⋅˚₊todi

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.

Samira [6:02 a.m.]: u awake

You stare at it.

You [6:03 a.m.]: unfortunately

Samira [6:03 a.m.]: ✨ come for a walk ✨

You close your eyes. Open them. The ceiling stain looks faintly like a sheep if you squint.

You [6:04 a.m.]: give me 20 mins

The farmers market isn't open yet when you get there, but the vendors are setting up—the man with the sourdough stacking loaves, the woman who sells honey she names after her daughters. Samira is already there with two coffees from the cart near the entrance, hair in a low bun, sleep still in the corners of her eyes.

You take the coffee without speaking. She falls into step beside you.

"You're doing the thing," she says, eventually.

You sip. "What thing."

"The thing where your jaw is very tight and your eyes are doing that scanning thing—"

"That's just my face—"

"—and you keep checking your phone even though no one's texted you." She glances at you. "The 'I made a decision I'm regretting but I'm calling it self-preservation' thing."

You exhale through your nose.

"He called my name," you say. "When I was leaving. And I just—kept walking."

Samira is quiet for a moment. Then: "Why?"

"Because." You watch a pigeon investigate a dropped strawberry near the sidewalk. "Because I didn't know what he was going to say, and not knowing felt safer than knowing and it being—" You pause. "Nothing."

Samira doesn't fill the silence. She's good at that. It's why you love her and occasionally find her terrifying.

"So you ran," she says finally. Not unkind. Just precise.

"I walked. Quickly."

"Right."

You both stop at the honey table. The jars are lined up in rows, amber and gold and deep brown, labeled in small cursive—Clara, Margot, Bea. You pick one up without really looking at it.

"I don't know what to do with it," you say. "I don't know what the it even is."

"Yes you do," Samira says, very gently. "You just don't know what to do once you admit it."

You put the honey down.

"He's on my committee," you say.

"I know."

"I'm leaving for internship in eight months."

"I know."

"It's literally textbook contraindicated."

"I know." Samira turns to look at you. "I also know that you came back from that conference and spent a week looking like someone had taken all the furniture out of a room you'd been navigating in the dark."

You blink.

"That," she says, quieter now, "is not nothing."

You look down at the ground—at the coffee cup in your hands, at the seam of your shoe on the sidewalk. The weight in your chest has shifted, not lighter, just differently distributed.

"I don't know how to do this," you say, for the second time in as many months. The second time you've said it out loud.

Samira bumps her shoulder against yours. "I know. But you said that about the dissertation defense outline too, and you handed it in six days early."

You almost laugh. Almost.

"That's not the same—"

"It absolutely is not." She links her arm through yours and starts walking again. "But the point stands. You figure things out. It's physically your personality."

The sun is just cresting the buildings to the east. The market is filling up around you—footsteps and laughter and the smell of something with cinnamon baking somewhere nearby.

"And if figuring it out means getting hurt?" you ask.

Samira is quiet for a beat.

"Then you'd have been brave enough to find out," she says. "Which is more than most people manage."

You say nothing. Hold the warmth of the coffee between your palms.

Some things you carry without answering.

The distance, when it comes, is nothing dramatic. No cold shoulder. No avoided eye contact. No sudden shortness in his emails.

It's subtler than that.

The cadence of your meetings shifts—back to once a week, crisp and functional, the kind of sessions that produce useful feedback and leave no residue. Jack asks about your analyses. You answer. He comments on your framing. You revise. He schedules the next meeting. You confirm.

It's fine. It's professional. It is exactly what your graduate school handbook would describe as a well-functioning mentor-mentee relationship.

It should feel like relief.

It doesn't.

You notice things in the space where something else used to live. The absence of the small aside at the end of a meeting—the stray observation about something you'd mentioned weeks ago, the dry comment about the department printer, the half-question that wasn't quite a question. They're gone. Not dramatically. Just quietly returned to wherever they'd come from.

Jack is still warm, in the way that he is warm—careful and deliberate and exactly as much as the situation calls for. But the frequency has changed. The wavelength.

You're both doing it, you think. Both retreating to the coordinates you know by heart. Both pretending the elevator was just an elevator.

The self-aware part of you—the part that has read every paper on defensive avoidance and could lecture for forty minutes on the behavioral inhibition system—recognizes it with clinical precision. Aversive conditioning of anticipated rejection. Avoidance as negative reinforcement. Classic extinction failure: the feared outcome was never actually tested.

The other part of you just misses him.

Quietly. Without announcement. The way you miss things you never quite had—the shape of a feeling rather than its substance.

You tell exactly no one. Even Samira gets radio silence on this front. Some things are easier to file when you don't keep talking about them.

November fades into December the way Pittsburgh winters do: fast, gray, and without apology. The light drops out of the sky by four o'clock. The Monongahela goes flat and pewter. The trees have been bare for weeks already.

You're in the thick of dissertation writing now—an all-consuming, existentially leveling process that at least has the virtue of leaving you very little bandwidth for anything else. You're on your fourth draft of the discussion. You've rearranged your integrative conclusion three times. You've developed a complicated relationship with the phrase taken together.

It's a Thursday when the clinical week falls apart.

Your practicum is at the university training clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays, standard for fifth years. You've been carrying a moderate caseload: anxiety, adjustment disorder, one OCD case supervised closely by your practicum coordinator. This term you'd also picked up a new case under GM: a college student presenting with recurrent dissociative episodes, functioning well on the surface but fragile in ways that required careful, slow-moving work.

On Thursday afternoon, the session doesn't go the way you planned. Nothing goes wrong, exactly. Nothing catastrophic. But there's a moment—a long pause in the middle of a grounding exercise where your client looks at you with eyes that are there but not there, present but unreachable, and you talk them back gently while something in your own chest catches.

You go through the motions with professional competence. You close the session correctly. You write the note. You consult with GM on your way out.

But by the time you reach your car, you feel it—the hollow, bruised sensation of doing hard emotional work and having nowhere to put what it costs you. You sit in the driver's seat for five minutes before you can make yourself turn the key.

You don't go home. You end up at the lab instead—the quiet, familiar grid of your office—and just sit there for a while, lights on but not doing anything in particular.

He knocks at ten past eight.

You don't need to look up to know it's him. His knock has a particular quality—three times, evenly spaced, not demanding but not tentative.

"Hey," Jack says. His voice is quiet. He's in a jacket, not his usual button-down—must be heading out, or have just come from somewhere.

You manage something that's almost a smile. "Hey."

He reads the room. He's good at that.

He comes in without being asked, leaves the door cracked just slightly, and sits—not at the desk chair you use for supervision, but on the edge of the little couch along the wall, the one cluttered with journals and one forlorn stress ball someone left in 2019.

"Clinical?" he asks.

You nod.

He doesn't ask for details. Doesn't push. Just settles in with the quiet steadiness that has always been his particular way—not filling space, but not evacuating it either.

"Good session or hard session?" he says, eventually.

"Hard," you say. "Not bad. Just." You turn your pen over in your hands. "Heavy."

He nods slowly.

"She dissociated," you say. "Not dangerously. We got through it. But she looked at me for a second like I was—" You pause. "Like I was the only solid thing in the room. And I just." You exhale. "I wanted to be solid for her. I wanted to be enough."

Jack is quiet for a moment.

"You were," he says.

"How do you know that?"

"Because you're still here thinking about it." He glances at you. "Clinicians who stop caring don't sit in dark offices at eight p.m. asking themselves if they were enough."

The lamp on your desk makes a warm amber pool on the carpet between you. You turn your pen over again.

"I know." You look at the wall—at the print you'd pinned up there in your second year, a Magritte reproduction slightly askew that you've never straightened. "I know, academically. I just needed someone to say it out loud."

Jack doesn't answer right away. He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped in that posture you've come to recognize as his thinking posture—unhurried, turned inward.

"I had a case in my third year," he says. "Veteran. Chronic combat trauma. We were deep into prolonged exposure and he had a flooding episode—couldn't orient, couldn't regulate. I held the space, called it correctly, got him back. Textbook." He looks at his hands. "I went home and couldn't remember what I ate for dinner. Sat on my kitchen floor for about twenty minutes."

You look at him.

"It costs something," he says. "It should. That's not weakness—that's you metabolizing what it means to be in the room with someone else's pain." He meets your eyes briefly. "The trick is learning the difference between carrying it and drowning in it."

There's something in his voice that's older than clinical training. You hear it.

You don't say anything right away. The lamp hums softly.

"When did you learn the difference?" you ask.

His mouth does the thing—not quite a smile, but close enough. "Still learning," he says.

You exhale. It comes out longer than you intended.

You don't know when the distance shrank again—or when you stopped feeling the absence of what you'd been missing. Maybe it was the knock. Maybe it was before that. But the room feels different now. Not charged, not complicated. Just warm in the way of two people who have, without deciding to, become important to each other.

He stays for another thirty minutes. You talk—not about the case, not about the dissertation, just talk. About a book you've both read that you have opposite reactions to. About whether the department coffee machine is a metaphysical threat. About a conference you'd both attended in 2022 where the keynote fell asleep during a panel.

By the time you both get up to leave, the hollow thing in your chest has mostly filled back in.

In the hallway, walking toward the exit, the corridor is dim and quiet. Your footsteps echo.

"Jack," you say.

He looks at you.

"Thanks." You mean it completely. "For coming in."

He studies you for a moment—that careful, unhurried look you've catalogued more times than you'll admit.

"You'd have done the same," he says.

He holds the door open for you when you get to the exit. The night air is cool, and the parking lot is mostly empty.

You walk to your cars on opposite ends. At some point, you both say goodnight.

You don't touch. You don't linger at the threshold.

But when you pull out of the lot, you glance in the rearview mirror and see his headlights behind you, following the same street for two blocks before diverging.

And something about that—the parallel trajectories, the ordinary fact of it—makes the hollow thing seal over completely.

The distance has a half-life. This is not a metaphor; it's a measurable phenomenon, and you are an empiricist.

By January you've stopped counting the meetings where he doesn't say more than he needs to. By February you've started bringing coffee again when you come to his office—one for each of you, the exact order by now committed to muscle memory—and he takes his without comment but with that barely-there flicker at the corner of his mouth that you've learned to read as thank you and also you remembered.

The dissertation is moving. Your committee is satisfied. Your applications have all been submitted to internship programs across the country—ranging from dream (Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, UCSF) to realistic (solid programs in the midwest and southeast you've made your peace with) to the one your program director submitted on your behalf as a safety that you will simply not speak aloud.

Match day is scheduled for the second Friday of March.

This fact exerts a low-grade gravitational pull on everything. Eight months of applications, interviews conducted over video call with your best blazer over pajama pants, reference letters and work samples and personal statements, and it all comes down to whether an algorithm decides you belong in Baltimore or Nashville or, optimistically, Boston.

It also means that in approximately four months, you may be leaving Pittsburgh.

You don't examine that fact too directly. You keep it in the same folder as everything else that doesn't bear direct examination.

Jack brings it up exactly once.

It's mid-February. Your meeting has run long—you'd gotten into it over a section of your discussion on affect labeling, the kind of argument that feels like sparring but productive sparring, where you end up sharper for it. He'd pushed back on your framing of emotion regulation as primarily effortful. You'd defended it with three citations and a pointed analogy. He'd conceded gracefully and suggested a small modification that you immediately knew was correct.

You're packing up when he says, "Have you started hearing back from programs?"

The question is casual. You match it. "A few. Three interviews so far. Couple more coming in."

"Strong ones?"

"Yes." A beat. "Hopkins. Vanderbilt. One in Chicago."

He nods slowly. "Those would be good for you."

Something in his voice. You can't name it. You glance up, but he's looking at his desk—not avoiding, just looking. His thumb traces that familiar line across his knuckle.

"Yeah," you say. "They'd be good."

The room is quiet.

You should say something else. Or he should. Something neutral and professional about internship match rates and placement history, something that closes the brackets on the conversation.

Neither of you does.

You zip your bag. Lift it to your shoulder.

"I'm going to miss this place," you say, and you intend it to sound light, offhand, a general statement about the building and the program and the years of your life you've poured into this particular institution.

But it comes out softer than that. More specific.

Jack looks up.

Your eyes meet for a moment. The lamp is on again—it's always on in winter, the days too short—and his expression is careful and unguarded in equal measure.

"I know," he says.

Two words, weighted like a full sentence.

You nod. And go.

March arrives the way it always does: grudgingly, the cold not quite releasing its grip, the sky still the particular white-gray of a city that has forgotten what it feels like to be warm. The trees are still bare. The Allegheny is running high from snowmelt. But there's something—just barely—starting to shift. A smell in the air. A degree or two of extra light in the mornings.

Match Day is a Friday.

You don't sleep well on Thursday. You'd known this intellectually—your sleep diary for the two weeks preceding shows the progressive fragmentation of your rest as clearly as any polysomnography readout—but knowing it doesn't prevent the 3 a.m. staring at the ceiling, the runaway iteration over best and worst case, the quiet inventory of what your life might look like in six different cities.

By 9 a.m. you're in the clinical training suite with the rest of the fifth years, all of you gathered around a conference table with laptops and coffee and the particular energy of a group that has been under sustained pressure for so long that near-release just makes everything worse.

Samira is beside you, her knee bouncing under the table—the only visible tell of her own anxiety, otherwise composed as ever.

"I'm going to vomit," she says very quietly.

"You're not," you say.

"I might."

"You won't." You slide the coffee cup closer to her. "If you were going to vomit, you'd have done it on Tuesday."

She breathes out through her nose. "Thank you. This is why you're my best friend."

The match results come through at 10 a.m. Eastern.

The room is very quiet when you open the email.

You read it once. Then again.

Boston VA Healthcare System, Primary Care Mental Health Integration track.

You sit with it for a moment. Just sit with the fact of it—the program you'd ranked fourth, the one you'd applied to thinking probably not but why not try. The one in the city where you'd done your first clinical rotation as an undergrad, where you'd walked the Charles River Esplanade in February with your coat zipped to your chin and thought: I could come back here.

Boston.

"Well?" Samira, beside you, voice tight.

You show her the screen.

She makes a sound that is somewhere between a gasp and a laugh and physically takes your face in both her hands. "Are you KIDDING me. Are you kidding me."

"I'm not kidding you."

"VA Boston—that's a phenomenal program—"

"I know—"

"Oh my GOD, you're going to be incredible—" She pulls you into a hug that is immediate and fierce and slightly complicated by the fact that you both still have coffee cups in your hands. Across the table, someone else whoops. Someone else exhales in relief. Someone else is very quietly crying, which turns out to be Robby's student Ben, who matched to his first choice at Duke, and the room shifts into something softer and loud and genuinely joyful.

You let yourself feel it. You let the reality settle into your body—the good reality, the one you'd practiced hoping for without quite letting yourself believe in.

Boston.

Eight months.

The department sends the mass email at 11:43 a.m., a congratulatory announcement from the training director, all matched students listed by name and placement with a brief note about what a strong cohort this has been. Standard. Warm in the institutional way.

You see your name in the list. Boston VA, Primary Care Mental Health Integration. It still looks slightly unreal in 11-point Times New Roman.

You're back at your desk by 1 p.m., the afternoon quiet settling around you, when a new message arrives.

The sender line stops you.

Abbot, J.

Not a reply-all. A separate message, written directly to you.

Subject: Congratulations Boston is an excellent program—rigorous, well-resourced, strong supervisory model. You'll do well there. Congratulations. You earned it. - J.A.

You read it twice.

Nine sentences. Fourteen words if you don't count the sign-off. Entirely professional, entirely appropriate, the kind of email a committee chair sends to a student on match day.

He didn't have to send it separately. The department email covered it. Everyone got the announcement. He chose to write to you anyway.

You read it a third time.

You'll do well there.

Not it will be good for your career or strong placement or any of the other framing he could have reached for. You'll do well there. Second person. Present tense. About you, specifically.

You sit with that for a moment.

Then you write back.

Subject: Re: Congratulations Thank you. For the email, and for this year. I'll try to make it worth the committee hours.

You hover over send for approximately four seconds longer than necessary.

Then you close your laptop and tip your face up toward the window, and breathe.

The semester moves. You write. Jack reads. Your committee reconvenes. The defense date is set for early May—a milestone that your brain can only process in practical terms, as a series of calendar items and task lists, because if you let yourself comprehend its full meaning you will simply dissolve.

In the meantime, you are in Jack's office.

This is its own kind of milestone—you've been in this office more hours than you've spent in many other rooms you call significant. You know the slant of the afternoon light through the far window, the particular creak the second shelf makes when someone reaches the top, the way Jack leans back when he's about to disagree with you versus when he's genuinely thinking. You know his coffee order (black, no exceptions, one cup in the morning and one in the afternoon and a herbal tea at night that he will vehemently deny drinking if asked). You know the way his pen moves across a manuscript, the steady shorthand of his corrections.

You know the way the room changes temperature when something shifts between you.

You've spent most of this year pretending you don't know that.

It's a Thursday in late March. The forsythia trees outside his window are now legitimately doing something—stubborn yellow against the last of the grey, the first thing in Pittsburgh that remembers it's supposed to be spring. The late afternoon light is long and golden. You're going through the last chapter of your dissertation, which has taken on the quality of a strange old friend—someone you've been in close quarters with for long enough that you've stopped being able to see them clearly.

"The conclusion is too hedged," Jack says. He's looking at the page, not you. "You spend two pages caveating when you could spend one page claiming."

"I'm a scientist," you say. "We caveat."

"You're also capable of defending your argument with conviction. This—" he taps the page "—sounds like you're apologizing for your own findings."

You look at the passage. He's right. You hate that he's right.

"I always do this in conclusions," you say, more to yourself than to him.

"I know." His voice is matter-of-fact, not unkind. "You hold ground in an argument but retreat when you have to claim territory for yourself."

You look up.

He's still looking at the page, turning his pen in the same slow rotation. Like it's a simple observation about writing style.

"That's..." You stop.

He glances up. Something in his expression acknowledges that he said more than he meant to.

"That's specific feedback," you say, carefully.

Jack holds your gaze for a moment. The pen stills.

"It's accurate feedback," he says, equally careful.

The room does the thing it does. The hum under the surface, the change in pressure.

You look back down at the page. Your hands are in your lap.

"I'm working on it," you say. Your voice is quieter than you intend.

"I know," Jack says. Softer this time.

You don't look up. But something crosses your chest—a warmth, a recognition, the faint ache of being seen by someone who hasn't been asked to look.

You rework the conclusion.

He doesn't say anything else.

But when you read it back, voice low and a little self-conscious, he listens with his full posture—that lean, that attention—and at the end he says, simply, "There she is."

You keep your eyes on the paper.

But you're smiling.

The week before your defense, you dream about the elevator.

Not the way it happened—not the held hands, the charged silence, the doors opening. In the dream, the elevator doesn't stop. You and Jack just keep going up, floor after floor, the numbers above the door cycling past in amber, the two of you not touching, not speaking, just aware of each other in the way of people who have been circling the same sun for a long time.

You wake at 4 a.m. with the particular clarity of a mind that has processed something while the rest of you wasn't watching.

You lie there for a while.

Then you open your laptop and finish the final edits on your conclusion.

You send it to your committee at 6:15 a.m.

Jack responds at 7:02:

Jack [7:02a.m.]: Strong. See you Thursday.

Your dissertation defense is on a Thursday in the second week of May. The building is too warm. Your outfit is exactly right and somehow still slightly wrong. Robby brings a gift bag with a card signed by the entire clinical faculty that includes a pun about mixed methods you'd expect from him and will keep forever.

You stand in front of your committee in the small conference room with the recalcitrant projector, and you talk for fifty-three minutes about affective forecasting and emotion dysregulation and the particular ways people fail to predict their own future selves.

You claim your territory. Without apology.

Afterward, in the deliberation period, you sit in the hallway with Samira and Mel and two cups of terrible departmental coffee and try to remember how breathing works.

When Robby opens the door and says "Can we get Dr.—" using your full surname with theatrical solemnity, and then ruins it immediately by grinning, you feel something that you don't have a clinical term for. Not pride, exactly. Something more like the completion of a circuit you've been holding open for years.

The first hug is Samira, who says nothing because she doesn't need to.

The second is Mel, who says I'm so proud of you into your shoulder.

The third is Robby, who makes it weird in the best possible way.

You look for Jack in the room. He's at the window, standing slightly apart from the cluster of faculty who are milling about with champagne glasses—he must have gotten the sparkling grape juice, which he will also deny doing. He's watching you.

You cross the room.

"Thank you," you say. "For this year. For all of it."

He looks at you steadily. "You did it yourself."

"You helped."

"I offered feedback on your methodology and occasionally told you to go home when you were clearly running on fumes." He tilts his head. "That's the job."

You look at him. "Jack."

He holds your gaze.

"Thank you," you say again, and you let it land without hedging, without the reflexive self-deprecation, without the pivot to professional language.

Something shifts in his expression—small, almost undetectable, but you know his face too well now not to see it.

"You're welcome," he says. Quiet and direct and entirely without deflection.

Robby appears between you like a force of nature with two glasses of champagne, breaking the moment with the precise timing of someone who has absolutely no idea he's breaking a moment.

You take the glass. Drink.

Jack, across the room a moment later, meets your eyes once over the rim of his glass.

Something in his expression says: not yet. But also: eventually.

And that is enough, for now.

May becomes June. June becomes the last days before your departure.

The lab throws you a small send-off party—research assistants who are better at baking than you expected, a card covered in looping handwriting, a photo taken in your office with your degrees on the wall. You cry exactly once, into the bathroom sink, and then you go back out.

Your last formal day in the department is a Thursday, because of course it is.

You don't plan to stop at Jack's office. You have your bag, you have your keys, you've said your important goodbyes. The hallway is bright and summer-warm, motes of dust in the late afternoon light.

But you stop.

The door is half-open. He's there, which you somehow knew without knowing.

You knock on the frame.

He looks up from his desk, and the particular quality of stillness that crosses his face in the first half-second tells you something you've been trying not to look at directly for the better part of a year.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

You step inside, stay near the threshold. "I just—" You look at your hands briefly. "I wanted to say goodbye. Properly."

Jack sets down his pen. He folds his hands on the desk in that careful way, and looks at you with the full weight of his attention, the way he has always looked at you, the way that once made you recalibrate your entire emotional filing system.

"When do you leave?" he asks.

"Sunday."

He nods once.

The room is very quiet.

"I'm going to—" You exhale. You're going to do this. You promised yourself you'd do this. "I'm going to say something, and then I'm going to go, and you don't have to say anything back."

His expression doesn't change. But the quality of his stillness shifts.

You look at him.

"That night in the elevator," you say. "I've been trying to file it away for months. And I can't. I've tried every cognitive strategy I've ever taught a client and I can't, so I'm just going to say it: I don't think it was nothing. I don't think either of us thought it was nothing."

You breathe.

"And I know the timing has been terrible, and the ethics of it are genuinely complicated, and I'm leaving on Sunday to go five hundred miles northeast—" You stop. Try again. "I'm not asking you to do anything about it. I think I just needed to say it out loud. So that it's real somewhere outside of my head. So that—" Your voice is very steady, you're proud of it. "So I could be someone who claimed their territory."

The silence is not empty. It never is, with him.

Jack looks at you for a long moment. The afternoon light through the window. The slant of it across the floor.

He rises from his desk. Slowly, with the slight care of someone managing a prosthetic after a long day. He crosses the room.

He stops just in front of you. Close enough that you're aware of his presence in the visceral, full-body way you've been aware of it since October of last year.

"You're not the only one who couldn't file it away," he says.

Your breath catches.

He looks at you—not uncertain, not cautious. Just clear. That worn, grounded clarity that has always been his particular frequency.

"I called your name," he says. "When you were leaving. In November." His eyes don't waver. "I was going to—" He pauses, the smallest compression of his jaw. "I wanted to say something. I let you walk out."

"Why?" you ask. Your voice is barely a whisper.

He exhales. "Because you were leaving in eight months, and I was your committee chair, and I'd been telling myself those reasons were sufficient." A beat. "They weren't sufficient."

You look up at him.

"They're still true," he says. "The timing. The distance. I know that." He holds your gaze. "I just think you deserve to know that they were never the whole truth."

Your chest aches. Not painfully. Just full—the way of a thing that has been waiting a long time to be acknowledged.

"So what do we—" You stop. Swallow. "What does that mean?"

Jack looks at you with that quiet certainty—no hedging, no strategy.

"It means," he says, "that you're going to be extraordinary in Boston, and you're going to do things with your research that you can't fully see yet." He pauses. "And it means that when you come back—"

"Jack—"

"—whether for a conference or a visit or for good," he continues, steady, "I'd like to take you to dinner. Not as a committee chair." He holds your gaze. "If you'd want that."

You look at him.

The afternoon light.

The familiar room—overcrowded bookshelves, the annotated manuscript stack, the office that has felt like a bunker and also, somehow, over the course of the last year, like one of the steadier places you know.

"If I want that," you repeat.

"If you want that," he confirms.

You breathe.

"That's a very open-ended variable," you say. Your voice comes out unsteady in a way you don't entirely mind.

The corner of his mouth shifts—not a smile, but very close to one.

"I'm a fan of longitudinal designs," he says.

A laugh escapes you, broken and genuine. The tension in your chest doesn't release, exactly, but it transforms—into something lighter. Something that feels like the particular relief of a hypothesis finally tested.

"Okay," you say. Softly. With intention. The way you said it once before, in this office, when he told you your argument was brilliant and held your gaze until you believed him.

"Okay," he echoes.

You stand there for a moment—the two of you, in this room, on a Thursday afternoon in June with the trees finally fully green outside his window and the semester over and your whole enormous future waiting on the other side of the weekend.

You don't touch. The moment is too careful for that, too deliberate, balanced on the edge of what's been said and all the room that the future holds.

But when you finally turn to go—when you lift your bag and step toward the door and feel the familiar threshold of this hallway under your feet—he says your name.

Not hey— and a trailing off. Not a half-word swallowed by a closing door.

Your name. Fully. Quietly. Like he means it.

You stop.

You turn around.

He's standing where you left him, hands loose at his sides, his expression unhurried and unguarded in equal measure—the face he makes when he's not performing composure, when the careful architecture of his restraint has, just briefly, stepped aside.

"Safe travels," he says.

You hold his gaze.

"I'll see you," you say. And you mean it completely.

He nods once.

You walk out into the hall, and this time when the door closes behind you, your hands don't shake.

On the drive home, the radio plays something instrumental—no lyrics, just a pattern of notes rising and resolving. You have the windows down because it's June in Pittsburgh and the air is finally, genuinely warm, the kind of warm that feels earned after a winter that long, and it smells like cut grass and something green and the river not too far away.

You think about fear extinction. About what you told your client, back in October—the point isn't to trick you. It's to see what happens when the threat isn't real. When it's safe.

About what Jack said, once, in the dim warmth of your office: you just have to let someone sit with you in the silence.

About the elevator—the held hands, the held breath, the careful way you'd released his fingers. The doors closing. The look through the narrowing gap.

About all the small exposures between then and now. Every meeting, every hallway, every 8 p.m. quiet, every morning coffee remembered and carried. Every moment you'd stayed instead of filing it away. Every moment the feared outcome—rejection, exposure, the cost of being known—simply did not arrive.

You think about what it means that you know this already. That you understand, at a structural level, exactly what has been happening. The learning theory of it, the neural underpinnings, the way the amygdala recalibrates when a stimulus is repeatedly encountered without the expected aversive consequence.

You think about how understanding it doesn't prevent it. Only living it does.

And you think—window down, June air moving through your hair—that this is what the last year has been. Not just a dissertation, not just an internship match, not just the careful navigation of an impossible professional-emotional situation.

It's been an experiment. An extended, uncontrolled, deeply personal study in what happens when someone offers safety and you, eventually, believe them.

Not because the risk went away.

But because you kept showing up anyway.

The music shifts. The resolution of the phrase opens into something new.

Boston waits on the other side of Sunday, and internship, and the year ahead—all of it unfamiliar and enormous and full of the kind of uncertainty that you used to hate and are beginning, slowly, to hold differently.

And somewhere behind you, in an office with too many books and not enough daylight, a man with careful hands and a worn voice and a slow, particular way of seeing is going to go home tonight. He will hang up his coat. Place his keys in the ceramic dish. Fill the kettle.

He will think of you.

You know this.

And for the first time, the knowing doesn't make you want to file it away.

You tip your head back against the headrest. Let the warm air move.

Fear isn't erased, he'd told a lecture hall once, without looking at you and entirely for you. It's overwritten.

You close your eyes for one red light.

When it turns green, you go.

to be continued in part III