summary: tired of reading fanfics based on your newest obsession, you give in to peer pressure and use a seemingly harmless gimmick from a metaphysical shop. you quickly find out that you should have been careful what you wished for.
tags: dark!jack abbot x irl!reader, fiction breaks the fourth wall, based on the movie obsession, USE OF Y/N CAUSE NO ONE CAN STOP ME, vivid descriptions of violence, mentally unstable!jack, blood, murder, self!harm/mutilation, dd:dne, smut (non-con, oral-fem!receiving, piv-unprotected sex), afab reader, no happy ending, 18+ NSFW and ABSOLUTELY MDNI
notes: this fic is based on this TikTok by @m1yuk1washere, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE know that this is a very dark fic and please be aware of the tags before reading below the cut. I am in NO WAY romanticizing this movie at all. this is not a reflection of Jack Abbot's actual character, but he needed to be ooc for this to work. again, there is no happy ending and nothing is romanticized about this fic or the movie. I highly suggest watching the film once it releases on streaming services.
author's note: 82 of you asked to be tagged, but due to tumblr's 50 limit and me not wanting to get nerfed, half will be tagged in this post, and the other half will be tagged in my co-author's reblog!
word count: 11.5k
And Jack couldn’t stop staring at you like he’d found the love of his life. His hazel eyes trailed along your body, and a deep blush painted across your face. You’d caught him staring across the ER, but instead of looking away, he kept eye contact while his hands moved across a tablet. In one blink, he was moving toward you like a man on a mission. You couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe under the weight of his gaze.
In fewer than five steps, Jack closed in on you, and his hands lifted just to grip your hips and pull you into his orbit. Your breath hitched high in your throat at his closeness. Around you, the Pitt melted away, and all you could feel was Jack, Jack, Jack—
“Earth to Y/n!”
A snap near your face had you leaning back away from your phone. Your eyes widened as you stared at your small friend group. Suddenly, the entire world around you came crashing down in overlapping voices and the distinct smell of mall food, an odd combination of Japanese, Pizza, and sub sandwiches. Your phone stayed open to the latest chapter of your favorite Jack Abbot fanfic, and now looking at your friends, you knew you’d been caught. You quickly shut off your phone and placed it face down on the sticky table.
“Sorry,” you muttered. “What were you saying?”
Your best friend, Sarah, rolled her eyes. “You’d know what we were saying if you weren’t nose first in your phone. What was it this time? One of those smutty fanfics you’re so into these days?”
“It’s definitely one about that silver-haired doctor,” your other friend, Haley, chimed in. “What’s his name again? Jake?”
“Jack,” you shot out before realizing your mistake. You’d come off too strong, and your friends ate it up like vultures. “I-I mean—”
“You really need to get laid,” Sarah told you, voice dipping into a border-line condescending tone. “Your daddy issues are showing, babes.”
“I don’t have daddy issues.” You rolled your eyes before taking a bite of your now-cooling food, slimy noodles sliding down your throat in one swallow. “And I don’t want to get laid. I’m perfectly content where I’m at; thank you very little.”
Haley hummed. “You’re telling me that you’re happy reading hours and hours of fictional worlds while you could be out and about meeting new people. What if your future husband looks like this Jett?”
“Jack,” you corrected—again. “And I don’t want a future husband unless he looks like Shawn Hatosy dressed in a SWAT uniform.”
“You are so down bad for a fictional man. When was the last time you had an interest in someone who was actually . . . real?”
You pursed your lips when no names came to mind. To get them off your back you could have mentioned the two-second crush you had on Luke Davis way back in ninth grade. But he had been eliminated from the list the moment you got back home and pulled out a Bucky Barnes fanfic where you found out you wouldn’t mind an older man calling you doll. And plus, ninth grade was almost fifteen years ago. Confessing that while currently being in grad school at the ripe age of 24 would have been more embarrassing than saying nothing at all.
“A while,” you spat after settling on a response. “But the modern online dating field is not for me. Every time I try one of the apps, I either get insulted or an unsolicited 3-inch-dick pic like it’s supposed to impress me. Unless you two have a magical solution to find me the picture-perfect man, I’m perfectly okay spending my time reading fanfiction.”
You went to spoon in another bite, but you noticed the way they glanced at each other. The corner of your lips tugged downward. “What? Why are you two looking at each other like that?”
Sarah sucked in a breath. “We weren’t going to say anything but—”
“But you look like you need it,” Haley finished the sentence before turning, hands already deep in her purse on the chair next to her.
You tried to not be offended by her words, but an ugly feeling bloomed in your chest. You hated the way they judged you. Fanfiction had quickly become a paradise away from the ugly world you lived in. If a few chapters and one shots here and there helped your mental health stay regulated, you saw no harm in divulging into the world of fiction. It also helped that most of the fics you read were tagged with “x-reader;” the idea of getting to put your name mixed in with iconic characters kept you feeling alive. Authors let you live lives you could never do in the real world. How could you give up that kind of mental freedom?
“Here,” Haley finally said as she pushed something towards you.
You eyed the red and white packaging with the words One Wish Willow written in fun lettering along with two cartoon drawn people. Hesitantly, you grabbed it and brought it closer to read.
“The guy at the store said they actually work,” Sarah explained. “You state a wish and break it, then tadaaaa your wish comes true.”
Looking at it while spinning it in your hands, your nose crinkled. What Sarah just said sounded way too good to be true.
“There’s no way,” you said, a bit awestruck. Your thumb ran across the words on the back of the package: Spark the middle and break in half. “I think you both got scammed.” You placed it back down on the table, but one look at the two of them gave you a sinking feeling in your stomach. “You two actually believe this shit?”
“Look, Y/n, we just want to look out for you,” Sarah said slowly as if she were talking to a child. “And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but there’s no harm in trying. But we can’t sit here and let you go on like this. Before you know it, you’re going to be fifty, living alone, and still reading stories about fictional characters. I mean, look at yourself.”
To your surprise, Haley nodded along. “Grad school is killing you. And you can’t say that you’ll find a man once you graduate. Because by then, you’re going to find another excuse.”
You eyed the thing as their words sank thorns into your soul, and for some odd reason, you felt compelled to pick it back up again. You don’t know if it was the idea that any wish you made would come true or the desire to prove them both wrong, but instead of leaving it there for them to take back, you grabbed it and pushed it deep in your purse.
“Whatever. But when it doesn’t work, I’m totally rubbing it in both your faces,” you said.
Finally, you shoved the last bite of your food into your mouth, but your mind was racing with the possibilities of what you could use the one wish willow for. Sure, Sarah and Haley wanted you to use it to get a boyfriend, but honestly, that seemed boring. The world, hypothetically, could be at your fingertips. What was stopping you from using it to become a millionaire, change everything you hated about yourself, stop world hunger.
The possibilities seemed to endlessly swim around your brain while you drove back home from the mall, the sky already dimming the closer you got to your destination. You sighed in relief once you pulled into your driveway and leaned your head against the steering wheel, eyes flitting towards your bag. Your fingers itched to pull the One Wish Willow out, and you, against everything, obeyed them. You picked at the heavy paper packaging, and the branch slid out right into your palm.
It was dark and hole-filled, and it barely weighed anything. You guessed that was necessary for easy breakage when you used it. You read over the instructions one more time before taking each end, holding it a few inches from your face.
Outside, the night was quiet. There were no joggers, no late-night walkers, no one to witness what you were about to do. You inhaled sharply and lowered the branch.
“This is stupid,” you mumbled to yourself.
You almost put the branch back in the packaging, but your phone screen lighting up stopped you. You glanced over and caught the notification. A quick read told you that another author had updated a Jack Abbot series. Your heart panged.
Were you truly going to be alone forever, stuck reading fanfiction well into your fifties while pretending you lived in a different universe?
Before you could second guess yourself again, you took a hold of the branch.
“I wish Jack Abbot was real and would love me and do anything for me like he does in fanfiction.”
The branch snapped in two.
You squeezed your eyes shut, and your body tensed as you waited for something like a huge explosion to happen and for Jack to appear like some mythical genie. But when everything stayed quiet, you slowly opened your eyes. Frustrated tears welled in your lash line, and you threw the two pieces of the branch somewhere deep in your car. You jerked the door open and all but slammed it closed. Each step you took to your house reverberated into the concrete walkway. The automatic lights turned on while you unlocked the door with shaking hands, and the key missed twice before finally going in. With a harsh shove, the front door gave way into a dark home. By the looks of it, your mom probably wasn’t home, or every light inside would have been on.
An eeriness crept over you, but through your glossy eyes and overwhelming feelings of loneliness, you brushed it off. The One Wish Willow was an absolute joke, and you knew you should have texted Sarah and Haley that it hadn’t worked. Your chest tightened once you realized exactly why you didn’t want to rub it in their faces right away. In the car, you’d given yourself the smallest morsel of hope that it would actually work. The idea of having your own Jack Abbot had taken over quicker than you would have liked. Even with all your constant reassurances to Sarah and Haley that you didn’t want a man, that you were happy with being alone, you were beginning to feel the crux of being the last single person in your friend group.
Even the promise of a new chapter once you shuffled into bed wasn’t enough to lift your mood. But as you tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, you reached for your phone in need of familiar comfort. Your thumb pressed on the white T icon, and you scrolled until one caught your eye. The tags used xreader, but as you scrolled, you couldn’t help but notice something peculiar.
Instead of the normal “Y/n” whenever Jack would “say” the reader’s name, your actual name stared back at you in every paragraph.
You blinked a few times, wondering if you’d gotten to the point where “Y/n” automatically became your given name. But when the words didn’t change, your brows pinched. You didn’t have any added mods, and the author stated that they hadn’t given the reader a special nickname or anything of the sorts. You scrolled up until the page refreshed.
Surely there was a glitch you thought.
However, after the loading symbol went away, your name continued to be written in the fic. On one hand, you knew you should have put the phone down; obviously you were tired and sad and currently hallucinating. Yet, you continued reading on, already sucked deep into the story.
Jack didn’t know what to do; you’d disappeared on him after an argument. His calls went unanswered, his messages left unread. His heart raced below his sternum in a panicked rhythm. He couldn’t lose you, not after he already lost his wife. He refused to lose you. With a sharp inhale, he turned and faced an empty space to his right, hazel eyes boring into the reader’s—wait.
You pulled your phone away from your face as you sat up. Had you read that correctly?
—hazel eyes boring into the reader’s. He stood still, seemingly knowing that there was a presence he couldn’t see but could always feel.
“I’ll be there soon, sweetheart,” Jack spoke to no one. “And when I find you, I’m going to make you so, so, so, so happy. I’m exactly what you need and want. I—”
Your phone screen went black after you pushed in the power button. The eerie feeling from earlier grew at the base of your skull, and your skin pricked with the sensation that someone was watching you. Your face whipped to the far corner of your room, the one that was always half-cast with a shadow after the sun went down. Logically, you knew no one was standing there, but you turned your flashlight on anyway. A quick scan around the room settled you some but not entirely.
You slowly lowered back down into your bed and pulled the covers up to your chin. Thankfully, sleep was already licking at the edges of your mind. But as you lolled into its grasp, you couldn’t rid yourself of what the author made Jack say at the end.
—I won’t hesitate to do anything to make you mine.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Two loud knocks at the front door followed by your mom screaming Y/n! Get your ass down here and answer the fucking door! had you shooting up from your bed.
Without even looking at yourself, you scampered down the stairs in just a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. You had no time to even think about what the person on the other side could even want before you wrenched the door open, and all reminders to look through the peep hole first failed entirely. Sun spots swirled in your vision, but once they settled enough for you to see who had been knocking, you froze entirely.
“There you are, sweetheart.”
You knew that voice. You’d heard that voice clearly through your TV speakers.
Your eyes widened, and a breath hitched high in your throat. You gripped the sides of the threshold with white knuckles. For a split-second, you wondered if you were still dreaming before wondering if you’d died in your sleep, because there was absolutely no fucking way the man standing on your doorstep was actually who you thought it would be.
Your body jolted under a firm hand, and you whirled around to see your mother’s figure standing behind you. She eyed you carefully before putting on a smile that only you knew to be very fake.
“Hi there,” she said loudly, voice too chipper for 8:15 am. “How can we help you?”
The salt-and-pepper-curly-haired man smiled warmly, and his hazel eyes never left yours. “Baby, you didn’t tell your mom about me?” he chuckled like this was all some inside joke.
Your mom glared at you from the side of her eye. “Baby?”
“I really should have called beforehand that I was on my way over,” he explained before thrusting out his large hand. “Jack Abbot. It’s nice to meet my girl’s mom.”
The way he said my girl had your heart racing for more than one reason. The main one being you’d never met this man in your entire life, unless you counted the multitude of fics you consumed to the point you felt like you did know him—Jack. But that was all fiction uploaded to multiple websites, yet the man standing less than a foot away from you looked real and not a figment of your wild imagination. Hell, even your mom saw him, so to some degree you knew you were hallucinating or weren’t dead upstairs.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Jack. I’m sorry you’ve seemed to slip my daughter’s mind,” she hissed the last bit out. “Come inside please.” She yanked you away from the door and whispered harshly in your ear, “You could have told me about this.”
Your jaw dropped before snapping back shut when your mind refused to catch up to the situation. Jack—if you could even think of him as your beloved fictional character—stepped forward and placed a hand to the small of your back. His touch felt like electricity, white hot and zipping up your spine. He softly pushed you along until he fully got inside your hours.
“Jack, let’s get you into the kitchen! I’m sure I can make a quick breakfast for us while Y/n changes upstairs,” your mom stated, but the suggestiveness in her gaze wasn’t as subtle as she thought it was.
Jack clicked his tongue against his cheek. “That sounds lovely, but I’m afraid I already made plans with Y/n to go out for breakfast.” He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you in like a rag doll. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart,” he cooed.
As if a spell had been cast over you, you nodded numbly. “Yeah,” you managed to croak. “We’re going out for breakfast.”
“Let’s get you changed, baby, and then we’ll get heading out,” he said. “It was nice meeting you.” With not another glance toward you mom, he walked you over to the staircase and motioned for you to go first.
Once the two of you made it into your room, you closed the door before pushing your back against the grain to put some space between you and supposedly Jack Abbot.
“Okay, what the fuck man,” you sneered. “Is this some stupid cosplay? Did Sarah and Haley put you up to this? Because coming to my house and pretending we know each other let alone dating is downright creepy and stalker behavior.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said while cocking his head to the side. “Did you hit your head? Should I look at it for you?” He stepped forward and raised his hands, but you were quick to shake your head.
“No; I’m fine,” you said. “I’m just . . .” You closed your eyes. “I don’t know why you’re here. You don’t exist here.”
Jack paused for a minute before laughing loudly. “Baby, are you taking the piss? Of course I exist here; you know I exist only for you.” This time, he walked until your fronts were almost pressing. The warm, spicy scent of his cologne hit your nose. His hands did not touch you, but the twitches in his fingers told you he wanted to. “I told you last night that I’d come find you, baby.”
“Huh?”
Jack’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head? You asked for me last night after the mall. I know I’m old, but how could you forget so soon, baby?”
His words hit you like an 18-wheeler to the stomach.
The broken-in-two One Wish Willow that remained in your car filled your thoughts. You swore it hadn’t worked, because last night nothing had happened. And then you remembered one of the fine print warnings.
*Wait up to 24 hours for your wish to come true.
It was as if it all made sense now. The fucking gimmick worked; you couldn’t rub it’s failure in Sarah and Haley’s faces anymore. Jack fucking Abbot was in your bedroom acting like the two of you were romantically together.
Your wish—against all odds—had come true.
Happiness washed over you like a tidal wave, and you stepped right into Jack’s orbit, arms coming up to wrap around his middle. You couldn’t believe the way you fit right into his chest, and you were elated to hear his heart beat so fast at your closeness.
“There you go, pretty girl,” Jack whispered against your temple. His hand gently rested against the back of your head. “I’ve missed you so, so, so, so much. I’m yours forever; I’ll do anything for you.”
In the throes of his whispered promises, you forgot about the smallest warning buried within the fine print of the One Wish Willow Packaging.
*Side effects of a wish may include violent tendencies, self-mutilation, and unexpected behavior. Please wish responsibly.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Life with Jack was infinite bliss, and you’d be a fool to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He was the perfect man and exactly the type of person you’d been secretly wishing for the entire time. If you were truly honest with yourself, all the times you said you were happy were lies upon lies upon lies. You hated how Sarah and Haley went on double dates with their boyfriends all the time while leaving you behind. Their happiness just showed that if you didn’t have them, you had no one.
No one to laugh with; no one to be around; no one to love. Jack filled in those spaces like glue holding your life together. Suddenly, you didn’t have to wonder who you’d take to the movies to see the latest film. You didn’t have to sit alone in your bed while hoping for someone to come along and sweep you off your feet like men did in stories. You didn’t even have to worry about feeling scared when you slept. Jack apparently had an affinity for watching you rest.
When Jack was around—which was pretty much all the time—you were never alone.
A few weeks after he showed up on your doorstep, you made plans to introduce him to Sarah and Haley at the local bar the three of you frequented. You’d been excited for them to see what had happened, to see how Jack made you happy. Jack seemed to be passive about it, but one smile his way had him melting to your every whim.
“What makes you happy makes me happy,” he had told you before pressing his lips deeply against yours. “Do I make you happy, sweetheart?”
“So much,” you had whispered back against his lips.
However, now that you were seated next to Jack and their eyes were filled with skepticism and doubt, an ugly feeling settled inside your chest. You tried to focus on the game of Jenga, but the weight of their gaze pressed heavy on your mood that continued to sour the longer the night progressed.
As you tried your best to shuffle another block out, Sarah leaned forward.
“So . . . Jack . . . where do you work?” she asked.
Jack rubbed at his jaw while he thought, and your focus shifted to the way his bicep bulged in the short-sleeved shirt he wore out.
“I’m a senior attending at an ER up in Pittsburgh,” he stated.
Haley raised an eyebrow. “Then why are you here? Surely your hospital keeps your leash a bit tight.”
You pulled the block out successfully and held it up for Jack to see. He mouthed a good girl and winked, sending you into a blushy mess before answering.
“I’m on a well-needed sabbatical right now. My girl needed me here, and I couldn’t think of being anywhere else.” His hand came to rest at your nape, and his fingers squeezed.
“What happens when your sabbatical is up? Y/n’s in grad school right now, and I doubt she can do the long distance,” Sarah explained, and that ugly feeling roared inside your chest.
Jack pursed his lips and sat back against the couch. “I’m sure that we’ll work something out when we cross that bridge. I’m not opposed to long distance, but I’m also not opposed to her moving close to me either.”
Haley let out a soft scoff to which you looked at her strangely.
“Do you have something to say, Haley?” you questioned.
She looked like a deer caught in headlights. “I-I just think that moving in with someone you’ve been with for a few weeks is a bit fast.”
“I’m not getting any younger,” you tried to joke, but the tone of your voice said that you were anything but joking. “And it wouldn’t be too terrible. After this semester I’m changing to online classes anyway.”
Sarah’s face pinched tightly. “What happened to moving onto campus with us next semester?”
You shrugged lazily. “The thought about moving was getting to be too stressful.” You linked your arm into Jack’s. “Jack suggested online classes, and it was like a weight lifted off my chest.”
Your friends stared widely with their jaws unhinged.
Sarah waved a hand around. “Hold on. Just because he told you to do something, you just did it without discussing it with anyone else? Y/n, we won’t be able to afford the deposit for the apartment if you pull out.”
“Plus, what if he dumps you halfway through the year?” Haley suddenly asked in a stage whisper, not caring if Jack heard the question.
Next to you, Jack’s entire body tensed. “I’m sorry—what?”
She at least had some decency to understand that her question was invasive. “Ya know . . . what if y’all have, like, a really bad argument or something? Some relationships don’t end up lasting long enough for a couple to live together. Plus, with your age gap it’s inevitable that—”
Jack suddenly stood from the couch, and his towering body cast a shadow across the Jenga tower. He frowned deeply, and his darkening eyes narrowed down at your friends. His fists curled at his sides while his head tilted very slowly.
“You don’t know anything about our relationship,” he hissed. “So I wouldn’t be so presumptuous if I were you.”
Sarah leaned back enough to look him in the eye at an angle. “Dude, we’re just looking out for our friend.”
“Yeah,” Haley said lightly. “No need to get so upset about it.”
He ran his tongue along his teeth. “I’m upset because you had the gall to even think I’d break up with her.” He bent in slightly at the waist. “I’m in love with her; she is my everything. Whatever she asks me to do, I will do it without hesitation.”
His voice rose with anger on every word, and soon, the entire bar was looking towards your small group. You nervously shifted on the couch, but the annoyance of their questions kept you seated and stopped you from pulling Jack back.
Jack turned his head and spotted an empty beer bottle. He turned back to look at your friends, and without breaking eye contact, he grabbed the bottle. In one fluid motion, he swung it down, and the glass shattered against the side of the table. At the sound, you, Sarah, and Haley stood up. They backed away slightly while you stepped forward to be at Jack’s side. Yet, he paid no attention to you.
“No one on this earth will ever comprehend what it feels like to love someone as much as I love her,” he said, timber dark and serious. It sent shockwaves through your soul. “I’d rather kill myself than ever hurt her or be without her. Every ounce of my blood that keeps my beating heart alive belongs to her and her alone.”
Before you could do or say anything, Jack dragged the jagged edge of the broken bottle from his wrist and towards the inside of his elbow, and dark blood welled and dripped from the long gash. Sharp, surprised and horrified gasps rang through the air.
When your eyes caught the red thick smear, you reached forward and yanked the bottle out of his hand. “Jack!”
At the sound of your voice, Jack’s eyes softened instantly, and all tension in his body melted away. Any glimpse of the Jack moments ago was gone, but the damage had already been done. Everyone, including Sarah and Haley, watched on with scared eyes as you gently set the bottle down. You said nothing and grabbed your (Jack’s) jacket and purse. Your hand found Jack’s quickly, and without saying anything to your friends, you tugged him out of the bar and towards his car. Thankfully, he didn’t fight for the keys, and you took off, leaving the bar to turn into a speck in your rearview mirror.
The ride back to your house was oddly quiet. Jack stared out the window the entire time, never once looking over at you. When you parked the car in the driveway, you shifted in your seat and turned to face him.
“Jack,” you said softly. “Why’d you do that?”
Not being on to deprive himself of your face, Jack turned too with hunched shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
You rested a hand on his cheek. “I know you’re sorry, but you scared everyone. And you hurt yourself.”
“I know. I don’t know why I did that, but I couldn’t let them keep talking about us—about you like that. I love you so much; that’s why I did it.”
“Jack, I don’t need you to cut yourself because you love me, I—”
“Do you love me?” he interrupted.
You paused. “I do.”
Jack leaned back into his seat. “You never say it like I do.” He sat up straight again in a jerky motion, and he placed his hands on your cheeks and held your face there. You watched his hazel hues melt into something darker. “Do you love me? Say you love me. I need to hear you say you love me, sweetheart.”
Your throat bobbed in a thick swallow. “I love you, Jack.”
Like at the bar, he all but melted back into his seat before leaning forward to kiss you. You let his lips languidly move against yours in sloppy motions. His hands tightened around your face, and with a small gasp, your mouth opened just enough for him to shove his hot tongue between your teeth. You moaned at the taste of him.
Before you could go any farther, he pulled back and licked his lips. “Are you going to listen to them?”
Your head reeled at the sudden change of events. “Who?”
“Your friends,” he spat bitterly. “They won’t change your mind about moving with me once I need to go back to work?”
You hummed and tried to lean back in for another kiss, but Jack stopped your motion. His eyes bore into yours deeply in almost a pleading manner.
“Tell me you want to move with me. I can’t be without you, baby. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d rather kill myself than not be with you. Do you want me to kill myself? I’ll tell you how I’d do it. Instead of my wrists, I’d take one of my scalpels and drag it along my throat.”
Your heart beat wildly at his words, and concern corroded any love you felt for Jack in that moment.
He looked at you through lidded eyes. “Is that what you want? You want me to die? Want me to commit suicide just to show you how much I’m obsessed with you?”
You shook your head between his hands.
He grinned stretched impossibly wide, but his eyes stayed dead and unmoving. “Then say what I want to hear, sweetheart. It’ll all be so, so, so much better when you say it.”
“I want to move with you Jack. I want to follow you to Pittsburgh or wherever you go after this.”
You were rewarded with another deep, invasive kiss that left you gasping for air. Instead of fully pulling back, Jack breathed heavily while his nose nuzzled into your face.
“Maybe it’ll be good when I don’t have to listen to Sarah and Haley anymore,” you softly mentioned.
Jack froze near your hairline but didn’t say anything.
“They were kind of rude at the bar. To think they were the ones who wanted to push me to get a boyfriend in the first place. Like, imagine if you hadn’t shown up.”
“You’re no one else’s but mine,” he growled, chest beginning to heave at the thought of you with someone who wasn’t him, kissing someone who wasn’t him, fucking someone who wasn’t him. “I’m never going to leave you.” His eyes fluttered closed. “I’m going to make sure your friends have no impact on your life again. I promise.”
You giggled, not fully knowing the meaning of his words. “We’ll be in Pittsburgh. I’m sure they won’t want to make the drive. Don’t worry about them putting any more unsolicited input into our relationship.”
Soon after Jack gave you one more kiss, you slipped into your house knowing Jack would be back in the morning to pick you up for another breakfast date. You paid no mind to the sound of Jack pulling away from your house or the way his car suddenly passed by in the opposite direction moments later.
Because if you had, you would have realized he wasn’t driving to his house, oh no, he was driving back in the direction of the bar to make sure he kept his promise.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Waking up during the night wasn’t uncommon.
Most times, you never fully managed to sleep deep enough to stay asleep for more than four hours, always having to get up for a drink of water or a bathroom break. But tonight, you woke up for a completely different reason. From the corner of your room, a noise reached you through a deep dream in a wet, continual plat, plat, plat, plat.
With bleary eyes, you looked around the room through barely slotted eyelids. Nothing seemed to jump out at you until you glanced at the shadowed corner. There, someone stood, their outline barely visible against the black background. You blinked rapidly in a desperate attempt to get your eyes focused.
A sigh of relief wheezed through your chest when you realized that the person was just Jack; although you were confused as to why he picked the corner when you had already set up a chair near your bed the first time you found him watching you sleep. You knew he liked to take his prosthesis off after dark to give his limb a break. The least you could do was make sure he was comfortable.
“Jack?” you called out, voice scratchy and slurry with sleep. “What’re you doin’ in the corner?”
When he failed to answer, you pushed yourself up halfway with your arm. You reached for the lamp on your bedside table, but the floor creaking beneath his weight made you stop.
Plat, plat, plat, plat, plat.
“Don’t turn on the light,” he whispered.
You slung your legs over the side of the bed and reached out a hand. “Could you at least come and sit down? Your leg must be killing you.” By now, your eyes had adjusted to the dark atmosphere, and you peered over at him when you noticed something splashed on his face. “Did you get mud on you?”
Jack took a step forward, and his shoes squished against your hardwood floors. He stopped a few feet away from you, and that’s when a thick, metallic waft hit your senses. You urgently rubbed at the skin between your lip and the bottom of your nose in an attempt to disrupt the onslaught of iron. Your brows pinched as you looked up at him with utter confusion.
Plat, plat, plat, plat, plat.
“What are you covered in, baby?” You reached out to touch a large stain on the hem of his shirt. Your fingers game back slick. “What the fuck,” you whispered. Jack’s words be damned; you reached over and turned on the lamp.
As the light drenched the room, horror seized your chest with large hands at the sight in front of you. The noise that had awakened you from your sleep was the steady drip of blood that trickled from Jack’s pant leg. The stain you’d touched was larger under the light, and the lower half of his shirt was drenched in the bodily fluid. His arms that were normally tanned and freckled were covered in blood like cleaning gloves, a harsh line of red cutting around his bicep.
Bile rose from deep in your stomach, and the acrid taste coated your tongue.
“Jack,” you whispered in terror. Sleep’s effect had been ripped from you the moment you realized what he was covered in. “W-why are you . . . covered in blood?”
Jack’s mouth twisted in an elated smile as he looked down at his lower half. “Do you not like it, sweetheart?” Despite his leg, he kneeled between your legs, and his dripping hands rested against your thighs. He looked up at your face with a pinched expression, similar to one you’d see on a sad puppy. “Do you not like it?”
“It’s blood, Jack. Why are you covered in blood?”
“Not like I don’t deal with blood on the daily.” He licked his lips. “You should be asking whose blood it is I’m covered in, baby.” He leaned in closer to your face, and your eyes burned with the smell. “C’mon; ask me.”
You swallowed a frustrated groan before whispering, “Whose blood are you covered in?”
His head lolled to the side. “Remember when I promised you that no one would ever speak out against us again?” Jack moved in closer and pressed his cheek against yours so that his lips were right near your ear. “Let’s just say I made sure that wouldn’t ever happen again . . . permanently.”
It felt like all the blood drained from your face in an icy instant; a complete contrast from the way Jack licked a hot strip up from your pressure point to your ear. Your mouth dried up completely.
“Don’t worry, baby. Those girls are never going to bother us ever again.”
“Jack,” you whimpered, suddenly scared of the man between your legs.
He hushed you softly. “And I made sure that your mother was also removed from the picture. I couldn’t have her waking up to find me like this.”
Your shoulders caved in, and the smallest whimper pressed through your lips. At the sound, Jack lurched back to look at your face. Within three breaths, all emotions washed from his face as he realized that you were scared—scared of him.
Now, he couldn’t have that, could he?
His hand rushed up to your face, and his fingers crushed your cheeks together. He stood to his feet, but his face stayed close to yours, his warm breath fanning across your nose and lips.
“There’s nothing for you to be afraid of,” he said calmly as if he hadn’t just implied that he’d killed your best friends and your mother. “Besides, isn’t this what you wished for?”
Even with his strength, you managed a small shake of your head.
He pouted. “No? But I could have sworn you said I wish Jack Abbot would love me and do anything for me.”
“I d-didn’t ask for you to kill my friends and mom,” you cried through smushed lips.
Jack nodded along like he agreed with you before barking out a laugh. “But you said it’d be good when you wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore. That’s what you said!” his voice thundered in your face. “I did exactly what you told me to, so why don’t you FUCKING LOVE ME?”
You tried to jerk your face out his hand, but his hold tightened, fingers digging into your teeth through your cheeks. Your eyes shut closed, but that did little to appease Jack’s anger. This wasn’t what you wanted; you never wanted your wish to turn into him harming people for you.
“I-I do-do love you, Jack,” you cried while tears traced down your cheeks.
He frowned intensely, lips forming an upside-down u. “I don’t believe you.” His unoccupied left hand gripped onto the pudge at your hipbone. “I can feel you shaking like a leaf. It’s okay, baby. I would never hurt you.”
Somehow, you knew he was telling the truth, though it didn’t help you feel less scared. Your thighs rubbed against each other in a nervous manner, and Jack’s eyes tracked the movement. However, he thought it was for a different reason.
“Oh,” he breathed, eyes widening at the idea formulating in his sick, twisted head. “You want to show me that you love me? Is that it, sweetness?”
His left hand released your hip and trailed lower and toward the right, and you inhaled sharply when he pressed his fingers to your core. You reached out and gripped his wrist, halting any other movement from his appendage.
“No,” you stated. “Jack, this isn’t-this isn’t normal.”
He pressed his hard chest forward, and the cooled blood began soaking through your sleep shirt. You cringed and shuddered when the wet fabric clung to your skin.
“Your heart is racing,” he whispered in awe. “For me? Is your heart racing for me, sweetheart?” He dropped to his knees this time and pressed his ear right to your heart. He exhaled breathily at the sound. “Yeah; that’s for me.” His next inhale was sharp. “I can smell you. You’re utterly dripping.”
“I’m not,” you argued. “I’m—” A wince turned whine cut you off after Jack squeezed your sides painfully.
“You know better than to lie to me.” His matted curls pushed against his forehead as he twisted his face to look downward. “Remember,” he muttered, “you wished for this.”
His hand planted itself in the middle of your chest and pushed you down to your bed, your spine hitting your mattress so hard it pushed out a small oomph.
“Wait- stop-”
Jack shushed you, his hands, still covered in blood, yanked the sleep shorts you’d been wearing down your legs. Your legs kicked and twisted, trying in vain to stop him, but he had them down and hanging off one ankle despite your efforts.
“You just need to remember why you love me,” those big, calloused hands pushed your thighs apart, keeping them pinned open despite your efforts to close them. His hot breath against your core shocked you, your wiggling and writhing halting for a moment. He licked a stripe through your folds, humming in satisfaction. “No one can make you feel as good as I can. No one.”
“Jack please!” Your hands were pushing at his head, trying to get him away from you, but he barely budged, not even acknowledging your efforts.
“Already begging for me and I’ve barely touched you,” his chuckle vibrated through your traitorous body as he laid kisses over your mound. “I told you, you love me.”
“You have to stop! I don’t want this!”
“Yes you do,” Jack wrapped both of your wrists in one of his hands, holding them down against your stomach to keep you pinned. “You want this. I don’t know why you’re trying to lie to me when your cunt is being so honest, sweetheart.”
Humiliatingly, he was right. You could feel how wet you were, practically dripping down onto the bedsheets below you, your hole clenching and begging for something deep inside it. But you didn’t want this. Right? No, of course you didn’t. This was the man who had just admitted to killing your mother and best friends. Their blood was still on the hands that held you open and in place as his mouth descended on you.
But it was hard to stop the whine you let out when his tongue began tracing around your clit. The pressure was firm and insistent, sending bursts of pleasure coursing through you against your will.
You fought through the sensations, trying to focus on wiggling out of his grip, but inevitably your focus was drawn back between your legs. Jack was unrelenting, repeating the motions and keeping a steady pace, like he knew exactly how to push your buttons. You supposed he did, having been created by some sick force of nature just for you.
Belatedly, you realised exactly what his tongue was spelling out against you:
J-A-C-K A-B-B-O-T
His own name, again and again, all at the same speed and intensity.
Gradually, your desperate attempts to flee were being tempered by the pleasure rocketing up your spine. Your twisting and writhing to get away had turned into rocking and grinding against his face, using his bruising grip on your wrists as leverage. But while your body betrayed you, your mind didn’t.
Through the gasps and whines and moans he was yanking out of you, you tried your best to keep up the protests. Your increasingly weak protests of “No!” and “Please stop!” fell on deaf ears, until, right as you neared your peak and, fearing what the impending orgasm might do to your psyche, you got through to him. But not in the way that you’d hoped.
“Stop! Stop, Jack, or I’ll never love you!”
He froze, pulling his face away from your folds but keeping his hold on you firm. You were gasping for air, eyes firmly shut. You were afraid to look at him, afraid he’d see just how close he was to breaking you.
“You want me to kill myself?” His grip around your wrists tightened even more and his fingers holding your thigh open tensed, nails digging into your skin. He didn’t let up, despite the yelp that left your lips. “Is that what you want? You want to watch me slit my fucking wrists right now? Wanna watch me bleed out all over you? Because I will. I love you more than anything - more than life itself - and you are breaking my heart.”
“Jack, I-”
“Do you want that?” His voice raised, eyes wide and manic. “I’m all you need, baby. If I die, you have nothing. You made me kill your mom, your friends, and if I’m gone, what do you have left? You need me just like I need you.”
“No, no I didn’t make you-”
“You said you didn’t want to have to listen to them anymore,” Jack stood from the floor, his blood stained figure looming over you as you cowered back against the mattress. “I did exactly what you asked for, and now you don’t have to listen to them anymore.”
You were shaking, trying to look away, trying not to think about how everyone you loved had died because of a poor choice of words and Jack’s instability.
Jack’s hand grabbed your chin, forcing your eyes on his. His expression had softened, the lines on his face deepening as he stared down at you.
“Don’t make me kill myself because I did what you wanted,” he was begging, the whiplash from his rapid change in demeanor taking a moment to register in your mind. “Don’t make me, please.”
“I-I won’t,” you swallowed around the lump forming in your throat. “I won’t make you kill yourself, Jack. Please don’t do that.”
“Then tell me you love me,” his eyes darkened again and the frown fell from his face.
“Jack-”
“Tell me,” the tone of his voice dropped, practically growling at you as his fingers tightened against your jaw. “You love me.”
“I…”
The words stuck in your throat. The love you’d felt for him from before was still there, but your terror and grief was overshadowing it, making it impossible to verbalize.
Jack sighed, his expression once again changing, this time to disappointment. He tutted at you, like you were a small child failing to follow directions.
“I guess I just have to remind you how much you love me.”
There was no time for you to question what that meant, but you found out quickly. Jack’s hands wrapped around your waist. Before you could even gasp at the rapid change, his thighs were straddling yours, his palm planted between your shoulder blades to hold you down.
“I’m going to make you tell me you love me,” you could hear clinking and shuffling behind you, but it took a moment for it to connect that he was undoing his belt.
“Wait, Jack!” Bucking your hips and trying to push yourself up was futile, his weight and the strength of the muscles cording his arm simply too much for you to fight back against. This wasn’t what you wanted for your first time. You’d been hoping for a romantic dinner with him, followed by sweet, slow sex, not him covered in your loved ones blood as he took you by force. “Jack please, I’m a virgin!”
“Oh, sweetheart,” the heat of his chest, pressing against your back as he leaned down, was scalding. His fingers gently tucked your hair behind your ear, his lips pressing a kiss against your cheek. You didn’t realize you’d been crying until his tongue darted out to lick up the droplet. “Don’t worry. I’m all you need. I’ll be the only man to ever have you like this. I’ll take such good care of you.”
And then he was sliding in, stretching your traitorously wet walls around his length. Fuck, he was thick. You felt every ridge and vein as he sunk into you as deep as he could, until the tip was pressing against your cervix. It was impossible to stop the moan you let out, the noise mixing with his grunt as he ground against your ass.
“Jack, please…”
“You feel so good around me, baby,” He let more of his weight fall against you, pushing you even further into the crumpled sheets. One of his big arms slid around your neck, pressing your throat into the crook of his elbow.
“You need to sto-”
You choked on your words when Jack’s arm tightened, his bicep and forearm cutting off your air supply.
“The only thing I need,” his voice was low and gravely, his lips pressed against the shell of your ear. “Is for you to stop pretending this doesn’t feel good, and let me make love to the love of my life.”
Your whole body tensed, walls trying to push him out, as he began to withdraw slowly.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he was panting against your ear now. His little groans and sighs rattled around in your head, clouding your already conflicted senses. “Squeeze me just like that.”
You felt yourself flutter involuntarily around him as his thick cock bullied its way back inside of you. Fighting against his hold to get air into your lungs, your own breathing picked up in pace, each exhale forcibly pushed out when he sunk in.
Jack’s pace was slow. Each thrust was long, pausing to grind against you when he bottomed out, his head pushing hard into the deepest parts of you. You’d never considered yourself a masochist before, but the little jolts of pain mingled with the pleasure, pushing you even higher. The confusing signals sent to your brain were sapping your willpower. You needed to fight him off, needed him to get away from you, but your body was tightening around him, pulling him in.
God, it felt good, but you had to hold out. You still needed to find a way to break free and to get rid of him.
But it was growing increasingly hard to focus on anything other than the sensations between your legs when your head grew fuzzy from the lack of air and your clit was dragging against the sheets as every move he made rocked your body. He’d gotten you close before with his mouth, but now the dizzying pleasure of his cock had your eyes crossing.
“You’re doing so good, my sweet girl,” his words were whispered into your hair as his pace gradually increased. He never fully withdrew, but his hips were bouncing against your ass as his slow, grinding rhythm transitioned into hard and fast thrusts. “Doing so good for me. I can feel how close you are, I want you to tell me you love me when you cum, ok?”
You tried to shake your head no, trying your hardest to beat back the ever rising pressure of your impending orgasm, but Jack’s hold around your neck stopped you from moving. The only noises you could squeeze out through his hold were little whines and whimpers.
“You’re going to say it,” he pulled you in tighter, leaning all of his weight onto you. His hand not around your neck slipped between you and the sheet. “Say it, say it, say it.”
The first brush of his fingers against your clit was all it took for you to shatter in his arms. You spasmed and clenched around him, your eyes rolling back into your head. Your trembling hands scrambled for a hold on the sheets when he pinched the little bundle of nerves between his fingers. It was overwhelming, the intensity of your orgasm squeezing you so tightly around him that you nearly pushed him out.
Jack responded by thrusting even harder inside of you, all the while mumbling, “say it, say it, say it.”
But you didn’t. You weren’t sure if it was your willpower that kept the words from falling from your lips, or the debilitating pleasure that was rendering your mind nearly blank, but you didn’t say it.
Jack roared in frustration as the last waves of your orgasm faded, leaving you shaking beneath him. You were unprepared for him to rip himself away from you, leaving you completely free of him for just a moment. Your brain cleared slightly without his skin on yours. There was only about a second for you to try to will your still trembling body to get up and run, but you ran out of time.
He flipped you over onto your back, spreading your legs wide and forcing himself between them before you could snap them shut. His eyes were wild, his chest heaving with every breath.
And, for the first time, you saw his cock, pointing up and out of where his jeans were just barely pulled down. He was big, even bigger than you’d pictured when he’d first slid inside you. Long and thick, flushed red and dripping with your juices. In any other situation, you’d be reaching for him, eager to get your hands on him. Even despite the position you found yourself in, against your will, you felt your mouth water and hands itching to reach out and touch him.
But you managed to hold back, trying to squirm away from him up the bed. He stopped you before you could put any meaningful distance between you, though, his hands found the back of your thighs, pushing them up and pressing them down, folding you in half.
“I gave you everything,” Jack looked close to tears, but you couldn’t tell if it was from anger or sadness. “I would do anything for you. Why don’t you love me?”
You didn’t have an answer for him. How do you answer when the man confessing his undying love to you killed your family and then took your virginity against your will? What do you say to the man taking off his shirt, revealing the bloody mess of his chest, slashes covering the skin on his left pec?
There were certainly no words to be found when it clicked that those lines were your initials, carved into the skin over his heart. They weren’t bleeding anymore, but the skin was red and angry, blood still smeared over his skin. The more you looked, the more you realized the incisions were much more precise than you’d realized. Jack specialized in trauma procedures, of course the self inflicted modification he’d given himself would be perfect.
Your first instinct was awe, quickly followed by disgust at yourself and fear at the sight of his dedication to you. But you couldn’t help tracing your eyes over the split skin, admiring the clean lines. It sparked something deep inside you, to see him declare your ownership over him so blatantly on his skin, despite the fact that you still told yourself that you didn’t want to hold his leash.
“All I want is to be yours, sweetheart,” Jack’s intensity hadn’t dimmed, but his anger seemed to be gone for the moment. He sounded miserable, literally begging on his knees before you “Please let me be yours.”
“Jack . . ..”
“Please,” he still had your knees pressed to your chest, his fingers flexing and digging into your flesh.
You didn’t know if it was the pathetic way he was begging for your love or the devotion in his eyes that broke you. You could tell yourself that you were playing along, trying to go along with it to get away from him, but you didn’t know if that was true.
“Ok.”
Jack lit up immediately, all traces of his despair disappearing in an instant. The wide and handsome smile that split his face was at odds with the blood still smeared across his body. The juxtaposition was jarring, adding to the warring feelings rising in you.
“Can you say it for me?”
“I love you,” your voice was barely above a whisper. You didn’t know if you meant it - you weren’t sure you wanted to know, either - but Jack took you at your word.
“I love you, too.”
And then he was sliding back in, pushing through your folds and sinking into you up to the hilt. With your legs still folded up and resting over your shoulders as he bent forward, he felt even bigger than he had before, filling you completely to the brim. You swore you could feel him in your throat.
When he pressed fully into you, he leant down, his lips connecting to yours. You didn’t bother to fight him, returning the kiss as he fell into a rhythm. His tongue pushed between your lips as his hips pulled back from yours.
Jack sheathed himself back inside you, thrusting hard and punching a broken sound out of your mouth. He swallowed the noise, continuing to devour you as he continued. Every slow withdrawal was followed by a brutal thrust in.
“I love you,” Jack broke the kiss. His lips traveled down over your cheek until they reached your neck. His teeth scraped over a spot just below your jaw that had you keening, arching up into him.
He continued to work the spot, kissing and sucking and biting until he was satisfied with the blooming bruise before he was moving onto another, unblemished section of skin. It hurt, your skin burning from the contact of his lips, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do anything besides cry and moan.
“Fuck!”
You couldn’t help the expletive when his hips shifted, his thrust pushing directly against a spot inside you that had your back arching into him. It shot sparks through you, the sensation tightening into a knot in your stomach. Jack adjusted his angle to hit that spot head on again and again. A strangled groan vibrated through Jack when you clenched around him as a result.
“Take me so well,” Jack disconnected from your neck. His forehead rested against your shoulder, looking down to where you were connected, but the bulk of his body blocked your view.
Jack pushed back, sitting up to kneel between your legs. His large hands kept your legs over his shoulders, holding you in place, even though you weren’t sure you’d be strong enough to get away from him, even if you wanted to. He felt too good buried deep inside you.
Your brain felt foggy, the combination of sensations washing away your self preservation and critical thinking. When Jack had you on your stomach, you were being taken, but here, you felt like you were being worshipped. There was still fear simmering under your skin, but it was taking a backseat to the orgasm rising in your gut.
“God, look at you,” Jack was panting, his pace increasing and his eyes focused down between your legs. You didn’t realize what he was looking at until one of his hands let go of your thigh to press down on your stomach against the visible outline of his cock. “Can see how much I'm stretching you out.”
Your body seized, the breath flying out of your lungs. That added pressure made him feel even bigger. It triggered your orgasm, pleasure crashing through you unexpectedly. It caught you off guard and unprepared. Your head lolled back, eyes fluttering as your mind went blank. Jack kept his hand there, pinning you down as he kept thrusting into you, his rhythm faltering slightly as he battled his way through the continued clenching of your walls. He wasn’t letting you come down, giving you no reprieve from the waves of pleasure wracking your shaking body beneath his.
“Oh, fuck,” Jack finally took his hand away from your lower stomach, but you still didn’t get a moment to breath. His fingers found your clit again, rapidly circling the small bud. “One more, baby, one more.”
“No, Jack, no,” you started to try to wiggle away. Through your addled brain, deja vu struck you. It made you almost want to laugh. You didn’t want to get away from him out of fear - although fear was certainly still there - no, instead you were trying to get away from the rapidly building overstimulation. “I can’t, not again!”
“Yes you can,” his rhythm picked up, hips moving even faster against you. The squelching and slapping sounds filling the room were obscene. “I know what’s best for you. Trust me.”
You were chanting; “No, no, no!” even as your core tightened, the rapid build up of your third orgasm contradicting with your words. You were sure Jack could feel it, too. The way your walls clenched and fluttered around him was telling.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” sweat was beading on his chest, mixing with the blood on his skin and dripping onto you, leaving small splatters on your stomach. “Cum for me and I’ll cum for you.”
“Jack!”
You broke. This orgasm hit you like a truck. You felt it physically snap inside of you, the tension releasing a flood of endorphins into your blood. Through the haze wiping your mind blank, you heard Jack cry out, hips stuttering and pushing into the hilt. You could feel the heat as he spilled deep inside of you. It felt like a brand, burning you from the inside out and soaking your depths in him.
The waves of pleasure mounted, consuming you until you couldn’t take it anymore. Your eyes rolled back into your head and everything went black.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Jack had fallen asleep, and you were far from turning over and snuggling into his side after you'd been ripped from the consuming darkness.
You ached in ways you didn’t know were possible. Every limb felt heavy like you’d been shacked to a ball and chain, and you knew every step would be agony. The bruises he’d left behind would mottle your skin for weeks as reminders of what he did to you, to your friends, to your mom. Staying next to him in bed would ease the pain, but you needed to get up. The thought of waking Jack sent your heart into a panicked rhythm, and you were sure the sound alone would wake him up. Soft snores and grunts sounded from his lips every few seconds.
Centimeter by centimeter, you pushed up from your lying position. You thanked anyone who was listening for the fact that he hadn’t slung an arm around your waist to hold you down further. Instead of your normal wake-up routine, ten minutes must have passed by the time you stood from your bed. You could not let Jack wake up under any circumstances. You took another glance back at Jack.
Still asleep.
Gingerly, you grabbed your phone off the side table and began to shuffle towards your bathroom. You held back the urge to throw up when your foot slid through a puddle of thickened, coagulated blood. With trembling hands, you closed the bathroom door, mentally cursing yourself when it gave off the tiniest click. You held your breath and listened and listened and listened for any sign that Jack had woken up. When you caught another puff of steady air, you pushed in the small lock carefully. Not daring to turn on the light, you powered on your phone and Googled “One Wish Willow Customer Service” and clicked the first number that showed up.
Your phone rang quietly three times before a bored voice filled your ear. “Hello.”
“I need to cancel a wish . . . please,” you pleaded in a whisper.
“I’m sorry, we don’t really do that.”
Your stomach dropped, and the room tilted. “Please; you have to do something. I need my wish to go away.” Your mouth pooled with bile-tasting saliva.
“If you had read the back of the box, you would see that wishes can’t be canceled or altered. It’s all in the fine print.”
A whimper slipped through your lips. “He killed people, don’t you understand? And I’m scared he’ll kill me eventually.”
Static crackled from the speaker before the guy on the other line sighed heavily. “The only way a wish can go away is if the wisher or the wished-upon passes. Sorry, but I can’t do anything else for you.”
The call ended, and all you were left to do was stare at your phone.
A flash of pills or your razor against your wrists crossed your mind briefly, but that meant Jack would still be in your world. And there was no telling what he’d do if you died. You could practically envision the city drenched in red and violence. But not doing something wasn’t an option. You couldn’t force yourself to go back into the room, get back into bed, and sleep like your world was perfect.
Your guilt wouldn’t silence enough for that.
With a tight chest, you called a second number and waited.
It wasn’t long before you heard the sirens wail down your street, and you pressed your back against the door. By now, you were certain Jack was either close to waking up or he was now fully awake. You didn’t know which terrified you more.
“Sweetheart?” Jack called out, and your lungs seized. “Where’d you go, baby?” His tone was soft and gentle for now.
You wondered if the blue and red flashing lights poured through your blinds and illuminated his enraged face. Besides the sirens, your bedroom and bathroom were silent. On the other side of the door, Jack made no movements that caused any sound. It was as if he had disappeared, giving you an opportunity to think about opening the door. The golden knob felt cool against your palm and–
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
You squealed loudly in terror and backed away immediately from the door only stopping when the backs of your legs hit the side of the tub.
“What did you do, sweetheart?” Jack’s loud voice carried through the door in a hollow manner. “Y/nnnnnn,” he drew out your name. “WHAT DID YOU FUCKING DO?”
Downstairs, another blam! sounded and was followed by many footsteps and cries of Police! and We’re coming up!
A glimmer of hope raced through your chest, however panic engulfed it when Jack began rattling the door so hard you feared he’d take it off its hinges.
“You think you’re so smart? You think the boys in blue will keep me away from you?” Jack screamed through a raw throat. “You’re so dead wrong, baby. I’ll never be apart from you. You’re mine for the rest of your life. I—”
His voice cut off from the slam of your bedroom door. Following, grunts, the Miranda rights, and the sound of struggle echoed into the bathroom. You attempted to block it out with both hands on your ears, but Jack was too loud, too impossible to suppress. All went quiet a few moments later until his empty laugh began to stutter out in broken barks.
You were going to be sick.
“We aren’t over, sweetheart!” he continued, though his voice was waning. “I’ll find you again soon enough! We’re going to be together until the end of time! We—”
“Ma’am, it’s safe to come out,” another male’s voice covered the rest of Jack’s taunts.
You ripped the door open and a sob of relief sputtered from your lips. You stepped back through the smeared blood–a result of Jack’s struggle–and sat back down on your bed. Your spine bent as you hunched forward in an attempt of self-comfort. You gripped your arms with white knuckles, and the bruises Jack left behind didn’t even compute through your twisted emotions.
One of the officers stepped close to your knees. “I know this has been very traumatic for you, but when you’re ready, we’ll need to take you down to the station to get your statement.”
You nodded wordlessly.
Two officers stood in the corner where Jack dripped the most blood while he stood watching you.
“What the fuck happened in here,” one of them whispered, but without much other conversation, you heard him clear as day.
“I wish I knew, man,” the other responded.
Your soul tensed at his wording and the way he tossed it out so casually. Because you’d wished for something you thought to be so trivial, and now look at where it got you.
Alone and traumatized where you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.
You're pretty sure that the couple next door is keeping someone locked in their basement, but that's Johnny and Simon's business, not yours. You refuse to acknowledge both your suspicions and your growing attraction to them. Unfortunately, your neighbors find it highly entertaining to invite you over to watch you pretend like nothing's wrong.
cw: nightmares, sex tapes, non consensual sharing of sed sex tapes, masturbation, oral sex, rough sex, punitive sex, telepathy
wind whips everywhere as the helicopter slowly descends upon the city, yellow streetlights below illuminating the small crowd that's gathered just outside the building you're headed towards.
it's a hot one tonight, and the churning air feels cleansing somehow, keeping you cool as you take in the scene below you. you don't recognize this place- the trees along the sidewalks look unfamiliar, the street signs and traffic lights not like the ones you see locally. you squint into the night to see if you can parse out anything that might tell you where you are, but no dice. you're too far up, moving too fast, and it's too dark out to look for clues, so you just hang on for the ride as you slowly descend.
suddenly, gunfire pinging off the metal frame of the chopper. the pilot yells something about small arms- moments before a white streak flashes up through the night sky, headed straight for you.
"rpg!" a man screams nearby, his warning nearly cut off by the sound of impact- a shrill whistle before a boom that shakes the solid floor from under your feet, sending you sprawling over the cold metal as you slide along with the listing of the chopper. it's deafening- the cacophony of gunfire, the roar of the engine, the shriek of alarms, all with your pounding heartbeat playing harmony.
bits and bobs are sent flying through the air- metal canisters, a handgun, little metal bits that you can't identify but look like they'd hurt to be hit with. you deliriously think to yourself that if the crash doesn't kill you, maybe the shrapnel will.
because face it- this is it. you're going to die out here, falling to your death our in god-knows-where for god-knows-what-reason, and it's going to be painful. and it's going to be now.
the thought sends you rocketing upright in your bed, panting and sweating and shaking like a leaf. the soft glow of the moon through your sheer curtains is grounding- you're at home, you're in bed, you're safe. there's no crash, no fires, no mobs waiting on the ground to murder you on sight.
it's so much worse at night, so much more terrifying to see through someone else's eyes when you're unconscious and unaware of what's happening. at least now, awake, you can process the scene with a bit more detachment. you aren't the one in the helicopter, after all. you can still see and hear it all- everything is so loud, red lights illuminating the dark hold of the chopper, panicked face of the pilot looking back as the bird goes down. there are mere moments for a stranger's hands to grab the rope dangling nearby and swing to the safety of a nearby rooftop, crashing on hard concrete as the chopper crashed onto the street below. someone else lands bodily close by, and they're slow to get up. fire illuminates the streets below, around where the helo landed- but maybe that was there before the crash? it's hard to say.
after all, it's not like you're in charge of the movie playing in your brain.
slowly, you pad through your dark apartment, not bothering to turn on lights as the scene continues to unfold in your mind.
a gun in hand, scared office workers terrified of a threat just outside, a uniformed man with an ugly beard barking orders both at the workers and over his radio- but the vision is imperfect, faces of everyone but the soldier slightly blurred, their words slightly muddled, as if the whole scene was slightly underwater. in your experience, that means the memory is older- maybe a six or seven years, based on the clarity of some details.
kyle's home, you think to yourself as you pour yourself a glass, leaning against the counter as you sip, trying to regulate your breathing again. normally, you have some sort of warning that he's coming- his thoughts are so loud that you can usually detect him when he's at the end of the block- but tonight he got in too late for you to be aware of his arrival, too late to make plans with friends or a last-minute hotel reservation. it's jarring to have the circus of violence, gore, and morally reprehensible foreign policy to not only act as your alarm clock, but to continue to play out in your mind long after sleep has been shaken loose from you.
it's funny, in a way. you've been able to read people's thoughts ever since you were a little girl, but with everyone else you've ever met in your entire life, it's been manageable. sure, you've heard some fucked up shit that people dwell on in the privacy of their own minds, but for the most part people's thoughts aren't very interesting and just fade into the background like white noise made up of shopping lists, regrets, memories, wishes, and the songs people get stuck in their heads. but your neighbor, kyle? he's unlike any of the rest of them, the contents of his brain seemingly on a mental bullhorn of sorts, coming in more vivid and loud than anyone else you've ever met- which is why it's so awful that he happens to have the most violent job you've ever seen.
in your heart, you're convinced that if you actually met the man that he'd probably be lovely. according to his (loud, inescapable) memories, people really seem to like him. faces light up when he enters rooms, everyone laughs at his jokes and give him easy smiles, people of all genders flirt shamelessly. according to all of his memories that take places in pubs, back gardens, birthday parties, and brunch with loved ones, kyle (or 'gaz', as he's sometimes called) is a stand-up guy. a good son, brother, friend, and teammate. a charming young man with a nice smile and the right mixture of cocky and clever that wins over most everyone he meets- especially mums and grandfathers. they think he's a 'good guy', someone even-keeled, patient, and safe.
you know different.
late at night, his darker memories drift through your wall, robbing you of sleep, appetite, and concentration. bodies being chewed up by the bullets that kyle himself is firing at them. kyle shooting an empty pistol at a child with a pillowcase over his head, and being surprised at the lack of bullets. throwing live grenades and watching the bodies explode, only to march over and shoot the mangled and screaming survivors right in the temple. buildings collapsing under his feet, aircraft falling out of the sky, a man being shoved over a railing moments before the bomb strapped to his chest explodes. kyle's memories are a circus of death and violence, a spectacle of gore and war crimes.
he's a soldier, from what you've gathered. you've seen flashes of places made familiar from the news, of men in uniform clapping him on the shoulder and following him into battle, of meetings you shouldn't know about, of loading in and out of government planes and trucks. all of that interspersed between bodies being blown apart, slashed open, shot, broken, and crushed- all watched through unblinking eyes.
that's the worst part of it, you think. in all his memories, he never looks away from the carnage, never flinches from it. he just moves on, like a machine, his bullets chewing indiscriminately through bodies as he snakes through homes, villages, laboratories, and office buildings. you've seen the memories of him getting praised for it- and felt the pride of being called 'brutal' by his lieutenant,of his captain clapping him on the shoulder and praising him for the carnage he'd left in his wake.
his pride in it all makes you sick.
nothing has ever made you feel less patriotic than the knowledge that kyle thinks he's doing this to protect you and everyone else in this building. it makes you feel downright sick, frankly, to think that he believes that your mere existence in this country merits the violent deaths of all those people in his memories. if you weren't so terrified of the myriad of inventive ways you've seen him kill people, you'd probably call him a murdering wanker to his bloody face.
but you are. so you don't.
instead you currently content yourself to sip at your water, mentally mapping out where in your bathroom cabinet the sleeping pills are, trying to decide if you want to just sleep until the morning and try to find a hotel in the morning, or potentially just sleep through the whole next day instead. your neighbor's thoughts and memories are usually at their most horrible and vivid right after deployment, and prior experience has taught you to either conk out or stay away from home for the first few days after he returns.
god, you should really call your therapist. you'd only started seeing her out of desperation, when kyle's memories were starting to cause you to lose sleep, appetite, and your own will to live. every moment he's home is exquisite torture, and every moment he's away you're just anxiously awaiting the torture to start back up again- and now it has, in the middle of the night, waking you from an otherwise dreamless sleep.
in your sessions you'd been vague about certain details in order to keep from seeming outright delusional- instead opting instead to mention bad dreams, anxiety, and the way that you avoid being home when intrusive memories pop in. your therapist diagnosed you with ptsd on the spot, and you couldn't help the bitter laugh that burst out of you when she said the words. after all, if you're fucked up from all those memories that aren't even yours, how fucked up is the guy actually living them? sure, you're still broken up about witnessing a little boy with a bag over his head having a gun pointed at him- but what the fuck is wrong with the man who actually held the gun? who pulled the trigger and was surprised there were no bullets?
the gunfire and screaming in your mind fades as you head to the bathroom, as kyle's thoughts have turned to something else. he's staring at the phone in his hand, idly scrolling on messages, catching up on stuff he's missed. 'mum' has texted him 14 times over the three months he's been deployed, 'mummy' has texted him over 100 times. there's messages from his sisters, uni friends, and a bunch of flirty texts from unsaved numbers. he flips through those, actively seeking any nudes, not bothering to read the actual messages before he moves on, slowly chipping away at his number of unread messages until he reaches zero.
with any luck, he'll go out looking for someone to go home with tonight. he's horny and restless and looking for a distraction, that much is obvious, and it's only midnight on a friday. he could easily go to a club or something and find someone. he does that sometimes, and it's a beautiful respite for you, especially since he doesn't tend to think about his hookups too much after he's done with them. your eyes slide shut as you watch through his as he weighs his options, checking himself out in the bathroom mirror, rubbing a hand thoughtfully over his stubble as he tries to decide whether or not it's worth going out or just jerking off and going to sleep.
god, you should move. you really should. the problem is that the rent is cheap, the other neighbors are relatively quiet, and it's just a few minutes walk from the bus stop. kyle's presence is literally the only thing ruining it, and you almost feel bad about how much animosity you have towards a man who doesn't even know you're there. he thinks your apartment is vacant, because for the most part, when he's home, it is. you're either in a pill-induced sleep that's only technically not a coma, or earning the rest of your year's rent in marathon basement poker games that keep you occupied for days on end. you just keep on privately resenting him and loathing his career while he remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that you even exist.
it's not healthy, you know that, but a sick sort of hope does keep you hanging on to your lease- after all, his job is dangerous. you've seen it firsthand through his eyes. there's been plenty of close calls, tough scrapes, and life threatening injuries- surely one day he just won't come back from a mission? maybe one day he'll leave and get killed on an op, never to return and plague you with a replay of his various war crimes.
you dry swallow the sleeping pills as soon as kyle decides to stay in tonight, opting to watch a video his buddy 'soap' sent him- a home made porno of some poor girl choking down a hard, ruddy cock with tears clumping and streaking her mascara. the lighting is harsh, and you wince in sympathy as she squints into the too-bright light, clearly not expecting this amateur director to have his phone out. you already know it's soap based on his voice, the way the scottish brogue plays on his vowels as he brushes her tears from her cheek, telling her how bonnie she looks, what a good lass she is for him, to give a little wink for his mates. you don't know if the girl in the video knows this is being shared around their squad. you don't know if she gave permission. what you do know is that kyle never asked either, content to save it to his phone with his hand in his trousers, hand idly stroking himself as he watches the video.
kyle imagines himself with her, how much rougher he'd be, grabbing her pretty blonde hair by the root and forcing her down until she chokes on him, the way her throat would convulse around her cock, how she'd slap his thighs in a wordless plea for mercy. the way her eyes would go big and sad and almost accusing when he wouldn't let up- and then soften up into something more akin to pride when he praises her and tells her how good and sweet and special she is.
the face in his fantasy shifts to a new girl on her knees, a woman you know to be his ex based on the memories you've seen. her appearance makes him recall that he'd looked her up a few months ago and saw she was married- and he spits in his hand and strokes a little more vigorously at the thought of it, his imaginary self violently fucking her throat. soap's video is forgotten, phone discarded as the poor girl's face gets coated in cum and kyle opts to close his eyes in order to ruin his pretty, doe-eyed ex with imaginary punitive sex.
all you can do is watch as you stand in your bathroom, eyes staring into the drain and hands clenching the sides of the sink, praying to god or satan or whoever the fuck it is responsible for giving you this ability to take it back, take it all away, please make it stop. your bathroom is as silent as a tomb, but it's so, so loud in your head. you can hear everything- the imaginary ghlk ghlk ghlk of a poor girl whose only crime was loving kyle once, the refrain of 'take it, take it' both said in his fantasy and muttered out loud in his apartment, and the sound of wet skin-on-skin as he chases his orgasm with a vindictive snarl on his face. when he finally cums, he groans loud enough for you to hear through your shared wall, and it feels like hearing it in stereo as you also listen to it at full volume in your mind.
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
Part 2
masterlist
You walk around town like it’s written on your forehead that you’re about to let some strange man get you pregnant.
It might as well be a scarlet letter pinned to your breast. A sign taped to the back of your shirt. Kick me. I’m letting some guy knock me up. Or better yet, I’m with stupid, with the arrow pointed up at you.
Obviously that’s not true. You’ve done a good job at keeping this under wraps for the most part, not even your closest friends hearing about the man that propositioned you in the fertility clinic waiting room. You might've had half a mind to call one of them about it on the drive home, but by then you’d already filed it away as future gossip material, imagining bringing it up at drinks to the shock and delight of your friends.
Then night falls, and you grow weak.
You wake up with post-text message clarity the next morning, but there’s little you can do to backtrack now. You gave the man your name and number. You spoke to him on the phone about it, albeit briefly. Sure you could call John again and tell him that you thought it over a little more and decided against it, but then—
“It’s gonna cost four thousand dollars.”
Your coworker lets out a hissed breath, wincing. “That’s not cheap.”
It’s a pea-soupy summer morning, all hot and humid with the sky tinted a yellowish colour from forest fires up in the country, the hazy light seeping in through the windows in the office kitchen. Not a cloud in sight. You wouldn't call it a particularly pleasant morning, with the weather as overcast as your mood, but it could always be worse.
She’s the first person outside of a few close friends that you’ve told about going to the clinic at all, but she reacts exactly as you thought she would. It’s both affirming and annoying; it’s not so bad hearing from someone else that four thousand dollars is a bit pricey for a single person, but part of you wishes she’d try to convince you to go through with it. You need someone to push you in a direction—in any direction.
You nod, mouth screwed into a grimace. “And that’s only for a single try. I think she said it would be closer to, like, twelve thousand dollars altogether.”
“So are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna keep looking around?”
“I have another appointment next week,” you half-answer, getting cagey all of a sudden.
The truth is, that appointment isn’t the only thing you’ve got on the books. There’s another dot in your calendar for a few days before, one that seems to glow ominously when you stare at the date as it slowly approaches, lumbering forward one ground-shaking step at a time.
You wonder how long you can go without telling anyone. Theoretically, you could keep up this ruse for the rest of your life, pretend you always went through with the treatment. Lie through your teeth when your friends ask you if you know anything about the donor. No, they didn’t tell me anything, I just picked a profile with a good medical record and family history.
Don’t think about how you live in the same city. Don’t think about the likelihood of running into him around town with the baby in tow.
You shake your head. Those are concerns that you can foist off onto a future version of you. All the current you needs to worry about is making this all a reality.
You don’t know what to wear out to dinner with him. It’s both a date and not, more of a prelude to the later events of the night. Part of you wonders if you should just text him your address and tell him to skip the preamble and come on over.
The only reason you don’t is because a little voice at the back of your mind insists that you at least do your due diligence and screen him a little more over dinner. You can always back out at the last minute if a few too many red flags pop up.
(You tell yourself that as if a strange man offering to knock you up within five minutes of meeting weren’t a big enough red flag on its own.)
John meets you at the restaurant looking every bit as handsome as the day you met him, once again nearly taking your breath away. A little more buttoned up this time though, actually quite dashing in a proper dress shirt and suit jacket, even his shoes polished.
You have a second to think about calling it off. A second to consider turning tail and getting as far away as possible. Maybe, with enough time, you could scrape together the money for IUI. You could wait a year, or take out a loan with your bank, or pray for a decent enough raise to manage it on your own.
But then, as the time before, he turns his head and locks eyes with you.
It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of him, maybe even a picture of his ID, and send it over to one or two of your friends, on the off chance that he turns out to be a dangerous man, but you don’t need to be inundated by a barrage of text messages and phone calls from your friends trying to talk you out of it. You’ve made up your mind.
Walnut and burgundy furnishings decorate the large room, and the amber glow of candlelight and antique wall sconces saturates the restaurant in a dark, sensual bloom. A server guides John and you to a table right in the middle of the room, a better table than you might’ve hoped to get on your own. You eye him sideways when he pulls your chair out for you.
His demeanour is so relaxed that if you didn’t already know the purpose of this dinner, you could be forgiven for assuming that you were out on a real date. John certainly acts the part.
“You know, we didn’t have to do this,” you start awkwardly, eyes gliding over the room to look at all the other well-dressed patrons, some presumably out on actual dates.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that dinner comes before the rest of the evening.”
“I just mean you didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine just…” getting right down to business, you leave unsaid, hoping that he doesn’t make you spell it out.
“We’re two civilized adults. I thought we might get to know each other first.”
“Well, what do you want to know about me?”
“This is as much for me as it is for you—don’t you want to know anything about the father of your children?”
You wish he’d keep his voice down. He isn’t wrong though; it would be a good idea for you to take his candidature more seriously, actually ask him questions about himself and his parentage. He already emailed you a recent STI panel and bloodwork results, both done through the fertility clinic back when he was still keen on donating, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about him.
“Alright. How old are you?”
“Forty-six.”
You nod, pleased with yourself for guessing it right. “What do you do for work?”
“Just some work for the government,” he says, brushing the question off. “What else?”
That piques your interest though. “Oh, come on. What are you, M16 or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” John laughs, genuinely amused enough for you to believe him.
You roll your eyes when he doesn’t elaborate any further though. “Fine, leave me in the dark. Anything else you want to know about me?”
“Where are you in your cycle?” he asks, blunt as a hammer.
A classic spit take moment. It’s a good thing you haven’t ordered a drink yet.
“I think it’s, uh…it’s coming soon actually. Um. Next week or so.”
He chews on that for a second, mulling over the timing. “That’s fine. We should still be able to make it work.”
There he goes again, making comments that leave you fish-mouthed and stunned, jaw slack with disbelief. Never able to conjure up a good enough retort.
When the server comes by to take your drink orders, both of you still deliberating over your food, John orders a beer for himself and a mocktail for you, not even bothering to consult you about it.
“No alcohol,” he reminds you before you have a chance to ask.
To be fair, the spicy blackberry-basil concoction that the server comes back with a few minutes later is a refreshing burst of fruit and fresh herbs, but that doesn’t excuse the overstep. You ignore it only because you know there’s no use getting worked up when you’ve already made your mind up. It’s a peccadillo in the grand scheme of things considering what he’s doing for you.
Conversation flows surprisingly well over dinner, but at the back of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about how at the end of the night, he’s going to take you home and fuck you. It creeps back in whenever you let your guard down for a split second.
So, do you have any hobbies? (In three hours, this man is going to strip you naked and have sex with you)
Do you have any siblings? Any twins running in the family? (In two hours, this man is going to climb on top of you and fuck you until he puts a baby in you)
It’s a lot to keep in your head at the same time.
“How long have you been thinking about doing this?” John asks apropos of nothing, the earlier thread of your conversation evaporating on the spot.
“I mean, I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time, but actually planning to have them…maybe a couple months?”
“Why now? Why not wait a little longer? Wait for someone to start a family with?”
You’re not sure why he’d ask you that, why it would matter. It’s none of his business, quite frankly. You almost want to tell him that, let yourself get righteous, get angry, but you find you can’t fully commit to the anger. It wouldn’t change anything. You aren’t being forced to answer him.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not much of a family man myself. ‘Least not when I was younger, when it counted. Never had the time nor the inclination. Work took me all over—it just wouldn’t have been fair if I had a wife or kids waiting around for me. But since it didn’t seem like having a family was in the cards for me, I thought it would be a waste of good genetics.”
“Oh.” It’s arrogant, but it’s as good an answer as any.
He waits a beat then lifts an eyebrow when you don’t reciprocate. “So? Why didn’t you wait?”
“I did try, but there wasn’t much out there, and I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be with someone, so…”
Leave him to fill in the blanks. He met you at the culmination of that longing after all, even changed the course of it, disrupted your plans to place himself at the centre of them.
At the centre for a time, you remind yourself. Not forever.
After that, he keeps the conversation light, only delving into superficial topics to help pass the time. You excuse yourself after finishing your meal to go to the bathroom, and come back to two coffees laid out on the table with sugar and cream in pretty porcelain cups laid out between them. John must have ordered for you again in your absence. Good thing you like coffee.
The bill is also there, discretely tucked under John’s napkin, and that makes your stomach flip, realizing that only a coffee now sits between you and the end of this night.
Then, at a certain point, when all that’s left in your cup is the dregs, sugar spoon bone dry on your plate, John gives you a look from across the table that says it’s time for you both to go.
Well, here we go, you think a little hysterically as you push back your chair to stand, nearly jumping out of your skin when his hand comes down on your back.
At your car, you sway back and forth on your heels. “You can, uh…follow behind me, if that works.”
“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”
You bite your lip, pretending to deliberate, then acquiesce.
Let him think he’s pulling one on you. You’re bringing him home instead of the other way around because you don’t want to have any memory of a man’s bed when you think about your pregnancy journey. If it’s going to be you alone, then it should be about you alone. Your decision to go out and pick a man to father your baby.
His participation will be a short blip in your life. A minor footnote. You’ll remember it in bursts throughout the rest of your life: staring at a carton of cream in the dairy aisle of the local grocery store; garden spade buried hilt-deep in a plot of soil, blue bigleaf hydrangea in a pot beside you, sweat dripping down the bow of your lips; your baby’s face, for the rest of your natural life.
In your foyer, his hands glide around your hips, pulling you into his chest, and you realize abruptly that ‘short’ might not have been the most accurate interpretation of what’s about to happen.
(Honey, you’ve got a storm coming)
“This off first,” John rasps, pulling the bottom of your shirt up and over your head, blinding you for a split second before he yanks it over your arms.
“Getting right to it, huh?” you joke nervously.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, staring down at you assessingly, as if staring into your soul. That cuts the humour from the moment. Vacuums it from the room, leaving behind only the crackling, blistering heat of his gaze and his intentions.
“Yes,” you whisper. Neither of you mention the tremble in your voice and how unsure you sound.
It doesn’t stop him from undressing you though. Bra pulled down under your breasts, pushing your tits up into his face like an invitation, one he accepts without question, pulling your nipples into his mouth one by one, hands on your hips to hold you in place when you try to squirm away. Not that it’s bad—it’s amazingly good after all, toe-curlingly good to have a man run his tongue over your areolas and suck each sensitive nipple to a stiff peak, until you’re on the verge of coming—but it’s a lot, a lot that you have to wrap your head around, your bra pinched off shortly after that and underwear next.
Your touch is hesitant at first, fingers barely gliding down his arms and fisting in the fabric of his shirt to jerk it up, but he makes it easy for you to get lost in it, your nerves fizzling out in the heat and fervor.
You don’t even notice that John has walked you backwards into the bedroom until he pushes you down onto the bed, the mattress bouncing under you. “One second, love—need to get all of this off myself.”
You watch transfixed as the suit jacket comes off first, shrugged off and discarded. He undoes only a few buttons before wrenching it over his head, eyes on you the whole time, his stare never breaking. Scalding hot.
That’s how you know that despite all his lofty words, this isn’t some favour he’s doing you. He wants this just as badly—wants it with a vigour that you don’t even know if you’ll be able to handle, aware that you are just flesh and blood. There’s a prickle at the back of your mind, a whisper reminding you that nobody knows that he’s here, that he’s a hot-blooded man about to slake his lust with your body.
Then he slides the elastic waistband of his boxers down his thighs and your mind goes blank when you see the flushed, heavy shaft droop between his legs.
The two of you work together to shove a pillow under your hips, John fetching it from the top of the bed and you lifting your hips to give him easier access. You don’t have to ask why.
Nestled between your thighs, John looks up at you with heavy-lidded eyes and says, “Let’s get you all softened up to start, alright, love?”
The first touch of his lips to your sex sends a lightning bolt up your spine, and then it’s practically an open mouth kiss. Tongue running up the seam of your lips, pushing into the clenched hole at the centre, the bristles of his beard scraping up the insides of your thighs and the thin skin of your labia.
It’s good, but it’s taking too long and your heart is a rabbiting mess and you can barely think or see straight, so you tangle your fingers in his hair and try to push his head away. “That’s okay, John, I just wanna—oh fuck, can you please just put it in?”
“No, baby, it’s good if you come first,” he murmurs. “Helps it take.”
That floods your system with a frenetic, crazed exhilaration. Baby fever bubbling and boiling, frothing spilling over the top like a pot left on the stovetop for too long.
You gasp when he tucks a couple fingers into your hole to stretch you out, a perfunctory, almost clinical motion. Just enough to loosen you up for him, unmindful of the way you squirm and whine, rolling your hips to get him to go faster. He does not.
It doesn’t take much effort on his part after that to get you to come, too worked up and wound up, core squeezing his fingers like a vice until he gives your clit a suck and you squeal, oh, too much, breath ripping through your chest.
They’re wet when he pulls them out, and he dries them off by rubbing them on your belly.
The shadow of his body draws over yours as he climbs on top of you. It’s as physical as it is visual though, John’s hands always on some part of your body, dragging up your legs and over your arms, fingers spreading over your belly before he runs a hand up between your breasts and over your throat, lingering there just long enough to close around your throat and hold for a second, then skating up to cup your jaw.
And then he’s all big body on top of you, coaxing your legs around his hips, one hand squishing your cheeks when he bends down to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his lips, the tongue pushing into your mouth musky with the flavour of your cum. You’d protest if you could, but you can’t, his mouth slanted over yours and demanding.
“C’mere,” he mumbles against your lips when he draws you in for another kiss, sawing his cock up and down between your folds, coating his length with your juices, until it’s there suddenly, breaching you.
You have to grab him, loop your arms around his shoulders and squeeze to ground yourself. It’s a lot to take in. He’s a lot to take in.
“I know, love, I know,” John murmurs soothingly. “Deep breaths, okay?”
You listen to him, letting a shaky breath out. It helps you relax. Barely, but enough to ease the strain a bit.
He nuzzles his nose into your temple, his breath fanning out against your ear. “A little more, love, alright? You gonna be brave for me?”
“Oh—just get on with it,” you gasp when he eases in another inch, and John laughs in your ear.
It feels genuinely romantic like this. Your arms wrapped around his neck and his hips slowly rocking into you, whispering sweet nothings like, there we go, you’ve got it, that feel good, love? When he fits his hand around the back of your neck and lifts your head up for a kiss, you swear you see stars.
The kiss is too much. Too intimate. You wish you would’ve set that boundary ahead of time. It feels pointless now, trapped under the heavy weight of his body and impaled on his member, sucked into it, lips slotting and melting over each other, his tongue running over yours. He’s a good kisser at least, practiced from a lifetime of it. No awkward schoolboy tonguing.
Too good. You wonder distantly how many other women he’s slept with (probably more than you have any business knowing). If he’s ever gotten anyone else pregnant. Your nails dig into his back instinctively at the thought and he gasps a wet and guttural sound, hips bucking harder.
He gets rough enough to loosen a bolt of fear in your chest. All of a sudden, it becomes bright and clear in your mind. There’s a grunting, sweating man over you, all two hundred plus pounds of him laid out on top of you, with no protection between you. Raw cock plunging into your pussy. You can barely get a full breath in.
“Fuck, I’m close,” John grunts, and your eyes flick down instinctively, trying to see past the dense mass of hair on his chest towards the length of his cock sliding into you. He’s pressed too close though. When he catches you looking away from him, he clamps his hand around your face again, forcing your gaze back up. “No, none of that. Eyes on me.”
You think you must gasp. Some horrified sound must escape you because you can feel the aftereffect of it, the big hollow where it used to be.
His other arm wedges under your back to pull you closer to him, thighs spreading to brace his weight against the mattress before driving into you harder, deeper, the big, concentrated energy of him inescapable.
You can sense it the second before he’s about to come, his eyebrows digging in and his jaw going tight, the vein in his forehead prominent.
“Christ, you’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” he snarls. “All this fucking cum.”
On the next stroke in, you dig an ankle into the muscle of his ass and squeeze your inner muscles around his length, grinning hazily to yourself when that makes him shout.
And then, oh, he surges in and you feel it, hear it, sense it all around you, his fingers from the hand wedged under your back digging hard into the side of your breast. Hips forcefully pumping into you and pushing his cum in deep, your own orgasm lost somewhere in there, a small, forgettable part of it all.
Eventually, he stops moving over you, letting his cock slip out of you on the next stroke out. You hiss when he does, clenching up involuntarily. With nothing plugging it inside though, his cum leaks out, dripping down the crack of your ass and onto the pillow under your hips.
John’s hot breath fans over your face as he pants, slowly winding down as well, the red flush in his cheeks still stark, though gradually fading. It’s only in the cooldown that you realize how claustrophobic it is being trapped under him, the sheer weight and heat of his body flush with yours becoming more and more uncomfortable, almost unbearably so.
When he slumps off to one side, you can finally breathe again, the air rushing into your lungs. There’s sweat in your skin and tears in the corners of your eyes, everything tacky and humid, the frantic beat of your heart only beginning to slow down. The stiffness in your shoulders only dawns on you after a few minutes like that, and you push yourself up onto your elbows just to try to work some of it out.
“No, don’t get up, love. We’re just gonna lie here for a bit,” he instructs, pushing your shoulder back down. “Better chance of my boys getting the job done if we keep it all in you.”
Of course he just wants to make sure that it takes. That way, you don’t have to do this again. “Oh yeah. I, uh, I didn’t think about that.”
He doesn’t just mean lie there, of course, though your body would like nothing more than to sink into the plush embrace of sleep. Instead he means keeping your hips propped up on the pillow now saturated with cum, and curling you into his side, separating your thighs again to palm your cunt, sliding his fingers through the wet.
It’s a goopy, sticky mess that John plunges his fingers into, pushing it back up inside of you and shushing you when you whimper, a little gaped from his cock but sore to the touch.
For much longer than you anticipated, he lies there on his side beside you and keeps two fingers pushed up inside you, blocking any cum from leaking out.
“How long do we have to do this for?” you ask, voice all high and tight in your throat.
John hums, unconcerned. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”
True to his word, he keeps you there for the full fifteen minutes. Only the sound of your breathing fills the room, quiet otherwise aside from the enormously large weight of his presence, too familiar now with the private corners of your world.
He doesn’t warn you before idly circling your clit with thumb. You jerk, nearly biting through your lip. “John!”
“Relax, honey, I’m just making you come again.”
“I know that, John—ah, ah, ah—”
A leg hooks over yours, his thigh heavy enough to keep you pinned without even much strength behind it. His fingers don’t so much as twitch inside of you, buried to the fattest knuckle while his thumb circles the tight bud of your clit over and over again until you—
You haven’t finished the thought by the time he draws his fingers out, pearlescent strings of cum webbed between them. He hums approvingly when he sees that, pulling your thighs further apart to admire his work. “Gorgeous. That ought to do it for now.”
Your heart skips a beat and you stare up at him, exhausted, the sweat on the back of your neck now cold.
cw: this will eventually become sexually explicit, so mdni from the jump. this is not a dark fic, however, so major tags don't apply.
reader gets an anonymous message at work. this is an anonymous identity x cis-fem reader fic. tags + story blurbs will therefore reflect this. for future readers, please refrain from commenting any spoilers (i will delete + block if they come up).
have fun!
navigate to: part 1
part 2
"It's gotta be him. No?" Sasha sips at her coffee eagerly.
"Maybe?"
"But G could also be like, a version of bro or whatever, too," she admits. "He didn't say anything obvious? Make you feel like he's noticed you before?"
"Definitely not." You tap robotically on the lid of your coffee cup. "We didn't even exchange names."
"Yeah, 'cause he already knows yours. Also, how do you get locked inside an elevator with a single person for over two hours and not know each other's names by the end of it?"
You sigh heavily, throwing up a hand in defense. "Listen! I was stressed out and he made me fucking nervous. I don't know, dude. I really didn't get a vibe from him that he was like…messing with me."
Sasha rolls her eyes and her chair back to her desk. "You're on your own then. Call up maintenance and see if they send him. Be a damn detective."
You stomp away dramatically to her light laughter. It's been over a week since the elevator incident.
A telltale blink on the screen when you return.
» Bored?
» Look, I don't want to be rude, but your messages aren't funny to me. I don't like this mystery or thing you're doing. If you want to talk to me, just approach me
» Ah, I'm sorry.
» I really don't mean to scare you.
» You're not scaring me. It's just weird.
» Do you want a hint? Maybe it'll make you feel better.
» Or you could just tell me who you are. Or I could just submit a ticket to IT.
» You could.
» Do we work on the same floor?
» No. But I see you around.
» Do I pass you or do you pass me?
» Both.
That narrows it down to approximately two floors and far too many departments and teams. Time to put the elevator theory to the test.
» Have we talked before?
» I'll say this: you have a very lovely smile.
» Gotta run. Talk soon.
You stand up and go refill your water bottle at the station so you don't shatter your work laptop out of frustration.
—
A grimy July day drips into evening. A few teams, yours included, all banding together to descend en masse to a restaurant with a huge outdoor patio and cold-ass after-work drinks. You tentatively decline until Sasha bullies you into accepting. "Cinq à sept! Cinq à sept!"
Should socialize more rattling around your heat-dumb brain.
Sasha texting you before you guys lock up your computer for the night:
» maybe G will be out there amongst us woooohhhhh
That idea almost makes you decline again until she's parked her ass in front of your cube, firmly entrenched and not budging. "Let's goooo. One drink."
You walk together and your nerves twist in nauseated bundles under your skin as she yaps amiably the whole way. It's your first social outing with anyone other than her, so you quickly order a drink and stand with her, being gradually introduced to a wide variety of folks from accounting, HR, marketing, comms, and so on. When the sept part of cinq à sept passes, you lean over to her. "Do people usually get this drunk at these?" She laughs breezily. "Well. Depends on the group, but I think it's just this fuckin' weather. Oh, I think those guys are from IT. Hey," she elbows you. "Let's ask about your message."
Some people left after a drink or two — like you should've — and more continue to drift in. The IT guys are two tall men that don't look like IT men in the first place. Not that there's a look, but…there can be a look. You let your eyes land on them, taking them in: white with blue eyes and some trendy haircut, and Black with sweet eyes and a dentist's dream of a smile. Sasha needles you. "Let's go say hi, I'll introduce you."
"Sasha," you plead, but she taps her glass to yours and pulls you over.
"Hey! John, right?" She says, easy as anything, to the one with shaggy hair. She introduces you to them both, and they both smile warmly at you. "And sorry, you fixed my workstation last week but I'm totally blanking on your name."
"Kyle," the other guy says with a grin, and you all laugh over the mix of handshakes between the four of you.
"Kyle! Oh my god, right." She throws her head back dramatically. "You saved my fucking ass."
He laughs, taking a slow sip of his drink. "No trouble at all."
Sasha perks up. "I have a fun question for you both then!"
Fuuuuuuck.
"Excuse me, I gotta—" you say just as Sasha tries to grab your arm, but you cut yourself off, slipping away to the washroom before she can make a scene. You are not interested in what the IT team thinks of your fucking messages, and you're annoyed that she's making it a joke. Obviously if you cared enough, you'd have submitted a ticket already and gotten something resolved, but it's a new job and you don't want to make waves. Why couldn't she just let it lie between you both?
If you could get away with it, you'd stay parked in the washroom until IT left. Or just dip and run, but neither of these are viable solutions. Instead, you swipe away the gathered sweat from your neck and hands, pat your face with cold water, and try to make with a facade of confidence back to the group. You spot Sasha still with John and Kyle, so you beeline for another member of your team. Sit down in the safety of numbers, and order another drink.
A little while later, there's a hand that hovers slightly at your elbow. You turn to see Kyle having sit to your far left, where your back had been turned.
"Oh, hi," you say weakly. Sasha's off somewhere else now.
"Hey, just wanted to check if you're alright?"
Your eyebrows pinch together and you sip from your drink nervously. "Yeah? Why?"
"Ah, good. You just seemed bit out of sorts back there with your friend. Summat we said, or?"
You laugh, relieved. "No, no. It's all good." You have no idea if Sasha explained your issue. And you don't feel comfortable revealing it if she did decide to keep her mouth shut. "Just getting used to a big company with lots of people to meet. I guess I'm not used to the big get-togethers. My first one."
He smiles brightly, a lazy laugh coming out of him. "Ah, that's nice then. Bit of a shy one, eh?" His eyes crinkle nicely in the corners when he smiles like that. He looks like a man you would've admired in the men's sleepwear pages of the Sears catalogue; handsome and sweet. Doe-like eyes.
Your cheeks heat under his soft gaze. "Well, I don't know about that. Just getting used to it, is all. How long have you been here?"
He sucks his teeth a little, hems and haws. "Little over two years, I reckon? John headhunted me personally."
"Oh, nice."
"You got any plans this summer? Goin' on holiday?" He props an arm loosely along the back of the booth you're sat on, the relaxed cream linen shirt he's wearing pulled a bit snug over his arm muscles. The sun close to setting now, he seems to glow and gleam in front of you, while you just wilt and sweat. Some are just chosen ones.
You laugh. "I just started. Not taking any time off yet. I might just take off a Monday over a long weekend, maybe."
"Lovely." He smiles. Those're fun," he says, reaching his hand out and tapping his fingertip against your manicure, a reptilian pattern you'd tried last night.
"Oh, thank you." Another self-conscious laugh, the desire to pull your hand back.
"—arrick!" A boisterously loud voice calling over the patio, stopping most people's conversations as heads turn to the source: John, waving at the exit gate. "C'mon, mate, ah dinnae want tae get another ticket!"
Kyle's face breaks down into a seriously, mate? expression, turning back to you to smile ruefully. "Next time? You'll be here."
"Maybe!"
"Nah, you gotta promise that."
You laugh again, his voice carrying as he stands up, grabbing your hand. A couple people looking at you both.
"Sure, maybe I promise."
A smile as bright as the sun and just as intoxicating.
On the walk home to your car, Sasha gripping your arm tightly. "Dude."
"What?"
"Kyle's last name."
You stare at her. "I didn't hear it."
"John yelled it, you didn't hear it?"
"I dunno, kinda? Eric or something."
She laughs at you openly. "Garrick, dummy. G-guh-guh-garrrrrrick."
"No. I think it was Eric or Carrick maybe. I didn't hear a G."
She shrugs, clearly not believing you at all, hands up. "Oookay."
You wait as she waits for her bus, then you head through the secondary parking lot to your car in the next lot. Dozens of moths are swarming each floodlight, forming strange dark clouds that dissipate and reshape themselves.
A truck's headlights turn on in front of you, making you gasp and grab your bag. You squint above into the cab. See a tall shadow. You scurry your feet and hear a door open.
"Just me."
Elevator guy, unfurling his big body from the truck, and stepping down in his uniform and boots. Looks tired in the fluorescent lighting.
"Oh," you twist back, breathless and embarrassed for it. "Hey." The lack of his name gives you pause. "Just getting off now?"
He nods. "Walk you."
You wait as he shuts the engine off and palms the keys as he walks beside you across the swaths of grass and improvised footpaths between the lots.
"Where you comin' from?"
"Oh, the cinq à sept, down the road?" The realization hits you that maintenance and security and warehouse and all those other folks may not get invitations extended their way, and you bite your tongue in shame. "My team invited me last minute." A mollifying shrug offered like you too are on the outskirts.
"Never been," he says simply. You're not sure if you want to get to your car quicker or slower, feeling out of sorts and pulled apart. "They treatin' you nice?"
"Who, my team?"
"Yeah." No inflection, nothing to riddle out.
"Yeah, they're really nice." Wait. "How'd you know I'm new?"
He laughs shortly, not rude but not really kind either. "You got a look to you. Big eyes. Spooked."
You frown down, staring at the hem of your dress and sandals, not realizing people could smell the rookie off you that obviously. "Me? Or new people in general?"
"Don't know anyone else that's new."
You get to your car. Your keys are still in your bag. Sasha's dumb boldness takes root in you for as long as you can harness it.
"Can you tell me your name?"
His brows raise a little. "Simon."
"Full name. Please."
"Riley."
When you look deeply confused and start fidgeting with your keys, he looks around like he's missing something. "Y'alrigh'?"
"Yeah. I just…why'd that guy call you G?"
He looks just as confused as you do. "Who?"
Just gotta admit that I noted every single second of our encounter to replay later and know what a random man called you in a two-plus hour span.
"Your…friend from maintenance? He called you G. Through the speaker."
His expression settles immediately. "Dumb nickname the lads gave me." Even with the dim evening light, washed in deep tangerine twilight, there's colour high on his cheekbones. You stare at it dumbfounded. He is not the type of person — you thought — that would ever blush or seem uncomfortable.
"For what? I mean. What's the G stand for?"
"Ghost." He clears his throat loudly, and kicks your tire with his boot.
"Hey," you say lightly, waving your hands out at him. "That's my…those are my tires you're kicking!"
"Tire's nearly flat." He says, eyes flicking to you briefly.
You spin around to look. Sure enough. Dumb ass fucking piece of shit car. Dumb ass fucking piece of shit you.
"Get in." You do, obedient. Then watch as he gestures to you to wait, and jogs long-legged and slightly stiff, to his truck across the way. You watch in silence as his truck headlights come on. Veer out, across his own lot, then looping around until he's by yours.
"'kay, y'can wait in there if you're not gonna boil. Or y'can help me."
Neither of you speak about anything while he loosens the lug nuts, jacks your car up — not surprised he's got his own jack in his truck — then hauls the spare out of your trunk for you. You do helpful tasks like popping the trunk open. Handing him the occasional item. Staring at him. As you lose the dying bits of sun, holding your phone's flashlight out to see better, which he snorts at.
It's done by the time your roadside assistance would even be dispatching someone.
"Take it for a spin." He gestures, and you climb in, aware of the scent he's left behind — an old but mostly clean sweat — and drive around the parking lot, feeling like an idiot learning how to drive.
"Feels good?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Do you get out of the car? Shake his hand? Hug him? "How—no—can I pay you back, please?"
A solemn shake of his head. "Nah, don't be daft. Glad I was here."
"Me too." Again.
"Can I buy you a drink?" What if he doesn't drink? What if he'll take it as flirting? Do you want him to take it as flirting? What if he's married, or g—
"Alrigh'."
You take his number and don't offer yours in return. You suddenly feel very possessive of that scrap of agency left. "Well, thanks again. Simon."
Head clearing as you hit the highway, realizing you have no better information than you started with.
cw: this will eventually become sexually explicit, so mdni from the jump. this is not a dark fic, however, so major tags don't apply.
reader gets an anonymous message at work. this is an anonymous identity x cis-fem reader fic. tags + story blurbs will therefore reflect this. for future readers, please refrain from commenting any spoilers (i will delete + block if they come up).
have fun!
part 1
The company is large, larger than any you've ever worked for. Huge building all its own, not just some leased office in a commercial space. It has its own parking lot, for Christ's sake. You no longer have to shuttle your little chugger of a car into a daily parking lot that charges out the ass.
You get installed in a small quasi-cubicle with a slight partition. You pin a picture of you and your friends at your friend's cottage after your first few weeks when you noticed that other people decorated their spaces openly. You were never going to be bold enough to do it without tacit permission.
Sea legs take awhile, and this is a huge move for your career. You find sanctuary with a team lead, Sasha, who tours you around leisurely, giving you the dos and don'ts — this washroom is a hidden gem, so don't tell anyone else; she gives you extra scoops of guac if you call her miss; don't bother submitting a maintenance ticket, just grab someone if you see 'em and they'll help — until you're at least more comfortable navigating between the different floors to explore a little on your own when you're bored on break.
Work is more interesting and demanding than any other you've held in the past, so you're constantly nose-to-computer otherwise, navigating the online repository of the company's technical guides and user-created templates. You're deep in one when a little pop-up window for the intra-company chat app appears at the bottom of the screen, then minimizes itself with a flashing icon.
» User G_02 would like to send you a message. Would you like to ACCEPT or DECLINE?
Your team, and even your department, is small. You don't know anyone with those initials. Do you? In your email, you pull up the department group to scroll through all the names; you're still new, you're probably forgetting a few.
Nothing. Well, it's intra-company, so no harm, no foul. It's not as if you're clicking on a suspicious link.
» Accept.
You wait. The longer you wait, the antsier you get. You flick at your thumbnail, your fingertip catching where the nail polish is peeling up. Little flecks of polish in a tiny pile that you sweep off with a scoop of your hand.
Wrong message maybe?
Sighing, you flip back to your manual to scroll through for specific information when the window suddenly blinks.
» Like your hair today
» Hi, sorry who is this?
» You don't know?
Your stomach flips.
» Sorry, I'm new. I really don't know anyone outside my department.
» Shame. Should socialize more.
What?
» Oh, well…I'll start soon, i'm sure lol. Sorry what department are you in?
» Kinda fun to let you figure it out
You minimize the chat window silently. It feels like holding a snake that suddenly turns its head to look at you.
You message Sasha, asking if she knows anyone with the first initial G, without telling her the rest. She laughs and says you might as well be asking if there're any white guys working in big tech.
For the rest of the day, anyone passing by your little cubicle is a suspect. You are in a busy, central spot of your floor; dozens of people float around every hour, many faces still unknown to you. You constantly receive a spectrum polite smiles, blank smiles, warm hellos, but nobody that stares or lingers. Every single person you interact with, hear about, you're training yourself to look for any matching initials.
Judging by their message, G doesn't want you to deduce it right away. Wants to play a bit, and you don't like it one bit. You delete the message history. It won't prevent them from sending you messages, but it's the only thing that works to keep your focus off it.
Pretend it hasn't happened.
—
A week later, you're deep in a document review, eyes bleary, when the window blinks. Doesn't occur to you that it wouldn't be anyone but your team members.
» Forgot to mention I like your cute little picture
Your eyes slam to the pinned picture on your partition wall — you, your best friends, soaking wet on the dock, arms up and eyes closed. A comfort to look at. No different from other people's pictures of their pets or kids or spouses. Suddenly, it feels as if you blew it up and hung it off the side of the building to flap in the wind and let the city gawk at you. Like a nude got published. You're all in your bathing suit cover-ups, nothing untoward to hang up in the workplace, but you suddenly grab it, the little pushpin ripping out with it. You stuff it in your bag, suddenly noticing that your palms and soles of your feet are sweating.
» Make you nervous?
» I don't really know what to say. I don't know who you are.
» You sure?
What the fuck. You close the chat again, pushing your chair out from your desk, and get up to go talk with Sasha. She asks if you want to tell IT; not yet, not really. HR? Definitely not. You both tool around and discover the chat app doesn't let you block other users, considering it's just a company-wide tool.
"Okay, well. I can try to look up directories, if you want, anyone with a G-name. Find an org chart, but those are constantly fuckin' outdated. Do you think they work on this floor?"
"Sasha, how would I know that," you laugh weakly. You scroll up through the chat history to show her. "There's nothing there that tells me what department they work in. How often they see me. They could be mailroom, or someone's assistant, or…anyone!"
She chews her lip, hip bumped against your desk. "Yeah. Fuck. Well, just ignore them for now. Let me know if you want to escalate it." She gives you very serious eye contact until you nod sincerely. "Or if they do something even weirder. Okay?"
You wander back to your desk.
You work later than usual that day. A company this size and given the field you're in, there are still dozens of people on calls, staring at screens, wrapping up meetings. Makes you feel better, safer.
A maintenance worker is waiting for the elevator when you approach. The sheer breadth of him makes you feel small and insignificant, standing there with your lunch bag and water bottle and backpack like a schoolkid. He's got a big yellow maintenance pushcart with him, and when the doors ding open, you motion for him to go first so you can fit yourself in after. He obliges with a blank nod, and you skirt in behind him.
G for you.
B1 for him.
You're staring unseeingly at the smeared stainless steel reflection of the elevator door, picking at your nail polish, when the lights flicker rapidly in a one-two count, and then the elevator car is shuddering, pulling up short and making your stomach roil.
"What the fuck," you mutter automatically. Eyes flick up to the robotic floor read-out, but that doesn't even seem certain where you are. Between 2nd and 3rd floor?
The lights shudder out again, plunging you both in dark for a few moments. You breathe in sharply until some sort of backup system kicks in, running lights on the ceiling of the elevator turning on. A ceiling fan spinning, thank god.
You turn to the maintenance worker — also thank god, someone who might know what to do exactly besides pressing the HELP button — and his mouth is downturned, unimpressed.
"Do you want—?" You gesture to the panel of buttons. He nods silently. Then, with the big-ass cart filling up the space of nearly 4 people, you have to maneuver off to the side like one of those frustrating tile games so he can bring himself up to where you were stood.
Tucked at the back, his broad back blocks you from seeing what he's pressing. Then there's a tinny, crackling voice. "Maintenance."
"Hey mate, it's me. Stuck in car 2 between 2 and 3. Power go out?"
"Oh, hey, man." You can almost detect relief in the other person's voice, like they're grateful not to hear from a panicking employee instead. "Yeah, brown-out. Car should be good though — lights and fan on?"
"Yeah."
"Weird. 'Kay, hold tight. I'll give J a ring." The crackling noise cuts out.
You stare at his back impolitely. Large shapely muscles bulked under a dark grey short-sleeved canvas shirt, tattoos pouring out over thick biceps and forearms. Workman's belt. Matching grey canvas pants and some of the thickest black boots you've seen. Huge, muscular ass. Tree trunk thighs stretching the canvas tight.
Boots turning backward to face you. Your eyes fly up to his face — solemn dark eyes, healed-wrong nose, and full mouth — breathlessly, guilty.
"Y'alrigh'?"
"Yeah?" You almost cough. "Yeah. Good."
"Might be a bit. Stingy fuckers been delaying calling the elevator techs out since spring."
"Oh." You panic because there's nothing to look at except for him and all he's looking at it is the way you're grabbing helplessly at the straps of your backpack. "Well. At least we've got air." You, ever the optimist.
—
The cart forces awkwardness. When you finally slide to sit down, and he follows suit later, you can't even see one another. Two ends of an L shape of space.
The silence is mortifying for no good reason, shining floodlights on your social insecurities.
You've tucked yourself in the back corner of the car, knees pulled up to your chest, unzipping your backpack quietly like you don't want to disturb the man.
It's been an hour and a half. You've stopped caring about the sweat that's peppered along your hairline, under your arms.. You scrape your hair up and find a claw clip to keep it off your skin.
"Whatcha got?" he asks after you crinkle around in your lunch bag too loudly.
"Oh, I was…I was just about to offer. I have some cold noodle salad left. You allergic to sesame or peanut?"
"Nah, no allergies."
You scrape two portions out, using your emptied containers to divvy them up. Big boy; you serve him a bigger portion. Around the corner from you, he won't know any different. Instead of standing, you scoot forward until you're peeking around. His legs are kicked out as much as they can, but he looks cramped and awkward.
He meets you halfway, arms flexing to grab your offerings; a can of grapefruit seltzer water, chopsticks and cold noodle salad, and a two-bite brownie from the dollar store. His expression, so blank before, looks surprised when he sees it.
His big fingers drag against yours as you weirdly try to place it all in his opened palms.
"Cheers," he says bluntly.
You nod politely and you both retreat to your corners like sweating, sad boxers.
"Oh wait!" You call out brighter than anything else you've said to him. "Ice packs."
A repeat of moving forward and then a hand-off a cool-but-better-than-nothing ice pack. He makes a very small sound when it hits his hands. Scuffled back into your spots again. A deeper groan when he puts the ice pack…wherever. You don't want to imagine where he's placed it.
"You get this downstairs?" It's the only question he's asked you except
At first, you think he means the ice pack.
"Huh? Oh, the salad? No, I made it. Why, is it okay?" Properly a character deficiency for you to seek validation from a random stranger in a stuck elevator.
He slurps the noodles loudly. "S'fuckin' good. Can't figure these things out though." You suspect he means the chopsticks.
You laugh lightly. "Sorry, I don't have a fork."
"Don't say sorry. S'good." The crisp sound of the pop can being cracked open and then a long thirsty guzzle. He must be sweatier than you in that canvas uniform. You imagine his Adam's apple working up and down as he chugs the water. "Ah, what the fuck is that" spat out in a strangled voice.
"What?"
"Your pop's gone off."
"Huh?"
"Tastes old."
Realization. You laugh. "It's just seltzer water. Flavoured. Not really pop."
You see the edge of his steel toed boots move slightly, and then a hand appear around the corner, setting the opened drink down for you. He moves back against his wall. "'m good. Thanks."
Are you opposed to drinking from the same can as a stranger? Yes.
This stranger? You grab the can quickly as if he's going to snatch you, and set it beside you. Look down and see where some of the water's pooled around the open tab. In the utter, humiliating privacy of your corner, you silently sniff the top of the can. Nothing. You have a tiny sip, and then dig into your own noodles, awash with whatever has come over you. A bitch in heat.
You gasp very loudly when the speaker crackles to life.
"Ey, G? You good, man?"
The man — you still don't know his name. He doesn't know yours — awkwardly pushes himself up to stand. "Yeah."
"Sorry for the wait there, brother. Fuckin' shitshow with these fools. Someone had to pull up their goddamn contract to check about OT calls. Anyway, they should be here soon. You guys good?"
"Yeah, all good, mate. Cheers." From this angle, stood up tall, he glances back and sees you tucked up tight, staring up at him. A funny look crosses his face, but you don't know him, can't read him.
When the technicians finally arrive, it doesn't take long for you guys to finally arrive at the 2nd floor, doors sliding open, and you finally on more stable ground. The man chats a little with the techs and you shyly say, "Thank you so much," to…everyone there, and then aim for the stairwell. The cold recirculated office air is a fucking relief on your skin, under your dampened clothing.
There's a door slam in the stairwell, echoing loudly in the chamber as you descend, and heavy boots clomping down, not hurried but not slow. You glance back and up: he's followed you. Didn't stay to chat.
"Walk you out." He says simply, and you mouth oh and you don't really have any arguments for that, so you walk self-consciously ahead of him. Aware that your pants and top are stuck unflatteringly to your skin with probably a pool-shaped band of sweat at the back of your top. "You drive or take public?"
"Uh, drive." Nerves rankling your voice like you didn't just spend hours cooped up in a tighter space than this.
He nods. Laughs short and rough when he sees you heading to the single car in the deserted parking lot. Overnight crews must park elsewhere.
An absurd question out of your mouth — "Do you want a drive home? Or…need? I don't know if you drive or…" You fumble with your car keys, press repeatedly on the fob to open the doors just for something to do with your hands. Your car lights blinks obediently as you approach.
"'m good. Drove." You turn your head, too afraid to look back up at him now, but watching his arm lift to gesture at a secondary parking lot. Some trucks parked there.
He stands, crossing his arms across his bulky chest, as you smile unnaturally.
"Okay, well, thanks, I guess." You laugh uncomfortably. "For keeping your cool. Made me feel a lot better."
"Yeah?" An eyebrow, ripped apart by scar tissue, tugging up by a hair.
"Yeah. A lot, actually." And then immediately, your cheeks feel even hotter, feeling like you've revealed something far too intimate to a man whose drink you swallowed.
"Cute."
You hustle into your car, flinging your shit on the passenger seat, sweating furiously and keys bouncing off the ignition cylinder multiple times until it takes, and waving until you can pull out and far away.
In bed that night, showered clean and cool, you're tracing the day's events like fingering a long rosary bead until you realize that the other maintenance person called him G.
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
Part 1
masterlist
It must be the mother of all quarter-life crises for you to be as torn up about this as you are.
(‘Mother of all’—what an apt phrase for a time like this.)
Two of your friends have babies and suddenly it’s all you can think about. Chubby cheeks and wrinkly fingers; diaper bags stuffed to the brim and shrill baby screams piercing through the house.
You try to help them out as best you can in those first few months, coming over with dinner wrapped in foil and snacks in Tupperware for the exhausted parents, offering to help run errands or tidy up the place while they try to catch up on sleep. The picture perfect friend.
You never thought it’d hit you like this until it does. Baby fever à la max. Even the word ‘fever’ undersells it—the feeling that overtakes you is like a blazing inferno, burning away every other want or desire apart from the one currently tearing you asunder.
It’s all you can think about from that point on. Babies, babies, babies. The milky smell of their heads, the flexible cartilage of their noses, their pudgy, wrinkly yawns and soft sighs. You make excuses to visit, offering to babysit whenever they look like they could use a night out, your agenda so transparent that anyone with eyes could see it.
All you can think when you look at them is that your life has been looking a lot like a house of cards these days: all style and no substance.
They get in your head, alright. That ominous they; not a specific person or group, just a nebulous, widespread opinion permeating far too many corners of your world. All that fearmongering about babymaking windows and that talk of rapidly vanishing fecundity—your eyes nearly bulge out of your head when you come across a TikTok of a thirty-six year old calling her eggs geriatric—and by the end of it, you swear you can hear your biological clock booming between your ears, one swinging gong after another.
You’re able to keep the beast at bay for a bit by tricking yourself into thinking that it’s just in your head. Just one of those things. You’re getting older—of course at some point you’d start to worry about the things you never got a chance to do. FOMO. Regrets blooming into full-blown crises. It’s only natural that it would start to get to you eventually.
Trying to convince yourself of that is not enough to shake the damn urgency from your blood though. You’re like a dog with a bone, too many late nights spent scrolling through parenting forums and conception tips, neither of which are of much use to you as a childless, partnerless person not currently trying for a baby. What does it matter to you if smoking reduces your chances of getting pregnant by forty percent? You don’t even smoke.
You might actually want to have a baby though. Mindblowing after all this time, to think that maybe it wasn’t just a fleeting fancy.
Mindblowing, then abruptly terrifying.
Your present situation is a bit dire. It’s been several years since you last had a partner, none you ever would’ve ever considered having a baby with. Absurd—worse than absurd even. And despite everything, despite the self-imposed countdown ticking away in your head and the stress causing your spine to curl in a half-inch more every single day, you are, thankfully, not desperate enough to reach out to any of them.
So you try. For a short period of time, you make a real, concerted effort to find a partner, going on three dates in a week, each more appalling than the last. It’s the last one that breaks you, your date not only unbearably dismissive to the waitstaff but also entirely uninterested in discussing anything about your life, completely preoccupied with recounting the minutiae of his own life story.
A swing and a miss. You made an effort at least, put yourself out there. Tried to do things the old-fashioned way.
It’s the twenty-first century though, for goodness’ sakes; there are more ways to start a family than just the tried-and-true method.
And that’s how you wind up here, at a fertility clinic on a Tuesday afternoon, PTO plugged into your work calendar with a secretive little “Appointment” reason left for being out of office. It’s no office-busybody’s business though. They don’t need to know about the increasingly debilitating need to have a baby that’s been overtaking you these past few months.
It would clear a lot of things up, but it still isn’t anyone’s business.
The waiting room is a simple, unadorned roost of a room, the walls lined with plastic eggshell-like chairs for all the eggs soon to be hatched. An oddly sterile space for the purpose it serves. It would be a little uncomfortable if it weren’t like every other waiting room in existence, minus any snivelling sick people.
There are other people besides you. Or rather, there were people. People that have already come and gone, not quite so anxious as to turn up an hour early for their two o’clock appointment, their stomachs grumbling from skipping lunch.
And so after the third couple goes in for their appointment with the specialist, you’re left on your own for a bit until a new person walks in.
A man this time, all by his lonesome.
And boy is he a specimen so fine that you can’t help but hope that he’s come to make a deposit. If they let you pick your donor based on build and gait alone, you think you’d have your man right here. You can barely drag your eyes away from him, glued to the rounded muscle of his back, gliding over the curve of his shoulders and up the thick of his neck.
After a brief conversation with the receptionist to check in, he drums his fingers across the counter and takes a seat on one of the little egg chairs along the wall facing yours.
Where he then proceeds to lift his head and lock eyes with you.
In retrospect, you wish you could describe it as a magical moment, but in reality, you just freeze in place, embarrassed at being caught staring. He’s a decently handsome enough man to be good fodder for any later self-care. Square-jawed and bearded.
Good hairline for his age, which you don’t want to take a crack at guessing, but if you had to, it would have to be somewhere around his mid-forties. Maybe late. But it touches him in just the right way, evident in the lines on his forehead and the pull of the skin around his eyes, his beard just ever so slightly flecked with the barest hints of grey.
The writing on the threadbare shirt he has on, almost hidden beneath the plaid shirt layered over it, is barely legible after countless washes. You can almost see straight through it. If you pinched the fabric between your fingers, you think your nails would poke right through. You could rip it right off him, get a better look at the dense pecs that you can just barely make out through his shirt.
You swallow, that thought catching you off guard.
Despite your own embarrassment, his gaze holds steady. Some people aren’t born with shame as a built-in foghorn. Some people look out into the world and genuinely believe it is theirs to conquer, raised on a diet of self-confidence and boldness, free-range audacity.
He’s bold enough, in fact, to rise to his feet and cross to the other side of the waiting room, taking a seat right beside you. He sits down beside you like you're old friends, like there's nothing strange about a man sitting beside a veritable stranger in a completely empty room.
It’s such a bold move that you don’t even know what to say at first, head turned towards him in the chair next to you now with some dumb expression on your face, gobsmacked.
“Can I help you?” you hear yourself ask, years of socialization coming to the rescue. Thank god the gears start turning in your head after that brief second of bewilderment.
“Not at all.” And what a voice too, as if his looks weren’t enough. All unintentional deep-chested purr, leonine English rumbling out of the depths of him, Northern accent to top it off. “Just thought I might introduce myself. Be polite, seeing as how we’re both here for the same reason.”
Unless he ran ahead of a wife still on her way up the elevator, you don’t think that’s the case. You glance around him just to double check the door. “Are we?”
“Maybe a pick-up instead of a drop-off in your case,” he concedes, a droll little note curled up in his voice. “But that’s not so different when the end result’s the same.”
You swallow and force an awkward smile, ignoring the way your heart speeds up. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, nice to meet you, um, circumstances aside.” You hold out a hand, which he doesn’t hesitate to take.
“Nothing wrong with the circumstances, but pleasure to meet you too, love.”
His palm feels huge around yours, a warm, firm grip that only yields a few moments later when you have to make an effort to pull your hand away, holding on for the fleetingest of seconds, long enough for a spark of anxiety to shoot through your chest.
You hope that’s the end of it when he finally lets go of your hand. Not because you don’t want to chat up an incredibly attractive stranger, but because you couldn’t imagine the timing being worse.
He, however, seems to have no qualms with carrying on. “Has it taken yet or are you shopping for donors today?”
It’s a horribly invasive question, but you answer it anyway, all buttoned-up and ginger. “Um. No, I’m just here for a consultation. There’ll probably be a lot of paperwork before, um…before we get started.”
“A lot of nonsense for something I reckon we could get done a lot easier together.”
It doesn’t register until it does. Then you just have to look at him and blink, confused.
“Excuse me?” you ask.
He cocks an eyebrow. “I haven’t got this wrong, have I? You said you’re here for a baby?”
“Uh, yes, that’s—that’s what I just said.”
“And I’m here to help someone like you have a baby. Seems like we’d be making both of our lives easier if we just skipped all the red tape and saved you the expense.”
“‘Save me the expense’?” you repeat, stunned.
“Won’t cost anything the natural way.”
You know what he’s insinuating, but you can’t believe it. You actually can’t believe that this man—a stranger, handsome as he might be, good-looking as he might be, husband-envy-inspiring as he might be—would openly proposition you in the waiting room of a fertility clinic. Offer to get you pregnant ‘the natural way’, as if it were a cold drink on a hot day. A side of fries with your order.
“I—I’m sorry, but that’s incredibly inappropriate,” you eventually wheeze out.
That gets a laugh out of him, one of those amused huffs that erupts out of him like a bear flicking a bee off its snout. “Can’t be cagey about this sort of thing, love. You have to be direct when you want to get things done.”
“You do know we’re in public, right?”
“I’d be happy to take this somewhere private.”
The heat under your cheeks might actually result in a physical burn. “I…think I’m going to find somewhere else to sit.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that, love, I’m gonna head out anyway.” A satisfied smile tugs at his mouth. “I think I got what I actually came for.”
Your frown deepens. “You haven’t even been called in yet.”
“Not what I meant.”
Before you can ask what he means, he shifts in his seat, leaning closer to you for just a second, but long enough for your heart to suddenly go wild and your pupils to go big as dinner plates.
“Here,” he grunts, lifting a hip to pull his wallet out of his back pocket, flicking it open and plucking out a business card. He flips your hand over and puts it down on your palm. “That’s my number. When you’re done here, give me a call. I’m sure we can come up with something better than this.”
He taps the card in your hand with a finger. It ricochets through you, the tap rippling up your arm and chest, nearly rocking you back in your seat. Everything he does must be punctuated with the same echoing weight.
He nods to you on his way out, a secretive smile on his lips, just the barest hint of a lift that you might’ve missed had you not been staring at his face. All you can do is stare though, still absolutely floored, practically speechless as you watch him leave.
And then you’re alone again, in an entirely different headspace than when you first sat down.
“John Price?” the receptionist calls out from behind the desk suddenly, but with the man gone, there’s no one else in the waiting room apart from you. “Mr. John Price?”
You blink, stun-locked. You can’t have been the reason he decided to back out of his appointment at the last minute. He must’ve decided to bail at the last minute before throwing a Hail Mary in an attempt to get laid.
That has to be it. He wouldn’t leave because of a brief interaction with you.
The waiting room feels a lot emptier without him now that he’s gone, as if by being made aware of his presence, everything has been indelibly altered. Changed. Slightly less interesting somehow.
You hover somewhere between bewilderment and affront until a flicker of giddiness steals in. Tamp that back down. He's gone, and with him the impossible audacity of what just came out of his mouth. You stare at the door that he just disappeared through, lips parting around a reply you'll never get to deliver, then let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. The gall.
And yet, despite yourself, you can't quite smother the giddiness bubbling low in the pit of your stomach. Your fingers curl around the business card in your hand.
Eventually it’s your turn. You almost miss the sound of your own name until a lady in purple scrubs repeats it, sending you shooting to your feet. You follow her as she leads you down a hall and towards an open office just as clean and spartan as the waiting room. All there is in her office is a desk, a bookshelf, and a mobile ultrasound machine. Practically empty for all intents and purposes.
Ok lady, you think, sitting down across from her, what’s it gonna take to put a baby in me?
“Four thousand dollars,” she says matter-of-factly, the earlier part of your conversation long forgotten after hearing the price.
That just about knocks all the wind out of you. “Oh,” you bleat, the prospect of ever getting pregnant suddenly a sad and distant dream.
“Per cycle,” she further clarifies, much to your dismay, sliding a couple pamphlets your way. “We’re always hopeful that it’ll take on the first cycle, but we typically see about three to four cycles of IUI before conception occurs.”
IUI—intrauterine insemination. The sperm they have to shove up inside you to just and knock you up. At four thousand dollars a pop.
“There’s no…first time discount?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like the, um…like the home buyer’s loan.”
She seems vaguely apologetic when she shakes her head at least, though that doesn’t really ease the sting. “No, unfortunately. Most of our customers are first time parents, so—”
It wouldn’t make much business sense. “Yeah, no, I get it.”
You do your best to pay attention to the rest of the conversation and ask the right questions, but the sticker shock makes it hard to focus. At some point, the consultation must end because she sends you off with a folder full of pamphlets and QR codes to scan, and a follow-up appointment booked two weeks out for a blood test and a pelvic ultrasound.
No music on the drive home, just silence to let the events of the day marinate.
You know it’s likely just this clinic. It’s not like there aren’t other, probably cheaper clinics. But it’s the principle of the matter, the one factor that you hadn’t considered in this whole endeavour—you’d assumed, obviously, that raising a child in and of itself wouldn’t be cheap, but you hadn't even contemplated that the run-up to actually getting pregnant might be so cost prohibitive.
If you even get pregnant. You exhale in a rush, the thought hitting you like a sledgehammer. God, you might not even get pregnant. You might go through the whole treatment, waste thousands of dollars, and go half-crazy begging the universe to let you get knocked up, and it might not even take.
Dinner is a glass of white wine and burrito straight from the freezer, in no mood to cook or clean even a single dish. You should be cutting down on your alcohol consumption in anticipation of fertility treatments, but that’ll be a task for a later, less devastated you. You’ll rinse the hot sauce off your plate when you’re done eating and leave it in the sink for tomorrow morning.
It’s not how you wanted the day to end. You were hoping to come home invigorated and inspired, already prepping for the next steps in the process. Instead it feels like you’ve taken a massive step back.
Occasionally you like to look up flights to other countries just to imagine what it might be like to get away from your life for a bit, but the ticket price always brings you back down to reality.
This isn’t like that though; this isn’t some temporary flight of fancy or some pie in the sky that you’ll spend decades chasing down in your dreams, hoping for just a single bite or even just a whiff. This is something you actually, genuinely want. A baby. Something you can take with you into the future, something you can build your life around.
There’s got to be another way.
It’s a physical weight in your front pocket. You can feel it now, burning a hole in your hip. When you pull it out, the name John Price is printed on the card in a crisp, typewriter font, his phone number and occupation printed in the same sized font just beneath it.
You stare at the card long enough for your eyes to go dry. Blink. Breathe out, reluctance giving way to acceptance, as tentative as it might be. It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing to ever happen. A fun night with a good-looking man, with the added benefit of getting a baby out of it, no strings attached. Not the most irresponsible decision anyone has ever made. Some people join the army, after all.
A shiver runs up your spine when you remember the way he worded it though. Sweat on your upper lip that you have to lick off, the salt sinking into the ridges of your tongue. You don’t think he meant turkey basters and plastic cups by getting it done ‘the natural way’. You saw the way he looked at you.
You could do it for a baby. Let him—and here, you have to squeeze your eyes shut and cover them with your fists—let him do what he has to do to get you pregnant. Cut out the middle man and just let him fit the heavy weight of his body over yours and pry your legs apart to let him sink between your—
ignoring icky!Mckay throughout your entire shift because last night she just left you in your bed as soon as she made herself cum using your body. Not even a kiss goodbye! this makes her mad and corners you in the break room, and you still wouldn’t budge :(
don’t make her follow you home tonight, princess :(
hi so based off of arm scene 🙂↕️🙂↕️ ib: @pagetsfishpurse & her late night shenanigans<3
mean gym bro!cassie mckay x fem!reader
mean!cassie who fucks you in a chokehold after you complement the newfound muscle in her arms, your neck held tight between her bicep and flexor as her strap pushes between your slick folds. her chain brushes lightly over the back of your neck bringing delicate lines of bumps to your skin as you shiver from the contact.
mean!cassie who tells you how much of a fithy slut you are for getting off being manhandled like this.
mean!cassie who only goes harder when you beg her to slow down, her silicone length bullying against your plush walls, the curve just right to hit your g-spot over and over again
mean!cassie who's other hand remains firmly on your tits, tugging and pinching the peaked buds of your nipples.
mean!cassie who neglects your clit altogether, only focused on bringing herself to the edge as she grinds her needy bud against the base of her strap
mean!cassie who holds you unable to breathe until unoxygenated tears spill down your cheeks, but even then, she only relaxes the crushing pressure minutely + uses the pad of her thumb to wipe them from your cheeks.. and then makes you taste them as she pushes her thumb into your mouth.
mean!cassie who always comes back from the gym all sweaty and gross, so she makes it her mission to make you all sweaty and gross too<33
just icky!Mckay’s weird ass pulling your panties down while you’re sleeping just to admire and press soft kisses to your pussy. She’s not even eating you out! pressing her nose at your mons and just sniffs. She’s such an icky perv >_<
it’ll be so funny if icky!Mckay coerced you into a quickie in an empty room during rush hour, and when you pulled down her scrub pants, she already got her strap on 😭😭😭 girl what the hell are you doing walking around the ED just strapped up 😭😭
synopsis you and Jack have always been two pees in a pod, working the ER together, on the field together, no wonder you started to search for those dark eyes and damning smirk. and you thought for a second, just for a second, he might be searching for you too, until you hear the man you're crushing on airing out everything he hates about you
warningstypical medical drama stuff, in-accurate medical terms. miscommunication. angst. insecure reader. language, jack says things he doesn't mean about reader. angry love confession in the rain. this is not proof-read
authornotei really really really loved this idea and tried so hard to do it justice, I hope you like anon. I tried to stay close to the SWAT idea but I'll be honest I know nothing about American army stuff (i'm british) so I sort of set it as much in the Pitt as I could. I also couldn't find ANYTHING for Jack's military background so I made up some SWAT guys
pitt masterlist. another Jack fic!
Just when you thought the rest of your day was going to be boring, Jack Abbot and his crew of SWAT pushed through the ambulance bay doors, yelling off stats, applying pressure where needed and clearing the way around them.
Which was a welcome change from trying to sell Robby your hypothetical first born child in exchange for a lunch break.
“Intubated neck wound, stats are going down. Got a room?” said Jack.
You were at the gurney in an instance, Robby joining the herd in the pushing of the bed. It took you less than a second to see through the bag in the neck and the blood and the uniform to recognise the one on the gurney. “Hiro? What happened?”
“Warehouse robbery gone wrong,” said Jack with almost absent of mind. He said the words and promptly seemed to realise who he was talking to and looked up- at you- again. “You're working today?”
“Oh no, I just hang around in hopes of seeing you in unfiorm.”
Next to you, Robby chuckled and beyond Jack you gave quick greeting to your laughing buddies, clad in SWAT uniform.
You were what could be called, a floater.
By all educational means you were a doctor and a damn good one too. You had every certificate you needed and all the flying colours you could get. You just didn't have a permanent job. You were a sub. You worked mainly at PTMC and on the field but had been known to go to the dark side, a.k.a, Presby.
“Okay, on my count,” you begin. “One, two, three-”
You helped lift him over to the bed.
“Did you intubate him?” you asked,
“Yeah, under active fire,” said Jack.
You looked at Jack. Sweat on his forehead, flecks of grey hair sticking to him and the shirt under his army vest hung lose. He was dishevelled in away romance characters presented on books covers. To lure you in. “You were shot?”
“Shot at.”
“You need to be looked at?”
“No. I'm fine.” His lips were pursed, focus on Hiro.
“Did you see the chords when you intubated?” asked Robby, floating around the two of you as Jack refused to leave Hiro's side and you stayed by Abbot. He'd seen it a dozen times before. A disaster where there was one, there was the other.
There was the occasions he'd hand over to Jack, go home, sleep and come back to find Jack had called in you. You who was always ready to go at the first buzz of your pager. Wherever it was, whatever you had to do. And Robby would look through the patients that night, check the board and understand they hadn't really needed your help all that much.
Jack had.
Now, Robby saw the way you looked at Jack and had seen the gap that existed between the two of you.
“Yeah, I did but it was hard to miss when I cleared them.”
Jack reached and you watched as he stretched, wincing at the pull in his shoulder.
“You should get that looked at,” you told him.
“I'm fine.”
“No, you're not.”
There was a small roll of the eyes as Jack's gaze rose to meet yours through his goggles. There was almost a tiny hint of a smirk- your favourite kind but it disappeared as soon as it appeared.
“Yeah, c'mon Abbot!” said Charlie, calling from the back of his room where he stood with Diaz, two of the SWAT officers you were most frequent with. “Let doc work you up.”
You chuckled low to yourself, trying to catch Jack's eyes to share the joke but he looked away, his jaw clenching.
So, he wasn't in the joking mood.
“Alright, fellas, out!” leaving the wounded's side you ushered them out in spite of their protests and their giddy, hopeful optimism that Officer Hiro would pull through. “We'll let you know any changes, out!”
You pulled on a gown and cleared a way over.
“Demanding,” said Robby.
“You should hear me in the bedroom,” you teased with a wink.
Over on the other side you caught a small click from Jack's tongue. A disapproval voiced loud enough for others to hear.
You grasped the ultrasound wand from the nurse, circling it around the wound at Hiro's neck while Jack pulled away the gauze he'd packed, carefully minding you. “Good lung sliding, no pneumo-”
The last gauze peeled away in a bloody mess and a rope of blood shot out directly at you for vengeance.
“Geez- woah!”
“Pumper!” you announced, clamping your hand over the wound.
The streak of red cut through the skin on your neck, your gown and the doctors coat you liked to wear just like they did in tv shows. You had a draw full of them at home for instances like that.
“Hey, hey,” Jack was at your side quick as you loomed over the body. “Move back, get yourself cleaned up.”
“I can handle a little blood, Abbot.”
“I know that but-”
“- this is a transected trachea now-”
There was little else time to worry about blood on your gown and coat when the intubation was pulled out, the hole in his throat open.
There was a lot people said about you, with words and looks alike but none of which passed you or bothered you. You knew some thought you abrash and loud, you were, you knew it true. On the field the teams you worked with always thought you as one of them, 'one of the guys' but damn it- you were a good doctor.
You ordered everything correctly, you took them and worked them without so much as a blink and Robby stood behind you approving of everything you did.
It was one of the reasons he always called you in.
“Well done, good breaths sounds, stats are up: in the nineties,” approved Robby.
Jack hummed, pulling off his gloves as you all backed away. “Not bad.”
Your carried your smirk with you and over to him. “Is that the great Jack Abbot stamp of approval?”
“You know I think you're good at you're job,” he said, plainly.
You did know that. You knew that Jack admired your skills. He was one of the only ones who'd seen your skills on the field when sometimes all you had left in your kit was the dregs from other procedures or in the hospital when everything was pristine. He'd worked closest to you, probably out of everyone in either one of your jobs.
But there was always something about Jack that kept him far away. He was always a man that was so calm, which in the the face of conflict wasn't a bad call. Yet, it was the quiet moments in between- the way his footfall would slow to match yours, or the glances he'd steal at you half way across the ward, or the extra snacks he'd pack that had you searching rooms for him, checking shifts to see if you'd be around him.
Then when you were, Jack pursed his lips, clenched his jaw, acted like he wanted to be anywhere else sometimes than at your side.
He was a complicated man. Annoyingly that's what added to your attraction- and everyone knew it.
Once the two of you told Officer Charlie and Diaz that Hiro was stable enough to be taken to surgery you followed after Jack.
“You sure you don't want me to look at that shoulder for you?”
“Hmm? Oh, no, it's fine,” he excused.
“Don't want the paperwork?”
“Something like that,” said Jack, still shifting around in pain as he tried to roll his shoulder out.
“Okay, okay, but get it looked at!” you called off, ready to shed your coat or at least try and rub off some of Hiro's blood.
There was a mutter from Jack before he went another way.
You looked back to him once, watching as he walked off with a small limp that probably wasn't detectable to anyone that didn't analyse him like you did. It was a brutal sort of thing, SWAT, and with Abbot's sleep schedule you knew it was only worse. Eight- maybe ten hour shifts for so little sleep to get thrown back into the fire- literally. You wondered how he did it.
And, why.
Jack flexed out his shoulder at the press of the q-tip to his back.
He meant it, the wound really wasn't that bad. It had grazed through his clothes and vest but still hit just enough to leave an angry welt and bruising. He was content to hide away and sort it himself if it weren't for the fact he couldn't reach.
Then Samira Mohan walked by and offered her help. He was already tired, annoyed that those punks had thought it a good idea to rob a warehouse in the middle of the day, already worried about Hiro and his recovery. Then- there was you, with your snarky comments while saving his life, not batting a lash at the blood that got splattered on you in the mean time and still having time to flirt with Robby.
And prancing around in this scrub pants that were surely just a bit too tight.
Jack was wound up, which was why he admitted surrender and allowed Mohan to clean out his wound.
“Why do you do this?” she'd asked.
Jack had folded his arms over his chest, suddenly very aware he was shirtless in front of her. “My therapist says I need a hobby. I suck at golf.”
She hummed. “Funny.”
“Thank you.”
He made conversation to be polite, asking about the fellowships he knew others were already applying for. Crus had been telling him about them and he knew Mohan was searching to.
They were chatting was all when Robby walked by, looking in to check.
He frowned when he saw Mohan and Abbot, pausing in his fly by with a hand in the door way.
Jack watched as Robby looked around again at the ward, undoubtedly searching for you.
“We're almost finished up here,” said Mohan.
Robby held up his hands. “I didn't say anything,” he said, leaning in the doorway. He passed Jack a nod. “You good?”
“Getting there, thanks to Doctor Mohan's capable hands.” Jack kept his eyes averted from Robby as if he'd done something wrong. He hadn't. He'd told you the wound didn't need looking at because he was going to handle it.
Robby looked at him the sort of way he looked at patients when he knew they were lying about their scale of pain. “Can you give us a second?”
Just as Jack was about to push himself up Samira moved behind him.
“Er, yeah, sure. No problem,” she said, pulling off her gloves and listing off post-care instructions from instinct. “Keep it clean and the dressing fresh.”
“Can do, Doctor Mohan. Thank you.”
Robby stepped out of the way for Mohan before walking in, staring at Jack with his hands in his pockets.
Jack found his shirt discarded on the floor and pulled it over him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Clearly,” said Jack.
“Are you avoiding her, now?”
Jack didn't need to ask who he was talking about and Robby didn't need to specify. “Course not.”
“Did she do something?”
“No.”
“So what was all that? Back in trauma?” asked Robby. His eyes were beady, waiting to pick up on any shift in Jack or anything that might betray him. But Robby wore his heart on his sleeve. He might think he doesn't or thinks he's good at hiding such emotions away but Jack and everyone else sees them anyhow.
Jack had his heart buried deep down. “I dunno, man,” he huffed, ignoring the burning sensation as he pulled his shirt back over him. “Maybe I just didn't feel like joking around when my buddy was bleeding out on the table.”
Robby shook his head, eyes creasing. “People bleed out all the time.”
Jacks lips pursed as he worked on tucking his shirt back into his pants. Anything to keep him occupied and averted from Robby’s knowing gaze.
“I haven’t seen you this worked up since you first met her,” he teased.
“Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Abbot grumbled.
Robby chuckled low in his throat, leaning back on the wall comfortable like he was watching his favourite show. “When two consenting adults like each other very much-”
“I don’t,” said Jack, abrupt. “I don’t… like her.”
“Jack, c’mon-”
Jack turned to Robby. He considered his confusion. Sure, you were a great doctor and even better on the field. Something about the chaos seemed to focus you, bringing out your best self. You were funny, even at the worse times.
“She’s not it for me,” he said, trying to mean those words.
Your smile first thing in the morning didn’t warm him. The fact you knew his coffee order after only two days of working together didn’t make him feel special. You were incredibly intelligent. Beautiful.
Jack twisted and turned around his wedding band.
Robby watched, heaving a sigh. “Brother…”
Jack couldn’t keep you in his heart when his dead wife still held a place there. It wasn’t fair to you.
“She’s not it, Robby.”
“And why not?” He asked, pushing and prodding against his bag of lies like he knew he was carrying it.
“She’s different- we’re two different. You know with my- with my wife we worked. She wasn’t a doctor, she didn’t throw her life away on field missions. She wasn’t… she wasn’t ruthless, she was soft. Perfect for me.”
He pressed down against the metal band branding him.
“You’re not gonna give yourself a chance to be happy because she’s not like your wife?” Asked Robby.
Jack glanced back at him. “I know what works for me. I can’t be with someone as loud or… bash. She’s-she’s brutal, you know.”
Robby nodded but there was a furrow between his brows. “We all have our own ways of dealing with things.”
“Her way is drinking every weekend, out with the guys, there’s no healthy habits there,” argued Jack. Why he was arguing about you with Robby he didn’t know. Why he was defending himself with words that fell like led on his tongue he had no idea.
“Okay,” said Robby in a way that marked defeat.
But Jack didn’t believe what he was saying. He heard himself and frowned. “And I don’t even think she’s a person who could settle down. Hmm, I mean look at her job? She’s constantly in between them.”
“She’s a sub, that’s what she does-”
“- scared of commitment,” corrected Jack.
Robby scoffed out a laugh of disbelief. “Okay, you’re in a mood or something.” He pushed himself from the wall.
“No, I’m not,” he argued a little too quick and a little too harsh to be okay with what he was saying. “She’s a good person she’s just not my person. You know she-she doesn’t even like flowers, who doesn’t like flowers?”
“She’s more than a good person, Jack,” said Robby with an air of defeat about him. With one last look back to Jack he left, closing the door gently behind him.
In the seconds the door was open Jack sort a peek out. You were at the nurses desk, leaning over a tablet, the blue glow illuminating you. There was a troubled look to your face, scrunching your brows and marring your usual unflappable gaze. Jack almost wanted to see the chart himself and ask what was bothering you, but he knew you never told him, only ever let it be yourself that saw your problems.
Another thing he couldn’t stand. You’d never ask for help.
Even if, Jack couldn’t admit it out loud, he’d help without an invitation too.
You suppose you shouldn’t have been surprised, yet doctors ran on hope. Without hope trauma rooms became morgues and body’s became empty vessels. You’d built hope into your system, kept somewhere between your heart and stomach.
That’s why you felt it plummet.
She’s not it for me.
There was no intention to listen in on a conversation that clearly you weren’t supposed to know about. You'd just been passing by when you heard your name from Jacks mouth. That was enough to stop you in place. If your feet weren't frozen you would have moved, made yourself busy or call up to surgery to check on Hiro.
But as Jack went on your heart plummeted.
She's brutal.
It wasn't until you heard Robby defend you that you moved away, hiding with your back to the exam room and hunching over a tablet that held no chart.
You'd always assumed Jack was just harder to crack then some of the other SWAT guys. You could read most of them within days, know their moods from a glance. You'd never been able to read Jack and maybe it was because he didn't want to be known by you.
You thought seeing Hiro with a hole in his neck would be the worst thing of the day but you caught your reflection in the black screen of the tablet and resented the way things blurred around you.
She's not it for me.
“Hey-” Robby was behind you and you tucked your head into your chest. His hand squeezed your shoulder. “Central twelve when you have a chance.”
“You got it, boss.” Luckily your voice remained steady despite the waver in your throat.
Robby gave a nod and left you to it.
Had Jack had hatred for you since you knew him and just never said a word? Did you do something for him to harbour these feelings?
Besides from not being his wife.
The door closed again and on instinct you looked over your shoulder, catching Jack adjusting his belt. He looked up and found your gaze, offering you a pulled smile.
It was like every other smile he'd ever given you.
You'd been so blind with affection to not see it. What a fool.
You couldn't even pull your lips back up, you just walked away.
Weeks went by in flashes of sleepless nights and lonely days.
The sick and injured didn't wait for you to get over yourself, instead they helped.
You offered yourself like a lamb to the slaughter in Presby and even Westbridge. You pulled doubles, catching small naps in any empty exam room or on-call room you could find. You started to learn staff names when you'd never cared before.
A group of nurses at Westbridge even invited you out for drinks.
“Drinking every weekend, out with the guys, there's no healthy habits there” you remembered Jack's voice and declined their invitation.
When SWAT called you had an excuse. A plumber was coming around... you were re-modelling; suddenly your apartment was going through half a dozen makeovers and all your childhood friends were visiting.
“You know you're not a very good liar,” Diaz had said when he called you for a drink and you declined. That day you were taking your mom's dog to the vet (your mom was a cat person and in another state)
Your apartment became a cave and you became a shell of yourself, un-ironically listening to the high school musical soundtrack and crying.
And still you couldn't find it in yourself to be angry at Jack. Of course he wouldn't want you- he had a wife. And a memory of that wife to keep him walm. What could he do with you? If you weren't his type, you weren't his type. If it was just that maybe you could have moved on.
But he didn't like you as a person and that stung more.
You didn't know how long it had been since you were last at PTMC, only long enough that you started to scramble corridors in your mind and forget what some of the nurses sounded like.
“We have a mass casualty event,” said Robby on the phone one Sunday morning. His voice sounded different, but you supposed time played tricks on your memory. “School bus incident. You in?”
You were in pyjamas at home, some crappy tv on low. “I'll have to check, Presby might need me.”
Robby scoffed down the line. “Have they called yet?”
“Well, no-”
“Then get your ass over here.”
“Robby-”
“Please, please get your ass over here,” he said down the line, sighing heavily. “I.... I could really use another set of hands.”
Robby didn't say please. Ever. So how could you say no.
Within the hour you were dressed an,d thrown into the anarchy.
You got through the ambulance doors, was thrown a gown and got to work. You didn't even see Robby to let him know you were there, you just found Langdon and worked beside him.
“I need some help over here!” yelled out a paramedic.
At once you and Langdon were at her side, pushing along the gurney.
“Kid, fracted tib-fib, pupils mid range and sluggish- couldn't get a line we had to intubate.”
“Dana what's open?” called out Langdon.
“Room in trauma one!”
Mass casualty meant trauma rooms doubled up, pushed up against either wall. Mass casualty meant extra hands called in- like you. Still, when you pushed through the door and found Jack's eyes look up you spared half a second in apprehension.
“You're here,” was all he said.
You didn't know what to say. There was some snarky comment on the tip of your tongue as you settled the boy in the corner but you remembered you weren't supposed to be that person.
Jack didn't like that person.
“Yeah, in the flesh,” replied Frank instead.
“Chest trauma on the right!” you assessed. “We need an X-ray in here.”
“X-ray's backed up,” Jack called from where he hovered over another patient.
“Then get me an ultrasound!” you called out. “Push five migs of epi down the tube and hang a unit of O-neg on the rapid infuser.”
“BP'S eighty over fifty, pulse is at one-twelve!” called out Princess.
You felt someone bump in your shoulder and knew by inhale it was Jack. He was close at your side, pulling off and on another pair of gloves.
“What have you got?” he asked.
It wasn't instinct to move away from him. It was practised control that had you swapping sides with Frank, practically pushing him into Jack.
“Chest trauma to the right, he's tacky,” he explained quickly.
You pulled out your stethoscope, listening closely. “His breathing's stridor, I need a thoracotomy tray!”
“A thoracotomy?” asked Jack, voice oddly quiet in the trauma as if it was whispered just next to you. “You sure you can handle that?”
“I'm a good doctor, if I'm nothing else,” you bit out, swinging your stethoscope back around your neck. You weren't going to allow yourself to fall back into old habits, of questioning what Jack didn't like so much about you. You focused on the un-conscious boy under the mercy of your hands. You ordered the right tools, made the cut neat and precise, pushing more pain relief.
“Any tamponade?” asked Jack.
You checked the boys blood pressure. “No, pericardium's dry.”
“Okay, start an-”
“- start an internal massage-”
You and Jack said at the same time.
Frank seemed stuck in headlights before he reached through the incision in the boys chest and slowly started to work the heart.
“Pulse?”
“Barely.”
Jack frowned, looking over at your work. “Cross clamp the aorta, and push another mig of antropine.”
“I need suction!”
“Got anything for surgery?” asked a new voice, Doctor Walsh checking between the patients in the room.
“Oh no, we've brought the OR down to us,” said Jack.
Doctor Walsh rounded, catching the suction and the message of the heart. “Are you doing a thoracotomy right now?”
“Don't look at me,” said Jack, surrendering.
Before anyone could argue with you, question your capability you snapped out. “I know what I'm doing!”
Jack was silent, Frank smirked and Walsh rose a brow.
“Clamped,” said Princess.
“Someone push in another of antropine and get another unit of blood in,” you ordered.
There was a sudden buzzing as all eyes averted to the monitor.
“He's going into V-fib!”
You wiped your bloody and gloved hands down your gown. “Okay, I need internal panels!”
They were handed to you and Jack rushed to your side.
“You want me to-” he started but you already had the panels in hand and were ordering their charge.
“Charge to thirty! Clear!”
Like you were cupping the heart with your own hands you nudged the panels on either side and shocked. There were little miracles sometimes in the ED and with a bus full of school children you needed miracles.
“There! He's stable!” said Princess.
“We've got a girl coming in, needs stabalising and an ortho consult!” said Lena, throwing the door open. It seemed everyone had been called in.
“I'll take this guy, don't want you getting all the credit,” smirked Walsh as she and the team wheeled out the boy. She looked back at you, almost waiting for you to say more- some funny joke or flirtatious tease.
You only waved past her to get the young girl into the room.
Everyone in the room looked at you as you honed in on the next casualty, ignoring the pang in your heart at Jack's gaze.
When the girl for ortho came in you could only work on stabilising her before Park the Shark descended and took her up, assuring the bag was on ice. He gave you a less ten friendly look. Seemingly Jack wasn't the only one who couldn't stand you.
The hours ticked by in bodies of different kids, in shades of blood and traumas. By the time you got outside for some fresh air it was night and one lonely ambulance sat with you.
You were catching your breath when you heard the doors slide open and shut again. You imagined it was someone else wanting some peace and air, or a paramedic heading back out on the road.
“You were impressive in there,” said Jack, coming to stand next to you. There was a large enough gap that another body could have fit there.
“Thank you.”
He gave one short nod. “Robby call you in?”
“Yeah.”
“Same here,” he said, not that you'd asked. “You know, Hiro's doing well.”
You paled in the night. Lost in your own self-loathing you hadn't even asked about Hiro, or gone to see him. You'd heard he was okay when he dropped a message from the ICU but that was as far as it got. “Oh yeah, I know, I heard.”
“What, from the guys?”
You nodded, lips pursing as you crossed your arms over your chest in the light chill.
“You know they told me you haven't been around much,” said Abbot. “I've noticed it too. We all went to Larry's the other night, your invitation get lost?”
Was it a test? Was it a joke to him?
“No, I just didn't want to drink. Trying to cut down, it's not so healthy,” you said, kicking one foot in front of the other.
“One or two's not bad,” he said. “Couple of us are gonna grab a beer once this is all over. You joining us? Usual spot.”
She's brutal, you know.
You looked to him first. He was already looking at you, eyes creased like he was trying to see through you. It was real and earnest and making his words from weeks ago hurt even more.
“No thanks, Jack.” You almost reached to his shoulder but thought better of it.
Heading back in seemed the safer option.
Jack turned when you did. “Noody's seen you for weeks-”
“- I've been busy-”
“- except those nurses in Presby, they see you all the time apparently-”
“- they've been busy, they've called me in-”
“- I called you three times last week, you didn't answer-”
“- I didn't think you'd want me.” It was about the only honest thing you'd said in weeks. Your trainers squeaked on the ground just before the hospital, the automatic doors ready to welcome you back.
Jack was at your side, close enough you could see the lines of confusion in his face. “Why would you think that?”
You tried to think of a quick excuse but every word died prematurely in your throat. You chocked on them.
“Hey-hey-” Jacks hand fell to your back, soothing it in calming rubs.
You allowed yourself to bask in one circular motion of his hand and your back before you stepped away, backing up from the doors that slid shut again on instant.
“What’s going on?” Asked Jack, following in your steps.
“Nothing, nothing.”
Jack made a disgruntled noise. “C’mon, talk to me.”
He let you think about what to say, stewing in silence where your mind became alive with everything he’d said, with every terrible thing you’d already thought about yourself. You imagined every time you’d cracked a joke that was maybe too perverse. You tried to picture Jacks face but came out blank. Was it loathing? Contempt?
Your voice betrayed you with a shake as you spoke again. “I do like flowers.”
“Huh?”
You wiped at your eyes and turned to him. “I like flowers,” you said, stronger. “Nobody’s ever brought me flowers but I- I like them.”
For anyone else it would’ve took time to click. They’d have stood there, looking at you like you’d gone mad, spewing out words that out of context meant nothing.
But Jack was not just any other clueless guy. He was the guy who always packed left overs and left them in the fridge, he always cooked enough to make sure he’d have left overs. He was the sort that always checked in on pedes patients and made sure they had enough colourful bandages for them.
Jack knew what you were saying immediately. His jaw tensed. “I- I shouldn't have said that.”
“You said a lot of things,” you said, holding yourself tighter. “Sounded like you meant them.”
He gulped. “I didn't mean-”
“-what, for me to hear it?”
“No, I didn't mean for what I said to come out as- as bad,” he said.
“Well it didn't come out as shining praise either.” You turned from him, looking out to the building and lights. Somewhere n the distance a siren wailed.
“Robby- Robby was saying things, teasing, I just waned to shut him up.”
You chuckled with loathing. “No you didn't. It's okay, Jack, you don't have to like me, I just wish you didn't make it seem like you did.”
“Hey!” he said, coming to stand in front of you. He was without a scrub top and his t-shirt clad to his biceps, his muscles flexing as his jaw worked. “I do like you.”
You rolled your eyes. “No you don't.”
“I do-I do-” Jack grabbed the top of your arms, stopping you from walking away. His grip was tight, not enough to bruise but enough to beg you not to leave. “I do like you.”
“It doesn't matter.”
“It does, it does.” Jack crouched enough in his knees to get a look at your face that you kept trying to turn away from him.
“You know the worst thing is? It's that I know,” you uttered, voice quiet. You didn't trust yourself to shout- even if you really wanted to- in fear your voice cracked, humiliatingly.
Jack's eyes softened, his thumb drawing up and down in comfort. “Know what?”
“I know that I can be a lot. I go out with the guys, I drink, I make jokes when things get bad because what else am I supposed to do? Cry? Let the grief of the job swallow me up?”
“No. No, of course not,” he said, lips pulled down.
You hated that you still wanted to make him smile. “I could keep a job if I wanted to but I like meeting the people-”
“- I know, I know you do-”
“- and now I'm here defending myself to a guy who probably doesn't even want to hear it!” Trying to turn in Jack's hold was feeble, his grip was strong and he moved with you.
“You don't have to defend yourself, you have nothing to defend!”
“You know what the worst part is?”
Jack shook his head, waiting.
“It's the guy you liked and admired the most seeing everything you hate about yourself and hating you for it too.”
Jack flinched as of you'd slapped him. The chill in the air grew colder around you and all the light from the dim glow of the lamps shrunk away, leaving you and Jack in a self-made darkness. You felt his grip weaken and savoured the feel of him a moment longer.
It was only when you couldn't stomach it anymore that you retreated back into work.
Jack had fucked up.
There was no easy way of putting it. There was no clinical way of looking at it, no diagnosis to give other than he had fucked up.
He'd never heard himself speak and hated the sound of his own voice. Never caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror with tired eyes and a pale expression and loath to see the sight. When he looked at himself, all he saw was your own face heart-broken. When he heard himself talking he remembered everything he'd said.
He could have blamed it on the pain in his shoulder, the worry over Hiro, the lack of sleep he'd been struggling with for days but he had a therapist for all that. You didn't deserve that burden.
He was un-focused the following week in work. Patient satisfaction was at an all time low with him. He'd opened up to his SWAT buddies over a self-pitying pint and had been shunned.
“What's your problem?” Charlie had said, two beers deep and a haze over his eyes. “She's a fucking saint. She'd lay down her life for any one of us- what the fuck man?”
“She won't return my calls,” Jack told them. “Can you just... just call her?”
They'd refused, with good reason.
He'd tried texting his apology. He'd tried calling you in but he found from a contact at Westbridge you'd been covering nights while their attending was on holiday.
It was a brash decision to call in to PTMC and tell them he'd be late, he was running an errand. Nobody questioned him.
Westbridge was darker than the hospital he was used t, built up on top of each other but they were no less busy than himself. Patients were lined up in corridors and there was hardly a seat left in chairs when he walked through.
“Can I help you?” asked the nurse at reception, eyeing Jack and the bouquet of flowers he held.
He said he was looking for you.
“She's in a trauma right now, can I take a message?”
“Can you tell her Ja-Jack's here.” For a moment he debated lying, saying it was Robby wanting to see you, or maybe you didn't want to see Robby either. Deceit wasn't going to be his friend.
Jack waited and tried not to look around, tried not to let himself get caught in the heavy bustle of another hospital as he waited for you. He ignored the coughing from the waiting room that definitely sounded like it would require a chest CT.
There was a crash of doors and he caught sight of you rushing out, protective goggles over your eyes and bloodied gown clad to you.
“Jack, what is it? Are you okay?” your eyes were frantic, searching him.
Ah. Of course you'd think something had happened. When you hear someone's in the hospital it's very rarely to just say hi. “I realise I should've specified,” said Jack, rubbing the back of his knuckle against his brow. “I just- I wanted to see you. And give you these.”
Sensing this was a conversation she definitely wanted to be around for yet probably wouldn't be allowed to, the nurse at reception left the two of you to it and Jack sat the flowers down on the counter in-between you.
You eyed the shades of red roses, of yellow tulips, the violet of the iris and the pink of the peony.
“I didn't know what you liked so, I kind of got one of everything,” he said, sighing to himself. He should have got two of every flower the florist had on hand. “I didn't get Lilies, the lady at the shop said it's a show of death and sunflowers aren't in season, apparently.”
“They're very nice, thank you,” you said.
“They come with an I'm sorry:” said Jack. “I'm sorry.”
You wet your lips and pursed them, nodding slowly. “Okay.”
Jack looked down to his boots. “It's not, I know it's not, nothing I said is okay and I didn't mean it.”
You didn't say anything at that, only taking in a quivering breath.
He ignored the irritation in his prosthetic as he crouched to catch your gaze. Jack wasn't used to having to search for your gaze, usually he always found it already on him. He only realised how much he valued finding you in the middle of the storm when you wouldn't look at him.
“I didn't mean it,” he enunciated every word, begging you to hear them.
Your gaze studied around Westbridge, hoping for a distraction.
“I messed up, it's on me. It's not you.”
“The classic it's not you, it's me?” you dismissed.
Jack winced. It was cliché, damn him. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He watched as your fingers brushed over a flower petal, picking it off like plucking a string on a guitar. He felt his heart pound in his chest.
“Can I get back to work now?” you asked, gently.
What was he thinking? Turning up to where you were tying to do some good. Where you were doing good- it was what you did. Did he expect the flowers to fix everything? No. Only he could. But he'd grovel, he'd beg, he'd crawl after you for the rest of his miserable life and do it all while building you a rose garden.
He'd do all of that for one minute of your eyes on his.
“Just promise you'll come back. To the Pitt. Whole place is going to crap without you.” He tried to joke but it was a pathetic thing.
“Okay. Yeah.” Your shoulders lifted in in-difference.
“And don't ignore the guys. They're going out for drinks tomorrow night. I won't be there. They all pretty much think I'm a dick anyway.”
There was a glimpse of a smile.
Jack played on. “I'm a total, total dick, a jerk!”
An elderly lady being escorted by with a nurse and an IV trailing her paused and glanced his way.
“Sorry,” he uttered.
You hid your chuckled behind your mouth but he caught a second of it.
It was enough for now.
Your name was called down the corridor.
“He's in V-tach!” a nurse announced before disappearing again.
“Go,” said Jack, taking himself out of the equation. “Just, please. Don't be a stranger.”
Jack wasn't lying when he said the place was going to crap without you. How they managed on shifts without your charm to work fretting family and friends down, or your terrible singing in between exams he didn't know.
Walking through the ambulance doors for his shift there was already paramedics pushing an empty and slightly blood stained gurney back into their rig. There was a crowd of elderly patients in beds and gowns left at the side and phones were ringing, drilling into his eardrums.
“Where the hell is she?” barked Robby, spotting Jack and no you.
Jack dumped his bag at the counter. “What happened here?”
“Nursing home caught fire, now where is she? We're swamped her, I thought you were going to get her and bring her back?”
Jack grumbled, frowning at the counter. “She's busy at West.”
“West? God-” Robby groaned, looking around the place and cursing. “Listen, I don't care what you have to do to make it up to her, buy her a florist, give her a ring, get down on your knees, I don't fucking care- I need her here.”
“You think I don't?” Jack snapped.
Robby eyed him, hand clenched on the counter. “Tell her the truth-”
“-Robby-”
“-no, you tell her you didn't mean a damn thing you said. That you were scared loving someone that isn't your wife.”
Glass. Jack was made of glass. If Robby could see through him so clearly why couldn't you? Why couldn't you see the truth? That Jack liked you, liked you more than he'd liked anyone. That loving you meant leaving the life he lived with his wife behind, yet carrying a part of her with him always. He didn't want to do that to you. He didn't want to make you live with a ghost or carry his grief. There were days where it was too hard for him to handle.
Robby sighed. “You think she'd want you to be happy?”
A muscle in Jack's neck tensed as he went to nod but was held back by himself.
“Talk to her,” said Robby clamping him on the shoulder quickly before disappearing.
Hiding away wasn't going to solve anything. That's what Robby said to you in a desperate plea to get you back to helping him out with shifts.
Truth was you weren't hiding away... as much.
Drinks with the guys had been hours of them telling you Jack was wrong, after Jack had exposed himself to them, laying the situation on the table. As promised, he wasn't there but every conversation revolved around him so much so it felt like he was at your side. You defended Jack when they argued against him. You told them you knew you were loud at times, maybe you shouldn't joke around as much as you did.
They'd laughed, thinking it was a joke itself.
They told you not to change.
It was hard not to. Every time you heard yourself get loud or get a look from people at the other table your instinct was to shrink. When Diaz tripped on the curb out the bar you laughed instead of helping him and was left with your own guilt when you got home.
Un-learning habits was hard. Learning to live with them was harder.
You started with baby steps. A day shift here, a day shift there, by hand-offs you were always gone. Yet, in the staff lounge there sat a fresh bouquet of flowers every morning. As soon as they started to wilt another fresh bunch was placed over night.
Nothing was said. Nothing ever had to be.
“Shen's out, food poisoning,” said Robby over the phone another day. “You know I wouldn't ask if there was no otherway.”
Which was how you ended up working a night shift. The first in months.
Jack's eyes lit up as you walked in, it was impossible not to notice. The only eyes to rival his sparkle was Lena's when she saw you.
It was the sort of night that held your attention. That roped you in and demanded you listened. Not overly busy but not quiet enough to cause you and Jack to be held captive in the same room. Only seconds passed in hallways when he looked like he was going to say something before being called away, taunt in the neck and gripping his stethoscope for the life of him.
“Am I going to need surgery?” asked the young boy in five who you were examining. A nasty accident in his dad's garage ended up with a laceration to the foot.
“Not surgery but a couple stitches to bring the skin back together, and you're gonna have to stay off your feet for a while,” you said.
The boys eyes grew wide in joy. “So, no school?”
You chuckled as his mom pinched his shoulder playfully. “Well, I can't be the deciding factor on that, I'm afraid.”
You put in the orders for stitches.
“Is it gonna hurt?” asked the boy, shrinking back in his bed.
“We're gonna numb you up so you don't feel anything,” you assured. “Tell you what, I have a secret stash of candy that I only share with my favourite patients, how's that sound, you want something?”
The boy tried not to be too eager in his nodding but it took less than two second for him to grin.
You didn't expect anyone in the lounge when you went in search for candy usually lying around.
Jack was hunched over the table, pulling out the dying flowers and arranging fresh ones. He stopped when you walked in, the door closing gently behind you. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“I was just... maintenance,” he mumbled.
You nodded along, a thick awkwardness engulfing the two of you. “Maintenance... yeah... sure...”
You moved around him, keeping a good distance around the space of him like he was a poisonous snake. The cabinet was high up, the tin an old sewing one where you hid your most precious protein bars and sugar packed candy.
“Here, I can-”
His body was sturdy against the back of you as he reached up for the tin. Few select people were allowed to know about its contents and Jack was on of the first ones you trusted. He raised his arm and you watched the freckles along his arm move and ripple. Upon inhale you took a deep breath of lingering cologne, mixed with the hearty sterile hand wash of the ED.
Jack's own head tilted down and your heard him inhale, deeply.
The tin fell into your hand.
Jack stared down. “Oh- er, there.”
“Thanks.”
It was about all the conversation you got with Jack your shift was over. The morning was just breaking through the clouds at six, bringing with it a down pour. You'd already punched out, handed off your patients to McKay and was left standing under the small awning of the ambulance bay, trying to out wait the rain.
It took ten minutes for Jack to follow you out.
“You heading out?” he asked, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Yeah. I'm just waiting for my uber.”
Jack frowned. “What happened to your car?”
“It's in the garage.”
“Well... I can give you a lift,” he suggested.
The rain hammered down harder above you, steady streams falling from the awning to at your feet. As discreet as possible you checked the location on you uber. Just around the corner. In the rain it had taken longer.
“No, it's okay, you don't have to.”
“I'd like to,” said Jack, stepping closer. “I'd like a chance to talk to you. To tell you everything that I meant by my words.”
You'd almost hoped you could carry on as you were: extremely avoidant.
“You don't have to, Jack.”
“I do- I do!” he insisted, hands out in front of him as if desperate to grasp you. He held himself back. “Please let me.”
Stomaching more of his words, whether it be excuses as to what he meant to say or just doubling down and insisting what he said was true. You didn't think you were strong enough for either.
Your phone buzzed in hand as a slick back black car pulled up, window rolling down and calling your name.
“No, wait-wait!” said Jack, holding a hand up to you with all the authority of an attending still on duty.
“Jack, what are you-” You were struck in place, watching him lean through the window, rain dampening his shirt as he un-folded a few bills and handed them to the driver.
“We don't need you know, sorry man,” Jack mumbled.
Your jaw hung open as you stepped out into the rain, bottom of your scrub pants dampening at once. “What?”
The driver tutted. “I still want me five star review!” He drove off quickly, splashing the two of you as he went.
“Oh- serious?” Jack gritted. “Now I wish I hadn't given him such a tip.”
The puddles of rain were seeping into your trainers as you walked off, out of the way of ambulances and cars, pulling your jacket tighter around you.
“Wait! Wait!” Jack called after you, boots slapping in the water. He all but jumped in front of you, stumbling lightly at the shift in his bad leg. “Wait.”
“I don't know what else you want to say to me, Jack?”
“Nothing I say can excuse what I said-”
“-so why try?”
“Because it's killing me being like this!” he snapped. The rain was pouring down, falling down his cheeks and nose. “It's killing me to look for your smile and not see it. It's killing me to hear a joke and you not laugh. Everything I said, it-it re-plays in my head and I'm sorry.”
“I know you are, Jack, I just need time!”
“I'll give you time,” he said. “I'll give you anything you need. But just let me say one thing. You owe me nothing, I'm begging you.”
To prove a point Jack crouched, starting to get down on his knees, hands already clenched together. To spare you the embarrassment and him the ache in his leg you tugged him back up.
He stared at you, breathless. He was as drenched as you, the both of your scrubs stuck to you.
“I haven't loved anyone since my wife,” said Jack. “I haven't tried, I didn't want to try. I was... not happy, but content to just carry on with her here-” he curled a fist at his chest. “And then you... and I couldn't not feel anything for you. I tried- I really tried.”
“Okay. You tried. I get it,” you mumbled.
“But I started to love you and I hated myself for it. It felt like I was betraying her by wanting someone else. By wanting you. And I did- I do want you. Every terrible joke you made, Jesus, I couldn't laugh in front of patients and their families. When you go out drinking with us and the guys in our team and you sing karaoke badly-”
“Excuse me?”
Jack winced. “I mean great, great karaoke.”
You chuckled.
“I can't take back the fact you're different from my wife, you are, but I don't think that's a bad thing- it's not. Because I still love you. I love that you're loud, I love that you draw attention to yourself as soon as you walk into a room, my attention is always on you anyway,” he smiled, sadly. It was the kind of smile a lover would give as they watched the love of their life leave them. “I shouldn't have made my grief your problem. I shouldn't have hated myself for feeling love again and I shouldn't have tried to convince myself hating you. I mean, that was just- just impossible.”
You looked down to your trainers, seeing the darkening colour where the water soaked in. “I've loved you for so long now, Jack.”
He waited, catching his breath, for more.
You looked up at him. “I'm sorry. About your wife. I can't imagine how hard it is for you. But I don't want to fall in love with a man who constantly advertises me next to his wife.”
Jack nodded, looking down.
The rain was probably helpful, hiding any tears you'd give away.
“I love you, separate to how I love my wife. And I loved her, I did. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life dead inside. Be on my death bed when I'm eighty looking back at all the times I should've kissed you.”
His words pulled at your heart, your feelings that you'd been burying deep inside clashing together inside of you.
“By the time you're eighty, I'll be like, in my sixties?” you said.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“And looking to settle down.”
Jack laughed, and you laughed and for a second that was almost enough. The rain had made the grey in his hair darker, almost making him look younger. “I'm not saying I won't fuck up, I probably will, I have a therapist for a reason.”
“Therapy is good,” you said.
Jack's eyes were lighting up slowly with every teasing comment you made. Something akin to hope flickered between the two of you. “But I will never draw comparison to you and my wife. I'll never make you feel like second choice. I'll never dump my grief onto you. If you just give me one chance, just one chance at making this right.”
As sorry's went... as love confessions went.
“I'm scared what it means to love you, Jack,” you said, slowly, feeling the words around your mouth.
“I know, I know,” Jack reached over, clumsily brushing back your damp hair from your cheeks. In spite of the rain, his skin was still soft and hot on you. “I am too.”
You searched his eyes before whispering. “Can I kiss you?”
He smirked a little. “No.”
Your heart dropped.
Jack's hands tilted your head back before you could tuck yourself away. “Can I kiss you?”
His lips were slick and wet from rain but no less sort after from you. He didn't push or prod for more, he just laid his lips against yours with enough pressure for you to know he was there. For you to always remember he was there.
You could have stayed like that for hours, practically standing on each others toes as your own hands came up to clutch his biceps, fingertips digging into his freckles.
You pulled away only when you needed to catch your breath.
Jack's lips chased yours, body tumbling into you slightly as his eyes took seconds to open like coming out from a dream.
You ran your hands up his shoulders. “I love you.”
He closed his eyes and soaked in the words.
“Will you let me?” you asked.
“Always,” he promised.
thank you to anon for requesting, and thank you to @oldbaddies and @mafercita101 who wanted to be tagged :)
SYNOPSIS: After 4 months of night shifts, and an accidental bonding with the widowed attending, fleeting days out after extensive shifts and feelings that grow into an unnamed relationship with a man who refuses to acknowledge anything - you finally switch back to day shifts. Now, it becomes harder to find where you stand in the life of the night attending, and whether or not there really was anything at all.
𖦹°⋆ next to a chapter means it includes a written part!
TAGLIST CLOSED
CHAPTERS:
╰┈➤ background info & extra context!
⋆˚࿔ CH.1 GOONETTE RETURNS
⋆˚࿔ CH.2 MOMMYS SICK, BABY
⋆˚࿔ CH.3 DOUBLE STANDARDS 𖦹°⋆
⋆˚࿔ CH.4 HOLD YOUR HEAD
⋆˚࿔ CH.5 AIRING OUT
⋆˚࿔ CH.6 yikes…. 𖦹°⋆
⋆˚࿔ CH.7 THE MORNING AFTER (LOSING ALL YOUR FRIENDS)
⋆˚࿔ CH.8 NEVER LOOKING BACK!!
⋆˚࿔ CH.9 ALWAYS COMES TOO LATE…
⋆˚࿔ CH.10 JACK ABBOT IS OVER PARTY
⋆˚࿔ CH.11 TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, BREAK MY HEART
⋆˚࿔ CH.12 RUMOUR HAS IT
⋆˚࿔ CH.13 GOONETTE RETURNS (AGAIN!)
⋆˚࿔. CH.14 10/10 BAD IDEA!!
⋆˚࿔. CH.15 CONFRONTATION
CONTENT WARNINGS BELOW THE CUT!
Content warning throughout: hurt/comfort in last chapters, implied neurodivergent! reader (can be read by people with neurodivergence as it’s not major or a plot line :) , mentions of mental health issues, miscommunication (?), reader is an anxious mess, author trying to be funny & overuse of reaction pics 😣, jack lowk an ass for a bit, probably OOC (i tried my best but this is my first time doing any writing for the public!)
i tried not to use any ships! i know some people get put off fics bc they don’t like ships within it . There is also mentions of Mohabbot in earlier chapters FOR THE PLOT!!!
A/N: Hii! iim actually shitting myself bc i have crippling RSD and im terrified somebody’s gonna dookie on my ass for this - lowk have no idea how writers do tag lists or masterlists or anything because im slow so gimme a sec 🥹 Im also currently doing my A levels (yes im aware jack abbot is like 30 years older than me i do NOT gaf) & working so pls be patient with me if i get slow — i have 4 chapters planned atm. im not really a dedicated soul & this may get forgotten and unfinished. peer pressure me and send me aggressive DMS and i’ll comply!
