No curtains, no shades. There's not even a half-effort of an old sheet hung up over the glass pane. And at night? When he can't sleep, and the moths circle the flickering porch lights, and you've got those blue or red or purple LED lights on…well.

Pope can see right into your apartment.

Can see you, watching TV on the couch or cooking boxed macaroni in nothing but a loose tank top and a pair of lace underwear.

He thinks you might be the only good thing about the apartment that Smurf forced him into only three days after he was released from prison.

It's been a long time since he's looked at a woman, you know. Longer since he's seen one as pretty as you.

He's not lacking self awareness or anything. Pope knows your open windows and ever changing LEDs aren't an invitation to stare, but…sometimes it feels like one.

You fall asleep on the couch most nights. Which is good for him, because Pope can't see into your bedroom.

Some things, he begins to realize, are a sort of chaotic routine.

You tend to fall asleep with your phone in your hand and scramble to find it each morning (it's always under the couch, beneath the hot pink throw pillow you kick off in your sleep).

You don't eat breakfast because you don't wake up early enough to (don't you know it's the most important meal of the day?). Most mornings, you wake up with just enough time to doll yourself up in the bathroom, prioritizing glittery eyeshadow and shimmering lip gloss rather than the sustenance of a bowl of cereal.

He doesn't know what you do for work, but it's something with an inconsistent schedule. You sleep until noon on your days off, which could be any day of the week, Pope learns.

Work doesn't stop you from going out, though. Saturday nights are reserved for those miniskirts and stiletto heels and all your giggling girlfriends who get ready on your living room floor with a hand mirror. You share perfume and makeup and clothes with them before you all climb into a shared uber.

A few times, Andrew finds himself tempted to follow you. He tells himself it's not like he'd be doing it for his own satisfaction. He'd just be doing it to keep an eye on you, that's all. You're a young girl (too young for someone his age). Don't you know there are predators out there?

But he never does. Because that would be weird, right? You don't even know him. But…he certainly starts to feel like he knows you.

You and your friends always stumble back to your apartment, sometimes falling up the concrete steps to the second floor. One of them will make pizza rolls or messy peanut butter sandwiches and you'll pass around cold bottles of water and spill electrolyte drink mixes on the kitchen counter.

You'll share your things with them even after the club, selfless girl. Passing out hair ties and makeup removing wipes and big t-shirts for them to sleep in. On on particular night, when most of them are passed out on the couch, legs and arms tangled together, Pope even watches you you share a kiss with one of them under pink LEDs.

That night, Andrew has to force his attention away. It feels way too close to the beginning of that porno Craig left open on the family computer years ago.

But this doesn't feel erotic. Watching your mouth move against someone else's doesn't elicit any warmth beneath the fabric of his jeans.

No, it makes Andrew...upset. Angry, even.

It makes him jealous.

He tries not to think about it again. Tries even harder (and fails, repeatedly) to give you some privacy on Saturday nights.

But Sundays…Sundays are sacred.

Both for you and for him.

So much so that he pulls out on a job when his brothers plan it for a Sunday. Tells them he has to check in with his parole officer that day. Lies to their faces, because he doesn't want to miss out on you.

Because every Sunday, without fail, Andrew gets to see you naked.

You start by cleaning your apartment. Wiping down the counters and vacuuming the carpet and dusting the top of the cabinets. Then you light the candle on the coffee table (pink champagne, he's pretty sure, after looking endlessly online to match up the glass container. Twenty six dollars. Four day shipping. Currently sitting unlit on his nightstand).

And when you're ready, you strip off all your clothes and discard them in the bathroom.

You put oil in your hair and nineties R&B on your bluetooth speaker. You paint your toes (usually white or black, occasionally an electric blue) and glue artificial nails with sparkling gems onto your fingers.

Sunday showers are the longest, Pope knows. Sometimes thirty minutes. And when you emerge from the bathroom, steam rolls out from the open door and you've got your hair wrapped up in a towel. You balance yourself with a foot on the edge of the couch and massage lotion into your skin first.

From top to bottom, moisturizing your entire body. And then you repeat the motion with an oil, and it's during this particular step that Andrew starts feeling a little lightheaded.

He'd bet you feel all smooth and soft and smell so fucking good. Maybe like vanilla or cherry or coconut. And, god. He wants to touch you. He wants to touch himself.

But he resists.

The first three times, anyway.

By the fourth Sunday, though…well. His cock gets so fucking hard in his jeans that it's leaking. Making a big fucking mess in his boxers. It hurts, you know?

And it's not like you'll know he's doing it. He's had a little over a month to perfect his setup—lights off, chair angled perfectly so if anyone glanced into his apartment they'd have to really look to see him.

So, he takes his cock in his hand and imagines it's your delicate fingers wrapped around him instead. Imagine it's his hands rubbing oil into your shoulders, over the swell of your breasts, pressing into your hips, squeezing at the supple flesh of your thighs.

He'd make sure to do it just how you like. And Pope wouldn't need to be told how to, either. Because he's spent so much time watching you now that he would just know.

He wonders if your head would fall back, wet hair clinging to your slick skin. He wonders if he pressed just right into that spot at the small of your back that you're always so gentle with if you'd moan or whine or whimper. Maybe even say his name.

Andrew cums at the thought alone, grunting low, lips parted, his release spilling over his hand and down the hard length of his cock.

The shame doesn't take hold of him for a while.

Not until later that night, when your hair is blow dried and you're dressed in a pretty silk pajama set. You've got some trashy reality show on the TV, and you're eating the pizza you had delivered right out of the box.

Andrew takes the moment to clean himself up. To change out of his clothes and into something more comfortable. He brushes his teeth and climbs in bed, but lays with his head propped up by an extra pillow so he can still see clearly out of his window.

He knows it's weird. He knows he shouldn't be staring at a naked girl who's probably half his age and doesn't know there's some fucking creep across the courtyard who watches her every fucking day. He knows he shouldn't be fucking his fist watching you put lotion on your skin. He knows he shouldn't be changing his plans with family or friends around your schedule, just so he can watch you a little longer.

He knows he should stop.

The problem, however, lies in the wanting.

Andrew's never had much. Not when it comes to women. But you…god. You're so beautiful, and so pure and so different from anything he's ever seen. You don't belong to anyone but yourself, and once he sees you, he finds it impossible to look away.

Things change late one Friday night.

Andrew gets sloppy. He gets comfortable, here in this routine he's created around you.

There's music coming from your apartment, some electronic pop ballad that's at a volume so loud he can hear it from across the courtyard (there will be complaints to the office manager tomorrow morning, he knows. But you don't have to worry. Pope will take care of it for you, baby. He'll make sure you can keep having your fun).

You're wearing just a lacy bra and a pair of linen sleep shorts. There's a seltzer in your hand, and you're singing and dancing like you've somehow summoned all the energy from the club right there in your apartment.

It's a beautiful sight, truly. You're so happy and carefree. The warmest ray of sunshine that he wants to find himself basking under.

Andrew gets comfortable, posture relaxing in the chair that now lives permanently in front of his window. He watches you dance around your apartment, the easy smile on your face reflected back on his own.

He thinks he could really take care of you. Keep you safe. Protect all that girlish whimsy that lives in your heart. He'd make you real happy, Andrew thinks. Would watch you dance with your friends at the club, leaning against the bar. He'd take you shopping and add more of those short dresses into your closet. He'd make you breakfast in the mornings before work and Christ—he'd buy you a set of fucking curtains.

Pope is so lost in the fantasy of it that he doesn't register in time that your dancing has slowed. And you've put your seltzer down on the coffee table.

And you're staring right back at him.

His heart kicks up, pounding against his chest. He knows he should move out of sight, shut his blinds, pass this off as a mistake, maybe even pretend he hadn't seen you.

But he doesn't do any of that.

He's frozen in time, terrified and exhilarated all at once by simply being perceived by you.

Pope just…stares.

It seems to be the only fucking thing he's capable of these days.

He expects you to flip him off or maybe come barreling out of the door and across the courtyard to confront him. Or maybe you'll scurry away into your room. Maybe you'll order a set of curtains online.

But you don't do any of that.

You just stare right back.

Andrew tilts his head curiously. It's an involuntary movement.

In the end, you're the first to look away. You pick up your seltzer, dump it down the drain in the kitchen, and then disappear into the bathroom to brush your teeth.

Your routine remains the exact same. You find your phone beneath the throw blanket on the couch and turn off the TV. You turn the kitchen light off and turn on the light above the stove instead. You grab a water bottle from the fridge, and then go to bed in your room.

It's not rushed, and you don't seem nervous or fearful that there's someone watching you.

And Andrew thinks to himself, see. This is why you need him. This is why you need someone looking out for you. Don't you know how dangerous he could be?

He would never hurt you, Andrew knows. But you don't know that.

He doesn't sleep that night. He doesn't sleep often as it is, but his mind is running too fast. Cataloguing all the potential scenarios in which you cut off all access he has to you, severing the comfort he finds in his new favorite, voyeuristic hobby.

And Andrew wouldn't—couldn't—blame you for it. He thinks that's what you should do.

You don't.

The following morning, your routine changes.

On the nights you fall asleep in your bed, you're usually dressed in a pair of jeans with gems decorating the pockets and a low-cut top by the time you emerge from your room.

But not this time.

No, this time you're still wearing the same clothes you'd fallen asleep in. A lacy bra and cotton shorts.

Andrew watches, freshly emerged from the quickest shower of his life, hair still wet, as you stand in front of the fridge to find the fizzy energy drink you'd brought home with you last night.

He watches you struggle for a moment to crack the seal open (Those pretty nails of yours. He could help you with that, you know). You take a slow slip, put the aluminum can down on the counter, and turn your head just enough to let Pope know you see him.

You know he's there, in the window. You know he's watching.

And then, painfully slow, you drag your shorts down your thighs. The fabric pools at your feet, and Pope loses all train of thought.

Because this is no accident. You want this. You want him to watch you.

Your bra is next. You reach around to unclasp it and soon after the lace joins the linen fabric on the linoleum floor.

Warmth blooms beneath his skin as he watches you press your hands to your abdomen, feeling your skin, running your hands up your chest and over the swell of your breasts.

You try and play it off like a stretch, lifting your arms above your head and arching your back.

Andrew knows it's not.

You get ready the rest of the morning like normal. And Andrew…God. He doesn't know what to think.

He knows he should stop this before it goes too far. He thinks it already has.

It's…it's weird, right?

Everything about it is wrong.

He doesn't want to stop, but he knows he should.

He tries, though. For what little it's worth.

Tries to busy himself building a fountain at Smurf's. Tries to find small jobs he can do himself to pass the time. He still thinks about you all hours of the day, though. Like a thorn stuck beneath his skin, aching when he moves just the wrong way.

He overhears Nicky explaining to Deran what an 'everything shower' is and thinks about your Sunday ritual. He walks into a hungover Craig making boxed macaroni in his boxers and thinks of you. Smurf lights a candle called pink cashmere and even though it's not pink champagne, it still makes him think of you.

The pretty little girl in the apartment across from his, who he finds himself certifiably, insanely, obsessed with.

One Thursday afternoon, Andrew returns home earlier than he'd planned. He tells himself he just wants to get a little glance.

Just one look. You know, to soothe the ache the thought of you brings. To see if maybe he imagined the weight of your stare.

What he finds, though, is somehow more concerning.

You're pacing your living room, cell phone pressed to your ear, still wearing jeans and your sneakers. There's tension in your shoulders and even though he can't hear the conversation you're having with the person on the other end of the phone, he can see that you're shouting.

It drags on for the better half of an hour. The pacing, the frustrated hand waving, the pinching of the bridge of your nose. Whatever it is, Andrew bets he could help with it.

He hates seeing you stressed. Thinks you should be living your fun, carefree life like normal. You shouldn't be burdened with…whatever it is that's got you so upset.

But it's not like he can go over and just ask.

So, he chooses a different path instead.

Gets the key to the office of the apartment complex from Smurf. Rummages through the paper files until he finds the lease contract linked to your apartment number.

Andrew thinks he should've done this weeks ago. He learns an awful lot about you this way. Like your name, which he begins to recite like a mantra in his head. He learns your birthday and, regretfully, your age.

But, most importantly, he discovers (and memorizes) your phone number.

And that same day, he returns to Smurf's with a torn piece of paper with the digits scribbled on it. He hands it to his nephew and says, "Need you to get a few phone call records. Can you do that for me?"

J furrows his brows in confusion. "Who's number?"

Pope shrugs. "No one," he lies. "Can you get the records or not?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, probably. Anything specific you're looking for?"

"I wanna know about a call that happened today. Around two or so. Lasted almost an hour. Just get me the number of whoever was on the other line."

J hesitates for a single moment, and then nods slowly. "Alright. I'll get back to you on it."

In the meantime, Andrew spirals.

The thought of you having a boyfriend never really crossed his mind until now. You don't really have men over. Just your girl friends.

But there are some Saturday nights you don't come home, stumbling in early Sunday morning instead with sunglasses on and your hair a mess. So, Pope thinks you very well could have a boyfriend and he'd never would've known it.

Pope tells himself if it is a boyfriend, he won't…he won't do anything. It's not his place to make decisions for you, right?

Still. You shouldn't let a man stress you out so much. Whoever it is, they're not worth it. You deserve better. You deserve more.

You deserve someone who knows you.

Less than two hours later, Pope gets a phone call from J, who explains that the person on the other end of that phone call wasn't a person at all.

It was your phone company.

You're stupid fucking service provider who just so happened to put an extra two hundred dollar fee on your bill this month, claiming data overages.

All that stress wasn't over a boyfriend. It was over money.

And money is something Andrew can provide.

He waits until you leave for work, locking up tight behind you. But that doesn't matter, not now. Andrew has a key to the office, which means he has access to the spare key to your apartment.

He is fully aware that he shouldn't be doing this, but ten minutes after you leave he unlocks the door and steps inside anyway.

Your apartment smells sweet. Like sugar and citrus. He wonders if you smell the same way, and the thought alone makes Andrew's mouth water.

He moves slowly into your space, fingers tracing over the TV stand, feeling the wood beneath his calloused fingertips. He straightens the crooked throw pillow on the couch and puts the lighter for your candle back into the tray on the coffee table.

Andrew knows he should just…leave the cash and go. He shouldn't be snooping around, invading your privacy.

But you left a knife point-side up in the strainer in the sink. And you could get hurt doing something like that.

And once he's already in the kitchen, turning the knife over so the sharp edge is down, well…what does it hurt if he just opens a couple of drawers?

None of your silverware matches. Andrew finds this little fact sort of endearing. Messy and chaotic in the same way you are, but that's okay. Maybe he can fix that for you one day, too.

Your bathroom is cluttered. There's makeup products littering the porcelain sink and the cabinet mirror is left wide open. Andrew picks up a few different products to read the labels and finds lip liners and leave-in conditioners and powdered blush that's spilled magenta pigment on the counter.

He finds that lotion you're always using on Sundays and opens the lid. Andrew brings the container to his nose, inhales deeply, and feels suddenly too hot.

The scent of it is sweet, like you. There's notes of syrupy amber and warm florals and it has the muscles in his abdomen squeezing tight as he thinks about how potent the scent would be if he were between your legs, freshly oiled, calves resting on his shoulders as he licks and sucks at your clit.

His cock has been half hard since the moment he stepped foot in your apartment, but by the time he makes it to your bedroom?

Pope is aching.

Your clothes are strewn all over. There's t-shirts on the floor and jeans inside out near the hamper and a dress you'd worn two weekends ago lying on the edge of your unmade bed.

It smells like you in here, too. Even more so. There's less perfume, but Andrew swears he can smell the scent of your skin. Sweet and intoxicating, sending sparks of arousal straight to his groin.

Your bedside table has a lamp on it and three half-empty bottles of water. There's one drawer, and he pries it open and gives a slow exhale to see all the silk and lace inside.

Going through your underwear drawer is, quite literally, the very last thing someone like Andrew Cody should be doing.

He does it anyway.

Rummages around until he finds that little black pair you like to sleep in. He runs his fingers over the lace band, feeling the softness beneath the rough pad of his thumb. His cock is throbbing, even before he brings the fabric to his nose and inhales the scent of laundry detergent and faint mahogany from the nightstand and—there. The scent of you.

As close as he can get.

As close as he'll probably ever get.

He needs to leave. Andrew is painfully aware that this is crossing a line of a whole new degree. Levels above simply watching.

This is obsession. This is addiction. Sick and twisted and perverted.

Andrew does not leave.

He climbs into your bed instead. Kicks off his boots and discards his hoodie until he's in nothing but his jeans. He slips beneath your sheets—satin, and pink, and filled with the scent of your shampoo and your skin and—fuck.

His cock is leaking by the time he undoes his belt. Andrew reaches beneath your sheets and shoves his jeans down just enough to free himself.

And it's almost enough to blow his load right fucking there, when the underside of his heavy length brushes against the fabric of your sheets. It's almost too much, being in your room, in your bed, breathing in your scent.

But he resists. Grits his teeth and takes his cock in one hand and uses the other to wrap the soft fabric of your underwear around his aching length.

This time, there's nothing slow about the way he strokes himself to the thought of you. He's desperate for it. Release already clouds the edges of his mind and he needs the relief it'll provide.

His brain feels hazy and his vision blurs, just thinking about you, lying here, hand between your legs. He wonders how you touch yourself, if you just play with your clit or if you fuck yourself on your fingers.

The thought crosses his mind that you might be using more than just your hand, and Pope finds himself sitting up. He leans over the edge of your bed and sticks his hand back into your panty drawer, reaching to the very bottom, feeling around until the tips of his fingers brush over silicone.

His heart is beating fast.

It's a small thing. Pink, of course. With only a small, almost hidden power button.

Pope leans back in your pillows and turns the little vibrator on. It buzzes to life in his hand, and when he pushes the button again, the intensity ratchets even higher.

There's only three settings. He turns it to the highest one and imagines holding it against your swollen clit. He imagines you lying under him, thighs around his waist, hips bucking wildly, chasing the vibration that he gives and gives and then takes away.

He turns so he's lying face down in your sheets now, nose pressed into your pillow. Pope puts the vibrator between his cock and the soft expanse of his abdomen, and he feels the sensation everywhere.

He's still got your underwear wrapped around his cock, and he gives a tentative roll of his hips against the mattress.

The groan he lets out is guttural. With his eyes closed, he can imagine its not your panties he's fucking but you. The tight, wet cunt between your legs. He can imagine it's the curve of your throat he's got his nose buried in and not your pillow. He can imagine that sweet, intense vibration is reverberated through your pelvic bone, little toy pressed hard against your clit.

Pope tells himself he'd make it so fucking good for you. He'd bury his cock so deep you'd never forget the weight of it inside you. He'd whisper how beautiful you are in your ear and make you look him in the eyes while he watches you cum over and over and over.

His release is…embarrassingly fast.

A few rolls of his hips against your mattress and he's cumming into the lace fabric of your panties, the vibration of the toy milking him until he's so overstimulated it almost hurts.

Pope rolls over, turns the toy off, buries it back in the bottom of your drawer. He gives himself a few more moments to gather himself. To catch his breath, to wipe himself clean (never mind the couple of drops that now stain your satin sheets. That could be from anything, right?).

He tucks himself back into his jeans, pulls on his boots and his hoodie, and tosses your underwear in the pile of clothes next to the laundry bin.

There's a pair of your jeans in the middle of the floor, away from the rest. One leg of the denim is inside out. Pope takes the cash from his wallet and tucks it into the pocket of your jeans, leaving out just enough that he knows you'll notice it.

He leaves.

Locks the door behind him with the spare key.

Makes it halfway across the courtyard before he doubles back, lets himself back into your apartment and into the bathroom where he pockets one of the many different chapsticks on the sink.

It isn't until he's home, tucked safe back in his own apartment, that he realizes it's strawberries and cream flavored.

Andrew puts it on, swiping the transparent petroleum over his lips. He tells himself it's almost like kissing.

Later that day, Craig calls a family meeting. But you've just gotten home, and he knows you'll find the cash within a few minutes when you go to change out of your clothes.

So Andrew waits at the bottom of the stairs on his side of the courtyard. He can't see into your apartment from here, though. And he decides he'll only wait for thirty minutes.

He responds to text messages and opens his blank, photo-less Instagram (that he definitely didn't make only to look at your profile. The one filled with selfies under neon lights and bikini photos on the beach and mirror pictures in the dressing room at that one boutique in the mall).

Twenty nine minutes later, he hears an apartment door slam shut and looks up to see you.

You've got your bag over one shoulder and a grin on your face and the cash in your hand. Enough to cover the additional charges and a little extra, too.

You notice him at the bottom of the cement stairs and freeze, but you don't look…scared, like he expects. Maybe a little startled at first, but the tension bleeds from your face the moment you recognize him.

He should say something. Talk to you. Apologize, maybe, for staring at you.

But Andrew isn't sorry.

And he's never really been good at talking, anyway.

You tilt your head and give him the sweetest fucking smile he's ever seen. It's somehow innocent and knowing at the same time, and Andrew feels the corners of his mouth lifting in response.

Something passes silently between you. An…understanding, maybe. You know he watches you, and he knows you know, but…you don't stop him. You just let it happen.

You smile at him from fifteen feet away.

And then you turn to leave, no doubt making your way to pay off that stupid bill that caused you so much unrest.

Pope watches you go, like always.

But this time, you glance back at him over your shoulder with…something lingering in your pretty eyes. Excitement, maybe. He can't be sure.

He needs to get closer.

During the family meeting, he isn't very present. His mind is so far away, stuck on you, that he just blindly agrees to whatever job they're doing next and trusts that it'll all work out.

When he returns to his apartment, there's a note stuck to his door.

A pink sticky note with nothing but a phone number and a heart with an arrow through it scribbled on the paper.

Your phone number, Pope knows.

He knows he shouldn't text you.

It's stupid and dangerous and god, you really shouldn't be giving your number to random men. He could be a creep. He could be a stalker or something.

His message just says,

Hello.

Your response is immediate, with no capitalization which seems quite…fitting for you. He finds it strangely endearing.

hey

are u the guy from apt 212 ???

Pope can feel that this is a bad idea already. But he's already here, and there's no going back now, is there? He doesn't want to hurt your feelings. He doesn't want to leave you on read and make you think he's not interested when the problem is the exact opposite.

Yes.

The typing bubble pops up, disappears, and appears again three different times before you send another message.

im gonna be home in like an hr

will u be watching ???

Always, he wants to say. Fucking always. He can't take his eyes off you, no matter how hard he tries. No matter how shameful it feels.

Andrew's hands shake as he types out a response.

Do you want me to be?

No hesitation this time. Your message comes through a second later.

uhmmm tbh yeah <3

He exhales a long breath. It doesn't feel real. Like he's imagining the entire thing. How could he not be? Why on earth would the sweetest, prettiest little thing want someone to watch her?

But the weight of his cell phone in his hand is real.

And the text message is real.

And this…this is real.

Then yes. I will be.

You don't reply, and Andrew's heart flutters in his chest as he takes his practiced position in the chair in front of his window and waits.

True to your word, you're skipping up the steps fifty three minutes after the last message is sent. You turn on those LEDs and and move about your apartment like normal, kicking off your sneakers and dropping your bag by the door. You change out of your clothes and put on a worn in t-shirt that's two sizes too big for you, but underneath…

Pope can see the sheer thigh highs you wear and the black, lace edge of them. He can see those strappy garters attached to them, but nothing else. The straps disappear beneath your shirt, leaving him wanting for more.

You're teasing him, Pope realizes.

He watches with bated breath as you lay on the couch, getting comfortable with the throw pillow against the arm.

And then, for the first time, Andrew watches you touch yourself.

You start slowly, hands roaming over your body, on top of the fabric, massaging gently at the inside of your thighs.

His cock's always hard watching you, truth be told. But this…

His skin feels hot. His lungs feel tight.

Your fingers curl around the edge of your t-shirt, and you pull it over your head to discard it on the floor.

Andrew hasn't seen you wear this set before, not even on those sacred Sundays.

It's pretty. Matching black lace. The bra is low cut and pushes your breasts up your chest, the soft flesh swelling over the top. The waistband of the matching panties is decorated in shining silver gems, laying so perfectly against your hips that he feels dizzy just looking at it.

The prettiest package, just begging to be unraveled by his big, mean hands.

You dressed up for him.

You dressed up for him.

Your hands start to move again, palming your breasts, pulling the lace down until they spill out of the top. Your nipples are so pretty that his mouth waters. He wants to kiss them, to feel the shape of them under his tongue. He wants to kneel over top of you and jerk himself off until they're covered in his sticky white release.

You squeeze your breasts until your nipples form pretty little peaks, and then your hands slide lower. Over your abdomen, and your hips, and then your thighs. You bring them slowly back up, only to slide them over the lace fabric of your panties, right down the center of your cunt.

Andrew thinks he could die.

He could fucking die, just looking at you.

Carefully, you unbuckle the chrome latch of your garter. The left side first, and then the right quickly follows. You leave the lace belt on, but hook your thumbs around the bedazzled lace of your panties and pull them down your thighs painfully slowly.

Your knees fall apart.

Pope swallows hard.

He can see everything from here. The seam of your thighs that he's dreamt about. The pretty shape of your pussy. The wetness that's gathered between your folds, slick and shiny with arousal. With want.

For him. It's for him.

His cock throbs so hard it hurts.

Pope doesn't touch himself. He can't. Can he? All you asked of him was that he watched.

That's what you wanted.

But wouldn't it be better if he was there? Wouldn't it be better if he could touch you, if he could taste you, if he could fuck you?

All you'd have to do is let him in.

Your fingers stroke gently over your clit in small circles, and he watches in awe as your lips part and your spine bends.

He can't hear your moans but god does he wish he could. Thinks about putting a little microphone in your lampshade the next time he sneaks into your apartment.

Your fingers drift lower, over your center, and slowly press inside.

Pope wants it to be him so fucking bad.

If not his cock inside you then his fingers. They're bigger. Longer. Thicker. They'd please you more. Reach places your fingers can't.

Maybe his tongue. He'd drink you right from the fucking source and cum in his jeans, probably. But he'd make sure to find that sweet, velvety spot inside you first and he'd spell his full fucking name over it with a pointed tongue.

Silly girl. Don't you know what he could do for you? Don't you know what he could do to you?

Pope squeezes the bulge in his jeans to try and alleviate the pain of his lust.

You fuck yourself with your fingers, stuffing in one and then two and then three, stretching yourself on them, slick dripping down the seam of your cunt. Your back arches when your free hand finds your clit, and he knows you're close.

He knows he shouldn't, but he searches frantically for his phone anyway and sends another text message.

I want to hear you.

You pause only long enough to grab your phone off the coffee table, read the text, and lay your phone on the arm of the couch behind you.

Pope's phone buzzes in his hand.

You're calling him.

He answers on the first ring, and the sounds that greet him are so erotic it steals the breath from his lungs.

You sound so pretty. So sweet and feminine, everything he's imagined yet somehow so, so much more. He's sure you can hear his heavy breaths on the other end of the phone, but Pope can't find it in himself to care. Can't think of much else besides the way you whimper and the sight of your fingers stuffed inside you.

"Oh, god—"

His inhale is shaky.

"I'm gonna cum," you choke out, words hazy with your moans. "I'm so close, I'm so fucking—hmm. Yes. What's your name?"

He almost doesn't hear you, so lost in the sight before him. Immersed in the euphoria of it. But then he says, voice a low, uncertain whisper, "Andrew."

Your spine bends and the fingers on your clit slow. "Oh my god. Fuck, Andrew—I'm cumming, I'm—yes, yes—god."

His cock twitches and when he tries to soothe it with another tight squeeze, he sends himself careening off the precipice of release instead. His head falls back and his once heavy breaths get stuck in his lungs. Pope rubs himself over his jeans, making a sticky, hot mess in his boxers, generating what little friction he can.

He watches you come down in real time. Not his dreams, not his imagination. He watches it happen. Watches that fucked-out, hazy look cross your face. Watches the tension in your muscles melt away, wishing he could kiss the junction of your throat.

Pope wishes he could worship you. Wishes he could clean you up and put on that trashy reality show you like and hold you against his chest, comforting you while your brain comes back to earth.

Instead, you lean up. Grab your phone and press it to your ear, staring right at him through his wide open window.

He doesn't know what he expects you to say, but it's certainly not, "Have you been inside my apartment, Andrew?"

For a second, he thinks about lying. Because there's no way you know, right? Not for sure. It's not like you have cameras or anything (he knows, because he checked).

But he doesn't want to lie. Not to you.

"I…might have been. Once, yes."

"Did you steal my chapstick?"

"You have ten of them."

He hears your laugh for the first time, and the sound is like sunlight in his chest. "You took the best flavor."

"I'm…I'm sorry. I'll return it."

"Keep it. I already got a new one," you say. "Cost me five hundred dollars, though."

So, you know it was him who left the cash, too.

Smart, pretty girl.

He doesn't say anything, too afraid he'll say something stupid or awkward the way he usually does. He doesn't want to ruin this moment. This absolutely perfect moment.

You smile at him, kiss your palm, and blow it towards your window. "Goodnight, Andrew."

He feels his face heat. "Goodnight."

Pope rides the high of it for days.

Can't shake the sight of you open and bare for him. Can't stop thinking about the sound of your moans or the way you'd said his name in the peak of euphoria. He fucks his first to the thought of it more times than he can count.

And Andrew's never been a really sexual person. Not unless it's with someone he loves.

But is that what this is? Love?

You've never met. Not really, not properly. How could it be something so intense? You don't know him. You don't know who he is or what he does. You don't know how he's hurt and maimed and killed.

Would you be afraid, finding out? Would you run to the police if you knew? Would you recoil away from him with terror in your eyes?

All things left unsaid. All things that may, very well, never be said.

Pope feels so uncertain with all of this that he finds himself resorting to fucking google, even. Search history littered with questions and Reddit threads that never provide any real clarity.

Define love.

Define obsession.

How to know if you're in love?

How to ask a girl out?

How to get over a girl.

Define voyeur.

Define fetish.

How big of an age gap is too big?

Apartments for sale on the east coast.

Pink champagne candle.

Strawberries and cream chapstick bulk pack.

You text him the following weekend.

do u wanna like…go out sometime?? been thinking about u a lot

He's at Smurf's when he reads the message.

Pope doesn't even realize he's smiling until Deran slides a beer across the counter at him and asks, "What's got you all happy today?"

And Pope just shakes his head. Schools his features back into neutrality and says, "Nothing. Just won a bet."

He can tell his brother doesn't believe him, not even for a second. But thankfully, Deran doesn't push any further. He lets the subject go, but the question stays stuck in Andrew's head for hours.

It takes him a while to decide on a response. It's honest, and…mostly true.

We shouldn't. I'm a lot older than you.

Your response is one single, painful letter.

k

He doesn't respond to try his hand at damage control, even though he wants to. It's probably better this way, he thinks. Better that there's some distance between you. Better than you hate him and see him as the creepy neighbor he is.

But that Saturday night, when you return home, it's not with your friends.

Pope watches from his window as you guide a man up the stairs and into your apartment.

He's tall. Dark haired, with bright eyes and white teeth and a good smile. Closer to your age. Handsome like a man allowed into your space should be.

You're fumbling a little with your apartment key and Pope watches as the man stands behind you and slides his hands down the back of your thighs.

Thighs he should be touching. Thighs he's watched for months. Thighs that spread for him, long before this fucking loser ever laid his eyes on you.

He tells himself he won't interfere.

You're your own woman. You deserve to feel good, even if it's with…someone else.

And Pope knows he's just going to have to get the fuck over it.

He did it to himself, really.

He should look away.

But he watches instead.

Watches the two of you fall onto the couch. Watches another man kiss down the column of your throat and squeeze the supple curve of your ass over your sequined dress.

Your eyes find his from across the courtyard, and Pope's jaw clenches.

Putting on another show for him. Filthy, filthy girl.

And you're just going to give it to some random man? Someone who doesn't know you like Pope does? Someone who doesn't know how you like to be touched?

He needs to look away. Close his own fucking blinds for once.

But he feels frozen. Knowing this time, you're watching him. Looking for him. Goading for a reaction.

Pope watches the slow ascent of the man's hand. Promises himself he won't interfere. He'll just watch to make sure you're safe, that's all.

But the moment that greedy hand disappears beneath your dress, Andrew's moving. Throwing open his door and slamming it closed behind him. He crosses the courtyard and takes the steps two at a time.

His fist against your apartment door is incessant. He doesn't stop, even when he hears the uttered, male voice ask, "Who is that?"

When the door opens, it's you who stands in front of him, chin tilted up as you stare at him, pupils flared wide.

The man you'd brought home with you hovers over your shoulder.

Pope doesn't even look at him. He stares only at you as he says, a little snarl in his voice, "Tell him to leave."

"Dude, what the fuck? Who is this guy?"

Your lips curl at the corners. A devilish little smile. "Okay," you say, nodding, your voice soft and pliant. You turn your head to look at the man who stands behind you. "Sorry, but you've gotta go."

"You're joking," he responds flatly. "You said I could—!"

Andrew reaches past you and takes him by the collar, pulling him out of your apartment and slamming him up against the paneled siding. "I ever see you in this apartment again, I'll fucking kill you. You understand me?"

"Jesus fucking—yeah, okay. Alright. Sorry."

Pope isn't joking. Doesn't say it to scare him off but rather as a warning.

He lets him go and watches him scramble down the stairs. He doesn't turn back to face you until the little tool you used for attention gets in his car and drives away.

And when he does finally turn back to you…Christ. Your eyes are half lidded and full of lust. Pope's close enough this time that there's no mistaking it.

He should be a gentleman. Should take you out first. Bring you home and kiss you on your doorstep and leave you untouched.

He knows he should.

What he does instead is curl his hand around the back of your neck and pull you to him. He leans down, mouth hovering over yours, breathing in your panicky exhales. "This what you want?"

Your grin is immediate and undeniable. You nod and breathe out the word, "Please."

Andrew kisses you hard, crowding you back into your apartment. He kicks the door closed behind him and slides his tongue into your mouth, tasting you and groaning at the sweetness. There's mint and strawberry and you, his favorite flavor.

He feels drunk on it. On the taste of your tongue, the glide of your wet lips over his, the way your hands scramble and tug desperately at his belt.

"Fuck," he sighs, pulling back just enough to see you. "Open your mouth, baby. Wide. And stick out your tongue."

The way you immediately obey has his cock twitching. Good girl. So fucking good for him when he gives you exactly what you need.

Andrew licks the flat of your tongue once, delighting in the way you whimper in response, before bringing his hand to your mouth. He slides two fingers behind your teeth and orders, "Suck."

You do, lips closing tight around the digits, wet tongue swirling over his thick knuckles. He pushes them further down your throat, your eyes locked on his as he makes you choke on them.

"So fucking pretty," he tells you. "You always look so pretty."

Andrew pulls the straps of your mini dress over your shoulders, roughly tugging the fabric over your chest down to expose your breasts.

You're wearing the same lace bra you'd worn when you dressed up for him, he realizes. He can see the peaks of your nipples through the semi-sheer fabric, and leans down to lock his lips around the left one over the lace.

The fabric is rough beneath his tongue, a stark contrast to the softness of your skin. He sucks hard, spreading the wetness of his saliva over the lace. You push your dress further down your waist and over your hips.

Andrew slides his fingers out of your mouth, sticky and dripping with your spit. He brings them to his own lips instead and sucks them clean, watching your breath hitch and your eyes grow impossibly more hazy.

He lowers himself to his knees before you and his slick fingers work quickly at the straps of your heels, unbuckling them to free your pretty, white-painted toes.

Your hands find his shoulders for balance. "I like that you watch me," you tell him. "I think about it sometimes and it makes me so…god, Andrew. It gets me so wet."

He looks up at you from his knees, big brown eyes glassy and full of adoration. "Good," he says. "'Cause I'm gonna watch you a little closer tonight."

That pretty smile finds its way to your face again.

Andrew presses a sweet, chaste kiss to the apex of your thighs. Over your panties, right where he knows your clit lies beneath. He then stands to his feet, towering over you now without the added height of your heels, and presses you forward.

You take a careful step back, nearly losing your balance.

Andrew grins, taking another step, crowding you back towards your bedroom. He doesn't stop until the back of your knees hit the edge of your mattress.

You stumble backwards, falling into the plush sheets that he's all too familiar with. Lying on your back, propped up by your elbows, you stare up at him with wide eyes and he's reminded of a timid little animal caught in the trap of a predator.

Don't you know how dangerous he could be?

You don't look afraid. You actually look…eager.

Pope stands tall at the edge of your mattress. "Take off your clothes."

You do. Unclasping your bra first, tossing the fabric into the already existing mess on the floor. And then your panties follow, thumbs hooking around the fabric to drag it down your legs.

Andrew reaches around and fists the collar of his shirt, tugging it over his head. He feels warm all over, watching you greedily drink up the sight of him. He thinks he'd feel a little nervous, in any other setting. If it were anyone but you.

His sweet, filthy girl.

Andrew reaches into the half-open drawer of your nightstand, searching until he finds your vibrator again.

Your brows furrow as you watch him find it with practiced ease. "You went through my underwear drawer, too?"

"Did more than that," he admits.

You inhale like you're going to speak again, but the words melt to nothing when he tosses the small toy onto the bed beside you.

"Use it," Pope orders.

"What?"

He crawls onto the mattress between your legs, spreading them wide, laying your calves on either side of his hips. "Let me watch you."

There's a moment of hesitation, but you don't look nervous. Only…curious.

You pick up the vibrator and slide the pink silicone through your folds, spreading your arousal before you press the power button. You circle your clit with the tip of it a few times, teasing yourself.

When you turn the toy on, he can feel the vibration against his hands that grip your thighs. You let out a syrupy moan and turn the intensity higher, drawing tight circles around your pretty clit.

He watches you, eyes locked on the pink silicone between your legs. He watches your entrance flutter, tightening around nothing, begging to be filled. "Your pussy is so pretty," he mutters. "Do you know that?"

Your only response is a breathy whimper. You click the intensity up again, putting it on the highest setting, and Pope sighs when your legs begin to shake around him.

He wants to watch you make yourself cum. Wants another scene to fuck his fist to in the shower or in his bed or in his truck.

But he's here. Finally, finally here, in your bed, with you, and he can't help himself.

Pope grips your hips hard and pulls you closer, tilting your hips up into his lap. The vibrator falls from your hand at the sudden movement, but he's quick to return it to you. "Keep going."

You press the silicone back to your clit, and Andrew spreads you open with gentle thumbs. He gathers the spit in his mouth and lets it drip from his lips and onto the seam of your cunt.

And then he's sliding his middle finger inside of your entrance, curling it upwards, searching for that sweet spot that makes you writhe.

It doesn't take long. He's watched you. He knows just what you like and what angle to hit. And the second the tip of his finger presses hard against it, you fist your free hand in the sheets and curses fall from your sweet mouth.

Pope slides another thick finger inside, watching the way you squirm, feeling the walls of your cunt flutter around the swell of his knuckles.

"I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna—oh, fuck. Feels so good, feels so fucking—"

A long, throaty moan leaves your mouth, and he feels the warmth of your release pool in his palm. You're so slick that each wet thrust of his fingers echoes against the walls of your room.

He doesn't stop until you're twitching. Until you click the vibrator off and shove it away from you. And even then, he still gives a few, slow curls of his fingers inside of you. Not touching with intent, just…feeling. Memorizing.

Once you catch your breath, you lean up enough to find his eyes again. You say timidly, shyly, "I want…I want to feel you, Andrew. I want you inside me. Do you…do you want to fuck me?"

It's the most asinine question he's ever been asked in his fucking life. Does he want to fuck you?

He's thought of nothing else for months. Every night when he fights for sleep, it's the thought of you under him that puts him to bed.

It's such an impractical concern from his point of view that he laughs. Actually laughs, for the first time in years. "Oh, baby."

Pope takes your hands in his. He presses one to his chest, right over his heart, and the other against the hardness in his jeans.

"I have never wanted another woman as bad as I want you," he says truthfully. "But I…you…you deserve better than this. Better than me. You understand that, don't you?"

You shake your head. "You don't know me, Andrew. Not really. You don't know if—"

"No, no. I do. I know you're the kind of friend who would give the shirt off their back. The kind of girl who'd let her phone get cut off before asking for help. The kind of girl who gets up every morning and just…tries. Every day. And you fucking…you smile about it. You're good. You're so fucking good and I…"

He stops.

Remembers the last time he'd loved someone like this and how he'd made a stupid confession he should've taken to his grave and how it'd fucked him completely.

"You're what, Andrew?"

Pope swallows. "I'm...I'm a bad man. I've hurt people. I will…hurt people, I—" His voice cracks. He lowers his eyes, trying to turn away, unable to find the strength to face you.

But you take his jaw in your gentle hands and force him to look at you. Sweet, angel of a girl that you are. And then you say without a waver to be found in your voice, "I like who you are. Do you think I gave the man who watches me through my window my phone number because I want some guy I could match with on Tinder?"

He tries to slow the rapid pounding of his heart. He wonders if love is supposed to be like this. To feel like this. All consuming and terrifying and devastatingly hopeful above all.

You shake your head and tuck your legs beneath you, sitting up on your knees. He sits stone still as you lean forward and kiss his cheek, whispering against his ear, "I've been watching you, too, Andrew Cody."

Something shifts inside of him as you say it. Uttering his last name that he'd never given you, that isn't even on his lease because this is a fake apartment under a fake name to launder the money they steal.

Oh—sweet, smart girl. Smarter than he thought.

How silly of him to ever doubt you.

There's a newfound wildness in your eyes when they meet his again. An unveiling. Like he's seeing you for who you truly are for the first time.

And you're…god. So fucking beautiful.

And, yeah. Pope thinks he's been right this whole fucking time.

He's weird and wrong and sickly obsessed.

But you are, too.

Andrew takes you by the back of the neck and kisses you hard, desperate to taste you, to close what little physical space remains between your body and his. He pushes you back against the mattress and follows you down.

Your hands find his belt buckle before he does, and he stares down at you as your deft fingers pry the leather open and unbutton his jeans. He helps you push the denim down his legs until his cock springs free, heavy and leaking. Wanting for you, twitching as you take it carefully in your hand.

A groan reverberates at the back of his mouth. Your hands are so soft. Perfect and pliant. One day, he swears he'll show you how he likes to be touched. He'll let you sit in his lap and watch him stroke his cock for you.

But for now, he lets you touch him slowly. Experimental. Feeling the heavy weight of him in your palm. You spit on your fingertips and spread your saliva over his sensitive tip, flushed red and pulsing beneath your touch.

You lean back and guide him between your thighs, sliding the head of his cock through your syrupy folds and over your clit.

The moment you line him up at your entrance, Pope eases inside and you let out the sweetest fucking sigh he's ever heard in his entire life. Sweet and soft and so, so satisfied.

It's so beautiful. You're so beautiful. And you feel warm and heavenly and wet around him. He pulls out slowly, almost all the way, and then drives his cock back into your cunt.

You squeal and those sharp, acrylic nails dig into his spine. But your legs circle his hips, and so Pope does it again.

He fucks you hard. Claiming that spot at the back of your cunt, pressed right up against your cervix. He rolls his hips and presses his mouth to yours, swallowing up those desperate, carnal sounds he pulls out of our chest.

Sweet girl. Sweet fucking girl. He reaches between you and circles your clit. "My girl now," he says, words spoken against your lips. "You'll never need anyone else, baby. No one but me."

You nod, the velvety walls of your pussy squeezing around the hard length of his cock.

Andrew puts his whole weight on top of you, grinding himself between your thighs, giving you everything he has. Everything he is.

"I'm yours," you choke out. "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm—"

It becomes a mantra. One that feeds his desire, in perfect sync with the rhythm of his thrusts. He watches your arousal begin to crest, nearing the summit, the muscles in your thighs twitching. "Look at me, baby," he says. "Tell me you love me when I make you cum."

You're so lost in it, head all spacey, that your eyes remain closed until he takes your jaw in a firm grip.

There are pretty tears in your eyes when you open them, but that smile on your face is present, too. He feels you pulse around him and your breath gets all shallow and then—

"I love you, Andrew, I fucking—oh my god please, please—I love you."

The words are music to his ears, tingling down his spine, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He thought the sound of his name in your mouth was beautiful but this…fuck. He could die.

Pope thinks he would. For you, he would.

He fucks you through it. Tastes your moans and says, "Yeah, that's it. Give it to me. Look so pretty when you cum for me."

He doesn't let his pace falter until your muscles loosen, until your nails stroke gently over his spin instead of leaving marks.

You pepper sweet kisses over his jaw, tongue sliding up the shell of his ear. "I want you to cum inside me," you tell him.

He's been fighting it the whole time, trying desperately not to blow his load before he'd at least gotten you there first.

But when you say that?

When you say, "Please, Andrew. Want you to give it to me. Want you to fill me up with your cum. Please. I need it."

He thinks about telling you that you don't have to beg. Not him, not for anything (especially this). But you just sound so pretty, begging for his cum, that he can't bring himself to do it.

So, he gives you what you want instead. Fucks his cum into you, groaning low in your ear, cock pulsing inside you. You feel so good wrapped around him it's euphoric. Otherworldly.

Your pussy grips tight, milking him dry, taking every last drop (he knows you're on birth control. Don't you know the women's clinic downtown keeps a spare key beneath the plant in front of their door?).

Andrew is careful when he slides out of you. And he wastes no time before kicking his jeans the rest of the way off and pulling you against his chest.

He pulls the blanket up around your shoulders and presses a kiss to your hairline. His voice wavers a little as he says, "Sorry if I…if I was a little rough."

You shake your head, pressing your nose to the divot between his pectorals. "It was perfect," you murmur against his skin.

Silence settles between you. Comfortable and easy, the sound of your breathing in perfect synchronization.

After some time you say, "I meant it, you know. Wouldn't have said it if I didn't. I really think I might be in love with you, Andrew. Is that…crazy?"

Yes, he wants to say.

But he feels it, too.

So instead he says, "You know, I don't…I don't have much experience with that sorta thing. Don't really know how to…to navigate it, I guess. But, uhm…yeah. Me, too."

He feels that smile of yours against his chest.

Andrew knows that this dynamic the two of you have created is weird.

He knows that.

But at least, now, he's not alone in it.

The closer 7PM rolled around, the more you could barely keep yourself still.

You tried that yoga routine you'd wanted to try a hundred times, but kept missing whatever the instructor was saying. You tried reading but couldn't make any of the words stick to your brain, reading the same sentences three times over before putting it down on the coffee table. You made yourself some tea, took a shower—your everything shower—your entire skin care routine, and did a hair mask. Nothing could keep your mind from running through the guiltiest thoughts, how Robby might react when he got back from the hospital. You couldn't even keep dinner down. The leftovers sat mostly untouched in the bowl beside you, the sauce going cold while the clock on the stove clicked closer and closer toward shift change.

At 7:45PM, the front door opened.

You'd heard his long, tired sigh before you saw him, and placed yourself casually on the couch, flipping a page in the same book you'd barely absorbed earlier that day, legs tucked beneath you.

Robby appeared in the archway a second later, shrugging his backpack off onto the upholstered bench by the door before toeing off his shoes. He peeled the navy Figs top over his head as he walked, leaving himself in his gray long sleeve and those cargo pants he always wore to work. He looked exhausted.

He didn't say anything when he came over to the couch. He just dropped down beside you and pulled you into him immediately, one arm wrapping around your waist before he buried his face against your shoulder and let out another long exhale.

"Hey," you said softly, arms sliding around his shoulders as you leaned into him automatically. You kissed his temple. His hand tightened on you a little before tugging you over fully into his lap.

The position had the nerves in your stomach fluttering, remembering this exact seating in a Ford F-150 less than twelve hours ago.

Your hands moved to Robby’s face, thumbs brushing along his scruffy jaw as you looked down at him. He looked so tired that for a second you considered waiting until tomorrow. Maybe you'd let him shower or eat first. Get a good nights sleep first. But you promised, and you also just knew better.

"Michael…" you whispered, "I have to tell you something."

"So it's Michael today, hm?" he murmured, tilting his head up to kiss you gently on the mouth. One hand moved up your back slowly, resting there.

You sighed into his gentle kiss, hoping to god it wasn't your last. When you pulled away, about to bring your hands off his neck, his own hands reached up quickly, catching your wrists before you could get too far. He held them against his chest, brows pulling together immediately.

"What is it?" he asked very seriously. His brown eyes were fully focused on you now, all the exhaustion from a second ago suddenly honed onto your face, his hands warm around the boney joints of your wrists.

"I—" you started, and then stopped, pushing your lips together, thinking of the right words. "I got a ride home from Jack today…and…we…"

His head flinched back, blinking quickly like his brain was filling in the rest before you could even finish the confession.

"You and Jack what?" he asked, but there was already a steady drip of venom in the words. His jaw clenched hard beneath the beard, mouth pulling tight under his mustache as he stared up at you. You could practically see him piecing it together already, his eyes flicking over your face waiting for you to deny whatever conclusion he'd jumped to.

"I'm sorry, Michael." you said, clenching your fists uselessly, "we were just talking—and then—he kissed me and we—" you shut your eyes tightly, "I slept with him."

Robby slowly released your wrists from his hold, and your hands felt cold from the sudden loss of his touch. He leaned his head back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. Your hands went to his shoulders, pawing at him, fisting the gray undershirt in your fingers.

"I'm sorry—" you pleaded again, hearing your voice start to shake. "I'm so sorry, I should've asked you, I know but—"

He sat up suddenly, forcing you off his lap in the process. The movement wasn't rough exactly, but there was nothing gentle in it either. Barely any touch at all.

Then he stood, and started pacing the room.

You watched him walk past the coffee table, one hand dragging over his mouth, then the back of his neck, then down to his hip before he turned again. His socks made almost no sound against the hardwood, the TV reflecting every move faintly across the dark windows behind him. He paced around in front of you for a few minutes. You felt helpless, just watching, waiting.

"Michael—"

He shook his head, lifting his finger to silence you, eyes squeezing shut as he kept walking around.

He came to an abrupt halt, finally turning toward you. His hands came together in front of his mouth almost like he was praying, thumbs pressed hard against his lips before he dragged them downward and pointed them vaguely in your direction, like he was trying to force words out in the correct order and couldn't manage it.

"What exactly did you think was gonna happen here?" he asked.

"I—I don't know." you answered honestly, "I thought he was just going to take me home, and then he started talking about the arrangement, why he never gave in and then, it was just a fucking mess and—god, Michael, I'm so—"

"So you fucked him? He started saying sweet words and you slept with him? Where?"

You swallowed dryly. "It wasn't like that—"

"Where?" he snapped.

"Parking lot."

His eyes crinkled in a sort of sarcastic smile as he nodded, bringing his hands up to his face to drag down, sucking in a deep breath.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath. "Jack."

"I didn't mean for it to happen."

"Not really the point," he snapped.

You flinched at the tone.

He noticed immediately too. You saw it in the way his eyes squeezed shut for a second before he brought his hands to his neck, pulling at his shoulders before dropping them again—restless, agitated.

"Look at me and tell me honestly you thought this was okay."

You opened your mouth, then closed it again.

Robby gave another short nod to himself, humorless. "Yeah."

"I know I crossed a line, and I'm so—"

"A line?" he repeated, finally looking at you fully now. "Honey, this whole thing only works because there are lines. Rules! Trust!"

You could tell he was trying very hard not to let his voice rise in octave, a sharpness to it, a forced quiet.

"I let a lot slide. Probably too much lately." He pointed vaguely toward you, frustrated. "Flirting, teasing, picking favorites. But this arrangement works because I know what's going on. I know who's touching you. I know you're safe. I know nobody's getting weird ideas in their fucking heads."

"He doesn't have weird ideas—"

"How the hell would you know?" he shot back immediately. "You think I haven't watched people in that department getting a little too attached lately?"

Robby laughed once through his nose and shook his head, walking again. "And him. Of all people."

"He was upset."

"Oh, don't do that." Robby pointed at you sharply. "Do not start defending Jack Abbot to me right now, because I swear to god that is gonna make this so much worse."

You looked down at your hands instantly. He stood there staring at you for a long second before speaking again, quieter this time.

"You know what the really shitty part is?" he asked, voice threaded with anguish and almost humor, as if it was laughable. "I came home just wanting you. That's it. Whole fucking day went to hell, a patient died on me because I didn't insist on getting her checked while her husband coded. We had more West Bridge reroutes, one of my interns passed out during a trauma, and all I wanted was to come home and hold onto you for five goddamn minutes, even after the conversation this morning."

Your eyes burned immediately.

"And instead I walk in here and find out you've been sneaking around behind my back."

"Michael—"

"Enough." His jaw tightened again. He looked at you then, tired more than angry now, which somehow hurt worse.

"You are the one good thing I had," he said plainly. "And now I just… how am I supposed to trust you?"

Your tears had begun to fall in earnest streaks down your face now, your voice barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry."

He sighed, shaking his head, before turning away.

And one word rang in your head as the bedroom door slammed shut.

Had.

You were the one good thing he had.

The rest of the night, the following days… were some of your worst in a very long time.

Robby hadn't said much to you at all, his silence unbearable. That night, after the argument, he just said he needed some time to think, and the following days only gave you more time to think too. More time for your brain to chew itself apart.

He even started picking up extra shifts at the hospital, offering to take some of Al-Hashimi's workload, which left you alone in the house most of the time. You didn't go out much either. Part of it was because you barely wanted to be seen. Another part was because every dollar spent felt wrong now. It was Robby's money. Robby's house. Robby's groceries in the fridge. Robby's money that bought the expensive shampoo in the shower that needed a refill.

You felt awful— guilty. You didn't know what to do. You felt like you'd ruined something so good. Something built on the things you'd broken. Trust, understanding, connection. You didn't know what Robby was going to say, if he'd ever say anything, if things would ever go back to normal. If you'd have to move out and find somewhere to live, a job, make new friends. It was so overwhelming.

Your brain just wouldn't stop running.

You'd sit on the couch with an untouched coffee in your hands, staring through the sliding glass doors into the backyard while the steam slowly disappeared from the mug. The TV would be on and you wouldn't realize three episodes had passed because your mind had wandered somewhere else entirely. You'd wonder where you'd even put your clothes if he told you to leave. Whether you'd need boxes. Whether you still had your old suitcase somewhere. You'd wonder if you'd have to call somebody and then remember there really wasn't anybody to call.

Sometimes you thought about what Jack was up to. If maybe you should call him. But you also knew better. You wondered what it was like when the two of them saw each other when the shifts changed at the start and end of the day. Jack was one of Robby's closest people. He often said he didn't have friends, but that was a lie. Because Jack was one of his best friends. And you'd probably ruined that for him.

One morning a week later, you woke up to an empty bed again, and stared at the ceiling for an hour.

Your eyes burned as you thought about what your life had turned into. You'd woven it into Robby's in ways you hadn't even realized until he wasn't here. You used to walk into the kitchen and find him drinking his black coffee out of his I ❤️ Pittsburgh mug, hair a mess and plaid boxers askew as he read the morning paper. And now you'd wake up and reach your hand over the mattress, searching for his warmth before remembering he was sleeping in the guest room. You'd find yourself wanting to text him a funny part of the show you'd been binging, thinking he'd like it, wanting to save an episode til he got home, before remembering he probably didn't want to hear from you.

It hurt so badly.

Robby usually made things feel quieter in your head when things were hard. You never had to wonder where you stood with him before this. You never had to question if he wanted you. And when you weren't sure about something, he'd be there. He'd tell you where to sit for your evening binge of The Office, tell you what to add to the Instacart order while you sat beside him scrolling through recipes for the week, his hand rubbing slow circles against your thigh. Always soothing and sweet.

Half the time you didn't even realize there was anything other than this. You and him. How he was your assurance, your guide. How he knew what you needed even if you didn't. You remembered when he'd wander into the kitchen while you cooked and steal bites from the cutting board before nudging your hip with his and pointing toward the island stools because he'd already decided you'd done enough for the night. He'd slide a glass of water beside you because he'd noticed you hadn't touched yours in hours. He'd hand you one of his coziest, old collegiate sweatshirts before you even registered you were cold. He'd pull you into his lap when your leg started bouncing too much, fingers threading through your hair while he read over charts in the evenings, kissing the top of your head absentmindedly.

Tiny things that built and built until they became routine, until they became normal, until they settled into every corner of your life so completely that you'd stopped noticing them one by one.

And he wasn't even your boyfriend.

You needed to get out of bed. You needed to do something with yourself. All this moping, waiting, hoping, crying— it was getting to be too much. You were a grown fucking woman, after all. You'd made a mistake. You needed to get yourself together.

Because this was getting ridiculous.

You'd spent the last week moving between the bed and the couch and the kitchen and then back again, carrying your sadness around the house so much your body felt sluggish now. Heavy. Your eyes still had that swollen feeling from crying too much, your head dull from sleeping at weird hours and barely eating enough to count as meals.

You sat up and shoved the duvet off of yourself.

Pulling open your dresser and digging out some workout clothes, you threw on your cutest set. One you knew you'd feel good in. Or at least one you'd bought because Robby said you looked good in it and right now that felt close enough. You went into the bathroom, did your skincare, tied your hair back, brushed concealer beneath your eyes because you were tired of looking sad every time you caught yourself in the mirror. You threw on mascara, tinted lip balm, brushed your ornery eyebrows as best you could before heading back into the bedroom.

Looking around, you finally saw it all for what it was.

The water glass still sitting on the nightstand from three nights ago. One of Robby's sweatshirts hanging half off the dresser chair. Clothes piled on the floor. Moisturizer and makeup sitting open on the bedside table with a pile of tissues. The duvet was twisted up from days of crawling back into bed halfway through the afternoon.

You stared for a few seconds, and then turned and grabbed the hamper.

You pulled the sheets off and wrestled the duvet cover from the insert, getting tangled in the stupid thing halfway through and swearing under your breath before finally shoving it all into the washer. Then you got out your basket of cleaning supplies and kept going.

You swept. Scrubbed. Wiped down counters. Lit one of the candles sitting forgotten in the cabinet beneath the sink. You cleaned every inch of the apartment for the next few hours, your playlist blasting from your phone as you moved from room to room. The smell of lemon cleaner and laundry detergent slowly replaced the stale, shut in feeling that had settled over everything this past week.

And it helped.

A lot, actually.

For the first time in days your brain wasn't sprinting ahead of you. It only cared about what was directly in front of you: fold this towel, wipe down this counter, put this away. It felt like one of those corny montages in a movie where the girl finally gets her shit together.

Once the bedroom was looking refreshed with clean sheets and the comforter pulled smooth across the mattress, you blew out the candle you'd lit and headed out of the apartment.

And started to run.

Your lungs were burning by the time you'd made it a few blocks from the house.

God, it had been a while.

Not just the last week while you'd spent your time curled up on couches and under blankets feeling sorry for yourself. A long while. Before the accident, probably. Before your ex had started making little comments like: You really wear that out for a jog? Don't you think those shorts are a little much? You like people looking at you or something? Which then turned into him not wanting you to run at all.

Funny how things happened like that, how things changed so slowly you barely noticed them happening at all. Funny how easy it was to change yourself little by little until you looked up one day and realized you'd stopped doing things you used to love.

Robby had been the opposite.

Hell, the set you had on right now had been his choice. The memory flooded your minds' eye, of you standing in front of one of those giant Lululemon mirrors when he'd taken you shopping for a weekend away. You remembered tugging at the waistband and shifting your weight from foot to foot while you stared at yourself a little too hard. You remembered pulling lightly at the sports bra, uncertain about the way it sat against your chest, turning sideways and then back again.

Robby had been sitting outside the fitting room on one of those little upholstered benches, his arm extended across the back. He'd looked so pleased with himself as you walked out. Blushing and eyes alight with mirth. You missed that look on his face, it made you realize as your chest pulled tight. The way he'd look at you like that, all warm and entertained, like he'd stumbled into something good and still couldn't quite believe it was his. How he'd made you put on a fashion show in the hotel room when you'd gotten back of all the things he'd gotten you that day. The bliss of when all clothes were forgotten for the hours that followed.

Your sneakers slapped the pavement of the sidewalk while the late morning air filled your chest and scraped your throat. Your old running playlist that you never deleted blasted in your ears, the sky a pretty clear blue. Everything was so pretty today, even if you didn't feel the same. You looked around at the tall buildings reflecting the light of the sun, people bustling around on their lunch break, the world moving even if you felt like you'd been motionless for days.

You slowed a little as you approached the crosswalk ahead, coming to a stop at the corner and pressing the little crossing button with the heel of your hand. Your chest rose and fell hard now, sweat gathering beneath the band of your sports bra and sliding slowly down your spine.

You suddenly felt your phone vibrate in a quick, succinct alert in the waistband of your bottoms. With two fingers, you slid it from between your skin and the fabric, pulling it up to your face. You had to lift your other hand to shield the screen from the glare blinding your view.

Your stomach dropped. A text message appeared on your lock screen.

Jack Abbot: I think we should talk.

The little speaker beside you crackled to life. "Grant Street. Walk sign is on to cross Grant Street."

You barely heard it.

You didn't look up from your phone, staring at the text.

What the fuck was he thinking?

Your eyes stayed locked on the message while your brain immediately started spiraling ahead of you again, filling in spaces that didn't have answers yet. Had he talked to Robby? Did something happen?

You stepped out into the street to cross, and heard someone shout behind you through the muffle of your music in your ears. At first, you hardly registered it, filing it away as background noise of the city, until they were really shouting louder, close behind you.

"Watch out!"

Your head jerked up, and for a split second you didn't fully understand what you were looking at, but as you turned to the left, your eyes widened.

A bicyclist was coming straight toward you, moving fast enough that you could hear the tires humming against the pavement. His eyes had gone wide beneath his helmet, panic written all over his face as his hands yanked hard at the handlebars, trying to turn away from you.

Trying and…failing.

Because before you could react, the front tire slammed into your leg with enough force to knock your balance off its axis, something hard—a handlebar—driving sharply into your side and stealing the air from your lungs. Your phone went flying out of your hand as you fell, stomach lurching into your throat.

The sky tilted, world spinning as concrete rushed to meet you.

Fuck, that hurt.

You heard yourself groaning somewhere through the ringing in your ears while the world slowly blinked back into focus, sunlight too bright when your eyes finally cracked open. Your cheek was pressed against rough pavement, tiny grains digging into your skin.

As you brought your hand up to the bump forming on your head, you saw bright red staining your fingertips.

"Miss, are you okay?"

"What?" you murmured thickly.

You blinked hard and looked up. It was a man standing over you in a suit and tie, young, slicked back hair and clean shaved face, his brows pinched together while he crouched beside you.

"Let me take you to the emergency room, we're very close—"

"No—no, I'm fine!" you nearly shouted, syllables jumbling and coming out too fast as his words finally reached you.

But the second you tried sitting up, pain shot through your head so hard your face twisted and you sucked in a breath.

Hands were suddenly under your arms.

"Easy," the man said. "Easy."

Another pedestrian had come over now too, helping pull you up carefully while your feet tried finding solid ground beneath you.

Everything around you felt too loud. You could hear the bicyclist cursing somewhere nearby, people talking over one another, tires hissing over pavement, a car horn farther down the street. The bike itself sat twisted awkwardly near the curb.

As things slowly came back to you, you remembered his face right before impact, eyes wide beneath his helmet. Now he just looked furious. His arms were thrown out while he pointed at somebody nearby, shouting over everyone else.

Your head was splitting.

And suddenly you realized you were being walked quickly down the block by two sets of worried hands, the red Emergency Room looming ahead.

Oh, fuck.

"Promise you won't tell him?" you pleaded, gaze boring into Samira's brown worried eyes.

She was perched on the rolling stool beside you, one foot hooked around its base, hands folded loosely in her lap. The curtain of the triage bay swayed faintly in the draft of someone rushing past outside. Voices overlapped in the hallway: patients, doctors, Lupe's voice on the loudspeaker in the waiting room.

She frowned, clearly debating it over in her head, but nodded anyway. "Yeah, okay. Okay."

She looked over her shoulder toward Santos at the computer as she typed into your chart. Something passed silently between them before she turned back to you.

She slipped back into doctor mode while pulling gloves on. "Let's get neuro checks going. Did you black out at all?"

You frowned.

"I...don't know." you said, memory a little cloudy. "I think so?"

“Okay.” Samira nodded once, calm and focused, her penlight flicking briefly across your pupils again before she instructed you to follow her finger. “Any nausea? Neck pain? Dizziness?”

You shook your head slowly, though even that made your skull ache a little.

“And we’re gonna get a CT just to rule out any bleeding,” she continued. “Probably draw some blood too.”

"Woa, Samira—" your stomach twisted instantly. "I don't need all that, if I go back there he's gonna see I'm here—"

Around your finger, the pulse ox clipped tighter every time your heart rate climbed, the monitor beside you already chirping intermittently over nothing more than nerves. Leads had been stuck to your chest at some point while you'd still been dazed on the way in, wires trailing down beneath the thin blanket over your lap. The whole thing felt wildly overblown now that you were sitting upright in a bed.

Samira's expression softened as she leaned forward. "We'll keep you hidden," she said softly before looking over at Santos again, knowingly. The resident nodded back, and quietly went out into the hall.

Samira rolled the stool closer, sneakers squeaking faintly against the tile. "Do you wanna tell me what's going on?"

You actually didn't.

Your eyes dropped to your hands instead, fingers picking at the edge of the thin hospital blanket spread over your lap. You tried figuring out how to phrase it right, how to explain something so humiliating without sounding ridiculous. Spoiled. Childish. You felt like a little like the dog that bit the hand feeding it.

"He and I are just..." You swallowed. "Having some issues."

Samira's brows pulled together slightly. Her warm brown eyes studied you intently, flickering over your expression that you tried to keep hidden.

"I was..." your voice got smaller, "I was bad."

"Bad?" she echoed carefully.

You shook your head a little, frustrated with yourself already. "No, I just—I did something stupid and now things are weird and—"

The curtain suddenly got yanked open so hard the metal rings shrieked across the track.

Dana stood there holding it wide, chest rising fast like she’d run the whole way from the desk. Behind her, Robby barreled in so quickly he nearly clipped the stainless steel side tray with his hip, already yanking the stethoscope from around his neck as he moved toward you.

"What happened?" he demanded immediately.

"I'm fine—"

"What happened?" he repeated sharply, already reaching for your face. Dana stayed at the mouth of the curtain, a flat look of disappointment written across her features. You knew she was biting her tongue from chirping Thought you could hide or somethin' angel?

"Head strike from bicycle versus pedestrian. Witness said she didn't get up right away." Samira reported, looking at Robby. "CT head's already ordered. Neuro checks too."

"Jesus." He breathed as his hand brushed carefully through your hair near the tender spot along your hairline, fingertips searching around the injury.

"Deep breath for me, honey." he said.

You did, heart skipping at the pet name but as soon as you felt the glimmer of hope, it was wiped away when pain shot through your side, making your face twist in a grimace.

"Okay." His eyes closed briefly. "Okay. Let's add a rib series too."

You felt sick suddenly. Not physically sick—though your stomach was still flipping on itself, your head still throbbed…but…you felt sick like that thick, churning guilt that had been with you all week.

Because he looked so scared.

There were still faint marks pressed into the bridge of his nose from his glasses. His dark hair was flattened in strange directions, probably from one of the scrub caps used in surgical procedures. He smelled like coffee and hospital sanitizer and the stale air of the ED, like he'd probably barely sat down all day before getting called in here to deal with you too.

Samira squeezed your knee once before backing toward the computer. "I'll be back."

Dana gave you one more long look before following her out, and the curtain fell shut again.

The bay got quieter after that. Not quite silent, it was never truly silent in the emergency department.

Robby was still staring at your face, and you realized he had put his gloved hand on yours where it rested on the bed.

You'd missed the simple touch of his hands. When one would rest at the back of your neck steering you through crowded hallways, or when his fingers tapped absentmindedly against your thigh during movies, the way his hand would slip beneath your shirt when he was feeling cheeky. You missed finding him within the walls of this hospital, the strange comfort of him existing in an entirely different world when you came into the orbit of the ED. The way you could pull him out of the darkness for a while.

"I'm sorry," you whispered finally.

His eyes flicked to yours immediately.

"What?"

Your throat burned. Like you'd swallowed a hot coal down it, tightening around the lump. "I'm sorry," you repeated, pulling your hand away and twisting it into the other in your lap now. "I didn't mean to come here and make things worse and I know you're busy and after everything already I just—"

Robby's hands wrapped around yours once again, "Don't be sorry, honey."

You looked up at him, blinking a little, "You're not mad?"

"About you getting hit by a bicycle?" he said, huffing a little disbelieving breath, "Why would I be? I just care that you're safe."

Your chin began to wobble in earnest.

"Oh, honey—"

"I thought you hated me now."

"Honey—"

You couldn't help the wracking sob that came from your chest, his hand reaching for yours again even when you tried to pull away, but he held fast. Your face dropped, chin ducking until it almost hit your chest.

Finally he let go of your hand only to wrap his arms around you, kissing the side of your neck as he held you close, "Why would you ever think that?" he whispered into your hair.

"I was bad. We haven't spoken in days."

It felt so childish, so stupid when you said it. Especially when it came out like that—weak, wobbly and wet with tears.

He pulled away just to look at you.

"You are not a bad person, honey," he murmured softly. "You maybe behaved badly, but that does not make you bad. I'm sorry I haven't been very good at this either." He lifted his hand, and you leaned into it as it cupped your face, brushing beneath your eyes and collecting a tear there before it could run. "Hey, listen to me."

He lifted your face, making you look at him straight on. Your face felt hot and swollen, cheeks wet with streaks. You sniffled as you looked at him now. His eyes were so kind, so worried and sweet. You felt like you didn't deserve any of it.

"You are my best girl, I will never ever think you are a bad person." he said. "Things got confusing, and I've been… avoiding it, avoiding you...and I'm sorry."

Your hands reached for him automatically then, gathering the black sleeve beneath his scrubs in your fists and holding on. You'd spent days sleeping without him, sitting across rooms from him, pretending not to notice every place where he wasn't anymore, and now that he was here your body seemed to remember him before your brain did.

"How is your head, honey?" he asked, tilting his own while he looked at you.

"Hurts." you whined a little, your voice meek and small.

"Yeah?" it came out hoarse and sweet, and so gentle. You'd heard his voice go soft like that before, late at night with his mouth close to your ear, and the memory flushed through you for a second before disappearing again beneath the throbbing ache in your skull and the warmth of his hands still holding your face.

He moved to rest his knuckles against the top of your forehead, sliding down your cheek, feeling your temperature.

"You're alright, honey." he said. He pulled away then and immediately shifted back into work, reaching for his stethoscope and slipping the earpieces in before pressing the bell lightly against your chest, listening to your lungs, your heart, checking you over all over again with that same focus he'd walked in carrying.

When he leaned back again in front of you, he threaded his fingers together in his lap, and looked up at you.

"Stay here for a few tests, okay?"

You nodded.

"Hey."

You looked up.

"You're my best girl. Always. Nothing has changed between you and me. I just... I needed some time, is all."

Your eyes burned all over again. Wiping your face with the back of your hand, your voice came out like a croak: "Promise?"

He came in close then, inches away, and whispered, "Promise."

Then he kissed you gently.

It felt so warm that it almost hurt. Your skin tingled beneath it, his mustache rough against your face, and his breath smelled like coffee, like the coffee from home, like mornings in the kitchen and evenings on the couch and every little thing you'd spent the last week missing.

When he pulled away, there was an odd look on his face. Fluttering your eyes to look at him better, you watched a sad smile pull his lips, his eyes ful of something you weren't quite sure how to read. But before you could try, he was turning away and standing, heading for the curtain opening.

"Dana is going to bring you back here, okay? I'll be close by."

You nodded, your lips still tingling a little from his touch.

Rolling through the ED surrounded by people who recognized you at every turn was a form of torture. Dana did her best to bat people away whenever they'd come jogging up beside the hospital bed she insisted on keeping you in— asking questions, peering over shoulders, trying to get a look at you. She actually let Langdon walk alongside you for a few steps, checking in, fingertips grazing your cheek in a quiet assessment as he asked if you were okay before someone called his name from across the department and he was pulled off toward an incoming trauma. Samira kept a quick pace on the opposite side of Dana, answering for you when others pressed in too close.

Your exam room must have been on the exact opposite side of triage with how long it took to get there, the route stretching on past curtained bays and supply carts and past the central station where screens flickered with patient lists and tracking boards.

“South 7, straight ahead, almost there angel,” Dana said on your right, and you let yourself sink back against the thin mattress, the metal frame cool against your shoulder as the hallway finally began to narrow.

"Woah, woah, woah, what happened here?"

His voice alone was enough to send your heart rate spiking, the monitor clipped to your forefinger breaking into an erratic rhythm that filled the space between you. You saw Samira glance up at the numbers, then back at your face, and then her gaze shifted forward to Jack Abbott standing directly in front of the bed in full camo SWAT gear, vest strapped across his chest, radio at his shoulder.

"Abbot— move it or lose it." Dana barked.

He must've known better than to fight her on it, because he slid to the left of the gurney, holding onto the metal bars as your eyes widened at him.

"What's going on, sweetheart?"

"I—um—well—I—"

“Bicyclist versus pedestrian,” Dana cut in, already steering you through the doorway into South 7. You heard Jack let out a baffled huff of breath.

"I'm fine—really—"

“She hit her head on the way down,” Samira added as she reached for the wall computer and woke the screen with her badge. “Passerby reported she didn’t get up right away. GCS fifteen on arrival here. No active vomiting, no seizure activity, no focal neuro.”

She glanced at Abbott while her fingers moved over the keyboard. “We’ve got a non-contrast CT head ordered. She’s got a frontal scalp laceration at the hairline and localized tenderness.”

You lifted your hand without thought, not even realizing you’d hit your head that hard. Your fingertips pressed into the sore skin and came away tacky, faintly red.

Dana locked the gurney into place while Samira continued, voice clipped and clinical. “However, she had some left lateral chest wall pain with palpation. Robby added a rib series and chest X-ray to rule out nondisplaced fractures or pneumothorax. CBC and CMP are pending. We’ll repeat labs if needed.”

Jack exhaled slowly beside the bed, jaw working before he looked at you again. “You feel okay?”

You nodded, but it was small and unconvincing, your knees drawing up toward your chest.

He glanced back up at the resident. "I want to be updated on every change or test result.”

Samira’s brows lifted slightly. “Robby is already on—”

“Appreciate it,” Jack cut in, voice tight. "Go see if she can skip the line for X-ray."

Samira gave him a flat look that said she understood exactly what he was doing and didn’t approve, but Dana nudged her toward the door anyway, and a second later the room emptied, leaving the hum of the monitor and the faint rattle of the vent overhead.

"You shouldn't be in here, Jack," you started, "this is all so insane, I didn't even mean to come in, I was out for a run and—"

“Is your heart rate always in the one twenties,” he asked lightly, “or is that just when I walk into a room?”

You stared at him. He gave you the smallest tilt of his mouth, trying for easy, trying for normal.

“Sinus tachycardia,” he added, nodding toward the monitor. “Very dramatic. Don't tell me you do it just for the attention."

You rolled your eyes, but couldn't help the little tilt of your mouth. "Why are you here, Jack?"

"I go into the field in case of any injuries."

“You and your weird hobbies.” You shook your head, teeth catching on your lower lip. Then, you asked: “Have you talked to Robby?”

Jack’s hands tightened on the metal guardrails before he clipped them down, the sound loud in the otherwise quieted room. “He doesn’t really seem to want to.”

“I’m not surprised,” you said, voice thinning.

“Are you two—” He stopped himself, cleared his throat and stuffing his hands into his cargo pockets. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “How did the talk go?”

You looked at him then, “How do you think?”

He pressed his lips together, his weight shifting back and forth on his feet.

You sighed, shoulders folding in. “I’m sorry. It’s been… it’s been really hard. Today was the first day he’s even spoken to me since.”

“Jesus,” Jack muttered, eyes flickering to the door for a second. “If I’d known…”

You shook your head again. “It’s what I deserve.”

He looked up sharply at that, anger flickering across his face. “No, it is not. He should talk to you. He should—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening.

“You should go,” you said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll be here a while. And you shouldn’t be in here with me right now.”

Jack whispered your name.

“It’s okay,” you said gently, even though your fingers were twisting the edge of the blanket. “I’m okay. Just… go, please.”

He nodded, and as if he didn't trust himself to say anything else as back himself away until he was leaning against the door for a second, steadying himself.

Then he pushed back into it to leave, and Robby appeared.

Your stomach twisted on itself.

You watched as the glass exam room door had barely opened halfway before the two of them met eyes. Robby’s expression tightening immediately, brown eyes lifted toward Jack with something flat and hard sitting behind them. Jack, meanwhile, didn't seem bothered at all. He looked up at the other attending and paused.

"Labs back yet?" Jack asked easily.

You wanted the bed to swallow you whole. Heat crawled into your face while your fingers hooked around your legs, palms damp against your shins. You couldn't even bring yourself to look at either of them for long.

Robby nodded only once, stiffly, "Everything is good."

“That was quick,” Jack said.

Robby didn’t answer.

Jack let the silence sit a second before adding, “Glad to see the lab actually listens to some of us.”

Robby just looked at him, expression still flat, then pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped past him without another word.

He moved automatically, slipping his stethoscope from his neck once again while checking the monitor above your head, fingers brushing your wrist before he listened over your lungs, then your heart. Familiar, routine motions. You lowered your eyes to your lap because Jack was still standing there, still in the doorway, and now he was letting the door swing shut behind him instead of leaving.

Nobody said anything, and it made your heart leap into your throat even harder.

The cool metal of the stethoscope touched your chest and Robby's eyes lifted briefly to your face before he pulled it away.

“Not really helping my exam, Jack,” he said, voice clipped.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Jack shrug.

“Can't help it.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I'm distractingly handsome.”

Robby scoffed under his breath and shook his head.

"I think the three of us need to talk." Jack said seriously.

“Not now,” Robby snapped immediately. “I've got patients to worry about, and you should go get that looked at. Make yourself a chart.”

Your head turned toward Jack so fast your neck protested.

“Nah, don't need the paperwork,” he said casually. His eyes found yours and softened just a little. “I'm fine,” he said, tilting his head toward his shoulder. “Just a graze, sweetheart.”

He turned a bit so you could see it—the back of his camo jacket at the top of his left shoulder had gone dark red and splotched, fabric torn open in a thin line.

"You were shot?" you gasped.

"Shot at." he corrected, "I'm alright."

Before you could say anything else, Robby's fingers tipped your chin upward.

You knew exactly what he was doing, you knew this routine. Penlight already in his hand, checking your pupils again, watching for nystagmus, for delayed reaction, for anything off.

Still, your body reacted before your brain did.

Maybe it was because he'd barely touched you all week. Or because he'd spent days keeping distance between you like there was a line painted on the floor. Maybe it was because suddenly today he'd touched your face, your wrist, your shoulders, your hair, all under the excuse of medicine, and your stupid brain wasn't separating any of it anymore.

Your heart rate climbed again, the monitor immediately tattling on you. Its beeping rose in rhythm, its oxygen levels warning for over activity.

“And here I thought I was special,” Jack sighed dramatically.

Robby clicked off the penlight, and said flatly: “Go home, Jack. We're good here.”

"Not so fast," Jack said, dragging the syllables.

Both you and Robby paused, looking over at him. His face had gone serious, the graying curls a bit of a mess as he looked between the two of you, swaying on his feet like he always did.

"I have a proposition to make."

Robby stood a little straighter, folding his arms over his chest. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means… " Jack looked between the two of you, and your eyes were wide, worried, nervous for whatever came next. "I want to make an offer."

"An offer?" Robby echoed flatly.

Jack nodded. Your brows pulled together, uncertainty clouding your brain.

“No,” Robby said immediately.

“You haven't even heard what I have to say." Jack rebutted, "Why don’t we ask her?”

“Because she’s concussed, Jack.”

“Sweetheart—” Jack started, smile sliding back into place like armor as he looked down at you.

Robby moved before he could finish. He stepped up to the foot of your bed, placing himself squarely in front of you, cutting off Jack’s line of sight entirely.

“This is not the god damn time for this, Jack,” Robby said evenly, “Whatever it is you have to offer, it can wait."

The monitor hummed behind you.

“She’s going to X-ray,” Robby continued, thumb hooking over his shoulder at you. “If you want to talk, we can talk outside."

His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

You couldn’t see Jack anymore, just Robby’s back, broad and immovable between you. Whatever expression crossed Jack’s face, it was enough that Robby gave a short nod and stepped forward, hand landing briefly on Jack’s shoulder as he guided him toward the door.

Through the glass you watched them, close enough to read the tension in their posture even if you couldn’t hear a word. Robby rigid, jaw tight. Jack leaning in, saying something low and serious. It felt strange watching two grown men argue about you like you weren’t ten feet away. Part of you burned with humiliation, feeling like a child. Another part was too tired to care. Your head throbbed, your ribs ached every time you shifted, the room too bright.

You laid back in the bed, closing your eyes.

Eventually, when the door opened again, it was only Robby. He was pushing a wheelchair through the frame, his expression set into neutral nothingness, but you could see the downturn of his mouth, the frown he wore as he came to the bedside.

"Everything okay?" you murmured as he helped you into the chair.

“Yeah, honey,” he exhaled. “That man’s got some nerve.”

“S’probably why he likes getting shot at on the weekends.”

Robby chuckled a little at that, and your heart warmed as he said: "Yeah, probably."

After all the tests, all the re-checking and the overdramatic X-rays and CT scan, you were finally getting into the car with Robby after what had turned into a very long shift for him and an even longer day for you.

He shut the door of his steel gray BMW with more care than usual. He didn’t often take it to work, preferring the bike whenever he could, but tonight the car felt quieter, contained, easier. The hospital parking lot lights hummed overhead as he started the engine.

“That all felt… kind of silly,” you said gently, trying to keep your tone light, though the thought of going home and slipping back into the routine of the past week made your chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with bruised ribs.

Robby glanced over at you as he pulled out of the lot, the evening sky behind him pale blue, the sun already dropped behind the buildings. In the height of summer the light lingered without color, stretched thin across the horizon. He wore that tired smile he often did after a long shift, soft but worn.

“Just had to make sure you’re okay,” he said quietly, his voice a deep rasp of exhaustion. “What do you want to listen to?”

You reached for the screen and put on one of your favorite playlists, hesitating only a second before you did. It felt like a small olive branch. On any other night it would have meant takeout on the couch, his arms around you while you watched more reruns. It felt almost normal. He drove mostly in silence, eyes forward, one hand resting loose at the bottom of the wheel, deep in thought in that way he often was after work, and you told yourself that this, at least, was something steady.

Halfway home, stopped at a red light, he turned toward you.

“Honey, are you happy?”

You blinked at him and reached up to lower the music until the car fell quiet except for the hum of the engine and the distant sound of another car passing through the intersection.

“What do you mean?” you asked softly.

His eyes shifted back to the light and then to you again, as if he was weighing the words before he let them out. “I want you to be happy.”

You opened your mouth and then closed it again.

What you had with Robby, before the mess of this past week, had been the only steady, good thing in your life. Every road you’d taken had led you here. There had never been a clean formula for you, no simple checklist of school, job, marriage, children. But life had shown that that was never for you, no matter how much people said it like it guaranteed anything. They never talked about this— finding someone who felt like home without needing the rest of it. They never explained the peace of being taken care of and trusted and guided, about wanting the safety of his control and the way he made decisions with you in mind, the way he steadied you without diminishing you. After everything—your parents, the accident, your ex—this had been the thing that made sense. It had been everything.

You let your shoulders sink back into the leather seat, your gaze resting somewhere beyond the windshield, the quiet answering him before you did.

When he looked over again, something vulnerable in his expression forced you to speak.

“Nothing in my life has ever compared to what I have with you,” you said gently. “I’ve been upset this past week because it felt like that was slipping away.”

He nodded once as the light turned green and eased the car forward.

“I am happy with you,” you added after a moment, your voice steadier now. “I’ve never felt so taken care of, so seen and understood. I made a mistake, and I know I’m paying for that. It’s just…”

He leaned over slightly, eyes still on the road, and took your hand in his. His thumb pressed into your knuckles in a slow, grounding squeeze.

“You really scared me this week, Michael,” you said.

He brought your hand up and pressed his mouth to the tops of your knuckles. “I know.”

"You've never been like this before, avoiding me, barely talking. We live in the same house but it felt like… you were… like a ghost."

He looked over at you briefly, "I felt a little like one."

Your brows pulled together at that, a different kind of ache settling in your chest, not biting like your ribs or throbbing like your head, but heavy all the same. Worse than the guilt, the shame of everything. You dipped your head, your voice barely above a whisper when you spoke:

"I'm so sorry I did this to us."

He shook his head, more firmly this time, coming to another red light and finally turning fully toward you.

“We are a team,” he said, his voice low but steady. “As long as you want to be one, it’s you and me. I shouldn’t have shut you out. What happened…it caught me off guard. It made me scared for things I didn't realize I was afraid of. It made me realize how much I’ve invested in you— in us. Made me see how much I care.”

You reached up with your free hand and cupped his face, your fingers sliding into his dark hair, scratching lightly behind his ear the way you knew he liked.

“Me too,” you whispered.

His hand moved up and down your arm slowly, reassuring, until the light turned and he eased the car forward again, the quiet between you no longer sharp but thoughtful, settled, waiting.

When you pulled into the driveway a little while later, neither of you moved right away. The engine hummed beneath you while the headlights washed over the garage door and the shrubs along the front walk, throwing long shadows across the siding of the house.

But when you reached for the door, he stopped you. Your eyes lifted immediately towards him, a question between your brows, but something on his face made your skin rise in goosebumps. The crease that had lived between his brows all week had disappeared. There was no tension pulling at his mouth anymore, none of that exhaustion sitting around his eyes. His face had gone still, settled into something calmer. His arm rested across the center console between you, stopping your movement without effort, his brown eyes holding yours from only a few inches away.

“I want you to go inside and take a shower,” he said quietly, his voice low beneath the softened music and the idle hum of the car.

Your pulse gave a hard thud against your ribcage.

“I want you to use your special body wash. The perfume we picked out together.” His head tilted slightly. “Do you know the one I mean, honey?”

You swallowed. “Yes, Robby.”

His gaze stayed on your face for another moment, watching you carefully, and something curious moved through his expression at your answer, at the way you were already sitting a little straighter without realizing it.

“I’ll be back in about thirty minutes, okay?” he said. “I’m gonna grab us dinner.”

You nodded.

“Give me a kiss.”

The request was gentle, and yet, your stomach dipped.

You leaned over automatically, pressing your mouth to his. He made a soft sound against your lips and his beard brushed warm and prickly against your skin.

“Okay,” he murmured after he pulled back. “Go on.”

You nodded again and reached for the handle, suddenly far too aware of your own body, of your heartbeat, of your hands, hoping desperately that he couldn't see the way nerves had started jittering all through you as you climbed out of the car.

A long, hot shower later with your rose-scented body wash, your Maison Francis perfume misted along your neck and the skin of your inner wrists, you sat very still in the living room.

Your hands worked slowly through your hair, gathering it and plaiting it down your neck before coming to rest against your bare knees. Your brain felt a little fuzzy now, close to the way it felt after sitting in warm water too long, sleepy and a little hazy. It always started like this. The feeling of cotton slowly gathering in your head before you finally stopped fighting it. The smell always started it— pulling at the quiet place inside of your head, unraveling all your busiest thoughts, your deepest worries.

When the front door opened, you didn't even flinch. You just waited, your eyes heavy lidded and chin tilted down. Through your lashes, you saw the tips of his socks appear in front of your knees.

And then a thick, broad hand came down beneath your chin and lifted your face.

His eyes found yours immediately. Deep brown, those little lines around them digging in at the corners--crows feet people called them. You never thought they looked like that. They looked like years of laughing, of smiling, of joy worn into skin.

You smiled up at him.

"Hi, pretty girl." Robby said softly.

"Hi."

"How are you doing?"

You hummed softly. "Really good."

"That's good." He smiled. "I'm gonna go put these away and I'll be back, okay?"

You nodded. His thumb brushed lightly over your cheekbone before he let you go again, and your shoulders lowered with a quiet exhale you hadn't realized you'd been holding.

You watched him from where you sat as he moved into the kitchen and unpacked the reusable grocery bag. You caught a glimpse of jar of pasta sauce, a box of noodles and vegetables laid across the counter one by one. But you didn't move towards him, didn't bother trying to help. You knew what he wanted from you right now, what he needed. And you'd give it to him. Because it felt right-- to be here, to be in your place with your knees buried in the rug, your body bare and exposed for him.

When he finished, he poured himself a glass of scotch and walked over to the couch. He sat with a long exhale sinking from his chest. The coffee table had been moved, just like always on nights like this, pushed off against the wall so he had a clear view of where you sat.

He settled deeper into the cushions, taking a sip of his drink before setting the glass down with a soft click against the coaster.

"Come here, honey."

You crawled, very slowly, until you were just in front of him. No touching, no reaching for him. Just… in wait.

He leaned forward, taking one finger and letting it graze down your face.

"You are so pretty, my best girl." he whispered. You smiled at that, your brain melting down little by little. "Are you going to be good for me?"

"Yes, Robby," you murmured back.

He smiled a little at that, before leaning away again, and taking another sip of his drink.

"Safeword?"

You licked your lips, "Pickleback."

"And when you can't talk?" he asked, voice muffled in the top of his glass.

"Two snaps."

He smiled, exhaling with bared teeth as the drink went down his throat, "That's a good girl."

When he leaned forward again, you could smell the whiskey on his breath as he said: "We have some things to go over, honey."

Your eyes lifted to him, and he nodded reassuringly.

"It's okay, just need to adjust some rules going forward. You know why?"

You nodded.

"Go ahead, tell me."

"Because I was a—" You stopped when his head tilted slightly, that tiny shift enough for you to catch the correction. "I acted badly."

"That's right." he said, and his hand returned to your face, tracing slowly along your cheek, your jaw. It felt good, this touch, this connection, as he drew lines in the sand and on your face.

"We've been a little confused lately, both of us, huh?" he murmured, "we're going to fix that tonight."

"Yes, Robby."

When he leaned away, he tilted his hips up a bit, and you could just make out the bulge within his cargos.

"Show me that you want this—you and me, this thing we've created together. Show me that you want me."

You hesitated.

"You can touch," he murmured, giving a small nod before lifting his glass again.

Your hands lifted to his legs, a little shaky now. You cupped his knees first, almost testing it, feeling the warmth of him beneath the fabric of his cargos. He inhaled deeply, head tipping back against the couch for only a moment, though his eyes never left yours. Slowly, you let your hands slide higher, fingers tracing up his thighs until they reached his lap, and you carefully began undoing his belt, pulling down the zipper before easing the fabric lower.

Your hand slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs, finally cupping his growing length as he shifted beneath your touch. He hissed a breath through his teeth, knees widening slightly to make room for you.

Pulling him from the confines of the briefs, your fingers moved with care, wanting him to feel every gentle tug of your hand, wanting him to understand what you were trying so desperately to say without saying it. You watched his face as you bent down, lips brushing a soft kiss against the tip, and his shoulders lowered with a heavier exhale, though his hips gave the slightest movement toward you.

The hand not holding the scotch lifted and tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind your ear, fingers settling against your jaw as his thumb brushed your cheek.

“You make me fucking crazy,” he whispered, voice rough around the edges now. “Do you understand?”

You nodded.

His hand tightened slightly against your face and your fingers twitched where they held him. “Words.”

“Yes, Robby,” you murmured. “I understand.”

"Do you understand that I like to share you, but under my terms?" he asked quietly, eyes holding yours. “That you and I—this—we—come first?"

Your hands traveled up and down his cock, feeling it twitch and harden and warm to your touch like velvet.

You nodded again, 'Y-yes, Robby."

"So why did you do it?"

Your brain was a little too foggy to make out a real answer, so all you said was: “He has pretty eyes.”

“Yeah?” Robby chuckled softly, already knowing there was more to that answer. “I’ll bet he was a good kisser too, huh?”

You nodded, "Yes,"

You knew where this was heading, and even though you knew you might not like every part of it, you let him keep leading you forward. Because you trusted him.

"Did he feel good inside you, baby?"

You bit your lip, wriggling as your pulse jumped, but you nodded. Your hands had begun working faster, twisting and reaching down to fondle his heavy balls.

His lip curled, "Words."

“Yes."

And then he moaned a little when you used a little bit of his precome, slathering it over his tip.

"Can I please use my mouth, Robby?"

"Not yet—tell me how he felt—did you come?"

The pulse that had been hammering in your chest was traveling south, blood surging in humiliation, in want, nearly painful between your legs.

“He felt big,” you admitted quietly. “And... yes.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

He smiled at that. "Aw, only once? So he didn't get to see you whining and begging, did he?" his tone was proud, knowing, even though his voice was threaded with hunger, "When you beg for me to stop making you come over and over?"

"No, Robby."

You were leaning in, mouth agape, nearly drooling at how much you wanted him in your mouth— needed him. Needed to show him how much you wanted him. How it didn't matter what you'd done with Jack, didn't matter right now because all you wanted was him, the man in front of you, who knew you better than any of them. All you wanted was Robby's closeness, his attention, his praise.

"Go on, you can use your mouth now," he said gently, letting go of your face, "good girl answering my questions."

You moved down onto him immediately, your mouth already warm and waiting, and both of you let out helpless sounds at the contact of it around the smooth, velvety tip of his cock. Something rough cracked out of his chest at the feeling of your lips gliding down his member, your own noises swallowed as you glanced up at him through your lashes. He had leaned back into the couch now, mouth parted, eyes closed.

"Oh, fuck," he moaned.

You moved eagerly, bobbing your head to chase more of those sounds, his praise. Your jaw unhinged to accommodate the wide breadth of him, nose never really reaching his belly that was covered in wiry hair where his shirt had ridden up. Your fingers curled into the fabric and pushed it higher. He let out a breathless little laugh at that, understanding immediately before pulling the shirt over his head and tossing it somewhere beside him.

When he looked back down at you, his breathing had gone uneven. He gathered your hair into his fist, just guiding your rhythm. “Easy, easy,” he murmured, steadying your pace. “There you go, honey. There you go. I know you missed me.”

You hummed pleasantly, eyes rolling back at the feeling of the tip of him brushing the back of your throat.

"All the way down now, okay?" he coaxed. Your lashes fluttered a bit, hollowing out your cheeks. "That's it."

You could feel every ridge and vein pushed up against your soft palette, your tongue flat and soothing to the underside as you breathed through your nose.

"Now you listen."

Oh, fuck. You knew that voice. It was like your brain, once ridged with memories and thoughts—wants, needs, fears—had gone smooth and mushy, every sharp edge softening until there was only him. His eyes on you. His voice. His pleasure and wants. When he got like this, voice rough around every syllable, lower and gruffer and cracking just slightly, it fully submerged you into that head space you only ever found with him.

Your eyes, though a little watery, found his as he held you down.

"You are mine." he growled. "I don't care about the title—girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, whatever—you are mine."

His voice was lethal, his lip curling. He held you down on his cock firmly, and you breathed through your nose. This wasn't just bruised pride or irritation from what had happened, but fear, you realized. Fear of losing you, of losing this. And the best way he knew how to face fear was with control. And you'd give him everything every time.

“I’m in charge of who you kiss, who you flirt with, who gets your attention. Who fucks you.”

Your jaw had begun to ache, a deep soreness settling in, but you sat through it, wanted to, welcomed it, because your brain had gone soft and smooth, every thought slipping through your fingers before it could fully form.

"There will be no more playing with anyone else for the next month." he said sternly, pushing you down his cock a little further until your nose pushed into his belly. Your mouth constricted a little at the fat tip of him reaching into your throat now.

"And you will not come for the next month, either." he growled.

Your brows pulled together, and he mirrored the look with a pout, "“Oh, honey.” His thumb traced slowly along your hairline. “I know.”

He gave you a little smile, something gentler finding its way into it. “I know you don’t like hearing that. But it's what you need."

He pulled you up his cock, and when you were free you pulled in a quick breath, chest rising sharply. You felt the spit from your mouth slipping down your chin a little, but then his face lowered, nose brushing against yours before his mouth found you. He kissed you deeply, mouths slotting against one another with growing urgency, both of you breathing unevenly into it as his tongue slid against yours.

When he was done, he used the hand that was in your hair to push you back down into his lap, your lips opening obediently around his cock, pushing it deep into your mouth. He thrusted a few times, letting his balls slap lightly against your chin, and then he was holding you down again. Your mouth watered around him, drool pooling over your tongue, onto your lips as your eyes fluttering shut. The pulse between your legs had climbed to a throbbing, but you did nothing for it. You knew better.

"Everything we have—everything you've let me build with you…" he groaned, and then reached down, fingers brushing your face before his thumb and forefinger found your nose, and held it closed. "…is because of me. Because we chose it."

"Even this—" he breathed, and your eyes widened a bit as your head became fuzzier, your lungs began to beg for release. It only lasted a second before he was pulling his hand away, easing you from his slick coated member. You heaved in deep breaths when he brought his face down to yours, kissing you again before he demanded: "Say thank you—"

"—Thank you—" you gasped.

"Fucking hell that's so good—" he moaned. The kiss was breathless, wet, urgent as you let him have it, your mouth open, tongue awaiting his.

"More—" you moaned the next time he pulled away.

"Yeah?"

You nodded.

"Not too much," he whispered, but there was a smile on his face, so soft and warm you almost could feel tears coming. He obliged your request, pushing you back down onto his throbbing cock, fucking your throat in earnest until he held you down once more, holding your nose for a little longer than the first time, until you were spluttering around him.

"Fuuckkkk," he groaned even louder, and finally pulled you off entirely, his hand cupping your face, your chin held in the crux of his palm as he squeezed your cheeks. Your tongue dipped out to collect the drool that had been slipping from your open mouth, and you could feel your pulse jumping, your inner thighs sliding together with the amount of arousal you'd created for him.

“Okay, okay,” he cooed, petting your head with his other hand, “deep breaths. Deep breaths, honey. How are you doing?”

You hummed, breath still uneven and quick, chest rising against him while you tried pulling air back into your lungs. You nodded.

“Good,” you murmured.

"What a good girl you are," he murmured, pressing a fat, wet peck to your lips before his hands were tucking under your arms, and you rose with him from the couch.

Your legs automatically wrapped around him, and you couldn't help the way your hips undulated against his belly, as your body moved on something like instinct, all want and need and nothing else. The sensitive, slick skin of your core brushed up against the thick tuft of wiry hair at the base of his member, making you moan. Your mouth found his neck, suckling just above the jugular. And your hands felt disconnected from you entirely, wandering over him without thought, fingers curling into his hair and scratching lightly against his scalp as you held onto him. You could hear him chuckling fondly under his breath at your desperation, one arm circled around your middle while the other hand kept smoothing over your hair, down your back, petting and reassuring. He just kept whispering I know, I know.

Soon, you were being laid onto the bed, his groans about his back rumbling warmly against your ear as he lowered you down onto the soft duvet. He stayed over you for a moment, his weight pressing you pleasantly into the mattress, chest warm against yours, the heat of his skin making your limbs feel loose and floaty.

"You with me, huh?" he cooed, smiling down at you. His hand still hadn’t left your hair, fingers combing through it in slow strokes that kept your thoughts soft and drifting like clouds. You nodded, tilting your face to kiss him again, your lips lingering against his while he stayed laid over you.

“Why don't you turn over for me?” he murmured eventually, sitting back.

You obeyed without thought, rolling onto your stomach over the comforter. Your sore muscles pulled as you stretched your arms over your head, a little whine slipping from your throat before you folded your arms beneath your cheek so you could look back at him over your shoulder.

He was looking down at you with open affection, completely bare, peppered hair dusting his chest and stomach, thick around the base of his length. The sight of him sent another pulse of warmth through your body, your hips wiggling restlessly against the mattress before you could stop yourself. As if in answer, his cock jutted out in excitement for you too.

Robby let out a low breath through his nose, gaze dropping to your ass as his hands spread over you, kneading slowly, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh before he pulled you open. Your moans filled the room along with the sticky, embarrassing shlick of your lower folds being spread and opened as he looked at you.

"What a mess you've made, honey," he said softly.

“Please…” you whimpered, pushing your hips back into his palms without thinking.

“Please what?” he asked, and you could hear the smile in his voice even before you looked back at him.

"Touch me, please," you whispered.

"I am touching you." he teased back.

Then, while he held you open, you heard the wet gather of spit in his mouth. Your eyes opened wider just in time to see it fall, warm and thick against your skin above your slit before it slid downward through your folds and over your clit. You mewled at the feeling, your body jerking, the neediness and desperation no longer able to hide. Your mind felt smooth and fuzzy, your body begging for some form of release, hanging onto every brush of his thumb, the feeling of his cock twitching against you too.

"You'll take what I give you, and what will you say?" he asked, and finally, his thumb swept over your pussy, tracing the trail of spit down to your clit.

The sound you let out could've been heard by the neighbors.

"Thank you!" you moaned.

He nodded, his thumb still tracing you, your folds so sensitive it had your hips moving, rolling back, searching for more.

"You're welcome, honey," he said, and then moved off the bed, his hands finding your hips and yanking them up so your face was pushed down into the bed, your knees propping you up.

You gasped at the first feeling of his mouth on you. Flat tongue, prickly beard—it was wet and hungry and needy as he cupped his tongue against your clit, flicking the tip of the wet muscle until he was flattening it again and licking all the way up to the skin between your openings. Every lick and kiss sent shocks through your spine, and you moaned loudly into the duvet, fists clutching at it desperately. Your eyes had rolled to the back of your skull, mouth hanging open at the pleasure of it.

Without thinking, your knees spread wider for him, toes curling at the feeling of his tongue working deeper between your folds, licking until his lips closed around your clit. The gentle suction made your stomach jump violently.

"Taste so fucking good, honey," he murmured against you, voice vibrating directly through your body while his hands spread your ass even wider. “Did Jack eat you out, baby? Did he get a taste?”

Your brain lagged badly behind the question, and all you could do was moan. But a quick whack! to your thigh had you jumping, remembering he had asked a question.

"No!"

He hummed low in satisfaction before diving back in, mouth wrapping around you again while his tongue flattened and dragged upward. You couldn't stop moving against him now. Your hips rolled helplessly into his face, chasing the pressure every time he eased away even a little.

"Oh—oh, fuck—Robby, please—" you begged, hips wildly chasing the friction. His tongue moved with you, moving between long strokes and suckling your clit, his hand coming up to just gently prod into your pussy, the teasing of the pad of his thick finger enough to make that cresting wave of an orgasm roll closer and closer. Your moans had turned into cries, like a cat in heat just mewling his name, begging and begging for more, even if it sounded more like gibberish with the state your hazy brain was in.

"Mmmm—Robbyyy— right there—"

And just as you were about to crash into the wave, orgasm swelling, thighs shaking, ready to scream out in pleasure—

He stopped.

He pulled away, his hands going back to grip your ass. The loss of it had you crying out loudly, hips bucking uselessly while you petulantly kicked at the bed.

He tsk'd his tongue at you, and when you peered over your shoulder, you saw him shaking his head, "Don't you remember what I said, pretty girl?"

You whined miserably, thrashing on the bed, earning another smack high against your thigh that left heat blooming under your skin.

"No coming for a month." he said very sternly.

And then, to your dismay, he went back in. His tongue flattened, tracing over your swollen skin in lazy strokes while he slurped softly at the arousal gathered like a basin of nectar, obscene wet noises filling the room. Your whole body clenched around nothing, orgasm trapped inside you now, throbbing painfully close without ever breaking.

You whined again, but stopped your thrashing, burying your face into the bed.

"Remind me why you're not allowed to come, baby," he said softly, kissing your clit gently.

You jumped at the contact, voice muffled in the bedspread: "M-bad girl."

When you peeked an eye over your shoulder, he was shaking his head gently at that. "Not a bad girl," he said, and licked a stripe up your pussy again, and you felt your walls constrict, begging for something, anything.

The ache inside you deepened. Every slow drag of Robby's tongue pushed you right back toward the edge again until your stomach felt tight and shaky.

And then he pulled away again.

You wailed in protest, dropping your hips to the bed, and kicked your feet. Your body felt tense with the need of release, muscles tightening and loosening and tightening again.

He climbed over you then, mattress dipping and you felt his cock rest in the curve of your ass as his mouth came down to your ear.

"You are not a bad girl, honey," he murmured, nipping at the top of your lobe, "you are my best girl, say it now—"

"Mmm…yr…" you sighed weakly, too distracted by the drag of his cock between your cheeks to force the words out properly. He chuckled a little, and pulled back just to look down at his cock wedging itself into the cleft of your ass.

"I'm going to fuck you now, okay, honey?"

You nodded adamantly, and then realized what he meant as his thumb traced down your vertebrae, lower and lower until it pressed gently against the tight ring of muscle there.

Oh god. Oh god, oh god.

“S'alright,” he murmured as if reading your thoughts. “Remember last time? You were so good. Just gotta relax for me, okay?”

You did remember it, in some distant memory your brain was trying to scrounge up now. He had been so gentle, and you'd promised him he was the only one who could have your tight little hole.

His hands flattened along your back, massaging gently until one wrapped around his cock, the other reaching for the lube in the bedside table. The cool slickness made goosebumps break across your skin immediately, a soft hum slipping from your chest with your next breath.

Robby prepped himself, fisting gently along his cock, and he started by just tracing it along the seam of your folds, collected your slick, pooling arousal, making you let out another simpering sigh at the feeling. You knew better than to beg for him to fuck you there—once Robby had something on his mind, he would take it. And you were always so eager to give whatever he wanted.

When his cock pressed ever so gently into your hole, you squeaked a little.

Immediately, he folded himself over your back, pushing his hands so they could come up under your body and flush your spine to his chest and belly. One of them came up under your chin to hold you even closer.

“Breathe in,” he said softly.

You obeyed automatically, lungs filling deep while his weight pressed you down into the mattress.

"Breathe out."

Again, you did as you were bid. Your breath left you shaky and uneven. He hadn't moved yet.

"One more time, honey, deeeep breath—"

He joined you this time, both of you inhaling, chests expanding together, and then—together again—you both exhaled, and he notched the fat tip of his length into you.

"Ah-ah-ah—" you gasped.

"Keep breathing baby," he cooed, his bicep coming closer to your face, your chin tucked into the crook of his elbow.

“Keep breathing, baby,” he cooed against your temple, arm tightening around you while your body strained around the stretch. Your muscles trembled violently at first, trying to resist before slowly, slowly beginning to give. All you could really focus on was his voice, the warmth of him around you, the deep drag of air into your lungs. By the time his hips settled flush against you, your hands were clutching hard at his forearm.

He kissed the side of your head, his breath a little ragged as he moaned at the tight feeling of your muscle around him.

"S'all mine, huh, honey? My pretty girl, my pussy to play with. My ass to take."

All you could manage was a weak whimper.

"Say: im your best girl, Robby, go on now—" he whispered.

“I—mmm…” you moaned when he pulled out barely an inch before easing back in again. "I'm…"

"Mhm, that's it, use your big girl words now." he softly urged as he pushed back in, only gently beginning to saw his hips. He was hardly moving at all, just a soft lull of movement to ease you into it.

"I'm y-your best girl…" you gasped, mouth hanging open, eyes fluttering as he pulled out even further, and pushed back in again.

"That's it, that's a good girl—" he groaned, and like he couldn't help himself, his next thrust in was rougher, and your eyes bulged a little.

He kissed the corner of your open mouth, "Okay?"

You nodded quickly, one hand reaching back blindly for him until your fingers tangled in his hair. He held you tighter in response, his breathing growing rougher against your cheek while his hips started moving in earnest.

"What a good girl, letting me fuck her little ass, huh? Only mine, this is all mine—"

“Yes—yes, yes—” you tried to answer, but every word dissolved into moans because his thrusts were getting harder now, faster, driving deep enough to make your entire body shake with each one. Soon, the room filled with wet slapping sounds and the strained noise of both your breathing. Heat kept building low in your stomach again, strange and different this time, tingling down your spine and making your thighs tremble uncontrollably.

"Robby—"

"Hmmm?"

"I—mmmm ohhhh I feel—"

"What do you feel, honey? Tell me, tell your old man—"

"Might—might come—like this—"

"Is that so?" he asked.

You nodded desperately, licking at your lips, your eyes squeezing shut at the feeling of the pressure. Your fingers tightened into his hair, nails scraping along his scalp.

“Don't you dare,” he growled into your ear, his breath hot as his teeth bared against your cheek. “Hold it.”

"Noooo—"

"Yes."

The firmness in his voice made your stomach clench hard. Even while he kissed your ear gently afterward, his hips kept snapping faster against you, driving you right up against that unbearable pressure again. It felt so odd—a tingling in your spine, though your pussy pulsed so hard it was nearly painful with neglect.

"Robby!"

“I'm gonna come, baby, fuck—hearing you moan my name like that—Jesus you're so fucking tight—my best girl, my good girl—don't you dare come—”

Tears gathered hot in your eyes from the intensity of it, your whole body wound tight around the orgasm he wouldn't let you have. You weren't upset. You just needed. Needed him. Needed something.

Suddenly, he was pulling out from your ass with a quick dip of his hips, and you let go of his hair to heard him letting out the loudest groan, deep and wrecked from his chest, the sound of his fist against his wet cock, the spluttering of ropes of come up your back.

You laid there, pussy throbbing, your orgasm lost, your muscles tight and loose all at once at the loss of him.

A second later he rolled onto his back and pulled you onto his chest immediately, chest heaving in breaths of relief. His thumb brushed gently beneath your eye where a tear had slipped free.

"I know, I know," he cooed, "C'mere."

You curled into him bonelessly, burying your face against his neck while your body slowly came down from everything. His skin was damp and hot beneath your cheek, your limbs still trembling every now and then. Across him, you could hear the soft rustle of tissues when he reached for the box beside the bed and started carefully cleaning your back.

“Here,” he whispered after he was done. You opened your eyes blearily and tilted your chin down to see him holding your water bottle up toward your mouth, thumb already resting against the straw so it wouldn’t wobble.

You hummed in appreciation and took a few small sips, throat still dry, lips swollen and warm.

“There you go,” he murmured.

When you were done, you sighed and let your cheek settle back against his chest. Your fingers wandered lazily over him, tracing little circles into his skin while his heartbeat knocked steadily beneath your ear.

His arm tightened around your shoulders, pulling you closer still before he pressed a careful kiss to your forehead. “How are you doing, honey?”

You hummed sleepily. “M’good.” Your lashes fluttered against the skin of his throat before you tipped your face up just enough to ask quietly, “How’re you?”

"I'm good."

You kissed into his beard once, then again, little absent-minded presses of your mouth along his jaw until your lips brushed softly against his. “Talk to me,” you murmured.

He sighed. "I missed you."

You smiled faintly, lids feeling heavy, your brain still a little fuzzy, "I missed you more."

He grinned fondly, his hand coming up to brush your hair back from your face. "Why don't we watch something for a bit, I'll go make some dinner."

"Okay,"

“Do you wanna come sit with me in the kitchen, or stay here?”

You shook your head immediately against him. “I’ll come.”

“Okay, honey.”

It took you a minute to convince your body to cooperate enough to climb out of bed. Your legs still felt loose and shaky beneath you, and there was a lingering heaviness between your thighs every time you moved, a pulse that kept reminding you of the events of the night. Robby hooked an arm around your waist to steady you while he dressed you in a pair of his boxers and a big sweatshirt. Eventually, he slid on his own shorts and you followed him out towards the kitchen.

The house felt different now in the aftermath, softer in the evening light, the lamps automatically turning on with the darkening hours. You climbed onto one of the barstools of the kitchen island with your water bottle clutched in both hands while Robby moved around the kitchen barefoot.

Your body still felt warm and heavy in a way that made you want to curl up somewhere close to him and stay there. And every now and then he drifted back toward you without seeming to really thinking about it, leaning in to kiss the top of your head or rubbing your neck gently while the pasta boiled behind him. At one point he'd put the kettle on, and handed you a mug of peppermint tea.

Time passed slowly as you sipped at it while he cooked, watching him take care of you. The windows over the sink had gone completely dark, kitchen lights soft against the granite counter tops. Finally, when everything was done, he plated the food and brought it to the small round dining table.

"C'mere," he said again, beckoning you with his fingers, the other hand patting his thigh.

You climbed onto his lap without hesitation, your spine settling against his chest while his arm wrapped loosely around your middle. He fed you slowly between bites of his own food, twirling pasta against the fork before bringing it to your mouth while you sat warm and pliant against him, sipping peppermint tea between bites.

Neither of you spoke much, but it didn't feel necessary. This was exactly what you needed: him, taking care of you, feeling needed and wanted. You, being taken care of and shown how special you were to him.

By the time you'd wiped your mouth and your tea was empty, the ache of your body had softened low and manageable.

Robby had turned on an episode of The Office, settling the two of you back onto the bed beneath the comforter. You tucked yourself against his side, one of his arms beneath your neck so his hand could stroke through your hair. The television light flickered blue across the room, catching against the planes of his face every time you looked up at him.

"Can I ask you something?" you said quietly.

His fingers paused briefly in your hair before starting again. “Of course.”

"What did Jack say today?" you said carefully.

Robby sighed softly through his nose.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you assured him quickly. “I was just curious.”

He shifted then, turning toward you more fully so he could dip his chin and look directly into your face. His gaze studied your face, flitting over your eyes, your lips, your hair as he continued pushing his fingers through it. And then, landing his soft brown eyes back on you, he said: "He wants something that's a bit more complicated than he thinks."

Oh?

Your eyes brows threaded together in uncertainty.

Robby leaned down and kissed the tip of your nose gently before pulling back again. “Let me just…” He sighed again, dropping his hand from your hair to rub his thumb along your shoulder beneath the blanket. “I need to talk to him again first. Clarify some things before you and I really get into it. Is that okay?”

You nodded slowly, though your teeth had already found your bottom lip. Your eyes drifted back toward the television, but you weren’t really watching anymore, your thoughts beginning to move in circles.

His finger hooked gently beneath your chin and guided your face back toward him.

“Hey,” he whispered.

You looked up at him again.

“We’re good,” he said softly. “More than good.”

Something in his expression tightened, vulnerable in a way he rarely let himself be around anyone.

“You’ve been really patient with me this week,” he continued quietly. “And I appreciate that more than I think I’ve said. I’m sorry again about all of this. About shutting you out. You mean so much to me, honey. I want this, I want you. More than ever before.”

You cut him off before he could keep spiraling, leaning forward to kiss him softly.

“It’s okay, Robby,” you murmured against his mouth. “I’m sorry too. You and me. Always.”

His eyes closed briefly at that. Then, he smiled and breathed deeply into the kiss. He rolled over you slowly until he was hovering above you again, broad shoulders blocking out most of the television light while the muffled sounds of the episode kept playing somewhere behind him.

because last night he'd learned just how thin the walls at the cody house were.

he'd learned that, yeah, maybe he should've been a little more considerate of his brothers when staying up all night with a new girl in his room every other day.

but, to be fair, there was no way for craig to know that this was what his brothers were hearing through all hours of the night when his promiscuity got the best of him.

"i swear to god, if i hear one more 'andy-!' i'm going to march in there with a shotgun."

deran could only chuckle into his mouthful of cereal, clearly way less impacted by the noise than his brother.

he was used to it. courtesy of craig himself.

"what, not as fun when it's not a girl screaming your name?"

before craig could answer, the slam of a headboard hitting the wall that separated the kitchen and pope's room began to accelerate once more, interrupting anything he could've said.

and when he opened his mouth after a short pause, he was interrupted once more, except this time by something worse — wails of his brother's name.

"a-andy, fuck! please, fuck, andy—!"

"you've gotta be fucking kidding me," he muttered under his breath before addressing his brother, "no. in fact, sex completely loses its appeal when i'm not the one on the receiving end."

"shit! oh, andyandyandy- don't stop!"

craig rolled his eyes, movements brusque as he took out a few things to make himself breakfast. he could feel a headache coming in.

"hey, be happy it's only her you can hear. i can't even imagine what pope would soun-"

craig grimaced, "don't finish that sentence, man. i don't wanna know what fucking pope sounds like during sex."

deran shrugged, continuing to eat his soggy cereal. nonchalance seethed out of him.

some moments of silence passed between the brothers, with the occasional eye roll from craig and the snicker from deran as the noises came and went. both brothers shared a fleeting thought, which was just how long could the two of you go for?

"i mean, there's no way pope's that good, right?"

"dude, you just said you didn't want to think about pope having sex."

"okay, but listen," craig interrupted halfway through making himself a sandwich, "do you hear that? there's no way she's not faking it. pope can't be that good. he's way smaller than me, his dick can't be that-"

"dude."

"i'm just saying—!"

unfortunately, the hammering at the wall reached its crescendo just then, halting any further conversation that could be had.

your screams increased in volume, and now a few sounds could be heard coming from the other party involved. andrew's pained groans joined your wails, making both guys share a look of terror between one another.

"it's so big, andy! fuck! r-right there—! 'm almost- ffffuck, hnnng, andy, yes!"

and then a very loud grunt from pope was followed by silence.

craig felt some heat reach his neck, but he shook his head in a shudder in order to snap out of it.

meanwhile, deran felt weirdly shocked. he was happy that his brother had found what seemed to be the one and trusted them enough to bring her back home, but this was way more than he'd ever expected to hear from a brother. and this was said with craig's sexcapades in mind.

"okay, i'm gonna kill him-"

"that'll just make him go harder next time."

"fuck, you're right."

and so they found themselves at an impasse.

after the silence began to invade the next room over, it didn't take long for the eldest cody brother to walk into the room, breaking the awkward and defeated silence that had formed in the kitchen.

as expected, be was almost fully nude, with only a tight pair of boxers covering his manhood and a variety of marks adorning his upper body — although craig's nosy eyes noticed a faded trail of hickeys to be found on pope's inner thighs, making him gag internally.

andrew immediately took notice of the weird silence and the shared looks behind his back as he neared the fridge for some cold water.

slowly turning around, he asked, in a somewhat pointed tone, "what?"

settled on opposite sides of the kitchen island, his brothers looked to him with different expressions.

deran seemed mostly incredulous. craig was just frustrated — either jealousy or annoyance, not even he could tell.

"'andy'?" was all craig said.

"got a problem, craig?"

"maybe keep it down next time, yeah, brother?"

deran sighed, continuing to occupy himself with his cereal. pope could be a bit of a ticking time bomb if poked just at the right moment. this was uncharted territory, so he wasn't very sure how much craig could push before making pope blow up.

but craig continued.

his crown had been toppled a little, maybe.

"you're saying that to me?"

with a scoff and an incredulous chuckle, andrew turned back to the fridge, grabbing himself two water bottles before closing it back up and facing his brothers once more. to him, the conversation must've been over.

"i'm just saying, it's a shared space. i don't need to hear your girlfriend, or whatever, screaming your name all fucking night."

pope's eye twitched at the tone in which the word girlfriend was said, but he let it slide.

there was a certain, uncharted, sense of pride he felt at the comment.

his girlfriend screaming his name all night long.

yeah. this could easily become the new normal to him. he had felt a slight surge of confidence upon leaving his room that morning, somewhat aware of how much noise you'd been making, but just completely careless about it. it had been at the back of his mind, but every thrust just buried the thought deeper. up until the point where it became completely insignificant.

(how could he think about decorum when he had you under him, clawing at his back, crying out 'andyandyandy-' in the prettiest voice he'd ever heard, going higher and higher the more he lost himself in your pussy—)

but when he turned around, craig continued to glare at him as if he'd personally offended him.

and normally andrew would've been perfectly fine with decking him, telling him to get fucked, and walking past him. but a very welcome interruption entered the room before he could.

"baby?"

it came from behind craig, leading to the hallway that connected the walls of the kitchen and his room. the soft sound of your voice caused all boys to face you. deran offered a smile, albeit a little forced and awkward. craig scoffed to himself and nodded in semi-polite greeting, hands in pockets as he leaned against the counter in order to create space for you to get to pope.

there you stood, hair disheveled, makeup running slightly down your waterline and donning only one of pope's plain pajama shirts.

with a little extra attention, it would've been easy to spot the matching trail of hickeys up your thighs. and some x-ray vision would've provided the life-ruining sight of your hidden skin filled with marks made by andrew's teeth.

"you were taking too long, what's wrong?"

and, fuck, andrew almost went hard again at those simple words.

pride swelled in his chest, a weird sense of superiority invading him at having his sweet, pretty, gorgeous girl standing in front of his family in such a state.

andrew didn't need to argue with craig any longer. no words were needed as the appearance of his sweet girl said everything that needed to be said.

"sorry, sweetheart, just saying good morning to the guys."

andrew took the few steps that separated you and held onto your hand with one hand as the other held the two bottles of water (swoon), beginning to lead you back where you came from.

at that you smiled at them, sleepy demeanor leaving you a bit as you mumbled 'morning,' seemingly unaware of craig's earlier complaints.

as andrew passed in front of craig, he smirked to himself, twice as much when he noticed craig's annoyed scowl.

"might wanna get some earbuds or somethin'" he mumbled under his breath as he walked away.

once he was gone, craig groaned to himself, speaking up one last time.

"yeah, i guess it's time i moved out."

The closer 7PM rolled around, the more you could barely keep yourself still.

You tried that yoga routine you'd wanted to try a hundred times, but kept missing whatever the instructor was saying. You tried reading but couldn't make any of the words stick to your brain, reading the same sentences three times over before putting it down on the coffee table. You made yourself some tea, took a shower—your everything shower—your entire skin care routine, and did a hair mask. Nothing could keep your mind from running through the guiltiest thoughts, how Robby might react when he got back from the hospital. You couldn't even keep dinner down. The leftovers sat mostly untouched in the bowl beside you, the sauce going cold while the clock on the stove clicked closer and closer toward shift change.

At 7:45PM, the front door opened.

You'd heard his long, tired sigh before you saw him, and placed yourself casually on the couch, flipping a page in the same book you'd barely absorbed earlier that day, legs tucked beneath you.

Robby appeared in the archway a second later, shrugging his backpack off onto the upholstered bench by the door before toeing off his shoes. He peeled the navy Figs top over his head as he walked, leaving himself in his gray long sleeve and those cargo pants he always wore to work. He looked exhausted.

He didn't say anything when he came over to the couch. He just dropped down beside you and pulled you into him immediately, one arm wrapping around your waist before he buried his face against your shoulder and let out another long exhale.

"Hey," you said softly, arms sliding around his shoulders as you leaned into him automatically. You kissed his temple. His hand tightened on you a little before tugging you over fully into his lap.

The position had the nerves in your stomach fluttering, remembering this exact seating in a Ford F-150 less than twelve hours ago.

Your hands moved to Robby’s face, thumbs brushing along his scruffy jaw as you looked down at him. He looked so tired that for a second you considered waiting until tomorrow. Maybe you'd let him shower or eat first. Get a good nights sleep first. But you promised, and you also just knew better.

"Michael…" you whispered, "I have to tell you something."

"So it's Michael today, hm?" he murmured, tilting his head up to kiss you gently on the mouth. One hand moved up your back slowly, resting there.

You sighed into his gentle kiss, hoping to god it wasn't your last. When you pulled away, about to bring your hands off his neck, his own hands reached up quickly, catching your wrists before you could get too far. He held them against his chest, brows pulling together immediately.

"What is it?" he asked very seriously. His brown eyes were fully focused on you now, all the exhaustion from a second ago suddenly honed onto your face, his hands warm around the boney joints of your wrists.

"I—" you started, and then stopped, pushing your lips together, thinking of the right words. "I got a ride home from Jack today…and…we…"

His head flinched back, blinking quickly like his brain was filling in the rest before you could even finish the confession.

"You and Jack what?" he asked, but there was already a steady drip of venom in the words. His jaw clenched hard beneath the beard, mouth pulling tight under his mustache as he stared up at you. You could practically see him piecing it together already, his eyes flicking over your face waiting for you to deny whatever conclusion he'd jumped to.

"I'm sorry, Michael." you said, clenching your fists uselessly, "we were just talking—and then—he kissed me and we—" you shut your eyes tightly, "I slept with him."

Robby slowly released your wrists from his hold, and your hands felt cold from the sudden loss of his touch. He leaned his head back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. Your hands went to his shoulders, pawing at him, fisting the gray undershirt in your fingers.

"I'm sorry—" you pleaded again, hearing your voice start to shake. "I'm so sorry, I should've asked you, I know but—"

He sat up suddenly, forcing you off his lap in the process. The movement wasn't rough exactly, but there was nothing gentle in it either. Barely any touch at all.

Then he stood, and started pacing the room.

You watched him walk past the coffee table, one hand dragging over his mouth, then the back of his neck, then down to his hip before he turned again. His socks made almost no sound against the hardwood, the TV reflecting every move faintly across the dark windows behind him. He paced around in front of you for a few minutes. You felt helpless, just watching, waiting.

"Michael—"

He shook his head, lifting his finger to silence you, eyes squeezing shut as he kept walking around.

He came to an abrupt halt, finally turning toward you. His hands came together in front of his mouth almost like he was praying, thumbs pressed hard against his lips before he dragged them downward and pointed them vaguely in your direction, like he was trying to force words out in the correct order and couldn't manage it.

"What exactly did you think was gonna happen here?" he asked.

"I—I don't know." you answered honestly, "I thought he was just going to take me home, and then he started talking about the arrangement, why he never gave in and then, it was just a fucking mess and—god, Michael, I'm so—"

"So you fucked him? He started saying sweet words and you slept with him? Where?"

You swallowed dryly. "It wasn't like that—"

"Where?" he snapped.

"Parking lot."

His eyes crinkled in a sort of sarcastic smile as he nodded, bringing his hands up to his face to drag down, sucking in a deep breath.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath. "Jack."

"I didn't mean for it to happen."

"Not really the point," he snapped.

You flinched at the tone.

He noticed immediately too. You saw it in the way his eyes squeezed shut for a second before he brought his hands to his neck, pulling at his shoulders before dropping them again—restless, agitated.

"Look at me and tell me honestly you thought this was okay."

You opened your mouth, then closed it again.

Robby gave another short nod to himself, humorless. "Yeah."

"I know I crossed a line, and I'm so—"

"A line?" he repeated, finally looking at you fully now. "Honey, this whole thing only works because there are lines. Rules! Trust!"

You could tell he was trying very hard not to let his voice rise in octave, a sharpness to it, a forced quiet.

"I let a lot slide. Probably too much lately." He pointed vaguely toward you, frustrated. "Flirting, teasing, picking favorites. But this arrangement works because I know what's going on. I know who's touching you. I know you're safe. I know nobody's getting weird ideas in their fucking heads."

"He doesn't have weird ideas—"

"How the hell would you know?" he shot back immediately. "You think I haven't watched people in that department getting a little too attached lately?"

Robby laughed once through his nose and shook his head, walking again. "And him. Of all people."

"He was upset."

"Oh, don't do that." Robby pointed at you sharply. "Do not start defending Jack Abbot to me right now, because I swear to god that is gonna make this so much worse."

You looked down at your hands instantly. He stood there staring at you for a long second before speaking again, quieter this time.

"You know what the really shitty part is?" he asked, voice threaded with anguish and almost humor, as if it was laughable. "I came home just wanting you. That's it. Whole fucking day went to hell, a patient died on me because I didn't insist on getting her checked while her husband coded. We had more West Bridge reroutes, one of my interns passed out during a trauma, and all I wanted was to come home and hold onto you for five goddamn minutes, even after the conversation this morning."

Your eyes burned immediately.

"And instead I walk in here and find out you've been sneaking around behind my back."

"Michael—"

"Enough." His jaw tightened again. He looked at you then, tired more than angry now, which somehow hurt worse.

"You are the one good thing I had," he said plainly. "And now I just… how am I supposed to trust you?"

Your tears had begun to fall in earnest streaks down your face now, your voice barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry."

He sighed, shaking his head, before turning away.

And one word rang in your head as the bedroom door slammed shut.

Had.

You were the one good thing he had.

The rest of the night, the following days… were some of your worst in a very long time.

Robby hadn't said much to you at all, his silence unbearable. That night, after the argument, he just said he needed some time to think, and the following days only gave you more time to think too. More time for your brain to chew itself apart.

He even started picking up extra shifts at the hospital, offering to take some of Al-Hashimi's workload, which left you alone in the house most of the time. You didn't go out much either. Part of it was because you barely wanted to be seen. Another part was because every dollar spent felt wrong now. It was Robby's money. Robby's house. Robby's groceries in the fridge. Robby's money that bought the expensive shampoo in the shower that needed a refill.

You felt awful— guilty. You didn't know what to do. You felt like you'd ruined something so good. Something built on the things you'd broken. Trust, understanding, connection. You didn't know what Robby was going to say, if he'd ever say anything, if things would ever go back to normal. If you'd have to move out and find somewhere to live, a job, make new friends. It was so overwhelming.

Your brain just wouldn't stop running.

You'd sit on the couch with an untouched coffee in your hands, staring through the sliding glass doors into the backyard while the steam slowly disappeared from the mug. The TV would be on and you wouldn't realize three episodes had passed because your mind had wandered somewhere else entirely. You'd wonder where you'd even put your clothes if he told you to leave. Whether you'd need boxes. Whether you still had your old suitcase somewhere. You'd wonder if you'd have to call somebody and then remember there really wasn't anybody to call.

Sometimes you thought about what Jack was up to. If maybe you should call him. But you also knew better. You wondered what it was like when the two of them saw each other when the shifts changed at the start and end of the day. Jack was one of Robby's closest people. He often said he didn't have friends, but that was a lie. Because Jack was one of his best friends. And you'd probably ruined that for him.

One morning a week later, you woke up to an empty bed again, and stared at the ceiling for an hour.

Your eyes burned as you thought about what your life had turned into. You'd woven it into Robby's in ways you hadn't even realized until he wasn't here. You used to walk into the kitchen and find him drinking his black coffee out of his I ❤️ Pittsburgh mug, hair a mess and plaid boxers askew as he read the morning paper. And now you'd wake up and reach your hand over the mattress, searching for his warmth before remembering he was sleeping in the guest room. You'd find yourself wanting to text him a funny part of the show you'd been binging, thinking he'd like it, wanting to save an episode til he got home, before remembering he probably didn't want to hear from you.

It hurt so badly.

Robby usually made things feel quieter in your head when things were hard. You never had to wonder where you stood with him before this. You never had to question if he wanted you. And when you weren't sure about something, he'd be there. He'd tell you where to sit for your evening binge of The Office, tell you what to add to the Instacart order while you sat beside him scrolling through recipes for the week, his hand rubbing slow circles against your thigh. Always soothing and sweet.

Half the time you didn't even realize there was anything other than this. You and him. How he was your assurance, your guide. How he knew what you needed even if you didn't. You remembered when he'd wander into the kitchen while you cooked and steal bites from the cutting board before nudging your hip with his and pointing toward the island stools because he'd already decided you'd done enough for the night. He'd slide a glass of water beside you because he'd noticed you hadn't touched yours in hours. He'd hand you one of his coziest, old collegiate sweatshirts before you even registered you were cold. He'd pull you into his lap when your leg started bouncing too much, fingers threading through your hair while he read over charts in the evenings, kissing the top of your head absentmindedly.

Tiny things that built and built until they became routine, until they became normal, until they settled into every corner of your life so completely that you'd stopped noticing them one by one.

And he wasn't even your boyfriend.

You needed to get out of bed. You needed to do something with yourself. All this moping, waiting, hoping, crying— it was getting to be too much. You were a grown fucking woman, after all. You'd made a mistake. You needed to get yourself together.

Because this was getting ridiculous.

You'd spent the last week moving between the bed and the couch and the kitchen and then back again, carrying your sadness around the house so much your body felt sluggish now. Heavy. Your eyes still had that swollen feeling from crying too much, your head dull from sleeping at weird hours and barely eating enough to count as meals.

You sat up and shoved the duvet off of yourself.

Pulling open your dresser and digging out some workout clothes, you threw on your cutest set. One you knew you'd feel good in. Or at least one you'd bought because Robby said you looked good in it and right now that felt close enough. You went into the bathroom, did your skincare, tied your hair back, brushed concealer beneath your eyes because you were tired of looking sad every time you caught yourself in the mirror. You threw on mascara, tinted lip balm, brushed your ornery eyebrows as best you could before heading back into the bedroom.

Looking around, you finally saw it all for what it was.

The water glass still sitting on the nightstand from three nights ago. One of Robby's sweatshirts hanging half off the dresser chair. Clothes piled on the floor. Moisturizer and makeup sitting open on the bedside table with a pile of tissues. The duvet was twisted up from days of crawling back into bed halfway through the afternoon.

You stared for a few seconds, and then turned and grabbed the hamper.

You pulled the sheets off and wrestled the duvet cover from the insert, getting tangled in the stupid thing halfway through and swearing under your breath before finally shoving it all into the washer. Then you got out your basket of cleaning supplies and kept going.

You swept. Scrubbed. Wiped down counters. Lit one of the candles sitting forgotten in the cabinet beneath the sink. You cleaned every inch of the apartment for the next few hours, your playlist blasting from your phone as you moved from room to room. The smell of lemon cleaner and laundry detergent slowly replaced the stale, shut in feeling that had settled over everything this past week.

And it helped.

A lot, actually.

For the first time in days your brain wasn't sprinting ahead of you. It only cared about what was directly in front of you: fold this towel, wipe down this counter, put this away. It felt like one of those corny montages in a movie where the girl finally gets her shit together.

Once the bedroom was looking refreshed with clean sheets and the comforter pulled smooth across the mattress, you blew out the candle you'd lit and headed out of the apartment.

And started to run.

Your lungs were burning by the time you'd made it a few blocks from the house.

God, it had been a while.

Not just the last week while you'd spent your time curled up on couches and under blankets feeling sorry for yourself. A long while. Before the accident, probably. Before your ex had started making little comments like: You really wear that out for a jog? Don't you think those shorts are a little much? You like people looking at you or something? Which then turned into him not wanting you to run at all.

Funny how things happened like that, how things changed so slowly you barely noticed them happening at all. Funny how easy it was to change yourself little by little until you looked up one day and realized you'd stopped doing things you used to love.

Robby had been the opposite.

Hell, the set you had on right now had been his choice. The memory flooded your minds' eye, of you standing in front of one of those giant Lululemon mirrors when he'd taken you shopping for a weekend away. You remembered tugging at the waistband and shifting your weight from foot to foot while you stared at yourself a little too hard. You remembered pulling lightly at the sports bra, uncertain about the way it sat against your chest, turning sideways and then back again.

Robby had been sitting outside the fitting room on one of those little upholstered benches, his arm extended across the back. He'd looked so pleased with himself as you walked out. Blushing and eyes alight with mirth. You missed that look on his face, it made you realize as your chest pulled tight. The way he'd look at you like that, all warm and entertained, like he'd stumbled into something good and still couldn't quite believe it was his. How he'd made you put on a fashion show in the hotel room when you'd gotten back of all the things he'd gotten you that day. The bliss of when all clothes were forgotten for the hours that followed.

Your sneakers slapped the pavement of the sidewalk while the late morning air filled your chest and scraped your throat. Your old running playlist that you never deleted blasted in your ears, the sky a pretty clear blue. Everything was so pretty today, even if you didn't feel the same. You looked around at the tall buildings reflecting the light of the sun, people bustling around on their lunch break, the world moving even if you felt like you'd been motionless for days.

You slowed a little as you approached the crosswalk ahead, coming to a stop at the corner and pressing the little crossing button with the heel of your hand. Your chest rose and fell hard now, sweat gathering beneath the band of your sports bra and sliding slowly down your spine.

You suddenly felt your phone vibrate in a quick, succinct alert in the waistband of your bottoms. With two fingers, you slid it from between your skin and the fabric, pulling it up to your face. You had to lift your other hand to shield the screen from the glare blinding your view.

Your stomach dropped. A text message appeared on your lock screen.

Jack Abbot: I think we should talk.

The little speaker beside you crackled to life. "Grant Street. Walk sign is on to cross Grant Street."

You barely heard it.

You didn't look up from your phone, staring at the text.

What the fuck was he thinking?

Your eyes stayed locked on the message while your brain immediately started spiraling ahead of you again, filling in spaces that didn't have answers yet. Had he talked to Robby? Did something happen?

You stepped out into the street to cross, and heard someone shout behind you through the muffle of your music in your ears. At first, you hardly registered it, filing it away as background noise of the city, until they were really shouting louder, close behind you.

"Watch out!"

Your head jerked up, and for a split second you didn't fully understand what you were looking at, but as you turned to the left, your eyes widened.

A bicyclist was coming straight toward you, moving fast enough that you could hear the tires humming against the pavement. His eyes had gone wide beneath his helmet, panic written all over his face as his hands yanked hard at the handlebars, trying to turn away from you.

Trying and…failing.

Because before you could react, the front tire slammed into your leg with enough force to knock your balance off its axis, something hard—a handlebar—driving sharply into your side and stealing the air from your lungs. Your phone went flying out of your hand as you fell, stomach lurching into your throat.

The sky tilted, world spinning as concrete rushed to meet you.

Fuck, that hurt.

You heard yourself groaning somewhere through the ringing in your ears while the world slowly blinked back into focus, sunlight too bright when your eyes finally cracked open. Your cheek was pressed against rough pavement, tiny grains digging into your skin.

As you brought your hand up to the bump forming on your head, you saw bright red staining your fingertips.

"Miss, are you okay?"

"What?" you murmured thickly.

You blinked hard and looked up. It was a man standing over you in a suit and tie, young, slicked back hair and clean shaved face, his brows pinched together while he crouched beside you.

"Let me take you to the emergency room, we're very close—"

"No—no, I'm fine!" you nearly shouted, syllables jumbling and coming out too fast as his words finally reached you.

But the second you tried sitting up, pain shot through your head so hard your face twisted and you sucked in a breath.

Hands were suddenly under your arms.

"Easy," the man said. "Easy."

Another pedestrian had come over now too, helping pull you up carefully while your feet tried finding solid ground beneath you.

Everything around you felt too loud. You could hear the bicyclist cursing somewhere nearby, people talking over one another, tires hissing over pavement, a car horn farther down the street. The bike itself sat twisted awkwardly near the curb.

As things slowly came back to you, you remembered his face right before impact, eyes wide beneath his helmet. Now he just looked furious. His arms were thrown out while he pointed at somebody nearby, shouting over everyone else.

Your head was splitting.

And suddenly you realized you were being walked quickly down the block by two sets of worried hands, the red Emergency Room looming ahead.

Oh, fuck.

"Promise you won't tell him?" you pleaded, gaze boring into Samira's brown worried eyes.

She was perched on the rolling stool beside you, one foot hooked around its base, hands folded loosely in her lap. The curtain of the triage bay swayed faintly in the draft of someone rushing past outside. Voices overlapped in the hallway: patients, doctors, Lupe's voice on the loudspeaker in the waiting room.

She frowned, clearly debating it over in her head, but nodded anyway. "Yeah, okay. Okay."

She looked over her shoulder toward Santos at the computer as she typed into your chart. Something passed silently between them before she turned back to you.

She slipped back into doctor mode while pulling gloves on. "Let's get neuro checks going. Did you black out at all?"

You frowned.

"I...don't know." you said, memory a little cloudy. "I think so?"

“Okay.” Samira nodded once, calm and focused, her penlight flicking briefly across your pupils again before she instructed you to follow her finger. “Any nausea? Neck pain? Dizziness?”

You shook your head slowly, though even that made your skull ache a little.

“And we’re gonna get a CT just to rule out any bleeding,” she continued. “Probably draw some blood too.”

"Woa, Samira—" your stomach twisted instantly. "I don't need all that, if I go back there he's gonna see I'm here—"

Around your finger, the pulse ox clipped tighter every time your heart rate climbed, the monitor beside you already chirping intermittently over nothing more than nerves. Leads had been stuck to your chest at some point while you'd still been dazed on the way in, wires trailing down beneath the thin blanket over your lap. The whole thing felt wildly overblown now that you were sitting upright in a bed.

Samira's expression softened as she leaned forward. "We'll keep you hidden," she said softly before looking over at Santos again, knowingly. The resident nodded back, and quietly went out into the hall.

Samira rolled the stool closer, sneakers squeaking faintly against the tile. "Do you wanna tell me what's going on?"

You actually didn't.

Your eyes dropped to your hands instead, fingers picking at the edge of the thin hospital blanket spread over your lap. You tried figuring out how to phrase it right, how to explain something so humiliating without sounding ridiculous. Spoiled. Childish. You felt like a little like the dog that bit the hand feeding it.

"He and I are just..." You swallowed. "Having some issues."

Samira's brows pulled together slightly. Her warm brown eyes studied you intently, flickering over your expression that you tried to keep hidden.

"I was..." your voice got smaller, "I was bad."

"Bad?" she echoed carefully.

You shook your head a little, frustrated with yourself already. "No, I just—I did something stupid and now things are weird and—"

The curtain suddenly got yanked open so hard the metal rings shrieked across the track.

Dana stood there holding it wide, chest rising fast like she’d run the whole way from the desk. Behind her, Robby barreled in so quickly he nearly clipped the stainless steel side tray with his hip, already yanking the stethoscope from around his neck as he moved toward you.

"What happened?" he demanded immediately.

"I'm fine—"

"What happened?" he repeated sharply, already reaching for your face. Dana stayed at the mouth of the curtain, a flat look of disappointment written across her features. You knew she was biting her tongue from chirping Thought you could hide or somethin' angel?

"Head strike from bicycle versus pedestrian. Witness said she didn't get up right away." Samira reported, looking at Robby. "CT head's already ordered. Neuro checks too."

"Jesus." He breathed as his hand brushed carefully through your hair near the tender spot along your hairline, fingertips searching around the injury.

"Deep breath for me, honey." he said.

You did, heart skipping at the pet name but as soon as you felt the glimmer of hope, it was wiped away when pain shot through your side, making your face twist in a grimace.

"Okay." His eyes closed briefly. "Okay. Let's add a rib series too."

You felt sick suddenly. Not physically sick—though your stomach was still flipping on itself, your head still throbbed…but…you felt sick like that thick, churning guilt that had been with you all week.

Because he looked so scared.

There were still faint marks pressed into the bridge of his nose from his glasses. His dark hair was flattened in strange directions, probably from one of the scrub caps used in surgical procedures. He smelled like coffee and hospital sanitizer and the stale air of the ED, like he'd probably barely sat down all day before getting called in here to deal with you too.

Samira squeezed your knee once before backing toward the computer. "I'll be back."

Dana gave you one more long look before following her out, and the curtain fell shut again.

The bay got quieter after that. Not quite silent, it was never truly silent in the emergency department.

Robby was still staring at your face, and you realized he had put his gloved hand on yours where it rested on the bed.

You'd missed the simple touch of his hands. When one would rest at the back of your neck steering you through crowded hallways, or when his fingers tapped absentmindedly against your thigh during movies, the way his hand would slip beneath your shirt when he was feeling cheeky. You missed finding him within the walls of this hospital, the strange comfort of him existing in an entirely different world when you came into the orbit of the ED. The way you could pull him out of the darkness for a while.

"I'm sorry," you whispered finally.

His eyes flicked to yours immediately.

"What?"

Your throat burned. Like you'd swallowed a hot coal down it, tightening around the lump. "I'm sorry," you repeated, pulling your hand away and twisting it into the other in your lap now. "I didn't mean to come here and make things worse and I know you're busy and after everything already I just—"

Robby's hands wrapped around yours once again, "Don't be sorry, honey."

You looked up at him, blinking a little, "You're not mad?"

"About you getting hit by a bicycle?" he said, huffing a little disbelieving breath, "Why would I be? I just care that you're safe."

Your chin began to wobble in earnest.

"Oh, honey—"

"I thought you hated me now."

"Honey—"

You couldn't help the wracking sob that came from your chest, his hand reaching for yours again even when you tried to pull away, but he held fast. Your face dropped, chin ducking until it almost hit your chest.

Finally he let go of your hand only to wrap his arms around you, kissing the side of your neck as he held you close, "Why would you ever think that?" he whispered into your hair.

"I was bad. We haven't spoken in days."

It felt so childish, so stupid when you said it. Especially when it came out like that—weak, wobbly and wet with tears.

He pulled away just to look at you.

"You are not a bad person, honey," he murmured softly. "You maybe behaved badly, but that does not make you bad. I'm sorry I haven't been very good at this either." He lifted his hand, and you leaned into it as it cupped your face, brushing beneath your eyes and collecting a tear there before it could run. "Hey, listen to me."

He lifted your face, making you look at him straight on. Your face felt hot and swollen, cheeks wet with streaks. You sniffled as you looked at him now. His eyes were so kind, so worried and sweet. You felt like you didn't deserve any of it.

"You are my best girl, I will never ever think you are a bad person." he said. "Things got confusing, and I've been… avoiding it, avoiding you...and I'm sorry."

Your hands reached for him automatically then, gathering the black sleeve beneath his scrubs in your fists and holding on. You'd spent days sleeping without him, sitting across rooms from him, pretending not to notice every place where he wasn't anymore, and now that he was here your body seemed to remember him before your brain did.

"How is your head, honey?" he asked, tilting his own while he looked at you.

"Hurts." you whined a little, your voice meek and small.

"Yeah?" it came out hoarse and sweet, and so gentle. You'd heard his voice go soft like that before, late at night with his mouth close to your ear, and the memory flushed through you for a second before disappearing again beneath the throbbing ache in your skull and the warmth of his hands still holding your face.

He moved to rest his knuckles against the top of your forehead, sliding down your cheek, feeling your temperature.

"You're alright, honey." he said. He pulled away then and immediately shifted back into work, reaching for his stethoscope and slipping the earpieces in before pressing the bell lightly against your chest, listening to your lungs, your heart, checking you over all over again with that same focus he'd walked in carrying.

When he leaned back again in front of you, he threaded his fingers together in his lap, and looked up at you.

"Stay here for a few tests, okay?"

You nodded.

"Hey."

You looked up.

"You're my best girl. Always. Nothing has changed between you and me. I just... I needed some time, is all."

Your eyes burned all over again. Wiping your face with the back of your hand, your voice came out like a croak: "Promise?"

He came in close then, inches away, and whispered, "Promise."

Then he kissed you gently.

It felt so warm that it almost hurt. Your skin tingled beneath it, his mustache rough against your face, and his breath smelled like coffee, like the coffee from home, like mornings in the kitchen and evenings on the couch and every little thing you'd spent the last week missing.

When he pulled away, there was an odd look on his face. Fluttering your eyes to look at him better, you watched a sad smile pull his lips, his eyes ful of something you weren't quite sure how to read. But before you could try, he was turning away and standing, heading for the curtain opening.

"Dana is going to bring you back here, okay? I'll be close by."

You nodded, your lips still tingling a little from his touch.

Rolling through the ED surrounded by people who recognized you at every turn was a form of torture. Dana did her best to bat people away whenever they'd come jogging up beside the hospital bed she insisted on keeping you in— asking questions, peering over shoulders, trying to get a look at you. She actually let Langdon walk alongside you for a few steps, checking in, fingertips grazing your cheek in a quiet assessment as he asked if you were okay before someone called his name from across the department and he was pulled off toward an incoming trauma. Samira kept a quick pace on the opposite side of Dana, answering for you when others pressed in too close.

Your exam room must have been on the exact opposite side of triage with how long it took to get there, the route stretching on past curtained bays and supply carts and past the central station where screens flickered with patient lists and tracking boards.

“South 7, straight ahead, almost there angel,” Dana said on your right, and you let yourself sink back against the thin mattress, the metal frame cool against your shoulder as the hallway finally began to narrow.

"Woah, woah, woah, what happened here?"

His voice alone was enough to send your heart rate spiking, the monitor clipped to your forefinger breaking into an erratic rhythm that filled the space between you. You saw Samira glance up at the numbers, then back at your face, and then her gaze shifted forward to Jack Abbott standing directly in front of the bed in full camo SWAT gear, vest strapped across his chest, radio at his shoulder.

"Abbot— move it or lose it." Dana barked.

He must've known better than to fight her on it, because he slid to the left of the gurney, holding onto the metal bars as your eyes widened at him.

"What's going on, sweetheart?"

"I—um—well—I—"

“Bicyclist versus pedestrian,” Dana cut in, already steering you through the doorway into South 7. You heard Jack let out a baffled huff of breath.

"I'm fine—really—"

“She hit her head on the way down,” Samira added as she reached for the wall computer and woke the screen with her badge. “Passerby reported she didn’t get up right away. GCS fifteen on arrival here. No active vomiting, no seizure activity, no focal neuro.”

She glanced at Abbott while her fingers moved over the keyboard. “We’ve got a non-contrast CT head ordered. She’s got a frontal scalp laceration at the hairline and localized tenderness.”

You lifted your hand without thought, not even realizing you’d hit your head that hard. Your fingertips pressed into the sore skin and came away tacky, faintly red.

Dana locked the gurney into place while Samira continued, voice clipped and clinical. “However, she had some left lateral chest wall pain with palpation. Robby added a rib series and chest X-ray to rule out nondisplaced fractures or pneumothorax. CBC and CMP are pending. We’ll repeat labs if needed.”

Jack exhaled slowly beside the bed, jaw working before he looked at you again. “You feel okay?”

You nodded, but it was small and unconvincing, your knees drawing up toward your chest.

He glanced back up at the resident. "I want to be updated on every change or test result.”

Samira’s brows lifted slightly. “Robby is already on—”

“Appreciate it,” Jack cut in, voice tight. "Go see if she can skip the line for X-ray."

Samira gave him a flat look that said she understood exactly what he was doing and didn’t approve, but Dana nudged her toward the door anyway, and a second later the room emptied, leaving the hum of the monitor and the faint rattle of the vent overhead.

"You shouldn't be in here, Jack," you started, "this is all so insane, I didn't even mean to come in, I was out for a run and—"

“Is your heart rate always in the one twenties,” he asked lightly, “or is that just when I walk into a room?”

You stared at him. He gave you the smallest tilt of his mouth, trying for easy, trying for normal.

“Sinus tachycardia,” he added, nodding toward the monitor. “Very dramatic. Don't tell me you do it just for the attention."

You rolled your eyes, but couldn't help the little tilt of your mouth. "Why are you here, Jack?"

"I go into the field in case of any injuries."

“You and your weird hobbies.” You shook your head, teeth catching on your lower lip. Then, you asked: “Have you talked to Robby?”

Jack’s hands tightened on the metal guardrails before he clipped them down, the sound loud in the otherwise quieted room. “He doesn’t really seem to want to.”

“I’m not surprised,” you said, voice thinning.

“Are you two—” He stopped himself, cleared his throat and stuffing his hands into his cargo pockets. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “How did the talk go?”

You looked at him then, “How do you think?”

He pressed his lips together, his weight shifting back and forth on his feet.

You sighed, shoulders folding in. “I’m sorry. It’s been… it’s been really hard. Today was the first day he’s even spoken to me since.”

“Jesus,” Jack muttered, eyes flickering to the door for a second. “If I’d known…”

You shook your head again. “It’s what I deserve.”

He looked up sharply at that, anger flickering across his face. “No, it is not. He should talk to you. He should—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening.

“You should go,” you said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll be here a while. And you shouldn’t be in here with me right now.”

Jack whispered your name.

“It’s okay,” you said gently, even though your fingers were twisting the edge of the blanket. “I’m okay. Just… go, please.”

He nodded, and as if he didn't trust himself to say anything else as back himself away until he was leaning against the door for a second, steadying himself.

Then he pushed back into it to leave, and Robby appeared.

Your stomach twisted on itself.

You watched as the glass exam room door had barely opened halfway before the two of them met eyes. Robby’s expression tightening immediately, brown eyes lifted toward Jack with something flat and hard sitting behind them. Jack, meanwhile, didn't seem bothered at all. He looked up at the other attending and paused.

"Labs back yet?" Jack asked easily.

You wanted the bed to swallow you whole. Heat crawled into your face while your fingers hooked around your legs, palms damp against your shins. You couldn't even bring yourself to look at either of them for long.

Robby nodded only once, stiffly, "Everything is good."

“That was quick,” Jack said.

Robby didn’t answer.

Jack let the silence sit a second before adding, “Glad to see the lab actually listens to some of us.”

Robby just looked at him, expression still flat, then pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped past him without another word.

He moved automatically, slipping his stethoscope from his neck once again while checking the monitor above your head, fingers brushing your wrist before he listened over your lungs, then your heart. Familiar, routine motions. You lowered your eyes to your lap because Jack was still standing there, still in the doorway, and now he was letting the door swing shut behind him instead of leaving.

Nobody said anything, and it made your heart leap into your throat even harder.

The cool metal of the stethoscope touched your chest and Robby's eyes lifted briefly to your face before he pulled it away.

“Not really helping my exam, Jack,” he said, voice clipped.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Jack shrug.

“Can't help it.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I'm distractingly handsome.”

Robby scoffed under his breath and shook his head.

"I think the three of us need to talk." Jack said seriously.

“Not now,” Robby snapped immediately. “I've got patients to worry about, and you should go get that looked at. Make yourself a chart.”

Your head turned toward Jack so fast your neck protested.

“Nah, don't need the paperwork,” he said casually. His eyes found yours and softened just a little. “I'm fine,” he said, tilting his head toward his shoulder. “Just a graze, sweetheart.”

He turned a bit so you could see it—the back of his camo jacket at the top of his left shoulder had gone dark red and splotched, fabric torn open in a thin line.

"You were shot?" you gasped.

"Shot at." he corrected, "I'm alright."

Before you could say anything else, Robby's fingers tipped your chin upward.

You knew exactly what he was doing, you knew this routine. Penlight already in his hand, checking your pupils again, watching for nystagmus, for delayed reaction, for anything off.

Still, your body reacted before your brain did.

Maybe it was because he'd barely touched you all week. Or because he'd spent days keeping distance between you like there was a line painted on the floor. Maybe it was because suddenly today he'd touched your face, your wrist, your shoulders, your hair, all under the excuse of medicine, and your stupid brain wasn't separating any of it anymore.

Your heart rate climbed again, the monitor immediately tattling on you. Its beeping rose in rhythm, its oxygen levels warning for over activity.

“And here I thought I was special,” Jack sighed dramatically.

Robby clicked off the penlight, and said flatly: “Go home, Jack. We're good here.”

"Not so fast," Jack said, dragging the syllables.

Both you and Robby paused, looking over at him. His face had gone serious, the graying curls a bit of a mess as he looked between the two of you, swaying on his feet like he always did.

"I have a proposition to make."

Robby stood a little straighter, folding his arms over his chest. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means… " Jack looked between the two of you, and your eyes were wide, worried, nervous for whatever came next. "I want to make an offer."

"An offer?" Robby echoed flatly.

Jack nodded. Your brows pulled together, uncertainty clouding your brain.

“No,” Robby said immediately.

“You haven't even heard what I have to say." Jack rebutted, "Why don’t we ask her?”

“Because she’s concussed, Jack.”

“Sweetheart—” Jack started, smile sliding back into place like armor as he looked down at you.

Robby moved before he could finish. He stepped up to the foot of your bed, placing himself squarely in front of you, cutting off Jack’s line of sight entirely.

“This is not the god damn time for this, Jack,” Robby said evenly, “Whatever it is you have to offer, it can wait."

The monitor hummed behind you.

“She’s going to X-ray,” Robby continued, thumb hooking over his shoulder at you. “If you want to talk, we can talk outside."

His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

You couldn’t see Jack anymore, just Robby’s back, broad and immovable between you. Whatever expression crossed Jack’s face, it was enough that Robby gave a short nod and stepped forward, hand landing briefly on Jack’s shoulder as he guided him toward the door.

Through the glass you watched them, close enough to read the tension in their posture even if you couldn’t hear a word. Robby rigid, jaw tight. Jack leaning in, saying something low and serious. It felt strange watching two grown men argue about you like you weren’t ten feet away. Part of you burned with humiliation, feeling like a child. Another part was too tired to care. Your head throbbed, your ribs ached every time you shifted, the room too bright.

You laid back in the bed, closing your eyes.

Eventually, when the door opened again, it was only Robby. He was pushing a wheelchair through the frame, his expression set into neutral nothingness, but you could see the downturn of his mouth, the frown he wore as he came to the bedside.

"Everything okay?" you murmured as he helped you into the chair.

“Yeah, honey,” he exhaled. “That man’s got some nerve.”

“S’probably why he likes getting shot at on the weekends.”

Robby chuckled a little at that, and your heart warmed as he said: "Yeah, probably."

After all the tests, all the re-checking and the overdramatic X-rays and CT scan, you were finally getting into the car with Robby after what had turned into a very long shift for him and an even longer day for you.

He shut the door of his steel gray BMW with more care than usual. He didn’t often take it to work, preferring the bike whenever he could, but tonight the car felt quieter, contained, easier. The hospital parking lot lights hummed overhead as he started the engine.

“That all felt… kind of silly,” you said gently, trying to keep your tone light, though the thought of going home and slipping back into the routine of the past week made your chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with bruised ribs.

Robby glanced over at you as he pulled out of the lot, the evening sky behind him pale blue, the sun already dropped behind the buildings. In the height of summer the light lingered without color, stretched thin across the horizon. He wore that tired smile he often did after a long shift, soft but worn.

“Just had to make sure you’re okay,” he said quietly, his voice a deep rasp of exhaustion. “What do you want to listen to?”

You reached for the screen and put on one of your favorite playlists, hesitating only a second before you did. It felt like a small olive branch. On any other night it would have meant takeout on the couch, his arms around you while you watched more reruns. It felt almost normal. He drove mostly in silence, eyes forward, one hand resting loose at the bottom of the wheel, deep in thought in that way he often was after work, and you told yourself that this, at least, was something steady.

Halfway home, stopped at a red light, he turned toward you.

“Honey, are you happy?”

You blinked at him and reached up to lower the music until the car fell quiet except for the hum of the engine and the distant sound of another car passing through the intersection.

“What do you mean?” you asked softly.

His eyes shifted back to the light and then to you again, as if he was weighing the words before he let them out. “I want you to be happy.”

You opened your mouth and then closed it again.

What you had with Robby, before the mess of this past week, had been the only steady, good thing in your life. Every road you’d taken had led you here. There had never been a clean formula for you, no simple checklist of school, job, marriage, children. But life had shown that that was never for you, no matter how much people said it like it guaranteed anything. They never talked about this— finding someone who felt like home without needing the rest of it. They never explained the peace of being taken care of and trusted and guided, about wanting the safety of his control and the way he made decisions with you in mind, the way he steadied you without diminishing you. After everything—your parents, the accident, your ex—this had been the thing that made sense. It had been everything.

You let your shoulders sink back into the leather seat, your gaze resting somewhere beyond the windshield, the quiet answering him before you did.

When he looked over again, something vulnerable in his expression forced you to speak.

“Nothing in my life has ever compared to what I have with you,” you said gently. “I’ve been upset this past week because it felt like that was slipping away.”

He nodded once as the light turned green and eased the car forward.

“I am happy with you,” you added after a moment, your voice steadier now. “I’ve never felt so taken care of, so seen and understood. I made a mistake, and I know I’m paying for that. It’s just…”

He leaned over slightly, eyes still on the road, and took your hand in his. His thumb pressed into your knuckles in a slow, grounding squeeze.

“You really scared me this week, Michael,” you said.

He brought your hand up and pressed his mouth to the tops of your knuckles. “I know.”

"You've never been like this before, avoiding me, barely talking. We live in the same house but it felt like… you were… like a ghost."

He looked over at you briefly, "I felt a little like one."

Your brows pulled together at that, a different kind of ache settling in your chest, not biting like your ribs or throbbing like your head, but heavy all the same. Worse than the guilt, the shame of everything. You dipped your head, your voice barely above a whisper when you spoke:

"I'm so sorry I did this to us."

He shook his head, more firmly this time, coming to another red light and finally turning fully toward you.

“We are a team,” he said, his voice low but steady. “As long as you want to be one, it’s you and me. I shouldn’t have shut you out. What happened…it caught me off guard. It made me scared for things I didn't realize I was afraid of. It made me realize how much I’ve invested in you— in us. Made me see how much I care.”

You reached up with your free hand and cupped his face, your fingers sliding into his dark hair, scratching lightly behind his ear the way you knew he liked.

“Me too,” you whispered.

His hand moved up and down your arm slowly, reassuring, until the light turned and he eased the car forward again, the quiet between you no longer sharp but thoughtful, settled, waiting.

When you pulled into the driveway a little while later, neither of you moved right away. The engine hummed beneath you while the headlights washed over the garage door and the shrubs along the front walk, throwing long shadows across the siding of the house.

But when you reached for the door, he stopped you. Your eyes lifted immediately towards him, a question between your brows, but something on his face made your skin rise in goosebumps. The crease that had lived between his brows all week had disappeared. There was no tension pulling at his mouth anymore, none of that exhaustion sitting around his eyes. His face had gone still, settled into something calmer. His arm rested across the center console between you, stopping your movement without effort, his brown eyes holding yours from only a few inches away.

“I want you to go inside and take a shower,” he said quietly, his voice low beneath the softened music and the idle hum of the car.

Your pulse gave a hard thud against your ribcage.

“I want you to use your special body wash. The perfume we picked out together.” His head tilted slightly. “Do you know the one I mean, honey?”

You swallowed. “Yes, Robby.”

His gaze stayed on your face for another moment, watching you carefully, and something curious moved through his expression at your answer, at the way you were already sitting a little straighter without realizing it.

“I’ll be back in about thirty minutes, okay?” he said. “I’m gonna grab us dinner.”

You nodded.

“Give me a kiss.”

The request was gentle, and yet, your stomach dipped.

You leaned over automatically, pressing your mouth to his. He made a soft sound against your lips and his beard brushed warm and prickly against your skin.

“Okay,” he murmured after he pulled back. “Go on.”

You nodded again and reached for the handle, suddenly far too aware of your own body, of your heartbeat, of your hands, hoping desperately that he couldn't see the way nerves had started jittering all through you as you climbed out of the car.

A long, hot shower later with your rose-scented body wash, your Maison Francis perfume misted along your neck and the skin of your inner wrists, you sat very still in the living room.

Your hands worked slowly through your hair, gathering it and plaiting it down your neck before coming to rest against your bare knees. Your brain felt a little fuzzy now, close to the way it felt after sitting in warm water too long, sleepy and a little hazy. It always started like this. The feeling of cotton slowly gathering in your head before you finally stopped fighting it. The smell always started it— pulling at the quiet place inside of your head, unraveling all your busiest thoughts, your deepest worries.

When the front door opened, you didn't even flinch. You just waited, your eyes heavy lidded and chin tilted down. Through your lashes, you saw the tips of his socks appear in front of your knees.

And then a thick, broad hand came down beneath your chin and lifted your face.

His eyes found yours immediately. Deep brown, those little lines around them digging in at the corners--crows feet people called them. You never thought they looked like that. They looked like years of laughing, of smiling, of joy worn into skin.

You smiled up at him.

"Hi, pretty girl." Robby said softly.

"Hi."

"How are you doing?"

You hummed softly. "Really good."

"That's good." He smiled. "I'm gonna go put these away and I'll be back, okay?"

You nodded. His thumb brushed lightly over your cheekbone before he let you go again, and your shoulders lowered with a quiet exhale you hadn't realized you'd been holding.

You watched him from where you sat as he moved into the kitchen and unpacked the reusable grocery bag. You caught a glimpse of jar of pasta sauce, a box of noodles and vegetables laid across the counter one by one. But you didn't move towards him, didn't bother trying to help. You knew what he wanted from you right now, what he needed. And you'd give it to him. Because it felt right-- to be here, to be in your place with your knees buried in the rug, your body bare and exposed for him.

When he finished, he poured himself a glass of scotch and walked over to the couch. He sat with a long exhale sinking from his chest. The coffee table had been moved, just like always on nights like this, pushed off against the wall so he had a clear view of where you sat.

He settled deeper into the cushions, taking a sip of his drink before setting the glass down with a soft click against the coaster.

"Come here, honey."

You crawled, very slowly, until you were just in front of him. No touching, no reaching for him. Just… in wait.

He leaned forward, taking one finger and letting it graze down your face.

"You are so pretty, my best girl." he whispered. You smiled at that, your brain melting down little by little. "Are you going to be good for me?"

"Yes, Robby," you murmured back.

He smiled a little at that, before leaning away again, and taking another sip of his drink.

"Safeword?"

You licked your lips, "Pickleback."

"And when you can't talk?" he asked, voice muffled in the top of his glass.

"Two snaps."

He smiled, exhaling with bared teeth as the drink went down his throat, "That's a good girl."

When he leaned forward again, you could smell the whiskey on his breath as he said: "We have some things to go over, honey."

Your eyes lifted to him, and he nodded reassuringly.

"It's okay, just need to adjust some rules going forward. You know why?"

You nodded.

"Go ahead, tell me."

"Because I was a—" You stopped when his head tilted slightly, that tiny shift enough for you to catch the correction. "I acted badly."

"That's right." he said, and his hand returned to your face, tracing slowly along your cheek, your jaw. It felt good, this touch, this connection, as he drew lines in the sand and on your face.

"We've been a little confused lately, both of us, huh?" he murmured, "we're going to fix that tonight."

"Yes, Robby."

When he leaned away, he tilted his hips up a bit, and you could just make out the bulge within his cargos.

"Show me that you want this—you and me, this thing we've created together. Show me that you want me."

You hesitated.

"You can touch," he murmured, giving a small nod before lifting his glass again.

Your hands lifted to his legs, a little shaky now. You cupped his knees first, almost testing it, feeling the warmth of him beneath the fabric of his cargos. He inhaled deeply, head tipping back against the couch for only a moment, though his eyes never left yours. Slowly, you let your hands slide higher, fingers tracing up his thighs until they reached his lap, and you carefully began undoing his belt, pulling down the zipper before easing the fabric lower.

Your hand slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs, finally cupping his growing length as he shifted beneath your touch. He hissed a breath through his teeth, knees widening slightly to make room for you.

Pulling him from the confines of the briefs, your fingers moved with care, wanting him to feel every gentle tug of your hand, wanting him to understand what you were trying so desperately to say without saying it. You watched his face as you bent down, lips brushing a soft kiss against the tip, and his shoulders lowered with a heavier exhale, though his hips gave the slightest movement toward you.

The hand not holding the scotch lifted and tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind your ear, fingers settling against your jaw as his thumb brushed your cheek.

“You make me fucking crazy,” he whispered, voice rough around the edges now. “Do you understand?”

You nodded.

His hand tightened slightly against your face and your fingers twitched where they held him. “Words.”

“Yes, Robby,” you murmured. “I understand.”

"Do you understand that I like to share you, but under my terms?" he asked quietly, eyes holding yours. “That you and I—this—we—come first?"

Your hands traveled up and down his cock, feeling it twitch and harden and warm to your touch like velvet.

You nodded again, 'Y-yes, Robby."

"So why did you do it?"

Your brain was a little too foggy to make out a real answer, so all you said was: “He has pretty eyes.”

“Yeah?” Robby chuckled softly, already knowing there was more to that answer. “I’ll bet he was a good kisser too, huh?”

You nodded, "Yes,"

You knew where this was heading, and even though you knew you might not like every part of it, you let him keep leading you forward. Because you trusted him.

"Did he feel good inside you, baby?"

You bit your lip, wriggling as your pulse jumped, but you nodded. Your hands had begun working faster, twisting and reaching down to fondle his heavy balls.

His lip curled, "Words."

“Yes."

And then he moaned a little when you used a little bit of his precome, slathering it over his tip.

"Can I please use my mouth, Robby?"

"Not yet—tell me how he felt—did you come?"

The pulse that had been hammering in your chest was traveling south, blood surging in humiliation, in want, nearly painful between your legs.

“He felt big,” you admitted quietly. “And... yes.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

He smiled at that. "Aw, only once? So he didn't get to see you whining and begging, did he?" his tone was proud, knowing, even though his voice was threaded with hunger, "When you beg for me to stop making you come over and over?"

"No, Robby."

You were leaning in, mouth agape, nearly drooling at how much you wanted him in your mouth— needed him. Needed to show him how much you wanted him. How it didn't matter what you'd done with Jack, didn't matter right now because all you wanted was him, the man in front of you, who knew you better than any of them. All you wanted was Robby's closeness, his attention, his praise.

"Go on, you can use your mouth now," he said gently, letting go of your face, "good girl answering my questions."

You moved down onto him immediately, your mouth already warm and waiting, and both of you let out helpless sounds at the contact of it around the smooth, velvety tip of his cock. Something rough cracked out of his chest at the feeling of your lips gliding down his member, your own noises swallowed as you glanced up at him through your lashes. He had leaned back into the couch now, mouth parted, eyes closed.

"Oh, fuck," he moaned.

You moved eagerly, bobbing your head to chase more of those sounds, his praise. Your jaw unhinged to accommodate the wide breadth of him, nose never really reaching his belly that was covered in wiry hair where his shirt had ridden up. Your fingers curled into the fabric and pushed it higher. He let out a breathless little laugh at that, understanding immediately before pulling the shirt over his head and tossing it somewhere beside him.

When he looked back down at you, his breathing had gone uneven. He gathered your hair into his fist, just guiding your rhythm. “Easy, easy,” he murmured, steadying your pace. “There you go, honey. There you go. I know you missed me.”

You hummed pleasantly, eyes rolling back at the feeling of the tip of him brushing the back of your throat.

"All the way down now, okay?" he coaxed. Your lashes fluttered a bit, hollowing out your cheeks. "That's it."

You could feel every ridge and vein pushed up against your soft palette, your tongue flat and soothing to the underside as you breathed through your nose.

"Now you listen."

Oh, fuck. You knew that voice. It was like your brain, once ridged with memories and thoughts—wants, needs, fears—had gone smooth and mushy, every sharp edge softening until there was only him. His eyes on you. His voice. His pleasure and wants. When he got like this, voice rough around every syllable, lower and gruffer and cracking just slightly, it fully submerged you into that head space you only ever found with him.

Your eyes, though a little watery, found his as he held you down.

"You are mine." he growled. "I don't care about the title—girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, whatever—you are mine."

His voice was lethal, his lip curling. He held you down on his cock firmly, and you breathed through your nose. This wasn't just bruised pride or irritation from what had happened, but fear, you realized. Fear of losing you, of losing this. And the best way he knew how to face fear was with control. And you'd give him everything every time.

“I’m in charge of who you kiss, who you flirt with, who gets your attention. Who fucks you.”

Your jaw had begun to ache, a deep soreness settling in, but you sat through it, wanted to, welcomed it, because your brain had gone soft and smooth, every thought slipping through your fingers before it could fully form.

"There will be no more playing with anyone else for the next month." he said sternly, pushing you down his cock a little further until your nose pushed into his belly. Your mouth constricted a little at the fat tip of him reaching into your throat now.

"And you will not come for the next month, either." he growled.

Your brows pulled together, and he mirrored the look with a pout, "“Oh, honey.” His thumb traced slowly along your hairline. “I know.”

He gave you a little smile, something gentler finding its way into it. “I know you don’t like hearing that. But it's what you need."

He pulled you up his cock, and when you were free you pulled in a quick breath, chest rising sharply. You felt the spit from your mouth slipping down your chin a little, but then his face lowered, nose brushing against yours before his mouth found you. He kissed you deeply, mouths slotting against one another with growing urgency, both of you breathing unevenly into it as his tongue slid against yours.

When he was done, he used the hand that was in your hair to push you back down into his lap, your lips opening obediently around his cock, pushing it deep into your mouth. He thrusted a few times, letting his balls slap lightly against your chin, and then he was holding you down again. Your mouth watered around him, drool pooling over your tongue, onto your lips as your eyes fluttering shut. The pulse between your legs had climbed to a throbbing, but you did nothing for it. You knew better.

"Everything we have—everything you've let me build with you…" he groaned, and then reached down, fingers brushing your face before his thumb and forefinger found your nose, and held it closed. "…is because of me. Because we chose it."

"Even this—" he breathed, and your eyes widened a bit as your head became fuzzier, your lungs began to beg for release. It only lasted a second before he was pulling his hand away, easing you from his slick coated member. You heaved in deep breaths when he brought his face down to yours, kissing you again before he demanded: "Say thank you—"

"—Thank you—" you gasped.

"Fucking hell that's so good—" he moaned. The kiss was breathless, wet, urgent as you let him have it, your mouth open, tongue awaiting his.

"More—" you moaned the next time he pulled away.

"Yeah?"

You nodded.

"Not too much," he whispered, but there was a smile on his face, so soft and warm you almost could feel tears coming. He obliged your request, pushing you back down onto his throbbing cock, fucking your throat in earnest until he held you down once more, holding your nose for a little longer than the first time, until you were spluttering around him.

"Fuuckkkk," he groaned even louder, and finally pulled you off entirely, his hand cupping your face, your chin held in the crux of his palm as he squeezed your cheeks. Your tongue dipped out to collect the drool that had been slipping from your open mouth, and you could feel your pulse jumping, your inner thighs sliding together with the amount of arousal you'd created for him.

“Okay, okay,” he cooed, petting your head with his other hand, “deep breaths. Deep breaths, honey. How are you doing?”

You hummed, breath still uneven and quick, chest rising against him while you tried pulling air back into your lungs. You nodded.

“Good,” you murmured.

"What a good girl you are," he murmured, pressing a fat, wet peck to your lips before his hands were tucking under your arms, and you rose with him from the couch.

Your legs automatically wrapped around him, and you couldn't help the way your hips undulated against his belly, as your body moved on something like instinct, all want and need and nothing else. The sensitive, slick skin of your core brushed up against the thick tuft of wiry hair at the base of his member, making you moan. Your mouth found his neck, suckling just above the jugular. And your hands felt disconnected from you entirely, wandering over him without thought, fingers curling into his hair and scratching lightly against his scalp as you held onto him. You could hear him chuckling fondly under his breath at your desperation, one arm circled around your middle while the other hand kept smoothing over your hair, down your back, petting and reassuring. He just kept whispering I know, I know.

Soon, you were being laid onto the bed, his groans about his back rumbling warmly against your ear as he lowered you down onto the soft duvet. He stayed over you for a moment, his weight pressing you pleasantly into the mattress, chest warm against yours, the heat of his skin making your limbs feel loose and floaty.

"You with me, huh?" he cooed, smiling down at you. His hand still hadn’t left your hair, fingers combing through it in slow strokes that kept your thoughts soft and drifting like clouds. You nodded, tilting your face to kiss him again, your lips lingering against his while he stayed laid over you.

“Why don't you turn over for me?” he murmured eventually, sitting back.

You obeyed without thought, rolling onto your stomach over the comforter. Your sore muscles pulled as you stretched your arms over your head, a little whine slipping from your throat before you folded your arms beneath your cheek so you could look back at him over your shoulder.

He was looking down at you with open affection, completely bare, peppered hair dusting his chest and stomach, thick around the base of his length. The sight of him sent another pulse of warmth through your body, your hips wiggling restlessly against the mattress before you could stop yourself. As if in answer, his cock jutted out in excitement for you too.

Robby let out a low breath through his nose, gaze dropping to your ass as his hands spread over you, kneading slowly, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh before he pulled you open. Your moans filled the room along with the sticky, embarrassing shlick of your lower folds being spread and opened as he looked at you.

"What a mess you've made, honey," he said softly.

“Please…” you whimpered, pushing your hips back into his palms without thinking.

“Please what?” he asked, and you could hear the smile in his voice even before you looked back at him.

"Touch me, please," you whispered.

"I am touching you." he teased back.

Then, while he held you open, you heard the wet gather of spit in his mouth. Your eyes opened wider just in time to see it fall, warm and thick against your skin above your slit before it slid downward through your folds and over your clit. You mewled at the feeling, your body jerking, the neediness and desperation no longer able to hide. Your mind felt smooth and fuzzy, your body begging for some form of release, hanging onto every brush of his thumb, the feeling of his cock twitching against you too.

"You'll take what I give you, and what will you say?" he asked, and finally, his thumb swept over your pussy, tracing the trail of spit down to your clit.

The sound you let out could've been heard by the neighbors.

"Thank you!" you moaned.

He nodded, his thumb still tracing you, your folds so sensitive it had your hips moving, rolling back, searching for more.

"You're welcome, honey," he said, and then moved off the bed, his hands finding your hips and yanking them up so your face was pushed down into the bed, your knees propping you up.

You gasped at the first feeling of his mouth on you. Flat tongue, prickly beard—it was wet and hungry and needy as he cupped his tongue against your clit, flicking the tip of the wet muscle until he was flattening it again and licking all the way up to the skin between your openings. Every lick and kiss sent shocks through your spine, and you moaned loudly into the duvet, fists clutching at it desperately. Your eyes had rolled to the back of your skull, mouth hanging open at the pleasure of it.

Without thinking, your knees spread wider for him, toes curling at the feeling of his tongue working deeper between your folds, licking until his lips closed around your clit. The gentle suction made your stomach jump violently.

"Taste so fucking good, honey," he murmured against you, voice vibrating directly through your body while his hands spread your ass even wider. “Did Jack eat you out, baby? Did he get a taste?”

Your brain lagged badly behind the question, and all you could do was moan. But a quick whack! to your thigh had you jumping, remembering he had asked a question.

"No!"

He hummed low in satisfaction before diving back in, mouth wrapping around you again while his tongue flattened and dragged upward. You couldn't stop moving against him now. Your hips rolled helplessly into his face, chasing the pressure every time he eased away even a little.

"Oh—oh, fuck—Robby, please—" you begged, hips wildly chasing the friction. His tongue moved with you, moving between long strokes and suckling your clit, his hand coming up to just gently prod into your pussy, the teasing of the pad of his thick finger enough to make that cresting wave of an orgasm roll closer and closer. Your moans had turned into cries, like a cat in heat just mewling his name, begging and begging for more, even if it sounded more like gibberish with the state your hazy brain was in.

"Mmmm—Robbyyy— right there—"

And just as you were about to crash into the wave, orgasm swelling, thighs shaking, ready to scream out in pleasure—

He stopped.

He pulled away, his hands going back to grip your ass. The loss of it had you crying out loudly, hips bucking uselessly while you petulantly kicked at the bed.

He tsk'd his tongue at you, and when you peered over your shoulder, you saw him shaking his head, "Don't you remember what I said, pretty girl?"

You whined miserably, thrashing on the bed, earning another smack high against your thigh that left heat blooming under your skin.

"No coming for a month." he said very sternly.

And then, to your dismay, he went back in. His tongue flattened, tracing over your swollen skin in lazy strokes while he slurped softly at the arousal gathered like a basin of nectar, obscene wet noises filling the room. Your whole body clenched around nothing, orgasm trapped inside you now, throbbing painfully close without ever breaking.

You whined again, but stopped your thrashing, burying your face into the bed.

"Remind me why you're not allowed to come, baby," he said softly, kissing your clit gently.

You jumped at the contact, voice muffled in the bedspread: "M-bad girl."

When you peeked an eye over your shoulder, he was shaking his head gently at that. "Not a bad girl," he said, and licked a stripe up your pussy again, and you felt your walls constrict, begging for something, anything.

The ache inside you deepened. Every slow drag of Robby's tongue pushed you right back toward the edge again until your stomach felt tight and shaky.

And then he pulled away again.

You wailed in protest, dropping your hips to the bed, and kicked your feet. Your body felt tense with the need of release, muscles tightening and loosening and tightening again.

He climbed over you then, mattress dipping and you felt his cock rest in the curve of your ass as his mouth came down to your ear.

"You are not a bad girl, honey," he murmured, nipping at the top of your lobe, "you are my best girl, say it now—"

"Mmm…yr…" you sighed weakly, too distracted by the drag of his cock between your cheeks to force the words out properly. He chuckled a little, and pulled back just to look down at his cock wedging itself into the cleft of your ass.

"I'm going to fuck you now, okay, honey?"

You nodded adamantly, and then realized what he meant as his thumb traced down your vertebrae, lower and lower until it pressed gently against the tight ring of muscle there.

Oh god. Oh god, oh god.

“S'alright,” he murmured as if reading your thoughts. “Remember last time? You were so good. Just gotta relax for me, okay?”

You did remember it, in some distant memory your brain was trying to scrounge up now. He had been so gentle, and you'd promised him he was the only one who could have your tight little hole.

His hands flattened along your back, massaging gently until one wrapped around his cock, the other reaching for the lube in the bedside table. The cool slickness made goosebumps break across your skin immediately, a soft hum slipping from your chest with your next breath.

Robby prepped himself, fisting gently along his cock, and he started by just tracing it along the seam of your folds, collected your slick, pooling arousal, making you let out another simpering sigh at the feeling. You knew better than to beg for him to fuck you there—once Robby had something on his mind, he would take it. And you were always so eager to give whatever he wanted.

When his cock pressed ever so gently into your hole, you squeaked a little.

Immediately, he folded himself over your back, pushing his hands so they could come up under your body and flush your spine to his chest and belly. One of them came up under your chin to hold you even closer.

“Breathe in,” he said softly.

You obeyed automatically, lungs filling deep while his weight pressed you down into the mattress.

"Breathe out."

Again, you did as you were bid. Your breath left you shaky and uneven. He hadn't moved yet.

"One more time, honey, deeeep breath—"

He joined you this time, both of you inhaling, chests expanding together, and then—together again—you both exhaled, and he notched the fat tip of his length into you.

"Ah-ah-ah—" you gasped.

"Keep breathing baby," he cooed, his bicep coming closer to your face, your chin tucked into the crook of his elbow.

“Keep breathing, baby,” he cooed against your temple, arm tightening around you while your body strained around the stretch. Your muscles trembled violently at first, trying to resist before slowly, slowly beginning to give. All you could really focus on was his voice, the warmth of him around you, the deep drag of air into your lungs. By the time his hips settled flush against you, your hands were clutching hard at his forearm.

He kissed the side of your head, his breath a little ragged as he moaned at the tight feeling of your muscle around him.

"S'all mine, huh, honey? My pretty girl, my pussy to play with. My ass to take."

All you could manage was a weak whimper.

"Say: im your best girl, Robby, go on now—" he whispered.

“I—mmm…” you moaned when he pulled out barely an inch before easing back in again. "I'm…"

"Mhm, that's it, use your big girl words now." he softly urged as he pushed back in, only gently beginning to saw his hips. He was hardly moving at all, just a soft lull of movement to ease you into it.

"I'm y-your best girl…" you gasped, mouth hanging open, eyes fluttering as he pulled out even further, and pushed back in again.

"That's it, that's a good girl—" he groaned, and like he couldn't help himself, his next thrust in was rougher, and your eyes bulged a little.

He kissed the corner of your open mouth, "Okay?"

You nodded quickly, one hand reaching back blindly for him until your fingers tangled in his hair. He held you tighter in response, his breathing growing rougher against your cheek while his hips started moving in earnest.

"What a good girl, letting me fuck her little ass, huh? Only mine, this is all mine—"

“Yes—yes, yes—” you tried to answer, but every word dissolved into moans because his thrusts were getting harder now, faster, driving deep enough to make your entire body shake with each one. Soon, the room filled with wet slapping sounds and the strained noise of both your breathing. Heat kept building low in your stomach again, strange and different this time, tingling down your spine and making your thighs tremble uncontrollably.

"Robby—"

"Hmmm?"

"I—mmmm ohhhh I feel—"

"What do you feel, honey? Tell me, tell your old man—"

"Might—might come—like this—"

"Is that so?" he asked.

You nodded desperately, licking at your lips, your eyes squeezing shut at the feeling of the pressure. Your fingers tightened into his hair, nails scraping along his scalp.

“Don't you dare,” he growled into your ear, his breath hot as his teeth bared against your cheek. “Hold it.”

"Noooo—"

"Yes."

The firmness in his voice made your stomach clench hard. Even while he kissed your ear gently afterward, his hips kept snapping faster against you, driving you right up against that unbearable pressure again. It felt so odd—a tingling in your spine, though your pussy pulsed so hard it was nearly painful with neglect.

"Robby!"

“I'm gonna come, baby, fuck—hearing you moan my name like that—Jesus you're so fucking tight—my best girl, my good girl—don't you dare come—”

Tears gathered hot in your eyes from the intensity of it, your whole body wound tight around the orgasm he wouldn't let you have. You weren't upset. You just needed. Needed him. Needed something.

Suddenly, he was pulling out from your ass with a quick dip of his hips, and you let go of his hair to heard him letting out the loudest groan, deep and wrecked from his chest, the sound of his fist against his wet cock, the spluttering of ropes of come up your back.

You laid there, pussy throbbing, your orgasm lost, your muscles tight and loose all at once at the loss of him.

A second later he rolled onto his back and pulled you onto his chest immediately, chest heaving in breaths of relief. His thumb brushed gently beneath your eye where a tear had slipped free.

"I know, I know," he cooed, "C'mere."

You curled into him bonelessly, burying your face against his neck while your body slowly came down from everything. His skin was damp and hot beneath your cheek, your limbs still trembling every now and then. Across him, you could hear the soft rustle of tissues when he reached for the box beside the bed and started carefully cleaning your back.

“Here,” he whispered after he was done. You opened your eyes blearily and tilted your chin down to see him holding your water bottle up toward your mouth, thumb already resting against the straw so it wouldn’t wobble.

You hummed in appreciation and took a few small sips, throat still dry, lips swollen and warm.

“There you go,” he murmured.

When you were done, you sighed and let your cheek settle back against his chest. Your fingers wandered lazily over him, tracing little circles into his skin while his heartbeat knocked steadily beneath your ear.

His arm tightened around your shoulders, pulling you closer still before he pressed a careful kiss to your forehead. “How are you doing, honey?”

You hummed sleepily. “M’good.” Your lashes fluttered against the skin of his throat before you tipped your face up just enough to ask quietly, “How’re you?”

"I'm good."

You kissed into his beard once, then again, little absent-minded presses of your mouth along his jaw until your lips brushed softly against his. “Talk to me,” you murmured.

He sighed. "I missed you."

You smiled faintly, lids feeling heavy, your brain still a little fuzzy, "I missed you more."

He grinned fondly, his hand coming up to brush your hair back from your face. "Why don't we watch something for a bit, I'll go make some dinner."

"Okay,"

“Do you wanna come sit with me in the kitchen, or stay here?”

You shook your head immediately against him. “I’ll come.”

“Okay, honey.”

It took you a minute to convince your body to cooperate enough to climb out of bed. Your legs still felt loose and shaky beneath you, and there was a lingering heaviness between your thighs every time you moved, a pulse that kept reminding you of the events of the night. Robby hooked an arm around your waist to steady you while he dressed you in a pair of his boxers and a big sweatshirt. Eventually, he slid on his own shorts and you followed him out towards the kitchen.

The house felt different now in the aftermath, softer in the evening light, the lamps automatically turning on with the darkening hours. You climbed onto one of the barstools of the kitchen island with your water bottle clutched in both hands while Robby moved around the kitchen barefoot.

Your body still felt warm and heavy in a way that made you want to curl up somewhere close to him and stay there. And every now and then he drifted back toward you without seeming to really thinking about it, leaning in to kiss the top of your head or rubbing your neck gently while the pasta boiled behind him. At one point he'd put the kettle on, and handed you a mug of peppermint tea.

Time passed slowly as you sipped at it while he cooked, watching him take care of you. The windows over the sink had gone completely dark, kitchen lights soft against the granite counter tops. Finally, when everything was done, he plated the food and brought it to the small round dining table.

"C'mere," he said again, beckoning you with his fingers, the other hand patting his thigh.

You climbed onto his lap without hesitation, your spine settling against his chest while his arm wrapped loosely around your middle. He fed you slowly between bites of his own food, twirling pasta against the fork before bringing it to your mouth while you sat warm and pliant against him, sipping peppermint tea between bites.

Neither of you spoke much, but it didn't feel necessary. This was exactly what you needed: him, taking care of you, feeling needed and wanted. You, being taken care of and shown how special you were to him.

By the time you'd wiped your mouth and your tea was empty, the ache of your body had softened low and manageable.

Robby had turned on an episode of The Office, settling the two of you back onto the bed beneath the comforter. You tucked yourself against his side, one of his arms beneath your neck so his hand could stroke through your hair. The television light flickered blue across the room, catching against the planes of his face every time you looked up at him.

"Can I ask you something?" you said quietly.

His fingers paused briefly in your hair before starting again. “Of course.”

"What did Jack say today?" you said carefully.

Robby sighed softly through his nose.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you assured him quickly. “I was just curious.”

He shifted then, turning toward you more fully so he could dip his chin and look directly into your face. His gaze studied your face, flitting over your eyes, your lips, your hair as he continued pushing his fingers through it. And then, landing his soft brown eyes back on you, he said: "He wants something that's a bit more complicated than he thinks."

Oh?

Your eyes brows threaded together in uncertainty.

Robby leaned down and kissed the tip of your nose gently before pulling back again. “Let me just…” He sighed again, dropping his hand from your hair to rub his thumb along your shoulder beneath the blanket. “I need to talk to him again first. Clarify some things before you and I really get into it. Is that okay?”

You nodded slowly, though your teeth had already found your bottom lip. Your eyes drifted back toward the television, but you weren’t really watching anymore, your thoughts beginning to move in circles.

His finger hooked gently beneath your chin and guided your face back toward him.

“Hey,” he whispered.

You looked up at him again.

“We’re good,” he said softly. “More than good.”

Something in his expression tightened, vulnerable in a way he rarely let himself be around anyone.

“You’ve been really patient with me this week,” he continued quietly. “And I appreciate that more than I think I’ve said. I’m sorry again about all of this. About shutting you out. You mean so much to me, honey. I want this, I want you. More than ever before.”

You cut him off before he could keep spiraling, leaning forward to kiss him softly.

“It’s okay, Robby,” you murmured against his mouth. “I’m sorry too. You and me. Always.”

His eyes closed briefly at that. Then, he smiled and breathed deeply into the kiss. He rolled over you slowly until he was hovering above you again, broad shoulders blocking out most of the television light while the muffled sounds of the episode kept playing somewhere behind him.