s ᯓ★

everything is romantic

[buckyarchives]

•⭑.ᐟ welcome

sophie. she. active enough. nineteen. kinda writer. caffeine addict. professional yearner. attempting to fix plot holes and fictional characters with silly stories and romance. messages are open! OPEN 4 REQUEST

Most recent creation—> EXTRA BEDROOM / STEVE H.

Currently spinning—> home : lcd soundsystem

AO3 / the archives / tunes

[tearsof-scarlet]

Under Observation

Pairing: Frank Langdon x Resident!Reader

Synopsis: You and Dr Langdon are brilliant together in the ER and completely unbearable everywhere else. When Robby forces you to work as a pair, constant bickering turns into trust, tension, and something neither of you should want. But Langdon is married, quietly falling apart, and lately, when the ER gets chaotic, you’re the first person he looks for.

Tags: SMUT, resident reader, attempt at humour, langdon has adhd, ER romance, forced proximity, rivals to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, workplace tension, forbidden feelings, angst

Warnings: SMUT! MDNI! marital issues, emotional infidelity themes, medical trauma, blood/injury mentions, angst

Words: 15k~

The ER had been making that sound all morning. Not one sound, exactly, but a hundred of them layered badly on top of each other. Monitors chiming. Wheels rattling over tile. A toddler crying behind curtain four. Someone coughing like they were trying to turn themselves inside out. A nurse calling for a line kit. Another calling for security. Robby’s voice cutting through the noise every few minutes with the kind of exhausted authority that made everyone move faster without realising they had been told to.

You were at the computer by the nurses’ station, trying to finish a note with one hand while eating a protein bar with the other, when the radio crackled.

“Trauma incoming. Male, mid-thirties. High-speed MVC. Hypotensive in field. GCS thirteen. ETA two minutes.”

The department shifted instantly. That was the thing about the ER. Chaos was constant, but trauma gave it direction.

You abandoned the note. The protein bar went into your scrub pocket, half-eaten and forgotten, as you moved toward trauma bay two. A nurse tossed you a gown before you even asked.

Langdon was already there. Of course he was.

He stood at the head of the bed, pulling gloves on with sharp, efficient movements, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his jaw set like the entire room had been waiting for him specifically. He glanced at you as you stepped into the bay.

“No,” he said immediately.

You stopped tying your gown. “Good morning to you too.”

“I’m taking this one.”

“You’re standing in the trauma bay,” you said. “That’s not the same thing.”

His eyes flicked over you, quick and assessing, like he was triaging your usefulness and finding it irritatingly high. “I’ve got this.”

“Congratulations,” you said, snapping your gloves into place. “So do I.”

His mouth tightened. You smiled sweetly.

The doors burst open before he could respond. EMS rolled the patient in fast, their report firing over the noise.

“Thirty-six-year-old male, driver, hit on passenger side at approximately fifty miles an hour. Restrained. Airbags deployed. Brief loss of consciousness at scene. BP eighty-six over fifty in field, heart rate one-thirty. Complaining of chest pain and abdominal pain. Decreased breath sounds on left. Two large-bore IVs established. Gave five hundred fluid en route.”

Langdon moved without hesitation. “On my count. One, two, three.”

The patient transferred onto the bed with a heavy, coordinated lift. He groaned, eyes half-open, blood streaked across his temple and down the side of his face. You took the left side. Langdon took the head.

“Sir, can you tell me your name?” Langdon asked, leaning over him.

“Mark,” the patient rasped.

“Mark, I’m Dr Langdon. You’re in the emergency department. We’re going to take care of you.”

You reached for the shears. “Airway intact. He’s talking.”

“Breathing,” Langdon said. “Oxygen on. Fifteen litres. Get me sats.”

“Already on it,” one of the nurses said.

You cut the shirt open. Purple bruising was already blooming across the patient’s chest where the seatbelt had caught him. His breathing was too fast, shallow. You pressed your stethoscope to his chest.

“Decreased air entry on the left,” you said.

Langdon nodded. “Portable chest. Trauma labs. Type and cross. FAST scan.”

“Pressure’s seventy-eight systolic,” the nurse called.

You looked down at the patient’s abdomen as he flinched under your hands. Firm. Guarding.

“Langdon.”

“I heard it,” he said.

“You heard the pressure. I’m talking about the abdomen.”

“I said FAST scan.”

“You said chest X-ray first.”

“Because he has decreased breath sounds after blunt trauma.”

“And he’s hypotensive with abdominal guarding.”

Langdon’s eyes cut to you. “I’m aware of how blood pressure works.”

“Great. Then you’ll understand why I want blood in the room before radiology gets here.”

His hands stayed steady at the patient’s jaw, but his tone sharpened. “We need to identify the source.”

“We need to stop him crashing before we make him pretty for the CT scanner.”

“I didn’t say CT.”

“You were thinking it loudly.”

A nurse made a noise that was almost a laugh and wisely turned it into a cough.

Langdon ignored her. “Chest first. If he’s got a tension pneumo, we can fix that now.”

“And if he’s bleeding into his abdomen, we can kill him by pretending the chest is the only exciting organ in the room.”

His nostrils flared. “I did not say that.”

“You implied it with your whole personality.”

“Can you two flirt after he has a blood pressure?” Robby said from the doorway.

You and Langdon both turned.

“We’re not flirting,” you said.

“At all,” Langdon added, with more offense than the accusation required.

Robby raised his eyebrows. “Then argue quieter. I need a team, not a podcast.”

The patient groaned again, trying to curl to one side.

You looked back down at him. Focused. “Mark, stay with us. Where does it hurt most?”

“Chest,” he gasped. “And… belly. Left side.”

“Left upper quadrant tenderness,” you said. “Possible splenic injury.”

Langdon’s expression shifted. He had heard you. That was the infuriating thing. He always heard you, even when he was being unbearable about it.

“FAST now,” he said.

You were already reaching for the ultrasound. For half a minute, neither of you argued. The room compressed into motion and information. Probe gel. Monitors. Blood pressure cycling again. The ultrasound screen flickering grey and black beneath your hand. Langdon leaned closer, watching over your shoulder.

“RUQ negative,” you said.

“Pelvis?” he asked.

“Give me two seconds.”

“Your angle’s too steep.”

“My angle is fine.”

“Then why am I looking at bowel gas?”

“Because the patient was inconsiderate enough to have intestines.”

“Move superior.”

“I am moving superior.”

“There,” he said.

“I see it.”

Free fluid.

The room seemed to tighten around the finding.

“Positive FAST,” you said.

Langdon was already turning. “Activate massive transfusion protocol. Surgery now. And get the chest X-ray in here.”

You looked at him. “Now the chest X-ray?”

“Now the chest X-ray,” he said, briskly. “Because unlike some people, I can care about two life-threatening problems at once.”

“Beautiful growth. Really proud of you.”

“Don’t make this emotional.”

The blood arrived. The patient’s pressure dipped again, then steadied under the first unit. Chest X-ray rolled in, the plate slid behind him, everyone moving with that controlled urgency that looked like panic from the outside but felt, from within it, almost elegant. The film came up.

“Left hemothorax,” Langdon said.

You were already moving. “Chest tube tray.”

His gaze snapped to yours. Not surprised. Not approving exactly. But something close.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“You’ll supervise.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“You’re a year ahead of me, Langdon, not a prophet.”

“This is not the time for your complex about hierarchy.”

“I don’t have a complex. I have hands.”

“And I have seniority.”

“You have a badge with a slightly older date on it.”

Robby appeared beside you both, expression flat. “She does the tube. You supervise. If either of you says one more word about seniority, I’m intubating myself.”

Langdon’s jaw flexed. You smiled again, quick and victorious, then turned back to the patient. The smile vanished as soon as your scalpel touched skin. After that, there was no room for performance.

You made the incision. Langdon passed the clamp before you asked for it. You spread through muscle. His hand appeared with gauze at exactly the right time. You entered the pleural space, guided the tube in, and dark blood surged into the chamber.

“Good,” Langdon said quietly.

It was so quiet you nearly missed it. Nearly.

You secured the tube while surgery arrived, the patient’s pressure climbing into something less terrifying. His colour improved by degrees. His breathing eased. The room exhaled, not all at once, but person by person.

Surgery took over with the brisk confidence of people who preferred their disasters open and bleeding under bright lights. The patient was transferred out, still critical but alive, moving toward an OR that might actually save him.

For five seconds after the bay emptied, there was silence. Then Langdon said, “You cut me off in there.”

You blinked at him. “That’s what you’re opening with?”

“You did.”

“You were taking too long to get to the correct answer.”

“I was explaining my reasoning.”

“That’s what I said.”

He pulled off his gloves with unnecessary force. “You can’t just steamroll because you think you’re right.”

“You just tried to pull rank over a chest tube.”

“Because I am senior.”

“By one year.”

“One year matters.”

“In medicine, yes. In making you king of trauma bay two, no.”

His eyes narrowed. “You are impossible.”

“And yet the chest tube went beautifully.”

“The chest tube was fine.”

“Fine?” You laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “That was textbook.”

“It was acceptable.”

“You are physically allergic to praise.”

“I praised you.”

“You said ‘good’ like it caused you internal bleeding.”

“It may have.”

You stepped closer before you could stop yourself. “You know what your problem is?”

Langdon stepped closer too, because apparently self-preservation was not one of his clinical strengths. “I’m sure you’re about to misdiagnose it.”

“You think being ahead means being better.”

“No, I think being ahead means having more experience, which is objectively true.”

“And you think experience means no one else in the room can have a good idea.”

“I listened to your idea.”

“After arguing with me for five minutes.”

“Because your delivery is a war crime.”

“Your face is a war crime.”

There was a short, stunned pause. Somewhere behind you, a nurse whispered, “Jesus Christ.” Robby walked between you and Langdon like he was breaking up a bar fight.

“Enough,” he said. “Both of you. You’re giving me a migraine and I work in emergency medicine.”

“He started it,” you said.

“She escalated it,” Langdon said at the exact same time.

Robby looked from one of you to the other. His face changed. It was subtle, but you saw it. The shift from irritation to calculation. That was never good. Robby only looked like that when he was about to make someone’s life educational.

“No,” you said immediately.

Robby pointed at you. “I haven’t said anything.”

“I can feel you about to manage me.”

“Good. Saves time.” He turned to Langdon. “You too.”

Langdon straightened. “I don’t need managing.”

Robby stared at him.

Langdon looked away first.

“You two,” Robby said, “are a nightmare.”

“Thank you,” you said.

“Not a compliment.”

“Still taking it.”

“But,” Robby continued, ignoring you, “you are also annoyingly effective together. Which means I can’t just separate you like misbehaving children, despite the fact that both of you seem committed to the role.”

Langdon’s mouth opened. “Robby-”

“No.”

“I really don’t think-”

“That much is clear.”

You bit the inside of your cheek.

Robby turned back to you. “And you. Stop smiling. You’re not innocent. You argue with him because you like that he can keep up.”

Your smile died. “I do not.”

Langdon looked at you.

You looked at Robby.

Robby looked exhausted by both of you.

“For the next two weeks, when you’re both on shift, you’re paired.”

The room went very still.

“No,” you said.

“Absolutely not,” Langdon said.

Robby nodded. “That’s the spirit. Shared patients. Shared notes. Shared sign-outs. You present together when appropriate, and you figure out how to disagree without turning the department into a debate club with central lines.”

“Robby,” Langdon said, voice tight, “with respect, this is not necessary.”

“With equal respect,” you added, “this may actually worsen patient outcomes by increasing homicide risk.”

“Then don’t kill each other,” Robby said. “Growth opportunity.”

Langdon dragged a hand over his face. “I am a year ahead of her.”

You made a noise. “Oh my God.”

Robby closed his eyes briefly, as if asking a higher power for strength or a transfer. Then he opened them and pointed between you.

“You two are going to learn how to work together without turning every chart note into a courtroom deposition.”

Langdon looked like he had swallowed a scalpel.

You looked like you were considering throwing one.

Robby smiled thinly. “Excellent. Glad we agree.”

“We don’t,” you both said.

“Progress already,” Robby said. “You’re saying things in unison.”

Then he walked away, leaving you and Langdon standing in the wreckage of trauma bay two, surrounded by discarded gloves, blood-specked gauze, and the horrible realisation that your next two weeks had just become significantly more irritating.

Langdon looked at you. You looked at him. His expression was grim. Yours was worse.

Finally, he said, “Try to keep up.”

You gave him your brightest, sharpest smile.

“Try to be worth following."

By the third shared patient of the shift, you had decided Robby was a sadist. A professionally respected one, obviously. A gifted attending. A steady hand in a crisis. A man who had once calmly talked a hypoxic patient through a panic spiral while simultaneously directing a central line placement and telling an intern not to faint into the sterile field.

But a sadist nonetheless. Because there was no other explanation for why you and Langdon were standing side by side at the same computer, reviewing the same chart, after seeing the same patient, for the third time in six hours.

“Scroll up,” Langdon said.

“I am scrolling.”

“You scrolled too far.”

“You have eyes.”

“I have more experience interpreting what my eyes see.”

You stopped scrolling and looked at him. “You are genuinely committed to being unbearable.”

“I prefer consistent.”

“You would.”

He leaned past you without asking, reaching for the mouse.

That was the first problem. Langdon had no concept of appropriate physical distance when he was focused. None. In ordinary conversation, he kept himself neatly arranged behind sarcasm and seniority, all sharp edges and professional posture. But put a chart in front of him, give him abnormal labs and a patient with three vague symptoms, and apparently his entire body forgot other people existed.

His shoulder brushed yours. It was not dramatic. Not even intentional. The contact lasted less than a second, just the dark fabric of his scrub top grazing your sleeve as he angled toward the screen.

Still, your brain noticed. He smelled faintly of hospital soap, coffee, and something clean beneath it, like whatever detergent he used had survived a twelve-hour shift through sheer force of will. His forearm crossed in front of you as he took the mouse, sleeve pushed up, tendon shifting under skin as he clicked into the medication history.

You stared for half a second too long.

Not at the chart.

At his arm.

At the flex of muscle near his wrist. At the faint blue line of a vein. At the tension in his hand where it rested over the mouse.

And then, because your mind apparently wanted to ruin your entire professional life, at his ring.

Plain. Silver. Simple. Caught in the fluorescent light as his fingers moved.

He must have felt you looking, because his hand stilled.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

You dragged your eyes back to the monitor. “With your note? Yes."

You reached across him and stole the mouse back. “Your note says the patient denies chest pain twice.”

“He denied it emphatically.”

“Then write emphatically once. Not twice, like you’re trying to convince the insurance company through repetition.”

“I value clarity.”

“You value hearing yourself document.”

He leaned closer, reading over your shoulder as you edited. Again, his shoulder touched yours. Again, not on purpose. Probably.

“You’re changing my wording,” he said.

“I’m improving your wording.”

“My wording was precise.”

“Your wording was a hostage situation.”

Langdon made a low sound of disapproval, then pointed at the screen. “Don’t delete the family history.”

“I’m not deleting it. I’m moving it.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t belong between the physical exam and your dramatic description of his ankle swelling.”

“It wasn’t dramatic. It was relevant.”

“You wrote ‘markedly pitting’.”

“It was markedly pitting.”

“You enjoyed writing it.”

“I enjoy accuracy.”

“You enjoy adjectives.”

His mouth opened, presumably to argue, but before he could, the charge nurse appeared behind both of you with a chart in hand and an expression of deep amusement.

“Your next shared case,” she said.

You turned. “Already?”

“Robby’s orders.”

Langdon took the chart. “What is it?”

“Fifty-two-year-old female. Dizziness, nausea, some vague chest discomfort, says she feels ‘off.’ Vitals stable. ECG done.”

The moment the clinical details hit, Langdon changed. It was subtle but immediate. The irritation sharpened into focus, the bickering folded away into something more useful. He flipped the chart open, eyes scanning quickly.

“Dizziness and chest discomfort could be posterior circulation, ACS equivalent, electrolyte, vestibular, hypoglycaemia, medication effect, panic, but we don’t call it panic until everything else has earned the right to be excluded.” He started walking before he finished speaking, forcing you to match him. “Any diaphoresis? Radiation? Neuro deficit? Did triage note nystagmus? Of course they didn’t. Why would anyone note the thing that matters?”

“You know,” you said, falling into step beside him, “some people ask questions with the expectation that another person might answer.”

“I was building a framework.”

“You were monologuing.”

“I was thinking aloud.”

“You do that a lot.”

“Because I think a lot.”

“And aloud, apparently.”

He pointed the chart at you without looking. “Mockery is not a diagnostic tool.”

“It is when I’m diagnosing you.”

He glanced over. “And what have I got?”

“Terminal seniority.”

“Tragic. Untreatable.”

“You’d refuse treatment anyway.”

You introduced yourself first. Langdon let you. That surprised you enough that you almost looked at him.

Mrs. Alvarez described the dizziness as a sudden wave that came while she was making tea. No true spinning. Nausea. A pressure in her chest she insisted was “probably indigestion,” which immediately made both you and Langdon exchange a look. Her ECG was not dramatic, but it was not perfectly comforting either. Slight ST depression in the lateral leads. Nothing screaming. Just enough to whisper. Langdon saw it at the same time you did.

“Troponins,” you said.

“Serial ECGs,” he added.

“Full neuro exam.”

“Glucose.”

“Electrolytes.”

“CXR if the chest pressure persists.”

“Orthostatics.”

“Medication review.”

Mrs. Alvarez looked between you. “Do you two rehearse?”

“No,” you said.

“Unfortunately,” Langdon said.

Her mouth twitched. “Could’ve fooled me.”

You did the neuro exam while Langdon took the history, and this was where you discovered something else about him. Langdon was a yapper.

Not in the useless way. Not in the nervous intern way where silence felt like failure and every thought spilled out unfiltered. Langdon’s talking had structure, technically. It just had far too many doors, and he insisted on opening all of them.

One question about recent illness turned into a brief explanation of viral labyrinthitis, which became a tangent about how often dizziness was mislabelled, which became a story about a man he had seen the year before who came in for vertigo and turned out to be anaemic, which then somehow became a complaint about the way people used the word “dizzy” to mean eight different sensations and expected doctors to perform linguistic archaeology under fluorescent lighting.

Mrs. Alvarez seemed entertained. You were fascinated despite yourself.

His mind moved fast. Too fast sometimes. It leapt from symptom to mechanism to anecdote to warning sign and back again. He interrupted himself. Once, he interrupted you, caught your look, and said, “Sorry, continue,” in a tone so reluctant it barely qualified as an apology.

Then, ten minutes later, while you were ordering bloods, he said suddenly, “Family history.”

You looked up. “What?”

“Her father had an MI at fifty-four. She said it when you were checking sensation in her left leg.”

“I heard.”

“I forgot to put it in the note.”

“That must have been very difficult for you to admit.”

“It was. Be respectful.”

He wrote it down, then immediately started tapping his pen against the desk. Fast. Rhythmic. Annoying.

Tap tap tap tap.

You waited.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

“Langdon.”

“What?”

“The pen.”

He looked down like he had never seen his own hand before. The tapping stopped. For six seconds. Then his knee started bouncing. You turned slowly toward him.

He was reading the chart, completely absorbed, one hand at his mouth, the other hovering over the keyboard, knee vibrating beneath the desk like he was personally powering the department. His coffee sat untouched beside the monitor, the lid off, gone cold.

“Do you ever stop moving?” you asked.

“Do you ever stop making observations no one asked for?”

“No.”

“Then we understand each other.”

You should not have laughed.

It slipped out before you could stop it, small and surprised. Langdon looked at you like you had done something unexpected. Not impossible. Just unexpected from you. Then his mouth curved. It was not a smile, not fully. But it softened him by a dangerous margin.

The blood results came back while you were both still at the computer. First troponin mildly elevated. Potassium low. Creatinine slightly up. Enough to complicate things. Enough to make the case interesting.

Langdon leaned in again. You felt him before he touched you. A shift of warmth at your side. The brush of his shoulder against yours. His arm reaching past you, close enough that you could see the faint indentation the ring left at the base of his finger. He clicked through the labs, eyes narrowed.

“She needs admission,” he said.

“Agreed.”

He looked at you quickly.

“What?” you asked.

“You agreed too fast.”

“I can disagree if it would make you feel safer.”

“It would feel more familiar.”

The word sat between you, strangely weighted. Because the worst part was, he was right.

The arguing had already developed a rhythm. You knew when he was about to lecture because his eyebrows lifted half a second before he started. He knew when you were about to challenge him because you inhaled like you were loading a weapon. You passed each other things without looking. You corrected his notes. He caught your missed boxes. You rolled your eyes. He pretended not to enjoy it.

Mrs. Alvarez was handed over to medicine with a neat plan, a cardiology discussion pending, and strict instructions for repeat ECGs. Langdon presented the case to the attending, and to your deep irritation, he did it well. Concise, intelligent, no unnecessary adjectives. He included your neuro findings without claiming them as his own.

When the attending nodded and moved on, you looked at him.

“That was almost humble.”

Langdon slid the chart under his arm. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late. I’m documenting growth.”

“I’ll dispute the note.”

“You dispute everything.”

“Only when it’s wrong.”

You walked side by side back toward the nurses’ station. The ER was still loud, still overcrowded, still held together by caffeine, compression socks, and the collective denial of everyone working past hour eight. But something had shifted. Not softened exactly. Nothing about Langdon was soft. But the edges of the day had changed shape.

At the computer, he took the chair before you could.

You stared at him. “That’s my seat.”

“I got here first.”

“You are such a child.”

“I’m senior.”

“Move.”

“No.”

You leaned over him to reach the keyboard, deliberately crowding into his space this time. “Fine. I’ll chart standing.”

He looked up at you, eyes bright with challenge. “That’s terrible ergonomics.”

“Then move.”

“Ask nicely.”

“I would rather develop spinal pathology.”

He laughed under his breath and rolled the chair back half an inch. Not enough to be useful. Just enough to be annoying. You squeezed beside him anyway, shoulder pressing against his. Neither of you moved away. For a few seconds, you both looked at the screen in silence.

Then Langdon said, “You spelled haemorrhage wrong.”

You closed your eyes. “I’m going to sedate you.”

“With what order?”

“With my bare hands.”

“Poor technique.”

“Poor survival instinct.”

And this time, when he smiled, you saw it properly.

By the end of the first week, people had started making comments. Not helpful comments. Not clinical comments. Comments made by nurses who had worked too many consecutive shifts and thrived on emotional blood sport.

“Where’s your other half?” one of them asked as you reached for a new set of gloves.

You froze. “My what?”

She nodded toward the trauma board. “Langdon.”

“He is not my other half.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

You gave her a look. “That is a professionally reportable statement.”

She grinned. “To who? Robby? He started this.”

That was, unfortunately, true. Robby had started it, and now the entire department seemed invested in whether you and Langdon could stand beside each other for more than ten minutes without starting a constitutional crisis. The worst part was that you were improving. Not peacefully. Not gracefully. But improving.

You still argued. Of course you argued. Langdon remained physically incapable of saying a simple thing when a longer, more irritating version existed. You remained incapable of letting him get away with it. But the arguments had become shorter. Sharper. Almost efficient.

Sometimes you caught him changing his mind before you finished making your point. Sometimes he caught you doing the same. Neither of you acknowledged this. Acknowledging it felt dangerous.

You were finishing a discharge summary when triage called over.

“Can I get someone to eyeball bed nine? Twenty-six-year-old female, shortness of breath and chest tightness. Vitals mostly fine. Says she feels like something is wrong. No cardiac history. Looks anxious.”

Langdon, standing beside you with a chart tucked under one arm and a pen between his fingers, sighed.

You looked at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to say panic attack.”

“I was about to say that ‘looks anxious’ is rarely a useful diagnostic category.”

That surprised you enough to stop typing. He noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you’ve just discovered I’m not entirely negligent.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

You stood, grabbing your stethoscope. Langdon followed without being asked.

Bed nine held a young woman sitting bolt upright, one hand pressed against the mattress, the other curled tightly against her chest. She was pale beneath the harsh lights, dark hair pulled back messily, lips slightly parted as she tried to slow her breathing.

Her chart said: Maya Ellis. Twenty-six. Shortness of breath. Chest tightness. Anxiety?

You hated the question mark.

“Hi, Maya,” you said, pulling the curtain closed behind you. “I’m one of the doctors. This is Dr Langdon.”

Maya looked between you and him quickly. “Are you two together?”

The question landed with the force of a dropped instrument tray. You blinked. Langdon went completely still beside you.

“No,” you said at the exact same time he said, “Absolutely not.”

Maya’s eyes widened. “Oh. Sorry. You just came in together, and you’re standing like—”

“We work together,” Langdon said, too quickly.

“Against our will,” you added.

Maya stared. You felt heat crawl up your neck. Beside you, Langdon’s ears had gone pink. Actually pink. You had never seen anything so gratifying in your life.

You turned to him slowly. “Are you blushing?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m warm.”

“It’s freezing in here.”

“I have circulation.”

“Apparently too much.”

“Patient,” he said through his teeth.

You turned back to Maya, who looked slightly less frightened now, if only because she had been distracted by whatever that had been.

“Tell me what happened,” you said gently.

Maya swallowed. “I was at work. I got this pain here.” She touched the right side of her chest. “Not really pain, like pressure? Then I couldn’t get a full breath. My hands started tingling. Everyone said I was having a panic attack, but I’ve had panic attacks before. This feels different.”

Langdon’s posture shifted.

You saw it because you were starting to see too much where he was concerned. His focus sharpened. His gaze moved over Maya’s face, her breathing, the way she held herself too carefully.

“When did it start?” he asked.

“Maybe an hour ago.”

“Any recent travel?” you asked.

“No.”

“Birth control?”

She hesitated. “The pill.”

Langdon glanced at you.

You were already looking at him.

“Any leg pain or swelling?” you asked.

“My calf hurt yesterday,” Maya said. “But I thought I’d pulled something at the gym.”

You reached for the pulse oximeter. Her oxygen saturation was technically acceptable, but lower than you wanted for a healthy twenty-six-year-old. Her heart rate flickered between one-oh-eight and one-fifteen. Not dramatic.

You checked her chest. Clear. No wheeze. No crackles. No obvious infection. Her blood pressure was stable, but her skin had that faintly grey look that made your stomach tighten before your brain had finished catching up. Langdon was watching you.

You looked at Maya. “We’re going to run some tests.”

Her face tightened. “So you don’t think it’s just panic?”

“I think panic is a diagnosis we can consider,” you said, “after we’ve ruled out the things that like to disguise themselves as panic.”

A voice came from the other side of the curtain.

“Seriously?”

Dr Patel, one of the other residents, pulled the curtain back slightly, holding Maya’s triage sheet. He was not unkind, exactly, but he had the slightly rushed expression of someone who had already decided the department had bigger problems.

“She’s twenty-six,” Patel said. “Normal ECG. No hypoxia. She’s anxious, hyperventilating, tingling hands. This is classic.”

You felt your spine straighten.

“She’s tachycardic, on the combined pill, pleuritic chest pressure, calf pain yesterday, and says this feels different from previous panic attacks.”

Patel gave you a look. “You want to PE workup every anxious young woman with chest tightness?”

“I want to work up this one.”

“It’s overkill.”

Langdon stepped in before you could answer.

“She’s right,” he said.

You blinked. He did not look at you.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he added. “It’s not cute.”

You immediately stopped blinking and glared instead.

Patel looked between you both. “You’re serious?”

“Yes,” Langdon said. “D-dimer, troponin, VBG, pregnancy test, CXR. If the D-dimer’s positive, CTPA. And repeat the ECG if symptoms change.”

“Radiology will love that.”

“Radiology has survived worse than clinically justified imaging,” Langdon said.

Maya’s eyes moved between you again, something like hope breaking through the panic. “So you believe me?”

You looked at her. “Yes.”

Langdon was quieter when he added, “We do.”

The we should not have hit you. It did anyway. After that, the case moved quickly.

Bloods. Cannula. Chest X-ray. A nurse getting Maya changed into a gown. Langdon arguing with the lab about turnaround time as if personally offended by coagulation delays. You reassessing Maya when her breathing worsened, catching the way she clutched at the side rail and tried not to cry.

Her D-dimer came back high. Very high. Patel, to his credit, swore softly and stopped arguing.

Langdon was already beside you at the computer, shoulder pressing against yours as you both stared at the result. He had moved in close without thinking again, but this time the contact did not feel accidental in the same way. Or maybe you were just becoming too aware of him.

His arm brushed yours as he reached for the mouse. You did not move. Neither did he.

“CTPA,” you said.

“Already requesting it.”

“Pregnancy negative?”

“Just resulted.”

“Renal function?”

“Fine.”

“You checked?”

“I knew you’d ask.”

You looked at him. He kept his eyes on the screen, but his mouth twitched. “Don’t make it sentimental.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were considering it.”

“I was considering whether that counts as teamwork or just fear of my standards.”

“Both can be true.”

The scan happened fast because Langdon made it happen fast. You did not ask what he said to radiology. You suspected it involved an unbearable amount of confidence and at least one phrase like “clinically indefensible delay.”

When the result came through, the department seemed to narrow around the words.

Bilateral pulmonary emboli. Evidence of right heart strain.

For a second, no one spoke. Then you and Langdon moved at once.

“Get Robby,” you said.

“I’ll call ICU,” Langdon replied.

“Anticoagulation?”

“Unless contraindicated. I’ll check with Robby.”

“Echo?”

“Bedside first. Formal after.”

“Maya needs explaining before she hears it from six strangers talking over her.”

“I’ll do ICU. You talk to her.”

There was no argument over who should do what. You went back to Maya while Langdon made the call, his voice low and rapid behind you. Maya looked up as you entered. She knew from your face.

“It wasn’t panic,” she said.

“No,” you said, pulling a stool close. “It wasn’t.”

Her eyes filled. You explained as clearly as you could. Blood clots in the lungs. Serious, but treatable. The team was moving quickly. She had done the right thing by coming in. She had done the right thing by insisting it felt different.

Langdon appeared halfway through, standing at the foot of the bed. He did not interrupt. He did not take over. He listened. When Maya asked if she could die, you paused for half a second. Langdon answered, not over you, but beside you.

“That’s why we’re treating it aggressively,” he said. “You’re in the right place.”

Maya looked between you both again, tears on her cheeks.

“You’re sure you’re not together?” she asked weakly.

The blush hit you so fast you almost hated her. Langdon’s face changed colour too. A faint, unmistakable pink rising under his cheekbones.

“Maya,” he said, with immense dignity, “you have a pulmonary embolism.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I’m still observant.”

Despite everything, you laughed. Then Robby swept in, and the spell broke.

“Okay,” he said, scanning the chart. “Talk to me.”

You and Langdon presented together.

Not one after the other. Together.

You gave the history. Langdon gave the imaging. You gave the clinical progression. He gave the plan. You caught the missing contraindication question before he asked it. He remembered the calf pain and added it into the handover. Robby listened, eyes moving between you both with increasing interest.

When you finished, he nodded.

“Good. Very good. ICU are aware?”

“On their way,” Langdon said.

“Anticoagulation?”

“Ready once you confirm.”

“I confirm.” Robby looked at you, then at Langdon. “See? That. Do that more.”

You frowned. “What?”

“Whatever that was where neither of you made me want to walk into traffic.”

Langdon looked offended. “We are always professional.”

Robby stared at him.

You stared at him too.

Langdon looked away. “Intermittently.”

Maya stabilized over the next hour.

The anticoagulation was started. ICU came down. Her breathing eased, her colour improved, and she squeezed your hand before they transferred her.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You caught it,” you said. “We just listened.”

Maya’s eyes flicked to Langdon, then back to you. “He listened because you said it.”

You did not know what to do with that.

Apparently, neither did Langdon. He became intensely interested in adjusting the line that did not need adjusting.

After Maya left, the ER swallowed you both again. There were discharge summaries to finish, a drunk man singing in curtain three, a child with a bead stuck in his nose, and an elderly woman insisting she had not fallen despite arriving with leaves in her hair.

Normal chaos returned.

Except Langdon was quieter.

Not silent. Never silent. Langdon being silent for too long would have caused genuine concern. But quieter. His comments came slower. His sarcasm lost some of its bite. Once, when you corrected his medication reconciliation, he simply said, “You’re right,” and kept typing.

You nearly checked his pupils.

Later, while you were speaking to a nurse near the supply room, you felt it.

The awareness of being looked for.

You turned.

Across the department, through the movement of stretchers and staff and families and monitors, Langdon stood near the central desk. A chart was open in his hands, but he was not reading it.

He was scanning the room.

Searching.

His gaze moved past trauma, past triage, past the medication room.

Then he found you.

For one second, his expression changed.

Not relief exactly.

Recognition.

As if some part of him had been tracking your absence without permission and settled only once you were accounted for.

Your breath caught.

Then he seemed to realise what he was doing.

His attention dropped abruptly to the chart.

Too late.

You had seen.

When you came back to the desk, you said nothing at first. You stood beside him, close enough that your shoulder almost touched his, and reached for the keyboard.

He cleared his throat. “Where were you?”

You kept your eyes on the screen. “Working.”

“I didn’t ask because I cared.”

“Obviously.”

“I needed the chart.”

“The chart was here.”

“Yes. Well.” He tapped his pen once against the counter, then stopped himself. “You weren’t.”

You looked at him then. He looked back. The ER moved around you, loud and fluorescent and alive, but for a moment, the space between you went very still. Langdon’s ring caught the light as his fingers tightened around the chart. Then a nurse called his name from across the department.

“Dr Langdon!”

He blinked first. The moment broke. He stepped back, all at once professional again, but something remained in his face as he turned away. Something unsettled. Almost frightened.

And you understood, with a strange ache of certainty, that whatever was happening to him had very little to do with your face, or your body, or the fact that sometimes you caught him looking too long.

It was not just attraction. It was worse. He trusted you.

He trusted your eyes on a patient. Trusted your instincts. Trusted the way you stood your ground. Trusted you enough to back you publicly before he had time to remember all the reasons he should be careful.

And for a man like Langdon, that seemed to scare him more than wanting ever could.

The ER went quiet at 2:17 in the morning.

Not truly quiet. It never managed that. There was always a monitor complaining somewhere, a printer coughing out labels, the distant squeak of wheels against linoleum. Someone in curtain five was snoring with the violent determination of a man who had denied sleep apnoea for twenty years. A nurse laughed at something near triage, low and tired, and the sound slipped through the department like a match struck in the dark.

But for the first time in hours, no one was actively dying. No one was shouting. No one was bleeding onto your shoes.That counted as peace.

You found refuge in the breakroom beneath the cold buzz of the fluorescent lights, sitting at the small table with your back against the wall and one leg hooked around the chair beside you. The vending machine hummed in the corner with the smug authority of the only thing in the hospital that got regular maintenance. Your coffee was terrible. Your crackers were worse. You ate them anyway.

Half a packet remained in front of you, along with a bruised cereal bar you had no memory of buying and a banana so far past optimism that even the bin seemed reluctant.

You were staring at the wall without seeing it when the door opened. Langdon walked in. Then stopped. He had not known you were there. That was obvious from the brief, unguarded second before he rebuilt himself. He looked wrecked.

Not in any dramatic, tragic way. Not bloodied, not frantic, not visibly broken. Just worn down past the point where sharpness could hide it. His hair was slightly mussed from where he had dragged a hand through it too many times. His scrub top was creased. The sleeves were still shoved to his elbows, but the movement looked less deliberate now and more like he had been too tired to fix them.

He stood in the doorway for half a breath, one hand against the frame. Then he exhaled, rubbed both hands over his face, and muttered something under his breath. You caught only the last word.

“...ridiculous.”

“Me or the hospital?” you asked.

Langdon’s head snapped up. For a second, he looked genuinely startled. Then his face arranged itself into offence. “Do you make a habit of sitting silently in dark corners?”

“The lights are on.”

“They’re hospital lights. They barely count as illumination.”

“Fair.”

He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him. The room was small enough that his presence changed its temperature. Or maybe that was just your exhaustion making everything feel too close. He moved to the counter, picked up the coffee pot, looked inside, and grimaced.

“That’s been there since midnight,” you said.

He poured it anyway. You watched him add one sugar, then another, then stir it with a wooden stick so aggressively it sounded personal.

“That coffee owes you money?” you asked.

“This coffee is a crime.”

“And yet you’re drinking it.”

“I’m building a case.”

“Against the coffee?”

“Against whoever allows this hospital to call itself a place of healing while serving liquid despair in a paper cup.”

You pushed the crackers toward the empty chair opposite you. “Eat something before you start litigating beverages.”

He looked at the crackers. Then at you. Then back at the crackers, as if they were beneath him morally.

“No.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t want crackers.”

“Okay.”

“They’re dry.”

“They are crackers.”

“That doesn’t mean they have to be aggressively joyless.”

You broke one in half and held it out. “Langdon.”

He stared at your hand. A long second passed. Then he took it.

He sat down opposite you with the air of a man being forced into an indignity by his own body’s basic requirements. He ate the cracker, frowned, then reached for another. You did not comment. You wanted to. You deserved an award for not commenting.

The two of you sat in a silence that should have been awkward but was, strangely, not. The vending machine hummed. The fluorescent light flickered once overhead. Langdon’s coffee steamed faintly between his hands. He took one sip and made a face like it had betrayed him.

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Still building your case?”

“Class action.”

“Against the hospital?”

“Against medicine. Possibly society.”

You smiled into your coffee. He saw. That was the problem now. Langdon saw things. Worse, he was beginning to see you. Not just your mistakes, or your stubbornness, or the exact second you were about to disagree with him. He saw the small things too. The way your mouth twitched when you were trying not to laugh. The way you went quiet after paediatric cases. The way you rubbed at your temple when you were hungry but too busy to admit it.

And you saw him. You saw that his knee had started bouncing beneath the table. Saw that his left hand was around the coffee cup, but his right hand had drifted toward his ring. Saw the thumb brush once over the metal, then stop, then return.

He looked down as if catching himself. Then, perhaps to cover the movement, he started talking.

“I had a patient last year,” he said abruptly, “who came in convinced he had been bitten by a venomous spider. Very insistent. Had pictures on his phone of spiders that were not, in fact, in this country. He’d printed off an article. Highlighted sections. Presented it like a dissertation.”

You leaned back. “Was he bitten?”

“No. He had an infected ingrown hair.”

“Devastating.”

“Deeply. He was furious. He wanted antivenom.”

“For the hair?”

“For the imaginary spider.”

“Naturally.”

“He told me I lacked imagination.”

“You do sometimes.”

Langdon pointed a cracker at you. “I have an excellent imagination. I simply refuse to waste it on medically implausible arachnid conspiracies.”

You laughed, and he kept going.

That was how it happened.

One random story turned into another. The spider patient became a woman who had swallowed a dental crown and demanded a written guarantee it would not “attach to anything important.” That became a short but passionate complaint about patients describing pain numerically but then adding “but I have a high pain tolerance,” which somehow became an explanation of a study he had read about pain reporting, which became an argument with himself about whether the study design was flawed, which became a detour into how much bad research got repeated because the abstract sounded confident.

He talked with his hands. Even exhausted, he could not seem to stop them. They moved around the coffee cup, sliced through the air, tapped the table, reached for a cracker and forgot about it halfway there. His thoughts jumped tracks but never fully derailed. They circled, looped, returned. Ten minutes after mentioning the dental crown, he suddenly said, “Actually, the crown did pass uneventfully,” as if you had been waiting in suspense.

You had been, a little. You let him talk. Not because he needed humoured. Because he was interesting. Annoyingly interesting.

He knew too much and said too much and somehow carried a dozen half-connected thoughts in his head without dropping any of them. He could be arrogant, yes. Insufferable, obviously. But when he forgot to perform seniority at you, when he stopped trying to win, he was something else.

Alive with thought. Messy with it. Almost boyish beneath the exhaustion, though you suspected saying so would get you murdered in a professionally deniable way.

Eventually, his words slowed. Not stopped. Langdon did not stop. But slowed enough that he noticed the silence on your side of the table. He looked at you.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“Observing.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“You’re not clinically observing me.”

“No?”

“No. You’re personally observing me. It’s unsettling.”

You took another sip of coffee and regretted it. “You know, for someone who acts like he hates talking to me, you talk to me a lot.”

“That’s because you keep being wrong.”

“I haven’t said anything in seven minutes.”

“Exactly. It was unsettling. I had to compensate.”

You laughed again. This time he smiled properly. It was tired. Crooked. Brief. And maybe because it was late, or because the room was small, or because the ER outside had gone soft around the edges, the smile felt more dangerous than all the shoulder brushing in the world.

Then his hand moved again. Thumb to ring. One pass. Another. The smile faded before it fully had time to live. Your eyes followed the movement before you could stop them.

He saw. Of course he saw. This time, his hand did not disappear beneath the table fast enough. His fingers curled over the ring, not hiding it exactly, but protecting it. Or protecting himself from being asked.

The room changed. Not dramatically. The vending machine still hummed. The coffee was still awful. Somewhere outside, someone called for a blanket. But the small pocket of ease between you thinned into something fragile.

Langdon’s jaw tightened. You could almost see him preparing. For the question. For the pity. For the polite, terrible concern people used when they wanted information more than they wanted to help. You looked at his hand. Then back at him.

“I’m not asking,” you said gently.

The words landed harder than you expected. He went very still. Not like before, when you had startled him in this same room and he had hidden the ring beneath the table. This was different. This was not being caught. This was being spared.

His face did not change much, but something behind it did. Some defensive structure he had been holding upright with both hands seemed, for one impossible second, to weaken.

“Good,” he said. His voice was quiet. A pause.

“Because I wouldn’t answer.”

“I know.”

Langdon looked down first. His thumb moved once more across the ring, but slower now. Less like panic. More like acknowledgement.

“I don’t hate talking to you,” he said.

The words were so quiet you almost thought you had imagined them. You held very still. He seemed immediately annoyed with himself.

“I mean,” he added, “you are frequently wrong.”

“There it is.”

“And argumentative.”

“Mm.”

“And you edit my notes without consent.”

“Because they need help.”

“And you have an extremely concerning relationship with being right.”

“You’re describing yourself.”

“I’m describing a pattern.”

“Again. Yourself.”

He breathed out, but it was almost a laugh. Almost. You broke the last cracker in half and slid one piece across the table. He took it without complaint this time.

Outside the breakroom, the ER began to wake again. Footsteps quickened. A monitor alarm rose, cut off, then rose again. Someone knocked once on the door and opened it just far enough to say, “Langdon? Bed twelve’s asking for pain relief.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“Coming.”

The nurse disappeared. Langdon stood, taking the coffee with him despite having insulted it for twenty minutes. At the door, he paused. You expected a joke. A correction. Some little piece of armour placed back over the exposed thing between you.

Instead, he said, “You should eat the cereal bar.”

You looked at the sad, bruised thing on the table. “That an order?”

His mouth curved.

“No,” he said. “Unfortunately, you don’t outrank me.”

“Yet.”

The smile stayed for one more second. Then he left. You sat alone beneath the fluorescent lights, listening to his voice rejoin the chaos outside, low and quick and familiar.

And you knew, with an ache you did not want to name, that something had shifted. Not enough for either of you to speak of it. Enough that silence no longer felt empty when he was in the room.

Time passed strangely in the ER. Hours stretched until they felt like punishment. Days vanished inside the blur of patient names, blood results, chest pain pathways, sepsis protocols, discharge summaries, and cold coffee. You measured time less by clocks and more by what had gone wrong: the night of three overdoses, the morning the CT scanner went down, the shift where paediatrics overflowed and everyone in the department aged five years before lunch.

Somewhere inside all of that, working with Langdon stopped feeling like a sentence. It became a habit. An irritating one. A persistent one. One you would still complain about if asked, loudly and with evidence. But a habit all the same. He brought you coffee one morning and set it beside your keyboard without looking at you.

“What’s this?” you asked.

“Coffee.”

“I know what coffee is.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Why are you giving me coffee?”

He opened a chart. “They made an extra.”

You looked at the cup. It had your usual amount of milk. Your usual one sugar. Your name was not on it, but it might as well have been.

“They made an extra exactly how I take it?”

“Miracles occur in emergency medicine every day.”

“Langdon.”

“Drink it before I regret being generous.”

“You mean before you regret being caught.”

He did not answer, which was answer enough.

Later, you corrected his charting grammar while he stood over your shoulder pretending not to care.

“You cannot describe someone as ‘very febrile,’” you said.

“They were very febrile.”

“They had a high fever.”

“That loses emphasis.”

“It gains dignity.”

He leaned closer to read the screen. He stood beside you by choice now. That was the dangerous part. At first, proximity had been practical, both of you crowded around the same computer because Robby had forced you to share cases and there were never enough workstations. But now Langdon appeared at your side when there were other computers open. He rested one hand on the back of your chair. He leaned in, shoulder brushing yours, as if the space beside you had become his natural place in the department.

The bickering remained, but it changed texture. Less blade, more spark. He still corrected you when he thought you were wrong, but now there was a glint in his eye when he did it. You still challenged him, but sometimes the challenge came with a smile you failed to suppress quickly enough.

The nurses noticed. Of course they noticed. Nurses noticed everything. If you ever committed a crime, you were certain an ER nurse would know before the police and would critique your technique.

“Your shadow is looking for you,” one of them said as you came out of bed four.

You frowned. “My what?”

She nodded across the department. Langdon stood near the central desk with a chart in his hand, scanning the room in that way he had. Not frantic. Never frantic. But intent. His eyes moved over beds, curtains, staff, doorways.

Searching. Then they found you. His expression settled for half a second before he looked back down at the chart.

The nurse beside you made a small humming sound.

“Don’t,” you said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was simply observing a workplace relationship improving.”

“This workplace relationship is none of your business.”

“In this department? Everything is everyone’s business.”

You had no defence against that, so you left.

Langdon was still pretending to read when you reached him.

“Lose something?” you asked.

“No.”

“Looked like you were searching.”

“I was assessing departmental flow.”

“With your eyes?”

“That is traditionally how assessment works.”

“You found me pretty fast.”

His pen tapped once against the chart. Stopped. “You were in my way.”

“I was across the room.”

“Obstructively.”

You smiled before you could help it. He watched you with patients. You caught him doing it during a difficult discharge with an elderly woman who had no one to collect her and kept insisting she did not want to be a bother. You sat beside her for ten minutes you did not have, explaining the plan twice, then a third time when she looked embarrassed for forgetting. You wrote it down in large letters. You found her a sandwich. You got social work involved before anyone could rush her out. When you stepped back out, Langdon was at the counter, looking at you.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“Personally observing me. Apparently it’s unsettling.”

His mouth twitched. “You’re good with them.”

The compliment was so direct that you nearly missed a step.

“Patients?”

“No, vending machines. Yes, patients.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Are you ill?”

“I can retract it.”

“No. Too late. I’m keeping it.”

“Use it sparingly.”

“I’m going to document it.”

“I’ll dispute the note.”

You expected him to turn away after that, but he did not. His gaze lingered, not on your face exactly, but on the part of you that had stayed soft despite the shift, despite the noise, despite the endless pressure to become brisk where kindness took too long. You felt seen.

His defensiveness appeared in other ways. When a surgical registrar asked if you were “sure” about an abdominal finding in a tone that implied you might have confused guarding with enthusiasm, Langdon cut in before you could.

“She knows the difference.”

The registrar looked at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”

“No,” Langdon said. “You were patronising her. It’s a subtle distinction, but I’m confident you can learn it.”

You stared at him.

The registrar stared too, for different reasons.

Afterwards, you followed Langdon to the computer. “I had that handled.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you say something?”

“Because he was being an idiot.”

“I can handle idiots.”

“I’ve noticed. You handle me daily.”

He shrugged, but there was colour high on his cheekbones. He did not apologise for defending you. He did not make it into something noble either. He simply stood beside you, close enough for your arms to touch, and let the moment pass into charting.

Then there was the procedure. A straightforward abscess drainage, nothing dramatic, nothing you had not done before. Langdon was supervising because technically he had seen more of them, a fact he had only mentioned twice, which for him was basically restraint.

He stood across from you, sleeves rolled up, gloves on, forearms tense as he adjusted the tray.

You looked. You meant only to glance. Unfortunately, Langdon had very nice arms.

This was not clinically relevant. This was not professionally useful. This was not information you had asked your brain to collect. And yet there it was, filed somewhere between “patient needs follow-up antibiotics” and “Langdon’s veins are a public safety issue.”

He was explaining something about incision placement. You heard none of it. He stopped. You looked up. His eyes were bright with terrible understanding.

“Were you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Then what did I say?”

“Something about antibiotics.”

“Devastatingly specific.”

You pressed your lips together.

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping just enough that only you could hear. “Were you distracted?”

“No.”

“By the sterile field?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Because the sterile field is lower.”

“Langdon.”

“Were you staring at my arms?”

You wanted the floor to open.

For one second, his face went blank. Then pink. Then unbearably smug.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I think I do.”

“You think a lot of things. Many are wrong.”

“Not this.”

“You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I intend to enjoy it for years.”

“Touching confidence in your life expectancy.”

He smiled through the rest of the procedure. You considered sedating him. But beneath the humour, beneath the coffee and the charts and the almost-smiles, something darker was moving.

His marriage was getting worse. You did not know details. Langdon gave no details. He guarded them with the same stubborn competence he brought to trauma bays and difficult airways. But the shape of the pain became harder to miss. He took phone calls outside now. Not many. Just enough.

His phone would light up. He would look at the screen and something would close in his face. Then he would step into the hall near radiology, voice low, back turned. Once, you saw him through the narrow window in the door, one hand braced against the wall, head bowed as he listened to someone on the other end.

When he came back, he was pale. Not sick-pale. Worse. Angry-pale. Hurt-pale. The colour of someone holding himself together through muscle memory alone.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

He did not look at you. “Fine.”

You hated that word from patients. You hated it more from him.

Another night, after a messy resus, you both stood at the sink scrubbing blood from your hands. Langdon pulled his ring off to wash beneath it. That was normal. Practical. Sensible.

But then he stopped. Water ran over his wrist while he stared down at the band resting in his palm. The moment stretched too long. You looked away first, giving him the privacy of pretending you had not seen. When he put it back on, his hand shook once. Just once.

He slept in the on-call room more often too. You knew because you found him there one morning, still in yesterday’s scrubs, hair wrecked, one arm thrown over his eyes like he was trying to block out the entire world. He woke when the door creaked and sat up too quickly.

“I was reviewing notes,” he said.

“In the dark? Horizontally?”

“Advanced method.”

One night, close to the end of another impossible shift, when the ER had settled into a thin, watchful lull and the two of you ended up outside by the ambulance bay doors, stealing five minutes of air that smelled faintly of rain and petrol.

Langdon stood beside you, shoulder nearly touching yours, coffee cooling untouched in his hand. For once, he was not talking.

“You’re quiet,” you said.

“I’m capable of quiet.”

“Medically unproven.”

He huffed, but it was not quite a laugh. The automatic doors opened behind you, then closed again. Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose and faded. Langdon looked out across the wet pavement.

“Things at home are…”

He stopped. His hand closed around the coffee cup, then shifted. His thumb found the ring. Pressed hard. Once. Twice. His jaw worked.

“Never mind.”

You could have let him have it. Maybe you should have. Maybe the kinder thing would have been to pretend he had not started to open a door and then lost the courage to stand in it.

But you were tired too. Tired of fine. Tired of never mind. Tired of watching him bleed invisibly and then turn sharp because sharp was safer than wounded.

“Okay,” you said.

He looked at you, wary. “Okay?”

“You don’t have to tell me. But don’t pretend you’re fine and then bite my head off because I’m the nearest available target.”

The words hung between you. For a second, you thought you had gone too far. Langdon stared at you. Not angry. Not exactly. Exposed. The kind of exposed that made anger tempting.

You waited for it. The snap. The correction. The reminder that he was senior, that you were overstepping, that whatever was happening behind the closed door of his marriage was not yours to observe.

It did not come. Instead, he looked at you for a long time. Long enough that you became aware of the small distance between your shoulders. Of the coffee cooling in his hand. Of the ring beneath his thumb. Of his mouth, pressed into a line to keep back words that had nowhere safe to go.

He wanted to say something. You could see that. Maybe not the whole truth. Maybe not even a useful part of it. But something. Something more honest than sarcasm. Something more dangerous than fine.

He could not. Because he was still married. Because you worked together. Because he was technically your senior by one year, a ridiculous fact he had turned into armour and identity and distance. Because whatever this was, it had grown in the wrong season. So he chose something safer.

“You’re very annoying,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

His eyes stayed on yours.

“It’s becoming a problem.”

“For you?”

His thumb stilled against the ring.

“Mostly.”

The next shift was brutal in a way that made time feel physical. It pressed into your shoulders. Settled behind your eyes. Lived in your hands even after you washed them three times.

There had been a pile-up on the motorway just after seven. Three ambulances at once, then a fourth twenty minutes later. Trauma bays full. Corridors narrowed by stretchers. Blood on the floor that someone cleaned and then someone else bled over again. A child crying for a father who was still in imaging. A woman asking the same question every five minutes because shock had turned her memory into water.

You and Langdon had worked together without thinking. No bickering. No sharp comments. No seniority. No courtroom deposition.

He called for suction before you asked. You handed him gauze before he reached. He caught your eye over a patient’s chest and you knew, instantly, what he needed. You moved like the same thought split between two bodies.

It should have felt satisfying. Instead, it felt terrifying. Because the better you worked together, the harder it became to pretend it was only work.

By the time the department settled into its ruined version of calm, your scrubs felt too tight and your skin felt too aware of everything it touched. The last trauma had gone upstairs. The family had been updated. Robby had disappeared to make three phone calls you were glad you did not have to hear. The nurses moved with the blank efficiency of people who would feel all of it later, somewhere private, if they were lucky.

Langdon vanished after the final handover. You noticed because you always noticed now. You hated that about yourself. You told yourself not to look for him. You had charts to finish. Patients to reassess. A bladder scan that had been requested an hour ago and a discharge summary that might have been written in ancient code for all the sense it made to you.

You lasted six minutes. Then you found yourself walking. Not toward the breakroom first. That would have been too obvious. Not toward radiology. Not the ambulance bay. You checked the medication room. Empty. The on-call room. Empty. The small alcove by the staff lockers. Empty.

Finally, you reached the storage room at the far end of the department, the one no one used unless they needed extra blankets, spare tubing, or somewhere to fall apart for forty-five seconds between catastrophes.

The door was half open. Inside, the light was off except for the weak strip spilling in from the corridor. Langdon stood between a stack of folded sheets and a metal shelving unit lined with IV fluids. His back was to you. His head was bowed. One hand braced against the shelf. The other held his ring.

You stopped in the doorway. The air seemed to leave the room. The silver band rested in his palm, small and bright and devastatingly quiet. He must have heard you, because his shoulders tensed.

For once, he did not turn around immediately. Did not snap. Did not cover. Did not construct himself into something sharp enough to keep you back.

He only said, “I thought I locked the door.”

“You didn’t.”

“Obviously.”

His voice was flat. Worn thin.

You should have left. Everything in you knew that. You should have given him privacy. You should have turned around, walked back to the nurses’ station, and written your notes like a sensible person with appropriate boundaries and no instinct for emotional self-destruction. Instead, you stepped inside and let the door fall halfway shut behind you.

“Langdon.”

He closed his hand around the ring.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know. You’re worse when you don’t.”

He turned then. You had seen Langdon tired before. Irritated. Wired. Brilliant. Unbearable. Pale after phone calls. Quiet in the ambulance bay. Almost gentle with patients who would never know what it cost him to be that careful.

You had not seen him like this. He looked stripped down to the bone.

His left hand was bare. The absence of the ring was louder than the ring had ever been. Your eyes dropped to it before you could stop yourself. His hand flexed once, as if he felt the nakedness there too. Langdon looked down at the ring in his hand.

“We’ve been over for a long time.”

The sentence was quiet. Direct. Terrible.

You swallowed. “Langdon…”

“I know.” His head lifted quickly. “I know what it sounds like. I know what people say. I know every version of this story makes someone look selfish or weak or cruel, and maybe I am. Maybe that’s the point. But I need you to understand that I’m not saying it because I expect anything from you.”

Your heart was beating too hard. He kept going, words gathering speed now, not quite his usual yapping, not a tangent, not a lecture. More like he had been holding them in for so long that once one escaped, the rest tore after it.

“I’m not saying it so you’ll pity me. I’m not saying it so you’ll forgive me for being difficult. I’m not saying it because I think my marriage ending is some romantic inconvenience that clears the way for—” He stopped, jaw tight, eyes shutting briefly. “God. I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying enough.”

His eyes opened. That hit him. You saw it hit him. He looked at you like he had expected judgement, or interruption, or the clean, clinical slicing of your intelligence through whatever mess he had dragged into the room.

His voice lowered. “We’re separating.”

“It’s been coming for months,” he said. “Longer, probably. We just got very good at living around the truth. Different rooms. Different schedules. Conversations that sounded like logistics because anything else would have been war.” He looked down at his bare hand. “I kept wearing it because taking it off felt like admitting failure. Then keeping it on started feeling like lying.”

You did not know what to say. There were a dozen things you could have said. I’m sorry. That must be hard. Are you okay? What happened? How long? Why didn’t you tell anyone?

“I won’t be the reason.”

His eyes lifted to yours immediately.

“You’re not,” he said.

“Langdon-”

“You’re not.” He stepped closer, then stopped himself, like the movement had escaped before he could decide whether he was allowed to want it. “I need you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever I’ve been-” He broke off, breath unsteady. “You are not the reason.”

You believed him because you had seen the shape of the pain before you ever became part of it. You had seen the calls, the silence, the way home pulled colour out of him. You had seen him twist that ring like a man trying to keep a door shut with his bare hands.

“Then why are you telling me?” you asked.

He looked at you for a long moment. The storage room felt too small. Too warm. Too crowded with things neither of you had said. His hand closed tighter around the ring.

“Because lately,” he said, “when something happens, you’re the first person I look for.”

He laughed softly, almost in disbelief at himself. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe when you argued with me in trauma two and somehow made the correct call while insulting my entire personality. Maybe when you noticed the ring and didn’t ask. Maybe when I realised the ER could be on fire and I’d still know exactly where you were standing.”

You could not look away from him. He looked ruined by his own honesty.

“I know where you stand,” he said. “That’s the problem. I know which computer you go to when you’re annoyed. I know you forget to eat when paeds is bad. I know you pretend not to care when someone underestimates you, but you do. I know you take one sugar and then act like it’s a moral failing when I remember.” His mouth twitched, pained. “I know when you’re about to argue because you breathe in like you’re loading a weapon.”

Despite everything, your eyes stung. “Langdon.”

“I know your hands are steady when mine want to be. I know you’re kind when you’re exhausted, which is infuriating because I can barely manage civil. I know I trust you before I have time to decide whether I should.”

He stopped. The silence after was immense. You stared at him, at the bare hand, at the ring trapped in his fist, at the man who had spent weeks making seniority into a wall only to stand in front of you now with nothing left to hide behind.

“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You’re still—”

“I know.”

“We work together.”

“I know.”

“You’re my senior.”

That made him let out one broken, breathless laugh.

“By one miserable year.”

The laugh almost undid you. Almost. You crossed your arms tightly, not because you were angry, but because you did not trust your hands. “I can’t be where you run because your life is falling apart.”

“You’re not.”

“I won’t be your escape.”

“You aren’t.” His voice roughened. “You’re the first thing that’s made me want to stop escaping.”

The words hit so hard that for a second you forgot how to breathe. Langdon looked like he regretted them instantly. Not because they were untrue. Because they were too true. He turned away, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. The ring glinted between his fingers.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” you said.

He froze. You stepped closer. Not all the way. Just enough that the air between you changed.

“No,” you repeated, quieter. “You probably shouldn’t have.”

He turned back slowly.His eyes found yours. That was when the room became impossible. You had stood close before. Shoulder to shoulder at computers. Hip to hip beside bedsides. Elbows touching over notes. His hand reaching past yours for the mouse. Yours brushing his when you passed him a pen.

All of that had been deniable. This was not. The distance between you was a decision now. Langdon’s gaze dropped to your mouth. Only for a second. Long enough to set your whole body alight. Then he looked back at your eyes, and the restraint there was almost worse than wanting. He was waiting. Not taking. Not assuming. Holding himself so still it looked painful.

“Tell me to leave,” he said.

Your voice barely worked. “This is a storage room.”

“Then tell me to stop looking at you like this.”

Langdon crossed the distance between you and then stopped with barely an inch left, close enough that you could feel the heat of him, close enough that his breath stirred against your cheek.

He did not touch you yet. That restraint was the final undoing. You reached for him first. Your fingers caught the front of his scrub top, and he inhaled sharply, eyes closing for half a second as if the contact hurt. Then his mouth was on yours.

The kiss was not gentle. It tried to be. For one brief, trembling second, it was careful, uncertain, a question asked against your lips. Then you answered. And it caught fire.

Langdon made a sound low in his throat, one hand coming to your waist, the other still closed around the ring like he did not know how to let go of anything. He backed you against the shelving unit with enough care not to hurt you and enough urgency to make your head spin. Your hands slid up to his shoulders, then into his hair, and he kissed you harder, like restraint had been a language he was fluent in until you touched him.

He tasted like bad coffee and exhaustion. He kissed like a man who had spent weeks arguing because wanting you quietly had become impossible. You pulled back for air and he followed, mouth finding the corner of yours, your cheek, the line of your jaw, stopping himself there with a sharp breath.

“Tell me this is a bad idea,” he said against your skin.

“It’s a terrible idea.”

He kissed you again. You let him. For a moment, there was no ER. No ring. No one-year seniority. No Robby. No charts. No impossible circumstances waiting outside the door.

There was only Langdon’s hand at your waist, his body warm against yours, the hitch in his breath when you tugged lightly at his hair. Your fingers slid down his arm, and yes, even now, some absurd part of you noticed the muscle beneath your palm. He noticed you noticing. Even like this, even breathless, ruined, mouth swollen from yours, he found the energy to be unbearable.

“Are you still clinically observing my arms?”

You laughed against his mouth. “Shut up.”

His forehead dropped against yours. For a few seconds, you both stood there breathing the same air, half-laughing, half-shaken, holding on to each other like the floor had tilted beneath you.

Then the world returned. A cart rattled past outside. Someone called for extra blankets. The department beyond the door kept living, kept needing, kept demanding.

He looked at you then, and the kiss had not solved anything. That was the terrible, honest thing. It had not made the circumstances simple. It had not erased the hurt or the timing or the consequences. If anything, it had made everything sharper. But it had also made lying impossible. Langdon opened his hand. The ring sat in his palm.

“I’m going to do this properly,” he said. “Not because of you. Not for you. For me. Because it should have been done before I ever looked at you like this.”

Your chest ached. “And until then?” you asked.

His jaw tightened. “Until then, I behave.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “You?”

“I said behave. Not become likeable.”

That almost made you smile. He stepped closer again, but this time he did not touch you. The space between you was deliberate. Painful. Necessary.

“I meant what I said,” he told you. “You’re the first person I look for.”

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then you reached out and touched his bare left hand, just once, your fingers brushing the place where the ring had been.

“I know.”

For a second, neither of you moved.

Your fingers were still against his hand, resting over the pale strip of skin where the ring had been. It was such a small place to touch him. Barely anything. Barely pressure. And yet Langdon looked at you like you had put your hand around his throat.

His breath changed first. A quiet inhale. Unsteady. Controlled only because he was forcing it to be. Then his eyes dropped to your mouth. His eyes came back to yours, darker now, the last of his restraint trembling visibly at the edges. For one breath, he just stared at you. Then something in him snapped.

Langdon crossed the space between you in one hard step, his hand catching your waist as his mouth found yours again. The kiss was rougher this time, less question than surrender, and the force of it drove you back until your shoulders met the storage room wall.

The impact was soft, cushioned by his hand sliding behind you just in time. You made a sound against his mouth, half surprise, half relief, and his grip tightened like it had undone him. His body pressed close, heat and tension and the sharp, clean scent of hospital soap beneath exhaustion. One hand stayed at your waist.

You felt the thought pass through him too. For one second, his mouth slowed. You caught his lower lip between yours before he could retreat. Langdon groaned. It was low, helpless, and completely unlike any sound you had ever heard from him. It went straight through you. His forehead tipped against yours, breath uneven.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he said.

“You’re very dramatic.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Then he kissed you again. This one was slower, somehow worse. His mouth moved over yours like he was trying to learn you and forget you at the same time, like every second of contact was both a mistake and the only honest thing left in the room. Your hands slid up his chest, over the tense line of his shoulders, into his hair. He shuddered when your fingers curled there.

“Careful,” he murmured against your mouth.

“Why?”

“Because if you keep doing that, I’m going to stop pretending I have any self-control.”

You tugged lightly. His answer was immediate. His hand dropped from the wall to your hip, pulling you more firmly against him, and the kiss turned hungry. You could feel the hard line of his body against yours, the restless energy he carried everywhere finally given somewhere to go. His mouth left yours, dragging along your cheek, your jaw, stopping at the side of your neck with another sharp breath.

He did not kiss you there at first. He hovered. Waiting. Asking without words. You tilted your head. That was all the permission he needed.

His mouth pressed to your neck, hot and deliberate, and your fingers tightened in his hair before you could stop them. He kissed you there once, twice, then lingered like he was trying to brand the moment into memory. His hand at your waist flexed.

“Langdon,” you breathed.

He pulled back just enough to look at you.

The sight of him nearly finished you.

His hair was disordered from your hands. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were bright and wrecked and fixed on you like the entire ER could collapse outside the door and he would still need one more second. Instead, you kissed him.

He answered like he had been waiting his whole life to be interrupted. The shelf beside you rattled as he pressed you harder into the wall, his hand sliding from your waist to your back, holding you there, close enough that you could feel every uneven breath he took. You arched into him without meaning to, and his control slipped visibly.

His hand moved to your face then, thumb brushing your cheek with a tenderness so sudden it made the heat in your chest turn painful. The contrast was unbearable: the press of him against you, the urgency of his mouth, and then that careful touch, like even now he was afraid of taking more than you wanted to give.

You covered his hand with yours. For a moment, the kiss softened. Not cooled. But deepened into something more dangerous than want. Something that knew names. Habits. Coffee orders. The exact place the other person stood in a crowded room.

Langdon pulled away first, but only barely. His mouth hovered over yours. His eyes shut for half a second, tortured.

Then he laughed under his breath, low and disbelieving. “I’m behaving terribly.”

“You warned me you wouldn’t become likeable.”

“That was different.”

“You’re still not likeable.”

His eyes opened. There he was again beneath all of it. Infuriating. Brilliant. Yours to argue with, though not yours to keep. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The uncertainty made the moment sharper. But his smile, small and breathless, was real.

“You say that,” he murmured, “but your hands are still in my hair.”

You immediately started to pull them away. He caught your wrist.

“Don’t.”

For one more impossible moment, you stayed pinned between Langdon and the wall, your hand in his hair, his mouth close enough to yours that every breath felt stolen. Then voices passed outside the storage room.

The hospital. The shift. The ring still in his hand. The fact that his left hand was bare because he had chosen honesty too late and too close to you.

Langdon stepped back slowly, like it cost him. The air rushed cold between you. But his eyes dropped to your mouth again, and you hated him a little for how badly you wanted him to ignore his own promise.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to make me forget every decent thought I’ve ever had.”

You gave a shaky laugh. “That many?”

“Three. Maybe four.”

“Impressive for you.”

His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if erasing the evidence of himself and failing completely.

The voices outside faded completely, but the tension in the small storage room only thickened, charged and electric. Langdon’s thumb lingered on your lower lip a second longer, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide with want. The ring was still clutched in his other hand like a talisman he refused to let go of, but the way he was looking at you said the “properly” he’d promised was about to be tested to its breaking point.

His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if trying to erase the evidence of himself and failing completely. The pad of his thumb lingered, tracing the curve of your mouth like he was memorizing it. Like he was already mourning the loss of this moment before it had even ended.

You watched his eyes darken. Watched something shift behind them, the last thread of restraint finally snapping.

Then his hands were on you again, sliding under your scrub top, palms flat against your ribs, possessive and sure. His fingers splayed wide, spanning the curve of your waist like he was claiming territory. His thumbs pressed into the soft skin just below your breasts, and you gasped at the contact, at the heat of his hands against your flushed skin.

"One minute," he muttered, voice gravel-rough, his mouth already dropping to your throat. "I just need one goddamn minute of you."

His teeth grazed your pulse point, and your head fell back against the wall with a dull thud. His mouth was everywhere, hot, insistent, trailing fire down the column of your neck. His fingers found the hem of your scrub top and pushed it higher, exposing your stomach to the cool air of the storage room.

"Langdon-"

"Don't." His voice was muffled against your collarbone. "Don't say my name like you're about to talk sense into me. Not now."

He dropped to his knees. The sight of him there, brilliant, infuriating Langdon, on his knees in a hospital storage room, looking up at you with hunger and devotion tangled together in his dark eyes, nearly undid you completely.

"You have no idea," he murmured, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to your hipbone, "how much I've thought of this." His fingers hooked into the waistband of your scrub pants, tugging them down with agonizing slowness. "Of you."

He kissed lower, his lips tracing a path along your stomach, your hips, the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. His breath was hot against you, and you could feel the tremor in his hands as they gripped your thighs, spreading you open for him.

"So pretty," he breathed against your skin. His tongue traced a slow, deliberate line along your inner thigh, and your knees nearly buckled. "So fucking smart. Do you know what you do to me? The way you argue with me in front of the whole department, like you're not the only thing I can see?"

You opened your mouth to respond, but whatever you might have said dissolved into a sharp cry as his mouth found you. He was thorough. Unhurried despite the urgency that had driven him to his knees. He took his time, learning you with his tongue, his fingers, the occasional scrape of his teeth that made you gasp and grip his hair. Your fingers tangled in the dark strands, tugging, and he groaned against you, a low, desperate sound that vibrated through your entire body.

"Langdon-" His name was a broken plea on your lips.

He pulled back just enough to look up at you. His mouth was slick, his eyes dark and hungry. "Tell me what you need."

"You. Just please-"

He rose then, fluid and commanding, guiding you backward until your knees hit the narrow exam table. He lifted you onto it, the paper crinkling beneath you, and positioned himself between your thighs in a single, decisive movement.

His hands found your hips, pulling you to the edge of the table. He kicked his own pants down just enough, and then he was there, pressing against you, the heat of him making you ache.

"Look at me," he ordered, his voice low and dominant. One hand pinned your wrist above your head, fingers lacing with yours. His other hand gripped your hip, steadying you. "I want to watch every second I'm finally inside you."

He pushed in slowly. Deliberately. Inch by agonizing inch, giving you time to feel every stretch, every pulse of heat. Your back arched off the table as he filled you completely, and he groaned, a raw, guttural sound that seemed torn from somewhere deep in his chest.

"Jesus," he breathed, pressing his forehead to yours. "You feel, God, you feel like you were made for this."

Then he moved. Deep. Rough. Commanding. Each stroke drove you higher, the table creaking beneath you as he set a relentless rhythm. His hand released your hip to find your breast, thumb circling your nipple through the thin fabric of your scrub top. His mouth found your throat, your jaw, the corner of your mouth.

"Eyes on me," he reminded you, voice strained. "I want to see you. All of you."

You obeyed, meeting his gaze as he drove into you again and again. His expression was wrecked. All pretence gone, every carefully constructed wall reduced to rubble. The composed, infuriating man who could diagnose a cardiac arrest with clinical detachment was nowhere to be found. In his place was someone raw, undone, completely at your mercy despite being the one driving into you with commanding precision.

His hips snapped against yours, each thrust deep and deliberate, angling to hit that perfect spot inside you that made stars burst behind your eyes. The narrow exam table creaked beneath you, its thin paper crinkling with every movement. One of his hands remained wrapped around your wrist, pinning it above your head against the thin mattress. The other gripped your hip hard enough to leave bruises, and you wanted them. You wanted every mark he would leave on you.

"Look at me," he ordered again, his voice strained and wrecked. "Don't look away. Not now."

His pace quickened, growing more urgent. The sound of skin meeting skin filled the small room, obscene and perfect. His jaw was tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek as he fought for control and lost, over and over. Sweat beaded at his temples, and a lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look younger.

"I thought about this every night," he confessed, his voice breaking as he thrust deep, holding there for a moment before pulling back and driving into you again. "When I was with her." The word came out bitter, almost angry. "It was always you.”

His mouth found yours, bruising, desperate, consuming. He kissed you like he was drowning and you were air. His tongue swept into your mouth, and you tasted yourself on him, tasted the salt of his sweat, tasted the raw honesty he'd never given anyone else.

"I imagined you," he continued against your lips, each word punctuated by another thrust. "All the time. Every time I closed my eyes, it was you." His hand slid from your hip up your side, pushing your scrub top higher until your breasts were exposed. His thumb found your nipple, circling it with devastating precision. "The way you argue with me. The way you challenge me. The way you look at me like I'm not just some broken asshole."

His pace grew punishing. Relentless. Each stroke drove you higher, your body clenching around him, drawing desperate groans from his throat.

"I'd be inside her," he said, voice dropping to a ragged whisper, "and I'd close my eyes, and I'd see you. Feel you. Imagine it was your legs wrapped around me, your mouth on mine, your voice telling me to go harder, faster, more."

His rhythm faltered slightly, the only crack in his commanding facade. His forehead dropped to yours, eyes screwed shut, breath coming in harsh pants against your lips.

"And when I finished," he breathed, "I'd say your name. Every fucking time. I'd whisper it into her hair and pretend I hadn't. Pretend it didn't mean anything."

He opened his eyes then, and what you saw in them nearly undid you. Guilt. Desire. Years of suppressed want finally unleashed. He looked at you like you were the only thing anchoring him to earth—like without you, he'd spin off into nothing.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, and the apology wasn't for the confession. It was for the weight of it. The admission that he'd been carrying you in his chest while lying beside someone else. "I'm sorry I couldn't." His voice cracked. "I should have left her the first time I said your name. I should have found you. Should have told you-"

You silenced him with a kiss, arching up into him. His hand found your free wrist, pinning both above your head now, and he drove into you with renewed intensity. The admission had shattered something inside you, something you hadn't even known was holding you back.

Your release hit like a wave, unexpected and overwhelming, pulling you under as you cried out his name. Your body clenched around him, pulsing, drawing him deeper. Your back arched off the table, and he watched you fall apart with an expression of pure reverence, like he was witnessing something sacred.

His control broke completely. He followed with a guttural groan, burying himself deep as he finished, his forehead pressed to yours. His hips stuttered against you, his body shuddering, and he buried his face in the curve of your neck as he came undone. You felt every tremor, every gasp, every ragged breath he took against your skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, his breathing harsh and uneven, his weight pressing you into the thin mattress. One of his hands released your wrists, sliding down to cup your face. His thumb traced your cheek, and when he finally lifted his head, his eyes were wet.

"Say something," he whispered. "Please. Tell me I didn't just ruin everything."

You reached up, brushing the dampness from his cheek. "You didn't ruin anything."

He let out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to yours again. His body was still trembling, still connected to yours in the most intimate way possible.

"I'm yours," he said quietly, the words almost lost against your lips. "I've been yours since the first time you told me I was an insufferable asshole."

You laughed weakly. "You are an insufferable asshole."

For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, breathing ragged, his hand still tangled with yours. The only sounds were your mingled breaths and the distant hum of the hospital beyond the door.

Then, slowly, he eased out of you. The loss of him made you ache, but he didn't leave you empty for long. He reached for a spare scrub top from a nearby shelf and cleaned you both with surprising gentleness, his touch reverent. He pressed a soft kiss to your stomach, your hip, the inside of your knee.

Then he gathered you into his lap on the edge of the table, pulling your scrub pants back up before wrapping his arms around you. One hand stroked slow, soothing circles down your back, tracing your spine through the thin fabric.

Then, softer, almost reverent. He kissed you slowly, tenderly, the roughness melting into Langdon stayed inside you for a few more heartbeats, then eased out carefully. He cleaned you both with a spare scrub top, surprisingly gentle despite the roughness from minutes earlier. He pulled you into his lap on the edge of the table, arms wrapped around you, one hand stroking slow circles down your back.

“You okay?” he murmured against your hair.

“More than okay,” you whispered, still catching your breath.

A beat of silence. Then the absurdity of it all—hiding in a storage room, half-dressed, the weight of everything still hanging between you—hit at the same time. A small laugh bubbled out of you. Langdon’s chest shook with a low chuckle that turned into quiet, helpless laughter against your shoulder. The shared sound broke the heavy tension like a release valve, warm and real.

From the hallway, Robby’s voice carried through the door.

“Whoever stole my extra blankets, I am choosing violence.”

You and Langdon both looked toward the sound. Then at each other. Despite everything, despite the ache and the ring and the kiss still burning on your mouth, you laughed. Langdon’s smile faded first, but only because something softer replaced it.

“I should go first,” he said.

“Probably.”

“People will talk.”

“People already talk.”

“Yes, but usually because you’re impossible to work with.”

“You’re confusing me with yourself.”

“There she is.”

You rolled your eyes, but your hand lingered near his for one second longer. Then he stepped back. At the door, he paused, the ring still held in his hand.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said, voice low, “this changes nothing at work.”

“Obviously.”

“We remain professional.”

“Painfully.”

“No favouritism.”

“You’re still wrong half the time.”

“A third at most.”

“And you’re still only one year ahead of me.”

His mouth curved. This time, when he looked at you, he did not hide any of it.

“Try to keep up,” he said.

You smiled, still breathless.

“Try to be worth waiting for.”

[of-apollo]

₊⊹ THOSE WE LOVE !

PAIRING: Frank Langdon x GN!Nurse!Reader.

SUMMARY: Dealing with the fallout of a mass casualty is intense enough as it is. But, when a disgruntled patient fires at you, the department has to fight desperately to keep you alive even in the midst of chaos.

NOTES: Pittfest-based, accidental shooting, GSW and blood, medical settings (ICU), angst, established relationship.

REQUESTED BY: @maxinebxrnes

NAVIGATION | PITT MASTERLIST | KO-FI

The sirens outside the Pitt had long since ceased to sound like individual vehicles, blending instead into a continuous, howling wall of noise that vibrated through the very soles of your sneakers. It was just past seven in the evening, but the concept of time had completely fractured three hours earlier when the first alerts of a mass shooting at Pittfest started flashing across the emergency department monitors.

The hospital wasn't just overrun. It was drowning in a deluge of torn flesh, muddy festival gear, and the raw, piercing panic of the young and the terrified.

You had been moving on pure adrenaline, your nursing scrubs already stained with a patchwork of fluids from half a dozen different patients, your hands working in a flawless, unspoken synchronicity with Frank. That was the thing about the two of you, even in the middle of a literal war zone, with the entire department tearing itself apart at the seams, Frank Langdon was your anchor. An established rhythm existed between you.

Right now, that rhythm was being tested to its absolute limit on a patient crammed into the makeshift overflow area near the ambulance bay. The man on the gurney was large, aggressive, and reeked of cheap bourbon and woodsmoke, his upper thigh torn open by a jagged piece of shrapnel or a ricochet from the festival grounds. He was thrashing, his eyes rolling back in his head as he roared obscenities, fighting the very hands trying to save his life.

Frank was leaning over him, his broad shoulders tensed as he applied heavy, two-handed pressure to the femoral artery, his face a mask of fierce, locked-in concentration. You were positioned just opposite him, your fingers deftly trying to establish a secondary IV in the man’s uninjured arm while the chaos of the ER swirled madly around you.

Just a few feet away, Dr. Abbot was shouting orders, his voice cracked with exhaustion as he directed a trauma team toward a crashing teenager. Dana was somewhere down the corridor, her authoritative tone echoing as she managed the triage nightmare at the front doors. Everyone was stretched to their absolute breaking point, operating on instinct and sheer willpower.

"I need that line running now!" Frank barked, not out of anger toward you, but to be heard over the deafening noise of a nearby heart monitor screaming and the desperate sobbing of a girl two bays down. "He's losing his pressure. We don't have time for him to be fighting us."

You nodded quickly, your voice calm and steady as you spoke to the thrashing man. You told him he was safe, told him that he was at the hospital and that Frank was going to fix his leg, but the words didn't seem to penetrate the thick fog of his intoxication and terror. The man gave a sudden, violent heave, his free arm flailing out wildly. His fingers clawed frantically at the heavy tactical waistband of his cargo trousers, diving beneath the blood-stained fabric of his shirt.

It happened in a terrifying, fragmented blur that defied the frantic speed of the room. You saw the dark glint of steel before your brain fully processed what it was, a compact handgun snagging on his belt as he yanked it free in a blind, paranoid reflex.

"Gun! He’s got a gun!" someone screamed from the corridor. It sounded like Robby, his voice cracking with a raw, primal panic that instantly silenced the immediate vicinity.

Time seemed to violently liquefy. Frank’s eyes widened, a sudden, horrifying comprehension dawning on his features as he instantly let go of the wound, lunging across the gurney in a desperate, instinctive attempt to smother the weapon or shield you. The patient fired blindly into the air, the deafening roar of the gunshot exploding inside the enclosed space, shattering a nearby fluorescent light fixture in a shower of sparks and white dust.

From down the hall, the immediate, instinctual response was instantaneous; voices shouted to get down, and a chorus of bodies hit the linoleum floor as medical staff and ambulatory patients dropped to seek whatever cover the flimsy privacy curtains and stainless-steel carts could provide.

But the man’s wrist snapped sideways as he recoiled, the weapon discharging a second time before Frank could pin his arm to the mattress.

There was no grand explosion of pain, just a sudden, violent impact against your ribs that felt like being struck full-force by a swinging baseball bat, knocking the breath entirely out of your lungs. The momentum threw you backward, your feet tangling in the stool behind you, and you went down hard against the cold, hard floor, the bag of saline you had been holding bursting against the metal leg of the gurney.

For a second, the world went completely silent, the ringing in your ears drowning out the screams, the shouting, and the heavy thud of security guards finally tackling the gunman to the ground just inches away from where you lay. You stared up at the cracked ceiling tiles, wondering vaguely why the air felt so thick, why it was suddenly so incredibly difficult to draw a single breath.

Then the silence shattered, and the world rushed back in with a terrifying, agonizing roar. Frank was on his knees beside you before you could even register that you were on the floor, his hands trembling in a way you had never seen before as they hovered over your chest. His face was entirely drained of colour, his lips parted in a silent gasp of horror that quickly transformed into a frantic, breathless plea. "No, no, no, please, God, no," he muttered, his voice stripped of all its usual authority, sounding entirely small and broken.

His palms came down hard against the left side of your upper abdomen, just beneath your ribs, and the sudden, searing agony that ripped through your torso made your back arch off the floor, a choked, ragged scream tearing from your throat. The fabric of your scrubs was already turning a deep, heavy crimson, the warmth of your own blood soaking through his fingers as he pressed down with everything he had.

The immediate area exploded into a frenzied, chaotic scrum of activity, but this time, the emergency was you. Robby was there in an instant, his face pale and eyes wide with shock as he dropped to his knees on your other side, "I’ve got the back, Frank, I’ve got the exit wound, keep pressing!" Robby yelled, his voice shaking as he tried to stabilize your writhing frame.

Jack appeared above you, his authoritative calm momentarily cracking as he took in the sight of one of his own nurses bleeding out on the floor. "Get a gurney over here now! Someone get me a chest tube tray and two units of O-negative!" Jack roared, his commands snapping the stunned onlookers into motion.

Samira was right behind him, her hands steady despite the visible tremor in her jaw as she ripped open a pack of trauma dressings, quickly tucking them under Frank’s straining hands. Dana was on the radio, her voice cutting through the hospital page with a sharp, trembling urgency, calling for an immediate surgical consult and clearing a path straight to the operating theatres.

You tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet, shallow gasp and the sound of it seemed to fracture something deep within him. "Stay with me, do you hear me? Look at me, sweetheart," he begged, leaning down so close that his sweat-dampened hair brushed against your forehead. His eyes were wild, swimming with tears that he refused to let fall. "Don't you dare close your eyes. You breathe for me, come on, just keep breathing."

The vulnerability in his voice was terrifying; this was a man who stared down death every single day without flinching, but looking at you, he looked utterly defeated, stripped entirely of his medical armor.

With a coordinated heave, Frank, Robby, and Jack lifted you off the blood-slicked floor and onto a clearing gurney, the sudden movement causing the agony in your chest to flare into a blinding, white-hot sheet of pain that threatened to turn the world completely black.

You gasped, your fingers clawing blindly at the air, and Frank instantly caught your hand in his own, his grip incredibly tight, almost crushing, yet it was the most comforting thing you had ever felt. He didn't let go, not even as Jack began cutting away the remnants of your ruined scrubs, exposing the neat, horrific puncture wound where the bullet had torn through your muscle and bone.

“Shit, this doesn’t sound good," Jack muttered, his stethoscope pressed firmly against your skin, his expression grim. "Dr. Mohan, give me that scalpel, we need to drop a tube now before they arrest."

"Frank," you whimpered, the word barely a whisper, your vision beginning to tunnel, the bright fluorescent lights of the ER fading into a hazy, shimmering blur.

"I'm right here, I’m not leaving you, I swear to God I’m right here," Frank cried, his voice breaking completely as he used his free hand to wipe the blood from your lip, his thumb caressing your cheek. He looked up at Jack, his eyes blazing with a mixture of terror and fury. "Do it fast, Jack, please, just do it fast."

You felt the sharp, sudden sting of the local anesthetic, followed almost immediately by the heavy, suffocating pressure of the chest tube being inserted between your ribs. It was an invasive, brutal sensation, a choked sob tearing from your throat as you tried to pull away from the pain.

Frank held you steady, his strong arm wrapping around your shoulders to keep you pinned to the mattress, his face pressed against the side of your neck as he whispered frantic, broken promises into your skin. "You're okay, you're doing so well, just hold onto me, sweetheart. I've got you."

As the tube found its mark, a dark, heavy rush of blood and trapped air hissed into the collection chamber, and suddenly, a massive, cooling relief washed through your lungs. You could breathe again, the suffocating weight lifted from your chest, even as the profound exhaustion of blood loss began to pull you down into the dark.

The gurney was suddenly in motion, rattling violently as it was pushed out of the trauma bay and down the long corridor toward the elevators. Dana was there at the doors, holding them open, her face pale as she reached out to briefly touch your leg, her voice fierce as she looked at the surgical team waiting for you. "Take care of them," she ordered, her tone leaving absolutely no room for negotiation.

Frank walked alongside the moving bed, his hand still locked in yours, his eyes on you, his thumb tracing endless, soothing circles against the back of your hand.

When they finally reached the double doors of the surgical suite, the anesthesia resident stepped in front of him, gently but firmly placing a hand on Frank's chest. "Frank, you need to stay here. We've got them, we're going to take care of them, I promise."

Frank stopped, his sneakers skidding slightly on the polished floor, his chest heaving as he fought the urge to push past the man. He looked down at you, his eyes red-rimmed and filled with a profound, terrifying helplessness, his grip loosening only when the momentum of the gurney forced your fingers to slide apart.

"I'll be right here," he called out, his voice echoing down the sterile hallway as the heavy doors began to swing shut, separating you from his sight. "Right here when you wake up. I love you, do you hear me? I love you!"

As the darkness finally took you, the smell of antiseptic and the bright, shadowless lights of the operating room fading into nothingness, the last thing you felt was the lingering warmth of his hand against your skin, and the steady, unbreakable promise of his voice.

Everything felt incredibly heavy, as though your limbs had been poured full of wet sand, and your throat was dry and parched, tasting of stale plastic from the oxygen cannula resting beneath your nose. For a long moment, you simply drifted in that twilight space, aware of a dull, throbbing ache radiating across the entire left side of your chest, a deep-seated soreness that flared into a sharp pinch every time you tried to take a deep breath.

But beneath that pain, and the overwhelming exhaustion pulling at your eyelids, there was a profound, grounding warmth enveloping your right hand.

Slowly, with an effort that felt almost monumental, you forced your eyes open. The harsh, chaotic glare of the emergency department was gone, replaced by the soft, dimmed shadows of a private recovery room in the intensive care unit. The blinds were drawn against the morning light, casting long, quiet bars of grey across the linoleum floor. And sitting right beside your mattress, his frame uncomfortably curled into a stiff hospital armchair, was Frank.

He looked entirely shattered. He was still wearing his scrub trousers, though he had swapped his blood-stained top for a faded, oversized grey university sweatshirt that looked as though it had been pulled from the bottom of his locker. His elbows were resting on the edge of your mattress, his face buried in the crook of his arm, his fingers tightly, desperately interlaced with yours.

As you shifted your weight slightly, trying to ease the pressure on your chest tube site, a soft, involuntary whimper escaped your lips. The sound was barely audible, but it acted like an electric shock to Frank. His head snapped up instantly, his eyes bloodshot, dark shadows bruising the skin beneath them. For a fraction of a second, his expression was blank with a raw, lingering terror, but as his gaze focused on your open eyes, his face cracked, a look of profound, overwhelming relief washing over his features.

"Hey," he whispered, his voice incredibly thick and hoarse, rough from hours of silence and unshed tears. He shifted instantly, his thumb brushing over your cheekbone with a tenderness that made your chest ache for reasons completely unrelated to the bullet wound. "Hey, beautiful. Don't try to move too much, alright? You're okay. You're safe."

"Frank," you croaked, the word catching in your throat, sounding small and entirely broken.

"I'm here. I'm right here," he murmured, his touch lingering against your skin as if he needed the physical contact to completely convince himself that you were truly alive. He reached for a small plastic cup on the bedside table, dipping a pink foam swab into some ice water before gently pressing it against your cracked lips. "Just a little bit, sweetheart. Your throat's going to be sore from the ventilator, just let it sit there."

The cool moisture was an absolute blessing, and you closed your eyes for a moment, letting the relief wash over you. When you opened them again, you looked down at the heavy, white dressings taping the chest tube firmly to your ribs. The memory of the gunshot, the sudden, violent impact, and the terrifying sight of Frank kneeling over you in a pool of your own blood came rushing back with a vividness that caused your heart rate to spike on the monitor.

Frank noticed the rhythmic acceleration of the beeping instantly. "Hey, look at me, honey," he commanded softly, squeezing your hand a little tighter. "The guy's gone. Security took him down, police have him. The hospital is secure. You are out of danger, I promise you."

"You... you look terrible," you managed to whisper, a faint, weak attempt at a smile touching the corners of your lips.

A ragged, wet laugh spilled from his chest, his shoulders dropping as he leaned his forehead gently against your shoulder, his breathing heavy and uneven. "I have never been so terrified in my entire life," he confessed into the fabric of your hospital gown, his voice trembling in a way that made your throat tighten. "I’ve seen a lot of things in that department. A lot of blood, a lot of close calls. But when you went down... when I saw what that bastard did... I froze. My brain just stopped working because the only thing that mattered was that it was you."

You squeezed his hand back with what little strength you had, your heart swelling at the raw vulnerability in his tone. "You didn't freeze," you murmured softly. "You caught me. You held me."

"Because I couldn't let you go," he said, pulling back to look down at you, a single tear finally escaping and tracking down the rugged line of his jaw. "Robby, Jack, Samira... they all practically had to drag me out of the operating theatre doors. Dana sat with me in the hallway for four hours while you were under. She kept telling me to go home, to wash the blood off my clothes, but I couldn't leave this building knowing you were in there. Collins kept checking the surgical log every fifteen minutes just to give me updates. Everyone's been by, sweetheart. They’re all terrified for you, but they're all waiting to see you."

"Tell them thank you," you whispered, the exhaustion beginning to pull at your consciousness again, your eyelids growing heavier by the second as the hospital pain medication kept you drifting.

"I will. I'll tell them all," Frank murmured. He leaned down, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. "You just rest now. I'm not going anywhere. I’ll be right here when you wake up again, and I’ll be here when we finally get to go home. I love you so much."

As the darkness drifted back in to claim you, softer this time, devoid of the terror and the pain of the ER, you let yourself sink into the mattress, completely enveloped by the steady, protective warmth of his presence and the quiet, reassuring beat of his heart right beside you.

— COME AND JOIN MY TAGLISTS !

ALL PITT MEN: @malindacath @superlegend216 @sapphire882 @challengers4ev @hazydespair @hallecarey1 @teenwolfbitches28 @imabapical @sleepylunarwolf @lacy1986 @thehockeynerd30 @teardropcup @staygoldsquatchling02 @typicalkhani @ibleednavyandorange @cozyvanillacashmere @amacphet @hellsxbellsx @alexxavicry

FRANK LANGDON: @lastwandastan @marvelsbipolarnerd @abbotaes

[tearsof-scarlet]

Under Observation

Pairing: Frank Langdon x Resident!Reader

Synopsis: You and Dr Langdon are brilliant together in the ER and completely unbearable everywhere else. When Robby forces you to work as a pair, constant bickering turns into trust, tension, and something neither of you should want. But Langdon is married, quietly falling apart, and lately, when the ER gets chaotic, you’re the first person he looks for.

Tags: SMUT, resident reader, attempt at humour, langdon has adhd, ER romance, forced proximity, rivals to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, workplace tension, forbidden feelings, angst

Warnings: SMUT! MDNI! marital issues, emotional infidelity themes, medical trauma, blood/injury mentions, angst

Words: 15k~

The ER had been making that sound all morning. Not one sound, exactly, but a hundred of them layered badly on top of each other. Monitors chiming. Wheels rattling over tile. A toddler crying behind curtain four. Someone coughing like they were trying to turn themselves inside out. A nurse calling for a line kit. Another calling for security. Robby’s voice cutting through the noise every few minutes with the kind of exhausted authority that made everyone move faster without realising they had been told to.

You were at the computer by the nurses’ station, trying to finish a note with one hand while eating a protein bar with the other, when the radio crackled.

“Trauma incoming. Male, mid-thirties. High-speed MVC. Hypotensive in field. GCS thirteen. ETA two minutes.”

The department shifted instantly. That was the thing about the ER. Chaos was constant, but trauma gave it direction.

You abandoned the note. The protein bar went into your scrub pocket, half-eaten and forgotten, as you moved toward trauma bay two. A nurse tossed you a gown before you even asked.

Langdon was already there. Of course he was.

He stood at the head of the bed, pulling gloves on with sharp, efficient movements, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his jaw set like the entire room had been waiting for him specifically. He glanced at you as you stepped into the bay.

“No,” he said immediately.

You stopped tying your gown. “Good morning to you too.”

“I’m taking this one.”

“You’re standing in the trauma bay,” you said. “That’s not the same thing.”

His eyes flicked over you, quick and assessing, like he was triaging your usefulness and finding it irritatingly high. “I’ve got this.”

“Congratulations,” you said, snapping your gloves into place. “So do I.”

His mouth tightened. You smiled sweetly.

The doors burst open before he could respond. EMS rolled the patient in fast, their report firing over the noise.

“Thirty-six-year-old male, driver, hit on passenger side at approximately fifty miles an hour. Restrained. Airbags deployed. Brief loss of consciousness at scene. BP eighty-six over fifty in field, heart rate one-thirty. Complaining of chest pain and abdominal pain. Decreased breath sounds on left. Two large-bore IVs established. Gave five hundred fluid en route.”

Langdon moved without hesitation. “On my count. One, two, three.”

The patient transferred onto the bed with a heavy, coordinated lift. He groaned, eyes half-open, blood streaked across his temple and down the side of his face. You took the left side. Langdon took the head.

“Sir, can you tell me your name?” Langdon asked, leaning over him.

“Mark,” the patient rasped.

“Mark, I’m Dr Langdon. You’re in the emergency department. We’re going to take care of you.”

You reached for the shears. “Airway intact. He’s talking.”

“Breathing,” Langdon said. “Oxygen on. Fifteen litres. Get me sats.”

“Already on it,” one of the nurses said.

You cut the shirt open. Purple bruising was already blooming across the patient’s chest where the seatbelt had caught him. His breathing was too fast, shallow. You pressed your stethoscope to his chest.

“Decreased air entry on the left,” you said.

Langdon nodded. “Portable chest. Trauma labs. Type and cross. FAST scan.”

“Pressure’s seventy-eight systolic,” the nurse called.

You looked down at the patient’s abdomen as he flinched under your hands. Firm. Guarding.

“Langdon.”

“I heard it,” he said.

“You heard the pressure. I’m talking about the abdomen.”

“I said FAST scan.”

“You said chest X-ray first.”

“Because he has decreased breath sounds after blunt trauma.”

“And he’s hypotensive with abdominal guarding.”

Langdon’s eyes cut to you. “I’m aware of how blood pressure works.”

“Great. Then you’ll understand why I want blood in the room before radiology gets here.”

His hands stayed steady at the patient’s jaw, but his tone sharpened. “We need to identify the source.”

“We need to stop him crashing before we make him pretty for the CT scanner.”

“I didn’t say CT.”

“You were thinking it loudly.”

A nurse made a noise that was almost a laugh and wisely turned it into a cough.

Langdon ignored her. “Chest first. If he’s got a tension pneumo, we can fix that now.”

“And if he’s bleeding into his abdomen, we can kill him by pretending the chest is the only exciting organ in the room.”

His nostrils flared. “I did not say that.”

“You implied it with your whole personality.”

“Can you two flirt after he has a blood pressure?” Robby said from the doorway.

You and Langdon both turned.

“We’re not flirting,” you said.

“At all,” Langdon added, with more offense than the accusation required.

Robby raised his eyebrows. “Then argue quieter. I need a team, not a podcast.”

The patient groaned again, trying to curl to one side.

You looked back down at him. Focused. “Mark, stay with us. Where does it hurt most?”

“Chest,” he gasped. “And… belly. Left side.”

“Left upper quadrant tenderness,” you said. “Possible splenic injury.”

Langdon’s expression shifted. He had heard you. That was the infuriating thing. He always heard you, even when he was being unbearable about it.

“FAST now,” he said.

You were already reaching for the ultrasound. For half a minute, neither of you argued. The room compressed into motion and information. Probe gel. Monitors. Blood pressure cycling again. The ultrasound screen flickering grey and black beneath your hand. Langdon leaned closer, watching over your shoulder.

“RUQ negative,” you said.

“Pelvis?” he asked.

“Give me two seconds.”

“Your angle’s too steep.”

“My angle is fine.”

“Then why am I looking at bowel gas?”

“Because the patient was inconsiderate enough to have intestines.”

“Move superior.”

“I am moving superior.”

“There,” he said.

“I see it.”

Free fluid.

The room seemed to tighten around the finding.

“Positive FAST,” you said.

Langdon was already turning. “Activate massive transfusion protocol. Surgery now. And get the chest X-ray in here.”

You looked at him. “Now the chest X-ray?”

“Now the chest X-ray,” he said, briskly. “Because unlike some people, I can care about two life-threatening problems at once.”

“Beautiful growth. Really proud of you.”

“Don’t make this emotional.”

The blood arrived. The patient’s pressure dipped again, then steadied under the first unit. Chest X-ray rolled in, the plate slid behind him, everyone moving with that controlled urgency that looked like panic from the outside but felt, from within it, almost elegant. The film came up.

“Left hemothorax,” Langdon said.

You were already moving. “Chest tube tray.”

His gaze snapped to yours. Not surprised. Not approving exactly. But something close.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“You’ll supervise.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“You’re a year ahead of me, Langdon, not a prophet.”

“This is not the time for your complex about hierarchy.”

“I don’t have a complex. I have hands.”

“And I have seniority.”

“You have a badge with a slightly older date on it.”

Robby appeared beside you both, expression flat. “She does the tube. You supervise. If either of you says one more word about seniority, I’m intubating myself.”

Langdon’s jaw flexed. You smiled again, quick and victorious, then turned back to the patient. The smile vanished as soon as your scalpel touched skin. After that, there was no room for performance.

You made the incision. Langdon passed the clamp before you asked for it. You spread through muscle. His hand appeared with gauze at exactly the right time. You entered the pleural space, guided the tube in, and dark blood surged into the chamber.

“Good,” Langdon said quietly.

It was so quiet you nearly missed it. Nearly.

You secured the tube while surgery arrived, the patient’s pressure climbing into something less terrifying. His colour improved by degrees. His breathing eased. The room exhaled, not all at once, but person by person.

Surgery took over with the brisk confidence of people who preferred their disasters open and bleeding under bright lights. The patient was transferred out, still critical but alive, moving toward an OR that might actually save him.

For five seconds after the bay emptied, there was silence. Then Langdon said, “You cut me off in there.”

You blinked at him. “That’s what you’re opening with?”

“You did.”

“You were taking too long to get to the correct answer.”

“I was explaining my reasoning.”

“That’s what I said.”

He pulled off his gloves with unnecessary force. “You can’t just steamroll because you think you’re right.”

“You just tried to pull rank over a chest tube.”

“Because I am senior.”

“By one year.”

“One year matters.”

“In medicine, yes. In making you king of trauma bay two, no.”

His eyes narrowed. “You are impossible.”

“And yet the chest tube went beautifully.”

“The chest tube was fine.”

“Fine?” You laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “That was textbook.”

“It was acceptable.”

“You are physically allergic to praise.”

“I praised you.”

“You said ‘good’ like it caused you internal bleeding.”

“It may have.”

You stepped closer before you could stop yourself. “You know what your problem is?”

Langdon stepped closer too, because apparently self-preservation was not one of his clinical strengths. “I’m sure you’re about to misdiagnose it.”

“You think being ahead means being better.”

“No, I think being ahead means having more experience, which is objectively true.”

“And you think experience means no one else in the room can have a good idea.”

“I listened to your idea.”

“After arguing with me for five minutes.”

“Because your delivery is a war crime.”

“Your face is a war crime.”

There was a short, stunned pause. Somewhere behind you, a nurse whispered, “Jesus Christ.” Robby walked between you and Langdon like he was breaking up a bar fight.

“Enough,” he said. “Both of you. You’re giving me a migraine and I work in emergency medicine.”

“He started it,” you said.

“She escalated it,” Langdon said at the exact same time.

Robby looked from one of you to the other. His face changed. It was subtle, but you saw it. The shift from irritation to calculation. That was never good. Robby only looked like that when he was about to make someone’s life educational.

“No,” you said immediately.

Robby pointed at you. “I haven’t said anything.”

“I can feel you about to manage me.”

“Good. Saves time.” He turned to Langdon. “You too.”

Langdon straightened. “I don’t need managing.”

Robby stared at him.

Langdon looked away first.

“You two,” Robby said, “are a nightmare.”

“Thank you,” you said.

“Not a compliment.”

“Still taking it.”

“But,” Robby continued, ignoring you, “you are also annoyingly effective together. Which means I can’t just separate you like misbehaving children, despite the fact that both of you seem committed to the role.”

Langdon’s mouth opened. “Robby-”

“No.”

“I really don’t think-”

“That much is clear.”

You bit the inside of your cheek.

Robby turned back to you. “And you. Stop smiling. You’re not innocent. You argue with him because you like that he can keep up.”

Your smile died. “I do not.”

Langdon looked at you.

You looked at Robby.

Robby looked exhausted by both of you.

“For the next two weeks, when you’re both on shift, you’re paired.”

The room went very still.

“No,” you said.

“Absolutely not,” Langdon said.

Robby nodded. “That’s the spirit. Shared patients. Shared notes. Shared sign-outs. You present together when appropriate, and you figure out how to disagree without turning the department into a debate club with central lines.”

“Robby,” Langdon said, voice tight, “with respect, this is not necessary.”

“With equal respect,” you added, “this may actually worsen patient outcomes by increasing homicide risk.”

“Then don’t kill each other,” Robby said. “Growth opportunity.”

Langdon dragged a hand over his face. “I am a year ahead of her.”

You made a noise. “Oh my God.”

Robby closed his eyes briefly, as if asking a higher power for strength or a transfer. Then he opened them and pointed between you.

“You two are going to learn how to work together without turning every chart note into a courtroom deposition.”

Langdon looked like he had swallowed a scalpel.

You looked like you were considering throwing one.

Robby smiled thinly. “Excellent. Glad we agree.”

“We don’t,” you both said.

“Progress already,” Robby said. “You’re saying things in unison.”

Then he walked away, leaving you and Langdon standing in the wreckage of trauma bay two, surrounded by discarded gloves, blood-specked gauze, and the horrible realisation that your next two weeks had just become significantly more irritating.

Langdon looked at you. You looked at him. His expression was grim. Yours was worse.

Finally, he said, “Try to keep up.”

You gave him your brightest, sharpest smile.

“Try to be worth following."

By the third shared patient of the shift, you had decided Robby was a sadist. A professionally respected one, obviously. A gifted attending. A steady hand in a crisis. A man who had once calmly talked a hypoxic patient through a panic spiral while simultaneously directing a central line placement and telling an intern not to faint into the sterile field.

But a sadist nonetheless. Because there was no other explanation for why you and Langdon were standing side by side at the same computer, reviewing the same chart, after seeing the same patient, for the third time in six hours.

“Scroll up,” Langdon said.

“I am scrolling.”

“You scrolled too far.”

“You have eyes.”

“I have more experience interpreting what my eyes see.”

You stopped scrolling and looked at him. “You are genuinely committed to being unbearable.”

“I prefer consistent.”

“You would.”

He leaned past you without asking, reaching for the mouse.

That was the first problem. Langdon had no concept of appropriate physical distance when he was focused. None. In ordinary conversation, he kept himself neatly arranged behind sarcasm and seniority, all sharp edges and professional posture. But put a chart in front of him, give him abnormal labs and a patient with three vague symptoms, and apparently his entire body forgot other people existed.

His shoulder brushed yours. It was not dramatic. Not even intentional. The contact lasted less than a second, just the dark fabric of his scrub top grazing your sleeve as he angled toward the screen.

Still, your brain noticed. He smelled faintly of hospital soap, coffee, and something clean beneath it, like whatever detergent he used had survived a twelve-hour shift through sheer force of will. His forearm crossed in front of you as he took the mouse, sleeve pushed up, tendon shifting under skin as he clicked into the medication history.

You stared for half a second too long.

Not at the chart.

At his arm.

At the flex of muscle near his wrist. At the faint blue line of a vein. At the tension in his hand where it rested over the mouse.

And then, because your mind apparently wanted to ruin your entire professional life, at his ring.

Plain. Silver. Simple. Caught in the fluorescent light as his fingers moved.

He must have felt you looking, because his hand stilled.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

You dragged your eyes back to the monitor. “With your note? Yes."

You reached across him and stole the mouse back. “Your note says the patient denies chest pain twice.”

“He denied it emphatically.”

“Then write emphatically once. Not twice, like you’re trying to convince the insurance company through repetition.”

“I value clarity.”

“You value hearing yourself document.”

He leaned closer, reading over your shoulder as you edited. Again, his shoulder touched yours. Again, not on purpose. Probably.

“You’re changing my wording,” he said.

“I’m improving your wording.”

“My wording was precise.”

“Your wording was a hostage situation.”

Langdon made a low sound of disapproval, then pointed at the screen. “Don’t delete the family history.”

“I’m not deleting it. I’m moving it.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t belong between the physical exam and your dramatic description of his ankle swelling.”

“It wasn’t dramatic. It was relevant.”

“You wrote ‘markedly pitting’.”

“It was markedly pitting.”

“You enjoyed writing it.”

“I enjoy accuracy.”

“You enjoy adjectives.”

His mouth opened, presumably to argue, but before he could, the charge nurse appeared behind both of you with a chart in hand and an expression of deep amusement.

“Your next shared case,” she said.

You turned. “Already?”

“Robby’s orders.”

Langdon took the chart. “What is it?”

“Fifty-two-year-old female. Dizziness, nausea, some vague chest discomfort, says she feels ‘off.’ Vitals stable. ECG done.”

The moment the clinical details hit, Langdon changed. It was subtle but immediate. The irritation sharpened into focus, the bickering folded away into something more useful. He flipped the chart open, eyes scanning quickly.

“Dizziness and chest discomfort could be posterior circulation, ACS equivalent, electrolyte, vestibular, hypoglycaemia, medication effect, panic, but we don’t call it panic until everything else has earned the right to be excluded.” He started walking before he finished speaking, forcing you to match him. “Any diaphoresis? Radiation? Neuro deficit? Did triage note nystagmus? Of course they didn’t. Why would anyone note the thing that matters?”

“You know,” you said, falling into step beside him, “some people ask questions with the expectation that another person might answer.”

“I was building a framework.”

“You were monologuing.”

“I was thinking aloud.”

“You do that a lot.”

“Because I think a lot.”

“And aloud, apparently.”

He pointed the chart at you without looking. “Mockery is not a diagnostic tool.”

“It is when I’m diagnosing you.”

He glanced over. “And what have I got?”

“Terminal seniority.”

“Tragic. Untreatable.”

“You’d refuse treatment anyway.”

You introduced yourself first. Langdon let you. That surprised you enough that you almost looked at him.

Mrs. Alvarez described the dizziness as a sudden wave that came while she was making tea. No true spinning. Nausea. A pressure in her chest she insisted was “probably indigestion,” which immediately made both you and Langdon exchange a look. Her ECG was not dramatic, but it was not perfectly comforting either. Slight ST depression in the lateral leads. Nothing screaming. Just enough to whisper. Langdon saw it at the same time you did.

“Troponins,” you said.

“Serial ECGs,” he added.

“Full neuro exam.”

“Glucose.”

“Electrolytes.”

“CXR if the chest pressure persists.”

“Orthostatics.”

“Medication review.”

Mrs. Alvarez looked between you. “Do you two rehearse?”

“No,” you said.

“Unfortunately,” Langdon said.

Her mouth twitched. “Could’ve fooled me.”

You did the neuro exam while Langdon took the history, and this was where you discovered something else about him. Langdon was a yapper.

Not in the useless way. Not in the nervous intern way where silence felt like failure and every thought spilled out unfiltered. Langdon’s talking had structure, technically. It just had far too many doors, and he insisted on opening all of them.

One question about recent illness turned into a brief explanation of viral labyrinthitis, which became a tangent about how often dizziness was mislabelled, which became a story about a man he had seen the year before who came in for vertigo and turned out to be anaemic, which then somehow became a complaint about the way people used the word “dizzy” to mean eight different sensations and expected doctors to perform linguistic archaeology under fluorescent lighting.

Mrs. Alvarez seemed entertained. You were fascinated despite yourself.

His mind moved fast. Too fast sometimes. It leapt from symptom to mechanism to anecdote to warning sign and back again. He interrupted himself. Once, he interrupted you, caught your look, and said, “Sorry, continue,” in a tone so reluctant it barely qualified as an apology.

Then, ten minutes later, while you were ordering bloods, he said suddenly, “Family history.”

You looked up. “What?”

“Her father had an MI at fifty-four. She said it when you were checking sensation in her left leg.”

“I heard.”

“I forgot to put it in the note.”

“That must have been very difficult for you to admit.”

“It was. Be respectful.”

He wrote it down, then immediately started tapping his pen against the desk. Fast. Rhythmic. Annoying.

Tap tap tap tap.

You waited.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

“Langdon.”

“What?”

“The pen.”

He looked down like he had never seen his own hand before. The tapping stopped. For six seconds. Then his knee started bouncing. You turned slowly toward him.

He was reading the chart, completely absorbed, one hand at his mouth, the other hovering over the keyboard, knee vibrating beneath the desk like he was personally powering the department. His coffee sat untouched beside the monitor, the lid off, gone cold.

“Do you ever stop moving?” you asked.

“Do you ever stop making observations no one asked for?”

“No.”

“Then we understand each other.”

You should not have laughed.

It slipped out before you could stop it, small and surprised. Langdon looked at you like you had done something unexpected. Not impossible. Just unexpected from you. Then his mouth curved. It was not a smile, not fully. But it softened him by a dangerous margin.

The blood results came back while you were both still at the computer. First troponin mildly elevated. Potassium low. Creatinine slightly up. Enough to complicate things. Enough to make the case interesting.

Langdon leaned in again. You felt him before he touched you. A shift of warmth at your side. The brush of his shoulder against yours. His arm reaching past you, close enough that you could see the faint indentation the ring left at the base of his finger. He clicked through the labs, eyes narrowed.

“She needs admission,” he said.

“Agreed.”

He looked at you quickly.

“What?” you asked.

“You agreed too fast.”

“I can disagree if it would make you feel safer.”

“It would feel more familiar.”

The word sat between you, strangely weighted. Because the worst part was, he was right.

The arguing had already developed a rhythm. You knew when he was about to lecture because his eyebrows lifted half a second before he started. He knew when you were about to challenge him because you inhaled like you were loading a weapon. You passed each other things without looking. You corrected his notes. He caught your missed boxes. You rolled your eyes. He pretended not to enjoy it.

Mrs. Alvarez was handed over to medicine with a neat plan, a cardiology discussion pending, and strict instructions for repeat ECGs. Langdon presented the case to the attending, and to your deep irritation, he did it well. Concise, intelligent, no unnecessary adjectives. He included your neuro findings without claiming them as his own.

When the attending nodded and moved on, you looked at him.

“That was almost humble.”

Langdon slid the chart under his arm. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late. I’m documenting growth.”

“I’ll dispute the note.”

“You dispute everything.”

“Only when it’s wrong.”

You walked side by side back toward the nurses’ station. The ER was still loud, still overcrowded, still held together by caffeine, compression socks, and the collective denial of everyone working past hour eight. But something had shifted. Not softened exactly. Nothing about Langdon was soft. But the edges of the day had changed shape.

At the computer, he took the chair before you could.

You stared at him. “That’s my seat.”

“I got here first.”

“You are such a child.”

“I’m senior.”

“Move.”

“No.”

You leaned over him to reach the keyboard, deliberately crowding into his space this time. “Fine. I’ll chart standing.”

He looked up at you, eyes bright with challenge. “That’s terrible ergonomics.”

“Then move.”

“Ask nicely.”

“I would rather develop spinal pathology.”

He laughed under his breath and rolled the chair back half an inch. Not enough to be useful. Just enough to be annoying. You squeezed beside him anyway, shoulder pressing against his. Neither of you moved away. For a few seconds, you both looked at the screen in silence.

Then Langdon said, “You spelled haemorrhage wrong.”

You closed your eyes. “I’m going to sedate you.”

“With what order?”

“With my bare hands.”

“Poor technique.”

“Poor survival instinct.”

And this time, when he smiled, you saw it properly.

By the end of the first week, people had started making comments. Not helpful comments. Not clinical comments. Comments made by nurses who had worked too many consecutive shifts and thrived on emotional blood sport.

“Where’s your other half?” one of them asked as you reached for a new set of gloves.

You froze. “My what?”

She nodded toward the trauma board. “Langdon.”

“He is not my other half.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

You gave her a look. “That is a professionally reportable statement.”

She grinned. “To who? Robby? He started this.”

That was, unfortunately, true. Robby had started it, and now the entire department seemed invested in whether you and Langdon could stand beside each other for more than ten minutes without starting a constitutional crisis. The worst part was that you were improving. Not peacefully. Not gracefully. But improving.

You still argued. Of course you argued. Langdon remained physically incapable of saying a simple thing when a longer, more irritating version existed. You remained incapable of letting him get away with it. But the arguments had become shorter. Sharper. Almost efficient.

Sometimes you caught him changing his mind before you finished making your point. Sometimes he caught you doing the same. Neither of you acknowledged this. Acknowledging it felt dangerous.

You were finishing a discharge summary when triage called over.

“Can I get someone to eyeball bed nine? Twenty-six-year-old female, shortness of breath and chest tightness. Vitals mostly fine. Says she feels like something is wrong. No cardiac history. Looks anxious.”

Langdon, standing beside you with a chart tucked under one arm and a pen between his fingers, sighed.

You looked at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to say panic attack.”

“I was about to say that ‘looks anxious’ is rarely a useful diagnostic category.”

That surprised you enough to stop typing. He noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you’ve just discovered I’m not entirely negligent.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

You stood, grabbing your stethoscope. Langdon followed without being asked.

Bed nine held a young woman sitting bolt upright, one hand pressed against the mattress, the other curled tightly against her chest. She was pale beneath the harsh lights, dark hair pulled back messily, lips slightly parted as she tried to slow her breathing.

Her chart said: Maya Ellis. Twenty-six. Shortness of breath. Chest tightness. Anxiety?

You hated the question mark.

“Hi, Maya,” you said, pulling the curtain closed behind you. “I’m one of the doctors. This is Dr Langdon.”

Maya looked between you and him quickly. “Are you two together?”

The question landed with the force of a dropped instrument tray. You blinked. Langdon went completely still beside you.

“No,” you said at the exact same time he said, “Absolutely not.”

Maya’s eyes widened. “Oh. Sorry. You just came in together, and you’re standing like—”

“We work together,” Langdon said, too quickly.

“Against our will,” you added.

Maya stared. You felt heat crawl up your neck. Beside you, Langdon’s ears had gone pink. Actually pink. You had never seen anything so gratifying in your life.

You turned to him slowly. “Are you blushing?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m warm.”

“It’s freezing in here.”

“I have circulation.”

“Apparently too much.”

“Patient,” he said through his teeth.

You turned back to Maya, who looked slightly less frightened now, if only because she had been distracted by whatever that had been.

“Tell me what happened,” you said gently.

Maya swallowed. “I was at work. I got this pain here.” She touched the right side of her chest. “Not really pain, like pressure? Then I couldn’t get a full breath. My hands started tingling. Everyone said I was having a panic attack, but I’ve had panic attacks before. This feels different.”

Langdon’s posture shifted.

You saw it because you were starting to see too much where he was concerned. His focus sharpened. His gaze moved over Maya’s face, her breathing, the way she held herself too carefully.

“When did it start?” he asked.

“Maybe an hour ago.”

“Any recent travel?” you asked.

“No.”

“Birth control?”

She hesitated. “The pill.”

Langdon glanced at you.

You were already looking at him.

“Any leg pain or swelling?” you asked.

“My calf hurt yesterday,” Maya said. “But I thought I’d pulled something at the gym.”

You reached for the pulse oximeter. Her oxygen saturation was technically acceptable, but lower than you wanted for a healthy twenty-six-year-old. Her heart rate flickered between one-oh-eight and one-fifteen. Not dramatic.

You checked her chest. Clear. No wheeze. No crackles. No obvious infection. Her blood pressure was stable, but her skin had that faintly grey look that made your stomach tighten before your brain had finished catching up. Langdon was watching you.

You looked at Maya. “We’re going to run some tests.”

Her face tightened. “So you don’t think it’s just panic?”

“I think panic is a diagnosis we can consider,” you said, “after we’ve ruled out the things that like to disguise themselves as panic.”

A voice came from the other side of the curtain.

“Seriously?”

Dr Patel, one of the other residents, pulled the curtain back slightly, holding Maya’s triage sheet. He was not unkind, exactly, but he had the slightly rushed expression of someone who had already decided the department had bigger problems.

“She’s twenty-six,” Patel said. “Normal ECG. No hypoxia. She’s anxious, hyperventilating, tingling hands. This is classic.”

You felt your spine straighten.

“She’s tachycardic, on the combined pill, pleuritic chest pressure, calf pain yesterday, and says this feels different from previous panic attacks.”

Patel gave you a look. “You want to PE workup every anxious young woman with chest tightness?”

“I want to work up this one.”

“It’s overkill.”

Langdon stepped in before you could answer.

“She’s right,” he said.

You blinked. He did not look at you.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he added. “It’s not cute.”

You immediately stopped blinking and glared instead.

Patel looked between you both. “You’re serious?”

“Yes,” Langdon said. “D-dimer, troponin, VBG, pregnancy test, CXR. If the D-dimer’s positive, CTPA. And repeat the ECG if symptoms change.”

“Radiology will love that.”

“Radiology has survived worse than clinically justified imaging,” Langdon said.

Maya’s eyes moved between you again, something like hope breaking through the panic. “So you believe me?”

You looked at her. “Yes.”

Langdon was quieter when he added, “We do.”

The we should not have hit you. It did anyway. After that, the case moved quickly.

Bloods. Cannula. Chest X-ray. A nurse getting Maya changed into a gown. Langdon arguing with the lab about turnaround time as if personally offended by coagulation delays. You reassessing Maya when her breathing worsened, catching the way she clutched at the side rail and tried not to cry.

Her D-dimer came back high. Very high. Patel, to his credit, swore softly and stopped arguing.

Langdon was already beside you at the computer, shoulder pressing against yours as you both stared at the result. He had moved in close without thinking again, but this time the contact did not feel accidental in the same way. Or maybe you were just becoming too aware of him.

His arm brushed yours as he reached for the mouse. You did not move. Neither did he.

“CTPA,” you said.

“Already requesting it.”

“Pregnancy negative?”

“Just resulted.”

“Renal function?”

“Fine.”

“You checked?”

“I knew you’d ask.”

You looked at him. He kept his eyes on the screen, but his mouth twitched. “Don’t make it sentimental.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were considering it.”

“I was considering whether that counts as teamwork or just fear of my standards.”

“Both can be true.”

The scan happened fast because Langdon made it happen fast. You did not ask what he said to radiology. You suspected it involved an unbearable amount of confidence and at least one phrase like “clinically indefensible delay.”

When the result came through, the department seemed to narrow around the words.

Bilateral pulmonary emboli. Evidence of right heart strain.

For a second, no one spoke. Then you and Langdon moved at once.

“Get Robby,” you said.

“I’ll call ICU,” Langdon replied.

“Anticoagulation?”

“Unless contraindicated. I’ll check with Robby.”

“Echo?”

“Bedside first. Formal after.”

“Maya needs explaining before she hears it from six strangers talking over her.”

“I’ll do ICU. You talk to her.”

There was no argument over who should do what. You went back to Maya while Langdon made the call, his voice low and rapid behind you. Maya looked up as you entered. She knew from your face.

“It wasn’t panic,” she said.

“No,” you said, pulling a stool close. “It wasn’t.”

Her eyes filled. You explained as clearly as you could. Blood clots in the lungs. Serious, but treatable. The team was moving quickly. She had done the right thing by coming in. She had done the right thing by insisting it felt different.

Langdon appeared halfway through, standing at the foot of the bed. He did not interrupt. He did not take over. He listened. When Maya asked if she could die, you paused for half a second. Langdon answered, not over you, but beside you.

“That’s why we’re treating it aggressively,” he said. “You’re in the right place.”

Maya looked between you both again, tears on her cheeks.

“You’re sure you’re not together?” she asked weakly.

The blush hit you so fast you almost hated her. Langdon’s face changed colour too. A faint, unmistakable pink rising under his cheekbones.

“Maya,” he said, with immense dignity, “you have a pulmonary embolism.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I’m still observant.”

Despite everything, you laughed. Then Robby swept in, and the spell broke.

“Okay,” he said, scanning the chart. “Talk to me.”

You and Langdon presented together.

Not one after the other. Together.

You gave the history. Langdon gave the imaging. You gave the clinical progression. He gave the plan. You caught the missing contraindication question before he asked it. He remembered the calf pain and added it into the handover. Robby listened, eyes moving between you both with increasing interest.

When you finished, he nodded.

“Good. Very good. ICU are aware?”

“On their way,” Langdon said.

“Anticoagulation?”

“Ready once you confirm.”

“I confirm.” Robby looked at you, then at Langdon. “See? That. Do that more.”

You frowned. “What?”

“Whatever that was where neither of you made me want to walk into traffic.”

Langdon looked offended. “We are always professional.”

Robby stared at him.

You stared at him too.

Langdon looked away. “Intermittently.”

Maya stabilized over the next hour.

The anticoagulation was started. ICU came down. Her breathing eased, her colour improved, and she squeezed your hand before they transferred her.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You caught it,” you said. “We just listened.”

Maya’s eyes flicked to Langdon, then back to you. “He listened because you said it.”

You did not know what to do with that.

Apparently, neither did Langdon. He became intensely interested in adjusting the line that did not need adjusting.

After Maya left, the ER swallowed you both again. There were discharge summaries to finish, a drunk man singing in curtain three, a child with a bead stuck in his nose, and an elderly woman insisting she had not fallen despite arriving with leaves in her hair.

Normal chaos returned.

Except Langdon was quieter.

Not silent. Never silent. Langdon being silent for too long would have caused genuine concern. But quieter. His comments came slower. His sarcasm lost some of its bite. Once, when you corrected his medication reconciliation, he simply said, “You’re right,” and kept typing.

You nearly checked his pupils.

Later, while you were speaking to a nurse near the supply room, you felt it.

The awareness of being looked for.

You turned.

Across the department, through the movement of stretchers and staff and families and monitors, Langdon stood near the central desk. A chart was open in his hands, but he was not reading it.

He was scanning the room.

Searching.

His gaze moved past trauma, past triage, past the medication room.

Then he found you.

For one second, his expression changed.

Not relief exactly.

Recognition.

As if some part of him had been tracking your absence without permission and settled only once you were accounted for.

Your breath caught.

Then he seemed to realise what he was doing.

His attention dropped abruptly to the chart.

Too late.

You had seen.

When you came back to the desk, you said nothing at first. You stood beside him, close enough that your shoulder almost touched his, and reached for the keyboard.

He cleared his throat. “Where were you?”

You kept your eyes on the screen. “Working.”

“I didn’t ask because I cared.”

“Obviously.”

“I needed the chart.”

“The chart was here.”

“Yes. Well.” He tapped his pen once against the counter, then stopped himself. “You weren’t.”

You looked at him then. He looked back. The ER moved around you, loud and fluorescent and alive, but for a moment, the space between you went very still. Langdon’s ring caught the light as his fingers tightened around the chart. Then a nurse called his name from across the department.

“Dr Langdon!”

He blinked first. The moment broke. He stepped back, all at once professional again, but something remained in his face as he turned away. Something unsettled. Almost frightened.

And you understood, with a strange ache of certainty, that whatever was happening to him had very little to do with your face, or your body, or the fact that sometimes you caught him looking too long.

It was not just attraction. It was worse. He trusted you.

He trusted your eyes on a patient. Trusted your instincts. Trusted the way you stood your ground. Trusted you enough to back you publicly before he had time to remember all the reasons he should be careful.

And for a man like Langdon, that seemed to scare him more than wanting ever could.

The ER went quiet at 2:17 in the morning.

Not truly quiet. It never managed that. There was always a monitor complaining somewhere, a printer coughing out labels, the distant squeak of wheels against linoleum. Someone in curtain five was snoring with the violent determination of a man who had denied sleep apnoea for twenty years. A nurse laughed at something near triage, low and tired, and the sound slipped through the department like a match struck in the dark.

But for the first time in hours, no one was actively dying. No one was shouting. No one was bleeding onto your shoes.That counted as peace.

You found refuge in the breakroom beneath the cold buzz of the fluorescent lights, sitting at the small table with your back against the wall and one leg hooked around the chair beside you. The vending machine hummed in the corner with the smug authority of the only thing in the hospital that got regular maintenance. Your coffee was terrible. Your crackers were worse. You ate them anyway.

Half a packet remained in front of you, along with a bruised cereal bar you had no memory of buying and a banana so far past optimism that even the bin seemed reluctant.

You were staring at the wall without seeing it when the door opened. Langdon walked in. Then stopped. He had not known you were there. That was obvious from the brief, unguarded second before he rebuilt himself. He looked wrecked.

Not in any dramatic, tragic way. Not bloodied, not frantic, not visibly broken. Just worn down past the point where sharpness could hide it. His hair was slightly mussed from where he had dragged a hand through it too many times. His scrub top was creased. The sleeves were still shoved to his elbows, but the movement looked less deliberate now and more like he had been too tired to fix them.

He stood in the doorway for half a breath, one hand against the frame. Then he exhaled, rubbed both hands over his face, and muttered something under his breath. You caught only the last word.

“...ridiculous.”

“Me or the hospital?” you asked.

Langdon’s head snapped up. For a second, he looked genuinely startled. Then his face arranged itself into offence. “Do you make a habit of sitting silently in dark corners?”

“The lights are on.”

“They’re hospital lights. They barely count as illumination.”

“Fair.”

He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him. The room was small enough that his presence changed its temperature. Or maybe that was just your exhaustion making everything feel too close. He moved to the counter, picked up the coffee pot, looked inside, and grimaced.

“That’s been there since midnight,” you said.

He poured it anyway. You watched him add one sugar, then another, then stir it with a wooden stick so aggressively it sounded personal.

“That coffee owes you money?” you asked.

“This coffee is a crime.”

“And yet you’re drinking it.”

“I’m building a case.”

“Against the coffee?”

“Against whoever allows this hospital to call itself a place of healing while serving liquid despair in a paper cup.”

You pushed the crackers toward the empty chair opposite you. “Eat something before you start litigating beverages.”

He looked at the crackers. Then at you. Then back at the crackers, as if they were beneath him morally.

“No.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t want crackers.”

“Okay.”

“They’re dry.”

“They are crackers.”

“That doesn’t mean they have to be aggressively joyless.”

You broke one in half and held it out. “Langdon.”

He stared at your hand. A long second passed. Then he took it.

He sat down opposite you with the air of a man being forced into an indignity by his own body’s basic requirements. He ate the cracker, frowned, then reached for another. You did not comment. You wanted to. You deserved an award for not commenting.

The two of you sat in a silence that should have been awkward but was, strangely, not. The vending machine hummed. The fluorescent light flickered once overhead. Langdon’s coffee steamed faintly between his hands. He took one sip and made a face like it had betrayed him.

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Still building your case?”

“Class action.”

“Against the hospital?”

“Against medicine. Possibly society.”

You smiled into your coffee. He saw. That was the problem now. Langdon saw things. Worse, he was beginning to see you. Not just your mistakes, or your stubbornness, or the exact second you were about to disagree with him. He saw the small things too. The way your mouth twitched when you were trying not to laugh. The way you went quiet after paediatric cases. The way you rubbed at your temple when you were hungry but too busy to admit it.

And you saw him. You saw that his knee had started bouncing beneath the table. Saw that his left hand was around the coffee cup, but his right hand had drifted toward his ring. Saw the thumb brush once over the metal, then stop, then return.

He looked down as if catching himself. Then, perhaps to cover the movement, he started talking.

“I had a patient last year,” he said abruptly, “who came in convinced he had been bitten by a venomous spider. Very insistent. Had pictures on his phone of spiders that were not, in fact, in this country. He’d printed off an article. Highlighted sections. Presented it like a dissertation.”

You leaned back. “Was he bitten?”

“No. He had an infected ingrown hair.”

“Devastating.”

“Deeply. He was furious. He wanted antivenom.”

“For the hair?”

“For the imaginary spider.”

“Naturally.”

“He told me I lacked imagination.”

“You do sometimes.”

Langdon pointed a cracker at you. “I have an excellent imagination. I simply refuse to waste it on medically implausible arachnid conspiracies.”

You laughed, and he kept going.

That was how it happened.

One random story turned into another. The spider patient became a woman who had swallowed a dental crown and demanded a written guarantee it would not “attach to anything important.” That became a short but passionate complaint about patients describing pain numerically but then adding “but I have a high pain tolerance,” which somehow became an explanation of a study he had read about pain reporting, which became an argument with himself about whether the study design was flawed, which became a detour into how much bad research got repeated because the abstract sounded confident.

He talked with his hands. Even exhausted, he could not seem to stop them. They moved around the coffee cup, sliced through the air, tapped the table, reached for a cracker and forgot about it halfway there. His thoughts jumped tracks but never fully derailed. They circled, looped, returned. Ten minutes after mentioning the dental crown, he suddenly said, “Actually, the crown did pass uneventfully,” as if you had been waiting in suspense.

You had been, a little. You let him talk. Not because he needed humoured. Because he was interesting. Annoyingly interesting.

He knew too much and said too much and somehow carried a dozen half-connected thoughts in his head without dropping any of them. He could be arrogant, yes. Insufferable, obviously. But when he forgot to perform seniority at you, when he stopped trying to win, he was something else.

Alive with thought. Messy with it. Almost boyish beneath the exhaustion, though you suspected saying so would get you murdered in a professionally deniable way.

Eventually, his words slowed. Not stopped. Langdon did not stop. But slowed enough that he noticed the silence on your side of the table. He looked at you.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“Observing.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“You’re not clinically observing me.”

“No?”

“No. You’re personally observing me. It’s unsettling.”

You took another sip of coffee and regretted it. “You know, for someone who acts like he hates talking to me, you talk to me a lot.”

“That’s because you keep being wrong.”

“I haven’t said anything in seven minutes.”

“Exactly. It was unsettling. I had to compensate.”

You laughed again. This time he smiled properly. It was tired. Crooked. Brief. And maybe because it was late, or because the room was small, or because the ER outside had gone soft around the edges, the smile felt more dangerous than all the shoulder brushing in the world.

Then his hand moved again. Thumb to ring. One pass. Another. The smile faded before it fully had time to live. Your eyes followed the movement before you could stop them.

He saw. Of course he saw. This time, his hand did not disappear beneath the table fast enough. His fingers curled over the ring, not hiding it exactly, but protecting it. Or protecting himself from being asked.

The room changed. Not dramatically. The vending machine still hummed. The coffee was still awful. Somewhere outside, someone called for a blanket. But the small pocket of ease between you thinned into something fragile.

Langdon’s jaw tightened. You could almost see him preparing. For the question. For the pity. For the polite, terrible concern people used when they wanted information more than they wanted to help. You looked at his hand. Then back at him.

“I’m not asking,” you said gently.

The words landed harder than you expected. He went very still. Not like before, when you had startled him in this same room and he had hidden the ring beneath the table. This was different. This was not being caught. This was being spared.

His face did not change much, but something behind it did. Some defensive structure he had been holding upright with both hands seemed, for one impossible second, to weaken.

“Good,” he said. His voice was quiet. A pause.

“Because I wouldn’t answer.”

“I know.”

Langdon looked down first. His thumb moved once more across the ring, but slower now. Less like panic. More like acknowledgement.

“I don’t hate talking to you,” he said.

The words were so quiet you almost thought you had imagined them. You held very still. He seemed immediately annoyed with himself.

“I mean,” he added, “you are frequently wrong.”

“There it is.”

“And argumentative.”

“Mm.”

“And you edit my notes without consent.”

“Because they need help.”

“And you have an extremely concerning relationship with being right.”

“You’re describing yourself.”

“I’m describing a pattern.”

“Again. Yourself.”

He breathed out, but it was almost a laugh. Almost. You broke the last cracker in half and slid one piece across the table. He took it without complaint this time.

Outside the breakroom, the ER began to wake again. Footsteps quickened. A monitor alarm rose, cut off, then rose again. Someone knocked once on the door and opened it just far enough to say, “Langdon? Bed twelve’s asking for pain relief.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“Coming.”

The nurse disappeared. Langdon stood, taking the coffee with him despite having insulted it for twenty minutes. At the door, he paused. You expected a joke. A correction. Some little piece of armour placed back over the exposed thing between you.

Instead, he said, “You should eat the cereal bar.”

You looked at the sad, bruised thing on the table. “That an order?”

His mouth curved.

“No,” he said. “Unfortunately, you don’t outrank me.”

“Yet.”

The smile stayed for one more second. Then he left. You sat alone beneath the fluorescent lights, listening to his voice rejoin the chaos outside, low and quick and familiar.

And you knew, with an ache you did not want to name, that something had shifted. Not enough for either of you to speak of it. Enough that silence no longer felt empty when he was in the room.

Time passed strangely in the ER. Hours stretched until they felt like punishment. Days vanished inside the blur of patient names, blood results, chest pain pathways, sepsis protocols, discharge summaries, and cold coffee. You measured time less by clocks and more by what had gone wrong: the night of three overdoses, the morning the CT scanner went down, the shift where paediatrics overflowed and everyone in the department aged five years before lunch.

Somewhere inside all of that, working with Langdon stopped feeling like a sentence. It became a habit. An irritating one. A persistent one. One you would still complain about if asked, loudly and with evidence. But a habit all the same. He brought you coffee one morning and set it beside your keyboard without looking at you.

“What’s this?” you asked.

“Coffee.”

“I know what coffee is.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Why are you giving me coffee?”

He opened a chart. “They made an extra.”

You looked at the cup. It had your usual amount of milk. Your usual one sugar. Your name was not on it, but it might as well have been.

“They made an extra exactly how I take it?”

“Miracles occur in emergency medicine every day.”

“Langdon.”

“Drink it before I regret being generous.”

“You mean before you regret being caught.”

He did not answer, which was answer enough.

Later, you corrected his charting grammar while he stood over your shoulder pretending not to care.

“You cannot describe someone as ‘very febrile,’” you said.

“They were very febrile.”

“They had a high fever.”

“That loses emphasis.”

“It gains dignity.”

He leaned closer to read the screen. He stood beside you by choice now. That was the dangerous part. At first, proximity had been practical, both of you crowded around the same computer because Robby had forced you to share cases and there were never enough workstations. But now Langdon appeared at your side when there were other computers open. He rested one hand on the back of your chair. He leaned in, shoulder brushing yours, as if the space beside you had become his natural place in the department.

The bickering remained, but it changed texture. Less blade, more spark. He still corrected you when he thought you were wrong, but now there was a glint in his eye when he did it. You still challenged him, but sometimes the challenge came with a smile you failed to suppress quickly enough.

The nurses noticed. Of course they noticed. Nurses noticed everything. If you ever committed a crime, you were certain an ER nurse would know before the police and would critique your technique.

“Your shadow is looking for you,” one of them said as you came out of bed four.

You frowned. “My what?”

She nodded across the department. Langdon stood near the central desk with a chart in his hand, scanning the room in that way he had. Not frantic. Never frantic. But intent. His eyes moved over beds, curtains, staff, doorways.

Searching. Then they found you. His expression settled for half a second before he looked back down at the chart.

The nurse beside you made a small humming sound.

“Don’t,” you said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was simply observing a workplace relationship improving.”

“This workplace relationship is none of your business.”

“In this department? Everything is everyone’s business.”

You had no defence against that, so you left.

Langdon was still pretending to read when you reached him.

“Lose something?” you asked.

“No.”

“Looked like you were searching.”

“I was assessing departmental flow.”

“With your eyes?”

“That is traditionally how assessment works.”

“You found me pretty fast.”

His pen tapped once against the chart. Stopped. “You were in my way.”

“I was across the room.”

“Obstructively.”

You smiled before you could help it. He watched you with patients. You caught him doing it during a difficult discharge with an elderly woman who had no one to collect her and kept insisting she did not want to be a bother. You sat beside her for ten minutes you did not have, explaining the plan twice, then a third time when she looked embarrassed for forgetting. You wrote it down in large letters. You found her a sandwich. You got social work involved before anyone could rush her out. When you stepped back out, Langdon was at the counter, looking at you.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“Personally observing me. Apparently it’s unsettling.”

His mouth twitched. “You’re good with them.”

The compliment was so direct that you nearly missed a step.

“Patients?”

“No, vending machines. Yes, patients.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Are you ill?”

“I can retract it.”

“No. Too late. I’m keeping it.”

“Use it sparingly.”

“I’m going to document it.”

“I’ll dispute the note.”

You expected him to turn away after that, but he did not. His gaze lingered, not on your face exactly, but on the part of you that had stayed soft despite the shift, despite the noise, despite the endless pressure to become brisk where kindness took too long. You felt seen.

His defensiveness appeared in other ways. When a surgical registrar asked if you were “sure” about an abdominal finding in a tone that implied you might have confused guarding with enthusiasm, Langdon cut in before you could.

“She knows the difference.”

The registrar looked at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”

“No,” Langdon said. “You were patronising her. It’s a subtle distinction, but I’m confident you can learn it.”

You stared at him.

The registrar stared too, for different reasons.

Afterwards, you followed Langdon to the computer. “I had that handled.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you say something?”

“Because he was being an idiot.”

“I can handle idiots.”

“I’ve noticed. You handle me daily.”

He shrugged, but there was colour high on his cheekbones. He did not apologise for defending you. He did not make it into something noble either. He simply stood beside you, close enough for your arms to touch, and let the moment pass into charting.

Then there was the procedure. A straightforward abscess drainage, nothing dramatic, nothing you had not done before. Langdon was supervising because technically he had seen more of them, a fact he had only mentioned twice, which for him was basically restraint.

He stood across from you, sleeves rolled up, gloves on, forearms tense as he adjusted the tray.

You looked. You meant only to glance. Unfortunately, Langdon had very nice arms.

This was not clinically relevant. This was not professionally useful. This was not information you had asked your brain to collect. And yet there it was, filed somewhere between “patient needs follow-up antibiotics” and “Langdon’s veins are a public safety issue.”

He was explaining something about incision placement. You heard none of it. He stopped. You looked up. His eyes were bright with terrible understanding.

“Were you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Then what did I say?”

“Something about antibiotics.”

“Devastatingly specific.”

You pressed your lips together.

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping just enough that only you could hear. “Were you distracted?”

“No.”

“By the sterile field?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Because the sterile field is lower.”

“Langdon.”

“Were you staring at my arms?”

You wanted the floor to open.

For one second, his face went blank. Then pink. Then unbearably smug.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I think I do.”

“You think a lot of things. Many are wrong.”

“Not this.”

“You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I intend to enjoy it for years.”

“Touching confidence in your life expectancy.”

He smiled through the rest of the procedure. You considered sedating him. But beneath the humour, beneath the coffee and the charts and the almost-smiles, something darker was moving.

His marriage was getting worse. You did not know details. Langdon gave no details. He guarded them with the same stubborn competence he brought to trauma bays and difficult airways. But the shape of the pain became harder to miss. He took phone calls outside now. Not many. Just enough.

His phone would light up. He would look at the screen and something would close in his face. Then he would step into the hall near radiology, voice low, back turned. Once, you saw him through the narrow window in the door, one hand braced against the wall, head bowed as he listened to someone on the other end.

When he came back, he was pale. Not sick-pale. Worse. Angry-pale. Hurt-pale. The colour of someone holding himself together through muscle memory alone.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

He did not look at you. “Fine.”

You hated that word from patients. You hated it more from him.

Another night, after a messy resus, you both stood at the sink scrubbing blood from your hands. Langdon pulled his ring off to wash beneath it. That was normal. Practical. Sensible.

But then he stopped. Water ran over his wrist while he stared down at the band resting in his palm. The moment stretched too long. You looked away first, giving him the privacy of pretending you had not seen. When he put it back on, his hand shook once. Just once.

He slept in the on-call room more often too. You knew because you found him there one morning, still in yesterday’s scrubs, hair wrecked, one arm thrown over his eyes like he was trying to block out the entire world. He woke when the door creaked and sat up too quickly.

“I was reviewing notes,” he said.

“In the dark? Horizontally?”

“Advanced method.”

One night, close to the end of another impossible shift, when the ER had settled into a thin, watchful lull and the two of you ended up outside by the ambulance bay doors, stealing five minutes of air that smelled faintly of rain and petrol.

Langdon stood beside you, shoulder nearly touching yours, coffee cooling untouched in his hand. For once, he was not talking.

“You’re quiet,” you said.

“I’m capable of quiet.”

“Medically unproven.”

He huffed, but it was not quite a laugh. The automatic doors opened behind you, then closed again. Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose and faded. Langdon looked out across the wet pavement.

“Things at home are…”

He stopped. His hand closed around the coffee cup, then shifted. His thumb found the ring. Pressed hard. Once. Twice. His jaw worked.

“Never mind.”

You could have let him have it. Maybe you should have. Maybe the kinder thing would have been to pretend he had not started to open a door and then lost the courage to stand in it.

But you were tired too. Tired of fine. Tired of never mind. Tired of watching him bleed invisibly and then turn sharp because sharp was safer than wounded.

“Okay,” you said.

He looked at you, wary. “Okay?”

“You don’t have to tell me. But don’t pretend you’re fine and then bite my head off because I’m the nearest available target.”

The words hung between you. For a second, you thought you had gone too far. Langdon stared at you. Not angry. Not exactly. Exposed. The kind of exposed that made anger tempting.

You waited for it. The snap. The correction. The reminder that he was senior, that you were overstepping, that whatever was happening behind the closed door of his marriage was not yours to observe.

It did not come. Instead, he looked at you for a long time. Long enough that you became aware of the small distance between your shoulders. Of the coffee cooling in his hand. Of the ring beneath his thumb. Of his mouth, pressed into a line to keep back words that had nowhere safe to go.

He wanted to say something. You could see that. Maybe not the whole truth. Maybe not even a useful part of it. But something. Something more honest than sarcasm. Something more dangerous than fine.

He could not. Because he was still married. Because you worked together. Because he was technically your senior by one year, a ridiculous fact he had turned into armour and identity and distance. Because whatever this was, it had grown in the wrong season. So he chose something safer.

“You’re very annoying,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

His eyes stayed on yours.

“It’s becoming a problem.”

“For you?”

His thumb stilled against the ring.

“Mostly.”

The next shift was brutal in a way that made time feel physical. It pressed into your shoulders. Settled behind your eyes. Lived in your hands even after you washed them three times.

There had been a pile-up on the motorway just after seven. Three ambulances at once, then a fourth twenty minutes later. Trauma bays full. Corridors narrowed by stretchers. Blood on the floor that someone cleaned and then someone else bled over again. A child crying for a father who was still in imaging. A woman asking the same question every five minutes because shock had turned her memory into water.

You and Langdon had worked together without thinking. No bickering. No sharp comments. No seniority. No courtroom deposition.

He called for suction before you asked. You handed him gauze before he reached. He caught your eye over a patient’s chest and you knew, instantly, what he needed. You moved like the same thought split between two bodies.

It should have felt satisfying. Instead, it felt terrifying. Because the better you worked together, the harder it became to pretend it was only work.

By the time the department settled into its ruined version of calm, your scrubs felt too tight and your skin felt too aware of everything it touched. The last trauma had gone upstairs. The family had been updated. Robby had disappeared to make three phone calls you were glad you did not have to hear. The nurses moved with the blank efficiency of people who would feel all of it later, somewhere private, if they were lucky.

Langdon vanished after the final handover. You noticed because you always noticed now. You hated that about yourself. You told yourself not to look for him. You had charts to finish. Patients to reassess. A bladder scan that had been requested an hour ago and a discharge summary that might have been written in ancient code for all the sense it made to you.

You lasted six minutes. Then you found yourself walking. Not toward the breakroom first. That would have been too obvious. Not toward radiology. Not the ambulance bay. You checked the medication room. Empty. The on-call room. Empty. The small alcove by the staff lockers. Empty.

Finally, you reached the storage room at the far end of the department, the one no one used unless they needed extra blankets, spare tubing, or somewhere to fall apart for forty-five seconds between catastrophes.

The door was half open. Inside, the light was off except for the weak strip spilling in from the corridor. Langdon stood between a stack of folded sheets and a metal shelving unit lined with IV fluids. His back was to you. His head was bowed. One hand braced against the shelf. The other held his ring.

You stopped in the doorway. The air seemed to leave the room. The silver band rested in his palm, small and bright and devastatingly quiet. He must have heard you, because his shoulders tensed.

For once, he did not turn around immediately. Did not snap. Did not cover. Did not construct himself into something sharp enough to keep you back.

He only said, “I thought I locked the door.”

“You didn’t.”

“Obviously.”

His voice was flat. Worn thin.

You should have left. Everything in you knew that. You should have given him privacy. You should have turned around, walked back to the nurses’ station, and written your notes like a sensible person with appropriate boundaries and no instinct for emotional self-destruction. Instead, you stepped inside and let the door fall halfway shut behind you.

“Langdon.”

He closed his hand around the ring.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know. You’re worse when you don’t.”

He turned then. You had seen Langdon tired before. Irritated. Wired. Brilliant. Unbearable. Pale after phone calls. Quiet in the ambulance bay. Almost gentle with patients who would never know what it cost him to be that careful.

You had not seen him like this. He looked stripped down to the bone.

His left hand was bare. The absence of the ring was louder than the ring had ever been. Your eyes dropped to it before you could stop yourself. His hand flexed once, as if he felt the nakedness there too. Langdon looked down at the ring in his hand.

“We’ve been over for a long time.”

The sentence was quiet. Direct. Terrible.

You swallowed. “Langdon…”

“I know.” His head lifted quickly. “I know what it sounds like. I know what people say. I know every version of this story makes someone look selfish or weak or cruel, and maybe I am. Maybe that’s the point. But I need you to understand that I’m not saying it because I expect anything from you.”

Your heart was beating too hard. He kept going, words gathering speed now, not quite his usual yapping, not a tangent, not a lecture. More like he had been holding them in for so long that once one escaped, the rest tore after it.

“I’m not saying it so you’ll pity me. I’m not saying it so you’ll forgive me for being difficult. I’m not saying it because I think my marriage ending is some romantic inconvenience that clears the way for—” He stopped, jaw tight, eyes shutting briefly. “God. I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying enough.”

His eyes opened. That hit him. You saw it hit him. He looked at you like he had expected judgement, or interruption, or the clean, clinical slicing of your intelligence through whatever mess he had dragged into the room.

His voice lowered. “We’re separating.”

“It’s been coming for months,” he said. “Longer, probably. We just got very good at living around the truth. Different rooms. Different schedules. Conversations that sounded like logistics because anything else would have been war.” He looked down at his bare hand. “I kept wearing it because taking it off felt like admitting failure. Then keeping it on started feeling like lying.”

You did not know what to say. There were a dozen things you could have said. I’m sorry. That must be hard. Are you okay? What happened? How long? Why didn’t you tell anyone?

“I won’t be the reason.”

His eyes lifted to yours immediately.

“You’re not,” he said.

“Langdon-”

“You’re not.” He stepped closer, then stopped himself, like the movement had escaped before he could decide whether he was allowed to want it. “I need you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever I’ve been-” He broke off, breath unsteady. “You are not the reason.”

You believed him because you had seen the shape of the pain before you ever became part of it. You had seen the calls, the silence, the way home pulled colour out of him. You had seen him twist that ring like a man trying to keep a door shut with his bare hands.

“Then why are you telling me?” you asked.

He looked at you for a long moment. The storage room felt too small. Too warm. Too crowded with things neither of you had said. His hand closed tighter around the ring.

“Because lately,” he said, “when something happens, you’re the first person I look for.”

He laughed softly, almost in disbelief at himself. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe when you argued with me in trauma two and somehow made the correct call while insulting my entire personality. Maybe when you noticed the ring and didn’t ask. Maybe when I realised the ER could be on fire and I’d still know exactly where you were standing.”

You could not look away from him. He looked ruined by his own honesty.

“I know where you stand,” he said. “That’s the problem. I know which computer you go to when you’re annoyed. I know you forget to eat when paeds is bad. I know you pretend not to care when someone underestimates you, but you do. I know you take one sugar and then act like it’s a moral failing when I remember.” His mouth twitched, pained. “I know when you’re about to argue because you breathe in like you’re loading a weapon.”

Despite everything, your eyes stung. “Langdon.”

“I know your hands are steady when mine want to be. I know you’re kind when you’re exhausted, which is infuriating because I can barely manage civil. I know I trust you before I have time to decide whether I should.”

He stopped. The silence after was immense. You stared at him, at the bare hand, at the ring trapped in his fist, at the man who had spent weeks making seniority into a wall only to stand in front of you now with nothing left to hide behind.

“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You’re still—”

“I know.”

“We work together.”

“I know.”

“You’re my senior.”

That made him let out one broken, breathless laugh.

“By one miserable year.”

The laugh almost undid you. Almost. You crossed your arms tightly, not because you were angry, but because you did not trust your hands. “I can’t be where you run because your life is falling apart.”

“You’re not.”

“I won’t be your escape.”

“You aren’t.” His voice roughened. “You’re the first thing that’s made me want to stop escaping.”

The words hit so hard that for a second you forgot how to breathe. Langdon looked like he regretted them instantly. Not because they were untrue. Because they were too true. He turned away, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. The ring glinted between his fingers.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” you said.

He froze. You stepped closer. Not all the way. Just enough that the air between you changed.

“No,” you repeated, quieter. “You probably shouldn’t have.”

He turned back slowly.His eyes found yours. That was when the room became impossible. You had stood close before. Shoulder to shoulder at computers. Hip to hip beside bedsides. Elbows touching over notes. His hand reaching past yours for the mouse. Yours brushing his when you passed him a pen.

All of that had been deniable. This was not. The distance between you was a decision now. Langdon’s gaze dropped to your mouth. Only for a second. Long enough to set your whole body alight. Then he looked back at your eyes, and the restraint there was almost worse than wanting. He was waiting. Not taking. Not assuming. Holding himself so still it looked painful.

“Tell me to leave,” he said.

Your voice barely worked. “This is a storage room.”

“Then tell me to stop looking at you like this.”

Langdon crossed the distance between you and then stopped with barely an inch left, close enough that you could feel the heat of him, close enough that his breath stirred against your cheek.

He did not touch you yet. That restraint was the final undoing. You reached for him first. Your fingers caught the front of his scrub top, and he inhaled sharply, eyes closing for half a second as if the contact hurt. Then his mouth was on yours.

The kiss was not gentle. It tried to be. For one brief, trembling second, it was careful, uncertain, a question asked against your lips. Then you answered. And it caught fire.

Langdon made a sound low in his throat, one hand coming to your waist, the other still closed around the ring like he did not know how to let go of anything. He backed you against the shelving unit with enough care not to hurt you and enough urgency to make your head spin. Your hands slid up to his shoulders, then into his hair, and he kissed you harder, like restraint had been a language he was fluent in until you touched him.

He tasted like bad coffee and exhaustion. He kissed like a man who had spent weeks arguing because wanting you quietly had become impossible. You pulled back for air and he followed, mouth finding the corner of yours, your cheek, the line of your jaw, stopping himself there with a sharp breath.

“Tell me this is a bad idea,” he said against your skin.

“It’s a terrible idea.”

He kissed you again. You let him. For a moment, there was no ER. No ring. No one-year seniority. No Robby. No charts. No impossible circumstances waiting outside the door.

There was only Langdon’s hand at your waist, his body warm against yours, the hitch in his breath when you tugged lightly at his hair. Your fingers slid down his arm, and yes, even now, some absurd part of you noticed the muscle beneath your palm. He noticed you noticing. Even like this, even breathless, ruined, mouth swollen from yours, he found the energy to be unbearable.

“Are you still clinically observing my arms?”

You laughed against his mouth. “Shut up.”

His forehead dropped against yours. For a few seconds, you both stood there breathing the same air, half-laughing, half-shaken, holding on to each other like the floor had tilted beneath you.

Then the world returned. A cart rattled past outside. Someone called for extra blankets. The department beyond the door kept living, kept needing, kept demanding.

He looked at you then, and the kiss had not solved anything. That was the terrible, honest thing. It had not made the circumstances simple. It had not erased the hurt or the timing or the consequences. If anything, it had made everything sharper. But it had also made lying impossible. Langdon opened his hand. The ring sat in his palm.

“I’m going to do this properly,” he said. “Not because of you. Not for you. For me. Because it should have been done before I ever looked at you like this.”

Your chest ached. “And until then?” you asked.

His jaw tightened. “Until then, I behave.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “You?”

“I said behave. Not become likeable.”

That almost made you smile. He stepped closer again, but this time he did not touch you. The space between you was deliberate. Painful. Necessary.

“I meant what I said,” he told you. “You’re the first person I look for.”

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then you reached out and touched his bare left hand, just once, your fingers brushing the place where the ring had been.

“I know.”

For a second, neither of you moved.

Your fingers were still against his hand, resting over the pale strip of skin where the ring had been. It was such a small place to touch him. Barely anything. Barely pressure. And yet Langdon looked at you like you had put your hand around his throat.

His breath changed first. A quiet inhale. Unsteady. Controlled only because he was forcing it to be. Then his eyes dropped to your mouth. His eyes came back to yours, darker now, the last of his restraint trembling visibly at the edges. For one breath, he just stared at you. Then something in him snapped.

Langdon crossed the space between you in one hard step, his hand catching your waist as his mouth found yours again. The kiss was rougher this time, less question than surrender, and the force of it drove you back until your shoulders met the storage room wall.

The impact was soft, cushioned by his hand sliding behind you just in time. You made a sound against his mouth, half surprise, half relief, and his grip tightened like it had undone him. His body pressed close, heat and tension and the sharp, clean scent of hospital soap beneath exhaustion. One hand stayed at your waist.

You felt the thought pass through him too. For one second, his mouth slowed. You caught his lower lip between yours before he could retreat. Langdon groaned. It was low, helpless, and completely unlike any sound you had ever heard from him. It went straight through you. His forehead tipped against yours, breath uneven.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he said.

“You’re very dramatic.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Then he kissed you again. This one was slower, somehow worse. His mouth moved over yours like he was trying to learn you and forget you at the same time, like every second of contact was both a mistake and the only honest thing left in the room. Your hands slid up his chest, over the tense line of his shoulders, into his hair. He shuddered when your fingers curled there.

“Careful,” he murmured against your mouth.

“Why?”

“Because if you keep doing that, I’m going to stop pretending I have any self-control.”

You tugged lightly. His answer was immediate. His hand dropped from the wall to your hip, pulling you more firmly against him, and the kiss turned hungry. You could feel the hard line of his body against yours, the restless energy he carried everywhere finally given somewhere to go. His mouth left yours, dragging along your cheek, your jaw, stopping at the side of your neck with another sharp breath.

He did not kiss you there at first. He hovered. Waiting. Asking without words. You tilted your head. That was all the permission he needed.

His mouth pressed to your neck, hot and deliberate, and your fingers tightened in his hair before you could stop them. He kissed you there once, twice, then lingered like he was trying to brand the moment into memory. His hand at your waist flexed.

“Langdon,” you breathed.

He pulled back just enough to look at you.

The sight of him nearly finished you.

His hair was disordered from your hands. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were bright and wrecked and fixed on you like the entire ER could collapse outside the door and he would still need one more second. Instead, you kissed him.

He answered like he had been waiting his whole life to be interrupted. The shelf beside you rattled as he pressed you harder into the wall, his hand sliding from your waist to your back, holding you there, close enough that you could feel every uneven breath he took. You arched into him without meaning to, and his control slipped visibly.

His hand moved to your face then, thumb brushing your cheek with a tenderness so sudden it made the heat in your chest turn painful. The contrast was unbearable: the press of him against you, the urgency of his mouth, and then that careful touch, like even now he was afraid of taking more than you wanted to give.

You covered his hand with yours. For a moment, the kiss softened. Not cooled. But deepened into something more dangerous than want. Something that knew names. Habits. Coffee orders. The exact place the other person stood in a crowded room.

Langdon pulled away first, but only barely. His mouth hovered over yours. His eyes shut for half a second, tortured.

Then he laughed under his breath, low and disbelieving. “I’m behaving terribly.”

“You warned me you wouldn’t become likeable.”

“That was different.”

“You’re still not likeable.”

His eyes opened. There he was again beneath all of it. Infuriating. Brilliant. Yours to argue with, though not yours to keep. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The uncertainty made the moment sharper. But his smile, small and breathless, was real.

“You say that,” he murmured, “but your hands are still in my hair.”

You immediately started to pull them away. He caught your wrist.

“Don’t.”

For one more impossible moment, you stayed pinned between Langdon and the wall, your hand in his hair, his mouth close enough to yours that every breath felt stolen. Then voices passed outside the storage room.

The hospital. The shift. The ring still in his hand. The fact that his left hand was bare because he had chosen honesty too late and too close to you.

Langdon stepped back slowly, like it cost him. The air rushed cold between you. But his eyes dropped to your mouth again, and you hated him a little for how badly you wanted him to ignore his own promise.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to make me forget every decent thought I’ve ever had.”

You gave a shaky laugh. “That many?”

“Three. Maybe four.”

“Impressive for you.”

His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if erasing the evidence of himself and failing completely.

The voices outside faded completely, but the tension in the small storage room only thickened, charged and electric. Langdon’s thumb lingered on your lower lip a second longer, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide with want. The ring was still clutched in his other hand like a talisman he refused to let go of, but the way he was looking at you said the “properly” he’d promised was about to be tested to its breaking point.

His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if trying to erase the evidence of himself and failing completely. The pad of his thumb lingered, tracing the curve of your mouth like he was memorizing it. Like he was already mourning the loss of this moment before it had even ended.

You watched his eyes darken. Watched something shift behind them, the last thread of restraint finally snapping.

Then his hands were on you again, sliding under your scrub top, palms flat against your ribs, possessive and sure. His fingers splayed wide, spanning the curve of your waist like he was claiming territory. His thumbs pressed into the soft skin just below your breasts, and you gasped at the contact, at the heat of his hands against your flushed skin.

"One minute," he muttered, voice gravel-rough, his mouth already dropping to your throat. "I just need one goddamn minute of you."

His teeth grazed your pulse point, and your head fell back against the wall with a dull thud. His mouth was everywhere, hot, insistent, trailing fire down the column of your neck. His fingers found the hem of your scrub top and pushed it higher, exposing your stomach to the cool air of the storage room.

"Langdon-"

"Don't." His voice was muffled against your collarbone. "Don't say my name like you're about to talk sense into me. Not now."

He dropped to his knees. The sight of him there, brilliant, infuriating Langdon, on his knees in a hospital storage room, looking up at you with hunger and devotion tangled together in his dark eyes, nearly undid you completely.

"You have no idea," he murmured, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to your hipbone, "how much I've thought of this." His fingers hooked into the waistband of your scrub pants, tugging them down with agonizing slowness. "Of you."

He kissed lower, his lips tracing a path along your stomach, your hips, the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. His breath was hot against you, and you could feel the tremor in his hands as they gripped your thighs, spreading you open for him.

"So pretty," he breathed against your skin. His tongue traced a slow, deliberate line along your inner thigh, and your knees nearly buckled. "So fucking smart. Do you know what you do to me? The way you argue with me in front of the whole department, like you're not the only thing I can see?"

You opened your mouth to respond, but whatever you might have said dissolved into a sharp cry as his mouth found you. He was thorough. Unhurried despite the urgency that had driven him to his knees. He took his time, learning you with his tongue, his fingers, the occasional scrape of his teeth that made you gasp and grip his hair. Your fingers tangled in the dark strands, tugging, and he groaned against you, a low, desperate sound that vibrated through your entire body.

"Langdon-" His name was a broken plea on your lips.

He pulled back just enough to look up at you. His mouth was slick, his eyes dark and hungry. "Tell me what you need."

"You. Just please-"

He rose then, fluid and commanding, guiding you backward until your knees hit the narrow exam table. He lifted you onto it, the paper crinkling beneath you, and positioned himself between your thighs in a single, decisive movement.

His hands found your hips, pulling you to the edge of the table. He kicked his own pants down just enough, and then he was there, pressing against you, the heat of him making you ache.

"Look at me," he ordered, his voice low and dominant. One hand pinned your wrist above your head, fingers lacing with yours. His other hand gripped your hip, steadying you. "I want to watch every second I'm finally inside you."

He pushed in slowly. Deliberately. Inch by agonizing inch, giving you time to feel every stretch, every pulse of heat. Your back arched off the table as he filled you completely, and he groaned, a raw, guttural sound that seemed torn from somewhere deep in his chest.

"Jesus," he breathed, pressing his forehead to yours. "You feel, God, you feel like you were made for this."

Then he moved. Deep. Rough. Commanding. Each stroke drove you higher, the table creaking beneath you as he set a relentless rhythm. His hand released your hip to find your breast, thumb circling your nipple through the thin fabric of your scrub top. His mouth found your throat, your jaw, the corner of your mouth.

"Eyes on me," he reminded you, voice strained. "I want to see you. All of you."

You obeyed, meeting his gaze as he drove into you again and again. His expression was wrecked. All pretence gone, every carefully constructed wall reduced to rubble. The composed, infuriating man who could diagnose a cardiac arrest with clinical detachment was nowhere to be found. In his place was someone raw, undone, completely at your mercy despite being the one driving into you with commanding precision.

His hips snapped against yours, each thrust deep and deliberate, angling to hit that perfect spot inside you that made stars burst behind your eyes. The narrow exam table creaked beneath you, its thin paper crinkling with every movement. One of his hands remained wrapped around your wrist, pinning it above your head against the thin mattress. The other gripped your hip hard enough to leave bruises, and you wanted them. You wanted every mark he would leave on you.

"Look at me," he ordered again, his voice strained and wrecked. "Don't look away. Not now."

His pace quickened, growing more urgent. The sound of skin meeting skin filled the small room, obscene and perfect. His jaw was tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek as he fought for control and lost, over and over. Sweat beaded at his temples, and a lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look younger.

"I thought about this every night," he confessed, his voice breaking as he thrust deep, holding there for a moment before pulling back and driving into you again. "When I was with her." The word came out bitter, almost angry. "It was always you.”

His mouth found yours, bruising, desperate, consuming. He kissed you like he was drowning and you were air. His tongue swept into your mouth, and you tasted yourself on him, tasted the salt of his sweat, tasted the raw honesty he'd never given anyone else.

"I imagined you," he continued against your lips, each word punctuated by another thrust. "All the time. Every time I closed my eyes, it was you." His hand slid from your hip up your side, pushing your scrub top higher until your breasts were exposed. His thumb found your nipple, circling it with devastating precision. "The way you argue with me. The way you challenge me. The way you look at me like I'm not just some broken asshole."

His pace grew punishing. Relentless. Each stroke drove you higher, your body clenching around him, drawing desperate groans from his throat.

"I'd be inside her," he said, voice dropping to a ragged whisper, "and I'd close my eyes, and I'd see you. Feel you. Imagine it was your legs wrapped around me, your mouth on mine, your voice telling me to go harder, faster, more."

His rhythm faltered slightly, the only crack in his commanding facade. His forehead dropped to yours, eyes screwed shut, breath coming in harsh pants against your lips.

"And when I finished," he breathed, "I'd say your name. Every fucking time. I'd whisper it into her hair and pretend I hadn't. Pretend it didn't mean anything."

He opened his eyes then, and what you saw in them nearly undid you. Guilt. Desire. Years of suppressed want finally unleashed. He looked at you like you were the only thing anchoring him to earth—like without you, he'd spin off into nothing.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, and the apology wasn't for the confession. It was for the weight of it. The admission that he'd been carrying you in his chest while lying beside someone else. "I'm sorry I couldn't." His voice cracked. "I should have left her the first time I said your name. I should have found you. Should have told you-"

You silenced him with a kiss, arching up into him. His hand found your free wrist, pinning both above your head now, and he drove into you with renewed intensity. The admission had shattered something inside you, something you hadn't even known was holding you back.

Your release hit like a wave, unexpected and overwhelming, pulling you under as you cried out his name. Your body clenched around him, pulsing, drawing him deeper. Your back arched off the table, and he watched you fall apart with an expression of pure reverence, like he was witnessing something sacred.

His control broke completely. He followed with a guttural groan, burying himself deep as he finished, his forehead pressed to yours. His hips stuttered against you, his body shuddering, and he buried his face in the curve of your neck as he came undone. You felt every tremor, every gasp, every ragged breath he took against your skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, his breathing harsh and uneven, his weight pressing you into the thin mattress. One of his hands released your wrists, sliding down to cup your face. His thumb traced your cheek, and when he finally lifted his head, his eyes were wet.

"Say something," he whispered. "Please. Tell me I didn't just ruin everything."

You reached up, brushing the dampness from his cheek. "You didn't ruin anything."

He let out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to yours again. His body was still trembling, still connected to yours in the most intimate way possible.

"I'm yours," he said quietly, the words almost lost against your lips. "I've been yours since the first time you told me I was an insufferable asshole."

You laughed weakly. "You are an insufferable asshole."

For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, breathing ragged, his hand still tangled with yours. The only sounds were your mingled breaths and the distant hum of the hospital beyond the door.

Then, slowly, he eased out of you. The loss of him made you ache, but he didn't leave you empty for long. He reached for a spare scrub top from a nearby shelf and cleaned you both with surprising gentleness, his touch reverent. He pressed a soft kiss to your stomach, your hip, the inside of your knee.

Then he gathered you into his lap on the edge of the table, pulling your scrub pants back up before wrapping his arms around you. One hand stroked slow, soothing circles down your back, tracing your spine through the thin fabric.

Then, softer, almost reverent. He kissed you slowly, tenderly, the roughness melting into Langdon stayed inside you for a few more heartbeats, then eased out carefully. He cleaned you both with a spare scrub top, surprisingly gentle despite the roughness from minutes earlier. He pulled you into his lap on the edge of the table, arms wrapped around you, one hand stroking slow circles down your back.

“You okay?” he murmured against your hair.

“More than okay,” you whispered, still catching your breath.

A beat of silence. Then the absurdity of it all—hiding in a storage room, half-dressed, the weight of everything still hanging between you—hit at the same time. A small laugh bubbled out of you. Langdon’s chest shook with a low chuckle that turned into quiet, helpless laughter against your shoulder. The shared sound broke the heavy tension like a release valve, warm and real.

From the hallway, Robby’s voice carried through the door.

“Whoever stole my extra blankets, I am choosing violence.”

You and Langdon both looked toward the sound. Then at each other. Despite everything, despite the ache and the ring and the kiss still burning on your mouth, you laughed. Langdon’s smile faded first, but only because something softer replaced it.

“I should go first,” he said.

“Probably.”

“People will talk.”

“People already talk.”

“Yes, but usually because you’re impossible to work with.”

“You’re confusing me with yourself.”

“There she is.”

You rolled your eyes, but your hand lingered near his for one second longer. Then he stepped back. At the door, he paused, the ring still held in his hand.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said, voice low, “this changes nothing at work.”

“Obviously.”

“We remain professional.”

“Painfully.”

“No favouritism.”

“You’re still wrong half the time.”

“A third at most.”

“And you’re still only one year ahead of me.”

His mouth curved. This time, when he looked at you, he did not hide any of it.

“Try to keep up,” he said.

You smiled, still breathless.

“Try to be worth waiting for.”

[marwrite]

good guy

summary: clark has always prided himself in being one of the good guys. and he is, for the most part- until you come along. suddenly, his hands are in places they shouldn't be while his mind plagues him with visions of you being oh-so-sweet beneath him.

clark kent x fem ! reader

themes: 18+ so mdni, yearning and a whole lot of it, jealousy, clark just can't help himself. kinda feral!perv!clark trying to be as respectful as possible but lowkey failing. filthy in the best way. enjoy! x

Clark is a good guy.

Always has been, and Ma would certainly like to think that he always will be. At school, he never got so much as a stern look and pointed gaze- after all, he was a sweet little kid that smiled a bit too much and tried to take up the least amount of room possible. His teachers loved him, the envy of all his peers.

During High School, Clark kept his head down. Did his work in a flurry of soft smiles and polite nods, offering help when needed, kindly rejecting any flirtatious advances under the bleachers that would result in him getting into trouble.

"You're somethin' else, Kent." Lana rolled her eyes at him once, flicking the spectacles on his face just a little of their axis.

College followed suit. While his friends joined fraternities and disrespected sorority sisters, Clark diverted all his attention to perfecting his degree. Sure, he had a couple pecks here and there, a few misunderstandings with a handful of very drunk and slightly deprived college girls- but hey, at least he didn't take it any further.

All in all, Clark Kent grew up with the belief that he wasn't like that. He was kind. Respectful. Ma would tell him so, and Pa would go to the ends of the earth to enforce it; listen 'ere, Clark, a lady should be left alone unless prompted otherwise. You hear?

He'd nod. Pa's shoulders would relax, and Ma would place a dear old hand on her heart at the relief of her son turning out just the way she'd hoped.

But then one day, during an intense intern briefing amidst the bustling bullpen of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent met you.

And he soon realised that he might not be such a 'good guy' after all.

Because it wasn't enough that your skirt was always far too short, or that the lip gloss you wore blinded him no matter the lightning in the room. It wasn’t even the way you laughed, bright and careless, like you had no idea what it did to the people around you- what it did to him and every fibre of his superhuman being.

It was everything else.

Your perfume would linger in the newsroom ten minutes after you’d left, sweet enough that Clark could still catch it when he bent over his desk. Every time he did, his chest tightened with something ugly; vanilla sugar and lemon, wrapped in a pretty gold ribbon of guilt and shame.

He hated it, but he also couldn't get enough of it.

Your voice would carry on over everyone else’s, no matter how crowded the bullpen got. It was like his hearing had singled you out on purpose. Your heartbeat, your exhales, the slight pucker of your lips when an article brought on confusion.

Every other sound in Metropolis dulled itself accordingly, just so he could hear you ask Jimmy if he wanted coffee, or laugh at something Lois said, or mention your boyfriend in that absentminded little way that made Clark’s jaw lock so hard it ached.

And god, your boyfriend.

Your dumb fucking boyfriend.

Clark never usually swore (it didn't come to him as naturally as the likes of golly and gosh). But fuck, Superman on Red Kryptonite himself wouldn't have the mirage of different profanities that Clark did for the man you called yours.

Funnily enough, he had never even met the guy.

Didn’t need to. He hated him anyway.

He hated the way your phone lit up and brightened your face when you glanced at it. Despised the little smile that curled at your mouth when you typed back. Loathed the thought that someone else got to touch what Clark could barely stand to look at for too long.

However hard Clark made you laugh, however red your face flared after every shh little compliment thrown your way- it was never enough.

Someone else got to walk you home, kiss that gloss right off your lips, hear you laugh when no one else was around. Someone else got to climb over you at night, cover your gorgeous frame with theirs, fuck you gently into the bed until the early hours of the morning.

The thought would come to Clark late at night, when the city was finally at rest and he had only his thoughts to keep him awake. He'd envision you writhing beneath him, soft voice dripping like honey in his ears, moaning his name like a prayer and begging, pleading, for his touch.

His release would come quick. But on the nights the guilt settled in too deep, it wouldn’t come at all- and he’d spend the next few hours lying awake in silence, trying to atone for every impure thought he’d ever had about you.

It made something mean curl low in his stomach, something he’d spent his whole life pretending wasn’t there.

Because Clark was supposed to be good. He was supposed to smile and hold doors open and politely excuse himself when you leaned over his desk to point something out, cleavage threatening to spill, exposed neck so inviting he felt like a rabid animal; your mere existence flooding his senses so completely that for one humiliating second, he forgot his own name.

Lately, being around you felt less like admiration, and a hell of a lot more like drowning.

You’d walk into a room and he’d know it before he looked up. His whole body knew. The tiny hitch in his breathing, the way his shoulders went rigid, the awful, immediate awareness of where you were- crossing your legs at your desk, tugging your coat off your shoulders, leaning your cheek into your palm while you read over some notes.

Clark noticed all of it. Against his will. Against every decent thing Ma and Pa had ever taught him.

Eventually, he did the only thing he could think to do.

He booked some time off.

He told Perry he needed a break from the city, his eyes never quite leaving the floor. "Ma and Pa..." he scratched the back of his neck nervously, the lie coming out in one smooth sweep, "They've been asking for me. Some fence panels fell, Pa's heart... just wanna be there in any way I can."

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. The Kent farm always had something that needed looking after, even if it wasn't an immediate fence post. There were always animals to feed, fields to tend. Plenty to keep a man occupied.

"Take the time off, Kent. You deserve it."

After that, the situation became a civil war in his mind; one that had him at a loss no matter the outcome.

He convinced himself day after day that the dirt under his nails, the sweat on his back and the ache in his muscles would drown out the ache you’d left somewhere far deeper. He busied his hands, giving them something to do other than grip the base of his cock at night, eyes squeezed shut, pretending it was your skin beneath his legs and your mouth wrapped around his tip.

He needed Kansas air in his lungs instead of your perfume in his office, your laugh in the elevator, your voice drifting over cubicle walls and undoing him with every syllable.

He thought distance would help. What with Ma’s cooking and Pa’s quiet talks on the porch, there was simply no way the trip home wouldn't knock some sense back into him; remind him who he was, who he was supposed to be.

Even in Smallville however, you followed him.

And by the time Clark came back to Metropolis, he was exhausted in a way no amount of sleep could fix.

But you weren’t there.

Your desk sat empty.

Chair tucked in. Computer dark and oddly enough, collecting a light blanket of dust.

At first, Clark thought you were just running late. You were always stuck in traffic, and coffee lines always seemed to double in size whenever you walked into a café. He tried not to look at your desk every five minutes as he ran out of excuses to make on your behalf.

By noon, he was making mistakes. The backspace was hit more than a coherent sentence was formed; typos littered his edge of the column. Missed calls had Lois smacking him on the shoulder with a rolled-up newspaper. For someone so in tune with the written word, Clark even found himself reading the same paragraph three times over without taking in a single word.

Finally, he looked up from his monitor and asked Jimmy as casually as he could manage. Though the other man barely glanced up from his camera, Clark got the only answer he needed.

“Oh, she took some time off. Started a few days after you left, I think.”

He swallowed, nodding slowly, and that should’ve been the end of it.

But Jimmy kept talking.

“Guess her and her boyfriend broke up. Saw her crying in the break room last week. Lois said she’s staying with family for a bit.”

Clark didn’t hear the rest.

The words lodged themselves somewhere deep and awful, echoing through his skull all day. He hated how quickly his pulse kicked up.

Broke up.

You and your god-awful fucking boyfriend that made Clark swear (albeit in his own mind) had broken up.

And you were single.

A hot, selfish feeling unfurled in his chest before he could stop it.

You had been hurting. You had been crying. Yet the first thought that crossed his mind- before concern, before decency, before anything good that he was taught all his life- was that there was no boyfriend anymore. No one standing between you and him, the line between reality and fantasy dissolving into a thin blur in the week he spent throwing hay bales and flying circles around the equator.

That night, Clark lay in bed staring at the ceiling of his apartment, the city humming beyond his windows. For the first time in weeks, he found his restraint collapsing completely.

He let his mind wander, hands itching to free the stiffness in his boxers. He stroked long and deliberately, steady, the way he'd always imagined your first time with him would be.

He wasn't like that ex-boyfriend of yours. Wasn't selfish or needy or desperate. No, Clark would kiss the ground you walked on. He'd fuck you nice and slow, praise you like you were the God, make you come so hard the other guy would feel like fiction. He's not just Clark Kent after all- he's Superman, and even Superman has a few fun tricks up his supersuit sleeve.

You were a rocket. He'd overheard your conversations with Cat in the break room in the past, each one lewd and inappropriate but addictive all the same. Your ex could only last so long, only cared for a few unimpressive positions- but Clark, Clark could last forever and a day if you wanted. You burned hot and filthy and Clark knew he could match you without breaking a single sweat.

You'll come back to work soon- tired, maybe, eyes a little puffy from crying, soft from the heartache. You'll lean against his desk again, this time with no mention of another man. No absent little smiles at your phone. No reason for Clark to pretend he doesn't need you like oxygen.

He'll be there for you. Whether it's a shoulder to cry on, someone to vent to or an outlet in general, there's no other place he'd rather be.

And if, somewhere between the late nights at the office and grateful smiles meant only for him, you start needing him a little too much… you can't expect him to refrain from giving you what you want, surely?

Clark Kent is a good man. A nice man.

But if leaning into the bad is exactly what it takes to finally have you under him instead of just in his head...

Well, he can make peace with that, too.

[supermenz]

if you're done with your ex, move on to the next!

summary: Being rejected from Metropolis University? Humbling. Your boyfriend of four years dumping you a year later thanks to his dead parents? Even worse. But when your friend tries to get you out of your dorm after two weeks spent bed-rotting and takes you to a photoshoot audition — "Just to try something new!" — you find yourself with a lot of attention you didn't want and a billionaire playboy on your tail.

pairing(s): bruce wayne x reader, (ex) clark kent x childhoodsweetheart!reader

word count: 21.7k (my longest fanfic yet)

warnings: inaccuracies regarding the position of the towns (used this map for reference) and college admissions, if you don't really understand why reader is beware of bruce then you might want to go and read a little sumsum about epstein island (my girl is right not to want anything to do with a billionaire), bruce is so not nonchalant, he's also kinda bi (OF COURSE HE IS HE'S A SLUT!!! AND OF COURSE IT'S WITH HARVEY), no trouple sorry, blood, one (1) gunshot as well as one (1) scott pilgrim reference, bruce and reader trauma bond over their weird exes, merry christmas/please don't call trope, suggestive maybe, swear words, angst and fluff, dick makes an apparition at the end (if there's anything I'm forgetting pls lmk)

author's note: credits to @lovingyoulovinme for the concept, taken from this post! bruce and clark can be imagined as any transposition of their characters, but honestly I tried my best not to think of david corenswet while writing this cuz I'd NEVERRRR let that man go. EVER. english isn't my first language so construcitve criticism is always welcome!!

dividers from @uzmacchiato! <3

You’ve known Clark Kent all your life. 

That happens when he’s the only kid in a three-mile radius near the house you were raised in — and that also happens when your mothers have been best friends for more than twenty years. There are pictures of him, barely one year old, sitting on the couch of your parent’s living room while cooing at the pink bundle in your mother’s arms — you. From then on, it’s unusual to see a photo of the two of you not together. 

He’s there when you start crawling, clapping his hands in encouragement, a picture showing him smushing his cheek against yours in triumph as you smile with the only two teeth you have. He holds you steady as you take your first steps, a bit wobbly himself, and you both fall into a fit of uncontrollable laughter as you crumble down to the floor. He teaches you his name as soon as you start talking, and when he’s over to your farm you end up following him like a lost puppy, chanting ClarkClarkClarkClark! loud enough for your father to take a peek out of the living room to make sure you’re okay. 

You’re four when you participate to your first dance recital, grinning wildly while wearing the pinkiest tutu your father could find at the only costume shop Smallville has, and when you get off stage after a choreography only the parents of the kids doing it could enjoy, you find a red-cheeked Clark holding a bouquet of flowers almost bigger than him. Your parents watch with knowing smiles as you squeal and topple him to the ground, smooshing your cheek against his. 

“You shouldn’t have, Jon,” your mother whispers to Pa Kent, “I know flowers are getting expensive these days.”

He barely brushes her comment aside, “Oh, shut it, woman, he wanted to. ‘Sides, Eleonor from the flower shop already owed us a favour.” he chuckles quietly, “Why, you tellin’ me it bothers you to see her so happy with her itty-bitty pink tutu and her bouquet?”

By this point, both you and Clark are back on your feet, and you’re jumping around — showing off your flowers to the friends you’ve made in the dance class while dragging Clark along by the hand. The kid is as red as a tomato, shuffling his feet awkwardly as you hold the bouquet like it’s an infant. 

Safe to say, you and Clark are thick as thieves growing up: it’s rare to see him around without you and vice versa, aside from school hours — and even then, you’re always together during breaks and such, and given that you take the same school bus and even get down at the same spot there’s never a day where the seat next to you or next to him is empty. 

Since the Kent farm and yours aren’t that far away you’re both often found wandering in the fields between your houses, sometimes even bringing your lunch lovingly wrapped in an embroidered cloth by your mum, who — same as Ma Kent — always packs not one but two meals; one for you, one for Clark. Of course, you both take advantage of the situation and always end up eating the whole feast without leaving a single crumb, only to then pass out for usually two or three hours after the ordeal on your little beaten up blanket. 

When everybody starts picking on him when he gets glasses — horrendous, thick-lenses ones — you just hold his hand while laying together on the hammock that hangs on two of the trees outside his farm, probably older than Pa Kent himself. “Who cares?” you mumble over his muffled sobs, hugging his side tight. “They all suck anyway. Besides, if they think the glasses look bad on you, maybe it’s their eyes that need fixing.” 

You’re nine when you first see him fly. It’s an accident — he thought you were in town with your parents, but opted to stay home instead and went to the Kent farm for a surprise visit — and he doesn’t talk to you for a week, too scared of confrontation. Things slide back in place as soon as Martha understands what happened and gives him a stern talk about friends and secrets; not even an hour later you’re aware of all his history — the meteor shower of ten years ago actually being his space pod entering the atmosphere, him coming from another planet and having freaking superpowers. 

You’ve always known Clark was special — always thought that he was one of a kind, a boy too gentle to be like everyone. You just didn’t know that special would have meant from another galaxy. 

Not a lot changes by the time you start going to middle and then high school — Clark’s one of the few boys in town that growing up didn’t have a phase or permanently turned into a dickhead. The Kents raised him well, making sure he never disrespected anyone without a good reason to, and even then he’s often too nice to act on it — unless it involves someone other than him. If there’s someone who’s being given trouble at school, he always finds a way to help — even if he himself isn’t really one of the popular kids either. 

That’s what you like about Clark. The ability to look bigger than he is if needed to and a heart of gold that would make the nicest man on Earth look pale in comparison. 

Of course, it’s not a surprise to anyone when you two start dating — it was just a matter of time, clearly. The only visible change is the hand-holding and kissing; when you tell the Kents, as Martha squeals and jumps up to hug you, Jon just sits there with a confused look on his face while scratching his chin. “You tellin’ me you two weren’t together this whole time?” 

Those are definitely the best years of your life, you think one summer evening as you lay on the same battered blanket of ten years ago in the same tulip field with the same boy. It’s just that this time he’s double the size and officially your boyfriend, who holds you tight against his chest while basking in the blazing sun. 

“Will you ever take me flying?” you ask, eyes barely open — just what you need to look at him, golden and smiling. He chuckles, “You’d like me to?”

You nod enthusiastically. You’ve rarely ever gotten out of Smallville, aside from school trips and a couple of vacations with your parents, so it’s safe to say that you’ve never even gotten on a plane in your entire life, with the closest airport being in Metropolis. Clark, you guess, is the next best thing you have to a plane. 

“Dunno, sweetheart,” he presses a kiss to the crown of your hair, “If Pa saw me fly with you, he’d yell at me to get down and start a long lecture about being seen and the dangers of it. Maybe when they’re out of town, mh?” 

You hum, almost half asleep, lulled by his hand gently caressing your back under your shirt and the warmth of the sun. “I’ll hold you to that one.” 

But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end — and just two years after that conversation in the field you find yourself in Clark’s room, holding back your tears as you help him pack his things for college. You should be happy for him — he’s been accepted into the Journalism course, which has been his dream for years — but you just can’t shake the thought of him being so far away in the big city while you’re still stuck here for another year. 

You like Smallville — you love the farm, the animals and the constant fresh air — but there’s basically nothing there aside from fields and the school. You and Clark have never been so far away from each other for so long — you honestly don’t know how you’ll manage without him around. Sure, you have other friends, but nobody could ever make up for his absence. 

And that’s why you’ve been spending the last two weeks tied to his side — helping him get ready for his move and packing old shirts and jeans. You almost burst out in tears when you see him sneaking an old picture of you in a tutu and a bouquet in one of the boxes. 

He notices you staring  — of course he notices. He’s already noticed how on edge you’ve seemed in these last few months, and if he’s right the dam is about to break in a million pieces right in front of him. 

Clark gets up from his place on the floor, wiping his hands on his jeans, “Everything alright?”

You look at him– really look at him. Your lips tremble, tears begin to form in your waterline and judging by the rapid beats of your heartbeat you’re about to have a complete breakdown. Finally, you whimper, “I don’t want you to go,” 

The dam breaks. You start ugly crying, full-on sobbing as Clark hugs you and holds you tight against his chest, “No– I mean– I want you to go, it’s– it’s a great opportunity– but I don’t want you to leave me here all alone–” your sobs rattle against his chest and your words are barely understandable, but for someone with super empathy — you’re sure that’s a real thing and an actual true power of his — and super hearing it’s pretty understandable. 

His eyes soften. “I wouldn’t leave you here if it was my choice,” he murmurs, “I’d take you with me in a heartbeat, but we’ll have to start somewhere if we want to eventually move out of here together. In a year you’ll finish high school, and until then I’ll still visit constantly.” he smiles sweetly, “You could come to visit me too. Did you know that they just finished building the railway connecting Midvale to Metropolis? How convenient is that?” 

His heart breaks even more when you don’t stop crying. His shirt is damp by now, and you are starting to hyperventilate — sobs becoming more drawn and hoarse. “Hey, hey,” he takes your face in his hands, wiping away your tears with his thumbs, “we’ll be okay, alright? Nothing will change. We haven’t been friends for seventeen years only for things to change because of– what, a hundred miles of distance?” he starts peppering your damp cheeks with kisses, managing to get a strained laugh out of you. “I didn’t come all the way here from another galaxy just to forget about you the second I move out of town.”

You’re back in the Kent’s farm two days later to say goodbye to Clark along with some close friends of his, and you cry more than you’d like to admit — but for now it doesn’t matter, because he’s still here and still able to wipe your tears with a gentle hand and dry the dampness on your cheeks with kisses. The real problems will arise when he won’t be able to do that anymore — and it happens soon after: he and Jon get on his truck and start driving towards Metropolis.

You stay seated on the Kent’s porch until Clark’s truck isn’t visible anymore, and Martha gently puts a hand on your shoulder. “Want a slice of pie? Lemon blueberry tart, your favorite. I made it… well, I kind of knew this sadness was coming.” she gives you a tight-lipped smile, teary herself. “I’ll miss him too. But it’s not the end of the world, is it? It’s just a new beginning. Besides, a couple of months and it’ll be Christmas. And you know we always spend Christmas together, hun.” 

The next few months are spent between your studies for the admission tests for University and hours-long calls with Clark, who’s enthusiastically adapting to life in the big city as you try not to give away too much that you’re rightfully sulking back at home. Christmas is a nice break from your longing, and you barely spend any time apart from each other, but after that it’s back to square one. 

Much to your displeasure, the calls start to become less and less long — and you really don’t want to be the type of girlfriend that stalks her boyfriend’s every step, but you really miss him, and it’s hard staying in Smallville without him when you’ve only known the town with him in it. He’s just starting to make new friends and getting to know the city, and you know that, but you wish you could be there with him instead of being stuck in the middle of nowhere. 

Spring break comes, and with it your train ticket from Midvale to Metropolis and your hunk of a boyfriend waiting for you at the arrival station. You nearly tackle him to the ground — and that says something, because he played football in high school — and kiss him fervently right here and there, not really caring about being in public. He takes your luggage like the real gentleman he is and tries not to laugh when you take his hand and start skipping like Heidi as he leads the way to his apartment. 

It’s definitely the shortest week of your existence — you get to have a preview of the life you’ll have with Clark in Metropolis, but not really the whole thing. You try to forget about how soon you’ll have to be back home as he shows you around and introduces you to his friends, and try to ignore the fact that while you’ve been wallowing in your own pity and having breakdowns weekly he seems to be just fine — peachy, even. As you barely manage to adapt in an environment without him, he’s thriving without you — and you know it’s not specifically because of your absence, but still. It drives you crazy, the way you seem to cling on him for everything as he manages to handle even the most complicated things alone. 

The week ends, and you go back home — maybe it’s for the best, you try to reason with yourself. You’re not sure of how much you could go on without going crazy while seeing him being perfectly fine without you as you’re spending every day missing him, and you’re starting to doubt yourself. Maybe he just doesn’t need you as much as you need him, and that hurts, because you’ve spent all your life by his side and don’t really know how to change that.

You still try to put up a brave face when talking to him on the phone, even though you’ve been counting the days that remain until your graduation — and thus Clark’s next visit — and try to hide your anxiety about your college applications. Veterinary Science, you’ve chosen — pretty predictable for a farm girl who was raised around animals, really. Metropolis is your first choice, of course, but what you haven’t really told Clark are the other options — Gotham University, Central City College, and countless others that you don’t really want to mention to him. 

Truth is, you’re not sure you’ll be accepted into Met U, and even if you did — you’re still not sure it would be the best option. Clark seems to be holding up the fort just perfectly without you — and since you’ve visited him in Metropolis, you’ve had this horrendous itch that you just aren’t able to actually scratch. Would you be able to create the life he’s having, alone? Are you melancholic just because you’re in Smallville, and to you Smallville has always meant Clark Kent? Would it be the same if you weren’t here but somewhere else, like Gotham? 

Graduation day comes and goes, and not even Clark’s presence is able to bring you out of the existential crisis you feel you’re living in — because the thing is, you don’t really know how you would manage in a new city alone. You’ve never explored the idea because you’ve always taken for granted that Clark would’ve been there for you, but seeing the acceptance rate at Met U really gave you a reality check. 

You spend the day throwing mostly fake smiles at everyone that congratulates you and going back to frowning at your shoes once they notice Clark at your side, not able to ignore the pit that’s formed in your stomach at the thought of not being accepted at Metropolis University anymore. But why do you really want to go there, anyways? Because there’s Clark? As much as you love him, you don’t want to live your life tied to his side only to then discover you can’t actually function without him. 

And when, inevitably, the admission letters come back in, you try to act like you can keep it together — like you’re not nearly combusting at the mere idea of opening them. Clark comes over in the evening and you open them together, hearts thumping and feet tapping nervously against the ground. The first one you open, of course, is from Met U. 

Dear miss, this is in regard to your application to the Veterinary Science program at Metropolis University, Delaware; we regret to inform you that… 

You don’t even want to read the rest of the letter, immediately dropping it on the table and getting up from your seat to go take a breath of fresh air on the porch — trying to avoid the inevitable nervous breakdown waiting for you if you dare to look into Clark’s eyes. You don’t want to see the disappointment in them — you know he’d never really blame you, but you’ve been waiting for this moment for a whole year, and despite all your doubts you still wanted to be admitted. It’s, honestly, so humbling. 

Clark is smart enough to give you a couple of minutes to yourself, coming to sit beside you on the porch when he’s sure you won’t burst out crying as soon as he mentions the subject, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “It’s not the end of the world,” he hushers, pressing a kiss to your temple, “you’ve been accepted to GCU, which is still closer to Metropolis than Smallville. Or– or Star City, too, even if that’s a bit far– whatever makes you happy, I’ll support that.” 

You sniffle, rubbing the palm of your hand on your face. “You opened the other letters?” 

He chuckles quietly, “Wouldn’t rob you of the experience. X-ray vision, remember?” 

A small, broken laugh escapes you. “Oh, you and your outer-world powers.” he shares the laugh with you, the air lightening for just a moment before it goes back to heavy. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

He flinches. “You– oh, sweetheart, no,” you can tell that he’s, for maybe the first time in his life, at a loss for words. “It’s… it’s just a mishap. They happen. It’s not your fault.” 

You hide your face in your knees and hug them tight against your chest. “I was already imagining us two happily living together in Metropolis.” you're now imagining yourself not able to live alone without him and ending up all alone in the new city, whatever one it’ll be. 

“And it will happen,” he assures you, “just, in… a couple of years. As soon as they let you transfer to Metropolis University.” 

Life goes on. You choose to pursue Gotham University, even if your parents are a little worried about the percentage of violent crimes there, and find a little apartment near campus in a complex that’s owned by the School Department and offered to the students for a modest price in one of the relatively safest areas in town. Clark helps you pack and even drives you all the way to Gotham when it’s time for the semester to start, unloading all your things in his truck and carrying them up the stairs to your unit. 

That being said, your roommate’s already there when you enter. “Jenna,” she introduces herself, enthusiastically shaking your hand as you let Clark do all the work in the background. She’s got a shirt with the drawing of a bat on and looks already settled in. “Heard you weren’t from around here, so I got you a little welcome present!” she passes you a glittery pink box with a bow on it, smiling excitedly. 

You blush, hesitantly accepting the gift, “Oh, there was no need–” 

She brushes you off with an easy smile, “Nonsense! Now, open it and tell me if you like it,” she’s buzzing with joy, and Clark curiously joins your side while wiping inexistent sweat from his forehead. You cautiously untie the ribbon, then open the box to reveal the gift, “It’s a…” you’re trying your best not to seem rude, but you’re really confused. “...A weirdly shaped bat?” Clark tries, not unkindly. 

Your roommate doesn’t seem too disheartened by the inexistent recognition of her gift. “It’s a Bat-taser!” she says it like there could be no doubt ever about it. “They’re really popular these days. Trust me, you’ll need it.” a fucking taser. Shaped like a bat–

Clark perks up, “Oh, yeah– is it from the guy that goes around dressed like a bat?”

Jenna claps like he’s won the lottery. “Batman, yeah!” 

You frown, “I’ve heard of him. Guys playing dress-up are getting really popular these days, aren’t they? Heard about a guy floating around in a horrendous green suit in Star City.” you lower your voice, making sure only Clark can hear you, “You sure he isn’t from your planet?” 

“I sure hope not,” he whispers back, “would really taint the whole mysterious thing about being from an unknown planet, you know?” 

Bat-taser aside, you find out pretty soon that Jenna’s actually really cool. She was born and raised in Gotham, apparently, and lunged at the idea of moving into a safer area of the city when given the opportunity. “Things are actually crazy around here,” she tells you as soon as Clark leaves — thank God, because the last thing you want is a far-away worried boyfriend that shriekes in fear every time you have to go out. “Got even crazier when Batman started going around. We’ve got so many insane criminals that a whole island’s basically dedicated to them.” 

“You mean Arkham,” you recall, slouched on the couch beside her, “so the stories about the asylum are true?” 

“Probably even watered down,” she muses, “the city’s had more lockdowns than sunny days these last few years.” 

Well, isn’t that exciting. Something tells you that soon, you’ll learn exactly why Bat-tasers are so popular these days.

You adjust to life in Gotham pretty well — to be back home before the sun sets, to use all the locks on the door even if it’s still just noon and never ever leave a single window open. You and Jenna have the disadvantage of the balcony — a tiny little crane that looks onto the street below —, disadvantage, you learn confusedly, because apparently Batman and his friends (aka the lunatics that he follows around in the city) often swing by those and either break the rails (in Batman’s case) or straight up break-in (in the lunatics' case). 

Adapting to Gotham is hard — but still easier, you must say, than adapting to a Smallville without Clark. It’s a new city, after all, void of any memories and full of new things, and soon enough you’re too immersed into your studies and the new city to constantly miss your boyfriend's presence. 

It’s not that you don’t miss him — you do — it’s just different than in Smallville. It doesn’t feel like something — someone — is constantly missing, and you have enough things on your mind to keep Clark’s absence out of your mind until mid to late evening, when usually one of you calls the other to talk about how things are going. 

Jenna helps, too — you find yourself being more close to her than you could ever imagine. It’s more like having a sister rather than a roommate, really. She manages somehow to get you a job at the same animal clinic she works at, and you've discovered more things that people can do in the last few months in Gotham than in your eighteen years of life, and that’s probably where farm life has stunted you. 

She offers you your first cigarette — not really a cigarette, she specifies, it’s made out of natural herbs that should taste like strawberry or something like that — and soon enough you purchase two ten-dollar fold-in chairs from Target just for the thrill of sitting in your little hazardy balcony while gossiping about the other students or one of her fifty family members. 

“And you?” she asks during a Saturday night in October, spent happily freezing outside while bundled up in a blanket each, “I bet at least one interesting thing happened in your eighteen years spent in your little farm town.”

You think about Clark flying and holding up cows and tractors like they’re berries, “The most interesting thing that can happen in Smallville is a particularly nice harvest. Even though I do recall that the milkman’s wife cheated on him with the mailman a couple of years ago.” 

For Christmas, obviously, you go back home. Jenna tells you that she’ll take care of the plants and make sure that nobody dares to break in, even if she’s back to her parents in Chinatown. Clark picks you up at the Metropolis' train station, greeting you with a tight hug and a loving kiss, and you make the two-hour drive to Smallville together, chatting quietly about how the last few months have been. Not surprisingly, even with the distance between you two shortening to eighty-seven miles rather than the hundred from Smallville, you haven’t really had the time to see each other. 

Something’s going on with Clark. You’re not really sure what it is, but the look in his eyes troubles you. He looks dazed, almost dull, and he isn’t anything like your usual loverboy Kent is. 

“Hey,” you whisper to him on Christmas Eve night, as everyone chatters happily while waiting for midnight to open the presents, “everything alright?”

“Mh?” he looks taken aback. “Oh, yeah, I’m just…” he sighs, slumping his head against your shoulder, “lost in my own thoughts, I think.” 

“Well, what about them?”

His brows furrow. “Not sure yet.” he looks up at you, pretty blue eyes shining under the dim light of the living room, “Do you ever think that my powers should be used for good?”

You stay silent for a moment. “I think you’re too kind to use them in any way but for good. Why?”

“I don’t mean ‘helping my parents in the farm’ good,” he nuzzles his nose on your shoulder, leaving a faint kiss there. “I mean, like, ‘helping citizens during a crisis’ good.” 

You blink. “You’ve got a heart of gold, Clark Kent,” you hush lovingly, pressing a kiss into his curls, “but as much as I love that about you, I don’t think you should put that burden on your shoulders. If you could, you’d help everyone, but that can’t really be possible. There’ll always be an old lady you couldn’t help walking the street, or a girl you couldn’t save from a mugger.”

His eyes are so soft that they might melt you too. “Why are you telling me this?”

You frown in the most gentle way possible. “Because I’m worried that if you start being like Green Lantern or– or Batman, you’ll never be able to come to terms with the people you weren’t able to help.”

“I still could try to help,” he argues without any spite. 

You study his face — oh, your sweet, sweet boy… “Jenna told me stories,” you murmur, “about Batman having to crawl back to his car, bloodied and barely alive, and sometimes even fainting in some God-forgotten alley — saved only because of some good samaritans that helped him get back up on his feet. I… I know that you might feel like you have a mission, Clark, but you have to consider the downsides of it.” you shake your head gently, “I don’t want you to be the man lying half-dead in a dark alley while I wonder why you’re so late to dinner.” 

Of course, none of you knows the true extent of Clark’s powers — that happens when someone has to hide them for all of his life. When the winter break comes to an end, you go back to Gotham with Clark like always, but this time the car ride is silent. He drops you off at your apartment, carries your luggage up the stairs and kisses you goodbye like nothing’s wrong — like the air isn’t heavy with something. 

Your days go on like always — you listen to your lessons, study, have a half-decent lunch with Jenna, listen to some more lessons, do your shift at the animal clinic and get back home before the sun goes down. The calls with Clark have slightly lessened, and you’d like to think that the blame can be put on the shoulders of the exam season, which — you are sure of it — is kicking both of your asses. Everything continues just fine until April comes. 

Clark calls, which by now it’s unusual because it’s always you that calls him. “Hello?” Your reply comes after a few rings, because it’s 10 a.m. on a Sunday and you sure as hell weren’t thinking about getting out of bed before it was time for lunch. Silence meets you on the other end. “I said, hello?”

“Hi,” Clark’s voice is the tiniest squeal, a very unusual thing for him — he’s never insecure about something, and when he is, you talk it out like the responsible people you’d like to think you are. 

You sigh softly on the phone, already fighting back sleep, “Hi, baby,” you yawn loudly, “what’s up?” 

“I, um…” he stutters for a bit, maybe unsure of where to start. “I’m in town for a couple of commissions. Are you up for a coffee?” 

Well, if that doesn’t wake you up, you don’t know what would. “You’re here? In Gotham?” 

“Yeah.” you do hear the ever persistent GCPD sirens screech on his end of the line. 

“Not that I’m mad about it, but why?” 

Another weird silence. “I told you, had a couple of commissions to run.”

It confuses you — what kind of job would Clark have to do in Gotham, and why didn’t he even tell you about it before coming here? — but you just shrug it off, taking for granted that he’ll explain everything about it when you see him. You get ready to meet him downtown quite happily, thinking about maybe a surprise, but nothing could really prepare you for what’s about to come. 

“I think we should break up.” 

The words ring in your ears. You’ve never pondered about the option of Clark and you breaking up — honestly, you’ve known him for so long that it just wasn’t even a thought in your head. Ever since you were little, you’d dreamed of the day you’d finally be able to marry Clark Kent and have the life you’d always fantasized about with him. 

The café he told you to meet him in is nice. Not one of the fancy ones in uptown Gotham, but not even one of the worst ones down in Crime Alley. You’re pretty sure you’d actually be able to enjoy it if it wasn’t for the fact that your boyfriend of four years is dumping you in it and you have no idea why. You can’t even form an actual thought, let alone an intelligent one, so the only thing that escapes your mouth is, “Uh?” 

He doesn’t look so comfortable either. It’s your first time getting dumped, but it’s also his first time dumping someone, you guess. “I just think it’s not working anymore between us. That we may need some time to figure things out on our own.” the shock must be written on your face, because he almost flinches. “Don’t look at me like that, please.”

“A cappuccino, an espresso and a croissant,” the waitress pretends not to listen as she brings you guys your order, but you saw her staring earlier. You shake your head in disbelief as soon as she leaves, pinching the bridge of your nose to try to make sense of anything that’s happening right now. “So you mean to tell me that the commission you had to do in Gotham… was to break up with me?” 

He grimaces. “Don’t say it like that,” 

“How else should I put it?” you hiss, “Clark, we’ve been together for four years — friends for all my existence even before that. You’ve been in my life since I can remember and you want to break up with me with the whole ‘I don’t think it’s working anymore’ bullshit? No, my guy, you’ll have to tell me a lot more than that. What is up with you?”

He presses his lips together for a brief moment, “I managed to get my degree earlier than I expected,” he almost stumbles over his words, “I… it was always my intention, but I didn’t think I’d actually manage to do so in such a brief period of time.” 

You blink. “You never told me that.” 

“I– I never told anyone, actually.” now he’s actively avoiding your eyes while nervously playing with his fingers, “Clark, it’s not a thing you just casually avoid to mention. You turned a three to four year program into a year and a half course. That’s a big thing. You should’ve told me– I would’ve done my best to support you.” 

His eyes are shiny, and it’s not just because of the light hitting them in just the right way. “I’m leaving.” 

You blink. “What?” 

He gives you a sad smile — and that makes you shudder, because in your entire life you’ve never ever seen Clark Kent smile like that. It’s honestly scary; he’s made for happy smiles, not for sad half-crapped ones. “I’m leaving,” he repeats gently, “I want to find out more about my biological parents — about my home planet. I think I’ve just found a way to do that, and I don’t know exactly for how long I’ll be gone.” he blinks away the tears, “And I can’t leave if I know that I’ve left you behind waiting for me.” 

“How long will you be gone?” you almost don’t hear yourself asking — it’s like that’s not even your voice. You have no idea how you still haven’t started crying. 

His voice is almost as little as yours. “I don’t know. I’d like to think it could be just a few months, but… something tells me it’ll be years.” 

You’re not sure how you get back home, but you somehow do. Jenna is on the couch, eating ice cream for breakfast, and chirps happily when she sees you. “Hey, I was getting worried! How did it go with Prince Charming?" you make it to your room before you throw yourself on the bed and start ugly crying uncontrollably. 

You don’t know life without Clark Kent. You’ve been inseparable since forever, and you always thought he’d be one of the only constants in your life — turns out, he had other plans. Yes, it’s true that you wanted to experience life in the big city without him, but that doesn’t mean you wanted him completely out of your life — you just wanted to see how well you’d do. (Ditched for unknown and dead parents, by the way? That has to be a new low.) 

Jenna tries her best to boost your morale — even buys you that one Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream that she hates with passion but that you love— but in the end, everything proves to be useless, and you end up going on with your life while trying to pretend that you have it all together. 

Class. Study. Lunch. Class. Work. Back at home. Repeat. 

Of course, you barely manage to keep it together. Every hour not spent doing the things you have to do is spent in bed contemplating your life and the exact moment where it got real shitty. Somewhere along the first week Ma Kent calls, probably alerted by your mother about the break up, but you really don’t have the heart nor the strength needed to respond to her call. You’re relieved when she avoids calling a second time — probably knowing that you need some space and that she’s not the first person you’d want to hear after something like this — because you don’t really know how you could’ve avoided to reply for a second time while watching her name grace the screen. 

Week two passes and things get even worse for you, so much so that you have to call in sick to work thanks to the sore throat that you find yourself with after crying uncontrollably for almost all night every night. You can tell Jenna’s fed up, because even with all her strength, it seems as if she can’t help you at all. 

“You know, I once broke up with an italian guy over distance,” she tries to reason, sprawled on your bed as you lie face down as if dead — you have yet to actually explain to her why you and Clark broke up, so she’s still thinking that it was because of all the miles separating you. “He has yet to tell his mother– and it’s been two years. She still sends me a whole box of Italian cheeses for every holiday.” she suddenly perks up, “Maybe I’ll be graced with some of the famous Ma Kent pie one day. I hope she sends a piece for your birthday.”

Your hiccup is muffled by the pillow. “Right, yeah, sorry. Not the best thing to say right now. You don’t need to mourn Ma Kent’s pie too. You’ll do that once you’re ready.” 

“I’ll never be ready to mourn Martha’s pie,” you groan. You could get over Clark Kent, but not his mother's pies. Your ma's still friends with her, so you doubt that you’ll never eat it again, but you’ll have no reason to come over to the Kent’s farm as much as you did before. 

Two days later, entering the third week post break up, Jenna has had enough — and she barges into your room with a plan. “We’re going out.”

As always, your reply comes out muffled, “Ion wan’ to.” 

“I didn’t ask if you wanted to,” she tears off the duvet from your body and takes a hold of your ankles, literally dragging you out of bed as you shriek, “I just said that we are going out!”

She makes sure you dress up decently before dragging you out of the house and into her car, making sure the child lock is on — wouldn’t want you to jump out of the vehicle as she’s driving — before starting the engine. “I signed you up for an audition.”

You look at her, frowning, pretty sure your ears have betrayed you and made you hear wrong. “I’m sorry, what?”

Her smile is so genuine that it would be hard to find the will to smack her. “I signed you up for an audition,” she repeats without any sign of remorse, “you know Flowers n’ Kisses? The shop uptown? They’re looking for new models to renew the brand, make it younger. And you, my dear, with your little sad eyes and red cheeks from all the crying, will be perfect.”

You stare at her, bewildered. “Are you well?”

“What? It’s true that you look your best right after crying!” 

“Are you saying I should be sad more often?”

“Of course not! I’m just saying that at least one good thing should come out of this situation — besides, don’t look at me like that, you know you’re already sad all the time. I just think that we should take advantage of your puffy, irritated, cute face. Besides, it’s just to try something new! Who knows, maybe you’ll like the lights of the camera and having to pose and all the pretty dresses they’ll put you in.” you highly doubt that, but you let it go in favour of your remaining sanity.

There’s at least twenty other people at the audition when you arrive to the location — and this is only the three PM slot, Jenna whispers to you conspiratorially — and you raise an eyebrow when you see the other girls there, because they’re gorgeous and you’re starting to wonder if there were any demands for this interview. “Jenna, are you sure there aren’t any requirements for this kind of thing?” 

“Oh, there were,” she assures you, “I had to put a couple of your pictures in the form before they gave me a time for your audition. I tried to apply too, but they rejected me.” she sighs dramatically, clinging to your arm, “But if I can’t chase my dream of marrying a ninety-year-old multi-billionaire and living the rest of my life filthy rich, then you might as well follow up for me! And don’t forget about me when you’re going on vacation to Tenerife with your boyfriend’s super expensive and huge yacht…” 

“You’re sick,” you mutter, completely fed up, “and not in the good sense. I’m sure there’s people in Arkham down on the worst levels that are much more reasonable than you.” you sigh, feeling the by-now familiar punch to the gut that follows every single thought about him, “I don’t care about yachts. I would’ve been just happy with a little apartment in Metropolis with Clark.”

She groans dramatically, “Oh, please! What was so great about this guy? Was he the genie of the lamp or something? Was he that good in bed?”

You sniffle. “You’re so cruel. He was my everything.”

“He’s a guy! An average one, at best!” 

“You take that back–” you’re about to strangle her because Clark Kent is definitely above the average male population but get conveniently stopped by the call of your name. It’s the PR manager, you assume, and he smiles kindly at you when Jenna takes your hand and raises it up like he’s a teacher making a difficult question and you’re a student eager to reply. “Please come with me, this way.” 

You find out his name is Roy and he’s better at make up than you are — you stare at his perfect eyeliner with envy as he leads you to a room with a camera set up and a table with other people quietly chatting. You already feel awkward just by standing there, and you’d be lying if you said that you were ready for this thing, so you find yourself thinking about Jenna’s dreams to force yourself to go on. Think about Tenerife and a yacht. Think about Tenerife and a yacht. Think about– 

“So, miss,” a redhead at the center of the table smiles at you, leaning her chin on her intertwined fingers, “are you ready to start?”

You'd be lying if you said that you got out of there without feeling stupid. They made you walk into a straight line with music in the background, asked you to pose, took a few pictures and then just started asking questions about your life, saying something about wanting to know the personality of the candidates. You feel so relieved when you walk out that room that suddenly being single doesn’t look as bad as staying ten minutes more in that hell hole. 

Jenna doesn’t seem to be too worried about your relief about being out of there. “So?” she asks excitedly, “How did it go?” 

“I doubt they’ll call back,” you weren’t that terrible, but you’re sure that much more qualified people auditioned for this thing — and even if they didn’t, you’d seen at least fifteen girls that look like they could rock the style of Flowers n’ Kisses way better than you, “but if they do, I’m not replying. Please don’t make me do that again, like, ever. We don’t need an ancient husband to have a yacht, we can just steal one. Seems way more doable to me.” 

Except that they actually call back. And you hadn’t put into the equation the fact that while registering you for the audition, Jenna was smart enough to put her cellphone number in it instead of yours. 

“You signed me up for another thing?”

“I had to! They were happy about your audition and wanted to schedule the day for the shoot of the campaign!”

“What campaign–”

“The one for the summer collection! Aw, c’mon, they’ll pay you eight hundred something dollars and give you some free clothes too–” 

You want to smash your forehead into the wall — but then again, she wouldn’t let you do that, because your forehead is on your face and your face will be on an ad of some kind. “I wouldn’t risk having a restful sleep if I were you,” you hiss, “because I think that one of these days I’ll become one of the many maniacs that help the violent crimes rate be so high, and rest assured that you’ll be my first victim.” 

Jenna doesn’t seem to worry about that, and as it turns out she’s right to be — because on the day pre-established you still make yourself presentable and head to the studios where the photoshoot’s supposed to be at 7 a.m. sharp like requested. 

The same PR guy you met at the audition greets you first with a smile and a hand shake, “Roy Chamler,” he introduces himself — you only notice you didn’t know his full name when he says it. You were so nervous at the audition that you barely introduced yourself, let alone asked the name of the other people there. “PR manager and guy in charge of the campaign. Is this your first time participating in something like this?”

You cringe. “Yeah, is it that obvious?” 

He shrugs, smiling at you. “I’ve made it work with worse in my hands. You were chosen in the end, weren’t you?” 

The day starts with a worryingly high stack of paperwork in need to be signed. “Your contract,” Roy explains, patting it, “the rights for your image and copyright, parties involved, payment times, everything.”

You frown, “Is it normal for employees to sign their contract on the first day of work?” 

It’s his time to cringe. “No. It’s just that… the owner of the brand — Mrs Livvie, she was at the audition — is a very demanding woman. She called me a month ago about making the campaign and I have barely a week left to organize the rest. So, please, even if the conditions of this job are weird, please bear with me.” 

You sigh. “Alright. Where will the pictures of the shoot be exposed, exactly?” 

He cringes even more. “I… it’s all in the contract. You know, before Mrs Livvie, it was her father who thought about the brand. Then it was passed down and she wanted to do a lot of things, but it’s clear that she still doesn’t really know her way around. So, the thing is, it will depend on how much her and the other owners like the shoot.” he tilts his head, “I wouldn’t say more than a couple of posters around town and maybe some internet ads, though.” 

You sign the contract while not trying to overthink too much about your face being splattered around the internet, and as soon as Roy gets his hands on the paperwork you’re dragged into a room that positively looks like a spa. A girl gets immediately around to work on your hair as another worries about your nails, and you have to admit that if submitting to this thing meant a free manicure and hairdo you’d have gotten here even earlier than needed to. The make-up is the last thing on the list, right after the clothes, and then you’re ready for the shoot.

The whole ordeal lasts about five hours — five grueling hours, during which you have to change outfit, make up and hairdo one time too many for the day to still be considered relaxing. You go back home with your hair still in the last slickback they gave you, mascara a little smudged from all the times you rubbed your eyes during the train ride, and a bag full of clothes to wear this summer. Roy tells you that the ads should be up somewhere between next week and the one after that, takes your actual phone number and promises to call you if any problem with the campaign emerges. 

Meanwhile, you're surprisingly starting to accept the fact that Clark dumped you and probably will never get back with you, that he’s now who-knows-where doing who-knows-what with who-knows-who. Actually, you’re starting to get mad — how dare he not tell you about his plans? For how long was he thinking about just disappearing? You were out there dreaming about a future with him and he just–

“Yo,” oh. Is your mental health that bad that now your dreams are angry about Clark, too? Because you’re in bed, it’s been a little over a week since the shoot and Jenna is shaking you awake. “Yo. You did not tell me the campaign was so serious.” 

Still groggy, you barely find the strength to raise your head from the pillow, “Whatcha mean?”

“The billboard,” she hisses, “you didn’t tell me they were going to put your pictures on a billboard.”

That wakes you up instantly. “They what?” 

Sure enough, there’s a big ass billboard with a picture of you in a strawberry shirt and a pair of low-rise jeans while subtly smiling at the camera from the side (under the brand’s name and motto, of course) right in the middle of Union Square — literally the most trafficked place in all of Gotham. You’re about to slap yourself in the face because there’s simply no way they actually put a whole billboard of you when they said it was gonna be just a couple of ads online and maybe some posters around town. You suddenly fear what they’ll do with the pictures of you in that one blue tankini.

“Dear God,” you utter in disbelief. 

Jenna blinks. “If it reassures you, you do look good. It’s the sad eyes, I think. They give you depth.” 

“I don’t think I’ll be able to show my face around ever again,” you’re on the verge of tears, “how will I manage to get around on campus again? No, Jenna, I’m finding a house in the Appalachians and hiding there for the rest of my life–” 

“But you can’t! This is one picture and you’re really shining in it– why can’t you embrace this? Maybe it’s a good thing! Do you know how much models make–”

“Jenna!” you shriek, “My photo is on a fucking billboard right in front of Wayne Tower! Can’t you understand I just want to bury myself in the ground and die?”

“Well, maybe it’ll make Bruce Wayne fall in love with you as he’s forced to see your face every day.” she jokes, “And then I’ll be able to get my vacation on a yacht–”

“We are not going on vacation with Bruce Wayne,” you hiss, “have you seen one footage of him with any woman? God knows what he puts in their — and his — drink to act like that.”

“I think of him as someone who’s actively drunk all the time without even drinking, and his company is surely not better than him.” she shrugs, “Besides, he’s not that older than you. You would be happier with him rather than with the ninety-year-old billionaire."

You blanch. “I’ll be happy if they both leave me alone.” 

They will, unfortunately, not leave you alone, you find out soon. Because thanks to the spike in sales, not even two weeks after the ads are made public the management of Flowers n’ Kisses organises a gala with all of its associates and investors, and you — just like the other models who do runways and are the face of previous campaigns — are contract-bound to participate, because– well. Your face is scattered all over the city while wearing their clothes — it would be weird if you didn’t show up, no? 

And guess who is one of the biggest associates of Flowers n’ Kisses? Exactly. Fucking Wayne Industries. Guess your dream of not becoming one of Bruce Wayne’s victims as the latest coming model — not that you would describe yourself as one, but you guess that his definition of model is much more wider than yours — in Gotham may be a little more difficult to achieve, since if they could talk, he would probably try to have one-night stands with walls too. 

Roy calls again to arrange for you to get a dress, one from the newest collection that you hadn’t had the chance of trying out, and thankfully he doesn’t seem too mad about the last time you called him — you had insulted him so much about the billboard that you almost discovered new curse words. “You know, I got a few calls about you,” he says, ecstatic, “people love you! I’ve got the list of a few other brands that would like a contract with you–”

You shut the idea before it gets a little too deep into his head. “No. Bye, I have an exam to study for.” 

The event’s in some fancy, fancy rented mansion’s ballroom — incredible that they still have those, by the way — and the timing’s just right, because tomorrow morning you have a test, and you’re already mumbling names and descriptions under your breath before they even get you in that evening dress. And about the dress– it’s dark blue, with little embroidered silver stars around your hips, tight where it needs to be and softer as it reaches your legs. They give you a pair of silver kitten heels to match the stars around the dress, and even if they do kill your feet a little, you have to admit that you look good. 

Getting out of the room where they dolled you up, you immediately notice another woman at the end of the hallway — probably one of the other models of the brand, hopefully one more experienced than you. She seems to notice you too, and waves a hand up to catch your attention, “Hey! You must be the new girl they told me about,” 

She’s stunning, with chocolate skin and honey eyes and a dress that — you guess — is made to be worn right next to yours, because while your gown resembles the night, hers resembles the dawn, with an embroidered red sun on her waist. She offers you her hand, which you shake without any questions, “I’m Kelly,” she introduces herself, “Roy asked me to keep an eye out for you — didn’t want you to feel lost. She knows these types of gatherings can be scary, and I’m happy to help a new recruit out.” Kelly does look a bit older and experienced than you — early thirties, at most, even if she does carry them well. 

“Thank God,” you can’t really hide your relief, “I was afraid I had to do all of this alone.” 

She giggles, “I remember being this scared too. You’re doing it well, though, from what I have seen — you came out perfect in the pictures, I really couldn’t believe it was your first shoot,” 

You feel your face get hotter at her words, “Thanks,” you manage to squeal out as she guides you into the ballroom, where the main event is held, “It’s the sad eyes, I think.” she adds. You’re one more comment about your sad eyes apart from imploding. “I don’t tend to like these events, but usually the food is pretty nice, so that’s a plus. I’d avoid any drink already served if I were you, though,”

Thankfully, you soon find out that you two were put at the same table — great thing for you, because you really don’t want to socialize more than you actually need to. The other people around the table are mostly boring investors and owners of shares, who don’t seem interested in asking anything more than what’s expected in a common conversation — your name, age, what do you do in life. One kind old lady asks you more about university and looks actually interested in hearing you repeat the subject of your exam tomorrow, until you are rudely interrupted by a voice calling out for you just as the dessert is being served. 

“Oh, there she is!” you’ve only seen her once, but you do recognize Mrs Livvie from the audition — you did not forget those striking red hair of hers. Beside her, your latest possible obstacle: in all his striking glory, Bruce Wayne. “This is our latest golden girl, miss…” it’s clear that she has forgotten your name, which you kindly suggest to her, “Right! A real sweetheart. Anyways, this is Kelly Th–”

“I know Kelly,” he interrupts her, giving her and your — hopefully — latest friend a kind smile. “I remember her from the runway for the autumn collection.” he turns his gaze to you, “I’ve never met you, though, which is really a shame because you’re stunning. You know, the billboard with one of your photos is right in front of my office, which is the motivation to get on time around the office I just needed.” well, if this isn’t your nightmare come true. 

“As I’m sure you’re aware,” Mrs Livvie looks at you, “this is Mr Wayne–”

“Please,” he looks directly at you in a way that would normally have you swooning, but that from him just makes you quite worried. “Just Bruce will go.” 

You give him a tight-lipped smile, “Sure.” 

“Weird that I have never seen you before,” he continues, “usually models start young, but I’m happy that Nina found you — you’re a real jewel, miss. May I ask why you — or your parents — never thought of putting you out there?” 

“Well, I never knew about this talent of mine until now.”

He smiles, chuckling quietly, “Well, you don’t sound like you’re from around here, either, am I right?”

You nod. “Yessir — I’m from Smallville, a little farm town a couple of hundreds of miles from here.” you hope that being the daughter of farmers will scare off a playboy that is known to socialize with rich people. It doesn’t. 

“Well, if you ever need anything,” he takes out a business card from his breast pocket with a pen and scribbles something on it, then gives it to you, “please don’t hesitate to call me. I’m at your disposal.” 

You don’t reply, getting a weird look from all the people on the table before Mrs Livvie quickly brings his attention elsewhere — hopefully away from you. Kelly looks at you, delighted, “Well, miss girl, that is the offer of a lifetime.” 

You snort, looking unamusedly at the private number scribbled on the card. “I doubt I’ll ever use it.”

Summer break comes a lot faster than you’d expected. 

You’re not sure it’s a good thing. You still haven’t exactly come to terms with what happened with Clark now almost three months ago and the thought of seeing your parent’s farm draped with pictures of you and him from when you two were kids nauseates you. Besides, you just know that your mother talked to everyone who willing to listen about your newfound talent as a model, even if you only did one shoot. It’s also your first time doing the trip from Gotham to Smallville alone, and you opt to just use the train after seeing the whopping prices for a taxi.

Your father picks you up at the Midvale train station, teary eyed and with arms wide open to hug you. “My baby,” he says trembly, once you are in his arms “oh, it seems like it’s been years since Christmas,” 

You laugh tearily. “Oh, trust me, I know.” 

The car trip is filled with conversation and love. “Oh– did your mother tell you we adopted a dog?”

You perk up. “Oh, did you, now?”

Your father nods, “Dunno what kind o’ dog he is. All I know is he’s yellow. We found him on the side of the road to the farmer’s market a coupla’ weeks ago and he won’t leave your mother's side since then. We tried to ask around, see if he was someone’s dog — nobody knew anything, so her resolve was just to take him home.” he looks at you, cracking up with laughter. “You wanna know what she called him?” 

You grin, loving to see your father so serene. “Do tell me.” 

“Batman!” his laughter gets even louder, “Batman, you get it? Said, it’s after the psycho that runs around in a Halloween costume and makes sure that my daughter’s city doesn’t burn down. I really owe him. Have you ever even seen him, or is he just some kind of urban legend?”

You crack up with laughter too, half from hearing him laugh so openly, half for the actual story, “No, no,” you wheeze, “never seen him, but I do know people that have. I just don’t get out late enough for him to be running around yet, I fear.” 

It’s with relief that, once you enter the farm, you notice that all the pictures of you and Clark have either disappeared or been replaced. You know your mother’s too much of a sentimentalist to get rid of them, so they’re probably carefully hidden in some drawer — but that doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate her gesture. She hugs you tightly and kisses you on both cheeks before calling out for the dog — which you find out is a golden retriever — to meet you. 

The next three weeks are spent helping your parents around the farm and bringing Batman — or, as your mother calls him, Battie — in the fields so that he can run as much as he likes. You gotta admit that you also do it to try to form new memories of the place — because you simply can’t spend the rest of your life brooding as soon as you go back there to visit your parents. 

You avoid the old classmates to prevent any questions about Clark. You don’t visit the Kents. You’d like to, but honestly, you are ashamed — ashamed because Martha had called back when you and Clark had just broken up, and yet you never called her back or replied. Or sent a message. Or a postcard. Did you really ghost a nice old lady? Because that has to be some kind of new low.

It’s your mom that tries to get you back to sanity. “Martha and Jon did nothing to you,” she tells you, angered, when you refuse to take the muffins she’s just baked to their farm, “and you are going to say hi to them because they’ve always been nothing but nice to you!”

That’s how you end up at the porch of the Kent’s farm, a tray of still steaming muffins in your hands as you anxiously wait for either of them to answer the door. You almost burst out in tears when it’s Martha that greets you — because, you have to admit, you’ve missed them too. And as she invites you in and calls Jon down to say hi to you too, not mentioning that call you had completely ignored — you thank the universe that at least you didn’t lose them too with Clark. 

You return to Gotham feeling shittier than ever, but, hey! At least you got some nice pie while you were in Smallville, since you can’t really say that you and Jenna cook real food when you have to eat. The University’s not back open just yet, so you spend most of your days picking more shifts at work so that people that actually go on vacation can do it without any remorse or trouble. 

You’re worrying about getting every animal at the clinic fed when the bell of the door rings out in the waiting room. “I’ll be there in a minute!” you call out, petting a cat and putting him back into his carrier as he meowles happily around the meat stick you just gave him — a good enough treat in exchange to being neutered, you hope. 

You exit the backroom and go back to the front desk, “So, how can I help–” your eyebrows raise. “Mr Wayne?” 

In all his glory, surely. He’s right in front of you, smiling, hair slicked back and sunglasses hanging from the neckline of his shirt. “I thought I asked you to call me Bruce,” he says, not unkindly. 

You try not to grimace. The last thing you wanted for him was to find out where you worked. “Yeah, sorry,” you press your lips into a thin line, “how can I help you?” 

“I was thinking about adopting a dog.” this actually surprises you, because you didn’t think billionaires had the time for animals — and even if they did find the time to get them a petsitter, you’d taken for granted that they would buy the fancy breed ones. “I was thinking about getting a german shepherd, I told your friend Kelly at last week’s Prada runway and she suggested coming here since apparently this clinic collaborates with the local shelter.” 

“We do,” you nod, “they’re running out of space and we have a decent sized backyard for them to play in and some rooms for the animals to stay in.” you open a drawer on the desk, taking out a folder with all the registered pets, “We mostly have the injured ones that are recovering, but I’m not sure about german shepherds. I do think there’s a mixed one though– there!” you stop at one of the pages and turn the folder for him to see the picture of a dog with brown fur and a star-shaped white patch on his forehead. 

“This is Ace– he’s a retired K-9, mixed german shepherd. He’s just two, but was shot during an inspection and has been limping ever since. Nobody in the police department could adopt him, so we took him in. He’s been doing well with the recovery and we’re trying to rehabilitate him to normal as to our best abilities.” 

He nods,  “Looks like a cute dog. Can I see him?”

You show him the way to the backroom with all the strays, stopping at Ace’s crate. He immediately raises his snout from his paws, tail wagging as he sees you, “Well, this is him,” you sneak a hand between the rails to give him a pet, “one of the nicest dogs we have here — if you want, you could take him on a walk today or when you want. Usually we ask for at least four outings before permitting the adoption — to see if the owner and the pet are compatible, y’know.” 

He nods, “So, I can take him out today and then come back in the next few days to later on adopt him?” 

You lean your head, “If everything goes well, yes.” 

“Perfect– I’d like to take him on a walk right away, then, if possible.”

You get a collar for Ace and a leash for Bruce after getting the dog out of its crate, then put a couple of treats in a little paper bag with some toys. You attach the leash to Ace’s collar and give it to his aspiring owner with the paper bag, “Wait a moment, I’ll tell my coworker that I’m going out and then we can go,”

Mr Wayne perks up, suddenly interested in something else rather than the dog, “You’re coming with us?” 

You raise an eyebrow at him, “Of course. The outings before adoption are always supervised.” 

You come back after alerting your coworker that you’re going out, then exit the clinic with Bruce — who's handling a definitely too excited Ace — on tow. It’s weird seeing a blue Rolls Royce parked right in front of where you work, as usually the most expensive thing that’s parked there is a FedEx van. “There’s a dog park just around the corner — we often bring customers there for supervised outings.” 

Bruce Wayne looks so out of place in such a funny way at the dog park that you barely manage to keep your laugh in; in his Armani tailored coat as Ace, finally without a leash in the dog fence at the park, looks thrilled to play with him, it’s so obvious that he’s never been in this kind of situation. “Are you sure he’s still in rehab?” he squeals, as the dog tackles him to the ground and licks his whole face clean. “He’s– aargh!– definitely in better shape than me!”

Your laugh finally blesses his ears. “That just means he likes you, Mr Wayne! Be nice to him, or he’ll think you’re friendzoning him.” 

Ace is a good dog. It’s like he’s got a sixth sense for bad people — he never barks at kind customers, only at the rude ones, so you guess that’s kinda his talent. And since it’s never betrayed you, you admit that maybe — just maybe — Bruce Wayne isn’t that bad of a person as you thought he would be. 

He comes back to the clinic for three days in a row, just what he needed to be able to adopt the retired K-9. He always suspiciously shows up during your shifts, with mysteriously not a single paparazzi on sight and always the same Rolls Royce. On the second day he got there with brand new toys — some for Ace, some in donation for the other pets awaiting a loving owner — and a new collar with a bone-shaped metal tag with a bold ACE engraved on it.

Saturday’s the last day of the supervised period, and just as the last three days, you find yourself leaning over the railing of the fence that limitates the unrestrained dog area, watching them play like they’ve known each other for years. It’s a rare connection to see forming with a guard dog — they usually need time to adapt to new people, but apparently Ace didn’t. He took one look at Bruce and thought yeah, I want to munch on his atelier shoes for the rest of my life. 

“You know, I think it really was love at first sight,” you tell him as you walk back to the clinic.

Bruce looks at you like for a second he forgot you were talking about his dog. “You really think so?”

You laugh, “Yeah, I mean, have you seen him? He’s wagging his tail like crazy and he met you three days ago. It’s like he knows you’re taking him home today.” 

His shoulders deflate a little as he understands that you’re talking about him and Ace. “Yeah, well, I’m happy that he’s happy.” 

“Why do you want a dog, by the way?” you realise just now that you hadn’t asked, having taken for granted that he just wanted one for show, but now it’s clear that it isn’t. 

He shrugs, “To keep me company. I guess I just want someone other than my butler greeting me at the door when I get home. Besides, I liked playing with him — it’s a win-win: I get to destress about work and he gets to play catch.” he pets Ace’s head as you reach the clinic, “Don’t you, boy?” 

You go behind the desk and immediately get to work, preparing the paperwork for the adoption, “So– here, fill out this form and this one. There’s a ten dollar fee on every adoption, but I guess it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

He chuckles. “I should have a fifty dollar bill in my wallet — you can keep the change.” he coughs a bit as he starts to fill out the paperwork, “You know, I, uh… I didn’t come here just because I wanted a dog. I wanted to talk to you.”

You square him up and down. “Yeah. We talked the last three days.”

“Oh, no, I mean–” he looks honestly embarrassed, “I was… I was wondering why you didn’t call me back after the event.”

You blink — you had completely forgotten about the business card rotting in your bedside drawer with his private number written on it. You must be the first girl that doesn’t call him back after receiving such an opportunity. “Well, you told me to call if I needed anything, and I have yet to be in need of anything.” 

“I–” he sighs, “I was hoping I’d see you at the following Flowers n’ Kisses event, but you weren’t there.” 

You raise an eyebrow in the politest way you can muster up. “Yeah. It was a lunch on a Monday. I had an exam.” you actually started ghosting Roy as soon as he started suggesting coming to events not included in your contract, but that’s a story for another time. 

It seems you aren’t really getting what he’s trying to say, Bruce understands. He takes a deep breath, “What I meant to say is… that I was wondering if you wanted to grab a coffee one of these days.” 

You stare at him, bewildered, then point to yourself. “Me?” 

He looks even more bewildered than you. “…Yeah. Would… would you like that?”

“I mean, I,” you aren’t really understanding if he’s interested you in a romantic sense — which would be absolute bonkers, by the way — or if the conversations of the last few days just made him want another friend. “Sure. As… as friends, right?” 

He winces. “Yeah, of course.” he’s losing count of how many awkward yeahs he’s mumbling. Alfred’s right; he, terrifyingly so, has a crush. 

“Wouldn’t, like, paparazzi follow us?” you really don’t want your face splattered all over the news again. 

“I honestly doubt it.” he wouldn’t waste his little chance because of a couple of gossip-hungry journalists. “When I don’t want to be noticed I use my butler’s car, so that if anyone passes by they think it’s him around rather than me, and the staff of the places I frequent can be very discreet.” he looks down to Ace, “Besides, could you really say no to seeing this cute face again?” 

No, you couldn’t. You do raise an eyebrow, though, “Your butler… owns a Rolls Royce?” 

He nods like it’s the most common thing in the world, “Yeah, it was my gift for his fiftieth birthday.” 

And that’s how you end up having coffee with Bruce Wayne in some high-end uptown cafè two days later. Then two days later after that. Then, someway, somehow— fucking everyday. And thank God that he’s the one paying, because you doubt you can even afford one of the smallest macarons they have on the menu. 

You have to give it to the man — he’s trying really hard to be nice. It’s clear he’s not good at courting — not the kind that doesn’t let him bring a woman into his bed an hour after he met her, at least — but he’s doing that while also doing his best to respect your boundaries. 

“I don’t think it’s really a great time for a new relationship as of now for me,” you explain, a little embarrassed, over the first coffee you share. “I just got out of… one of the most important connections I’ll ever have in my entire life.” 

Bruce isn’t one to give up easily, and surely not on the first person he’s actually interested in since years. Even if it will take decades — and he’ll be just as happy being just a friend during those — he won’t give up. Even if he has to be just a friend for all eternity — you and your accent really did a number on him. 

Just as he promised, no articles come out about you two, even if a couple of curious waiters do ask if you’re that one girl from the billboard in Union Square — much to Bruce’s sincere delight, because it’s probably the first time in his life that he gets overlooked in favour of his date. What’s so special about your ads to overlook a billionaire, you’ll never really understand. 

It goes on for months, and before you can really assimilate it, It’s November and it’s been eight months since Clark broke up with you, seven since the terrific Flowers n’ Kisses campaign and four since you started seeing (you’re not sure how to actually describe it, because you’re kinda warming up to him despite everything) Bruce. 

You cave in to Kelly’s constant nagging, and finally accept her invitation to go out for dinner, just the two of you, to her favourite Thai restaurant down the street from her apartment — even after almost a year in Gotham, you’re reluctant about going out at night, still a bit scared after Jenna’s horror stories about her outings during the evening. 

It’s a fun night — you chit chat about anything and everything and she makes sure you’re updated about the latest rumors going around in the modeling world (apparently, Linda Reynolds is pregnant, and the father is supposedly the son of the sixty-year-old CEO she should be marrying in a few months). You both laugh as a teenager from one of the other tables comes over and asks you if you’re the girl from that one Flowers n' Kisses photoshoot, and you almost forget about the dangers of going out at night as you exit the restaurant because — c’mon, you’re with Kelly, her car’s just a few feet away from you two and she’s Kelly, she just knows how to deal with things. That is, until–

There’s a man. He’s in front of you. He has a gun. You barely even register all that happens next. 

She pushes you behind her as he screams to give him all the valuables you have, gun trembling in his hands — is he drunk or just a schizo? — and just as she reaches for her purse — to take out her wallet, she says as she feels around for her taser — he panics and pulls the trigger. 

You don’t know when you start screaming, nor register your hands pressing on her bloody shoulder, nor the cashier from the Thai restaurant going out in the street after hearing the shot and calling the police. You barely feel Commissioner Gordon’s hands around your shoulders as he gently pulls you away from Kelly and gets you to his car while two paramedics get a stretcher ready and lift her into the ambulance, nor notice when he pulls a blanket over your shoulders and a mug of hot chocolate into your hands at the police station. “You’re trembling, kid.” you think you started when the man took out the gun, but it could be when he shot Kelly. You’re not sure. 

“Can I call anyone?” 

You snap out of your trance, looking at Commissioner Gordon with eyes that could only be described as haunted. “Huh?”

He presses his lips into a thin line like he’s been in this situation one too many times. “Can I call anyone?” he asks again, not unkindly. “To come and pick you up and stay with you for the night? It would be better for you not to be alone.” 

You blink. “Is Kelly okay?” 

Gordon sighs. “The paramedics said she should recover without any trouble. You can go visit her tomorrow, if you want.” he leans forward, putting a gentle hand on your shoulder, “Can I call someone for you?” he asks for the third time. 

You sniff — you hadn’t even realized you’d been crying. You can’t call your parents — you know they’d drop everything and come here, but you don’t want them to worry. Jenna’s out of the city for a week, having gone to visit a cousin in Blüdhaven, and terrifyingly so the only person who comes into your mind is Clark Kent– wherever he is, he does know how to fly, and if he wanted to he could just zap here. You manage to scribble his number in the post-it that Gordon hands you, and then he’s off to make the call — only to return defeated ten minutes later. 

“I’m sorry, nobody’s replying. Can I call someone else for you or would you like to try to make the call yourself?” 

You try to swallow the lump in your throat, “Can I try? With my phone?” Clark’s never ignored your calls. And, sure, you haven’t heard from him in months, but you don’t think he’d actively avoid you — he has to know that you wouldn’t call unless it was strictly necessary. Besides, he’s never turned you down in the time of need. 

Gordon nods, “Sure. I think I left your bag in the car, though, so I’ll be right back,” 

He brings your purse, and as soon as your phone’s in your hands you press onto Clark’s number and try to reach him. The Commissioner leaves you in his office, probably to try to give you a bit of privacy, and you’re quite thankful he’s not there to witness you start crying as Clark not only doesn’t reply to the first call, but also to the next five you make. 

“Clark, I know that maybe you don’t want to hear from me but — could you just please, take up the phone?” you try not to sob as you leave what must be the third message in a row, “I wouldn’t call unless I really needed you and– and I’m trying my best not to sound hysteric but please, just pick up the fucking phone.” 

You try and try and try, but lo and behold, it always goes straight to voicemail. Gordon knocks on the door of his office, opening it hesitantly when you don’t reply, “I– it’s been twenty minutes.” 

“I,” you huff tearily, slamming your phone on your thigh, “he just won’t reply.” 

You don’t want to look Gordon in the eye, because even now you can feel the pity in this voice. “Is there anyone else you can call? If… if there isn't, I could have an agent escort you home,”

“No, I–” you really don’t want to cry in front of him, even if your cheeks are already tear-streaked and your eyes are puffy, “I guess I could call someone else.” 

You hadn’t even thought about calling Bruce, having taken for granted that Clark would have replied and knowing about the late hour, but it’s not like you have any other choice. Besides, he did say to call him if you ever needed anything. You dial his phone number and have to hold back a sob as he replies in two rings, voice hoarse, “Hello?” 

“Hi, um, I…” you stumble over the words, not managing to hold the tears at bay anymore as your voice breaks. “Hi, Bruce, could you…” a hiccup interrupts you. 

“Hey,” his voice is alarmed even if it’s clear that he either just woke up or is hungover from the roughness of his voice, “is everything okay? Did something happen?” 

“I…” your throat betrays you again as you let out an embarrassingly loud sob. You hear Bruce’s worried questions on the other side of the line, but you aren’t really able to respond to any of his questions, and Commissioner Gordon holds his hand out for you in a way that says ‘If you want, I can talk to him for you,’. You don’t ask many questions and just pass him the phone. 

“Hello, this is Commissioner Gordon from the GCPD…” 

Not even twenty minutes later Bruce rushes into the office, accompanied by Gordon, and holds you tight as you rise from your chair and crash into his arms. You’ve never hugged before, but that doesn’t really matter as of now, because he’s rubbing your back and pressing his cheek on the top of your head and suddenly you feel safe. “I was so scared,”

“It’s okay,” he whispers, and something on the back of your mind whispers that it’s not fair to cry to him about your friend getting shot but surviving when he had to watch his parents die when he was just a kid, but he doesn’t say anything. He just holds you tighter, thanking Gordon and leading you to his — his butler’s, technically, as it’s still the blue Rolls Royce he came here with — car. Well, if the media didn’t know you two were seeing each other before, now they probably know, because Gotham’s cops are the most gossip hungry people in the city. 

He helps you get into the car as you sniffle, making sure your seatbelt is on before jumping on the driver’s seat and going back to look at you. “Are you okay?”

You nod. “He shot Kelly on the shoulder. Looked crazy, like a schizo maniac on drugs.” 

He sighs, a bit disheartened, “I mean, does a schizo maniac need drugs to look crazy?”

“I guess he doesn’t.” a beat passes before he reaches over to your side, opening the glovebox and reaching for wet wipes — the kind you use for babies’ butts. “Here,” he murmurs softly, “you might want to get the blood off your face.”

You didn’t even know you had blood on your face. You look at the picture of the newborn on the wipes pack, puzzled, “Is there anything you might want to tell me?”

He chuckles and starts the car. “I told you this was my butler’s car. He carries a pack of those anywhere.” 

You look at yourself in the sun visor mirror, acknowledging the fact that you look like absolute crap and definitely have splatters of blood as well as smudged make up all over your face. “Sorry I made you come all the way here so late,” you mumble, trying to wipe the now dried blood off of your face. 

“Nonsense,” he assures, “Commissioner Gordon said it would be best for you not to be alone tonight — would that be okay for you?”

You nod. “Yeah, my place’s a bit cramped but I can sleep on the couch.”

He frowns, “That’s not a problem, I’ll take it. You need a good night’s sleep. We could always go to the Manor if you want.”

You shake your head, “I need a shower and to eat the leftover ice cream in my freezer.”

Bruce smiles the tiniest bit. “Okay. Where to, then?” 

You wouldn’t say the apartment’s cluttered, but you weren’t expecting any guests over so it’s a given that it’s not tidy either — if Bruce notices it, he doesn’t mention it, something you’re grateful for. Instead, he puts a hand on your shoulder, smiling softly, “You should go take that shower. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here.” 

You take a good look at yourself in the mirror and almost start crying again. You had seen that you were covered in blood, but you also didn’t think it was so much blood — the cardigan your poor mother had hand-stitched for you is awaiting a brilliant future in the trashbin, because there’s no way that the stain will ever wash out. 

The water is soothing, even if it takes you a good half-hour to scrub away all the dried blood from your hair and neck — so much so that the skin is left red and sore. It’s your first time witnessing one of the violent crimes Gotham’s so famous for, and you gotta say, it’s even worse than you thought. 

You put on an old ratty sweater — that after a year of living together neither you nor Jenna are too sure of who it belongs to anymore — and a pair of cozy sweatpants that are definitely Jenna’s, because you would never buy such a thing as yellow pants with the bat signal print on them. 

You exit the bathroom with your damp hair still wrapped in a towel, eyes barely managing to stay open thanks to the aftermath of the shock you had been in. You find Bruce sitting on the sofa, maybe a little too interested in the news broadcast playing on the TV. “And it’s game over for Harvey Dent, also known as Two Face, who was arrested just yesterday by the GCPD thanks to an ambush coordinated by none other than Batman…”

“Wasn’t Dent the district attorney?” you’d lie if you said you were informed about the latest coming criminals of Gotham City. “Man, in Smallville the craziest guy we’ve had was Samuel Comell and that’s just because he ate nothing but corn. We’ve got clinical psychos guiding the law here.” it actually would’ve been Clark if anyone knew he was an alien, but you avoid talking about that. You aim for the refrigerator and take out the ice cream, bringing it and two spoons with you to the couch. “Ice cream?”

Bruce grimaces as he takes one of the spoons, “You couldn’t be more right about madmen in Gotham, but Harvey wasn’t one of them until less than a year ago.” 

You raise an eyebrow at his soft tone. “You knew him?”

“We grew up together.” his face falters, “He was my friend– still is.” 

You blink. “Man, the universe must be laughing really hard right now, because the boy I grew up with is also kinda weird.” sure, not a mass-murderer type of weird, but a little weird still. 

He leans to take a spoonful of ice cream from the tub you’re holding, “What do you mean, kinda weird?” 

“Oh, you can’t even imagine,” you can’t even tell him — you swore to Clark that you wouldn’t have told anyone his secret, and you don’t plan on breaking that promise now. “Remember the guy I told you I was trying to get over?”

“It was him?” 

“Yeah,” you try to laugh it off, “Clark was… pretty much everything for me. Then he dumped me to, I don’t know, disappear to find himself or something like that.” it’s much more complicated than that, but you can’t just tell him that your ex-boyfriend is an alien — he’d freak. 

Bruce’s eyes soften a bit. “Well, it’s always more complicated than that, isn’t it?” this time you can’t exactly handle your emotions well, and sputter as your eyes widen. Did he just read your mind? He laughs, “What? I know a thing or two about relationships. Well, about how they end, at least. You know, uh…” he rubs the back of his neck, “I haven’t really said this to anyone, really, but me and Harvey… let’s say we were more like you and your old friend rather than simple friends.” 

You squint, then force the ice cream tub in his hands. “Here. You probably need it more than me.” 

He stares at the tub. “It’s been years. I’m sure you need it more than me.” 

“Well, my ex hasn’t just been arrested,” your face drops, “for what I know, at least.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow at you. “He really just disappeared?” 

You shrug. “Could be in Alaska right now and I wouldn’t know about it.” 

The night starts off easy. You finish the ice cream, then put away the towel you had around your hair and get a blanket because it’s getting a bit chilly, then one thing leads to another and suddenly your cheek is resting on his shoulder as Criminal Minds is playing on the TV. 

“You know,” you mutter at some point, almost half-asleep and too cozy to muster an actual, coherent thought. “You should be detestable. You’re ugly rich, live in a mansion up on the hill and have a butler that has a car that’s probably worth more than my parent’s farm.” you poke his cheek as he turns his head to look at you properly, his arm going around your shoulder, “And instead, you’re nice — and worst of all, relatable.” you raise a hand to curl a lock of his hair around your finger, and he makes that face that men do when they’re about to kiss you — the blank stare that makes them look dumb in the head. “Now, one evil ex’s down. Do I have to defeat the other six or can we just get this over with?”

His lips slosh over yours with unexplainable easiness, like they’ve wanted nothing but to do this their whole life, and maybe you should feel a little guilty about eating Bruce Wayne’s face in your little beat-down couch, but you can’t find it in yourself to care. It’s the first time your mind finally manages to shut down — to stop worrying about anything and everything, and think about just one thing: Bruce. 

Tomorrow, he’ll worry about catching the guy that shot Kelly, he says to himself. Tonight, he worries about you and tries to make sure you’ll be alright. And he does. 

You wake up the next morning with an absolute sight — infamous Bruce Wayne, untouchable playboy and known for his one night stands, standing in your small ass kitchen in a pair of hot pink pajamas — the only thing you had that vaguely fit him — trying to cook pancakes. Key word: trying, because you weren’t woken up by the birdies singing outside of the window, but by the smell of burnt food. Badly burnt food. 

You come up from behind him, hugging his back, “Have you ever even made pancakes?”

He purses his lips like a kid. “No. What is so terrible about wanting to try?” 

You chuckle. “Nothing, nothing,” you tug him down to kiss his cheek, “I just think it’s really funny of you to try to cook when you’ve clearly had problems just with getting the stove on.” 

He rolls his eyes, “Okay, okay, I wasn’t that stunted.” 

He turns to take a good look at you — and apparently, notices your pants just now. “What’s with you and Batman?” he asks, amused. You shrug, ”More like, what’s with Jenna and Batman. When I tell you she’s obsessed with him, dude. She keeps a med kit in the bathroom just in case he falls on our balcony and we have to stitch him up.”

He shudders. “That does sound a bit manic.” 

After a definitely too cheesy breakfast and quickly getting dressed, Bruce accompanies you to the hospital — not before going to the flower shop, of course, to get the biggest bouquet you’ve ever seen and a couple of Get well soon! balloons. 

“What?” he asks. You’re not saying anything, but still clearly judging him, “I thought Kelly was your friend. She has to enjoy the flowers, especially since they’re from you.” 

“Technically, they’re from your wallet,” you retort. He shrugs, “Same thing.” 

Kelly’s still a bit pale, but happy to see you and Bruce. She gives you a look as you apologise for what happened, eyes teary as you remember that she got shot while protecting you. She swats a hand in your way, laugh full of not suggestion but knowledge — absolute certainty. “Honey, if what you two needed to get it on with was me getting shot, I’ll get shot another hundred of times.” she lowers her voice as your face burns red, “Besides, you might want to raise a little that scarf you’ve got — a hickey’s still showing. Just remember me when you’ll go on vacation with his big-ass yacht.” 

What is it with your friends and yachts? You really need to make Jenna and Kelly meet — just kidding, you take that back, the consequences of their team up for your psyche would be devastating.

Time passes quickly when you’ve got one exam after another, and suddenly — before you can actually register it — it’s December, you and Bruce have been together for a month and it’s time for the Christmas holidays. While Jenna goes as soon as she can back to her parents in Chinatown, you, of course, need to go back to Smallville — without Bruce, as it’s still too early in the relationship to meet the parents. He doesn’t look too beaten up about it — just before you told him you wanted to go visit your parents, he had suggested a skiing trip in the Alps in an all-paid-for resort. Poor him, having to go on an exclusive resort with all the comforts in the world all alone! How will he manage without you, you wonder? How will he thrive? 

(Just kidding, of course. You’re pretty sure it’ll take all of his restraint not to go back to his old playboy ways and try to seduce the first female that approaches him. He’ll be just fine.)

There’s two trains for Metropolis on the 22nd of December: you plan to take the first one, the one that leaves Gotham’s station at 8 a.m. sharp — and so you tell Bruce, who unfortunately has a plane to catch and can’t give you a ride — and of course, you just had to miss it. You wake up twenty minutes too late, and by the time you’re at the station the train has just left. 

You go back home to take a nap while waiting for it to be time for the 4 p.m. train, and wake up just two hours later with an emergency broadcast for all Gothamites going off on your phone — God forbid you have a happy holiday in the arms of your loved ones, because the corridor that connects the prison’s main structure to Arkham’s left wing — the one holding captive the major crazed maniacs — has just blown up, and now years and years of captures and police operations have ended up in a massive breakout that will probably pulverize the city in a matter of two days. You’ve never been happier to not be a police officer than now. 

The downside is that the whole city’s on lockdown. Commissioner Gordon appears on TV, warning all citizens to remain home unless strictly necessary and inevitable. A quick call to your parents later you’re fuming about your own stupidity while laying on the couch, wondering why you didn’t just wake up earlier — because now you’re condemned to a Christmas and probably New Years all alone, as all trains and planes are canceled to avoid the passengers turning into hostages or worse, victims. 

Later that night you receive a call from Bruce, voice unusually rough, who says that he’s grateful that you’re already back at home in Smallville and not in Gotham because, if you hadn’t heard, a massive breakout happened. You really don’t want him to worry, so you lie and tell him that you’re relieved too that you took the 8 a.m. train — that your parents say hi and hang up. 

The following days are weird. There’s barely anyone but cops in the streets — you wonder why — and your only interactions with a human are the ones with Nelson, the guy that works at the 7/11 right beside your apartment, and you both try your best to ignore the shotgun he’s keeping behind the counter as he scans your items and wishes you a happy Christmas. 

You spend Christmas Eve eating instant noodles and watching the old Harry Potter DVDs that Jenna left behind — Ron’s just been dragged into the Whomping Willow by Sirius when your phone starts ringing. 

You pause the movie and frown — because you’ve already heard both your parents and Jenna, who could be the only people calling at such an hour. It could also be Bruce, you guess, but you haven’t heard much from him considering the six hour difference between Gotham and wherever he’s staying in the Switzerland Alps. Except when you take your phone, you see an unknown number on the screen. 

“Hello?” you reply tentatively — you really don’t want to be blackmailed by the Penguin or one of his friends on Christmas Eve. No one responds to your hesitant greeting, so you try again, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

You’re about to close the call when you hear it — barely there, the whisper of your name by a voice you know too well. You put the phone back against your ear, eyes already twitching, “Clark?” 

“Hey,” his voice is the tiniest you’ve ever heard from him, “I, uh… wanted to know how you were holding up.”

Your hand starts trembling — if in anger or disbelief, you’re not sure. “You know, you’ve got some fucking audacity calling me now,” you manage to keep your voice steady only by some weird miracle, “when just a month ago I called you about twenty times and cried in the voice messages begging for you to come and get me.” 

He doesn’t reply, but you can almost see him grimacing. “I… I got busy. I’m sorry about that.” 

You pinch the slope of your nose, “Clark, I get it. You need to find yourself and all that but– but I needed you. Like, really needed you. Even if we broke up, I thought you would’ve always been there for me.” a grumble escapes from your throat, “I would’ve always been there for you. But you weren’t there, even with your flying abilities and supersonic speed.” 

He sniffles. God, is he crying? “I just… I thought you would’ve been able to handle it alone. I know you’re strong enough to.” 

“Well, if I call you at an ungodly hour an ungodly number of times then maybe I’m not able to handle it alone. Where are you, anyways?” 

You hear a shuffle on the other end, “Somewhere in the Arctic. Not sure I can exactly tell you where.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure your dead parents would be really offended if you did.”

Ouch. That was a low blow. He says your name as if to try to calm you down, but you shake your head even if he can’t see you, “Why exactly did you call, Clark?”

“I told you, I wanted to see how you were doing–” “Please, we both know that’s just an excuse you invented right here and now. Why did you call me, Clark?”

Silence meets you on the other end. “I… it’s Christmas. We’ve never spent a Christmas apart.” 

You check the hour on your phone, and it’s true — it is Christmas. Has been for only a few minutes, but still. “So what, Clark? It’s not like it was me who decided to break it off between us.”

Another sniffle on his end. “I guess I… I just wanted to wish you a happy Christmas.” 

You sigh. “Merry Christmas, Clark. I loved you, and I’ll always love you– but I’m trying to get over you, and you need to understand that. I can’t do that if you call me just now after ghosting twenty of my calls and voicemails. I’m sure we’ll find a balance in some years when you get back — maybe even be friends again — but please… don’t call.” 

You press the red END CALL button almost as soon as a crash comes from your balcony. You shriek and jump up from the couch, running from your purse and the Bat-taser — finally, his moment to shine. Jenna’s hard earned ten bucks will serve their purpose, maybe. You also eye the metal baseball bat sitting beside the entrance in case you’ll need it, but choose against it in case your opponent is way too strong for you to kick him out. 

You try to peek outside and see nothing but darkness. So, you do the only thing you can think of: hold the Bat-taser in front of you like it’s a gun, slowly open the door to the balcony and yell (probably sounding more shrill than you’d intended to): “GoawayorIswearI’llcallthepolice!” 

A pained groan comes from the ground, “Please don’t.” 

You have to hold onto all the self control you have not to shriek again, “Batman? Is that really you?”

Another pained groan — from the dim light, you notice him holding onto his side and trying to get back up– and also that he crashed one of Jenna’s beloved flower pots while falling here. “The one and only.” 

Now, Jenna had told you about him ending up on civilian’s balconies, but you didn’t actually think he did it. You let the taser fall from your hand and rush to his side, helping him up and then inside the apartment. “What the hell, dude? You scared the shit out of me.” 

He slips from your grip pretty easily — he’s built like a tank, of course he does — and maybe you should worry about getting him back up to his feet, but rather think about closing the balcony door behind you. “Well, my guy, I sure hope you haven’t dragged one of your nemesis right here in my poor little apartment — because I might just lose it.”

He just groans — again. He must be a real sweet talker. “You don’t happen to have something to stitch me up, do you?” 

And that’s how you end up hunched over Batman’s limp body on the tiles of your bathroom floor — you had begged him to at least get there before the living room’s carpet was ruined without any means to salvage it — with an All That You Need If Batman Crashes Through Your Window! medical kit — a wonder that they make these and that Jenna paid a whopping thirty bucks to have it — while watching the shortest video you found on Youtube teaching how to stitch an open wound. Because while you’re a vet student, you still haven’t exactly gotten to this part of the practice just yet. 

“It’s scary that you haven’t even flinched since I started sewing your side close,” you murmur — the first thing you say to him after managing to get him laid down decently. You say it just to try to break the ice, feeling kinda pressured by the awkward silence. “Sorry, man, I’ll have to cut your suit open again. You’ve got a nasty cut on your ribs.” 

“What’s scary is that you’ve got all these Batman themed things,” he replies curtly. “The Bat-taser? The Bat-signal pants? This… abomination of a medical kit? I didn’t even know they made those.” 

You would’ve laughed loudly if you weren’t trying to make the stitches as even as possible. “That’s not on me– that’s on my roommate Jenna. She’s a big fan of yours. I’ll need you to sign her limited edition iridescent Bat-popcorn-bucket before you go, by the way.”

He blinks. “A Bat… what?”

“Bat-popcorn-bucket. It’s iridescent. It makes it look like you’re wearing a rainbow and she keeps it in a display box in her room just in case.” 

You take the scissors and cut away some more fabric, only to stop and squint at his abs. Now, don’t they look familiar… “So, Batsy… how are you holding up in these fantastic days of freedom for all the Arkham prisoners?”

He grunts — does this man know how to start a phrase without an animalistic sound? “Just what I needed for Christmas.” 

You hum, scanning his abdomen as if to understand how to better close the rib wound while you try to understand if your mind’s playing some trick on you or not. “It was just so nice of them to ruin Christmas for everyone, wasn’t it?” 

You dab some hydrogen peroxide on the cut on his ribs, “Don’t you have someone to spend Christmas with, anyway?” his response is kinda quipped, and if your suspicions are true, you might just know why — after all, Bruce does think you’re in Smallville as of now. Who knows what he’s thinking right now. 

You decide to test your theory. “Oh, yeah. My boyfriend’s in the bedroom, he was so tired from cooking all day that he just collapsed after dinner.”

His entire body freezes, and as he tries to sit up, you get your answers. “I have to go,” he mumbles hurriedly, “Scarecrow’s still out there–”

You place a firm hand on his chest, smirking as you inch closer to his face. “Huh-huh,” you tut, his eyebrows twisting in confusion, “where do you think you’re going, Bruce? I just started stitching this cut right here, and you’re not getting out of here unless you take a good nap.”

He raises an eyebrow, “I don’t know what you’re talking about–”

“Please,” you push him back onto the floor, “I would recognise these abs anywhere. By the way, the only thing sleeping in the next room is Jenna’s elderly hamster. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t even have the social skills needed to cheat on someone if I wanted to.”

He sighs, then presses a hand to his forehead and decides to drop the act. “What gave me away?”

“I told you,” you tap his abdomen, “those abs don’t lie. Besides, the way you reacted when I told you my boyfriend was in the bedroom sleeping? Whoof, you slipped right into my trap. Now, can I look into your baby blues or will I have to converse all night while looking at those ugly white lenses?”

He rips off his cowl, rising to his elbows  — and there he is, your handsome, so-tired looking loverboy. “I’m mad at you, by the way,” he says while glaring in your direction, “you told me you were in Smallville. I thought you were safe, and here you are — do you know how many home invasions I had to stop just these last two days in this area?” 

You blanch. “I’d prefer not to, thanks.” but you also raise an eyebrow, because you’re not about to lose an argument to a guy that outed his real identity because of abs and jealousy, “You told me you were in the Alps, by the way. In Switzerland. About… what, four-thousand miles away?” 

Bruce sighs, resigned. “I received word of the breakout just as I was flying above the Atlantic.” 

You tie the last stitch and cut the excess string, pressing a kiss on the wounded skin. “Well, I lost the 8 a.m. train but was too embarrassed about it to tell you. I guess we’re even.” 

You lean down to his level as he holds out an arm to brush your hair off your shoulder, “Oh, sweetheart, we’re always even.” his hand rests on the back of your neck as you two kiss hard, all spit and tongue — so much so that you lose yourself in the moment and press your side a little too hard on his cuts. 

He jumps, yelping in pain as you stare bemused. “Oh, so you do feel pain,” 

He raises an eyebrow, “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Thought you were some kind of robot programmed not to feel soreness for a second.” 

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “I’m still mad at you. You could’ve gotten hurt.”

“Thank goodness then that the guy crashing on my balcony wasn’t one of the Joker’s henchmen, no?” you frown, “Besides, why did you come here? For all you knew I wasn’t home.” 

“Well, missy, I wasn’t looking for you,” you feign a gasp of disbelief, “I was hoping to find that horrendous medical kid you told me about.”

You pinch his side — one of the parts not wounded, at least. “You were thinking about breaking in? What are you, a criminal?” 

He purses his lips. “I would’ve forced the lock, but I would have repaired it before you got back.” 

“Is that how you spend your fortune?” you murmur, defeated. “Fighting bad guys in your free time? That’s a pretty expensive hobby.” you suddenly remember something you had said to Clark — I don’t want you to be the man lying half-dead in a dark alley while I wonder why you’re so late to dinner. Would you look at that — you ended up with the same guy you told your ex to please not be. You’re not even too surprised about it — because sometimes, it does feel like Bruce is faking being dumber than he actually is. 

You let him go as soon as the sun peeks out from the horizon with a kiss on the lips and the promise of coming back later in the day, to autograph Jenna’s popcorn bucket, and while he later on keeps his promise, he makes sure to make you another Christmas gift other than the too-expensive necklace he already got you — and somehow manages to get all the criminals back in their cells by the time New Year’s Eve comes around. 

The lockdown ends, but all means of transportation are still off-limits thanks to a few well-placed explosions that went off in the last few days. That’s why you’re confused when Bruce tells you to pack a bag and come with him to the Archie Goodwill International Airport. “I mean, Bruce, we should be somewhere opening champagne bottles — not in a completely deserted airport looking for– what exactly are we looking for?” 

He chuckles, going for one of the hangars present at the launch track, the number 18 plastered on it. “Have you ever flown on a helicopter?”

You frown, “I’ve never flown like, ever.” you don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s because your ex-boyfriend knew how to fly and you’d always hoped he would be the first one to take you flying. 

He takes out a key and opens the sliding door of the hangar — revealing, surprise surprise, a helicopter. “Well, get ready for your first flight, then.”

Flying is much more scary than you would’ve thought — especially because you really don’t know if you should trust Bruce at the wheel. All you know is that you’re holding onto the armrest for your life, hoping that he actually got the licence for flying and didn’t randomly purchase it one day. “Wh– where are we going?” you ask him, trembling, not even managing to look down from the window. 

He sends you a look, “Don’t worry, I would never crash the helicopter with you in it. About the place where we’re going, however– it’s a surprise.”

Barely an hour up in the air later you look out the window to see the helicopter landing in a familiar — too familiar — field, with the grass cut weirdly low. “Bruce, are we–?”

“In Smallville? Yeah, we are.”

Your whole face lights up. “No, you didn’t,” you jump on him, kissing everywhere you can reach, “oh, Bruce, thank you, thank you, thank you– mwah! You’re a real sweetheart, I don’t know how I ever managed to think that you were any less of a person than you are–” 

Needless to say, your parents are elated to see you — they did know about Bruce’s plan, hence why the grass was cut so short where you landed: they were his accomplices and made sure the soil was decent to land on. You’re so happy when you take a bite out of your mother’s pie that you could cry, and your boyfriend — is he? You still haven’t really talked about labels and such — looks not too far away from tears either. 

You spend at least two hours chatting away happily with your parents before Bruce coughs, taking his coat back from the hanger at the entrance. “Well, I think it’s time for me to go.”

Your mother raises an eyebrow, “Oh, but you can’t go! I’ve just put the sweet potatoes in the oven– besides, it’s already dark out there, you seriously wouldn’t want to fly that thing in complete darkness!”

Bruce looks at you, waiting for your approval — well, it was you who said that spending the holidays together at your parents’ was a step a little too big for just a month-long relationship — but you nod, smiling. “You were the one who brought me here, Bruce. C’mon, you gave Alfred the week off– surely you don’t want to be all alone during New Years’ Eve?” 

He relents, “Well, if you say so,” 

That’s how he ends up staying at your parent’s house against all predictions — and you won’t forget the kiss he gives you when the clock strikes midnight for a long, long time, that’s for sure. 

You two spend one week at the farm and another one in the Alps’ resort Bruce had planned to spend Christmas in, spending your time either skiing — tripping over the snow, in your case — or, an activity you appreciate much more, cozied up in the jacuzzi of your private suite. It’s also during this vacation that your relationship gets leaked, but surprisingly — apart from a call from an absolutely fuming Jenna (you had somehow managed to keep the relationship a secret from her) and one from a triumphant Kelly — you take the new wave of publicity suspiciously well. 

Because for the first time in months, you’re truly happy.

It’s the summer of the year later when he appears again. 

You’re on one of the Wayne's biggest yachts in Tenerife with Bruce, Kelly and Jenna — just as the prophecies predicted!, the latter had shrieked when you’d shared Bruce’s invite with her — sunbathing on the boat’s deck as your friends play mermaids in the water when you notice an unusual silence from the upper deck. 

You get up from your sunbed, raising your sunglasses up to your hair as you look for your boyfriend. “Bruce? Honey, is everything alright?” 

You find him seated on the plush couch of the lounge room, staring intently at the TV; you hug him from behind, leaving a kiss on his temple, “Did something happen in Gotham?”

He takes the remote and raises the volume, turning to look at you with a puzzled face. “Not exactly in Gotham.”

Looking up at the screen, you frown when you see the broadcaster. “DPN? Isn’t that the Daily Planet News channel?” 

“And things apparently just keep getting weirder in Metropolis, because after scarce apparitions and helping for some minor crimes the man that the citizens have lovingly dubbed as ‘Superman’ has just shown the public what he’s really capable of by preventing a building from falling onto the passers-by after an explosion cut the structure in half…”

Your heart skips a beat, and suddenly you begin to wonder what you must have done wrong in your life to end up not only with a vigilante boyfriend, but also a vigilante ex-boyfriend. You have to hold back not to slap your forehead in disbelief — really, Clark, and the glasses should be your mask? It’s the stupidest disguise you’ve ever seen, and you have no idea how no one connected Clark Kent — just starting his career as a reporter in the Daily Planet — and Superman — just starting his career as… you don’t know what he’s trying to be. 

You seem to have a magnet for too good-hearted guys, apparently. Bruce presses a kiss on your cheek, “I’ll worry about it when we get back. Don’t think too much about it, okay?”

You’re not ready to tell him your ex-boyfriend is the guy saving old ladies from having to carry their groceries alone — that would be a conversation for almost six months later, when the Justice League is formed — so you just smile at him and pretend to your best abilities that you don’t know anything.

The first time you see Clark Kent again after that morning at the cafè is five years after the start of his crusade as Superman. 

He’s one of the six reporters who were granted permission to be inside of Wayne Manor during the engagement party, briefly interviewing anyone he can talk to and taking notes of everything he thinks valuable on his little notepad. 

You? You’re the one who’s getting engaged. 

You’re wearing a silky white dress that fits you like a glove as you stand next to Bruce, talking to some WE associates, Dick patiently waiting for the conversation to end as he stays glued to your side, hugging your waist and pressing his cheek into your hip as you gently run your hands through his hair. Clark is expecting a one-of-a-kind rock on your ring finger, but is instead surprised with a simple white pearl adorned with two smaller ones on its sides — he did hear something about Bruce proposing with his mother’s ring, now that he thinks about it. 

Lois’ gone off to interview Lucius Fox when you notice him standing awkwardly to the side, scrambling with his notebook and looking around. You excuse yourself from the conversation, giving a little smile to Bruce, nudging Dick with a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to come and meet an old friend of mine, bubba?” he nods, eager to please, and lets your waist go in favour of your hand. 

You approach Clark with the confidence of someone who doesn’t hold any grudges when they should. “Hi, Clark,” you greet him like you two are old friends that meet again — and even if you technically are, you’re also so much more than that. You hold out your hand — again, like you were just good old friends catching up — and he has to force himself to shake it instead of tackling you into a hug. “Have you seen my parents? I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you– it’s been a while.” 

You nudge Dick from behind you, gently holding him by the shoulders in front of you, “Dick, this is Clark, the old friend I was telling you about. Clark, this is Dick, my son.” 

As the child holds out a hand and excitedly says “Hullo!”, Clark tries not to think about how weird it is that he’s still trying to figure out his life while you just have a whole ass kid — adopted, but still. It’s clear how much you have taken into the role of mother. “Hi, Dick,” he says as kindly as possible, not really believing that the Robin who beats up criminals during the night beside the fearsome Batman is the same kid who hides behind his mother during formal events. 

Said kid raises his eyebrows in curiosity, looking up at you, “What kind of friends are you, anyways?” he asks, knowing all too well about your distaste for reporters and journalists alike. 

“The kind that goes way back,” you reply easily with a chuckle, “me and Clark grew up together, bubba.”  

“Oooh,” he ushers, “does that mean you also know nana and gramps?”

Guessing that he’s talking about your parents, Clark chuckles a bit before nodding, “That I do, champ.” 

“Aren’t they the coolest people you know?” Dick rambles excitedly, “last time gramps took me a ride on his tractor and it was so fun! Besides, they have this dog–” he turns to look at you, “Batman’s here, isn’t he?”

Clark’s eyebrows shoot up to his airline. He knew the kid was talkative, but he didn’t think he would be able to out Bruce like that. You laugh, “Yeah, I think I saw him earlier somewhere in the garden with Ace. It’s a miracle the both of them still have their tuxedo collars.” you then look at your old flame, a playful smirk on your face, “Don’t worry, Batman’s my parents' golden retriever.” 

“Ooh,” he sighs in relief, “for a moment there I wondered why Gotham’s most famous vigilante was playing with Bruce Wayne’s dog, and how exactly to phrase it in my article,” a terribly awkward silence follows. 

You shift your gaze to Dick, “Hey, Dickie, why don’t you–”

“Hello! Good evening!” a man with blazing red hair and a whole lot of freckles on his face runs up to the two of you, nudging Clark with an elbow as if clearly saying, please please pleaseeeee introduce me. He’s one of the reporters, you notice, with the press pass and a Canon slung over his neck. He kinda looks like a kid in a candy shop — eyes shining with excitement and almost jumping up and down on his feet. 

Clark sighs, “This is Jimmy Olsen, one of my coworkers from the Daily Planet,” 

The guy grins and holds out his hand, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” his fingers are a bit sweaty, “I’m a great fan.”

You have to bite the inside of your cheek to avoid bursting out in laughter, “Oh, I’m flattered,”

“May I take a picture of the two of you?” it’s clear it was what he had wanted to ask since he saw you and Dick talking to Clark. You look at your son, and he grins up at you with glee. You smile, “Of course,”

You lower yourself a bit and cross your arms over his chest while pressing your chin to the top of his head, smiling widely — and you don’t doubt that he’s smiling with all he’s got too, hands holding your forearms, showing the window his last canine that fell out left. Jimmy snaps a little more than one pictures, but gets interrupted by a voice from behind you, “I hope you aren’t hogging the missus too much, boys,” 

It’s Bruce — of course it is, he’s been staring since you got out of that conversation twenty minutes ago — and he slings an arm around your waist as you rise from your position. Jimmy sits up straighter like his drill sergeant just entered the room — you’re surprised he doesn’t do the salute. “Sir,” he starts, “it is an honor–”

“Clark,” Bruce casually shakes the man’s hand, to his coworker’s utter disbelief. Technically, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne don’t know each other, but it’s another story for Batman and Superman. “A pleasure to meet you — this pretty girl right here told me a lot of stories about the two of you growing up together."

Jimmy’s mouth falls open. His gaze turns to his coworker with an accusation that could only be described as treacherous. Clark smiles awkwardly, “Yeah, well–”

“You’re a photographer, aren’t you?” the Brucie Wayne persona isn’t trained to hold his attention on just one person at once, so he immediately switches his charming smile to Jimmy, “Why don’t you take a few photos of us? We’re a real nice picture to see,” he draws you closer to him by the waist, “Especially my soon-to-be wife.” 

Jimmy doesn’t let him repeat that, snapping a couple — more like a dozen — of pictures of Bruce holding you close to him while his other hand is as occupied as yours, sitting on Dick’s shoulder as he stands between the two of you, grinning ear to ear. 

“So, Clark,” you start when Jimmy stops snapping pictures, eyeing the other reporter from the Daily Planet — was it Lane? — from the other side of the room, “is that your girlfriend? You two looked pretty close earlier.” 

It’s meant to be a friendly remark, said with nothing but a happy tone, but Clark almost chokes on his saliva. “Oh, I mean–”

You raise an eyebrow, “Please,” you laugh out, “Don’t tell me she’s just a friend, because I’d be nearly as devastated as she would.”

He huffs with a little smile. “I’m… working on it.” 

You smirk. “That’s a good thing. Bruce here has got something for you that could help in your romantic quest.” you nudge your fianceè with your elbow as Dick snickers, “Don’t you, honey?”

He grumbles, looking with a frown at Clark — it’s not that their relationship isn’t good, it’s just that… he wasn’t really the happiest with your decision. “I do, actually,” he takes out an envelope and passes it to Clark with gritted teeth. “I’m… delighted… to invite you to our wedding.”

“As a friend, and with the possibility to bring a plus one,” you add, hand squeezing Bruce’s bicep, “not as press– there won’t be any, by the way.” you roll your eyes towards your boyfriend, “He’ll insist on making you sign an NDA, but I’m sure that you wouldn’t write anything about it nonetheless.” 

He blushes deep red, “Oh, no, no, I would never–”

“Clark.” you giggle as you interrupt him, “It was a joke. Nobody’s going to make you sign an NDA,”

“Yet,” Bruce grumbles. 

You ignore him. “It was a joke between friends,” you aren’t implying anything in your words — you’re sincere. After all these years, that’s what you see Clark as, and it would be sad not having him or his family at the wedding. You’ve already sent the invites to the Kents: only Clark was missing. 

You hold your hand out to him, hopeful. “We are friends, aren’t we?” 

I loved you, and I’ll always love you– but I’m trying to get over you, and you need to understand that. I can’t do that if you call me just now after ghosting twenty of my calls and voicemails. I’m sure we’ll find a balance in some years when you get back — maybe even be friends again — but please… don’t call.

He takes your hand and shakes it with a soft smile. “Friends.”

if you've managed to read all the way down here, congratulations! have some memes:

[garfieldsladybird]

i have read it and i loved it so much!! beautiful work

[snoopysupe]

⭑.ᐟ 7 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU ── Clark Kent

summary: you have feelings for your neighbour, clark kent. too bad you hate superman after your car became collateral damage in a fight. or: 3½ times clark kent tries to convince you that superman is good (ft lois lane) and 1 time superman finds you to apologise. (wc: 9.0k)

pairing: clark kent / f!reader

content: neighbour!au. fluff/humour/angst. idiots in love. reader despises superman. #supershit mentioned. mean!reader at times. mentions of an ex-boyfriend. descriptions of injuries, blood and tbh clark is giving wet towel throughout all of this. he’s desperate for reader to like his true identity. 18+ suggestive themes at the end! not proofread, i ain’t reading allat.

i. WORD OF MOUTH

The city of Metropolis had barely roused from its sleepy state, the skyscrapers painted in colours of pink and orange as the sun lazily peered from its slumber beneath the horizon. 

Clark Kent shared a similar sentiment as the giant ball of gas, his hair mussed and tie not sitting quite right against the crisp white button shirt that took an embarrassing amount of time to iron the creases out of. There was little requirement for him to sleep, aside from maintaining a side of humanity he’d like to keep, but the mental fatigue from the tensions between the US Government and his actions in Jarhanpur had contributed to his flat energy. 

His feet felt like concrete against the stone stairs, one hand on the railing that the paint was peeling off of, his steps echo all the way to the ground floor; where he had every intention to muster the courage to open up his mailbox on the communal postal area for the apartment complex. 

There was never anything bad in there, but when your standard 9 til’ 5 job consists of fact-checking, pitching article ideas and fighting for the hot spot on the front page of the company you worked for…well, the last thing he wanted to do was read. 

Either way, the mailman waits for nobody and it was evident in the papers crammed into mailbox painted with Clark’s door number on it. 

Clark sighs. He got up earlier than usual to do this—and he was sure he’d still be late to work with an extra twenty minutes under his belt. He persists past the procrastination, and slots his mailbox key into the lock; a few envelopes topple out and he bends at the waist to retrieve them from the floor riddled with chewing gum pressed into the material. 

“Oh hey, Clark,” Clark shoots up, the back of his head catching the corner of the small metal door at the abrupt sound of the secondary voice. You—the owner of the groggy voice—wince, “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

Clark feels his face go pink. You were one of the many residents within the mid-rise apartment complex on Clinton Street in midtown Metropolis. Quick-witted, with a generous amount of extrovert which made the perfect concoction in befriending your neighbour Clark Kent upon his first week in his new pad.

You had believed the dark-haired and bad postured journalist to be a little lacking in the social skills forefront when you had first met him. His skin maintaining a healthy flush whenever you stopped by his door with house-warming plants—that he took incredibly seriously in keeping alive—or whenever you bumped into him around the building. 

(Worst time was in the laundry room, where Clark had missed a pair of boxers with hearts printed on them in the dryer. You were the one to find them and return them to their rightful owner that had written his name in sharpie on the tag.) 

Eventually, you just accepted that was who he was. A six foot something pink man. 

It also didn’t help that Clark found you incredibly gorgeous amongst all the other feelings that bubbled in his stomach when he caught some small talk with you. 

You weren’t as much as the girl-next-door, as you were the girl-one-floor-above.  

Unbeknownst to him; you also felt the same way. 

Clark clears his throat, “Don’t apologise. I should have my wits about me.” he says as he rubs the back of his head. 

“I’ll announce myself by a bell, or something next time.” you joke as you step up to the communal mailboxes and find your one with ease. Your mailbox has the correct amount of letters for someone who checks it daily—unlike Clark—and you begin to siphon through them whilst you speak, “Aside from the headache…how are you?” 

Embarrassed! Publicly humiliated! 

“Swell.” Clark settles for, “And you?” 

You sigh, which can’t be good. “I got let go from my job. I say that term loosely—I got fired.” 

“No kidding?” 

“Turns out you shouldn’t shit where you eat.” you grumble, flipping a pamphlet over in your hand, “Power imbalance prevails, I suppose.” you shrug at the thought. 

Clark pulls his lips into a thin line, the pinky flush slowly dissipating from his face from the distracting subject of your workplace drama. It had been common knowledge between three floors in the building that you and your seedy boyfriend who, also, happened to be the manager at the establishment you had been employed in; had since gone your separate ways after you found several of his accounts on a plethora of dating apps—one app, he had a passport for in order to speak to women across the globe. 

Because his cheating needed to be international. 

Things went sour, like really sour. It wasn’t your finest moment, but Clark reassured you through breathing exercises and a firm rub up and down your back that it was completely acceptable to hold an illegal street bonfire with your ex’s belongings as the kindlings to ignite it. 

(He didn’t mention the part where he was lying about it being okay. Or, the amount of bail he paid to get you out of the local police station.) 

Turns out the retaliation from your ex was firing you. The irony. 

Jackass. 

“I’m sorry about that.” Clark stares at your side-profile with empathy in his blue eyes, “Have you found anything?” 

“Nope.” you emphasis the ‘p’ with a pop, finger peeling a brown envelope open, “So, if you hear anything—literally anything—send it my way. I’m down to scrape the barrel to keep up with my rent payment each month.” 

“You have my word.” Clark promises and then you both fall comfortably silent. Which just means, he was going to admire you for a minute. 

After Clark had heard through the grapevine of your split, he had every intentions to build up the courage to ask you out on a date in the near distant future. It had been nine, torturous months of watching you from afar with a man that Clark Kent knew was not up to par with being able to be with a woman like you. That guy dimmed you down in every single way possible, and Clark had to stop attending neighbour-hangouts as he couldn’t bear to watch your radiance shrouded.

Plus, your ex took a real disliking to Clark after he watched your compatibility with him flourish.

So, when the news broke via—as you graciously called her—Old Woman Jenkins who lived in Apartment 3-B with her seven cats and two budgies; it was safe to say Clark was ecstatic for two reasons. 

1.) You were free from the toxicity, and 2.) This gave Clark the opportunity to show you how a real man should love you. 

Only downside was…Clark wasn’t sure when to approach it. He wasn’t emotionally stinted, so he knew that asking you out within a day, or even a week after your split would’ve just been grounds for a restraining order. On the flip side, he didn’t want to catch a rebound case because his feelings ran a lot deeper than a fleeting, emotional distraction.

Therefore, Clark just never asked. You don’t ask, you don’t get your heartbroken or something like that.

He just couldn’t ruin a good thing. 

You eventually speak again when you close your mailbox, eyes trailing down to the newspaper clutched in your neighbour’s hand, “You a front pager again?” you ask with a smile. 

“Oh—Ah, yes,” Clark flips the folded newspaper open to reveal the front page regarding his recent fight with the Hammer of Boravia. He points to the article, “That’s all me.” 

You peer at the print, “Congratulations again, Clark! That’s a huge deal in journalism world.”

“Oh…I—Thank you.” Clark stumbles through his profound gratitude for your praise. The tips of his ears start to turn pink again. 

You nod and adjust the tote bag on your shoulder, “Seriously, it takes balls.” 

“Yes, that’s why I enjoy the job—” he says at the same time as you speak.

“I mean, making that guy look good? I didn’t think that could be possible.” you add earnestly. 

Clark blinks. 

“…” he breathes a laugh, “I—I don’t follow.”

“Superman? I mean, come on. He is an egotistical white knight that faces zero ramifications from his actions. He only gets away with things because he’s handsome.” you wave off the tail-end of your statement in a flippant manner paired with a roll of your eyes, “I can’t stand the guy.”

You think he’s handsome? Clark has to shake the compliment off like water off a duck’s back. Low priority in comparison to the other things you had just off-handedly stated in your brief rant on the man in red and blue. 

There is part of Clark that almost leaps at the opportunity to get a little bad tempered over it, toss his toys out of the pram from the unwarranted criticism. Superman was good! He was good! 

Instead, Clark compartmentalises his hurt feelings and puts his Pulitzer prize-winning star reporter title to good use. 

“What—What makes you say that?” Clark tucks his chin to conceal the pout on his face, masking it as deep interest to the letters in his hands, “He’s got a glowing track record of keeping the streets of Metropolis safe.”

He was really hoping that he didn’t unearth a Boravian supporter out of you.

Or, that you agreed with the statement that had begun to grow arms and legs about his so-called ‘alien entitlement’ to house himself within Earth’s atmosphere. 

You answer in an unwavering tone of resentment. “It’s a personal grudge that’s grown ever since that fight on Clinton Street broke out—before you got here. I had just paid my car off, and whaddya know? Superman and his body made of steel, totals it alongside his own defeat with whatever shithead guy he was fighting against.” you blurt sarcastically, “He owes me a car.” 

“Oh. That isn’t so bad.” is how Clark responds, without a thought behind it. 

To him, it wasn’t so bad. He felt guilty, obviously collateral damage was something he wasn’t so favourable over.

However, this was fixable. 

Clark’s answer threw you for such a loop, that you almost forgot to answer. “Isn’t so bad?” you repeat, “Under what circumstances does that fall under the category of: isn’t so bad?” 

“No—I, I didn’t mean it wasn’t bad. It’s quite terrible actually,” Clark swallows, the heat capturing beneath his collar as he speaks. “In the grand scheme of possibilities that could have happened, at least you weren’t in your car. And—And, on top of that, he saved multiple citizens from becoming a casualty statistic.” 

“My car became a casualty statistic. Superman fucking sucks.” you state sternly. “Nothing can change my mind about that.” 

Clark frowns, “Nothing?” 

“Nothing.” you affirm, “Anyway, I’ve got a job interview in thirty. I’ll see you around?” 

“Yes. See you.” Clark offers a strained smile as you wave him goodbye and disappear round the corner to exit the building.

He lets out a breath he had been holding since you confessed your acquired distaste for Superman. 

Clark’s gaze drops to the newspaper, his fingers curl tightly into the pages as he decided on the spot; he was going to convince you otherwise regarding the personal vendetta against, well…him. 

ii. WEEKLY PAPER

The art of apologies seemed pretty simple, right? 

A heartfelt card, or a bouquet of flowers could go a long way in the tumultuous events that led up to an apology being a necessity to mending a friendship, relationship or family bond. However, the situation with you was a little different to a petty squabble, despite Clark believing it to be petty to hold such a grudge—he saved lives that day! 

For one, you weren’t aware that there was any mending to be done. Your hatred toward Superman had been cemented the day you returned from work, having decided to walk that particular sunny day, only to find your beloved vehicle crumpled. To you, there was no putting bandaids over wounds, and you certainly had zero forgiveness in your heart for the man that patrolled the skies of Metropolis. 

The whole crux of the matter was, Clark Kent was raised on the rule that honesty was the best policy. Honestly, no, he doesn’t recall crushing your car after being tossed across Clinton Street like a rag-doll. He’s sure he’s crushed a few cars in his time in the city, and he knows he would have felt guilty at the time; but it was better to forgive and forget rather than bottle up all your resentful feelings toward someone who was just trying to help. 

Further to this, Clark wanted to take the chance and ask you out on a date. He really did. Time was a healer, and it had been three months—give or take—since your split from the egotistical cheater, meaning it felt like ample enough time to be justified in his intentions. However, if you despised Superman, you unknowingly despised Clark Kent…and that wouldn’t be something that would sit right on his chest. 

That would take away part of his honesty. If he had to continue concealing his identity behind the glasses to appease your objectifications on Superman. 

(At least it was more a personal issue than a shared thought with the less friendly bunch that lived in Metropolis.) 

So, in conclusion, Clark came up with the bright idea to slowly introduce you to the good side of Superman. You know, the one that saves Metropolis and much further, fetches kittens down from trees, gives back to the community. 

He was basically trying to fill your head with Superman shaped stars. 

The best option came to him whilst he sat at his desk in the bullpen of Daily Planet. Knees touching the underside of his desk, his mind had been elsewhere for the better part of the day; as Clark was more or less sulking over the revelation you shared with him that morning. 

How could he change your mind? Clark had learnt that you were strong-minded to an extent from a personal experience with a fellow neighbour, who had a terrible habit of pausing Clark’s laundry in the dryer and dumping his half damp clothes into a hamper just so they could use that one particular machine. (There were ten in total.) 

When Clark expressed his frustrations to you, he hadn’t expected you to begin a psychological warfare against the neighbour in Apartment 1-D. It was safe to say, you won out of sheer resilience. 

He dared not to share the same fate as Apartment 1-D. 

Then, it sort of went off like a lightbulb in his head. Clark Kent created articles in which he interviewed himself, in order to shed a positive light on his actions. Why not bring those interviews to your doorstep under the Daily Planet subscription service? 

It meant you’d receive weekly newspapers from the Planet, delivered to your home with no extra cost aside from the cheap subscription fee to keep journalism alive and kicking.

Clark would pay for it out of his own pocket, of course. 

Not only were you strong-minded, but you were curiouser than a cat and that meant your interest would pique to flip through the pages of the newspaper and, eventually, read all about the good deeds of Superman. 

Not to mention how charming and handsome he was…but you already knew that. 

It was the perfect idea, with the perfect execution! 

That was, until, you had received the third instalment of your new $3.99 subscription to the newspaper company Clark worked for. 

“Morning, Clark.” you chirp as you reach your mailbox, sparing the male a glance with a pretty smile that had his heart thump a little harder. “This is the most I’ve seen you in the communal mailbox area.” 

(There was a reason for that.) 

Clark hums, “Best to keep on top of my mail, I think.” 

“You’d be right. The shredders are hungry for junk mail.” you had a tendency to laugh at your own jokes with a cute snort. Something that was cut short when you open your mailbox. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“What’s wrong?” Clark asks with his brows pinched.

“I think my ex is tormenting me,” you grouse, “As if I was the one sharing my favourite position on six different dating apps—ugh. He’s signed me up for the Daily Planet subscription when he knows how much I don’t want to read about the brown-nosing of Superman.” you pause, eyes flitting to Clark’s face, “No offence.” 

“None taken.” (A lot taken. All at once.) 

You continue, “I mean—I guess it is a retaliation because I signed his phone number up to receive regular calls for recruitment within Scientology. But, this almost feels worse.” you whine as you toss the newspaper in your tote bag for later shredding. 

“You signed him up to Scientology?” Clark asks and you spare him a shameful glance. He redirects the topic, for your sake. “Is it really so bad, reading about all the things Superman is doing to keep Metropolis afloat?” 

“It’s hard not to hear about it, let alone be subjected to reading it too.” you seethe, “It’s a constant reminder that he wrecked my car, and never had to face the consequences—unlike me. You know, I hate riding the subway? I swear I’m one sticky seat away from contracting a new strain of the plague. He caused that.” 

Clark wants to call you dramatic. 

He goes for, “I hear you.” instead. 

“Do you think you could get this cancelled for me?” you ask as you shut your mailbox, “I want to support you, but, this is like rubbing salt in an open wound.” 

How could Clark say no? He had a firm grasp on boundaries, and part of him felt remorseful over the fact that you believed that his own doings were that of your ex-boyfriend—someone you really didn’t need reminding of. Plus, you were staring at him all glittery-eyed which was part of his weakness when it came to you. 

And your means to be overtly theatrical.

Not only that, but Clark led himself to believe he had crossed a big company no-no by inputting your details into the Daily Planet subscription system and, has since spent every day since unlawfully signing you up to the weekly newspapers, convincing himself he was border-lining on identity theft. 

Clark likes you. He likes the idea of keeping his job just a little bit more. 

He exhales. “Yeah. I will sort that for you. No problem.” 

“You’re a life saver. I owe you one, Clark.” (He owes you a car.) “I’ve got to go. I need to get to Hob’s Bay for an interview with Metro Souvenir.” 

“Good luck. They’d be lucky to have you.” Clark enthuses sweetly. 

You blink at his compliment, a smile growing slowly on your face, “Thanks, Clark.” 

“Anytime.” Clark gives you a lopsided smile, forgetting he’s already ten minutes late to work, being so wrapped up in your addictive presence and all—he’s already forgotten the pit in his stomach over you loathing his true identity. “I’ll catch you later.” 

iii. SUPERSHIT 

Similar to the rest of the population on Earth, Clark Kent had a number of things that got under his skin. The obvious, being that of his own fabrication of an alter-ego in an ill-fitting suit that he hid behind in order to keep those around him safe. It was the finest quality of deception, and Clark found it vexing to upkeep. Then there were other issues, such as: the US Government’s reluctance to side with his good intentions in Boravia, Steve Lombard at times, and the smear campaign against him that had recently gained traction online.  

One specific insult within the smear campaign that tested Clark Kent’s abundance of patience; was Supershit. It was juvenile. Completely undermined his efforts in guiding humanity into a better tomorrow. It was…bothersome to a man like Clark Kent. 

His agitation toward the name had only furthered when Steve Lombard had mentioned it in passing toward the end of the day, leading Clark to trudge home under his own personal grey cloud of discontent. 

The mental fatigue of it all weighed his shoulders down and he took to the three flights of stairs in the apartment like a kicked dog. 

“Whew. Bad day?” 

The grey cloud breaks overhead at the sound of your melodic tone. 

Clark looks over his shoulder to see you with a plastic bag in one hand and a newspaper in the other. “Oh, no. Just a rather long one.” he says in partial dishonestly.

“I hear you.” you take a couple of steps up, “Want to come to mine and wallow over some Thai?” 

When Clark hesitates, you answer for him. 

“It’s free,” you lift the warm bag to wiggle it, “Plus, the cashier asked if I was eating for two…so.” 

Clark’s brows raise at your reiteration of an inconsiderate presumption. “Looks like we both were insulted today.” he murmurs, allowing you to pass him on the stairwell to lead him up to the fourth floor.

You both greet Old Woman Jenkins and her three-legged cat with a taste for ankles on the third floor—she was the eyes and ears of the complex—and then you dip into explaining how the Metro Souvenir interview was a complete bust after you openly belittled the small Superman collection in the corner of the store that was made up of 90% Superman bobble-heads. 

Turns out it was the owner’s daughter’s hobby in her past time. 

Keys jingle in your hands as you pull them from the abyss that was your unorganised tote bag and as you open the door to your apartment, Clark stands behind you with a pout; fiddling with the strap of his work briefcase. 

He was putting it down to mental fatigue or lack of direct sunlight which had instilled the glass half empty mentality into him. Clark couldn’t quite shake off the impending doom of a sharp rejection of, not only a possible blossoming of a relationship, but the friendship you two had made along the way when he eventually takes off the glasses and you’re exposed to the man who wrecked your car. 

(For good reason!) 

The thought stays chewing the back of his mind as he sits on the new sofa—a piece of furniture you decided to invest in after your ex’s body warped a dent in his shape on your old couch—in your apartment, and whilst you spread out the lukewarm Thai food in plastic tupperware boxes; across your rickety coffee table. 

The two of you sit closer than necessary for a four-seater sofa with cushions that felt like the equivalent to clouds from cartoons, Clark had forgone his suit jacket and rolled his ironed sleeves of his white button-up shirt up to rest at his elbows. It wasn’t hard to miss that his suit pants were almost bursting at the seams from being taut against his muscular thighs. 

It was hard not to look at him. 

The friendly neighbourhood heathen. Dwarfing doorframes and, sometimes, having to walk sideways into a room due to the broadness of his shoulders; was sitting flush with your own shoulders and occasionally making eyes with you. 

That’s what you translated it as, anyway—even if he had entered a little broodier than usual. 

Clark eventually strikes up a conversation in between eating, “I actually wanted to tell you about a job going at Daily Planet,” he swallows the chewed up food in his mouth, “Sort of a support role.” 

You perk, “Really?” 

“Yeah. You’d be working under Lois Lane. She’s a good friend and great journalist.” Clark informs, mirroring the excitement that lights up on your face. “I can put in a good word, if you’d like?” 

“I mean…I know nothing about journalism, but it’s a learning curve.” you state. 

Clark bites into a spring roll, the aromatic kaffir lime takes over his senses as he nods into the bite, “You can only try.” 

“Thank you, Clark. I seriously owe you double now.” you pluck a spring roll from the tupperware, “You’ll have to think of something.” 

The idea that crosses Clark’s mind is like a balloon being popped with a sharp needle. His blue eyes shoot to your side-profile, happily dissecting your own spring roll to inspect the food inside. He’s suddenly swamped in those warm fuzzy feelings Ma Kent had told him about during his bedtime stories at a young age. 

Clark didn’t want to detract from the slow process of your own heartbreak over your ex-boyfriend. 

Yes, the guy had shattered the innocence on the idea of love, and how to be loved—he used to turn the TV up to drown out your cries. He robbed nine months of your life with poor judgement that his online escapades with other women wouldn’t see the light of day, he had purposely used his position of power to terminate your employment; leaving you without a job, and zero income to pay for the bills that were on a steep incline from inflation. 

Even with all of this taken into consideration, you were taking your time in experiencing your own version of heartbreak. Because, deep down, you had been naively and so incredibly blindly in love. 

That was something Clark didn’t want to overstep on until the time was right. 

But, on the contrary, when was the timing ever right? It had been three months since you split from your boyfriend, and honestly? Clark wanted you. Heart broken, or not.

He just hoped those feelings would be reciprocated. (Nobody sits that close to you without it being intentional, right?) 

It comes out of him with all the confidence he can muster. “You…you could let me take you on a date.” it almost sounds rhetorical in the way he chose to ask. 

It makes you turn your head, eyes wider as if you were a deer that had just been caught in the headlights. Your cheek swollen with pocketed food, the room goes silent enough to hear a pin drop. 

It makes Clark suddenly regret his decision. 

“I’m sorry—” Clark shakes his head, pink from head to toe, “I don’t, I don’t know why I thought that was acceptable. You’re still going through the process of a breakup. That was all rather silly of me—” 

“Clark.” 

Clark hums, “Hm?” 

“Relax, dude.” you lilt, “I’d like that.” 

“You would?” 

You breathe out a laugh, “Yes. That sounds like the perfect I.O.U.” you bump your shoulder shyly with Clark’s and then mumble, “I knew you weren’t a constant shade of pink around me for no reason.” 

“Yes, well. It was for a good reason.” Clark mumbles and tugs at the collar of his shirt to release some heat that had been trapped beneath it. “A pretty reason.” he says with a smile. 

The night shared in Apartment 4-A would’ve ended perfectly there. Clark had found his voice, and in turn, became more openly flirtatious with you as the pair of you cleaned up the leftovers of the takeaway. The touches became more tactile and it made both of your heads a little fuzzy with excitement. 

His dampened mood from Steve Lombard had shifted, Clark quickly finding that you were a version of sunlight that he could metabolise and recharge on. 

The night should’ve ended there—on a high. 

Then the topic of conversation rolls back around to, well, Clark. 

You take a sip from your water bottle before you speak, “So…I hear your buddy is in some type of hot waters with the government.” you spare Clark a glance. 

“You could say that.” Clark pinches his brows at the thought, “He was just trying to save people—” 

“From a tyrannical president?” you interject, “It’s the one time I’ll give it to him.” 

Clark is surprised, and he struggles to hide that on his expression; so you quirk a brow. He clears his throat, “I didn’t expect you to side with him. Seems like you may be one of the very few people who do.” 

You end up shrugging, “His actions to save Jarhanpur override my personal issues with Supershit.” 

Supershit. You just had to use Supershit.

(Sunlight status revoked.)  The atmosphere shifts and you’re blissfully unaware of the nerve you had hit as Clark shifts beside you. All of the impulsive reactions surge forward in Clark, entangling themselves in the warmth he had felt by being within close proximity with you, making his mood sour like milk left in the sun. 

His nostrils flare from frustration. The tips of his ears are an angry shade of red. 

Clark bores a hole into your coffee table. “I think that’s a little unfair to call him that.” he says lowly. 

“You think that because you’re a good person who sees past all the bad stuff, Clark.” you reason without much deliberation over his defence, “Me, on the other hand—” 

“Should give him a chance, perhaps?” Clark retorts bluntly, leaving you to blink in surprise, “He’s misunderstood. He’s doing what he thinks is right, what is good for the citizens of Metropolis.”

“I’m not questioning if he’s good or not.” you argue back, “It’s just a personal gripe.”

Clark stands, “Oh, come on,” he gravels, “Superman is not your enemy. Supershit is not a fair nickname!” 

“Why do you care so much if I like him or not?” your eyes narrow, “You’ve been selling him to me this whole month. What is that all about?” 

OK, maybe your career in journalism would be a steer in the right direction. 

You sigh when Clark fights for an explanation. “He wrecked my car, Clark. I’m allowed to dislike someone that you favour. That’s just life.” 

Clark doesn’t look at you when he speaks, “Yeah.” 

He backs down after that. Not because he wants to, or that your stare has him pinned to the spot. It was down to the reason that, if he projected anymore resistance against your grievances with Superman; he may be on a slippery slope of a bad-tempered confessional in the middle of your living room.

Clark grabs his suit jacket from the back of your sofa, fiddling with it as he sulks, “I think I should leave. Thank you for the food. I’ll…um, I’ll talk to Perry and Lois about the job.” 

“Okay. Thank you.” you look up at him from your seated position, a little confused by the whiplash from the energy shift in the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

“Yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow.” 

iiii. LOIS LANES’ DIVINE INTERVENTION

So…you don’t hear from Clark for three days—aside from a short text giving you the thumbs up for an interview at Daily Planet.

After the blip of Supershit, Clark took the mental load of keeping his distance from you. His patience was stretched thin from outside opinions and he feared with the hard-to-budge bad taste that Superman left in your mouth; that you would be a target of hot-headed retaliation if you utter the word Supershit in Clark’s presence again.

The safest assumption was that he was busy—he was a Pulitzer prize-winner at the end of the day. It definitely hadn’t been in relation to the immediate debate that came after you used the trending, cancel culture-esque nickname, Supershit, on his nearest and dearest interviewee. 

Even with your feelings now left up in the air with a date being strung over your head with zero confirmation of a date or time, you weren’t one to sit and dwell over a man’s fragile ego—for whatever reason Clark’s ego was made of glass, you were unsure but close to figuring out—and put all your energy and abundance of spare time into perfecting your knowledge about Daily Planet prior to your interview. 

The interview process for the support role beneath Lois Lanes’ expertise as a front-runner journalist for Daily Planet had gone smoother than you could have anticipated. To be quite frank, you had little experience in the journalist field, let alone a degree, but you came prepared with a good amount of charm and some background knowledge on the company.

Founded in 1775, globally renowned for its pursuit of justice, home to some brown-nosing of Superman and the Justice League, and the employer of the curly-haired neighbour you had been crushing on for quite some time. (The last two weren’t verbalised as such. Edited version: enthralling interviews that capture the true essence of the city’s extraterrestrial and meta-humans, and the employer of Clark Kent. Your neighbour. Nothing else.)  

Lois likes you. Perry White isn’t easily convinced. She spends the rest of her shift arguing your case—the Editor-in-Chief calls it favouritism for the only woman who applied for the role. 

Before you leave, you are tail-ending a conversation with Lois. She’s the epitome of a thriving journalist in a trim waistcoat and white tee beneath, a mug of hot coffee with at least, fifteen lumps of sugar stirred into the mix.

“You have to make sure you’re not in favour of one particular person that we write about. You know, like Superman is a good guy, but you can’t show bias. Even if Daily Planet have been hit with some accusations of preference.” Lois says in a monotonous tone. 

You nod along, not wanting to ruin your chances by shit-talking one person that brings the money in for the company. “I mean, everyone seems to like him, right? Clark has been fawning over him for sometime.” you prod at her brain intentionally for an underlying curiosity of your own. 

“Clark sees a lot of himself in Superman,” Lois choice of words make your brow quirk—she’s being careful. “He does a lot of questionable things—Superman, I mean, but he saves a lot of lives. They both live their lives to be good, I guess that’s why Clark is drawn to him.” 

“I guess so.” you pause, “You know he totalled my car in a fight?” 

“Clark?” (No, but you were starting to think otherwise.) 

“Superman.” you correct and Lois looks at you as if it isn’t that big of a deal. A major inconvenience at best. “Yeah, he got into a fight on Clinton Street and was thrown into my car that I had just paid off. I was pretty torn up about it…still sort of am.” 

Lois wracks her wonderful brain, “Clinton Street?” you nod, “Yeah—We covered that story. The meta-human he had been fighting was headed for a nursery a few blocks down, for whatever sick reason. Superman diverted him to Clinton Street and saved about fifty kids. He took some punches over that. Anything to keep the guy away from those kids.” 

You blink, “I didn’t think about it like that.” 

“You have to look at the bigger picture, if you’re going to be apart of this world.” Lois smiles, “Although, it doesn’t take away from the fact that your car got ruined. Did you get another one?” 

“Uh…no.” your mind is elsewhere—you kind of feel like an asshole. You shake it off, “Doesn’t matter, though. I like the commute.” 

“Clark mentioned that you had said that you were one sticky seat away from catching a new strain of the plague.” Lois quips and you shrink with embarrassment, the elevator is so close you could just…make a break for it. 

It makes you laugh nervously, “Yeah. Well, that’s the fun part. The risks. Gets my adrenaline pumping.”

Lois really likes you. She decides. 

“We’re all about adrenaline and risks.” 

“Yeah—Well, thank you for giving me an interview. I’ve gotta head, sort of overstayed my welcome.” you express, thumb gesturing over your shoulder to the elevator, “It was nice meeting you!”

Lois bids you a goodbye, her eyes trained on your frame as you press the golden button umpteen times out of impatience to take your leave. She smiles to herself, turning on her heel as the elevator doors peel open. 

Your eyes are cast downward, brain on autopilot over the realisation that struck the back of your neck like the side of a hand. The visit to Daily Planet for the interview had not only been relatively exciting—because you felt like you gelled well with Lois Lane—but it had been incredibly insightful to the incident relating to your deeply rooted dislike for Superman. 

He was saving kids. How could you resent that? 

Perhaps there was an aspect of selfishness on your behalf. Most times you had broken into a rant about the car tragedy of 2024, people have asked you if you knew the reasoning as to why Superman happened to be on Clinton Street, fighting a meta-human. More times than not, you’d shrug. You didn’t care, it was your car that suffered! 

But, now? Lois Lane had smothered that year-long grudge with the missing pieces of the story. 

“Holy shit. Am I an asshole?” you say out loud to yourself. The elevator slides shut and you stare wide-eyed at the golden doors. 

“Pardon me?” 

You turn your head to see Clark Kent clutching into his briefcase as if you were going to bite. You don’t even bat an eyelid as you say, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Unavailable.” 

“Well, now, I—I can explain my absence—” 

“Can we just bury our last interaction?” you interject with a sharp tone, “I’m feeling a little forgiving today.” 

“Right. Yes, I was going to apologise for how I left—” Clark’s voice trails off as you deadpan at him. He shakes his head, “—All is said and done. Can I ask why you called yourself an asshole?” 

“It’s a long story.” 

“I have time.” 

You peer up at him, “Weren’t you meant to get off on that floor?” 

“Yes. I suppose I should have.” 

It makes you look him up and down. “…Alright, well, I mean I just had this super insightful conversation with your friend Lois about Superman—” Clark visibly winces, “—And the fight on Clinton Street, that ultimately lost me my car. This whole time, I just…I just didn’t care about the details, just knew I was pissed about my car. Then—Then Lois tells me it was collateral damage over Superman saving a nursery from a rampant meta-human. That sort of makes me the asshole in this story, Clark.” 

“You are upset about it, that doesn’t make you an asshole.” 

“No, but it does!” you exasperate, “Sure, it’s been a huge inconvenience to me, and a lot of money lost. But he was putting himself in harms way to save innocent lives. My car doesn’t even matter in the grand scheme of things.” 

Clark wants to argue the fact that Superman has been saving lives even before the incident on Clinton Street. However, the revelation that you’ve been put on track for is at the precipice of a complete 180 in your opinion of Superman; why stunt that growth? 

He makes a note to thank Lois—who is well aware of his secret—for feeding you the breadcrumbs that led to this.

You know…once he takes elevator back up. 

Clark waits for you to breathe. “So, no hard feelings over Superman?” he asks hopefully. 

“He’s still an asshole for wrecking my car.” you retort, arms crossing over your chest, “But, I suppose that’s sort of the closure I needed. I can’t stay mad at a guy for forfeiting his own life to save fifty little ones.” 

“I can work with that.” Clark says without thinking. The colour pink creeps up his neck when you cock your head to the side inquisitively—because, what did that mean? He gulps some air, “I—Can I still take you on a date?” 

“I don’t know, can you get Superman to apologise to me?” you lilt in an unserious tone, essentially throwing a hook with a fat piece of bait impaled on the end.

The elevator reaches the ground floor. 

“I can try.” Clark absolutely would. Without a shadow of a doubt. 

(Hook, line and sinker.) 

“Then yes.” 

+1 APARTMENT APOLOGIES

You had got the job at Daily Planet. It took all of two days, and the persistence of the tenacious Lois Lane for Perry White to accept somebody without even a scrap of journalistic experience onto the team; for you to get the call to start in a weeks time. 

And how you celebrated your elation was by grabbing a greasy pizza en route to your apartment, and watching reruns of Golden Girls on your sofa.  

It was pure, unadulterated bliss. 

That was, until the hairs on your arms unexpectedly stood on end on the last bite of the cheese-filled crust. 

Immediate from this, there’s a silhouette that captures your attention from your periphery on the fire escape outside your living room window. Heart chasing its own beat, you drop the pizza crust into the cardboard box, your hand slowly reaching to curl round the steel bat you kept beside the sofa; the other one was located in your bedroom. 

You didn’t want to engage, or even look. There’s been enough viewings of horror movies to know that the person that is curious, is the person that gets killed. You even think about sprinting out the front door and banging on Clark’s front door on the floor below.  

When your bare foot touches the wooden floorboards, that’s when you hear a groan from just outside your window. 

Your brows pinch from the familiarity. “Clark?” 

It sounded like him. 

Instinctively, you lift your bat as you stand. This was Metropolis after all. You wouldn’t put it past some extraterrestrial visiting the city to mimic the sounds of your neighbour. But honestly, where would they have gotten the sound of Clark in somewhat pain? 

The large silhouette moves when you speak Clark’s name, and you make it to the window in two swift steps; forcing the window up to let in the billowing winds of the city air and noise pollution into your apartment. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“Good evening ma’am.” 

You raise your bat, “Superman?” you waver in your impulsivity to strike him across his head, “What the fuck are you doing on my fire escape? You’re—ugh—you’re bleeding!” 

He peels the palm of his hand away from his torso to reveal a much bigger wound, “Just a scratch. I’ll be alright. May I come in?” 

“No! Crazy!” you argue back, “You’ll get your blood all over my new rug.” 

“I’ll pay for it.” 

You scoff, “Oh yeah? Like the car you wrecked—?” you pause to stare at him, the cogs turning in your mind, “Did Clark Kent put you up to this? Are you—Are you two in cahoots or some shit?” 

“He may—” Superman groans when he shifts from one foot to the other, “—Have mentioned something about a disgruntled neighbour.” 

Oh. He took your joke seriously. 

Your fingers shift around the metal bat. “Yeah, that would be me.” you watch as a loose curl flops down onto his forehead, familiarity spreads across your chest, “Look. You can just let me hit you over the head with my bat. Once. Then, all is forgiven.” 

“I’d rather you didn’t.” 

You sigh, “Worth a shot.” 

Superman’s lips quirk into an amused smile, “Please? It will only be for a moment.” 

“…Fine.” you drop the bat down to your side and step back, “Only step on the wooden flooring, and just head to the bathroom. I’ll get you a wet flannel.” 

A red boot swings over the threshold and suddenly, Superman is standing in the middle of your apartment at full stature, bleeding from the wound on his torso. He’s handsome, you’d give him that. In an omnipresent superhero type of way. He gives you a strained friendly smile, his dimples deep whilst his forehead creases from the sharp pain that elicits from the wound site. 

Without further instruction as to where your bathroom was located, Superman makes a beeline down the hallway, breadcrumbs of blood leading you to him after you wet a spare flannel beneath the kitchen sink tap. His familiarity with your apartment only worsens your suspicions. 

You find him dwarfing your toilet with the lid down. He has a handful of toilet paper stuffed against the bleeding gash, lips parting momentarily to exhale intermittently as he applies pressure with the worst gauze replacement to soak up the excess blood. 

Pieces of tissue paper break apart from the saturation of blood and Superman—without thinking—gives you a clumsy smile. Lopsided and without confidence to fuel the curve of his lip. It is sort of vexing for you, coming from a place with purposefully minimal knowledge, these so-called ‘Protectors of Metropolis’ exuded self-righteousness because they needed to have a strong backbone to be a public figure. The man who sat on the lid of your toilet, in a vibrant red and blue suit that clung to his muscular physique presents nothing of the sort. 

You wish you could approach it differently. This rare moment captured in time, where you come face to face with the destructor of your beloved vehicle and you had asked for permission to strike him across the head, rather than just doing it; as you had practiced multiple times in your head. 

He wouldn’t even flinch, you suppose. 

Further to this, if Lois Lane hadn’t intervened with her sharp memory of the Clinton Street incident, then Superman wouldn’t have been able to step foot into your apartment. Then again, you were stood at the threshold of the bathroom questioning his identity altogether. 

“I don’t bite.” The male informs on borderline playful. 

You don’t budge—a prisoner in your own home.

“I’d rather not take any chances.” you quip, tossing him the wet flannel because watching the pieces of tissue paper fuse to his wound was near painful. You observe him for a moment, “Clark sent you here?” 

He hums lowly. 

You continue, “When…did you see him? Usually he catches you at the scene of the crime, so to speak.” you tilt your head when Superman lifts his gaze to look at you, “I didn’t see any fights break out on the news today.” 

“He called in a favour.” Superman responds with faux-innocence, “By phone.” 

“Right, right.” you fall silent to watch him dab at his injury with care. There’s a deep inhale before you speak again, “You guys are close?” 

“You could say that.” he mumbles, “Is there a problem?” 

Your eyes narrow, “Is there a problem to be addressed? Other than the wreckage of my car, but, y’know, you already knew about that coming here. Did he give you my address?” 

“No.” Superman jumps to Clark’s defence because giving a stranger—let alone a so-called enemy—your address without consent was a downright breach of your privacy and safety; let alone dangerous. He then adds, “He wouldn’t do that.” 

“So you just happened to know where I live in a mid-rise apartment complex with eleven floors?” you take a step into the bathroom to goad him, “Is that part of your superpowers? Being a creep?” 

“What—?” he flaps, “No! Nothing like that.”

“A woman alone in her apartment at night and you’re watching her from her fire escape. That’s pretty creepy, Supe.” you point a finger in his direction, essentially pinning him to the spot. 

“I just came to apologise. Okay?” Superman takes a deep inhale in mild panic, “I never intended to destroy your car. But, if you ask me, I’d do it a hundred times over if it meant I saved those kids that day.” 

“Why does it matter if you apologise to me or not? You must have damaged thousands of cars by now.” (Try hundreds of thousands.) 

Superman huffs, “It matters to Clark. He—uh—Forgive me if this isn’t common knowledge, but he likes you. Truly likes you. He sees a future with you, and then you had mentioned that if he were able to have me apologise to you…then perhaps you’d proceed with the date.” 

Oh, boy. 

“I was joking when I said that.” you state, “Can you not tell the difference between a joke and a serious request, Clark?” 

“Clark?” the tips of Superman’s ears go pink. Dead giveaway. 

You throw a hand in his direction. “Oh, come on, Clark. It’s obviously you. You’re Superman. You think I’m dumb enough not to catch on when you’ve been fighting his corner for the past couple of weeks?” 

Superman—or, Clark to you—gawks, “I’m not quite sure what you’re implying here.” 

“What I’m stating is, that you are Superman. You just so happen to be able to interview him every single time and shed a positive light on his actions, you were unbelievably mad after Supershit—” Clark’s eye twitches, “And, what, Superman just so happens to know what apartment I’m staying in without any information handed out? Don’t even get me started on the glasses.” 

“The glasses?” 

“Well, you mentioned once that the glasses were for short-distance reading. You never took them off after reading the letters in your mailbox.” you shrug as you explain your theory, “Plus, you’re not wearing them now so you obviously don’t need them. You just wear them for a whole identity thing.” 

Clark is struck silent. You were good. Like, incredibly observant. 

“Did you get the job at Daily Planet?” when you nod, he proceeds to talk, “Good. We’ll need someone like you.” he pauses, “Are you mad?” 

“No, I’m not mad.” you deflate a little, “I would have been if my theory was wrong and you did happen to hand out my address to some random man without my knowledge.” 

Clark gives a feeble nod, “I’m a little shellshocked that you figured it out.” 

“I’ve never seen you two in the same room, I guess.” your joke makes both Clark and you smile widely at each other. The break of tension allows you to move closer to him as you bend at the waist to look at his injury. You hiss at the sight of it, “That looks sore.” 

“Oh, it isn’t so bad.” Clark gives you a dopey sort of smile when he catches your eye. “I didn’t intend to get hurt on the way here.” 

You nod, taking the sodden flannel from his grasp in order to dab at his torso, “Superman sells me a sob story and bleeds out on my fire escape to get me to like him. That would have been dramatic.” 

“You’re not mad?” Clark asks again for reassurance—his confidence since shaken from the rise of resistance in the Metropolis community in regard to his presence within the city. 

With a shake of your head, you meet his blue eyes again, “No. I mean, we have a lot to talk about. But that’s what first dates are for, right? Getting to know each other?”

“So, the date is still going ahead?” (Gosh. He sounded so insecure.)

“Oh, I’m not sure. Clark Kent might have an issue with it.” you joke, “He called first dibs.” your playful tone ebbs along with your smug smile when Clark’s brows pinch and he swallows deeply. His eyes flit to your lips and then back up to your eyes. “Are you about to kiss me?”

“Is that okay?”

“Again, Clark Kent—”

Your repetitive joke is smothered when Clark captures your lips with his own. He cradles the back of your head to keep you in position, his head tilting in one direction to refrain from your noses being pressed together. Your stomach is splattered with a heavy warmth as your fingers curl around the bluish fabric of the suit he wears. The room falls into a blissful silence aside from the occasional smacking of lips when Clark deepens the kiss with a sense of heated desire—the innocent kiss soon turning open-mouthed and desperate. 

The signals of it allow you to climb onto his lap, wet flannel disregarded behind you as you wrap your arms around his neck, pulling yourself closer into his arms that begin to circle your frame. Your hips tilt and press downward and Clark responds with a faint whimper that makes you smile against his lips. 

There’s that sensible part of your brain that screams for this to come to a screeching halt. No first date and you’re practically dry-humping Superman? Of all people? But the way he pathetically whined beneath you; that was all Clark Kent. Your neighbour that you had been crushing on for the better part of a year, even when you had been dating your ex-boyfriend, the poorly-postured, socially inept male had always been in your peripheral. (Turns out he had just been biding his time.) 

You feel him shift beneath you and the memory of an open-wound that your all of a sudden flush against is thrown to the forefront of your mind. It makes you pull back promptly, Clark’s face written with concern—his lips all puffy and wet. 

“Is something wrong?” 

“Your wound, Clark.” You lean back and Clark’s hands hold your weight for you. “It’ll probably need stitches.” 

He frowns, “No, it won’t.” he leans in to press another kiss to your lips with less eagerness than before, “I can heal easily without human intervention.” 

“Are you serious? You just wanted some attention?” you tug at the grown out curls at the nape of his neck and laugh. “You have so much explaining to do.” 

“Of course.” Clark smiles against your lips, quickly making you forget your train of thought as he stands with a grunt with you bundled up in his arms. He speaks between hungry kisses, “But first, I have a destroyed car and a year of apologies to make up for.” 

You giddily laugh as he carries you to your bedroom. 

“I hate you.” 

[buckyarchives]

Bro has done it again. Beautiful 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[riverlarking]

i love clicking on somebody’s ao3 profile and seeing the most nonsensical collection of fandoms. like yess let's live a thousand lifetimes

[upsidedownwithemmy]

Steve Harrington x fem!reader

[4.4K] loosely based on the movie float, lifeguard!steve, a summer full of swim lessons. mentions of drowning, eventual smut 18+

SWIM LESSON SCHEDULE

LESSON #4

Steve made Eddie leave.

Not immediately, not in any sort of cruel way; but eventually, after twenty minutes of the longer haired boy splashing around the deep end, Steve had levelled him with a look that could only be described as long suffering.

“You know,” Steve had sighed, arms crossed over his bare chest as Eddie floated on his back, his hair like seaweed on the pool surface, “some of us are trying to work here.”

Eddie grinned, entirely unashamed. Sunlight bounced off the water in fractured lines, turning the tattoos on his chest into moving pictures. “And some of us,” he countered, “are supporting our best friend through her aquatic trauma.”

“You’re cannonballing beside her every five minutes,” Steve squinted at him.

Eddie made a huffing sound, all faux offence and mockery. “It’s called exposure therapy, Harrington. Look it up.”

Steve looked to you for backup, brows raised expectantly, but you were far too used to this behaviour by now. Besides, the two boys were chest deep in the dark blue water now, Steve subconsciously floating further from you as he tried to wrangle Eddie towards the pool steps. And you found that the distance didn’t panic you as much as you once thought it would. You were still standing waist deep, happy to see your toes wiggle on the blue pool tiles.

Eventually Eddie checked the time on the cheap silver watch hanging from his wrist and cursed loudly, remembering he’d promised Gareth he’d help move some amps before band practice. He hauled himself from the pool in a shower of water, curls dripping onto the tiles as he shoved his feet back into his boots without drying them first.

“You two have fun,” he announced too loudly, pointing between you both. “No drowning. No weird sexual tension. Behave yourselves.”

“Get out,” you and Steve snapped, looking anywhere but at each other.

Eddie barked out a laugh at that, eyes too bright with vindication before he saluted lazily and disappeared through the gate, humming a song you didn’t recognise under his breath.

Quiet settled in his wake. The low hum of the pool filter continued steadily from somewhere behind you, bugs buzzed lazily in the trees beyond the fence line. Water lapped softly against your ribs where you stood in the shallows, fingers now curled over the edge of the pool in lieu of Steve’s arm. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower started up.

Steve exhaled through his nose and made his way over to you, careful not to splash too much. “Fuckin’ finally,” he muttered.

You snorted, a decidedly unattractive sound and you looked down at the water to hide your grin. Steve moved a little closer, shoulder brushing yours underwater. It shouldn’t have felt like such a big thing. It was barely even a touch. But fuck, your breath still snagged somewhere in your chest all the same. It felt like the water should have rippled from your body, bones rattling, heartbeat loud enough to make waves in the water.

“You okay?” he asked softly. It wasn’t exactly pity, nothing too gentle, just quiet enough to make you far too aware that Steve cared. Like he was constantly checking the weather inside your head, making sure the skies were still clear enough to continue.

You nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

Steve’s gaze caught your own, the steadily rising sun finally catching his features. Brown eyes turning gold, hair turning honey, skin turning bronze. “You sure?”

“Mhm.” You could only mumble, head nodding.

His eyes narrowed slightly like he didn’t fully believe you but he let it go after a moment, pushing himself away from the pool wall and motioning toward the middle of the shallows. “C’mon then,” he said. “Next lesson.”

You groaned immediately. “That sounds ominous.”

Steve grinned. “Nah. You’re ready.”

You wrinkled your nose, the distaste on your features more than apart t and the motion of it let you know your face was catching the sun, skin stinging. “People tend to say that before terrible experiences.”

The boy swam backwards, arms outreached, the water practically parting for him with every measured move. He grinned at you, watching you watch him. “You survived floating,” he offered helpfully.

“Barely.”

Steve barked out a laugh at that, loud and surprised, and god—it was addictive, making him laugh like that. His whole face changed when he did it. Softer and brighter, like summer had made him just for you.

“C’mon, when have I ever let you astray?” Steve held out his hands to you, water dripping from his forearms, beckoning you with his fingers in hopes you would follow him and after only the briefest hesitation, you did.

That alone felt monumental.

You sucked in a breath, resisted the urge to hold it, but you stepped forward all the same. Slow motion movements, like dragging yourself through a dream that was maybe once a nightmare, you followed Steve to the darker side of the pool. You gasped when the water hit your chest, a new cold lapping at your breasts until they were submerged too.

Your toes burned from staying up on them but still, you stayed, you didn’t panic. Steve noticed it too as he stood a foot away from you, his eyes warm, his chin dipped into the water. You could tell by the way his expression flickered into something almost proud.

“See?” he said quietly. “Already gettin’ better.”

The praise warmed you embarrassingly fast; faster than the sun, than the summer heat that was sticking to the skin that you hadn’t submerged.

“Alright,” he started, running a hand through his wet hair, “today we’re gonna work on going underwater.”

Your stomach dropped instantly, the quiet, gnawing ache turning into an open pit. Your heart fell into it, crashing between your ribs on the way down. “Oh absolutely not.”

Steve sighed like he’d expected that exact response. “C’mon.”

“No.” You didn’t have it in you to sound polite, to even attempt to make the word sound softer, more apologetic. The steps leading out of the pool looked like an ocean away. “Steve—.”

“You trust me, remember?” The boy’s words were much gentler than your own and he took a few steps towards you, hands up and laying across the surface like he’d catch you if you fell.

You felt the world tilt a little. “That was before I knew you were going to try to drown me.”

He rolled his eyes and scoffed but you knew him well enough now to see the fondness there, the lift of his mouth that almost made a smile. “You are not gonna drown from putting your face underwater for two seconds,” he told you softly.

You wanted to be home. You wanted to be on solid ground in dry clothes. You wanted to kick Eddie’s bedroom door open and demand to know why he set this stupid thing up in the first place. Instead, you swallowed the lump in your that and gave a weak laugh. “You don’t know that.”

Steve smiled then, an awfully pretty thing that made it much harder to deny him of anything. He shrugged, slipped deeper into the water. “I literally do. It’s my job,” he grinned at you.

“Look, why don’t we just—.” Steve made his way over to you, chest rising from the water and he took your hands in his own. His gaze met yours, his expression turning serious. “Hey, look at me, yeah? I’m not gonna let you go, okay? I swear to god, I’ll be here the entire time. Nothin’ bad will happen.”

Water dripped from his nose onto his lips as he watched and waited, his words tumbling over you as you tried to separate them from the irrational fear that was making your chest too tight. You thought back to lakes and dark skies and darker water. Deep and endless with fallen branches and weeds growing from the sand you couldn’t see.

Your pulse stumbled, your breath hitched. It was easy to remember the hands that pulled you out when the same ones were holding you now. You stared at the way Steve’s fingers wrapped around your own, his big palms engulfing yours. He was warm despite the cool water, an anchor in the middle of Hawkins community pool.

“Okay,” you whispered, the word getting stuck and twisted in your throat. But still, an agreement.

Steve’s brows shot up in surprise but he hid it well, replacing his shock with a smile that rivalled the sun above. “Yeah?” He murmured, double checking as his gaze travelled over your face, searching for anything that would suggest you were going to change your mind. He found none. “Atta’ girl.”

But still, your face must’ve shown your fear, because Steve tried another approach.

“How ‘bout you just listen first?” His voice was practically honey, melted butter on a open windowsill, softer than you’d ever heard. His thumbs stroked over the backs of your hands and you forgot about the water kissing at your collarbones. “You don’t even have to fully go under today, okay? We’ll just practice until your comfortable.”

You could only nod but the moment was firm and resolute so Steve took it as a good sign. But even though you knew Steve was there to help, the deep end glimmered darkly behind him, a seemingly endless blue that stretched beneath the surface and your chest tightened instinctively at the sight of it. Steve followed your gaze immediately.

“Hey.” Gentle again, achingly so. “Eyes on me.”

You looked back, blinking quickly until you felt the prick of tears that had threatened to show themselves subside.

“There you go.” His tone dropped quieter still. “That’s all you gotta think about, alright? Not the deep end. Not the lake. Just me.”

Your heart turned traitorous and you wondered if he’d hear it the way you did when you fell into the lake, if the drumbeat you’d heard in your own ears would be loud enough for Steve to hear too. Steve seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had on people sometimes. Or maybe just on you.

He moved closer again until your knees almost bumped beneath the water and the sun was suddenly too hot. You watched the muscles in his shoulders, watched the movement of them ripple and twist as he held you closer to him that you would’ve deemed necessary. But you didn’t mention it, you didn’t move away.

“First thing,” he murmured, “you gotta learn how to breathe properly.”

You scoffed, a little offended. “I know how to breathe, Harrington.”

He grinned at you, lopsided and boyish. His hands squeezed your own and he mumbled, “well, that remains to be seen.”

You glared at him halfheartedly, a weak attempt at best considering you were still stiff with fear, clutching his hands like a lifeline.

“When your face goes underwater,” he explained, ignoring your expression, “you breathe out through your nose slowly, okay? Little bubbles. If you hold your breath too hard, you panic.”

“Little bubbles,” you repeated skeptically. You stared at the surface of the water, as if daring something sinister to appear from its depths. Instead, you saw the wiggling outline of your legs and Steve’s, your feet close to his, toes almost touching. “Little bubbles. Fuck—“

“You’ll be fine, I promise,” Steve whispered. “It’s easier than you think.”

You nodded as if you agreed with him, chest rising and falling a little faster than before and you steeled yourself, hands holding Steve’s way too tightly but he didn’t complain. He only squeezed back. But still, you couldn’t bring yourself to drop any lower into the water. Frustration crackled in you, tears pricking at your eyes again but annoyance for yourself surpassed the fear and you swore, blinking harshly at the blue sky as you tried to pull yourself together.

Then Steve let go of your hands and lifted his own carefully, giving you every opportunity to pull away before he touched you. “Can I?” he asked quietly.

Hawkins seemed too quiet then, like even the cicadas had stopped their buzzing to hear your answer. The filters and generators were merely white noise as you stared at the boy and his hands that were reaching for either side of your face.

You nodded before you could overthink it.

One hand settled lightly at the back of your neck, fingers threading gently into the damp strands at the base of your skull. The other brushed your jaw, callouses rough against your skin, a gentle scratch that sent goosebumps over your forearms, across your chest, and you hoped to god that Steve didn’t notice.

“Relax your shoulders,” Steve said softly. “Good,” he praised instantly when you did, your breath coming out in a small shudder as your body went a little limp. His thumb brushed over the spot near your ear and you wondered if it was deliberate, you wondered if he knew. “Now, tilt your chin down a little.”

You obeyed automatically, a mortifying concept that you would dissect later in bed when you were alone and too warm but Steve’s eyes stayed fixed on yours the entire time, warm and honey brown and impossibly steady.

“You’re safe,” he told you quietly. “Okay?”

Something inside your chest ached at the sincerity in his voice and now more than ever, you believed him. You could only more once, heart hammering, your hands reaching to wrap around Steve’s forearms, clutching at him as he held you, as he guided you.

“Atta girl,” he said again, his voice so quiet it sounded hoarse, a little rough.

God. Fuck.

“Now,” Steve continued, “I just want you to put your mouth underwater first. Blow bubbles. That’s it.”

“That’s it,” you echoed weakly.

“Yeah, that’s it, sweetheart,” he smiled, voice dropping to an octave that was solely for you.

“And if I die?” You tried to sound serious, but maybe Steve knew you were just trying to buy some extra time. Your hands were tight around him, your fingers barely managing to meet as they held onto his wrists and his thumbs were stroking over the spots of skin they were touching, maddening circles that made everything seem a little fuzzy.

He snorted, the sound much more attractive than when you did it. “You’re so dramatic.”

“All I’m saying is, you’ll have to be the one to break the news to Eddie,” you shrugged. God, you felt like you were babbling, panic mixing with a dry humour that felt clumsy as the words tumbled from your mouth. The water was so close to your chin, your mouth, your nose. “Besides, you’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

Steve didn’t say anything about breaking the news of your demise to your best friend but he did say: “I’ll miss you as soon as this lesson is over,” he murmured lightly. “Now, c’mon. Give it a try.”

Your heart nearly stopped functioning altogether. Because what the fuck was that supposed to mean and how were you supposed to focus on your breath now? You stared at him for a second too long before finally inhaling, careful and cautious, and then you started bending your knees.

The water crept toward your chin immediately. Every instinct screamed at you to jerk back upright, the shock of the water near any part of your face a sign of something awful to come. The bottom of the pool suddenly seemed too far down.

Steve’s hand tightened slightly against your neck. Not crushing but a gentle squeeze, his thumb rubbed over the damp hair there, his eyes fixed on your own as he bent down with you, following you the entire time. “You’re okay,” he reminded you. “Slow breaths.”

You tried. Really, you did.

The second the water touched your lips panic sparked hot beneath your ribs, but Steve stayed right there, close enough that your knees brushed his underwater.

“Blow out,” he encouraged gently. “That’s it.”

You lowered your lips beneath the surface and immediately sputtered. Chlorine filled your mouth, a too clean taste that was cold and sharp ans shocking against your tongue. You couldn’t help it, you sprung back up from the water, coughing and embarrassing amount.

Steve caught you before you could stumble backwards, hands leaving your neck and jaw to grip at your waist. “Easy,” he soothed quickly. “Easy, sweetheart, you’re alright.”

He was watching you with wide eyes, as if he was worried he’d pushed you too far. But he held on, the ripples you’d made from your dramatic exit from the water circling you both. The sun was beating down hotter now, higher in the blue sky above but mortification burned through you warmer than any Indiana summer.

“I hate this,” you croaked.

“I know.” His thumbs rubbed absentminded circles against your sides before he seemed to realise what he was doing and quickly let go. He stayed near, cheeks pink and flushed looking, from the sun or his proximity to you, you weren’t sure. But his voice was achingly gentle when he told you: “But you still did it.”

“Barely.”

“Still counts.” He smiled, lopsided and soft.

You groaned dramatically, letting your forehead thunk lightly against his shoulder and you felt how he froze underneath you before his finger poked at your ribs. “You good there?”

His voice vibrated through his chest into your skin.

You wanted to die. Honestly, it seemed like the only reasonable solution to everything that had happened that morning. You wondered if today would’ve been easier if you’d taken Steve up on his offer to walk you home last night, if it would’ve been different now. If something would’ve happened. “M’gonna drown myself voluntarily now,” you mumbled into his shoulder.

Steve let out a breath of a laugh and warm hands settled carefully at your upper arms. He guided you backwards, just an inch or two, just enough so he could find your gaze with his own.

“Hey.” Sincerity threaded through every word. “You’re doing good. Seriously.”

“Really?” You asked reluctantly, brows crinkled, cheeks and neck warm. You hated how you sounded, how you felt. Weak and scared and a little bit pitiful.

But Steve nodded and grinned, thumbs tracing down your arms, leaving droplets of water in his wake. “Yeah, really. You wanna stop for today?”

You considered it, for a second, maybe five. But the surface of the pool had stilled, blue and calm and still very clear. You saw your toes, saw Steve’s. It wasn’t that deep, the logical conclusion was right in front of you. If you went under, you could stand and come straight back up.

You could.

You should.

Fuck.

You glanced at Steve, lips twisting as you thought about what to say, heart racing at the prospect. Fuckfuckfuck. “Uh, can you hold my hands again?”

Steve didn’t question you, but his brows rose all the same as he offered you both his hands. They engulfed your own, still amazingly warm despite the cool water and he waited for your next instruction.

He didn’t expect you to say: “I’m gonna just— dunk. Do it with me.” You swallowed tightly and then remembered yourself. “Please?” You added.

Steve looked too shocked to speak. He considered telling you to hold on, to wait, to maybe take some baby steps before leaping into the literal and proverbial deep end but you looked like you’d made your mind up. Determination set in your pretty features, your hands gripping his like they were your only lifeline.

So he nodded, held onto you a little tighter and moved close enough for his toes to touch yours. “Ready?” He whispered.

You nodded, too sick to speak.

“Three, two, one…”

Fuck. You bent your knees.

The water climbed your cheeks, cool against skin that was still warm from the sun. For a split second, panic flared bright and familiar, something instinctive and sharp and awful but then Steve squeezed your hands and the world disappeared.

Everything became blue.

The sounds of summer vanished. No incessant cicadas, no distant lawnmowers, no rustling leaves. The pool filter became a distant hum, softened into something that barely existed at all underneath the surface.

Your entire world was now just water and light. And Steve.

You blinked underwater, surprised that you could, wondering when the fear would spike, when absolute horror would set in, when things would turn too murky to see. But sunlight fractured above you in ribbons of gold, breaking apart against the surface. It turned Steve into something dreamlike, his features softened by the movement of the water between you. Not that there was much.

His hair floated slightly around his forehead, a wild thing and his eyes were on yours, his lips stretched prettily into a wide smile. Tiny bubbles escaped from your nose, little, tiny bubbles, exactly like he'd told you.

The realization hit slowly, rolling over you like a summer morning; warm and lazy, like you were just waking up from a too long sleep. You were doing it.

You were underwater and you weren't drowning. Your lungs weren't burning, an unblinking darkness wasn't reaching for you. There was no lake, no too strong current and fuck, weeds weren’t wrapping around your ankle, pulling you downdowndown.

Only blue tiles beneath your feet and Steve in front of you.

His eyes widened slightly as he saw understanding settle across your face, a pretty flicker of understanding in your own gaze and pride bloomed in him, an uncontrollable thing that broke free from his ribs. He couldn’t say it, not underwater, but you could tell. It made you smile too, big enough that water kissed your teeth and you jerked slightly at the coolness of it, but Steve just held you tighter.

The water shifted between you as he drifted towards you a little more. Hands tugging at your own, knees bumping, chests impossibly closer. If you hadn’t already been holding your breath, you were sure you would’ve.

His fingers remained wrapped around yours, shifting from cupping your hand to linking between your own, a wholly intimate thing, far more so than the two of you half naked beside each other. The strangest thing happened then, a whole thirty seconds after you’d been brave enough to disappear under the surface. The fear that had occupied so much space inside your chest, that awful, burning knot that had lived in your chest for so long simply just… loosened. Like unclenching a fist you hadn't realized you'd been holding for too long.

It hadn’t disappeared, not yet. Not that quickly. But it unravelled slowly, unwound itself from the spaces between your ribs and your heart and your lungs and it gave you space to breathe. It let you feel the water on your skin, it let you blink against the chlorine and watch the way the sun danced above you.

The expression felt ridiculous underwater, but you grinned wider still, lips parting as if you could laugh, and Steve saw it. His own grin appeared instantly, bubbles leaving his lips, his nose. They popped and fizzed between you both, reaching for the surface that was only a short swim away.

God. He was beautiful. Even distorted through the rippling water, especially in the shifting light of the sun, shapes of yellow and light blue scattered themselves over his chest, his cheeks. They caught his eyes, turned them from brown to honey, his cheeks warm and sun-kissed, even under the water.

A stream of silver bubbles rose from your mouth too, racing toward the surface, floating upward between you. You waited for the water to rush into your throat, to floss your lungs but nothing happened apart from a slight burn, a reminder that you would need to breathe soon. But staying down here worn Steve, alone and in the quiet together, seemed worth the sting.

The moment into something weightless and for a beat, neither of you moved. You simply floated there, hands linked and suspended in blue. The surface shimmered above your heads like liquid glass and sunlight painted Steve in different shades of gold.

His eyelashes looked darker underwater. His freckles softer. Closer. Jesus Christ, everything felt closer and the world outside the pool seemed impossibly far away.

The party, the achingly awkward goodbye. The walk home Steve never got to give and the disappointment you'd seen him try to hide.

All of it drifted somewhere beyond the water you were floating in. And whatever you were feeling, thinking, Steve seemed to feel it too. His grin faded, not completely. It just softened into something else, the corner of his mouth relaxing as his gaze lingered on yours. Underwater, here with the boy, you found you couldn’t look away.

The sunlight moved across his face and your own, a shifting mosaic of gold and blue. Your pulse stumbled and water made everything feel too slow. Dreamlike and hazy and so not real.

Steve's eyes dropped briefly to your mouth. The motion was tiny, a barely there thing but god, you still saw it. Heat flooded through you despite the cool water surrounding your body and for one absurd second, you wondered if he could hear your heartbeat. You wondered if the water carried it, if it echoed between you.

Reality caught up with you then, a full fifty one seconds after you first sunk underneath the blue surface. You felt the burn in your lungs get too hot to ignore, reaching your throat and the panic that had lived inside of you for so long came back, a rattling thing that had you planting your feet on the pool tiles and pushing up. You burst from the surface, droplets flying as you sucked in a breath and Steve was there too, hands still holding yours, fingers intertwined.

Steve looked just as startled by the moment as you felt, his chest heaving although you were so sure he could hold his breath much longer and more comfortably than you could. He shook his head, not daring to let go of you to sweep his hair back and dark brown curls were plastered to his forehead instead.

It made him look younger, boyish. With freckles and water droplets stuck to his cheeks and you were breathing too hard as you stared at him, wide eyed and in wonder. You just weren’t sure what had you feeling more astonished: the fact that you had willingly gone underwater or that Steve Harrington looked like he wanted to kiss you.

And then the world crashed back all at once. Sunlight. Heat. Birdsong. The stupid hum of the filter. Your gasp. Steve's laugh.

Water streamed down your face as you broke through the surface beside him and you sucked in a breath so large it hurt. Steve was laughing openly now, head tipped back and the sound was a joyous, ecstatic thing that made you smile so hard your cheeks ached.

“I did it,” you breathed. The words sounded almost astonished.

Steve looked at you and his laughter softened, pride taking place over excitement and all of it was bright enough to rival the sun over your heads.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. You hadn't let go of his hand but he hadn’t let go of yours either. “Yeah, you did.”

The water lapped gently around your chest, the surface of it still moving from your exit from below, the trickle of water surrounded you both as it dripped from your soaked hair, the lobes of your ears, the tips of your noses. Steve’s eyelashes were spiked together, too pretty to look at

Neither of you moved, to be honest, neither of you seemed particularly eager to. And somewhere beneath the celebration and relief and your racing heartbeat, a different realization settled between you.

You'd gone underwater.

Somehow the part that lingered in your mind wasn't the fear or the dark or the suffocating memory of the lake. You didn’t think about the weeds and the sludge that caught you from below, ankles trapped, your shirt wrapped around your ribs, branches clawing at your feet.

All you could remember was that it was Steve who was waiting for you when you opened your eyes.

[buckyarchives]

Been yearning for aot me again because I have never gotten over that show and upon a rewatch, it got worse, and I didn’t realize how popular fics were for the boys on TikTok + wattpad + ao3 so we are dusting off some old Levi and Jean fic ideas

[buckyarchives]

And I’m sorry to Steve Harrington whom the hyper fixation died and also my motivation to finish extra bedroom…. Sorry people

[buckyarchives]

Been yearning for aot me again because I have never gotten over that show and upon a rewatch, it got worse, and I didn’t realize how popular fics were for the boys on TikTok + wattpad + ao3 so we are dusting off some old Levi and Jean fic ideas

[buckyarchives]

• STEVE HARRINGTON FANFICTION NAVIGATION

EXTRA BEDROOM [3.7k] after starcourt, the last thing Steve wants to do is go back to his house and possibly face his parents, and well—you have an extra bedroom. (As if it gets used!)

I LIKE JOCKS [6.1k] Steve beats himself up over the fact that you’re Eddie’s type, and Eddie is totally your type as well, and you’re type is absolutely not Steve Harrington.

YOU SUCK! [4.7k] Steve has a new work crush

SUGAR TALKING [2.9k] you were fed up with Steve’s constant sugar talking getting him out of any trouble he finds himself in. 18+

TO THE BOY I LOVED BEFORE [14k][TWOPART] Dustin’s disappointed by his sisters recent decline into loneliness, and after a new discovery that gives him an opportunity to unite his two favorite people—a certain light comes back into your life

•

[buckyarchives]

New Steve incoming???…

[levanswrites]

𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: steve harrington x reader 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: your baby’s in love with her boyish, ridiculously charming swim instructor. and apparently, so are you. (2.6k) 𝐚/𝐧: hi :) ive been thinking a lot abt baby swim instructor steve lately.

.   *　✦　　.　 ˚　✦　 .

There’s this dumb little joke that's making the rounds in your “Mommy and Me” baby swim group.

That the most dangerous part about Saturday beginner classes isn’t the water.

It’s the instructor.

You used to roll your eyes at it—bouncing your nervous, clingy toddler on your hip while listening to the other moms whisper and gossip with each other. Oh my god, have you seen him with the little ones? It's amazing.

You don’t roll your eyes anymore.

Because the instructor in question—Steve Harrington, as you’ve learned from the sign-in sheet and the way the front desk girl said his name with a dreamy little sigh—has somehow earned your daughter’s undying loyalty in record time.

And that feels like a betrayal.

Especially when he’s just some twenty-something-year-old guy in red swim trunks, with lean, tanned arms that flex every time he hoists a giggling baby into the air.

It's ridiculous, honestly.

Your daughter went from clinging to you—fingers fisted in your swimsuit strap, wailing the second her toes skimmed the surface of the pool—to vibrating with excitement the moment she catches a whiff of chlorine.

It took, what, three classes?  

Now, she spots him before you do.

You’re barely through the gates when she starts squirming in your arms, legs kicking wildly against your hip. She babbles at full volume, squealing, clapping her hands together in a desperate attempt to get his attention.

“Okay, okay,” you murmur, shifting her higher. “We see him. I know.”

He’s finishing a lap when you look up.

He cuts cleanly through the last stretch of water, arms slicing forward, shoulders rolling smooth and strong beneath the surface. When he reaches the wall, he plants his palms on the edge and hauls himself up enough to hook both forearms over the edge.

Water streams down his shoulders, along the swell of his biceps, dripping from his chin in steady rivulets. The sun turns every drop of water on his skin into a shimmering prism of light.

He wipes his face with both hands, dragging them down over his eyes to clear the chlorine, and slicks his hair back.

Then he looks up.

And it’s unfair, how his whole face changes.

Recognition lights him up instantly, his mouth curving into that easy, unguarded smile you’ve seen a dozen times now—one that pulls gentle crow’s feet around those ridiculously kind eyes.

At first glance, they're just brown.

Until the sun hits.

Then a deep shade of hazel starts to blossom at the edges, that slow spill of green feathering inward. Honey-warm at the center, almost amber where the light pools. A kind of kaleidoscope you only notice if you stare for too long.

Which you don’t.

He grins wide as you approach the pool deck, squinting slightly against the glare off the water.

There’s always this split second where he looks so openly happy to see you.

Or, more accurately—to see your daughter.

You lower yourself carefully to sit at the edge, adjusting your grip because your daughter is now folding herself in half trying to reach him.

“Hey," he smiles, glancing toward the clock mounted near the lifeguard chair. "You guys are early today,”

“Yeah, I know, she—” Your daughter lets out a determined grunt and lunges forward, feet thumping against your thigh as she tries to swan-dive straight into the water. “—Okay, okay! Hold on!”

Steve laughs, water sloshing around his waist when he lifts himself up with one hand.

“Whoa,” he says gently, catching your daughter by the ankle before she can kick you in the ribs. “Here, let me see those.”

He wiggles her foot up and down, thumb brushing over the soft arch of her sole to make her squirm. She giggles, kicking against his palm the way he’s been teaching her to do in the water.   

His eyes grow wide. “Hey! Those are some serious kicks. You been practicing without me?”

You laugh, tightening your grip before she can try to launch herself again. “Sorry, she’s just... really happy to see you."

He smiles at that, still holding her tiny foot in his hand. He gives it another gentle wiggle, brushing over her little toes.

“Yeah?” he murmurs to her, playful. “You're happy to see me?”

Then he glances up at you.

And it’s very deliberate, the way he looks at you when he says it.

Something soft in his smile when he tells you,

“I'm happy to see her, too.”

𓇼

It really was just curiosity at first.

You’d sit on the shallow steps with the other parents, water lapping at your calves, your daughter balanced against your chest while you adjusted her rash guard for the tenth time.

And you’d watch him.

He’d kneel in waist-deep water, a half-circle of bobbing babies surrounding him like ducklings. Wisps of hair pasted to tiny foreheads, fat cheeks glistening with water. Tiny palms slapping the surface while he explained very seriously that, “Pools are for swimming, not drinking. Ah, ah, Ben—I saw that, bud.”   

Gentle water acclimation and back floats came first.

Then came assisted front floats.

Your stomach tightened the moment he announced it.

Your daughter had only just begun to stop crying when her ears dipped into the pool. Turning her over to face the water felt like betrayal.

You shifted her in your arms, hesitating.

Then you felt a pair of warm hands brush gently against yours.

“Here, you mind if I show you? No, no, you're fine, you're doing great. You just want to support her like… this.”

You watched his hand slide over yours, cupping under her stomach to demonstrate proper placement. The span of his palm was wider than your daughter’s entire torso, fingers splayed across her round little belly, thumb braced lightly against her ribs. His other hand hovered near her shoulder, ready to catch her if she tipped even slightly.

Your chest tightened as you let go.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured you, glancing up with an easy smile. “I’ve got her, promise.”

He knelt in the pool so he was eye-level with her, bringing his face close enough that she could focus on him instead of the water beneath her.

“You’re okay, I’ve got you,” he murmured, voice dropping into that calm, even register he uses with all the kids. “See? Just floating. That's not scary, right?”

And though his eyes were on her, you had the distinct feeling the reassurance was meant just as much for you.

He eased her forward across the water, keeping her chin well above the surface, adjusting instinctively when her body went stiff. 

“Can you kick for me?” he coaxed, lifting one of her chubby legs and moving it through the water. “Kick? Like this?”

For a second, she just blinked at him. Then both legs started flailing at once—wild, enthusiastic splashes that sent arcs of water straight into his face.

He sputtered, wiping at his eyes with his shoulder. “Hey! Okay! There we go!”

He turned to you, grin wide, blinking away droplets from his lashes.

“You might wanna start saving up for Olympic training.”

It was the first time he made you smile like that.

It wouldn’t be the last.

𓇼

“Uppies” are his favorite part of class.

At the end of every session, when the babies are pruny and a little glassy-eyed with exhaustion, he rounds everyone up for one last game.

He holds each baby under the arms, gently lowering them until the water reaches their shoulders. Leans in close, dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper—ready?—then hoists them high overhead with a loud whoooosh!

The pool always fills with shrieks of laughter, your daughter’s being the loudest.

She’s fearless now. The same baby who used to cling to your shoulders now squeals in joy whenever he dips her in. Wraps her arms around his neck, fingers tangling in the ends of his damp hair. One time, out of pure excitement, she smacked him square on the cheek. He’d only laughed, lifting her back up for another round.

“You like that, huh?” he grinned, a little breathless from doing twenty sets of baby shoulder-presses. “Okay, okay—one more. But that’s it. Last one.”

It’s never the last one.

He always does it again. Then again. Down, up, down, up—biceps flexing with effort, cords of muscle rippling under sun-warmed skin.

It has to burn after a while, lifting water-logged, wriggling toddlers out of the water like that.

He never lets it show.

𓇼

After a few weeks, your daughter doesn’t hesitate anymore.  

The moment he’s close, she starts reaching.

Abandons your shoulders, ignores the bright foam rings floating nearby. Both arms stretched out toward him, fists clenching and unclenching impatiently.

You think it’s because she's come to associate him with safety. With warm, steady hands and that reassuring laugh that always comes right after something scary.

Like independent swims.

He backs slowly through the water while she paddles toward him, barely supporting her—just two fingers under her hands at first, then nothing.  

“It’s okay, you got it,” he encourages when she lets out a frustrated whine. “C’mon, show me those strong legs. Kick-kick-kick!”

Her face scrunches in fierce concentration. She paddles forward in determined bursts, swallowing a little water but pushing through.

“That’s it. Big kicks. Yeah, there you go!”

And the second her tiny hands smack against his chest, he steadies her instantly, sliding his hands under her arms.

“Yes! Look at you go!”

Up she goes, lifted higher and higher until her legs dangle, round belly catching the sunlight.

Droplets fall from his jaw, tracing down his throat as he tilts his head back to grin at her. His brows shoot up, eyes going wide in exaggerated disbelief.

“Woah!” he gasps. “That was all you! I didn’t even help!”

Your daughter squeals, loud and piercing, toes knocking clumsily against his chest. You watch as he lowers her back down, pressing his nose briefly to her cheek before settling her against his shoulder.

He turns to you, grinning so wide it creases his whole face.

Did you see that?! he mouths, eyes shining with pride, excitement radiating off him.

You can’t do much except smile and nod.

𓇼

The day you realize you’re well and truly gone is the day the class moves to the deeper end of the pool.  

The water reaches all the way up to Steve's chest there. The babies have got snug little float belts on, just enough to add buoyancy while they practice longer kicks and back floats.

Steve's hand rests under your daughter’s back, fingers spread between her shoulder blades, the other steadying her hip. You cling to the divider rope, peering anxiously at the deeper water where they float.

When he catches you watching, he bends down close, lowering his voice in an exaggerated whisper.

“Who's that?” he gasps, pointing at you. “Is that your mommy?”

Your daughter follows his finger. Sees you.

She squeals, slapping both hands into the water so hard it splashes up into his face.

“Yeah,” he laughs. “That’s your mom, huh? Say hi! Hi, mommy!”

He lifts one of her chubby arms out of the water and wiggles it in a wave. “Look at us! We’re in the deep end!”

She babbles wildly, smacking the surface some more.

He adjusts his hold on her so she’s secure against his side and calls out, “You wanna come join us, mom?”

You blink, heat rushing to your face. “Oh—uhh, no, that’s... I’m okay!”

He studies you for a moment, something curious flickering in his gaze, but doesn’t push.

“Alright, we’ll just show off from here then,” he calls back easily, shifting his attention back to your daughter. “You wanna show mommy your starfish? Yeah? C’mon, show me your starfish. That’s it!”

𓇼

He finds you at the end of class.  

You’re sitting at the edge of the pool, feet dangling just above the water. Your daughter is bunded up like a burrito in your lap, sucking from her sippy cup with half-lidded eyes, fighting sleep.

You see him walking toward you, still dripping from the pool.

Water traces slow paths down his calves, leaving faint wet footprints on the concrete. Without thinking, you reach into your bag and hold out your spare towel.

“Oh, thanks,” he breathes, a little winded still, taking it with a small smile.

He drops down beside you, close enough that your thighs brush. Drapes the towel over his shoulders and scrubs it briskly through his hair, roughing it up until it sticks out in uneven, damp spikes. A few strands fall back over his eyes.

You try very hard not to stare.

There are beads of water still clinging to his bare skin, catching in the dark tuft of hair at the center of his chest. One rolls down the soft line of his stomach before disappearing into the waistband of his swim trunks.

You clear your throat, suddenly very absorbed in fluffing up your daughter’s towel.

“Hey,” he says casually, nudging your shoulder lightly with his. “Were you okay earlier?”

You glance at him. “Earlier?”

“When we moved to the deep end.” He tips his head slightly, studying your face. “You just... seemed kinda freaked out.”

You huff a small, embarrassed laugh. “Was it that obvious?”

“A little,” he shrugs, smiling.

You shift your daughter higher on your lap and press a kiss into her damp hair, mostly so you don’t have to hold his gaze.

“I just, um…” you clear your throat. “I can’t really swim. Not very well, anyway.”

There’s a brief pause.

“Oh,” he says quietly.

When you glance up, you don't find any judgement on his face. Not really surprise, either. If anything, he looks thoughtful. Maybe a little relieved, like he’d worried it was something worse.

He adjusts the towel around his shoulders, rubbing at the back of his neck as he considers.

“Well,” he starts carefully, “would you want to learn how?”

You blink at him.

“It’s just—it's kind of an important skill to have, you know?" He supplies quickly. Then his gaze falters, drifting down to your lap, settling on your daughter who’s now blinking up at him with sleepy curiosity.

“I mean, I could uh... I could show you sometime. If you want.”

Oh.

“Oh—no, I—” you rush out, flustered. “I wouldn’t want to like, take up your time. You already have to deal with so many of us.”

He shakes his head, a small, easy smile pulling at his lips. “It’s fine, I don't mind. I'd be happy to do it.”

He turns to face you fully, smile turning playful when he adds, “Seriously, I won't even charge you."

That pulls a small laugh out of you.

“You won’t, huh?”

“Nope,” he says, eyes twinkling as he gestures to the small, bundled-up head peeking up at him. "Call it a... bonus. For having the cutest little swimmer around.”

You glance down at your daughter, smiling.

“I don’t know,” you say lightly, bouncing her on your leg. “This little swimmer has the tendency to get super jealous.”

He lets out a soft laugh, reaching out to gently nudge her pudgy cheek with his knuckle.

“What do you think?” he murmurs to her. “Should we teach mommy how to swim?”

Your daughter makes a soft, pleased noise, leaning into his hand.

Steve grins, then looks back up at you, gently brushing his thumb across your knee.

“So?” he asks, voice gone quieter.

His eyes hold yours—dark brown edged with hazel, warm honey pooling at the center.

“You trust me?” .   *　✦　　.　 ˚　✦　 .

[buckyarchives]

YOU LOVE ME / FRANK LANGDON

Frank Langdon x f!reader [1.5k]: one very drunk confession from Frank.

AO3 | the archives

“You’re the only person that makes me happy anymore.”

Frank Langdon was drunk, almost hilariously so. Pathetic, desperate, and close to needing a ride back to work.

The clock was ticking toward midnight; you weren’t even sure how Santos and Javadi had convinced half of the day shift to go out for a night of clubs and fruity drinks. Even Robby sat quietly and watched his attendees let loose and make a fool of themselves. Everyone here knew the technique of drowning sorrows in liquor very well.

It was mid-July, sickly humid, and almost a year since Frank came back preaching a new life. Yet, it hadn’t taken long for the heartless, ER Ken persona to come crawling back up on everyone like a disease.

And now everyone was watching it unravel sloppily under shitty dim lights of a bar Trinity had found on 5th Avenue.

Everything from embracing his divorcee life karaoke singing Single Ladies with Dana completely out of tune, suddenly gaining the energy of something akin to his own boys whilst he climbed the closest thing possible just because, and confessing some drunken affection to you in front of all your coworkers.

Frank Langdon was all boyish smiles and floppy hair once the alcohol hit him. Bouncing on his feet and acting nicer to everyone than the past year of shifts combined. Sometimes that kindness only extended to you on days, to your mystery. Maybe until now, yet the claims from him only confused you more.

You weren’t drunk enough for this, the words struggled to pass through your head, despite how easily they seemed to leave Frank's mouth. Whitaker's eyes went wide, sensing the tension, and he seemed to excuse himself, dragging Trinity away from the table with him despite how much she was obviously eating this up.

Frank swayed, seemingly distracted and almost immediately forgetting what he had just told you. Or it simply didn’t phase him in his current drunken stupor.

“Alright, Dr. Langdon.” You got up and gently grasped his shoulder, maybe for a clear sign of life. You searched for his eyes, “let’s get you home? Yeah?”

“Yes.” He slurred.

It was towards the end of the night anyway, you tried not to think about Robby’s eyes on the back of your neck while you grabbed your things and coaxed Frank out the door as you dodged his grasping hands as he stumbled out.

Your hands found his shoulders and Frank felt warm and way too alive under your touch, practically buzzing. Your hair stuck to your skin from the heat, and the air felt heavy once you found yourself standing in front of a Frank on the sidewalk of downtown Pittsburgh.

Frank looked freer than ever, his shoulders didn’t tense and his smile was real. It’s been over a year, but you worry about what this will do to his recovery. He looks happy, so you shove that gut-wrenching thought down for now.

Then he says it again: “You’re the only person that makes me this happy.”

He's borderline giggling under his breath, cheeks flush.

“Frank, you gotta stop saying that.” You murmur, trying to avoid his gaze that's set on you. That boyish charm cannot grab hold of you now, so you look at the skyline.

“It might be unfortunate to hear,” his feet shuffled towards you, “but it’s true.”

You looked up and all humor left his tone, expression was fixed with an earned gaze directed right at you.

It’s human nature to do what’s familiar when met with an uncontrollable and new situation. You were a doctor after all. Taking care of people at a distance is familiar and practiced. Boundaries. Safety.

“You're drunk,” you say, attempting to pull him out of whatever lovey bubble he’s in and get the man home.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t such a surprise as one may think. The practiced dance you and Langdon perform has been crafted over the years. The lingering touches, meetings in the fleetingly quiet halls over a Cliff bar in vending machines. The gaze worth a thousand words, the smiles, the banter.

You had been in deep and almost ruined by Dr. Frank Landon’s and it almost came to a head. Then he left for ten months and the reset button was hit.

But enough liquor could make the man address this unspoken thing like it was small talk. The elephant in the room stood right in front of you and was unmoving.

“You know I’m telling the truth.” Frank smiled, “Uh, what do they say? About the sober words—“

“Drunk words are sober thoughts.” You answered, groaning.

“Yeah.” The giddy smile just grew, if possible. “You’re so smart, always have been.”

“Come on,” you touch fell to his back to walk him to your car. Your hand tingled.

“You always take such good care of everyone, take good care of me.” Frank's words were almost incomprehensible. His shoulders swaying into yours, almost leaning into you.

“You have alcohol poisoning, Frank.”

The snort that left his mouth almost made you giggle, “and you're funny.”

“I’m being serious.” You whine.

“So am I.”

You can’t find the words to respond to him, any fight dies in your throat and you let a familiar feeling flutter through you and flip your lower stomach. Overly aware of Frank’s hands holding onto you as he shuffled down the sidewalk, he was a big boy who could stand on his own despite the shots, a part of you knew Frank didn’t need to lean on you as much as he was. Deeper down, it warmed your chest and you decided that you liked it.

The warm, almost orange streetlights flickered, you couldn’t not notice how gorgeous Frank was. He earned his nickname for a reason, it wasn’t rare for girls to want him, it seemed everyone did at one point. Despite the marriage but less now after the 10-month leave.

You used to be puzzled when Frank's eye found you first in the ER, even more when you noticed it became a pattern. Then you learned how to bathe in it, falling into step with Frank in every possible way at work, sometimes even outside. Always comfortable. Always unspoken.

Frank's hair was a tussled mess, his shirt unbuttoned to peak at the hair that decorated his chest. Frank knew what your gaze felt like on him, his head falling to find your eyes.

“You’re staring.” He said, finding your car and slowing to a halt. Frank's hands are still on you.

“Making sure you're still with us.”

“Okay, doc.” He jokes, but you can’t laugh. The air’s too heavy. Tension weighing down on you, or maybe that was just Frank. “So, you're coming home with me?”

You didn’t say anything, just shot him an annoyed look. A glare, even.

A sickly sweet smile grew on his face, “Oh, so that’s when your care stops.”

“Pervert.” You mutter.

The humid weather suddenly goes ignored once Frank parts from you, feeling unbelievably cold when he goes to lean against your car. You felt almost uncomfortable.

Frank's shoulder slack, dopey, boyish smile, and it all pointed at you. Looking at you like you held the moon and strung the star, in his mind you practically do every day for him.

Maybe it’s the alcohol, the welcomed breeze in the air as midnight hits, or the way it seemed you were glowing before him.

As easily as the whisky went down Frank's throat hours ago he said: “You love me.”

Words spoken as easily as breathing, gaze softer than he’d ever given you. You were frozen. You wanted to melt. All the air was sucked from your throat as Frank broke the one unspoken rule between you too. The tension is crashing down on your chest.

“Maybe.” You swallow, you bite a grin.

Frank adores you, anyone could tell by how his eyes glistened right now. “I’ll take it, now take me home?”

“Yes, Langdon. Home.” You click your fob and he already goes for your passenger seat. Dramatically flopping onto your leather seats, a dramatic sigh escaping him as he falls limp in your seat, smile not fleeting for a moment.

“I’m too inebriated to buckle, I need assistance from a doctor.” He slurs.

“You’re impossible.” You groan through a grin, reaching across him to buckle him up. “And perfectly capable.”

“But you love taking care of me.” Frank's tone fell to a whisper and you realize how close his face is to yours, nose to nose. Your body betrays you when you glance at his lips for a moment, he still looked giddy but his smile fell and he put up a more serious front.

“I’ll tell you how I feel when you’re awake tomorrow, and sober.”

He grins once more, “Does that mean you're staying over?”

“If you don’t puke in my car.” You’re finding it hard to pull away from him and just get in your seat and drive. “Then, sure.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Everything in you wants to kiss him, to grasp at his dark hair and warm, flushed cheeks.

But Frank Langdon is drunk and confessing to you. So you tell yourself you’ll kiss him if his story stays up once the buzz leaves his body and you get in your driver's seat.

Taglist: @xreader1989

[divorcedfranklangdon]

he heard that there was MelMisery and locked in

[selenewowww-deactivated20260430]

someone give me the energy to open my steve wip

[cognacqueen]

Jack Abbot gets off on having you spend his money.

That man constantly gives you his card to use so you can buy whatever you want. He likes you using his money so much he made you an authorized user on his card and had you add it to your phone so you could use it with Apple Pay. The man is so insane he has his notifications for his card turned on not because he wants to monitor your spending, but because every new ding he gets in his phone leads to another twitch of his cock. He’ll actually get offended & hurt if you don’t use his money that he so generously gives. It’s not even about the money, he has enough of it and could give less of a shit about spending it himself because he’s a cheapskate. But he feels comforted & sleeps better at night knowing he can provide for you and take care of you, regardless if you have a career or not. He just wants you taken care of. He wants to make your life easier.

Jack “I’ll pay for it” Abbot is a man that gets hard when you buy a $8 latte at your favorite cafe. He doesn’t give a fuck, just spend the man’s money and he’ll be happy.

(Thank you to @maiamore for mentioning the notification thing to me cause yeah he fucking would. He’s a madman. Old whore!)

[buckyarchives]