Jack in my beanstalk

Bare concrete walls, chains hanging from hooks, one exposed bulb casting ominous shadows. There is even what appears to be a table containing several neatly arranged implements of torture, although Price suspects at least two of them are novelty kitchen utensils.

Simon sits in the middle of it all wearing his skull mask, trousers, and an expression that cannot be seen but can nevertheless be felt radiating through the photograph.

Price studies the ropes binding his lieutenant’s wrists.

He blinks.

He studies them again.

The rope is looped around Simon’s arms perhaps twice, secured with what looks suspiciously like a shoelace knot, and hanging loose enough that a moderately determined toddler could escape it.

“Are we certain this is current?” Price asks.

The intelligence officer standing opposite his desk shifts his weight. “Timestamp puts it at fourteen hundred yesterday, sir.”

“And we’re certain it’s Riley?”

“Yes, sir.”

Price looks back at the photograph.

Simon’s boots are planted comfortably apart. His shoulders are relaxed. There are no visible injuries. Someone has placed a folded blanket beneath him so the metal chair won’t be uncomfortable.

There is also, Price notices with mounting despair, a bottle of water positioned beside his right foot with the water level already half gone.

“Right,” Price says.

The investigation continues and it should be difficult to determine how one of the world’s most highly trained special operations soldiers was abducted from his own home. Simon Riley is six foot something of professionally cultivated paranoia. He checks exits without thinking, sleeps lightly, and once identified a surveillance team because the same pigeon appeared outside three different cafes.

You, by comparison, possess all the operational subtlety of a marching band falling down a staircase.

Price discovers you have been following Simon for six weeks.

Not discreetly, no. You’ve followed him to the store, the gym, the shooting range, and several coffee shops. You’ve taken photographs from behind newspapers held upside down, worn a black trench coat during a heatwave, an once crouched behind a decorative hedge that did not make you as invisible as you probably led yourself to believe you were.

Security footage shows Simon looking directly into the camera on several occasions while you scurry behind him between hiding places.

Price sees all of this and lowers his face into his hands.

The next report arrives shortly before lunch.

“A syringe was recovered from Lieutenant Riley’s residence,” an officer tells him.

Price straightens slightly. Finally. Something resembling an actual crime.

“Forensics?”

“Lorazepam, sir.”

“What dosage?”

The officer consults the report. “Zero point five milligrams.”

Price stares at him.

The officer clears his throat. “Ativan.”

“I know what lorazepam is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Price looks at the report again, perhaps hoping an additional zero will materialize through force of will.

It doesn’t.

“Zero point five.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That dose wouldn’t knock out a pensioner after Sunday lunch.”

“No, sir.”

“Riley weighs nearly two forty.”

“Yes, sir.”

They stand in silence and Price’s eye begins to twitch.

The final piece of evidence is recovered from a traffic camera positioned across from Simon’s flat where Pricd can see you dragging Simon beneath the arms towards the back door.

Dragging is perhaps generous. You are straining, red faced and panting, moving him approximately three inches at a time while Simon allows his boots to scrape uselessly across the floor. His head lolls against his shoulder with theatrical unconsciousness.

In the process, his boot catches the base of a standing lamp, which begins to fall.

Simon, still allegedly unconscious, reaches out one hand, catches it, carefully rights it, and places it back beside the doorway.

“Unbelievable,” Price mutters.

You turn around at the sound and he drops his arm and resumes being unconscious before you see him.

You stare suspiciously and Simon remains perfectly still.

After several seconds, you shrug and return to your kidnapping.

Price pauses the footage, sits back, and runs both hands slowly down his face, dragging his palms over his beard until he resembles a man trying to physically remove himself from existence.

Behind him, one of the task force operators shifts impatiently. “Captain?”

Price says nothing.

“Do you want us to assemble a team?”

“No.”

There is a pause.

“No, sir?”

“No.”

“But Lieutenant Riley has been taken hostage.”

“Has he?”

The operator looks at the frozen image on the screen. Simon’s enormous, supposedly unconscious body is halfway inside a compact hatchback while you attempt to fold one of his legs through the door.

“He’s tied to a chair, sir.”

“He could break those ropes by sneezing.” He says while he picks up Simon’s personnel file.

He opens it, turns to the appropriate page, and begins filling out a leave request.

The operator watches him. “Sir?”

Price writes Simon Riley beneath the section marked PERSONNEL NAME.

“Captain, what are you doing?”

“Administrative work.”

“Shouldn’t we at least contact him?”

Price checks the box beside personal leave.

“He’s been missing for two days.”

Price writes seven beneath REQUESTED NUMBER OF DAYS, considers it, crosses it out, and replaces it with fourteen.

“Sir.”

Price signs the bottom of the form with a flourish made violent by fatigue.

The operator makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat.

Price places the completed document neatly on top of the photograph showing his lieutenant sitting comfortably in a dungeon with a blanket beneath his ass, a half finished bottle of water by his foot, and enough slack in his restraints to knit a second rope.

“No deployment,” Price says. “No rescue attempt. No one contacts him unless there’s an actual emergency.”

“But- ”

The cold dusk air filtering inside as they disappeared together. The door swung shut and you visibly deflated. With your drink nearing the bottom of the glass and no official reason to occupy a booth meant for four people, you slipped your bag over your shoulder and wandered toward the bar. 

Somehow, every stool seemed to be taken. Groups of friends crowded together, couples leaning into each other's conversations. You almost kept walking, until your eyes drifted further down the counter. 

One seat remained. 

Next to him.

He looked slightly intimidating, not because he was actively glaring or acting weird. If anything, it was the opposite. 

He sat perfectly still, broad shoulders relaxed beneath a fitted navy shirt that looked unfairly good on him. His forearms rested against the polished wood, one hand loosely holding a glass of whiskey, idly observing as the liquid swirls around the glass. 

His hair was a little longer than most men his age tend to have, soft strands of dirty blonde falling across his forehead, touched with a few silver strays near the temples. Stubble shadowed his jaw and faint lines framed eyes that somehow looked both exhausted and constantly alert. 

He simply existed in the warm lights of the bar. Comfortably alone. 

You couldn’t even begin to explain why, but something about that drew you in. 

You cleared your throat slightly. “Is anyone sitting here?” 

His gaze lifted slightly. 

Blue, a shade paler than you expected. 

For a heartbeat, he simply looked at you. His gaze hadn’t lingered, he didn’t obviously check you out either. A stare made to assess. He then glanced at the empty stool.

“No.” His deep voice rumbled through his chest. A little rough around the edges.

You smiled slightly. “Mind if I steal it?”

“It’s not mine.” He replied.

“Well, that’s not exactly permission.” You look at him, expectantly.

One corner of his mouth lifts imperceptibly. “Go ahead.” 

You settled onto the stool, smoothing your dress out before setting your bag onto your lap. 

“So…” You glanced at him. “Thanks.” 

He gave a small nod before returning his attention to his half empty glass of whiskey. 

Well. This was going brilliantly. 

The bartender approached you with a practiced smile. “What can I get you?” 

You take a quick look at the amber liquid in the older man’s glass. 

“I’ll have whatever he’s having.” You say confidently, crossing your arms under your chest. 

His eyes flicked toward you. “You don’t want this.” He intoned.

“Oh?” You turn to him and raise a brow.

“It’s whiskey.” He answers.

“I know what whiskey is.” 

“I’m not convinced.” He said with an authoritative weight.

“Excuse me??” You reply. 

“You’ll hate it.” He says it like it’s a fact, like that assessing stare earlier had told him everything about you. 

“That’s for me to decide.” You say stubbornly. 

The bartender hid a small smile as he poured another glass of whiskey. 

You took a sip. And immediately every muscle in your face tried to protest. 

It tasted like chewed acorns.

You forced yourself to swallow the throat burning liquid. “That’s awful…” 

A low chuckle rumbled beside you. “I warned you.” He says, slight smugness laced in his voice.

“Don’t worry, it grows on you.” 

“I sincerely hope not.” You reply before asking the bartender for some water. 

“You don’t have to finish it.” His statement had offered you an easy way out. But were you going to listen? 

No.

“I refuse to lose a battle against a drink.” You say firmly.

“You’re stubborn.” The man beside you states, turning towards you properly for the first time tonight. 

“I prefer the word determined.” You say as you take a quick sip of the water the bartender had just placed on the counter.

“I don’t.” He replies, with a slight shrug.

You scoff slightly with a smile. “You don’t even know me.” 

“I know enough.” He states, bringing the glass of whiskey up to his lips.

“Oh?” You question him.

“You ignored good advice.” He rumbled, before finishing the glass in one take. 

You sigh softly. “Fair…” 

You found yourself smiling at him. There was something unexpectedly easy about talking to him. His sense of humour wasn’t exactly flashy, it was dry. Quiet. 

For a few moments, the conversation shifted into comfortable silence… and you couldn’t help stealing another glance. 

God.

He really was handsome.

Not in the polished, influencer edited kind of way.

He looked real. Like someone who’d lived through enough sleepless nights to earn every faint line around his dusk coloured eyes. His shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt, his forearms looked strong enough to lift furniture without much needed effort, and the pale scars decorating his skin disappeared beneath pushed up sleeves that hinted at stories you doubted he’d ever share. 

You realised you’d been staring. 

And of course he noticed. 

“..Something on my face?” He said with a chest vibrating depth. 

Heat flooded into your cheeks, a rosy hue painting your face. “I was just thinking.” You say. That wasn’t exactly a lie. 

“I’m afraid to ask.” His words rolled out like thick, dark velvet, as he assessed you for the second time that day. 

You smile softly at him, resting your head on the palm of your hand. 

“I think you might be the most attractive man in this bar.” You say honestly. 

He blinked once, before releasing a slow breath from his nose. 

“That’s one way to start a conversation.” 

You shrug slightly. “I wasn’t trying to start anything.”

“No?” He looks at you, the permanent furrow in his brows lifting slightly.

“No.” You say innocently. “I just appreciate good looking people.” 

He studied you for a second longer this time, eyes glazing over your appearance. 

“...How old are you?” He asks, curiosity laced into his deep monotone. 

You smile into your glass of water. “Twenty five.” 

Your answer seemed to settle over him like a weight, his shoulders dropping subtly. 

“..Right.” He exhaled.

“What?” You ask.

He rubbed his thumb against the rim of his glass. “I don’t get involved with women half my age.” 

There wasn’t any clear arrogance in the statement. No smug assumption that you wanted him. If anything, he sounded slightly tired. Like it was regulation he had repeated to himself more than once. 

You tilt your head softly. “Who said I wanted to get involved with you?” 

A corner of his mouth lifts indistinguishably. 

“I said you were attractive.” You repeat.

“I noticed.” 

“Those aren’t the same thing.” You smile, voice like fluid silk. 

“No?” He questioned.

“No.” You reply.

You lean against the bar, body pressing against the counter.

“Maybe I just thought a handsome older guy deserved a compliment.” 

He looked at you for a long moment. Then, to your satisfaction, he smirked faintly.

“You always this persistent?” He says with a low melodic hum. 

“Only when people keep trying to put words in my mouth.”

For the first time since you had sat down next to him, the lines around his eyes had softened. 

“..I’m ___” You say softly. “And you?”

“Leon.” 

No other arrangement of letters could have captured him so well. Strong. Simple. 

“So…” You say with a feathery cadence. “What brings you here, Leon?” 

He rolled the whiskey around his second glass of whiskey, watching the amber liquid reflect the warm bar lights before taking another slow sip.

“....Needed somewhere quiet.” 

You look around the crowded room.

Someone near the speaker had just burst into an offkey cover of ‘In the Closet’ by Michael Jackson. A group of young adults playing pool erupting into cheers after someone landed an impossible shot, while the poor bartender struggled to note down three different drink orders. 

Your gaze drifts back to Leon. 

“You’ve got a very interesting definition of quiet." 

The faintest hint of amusement displayed on his features. “I’ve had louder.”

The answer was so simple. So casual. However, something about it made you stop yourself from asking what he'd meant. There was something behind those three words. Something heavier. You had the distinct feeling that if you kept digging, you'd find stories no one should have to tell.

“What about you?” He murmured.

"What about me?" You ask curiously.

"You asked why I was here."

"Oh." You realise. 

You rested your chin in your hand, as if you’ve had enough of that situation. "My friend abandoned me."

His brow furrowed immediately. "Abandoned?"

"She found some incredibly handsome stranger." You say with a soft nod.

"I don't like where this is going."

"I didn't either." You laughed softly.

“Yeah, well, people in bars usually have questionable judgment,” Leon muttered, before setting his glass down.

Silence stretches between you both in the loudest way possible, the music vibrating through the warmth of the bar. 

"So..." you began, resting your elbow against the bar. "What do you actually do?"

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he watched the bartender pour syrupy liquids into freshly washed glasses. 

"I work for the government." 

You stared. “That’s it?”

He looked over at you again. “That’s it.” He repeats.

You glanced at him, subtly checking out his muscular build. "How long have you been doing... government things?"

"A while." He intoned.

"That's not an answer." You press further.

"It is." He states.

"No, it's a time frame."

"It's both." 

You let out a dramatic sigh. "I swear, getting information out of you is like interviewing a brick wall.”

"I've heard that one before." He stated.

"I doubt you've heard all of them." 

"I've probably heard most." He muttered in his low baritone.

You take another sip of your water. "I mean..." You gestured vaguely toward him. "You've had longer than me to hear them." 

The second the words leave your mouth, you turn to him. “I didn’t mean-”

Leon slowly turns his head towards you. “I see how it is, so you think I’m old?” He questions.

“No!” You reply, almost too quickly. "I meant..." You groaned, covering your face with one hand. "I meant you've lived longer."

"...Which generally comes with being old." He takes another slow sip of his whiskey.

"You know that's not what I meant." You pout slightly. 

He stayed silent for a few seconds, deliberately making you wait. "...Right."

"What?" You look at him expectantly. 

"You almost had me feeling good about myself." He mutters with a slight smirk. 

"Leon–"

"Then you reminded me that I’ve got one foot in the retirement home." 

A soft smile bloomed onto your lips, warm and genuine enough that it seemed almost dreamlike in the loud warmth of the room. 

“Are one liners your thing?” You enquire the older man.

"I've got a limited selection." He replies. 

"Only a limited one?" You smile.

"Government budget cuts." 

Pressing your lips together against a laugh, you listened to the cheesiest jokes imaginable. Sarcasm had rolled off him so effortlessly it felt like his primary dialect. 

“So do you think I should be asking the bartender to blend my drinks?” He mutters with a slight grunt as he downs his whiskey.

Your smile drops slightly, guilt eating at you, letting your forehead fall lightly against the edge of the bar counter with a soft groan.

"I can't believe I accidentally called the hottest man I've seen all year old." You mumble.

For the first time since you'd met him, Leon looked genuinely caught off guard.

His eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.

"...That's quite the recovery."

"It wasn't a recovery." You sit up and look at him.

"Oh yeah? I’d say it is.” The words vibrated in his chest.

You sigh softly, the subdued blush from earlier making a comeback as you smooth down your dress again, painfully aware of how tight it seems to be enveloping your chubby figure. 

“I meant what I said.” You mumble, needing to say it a little louder just in case he couldn’t hear you over the deafening environment of the bar. 

He cleared his throat. "...You're direct aren’t you?" 

“Not usually.” He studied you for a moment, the teasing expression fading into something quieter. 

“Am I the lucky exception?” He rumbles, glancing sideways at you.

Your lips curled into a small smile as you looked down at your drink, absentmindedly tracing the rim of the glass with your finger.

"Maybe."

Everything blurred until there was only the heat of Leon’s mouth against yours. 

His hands roam your clothed body, your figure sliding onto his lap, framing his hips with your plush thighs as you settle against him. Your dress exposing more skin than designed. 

His apartment was minimalistic, as if he was constantly on the move. You weren’t sure what you had imagined, something colder, maybe. Something that matched the intimidating man from the bar who carried himself like he was always waiting for something to go wrong. 

But it was filtered with a gentle quietness. The lights were warm rather than harsh, casting a soft glow over your bodies. Everything had a place. Nothing was left carelessly scattered.

There was no teasing remark waiting on his tongue, no dry one liner to break the moment apart. Just the warmth of him, the steady way his hand settled against you like he was still giving you every opportunity to change your mind. 

You didn’t, fingers curling slightly into the fabric of his navy shirt, feeling the unremitting rise and fall of his heavy breathing beneath your desperate touch. The same man who had spent the entire night keeping you at arm’s length was now touching you like he was afraid that if he loosened the grip on your hips, the moment would disappear. 

It almost made you smile, letting him kiss you like he was trying to remember what it felt like to want something without immediately convincing himself he shouldn’t.

When you pulled back softly, his eyes drifted to yours, blue and immeasurably more mellow than they had been when you first met him. He looked slightly off guard, eyebrows furrowing with new found lenience.

You couldn’t resist the small smile that tugged at your subtly swollen lips. 

“Something funny?” He murmured as his large hands squeezed at the soft flesh of your hips.

You shook your head. “No, I'm contemplating.”

His expression had shifted into immediate suspicion. 

“That’s not a good sign.” He muttered.

You laugh quietly at his words, arms resting around his neck. 

“You know…” You whispered. “I thought you don’t get involved with women half your age?” You tease.

A quiet breath left him, not quite a laugh. More like the sound of a man realizing he had walked directly into a trap and had no one to blame but himself.

His eyes narrowed slightly, though the amusement behind them was impossible to miss.

“Is that what we’re doing now?” He spoke in an unfaltering, deep cadence. 

You smiled innocently, your position proving otherwise. “Doing what?”

“Keeping score.” He states.

You tilted your head. “I’m just pointing out an observation.”

“An observation?” 

“Mhm.” 

His hands remained resting at your hips, before slipping under the fabric, hands moving absentmindedly against the soft skin of your thighs. Your breath hitched softly.

“Weren’t you the one that spent the entire night diverting my attention towards my age?” He said.

His hand seemed to be inching further under the fabric of your dress, muted whimpers leaving your lips. “I did not.” You manage.

“You implied it.” 

“You’re the one who brought up the retirement home.” You argue softly.

His lips curled into an arrogant little line. “Because you decided to call me old.”

“I called you attractive.” Your breath hitches again, his hand not stopping its teasing movement. 

“Before calling me old.” He leans in impossibly closer.

I scoff softly. “Details.”

He shook his head, eyes glazing over your flushed face as if he was genuinely trying to understand how you managed to argue your way out of everything. 

“You don’t make this easy.” A sonorous, effortless depth had made even his casual words sound important. 

“And yet..” You whisper softly, lips only a small distance from his. “We just made out in your apartment.” 

Leon’s thumb brushed lightly over your clothed wetness as he looked at you. “You really don’t let things go, do you?”

“No.” You manage a soft answer, attempting to steady your racing heart.

The kiss started slowly, almost like Leon was giving himself one last chance to stop. But then your fingers slipped into his hair, and whatever internal argument he had been having disappeared. His lips moved against yours with a tenderness that felt almost unexpected from someone who carried so much weight behind his eyes. Every movement was deliberate, like he wasn’t rushing to take anything from the moment. He was savoring the sweetness of your lips.

Your dress had come off in a matter of seconds, Leon’s breath audibly catching. His calculating eyes dropped for a split second, taking in the sight of your softness, then snapping back to your flushed face, as if he was seeking silent consent from you. 

You nod softly, and his calloused hands hover for an aching moment. Slowly he reaches out to trace his hand along the softness of your stomach. A test. A muscle ticks in his jaw as restraint wars with desire. 

“You’re staring, Kennedy.” You breathe out. 

The corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “Hard not to.”

“That a compliment?” You tease slightly. 

“You want it to be?” 

You smiled. “Maybe.”

The kiss resumed, more desperate this time, filled with all the things he struggled to say out loud. The quiet affection. The hesitation. Your hands reach out towards his navy shirt, tugging on the hem like a yearning succubus. 

Leon’s movements begin to grow urgent, pulling his shirt over his head in one fluid motion with a quiet grunt. Without the barrier of the navy fabric, the full reality of his imposing frame hit you all at once. A dusting of dark chest hair, lightly peppered with silver at the center, contoured the heavy muscle of his pectorals before tapering down into a distinct, enticing happy trail that disappeared straight into the waistband of his trousers.

As you reached out, your palms smoothed over the broad expanse of his chest, feeling the frantic, heavy thud of his heart hammering against his ribs. Decades of survival had carved his torso into dense, hard muscle, every line of his abdomen flexing as he adjusted his weight. Your hands slid upward, your fingers catching on the raised silver tracks of old battle scars peppering his shoulders. Leon let out a low, ragged rumble from the depth of his chest as his large, calloused hands locked onto your hips once again, anchoring you effortlessly to his lap.

His eyes flickered down briefly, catching the way your confidence faltered beneath his attention. The corner of his mouth lifts subtly.

“You were awfully confident at the bar.” He mutters. “Starting to lose your words now?”

Crimson stole across your features. “Shut up.” You whisper before capturing his mouth again, using the kiss to hide your burning cheeks. 

Your thighs tighten on either side of his hips as you tilt your head to deepen the angle. The sudden pressure of your soft body flush against his bare, hard muscles caused Leon’s breath to hitch, eagerly meeting the desperate, hungry rhythm of your lips. You sigh faintly into the kiss, reaching behind you to unclasp your bra, letting it slip off of you finding its new place on the floor. In the blur of the moment, your panties had also vanished, guided down your thighs by the heavy, urgent sweep of Leon's calloused hands without either of you breaking the rhythm of the kiss.

The kiss deepens instinctively, the prominent veins running along the backs of his hands and up his forearms flexed as his hands glide up your bare back. A reverent exploration, tracing your shoulders, spine, mapping every new curve now exposed to him. As if trying to memorise your body from touch alone. 

Leon’s breath stalls as your hands slide down to the waistband of his trousers. “Easy..” He breathes out. 

He doesn’t stop, just lifts his hips slightly to aid in your actions. Letting you pull the fabric and the soft cotton beneath them down his thighs in one single, determined motion. 

The fabric disappears..and now there’s no barrier left between you two at all. Just bare skin meeting skin. You glance downward at his length, thick and fully aroused, standing proud against the dark line of his happy trail. Inexplicably you had started to feel modestly intimidated. 

Leon notices your less than subtle glance downward, and the way your blush had deepened in colours. A low exhale escapes his nose, before his large hand slides up from your hip to gently cup your jaw, his thumb tracing the warm flush on your cheeks. He applies a soft, steady pressure to guide your eyes back up to meet his.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice dropping to that low, velvety resonance that instantly calms your racing pulse. “Look at me. There's no need to be nervous. Just tell me what you need sweetheart.”

His other hand slides down to cradle the small of your back, guiding with silent reassurance. You lifted your hips, aligning his length with your aching warmth, before slowly sinking down. The breathless contact made you gasp as he filled you, his dense tactical frame completely unyielding beneath your weight. Leon’s hands clamped tightly onto your hips to anchor you, grunting softly as your bare skin met in the most complete way possible.

The gentle warmth in his tone completely strips away your defenses. You lean forward until your forehead rests against his collarbone, breathing in his familiar scent.

“Just stay like this for a second,” you whimper against his skin, your fingers tangling into the coarse texture of his chest hair. 

The moment you sink onto him fully, Leon’s body tenses, his jaw clenching, a ragged breath punching out of him. Holy shit. 

It’s overwhelming, not just the physical sensation but the intimacy of it. You trusting him like this, letting your bodies connect so completely. The internal heat between you flooded outward, making the air feel thick and heavy.

As the initial shock of the fullness began to soften into a deep, pulsing ache, you let out a trembling whimper against his collarbone. Your hips gave a tentative, involuntary twitch, a soft upward tilt that drove a low, subterranean groan right out of Leon’s throat.

His grip on your hips tightened with a sudden, possessive urgency, his knuckles whitening as your subtle movement ruptured whatever fragile restraint he had left. 

“You okay?” He murmurs, voice strained with increasing urgency. One hand lifts to brush hair from your forehead, checking on you even as his hips twitch slightly beneath yours, a subconscious urge to move. 

You give a breathless, quiet nod against his skin, your voice dropping to a needy whisper. “Yes..” 

With that final confirmation, you lift your weight slightly and begin to move, setting an agonizingly slow, deliberate rhythm. The friction of the contact is immediate and dizzying, your syrupy walls sliding along his thick length as you ride him. Leon lets out a rough, gravelly gasp at the first downward press of your hips, keeping you flush against his lap to meet every single rise and fall.

Leon’s head falls back against the headboard, eyes fluttering shut at the slow, experimental rolls of your hips. Every movement sending sparks up his spine. He lets you take the initiative, letting you set the pace, watching through half lidded eyes how your soft body moves above him. The way your hair falls forward with each teasing motion, how focused you look. 

His hands slide up to grip your thighs, squeezing the soft flesh like he needs something to ground himself. He feels the softness under his fingers, memorising it as you pick up speed. A breathy curse slips out. “Fuck..”

His cock twitches deep inside you, swelling even thicker under the sudden, friction-heavy heat of your accelerating pace. The sound of his deep, breathless curse rolls over you like dusk, instantly sending a matching shiver straight down your own spine.

Driven by the raw desperation of the moment, you tilt your pelvis forward, sinking down fully to grind your slick warmth flush against the unyielding ridge of his pelvic bone. The rhythm turns more deliberate, bodies syncing in a way that makes heat coil tight in both of you. 

A low groan rumbles from Leon’s chest, unfiltered. His abs flexing involuntarily with each upward thrust meeting yours. Preemptively, he can’t stay passive any longer. One hand shifts around to grip your lower back, helping lift and drop you onto him with fractionally more force, still allowing you to lead. 

“Leon..” You let out a soft moan of his name, the syllables trailing off into a broken, breathless sigh against the column of his throat. Hearing his name on your lips completely undoes him. Leon’s breath catches hard, his chest locking beneath your palms as a sudden, intense shudder ripples right through his heavy frame. His grip at the small of your back tightens instinctively, pulling you so close that there isn’t a single fraction of space left between your bare chests.

Encouraged by your pleasure echoing in the quiet room, his grip tightens on your back, helping you bounce with more vigour, each downward motion now meeting an upward thrust from his hips as he grunts. The bed creaks softly beneath you both, but neither cares about anything but this. The slick heat between your bodies, the moans spilling from your lips, Leon’s own breath coming faster by the second. 

Your lips are swollen from extensive kissing, eyes teary from pleasure, and face flushed with a blossoming pink as you move your hips faster. You feel yourself falter slightly as an ache settles in your burning muscles. Leon groans softly, crashing his mouth onto yours. The kiss is messy. Teeth clashing, tongues tangling as his hands roam everywhere at once, the pace turning feverish. Leon’s restraint snaps completely under the hypnotic friction, a low grunt ripping from his throat as his large, calloused hands slide from your waist down to your thighs.

With the fluid, effortless strength of an elite operative, he shifts his weight. In one smooth, breathtaking motion, he lifts you and rolls, reversing your positions until the mattress catches your fall. You let out a small yelp at the sudden change in perspective, leaving your head spinning as you find yourself flat on your back, the cool sheets a sharp contrast against your flushed, sweat adorned skin.

Before you can even catch your breath, Leon hovers over you, his massive, bare chest heaving as he traps you beneath his frame. His heavy thighs settle securely between yours, pinning your legs wide to completely claim your space. He looks down at you through the messy, sweat-dampened strands of his hair, his blue eyes dark, entirely consumed by an obstinate force of need. Without giving you a single second to acclimate to the shift, his hand slides under the small of your back to arch your hips upward, aligning his length before driving back inside you with a deep, relentless thrust that knocks a loud, helpless moan right out of your lungs.

Aggressive thrusts. Fast, deep strokes that make your soft body bounce slightly with each snap of his hips. He leans down, whispers sweet praise against your ear. “So perfect.” He murmurs between ragged breaths.

A contrast of the sweetest tooth decaying words and the feral movement of his cock against your gummy walls as his hands grips your hips hard enough to leave marks. 

Leon’s body moves with years of discipline, every thrust precise, tempestuous, lost in the heat of your tightening warmth. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, his rough, silver-flecked stubble scratching pleasantly against your sensitive skin as a dark, needy growl vibrates directly against your collarbone. Leon’s movements turn entirely frantic, the disciplined precision of his strokes melting away into a raw, unbridled desperation. His large hands squeeze your hips with a bruising pressure, pinning you down into the mattress as his thrusts become faster, shallower, and completely relentless.

Saccharine words spill out of his mouth.”Look at you…taking me so well.” You mewl in reply as he leaves a kiss just under your jaw. “So fucking beautiful.” He mutters.

His teeth graze your neck, honeyed moans leaving your swollen lips before his mouth claims yours again in a searing kiss that matches the intensity below. 

A sheen of sweat glistens on both your bodies. The air in the room is heavy and wavering, charged with an intensity that seems to blur the world outside. Every breath feels shared, a frantic rhythm that underscores the deep connection between you. Leon’s gaze is locked on yours, his usual composure completely replaced by a raw, unfiltered vulnerability that he only ever reveals in moments like these.

You moan enticingly, some drool leaving your puffed lips as the tip of his length continues its feverish abuse against your cervix. “Leon…fuck..” You mumble.

His name lingered on your tongue like a prayer, every sound falling from your lips fueling him further. 

Leon’s curses spill out in a guttural stream. “Fuck.. atta girl.” Each word ragged with pleasure as your core tightens around him like an alluring vice. 

He can feel his own climax barreling toward him, yours not being far from reach either as he kisses you vehemently through the storm of sensations, lips smushing against yours, noses bumping messily. A shudder consumes his body when your walls squeeze around him.

“Gonna come..” A deep, broken whisper escapes him.

“Me too,” you whimper against his lips as his thrusts grow erratic, your fingers digging tightly into the muscles of his back as your own climax begins to fracture. “Come with me, Leon. Please.”

Leon’s control threatens to shatter at your whimpered request, obeying with a guttural groan. The erratic thrusts turn final, three bruising hurls against your cervix as his release hits him like a personal offence. Hips stuttering against yours while warmth floods you.

The sudden, pulsing rush of his warmth inside you acts like a fuse, completely splintering whatever fragile hold you had left. Your own climax fracturing instantly, as a blinding wave of pleasure ripples through your core as your walls lock around him in a tight, desperate cadence. You let out a high, helpless cry into the crook of his neck, your entire body trembling beneath his heavy frame as the tension snaps. 

Leon doesn’t stop moving, just gentles his thrusts to ride out your high with soft, slow rolls of his hips. He presses the softest haunting kiss to your lips.

As the aching waves of your release began to slow into a quiet, heavy hum, you couldn’t bring yourself to let the stillness take over. Your fingers, still dug into the skin of his chest, tightened slightly. Gathering what little strength remained in your burning muscles, your pelvis gave a slow, deliberate, friction-heavy tilt, a silent request rolling your hips up against his resting length.

Leon’s breath hitched instantly, his head dropping into the crook of your neck with a low, defeated chuckle that vibrated right against your collarbone.

“Aren’t you greedy," he rasped, his deep voice thick with a rough, post-climax gravel. His large hands slid back down to clamp firmly onto the soft flesh of your hips, his thumbs pinning you into the mattress with a steady, commanding pressure. “I thought you were intimidated, sweetheart. Now you’re looking for a round two?”

A breathless, flush-faced smile blooms on your lips as his hands kneed the fat on your hips. You tilt your pelvis up against him again, a tiny, defiant challenge in the friction.

“Maybe I just changed my mind,” you whisper, your voice dropping to a needy murmur. “Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to do something about it?”

Leon doesn’t answer right away. The provocation hangs in the thick air, followed by a heavy, sudden silence where the only sound is the frantic rhythm of his breathing against your neck. He goes completely still over you, his jaw clenching so hard a prominent vein throbbed along his throat. For a heartbeat, his dusk coloured eyes burn down into yours under heavy lids, a placid, intense calibration as he processes the sheer audacity of your request. He lets out a single, low exhale through his nose, his remaining restraint dissolving.

Before you can even register the shift, the pause splinters.

Leon’s large, calloused hands grip your waist and flip you onto your stomach in one seamless motion. Your lips let out a soft yelp for the second time that night.

The weight of his presence is anchoring and solid against the plush, soft curves of your frame. The mattress catches your chest as your view spins, the sudden change in perspective leaving you breathless. He settles against you, his strength a striking contrast to your own fullness, creating a sense of being entirely enveloped by him. 

Leon lets out a low, ragged sound, his hands resting with a steady, possessive pressure on the soft curve of your hips. He seems completely fixated on you, steadying himself against your figure as if transfixed by the way you fit perfectly in his personal space. 

You lift your hips imploringly, the mixture of your previous release leaking out of your puffy warmth. An unbearable ache for the filling sensation Leon had given you overtakes all your senses. 

The eager display of your arched body sends a thrill through Leon, one large hand pressing against the space between your shoulder blades, enough to push you down against the pillows on his bed. His other hand grips his own coveting length to guide it back into your wet heat from behind. With an eager push and an embarrassingly loud squelch, he’s fully sheathed again with a soft groan. 

Your moans muffle into the pillow. “Fuckkk.” A long involuntary curse leaves your lips, the fullness returning, deepening with the new position. 

His hand shifts from your shoulder blades down to your waist, his calloused fingers burying deep into the soft flesh of your torso. He tethers you firmly against the mattress, using his thumb to trace the plush curve of your waist as he begins to move. The friction from behind is thick and immediate, a slow, heavy drag that forces another breathless mewl right out of your lungs.

He doesn’t wait for you to acclimate this time. Driven by the lingering heat of your challenging words, his snaps become more deliberate, his heavy thighs driving flush against your plush ass with a wet, rhythmic slap that ricochets in the quiet room. 

Every deep, relentless hurl bounces your body forward into the pillows, leaving you completely at the mercy of his effortless tactical strength. Your fingers claw at the bedsheets for comfort, your walls clamping tight around him with every single stroke. 

His thrusts drive a new moan out of you each time, muffled into the thick fabric of his pillow. One of his hands slides under your waist to cup your breast, a low growl vibrating in his chest as he watched himself disappear inside you over and over, obsessed with how perfectly your body takes him. The veins along his length drag against your gummy walls with each thrust, and Leon hears every gasp it pulls from you. 

A particularly deep snap of his hips makes him groan. “Fuck..such a good girl for me, arent you?” He mutters before leaning over to bite gently at your shoulder as his pace stays unremitting.

Your eyes glisten with honeyed tears of pleasure, spilling over your flushed cheeks each time his hips snap flush against yours, arching your back further. It’s an agonizingly beautiful bliss, a sensation so thick that your burning muscles completely give up any attempt at resistance. You are entirely undone, caught in a breathless suspension between the tight, aching fullness in your core and the possessive, grounding weight of Leon's heavy frame centering you to the bed. 

His cock hits at the spongy spot of your warmth with an inexorable pace. “Fuckk yes..” You drawl out a sound of pure unfiltered pleasure.

His arm slides around the front of your neck, his massive bicep curling beneath your chin with a heavy, methodical pressure that catches the air right in your throat. The thick muscle locks you securely against his chest, the delicious, restrictive heat of his grip instantly heightening every single sensation as he drives into you from behind. 

Your moans spike louder, vibrating faintly against his arm, letting it embolden him. With a soft grunt, he tightens his hold slightly while his thrusts grow even more erratic. 

Feeling your body melt under the restriction of his arm, Leon lets out a dark, ragged chuckle that vibrates right against your neck.

"Good girl," He rasps, his deep voice dropping to an impossibly low, gravelly frequency. "Look how easy you break for me when I hold you down. Keep clamping around me like that, sweetheart."

The final thread of coherent thought dissolves into the heat of your bodies. Every time his hips thrust forward, driving deep into your plush warmth, only a string of high, overstimulated moans can escape your swollen lips. The sounds are muffled directly into the thick air around you, as he pistons into you from behind with a driving symmetry. The raw friction is dizzying, a blinding wave of pleasure that locks your core around him in frantic, involuntary spasms. 

“Leon..” You whine blissfully. “I’m gonna..”

“I know, baby. I’ve got you,” He grunts out, the words a frayed, breathless vibration against the shell of your ear.

His large frame tenses completely over yours, the muscles in his back locking up as he feels the desperate flutters of your walls signaling your final collapse.

He doesn’t slow down to let you catch your breath driving into your fracturing core with deep, final thrusts that push you straight over the edge. You let out a loud moan that is completely swallowed by the room as a blinding wave of release crashes over you, your internal muscles squeezing his length in a tight, liquid hold. 

The intense, rhythmic movement of your climax instantly triggers his own. Leon lets out a low, guttural groan from the depths of his chest, his head falling blindly into your hair as his hips shutter against your plush ass. His entire body shudders violently under the weight of an overwhelming release, pouring his warm seed inside you as he completely unravels, his discipline crumbling to pieces in the quiet dark. 

As the final tremors of your shared release subsided into a quiet, blurry hum, Leon carefully shifted his weight so he wouldn't crush you. Hooking his arms under your waist, he rolled onto his back, pulling your soft, pliant body right along with him until you were draped securely over his chest. You rested your head in the crook of his neck, breathing in his familiar scent as his hands settled at the small of your back, smoothing over your skin in lazy, comforting strokes. Through the dark, his blue eyes finally fluttered open, heavy with sleep but entirely softened as he looked down at you. 

“You alright?” he murmured, his voice a deep, gravelly rasp that vibrated directly against your cheek.

You leave out a soft, satisfied exhale, the frantic palpitations of your heart finally beginning to match the steady, rhythmic beat of his beneath your cheek. Your fingers slowly uncurled from the sheets, sliding up his bare torso to lazily trace the slightly raised skin of his scars, feeling the deep rumble of his gravelly voice still vibrating in his chest.

“Mhm,” You hummed tiredly, your tone thick with exhaustion and a deep, liquid bliss. You shifted slightly, pressing your face deeper into the warm crook of his neck, completely melting into the solid mass of his chest. “Just tired.”

Leon let out a gentle, low rumble of approval, a sound of pure contentment that spoke louder than any words could. His large, calloused hand moved up to the back of your head, his fingers gently weaving through your hair to press you securely against his pulse.

“Find everything you were looking for down there?” He asked with a lazy, velvet drawl. 

A soft, breathless laugh shook your chest, your lips brushing against the warm skin of his throat as you smiled. You reached up, your fingers trailing lazily over the silver-flecked stubble along his jawline before sliding down to rest against the heavy muscle of his chest.

“Hmm, I’m not sure,” You whispered back teasingly, your voice dropping to a sleepy, affectionate murmur. “We might have to try it again soon... strictly for scientific purposes, of course.”

Leon let out another quiet, gravelly chuckle that vibrated right through your cheek, his arm tightening around your waist to pull your plush curves even closer against his side. “Is that so?” he muttered, his deep voice thick with a heavy, restful drowsiness as he pressed a final, lingering kiss to the crown of your head. “Guess I’ll have to clear my schedule.” 

Chris Redfield

Chris has an incredibly fat cock, its not that long but the width makes up for it, pretty even all the way, except it kinda has an almost crest shape where it tapers out slightly in the middle but only on the underside, kind of built like a combo of a tower shape and a 'D' shape.

Big ol head too, like a fat thing not much like a mushroom more like a bigger version of the ball on a shuttlecock. Not cut and actually quite heavy on the foreskin, his foreskin gets a bit darker nearer to his tip bc of hyperpigmentation and he used to be really insecure about it when he was younger because he thought the colour made him look dirty.

Nearly got an adult circumcision bc of it but pussied out a week before and got a telling off from claire bc it was a waste of money for the booking bc insurance wouldn't cover that.

A fling in his mid-late 20s said it made his cock look so much more masculine than others and it boosted his ego sm he was pretty much instantly cured from his insecurity.

Hes pretty hairy too but its trimmed and cleaner than most mens facial hair, he hates the feeling of being unclean like that.

ALSO BREEDER BALLS. im not sorry this man's nuts are fat and heavy and sensitive as fuck knows what, he accidentally almost waterboarded an ex with his cum after she touched them and the sensation caused him to orgasm instantly.(he now warns people about it because the guilt of nearly killing someone with his spunk is so much worse than the awkwardness of telling them about his sensitivity)

Not really sensitive anywhere else except for this one spot on his lower back that no-one knows about except an ex-situationship from when he was still a fighter pilot, she ranked over him and was one of the only women he would sub for. (i feel like hes a service dom but can be a beautifully trained sub for the right lady, or man, he isnt fussy)

Leon Kennedy

Leon has a fat long cock but with a thinner base and smaller head, and it curves out and back in again like the middle is further away from his torso than the head, also hes circumcised and his dick flushes this beautiful adorable shade of pink

When hes younger hes usually clean shaven bc he gets weirdly insecure about having quite thin and light pubic hair, but he has it done so that he almost has a fade from his happy trail because thats one of the only parts where his body hair comes in thick and hes too emotionally attached to shave it off.

An ex fling laughed at it before he started doing the fade because it just stopped abruptly where his pubes would have started and it looked sort of goofy so he started doing that.

Stopped doing it around his 30s because his body hair had gotten darker and more coarse (at last).

Also, hyperspermia. he didn't realise until he was 19 that having his orgasms last 1-2 minutes with constant spurting wasnt actually normal, nor was being unable to go more than 2-3 days without getting off unless he wanted blue balls.

Got diagnosed around Re4r era and immediately got really shy about it because he felt like it was a bit of a waste on him because he (in my opinion) doesn't want kids because of his job putting them at risk so doesn't often cum inside to be safe.

Later figures out hes actually infertile to the point of sterility (im thinking like death island-vendetta era, his late 30s caused by years of alcoholism and generalised abuse of his body from BOWs).

Goes HAM now he knows its actually completely safe to cum inside as much as he wants. gets sulky though because he cant go as many rounds as he used to and it means he cant fill up his partner as much as he wants to.

Sensitive nips, lower back, lower abdomen and neck for the pre and re2r era, by the time re4r happens only his nips and lower abdomen are still sensitive. Very weirdly sensitive belly button, had a girl shove a bullet vibe in there after she discovered how sensitive his lower abdomen in general was and he came so hard he nearly passed out.

Re4r to vendetta he refuses to let anyone choke him, has a fling with ada at one point where she tries to choke him, knowing he used to have a sensitive neck and bc it wasnt on his list of hard no-gos (i can see them engaging in CNC/dubcon and having a no list, communication is key) and he panicked immediately and jabbed her in the side, not enough to do any damage but enough to hurt and say that he was done for the night without needing his words.

Death island leon, however has recovered very well mentally, and from that point on can engage in asphyxiation without much trouble. Always insists his partner check with him first though.

Also from re4r era to Damnation/re6 era he tries to come off as a dom with all flings (except ada). by the time vendetta hits hes so mentally tired he cant keep the act up and reverts back to his old subby ways. Vendetta in particular, despite his slight erectile dysfunction/whiskey dick, cums incredibly fast from being man handled in a gentle way, like throwing him onto the bed but making sure he lands softly and holding him firmly but not enough to leave a mark? yeah no hes gone.

Also RE9 leon has a new found thing for silver streaks in his partners body hair despite being caught multiple times trying to dye his pubes bc hes adamant hes "not that old yet."

You’ve dealt with your fair share of speed-boosted infected; limbs windmilling, clawing and careening, all bursting energy and no finesse.

These aren’t blisterheads. They have stamina. They’re keeping up.

You twist and shoot one whose fingers are uncomfortably close to swiping the back of Leon’s shirt. The nearby white paneled wall goes bright, splotchy red.

“Intel’s getting a new one ripped if we make it out of this,” you pant, breath dry and ragged in your throat. Your lungs are burning.

“We’re making it out,” Leon tells you. Conclusive, no room for argument. He dodges left, hand once again grazing your arm to pull you with, but you’re already there, a perfect shadow.

This hall is wider, brightly lit with glass cases set in between the wall panels.

You’ve only got eyes on one thing as you run.

EXIT

It’s a final sprint.

You grit your teeth, breath loud in your ears, arms and legs pumping hard, trying to build a gap that allows for a sudden smack into the double doors, a loss of momentum and reversal of motion to slam the barrier closed.

‘Slam’ turns out to be optimistic. It’s a hydraulic close. Glacially fucking slow.

“Fuck! Force it!”

You almost bash heads with Leon, throwing your combined weight against the doors as the calamitous wall of infected catch up, arms reaching through the diminishing gap, scratching and clawing at you.

With a roar of effort, the doors finally give way under pressure and close with a crunch. An arm, hand, and various fingers fall onto the concrete.

“Bar it! Bar it!” Leon’s braced against both doors, his body a wedge, jarred by the furious thumping from the other side.

There are massive pneumatic rod locks on either side of the door. The control panel is dark.

“There’s no power!”

“You’re armed!”

Oh, right.

BANG T-SHUNK

Smoke curls from the barrel of your gun. The blasted hole in the control panel sparks weakly, fizzes, then goes dark.

Leon pushes away from the secured doors, rubbing at his ear. Your head’s ringing like a struck bell and you’d been back at arm’s length, not parallel with the barrel.

“Say something?”

“Something.”

“Yeah, can’t hear shit.”

"You only look like it.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

He’s flipping you off.

You grab it like a pinky promise, linking middle fingers, and he rolls his eyes.

“Alright. Let’s bounce,” you say.

He pulls you back. Urgent, abrupt. It bumps you against him.

“Wait.”

You’re in a greenhouse.

Rows and rows of lush, overgrown plants stretch unfamiliar leaves towards a glass-paneled sky. The walkways between rows are made of industrial metal grating, a stale funk rising from the darkness underneath.

No breeze is stirring the air. The back of your neck starts prickling; your animal brain tugging on your metaphorical hem and pointing.

The plants are rustling lightly.

Leon half-turns his head towards you, keeping his eyes on the jungle ahead.

“What’s the sitrep on the door?”

It’s still thumping against the locks, battered by the relentless undead. You glance at the panel you’d shot, burst and gutted, the wall above it blackened.

“Fucked.”

“Other doors?”

It’s just wall. Wall, and wall, and wall, smooth and inhospitable.

“Negative.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

“I don’t think that’s the concern.”

You’re playing back the last hallway. White walls broken by glass panels, streaking by as you run. Behind every glass panel, a bright orange suit, thick like leather.

Bite-proof.

“Fuck.”

“So you tried to bypass it underground.”

“So we tried to bypass it underground,” you confirm. You watch the man nod, taking notes. He’s a leftie.

“Good thinking.”

“Yeah, well. Apparently not.”

The metal grating isn’t light. Thankfully, you and Leon aren’t weak.

The daylight sits like oil on top of water, only greasing weakly off of the reflective metal of more walkways below; descending levels disappearing into the dark.

“Oh, good. Can’t see the bottom.”

“Endless possibilities,” Leon says. “Cover me.”

The first level is an eight foot drop. Leon swings his legs into the gap, scoots forward, and eases himself down slowly, like he’s waiting for something to file a violent complaint. When nothing does, he drops onto the walkway, the metal clanging despite his rubber soles.

He shines his flashlight forward.

“Ugh.”

“What?”

“Love what they’ve done with the space.” He pockets the flashlight, reaching up to you. “It’s a charm you have to see in person.”

His hands are firm on your sides, your shirt riding up a little as he supports you down onto the platform with him. He absently fixes your rucked hem as you shine your flashlight into the gloom.

“Ugh,” you agree.

Roots.

Long, white, spidery roots hang from the ceiling in lengthy clumps and bundles, like massive, cobwebby chandeliers.

Leon’s eyes narrow, scrutinizing.

“Hey. Look.”

He steps forward, reaching into the nearest nest of gauzy filaments. He pulls his hand out, fingers curled around a narrow, dark plastic tube.

You come closer with the flashlight.

The dark color is red.

“It’s warm,” Leon adds, horribly.

The tube snakes off into the darkness below. You point your flashlight down and catch a glint off of something flat, circular, and shiny.

Leon’s separating more tubes from the leggy mass of roots. Only the one is red, but the others don’t look any less… organic.

“God. Which way do you think they run?”

He glances at you. “Three guesses.”

“Plants don’t bleed red.”

“Not typically.”

You share a resigned look, then he brushes past you, face set.

You turn to find him making quick work of the stairs down to the lower levels, hand on his gun.

You check your pistol's chamber and follow.

“A line of tanks.”

“Life support tanks, yes. Dozens.”

“Which way were the tubes running?”

“Both ways.”

“So…”

“The tanks were feeding the plants, and the plants were feeding the tanks.”

“Life support, you said. So there were … humans? Inside the tanks?”

“Yeah,” you say, looking away. “Used to be.”

There’s a thick film of slime on the tank, like growing snot. Your flashlight can’t make out anything coherent inside.

Leon shines his flashlight down the row; cylinder after cylinder, standing like a row of human-sized batteries, all mucky with slime and tickled by the trailing ends of roots from the massive bundles overhead.

Somewhere ahead, a steady dripping, echoing. You don’t appreciate the cliche.

“When was the initial outbreak?” Now that you’re on solid ground, your voice seems to suck right into the floor.

“All the lab logs and entries stop around six months ago.”

“So no one’s been down here for half a year.”

“Yeah.”

Leon shares a long look with you, mouth tight. Then, hesitant, he wipes a window through the muck on the nearest tank.

The beam of his flashlight illuminates the chamber. You can see a vague shadow suspended inside, like a bug in rough, raw amber.

He steps back, jaw tight.

“Dare I even ask?”

He shakes his head. “It’ll put you off soup.”

You shine your flashlight upwards; the root balls catch it and glow, high overhead.

“What was so wrong with good ol’ hydroponics?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Leon says, heading off down the line of tanks.

“Twist my arm.”

“You didn't see it?”

“It was behind one of the tanks. In the dark.”

“You didn't hear it?”

“It was a little noisy at the time,” you say, annoyed.

Third tank from the last, everything goes spectacularly tits up.

Glass shatters outward, slimy and wet as it ricochets off your defensively raised arms. The body in the tank falls forward and swipes for Leon’s legs.

It’s not like the infected you’re used to, desiccated and dry as jerky.

This one is wet. This one is dissolving, skin sloughing from muscle sloughing from bone. Entrails spill from its body cavity, slippery, spreading across the hoary concrete as the disgusting thing writhes for a claim on your partner’s ankle.

Leon stumbles out of reach, gun aiming at the mucky skull. It explodes like a sixpack in a hot car and you’re shouting, ducking behind your arm again—

That’s when the other thing strikes.

Leon shouts in pain and tries to tear free. The pale, rubbery thing keeps hold of his shoulder like an overexcited dog with a rope toy.

“Leon!”

It’s too close to his head and he’s thrashing, you don’t have a clear shot. Something glints in the shadows behind his hip.

The hatchet. He’s already grabbed it.

A roar, a swing, the song of a sharp blade slicing clean through something organic.

The pale thing hits the ground with a sound like a rotting squash, the vine swinging empty into the darkness behind the tanks.

Leon falls to one knee with a grunt, the hatchet clattering onto the concrete.

“Leon! Leon,” you’re touching his back, crouching down with him. He’s breathing hard through his nose, clutching his shoulder. The fabric is darkening under his hand.

“Let me see. Leon.”

You shove his hand clear, unzipping his collar and yanking it aside.

His skin is patterned with circular rows of bleeding dashes. Lots of them.

“What the fuck.”

The pale, rubbery thing lies flaccid on the floor behind Leon. At first glance, it looks like a starfish collapsed on itself.

At second glance, you start to see the teeth, fine and triangular, in diminishing rows like a shark.

Pink with blood.

“Shit. Hey.”

Leon’s still on one knee, head down. You push his hair back, leaving a bloody streak on his skin, and tip his face up. There’s sweat on his forehead.

It takes him a moment to focus on you.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.”

He grunts. His pupils are a little too big, even for the dim lighting, and they’re not reacting right when you pass your flashlight closer.

You’re trying not to panic.

“Can you get up? Can you walk?”

He lets you haul him to his feet but shoves you off when you go to duck under his arm. You don’t take offense; it’s a good sign. He’s steady enough on his own.

“Grab that,” he tells you, voice rough. He’s holding his shoulder again, pointing down at the beheaded plant. You pick it up by the little stem of vine, grab his hatchet, and follow him close, ascending fast while he calls for extraction.

You don’t wait for your debrief to finish writing.

“What did the labs say?”

“They’re still running tests.”

“What did Medical say?”

“They’re still running tests.”

“What, with a potato? Where's the sense of urgency, here?”

“At last report, Mr. Kennedy was stable,” he says, capping his pen.

“He was half delirious coming off that chopper!”

“They’ve determined he’s in no immediate danger.”

“How can they know if they’re still running fucking tests?”

You get your name in an admonishing tone. You stand up, your chair screeching against the floor.

“I wanna see him.”

“He’s in precautionary isolation.”

“I was exposed to the same bullshit he was. I wanna see him.”

“You weren't bitten.”

“What, you think he’s gonna bite me?”

Your debrief just looks back at you, calm and level, his hands folded prim over the closed folder containing your account of the whole goddamn shit-spackled mission.

“He’s in precautionary isolation,” he repeats.

Your teeth grind, a muscle in your jaw jumping.

“Are we done here?”

“Yes. You are free to go.”

Medical stops you at the door. They aren’t fooled by your purposeful stride, your bored but intent expression. They hook your arm and yank you away like it’s goddamn Looney Tunes.

“We were told you might try that.”

Fucking debrief.

So now you’re sitting at home, dialing the Medical desk every fifteen minutes, certain from the complete non-activity of the past four hours that they’ve filtered your number as spam.

Assholes.

You should go to bed. Medical’s kept you both alive thus far, through hell and high water. Leon’s in good hands. Stable. No immediate danger, they said.

You rotate your phone in your hand, over and over. Upside-down, rightside-up. Staring at nothing.

You call the labs.

Some poor idiot actually picks up.

“I-I-I can’t give you that information,” he stammers, when you demand an update on Leon. On the biting plant. On fucking anything.

“I’m his partner! I was ground zero when it happened!”

“I-I can’t verify that over the phone.”

“Then I’m coming in,” you say, prim. You hang up on more panicked stammering, tossing your phone aside on the couch.

You’ve barely made it to your feet when your phone starts ringing.

Incoming Call Leonnedy

You stub your toe on the couch in your scramble to pick up.

“Leon! Are you okay?”

Immediately you can tell he’s not.

“I need help,” he says. Croaks.

Cold sweat breaks on your skin.

“Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I’m… I can’t…” He gasps.

You’re a whirl of activity. You’re grabbing your wallet, your keys, pulling a jacket on over your pajamas. There’s no fucking time to change.

“Leon, where are you.”

“Home.”

“What?” You stop cold in your mad dashing, gripping the phone too hard. “They sent you home like this?”

“They said I could take care of it.”

“Take care of what? They won’t tell me fucking anything, Leon–“

He groans through clenched teeth and oh boy, Medical’s gonna find out just how creative you can be when it comes to revenge. You shove your feet ungracefully into some shoes and grab for the door handle.

“The venom,” Leon’s panting in your ear, and then he gets to the zinger. “It’s an aphrodisiac.”

You feel it like lightning, a surge throughout your entire body. Your visual of his situation, based on the noises he’s making, takes a dramatic turn.

“Leon.”

“It’s been six goddamn hours,” he grits out.

“Jesus christ, can’t you just–”

“I’ve tried,” he says. “I’m just goddamn edging myself.”

“Did you call Medical? There’s gotta be something they can–”

“Fucking useless,” Leon says, confirming your hypothesis. “They told me to hire an escort.”

“What?”

“I’m not— fuck— fucking doing that.”

You thump your forehead against your front door, your grip on the doorknob tight enough to crush.

“Leon, if you… there’s no shame. They’re professio–”

“No,” he cuts in. “I don’t…” He breaks off, breath hissing through his teeth, and then fails to elaborate.

That’s alright; you’ve got a pressing question.

“Why’d you call me?”

For a moment, he doesn’t answer. You just have to listen to him breathe like this.

Your vivid imagination is a fucking curse.

"I trust you,” he finally tells you. “I know how this… I don’t have… I trust you.”

You’re partners.

No, you’re coworkers. What he’s asking is… can he ask this? What happens to your partnership in the aftermath? Can you go back to–

“Please,” he breathes in your ear, and tops it with your name.

You wrench the door open.

Before you hang up, he gives you the code for the garage door, and fair warning.

You’re still not prepared.

As partners, you’ve seen each other in various states of undress. Usually partial. Usually because you’re bleeding somehow. Always clinical.

This doesn’t feel like the far end of the same spectrum. This feels like a g-force journey into a different dimension.

Leon’s on his couch, head back, knees wide. Taut like a bowstring.

Completely, stark, buck-ass naked.

His shoulder looks like a bisected watermelon, his skin dewy and pink, dotted with the dark little toothmarks from the venomous plant.

His chest is heaving, his hips restless.

His cock is flushed dark, painfully engorged, thick and pulsing against his stomach. There’s a wet smear on his skin; when his cock lifts, straining, it trails a sticky little string of precum.

“Christ,” you rasp, tossing your jacket aside.

He lifts his head and his eyes can barely focus on you. He looks on the verge of passing out, but he reaches out, reaches for you. You shove a bottle of lube out of the way on the couch cushions and take his outstretched hand.

“I’m here. What do you–“

“Touch,” he pants, barely coherent. “Touch me.”

And here you are in the deep end, no time to brace, no time to breathe. You’re touching him, chamois soft skin, hot and unyielding. His hips jerk on a gasp, a groan dragging from somewhere deep within as he lets his head fall back on the couch.

The hot, swooping sensation in your stomach physically bends you, punches your breath out.

You’ve never handled a dick this hard in your entire life.

You’ve maybe never handled a dick this big in your entire life. He’s long and thick, the head flared, cerise and glistening. You pass your thumb over his slit, smearing through the precum, and his stomach tautens as he pushes up into your hand, his breath rushing out hot, hissing back in. He’s desperate.

He breathes your name. His ass keeps flexing with the helpless motion of his hips and his eyes are closed, forehead knotted.

It’s intense concentration. His world narrowed down, only as wide as the circle of your fist.

Six goddamn hours.

You tighten your grip, trail your other hand up the lightly furred inside of his thigh, teasing his balls before stacking your fists and starting to pump him in a steady rhythm that answers the flex of his body.

His hand lands on your thigh, searing, his fingertips firm on your flesh and pulling. Your knee presses tighter against his leg.

He’s just grappling for a hold on something, for an anchor. His other hand is doing the same thing to the arm of the couch. You just hope he doesn’t move his hand any further to the left on you or he’s gonna find you a little too slippery to hold onto.

Fuck, you’re only goddamn human.

You jerk him faster, his hips starting to meet you in earnest, his body rolling as he chases his disobliging release.

And why couldn’t he get there himself?

What if… what if you can’t get him there, either? You don’t know anything about the venom, they’re still running tests. Maybe this is the result. Maybe he’s just… stuck like this, heightening, exacerbating, until he, what, pops?

What a fucking epitaph that would be.

No, you’re not scripting headstones. That’s not happening.

You start to twist on the upstroke, a flick of the wrist, and Leon moans loud.

“That’s it. Come on, Leon.”

His balls are tightening, drawing up, his forehead beaded with sweat, his mouth open. He’s right on the edge.

“Look at me.”

He opens his eyes, glassy as they are. You make sure he can see you, and then you bend low.

His skin is velvety soft around the firm rounds of his balls. You fit your lips to one of the shapes, touch your tongue to it, tasting the salt of him.

He cries out, thick ropes of cum hitting his chest, his stomach, spurting and spilling down his shaft, smeared by your hand as you milk him through it, relieved.

You can’t stop your breathy laugh, almost lost under his aereous groans. He just keeps going.

“A little pent up?”

He doesn’t quip back. The situation is dire.

His dick gives one last pulse, the final beads of his release dribbling down the head of his cock. You rub it away with your thumb.

There’s a very noticeable issue.

He’s still incredibly hard.

When you meet his eyes, they’re a little clearer. He’s still sunset pink and breathing hard – messy, now, too – but he can track your face better.

“Do you feel any different?”

“Fuck. Barely.”

"What if you're stuck like this?"

“Don't say that," he says. You’re still stroking him, slow, like an afterthought. He drags his hands through his damp hair, hissing when it stretches the scabs on his chewed shoulder.

"It was venom, do you need some sort of antivenom?"

He doesn’t appear to be listening. His hands grip the back of the couch, his hips rolling, cock pushing through your sticky fist.

You grab his hips and force them down.

“Leon.”

He bucks hard against you, bratty.

"You think I know?”

“Don’t give me an attitude.”

“Don’t fuckin tease me,” he snaps, unwisely.

You move fast.

A whump, a gasp, the silence of breath caught in the shadow of a predator.

His breath fans out over your face; slow, tremulous.

“I’m doing you a favor,” you remind him, low, your face inches from his. “I could just leave.”

He’s not moving, trapped under you.

You’re straddling him, your fist tight at the base of his cock.

“What do you say?”

“Fuck.”

“Leon.”

“I love you.”

It rattles you like a gunshot, strikes you and spreads.

It takes your advantage, crumples it up, and throws it in a trash compactor. And then it lights that trash compactor on fire.

“That’s not fair,” you breathe.

“Sorry,” he whispers, and kisses you.

He’s upgraded your permissions. You kiss him back, heated, and let go of your leash.

He breaks from your mouth to gasp when you sit on his hips, his hands catching your waist and gripping.

“Shit.”

“So we’ve learned that I’m not a monk,” you say, a verbal roll of the eyes.

It’s not just a few tepid inches of water in your basement. At this point, your flood’s halfway up the damn walls.

He rocks his hips, rubbing himself against the soaked fabric of your pajama shorts. You keen and pick up the motion on your own.

God, you’re aching.

“You should have said something,” he says, breathless.

“That wasn’t on the invitation.”

“Aren’t you a saint.”

“Yeah. Because when you said ‘I trust you’, I heard ‘take advantage of my compromising situation’.”

“Fair,” he says, then pulls you down to speak in your ear, his scruff a ticklish rasp against your skin. “Fuck me.”

Well don’t you make the perfect pair. He’s hard as granite and you’re wet enough to sink a dinghy.

Taking off your clothes is too much fucking bother. You just shove the wet fabric to the side.

He doesn't watch where you’re taking his cock into your body, the hot, hard length of him sliding in tight past your pussy lips.

He’s watching your face. You don’t know it until you’ve got him in to the hilt, your mouth falling open on a sigh, your forehead smoothing out as you gyrate your hips, a delicious little circle, fully seated on his lap.

"Oh my god, Leon."

He comes.

Your name is somewhere in the long groan sieved through his clenched teeth before his mouth drops open, diced breaths tumbling free as he pulses inside of you, so deep, so hot and thick.

He’s still looking directly at you.

You watch his eyes clear just a little more; sharpening, focusing. Smoke becoming a mist.

“Can I tease you about premature ejaculation.”

“No.” He starts unbuttoning your pajama top. The fabric is wrinkled at your sides where he’d been gripping, almost hard enough to bruise.

“Why, because you’re still hard?” He is, but it’s different. You couldn’t bend steel around him anymore.

“Yeah,” he says simply, and grips your open collar, pulling you down into a kiss.

You arch your back, easing him to just the tip, bottoming him out again, cycling his affected breath through your own lungs. He runs his hands down your chest, grazing your nipples, his tongue reaching into your mouth to taste your sigh.

His hips press up into you, lifting you, a gentle swell. You ride it; start to rock your hips.

The fabric of your shirt whispers down your arms, chased by the skim of Leon’s palms. Goosebumps raise on your skin.

You brace your arms on the back of the couch, riding him faster. He trails his lips down the column of your neck, his scruff a pleasant scratch, his humid breaths printing your skin.

He runs the fan of his fingers over your nipples.

“Leon.”

“Lean back,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing your shoulder. “Let me see you.”

You sit back on his hips, brushing your hands over the caps of his knees. He scratches lightly down the flex of your thighs as you start slapping down on him harder, dropping your head back, gasping.

“Fuck, gorgeous, just like that.”

“God, Leon.”

Your thighs are burning. He starts meeting you, hips snapping, and you look down.

It almost does you in.

Those broad shoulders, that flushed chest. Muscles rolling and bunching under his glistening skin. Hair sticking to his forehead, wet pink lips, blown eyes hooded, watching you, too.

His hands fall to your hips and he growls, fingers bunching in your pajama shorts. Feral. Like he’s going to tear them.

He hooks his arm around your back and surges up, laying you out on the sofa. You whine when he slips out of you, but he’s lifting your hips to yank your shorts and panties down, surprisingly coordinated for the way he’s wound up.

A small part of you expects them to hit the floor with a wet slap. The rest of you is reaching for Leon, impatient, empty.

He brings your knee up, hooks your leg around his hip and pushes back in, one long thrust, his breath a humid narration. You keen, head falling back against the cushions, feeling his lips at your jaw.

He digs his arms under your shoulders, his body rocking you, fluid motions pushing and pulling as he fucks you slow, deep. You grip his back, obsessed with the animal flex of his body.

You can feel every inch of him, stroking your walls. In, out, a steady tide. You arch your back, your stomach pressing to the rippling heat of his abs.

He’s still sticky. You don’t fucking care.

“Score’s two to zero,” he tells you, breath hot against your cheek. “You gonna catch up?”

“I’m not the medical concern.”

He brings your other leg up onto his hip, adjusting. Seeking.

He finds it. You groan loud, raw, and feel him smile against your neck.

“There you are.”

Your jaw hinges open, your vision glazing over as he rubs the head of his cock against the bundle of nerves inside you. He snaps his hips, jolting a gasp out of you, then goes right back to massaging your g-spot.

“You’re not real,” you pant. He nips your skin, sharp.

“River in Egypt, sweetheart.”

You dig your heels into his glutes, pressing in like spurs, urging him faster.

“Come on, cowboy– ah!”

He pushes up onto his hands, skin slapping loud as he starts pounding into you hard and fast. You were already tightening, coil building, and he’s hit your fucking warp drive.

“Fuck, fuck, like that, Leon!”

“Shit, you better hurry,” he says through gritted teeth. His hips are stuttering, rhythm starting to fall apart.

“I told you–“

His thumb circles your clit, just one rotation, and that’s it. The bastard’s got you. Screaming, even.

You come apart beneath him, your foundation shaking, walls clenching around him, wracked by seismic waves. He gasps your name, watching you climax on his dick, then slams in deep and comes with a long, stuttering groan.

The third time, it seems, is the charm.

When his phone starts ringing, you don’t hear it at first. His head is blocking your nearest ear.

“Leon.”

“Mm.”

“Your phone.”

“Mmph.”

You shift like you’re going to try to reach for it yourself, but he’s beautifully heavy on top of you, so you don’t try very hard.

You nuzzle your face into his hair and bring your arms around him instead, closing your eyes. He hums, content.

The ringtone stops, bending to your private moment.

Five seconds later, it starts up again.

“Fuck.”

You grouse when Leon shifts up, but his reach is longer than yours and he doesn’t go far.

“Huh. Medical,” he says.

“Oh,” you say, with mock optimism.

He hits answer, settling back on top of you. You run your hand up and down his back, petting him.

“Kennedy.”

He doesn’t have his volume turned up very high. You get vague shapes of words, spoken quickly, and then Leon’s short responses, felt as much as heard, his voice thrumming through you.

“Yeah. … No. … Don’t need it. … I know. … I know. … No, I’m fine. … Sure. Bye.”

“Fucking useless,” he mutters, his phone clattering onto the coffee table. “Antivenom’s ready.”

You start giggling.

“They want me in for reassessment in the morning.”

It turns into laughter, smothered into his shoulder, and he rolls into the couch crease so he can look at you.

“What?”

“All their overtime hours,” you say. “No match for your partner’s Magical Healing Vagina.”

He laughs, a real one, his hand pulling at your hip to twist you towards him, pressing you against his body. You’re both a fucking mess, and the couch might be a write-off.

It was an emergency.

“Should get you certified,” he says. You make a skeptical noise.

“There’d be a demand.”

His arm tightens around you, minuscule. Almost imperceptible. Might’ve been completely imperceptible, if his arms weren’t so big.

“Mm. We’re sticking to best-kept-secret.”

“How selfish.”

He nuzzles your mouth with his, sharing breath.

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” you mention, to his invading tongue. He retreats and lets you speak. "Did you mean what you said, or was it just self-defense?"

"What I said?"

"Don't be obtuse.”

He brushes his lips against yours, just a snag of soft, moist skin.

"I've never lied to you," he says.

"There's a first time for everything," you say. "You're skirting the question."

He brushes your hair back, studying your face. Content to take forever, it seems.

"If it helps," you say, "I can put you back under duress."

You slide your hand to the front of his hip, laughing when he flinches away.

"Ass," he says, and rolls you onto your back again, dipping to kiss you.

"Yeah. I love you," he says, and maybe it's a little gruff. "And isn't that just a shitload of complications."

"A metric fuckton," you agree, stroking his cheek. His stubble rasps against your fingertips.

His eyes are completely clear, gaze steady looking back at you.

“But maybe it helps that I love you, too,” you murmur.

It's not a kiss this gets you. He's been dishing out all manner of kisses tonight, their significance has shifted. No.

Instead, he nuzzles his face against your neck, wraps his arms around you, and holds you. Holds you like he intends to for a very long time, like you're the only thing that matters, like your beating hearts need to carry out a close and personal conversation.

Good. They can work out the details. You're just gonna lay here and pet the hair of the man you trust most – the man you can finally admit that you love – glowingly content in his arms.

On AO3

Y'all mind if I just give our man a bad good time real quick

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist when I post these fics 🩷

"please—"

it wasn't the first time you'd begged. you'd begged for many, many things in this same position, truth be told. robby behind you, jack below. both of their cocks splitting you open. jack was thick, just like the rest of him—thick fingered, thick bodied, thick cock throbbing and twitching where it stuffed your pussy. robby, on the other hand—long and curved up to the right—enjoyed fucking you in your tight puckered muscle, making you whine and squirm beneath him.

robby laid down over you, crushing you further into jack's chest, who moaned with you at the change in angle. robby’s breath was hot against your ear, his lips pressed into the shell.

"please what, baby? hmmmm?" he groaned, his voice hoarse and cracked, his chest wiry with hair against your slick back.

you brought your hand up to fist in his hair, holding on tight as he pulled his length from you almost to the very tip before thrusting slowly back in.

"oh my god," you heard jack curse, his hands tightening at your hips, his mouth opening in a gasp.

both of them were to the right of you—your face laid down on jack's collarbone, robby's chin hooked over your right shoulder. they were so close. breathing one another's air, enough that you could feel jack’s breath leave him and robby’s cheek shift against the side of your head when he opened his mouth to kiss the crest of your shoulder.

you tightened your grip in the latter's hair.

"wanna see you kisssss—"

jack let out a breathless little laugh, robby chuckling into your shoulder.

"baby, we talked about this—" jack said, his voice hardly more than breath, his chest heaving under yours.

"—but it would be so hottttt," you whined.

robby ignored you. "how's she feel, brother?"

jack's head tipped back into the pillow beneath him, and you watched the rough scruff of his unshaved neck shift as his adam's apple glided up and down, swallowing around the broken gasp he pulled in.

"so god damn good—go a little harder, she squeezes me so fucking tight when you really give it to her, mike."

you barely had time to register the gleam in robby's eyes before he was swinging his hips back again, this time thrusting hard against you, his skin slapping hard, balls clapping right above where jack's cock was buried deep inside.

you squealed and jack groaned loudly. your hand hung on tighter to robby's hair, your other hand digging into jack's shoulder beside your head.

"ohhhh fuck—" you mewled. "so—so deep, robby, oh god—"

"she sounds so pretty when she makes those little noises," jack strained to say, turning to kiss you on the nose. "huh, honey? robby's dick feel good like that? yeah? gimme a kiss."

you tilted your chin, pushing into his lips lazily, your tongue reaching out to lick at his, wet muscles sliding together. when you began to drool out the side of your lips, you brought robby's head down closer, resting your cheek back to jack's chest.

"your turn—" you murmured sleepily, your brain fucked out of any logic.

nothing passed through you but the ecstasy of having these two men and being sandwiched between them and their weight pressing in around you. jack began jerking his hips up into you, making you hiccup and whine, his thrusts getting erratic, his breath heavier.

robby's cock pushed deeper into you too, the pressure of both of them at the same time making you feel so content, so full, so cock drunk.

"please, please," you chanted. "wanna see you kiss so badly—"

"she really does beg so cute, doesn't she?" robby murmured, kissing your shoulder.

"yeah—" the other breathed, a light groan strangling the word as both of them slid in and out of you in tandem—full of jack's cock, then robby's, empty. then again, both of them filing you at the same time. the rhythm made your jaw go slack, your thoughts thinning. it felt so right, with jack below you, robby behind you, both of them too big, too hot, too much. still, you wanted more. wanted this so badly the need burned behind your eyes.

"like this—" you said, ignoring their cooing, and you craned your neck, pressing a chaste kiss to robby's lips.

it was hardly a second, your brain too foggy to make it anything more.

"that's it, huh? that's what you want, honey?" robby murmured, voice even hoarser with mirth as he smiled at you.

"yesss!" you whined, kicking your feet into the bed beneath.

"not good enough to have both of us, huh?" he teased. "such a needy little girl."

"be nice, mike—" jack moaned. "she's a good girl."

his praise always effected you—making you flutter around him, and you knew he could feel it, even with the increased fulless from robby deep inside you with him. he cracked a little knowing smile between moans.

"oh, i know she's a good girl, brother," robby said, and his mouth dragged over the back of your shoulder. "no doubt about it. but we've spoiled her. she thinks she can have whatever she wants."

you pouted, the prick of tears in your eyes not from him denying you, but from the utter fullness of their cocks punching in and out of you. from the easy back and forth of them—robby pretending there wasn’t a soft spot in him you could reach with the simplest look. and jack caught it every time and teased him for it.

"enough talking—" jack cursed. "fuck, fuck, she's tightening up on me— think she's gonna come, mike, oh god—"

"please—" you moaned louder, thrashing a little bit out of frustration.

"fuck it—" robby growled.

he leaned down and placed a kiss on the corner of jack's mouth.

they didn't stop entirely when robby pulled his lips away from jack's. their thrusts only softened into shallow rocks, jack's hands tightening on your skin, both his and robby's throbbing lengths still pressed deep enough inside you that every quiet breath made you feel the stretch of both of them. you held yours without meaning to—waiting, feeling both of them still around you.

robby's chest pressed heavier against your back as he breathed through his nose. you felt jack's beneath you, his ribs expanding, pressing against your breasts.

"yes," you whispered, though not wanting to rush them. your mouth brushed jack's skin when you said it, soft against the damp hollow below his collarbone. "more."

"you're right—" jack huffed a little laugh that shook his chest on the way out. "she really is needy."

robby smiled, as if grateful for the lightness, "told y—"

but he couldn't say anything else, because jack's lips were suddenly on his.

a deep, harmonized groan passed between the two of them, and it did something terrible to you. your stomach dropped, your hips jerked. even a little lick of jealousy flamed in you, warming your skin, but they looked good together. so good. exactly as you pictured it. it made you moan and writhe to see their mouths slot against one another, lips parting, tongues sliding, jack's stubbled jaw working under the rough scrape of robby's beard.

"oh my god," you whispered.

when they paused their kissing, a string of spit connected them, shiny and wet.

"d'you feel that?" robby whispered.

"yeah," jack answered, his one hand squeezing your hip while the other came up to robby's hair along with yours. "her pussy is gripping me like a vice—"

"yeah, she really tightened up—fuck, c'mere."

robby's hand went up to jack's hair too, fisting in the messy graying curls. jack's mouth fell open in a guttural groan, and robby's other hand came to the nape of your neck in answer. he pulled you into himself harshly, his tongue sliding against yours as your mouths met.

it was slick and wet and lewd, and just when you began to moan in earnest, their thrusts picked up again. harder now, less patient. jack fucking up into you from beneath, robby driving into you from behind, the bed frame knocking against the wall harshly again and again.

then you felt a second tongue at the corner of your mouth.

you pulled back only enough to welcome it—jack's tongue sliding against yours, robby's flicking against the two of you together.

the room filled with louder moans and the thick slap of skin, the wet drag of mouths, jack's rough little curses disappearing against your lips. robby's hand stayed tight at the back of your neck, holding you there for it, making you take the kiss you had begged for. you gushed around them, pussy fluttering and convulsing in pleasure.

"come for us, baby," robby whispered between kisses. "come for jackie. he wants you to come all over his big cock."

jack groaned under you, his hips jerking up harder, his member punching even deeper.

"I wanna feel it too," robby said. "c'mon now, gave you what you wanted. now I get to feel this perfect little ass take my come."

"just wanted your boyfriends to kiss, huh, baby?" jack cooed, his hand moving up to grip your face, forefinger and thumb squeezing your cheeks. his thumb hooked into the tender hinge of your lips, sliding along your molars to pry your mouth open wider for the two of them.

you cried out around his salty skin, and he pouted in mock pity as he looked at you.

"come on my cock, baby," jack moaned, leaning in to keep licking and nipping at your lips. "know you wanna, come on my cock now—gonna fill you up so good, mmmm—"

"i'm—i'm—i'm coming—oh, god, oh god—"

"yeah, that's it, that's it—oh fuckkk—" robby groaned, his thrusts slamming harder, turning erratic before he froze up, jaw unhinging, breathing hotly against wanton mouth.

jack's opened too, in shock, in awe, and when you looked at him you saw his eyes go wide before they rolled back behind his eyelids.

your orgasm ripped through you, a heady pressure down your spine and tightening your hips, making your legs lock up before it crested you like an ocean wave swelling and crashing. your hand clenched in robby's hair as your mouth fell open around jack's thumb. both of them groaned in tandem, trapping you between them, both buried deep while your body squeezed down, making jack curse and robby bare his teeth.

as the euphoria eased and your body went loose with the oxytocin flooding your blood, the three of you kept kissing—gentle little nips, soft flicks of tongue, spit sliding and glistening at the corners of your mouths, collecting where lips met and parted. jack retreated his thumb from your mouth to gently pet at your cheek, and they let you have as much as you wanted, just like always. spoiled thing, they'd tell you again afterwards, while they washed your hair in the bath and cleaned you up.

but for now, you kissed them as your eyes grew heavier and heavier, your breathing deepening against jack's chest. robby's weight behind you felt heavy and comforting, tucked between two men, utterly spent and completely content.

The way he said it, so casual, so dismissive, should have made you shut your mouth. Instead, it acted like gasoline on a fire. "Maybe," you retorted, trying for bravado and landing somewhere in the vicinity of pathetic. "What's it to you, anyway?"

He set the rifle down with deliberate slowness, the clatter of metal on wood sounding like a gunshot in the small room. He pushed off the wall and crossed the space in two long strides. He was a tower of muscle and barely contained violence, and you were suddenly aware of how small the bed was and how close he was.

"You sound like a bloody teenager," he rumbled, his voice low and dark. "It's just a fuck. It's not a holy grail."

And that's when it happened. The words tumbled out, a drunken, shameful confession that you couldn't claw back even if you tried. "Well, maybe I wouldn't know, would I?"

The air in the room changed, going from thick with tension to frozen solid. Simon stared at you, his expression unreadable, but you saw the flicker of surprise, the slow-dawning realization, and the subtle shift in his posture.

"Say that again," he commanded, his voice quiet, cutting through the whiskey haze.

You shook your head, a wave of intense heat rushing to your face, your stomach twisting with a mortification so acute you thought you might be sick. "Forget it," you mumbled, trying to look anywhere but at him.

He crouched down in front of you, bringing his face level with yours. His gloved hand reached out, tipping your chin up, forcing you to meet his gaze. Those eyes were searching, dissecting you.

"You're a virgin." It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, delivered with a kind of breathless awe that was somehow worse than mockery.

"Shut up," you hissed, trying to jerk your head away, but his grip was firm. The shame was a living thing inside you, clawing at your throat. You felt exposed and raw, like he'd peeled back your skin and found something soft underneath.

He let go of your chin, but he didn't move away. He just stared, his mind clearly working behind those dark eyes. You expected him to laugh, to call you a kid, or to tell you to get the fuck over it. Instead, he said something that shattered you completely.

"You want me to fuck you."

It wasn't a question either. It was the most terrifying, exhilarating statement you'd ever heard. Your denial was automatic, a knee-jerk reaction to the unbearable vulnerability. "No! I didn't say that. I just..." You trailed off, because what could you say? You did. You wanted it so badly it hurt. You wanted him. The terrifying, scarred, lethal man who now knew your most private secret.

His lips quirked into a ghost of a smile. It wasn't mocking; it was hungry. "You're a shit liar," he murmured. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that made your skin pebble. "Is that why you've been lookin' at me like a lost puppy? Hoping I'd bend you over and show you the ropes?"

The crude, direct language sent a jolt straight to your core. You squeezed your thighs together, a pathetic attempt to relieve the sudden, throbbing ache. "Fuck you, Simon," you whispered, but it sounded weak and breathless.

"That's the idea, sweetheart."

So it had started as a joke, a stupid, whiskey-fueled slip-up that you'd both tried to bury under layers of snark and forced professionalism. For a few days, it was like a bizarre, unspoken truce. He didn't mention it, and you tried to pretend you hadn't basically offered up your virginity on a silver platter. You trained harder, kept your head down, and avoided his eyes like they were the abyss.

But the world had shifted on its axis, and you couldn't unsee it.

You started noticing things. The way his t-shirt stretched across his chest when he reached for a high shelf, the fabric straining over the solid muscle of his shoulders. The way his tactical gloves creaked when he balled his fists. The scent of him that seemed to linger in the air long after he'd left a room.

His eyes were the worst. Before, his stares had been assessing and analytical. Now, they were heavy, weighted with a new kind of intent. You'd feel them on you during a briefing, a heated, lingering sweep from your boots to your face that made your breath catch and your cunt throb. He was looking at you like he was picturing you naked, and the constant, low-level humiliation of your secret acted as a toxic aphrodisiac.

He was harder on you, too. His critiques in the field were more cutting, his expectations higher. He'd push you during PT until your lungs burned and your muscles screamed, his voice a low, relentless bark in your ear. "Again, Sergeant. Is that all you've got?" It felt like a punishment, or maybe a test, and every time you pushed through it, you felt a flicker of pride, followed by the hot rush of imagining what he'd do to you if you really impressed him.

The tension coiled tighter and tighter, a wire vibrating at a frequency only you and he could feel. It was only a matter of time before it snapped.

It was a normal enough afternoon. The whole team was sprawled in the common room, the low hum of the TV and Price's cigar smoke filling the space. Johnny was recounting some wild story about a bar fight in Prague, his voice boisterous and animated. You were trying to laugh, trying to be normal, but all you could feel was Simon's presence on the other side of the room. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a beer bottle in his hand. He wasn't looking at you, he was looking at Johnny, but you could feel his attention like a physical touch.

Then Johnny, the glorious, oblivious bastard, said something that twisted the knife.

"Aye, but you know what it's like, Si," he said, grinning. "Sometimes you just gotta get in there, get the job done, no matter how tight the fit is. Am I right?"

A beat of silence. Your heart stopped. Simon's eyes, slow and deliberate, slid from Johnny to you. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Yeah, Johnny," he said, his voice a low, gravelly drawl that seemed to be directed only at you. "Sometimes you just have to be patient. Make sure they're ready before you... make your move."

Johnny laughed, clapping Gaz on the back. "See? The man's a poet."

But you weren't hearing it. Your blood was roaring in your ears. He was going to tell them. The paranoia, the toxic cocktail of shame and fear, exploded in your chest. He was going to expose you, right here, in front of everyone. He'd tell them you were some pathetic virgin who'd begged for it, and they'd all laugh, and you'd have to leave the task force.

Your chair scraped against the floor as you stood up, your movements sharp and jerky. "I need some air," you mumbled, not meeting anyone's eyes.

You didn't make it two steps before Simon's voice stopped you. "Sergeant. A word."

Your stomach dropped. You turned to see him pushing off the wall, his expression unreadable. He mystic jerked his head towards the hallway. "Now."

The others were already back to their conversation, but you felt their curious glances as you followed him out of the room and down the hall, your boots feeling heavier with every step. He pushed open the door to his quarters and you followed him inside, the door clicking shut behind you with a terrifying finality.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" you hissed, the words tearing out of you the second the door was closed. "Are you going to tell them? Just get it over with and humiliate me, you bastard!"

He turned to face you, his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. "Tell them? What the hell are you on about?"

"Don't play dumb!" you shot back, your voice cracking. "You're going to tell them I'm a... that I'm... that I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!"

His face softened just a fraction. The anger bled out of him, replaced by something that looked uncomfortably like pity. "Jesus," he muttered, running a hand over his masked face. "I'm not going to tell them anything. That's your business, not mine."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?" you demanded, your breath catching in your throat. "Why are you always fucking looking at me?"

"Because you're driving me fucking insane," he ground out, taking a step towards you. "I'm trying to give you space, trying to be a fuckin' gentleman, and you're over here thinking I'm about to announce your sexual history to the whole squad?"

The sheer absurdity of it, the relief mixed with the lingering fear, was too much. The words you'd been holding back for weeks finally burst free. "Just fuck me and get it over with!" you blurted out, the words sounding pathetic even to your own ears. "Just do it so I can stop thinking about it!"

He stared at you, his chest rising and falling with a deep, controlled breath. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Then he spoke, his voice quiet, cold, and utterly commanding.

"No."

Your heart plummeted. "What?"

"I said no." He took another step closer, crowding you, his presence overwhelming.

You stammered, your brain short-circuiting. "I-I don't understand. You... you want to, don't you?"

His eyes flashed, a dark fire igniting in their depths. "Wanting to and fucking you are two different things, Sergeant. I'm not going to take your virginity because you're having a fuckin' panic attack. You'll wait."

"Wait?"

"You'll wait until you're sure. Until you can ask me properly." His gaze dropped to your mouth, then back up, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous purr. "And you'll ask me in my bed, after everyone's asleep. Then, and only then, I'll consider it."

The shift in power was dizzying. He wasn't rejecting you; he was setting the terms. And God help you, you wanted to agree to every single one.

"Okay," you whispered, your voice trembling.

He tilted his head, a gesture of both command and curiosity. "Okay, what?" His gaze was piercing, demanding.

You swallowed hard, your mouth suddenly dry. The old shame was there, but it was being drowned out by a new, more powerful feeling: a desperate, clawing need to please him. You sank to your knees on the cold, hard floor of his room, the movement feeling both shameful and right. You looked up at him, your heart pounding against your ribs.

"Please, Simon," you whispered, the words barely audible. "Please... fuck me."

A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face, visible even around the mask. He reached out and cupped your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin with a surprising tenderness.

"Good girl," he murmured. "Now get up and go back to the others. Act normal. I'll see you later."

You didn't remember much of the rest of the evening. You sat through the briefing, you ate dinner, you even managed a few stilted laughs at Johnny's jokes. But all of it was a blur, the background noise to the roaring in your head. You were going to Simon's room tonight. The thought was a live wire in your stomach, sparking terror and anticipation in equal measure.

Hours later, the base was quiet. The hallway was deserted, the only light coming from the red glow of the emergency exit signs. You moved like a ghost, your bare feet silent on the linoleum as you made your way to his door. You didn't knock. You just turned the handle and slipped inside.

He was waiting for you. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his mask illuminated by the single lamp on his bedside table. He'd taken off his tac vest, leaving him in just a tight-fitting black t-shirt and his cargo pants. He looked human, and terrifyingly sexy.

"Lock the door," he said, his voice soft but firm.

You did, the click of the lock sounding like a gunshot. You turned back to him, your body thrumming with nervous energy. And then you noticed the room. It was different. The usually stark, military-neat space was softened. The bed had clean, crisp sheets on it. And there were candles, a few simple tea lights flickering on the windowsill and the dresser, casting a warm, gentle glow over the room.

"You... lit candles," you said, your voice small.

"I wanted you to be comfortable," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He patted the space on the bed next to him. "Come here."

You went, your legs feeling unsteady. You sat down, a careful distance between you, your hands twisting in your lap. He didn't rush you. He just watched you, his dark eyes patient.

"You don't have to do this," he said quietly. "If you've changed your mind"

"I haven't," you said, a little too quickly. "I want this. I want... you."

He nodded slowly. "Good." He reached out and took one of your restless hands, his grip warm and steady. "We'll go slow. We'll go as slow as you need. And you tell me to stop if you want to stop. Understand?"

You nodded, your throat tight. "I understand."

He leaned in, and for the first time, you thought he was going to kiss you. But he just pressed his forehead against yours, a gesture so unexpectedly tender it made your eyes sting. His hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing your skin.

"Relax," he murmured. "Let me take care of you."

Then he did kiss you. It was nothing like you'd imagined. It was slow, soft, exploring. His lips were warm and firm against yours, and the fact that you could feel them, that the mask didn't cover them, made it incredibly intimate. You gasped against his mouth, and he took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, his tongue sweeping out to taste you. He tasted like mint and the faint, bitter hint of coffee, and it was the most intoxicating thing you'd ever experienced.

You kissed him back with a clumsy, desperate enthusiasm, your hands coming up to clutch at his t-shirt. He let you, his own hands moving to your waist, guiding you. He pulled you closer, until you were half in his lap, and you could feel the solid, hard plane of his chest against yours.

"Simon," you breathed against his lips, his name a prayer on your tongue.

"Shhh," he soothed, his hands sliding under your shirt. His fingers were calloused, rough against the soft skin of your back, and you shivered at the sensation. "Just feel."

He kissed his way down your jaw, to your neck, his lips and tongue tracing a path that made you arch into him. He pulled your shirt over your head, his eyes drinking in the sight of you in your simple cotton bra. He reached around and unhooked it with practiced ease, letting it fall away.

"Fuck, you're beautiful," he groaned, his hands coming up to cover your breasts, his thumbs brushing over your nipples. The praise, so sincere, so raw, sent a bolt of heat straight to you. You'd been so focused on your own inexperience, you hadn't considered that he might actually want this, want you, with the same desperate hunger.

He laid you back on the bed, his body hovering over yours, and continued his exploration. He kissed every inch of your exposed skin, his touch reverent. He was taking his time, so much time, working you up with a maddening slowness that had you writhing beneath him.

He started kissing your tits, his mouth hot and wet as he closed his lips around one nipple, flicking it with his tongue. The sensation was electric. And in your head, the old, ugly thought surfaced: He's done this a hundred times. He knows exactly what he's doing, and you're just another body in his bed. The thought made you squirm, a mix of jealousy and insecurity twisting your gut.

He must have felt the change in you, because he pulled back, his eyes searching your face. "What is it?" he asked. "Talk to me."

"I just..." you couldn't say it. It was too embarrassing. But he just waited, his gaze patient and unwavering. "I just... I know you've done this before. With people who know what they're doing."

A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. "Yeah, I have," he said, his voice a low, dark rumble. "And do you know what I've learned?" He leaned down, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "I've learned that nothing is hotter than watching someone fall apart for the first time. I've learned that I fucking love being the one to make it happen."

He moved down your body, his hands hooking into the waistband of your pants. "I'm going to eat your pussy now," he stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "And you're going to let me hear every single sound you make. No holding back. Understand?"

You nodded, your breath coming in short, shallow pants. He pulled your pants and underwear down in one go, leaving you completely bare to him. He settled between your thighs, his broad shoulders pushing them apart. He looked up at you, his eyes locked on yours as he slowly lowered his head.

The first touch of his tongue on your cunt was like a lightning strike. You cried out, your hands flying to his hair, your back arching off the bed. He groaned against you, the vibration sending shockwaves through your body.

"Fuck, you're wet," he rasped, his tongue lapping at you with long, slow strokes. "So fuckin' wet for me."

He ate you out with a devastating skill, his tongue finding your clit with unerring accuracy, circling and sucking until you were a whimpering, moaning mess. You could feel his spit mixing with your own slickness, the obscene, wet sounds filling the room.

While he worked, his hands found yours, his fingers lacing through yours, pinning them to the mattress on either side of your hips. It was an anchor, a connection in the midst of the overwhelming pleasure. He held your gaze, letting you watch him, his eyes dark with lust as he showed you exactly what his tongue was doing to your swollen, aching clit.

"Tell me how it feels," he commanded, his voice muffled against your flesh. "Talk to me."

"It feels... so good," you gasped, your nails digging into the backs of his hands. "Your tongue... fuck, Simon, don't stop."

His grip on your hands tightened, a silent acknowledgment of your plea. Your pussy was burning, a deep, throbbing ache that demanded more. You felt a fullness in your belly, a tightening coil of pleasure that was wound so tight it was almost painful.

He slid a finger inside you, then another, curling them just right. The stretch was intense, a dull burn that quickly melted into pleasure. He was watching your face, reading your every reaction, ensuring you were with him every step of the way.

"You're taking my fingers so well," he praised, his voice thick with arousal. "Look at that. So fuckin' tight." He pumped his fingers in and out of his mouth, his tongue still working your clit.

The dirty talk, the sight of him between your legs, the feel of his fingers and tongue, it was too much. The coil in your belly snapped, and your orgasm crashed over you in a blinding wave. You came with a loud, broken moan, your thighs clamping around his head as he worked you through it, drawing out every last shatter of pleasure.

He finally released you, crawling back up your body and kissing you deeply, letting you taste yourself on his lips. You could feel his erection, a hard thick line pressing against your thigh, and you were suddenly desperate to feel it, to feel Ghost.

You reached down, your hand palming his cock through his pants. He hissed, his hips jerking involuntarily. You wanted to make him feel as good as he'd made you feel. You wanted to show him how desperate you really were.

You pushed at his shoulders, surprising him. He let you roll him over, until you were straddling his thighs. You quickly undid his belt and fly, freeing his cock. It was even more intimidating up close, long, thick, and flushed dark red at the tip. A bead of pre glistened there, and you leaned down, licking it off on a whim.

"Fuck," he groaned, his head falling back against the pillow.

You looked up at him, your eyes wide. "Show me," you whispered. "Show me how you like it."

His eyes snapped open, dark with lust. He wrapped his hand around his cock, stroking it slowly from base to tip. "Like this," he said, his voice strained. "Spit on it."

You did, your saliva glistening on the head. He used it as lube, his fist moving in a smooth, steady rhythm. You watched, utterly mesmerized, as he pleasured himself.

"Your turn," he grunted.

You replaced his hand with yours, your grip tentative at first. You mimicked his movements, and he let out a low, encouraging sound. "Yeah, just like that, love. Tighter. Squeeze the head when you get to the top."

You followed his instructions, your confidence growing with every groan you elicited from him. He was leaking steadily now, his pre-cum making your hand slick.

You leaned down and flicked your tongue over the head again, tasting the bitter saltiness of him. He twitched in your hand, a guttural sound escaping his lips. Emboldened, you took him into your mouth, just the tip at first, swirling your tongue around him. The taste, the feel of him on your tongue, the power of having this strong, dangerous man at your mercy, it was intoxicating.

"Jesus, fuck," he gasped, his hand flying to your hair, not to guide you, but just to hold on. "You're gonna make me come, you little minx."

You smiled around his cock, a surge of feminine pride washing over you. You cupped his balls, rolling them gently in your hand, marveling at the weight of them. You even ran your fingers through the coarse, dark hair at the base of his cock, finding the fact that he was unshaven, so naturally and undeniably male, incredibly hot.

"Christ, stop looking at me like that," he groaned. "You're gonna make me blow my load before I even get inside you."

You pulled off him with a wet pop, grinning. "Sorry."

"You're not," he said, sitting up and kissing you hard. He flipped you over again, pinning you beneath him.

He reached over to the bedside table, grabbing a condom and ripping it open. He rolled it on with practiced efficiency, his eyes never leaving yours. He positioned himself at your entrance, the head of his cock nudging against you.

"Last chance," he said, his voice serious. "Tell me to stop."

"Don't you dare," you breathed, your legs wrapping around his hips, pulling him closer.

He pushed forward, slowly, so slowly, the stretch immense. You gasped, your hands clutching at his shoulders. It burned, but it was a good burn, a sign of the connection you were making. He paused, letting you adjust, his forehead pressed against yours.

"You're doin' so good," he murmured, his voice strained. "So fuckin' good. Just breathe."

You did, and as you did, he slid in deeper, inch by incredible inch, until he was seated fully inside you. The feeling of fullness was absolute, overwhelming. He was so deep, so much a part of you, it brought tears to your eyes.

He kissed them away, his lips gentle. "You okay?" he asked, his voice thick with emotion.

You nodded, unable to speak. He started to move, his thrusts shallow and slow. He held your hand, his fingers interlaced with yours, anchoring you as he began to fuck you. It was nothing like you'd imagined. It wasn't frantic or rough. It was deep, intimate, and devastatingly slow. He kissed your neck, your collarbone, your breasts, his lips worshipping your body as his cock worshipped your cunt.

You could tell he was holding back, his body trembling with the effort of not pounding into you. His thrusts were angled perfectly, stimulating a spot inside you that you didn't even know existed. The pressure built again, a slow, rising tide of pleasure that was even more intense than the first.

"That's it," he panted in your ear. "I can feel you gettin' tighter. Are you gonna come on my cock, sweetheart? Gonna come all over me?"

His words, combined with the relentless, perfect pressure, sent you over the edge again. You came with a silent cry, your inner walls clenching around him, your body shaking with the force of it.

"Fuck, yes," he groaned, his rhythm finally faltering. "I can feel you comin'. So fuckin' hot. So goddamn perfect." He slammed into you once, twice, three more times, and then he was coming with a hoarse shout, his cock pulsing inside you as he filled the condom.

He collapsed on top of you, his weight a welcome, heavy blanket. You lay there, tangled together, your breathing slowly syncing up as you came down from the high. After a long moment, he rolled off you, disposing of the condom before pulling you back into his chest.

You were silent, your mind reeling. You felt different. Changed. The shame, the insecurity, it was all gone, replaced by a deep, bone-deep satisfaction.

Simon pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "Stay," he murmured, his voice already heavy with sleep.

You didn't need to be asked twice. You cuddled closer, your head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. In the morning, things would be different. But for tonight, in the warm, candlelit glow of his room, you were exactly where you were supposed to be.

The only thing more shocking than the fact that you'd just lost your virginity to Simon 'Ghost' Riley was the realization that you wanted to do it again. And again.

The first few days after were a weird, hazy blur. You moved through your training exercises on autopilot, your body aching in places you didn't know could ache. A deep, pleasant soreness that was a constant, throbbing reminder of the way he'd felt inside you, the way he'd held you, the sounds he'd made. Every time you caught sight of him across the compound, a dark, imposing figure against the grey concrete, a jolt of heat would shoot straight to your core.

You expected things to be awkward. You'd braced yourself for smirks from Johnny or a pointed, knowing look from Gaz. But there was nothing. Simon was the consummate professional on the field, his commands sharp, his demeanor as unreadable as ever. If anything, he was a little more distant, a little more controlled, as if he was holding himself back with a supreme effort. And Johnny just thought you were hungover.

That first night back in the safety of your own room, you'd slid your hand into your panties and touched yourself, trying to replicate the devastating pleasure he'd given you. It was useless. Your own fingers were a poor substitute for the thick, insistent stretch of his cock, the expert roll of his hips. You came, but it was a hollow, fleeting thing, and it only made you miss him more.

It took three days of this simmering tension before you snapped. You were in the gym, pounding away your frustration on the treadmill, when he walked in. He was wearing a tight-fitting black tank top and sweatpants, his hair damp from a shower. He didn't look at you, just gave a curt nod and headed for the weights. But you saw the way his jaw ticked, the way his hands flexed at his sides.

You hit the stop button on the treadmill, the machine's whine cutting through the quiet hum of the room. "My room," you said, your voice sounding more confident than you felt. "Ten minutes."

He didn't even turn around. "I have a briefing."

"You'll be quick," you retorted, a sharp heat rising in your chest. You saw his shoulders shake with a silent, dark laugh before he gave you a single, sharp nod.

You were waiting for him, your heart pounding when your door creaked open. He slipped inside, closing and locking it behind him with the same quiet efficiency he did everything. He didn't say a word. He just crossed the room, cupped your face in his hands, and kissed you.

It wasn't sweet or slow this time. It was a kiss born of days of frustrated denial. His tongue was in your mouth immediately, claiming, possessing, and you met him with equal desperation. You clawed at his tank top, pulling it over his head, and he did the same to yours, his hands rough and impatient on your skin.

"Couldn't stop thinking about you," he growled against your lips, backing you towards the bed. "About this tight little body. About how you felt squeezing my cock."

His filthy words sent a rush of wetness between your thighs. You whimpered, your hands scrambling for the button of his pants. He shoved his trousers down, kicking them away, and then he was on you again, his naked, scarred chest pressing you into the mattress. He was already hard, his cock heavy against your stomach.

Si was tearing at your pants, and you lifted your hips to help him, kicking them away along with your panties. He was between your thighs in a second, his cock nudging at your entrance. You felt the tear of a condom packet and you grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

"Don't," you said, your voice breathless.

He stilled, his eyes searching yours. "You sure?"

"I'm on the pill," you rushed out. "And I trust you. I just... I need to feel all of you. Please, Simon."

He stared at you for a long, tense moment, something raw and vulnerable flashing in his eyes. Then he crushed his mouth to yours, the condom forgotten. He pushed into you in one long, smooth stroke, and the sensation was overwhelming. No thin barrier, just the hot, silky feel of him, every vein, every ridge. He was so deep, so impossibly deep, you could feel him everywhere.

"Fuck," you gasped, your head falling back. "You feel so good."

He set a brutal pace, his hips snapping against yours, the bed creaking in protest. "You feel like fuckin' heaven," he gritted out, his face buried in your neck. "So wet, so bloody tight for me."

You wanted more. You needed to be in control, to set the pace, to take what you needed. You pushed against his chest, and he let you roll him over with surprising ease. You straddled his hips, his cock still buried deep inside you, and braced your hands on his chest.

The sight of him below you was breathtaking. His chest was heaving, his muscles tensed, his eyes fixed on you with a burning intensity. And his mask, it had shifted slightly during the tussle, riding low on his nose, revealing more of his face than you'd ever seen. The sharp cut of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the scar there. He looked wild, untamed.

You started to move, rising and falling on his cock, setting a rhythm that had you both moaning. His hands found your hips, then slid down to grip your ass, his fingers digging into the flesh as he guided you, helping you take him deeper.

"Simon," you panted, your head lolling back. "I can't... I can't stop thinking about you. You've done this to me. I'm obsessed."

His grip on your ass tightened, his eyes blazing. "Yeah?" he rasped, his voice strained. "Tell me what you're thinking about, sweetheart."

"Thinking about how full you make me," you whimpered, feeling another orgasm coil low in your belly. "How you stretch me so good. Si, please... please don't stop filling me up."

That was what broke him. With a groan, he sat up, wrapping his arms around you and crushing you to his chest. His mouth was on your neck, sucking and biting as he drove up into you, meeting your downward thrusts with powerful, desperate strokes of his own.

His mask was pushed down further, and you turned your head, your lips finding the corner of his mouth, kissing the scarred skin there. "You feel so good, LT," you whispered in his ear. "So fuckin' good inside me."

He came with a roar, his hips jerking erratically as he emptied himself inside you, the hot, thick flood of his cum triggering your own release. You came with a silent scream, your whole body clenching around him, milking him for every last drop. You collapsed against his chest, both of you slick with sweat, trembling with the aftershocks.

For a long time, neither of you spoke. You just held each other, your breathing slowly returning to normal. He was still inside you, softening but not gone, a warm, comforting presence. He reached up and gently adjusted his mask, pulling it back into place. The intimacy of the gesture, the quiet trust it implied, made your heart ache.

"Now you stay the night," you murmured into his neck, not a question, but a statement.

He didn't answer. He just held you tighter, and that was answer enough. You knew, with a certainty that this was no longer just about getting rid of your virginity. This was something else entirely.

Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.

You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.

You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.

You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.

Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.

Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.

"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."

Bioweapon.

Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.

"Nothing concrete yet?" Price snaps incredulously. "Goddammit, Kate!"

"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.

"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."

Apparently?!

You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.

"That is correct, sir. She won't die."

Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.

"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."

A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.

"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.

"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.

When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.

It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.

And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.

What the hell is happening?

Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.

Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.

"What kind of bloody toxin?"

"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."

The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.

"The reports say it turns men—"

Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.

"Turns them what, doc?"

It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."

The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.

"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."

Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.

Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.

"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.

"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"

Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.

Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.

"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"

A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.

"I feel weird."

You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.

Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.

Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.

"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.

Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.

The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.

You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.

And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.

Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.

"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.

In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.

Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.

"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.

Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.

"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.

"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."

Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.

It's his.

"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.

"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.

Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.

"Cap'n! What do we do?!"

You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.

Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.

Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.

All that matters is someone touching you.

Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.

"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."

"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.

"I'll call the senior consultant."

Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.

Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.

Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.

"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.

Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.

"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"

Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."

Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.

"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"

Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.

Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.

"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.

"She can't consent!"

It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.

"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"

John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.

"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."

His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.

"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.

He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.

"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."

Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."

"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.

"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.

"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."

The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.

Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.

"But sir—"

Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.

"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."

Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.

The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.

Not asked, ordered to.

He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.

He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.

This doesn't feel like any of those things.

He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.

"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.

"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.

Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.

This is not how he'd imagined it.

He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.

He hadn't planned any of that.

Fucking liar.

You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.

"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"

"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."

He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.

You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.

He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.

Upper receiver. Charging handle. Bolt carrier group.

You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.

Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.

"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.

Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.

You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.

Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—

"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.

Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.

"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.

Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.

He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.

His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.

You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—

No. He's not going there.

"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."

He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.

His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.

You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.

"M-more, Kyle, please!"

Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.

Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.

He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.

"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."

He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.

Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.

"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."

You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.

Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.

He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.

When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.

"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"

He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.

"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."

"Please—"

"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."

He drops to his knees instead.

The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.

He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.

The sound you make is devastating.

Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.

Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.

He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.

But he doesn't stop.

Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.

When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.

"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."

Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.

But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.

He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.

"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."

You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—

And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.

"Soap!"

The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.

Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.

"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"

Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."

"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.

"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.

"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.

Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.

"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."

Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.

Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.

He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.

Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.

There is no need to.

Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.

He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.

By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.

It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.

"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."

And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.

That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.

Christ, you're beautiful.

He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.

He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.

He's thought about it a lot.

But not like this.

"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.

Close enough.

"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."

He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.

He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.

"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."

He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.

Let them hear.

His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.

"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."

He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.

Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.

He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.

His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.

But he doesn't stop.

He is physically incapable.

You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.

"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"

He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.

The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.

"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"

"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"

He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.

Inside his combat pants.

His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.

He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.

"MacTavish."

Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.

Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."

"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.

"Get yourself sorted. Now."

Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.

Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.

"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.

"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.

You don't notice the shift at first.

One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.

You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.

A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.

"Don't."

One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.

Ghost.

He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.

Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.

You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.

He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.

Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.

"Simon…"

His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.

"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.

"Don't want—"

"Wasn't bloody askin’."

He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.

Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.

Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.

Trust.

You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.

Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.

"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.

You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.

"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.

You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.

You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.

"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."

"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.

He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.

You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.

Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.

Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.

But.

His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.

Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.

You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.

"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.

"Yeah."

"It hurts."

He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.

He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.

Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.

Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.

Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.

It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.

So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.

You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.

He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.

Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.

Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.

In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.

"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."

Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.

"It's not enough, is it."

It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.

"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."

The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.

"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.

"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.

"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."

He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.

"And we tell Ghost."

Ghost doesn't agree.

He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.

And then: "No."

Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"

"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."

Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.

Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.

"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."

No one dares to argue.

Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.

The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.

You look small.

That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.

You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.

But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.

He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.

"Sergeant."

You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.

"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"

"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."

He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.

You'll keep hurting. Under his command.

He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.

"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."

His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.

This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.

He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.

This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.

He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.

"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."

He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.

Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.

You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.

It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.

Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.

He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.

Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.

He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.

"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."

Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.

"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."

You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.

He lowers you onto him slowly.

The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.

You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.

"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.

You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.

Almost.

He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.

And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.

He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.

Hates that he doesn't want to stop.

Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"

His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.

You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.

For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.

Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.

He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity

He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."

You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.

Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.

"Garrick. You're up."

Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.

Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.

The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.

Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.

He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.

"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."

He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.

Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.

He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.

"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"

The condoms run out after Soap's first round.

Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.

"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."

Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.

"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."

It should be simple, and it’s anything but.

Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.

"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"

He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.

Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.

"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."

"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."

And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.

Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.

The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.

The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.

You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.

Ghost enters the room without being asked.

He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.

He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.

He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.

You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.

Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.

"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.

You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.

"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."

Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.

In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.

Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.

How is she?

He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.

Handled. Debrief in the morning.

He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.

Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.

The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.

The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.

The third thing is the balaclava.

You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.

Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.

You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.

The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.

And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.

Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.

The shower. The water. Voices.

John.

Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.

You lie very still.

The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.

You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.

Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.

Neither of you says a word.

His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.

The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.

Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.

"How do you feel?"

You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.

"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.

Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."

His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.

Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.

You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.

I thought of this in the shower and knew I had to get this idea in front of you fine people but didn’t want to write a full fic so here ya go:) also holy shit the way he starts to smirk in this gif? I might have to go take another shower Jesus fuck he’s such a harlot whore.

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.