em :)

"This is my song!" You shout as the familiar dun-dun-dun-dun of Act Up starts blasting through the stereo speakers.

As if on auto pilot, you lean forward and look back over your shoulder, not caring who your eyes land on as you anchor your hands firmly onto your knees.

Locking into the beat, you drive your hips back in time with each drop of the heavy bass, sending a sharp ripple through your body as your ass moves in sync.

Beau’s standing to the side watching you dance as he waits for his invitation. He knows you’ll give it; you just need to dance to a few songs on your own first.

He watches you through countless songs, body moving appropriately to whatever the beat required. The song changes into a slower song and you gesture him over with a curl of your index finger.

Your boyfriend comes to stand behind you, hands on your waist as you gyrate to the music. Beau doesn’t need to guide you, if there’s one thing you know, it’s how to feel the beat of the music through your body. You push your ass back and roll your waist, “Fuck,” he groans into your ear.

Your arms raise to the air and your hands find his dark hair. He pulls you impossibly closer, nuzzling into your neck as one slow song blends into the other. Taylor really did have the best assists.   

Another pair of hands find your waist and you look up to see Dean smiling down at you.

“Hey gorgeous,” you purr as you wrap your arms around his neck.

The three of you find a comfortable rhythm. Hips swaying and twisting to the music. You feel warm, the mixture of the alcohol in your veins taking effect and the bodies moving around you acting as a furnace.

“Should we take this party upstairs?” Beau’s breath tickles your neck.

You look up at him. He has that look in his eyes, the one that completely contradicts his sweet, dimpled, smile.

“Great idea,” you smile, slipping out from between them. You grab hold of Beau’s hand and pull him behind you, swerving through the crowd with ease and running up the stairs. You’re well aware that your too-short skirt is putting on a show for anyone that happened to look up as you were going up the stairs.

Dean doesn’t need to be invited to know that he’s supposed to follow you both up the stairs. The unspoken agreement between you all having been in play for months now. He stops at the makeshift bar at the bottom of the stairs, his blonde hair catching in the strobe lights, as he grabs the tequila, salt, and limes.

Once you get into Dean’s room, you pull your shirt over your head and lie back on the bed. You know the drill by now, but the familiar routine does nothing to quell the spike of anticipation in your chest.  

Dean comes bumbling in seconds later, a careful smile playing on his face when he sees you’re ready for him. He quickly pours two shots, placing one small shot glass in each hand for you to hold. You focus your attention on balancing them as Beau leans over you, his dark eyes locked onto yours as he carefully shakes two thin lines of salt across your stomach, stopping just under the lace of your bra.

Dean puts the bottle of tequila on the nightstand and places a lime wedge firmly between your breasts before shooting you a wink.

“Open up,” Beau coos, placing his lime firmly in your mouth.

Your stomach knots, they’re both towering over you and looking at you with a ravenous desire. It’s intoxicating.

They slowly come to a kneel on the bed either side of you.

“Ready?” Dean asks, as they put their hands behind their back.

You nod your head, careful not to move to much and spill the shots balancing on your palms. In unison, they lean forward to pick up their respective shot with their mouth. It’s a competition now with them quickly downing the shot and spitting out the glass.

Dean gets to your stomach first, using the tip of his tongue to lick the salt. Beau’s tongue is flat and flush against your stomach. He licks a fat stripe up and past your chest. You feel his warm breath against your skin and it leaves a trail of goosebumps.

Dean gently bites one of your breasts before taking the lime that’s there as Beau’s lips meets yours to suck the juice from the lime. The blonde presses his face further into your breasts, thrusting his tongue between them.

“You look so fucking pretty like this,” Dean calls, lifting his face from where it was buried between your breasts. “Doesn’t she look so fucking pretty, Beau.”

“You really do look so pretty.” Your boyfriend accompanies his words with a kiss to the tip of your nose.

You smile around the half-eaten lime that’s still in your mouth. You and Beau had been dating a little while before Dean came into the mix. You couldn’t understand why he was so hesitant to introduce you to his best friend. That is, until you saw them together. You saw the bond that he was afraid you’d see and run from. He worried you’d feel jealous and make him choose. But you didn’t feel jealous; you saw it for the opportunity it was.

The night you finally suggested bringing Dean into your shared bed, Beau had pinned you down and fucked you so fiercely that even days later, just the memory alone was enough to leave you completely breathless and aching all over again.  

You shiver as the cold tequila is poured directly into your bellybutton. Two fresh lines of salt are sprinkled across your stomach, and the old limes are replaced. Taking their places on either side of you again, the men exchange a quick smile before leaning forward. Their tongues dive into your navel, brushing against one another as they lap up the liquid pooled there.

They make quick work of sucking up the liquid that had overspilled before tracing the salt lines up your ribs, each using their tongues in different ways. You love the way your body reacts to them.

This time, it’s Dean that moves up to your face. Instead of just taking the lime, he plucks it from your teeth and replaces it with his own mouth. He runs his tongue along your bottom lip before sucking it into his mouth until you dart your tongue out to meet his. He catches your tongue between his lips and sucks on it. He tastes of sharp tequila and a deep, intoxicating familiarity that should be reserved for your boyfriend.

Blonde hair falls across your face as he deepens the kiss, you had told him that you liked it when he kept it longer, he hasn’t cut it since.

Heat pools in your belly as Beau gently pulls down the cup of your bra away from your breast. His warm mouth settles over your tight nipple, swirling his tongue around the sensitive skin before sucking on it. His hand is heavy on you, groping your other breast and running a calloused thumb over the sensitive nub. You moan in Dean’s mouth as Beau’s fingers pinch the nipple.

The sensation of having four hands roaming your body and two mouths on yours sends your heart racing. Your short nails scratch Beau’s scalp, urging him on. Your other hand makes its way between your legs where you’re aching to be touched. You run your hands through your slick folds and a satisfied hum escapes your lips.

Your boyfriend releases your nipple and stands up, yanking his shirt over his head and pulling off his jeans. He watches as Dean leaves a trail of kisses down your body, the blonde repositioning himself to settle between your legs.

Dean pulls off your underwear and uses his hands to spread your knees apart. Although you’re completely comfortable with them, you feel a blush creep up your neck. You’re fully exposed as they eye you hungrily, Dean between your legs and Beau at the foot of the bed, fully naked now and gently palming himself.

Dean looks back at his best friend for approval, they were yours and each other’s, but you were Beau’s unless he told Dean otherwise. Beau gives him a curt nod.   

You cry out, back arching, as Dean takes your throbbing clit into his mouth. The warmth of his mouth around you has your hips rolling. Dean moves your legs onto his shoulders and leans back to spit directly onto your pussy. He watches the spit roll down before diving back between your legs again, flicking his tongue around your folds in his journey towards your clit.

“How does it feel?” Beau asks, voice husky, “tell him how it feels.”

“Feels… fucking… incredible.” Your thoughts are incoherent; all your brain power is focused on the overwhelming pleasure. You look at Beau through hooded eyes to find him looking at you. His dick is growing in his hand as he watches Dean pleasure you. His lips are parted and you can hear his ragged breaths. You can also hear the sound of your wetness between your legs, Dean’s slurping and dragging a finger between your soaking lips.

You’re too turned on, the need to combust rising quickly within you.

Beau’s still only gently palming himself, not wanting to get too caught up. He doesn’t want to come now; he wants to be buried deep in you when that happens.

Your hips jerk up as Dean slides a finger, then two, into you. He curves them inside of you as he flicks his tongue back and forth against your clit.

The combination of the blonde between your legs and your boyfriend’s hungry gaze has you quickly spiralling to an orgasm. You shudder then cry out as your orgasm crashes over you.

“That’s it, you like that huh?” your eyes roll to the back of your head.

Both men whine at the sound of your moans, it’s their favourite song.  

Dean gently pulls your leg from his shoulders; you’re still twitching as you come down from your high. A satisfied smile spread across his face, you’re a mess.

“You taste so sweet,” Dean says, as he sits back on his knees, you can see a bulge in his jeans. “I could eat you for every meal.”

“Let him know how I taste,” you encourage jerking your head towards Beau. You prop yourself up on your elbows to get a better view of the men at the foot of the bed.

Dean pulls off his shirt before climbing off of bed and pulling Beau into a hard kiss.

A jolt of electricity shoots down your body and settles in your stomach as you watch them. The sight never fails to make your breath hitch. The kiss is intense, their teeth are clashing and they’re moaning into each other’s mouths. There’s no jealousy in you, no concern that you’ll be pushed to the side. You unlocked this side of them and you get to reap the rewards of that.

Dean grabs the back of your boyfriend’s neck, deepening the kiss. You swallow hard, your hand coming between your legs again. You’re already slick, aching for the weight of them to pin you down.

Beau pulls back to unbutton Dean’s jeans, pushing the denim and boxers down Dean’s thighs in one motion. Dean kicks them off the rest of the way.

Both of their chests are heaving, grasping for air as they turn their gazes to you. You’ve taken off your bra and skirt, legs spread open and you’re frantically circling your clit.

“Look at her,” Beau murmurs, his voice thick with desire.

“Lie back, baby,” you breathe, “wanna ride you.”

Beau sits on the edge of the bed and lies back. He looks at you and slaps his thighs. “Come take a seat.”

Dean stands between Beau’s open legs and grabs hold of his erection. He helps guide you over Beau’s hips and down onto his hard, leaking, dick.

“Can you feel how wet I am for you?” You whine, taking him in inch by inch. The way you stretch around his thick dick feels so good, you take a minute to feel it before bracing your hands against his chest and beginning to bounce in a steady rhythm.

Beau’s hands slide along your thighs; your breasts are bouncing with each thrust.

“Dean, look at how my pretty girl takes me in,” Beau grunts. You make a show of riding him; lewd moans escape your lips as you alternate between bouncing and rolling your hips.

Dean’s still between Beau’s legs, taking care of himself with his hand. That won’t do. “Dean, come here. Wanna taste you.”

Your mouth waters, you love sucking off Beau but Dean’s dick is heavier and it falls on your tongue in just the right way.

You turn your head to the side as Dean comes to stand beside you, squatting down a little so you can take him in your mouth. Your tongue swirls around the tip before you take him all in. His neatly trimmed pubic hair tickles your nose as you bottom out.

Your bounces falter as you focus on the throbbing dick in your mouth. Dean looks down at your lips, swollen and stretched around him. “Nngh… your tongue… ah.” Dean’s babbling incoherently.

His hands come into your hair, pulling you towards him as he bucks his hips into you. “S-shit, fuck,” he whimpers and Beau’s hips snap up into you.

Every moan and whimper that your mouth gets out of Dean earns a snap of Beau’s hips up into you.

“That’s my girl, taking both her boys in.”

Your nails dig into Beau’s chest as Dean’s breathy moans grow louder and faster. He’s close. Your hand comes up to play with his balls and that’s all he can take. He pulls out of your mouth as he cums, wanting to coat you both with it. Warm cum trails down your chin as Dean spills the rest of his climax onto Beau’s chest.

His dick continues twitching in his palm as he comes to a seat next to you. He lazily circles your clit as Beau chases his own release, hips snapping into you in a dizzying pace. Your second orgasm hits you more forcefully than the first. Your eyes squeeze closed until you see stars. You cum with a scream of both of their names.

Engulfed in your wet, clenching, heat, Beau cries out.

“I’m gonna fill you up,” he rasps.

You don’t think you can move, too exhausted and sensitive as Beau continues fucking up into you with pace. You’re willing yourself to move your hips, you want to take good care of him.

“Fuck.” Beau holds you in place as climaxes into you. You feel him throbbing inside of you and you clench, milking him for all he can give you.

You choke back a sob as you lean forward, completely spent.

Dean’s there immediately, wrapping an arm around you and raising you off of Beau’s softening dick. He lays you down and cleans you off with a washcloth. He wipes you gently, aware of how thoroughly fucked you are, and your heart tightens. He puts you under the covers before cleaning Beau up.

Once cleaned, Beau moves to press up behind you.

“Dean, cmhere,” your words slur as sleep threatens to take you over.

Dean climbs into bed beside you and you immediately snuggle into his chest.

“Happy Birthday, boys, I love you,” you say. Two pairs of arms tighten around you and you fall asleep with a smile on your face.

The dream of becoming a lawyer had started when you were young. It hadn't started glamorously, no single defining moment, no courtroom drama that changed everything. Although you really did have a knack for binge-watching shows like How to Get Away with Murder and Suits. But the real want had started with the slow, accumulating understanding that the world was not fair, and that fairness was something you had to build rather than wait for, and that the people who built it tended to know the rules better than everyone else. You had decided, young and furious, that you were going to know the rules.

Now, years later, it finally felt within reach.

Last summer you had taken the LSAT. When the score came back — 176 — you had screamed so loudly your roommate came running from the other room convinced something had happened. Something had happened. Everything had happened. Applying to Harvard had been a no-brainer after that, the natural conclusion of four years of work that had never once felt like anything other than work. To say it had all been a dream would be a lie. You had earned every grade, every internship, every recommendation letter. Every achievement had come attached to long nights and sacrificed weekends and more cups of coffee than you were prepared to account for.

Still, every now and then, you allowed yourself a moment to appreciate how far you had come.

Then you remembered the Harvard interview scheduled in just a few weeks, and the knot in your stomach returned immediately. It lived there, that knot had been living there for months, through the application and the waiting and the acceptance, through every good thing that should have dissolved it and didn't. You had stopped expecting it to go away. You had just learned to work around it.

What if you stumbled over your words? What if they asked something you couldn't answer? What if four years of work came down to one bad afternoon?

Which was exactly why Professor Whitaker's announcement nearly made you lose your mind.

The second she wrote Semester Project across the whiteboard, a collective groan spread through the lecture hall. Over the next month, students would work in pairs to complete a research project on the evolution of constitutional rights in the United States , a project worth a significant portion of the final grade.

At any other point in your college career, that would have been merely annoying.

Right now it felt catastrophic.

You could not afford for your GPA to slip. Not when Harvard was finally within reach. Not when everything you had worked for was balanced on the edge of these last few months. And that meant you absolutely could not get stuck with a partner who didn't care like a jock who only cared about a sport, someone who would contribute three bullet points to a shared document at the eleventh hour and disappear for six weeks while your entire future quietly collapsed.

The thought alone made you grimace.

So as Professor Whitaker reached for her roster and began assigning partners, you found yourself doing something you almost never did.

Praying.

"The class will be sorted according to performance on the most recent exam," Professor Whitaker announced, scanning the room over her glasses. "That way the workload stays balanced and the pairing is fair for everyone."

A few students groaned.

You sat a little straighter.

Actually, that wasn't terrible. At least now there was a reasonable chance your partner wouldn't be dead weight. You had carried enough dead weight in your academic career to last a lifetime and you were done with it.

Professor Whitaker called your name first. You looked up from your notebook on instinct, even though she already knew exactly where you were. You hated change. You liked knowing where everything was. You liked routines, systems, the quiet reliability of things being where you left them.

More importantly, you liked being good at things.

Which was why hearing that your partner would be someone on your level was oddly comforting. Most of your life had been spent balancing on a very thin line between confidence and crippling self-doubt. On good days, you knew you were intelligent. On bad days, you were convinced everyone else was smarter and better than you. The trick was not letting either version get too loud.

Professor Whitaker glanced down at her roster.

The next five seconds would remain engraved in your frontal lobe for at least thirty years.

"Dean DiLaurentis."

Silence.

Jesus H. Christ.

Your head snapped up. Not because you needed to find him. You already knew exactly where he was sitting. You always knew where he was sitting, a fact you had never examined too closely and were not going to start examining now.

Middle of the sixth row. Today he was wearing a green cardigan over a white t-shirt, looking far too comfortable for someone who had just become the source of your newest academic crisis. He was mid-conversation with Beau Maxwell when his name was called, laughing at something, completely unaware that your entire carefully managed semester had just been handed to him without his consent or yours.

Dean turned around.

Then he smiled.

That smile. The one that belonged on toothpaste advertisements and nowhere else, the smile of someone who had never once in his life worried about whether he was welcome somewhere. It was the kind of smile that assumed the answer before the question had been asked, and it had always, privately, made you want to argue with it.

His eyes found yours immediately.

The realization landed half a second later, oh, you're my partner, and his grin widened, and then, because apparently the universe had a sense of humor that you had never personally found funny:

He winked.

He actually winked.

You stared back at him with the expression of someone who had just been personally wronged by the laws of probability.

You knew Dean. Not personally, god forbid. But you knew of him, the way everyone knew of him. Hockey player. Trust fund. Chronic flirt. The kind of person who walked into a room and somehow became the room. Loud and charming and surrounded by people at all times, the social gravity of someone who had never once had to earn a seat at the table.

Meanwhile, you considered making eye contact with strangers a form of cardio.

This could not be right. There had to be a mistake. How could Dean DiLaurentis possibly have a grade comparable to yours?

You spent your Friday nights in the library. You color-coded your notes by subject, by date, by relevance. You had cried over constitutional law, like actual tears, in the bathroom of the third floor study room, alone at eleven pm because that was what it cost and you had paid it without complaint.

Dean spent his weekends at hockey games and parties.

The math simply wasn't mathing.

Unless.

Oh.

Oh, god.

He was sleeping with the TA.

That had to be it. Everything suddenly made horrifying, perfect sense. The TA was a graduate student from somewhere in the Midwest who had spoken to you exactly three times all semester, and every single interaction had felt like she was being held at gunpoint. If Dean was somehow managing to maintain a functional relationship with her —

Honestly? He deserved the extra credit for that alone.

Three months earlier, it had started.

Professor Whitaker had a specific way of running discussion that you had privately categorized as controlled chaos. She threw a question into the room and stepped back and let whoever was going to talk, talk, with the quiet authority of someone who already knew what she thought and was waiting to see if anyone else did. The lecture hall always felt different during these sessions. Bigger somehow, the overhead lights slightly too bright, the charged quality of a room full of people deciding whether to say the thing they were thinking.

You almost always said the thing you were thinking.

Today the question was about Shelley v. Kraemer.

You had opinions about Shelley v. Kraemer.

"The court got it right," you said, when Whitaker's gaze landed on you. "State enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant is state action. The fourteenth amendment doesn't care that the covenant itself was private — the moment a court steps in to enforce it, the state is complicit. You can't separate the two."

Whitaker nodded — the small, noncommittal nod that meant continue or let someone else.

"I'd push back on that a little."

You turned.

Dean had his pen between two fingers, not quite raised, the posture of someone making a point rather than asking permission. He was looking at Whitaker, not at you, which was somehow more irritating than if he had been looking at you directly. Like the argument was with the room rather than with you specifically. Like you were incidental.

"The ruling is right," he said, "but the reasoning has a ceiling. If state enforcement equals state action, you've created a framework that depends entirely on whether someone decides to litigate. The protection isn't structural, it's reactive. It only exists if someone can afford to fight for it."

The room was quiet for a moment.

You became aware, distantly, that your jaw had tightened.

"That's not a flaw in the ruling," you said. "That's a flaw in the system the ruling exists inside of."

"Sure." Dean looked at you then, for the first time. His eyes were steady, interested in a way that wasn't performative. "But you're writing a decision, not a philosophy paper. The decision has to function in the system it's handed to."

"So your position is that the court should have ruled differently because the system might not implement it correctly."

"My position is that a protection that requires money and access to activate isn't really a protection." He said it evenly, without heat. "I thought that would be something you'd agree with."

The last sentence landed differently than the rest.

Not unkind. Not pointed exactly. Just specific, in a way that implied he had thought about what you would and wouldn't agree with, which was a thing he should not have been thinking about. Which meant he had been paying attention quietly and consistently.

Whitaker moved on.

You looked back at your notes and wrote nothing for the remainder of class. Outside the lecture hall windows the sky was the flat white of a November afternoon, and you sat with the particular discomfort of someone who had just been surprised by a person they had already decided to understand.

That was when it had started. Which meant that three months later, sitting in the lecture hall watching him smile at you like you were a problem he was looking forward to solving, you did not have the excuse of not knowing better.

The lecture hall emptied in a slow, shuffling wave that you had no patience for.

You were already packing your bag when you heard him.

"So." Dean dropped into the empty seat beside yours with the casual confidence of someone who had never once been unwelcome anywhere. He turned to face you, one arm resting on the back of the chair, bringing with him the faint smell of something clean, something woody, or the cold outside air. "Partners."

"Observant," you said, without looking up from your notebook.

He made a small sound, not quite a laugh, not quite not one. You could feel him watching you with that specific brand of unhurried attention that probably worked on most people and was currently working on you in ways you were categorically refusing to acknowledge.

"We should exchange numbers," he said. "Figure out when we can meet."

"I have time Thursday afternoon." You zipped your bag closed. "After three."

"Thursday I've got practice until five." He pulled out his phone, apparently unbothered. "What about evenings?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays I tutor until nine." You finally looked at him. "Weekends I pick up extra sessions when I can."

Something shifted in his expression, brief, almost imperceptible. Not pity. Something more like recalibration, the specific adjustment of someone updating a model they had been working from.

You watched him process it and kept your face completely neutral, the way you always did when people did the math on your schedule and realized there was no give in it, no free afternoon that existed just for the sake of existing. You didn't need him to feel bad about it. You just needed him to understand that his time was not the only time being managed here.

"Okay," Dean said, and to his credit, he didn't make it weird. "Wednesday? I'm free after two."

"I have a session at two."

"After three, then."

You considered this. "Three. Library. Third floor."

"Done." He held out his hand for your phone with the easy expectation of someone who had never once been told no and somehow, inexplicably, made that feel more like charm than arrogance.

You looked at his hand for exactly one beat longer than necessary.

Then you unlocked your phone and placed it in his palm, your fingers brushing his warm hand briefly.

"Don't put anything weird in my contacts," you said.

Dean smiled and typed with the focused, two-thumbed efficiency of someone taking the instruction very seriously.

He handed it back.

You looked down.

Dean DiLaurentis 🏒 (ur partner deal with it)

You stared at it for a long moment.

"Truly," you said, "a legal mind."

He laughed then , a real one, surprised out of him, and stood to leave, shouldering his bag. He paused at the end of the row and looked back at you with the expression of someone who was about to say something and had decided against it.

"Wednesday, then."

"Wednesday," you confirmed, already looking back at your notes.

You did not watch him go.

You listened to his footsteps until you couldn't anymore and then looked back at your notebook and found the page completely blank.

By the time Wednesday rolled around, you had done the mental gymnastics of calculating exactly how much this project was going to cost you. Not much, you had decided. You were already at maximum stress capacity between the Harvard interview and the end of semester closing in, so there was simply no room left for anything Dean DiLaurentis-related to take up residence.

This was the conclusion you had reached.

You woke up early anyway, restless, and got ready with the focused efficiency of someone who was absolutely not anxious about a study session. In the kitchen, Elisa was at the stove, hair still in a braid from the night before, doing something that smelled like butter and brown sugar.

"Morning, sugar plum." She turned and pointed her spatula in your direction. "Do you want to have breakfast with me?"

Elisa was the easiest person you had ever lived with, which was not something you said lightly. You had moved into her house sophomore year knowing no one and she had made you feel like you had been there the whole time. Wednesdays were her day off no classes, no obligations, and she spent them cooking elaborate things and playing at domesticity in a way that you found deeply comforting. She called them the Tradwife Wednesdays, in a joking manner.

"I can't, I have a class I can't miss." You grabbed your bag from the hook by the door. "Sorry."

"That's okay." She stirred something. "Are you coming back for lunch? I'm trying a new caesar salad recipe I found on TikTok. Caesar 2.0."

"I can't do lunch either. I have a study session at noon."

"Bring your partner. We can all have caesar salad 2.0."

"My partner is —" you paused, already regretting what you were about to say — "Dean DiLaurentis."

Elisa put down the spatula.

"Shut up."

"I'm not going to —"

"No way. You hate him."

"I don't hate him."

"Despise, then."

"Not even that." You pulled on your jacket. "I don't care about him at all. He just exists in the same world as me."

"Sure," Elisa said, in the tone she used when she was humoring you. She picked up the spatula again. "Ask him if he remembers our little trip in the Mystery Machine."

"Goodbye, Elisa."

"Caesar salad is on the table if you change your —"

You closed the door.

session one

He was already there when you arrived.

That was the first thing that threw you off, small and inconvenient, the kind of detail that shouldn't matter and did anyway. Dean DiLaurentis, sitting at the table you had specifically chosen because it was tucked into the back corner of the third floor, away from foot traffic and group study noise and every possible social distraction. You had chosen it because it was your table, the one you came to when you needed to actually work, claimed over three years of afternoons and late nights. The carpet near the window had a worn patch from your chair. You knew which overhead light buzzed slightly and had learned to tune it out.

He was sitting in your chair.

He had a coffee on each side of the table.

Two coffees.

You stopped.

"I didn't know your order," he said, not looking up. "So I got you black. You seem like a black coffee person."

You were a black coffee person.

You sat down without commenting on it and pulled out your laptop.

"I started an outline," Dean said. "Sent it to your email."

You opened it without responding. It was actually structured. Clean headers, logical progression. You stared at it for a moment longer than you intended, turning it over, looking for the flaw. There wasn't one.

"You cited Marbury v. Madison in the intro," you said.

"It's foundational."

"It's also the first thing every professor expects to see. It makes us look like we opened the textbook once and called it a day."

He looked up then. "So where would you put it?"

"Section three. After we've established the framework."

Dean looked at the outline. Then back at you. "...Yeah, okay."

You pulled it up on your own screen and started restructuring. He watched for a second, then turned back to his own laptop without making it a thing, and something about that: the absence of wounded ego, the lack of argument, the simple yeah, okay, was quietly unexpected.

You worked in silence for a while. A real silence, the functional kind, punctuated only by typing and the occasional ambient noise of the floor around you, someone whispering two tables over, the elevator arriving and departing, the hush of a library in the afternoon when the day outside has gone grey.

At some point he shifted in his seat and his foot knocked against yours under the table. He pulled it back immediately, said a distracted sorry without looking up, and kept typing.

You looked back at your screen.

Ten minutes later it happened again his foot finding yours under the table, settling against it with the absent, unthinking quality of someone who wasn't paying attention to their own body. This time he didn't notice. Or didn't move. You couldn't tell which.

You didn't move either.

You looked at your screen and read the same sentence four times and told yourself it was nothing, the table was small, it meant nothing at all.

His ankle was warm against yours for the rest of the session.

An hour passed, and then another. The coffee went cold. The light through the window shifted from afternoon grey to early evening grey, and you were deep enough in the due process section that you had stopped noticing either.

"Take a break," Dean said, without looking up.

"I don't need a break."

"You've reread that page four times."

You looked up. He was still looking at his notes, which meant he had been paying attention to you without appearing to pay attention to you, which was somehow worse than if he had just been watching you openly.

You closed the case study.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean leaned back in his chair all the way back, with the easy, unhurried comfort of someone who had never had to fight for a seat at any table he wanted to sit at. You had noticed that about him early, the specific posture of someone for whom things had always been available, every room an environment that had been pre-adjusted to suit him. It was the kind of thing that was difficult not to notice when you had spent your entire life doing the opposite.

"You know," you said, mostly because the silence was starting to feel companionable in a way you weren't ready for, "you hooked up with a friend of mine once."

Dean looked up. Something shifted in his expression mild interest, maybe the faintest trace of wariness. "Oh really."

"Daphne."

A pause. He turned the name over, and you watched the moment he didn't find it.

"I don't remember," he said.

"She was dressed as Daphne for Halloween. You were, surprisingly, dressed as Fred."

Something cleared in his expression. "Halloween two years ago?"

"That would be the one."

He considered this with the equanimity of someone who had made peace with a certain kind of personal history. "Can I ask why you're bringing this up?"

"No particular reason." You picked up your cold coffee. "Can you even remember her name?"

"I just said I couldn't."

"Right." You set the coffee back down. "Well. For the record."

Dean looked at you for a moment with the expression you were already starting to recognize the one that meant he was deciding whether to say the thing he was thinking. He usually said it.

"You know," he said, "you hooked up with a friend of mine too."

You kept your expression very neutral. "Did I."

"Garrett."

"We made out at a party freshman year," you said, with the patience of someone correcting a factual error. "Did he tell you we hooked up?"

"He didn't say anything." Dean's mouth curved slightly. "I saw you two leaving and made an assumption."

"A wrong one."

"Clearly." He tilted his head. "So. Has Daphne said anything? About her experience."

You considered the question with the gravity it deserved.

"She tried to tell me," you said. "I didn't want to hear it."

"So she didn't give a great review."

"Ravishing," you said pleasantly. "It almost made me want to sleep with you too." You paused. "But then I remembered I have something called self-respect."

Dean laughed a real one, sudden and unguarded. It was, you noted with some irritation, a genuinely good laugh. Warm and surprised, the laugh of someone who had not seen it coming and was delighted by that fact. The kind of laugh that made you want to have caused it again.

"That's funny," he said.

"I know."

He was still smiling when he looked back down at his notes. You looked back at your case study. The library settled back into its particular silence the low buzz of the overhead light, the distant elevator, thirty people pretending they weren't exhausted but something had shifted in the quality of it. Imperceptibly, the way temperature changes in a room before anyone acknowledges it's warmer.

You didn't say anything about it.

Neither did he.

Twenty minutes later he slid his notes across the table, pointing out something you had missed without making it feel like a correction. You leaned in to look without thinking about leaning in and then you were close, closer than you had been all session, his shoulder warm against yours, and you could see the slight curl of his handwriting on the page and the way his finger traced the line he was pointing to, and you became aware very suddenly of his hands. How big they were. How deliberate.

You had not thought about his hands before. Or you had thought about them in passing and moved on. But up close, right now, pointing at a citation on a page they were careful and unhurried, the kind that did things with attention.

You looked at the citation.

"You're right," you said. "Good catch."

He glanced at you sideways, briefly, with that expression.

You both looked back at the page.

Neither of you moved away.

It was near the end of the session when it happened. You were flagging sources, half your attention on the screen, the room around you reduced to the low hum of concentration, when Dean said, mostly to himself, still reading:

"You always sit in the same seat."

You glanced up. "What?"

He seemed to catch himself, just barely, a slight tensing around his jaw. "In Whitaker's class. Third row, right side, second from the aisle. Every lecture."

The air shifted in a way that was difficult to name. Outside the library window the sky had gone fully dark, the glass reflecting the room back at you, two people at a table, closer than they had been three hours ago, the space between them negotiated down to nothing without either of them signing off on it.

"I like consistency," you said, after a beat.

"Yeah." He looked back at his screen. Something in his jaw had gone slightly careful. "I know."

I know.

Two words. Completely neutral on the surface and yet carrying the specific weight of something that had not been meant to be said out loud. Not an admission exactly. More like a door opened a half-inch before he caught it and eased it shut , slowly enough that you both knew it had moved.

You looked at him for a moment.

He did not look back up.

"We should finish the first amendment section," you said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Probably."

You both looked at your screens.

Neither of you said anything else about it.

You packed up at eight-fifteen, twenty minutes later than planned. The third floor was empty by then, the overhead lights on their late setting. You walked to the elevator in a silence that had become, somewhere in the last six hours, a different kind of silence entirely, not neutral, not loaded, just inhabited.

In the elevator he stood beside you with his shoulder against yours, the same way it had been at the table, and neither of you shifted. The floor numbers climbed down. You looked straight ahead.

His ankle had been warm against yours for three hours and you had not moved away once.

You filed that under the place where you kept everything you weren't ready to examine yet.

session two

The second study session had started with considerably less hostility than the first, which you were choosing not to read into.

It was late afternoon again, the library emptying out around you as people made the reasonable decision to leave, and you and Dean had been working for three hours straight with the focused efficiency of two people who were both too competitive to be the first to suggest stopping. The case briefs were spread across the table in a system that was half yours and half his and somehow, irritatingly, better than either would have been alone. Your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. Your precision and his instinct for where an argument wanted to go.

You had noticed that yesterday too. Filed it away.

What you had not filed away or had tried to and failed was the moment an hour into the session when he had reached across you to grab a case brief from your side of the table without asking, and his arm had crossed in front of you close enough that you felt the warmth of it before it was gone. He hadn't noticed. He had grabbed the brief and gone back to his side of the table and kept reading, completely unaware.

You had read the same paragraph for twelve minutes after that.

"Okay," Dean said, dropping his pen and leaning back. "Break."

"We just had a break."

"That was an hour ago."

You looked at the time. It had been an hour and twenty minutes, which meant you had lost track of time, which meant you had been absorbed enough in the work — in the conversation around the work, the back and forth of it, the way he argued a point and actually listened when you argued back — that the time had disappeared without asking permission.

You put your pen down.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean stretched his arms above his head with the unselfconscious ease of someone completely comfortable in his own body, the cardigan riding up slightly, a sliver of skin at his waist, the line of his shoulders, the way his head fell back for a moment, which you observed in a purely detached and analytical capacity and then looked at the ceiling.

"So," he said. "Harvard Law."

"What about it."

"That's the goal?"

"That's the goal," you confirmed.

He nodded slowly, with an expression that was hard to read. Then, in a voice of complete casual confidence: "What, like it's hard?"

You turned to look at him.

He was already smiling.

"That's the second time today," you said, "that you have made a Legally Blonde reference."

"Is it?"

"You quoted it earlier when I said the admissions rate was three percent."

"I don't remember that."

"Dean."

"It's a great film."

You looked at him for a moment. "Is it your favorite movie?"

"Top two," he said, without hesitation. "Just after Top Gun."

You stared at him. Dean DiLaurentis. Hockey player, pre-law, top of the class, sitting in the library surrounded by case briefs, whose top two films were Legally Blonde and Top Gun.

"God," you said.

He laughed. "What?"

"Nothing." You picked up your pen. "It explains a lot actually."

"Does it."

"The confidence," you said, gesturing vaguely at him. "The hair. The complete inability to walk into a room without knowing exactly how you're going to be received." You paused. "You've watched both of those films a concerning number of times, haven't you."

Dean pointed at you. "Elle Woods and Pete Mitchell are two of the most —"

"Please don't finish that sentence."

"— compelling character studies in the history of American cinema."

You laughed and put your head down on the table.

His laugh was warm and close and you could feel it more than hear it, and when you looked up he was leaning on his elbow facing you — close, comfortable in the way he had gotten over the past two sessions, close enough that you could see the specific color of his eyes in the library light, and the way they crinkled at the corners when he was actually amused rather than performing it. The late afternoon light was doing something completely unreasonable to his face — the angles of it, the warmth of it, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone making a deliberate choice.

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work," he agreed.

But he was still smiling when he turned back to his notes, and you were very carefully not smiling, and the library was quiet around you in that way it had been yesterday, warmer than it should have been, the silence between you easier than it had any right to be.

Top two, you thought, against your will. Just after Top Gun.

God help you.

You made it another forty minutes before it went sideways.

It started, as these things often did, over something small.

Dean wanted to include a law review article you thought was analytically weak. You had said so. He had disagreed. It had escalated with the particular efficiency of two people who were very good at arguing and had been carefully not arguing for weeks, the pressure of it finding the first available exit.

"It's not a weak source," Dean said, for the second time. "You just don't like the conclusion."

"I don't like the conclusion because the methodology doesn't support it. There's a difference."

"You've said that. You haven't explained it."

"I sent you three paragraphs —"

"You sent me three paragraphs about why you were right," he said. "That's not the same thing."

You looked up from your laptop. He was looking back at you with the expression that meant he was done being patient, and something about that, the specific quality of it, the fact that he was allowed to be done being patient when you had been managing your frustration for weeks —

"You know what, it doesn't matter," you said. "Include it. It's fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"Shut down and say it's fine when it's not fine." He closed his laptop halfway. "If you have a problem with the source, say it."

"I have a problem with a lot of things," you said, and it came out with an edge you hadn't entirely intended. "I have a problem with the fact that I have no idea how much of this grade I'm actually carrying."

The air in the room changed entirely. The low buzz of the overhead light was suddenly very audible.

Dean went very still. "What does that mean."

It means I've been doing this alone my whole life and I don't know how to stop assuming I'm about to have to do it again. That was what it meant. That was not what came out.

"It means," you said, and your voice was measured in the way it got when you were saying something you couldn't take back, "that I don't actually know how you scored high enough on that exam to get paired with me."

Silence.

Dean looked at you. Something moved behind his eyes, not hurt exactly. The thing that came just before.

"Say what you mean," he said quietly.

And because you were frustrated and tired and the Harvard interview was in two weeks and you had been holding this assumption for long enough that it had started to feel like fact —

"I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA."

The silence that followed was a different kind entirely. Heavy and still, the kind that has a shape.

Dean sat back. He looked at you for a long moment with an expression you had never seen on him before — not the easy charm, not the careful attention, not the almost-smile. Something stripped of all of that, all the way down.

"I got a ninety-four on that exam," he said. "I got a ninety-four because I studied for it. I study for all of them." A pause. Each word placed with precision. "I know you think I'm here because of my last name or my hockey stats or whoever you've decided I'm sleeping with. I know that's easier than just —" he stopped. Exhaled slowly. "I've been doing the work. I've been here every session. I don't know what else you want from me."

You opened your mouth.

"And the TA," he said, " she has a girlfriend. So."

He opened his laptop again. The sound of it was very loud in the quiet room.

You looked at your screen. The cursor blinked in the document you had been sharing for two weeks, both your names in the top corner. You were acutely, uncomfortably aware of the specific kind of wrong you had just been.

Not about the source.

About him.

"Dean —"

"First amendment section," he said. Not cold. Not cruel. Just done. "Let's just finish."

You looked at him for a moment.

"Yeah," you said quietly. "Okay."

The Legally Blonde conversation felt like it had happened in a different library entirely.

Top two, he had said, and laughed, and looked at you like you were something worth looking at.

You stared at the cursor and said nothing else.

Neither did he.

session three

The third session was on a Tuesday.

You knew because Tuesdays you tutored until nine, which meant you had come straight from the library's second floor where you had spent an hour and a half walking a freshman through the commerce clause, and you were tired in the specific way of someone who had been performing competence for other people all day and had very little left over for themselves.

You had also been thinking about what you said for five days straight.

Not continuously. Like something that sits in the back of your mind and surfaces at inconvenient moments — in the shower, between tutoring sessions, at two in the morning when you should have been sleeping and instead were staring at the ceiling cataloguing every assumption you had ever made about Dean DiLaurentis and finding most of them wanting. I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA. The words had a particular quality in retrospect, the quality of something that could not be unsaid, that existed now in the permanent record of things he knew about you.

You pushed open the door to the third floor reading room and told yourself you were fine.

Dean was already there.

Of course he was. He was always already there, with his laptop open and his notes spread out in the handwriting you had become, against your will, familiar with, slightly left-leaning, inconsistent spacing, somehow completely legible. He looked up when you came in. The room smelled like old paper and the particular warmth of a space that had been occupied for a while, and the overhead light buzzed its familiar note.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said back.

You sat down. Not beside him, you took the chair across the table, the one you had started in, back when the table felt like a neutral territory that required a border. You pulled out your laptop and opened the shared document and did not look at him.

He did not comment on the seating arrangement.

That was somehow worse than if he had.

You worked. The session had the functional efficiency of two people who were both too professional to let personal things affect the work, which meant the work was fine and everything around it was not. He passed you sources without commentary. You flagged edits without explanation. The back and forth that had become almost conversational — the small arguments, the digressions, the way he said okay when you made a point he couldn't refute — was gone.

The overhead light buzzed. Someone turned a page three tables over.

Around the forty-minute mark he said, "the due process section needs another source."

"I know," you said. "I'm looking."

"I found one this morning. Sent it to your email."

"I haven't checked yet."

"It's good."

"Okay."

Silence.

You checked your email. The source was good. You added it to the document without saying so and heard, very faintly, the sound of him exhaling.

An hour passed like that.

You had just pulled up a new case brief when Dean leaned back in his chair and said, to no one in particular, "I don't actually care about the TA."

You looked up.

He was looking at the ceiling, not at you, with the expression of someone who had decided to say a thing and was committed to the delivery. "I just want you to know that. In case it was still sitting there."

Outside the library window, the campus was dark and wet with recent rain, the paths lit amber under the streetlights.

"It was sitting there," you admitted.

"Yeah." He brought his gaze down to his notes. "I figured."

"Dean —"

"You don't have to." He said it simply, without edge. "I'm fine. I just didn't want it to be weird for the rest of the semester."

"It's already a little weird," you said.

"I know."

Another silence — but this one had more air in it, the quality of a silence that had been cleared rather than accumulated.

"I'm going to apologize properly," you said. "I just haven't figured out how yet."

Dean was quiet for a moment. Then, very carefully, not quite a smile: "Does it involve food."

You said nothing.

"It does," he said. "Okay."

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work."

You heard her before you saw her.

The click of heels on library floor that had nothing to do with studying, moving with the purposeful energy of someone who had a destination and knew exactly what they wanted when they got there. You didn't look up. You were in the middle of a paragraph and you had a system and you were not going to lose your place.

The heels stopped at your table.

"Hey." Not directed at you. You turned a page. "I've been looking for you."

"Hey." Dean's voice, easy and careful. "Didn't know you were on campus today."

"I wasn't. Now I am." A pause with a specific texture. "Come outside for like five minutes."

"I can't right now, we're working."

We. You noted the word and kept reading.

"Five minutes," she said again. "It's not a big deal."

"I know it's not. I just can't right now."

You turned another page. The paragraph was about tort law and you had read the same sentence three times and retained nothing.

"Dean —"

"Seriously." His voice was still easy but there was something underneath it now, something with weight. "I'll text you later, okay?"

A silence. The kind that meant she was deciding something.

"Who even is she?" The question was directed at you. You looked up for the first time, because that was directed at you, and you had opinions about being spoken about in the third person by someone standing four feet away.

The girl was pretty in the specific, polished way of someone who had never had to try very hard at it. She was looking at you with an expression that was more curious than hostile, which somehow made it worse.

"His project partner," you said pleasantly. "We have a deadline."

"It's literally five minutes —"

"We're aware of how long five minutes is," you said, in the tone you had been practicing for courtrooms. "He said he'll text you. The reading room is a shared space and we're trying to work, so." You smiled. "Thank you."

The girl looked at you. Looked at Dean. Looked back at you with an expression that had shifted into something more speculative, something that said she understood more than you had intended to reveal.

Then she left.

The heels clicked back across the library floor and faded, and the room settled back into its particular silence, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone who had not just done what they had just done.

From across the table, nothing.

You turned a page.

More nothing.

You looked up.

Dean was looking at his notes with the carefully neutral expression of someone using every available resource not to smile.

"What," you said.

"Nothing."

"Say whatever you're going to say."

"I'm not going to say anything."

"Dean."

"I'm just —" He pressed his mouth closed. The not-smile was winning. "Thank you for your help."

"I didn't do it for you," you said immediately. "She was interrupting. It was annoying."

"Completely understandable."

"I would have done the same for anyone."

"Of course."

"It had nothing to do with —" You stopped. "We have three more pages to get through."

"We do," Dean agreed, in the voice of someone being very, very agreeable.

You looked back at your notes.

I would have done the same for anyone.

You were a pre-law student. You were supposed to be good at arguments.

That one had convinced neither of you.

You packed up at nine-fifteen, later than planned, and Dean walked out with you the way he had started doing without either of you deciding he would.

"She's no one," Dean said, when the elevator arrived. Not defensive. Just offered.

You stepped inside. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"I know." The doors closed. "I wanted to anyway."

You looked at the floor number climbing. He looked straight ahead. The elevator was small and you were standing close , his arm against yours, the cedar smell of him in the enclosed space, and something about the cleared air of the session, the I'm going to apologize properly, the we he had said without thinking, settled between you like something that had decided to stay.

The doors opened.

"Wednesday," you said.

"Wednesday," he confirmed.

You walked out into the night and did not look back.

You were going to need a very good cake.

session four

It was week four of the project, and Dean had gone back to sitting beside you, in the most inconspicuous way possible.

It had been gradual and deniable at every individual step. First the chair had been angled slightly toward yours. Then it had migrated. Now your thighs brushed every time either of you shifted, and you were acutely, unhelpfully aware of the warmth of his forearm against yours, the cedar-and-cold-air smell of him that you had catalogued in the first session and had been trying unsuccessfully to un-catalogue since.

Things had been a little strange since the fight.

The fight you had caused. With assumptions you had made. About a TA who, it turned out, had a girlfriend.

You had settled, eventually, on cake — specifically the lemon cake Elisa had made that morning, wrapped in foil and sitting on the table between your laptops like a small citrus-scented olive branch, which Dean had looked at when you arrived and had not yet commented on.

You had not told him it was Elisa's. You were not going to examine why.

"So," you started.

Dean looked up from his laptop.

"I would like to apologize."

He held your gaze for a moment. Something in his expression shifted — careful, like he was deciding how much to give you. "It's okay."

"It really isn't, Dean." You turned to face him, which was a tactical error because it meant you were now very close to him, close enough that you could see the dark blue of his eyes in the library light, and the soft fabric of the cardigan where your knee was almost touching his. "I made assumptions. I think the worst of people sometimes and I let it get ahead of me. You've been doing the work. I knew that and I said it anyway. That wasn't fair."

Dean looked at you for a long moment.

"It's truly okay," he said quiet and uncomplicated, completely without performance. "I get it. I know what it looks like from the outside."

"That doesn't make it okay."

"No," he said. "But it makes it understandable."

You looked at him. He looked back at you. The study room was very quiet, the overhead light doing its particular low buzz, the air carrying old paper and coffee and the warm-wool smell of his cardigan.

"The cake is Elisa's," you said, because you needed to say something. "My roommate. She made it this morning and I brought it."

Dean's mouth curved. "You brought me a peace offering."

"I brought us a snack."

"A lemon cake wrapped in foil."

"We've been here three hours."

"That," he said, "is the most you thing I've ever heard." He reached over and broke off a piece without ceremony, and you watched his hands doing it those careful, deliberate and huge hands of his, and felt something tighten somewhere that you immediately filed under irrelevant.

"Good?" you asked.

"Really good." He looked at you with the quiet expression, the one that sat closer to the surface. "Tell Elisa thank you."

"Tell her yourself," you said, and then realized what that implied, and looked back at your laptop.

Dean didn't say anything.

But he didn't look away.

You worked. The tension in the room had changed quality, no longer the awkward residue of an unresolved argument, something else now, something that had been building for four weeks and was running out of places to go. You were aware of him the way you had been aware of him since that first session, the warmth of his arm against yours, the sound of his breathing in the quiet room, the way he tucked the pen behind his ear when he was reading something carefully.

You were looking at your screen. You were not reading anything on it.

He shifted beside you. His knee pressed against yours under the table, not accidentally, not with the absent quality of the foot under the table in session one, but deliberately, with the specific patience of someone making a point without words.

You looked at your screen.

His knee stayed where it was.

Fine, you thought. Fine.

You did not move away.

Another twenty minutes passed like that, both of you working, neither of you acknowledging the point of contact, the room very warm and very quiet. And then Dean reached over, not for a case brief this time, his hand finding yours on the table, covering it, not grabbing, just resting there. Still. Like a question asked very quietly.

You looked down at his hand on yours.

You looked up at him.

He was already looking at you and he didn't say anything, didn't push, just held your gaze with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while and had decided to stop waiting quietly.

You turned your hand over under his.

Something shifted in his face. Not the smile, something more careful than that, something that meant more.

Then his hand came up slowly, fingers brushing your jaw, turning your face toward his unhurried, giving you every opportunity to move.

You didn't move.

His eyes met yours — a question, patient and certain — and you answered it by closing your eyes and leaning in, and then his mouth was on yours.

You had kissed people before.

This was categorically different.

It started soft and then didn't stay that way. His hand slid into your hair and yours found the front of his cardigan — soft wool under your fingers, the solid warmth of him underneath — and when his tongue met yours you made a sound you were going to spend considerable time not thinking about.

The kiss was unhurried. Calculated in the best possible way. Dean kissed you like he had all the time in the world, and when air became a necessary concern he pulled back smiling, pressed a soft peck to your lips, and began a slow trail of kisses along your jaw and down your neck.

His mouth was warm on your neck, lips dragging slow enough to make your breath catch, and his hand slid down your thigh with a deliberate patience that made it very clear he was in no hurry whatsoever.

You pulled his hair and got a low, rough sound against your skin in return, and then his hand found your waist and pulled, dragging you onto his lap until you were straddling him and there was no distance left to negotiate.

You could feel exactly what four weeks of thighs brushing and careful silences had done to him.

Dean — you heard yourself saying. Dean, Dean —

Your hands had found their way under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and when you dragged your nails lightly down his skin he smiled against your mouth and rolled his hips up into yours with a slow, pointed pressure that dissolved whatever thought you'd been forming completely.

A loud, deliberate cough came from the doorway.

Mrs. Miller, the night librarian, stood in the entrance with the expression of a woman who had seen too much and was being paid nowhere near enough.

You scrambled back. Dean straightened. A beat of absolute silence.

"We're leaving," you said, with as much dignity as the situation permitted. "We're so sorry, Mrs. Miller."

Mrs. Miller said nothing. She held the door open with the energy of someone who had made peace with humanity's worst impulses but did not have to enjoy them.

You gathered your things in record time. Dean had the audacity to look almost completely composed, which was deeply unfair given the state of his hair, which was your fault. You looked away.

Outside in the hallway you made it three steps before he said:

"So."

"Don't."

"I was just going to —"

"I know what you were going to say."

A pause. Then, with great personal restraint: "Okay."

You made it to the elevator before you looked at him. He was already looking at you.

"The cake was really good," he said.

"Shut up, Dean."

He laughed. The elevator doors closed. You stood in the small lit space of it with your shoulders touching and said nothing else the whole way down.

You were both smiling though.

session five

The fifth session was on a Wednesday.

You had been avoiding him since the awkward encounter with Mrs. Miller.

Not obviously, you were too disciplined for obvious. You had shown up to every class, done every piece of work, responded to every text within a reasonable time. You had simply pulled back the parts of yourself that had started, over four weeks of thighs brushing and functional silences and one extremely ill-advised study room incident, to lean toward him without permission.

You were good at pulling back. You had been doing it your whole life.

The third floor smelled like old paper and the warmth of a space occupied all day, the radiator ticking in the corner, the last of the evening light grey through the windows. Dean was already at the table. He looked up when you came in. You sat across from him, the original position, the border re-established, and he looked at it and then looked at his laptop and said nothing.

You worked.

The project was almost finished. This was the last session, a conclusion, a bibliography built jointly over five weeks, your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. It was good work. You were going to get an A on this project.

You were also going to have no reason to sit in this library with Dean DiLaurentis after next week.

You were not examining that.

"We need to talk about the conclusion," Dean said, around the hour mark.

"I know. I drafted something last night, it's in the doc."

He found it. Read it. Was quiet for long enough that you looked up.

"It's good," he said.

"I know."

Another silence. He wasn't reading anymore.

"Are you going to keep doing this," he said, "or."

"Doing what."

"You know what."

"Dean —"

"Because I can." Simply, without heat. "If that's what you want, I can pretend that kiss didn't happen and we finish the project and that's it. I'm not going to make it weird." A pause. "Weirder."

You said nothing. Outside the window the campus was dark and wet, the paths amber-lit below.

"But I'd like to know," he said, "so I can stop waiting for you to tell me."

The library was very quiet. The radiator ticked. The overhead light buzzed.

"It's not that simple," you said finally.

"Okay." He waited.

"I have the Harvard interview in four days. I have a GPA I cannot let slip. I cannot afford to be distracted by —" you stopped.

"By me," he said.

"By anything."

He was quiet. "That's fair."

"And you don't —" you stopped. Started over. "You don't do this. Whatever this would be. I've heard enough to know that's not something you do. Rollercoaster ride or something like that."

Dean looked at you then. Fully, the way he didn't always let himself — all the way, no management.

"What have you heard," he said.

"Dean."

"No. Specifically."

You met his gaze. "That you don't do relationships. That it's always casual. That you're consistent about that."

He held your gaze.

"That was true," he said. "For a long time that was true."

"And now?"

He looked at you like the answer was obvious and he was simply waiting for you to arrive at it, with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while.

You looked back at your laptop. Your chest felt tight. You had spent five weeks building a careful wall and he had just put his hand flat against it and pushed, gently, without drama, without raising his voice.

The same way he had put his hand over yours on the table.

Just resting there. Like a question asked very quietly.

"Four more pages," you said.

Dean was quiet for a beat.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

You both looked at your screens.

You finished the project.

Professor Whitaker announced the grades on a Thursday morning.

You were in your seat when she read them out.

A plus.

You looked up. Dean was already looking at you from the sixth row, and the smile on his face was the quiet one, the one you had catalogued in week two and had been trying not to think about since. It crossed the room and landed somewhere specific.

You gathered your things after class with the focused efficiency of someone with somewhere to be, and you almost made it to the door.

"Hey." He fell into step beside you in the hallway, easy and unhurried, bringing with him the cedar smell. "A plus."

"A plus," you confirmed.

"Told you the Marbury placement was better in section three."

"That was my idea."

"I agreed with it enthusiastically."

"You said yeah, okay and went back to your laptop."

"Enthusiastically," he repeated.

You stopped walking. The hallway moved around you, students flowing past, and Dean stopped too, and you were standing in the middle of it looking at him.

You had done it. You had actually done it. Four years of work and one extremely stressful semester and a project partner you had spent the first two weeks convinced was going to ruin everything, and you had gotten an A plus and the Harvard interview was tomorrow.

The knot in your stomach, which had lived there so long you had stopped noticing it, was gone.

Dean was looking at you with an expression that had gone soft in a way you weren't ready for.

You hugged him.

You weren't sure you had decided to. Your arms were around him and his were around you a half second later, one hand flat between your shoulder blades, and he was warm and solid and smelled so good, and you stayed there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

The hallway moved around you. Neither of you moved.

When you pulled back he was still looking at you.

"Good luck tomorrow," he said quietly. "You don't need it. But good luck."

You nodded. Looked at him for one more second.

Then you walked away.

You made it to the end of the hallway before you thought —

oh.

oh no.

And kept walking anyway.

the wednesday after

The Wednesday after the interview, you were in the kitchen with Elisa when the doorbell rang.

Elisa looked at you. You looked at Elisa.

"Are you expecting someone?" she asked.

"No."

"Should I get it?"

"I'll get it," you said, in the tone of someone who had a feeling.

You opened the door.

Dean DiLaurentis was standing on your porch in a green cardigan — of course he was, he owned approximately nine of them — holding grocery store flowers and a DVD copy of Legally Blonde.

You stared at him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"I heard the interview went well."

"How did you hear that."

"Beau knows your roommate apparently."

You were going to have words with Elisa. "It went well," you confirmed.

"Good." He held out the flowers. The stems were slightly damp from the cold outside. "These are for you."

You took them. "And the DVD."

"Also for you."

"Dean." You looked at him. "I don't own a DVD player."

Something flickered in his expression, that almost-smile. "I know."

"So this is."

"A reason to invite me in," he said simply. "So we can watch it on your laptop. If you want."

"My laptop also doesn't have a DVD player."

He made a gesture as if to throw the DVD across the lawn, which made you laugh despite yourself.

You looked at him standing on your porch and thought about five weeks of sessions, the foot under the table, the arm reaching across you, the knee pressed deliberately against yours, the hand resting over yours on the table, quiet as a question.

"You drove here," you said, "with a DVD."

"I did."

"That's extremely old fashioned. You might as well stand under my window with a boombox playing George Michael."

"If that's what you want."

"Most people would have just texted."

"I'm not most people," he said, simply, without needing anyone to confirm it.

You stepped back from the door.

"Elisa made caesar salad," you said. "She's been waiting for an excuse to feed someone new."

Dean stepped inside. The warmth of the house closed around him.

"I love caesar salad," he said.

"I know you do," you said, closing the door. "It's very you. That and like, Steak Tartare."

"What's wrong with Steak Tartare?"

Elisa lasted forty-five minutes before she announced she was going to her boyfriend's and picked up her keys with the energy of someone who had orchestrated something and was not going to pretend otherwise. You did not look at Dean when she left. You heard the door close and the house settle into quiet and then it was just the two of you on the couch with the TV on and Elle Woods on the screen, his arm warm along the back of the cushion behind you, close enough that you could feel the heat of it without it quite touching.

You had made it approximately eleven minutes into the film.

"I got in," you said, to the screen.

Dean went still.

"The interview —" you stopped. The room was very quiet. The lamp on the side table cast everything amber, warmer than the library had ever been. "They called this morning. I got in."

A beat of silence.

"Harvard," he said.

"Harvard," you confirmed.

Another beat, long enough that you turned to look at him. He was already looking at you.

"I knew you would," he said.

And then he kissed you.

It felt like something he had been waiting to do since the door opened, like Elisa leaving had simply removed the last obstacle between the moment and itself. His lips were on yours immediately, and Dean tasted like mint, and you found yourself wondering distantly if he had come here prepared for this, if this was always how tonight was supposed to end.

He didn't kiss like a careful person. His tongue was thorough and consuming and somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered that cliché about tongues fighting for dominance, that was what Dean was doing, except you found you had absolutely no desire to fight him for it. You would give him whatever he wanted.

Your hands found his shoulders. His found your waist, your thighs, and then settled, decisively, with intent, on your ass. An ass man, you noted, which tracked completely. He pulled you closer and you went willingly, swinging one leg over his knees until you were straddling him. He groaned in satisfaction, his hands pulling you flush against him, his hips rising to meet yours.

Air became a problem. You pulled back, opening your eyes, and found Dean with his eyes still closed, already searching for your mouth again. You gave him a small peck, then made a slow path of kisses from his mouth to his ear to his neck.

On his neck you bit him, lightly, experimentally, and the response was immediate. His hand came down on your ass in a sharp reflexive slap that startled a breathless laugh out of you. Through your skirt and his jeans you could feel exactly how much he was enjoying this, and you rolled your hips deliberately. The sound that came out of him made you stop entirely.

God. You wanted to hear that sound on repeat for the foreseeable future.

He seemed to resurface from wherever he had gone, and then he was standing, actually standing, with you in his arms, your legs wrapping automatically around his back.

"So," he started, eyes dropping to your mouth in a way that was frankly unfair. "Where's your bedroom?"

"Up the stairs, first door on the left," you answered against his neck, punctuating it with another bite.

"Stop teasing me or I'll drop you."

As a direct response you attempted to suck a mark into his neck. He fake-stumbled dramatically on the first step, which made you shriek and then immediately muffle it, and he laughed, low and warm and entirely too pleased with himself.

"I told you," he said.

You made it to your bedroom, and you silently praised the rare burst of energy that had led you to tidy it the night before. He dropped you onto the bed and you propped yourself up on your elbows and watched him pull off his cardigan and then the white shirt underneath.

You let out a slow whistle.

Hockey had been very, very good to him.

"Has anyone ever told you you're kind of annoying?" he said, dropping to his knees at the foot of the bed and pushing your legs open. His eyes went to your underwear. Something in his expression softened. "Cute underwear."

"Only this blond guy I'm sort of into," you said, focusing very hard on something other than what was about to happen. "And I wasn't planning on sleeping with anyone today, hence the polka dot Snoopy panties."

"No, I genuinely think they're cute," he said, and pressed a kiss to your clothed center that made your breath catch. "But they do have to go."

He hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled them down, and then — you watched, incredulous — tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Absolutely not —"

"Focus," he said.

"You're so wet," Dean murmured, his gaze on you in a way that made you feel simultaneously embarrassed and triumphant. He kissed the inside of your knee, your inner thigh, everywhere except where you needed him. "All from just kissing?"

"Stop teasing," you whined.

"Not so funny anymore, is it."

"Please, Dean —"

"Please?" He looked up at you, and the expression on his face was criminal. "So you're telling me I spent weeks and months putting up with you being rude to me, when I could have had you this polite just by bending you over a table?"

The image that produced made you moan before you could stop yourself.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this," he said, voice low. "To taste you."

His tongue pressed flat against your center and you moaned so loudly you were immediately grateful Elisa had left. He explored you with single-minded thoroughness, his tongue parting you, learning you, the sounds filling the room obscenely, the wet heat of his mouth and your increasingly frantic responses.

When his mouth found your clit your hands flew to his hair, pulling, trying to bring him impossibly closer.

"You taste so fucking sweet," Dean said against you.

"Fuck — Dean —"

The feeling built and crested and his hand came down across your stomach to hold your hips in place as they jerked. Your thighs trembled. He felt the way you clenched around nothing and knew.

"Be a good girl and come for me."

The orgasm hit like a wave breaking — sudden and total.

"Dean — oh my god —"

He worked you through it, his tongue slowing gradually until he finally pulled back. When he stood you were completely wrecked, sprawled across the bed, unable to form a sentence, staring up at him. His chin was wet. He looked insufferably composed.

He removed his jeans and helped you out of your dress, then came down over you on the bed, his weight settling between your thighs. He kissed you slowly, his hands cradling your jaw with a tenderness that was almost absurd given what had just happened, sweet and careful and at complete odds with the rest of the evening.

You felt him against your thigh.

Oh. He was — yes.

"Breathe, honey."

It was annoying how well he could tell when you'd stopped.

Your hips rolled up against him instinctively, looking for him.

"I need you inside me, Dean —"

"So demanding," he said, cutting you off with a kiss. His hand slid down between you, pressing the length of him against your folds, and the sound you made was not dignified in the slightest. He tapped the head of his cock against you and you dug your nails into his back.

"Please — Dean — please, please —"

He finally gave you what you were asking for, positioning himself at your entrance. The thick head breached you slowly, stretching you out, and you tried to pull him deeper faster.

"Oh fuck —" you moaned as he bottomed out.

"God damn," he breathed. "You're so tight."

His hips pulled back and snapped forward and then he was properly fucking you, hard, deep, everything you had imagined during different library sessions. His mouth found your collarbone, your chest, and then he took one nipple between his lips and you arched off the bed.

"You really do have the most absurd —" he said against your skin.

"Do not finish that sentence —"

"— tits. I could spend all day here."

Your walls tightened around him as the second orgasm built.

"I'm gonna come —" you breathed.

"I know."

He moved back up to your mouth, kissing you as you fell apart, and at the last moment he pulled out, the warmth of him spilling across your stomach. He stood and disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a cloth to clean you up. He discarded it somewhere, then lay down beside you and pulled you against his chest without ceremony, your legs tangling together.

The room was quiet. The lamp was still on. Outside the window the November street was dark and still.

"So," you said finally, staring at the ceiling. "You really are an overachiever."

"Shut up, (Y/N)," Dean said, and kissed you.

You stayed like that for a while, his heartbeat under your cheek, the lamp casting everything amber, the particular quiet of a house when everyone who needed to leave has left.

You had spent four years not allowing yourself anything that wasn't useful. Not a detour, not a distraction, not a single afternoon that didn't have a purpose.

Dean DiLaurentis, you thought, had been the worst possible use of your time.

You pulled his arm tighter around you.

Now it wasn't that Jack Abbot didn’t have the means to fix this issue. For that, he was brutally aware. His rugged good looks and quarter of a million dollar salary alone should have gotten him at least a date. His main problem was that he didn’t try, not really. He never took days off, accruing over 60 days of PTO before Gloria forced him out of the hospital for a week to avoid litigation over labor laws. He was a workaholic, with no real desire for change in his life. Once again, words from his therapist.

Today was another session, his therapist scribbling down in the notebook as if her life depended on it. It was all mundane until she paused. “Have you ever considered going to a strip club?”

He paused, hands freezing on his thighs. “I’m sorry, what?”

He had heard her, quite clearly, actually. Too shocked to let the words absorb into his brain. She repeated herself slowly, “It’s a very common place for men your age to go. It’s legal, low risk. Get some ones and see if it brings you back to your glory days as a young cadet. At the very least, you’ll have a story to tell me next week.”

So here he was, sitting in the parking lot of the Pink Pony. He changed his outfit twice before leaving, two different variations of the same black t-shirt and jeans. He had over $1000 in various bills shoved haphazardly into his wallet and pockets. Too nervous to undertip, feeling like he had to overpay to apologize for being a pervy old man.

The parking lot was quiet for an unassuming Thursday night; he’d taken a few days off for the affair. If nothing went his way, at least he had time to sulk in his pity before walking back into work on Monday.

He walked in awkwardly, shifting his weight consciously to his prosthetic, attempting to walk normally despite the years-long shift in his hips. He felt like he was crawling out of his skin. Men sat in the corners, dollar bills lazily thrown as girls twirled around on the stages. Half-dressed waitresses carrying overpriced bottles waved at him as he slipped into the bar. He got a whisky on the rocks and slipped into his own corner. He sank into the worn velvet chair, his back to the wall and a small stage in front of him. Secluded enough, and he was able to see all the exits. Old habits die hard.

Meanwhile, you were lounging in the back room, silk robe over your shoulders, while you fumbled around with your curlers. Nursing a lukewarm Diet Coke while music blared from the main stages. You weren’t even supposed to work tonight, prompting you to take a shift for a friend who caught a nasty case of the flu. Getting a master's degree wasn’t cheap, so you were perfectly fine with the extra hours.

“Y/n,” A coworker yelled, “Can I borrow that green set of yours?”

You shrugged lazily, “Don’t care, just wash it and return it. S’in my locker.” You hummed, coating your lips in a little too much lip gloss, adding a little too much highlighter to your face. This was one of your favorite things about your job: sitting in an overpriced fur-lined chair surrounded by girls who only uplifted each other. It all started as a small gig in undergrad, just to make extra money. Years later, you were still here, settling into the night shift like it was your home away from him.

“Oh, bitch.” Your coworker Ani squealed, barreling into the dressing room like her heels were on fire. “Y/n.”

You twirled around, urging the frantic girl to spit her words out. “Ani, where’s the fire?”

“Hot ass old man in front of stage F, wouldn’t even look me in the eyes but slid $150 across the stage.” She giggled, sitting next to you, your shoulders brushing.

Ani was your oldest friend here, and one of your closest friends outside of work. She kept you on your toes, but you always looked out for each other.

“How old?” You pry, lips pursed.

“Old enough to be your father.” There was an evil glint in her eyes.

You let out an over-dramatic moan, “Oh, you know me so well.”

“Right?” She yelled, grabbing your shoulder to pull you to the curtain. Both of your heads poked out, your eyes immediately finding the man. His body language was stiff, clutching his sweating whisky like a lifeline. She wasn't wrong; he was hot. In a rugged, soldier way. Exactly the type of customer you loved. So what you had stereotypical daddy issues, didn’t everyone?

“Oh, Ani,” You sighed, “I could kiss you on the lips.”

She let out a giggle, clearly proud of herself. “Consider us even for you giving me the Russian last week.”

Then her hands were on your shoulders, pushing you back into the room. “Wear that sexy little black number, and the clear glitter heels.” She ordered, tossing your clothes, ordering you around.

The two of you fell into heaps of giggles, ignoring the side eyes of the other girls as she helped dress you. Too much makeup and very little clothing later, you were shining, ready to slip out there.

“You’re gonna kill that old man.” She hummed, bouncing one of your curls between her long nails. “Make me proud, mama.”

With a playful slap on your ass, you were off, slipping into the main area as if you belonged there. Which you did, it was years of working here and owning the stages. Your heels clicked loudly against the tiny stage, hair bouncing down your back with each dramatic sway of your hips.

One hand wrapped around the pole, casual as anything, like it was an extension of you rather than something to perform with. You circled it once, twice, dragging it out, letting the music sway your movements. Your gaze skimmed the room like you were choosing, like you were deciding who deserved your attention. As if he wasn’t your target already.

When your eyes did find him, you couldn’t help the ridiculous smirk that fell on your lips. His honey brown eyes were dark, locked on yours. With your free hand, you sent him a sultry wave before the lights dimmed. The colored spotlights hit your skin as you brought your legs up around the pole. Twisting and gliding around in your natural habitat. When your back hit the pole, hands up and gliding down it, you watched him watch you.

His watchful eyes are heavy with every shake of your body, every gentle caress of your own skin. You arched your back, letting the pole support your weight as your head tilted back, hair cascading over your shoulders, your chest fully on display. He let himself pretend for just a moment that this was for him and him only. He felt an unfamiliar feeling in his gut, a warmness growing there. A feeling he had longed forgotten, forcing itself through his body the longer he watched you.

You slid down the pole, landing on the cool floor in a split. The song is slowly coming to an end, allowing yourself to change the pace. You let yourself fall on your elbows, pulling yourself up so you were crawling across on your hands and knees. This time, you made sure to keep eye contact with the man, stalking him as prey. Hips rolling with each crawl. He lifted a hand, brandishing a handful of bills very respectfully on the corner of the stage. Once you were close, you grabbed the bills, holding them up in between your perfectly manicured nails.

“This for me?” You asked, a faux dumb look plastered on your face. Just to see him squirm in his chair, which he did.

He nodded slowly, adjusting himself. His body leaning forward, watered-down whisky long abandoned on the table. “More where that came from.” He spoke, voice gruff and quiet over the music.

“Really?” You put a hand on your chest, slipping the bills into the thin string of your top. “I’m honored, baby.”

He pretended his cock didn’t stir at your voice, and your eyes, and your tits that were practically spilling out of the lace number you had on. He cursed his therapist, he cursed his body, and secondly, he cursed you because he knew you had ruined him from the moment you walked out on stage. He was going to have to go back to therapy and tell her that he came in his pants at the first girl to give him attention.

Your legs swung off the platform, heels hitting the floor with practiced precision as you sauntered over to him.

“You got a name, ‘Mr. More where that came from?” You growled playfully, letting your hands fall on the armrests, your body above him tits mere inches away from his face. You held all the power in this interaction, and it had his palms sweaty.

“You can call me Jack.” He spoke, his own voice sounding foreign to him.

“Jack.” You purred, letting your body settle between his spread legs. “Can I have a seat?” You asked sweetly, pointing towards his very welcoming lap.

“F-fuck, yeah.” He stumbled, leaning back just enough for you to swing your legs over his. You were perched on his lap gently, barely putting any weight on him. The doctor in him took a beat to notice your core strength, the way you moved expertly against him.

“So Jack,” You hummed, content on letting your hands rest lazily on his shoulders. ”What do you do for work?”

“M’a doctor.” He managed to stumble out, making a small laugh escape your lips. He was sure you didn’t believe him; your whole job consisted of men lying to you. Everyone was a CEO, a doctor, a lawyer, anything to impress the pretty girl in front of them.

“Yeah?” You giggled, a small accent slipping out. “You know, doctor, I’ve been having a serious problem lately.”

With your perfectly glossed lips in a pout, and your voice purring in his ear, he would have done anything you said. “Hm?” Was all he could get out, still tongue-tied by the fact that you were on top of him.

“These tits,” You sighed, grabbing your chest with both of your hands, “Are just sooo heavy. I really need someone to help hold them.”

”Doctor’s orders, huh?” He couldn’t help but laugh.

You nodded, letting your hands fall to the sides of the chair again. “Don’t be shy, I don’t bite.”

“What if I do?” Jack said, his eyes surprising both you and himself. His confidence is growing, slowly but surely.

“I might like that.” You recovered coolly, slipping back into your persona. “Come on, you can touch.”

His hand moved up, twitching ever so slightly but never moving closer to you. He looked nervous, his eyes practically scouring the room as if someone would catch him somehow breaking the law. You noticed, because of course you did.

“Hey, we can slip into a private room if you want a dance-“ Before you could even finish, he was slipping a few more bills into the bottom string of your thong.

To your credit, you didn’t let the flicker of surprise show on your face, even as the bills slid against your skin and his voice settled low and certain in your ear. “I’d prefer that, sweetheart.”

You smiled at that, something pleased and almost fond tugging at the corner of your mouth before you caught it and smoothed it back into something more seductive. His lap missed your presence when you sat up, holding your hand out for him. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

He stood a second later, slower than you, but following all the same. His hand was in yours, ignoring all the stares as you guided him into the back rooms. You said something quietly to one of the girls before a thick curtain was opened, revealing a private area. There was a plush couch, a few chairs, and a pole in the middle. The music was quieter, the lights dimmer. There was a faint neon pink glow, making his eyes adjust for a few moments.

“Take a seat wherever you’re comfortable.” You smiled, closing the curtain behind you two. The floor-to-ceiling fabric seemed to dull more sound than he thought, the music almost barely audible. He sank into the middle of the couch, adjusting his legs awkwardly while you frolicked around the room.

“This your room?” He asked, a small bluetooth speaker crackling in the corner.

“On most days,” You smiled, smooth rock music echoing throughout the room now, “Hope this is okay, you don’t strike me as the EDM pop type.”

He shook his head, “No, I am not.”

He barely had time to settle before you were moving again, letting your hands grip the pole as you walked by.

“Few rules,” You pointed towards the sign on the wall, “At any point you want to stop, let me know, if there’s something you’d like to ask nicely and I’ll work with you, no touching new places without asking, and tip well.”

“Yes, m’am.” He gave you a mock salute, your hips swaying to the beat. You inched closer and closer until you were close enough to touch. He was still tense as ever, even as you all but crawled into his lap again. The only time he touched you was to slip a few more bills into your thong, this time while your ass was in his face.

You spun around after another song had ended, “New rule,” You hummed, “Relax.”

”I am relaxed.” He lied, his shoulders were so tense they were beginning to ache, and his cock was so hard he was worried he was going to pass out from all the blood rushing between his legs. It didn’t help that you kept ending up hovering above his lap. You hadn’t once looked at the tent in his pants, another occupational hazard he assumed.

“You’re a bad liar,” You pressed your palms against his shoulders, “Relax,” you murmured again, softer this time, your voice losing some of that performative edge.

There was a quiet huff of breath from him, something almost like a laugh, but it didn’t quite make it all the way out. Not when you started to move.

A slow roll of your hips, controlled and measured, more about the rhythm than anything else, your body finding the beat and settling into it like second nature. You didn’t drop onto him right away, didn’t give him that friction yet; you let the anticipation build, let him watch the way your body moved just inches from his, the way your hands slid from his shoulders to the back of the couch, bracketing him in without touching.

His hands still hovered awkwardly at his sides for a second, like he didn’t know where they belonged, like he was afraid of getting it wrong.

“Do you wanna touch me?” You ask softly, in that new gentle tone you had reserved for him.

“More than anything in the world.” He admitted.

You placed his hand at your waist, right where the curve dipped in, where he could feel the heat of your skin beneath the thin fabric. “You can touch. That’s kind of the point.”

His fingers flexed there, tentative at first, like he was expecting you to pull away. As if this were a dream he’d get rudely woken up from. Instead, you moved closer, finally letting your hips settle on his lap. Pressing directly down on the bulge in his pants. At the contact, his fingers squeezed tightly at the flesh, mostly out of instinct. His hands were large and rough. His touch had you arching against him slightly, a shit-eating grin on your lips.

His other hand joined the other side of your hip, steadying you on top of him. You leaned forward just slightly, enough that your chest brushed his, your face close to his now, close enough that he could see the detail in your makeup, the gloss on your lips, the way your eyes held his with a kind of quiet confidence that didn’t waver.

”There you go, doctor.” You whispered, that nickname sticking much to his chagrin. He doesn't know why he was lying to himself, not when you could feel each jump of his cock.

He swallowed hard, his gaze flicking between your body and your mouth like he couldn’t quite decide where to land, like he was trying to take in too much all at once and failing. The friction was enough to make the room feel hot, tension building between each perfected roll of your hips.

One specific roll had a curse leaving his mouth, “Fuck.” He grunted, his eyes falling shut.

Your stomach burned, his voice going directly between your thighs. “D-does this feel good?”

He nodded, not even able to get a word out. “Can I move?” He asked, more confident, his hands guiding up to your chest before you could even finish your nod.

”Please.” You breathed out, nearly moaning at the first squeeze of your tits in his palm. His thumb brushes against your hardened buds, squeezing them between his forefinger.

You feel the shift in him, his movements more sure, his face more relaxed. Between his cock heavy between your legs, and his rough hands, you nearly forget you’re the one in charge for a moment. You try not to think about what he looks like underneath his dark, tactile daywear, what he sounds like when he cums, how large his fingers would feel slipping inside of you, or his cock, heavy and thick.

It takes you a second to catch your breath, settling back into the reality of the situation. “Permission to say something uncouth?” He asks, the word choice making you smile dopey at him.

“Always.”

“You have the most gorgeous tits I’ve ever seen.” He said, palms still heavy over the fabric of your top. “How much to get this little top off?”

Fuck, you are so fucked. Because if he looked at you with those respectful brown eyes again, you’d probably fuck him right here if he asked with that much kindness dripping in his voice.

“All you had to do was ask,” You admitted, “Go ahead, take it off me.”

With ease, he slips the knot in the back open, throwing the strings across the room as if it personally offended him.

“Fuck, I was right.” His other hand came up, both hands squeezing your tits.

Your hips stilled momentarily, letting your head fall back, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

“You like what you see, doctor?” You pant, steadying your hips again. Letting the now damp spot on your bottom rub against his bulge again.

“You’re like a dream.” He sighed, moving his hands down your stomach back to your hips. Helping you grind against him, the pleasure makes his toes curl.

“You-“ he cuts himself off, breath catching, jaw tightening before he tries again, quieter this time. “You might need to slow down.”

“Yeah?” You tease, the delicious drag of your clit making your own breath heavy, “Why?”

“You know why.” He grunted, gripping your hips tighter, stilling you on top of him.

You slow down, “What if I wanted to make you cum?”

The words leaving your mouth made both of you tense; the song changing left an awkward beat of silence.

“I’m sorry,” You cringed, “Was that too much? You’re just really-“

“Really, what?” He smiled, amusement in his eyes.

You faltered, not liking how you lost control of the situation. “You know, my friend told me you were here,” you admitted, “Sexy older man, looks slightly traumatized. I’ve wanted to jump your bones from the moment I saw you.”

“She knows your type, huh?”

You nod, “And you doctor, are making me wanna break all my rules.”

“What are those rules?” He hummed, letting his palm spread, gripping your ass gently.

“Not wanting to fuck my clients,” You jutted your bottom lip out, “That’s a big one.”

“Don’t I feel special.” He grinned, his cock still twitching in his pants at the sight of you. “S’been a while for me sweetheart.”

You made a sound between a scoff and a laugh, waiting for him to make a joke. Instead he just kept his smile locked on you, his hands warming your flesh.

You click your tongue against your teeth, “Well, that can’t do.”

Before he can reply, you’re sliding down his body. Letting your knees fall to the floor, leaving you between his spread legs. His eyes flare, with something dark and dangerous. You rest your cheek on his upper thigh, your lips so close to the ever prominent bulge in his pants.

“This okay?” You asked sweetly, your hands coming up to grip his thighs.

“Y-yeah, god yeah,” He sighed, lips parting in disbelief, “Are you sure-“

You shush him letting your hand fall on his knee, and he flinches. His whole body twinging underneath your touch, as if he was just pulled harshly back into reality.

You pause, it very clearly doesn’t feel like a knee, but you keep your face blank, looking up at him through your lashes. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what you were touching; it was common, especially among soldiers. You’d know, considering your field of study.

“Did I hurt you?” You asked sweetly.

He shook his head, “I just, uh. I don’t have, there’s a- “

You pause, “I don’t care what happened, just wanna make sure I'm not hurting you. Would you like me to move my hand?”

“If you want to move it, I wouldn’t be offended.” He stutters, tensing up again.

You don’t move your hand; instead, you continue pulling his pants down with the other. “When was the last time you got your cock sucked, doctor?”

“If I said over 10 years, is that embarrassing?” He breathes out, his hands fisted by his sides.

“Not at all.” Your mouth is watering as his heavy cock slips out of his boxers. Just like you thought, he’s thick and large. “If you need me to stop, please tell me.”

“Y-yes, whatever you want.” He nearly whimpers.

You lean forward, wrapping your lips around his red tip. Swirling your tongue around it, before slowly bobbing your mouth around him. He tasted salty and warm as you moaned around him.

This was heaven; Jack had surely died and gone to heaven.

His cock twitched in your mouth with each bob, the small patch of salt and pepper hair tickling at your nose each time he prodded the back of your throat.

“Oh, hell.” He grunted, one of his hands coming to gently push your hair back from your face. Your eyes fluttered shut, your hands wrapping around the little bit you couldn’t fit in your mouth with each thrust. You ignored the tears threatening to leak from your eyes, your cheeks hollowing, your tongue pulling elicit sounds from the back of the older man's throat.

“Let me see those gorgeous eyes, yeah, eyes on me.” He cooed, his hand holding your hair in a makeshift ponytail.

You obliged, opening your watery eyes to look up at him. “Gonna let me fuck that mouth of yours?”

Jack had a filthy mouth, and with each low command he whispered to you, your thighs were rubbing together, attempting to get the smallest bit of relief. You nodded, relaxing your jaw around his thick cock. He braced himself, guiding your head up and down on his length slowly. Each thrust hits the back of your throat.

It was messy, the squelching sound of him fucking up into you nearly overpowered the slow speaker still playing in the corner of the room. The small moans and whimpers of praise that left his mouth were music to your ears.

“Breathe.” He ordered, noticing just how red your cheeks were getting from the intrusion. You ignored him, trying to breathe through your nose, continuing to flick your tongue against the bulging vein on his cock. He shivered at the feeling, but his concern outweighed it.

“Off,” He pulled at your hair, “Now.”

Your lips trailed up with a pop, a string of spit hanging off your wet lips connecting to his tip. Your makeup was a mess, eyes sparkling as you took a few heavy breaths.

“Sorry,” You breathed out, licking his tip once more. “This fucking cock. What a travesty, no one's been sucking it for the last 10 years.”

“You okay?” He asked, his fingers pressing against your carotid. No doubt checking your racing heart rate, making sure you weren’t about to have a coronary.

“M’ okay.” You mumbled, wrapping your lips around him again with a moan.

“Good girl.” He praised, gently pushing your head back down on him. With each wet, messy gargle of him fucking into your throat, he was willing himself not to cum. “You listen so well, don’t you?”

You nodded with him in your mouth, making his eyes roll back. You knew he was close, you could tell by how tight his balls were, or by the frantic pulling of your hair.

“F-fuck,” He cried out, his hips thrusting up into your throat causing you to gag around him, “I’m gonna cum. Gonna fucking cum.”

You didn’t stop your movements, moaning around him in response as you felt him twitch once before he cums directly down your throat.

His head is thrown back in the couch cushions, his muscles peaking through the too-tight t-shirt he wore with each heavy breath as he came down.

You slowly pulled your mouth off of him with a pop, using your thumb to pick up the little bit of cum that had dripped down your chin. His eyes were glazed, his lips wet and red from biting down on them.

“Open,” He demanded, moving his hand from your hair to your chin. He helped you relax your jaw, showing your tongue out to him showing him not a drop was wasted. “Fuck, you’re unreal.”

You were giggly, cockdrunk off that alone. You helped him pull his pants back up with gentle hands, slipping back into his lap as if you belonged there.

“How was your first blowjob in over a decade?” You teased, your legs outstretched on the couch cushions while you sat perched on his leg.

He pinched your bare leg lightly, “Little minx. You know exactly how dangerous that mouth is.”

You rolled your eyes playfully, ready to swing off his lap and prepare to part ways. Instead, he grabbed your hips, keeping you exactly where you were.

“Wait,” He whispered, “You can say no, but it’s very rude not to offer to make a lady cum. Especially after she just gave you the best blowjob of your life.”

You froze, brows flying up your forehead. “You wanna make, me? Cum?” You asked, as if it were such an unbelievable request.

He nodded casually, as if he was asking about the weather. “I didn’t even need the blowjob, don’t get me wrong I enjoyed it so fucking much, but I’d have just as much fun getting to taste your sweet little cunt. What an honor would it be to make you cum, over and over….”

Your chest flushes, legs nearly trembling at the words he was whispering in your ear. Where the fuck did this man come from?

His hand moved to your thigh, fingers tapping on the skin.

“Fuck,” Unable to keep the whine from escaping you, “Y-yeah. Touch me, please.”

That’s all Jack needed, gently positioning you facing away from him. Your back pressed against his chest, your legs spread against his.

His lips dragged gently against your neck, his breath hot with each word he spoke. “I knew these little panties would be soaked for me.” His fingertips trailed against the now-soaked fabric, pressing just enough to make you mewl against him.

“You’re so fucking hot, hard not to.” You panted.

He chuckled, pulling the fabric aside so he could glide his fingers against your wet folds. He moaned louder than you did at the contact, his rough fingertips finding your clit expertly.

“There you go,” He cooed, rubbing steady circles on the twitching bud. Your legs were all but trembling now, chest rising with each stroke.

After a while, you were aching, throbbing for more. “P-please-“ You begged, not even sure what you were begging for.

“Hmm?”

“Please, wanna feel you.” You cried, gasping in relief when his thick softy slipped into your entrance, with very little resistance.

“There you go, good girl using her words.” He praised, rewarding you with his fingers pressing deep inside of you. Reaching places your fingers couldn’t even think of touching.

He could feel the effect his words had on you, each gentle praise had you squeezing around him. Even as he slipped in another finger, stretching you out around him.

“Oh, you like that, don’t you?” He tutted, “Me in control?”

You nodded, eyes rolling into the back of your head. Those large fingers you spent the past hour imagining felt even better than you could have thought. He was so deep, his fingers curling with each rock of your hips.

“Knew it.” Was all he said, as his spare hand wrapped around your throat gently. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t even attempt to hold on. Just kept his hand there, forcing you into his hold.

You lost your ability to think, too lost in his strong hold as he curled and scissored his fingers inside you. “J-jack.”

“That’s my name, sweetheart.” He mocked playfully, his thumb moving to rub at your oversensitive clit. That’s all it took for you to come apart against him, crying out his name.

He didn’t stop, his hands continuing their movements.

“Too much,” You whined, your fingernails digging into his thigh as he kept going. The lewd sounds of his fingers slipping in and out of your soaked cunt had your head spinning.

“I don’t think so, I think you can take one more.”

You nearly laughed, delirious, “God, you’re so fucking hot.”

“So are you baby, being so good for me.” He sighed, “Perfect fucking pussy, and she wants to cum again for me? Doesn't she?”

You nodded frantically, feeling his fingers curl even deeper pressing against your sweetspot with each movement.

“You wanna cum again so bad, I can feel it.”

You hated how right he was, how your hips were jerking into him. You were already so close to cumming again, off his words alone.

“Right there,” You gasped, “Don’t stop.”

“Never,” He pressed a kiss to your neck, feeling your cunt suckle in his fingers greedily. You came wordlessly, nothing but pitiful moans leaving you. His hand was soaked, your release dripping down his palm as he stroked you through your second orgasm of the night.

You were breathless, panting miserably.

“Fuck.” You cried out, your head falling back into his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve come that hard in years.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, sweetheart.” He hummed, gently slipping his fingers out of you.

“M’not lying.” You shake your head, "Would never lie to a man about that.”

“What losers have you been sleeping with?” He frowns. “A real man makes sure his girl cums at least twice before he even thinks about himself.”

A shiver runs down your spine as he continues, “I’d take good care of you, you know?”

You nearly moan, “Really?”

“Hm,” He nods, his palm spread wide on your bare thigh. “Would buy you whatever you want, make you cum so hard every night until you forget your name. You’d never have to entertain these losers here again.”

He’s not the first man to claim he can swoop in and be your knight and shining armor, but he is the first man to make you believe that he means it.

“What if we start with dinner?” You smile, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. It was humorous that both of you had made each other cum, without even kissing. It was ridiculous, completely unorthodox, borderline unethical, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. Not when his soft, honey brown eyes were looking at you like you hung the moon.

“I think I'd like that, sweetheart. Give me a chance to treat you right.” He smiled, smoothing down your hair with his free hand.

You exchanged numbers and even texted him first. Promising him again, this wasn’t something you normally did. You offered to walk him out, but he declined, pressing one last kiss to your lips, pretending not to see the very large stack of cash he slipped on your side table.

“I’ll be expecting your call.” He smirked before he slipped through the curtain.

“A text! Who calls anymore old man?” You teased, walking him slink down the hall. You waited for a beat, watching his bow-legged sway as he walked out the door.

It was only seconds later that a head popped out of the room across from yours, Ani’s eyes wide. “Bitch! What happened?”

“-Why did you stop-“ A man’s voice rang out behind her, only making her slam the curtain shut.

All you could do was squeal at your friend, pressing your hand to your beating chest.

“Your spacing’s off,” you say finally, voice calm but carrying easily over the noise. “You’re crowding the protein. Let it breathe. It’s the star of the show, the sauce is the supporting act.”

The woman startles, eyes snapping up to you, then immediately over your shoulder like she’s checking if she’s about to get in trouble.

“What,” he starts, turning sharply, already halfway into irritation, “did I just say about-”

His eyes land on you, a flicker of confusion on his face about the stranger who was relaxing against his station, as if she belonged there. 

“Who are you and why are you standing around like you own the place?” He asks gruffly, his hands leaning against the table now. His arm veins protruded as his body weight rested on the limbs. 

“The person who does own the place gave me a key,” You hold up the silver key between your fingers, “And I’m Y/n Y/l/n, the new sous-chef.” 

“The one from France?” he asks, stepping closer, wiping his hands on a towel but not breaking eye contact. 

You give a curt nod, a smirk still gracing your lips. It made it very hard for Jack not to stare at your pursed lips as he sized you up.

”Ah, yes,” Ellis chimes in, grinning as she leans against her station, clearly enjoying this far too much. It wasn’t often that many people gave Jack shit.  “The prodigal daughter back from studying abroad in France. Here to give this old guy a run for his money?”

”Old?” His voice echoed in the kitchen, making Ellis put her tattooed arms up. 

“Respectfully.” She whistled, holding her hand out for you to shake. 

Her grip was firm as she gave you her name, “Ellis Parker, Chef de Partie for the French girl.” 

You nearly flushed at her warm gaze, dropping her hand as she grabbed her plate, giving you and your new boss time to talk. 

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s see what Robby thought was worth importing.”

He holds his hand out in front of him, guiding you through the massive kitchen. 

“Careful,” you murmur. “You might like it.”

Something in his gaze darkens at that, interest threading through the challenge, but it’s gone just as fast as it appears. Your stuff is put up in a locker, while you throw an apron over your head. 

The tour is less formal than most restaurants you’ve worked in. That’s the first thing you’ve noticed, just how close-knit everyone seems to be. Which was a stark contrast to most other posh workplaces you’ve spent the last few years in. 

“Head of house, Frank Langdon with his assistant Mel King.” He points through the glass window into the dining room where the tall brunette was wildly explaining something to do with menus to the eager blonde. 

You’re on his heels as he walks, keeping up behind him like you were in a moving current. 

“Dana, house manager. She keeps this place running, don’t ever piss her off.” He grumbles, and you hear the blonde put the phone down to yell loudly at the man. 

“-I heard that!” 

“Anyways,” he continues, his shoulder pushing open another door for you two to glide through. “Santos and Garcia, our resident bartender and sommelier.” 

The younger girl is shoulder to shoulder with the older girl, polishing wine glasses with expert precision. You wave softly to them, trying your best to be polite while Jack is all but dragging you through the restaurant at lightning speed. 

You’re back in the kitchen, a guy is on his knees scrubbing at a spot on the floor while the other is rinsing the sink. 

“Whittaker, our busboy, and Ogilvie his assistant of sorts. I don’t really know what he does, he cleans.” Jack pauses watching the boy squint at him before you’re off in the kitchen again. 

The smell of sugar and vanilla hits your nose as you walk through the pastry kitchen. “Samira Mohan, our Pastry Chef. I don’t care what bullshit you saw in France, she’s better.” He boasts, and you barely catch a glance of the girl as she’s pulling another rack of pastries out of the oven. 

“There are some people I’m missing,” He huffs, “You met Ellis, then we have Shen and Crus our other chefs. We have our prep cooks Princess and Perlah, don’t tell them anything they gossip.” 

He lets out a short laugh as you’re suddenly right back where you started, “McKay and Javardi are our hosts, Joy and Emma are our veteran waitresses. We love them, Emma does our social media. So if she asks you to make a TikTok, you’ll do it because she’s too sweet to say no to.” 

“Understood,” You let out a breath, still trying your best to remember all of the names. 

”You met Robby and Heather, they’re hardly here since their daughter was born so that leaves me.” He smiles, rocking on his feet. “Jack Abbot.” 

“Nice to officially meet you,” You nearly laugh, sticking out your hand to shake his. You nearly shiver at the way his large warm hand encompasses yours. 

He switches in and out of Head Chef mode easily, immediately going into a deep explanation of how they work here. Their processes, what makes it work, and how under no circumstances are you to deviate from the plan. He was a stickler for order, that much was obvious, but you had to be in this line of work. 

“Did you memorize the menu?” 

“Of course.” You nod, thinking back to Robby shoving a binder in your hand upon hiring and telling you to study up. You didn’t think you’d actually be tested until Jack started throwing questions at you. 

“Miso cod,” he says. “What finishes it?”

“White miso glaze, reduced until it clings,” you answer without hesitation. “Caramelized under high heat, served over a bed of jasmine rice with a ginger-scallion emulsion and pickled shiitake for contrast.”

His eyes flick toward you briefly.

“Citrus?”

You don’t miss a beat. “Yuzu zest in the emulsion. Bright, but not overpowering.”

He hums, not quite approval, not quite dismissal.

“Filet.”

“Dry-aged,” you reply. “Pan-seared, basted in brown butter, garlic, and thyme. Rested properly. Served with pommes purée that’s more butter than potato and a red wine bordelaise reduced to almost syrup.”

“Temperature.”

“Mid-rare,” you scoff. “Obviously, anything higher is a crime.”

That earns the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He stops suddenly at the pass, picking up a plate, holding it between you like a test you’re meant to fail. It’s still steaming, but there’s not much cooking happening besides prep. 

A smile quirks up at your lips, thinking of him preparing a dish just to quiz you on. You take the challenge. 

It’s a roasted chicken, split and pressed, the skin blistered and golden, glistening under a brush of jus. It sits over a bed of truffle-laced pommes anna, layered thin and crisp at the edges, soft and buttery at the center. There’s a swipe of charred leek purée, dark and smoky, and a scattering of pearl onions lacquered in something sweet and reduced.

He holds it out slightly toward you, pulling a fork out from his pocket.

“Roast chicken,” he says. “Walk me through it.”

You step in closer without hesitation, close enough that your shoulder nearly brushes his as you lean in.

“Air-dried for at least twenty-four hours,” you start, eyes scanning, picking it apart piece by piece. “High heat to render the skin, then finish slower so it stays juicy. Basted in butter, thyme, maybe a little garlic toward the end so it doesn’t burn.”

Your finger hovers just above the pommes anna, not touching, just tracing the shape with the fork. You bring it up to your lips, unaware of Jack’s sudden interest in the counter after your tongue swipes against it.

“Potatoes layered with clarified butter, pressed, cooked low and slow, then crisped. Truffle folded in at the end, not during, or it disappears.”

“Sauce,” he prompts.

“Chicken jus, mounted with butter,” you reply. “Reduced enough to coat the back of a spoon, not so much that it turns sticky.”

He nods once, then tilts the plate slightly.

“What doesn’t belong?”

You hum, twirling the fork around. 

You lean in just a little more, close enough now that if you shifted even an inch you’d touch him, your voice lowering without you meaning to. The fork stabs one of the pearl onions, you shove it into your mouth, and grimace a little. 

“They’re glazed in balsamic,” you say.

“And.”

“It’s too heavy,” you continue, straightening slightly, meeting his eyes again. “You’ve already got richness from the chicken, the butter, the potatoes. The balsamic makes it sweet and acidic in the wrong way. It pulls focus instead of balancing.”

He watches you carefully.

“Sweetness is bad?”

“Not if it’s intentional,” you counter. “But this isn’t. It’s competing, not complementing.”

Then you tilt your head just slightly, a hint of something playful slipping in.

“You’d be better off with something brighter. Maybe a preserved lemon glaze, or even a light cider reduction. Something that cuts through instead of sitting on top.”

He makes a noise of satisfaction, “Most people would’ve said the truffle,” he admits.

“The truffle isn’t overdone, it’s a good addition. If it’s in the budget, I’d put it on the menu, minus the onions.” You smiled crookedly. 

He’s trying to hide how impressed he is, as he shuffles around. “Well, try not to slow us down tonight.” 

“Oh, I don’t like it slow.” You purse your lips, “Don’t worry about me.” 

He has an amused look on his face, “You are gonna give me a run for my money huh?” 

You shrug, “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.” 

And you don’t make him wait long.

Service hits like a wave and you step into it without hesitation, sliding onto his line as if you’ve always belonged there, like the rhythm of this kitchen is something your body already understands. This is where you belong, even when the tickets start stacking. Jack glides through the kitchen like he could do it blindfolded.

You match him without thinking, your hands moving before the words even fully land, reaching for pans, adjusting heat, finishing sauces before he even has the chance to bark out orders. 

“Two scallops, one duck, one filet,” he calls.

“Scallops walking,” you answer just as quickly, already flipping them, butter foaming, the edges caramelizing into that perfect golden crust. You tilt the pan, baste once, twice, then pull them at exactly the right second, sliding them onto the plate like it’s elementary. 

Jack tries not to stare, tries to focus on his own job but he finds the way you move mesmerizing. Even when you reach for the wrong item, still gaining your footing here, you’re majestic. 

“Duck?” he presses.

You’re already slicing it, the blade gliding clean through, juices held exactly where they should be. “Rested,” you say, fanning it out, dragging the cherry reduction into a sharper line, tightening the plating just enough to elevate it without losing its soul.

“You’re moving fast,” he mutters, more to himself than you.

You don’t look up. “I told you, I don’t like it slow.”

There’s something in the way you say it that makes him pause for half a second too long before snapping back into motion.

The longer the service goes, the clearer it becomes. You’re not just keeping up with him, you’re anticipating him. Adjusting before he asks, finishing thoughts he hasn’t spoken yet, stepping into the exact spaces he leaves open without ever colliding. It isn’t chaotic, it isn’t competitive in a loud way. You’re not working against him, you’re not showing out. It’s a dance. 

At one point your hands brush when you both reach for the same pan, and neither of you pulls back immediately. He lingers, and you let your fingers dance over his before pulling the pan out from him. 

When service is over, the place takes a deep breath. Jack pretends he can’t smell the sweat clinging to your neck, and the soft scent of your shampoo when you pass him. 

“Is every night like that?” You ask, your skin still vibrating from the adrenaline rush. successful service. 

“If we’re so lucky,” Shen smiles, patting you on the back, “You were on fire back there.” 

“Thank you.” You smiled, listening to their compliments while your eyes were on Jack. He gave you a simple nod of encouragement, before he leaned back down to scrub at the oven. You took that to heart, ignoring the weird flutter in your chest at his approval. 

You roll your shoulders back, trying to shake the adrenaline loose, but it’s still there, buzzing under your ribs, settling somewhere deeper instead of fading.

“Careful,” Ellis calls from across the line, flicking water from a rag in your direction. “You keep that up, you’re gonna make the rest of us look bad.”

“You already do that on your own,” you shoot back, not missing a beat.

A few laughs ripple through the room.

”Yeah,” She whistles, tossing you a sponge, “You’re right where you belong.” 

You move through cleanup as you worked here for years, not a single night, falling into rhythm beside them, trading small comments, quiet jokes, letting yourself settle into something that feels dangerously close to belonging already. 

Princess is already whispering something to Perlah that makes them both glance at you and grin, Dana’s voice carries faintly from the front, still managing something even this late, and Shen is already halfway to the espresso machine without needing to ask. He brings you a coffee in a shot glass, a wide smile on his face. “To surviving your first shift at The Pitt.”

By the end of your first week, the kitchen stops watching you like you’re a baby deer on new legs, and starts moving with you as if you’ve always been there. By the end of your second, they start trusting you. And by the end of your first month, there isn’t a single person on the line who doesn’t adjust when you step in, who doesn’t listen when you speak, who doesn’t look for you the same way they look for him when something matters.

Service becomes something electric between you and Jack.

You learn his tells, the slight shift in his posture when something is about to go wrong, the way his voice drops when he’s focused, the exact second he expects a plate to land in the pass. And he learns yours too, whether he wants to admit it or not. The way you move faster when you’re challenged, the way you don’t wait to be told, the way you fix things before they ever reach him. 

“Too much salt,” he mutters one night, barely glancing at a pan.

You’re already beside him, tasting, adjusting, adding a splash of stock and a knob of butter, bringing it back into balance like it was never off.

“Better,” you say, sliding it back.

He watches you for a second longer than necessary, before you’re already back at your station.

“You don’t miss,” he says.

“Neither do you,” you reply, and he pretends it doesn’t make his knuckles shake. He’s too old for a crush, he tells himself. But it doesn’t stop the way he looks at you with stars in his eyes every night. 

There’s a push and pull to it, something unspoken but constant. You challenge him in small ways, tightening a plate here, swapping an element there, offering suggestions that are just bold enough to make him pause but never reckless enough to break the integrity of what he’s built.

“Lose the microgreens,” you murmur one night, adjusting a dish before it goes out. “They’re filler.”

“They add color.”

“They add nothing,” you counter, meeting his eyes. “If you need color, fix the dish, not the garnish. Microgreens are shipped in by the pound to every wanna be Michelin star restaurant in the US. We don’t need it.”

He wants to argue, you can see it on his face. Then his brows furrow, and he watches the plate so intensely you’d almost believe it was speaking to him.

Then he pulls them off himself.

“Send it,” he says.

You don’t smile, but you feel the way your cheeks burn. 

You find your place in the quieter moments too.

Samira’s kitchen is the first space that feels different. Warmer, softer, but no less precise. The scent of caramelizing sugar wraps around you the second you step inside, vanilla and citrus layered over butter and heat. She hands you a spoon without looking.

“Try that.” She orders. 

You do. A dark chocolate crémeux, smooth and rich, finished with a hint of sea salt that lingers at the back of your tongue.

”Respectfully,” You start, the spoon still in your mouth, “I think I’d do anything you asked me to do if you keep making things like that.” 

She laughs, a loud one that comes from her throat. “Jack was right, I like you.” 

You don’t press on what she means, because the idea of Jack boasting about you makes something coil in your stomach. 

It’s easy to fall into rhythm with the staff. You’d bum a cigarette off of Santos after long nights, the two of you chain-smoking with Dana in the freezing Pittsburgh weather. Samira would sneak you pastries in exchange for tips you had picked up in France. You brought her in some cookbooks from your time there, and she nearly cried. The next day there’s a container waiting for you in the breakroom fridge, your name written across the lid in careful script. Chai tiramisu, layered perfectly, the spice warm and unexpected against the bitterness of espresso. 

Frank and Mel were a joy to be around, you sat with them one day learning the inner workings of the magic they create out front. Your first outing with the crew was one weekend Javardi had convinced all the girls, barring Dana who was always busy, to go out and get drinks one night. Despite the girl's only memo, Shen showed up an hour in and got so drunk that Ellis had to carry him two blocks home. 

Somewhere in all of it, you find your place.

Not just in the kitchen, not just on the line, but here, in the middle of this strange, chaotic, loyal little family that somehow makes space for you without question. 

That’s why, you think, the first time it cracks makes it hurt a little more than if this were any other job posting. 

The kitchen is running hot, faster than usual, the kind of night where everything is just slightly off and everyone feels it. Tickets pile, timing tightens, and Jack is sharper than usual, voice cutting a little cleaner, a little colder.

A braised short rib, rich and heavy, sitting over a parsnip purée with a red wine reduction that leans deep, almost too deep, into itself. It’s Jack Abbot on a plate, almost. 

You taste it as it comes up, quick, instinctive, and your brow pulls just slightly. It’s good, actually, it’s fantastic, but it’s missing something vital to him. 

A splash of sherry vinegar, just enough to lift it. A touch of orange zest, subtle, brightening the edges without changing the core. You swirl, taste again, and it opens up immediately, the richness balanced, the flavor sharper, more alive.

You plate it and send it without thinking. 

Jack catches it at the pass, because of course he does. 

“What is this,” he asks, not loud, but dangerous in how controlled it is. Everyone seems to tense, knowing exactly what the inflection in his voice means. 

You don’t hesitate. “Short rib.”

His eyes flick to yours, then back to the plate. He then narrows his eyes at the sauce you have sitting on your station.

“You changed the sauce.” 

It’s not a question, but you answer anyway. “Yes.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he says, voice tightening, the edge finally showing. “You don’t touch my dishes without clearing them first.”

”It needed it,” you reply, your voice steadier than you feel.

“That’s not your call,” he snaps, sharper now. “You think because you worked in France and have all these fancy restaurants under your belt that you get to walk in here and rewrite my menu? You’ve been here a little over a month, don’t think you’re more important than you are because Robby wanted a new shiny chef to look good in the media.”

There it is. 

The version of him everyone else warned you about. The version of him you have yet to see. The one no one had seen since you arrived. Because, Robby thought you’d mellow him out. Inspire him again, lighten the kitchen up. 

For a second, the kitchen holds its breath. Waiting to see if you crumble, or if you start yelling back. 

If anything, something in you sharpens right back, your eyes catching the light in amusement. 

The anger simmering in his chest only burns hotter when he sees your plush lips fighting off a stupid grin. 

“Taste it,” you say simply.

He scoffs. “That’s not the point.”

“Then make it the point,” you counter, stepping closer, lowering your voice just enough that it’s not for everyone else anymore. “Because if you’re going to be mad, you should at least be right.” 

His warm eyes are dark, with something you can’t quite place. 

“You come into my kitchen, and say my dish needs fixing?” He scoffs, both of your faces inching towards each other. The chaos of service still bustles around you, but both of you tune it out. Too fixated on each other 

“I mean no offense,” You start, “But that dish was supposed to be you on a plate right? It was wrong, it needed a boost, a light in it if you will.” 

“Don’t try to sound like my therapist,” His voice raises, “The sauce was fine-“ 

“I never said it wasn’t.” You stressed, “I just made it better. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, won’t happen again Chef.”

His jaw tightens at that, like the words themselves are a physical thing he has to chew through. For a second it looks like he’s going to refuse just to prove a point, to keep the argument alive on principle alone.

But he doesn’t, because he’s a chef first. And much to his chagrin and anger, he trusts you.

Jack snatches the spoon from the pot with more force than necessary, then drags it through the sauce you changed. The motion is sharp, almost aggressive, and when he brings it to his mouth, the entire kitchen somehow gets even quieter.

“It’s good,” he says finally, his voice not coming out as flat as he’d like. 

Your lips curve before you can stop them.

“Chef,” you correct softly, just to press him a little more.

His eyes snap to yours immediately, the irritation running back up his broad shoulders. “It’s good, Chef.” 

Jack leans in just slightly, not enough to touch, but enough that the space between you stops feeling safe. His hand grabs your upper arm, to pull you closer or just as an excuse to touch you. He isn’t sure which one it is. 

“You pull something like that again,” he says quietly, voice rougher now, “and it will be your last day in my kitchen.”

”Yes, Chef.” You whisper to him, a little too close to his ear. Your warm breath on his neck makes him shiver, his fingers dropping the grip he had on you. 

It occurs to you in that moment, that this is foreplay. For both of you. 

Both of your chests are panting, eyes dark with something neither of you dared to name. This is what every challenge in this kitchen has been. You push him, he pushes back, and you enjoy the rush. 

He steps back like your presence burns, turning his attention back to the tickets that were piling up. 

“Back on the line,” he calls, voice louder now, reestablishing control, forcing the kitchen back into motion.

As the rhythm picks back up, Crus passes behind you and bumps your shoulder lightly with his elbow, a grin tugging at his mouth.

“You poked the beast,” he murmurs, shaking his head like he can’t decide if he’s impressed or terrified for you.

You glance at him, calm as ever. “He survived.”

Crus snorts under his breath. “Barely.”

Across the line, Jack doesn’t look back at you again for the rest of the service, but you know he feels it. The coil wound tight between the two of you. What was once just longing stares and brushes of skin, was now a pressure cooker ready to explode all over the kitchen he spent the last few decades building from the ground up.

After that night, nothing really goes back to how it was before.

It doesn’t get worse, not exactly, but it changes shape. The kitchen doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t lose its rhythm, but there’s something threaded through it now that wasn’t there before. A pressure. A quiet awareness that sits under every callout, every pass, every brush of shoulders in tight spaces. People feel it even if they don’t say it out loud, even if they pretend they don’t see it. 

Princess and Perlah catch it immediately, and it spreads all the way to the front of the house.  Frank catches it in the way Jack’s eyes flick toward the kitchen door whenever you’re not on the line. Mel notices it in how quickly the tickets start moving when you’re working beside him, like the pace shifts just slightly to match the two of you instead of the system. Dana, of course, clocks it immediately and says nothing, which somehow makes it worse.

Santos says it out back one night, smoke curling between her fingers as she watches you lean against the brick wall after service.

”What’s going on between you and Jack?” She asks. 

“What’s going on with you and Garcia?” You pirate back, dangling the cigarette between your lips. 

She ignores your comment, continuing on. 

“You two are going to burn this place down with the passion between you two,” she says mildly, like she’s commenting on the weather.

You just take a drag of your cigarette and exhale slowly.

“We just both love food, passion makes us run hot, s’all,” you reply.

She hums like he doesn’t believe you.

Inside, Jack doesn’t say anything either, but he starts noticing everything. The way you stand a little closer than necessary when you’re correcting a dish. The way your hand lingers for half a second too long when you pass him a pan. The way you don’t look away first anymore.

Someone texted Robby about it, because of course they did. He gets a call one morning, asking if he’s running off the new chef or if he’s trying to commit an HR violation. Jack hangs up before he gets the chance to start making jokes anymore. 

It’s a random Thursday when you slip through the back door like normal, a little earlier, and a lot more dolled up. Your makeup is done, hair is down, and you have on a sweater as compared to your normal work attire. Samira whistles playfully as she walks into the breakroom, complimenting you as you begin to talk between yourselves. 

Jack hears you but doesn’t look up right away.

“You’re early,” he says, voice low, still facing the stove.

“Emma needs a headshot of me for the website,” you reply, shrugging off your coat and hanging it without slowing down. “She said she likes to take them in front of the sign. I’m also filming a few videos with her.”

He hums in acknowledgment, but his attention stays on the braise for the beef, on the way the liquid moves when he tilts the pot slightly, checking consistency, tasting with a spoon without thinking. He looks up at you, and that’s when everything goes wrong. 

You look beautiful. You’ve always been beautiful, even bare-faced with a dirty bandana tied around your head, but this? This was different, it was seeing you in another light. The Y/n you were outside of these walls, outside of being the best chef he’d ever met. 

Jack shifts slightly closer to the burner, adjusting the heat under the pot mindlessly, and that’s when it happens. He pulls back immediately, a sharp hiss escaping through his teeth before he even fully processes it. The side of his hand sizzles against the heat, and everyone’s heads turn. 

“You good, boss?” Crus asks, and you see Shen and Ellis falling into each other hiding their amusement. 

This is the first time in his career he had burned himself, and it suddenly feels like his world is falling apart in front of him. The clicking of your heels against the floor makes his brow furrow as he wraps his hand in a rag. 

“Jack,” you say, already moving.

He likes the way his name sounds coming from your lips. 

“I’m fine,” he answers automatically, but it’s too quick, too tight.

You don’t argue, just step in beside him, gently but firmly taking his wrist and turning it under the cooler sink before he can insist otherwise. The skin is already red, irritated, not serious but enough to sting, but enough to make him finally go quiet and let you work.

“I said I’m fine,” he mutters again, though softer now.

“And I didn’t ask,” you reply, adjusting the water slightly, your touch steady and unhurried as you check the burn properly.

You reach for ointment in the first aid kit without asking, careful as you apply it, your fingers light but precise as you wrap the gauze around his hand. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t interrupt, just stands there letting you take control. Something he normally doesn't let happen. 

“You distracted me,” he says after a beat, quieter now, like he’s admitting something he doesn’t fully like saying out loud.

You glance up at him briefly while tying off the bandage. 

“I wasn’t even doing anything,” you laugh.

That earns a faint exhale from him that almost, almost sounds like a laugh he’s holding back. “Exactly,” he replies.

There’s a pause then, as your head tilts to the side watching him carefully. “Is it the heels? Because I know they’re not kitchen standard, but I have an outfit change before service.” 

“It’s not the heels,” He breathes out, but then his eyes do rake down your body for a fleeting moment before he meets your eyes again, “Maybe it’s the heels.” 

You chuckle again, patting his now bandaged hand softly. “You’re all set to go.” 

“You must have been a doctor in another life,” He smiles, “I feel better already.” 

“Healing hands.” You wiggle your fingers at him playfully, taking a short step back. You go to turn away, but you pause leaning back into his space. “Be careful, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself again watching me walk away.” 

With those words you’re off, spinning on your heel and walking into the dining room with an unnecessary added sway in your steps. 

“Jesus,” He grumbles, feeling a flush run up the back of his neck as he indeed did watch you walk away. Ignoring all the alarm bells that were ringing in his head, as he tried his best not to get hard in the middle of prep. 

He’s not subtle at all with the way his eyes keep finding yours that night. At one point there was no shame as he stood in front of the pass window, watching Emma direct you and pose while Joy stood there following Emma’s every polite command. 

“You are not slick brother.” Robby’s voice bellows through the kitchen.

Jack barely reacts, just exhales through his nose like he’s been caught doing something mildly inconvenient rather than completely transparent. He turns his head slightly, watching Robby step into the kitchen like he still owns part of the air in it.

“You’re here,” Jack says flatly. “Almost forgot you worked here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He takes the tease, hugging him gently. “I’m observant,” Robby adds, glancing past him straight to you, then back to Jack with a faint smirk. “And I’ve been hearing things.”

Jack’s jaw tightens just a fraction. “From who?”

“Little birdies,” Robby says casually, leaning against the edge of the pass like he’s got all the time in the world. “Mostly the kind that tells me my head chef’s been acting like he forgot how to breathe around his new sous chef.”

Jack scoffs, immediately turning back to the line like that’s the end of it. “People talk too much.”

“People always talk,” Robby replies, watching him carefully now. “What’s interesting is that I’ve been here two minutes and I already see it.”

Then, lighter, almost teasing, but not quite. “They’re saying she’s changed you.”

Jack doesn’t answer right away, just focuses a little too hard on the clock.

“She hasn’t changed anything,” he says finally.

Robby hums like he doesn’t believe him for a second. “Sure.”

Service pulls them both back in before anything else can be said, and the kitchen does what it always does, it swallows everything that isn’t immediately necessary. Orders fire, pans heat, voices cut across each other in practiced rhythm. You’re back on the line fully now, moving like you’ve always belonged there, correcting, plating, adjusting without hesitation, and Jack tries to stay locked in the way he always does.

But he keeps looking.

He catches himself doing it twice, maybe three times, eyes flicking up without permission, drawn to you like it’s reflex now. You’re leaning over a station explaining something to Ellis, hair slightly loosened from earlier, even as it’s pulled back, your expression focused and animated in a way that makes the whole room feel a fraction warmer. It annoys him more than it should that he notices how easily people orbit you now.

By the time service winds down, the kitchen is in that slow collapse, energy draining out of it in waves. The clatter softens, the urgency fades, and what’s left is exhaustion and the quiet satisfaction of getting through it.

Shen is already at the back counter when you finish cleaning your station, pulling shots of espresso with practiced ease, humming under his breath like he’s done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more.

“You look like you need this,” he says, sliding a small glass toward you.

Ice cream first, espresso second, the classic affogato, simple and perfect in a way that feels like a reward for surviving the night.

You take it gratefully, leaning against the counter beside him.

“Saved my life,” you murmur after the first bite.

Shen shrugs like it’s nothing. “You say that every time.”

“Because it’s true every time.”

Across the room, Jack is wiping down his station, slower now, watching the kitchen settle back into itself. Or at least pretending to. His eyes flick toward you before he can stop them, landing on the two of you draped across the bar as you belong. The way your faded lipstick still clings to your lips that are wrapped around the spoon. 

Shen leaves before you do, bidding you a goodnight. No doubt stealing yet another glass bowl from the restaurant. You tell him not to eat and drive, and he flips you off as the door shuts behind him.

You finish your affogato and set the glass down, turning slightly like you feel Jack watching from behind you. 

“You two are close,” Jack says, voice level, neutral on the surface but just tight enough underneath to give it away.

It’s then you realise that you are the only two left. The lights are dim and the room smells of cleaning supplies and that slight metallic smell of polished stainless steel permeates through the air. 

“He’s a mess,” You comment, placing the bowl into the sink slowly. 

He makes a noise of agreement, tossing his rag around his neck. 

“Not as close as we are, chef,” you say lightly, almost teasing, but steady enough that it lands exactly where you intend it to. “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite.” 

“Am I?” He asks, running his hand through his tousled salt and pepper curls. 

Your teeth bite down on your bottom lip, mischief in your eyes as the only thing that separated you two was the kitchen island. You lean your palms against the cold metal, leaning forward. 

“Of course you are.” 

He pretends he can’t see down your thin undershirt now, he finds his fingers itching to touch the exposed skin of your collarbones. 

“You’re my sous chef,” he says after a beat, like he needs to remind himself of something solid.

“Mm,” you murmur, stepping closer to the island, palms pressing lightly against the edge as you lean in more. “And?”

“And,” he repeats, but it comes out quieter than he intended, like the word itself has lost some of its authority.

You tilt your head, watching him carefully now, the teasing still there but softened by something more focused, more aware.

“White pinot goes best with cod,” you say casually, like you’re talking about nothing important at all.

His brow furrows slightly, thrown off for a second. “What?”

You shrug, eyes flicking briefly to his mouth before returning to his gaze like you didn’t just do that. “I thought we were just naming the obvious.”

His breath shifts slightly, like he’s trying to steady it without making it obvious, and he pushes off the counter, stepping closer without fully thinking about it until suddenly there isn’t really any space left between you and the island doesn’t feel like an obstacle anymore, just something your bodies are pressing against from opposite sides.

“That’s not,” he starts, then stops, jaw tightening as if he’s actively trying to regain control of the situation, of himself. “We can’t just-”

“Can’t just what,” you interrupt softly, not moving back, not giving him an inch. “Talk?”

His eyes drop for half a second, as they betray him before he can stop them, and when he realises just how close you both are. Even with the counter digging into both of your hips, it feels like there’s no space between you two at all. 

“You’re pushing it,” he says, but there’s no real force behind it anymore.

“I think you like it when I do,” you reply, and this time your voice drops with it, something slower threading through the words as you shift just slightly, your nose brushing against his. Your lips hovering over his warm skin, “Don’t you?”

He moves, nearly stumbling backwards as he does. Like your touch burned him just as bad as the burner did earlier. 

You follow him like it’s instinct, like the space he creates is just something you’re meant to fill. He doesn’t back up once, he just lets you step across from him 

“Listen, if I’m reading this wrong you can tell me.” You say softly, “I won’t be offended.”

His eyes flick to yours, sharp, guarded, but it’s slipping at the edges now.

“You’re not- fuck,” he replies, but it comes out lower than he intends, less certain than it should be. “That’s not it.”

You hum faintly, stepping just close enough that the air between you changes again, warmer, tighter, charged in a way that makes the quiet hum of the kitchen feel miles away. The towel around his neck catches your attention, and without asking, you reach for it.

He doesn’t stop you,if anything his body shivers anticipating your touch. 

Your fingers curl around the fabric, not pulling hard just enough to feel the tension in him as you draw him a fraction closer, enough that his breath shifts slightly when you do it. You pull his neck down to your height, meeting his eyes. 

“Then what is it?” You ask, that teasing jilt in your tone again. The same one you throw out during service that makes his cock twitch in his pants. 

His hand comes up, hesitates for half a second like he’s still trying to decide whether he should stop this or not, and then it settles at your waist, firm but controlled, pulling you just slightly closer until the space is gone between you two entirely. 

“You’re my sous chef,” He repeats, his mouth dry. “You work under me, it’s a- I don’t wanna- take advantage of you-“ 

“Jack,” You coo softly, “I’m a big girl, if anything I wish you’d take advantage of me-“ 

That’s all that it takes for that coil to snap. He leans forward, his hands pulling your hips flesh against his as your lips meet. 

It’s frantic, hot, and wet. Your lips are warm against his, teeth nearly gnashing together at the intensity of it. Before you know it, he’s pressing you against the edge of the counter, cornering you there. His hands on your hips grip tighter, before they lift you as if you weigh nothing. 

You plop down on the metal slab, your lips still chasing each other as his knee knocks your legs open wide for him. You oblige, pliant in his hands as yours are tugging against his curls. He pulls your shirt over your head as if it personally offended him, the fabric falling somewhere near the glasses. 

You nearly whine when his lips part from yours, but it’s soothed over with a moan when he kisses down your jawline to your neck.

”Tell me what you want.”

Your back arches, the ache between your legs growing stronger with each touch. 

“Just, f-fuck-“ You can barely get the words out when his canines bite down into your skin. 

“Do you like that?” He panted against your neck, his lips alternating between sucking and licking at the supple flesh. He moved down to your tits, kissing the exposed skin. 

“I want you to tell me how you want it,” He demanded, “Boss me around just like you do every fucking day in this kitchen. Tell me how to touch you, where you want my lips, how slow, how fast, how you like to be fucked..” 

Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head at his words, your hands gripping his biceps like a lifeline. 

“Get these pants off,” You manage to bark out, lifting your hips to give him space to pull your pants to your ankles. The thin fabric separating you from him was damp, a dark patch that had been there since the start of your verbal foreplay earlier during service. 

“You are so fucking beautiful.” He whispers, his eyes never once leaving yours even as his lips trail down your body. “I’ve thought that from the moment you walked in here, correcting my chefs like you owned the place.” 

“Yeah?” You panted out, watching his fingers slide your underwear to the side. 

“And this….” He breathed out, staring at your wet heat. He used his fingers to spread you open wider for him, a guttural moan leaving his lips. “This is gonna be the best fucking meal I’ve ever had. Isn’t it?” 

You can’t speak, you’re breathing too hard, anticipation making your skin crawl. But you see the glint in his eyes, the smirk on his face. 

“You’re so mouthy during service, what’s wrong? Hmm?” 

“Fuck,” You nearly whine, feeling his fingers ghost around everywhere but where you need him the most. “It is gonna be the last meal if you don’t do something-oh.” 

Your head falls back against the wall as soon as his tongue makes contact with your clit. It’s an experimental swipe through your folds, enough to have your fingernails digging into his arms. 

“I was right,” He moans into you, "Delicious." 

Jack Abbot was not lying when he said this would be the best meal he’d ever had, because the way his mouth was moving against you you’d think the man had never eaten in his life. It’s messy, his tongue teasing in and out of your aching hole in between frantic sucks of your clit into his mouth. 

You were moaning his name like a prayer, jutting your hips up into his nose without even meaning to. 

“Fingers,” You gasped out in need. 

“Yeah?” he hummed, slipping an arm between your legs so he could slip a finger inside of your soaking entrance. “You’re so wet, baby. What got you like this?” 

His finger stretches you out with a delicious burn, you’re already aching for more by the time he curls the digit just right. It’s like he can read your mind, slipping another deep inside. They’re so thick it takes you a moment, before you’re clenching around him. 

“You, just you.” Your hands are now gripping the side of the counter, watching him through half-lidded eyes. “Been thinking of those fingers of yours, every time you’d- oh my god- stick your fucking finger into a sauce. Sucking on it like you knew I was watching.” 

“Same way you’d suck on those spoons while looking at me,” He whispered, bringing his mouth back down to your throbbing clit. 

The sound was just as disgusting as it was the hottest thing you’ve ever heard in the world. With each loud squelch of his fingers prying you apart, he was moaning desperately into you. His cock was hard and straining against his slacks. 

“S’good,” You praised, shifting your hips a little in his hold, “A little faster, wait- right there- yes, yes,” 

He listened intently, waiting to hear that sharp intake of breath and to feel your legs tremble around his head. He wouldn’t admit how many nights he went home, fisting his cock in the shower imagining just how you’d sound when you came. How you’d taste, how you’d feel wrapped around him. 

You could feel your orgasm approaching, and it almost pissed you off how fast you were coming apart around him. No other man had made you feel this way, but with his tongue lapping against you and his fingers curling deep inside right against your g-spot you were cumming with a loud moan. 

“There it is,” His voice was slurred and muffled against you.

Your shoulders dropped back, back arching and legs trembling as he didn’t change his rhythm once. Your head fell back, mouth parted as his fingers slid through your folds drawing out your orgasm until you couldn’t take it anymore. 

His head was pulled back up by your fingers in his curls, your release was dripping down his chin. His eyes were sparkling as he looked up at you. 

He brings his fingers up to his mouth and licks them clean like he made a mess eating the most expensive chocolate in the world. Not a drop is wasted, and you’re already clenching around nothing. 

“Remember,” You start, still trying to catch your breath, “How you wanted me to tell you how I wanted to be fucked?” 

He nods eagerly, slowly rising back up to your eye level. 

“I told you I don’t like it slow.” 

He smirks, the crinkles by his eyes deepening as you pull him closer towards you by his belt loops. 

“Get this off-“

”Eager?” He teases, his boxers falling to the floor. 

“Fuck.” You almost laugh, watching his heavy cock fall between his legs. He was veiny, and his tip was red and leaking. 

”I don’t have any condoms-“ 

You cut him off, eyes still locked on the massive cock that was twitching with neglect. “I’m clean, and I have an IUD.” 

He’s about to ask you another question before you bring your hand down, wrapping gently around his length. He hisses at the touch, warning you to go slow. 

“Sorry, this is just- god the biggest cock I’ve ever seen.” 

His chest puffs in pride, watching your thumb swipe a bead of his pre-cum around his sensitive tip. He can barely take it, he needs to be inside of you so bad his legs are practically shaking. 

“Think you can take it?” He asks, grabbing your thighs to push them up on the counter, as he settles between them. 

“Yes, chef.” You say jokingly, but you feel the way he tenses you see the way his eyes darken. You tilt your head at him, while he’s lining up at your entrance. 

“You like that don’t you?” 

He’s silent, but huffs as he rubs his tip against your soaked slit. 

“You gonna fuck me?” You ask, “Please Chef-“ 

You’re barely able to finish your teasing when he slips inside of you slowly, a gasp gets lodged in your throat. His palm is heavy on your stomach, thumb rubbing small circles into your clit as he inches in. 

“You’re okay,” He cooed, “Bigggg stretch, almost in baby. You’re doing so fucking good. F-fitting like a glove, so wet for me.” 

You feel so full, almost impossibly full. Each time you think he’s done, he keeps pushing more into your greedy velvety walls. With one final roll of his hips, he bottoms out. His hips meet yours. 

“Fuck.” He moans, leaning his forehead against yours to kiss you gently. “Need. This. Off.”

Your bra is unclasped with one of his hands, and pushed to the side. His head lowers to catch a nipple into his mouth, he swirls his tongue around the bud before pulling off with a pop. 

“You okay, honey?” He asks softly, doing his best to keep you relaxed as your body adjusts to him. 

You nod lazily, the dull ache turning into searing pleasure after a minute of his tongue expertly sucking at every sensitive spot he could reach. 

The first thrust has you nearly crying out in bliss, his tip is nudging so deep you swear you can feel him in your throat. He’s slow at first, steady enough to make sure he’s not hurting you and that your cunt is still dripping around him. 

As soon as he feels your hips rocking against his, he braces his hands on your hips. 

“M’member what you said, baby? How you don’t like it slow?” 

Your jaw goes slack, the moment he thrusts harder, pulling his cock all the way out before slamming back in with fever. 

Then, he’s everywhere. His lips mouthing at your neck, his cock rearranging your guts, his thumb flicking your clit. It’s overwhelming, in the best way possible. 

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since you walked in here in those fucking heels,” He admitted in a gasp, already lost in the warm wet of your cunt wrapped around him. “Hell, since the first day I met you.”

It was one thing to have a massive cock, it was a completely other thing to know exactly how to use it. And god, did he know how to use it. 

All control you held onto slipped through your hands, cockdrunk already on him. 

The lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin echoed through the quiet kitchen, alongside the pathetic moans you couldn’t stop from slipping through your lips. 

“S’ fucking big.” 

“You’re taking it so well,” He praises, “Feels s’good doesn't it baby?”

The moment your nails scratch down his shoulders so hard he winces, he knows he’s angled his hips just right. “There it is,” he says, under his breath. “That’s the spot isn’t it?”

When you don’t answer in coherent words he speaks up again, “Come on, talk to me. Tell me that’s the spot baby.” 

“That’s the spot,” You cry out, “That’s the fucking spot, don’t stop. Keep fucking me.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of stopping,” He huffs, pulling the hem of his white t-shirt up his torso. The hem finds itself slotted in between his teeth, keeping it out of the way as he jackhammers into you. 

The sight of his salt and pepper hair, and his abs glistening with sweat is all it takes for the familiar feeling to creep up your spine. And he knows it too. 

“You’re gonna cum for me, chef.” He orders, and you feel your cunt pulse around him. “Gonna cum all over my cock.”

”Y-yes, chef.” You’re gone, eyes closed and hips thrusting upwards as he pushes you down with his palm on your stomach to keep you still.

“That’s it,” He grunted, “Give it to me- fuck use this fucking cock.” 

You came so hard your ears rang, pleasuring licking up your spine even hotter than before. You can feel yourself creaming around him, each thrust only making your high ride out that much longer.

“Shit- you’re squeezing me so fucking tight- I’m barely gonna last.” He spoke through gritted teeth, his hand cupping the back of your neck harshly while the other ran up and down your side, squeezing the flesh harshly. 

“W-wanna feel you cum.” You babbled, head lolling to the side, only being held up by his hand. “Fuck me full of your cum.”

”Yeah?” His brows squinted in concentration, keeping your eyes on you. “Watch me while I cum.” 

Tears are filling your waterline as he fucks into you so hard you’re worried the shelving units are going to fall off the walls. 

Drool is sliding down your chin by the time his hand wraps around your throat, as he groans your name loudly into your neck. 

His hips stutter as he comes, and you can feel him twitch and release inside of you. The ropes of sticky cum are warm, filling up your cervix with each twitch until you’ve milked him dry. 

“Holy fuck,” He pants, pulling your head into his sweaty chest as the two of you come down. 

You were both sticky and out of breath, bodies aching from the intensity of it. But still, your brows were furrowed, lost in thought before you spoke up. 

“Wait,” You pant softly, “Have we ever thought about putting a new pasta dish on the menu?” 

His brows furrowed, sweat still clung to his top lip. “What?” 

“I just started thinking of an herb roasted chicken mafaldine pesto pasta, with like sundried tomatoes and shallots,” You rambled, as if his cock still wasn’t seated deep inside of your cunt. “We could top it with parmesan and some lemon, freshly cracked black pepper.”

”You realize,” He shifted, “I’m literally still inside of you.” 

You rolled your eyes, he wasn’t wrong. His release was still dripping out of you, coating the inside of your thighs. “Yes, you should be proud your dick inspired such a wonderful dish from my brain.” 

It was then he realised he was more far gone than he had ever been before. 

He thinks he’s in love with you. 

All he could do was shake his head. 

That’s how you ended up staying there late into the night, both of you working to make your impromptu post orgasm dish a reality. 

“Hm, I still think it’s missing something.” He mused, looking at the freshly made pasta dough and steaming chicken that was thrown together on the tasting plates, and you nodded letting him hand-feed you yet another bite. 

“I think,” You swallowed, “You should take me home, and we can shower and you can fuck the missing ingredient out of my head. How does that sound?” 

The fork was dropped within seconds, practically grabbing your hand and pulling you out of the door. “But, wait we need to clean up-“

“Fuck them, I’m the boss.” He shrugs, and you find yourself in an endless fit of giggles. 

You sighed, swirling the straw in your half-finished gin and tonic, while around you, the bar hummed with the low buzz of travelers. You weren’t sure why your editor had pushed this assignment on you since your usual column had never been about love—it was about travel. You were the one readers turned to when their flight was canceled at 2 a.m, and they needed to know how to squeeze a meal voucher out of an airline that swore they didn’t owe them one. You wrote about the art of packing two weeks’ worth of outfits into a single carry‑on without looking like you’d slept in your clothes. You guided them through budget adventures, pointing out the best street food stalls in Bangkok or the cheapest train pass that could carry them across Europe. You loved writing about how to navigate a city where the language was unfamiliar, but the adventure was irresistible.

Which was why it felt so strange, almost laughable, that your editor had suddenly decided readers wanted your advice on love (with a travel spin) and how to navigate fucking cuffing season.

You tapped out another attempt:

Is Your Holiday Romance a Direct Flight to Love—or Just a Layover in Lust?

Better. Not perfect, but better.

Ironically, you were currently experiencing a delay yourself. It was the kind of endless waiting that made time feel heavy. When the announcement came—two hours delayed—a collective groan had rippled through the gate area.

Now, typing at the bar near the gate, you noticed him…the same man you’d seen earlier, leaning against the counter, his drink in hand. He was striking, the kind of presence that drew your eye without effort. You recognized him instantly as a fellow passenger on your flight to Pittsburgh. You remembered seeing him, sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of his nose as if the weight of the delay pressed down harder on him than anyone else.

For a moment, you thought about talking to him, but then your eyes caught the glint of a wedding ring. That small detail was enough to hold you back.

The handsome ones were always taken.

So, you kept your thoughts to yourself, sipping your drink and continuing to type. Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted. A commotion broke out a few seats away—someone had collapsed, and a panicked voice rang out: "Is there a doctor here?" The bar fell into stunned silence, until the man you’d been watching stood up. Without hesitation, he pulled out a badge, his voice steady as he identified himself as "Dr. Abbot" and in an instant, he was at the side of the fallen passenger.

He pressed two fingers against the man’s neck, checking for a pulse, then looked up suddenly.

"You," he barked.

You froze, glancing around, convinced he must be talking to someone else. But his eyes locked on yours.

"M-me?" you stuttered, pointing at yourself.

"Yes, you," he grunted, already shifting his focus back to the man. "I need you to hold down his arm. He’s seizing, and I can’t get a clear line.

Your heart hammered, nerves sparking, but you shut down your laptop, moved closer, and got on your knees. The man on the floor was convulsing, his body jerking uncontrollably. Dr. Abbot had already tilted the man’s head to keep the airway clear, but he needed another set of hands.

"Here," Dr. Abbot guided you quickly, placing your hands on the man’s forearm. "You sure you can handle that?"

You swallowed hard, palms slick with adrenaline, but you did as you were told. He leaned down close enough that his forehead almost met yours.

"Good, keep steady pressure," he instructed, his voice low but commanding. He slipped off his jacket, folded it, and slid it beneath the passenger’s head to cushion the impact of the convulsions. The man’s body jerked violently once more, but Dr. Abbot was already adjusting and loosening the collar of the man’s shirt.

A woman knelt on the other side of the man, her face pale with panic. Dr. Abbot glanced at her.

"Has he ever had a seizure before?" he asked.

She shook her head quickly. "No—never. I don’t—he’s never had anything like this."

Dr. Abbot leaned in close, his fingers pressing firmly against the man’s neck again, just beneath the jawline. His brow furrowed in concentration, shutting out the noise of the bar, even your own ragged breathing.

"There," he murmured, almost to himself. His eyes sharpened, catching the subtle thump against his touch. "I can hear it. The pulse is irregular, but it’s there."

Dr. Abbot glanced up sharply. "A glass of water—quickly," he called to the bartender.

As the bartender scrambled, Dr. Abbot reached into his bag and pulled out a small pouch. "Keep holding firm. He’s almost through it." he instructed you.

From the pouch, he produced a vial of lavender oil and a small packet of powdered magnesium. The bartender returned with the water, and Dr. Abbot tore the packet open, sprinkling a measured pinch into the glass before stirring briskly.

"Natural relaxants..." he explained to you.

He dabbed the lavender oil onto a cloth and held it near the man’s nose, speaking firmly: "Easy now. Breathe."

The convulsions began to slow, the violent jerks tapering into tremors. You felt the tension in the man’s arm ease beneath your grip. When the spasms subsided, Dr. Abbot guided the cup to the man’s lips, helping him take small, careful sips.

"Magnesium helps calm the nervous system," he murmured.

The passenger’s eyelids fluttered open, his gaze unfocused but present.

"You’re alright. You had a seizure, but it’s passed. Just stay still."

The woman who’d been traveling with the man let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in her chest for minutes. Dr. Abbot guided the man slowly onto his side, ensuring his breathing stayed even. After a minute, Dr. Abbot helped him sit upright.

"Easy," he said, steadying the man with a hand on his shoulder.

The man nodded faintly, whispering a shaky "thank you." Around you, the bar’s tension dissolved into murmurs of relief. A few travelers clapped softly, others smiled in gratitude. The woman surged forward in a sudden, instinctive motion and threw her arms around Dr. Abbot. You could tell instantly that the hug caught him off guard but then he managed a polite return of the embrace. A small, trembling sound escaped her before she finally pulled back, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

The woman turned to you next.

Her eyes were still glassy, her breath still uneven, but she reached out and grabbed your hands.

"Thank you," she said, voice thick with relief.

Dr. Abbot finally turned back to you, his eyes locking with yours again. This time softer, less commanding. Suddenly, you felt trapped in a gaze that had a fire licking up your spine.

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. So, you did the only thing you could manage. You nodded. A small, awkward, probably-too-fast nod that felt embarrassingly insufficient for everything that had just happened. But your throat was tight, your thoughts scrambled, and you weren’t sure your voice would come out right if you tried to use it. You pretended to brush dust from your jeans, anything to avoid the truth flickering at the edges of your thoughts. Because you didn’t want to admit (even to yourself) that watching Dr. Abbot had done something to you.

Competence shouldn’t have been attractive. Not like that. Not in a moment like this.

But it was…

The passenger, now steady enough, managed to stand with Dr. Abbot’s help. He gave a faint smile and settled into a nearby chair, sipping water while the color slowly returned to his cheeks.

Your hands were still trembling when you slipped back onto your stool at the bar. The adrenaline hadn’t quite burned off, leaving your chest tight and your pulse erratic. You grabbed your glass and drained the rest of your gin and tonic in one long swallow, the sharp burn of alcohol grounding you in the moment.

"Another," you said, your voice hoarse.

The bartender gave you a look—and slid a fresh glass across the counter.

"On the house," he winked.

You managed a weak smile, wrapping your fingers around the cold glass. Before you could take a sip, you felt a gentle pressure on your shoulder. You turned, startled, and found yourself staring into Dr. Abbot’s eyes.

This guy wasn’t just handsome; he was the kind of man who made you forget what words were supposed to do. Up close, you could see the way his hazel eyes caught the light, flecks of gold sparking: they were steady, piercing, and far too beautiful. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his athletic long-sleeve shirt, fabric stretched tight like it was barely containing him. You couldn’t help but notice…exploding out of the shirt was the only way to describe it.

Normally, you didn’t fawn over men with grey hair. It was never your thing. But on him? Holy hell. It was devastating.

And then your gaze dropped again to his wedding ring.

The reminder hit you like a splash of cold water. Married. He was married.

Your thoughts snapped back into place, the attraction suddenly tangled with guilt. What the fuck are you thinking? you scolded yourself, forcing your eyes away from the ring, away from him, back to the drink in your hand.

"You alright?" he asked.

You let out a shaky laugh, more nerves than humor. "That was… crazy," you admitted, shaking your head.

He didn’t move away when you answered. Instead, he pulled out the stool beside you and sat down. The bar noise carried on around you with ice clinking in glasses, muffled announcements over the PA, but it all felt distant.

"You did well," he said.

You shook your head quickly, almost reflexively.

"I didn’t do anything," you muttered, staring down at your drink. You were the one who knew what to do. I was just… holding an arm."

"No. Don’t minimize it. If you hadn’t held him, he could’ve thrashed harder, bitten his tongue, or slammed his arm against the floor. People can break bones during a seizure. You kept him steady enough that I could focus on his airway and his pulse."

You blinked, the weight of his words sinking in.

"I didn’t realize…"

"That’s the point," Dr. Abbot said, leaning forward slightly. "Most people don’t. They panic, or they freeze. But you didn’t."

You swallowed hard, the adrenaline still lingering in your chest.

The bartender slid a napkin across the counter, but neither of you moved to take it. Dr. Abbot’s gaze stayed on you, unwavering, until you finally exhaled and nodded faintly.

"Okay," you said quietly. "Maybe I did something."

"You did," his lips curved into a sexy smile (it was just as blinding as it was contagious), though his eyes stayed serious. "And you should remember that."

You mustered a nod, now noticing the green in his eyes.

"So..." he said, voice casual now, almost conversational, while he raked his fingers through his luscious hair. "Is Pittsburgh home?"

You shook your head, realizing he had probably recognized you as one of the passengers on his same flight as well.

"No. I live in Brooklyn. I’m visiting—well, surprising—a friend of mine."

"Surprising?"

"Yeah," you said, a small laugh escaping. "She’s actually a doctor, too. A resident. Her schedule’s absolute shit, and it’s going to stay that way until the new year. But she’s off tomorrow, so I thought… why not spend the day with her?"

"You’re flying out from New York during the holidays… just to see your friend for a single day?" he cocked his head to his side, clearly intrigued.

You shrugged, suddenly aware of how impulsive it sounded when spoken aloud. "I guess so. She’s important to me. And sometimes one day is enough."

His expression shifted, surprise flickering into something more thoughtful. He studied you for a moment longer.

"That’s… rare," he said finally. "Most people wouldn’t bother. Especially not with holiday chaos stacked against them."

"Well, my best friend deserves it. I honestly don’t know how she does it."

"Does what?"

"The doctor thing," you waved your hand toward him. "You guys work all the time. It sounds exhausting."

"It is exhausting. But you get used to it. Or at least you pretend you do."

You nodded, then found yourself spilling more than you’d planned. Maybe it was the gin, maybe it was the adrenaline still humming in your veins, or maybe it was just the fact that he was a stranger, and it felt safe to let the words tumble out.

"My friend… when her mom died, she basically became the primary caretaker for her sister. And then she matched in Pittsburgh, and has had to hire a part-time aid to help cover things while she’s at the hospital. So, she’s either working or taking care of her sister. There’s never really a break for her."

"That’s a lot. For anyone," he said, brows furrowing over his perfect features when he looked at you with genuine concern.

"Yeah. She doesn’t complain, though. She just… keeps going."

"Sounds like she’s lucky to have you. Flying out here, even for one day, even just to remind her she’s not alone—that matters."

"I hope so. I don’t know. I just… wanted to show up. That’s all."

He exhaled, a sigh that seemed to carry more than just fatigue. His shoulders relaxed, and for a moment, he looked almost vulnerable.

"Sometimes showing up is everything."

Your fingers traced the condensation on your glass, a nervous habit you couldn’t quite stop. "What about you? Is Pittsburgh home?"

"Yeah. I guess Pittsburgh’s home," he said, giving you a small grunt.

"Why were you in New York then?"

He rested one arm on the bar. "A favor, actually. A friend of mine works at Mount Sinai. They had a patient with a complicated case, and he asked me to fly out last night to provide a consult this morning. There’s a chance the patient will need to finish their treatment back in Pittsburgh."

"Sounds like it made sense for you to come in then."

"That’s one way to put it," he chuckled, the sound low and warm. "But it’s worth it. The patient is important to me," His eyes caught yours, steady and deliberate. "And sometimes one day is enough."

The words landed with a weight you hadn’t expected. It took you a beat to realize he was throwing your own line back at you, and when you did, heat rushed to your cheeks—giddiness dripping from your limbs.

The loudspeaker crackled overhead, pulling you both out of the quiet bubble you’d been sitting in.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the gate agent’s voice rang out, weary but practiced, "we apologize again for the delay. Your aircraft has now arrived at the gate. Boarding will begin shortly."

Around you, the bar shifted, travelers straightening, gathering bags, finishing drinks with hurried gulps. The low hum of conversation turned into the shuffle of movement.

You glanced at Dr. Abbot, and he was already sliding his arm back into his jacket, his expression returning to something more professional. "Guess that’s our cue."

You stood too, tucking your laptop back into your bag.

"Yeah," you muttered, trying to hide your internal struggle with a smile. "Have a safe flight."

"You too," he said, before slinging his bag over his shoulder and heading toward the gate.

And then he was gone, moving toward the gate, and you watched him disappear into the crowd, realizing with a sudden pang that you two had never actually exchanged names. He knew nothing about you beyond fragments of conversation, and yet it felt like he’d seen more of you than most strangers ever did.

When boarding was finally called, you joined the line, inching forward with the rest of the passengers. As you scanned your boarding pass, you spotted him ahead since his zone called before yours.

Later, as you stepped onto the plane and made your way down the narrow aisle, you caught sight of him again. He was already seated, aisle seat, his bag tucked neatly beneath the chair. For a moment, his gaze lifted, catching yours as you passed. Your heart suddenly felt like it was thumping in your throat.

You offered a small, shy smile. He returned it with the faintest nod, then lowered his eyes back to the book in his hands.

And just like that, you kept walking, sliding into your own seat a few rows back.

Almost automatically, you pulled your laptop back out, the cursor blinking at you like it had earlier. The half-finished headline stared back, daring you to pick up where you’d left off.

You hesitated, glancing down the aisle where he sat, book in hand, already absorbed. Then you forced your focus back to the screen. Fingers hovered over the keys, and you began typing again.

Holiday romances are like flight delays—unexpected, inconvenient, and sometimes revealing more about us than we’d like. The question isn’t whether they’re real, but whether they last once the turbulence settles.

December 27th - Pittsburgh

When you knocked on Mel’s apartment door the day you landed in Pittsburgh, you hadn’t expected the reaction to hit so hard. The moment Mel opened it, her eyes widened, disbelief flashing across her face before it broke into something raw. Tears welled instantly, spilling down her cheeks as she pulled you into a hug so tight it nearly knocked the breath out of you. Her shoulders shook against yours, relief pouring out in waves, and you brushed at her damp cheeks with a soft laugh.

That night, you somehow convinced her to go out. The bar was quiet, unassuming, and she allowed herself one drink—her version of 'drunk.' Sure enough, after a single glass of wine, she was giggling, cheeks flushed, leaning against you like the weight of residency had finally lifted for a moment.

The next day, you two laughed a lot, the kind of laughter that came easy after months of exhaustion. Becca, her sister, also joined you, and the three of you spent the afternoon wandering, eating, talking about everything and nothing. At one point, Mel begged you to come back in a couple of days because her hospital was hosting a holiday party, and she wanted you there.

You promised, even though you knew you’d be driving to Cleveland for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Family obligations pulled you away, but you carved out the time. You spent the 24th and 25th wrapped in the familiar insanity of home, the 26th lingering with family, before packing up again.

Now, back in Pittsburgh, you stood in front of the mirror, tugging at the hem of a tight mauve dress, getting dressed up for the holiday party Mel had begged you not to miss. The city outside was cold, streets glittering with leftover Christmas lights.

You slipped on your coat and glanced at Mel as she adjusted her earrings in the hallway mirror. She gave you a quick grin, nerves and excitement tangled together, and you pulled out your phone to hail an Uber. The car arrived within minutes, headlights cutting through the frosty air as you both hurried down the steps, laughter puffing out in little clouds.

After a quick ride, you and Mel stepped into the Andy Warhol Museum. The space had been transformed for the holiday party with strings of twinkling fairy lights draped across the high ceilings, vintage film projections flickered softly on the walls, and a Christmas tree stood proudly in the corner, its ornaments shimmering in gold and crimson. Soft jazz music played in the background, mingling with the hum of conversation and laughter.

Mel introduced you to her colleagues first, her fellow residents, nurses, and some attending physicians. You shook hands, exchanging quick introductions.

Then Mel led you over to her mentor, Dr. Langdon—Frank.

He seemed approachable, if a little 'Ken doll' in appearance, as you’d joked to Mel earlier.

You liked him enough, and compared to the mentors Mel had slogged through at the VA so he felt like a step up. You could tell Frank was probably tough on her, in the way residency demanded, but it was clear he treated her with genuine regard.

"Ah, there you two are," Frank said, his eyes twinkling with recognition. Turning around, you and Mel pivoted to face two men who had just entered the room behind you. You heard Mel begin to speak, her voice friendly and a little excited, as she introduced you.

"These are my attending physicians—Dr. Robby and—"

But before she could finish, your eyes widened, recognition hitting you like a sudden jolt. "Dr. Abbot," you said, the name escaping before you could stop it.

Time seemed to freeze for a heartbeat as your gazes met. He was in a tux, the crisp black fabric framing in a way that made your mouth go dry. Dr. Abbot looked just as surprised to see you as you were to see him. 

Mel glanced between you, confusion knitting her brow, but you couldn’t look away. Big hazel eyes swept over you, lingering on your curves a little too long, the look deliberate and unhurried, before returning to your face. Your eyes were just as greedy as his and the weight of his stare sent a rush of heat through you, your pulse quickening in response.

Then, as if to break the tension, a faint smile tugged at his mouth. "Jack is fine."

Jack. The name echoed in your head.

And the way your name rolled off his tongue after he shook your hand sent a jolt of arousal right to the center of you.

Dr. Robby tilted his head, curiosity sparking, and asked how you knew each other. You explained (briefly and very factually) the situation at the airport, the collapsed passenger, the way Jack had stepped in. As you spoke, Mel stood there wide-eyed and not making a signal fucking sound.

It was the look of someone connecting dots, realizing this was the man you’d mentioned the other day—the 'hot guy' from the airport. Her gaze flicked between you and Jack, a silent seriously? My attending? What a small world? written across her face.

Turning his attention back to you, Dr. Robby’s smile widened.

"Are you a doctor too?"

"No," you chuckled softly, shaking your head. "I’m not. I’m a writer—I write a silly column," you replied. "Nothing too special. Nothing like what you guys do." You gave a modest shrug, a little self-deprecating.

Mel frowned while Jack’s brows shot up.

Before anyone could respond, a voice cut through the hum of conversation.

"Robby," Dana (the fabulous nurse you met earlier) called as she approached, she gave the group a quick smile before turning to Dr. Robby. "Gloria’s looking for you—something about a patient, Mr. Thomas Henderson. She said it couldn’t wait. It’s regarding his post-op cardiac case."

Dr. Robby groaned audibly, rolling his eyes.

"I swear to God, if this is related to patient satisfaction scores…" he muttered, half to himself, half to the group.

Dr. Langdon straightened beside him, nodding. "That’s our case," he said, glancing at Mel with a look of recognition. "We should go check in."

Mel gave you a quick squeeze on the arm, a silent be right back, before following Dr. Langdon and Dr. Robby across the room toward Gloria. Dana trailed after them.

And just like that, the circle dissolved, leaving you standing with Jack.

"Dr. King is the friend you’re visiting?"

It was always weird hearing people refer to Mel as 'Dr. King' … it sounded so adult.  

You nodded, the word catching in your throat before you could shape it into something more. "Yeah," you managed, but then your teeth found your lower lip, worry pressing in.

Fuck.

You had unknowingly shared something so intimate and private about Mel’s life with one of her fucking attendings.

Your teeth pressed harder into your lip, nerves spiking. What if he saw her differently now? What if he judged her, thought she was distracted, less capable? What if you’d just made things harder for her?

The thought made your chest tighten and you wanted to rewind, to take it all back, but the words were already out there, probably lodged in his memory.

Jack shifted slightly, adjusting his cuff, the silence stretching between you. Finally, he offered a small, polite smile.

"Looks like you stayed for more than one day," he said, his tone casual, almost forced—like he was trying to be nice, to fill the space with small talk. But the words only made you want to throw up. The guilt surged, sharp and immediate, and before you could stop yourself, you blurted out, "What I told you about Mel—I didn’t know who you were. I thought you were just… some guy I would never see again. I never would’ve said anything if I’d known." Your voice stumbled over itself, rushed and uneven, nerves spilling out in every syllable. "I shouldn’t have… I mean, it wasn’t my place. I don’t want her to be treated differently because of what I said."

Jack’s expression shifted as he caught the edge of your panic and slowly invaded your personal space just enough for you to smell his cologne.

"Hey," he said, calm but firm. "You don’t need to worry.  What you told me stays with me. I’d never repeat it, not to anyone. Besides, from what I’ve seen, she’s damn good at what she does—nothing you said changes that." Jack’s mouth curved faintly, almost like he was letting you in on a secret. "If anything," he added, "what you told me only makes me respect her more. She’s balancing more than most people could handle, and still showing up at the top of your game. That says a lot."

"It’s kind of crazy seeing you again," you admitted, heat creeping up your neck the moment the words left your mouth.

And suddenly you were rambling with words tumbling out faster than your brain could filter them.

"I mean—I know you live in Pittsburgh, obviously. But you and Mel working together—it’s just—"

You know that feeling on a roller coaster ride when just as you’re about to descend down a sharp hill? That’s how you fucking felt, so you made a helpless gesture, searching for the right word and failing spectacularly.

"—unexpected. In a… statistically improbable kind of way."

"Yeah," he said, letting out one of those noncommittal sounds men made. "It’s… pretty damn random."

A waiter appeared at your side, silver tray balanced effortlessly in his hand, offering you some champagne. You murmured a quiet 'thank you' as you took one, the bubbles fizzing gently against your lip as you sipped. Jack accepted a glass too.

"What kind of column do you write?" he asked.

"I write for Cosmopolitan. It’s nothing Pulitzer Prize–winning."

"Guess I’ll have to cancel my subscription then."

You giggled. "You have a subscription to a women’s lifestyle magazine?"

"Well, not me. My wife does."

The word wife hit you like a sudden drop, your smile faltering as your mind raced. There it is, you thought.

"Or… she did," you heard a crack in his voice. "She passed away a few years ago…" he cleared his throat, "and I never got around to cancelling it."

Your heart dropped into your toes at his reveal.

Fuck.

He was a widower.

You were unsure of what to say and assumed that Jack probably preferred it that way. Without the need for empty expressions of I’m sorry or that must have been hard from a fucking stranger. You knew he wasn’t asking for sympathy. He was simply stating a fact, as if that was all it needed to be. You forced yourself to breathe, to push past the heaviness that threatened to settle between you. Instead of letting silence swallow the moment, you tilted your head, a wry smile tugging at your lips.

"So, she’s the reason my rent’s been paid all these years. I wish I could give her a thank-you card."

The words weren’t meant to erase what he’d shared, only to acknowledge it without drowning it in pity.

Jack didn’t laugh outright. He didn’t seem like that kind of man. But his eyes shifted, the tension in them loosening, and the corner of his mouth tugged just enough to suggest the ghost of a smile. It was subtle... but you caught it.

He stared at you with those god damn eyes, and in that silence, you understood: he appreciated that you hadn’t tried to fill the space with platitudes. He lifted his glass in a brief, private salute, then let the moment pass.

"It’s a travel column," you finally said.

"I honestly didn’t know that Cosmo had a travel section," he said in this velvet timbre before taking a sip of his drink.

You swallowed thickly, trying to squash the way his voice made you tremble.

"You and me both. When I first interviewed for the job, I thought the magazine was all about sex positions and toys and kink."

Jack choked on his sip, lowering his glass and coughing into his fist, eyes wide for a beat before he recovered. You giggled, the sound light and a little breathless, and leaned forward, letting your fingers brush the rim of his glass. "Don’t act so scandalized," you teased, voice soft. "You're a doctor!"

His mouth twitched into a grin, making you huff out a relieved laugh, especially after seeing the apples of his cheeks dust in a shade of pink.

"Honestly, the sex stuff just gets the headlines. The rest is what keeps people reading. I like to think of my job as being a professional tourist with deadlines," you swirled the champagne in your glass, watching the bubbles rise. "Now it doesn’t require as much travel as it once did, which honestly, I’m thankful for. But…" A thought flickered in the back of your mind because you were getting older, the constant flights and jet lag not as glamorous as they once were.

You paused, the words catching.

"But?" Jack asked, voice gruff. 

"I’ve got a master’s in journalism. And sometimes I wonder if I should be reporting on… I don’t know, real stories. Not just writing a column telling you where to drink cocktails in Paris and where not to order sushi in Madrid."

Jack angled his head, eyes narrowing just slightly, as though he were about to cross‑examine you in court.

"What about the hotel stays?" he teased just enough to earn a roll of your eyes, "I thought travel writers lived for the luxury perks."

You snorted, unable to help yourself. "Luxury perks? Half the time, it’s me fighting with a broken coffee machine in my room. But you’re right, I also write hotel reviews, suggested itineraries, and general "I tried it" travel, from yours truly."

Jack studied you for a moment.

"Do you like writing your column?"

You stalled, thinking of the long flights, the endless airport security lines, and the nights you wrote half-delirious in hotel lobbies. The truth was sometimes your career was lonely, exhausting, and fucking chaotic. But even in the worst of it, you’d never stopped wanting to share with your readers about adventures worthy of their PTO and providing glimpses into new cultures and experiences that reminded them about how vast and varied the world could be.

"Uh… yeah," you hesitated, then nodded. "I love it."

Jack’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, before he gave you a simple shrug. "Then that’s what matters."

You chuckled at his evaluation.

The conversation shifted naturally, and Jack steered things in another direction, asking about how you knew Mel. You explained that she had been your next‑door neighbor growing up, younger than you, someone you’d always felt a quiet responsibility to look out for. Over time, that protectiveness had deepened into something more permanent—she became like family.

You learned he was an army veteran, sharing with you about dusty forward operating bases, long nights on watch, the small, sharp moments that stayed with him.

A medevac that came too late.

The way a sunrise could feel like a small mercy.

The camaraderie that made the worst days bearable.

It was the kind of back-and-forth that let strangers become familiar. You talked about everything. It sorta…felt like a first date. You found yourself laughing at his dry asides, pausing to listen when he grew quieter, offering details you didn’t usually give out. He would smirk with flirty eyes, and it made you feel dizzy inside. You couldn’t shake off the butterfly feeling in your stomach. You couldn’t help but study the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled or the way his dimples deepened in his cheeks.

Then… Mel came back not alone but with someone. Dr. Mohan.

And…she was fucking stunning.

Jack’s attention shifted the second she stepped into the circle, and you watched them orbit each other and felt suddenly very small. You watched them talk, their voices low, their smiles small but real, and a ridiculous thought flashed through your mind: Are they sleeping together? It was intrusive, uninvited, and yet it rooted itself before you could shove it away.

You told yourself it was ridiculous. You didn’t even live here. You’d probably never see him again after tonight. Still, a hot, stupid jealousy flared—sharp and embarrassing—because…because for a moment—God, for a stupid, fleeting moment—you’d let yourself believe he might have been flirting with you this evening.

"Idiot," you grumbled to yourself.

Mel glanced at the clock and groaned, saying she couldn’t believe how late it had gotten.

"Wanna head out?" you asked, already anticipating her answer.

"Yes," she said, but her face betrayed the contradiction. "Yes, but also no—because it means you’re leaving tomorrow."

Jack’s head lifted at the word leaving, his attention snapping back to you with a quiet, startling precision. His expression didn’t shift dramatically, but something in it tightened, a flicker of surprise or… disappointment? You couldn’t tell. You didn’t trust yourself to guess anymore.

"Tomorrow?" he asked, his eyes roaming your face freely, pink tongue coming out to wet his full bottom lip.

You nodded, trying to keep it casual, trying not to read into the way his gaze lingered on you. If you were being honest, his eyes bore into yours with an intensity that made your thighs clench.

"Back to Brooklyn, huh?" he exhaled through his nose.

"Yeah," you said, tucking your bottom lip between teeth to hold back your groan. "Back to reality."

Mel clapped her hands together, the universal signal that she was about to start her rounds of goodbyes. You could practically feel her energy shift, as she leaned in to hug Dr. Mohan first, murmuring something about how she’d text her later. Then she turned to Jack.

"I’ll see you tomorrow night."

She had a night shift with him.

He met your eyes for a beat, and you felt warm. You wondered if it was because of the way his eyes seemed to shine when he looked at you.

"It was nice seeing you again," he murmured, with that sex-on-legs voice of his.

Heat pooled through you.

You heard the politeness in it, the social lubricant of a line people use to close out conversations. You told yourself he was being courteous, that the words were the kind he could have said to anyone. Still, when the words landed, you were unable to stop the shy smile that tugged at your lips. You tried not to agree too eagerly like a fucking lunatic, and definitely failed miserably.

"Yeah," you said, shifting your feet. "It really was."

A smirk flickered on the ends of his lips.

December 30th – Manhattan

Your editor’s office was always too bright. Overhead fluorescents humming, the windows letting in the kind of cold December light that made everything look a little washed out. You sat across from his desk, hands folded over your notebook, pretending not to watch the way he skimmed your draft for the third time.

He didn’t speak for a while. He never did. He liked to make you sweat.

"Well," he said, tapping the printed pages with the back of his pen, "It’s not what I asked for."

"I know."

Finally, he leaned back, glasses sliding down his nose as he looked at you over the frames.

"This is good."

"Yeah?" You blinked.

"Yes," he confirmed, then added, "Different than your usual stuff. But I like it. I think your readers will like it too."

A slow warmth crept up your neck. You weren’t sure if it was pride or nerves.

He flipped the pages together, squared them against the desk, and slid them aside. "After a few edits, I think it will be ready to go to print for the January issue." Then he smirked. "You sure you don’t want to start writing about love and relationships? You’ve got a voice for it."

"No way," you said immediately, laughing. "Absolutely not."

"Shame. You’d be good at it."

You rolled your eyes, gathered your things, and stepped out into the hallway. As soon as the door clicked shut behind you, you pulled out your phone and opened Mel’s text, the one from earlier asking for that chicken recipe.

You typed back, Happy almost New Year. Love you. And then, without thinking, you hit the little paperclip icon and attached the recipe your mother had sent you.

Back in Pittsburgh, Mel finally checked her phone during a lull in the night shift, expecting the chicken recipe you’d promised. Instead, she saw a long attachment icon and a preview that definitely did not look like a list of ingredients.

She frowned, thumb hovering, then tapped it open.

Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed as she read further, and widened again when she realized exactly what she was looking at. By the time she reached the end of the article, she exhaled slowly and lifted her head, still processing what she’d just read.

Across the nurses’ station, Dr. Abbot was leaning over the counter, pen moving across a patient chart. Every so often, he’d pause, tap the pen against the clipboard, then jot something else down. He shifted to the computer next, typing in vitals. The soft glow of the monitor lit the edges of his face, catching the faint lines of fatigue around his eyes. He didn’t notice her staring. He was already flipping to the next chart, scanning it with a small frown of concentration, reaching for a fresh pen when the first one began to skip. He muttered something under his breath, shook his head, and kept going.

Mel’s phone felt suddenly heavy in her hand.

She looked down at the screen again. Then back at Dr. Abbot. Then down. Then back.

Dr. Abbot finally glanced up, sensing movement more than anything.

Mel snapped her eyes away, too quickly to be casual.

"Hey," he said, pen hovering above the chart, "how did Mr. Lawson do after surgery? Did he wake up okay?"

Mel jolted like he’d caught her doing something she absolutely shouldn’t be doing.

"What? Oh—uh—yes. I mean—yeah. He’s good. Stable. Totally fine."

"You sure?"

“Yep. Great. Perfect.” She cleared her throat, forcing her voice into something steady and professional. "So—uh—yeah. Surgery went well. The laparoscopic approach held up, no complications. His blood pressure stabilized once we got him into recovery, and he’s already responding to fluids."

"Good. That’s good to hear."

Mel looked at her phone again, her pulse ticking visibly at her throat.

Whatever she was thinking…whatever she was about to do…she hadn’t decided yet.

"Dr. King… you sure everything’s alright?" Dr. Abbot turned back to his chart, but only halfway.

She hesitated.

Then took a slow breath.

Then stepped closer.

"Dr. Abbot...I know what I’m about to do is completely unprofessional."

Dr. Abbot looked up. His face twisted, a frown deepening between his brows, and his concern sharpened.

Mel swallowed, eyes flicking down to her phone, then back up to him. "If you need to take me off your service after this?" She exhaled, a humorless little laugh. "Feel free."

Then Mel held out her phone.

Dr. Abbot took the phone from her slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure what he was about to see but understood it mattered. His eyes dropped to the screen, and then his eyes moved over the title—and Mel watched the moment recognition hit him. His brows pulled together, not in confusion, but in a kind of startled focus when he saw your name.

DRAFT Jan 2026 Article: Here’s something I’ve never said in print before—and I’m already cringing because my parents read my column (hi Mom, hi Papa, please avert your eyes):

I’ve never had a one-night stand. I know. I travel for a living. I spend half my life in airports, hotels, and cities where no one knows my name. If anyone were likely to have a casual fling in a foreign place, it should be me.

But I’m just… not wired that way.

It’s hard for me to meet a stranger and immediately think, Oh yeah, let’s get naked. My brain doesn’t work like that. My heart definitely doesn’t.

When I date, I date seriously. Not in a is this my husband panic‑mode way, but in a I like being a girlfriend way. I love the small, everyday rituals that look boring on paper but feel like glue in real life: brushing our teeth side by side, sending each other photos of ridiculous things we see, debating whose turn it is to pick the movie, knowing exactly which snacks to grab for them at the grocery store. I like the comfort of shared routines, the quiet intimacy of folding laundry together, the easy joy of having someone to debrief the day with.

I like being the person who shows up. And I like being shown up for.

So why am I sharing this incredibly personal and perhaps mildly mortifying fact about myself? Well… partly because my editor asked me to. (He claims readers "love vulnerability," which is convenient for him because he’s not the one whose mother will be texting her about this later.)

But also because…I met someone recently.

And no, it wasn’t like that. Not even close. There was no dramatic kiss, no hotel keycard exchange, no cinematic moment where I suddenly became the kind of woman who has a wild holiday fling in a city she doesn’t live in.

It was just… nice.

Nice in a way I didn’t expect. Nice in a way that made me remember what it feels like to talk to someone and actually feel something. That tiny spark of warmth you can’t manufacture or plan for.

He was a stranger, technically. But talking to him didn’t feel strange. It felt easy. Comfortable.

And maybe that’s why I’m writing this. Not because I suddenly believe in fate or holiday magic or whatever nonsense Hallmark has been peddling for decades, but because sometimes a simple, human moment with someone unexpected can shake something inside you.

Not lust. Not infatuation. Just… possibility.

So, my advice this New Year? Just go for it.

Maybe that guy from work is interested. Maybe the stranger from that bar thinks you’re the most amazing person they’ve ever met. Maybe someone you talked to for five minutes is still thinking about you on their commute home. And look…if you feel a spark with someone at an airport or a holiday party or in line for that $7 overpriced latte: say hi, flirt a little, see what happens.

You know what… maybe even go have that one-night stand.

Also: be smart about it. My best friend is a doctor and would materialize mid‑sentence to remind you to use protection, get consent, and look after your health. She’d also happily hand you a chart of STD stats… because that’s her and she cares.

But the point is: Lean into the moment instead of talking yourself out of it.

Because here’s what I should have told that guy.

You’re a total catch. I think you’re smart, charming, and genuinely funny, and talking to you felt… really, really good. And yes—you’re extremely attractive, too.

I didn’t say any of that at the time. Not because it wasn’t true, but because the moment slipped past me while I was busy being practical… and maybe a little scared. Scared of misreading things. Scared of wanting something I couldn’t have. Scared of stepping into a connection I didn’t expect with someone who carries his past with a kind of quiet dignity that made me realize he once loved someone deeply.

Maybe this New Year, we all give ourselves permission to feel something…even if it’s small, even if it’s fleeting, even if it’s just a spark for a moment and then becomes a story we tell later.

So go for it. Say the thing. Take the chance.

And who knows? Maybe next time, with the next guy, I will too.

December 31st – Park Slope, Brooklyn

Your favorite coffee shop was already buzzing by the time you slipped inside and claimed your usual corner table by the window, the one with the slightly wobbly leg and the perfect view of the street

You weren’t working. But you were kind of working since you had already been assigned your February issue article. You toggled to another tab to scan your favorite vintage shop in Greenpoint, because tonight you were going to a New Year’s party in Tribeca. It was one of those loft spaces with exposed brick, overpriced champagne, and people who pretended not to care about midnight kisses even though everyone absolutely did.

Pulling your sweater tighter around your shoulders, you found a dress on their website that looked promising—and in stock. You would hop on the G after you finished your coffee to go to the vintage shop. Of course, you were trying to buy a dress today. You were halfway through convincing yourself that buying it on New Year’s Eve wasn’t irresponsible but festive, when a voice drifted over the low hum of the café.

A man’s voice. Familiar in a way that made your stomach tighten before your brain even caught up.

"Just go for it, huh?"

You froze.

Suddenly, the dress didn’t matter. The coffee shop didn’t matter. The entire city outside the window could’ve gone silent for all you noticed.

Because you knew that voice.

You looked up.

And there Jack was, his delicate five o'clock shadow peeking through.

He looked unfairly good for someone who’d just walked in from the cold. He somehow looked even better than the last time you saw him, a bad habit you were quickly learning that he had. A charcoal wool coat hung open over a navy sweater. It was soft, fitted, the kind that hinted at the shape of him without trying. His sleeves were pushed up just enough to show the strong lines of his forearms. His hair was slightly wind‑tousled, a few strands falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger, warmer.

"D-Dr. Ab—bot," It came out as a stutter, and suddenly you were feeling sixteen again.

"Jack," he corrected. Confidence smoldered in his stare before his teeth came out in a blinding smile. He pulled out the chair across from you and sat down like it was the most natural thing in the world. "I forgot to ask you something at the holiday party," he said, settling his hands on the table.

"W-what was that?"

"What are you doing tonight for New Year's Eve?"

"I—New Year’s?" you echoed, trying to play off how flustered you were, but the slight shake in your voice didn’t go unnoticed by Jack. You felt like your brain was still catching up to the sight of him, a light flush of red swept up his neck and along his cheeks from the cold.

"Yeah. It’s my day off. I’m here until tomorrow night."

"You… have a day off," you said slowly, "and you decided to spend it in New York?"

He leaned in just a little, elbows resting on the table, voice dropping into something softer—something that felt like it was meant only for you.

"Sometimes," he winked, "one day is enough."

The smile that spread across your face could not be contained.

“Can you tilt your head back a bit more?” Feyre asked, biting her lower lip, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

Heat rushed to my cheeks as I rested my head against Rhys’s bare chest. His skin was warm and firm beneath my cheek. 

I still don’t know how they convinced me to do this. I don’t know why I agreed so quickly.

Her gaze flicked from the canvas to us, and my hands started to sweat.

“Cass, move your hand higher,” she murmured, her brush pressing against the canvas in short strokes.

Cassian’s hand slowly slid up my inner thigh. His body pressed more firmly against one side of me, all heat and muscle.

“Az, put your hands on her knees.”

Azriel’s scarred hands moved to my knees as he knelt before me. His grip tightened just enough to make my breath hitch. 

I swallowed, eyes closing as I tried to calm my heart pounding in my chest. 

Why did I agree to this? 

Why did I say yes to sitting here, barely clothed, pressed between them?

Now here I was, pressed between three of the most handsome men in all of Prythian, dressed in nothing but sheer fabric, heart pounding, skin tingling, all because Feyre wanted to paint live models.

Cassian’s thumb grazed the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. Azriel’s hands gently pressed my knees apart. Rhys’s hands tightened on my shoulders.

The room grew brighter as the fireplace cracked. I felt warm, too warm, burning alive with the touch and smell of them. 

Feyre’s eyes lingered on the way my nipples peaked beneath the sheer fabric.

I could smell the arousal in the air, the unmistakable scent of desire. I felt Azriel inhale deeply as he scented the same thing I did.

“Rhys,” Feyre said, her voice trembling slightly. “Place your hands on her jaw. Keep her head tilted back.”

My head tilted back against his lower stomach, looking up into Rhys’s eyes as his hands cupped my jaw, my pulse pounding beneath his touch. 

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk as his thumb brushed along the line of my jaw.

He knew exactly what he was doing to me. I looked up at him, pleading. I couldn’t take this much longer.

I heard Feyre’s breath hitch as I looked up at her mate.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

I shouldn’t be feeling like this.

But her eyes darkened, her brush moved faster across the canvas, and I realised she was enjoying this. 

“God,” I whispered beneath my breath as Cassian’s hand slid even higher.

His fingertips traced the spot where my thigh met my hip. I watched Rhys’s smile widen before he nodded once, a silent command passed between the three men without words. 

I felt Azriel’s hands pressing my knees further apart, spreading me open before him.Rhys's hands stayed still, forcing me to keep eye contact with him. 

My lips parted, maybe to ask for something I shouldn’t, maybe to whimper something desperate and pathetic, instead his thumb brushed across my lower lip. 

My tongue darted out without thinking, licking his thumb, and my cheeks blushed a deep red.

His smirk turned into a grin, slow, predatory, satisfied. His thumb pressed past my lips, slipping into my mouth, and I looked up at him as I sucked and swirled my tongue over him. 

I could hear Feyre’s brush moving frantically across the canvas. 

I felt Azriel shift beneath me. Cassian’s hands helped me to the edge of the lounge chair.

I should have pulled away. I should have said something, done something, been stronger than the desire burning between my thighs.

Azriel pressed wet, hot kisses to the inside of my thigh. A soft whimper left my lips as my eyes fluttered shut, as Azriel’s mouth pressed higher.

Cassian pulled away the sheer fabric, his fingers finding my nipples. Pulling them just as Azriel’s mouth pressed fully against me, his tongue licking a long, slow line from my entrance to my clit.

I groaned as my lips parted, arching against Rhys. Rhys slid two fingers into my mouth, smiling as I squirmed.

Azriel’s tongue was relentless, circling my clit with precise strokes that made my vision blur.

Cassian’s fingers twisted and pinched my nipples before he soothed them with his mouth. His tongue was hot and wet as he grazed my nipples with his teeth.

I heard Feyre let out a gentle sigh, the sound of her brush strokes filling the room between my moans and the sound of Azriel’s soft grunts as his tongue tasted me. 

Rhys’s fingers finally left my mouth, covered in my saliva. The palm of his hand tapped against my cheek.

“Good girl,” he whispered, his voice low.

My head fell forward, finally able to see the two men whose mouths were devouring me. 

Cassian’s mouth was attached to one breast, his hand massaging the other. 

I groaned, my eyes flickering to Feyre as she watched me.

Her brush was still clutched in her hand, though her chest heaved with rapid breaths, and her gaze, fixed on Azriel’s face buried between my thighs. 

Rhys moved behind her, his hands sliding slowly up the sides of her body before squeezing her breasts through her shirt.

He whispered something in her ear, her cheeks flushing pink as she leaned back into him.

I opened my mouth to speak, to say something, anything, but Azriel chose that moment to slide a single finger inside me.

The sound that tore from my throat was raw.

He immediately found the spot that made stars explode behind my eyes. His mouth closed around my clit, sucking gently as his finger moved in a slow, devastating rhythm that had me begging.

“Please,” I gasped, my voice cracking on the word. “Please, I need—”

Cassian’s teeth grazed my nipple as Azriel added a second finger, stretching me.

My moan echoed through the room as I clenched around his fingers, desperate for more. 

“Look at how pretty she is,” Rhys murmured in Feyre’s ear, his fingers tugging at her clothes.

Cassian left hot kisses from my breasts to my mouth, his mouth claiming mine in a rough kiss.

His fingers continued to pinch my nipples as I whimpered against his mouth, my body trembling between the two men.

“Look at you,” Cassian whispered, his lips trailing from my jaw to my throat. “Making a mess all over Azriel’s face.”

My cheeks flushed red, but I couldn't deny it as the wet sounds of Azriel’s fingers inside me filled the room.

I glanced over at Feyre, Rhys’s hands squeezed her breasts, pinching and twisting her nipples between his fingers. She arched into his touch, her paintbrush discarded on the floor.

Azriel’s fingers curled deeper inside me, Cassian’s teeth marked my throat, as Feyre’s moans began to fill the room. 

I looked over at her. Rhys’s hand was between her thighs.

I came before I could stop it, my pussy clenching around Azriel’s fingers as Cassian swallowed my cries, his tongue down my throat. 

Azriel slowly withdrew his fingers as he and Cassian guided me onto my hands and knees on the rug. 

I felt the head of Azriel’s cock press against my entrance, while Cassian knelt before me, his cock hard, glistening with pre-cum. 

“Open,” he commanded, his voice low and rough.

I obeyed, taking him into my mouth. Forcing my throat open around him, I gagged as he pressed deeper. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I tried to breathe through my nose.

“That’s a good girl,” Cassian said, his hand tangling in my hair and forcing his cock deeper. “Take all of it.”

He held me there, my nose pressed against the base of his cock.

Azriel filled me in a single thrust.

I moaned around Cassian. The vibration made his grip tighten in my hair.

I turned my head as much as I could with Cassian’s cock in my mouth, watching Rhys lift Feyre onto a table, her legs wrapped around his waist as he stood between her thighs. His cock was already pressing into her. 

Cassian thrust into my mouth as I watched Rhys pull all the way out of Feyre, the head of his cock glistening with her arousal, before thrusting deep within her again.

Azriel mirrored his movement, withdrawing until only his tip remained inside me before slamming back in.

I moaned around Cassian in unison with Feyre’s cries. Azriel’s cock hit that spot inside me that had me trembling. Cassian filled my mouth, as my saliva dripped down my chin.

“Such a pretty mouth,” Cassian groaned, his hips thrusting faster. “Made to be fucked.”

Azriel’s hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, his thrusts becoming harder and harder.

Each impact drove me forward onto Cassian’s cock, forcing him deeper into my throat.

Feyre’s moans grew louder and more desperate as Rhys maintained a relentless pace.

Azriel’s hand found my clit, rubbing tight circles that made my thighs shake. I whimpered around Cassian, the sound vibrating through his cock.

“That’s it,” Cassian groaned.

Feyre cried out, her body going taut as her orgasm crashed over her. 

Azriel’s thrusts become erratic, his fingers pressing harder on my clit. Cassian’s grip in my hair tighten painfull.

I came undone, my entire body shaking as pleasure crashed through me. My pussy tightened on Azriel’s cock, as he groaned behind me. 

I felt him pulse inside me, his release filling me.

Before I could take a breath, Azriel flipped me onto my back, and Cassian settled between my thighs.

He buried himself inside me, and the sound that tore from me was a scream and a sob. 

Cassian’s cock pushed Azriel’s cum deeper, forcing it further into my body with each brutal thrust of his hips. 

“Fuck,” Cassian groaned, as my head rolled from side to side.

Each thrust forced my breasts to bounce, my hands clawing uselessly at the carpet. The pleasure was painful, almost violent, bordering on too much.

I watched as Rhys helped Feyre to her feet, his hands steadying her as she swayed.

“Let me taste him, please,” I whimpered, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. 

Cassian’s laugh was dark and breathless. He slipped his arm beneath my knee, lifting my leg higher, angling his hips to go deeper.

The new position had tears fall from my eyes, my back arching off the floor as he hit something inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes.

Feyre straddled either side of my head. Her thighs trembled as she lowered herself; her pussy hovered just above my mouth.

“Go on,” Cassian murmured. “Taste her. Taste him.”

My tongue licked a long, slow line from her dripping hole to her clit. I groaned into her, my hands reaching up to wrap around her waist, pulling her down onto my mouth.

She was shaking as my tongue pressed deeper, licking every drop of Rhys’s release.

“God,” Feyre moaned, her hips rolling against my face. “Please. Please don’t stop.”

Cassian’s fingers found my clit, pressing down in tight circles as he fucked me. I whimpered into Feyre’s pussy, the vibrations making her cry out above me.

My tongue traced every fold to her clit, flicking it with the tip of my tongue. Her breath came in short, desperate gasps, and I could feel her body tensing. 

“I’m, oh god, I’m going to—”

She pressed herself harder against my mouth, and I felt her release flood my mouth and chin. I followed her, my walls clenching down around Cassian’s cock. 

I felt him pulse inside me, his own cum adding to the mess inside me. 

We stayed like that for a moment, me beneath him, Feyre still trembling above my face. 

Cassian withdrew from me slowly, the sensation making me whimper as I felt their cum leak from my body. 

Feyre didn’t climb off me as I expected. Instead, she bent forward, her hands reaching for the back of my thighs, and I felt her warm breath against my sensitive pussy.

My pussy was swollen and aching, still pulsing from my orgasm, and the feeling of her tongue was too much, overstimulating me. 

“Feyre, I can’t, it’s too—” I gasped. 

She didn’t stop. Her tongue pressed into my entrance, tasting every drop of cum that dripped from my body.

I came fast and hard, my face burying into her soaking pussy as my body arched. 

The scream that tore from my throat was muffled by her pussy, my hips grinding against her mouth.

Her tongue continued its torture until I lay beneath her, whimpering and broken, coated in her release and Rhys’s, my body trembling.

Finally, she climbed off me, collapsing beside me. My hand reached for hers, our fingers intertwining as my eyes met the others. 

Azriel sat with his back against the lounge chair, his face still glistening with my wetness, his cock hard in his hand. 

Cassian sat beside me, his chest rising and falling heavy, his own hand working his cock in lazy pumps. 

Rhys leaned against the table, his eyes watching us, hungry and predatory. 

My breath hitched as I watched three men stroking themselves, knowing that the night was far from over.

Day 20 | Kinktober Masterlist | Day 22

Taglist:

He glances over, grinning. “What’s it about?”

You close the book with a sigh. “I have no idea. I can’t concentrate.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re sitting there all-” You wave a hand at him. “-distracting.”

“I’m literally just watching tape.”

“You’re biting your lip. You always bite your lip when you’re analyzing plays. It’s hot.”

He laughs, closing his laptop. “You think my game tape analysis is hot?”

“I think everything about you is hot.” You set your book aside, crawling across the couch to straddle his lap. “It’s a problem.”

“Seems like a good problem to have.”

You kiss him, slow and deep, and he groans into your mouth. His hands find your hips, pulling you closer.

“I thought you had to study,” he murmurs against your lips.

“I do.”

“So we should stop.”

“We should.” But you’re grinding against him now, and he’s already getting hard. “We really should.”

“Absolutely.” His hands slide under your shirt. “Very important exam.”

“Critical.”

“Life or death.”

You laugh, pulling back to look at him. Your eyes are dark, pupils blown wide. “Or we could take a study break.”

“A long study break?”

“Very long.” You roll your hips again, and he can feel the heat of you even through both your clothes. “Educational, even.”

“Educational?”

“Mmhmm.” You lean in, biting his earlobe. “I could teach you something new.”

His breath catches. “Yeah? What did you have in mind?”

You pull back with a smile that makes his heart race. “You’ll see. Bedroom. Now.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

***

In your bedroom, you push him onto the bed and he goes willingly, already pulling his shirt over his head. You stand at the foot of the bed, watching him with that look that makes him feel like he’s on fire.

“Strip,” you say.

“Bossy.”

“You love it.”

He does. He strips down to his boxers, then pauses. “These too?”

“Everything.” You’re already taking off your own clothes, and he watches, transfixed, as more and more skin is revealed. “I want you naked.”

He obeys, and then you’re climbing onto the bed, straddling his thighs. You’re completely bare, and the sight of you never gets old — the curves of your body, the way you look at him like you want to devour him.

“Hi,” you say, grinning.

“Hi.”

You lean down to kiss him, and he can feel your breasts against his chest, your heat so close to where he wants you. He reaches for you, but you catch his wrists.

“Patience.”

“I don’t have any.”

“I know. It’s cute.” You pin his wrists above his head. “Keep them there.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.” You kiss down his neck, his chest, taking your time. “You’re going to be good for me, right?”

“Always.”

“Good boy.”

The words go straight to his cock, and you notice, glancing down with a satisfied smirk. “Someone likes that.”

“You know I do.”

“I do.” You kiss down his stomach, and he has to fight to keep his hands where you put them. “You’re so responsive. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

“What are the others?”

“Your persistence. Your passion.” You’re at his hip bone now, biting gently. “The way you look at me. The way you touch me. The way you fuck me.”

“Jesus,” he breathes.

You look up at him, eyes wicked. “You want me to touch you?”

“Please.”

“Where?”

“You know where.”

“Say it.”

“My cock. Please touch my cock.”

“So polite.” You wrap your hand around him, and he nearly comes off the bed. “So hard for me already.”

“Always hard for you.”

You stroke him slowly, and it’s torture — good torture, but torture nonetheless. He wants to thrust into your hand, wants to flip you over and bury himself inside you, but he keeps his hands above his head like you told him to.

“Good boy,” you murmur, and he whimpers. “You’re being so good. Keeping your hands where I put them.”

“It’s hard.”

“I know.” You lean down, licking a stripe up his length. “But you can do it. You want to be good for me, don’t you?”

“Yes. Fuck, yes.”

You take him into your mouth, and his hips jerk involuntarily. You pull off immediately.

“Stay still.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I’ll—I’ll be good.”

“I know you will.” You take him again, deeper this time, and he has to concentrate on not moving, not thrusting, not grabbing your hair and fucking your mouth.

It’s the sweetest torture he’s ever experienced.

You work him with your mouth and hand until he’s trembling, right on the edge, and then you pull off with a wet pop.

“Don’t come yet,” you say.

“I’m trying not to.”

“I know. You’re doing so well.” You crawl back up his body, kissing him. He can taste himself on your tongue. “Ready for something new?”

“Yes. God, yes. Anything.”

“Hands on the headboard.”

He reaches up, gripping the headboard. You reach into your nightstand, pulling out a condom. You tear it open with your teeth — which shouldn’t be as hot as it is — and roll it onto him slowly.

“Okay,” you say, positioning yourself over him. “We’re going to try something different.”

“Different how?”

Instead of facing him like you usually do, you turn around.

His view is suddenly your back, the curve of your spine, the swell of your ass. And when you sink down onto him — slowly, so slowly — he can see everything. Can see himself disappearing inside you, can see your body taking him inch by inch.

“Oh fuck,” he groans.

“Good?” you ask, and your voice is strained.

“So good. Holy shit, this is—you look-”

You start to move, and the angle is different, tighter somehow. He can see everything — the way you move, the way your body takes him, the way your hands grip his thighs for balance.

“You can touch,” you say breathlessly. “Your hands—you can touch me.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. His hands find your hips, your waist, helping guide your movements. You’re rolling your hips in a way that must feel incredible for you because you’re moaning, your head falling back.

“Is this-” He can barely speak. “Is this what you wanted to teach me?”

“Yes. This is—fuck, Macklin—this is reverse cowgirl.”

“Best. Position. Ever.”

You laugh, but it turns into a moan as you sink down harder. “The angle is good for you?”

“The angle is insane. I can see everything. You’re so—god, you’re so fucking beautiful like this.”

One of his hands slides up your back, the other stays on your hip. You’re setting the pace, taking what you need, and he’s happy to let you. Happy to watch you ride him, watch your body move, watch himself slide in and out of you.

“Touch yourself,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“I want to watch you touch yourself. Please.”

You reach down between your legs, and he can see your fingers finding your clit. You moan louder, your movements getting more erratic.

“That’s it,” he encourages. “Make yourself feel good. Use me.”

“Macklin-”

“You look so good like this. Taking my cock, touching yourself. So fucking perfect.”

You’re getting close — he can tell by the way you’re moving, the sounds you’re making. He grips your hips tighter, helping you move, thrusting up to meet you.

“I’m-” you gasp. “I’m close-”

“Come for me. Want to feel you come on my cock.”

That does it. You cry out, your whole body tensing, and he can feel you clenching around him. It’s almost enough to make him come too, but he holds off, wanting to feel this for as long as possible.

When you finally slump forward, catching your breath, he’s still rock hard inside you.

“Don’t move,” you say. “Just give me a second.”

“Take your time.”

You’re still seated on him, and he runs his hands up and down your back, soothing. After a moment, you start moving again — slow, rolling movements that make him groan.

“You didn’t come,” you observe.

“Wanted to make sure you did first.”

“Always so considerate.” You look back over your shoulder at him. “You want to come now?”

“Please.”

“Then fuck me.” You brace your hands on his thighs. “Hard as you want.”

He doesn’t need more encouragement than that. He grips your hips and starts thrusting up into you, hard and fast. The position gives him leverage he didn’t have before, and he uses it, driving into you over and over.

“Yes,” you gasp. “Just like that. Fuck, Macklin-”

He’s mesmerized by the sight — your body taking him, the way your ass bounces with each thrust, the curve of your back. It’s almost too much, too good.

“I’m-” He can barely get the words out. “I’m gonna-”

“Do it. Come for me.”

He does, with a broken groan, his hips stuttering as he empties himself into the condom. You keep moving, milking every last bit of pleasure from him until he’s boneless and spent beneath you.

You carefully lift yourself off him, and he immediately misses the warmth of you. You collapse beside him, both of you breathing hard.

“So,” you say after a moment. “Thoughts on reverse cowgirl?”

He laughs, still trying to catch his breath. “I think it might be my new favorite thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The view was-” He turns his head to look at you. “You’re incredible.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” You curl into his side. “You liked watching?”

“Loved it. Seeing you like that, seeing us-” He breaks off. “It was the hottest thing ever.”

“We should definitely do it again then.”

“Yes. Absolutely. Whenever you want.”

You laugh, pressing a kiss to his chest. “Give me like twenty minutes to recover first.”

“Fair.”

You’re quiet for a moment. “You know what else we could try sometime?”

“What?”

“There’s this thing where I face you, but I lean back and-”

“Yes. Whatever it is, yes.”

You laugh. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Don’t care. If it involves you naked and on top of me, I’m in.”

“Good to know you’re so easily convinced.”

He rolls over, pinning you beneath him. “Only when it comes to you.”

You kiss him, slow and sweet, and he can feel himself starting to get hard again already.

“Twenty minutes,” you remind him.

“Eighteen now.”

“Macklin.”

“What? I’m a professional athlete. I have excellent recovery time.”

You shake your head, but you’re smiling. “Fine. But this time I get to try something else I’ve been thinking about.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

You whisper in his ear, and his eyes go wide.

“Really?”

“If you want to.”

“I—yeah. Yes. Definitely yes.”

“Enthusiastic consent. I love it.” You kiss him again. “But seriously, give me a few minutes. I need water and maybe a snack.”

“I’ll get it.” He starts to get up, but you pull him back down.

“In a minute. Right now I just want to lie here with you.”

So he does, holding you close, running his fingers through your hair. He’s thinking about what you just told him, about all the things you want to try, about how lucky he is that you trust him like this.

“Hey,” you say softly.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

His heart swells. “I love you too.”

“Even though I’m corrupting you?”

He laughs. “Especially because you’re corrupting me.”

“Good.” You kiss his shoulder. “Because I have a whole list of things I want to teach you.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“I’m a very eager student.”

“You really are.” You prop yourself up to look at him. “You know what I love about you?”

“What?”

“You’re always so enthusiastic. About everything. Hockey, learning new things, making me feel good. It’s-” You pause, searching for words. “It’s refreshing. Most guys would be too proud to let their girlfriend teach them things.”

“Why would I be proud about not knowing how to make you feel good? That’s stupid.”

“See? This is what I mean.” You kiss him. “You’re so—you’re perfect, you know that?”

“Not perfect.”

“Perfect for me.” You settle back against his chest. “My eager, enthusiastic, perfect boyfriend.”

He holds you tighter, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Your boyfriend who really loves reverse cowgirl.”

You laugh. “That too.”

***

Later — after water and snacks and another round where you do indeed teach him that other thing you mentioned — you’re both thoroughly exhausted and tangled together in your bed.

“I have a question,” Macklin says into the darkness.

“Hmm?”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Like positions and techniques and-” He gestures vaguely. “All of it.”

You’re quiet for a moment. “Does it bother you? That I’ve done this before?”

“No. God, no. I’m just—I’m curious. You’re really good at it.”

“At sex?”

“At teaching. At knowing what you like and what works.” He runs his fingers up and down your arm. “At making me feel like I’m good at it too.”

“You are good at it. You’re very good at it.”

“Because you taught me.”

“I gave you some pointers. You did the rest.” You shift to look at him. “You want to know the truth?”

“Always.”

“My ex was terrible in bed.”

“What?”

“I mean it. Terrible. He never wanted feedback, never asked what I liked, just did the same thing every time.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It was.” You trace patterns on his chest. “So after we broke up, I did some research. Read some books, watched some videos. Figured out what I actually liked.”

“Videos?”

“Porn, Macklin. I watched porn.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a second. “That’s hot.”

You laugh. “You think so?”

“Yeah. You figuring out what you like, so you could teach me? That’s—yeah. Really hot.”

“You’re such a guy.”

“You love it.”

“I really do.” You kiss his chest. “And for the record, you’re so much better than my ex ever was.”

“Because you taught me.”

“Because you listen. Because you care about making me feel good. Because you’re not too proud to ask questions or take direction.” You look up at him. “That makes you better than like ninety percent of guys out there.”

“Only ninety?”

“Okay, ninety-five.”

He grins. “Better.”

You shake your head, but you’re smiling. “You know what else makes you better?”

“What?”

“You genuinely enjoy it. Making me feel good. You’re not just doing it to get to the main event.”

“Making you feel good is the main event.”

“See? That.” You kiss him. “That right there. That’s why you’re the best I’ve ever had.”

He knows he’s blushing. “Really?”

“Really. You’re attentive and enthusiastic and you make me feel-” You pause. “You make me feel like I’m the only thing that matters when we’re together.”

“You are.”

“And that’s why I love you.” You settle back against him. “Also because you’re really hot and really good with your tongue.”

He laughs. “Romantic.”

“I can be romantic. But right now I’m just being honest.”

“I like your honesty.”

“Good. Because I have more things I want to try with you, and I’m going to need to be very honest about what I want.”

His interest is immediately piqued. “Yeah? Like what?”

“You’ll find out.” You yawn. “But not tonight. Tonight we sleep.”

“Tease.”

“You love it.”

“I really do.”

You’re quiet for a while, and Macklin thinks you’ve fallen asleep. But then you speak again, softly.

“Macklin?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being so open to learning. For trusting me. For-” Your voice gets smaller. “For making me feel safe enough to ask for what I want.”

He pulls you closer. “Always. You can always ask me for anything.”

“I know. That’s why I love you.”

“I love you too.” He kisses the top of your head. “And I love learning new things with you.”

“Even when I’m bossy about it?”

“Especially when you’re bossy about it.”

You laugh sleepily. “Good. Because I’m about to get a lot bossier.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He falls asleep with you in his arms, already thinking about all the things you’re going to teach him, all the ways you’re going to make each other feel good.

***

The next morning, he wakes up to you kissing down his body.

“Good morning,” you murmur against his stomach.

“Best morning,” he corrects, already getting hard.

“Want to try something else?”

“Always.”

You grin up at him, wicked and beautiful. “Good boy.”

And as you take him in your mouth, as you show him yet another thing he didn’t know he could love, Macklin thinks that being your eager student might be the best position of all.

***

Later, over breakfast — which is really lunch because neither of you got out of bed until almost noon — you’re scrolling through your phone while he makes eggs.

“Oh,” you say suddenly.

“What?”

“There’s this article-” You hold up your phone. “About different positions and their benefits. Flexibility, muscle engagement, that kind of thing.”

“Are you reading sex articles at the breakfast table?”

“It’s research.” You’re grinning now. “Very important research.”

“For what?”

“For us. Look, it says reverse cowgirl is great for deep penetration and G-spot stimulation. Which tracks with last night.”

He nearly burns the eggs. “You’re going to kill me.”

“What? I’m just sharing information.”

“You’re going to kill me and I’m going to die happy.”

You laugh. “It also has some other suggestions. Positions that might be good for us to try.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm.” You stand, coming around the counter to wrap your arms around him from behind. “What do you think? Want to work through the list?”

“Is this list long?”

“Very long.”

“Then yes. Absolutely yes.”

You kiss his neck. “Such an eager student.”

“You make learning fun.”

“I try.” Your hands slide under his shirt. “The eggs can wait, right?”

“The eggs can definitely wait.”

You pull him back toward the bedroom, and he goes willingly, laughing, already hard again.

Being your student, he decides, is the best education he’s ever had.

And he’s got a lot more to learn.

***

Over the next few weeks, you work through your list. Some things are great — the standing position you try in the shower makes him see stars. Some things are good but not great — that one thing you saw in a video is more complicated than it looks and you both end up laughing too hard to finish.

And some things are absolutely mind-blowing.

Like the night you tie his wrists to the headboard and ride him until he’s begging.

Or the morning he wakes you up with his face between your legs and you come so hard you actually scream.

Or the afternoon you’re supposed to be studying and you end up bent over your desk instead, his hand in your hair while he fucks you from behind.

Every time is good. Every time he learns something new — about you, about himself, about what makes you both feel incredible.

And every time, you praise him, guide him, teach him.

“Good boy, just like that.”

“Perfect, you’re so perfect.”

“Yes, right there, don’t stop.”

The praise still makes him weak. Makes him want to be better, do better, make you feel better.

“You know what you are?” You ask him one night, after he’s made you come three times in a row.

“What?”

“A fast learner.” You’re breathless, flushed, beautiful. “The fastest learner I’ve ever had.”

“Good teacher.”

“Good student.” You pull him up for a kiss. “The best student.”

And later, when you’re both too exhausted to move, wrapped up in each other and completely satisfied, Macklin thinks about how far he’s come.

From that first time, nervous and inexperienced, asking you to teach him.

To now, confident and skilled, able to make you fall apart with just his hands, his mouth, his body.

All because you were patient enough to teach him. Brave enough to tell him what you wanted. Trusting enough to let him learn.

“I love you,” he says into the darkness.

“I love you too.” Your voice is sleepy, content. “My perfect, eager, absolutely incredible student.”

“Best class I’ve ever taken.”

“Wait until next semester.” You’re grinning — he can hear it in your voice. “I’ve got a whole new curriculum planned.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. Advanced techniques. Extra credit assignments. Very hands-on learning.”

He laughs, pulling you closer. “I can’t wait.”

“Good.” You kiss his chest. “Because you’re going to need to study hard.”

“I’m very dedicated to my education.”

“I know you are.” You yawn. “That’s why you’re my favorite student.”

“I better be your only student.”

“Obviously.” You’re falling asleep now, your words slurring together. “My only student. My only love. My only everything.”

He holds you as you drift off, thinking about reverse cowgirl and shower sex and all the things you still want to try together.

Thinking about how lucky he is to have found someone who makes learning so fun, who makes vulnerability safe, who makes every day better than the last.

Thinking about how much he loves you.

You give him a look that says you don’t believe him for a second. “Macklin.”

“I’m just-” He tugs at his collar. “There’s a lot of people here.”

“It’s a dinner party, babe. That’s kind of the point.”

“Right. Yeah. Of course.”

You take his hand, squeezing it. “Hey. You’re going to be fine. They’re going to love you.”

He’s not so sure about that, but he follows you into the banquet hall anyway.

The room is full of people in expensive suits and designer dresses, all of them older than him, all of them talking about things like tort reform and constitutional law and summer associate positions at firms Macklin’s never heard of. There are professors he recognizes from you pointing them out on campus, students he’s seen you study with, and everyone seems to know everyone else.

He feels like he’s showed up to the wrong party.

“Y/N!” A woman in a sharp pantsuit waves you over. “There you are!”

“Professor Weitz!” You light up, pulling Macklin with you. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Professor Weitz’s eyes land on Macklin, curious and assessing. “And who’s this?”

“This is my boyfriend, Macklin.” You say it with such pride that his chest warms despite his nerves. “Macklin, this is Professor Weitz. She teaches my Constitutional Law seminar.”

“Nice to meet you,” Macklin says, shaking her hand.

“Macklin,” she repeats, studying him. “Why do I know that name?”

“He plays for the Sharks,” you supply. “Hockey.”

“Oh! Of course!” Recognition dawns on her face. “My husband watches your games. He’ll be thrilled I met you.”

“That’s—yeah, that’s cool.” Macklin manages a smile.

“Y/N tells me you’re having quite the season.”

“I’m trying.”

“He’s being modest,” you cut in. “He’s fifth in points across the entire league. He’s probably going to win the Hart.”

“The what?”

“MVP award,” Macklin explains.

“That’s impressive.” Professor Weitz looks genuinely interested now. “And you’re how old?”

“Nineteen.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Nineteen. Wow. So you went pro right out of high school?”

“I did a year at BU first,” he says. “Boston University. But then I got drafted first overall, so-”

“So you left college for the NHL,” she finishes. “That must have been quite a decision.”

There’s something in her tone — not quite judgment, but not quite approval either. Macklin feels himself shrinking.

“It was the right choice for him,” you say firmly. “Not everyone needs a traditional path.”

“Of course not,” Professor Weitz agrees, but Macklin can tell she’s already mentally categorizing him. Jock. Dropout. Not serious.

You talk for a few more minutes before Professor Weitz excuses herself, and Macklin lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You okay?” You ask quietly.

“Yeah. She seems nice.”

“She is.” You squeeze his hand. “Come on, let’s get drinks.”

The next hour is a blur of introductions. You bring him around to different groups, always making sure to include him, always finding ways to brag about his accomplishments.

“This is Macklin, he plays hockey-”

“My boyfriend Macklin, he’s having an incredible season-”

“Have you met Macklin? He’s the one who scored that hat trick in overtime I told you about-”

Everyone is polite. Everyone smiles and shakes his hand and says nice things. But Macklin can see the way their eyes glaze over when you mention hockey, the way they quickly steer the conversation back to law school gossip or summer internships or the bar exam.

He meets your study group — three people who apparently spend every Sunday with you at the library. They’re in the middle of discussing some case about workplace discrimination when you pull him into the circle.

“Macklin might actually have some insight here,” you say. “The NHL has a pretty comprehensive anti-discrimination policy now.”

Everyone turns to look at him expectantly.

“Oh. Um.” He scrambles to remember what little he knows about it. “Yeah, we had some training on it during orientation. Sexual harassment, discrimination, that kind of stuff.”

“Interesting,” one of the guys — Darren, maybe — says. “Did they cover the legal framework? Title VII implications?”

“I, uh, I don’t know. They just told us not to be assholes.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then Darren laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that makes Macklin feel like he’s said something stupid.

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Darren says.

“More effective than you’d think,” you say lightly, but Macklin can hear the edge in your voice. “Sometimes simple is better.”

The conversation moves on, but Macklin stays quiet. He sips his drink — some kind of fancy cocktail he doesn’t really like — and tries to follow along as they discuss cases and statutes and legal theories he’s never heard of.

At one point, someone mentions the Socratic method, and Macklin has to Google it on his phone under the table.

“You’re quiet,” you murmur during a lull in conversation.

“Just listening.”

“You can jump in, you know. They don’t bite.”

But he doesn’t know what to say. These people are talking about Supreme Court decisions and law review articles, and his most intellectual conversation this week was with Will about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

Dinner is served — a fancy chicken dish with vegetables he can’t identify — and Macklin finds himself seated between you and a guy named Aaron who’s apparently going to clerk for a federal judge next year.

“So Macklin,” Aaron says, clearly trying to be friendly. “What are you planning to do after hockey?”

“After?”

“You know, long-term. Hockey careers are pretty short, right? What’s your backup plan?”

Macklin blinks. “I-I haven’t really thought about it.”

“You should.” Aaron cuts into his chicken. “You’re young now, but you’ll want to have something lined up. Maybe go back and finish your degree?”

“Maybe,” Macklin says, even though the thought of going back to school makes him want to crawl out of his skin.

“What was your major at BU?”

“I didn’t declare one. I was only there for a year.”

“Right, right.” Aaron nods like this confirms something. “Well, it’s never too late. Y/N could probably help you figure out a good path.”

Next to Macklin, you’re deep in conversation with Professor Weitz about some case you’re working on at the Sharks’ legal department. You’re animated, gesturing with your hands, completely in your element.

You look like you belong here.

Macklin looks down at his plate and tries not to feel like he’s drowning.

***

“Y/N, we need to steal you for a second!”

It’s later in the evening, and a group of your classmates are waving you over. You glance at Macklin.

“You okay for a minute?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

He watches you go, watches you fold seamlessly into their group, laughing at someone’s joke. You fit here. These are your people — smart, ambitious, articulate people who read case law for fun and have opinions about judicial philosophy.

What the hell is he doing here?

“First time at one of these?”

Macklin turns to find an older man beside him — late twenties, maybe, with the kind of expensive watch that screams Big Law money.

“Yeah. I’m with Y/N.”

“Ah, Y/N.” The guy smiles. “She’s great. Brilliant mind. We had Civil Procedure together last year.”

“Cool.”

“You’re the hockey player, right?”

“Right.”

“That must be interesting, dating someone in law school. Very different worlds.”

“Yeah.” Macklin takes a drink. “Very different.”

“She’s got a bright future ahead of her,” the guy continues. “She’ll probably make partner at a big firm by thirty-five. Maybe go in-house somewhere prestigious after that.”

“She wants to do sports law,” Macklin says.

“For now, maybe. But she’s too talented to limit herself like that.” He says it like it’s obvious. “She could do anything she wants.”

Including date someone who’s not a nineteen-year-old dropout, Macklin’s brain supplies unhelpfully.

He excuses himself and heads to the bathroom, just to get away. He stares at himself in the mirror — too young, trying too hard in this suit, completely out of his depth.

What is he even doing here?

***

You find him twenty minutes later, standing alone by the windows overlooking the city.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Sorry. Just needed some air.”

You study him, your lawyer face on — the one that means you’re reading between the lines. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Macklin.”

“I said I’m fine.”

You’re quiet for a moment. Then you slip your hand into his. “You want to get out of here?”

He does, desperately, but he doesn’t want to ruin your night. “Don’t you need to stay?”

“I’ve made my rounds. Said hi to everyone I needed to say hi to.” You squeeze his hand. “Let’s go.”

***

The drive back to your apartment is quiet. You try to make conversation — asking about practice, about the upcoming road trip — but Macklin’s responses are short, distracted.

Finally, you sigh. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been weird since dinner started.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Macklin.” Your voice is firm now. “Talk to me.”

He keeps his eyes on the road. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’ve barely said two words since we left.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me what’s going on in your head.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “You should pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over. Please.”

You do, finding a spot on a quiet side street. You put the car in park and turn to face him.

“Macklin, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

He can’t look at you. He stares at his hands instead, trying to find the words.

“You deserve better than me.”

The silence is deafening.

“What?” Your voice is very small.

“You deserve someone better. Someone like … like Darren, or Aaron, or any of those guys back there. Someone smart. Worldly. Someone with a fucking college degree.”

“Macklin-”

“I’m nineteen,” he continues, the words spilling out now. “I never finished college. I don’t know what the Socratic method is or what Title VII means or anything about the shit you talk about with your friends. I don’t fit into your world.”

“My world-”

“You’re going to be this incredible lawyer, and I’m just—I’m just some hockey player who got lucky.”

“Stop.” Your voice cuts through his spiral. “Stop talking.”

He finally looks at you. You’re staring at him like he’s grown a second head.

“Are you serious right now?” You ask.

“I just think-”

“No. You don’t get to think. Not about this.” You unbuckle your seatbelt, turning to face him fully. “Do you want to break up with me? Is that what this is?”

“What? No!”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you deserving better-”

“I don’t want better!” Your voice rises. “I don’t want Darren or Aaron or some law school guy who can discuss Supreme Court cases over dinner. I want you!”

“But-”

“No buts. Jesus, Macklin.” You run a hand through your hair, messing up the fancy style. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”

He doesn’t answer.

“I see the guy who asked me out seventeen times before I finally said yes. The guy who scored a hat trick just to get a date with me. The guy who shows up to my apartment after games — win or lose — just because he wants to see me.”

“That’s not-”

“I see someone who listens when I talk about my cases, even though I know you don’t understand half of it. Someone who brings me coffee when I’m studying. Someone who makes me laugh when I’m stressed about exams.”

Your voice softens. “I see someone who’s kind and genuine and works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. Someone who made it to the NHL at eighteen because he’s that fucking good at what he does.”

“But I’m not smart like you-”

“You are smart.” You say it fiercely. “You’re hockey smart. You read plays before they happen. You memorize defensive systems. You adjust your game on the fly. That’s intelligence, Macklin.”

“It’s not the same-”

“Why does it have to be?” You cup his face, making him look at you. “Why do you have to be a lawyer or have some fancy degree for me to want you?”

“Because you’re you. And I’m just-”

“You’re Macklin fucking Celebrini,” you interrupt. “First overall pick. Hart Trophy frontrunner. One of the best players in the NHL. And more importantly, you’re the guy I’m falling in love with.”

His breath catches. “You—what?”

“I’m falling in love with you,” you repeat, slower this time. “Not with some hypothetical guy with a law degree. Not with Darren or Aaron or anyone else from tonight. With you.”

“But-”

“Do you know what I was thinking tonight, while you were talking to everyone?”

He shakes his head.

“I was thinking how proud I am to be with you. How you’re polite to everyone even when they’re clearly boring you. How you asked Professor Weitz about her husband’s favorite team even though you were clearly uncomfortable. How you tried to contribute to conversations even when you didn’t know what we were talking about.”

You brush a strand of hair off his forehead. “I was thinking about how you look at me like I’m the only person in the room. How you remember little things I tell you. How you make me feel safe and wanted and seen.”

“You are,” he says quietly. “The only person in the room. Always.”

“See? That. That’s what I want.” Your voice is fierce now. “Not someone who can discuss constitutional law. Someone who looks at me like that. Someone who cares like you do.”

“I just—I felt so out of place tonight.”

“I know. I could tell.” You lean your forehead against his. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you better about what it would be like.”

“You were great. You made sure to include me in everything.”

“But you still felt like you didn’t belong.”

“Because I don’t. Not in that world.”

“Maybe not,” you concede. “But you belong in my world. My actual world, not just the law school part of it.”

He’s quiet, processing.

“Macklin, look at me.”

He does.

“I don’t care that you didn’t finish college. I don’t care that you can’t discuss case law. I care that you’re kind and hardworking and genuine. I care that you make me laugh. I care that you’re falling for me too.”

“I am,” he admits. “So much it scares me sometimes.”

“Good. Be scared. I’m scared too.” You smile, soft and a little watery. “But don’t be scared that I’m going to leave you for some law school guy. That’s not happening.”

“How do you know?”

“Because none of them score hat tricks for me,” you say simply. “None of them show up at my apartment at midnight just to make sure I’m okay. None of them are you.”

He kisses you then, desperate and needy, pouring everything he can’t say into it. You kiss him back just as hard, your hands in his hair, anchoring him.

When you finally pull apart, you’re both breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For freaking out.”

“Don’t apologize. Just talk to me next time, okay? Before you spiral into thinking I’m going to leave you for some guy named Aaron.”

He laughs despite himself. “He was kind of a dick.”

“He’s always kind of a dick.” You grin. “Did he do the whole ‘what’s your backup plan’ thing?”

“How did you know?”

“Because he does it to everyone who’s not in law school. It’s his thing.” You roll your eyes. “Ignore him.”

“He said you’re going to make partner at a big firm.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll do sports law like I actually want to.” You shrug. “I haven’t decided yet. But whatever I do, I want you there with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You kiss him again, softer this time. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Celebrini.”

“Good. Because I don’t want to.”

You sit there for a while, just holding each other in the quiet car. Finally, you pull back.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Always.”

“When I first met you, I thought you were just some cocky hockey player who was used to getting whatever he wanted.”

“Ouch.”

“Let me finish.” You smile. “But then you kept asking me out, and you were so earnest about it. So genuine. And I realized you weren’t cocky at all. You were just confident. In yourself, in what you wanted.”

“I wanted you.”

“I know. And you didn’t give up, even when I kept saying no. Even when I was kind of a bitch about it.”

“You weren’t-”

“I was,” you interrupt. “I was trying to protect myself. Because I knew — even then, I think I knew — that if I said yes, I was going to fall for you. And that scared me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re nineteen. Because everyone told me it was a bad idea. Because I thought you’d get bored of me once you realized I’m just a stressed-out law student who spends her weekends in the library.”

“I love that you’re a stressed-out law student,” he says. “I love watching you study. I love hearing about your cases. I love that you’re passionate about what you do.”

“Even though you don’t understand half of it?”

“Especially because I don’t understand half of it.” He takes your hand. “You’re so smart, and you work so hard, and you’re going to be an incredible lawyer. And I’m so proud of you. Even if I can’t always follow the conversations.”

You blink rapidly, and he realizes you’re crying.

“Hey, no-”

“They’re happy tears,” you assure him. “I just — no one’s ever said that to me before.”

“That they’re proud of you?”

“That they love watching me work. That they don’t need to understand everything to be supportive.” You wipe your eyes. “My ex used to complain that I talked about school too much. That I was boring.”

“He sounds like an idiot.”

“He was.” You laugh wetly. “But you’re not. You’re perfect for me, Macklin. Exactly as you are.”

“Even though I don’t have a college degree?”

“Even though. Especially though.” You squeeze his hand. “You have something better. You have passion. Drive. Talent. And you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Playing hockey?”

“Being yourself.” You smile. “Being the persistent boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Being the guy who plays like he has something to prove every single night. Being mine.”

“I like being yours.”

“Good. Because I really like you being mine too.”

He pulls you into another kiss, and this one is slower, sweeter. A promise instead of a plea.

“Can we go home?” He asks when you finally part.

“Your place or mine?”

“Yours. I want to stay with you tonight.”

“Okay.” You start the car again. “But Macklin?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time you start spiraling about not being good enough for me, I’m going to make you watch highlights of yourself on repeat until you remember that you’re kind of amazing.”

He laughs. “That seems fair.”

“And I’m going to remind you that I chose you. Not because you’re a hockey player, and not despite the fact that you’re nineteen. Just because you’re you.”

“I can live with that.”

“Good.” You reach over, lacing your fingers with his as you drive. “Because you’re stuck with me now.”

“Best place I could be stuck.”

***

Later, back at your apartment, you’re both getting ready for bed. Macklin watches you take down your hair, transform from the polished law student back into just you — his you.

“Hey,” he says from the doorway.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you. For tonight. For everything you said in the car.”

You turn to face him, and your expression is so soft it makes his chest ache. “You don’t have to thank me for telling you the truth.”

“Still. I needed to hear it.”

“I know.” You cross to him, wrapping your arms around his waist. “And I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it. You’re enough, Macklin. More than enough.”

He buries his face in your neck, breathing you in. “I love you.”

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and he feels you freeze.

Then you pull back, cupping his face. “Say that again.”

“I love you.” It’s easier the second time. “I’m in love with you.”

Your smile is brighter than the sun. “I love you too. So much.”

You kiss him, and it’s different from all the other kisses. It’s a beginning, a promise, a answer to a question he didn’t know he was asking.

“Come to bed,” you murmur against his lips.

“Bossy.”

“You like it.”

“I really do.”

You pull him toward the bedroom, and as he follows you — as he always will — Macklin thinks about the dinner party. About feeling out of place, inadequate, not enough.

But here, in your apartment, with your hand in his and your love freely given, he doesn’t feel any of those things.

He feels exactly where he belongs.

***

In the morning, he wakes up to you already dressed, sitting at your desk with a case book open.

“Morning,” he mumbles.

“Morning, superstar.” You don’t look up from your notes. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

He pads out to pour himself a cup, then comes back to stand behind your chair. He drapes himself over you, chin on your shoulder.

“What are you working on?”

“Contracts. I have a final next week.”

“Tell me about it.”

You do, launching into an explanation of consideration and promissory estoppel that he definitely doesn’t understand. But he listens anyway, asking questions when something sounds interesting, making you laugh when he relates contract law to hockey somehow.

“You’re distracting me,” you say, but you’re smiling.

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” He kisses your neck. “But I can let you study if you need to.”

“I should.” You turn in your chair to face him. “But I’d rather spend time with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You pull him down for a kiss. “We can study later. Right now, I just want you.”

And later, when you’re both back in bed even though it’s barely nine in the morning, Macklin thinks about what you said last night.

About choosing him. About loving him exactly as he is.

About belonging.

He may not have a college degree. He may not understand case law or legal theory or any of the things your classmates talk about.

But he has this. He has you. He has mornings in bed and coffee in the kitchen and the way you explain contracts like he might actually care about consideration clauses (he doesn’t, but he cares that you care).

He has your love, freely given and fiercely defended.

And really, what more could he possibly need?

“I love you,” he says into the quiet of your bedroom.

“I love you too,” you reply, fingers tracing patterns on his chest. “My persistent, hockey-playing, absolutely perfect boyfriend.”

“Perfect is a stretch.”

“Not to me.” You prop yourself up to look at him. “To me, you’re exactly right.”

And lying there, with the morning light streaming through your windows and your hand over his heart, Macklin finally believes it.

He’s exactly right.

Exactly enough.

It’s a Saturday night in January when things finally shift. The Sharks don’t have a game until Tuesday, and you’ve invited him over for dinner at your apartment. Not takeout, not going out — actual cooking, which you’ve mentioned you like to do when you have time.

Macklin shows up with flowers (your favorite, which he remembered from an offhand comment two weeks ago) and wine (which Joe had to help him buy because he’s nineteen and knows nothing about wine).

“You didn’t have to bring anything,” you say, but you’re smiling as you take the bouquet.

“My mom would kill me if I showed up empty-handed.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” You stand on your toes to kiss him, and he wraps his arms around your waist, lifting you slightly. You laugh against his mouth. “Down, boy. Dinner first.”

“Can’t we skip to dessert?”

“Macklin.”

“What? I’m just saying-”

You press a finger to his lips. “Dinner. First.”

He kisses your finger, grinning when you roll your eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

Dinner is pasta with homemade sauce, garlic bread, and a salad that Macklin dutifully eats even though he’d rather be kissing you. You tell him about your week, about the case you’re working on, about your Evidence professor who you’re pretty sure hates you.

“Impossible,” Macklin says. “Nobody could hate you.”

“You’re biased.”

“Extremely.” He reaches across the table, lacing his fingers with yours. “But also right.”

You shake your head, smiling. “Eat your vegetables.”

“I’m eating them!”

“You’re pushing them around your plate.”

“I’m savoring them.”

“Macklin.”

He sighs dramatically but takes a bite of salad. “Happy?”

“Delirious.”

After dinner, you move to the couch with the wine. Macklin doesn’t really like it, but he likes the way you curl into his side, your legs tucked under you, your hand resting on his chest.

“This is nice,” you murmur.

“Yeah.”

“Just quiet. No games, no studying, no obligations.”

“Just us.”

“Just us,” you agree, and then you’re kissing him.

It starts slow, gentle. His hand in your hair, yours on his jaw. But then you shift, straddling his lap, and Macklin groans into your mouth.

“Is this okay?” You ask, pulling back slightly.

“Are you kidding? This is-” He doesn’t finish, just pulls you back down.

You kiss for a while, his hands on your hips, yours in his hair. He can feel the heat of you through your clothes, can feel the way you’re starting to move against him, just slightly. His whole body is on fire.

“Macklin,” you breathe against his neck.

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to-” You pull back to look at him. “We don’t have to. But if you want-”

“Yes.” The word comes out strangled. “God, yes. Whatever you want.”

You smile, slow and dangerous. “Whatever I want?”

“Anything.”

“Dangerous words.”

“I trust you.”

Something soft crosses your face. You cup his cheek, kissing him sweetly. “Come on.”

You lead him to your bedroom, which he’s never seen before. It’s neat, organized, very you — soft lighting, a big bed with about a thousand pillows, books stacked on the nightstand.

“Second thoughts?” You ask, watching him take it in.

“No. Just-” He turns to you. “I’m really here. In your bedroom.”

“You are.”

“I’ve thought about this.”

“Have you?” You step closer, playing with the hem of his shirt. “What did you think about?”

His brain short-circuits. “I, uh-”

“It’s okay.” You kiss his jaw. “You don’t have to be smooth right now.”

“Good, because I’m really not.”

You laugh, and then you’re pulling his shirt over his head. He reaches for yours, but you catch his hands.

“Let me,” you say softly.

So he does. He watches as you undress, reveals skin he’s only imagined, and when you’re standing there in just your underwear, he forgets how to breathe.

“Okay?” You ask.

“You’re perfect.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truth-teller.” He steps closer, running his hands up your sides. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

You shiver under his touch. “Your turn.”

He strips off his jeans, suddenly self-conscious, but the way you’re looking at him — hungry, appreciative — makes him feel like a god.

“Come here,” you say, pulling him toward the bed.

You fall onto it together, a tangle of limbs and kisses. His hands are everywhere, trying to memorize every inch of you. You’re making these small sounds that are driving him crazy, arching into his touch.

“I want-” He breaks off, kissing down your neck. “Can I-”

“What do you want?” Your voice is breathless.

“I want to taste you.” The words come out rough. “Want to make you feel good.”

You pull back, looking at him. “Yeah?”

“Please.”

“Okay.” You lie back, and Macklin’s heart is pounding so hard he’s sure you can hear it. “Come here.”

He kisses down your body — your neck, your collarbone, your breasts (taking his time there until you’re pulling at his hair), your stomach. When he reaches the waistband of your underwear, he looks up at you.

“Still okay?”

“More than okay.”

He pulls them down slowly, and then you’re bare before him, and he has no idea what he’s doing.

He knows the theory, obviously. He’s watched porn, he’s heard his teammates talk. But actually being here, faced with the reality of you, he realizes he’s completely out of his depth.

“Macklin?” Your voice is gentle. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just-” He swallows. “I don’t—I’ve never-”

Understanding crosses your face. “Oh. Oh, honey. It’s okay.”

“I want to,” he says quickly. “I really want to. I just don’t know-”

“Hey.” You sit up slightly, cupping his face. “It’s okay. We don’t have to-”

“I want to,” he repeats. “I just—I don’t want to be bad at it.”

You smile, soft and affectionate. “You won’t be. Come here.”

He does, and you pull him up for a kiss. “Do you want me to show you?”

“Show me?”

“How to do it. What I like.” Your voice is patient, kind. “If you want to learn, I can teach you.”

Something hot shoots through him at the thought. “Yeah. Yes. Please.”

“Okay.” You kiss him again. “First rule: communication. I’ll tell you what feels good, and you pay attention to how I respond. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t be afraid to ask questions. This isn’t a test. It’s just us.”

He nods, and you lie back down. He settles between your legs again, and you spread them wider.

“Start slow,” you instruct. “Just explore. Use your fingers first.”

He does, running his fingers through your folds experimentally. You’re wet — so wet — and the knowledge that you’re this turned on by him makes his head spin.

“Good,” you breathe. “That’s good. See here?” You guide his hand. “That’s my clit. That’s going to be your best friend.”

He circles it gently, watching your face. Your eyes flutter closed.

“Lighter,” you say. “It’s really sensitive. Just—yes, like that. Oh, that’s good.”

Encouraged, he keeps going, varying the pressure, the speed. You’re making soft sounds, your hips moving slightly.

“Okay,” you say after a moment. “Now you can use your mouth.”

“What do I-”

“Start with kisses. Just like you’d kiss my mouth, but slower. Softer.”

He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your inner thigh. Then another, working his way up. When he finally reaches your center, he presses a gentle kiss there, and you gasp.

“Good,” you whisper. “That’s so good. Now-” Your breath hitches. “Now use your tongue. Flat and slow.”

He does, dragging his tongue through your folds, and the taste of you is overwhelming in the best way. You moan, and the sound goes straight to his cock.

“Like this?” He asks, doing it again.

“Yes. Oh god, yes. Just like that.”

He keeps going, losing himself in it. You’re so soft, so warm, and every sound you make spurs him on.

“Now the clit,” you say, your voice strained. “Remember, gentle.”

He finds it with his tongue, circling it the way he did with his fingers. You cry out, your hand flying to his hair.

“Macklin—fuck—yes-”

He’s never heard you swear before, and it’s the hottest thing he’s ever experienced. He does it again, and your grip in his hair tightens.

“Perfect,” you gasp. “You’re doing so perfect. Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t. He keeps going, finding a rhythm, paying attention to what makes you moan louder, what makes your thighs tremble.

“Suck on it,” you instruct breathlessly. “Gently. Like—oh fuck—yes, just like that-”

He’s rock hard, grinding against the bed without meaning to. Making you feel like this is the best thing he’s ever done.

“Fingers,” you pant. “Add your fingers.”

“Where-”

“Inside. One first. Slow.”

He slides one finger inside you, and you’re so tight and wet that he nearly comes right there.

“Curl it,” you say. “Up toward—oh god, yes, there. Right there.”

He finds a spot that makes you practically levitate off the bed, and he focuses on it, sucking on your clit while his finger works inside you.

“Another,” you gasp. “Two fingers now.”

He adds a second, and the stretch makes you moan so loud he’s briefly worried about your neighbors. But then you’re rocking against his face, chasing the pleasure, and he doesn’t care about anything except making you feel good.

“So good,” you’re babbling. “So fucking good, Macklin, oh my god, you’re such a good boy-”

The praise makes him work harder, desperate to hear more. He alternates between circling your clit with his tongue and sucking on it gently, his fingers pumping in and out, curled to hit that spot that makes you shake.

“I’m close,” you warn. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop-”

He doesn’t. He keeps the exact same rhythm, the same pressure, and when you finally come apart, he can feel it — the way you clench around his fingers, the way your whole body goes taut and then liquid. You’re moaning his name, your hand tight in his hair, and he works you through it until you’re pushing him away, oversensitive.

He pulls back, chin wet, looking up at you in wonder.

You’re sprawled on the bed, chest heaving, a thin sheen of sweat on your skin. You look thoroughly debauched.

“Come here,” you say, voice wrecked.

He crawls up your body, and you pull him into a kiss, apparently uncaring that he tastes like you. When you finally pull back, you’re smiling.

“So?” He asks nervously. “Was that-”

“That was incredible.” You cup his face. “You’re incredible. For your first time — god, Macklin.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You kiss him again. “You’re a very fast learner.”

“I had a good teacher.”

“And you listen so well.” Your hand trails down his chest, his stomach. “Such a good boy.”

He actually whimpers, and you smile against his mouth.

“You like that?” You murmur. “When I tell you you’re good?”

“Yes.”

“When I call you a good boy?”

“Fuck, yes.”

Your hand reaches his boxer briefs, palming him through the fabric. He’s so hard it almost hurts.

“Want me to take care of this?” You ask.

“Please.”

But when you start to move down his body, he catches your hand. “Wait.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Can I-” He swallows. “Can I do it again? To you?”

You blink. “You want to-”

“I want to practice.” He’s already kissing down your body again. “Want to make sure I can do it right every time.”

“Macklin, you already-”

“Please.” He looks up at you from between your legs. “Let me be good for you.”

Your breath catches. “God, you’re going to be the death of me.”

“Is that a yes?”

“That’s a yes.”

This time, he’s more confident. He starts with kisses to your inner thighs, teasing, taking his time. You’re still sensitive from the first orgasm, and when he finally drags his tongue through your folds, you gasp.

“Too much?” He asks.

“No. No, keep going.”

He does, but gentler this time, slower. He explores every inch of you, finding what makes you sigh, what makes you moan, what makes you pull his hair.

“You’re enjoying this,” you observe, breathless.

“Love it,” he admits against you. “Love how you taste. Love the sounds you make.”

“Such a sweet talker.”

“Just honest.” He circles your clit with his tongue, and your hips jerk. “Love making you feel good.”

“You do,” you gasp. “You make me feel so good, Macklin.”

He adds his fingers again, two this time without needing to be told. He remembers the spot, the angle, and when he finds it you cry out.

“Good boy,” you breathe. “Such a good boy for me.”

He groans against you, working harder. He’s learning what you like — the combination of his fingers inside you and his mouth on your clit, the way you need him to be gentle but persistent, the way you get wetter when he hums against you (he does it again, just to feel you gush).

“Close,” you warn. “I’m close again, oh god-”

He doesn’t let up. He keeps the same rhythm, the same pressure, and when you come this time, he can feel the way your whole body trembles with it. You’re pulling his hair almost painfully hard, your thighs clamped around his head, and he’s never felt more accomplished in his life.

When you finally go limp, he presses soft kisses to your thighs, your hip bones, your stomach.

“Macklin,” you say weakly. “Holy shit.”

He grins, crawling back up to kiss you. “Better?”

“I’m going to need a week to recover.”

“Was I good?”

“You were perfect.” You pull him close. “So perfect. My perfect good boy.”

He buries his face in your neck, overwhelmed. “I love when you call me that.”

“I can tell.” Your hand slides down to palm him again. He’s still rock hard, leaking through his briefs. “This must hurt.”

“It’s okay.”

“Macklin.” You push him onto his back. “Let me.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I want to.” You’re already pulling down his briefs. “I want to make you feel as good as you made me feel.”

When you take him in your hand, he nearly comes just from that. He’s so worked up, so turned on from going down on you, that he knows he’s not going to last.

“I’m not-” He gasps as you stroke him. “I’m not going to last long.”

“That’s okay.” You kiss his jaw. “That’s more than okay. You earned this.”

“I didn’t-”

“You made me come twice.” You kiss down his neck. “You learned so fast, listened so well. Such a good student.”

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“My good boy,” you murmur, and that’s all it takes.

He comes with a broken moan, spilling over your hand, his whole body shaking. You work him through it, whispering praise in his ear-”so good, did so well, so perfect for me“ — until he’s boneless and spent.

When he finally comes back to himself, you’re wiping your hand with a tissue, smiling at him fondly.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hi.”

“You okay?”

“I think you broke me.”

You laugh, curling into his side. “In a good way?”

“In the best way.” He wraps his arms around you. “That was-”

“Yeah.”

“Can we do it again?”

“Now?”

“No, I think you actually did break me. But like later? Tomorrow?”

You laugh against his chest. “We’ll see.”

You lie there in comfortable silence, his fingers tracing patterns on your skin. He’s thinking about how this started — with him begging for a date, with you saying no over and over. How if someone had told him three months ago that he’d be here, in your bed, having just made you come twice, he wouldn’t have believed them.

“What are you thinking?” You ask quietly.

“That I’m really glad I scored that hat trick.”

You prop yourself up on your elbow, looking down at him. “Yeah?”

“Best thing I ever did.”

“Better than being first overall?”

“So much better.”

You kiss him, slow and sweet. “I’m glad too. Even though you were a persistent little shit.”

“Hey.”

“What? You were.”

“I prefer determined.”

“Potato, potahto.”

You laugh, and he rolls you over, pinning you to the bed. You look up at him, eyes soft.

“I’m falling for you,” he says. He didn’t mean to say it, but it’s true. “Like, really falling.”

“Macklin-”

“You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know.”

You cup his face, pulling him down for a kiss. “I’m falling too,” you whisper against his lips. “Have been for a while.”

His heart soars. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You make it really hard not to.”

“Is it the going down on you thing? Because I can do that a lot more-”

You laugh, swatting his chest. “It’s not just that. It’s-” You pause, searching for words. “It’s everything. The way you listen. The way you care. The way you look at me like I’m the only person in the room.”

“You are.”

“See? That.” You smile. “You’re sweet and genuine and you make me laugh. And yeah, you’re also apparently a very fast learner in bed, which doesn’t hurt.”

“I had good motivation.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Making you feel good.” He kisses your neck. “Hearing you call me a good boy.”

You shiver. “You really like that, huh?”

“More than I probably should.”

“There’s no should.” You tilt his chin up to look at you. “If it feels good, it’s good. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you were so good,” you murmur. “So eager to learn, so focused on my pleasure. Do you know how rare that is?”

“I just wanted-”

“I know what you wanted. And you got it.” You pull him down for another kiss. “You made me come so hard I forgot my own name.”

He grins against your mouth. “Mission accomplished.”

“Cocky.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No,” you admit. “You earned it.”

You spend the rest of the night like that — talking, kissing, touching. He goes down on you one more time (for practice, he insists, though you suspect he just loves doing it), and you return the favor until he’s a writhing mess beneath you.

When you finally fall asleep, tangled together in your bed, Macklin thinks that this might be the happiest he’s ever been.

***

He wakes up to sunlight streaming through your curtains and you curled against his chest. For a moment, he just watches you sleep, still not quite believing this is real.

Your eyes flutter open, and you smile sleepily at him. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Sleep okay?”

“Best sleep of my life.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truth-teller,” he corrects, kissing your forehead.

You stretch, and he notices the marks on your neck, your collarbone. Oops.

“What?” You ask, catching his expression.

“I might have left some marks.”

You get up to check in the mirror, and he watches you count them. “Macklin. I have work tomorrow.”

“Sorry?”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” He grins. “You look good like that.”

“Like what?”

“Mine.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling as you crawl back into bed. “Possessive.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” you admit, curling back into his arms. “I kind of like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You kiss his chest. “I like being yours.”

He tightens his arms around you, feeling like his heart might burst. “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

“Even when I make you crazy?”

“Especially then.”

You laugh, and he thinks he could listen to that sound for the rest of his life.

“Hey,” he says after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For last night. For being patient with me.”

“Macklin, you don’t have to thank me-”

“I want to.” He tilts your chin up. “You could have made fun of me, or made me feel bad for not knowing what to do. But you didn’t. You just—you taught me. Made it safe.”

“Of course I did.” You look almost offended at the idea of doing anything else. “That’s what you do when you care about someone.”

“I care about you too. So much.”

“I know.” You kiss him softly. “I know you do.”

“And I’m going to keep getting better,” he promises. “At that. Going to practice until I’m perfect at it.”

You laugh. “You know most guys hate doing that.”

“Then most guys are idiots.” He’s already kissing down your body again. “Because that was the hottest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Macklin, you don’t have to-”

“I want to.” He looks up at you from between your legs. “Please? Let me practice?”

You laugh, breathless. “You’re insatiable.”

“Only for you.”

“Such a line.”

“Such the truth.” He presses a kiss to your inner thigh. “Please?”

You thread your fingers through his hair, smiling down at him with such affection it makes his chest ache. “Okay. But only because you ask so nicely.”

“I can be very nice.”

“You can be very good,” you correct. “My very good boy.”

And as he sets to work, listening to your breathing quicken, feeling you arch into his mouth, Macklin thinks that yeah, he could definitely get used to this.

Being yours. Being good for you.

Being the person who gets to make you feel like this.

It’s better than any hat trick, any goal, any win.

This is everything.

And he’s never been more grateful for his own persistence, for that stupid bet, for every single rejection that led him here.

To you. To this.

“Dude,” Will says. “You good?”

“Who was that?”

Will glances back. “Oh, that’s the new legal intern. Started last week, I think? Why?”

“No reason,” Macklin lies, but he’s already calculating how quickly he can manufacture a reason to visit the legal department.

***

He finds out your name is Y/N Y/L/N. You’re twenty-three, which makes you four years older than him — a fact that Will points out is “not that much, bro” when Macklin mentions it, which Macklin definitely wasn’t asking about. You went to Stanford for undergrad, you’re doing your law degree at Santa Clara, and you’re apparently the most organized person the Sharks’ legal team has ever seen.

Macklin thinks you’re the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, but he keeps that part to himself.

For about three days.

“So,” he says, catching up to you in the hallway on Thursday afternoon. “Y/N, right?”

You don’t slow down. “Right.”

“I’m Macklin. Macklin Celebrini.”

“I know who you are.” You shift the folders in your arms. “You’re kind of hard to miss.”

His heart does a stupid little flip. “Yeah? I mean—cool. That’s cool. So, I was thinking-”

“I’m not interested.”

He blinks. “I didn’t even-”

“You were going to ask me out.” You finally stop walking, turning to face him with a look that’s equal parts amused and exasperated. “The answer is no, but I appreciate the interest.”

“How did you-”

“You’ve been staring at me for three days straight, Macklin. You’re not exactly subtle.” But you’re smiling a little, and it gives him hope.

“Okay, fair,” he admits. “But hear me out-”

“No.”

“Just coffee-”

“No.”

“Lunch?”

“No.”

“Breakfast?”

“Still no.”

He grins, undeterred. “What about second breakfast?”

You actually laugh at that, short and surprised. “Did you just make a Lord of the Rings reference?”

“Is it working?”

“No.” But you’re still smiling as you walk away, and Macklin counts it as a win.

***

Will thinks he’s lost his mind.

“She’s said no, like, fifteen times,” he points out a week later, watching Macklin check his hair in his phone camera before heading to a “random” stop by the legal department.

“Sixteen,” Macklin corrects. “But who’s counting?”

“Apparently you are.”

“She laughs at my jokes, dude. That’s a good sign.”

“Or she thinks you’re funny-looking.”

Macklin flips him off and heads out.

He finds you in the break room, heating up leftovers in the microwave. You see him coming and immediately shake your head.

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You were thinking it.” The microwave beeps, and you pull out your container. “The answer is still no, Macklin.”

He leans against the counter, watching you stir your pasta. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

“Let me guess.” You cap your container, turning to face him. “Coffee, lunch, dinner, or some creative variation thereof. Am I close?”

“I was actually going to ask if you wanted to come to the game on Saturday,” he says. “We’re playing Vegas. Should be a good one.”

“I have season tickets,” you say. “Section 107.”

“Oh.” He brightens. “So you’ll be there anyway?”

“With my dad, yes.”

“Cool, cool. So after the game-”

“No.”

“Come on.” He’s smiling because he can’t help it, because you’re standing there in your perfect blazer and your hair is coming loose from its bun and you’ve got a tiny bit of sauce on your chin. “One date. That’s all I’m asking.”

You grab a napkin, wiping your chin like you can read his mind. “Macklin, you’re nineteen.”

“So?”

“So I’m twenty-three. That’s-”

“Four years. Which is nothing.”

“It’s not nothing when you’re nineteen.” But your voice is gentler now. “You’re a baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” he protests. “I’m in the NHL. I have a 401k.”

That gets another laugh out of you. “Oh, well, a 401k. That changes everything.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No.” You pick up your lunch, heading toward the door. “You’re very sweet, Macklin. But the answer is no.”

“For now,” he calls after you.

You don’t disagree, and he takes that as progress.

***

By mid-November, the rejections have become routine. He asks, you say no, you both smile about it, and life goes on. It’s become a thing, he realizes. Your thing.

“This is sad,” William Eklund tells him after watching Macklin’s latest attempt get shot down in the parking lot. “Like, genuinely sad.”

“She’s going to say yes eventually,” Macklin insists.

“Based on what evidence?”

“She hasn’t told me to stop asking.”

“Maybe she’s just being polite.”

Macklin shakes his head. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“You don’t know her at all, dude. You’ve had, what, maybe five actual conversations?”

“Fourteen,” Macklin corrects. “And a half.”

“What’s half a conversation?”

“She said good morning to me once.”

Ekky stares at him. “You need help.”

But the thing is, Macklin does know you. He knows you take your coffee black with exactly one sugar. He knows you’re always exactly seven minutes early to everything. He knows you chew on your pen cap when you’re thinking and that you organize your folders by color and date. He knows you’re funny and sharp and kind, and that you always stop to talk to the arena staff, asking about their kids and remembering their names.

He knows that when you smile — really smile, not the polite professional one — your whole face lights up.

And he knows that you’re not entirely unaffected by him, even if you pretend to be. He catches you watching him sometimes, quickly looking away when he notices. You always know his stats from the previous game. You laugh at his jokes even when they’re terrible.

There’s something there. He’s sure of it.

***

The breakthrough comes in early December, before a game against Utah.

You’re walking past the locker room — which you normally avoid like the plague — when Macklin spots you and jogs over, still in his suit.

“Y/N, hey.”

You sigh, but you’re smiling. “Macklin.”

“Big game tonight.”

“I’m aware.”

“You coming?”

“Section 107, same as always.”

He takes a breath. This is it. His last shot. “What if I made you a deal?”

You raise an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

“If I score a hat trick tonight-”

“You’re playing Utah,” you interrupt. “No offense to them, but come on.”

“Okay, fair point.” He thinks for a second. “If I score a hat trick, and we win, you go out with me. One date.”

You cross your arms, considering. “And if you don’t?”

“Then I’ll stop asking.” The words hurt coming out, but he means them. “Completely. You’ll never have to say no again.”

You study him for a long moment. He can see you weighing it, calculating the odds. Three goals plus a win is a tall order against any team.

“You’ll really stop?” You ask quietly.

“If that’s what you want, yeah.”

Something flickers across your face, too quick to read. “Okay,” you say finally. “Deal.”

His heart jumps. “Yeah?”

“But Macklin?” You step closer, and he can smell your perfume. “I’m not saying yes because I think you’ll do it. I’m saying yes because I think you won’t, and maybe this way you’ll finally move on.”

It should sting, but he’s too busy grinning. “We’ll see.”

“Yes,” you say, already walking away. “We will.”

***

In the locker room, Macklin is vibrating with energy.

“You good?” Tyler Toffoli asks, watching him bounce on his toes.

“I need a hat trick.”

“Okay …”

“Tonight. I need a hat trick tonight.”

Ryan Reaves looks up from taping his stick. “Why?”

“Because if I get one, Y/N finally has to go out with me.”

The room goes quiet. Then everyone starts talking at once.

“Wait, the legal intern?”

“You bet a date on a hat trick?”

“Dude, that’s actually kind of smooth.”

“He’s been chasing her for months-”

“Two months,” Macklin corrects. “And one week.”

Will throws a tape roll at him. “You’re insane.”

“I prefer determined.”

“What happens if you don’t get it?” Will asks.

Macklin swallows. “I have to stop asking her out. Forever.”

The room goes quiet again.

“Well,” Ryan says finally, “better make it count then.”

***

The game starts badly.

Utah scores first, a garbage goal that somehow squeaks past the goalie. Then they score again midway through the first period, and Macklin can feel the opportunity slipping away.

He can see you in Section 107, sitting with an older man who must be your dad. You’re wearing a Sharks jersey — his number, he notices with a jolt — and you’re watching the ice intently.

Focus, he tells himself. Focus.

He gets his first goal with three minutes left in the first period. A quick wrist shot from the slot that goes top shelf. He doesn’t celebrate much, just taps his gloves and gets back to the bench.

“One down,” Will says, bumping his shoulder.

“Two to go.”

The second period is a grind. Utah’s defense tightens up, and Macklin can’t find any space. He takes a penalty for holding, spends two minutes in the box hating himself, and comes out determined to make up for it.

With six minutes left in the second, he gets his chance. A beautiful feed from Dmitry Orlov, and Macklin one-times it past the goalie.

2-2.

And more importantly: two goals.

The arena erupts, and Macklin lets himself look up at Section 107. You’re on your feet, clapping, and even from here he can see that you’re smiling.

One more, he thinks. Just one more.

***

The third period is agony.

Utah scores again, making it 3-2. Then Will ties it up with eight minutes left, and the game becomes a desperate scramble. Both teams are exhausted, sloppy. The ice is choppy.

Macklin gets chance after chance, but nothing falls. He hits the post twice. Once, he has an open net and somehow puts it wide.

“It’s okay,” Ekky tells him during a TV timeout. “We’re going to OT. You’ll get another chance.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t. But you’re not giving up now.”

Regulation ends 3-3. Overtime.

***

Three-on-three hockey is chaos at the best of times. Tonight, it’s absolute mayhem.

Utah nearly ends it thirty seconds in. Then the Sharks almost score. Back and forth, both goalies standing on their heads.

Macklin is exhausted. His legs are burning, his lungs are screaming, and all he can think about is you in Section 107, watching.

Two minutes left in OT.

Macklin gets the puck at center ice. He sees Ekky streaking down the right side, Tyler driving the middle. The Utah defenseman commits to Will, leaving a gap.

Macklin takes it.

He’s never skated faster in his life. The Utah goalie is sliding across, trying to cover the angle. Macklin fakes the pass to Tyler, pulling the goalie even further-

And then he shoots.

Time slows down. He can see the puck spinning, can see the goalie reaching, can see the tiny space between the glove and the post-

The puck goes in.

The horn sounds.

The arena explodes.

Macklin’s teammates mob him, screaming and laughing, but all he can think about is looking up at Section 107. You’re standing, hands over your mouth, and even from the ice he can see that you’re shaking your head.

But you’re smiling.

***

After the game, after the media and the showers and the endless chirping from his teammates, Macklin finds you waiting outside the locker room.

“Hi,” he says, suddenly nervous.

“Hi.” You’re still in his jersey, and it does something to his heart. “That was-”

“A hat trick?”

“Show-off.”

He grins. “A deal’s a deal.”

You sigh, but there’s no heat in it. “I can’t believe you actually did it.”

“Did you watch the whole game?”

“Of course I did.” You say it like it’s obvious. “I had to see if I was going to owe you a date.”

“And?”

“And apparently I do.” You’re trying to sound annoyed, but you’re failing. “When?”

“Now?”

You laugh. “You just played almost seventy minutes of hockey. You’re exhausted.”

“I’m not tired at all,” he lies. He’s pretty sure he could fall asleep standing up.

“Macklin.” You step closer, and his breath catches. “I know you’re not tired. But I am. And I’d rather our first date not be at eleven PM when we’re both dead on our feet.”

“Our first date,” he repeats, grinning like an idiot. “So there’s going to be a second one?”

“Let’s see how the first one goes.”

“When?”

You consider. “Friday? After work?”

“Done. Yes. Perfect.”

“There’s a Thai place near my apartment-”

“I’ll eat anything,” he says quickly. “Whatever you want.”

You smile that real smile, the one that lights up your whole face. “Okay. Friday.”

“Friday,” he agrees.

You turn to leave, then pause. “Macklin?”

“Yeah?”

“That was a really good game.” Your voice is soft. “Really good.”

“I had motivation.”

“Apparently.” You shake your head, still smiling. “Get some rest. I’ll see you Friday.”

“Wait-” He catches your hand without thinking, then immediately lets go, embarrassed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Did you actually think I couldn’t do it? Or were you hoping I would?”

You’re quiet for a moment, and when you speak, your voice is honest. “I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe both? I told myself you wouldn’t do it, that it was impossible. But then you kept getting chances, and I kept thinking-” You break off, laughing a little. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Were you cheering for me?”

“I was cheering for the Sharks.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

You bite your lip, and he’s never wanted to kiss someone more in his life. “Maybe a little,” you confess. “When you scored the third goal, I-” You shake your head. “Never mind.”

“Tell me.”

“I thought, ‘Oh no.’” You’re smiling now, embarrassed. “Because I realized that some part of me wanted you to do it. Wanted an excuse to say yes.”

His heart is going to explode. “You could have just said yes.”

“I know.” You meet his eyes. “But where’s the fun in that?”

“You made me work for it.”

“You needed to work for it.” Your voice is gentle. “You’re nineteen, Macklin. You’ve had everything come easy to you your whole life. Hockey, school, girls probably-”

“Not this girl.”

“No,” you agree. “Not this girl. And maybe that’s good. Maybe you needed to want something you couldn’t just have.”

“And now?”

“Now you can have it.” You reach out, squeezing his hand quickly. “One date. Friday. Don’t be late.”

“I’ll be early.”

“I know you will.” You’re already walking away. “Goodnight, Macklin.”

“Night, Y/N.”

He watches you go, and this time when you reach the end of the hallway, you look back. You catch him staring and shake your head, but you’re smiling.

He’s smiling too.

***

Friday takes forever to arrive.

Macklin changes his outfit four times, shows up twenty minutes early, and has to walk around the block three times to avoid looking desperate. When he finally knocks on your apartment door at exactly 6:30, his palms are sweating.

You answer in jeans and a soft sweater, your hair down for the first time he’s ever seen, and he forgets how to speak.

“Hi,” you say, amused.

“Hi. You look-” He clears his throat. “Really pretty.”

“Thanks.” You grab your jacket. “You clean up nice yourself.”

The Thai restaurant is small and warm, tucked into a strip mall. You clearly come here often — the owner greets you by name and gives Macklin an appraising look that makes him sit up straighter.

“So,” you say once you’ve ordered. “Tell me about yourself.”

“You know about me.”

“I know you’re a hockey player. I don’t know you.”

So he tells you. About growing up in Vancouver, about his family, about the pressure of being first overall and the weight of expectations. He tells you about his teammates, about learning to do his own laundry for the first time, about how sometimes he still feels like a kid playing dress-up in an adult’s life.

You listen like everything he says matters, asking questions, laughing in the right places. And when he asks about you, you tell him about law school, about wanting to work in sports law, about your dad who brought you to Sharks games since you were six.

“He was pretty excited about the hat trick,” you admit. “He might be more invested in you asking me out than you were.”

“Impossible.”

You laugh. “He said any guy who works that hard for a date probably deserves one.”

“Smart man.”

“He has his moments.”

The food comes, and you steal bites off his plate without asking. He pretends to be annoyed but immediately offers you more. You argue about the best Sharks players of all time, about whether the 2000s or 2010s had better rom-coms, about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

“It absolutely does not,” you insist.

“It’s fruit! It’s healthy!”

“It’s an abomination.”

“You’re an abomination.”

You throw a napkin at him, and he catches it, grinning.

Somewhere between the pad thai and the mango sticky rice, he realizes he’s never been this happy. Not after winning games, not after scoring goals. Just sitting here, watching you laugh at his stupid jokes, arguing about pizza toppings.

This. This is what he wanted.

***

After dinner, you walk slowly back toward your apartment. It’s cold, and you huddle into your jacket. Without thinking, Macklin puts his arm around you.

You don’t pull away.

“So,” you say as you reach your building. “Verdict?”

“Best date of my life.”

“You’re nineteen. How many dates have you been on?”

“Enough to know this was the best one.”

You smile, looking down. “It was pretty good.”

“Just pretty good?”

“Okay, really good.” You look up at him. “You’re not what I expected, Macklin Celebrini.”

“Better or worse?”

“Better,” you admit. “A lot better. You’re-” You pause, searching for words. “You’re genuine. And funny. And you actually listen when people talk. That’s rare.”

“Especially for a nineteen-year-old?”

“Especially for anyone.” You lean against your door. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”

“I’m not.” He steps closer. “You were right. I needed to work for it. And now-” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Now?”

“Now I appreciate it more.” He’s looking at your lips. “Can I kiss you?”

You pretend to think about it. “I don’t know. Maybe you should score a hat trick for that too.”

“If I need to, I will.”

You laugh, and then you’re kissing him, and it’s better than scoring any goal, better than anything he’s ever felt. You taste like mango and you’re smiling against his mouth and his hands are in your hair and-

You pull back, breathless. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” you say, still in his arms. “About that second date …”

He grins. “I thought we had to see how the first one went?”

“It went pretty well.”

“Just pretty well?”

You kiss him again, slower this time. “Really, really well.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You have a game tomorrow.”

“Sunday, then.”

“Pushy.”

“Determined,” he corrects.

You laugh against his neck. “Sunday. But only if you promise to actually focus on the game, not just stand around thinking about kissing me.”

“I can multitask.”

“Macklin.”

“Fine, fine. Hockey first, kissing second.”

“Good boy.”

He groans. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it does things to me.”

You pull back, grinning wickedly. “Good boy?”

“You’re evil.”

“And you’re nineteen and adorable and way too into me.”

“Guilty on all counts.” He kisses your forehead. “But you like it.”

“Unfortunately,” you say, but you’re smiling. “I really do.”

***

Later, after he’s left (and texted you goodnight, and good morning, and a meme he thought you’d like), Macklin lies in bed staring at his ceiling.

Joe Thornton pokes his head in. “So? How’d it go?”

“She kissed me.”

“I gathered, from the stupid grin you haven’t stopped doing.”

“I’m going to marry her.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’ve been on one date.”

“Best date of my life,” Macklin says dreamily.

Joe heaves a heavy sigh. “You’re hopeless.”

“Hopelessly in love.”

“Oh my god, I’m leaving.”

But Macklin doesn’t care. He’s already planning Sunday’s date, already thinking about how to make you laugh, already counting down the hours until he sees you again.

He thinks about you saying he worked for this, that he needed to. And maybe you were right. Maybe that’s why it feels so good now — because he earned it. Because you made him prove that he wasn’t just some kid with a crush, but someone who could be patient and persistent and worth your time.

His phone buzzes. A text from you: Stop smiling at your ceiling and go to sleep. You have practice tomorrow.

He laughs out loud. How did you know?

Because I’m doing the same thing.

His heart soars. He types back: Goodnight, Y/N. Thanks for saying yes.

Thanks for scoring a hat trick.

Thanks for wearing my jersey.

Goodnight, Macklin.

He falls asleep smiling, dreaming of Thai food and arguments about pizza and the way you look when you laugh.

Tomorrow, he’ll go to practice. He’ll take the chirping from his teammates about being whipped. He’ll count down the hours until Sunday.

But tonight, he’s just a nineteen-year-old kid who worked his ass off for one date with the most amazing girl he’s ever met.

And it was worth every single rejection, every single no, every single moment of doubt.

Because in the end, he got his hat trick.

And he got the girl.

***

On Sunday, you wear his jersey again. And when he scores (just one goal this time, but it’s enough), he points up at Section 107.

You’re already smiling.

After the game, he takes you for ice cream even though it’s December and not nearly warm enough. You get chocolate, he gets vanilla, and you share like you’ve been doing this forever.

“So,” you say, stealing his cone. “Three dates in one week. That’s pretty serious.”

“Is it?”

“For a nineteen-year-old and a sophisticated twenty-three-year-old? Absolutely.”

He steals your cone back. “What about for just two people who really like each other?”

You soften. “Then I guess it’s just right.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You lean into him, and he wraps his arm around you, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. “You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I knew you were going to get that hat trick.” You look up at him. “The whole game, I kept thinking, ‘He’s going to do it. He’s actually going to do it.’”

“And?”

“And I was terrified.” You laugh. “Because I knew that if you did, I’d have to admit I wanted you to. That I’d been wanting to say yes for weeks. That maybe you weren’t just some kid with a crush, but-” You break off.

“But what?”

“But someone I could actually fall for.” Your voice is quiet. “If I let myself.”

He stops walking, turning to face you. “So let yourself.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re nineteen, and I’m twenty-three, and you’re an NHL player, and I’m just-”

“You’re not just anything.” He cups your face in his hands. “You’re brilliant and beautiful and funny and kind. And yeah, I’m nineteen. But I know what I want. And I want this. I want you.”

Your eyes are shining. “Macklin-”

“You don’t have to say it back. Not yet. Just-” He swallows. “Just don’t count me out because of a number, okay? Give me a chance to prove I’m not just some kid.”

You’re quiet for a long moment. Then you smile, slow and sweet. “You already have.”

And when you kiss him this time, right there on the sidewalk with ice cream melting in your hands and the December wind biting at your faces, he knows.

This is it. This is everything.

Four years, four months, four decades — it doesn’t matter. When you know, you know.

his eyes flutter open, a frown appears between his eyebrows and that's when he sees you. asleep next to him. you were laying on your stomach, cheek pressed against the pillow, your face turned away from him, hair tousled spilling across the pillow in a tangled mess. then chris's eyes move down, your tank top rolling up, letting him see a bit of the skin on your back, but something else caught his attention.

the blanket was drawn up to your knees so almost all of your body was exposed. your hips slightly raised, one leg thrown over the blanket, the shorts you were wearing leaving little to the imagination.

chris almost drooled all over himself. his hand freezes mid stroke, realizing that his best friend was just right next to him. thank god you were sleeping. he would be so embarrassed if you saw or heard him.

and he was about to stop, wanting to go to the bathroom just like any person would. but he couldn't take his eyes away from your ass.

how perfect it looked, how it was slightly up in those tiny shorts, making him lose all sense of boundaries. his gaze intensified as he stared at your lower half. he slowly shifts his hips, trying desperately to find a more comfortable position without disturbing you. inside, he's wrestling with his own confusion and guilt over his inappropriate attraction, but he was so sleepy and so fucking needy.

biting down on his bottom lip, his hand starts moving under the covers again, the faint sound of his skin sliding against his own growing louder as he picks up the pace.

if he's quick then you'll never know.

despite knowing it was wrong, he couldn't stop himself, his arousal and tiredness made him careless.

another whimper leaves him as he tries to stifle it in the pillow, his cheeks growing hotter, finding this situation strange but also incredibly hot. the sight of your ass makes him think back to his dream where he would pound into you from behind, grabbing your butt or slapping it, leaving red marks on your skin.

chris's movements immediately became more urgent, his breaths coming in short gasps. his hips lifting off the bed as he starts thrusting into his hand, imagining that it was you who he was fucking right now. the wet sounds echoing in the silent room, another muffled groan leaving chris as his teeth sink into his lip to keep the sound quiet. he was so close he could feel it, his legs spreading, giving his hand more room. he just needed to finish and wanted to go back to sleep, it was too early to be up.

but then he hears your voice.

"chris, what the fuck?"

his whole body tenses, his hand freezes as he moves his eyes up to see your confused face. you were clearly awake, propping yourself up on your elbows, a frown between your eyebrows. you've been awake for a while, him constantly shifting woke you up, and while you tried to sleep again, you didn't have the chance because of his quiet whimpers, and the obvious movements under the covers. so you were... listening. until you couldn't take it anymore.

his heart almost leaping out of his chest, his face turning a deep shade of red as he realized he's been caught.

"fuck-" chris's wide eyes full of guilt and embarrassment, he quickly tries to compose himself, pulling his hand out from under the covers as nonchalantly as possible, but he could feel the evidence of what he was doing still wet on his fingers. "i wasn't.... i...i was just... just adjusting..."he stumbles over his lie, seeing by the look on your face that there was no point in denying what you clearly saw and heard him doing.

he shifts uncomfortably, still painfully hard, his cock brushing against the covers almost making him moan. "shit, m'so fuckin' sorry, i just.... i wasn't thinkin' straight, i had a dream- i mean, i thought you were asleep and..."

but he's immediately silenced by your voice, the tiredness clearly making you more bold as well. "i wasnt sleeping," you admit, looking down at his covered by the blanket lap, and then back up. "did you, uh... finish?"

chris almost choked on his own saliva.

his heart raced, mind reeling as he stares at you with wide eyes, completely surprised that you asked him that. he expected you to be grossed out, or think that he's a perv, not asking him if he came. the curiosity was written all over your sleepy expression, his dick twitching after your question.

he shakes his head, not daring to use his voice, too scared that it will betray how much more you just turned him on.

chris can see the wheels turning in your head as you shift onto your side, still propping yourself up on your elbow. your tits perfectly squeezed together now, catching his attention, and he almost comes right there and then when he notices your hard nipples through the thin tank top you were wearing.

your voice completely unsure, but still managing to put a lot of dirty thoughts into chris's mind as you ask, "do you.... wanna?"

his breath caught in his throat, eyes widening at your question once again. you were asking... or maybe even offering something to him...?

seeing you so vulnerable and sleepy made him bolder than usual. he swallowed hard, his composure fraying, "yeah."

his eyes were locked on your face, seeing its just as red as his, the way you were nervously chewing on your bottom lip makes him wonder what is going on in that pretty head of yours.

neither of you could logically think now, both too worked up to do so. he watched your hand twitch, almost wanting to touch him but hesitating. he thought that maybe you were too shy to do it, when really, you were too scared to make the first move, knowing it's your bestfriend.

but chris was so hard, his mind whirling. he knew you were touchy-feely when you were sleepy, usually seeking any physical contact when you were staying over but never like this. and you gave him that look— your doe eyes making his cock throb. and he just had to take the decision out of your hands. he couldn't handle the unspoken request and his own need anymore. so he grabbed your hand and guided it down under the covers, wrapping your fingers around his erection. "like this," he murmured sleepily.

both of you breathing heavily as you squeezed him, his hips jerking involuntarily. you keep biting your bottom lip, pulling the covers off him so you could see him and holy shit.

"you're so big-" it slips out of your mouth before you can think, your cheeks immediately growing hotter as you keep your eyes locked on his cock, brushing your thumb against his tip and spreading his precum over his length.

a low groan escaped him after hearing your words, sleep and lust making his body super sensitive to your touch. "yeah?" a small smirk appeared on his face, seeing the way you look at him and start to grow more confident in your movements.

it was like his wet dream coming true.

his body tensing up while you're moving your hand on his cock, the slow strokes making him crazy. his hand gripping the sheets as he lets out another low, needy groan, the sight of your hand wrapped around him was almost too much.

"what did you dream about?" he almost misses your question, too lost in the pleasure you're giving him already.

"uh..." his hips began to move in sync with your strokes, unable to stay still. "...you-" he admits, sucking in a sharp breath, the precum beading at his tip as your thumb keep brushing against it.

"me?"

your eyes met his, the intensity of your gaze makes his dick twitch in your hand. he nods, reaching down to cover your hand with his own, guiding you to squeeze him tighter and move faster. "yeah, you... i, uh...dreamed 'bout you doin' this and then-" he cuts himself off when you immediately pick up your pace just like he wanted, changing your angle a bit as well, your other hand playing with his balls. "fucking shit-" he groaned, head falling back against the pillow.

"is this good?"

he wanted to laugh at your question, 'cause it was pretty clear to see. "yeah," he managed to choke out, his voice rough with desire. "so fuckin' good..."

his hair sticking to his forehead, brows knitted together as you keep jerking him off, him also fucking your hand which makes his balls tighten with each stroke, the pleasure starting to be overwhelming. he could feel your eyes being locked on his face more than his cock, and it somehow felt even more intimate. "holy shit, keep goin'-"

"what else were you dreaming about?" you ask, and chris wants nothing else than to show you.

"you were on top of me...ridin' me-" his chest was falling and rising rapidly. "and then i was— fuccckk— takin' you from behind—"

as he fucked into your hand and talked about his dream, seeing you listening and squeezing your thighs together, chris felt his release approaching fast. his breathing was ragged as he tried to hold back, but the way you reacted to his movements, the way your body tensed, was too much. "fuck, gonna come-"

you don't even have the chance to respond as he moans, finally letting go. his hot sticky cum spills out of his tip onto your hand and his shirtless stomach as he continues thrusting into your palm. his entire body shook with the force of his orgasm, his head thrown back and eyes closed, but he's totally aware of your gaze on him, and it makes all of this even more intense.

but you don't stop. he came, but your hand was still moving. your gaze falls on your painted with his release hand, and you have an urge to taste it.

so you do.

quickly enough you end up gripping his sheets for dear life, and moaning his name while he's deep inside you, turning his wet dream into reality.

Because he was. 

Steve Harrington, Mr. Perfect Hair himself, asshole turned part time hero, was the guy who got to hold your hand in public. Eddie didn’t hate him. Not really. He wanted to, wanted it bad sometimes, when the jealousy itched too deep to scratch. 

He’d hated him at some point, when Dustin wouldn't shut up about how incredible his friend was. But alas, after everything they’d been through last year and Steve being the one who got him out of that hellhole, he really couldn’t hate him anymore. 

So, he hated the sun. Because he couldn't have it.

Eddie also hated himself for not speaking up sooner. For watching you fall in love with someone else while he sat in the background. And maybe that was his punishment. Maybe that was the price for every time he chickened out, every time he saw you in the hallway in that little cherry red jacket and panicked, ducking behind his locker like a coward.

Maybe if he hadn’t been, you would be wearing his jacket now. 

“Dude, wipe your face. You’re one drool away from filling the bucket,” came a voice from beside him, and undoubtedly by the tone–it had to be Henderson’s. 

Eddie snapped out of his trance by the sharp nudge of Dustin’s elbow. Shit. He hadn’t even realized he was watching. 

“I’m not,” he lied, even as he tilted his head just enough to catch another glimpse of you, this time laughing as Steve tried to sneak a kiss and Robin dramatically fake gagged next to you.

Jesus, Eddie was about to gag for real. 

“You’re staring again,” Dustin chuckled, walking away after patting him condescendingly on the back. 

Eddie shot him a glare but didn’t argue back. Because what was the point? 

All he could do was fantasize when it came to you. You would never look at him the same way you look at Steve. 

You just looked at him like he was funny. Your metalhead friend. And Eddie? Eddie looked at you like you hung the goddamn stars.

Things were finally looking up for Eddie. For once. 

Aside from his not so little crush situation, everything else seemed to be getting better. 

After almost dying being devoured by supernatural creatures–which, in his opinion would’ve been a very metal death–his uncle’s trailer had gotten split in half, and he’d gotten piles and piles of medical bills from his long recovery. Which led to him having to find a part time job as a mechanic besides his little dealing business. 

Oh! And how could he forget? The police department was still investigating him about the murders from last year. 

Between that, his job, the incessant crawls every week, and his therapy–both physical and psychological–he had absolutely no time to host hellfire anymore. Dustin had tried to keep it alive, but bless his soul, no one compares to Eddie Munson when it comes to being DM. 

But last week, by some miracle, he’d finally, finally been cleared as “innocent” due to lack of evidence and was able to start living a normal life again. His therapy sessions had been reduced to once every two weeks, and he’d also repaired a few fancy cars that earned him a pretty juicy commission. 

So yeah. Things were finally looking up for him after whatever the hell ‘86 was. 

So, with a pep in his step, he walked through the doors of the WSQK headquarters holding a cardboard box with all his stuff for that day’s campaign. Robin had told him they had a spare room on the back, and Steve said he could go earlier to set everything up. He even whistled as he strolled through the empty hallways of the radio station.

He saw two doors at the end, figuring he’d open both and find out which one he was supposed to settle in. 

But as all Munsons tend to run out of luck at some point, it seems like the curse finally hit him again when he opened the wrong one and changed the course of his entire fucking life. 

Because what he didn’t expect, what absolutely no one warned him about, was that you and Steve liked to use the storage closet to fuck like bunnies before anyone arrived at the station. 

He froze at the door, the box in his hand hanging on for dear life as he took in the scene in front of him. 

There you were. 

Propped up on a stack of cardboard boxes with Steve between your legs, your skirt was bunched around your hips, and your knees high on his waist. Your face was flushed, hair a mess and you were letting out choked little gasps because you couldn’t form words anymore.

Eddie’s heart stopped. He might’ve as well died for real this time. 

You let out a startled sound, grabbing Steve’s shoulders to hide yourself the second you saw Eddie standing there. Steve just glanced back over his shoulder, not even bothering to stop. 

“Dude. Do you mind?” 

Eddie slammed the door shut.

He walked out of WSQK like he’d seen a ghost. Didn’t even say a word to Dustin, who was just pulling up on his bike. 

He just got in his van, and drove straight into the woods far enough to be alone. And for the next ten minutes, the only sound in that van was the furious pumping of his hard cock into his hand and his broken, desperate moans repeating something.

Your name. Again. And again.

And again.

Then, after going back and giving a poor excuse to his boys as to why he couldn’t host that day and had to leave immediately (one that actually meant sorry guys! Gotta jerk off like 10 more times!) He went to repeat the same routine back at the small place Wayne managed to rent after the “earthquakes” had destroyed his trailer. 

He turned off the lights of the room he called his now. Lit a blunt just for something to do with his free hand. Threw on a loud tape to drown out the grunts and the pathetic moaning, and his fist went to town–again–to the memory of you.

The way you looked in that closet.

The arch of your back against the boxes. The sound of your voice breaking as you moaned his name–not Eddie’s, no, the one you belonged to. Steve. The way your fingers dug into his shoulders, pulling him closer, as if he wasn’t deep enough. And your face…

God. Your fucking face.

Blissed out and flushed, swollen lips parted, eyes half-lidded and completely lost in it. No cheap porn film he’d ever watched compared to that. No–you were the most obscene thing Eddie had ever seen in his life and it was burned into him now. Engraved into the insides of his lids. No amount of blinking could unsee it. 

No amount of jerking off could erase it. 

(He tried. Many times.)

People had sex all the time. This shouldn’t be on his head 24/7. But…Eddie couldn’t believe that was you. 

He’d always seen you as soft. As the sweet girl giggling at Steve’s dumb jokes while playing with his stupid perfect hair. As the one who would mediate when a crawl meeting got too heated when someone didn’t agree with the plan. As the one who always listened to everyone…even him. 

You even called him Eds once, so softly, that he’d walked around with chest pain for a full day like a goddamn lovesick teenager. 

But now?

Now he couldn’t stop imagining how your voice sounded when it wasn't innocent. Couldn’t stop remembering how your legs looked parted open, how your thighs shook as Steve thrusted harshly into you. 

He should’ve known better though, that was on him. He should’ve known that someone who once held the title of “King Steve” would be the one to corrupt a girl like you. 

Who wouldn’t want to? 

He couldn’t stop wondering what it’d feel like to be the one between your legs. To have you whimpering like that. To see you fall apart and know he did that. That he got you that high, that far gone…that wrecked.

He was fucking haunted by the fantasy. And it wasn’t lust, it was worse than that. It was curiosity, obsession, need.

The need to be the one who fucks the sweetness out of you. 

But now you were probably curled up in Steve’s bed, fast asleep on his hairy chest, wearing one of his shirts and dreaming about getting fucked by him, while Eddie dreamt of you after he didn’t have anything left to milk out.

He dreamt of your hand in his curls. Your thighs around his waist. Your voice in his ear breaking with his name over and over and…over. 

Eddie tried to be normal after that. God, he tried. 

At least you seemed to be normal. You walked into Thursday movie night at Nancy’s like nothing had happened, dropping onto the couch next to Steve with a bag of popcorn, listening to whatever Robin said, still sweet and smiley and wearing one of Steve’s jackets. 

He told himself not to stare. Repeated it like a goddamn mantra.

Don’t look, Munson. Don’t fucking look. You’ll just embarrass yourself. You’ll make it weird. 

But then your eyes met, and you smiled at him, and…Eddie forgot his own name.

His mouth opened, but no words came out. Just a squeak that could’ve been the start of a sentence, or a heart attack. He pretended to cough into his fist and buried himself deeper into the armchair. 

And Steve? Oh he noticed. 

Not just Eddie’s reaction, but all of it. The way Eddie’s eyes had locked onto you from the moment you walked in. The way they dropped lower every time you shifted. The way his fingers gripped the armrest. 

And the weird part? Steve didn’t get mad. He just smirked, knowingly, even amused by the whole thing. 

The next time something altered Eddie’s brain chemistry, was at the diner. 

He’d arrived late, mainly because he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to go in the first place, but the thought of seeing your smile was enough to convince him to walk through that door, and soon it was just him, Robin, and the perfect couple. 

Eddie looked at you from across the booth, wearing an outfit that he was sure would ruin his life later when he was alone back in his room. You were sipping from your milkshake, the pink straw pressed between your lips, as you let out a hum of contempt at the sweet taste. All Eddie could think was that could be something else.

Thank God for Robin’s need to ramble about everything that happened on her date with Vicky that weekend, that you and Steve were focused on her and not on Eddie’s anxious leg bouncing under the table. 

Or at least that’s what he thought. 

“Eds, take some fries,” you offered sweetly when Robin ran out of air, pushing the plate you’d been eating from with Steve toward him. 

Eddie hadn’t ordered anything, he wasn’t hungry–at least not for actual food–and of course you’d noticed and offered him some of your own. 

“Yeah man, go ahead,” Steve chimed in with a smile that was enough to freak him out. “I don’t mind sharing,” he added with a shrug, placing an arm around your shoulders, hazel eyes piercing into Eddie’s with a devilish glint. 

The implication left Eddie frozen in place, hand hovering over the fries as you began talking with Robin again, unaware of the way your boyfriend’s comment had left Eddie stunned. 

Steve didn’t say anything else. Just kept looking at him, head tilted, like he knew something. Like he felt it now. 

The shift. 

Eddie almost got up and left, but then he caught Steve’s eyes, and the bastard just winked.

Jesus Christ. 

You’re still breathless when Steve flips you onto your back again, mind stuck somewhere between heaven and passing out as your sore body still feels every inch of him buried deep inside you. 

He drapes you across his chest knowing you can’t hold yourself up anymore, bare skin sticky with sweat, your cheek pressed over his heartbeat. Steve's hand goes to your thigh, fingers brushing softly where he’d held you down minutes ago. 

You don’t want to move. You never want to after he’s done with you. So you just cling tightly to him, letting out a dreamy sigh and nuzzling closer, planting a soft kiss over his racing heart.

Steve smiles, shifting just enough to see your blissed out face. “You okay over there?”

“Mmhm,” you hum. “Can’t feel my soul. Congratulations, Harrington.”

That makes him chuckle. He kisses the top of your head. “Anytime, baby.” 

As his room settles into silence and you begin drifting off in his arms before he can drag you into taking a shower, Steve’s chest vibrates against your skin when he speaks again. 

“Hey,” he whispers, absentmindedly playing with your hair which doesn’t help your heavy eyelids closing. 

“Hmm?” 

“Do you ever notice the way Eddie looks at you?”

Your eyes blink open immediately. 

You don’t say anything at first. Just start tracing lazy little circles on a particular scar on his ribs, pretending to think about it, but you already know the answer. 

“Yeah,” you smile, “I’ve noticed.”

Steve hums, hand still resting on your thigh.

“It’s probably just a silly little crush,” you add, as if you didn’t know how Eddie’s voice breaks every time you spare a glance at him. Or the way his hands shake when you ask him to hand you a drink on movie night. “He’s just… traumatized from the time he caught us back at the station,” you chuckle. 

“Oh, baby. You should’ve seen his face in that closet.” Steve snorts. “You were extra loud that day, you really put on a show for him–the lucky bastard.” 

“What?” You ask, straightening up on his chest. “You knew he was going to get there earlier?”

“I was hoping he got there earlier."

You smack his arm with your mouth wide open, but a smile tugs at your lips. He grins like the bastard he is, shifting to ease you again into his embrace. 

“Don’t worry baby, I might have a way to fix him right back up,” he says smugly, those impossible hazel eyes glinting with mischief. “…Remember that talk we had a while back? Couple months ago. About maybe…bringing in a third?”

Your heart thumps so fast against your chest that you’re sure Steve can feel it on his. 

“…Yeah,” you say. “I remember.”

“What if…it was him?” He shrugs, like he’s discussing what movie to watch. “I’m just saying, we’ve both noticed. And maybe…” His hand drifts lower down your thigh, finding that place where you’re still sensitive. “Maybe it’s fun to imagine what he’d do if we invited him.”

His fingers press against your wet folds, easily sliding in and drawing a gasp out of you. His eyebrows shoot up, like he’d managed exactly what he wanted. 

“See? Don't you want to show him again how pretty you sound?”

Maybe it’s the overstimulation of Steve fingers pumping in and out of your pussy like he hadn’t absolutely wrecked it minutes prior, that the word comes out of your mouth before you can stop it. 

“Yes,” you exhale in a shaky moan. 

The thought alone thrills you. Because the truth is, you’ve been feeling it as much as Steve has. You've been wanting it as much as Steve has. 

The forbidden. 

Because it is fun to imagine. You guiding Eddie’s hand. Steve watching and telling you what to do. You crying out between the two of them.

God. 

“So…Eddie?” You pant, unsure if you’re asking or you're moaning out his name just to try it out on your lips. 

Steve just smirks. 

“Yeah,” he says, pumping faster. “Eddie.”

The moment that sealed Eddie’s fate was a random Thursday. 

He should’ve known better. 

The second you said movie night was at your place, he should’ve backed out. Should’ve faked a headache or a gig or even a freak accident involving his uncle.

Anything.

But–like the fucking idiot he was–he’d walked right through your front door that night. 

You’d picked a shitty movie on purpose. Something slow without any action scenes, full of long silences and artistic shots that made Robin snore into the couch cushion, with Nancy and Jonathan falling right behind. 

Steve sat beside you the whole time, like always, hand on your thigh, like always. Looking casual, almost innocent.

Eddie was on the floor, sitting too close to the TV just so he wouldn’t look at you. 

He’d been too busy picking at the skin of his thumb and lost into the mazes of his head, that he didn’t notice you’d disappeared with Steve until he glanced over to the couches and only found the girls and Jonathan dead to the world. 

He sat there for a few more minutes pretending to care about the stupid movie, but then–like a fucking idiot, again–he decided to get up, quietly leaving the room like he was going to the kitchen.

He took a hard left to the stairs instead. 

Eddie knew where your bedroom was. He’d been there before when you’d asked him to bring more blankets on movie night a few months ago. He still remembers the cute little nightlight plugged into the wall. 

As he tiptoed to the top of the stairs like a freak, the hall was dark, but a sliver of light came out of your room through the slightly open door. 

Eddie dragged his feet on the carpet, guided by shushing voices and a noise of what he was sure was the creak of a bed. Once he reached, he braced himself for the scene he was about to encounter as he peeked through the door, but no amount of breathing techniques could have ever prepared him for the image before his eyes. 

Oh, fuck.

You were on your stomach, face pressed into the mattress, Steve standing behind you with both hands gripping your hips. Your ass–god, your ass–lifted high to meet every thrust. 

Your skirt was bunched around your waist, panties pushed to the side, but nothing really hid you from the pervert on the door. Not even Steve’s body blocked the view of him disappearing into your dripping pussy, filling you so deep Eddie could see it, see the way your walls opened for him. 

The nightlight glowed behind you, casting just enough light to make it worse. 

Pink and soft and obscene.

Eddie’s eyes went over the curve of your spine. The shake of your thighs. Your fingers twisting in the floral sheets, holding on for dear life as your body kept being pushed forward. 

And the sounds. Jesus Christ, the sounds.

“Steve,” you gasped, “please–more–don’t stop.”

“Shhh baby, I know,” Steve cooed behind you, doing the exact opposite of what you asked and stopped. “But you gotta keep it down, don’t want to wake up your guests do you?” 

The fucking hypocrite then slammed back into you so hard the headboard bumped the wall. You moaned–no, cried out, trying to muffle it against the sheets as Eddie bit down his fist just to keep himself from making a sound. 

“Oh baby, you wanna be loud?” Steve chuckled, as he kept thrusting hard. “Go on then, I want to hear you.” 

“I–fuck–I love your cock, Steve” you choked the words out. “‘S–s’ so deep.”

Eddie froze at the crack of the door, heart pounding out of his chest as he watched you getting fucked within an inch of your life. 

The sweet girl. The sun. The angel he thought he knew. Gripping her sheets like a sinner. Moaning filth like she wanted the guests to hear.

Maybe you wanted him to hear. 

Eddie’s hand slipped inside his jeans, he couldn't stop himself. Not after that. He stroked himself fast and hard and desperate, watching your body take it, and your mouth beg for it. 

It didn’t take long for Eddie to come harder than he’d ever had in his life. He made a mess in his hand, his pants, and he was sure some of his cum dripped onto the carpet below, but he was too high and too far gone to care. 

He nearly collapsed against the stairs wall as he rushed back down, panting, already half hard again within seconds.