addie

You’re barely able to stutter out a sound of surprise before Ryland seals his mouth over yours. He kisses you like a drowning man coming up for air. You can practically taste the desperation in him. Its sharply metallic tang has always been there, omnipresent under the surface of this thing you’ve got going on. You’ve tried to ignore it, but there’s no washing the taste of blood from your mouths. What you have with Ryland is alive, for now, and so it bleeds.

You came here to be a friend to him and offer him a shoulder to cry on about this whole difficult, supremely shitty situation. That's what you should be doing, instead of letting him dig his teeth into your bottom lip. To your credit, you really do try. You pull away, even though everything but the small part of your brain that is still thinking clearly is telling you to sink deeper into the kiss. “I… I wanted to ask if… do you maybe need to— to talk?”

Ryland groans as if even this small bit of distance physically pains him. “I don’t.”

“Ry—”

“There’s nothing you can say that’ll fix this. I don’t need to have a conversation, I need—” He cuts himself off, dodging your gaze while his eyes dart around the room, as if hoping to find the words he’s searching for hiding somewhere among the sparse furniture. When he speaks again, he is quieter, and what he says sounds like both a warning and an admission. “I think I need to hurt you again.”

Your breath, still a bit ragged from the way he kissed it out of you, stutters.

Tension coils in his shoulders, a tight band ready to snap, and his eyes are wide with an intense cocktail of fear and fury and want. He's scared, yes, but not prey animal scared. His is the terror of a cornered predator, a fox in a trap — the kind of scared that wants to claw and bite and draw blood.

You do the only thing you can to smooth the tides: you tip your head back and offer him your throat. “So do it. Hurt me.”

Ryland practically pounces on you, drawing you in again by his grip on your jaw. You press yourself against him, wanting to feel him, his warmth, his skin, his beating heart against your palms as you slide your hands under his shirt, up his chest. He breaks from the kiss for a moment to throw it to the ground, and in the split second you have to catch a glimpse of him before he dives into you again, you find him looking utterly ravenous.

His hands are everywhere, your hair, your back, your waist, your chest, your ass. He's angry and he's greedy and you like it that way, because it's better than apathy and resignation. It's alright, you try to tell him as you let him move you, following his backwards shuffle until he's braced against his desk. Everything is spinning out of control, except me. You can still control me; I will let you.

“Get on your knees,” he growls, still half into your mouth. When you don't respond right away, dazed as you are, he repeats, “Get on your fucking knees.”

You've never heard him swear like that. So far, there have only been softer curses between ragged breaths and stuttering thrusts, and a few times when his habit of middle school teacher pseudo-swearing found its way into the bedroom. Like that one time he said “fiddlesticks” while buried to the hilt inside of you, and both of you couldn’t help but burst into giggles. Those simple, silly moments with him are what you think you’ll miss most of all.

You’ll also miss sinking to your knees in front of him the way you’re doing now. You lean forward, looking up at him with the biggest, most pathetic eyes you can muster, and press your cheek against his thigh, like you’re a cat, rubbing against him. Ryland pets you like a cat, too, tenderly and affectionately, brushing your hair back in the process.

But then his fingers tighten and he guides you to the increasingly obvious tent in his jeans. The whimper he lets out when you kiss his bulge, mouth hot and wet and only a few layers of fabric away, is nothing short of delicious. And, god, you want to taste him. You want to trace the vein at the underside of his cock with your tongue. You want to drool all over him. You want—

He pushes away your eager hands, which have moved to try and undo his fly. “Hands off. Want you to use your mouth.”

You blink, confused. “How am I supposed to—?”

“You’re smart, you can figure it out.” It's clear he means to sound dismissive and flippant, but there's a warmth there, buried under the condescension. He really does think you're gifted with the mental acuity and mouth dexterity to figure this out.

And who are you to disappoint him? You kiss up his bulge, a quick trail right next to his zipper, and try to catch the button between your teeth.

Keyword: try. It keeps sliding out from between your lips, and even when you manage to hold on, you just can’t turn it to fit through the buttonhole. It doesn’t help that you’re drooling a little, making everything slippery, and you’re panting out shaky, heated breaths against Ryland’s crotch, and you can feel the hardness of him, so damn close and yet completely out of reach. It’s distracting.

From the back of your throat rises what you think will sound like a frustrated groan, but comes out as an utterly pathetic sob. You mewl and nuzzle his clothed erection and mentally take back every nice thing you have ever said about how good his ass looks in those stupid jeans. You can’t muster up anything except hatred for them right now, no matter how absolutely delicious they make him look.

“Doesn’t feel good, huh?” Ryland mutters, hand still fisted in your hair. “To need something so badly it tears at you, and to only ever almost have it?”

It doesn’t. It feels like torture. Mouthing at his bulge, you blink up at him, and there’s something about the way he looks at you, with a wanting so great it burns him, like Icarus must have looked at the sun, that makes you wonder if he’s talking about you. But he has you, damn it, right here, on your knees for him, ready to do anything he wants. If he would just—

“Help me,” you whine. “Can’t do it alone, I’m sorry, please, I need you to help.”

“Got a lot of people asking me for help today,” he observes passively. “But you’re the first one to beg.”

And you plan to keep up both begging and trying. The metal of his button clinks against your teeth, and you do your best to keep eye contact as you tug and try to work it past the denim with your tongue. Your already borderline incoherent pleading doesn’t get any more comprehensible either, now that your mouth is occupied. Your face keeps rubbing up against the denim stretched over his cock, and occasionally he lets out the softest little groan. You feel tiny and pathetic and somehow both useless and like he’s not actually letting you be useful.

The world is small, about the size of a button, and you are smaller.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Ryland decides and pushes you back on your haunches. He undoes his fly with a single flick of his fingers. Your cheeks burn; you took too long, clearly, and now he’s bored of watching you struggle. “I’m a little disappointed, but at least you tried.”

No, no, no. That’s worse. That’s so much worse. You can handle angry, but you hate the idea of disappointing him. Indignation rises inside of you like bile. “You’re not supposed to give people impossible tasks. You’re a teacher, you should know that.”

The tug he gives your hair makes you hiss. Good. You want him to get mad, and to focus all of that rage on you, spill it into you, lose it inside you. “Telling me how to do my job now?”

“It wasn’t fair!”

“None of this is fair,” he replies bitterly.

He reaches into his boxers and his cock springs up, long and girthy and perfect, and even though you’re still kind of huffy, you can’t keep your mouth from watering. Ryland grips it at the base, and just when you part your lips, thinking he’s finally, finally going to guide it into your mouth, he taps it against your cheeks. Surprised, you flinch a little, but Ryland holds your head in place. It’s not painful, — he’s very gentle, for obvious reasons — but the humiliation of being smacked in the face with his cock burns through you harder than any actual slap might. His precum leaves a wet trail on your skin, and he quite literally rubs it in using the head of his dick. And just like when he hits you with his palm, it goes right to your cunt.

The glare you throw his way is half-hearted at best. Truth is, you’re soaked. If this goes on for much longer, you’ll be humping the floor like a dog in heat. Knowing Ryland and the mood he’s in right now, though, you have a feeling he would probably enjoy that. Bastard. You adore him.

“Are you going to be good and suck my cock now? Can you do that, at least?” Ryland finally asks.

You nod as frantically as your already bruised ego will allow. “Yeah— yes. Please.”

All in all, you'd like to think you're pretty good at giving head, earlier button-related humiliation notwithstanding. You've certainly never had any complaints before, especially not from Ryland, who, even now, looks down at your kneeling form with an elated sort of disbelief, like you're his most audacious wet dream come to life.

You flatten your tongue against his shaft and soften your mouth around him as you take him in. As he always does, Ryland brushes your hair back to keep it from falling into your face, and the gesture is so weirdly tender despite the way he pushes forward to feed you his cock, it feels kind of absurd to you.

Even when he’s dominant, snarling at you and ordering you around, there’s a softness to him. When he had you bent over his workstation one night, held down by the back of your neck, he still leaned in and kissed your shoulder blades mid-thrust. When he bites you, he always immediately soothes the pain with a kiss. And now, when he begins to roll his hips, he whimpers loose, fragmented praises like he’s in awe of you — and of getting to do this to you, with you, here and now.

You do your damn best. You know he gets caught up in his own head, even during sex. Sometimes, reality’s sticky tendrils manage to creep in through the cracks of your cozy illusion of simplicity and twine themselves around his thoughts. You're not letting that happen today. You moan lowly around his cock and pull back to swirl your tongue along the head. Look at me, focus on me. Let yourself fall into my orbit. You make yourself an anchor, the way he has been for you so many times, bossing you around and saying mean things and inflicting the most delicious pain on you, so you can focus on something other than the whirlwind of your thoughts for once.

It’s easy to get caught up in it, in the slide of him against your flattened tongue, the stretch your lips, and the sounds that he pants into the back of his hand. You’ll never understand why he’s so afraid of how vocal he is. To you, there’s no sweeter sound; you especially love the way his voice gets low and a little breathy when he’s getting close.

Today, you only get to hear it for a few moments, alas. His hand leaves your hair to tap your shoulder, and you pull back somewhat reluctantly. “Don’t want to come yet,” he says by way of explanation. “I need to get inside you.”

Any disappointment you may have felt about not getting to make him finish with your mouth disappears, just like that, as if with the snap of a finger. You can feel the way your underwear clings to your wet pussy as you shift your weight around, and suddenly there is almost nothing in the world you want more than to squeeze your achingly empty walls around every inch of him.

Your knees are perilously wobbly, so you're grateful for the hand Ryland holds out to help you stand up. His eyes rove over your face, your flushed cheeks and your swollen lips, and if you were standing in front of literally any other man, the smug look on his face wouldn't be nearly as charming as it is on Ryland.

“You look good, all wrecked.” Gently but possessively, his thumb traces your spit-slicked, puffy bottom lip.

“All because of you,” you breathe. It’s exactly the right thing to say; something about the reminder that he’s the only one who gets to treat you like this always gets to him. Being who you are, you use that piece of knowledge very liberally.

Ryland kisses you, gropes you, undresses you like he owns you. In a way, he kind of does. It’s not just that he’s the last person you’ll ever be intimate with, it’s because he has bumbled and joked and science’d his way into your heart, where a piece of him will always stay, to take with you to space and to wherever you go after, if there even is anything after this existence. He’s right there under your skin, which he uncovers and strokes with his fingertips, until you’re naked save for your panties and arching into him with need.

There’s nothing quite like being manhandled by Ryland. Him and his stupidly hot arm muscles, which scoop you up, turn you around and set you right down on his desk. Your legs part for him and he steps between them, roving mouth trailing its way down your body. As he goes, he flicks one of your nipples — sensitive and drawn taut — with his tongue, making you keen. You arch your back like a cat, meeting the softness of his kisses and the ticklish scrape of his stubble as they move lower, lower, lower.

When he reaches the hemline of your underwear, he lifts his head. “Did you get this wet just from sucking me off?” He rasps, sounding somehow both full of awe and full of himself. “Whore.”

Whore, whore, whore.

The word thumps through you in the same rhythm as the throbbing of your clit, which Ryland sucks through the cotton. “Fu-uck,” you moan, voice quavering, back arching off the desk. Only a whore for you, is what you want to say, but you don't know if you can form anything more substantial than incomprehensible syllable-salad right now.

Trembling thighs clench around Ryland's head, and he digs his fingers into their flesh to push them back apart. “Legs open. Do you want me to eat your pussy or not?”

Of course you do, damn it. In fact, you’re pretty sure might die right here on the spot if he doesn’t.

His tongue laves the soaked fabric, and it feels so much more purposeful than whatever it is you were doing when you tried and failed to get his pants open. When he steps away for a moment to peel the garment off your hips and down your legs, it feels kind of pointed. Unlike him, you’re easy. You didn’t make him work for it. He can just undress you and put his mouth on you, and you will not only let him but thank him for it, because he’s so damn good at it.

A ravenous want overtakes his features as he kneels down and throws your legs over his shoulders. A starving dog at the edge of a feasting table, and he bites his way up your thighs, sucking bruises into the sensitive skin. God, you love when he does that, love pressing your fingers into the red and purple marks days later and remembering how they got there and who put them there.

You had to have a deeply embarrassing private meeting about that with Stratt once, after Ryland got a little carried away biting your neck. Following a stern talking-to about how much of a PR-nightmare it would be if pictures of one of her astronauts covered in bruises and fingerprints got out, you had to promise to keep any lasting visible marks contained to more discreet parts of your body. Thus, he keeps his bites concentrated on your inner thighs. You don’t mind it; it’s a little like he’s marking his territory, and the mild pain of it only enhances the pleasure of being eaten out by him.

Strong hands grip your hips and draw you down towards the edge of the desk and towards his mouth. Rough stubble grazes your upper thighs and the friction of it only makes the fire in you burn hotter. At last, his fingers part your glistening folds and his tongue runs up their cleft, encircling your clit. Helpless, you buck against the touch and plead for more, which is he more than happy to give you.

Ryland presses his face into the apex of your thighs and groans into your cunt like he’s trying to lose himself in you. It’s frantic and desperate and you can feel the fear turned anger turned hunger, gathering at the tip of his relentless tongue. If this is his last meal, he is sure as shit making it count.

“G-god, please,” you yelp into the back of your hand and reflexively clamp your legs shut again.

Ryland tuts and rewards you with a swat to your thighs for your indiscretion. Sharp pain shoots through you, making you squirm, and he repeats the action once, twice more. “What did I just say? Keep your legs open. I’m trying to make this good for you. I could have just bent you over the edge of my bed and used you like a cheap toy. You’d have let me. Wouldn’t you?”

You try to shake your head, but he smacks your thigh again, this time closer to where you’re still wet and wanting for him. “Y-yes, Ryland.”

“And you’d have enjoyed it, too, because you just love being useful, don’t you, baby? But I’m better than that.” He pries your thighs farther open and strokes your folds. “I want to be nice, make this feel good for you, too. If this is the last time I get to do this, I want to make sure you never, ever forget it.”

“Could never have forgotten you anyway,” you say, and the honesty of your own words takes you by surprise. Neither of you talks about feelings much. It’s better that way, easier. But it’s likely that this is the last time you’ll get to do this, no matter the outcome of Ryland’s choice. Even if he agrees to be the Hail Mary’s scientist, it's not like a suicide mission including several years of artificial coma and sharing extremely cramped quarters with two other people is going to be some sort of honeymoon. If this is goodbye, in a way, maybe a little bit of honesty is a good thing. Maybe it’ll provide some sort of closure.

Ryland leaves an oddly tender kiss just above your pubic bone. “Let me try to make sure, anyway. Better safe than sorry.” With that, he slowly eases a single digit inside of you.

It’s not quite enough — you’ve been aching to be filled for a while now — but does slake at least some of your thirst for more. You lift your hips up to meet his pumps at the same time that he draws your clit between his lips and sucks.

It takes him no effort to find that one perfect, spongy spot that makes stars dance in your eyes. Your breathing grows fractured. You’re so fucking wet for him; it coats his fingers and whenever he comes up for a second to look at you, you can clearly see it glisten on his chin and smirking mouth. And, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all the Gods that must have turned their backs on humanity to let something like the Petrova problem happen, you’ve never wanted anything more than him, like this, forever.

Your orgasm catches you completely off-guard. It comes on suddenly, draws tight in your lower belly and rushes through you with the force of the tide sweeping in. Toes curling, head falling back, panting his name, you come all over his hand and his mouth and his stupidly adorable big glasses.

He licks you through it until the rapturous rolling of your hips ceases, and when he sits back and wipes his glasses, there’s a distinctly self-satisfied glint in his eyes. “There we go,” he says, casually, like he’s just telling you both “good job!” and hasn’t just made your vision white out for a second. Your chest heaves with it, but the climax didn’t temper the flame of your want so much as stoke it — you still need him, and judging by the jutting hardness of his length, he needs you just as much.

You watch him rise to his feet and as soon as he’s within reach, you draw him into a kiss. The taste of your wetness hasn’t yet left his mouth, and it mixes with some remnant of sweetness from the frankly absurd amounts of candy you’ve seen him snack on. Your combined tastes claim your mouth and you want nothing more than to anchor the memory of them there, to keep this with you, along with the slide of his lips and the stroke of his tongue.

You feel him try to move away and tighten your legs around him in protest. His hands move down to your knees to push them away from where they’re locked against his hips. You whimper defiantly when he breaks from the kiss. “I’m just going to get a condom,” he explains in a tone so easily and casually authoritative it sends a warm prickle up your spine.

“You don’t have to,” you supply.

Ryland freezes.

The information takes a second to click into place, but when it does, his brain visibly kicks up several gears. “Are you sure?” His voice is deadly calm.

You nod. There’s no risk — not a physical one, anyway. Your regularly mandated medical examinations are very thorough and Stratt has been extremely diligent about making sure you get your prescriptions refilled, with good reason. Neither you nor Ryland has been with anyone else since you met on the aircraft carrier. You haven’t really spoken about it, but lately, condoms have become more of a formality between you two than anything else. They’re a way to keep at least some distance, put up a literal barrier between you two. But there’s no need for that anymore, now. Like a dog tasting blood, you are in too deep, with no choice but to dig your teeth in even harder. The world cannot be what tears you apart if you get to each other first.

“Okay,” he breathes.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, yes, heck yes, I— fuck.” For a second, he needs to close his eyes, ground himself again, as if the mere idea of what you’re proposing might bring him to his knees. The gaze his fixes you with when he opens them again is nothing short of predatory.

He takes his cock in hand and guides the head to rub up against your clit, then down along your slit. The pre drooling from it mixes with your juices, and fucking hell, that sight shouldn’t be nearly as hot to you as it is. You feel yourself clench around nothing. “Please, Ry, please—”

“Please what?” There’s a clear undertone of condescension in Ryland’s voice, but you can tell, just from the way his voice breaks at the end of the question and the tight grip his other hand has on your inner thigh, that he’s barely holding on himself. “Use your words, baby.”

Noiselessly, your lips shape the words ‘fuck me’ once, twice, before you can gather the presence of mind to meet his eyes and say, with a tone so pathetic you might as well be pleading for your life and sanity, “Please fuck me raw, Ryland.”

Ryland groans like you’ve gut-punched him. He leans forward, shifts closer, notches his tip at your entrance, and then, finally, mercifully, he’s plunging into you in one long stroke. You’re so full, overstretched around the girth of him, and it is— holy fucking shit, it’s intense. Without the thin layer of latex between you, you can feel everything. Every ridge, every vein, every inch of skin against yours.

You’re not the only one struck by the intimacy of it; Ryland nearly tumbles forward, but catches himself with one arm. He’s gripping the side of the desk so hard his knuckles turn white, and you watch his jaw work as he grits his teeth. “You’re going to ruin me.” And then he says your name, like a prayer, a curse, an invocation.

You run the pads of your fingers over his stubble and muster up just enough defiant energy to make your next words sound like a challenge, “So ruin me back.”

And then he’s moving, and it’s everything, more than everything, it’s almost too much, but only almost. You feel your walls clench in ripples around his pistoning cock, and you have to brace yourself back against the desk to keep halfway upright. The sly little smile falls off your face as quickly as it crept onto it, because your mouth draws open in a staccato series of moans.

“I will,” Ryland grits above you. His voice comes to you like someone speaking through a dream. “I will ruin you before anyone else gets a chance to. You’ll be sent into space with my marks on your skin and my cum inside you.”

“Uh-hnng,” you respond inarticulately.

“Then again,” he goes on, eyes moving down to where he’s driving himself into you, “maybe I shouldn’t let you go at all. Maybe if I knock you up, neither of us has to leave. Even Stratt couldn’t make us go then.”

His words wash over you in a hot, dizzying rush. It’s a fucked up thing to say, you know that, but right here, in this moment, you want nothing more than to indulge in the fantasy of having an easy out, of not ending today in heartbreak. You feel every inch of the bare skin of his cock, and all you can think about is that this is what it would feel like if he were to actually get you pregnant.

“Do it.” Your breathing shakes with a tremor when he angles himself just right. You’re pretty sure you’re seeing stars — the good kind, the non-darkening kind, the kind you won’t have to die among. He’s so deep inside you, you could swear you almost feel him in your throat. “Do it, do it, do it. Breed me.”

“God. I will, baby, don’t worry. I’ll keep you here, all damn day if I have to, stuffing you full of my seed. Have to make sure it takes.” His voice vacillates between breathy sighs and low growls. “Could watch you go all round with it. Everyone would know what I did to you, that you’re all mine and she can’t take you away anymore.”

They would know, wouldn’t they? Neither of you has been particularly subtle about your ‘definitely not anything more than friends with benefits’ arrangement. On Friday nights on the aircraft carrier, Ryland used to put his hand on your knee when he thought no one was watching. The first (of many) times Olesya caught sight of it — incidentally also the first time he did it, because, yeah, discretion isn’t really Ryland’s strength — she raised her eyebrows and toasted to you in a ‘good for you’ sort of gesture. Once, you convinced him to sneak into a storage closet to make out in the middle of the workday. Carl didn’t so much catch you as watch you drag Ryland off and wait outside the door, only to knock and very politely ask you to get a move on when you took too long. And that’s to say nothing of the last New Year’s Eve party, where Ryland put his arm around you during the countdown and, when it hit zero, kissed you right there, in front of everyone — god and Stratt (increasingly the same thing) and the world.

Point is, you’ve always liked it. Being his, in whatever small way you can be. Other people knowing you’re his. So you know for certain that you’d like this, too.

Your hand finds your lower belly and just for a moment, you imagine it: rounded with child, with a life that is equally yours and his, a life he put inside of you. You imagine a house with a garden, day trips down to the beach, squealing children, gray hairs on your heads, falling into his arms in a dying world.

“I wish,” you start to speak, but your voice falters, “wish I could have that. A future with you.”

The admission hangs between you, honey-sweet and sticky. And just like that, the roughness gives way to a tender intensity. Ryland chokes out a sound, something like a sob, and reaches for your hand. Normally, he would do that to pin it above your head, but this time, he only twines his fingers through yours and holds it.

When he kisses you, you can almost taste every unspoken word on your commingling tongues.

The stroke of his cock is slower now, but deeper somehow, like he’s really trying to bury something of himself in you. You kiss him back, close your eyes, and try to disappear into him, the drag of him in your sensitive cunt, the teasing edge of his tongue, the scent of his skin, the sound of his moans.

His hand, the one that isn’t still holding yours and propping him up over your body, moves between your bodies, finds your clit and rolls it between his fingers in that one specific rhythm that he knows drives you insane. Just before your eyes flutter shut, they meet his. Tears are clinging to his lashes.

This isn’t hooking up anymore. This isn’t casual, and it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s not rough, desperate sex born out of a desire to have some kind of control over a truly horrible situation. Neither of you is trying to forget yourselves anymore; if anything, you want to be present for this, remember every part of it, because — trite and clichéd and juvenile as it may sound — you’re making love, or the closest thing to it that you’re able to give each other.

The magnitude of it all crashes over you at the same time your orgasm does. You writhe and you curl your toes and you cry out Ryland’s name, all throughout your peak, because what else can you say, when his name, to you, means love and hope and heartache and awe and pain and ‘goodbye’ and ‘don’t go’ and home-away-from-home?

He comes inside you moments later, and you shudder with the feeling of his warm ejaculate coating your insides. He’s here, some part of his body is in your body, just like part of his soul is forever in your soul. You were a fool to believe it could ever be anything less than this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your collarbone, and you can do nothing but hold him close. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that stuff about keeping you here, I— it’s brave, what you’re doing. So brave. You’re incredible. I just... I don’t understand, sometimes, why the would would give me you, just to take it all away again.”

“I’m sorry, too.” For all the time you’ll never have. For letting him close enough to hurt you both in the first place. For all the things you want to say but can’t, even now, because no matter how many people will remember you for your bravery, deep down you are a coward, afraid of the wingspan of your own feelings and the way they might take flight if you speak of them out loud.

You don’t ask him what he chooses. Whatever answer he gives, it would break your heart, and you can’t fall apart right now, not when you need to be strong more than ever before — for the world, for Ryland. For Ryland. For Ryland.

And you realize, with a horrible, sinking feeling, that you are not as okay with dying anymore. The thought of it was a lot easier when it meant sacrificing yourself for a definition of the greater good that included him. It didn’t matter that you didn’t get enough time with him, because you had to die so that Ryland might live. There used to be a tragic, twisted logic to that; now it's all muddled.

You don’t know yet that this is the last time you will see Ryland Grace on this Earth. When he kisses you, it tastes the same as it always does: a little bit like a kiss goodbye.

Hood moves like weather: blunt, inevitable, the kind that makes men board windows. He is a series of choices executed without doubt. You love him for his doubt anyway. You watch him through the morse-code blink of a broken neon sign and think of his bare hand on your kitchen counter, steadying a mug he does not drink from while you tell him, softly, that ghosts do not negotiate with the living.

The deal, such as it was, disintegrates. The wind changes. Your mouth says, “We’re done,” even as your body says, Not yet.

You push the shutter up on a second window with a code that isn’t legal anywhere and say, “Out, out,” like you’re calling alley cats in a downpour. Nightwing flips for the joy of it, because he’s alive and insists on proving it. Jason covers the retreat with two shots that ricochet thoughtfulness off the concrete. A man who wanted to hurt you changes his mind.

By the time the sirens pick a direction and commit, the rain has softened to a gray breath. Steam climbs the vents in exhausted spirals. You pull yourself back to the rooftop with hands that pretend not to shake.

Dick breaks the skyline first, slipping over the ledge like a promise. Mask shoved into his hair, rain ribboning off his cheekbones, smirk dialed down to save your life. “You’re bleeding,” he says lightly, as if pointing out a run in your tights.

“It’s fine,” you say, because it’s the script, and scripts are something you’re good at.

He kneels without asking and with absolute certainty, knees bracketing your boots. The arrogance of tenderness. The snap of gloves coming off echoes like a vow. He takes your hands, wet, grimy, foolish, and turns them palm-up with something close to reverence. The gauze unspools, a small white miracle in a dirty world.

“For someone who hates being fussed over,” Dick says, low, “you’re hell on the supplies.”

“Says the man who took a bullet and insisted on finishing the acrobatic sequence.”

“Had to impress the contractor.” He glances up. It’s ridiculous that the glance feels like standing under a heat lamp in January. “Was it working?”

“Maybe,” you say, and it’s the most dangerous thing you’ve said all night.

His thumb presses to the inside of your wrist, slow and deliberate. Your pulse does something you don’t sign for. You watch his mouth soften as he feels it. Watch his eyes flick to your throat, the rain there, the way you swallow. He lets your pulse go, not because he wants to, but because he always lets go when he should. It’s how he survives the falling.

The impact of Jason’s landing rattles the gravel into a nervous halo. Helmet off, curls pressed damp to his temple, that white streak defying weather, time, and sense. There’s a split in his brow that will insist on a scar. He does not appear to feel it.

His eyes go to the place where your fingers have threaded with Dick’s in the necessary choreography of gauze and steadiness. He is a man who can kill without a tremor; he is undone by the sight of your hand in someone else’s.

“You’re hurt,” he says. Not a question. A charge.

“Handled,” Dick sings without looking away from your knuckles. He tucks the gauze and ruins the tuck to retie it tighter. A little petty. A little pretty.

“Wasn’t talking to you.” Jason’s voice scrapes against a place in your chest you pretend is nothing but anatomy. He crouches; his bulk becomes shelter more than threat. His gloved fingers tip your chin up. He doesn’t force. He never forces. His thumb drags rain off your lower lip and finds the copper there. When he sees red on black leather his jaw flexes once, habit, history, hunger.

“You don’t get to bleed for either of us,” he says, softer than thunder and twice as inevitable. You could say something sharp. You could say something safe. You do neither. You look at him like your name was a hymn.

Dick’s voice cuts in, silk over steel. “If you two are done eye-fucking, debrief is still a thing.”

Jason moves first, he always does when the choice is stay or swing. The shove is a brother’s argument and a man’s jealousy. Dick takes it like a dancer and returns it like one; a hook, a twist, a break in the light. They’re not trying to hurt each other, but they are trying to make a point. Rain stipples the world to static. 

“Enough,” you say, and your voice makes the kind of quiet that cloth makes when it tears. You step into the space between lightning and thunder. You take the heat and the force and the promise of both and hold them in your body like it’s what it was made for. “If you want to measure dick sizes, do it on your time. I am not a prize.”

Dick’s arm loosens. Jason’s fist lowers. They back off because you asked. Because that, at least, is a line nobody crosses.

“You’re bleeding through,” Jason mutters after a long beat, staring at the bruised bloom on the gauze he didn’t tie.

“And you’re shaking,” Dick says, and you hate him a little for noticing; you love him a little for saying it like it’s a secret he’ll keep.

The pain arrives late and rude, dragging its luggage. Cold in your marrow. Bruise pulling at your breath. Hands that tremble like bad radio.

“I’m fine,” you manage, a lie so familiar it feels like a childhood nickname.

Jason has already shrugged out of his jacket. The leather lands on your shoulders with the weight of a promise he won’t let himself make. It holds heat the way he does, stubborn, surprising, yours as long as you let it be. Gun oil and smoke and a citrus note he denies wearing. It engulfs you. He looks at you like you were meant to live inside every piece of him he can give without dying from it.

“You’re freezing,” he says. “And an idiot.”

“You’re one to talk.”

He huffs, half laugh, half prayer. “Takes one to know one.”

Dick’s knuckles skim the edge of your temple. He’s so careful it hurts. “Hey,” he says, and the word is a light he puts on the table between you. “You scared us.”

The line in your throat snags on the word us. You’ve held the shape of them in your mouth for months: the way Dick’s hands say stay without ever closing, the way Jason’s jaw says go and his hands say don’t you dare. You are their contractor and their contraindication. You know where they hide their fear. You know how to pick the lock.

“We can’t keep doing this,” you say. The fighting, your body adds. The wanting, your bones amend. The pretending, your pulse insists. “It’s going to kill one of us.”

Jason sinks down until his shoulder presses into you. The leather between you squeaks like a confession. He flexes his hand once, pinky brushing yours, small and seismic. He pretends it was an accident. You pretend to believe him. “Doesn’t mean I want to stop,” he says.

Dick’s stance eases, the smirk sheathing itself. He looks, not at your mouth, not at the gauze, but at your hands, at the way you’re measuring breath. He reads you like you are the only file he never misplaced. “You and me both, Jay,” he admits, and it lands between you with all the graveness of a church bell.

Wind combs cold fingers through your damp hair. Sirens tug the horizon taut. Somewhere a radio argues with itself. Gotham exhales, tired. You close your eyes and let the rain mark time on your face.

You think about your job. About how you catalog their damage and hide your own. About the nights you stitch Jason together on your kitchen floor while he tells you he’s fine and you tell him he’s lying and the kettle screams for both of you. About the mornings Dick shows up with pastries he didn’t eat and a smile he can’t carry and parks himself in your chair like he’s been there his whole life. About how you keep their passwords and their last words in the same notebook. About the silence you’ve stored for them, the safe you’ve made out of your ribs.

“I need boundaries,” you say, and the word skitters, unsure of its legs in this weather.

Jason’s mouth pulls. “I know,” he says, and it sounds like it hurts. “I’ll follow whatever lines you draw.”

Dick nods once, the kind of assent that is also a stake. “We respect them,” he adds. “Even if I hate them.”

A moment passes. And then two. You don’t tell them the line you want is not a line at all but a room, warm and lamplit and wide enough for three stubborn ghosts to hang their coats and learn, slowly, how to stay.

“Here’s the deal,” you say instead, because you have always been a creature built on terms. “On the job, I am command if I’m on comms. You do not undermine my calls with machismo or miracles. You tell me before you bleed. You do not make me pick between you in a firefight. You do not use me to hit each other.”

Dick says, “Yes, ma’am,” like a joke made to keep his mouth from betraying his heart. His hand flexes once where it rests on his thigh. His pinky bumps your knee on purpose. He pretends it wasn’t. He does not fool you.

Jason says nothing for a long moment. He watches your mouth. He looks at your throat. He looks at your hands, at the places you’re fraying that the gauze isn’t covering. “Copy,” he says finally, as if saying it out loud carves it into him. He sets his palm on the edge of the ledge, close enough that you can slide your fingers until they meet, knuckle to knuckle. You do. He doesn’t move; neither do you. The contact is absurdly small. It is also everything.

“And off the job?” Dick asks, soft.

“Off the job,” you say, and the words feel like stepping out of wet clothes in a dark room, “we try telling the truth before it gets us killed.”

Rain ticks in the pause that follows.

“Truth,” Dick says, rolling the word like he wants to keep it. “Okay.” His gaze flickers to your mouth, down, back up. He smiles, small and private. It looks like a promise he’s afraid to spend. “Then truth: I think about your voice in my ear more than is professional. I like when you tell me I’m being reckless in that tone that makes me want to behave. I want,” He stops. Nightwing never stumbles; Dick Grayson does. It knocks something tender loose in your chest. “I want more time. With you. In rooms without exit plans.”

Jason’s truth arrives like a door kicked in. He doesn’t bother dressing it. “Truth,” he echoes. “You make me want to stay. You make me want to go where you go and put my back to every door so you don’t have to look over your shoulder. I think about you on the nights the world is too loud to sleep. I think about your hands,” His glance drops to the gauze, to the places he didn’t get to hold. He swallows it. “and I hate the rain for touching you first.”

Your throat tightens on a laugh that isn’t one. “Okay,” you say, and the word feels like you’ve moved a brick with your bare hands. “Then the truth is: I want you both alive more than I want anything. And I want,” You are not built for confession. You do it anyway. “I want to stop pretending I don’t want to be seen.”

Dick’s eyes go bright, even in the rain. Jason’s jaw finally unclenches. The sirens decide on some other tragedy and fade.

“You’re seen,” Dick says, and the certainty in it lifts the hairs along your arms. “You’ve been seen.”

“Hate to tell you,” Jason adds, a corner of his mouth tipping, “but it’s way too late to go invisible on us.”

You sit there with the city humming like a neon wound and let yourself have the smallest indulgence: you look at them the way you never let yourself look when the comm light is red. You catalog the things that won’t fit cleanly in a report: the way Dick’s curls kink at the ends when they’re drenched; the sliver of scar just below Jason’s left ear where his helmet once bit too hard; the particular generosity of both their mouths when they say your name.

Wind combs more rain through your hair. The leather shifts on your shoulders, heavy enough to anchor, light enough to choose to keep. Your hands, stubborn, find them: left pinky hooking Dick’s, right knuckle resting against Jason’s. A ridiculous geometry. A blueprint anyway.

“We have to move,” you tell them at last, because the city doesn’t care about epiphanies. “We leave prints when we sit still this long.”

Dick rises and offers you his palm like an old-fashioned gentleman who can break a man’s femur with that same hand in under a second. You take it. His fingers close around yours, firm and careful, like he’s lifting something precious from a shelf. He doesn’t let go right away.

Jason stands and takes the weight of the leather across your shoulders with one palm as you do, as if redistributing gravity is a thing he can do for you. It is, more often than you admit. His thumb lingers at your collar a millisecond longer than necessary. The touch burns like a brand you asked for.

You move to the ledge together, three shadows in a city that devours silhouettes for sport. You count yourself, quietly, like an old superstition, one, two, three, and feel the small grace of all the numbers answering back.

“On you,” Dick says.

“Always,” Jason adds.

You look out at Gotham, wet and ruinous and yours by stubbornness if not by right. You are not supposed to be here. You are here anyway. You taste copper and rain and a future you don’t have language for yet.

“Go,” you say, and the word is the first honest thing you’ve ever given the night.

They go. You follow. The city swallows you all and, for once, does not bite down.

-

The drive to Wayne Manor is a ribbon of wet glass and quiet engines, the town car humming like a kept secret. Crimson satin pools around your thighs, the slit inching higher every time the road curves. Your knuckles, still raw from last night, tingle beneath concealer that can’t quite convince your nerves to forget. In the rearview, the driver’s gaze brushes yours and skitters away. You wonder if he knows. You wonder if everyone does, the way your pulse learned two different rhythms and refuses to choose.

The manor lifts out of the rain like a cathedral that remembered it was a fortress: all gothic ribs and golden windows, a spine of old money straightening against the storm. Flashbulbs strobe the steps, paparazzi lightning, and for a heartbeat you stand with the night in your lungs, the cold kissing your bare shoulders, and then you step into the light.

The ballroom exhales you into warm perfume and polished crystal. Candleflame quivers along chandeliers; light fractures through cut glass and skates in silver down the spill of your dress. The air tastes of champagne and roses and the faint, metallic ghost that clings to every Wayne gathering: the memory of gun oil, polite and inevitable. The orchestra swells, Strauss, maybe, and the notes jar against the thud of your pulse, two tempos arguing under your skin.

You don’t see them first. You feel them.

Dick is kinesis before he’s man: a ripple widening in the crowd’s surface tension. Midnight-blue wool sits like a second language on his shoulders, spine straight as an oath. He smiles at a diplomat because his mouth knows how, but his eyes go hunting the second you cross the threshold. When they find you, conversation turns to static in his ears. His gaze drags, slow, and deliberate, down the line of your dress, over every place satin clings, pausing on every breath of bare skin the slit allows. He excuses himself with a word that means nothing and starts toward you; the crowd parts on instinct.

Jason is gravity. Stillness with the weight turned up. He’s a bruise of shadow against the bar in a charcoal henley and dark trousers, sleeves shoved to his elbows, forearms mapped with pale scars the tuxedo men pretend are bad lighting. No bow tie. No apology. He lifts his bourbon and lets amber catch a chandelier’s gleam like a low fire, eyes never leaving the space Dick is beelining toward: you.

The game begins before anyone names it. Not quite cat and mouse: more like wolves, and you, a red thread pulled taut between their teeth.

You start with Dick. He materializes at your side like he’d been there all along. The air shifts, cedar, clean sweat, rain on cold glass, his cologne threading the sugar of chilled champagne into something you want to breathe for a long time.

“You clean up nice, sweetheart,” he murmurs, pitching the tease for your ears alone. His hand finds the small of your back with a feather-light certainty that feels like muscle memory. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you in something I couldn’t peel off one Kevlar strap at a time.”

“You just like thinking about me half-dressed,” you say, and the corner of his mouth curves like he’s tucking the image into a pocket for emergencies.

“Can you blame me?” His thumb draws a slow circle over the bare skin at the dip of your spine. Your breath missteps. His answering laugh is quiet and satisfied, the sound of a man who catalogues cause and effect like a favorite trick.

“Dance with me,” he says, and it isn’t a question. Still, he offers his hand.

You take it.

The floor receives you like an old friend. Dick leads with deceptive ease; he always does. The first step is an apology for last night’s chaos, the second a promise to be better tonight, the third a smile you can feel where he’s touching you. He guides without crowding, lets your weight decide the next turn, skims you past diamonds and gossip with the same finesse he uses to slip past knives.

“You always move like this?” you ask, chin tilted just enough that your lips almost brush his jaw.

“Only when I’m trying to impress someone.” His mouth is a breath from your temple. The orchestra swells; he steals a spin you didn’t see coming. Satin flares around your legs, whispering over his trousers as you turn back into him. He catches you low and slow, the world tilting into a honeyed blur of chandeliers. His palm is heat at your back, sending a shiver down your spine that builds to a heat between your legs. His breath ghosts your cheek. “Hows it working?” he asks, voice gone soft at the edges.

“You’re getting there,” you say, voice breathless, and his laugh hums against your collarbone like a lover's caress. 

He doesn’t look away often when you’re in front of him, but when he does, it’s to check on you: a flick to your mouth when you bite back a smile; a sweep over your shoulder to the mirror, where the two of you flash like a dare; a glance to your knuckles where the concealer hasn’t quite bested the ache. His thumb shifts, sliding down a vertebra, anchoring.

“You’re dangerous tonight,” he says quietly, eyes tracing the shape of your mouth. You feel your chest tighten at the motion, your nipples drawing into taut peaks beneath your dress as you wonder, not for the first time, what his mouth might feel like on yours. 

“Good thing you do dangerous for a living, Grayson.” You challenge, tongue tracing the seam between your lips. His eyes glint dangerously as they track the movement.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I do.” You find that you long to hear him say those words again, over and over. He squeezes your fingers once, an extra beat off the measure, your own rhythm tucked into the music, and lets the moment hover, unsaid things burning a low, steady blue between you.

“Don’t get too comfortable, Grayson.” The voice is smoke and gravel at your back; you feel the heat of it along your spine before you turn. Jason. Closer than you expected. The slightest brush of his knuckles grazes your hip as he reaches past to take two flutes from a passing tray. “Some of us don’t have a dance card.”

Dick’s mouth quirks. “Make one.”

Jason’s eyes don’t leave yours as he hits his brother with a vulgar hand gesture. “Mind if I cut in?”

Dick holds your gaze for permission, always, always, and when you incline your head, he releases your hand with a reluctant grace. His pinky lingers a heartbeat longer than the rest of him, a tiny hook letting go.

Jason replaces the warmth at your back with a different heat: heavier, rougher, more obvious about the ways it can burn. He doesn’t ask where to put his hand; he puts it low at your waist like gravity would if it had a say. His other hand finds yours, fingers lacing, calluses catching on your rings.

“You don’t dance at these things,” you say.

“Didn’t have a reason.” He steers you into the waltz with an economy that reads less ballroom, more battlefield: fewer flourishes, more intention. He matches your breath instead of the strings. The room fades to a one-color wash behind him, amber bourbon, storm-cloud eyes, scars like constellations you’ve named alone.

“Nice dress,” he says, mouth close to your ear. “Looks like it’d rip easy.”

“Try it and see what happens.” You warn. 

“Tempting.” His smirk is brief; the look after isn’t. His thumb traces the hinge of your wrist, the same place Dick tested your pulse, only his touch is rougher, like he wants the thrum to answer to him. It does.

“You look different in the light,” he adds, softer. “Less haunted.”

“Concealer,” you say dry, and he huffs something that isn’t quite a laugh.

“Not that kind.”

He doesn’t dip you. He doesn’t show you off. He keeps you close. His thigh slides between yours in the turn and pauses there long enough to be a question he won’t ask in public. You feel a pulse between your legs, heat flaring instantly against the thick muscle pressing against you. Your hand tightens on his shoulder. The muscle bunches under your palm like a promise.

“You’re staring,” you murmur.

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but you’re looking at me like you’re one breath from doing something we can’t take back.” You say, teeth worrying your bottom lip as he flexes the muscles of his thigh, pressing harder against your mound. 

He leans in until his stubble grazes the shell of your ear. “Only if you ask nice.”

“Pretty please,” you whisper, and feel his inhale stagger.

He spins you slow then, deliberate enough to taste, and your slit flares high. His hand is there on your thigh before the room can blink, fingers splayed across bare skin above the garter, not hiding you so much as claiming the privilege of seeing. Heat sparks under your skin as his thick flinger dips under the garter, your hip hiked over his, the hard line of his thigh pressing against the soaked fabric of your thong.

“Careful,” he growls, but the word breaks in the middle. “Don’t want anyone else thinking that’s for them.”

You should laugh it off. Instead you angle closer, forehead tipping against his jaw. “You don’t get to claim me, Todd,” you manage.

“No?” He doesn’t move his hand. “Then why’s your pulse say otherwise?”

You refuse to answer. He doesn’t need you to. You rock your hips subtly against his and his eyes flash in warning.  When the song softens itself into applause, he doesn’t let go. The room brightens; the two of you stay in stormlight.

“Breathe,” he says finally, but the subtle flex of his thigh says if you can.

“I am.” You huff, trying to appear far less affected than you feel. 

“Then come on.” He releases your thigh and, with gentle rudeness, takes your hand again. “Five minutes. Somewhere quiet.”

You glance instinctively for blue. Dick stands a few paces off, watching over the rim of a champagne flute, mouth curved, something fond, something aching. He tips his head: go.

You go.

Jason leads, but not by much; you could break away and he knows it; he would let you and try again tomorrow. He shoulders open a door that looks like a wall and suddenly you’re in a corridor hushed with old wood and real paintings. Your heels snap lightly on parquet; rain whispers at leaded windows. He takes you down two turns you didn’t know and into a small library with a fireplace dressed in marble and a decanter of wine no one will miss.

Dick is already there. You’re unsure of how he beat the two of you, but you know better than to linger on it.  He’s shed the party smile but not the tux. The blue has darkened toward midnight; his eyes have not. His jacket hangs from a chairback, sleeves rolled, throat open a button too far. He’s paced, you can tell; the carpet’s dented under the window. He looks up like you’re the answer to a question he finally decided to ask out loud.

“Was wondering if you’d remember the passage,” he says, half to Jason, half to you.

“Wasn’t going to announce this on the PA,” Jason replies, dropping your hand only to close the door. The latch clicks. The storm outside makes an old house sound like a living thing.

For a moment the three of you just breathe.

You are the first to puncture the quiet. “We didn’t speak after patrol,” you say. “We didn’t know how.” You swallow. “At least… I didn’t.”

Jason leans his shoulders against a bookcase like it’s a wall he trusts. Dick takes a step closer and stops, as if he’s promised himself he won’t crowd you without being invited.

“Say what you need to say,” Dick offers softly. “We’ll match you.”

You look from one to the other and let the truth strip down. “I want both of you,” you say. The chandelier doesn’t fall. The world does not crack. “And I don’t know how to want you without breaking us in half.”

Jason’s jaw flexes. He doesn’t look away. “I want you,” he says, like a door kicked open. “And I don’t know how to want you without wanting to put my back to every door in every room you’re in.”

Dick’s mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile. “I want you,” he echoes, voice low, “and I don’t know how to want you without planning twelve different ways to keep you safe and then wanting a thirteenth where you teach me how you do it better.”

You huff a laugh that hurts. “This supposed to be a debrief or a disaster?”

“Knowing us? Both.” Jason says.

“Let’s stage the scene,” Dick says gently, slipping into the language you reach for when the world is too big. “There’s the easy option: we pretend last night was heat-of-the-moment, tonight is gala nonsense, and in the morning we revert to our regularly scheduled terrible decisions.”

“Option two,” Jason says, “we take one night, blow the fuse, and then we walk away clean.” A muscle in his cheek jumps like it wants to contradict him.

“Option three,” you say, because your mouth is brave when your heart can’t be, “we try.” The word hangs in the warm library air. “We build something with three corners and refuse to apologize.”

Silence greets your words. Not hostile. Not even heavy. Just… aware.

“How?” Dick asks, and it’s not skepticism; it’s an invitation to make a plan.

Your lungs find air. Your work voice steadies your wanting voice. “Rules,” you say. “We’re good with rules.” The boys shoot you a look and you laugh. “Okay, I’m good with rules.” You tick them on fingers still faintly aching. “No using jealousy as a weapon; if something hurts, say it. No martyrdom, no mind-reading; we practice radical honesty; ask before touching, anyone can tap out at any time with no drama; we go slow; we learn as we go; and we don’t use me, or each other, to act out old grudges.”

Jason nods once, as if welding each line onto his ribs. “Check-ins,” he offers. “Real ones. Not ‘fine.’ Not ‘don’t worry about it.’ Once a week we look each other in the eye and say the thing that’s ugliest.”

Dick’s eyes have gone bright. “And we celebrate, too,” he adds. “Wins. The small ones. A good night’s sleep. A mission where we felt… easy.”

“And a hard stop,” you say, because you know how important exits are. “Any of us can call time if we’re drowning. No questions, no punishment. We regroup when we can breathe.”

Jason’s gaze drops to your hands. He steps closer, slow enough to be interrupted, and turns your left palm up. His thumb sits in the center like he’s pressing a seal. “One more,” he says. “No lying about pain. Physical or otherwise.”

Dick mirrors the gesture with your right hand, thumb over pulse. “And we don’t turn desire into a weapon. Not against each other. If the wanting’s too loud, we tell the truth about that, too.”

“Can this be more than a night?” you ask the room, and the room answers with stormlight sliding down the window, with heat from a fire that’s been banked for hours, with the scratch of Jason’s stubble when he finally doesn’t hold his distance, with the careful way Dick leans his forehead to yours as if the contact might change the math of the world.

“It can,” Dick says, simple as a streetlight coming on.

“It will if we don’t bolt the first time it gets ugly,” Jason adds. He is close enough now that the edge of his henley brushes your arm. He doesn’t take more than you give; he doesn’t know how to take less.

You tilt your face to him. “You going to survive sharing?”

“No,” he says truthfully, and then softens it with the thing he’s learning how to do, “But I’m willing to try.”

Your laugh slips out, wet at the edges. “You?”

Dick’s smile is small and helpless. “I have been choosing not to choose for months. Walking away would be the coward’s choice. I’m finished being afraid of wanting good things.”

You breathe. In. Out. Their thumbs circle your pulse points, two different pressures writing the same promise. You let yourself look at them the way you never do when the comm light is red: the sunshot flecks in Dick’s blue; the stormbank green of Jason’s; the shared set of their mouths when they decide to be brave.

“I want slow,” you say. “I want to remember this in ten years and not hate us for it.”

“Slow,” Dick agrees. His hand leaves your pulse only to rise and cup your jaw, warm and callused and heartbreakingly careful. He doesn’t pull you in; he waits.

Jason’s knuckles graze your shoulder, down, then along the edge of crimson satin. “Slow,” he echoes, as if surfacing with the word.

You step into the space you opened. It’s a small step and also the whole night.

Dick kisses your temple first, soft, steady, like swearing in a language no one else hears. Jason kisses the corner of your mouth without taking your mouth, rough breath, restrained want, a promise to earn the rest. The two touches meet in your chest and light a lamp you decide you’ll leave on.

“Back to the ballroom?” Dick asks, nudging his nose against your hairline like he’s checking you haven’t short-circuited. “Or do we keep hiding in here until someone comes looking?”

“We should go back,” you say, exhaling. “Pretend we’re normal for at least ten minutes.”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, we’re real big on normal.”

You roll your eyes. “Fine. Pretend we’re functioning adults, then. But,” You jab a finger lightly between them. “Meet me after midnight.”

Dick’s brows lift. “Where?”

“Pick a guest room,” you say. “Any of them.”

Both men exchange a look, one you can’t decode but definitely feel in your chest.

Jason’s mouth curls first. “We grew up in this mausoleum, sweetheart. We know every room. Every hallway. Every spot Bruce pretends no one knows about.”

Dick adds with a half-smile, “So unless you want us to pick the room with the world’s creakiest floorboards…”

You glare. “You absolutely would not.”

He grins wider. “I’m a big fan of a challenge.”

Jason steps in close enough that you feel the heat of him through your dress. “We’ll pick a room,” he says, dropping a kiss to your temple. “Not the squeaky one.”

“And not one with ten portraits staring down at us,” Dick adds, pressing a kiss to your nose. “Those things still creep me out.”

You shake your head, but you’re smiling. “Midnight,” you repeat.

They both nod.

Jason’s voice drops, low enough it lands somewhere under your ribs. “We’ll be there.”

Dick’s hand brushes the small of your back, dipping teasingly low, careful, warm, deliberate. “Time to go pretend we’re social butterflies.”

“And count the minutes,” Jason mutters.

You laugh under your breath. “We really need to go. Before Alfred notices and sends someone to find us.”

Dick offers his arm, the showman, the gentleman, the man who falls and always gets up. Jason reaches past him to open the door, the soldier, the sinner, the man who never lets an exit be the last word. You take both: one arm, one glance, one red-thread pull through the dark corridor and into the glittering sound.

The gala swallows you again, softer now that you’ve taught your pulse a new tempo. People look and look away; rumors slither; the orchestra picks something lush. Dick’s palm finds your back like it’s found its address. Jason’s knuckles test your pinky, brush once, hook and unhook, a secret handshake in plain sight.

“Ready?” Dick asks.

“No,” you say honestly, and smile. “But I’m here.”

“Good enough,” Jason rumbles.

You stand between a man who moves like light and a man who moves like weather, letting the ballroom swallow the three of you again, each of you pretending to mingle, all of you silently counting down to midnight.

-

The guest room door clicks shut behind you, and the world narrows to this: mahogany breathing beeswax and old leather, lamplight spilling gold across velvet cushions and the spines of books that have never been read. The bed is a satin stain amongst the eggshell white of the walls.

The air tastes like rain-soaked wool and the faint, metallic bite of anticipation. Your pulse is a live wire in your throat and between your legs, a frantic rhythm that echoes the storm still whispering at the leaded windows.

There’s no preamble, no careful negotiation of space. Dick moves first, a shadow unfolding from the doorway’s edge, his chest pressing to your back like a vow he’s been holding too long. His hands slide over your hips, fingers splaying wide, possessive, pulling you flush against him until you’re the hinge in a storm of heat and muscle and unspoken want.

The room tilts on its axis, chandeliers blurring into streaks of fractured light, the air thickening, electric, a breath held before thunder cracks.

His mouth finds the curve where your neck meets shoulder, a kiss that starts soft, reverent, until his teeth graze the tendon there, sharp, deliberate, and your knees buckle like wet paper.

Jason doesn’t glide into your space like Dick; he arrives. The floorboards don’t creak so much as yield beneath his feet, a low, deliberate groan under his weight as he shoulders through the half-open door, letting it swing shut behind him with a thud that rattles the leaded glass.

 He’s a bruise of shadow against the lamplight, henley stretched tight across his chest, sleeves shoved to his elbows, forearms corded and scarred like a map of every fight he’s ever walked away from. His boots scuff once, twice, deliberate, the sound of a man who’s done waiting in hallways. 

The air shifts, heavier, warmer, edged with gun oil and winter and that very same citrus he pretends isn’t his, and then he’s there, a wall of heat at your front, caging you between them without a word.

His palm spreads across your stomach, fingers dipping low, the edge of his thumb brushing the lace beneath your satin, where you’re already damp, a secret your body won’t keep. His exhale rumbles against your throat, vibrating through your ribs like a second heartbeat, low and satisfied, a sound that curls heat in your core.

Dick’s voice is velvet over shattered glass, intimate against your ear. “Feel that? She’s trembling already.”

Jason’s answer is a low laugh, dark and filthy, the kind that sinks into your bones and pools liquid between your thighs. “Bet she’s drenched through that pretty lace. Has been all night. Aren’t you, princess?” His fingers flex against your stomach, claiming, and you feel the heat of him seep through the crimson fabric, the hard line of his thigh wedging between yours, pressing just enough to make you sway.

The words should jar you, pull you back to the careful lines you drew earlier. They don’t. They ignite, molten and aching, low in your belly, a fire that makes your breath hitch. 

When Dick’s hips roll, one slow, deliberate motion, dragging the seam of your dress across your clit, you bite the inside of your cheek to trap the moan, but it escapes anyway, a desperate whimper that Jason feels, the way your body jerks against him. His grip tightens, anchoring, his mouth at your ear, breath scorching.

“Say it,” he growls, the command wrapped in gravel. “Tell us what you want.”

Your head spins, the orchestra a distant swell downstairs, strings soaring while the crowd blurs into silk and diamonds and indifference. All you know is this cage of their bodies: Jason’s rough edges, Dick’s sleek control, too much and not enough, everything you’ve denied. 

You want Jason’s teeth on your throat, his hands bruising your hips like ownership. You want Dick’s whispers teasing your edges, his fingers threading your hair like a leash.

Dick’s hand glides up your spine, slow and worshipful, fingers weaving into your hair to tilt your head back against his shoulder. The stretch bares your throat to Jason, who doesn’t wait. He leans in, teeth scraping, then soothing with his tongue, marking you in a bloom that will be purple by dawn.

Dick’s lips brush the shell of your ear, soft as a confession. “You’re thinking too hard, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice honey and sin, laced with that teasing edge. “We can feel it. You do want us both, don’t you?”

The question hangs, sharp as a blade. Your breath catches, shaky, betraying.

Jason pulls back just enough to meet your eyes, green storm-lit and searching, a flicker of possession and something softer, almost holy. “Say it,” he repeats, quieter now, but no less insistent. “Tell us, and we’ll give it to you.”

You swallow, throat dry, heart hammering like Gotham’s sirens. The conflict twists inside you, a living knot. You know the agreement: no choosing, just this storm of them around you, in you. 

You’ve spent weeks circling it, dodging the truth in the midnight, in the rain, in every careful touch and loaded glance. Dick’s flirtation like sunlight on water, Jason’s protectiveness like a shadow that guards and devours. 

You laid the rules, drew the lines, promised radical honesty. You said we try. And now the trying is here, raw and trembling, the first time all three of you cross the line you once swore to yourself you wouldn’t.

“I…” The word fractures, and you try again. “I can’t choose. I want you both…”

The air shifts. Not a release, more like the moment before a match strikes. Dick’s exhale is soft against your neck, a laugh that isn’t a laugh, just the sound of months of restraint finally giving way. Jason’s hand flexes on your stomach, thumb pressing once, hard, like he’s anchoring himself to the truth of it.

“Good,” Dick says, the word low and reverent. “Because we’ve wanted you for so long it hurts.”

Jason doesn’t speak. He leans in, forehead to yours, breath ragged. His eyes are wide open, no mask, no helmet, just Jason Todd, stripped bare. “Never done this,” he mutters, voice rough. “Not with anyone. Not like this. Not with him.” A flicker of something vulnerable crosses his face, fear, maybe, or wonder. “But I want it. Want you. Want us.”

Dick’s hand slides up your spine, slow and deliberate, fingers threading into your hair. “First time for me too, baby,” he says, softer now, the tease gone. “Never shared. Never wanted to. Until you.”

The confession lands between you like a live wire. You feel it in your chest, your thighs, the slick heat already pooling between your legs. This isn’t just sex. This is the culmination of every late-night text, every rooftop touch, every time you stitched them up and pretended your hands weren’t shaking. This is the first time they’ll have you. The first time you’ll have them. Together.

You nod, small and certain. “Then take me,” you whisper. “Both of you. Now.”

Jason’s mouth crashes into yours first, rough, desperate, like he’s been starving for it. Dick’s lips find your neck, open-mouthed and slow, a counterpoint to Jason’s hunger. Their hands move in tandem, not choreographed but instinctive, Dick peeling the straps of your dress down your shoulders, Jason’s fingers already under the hem, dragging it up your thighs. The satin catches on your hips, then falls, pooling at your feet like spilled blood.

You’re bare beneath it. No bra. Just the soaked lace of your thong, clinging obscenely. Jason groans into your mouth, the sound vibrating through you. Dick pulls back just enough to look, his breath hitching.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Look at you.” Your pulse is a caged thing between your thighs, frantic and slick. “So eager, baby. You’ve been aching for this all night, haven’t you?”

Jason doesn’t ask for permission. He hooks the lace and rips it down your thighs with a sound like shredding silk, the elastic biting your skin before it gives. The torn scrap is soaked in you; he lifts it to his nose, inhales deep, then tucks it in his pocket with a grin that’s half feral. 

“Souvenir,” he rasps, “for the nights I stroke myself raw thinking how fucking divine you smell when you’re desperate like this.” His hands claim you, rough palms scraping your hips, thumbs pressing bruises into the soft give above your ass. 

Dick’s arms band around you, one hand splaying across your stomach, the other cupping your breast, thumb circling your bare nipple until it peaks hard and aching. “Use your words,” Dick coos into your hair. “Come on. Beg for it. Say please.” 

You whimper, canting your hips back into Jason’s. He scoffs, his mouth trailing against your collarbone. “Dickie said use your words. Not your body.” 

“P-please,” you grit out, feeling as Dick’s slender hand trails down your hip, toying with the garter on your thigh, his teeth lightly grazing your nipple, making you moan. 

“Please what?” The men ask you before sharing a look of annoyance that only brothers can manage. 

“Please make me feel good.” You whimper. “Want to feel your mouths. Your fingers. Your… cocks.” 

Jason instantly drops to his knees in front of you a growl escaping his lips, eyes locked on yours as he drags your garter down your legs, slow and deliberate.

The first touch of his mouth to your cunt is a shock, even as you watch him do it. It’s hot, wet, filthy. His tongue drags up your slit in one long, possessive stroke, and you cry out, legs trembling. Dick’s hand tightens on your breast, grounding you as Jason spreads your pussy open with his thumbs, licking into you like he’s trying to memorize your taste.

Dick’s voice is a low rumble against your ear. “That’s it, baby. Let him have you. Let us both have you. Arch your back some,” he breathes, moaning softly as you do as he says, “that’s my good girl.” 

Jason’s stubble scrapes your inner thighs as he devours you, tongue spearing inside, nose pressed to your clit. You’re already close, embarrassingly fast, but he doesn’t let you tip over. He pulls back just as your hips start to chase his mouth, smirking up at you with slick lips.

“Not yet,” he growls. “Not until we’re both inside you.” 

Dick’s already moving, guiding you to the bed, laying you down on the satin like you’re something sacred. Jason follows, shedding his henley in one fluid motion, scars and muscle and that white streak in his hair catching the lamplight. Dick’s shirt is gone, slacks undone, cock straining against the fabric.

They don’t rush. They savor. Dick kisses you slow and deep, tasting Jason on your tongue, while Jason’s mouth returns to your cunt, licking lazy circles around your clit. Dick’s fingers join him, sliding two inside you, curling, stretching, until you’re writhing, begging, tears pricking your eyes.

“Please,” you sob. “Please, I need…”

“We know,” Dick murmurs, kissing the tears from your cheeks. “We’ve got you.”

“Look at you,” Jason growls against your cunt, voice smoke and grit. “Already ready to come again. Pathetic little thing, aren’t you?”

Dick presses one last kiss to your lips before’s kicking off his slacks completely to he kneel on the bed in front of your face, fingers weaving gently through your hair. 

“Open up, sweetheart.” The words are coaxing, but his grip tightens just enough to sting sweetly. You part your lips, mouth stretching around the slick head of his cock. He tastes of salt and precum, the vein throbbing against your tongue. He doesn’t thrust; he holds you there, letting you feel the weight, the heat, the ache blooming in your jaw.

“Such a good girl,” he murmurs, voice laced with condescension. “Keep that throat relaxed for me. You’re doing so well, taking me like you were born for it.”

Behind you, Jason spreads your cheeks with unyielding force. Cool air teases your holes; then his tongue is there, hot, wet, unapologetic, lapping from clit to rim in one long, owning stroke. You moan around Dick’s cock, the vibration drawing a hum from him.

Jason’s stubble abrades your inner thighs as he devours you like a man starved, tongue plunging into your cunt, nose now pressed to your ass. He pulls back to spit on your hole, watches it drip, then sucks your clit into his mouth with suction that borders on cruel, making your vision flicker white.

“Taste so fucking good,” he rasps, thick with something like awe. “Could drown in this greedy little cunt.”

Dick’s hips begin to move, slow glides pushing deeper until your nose meets the trimmed hair at his base. Tears well; saliva drips in thick strands down your chin.

“That’s it,” he croons, thumb brushing your cheek even as he claims your throat. “Drooling like our perfect angel. You love being our toy, don’t you, baby?” He withdraws just enough for you to gasp “Yes” before sliding back, turning the word to a gurgle. “Shh. Just take it. You’re so pretty when you choke.”

Jason’s fingers join his tongue, three thick digits thrusting into your cunt without prelude, curling viciously. The stretch burns sweet; your walls clench around him. He targets your g-spot, rubbing relentless circles until your legs quake.

“So fucking tight,” he growls against your clit, vibration jolting up your spine. “Gonna stretch this needy hole till it knows my cock’s shape.” He adds a fourth finger, scissoring wide, tipping the burn into exquisite pain-pleasure. You scream around Dick’s cock. “That’s it, scream for me. Let me hear how much you love being my filthy little whore.”

Dick pulls out, slaps your cheek lightly with his wet length. “How are you feeling, baby?”

“So good,” you sob, voice shattered.

Dick’s smile is soft, almost proud. “Atta girl. You’re taking everything so beautifully.”

Jason’s laugh is dark, edged with reverence. “Good. Because I’m nowhere near done breaking you.” He flips you onto your back with brute efficiency.

Dick shifts to straddle your chest, cock gliding between your breasts. He presses them together, gentle at first, then firm, fucking the slick channel, the head bumping your chin with each thrust.

“These perfect tits,” he murmurs, condescension dripping off his tone. “Made to be played with. So sweet, letting me use you like this.”

Jason’s mouth returns to your cunt, but now it’s merciless: teeth grazing your clit, suction hard enough to bruise. His fingers plunge back in, four deep, thumb grinding your clit in brutal loops. Your hips buck; Jason pins them with one forearm across your pelvis, the pressure a delicious restraint.

“Stay still, slut,” he snarls, but his free hand strokes your thigh in tender circles. “You don’t move until I say. This cunt is mine tonight.”

Dick leans down, spits on your nipples, then pinches them hard, twisting until you cry out. The pain arrows straight to your core; Jason feels the clench and laughs into your folds.

“She likes it rough. Dirty to her core. But you’re our dirty girl, aren’t you, baby?” Jason’s voice softens on the end, the contrast making you whimper.

Your first orgasm crashes without warning, your back arching, a flood soaking Jason’s chin and the sheets. He doesn’t relent. He laps the mess, fingers pumping. Dick’s cock returns to your mouth, muffling your screams as Jason wrings a second climax from you from plunging his thick fingers back into your fluttering cunt. Your thighs tremble; tears streak your temples.

Jason surfaces, face gleaming. “Look at this sloppy cunt. Squirting like a fountain.” He slaps your clit, sharp, wet, and you jerk with a shattered whine.

Dick’s hand circles your throat, not squeezing, just promising.

“Breathe,” he says softly. “Count to five. Good girl.” You do, one, two, three, four, and on the exhale his grip firms, cutting air just enough to spark the edges of your vision. “There we go. Just like that. You’re so perfect.”

Jason’s fingers shift to your ass, two thick and slick with your slick and his spit, stretching you with slow, insistent pressure. The burn is divine; you clench, and he spanks your clit in rebuke. “Relax, baby,” he growls, but his other hand soothes your hip in slow, grounding circles. “Gonna take such good care of this tight little hole. Make it beg for me.”

Dick’s thumb traces your pulse under his palm, anchoring you as your head swims. “You’re doing so well, sweetheart. Opening up so pretty for us. Look at you, taking everything we give.”

He releases your throat with a final, gentle squeeze and steps back, guiding you down to your knees on the rug. The fibers bite into your skin, but you barely feel it. Dick’s cock is in front of you again, flushed, curved, already slick from your saliva and his precum, and he threads his fingers through your hair, tilting your face up.

“Open,” he murmurs, voice velvet and command.

You do, mouth stretching wide as he slides in once more, slow and deliberate, until the head nudges the back of your throat. He doesn’t thrust; he feeds you, letting you feel every inch, every throb, until your jaw aches and tears prick your eyes.

“Good girl,” he praises, hips rolling in shallow, controlled glides. “Take it all. Just like that.”

Behind you, Jason keeps working your ass, three fingers now, scissoring, stretching, the burn blooming into a dark, liquid heat that makes your thighs tremble. You moan around Dick’s cock, the vibration drawing a low groan from him.

“That’s it,” Dick croons, thumb stroking your cheek even as he fucks your throat. “Let Jason feel how much you want this.”

Jason’s free hand slides between your legs, two fingers plunging into your cunt, curling viciously against your front wall. The dual stretch, fingers in your ass, fingers in your cunt, Dick’s cock in your mouth, tips you over once more. You come with a muffled scream, walls fluttering wildly, a gush of wetness soaking Jason’s hand. He doesn’t stop; he works you through it, fingers relentless, until you’re sobbing around Dick’s cock, tears streaming, body shaking.

Dick’s hips stutter. “Fuck, gonna come,” he warns, voice rough. “You have to swallow, baby. Every drop.”

He thrusts once, twice, then holds deep, spilling hot and thick down your throat. You swallow convulsively, eyes burning, the taste of him flooding your mouth, salt and heat and Dick, until he’s spent. He pulls out slowly, thumb smearing the last drop across your lower lip, eyes dark with reverence.

“Yeah baby, just like that,” he whispers, kissing your forehead, your eyelids, the salt of your tears.

Jason withdraws his fingers from your ass and cunt with a wet sound, leaving you empty and aching. He rises, cock thick and flushed, dragging it through your folds once, twice, coating himself in your slick.

“Up,” he growls, voice raw. “On the bed. Now.”

Dick helps you stand, legs trembling, and guides you to the mattress. Jason lies back, drawing you astride his hips. His cock is immense, thicker than Dick’s, but not quite as long. The head is weeping, and he drags it through your folds, teasing, then notches at your entrance.

“Feel that?” he murmurs, restraint cracking his voice. “That’s what you do to me. Gonna ruin this pussy.”

Dick kneels behind you, slick fingers pressing into your ass, slow, careful, stretching you open anew. Jason’s cock nudges in, just the tip, before pulling out and rubbing against your folds again, an unforgiving tease. The dual stretch overwhelms; you whimper, high and fractured, still tasting Dick on your tongue.

Dick’s voice is gentle against your spine. “Breathe, baby. Push back. Good girl. You’re so close to taking us both. Just a little more.”

Jason’s hand finds your clit, rubbing tight, merciless circles. Dick’s fingers grip your hips, steadying.

Jason groans, “You’re gonna take us so well, aren’t you, princess?”

Dick’s teeth nip your shoulder, soft and teasing. “Prepping your perfect little holes. Gonna make you so full you’ll feel us for days. But only if you’re good.”

They keep you teetering, Jason’s cock gliding through your folds, pressing the tip in before repeating his teasing strokes, Dick’s fingers stretching your ass, both murmuring filthy praise and sharp taunts. Your body is electric, every nerve alight, every touch shoving you toward the abyss.

Jason’s hand cups your jaw, thumb smearing your tears of frustration. “Look at me,” he growls, rough with awe. “You’re gonna take us both, and you’re gonna cry so pretty doing it.” His other hand pinches your clit, rolling slow and cruel. You sob, hips jerking, and Dick’s free hand presses your belly, pinning you.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Dick murmurs against your ear, lips grazing. “We’ve got you.” His voice is honey over edges, gentle and mocking. He crooks his fingers in your ass, the burn flaring hot before melting to dark pleasure that curls your toes.

Jason’s cock claims you in one inexorable push, splitting your cunt around his girth. The stretch is profane, a burn verging on too much, and you cry out, the sound swallowed by Dick’s mouth as he leans to kiss you. His tongue dances with yours, soft and coaxing, tasting your tears. 

Jason bottoms out with a curse, hips flush, the fullness staggering: his cock thick in your cunt, Dick’s fingers still in your ass.

“Fuck,” Jason hisses, head tipping back. “So tight. Like a vice. You were made for this, weren’t you? Made to take us.” His hands bruise your hips, lifting you an inch before slamming you down. The wet slap echoes, loud and indecent.

Dick withdraws his fingers slowly, replacing with his cock’s blunt head. Lube (you’re too far gone to wonder where he got it from) drips cold; he presses in, the burn renewing. You whimper into his mouth, and he swallows it with a low chuckle.

“Shh, baby. You’re doing so well. Can’t wait to fill you.” Inch by inch, he sinks his long cock in until you’re impossibly full, split on them, quaking between.

They hold still. Jason’s hand returns to your clit, rubbing merciless circles. Dick’s fingers tug your hair, scalp stinging, neck arching.

“Oh fuck, she’s clenching tighter. You like that, don’t you, baby?” Jason growls. “Both our cocks stuffing you.”

Dick’s teeth graze your shoulder. “Oh fuck me,” he pants as you rock back.

The first thrust is Jason’s: shallow, probing. Then Dick’s, deeper. They sync, alternating, one retreating as the other claims. The slide is slick, obscene, the room thick with skin-slap and your fractured moans. Jason’s hand tightens on your throat, pulsing air in rhythm with their thrusts. Dick’s twists in your hair, pulling tears.

You come without mercy: a clench milking both, a gush soaking Jason’s lap. The sound fractures you; Dick’s hand slides to spank your clit, sharp, wet, and you jerk with a whine.

“That’s it,” Jason hisses. “Scream for us. Let the manor hear what a cockdrunk slut you are.”

Jason’s hips snap brutal; Dick’s turn punishing. Another orgasm builds, sharper. Jason’s thumb grinds your clit, Dick’s hand squeezes your throat until spots dance. You shatter, sobbing, convulsing. Jason follows with a curse, spilling hot in your cunt. Dick pulls out, painting your back and ass, marking.

They don’t let you fall.

Jason’s hands guide you face-down with effortless strength. Sheets cool and slick beneath your cheek, soaked with lube, cum, your ruin. He spreads your cheeks, thumbs bruising, watching his cum leak. His hand smooths your folds, pressing it back in. You jerk, a broken sound, but Dick kneels ahead, cock flushed and glistening.

“Open, baby,” he murmurs, fingers in your hair. You do, tasting salt, lube, the faint tang of musk. Dick’s hips roll controlled, feeding you until your nose meets his base again.

“Good girl. Clean me up. Taste how we wrecked you.”

Behind, Jason’s tongue spears your cunt, scooping his spend in thick strokes. He groans, vibration through your clit, come dripping your thighs as he cleans. When he shifts higher, circling your rim, you sob around Dick’s cock, tears fresh.

Jason’s stubble scrapes; his breath scalds. “Fuck, princess,” he rasps, raw with reverence. “Dripping with me. Gonna lick every drop from this pretty hole.”

Dick’s fingers tighten, guiding your rhythm. “Sweetheart,” he croons, thumb wiping tears as he fucks your throat. “You love this, don’t you?”

He withdraws for your wrecked “oh yes,” then slides back, gagging the word.

Jason’s tongue leaves with a kiss to your clit, then he shifts. Mattress dips; he lifts your hips to your knees. Dick pulls out with a pop, saliva stringing, lies against the headboard, cock curving, leaking.

“Come here, sweetheart,” Dick says, gentle-edged condescension. He lies back on the ruined sheets, cock jutting up, flushed and curved, still glistening from your mouth. He guides you astride him, back to his chest, thighs quaking, holes slick and gaping. His hands settle on your hips, thumbs tracing soothing circles as he nudges your ass with the blunt head of his cock, pressing the tender rim.

“Relax. You took us so well once already. Now let me in again.”

You sink slow, the stretch sharper this time, his curved cock dragging against your tight walls, vision blurring white. You whimper; Dick’s grip tightens on your hips, grounding, even as he bottoms out with a low, reverent groan.

“There we go,” he murmurs, lips brushing your temple. “Good girl. Look at you, opening so pretty for me.”

Jason climbs over the two of you like a storm rolling in, knees bracketing Dick’s thighs, heat branding your front. His cock, thick, flushed, slick your mess, glides through your folds, coating, then notches back at your cunt.

“Relax, baby,” he growls, but his hands are gentle as they hook under your knees, lifting your legs up and folding you nearly in half, ankles by your ears, utterly exposed. Dick’s arms wrap around your hips, fingers digging bruises into the soft flesh, holding you steady for what’s coming.

Jason thrusts in brutally, bottoming with a wet slap that echoes off the walls. The fullness is overwhelming, angle new: Dick’s curve pressing your front wall through your ass, Jason’s girth splitting your cunt wide. You sob, tears spilling fresh; Jason’s hand fists your hair, arching your neck gently so your throat is bared to the ceiling.

You know they said they have never shared anyone like this before… but they move so in sync with you that you can’t help but feel an ugly, possessive voice in your mind whisper that maybe they lied. Maybe they do this often and you’re just another pretty thing for them to claim.

“Don’t you dare think of anyone else,” Jason snarls, possession raw, hips already snapping, like he knew exactly what was on your mind. “This, us inside you, wrecking you, it’s only you. Never shared like this. Never will. Fucking meant it.”

Dick’s laugh is soft, fond, rumbling against your spine; his fingers slide from your hips to rub your clit in tight, teasing circles as Jason thrusts in and out of you. “He’s right, baby. You’re the only one who gets us like this. The only one who ever will.”

The words, only you, never anyone, sink like anchors, the last coherent thread snapping. Jason buried in your cunt, Dick in your ass, the world narrows to wet drag, hip-slap, squelch. 

Mouth slack, drool threading to the sheets beneath Dick’s shoulder, eyes glassy, rolled back, fluttering with every thrust like a broken thing. Your breasts bounce between the mens thrusts and Jason leans over, pressing sloppy kisses to your ankle. 

“Think you need a pretty little chain here,” he pants, “With my initial. Would you wear that, princess? Let me mark you as my pretty little slut?” 

No words leave your mouth, just moans, just “ah-ah-ah” in time with Jason’s brutality and Dick’s slow, grinding roll.

Jason fists your hair tighter, yanking so your neck aches, arching you like a bow strung between them.

“Look at you baby,” he snarls, degradation laced with worship. “My sharp girl, fucked so stupid she can’t close her mouth. Can’t think. Can’t beg. Just a dumb cockdrunk whore, huh? Brain gone.” He spanks, crack, the sound wet, your body jerking, fresh slick squirting around him. Jason laughs filthy. “That’s it. Such a leaky mess. Can’t control your cunt anymore.”

Dick’s laugh is soft, razored. His fingers find one of your nipples, swollen red, and pinch, hard, twisting until you scream. Pain and pleasure shoots to your core; Jason feels you clench around his cock and laughs against your calf.

“There they are,” Dick murmurs, delight syrupy. “Those pretty tears. Hurting so good for us, aren’t you, baby? Overstimulated and begging for more.” He licks a tear from your cheek and groans.

Your body feels like a puppet, jerked by hands, cocks, wills. Jason’s hand is on your throat, squeezing you to tunnel vision, stars bursting in your periphery.

Dick hand is on your clit again, rubbing relentlessly as you sob. “Now, now,” he murmurs, soft but cruel. “You have to take it like a good girl. Take us.” He leans, kisses slack mouth, licks drool. “Beautiful like this. Ours.”

You try speaking. Your lips move, trying to form words. “P-ple…guh,” Jason thrusts and your voice shatters to scream. 

“That’s it,” Jason whispers, arousal trembling. “So fucking perfect.”

“How are you doing, baby?” Dick asks, gentle but eyes hunger-dark.

You try answering. Your mouth opens but all that comes out is a high whine. Jason laughs again.

“She can’t talk. Look, Dickie, she’s a dumb, cockdrunk mess. Bet she couldn’t spell her name.” Both men thrust harder and your back arches, orgasm ripping through you, violent, messy, squirting across the men’s thighs, coating the sheets. Your body convulses, walls milking both men despite their rhythmic thrusts.

Jason’s laugh breaks into a moan, reverent. “Fuck. Can’t last when you’re fucking milking me like that.” He spanks the undersides of your thigh with one hand, the other still gripping your ankle. “Say it,” he pants. “Say you’re our dumb whore.”

You try. “D-dumb… I’m…” Dick thrusts just right and your voice screams.

“It’s alright, baby. No words. No thoughts. Just take.” Kisses slack mouth, licks drool. “So fucking good at it.”

Jason comes roaring, hips snapping forward one last time, spilling hot, thick ropes into your cunt. The fullness is obscene, a burn that tips into hurt, and your vision edges black in the aftershock, body convulsing around him. He stays buried for a heartbeat, two, breath ragged against your throat, then pulls out slow, a wet drag that leaves you clenching on emptiness.

He doesn’t let you fall.

His hands hook under your knees, still folded high, and he folds himself over you, chest to your chest, weight heavy and grounding. The shift presses you deeper into Dick’s lap; Dick’s cock, still hard and slick, pulls out of your ass with a wet pop. Groaning, he slides it along your folds once, twice, teasing you. Jason’s mouth finds yours, sloppy and open, tongue licking into you. The kiss is gentle despite the snarl still echoing in his throat, all teeth and reverence, stubble scraping your chin.

“Mine,” he murmurs against your lips, voice cracked. “But yours too.”

Dick’s hands tighten on your hips, thumbs tracing the bruises Jason left. “My turn, sweetheart,” he whispers, voice velvet and hunger. He lines up, the blunt head of his cock pressing to your cunt, still pulsing, still dripping Jason’s come, and slides in slow, deliberate, claiming the space Jason just vacated. The stretch is different, Dick’s long curve dragging against your walls in a way that makes your eyes roll back, a broken sound spilling into Jason’s mouth.

Jason swallows it, kissing you deeper, weight pinning you open and safe while Dick bottoms out with a low, reverent groan. “Fuck,” Dick breathes, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “So warm. So full of him. And now you’re gonna be full of me.”

They hold you there, Jason’s weight, Dick’s cock, the wet heat of Jason’s come mixing with Dick’s first slow thrusts. Jason’s hands slide from your knees to cradle your face, thumbs smearing tears and drool.

“Feel that?” Jason rasps, voice raw. “Only ever yours, princess.”

Dick’s hips roll, gentle at first, savoring the slick heat of you, the way Jason’s come eases his path. Then deeper, harder, the curve of him dragging relentless against your front wall until every thrust punches a broken sound from your throat. Jason kisses you through it, sloppy and desperate, tongue licking into your mouth like he’s memorizing the taste of you split open between them. His weight pins you, chest to chest, breath hot against your cheek, stubble scraping your jaw as he swallows every moan Dick wrings from you.

Dick’s hands slide from your hips to your thighs, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, spreading you wider, folding you tighter against Jason’s bulk. The angle shifts; his cock drives deeper, faster, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing off the walls, obscene and perfect. Your cunt clenches around him, oversensitive, fluttering, and Dick groans low in his throat, the sound vibrating against your spine.

“Fuck, baby,” Dick pants, voice fraying at the edges. “So tight. So perfect. Gonna fill you up, gonna…”

His rhythm stutters, hips snapping forward once, twice, then grinding deep as he comes. Hot, thick pulses flood your cunt, mixing with Jason’s, the sensation so overwhelming your vision whites out. Your body seizes, walls milking him in violent, rhythmic spasms, a final, messy gush squirting around his cock and soaking the sheets beneath. The pleasure is too sharp, too much; your lungs forget how to work, your heart stutters, and the world tunnels to black.

Jason’s mouth is still on yours when the dark swallows you. His kiss is the last thing you feel, soft, grounding, a tether, before everything goes quiet.

The world filters back in slow, syrupy pulses: the low thrum of your own heartbeat in your ears, the slick heat of Dick still buried inside you, pulsing with the last tremors of his release. Your limbs are liquid, boneless, draped over Jason’s chest like a blanket too heavy to move. The air smells of sex and cedar and the faint, metallic bite of the storm still rattling the windows. Somewhere, a clock ticks, 4:52 a.m., but time feels like a suggestion now, something you’ll worry about later.

Jason’s hand is in your hair, fingers carding through the damp strands with a gentleness that doesn’t match the man who just roared your name into the dark. He’s murmuring something, low and rough, the words half-lost in the haze.

“...got you, princess. You’re here. You’re safe.”

Dick shifts behind you, slow and careful, easing out of your cunt with a wet sound that makes you whimper. The emptiness is sharp, but he’s already moving, pressing soft kisses along your spine, your shoulder blades, the nape of your neck. His hands are everywhere, gentle, reverent, tracing the bruises on your hips, the faint red marks from Jason’s teeth, the slick mess between your thighs.

“Shh, sweetheart,” he whispers, lips brushing the shell of your ear. “We’ve got you. Just breathe.”

You try. Your lungs feel too small, your throat raw from screaming, but the air comes in shaky sips. Jason’s thumb strokes your cheek, smearing the salt of your tears, and he kisses your forehead, once, twice, lingering like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he stops.

Dick slips away for a moment, the mattress dipping, and you make a small, panicked sound. Jason tightens his arms around you, chest rumbling with a soothing hum.

“He’s not going far,” Jason says, voice soft. “Just getting something to clean you up. You’re a mess, baby. Our mess.”

The endearment lands warm in your chest, a small, glowing thing. You nuzzle into Jason’s neck, breathing him in. His stubble scrapes your temple, grounding you back to reality.

Dick returns with a warm cloth, the faint scent of lavender drifting from it. He kneels beside you, movements careful, like you’re something fragile and precious. The cloth is soft against your skin, wiping away the sticky evidence of them, sweat and cum and lube and your own slick, down your thighs, across your stomach, your back. He’s thorough but gentle, pressing kisses to every mark he finds: the bruise on your hip, the faint handprint on your ass, the tender skin of your inner thighs.

“Good girl,” Dick murmurs, voice thick with something like worship: “You took us so well. So proud of you.”

Jason’s hand finds yours, fingers lacing tight, and he brings your knuckles to his lips, kissing each one like a promise.

“You did so good,” he says, voice cracking just enough to make your heart ache. “Fuck, I-I didn’t know it could be like this.”

Dick finishes cleaning you, tosses the cloth aside, and crawls back into the bed, sandwiching you between them. The sheets are cool against your overheated skin, but their bodies are warm, solid, real. Dick’s chest presses to your back, his arm banding around your waist, fingers splaying across your stomach like he’s claiming the space Jason just filled. Jason’s still in front of you, forehead to yours, his breath mingling with yours in the quiet.

For a moment, no one speaks. The storm outside has softened to a murmur, rain tapping the windows like a lullaby. You’re floating, mind blissfully blank, body aching in the best way. Dick’s fingers trace lazy patterns on your stomach, Jason’s thumb strokes the inside of your wrist, and you feel held, not just physically, but in a way that sinks into your bones.

“You okay?” Dick asks, voice soft, lips brushing the curve of your shoulder.

You nod, or try to, your head is heavy, lolling against Jason’s collarbone. “M’good,” you mumble, the words slurred with exhaustion and something softer. “So good.”

Jason huffs a laugh, the sound warm and fond. “Yeah, you are.” He kisses your temple again, lingering. “Our good girl.”

Neither of them reaches across you.  Their hands stay where they are, the distance between them is only inches, but it feels deliberate, respectful. A boundary they’re both learning to read. They’re not touching each other. They’re touching you, and that’s enough. That’s everything.

You feel it in the way Dick’s fingers flex, just once, like he wants to reach further but doesn’t. In the way Jason’s thumb pauses, then resumes its slow, steady stroke, as if reminding himself where the line is. They’re not competing. They’re not merging. They’re sharing, carefully, clumsily, with the kind of reverence that comes from loving the same person so fiercely it rewrites the rules.

The realization makes your chest tight, your eyes stinging with fresh tears at just how much you love them.

“Hey,” Jason says, noticing. He cups your face, thumbs wiping the tears before they fall. “None of that. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

“We are,” Dick echoes, voice steady. “This, us, it’s real. We meant it. Slow, honest, all of it. We’re trying for you.”

You nod, the tears spilling anyway, but they’re not sad. They’re the kind that come when something too big to name finally fits into place. Jason kisses them away, one by one, while Dick presses closer, his lips finding the sensitive spot behind your ear.

“We’ve got you,” Dick whispers. “Always.”

Jason pulls the duvet up from the foot of the bed, draping it over the three of you. It’s heavy, warm, smelling faintly of lavender and them. You’re cocooned now, tangled in limbs and heartbeats, the world outside the manor a distant memory. Dick’s hand finds yours under the covers, fingers lacing tight. Jason’s arm stays around your waist, his thumb tracing small, soothing circles on your skin.

“Sleep, princess,” Jason murmurs, voice rough with exhaustion and something deeper. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Dick’s lips brush your shoulder one last time. “Dream sweet, baby. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

You let your eyes drift shut, the ache in your body fading into a warm, sated hum. The last thing you feel is Jason’s heartbeat under your cheek, steady and strong, and Dick’s breath against your neck, soft and sure. The storm outside fades to nothing.

For the first time in a long time, you’re not afraid of what comes next.

You’ve always had a somewhat fraught relationship with imagination. People say you lack it, to put it plainly. They say you’re too literal. As if being literal isn’t the reason airplanes stay in the air and bridges remain standing. 

But you just happen to find reality plenty beautiful. More than beautiful, actually. Reassuring. There is dignity in a thing that can be tested, reproduced, and counted on.

Newton’s law. The sodium-potassium pump. Entropy. Even the grimmer systems at least are consistent if nothing else.

So naturally, medicine was what you pursued in college. Everything means something. Everything is attached to something else. Symptoms are not random; bodies are not whimsical.

Even if an answer is hidden, it exists, and if you are willing to stay with a problem long enough, turn it over enough times, peel it apart layer by layer and build it back from the inside out, eventually it reveals itself.

Fiction does not afford you that courtesy. Fiction wants you to tolerate blank spaces and gaps. You hate gaps. You love knowing.

Fiction gives you half a scene and waits expectantly, like congratulations, now you do the labor.

Build the room. Place the bodies. Infer the angles. Ignore, apparently, that the human body is not an abstract concept but a heavily regulated system of hinges and limits and gravity and very obvious spatial constraints. 

You are experiencing one of those gaps now, staring so hard at the page your eyes begin to sting a little, focus tightening to a punitive little point. You think if you look at it severely enough the scene might resolve into something you can understand.

The book says the woman is “on top,” which should be clear enough on its own, except the next sentence immediately ruins that clarity by describing angles that do not, as far as you can tell, exist in three-dimensional space. 

And you have so many questions.

Is there a bed involved here? A couch? A floor? Any surface at all?

You reread the line. Maybe you overlooked a prepositional phrase hiding in plain sight. A detail that will clarify whose leg is bent and why it apparently now has the range of motion of a paper clip.

Nothing. No luck. Still opaque.

Possibly more vague now, because repetition has begun to dissolve whatever confidence you had in your own reading abilities.

It is difficult to overstate how humiliating it is to be bested by mediocre smut. 

You sigh and look to your watch. 9:18 p.m. Late. The bus is always late. That’s why you have this book in your hand in the first place, wanting to turn dead time into something educational. Unfortunately that’s not how it’s going.

You blow out a breath as another gust of wind snakes over the exposed strip of skin between your socks and the hem of your jeans.

They used to hit lower on your ankle, but courtesy of your building’s shitty communal dryer, they don’t do that anymore.

“Interesting reading choice.”

It is not a voice you prepared yourself to hear. You weren’t prepared to hear a voice at all, really.

So when you hear the familiar pitch of Landon, your body overcorrects, sending you backward like a startled deer losing traction on ice.

You see the next ten seconds in a flash: the hollow thunk of your head on the pole behind you, the stuttering apologies delivered as your vision tunnels, the concussion protocols that will surely haunt you for weeks, months, possibly forever.

But those ten seconds never actually happens.

Instead, you cautiously peer up into the flat, coolly appraising expression of Langdon, whose hand is placed behind your head, taking the brunt of the impact.

“Oh. Hi. Dr. Langdon. I, um, this isn’t — I’m not —” You’re already floundering, trying to assemble something defensible out of a situation that is not defensible. “It was recommended,” you say at last, which is true, though not in a way that sounds remotely exculpatory once spoken aloud. “By Javadi. She said it was good, which I assumed meant, like, well-written, not — this. Which I know sounds — I hear it, I hear how it sounds, but I didn’t just, like, seek this out independently. I was curious from a clinical standpoint.”

Shit.

You just lobbed Victoria under the bus didn’t you? And unlike the literal bus, this metaphorical one arrived enthusiastically on time, probably even honked.

You add it to the growing ledger of things you owe her. Coffee, at the very least. Something artisanal, thoughtful, handcrafted.

A note, handwritten in apology, because email would be cowardly and texting would feel insufficient, and really — after what you’ve just done, you’re not sure anything short of ink, paper, and a tangible record of shame could suffice.

He removes his hand, the pressure at the back of your head disappearing as he shifts to rest it along the bench behind you instead.

“Clinical,” he repeats. His eyes flick briefly to the book in your hands, then back to you, unimpressed. “And what have you concluded so far, doctor?”

“Not a doctor yet,” you point out. Not sure why you do. “But, um, just that it’s just not very clear? Like, the scenes move really fast, and I feel like I’m missing steps in between, so I keep trying to visualize what’s happening and I just end up getting stuck on, like… where everything is supposed to go and —” You stop, frowning now. “You — you probably didn’t actually want an answer to that, did you?”

His mouth pulls just enough to suggest he’s entertained despite himself. “Not initially.”

You nod. “Okay, good, because I definitely wasn’t planning to provide detail. Just, you know — general plausibility stuff. Realism concerns.”

“Let me see,” he says, and before your frazzled brain can form an adequate objection, he's already reaching forward, extracting the paperback from your suddenly slackened grasp.

You stand abruptly, the bench scraping in a terrible sound against concrete as you reach for the book.

“You really don’t have to do that.”

A correct statement. Useless, however, as he lifts the novel out of reach without even looking at you, arm extending just enough to make it clear that this is not a negotiation, and also, somewhat insultingly, not even difficult.

You briefly consider climbing him. Scaling him like a distressed, socially compromised marsupial and retrieving the book by force.

It feels like a viable solution. You dismiss it only on the grounds that in the last five minutes alone, accumulated enough embarrassment to sustain a normal person for at least two lifetimes.

And theoretically there should be a cap.

There is not, apparently.

Because after a brief glance at the page, he starts reading aloud: “She sank down on him with an aching slowness, savoring the stretch of it, the sweet friction that made her pulse flutter faster with every roll of her body. His hands gripped her waist, guiding her, keeping her there while the pleasure mounted in teasing waves until she was shaking with it, desperate and almost there.”

You feel the heat spark up your spine and towards you neck before saturating your face. The intensity momentarily blurs your vision.

Your hands tighten uselessly at your sides, a strange, unfamiliar tightness coiling low in your stomach.

You try your very hardest not to let your mind start making substitutions. You try not to let the faceless bodies on that page acquire identifiable features. A chin dimple, for instance. You try not to let the voice in front of you fuse itself any further to the text than it already has.

You wrench your gaze upward, fixing it somewhere behind his left ear, hoping that physical distance might somehow dilute your newfound imagination that just five minutes ago you were bashing.

He closes the book with a snap, eyebrow arched. “Sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“I mean, maybe,” you respond, a little too quickly. “If there were just… more specifics? Like, about the positioning. The angle, or where —” You take a quick breath. “Never mind.”

“And exactly how would you clarify it?”

“I’d probably just… add another line,” you say. “Like, specify that her hips are lower, or that her weight is shifted forward so her center of gravity is closer to his. Just so it’s clear what’s actually happening.”

He doesn’t say anything right away and when his eyes flick forward again, they look a little different beneath the dark of the sky, the blue of them deepened into something richer. A little less straightforward, you think. Lapis held in low light, saturated in silver strips and a little too pretty.

You watch as his tongue drags across his lower lip, the briefest glimpse of moisture highlighting the subtle contours and fine, shallow ridges of texture there.

“If you’re that concerned with accuracy,” he murmurs, “I’m sure there’s ways to run a practical demonstration.”

You have a hard time understanding what he means by that and when your mind does attempt to furnish the words with imagery, you have to recoil from your own thoughts.

Does he mean with him?

No, surely not, that is not where he wanted this conversation to go, and besides, that interpretation feels reckless, egotistical even, considering he is almost certainly saying it in the most neutral, solution-driven sense possible.

If that’s what he’s saying at all. He might not be. You can’t tell.

He is offering a suggestion for you.

You are the one making it weird.

“Oh. Well, it’d probably end up being more complicated than it’s worth. I’d need a controlled setup, probably multiple attempts, and at that point it’s less a demonstration and more a full reconstruction.”

A muscle feathers along his jaw as he tips his face towards the moon-lit sky. He seems to do that a lot. Like he’s appealing to some higher power for fortitude to deal with you. Or maybe not you specifically, which would be preferable, expect it does feel rather like you are the central to the current crisis, you just aren’t sure how.

Then he exhales a small laugh, thin with disbelief, and shakes his head once. 

“You’re right,” he says, voice deadpan. “Clearly I wasn’t thinking this through. Practicality first.” He glances pointedly at his watch. “It’s late. I’ll give you a ride home.”

You accept his offer without arguing, you’d be a fool not to, and trail him out toward the parking lot. A step behind, then a half step, then back again. You can’t quite decide on the appropriate proximity.

When you reach the row of cars, you realize you’ve never seen his before.

It’s nice. Grey, practical, a four-door SUV that screams fiscal responsibility and weather-appropriate footwear, a vehicle with divorced-dad energy so specific you can practically invent the rest of the man around it: patient at youth soccer, quietly resentful in a grocery store parking lot, pretending not to be wounded by logistical disappointments. 

The interior only deepens the impression. It is clean, but not in a forbidding way, not scrubbed of personality.

There is a toy in the cupholder, a crumpled napkin tucked into the side compartment, a few fast-food receipts scattered near the floor like the residue of a life conducted at speed.

It feels lived in, which is somehow more intimate than if it had been spotless.

It is, disconcertingly, human. More human than you expected from a man who often carries himself like a sealed document. 

Nice, you think again, and then, unhelpfully, him, the two notions beginning to blur together before you can stop them.

It’s a relatively quiet drive to start. The radio tuned to some Catholic station it must have picked up nearby, murky and hard to decipher, while streetlights drift past in bands of orange and green, staining the inside of the car with color and then taking it back.

“Javadi really recommended that?” Frank asks suddenly, piercing the silence.

“Yeah,” you admit, then wince almost immediately. “Well, sort of. I mean, I probably should not make it sound like she shoved it into my hands in some kind of corrupting-the-youth campaign. She mentioned it, but I was already curious. It was not not my idea.” You glance down, suddenly very interested in your own hands. “I’ve just been trying to do a little research, I guess.”

His fingers tap once against the steering wheel.

“And what, specifically, are you hoping to learn?”

Your mouth presses thin for a second. You’re not sure if you should continue.

“I was mostly just trying to get a better sense of... how certain things work in real life,” you say, picking each word carefully. “As opposed to in theory. Or in whatever version of reality people usually pretend is self-explanatory.”

He says nothing at first. Then through grit teeth: “You mean because no one’s explained it to you?”

You glance over, caught a little off guard by the question. “Well, not in any useful sense.”

His jaw flexes. 

“And the alternative,” he says slowly, “was assigned reading.”

You wince. “When you phrase it like that, it does sound bleak.”

“When I phrase it like that, it sounds like you’re trying to teach yourself something most people learn by experience.”

“Well,” you mumble, “yes. More or less.”

The light changes and he brakes, the red wash from the signal pouring through the windshield and across his face, tinting his skin rose-gold.

He screws his eyes shut for a brief second, hands drawing tighter on the wheel before he exhales.

“In that case,” he says, opening his eyes again, “I’m not entirely convinced that’s the most reliable educational resource.”

“Why?” you ask, with enough sincere confusion to make it clear you are not arguing so much as requesting clarification. 

The light turns green.

“Because it’s not source material. It’s entertainment.” His tone stays level, but only just. “It takes whatever is most dramatic, most flattering, most appealing, and presents it like it’s standard. It leaves out the parts that are inconvenient or unsexy, which means if you treat it as educational, you’re going to come away with a very distorted sense of how any of it actually works.”

“I guess that makes sense,” you say. “There were definitely sections where I kept thinking, surely that cannot be how that happens. Or at least not without significantly more preparation, flexibility, or orthopedic intervention than the text was willing to acknowledge.”

“So I gathered.”

You fall quiet after that, though not for lack of further questions. In fact the opposite is true, because now he has accidentally positioned himself as a person with knowledge of how sex works.

But that would be inappropriate on at least six different levels. 

He is driving you home as a favor, not volunteering to become some kind of after-hours consultant on the mechanics of sex, and there is no universe in which asking for elaboration would make you seem anything other than catastrophically unwell.

You almost ask him anyway. 

But before you can make what would almost certainly be the worst possible decision available to you tonight, the car slows, turns, and then stops. 

You stare at the windshield, disoriented by the fact that you are suddenly at your apartment.

“Right,” you say, gathering your bag with the abrupt, clumsy movements of someone trying to recover from her own thoughts. “Thank you. For the ride.”

He gives a brief nod, one hand still resting on the wheel. “It was no trouble.”

You do not believe that for even a second. Still, you murmur goodnight and let yourself out, hurrying inside with as much dignity as can be salvaged after a conversation like that.

A couple days later, you’re sitting in the breakroom with your head propped in your palm, devoting a frankly heroic amount of effort to not drop face-first into the laminate.

You are exhausted, which is surely unrelated to the fact that you stayed up too late conducting what can only be described as independent research.

There is, it turns out, an astonishing amount of positions.

More than seems necessary, honestly. Far too many names. Far too many diagrams. So many that appear to require either exceptional upper body strength or a level of mutual coordination that feels statistically unlikely in the average civilian population. 

Some are perfectly straightforward. Many are not. Several seem just down-right wrong.

The door opens and you glance up, prepared to offer some vague nod of recognition to whoever has come to interrupt your private collapse. 

Langdon.

“Oh,” you say, straightening a little too quickly. “Hi, Dr. Langdon.”

That seems to be your automatic response to his presence.

His eyes narrow. “Rough morning?”

You give a small shrug. “M’fine.”

“You’ll have to excuse my skepticism.” He drags the chair across from you and sits.

“Just stayed up too late.” 

You hope that doesn’t inspire follow-ups.

He slides something across the table toward you. A book. You stare at the cover. Then at him. 

“This,” he says, tapping two fingers once against the cover, “is at least designed to explain things.”

Slowly, as if touching it too fast might make this more real, you pick it up and turn it over.

The back is dense with tidy paragraphs about desire, arousal, and the science of how women’s bodies actually work, all written in the reassuring language of expertise, which would be comforting if your pulse were not currently behaving like it had something to hide.

“That’s… unexpectedly thoughtful,” you murmur. “Thank you.”

“Don’t make too much of it.”

“I won’t,” you say, which is a lie so poorly constructed it barely qualifies as one.

You are, in fact, almost certain to make too much of it later, probably in bed, probably while staring at the ceiling. 

Then the door opens again. You nearly jump. You pull the book against your chest like you are protecting classified material. Langdon’s eyes narrow a fraction.

Garcia steps inside a second later, pauses, and looks between the two of you.

“...Am I interrupting something weird?” she asks.

You stand so quickly the chair legs scrape against the floor.

“Nope,” you say. “Not at all. Nothing weird. Not even slightly.” You clutch the book tighter. “I do, however, suddenly need to go be elsewhere. For work-related reasons. Very legitimate ones.” You nod once. “Okay. Bye.”

It’s late when you finally start to read the book Langdon gave you. Your first mistake, really. You have to be up in four hours. Four.

But the book turns out to be more useful than expected. It has information. Real information. Terminology and diagrams and explanations that move in a sequence a human brain can follow, one thing leading intelligibly to the next instead of that gauzy, vague, everyone-just-knows-what-to-do, magical event nonsense.

And this all should, theoretically, be enough to satisfy you.

Except every answer you get splits open into three more questions, hydra-style, the whole thing multiplying the second you think you have a grip on it.

And yes, sometimes Google is enough. But sometimes it is not.

Too broad, too contradictory, too many tabs open at once, too many Reddit posts written by men with misplaced confidence.

So now you are sitting on your bed staring at your phone, typing a message, deleting it, retyping it, deleting it again. Because this is weird. It is weird to text him.

But then again, he did hand you the book.

He did, in a very real sense, amplify this situation. And maybe giving you additional reading material counts as tacit approval for further questions. A follow-up. Continuing education.

You hit send.

hi dr. langdon. sorry. i have a question about the book!

It takes only a couple seconds for him to answer.

Go ahead.

You sit up so fast the book slides off your leg and drops onto the bedspread with a soft thump.

You stare at the screen.

You expected eventuality, a response tomorrow morning maybe, sometime after sunrise, sometime under the polite cover of daylight when everybody involved could collude in pretending this was a normal academic exchange and not you texting a senior resident after dark about sex-adjacent material like you were requesting clarification on electrolyte imbalance.

You glance at the clock and frown.

What is he even doing up?

Surely you didn’t wake him. You cannot imagine he sleeps with his ringer turned up loud enough for that. No, he feels like a phone-on-silent, notifications-curated, emergency-contacts-only kind of man.

You spend four minutes composing the question. You send six words.

what does “building sensation” actually mean?

Need more context than that.

You photograph the page. You send it. You put your phone face down on the quilt and do not look at it for a full minute.

When you finally make yourself turn the phone over, he’s answered.

It’s the physiological buildup to orgasm. Increased blood flow, heightened sensitivity, pelvic muscle tension. Sustained and constant stimulation. The sensation compounds on itself.

Your thumb catches idly on the hem of your pajama shorts, worrying the fabric back and forth while you stare at the screen. It takes a long amount of time to realize you’re doing it. You stop. Then start again without meaning to, fingertips slipping under the edge to press against your thigh. 

is consistency about location or pressure or both? the book implies they're interchangeable.  

Both. Generally location first, then pressure. If you keep changing where you’re touching, it’s harder to build anything. If the location is consistent but the pressure is erratic, same problem. They’re related, but not interchangeable.

Your free hand has drifted north to the waistband of your shorts, thumb pressing little crescent moons into overheated skin. Almost feverish.

Location first. 

An unfortunate instruction to receive while being aware of the exact location in question, muted now by two thin layers of cotton.

You should stop there. Obviously.

You should set the phone down, turn off the lamp, go to sleep, and revisit all of this in the morning when you are less suggestible. 

Instead your hand keeps moving, slow enough that you can perhaps pretend you have not consciously decided anything, slipping lower until it hovers over your underwear, where your clit presses back against the fabric. Swollen. And then lower than that, wet.

That startles you more than anything. From what, exactly? A sex manual? A few texts? Him?

No. That last one is inadmissible. Wildly inappropriate.

So you drag your mind back to the book instead, using it as a kind of corrective, something technical to blunt that he is, however indirectly, implicated in this. 

Start with indirect stimulation. Let the body acclimate. Don’t rush the thing. Let the thing, apparently, arrive on its own like a skittish woodland creature you are trying not to scare off.

Fine. Whatever. 

You press your thumb down and make a circular motion, sucking in a breath so sharply it almost hurts, mostly because the sensation is immediate and strange and good. You wouldn’t say overwhelming. Though maybe you would. You can’t think straight. Surprising, then. Concentrated.

Like pressing a bruise, except the complete inverse of that, if they lit up instead of aching. It makes you want to do it again.

So you do.

Small circles. Experimental. Testing the waters.

And it’s not like this is technically new. You have tried before.

But before was rushed and graceless and was the sort of thing done half-curiously and abandoned quickly, with no patience for your own body.

You were raised sheltered, and beyond that, serious. Preoccupied with things that seemed more pressing, more worthy of your attention, as though this part of yourself could be indefinitely postponed without consequence. 

You pick the phone back up with your unoccupied hand.

okay. that makes sense.

You stare at it, dissatisfied. Too final. Too capable of ending the conversation. You add another line before you can overthink yourself out of it.

and if the sensation is building, when are u supposed to switch? like to inner stimulation, i mean. or are you not supposed to unless what you’re already doing stops working?

The typing bubble appears instantly.

You don’t have to switch. That’s the first thing.

External stimulation is usually more important, especially early on. Inner stimulation is optional, not a required next step.

Little gasps keep escaping you as you refine the motion, not changing much, just enough pressure to sharpen it, back arching into the mattress.

It feels good. You don’t remember it ever feeling this good.

Maybe because before did not involve a very attractive doctor explaining your own body back to you in real time.

It is getting harder to text. Harder to think in complete sentences. Still, you manage, so if it’s working, is it better to not change anything? even if it starts feeling a lot more sensitive?

Your phone starts ringing.

You freeze when Frank's name flashes across the screen.

For a moment you can only stare. Your pulse jumps in your throat, fluttering there like something trapped, and then you are yanking your hand from your shorts and grabbing for the phone with fingers that suddenly seem to belong to someone much less coordinated than you.

“Hi —,”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” you ask, though your voice already sounds guilty, chest rising and falling unevenly. “I’m — nothing. I’m just reading.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

You frown at the dark ceiling. “I hate the confidence with which you say things.”

“It’s usually earned.”

You make a face at that, even though he cannot see it.

“I wasn’t prepared for a pop quiz,” you mutter. “You called out of nowhere.”

“A call seemed appropriate,” he says through the soft buzz of static.

“Why?”

Your whole body feels keyed up now, strung too tight, humming with a surplus of energy like you have been plugged into the wall and simply left there to glow.

It's hard to keep still under the blankets. Harder with his voice in your ear, that low grain of it roughened by the hour, touched with that tired edge that makes him feel closer than he is. He sounds warm. He sounds half-undone.

You can picture him without trying. In bed. Hair rumpled from sleep or from his hand shoved through it one too many times, one stray piece fallen near his eyes. Maybe in pajamas. Maybe not. Either option is equally disruptive. You brain offers a shirt pushes up a little, one arm behind his head, a strip of stomach, a line of hair disappearing into plaid boxers.

You shift on the mattress. Your hand trails back down your front, fingers resuming their place on your underwear.

“Because your last text didn’t read like a theoretical question,” he says. “I wanted to hear whether I was right.”

The words move through you, like he has reached through the phone and pressed a hand flat to your lower stomach.

“And were you?”

Your hips shift on the mattress again, angling into your own touch.

You bite your lip around the small throb of pleasure that follows.

“Yeah. I was.” His voice comes through coarser now, the line fuzzing around it, but not enough to hide the change. “And if I’m hearing you correctly, you haven’t stopped.”

You squeeze your eyes shut.

“...maybe.”

There's a brief pause on the line. You hear the rustle of him moving, before he speaks again. “Tell me exactly what you're doing.”

“I’m, uh…” You mouth goes dry. “I mean, you know.”

“I can’t tell you what to do if you won’t tell me what you’re doing,” he says. “You need to be specific.” 

You swallow.

“I’m touching over my underwear,” you admit finally, the words coming out hushed and a little uneven. “Just with my thumb. I’m not really… doing anything more than that.”

A soft exhale crackles through the phone.

“That’s good,” he murmurs. “Tell me if it feels good.”

Your lashes flutter at the words. Your thumb keeps tracing the same spot, a little more rhythmically now, and every so often your hand falters when the sensation catches unexpectedly bright, a live wire under your skin.

Flashing hotter and hotter and hotter until you can barely stand it.

Your thighs draw in on instinct, then ease apart again, restless, unable to decide whether they are trying to hold the feeling or escape it.

“Mhm.” It’s all you can manage. 

You start to picture him again. Existing in real time in the dark on the other end of the line now.

It sends the throbbing in your cunt up tenfold, sharp little bursts of color flying behind your eyelids, green and orange and something almost gold.

You use your imagination to conjure up the image of him doing the same. Him with the phone in one hand and the other moving in lazy unhurried strokes around his cock, like this is no great strain for him, like he is as controlled in private as he is everywhere else.

You wonder what it looks like. His cock. Probably big and pink and veiny.

You know, rationally, that he is probably not doing that at all. He is probably just lying there in the dark, listening, talking, being composed for both of you.

But it is a nice thought anyway. More than nice, really. Your body answers it before you can caution it otherwise, your clit going heavier and more swollen, as you move to touch yourself without the barrier of your panties. It’s more sensitive that way. And your whole lower half seems to lean vainly into your own hand, practically preening toward the touch.

“Now I’m, um, touching myself directly.”

“Alright. Want you to try something. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah,” you say quickly. A little too eager. “I can.”

“Good girl.” The praise makes your stomach tighten. “Want you to slide two fingers into yourself a little. Not all the way, just enough to get them wet, okay? Then bring them back to your clit and keep using your thumb, or your fingers if that feels easier. Same pace as before.”

You nod even though you know he can’t see it and slip two fingers down, enough to feel the sticky warmth of yourself, coating your digits.

You bring it back up, smearing it over your nub.

“Oh,” you mumble breathily.

“Yeah?” he teases quietly. “That better?”

“A lot.”

“Good. It’s easier like that. Less friction. If you’re getting more sensitive, too much drag starts working against you.”

He’s right. He’s always right. You feel a little strange and floaty now, like your whole body has narrowed down to one incandescent point.

“How do you know all this?” you prod.

A pause. Then, “Experience.”

“Right. That.” Another circle, another spark of pleasure down your spine. “I don’t exactly have that.”

“I gathered.”

Something in his tone makes you go a little still. Not enough to stop, but your hand falters, tightening around a thought before you can even identify it.

He notices immediately. He has some terrifying sonar for you specifically, some private frequency calibrated to every tiny shift in your breathing, every dropped beat, every half-second hesitation.

“Hey,” he says pointedly. “Don’t get in your head now. Never said it was a bad thing. Keep going. Think about something else.”

“Such as?” you whisper.

There’s the sound of breathing from the phone before he answers, “that’s up for you to decide.”

You suck in a sharp breath, squirming as you adjust phone closer to your ear

“Can you just… keep talking to me?”

There’s a huff on the other end, almost a laugh. “That’s not very specific.”

“I know.” You’re sure you’re not making much sense right now. “I just — don’t stop. Please. Just wanna hear you say anything.”

He’s quiet for a second, like he’s trying to decide what, exactly, you’re asking for. The problem is, you’re not entirely sure either.

You only know there’s a strange, tightening warmth low in your stomach, something gathering there, and his voice seems to nurture it instead of breaking it apart.

You hear something clang on the other end of the phone.

“Fuck. Okay. First need you to breathe, okay? You're tensing up, I can hear it. Relax your legs.”

You try to do as you're told.

In. Out. In. Out.

Each breath feeding the whole thing oxygen, driving you nearer and nearer to the vanishing point until your eyes threaten to roll back and your body feels like on extended nerve.

“I —” A breath. “Sorry, I just —” Another one. “Frank I think I'm — I'm close, I think, I don't — It's really intense and I don't know what I'm —” You lose the thought entirely. “I just don't know what I'm supposed to do when it starts feeling like this. Do I stop, or —”

“Shit baby, you've never gotten there before? Not even —”

“No,” you manage.

“Oh, poor thing.”Quiet. Almost to himself. “Okay. ‘S okay. Don't stop. I need you to stay with me and just let it happen, can you do that?”

“I think —”

“Don't think,” he cuts you off. “For once in your life, don't think. Just feel it.”

Something in you finally gives.

You feel all of it at once.

Your orgasm peaks so fast it almost feels like losing power everywhere at the same time, every room going dark together, and your back comes off the pillows and your hand presses harder before you even mean for it to and a gasp tears out of you, high and helpless and so unlike anything you have ever heard from yourself that for a second it barely sounds like yours.

“That’s it,” Frank says, low in your ear.

It rolls. That's the only word for it.

It rolls outward from your pussy in a slow, stunned series of tremors moving through your thighs, your spine, your chest, each wave its own distinct thing and yet not distinct at all, each one its own event, its own brief undoing.

You cannot do anything except lie there and take it, receive it as it passes through you, because there is nothing else available to you now, no other function left online, no thought, no dignity, no language, only this long bright aftershock and your body answering it whether you understand it or not.

Your breathing takes a while to come back to anything recognizable.

At first it is just air dragged in and let back out. Sweat has glued a few strands of hair to your forehead. Your hand has gone slack.

“You still with me?”

That is when your brain comes back. All at once. Hard. Fast.

Because now you are not just a body coming down from an orgasm.

Now you are yourself again. And Frank Langdon just talked you through getting off.

Frank Langdon, your coworker. Frank Langdon, your superior. Frank Langdon, whom you have just used as a combined anatomy instructor, practical demonstration guide, and live sex education resource.

“Yes, yeah, sorry.” You swallow, wipe at your forehead with the heel of your hand. “I'm here.”

“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Your sensitivity's going to be elevated for a minute, so just let your muscles relax and let your breathing even out. If you feel shaky, that's normal. If you heart's racing, also normal. Get some water when you can. Sit up slowly if you're going to move.”

“Okay,” you murmur, because he sounds so certain that for a second it is easy to borrow some of it. You try to unclench by degrees, thighs, stomach, shoulders, one thing at a time. “I am a little shaky, which is good to know is normal and not, like, a sign that I’ve accidentally broken something."

“No,” he says, and there is that low note of dry amusement under it now, just enough to catch. “You didn’t break anything. If you had, trust me, we’d be having a very different conversation.”

“Right, no, I know. Though sex-related injuries are not exactly unheard of. Do you remember that girl in the ER who had a condom stuck in her for over two months and didn't realize it? That would suck."

"Mm. It would," he agrees. "Protection is important. Equally important to make sure it actually comes back out with you."

You let out a small giggle at that and shift on the bed, drawing yourself up a little slower this time, careful like he told you to bed. The quilt bunches under your legs.

A quiet opens up. And it might be comfortable if it with anyone else. But it is not with anyone else.

You break first.

“So what happens now?” you ask, trying for light and missing by a little. “Do we pretend this was a totally normal educational exchange and never speak of it again?”

“I don’t think you’re capable of pretending that,” he says.

You flush hot all over.

“And you are?”

A pause.

“No.” The room goes still around you. You wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t, but he does say: “You should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Probably.”

You have to be up in three hours now. Have to see him in four.

Another beat. Neither of you hangs up.

Then, very quiet, very even, he says, “Next time, ask sooner.”

“Next time?”

“If you’re going to use me as a reference source,” he says, all dry composure again, though now it feels a little put on, “I’d prefer a more reasonable hour.”

Your cheeks heat with the power of a thousand suns.

“Oh, well, Dr. Langdon, I think —”

“Goodnight.”

The line clicks dead.

You lie there staring into the dark, phone still pressed to your ear, and understand with awful, perfect clarity that this has not ended anything at all.

More gaps in your knowledge.

And you really hate gaps.

A/N: this has been sitting in my drafts 4 ten thousand yrs!!!!!!!! thinking about writing a part two but we shall see. anyway thanks for reading!! love ya always

There’s that tone. The one he uses with residents when they’re dancing around something obvious. Not unkind. Just… direct. Your breath catches for half a second. Not nerves exactly—more the weight of being looked at like that. Seen through, a little.

Jack glances at you, something softer there now. A small nod. Go on.

You shift in your seat, tucking one leg under you slightly, grounding yourself before you speak.

“It’s not… open,” you start, careful. “We’re not looking to—change anything. Not really.”

Robby watches you the whole time. Doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t fill the silence for you.

“It’s just—” you exhale, a small, almost embarrassed huff of a laugh, “—we trust you. Both of us do. And you’ve been… there. With us. For a while.”

“Unfortunately,” he mutters.

Jack snorts. “Speak for yourself.”

But Robby doesn’t look away from you.

You hold his gaze. “It’s not random. It’s not… about finding some person to fool around with. It’s you.”

That lands. You see it in the way his jaw shifts, just slightly. The humour doesn’t disappear, but it tightens around the edges.

“…Right,” he says, slower now.

Jack leans forward, elbows on the table, finally stepping back in. “It’s not a free-for-all,” he adds, dry. “We’re not pitching some kind of ER orgy.”

“Shame,” Robby says flatly.

You almost laugh, tension breaking for a second.

Jack shoots him a look. “Be serious for one second in your life.”

“I am serious,” Robby says. Then, to you—“I’m just making sure I understand what the hell you’re asking me.”

His gaze drops briefly—to your hands, the way they’re curled loosely around your glass—then back up again.

“What are you actually offering here?” he asks.

You hesitate—not because you don’t know, but because saying it out loud makes it real. Jack shifts beside you. You feel his knee press into yours, steady, grounding.

“It’s not just sex,” you say, quieter now.

Robby’s brow lifts. “No?”

You shake your head. “It’s… us. Still us. Just—” you glance at Jack, then back at Robby, “—with you in it. Sometimes. If you wanted that.”

There’s a long beat.

Robby leans back again, dragging his hand over his mouth, thinking. Really thinking.

“You two have been together, what,” he says, glancing at Jack, “two years now?”

“Nearly three,” Jack corrects.

“Nearly three,” Robby repeats. “You know, you… you live together. Don’t kill each other. That’s impressive.”

“Thank you,” you say, dry.

His gaze shifts back to you again, softer this time—but heavier, too.

“And you’re both telling me this doesn’t… complicate things.”

Jack answers this time, steady. “Everything’s already complicated. This wouldn’t change what we’ve got. We’ve talked, we trust each other, we trust you.”

Robby studies him for a second longer than necessary. There’s history in that look. Long-standing, unspoken understanding. The kind you only get after decades of knowing someone.

“…You’re serious,” he says finally.

“Yeah,” Jack says.

Robby exhales, a quiet, disbelieving laugh under his breath. He tips his head back for a second, staring at the ceiling like he’s trying to reset his brain.

“Jesus Christ.”

You don’t rush him. Neither does Jack. When he looks back at you, it’s different now. Less amused. More… considering.

“You’re asking about the three of us…” he tries, trailing off.

You nod. “Yeah.”

His eyes flick, just briefly, to where your leg is still angled toward Jack’s, the easy closeness of it. Then back to your face.

“And you’re both just- you’re… good with it,” he says.

Your voice is quieter when you answer. “Wouldn’t be sitting here if we weren’t. You’re attractive, smart, funny. And I think you’ve always secretly had a thing for at least one of us. Maybe both, but, one way to find out, I guess.”

Robby drums his fingers once against the table, then stills them.

“...Christ,” he mutters again, but there’s a hint of something else in it now. Not just disbelief.

Interest. He looks at you properly then. Not the quick, passing glances from before. This is slower. Measuring.

“You always this persuasive?” He wonders.

You tilt your head, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “Only when it matters.”

That earns the faintest huff of a laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can see that.”

Jack shifts beside you, not tense—but alert. Watching the shift happen in real time. Robby notices that too. His mouth quirks, just slightly.

Your phone buzzes—once, twice, then a string of messages lighting up your screen.

You glance down, already half-standing. “I’ve gotta go. Park needs me—Isla called in sick.”

Jack doesn’t even hesitate. He’s already reaching into his pocket, keys in hand. “Take the car. I’ll ride back with him.”

You take them, brushing his fingers briefly. “Thanks, baby.”

You lean down—meant to be quick, but it doesn’t quite stay that way. Your mouth presses to his, warm, familiar. He lets you, hand coming up to your cheek, thumb catching just under your jaw, holding you there for half a second longer than necessary before you pull back.

There’s a flicker of something in his eyes when you do. You straighten, turning— Robby’s already looking at you. Not subtle about it. Rarely is.

“Michael,” you say, softer, a small nod.

He repeats your name—flatter, rougher, like he’s testing how it sits in his mouth.

You don’t linger. You head out.

The door swings shut behind you.

Jack watches it a beat too long. Then exhales, leaning back into the booth, dragging a hand over his mouth like he’s resetting.

Robby doesn’t look at the door. He looks at Jack. There’s a slow, almost amused curve to his mouth. Not mocking. Just… processing.

“Alright,” he says. “Who’s idea is it?”

Jack doesn’t bother pretending. “Mine.”

Robby lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“When?”

Jack shrugs, reaching for his beer. “Remember that detox sexless cult thing she did a few months back?”

Robby snorts. “Yeah. You turned into the most unbearable version of yourself I’ve seen in twenty years. Which is saying something.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Walking around like—” Robby gestures vaguely, “—like a cat in heat.”

Jack huffs a laugh despite himself. “Yeah, well. After you left that morning, we had our… you know, usual great sex - not adding as part of the pitch, you already know how good the sex is -”

“-get to the point,” Robby says, with a slight snicker.

“Some point, I mention… I don’t know, marriage, foreplay, a third. We finish up, and… we’re just talking.”

“Talking,” Robby repeats, deadpan.

“Yeah. Try it sometime. With a professional, even, they do that.”

“Hard pass.”

Jack ignores him, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. “It came up. Not seriously at first. Hypotheticals. What we’d be into, what we wouldn’t.”

“And you landed on me,” Robby says.

“Yeah.”

Robby watches him for a second. Longer than usual. “…Both of you.”

“Both of us.”

That lands differently.

Robby leans back, dragging a hand over his jaw, thinking. Really thinking now—not just reacting.

“That’s your girl,” he says finally. “You’ve built something there. I’m not—” he shakes his head slightly, “—I’m not interested in screwing that up.”

Jack’s expression doesn’t change much, but something in it settles. He nods once.

“I wouldn’t be asking if I thought you would.”

Robby glances at him, sharper now. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“No,” Jack agrees easily. “But I do know you.”

A beat.

“And I trust you,” he adds.

it hangs there. Robby exhales slowly, gaze dropping to the table for a second before coming back up.

“…Yeah,” he mutters. “That’s the problem.”

Jack’s brow lifts, faintly amused. “That I trust you?”

“That I don’t take that lightly,” Robby shoots back.

Silence stretches for a second. Then Robby leans forward slightly, forearms braced on the table, voice dropping a notch.

“And you’re fine with it,” he says. Not a question. “Me and her.”

Jack doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

“Really.”

“Yeah.”

Robby studies him—searching for cracks, for ego, for something careless. Doesn’t find much. Jack kept his pride in check. He wasn’t a jealous person, not really. He was secure in himself. Something Robby envied, sometimes.

“…She’s—” he starts, then cuts himself off, jaw tightening slightly. “You know what she is.”

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Yeah. I do.”

“Twenty-something,” Robby continues. “Smart. Looks like—” he gestures vaguely, then shakes his head. “You’ve seen her.”

Jack smirks faintly. “I have, yeah. A lot of her. It’s great.”

Robby’s mouth twitches despite himself.

“And she looks at you like you hung the moon half the time,” he adds.

Jack’s expression softens just a fraction. “Sometimes.”

Robby nods once, slow. Then—

“…You really telling me you’ve never thought about it? About her” Jack asks, casual—but not careless.

Robby lets out a quiet breath through his nose, leaning back again.

“That’s not a fair question.”

Jack tilts his head at his friend. An insistence in his eyes to go on.

Robby tips his head back slightly, staring at the ceiling for a second like he’s debating how honest he wants to be.

Then he looks back at Jack.

“…Well I’m not blind,” he says.

Jack doesn’t react much. Just watches him.

“She’s—” Robby exhales, searching for a word, then gives up and settles for, “—she’s a lot. Sweet.”

Jack’s mouth ticks. “She is… You ever think about her while jerking off?”

Robby lets out a low breath at that, clicking his tongue at his friend's bluntness. Fuck it, they’re being honest. “Yes.”

Robby’s a little surprised when he sees the slow blink from Jack, a nod. Maybe irritable. 

“What?” Robby scoffs. “You’re cool with the prospect of me fucking your girl? But what I do with my hand in my spare time is… what, some sort of line being crossed?”

“I didn’t say anything, alright. I’m all good here. Just didn’t think you’d admit it,” Jack nods with insistence. “What about during sex? Thought about her then?”

“...On occasion, yes, I’ve- she’s popped up there, yeah.” Robby admits with brief hesitance. 

That’s as far as he pushes it—but it’s enough. Jack nods once, like this one he expected. Like it doesn’t threaten anything.

“Fair,” he says.

Robby glances at him, something like disbelief creeping back in. “You’re taking that a lot better than I thought you would.”

Jack shrugs. “She’s hot. You’re not dead. Tells me you’ve got a working dick, at least.”

Robby lets out a short laugh at that, shaking his head.

Jack took a sip of his beer, then—because he wasn’t finished, because he never really was with Robby—tilts his head slightly.

“What about me?”

Robby scoffs immediately, too quick. “Oh, come on.”

“No, seriously,” Jack says, glancing at him sideways. Casual on the surface, not casual underneath. “No shame, total honesty here. Twenty years, no secrets, all that bullshit.”

Robby drags a hand over his beard, already feeling the trap closing. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Have you?” Jack asks, like he was asking about the weather.

A pause.

Robby stares at the table, jaw working once.

“…You first,” he mutters.

Jack doesn’t even blink. “Yeah.”

Robby let out a slow breath through his nose, eyes dropping, like he was doing the math on how much of himself he was willing to hand over tonight.

“Man, it’s not even—” Jack went on, shrugging a shoulder. “Half the time that shit doesn’t mean anything. Brain just throws things at you. Doesn’t make you anything.”

Robby let out a short, humourless huff. “Right.”

“What,” Jack presses lightly, “you worried about the gay implications?”

Robby shot him a look. “Don’t—”

“—What? Say ‘gay’?” Jack says, not unkind, but not backing off either.

Robby glances up as a couple walks past, waits them out, then leans back in his seat, voice lower.

“We’re talking about whether I’ve jacked off thinking about another guy,” he says, flat. “Yeah, the… ‘gay’ of it all crossed my mind. Excuse me.”

Jack just nods, like that was fair.

“I just… I guess, I didn’t realise—” Robby starts, then stops, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I mean, you know, are you—”

Jack shrugs, easy. “I’ve been with a few. Never made a whole thing out of it. Don’t really care to.”

Robby gives a small, disbelieving shake of his head. “Figrues. Army man.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack mutters. “You don’t have to slap a label on it, Rob. Doesn’t have to mean anything bigger than it is.”

“I’m aware,” Robby says, maybe a little sharper than he meant to. Then, quieter—like it cost him something— “…It’s crossed my mind.”

Jack’s mouth pulled into something faintly smug. Not cruel—just… satisfied.

“Crossed your mind,” he repeated. “Interesting wording.”

“Don’t start,” Robby warns, but there was less heat in it now.

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “It was easier getting you to admit you think about fucking my girlfriend half our age than it was getting that out of you. That’s saying something.”

“Fuck you,” Robby mutters, rolling his eyes—but there was a reluctant grin there now, breaking through whether he liked it or not.

Jack shrugs, taking another sip. “Options apparently on the table.”

Robby shakes his head, but didn’t argue. Didn’t fully look away, either.

Something in the air had shifted—subtle, but real. Not a line crossed, exactly. More like one finally acknowledged.

Robby studied him for a second, longer than necessary. There was history there—years of it, unspoken things sitting just under the surface, things neither of them had ever had to name.

Jack didn’t push. Just leaned back, easy.

“Think about it,” he tries. “Or don’t. Nothing changes.”

Robby nods once, short. “Yeah.” A few seconds of quiet. “…You still need that ride home?” he asks.

Jack snorts. “Oh, a ride home? Wow. Subtle.”

“Shut up.”

“Flirting now, are we?”

“You are not a funny man, Jack Abbot, don’t think otherwise,” Robby says, but he was already smiling, just a little.

★★★

2 WEEKS EARLIER

threesomenoun — three·some — ˈthrē-səm

1: a group of three persons or things : trio

2: a golf match in which one person plays their ball against the ball of two others playing each stroke alternately

3: a sexual encounter involving three people

“Are you trying to say you wanna play golf?” Jack says from the stove, not even turning around as he stirs the pan like it personally offended him.

The kitchen smells like garlic and butter—onions already softened down, carrots and capsicum still holding a bit too much bite. He’s got one hand on the wooden spoon, the other braced on the counter, solid and steady in that way he always is.

You’re perched up on the counter, one leg swinging lazily, phone in hand.

“Yes,” you say dryly, scrolling. “I’m deeply passionate about golf. The balls. The stroking of the balls—”

“—I get it,” Jack cuts in. “You want a threesome.”

You look up at him, unimpressed. “I don’t want a threesome. I love twosomes. Specifically with you.” A beat. “But I’m not opposed to… expanding the sample size.”

Jack snorts, finally glancing over to you. “Expanding the—Jesus. That’s how you pitch wanting to fuck my best friend?”

“You brought it up,” you shoot back, pointing your phone at him like evidence. “Don’t act like this wasn’t your idea. ‘Oh baby, we should add a third, Robby would give me notes’—”

“I did not sound like that.”

“—If anything,” you continue over him, “I think you wanna fuck your best friend.”

“Alright,” Jack mutters, turning back to the pan. “Not what I sound like. And c’mon—you know you’re all I wanna fuck.” He nudges the vegetables again, frowning. “I think these are done.”

“They’re not.” You don’t even look up when you say it. “Anyway… I doubt he’d even be down for it,” you say. “I barely think he likes me as a friend.”

Jack lets out a quiet scoff at that.

You narrow your eyes. “What?”

“I think he’d fuck you in a heartbeat if I said I was okay with it,” Jack says, like it’s obvious. Then, distracted again—“I really think these are done, hon.”

“Test the carrot,” you say, still scrolling. “If it’s soft enough, it’ll break with pressure.”

He presses the spoon into one. It doesn’t budge.

“…Needs longer,” he admits.

“How do you know that?”

“I just did what you said, I—”

“No,” you interrupt, looking at him properly now. “How do you know Robby would fuck me?”

That slows him down.

Jack exhales through his nose, shoulders shifting as he leans back slightly against the counter, thinking.

“I know him,” he says. “Twenty years of it. And I know you.” A beat. “There’s something there. A thing. You’ve always had good chemistry.”

You huff lightly. “A vague… thing, maybe.”

You hesitate, then—because you don’t really do half-truths—

“I did have a bit of a crush on him,” you admit. “Before I met you.”

Jack stills. Not dramatically. Just enough.

“I don’t anymore,” you add quickly. “It faded. Pretty fast, actually. It was early—before I started coming down to ED properly. He’d come up sometimes, consults, whatever. I think it was just…” you shrug, searching, “…older. Authority. Bit of an asshole.”

Jack’s mouth pulls slightly at that, something between amused and unimpressed.

“Glad to know you don’t have a type,” he mutters.

You lean in closer from the counter, nudging his shoulder lightly with your knee.

“Hey,” you murmur. He glances up at you. “I like them a little shorter,” you say softly.

Jack blinks.

Then rolls his eyes, a huff of laughter slipping out despite himself as you grin and go back to your phone.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters, turning the heat down, a small smile at the corner of his lips. 

★★★

The thing about a third—about this third—was that it… kind of just felt natural. Like there was so little reason to not do it, to not try it, invite it.

It wasn’t sudden. It was something that had been sitting under the skin of things for so long it stopped feeling foreign the second it was named.

Robby had never been separate from Jack. 

Not really. People liked to pretend friendships had clean edges—this is where I end, this is where you begin—but that had never been the case with them. 

Too many years. Too many nights that blurred into mornings, too many arguments that never quite resolved but never quite broke them either. 

They’d dragged each other through their twenties, stumbled into their thirties, and settled—somehow—into their forties without ever untangling.

They knew each other in ways that made distance feel artificial.

And Robby had always lived in that tension.

He didn’t soften easily. Didn’t trust softness when it showed up uninvited. Jack had always been the exception to that rule—steady enough to withstand it, patient enough not to demand more than Robby could give. But patience didn’t mean absence.

There were things between them that had never been said out loud. Not because they didn’t exist, but because saying them would’ve required a kind of clarity Robby had spent most of his life avoiding. 

It was easier to file it under something else—loyalty, history, proximity. Easier to laugh it off, to redirect, to let it sit in that grey space where it didn’t have to be examined too closely.

Then you came along. And you didn’t disrupt that balance. You just seemed to understand it. 

You didn’t wedge yourself between them, didn’t ask Jack to choose, didn’t look at Robby like he was something to tolerate or compete with. You moved through it like it already made sense to you. Like there was room.

And God—there was something about you.

Not just that you were beautiful—though you were, in a way that made people look twice without meaning to. Not just that you were younger, brighter, sharper at the edges in a way that made everything feel a little more alive. It was the way you saw people.

The way you saw Jack—fully, without flinching, without trying to fix him or soften him into something more palatable. The way you leaned into him like you trusted him to hold the weight of that. The way you touched him without hesitation, like affection was a language you spoke fluently.

And worse—

The way you looked at Robby sometimes, like you were trying to figure him out and already had.

He’d noticed it long before anyone said anything. Of course he had. The small things. The way your attention lingered just a second longer than necessary. The way you didn’t pull back when he got too close, didn’t flinch at the edge in him that made other people cautious.

You met it. Sometimes you even matched it. And that—more than anything—was what made him careful. Because wanting you was one thing.

That was easy enough to dismiss, tuck away under instinct, under biology, under the thousand other justifications people used to avoid looking too closely at themselves.

But wanting you like this—in the context of Jack, with Jack, because of Jack. That was something else entirely. It brushed up against things he didn’t have neat categories for. Things that felt uncomfortably close to lines he’d spent years pretending weren’t there.

And Jack…

Jack, who didn’t do anything halfway, who didn’t offer things he wasn’t sure about—was sitting across from him like this was just another extension of something already solid. Like this wasn’t a risk so much as… an opening.

That was what threw him. It wasn’t the sex or the implication, it was how Jack totally trusted him. With you, with this, with Jack himself.

And Robby didn’t trust himself nearly that much.

That was the problem. Beneath all the deflection, all the dryness and sarcasm, the sharp edges, there was something undeniably real threading through all three of you. Not clean, not simple—but real in a way that resisted being dismissed.

Jack had never been particularly private about you. Not with Robby.

Not in the way people usually were about relationships—careful, curated, keeping the good parts polished and the rest tucked away. Jack wasn’t built like that. He didn’t gush, didn’t sentimentalise—but if he’d had a couple drinks in him and it’d been a long week, you came up. Inevitably.

Not in a soft-focus, hearts-and-flowers way.

In details. In fragments. In the way you got under his skin and stayed there. 

The way you kissed him, made him feel every ounce of his own flesh and blood, grounded, and above at once. In how much he adored your figure, or some ridiculous position, some ridiculous story of stamina and libido, your mouth, his mouth, your hand, his hand.

Robby had learned, over the years, to let it wash over him. Half-listening, half-not. It wasn’t discomfort exactly—more like… he didn’t know where to put it. There was something about hearing your name in Jack’s mouth like that that sat strange in his chest. 

“What the fuck do you mean six times?” Robby had said once, a laugh breaking through despite himself as he tipped his beer back.

They were sprawled out on the grass like they hadn’t aged out of it—backs damp against the ground, shirts sticking, the heat of the day still rising up through the dirt. The city hummed around them, distant enough to ignore. It felt like being twenty something again, except their knees ached when they stood and everything they didn’t talk about sat heavier.

It was one of those nothing nights, sometime back in Spring. End of a shift. A few beers. Waiting for you to finish upstairs while Jack pretended he wasn’t being watched over by the hospital.

Jack didn’t even open his eyes. “I mean she came six times,” he said, easy. “Working up to eight.”

Robby snorted. “You’re talking like it’s a personal best.”

“It is,” Jack said. “You don’t set goals, you stagnate. That’s what my therapist says.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Jack grinned faintly, still flat on his back, arms folded behind his head like he had nowhere else to be. “What’s your number?”

Robby shrugged, taking another sip. “I don’t know. I don’t have a number.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Nope.”

“Bull.”

Robby dragged a hand over his mouth, already regretting engaging. “…Four. Maybe.”

Jack turned his head slightly, considering that like it mattered more than it should. His fingers tapped absently against the neck of the bottle.

“Four,” he repeated.

“Some of us aren’t treating it like a competitive sport,” Robby muttered.

Jack huffed. “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s her. She’s a natural.”

“She really that good?” Robby had slipped as a question. Maybe for his own curiosity, maybe because he knew Jack would’ve gotten to it at some point. Both, likely.

There was a beat.

Robby stared up at the sky like it didn’t matter either way. Jack shifted slightly, something quieter settling into him now.

“She’s—” he paused, like he was trying to find a word that didn’t sound ridiculous and failing. “She pays attention. Like she’s studying you. Figures out what works and then—just… doesn’t let up. Like I’m constantly high around her. And man, she-” Jack cleared his throat. “She does this thing with her tongue.”

Robby exhaled through his nose, slow.

He didn’t say anything.

“She swirls it, right around the underside, traces it—the entire thing with the flat part. Goes between, you know, broad strokes, little ones, then she’ll—fuck,” Jack had mused. “…She’ll use the space beneath her tongue, suck, and still use her tongue at the same time. I can’t describe how good it feels,” Jack had explained, his words slurring slightly but still carrying a strange clarity. “Fucking… incredible.”

Robby couldn’t have helped but picture it. The image of you, on your knees, long lashes batting at him, as you brought him to the edge. He sipped his beer, fingers a bit tighter around the neck of the glass.

“She makes the prettiest noises, like a… I don’t even know,” Jack added, quieter now, almost to himself. “Moans and screams, and so… Christ. Like she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it, possessed.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Robby cut in, not sharply, but firm.

Jack just smirked, eyes still shut. “You asked.”

“I didn’t ask for a breakdown.”

“Semantics.”

Robby shook his head, but there was a faint smile tugging at his mouth despite it. He finished the last of his beer, letting the cold settle something in his chest that had nothing to do with the heat.

A pause stretched between them. Jack sipped his beer. Then—

“What’s the deal with you and Noelle?” Jack asked, casual in that way that wasn’t casual at all.

Robby’s jaw shifted.

“She’s… fine,” he said.

Jack cracked one eye open. “That sounds promising.”

Robby huffed. “It’s not—” he cut himself off, shook his head. “Don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

Jack watched him for a second. Then nodded, like he’d expected that. He handed Robby his own beer, watching as Robby took it after a moment, sipping from it himself

“Yeah,” he said. “Bummer.”

Another beat. Robby sat up, bracing his forearms on his knees, their shared beer dangling loose between his fingers.

“Don’t think I’m built for it,” he said finally.

Jack didn’t move. “For what?”

“This,” Robby gestured vaguely. “Relationships. The staying. The… showing up part.”

Jack was quiet for a second.

Then—

“Now that’s bull,” he said, not unkindly.

Robby glanced at him, a faint, tired smirk pulling at his mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “We’ve known each other, what—twenty years? You’ve stuck around that long.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

Robby didn’t answer that. Jack pushed himself up onto his elbows now, looking at him properly.

“You don’t get to pretend you can’t do something just because you haven’t done it right yet,” he said.

Robby scoffed lightly. “Didn’t realise you were gonna get philosophical on me.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack muttered, reaching for his beer. “Hate to break it to you, man, but you’re not some unfixable case.”

Robby laughed at that—short, real.

“Garcia said I’d make a good ex-husband,” he said.

Jack snorted. “See? Even she thinks you can commit.”

“That’s not what that means.”

“Close enough,” Jack sighed. “Lie down, will you. You’re so damn tense.”

Robby let out a low groan but did it anyway, dropping back into the grass beside him, one arm flung over his eyes like he could shut the world out for a second. 

The ground was still a little damp from the morning rain, cool through his shirt, the air thick and warm in that late-night way where everything feels slower, looser.

They went quiet after that. Easy quiet. The kind that only comes after years—no need to fill it, no need to perform.

“Aw, you two are so cute.”

Jack sat up immediately.

You stood a few feet off the path, lit half by a flickering streetlamp—scrubs wrinkled, hair a mess like you’d been running your hands through it all day, hoodie tied loose around your hips. One of Jack’s old military backpacks hung off your shoulder like it belonged there. 

For a while there, Robby had forgotten the whole reason they’d been in the park to begin with was to wait for you.

“Hey, baby,” Jack said, voice softening without him meaning it to. “You finish alright?”

You just nodded, already moving toward him.

You didn’t hesitate—never did. Leaned down, pressed a quick kiss to his cheek that turned, halfway through, into something closer to his mouth. Warm. Familiar. You lingered just long enough that he had to chase it a second.

“Miss me?” you murmured, barely pulling back.

“Always,” he said, easy. A little drunk, a little honest.

Robby watched it happen from the ground, not even pretending not to.

You dropped down in front of Jack, cross-legged, close enough your knees brushed his thighs. His hands came up immediately—instinct, habit—sliding over your arms, grounding, checking. 

Then his mouth found your neck, a soft press just under your jaw, before his hands settled at your shoulders, working slow circles into muscle that had no business being that tight at your age.

You exhaled like you’d been holding it all day.

“Jesus,” you muttered. “Keep doing that.”

“Yeah?” Jack hummed against your skin, a little smug.

“Mhm.”

You tipped your head slightly, giving him better access without thinking. He took it.

Across from you, Robby shifted, propping himself up on his elbows now, watching the two of you with that same look he always got—half amused, half something else he never quite named.

“Robby,” you said, glancing over at him, “how the hell are you drinking after that shift? You guys were slammed.”

“Sometimes a drink’s all you get,” he said. His voice was steady, but his eyes flicked—brief, involuntary—to where Jack’s hands were still working into your shoulders. Then back to your face. “Ortho must’ve been a dream, though.”

You let out a dry laugh. “Oh yeah. Absolute paradise. Park was being a complete asshole to one of the R1s. Kid looked like he was gonna cry.”

“Sounds about right,” Robby muttered.

Jack’s hands slowed, thumbs pressing deeper into a knot that made you suck in a breath.

“Careful,” he said. “You’re gonna fall asleep right here.”

“Honestly?” you said, eyes half-lidded now, “tempting.”

There was a beat. Quiet again—but different this time. Fuller.

You shifted slightly, leaning back into Jack without thinking. Your hand found his knee, resting there, absent, like it belonged.

Robby noticed that too. Of course he did.

You glanced up at Jack then, studying him for a second longer than necessary.

“…You been talking about me?” you asked.

Jack snorted, immediate. “What?”

“You’ve got that look,” you said, squinting at him. “And he’s looking at me weird.”

“I always look at people weird,” Robby said, flat, from the grass.

You didn’t even look at him. “Yeah, but this is a different weird.”

Jack huffed a laugh under his breath, shaking his head like you were ridiculous, even as his mouth betrayed him. “We were just talking about your—what was it—immense beauty. Your sex appeal. Your many talents.”

His mouth brushed your neck again as he said it, like he couldn’t quite help himself.

Robby let out a quiet breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh. Something drier. “It’s not far off.”

You stilled. Then slowly turned your head, looking at Jack properly now.

“What did you say to him,” you murmured, low, dangerous in a way that wasn’t entirely serious—but not entirely not.

Jack leaned in, said something under his breath—too quiet for Robby to catch. Your reaction was immediate.

You smacked his leg—right on the prosthetic—with a sharp thwack.

“Jack.”

He barely flinched, just grinned, caught your wrist before you could do it again.

“If you actually told him that,” you said, pointing at him, “I swear to god I’ll take this thing off and beat you with it.”

“That’s dramatic,” Jack murmured, still holding your hand. “And also physically unlikely.”

“It’s true, though,” he added, softer now, mouth near your ear again. “You’re very good at it.”

You rolled your eyes, but your shoulders had loosened, leaning back into him again despite yourself.

Robby watched the whole thing like it was a film he hadn’t agreed to sit through, but couldn’t quite look away from either.

“So the tongue thing’s real then?” he asked, almost idly.

Jack groaned. “Alright. We’re done here.”

You laughed—bright, cutting through the heaviness of the day shift still clinging to all three of you—and turned into Jack properly this time.

It wasn’t quick. Not really. Soft at first, then deeper, your hand coming up to his jaw, holding him there. He responded without thinking, one hand sliding to your waist, pulling you closer, grounding himself in something he knew.

Robby looked away. Not fast enough.

You pulled back eventually, brushing your nose against Jack’s.

“I’ll drive,” you said quietly. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” he said automatically.

“You’re pretty drunk,” you corrected.

A beat.

“…Alright. Could be a little drunk,” he conceded.

You smiled, already reaching into his pocket for the keys like it was second nature. He let you. Fingers brushing yours as you took them, just for a second longer than necessary.

“Don’t lose the car,” he muttered.

“No promises.”

You stood, stretching slightly, then glanced down at Robby.

“You good?” you asked, softer now.

He met your eyes, something unreadable passing through his expression before it settled back into something easier.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good.”

You nodded like you believed him.

“Night, Michael.”

There was a flicker at that—something small but real.

“Night,” he said.

Jack let you haul him up, weight shifting automatically to his left as he got his balance, your hand steady at his arm without making a thing of it. He adjusted, rolled his shoulders like he always did, then followed your lead without argument.

“Text me when you get home,” he called back to Robby.

“Sure. Have fun with your girl.’ Robby had said, lying back down.

“I definitely will,” Jack nodded.

You were already walking, his shoulder brushing yours, easy. He leaned down slightly as you hit the path, murmuring something low against your hair that made you let out a quiet, breathy laugh—something private, something just for him.

Robby watched you both go.

Didn’t move.

The grass was still damp under his back when he lay down again, staring up at a sky that refused to give him anything clear.

He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his mouth.

So, when you and Jack finally put it to him—cornered him in that quiet, deliberate way the two of you had—Robby wasn’t as hung up on the logistics of it as he probably should’ve been. The dynamic, the risk, the aftermath—those were the things a smarter man might’ve led with. But that wasn’t where his mind went first.

It went somewhere simpler. Sharper.

Just how pretty were the noises you made? How soft was your tongue? Would you like it if Robby was cruel—if he held your head down and made you choke on him?

And Jack… steady Jack. What did he look like when he finally came? Did he like being teased, kept right on that edge until it snapped? Would he grip Robby’s hair, or would he stay controlled even then, taking it without losing that composure?

It wasn't an abstract curiosity. It wasn’t even entirely sexual, not at its core. It was about access.

About seeing something of both of you that no one else did. About being let into a space that already existed—intimate, closed, complete—and being told there was room for him inside it.

And that—more than anything else—was what made it difficult to dismiss.

★★★

Ortho is down for a consultation when you get called in.

The patient is already under—intubated and sedated, leg secured in traction. The CT is up on PACS, the fracture obvious even before you zoom in: a displaced mid-shaft femur, clear shortening, classic muscle pull deformity.

“Yeah, that’s a transverse mid-shaft femoral fracture,” you say, pen tapping the screen. “You can see the displacement here, and the overlap—this is why the leg looks shortened clinically.”

Santos leans in, her eyes slightly wide. “Fuck.”

You shake your head. “It looks dramatic, but it’s stable from what we’ve got. No obvious vascular compromise on imaging. Ortho will likely take her for an intramedullary nail.”

Santos lets out a breath.

You scroll through the scan again, adjusting the windowing. “We’ll just want to repeat neurovascular checks pre-op and post-reduction. But she’s straightforward.”

“Thank god,” Santos mutters. “I was so not bothered to call for another consult.

A knock on the glass interrupts you. You glance up.

Robby.

He’s already halfway through sanitising his hands when he steps in, eyes flicking once to the screen before landing on you.

“Ortho’s down in ED?” he says.

“Yeah,” you answer, a little too aware of him in the doorway. “Santos messaged me. Femur fracture.”

He leans in beside you to look at the CT, close enough that the space shifts—clinical, but not entirely neutral. He’s tired in the way only long shifts make you, sleeves pushed up, forearms marked faintly by pressure lines from his undershirt.

“Looks like a clean nail,” he says.

“Assuming ortho behaves,” you reply.

He huffs something like a laugh. “They won’t.”

“No,” you agree. “We never do.”

Santos clears her throat. “While I’ve got you—Huckleberry and I are having a Parisian party next Friday. At our place. You should come. You and Abbott, of course.”

You pause slightly.

“A Parisian party?” you repeat.

“Yeah,” Santos says, warming to it. “Paris-themed. Like… French food, wine, decorations. The Eiffel Tower and shit.”

Robby makes a quiet sound behind you—almost a laugh, quickly disguised.

You glance at him, but he’s still looking at the scan like nothing happened.

Santos continues, mildly confused. “Have either of you been to Paris?”

“No,” you say.

Robby: “Nope.”

Santos nods like that still tracks logically. “Yeah, me neither. Barely even been to Canada.”

There’s a beat.

“Anyway,” She adds, already backing toward the door, “You’re invited too, Robby. Maybe the three of you come together or something. You’re all close”

“...Sounds good, Santos, we’ll let you know,” Robby says with a nod. “North Twelve?”

“Consider it done.” Santos says dry, nodding.

The door shuts behind her. Silence settles back in—clean, clinical, familiar. Except Robby is still standing close enough that you’re aware of him in a way you shouldn’t be during a trauma consult.

He glances at the CT again. “Paris-themed party,” he repeats flatly.

“Don’t even,” you say immediately, because you can hear it in his tone already, trying to hide your own smile.

“What?” he says innocently.

You turn slightly toward him. “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

He finally looks at you properly now, mouth twitching. “I’m not thinking anything.”

“You’re absolutely thinking something and at work nonetheless? Inappropriate.”

“I’m thinking Santos should never be allowed to plan anything,” he says.

“Liar.”

That earns you a brief, quiet exhale of amusement. You finish with the scans and walk out, Robby hot on your heels as you head to the nurses station.

“You think you’ll go?” he asks.

“No,” you say. “Jack and I have the night off. We’ll be busy.”

“Right,” he nods.

A beat.

“You?” you ask.

“I’d rather not spend my night around a bunch of drunk residents,” Robby says with a quiet exhale. “So, no.”

“Come over then,” you offer, stopping at the nurses’ station.

Robby gives you a look. “Thought you said you two were busy.”

“You can be busy with us,” you say, looking up at him, pen tapping lightly against the chart. “Or just Jack. Or just me. He told me you’ve thought about it either way.”

A faint sigh leaves him. “Right. I forgot he can’t keep anything to himself.”

He leans against the counter, lowering his voice slightly as his eyes flick briefly across the station—Dana watching from a few bays away, already narrowing her gaze like she’s clocking something she hasn’t labelled yet.

“Have you?” he asks softly.

“Thought about you? In that way?” you clarify.

He nods, a slight tilt to his head, curious.

You hesitate just long enough to make it honest.

“Yes,” you admit. “You’re tall. Kind. Your beard’s nice. You’re probably a little meaner than Jack, which interests me.”

That earns the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Something deeper in him satisfied.

“Abbot’s a lover boy at heart,” Robby says. “Gives in easily. ‘Specially for you.”

You nod, like that tracks. “Most of the time, yeah.”

That earns a quieter look from him. A pause that sits just slightly longer than professional. Then, more carefully, “Is it true you had a crush on me?”

You tilt your head. “God, he really just— Doesn’t keep anything to himself.”

Robby exhales through his nose. “Not at all. I’ve been subjected to that man and his inner workings for too long.”

You bump his shoulder lightly with yours, just enough contact to make the space between you feel intentional.

“Was it a yes?”

“To the crush?” You consider it. “Yeah.”

That makes his eyebrows lift slightly.

“Before Jack,” you add, like it matters in a technical sense. “Older, authority figure, slightly emotionally unavailable… I think I might just have a pattern.”

Robby hums, low. “Tracks.”

There’s a beat where neither of you moves away. Then he says, quieter, “And now?”

You don’t look away when you answer. “Now, it’s just… different.”

That hangs there. From somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeps sharply, breaking the moment just enough for it not to tip into anything else.

You glance back down at the chart, already half-moving on.

“I’ll let you know when we get a room open for the femur nail lady.”

And then you’re gone—already walking toward the elevator, the conversation left hanging in the air behind you. Robby watches you go.

A quiet breath leaves him through his nose. He taps his fingers once against the counter, then pushes off it, turning back to the screens like he needs something solid to land on.

Dana appears beside him a second later, sliding into the space like she’s been waiting for exactly this moment.

“What’s with that?” she asks.

“...What’s with what?” he replies, arms folding loosely, eyes still on the monitor bank.

“I mean,” she says slowly, “what’s with flirtin’ with Abbott’s girl in front of everybody?”

He doesn’t look at her when he answers.

“That’s not flirting,” he says evenly. “We were just talking.”

Dana hums, unconvinced. “Talkin’ real close.”

Robby exhales, already shifting focus. “New patient?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding toward the bay. “Just rolled in. Need you over there.”

“Alright,” he says.

And he follows her down the hall, expression already reset.

★★★

“—Hey. Hold on a second,” Jack says, breath a little uneven.

“No, don’t—don’t hold on,” you protest, already moving, frustrated at the interruption. Your hips roll, trying to sink deeper, but his hands clamp down on your waist—firm, grounding, stopping you.

“Hey. Easy.” A breath. “Just—gimme a second, alright?”

You huff, but you stop. Barely. Your thighs tremble, hovering just above his cock, the tip brushing against your wet slit.  “This better be good.”

He lets out something like a quiet laugh, more breath than sound. “Yeah, I’ll try not to waste your time.”

A beat. He looks at you properly now—focused, a little too clear-headed for the situation. His thumb traces a slow circle on your hipbone, soothing, but his eyes are sharp.

“Just… wanna get this straight,” he says.

Your hands shift on his chest, nails dragging lightly. “Okay. Then say it.”

He nods once. “He can be there. He can watch, he can fuck you.” A pause. “But there are lines.”

You tilt your head, watching him. “Such as?”

His grip tightens just a fraction—not enough to bruise, enough to mean something. “Such as—you don’t forget who you’re with.”

You raise a brow, a smirk pulling at your lips. “Hard to forget when you’ve got your dick in me half the time I’m not at work.”

“Smartass,” he mutters. Then, quieter—“I’m serious. He doesn’t get to know how you taste. That’s mine.”

“Uh-huh…” You roll your hips lazily, not sinking down, just letting the head of his cock nudge against your clit, making him hiss. “So this is allowed?” You lift up, then lower just an inch, teasing the tip against your entrance.

“Yeah, allowed,” Jack nods, his jaw tight.

“Mm. This?” You lean down and kiss him—sweet, slow, your tongue brushing his lower lip before you pull back with a soft pop.

He nods into the kiss, groaning when you start to move again, lifting your pussy off him completely. The air hits his wet shaft and he shudders.

“Yeah? What about this?” You wrap your hand around his cock, giving it a slow, deliberate stroke from base to tip, slick with your own arousal. You squeeze just a little, watching his eyes flutter.

“All allowed,” he grates out, “but his mouth isn’t getting near this, alright, that’s all—” He cuts off as he grabs you by the hips, guiding your pussy back down, lining you up and shoving it back in with a single, brutal thrust. Your moan rips out of you—loud, breathy, grateful. His cock fills you so deep you feel it in your throat.

“Yeah? That good with you?” he asks, voice rough.

You nod, already starting to ride him—slow at first, just a rock of your hips, teasing the angle. “What about you and ’im?” you ask, breath hitching as you grind down.

Jack shrugs—or tries to. “What don’t you want?”

“No blowjobs either, then,” you say, voice a little strained as you lift up and drop back down, feeling every ridge. “’S for me.”

“Sounds good to me.” His hands find your hips again, but he doesn’t guide—he just holds, letting you set the pace. Letting you take.

You pick up speed, thighs burning, your clit grinding against his pubic bone with each roll. The room fills with the wet sound of your pussy gripping his cock, and you tilt your head back, letting him see the arch of your throat.

His hand comes up, thumb brushing along your jaw, pulling your focus back to him when you drift.

“Right here,” he murmurs.

You meet his gaze. That same look—steady, a little rough around the edges, but sure. His.

“Good,” he says, softer now. His thumb drags across your lower lip, and you part your mouth, just enough to suck the tip of it in. His eyes darken.

And when you move again, it’s slower. You rock forward, letting his cock hit that deep, sweet spot, and you moan against his thumb. You pull off it with a wet sound, then lean down to kiss him again—dirtier this time, tongue and teeth, whimpering into him.

“Yeah,” he breathes against your lips. “That’s better.”

★★​​★

It’s late into the evening on Friday when you hear Jack on the phone.

“No, can’t,” Jack says, pacing your living room, phone tucked to his ear while he half-heartedly folds laundry and gives up halfway through. “I’m home. She’s cooking. Smells like I’m about to get fat and happy.”

“Baby, can you come try this?” you call from the kitchen.

“One sec,” he says, then quieter, back into the phone—“What’d you wanna do?”

“Nothing,” Robby mutters. “I… I don’t know, man. I don’t feel like crashing Santos and Whitaker’s… house party. We could go for a drive. Hike.”

Jack stops mid-step. “A hike,” he repeats. “At nine-thirty at night.”

A beat.

“Yeah, not happening,” he decides, dropping the laundry basket and heading into the kitchen.

You’re at the counter in that barely-there nightgown—soft, short, riding up your thighs as you lean forward, aggressively chopping an onion like it personally offended you. Eyes glossy, blinking through it.

Jack pauses in the doorway for half a second longer than necessary.

Then—business as usual.

“Alright,” he says, stepping in behind you, close enough that his hand brushes your hip on the way past. “What am I trying?”

You nod at the stove. “Carbonara.”

He leans over, tastes it, hums—low, approving.

“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “She’s showing off.”

You bump his arm lightly. “I am not.”

“You are,” he says, kissing you quick, easy, like he’s done it a thousand times. “It’s working.”

You smile despite yourself, wiping at your eyes.

On the phone, Robby exhales. Rough. Tired.

“Hike’s dumb,” Jack says, shifting tone without making it obvious. “What’s actually going on.”

“Nothing,” Robby says. “Just… can’t sit still. Garcia was on my ass all day, Al-Hashimi wouldn’t shut the fuck up—”

“—Hey,” Jack cuts in, calm, steady. “Take a breath.”

You glance over at him. He’s not looking at you anymore—focused now, locked into that mode.

“You’re good,” he says. “You’re not thinking anything dumb, right?”

A pause.

“…No,” Robby says. “Just need to… get out of my head, I don’t know.”

Jack hears it. You do too. That edge. That restless, pissed-off with nowhere to put it thing.

“He can come here,” you say, like it’s obvious.

Jack looks at you—quick, assessing—but there’s no resistance there. Just a flicker of something else.

“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “Come over. Food’s ready soon.”

“I don’t know, man—” Robby starts.

You reach over and take the phone straight out of Jack’s hand.

“Hey, Michael.”

There’s a beat.

Jack watches you now, not even pretending to focus on the onions anymore.

“…Hey,” Robby says, slower. “Heard you were cooking.”

“Mhm,” you hum, leaning back against the counter, bare leg brushing against Jack’s where he stands beside you. “Plenty to go around.”

Jack’s hand settles at your hip automatically. Not possessive—just there.

Robby hears the shift anyway.

“This a setup?” he asks.

You smile slightly. “You always this suspicious, or just with me?”

A quiet scoff from him.

“You should come,” you add, softer—but not innocent. “You sound like you need it.”

A beat. Jack’s thumb presses lightly into your hip. Grounding. Present.

Robby exhales. “Yeah. Guess I can make it.”

“Guess you can,” you say easily.

Silence again—but it’s different now.

You glance at Jack.

He nods once.

“Door’s unlocked,” you say. “Twenty minutes.”

You hand the phone back.

Jack takes it, fingers brushing yours briefly, then brings it back to his ear. “You heard her. No pressure.”

A pause.

“…Alright,” Robby says.

The line clicks dead.

Jack sets the phone down on the counter, then looks at you properly. A slow once-over. Not subtle.

“What?” You raise a brow.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ll finish the laundry.” He gives you a deep kiss to your neck, hands trailing over your figure as he mumbles into your skin, fingers gently pushing aside the light material. “You gonna stay in this?” He asks.

“‘S that alright?” You wonder, leaning into his touch.

He inhales sharply against your skin, lips leaving your skin. “Sure.”

★★★

You’re out on the balcony when it comes up.

Jack’s place sits high enough that the city feels almost staged—Pittsburgh stretched out in warm light, bridges lit up in clean lines, traffic moving steady below like it never really stops. It’s one of those late summer nights where the air sticks just slightly to your skin, warm but not suffocating. There’s music drifting from somewhere down the block, a party you can’t see but can feel in the background.

The balcony’s not small—wide enough for a proper table, a few chairs, space to lean without feeling cramped. Jack had insisted on that when he bought the place. Said if he was going to spend money, it’d be on something worth standing still for.

Your plates are mostly cleared, carbonara half-finished, wine and beer sweating into the wood.

“Have either of you done this before?” Robby asks.

Jack shakes his head immediately. “No.”

You don’t answer.

You’re thinking—actually thinking, head tilted slightly, finger lifting to tap against Jack’s arm like you need him to hold on a second. That’s when it hits him, belated and faintly incredulous, that this apparently hadn’t come up when the idea itself had.

“…Have you?” Jack asks, turning to you, already suspicious.

“I am thinking,” you murmur, brows pulling together like this is a serious recall exercise.

Robby raises a brow, watching you now, something amused creeping in despite himself.

“What do you mean you’re thinking?” Jack presses. “That’s not… I don’t know, something you half do or something. You’d know.”

“Or something,” Robby mutters under his breath.

You shoot him a look, then roll your eyes. “Okay—no. I don’t think I’ve had a threesome.”

“How can you not think you’ve had a threesome?” Jack wonders.

You lean back slightly, folding one leg under you, the fabric of your nightgown shifting higher on your thigh without you bothering to fix it. You don’t notice how both men’s gaze drop there.

You exhale, already regretting engaging. “Because—technically—no one actually got fucked, there was no penetration by anybody, so, grey area?”

There’s a beat.

Robby’s mouth twitches.

Jack blinks. “...Right.”

“Okay?” you continue, defensive now. “It was—hands. That’s it. Group situation, but not… full commitment.”

Robby huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “Group situation,” he repeats.

“Shut up,” you mutter.

“Another guy or girl?” Jack asks, too quickly.

You hesitate just long enough to make it interesting. “…Both.”

Jack leans back like you’ve just told him something deeply inconvenient. “...Huh.”

Robby lets out a low whistle through his nose. “So not a threesome. Just… poor project management.”

You laugh despite yourself. “Oh my god.”

“That’s a foursome that lost direction,” he adds, dry.

“Whatever,” you shrug. “Med school was fun for me. Sorry I had range.”

Jack eyes you, something between amused and slightly thrown. “I’m just saying, that’s a hell of a thing to casually drop over dinner.”

You smirk faintly. “I’m surprised you haven’t.”

Jack scoffs. “I’ve had opportunities.”

“Mm,” you hum, unconvinced.

Robby glances at him sideways. “That sounds like a lie.”

“It’s not a lie,” Jack says, defensive now. “I just—never felt the need.”

“Right,” Robby says. “Till now.”

Jack gives him a look. “Till now.”

Something passes there—quick, familiar, not entirely friendly as Robby sips his beer.

After, you step out to the edge of the balcony, forearms resting against the railing. The city hums below you, the air warmer now, carrying the smell of food and distant smoke.

Inside, you hear Jack moving—plates, running water. Robby’s voice low, asking something, already familiar with the space.

“Thanks, baby,” you say when Jack comes back out, taking your plate.

You lean in, press a quick kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, hand coming up to your hair, messing it slightly with a small, easy smile.

You push him away lightly. “Don’t start.”

Robby watches it for a second before picking up the empty bottles, holding them loosely by the necks.

“Next to the fridge?” he asks, like he hasn’t been here a hundred times already—like tonight isn’t slightly different.

“Yeah,” you nod. “Recycling. Thank you.”

He gives a short nod and turns— You catch his wrist. It’s not forceful. Just enough.

“Hey,” you say, softer.

He looks down at you.

There’s a pause—his eyes dragging, just briefly, lower before coming back up. You’re close enough now to feel the heat off him, the faint roughness of his breath after a drink, after a long day.

You use his forearm to pull yourself up just slightly— and kiss him. It’s not rushed. It’s far from tentative either. Close. Testing.

His beard scratches lightly against your skin, rough in a way that makes you more aware of it, not less. He stills for half a second—then responds, mouth softer than you expected, hand hovering like he hasn’t decided where it’s allowed to land. 

Your teeth catch his bottom lip briefly. That’s what does it.

“Starting without me?” Jack’s voice cuts in, dry. “Bit mean.”

Robby pulls back instinctively, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t—even though—

Even though.

You smile a little, letting go of his wrist as he clears his throat.

“Next to the fridge,” Jack adds, nodding toward the bottles.

Robby nods once, wordless, moving past him.

Their shoulders brush as he goes. Not accidental. Jack doesn’t move out of the way.

He watches Robby for a second longer than necessary, then looks back at you.

You end up on the couch.

It happens naturally—plates abandoned in the sink, TV flicked on for noise more than anything else. Some late-night rerun playing low in the background, colours shifting across the room, low lamps lighting the room.

Jack’s in the middle, halfway through some story from work—one of those cases that stuck with him. Complicated, strange, the kind he can’t quite let go of.

You’re tucked into his side, knees curled under you, your hand idly playing at the back of his neck—fingers brushing through his hair, absent, familiar. You nod along, half-listening, more focused on the rhythm of his voice, the warmth of him.

Robby’s behind you. Close enough that you can feel the heat of him through your back, even before his hand settles on your thigh—slow, absent movement, like he’s not even fully aware he’s doing it.

Up. Down. Not pushing. Not asking. Just there.

Jack keeps talking.

You lean in without really thinking about it—your lips brushing along his jaw, then just below it. Light. Familiar. Not rushed.

Jack’s hand comes up to your lower back automatically, pulling you in a fraction closer, steadying you there.

Robby’s hand doesn’t stop. If anything, it shifts—just slightly higher, fingers brushing warmer skin now where the fabric gives way.

Jack feels it. His hand stills for a second at your back—then relaxes again.

He doesn’t pull you away. Doesn’t say anything. You exhale softly against his neck, your breath warm there, your fingers tightening slightly where they rest behind him.

And for a second—just a second—you’re aware of both of them at once.

Jack in front of you, steady, grounding. Robby behind you, quieter, heavier—watching more than speaking.

Jack’s gaze lifts. Meets Robby’s. There’s a beat. Not long. But long enough. Something passes between them—wordless, measured. Something you can’t read.

Jack gives the smallest nod. Barely there. Robby’s jaw shifts slight. Then Jack looks back at you.

Your hand slides from his neck to his jaw, turning him slightly, and you kiss him properly this time—slow, deliberate. He leans into it without hesitation, one hand firm at your waist.

When you pull back, it’s not far. Just enough. Just long enough to turn.

Robby’s already looking at you. Not surprised. Not really. Just watching. You close the distance like it’s nothing—like it’s always been this simple—and kiss him too.

Different. Not softer, not harder—just new. Testing. His hand stills on your thigh for half a second before it shifts, coming up to steady at your side, like he’s grounding himself in it.

There’s a quiet breath from him—almost a huff, almost disbelief.

“This is fun,” You murmur.

You don’t give him time to overthink it.

You lean back between them again, tipping your head slightly, and they follow without being told.

Jack’s mouth finds one side of your neck, familiar, certain.

Robby hesitates for a fraction of a second— then doesn’t.

The other side. Slower. More deliberate. Like he’s learning something he’s not used to having.

You exhale, a soft sound you don’t quite hold back this time, and your hands come up instinctively—one finding Jack’s hair, the other Robby’s, fingers threading through both, holding them there.

For a second, it stays like that. Balanced.

Then you shift, just slightly—hands tightening, guiding as you move the two of them, their lips almost naturally coming to find one anothers, moving them like ken dolls, before you drop your hands, watching with a small smile, as Robby's immediacy for control goes against Jack's. Robby’s hand deepening into your thigh, grip tight as he kisses Jack.

Jack pulls back first, breath uneven but still controlled, his eyes flicking to yours like he’s checking in—like he always does.

His hand slides up your spine, slower now, deliberate where it had been absent before. His palm is cool against your overheated skin, the contrast making you shiver as it traces upward, then back down again, lingering just enough to feel intentional.

You lean back into him, lips finding his neck again—dragging slowly over the roughness of his skin, the faint scrape grounding, familiar. You press a little firmer this time, less thought, more instinct.

When you pull back, it’s only barely. Your breath catches—not dramatic, just… aware. Of him. Of Robby. Of both.

Jack’s hand presses more firmly into your back, keeping you close, steadying you like he can feel the shift too.

“Baby,” he murmurs, voice low, softer than before. “Feeling needy?”

You nod against him, answering with your mouth instead—kissing along his jaw now, slower, more deliberate.

“Yeah,” he exhales, a quiet sort of understanding in it. “I know, hon.” A beat. Then, quieter—“You want me, or him?”

You hesitate. Not long—but long enough to matter.

Robby’s hand shifts on your thigh, moving from the outside to your inner thigh, firm but unhurried, easing you open just slightly—testing, not taking. Waiting to see what you’ll do with it.

“It’s alright,” Jack starts, voice still calm, like he’s talking you through something he already trusts. “Go ahead. She likes it when you—”

“—I’ll ask you for help if I need it, alright?” Robby cuts in, low and even.

They exchange a look—brief, sharp, understood.

You lean over, pressing a quick, soft kiss to Jack’s cheek—something sweet, grounding—before shifting your weight and climbing into Robby’s lap.

He stiffens for a second. Just a second.

Robby’s always been hard to read. Time’s etched itself into his face, but there’s still that wall there—something held back, something controlled. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s you. His best friend’s girl, sitting on him like this—close, warm, curious.

“You okay there, Sasquatch?” you tease, tilting your head up at him.

His hands find your thighs again almost immediately, like muscle memory kicking in. His gaze flicks—down, over you, then back to your eyes. Briefly to Jack. Then back again.

“Sasquatch? Really?” he murmurs, one hand moving up to cup your breast through your top. His palm is warm against you, sending a shiver down your spine. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“Beard, tall… same thing, no?” you shrug lightly.

That earns the faintest hint of a smirk.

“She always cracking jokes before getting fucked?” Robby asks, giving your breast a firm squeeze. His other hand slides lower, ghosting over your stomach before cupping your mound through your panties

“Depends,” Jack admits. “One time I got G.I Joe for an hour.”

“He was in uniform, in my defense,” You defend, brief before you try moving your hips over Robby’s fingers, eager. “Come on, Michael.” 

Robby's fingers press harder against your core, rubbing slow, firm circles that have you arching into him, a sweet whine escaping your lips, his eyes enamoured with how your mouth parts, breath warm against him. 

“What a cute noise you make, sweetheart,” Robby murmurs. “Ask me nicely now.”

You hesitate, desperate as his fingers continue to move achingly slow over your wetness.

“Ask or I give Jack my hand right now instead and you can wait your turn for another hour,” Robby tells, voice low and soft, not looking away from where his fingers glide over your seeping core.

“Please,” you murmur, voice breathy and desperate. “Please fuck me with your fingers.”

You crash your lips to his—harsh, messy, tongues thrusting quick and slick, his beard scraping rough red trails across your cheeks and chin. He growls low into your mouth, yanking your panties aside with brutal force, calloused fingertips dragging through your dripping folds, parting your lips wide before ramming two thick fingers knuckle-deep into your clenching pussy—no mercy, no prep.

You gasp ragged into the kiss, a high-pitched moan ripping free as your lips break away, saliva trailing shiny strings from his mouth to yours. You latch onto his neck, teeth grazing the salty skin, sucking hard as you grind down fierce onto his invading digits—walls squeezing tight around the stretch, juices flooding hot over his palm.

“Move your fingers toward her ventral,” Jack instructs from the side, voice calm but edged with that teasing know-it-all tone, his hand sliding warm along your spine.

Robby exhales sharp through his nose—mild irritation flashing in his eyes at the unasked advice, jaw clenching as he shoots Jack a quick, heated glare. But he curls his fingers obediently upward inside you, knuckles grinding rough along your front wall to hammer your g-spot precise and relentless. Your moan swells louder, body jolting as fresh gushes of slick coat his hand, pussy slurping obscenely around each pump.

“Christ, you’re making a mess on me, aren’t you, kid? Huh?” Robby rasps, voice gravel-thick with mean delight, eyes locked on the filthy sight—your swollen pussy lips gliding and sucking greedily over his plunging fingers, riding them frantic. 

He twists his wrist sharp, scissoring the digits wide to pry your hole open, thumb mashing down hard on your throbbing clit with every brutal thrust—wet schlicks echoing loud, your thighs trembling slick against his forearm, arousal trickling warm down to soak his jeans.

He adds a third finger suddenly, forcing the burn deeper, stretching your cunt taut as he moves, hooking mercilessly on that spongy spot. 

“You getting close?” He asks, low and rough, listening closely to your moans, how they become pitchier, breathier, as sweet as Jack described. You nod, a loose yes, focused only on how your core winds up to the edge. “That right?”

Your cries pitch wilder, back arching as he pinches your clit between thumb and knuckle, rolling it rough while his fingers churn your insides, coil tight in your core.

“What else she like?” Robby asks Jack, glancing over at his friend now, fingers never slowing their rhythm inside you.

Jack taps his index and middle digit to his lips, nodding toward you. Robby nods back, hums at the sight of you, curious.

Robby yanks his fingers free abrupt—your pussy clenching empty, a whine tearing from your throat at the aching void, hips bucking needy for more. He brings those soaked digits up to your face, gripping your chin firm to still you, watching hungry as you part your lips instinctively. 

His fingertips tease your bottom lip, smearing your own cream glossy, before you suck them in deep—tongue swirling eager around the thick lengths, lapping every tangy drop, hollowing cheeks as saliva drips messy down your chin.

“Atta girl, you’re a fuckin’ mess now aren’t you?” Robby murmurs, gaze glued ravenous to your bobbing mouth, cock throbbing harder under you. “You wanna cum?”

You nod, frantic around his fingers, eyes pleading.

“Not yet,” Robby denies, voice almost gentle, yet harsh at once. “Barely seen what you can do.”

You exhale shaky as he pulls his fingers out with a wet pop, trailing spit from your chin before cupping your whole face possessive, holding you locked on him.

“Go over to him. Make him feel good,” Robby orders, jerking his chin at Jack.

You nod, movements sluggish from the edge he left you on.

“On the floor, knees, now,” Robby snaps, voice brooking no argument.

You slide off his lap reluctant, crawling back to Jack beside him on the couch. He smiles soft at you, fingers threading gentle through your hair, cupping your cheek as he brushes strands aside, gaze roaming tender over your flushed skin.

“You alright there?” he asks nicely, thumb stroking your jaw.

You nod eager, hands diving straight to his sweatpants, palming the rigid bulge straining there—heat pulsing under your touch. 

You tug the waistband down, freeing his cock—thick shaft springing up heavy, veins bulging, head slick with pre-cum. Your fist wraps tight around the base, pumping slow firm strokes up to the tip, twisting slick over the crown to spread his leak.

Jack inhales sharp, but you drop fully to your knees between his spread thighs on the rug, the rough weave biting into your skin. You lean in, lips parting wide to swallow his cockhead first—tongue flicking the slit to lap salty pre, then sliding down inch by veiny inch, throat relaxing to take him deeper.

“Look pretty down there,” Jack murmurs with a small smile, hand light in your hair, just cradling.

“You’re so soft with her,” Robby remarks from beside, voice mixed with mocking and earnestness as he watches you work, his own tenting obvious.

Jack shrugs, a quiet groan escaping as you hollow your cheeks, sucking vacuum-tight while bobbing steady—saliva pooling at the corners of your stretched lips, dribbling down his balls. Your hand strokes what your mouth can't reach, twisting wet on the upstroke, tongue pressing flat along the underside to trace every ridge.

Robby's gaze burns hot—flicking over your arched back, your drool-slick chin, eyes that dart between Jack's tense face, Robby's hungry stare, then flutter shut as you deepthroat him full, nose burying in his pubes. He fixates on Jack's cock vanishing slick between your lips, throat bulging visible. Then up to Jack, whose fingers grip tighter into your scalp—not shoving, just anchoring as his neck cords tense.

“Good job, sweetheart,” Jack praises breathy, hips twitching minimal into your rhythm. 

Your moan vibrates around his length, humming deep to make him shudder, spit bubbling messy as you pop off to lick sloppy stripes up his shaft, sucking each ball into your mouth turn before plunging back down.

He groans low, head lolling back, “Fucking… perfect. So perfect, always.”

Tension crackles thicker between them—Jack's free hand drifts casual at first, then deliberate, palming Robby's thigh before cupping the massive bulge in his jeans, squeezing firm through denim. Robby stiffens, eyes meeting with Jack's, breath hitching as Jack rubs slow circles over the thick outline, thumb pressing the zipper ridge where pre darkens the fabric.

“You alright there, man?” Jack scoffs, a light smile. “Can’t handle it?”

It’s a challenge. It always is with them. Has been since they were twenty something.

Jack knows exactly what he’s doing—knows the tells. The slight tilt of Robby’s head, the way his weight shifts more onto one side, the flicker of something sharper behind his eyes. He’s seen that look in bars, in fights, in operating rooms when things went sideways.

Robby doesn’t back down from anything. Least of all him.

Then Robby exhales slowly, something almost like a laugh under it, eyes locking onto Jack’s—steady, unflinching.

“Oh, I can handle it just fine,” Robby agrees with his own smile. “Go ‘head.”

Jack groans at your relentless mouth—fast and wet, then slowing perfect against him—his hand stroking over Robby’s clothed cock, deliberate and slow, denim rasping under his palm. He leans in first, crashing his mouth to Robby's—sloppy, urgent, tongues battling fierce right above you, beards grinding rough, wet sucks and grunts filling the air. Jack's fingers knead Robby's bulge harder, unzipping halfway to delve inside, wrapping firm around the hot shaft through boxers.

You pull off Jack with a gasp, spit stringing from your lips to his glistening tip, replacing your mouth with your fist—pumping slick and steady along his veiny length, thumb swirling over the slit to smear pre-cum. Your eyes lock on their kiss, Jack's hand slowing on Robby as your thumb teases tentative over his own sensitive crown, tongue darting out to lap the edge of his slit.

“Oh fuck,” Jack moans into Robby’s mouth, breaking away to watch you lick him sweetly, hips bucking light into your grip.

Your free hand joins Jack’s on Robby’s cock, fingers overlapping his as Robby undoes his belt buckle with a metallic clink, shoving jeans and boxers down his thighs. His thick cock springs free. You spit thick into your palm, slicking it hot before gripping him base to tip, stroking in tandem with Jack—your hand twisting wet on the upstroke while his squeezes the root, veins pulsing under your combined pressure. 

Robby hisses through clenched teeth, thighs tensing as you both jerk him off rough, pre dribbling over knuckles, your mouth still working on Jack’s cock.

Jack's strokes on you falter to lazy pumps, his fist gliding easy over your saliva-lubed skin as he watches Robby swell thicker in your shared hold. “Fuck, feel that grip? She’s got hands made for this,” he rasps, voice husky, eyes dark on Robby's face.

Robby grunts approval, thrusting shallow into the double stroke. Jack pulls back suddenly, nodding down at you. “Let him feel how good your pretty mouth is, baby.”

You release Jack reluctant, his cock twitching angry-red in the cool air as he takes over—fist flying fast over his shaft, slick echoing. You shift on your knees, turning to Robby, who grips his base and taps the fat head heavy against your cheek—wet smacks on flushed skin, taunting drip of pre-painting streaks.

“Dreamt about this once,” he admits, voice low. “The way Jack described it, you’d think you have the mouth of an angel. That right? You an angel?” He wonders.

You lick your lips in anticipation, hand between your legs, fingers gliding over your folds.

“Oh, baby, you’re touchin’ yourself too?” Robby notices. “God, so desperate.”

“Seemed pretty desperate for my boyfriend there too,” You remark, not looking away from Robby’s gaze.

His jaw tightens. “He’s pretty good with his hand, but I think you can do better with your tongue.”

You part lips wide, tongue out flat as he slaps his cock deliberately across it, underside dragging salty over your tastebuds before shoving in brutal—half his length in one thrust, stretching your jaw. 

You gag wet but suck hollow, cheeks caving as you bob frantic, hand pumping the rest in sync. Saliva floods fast, bubbling down his sack as you swirl tongue under the ridge, hollowing deep to milk him. Your fingers are quick against your wetness, dripping between your thighs, your other hand planted at Robby’s thigh.

“Shit—yeah, like that,” Robby growls, free hand fisting your hair to guide rough, not forcing but controlling the pace—pulling you off to tap his cock on your tongue again, smearing spit and pre glossy before ramming back in. 

He fucks your face shallow, hips snapping precise, balls swinging to nudge your chin while Jack jerks himself faster beside, groans syncing with yours muffled around Robby's girth.

You sweep the underside of your tongue around Robby’s cock, soft wetness coating him, slow, then fast, hearing how Robby’s hand tightens harder in your scalp.

Jack leans close, breath ragged as his fist blurs over his cock, tip weeping steady. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Fuck off,” Robby mutters, focused on your mouth, your eyes as they look up at him, wide, watery.

Your fingers slip between your thighs, dipping into your soaked pussy, rutting slow circles over your clit as you kneel between them, mouth stuffed full on Robby's cock. Spit drips messy down your chin, mixing with the slick from your own folds as you finger yourself deeper, chasing that tight coil building low in your belly.

“I’m good,” Jack rasps, eyes locked on your hand working your cunt, his fist pumping steady over his own cock. “Slow down, sweetheart.”

Your fingers comply, easing to lazy drags through your wetness, eyes flicking up to watch Jack slow his palm in sync, thumb circling his flushed tip. His free hand drifts back to Robby's thigh, squeezing hard muscle as he watches you deepthroat—throat bulging obscene with each plunge, gags turning wet and rhythmic.

Robby's taunts rumble gravel-deep: “Fucking hell, you gonna let me cum in that mouth, honey?” He pops free with a gasp, cock throbbing inches from your face, tapping insistent on your cheek—left, right, smearing sticky pre over flushed skin—before you dive back voluntary, nose grinding into his pubes as you swallow him full, humming vibration to wrench a guttural curse from his chest.

“She can take it,” Jack murmurs, voice thick. “Can you, baby? Come on, speak now.”

You moan muffled around Robby's girth, pulling off with a slick pop, resting your head against his still-clothed thigh as your fingers plunge back into your pussy, rutting frantic. “Mhm.” You kiss alongside his shaft, tongue tracing veins lazy, lips brushing hot skin.

“So damn sweet now,” Robby murmurs, hand loosening from your scalp to pet gentle through your hair, watching your fingers disappear knuckle-deep. “That feel good?”

You nod against his thigh, licking slow stripes up his cock, pumping your pussy deliberate—thumb flicking your clit, hips rocking into your hand, edge creeping close, breath hitching sharp.

“No more of that, alright?” Robby nods down, eyes sharp on your body. “Yeah? You listening?”

You groan, fingers curling harder inside yourself. “Fuck you—you wanna cum, I get to cum too.”

Robby tilts his head, that piercing look—the one Jack knows spells trouble, before ripping into a resident. Jack nearly laughs, slowing his strokes to a tease. “Not how it works,” Robby says flat, voice dropping steel.

You glance at Jack, pleading.

“Don’t look at him,” Robby orders, tone snapping stricter, hand fisting your hair tight to force your gaze back. You gulp, thighs clenching empty as you pull your fingers free, pussy clenching needy on nothing. “Put both hands behind your back if you’re gonna act like a fuckin’ brat.”

Reluctant, you clasp your hands behind you, knees aching on the floor, tits heaving with each breath. Robby nods approval, gripping his base to feed his cock back past your lips—slow at first, letting you savor the stretch, then thrusting deeper as you hollow cheeks vacuum-tight.

Your tongue flattens under his shaft to lap the frenulum relentlessly, swirling wet around the head on every upstroke before slamming down throat-deep, gag reflex crushed to nothing. Saliva floods obscenely, bubbling at the corners of your mouth, dripping strings to his balls as you bob frantic—suction pulling groans from his gut, nose buried in coarse hair, throat milking him like a fist. 

You hum constant vibration, eyes watering up at him, popping off to spit thick on his length before sucking one ball then the other into your mouth, rolling tongue heavy before plunging back down full.

“Jesus Christ—yeah, there we go…” Robby snarls, hips snapping erratic, free hand clamping your nape to hold you buried as his cock swells impossibly thicker, balls drawing tight. 

He floods your mouth suddenly—hot spurts painting your tongue thick and salty, cock pulsing ropes down your throat as you swallow greedily around him, not spilling a drop. He rides it out shallow thrusts, groaning ragged until spent, pulling free with a wet schlick.

“Fuck,” he pants, watching your tongue swipe clean over his softening head, lapping the last beads from his slit.

You fall back onto your heels, knees throbbing, core dripping wet and aching empty down your thighs. Swallowing his load thick, you stand shaky, and lean down to Robby, core exposed from your barely there nightgown. You grab him by his jaw, fingers at his chin, watching as his hand catches your wrist.

You smile at that. “Go on,” Your fingers linger near his mouth, covered with your wetness. “Jack prefers the real deal. You shy all of a sudden, Mikey?”

Robby reluctantly opens his mouth, trying and tasting your wetness, sucking your fingers clean.

“Atta boy,” You say sarcastically, moving them out of his mouth. “You think you can still fuck me, old man?” You whisper.

“Watch it,” Robby murmurs.

“You can, in the corner, while Jack finally makes me cum.” You whisper. “Jack,” you grab Jack’s hand, walking away with him as Jack follows suit behind you.

“Up and at it,” Jack tells Robby over his shoulder as he follows you.

“Fucking hell,” Robby mutters, taking a second before following after.

You hum satisfied, leading them stumbling to the bedroom, the air electric behind you.

In the dim glow, you strip your nightgown overhead, leaving ruined panties—crotch soaked dark—and a lacey bra barely containing your tits. Their eyes burn hot as you climb onto yours and Jack's bed, kneeling center.

Jack follows instant, standing at the edge, hands cupping your jaw rough-tender, leaning down to crash his mouth to yours—passionate and devouring, tongue fucking deep to taste Robby's cum lingering salty. You moan into it, hand snaking to grip his cock again, stroking firm base-to-tip.

Behind Jack, Robby's hands roam his back, trailing firm over shirt fabric before gripping the hem, yanking it up and off in one pull. Jack moans muffled into your kiss when your fist pumps faster, hips bucking into your grip, but he breaks away gasping as cool air hits his bare chest.

Robby presses close from behind, chest flush to Jack's back, beard scraping his shoulder as lips latch onto Jack's neck—sucking a mark deliberate.

“Baby, lie down for me,” Jack instructs.

You nod, lying down on your back, knees spread apart like second nature. He tilts his head, as Robby’s lips trail over his skin.

“Enjoying yourself?” Robby echoes Jack's earlier words, hand meeting at his cock briefly, feeling Jack stiffen and inhale sharply at that. “You gonna make your girl cum, or do I have to do that?”

“Fuck off,” Jack murmurs. “Go sit in a corner and wait, or somethin’,” Jack mutters, hands dragging you by the underside of your knee, gently towards the edge as he kneels on the bed, as Robby steps back with a chuckle.

“Think I got her ready, though, so, shouldn't take long,” Robby says. “Unless you’re not as skilled as you’ve been bragging to be.”

“Oh, my god, one of you make me cum or else I’m doing it myself, Jesus,” you whine.

“Oh, baby,” Jack murmurs, kissing at your inner thighs. “I’m leaving you waiting here.”

“She’s being a brat. Have some patience, honey,” Robby insists, tilting his head at you in mock. “But she’s right, hurry up, Abbot, Christ.”

Jack swipes his tongue along your core, and you moan, your wetness ready and eager from Robby's fingering and your own arousal. He licks slow and firm, teasing your sensitive flesh. 

Robby watches from the side, his cock still tucked away in his jeans, as he observes you writhing under Jack's talented tongue. His expression is heated, hungry, clearly enjoying the show. 

"Mmm...you look like a-" you moan, too lost in sensation to finish the thought. "A fucking nun, Michael," you finally manage, nodding towards his henley. "You aren't hot in that? Take it off already, fuck," 

Robby clicks his tongue, a light roll of his eyes. "You could ask me nicely. Here I thought you were so polite and sweet," he chides.

Jack’s tongue is a relentless, wet invasion, fucking into you with a rhythm that steals your breath. You clench around him, a tight, pulsing grip, your fingers tangled in his silver curls, thighs locked around his head like a vise. 

Your eyes stay fixed on Robby’s as he discards his shirt, the fabric whispering to the floor. The snick of his belt sliding free from the loops makes you tighten your legs around Jack even more, a shiver of anticipation racing up your spine, as Jack laps at your pussy.

“Wider,” Jack grunts, his voice muffled against your pussy. He pushes your thighs apart with his hard biceps, one big hand splayed over your hipbone, pinning you down. “Stop squirming. Take it.”

From the foot of the bed, Robby watches, arms folded over his bare chest. He looks like a professor observing a dissection—calm, analytical, utterly in control. “How close are you?” he asks, his tone clinical.

“Mm, close,” you manage, the words breaking on a moan as Jack’s tongue flicks hard over your clit.

“You make such pretty sounds. He was right about that,” Robby hums, stepping closer. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his calloused hand coming up to cup your cheek. His thumb strokes your skin, sweetly, but his brow is furrowed, his gaze intense. “Callin’ me a nun, and you still got this thing on, honey.” He hooks a finger under the strap of your bra and flicks it sharply against your skin, a sting of sensation.

Jack’s tongue plunges deep again, and you arch off the bed, a choked cry leaving your lips. Your eyes don’t leave Robby’s as his hand slides down, cupping your breast through the lace. He admires the weight, the shape, his fingers tracing the curve.

“Want me to fuck you first, or GI Joe there?” Robby recalls, a smirk playing on his lips. 

He doesn’t miss the way your mouth curves in a smile, even as your eyelids flutter shut. Jack quickens his pace, his hands now gripping your thighs like he’s holding you together.

You’re too close, teetering on that blinding edge. Words are impossible.

“Answer me,” Robby instructs, his voice dropping low and stern. His hand kneads your breast, then slips inside the cup of your bra, his fingers finding your nipple. He rolls it, pinches it just shy of pain. “Who do you want first?”

“You,” you gasp, the answer torn from you instinctively, desperately.

Robby’s smirk widens. “You hear that, Abbot? I get to break her in first.” He doesn’t look away from you as he says it.

He leans down, his hand sliding between your legs. Jack pulls back without a word, letting Robby’s fingers trail through your soaked folds, delivering a slap to your clit. You shiver violently, a string of high, needy moans escaping as he collects your wetness on his fingertips. He brings them back to your mouth, his other hand still working your nipple.

“I was right,” you murmur, breathless. “Knew you’d be mean.”

“Yeah? You like it?” Robby wonders, though he already knows.

You bite your lip, refusing to answer.

He pushes his wet fingers past your lips, pulling your jaw open with a firm pressure. The look he gives you is pure command—dark, expectant. Obey.

“I like it,” you moan around his fingers, the admission almost reluctant. Your grip tightens in Jack’s hair. “Fuck—I’m gonna—oh fuck—”

“Yeah?” Robby hums, petting your hair now, his other hand still at your breast. He watches your mouth hang open, watches the pleasure wreck you. “Eyes on me. Come on. No, no. No closing them. You keep ’em right here.” His gaze holds yours captive. “Good girl… good girl, aren’t you? Bratty, but you just needed to cum a little, isn’t that right?”

You whimper as Jack’s tongue sweeps over your oversensitive clit one last time, lapping up your juices as you shatter. Your orgasm crashes through you, white-hot and convulsing, your body bowing off the bed as you cry out.

“Good job, baby. Fucking hell,” Jack mutters against your thigh, his voice rough with praise. 

He comes up your body, his hand replacing Robby’s on your breast, kneading possessively. His lips find yours in a messy, wet kiss, tasting of you. Tongues swiping, teeth clashing briefly as you chuckle into the kiss, wet and sloppy as he moves to your neck, sucking hard around your jaw, yoru neck, hand trailing over your figure, squeezing, gentle, rough all at once.

“My favourite girl in the world, you know that,” he murmurs against your skin, kissing at your collarbone.

You grin, feeling as Robby captures your mouth with his own, a brief pause as he watches Jack worship your figure. Jack slides a finger over your core, feeling as your back arches, how you gasp into Robby’s mouth.

“You aren’t a brat, are you baby?” Jack murmurs, rubbing tight circles at your clit, hearing how you whimper at the feeling, fresh from your orgasm. “No, honey, not for me, isn’t that right? Yeah, I know, I know… my sweet girl,” He replaces Robby’s mouth with his own, dragging over yours as you nod into the kiss. 

“Told you. Lover boy,” Robby remarks to you.

You grin into the kiss, before Jack pulls away and naturally seems to find Robby’s lips.

You watch, a strange heat pooling in your belly, watching as Jack immediately leans in and kisses Robby. It’s harsh and sweet all at once—a clash of teeth and soft sighs. You thought you might feel a spike of jealousy, but instead, a warm, possessive pride swells in your chest. 

Robby stands, briefly cupping Jack’s jaw in a gesture that’s both dismissal and affection before pushing him gently aside. Jack moves from between your legs, sprawling onto his back on the bed. Robby’s hands are on your waist, and you yelp in surprise as he manhandles you with effortless strength, flipping you onto your stomach.

He drags your ruined panties down over your ass, off your legs, and sends them flying to a corner of the room with a flick of his wrist. Your bra is next; he unclips it with one practiced hand, and the lace joins the panties.

“Ass up, sweetheart,” Robby instructs, his voice thick. He lands a sharp, stinging tap on your bare ass cheek. He has one knee on the bed, the other foot planted on the floor.

You obey, pushing yourself up onto your knees and elbows. Jack is lying in front of you now, his gaze heated. You reach for his prosthetic leg, helping him with the quick-release mechanism. Robby hands you the second one without a word—a seamless, understood exchange. Jack kisses you, sweet and grateful, as he sets the limb aside.

"That's it," Robby mutters, positioning himself behind you. You feel the blunt head of his cock pressing against your slick entrance, teasing, and then he thrusts forward in one brutal, seamless motion.

Filling you so completely the air leaves your lungs in a whoosh. He sets a punishing pace immediately, each thrust driving you forward toward Jack.

Robby inhales sharply at the feeling of you. You adjust to him, moan loud and silent all at once at the feeling.

“Shit,” Robby mutters. “Fuckin’ hell, you know much Jack’s raved about this pussy? Callin’ it the treasure of the fucking ocean.”

His hands grip your hips like anchors, fingernails digging into your soft flesh as he sets a merciless rhythm—pounding into you with a force that drives your body forward with each impact, making the headboard knock rhythmically against the wall. “Perfect fucking pussy, sweetheart, you know that?”

You moan at his words, clenching even tighter around him. 

“How the fuck do you leave home, Jack— Jesus Christ,” Robby says as he quickens his pace slightly, watching as your ass moves from the harsh contact of his hips against you.

“Life or death, and that’s it,” Jack says. 

“Come on, give him some love, kid,” Robby tells.

Jack’s cock is hard and leaking against his stomach. You lean down, taking him into your mouth, swallowing him deep. He groans, his hands coming up to cradle your head. “Fuck, just like that,” he rasps.

You’re split between them—Robby fucking into you from behind with deep, possessive strokes, and Jack’s length hitting the back of your throat. The dual sensation is overwhelming. Robby’s hips slap against your ass, the sound filthy and wet. 

“You like being used like this baby?” Jack wonders, your moans vibrating against him. 

You don’t answer, focused on the sensation of Robby’s cock harsh within you.

“He asked you a question,” Robby pants, moving his hand to your hair, tight as you look up at Jack, watery eyed.

“Uh-huh,” you nod. 

“See? Not so hard,” Robby groans.

Jack smiles a bit at that, caressing your face as you occupy your mouth with Jack’s cock. He groans. The taste of salt and heat floods your tongue as you take him deep, your lips stretching around his girth. You hollow your cheeks, sucking hard as you bob your head, letting him feel every ridge of your throat as you swallow him down. Your nose presses against his pelvis, and he groans, his fingers threading through your hair.

"Just like that… Just like that," Jack chokes out, his head falling back as his hips buck up involuntarily, his hand tightening on your jaw. His thumb presses against your cheek, forcing your mouth wider, and you feel every ridge and vein of his cock sliding deeper down your throat. "Come on now, so close."

The words vibrate through you, but before you can double down, Robby leans over your arched back, his chest sweaty and hot against your spine, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "Make him wait."

You pull off Jack's cock with a wet pop, a thick strand of saliva and pre-cum stretching between your lips and his glistening tip before breaking. Jack's frustrated groan cuts through the room, his hips twitching in empty air.

"Fuck off, Mike," Jack growls, but his hand remains gentle in your hair, fingers stroking through the sweat-damp strands as you whimper from the brutal pace behind you. 

Robby's cock is driving into you with relentless accuracy, the head of him hitting that deep, spongy spot inside you with every thrust, sending electric jolts through your core. Your inner walls flutter and clench around him, helpless against the assault.

"You gonna be a brat too, then?" Robby says, shooting a lighthearted glare at Jack over your shoulder. 

Before Jack can retort, you clench down hard around Robby's shaft, a desperate whine escaping your throat. Robby's rhythm stutters for half a second, a low curse spilling from his lips. "Fucking—hell, god, doll. You are so goddamn tight, y'know that?"

His pace becomes brutal, each thrust driving deeper, harder, the angle punishing. His balls slap wetly against your clit with every impact, the sound filthy and rhythmic. You feel the slick heat of your own arousal coating his shaft, dripping down your thighs with every punishing stroke. 

"She's close," Jack murmurs, his voice softer now, almost reverent. 

You shift forward, pressing open-mouthed kisses across his stomach, your tongue tracing the soft lines of his abs, tasting salt and skin, over the light freckles. You moan into his flesh, the vibration making his muscles jump, and then his palm cups your cheek, thumb brushing over your bottom lip, holding you warmly.

"Look at you," Jack whispers, his eyes dark and soft at once. "So beautiful like this. Taking us both. You're doing so well, baby."

“Go ahead, cum,” Robby growls into your ear, his hand snakes around your hip, his fingers finding your clit. He rubs tight circles against the swollen nub while he continues to pound into you, and the sensation is electric—each thrust driving his fingers harder against that sensitive bundle of nerves. “Now.”

You moan around Jack’s cock as you break, your pussy clenching wildly around Robby’s thrusts. The convulsions milk him, and with a low groan, he buries himself to the hilt and pulses inside you, hot and deep.

"Fuck," he breathes, his forehead pressing against your shoulder blade, his body shuddering through the aftershocks.

He pulls out slowly, and you feel his cum begin to seep from you. 

“Goddamnit,” Robby murmurs, a pant. 

Before you can even catch your breath, he spits into his palm, the sound crude and purposeful. He reaches down, slicking up Jack’s cock, which is already hard again and straining against his stomach. Jack groans, a deep, ragged sound at the touch.

“Your turn,” Robby tells him, his voice rough with use.

But instead of letting you face Jack, Robby guides you. His strong hands on your hips turn you, maneuvering your spent body until you’re straddling Jack, but facing away from him. Your back is to Jack’s chest, your ass pressed against his hips. You can feel Robby’s cum, warm and wet, slicking the way as you settle over Jack’s length.

Jack’s hands come to your hips, steadying you. “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmurs, but his voice is tight with need.

From the foot of the bed, Robby watches. He’s kneeling there now, his eyes dark and hungry, fixed on the place where your bodies move against one another, well practiced. Jack’s fingers slide between your legs, through the slick mess Robby left behind. He gathers it on his fingertips, his touch making you shiver, he brings those wet fingers to your lips.

You open for him, tasting Robby’s salty tang on Jack’s skin as he slips his fingers into your mouth. You moan around them, your tongue swirling. Jack’s eyes never leave Robby’s as he then pulls his fingers free, back to your cunt, a slight shudder once more, and brings them to his own lips, sucking them clean, tasting his best friend.

Robby watches this whole exchange, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Atta girl,” Jack pants against your ear, his hands tightening on your hips.

Then he guides you down, and you sink onto him with a broken cry. He fills you completely, the stretch delicious, the sensation of being stuffed so soon after your last climax making your head spin. You’re so sensitive it’s almost painful, a sweet, overwhelming ache.

You begin to move, rising and falling on his cock, finding a slow, grinding rhythm. Your hands brace on Jack’s thighs behind you for leverage. The angle is deep, each descent hitting a spot that makes you see stars.

“That’s it,” Jack encourages, his voice a rasp in your ear. His hands roam your body—gripping your waist, palming your breasts, thumbing your nipples.

You increase your pace, bouncing on him, the wet sounds of your joining filling the room. Your head falls back against his shoulder, your eyes fluttering shut.

“Eyes open, sweetheart.”

Robby’s command cuts through the haze. Your eyes snap open. He’s moved closer, kneeling right beside the bed now, his face level with where you’re joined with Jack. He’s watching every slide, every glide, his expression one of rapt fascination.

“Look at you,” Robby murmurs, his voice thick. “Takin’ him so well."

His praise fuels you. You lean more back, hands coming up behind you to Jack, angle pushing him even deeper, as you whimper, sharp gasps, teetering on the edge again.

“Baby, I’m gonna cum,” Your moan, soft.

“Fucking- shit, go ahead, honey, cum f’me,” he moans. 

Your orgasm crests, a silent scream trapped in your throat as your body tightens. You clench around Jack, a series of violent, fluttering spasms that milk his length.

Jack curses, his hips bucking up into you. “Fucking—just like that—”

As you’re pulsing around him, Robby leans in. He captures Jack’s mouth in a sudden, fierce kiss over your shoulder. You can hear the wet slide of their lips, the soft grunts and sighs. It’s raw and intimate, and it sends another shockwave of pleasure through your oversensitive nerves.

Robby breaks the kiss. “Lift up for a second, kid,” he breathes against your skin.

Dazed and pliant, you raise yourself up, Jack’s slick cock sliding almost all the way out of you. Robby’s hand replaces you, wrapping around Jack’s shaft. He gives him a few rough, efficient strokes, his thumb smearing the pre-cum beaded at the tip.

“Missed the taste of you,” Robby mutters to Jack, his eyes locked on his friend’s face as he works him.

Jack just groans, his head thrown back, his hands gripping your thighs. Then Robby guides you back down, easing you onto Jack’s cock until you’re fully seated once more, stuffed to the brim.

“Go ahead, finish,” Robby growls, his command for both of you.

You begin to move again, a slow, rolling grind now, utterly spent but driven by the need to feel Jack lose control. He’s close—you can feel the tension in his body, the way his breath hitches.

“Come on, Jack,” Robby urges softly, his hand returning to your clit, applying just enough pressure to make you whimper. “Fill her up. Give her what she needs.”

That does it. With a shattered cry, Jack’s hips piston up once, twice, and then he stills, buried deep inside you as he comes. You feel the hot pulses of his release joining Robby’s already there, flooding you.

Jack kisses at your shoulder blades, near your neck, as you relax your body entirely, shaky breaths with your back against his chest. His arm coming around you automatically, instinctive, like it always does. His hand slides up your arm, slow, grounding, fingers brushing your shoulder, your collarbone—checking, not asking out loud but asking anyway. 

Robby puts a hand to your jaw, tapping your cheeks lightly with his fingers, watching as your eyes lazily find his.

“You alright?” he murmurs, voice rough, softer than it’s been all night.

“Mhm,” You nod, catching your breath.

“There she is,” Jack murmurs against you, pressing a kiss into your hair, lingering there a second longer than usual.

Robby doesn’t move right away.

He’s sitting beside you both, elbows on his knees, head tipped slightly forward, breathing steadier now—but there’s something in his posture, something looser than before. The edge is gone. Or at least… dialed down.

You shift, peeling yourself gently from Jack, turning toward Robby. For a second, there’s that flicker—uncertainty, maybe. Not doubt. Just… recalibration.

Then you lean in and kiss him. It’s different now. Slower. Softer. No urgency behind it.

Robby’s hand comes up to the back of your head, not guiding, not demanding—just holding you there, thumb brushing lightly at your hairline. He exhales through his nose, a quiet thing, like he didn’t realize he’d been holding onto something.

When you pull back, you stay close.

“Hey,” you say, softer.

“Hey,” he echoes.

Jack watches the two of you. His hand still rests low on your back, thumb moving in slow, absent circles like it always does when he’s settling you.

Jack kisses gently at your bare back, “Be right back,” he murmurs against you, before you hear him leave the bed, putting on his temporary prosthetic. 

You hear him leave, pulling away from Robby who watches Jack as he leaves the room, headed for the hall.

You groan and flop onto the bed, Robby moving the blanket over you, maybe suddenly prudeish as he picks up presumably Jack’s shirt and hands it to you. You hum, put it on.

“Jesus,” you murmur, voice soft, wrecked. “I think my legs might actually fall off.”

That gets a quiet huff out of Robby.

He’s sitting up at the edge of the bed now, dragging a hand down his face, then through his hair. He looks… different, a little. Looser. The usual edge sanded down.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Think you’ll live.”

You glance over at him, managing a small smile.

He’s already reaching for his boxers, pulling them back on, movements unhurried. The gold chain at his neck catches the low light—the Star of David resting against his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. There’s something grounding about it. Familiar. Normal.

There’s a beat.

Then, softer—

“…You good?” You ask.

He turns your head toward you. “Yeah.” He thinks for a moment, a shake of his head as he lets himself admit– “Needed that. Needed to be… not alone, I think.”

You watch him for a second—something thoughtful in your expression.

“That something you’d wanna do again or is this a one and done situation?” You wonder earnestly, rolling onto your side as you look up at him. “

Robby doesn’t answer straight away. He looks at you—really looks, like he’s trying to figure out what the question actually means underneath what you asked.

Your hair’s a mess, Jack’s shirt slipping off one shoulder, eyes soft but steady on him. Hickies across your neck. Not fragile. Not asking for reassurance. Just… asking.

His jaw shifts slightly.

“…You always this direct after something like that?” he mutters.

You huff a quiet laugh. “I’m an ortho resident. I don’t have time for interpretive dance.”

That almost gets a smile out of him. He exhales, leaning back more fully, one hand rubbing absently at his chest like he’s trying to settle something under the surface.

“It’s not—” he starts, then stops. Tries again. “It’s not really a ‘one and done’ kind of question.”

You tilt your head slightly. “Why not?”

He glances at the door—where Jack disappeared—then back at you.

Because Jack’s not just some guy. Because this isn’t just sex. Because there’s history here that predates you by decades and still manages to feel unfinished. Because he already feels it sitting somewhere in his chest, heavy.

You seem to pick up where his head is at, a nod. “Do you have… like, real feelings for him? Or me?”

Robby scoffs a chuckle. “I don’t have time to think about that.”

“Just time to fuck us though. Well, not Jack, sure he’ll give me a complaint about that later.” You murmur.

Robby smiles a bit. “You two are… perfect for each other. I still don’t get how he found you.”

“I don’t know either, to be honest,” You admit. “But he cares about you. Like a lot. And so do I. And it’s not just because your dick is great, promise. You’re always welcome with us, whether its sex, comfort, food, all three. We aren’t picky people.”

“Picked up on that,” Robby nods, quieter now. “What are your plans? With him, I mean. He mentioned something about marriage.”

You smile a little—more to yourself than anything—your hand drifting, almost unconsciously, to your left ring finger.

“No idea,” you admit. “However long he wants me around, I guess.”

Robby huffs a soft breath, leaning back against the headboard. “Well, if age’s anything to go by, you’ve got a good couple of years.”

You smack his arm lightly. “You’re literally older than him.”

“I’m not marrying you,” Robby shoots back, deadpan.

“You’re an ass,” you sigh.

That earns you a small smile.

The door opens.

Jack steps back in, towel slung over his shoulder, a glass of water already in hand. He pauses just inside, taking in the room in one sweep—quick, practiced. You, curled on your side in his shirt. Robby at the edge of the bed, quieter than usual.

“My leg’s killing me,” Jack mutters, like it’s an afterthought, already moving back toward the bed.

You push yourself up onto your elbows, frowning. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, dismissive in that way he gets, like pain’s just background noise. He hands you the glass. “Drink.”

You take it, still watching him. “You say that about everything.”

“Because everything’s fine.”

Robby snorts under his breath. “Yeah. That’s a healthy coping mechanism.”

Jack shoots him a look as he sits down, stretching his leg out carefully. “Oh, I’m sorry—did you want to compare notes?”

Robby raises his brows. “Not particularly.”

Then Jack exhales, leaning back into the headboard. His hand finds your thigh automatically—absent, grounding, like he needs the contact without thinking about it.

His gaze flicks between the two of you, lingering on Robby for half a second longer than necessary.

“What’d I miss?” he asks.

You shift, settling back into him, your cheek brushing his shoulder. “Marriage.”

Jack huffs. “One night with my girl and you’re already trying to steal her? Alright. Good to know.”

Robby lets out a quiet chuckle.

“With you, idiot,” you correct.

Jack glances down at you. “Oh, him and I are getting married now?”

You roll your eyes and, just to be difficult, shift toward Robby instead—curling lightly into his side.

It lasts all of two seconds.

Jack’s arm hooks around you and pulls you straight back against him.

“Relax,” he mutters, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, holding you there against his chest.

Robby watches that, something unreadable flickering across his face before it settles again.

Robby stays the night.

Not in the same way—there’s a natural rhythm to it. He gives you and Jack space without being asked, drifting out into the living room, the quiet murmur of the TV carrying faintly down the hall. At one point you hear the balcony door slide open, then shut again.

He’s not intrusive. Never has been.

But he doesn’t leave, either.

if u havent read it, i'd recommend reading my (wo)man on willpower! this is a spin off of that, i suppose. focuses more on jack x reader, though. :D

a/n: girls i have another like 700 words i had that as a short scene of santos speculating why u didnt make it to her paris party (oh my god im so funny paris because threesome haha i know right, please dont click off this), and i might post that later, but my ao3 will get the full thing if u wanna just see what it was. the 1000 block limit on tumblr genuinely my opp fr.

It comes along with the commanding presence he brings with his title— lieutenant; doctor; officer ( Combat Vet; Senior Attending; SWAT Medic )— that instinctively draws people in, or has them making way for him, has them deferring to him out of well-earned respect.

Physicality adds to it too, ofcourse. 

Biceps taut on his scrubs sleeves whenever he crosses his freckled arms to think, doing that pensive gaze he does where his chin tucks and he looks up past his lashes; shark-like in the tenebrous weight of his narrow stare, lips pursed and dimpling at his stubbled cheeks. 

Nor do the fatigues offer any help, either; they make him look meaner than he already does, you find. Tough. Militant. Imposing. Just a little more rugged, a little more rough-around-the-edges handsome, a little more grittier to the average eye in that classic, old-fashioned way. 

(The perfect archetype of a natural protector: both the shepherd who tends faithfully to his sheep and the dog that mercilessly defends them.) 

And then there’s that damn roughstone voice of his—

“Look at me,” he’d said, after the damage had been done. 

Ordered, it felt more like, though he was pleading. You’re surprised at how swift you’d paid automatic heed to the gravel-deep tone of his voice, riding that razor edge of unraveling concern and blistering anger. 

Well within reason, ofcourse: Abbot’s SWAT unit had been deployed on a gang-violence case. When the storm of a shootout had passed, and they’d ended up having to wheel in one of their own officers to PTMC’s Emergency Department alongside one of said criminal thugs in tow, you’d been the closest medical staff to get caught in the crossfire.

A tattooed blur reaching up from the gurney. A yelp as your hair is yanked down in a fit of blind rage. 

And then—

And then.

A pistol materialises, barrel pressed right between his eyes. 

“Go ahead,” Abbot snarls, an inch from pulling the trigger. “Give me a fucking reason.”

(He doesn’t open fire, of course. That would’ve been ridiculous. Not to mention a mountain of paperwork.)

And so the jarring chiaroscuro that was Jack Abbot appeared in South-22: Nonchalant then, in the way he’d cradled your face to assess you, in the way his fingers tucked a strand behind your ear as if they hadn’t been the same ones carrying a lethal weapon.

You okay? he’d murmured, voice that gravelly undertone that always makes you shudder. 

M’fine, you’d nodded, unable to stop openly admiring him in that dizzying uniform: all camo and tactical and trim, the muted colours working in his favour to bring out the bright of his eyes.

What is it, sweetheart? he’d frowned, shrewd as always. 

You swallowed. Shook your head. If he’d caught your there-and-away glance to his lips, he didn’t seem to comment. 

I’m gonna get back to work, you’d dismissed. It’s nothing, Jack.  

But—

“It’s not nothing,” he brings up, later that night. “This is very much not nothing, sweetheart.”

Straddled at the living room couch under the warm weight of you, Abbot has to physically slide his hands up from your hips and shackle your wrists away from his face. Done, ofcourse, with an alarmingly easy grip. (You file that thought away for later.)

Abbot looks handsome when frazzled like this, you think privately to yourself. A flush that's blossoming up from his chest, climbing his neck and rosing across the bridge of his nose. Even the tips of his ears have gone a distinct pink from your incessant kisses and constant grinding against his lap.

He hisses; lungs expanding, eyes screwing shut when you deliberately attempt to adjust your hips.

“Baby,” he breathes, pupils blown wide half in yen and in pleasant confusion. “What is up with you tonight?”

You ignore him. Waylay him into another bruising kiss instead. Drive your hips down coyly into his camo pants again, enough it makes him groan gutturally into your mouth at the friction of it all— 

Although it doesn’t appear to work: Abbot’s a disciplined man; he wouldn’t have made a good and dutiful soldier if he wasn’t. 

Instead he dodges the next kiss you give him, where it lands on the corner of his lips, much to your chagrin and his childish amusement, and he levels you with that discerning look.

“Tell me,” he murmurs. (Orders, it still feels like. Gruff and demanding. It makes you giddy. He can order you around to do whatever he wishes and you’d gladly—)

“Nothing,” you finally relent. Thumb at his cheek. Trace the slope of his lips down to his stubbled chin. “It’s just…”

Your hands drop to his chest, then further to the hem of his black shirt, where it’s come untucked at the waistline of his cargo pants.

Not once does he break eye-contact with you, and it’s then he reckons something in them.

“Is it my— Is the uniform doing it for you?” he pieces, laughter threading into his words. “It is, isn’t it? That’s why you were looking at me weird earlier. Why you practically jumped my bones when I walked through our front door—”

Heat floods to your face. You wrinkle your nose at him. “Don’t act like you didn’t know,” you scowl, letting him off the hook with that last statement: You had, in fact, practically gravitated and clung to him like a magnet when he’d come home wearing those lethal half-camo-half-civvies combination that hug him in all the right places. 

“I really didn’t,” he swears, unable to stop dimpling at you. And then: “Wow. You’re so easy.”

You scoff out an affronted Excuse me? Let out a stunned laugh as you swat him on the bicep at the boyish sense of pride blooming across his face. 

“I should’ve realised,” he sing-songs, catching your next smack with ease and pretending to nip at your fingertips in defense. “You like me in fatigues. I can’t believe it. You like a military man, huh?”

“I like you,” you correct, pulling your hands back to lay it on his sternum, feel the humdrum of his heartbeat under the broad of his muscles. “…But me pouncing you isn’t just because of that.”

“Oh?” he says, and like an intrigued bird, preens once again. You groan. Bow your head at the obvious delight in his face.

All he does is laugh and tuck the tresses of hair that’s slid along with your downturned gaze. Try to chase your eyes like he always does. You pick at the seam on his collar, a non-existent piece of lint— Just something to buy yourself time while you string your thoughts into something coherent. 

There’s that palpable sense in the space between— the tension you’d get when you feel somebody about to confess something; show you the chink in their proverbial armour, or offer you a plate of their beating heart. 

You’re… nervous, he realises. Sheepish about— 

His brows shoot to his hairline.

“Oh,” he says. Recognises it now: A yelp. A pistol. A threat. 

He lets out a wheeze. Doesn’t even try to hold it this time.

“Alright. I’m ordering dinner,” you deadpan, already climbing off him, where he instantly chimes in with a grasp on your wrist and a half-hearted series of No, no, no! I’m not laughing at you, honey, I promise. C’mere, baby, please—?

Abbot pulls you back in for a fervent kiss. Deep and meaningful as he breathes the scent of you in. Sorry, it translates, playful. I’m sorry. 

“I just…” His eyes squint after, head doing that endearing, fidgety turn and tilt it always does when he talks. “What is it exactly about what I did that turns you on?”

“Oh, now you’re just fishing for compliments,” you snort, twirling a rowdy curl at his nape when he lets out another weak laugh.

“The safety wasn’t even flipped, honey,” he explains, forming an imaginary pistol with his fingers to demonstrate the mechanism. “Hammer never dropped. The gun wouldn’t’ve went off.”

But you shrug anyway, run your nails down his scalp just the way he likes, carving through the salt-and-pepper of his hair as he hums. 

“It’s the thought that counts?” you offer, inadequate. “I… genuinely don’t know what exactly it was, if I’m being honest. Maybe it’s ’cause you were a total badass,” you muse, ignoring yet another laugh from him. “Maybe it’s the way you spoke to him.”

He breaks into a knowing smile. Voice tinged with amusement and something wry. “Oh, you like me a little mean, hm?” 

You laugh, caught. Pinch at his skin in comic retaliation. He doesn’t budge at all, like the tough-as-nails man he is; just stares at you with that hazy, affectionate gaze.

A slow beat passes as you reckon with your thoughts.

“I guess it’s just nice to be protected,” you say at last, the gentlest he’s ever heard. “Nice to feel invincible, y’know?”

Abbot falls quiet at that, blindsided.

Safe, he realises. He makes you feel safe.

Something abrupt tides over him. An impossible urge. An overwhelming desire to kiss and embrace and surround you. To tuck and fold you past his ribcage and into his weathered heart, forever sheltered in the home that is his arms—

“I love you, you know that?” he says, and he finds his voice is mellowed down now. Low, soft. An ocean-in-a-shell whisper when he says your name.

“Jack,” you exhale, a butterfly-wing breath. Abbot etches the divine sight of your smile into his mind. Thinks he could drown in the affection of your voice alone— Would gladly allow it. “I love you too.”

When you dip down to kiss him it's like lighting a wick aflame. The quickfire spark of a flintwheel. Then he’s nosing down and down, mouthing from the seam of your lips to your jaw, your pulsepoint, your collar, your bare shoulder. He’ll mark you up later, he thinks, right now he just wants to feel every inch of you.

Abbot caresses up your arms, pulls your left hand from his cheek to turn it over. And then he’s pressing his lips upon your palm up to your fingertips— a reverent kiss. Like you’re his holy artifact; a Saint’s relic to worship.

“Chivalrous,” you muse mindlessly, tracing down the dent of his cheek, the stippled line across his jaw. You can feel your heart swell. Feel his hands snaking up your skin beneath your shirt— his shirt, actually— that swallows you whole, loose and already slipping one shoulder.

“I threatened to kill a man,” he points out incredulously, voice dropped in that whispery octave again; smoky, dark.

Exactly, you don’t reply, feeling that excitable buzz through your spine once more at the vivid memory: bright blood and gleaming gunmetal; the predatorial growl in his voice and the dangerous expression on his face. Go ahead. Give me a fucking reason.

“For me,” you add, purring against his lips, breath damp and curling with his. You give him a kiss chaste enough that it has him craning closer for more. “You did it for me.”

Then your hands wander, up neath the cotton of his shirt and down his smoldering skin, slow and steady, until they settle at the flesh of his navel; until your manicured nails catch on the buttons of his camo pants. “So let me do something for you.”

Baby, he chokes back, half-desperate already. You press a bruising, saccharine kiss to lean him back as you work him free, revelling in the shudder of his battleworn body when the zipper sings through the air, and you take your time to reach into his waistband to wrap your fingers around the thick of him. 

It’s hot and heavy when you tug his cock out.

“S’for you,” you murmur, sinking to your knees now, between the gaps of his legs. 

He watches you rapt with attention when you lean a cheek into the camo, goosebumps lining his skin at the sight of you— doe-eyed and looking like you’re right where you want to be as a flash of your wet tongue makes itself known.

The breach of his swollen, leaky head into your mouth is divine. 

It doesn’t take very long before his hand is fisting your hair with barely concealed restraint. It’s messy, this time. Forgoing his usual reflex to bunch it into a ponytail for your own ease. (Oh, you hear his dry, biting sarcasm ring in your head, you like me a little mean, hm?) The other sits splayed on the gap between your shoulder blades, running the pads of his fingers up your nape.

“Ja— mh,” you choke, feeling the tip of him reach the back of your throat already. His hips are shifting up from the sofa to meet your insistent pace. Be a little harsher, you want to say, but you’re intoxicated with the scent and taste of him. Nose buried at his happy trail every time you bottom out and scrape your nails against his tense thighs.

You’re practically salivating over his cock and dampening the fly of his pants. He tastes like skin and something masculine. Smells like heady sweat and gunpowder. 

You’re dizzy with delight everytime he curses; everytime he croons. Watching each ripple of his forearms, sinews of muscles flexing under freckled skin as he braces himself from going too far—

“Eyes on me, honey,” Abbot rasps. Orders. There are jittering phosphenes in your peripherals when you meet his gaze, his eyes shadowed into something dark from the angle of the dim light above him. It sends a buzz through you. Forces a wanton, strangled sound from your throat that has him twitching excitedly in your mouth. “God, yeah. That’s it, baby.” 

It’s a touch condescending. Dangerous. That same, clinical way he gets as a senior mentoring his juniors, or in his gaze whenever he’s observing something in a patient; diagnosing. 

“You wanted mean,” he repeats, carefully. Making sure you’re registering each word. “Sweetheart. Want me to use you?”

(Courteous, still. Ensuring. May I? he seems to ask. A gentleman’s instinct.)

He’s pulling you apart from his cock the next second. Abrupt enough you’re gasping for air with a sickening pop of your lips, reflexively swallowing around the invisible shape he’s molded into your throat. A string of saliva connects; sloppy. It makes a frisson run through Abbot at the lewd sight. Answer me. 

“Yes,” you whisper to his question. Then, before the synapses in your brain could fire upon realisation: “Yes, Sir.”

Abbot slams his eyes shut. “Fuck.” Lets out a strained breath of a laugh. “Jesus, woman,” he exhales, flickering back to where your lithe fingers are mindlessly rolling and flexing over the hard length of him: slow strokes, a squeeze, a shy kitten-lick. 

He’d heard the title before, ofcourse. Sir. In his military days and tactical briefings during his moonlighting with SWAT teams, where rank and hierarchy is commonplace and acknowledged without question. A routine structure that never leaves those walls— 

Until now, at least. And even then formalities have never been a thing between you both, neither in the ED. It’s a collaborative affair when someone’s life is on the line— So hearing it now in the walls of home, so eager and so absentmindedly said, hits him square in the chest more than he’d like to admit. 

(On your knees, you look smaller like this: docile. Submissive; easier to handle, to bend into will or obedience. 

It makes him feel— powerful.)

“Go ahead, then,” he says, with newfound clarity and lust-filled amusement. He rakes his nails down your scalp, sets a demanding palm. “Be good for me.”

In no time, he’s forcing his cock past the seal of your lips. It’s wet and messy as you struggle to take the stiff length of him down in one go once more, muffled tiny sounds escaping you in lewd little hums and Mh, mh, mh— when he bobs you further down; makes you take him just that inch more.

Each rise and fall of your head is controlled by his clutch. He doesn’t let you pull back at times now— a new game— testing how long you can hold it before you’re tapping at his thighs, heart skittering in alarm— and even then he dares to tarry a second or two longer just for his own pleasure.

“Deeper, baby. You can do it,” he’d soothe, thumbing away the drool leaking from your lips. “Yeah? Fuck. You feel so good.”

The praises shoot liquid pleasure down your spine; makes you rub your thighs as you whine. Every grunt he makes is a compliment; every twitch and buck of his hips a trophy; every sharp hiss and muttering curse a jewel to your crown.

“Maybe I’ll fuck you in uniform,” he pants, when he eventually yanks you from his cock for a moment’s reprieve. His hand slides down from your scalp to press at both your cheeks, watching the slick dribble to your chin when he taps his thumb expectantly on your wet lips. “S’that what you want, honey?”

Unbidden, the image of Abbot half-feral as he fucks you brutally from behind flashes in your head. He’d command you strip naked for him, you imagine, and perhaps he’d use you for his own personal pleasure, still decked in that olive quarter-zip and taking, claiming, imposing himself onto you by burying his cock in you.

You imagine the sound of his belt— carrying his sidearms— divested and landing on the floor, his camo pants hurriedly unzipped just enough to pull his cock out while he climbs right into you with no prep; the full weight of his chest pressing down onto you from behind so you couldn’t squirm; couldn’t break free from the bicep he’d curl flush around your neck while he bit marks down the hollow of your throat, groaning into your ear as he c—

You whimper. It’s a pathetic sound; begging to be used. Humiliation burns your cheeks. “Yes.”

Abbot’s brows climb. Grip tightens in rumbling disapproval.

“—Sir,” you tag at the last second, gut seizing in half-fear and half-thrill at how quickly he’s already taken to this powerplay. “Yes, Sir.”

“There we go,” he coos, throbbing at how ready you are to heed. He bites his lip, curled at the edges with something akin to a daze and pure enamourment. He’d never have expected this from you— let alone himself. 

The gunpoint confrontation he’d had today with that patient had barely registered as anything remarkable to him. The dizzying cocktail of power and command over anyone, in fact, has never been something he’d given thought to. Sure, it’s satisfying to be feared, and above all out of respect— but it’d been nothing but a job to him. An instinct to move; to make sure no one in the Pitt is hurt.

But today, with the quiet surge of authority that comes with donning his fatigues— an unconscious, private sense of gratification and pride has him intoxicated at how you seem to defer to his competence, to his demands. Especially now, with how quickly you’d dropped to your knees for him in pure admiration, so eager to deign to his unspoken wishes and serve him just because he threatened a man while in uniform—

“You’ve got a job to do first, sweetheart,” he murmurs, meeting the excited glint in your teary eyes. “Finish what you started.”

He brackets your face with the palms of his hands and puts you back to work. Prespend drips down your chin as he feeds himself back down your throat, feels the slip and curl of your tongue as it slides over the veins of his cock. “Hah, f—uck,” he bites out, “Yeah. Attagirl. Attagirl.”

His pace is self-indulgent and cruel. Demanding; just how you’d pleaded it. Sinful approval tumbles from his mouth at how You take me so well, baby, you can do it. You can take it, can’t you? You wanted this, so I’ll give it. Just be a good girl and fuck, take it— a jumbled concoction of praises and condescending quips that has your mind spinning with both embarrassment and appetite.

His grasp turns into a vice as the minutes pass. Coiling around the sides of your face as he anchors you. He smothers and sinks you lower at each hard pump of your mouth around him, thumbing at a stray tear with a huff of a laugh. Spoiling himself with this fantasy of yours; with every gagging whine you make.

“C’mon now,” he husks, sounding breathless. “Almost there, pretty girl. Doing so good.”

You’re carving crescents into his thighs. Lungs searing at the mild hypoxia. An aching heat pooling south beneath you. His brows are pinched into an irritated divot when he allows you up for an obligated sliver of a breath, before fitting himself back into your mouth to fuck your throat into completion. 

Greedy, you think, completely delirious and candidly blissed out from the flattery and the sight of Abbot this way: eyes struggling not to roll as his head lulls from the utter euphoria coursing through his veins. You like him greedy and selfish and mean. 

That innate soldier that he can never shake from the doctor in him, appearing sporadically in flashes over days with combative patients or browbeating visitors. That effortlessly commands a room by sheer militant presence, that doesn’t take no for an answer, that can still be as deadly weaponless and with his own bare hands.

“Baby,” he warns coarsely, memorising the delicious glide of your tongue around his cock. He bites his lip and fights the urge to throw his head back onto the couch. “M’close. So close, sweetheart.”

It’s flattering to hear; to feel. Seeing Abbot looming above you like an eclipse, in complete control over your breathing, yet visibly struggling with effort as you slide your hands up from his thighs to his navel and to his hips; using it as grip to sink yourself deeper and deeper— Fuck, baby, he slurs. You’re so good to me. So fucking good—

“I’m gonna come,” he pants, breath hitching. It’s a primal sound, and for a moment you think he’ll finish in your mouth, paint you thick with him. “Yeah, fuck. M’gonna come—”

But he loosens his grip instead, lets you gasp for air as he pulls out and rests his cock on the tip of your tongue. It’s swollen; An angry, aching red. Fit to burst.

What was it you’d called this earlier? A gentleman’s instinct. Your own Prince Charming. That despite the ironclad hold avarice has over his self, he still courteously thinks of and puts you first; Still can rein in his wild desire and dial in the discipline, prioritise graciousness: 

“Where d’you want me, honey?” he whispers.

Abbot, before he is a deadly man, is a good man.

“I wanna, I—” you fluster, throat raw from overuse as your tunnel vision attempts to re-widen with the burst of oxygen. “Inside. Wanna swallow you. Please.”

Jesus fucking Christ, he doesn’t say, but it’s written in his face. “Yeah?” he assents, twitching in anticipation as he pets at the crown of your head. “Yeah. Don’t have to beg, baby. I’ll give it.”

“I’ll take it,” you nod feverishly, canting your head back into his grip again. His hands ease to your nape, and you let out a moan at the slow tightening curl of his fingers. “I’ll take all of it, Sir.”

His gaze is treacherous as he guides your mouth to his cock again. “Damn right you will.”

The approval makes your head swim. A decree. No room for mistakes or failure. You’ll take what he gives and ten more should he demand it. 

The strangled noises you make in your attempt to appeal to him— gags, mewls, coughs— makes him throb. Stifled moans that vibrate down his cock and knots in his groin. Deriving a depraved pleasure from your troubles to take him to the hilt. (Too big, you’d complained to him once, when he’d stuffed your cunt full of him. You’re so fucking big, Jack—)

The head of his cock grinds the back of your throat. He’s pulsing like a heartbeat. Ready to pump you to the brim. It’s driving Abbot mad how close he is, yet how much longer he wants to prolong this perpetual ecstasy.

“Oh, fuck,” he curses, rutting harder into you. Your name sounds like gospel as he chants it. Borderline a snarl. “I’m gonna come, honey,” he warns. “Y’gonna take it all, hm? Be a good— hah, fuck— be a good girl.”

Please, you keen. Letting him use your mouth recklessly to chase his high, hand at the back of your skull as he shoves you down to meet his thrusts: In. Out. In. Out. It’s delicious. It’s delicious, and you’re just as starved for his cum as he is for the wet, hot seal of your mouth to milk him clean.

“Yeah, I’m—” he stumbles, senseless. Too occupied with keeping you firmly suffocated around him. With the echoing squeak of the couch and the sickly-sweet sounds he’s pulling from your taut lips. “Fuck, sweetheart— Ah—”

It’s white-hot when he comes. Hips flexing. A flood of pure, unadulterated bliss. Suckling him down to the root, cheeks hollowed and nose nestled to the bed of curls led by his happy trail. 

Ropes of his thick cum streak your tongue and throat in rapid bursts, sudden enough it makes you lurch from your gag reflex, makes your back jump and arch instinctively under his domineering grip. Stay still, he means to say, coming out as a grunt. Quit fussing.

Abbot can imagine it as well as you can taste the molten spill of him. Feels the muscles in your throat twitching violently as you work him through it. Picturing the pearlescent mixture dripping down, down, down your pharynx like sin; a mark that brands you as his from the inside out. 

Your chokes are precious. Has him growling out incoherently as he continues to drain all of himself into you in spurts. “Ohh, good girl,” he sighs, looking down at the heavenly sight:

Fanned lashes fluttering. Maintaining that erotic eye-contact the way he likes. Dazed with halcyon and eros at the way he’s filled your mouth impossibly to the brim. He ought to burn this image of you into his brain forever.

Mmph, you hum, jaw aching from the sheer size of him; from the absolute work out he’d just dragged you through. When you pull away with a lingering kiss on his cock, he watches you, captivated; Unhinging just enough to show him the pool of white cum in your mouth, and then, as if coveting it— 

You swallow. Sticky. Tangy. Clicks as it goes down your throat.

“Attagirl,” Abbot drawls, brushing his knuckles at your cheek with tender affection. Collecting the tears rolling down them as a slow minute passes. “Did as I asked. So good. You’re so good, you know that?”

The blatant adoration sits fuzzy in your heart. Warmth settling in your ribcage and comfortably making a home there. You’re suddenly longing to be held— to feel what you felt when he’d propped that gun to the man’s forehead. Safe, you recall. You’ve done the job, after all, haven’t you?

Abbot reads your mind just as intuitively. Knows you better than anyone. 

“C’mon, pretty girl. Up,” he orders, without the bite now; without the rough tone and the manhandling. “C’mere, sweetheart.”

It’s soft. The fantastical image of him being some beastly, unforgiving thing— slows to a crawl and fades away at his behest. He slides his palms to your shoulders and gently helps you up onto his lap, folds you into his arms where he devours you into a doting, winsome kiss, before he lays your head to rest on his collar.

He presses his lips to the crown of your head. Let’s you square your breathing back into reality as his own tachy heart begins to slow in tandem with yours.

“Alright?” he soothes, when the moment passes. He’s tucked you into a cradle-like embrace— shelter, you feel, surrounded by nothing but him and only him— his one hand still busy with smoothing out the uneven tangles he’s made in your hair. 

“Mhm,” is all you muster for now. Unduly spent and satisfied to speak. Basking in the aftermath of sex; melting in his delicate aftercare.

“Too rough?” Abbot asks, the concern he’d tamped down earlier now beginning to surface. He cranes to meet your sleepy gaze; the only way he’d truly be able to discern whether you’re telling him the truth. “You listening, honey?”

That’s impossible, you could never hurt me, you want to say, but settle on a less-taxing: “No, I enjoyed it,” and shake your head, giving him a content smile as you nudge your forehead at his chin. “Just give me a minute before the next round.”

He lets out an exasperated laugh. Bumps his nose to yours. “You’re crazy,” he teases, meeting your lips in another fond kiss: chaste but deep, meaningful. Sits in his marrows like candied honey. “Can we at least have dinner first, sweetheart?”

“Old man needs his sustenance?” you jest, letting out a yelp when he pokes at your waist and burrows his face into your neck to nip playfully. “Okay! Okay. Dinner first, Jack.”

“Then you can have me any way you want,” he agrees, thumbing a stray strand from your face. Painfully domestic, he muses, for what’s just occurred between you two.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” you narrow. But he lets out an amused snort in reply.

“You like when I threaten people, baby. You just proved that about five minutes ago with the most intense blowjob I’ve ev—”

“Dinner!” you override, face aflame once more as you smack a hand over his mouth. “Hungry. Let’s?”

The walk from the coffee shop to the hospital wasn’t far, just a few blocks down, but you took your time.

The summer sun warmed the tops of your shoulders, the condensation around your iced matcha cooling in your grip. You could hear the last bits of ice sloshing around, already starting to melt only ten feet out into the hot July weather. The girl behind the counter had actually gotten your name right, written in looping marker, a little heart next to it that made you smile.

Pittsburgh bustled on around you, a passing ambulance wailing catching your attention as you walked toward the same destination, the sound rising and falling as it pushed through the intersection ahead. The hospital came into view at the end of the next block, glass doors sliding open and shut, people filtering in and out in small numbers.

Hopefully it was an easy day for them, but you knew better than to say that out loud in fear of jinxing the last half of the shift.

You stepped into the street at the white striped pedestrian crosswalk, adjusting your hold on the cold cup in your hands as you took another sip, the drink cutting through the blazing summer heat. And as you came to step up onto the curb on the other side, you heard the sound of screeching tires.

A truck suddenly pulled up to your right, jumping the curb as the front wheel bumping hard against the concrete when it came to a stop, engine still running. The driver’s side door flew open so fast it bounced once on its hinge.

"Help!!!" a woman screeched, blood on her jeans and across her shirt. Her voice was shrill, panicked: "I need help, please—I don’t know what happened! She was working on my farm, and I—please!"

The cup slipped from your hand, hitting the ground behind you with a hollow plastic crack, liquid spilling out and running toward the curb, green bleeding into the gray. You were already moving, your shoes slapping hard against the pavement as you ran to the passenger side, your hand fumbling on the handle before you yanked it open.

Your brain sort of…stalled for a second as you looked in.

A woman sat slumped in the front seat, her body angled awkwardly against the console, blood soaking through her shirt, her entire right side drenched in it, dark and wet and still spreading. Where her shoulder should have been—

It didn’t register at first. She looked like a realistic mannequin. A costume with fake blood from the Halloween store. It just…it looked… Just wrong. Just—

Your eyes dropped to her lap, and again, your brain was having trouble matching reality to logic. An arm, pale, unmoving, manicured pink fingernails. Not a prop or something from a costume set.

Her arm.

You looked her over, her head tipped back against the seat, her mouth parted, her skin pale and damp.

"Ma'am?" you squeaked, fingers going straight to her carotid, and you felt a very thin, thready pulse. You turned to the driver, "Go get someone from inside!"

You didn’t wait to see if she listened.

Moving without thinking, you set the arm carefully down on the passenger side floor so it wouldn’t fall, hands already going to your own shirt, pulling it up and over your head in one quick motion, leaving you in your bralette and cutoffs, the fabric bunching in your fists as you folded it over itself.

In any situation where someone is bleeding profusely and you don't have a tourniquet, you always apply pressure. Whether its with your hands, with your shirt off your back, doesn't matter. Pressure. Always remember pressure. Memories of Jack Abbott teaching you life saving first aid one day when his shift was less eventful and he had sat with you in the lounge over a cup of coffee. You're gonna want to look and see if it's stopped bleeding—don't. You'll only lose whatever clot you'd created with the pressure. Constant pressure, it could save someone's life one day.

You pressed your shirt hard against what was left of her shoulder, your hands slipping immediately, the blood soaking through the cotton quickly, warm and slick as you leaned your weight into it.

“What's your name?” you asked loudly closer, trying to keep her there, your forearms already starting to shake with the force of it. You brought your hand to her sternum, trying to see if she'd react to pain. She let out a little moan. “You're okay, you're gonna be okay. Open your eyes!”

Your own gaze lifted, distracted by movement on the other side of the car. Instead of the driver doing what you'd asked, she had already slid back into the car on the other side, "I have to go. I can't. I'm sorry." she began to say, as you shifted your arm around the hurt woman’s back and pulled her out of the passenger seat. You felt one of her shoes catch on the lip of the door, readjusting her full weight into you as you stumbled back a step to keep from going down with her.

Once she was out of the car, you leaned in to grab her arm, but suddenly, the car was moving.

“Hey!” you shouted or gasped or screamed, you couldn't remember. You had one arm around the bleeding woman, the other reaching into the vehicle just in time to grab her disconnected limb. And just like that, the car jerked forward, the open door slamming shut as it pulled away from the curb.

“Shit, shit shit—hey! I need help!” you yelled, throat scraping a little at the panic in your voice. You turned toward the hospital doors, people already starting to notice. Thankfully, Ahmad the security guard saw you and he was next to you in seconds.

"What the fuck!?"

"They just—they left her, oh my god—" you panted, the smell of the fresh blood flooding your senses.

Ahmad called into his walkie for help, and soon a gurney was coming around the corner from the ambulance bay, and a group of nurses and— to your surprise, Robby— came to your help.

"Jesus—" Robby cursed under his breath, grabbing you by the arms to pull you upright and out of the way as they took the woman from your hold and placed her on the gurney. His worried eyes scanned over you, squeezing your arms, checking you over as you stood shirtless on the side of the road. His eyes soon snapped to the patient—Jesse had stepped in immediately, his hand replacing yours at the woman’s shoulder, pressing down hard on the blood-soaked shirt.

“Proximal traumatic amputation—left shoulder,” he called out as the team walked together, “Massive bleed—checking her pressure now. Weak carotid, probably going to need blood.”

Robby was leading you inside with everyone, a hand at your back to keep you walking. The cool blast of AC hit you as the doors opened. "Alright, get her in a room, Dana, what's available?!"

"Trauma one!" She shouted from the charge nurse desk, pointing

The entire team turned on the dot.

“Someone grab the arm—careful—don’t lose it,” Robby barked as they cleared the doorway. “Mel’s on EFAST. I want MTP activated—blood in the room now. Get a saline flush going on that leg. Move!”

He turned to you once she disappeared into a trauma room, catching your arm to stop you just outside the doors. "What the hell happened?"

"I—" you swallowed hard, your hands shaking, blood still slick across your fingers, and your vision began to blur. "Oh god—"

His hands covered yours, hiding them from your view, "Are you hurt?"

"No—no," you said quickly, shaking your head hard. "I'm fine, uh—she—she was dropped off. On the curb! I just happened to be there. She—the lady who was driving said it happened at her farm and—and then, Robby, she just drove off!"

"Okay. Okay, thank you, honey. We've got it from here." he said, the edge gone from his voice now, grounding for you even as your ears started to hum and as his attention kept pulling back toward the room. "Do you want to go sit down and—"

You shook your head, eyes widening. "No, no—please, can I stay with you?"

He hesitated for a second, eyes flicking through the trauma room doors again, then back to you, then down at your hands in his.

"You sure?" he asked.

You nodded.

He gave a short nod back and guided you in with him, his hand pressing once at your back as the doors swung open.

Noise hit you all at once—monitors beeping, voices overlapping, orders being called out and answered, someone already on the phone with surgery, the room moving fast around the woman on the bed. You watched on, Robby setting you in the corner, grabbing sterile gloves and beginning to say something—but your ears were ringing louder and louder.

His eyes flickered over to you between his questions and orders once in a while, arms crossed tightly around his chest. Your lungs were beginning to feel shallow, not enough air being pulled in. God, there was too much blood, it was all making you dizzy, the smell and the sticky feeling on your fingers putting you right back in this same room years earlier. Suddenly your vision swam and it wasn't the woman from the road in the bed, but your parents, breathing tubes down their throats as everyone yelled and scrambled to save their lives, leaving you pushed in the corner as you watched on.

The door to your left swung open, a couple heads glancing up before dropping right back to what they were doing. A young man stepped in, clean scrubs, badge swinging against his chest as he moved uncertainly into the room, hovering like he didn’t know where to stand before drifting closer to the bed.

"Ortho consult?" he said loudly over the space so that you could hear him even over the buzzing between your ears.

No one answered him right away, but made room for him to take a look at the woman's shoulder.

“Time of injury?” he asked, glancing around, then back at the shoulder. “Do we have the limb? Was it preserved? I need to get a photo for Park—”

Robby looked up, "He couldn't come down?"

"Busy upstairs with a crush injury—" he said quickly, pulling his phone from his pocket, thumb swiping across the screen, "I only started yesterday as a resident, can't say for myself—." he said, looking closer at the open wound.

Robby let out a breath through his nose, shaking his head as his arms crossed tighter over his chest. "Jesus…"

As the new resident leaned down to snap a photo of the amputation, he smirked up at you.

"Hey, shark bait."

You barely heard him, but you did see Robby's head snap up from across the room.

"What the fuck did you just say?"

He faltered, already shrinking under it. "I just—you know—her and Brendon—"

Robby's lip curled as he jerked his chin toward the door. "Get out."

The resident didn’t move.

"Now," Robby snapped, voice suddenly very sharp and very scary. "Go upstairs, find Dr. Park, and tell him exactly what you just said. Word for word. Then you will tell him to send me a grown up who knows how to keep their mouth shut and actually knows what the fuck to do."

The resident turned, snapping another quick picture before shoving his phone away and getting out.

Robby stood there staring at the closed doors, shoulders tight. Then he let out another long exhale through his nose, and turned back to the room.

"Alright, let’s go people, once we get her stable she can go upstairs," he said, already back in the zone, each instruction coming out with a little less patience as everyone worked to get the woman stable. Whitaker had already taken her arm, setting it into a metal basin, saline sloshing as he flushed through it, hands moving fast but careful as he explained every step to his posse of med students.

Robby was on the move again, circling behind his team. He held his hands up to not brush any residents and nurses as he cut across the room, and then he was in front of you.

The snap of his gloves came first, latex pulling tight before he stripped them off, dropping them into the bin without looking. His hands were warm when they closed around your arms, thumbs pressing in to get your attention.

His face swam in and out of your vision.

"Honey," he said, voice cracking a little as he leaned down to your eye level. "I don't think you should be in here. We got this. Go find Dana, okay?"

You nodded, or, at least, tried to. Your fingers still curled into yourself as you swallowed thickly, the smell of iron flooding your senses.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, leaning out into the hall. "Princess, where the hell is Dana?"

"Outside for a smoke!" she yelled from the main desk. And once her eyes landed on you, they widened, and she hurried over. "You okay?"

You nodded again, this time a little stronger, your breath coming a little easier with the door open, the smell easing off.

She stepped in close, one arm coming around your shoulders, steadying you. Robby said something low to her and she nodded, already guiding you away from the fray.

"C’mon, let’s wash your hands," she said, her voice softer now as she guided you down the hall, her hand staying at your back, keeping you moving when your steps slowed.

She brought you to the sink in the room, reaching past you to turn the handle, letting the water run until it warmed before pulling your hands gently under the stream. The sensor clicked, soap dispensing into your palms, and she worked it in carefully, her fingers moving over yours, between them, over your wrists, rinsing away what had already started to dry there. The only sounds were the running water and the buzzing in your head, though you were starting to be able to breathe better without all the machines around.

She rinsed your hands clean, then reached for paper towels, patting them dry and then guided you to the plastic chairs in the middle of the room. She filled a small paper cup from the sink and brought it to you.

You realized then she'd brought you to the lounge. It was quieter in here. It didn't smell like blood, but of someone's salty ramen that was heated up in the microwave, the machine beeping its reminder to whoever forgot it.

Princess had brought over a container of baby wipes, and began pulling them out to wipe your face, your neck. Each one came away with so much blood on it you didn't know what to do. She was crouched in front of you, setting the cup down on the round table, her deep, dark eyes on your face. "You’re alright," she said, quieter now. "Just need a minute. Everything’s okay. You’re here. It’s Wednesday, five in the evening, July 30th, 2025. You’re alright. Breathe."

July 30th, not March 4th. Everything was okay. You weren't here to await the prognosis on your parents lives, but here to see Robby. Robby, you're...friend? What was he? He was your rock, your…your…

You breathed in deeply, your tremors starting to settle. Princess nudged the cup closer, and you took it, fingers wrapping around the thin plastic, cool water sliding down your throat.

The door opened abruptly, and though you thought you'd see Robby come back to check on you, but it was another familiar face.

Brendon Park.

He filled the doorway, broad and stoic and intense.

"Leave." he said shortly to Princess. She rolled her eyes and dropped the last wipe she'd been cleaning your shoulder with onto the table. She quickly glanced at you with an eyebrow raised, and you said a small thank you before she walked out the door.

His sharp eyes watched her, towering over her small stature as she slid past him and out the door. He shut it behind her, and finally looked over to you.

He was across the room in two wide steps, closing the space quickly, lowering himself in front of you. One knee hitting the tile, bringing himself level with where you sat.

"Hey," he said, so differently from his razor sharp dismissal of the nurse, his hands coming up to soothe your thighs. "Hey, look at me, bunny."

Bunny. The nickname Brendon had for you, because of how wide your eyes would get the first time he made it clear he wanted you. Intimidating, terrifying, and yet…you’d come to learn that beneath that piercing, narrowed gaze and that massive, unshakable ego, he was soft in the places no one else ever got to see.

"Did you—did you check on the patient yet?" you asked, your voice catching a little as you wiped at your eyes, fingertips coming away damp. You hadn't realized you'd been crying.

He caught your hand before you could drop it, turning it in his, holding it between his palms. His touch was anchoring, and he brought your fingers to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your knuckles. You caught a flash of the pink spiral bracelet he had on his left wrist.

"Not yet, but she's stable. I wanted to check on you…Heard you found her."

You nodded, chin wobbling.

"You were so brave, bunny." He pressed another kiss to your knuckles, slower this time, his thumb brushing once along the side of your thumb. "My resident, on the other hand, told me he was kicked out of the trauma room. What exactly did he say to you?"

The question pulled you out of wherever your brain had gone in the past twenty minutes, just enough to let a small flicker of amusement break through, like a light in the darkness, as Robby’s face came back to you.

"He called me shark bait," you said, a half smile tugging at your mouth, though it came off as more of a grimace. "You should’ve seen Robby—"

"Robinavitch is going to look like a saint once I get a hold of that fucking kid."

The way his voice dropped predatorily gave you a shiver.

"Brendon—"

He kissed your knuckles again, cutting you off, his grip steadying you where you sat.

"Be a good girl and wait for me, okay?" he said, his eyes holding yours, making sure you were actually listening. "I’ll handle that prick and come find you again later. Gotta save this lady’s arm. Could be in surgery a while."

You nodded. "Thank you…for…" you sighed, shaking your head and looking away, "I don't know."

He stood, letting your hands slip from his, but his touch didn’t leave you. His palm came up to your jaw, tipping your head back to look up at him. You followed the movement, craning your neck and taking him in: broad shoulders, slicked-back hair, his scrubs pulling tight across his chest and arms.

His thumb traced over your bottom lip as he said, "You're welcome, bunny."

Eventually, Princess came into check on you with Dana at her side, as if she had needed back up in case Brendon was still circling the room. They moved you down the hall to a quiet room, handed you a change of clothes and stayed just long enough to make sure you were steady before they went back to their duties. The door clicked shut and the noise felt like it dropped off all at once.

You sat for a little while, hands in your lap, and you could swear there were bits of blood beneath your fingernails even though Princess had scrubbed you clean. It was just the feeling, the memory of it. You flexed your fingers, reminding yourself it was the here and now, that you were okay. You felt silly, a little selfish thinking of your own memories instead of the woman going into surgery. You prayed she'd get her arm back.

You swallowed, shoulders tight, breath evening out slow through your nose. She was here, she was stable, and getting the help she needed. That was all that mattered.

The door opened again before you could sit with it any longer.

Robby came in, his eyes tight and brows thick with threaded worry, striding to the bed quickly and pulling you up into him like he needed to feel you against him. You went easily, arms sliding around his middle, your cheek finding his chest, and let him rock you where you stood, the sway of it doing something quiet to your nerves that hadn’t quite settled since the trauma room.

"How are you?" he sighed into your hair, his hold tightening like he meant it. "I'm so sorry you had to see that."

You pressed your face in a little deeper into the fabric of his hoodie, warm against your skin, familiar in a way that had your throat stinging again. "S'okay, I'm okay," you murmured, your voice still a little frayed at the edges.

You pulled back to look at him, hands bunching the back of his hoodie, holding tightly onto him.

"Honestly I'm…" you sniffled, trying to catch yourself before you really started to cry, "I'm glad I was there when I was. What if that lady just…left her on the side of the road or something?"

Robby was looking at you in that way he got sometimes, something thick behind his eyes that you couldn’t quite pin down, pride and worry and something softer tangled up together, his mouth pulling into a small, tight smile.

"I'm so proud of you, honey," he said, voice gentler now, the edge of it worn down. "You took such good care of her before we got there. And… the fact that you're worried about her and not the memory of... It makes your old man real proud is all."

You gave him a small smile. "You're so sappy today."

"You make me sappy," he said, a soft, breathy laugh slipping out of him, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose like he needed a second to collect himself. When he looked back at you, it was steadier, more like him again. "If you want to go home, McKay is heading out early, she could take you and—"

"No, it's okay," you cut in gently, shaking your head, the idea of leaving so soon not sitting right with you just yet. You didn't want to be all alone when your nervous system caught up to you, if the memories flooded again and no one was there.

"I told Brendon I'd wait for him."

"Oh, it's Brendon's turn is it?" he smirked, his hands giving your arms a small squeeze. It felt good to fall back into this, it felt like solid ground.

"He came to check on me." you said gently, remembering him in the lounge, "it was really sweet."

"Can't say that's the first word that comes to most people's minds when they think of Dr. Park—"

Your fingers slipped under his hoodie to pinch at his back, earning a quick huff of a laugh out of him.

"He is very sweet, actually. He's just… ya know, shy about it."

You knew it sounded ridiculous the second you said it, but you meant it anyway, thinking of the way he’d looked at you, held you, spoke to you.

"Oh, shy is actually the furthest from what that man is!" Robby laughed, louder now, shaking his head.

You smiled, a little wider this time, and then it softened again on its own, your thoughts circling back, something nudging your mind. There was a flicker of hesitation there, something you couldn’t quite ignore now that you’d brought the conversation back to what you'd come for all along.

"Is…that okay with you?" you asked, the question coming out slowly, your fingers still hooked in his hoodie. "If he comes in to see me?"

You weren’t even sure what you were asking for exactly— permission, reassurance, some kind of line you hadn’t crossed yet?—but there was an uncertainty in your stomach, of needing to make sure.

"Anything you want, honey," he said, and there was no hesitation in it, just that same steadiness he always gave you. "Do I need to check on you?"

Heat rushed up your neck, settling hot in your cheeks, your teeth catching your bottom lip as your gaze dropped. Your body knew what that meant before your brain caught up.

You nodded, almost automatically. "Part of the deal, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said, quieter now, something thick and low threading through his voice as he looked at you, "yes it is. Why don't you tell me your plans for Dr. Park today?"

Your head tipped back a little in surprise. "You really want to know?"

"Of course I do." His voice dropped further, almost a whisper now as he leaned in, his face close enough that you could feel his breath move across your lips. "I like to know what my girl gets up to with my staff."

"Technically Brendon isn't on your staff, Dr. Robinavitch…"

That smile pulled across his face, sharper, more of a leer than genuine joy. "Humor me."

You were a little confused, but when had Robby ever given you a reason not to humor this thing you'd created? He was always so open with sharing his ideas with you, his fantasies, his wants and needs and curiosities. It made the two of you a good match, after all. You were eager to fulfill all of them and he was more and more open each time you did. It was like peeling back layers of a person, under their mask, under their outward-facing humanity, and seeing the deepest, darkest parts, and taking him by the hand, letting him lead you through it to the other side.

"I think…" you murmured, your hands sliding up around his neck, fingers brushing along the sweat at his hairline. "I think I want to make him feel good. I just need…to turn my brain off and just…"

The word stalled somewhere behind your teeth, making you feel suddenly very shy.

His arms were wrapped around your waist, and he pulled you up on your toes so you were flush against him, hips to hips, your chest pressing up into his. "…Yes?"

"I really want to…" your eyes lowered, and your voice was hardly a whisper when you said, "suck his dick…"

"What was that now?" he asked, turning his head as if he couldn't hear you right, so that his ear was right at your lips.

"Robbyyy…" you whined, tipping your head back in half frustration, half nervousness.

He pulled you against him even harder, and you suddenly realized the prodding against your belly was his cock, covered by layers of fabric but still pushing into you, throbbing. Your breath caught in your lungs, belly flipping and sending a rush of heat through your spine.

“C’mon, I know you’ve got it in you. Use your words.”

"I want to suck Brendon's dick." you admitted, holding your breath.

Robby hummed, satisfied, and leaned down to kiss you. "What a good girl," he murmured against your mouth before his tongue pushed in, cutting off anything else you might’ve said. The kiss went deep fast, messy, hungry, pulling a desperate little squeak from you as he bent over your frame. As you tipped back, your leg lifted to balance yourself, and he used it, hiking over his hip and guiding you back until the edge of the hospital bed was at your back and he was lifting you across it.

"You drive me fucking crazy sometimes, you know?" he moaned, his kisses growing sloppier by the second. Your moans were climbing higher in octave as he drove his covered member into the crook of your lap, harder and harder, pushing you deep into the thin mattress.

"Fuck, Robby, please—"

"Let me see your mouth—" he demanded, pulling back just to look at you, "gotta make sure you're ready for Dr. Park, don't I?"

You opened it with a little smile.

"Stick your tongue out."

You did as you were bid.

His expression shifted, something darker settling in as he looked at you like that, stretched out on the hospital bed, compliant, waiting. You could feel the way your body reacted to it, the way your pulse picked up in your chest.

He grabbed a glove from the dispenser, snapping it on quick, and then his fingers were at your mouth, pushing in without hesitation. At the same time, his hips pressed harder into you, making you moan desperately.

"Gooood girl…" he murmured. "Gonna go deeper now, let’s see if you can take it."

You focused on your breathing, slow through your nose, your body adjusting around him, letting him guide you. When you tried to close your mouth, he pulled back fast, tapping your tongue in warning.

"Keep your tongue out." he said roughly.

"Yes, sir," you answered, the words muffled but automatic, your tongue back where he wanted it.

He pushed further this time, testing and watching you closely. You caught the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the way his pupils widened as they locked on you.

"What a good girl, not even gagging when I have my hand down your throat." his beard twitched as a smile pulled from his lips, "what if I—"

He pushed in a third finger, your lips stretching around his gloved digits. Your eyes began rolling back at the feeling of him invading your mouth, his cock begging to be let out to give what you needed. You locked your ankles around his lower back, bringing him even closer.

Suddenly your throat constricted when his fingers pushed a little too hard on your gag reflex, and he let out a wrecked groan, pulling his hand from your mouth in a flash and replacing it with his tongue again.

He couldn't seem to help himself today. Usually he was good about checking you over and going about his business, waiting until he was home to have his fun. But today he couldn't stop kissing you. And he was kissing you hungrily. They were wet and sloppy and all you could do was respond in equal fervor, trying to keep up with his abrupt eagerness.

"Fuck, I love kissing you," he groaned, his mouth still pressing into yours between words. "Such a perfect girl… so good to me. Gonna take such good care of Park, aren’t you, honey?"

"Yes, Robby," you moaned as he dragged his covered cock up into you again and again.

"And tonight, when we get home, I want you to be on my bed, naked, and I'm going to—"

"Robby!" a voice came from the door, following by a few quick, hard knocks.

Dana.

He groaned under his breath, shoulders dropping, and then he was moving, pulling back, helping you sit up like nothing had happened even though your body was still humming with heat and your heart still thrummed in your chest.

"Yeah, come in," he said, already sounding like himself again once he cleared his throat. He didn't face away from you, just waited to hear her come in over his shoulder.

Dana stepped in quick. "Got an incoming trauma at the backdoor." Her eyes flicked to you, apology plain there before she added, "MVC."

MVC. Motorized vehicle collision.

Suddenly all the heat from your body drained out at once.

"Okay," he said, pushing his hands into his face, dragging them down until he sighed and added:. "I'm coming."

She nodded, and shut the door behind him.

Robby looked back down at you, a little sad in his eyes.

"I'm sorry—"

"It's okay, of course," you said quickly, understanding and a little breathless. You plastered on a smile as much as you didn't feel its effects, and added: "Go save lives."

He bent down, kissing you for longer than absolutely necessary, and then pulled away with a whispered, "To be continued. I'll let Dr. Park know you're in here."

You nodded, humming as you licked your lips. "Bye."

Robby looked over his shoulder at you as he got to the door, "Bye, honey."

It didn't take too long for Brendon to find you, to hold you, to talk to you about the day you'd had. He spent a long time just sitting next to you. He'd stayed like that for a while, his hand at your back, massaging in circles while he listened. It was something you wished everyone got to see, though… selfishly, there was another part of you that thought it was sweet that he was only like this with you. Besides, you knew he wasn't always sweet or gentle. He was good about knowing when to give it to you just how you liked it.

And it definitely didn't take long after you told him what you'd wanted to do to him that both of your clothes were discarded into the corner and he was pushing himself down your throat.

"That's it," Brendon sighed, "turn off that pretty little brain of yours and take it."

It was actually working. Your brain felt fuzzy in the most intoxicating way, senses filling with the smell of musk and his cologne—something like evergreen and citrus with expensive clean essence. You couldn't help the way your eyes slipped shut as it settled over you.

The sounds, stacking on top of each other until they were all you could hear, were like a symphony orchestra that lulled you. It was the deep, throaty pull of his breathing, the rough noises he let out without thinking, the wet, obscene suction of your mouth, and rhythmic contact of his balls against your chin.

It began to pull you under, your mind drifting, going quiet.

His hands moved to the back of your head, gentler than anything else about him, and you opened your eyes, looking up.

"I got you," he murmured, voice lower now, closer. "Gonna get this out of your way."

He pulled you down his member, slick with your saliva, to get you closer, your throat contracting around the invasion of the thick, mushroom-shaped tip. He was so thick it had your lips stretching, your jaw feeling like it needed to unhinge just to take him fully. You breathed through your nose, eyes only able to see the beautifully cut V of his hips as he held you in place.

"Stay right there, bunny."

His fingers worked through your hair with a gentleness that didn’t match the rest of him, the most intimidating doctor of the OR, with his sharp gaze on you. He gathered the strands back, keeping it off your face. The pink spiral tie slipped from his wrist, stretched between his fingers before he pulled your hair into place. He'd done it so many times to you before, with the concentration only a surgeon could have while he tied it off without causing any strain to you.

“Aren’t you gonna get made fun of for a pink hair tie on your wrist?”

He’d smirked, snapping the plastic lightly against his skin.

“I’d love to see them try.” There’d been a note of amusement in it when he looked at you knowingly. “Been a while since I’ve had a good fight.”

“People are gonna ask questions,” you’d sang in a knowing-tone, trying to match his playfulness even as you put your clothes back on from the side of the hospital bed. You'd only known him a few weeks then, only seen him in private once before this. He'd decided to carry a tie with him at work after your first encounter where your hair got in both of your faces, and stuck to you in sweaty strands.

He’d stepped in closer then, crowding your space without touching you, tall enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep his eyes, his glower sending shivers down your back.

"Let them, little bunny." he whispered, pushing your hair back behind your ear, "And I'll tell them the truth. That if they'd pay more attention to their own problems, maybe they'd get their cock sucked as good as I do. Only losers can't handle a pink hair tie on their wrist."

You'd laughed it off, but he'd meant it.

“Better,” he soothed, wrapping his hand around the ponytail he’d tied, lifting you back to pull you off him. You were left catching your breath, a thin line of spit still connecting you to him.

“Fuck—yeah,” he muttered, his other hand coming down to himself, fisting the head slowly at the top as he looked at you. His mouth parted, eyes fixed on your face in bliss.

"You're so cute like this, bunny," he moaned, "even cuter when my cock is in your mouth, don't you think?"

“Yes, Brendon,” you answered softly, breath still uneven and your lips parting again as his hand kept you in place, held open for him.

“Why don’t you go ahead and touch yourself,” he went on, a small smile pulling at his mouth. He traced your open lips with the tip of himself, coating your bottom lip in a trail of his precum and your own spit. “I can feel you fidgeting. She’s eager, isn’t she?”

You hesitated for a moment, rubbing your lips together uncertainly.

He leaned down then, pressing a brief kiss to your mouth. His voice quieter when he spoke. “What is it?”

"I—” you swallowed. “I need… permission.”

“To touch yourself?” he asked, a flicker of something amused passing through him. “I’m giving it to you. I want to watch.”

You shook your head, a small wriggle of embarrassment making your stomach flip. “I need it from…Robby.”

That got a laugh out of him, his thumb coming up to wipe at your bottom lip before he stood again. “Jesus… You two are...” he shook his head, not finishing the sentence.

His hand stayed on your hair, but he released himself to reach down into his pocket. He took out his pager, your eyes widening—

"What're you doing—"

“Robby? It’s Park.” His voice shifted back to his usual short-worded, clinical, controlled tone as he brought the device to his ear. “Yeah, she’s fine. She wants to ask you something.”

He held it out to your ear.

“Honey?” Robby’s voice came through, a little distorted. “Everything okay?”

"Hi, Robby, yes," you said, breathlessly, your skin hot with a little bit of shame as you eyed Brendon above you. His eyes had gone dark with arousal, his hand still at the back of your head. He swayed his hips so his cock touched your lips as you spoke. You kissed it gently.

"What do you need?" Robby asked.

"Ummm…" you said, then licked Brendon's tip when it prodded at your face again, then spoke again, "I was…wondering if I could touch myself."

"You—? Oh."

There was a moment of quiet on the line, and then you heard Robby's voice muttering something to someone away from the speaker, and a moment later he was back.

“You’re with him right now?”

Your throat tightened. “Yes.”

"Fuck," he breathed. "Let me hear it. Let me hear how good you take it, and then I give you permission. But honey —I hope you're ready to be up very late tonight."

"Yes, Robby." you said, goosebumps rising over your flesh.

You looked up at Brendon. “He wants to listen.”

He raised an eyebrow, something darkly curious flickering across his expression, but he nodded.

You leaned back in, your mouth finding Brendon's cock again and opening wide, tongue out flat to massage the underside. His breath left him in a long exhale, his hand tightening slightly where it held you, the phone kept close. You pushed yourself up and down onto his length, bobbing until you gagged on an especially rough thrust against your palette.

“That’s my girl—” Robby said, quieter now, like he was trying not to be overheard. “Okay, be good. I need to go. You can have one. Do you hear me?”

Brendon's hand was still around your hair, pushing you down onto him further. "Mhm", you muffled, half a choked moan.

The line went dead.

Brendon pulled the pager away, tossing it aside, his chest rising and falling heavier now, something in him sharpened by it all.

“Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered. He pushed himself back between your lips faster now, “Go on, now. Show me.”

Your hand moved tentatively down your body, until you pushed a finger under your panties and pressed into your center. You were an absolute mess. Sopping, slippery, your hand barely finding any friction where it met your clit. You moaned around his dick, the sound muffled, helpless.

His head flew back, Ah, ah, fuck— chest rising and falling breath catching, spilling out in uneven bursts. It filled your ears, core pulsing in time with it, like your body had locked onto his rhythm, gaining momentum towards the edge with every passing second.

You closed your eyes, letting him take the control he wanted, the control you wanted to give. He pushed his cock so far into your mouth your nose nearly touched the skin of his belly, and your throat began to convulse around him.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come, Bunny—I’m gonna—oh fuck,” his voice broke roughly, choking on a groan as he went on: “you take me so well… such a good girl… that’s it—keep touching that pretty pussy.”

All you could do was moan, your vision blurring, your body tightening as the feeling built. Your fingers moved faster, sloppier. Your throat jerked as your body began to tighten up.

“Yeah,” he breathed, watching you, “I can feel it… you’re getting close, aren’t you?” His grip shifted, steady, insistent. “C’mon—come with me. Let me see what Robby gets to have, huh?”

That sent you over the edge. Your mouth fell open around him and he continued to fuck into your waiting, wet, wanting lips until he was pushing your head down so hard your nose finally did press into his navel, hot spend filling the back of your mouth.

"Swallow." he growled between moans, and you listened—barely tasting the salty tang of his release since he was so far down your throat.

When your hand came up to tap at his thigh, he eased back immediately, grip loosening, pulling away with a quiet breath. He adjusted himself back into his pants quickly, then dropped down in front of you, close again.

His hand came to your face, steadying you, and he kissed you—hard at first, then slower, taking his time as he licked the remnants of himself off your tongue.

Finally, as you caught your breath and he caught his, he pressed gentle, chaste kisses to your lips until your lips felt bruised.

"You—" he kissed you, "are—" another kiss, "—amazing—"

You giggled, sighing dreamily, bringing your hands to his hair. It was a little stiff from where he'd slicked it back, but the nape of it was beginning to soften from sweat. "Thank you for coming to see me. I had fun."

"Glad I could turn it around for you, Bunny." he said. His hand slipped behind your head, undoing the tie he’d put in, careful as he pulled it free and slipped it back onto his wrist. “Don’t wanna forget this—for next time.”

You smiled up at him as he stood above you, hiking his hands under your armpits, and raising you up to your feet.

"You sure you're okay?"

You nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m going home soon anyway. It’s almost eight—Robby’s probably done.”

“Does it ever…” he started, and then stopped, something changing in his expression when he looked at you. It was the most uncertain than you’d seen him before.

“What?”

He shrugged with those expansive shoulders, adjusting himself, buying a second. “If you were my girl, I wouldn’t be sharing. That’s all.” He paused. “You’re too perfect.”

"I'm no one's girlfriend." you replied, maybe a little sharply.

He looked at you for a second longer than he should have, something tightening in his eyes. It was like he was building up that persona he wore around the hospital. The Shark—with his dark, heavy brow and pinched face.

“Robby should be careful,” he said, quieter now.

“Why?” you asked, your mouth pulling into a frown as you watched him.

He sighed, stepping close to you, and bringing his thumb and forefinger to your chin before lifting your face to look up at him. For a second, you remembered how intimidating he could be as he stared down at you with that piercing gaze.

“Because one day someone’s going to slip up,” he said quietly, his voice dropping. “And you’re going to realize it’s a lot less about the sex than you think.”

You couldn’t tell what your face gave away. Your mind stalled, blank, but your stomach dipped, the words slamming heavier than anything else he could have said.

He dropped his hand from your face, eyes staying on you a moment longer before he turned, stopping at the door to look back once more.

"Have a good night, Bunny. It was good to see you."

his hands are shaking when he cups your face, thumbs brushing your cheeks like you’re made of glass.

is this okay?

tell me if it’s too much, please

we dont have to if you dont want

he kisses you so soft it makes your chest ache, slow rolls of his hips. you can feel every tremble in his arms where they’re braced beside your head, the way his breath stutters hot against your ear.

you feel… god, you feel incredible.

all sweet, pressing these tiny little kisses along your jaw while he pushes in slowly, letting you adjust, forehead dropped to yours as he tells you how well you are doing.

but the second you moan and roll your hips up to meet him?

ask him for more?

tell him that you want to feel him tomorrow?

it's game over.

he blames it on biology taking over, his eyes squeezing shut as he processes what youre asking, that sweet boyish expression twisting into something desperate. he lets out this broken, wrecked sound and suddenly he’s driving into you hard, hips snapping forward with zero warning

he’s fucking you like he’s starving for it now, deep and rough, the slap of skin on skin loud and filthy in the room. he feels bad for how little control he has, it's been far too long since he has touched someone like this.

touched someone, and loved them like this.

sweetheart—god, l'm sorry, you just—

it makes his movements sloppy as he can't get enough, he needs to take you over and over and over til neither of you can forget this feeling

shaky hands gripping your thighs hard enough to bruise as he folds you practically in half. he’s panting into your neck, sweat dripping from his messy hair onto your skin, every thrust punching the air out of you as he apologises against your skin, but he needs this, he needs you.

eyes wet and wild, his cock is so deep and he’s hitting that spot over and over like he was made for it. the gentle boy from five minutes ago is gone; now it’s just him completely lost in you, muttering filthy broken praises between gritted teeth:

baby—i'm sorry, god—just feel so good—

It would sound appealing, had you not known the consequences. You see, Robby likes a punishment. He works towards it, purposefully getting you and him in trouble just to get Jack or Dana to bend him over their knees. It’d be fine if he didn’t implicate you in it all, but he likes that too, licking his lips and humping the air when he gets to watch you get edged for hours or have Jack’s cock shoved down your throat.

Underneath you, Robby shifts. He pulls your panties to the side and lifts you slightly. When you lower back down you feel the thick tip of his cock pressing against your entrance.

Your back arches, “Wait! They’re gonna be home soon!”

Robby scoffs. His tip is slipped inside now, and Robby inches the rest of his length inside. He worked you open enough that your gasps are from pleasure alone.

“Come on, just relax,” Robby teases, “I won’t tell if you—“

Robby’s head snaps back, a hand suddenly fisted in his hair. You scream bloody murder until your eyes land on a familiar face. Two familiar faces. Jack and Dana hover over the two of you. Dana is the one holding Robby's head as far back as his neck will allow.

Your mouth moves faster than your brain, “I’m sorry! Dana, Jack, we didn’t mean to–”

“Not now, kid!” Dana bites. She’s pissed. Beyond pissed. Just a glare from her has you pressing your mouth together and lowering your gaze. “Michael, talk.”

That’s… new. Usually you're involved in the explain part, too. Especially because Dana likes to see you flounder.

Reluctantly, you lift your chin. Dana and Jack are just as they were before, angry. Except, their anger doesn’t seem to be directed at you. Not even a little. You stare at Dana, waiting for her to dish out your punishment. She doesn’t look at you. You turn to Jack, who is also not focused on you.

“You—“ Jack jabs a finger at Robby, the points by his feet. “Here.”

Robby scrambles, practically throwing you off of his lap to sit nice and pretty at Jack’s feet. Robby’s still smiling. Does he not notice the same thing you are? Maybe not, because his eyes seem to be on the spectacle of Jack unbuckling his belt. To his credit, Robby keeps his hands to himself as Jack pulls his cock out of his boxers. Though, his mouth hangs open as Jack holds the hardening length in front of his face.

“So, Michael,” Jack’s hand lazily pumps his length. “Do you want to tell me why Dana and I come home to you deliberately getting our girl in trouble?”

You can't hold back your surprise, letting out a soft, "Woah..."

A look of oh shit crosses Robby’s face. He has little time to respond before Jack is shoving his cock in his mouth. You whine, but Dana is quick to shush you. She kneels in front of you. Gently, she pulls your panties down your legs, tossing the fabric behind her. You hear a whine, and when your eyes manage to look at something that isn’t Dana, you find that the panties have landed right on Robby’s lap.

Jack lets out an airy chuckle, “How’d you do that?”

Dana doesn’t even look to see what ‘that’ is. “I’m good, Abbot. You know this.”

At this point, Robby isn’t even sucking Jack off. Jack is just fucking his face. Robby is barely holding it together, eyes on the panties sitting perfectly on his cock as he struggles to find purchase on the carpet. Tears and saliva run down his face. The sight alone makes you whimper, pressing your thighs together.

Brushing a strand of hair from your ear, Dana leans in, “Patience, honey. You'll get your reward soon.” Loud enough so Robby can hear it, she adds, “I always knew it was Robby getting you into trouble. My good girl would never be bad, would she?”

You make sure to make eye contact with Robby, his mouth stuffed full of cock, when saying, “Never. It was him.”

Jack fists a hand in Robby’s hair, lifting him off his length. Jack’s cock stands fully erect now, bobbing up and down slightly in its freedom. Robby glares openly at you, and when Jack sees his scowl, he clicks his tongue.

“Hey,” Jack snaps. “Eyes up here, Mike.”

Even you flinch at the nickname. It’s cold. You’ve heard Jack call Robby Michael plenty, but something about Mike seems so wrong. Dana lets out a low whistle as Robby pouts. With his cock leaking untouched and the puppy dog eyes he gives to Jack, you almost feel bad for Robby. Almost. Because as much as you’ve been in that position, you’ve always been in it because of him.  Jack’s cock bobs mere inches from Robby’s face. He holds it with one hand at the base, almost taunting Robby as he says, “You’re gonna watch while I give our girl a reward for her good behavior.”

“A consolation prize is more like it,” you grumble.

“Careful,” Dana chuckles, but pinches your nipple in warning. “Getting fucked and then sitting on a face is a pretty good consolation prize.”

Dana takes Jack’s place next to Robby. She points at the armchair and the man wordlessly scrambles to take a seat. Dana then plops herself on Robby's lap and winks at you. Jack manhandles you so you’re hanging off the edge of the couch with a front row seat to whatever the hell Dana is about to do or not do to Robby.

To Dana, you wonder, “I’m gonna sit on your face?”

“If you want, but…” Dana grabs Robby’s face, squishing his cheeks together, “I have a better idea.”

Robby looks ready to cry at Dana’s words. You could cry, too, though for a greatly different reason.

Your nerves are on fire as Jack settles behind you. His cock rests on the globe of your ass. It’s wet, leaking from his tip and still coated in Robby’s saliva. It’s weighty, too. Jack has fucked you before, but something about the acknowledgement of a reward, a treat for your good behavior, has you squirming.

Robby, on the other hand, is about to be miserable. How can you tell? Maybe it has something to do with Dana’s fingers circling and pinching his nipples. Robby's jaw is slack, only small gasps coming out as she teases him. One of her hands slides down Robby’s body. It rests on one of his thighs, stroking the skin there and ignoring his bucking hips.

“Can you touch me, too?” Robby whines underneath Dana. He pants, breath heavy as he grips the armrests.

“Hear that?” Jack leans close to your ear. His voice is so low, you’re unsure if Dana and Robby could pick up on it, “Don’t think I’ve ever seen him so upset about a punishment before.”

“Oh, sweetie, I am touching you,” Dana emphasizes her point with a flick of Robby’s nipple. He arches his back and moans.

“My dick! I–” Another pinch. Robby gasps. “–Fuck! My cock! Please, Dana!”

“Oh, Michael,” Jack taunts. “I don’t think you get to call the shots right now.” Then, softly to you, “Are you ready, kid?”

You nod desperately, “Please.”

As Jack’s cock sinks into you, somehow always a stretch, your brain is reduced to repeat one, simple thought.

baran hums, squaring her hips to thrust herself a little deeper. her measured stare drips across you and jack as she observes the build of his back. your chin settles just above his shoulder, your mouth parting to gasp when baran pushes forward again, causing the three of you to jolt together.

“thought you’d last a little longer than this. i’m just getting started.”

baran’s pairs her words with blanketing herself on top of jack, mushing her tits against his bare skin. the move finally pushes her all the way inside him, and a loud groan rips from his chest. baran’s hand squeezes jack's shoulder before slipping her palm to your face, holding it against your cheek just as she starts a soft, skin-smacking pound.

a wink from her has your lips curling with a drunken smile. "c-can feel when you find his spot... he, like–shit. his cock just kinda jumps inside me."

baran lets out her own little huff at your slurred words. the second dildo of her strap-on isn't as girthy as what's packed inside jack at the moment, but it's still big enough to snatch some of the air from her lungs.

the stars in her eyes while you gaze back at her isn't helping much. nor do the cries spill out of jack, noises that grow louder and louder as his neck beads with a salty sweat.

by the time he reaches his peak, jack can't talk. he just trembles and sobs your and baran's name into your skin. his hand reaching back to feel whatever part of baran he can find in this whirl of pumping his balls empty inside you.

baran keeps rolling her hips with a purposeful grind, sliding her thumb inside your mouth for you to moan around while jack's tip kisses impossibly deep inside you.

"has he got you nice and full yet, sweetheart?"

all you can do is bob your head at baran's panting question. jack is no better, clenching around the fake cock in his ass with deep whines. completely lost and drooling against your skin.

"guess you should return the favor, hm?"

she doesn't wait for you to respond. just uses jack, helping fuck his still-hard cock inside you until you shudder and splash with a couple of tiny squirts.

"there ya go." those are the first words out of jack, and still, they sound like a mess of nothing. he doesn't even know who he's talking to. all he can be certain of is that your gush was enough to soak his sack, and that his entire body is swimming in bliss. "y'keep goin', and i'm might blow again, b."

covered in a light sheen of sweat, baran humps herself into the feeling of the silicone inside her, crashing herself into jack who's got a hand squeezing at your chest.

baran's orgasm switches her thrusts from pointed to sloppy, her pussy pulsing with hot thrums as she buries her face. kneading her entire self to smush against you and jack in order to keep chasing the high. jack fucks himself back and forth with what little power he has left, milking himself by way of your strong clench around him.

slowly, the movements come to a stop. with breaths long lost and bodies drenched in sweat, you're halfway to sleep by the time baran slides out of jack to roll onto her side and next to you, unlatching the strap to throw it. jack has to pull out even slower, humming sleepily at the large dollops of cum that seep from your hole.

jack can just barely wiggle to the opposite side of you, watching with hooded eyes when baran tucks herself against you. it takes the man a few slooow blinks to catch up, pressing a messy kiss into both your mouths just in time for a final collapse.

you breathe out. “shower?”

jack’s already close to snoring. baran mumbles for him.

“bath. should probably give him a few, though….”

_____

Now

The house is too quiet.

Not empty, just wrong somehow. Everything is as it should be, the fading summer sun peaking through the large windows, the steady hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the faint tick of the antique clock from the family room. All the familiar sounds are there. It should feel normal. But it doesn’t.

Robby drops his keys into the bowl by the door and doesn’t realize he’s waiting for your voice until he doesn’t hear it. 

You normally call out to him regardless of where you are or what you’re doing in the house. You always greet him with a smile and a question of how his shift went. 

Tonight, there’s none of that.

He toes off his shoes slowly, listening again. Still nothing. He quickly strips out of his scrubs and dumps them in the laundry room right off the back door - a renovation you’d made to make his life easier during covid despite his insistence you didn’t need to. He throws on a pair of clean sweats and a tee and heads off towards your office. The door is open, light on, but you’re not there. 

The couch is empty too, no glass of wine on the table or cheesy romance novel abandoned on the armrest. 

You’re home. He knows that much. Your car is in the garage.

You’re just not here. 

The skin on the back of his neck pricks up, the same way it does when he knows that something catastrophic is about to happen in the ED, and he moves up the stairs, quickening his pace. 

He finds you in your bedroom.

You’re sitting up against the headboard, laptop open, phone facedown beside you. You’ve changed out of your work clothes into your normal loungewear, but that hasn’t stopped you from continuing your work.

You don’t look up when he leans against the doorframe. 

“Hey,” he says.

There’s a beat of silence, heavier than he’s ever felt between the two of you.

“Hey,” you answer, finally glancing up at him.

Your voice isn’t right, neither is the look in your eyes. A look he’s never been on the receiving end of. It’s not cold per say, not even sharp or angry, just distant. 

“Still working, huh? What’s it you’re always telling me…” he tries to joke. “That I need to start having boundaries because I work too much?”

He laughs but it falls flat at your nonchalant shrug.

“How was your shift?” You bulldoze through his attempt at humor, eyes fixed onto the screen in front of you. 

He groans and runs a hand down his face.

“Honestly…one for the books - the bad ones, that is,” he says. 

Normally this is where you’d look at him with sympathetic understanding, where you’d be gently pushing him to talk about it, to let you take on some of the load. After a particularly bad shift you’d even pat the covers next to you and let him soak in your warmth as you ran your hands through his hair as he decompressed. 

Tonight, you just nod.

“That’s rough,” you say quietly. 

Robby blinks, waiting for more. For the follow-up question. For the soft hand at the back of his neck. For the weight of your attention warming him from the inside out, but nothing comes. 

He steps fully into the room, eyebrows drawn down as he stares at you. 

“You okay?”

You hesitate, just a beat, but enough for him to notice. 

“I’m good.”

The lie isn’t obvious, but he’s known you long enough to spot your tells.

He raises an eyebrow in your direction. 

“Sure you are,” he trails off, waiting for you to snap at him for his pushing but it never comes. He tries a different tactic. “It’s not too late. Why don’t we go crack open a bottle of wine and watch some of that trash TV you love.”

You take a breath and give him a soft little smile. The polite professional kind. The one you use with board members and clients and people you don’t let close enough to see the real, messy parts of you. A smile that’s never been used on him in your decades of friendship.

“I really have to get this done.”

His mouth falls open. He closes it. Tries again.

“You eat?”

“Yes.”

That lie lands like a slap.

You finally look at him then. Really look. And Robby’s chest feels tight at what he sees, at the emotion he can tell you’re desperately trying to hide. 

“Sorry, I,” you take a deep breath, “I’m just tired.”

Robby’s not an idiot, he can tell when he’s not wanted somewhere. You’re not trying to be cruel but it doesn’t make his chest hurt less.

He nods slowly. “Okay, I’ll uh…I’ll leave you be then.”

“Okay.”

One word. Flat. Final. 

He lingers in the doorway longer than necessary, holding out hope that you’ll stop him. 

You don’t.

You sit there long after his door closes, staring at the screen in your lap without seeing it. You didn’t lie, you are tired.

Just not in the way he thinks. 

You’re not physically tired, not tired from work, or your long days dealing with clients and overbearing coworkers.

No, you’re tired of waking up every day and pretending that nothing in your life is breaking. 

And the worst part, is that the thing hurting you the most is sleeping just down the hall.

_____

Then

Back then, everything your sad, broke ass owned fit into seven flimsy cardboard boxes and a singular milk crate that doubled as a nightstand. 

Your Oakland apartment also doubled as a perfect representation of your post-masters life - sad, lonely, somehow never a comfortable temperature. The walls were a questionable yellow, and you had a sneaking suspicion they used to actually be white. The radiator kept you up at all hours of the night with its clanking, and the walls were paper thin, but it was home. 

You loved it anyway.

Robby moved in on a Sunday with a large suitcase, two dufflebags, and his own milk crate full of records. Older than you, but not by much, you’d met weeks earlier through a mutual friend - two people living the same life of long shifts and extra thin wallets. You’d both needed a roommate and neither of you had been in a position to be picky. 

By the end of the first month you had settled into your routine effortlessly, sharing meals and trading stories of antics at the hospital and your office that made each other laugh. It made the extra long shifts and abysmal pay just a bit more worth it to come home to someone in a similar boat.

The ritual started by accident.

It was ‘one of those days’. The ones where everything that could go wrong did. Your meeting had imploded, your pain in the ass male coworker undermining you to boost his own reputation. Robby’s second year of residency in the ED at PTMC had been a particularly brutal one and you could tell from the look on his face when he walked through the door that he had lost someone during shift. The kind of bad shift that lodged beneath his ribs and stayed there.

You were both quiet in the kitchen that night, standing on opposite sides of the small island, pretending to hold yourselves together. 

Finally, Robby seemed to snap out of it.

“How many quarters have you got?”

You blinked. 

“Why?”

He shrugged, pulling out loose change from his pockets and eyeing the sad jar on the kitchen island that held your hopes for a better air conditioner come summer.

“Because I’ve got eleven, and we need twenty four.”

You checked the jar, your wallet, the couch cushions.

“Twenty-five.”

His face lit up like you’d just told him he’d won the lottery.

So you put on sweatshirts, hopped onto the bus, and slid your exact change to the teller at the Monongahela Incline, because the Duquesne was always packed with tourists and flashing cameras, and people who weren’t even close to feeling the quiet desperation that you and your roommate were.

You rode all the way up with your knees touching, faces plastered to the window as the city appeared, sprawling before you glowing under a setting sun.

The view at the overlook stretched open for miles and you watched as streetlights flickered to life, the rivers darkening to an inky black as the sun slipped behind the slopes in the west. The city looked softer from above - less sharp, less demanding. 

You sat on the concrete with your backs against the railing.

Robby handed you the cup of ice cream he’d insisted on buying even though it meant you were broke until Friday. You’d splurged on a double scoop, insisting on it since it was one of the final days of the season that the store would be open. 

You talked about nothing and everything.

You told him about the career you were working towards - the version of your life that you desperately wanted. How you'd come from nothing and longed to make something of yourself. He told you about the doctor he was afraid he might never be good enough to become. You traded fears and secrets, two people that still had faith in the world, hoping to leave their mark on it.

That night you felt a bond forming that would transcend the decades to come.

That night became the standard. 

Bad days always led back up the Mon to the top of the Mount. 

Good days too. 

Sometimes you didn’t talk at all. You’d just sit there, taking in the skyline, letting the hum of the city wash over you as you got lost in thought. 

You learned the weight that he carried, saw the toll his career took on him. You learned how his laugh sounded when it came from his chest instead of his throat. He learned how you went quiet right before you were about to break - and how to interrupt it with terrible jokes and cheap desserts. 

You’d fought once, a year into your cohabitation, over a utility bill that you both swore up and down was the other's responsibility to pay. 

You’d made up on the incline with gas station coffee and a bag of M&M’s you split in half. 

When he made it to Senior Resident, you rode up and sat in the cold until your fingers went numb. When you landed a major win at work, he bought you an ice cream with 'extra' money he definitely didn't have. 

Somewhere between the quarters and the shared exhaustion, you became home to each other.

It was an unspoken truth. Never said aloud because there was no need. 

And that was the most dangerous part.

Because years later, when you’d both have more money than you ever imagined, when the ice cream became ceremonial and the bus rides became nostalgic, you would still come back to this place in your mind.

This version of you.

This version of him.

Before the silence between you started to hurt.

_____

Now

It doesn’t take long for Robby to notice that it wasn’t just a bad one off day. 

Your routine is as ingrained in him as his own. 

You’re still in the house, still moving around, going about your day. But somehow he rarely manages to catch a glimpse of you.

You don’t end up in the same rooms by accident, not like the way you used to. There’s no unconscious gravity pulling you together in the kitchen at midnight, no overlap at the end of long days where you’d sit shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen island basking in each other’s presence.

Now when he enters a room, you find a reason to leave it.

He comes home after a late shift one night to find the house silent. It was a weekday which normally meant he’d find you curled up on the couch under a fuzzy blanket nursing a glass of wine, half-watching some absolute trash reality tv show that he pretends not to like. Normally you’d glance up and give him shit for being late before pouring him a glass.

Tonight, the couch is empty. TV off. 

You come in an hour later while he’s dozing on the couch, medical journal open on his chest, Below Deck murmuring nonsense in the background. 

The sound of the lock turning wakes him and he sits up, blearily rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Hey.”

You pause just inside the entryway, taking a deep breath before responding. 

“Hey.”

He can tell that something is wrong, your posture screaming at him that you’d rather be anywhere but here. 

“Everything ok?”

“Yep. Just grabbed a drink with a coworker.”

His brow furrows at the vague answer. He knows all of your colleagues, has quite a few unkind thoughts about the majority of them as well. He secretly lived for the idle gossip of your corporate office, so far removed from the life and death of the ED.

You used to tell him names and stories. He used to be able to tell by the tone of your voice whether the drinks out were celebratory or necessary. Now you give him facts like you’re reading off a patient chart. Cold and brief. 

“Oh,” he says. “Nice.”

You nod at him and disappear towards the stairs without a glance back. 

He stays on the couch long after you’ve gone, staring into the coffee table like it might explain what's going on with his best friend.

It just gets worse from there. 

You stop waiting up for him. Stop asking if he made it home in one piece. You start staying later than usual at work and you seem to be traveling way more than was ever previously required of you. 

Robby starts checking his phone more often. His concern growing with every text you don’t send.

_____

Then

It was the third year of Robby’s residency and he’d stumbled through the door, scrubs askew, and the bags under his eyes more prominent than you’d ever seen. He flopped onto the couch and you’d wrinkled your nose at the smell of antiseptic and whatever insanity he’d gotten into at the ED rolling off of him. 

You’d nudged him in the thigh with your socked toe.

“Rough day, stinky?”

His head lolled your way, propped up by the lumpy couch cushions and he’d rolled his eyes. 

“Hilarious,” he dead panned, and lifted an arm up before he took a whiff of his sleeve. He’d winced and quickly lowered it back down to his side.

“I think working in the ED has me nose blind.” 

You let out a laugh and nudged him with your toe again.

“What’s got you so bent out of shape?”

He groaned, dropping his head back onto the couch again.

“A kid today couldn’t pronounce my name. ‘Dr. Robivvy, Dr. Rop, Dr. Rope-in-a-ditch, poor kid tried so hard but looked at me like I was an alien. I tried to correct him, but…” he threw his hands up in exasperation. “It’s impossible!”

You bit back a laugh at his distraught tone. 

“It’s not impossible, Michael. Maybe you just need a nickname. Something kids can actually say.”

He’d looked at you, suspicion filling his gaze. “A nickname?”

“Yeah,” you said, settling into the arm of the couch. “Something simple and friendly, easy on the tongue…” you’d trailed off, the gears in your head turning. “Something like… Dr. Robby!”

“Robby?”

“Robby,” you repeated firmly. “Easy, approachable. No one will ever mispronounce it. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

Robby mulled it over, still hesitant. 

“It’s either that or Dr. Mike, and that just sounds like a male stripper.”

He groaned, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this.”

You shrugged. “Too late to back out now. It’s official. You’re Robby now.”

And no matter how much guff he gave you over the years he cherished you calling him Robby, almost as much as he did during the rare moments you called him Michael.

_____

Now

He thought he was past the point of being startled - working in emergency care will do that to a guy - but his heart leaps into his chest when he runs directly into you in the kitchen at 2am, your glass of water upending onto his pajamas with a startled yelp.

“Jesus,” he mutters, futilely wiping away at the water now clinging to his sleep shirt. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry,” your hands are already reaching for him, clutching a dish towel and trying in vain to mop up some of the moisture from the soaked fabric. 

He lets out a laugh and gently bats your hand away, stripping out of his Steelers tee and using the fabric to blot dry the little liquid that soaked into the waistband of his boxers. 

“Trust me,” his voice is raspy from sleep. “I’ve been covered in much worse. It’s just a little water.”

When you don’t answer he glances up at you and finds your gaze fixed on his chest, slowly roaming down towards his stomach, eyes glazed.

He’s not sure where the words come from, but he’s been desperate to break you out of whatever funk you’ve both been in so he grins and crosses his arms over his chest, trying not to feel subconscious about the fact that his body isn't as toned as it was earlier in your friendship.

“See something you like?” He grins, but his heart drops as your gaze shutters and you glance away. 

Before, you would have rolled your eyes at him and lovingly punched him in the arm. Before, he knew where he stood with you. Before, things were different. 

Now you just mutter something unintelligible and try to scurry past him. His hand lands gently on your arm, stopping you before you can flee the scene.

“Hey, sorry,” he waits for a response but all he gets is your gaze avoiding his. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” your tone is clipped again and he exhales through his nose.

“Things have been…different with us. What’s going on?”

You look at the floor.

“Different how?”

His eyebrows shoot through his hairline at your response and he lets out a scoff.

“Oh come on,” he tries to keep his tone soft, friendly, slouching down to try and meet your gaze. “You know what I mean. Did I do something to upset you?”

Your flinch is so minute he almost misses it, but he doesn’t and his chest tightens at the thought that this is somehow his fault. 

“I did -”

“You didn’t do anything, Michael,” your tone is tired and you finally meet his eyes. You never used to lie to him like this and it makes him want to try even harder to fix things.

“I hate this… weirdness between us recently.”

Your grip tightens around your half empty glass and you carefully place it on the counter, glancing down to where a bit of water has puddled on the floor. You crouch to mop it up, avoiding his statement all together. 

“Should get this so we don’t slip,” you murmur softly. You’ve barely finished before he’s gently pulling you back up to face him. 

“It’s not like you to avoid a question… or confrontation for that matter. What the hell is going on with you?”

You sigh and throw the dish towel onto the counter. 

“Nothing,” the word is final and lands like a punch to the chest. “I just… I’m tired is all. Goodnight, Michael.”

Before he can open his mouth to push you further you’ve spun and are halfway up the stairs. Half empty glass of water left sitting on the counter.

Later that night, Robby lies awake, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded over his ribs like he’s holding himself together. 

He replays everything. 

The pauses, the way you don’t look at him, the way your voice flattens when it never used to. The fact that he now has pretty good confirmation that it was him that made you feel like you needed to pull away, has his mind spinning on what he could have possibly done. 

Sure, he was a crotchety old bastard most days, but that was basically his modus ​​operandi at this point and hadn’t bothered you in the years that you’d known him. His mind flies over when you started pulling away and if there was anything that happened around the same time but he comes up short.

He turns over and stares at his door, just a short walk across the hall that separates your room from his. 

You’re right there. 

But you’ve never felt so far away.

_____

Then

It was a Thursday evening, the kind where a bottle of wine and a home cooked meal was the next best thing to actual therapy. Robby had just returned home from a grueling 14 hour shift, shoulders slumped, eyes heavy, exhaustion pouring from every pore.

You’d assured him that dinner would be ready soon, and asked him to throw the bread in the oven for a few minutes to warm it up while you changed into your comfys. Robby did as instructed before slumping onto one of the stools at the kitchen island, taking a deep pull from the glass you’d left out for him. He propped his head on his hand and didn't even realize he let his eyes slip shut.

“Mike,” you called from the hall, strolling into the kitchen. “Do I smell something burning?”

Robby jolted awake, eyes wide as he watched you pull open the oven and place the charred loaf of bread onto a cutting board with a dull thwack. 

He blinked at you, exhausted. “I…I just - how is that even possible? I followed your instructions!”

“Clearly not!” you said and grinned, leaning against the counter. “And here I was thinking you’ve graduated from making toast to boiling water. Guess we better go back to basics huh?”

He groaned and leaned back into the stool. 

“I swear, that monstrosity,” he gestured to the extremely old stove/oven combo, “is out to besmirch my good name!”

“Michael Robinavitch, can piece a body back together, but can’t handle a little ol oven.”

He snorted and flipped you off, reaching over to refill your wine glass. 

“I can go grab another loaf.”

“Nah,” you waved him off. “It was grocery store bread anyways. Now, if it was that Macaroni Company sourdough, then we might be throwing hands right now.”

He clinked his glass against yours.

“Well, thank god for small miracles, huh?”

You grinned and took a drag from your glass.

_____

Now

Robby comes home wrecked. 

The kind of wrecked that settles into his bones and makes everything feel a lot shittier than it should. The kind that finds him on the roof of PTMC, watching the sun set, looking down with thoughts that shouldn’t be running through his head. The kind that had Jack worried when he found him taking in the view - more so than usual. 

It’s after midnight and the house is dark except for your reading lamp burning softly in the living room. 

For a brief, stupid second relief rushes through him - you’re still up.

Muscle memory has his body turning toward you before his brain catches up. 

You’re on the couch, knees drawn up, reading something on your tablet. The reading glasses you insist you don’t actually need are perched on your nose and for a moment it almost feels safe again.

He exhales. 

“Long day.”

You look up and smile, small and polite.

“Yeah?”

That’s it. No automatic offer to sit, no shifting to make space for him, no quiet ‘you look like hell’ said with affection instead of judgement.

He hesitates in the doorway - the rules have been rewritten and he’s not even sure what game you’re playing anymore.

“I, uh…” he normally doesn’t like to talk about work, but before the world went tits up you always hounded him to talk through his feelings. “I lost two patients. Just kids.”

Your breath stutters.

“I’m so sorry, Robby,” you don’t get off the couch to hug him or offer him comfort like you normally would, just look at him with sad eyes that add to his already precarious mental state. 

The apology should be enough, would be for other people, but it isn’t.

Usually by now you’d have ushered him over to you, with his back against the couch and your legs on either side of his shoulders, head tipped back as you ran your fingers through his hair. Or he’d be sitting beside you, head propped on your shoulder just letting your presence quiet the noise in his chest.

Tonight, the space beside you stays empty.

He drifts closer anyway. Slow and careful, unsure of where he stands in your new dynamic.

“You busy?”

You glance down at the tablet and shrug.

“Not really.”

It’s not an invitation but he takes it as one anyway and sits next to you on the couch. Just a few measly inches separate his thigh from yours but the distance may as well be a mile. 

Silence stretches, heavy and loaded in a way that’s becoming unnervingly familiar. 

He rubs a hand over his face.

"Speaking of bad days," he starts. "I don't know why this popped into my head before, but remember that time on the kitchen floor at our old place? When you got that promotion and instead of acting like any sane person would and being over the moon you ended up sobbing on the floor until you couldn't breathe because you were convinced you were gonna blow it? I knew then that we'd be lifelong friends."

Your gaze lifts slowly and finally catches his.

“I was terrified,” you admit with a small smile at the memory.

He nods, “You made it through though. Made something of yourself, and then some.”

“So did you.”

Another silence permeates the space, thicker now than before.

He shifts without thinking, his knee drifting toward yours, seeking that familiar anchor like it always has.

You tense instantly and his heart drops at the movement. You slowly pull your leg away from his, like you're trying to not make it obvious that you don't want his touch.

It's obvious anyway - devastating in a way he cant think about.

“Oh,” he murmurs before he can stop himself.

You freeze.

For a heartbeat, the room is suspended between what you used to be and whatever you are now.

“I’m sorry,” you say softly. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay,” he cuts in too fast. “I’m sorry if I… offended you?”

It comes out more of a question than a statement. 

You lock your tablet and place it on the coffee table with a huff.

“It’s fine, Robby.”

He scoffs and shakes his head.

“It’s obviously not.”

“You didn’t like, offend my delicate sensibilities or anything.”

“Then what did I do? Because now you can’t even stand physical contact with me for some reason.”

“Fuck,” you let out a quiet swear and turn towards him. “I know things have been… weird-”

“Ya think?”

You cut him off with a glare and he holds up his hands in surrender. 

“Like I was saying. I know that things have been weird, and that’s… that's on me.” You take a large breath and exhale it, closing your eyes. “I’ve just been… dealing with some stuff.”

“And you can’t talk to me about it because…?”

“I just can’t,” you snap at him and he recoils. “Shit, I’m sorry. I just, this is something I need to figure out on my own, okay?”

“But you said I was the cause of -” 

“No, Robby, you assumed that,” you cut him off. 

A dark thought has his blood rushing through his veins as he takes in your exhausted gaze, your aversion to touch, and your unwillingness to share.

“Sweetheart,” the pet name comes out soft and you let out a small flinch. “Did someone,” he pauses trying to figure out how to word this, “did someone hurt you? Physically?”

Your brow furrows in confusion for a second before understanding what he’s implying. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” you shake your head. “No! No, I wasn't assaulted or anything like that.”

Robby lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

“No, I just…” you realize you have to give him something or he’ll never stop assuming the worst. “I uh, am dealing with some, uh… heartache, that’s all.”

Robby blinks at the information.

“Oh. Ohhhhh. I didn’t realize you were seeing someone?”

“I wasn’t, I’m not. It’s just… something I need to deal with on my own okay?”

“You know you can always talk to me, right?”

You bite back a wince and give him a small nod instead.

“I know. I just need to do this on my own.”

The silence stretches thick and he finally stands. The conversation feels unfinished in a way that leaves him uneasy. 

“Okay, well I’m gonna shower.”

“Okay.”

Back to one word answers it seems.

“Michael,” you call out as he reaches the stairs. “I am really sorry about today.”

He nods in thanks and makes his way up the stairs, too exhausted to think about why there is an ache starting in his chest. One that started when you uttered the words ‘heartache’.

_____

Then

You meet Janey and Jake in the narrow window between two versions of your life. 

You and Robby had just signed a lease on a place that feels too expensive to be real. High ceilings. Soft light. A view that makes a smile stretch across your face when you remember to look out the windows. A dishwasher and in unit washer/drier.

Robby just started making enough money to breathe without counting every dollar twice, and he was one paycheck away from officially paying off his student loans from med school. One promotion had rolled into another for you, and you’d gone from scraping the coin jar for bus fare to apartment hunting for a 3 bedroom with lots of natural light and an outdoor space.

The old apartment - the one with the bad radiator and the magic of quarters - is about to belong to other people.

The night Robby tells you about Janey you’re sitting on the floor of your new living room, surrounded by half-open boxes and takeout containers.

“So,” he says around a bite of food. “I think I met someone.”

You raise your eyebrow at the caution behind his tone.

“That sounds…ominous.”

He laughs and you can hear the nerves behind it.

“Her name’s Janey. She’s…she’s pretty amazing.”

You can hear the difference immediately, have yet to hear him talk about a woman with whimsy in his voice the way he is now. 

You feel nothing twist in your chest. No jealousy. No fear. Just a quiet, genuine happiness for him.

“That’s amazing, Robby.” You grin at him, filled with excitement at the thought of your friend finding happiness. “I can’t wait to meet her!”

And you mean it. 

Janey is warm in a way that feels genuine. A single mom that somehow manages to have her shit together more than you and Robby combined. She doesn’t bristle at your existence, doesn’t look at you like competition. 

That alone makes you like her.

You all fall into a rhythm easily - dinners that stretch late, drinks on rooftops, babysitting for Jake so Robby and her can have date night, lazy Sundays where you steal her from him for hours at a time and he pretends not to mind. 

Her and Jake become family just as much as you and Robby do.

She tells you once, quietly, while Robby is grabbing your coats from the coat check after a night out:

“I like that he has you. Someone looking out for him.”

You give her a warm smile and a gentle nudge with your elbow.

“Well, now he’s got two someones.”

She meets your smile with her own before beaming at Robby as he comes over, coats in hand.

Robby moves out of your place and in with her and Jake a year later.

Life is moving on.

You help him carry boxes down the stairs of your no-longer-shared apartment and let out a groan as you plop it into the back of the rented pickup. 

“I’m getting too old for this shit, Michael. You’re almost an attending for Christ’s sake, can’t you shell out for some movers?” 

Janey laughs as she plops down a box right next to yours.

“Oh trust me, I tried. He said ‘it builds character’,” she rolls her eyes with a grin.

“I regret the day I ever introduced you two,” Robby groans and places the final box into the bed of the truck.

“Oh please,” Janey quips, “your life would be incomplete without us.”

“Amen to that!”

She laughs and gives you a hug, closing the tailgate and walking towards the passenger side door, giving you and Robby privacy to say goodbye.

You both turn to look up at the apartment windows. While this particular place had only been home for a year, it had been many since Robby had moved in with you, and him leaving can’t help but feel like the end of an era.

“Well,” he says. “Guess this is it.”

You huff out a breath, trying to tamp down on the unexplainable tears that burn behind your eyes.

“You’re moving to Highland Park, not to a different planet.”

“Still.”

You step forward and hug him - it’s familiar, easy, uncomplicated. Still just incredible friendship backed by years of living in each other's pockets.

He squeezes you once before letting go.

“Don’t disappear on me.”

“Oh please, like you’d ever forgive me for bailing.”

“Good to know you still have your head on straight.”

You both smile.

And then he drives away.

You think you might feel lonely that first night.

You don’t.

You feel proud.

With Robby gone you decide it’s time for a furniture refresh. Janey helps - she’s painfully good at interior decorating and you let her talk you into a couch that costs more than everything in your old living room combined.

“You’re allowed to want nice things,” she tells you firmly.

You believe her.

The years slide forward gently and then all at once. When Janey eventually exits his life - not with a bang, but in an exhausted whimper - you’re the one he calls.

It’s his old room in your apartment that he crashes in while he deals with the fallout. 

And when your last relationship ends quietly and without ceremony, he’s the one who brings wine and listens without trying to fix it.

And just like that, it’s like he never left to begin with.

As the years go on you each have your own romances. You go on dates - sometimes seriously, sometimes not. You meet each other's significant others and have the utmost respect for the roommate rule, never letting them stay the night if any funny business was to be had.

You meet each other’s partners. You make polite conversation. You offer advice when asked and hold your tongue when not.

You’re still each other’s emergency contact.

Still the first call after bad days.

Still the person you text without thinking.

And, at this point in your story, love is still something that happens elsewhere - both of you convinced that it always will.

_____

Now

The controlled chaos of the ED hums steadily around Robby. Monitors beeping, nurses moving between patients, but Dana’s voice cuts through it.

“What’s goin on with your better half?” she says, leaning against the counter next to him, arms crossed. “Hasn’t been by to see us in forever. She away on business again?”

Robby freezes, tablet clutched in his hands, just for a moment but Dana clocks it all the same. 

“No… no she’s in town,” he tries not to stammer but his voice is tight. “She’s just busy.”

Dana raises an eyebrow. “Busy, huh?”

He rubs the back of his neck, wishing the floor would open up and swallow him whole. He wants to explain. Wants to say, I don’t know what’s happening. She’s pulling away, she won’t talk to me about her problems, and I have no idea why. 

But he can’t... wont.

“I just… she’s busy,” he repeats, voice lower, almost pleading.

Dana doesn’t push further, but her eyes linger, sharp and knowing. Robby feels a small bead of sweat at his temple. He’s usually so in control. Usually so calm.

“What’d you do to piss her off this time?”

Robby startles with a swear as Collins appears out of what seems like thin air. A shark in the water sensing a drop of blood from a mile away. 

“Fuck, where’d you come from?”

“Don’t deflect, Robby.” He runs a hand over his face and wonders how he ended up here. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he snaps, meaner than he intended but the silence and avoidance of the past few weeks have been taking their toll and it was only a matter of time before he broke. 

“Fuck, sorry, sorry,” he breathes out an apology to the two women, both of whom have raised a very judgemental brow towards him at his little outburst. 

“I don’t know what I did,” his voice is defeated and that more than anything has the duo glancing towards each other in concern. “But she’s been pulling away from me for weeks. Icing me out. And I don’t know why.”

“Oooh are mom and dad fighting?” 

Robby rolls his eyes to the heavens as Perla perks up from behind a desk, previously hidden from sight but very much within hearing distance. 

“Jesus fucking Christ. I must have been a serial killer in a past life to deserve this shit,” Robby mutters to himself shaking his head. Gossip in the ED runs like wildfire so he has no doubt everyone will know that you two aren’t on 'best friend' terms in no time. 

“Since when,” he emphasizes, “is that what you call me and her?”

Perla snorts and turns back to her computer. 

“That’s been around for longer than I have. She visits like, all the time. Have to convince every new batch of interns that you aren’t, in fact, married. Even though you live together. Which is a totally normal thing for two grown ass adults to do.”

She looks him up and down like he’s the dumbest person to ever exist and he lets out another sigh, scratching his hands down his beard in frustration. 

“Tell everyone to stop calling us that.” He knows the directive is futile but he has to say it anyway. Perla gives him a mocking salute and gets up to walk towards a patient room.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

He should have expected the grins on Dana and Heather’s faces when he turned back to them.

“Don’t you have work to be doing?”

“Nah, unusually slow day,” Dana grins. “Sooooo,” she drawls and he feels his stomach drop at the predatory look. “You two finally sleep together?”

Thankfully Robby’s thermos hadn’t come into contact with his mouth yet or the two of them would be covered in lukewarm coffee. Still, he chokes on air.

“What?! No! Absolutely not!”

Collins cackles. “Oh come on. You’ve been living together for years. You’re both adults. You can’t tell me it’s never once happened!”

Robby waves his hands frantically. “No! Not even close. I mean… that’s not - nothing’s happened. At all!”

Dana and Heather look at him before glancing at each other.

“Seriously?” Dana’s tone is softer this time and for some reason that makes him more nervous. 

“Seriously. We’re just friends. That happen to cohabitate well.”

“You’ve never even considered it?”

Now that is a different question entirely. 

“Like I said. We’re friends.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, Robby.”

He’s saved by the ED door bursting open with a flourish and the conversation is forgotten as they get back to work. 

It’s a week later after Robby snapped at yet another intern, that Dana pipes up, giving out unsolicited advice. 

“Man, you need to get laid.”

This time, Robby does spit his coffee out. 

“What?”

“You heard me,” she says bluntly. “You’re crankier than usual, you’re an absolute terror to the new kids, and you look like you’re about two seconds away from bursting an artery. When’s the last time you got some?”

“This is a place of business, Dana.”

She bulldozes on like he hadn’t opened his mouth. 

“Seriously, do you need help finding a date? My daughter told me all about these apps-”

He cuts her off with a shake of his head. 

“Jesus fucking Christ. I do not need the apps,” he shudders and then lowers his voice. “I’ll have you know I do perfectly fine finding dates on my own.”

“Well, Cap, maybe it’s time you go find one. Cuz you’ve been like this for a month and a half and we can’t take much more of it.”

She leaves him at Central and his mind comes to a screeching halt.

When was the last time he got laid?

He wracks his brain and comes up with a vague face, young, pretty, overly flirtatious at the bar. It sticks out as memorable only because he had brought her back to the house. Normally, on the rare occasion that he was in the mood for a hook up, he’d find himself at their place. But you’d been gone on a business trip, and he’d really wanted to spend the night in his own bed, so he hadn’t seen the harm in it. 

Bits and pieces start to come together in his head. That was also right around the time that you started giving him the cold shoulder. 

His thoughts are interrupted by a call coming over the intercom and he no longer has mental space for anything beyond helping the next patient. 

_____

Then

The reception is warm with candlelight and laughter, the sound of the band and clinking glasses humming through the event space. Your dress still feels surreal against your skin - too perfect to be real. 

You’re married, and you made a good choice. A safe one. A happy one.

Robby in a rented tux and polished shoes, appears at your side with two flutes of champagne. 

“For the bride,” he says offering it with a mock bow.

You take it with a flourish.

“Why thank you, kind sir,” you bow back at him and he lets out a laugh. “Look at you,” you gesture to his getup, “looking all civilized.”

“I clean up well,” he deadpans. Then softer, sincere, “You look… really happy.”

You return his soft smile.

“I am. I really am.”

The song changes then to something slow and familiar and he holds out a hand. 

“Dance with me? Before I get too drunk and end up stepping on those absolutely ridiculous shoes.”

You don’t hesitate before taking it.

His hand is warm at your waist, familiar in the way only decades of friendship can make it. Safe. Steady. The two of you sway easily, laughing when another guest nearly collides with you. 

“Can’t believe we’re here, can you?”

You shake your head in disbelief.

“Feels unreal.”

You continue to sway, your body still running off the high of the day as Robby looks out over the crowd. You catch where his gaze lands and meet his eyes.

“You sure you’re okay that she’s here?”

He nods and gently twirls you, your dress sparkling in the candlelight.

“Of course, you know we’re good. We basically have unofficial shared custody of Jake at this point.”

You nod.

“Besides, this day is about you. You two are friends, I’d never ask you to not have a friend here simply because we used to date.”

You didn’t point out that what Janey and him had was quite a lot more than dating.

You continue to sway to the music, letting the energy of the day melt over you.

"Also, make sure to tell that husband of yours that if he ever fucks up that I know a million ways to make his death look like an accident."

You laugh and playfully slap him on the arm, giggling as he twirls you again before pulling you back. You can feel the stares from your husband's family, are used to it when it comes to Robby. The elder generation, as well as quite a few of your own, have a problem understanding that men and women can be friends without wanting to sleep together.

"But seriously, I'm happy you're happy," you hum in thanks and continue to sway against him, the bubbles from the champagne making you feel like you're floating.

“This is the part where you tell me I’m getting old and sappy,” he says.

“You’re getting old and sappy,” you reply dutifully.

He snorts. “There it is.”

You rest your head briefly against his shoulder, just for a second.

“Thank you for being here,” you murmur. “I know he’s not your favorite person.”

Robby exhales softly, gaze falling on the handsome man in the tux surrounded by other guys at the bar. “He’s… fine.”

You laugh quietly. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about him.”

“He makes you happy,” Robby says simply. “That’s what matters.”

And he means it.

“Even if he is doing Jagerbombs at the bar right now.”

You both snort out a laugh and continue to sway. No tension. No longing. No unspoken things. Just two people who grew up together in the trenches of adulthood, side by side.

“Hey,” he adds quietly, “no matter what, this doesn’t change anything between us. You know that, right?”

You squeeze his hand. “I know. You’re stuck with me forever.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to break in a new best friend at my age.”

A few years later the divorce is quiet. Civil but painful in all the ways that highlight every insecurity and bad thought you’d ever had about yourself.

And Robby never once says I told you so.

He just shows up.

_____

Now

The doors to the ED slide open, letting you into the chaos of the waiting room, Robby’s bag clutched in your hands. You’re immediately buzzed through and you smile at Lupe in thanks. 

You’re barely at the central desk when you’re met with a chorus of teasing voices. 

“Well, look who finally decided to grace us with her presence!” one nurse calls.

“Hey Princess, looks like Mom’s back!” another laughs.

Dana smirks, leaning against the counter. “Hey kid. Great to see ya.”

You meet her in a hug, rolling your eyes at the familiar ribbing, but your attention has already shifted.

Across the room, hunched over a computer, Robby and Dr. Collins are laughing softly at something on the screen. Robby’s shoulder brushes hers, and she leans in slightly, eyes twinkling. Their quiet intimacy, the way they share space and laughter so effortlessly - it feels like a punch to your chest.

You grip the bag a little tighter, heart picking up its pace. If they…

Your thought trails off, unspoken, as the world around you blurs into the edge of panic, jealousy, and that old ache you’ve been trying to ignore for months.

And you force it down, to be dealt with at a later time. 

Robby glances up from the computer and freezes for a second.

“You’re here,” he says, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Finally.”

You nod, setting the bag down on the counter, careful not to meet his gaze. “Yeah. You sounded like this bag was life or death,” you murmur, voice neutral.

He leans back, fists shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, relaxed but expectant. “It’s Javadi’s birthday, the team went in and bought her a gift which I was supposed to bring. You saved the day.”

You force a faint smile, shifting slightly to glance elsewhere, to the monitors, the staff, anything but him. “No problem,” you say softly.

Robby frowns, sensing the distance in your tone, the stiffness in your posture.

“Is everything okay?”

You freeze, chest tightening. Everything is not okay—but you can’t explain that, not to him. You shake your head slightly.

“I’m fine,” you reply, quick, almost too quick.

He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “You don’t sound fine,” he mutters, half to himself, half to you.

You avert your eyes completely, and the silence stretches. He studies you, as if he could read the thoughts you’re so carefully hiding. You pretend not to notice Dana unsubtly watching your interaction.

Finally, he drops his gaze, muttering, “Okay…”

The moment passes, but the tension lingers, thick and unspoken. 

“Thanks again,” you nod and watch him turn back to Heather, the small smile and wave she sends your way causing your chest to ache.

Neither of you says anything more, but in that silence, the distance between you feels larger than the entire ED.

“What,” Dana’s voice breaks him out of whatever spell he was under as he watched the door slide shut behind you. “The hell was that?”

The walk from the ED to the parking garage seems to take an eternity, but you finally slide into the driver’s seat, closing the door slowly, as if putting a barrier between yourself and the world. Your hands are shaking as you grip the steering wheel.

You should reach for your keys, but you can’t move. You can still see it in your mind, the way Robby laughed with Heather, leaning into her, brushing against her shoulder so casually, so intimately.

Your chest tightens. Your stomach knots.

You try to breathe. You really do.

In… out… in… out…

It’s not working.

Your vision blurs. The red exit sign hanging above the stairwell comes in and out of focus as your chest heaves. Your hands clutch the steering wheel as if holding on for dear life.

You press your forehead against it. A sob slips out, small, nearly silent. Then another.

Why can’t I just, why can’t I stop thinking...stop imagining...stop wanting something I shouldn’t…

Tears slide down your cheeks as your chest heaves, shuttering in effort. Every muscle in your body is taut, every thought spinning in impossible loops: Robby, Heather, the girl, the house, the ED, his laugh, her laugh, the sound-.

You want to run. You want to scream. You want to curl into a ball and disappear.

But you can’t. You have no right.

Your breath comes in short, jagged bursts, heart racing so fast you think it might burst from your chest. You press your hand over your face, leaning forward, and finally whisper to yourself:

“Get it together. Just… get it together.”

But even as the words leave your lips, your body trembles, your mind refuses to stop, and the panic doesn’t abate. It’s only you, the car, and the impossible weight of everything you’ve been holding in.

It takes an hour before you're calm enough to drive, and all the while Robby was a parking lot away, oblivious of your inner turmoil.

_____

Then

The apartment you moved into after the divorce is different than your old place.

Not necessarily bad different, just different. 

It’s all clean modern lines and sleek appliances. The floor to ceiling windows let in late afternoon sunlight and every now and then it makes the Allegheny sparkle when it hits just right. His own rental is just across the river, he can almost see it from the high rise balcony of your place. 

You’re on a call in the bedroom, door half-open, voice drifting out in low, professional tones - your 'customer service' voice as Robby calls it. He is in the kitchen rinsing out a mug when he notices your laptop, still open on the counter.

He doesn’t mean to look.

He really doesn’t.

But the Zillow blue-and-white is unmistakable and curiosity finally gets the better of him.

He steps closer, setting the mug down slowly. Your favorites are pulled up - most of them along a similar vein. Large brownstones, big windows, original wood features, small outdoor areas. He keeps scrolling, looking at beautiful house after beautiful house before realizing they all have one thing in common - their location.

North Shore. North Shore. North Shore. All of them.

His fingers slow on the trackpad as he clicks into each listing.

They’re all within minutes of the hospital.

Some of them are even close enough that he walks by them on his way in to work when he doesn't drive in.

Something quiet shifts in his chest. Nothing that he can put a finger on.

Just… something.

He clicks on one listing that's a three minute walk to PTMC. Another one is a seven-minute walk. A different one is just on the other side of the park from the hospital.

You finally come out of your room a minute later, phone still in hand as you type out a text.

"Sorry, thing at work came up. What's up?"

He gestures vaguely at the screen, a warmth blooming in his chest as he bites back a smile.

"You're looking at places on the North Shore?"

You finally glance away from your phone and towards the laptop, shrugging like it's no big deal.

"Oh, yeah I am."

Robby studies you carefully.

"You could buy literally anywhere in the city with your budget. Why not Shadyside or Squirrel Hill? Even downtown - your office is there."

You hesitate for half a second. Barely noticeable. Then you shrug again, the picture of forced nonchalance.

“Bridge and tunnel traffic is a nightmare,” you say lightly. “And if I’m on the North Shore, I can just hop on the T whenever I actually have to go into the office. Plus I’m way too old to live in a high rise, I need my own space.”

It sounds practical. It sounds logical. It sounds like nothing.

Robby nods like that makes perfect sense. Like his chest didn’t just tighten around something unnamed.

“Smart,” he says, unable to put words to his thoughts. You smile at him, easy, unguarded.

“You still good with living together, by the way? I know there might be some overlap with your lease, depending on when I find a place-.”

He answers too fast. “Yeah. Of course. I want to.”

And later, much, much later, he will realize that for the first time in years he felt like he was coming home.

____

Now

His day hadn’t been going terribly, they’d had a few saves and a few more idiots doing dumb but non-lethal things to end up in the ER. All in all, it could have been worse.

Jake had swung by after school, things with him had slowly been getting better since PittFest, and while Robby was treating him to an early dinner he’d casually dropped a proverbial bomb about you.

When he finally gets home, he finds you sitting at the kitchen counter, laptop open, papers scattered around you, so deep in your work that you’re completely unaware he’s home.

“Hey,” he says softly, voice low but carrying an edge that you immediately pick up on.

You look up, startled, and smile faintly.

“Hey, you’re home early.”

Robby walks over, setting his jacket down, and leans against the counter near you. His eyes hold yours, searching.

“Jake showed me your LinkedIn today.”

Your smile falters.

“Oh…uh….”

“You got promoted,” he says, voice tight, controlling the surge of frustration. “To Senior Partner,” he emphasizes, knowing how long you’d been working towards it. “And you didn’t tell me.”

You bit your lip at the anger in his tone.

“I… I didn’t think-”

“You didn’t think?” he interrupts, his voice shaking with hurt. “You didn’t think that I’d care? That I’d notice? What the fuck, Y/N!”

You swallow, unsure how to explain it to him.

“It’s not that. I.. I wanted to tell you, I just -”

“Just what?” His voice softens slightly, but the intensity doesn’t fade. “You’ve been…moving forward with your life, doing incredible things, and I… I had no idea.”

He sighs heavily and leans his forearms on the counter, dropping his head forward.

“You’re part of my life, one of the best parts of my life actually, and I-“

He stops, taking a breath and struggles to keep it together. 

“I'm sorry, Michael,” you whisper, closing your laptop. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just…”

You trail off, not knowing what to say.

Robby leans closer, voice low, almost breaking.

“It feels like I’m standing on the outside of your life, and I-” he exhales running a hand through his hair, frustration mingling with longing. “You’re my best friend, my family, and I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about one of the biggest accomplishments of your career.”

His eyes meet yours, wide and raw.

“Robby,” you breath, voice trembling. “I didn’t know it mattered this much to you.”

He steps back with a swear, taking a shaky breath, hand gripping the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him in control. 

“The fact that you think that is fucking insane," he quiets his voice and takes a deep breath. "It matters. You… you matter. And I don’t know how you could ever think so low of me that I wouldn’t care.”

The room falls silent, the weight of unspoken emotions hanging thickly between you. Neither of you move for a long moment, just letting his words sink in, the air charged, before he shakes his head and moves out of the kitchen, unable to keep the hurt from his face.

_____

Then

The thing about house hunting on the North Shore is - you’re gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding your prince. 

The first house you and Robby tour is a disaster.

Outdated kitchen. Slanted floors. A bathroom that smells faintly of mildew and sewage.

You walk through it with your hands on your hips.

“Well,” you say. “That’s a hard no.”

Robby bites his lip, trying not to laugh. “Bold choice for your insanely large budget.”

“First of all, rude. Second of all, come on, it has some character. Look at the stained glass!”

“It is broken and has mold,” he counters.

You laugh all the way back to the car.

The second house is better. Brick exterior. Narrow stairs. A tiny patchy grass yard in the back.

You linger in the living room longer than the rest.

Robby notices.

“You like this one,” he says.

You shrug. “I like that it's quiet.”

He thinks of your luxury highrise apartment in the cultural district, all sleek lines and quiet opulence.

“You can afford louder.”

“I’m tired of loud.”

Something about that sticks with him.

You spend the rest of the day traipsing in and out of houses all along the North Shore. Politely insisting that’s where you wanted to buy when your realtor insisted that they have plenty of inventory much more appropriate to your budget in Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, or even up in Sewickley. 

The final house of the day is the one.

Bright kitchen. Big windows. All the beautiful original features of a house with old bones, but outfitted with modern amenities. Quiet neighborhood noise instead of city noise. A short walk to the T. A shorter walk to the hospital. On an unheard of double lot with a big fenced in yard… a hot tub.

You wander from room to room slowly, fingertips brushing walls like you’re picturing your life within them.

The agent chatters in the background and Robby stands near the doorway, watching you.

“Michael,” you call softly from the back of the house.

He follows your voice and finds you in what will later become your home office. Sunlight fills the room, streaming through the original stained glass and casting rainbows along the cream colored walls.

“What do you think?” you ask.

He takes a breath he doesn’t realize he’s holding.

“I think,” he says carefully, “that you’re going to build a really good life here.”

You smile at him and nudge him gently in the side.

“We’re going to build a really good life here.”

Neither of you knows why the moment feels… heavier than it should.

And as you walk out of the house you're hoping to buy, something important shifts between you without either of you knowing what it is.

_____

Now

Robby’s surprised to find you cooking breakfast when he meanders down on Saturday morning. Things had been more tense than normal since your promotion announcement, and he’s done a shit job of hiding just how hurt he’d been at your aversion. 

He’s even more surprised when you place a plate full of eggs, bacon, and hash browns in front of him at the kitchen island. A coffee lands right next to it and he raises his eyebrow in question.

“Oh don’t give me that look,” you chide. “Just eat.”

“Yes ma’am,” he gives you a mock salute and tucks in. You slide onto the stool next to him and start on your own plate. You eat in silence, but for once it’s not heavy, more like how it used to be. He takes your plates when you’re finished and rinses them before loading them into the dishwasher. 

He knows you too well, can see that you’re working up the nerve to say something, so he busies himself with refilling your coffee, taking the extra time to froth the milk the way you like.

“I’m sorry,” the words are blunt and come out of nowhere, snapping through the kitchen like a whip.

He blinks, confused. “For what?”

“For… pulling away,” you admit, biting your lip. “For making things weird. For not telling you about Senior Partner. I didn’t mean to. I just… dealing with that thing," you say the word as if vocalizing 'heartache' would cost you something, "that I told you about has been tough, and I didn't know how to handle it."

He studies you, concern softening his features.

“You ever gonna tell me more about that thing you mentioned?” he teased and is relieved when you roll your eyes at him.

“Nope,” the word irks him but he lets it go.

“I was thinking,” you switch topics easily. “It’s been a while since we’ve done a movie night. Want to grab a pie from Giorgio’s and do a Lord of the Rings marathon?”

His mouth is responding before his brain can catch up. 

“I can’t,” he says morosely. “I have a date.”

The tentative smile on your face falls and he could kick himself. The words are like a punch to your chest. A reminder, that no matter how hard you try to forget, this is going to be a constant in your life. 

You force a smile back onto your face.

“No worries,” you take a sip of your coffee to give your hands something to do as the atmosphere quickly turns heavy. 

“How about tomorrow?” He offers but you shake your head. 

“Sorry, I was asked to speak at a partner dinner. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure we’ll find time soon.”

You hop off the stool and grab your coffee beelining it towards the stairs and the safety of your room to lick your wounds in peace. 

You’re not sure if it's stupidity, jealousy, or just sheer exhaustion that has you turning back to him. 

“Have fun on your date,” you try to sound happy for him but even you can hear the uncertainty in your voice.

“Thanks,” his voice responds, hollow.

“Um, one thing,” he looks up and frowns as you look nervous. “If uh, you bring her back here. Could you just… keep it a bit quieter this time?”

He frowns, tilting his head in confusion.

“Keep what quieter?”

You hesitate, eyes flicking to the floor.

“You know… that time.”

His brow furrows more.

“That time?”

You meet his gaze finally, letting just enough slip. “The… the other girl… months ago. I… overheard when you were....” your face heats in embarrassment and shame as you let him fill in the blanks.

Robby freezes. His jaw tightens, and for a moment he looks almost guilty before his face falls in remorse.

“I didn’t realize…" he stutters, distraught, "I thought you were traveling… I never would have… I’m sor-”

You hold up your hand to stop him.

“I’m not angry Michael, I just…” you sigh, trying not to sound as defeated as you feel. “Yeah, if that does happen if you could just keep the noise to a minimum that’d be great. Thanks.”

He exhales, trying to process, his eyes softening with a mix of understanding and regret. 

You flee up the stairs before he can respond - a habit you’re getting good at. A tense silence fills the apartment. Your heart hammers, adrenaline and nerves coiling tightly inside you. It’s quiet, charged, an unspoken acknowledgment of what happened, and what neither of you can ignore anymore.

_____

Then

The text comes through while he’s in the on-call room, half-asleep and slumped against the hard pillow.

You: Offer was accepted!

For a second, he doesn’t move.

Then he sits up straight, letting out a shout of joy.

He finds you in the kitchen that night, still in your work clothes, hair pulled back, pacing slowly with a glass of wine in your hand like your energy has nowhere else to go.

“You bought a house,” he says softly.

You stop pacing. Look at him.

“I bought a house.”

There’s something bright and terrified and proud all at once in your eyes.

The smile that takes over his face is huge, genuine in its joy as he looks at you.

"That's incredible. I'm... holy shit, I'm so proud of you."

You match his grin with yours.

"I keep waiting for it to feel real."

"When do you close?"

"Six weeks."

He nods, then hesitates like he wants to be extra sure.

"And then... we move in?"

You tilt your head at the uncertainty in his voice.

"Yeah. Unless you're sick of me."

It's a joke and an out all in one.

He scoffs. “Not even a little bit.”

You step closer to him without thinking, looking up at him and cocking an eyebrow.

"You do like it right? Because you'll be living there too."

What’s not to love? It’s a beautiful brownstone on The Mexican War Streets with a ton of natural light, a backyard, and a garage.

But most importantly it’s where you’ll be so of course it’s perfect for him.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s perfect.”

Part 2

________

authors note: first of all - I wish I could afford one of those beauties on the Mexican War streets. Secondly - this beast of a fic is already 100 pages so I'll be splitting the parts up. Hope the back and forth made sense.

Feedback is always welcome!

You get the e-vite in the middle of the day, in the middle of the pitt, in the middle of what had been a pretty good shift. 

A cute little flyer that you’re willing to bet your cousin made on Canva, perfect color scheme and pretty cursive—Let’s do it! followed by the details of her engagement party. 

“Shit.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and slide your phone back into the side pocket of your scrubs, cursing to whatever god there might be. 

Abi, little 22-year-old Abi, getting engaged. You already know exactly how this party is going to play out. 

It’ll be all about her for most of it, as it should be, but eventually your aunts and other cousins will turn to you, start asking the questions they always ask. Have you found a man yet? When can we expect to get an invitation for your engagement? Blah fucking blah. It’s enough to make your stomach cramp. 

“You look like you’re about to vom.”

Trinity is suddenly beside you, slinging an arm around your shoulders and roughly guiding you out of the way as Cassie walks with a patient to one of the exam rooms behind you. 

“Honestly? I just might.”

You shrug her off in favor of leaning up against central, elbows on the counter behind you as you let your head hang back. Maybe if you stare up at the fluorescent lights for long enough, they’ll blind you. That might get you out of the party. 

“My cousin is getting married,” you grumble. 

Trinity snorts, “oh, I know this one. You don’t want to go see the fam-bam and get interrogated about why you don’t have a boy-toy yet.”

“You do know this one.”

“Been there, done that,” she waves, posting up next to you. “You know what’d make it even worse?” You offer a nod. “—if you came out to everyone there.”

Lifting an eyebrow, you ask (a little impressed), “you came out at a family gathering?”

“Figured I’d knock everyone out at once.”

“And, how’d that work out?”

Trinity blows a stream of air through her lips, squints and rocks her head back and forth, “not great, actually. Zero out of ten, do not fucking recommend.” She laughs to herself, then, “this isn’t about me, though. This is about finding you a date.”

“The fuck it is,” you snap, standing up straight. 

She crosses her arms over her chest, sucking her top teeth while scanning the room. Hunting. 

“Trin, stop.”

“I would offer up Dennis, but he’s not gonna impress anyone,” she mutters, cruel and hilarious at the same time, “and I’d rather die than let you fake-date Langdon.”

“I’m not fake dating anyone,” you hiss as you slide in front of her in an attempt to block her view, “and even if I was, it would not be Langdon.”

“Why, scared of little ol’ Mel? I bet she’d be cool with it.”

“Wha—no, I’m not sca—no, it’s ’cause no one would fucking believe it if I brought someone like Frank.”

Trinity’s face sours. “Okay, I’m gonna pretend that you didn’t just imply that Franklin ‘just got out of rehab’ Langdon is too hot for you.”

“So, one, his first name is Francis, not Franklin. Two, he’s not ‘too hot’,” you finger quote, and Trinity actually looks relieved when you say it, relaxing for half a second before you mumble the real reason you can’t bring him: “he’s too young.”

Trinity coughs, probably for dramatic effect more than anything else, “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me,” you sigh, glancing around to make sure no one is close enough to hear this confession (specifically Princess and Perlah). “I’ve always had a thing for older guys, okay? Fucking sue me.”

Her eyes narrow, though not in suspicion. No, it’s as if something is clicking into place for her—like Trinity has just solved a riddle. 

“And, your family is aware of this,” she states more than asks. “Interesting.”

“It’s really not,” you pretend to assess your nails, can practically feel the way Trinity is glowing, so fucking smug. 

Like, unnecessarily smug. 

“What?” you grunt. 

She takes on a casual expression, lip between her teeth, shoulders shrugging, telling you, “nothin’,” which is a fucking lie considering the next thing out of her mouth is, “hey, bossman!”

Like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over your head, you gasp, “Trinity, no! Please—”

You hear the familiar stride, feel a growing presence making its way toward you, and the fluttery feeling you’re already used to experiencing whenever he’s around is multiplied by a thousand because no, there is no way Trinity is actually going to do this. She wouldn’t, right? 

“You summoned?” Robby greets flatly, “for the entire EC to hear, by the way.”

You have to fight every instinct not to flee while also fighting the urge to let yourself lean back into him with the way he’s standing just a little too close. As always.

“Yeah, I’ve been told my voice carries,” Trinity dismisses before, much to your horror, diving right in, “anyway, I’ve got a proposition for ya’.”

Annoyed and increasingly uncomfortable, you challenge her, “oh, it’s your proposition?” 

“Well, it’s not like you’re gonna do it.”

Robby huffs, something between a laugh and a scoff. His hand, though gentle where it lands on your back, feels so heavy. It’s nothing, a simple gesture, ‘right behind you’, but you can’t suppress the shiver that races down your spine. 

He has no fucking idea. 

“Do what? Come on, I’ve got shit to do,” Robby says, almost sounding irritated but not quite. 

You turn to him, quick to take a step back so that his hand falls, and you force a smile, “it’s nothing. Trinity is just being an asshole—as per usual.” You glare over your shoulder at her, tack on a threatening, “right?” 

Your friend, if you can even call her one at this point, sighs dramatically, “yeah, yeah, you know me.”

She clacks her teeth together, waves a hand as if to dismiss everyone, though she walks away herself, leaving you to come down from your near panic attack while Robby stays where he is, confused and adorable in a way no man his age should be. 

Big browns on you again, he raises his eyebrows, “sure everything’s good?”

“Positive.”

You give him a thumbs up, force yourself to walk away as you breathe in relief. Crisis averted. 

It would’ve been, anyway, if you’d just told Trinity ‘no’ when she insisted on grabbing a drink at the usual bar after your shift. 

But, of course, you just had to bend and follow her lead, and look where it’s gotten you: at the bartop, spine rigid, increasingly uncomfortable the longer this guy talks to you. 

He’s not a stranger—not technically, at least. Nate had been in the EC earlier that day. You’d helped debride the nasty road rash on his arm before patching him up and sending him on his way with sterile bandages, antibiotic ointment, and what you had thought to be very clear instructions to take it easy the next few days in order to give his immune system a fucking chance to aid in the healing process. 

At the time, he’d cracked a few flirty jokes, but nothing to make you nervous. 

Now, though, he’s too close, leaning in toward you as he waves around the beer in his hand, regaling you with how he sustained his injury, either having forgotten that he’d already told you hours ago or that maybe this time he’ll have better luck impressing you. 

Obviously not the case as you cringe at the smell of beer on his breath, leaning away from it only for him to take it as an invitation to move forward a few more inches. 

“I used to ride pro, actually,” Nate tells you, “got a lot of medals—got a lot of scars, too. You should let me show you some time.”

“The medals or the scars?” you ask (stupidly) with a frown. 

Nate chuckles, a smarmy smirk spreading across his face as he moves even closer, his free hand now cupping your elbow. 

“Whatever you want. Just as long as you show me yours too.”

God, it’s not even good, not even a little charming, but man, does he seem pleased with himself, probably thinks you’re actually interested since you haven’t walked away. 

You’ve just never been good at blowing people off, especially men. On your best day, you run off of a healthy cocktail of caffeine and anxiety, so that on top of having heard one too many horror stories about guys going insane in the face of rejection…

Things aren’t lookin’ too good—

“Jesus, there you are,” an all too familiar voice rings out just behind you, and oh, the relief. “Was about to send out a fucking search party.”

You don’t know what look Robby is giving Nate, but whatever it is, it can’t be good because the man immediately drops his hand from your arm, expression morphing into something sheepish, maybe even fearful. 

For a few seconds, anyway. Then, in true entitled-white-male fashion, Nate plasters that insufferable smirk back in place. 

“Nah, she’s fine,” he claims. “Seemed like she wasn’t having a good time tonight, so I figured I’d keep her company.”

The fucking audacity. 

An arm snakes around your waist, Robby’s hand heavy, hot, and huge where it lands just below your ribs, and despite how irritated you are with Nate and his blatant fucking lies, it’s impossible to focus on it when it feels like your entire chest cavity is full of butterflies. 

“Oh, is that true, babe?” Robby asks, not helping with the fluttery feeling because while he’s called you ‘sweetheart’ a couple times before, he’s never called you ‘babe’. 

Damn, he’s good at this—‘this’ being pretending to be your boyfriend, and despite how adamant you’d been with Trinity earlier, it turns out that this isn’t very hard to lean into afterall. 

Literally. 

Relaxing into his side, you peer up at Robby with what can only be considered Bambi eyes, wide and falsely apologetic as you tell him, “of course not. Just got—”

“Taken verbally hostage?” he suggests, lips curling at the corners as he stares back at you. 

“Hostage?” Nate scoffs. “You seemed pretty interested when I asked if you wanted to see my—”

“Your what?” This time when Robby interrupts, his tone is clipped, one eyebrow raised. A warning. “What were you planning on showing her?”

You snort, “apparently, Nate here has a lot of super cool scars from his time as a professional motocross rider. In fact, I debrided a brand new one just a few hours ago.”

Robby hums, “hm, cocky and stupid.” 

You can’t hide your amusement, don’t even really try to.

Nate opens his mouth, no doubt to argue, but he only gets a single syllable out before Robby is cutting him off again, “in that case, I’m sure we’ll see you in the ER again soon.” Then, with a gentle squeeze, eyes on you again—“should get you in bed, anyway. You’re gonna be so goddamn cranky in the morning.” 

Oh, good god. Get you in bed. The mere idea…

Robby doesn’t give Nate a chance to protest as he leads you away, hand drifting to the small of your back and staying there until you make it to the exit and out of the man’s line of sight. 

You try not to mourn the loss, instead focusing on the, “holy shit, thank you.”

Robby chuckles, a deep blush blossoming on his face as if he’s just now getting self-conscious about that entire interaction. 

“You looked like you needed saving,” he hangs his head, possibly trying to hide his red cheeks as he shoves his fists into the pockets of his hoodie. “Hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“No, no, I mean—” you wave your hands erratically, unable to come up with the right words, brain still a little foggy from having felt his arm wrapped around you. 

He’s done it before, but not like that. Not with the purpose of holding you, staking a (false) claim. It’s always been to pull you out of the path of a rogue gurney or an agitated patient, or, in one case, off of a badly twisted ankle. Things that are work appropriate. 

The way he tucked you against him tonight was not work appropriate, and fuck, you hope Trinity didn’t see. You can only imagine the ribbing you’re in store for if she did. 

“It was, um—it was super helpful, and, like… you’re really good at that,” you finish, lame but truthful, “the whole fake boyfriend thing.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it makes up for me being a shitty real one.” Self-deprecating as always. 

Mouth twisting to the side in contemplation, you give a tiny shake of your head, “I refuse to believe that,” mostly because in the year that you’ve known him, Robby has been nothing but caring. Sure, he has his bad days, lets everyone in the EC know when he’s at his wit’s end, but even at his worst, he’s still genuinely compassionate, would bend over backwards for every patient, every person, especially his own staff. 

You’ve been fucking infatuated with him since day one, and for good reason. It’s ridiculous, but can anyone really blame you? Kind, smart, and hot—you were doomed from the minute you stepped into the pitt for the very first time. 

And, it’s because of that stupid infatuation that you figure, what the hell? 

“If you want more practice with the whole boyfriend thing, I may have a, uh…” you bite your lip, gaze flicking to his in order to gauge his reaction, “—an opportunity for you.”

Something like curiosity dances in Robby’s eyes, though it’s tinted with something else you can’t place. 

He cocks his head. “Oh?” 

“Yeah,” you nod, and with a deep breath, you start, “so, my cousin is getting married…”

‘Cause what’s the worst that could happen? 

•

You sort of can’t believe he says yes. 

Robby’s never been anything less than helpful since you started in his department. Ready to hear you out, probe your brain, grow you into a better doctor. He has made you cry once, yeah, but it was just the one time, which is sort of a record (so says Trinity). Plus, he apologized shortly thereafter. 

He’s always been ready to step in when he sees you flounders, as proven the other night at the bar.