” you said, pointing, “is not a kitchen grip.”

He glanced down at his hand.

“It cuts.”

“You’re holding it like a scalpel Doc.”

His mouth twitched.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, they’re just apples”

Your face dropped into a deadpan stare and you teased, “You’re not dragging my reputation through the mud anymore”

You stepped nearer before you could think better of it.

Up close, he was even more solid than he looked. Heat rolled off him in a quiet wave. He smelled so good. Clean soap, cotton, and something warmer beneath it. Cedar, maybe, or just him. The kind of smell that made you instinctively lean in before sense caught up.

You reached for his wrist.

His forearm tensed the second your fingers closed around it.

Strong. Dense. Warm.

The muscles shifted beneath your touch like restrained machinery.

“Relax,” you murmured.

“I am relaxed.”

“You’re so tense, didn’t you hear what Chef said about fighting the knife?”

That earned a low sound that might have been a laugh.

“Not like that,” You slid your hand down, nudging his thumb and forefinger into place at the base of the blade, “Like this”

“Pinch grip,” you said. “Here. Control comes from the blade, not strangling the handle.”

Your other hand covered the back of his briefly, guiding the angle lower.

He went very still.

So did you.

You became acutely aware of the breadth of his chest just behind your shoulder, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the fact that if you leaned back half an inch you would feel all of him.

Your pulse gave an unhelpful kick.

“Then your guiding hand,” you said, voice thankfully steady, “makes a claw.”

You took his free hand and curled his fingertips inward around the apple.

“Protect the tips of your fingers, bend them in a little.”

“Bossy,” he murmured near your ear.

“People generally appreciate instruction involving sharp objects.”

“I don’t usually need any instruction around sharp objects.”

“Debatable.” You smiled, though with you in front of him like this you know he couldn’t see.

You released him and stepped back.

“There. Now slice.”

He brought the knife down through the apple in smooth, clean strokes. Even wedges. Neat spacing.

Quick learner.

Annoyingly attractive.

“Well?” he asked without looking up.

“Well what?”

“Tell me I’m talented.”

You laughed.

“I’ll tell you you’re teachable. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

That time he smiled properly.

It hit you with the force of a minor collision.

Warmth transformed him. Softened the stern lines of his face. Made him look less like a man carrying something heavy and more like one who had briefly remembered how to set it down.

You forgot what you were saying for a full second.

He noticed that too.

“Tart Tatin,” he said coyly. “Try to focus.”

You stared at him.

“Are you flirting with me over apples?”

“I don’t know,” he said, slicing another perfect wedge. “Is it working?”

You rolled your eyes, another smile forcing its way onto your face before you could stop it. You didn’t bother humouring him with a response, your expression told him enough already.

From there, working together became strangely symbiotic.

You caramelised the apples on the stove, he stabilised the pan handle without being asked.

He fetched ingredients before you reached for them.

You corrected seasoning. He corrected heat. And then overcorrected it.

Still learning. You bit back a laugh

“The heat was fine, just watch the timer” you said.

“They burn if ignored.”

“Where was that attitude when you killed our hollandaise?”

He glanced over.

“I was distracted then:

Your heart beat heavy against your chest.

“You’re not now?” you asked, eyes flicking up to his. He was watching you with a flirtatious intensity you hadn’t experience from anyone before. Maybe you’d just been flirting with the wrong people this whole time.

“I am” he said, voice rough and low, “I’m just motivated not to disappoint you twice in one night”

“Hmm, maybe too late for that Doc. Your tart crust is looking pretty thick.”

He looked down at it.

“It is not.”

“It’s wearing armour.”

“It needs structure.”

“It needs tenderness.” you arched a brow, daring him to argue further.

That look again.

Unadulterated attraction.

“You talk like that about all pastry?”

“Only the difficult ones.”

The timer for the apples went off then.

You both reached to take the pan off of the heat at the same time.

Your fingers brushed.

Neither of you moved for a beat too long.

Then he moved away, allowing you to take it.

“Slow reflexes, old man”

“I was letting you have it, kid”

“How noble.” you retorted, trying to ignore the flush of heat between your legs at the nickname he had given you.

As the tarts came out of the ovens, the room softened into that pleasant end-of-class warmth.

More wine appeared at nearby stations. Mireille floated by critiquing apple placements and praising crusts.

Jack stood beside you, leaning on the counter. You were starting to think he noticed how much you’d been looking at his arms and had decided to show them off for you.

Extremely annoyingly attractive.

“What kind of bakery?” he asked.

You glanced over, surprised.

“Umm it’s called Willow & Rye. Mostly pastries, custom cakes, bread. If I’m feeling particularly masochistic I’ll make macarons on weekends.”

He hummed, eyes never leaving yours.

“You own it?”

“I do, took over from my mom or took over from her mom. I basically grew up in that place.”

“You like it?”

No hesitation.

“I love it.”

He nodded once.

As though filing that away.

“And cooking?” he asked.

“What about it?”

“Why take a cooking class after baking all day?”

You laughed lightly, understanding the absurdity, “Well… it’s very different to baking. And I like learning things I’m not good at.”

“Why.”

“Because being bad at something humbles you.”

“You’re not bad at this.”

You laughed, “Thanks. But thats now. I was never a natural with cooking like I was with baking. It took time.”

His mouth twitched.

You added more quietly,

“And I find it peaceful. Even when the kitchen is chaotic I can still find the peace I need there.”

Something in his expression shifted then.

Small enough most people wouldn’t notice.

You did.

“Peaceful,” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

He pushed down off of the countertop and wrung his hands together, looking down at them.

“Maybe that’s why I’m here too.”

Warmth moved low in your stomach.

So naturally, you ruined the moment.

“I still wouldn’t trust you to do any of this alone”

He stared.

Then smiled slowly.

“I learn fast.”

“Do you?”

His eyes dropped briefly to your mouth.

“I do.”

By the time the tart came out of the oven, golden and fragrant, the room had dissolved into happy chaos.

People packed leftovers. Chef Mireille kissed cheeks and assigned homework.

You stayed behind to wipe down your station, as always.

Jack stayed too.

Not helping, exactly.

Lingering.

“You can go, you don’t have to wait for me” you said.

“I know.”

He didn’t move.

You dried a pan, trying to reign in the heat you could feel spreading up your neck to your face.

He watched you with the same focus he gave everything else.

“You hungry?”

You glanced over at the half-eaten tart between you, raising a brow at him.

“Is that a joke?”

“Or thirsty, then.”

Not smooth.

Not practiced.

Just direct.

You liked that far more than smooth.

“I could use a drink,” you replied, a smile playing at the corner of your mouth.

The wine bar next door was narrow, warm, and softly lit.

You took a booth.

You ordered wine.

He ordered water, mentioning briefly that he was driving home when he saw the surprise on your face.

“Ah, here I was expecting whiskey” you said.

“Why is that?”

“It’s very on brand for gruff older man in need of hobbies.”

“You think I’m gruff.”

You bit your bottom lip, smiling and nodding before saying “Can I ask you a question?”

He gestured for you to go ahead.

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way because I think you look incredible in the apron but. Why do your friends feel the need to strong arm you into taking up a cooking class?”

He shook his head, amused before leaning forward, resting on his elbows.

“They think I have a habit of mistaking danger for recreation.”

You smiled faintly. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.”

He glanced down at the water glass, turning it once against the table.

“Before this, I was doing volunteer medic work with a SWAT unit.”

You blinked. “Wow,” nodding “That’s really brave”

His mouth twitched but he didn’t argue.

“Anyway, couple months back I caught a graze.”

Your smile faded.

“A bullet?”

“Technically.”

“Jack.”

“It barely touched me.”

You stared at him.

Mouth downturned, he drew a sharp breath through his nose, shrugging like it was no big deal.

“Apparently getting shot, however inefficiently, gave everyone around me opinions.”

You were quiet for a moment.

“And what do you think?”

That made him pause for a second.

“They’re probably just tired of waiting for the phone to ring. So. Cooking class”

He summed it up like it was nothing. Like he had just finished telling you about traffic.

Conversation unspooled easier after that.

He told you about his job, long shifts working nights. You laughed when he taught you the Nightcrawler chant that he does with his staff at the start of a shift to hype themselves up.

He told you about his friends who worried.

And he told you about his time in the service, a life built around reacting quickly. Losing his leg.

He didn’t overshare, but what he gave you was enough that you were able to build a picture of who he was, the life he lead. And you wanted more.

You told him about four a.m. starts at the bakery, kneading dough before sunrise, the violence of holiday cake orders.

You told him about pressures of keeping the third generation family business going.

And you told him about baking. Growing up. With your mom and grandmother. Food as a conduit for community. A way to gather close with everyone you love and share in something.

“You talk about food like religion,” he said.

“Oh please, in my family it was the next best thing.”

Eventually the wine bar closed down. Jack offered you a ride.

You wouldn’t have ever said yes to a ride from someone you had only known for a few short hours but… you didn’t want to say goodbye yet.

The walk to the car park was damp with recent rain.

Streetlights turned the pavement gold.

You stopped beside his car.

He opened the passenger door.

As you neared him, you hesitated.

“You’re not getting in?” his voice was low. You looked up at him, his eyes darting between yours and your lips. He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed.

You were suddenly very thirsty again.

“Not yet”

Streetlight caught in the silver at his temples. The night air was cool, but standing this close to him made it hard to notice.

He stepped closer and the air changed with him, into something electric.

“You got quiet,” he said.

“Just thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

A smile pulled at your mouth.

“I want you, Jack.”

He went still.

Not startled. Not offended.

Just still in that way controlled men did when faced with something uncontrollable.

His eyes searched your face like he was checking for hesitation, for uncertainty, for the chance that you didn’t mean it.

“You don’t know how difficult you’re making it for me” he said quietly.

Your brow furrowed, confused. Your hand reached out for his, trailing up his arms lightly.

“What’s difficult about this?”

His jaw tightened visibly.

“I’m older than you.”

You laughed a little.

“Yeah, Jack, I noticed.”

“That doesn’t concern you?.”

“It looks like it concerns you enough for both of us, apparently.”

That almost pulled a smile from him, but it faded before it fully formed.

You dropped your hand. “Look, if this isn’t-. If you don’t want this. I’m sorry if I got the wrong impression”

His hand came to your jaw then, rough palm warm against your skin, thumb resting lightly beneath your chin.

“No. I want you too, you don’t know how much. All night I’ve been thinking about it” he said, the words sounding dragged from somewhere deep. “That’s the problem.”

You leaned into his touch.

“Doesn’t sound like one to me.”

“No,” he said, one corner of his mouth tugging up, eyes dropping briefly to your mouth. “It sounds like the start of several.”

You smiled up at him innocently. Far from innocent.

He groaned, almost too quiet to hear but you did.

That did it.

You reached up, hands reaching for his curls and bringing his head towards your own.

He kissed you like he’d been restraining the urge for hours and resented the delay.

One hand came to your waist.

The other braced on the car above your shoulder.

Controlled. Strong. Deliberate.

You kissed him back harder.

He made a low sound in his throat.

You tugged him closer by the front of his shirt.

“Still think pottery was the better choice?” you murmured.

“No.”

“Good.”

He kissed you again.

Longer this time. His tongue pushing in against your own, teeth biting gently at your lip.

When you broke apart, breathless, you took him by the hand.

Closing the passenger door and opening the back door.

You looked at him, brow raised in a challenge.

He laughed and slid into the back, pulling you with him.

The windows fogged quickly.

Heat trapped in too small a space. City lights reduced to blur.

You learned several things, as you were straddled on Jacks lap with your dress hiked up above your hips.

Jack liked control until he trusted someone enough not to need it.

He was attentive in every sense of the word.

And all that contained stillness hid a startling amount of hunger.

You kissed until your lips were swollen. Chin rubbed raw against his silver stubble.

Hands explored through clothing first, hesitant nowhere but careful everywhere that mattered.

There was laughter between sharper moments.

Your forehead bumping the roof of the car.

His muttered complaint about leg room, wishing he’d had the fore thought to push the front seats forward.

You teasing him that tactical planning should’ve accounted for that.

But when the laughter subsided, all that was left in its place was the heat.

You lifted up on his lap and he reached down to align his cock to your soaking entrance. You hadn’t had a chance to see it but fuck did you feel it. You had a moment of panic, he was thicker than anyone you had been with before. And lets be honest… it had been a while.

He looked up at you, eyes darker than before.

“You still with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me if anything feels wrong.”

Something in your chest tightened at the care in it.

You nodded.

“Good girl, so wet for me” he said softly, voice roughened by want, feeling exactly how much you wanted him as the tip of his cock entered you.

The words went through you like a spark.

He held you closer to his chest, patient where another man might have rushed, giving you time to adjust, time to breathe, time to feel every inch of anticipation.

Your fingers tangled in his curls.

Your eyes squeezed shut.

“Take your time baby,” he murmured against your throat.

Your thighs were shaking with the strain of holding yourself up but Jack noticed. And before you knew it strong rough hands were holding you up, hovering you just on the tip while you got used to the stretch. The veins in his arms were more prominent than you had seen all night. Jack moaned as your pussy clenched around him from the sight.

“Good girl” he said, drawn out “We’re gonna go nice and slow yeah?” he lowered you ever so gradually lower and lower as his cock went deeper and deeper inside of you. You had never been so fucking full. It was overwhelming. So full you could cry.

When you finally settled, his cock fully seated inside of you, Jacks head fell back onto the head rest. Eyes closed and mouth slightly open in absolute bliss.

You kissed up his jaw, hands moving from his hair to his shoulders. Clutching desperately as you began to move.

That spurred Jack back into action, his hands moving to cup your ass, finding the rhythm you wanted to set and lifting you in time.

“Ohh good girl. You’re so wet for me aren’t you” he cooed, drawing out a wanton moan from you that had you realising you’d been holding yourself breath. He had made you forget how to fucking breathe.

Bracing his hands against the seat, he used the leverage to buck his hips up to meet you and you folded, head resting against his shoulder.

“Jack, feels so good” you whined pathetically.

“Yeah baby, let me take care of you” he murmured in your ear, words enunciated by grunts as he rutted his hips, “Do you feel how hard you made me? I’ve been thinking about this all night. Wanted you as soon as I fuckin’ saw you baby”

Your insides quivered around him and he knew you were close, you wanted to straighten back up and move on him again but you were so fucked out on his cock you felt like you couldn’t move. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Good girl, you’re getting close aren’t you?,” he moaned, a ragged breath leaving his chest, “You’re gonna make me cum too, your tight pussy is squeezing me so well baby”

Fuck. That did it.

Your legs started to tremble and his hands were already there, on your hips, grinding you down onto his length where you had lost the strength to do it yourself.

“There she is. I’ve got you, cum all over my cock baby”

He held you steady, worked you through it with the same patient certainty he seemed to bring to everything, like there had never been any question he would carry you when your body gave out.

“That’s it,” he murmured, voice rough and low. “Let go for me.”

And with his hands anchoring you, you did.

Your body hummed with pleasure and the sob that you had been holding in let out as your orgasm rode through you.

You mumbled something indecipherable, unable to get the words out.

“Talk to me” Jack said, voice raspy and breathing fast, “What do you want baby?”

“Please Jack” you sobbed “I need you- inside me. Please”

His eyes closed again and his fingers dug into your flesh at your words.

“You want me to finish inside you?”

You nodded, head still resting on his shoulder, body complete mush.

“Say it.” he bit out. Demanding and assertive.

“I want you” you whimpered.

“Not what I meant,” His hips bucked up hard and you gasped for air, “Say. It”

“Cum inside me Jack. I need it. Please” you repeated that last word, over and over, blabbering and completely cock drunk.

Jack groaned and you could feel his cock twitching inside of you, filling you with his seed, overflowing and seeping back out.

What a fucking mess.

You leaned against his shoulder, you couldn’t say for how long, catching your breath.

Jack held you, long after his cock had gone soft, still buried deep in the warmth of you. His hands stroked your hair, down your back. Repetitively over and over. He pressed kisses into your temple and whispered how good you were.

You had never felt safer.

After a long time, you got up. Jack helped you dress which you were glad for. He had fucked any strength you had left out of you.

He drove you home, hand holding yours the whole time, rubbing soothing circles into your palm.

When he pulled up outside your building, neither of you moved immediately.

Then, direct as ever,

“I’ll make you dinner sometime.”

You laughed sleepily before you could stop yourself.

His brow lifted.

“I’ve seen your skills, Jack.”

“They improved significantly tonight.”

“Still.”

He leaned towards you, hand coming up to grasp your chin gently.

“You saying no?”

“I’m saying if we eat anything edible, I’m probably the one cooking.”

He smiled, nodding.

“You can cook. I’ll sous chef”

You grinned up at him, knowing you probably looked completely love sick.

“Deal” you said.

He walked you to your door, making sure you had stepped over the threshold before asking,

“Next Thursday?” he asked.

“The class?”

“The dinner.”

You pretended to consider.

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you practice your knife grip”

He laughed.

Warm and rough. Pulling you back towards him slowly.

“I will practice.”

He stroked your hair and tilted your head back towards him, kissing you deeply.

You must have done something evil in a past life because your landlord had decided to sell his place with no notice, which left you and other roommates with two weeks to find a new place to live before he evicted all of you. You remember spending countless sleepless nights scouring the internet, meeting random people, seeing random apartments. 

That’s how you met Jack and Michael.

It was another roommate interview; they seemed nice, both in med school or something so they wouldn’t be home much, they said. Their apartment was scarily clean for two guys, but Jack assured you that he was a self proclaimed clean freak and it was always like this. Michael just said not to go into his room and you would be fine, which you didn’t really want to think about further. 

They used to have a third roommate, they explained, but he wasn’t really taking to residency all that well and moved back home. Although the way Michael told the story seemed casual, the implication was glaring. You could read between the lines. They needed someone to take over his lease, and fast.

Considering the fact that the last two girls you met said your chakras were misaligned and that they could fix that if you paid them, coupled with the fact that you were about three days out from being homeless, you decided to take a chance on Jack and Michael. How bad could living with two guys be? 

That was months ago. Now?

You wish you paid those girls to realign your chakras and moved into their apartment. Sure, the boys’ apartment was nice. It wasn’t living with boys that was the issue. They were telling the truth; Jack really always kept it clean and the pair of them were always at the hospital, so they were barely around.

It’s when they were around that was the issue. 

Or, more specifically, when Jack was around. Robby, as he told you to call him a few weeks into you living there, was nice enough. He was polite and funny, humor just dry enough to be endearing. He always had a few girls coming in and out when he wasn’t working or knocked out from his shift, but that was neither here nor there for you.

Jack, on the other hand, was driving you up the wall. Your niceties had fizzled out in exactly two weeks, ending when you got into an argument about something so small, you can’t even remember it now. 

And that was that. After that fight, you were always butting heads whenever you were together, always about the dumbest things. It’s reached the point where you two can barely be in a room together without getting into it. You know Robby had been trying to mediate over the past few months, but to no avail. Nowadays, he just tries his best to not pull his hair out.

Like today.

“How many times have I asked you to stop slamming doors?” Jack snaps as you exit your room. He’s seated next to Robby at the bar, who’s tucking into his bowl of cereal and looking like he's praying that no one drags him into this conversation. They're both still in their pyjamas, Jack’s curls still mussed from sleep. 

“Well, good morning to you too, Jack,” You sigh, not even looking in his direction as you make your way into the kitchen on the opposite side of the bar. Pulling open the fridge, you ponder making a smoothie just to see if it’ll piss him off some more. “Glad to see a full night of rest hasn't removed the stick from your ass.”

You can see Robby white knuckling his spoon out of the corner of your eye, but he remains silent. Jack scoffs, using his fork to angrily gesture in the direction of your bedroom.

“Last I remembered, there was only one of us here not working twelve hour shifts at a hospital. I’d like a little sleep before I have to listen to you talk all day.” He looks to his right, presumably to have Robby to back him up, but he’s already left his bowl in the sink and is slinking away from the conversation.

“Tsk, tsk, Doctor Abbot. Someone needs to work on their bedside manner,” Shaking your head at him, you can tell that he’s already annoyed, face twisted up as your words. You decide, yeah, the blender probably will piss Jack off, and start pulling out some fruit. “Don’t they teach you that in medical school?”

“I’ve got one of the highest patient satisfaction ratings of the department,” He shoots back, a barely concealed brag. Not that it mattered that much to you, but he was clearly proud of the fact anyways. “I just save it for people that actually listen to the words that come out of my mouth. You-”

It seems comical, the timing, really. You toss the last of the fruit into the blender and switch it on, effectively cutting him off and punctuating his point. You watch his eyes furrow and you were totally right, the blender absolutely does piss him off. You mime something about not being able to hear him, sorry! and he rolls his eyes, conceding. Jack always did, if it was before eleven in the morning. Still too tired from his shift to get under your skin properly, you assumed. He grabs his plate and his coffee mug in a huff, heading into Robby’s room, no doubt to complain about you behind your back.

You shut the blender off once he leaves, the loud whirring slowing to a stop. You remember a time that you imagined yourself getting along with both of them, falling into your place at the apartment like their missing puzzle piece. But there was just something about Jack that just pushed all your buttons. He was just a pain in the ass.

A really handsome, really annoying, cherub-faced pain in the ass.

—

Robby likes to think of himself as a patient man.

The emergency room teaches you that. Taking a step back. Pausing, being objective. Being able to make the decisions that need to be made.

And right now, a decision definitely needed to be made. Robby was living in a psychological warzone.

He remembers when he and Jack were deliberating on who to choose to take over their spare room. It was between you and some guy who looked like he ate cigarettes for every meal; Robby can’t even remember his name now. Jack had said that they should pick you — even said you were cute.

This was one of the few instances in the time that he had known Jack that he had regretted listening to him.

“And she just-” Jack’s got his plate teetering on his knee, coffee mug still in his hand as he gestures angrily for no reason in particular. You’ve really worked him up this morning and now Robby is dealing with the consequences.

“Geez, man,” Robby can’t help but snap, cutting him off. Lately it’s been endless, Jack’s complaining. It feels like he starts and ends every day listening to Jack bitch and moan about their roommate, and it’s driving him up the wall. “You ever think about cooling it a little? Maybe extending an olive branch or something?”

“An olive branch? For what? I didn’t do anything.” His comment has clearly caught Jack off guard, eyes falling to his plate as he pushes the remaining remnants of his breakfast around. 

“It’s not about you doing something. It’s about you two getting along,” Robby explains with a sigh. He knows that Jack knows better than this, but there was just something about the situation that made him see red. Something about you. “A little peace around here would be nice, you know?”

“You should tell her that.” Jack gives up pretending to eat and sets his plate aside. Robby can feel the anxious energy radiating off of him; his leg shaking the bed, the angry tap, tap, tap of his nails against the ceramic of his coffee mug. He reaches out and places a hand on his thigh to steady him. The shaking stops instantly.

“You gotta figure this shit out,” Robby says, attempting to toe the line between stern and empathetic. He thinks it might just be coming off as tired, though. “Whatever issue you guys have, you guys need to solve that shit.”

Jack stiffens under his touch when the words leave his mouth and Robby kicks himself. For some reason, he keeps forgetting just how stubborn his best friend is.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Jack replies flatly. That kills the conversation and he collects his things and leaves Robby’s room, leaving him alone in some well needed silence.

Robby decides needs a new approach.

He tries his best to stick it out for the next few days, waiting until his next off day rolls around. Jack, on the other hand, is working that day which presents the perfect opportunity for Robby to appeal to your better nature instead.

He’s leaning on the counter, watching you put your groceries in the fridge. Over the time that you’ve been living together, you and Robby have learned to grow comfortable in the silence in the apartment. You’ll sit together on the couch, reading a book while he studies without saying a word. It’s grounding for him, like a familiar blanket. At least, that’s when Jack isn’t around.

Robby is finally pulled out of his thoughts when he notices you staring at him, hand on your hip. You’ve got an eyebrow raised, like you just asked him a question that he took far too long to reply to.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Robby shakes his head, trying to focus on you once more. “I was, uh, zoned out.”

“I just said you’ve been looking at me all weird,” You reply, hand dropping from your hip. You approach him slowly, laying a hand on his arm. You seemed concerned, which was sweet. He’s always wondered where the part of you that got Jack all riled up went when he wasn’t around. “Are you okay?”

“No, not really,” He says with a sigh, taking a step back out of your space. He takes a deep breath, wondering how exactly to explain this to you. He doesn’t want to misstep like he did with Jack; then he’d really be screwed. “It’s about you and Jack.”

“What about us?” Your curiosity is piqued but Robby can see that you’ve stiffened just at the mention of his name.

“Look, I get that you and Jack hate each other or whatever,” He runs a hand through his hair, deciding that the best course of action was to just be honest. Whatever happens after that is out of his hands. “But the arguing is driving me insane. Would you be able to maybe take it down a notch when I’m around? And when I’m not, you can kill him for all I care.”

“I think you would definitely care if I murdered Jack,” You say with a scoff, crossing your arms over your chest. You two stand in silence for a moment. Tense, not the comfortable kind that Robby is used to. He can see your eyes flicking around as you think, taking in his words. And then your posture softens. “But you’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Oh great,” He heaves a sigh of relief, taking a seat at the bar. You watch him, the curious look in your eye replaced with something that might even resemble sympathy. “I asked Jack the same thing and he nearly bit my head off.”

“You thought I would react worse than Jack?” You look at him sadly, hand splayed over your heart in mock hurt. “I’m wounded, Michael.”

He rolls his eyes and you’re back in the kitchen, bent over and rustling through the fridge. He watches you gather ingredients, pushing around and looking for the things that you need. He taps his finger on the counter, suspicious. 

“Is that really it?” He asks and you turn around, arms full. You shrug as you start placing things on the counter, gesturing for Robby to help you with a nod of your head. He quickly stands up, setting down whatever remained.

“I could make more of a scene, if you like,” You pull out the cutting board and knife from below the counter, shooting him a look from the corner of your eye. “But I thought I’d make you an ‘I’m-sorry-I-get-into-fights-with-your-best-friend’ dinner instead.”

Robby lights up at that. He and Jack always cook for themselves, but your food always looks a million times better than theirs. Probably because once they get home from their shifts they only have the energy to make boxed mac and cheese before falling asleep on the couch, bowls still in their laps. 

So yes, Robby will jump at the chance to eat some food that doesn’t come out of a box and doesn’t involve any powdered cheese.

You’re standing side by side when Jack walks in; Robby is chopping vegetables and you’re throwing everything together in a pot. Your shoulders are brushing —the kitchen you share is too small not to, especially at Robby’s size.

Robby glances up from the cutting board, ready to greet Jack, when he sees the look on his face. It’s twisted up in something… something Robby can’t really place. He’s frowning, eyes scanning the scene in front of him. Before he can open his mouth to say hello, Jack stomps off to his room, hand clutching the strap of his go-bag tightly. The door slams behind him and Robby finally looks in your direction. You’re looking equally as confused as he feels.

“What the hell is up with him?” You ask, going back to what you were doing before Jack’s abrupt arrival. He guesses that you were used to this kind of behaviour; Jack being all prickly towards you. Robby however, was not. He sneaks another glance at Jack’s closed door, brows furrowed.

“Bad shift, maybe?” He tries to supply. You just shrug in response.

He knows that it’s something else.

—

After that dinner the fighting only gets worse.

You’ve been making Robby a lot of I’m sorry dinners, which is a plus. But the hostile living situation is definitely a negative. 

He knows you’ve been trying to keep it down but it seems like you can’t even enter a room without Jack getting irritated with you these days. He’s tried to talk to him about it a grand total of once, and Jack snarls at him to ‘just leave it’ in a tone he’s never heard before, so he has.

But it’s driving Robby insane. He wants to eat a meal, sit on the couch, and study in peace. It’s reaching the point where he’s wondering if he’s going to have to physically separate you. The fights have been escalating; you two have been crowding each other’s space, all gnashing teeth and pointed jabs to the chest. 

Right now he’s laying in bed, listening to you two argue through the wall. He doesn’t even know what it’s about. In fact, he never really knows what they’re about. They always start off about something insignificant and then escalate into the grudges that you two are holding against each other. It seems like the fights never end, one of you always storming out before you ever come to a resolution.

Robby is sure that you could probably talk out your differences if you bothered to actually have a conversation about it without one of you stomping away. In fact, he’d put money on it.

He listens to a few more shouts and a particularly loud door slam and something in him finally breaks. 

He decides to put his money where his mouth is.

—

You’re enjoying a rare moment to yourself, curled up on the couch under a blanket with a book in hand when Robby’s voice rings through the living room. 

“The sink in the bathroom is doing that weird thing again.”

Motherfucker.

You tilt your head back with a groan, slamming your book shut. The sink in the bathroom had been crapping out on you guys for as long as you remember and for some reason, you were the only person who could jiggle the handle just right to get it working again.

“Can’t a girl get a moment to herself here?” You sigh, pulling off the blanket dramatically. Robby just shrugs, eyeing you as you put your book down. There’s something in his gaze you can’t place, a bit distant. It’s easy to assume it’s all the fighting with Jack. 

You promised to try to be nicer to him, but he just keeps goading you into petty arguments. It’s not hard to tell that it’s driving a wedge between the three of you. Tensions have been high in the apartment lately and you’ve noticed that Robby has elected to spend more time away, presumably with one of his many girlfriends.

Robby turns around wordlessly, not even checking to see if you’re following. It unnerves you a bit; he’s usually always down to rib with you and he never ignores you. Worrying your lip, you drop the nonchalant act and trail behind him in the direction of your bathroom. He pauses at the doorframe, waiting for you to catch up.

You approach him, wanting to ask if everything is okay, when he grabs you by the arm. It’s not rough and you wouldn’t expect it to be; Robby would never hurt you. However, his grip and the element of surprise are enough to allow him to haul you into the bathroom. You barely get a word out before the door shuts behind you.

You blink in shock, taking a moment to realize what exactly is happening to you.

Jack is standing in front of you, the same look of shock mirrored on his face. The sight of him has you whirling on your heels, grabbing the door handle. It doesn’t give —something is jamming the handle, effectively locking you in the bathroom. The bathroom you share, that’s about the size of a closet. Locked in with the guy that makes your blood boil.

For more reason than one.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” You hear Jack’s gruff voice from behind you but you deign to ignore it, choosing to bang against the door instead.

“Robby!” You shout, still rapping your fist against the door. You know that he can hear you; the walls and doors in this place are paper thin. Jack’s gaze is hot on your back and you can imagine his arms are crossed, ready to see what you’ll do next. “Let us out!”

“No,” You can hear his voice loud and clear through the wood. He must be standing right in front of the door on the other side, staring at the chipped white paint. His voice is serious, flat in a way you’ve never heard before. “You guys aren’t coming out until you’re best friends. I can’t deal with the bickering anymore. Either figure it out, or enjoy living in the bathroom together. Forever.”

Then you hear his footsteps, the sound of them peetering away. Which means you really are stuck in here for the time being.

You turn to face Jack with a deep sigh. You were right; his arms are crossed over his chest, looking as cool and collected as he always does before he starts pushing all your buttons. You two just look at each other for a moment, soaking everything in. He breaks the silence first. “How did he lure you in here?”

“He told me the sink was broken again.” You mutter, shifting uncomfortably in place and leaning your back against the door. The two of you stand at opposite ends of the bathroom, but the distance doesn’t feel nearly far enough.

You know that Robby is right. The two of you are constantly at each other’s throats for no reason. You run a hand over your face, annoyed that you’ve found yourself in a situation as dumb as this. As tragic as it is, you realize that this is probably the longest the two of you have gone without arguing in a long time.

“Robby is right. We need to stop.” Jack says, as if he can read your mind. You scoff at that, rolling your eyes. That’s rich coming from him. He’s the one constantly provoking you, pushing you until you’re the one who’s fuming when he walks into the room.

“You’re one to talk,” You reply, deciding to confront him. It’s what Robby wanted, right? For you to talk it out? You weren’t sure it would lead anywhere but it didn’t really seem like your third roommate was letting you out anytime soon. “Robby told me that he already asked you to stop and you chewed him out for it.”

“I did not chew him out,” Jack denies, shaking his head in disbelief. You can already feel anger bubbling up just from his dismissive tone. “You and Robby are best friends now, huh?”

“Yeah, that's kind of what happens when your third roommate is a gigantic asshole.” You spit back. So much for not arguing. It's getting hard to keep your annoyance under wraps, especially with the wounds of your last million fights still raw.

“Oh, please. I was his friend first, way before you came along,” Jack takes a step forward like he wants to pace but quickly realizes he doesn't have enough room without getting closer to you and pauses. He opts for rocking back on his heels instead. “It’s your fault we’re even in this situation in the first place.”

“My fault? Are you listening to yourself?” You laugh incredulously, dropping all pretenses that this could even be a normal conversation anymore. “You sound like a child. I’ve tried my best to be nice to you! How is this my fault?”

“Yeah, it’s your fucking fault!” This time he’s brave enough to take a step forward, probably more out of frustration than anything else. “You call that being nice? Getting into fights with me? Getting all friendly with Robby?”

“Is this what this is about?” You’ve caught him in a weird spot and he knows it, running a hand through his auburn curls. His brow furrows but you cut him off before he can shoot back a response. “Robby? Is that why you’ve been acting extra annoying since that night you saw us making dinner a few weeks ago?”

“It's not about him,” He grunts, jaw tensing. You can see that he’s holding back whatever he wants to say by his taut shoulders as he speaks. “It's about you.”

“About me? I don't understand what your problem with me is, or why you think this is my fault-”

“Oh my god, do you ever shut up?” Jack cuts you off, and the room goes dead silent. You two are close now, like both of you were taking subconscious steps towards each other as you fought. It was always like that —when you had these fights it always ended up with you crowding each other's spaces. This time was no exception. 

But the size of the bathroom makes it feel different. You can almost feel his breath from the quick rise and fall of his chest, pulse racing from the argument. Your breath matches his, coming out in short huffs. You’ve got each other all riled up and you can see something flash in his eyes.

Then it clicks.

“You want to fuck me, don't you?” You can see from his reaction that you’ve got it right on the nose. He takes a step back, the bluntness of your statement pulling him out of the stupor of anger he was in.

“What?” He recoils like the thought of it is physically repulsive. You try not to take too much offense from that, especially because you know that it’s all for show. The heat of the tension between you two has shattered and you give a smug smirk, teeth almost bared.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” You’re taunting him now, but after everything that he put you through it only seems fair. You can’t help but laugh out loud as you continue. “Little Jackie’s got a crush on me? That’s why he’s pushing me on the playground?” 

“Don’t call me that.” The timbre of his voice is low, egging you along. “You wish. I hate you.”

“Oh, yeah? How much?” You press. Jack’s gained more confidence and he’s back in your space. Even though you’re holding the cards, taunting him with a crush, you still feel like prey. He’s circling you like a shark without even moving. His eyes are on you as he backs you up against the door.

He still hasn’t answered your empty threat. You can feel his body heat even through your clothes and it makes your breath catch. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Jack, and you see a whisper of a smile on his lips. Any proverbial cards you had in your hands just moments before have fluttered to the ground. Jack has caught you and you both notice, and the idea of that has Jack looking at you like the cat who got the cream.

You’re fully pressed against the door now, almost forehead to forehead. His hands hover between the two of you, like he’s unsure of if he’s actually allowed to touch you or not. You finally grow the courage to look up at him and meet his eyes, your noses brushing as you do. He takes that as permission and moves his hands towards you, resting loose at your waist.

It’s hard to breathe, much less think. You can smell Jack’s body wash from this distance and it has your brain short circuiting. He’s close enough to see every reaction and he drags a hand up your side slowly, fingertips skimming. 

It travels up the expanse of your body and pauses at your neck, his fingers tightening for a moment. His grip isn’t firm but it’s enough to make your eyes flutter. Jack rumbles from somewhere deep in his chest and his hand continues it’s journey upwards, thumb settling on your bottom lip. He swipes across it slowly and it makes your heart stutter.

Fuck it.

Your mouth parts slowly and you take his digit into your mouth, lips closing around it. Jack presses even closer to you, chest to chest. His eyes have been locked on yours the entire time and they stay that way, even as his other hand moves to slip into your sleep shorts.

He’s got his hand cupped over your panties but you know he can feel how wet you are, even through the fabric. He finally lets the smirk take over his face, pressing his thumb into your mouth further. His fingers trail across the dampness of your underwear, sickly slow.

“This all for me?” He asks, cocky, and it’s pretty annoying when the shoe is on the other foot. “You get wet when I tell you I hate you? When we fight?”

His fingers are still moving slowly, making your mind foggy. Or maybe that’s just your excuse for when you look up at him dumbly, nodding. He seems satisfied with that answer, dipping in past the lacy waistband of your panties. His breath hitches when gets a finger between your folds and feels that you’re absolutely dripping in anticipation. You’ve got half a mind to tease him about it, but he pushes a finger in and the thought suddenly vanishes from your mind. 

The finger on your lips moves down again, landing on your throat once more. He’s only a knuckle deep when he pauses, cocking his head. The hand around your neck gives a small squeeze, and your pussy flutters around nothing at the sensation. You let out a small moan, heat rushing up to your face in both arousal and embarrassment. “Think I didn’t notice, huh? How much you liked it?” 

Before you can answer he slides in the rest of the way, leaving you speechless. The pace he sets is slow and deep, making your knees buckle. You’re gripping onto his annoyingly thick arms and his breath is ghosting your face. You can tell he’s holding back, eyes flickering from your lips to the hand down your shorts.

You don’t wait for him to make up his mind. Surging upwards, you catch his lips in yours, pulling him close by his shirt. The moment breaks the dam —all the months of pent up frustration and fights seared into a bruising kiss. He wastes no time, licking desperately into your mouth as he works you open with his hand. You’re mewling, sliding your lips against his as you whimper, slick with spit.

He’s got his leg slotted between your thighs and you can feel how hard he is, even through the layer of his denim jeans. He groans quietly under his breath, grinding against you as he fucks you with his fingers. The noise is obscene —you’re so wet that the sound of it reverberates through the bathroom every time his digits enter you.

It’s embarrassing, really, the way that you’re basically riding his fingers. Your hips are chasing the sensation and he gives another groan at the sight. He’s still got his hand wrapped around your throat and his brow is furrowed with pleasure, obsessed with the way he has you just falling apart for him.

The look on his face is getting you close, like he’s pissed that he gave into you but he wants to take you apart so damn bad he just can’t resist. He tightens his grip and hits that spot inside you just right and you can’t help the strangled whine that leaves your mouth as you tighten around him, cumming on his hand way too loudly for you two to keep what you’re doing a secret.

He’a got his hand out of your shorts now and he’s moved them both to pull your tank top down, exposing your chest. His breathing picks up and runs his hands up your body, rough skin on your sensitive nipples as he grabs at you, rough. Jack leans in for another bruising kiss, but you only get a short moment to savour it before he's got you by the hair, twisting you around and bending you over the counter.

The force of it has everything on the counter rattle, the tall bottle of lotion you keep in the bathroom toppling over. You recover and stumble to push yourself to your elbows, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. You look absolutely fucked out, hair disheveled, lips pink and swollen, looking at yourself all glassy eyed. Then your eyes flick back to take a look at Jack, who’s rutting his bulge into the clothed heat of your cunt.

The sight almost makes you cum again on the spot. His lids are hooded, mouth hanging half open in pleasure as he moves against you. He’s still got a hand woven into your hair and his eyes flutter open in a way you can only describe as pretty as he takes in your state through the mirror. His grip disappears and he pulls off his shirt, the piece of clothing landing on the ridge of the bathtub behind you as he tosses it. You can’t even get out a quip before he’s yanking your shorts down, taking your panties down with them.

Even though he just had his fingers in you moments ago, you still feel embarrassed with how exposed you are for him. If he notices the way you get shy, he doesn’t comment, hands drifting to undo his belt buckle instead. You mewl as he steps out of his jeans, hard cock slapping against his stomach. You’re almost drooling to get your mouth around it and he laughs at the look on your face.

“Yeah? Are you sure you’re not the one that wants to fuck me? ‘Cause it seems like you’re a minute away from begging for it.” He pumps his length loosely with one hand, lips curled into a smirk as his fingertips of the other skid up the side of your thigh. The touch has your pussy fluttering, and you’re hoping that he can’t see the way your legs are shaking. You can see the glimmer of precome gathered at his tip and you lick your lips.

“Fuck you.” You say through gritted teeth, although it comes off much less intimidating as you would like since you’re bent over and at his mercy. He lets out another laugh at your expense, not bothering to say anything else while he lines himself up at your entrance. 

“Well, since you asked so nicely…” You’re already slick from his fingers, so he pushes in rough and fast, both of you groaning as he sheathes himself fully inside of you. It pushes you to your toes, punching a breath from your chest. You can tell that this is going to be quick and dirty, and you brace your hands on the counter in anticipation. 

You were right. He pulls out slowly and you shiver at the sensation, then he slams back into you so hard that you can’t help but yelp. You spare a glance up at his face and you can tell that he fucking loved that, so he keeps that pace, rough and slow.

“Fuck, Jack…” You sound strung out as you moan his name, hips bucking as you try to get him to speed up, go deeper, anything. You’ve already come to terms with the fact that you’ve definitely lost this argument but then one of his big hands presses into your back, pressing you against the counter and you can’t really bring yourself to care. The other grips your shoulder and it’s like he can read your mind.

Jack starts fucking into you without abandon, chasing his high. It’s rough and the slap of skin on skin bounces off the tile, which only serves to make you even more wet. You’re pretty sure you’re just mumbling nonsense now, too focused on how deep Jack is inside of you to put together a coherent sentence. Jack’s getting loud too, the hand on your back snaking down to grab at your hip, pulling you back into him as he thrusts.

“Would’ve done this a lot earlier if I knew how easily I could shut you up.” He manages to get out, in between low groans and short breaths. You want to defend yourself, you really do, but he pulls you back on him and plunges in particularly deep, making your eyes cross, and your voice dies in your throat. Jack’s fucking you brainless, that much you can’t deny. You’re whining as the heat in your stomach spreads, cunt tightening as Jack fucks into you even rougher.

You know he feels it when he lets out a strangled noise that sounds suspiciously close to your name, hips stuttering. Then you feel a tight yank on your scalp, forcing your head upwards. You can barely keep still as Jack continues to move, head bobbing even with his grip on your hair. 

“Look at me.” He says, gruff and deep, and you clench around him at the sound. It takes way too much effort to open your eyes, motions slow like molasses. You clearly take far too long for Jack’s liking, pulling harder on your hair as he repeats himself. Finally, your eyes flutter open, and you’re so close to the mirror that your breath fogs the glass. Your mouth is wide open in a silent moan, eyes almost crossed. Another rough tug reminds you what he asked for, and you drag your gaze up to meet Jack’s.

His hazel eyes are dark with lust, hair stamped to his forehead in sweat. A smirk spreads across his face when he notices that you’ve obeyed, finally looking at him. The way he has your hair in an iron grip has your back arching and his cock is hitting spots inside of you that you didn’t even know existed. You can tell that he’s approaching his high just as fast as you are; his thrusts are growing sloppy and you almost can’t hear your small mewls over all the noise he’s making.

“Look at me when you cum.” He growls as he notices your eyes drifting as your orgasm approaches. It’s not a question. It’s a demand. Your eyes snap back to his and he’s already looking at you, eyes watching your face contort in pleasure. Locking eyes, he slides a hand in between your legs to work your clit, already slick from just how turned on you are by the whole ordeal. He’s rubbing tight circles around it and everything comes crashing down.

You cum so hard around his cock that you can’t even tell if you kept the eye contact he asked for, your vision going white. You’re also pretty sure your knees give out, but Jack keeps you steady with a hand around your waist as he keeps his pace going. You whimper as he fucks you through your orgasm, nerves alight, when he pulls out with a loud groan. He gives a few rough pumps, made easy with your cum practically dripping off of his dick, and you have the pleasure of watching him come undone, coating your ass with ropes of cum.

Jack braces his hand on the counter, knuckles tightening with one last shudder of his body. You two stay that way for a moment, catching your breath. The silence is deafening as you try to think through the synchronised pants that you two share. You’re not sure how many minutes pass until he straightens up, grabbing a towel hanging off the back of the door. He begins to clean you off, gentle in a way that you didn’t expect from him, and you decide that this probably isn’t the best time to tell him that he’s using Robby’s towel.

Once he’s done, he tosses it into the laundry bin in the corner and pulls up his briefs and jeans. You turn around as he approaches you once more, worrying your lip. You’re trying to think of something to say when Jack bends down, pulling your shorts and panties back up to your waist. He fiddles with the waistband of your shorts for a second before moving onto your tank, tugging the straps back up your shoulders and covering your chest once more.

You two are close again, but this time it lacks any of the anger and heat that it did before. Jack’s still got a finger tangled in your tank top strap, leaning closer into your space, noses brushing once more. You think he opens his mouth to say something, but the door swings open and interrupts him before he can start.