w/ pope cody 18+ sexually explicit content ; daddy kink
neither of you remember how it started or when and where he first asked you. maybe it was while he was midday fucking you against the tiled shower wall - his favorite place to do you - or maybe it was in the dead of the night, while he’d sneakily slipped into your bed beside you after mysteriously entering your apartment despite you never having gave him a key. you’re not sure, and most of the times he’s said it have blended together in his head, but there’s no mistaking there’s one question andrew cody loves asking you more than anything else: who’s daddy’s baby?
after you’ve been sitting quietly on his thigh at the patio table in smurf’s backyard, only halfway attentive to whatever meeting is commencing - pope having told his brothers that you’re a good girl, you’d never rat, you wouldn’t even actually be listening because he told you not to - he’d stand you up just as everyone else does, turning you around his arms as the boys head inside to prepare for the job they’ve just discussed. he’d cup your cheeks with his rough, calloused palms, pushing his thumbs in ever so slightly to make your lips pucker, before leaning in with his intense gaze and gravely voice, “who’s daddy’s baby? hm?”
your eyes would be pulled so high to meet his, feeling the surging warmth of his hands, something you search for constantly with him. a murmur from your smushed lips, “me, daddy. i am.”
“that’s right, you are. and daddy’s baby’s gotta be a good girl for him while he’s gone, yeah?” he’d tilt his head forward, still keeping your eyes, his voice softening in the way that’s only possible for you, “you’re gonna go lay down in my room and wait for me ‘til i come back.” your nod indicates your total obedience, his most perverted obsession about you, before he ghosts his lips over your forehead and sends you on your way inside.
or maybe during a particularly cranky day for you, as you seem to carry a permanent pout and whine on your lips; he’d be sat on the couch of his apartment, setting his beer down on the coffee table, finally so sick of your moodiness and his inability all day to cure it. bringing you into his big, burly arms, guiding your head to his shoulder with his fingers spanning your entire skull, beginning to comb your hair down, “shh, ‘s okay… don’t need to be so pouty, baby. c’mere, look at me… who’s daddy’s baby?”
eyebrows knit with a wobbly chin, pope’s greens lingering on that sweet, plump lower lip of yours, you’d shake your head with a sniffle, refusing to answer.
he’d tilt his head to the side, crooked smiling, almost amused, “don’t gimme that. c’mon, say it. who’s daddy’s pretty, cranky baby?”
“me.”
“and who loves her more than anything else in the world?”
“daddy does.”
he can’t help but coo, tucking your head below his chin as he drags his hand down to rub circles on your back, underneath your shirt, “yeah. daddy does. see, knew you knew it. now hush the whining, lemme make it better.”
and definitely while he’s got your ankles crossed right above his asscrack, plowing into you hard enough that the bedframe squeaks and scrapes the wood floor every few seconds. he’s a huffing mess as his thumb lives on your tongue, both your hands wrapped tight around his wrist, your saliva drenching his digit completely. “who’s daddy’s baby, huh? it’s you, isn’t it? using my finger like a fucking pacifier, fuck…”
he’s grunting, grabbing your chin forcefully as you arch and cry out at a particularly magnificent stroke, your jaw pliant under his harsh touch, “say it. say it like i own you, like you’ll never even think about it leaving me. say it!”
missing my sweetie big dick fictional man right now and thinking about how pope cody would have no idea he’s good at sex.
like completely clueless.
he would be on his knees, eating you out until you’re clawing at the sheets, eyes brimming with tears, spine arching like it’s about to snap. pope doesn’t even really know what he’s doing. he just makes sure to repeat everything that makes you clench around his fingers and twitch on his tongue. and you’re so close when he curls his two thick digits and sucks you into his mouth. your legs lock up.. your belly feels tight with tingles.. pleasure starts to rise almost alllll the way to your ears and…
he pulls away with a gruff “d’ya like that?”. and it’s not a sexy taunt. his tone is questioning and he’s being completely, utterly serious. you whine in frustration “andrew!!” he looks genuinely confused. “w-what?” your hips buck towards his mouth involuntarily, body aching with the need to come. “i was so close!” popes dark brows furrow in confusion. “you were…” it takes him three slow blinks while staring at your squirming thighs and fluttering pussy to finally understand. his eyes widen “oh shit- m’ sorry sweetheart..” then dives back in. sucking you and scissoring his fingers until you cry out his name and come on his face about twenty seconds later.
or or or. he doesn’t really understand how huge his cock feels inside of you. he’s aware he’s well endowed. but he thinks you’re just being a good girlfriend when you moan so loud at his first push into your tight pussy. pope always forgets that you’re not just stroking his ego. not quite understanding that you’re loud whimpers that accompany his thick length are authentic. he’ll thrust in and out of you harsh at the start. you can barely speak through the painful stretch of his rapid plunges. your gasps are choked “a-andy! andy s-slow down!” and he does get a little lost in the sauce as he watches your tits bounce beneath him. you have to slap at his shoulder to snap him out of it. “fuck- sorry. feels s’good. i’ll- hhnng- i’ll go slow. promise.”
then he’ll roll over until you’re on top of him. hands bracing his chest and thighs nestled firmly at his hips. he lets you set the pace to make sure he won’t hurt you again. it’s sweet.. until he won’t move again at all unless you’re bouncing up and down fervently. begging him to thrust up into you. “p-please! andy it doesn’t hurt.. need you- please!” once he decides you’re in no pain at all, he’ll grip your hips and piston up into you until you can’t move on your own anymore. completely filled with him. drooling at the pleasure coiling in your lower stomach. and pope is more than confident that you’re not exaggerating when you collapse with a raspy moan as you orgasm on his thick cock <3
Tags/warnings: Deran's friend!Reader, touch starved!Andrew (what's new), age gap (reader is mid 20s, Pope is almost 40), slow burn, friends to lovers, touchy reader, physical touch as a love language, injured!pope, a little angst cause it's Andrew, intox reader (she drinks and smokes at one of their parties and gets handsy [cute] with pope, he's a gentleman about it), Pope is just a big ol' simp, cuddling, unprotected piv sex, creampie, [inaccurate show dynamics, mostly cause I didn’t wanna deal with Cath (lover her though)]
Summary: Pope doesn't like to be touched...at least not until he met you.
a/n: my favorite touch starved boy <3
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The first time it happens it's an accident.
There’s people in his house when there shouldn't be.
The music is too loud, the bodies too hot and sweaty.
He’s standing in the kitchen like a weirdo, even he can acknowledge it.
But he truly doesn’t know what to do. Where to go.
He’s been gone for three years. He doesn’t recognize anyone anymore. Where the fuck is he even supposed to start?
It’s your meek “excuse me” that breaks him out of the spell he’s under, gaze finally sharpening as he comes back down to the present moment.
Everything rushes back to him, overwhelmingly. He’s suddenly too aware of it all, especially your timid grip on his bicep as you try to move him out of the way.
The touch doesn’t linger. It’s fleeting, unlike the reality that Pope finds himself in.
You side step around his imposing frame, a shy smile on your lips, one that makes his head spin.
You shouldn’t be nice to him, hell, you shouldn’t be nice to any asshole you don’t know. Did no one teach you—
And then you turn on the kitchen sink, gently cleaning the glass you’ve been using unlike everyone’s disposable, plastic ones.
An air of familiarity courses through him. You’re…comfortable in his home. You’re taking care of the space that no one, not even his brothers, could give two fucks about.
He can’t help but stare, his thoughts rendering him unable to look the other way, to go back to being stoic and uninterested.
If you feel him glaring you don’t let him know it, your body language remaining relaxed all the way through wiping the glass dry and standing on your tip toes to place it back on the shelf above you.
That’s when he moves.
It’s instinctual. His mother’s voice clear in his ear, urging him to help a lady in need.
He steps up, crowds your personal space yet gives you room to escape if you feel uncomfortable.
You turn to him then, your bright eyes meeting his as your fingers barely touch. He instantly forces himself to look away, afraid that he’s going to let the glass fall if he loses himself in your gaze.
“Thanks,” you mumble, shooting him another smile as you settle back down on your feet, the movement shifting you closer against his chest.
It honestly makes Pope dizzy. Feeling your warmth, smelling the faint softness of your perfume.
You don’t turn to move for the millisecond it takes for him to finish pushing the glass into place, perfectly aligned with the others.
It’s only when he too settles back down that you turn to him expectantly.
“You’re welcome.”
Pope guesses that’s what you’re looking for and he’s proven correct instantly as you bless him with another blinding smile.
His stomach does another flip.
Who the fuck are you?
Before he can ask, what he believes to be your name is called because you instantly turn towards the sound.
He commits your name to memory, such a fitting one for such a—
“Angel! There you are!” Daren breaks through the crowd like a lifeline, one that you instantly take, stepping away from Pope and towards him like a magnet.
You settle against his side like you’re meant to be there, his arm leisurely draping over your shoulders in a familiarity that makes Pope’s blood boil with a flurry of emotions he simply cannot pinpoint.
“See you’ve met Pope,” Deran notes and you turn back to Pope with wide eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” you start, tone remorseful. “I had no idea you were Deran’s brother, I would’ve introduced myself.”
You genuinely mean it and it almost causes Pope to snap at you. You don’t owe him anything.
“’s okay,” Pope mumbles instead, his gaze piercing.
“Well it’s really nice to meet you,” you hold out your hand for him to take.
Pope’s jaw clenches. He makes no effort to move, to reciprocate your kind gesture. He can see the disappointment in your face, how it falls instantly. You’re not used to being denied, to being told no, and for a second Pope almost cracks.
But he can’t. He won’t let himself do it.
No, because he knows that the second you give him even an inch of familiarity he will devour you whole.
“Don’t take it personally, angel,” Deran practically glares daggers at him. “He’s not really into that.”
Your mouth curls into a silent oh and Pope shrugs in response.
It’s all he can do to not come across as a complete weirdo instantly upon meeting you, more than he already has.
You copy him, shrugging like you’re unbothered but he knows for a fact you aren’t as your hand instantly retracts back towards you, seeking Deran’s instead.
His fingers interlace with yours like it’s second nature, overly intimate. Pope’s brows scrunch in confusion, barely. Are the two of you…a couple?
“Anyway, I’ll see you around.”
Pope gives you one last grunt of acknowledgement before Deran is pulling you away, back towards the backyard where all the action is happening.
He obviously keeps his eyes trained on you as you leave, on how your jean shorts hug your ass, how your body is sun-kissed and a little burnt from the summer heat wave, how your hair flows effortlessly.
And then you turn to glance back at him for what feels like minutes, your eyes filled with nothing but curiosity.
His eyes force him to blink then and he loses you to the crowd.
Fuck.
The next time Pope sees you, you’re back at the house for a pool day with his family. It’s a small gathering this time around, just their inner circle which apparently now includes you too.
You’re in a striking blue bikini, the color contrasting beautifully against your skin. You’re sitting on one of the lounge chairs, your legs open so a hyper Lena can settle in between them.
You can barely contain your laughter as the young girl tells you a silly story from school, your fingers working overtime to braid her long hair in one of those fancy styles that Pope could never name so that it won’t get too tangled from the pool.
Your laughter hits him like a disorienting grenade. It’s like he's never heard anyone feel joy the way you do. It's infectious, making him wonder if he’s ever actually felt a real emotion in his life.
“There, all done,” you tie up Lena’s hair and give her back a little pat before the girl practically bolts from your embrace, yelling a swift thank you before cannonballing into the pool as everyone cheers.
Andrew’s about to move forward, to settle down beside you, a pull to be near you clouding his senses.
But then Craig has to go and ruin it.
“Me next,” the oaf practically towers over you, settling down between your legs like Lena had, taking advantage of how you haven't moved.
You roll your eyes playfully but don’t complain.
Pope watches as you take his hair out of the messy bun that he’s got it in, gently scratching his scalp. His younger brother moans, causing you to stop and smack the side of his head.
Pope’s lips quirk up into a smirk. Good, set his brother’s straight.
But Craig is not deterred, simply reaching back and squeezing your thigh cockily.
It takes everything in Pope not to lunge forward. He doesn’t understand it, how protectiveness practically flares up in his chest at the sight of someone else’s grubby hands on your soft flesh.
He honestly doesn’t know how Deran lets it happen. They both know his brother so why is he letting Craig be so chummy with you?
Unless…you’re not actually together, together.
Is it possible that you’re just like this with everyone?
You finish braiding his hair then, meanly tossing it over his shoulder so that the tail end of it smacks him on the face.
“There princess,” you tease. “All done.”
Craig flinches as the band hits him, bursting out into a fit of laughter as he stands up and follows Lena’s example, splashing into the pool so hard that he ends up soaking you completely.
Lena laughs as you gasp dramatically. “You meanie!”
“Payback’s a bitch—” Craig starts, quickly correcting himself as you glare at him. “Payback, angel.”
Deran snorts, taking a swig of his beer from his spot at the other side of the pool. A spark of something is set ablaze in your gaze, a playfulness that borders on mischief.
“Oh yeah?” It takes them a few seconds to process what you’re doing as you sprint towards them, throwing yourself in the pool as close to Deran as possible.
Pope audibly snickers as you drench his youngest brother.
The backyard is set ablaze with teasing soon after, every single member of his family sans him and his mother engaging in a water fight for the ages.
Pope settles on the lounge chair that you’ve vacated, your warmth still lingering on the fabric beneath him.
He’s transfixed by you. By the ease in which you can bring lightness to his family, as though you can lift the weight they all carry on their shoulders, even if it’s just for a little while.
Another thought crosses Pope’s mind then — is it possible that you could be like this with him too?
Laughter only turns even more boisterous as you enter the living room, a baking dish in hand.
“Angel!” Both Deran and Craig greet you, your smile beaming as you round the table to say hi to Smurf first. You know the rules of this house well by now, a genuine comfort to Pope who at least doesn’t have to worry about you with his family.
He watches intently as you chat with the older woman, handing her the dish, humble enough to tell her it’s not something as grandiose as the roast she has prepared but you didn’t want to show up empty handed.
His mother smiles at you, her ego fed enough as she stands up and goes to heat it up in the kitchen.
You don’t let her comments get to you, instead you go around the table, saying hello to everyone, your touch always lingering, always soft and playful.
Deran gives you a hug, Craig kisses your cheek affectionately, Baz only gives you a nod in acknowledgement and Pope can’t help but smirk satisfactorily against his beer. You ruffle J’s hair and give Nicky a kiss to her temple.
You’re comfortable, confident, secure in your place within their family. You don’t back down to his mother, you don’t shrink away to Baz’s hesitancy, you—
Your eyes catch him staring from across the room. He’s subconsciously backed away the second he saw you come in, practically hiding in the threshold.
You give him a shy wave over Nicky’s shoulder, a gesture he reciprocates with a grunt and a barely there head bob.
Fuck, he’s even worse than Baz.
But you don’t look at him with the same disdain as you do his half-brother. Instead, something else ignites in your eyes. A challenge, almost, to chip away at the ice around his heart. But little do you know that it’s already melting away, and neither of you can stop it.
You eagerly help Smurf bring the rest of the food out before the entire family sits down around the overflowing table.
You make it a point to sit next to him, to never once let him think that his presence is unwanted, even if he refuses to give you the type of relationship that you want, that you crave.
You fill up his plate without asking him and if you weren’t so damn adorable he’d be angry about it. But he simply cannot be. He just lets you, watching silently as you tell the room a story from a crazy class you had to experience the week before.
Your hands move in tandem with your voice, making it a point to not draw attention to what you’re doing, as if serving Pope food is somehow normal. And for a second he can let himself believe that it is, that you taking care of him is how things are meant to be.
It’s only when Deran whispers something to Craig that has the two snickering that Pope finally breaks free from your spell, mumbling a quick thank you under his breath before you settle down to eat as Lena tells the table what she got up to in school over the week now.
You hum in acknowledgement, listening to his niece intently, like you actually care about her babbling, because you do.
After lunch, the crowd disperses throughout the house, the kitchen settling into a comfortable silence where Pope can finally breathe again.
He’s always relegated to clean up duty, mostly because he likes it that way, it’s something he can control.
“Where do you want these?” You ask, causing him to turn to face you from his spot in front of the sink.
He stammers for a second, blinking away the brain fog that you always seem to bring with you every time you bless him with your undivided attention.
He crooks his head towards the left side of the sink and you move swiftly, placing the stack of plates you’ve gathered into the space.
You don’t linger this time, no, you make it a point to step away as soon as you can but not before Pope feels his body shifting towards you.
Oh, you definitely know what you’re doing.
He shakes his head as he returns to his task of dishwashing. You return periodically, bringing by glasses, cutlery, baking dishes and everything else his family could’ve thought to leave behind like the animals they are.
Once the entire table is cleared, you settle beside Pope, dish towel in hand and begin drying what he's just washed.
It’s…nice.
Pope’s not used to someone actually wanting to help him but he finds himself quickly falling into the rhythm of your comforting presence.
“I never really asked,” you start conversation after what feels like a small eternity, turning to face Pope curiously. “Do you prefer Pope or Andrew?”
You ask as if it’s not a loaded question. Well, to you it isn’t, there’s no way for you to know about the weight his name carries over him. To you it’s just about making sure you’re calling him by the name he wants to be called, nothing more, nothing less.
But to Pope it’s…euphoric.
He stays silent for a while, thinking, and you let him without an ounce of judgment. You return to your repetitive motions, to working side by side, in tandem, coordinated.
Meanwhile, a storm rages waste in his brain. He’s never allowed himself to want, to put himself first, and for the first time in his life, someone is allowing himself to do just that.
But is it real? Do you actually mean it?
It’s only when he’s finished washing the last plate, handing it over to you that he finally allows himself to look your way.
“Andrew,” he mumbles before he loses the courage to. “Call me Andrew.”
You turn to him, setting down the plate atop the mountain you’ve created, nodding your understanding.
“Andrew,” you repeat back to him. “It suits you more.”
He can’t help the blush that creeps up his neck and to his ears, the heat that blooms in his chest, the way his intense gaze falters like a lovesick teenager as his mouth devolves into a dopey smile.
You don’t make fun of him for it, don’t even acknowledge it. You just stay there with him, following through with your help and leaving the kitchen spotless.
A few hours later he finds himself protectively escorting you out to your car, much to the snickers and teasing of his brothers which, thankfully, you’re not privy to as you say your goodbye to Lena and Cath.
“Bye Andrew,” you call out to him, and like a moth to a flame, he can’t help but step towards you, almost expectantly.
You hugged everyone else in his family, maybe—
Your eyes sparkle with delight as his body leans towards your again, a reaction neither of you was expecting.
You close the distance without hesitation, getting back up on your tip toes to plant a soft kiss to his cheek.
It’s over as quickly as it started, no lingering, no invading his space more than needed.
He’s certain he stops breathing, his brain short circuiting as you settle into the driver’s seat and follow Baz out of the family compound.
You’re not special. He reminds himself. She’s like this with everyone.
And yet reason doesn’t quell the pounding of his heart, the way his breathing hitches as he finally wills himself to take in a deep breath, the need to see you again.
He doesn’t see you for a while, exam season taking over most of your time and planning a new job taking up most of his.
He’s just had a disagreement with his brothers, it’s the only reason why he finds himself out by the pier, supposedly clearing his head with a walk like normal people do, but instead the voices are just getting louder and louder.
“Uncle Pope!”
Lena’s voice cuts through the noise. His gaze sharpens towards it, his frame lowering, arms opening, making space for her.
She doesn’t shy away from him, embracing him lovingly because to her, he’s just her uncle, a little weird but never dangerous.
It’s only when she steps back that Pope notices you.
You walk towards them leisurely, not wanting to break apart the cute display happening before you.
“Hi,” it’s the only thing that flows from his lips.
“Hi yourself,” you reply, placing your hands on Lena’s shoulders to keep her close to the two of you. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a family meeting all afternoon.”
Pope blinks back the shock. How close are you to his family? How much do you know?
“Ended early.”
You nod, Lena squirming in your embrace, gasping as realization dawns on her.
“Can Uncle Pope get ice cream with us?”
You chuckle at her impatience, causing Pope to huff playfully at just how adorable his niece is being.
“That’s up to him, sweetie.”
And how is he supposed to say no when his niece looks up to him with the most adorable eyes ever. “Please Uncle Pope!”
He nods. “Okay.”
Lena practically jumps into him out of joy, her tiny hand wrapping around his as she drags him towards the boardwalk shops.
You laugh behind them, jogging to catch up as she pulls you towards them, wrapping her other hand in yours.
Lena’s a bubblegum flavor fiend, extra sprinkles and gummy bears. You’re classic, rich and decadent, chocolate in a cup. Pope almost feels bad for getting a simple vanilla scoop in a waffle cone.
“Tell them to dip it in chocolate,” you whisper to him. “Trust me.”
He doesn’t know how to answer, blinking at you in surprise.
Trust me. Such a simple concept and yet…there’s still something that doesn’t let him take that leap.
But what does he know about ice cream.
So he does, he tries something new.
You smile brightly as you turn to receive your sweet treats, making sure Lena’s sitting down on one of the benches before you go up to pay.
But Pope’s quicker, pulling out a bill from his pocket and taking care of it before you can even ask the cashier how much it’s gonna be.
You roll your eyes at him when she tells you you’re too late and he can’t help but smirk victoriously.
“Thank you Andrew,” you relent, accepting your cup from his outstretched hand, your fingers gently grazing as you do.
The spark of electricity that snaps down Pope’s body is life inducing.
“You’re welcome.”
You settle next to Lena who’s munching ecstatically at her sugary confection, pink already staining her shirt.
Pope takes a seat on the other side of his niece.
He settles into the simplicity of intimacy with ease again, the gentle waves crashing up ahead, the cool afternoon air filling his senses with the comfort of saltwater.
Existing has never felt as easy as this. As something pleasant and unhurried, not having to pretend to be anything other than who he is.
Pope can’t help watch the two of you in complete awe. How you dote on Lena and how she reciprocates the action, something he’s never seen her do in the months since he’s been back.
She feels free here, not like the little girl who’s quiet and reserved with her now estranged parents. No, she’s alert and alive, playful and aloof. It makes Pope’s heart soar as he watches the two of you so effortlessly blend together, his own ice cream melting and making a mess of him soon enough.
The house is uncharacteristically quiet.
He’s the only one there, he’s sure of it. Smurf left the second she got the call that the job had gone sour and they had to split up, rushing to Baz’s because she knows Pope is too spiteful to die on her. Meanwhile J has gotten really injured and Smurf’s new baby comes first now.
It doesn’t matter to Pope. At least he tells himself he doesn’t hate himself a little more the second he hears his mother’s heels retreat down the hall, her car soon only a phantom noise as she speeds off.
Alone in the house, the quiet gets to him quickly. The typically bright and spacious home constricting in on him as he struggles down the hall to his old room.
He tries not to think about how the rough concrete walls feel against his sensitive fingertips, how the familiar pain in his side hums with the pressure of painful memories, how he’s definitely not back in that tiny jail cell after he had another psychotic break in prison and got himself thrown in solitary for another week.
No, he definitely does not think about how he was left struggling with his sanity, floating aimlessly, stuck inside his own head trying to desperately find some comfort to cling to as he curled in on himself to find a position where it didn’t hurt him to breathe.
He swings the door to his room open without thinking twice about it.
It’s early in the morning, no one’s been home since the night before, and yet, the second he comes inside, he instantly notices the way the air smells different, sweeter.
He stills, his hand not clutched to his side slowly sliding to the back of his jeans to feel the comforting weight of his gun handle. Meanwhile his eyes rake over the room, the unmade bed, the clothes—his clothes—scattered on the floor.
“Andy?” Your sweet, sleepy voice calls to him from his ensuite bathroom and he turns to it like an idiot boy with a childlike crush, eyes wide and heart practically beating out of his chest as if he isn’t currently in such devastating pain but he doesn’t dare make you uncomfortable.
Fuck, why does he feel like such a creep?
A sharp inhale springs you into action, crossing into the unlit room to take him in, suddenly wide awake it seems.
He doesn’t have the heart to stop you as your soft hands come up to inspect the gash on his brow, the purpling under his eye. Timid fingertips trace a path down his chest, landing softly over the hand at his abdomen.
You don’t say anything, don’t lash out at him, don’t flinch back in fear as you slowly lift his palm, assessing the damage. He doesn’t know why he lets you, it doesn’t make any logical sense, and yet he just melts into your hands, lets you maneuver him however you desire as he finally lets the dam crack.
You remain silent as tears stain his cheeks, as you gently pull him into the bathroom and sit him down on the edge of the tub, as you wrap your hands on the hem of his shirt and pull it over his head.
He knows you feel the gun tucked into his pants but you don’t let the shock show on your face. Instead, when you turn to discard his shirt behind you, he simply pulls it out himself, placing it on top of the counter, safety on always.
You turn to assess him then. Luckily the switchblade didn’t do too much damage, just one long enough gash that has since stopped bleeding, deep enough to hurt but not deep enough to kill him.
You settle on your knees in front of him and he’s certain his heart skips a beat. You smile up at him, so unbelievably soft, like you’re trying to comfort him without touching him because you know just how uncomfortable it makes him.
And yet, he can’t help but crave your touch, like a reminder that he’s still alive, that he’s still here, with you.
He knows he can just ask. Knows he can put together a sentence, or not, just muster the courage and say please. But how can he? When not even his mother deigned him worthy of fussing over?
“You don’t have to—” another sob breaks through him and it takes everything in him not to curse and scream and scare you.
His body begins to shake, shame bubbling from his stomach across his body until he’s nothing but a quivering mess before you.
He wants to run, to hide away and never have you see him like this ever again. This was a mistake, staying here, letting you see him this vulnerable. He needs—
He’s turned to stone as you pull yourself up from sitting on your heels and lean up towards him, invading his personal space now, all the voices in his head suddenly quiet. Your hands come up to cup his face, thumbs dutifully wiping away the tears that fall.
He feels pathetic, disgusted with himself at the sight you’re beholden to. But then your sweet voice begins to shush him softly, to tell him that he’s okay, that you’ve got him, that he can let it all out, and for a second he allows himself to believe it.
Andrew Pope Cody allows himself to feel, to not hide behind what he’s been groomed to be all of his life. He breaks down and you patiently wait for him to finish so you can help him pick up all the pieces.
It’s only when you no longer feel the wetness drip against your flesh that you pull back enough to take him all in. He forces himself to make eye contact with you, to show you as much as he can that he’s alright, that he appreciates you.
You swiftly rummage through his bathroom cabinets, searching for the first aid kit you know he has. He watches you intently as you clean him up with a wet rag first, removing all the blood from his abdomen, his hands turning white as he holds onto the side of the tub for dear life.
Your tongue pokes out between your lips as you lose yourself to the task, using that glue Baz got them in Mexico to close his wound. He can’t help but smile softly at the sight, finally allowing himself to rake his gaze over your body.
For one, you’re clad in one of his old shirts, the ones that no longer fit him after prison hardened his body into a bigger size. Maybe he’s not special, but he’ll be damned if possessiveness doesn’t boil over at the mere sight of you in his clothes.
He’s already slowly losing his mind, desire threatening to make him take a leap over that invisible line he’s drawn between the two of you in his mind, and then you shift a little, showing off his boxers underneath, your bare things practically causing him to salivate.
The decision settles with him with ease, dragging him down into the depths comfortably, like a sailor that has accepted his fate because it means he’ll at least get to kiss the siren.
“There,” you hum, tracing the outline of the bandage with your fingertips before you turn to look up at him. “All done.”
“Thank you,” he manages to choke out.
“My pleasure, Andy.”
Letting you go is the hardest thing Pope has ever done. You’d insisted he needed to rest after the trauma that he’d experienced and, not wanting to be an annoying patient, he’d conceded, settling down where you had just been sleeping, the sheets still slightly warm and smelling of you.
For the first time in a long time, Pope actually slept and slept good. But the second he’d woken up, you were no longer in the house.
He thought about calling, about making sure he hadn’t scared you off, but part of him preferred it this way. He was scared of his feelings towards you, so he chose indifference.
His mood soured, however. Every little thing his brother did made him snap, every time they brought you up in conversation, every time your name entered his orbit but your body didn’t made him go crazy.
He’s aware that it’s all his fault for not checking in, for disappearing into radio silence. But in his defense, you’ve never texted before, you’ve never even given him your number for fuck’s sake! It would’ve been weird to contact you out of the blue right?
Summer is coming to an end when you finally deign him worthy of your presence again.
Deran and Craig are throwing a party. Big surprise.
The house is packed, hot and sweaty. Everyone is scantily clad, if covered up at all. Even Smurf has left the premises for the weekend so it’s just a cluster of debauchery and substance abuse.
He should’ve left, he thought about it many times. But he knows you’ll show, even if it’s just to say hello, see how quickly things are devolving, and leaving immediately.
His eyes have been trained on the entrance all night, impatiently waiting for you to walk in. It’s nearing eleven and his palms are starting to get itchy with anxiety. What if you don’t show? He hadn’t even thought about that possibility.
It’s been a few days since Deran’s mentioned you. Even longer since you’ve babysat Lena. Could something be wrong? Are you okay?
His entire body bursts with uncomfortable heat. He needs to find Deran right now, needs him to tell him your address so he can go check on you himself, needs—
A loud squeal catches his attention, swiftly turning towards the backyard to catch you swung over Craig’s shoulder, your tiny jean shorts riding further up your ass as he spins you around.
You giggle brightly, not attention seeking, just pulling everyone’s gaze towards you with the ease in which you feel joyful. He watches, entranced, as his younger brother puts you down.
Pope moves instinctively, stalking towards the living room to get a better line of sight on you. You’re at least wearing a shirt over your bikini, your beautiful skin covered from the hungry gazes of those around you. If you realize just how many men are salivating after you, you don’t let it show, not as Craig lights up a joint and passes it on to you instantly.
Something constricts against Pope’s heart as he watches you inhale deeply, a primal urge to burst through the doors, grab the joint from your hand and toss it away before bringing you into the house and hiding you away.
He settles for sitting down on the loveseat. He can keep you safe from in here, from far away, from a distance.
The house only becomes more crowded as the night goes on and he unfortunately loses track of you two hours in, only noticing the second that annoying couple in front of him moves out of the way, the warm summer air hitting him in contrast to the air conditioned interior.
He panics instantly, his eyes jumping through the hazy bodies outside as he desperately tries to find you again. He’s about to stand up, to finally make a move and search for you when your body plops down on his lap instead.
“Andy!” You shriek, an airy happiness enveloping you as you settle over this lap. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Pope swallows thickly, feeling everything all at once, his brain having trouble processing your hands over his chest, your core pressed against the bulge in his pants, your hot breath on his face.
He’s certain he’s blushing crimson but maybe you’re too intoxicated to notice.
“Were you hiding from me?”
He doesn’t answer right away, causing your pretty little mouth to get upturned into a pout.
“I knew it,” you whimper. “You do hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, angel,” the words spill out of his mouth instantly, unfiltered since his stupid brain isn’t working anymore.
Wide eyes stare at him adorably. “You don’t?”
He shakes his head.
“Then…” you huff, clearly exhausted from all the mental gymnastics you’ve been doing too. “Why didn’t you call?”
He opens his mouth to answer.
I didn’t have your number.
I didn’t know I had to.
Why didn’t you call?
But he knows it’s all lies. He knows he deliberately didn’t call.
Didn’t text.
Didn’t anything.
Your eyes flicker down to his open mouth, your own hanging open as you stare hungrily at him, your hips grinding down against him involuntarily.
He hisses at the contact, the sound so broken and foreign to him. His brows scrunch in desperation, his head angling without him noticing. And so you take the leap for him.
Your lips settle on his like a sip of water after wandering in the desert for an entire lifetime.
It takes everything in him not to kiss you back, not to run his hands over your back, not thrust his hips up into you.
He knows how high you are, knows your actions, while yours, aren’t sober ones. And he’d much rather kill himself than take advantage of you.
“Andy,” you whine into his mouth again, needy and desperate. “Please.”
He stiffens beneath you, once again gripping the chair handles like his life depends on it. You frown as the wood creaks, a wicked smile curling your lips as you realize just how much he’s holding back right now.
“You can touch me, Andy,” you whisper, your lips starting their descent from his own down to his jaw and neck.
He shakes his head softly, not cruel, not rejecting, simply stating.
If anything, it spurs you on, determined to prove him wrong, to provoke him.
He can tell as your lips lock into the base of his neck, teeth nipping meanly at his skin, desperate to leave a mark on him.
He should stop you, should pick you up and tuck you into bed. But he doesn’t. He can’t.
Instead, his eyes close in pleasure, his fists practically snapping the wood between his fingers.
You’re hungry, having been kept from touching him for so long. He’s given you an inch and you’ll be damned if you don’t steal a mile. And he honestly doesn’t care, can’t care, when the realization that you were looking for him finally catches up.
You want him.
Desperately.
Your hands roam down his arms in tandem with your hip movements, your lips trailing back up to his mouth, but instead of diving in, taking the plunge, you hover above them, your hot breath taunting him.
“You’re so pretty, Andy,” you whisper. “Need you—” you huff, frustrated. “to touch me, please.”
He shakes his head again, this time accidentally brushing his lips with yours, groaning at the fleeting contact.
“‘M not gonna take advantage of you, angel,” he presses his forehead to your cheek, almost reverent.
You let out a sigh, deep and weirdly understanding, stopping your mindless torture as his words sink in. He stares at you, his heart finally pumping blood to the rest of his body normally as it sinks with your own, the raging storm calming into a consistent thundering.
“‘M sorry,” you mumble against his chest, settling down to rest your head against the crook on his neck. “I just…” you sigh, melancholic, the words not coming to you.
“I know,” he finally lets his hands break free from his self-imposed restraints, sliding them up your legs, taking his time feeling the warmth of your exposed thighs, the comforting weight of your clothes against your skin. You hum contently, like a cat finally being given attention, practically purring against him.
He settles his touch around your body, pressing you tightly against him as you slowly doze in and out of consciousness.
“Is this good enough, angel?” He’s never felt this soft with anyone before, his jagged edges usually too sharp, drawing blood instantly. But it’s as though you’ve smoothed him down, made him into someone that’s worthy of you.
You nod against him, fingers curling into his soft shirt, most definitely wrinkling the perfectly ironed fabric and he could not give two shits about it.
He’s acutely aware of how the two of you ended up asleep together.
All he wanted was to tuck you into bed, kiss your temple and then sit across from the bed, watching you sleep all night, like a messed up version of a guardian angel.
But you’d whined oh so loudly when he tried to peel away from you, your arms wrapping around his neck, your legs tightening around his waist. He couldn’t even get his shoes off, being forced down onto the soft mattress as you rolled over on top of him.
You settled down easy after that, your even breath soothing against his neck, the patterns he kept tracing over your back lulling you even further into the depths of rest.
He’s never fallen asleep this easily before, definitely not after the peak of adrenaline you’d just put him through.
But after exactly one thousand and sixty five seconds of watching your calm face, feeling your chest rising and falling steadily, something pulled him under, his eyelids becoming so heavy he could barely register as he stopped blinking altogether.
Your squirming wakes him up the next morning.
You’ve crawled on top of him, a comforting weight over his body. That is until you started to move, seeking something to put you out of your miserable restlessness.
“What’s wrong, angel?” His voice is deep with sleep.
You lift yourself onto a sitting position, straddling his hips once more, rubbing against the growing tent in his pants.
Part of him snaps awake at the mere inkling that you’re horny, now sober and wanting to torture him for denying you yesterday. But as his eyes focus on you, he finds an even deeper feeling he simply cannot name brewing in your pretty little head.
You scratch at your shirt, the fabric constrictive, your neediness for him overwhelming.
“’s too much,” you whine and he, for some divine reason, understands what you need.
He sits up, causing you to gasp as his erection thrusts up against you.
“Meanie,” you tease, pushing him to action.
He smirks as his hands gently trail over your exposed tummy. His hands grab the hem of your shirt and pull it over your head in one swift movement, quickly untying your bathing suit top and tossing the offending fabric to the floor. He doesn’t give himself the time to stare, not when you’re so desperate and time is of the essence, he’ll have time to properly worship you later.
Your nipples do harden as the cold air hits them, and he cannot fight the urge to take one into his mouth, rolling his tongue over the bud before he detaches so he can pull his own shirt off.
Your breathing gets caught in your throat as you watch him, brain already shutting off at the sight of his bare body. So much more real estate for you to touch, he thinks.
And touch you do, eager hands trailing the hardness of his chest and stomach all the way down to his pants. You make quick work of the button and his zipper and he lifts his hips so he can pull them off, hesitating with his boxers—
“All of it.” You answer for him.
“Yeah?”
“Mhmm,” you whine. “Please.”
And who is he to deny you now?
In one quick movement, he’s complete bare beneath you. But you’re still not content, no, you won’t be until you’re right there with him.
He takes care of your remaining clothes then, urging you up with two quick taps to your outer thigh and just as quickly hooking his thumbs underneath your bikini bottoms.
Your heat is so close to his face, so puffy and needy, he simply must lean forward and place a kiss over your hip bone. You hum contently, body buzzing with excitement as you practically tackle him back down on the bed and return to your earlier position.
At first you don’t want anything other than to feel him, your cheek pressed over his beating heart, legs spread over his lower abdomen, practically purring as his own hands wisp over your back.
You lay like that for a while, enjoying the gentle sounds of crashing waves and birds singing outside his window. But then you turn to look at him with those round, puppy eyes that he’ll be damned to cave to for the rest of his life.
“Andy,” you plead. “Need to be closer to you.”
He knows what you mean without you having to explain yourself.
There’s just one more thing to do.
So he does, grabbing a hold of his rock hard cock and slowly sinking himself into your entrance. You wince at the stretch, eyes quickly becoming watery as he settles inside of you. He shushes you gently, shifting you slightly so he can reach your lips, crashing them with his in a sloppy, wet kiss that has you instantly melting into him further.
It’s only when he’s sheathed within you completely that you finally relax. But while you’ve found euphoria with such a simple action, Pope is anything but.
He lasts fifty three seconds before his hips begin shifting involuntarily. Your brow scrunches in confusion, pleasure shooting up your body when all you really wanted to feel was peace.
He coos at you softly. “I need to move, angel.”
You sigh, dramatically so, and he can’t help but smile brightly at your theatrics.
“May I move?”
You bury your face in the side of his neck, going limp over him. “I guess.”
He rolls his eyes playfully, wrapping his arms around you before he lifts his hips off the bed and begins to piston in and out of you.
You’re so wet it’s absurdly easy, the room quickly devolving into a choir of wet, slapping sounds and his moans harmonizing with your little whimpers. You hold onto him for dear life, relishing in the closeness that he’s affording you, and he…he’s certain that you’ve just unlocked something he’d buried deep in his psyche long ago.
A desire to long for someone.
An allowance to feel.
A chance to love again.
“An—dy fuck,” you choke. “‘M so close.”
He turns his head to press his cheek against your temple, tightening his hold on your body, possessive and claiming.
“Come for me angel,” he urges. “Let me make you feel good, please.”
You moan loudly, your body responding diligently to his plea. He can feel your body convulse above him, your walls tightening around him as a jolt of electricity snaps and you’re coming undone.
You cry against his shoulder, panting feverishly as he continues to pound into you, seeking his own release while also extending you own.
“In me please, Andy, need you—”
He doesn’t need to be told twice, burying himself as deep as he can inside of you before he’s spilling, locking you tightly against him and enjoying the feeling of joy that washes over his entire body.
He can’t stop kissing your cheek, his lips lapping up the wetness that has streaked like a devout man worshiping a gift from the heavens.
You stay like this until both your heartbeats return to their normal, synced rhythm, your nails scratching deliciously at his scalp while his own return to their soothing patterns against your back.
“Was that okay?” You ask him, finally returning to your senses it seems.
there's no one like you...(i imagine the things we'd do)
summary: pope's gf is so gorgeous that craig still doesn't know how to act, but maybe pope can teach him a lesson that sticks, sort of the same universe as this...
pairing: andrew 'pope' cody x fem!reader
wc: 1.5k
warnings: uhh craig's still a creep, reader wears a thong, and slight violence but nothing crazy (lol), not entirely proofed
a/n: idkkk whyyy this just does something to me ;-; ... (feedback is always appreciated <3)
pope’s super hot girlfriend is just otherworldly gorgeous. craig can’t wrap his head around it, everytime he’s graced with your presence he’s caught in whatever spell someone that naturally beautiful casts. his enchantment is always rudely shattered, however, by his brother settling a rough hand on your hip and tugging you into his side, that intense look on his face like he’d seriously kill for you. it’s a devotion that makes craig squirm a little.
craig is seriously dumbfounded how someone like pope was able to bag someone like you, and you seem equally obsessed with his brother, which is probably the craziest part about the whole thing.
like today, everyone’s at the cody house for dinner. something casual, pope’s grilling something on the barbecue and you’re in the kitchen helping prep the salad. you showed up in those criminally tiny shorts, tight tank top that showed off your crisp tan lines, skin warm and glowing from the time you must’ve spent at the beach earlier in the day. you were smokin, everything about you would make any man weak, right down to the cheeky silver toe ring that glinted on your perfectly pedicured feet, strappy wedged heels accentuating your smooth legs. craig had to bite back a groan when he’d opened the door for you, practically ignoring pope and his glare as he soaked you up.
now, criag knows he’s not the brightest cody brother, but he likes to think he does a pretty good job at keeping his attraction to you close to the chest. i mean, you are his brother’s girl, at the end of the day, he’s not a complete asshole.
deran wholeheartedly disagrees, and he’s told craig time and time again that it’s painfully obvious, which craig just scoffs off, completely and wrongfully arrogant. at least, you seem to be none the wiser, always cheerful and just as lovely to craig as you are with anyone else. but that’s just who you are as a person, and it’s something pope loves about you very much. it’s craig that always takes advantage of your kindness and thinks he’s slick enough to get away with it that leaves a bad taste in pope’s mouth.
and as he lingers in the kitchen with you as you prepare the salad for dinner, he’s just as painfully obvious in his infatuation with you. it makes deran roll his eyes so hard and he has to leave the room or he’ll end up punching craig.
“huh…do you know where the big glass bowl is?” you ask craig from across the counter, searching in the overhead cabinet you swore it usually was in.
“oh yeah, i think i saw it in that one over there,” he gestured across the way, “yeah—the lower one,”
and he’s giddy in his seat as you bend down to search the cabinet for the bowl, commending himself for another brilliant idea as he gets an amazing view of your ass. he almost falls to his knees when he’s presented with the black lacy fabric of your thong as it peaks out from your shorts as you arch, trying to find the bowl—his pants growing tighter at the view.
he’s so distracted by the display he’s expertly orchestrated—he doesn’t know what bowl you’re even talking about—that he doesn’t hear the swish of the sliding glass door opening and closing, nor does he hear the steady tread indicative of pope’s approaching figure.
“are you sure it’s down here craig?” your call from where your head is shoved in the cupboard.
“uh-huh yeah, maybe check the back,“ he’s urging, a shit eating grin clear in his voice if you were merely keen to his motives, “i swear i saw it—“
he nearly jumps out of his skin at the feel of a heavy hand grasping his shoulder, hard. he flinches but refuses to turn around, thinking maybe if he avoids acknowledging his brother, he’ll manage to avoid any injury this time around.
but that’s never been the case when he’s caught in these situations.
“what’re you looking for, sweetheart?” popes voice is calling out to you evenly. standing behind craig, he gets a full view of what’s captured his brothers attention so raptly and tightens his hold on his shoulder painfully, making craig wince. fuck.
the sound of your boyfriend’s voice startles you a little, making you hit your head just a bit as you go to stand up, a muffled ouch coming from the cabinet.
you huff a breath when you’re finally right side up, “the big glass bowl we use for salads, i can’t find it,” you pout at him, rubbing your head softly.
pope walks over slowly— deliberately— and opens the cabinet above you next to the one you initially thought it was in, and pulls out the exact bowl you were looking for. you beam at him and lean up to give him a thank you smooch on the cheek, your back to craig as you accept the item, popes hard glare fixed on craig’s across the way from over your shoulder.
“you’re the best, andy! craig and i couldn’t find it,” you giggle, moving to mix the ingredients together.
“well dunno why you asked him sweetheart, craig couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag,” pope says flatly, pulling a genuine laugh from you which makes his mouth pull up at the corner in a crooked smile. craig rolls his eyes and grumbles under his breath.
“oh andy, don’t be mean,” you’re scolding through your giggle, swatting him on the chest softly in reprimand.
pope grabs your hand where it connects on his chest and pulls you in for a kiss. not just a quick kiss, it’s deep and forceful—eagerly reciprocated by you as you bring your hands up to tangle in his curls. craig scoffs under his breath as he looks away from the display, well aware of the point being made. you’re breathless when pope pulls away, stumbling forward slightly with a dazed expression as you try and chase his lips, which craig can’t help but grimace at. unbelievable, he thinks.
then you’re leaning up to whisper something in your boyfriends ear. it’s soft and breathy and too quiet for craig to make out with the distance, though he does catch the way you nibble on pope’s ear—to craig’s disgust—with how he’s intensely trying to read your lips, desperate to hear any filthy thing falling from your pretty mouth. he looks away when you pull apart, only catching popes gruff promise of later sweetheart mumbled into your forehead with a kiss as you nod with a pout, focusing back on your task.
craig’s trying to play it cool, still convinced he can play the situation off. he’s turning to walk out towards the backyard, hoping to escape when suddenly pope’s clasping him on the back of the neck like a little kid, shoving him the rest of the way outside so forcefully it makes the taller man stumble and nearly fall before he steadies himself, the glass doors clicking shut behind the eldest.
baz, j, and deran all look up from where they’d gathered around the table outside, quickly understanding with various levels of amusement or exasperation what craig must’ve been up to again to be caught at the end of popes fury, again.
“jeez, man,” craig’s complaining, rubbing at the back of his neck. deran actually lets out a disbelieving laugh, never understanding his brothers ability to be so dumb.
“ooh, that hurt?” pope’s mocking him, walking up with a condescending expression pulling at his hard features. he doesn’t even give craig time to answer before he’s pulling his fist back and landing a solid punch that has craig’s head jerking to the side. it’s quickly followed by a second that knocks him to the ground. pope leans over his brother’s cowering form, pulling him up slightly by the collar of his shirt and looking him in the eye.
“i catch you pulling some shit like that again, i’ll break both of your legs,” pope spits out. “got it?” he snapped, pressing his forehead to craig’s like an angry dog.
“yeah—yes, man!” craig relents.
pope sniffs, shoving craig away and letting his body slam back onto the concrete before taking his seat at the table and bringing his beer to his lips for a drink.
by the time you finish the salad and make your way to the table outside, everyone’s sat around it and ready to begin eating. you set the large bowl down in the middle with a wide smile, and take your seat next to pope, satisfied with your work.
“looks great, sweetheart,” pope praises, making his plate. you preen and serve yourself, passing the bowl around the table to j on your left, who takes it graciously.
the rest of the night goes on smoothly, conversation flowing as you remain blissfully unaware of the reaming your boyfriend just gave his brother, a black eye already forming around his left eye that you don’t even seem to question.
and at the end of the night when you rush out the door, pulling pope along in a hurry to get home with a fit of hushed giggles, craig is once again left stewing in his disbelief of his older brother’s pure luck at bagging you, and a throbbing eye that really rubs it in.
CW: D/s dynamic, kink, explicit sexual content, 18+, nsfw, mdni
Tags/warnings: soft dom!jack abbot, brat/good girl!reader, D/s dynamics, power imbalance (but consensual), explicit age gap (reader is mid 20s, jack is however old he is), pet names (kid/kiddo/baby/princess), explicit daddy kink, disappointed Abbot, punishment, safe words, angst, sub drop, sub space, healthy communication, impact play, spanking, unprotected piv sex, breeding kink, after care
Summary: You don't mean to misbehave, but Jack still has to remind you of your place.
a/n: here you go, never say I don't give you nice things
Disclaimer: YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WRITING ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT MY CONSENT. REBLOGS ARE ENCOURAGED THOUGH. YOU MAY NOT FEED MY WORK TO ANY AI DATABASES OF ANY KIND, USE MY WORKS TO TRAIN AI OR USE AI TO TRANSLATE MY WORK. FUCK AI.
"Oh shit," you drop to the floor the second you catch his silver hair making its way into the ED.
Dana chuckles beside you, her gaze quickly snapping from you up to greet her friend.
"What're you doing here so early?" she greets Jack, slowly positioning herself between him and you even though she knows he knows you're right there.
He huffs, amused as he settles his bag down behind the counter, not daring to peer over so you can pretend to be safe a little longer. How thoughtful of him.
He shrugs, lips downturning into a frown.
"No use being home alone...y’know?"
Dana's mouth opens in a silent ah, your heart dropping into your stomach as you silently curse yourself for your earlier actions.
In all honesty, it wasn't like you were trying to upset him. Neither of you had to go into work until that night.
You were looking forward to a lazy day of makeouts and lazy sex, maybe a little bit of talking about your relationship when you were less hazy...but then Dana had called.
She needed someone to fill in for one of her nurses, switch shifts if you will. And of course you said yes. How could you ever leave her stranded like that?
It wasn't your intention to not wake Jack up. He just looked so peaceful, his breathing not even a little disturbed as you shifted out of his embrace, quickly getting dressed in your back up scrubs and gathering your things before you left.
You honestly didn't think for a second you were doing anything wrong. He would've done the exact same thing, hell, he'd done the exact same thing before, picking up shifts whenever he was bored.
Whatever shame quickly burns away into indignation at his hypocrisy. You're not sorry, not even for a second.
Before you can talk yourself out of it, you spring back up to your feet, ready to bite back at him.
But the second you do, he's nowhere to be found.
Your bravery quickly evaporates into a confusing mix between relief and anxiety.
What the fuck is he playing at?
“You okay, hon?” Dana’s quick to check in, snapping your attention to her.
You nod, too quickly for her sanity, but before she can press further, Perlah calls your name from the other side of the ED and you take the leap instantly.
The rest of your shift is a blur of mindless tasks, plastering on a phony smile when you’re with patients, and searching every oncoming trauma for him.
But you never get to interact, never even get to be in the same room as you. No, because Robinavitch keeps sending you to do other things.
It’s around lunchtime when you finally figure this is a set up, a punishment.
And you fucking hate it.
Your heart is beating rapidly. His indifference physically hurts, making you yearn for his anger, for anything else other than his silence.
You’re stationed at the hub when you finally catch him making his way to the break room. You glance around the floor before you stand up to follow him, closing the door softly behind you.
You know he’s aware you’re there with him from how he doesn’t even flinch, continuing to torture you with his silent treatment.
“Yellow,” you state, clearly and as confidently as you can, given just how close you are to tears.
His reaction is instant.
He drops his mindless task of stirring his coffee, turning towards you and swiftly grabbing a hold of your hands, pulling you into him tightly.
He shushes you gently, his lips a grounding force against your temple.
“What’s wrong, baby?” He mumbles against your hairline.
You shake your head softly, blinking back the tears threatening to spill over.
“Don’t like it,” you manage.
“What don’t you like?”
“You ignoring me.”
He sighs deeply, pulling back to face you.
“I’m sorry, sweet girl.” He lets go of your hands to pull you flush against him, one hand tightening around your waist while the other combs your hair behind your ear. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“’s okay,” you whisper. “I know I was bad—”
“No, baby, no,” he presses a kiss to your cheek. “That’s not an excuse. I should’ve been clear from the start, not played games with you. Okay?”
You nod, hands tangling in his scrub top, grounding.
“You did such a brave thing, baby,” he kisses the corner of your mouth. “I’m very proud of you for telling me you were uncomfortable.”
You beam, glossy eyes brightening with an insurmountable amount of joy that honestly makes him go a little crazy.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he kisses you again, fleeting yet reassuring. “You’re gonna finish your shift and I’m going to keep ignoring you—”
You can’t help the whine the leaves your lips, causing him to smirk.
“I know, baby, but it wouldn’t be a punishment if you actually liked it, would it?”
You sigh. “I guess not.”
“Good girl,” he steps back, his warmth slowly drifting away from you. “Just a few more hours, okay? I’ll come find you later.”
You nod, feeling him peel away from your embrace, returning to his previous task as if you’re nothing more than another body near him.
It’s easier to deal with your shift, with the tasks at hand. His absence still lingers, a heaviness that settles over your heart but it doesn’t spill over because you know what it means, you know he’s not doing it to hurt you.
He finally graces you with his presence at shift change, cornering you as you replenish the supplies in north seven.
You feel him before you see him, his front pressed firmly to your back as you instantly still, a sharp jolt of electricity humming through your body.
"You're gonna go home," he murmurs against your ear, voice rugged and tugging on exhaustion. "You're gonna shower, eat, drink a lot of water, and you're gonna wait for me, naked, ass up towards our bedroom door."
His words have you gulping loudly, enough for him to smirk devilishly against your ear, his heavy use of words implying you’re now sharing a life together settling like rocks in your stomach, grounding yet…
"Is that clear, kid?"
You dismiss the thought, nodding while you focus on how terrified you are at the excitement that bubbles over.
"Yes, daddy."
"Good girl," he places a quick kiss to your cheek before he wraps your hand in his, the warm metal of his house key practically burning a hole through your flesh.
The second you take it, he removes his warmth, leaving you practically heaving for more.
You don't see him again as you do you walk of shame out of the ED half an hour later. You simply go through the motions, muscle memory carrying you as your mind reels with anticipation.
You're so aware of the tasks before you, the diligence in which you drive to his apartment, punching in the code to enter that he texted you, use the key to let yourself in.
You take a shower first, making sure to scrub yourself clean, washing away all the heaviness from having to work a day shift. Yuck. You honestly don’t know how any of them do it. Robby’s a good boss and Dana’s an even better one, but you miss the silly and goofy energy that comes from working nights, from cracking jokes with Shen, from flirting carelessly with Ellis, making fun of Park with Emery, exchanging recipes with Lena…and whatever the fuck type of intimate relationship you had with Jack before you made if official.
The lesson settles in your bones the second you exit the hot shower, the coldness of the empty apartment jarring.
“Oh.” You say out loud, your eyes darting over to the bed that Jack has so meticulously made up.
You think about how he must’ve woken up, alone and confused. He would’ve called your name and started to panic when he didn’t hear anything back. He would’ve rolled over, grabbed his crutches and made his way all over the apartment looking for you.
Tears blur your vision, chest heaving as you finally process everything that you were desperate to ignore.
You grab your phone, the lifeline you should’ve used earlier that morning but didn’t.
You press his contact, the line ringing twice before he answers. You don’t even let him get a breath in before you’re sobbing.
“I’m so sorry daddy,” you wail, choking on your tears. “I didn’t mean to— I didn’t even leave a note, who does that?”
“Baby,” Jack coos, soothing as much as he can through the phone. “I know, it’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it.”
You can’t make sense anymore, a string of unintelligible words trying to form a sentence but you simply can’t.
He shushes you gently but it’s not enough. You can’t feel him, you need to feel him and he’s just not there. Exactly how you were not this morning.
Another wail escapes your lips as you slide down to settle on the floor.
“I’m coming home now, baby,” he tells you. “Stay on the phone with me, okay?”
You nod, letting yourself feel every single emotion without fear of him getting angry at you for it.
You try to picture what he’s doing right now, desperately anchoring yourself to the present because if you so much as think about the past…
No, you can do this, you can hold on. You hear him talk to Robby, apologizing profusely as the older man simply states his understanding. Shen and Cruz have it covered. Jack grabs his bag then, swiftly rushing out of the bustling ED.
“You still with me, baby?”
“Mhmm.”
“Good girl,” the door to his truck opens and closes. “Did you have dinner yet?”
You shake your head. “No.”
“Did you shower?”
“Yeah.”
“Good job, baby,” he praises, the truck engine starting as he puts his phone up on the stand beside the steering wheel.
“Would you like anything special for dinner?”
You don’t respond.
“How about some soup?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Can we make grilled cheese too?”
“Of course we can, baby.”
“Thank you.”
“Always, kid,” you can hear the faint spark of his smile. “Where are you right now?”
“Floor.”
He chuckles, of course you are.
“Are you comfortable?”
“…yes.”
“I totally believe you.”
You roll your eyes.
“Get in bed, baby,” he commands. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
You groan, putting the phone on speaker as you pull yourself up. He listens to your cute little steps as you shuffle towards the bed, throwing yourself on the fluffy comforter with a huff.
“Good fucking girl,” he smirks.
“Still want me with my ass up?” You joke, playfulness returning as your tears dry on your cheeks.
He lets out a laugh, contagious and lively. “No, we’ll do that later, okay?”
You nod. “Okay daddy.”
“Why don’t you relax, get comfortable. I’ll wake you up when I get there.”
“Okay.”
Neither of you hangs up the call but you do as he says, sliding under the covers and burying yourself in his scent.
True to his word, you hear the front door open fifteen minutes later, his presence instantly livening the space.
You hum contently, sitting up on your spot in bed as you turn towards the door expectantly. You can feel him staring at your naked chest from the doorway as you stretch.
“Hi,” you mumble softly.
“Hi yourself,” he smiles. “Putting on a show for me?”
You chuckle, settling back down. “Is it working?”
“Always,” he steps up to the bed, still in his outside clothes so he doesn’t dare succumb to your siren call. “C’mon, lets eat.”
You take his outstretched hand, standing up in front of him in all your naked glory as he cups your cheeks with both hands, leaning down to press a soft kiss to your lips.
You smile against him, your own touch quick to wrap around his wrists in response, eager to just keep kissing him, to feel him close to you.
“Don’t get greedy, baby,” he huffs. “We’ve got things to do.”
He’s quick after that, stepping back and striding to his closet, picking out a pair of his boxers and a basic white t-shirt for you to slip into. He diligently helps you get dressed, not wasting the chance to place kisses up your legs, causing you to giggle while you pull the shirt over your torso.
When he finally stands back up, he gives you one last kiss, directing you back out into the living room.
Dinner is quiet, comfortable. You sit at the head of the table, one leg tucked in front of you while the other drapes over his thigh. Your favorite grocery store tomato soup and homemade grilled cheese almost gone from your plate. He watches you eat like it’s the most interesting thing out there and you can’t help but feel the heat creep up over your face as he does.
“Is it normal for you to drop this much?” He asks you finally.
You take a sip of your water, pondering his question.
“It used to happen a lot in my last relationship,” you confess. “He…” you shiver at the memory and he feels it, his hand coming down to squeeze your foot reassuringly. “He was never consistent, always disappearing and then coming back with his affections tenfold,” you look up at him, the concern and sadness heavy in his gaze. “I think I’m still expecting that, you know? For you to disappear on me so I have to give you a reason to stay.”
He doesn’t react, only absorbs what you’ve just told him. He doesn’t like it, the heaviness that settles in his gut, knowledge being a curse and all.
“Thank you for telling me that, kiddo,” he starts. “I think we both need to be a lot more vocal with each other, huh?”
You huff a sad laugh, reaching for your water again. “Yeah, we do.”
He watches you swallow every last drop, a burst of pride blossoming, making his head feel a little fuzzy.
“Here’s how this is gonna work then,” he clears his throat, holding out his other hand for you to place your own within it. You do, no hesitation, your nails softly raking the skin over his wrist and palm soothingly. “We keep using our safe words,” you nod. “‘M still really proud of you for using them today.”
“Thank you daddy,” you coo, slowly falling into that comfy headspace again.
“Eyes on me, baby,” he catches you. You blink, confusion springing you back to the present. “When we’re talking like this,” he emphasizes with a squeeze to your foot. “I need you to try and stay present with me, okay?”
Your brow scrunches instantly. That’s an option?
“Yes, look at me.”
You swear you are, why is he being so insistent?
“I need you to be able to advocate for yourself, kiddo,” he explains. “We’re gonna work on it, on staying grounded outside of play. We have to talk about these scenes before we do ‘em, alright?”
You take a deep breath in. He’s right, you know he’s right. It’s definitely weird, a strange feeling to set boundaries with each other, to not be at the mercy of what you think he wants and instead be told so clearly what he actually wants.
“I will always take care of you, kiddo,” he reassures. “But there’s a time and a place to let go and have daddy take care of you,” you nod in understanding. “While we’re here, I’m Jack, do you understand?”
You swallow, your chest lighting up with a new type of desire.
“Yes, Jackie.”
“Good girl,” he smirks, absolutely and completely whipped. “And when we’re playing, I’m…?”
You beam. “Daddy.”
“My baby is so fucking smart,” it’s the rasp in his voice that pulls a moan out of you.
He chuckles darkly, meanly, pulling back from you.
“Now,” he slides his chair back, the screeching sobering you up instantly. “Take off your clothes, get on the bed, ass up and wait for me.”
You practically sprint out of your seat, flinging his shirt and boxers off your body, tossing them behind you as if to leave a trail for him to follow.
He takes a second to steady himself, the joy he’s feeling once again overwhelming. He focuses on the methodicalness of his motions, picking up the plates you left behind, rinsing them, putting them in the dishwasher, turning it on.
The machines hums to life, adding another layer of noise to the otherwise quiet apartment. He can her a tiny huff from his bedroom, a wicked grin spreading over his features satisfactorily.
He makes sure to be loud, to give weight to his steps as he walks down the hall towards you, picking up the mess you left behind as he does, a calming motion to calm himself down too, knowing exactly what’s waiting for him, how easy you could make him break.
And he almost does at the mere sight of you, spread out on your knees, your ass up just like he’d asked. He can see you shivering, can see the way you body practically beckoning him forward.
But he’s stronger than his immediate desires.
He will not let you win this easily. This is meant to be your punishment after all.
He sits down on the edge of the bed, the way the mattress dips making you gasp softly. He can hear your body shuffling, readjusting yourself as you impatiently wait for him to get it over with.
But the one thing you’re about to learn about him — he will never do something to just do it. No, he will take his time, dot his i’s and cross his t’s.
He pays you no mind as he folds the bottom half of his scrub pants on his right leg. He takes his time, diligently removing his prosthetic, hissing in relief as the offending contraption is removed and placed to his side of the bed. He rubs over his residual limb, thoroughly, making sure to groan in pleasure as he does.
He can feel you salivating, your head turning to face him as you force yourself not to leave the spot on the bed. He hasn’t told you to move and it doesn’t matter how much you want to help him out, want to take care of him, you also desperately want to be good for him.
After a few more minutes of torture, he finally get off the bed, grabbing his crutches off the dresser and makes his way into the bathroom.
The second you hear the water running you let out a whiny and bratty groan.
The waiting is the worst part. Anticipation gnaws at your insides, with every breath, every second that counts away from you. You stare at the door like it’s personally offended you, desperately trying not to fall asleep, not to move an inch, not to give him any more reasons to leave you high and dry.
He told you to wait and damn it, you are gonna show him just how easy it is for you to do that for him.
A burst of excitement flutters in your stomach again once the shower turns off. You count the seconds in your head again, picturing him drying off, putting on his night cream, brushing out his hair. You wonder what domesticity with him can be like, how he gets ready every morning and every night, what kind of toothbrush he uses, if he flosses or not.
Your fantasy is quickly snuffed out as the doors swings open and he turns off the light, plunging the entire room into darkness.
“Baby, be my good girl and turn on the lamp,” he tells you and so you do, never once leaving the position you’re in, simply extending your hand towards the nightstand and clicking the light on.
A soft, warm hue springs the room to life as he moves towards his closet, a towel wrapped around his waist. You stare at him with doe eyes, your cheek squished against the mattress.
“Close your eyes and look away.”
You huff, the show just starting to get good, but obey.
Relying only on your hearing makes everything a million times worse. You hear the doors open, clothes rattling, the unmistakable sound of pants getting pulled up, zippers getting fastened, shirts being pulled over torsos.
You’re practically buzzing, your body vibrating as you feel the air in the room shift, his warmth enveloping you whole, every single one of your senses in high alert.
Your skin erupts into goosebumps as a single finger grazes the back of your thigh. You whimper pathetically as he sits down on the side of the bed, his breath unbelievably close to where you want him the most.
His hands grab a hold of the meat under your ass then, kneading possessively as he settles down into his role.
“You did so well for me, baby,” he praises, hands distracting you from what you both know is coming next. “I’m going to spank you now,” you huff in relief, the uncertainty in the air lifting as his touch inches closer to where he’s going to strike next. “Three on each side.”
You nod against the covers.
“You’re going to count each one, thank me for them, and apologize for making daddy worry.”
Your heart is practically beating out of your ears now, the blood pumping so quick it’s making it hard to think. But nonetheless, you hum in acknowledgement.
“Yes daddy.”
“Good girl,” he leans down and places a kiss over your right butt cheek first, a reverent gesture to let you know this isn’t something he wants to do but rather something he has to.
His right hand lifts off your body and you suck in a breath.
You hear the smack before you feel it, the room being set ablaze by the noise. The pain is secondary, blooming from your backside both deeply satisfying and also a shameful reminder of what brought you here in the first place.
“One,” you huff meekly. “Thank you daddy. I’m sorry I made you worry.”
He places a kiss on the reddening spot, his warm hand coming down to soothe the sting away as he lifts his left one. Once again, your abdomen tenses as you await the inevitable. For this one, the pain sparks first, his wedding ring adding to the sting.
“T-two,” you stammer. “Thank you daddy…” you shift, adjusting your body before you continue. “I’m sorry I didn’t wake you up this morning.”
He continues his pattern, leaning down to kiss the spot and soothe it once more.
“It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs against your skin. “I know you didn’t mean to worry me.”
The admission hurts more than anything he could do to you physically, tears welling back up as your body inhales shakily.
“I didn’t, I promise I didn’t—”
He smacks your right butt cheek to cut you off.
You yelp, your body jerking away from him so he has to pull you back to where you originally were.
“Three, fuck,” the tears spring free then, your eyes blinking open to let them flow freely down your cheeks. “I really didn’t mean—”
The next one. Immediately.
You almost hit him with how much you’re moving around, but he’s prepared, his strong grip not faltering for a second.
“Yellow, oh my god,” you hiss, hands grabbing a hold of the comforter and squeezing as hard as you can. Jack doesn’t apologize, you know why he doesn’t. He needs you out of your head, needs you to understand he’s not mad at you anymore. But you can’t. As grounding as you want it to be, you’re still hung up on how awful it must’ve felt for him.
He shushes you gently, pulling you onto his lap and holding you close to him. He lets you sob in his arms, rocking you gently and peppering your face with kisses.
“I’m not mad, baby,” he whispers once you’ve stopped heaving. “I need you to know that.”
You nod against him, your hands playing with his now tear stained white shirt.
“I know,” you whisper back. “I just…I keep thinking about how scared you must’ve felt and…I did that. I made you feel that way,” you turn to face him finally. “I’m sorry.”
He looks down at you, nothing in his eyes other than pure gentleness.
“I forgive you,” he leans forward, nudging your nose with his own. “Okay?”
You smile at the gesture. “Okay.”
He presses his lips to your own, a sweet kiss for an even sweeter moment. Neither of you lets it go too far, it’s not meant to. Instead, you both pull back as he shifts you to straddle him.
“Two more to go, kiddo,” he reminds you.
“Two more.”
He smiles against your lips, his hands once again kneading the meat of your ass, the remnants of the previous blows already making your body ache.
“Ready?”
“Yes daddy.”
He gives you one last peck before his right hand lifts.
This time, the pain blooms with pleasure, your body finally processing the hit without the weight of shame.
A soft smile curls at your lips, causing Jack to mirror it himself.
“Five, thank you daddy,” you hum. “Next time I pick up a shift, I’ll wake you up so that you know.”
Heat explodes throughout Jack’s chest, his head buzzing satisfyingly as your words thrum through his heart.
“Thank you, baby.”
You beam up at him, your arms wrapping around his neck, fingers running through the base of his hair unashamed.
His left hand lifts and you don’t hold your breath. Instead, you grind down on his crotch, pressing your body closer to his chest. The second his palm makes contact, you moan.
“Six, daddy,” you pant. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome, kiddo.”
You’re so gone, the delicious airiness making you feel dizzy.
You kiss him, slow and soft, like you’re trying to devour him with your sweetness. Such a well behaved girl. He’s beaming, every second with you, even through the hard parts, has honestly brought so much joy and hope into his life he’ll never get tired of it, of you.
“Feel how hard daddy is for you, princess?” He pulls you further into his erection, the roughness of his pants pulling a delicious moan from you. You nod dumbly against his cheek. “Make daddy cum, baby.”
You spring to action, sloppy movements endearing as you pop open the button of his jeans, the zipper the next one to go, practically salivating over him when you realize he decided to forgo underwear.
“Daddy’s naughty,” you giggle, taking him in your hand and giving him an experimental tug. His chuckle is broken into a moan as soon as you do, pulling himself further back into the bed so you have more space to get comfortable over him.
You waste no more time, spitting over his hard length to lube him up a little before you line him up with your entrance. He hisses the second his tip enters you, your hotness soothing him in a way he’s never felt before.
“That’s it, good girl,” he falls back onto the bed, his hands running up and down your thighs encouragingly as you sink down on him.
Your mouth hangs open as you do, brow furrowed in deep concentration, tongue poking out slightly from between your lips.
He snickers at the action, his pointer finger coming up to swipe at your tongue. Your mouth opens as he does, lips wrapping around the offending digit and sucking down as you take him all the way in, your clit settling nicely against his soft tummy.
“Fuck, baby,” he groans.
Smugness blossoms, causing you to roll your hips sharply. He loses the ability to speak quickly, so you keep doing it, over and over again until he’s a mumbling mess beneath you. You alternate between rolling circles and going back and forth before you lift up on your calves ever so slightly and start bouncing.
That’s when he loses all composure, a choir of moans and praises falling from his lips like ichor, gifting you new meaning to life, your own noises blending with his to give birth to a new religion.
His hands fall from your skin as he uses his forearms for leverage, his own hips thrusting up to meet your movements. You wail, your hands coming down to tangle in his clothes for support as realization dawns that he’s still fully dressed.
That simply won’t do.
Angry hands claw at his shirt, forcing the garment off his body so you can feel the hardness of his chest unobstructed. Possessiveness flashes through both your gazes as he leans up, capturing your lips in a searing kiss.
“Touch your clit baby,” he commands, speeding up his movements as your ass bursts with the remnants of your earlier punishment.
You do as you’re told, the lewdness of skin slapping against skin pushing you closer and closer to the edge.
“Daddy,” you whimper. “‘M close.”
“Me too,” he grunts. “Just hold on f’me.”
You nod feverishly, clenching around him as he continues to pound into you.
“Daddyyyyy,” you whine, desperation bitter on your tongue.
“Not yet,” he warns. “Daddy cums first.”
You nod and nod and nod, clenching your abdomen with abandon. You’re so close, you just need him to let go, if you can just—
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he stills, falling back down on the bed and firmly pulling your hips flush against him, burrowing himself as deep within you as he physically can. His tip grazes your cervix, it hurts but all you can do is feel his hot spend fill you up, mark you as his, reminding you that you can finally cum.
You let go the second you feel his body shake beneath you, falling forward and pressing your body against his, seeking his warmth desperately.
Pleasure blinds you for a few seconds, your core bursting with electricity. You stay like that for a long time, both coming down from your highs together for the first time. Much like the night before, he refuses to let you go, keeping you locked together until you start to fuss at the stickiness.
He showers your face with kisses, thankful and grounding. When he finally rolls you over, settling you down on your back, he groans as he sits back up, pulling the nightstand drawer open to pull out a packet of wet wipes.
His movements feel like worship as he cleans between your legs, causing you to giggle from how overstimulated you are. You can’t help but stare at him in awe, plain and simple, gratitude for how you ever could’ve ended in such a loving place overwhelming.
He takes off his jeans, tossing them off to the side before he takes a moment to recenter himself. He takes a deep breath in, his body shivering in the process.
Without a word being uttered, you lift off the bed, shuffling towards him on your knees, wrapping your arms around him tightly. He exhales shakily, his own hands coming up to run down your arms.
You hum against his back, pressing sweet kisses up his neck.
“Thank you, baby.”
“Always.”
You detach yourself then, skipping off the bed and into the bathroom to pee before he scolds you for it. On your way back out, toothbrush in your mouth, you pick up the clothes he’d let you borrow, throwing them over your body.
You stare at each other for a long minute, the absurd high the two of you just shared slowly coming down to a nice lull.
When you reemerge from the bathroom a second time, all ready for bed, you help him up to finish his own routine. It’s all so domestic, the way he gets shy about being the one naked now, the way he does floss and pours a glass of water for you to drink, following suit right behind you, the way he holds onto your waist like an anchor.
Neither of you can fathom how you got so lucky. Call it divine intervention or just plain, dumb luck, the blissfulness you both feel is all consuming, and when you make your way back into bed after helping Jack put on some pajama pants, you instantly tangle together, stolen kisses and searing touches reminding you of just how neither of you wants this to end.
a/n: this chapter changed so much from the previous version I had whipped up and I could not be happier. let’s see how long i stay in this mood for (pray for me)
18+ mdni simon riley is a horrible lay, everyone says.
that’s what you’ve heard around base, from men and women alike. he’s too fucking big, apparently, fucks like the mean bastard that he is. hurts. apparently, he’s so cold he doesn’t even care for his partner. and apparently, every time anyone’s tried to sleep with him, they’ve always stormed out of his room, pissed off at him because his room is a hellhole.
apparently. it’s all word of mouth, but you believe it.
but after the end of the month drinks at the local spoons, you can barely get simon off you, he’s pawing at you with his big hands. the two of you split a cider in two, and he looks at you with his big brown eyes, “y- you’re really fucking hot.” he blurts out, kissing your nose with chapped lips.
his face is red, blushing deeply as you try your best to not flush the same. “and johnny told me you can’t ever think about the pretty lass on floor 3 with the filing cabinet, but guess what, i can.” he kisses you on the side of your head this time, and you’re enjoying his affections.
it’s only back in his room on base that he fumbles with his belt, before he looks at you again, “s-sorry, it’s just, i don’t really get to spend the night with pretty women like you-“
you want to hide your face in his pillows, his room is really fucking nice. he has plants, actual plants growing from gaz, sketch drawings from johnny, photographs of him and the captain.
his cock is huge, hard and leaking, slapping against his stomach, but he still looks at you with his sweet brown eyes, “love, it’s okay if it’s too big…” he sounds dejected already, but you just shake your head, it’s nowhere near as big what the word around base was.
“it’s fine simon-“ you whisper, licking your lips and placing kitten licks on his length, feeling the taste of him coat your tongue.
“no no no-“ he shakes his head, pulling away before his hands touch your wet panties, “fuck, you’re so wet love.”
and then he dives in, tugging them off, before licking at your cunt with a sloppy tongue, he doesn’t have a technique down but whatever the fuck he’s doing it’s good, your legs are shaking as his tongue dips inside you.
“gotta make sure it’s good for you-“ okay, what the fuck was anyone talking about?
he slides into you with ease, and thrusts into you? his hands above your head, his eyes still looking at you. “you’re very fuckin’… mmmph… hot.” he says, with a grin on his scarred face that would look terrifying if it wasn’t for the way his brown eyes shone with sweetness.
it wasn’t long before his cock twitches inside of you, and his eyes roll back, “oh fuck love, right there— fuck!” he was filling you deep, his cum thick in your stomach.
“love?” he asks, whimpering, his head on your chest, “love, did you find it good?” he’s desperate for your fucking approval.
you kiss his head, his soft curls growing out of army regs.
“yes darling.” fuck the word of mouth, did anyone even try this with him?
“th-thank you dove-“ he pants, his cock deep inside you as you keep stroking his hair, feeling his breath even out.
Outside the ship, the storm raged with enough force to make the metal walls groan underneath the pressure of the wind.
Frost started to become visible on the exposed pipes and vents throughout the lower levels of the vessel, and despite every fur blanket and thermal layer wrapped around your body, the cold still managed to seep deep into your bones until even your hands ached from trying to preserve what little warmth was still there.
Curled tightly inside the nest built into the corner of the room, you pulled another thick pelt over yourself and tried to stop shivering, the weak red glow from the heating unit nearby barely helped the frozen air filling the room.
Another violent blow shook the ship hard enough to rattle the walls.
Then the chamber doors opened.
Heavy footsteps echoed and before you even looked up, you already knew exactly who had returned. Your mate had to lower herself slightly to fit through the doorway, her tall frame made even larger by the layers of armour covering her body and the thick furs draped across one shoulder. She stepped fully into the room, one massive hand carrying her biomask while her golden eyes went to you.
The low clicking sound that left her throat the moment she saw you shaking under the blankets let you know that she was just as hurt by your sight as you were shivering.
You had learned enough of her sounds and body language by now.
“I’m fine,” you insisted, although your teeth nearly chattered through the words. Your mate answered with another low rumble that vibrated deep insdie her chest.
She walked over to you, her body radiating so much natural heat that you felt the difference before she even reached you.
The cold that had wrapped around your body for hours seemed to retreat in her presence.
Without speaking, she crouched beside the nest and reached for you.
The sheer size difference between you remained almost absurd no matter how much time passed between you, and even now it still startled you how easily she could lift your entire body against her chest as though you weighed nothing at all.
“Hey,” you protested softly as she gathered you into her arms, “I was comfortable.”
A deep growl rolled through her chest, not angry, but filled with the familiar irritation she always displayed whenever you ignored your own limits.
The sound which said, stubborn little thing.
Your mate settled against the wall with you held securely in her lap before dragging every fur and blanket in the nest across both of your bodies, effectively trapping you against her chest while her arms wrapped completely around you.
The warmth hit instantly.
It spread through your freezing body, you let out a sighbefore you could stop it.
At the sound, your mate released a series of soft clicking noises.
“You’re smug,” you mumbled tiredly as one large hand began moving slowly along your back, the sharp edges of her claws barely catching against your clothes.
The contradiction had never ceased to fascinate you.
Outside these walls, she was feared even among her own kind, a massive huntress decorated in trophies and scars earned through battles, yet every ounce of that terrifying strength softened whenever she touched you, as though you were something precious enough to handle with care.
The storm outside worsened as snow slammed against the hull in forceful waves, but wrapped in her embrace, the noise slowly began fading into the background.
Your mate lowered her head until her mandibles brushed lightly against your hair in a gesture that had once terrified you when you first came to understand her affection, though now it filled your chest with a strange warmth entirely separate from the heat of her body.
“You actually enjoy this weather, don’t you?” you asked quietly.
A low trill answered you almost immediately.
Of course, she did.
The mighty hunter species built for impossible worlds and brutal climates remained perfectly comfortable while an entire moon froze under a raging blizzard.
“You’re insane,” you muttered.
Another pleased clicking sound escaped her. The laugh that slipped from you afterwards seemed to affect her instantly because the vibrations under your cheek changed into something deeper and softer, a low, deep purring came from her chest and into your body where you rested against her. Your eyes widened slightly.
“You’re doing it again,” you whispered.
The enormous Yautja tilted her head with an almost innocent look, but the continued purring vibrating through her body made any denial impossible.
“You are absolutely purring.”
She made no attempt to stop.
Smiling, you moved closer until your cheek was fully against her.
The sound, combined with the deep vibrations of her purring and the overwhelming warmth surrounding you, made you drowsy.
One hand settled against the back of your head, claws running through your hair while keeping you tucked against her.
Possessive.
Protective.
Completely devoted.
Your mate noticed the faint shiver that still moved through your body despite the blankets, and before you could react, she removed one heavy gauntlet before sliding her bare hand carefully beneath your clothing until her burning palm rested directly against your back.
The heat nearly stole the breath from your lungs.
Yautja body temperature had always bordered on absurd compared to humans, and in moments like this it felt less like being touched by another living creature and more like pressing yourself against living fire.
A pleased rumble escaped her as your entire body relaxed against the warmth.
“That’s cheating,” you murmured sleepily.
Her mandibles twitched with amusement before she moved lower into the nest and pulled you more completely across her chest until your head rested beneath her chin while one arm remained securely wrapped around your waist. The other continued stroking slowly through your hair in movements so strangely tender that it still managed to catch you off guard sometimes.
At first, when she had taken you aboard her ship, you believed yourself nothing more than a curiosity to her, some strange little creature she found interesting enough to keep alive after discovering how stubbornly you survived conditions that should have killed you.
Then she became protective.
Then possessive.
And somewhere along the way, without either of you truly noticing when it happened, the mighty huntress who terrified entire clans had become unable to sleep properly unless you were curled safely against her chest.
You smiled faintly at the thought.
“You’d kill anyone who tried taking me away from you, wouldn’t you?”
A low, dangerous growl vibrated through her body, deep enough that you felt it more than heard it.
There was not even the slightest hesitation.
Your mate lowered her forehead carefully against yours while her golden eyes remained fixed entirely on your face, their harsh intensity softened. One claw lifted slowly beneath your chin, forcing you to hold her gaze before she released the quiet clicking sound that you had eventually come to understand as the closest thing her species had to a spoken declaration.
Mate.
Every single time she made that sound, your chest tightened.
You lifted your hand slowly to rest against the side of her jaw, feeling the warmth of her skin.
“I know,” you whispered softly with a smile.
Wrapped tightly within the arms of the deadliest creature you had ever known, surrounded by warmth, heavy furs, and the overwhelming affection of the female Yautja who had claimed you as hers, you could not remember ever feeling safer.
A/N: Happy Pride month everyone! 🏳️🌈 To celebrate, I brought the above Female Yautja x Female Reader. I hope you enjoyed!
choso is a firm believer that pretty girls like you shouldn’t have to do anything.
it’s not something he’s ever said out loud, not in those exact words, but you see it in the way he kneels at your feet when your evening slippers are pinching, in the way his hands steady your ankles as he slides them off.
you see it in the careful, reverent way he unties the laces of your dress at night, his knuckles brushing your spine, his breath warm against the nape of your neck.
"cho, i can do that myself," you protest for the hundredth time, reaching for the hairbrush on your vanity. you’ve just returned from a work dinner, your face aching from smiling, your scalp tender from the weight of your responsibilities.
"don't be like that," he says softly, taking the brush from your hand. he’s already behind you, his reflection meeting yours in the mirror. he’s wearing a simple black sweater now, his pigtails undone, but he still looks at you like you’re the only thing in the room worth seeing. "let me help you."
"you’re going to spoil me rotten," you murmur, but you’re already sinking back against him, your eyes drifting shut as he starts working the brush through your hair in slow, even strokes. the bristles scrape gently against your scalp and you make a small, involuntary sound of pleasure.
"that’s the point," he says, his voice low. he sets the brush down and reaches for the cloth and cleansing oil. "you're too beautiful to even lift a finger, baby."
he’s wiping the rouge from your cheeks now, the kohl from your eyes. his touch is so gentle, so methodical, like he’s polishing something precious. you let him tilt your chin up, let him clean away the day’s mask. when he’s done, he presses a gentle kiss to your forehead.
"cmon, bed." he commands. not harshly—never harshly—but with the quiet authority of a man who knows exactly what you need.
you stand, your hand in his, and let him lead you to the mattress. he undresses you slowly, layer by layer, the silk pooling at your feet. when you’re down to your thin shift, he pulls back the covers and tucks you in like you’re something fragile.
"sleep," he whispers.
but you catch his wrist. you’re not sleepy. not anymore. the tiredness has shifted into something else, something warm and heavy low in your belly.
"stay," you plead.
he hesitates. "you’re tired."
"i want you," you clarify, your thumb stroking the inside of his wrist. "but i’m... i’m exhausted. but— but i want you— but i don't want to do anything—"
something dark flickers in his eyes. understanding. hunger. devotion.
"then don’t," he says. he climbs onto the bed, fully clothed, and crawls up your body until he’s hovering over you. "don’t do anything. don’t even think. just let me make you feel good."
"choso—" you start, already feeling guilty, already reaching for the hem of his sweater.
he catches your hands and pins them gently above your head. his fingers twine with yours, pressing your palms into the pillow.
"no, sweetheart." he says, his mouth brushing your ear. his voice drops, rough and reverent. "you don’t do the work. you never do the work. you just lay there, princess, and let me take care of you. let me please you. let me—" he grinds his hips down, and you feel how hard he is, straining against the fabric of his trousers, and you gasp. "—let me do everything."
he releases your hands only to finally pull his sweater over his head. you watch the muscles of his back shift in the warm light of your tablelamp, the old scars, the lean strength. when he turns back to you, he’s already unlacing his trousers, pushing them down, kicking them off.
he kneels between your thighs, his dark eyes raking over you. "open up," he murmurs, his hands sliding up your legs, pushing your shift higher. "be good for me, okay?"
you spread your legs, trembling. he’s already so hard, the pink tip flushed and wet, and he wraps his hand around himself, stroking once, twice, his eyes never leaving your face.
"you don’t even have to move," he says, leaning down, caging you in his warmth. "i’ll do all the work. i’ll get you ready. i’ll make you feel so good. all you have to do is look at me. can you do that for me, princess? can you let me love you?"
"yes," you breathe, your voice cracking. "yes, choso, please—"
he kisses you then, deep and filthy, his tongue sliding against yours in a rhythm that makes your toes curl. his hand slips between your legs, his fingers finding you already wet, already aching. he doesn’t make you ask, nor does he make you work for it. he just pushes two fingers inside you, curling them, stretching you open while his thumb circles your clit.
"that’s it," he praises against your lips, feeling you clench around him. "that's my girl. just lay there and take it. let me get you ready for my cock."
you moan, your head falling back against the pillow. he’s relentless, his fingers pumping in and out, hitting that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. you try to rock your hips, try to chase the sensation, but he stills you with his free hand on your hip.
"no, angel." he says, his voice firm. "don’t move. let me. i want to feel you squeezing my fingers while you just lay there and let me fuck you open."
you whimper, your hands gripping the sheets because he won’t let you touch him. he’s leaning over you, watching your face, watching the pleasure overwhelm you, and his expression is something almost feral. like this—serving you, controlling your pleasure, doing all the labor—is exactly where he wants to be.
"look at you," he breathes, his fingers moving faster, harder. "so pretty. so perfect. you're doing so well, baby. letting me make you cum. can you do that for me? can you cum on my fingers like a good girl?"
"choso!" you sob, the pressure building, your body tensing.
"there she is," he croons, his thumb pressing down. "cum for me, make a mess of the sheets."
you break, your orgasm crashing over you, your walls clamping down on his fingers as you cry out. he rides you through it, his hand moving slower now, drawing out every wave until you’re shaking, boneless, your hair fanned out across the pillow.
before you can catch your breath, he’s moving. he hooks his arms under your knees, spreading you wide, his hands sliding up to grip your hips. he positions himself at your entrance, the head of his cock pressing against your still-pulsing heat.
"now," he says, his voice rough with restraint. "i’m going to fuck you, and i’m going to make you cum again. and again. until you can’t think. until you can’t even remember your name."
"please," you gasp, your hands reaching for him again, wanting to touch, to hold.
he catches your wrists and presses them back into the mattress. "no," he says, his eyes dark. "be good, or i'll stop. understand?"
you nod, dizzy, your body still throbbing.
he pushes in with one long, smooth thrust, filling you completely. the stretch burns so perfectly you cry out, your back arching off the bed, but he holds you down, his grip tight on your hips.
"fuck," he groans, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. "so warm. so tight. and you’re just— letting me use you— shit—"
he starts to move, a slow, deep rhythm that has you seeing stars. he’s doing all the work—his hips rolling, his cock dragging against your sensitive walls, his hands holding you exactly where he wants you. you try to move, try to meet his thrusts, but he growls and pins you harder.
"stay still," he orders, his voice strained. "let me do this for you. you had a hard day. you smiled at people who didn't deserve it. now you just get to lay here and take my cock. that’s all. that’s your only job."
"ch-choso!" you sob, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes. it’s too much, the pleasure, the devotion, the way he’s using his body to serve you. "i love you— hic!— i love you so much—"
"i know," he breathes, his thrusts speeding up, becoming harder, more desperate. his skin slaps against yours, the bed creaking, but he never lets you move. he holds you open, holds you down, fucks into you with a single-minded focus that’s entirely about your pleasure. "and i love you more. god, i love you so much more."
his hand slides between you again, his fingers finding your clit, rubbing tight, fast circles. you’re so sensitive from your first orgasm, every touch is electric, overwhelming. you can’t move, can’t do anything but lay there and take it, exactly like he wants, and the helplessness of it, the sheer luxury of being cared for so completely, sends you over the edge again.
you cum with a scream, your walls clamping down on him so hard he chokes, his rhythm faltering.
"that’s it," he gasps, fucking you through it, chasing his own release now. "atta girl. just— shit— i-im gonna—"
he thrusts deep one last time and stills, his cock pulsing inside you as he comes with a broken groan against your neck. you feel the heat of it, the way he spills into you, marking you, claiming you, all while you lay there trembling, his hands still gripping your hips, his weight pressing you into the mattress.
for a long moment, neither of you moves. he’s breathing hard, his chest heaving, sweat slicking his skin. slowly, carefully, he pulls out and collapses beside you, immediately pulling you into his arms. he’s still panting, his heart hammering against your ear.
"okay?" he whispers, his hand stroking your hair again, back to the gentle, domestic touches.
you nod, boneless, drifting. "more than okay," you murmur. "felt so good."
"that’s the point," he reminds you, pressing a kiss to your temple. "pretty girls like you shouldn’t have to do anything."
you smile against his chest, your eyes already closing. "then i guess i’m just going to have to let you do it again tomorrow."
having a quickie in the morning before work with clark but it gets soooo irresistible you both have to keep going and going and going until it’s not a quickie anymore. gradually getting creamier and filthier to draw it out long while he fucks you so good from behind. twenty minutes passes by, then thirty minutes, then forty five…. you’ve made his dick a mess after cumming on it so hard so much but Clark just keeps going like a fuck machine on blast, getting greedy and wanting more of your fluids to get on him until you’re dry mouthed and dehydrated from leaking all that you’ve got. spanking you and jiggling your ass with his hand while he teases just the tip in.
then it’s passed the time he’d normally leave for work, briefcase and tie still hung up by the door waiting for him to go about his daily responsibilities but he just can’t. get. enough of that pussy this morning, his pre cum so slippery webbing between your inner thighs while he’s gasping and humming in your ear while he slides his full dick all the way in. wondering if the wet warmth he’s feeling squeeze him so good was part of your stomach cause he’s so. deep.
then he yanks you up with no effort whatsoever to switch positions so he’s sitting up and you’re on top, getting you ready for you to ride his dick. you can’t help the breathless crying leaving your throat while you slowly sink up and down to fulfill his demands while he praises you for going as long as he wants, calling you his creamy pretty slut. the clock on his nightstand literally shows he should be clocked in sitting at his desk right now. taking phone calls. getting the mountain of paperwork ready for the meeting he has scheduled before his lunch. clark breathily asks that you keep bouncing when his phone starts to ring, work calling him to check in and ask why he hasn’t shown up. if something happened or if he’s on his way, since its so out of character for him to be as late as he is right now. he holds his breath and closes his eyes with one hand holding the phone to his ear, the other pulling on a lip of that sloppy pussy still enthusiastically grinding all up on him.
‘yeah….yeah I’m sorry, just think I caught s…something, not really um. not feeling too good. probably best if I don’t come in today,’ he clenches his jaw when you raise your hips and his dick slips out mid excuse. clark could only put on his best fake-cough to try to keep the act going, squeezing your hip to quietly beg you to put it back in. grip getting more rough by the second until you whimper a sorry and take him to put it all back inside in one go. his boss says to call earlier next time because they need him but tells him to feel better soon and try to get healthy before tomorrow. clark agrees with a yeahyeahyeahmmmhm I’ll take good care of myself today bye and hangs up without another word, throwing his phone carelessly back to the nightstand and slamming his hips so hard his balls nestle up to your puffy used up and exhausted clit.
‘called out of work for this so let’s make it worth it, yeah? keep bouncing, good girl. that’s it. don’t be a bad girl and let it slip out again. I want it on me all day, got it?’
. . . .
yeah I know I’ve wrote morning d!ck before but yum no resistance to post this here I have hella stuff to work on thank you all so much for the love <3
summary: a comprehensive look into the kinks and fantasies you explore as bucky's sub.
word count: 1.4k
warnings: 18+, MDNI and I mean it, oral fixation, oral sex (bucky is a MUNCH), finger sucking, subspace, daddy kink, pet names (princess), body worship, spanking, romantic gestures, anal sex, butt plugs, overstimulation, dom/sub dynamics, safewords mentioned (just the fact that y'all have one in place), aftercare
series masterlist | main masterlist | tip jar | ao3
a/n: this was suggested by @onyx8514 on ko-fi! hope you love it <3
soft!dom!bucky who knows you're not a virgin, but he also knows you've never done most of the things he wants to do to and with you. you've had a few partners in the past, and the rare one-night-stand, but your sex life had been relatively vanilla. because of this, the first scene you and bucky had after officially establishing the power dynamics in your relationship he'd pretty much treated as your first time ever. he'd taken you out to the nicest restaurant in brooklyn and had the waiter sit you in a booth near the back so you could have privacy. he'd pulled you close and fed you by hand, had ordered you a glass of wine - only one, though, because bucky would never be intimate with you if you were impaired, and cooed in your ear, complimenting you on your hair and the way your dress hugged your hips, laying the foundations of what was to come and easing you into that soft headspace that leaves you so sweet and eager for him.
soft!dom!bucky who establishes a safe word early on: winter. so far, you've never had to use it, have never even thought of uttering the word, but bucky flat out refused to take the next step once your relationship changed without one. he'd never forgive himself if he was doing something you didn't like and there wasn't clear communication about it, the very last thing he wants is to bring you pain you don't want. you also use the traffic light system as bucky insists on checking in every so often to make sure you're okay, because you tend to get quiet when you're overwhelmed with pleasure.
soft!dom!bucky who has a heavy oral fixation - specifically, finger-sucking. even more specifically, you sucking on his fingers. what makes it even better is that you seem to have a thing for his hands, staring at them when he's cooking or playing with them when you're cuddled on the couch, so you're all too happy to let his fingers sink into your mouth whenever he wants. after you've had a long day, he loves sitting you on his cock while you suckle on two of his fingers, urging you to just let go, princess. I know, you're so wound up, huh? it's alright, you don't need to think, okay? just focus on daddy, let daddy fill you up exactly how you need until the events of your day finally leave your mind and you're slumping against bucky's chest, nuzzling into him and whimpering uselessly because your brain is too hazy to form any words but you need daddy to know that you appreciate him.
soft!dom!bucky who loves spanking you as a form of getting you out of your head. he knows your brain can get too loud sometimes, the doubts and insecurities overtaking your thoughts until you can't think of anything other than the many different ways you think you messed up that day. he'll perch himself on the edge of the bed fully clothed, gently ordering you to strip down until you're in just your thong and bra. once you're mostly bare, he'll beckon you forward until he can maneuver your body to where you're laying over his lap, your butt elevated, just waiting for his hand to grope and massage and swat. he makes you count out loud how many spanks he gives you, starting over when you lose count, relishing in your quiet squeals and pleas for more, only starting to slow down when he notices a few tears stinging your eyes. "color?" he checks in periodically, smiling to himself when you don't hesitate to assure him, "green," despite how much your ass stings. he lets you hump and grind in his lap occasionally, encouraging you to seek more pleasure when he dips his fingers between your cheeks and presses against your clothed hole. he never lets you actually cum until he sees that haze in your eyes, though, when those normally wide, curious eyes glaze over, your whimpers turning pathetic until you're unable to form any words other than daddy and thank you and soooo green when he asks if you're okay.
soft!dom!bucky who loves tying you down and eating you out for hours. he leaves the silk ties loose enough for you to be able to wiggle a little because he loves watching you squirm from the stimulation. he starts by kissing your thighs, biting down a little and sucking bits of skin into his mouth until he's sure you'll be able to feel the ache whenever you move. he'll give your pussy long, closed mouth kisses, licking your labia until you're whining for more, and since bucky has never been able to deny his princess anything, he spreads your lower lips and dive in. and sometimes, if bucky gets especially insatiable, that's the only thing you do that night. sometimes he just can't stop himself from licking and sucking your clit until you nearly black out, fingers reaching so deep inside you that you swear you can feel him in your stomach, pressing against your special spot over and over until you're squirting, crying out thank you, daddy! thank you! through tears.
soft!dom!bucky who thinks he's never been harder when he finds out you've never tried anal sex. you expressed your anxiety about it, citing previous partner's tendencies to rush things, to mostly care only about their own pleasure, and you'd been mildly afraid that it would hurt too much and spoil the experience. bucky is furious on your behalf, understanding that it's unfortunately common for guys your age to not give a shit about their partner's pleasure, but still upset that you had to deal with their selfishness when he knows how good he can make it for you. and he does, of course. he goes above and beyond what you'd imagined when you discussed it. and bucky talks to you the whole time, letting you know what he's doing so that you're not caught off guard, praising you as you take his fingers in your tightest hole, letting him consume you completely. the first time he presses his cock inside, you tense up, but bucky continues cooing at you, massaging your hips and kissing your neck and playing with your clit until your body lets him sink in completely, owning your body in every conceivable way. and he's never been prouder of you (and himself) when you cum so hard your vision whites out.
soft!dom!bucky who loves putting a plug in your ass after cumming inside, wanting to keep you full even after the scene is over because he craves those little pathetic whines you let out whenever you move even slightly, and you crave being full of him at all times. you get that glassy look in your eyes when the plug jostles, a fuzzy feeling wrapping around your heart and a warmth in your belly knowing that you're claimed wholly by daddy's cum. and sometimes you ask to keep it in for a while longer than bucky was planning, shyly explaining that it makes you feel more connected to him, like he's with you even when he's not.
soft!dom!bucky who will spend forever kissing and worshipping your body, nibbling and sucking on your nipples until you're hissing, desperately wishing he could imprint his lips on your collarbone like a tattoo so that you carry his love everywhere you go. he'll massage your thighs, his devotion to you and your pleasure being whispered into your neck as he plays your body like a fiddle, knowing exactly how to coax out those moans he loves so much, those high-pitched whines that go straight to his dick, but he'll happily ignore it until well after you're begging for it because he doesn't think you've cum enough times for him to deserve your tight heat.
soft!dom!bucky who takes aftercare extremely seriously. it's his responsibility and honor as your dom to take care of you after he's just fucked you stupid. he carries you to the toilet to pee, then will draw a bath for you if you're up for it. you're usually not considering bucky often leaves you so exhausted afterwards that you can barely keep your eyes open for more than ten minutes, but that just means you'll shower the next morning. he knows you hate the stickiness, so he'll always carefully clean you up with a wet rag no matter if you bathe that night or not, but will insist on getting actually clean no later than the next morning because he knows it helps rejuvenate you. you always fall asleep cuddled into his chest, and he never falls asleep before you, waiting for your breathing to even out before he even considers sleeping because he doesn't want to leave you to be awake alone after something so intense.
simon riley who won’t stop even when you’re writhing under him. he proudly eats pussy for the love of the game.
even after three orgasms in the span of thirty minutes, his tongue is still licking and lapping away at your precious cunt. knees trying to clench together while you’re shoving his head away.
simon riley who just tightens his grip on your thighs, grumbling under his breath.
a low “hol’ still, lovie. ‘m busy.” while he’s sucking your sensitive clit back into his mouth. you can’t stop the way your thighs tremble in his large hands.
scratches line his arms, your nails digging into his flesh with each pass of his tongue over your poor, sopping cunt.
“si, please. stop it. ‘s too much,” you whimper, still trying to get away.
he doesn’t care though, following you as your body contorts until you’re no longer on you back. instead, on your stomach and clawing at the sheets.
simon riley who crawls after you, only to tug your hips back.
“said ‘m busy,” he huffs. this time, he does pull away, but only long enough to glare at you.
“i can’t take anymore,” you whine, trying to catch your breath during his brief reprieve. simon eyes you closely, grip tightening on your thighs.
“no?” he hums, tilting his head.
“n-no,” you stumble, just as he starts tracing small circles over your clit. clamping down on your bottom lip, your hips lift in an attempt to chase his touch and your hand is flying out to tangle into his blonde hair.
“doesn’t seem like you can’t take anymore to me,” simon smirks. you whimper, face wet with fat tears when he lowers his mouth back onto your pussy.
you try to get away again, halfway off the bed when simon shifts into sniper mode. flat against the bed, simon grips your lower half, grinding his heavy cock into the mattress while keeping you in place as he continues his assault on your poor, sweet pussy.
pairing | post!tfatws!bucky x fem!reader
word count | 11.3k words
summary | when your boyfriend offers to play the stranger who picks you up at a bar, you expect a little dirty talk—not a full performance, a running camera, and the dirtiest night of your life.
tags | 18+ (MDNI), EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT, unprotected sex, rough sex, established relationship, roleplay smut, manhandling, roleplay sex, filmed sex, degradation/praise, overstimulation, fingering, dacryphilia, multiple orgasms, oral sex (f!receiving), facial, fake cheating, teasing!reader, mean!bucky, flustered!bucky, bf!bucky, bucky is down so bad, smut with feelings, bucky has a cam kink now, horny and in love, porn with the tiniest bit of plot, or no... actually I'm lying, there's really no plot.
a/n | this has been sitting in my drafts since oct, enjoy. inspired by that episode of modern family where claire and phil roleplay strangers in a hotel bar.
likes, comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨
you do NOT need to read the previous parts to read this one
sᴇʀɪᴇs ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ
divider by @omi-resources
You stood near the end of the counter, one hand wrapped around a sweating glass of something you couldn’t even remember ordering.
The condensation dripped between your fingers, cool and slick, grounding you in the low-lit noise of the bar. Your heel was propped on the brass rail, dress riding up just a little, enough to feel the air against your thigh.
The place was alive tonight. Warm with pressed bodies and old wood, the kind of Friday-night hum that vibrated through your ribs. Neon signs flickered half-heartedly against exposed brick, casting everything in shades of pink and amber.
It wasn’t your scene, not really, but you’d promised yourself you’d try. A little lipstick. A short sequence dress. A half-commitment to pretending you weren’t already imagining the silence of your apartment, the relief of kicking off your heels, the familiar weight of his arms around you when you got home.
But then you felt it.
A gaze sliding over your skin like a warm hand before it even touched you. Your neck prickled. The hair on your arms stood. The strange gravity of someone looking shifted the air around you before you even turned.
Then the voice came from behind your left shoulder, cutting through the bar’s chatter like a blade.
“Didn’t think a girl like you would be here alone.”
You turned.
The man beside you was tall, broad-shouldered under a dark coat that looked expensive in a simple way. His hair was neatly cut, dark, with a hint of grey catching the neon light. Stubble lined his jaw, sharp and clean, his eyes were blue, electric even in the dim haze—and they carried this confidence that bordered on predatory.
You gave him a slow once-over. From his boots to his jaw, letting him feel the weight of your attention. Then, casually, you turned back to your drink. “I’m not alone.”
He didn’t leave. You could feel him smile before he spoke again, the warmth of it bleeding into his voice.
“Boyfriend?”
You nodded.
“Is he here?”
You shook your head, taking a sip of your drink, something citrusy and sweet that burned pleasantly on the way down.
“Then you’re alone.” His voice was soft, like he was stating a fact you’d been trying to ignore.
You huffed a laugh before you could stop it, surprised sound that slipped out like a traitor. You sipped again, buying a second, then glanced sideways at him. “That’s not really how it works.”
He leaned in, close enough that his cologne reached you first; clean, soapy, undercut with something warm and woody. It was good. The kind of scent that made you want to lean closer just to breathe it in.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but I’ve got a feeling your boyfriend doesn’t appreciate you the way he should.”
You looked at him then, skeptical, one eyebrow lifting. “You know my boyfriend?”
“No.” A grin spread across his mouth. “But if he was doing his job, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
Your lips curved… again, against your will. A small, reluctant acknowledgment that the game was already in play. You shifted, angling your body slightly away, a polite distance that said I’m not interested even as your eyes lingered a beat too long.
He didn’t take the hint. He took a step closer, filling the space you’d left, and the heat of his body wrapped around you like a second skin.
His gaze traveled over your face, not crude, not hungry in the cheap way. Appreciative. Attentive. Too attentive, like he was memorising the curve of your jaw, the way the neon light caught the gloss on your lips.
“I’m flattered,” you said, keeping your tone light, easy. “But like I said—I’ve got someone.”
“Yeah?” His voice dropped, almost a murmur. “Is he here?”
You let out a slow exhale, a half-smile tugging at your mouth. “We’ve been over this.”
He smiled back, smaller this time. A quiet acknowledgment that yes, you had, and he didn’t care.
“You’re drinking alone,” he said, each word placed with care. “Dressed like that. Smiling at me.” He paused, tilting his head, letting the silence stretch. “You don’t strike me as the loyal girlfriend type.”
Your jaw tightened, just a fraction. You turned toward him fully now, elbows finding the bar.
“I’m very loyal,” you said, voice steady. “He’s just not the jealous type.”
He let the word sit, “oh,” slow and dry, laced with amusement. Then, “So he’s a fucking idiot.”
You blinked.
The laugh that escaped you was real this time, warm and surprised, your shoulders loosening despite yourself. You shook your head, a little smile you couldn’t suppress curving your lips.
“That’s one way to put it,” you said.
He tilted his head, eyes catching the soft curve of your smile, and holding it like a prize. A low, appreciative hum escaped him as his gaze dragged down your body, the kind of look that felt like a touch you hadn’t consented to but couldn’t bring yourself to stop.
“You let your girl come out here looking like that,” he murmured, his voice dropping into something rougher, “on her own, with guys like me walking around?” His tongue swept across his bottom lip as his eyes traveled back up to yours. “He doesn’t care. That’s what I’m hearing.”
You didn’t respond. Instead, you brought your glass to your lips, letting the cool liquid slide over your tongue, buying yourself a beat of silence. You could feel the weight of his attention pressing against your skin.
Then he lifted two fingers at the bartender, a lazy, confident gesture.
“Get her another,” he said, without breaking eye contact with you. “Whatever she’s drinking.”
You held up a hand, palm out. “I’m good, thanks.”
“I insist.” His words were soft but firm, and his eyes stayed locked on yours, daring you to look away first. “Your boyfriend can be mad later.”
You tilted your head, letting yourself study him in return. Really look this time. The sharp line of his jaw, the faint scar near his chin, and the barely-there dimple that flickered at the corner of his mouth when his smirk deepened.
He leaned in again, closer now, under the pretense of the music swelling around you. His lips hovered near your ear, close enough that you felt the warmth of his breath before you heard his voice.
“I’ll be honest,” he said, each word a carefully placed stone in the path he wanted you to follow. “I’m not here for the small talk. You don’t want me—fine. I can take no.” A pause. “But if you do… just say the word.”
The new drink landed in front of you, the glass slick with condensation, a thin river of water pooling on the dark wood. You glanced at it, then back at him. He hadn’t looked away once, not even to blink.
You gave him a flat look, but your fingers still curled around the rim of the fresh glass, betraying you. “You’re really pushy.”
He shrugged, unhurried. “I’m direct.”
“Same thing.”
“I’d argue it’s different.” His voice dropped, conversational now. “Pushy guys don’t take no for an answer. I’m just giving you a chance to be honest with yourself.”
You lifted the drink to your lips, more to buy time than anything else. The liquid was cold and sharp, citrus cutting through the warmth blooming in your chest.
“I mean, he can’t be that good,” he casually added, as if commenting on the weather. “You’ve checked your phone three times since I walked in. Not once did it light up with his name.”
Your gaze dropped to your hand, fingers tightening on the glass until your knuckles paled.
“That’s not really any of your business.”
He leaned his elbow on the bar, turning more fully to face you. The corner of his mouth twitched, like he was holding back a chuckle. “It’s a little bit my business, sweetheart,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, “especially if I’m about to spend the rest of my night thinking about those pretty legs wrapped around me.”
Your eyes snapped to his, a jolt of heat lancing through you at the crudeness. You forced yourself to stay still, to keep your expression schooled, even as your pulse hammered against your ribs.
“You always talk to women like this?” you asked, your voice steady, a thin shield.
“No.” He said it simply, without hesitation. “Just the girls who pretend they don’t want it.”
You scoffed, but you could feel the heat crawling up your neck. “You’re an asshole.”
He tilted his head, considering the word like a wine he was tasting. “Confident,” he corrected, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “And maybe a little desperate.” His eyes held yours, a challenge and an invitation all at once. “Can you blame me?”
His eyes dipped lower for just a second, dragging over the obvious curve of your cleavage, the bare expanse of thigh you’d half-heartedly crossed. When they came back up, his pupils had swallowed nearly all the blue, leaving only a thin ring of color.
“If I were your man,” he murmured, his voice dropping into something gravelly, “I’d never let you out of my sight. Let alone out of the house dressed like this.” A pause, his gaze flicking down again. “That’d only be for me to appreciate.”
You shook your head, a breathy laugh escaping you. “You really think negging my boyfriend’s gonna make me want to fuck you?”
“No.” The word camwe out confident. “But I think you’re already thinking about it. And that’s got nothing to do with him.”
The air between you tightened like a drawn wire. You hated how right he felt. How every time he leaned in, your body seemed to sway toward him, a magnetic pull you couldn’t quite override.
You didn’t meet his eyes right away. Instead, you let your gaze drift to the condensation on your glass, tracing a path through the droplets with your fingertip. Let him sit in his confidence. Let him think he was winning. Even if he kind of was.
“So,” you said after a beat, your voice dropping to a murmur that was almost lost in the pulse of the music, “how exactly would you be better than my boyfriend?”
He didn’t hesitate. Not a flicker.
“I’d actually pay attention,” he said, and his voice had gone quieter, it felt like a secret meant only for you. “I wouldn’t let you walk around looking like this unless it was for me. I’d keep you so satisfied you’d never even remember his name.”
You laughed softly, low and skeptical, a sound that caught in your throat. “That so?”
“Yeah.” The word was a breath, a promise. He leaned closer, and you caught the faint rasp of stubble against his jaw as his mouth hovered near your ear. “I’d learn your body like a map. I’d make you beg without even touching you. I’d ruin every other man for you just by how good I fuck you.”
The words landed like sparks on dry tinder, igniting something low in your belly. You should’ve rolled your eyes. Should’ve told him to get lost, laughed in his face, walked away.
Instead, you turned your head just enough to meet his gaze, your chin lifting in quiet defiance.
“You rehearse this shit, or is it just off the cuff?”
A grin spread across his face. “I can show you if you want.”
You took another sip, letting the cool liquid coat your throat. And then you felt it, his knee, sliding slowly between your thighs, pressing against the inside of your leg with unhurried pressure.
“I think,” you said, lips brushing the rim of your glass, your voice steady even as your skin hummed, “you’re full of shit.”
“I think,” he countered, leaning in so close you could feel the heat of his breath at your cheek, “you’re hoping I’m not.”
And you didn’t say anything for a second too long. The silence stretched, filled with the thrum of bass and the thud of your own heartbeat.
His smile widened, slow and triumphant.
“Just one night,” he said, soft as a murmur. “That’s all I’m askin’.”
You exhaled, the breath shaking just a little. “God, you’re really committed to this.”
His head tilted slightly, eyes never leaving yours. “Could say the same about you, sweetheart.”
Your eyes lingered on him longer than they should have. Longer than was safe. The neon glow from the sign behind him painted his jaw in shades of pink and blue. The way he stood; loose, confident, like he owned every inch of space around him, made your mouth go dry.
You were past the point of denial now. You didn’t even try to cover the way your thighs pressed tighter around his knee every time he leaned in, the way your breath caught when his voice dropped. Every word he whispered, every glance, it was crawling under your skin, planting something hot and unruly inside you.
You let out a slow breath, your chest rising and falling as you held his gaze. Your eyes dropped to his mouth, the slight curve, the faint wetness from where he’d licked his lips, then back up to meet his.
“Fine,” you said softly, the word barely audible beneath the thrum of the bar’s music. “Just one night.”
He didn’t even blink. Didn’t question it, didn’t gloat, at least, not out loud. But the shift in him was unmistakable. His shoulders straightened, his jaw tightened, and that smirk curved at the corners of his mouth. It was a look that said I knew it. I knew you’d break.
Then his fingers wrapped around your hand; big, warm, a little rough, calloused in a way that made you wonder what he did for a living. He pulled you up from your stool in one clean, fluid motion, and you felt the sudden loss of the barstool’s support replaced by the solid heat of his body close to yours.
Your drink was still half-full. Your dignity back at that bar. Didn’t matter.
His hand didn’t just hold yours, it led. Gripped with purpose, not carelessness. His thumb pressed into the soft webbing between your index and middle finger, and you felt the pulse in his palm, steady and strong.
Out of the bar, past the crowd jostling at the door, through the heavy oak door and into the night air that hit you like a slap, cold and sharp after the suffocating heat you’d been sitting in.
The temperature difference made your skin prickle, your nipples tightening beneath your dress. But it didn’t cool you down. If anything, it made everything more electric, more alive.
He glanced back once, just long enough to meet your eyes. In the dim light, you caught the flicker of heat behind his gaze, the tension in his jaw.
The parking lot was mostly empty. You hadn’t even registered which one was his, too busy trying to slow your heart down, too busy wondering what the hell you’d just agreed to.
He didn’t give you time to second-guess it.
Before you could reach for the door handle, he turned you.
One quick, smooth movement, your back hitting the cool metal side of the car with a quiet thud that echoed in your chest. The impact knocked the breath from your lungs, your eyes going wide, your hands flying up instinctively.
Then his hand came up, gripping your jaw, his fingers curving around the bone just beneath your ear. He tilted your face up toward his, forcing your gaze to meet his, and you saw the raw hunger there, barely leashed.
“I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he murmured.
It was all mouth and hunger and heat, his lips crashing into yours like he’d been holding himself back for hours and the dam had finally broken.
The first contact was almost bruising, a desperate, claiming press that stole your breath and left you reeling. His mouth was warm, tasted faintly of whiskey and salt, and the scrape of his stubble against your chin sent a shiver down your neck.
He kissed like a man who knew what your mouth would taste like. Who’d imagined it in vivid detail, over and over, until now, finally, it was real. His tongue slid in, exploring, tasting, taking, just claiming what he wanted. His fingers held your jaw in place, like he didn’t want you pulling away. Like he didn’t want you thinking.
Your knees buckled.
Your hands flew up, gripping the front of his shirt, the fabric soft but warm, the muscles beneath taut and steely. You fisted the material, trying to anchor yourself to something solid as his mouth moved against yours. His chest was hard against your palms, his heartbeat a rapid drum beneath your fingers.
You weren’t kissing him back at first. You were just trying to keep up. Trying to breathe.
But he didn’t let you. He didn’t give you space to gather yourself.
He licked into your mouth like he was starving, like every second without your taste was agony. A groan rumbled low in his throat, a sound that was equal parts relief and torture, and it vibrated through you, settling somewhere deep in your belly.
His hand slipped from your jaw to the side of your neck, fingers curling behind your ear, tilting your head just slightly to deepen the angle.
The world narrowed to the press of his mouth, the scrape of his teeth on your lower lip, the way his thumb stroked the sensitive skin behind your ear. The cold night air bit at your bare legs, but you barely felt it, all you felt was him, all you tasted was him, all you heard was the wet sound of the kiss and your own ragged breathing.
When he finally pulled back, your lips were swollen, throbbing, wet with the evidence of his claim. Your breath came in short, uneven gasps, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat.
A thin string of saliva connected your lips, glistening in the streetlight, unbroken until you finally parted them with a shaky exhale.
You didn’t even realize your nails were still digging into his shirt until you felt him exhale against your mouth, a warm, shaky breath that fanned across your sensitive skin.
He didn’t say anything.
Just pressed his forehead to yours. Let you breathe. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark against his cheekbones, his breath still uneven. You could feel the tremour in his frame, the barely restrained hunger still simmering beneath the surface.
Then he stepped back, opened the car door like nothing had just happened and waited for you to climb in.
The elevator ride was barely two floors.
Maybe three. You didn’t know. You didn’t remember stepping inside, didn’t remember pressing the button, didn’t remember the doors sliding shut behind you.
All you remembered was his hand on the small of your back, the firm, pressure of his palm against the curve of your spine, fingers splayed wide, pressing just hard enough to steer you forward.
And when you reached his door, his grip tightened. Those fingers dug into the flesh just above your hip, and you felt the tremour in his arm, the barely restrained tension coiling through his muscles. Like he was already fighting himself not to ravage you in the hallway.
The key turned. The lock clicked.
And the second the door swung shut behind you, it was over.
He was on you.
There was nothing smooth about it. No romantic glide across hardwood floors to a couch you’d never reach. No whispered sweet nothings.
This was fast.
His coat hit the floor before the door fully closed, followed by the jingle of keys dropping somewhere near his shoes. Your purse slipped from your fingers, landing near the entry table with a dull thump you barely registered.
His hands found your hips first. Then your ass, grabbing handfuls of flesh through the thin fabric of your dress. Then your back, sliding up the curve of your spine, fingertips pressing into the muscles on either side. Then your ribs, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts, and you gasped against his mouth.
He couldn’t decide where to touch first, so he touched everything.
God, his mouth was everywhere too.
At your jaw, teeth scraping along the sharp edge of it. At your throat, tongue dragging hot and wet over your pulse point. At your collarbone, lips sucking a bruise into the hollow just above where your dress dipped. Anywhere your skin peeked out, he was ther.
He was like a fucking bear. Big, warm, all-consuming, surrounding you with heat and muscle and the faint scent of whiskey and leather and male. And you weren’t complaining. Not even a little.
Your back hit the nearest wall with a thud that rattled the picture frame beside you. The impact forced the air from your lungs, and you gasped, head falling back against the plaster. The dress rode up under his grip, the hem bunching around your hips, cool air kissing the bare skin of your thighs.
Your leg lifted instinctively, wrapping around his hip, heel digging into the firm curve of his ass to anchor him to you. He groaned into your neck and the sound vibrated through your skin.
“Mmm,” he muttered against your throat. His lips brushed your pulse as he spoke, teeth grazing the sensitive skin. “Does your boyfriend touch you like this?”
A breathy laugh escaped you, surprised and amused despite the heat flooding your veins. You tilted your head back further, giving him more access, and your fingers tangled in the short hairs at the nape of his neck.
“You really hate that guy, huh?”
He pulled back just far enough to look you in the eye. Dim light from the kitchen filtered through the apartment, catching the sharp blue of his gaze, the dilated pupils, the flush creeping up his neck.
“I think he’s a goddamn idiot,” he said, voice low and rough. “Letting a girl like you walk around wanting this kind of attention. Dressed like this, looking like you do.” His grip tightened, fingers curling into the fabric of your dress. “If you were mine—”
You cut him off with a kiss. It was teeth and tongue and a sharp bite against his lower lip that made him hiss, and then you pulled back, breath short, lips slick.
“But I’m not yours,” you said against his mouth, the words barely a whisper.
And god, the look he gave you.
His eyes darkened, pupils swallowing the blue. His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking near his temple. His right hand came up, fingers curling around your throat as his thumb pressed gently against the hollow beneath your jaw, feeling your pulse flutter like a trapped bird beneath his touch.
“Not yet,” he rasped, the words a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through his chest into yours
He didn’t guide you so much as haul you toward the nearest surface.
One hand clamped under your thigh, fingers digging into the soft flesh, while the other gripped your ass hard enough to make you gasp. The world blurred; a flash of dark cabinetry, the hum of a refrigerator, the faint citrus scent of cleaner, and then your back hit the edge of his kitchen island.
The impact knocked a quiet, breathless gasp from your lungs. The granite was cold against your skin through your dress, a sharp shock against the heat blazing through your body. The edge dug into your lower back, a hard line of pressure that should have been uncomfortable, but it barely registered.
Not with the furnace of his body pressed so close. Not with the way he was already shoving the hem of your dress up your thighs, bunching the fabric with impatient hands, like the dress itself had personally offended him.
“Fuck,” he breathed out. His jaw was tight, a muscle ticking near his temple as his eyes raked down your body. His fingers curled into the hem and yanked it higher, past your hips, past the damp lace of your panties, baring you to the cool kitchen air. “Look at you.”
His voice dropped, as his hands slid under the bunched fabric to grip your bare hips. His fingers dug into the curve of bone, hard enough to leave crescents, and a shiver of anticipation rolled through you at the thought of feeling those marks tomorrow.
“Can’t believe your man lets you walk around like this,” he muttered, shaking his head slowly, his gaze fixed on the exposed skin of your thighs. “Dress so short I can see the curve of your ass with every step you take. Tits practically spilling out, begging for attention. You’re a walking invitation, sweetheart.”
“He trusts me,” you shot back, grinning despite the wildfire racing through your veins.
“He’s a fucking idiot,” Bucky grunted, and then he lifted you like you weighed nothing, hands under your thighs, a single smooth motion that had you gasping as he set you on the cold granite counter.
Your ass met the stone, a jolt of cold against the heat between your legs, and you braced your palms flat on the surface to steady yourself. “Should’ve locked you up before someone else got to you.”
Your thighs spread instinctively to keep your balance, opening yourself to him like a flower turning toward the sun. His eyes dropped between them like he was starving, dress rucked up around your waist, panties damp and clinging.
His hands followed his gaze. Fingertips found the soft inner flesh of your thighs, tracing lazy patterns, goosebumps rising in their wake. His thumbs brushed the edges of your panties, teasing,. His mouth hovered just above yours, close enough that you could taste his breath, warm and slightly sweet with the whiskey from the bar.
“Bet he doesn’t even touch you right,” he murmured, his lips barely skimming yours with each word. “Bet he doesn’t make you beg. Doesn’t know how wet you get from just being told what to do. Does he, sweetheart? Does he know how your body responds to a firm hand?”
You didn’t respond. Your tongue felt thick, your thoughts scattering like leaves in the wind.
His fingers hooked into the crotch of your panties, and he shoved the damp fabric aside with two confident strokes. Then one finger traced the length of your slit, gathering the wetness that had been pooling there since the bar. The sensation made you jerk, a sharp inhale hissing through your teeth.
“Fuck,” he hissed, almost to himself. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide as he stared at where his hand disappeared between your thighs. “Yeah. This is mine now.”
You clenched around nothing, your body responding before your brain could catch up, a desperate, empty ache blooming in your core.
He leaned in, pressing his forehead against yours, his breath hot and uneven. “Say it,” he whispered. “Say this pussy’s mine for the night.”
A grin tugged at your lips, defiant even now. You dragged your nails up the length of his back, feeling the muscles jump beneath the fabric of his shirt. “God, you’re so full of yourself.”
He let out a low chuckle. His hand slid from your throat to cup the back of your neck, fingers threading through your hair as he dragged you into another kiss, a reclaiming of territory already conquered.
His other hand slipped lower, fingers teasing at your entrance, slick with your own arousal. The tip of his finger pressed in just barely, and then withdrew.
“Yeah,” he murmured against your mouth, the word a breathless, cocky whisper. “And you’re about to let me prove it.”
His fingers were still between your thighs, barely moving now. Just resting there. A lazy pressure that kept you teetering on the edge of desperate, your hips twitching involuntarily against his palm.
Every time you tried to grind down, he pulled back just enough to deny you, a cruel little game he played with the patience of a predator.
His other hand trailed up your side, slipping beneath the rumpled dress to brush the curve of your waist. His fingertips traced the ridge of your ribs, then swept higher, grazing the underside of your breast with a featherlight touch that had your spine arching.
And then he murmured, voice low and wrapped in velvet, “You ever been filmed before, sweetheart?”
Your breath caught. Lodged somewhere in your throat like a stone.
Your body said yes before your brain even processed the question, your thighs tensed, your nipples tightened, a fresh pulse of heat bloomed between your legs. But your mouth hesitated. A flicker of uncertainty crossed your face.
“Filmed?” The word came out breathless, barely audible over the thudding of your heart.
“Mmhmm.” His voice was soft now, coaxing. His lips ghosted over your jaw as he spoke, hot and teasing. “Wanna see how goddamn pretty you look like this. Want to watch you later—legs spread, begging for it, that messy little sound you make when you cum. You ever seen yourself like that, honey?”
You couldn’t answer. Your mouth was dry, your pulse hammering so loud you could hear it rushing in your ears.
He kissed your neck, his lips parting against your skin. Then his teeth grazed the sensitive tendon just below your ear, a sharp little pressure that made you gasp.
His hand stayed between your legs, just touching, his palm pressed flat against your cunt, fingers slick and still, the heel of his hand grinding lazily against your clit. Keeping your blood hot. Keeping you pliant.
“C’mon,” he whispered, the word a hot puff of air against your throat. “Let me keep it. Just for me. I won’t show anyone.” A pause. His lips brushed the hollow of your collarbone. “Just wanna remember how you sounded when I made you cum. Just wanna have something to jerk off to when you go back to that sorry excuse for a boyfriend.”
Your lips parted. Your heart was in your throat, beating against the base of your tongue.
He pulled back just enough to look at you—and fuck. Those eyes. Half-lidded, dark as sin, glittering with something between hunger and tenderness.
This was for him. Just because he wanted to own this moment. To freeze it, preserve it, revisit it whenever he pleased.
“Please,” he added, the word a low murmur that crawled down your spine. “Let me watch you fall apart. Let me have something to remember you by when you’re gone.”
And just like that, you broke. You nodded once, a small, jerky motion that felt too fast and too slow all at once.
The look on his face turned downright pleased. A slow, wicked grin spread across his lips, pleased and satisfied.
He stepped back, pulling his hand from between your legs deliberately slow that bordered on cruel. The absence was sharp, almost painful—you whimpered, a soft, instinctive sound that slipped out before you could stop it.
He heard it. His lips parted like he might say something, but instead he just let out a low chuckle, his eyes gleaming.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
He reached into his jeans pocket and tugged out his phone. The screen blazed to life, casting cold light across his angular features. He swiped it awake with one thumb, eyes never leaving yours.
You stayed on the counter. Legs spread. Dress bunched up around your hips, the fabric twisted and forgotten. Panties still pushed to the side, damp and useless.
But before you could process what came next, he handed you the phone.
“Hold this,” he said. “Keep it steady. And don’t stop filming until I say so.”
The weight of the device settled in your palm, the screen angled toward him. Your fingers trembled, but you gripped it tight.
His hands slid under your thighs, palms warm and calloused against your skin, and he pulled you to the edge of the counter with a single, effortless motion.
“You’re really gonna let me eat you out on camera?” he muttered. His thumb brushed the inside of your thigh, pressing hard enough to leave a mark. “Look at you. Spread open, holding the phone, panting for it like a bitch in heat. What would your boyfriend say if he saw this, huh?”
A shiver rolled through you. You let out a shaky breath as you leaned back on your elbows, your legs falling open even wider.
“He doesn’t need to know,” you murmured.
He groaned, a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through his chest, through the air between you, through your bones.
“No, he doesn’t.” Bucky’s voice dropped to a whisper. His hands gripped your thighs, thumbs pressing into the tender flesh where your legs met your hips. “But I will.”
He lowered his head, his breath hot against your slick skin.
“Now keep that camera steady, sweetheart. I want to see your face when I make you forget your name.”
And then he was on you.
His tongue hit you like a brand. It dragged from the slick entrance of your cunt all the way up to your clit in one long, agonizingly slow stroke, tasting you like he was savouring every inch. The flat of his tongue pressed firm, parting your folds, and when he reached the top he circled once, lazy, before dipping back down.
You gasped. Your back bowed off the counter, your spine curling like a struck wire. One hand scrambled for the edge of the granite, fingers scrabbling for purchase, while the other fought to keep the camera steady, pointed directly down at him, at the way his mouth was devouring you.
He moaned into you.
A deep, guttural sound that vibrated through your clit, through your thighs, through the aching core of you. Like he was the one being pleasured. Like your taste was the only thing that could satisfy him.
“Goddamn,” he muttered against your flesh, his breath hot and damp. His tongue flicked out, lapping at your clit with a lazy stroke. “So fuckin’ sweet. Sweetest thing I’ve had in my mouth in months.”
He pulled back just enough to look up at you, eyes dark, lips glistening and chin slick. The camera caught every detail.
“Bet he doesn’t even taste you, does he?” His voice was a low, rasping cruel whisper. “Bet he just shoves it in and pumps away like a jackrabbit, leaves you lying there wet and wanting.”
You couldn’t answer. Couldn’t form a single word. Not when his mouth wrapped around your clit again, sealing tight, and he sucked, once, hard, a sharp vacuum of pleasure that punched a cry from your throat. Then he eased, softening into slower licks, his tongue tracing figure-eights around the swollen bud.
Your thighs trembled, clamping around his head. He didn’t seem to mind. He moaned again, the vibration traveling straight through your cunt and up your spine.
“Bet he doesn’t even know how to touch you here—” His metal thumb pressed into the soft, sensitive spot just beside your entrance, the cool metal a shocking contrast against your heat. “—or how wet you get just from a little attention. Look at you. Dripping. Making a mess all over my face.”
You whimpered. A high, broken sound that felt torn from somewhere deep in your chest.
His metal hand slid up your thigh, the cool vibranium tracking a path of goosebumps across your flushed skin. Then, without warning, two fingers pushed into you. A slick, effortless slide that made you gasp again.
He didn’t pause. Didn’t give you time to adjust. He just pumped them in and out, a steady rhythm that matched the circling of his tongue. His fingers crooked, searching, and when they found that spongy spot inside you, he pressed hard and held.
You didn’t mean to make the sounds you were making.
They poured out of you like confession, gasping, keening, helpless little moans that you couldn’t hold back. Your head fell back, your hips lifting off the counter, chasing his mouth and fingers like you’d lost all sense of self-preservation.
“Look at you,” he murmured against your wet skin, his lips brushing your clit with every word. “So desperate for someone who isn’t even your man. Fuck, he must be so boring.”
You whimpered, your hips grinding against his face.
His fingers curled again… just right, hitting that spot that made stars burst behind your eyelids. His tongue never stopped. It circled and flicked and pressed, relentless.
“You think about this?” he went on, “When you’re lying next to him at night, do you think about someone else doing this to you? Someone who actually knows how to use his mouth?”
You shook your head, trying to deny, but your body betrayed you, your hips rocking faster against his hand.
“Yeah, you do,” he said, and he laughed, a low, breathless sound against your cunt. “You think about it all the time. I think you’d let me do anything just to feel good for once. I think you’d let me fuck you right in his bed while he’s at work, and you’d still smile like a good girl and kiss him goodnight.”
His fingers fucked into you, slow and steady, his tongue circling your clit in tight, focused strokes that left no room for thought. The pressure built in your belly, impossible to ignore.
“You close?” he asked, his voice hoarse and knowing.
You nodded, a frantic, jerky motion. Too far gone to pretend. Too far gone to care.
He lifted his head just enough to meet your eyes. His lips were glistening, his jaw slick, his pupils blown wide and black. And then… smirking, that wicked curve of his mouth, he glanced toward the camera.
“Let’s show him, yeah doll?” he murmured, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let’s show him how you cum for someone who actually knows what he’s doing. Let’s give him something to think about tonight.”
And then he sucked your clit again—hard—while his fingers pumped faster, deeper, curling with ruthless precision.
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck—”
You came.
It was raw. Violent. Your hips jerked off the counter, your thighs clamping around his head like a vise. The sounds that tore out of you were ragged and broken, a string of curses and pleas that blurred into incoherence.
Your vision went white, your whole body seizing, and he didn’t stop. His tongue kept stroking, his fingers kept pumping, fucking you through every last wave of pleasure until you were twitching and shaking, oversensitive and gasping.
He groaned against your clit, like he loved it. Like he was drinking it down.
You barely had time to catch your breath. Barely had time to register the aftershocks still rippling through your thighs before he was climbing up your body, his lips slick with your release, his chin wet, his eyes dark with something animalistic.
His hand snatched the phone from your trembling grip, like a predator claiming his prize. The other hand clamped around your thigh, fingers digging into the soft flesh as he dragged you toward the edge of the kitchen island.
He angled the phone down, the camera aimed directly at your cunt, glistening, swollen, still slick from his mouth. Your dress was bunched around your waist in a crumpled mess, and your panties were long gone, ripped off somewhere between the counter and the floor.
“Gonna let me fuck you now?” His voice was a mocking drawl that made your toes curl. “Even though you’ve got a boyfriend waiting at home? Probably wondering where his sweet little girl is.”
You blinked up at him, still dazed, still floating on the aftershocks of your orgasm. But you played along. You nodded slowly, your lips parting, your eyes half-lidded. Like a good girl. Like a stupid little slut who’d already crossed every line and couldn’t find her way back.
You watched like a hungry bitch in heat as he unbuckled his belt, the metal clinking loud in the quiet kitchen, and shoved his pants down his thighs with one hand. His cock sprang free, slapping against his stomach with a wet sound that made your mouth water. The head flushed dark, already slick with pre-cum.
Your voice didn’t work anymore. All the clever retorts, the smart mouth answers—gone. Your legs parted on pure instinct, your hips tilting up in silent invitation.
He clicked his tongue.
“Such a dirty girl,” he murmured, his voice dropping to a cruel whisper. “Cheating on your boyfriend like this. Letting a stranger stretch your pretty pussy open in his kitchen. On his counter. While he films it.”
He positioned himself at your entrance, just the head pressing, teasing, not pushing in yet. Your breath hitched. Your whole body trembled.
“Tell me what you are,” he said, the camera still fixed on where he was about to enter you.
“I’m—I’m a dirty girl—”
“Louder.”
“I’m a dirty girl.”
“And?”
“And I—I want you to fuck me.”
He smiled, satisfied.
And then he pushed in.
Thick and slow. Letting you feel every filthy inch as he sank into you, stretching you open inch by inch. The burn was exquisite, a sharp, delicious ache that made your jaw drop and your eyes roll back. You clenched around him, too sensitive, already fucked-out from his mouth, and he groaned, an animal sound that vibrated through his chest.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his hips seating flush against yours. “Tight little thing. Feels like you were made for this. Made for my cock.”
He pulled back just enough to look down at where you were joined, angling the phone to capture every detail, the way your cunt gripped him, the slick shine of his cock as he dragged out, the desperate flutter of your muscles.
And then he started to move.
His hips dragged back and slammed in again with bruising force. The first thrust punched the air from your lungs. The second made you cry out, loud and raw, your voice cracking in the empty kitchen.
He groaned harder at the sound.
“Look at that,” he rasped, his voice wrecked with pleasure. He angled the camera down again, zooming in on where he split you open. “Fuckin’ made for it, huh? Look at how pretty she takes it.”
He shifted his weight, lifting one of your legs onto his shoulder, the angle changed, deeper nowand your back hit the counter hard as he picked up the pace. The slapping sounds filled the room.
“You gonna cum for me again?” he asked, breath ragged, the phone still steady in his grip. “Gonna cum on this cock like the fucking slut you are? Let your boyfriend watch it later? Think he’d wanna see what a whore you are when no one’s watching?”
Your eyes rolled back. Your mouth hung open, drool threatening to slip down your chin. You didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
He slapped your clit, a bright flare of pain-pleasure that made you jolt.
“Answer me.”
“Yes—yes, fuck, I—please—”
“Please what?”
“Please let me cum—I need—”
He thrust harder, faster, the angle punishing. His free hand pressed down on your lower belly, making you feel every inch of him inside you.
“Look at the camera,” he commanded, his voice a growl. “Look at it and tell him who’s making you feel this good.”
You forced your eyes open, found the lens, stared into it with glassy, tear-streaked eyes.
“You,” you gasped. “You’re making me—”
“That’s right. Me. Not him. Me.”
He lowered his mouth to your ear, still fucking you, his breath hot and ragged.
“Now cum for me. Cum for the camera. Let everyone see what a good little slut you are.”
The orgasm hit you like a freight train, sudden and impossible to stop. Your back arched off the counter, your walls clamping down around him in pulsing waves, a broken cry tearing from your throat. He didn’t stop. He fucked you through it, groaning as you tightened around him, his hips stuttering as he chased his own release.
“That’s what I thought”
He pulled out suddenly, an abrupt emptiness that made you gasp, your body clenching around nothing, desperate to keep him. The whine that escaped your lips was pathetic, high and needy, and you didn’t even have the shame to swallow it.
But Bucky didn’t give you a second to recover. His metal hand clamped around your wrist, yanking you upright before your head stopped spinning.
“Up,” he ordered, his voice tight and ragged. “C’mon. Up, baby. I’m not done with you.”
Your legs were jelly. Your bones had turned to water. But he hooked his hand under your thigh and lifted you off the island like you weighed nothing, sliding you down until your bare feet hit the cold tile floor.
Your knees buckled immediately. You were shaking, ruined, still dripping down your thighs in sticky trails, your dress bunched around your waist, while he steadied you with a hand on your hip.
“You’re a mess,” he muttered, not even pretending to hide the pride in his voice. His metal fingers traced the curve of your hip, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Bet he’s never fucked you dumb like this, huh?”
Your head fell back against his shoulder, eyes fluttering, lips parted. But he didn’t let you stay there. He spun you around, grabbed your hips, and bent you over the counter like a doll, your tits pressing flat against the cold marble, your cheek smushed against the cool stone, your legs spread wide before you even realized what he was doing.
The camera was still rolling. And he aimed it directly at your ass, at your dripping cunt, at the mess he’d made of you.
“There we go,” he rasped, his voice a rough purr behind you. “Much better view. Look at that, fuckin’ dripping for me. Like a little faucet.”
You gasped as his hand came down right across your ass cheek. The crack echoed in the kitchen, and your skin bloomed with heat instantly. Your hips bucked forward, pushing your tits harder against the marble.
“Stay still,” he grunted, his metal hand pressing into the small of your back, pinning you down. “Be good and take it. Don’t make me tell you twice.”
And then he was sliding back in.
No teasing. Just one sharp, deep thrust that punched the air from your lungs. He filled you completely, the angle brutal, the stretch exquisite. Your mouth fell open on a silent scream.
He didn’t wait. He started moving immediately, punishing strokes that made the counter shake. His hand clamped onto your hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh, holding you open for him.
“Fuck, baby—so tight like this,” he groaned, his voice strained, wrecked. “Like you’re trying to milk me dry.”
He leaned over you, his chest pressing against your back, his mouth at your ear.
“Bet he’s never seen you like this. Fucked out. Bent over. Filmed like a little slut.” He punctuated each word with a thrust, driving them into you along with his cock. “What would he say if he saw this video? Huh? If he watched you beggin’ for my cock with your makeup running, your pretty little pussy creamin’ all over me?”
Your only answer was a broken moan. Your hands scrambled uselessly across the marble, searching for something to hold onto.
He grabbed a fistful of your hair, yanking your head back, arching your spine, keeping you exactly where he wanted you. The stretch in your neck sent a shiver down your spine.
“What would he say, huh,” Bucky panted, fucking into you harder now, the slapping sounds wet and filthy, “if he saw how much you love it? If he saw that look in your eyes—that fucked-out, starved look you get when I’m deep inside you?”
Your third orgasm was building, coiling low in your belly, your pussy aching with overstimulation. The marble was digging into your hips, leaving red marks on your skin, and you didn’t care. You wanted more. You wanted him to break you.
“Say it,” he grunted, snapping his hips faster, his hand wrapping around your throat from behind to pull your head even farther back. “Tell the camera what you’re doing.”
You choked on a sob, tears welling in your eyes.
“—Cheating,” you gasped, the word torn from your throat. “I’m cheating on him—fuck, fuck—please don’t stop—”
He groaned like he could’ve fucking died from how good that sounded.
“That’s it, baby. Say it again. Let the whole world know what a filthy little whore you are.”
You were already crying, tears slipping down your cheeks from sheer overstimulation, your body trembling as you struggled to hold yourself up on your elbows. Each thrust sent a fresh wave of pleasure-pain through you, your clit rubbing against the marble with every movement, building that pressure higher and higher.
“Say it again,” he growled, his cock buried deep inside you. “Tell me what you’re doing.”
“—Cheating,” you whispered again, breathless, voice cracking. “I’m cheating on him.”
“Can’t hear you.”
“I’m cheating on my boyfriend,” you moaned, choked and messy, the shame in your voice only making it hotter. “Letting some stranger fuck me in his kitchen.”
He groaned, his hips stuttering for just a second, his grip tightening on your throat.
“God, you’re perfect. Fucking perfect. Say my name.”
You didn’t even think. The word fell from your lips like a prayer.
“Bucky—”
The sound of skin slapping against skin echoed through the kitchen. Your body rocked against the marble with every brutal thrust, your tits sliding across the cold surface, nipples dragging against the stone, your breath fogging the counter in ragged clouds as he fucked you faster.
The hand on your throat dropped down your body to between your legs, metal fingers finding your clit with brutal precision. He rubbed you in rough, tight circles, no gentleness, just enough pressure to make your vision blur.
“Wanna cum again for me, baby?” he panted behind you. “Wanna cum on a stranger’s cock while your boyfriend’s out there probably textin’ you right now, askin’ if you’re okay?”
His fingers pinched your clit and you cried out.
“Answer me.”
“Yes—fuck, yes—”
“Use me,” you begged, the words torn from somewhere deep, broken and desperate. “Please, just use me. I don’t care—I don’t care about anything—just fuck me—”
That did it.
He slammed in harder, faster, his groans turning into guttural snarls, his hips slapping against your ass with a force that left your skin stinging. His metal fingers on your clit were relentless. You were babbling words that made no sense, just sound and breath and need, your voice cracking as that third orgasm tore through you like lightning striking bone.
You clenched down so hard his rhythm stuttered.
“Oh fuck—fuck, doll—”
He pulled out suddenly, just in time, the loss of him leaving you gasping and empty. His hand left your clit and wrapped around his cock, jerking himself with messy, desperate strokes, the camera aimed down at the mess he’d made of you.
“On your knees,” he barked.
You dropped without hesitation.
Your knees hit the cold tile with a dull thud, your body limp and pliant and ruined. Your makeup was smudged into dark raccoon circles around your eyes. Your lipstick was blurred. Your thighs were still slick with your multiple releases, sticky and gleaming under the kitchen lights.
You looked up at him through wet lashes, lips parted, chest heaving, every inch of you screaming used.
He pointed the phone down at your face, capturing every detail.
“Jesus fuck—look at you,” he panted, his voice hoarse, wrecked. His grip on his cock was tight, the veins standing out against his skin. “Fucking look at you. Makeup ruined. Hair a mess. Cum drippin’ down your thighs. And you’re still lookin’ at me like you want more.”
You blinked up at him slowly, your tongue sliding across your lower lip, tasting the salt of your own sweat. The corner of your mouth lifted… just enough to tease. Just enough to let him know that yes, you wanted more. You wanted everything.
His breath hitched.
That was all it took.
He groaned deep from his chest, his hips snapping forward as he jerked himself harder… and then he came.
“Fuck—fuck—”
Thick, hot ropes hit your lips. Your cheek. Your tongue.
You didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. Just let it land wherever he gave it, your mouth open like a fucking invitation, your eyes locked on his the entire time. One streak landed on your chin, another across your nose. You held still like a good girl.
He moaned like he was in pain, his chest heaving, his arm trembling as he kept the camera steady. His other hand milked the last drops out, stroking his tip right against your tongue, smearing the rest across your bottom lip.
“Gonna remember this forever,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. “The way you look right now. On your knees. Covered in my cum.”
You swallowed what landed in your mouth. The taste of him, salt and heat and something musky, spread across your tongue.
You held eye contact… and then licked your lips. Slow. Sweet. Like you savoured every drop. Your tongue swept across the mess on your cheek, your chin, collecting every trace of him.
And then you smiled and winked at the camera.
He groaned again. His arm dropped. The phone nearly slipped from his fingers.
“Fuck, baby,” he whispered, his voice wrecked. “You’re unreal. You’re fucking unreal.”
He took a shaky step back, running his free hand through his hair, his chest still heaving.
“Get up,” he said, softer now. “C’mere. Let me kiss you.”
You were barely dried off when he dragged you into bed, still flushed in the cheeks, towel hanging low on his hips, clinging to the sharp cut of his waist. He flopped onto the mattress with a grunt that vibrated through the sheets and immediately reached for you like a heat-seeking missile.
You allowed him to wrap himself around you, his chest warm and damp against your back, arm tight across your middle, legs slotting in behind yours like puzzle pieces.
He was trying to hide. Burying his face in the curve of your neck, breathing slow and deep like he could disappear into your skin. And despite being genuinely so fucked out after three orgasms, your thighs still aching and your core still humming, you couldn’t help yourself.
“‘Gonna remember this forever,’” you murmured, pitching your voice low and rough, mimicking him. You dragged the words out, dramatic and breathy. “God, baby. The drama. Are you sure you’re not secretly a director?”
He groaned The kind of groan that started in his chest and rolled out like thunder. He dragged the covers over both your heads, cocooning you in darkness and warmth, like it might smother the shame.
And you.
“Shut up,” he muttered, his voice muffled against your shoulder.
You laughed, the sound swallowed by the blanket fort. Your body shook against his, and he tightened his grip in response, pulling you impossibly closer.
“You were so into it,” you continued, turning your head just enough to speak into the darkness. “Like, really committed. Tell me, what are you gonna do with that video? Are you planning an OnlyFans debut? Get some extra cash to spoil me with?”
He squeezed your waist in warning,, deliberate press of his fingers into your soft skin. You ignored him completely.
“I personally think we’d make a lot of money,” you said, your tone almost dreamy. “With your dick and my tits, we’d be famous in no time. Think of the branding. Think of the content.”
He lifted his head just enough to find your ear. “Please,” he said, low and gruff, “shut up and let me spoon you into silence.”
You hummed, basking in victory.
“You were so serious,” you whispered into the quiet. “The dirty talk? You’re gonna start submitting audition tapes to PornHub next, aren’t you? I can see it now—‘James.B.B, 107, 6’2”, specializes in roleplay and cum facials.’”
He groaned again, but it was quieter now.
You could feel his smile against your skin. He was trying not to let it show,but you knew it was there. Just like the soft kiss he pressed behind your ear, his lips lingering.
“You’re never letting me live this down, are you?” he muttered, his voice warm and entirely fond.
You turned in his arms, shifting until you faced him. The blanket still draped over your heads, cocooning you in shared heat and the faint scent of sex and soap. His whole body was relaxed in that way he only ever got after sex, the tension in his shoulders finally dissolved.
You smiled up at him, your fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the stubble rough against your fingertips. You kissed his nose.
“Not a chance, stranger.”
He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched. And then he kissed you anyway, a kiss that tasted like contented surrender. His hand slid up your spine, fingers splaying across your shoulder blades, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you.
He pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against yours, eyes closed, breath evening out.
You laid there for a long, quiet minute, his arm slung heavy across your stomach like an anchor, his breath slowing behind your ear into that deep, rhythmic cadence that meant he was drifting.
The warmth of his body curved around yours, the sheets tangled around your legs, the faint hum of the city through the window, it was almost enough to lull you under too.
Almost.
Which is exactly why you struck.
“Okay,” you said, your voice sweet as honey. “Give me your phone now.”
He tensed immediately. His arm tightened across your stomach, and you felt the shift in his breathing.
“...No.”
You twisted in his grip, frowning, propping yourself up on your elbow to look at him.
“James.”
He sighed, like it physically pained him to hear his name on your lips in that tone. The sound dragged out, full of protest, and he pulled the pillow over his face.
You didn’t let up. You tore the blanket off both of you, sitting up fully, then turned to face him with the kind of look that told him exactly where this was going. A look that said I’m not asking.
“I just want to see how I looked,” you cooed, letting your voice go syrupy and coaxing. “For science.”
“You looked perfect,” he muttered from beneath the pillow. “You don’t need to see it.”
“Oh, but I do,” you teased, already reaching past him toward the nightstand where he’d abandoned the phone. “Because someone got real creative with angles tonight. I wanna see what Christopher Nolan-level filth you captured.”
He tried to pull you back down under the covers, his arm snaking around your waist, but you fought dirty. You squirmed, laughed, dug your elbow into his ribs until he grunted and loosened his grip. There was some wrestling until you finally managed to straddle his hips, pinning him down, and snatched the phone from the nightstand.
“Aha,” you declared, waving it like a trophy. “Siri, show me the porn.”
He groaned from beneath the pillow. “You’re a freak.”
“You love it.”
You unlocked the screen with his passcode, your birthday of course, and found the video right there in his most recent gallery. It wasn’t buried in a folder, wasn’t hidden behind a password.
“Jesus Christ, you didn’t even try to hide it,” you murmured.
You tapped play.
The sound alone was enough to make you both flinch.
Your own moan filled the room, echoing off the walls. The video opened on a shaky shot of the kitchen island, granite cool and sleek under the dim light, your legs splayed wide, his hand wrapped around your thigh.
You looked down at him slowly. His eyes were squeezed shut, the pillow still half-draped over his head, his cheeks flushed dark. For a guy who had fucked you within an inch of your life thirty minutes ago, he looked deeply, profoundly embarrassed.
“Oh my god,” you said, pausing the screen on his face. There he was… eyebrows furrowed in concentration, hair a wild mess, that filthy, knowing smirk curling the corner of his lips. “Who is he? Why is he so serious? Is this an Oscar campaign? A sizzle reel for his breakout role in Eat Pray Fuck?”
“Stop it,” Bucky mumbled.
But you kept going.
“Look at you. Sergeant Pornstar. All intense and broody. Grunting like you’re about to break the fourth wall and fuck the audience too.”
He peeked out just enough to glare at you, one blue eye visible above the edge of the pillow, very unamused. You leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“You’re so hot when you’re pretending not to be a freak.”
He huffed, but his ears were pink. The tips of them, visible above the pillow, turned the colour of a ripe strawberry.
You tapped further into the video, scrolling through the shots. Paused again. Leaned in closer to the screen.
“Wait—” You squinted. “Did you zoom while you were inside me?”
He huffed, and buried his face in the pillow like he could escape through the mattress.
“You did. Oh my god, you adjusted the focus on my ass. You framed the shot like it was a nature documentary.”
“Stop watching it,” he moaned.
“Never. I’m gonna turn this into a gif. A screensaver. My new phone background. Every time I get a text, I’ll see your constipated orgasm face.”
That did it.
He moved faster than you expected. The phone flew out of your hand, skidding across the bed, and he tackled you back down onto the mattress, his weight pressing you into the pillows.
It didn’t hurt. Not with him laughing into your neck, his breath hot and uneven against your skin as he tried to wrestle the phone out of your reach. His fingers fumbled against yours, and you shrieked as he pinned your wrist above your head, still laughing, still muttering, “You’re the fucking worst,” and “I hate you so much right now.”
He got the phone eventually.
And as he pinned you to the bed with both wrists above your head, his body draped over yours, sweat-slick and smiling, he leaned down and kissed your cheek. A whisper of lips against your skin.
“I’m deleting that video first thing tomorrow,” he mumbled, his voice fond.
You smiled up at him, your chest rising and falling against his.
“Sure you are, Sergeant,” you whispered, your eyes glinting in the dim light. “Right after you jack off to it one more time.”
He collapsed beside you with a huff, his body sinking into the mattress like it weighed twice what it did, limbs heavy and warm as he pulled you into his chest. His arm slung around your waist, fingers splaying across the curve of your hip, his face pressing into the crook of your neck as he exhaled a long, tired breath.
The kind of breath that said finally, peace.
He was wrong.
“So,” you whispered against his collarbone, “since I let you pick this time, I get to choose the next roleplay.”
He sighed again
You ignored it completely.
“We could do the delivery guy thing,” you murmured, a yawn stealing the edge off your words. “Like, you show up with a package and I answer the door in just a towel, dripping wet, all innocent and flustered. And you’re just standing there, all stoic, but you have to fuck me on the spot. Right there against the doorframe. Package forgotten on the mat.”
He didn’t respond. His breathing was slow, like he was trying to will himself into unconsciousness.
So you kept going.
“Or—or we could do the ‘I’m your best friend’s girlfriend’ angle,” you said, your voice dropping into a dreamy cadence. “You’re not supposed to want me. But you catch me in the shower at a party. The bathroom door’s cracked open, and instead of leaving, you just… watch. Then you step inside, still fully dressed, and pin me to the tile.”
“No,” he mumbled, the word muffled against your skin.
Before you could continue, he rolled on top of you, his body a warm, solid weight pressing you into the mattress. His mouth found yours, a kiss that was clearly meant to shut you up. His tongue swept against your bottom lip, and for a moment you let yourself sink into it.
But only a moment.
You broke the kiss with a soft, teasing hum. “What about the corrupt cop thing?” you whispered, your lips still brushing his. “You pull me over on some empty road at midnight. I’m nervous, hands shaking as I hand you my license. And you shine your flashlight in my face, look me up and down, and tell me I was speeding. Then you lean down, voice low, and tell me there’s only one way I can get out of the ticket.”
He kissed you again. Harder this time. A grunt built in his throat, muffled against your mouth, his hand sliding up to cradle your jaw, his thumb pressing against your cheek like he could physically hold your words in.
You chuckled against his lips.
“Ooooh. Or the one where I’m drunk and stumbling out of a party,” you said, your voice breathless. “You’re the older guy who tells me to get in the car. You drive me home in silence, but I fall asleep in the passenger seat, my head lolling against the window. So you carry me inside, and tuck me into.”
He buried his face in your neck, his breath hot against your pulse point, his lips pressing a kiss to the hollow of your throat. “Go to sleep, please,” he muttered.
“—but I wake up,” you continued, your fingers threading into his hair, “and you’re standing in the doorway. Watching me. And I’m so grateful. So vulnerable. So willing—spread out on the bed in nothing but his oversized shirt, legs parted just enough, looking up at you with those sleepy, trusting eyes. And then you just… take what you want.”
His whole body shuddered against yours. His hips pressed into your thigh, and you felt the unmistakable stir of interest against your skin. His cock, already half-hard from the images you’d painted, twitched as if responding to your words directly.
“You’re gonna kill me,” he muttered, the words rough, as he pressed lazy, open-mouthed kisses along your jaw, down to the curve of your neck.
You hummed, “I think you like it.”
He didn’t answer. He just pulled you tighter, his arm wrapping around your waist like a vise, his other hand sliding under your head to cup the base of your skull. He kissed your temple, then closed his eyes.
“No more talking,” he whispered.
You grinned against his chest. “Not even the professor one?” you teased. “Where I’m failing your class and you offer extra credit in the form of—“
“I will gag you.”
You snorted, the sound warm and muffled against his skin.
“That’s a yes, then.”
He groaned again, long and suffering. But you felt it, the curve of his lips pressed against your hair, the soft exhale of a smile he tried to hide.
And eventually you let him fall asleep. Wrapped around you, his body a shield of warmth and muscle, his breath evening out into the deep, slow rhythm of rest. His cock still twitched against your thigh every few minutes, a stubborn reminder of all the images you’d planted in his head.
You smiled into the dark, your fingers still tangled in his hair, and finally let yourself drift.
a/n | i fear i would let bucky barnes film me with an iphone 7 in a kitchen with bad lighting and call it art.
tags: jack abbot x reader, younger reader (late 20s), resident reader, fangirldotcom's full pope cody debut, jack thinks pope wants that cookie (reader), jealous jack abbot, reader tries not to explode with basically jack-squared in one room, pope is just there for the ride
notes: okay funny thing is I had this almost completed before I changed gears to write doppelbangers (which if you want to read click here) but I at least wanted to get this published because I love Pope, and I cannot wait to start writing for him! so please enjoy, and if you'd like to be added to my permanent tag list, please comment on this post!
word count: 6.8k
The chairs had always felt vaguely cursed to you, even on good days.
On bad days—days where the waiting room smelled too strongly of antiseptic and drying blood, where somebody’s kid was crying near the vending machines, where a grown man was acting like a child as he yelled about missing insurance—it felt like corporal punishment in its purest form. You’d been down there for nearly two hours already, bouncing between triage and lacerations and flu symptoms and a man who had somehow managed to staple his own thumb at work only fifteen minutes into his shift.
By the third anti-vax mom, your patience had worn thin. And being exiled to chairs now felt less like staffing necessity and more like karmic retaliation. How were you supposed to know Robby was right behind you, listening in on very important Pitt gossip, and that he believed in the whole “if you had time to talk, you had time to work.”
Thus, you’d been sent off to chairs until Robby deemed you cleansed of your sins.
Because, unfortunately, chairs happened to be the closest thing the Pitt had to purgatory: the perfect place for hellfire and fractures and a waiting room from hell. People were packed shoulder to shoulder while irritated family members grumbled and complained about the temperature. The television in the corner played daytime reruns at an offensively loud volume, and every few minutes somebody new approached the desk asking how much longer the wait would be for something as simple (or ridiculous) as a cut hangnail. Their questions made you believe they thought you personally controlled time itself.
Which, if you did, you would have made your shift go by a lot faster.
But no. You did not control time. Time and a chief attending named Michael Robinavitch controlled you, and you hated every second of it.
By the time you pushed back through the waiting room doors with another chart in your hand, a mechanical smile that didn’t quite meet your eyes plastered across your face. Your eyes glued to the tablet in front of you with the name Mrs. Hill stuck between your teeth.
However, the name died in your throat after you glanced up.
There, in the corner, near the far wall, sat Jack Abbot, all hunched over in one of the molded plastic chairs with his elbows on his knees, body stiff as a board almost as to not touch the chair at all, and hood pulled over his head despite the warmth of the waiting room. Your brows pinched, confusion plastered all over your face. For a second, Jack sitting there genuinely made no fucking sense.
He was the night shift attending. He could walk through the ambulance bays whenever he needed. He’d be prioritized because the Pitt didn’t just look over one of their own and ban him to the chairs off all places to sit and wait with the rest of the common people.
Jack also never sat still enough to like a garden statue. Even through exhaustion, even post-shift, you noticed that he carried this restless energy about him, like if he stopped moving for too long, he might actually wither away.
You stared at him for another beat before walking over, Mrs. Hill be damned.
“What the fuck, Dr. Abbot,” you hissed, stopping in front of him. “What happened to you, and why didn’t you walk through the back?”
Jack slowly lifted his head, and a small something snagged uncomfortably in your chest. The feeling wasn’t alarming, and it wasn’t that guy from TikTok running back and forth across a field with an overly large flag yelling Red Flag! Red Flag! either. The cause of this feeling was the small curls peaking below the hood.
Jack’s hair had always been salt-and-pepper for as long as you’d known him in the Pitt, causing the very serious nickname of a true “silver fox” to be tossed around when he wasn’t listening. But right now, Jack’s hair was dark, richer, and auburn almost. Near his temples, the deep, reddish-brown curls were flat under the fabric.
But even with the recent hair dye, his face was Jack’s, your brain filling in the gaps automatically to the point you didn’t notice the way he was missing his sun spots and wrinkles that Jack normally dawned in the sexiest ways.
“Hit my head,” he finally replied quietly.
Even his voice sounded the tiniest bit off, however, your concern for him outweighed the missing features your Jack normally had.
You frowned, couching slightly so you could get a better look at him, Robby’s “words of wisdom” about getting on the patient’s level ringing in your head.
“Okay, that explains why you look like you got dragged behind an ambulance,” you said before reaching up to gently cup his face.
This time, you didn’t miss the way he flinched under your palms before settling as you tilted his head to find the injury.
“Did you pass out? Throw up? How long ago did it happen” You didn’t really wait for his answers before continuing, already slipping deep into assessment mode. “Actually, hold on, no, don’t answer all that because your pupils are clearly telling me you’re very concussed, and if you start slurring your words, you and I won’t get anywhere with delayed responses.”
Jack’s eyes fluttered shut as you talked to him, and the weird feeling bloomed under your skin again. When his hazel met yours again, you let his face go and stood to full height.
“C’mon, Dr. Abbot,” you sighed, motioning for him to stand. “You’re not sitting out here looking like a murder suspect all afternoon. Let me get you into a room before Robby sees you and starts berating me as to why you’re still out here.”
His eyes lifted to yours fully, and the intensity almost stopped you cold. Jack looked at people all the time—quick glances, assessing looks, sharp little observations hidden behind sarcasm—but the way he was looking at you now was different. This Jack, looking at least fifteen years younger, looked directly as you with a heavy kind of focus that should’ve felt unsettling, like he was trying to learn your family’s history with once glance. Unlike your Jack (which you were still convinced was sitting right in front of you), he felt almost dangerous in how still he was and how carefully he watched.
When he didn’t stand up to follow, you asked, “You gonna pass out if I make you walk?
“No.”
“Is your leg bothering you? I can get you a wheelchair if you need.”
“I can walk.”
“Great. Love your confidence.”
He stood slowly, hands never touching the handles, body towering over you once he straightened fully. Again, another disjointed feeling washed over you. Jack was tall, yes, but he was now carrying himself so opposite of how he normally did. Here, he seemed disconnected from the room, like feeling the air was inconveniencing him. Now standing, you caught another glimpse of bruising near the edge of his jaw as you guided him through toward an empty room down the hall.
His silence was starting to get uncomfortable, so you found yourself talking just to fill the unusual quiet between you, even if talking had gotten you banished to chairs in the first place.
“You know, Dr. Abbot, most people with concussions demand to be sent through immediately even if they aren’t an attending. Please tell me this isn’t you trying to not look weak in front of everyone? I bet they would rather you come through walking and talking than someone giving you a wellness check and finding you dead because you didn’t follow concussion protocol.”
Behind you, he stayed silent.
You busied yourself by pulling gloves on, still talking as he sat on the very edge of the exam bed, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists on his thighs.
“Seriously though, Dr. Abbot, you scared me for a second out there. You looked half-dead sitting in that chair, which, honestly, kind of impressive for you because you usually can’t keep still. I guess that’s why you do SWAT and stuff, huh? One of these days you’re going to find out you’re not actually immortal even though people talk like you are. But what would I know, I’m just a nurse while you spend your free time getting shot at.”
Finally, like broken pottery, the smallest smile cracked through his face. You blinked at him while his eyes refused to move anywhere but your face.
“Okay,” you said slowly. “You are being deeply weird today. Are you okay?”
His gaze dropped briefly before returning to your face. “Head hurts.”
“That would be your concussion talking.”
You stepped closer, gently tilting his head toward the light to examine the molted bruise near his temple. Unlike in the chairs, he didn’t flinch under your fingers this time. Up close like this, Jack’s differences stood out more. The lighting in the waiting room made everything seem worse under shadows, but the direct light washed away the wrinkles and lines around his eyes.
And still, he kept staring at you with an unwavering intensity that made your knees go weak and made a warmth creep up your neck.
“You’re very stare-y today,” you murmured distractedly while checking his pupils.
“Sorry.”
Your hands paused for a half a second at his promptness for an apology.
As far as you knew, Jack never apologized that fast.
However, the though slipped through your mind before you could stop it, but again, the concussion explained enough that you ignored every strange feeling creeping higher in your chest. Head injuries changed behavior sometimes. Personalities softened, reactions slowed, and people became emotional, subdued, clingy, and disoriented. You’d seen it first-hand countless times.
Still.
You moved back slightly to jot something onto the chart. “Any nausea?”
“A little.”
“Blurred vision?”
“Yeah.”
“Memory issues?”
His eyes stayed on you. “Maybe?”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“Pittsburg Trauma Medical Hospital.”
You snorted softly. “Using the full government name. I see you Dr. Abbot. I’ll give you a gold star for incredible patient participation.”
He didn’t laugh or smile at that this time. You continued to fill out his chart: name, birthdate, allergies. Thankfully, most of it was already in the system. Your eyes rose back to his when you finished up, chart getting tucked under your arm as you pulled the gloves off.
“Okay, let me go get Robby since I highly doubt you’d want anyone else in here—”
“Can you not tell anyone I’m here?”
You cocked your head. “What?”
His jaw tightened slightly, gaze flickering briefly toward the closed door before returning to you. “Don’t want people knowing.”
Concern replaced every single weird feeling. Embarrassment after injuring wasn’t uncommon, especially with doctors, and even so more with attendings who weren’t used to being the ones under care. God knew Jack hated appearing vulnerable in front of his coworkers.
“You do know they’re not going to make fun of you for getting a concussion. Robby might poke fun, but you are like his best friend.” Your eyes glanced toward the door. “Okay, maybe his only friend,” you added on with a mutter.
He didn’t answer right away.
You leaned against the counter, studying him for moment. The intensity was still there in the way he watched you, but his eyes held a sadness you’d never seen before. The hazel hues dripped with a scarcity that made your heart clench.
After a moment, you conceded. “Okay. Fine. Your secret is safe with me, Dr. Abbot.” You pointed at him with your pen. “But only because you’re looking at me like that. Special privileges are frowned upon here.”
The faintly cracked almost-smile appeared again.
And God help you, it looked surprisingly pretty on him, making you want more of it.
_______________________
Purgatory had ended the moment you stepped out of the room and went diving head-first into the incoming trauma after Robby grabbed you by the shoulders and physically steered you into Trauma Room One. The entire department had gone from irritatingly busy to borderline catastrophic after a minor highway pileup flooded intake with a dozen patients and emergencies that clogged up the CT scan because their necks felt “a little weird.”
Softened and concussed Jack Abbot fleed from your mind as you called out BP’s and administered correct dosages. You’d spent most of the last hour speed-walking between rooms with granola bar shoved into the pocket of your scrub jacket, half-finished notes beneath your arm, and a headache steadily building behind your eyes by the sterile light that never gave up buzzing for even a second.
At one point, Dana moved you toward the break room and ordered you to eat something before you passed out in front of a patient.
At another, Whitaker had nearly stepped into a pile of vomit while reading a chart, which honestly might have been the funniest thing you’d seen all week.
Through it all though, you kept thinking about softened and concussed Jack. Every time you passed through the hallway leading toward his room, your eyes drifted toward the closed door, checking without meaning to whether he was still there. And honestly, you were surprised Robby hadn’t yelled at anyone—you—for taking up a room and not having a resident check in.
When you finally nudged the exam room door open again with your shoulder, two awful vending machine coffees balanced carefully in your hands, the room was dimmer than before. He must have lowered the lights while you were gone, and you silently cured yourself for not doing that on your way out.
To your surprise (or horror) he was sitting exactly where you’d left him on the exam bed, shoulders straight, back even straighter, hands still glued to his thighs like he didn’t know he was allowed to touch the bed beneath him.
His head snapped up at the sound of the door opening, hitting you with that look before you could even mentally prepare for it.
Most people only half paid attention after hours in an ER room. Patients looked tired, distracted, and uncomfortable; doctors were worse. Jack especially had always operated at a hundred miles an hour, his attention split between six different thoughts at once even when he focused on you. Here in the exam room, he looked at you completely like he was tracking every little expression crossing your face the second you walked into the room.
The familiar warmth climbed embarrassingly fast into your chest and sat there.
“Oh, good,” you said quickly, mostly because the silence suddenly made you self-conscious. “You’re still alive. I was starting to think you’d turn into a statue or died sitting up in here. That would really make my paperwork worse, so I’m very glad you’re still breathing.”
His gaze dropped to the coffee cups in your hands before dragging up back to your face.
“You brought me one.”
The way he said it almost made it sound like he couldn’t quite believe why the hell you’d go out of your way to get one for him.
You shrugged, cross the room toward him before holding one out carefully. “I use the word coffee loosely here, because I’m pretty sure the machine actually dispenses motor oil, but you looked miserable earlier, and caffeine fixes at least eighty percent of human suffering.”
His fingers brushed yours when he took the cup. The contact lasted maybe a heartbeat, but it sent chills ripping up your arms. You turned away before he could possibly notice, pretending on the monitor beside him while taking a sip of your own coffee and instantly regretting it.
“Damn,” you muttered. “That’s genuinely horrific. I change my mind; this only fixes about 30 percent of human suffering and adds to the other percentage.”
A faint hint of amusement crossed his face, and the sight made you beam.
“You look handsome when you smile,” you blurted before you could even stop it. Your hands clapped over your mouth to the point it hurt. “I don’t know why I just said that.”
Jack cocked his head, eyes still burning into your face. “Do I not normally?”
Your heart clenched as you lowered your hands. “Um, I mean you do? But normally it’s when you’re about to say something so sarcastic it makes me want to pull my hair out.”
His brows pulled together slightly at that, like he was trying to remember through the lingering fog of his concussion.
You kept talking before he could say anything, words spilling naturally into the quiet space. “Actually, let me rephrase that. Usually you do smile, and it’s very nice, but it’s not normally after something I say. Also, is your head still hurting? You’re still staring at me like I’m a dessert you just want to eat, and that’s so unfair because I normally look at you like that and—”
Another hand slap to your mouth.
“Please ignore everything I’ve said in the past fifteen seconds. Or better, I’ll just stand here and wait for the floor to swallow me up. I’m talking way too much.”
You found yourself fidgeting under his stare before stepping closer, coffee cup placed gently on the counter. “Is your head any better? Or still hurting?”
“Hurting a little.”
“Have you gotten dizzy?”
“Yeah.”
“Still feeling nauseated?”
He nodded once instead of answering, and you wondered if he had hit his word limit for the hour. You sighed sympathetically while typing notes onto the chart.
“If I had to spend hours in a chair listening to daytime TV and screaming children, I’d probably feel that way too. Your concussion doesn’t help either.”
Another tiny smile quirked his lip even though he didn’t say anything else. You “allowed” him to stare at you while you finished updating the chart, his silent presence settling under your skin as you worked. The way he looked at you should have made you reach out for Robby the minute Jack started acting this way, but the intimidating way his droopy eyes never left your figure felt strangely calming.
Which probably said concerning things about your taste in men, but the whole ER was pretty much putty in Jack Abbot’s hand. You were the white sheep in the flock, and you’d follow Shepherd Abbot anywhere.
You turned away from the chart and leaned against the counter. “You know, Dr. Abbot, you’re allowed to talk in here. I know I tend to carry the entire social interactions, but this is kinda exhausting for me. Usually, I can barely get a sentence in around you.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “Why’s that?”
Your cheeks burned. “Well, um, medically that’s not important.”
His eyes lingered on your face and the small area around your mouth longer than necessary, and once again you felt like melting and dramatically draping yourself across a Victorian fainting couch to blubber about your feelings for the concussed attending.
To compensate for these feelings and the sterile quiet, you started talking more.
“So chairs officially became a nightmare while you were hiding her, by the way,” you told him. “Some guy tried convincing triage he needed immediate treatment for a paper cut, which would’ve been annoying enough on its own except he kept trying to squeeze blood out of it like he was in a Victorian tuberculosis ward. Then Dana yelled at me for skipping lunch again, which, in my defense, I fully intended to eat until somebody—probably Ogilvie, that fucker—stole my yogurt from the fridge. Again. At this point I think he’s specifically targeting me.”
The entire time you rambled, Jack listened without interrupting. He watched you pace while talking, energy buzzing unpleasantly beneath your skin from the nonstop pace outside.
“And then this woman asked if I was old enough to be a nurse, which somehow turned into her husband asking if I were single while she was standing right here! Emergency medicine should qualify as psychological warfare.”
The last tidbit made a quiet laugh escape, and the sound pulled your attention back toward him.
“At least you think I’m funny,” you said, pointing at him with exaggerated triumph. “Robby never thinks my jokes are funny. Don’t tell him I told you, but I think someone’s swapped him with a robot or AI engine that’s trying to convince everyone he’s a functioning person under all that brooding trauma.”
His face softened, and for some reason that affected you more than the laugh had. The warm in your chest spread outward before you realized you’d been talking almost nonstop for several minutes.
“Oh fuck,” you groaned, dropping your head briefly into your hands. “I’m doing it again.”
Jack sat up a bit straighter if somehow possible. “Doing what?”
“Talking too much.” You laughed awkwardly. “You’d think after enough years in medicine I’d learn when to stop speaking, but apparently not.” You looked down at your hands, suddenly embarrassed by how much space you’d filled with your own voice. “Sorry. You probably have a splitting headache and want to nap, but I’m over here narrating my entire day.”
When you finally looked back up, his gaze was still resting on you with steady attentiveness.
“I don’t mind it,” he admitted, tone close to a whisper.
You blinked rapidly.
“Your talking.”
Something about the way he said it in the sincerest and honest way made your chest tighten. He glanced down at the coffee cup in his hands before looking back into your eyes.
“Room’s less quiet when you’re here.”
A bright smile tugged at your lips. “Thank you for listening then.”
_______________________
The night shift always arrived like a storm rolling through the Pitt.
While the ER was the ground, and the day shift staff floated around with enough caffeine to possible kill a small animal, the night shift trickled in like the rain, refreshing and very much welcomed to take over the atmosphere. The residents, including you, handed over your charts with sluggish movements, desperate to go home and sleep the day and loss of patients away.
Normally, somewhere in the middle of all that transition, you and Jack inevitably found each other. Sometimes it was purely by accident; others it absolutely wasn’t. He’d appear beside you while you were finishing your charts just to bother you. You’d steal his coffee when he stopped paying attention. Always, there was some running commentary between the two of you, whether it be playful arguing or just an update on how social life outside the Pitt was going.
Tonight, though, you barely noticed the shift change happening around you since you’d ended up back in his room again almost without realizing. Through the last few hours, checking on him had stopped feeling entirely professional. You still used plenty of legitimate excuses, of course; his concussion needed monitoring in case his symptoms changed. You were also technically responsible for him until discharge, but if you were being honest with yourself, looking after him had become dangerously easy.
While the rest of the Pitt felt loud in comparison, his room felt quiet.
You’d sit perched sideways on the rolling stool near the exam bed, updating charts while absentmindedly talking through how your shift was going. He listened quietly from where he sat on the raised bed, legs swishing back and forth now, his hoodie abandoned sometime during the last hour.
Still, every now and then, your brain caught onto his staring and stumbled.
“You know,” you said while typing notes, “Dana threatened to physically drag me into the break room earlier because apparently surviving on caffeine and spite isn’t medically advisable. Which honestly is very hypocritical considering more than half the staff here are one inconvenience away from cardiac arrest.”
You looked up from the chart in time to catch a small smile.
“I’m glad you still think I’m funny even with brain damage. The cryptic staring can only last for so long.”
His eyes stayed steady on you. “Maybe.”
You giggled. “Still terrible at conversations, though. Truly tragic.”
While you were keeping him company, across the department, Jack Abbot had just walked into the Pitt, dressed in his scrubs and already talking.
“Tell me somebody restocked trauma two, because if I have to hunt down another chest tube tonight, I’m filing a formal complaint against humanity.” His voice carried easily across the department.
He shrugged out of his jacket while walking, salt and pepper curls slightly windblown from outside, already grinning at something Dana said near the nurses’ station.
“Four minutes late, by the way,” Dana informed him when he got closer.
“Still counts as on time in emergency medicine.”
“For an attending, you sure are incredibly wrong some of the time.”
“Key word being some and not all the time.”
Robby looked up from a chart with visible exhaustion. “I need you both to come down from a level eight to a level zero.”
Jack chose to ignore him, eyes already scanning around the room. When he didn’t find who he was looking for, he frowned slightly. “Where’s she at?”
Dana smirked before Robby could respond. “Interesting that you looked for her before your patients.”
“She’s less mean to me,” he replied without thinking, tossing his bag onto the counter.
“She’s been in one room half the afternoon,” Dana responded casually. “Concussed male.”
The minute her words ended, something subtle shifted in Jack’s chest. It probably wasn’t noticeable to people who didn’t know how Jack Abbot ticked, but Dana noticed, and her smirk turned downright evil.
“Aww,” she drawled. “Somebody jealous?”
Jack scoffed a tad too quickly to sound convincing. “I’m not jealous; I’m concerned.”
“Sure you are.”
Jack rolled his eyes hard enough to qualify as a medical even before pushing away from the counter. “I’m going to make sure she hasn’t adopted another emotionally damaged patient.”
Even as he said it, irritation had already begun creeping unpleasantly under his ribs.
One room all afternoon.
He knew how you got with certain patients; you were too soft-hearted for your own good sometimes, despite how hard you tried to pretend otherwise. But something about imagining you tucked away somewhere for hours giving another man the kind of attention you usually guarded carefully made something territorial and irrational bubble under his skin.
Back inside the room, you were still smiling down at your chart when you finally pushed yourself upright from the stool.
“All right,” you sighed. “I should probably go check whether the Pitt has fully descended into anarchy without me.”
His eyes followed you as you moved toward the door. “You’ll come back?”
You stopped for half a second, turning lightly and fully surprised enough by the quietness of his question that warmth spread through your being.
“Yeah,” you said softly. “I’ll come back.”
Your stomach flipped when his expression changed from a tight, worriedness to a soft, placated expression. Needing to escape before you could embarrass yourself further, you swung the door open and stepped into the hallway, holding the chart to your chest while talking over your shoulder toward him.
“Seriously, though, if you try sneaking out before I get back, I’ll actually—”
You voice cut off when your eyes landed Jack standing halfway down the hallway staring directly at you. It was almost like your brain hit the power mode and shut down completely, because Jack Abbot—your Jack Abbot was standing right in front of you.
Alive.
Healthy.
Definitely not concussed unlike the Jack—now not-Jack—you had spent hours sitting beside.
Your pulse dropped so hard it almost hurt.
Behind him, Robby slowed slightly, noticing the way all color drained from your face. Jack’s teasing grin faded into confusion as he took in the way you stared at him like you’d just seen a ghost.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said slowly, concern beginning to edge beneath the nickname. “You okay?”
You couldn’t answer as your eyes darted toward the closed room behind you, then back to Jack, then back again, then back to Jack one more time. Him standing there was impossible, so entirely impossible. Your heartbeat climbed into your throat.
Jack took another small step closer when you failed to answer. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
You blinked once before bolting back into the room.
“What the hell—” Jack muttered, following after you without hesitation while Robby moved right behind him.
He was the first through the doorway and stopped right as he went in. The air dropped almost noticeably. The man sitting on the exam bed had lifted his head slowly at the sound of the door opening, and for one disorienting second, it genuinely looked like Jack was staring at another, younger version of himself.
The man’s auburn hair caught warmly in the lighting while bruising shadowed one side of his face. He sat completely still on the bed, one hand loose around a cup Jack knew you had brought him at some point, his expression unreadable as he stared back at Jack.
Jack didn’t move, and you stood frozen near the corner, chest rising too fast while your brain desperately tried to recover from the fact that somehow—somehow—you had spent nearly an entire shift accidentally flirting with a completely stranger wearing Jack Abbot’s face.
Silence stretched painfully.
Behind Jack, Robby pinched the bridge of his nose. “Absolutely not,” he muttered under his breath. “Secret twins are above my pay grade. My sabbatical cannot come sooner enough.”
And before any of you could stop him, he turned around and walked directly back out of the room, letting the door click shit behind him, leaving only you, Jack, and the stranger sitting on the exam bed staring at one another in stunned silence.
_______________________
Nobody moved.
You still stood frozen near the corner clutching the chart so tightly your knuckles were white, while across the room Jack remained rooted just inside the doorway staring at the man like he genuinely could not process what he was seeing.
The resemblance was worse with both of them in the same room. They weren’t identical, but close enough that your brain kept trying to overlap them anyway with their same eyes, same mouth, same build. The now-stranger looked like someone had taken Jack and stripped ten years off him, softened the gray from his hair, and carved away some of the sharpness age and multiple years as an ER attending had left behind.
And suddenly you felt violently aware of every single thing you’d said over the last several hours. Heat flooded your face so quickly you thought you might actually die from humiliation right then and there.
To break the cursed silence, Jack finally spoke first. “What . . . the hell . . . is this?”
The stranger’s gaze shifted toward him calmly. Unlike you, he didn’t seem particularly unsettled by the situation. If anything, he looked mildly tired. The concussion probably wasn’t helping matters, but even beyond that there was still the same strange unwavering presence about him. You found yourself staring at him helplessly.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” you blurted, voice climbing in disbelief as you looked at him. “I spent like almost twelve hours calling you Jack.”
He looked back at you for a moment before answering. “My name’s Andrew.”
Jack let out a sharp disbelieving laugh. “Andrew?”
You shook your head. “Okay, no. You had so many opportunities to correct me, and you’re just now telling me your name?”
Andrew’s expression shifted slightly into something more apologetic. “Tried to.”
“You absolutely did not!”
“A little.”
“You said maybe four words all day!”
“You talked fast.”
You dropped your face into one hand, mortification crashing over you in waves now that the shock had worn off enough for your brain to start replaying the day in horrifying detail. “I told you that you were handsome.”
Jack’s head snapped toward you so fast it was almost comical. “You what?”
“Not talking to you Jack,” you shot back.
He stared at you in open betrayal. “I walk in here and find out you’ve been flirty with my concussed doppelganger all day?”
“I DIDN’T KNOW HE WASN’T YOU! HE’S LITERALLY WEARING YOUR FACE! WHAT WAS I SUPPOED TO DO?”
“Um, I don’t know, sweetheart, check first that it was actually me?
Andrew watched the entire exchange quietly, and to your absolute horror, there was the faintest hint of delight on his face.
You looked between the two men. “This is actually my worst nightmare.”
“Mine too,” Jack muttered before his eyes narrowed slightly when he looked back toward Andrew. “Hold on. You seriously never corrected her?”
Andrew was quiet as he kept looking at you. “I liked listening to her.”
Something fluttered in your chest. His words weren’t necessarily romantic, but he said it with such earnest that you couldn’t help but melt a bit. Jack clearly felt something too because his mouth pinched in irritation. You recognized it as the look he got whenever another one of the radiologists flirted with you for too long at the nurses’ station.
Jack Abbot was reeking with actual jealousy.
He looked away first, jaw tightening slightly before he exhaled through his nose and pointed vaguely toward the hallway. “Sweetheart.”
You tore your gaze from Andrew to look at him. “What?”
“Go do your handoffs.”
Your brows lifted. “Jack—”
“Go,” he repeated, still watching Andrew instead of you. “Before Dana starts a manhunt.”
You hesitated, sensing the almost openly hostile vibe Jack was giving off. It was certainly heavy enough that you suddenly felt like you were standing in the middle of something private. Andrew sat watching Jack with the same unreadable stillness while Jack looked back at him with visible suspicion. It genuinely felt like watching two wolves silently size each other up.
You pointed between them uncertainly. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”
“No promises,” Jack muttered.
Your eyes rolled back deeply. “You are unbelievably exhausting.”
Then, after one last glance toward Andrew and a silent wave goodbye, you slipped out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind you.
Jack crossed his arms slowly over his chest, leaning back against the closed door while studying the man in front of him more carefully now that the initial shock had worn off. Up close, the differences stood out more clearly, but enough resemblance lasted to make the situation deeply irksome.
Andrew continued to stare, though his lips had quirked up well before you had left the room.
Jack exhaled sharply and shook his head. “You know, most people would correct someone after the fifth time they got called the wrong name.”
Andrew’s gaze drifted over his shoulder like he could almost see you through the wooden door. “She was nice. Didn’t want to upset her. She looked like she was enjoying the idea of getting to take care of you.”
An unpleasantly possessive feeling twisted deep in Jack’s gut at the quiet sincerity of his answer. He understood why the man in front of him had gotten such a reaction from you. Andrew didn’t deflect; he said simple truths in a low steady voice that was somehow worse than flirty in his eyes.
Jack rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Did you flirt back?”
Andrew considered the question for a moment. “Didn’t have to since she did all the talking.”
And to his credit, he didn’t smirk afterward or act smug about it. If anything, he almost looked sad as he stood slowly from the exam bed. Even concussed, he carried himself with a height that made Jack very aware of the man when he moved. Jack puffed his chest out without meaning to, an instinctive reaction to the man who had held your attention for an entire day.
Andrew stepped close enough that now they both could look each other in the eye at the same height, making Jack almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
“You have a good girl,” Andrew said quietly, never looking away from hazel eyes that mirrored his own. “Don’t let someone else get to her first.”
The fact that Jack could picture you getting swept off your feet by another man felt like a punch directly to his chest. He’d been hiding behind teasing remarks and heavy sarcasm and blatant flirtation because it was easier than admitting how badly he wanted you. He couldn’t fathom the idea of someone, much softer and gentler than he might ever be, taking the chance he was too scared to. Andrew was an example of that man, someone who sat still long enough and quiet enough to let you feel seen and heard without interruption.
Because while he was falling behind, some concussed stranger who happened to share his exact face had managed to make you blush just by listening carefully.
Jack stared at Andrew for another long moment before muttering, “You know, I really don’t like this.”
“Do you not like this because I’m making you uncomfortable? Or do you not like this because I’m finally a wakeup call?” Andrew answered before stepping past him toward the door.
Jack whirled around. “Where are you going?”
Andrew opened the door with one hand. “To get discharge papers. Even though I enjoyed hearing her talk, I do not want to sleep in a hospital bed.” He paused. “You could probably go talk to her. Never know if another one of us might waltz through that door.”
The door swung shut behind him a second later, leaving Jack standing alone in the suddenly too-quiet room. For maybe three seconds, he stayed there staring at the empty doorway before he swore softly under his breath and headed out after you.
He found you near the nurses’ station halfway through handoff, leaning over a chart while Dana talked beside you. The second you noticed him approaching, your entire expression shifted somewhere between lingering embarrassment and outright panic. He didn’t slow down.
“Dana,” he interrupted the blond charge nurse mid-sentence.
She stared at him over her nose. “What?”
“I need her for a second.”
Her eyes tracked between him and you for a beat, and disappeared, though not before throwing you a deeply interested look over her shoulder. The moment she was gone, silence settled between you and Jack in a rather awkward way.
You looked down at your hands. “So.”
“So,” he echoed.
A soft groan pushed through your lips while your hands covered your face. “I cannot believe I spent an entire afternoon thinking your doppelganger was you with a concussion.”
“I can’t believe you called him handsome and still thought it was me when he didn’t do anything.”
“Hey,” you whined, lips jutting in a pout. “I was under emotional distress because I thought you had a severe concussion!”
“You know he liked you,” Jack teased with a smirk for half a second before his face dropped into a more serious look. “I don’t blame him, though.”
You swallowed once. “Jack—”
“I’m serious. And honest? I’m jealous as hell that he got to spend an entire shift with you.”
Warmth rushed to your face. “You’re jealous of your own face?”
“I don’t think that was my point, sweetheart.” He stared down at you. “I think I’ve been screwing this up for a while and seeing him just made me very aware of it.”
Your chest tightened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said slowly, “I keep joking around with you because if I actually said what I’ve been feeling, I’d probably mess it all up.” He ran a hand through his curls, almost frustrated by the lack of words to describe his feelings. “I like you,” he admitted finally. “Like . . . really like you.”
You couldn’t help but laugh softly under your breath in disbelief. “It took your twin from another universe getting a concussion for you to finally say that?”
“Apparently, yeah.”
Your smile widened helplessly, and Jack’s gaze briefly dropped to your mouth before lifting back to your eyes.
“Can I kiss you?”
The fact that he asked nearly ruined you on the spot. You nodded once before your brain could catch up enough to overthink it. But apparently that’s all Jack needed because the next moment, his warm hands slid carefully against your waist as he pulled you closer. Unlike all the teasing flirtation that existed between you for months, the kiss itself felt so intensely severe your knees almost buckled.
There were no games, no smug comments, just Jack kissing you like he’d wanted to for a very long time, his concussed double finally being the last straw to do so.
By the time you finally pulled apart, both of you were smiling a little stupidly.
And somewhere down the hallway, you were almost certain you heard Dana yell, “FINALLY!”
summary: Andrew has survived his whole life by wanting nothing. Until Craig introduces one of his friends, and suddenly, Andrew wants everything and more.
word count: 20.7k (yeah kinda lost my mind there)
c.w: age gap implied but not explicit; short suicidal ideation; crying; mentions of blood; light physical injuries; angst to fluff; smut - piv sex, oral sex; praising kink; breeding kink if you squint
a/n: sooooo...took me two weeks. had a breakdown. bon appetit! (and thank you to my wife for proofreading it) I really hope you'll like reading it like i enjoyed writing it.
❤︎ Thank you so much for reading!
Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
Nights spent pacing the garden of Smurf’s house, bare feet on the cold ground, counting his steps to keep his mind occupied. It never did. He tried to outrun the memories of his actions, to drown his pain at the bottom of the pool. But on those nights, his torment wore the faces of his ghosts.
First there was Julia, then Cath, quickly followed by Baz. And Smurf. Always Smurf. A cycle of misery that makes his ribcage feel as though it might collapse under the violent pounding of his heart.
Some days, seated at a table with his family, Andrew had felt he could scream until his throat gave out, and no one would have heard. He imagined falling into the pool, slipping under the surface, water closing over his head and staying there, lungs burning just long enough for the noise to finally fucking stop, no one coming to pull him out because nobody would have noticed he disappeared.
There were moments when the thought settled heavy in his bones: he would not survive another day in his family, he didn’t want to. He kept straining toward a bond that no longer reached his end…if it ever did.
Over the years, Andrew had grown accustomed to his role. Weird Pope, Creepy Pope, the family’s guard dog: asking for nothing, obeying to the beatings, the killings and never, never, mentioning the ghosts hunting the corner of his eyes each night.
He remembered Smurf’s voice, years ago. “Pop him a few pills and he’ll follow your commands, baby.” She said it to Baz like it was nothing, like he was nothing. This was before prison, before Andrew felt deep in his bones that the other half of his soul left this merciless Earth without him.
Sometimes he let himself think about Julia, since no one else did. He hoped that at least one of them had finally found peace.
Then, you happened.
And Andrew can’t make sense of it, no matter how much he turns it over in his head, how a girl like you ends up being friends with Craig and therefore, near the Cody brothers: you are sweet, kind, nothing but soft edges, and innocent. Almost like the world has spared you the knowledge of what men like him are capable of.
Whenever you are in the house, his gaze follows you from room to room. He tells himself that it’s vigilance and habit that pushes him to act like that. Except he doesn’t need to memorize the way you tuck your hair behind your ear, or how he can recognize the distinct sound of your footsteps in a heartbeat.
He learns and catalogues each of your reactions: the faint frown of your nose at the smell of a particular brand of coffee (gone from the house and replaced before sunset), the soft curl of your lips whenever you are kindly refusing his offer to make you a sandwich.
(He wouldn’t be bothered if you took a bite of his.)
To see you is a special kind of hell and an indescribable heaven, like pressing on a bruise just to make sure it still hurts.
Lately, you shift the air of the house by simply existing in it. Your laugh, in the rooms where Smurf had once lived, seems to almost cleanse the walls of her memory. And Andrew knows. He knows that’s why Craig is friends with you. Because each day, the sun seems to finally be able to reach the house, even his own room.
It frightens him.
His body instinctively adjusts around your presence, his mind reassessing new rules (the glasses on the bottom shelf so you can have access to them, checking how many drinks you have at Deran’s bar). He memorizes your schedule, notes which books you are bringing with you in your bag, times how long it takes you to get home, parks far enough that you can’t notice his truck but close enough that he can reach you if something goes wrong.
All his life, Andrew had survived by wanting nothing. By hollowing himself out until the obedience Smurf wanted from him fitted neatly inside his ribs, because wanting had always been a liability, a weakness someone could press a knife into.
But now…now that life seems finally good and breathable, that he has the skatepark and his siblings and an almost regular life (if one exists for men like him) without Smurf’s claws on his throat, Andrew finds himself cornered by a simple, terrifying truth: he wants you.
He swallows it. Buries it deep inside, trying to drown it with numbness and even more repetitive actions when you are near: chopping, tidying the house, scrubbing counters that are already clean, fixing hinges that doesn’t squeak… Anything to keep his hands busy so they don’t reach for you.
No, Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
──────────
You remember telling yourself that the house felt wrong before you ever understood why.
Craig had asked you to come meet his brothers and from his tone alone, you knew it was a big deal. That something was at stake.
You showed up at four sharp, even if he hadn’t given you a specific time (something you would soon realize was typical of Craig), a paper bag pressed to your chest, palms already sweaty. You stood outside for a full minute before knocking, taking a few deep breaths, and stepping over the threshold with a smile as he wrapped you in a hug with his tall frame before dragging you straight into the kitchen.
That’s when you saw him.
Broad shoulders, dark curls on a face held tight, back straight and hands braced on his thighs, his posture so still you almost thought he was a mannequin.
“My brother Pope,” Craig said. “Don’t mind him, he almost doesn’t bite.”
His gaze was already on you, unblinking, steady in a quiet unnerving way, like he was committing every detail to memory, a look so intense it coaxed words out of you before you could stop them.
“H-Hi,” you stuttered, giving your name as you tried to stay composed. You extended your hand toward him, and he stared at it for a moment. The pause stretched long enough for doubt to creep up your spine (maybe he didn’t shake hands? maybe you had already broken some invisible rule?).
You swallowed, blood rising to your cheeks, drawing your hand back to clutch the paper bag as you tried not to stammer on your words. “I brought pastries. I didn’t know what you all would like so…I kind of…guessed,” you hated how small your voice sounded.
He stayed silent, brows faintly furrowed, as if he was processing what you had just said. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”
His tone was quiet, almost a hum, pulled from the depth of his chest, the sound settling low in your stomach, warm and heavy, and your first thought (unwelcome and strange) was how that vibration would feel beneath your palm.
Craig sighed with desperation at the conversation with a quiet “Stop being weird, bro!” while his other younger brother, unbothered, simply ignored the awkwardness, nodded as an introduction and handed beers around.
It was a welcome distraction, the cold liquid sliding down your throat, and buying you time to think on what to say next, but the youngest, Deran, beat you to it, asking you about your job and how good a surfer you were.
“You fuckin’ with me? You live in Oceanside and can’t stand on a board?” he laughed and couldn’t stop the slight condescending tone from his voice. “No worry, me or mister El Craigo here will introduce you to it. You’ll only swallow, like…a gallon of water before you get it.”
“Oh, um…I don’t think…” you tried to say, though it was mostly ignored.
Pope hadn’t looked away once, hand gripping tightly enough on the beer that you could see his knuckles whitening. There was something careful about the way he held himself: still, contained.
Your eyes met his again and you smiled tentatively.
“Um…Pope,” you started, uncertain, the name tasting strange on your tongue. “Can I ask you…”
“Andrew.” He interrupted, the tone firm enough to stop you mid-breath.
You suddenly became aware of your heartbeat, your chest lifting as it rattled against your ribs. Your gaze dropped at the intensity. Had you done something wrong? You suddenly felt foolish for the pastries, for the outstretched hand, for trying so hard, and an absurd urge to apologize rose in your throat, even if you didn’t know what for.
When you looked up, he was already halfway out of the kitchen.
You never finished your question.
Later that night, when you slipped into your bed, the sheets cold but familiar in their welcoming loneliness, you turned from one side to the other, eyes pinched shut without any release to exhaustion, realizing that you couldn’t remember what you had meant to ask.
Only that you wanted to hear his voice, just one more time.
──────────
The house is too loud. It always is when there are people over.
It reminds him of being a kid, hiding with Julia, hands intertwined, avoiding the drunk and high grown-ups. Whispering that everything would be alright. That no one would find them. Not even Smu-
(Bad thought. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on the kitchen counter.)
The volume of the music is pushed too high for his comfort, a constant buzz under the conversations in the house and near the pool while Andrew stands in the kitchen, hands deep in soapy water, scrubbing a glass that is already clean.
He finished the dishes ten minutes ago, but he is still washing, still drying, rearranging things that don’t need rearranging because it gives him somewhere to put his hands, to put his eyes. Because the alternative is the living room. And you.
(You, in that white dress. He has the stupid thought that you look like an angel and immediately hates himself for it. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the droplets dripping from his fingertips.)
He tells himself that he is staying in the kitchen because it lets him see everything in the house, because parties mean unlocked doors, strangers who could wander into rooms they shouldn’t be in. And there are the habits he can’t shake off: watching the exits, the unfamiliar faces, counting heads (Deran, Craig, you), noting who is drinking too much, who is getting loud, who might break something.
He dries the same plate twice in a row before setting it down on the kitchen counter and looking up without meaning to.
You are by the couch, perched on the armrest while Craig, bare chest and shameless about it, tells you the story about the time he smuggled a burrito full of drugs across the Mexico border, story he knew you heard a dozen times these past three months. But still, you are laughing, head tipped back, hair falling down your spine (he wonders what they would feel like underneath his fingertips), one hand wrapped around a bottle you haven’t drunk from in a while, like it has more to do with keeping your hands busy while you are listening.
Andrew noticed it the first week he met you.
But the moment your lips wrap around the drink, he looks away and goes back to washing clean and dried plates, hands in the ice water, soap stinging the small cut on his knuckle.
(Good. Something sharp. Something real. Better than counting for now.)
“I bought you a new pair of gloves.”
Your voice is closer than he expected and his head snaps towards you before he can stop it. You are standing at the edge of the counter, smiling, so close that he can smell your shampoo despite the soap and the lingering smell of weed (it’s so clean, so soft, he wants to drown himself in it).
“Why?” He asks, his nostrils flaring at his own bluntness.
You shrug, small. “I know Craig threw your pair away yesterday. And, um… I know you like wearing them when you clean.”
“Why?” his voice repeats, breaking at the word.
Of course, you ignore his question, and he can’t help but spiral (why did you do that? do you realize how much the gesture is affecting him? no one ever cared about his gloves. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the freckles on your nose.).
“I got the good ones,” you add, beaming. “So the soap doesn’t mess up your hands.”
While your eyes drop to his hands, his are still enraptured on your face, studying every single feature (you really do look like an angel. and you act like one too. maybe you are his salvation. stop, he needs to fucking stop but he no longer knows what to count.).
Andrew swallows what feels like an anchor in his throat because you look like you worry about him (you have done that for a while now, which still baffles him). Nobody worries about him: they worry about what he might do, not whether he is hurt.
“’m fine.” He mutters, not convincingly enough, judging by the look on your face.
You are still looking at his bruised hands and your fingers twitch on the counter like you had the sudden urge to reach for him, like you might take his hand to look at it.
(He has the overwhelming need to know what you would do with his hands in yours. Hold them? Kiss them better? One. Two. Three- would you let his hands run along your hair? He knows what it’s like to touch you when you need help, but he feels that this would be very different.)
“They are under the sink,” you say above the music and Andrew can’t do anything else but stare, not trusting his own voice.
You linger for a moment at the counter and Andrew wants to ask you to stay (in the kitchen, in his life, doesn’t matter), but Craig shouts your name from the living room and suddenly he has some homicidal thoughts. You glance over your shoulder, then back at Andrew, and you look…reluctant.
“I’ll…”
“Yeah.”
You don’t move. Neither does he.
“Thanks.” He finally says, his gaze still tracking every shift of your expressions, trying to burn your smile in his retina, hoping one blink would not be enough to erase it.
“Of course, Andrew.”
Andrew. For you, he is Andrew and that’s all that matters because you are the only one calling him by this name and you make it sound like it belongs to you ever since you first said it by the pool.
With one last little smile, you walk away and his eyes follow you until he knows you have reached Craig but even then, he doesn’t look away, afraid you might disappear, just like every good thing always did.
And Andrew learned, a long time ago, that if you wanted something to stay alive and safe, you watched it. Guarded it. Didn’t blink.
Andrew didn’t blink.
──────────
You stepped outside because the house had started to feel too small, suffocating all at once, Craig and Deran’s voices stacking over each other in the open kitchen, arguing about a job - a part of the Cody brothers’ lives you knew existed but mostly chose not to look at too closely.
You told yourself you only needed a second of quiet, just enough space to breathe properly again after a long day at work full of aggravating customers, meager tips and a coffee spilt by a coworker on your bare legs.
The noise softened once the door closed, letting you draw in a deep breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
“Fucking hell.” You muttered, exhausted by the shouting.
You hadn’t noticed him at first, too busy staring at the pool and ignoring your inner voice telling you to jump straight in the pool fully clothed, a thought that you were soon pulled out of when you heard a sound that didn’t belong to the wind or the trees.
That’s when you saw him, seated at the edge of a lounge chair, head bowed, a skateboard turned upside down across his thighs, one hand spinning a wheel while the other oiled it with slow, precise movements.
“Not a fan of the shouting matches?” you asked, trying not to startle him.
He glanced up, shook his head before going back to the board. “No.”
“So…not keen on loud noises either?”
“No.”
For a moment, you simply watched him, struck by how different he looked when he was doing something he seemed to…enjoy. Less folded into himself, the usual tightness of his posture easing (was it because of the board? the sound of the pool? the absence of his brothers? whatever it is, the view looked precious enough for you to want to capture it).
You lowered yourself onto the warm concrete next to him, your back resting against the lounge chair, knees pulled to your chest, neither of you speaking for a while.
That’s when you noticed his hands: knuckles swollen and red, the skin split near the thumb, a faint line of blood reopening every time the skin stretched.
“They look like they hurt. Y-Your hands, I mean.”
He shrugged without looking at you. “They’re fine.”
Your eyes drifted from them to his profile: from his hazel eyes fully focused on the board to the tight set of his mouth and you caught yourself distracted by his lips for a second too long before forcing your eyes back to the floor, warmth creeping up your neck (don’t think about that, don’t think about that).
“Andrew?”
The wheel immediately stopped spinning. Not gradually, just…stopped.
The entire yard suddenly became too quiet as his face snapped towards you, something unreadable flickering across his face and vanishing just as quickly, and you felt the realization settle in slowly that you had finally said his name after almost a month of avoiding it.
“Do you think I could learn how to skateboard? I…” the words got stuck between your throat and your lips while you searched for the courage to finish your sentence without tripping over yourself. “I mean…I wanted to know if you could help me. Learn it, I mean. If you wanted to. You don’t have to, I just…” (fuck. why? why were you so weird?)
Your fingers picked at the hem of your skirt and pulled on a thread to busy your hands, and from the corner of your vision you caught his brief smile, and the warmth that spread was so shamefully immediate that you bit your tongue until you tasted metal just to keep from blurting out something along the lines of ‘i really, really, fucking love your smile, please do it again so my day goes from moderately shitty to embarrassingly close to perfection.’
“Give me your phone.” he said, and you didn’t hesitate, fishing it out from your pocket, and placing it in his palm.
“There’s no password on your phone.”
“Yeah…I know.”
“It’s dangerous.” His thumb hovered over the screen, nose flaring. “Anyone could get into it. Your photos. Your messages. Your address. Everything is in there.”
You barely heard the end of it, too focused on the pull in your chest as his words kept coming, just for you.
“I haven’t thought about that.” You murmured, feeling foolish while he muttered to himself something that definitely sounded like ‘I did.’
He tapped his number in before going through the settings while you were still struck by his intensity and that he was doing this for you without being asked.
“Six digits. Not birthdates and not something simple like six zeros.” He handed your phone back, his fingers lingering for a second too long before pulling away. “Put one.”
This time you knew it was an order and you didn’t hesitate a second as you followed it, typing something in, suddenly hyperaware of how close he was standing, your shoulder almost brushing his calf, your pulse loud in your ears and a slow, humiliating heat pooling low in your stomach that you refused to think about at the moment.
“Good.” He said after you saved the password. “Text me your work hours.”
“So, it’s a yes? Really?”
He grunted and whether the dusting of crimson over his freckles was real or something you imagined, you couldn’t tell, you were too busy feeling as light as a leaf.
“Yes. And…”
His words were cut off by the screen door banging open, leaning back abruptly just as Craig made his way toward you both with a grin that meant whatever the fight with Deran had been about, he had won.
“Deran agrees for Friday night. And you,” he tapped your forehead. “didn’t hear shit.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s my girl. Now get your ass in the pool.”
Craig was already running to the pool before you could respond, clothes coming off mid-step.
“I can’t believe this man has a kid. Has you brother always been a shameless nudist?”
“Unfortunately…yes.”
You snorted before murmuring. “Thanks, by the way. For the password thing. And for agreeing to teach me. I promise I’ll only be like…average terrible.”
“You’ll be fine,” he shrugged. Then, quieter, “I’ll make sure.”
His gaze dipped briefly to your mouth when he said it, before snapping back up, and something in your stomach turned warm and gooey, a reckless part of you hoping he might add something else. Or step closer again. But he didn’t, just nodded once, before muttering. “Go.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to your board, Andrew.”
You made it halfway to the pool before you glanced back. He was still watching, not even pretending not to, looking like a leopard ready to jump. Like if you slipped, he would already be moving.
And lying awake that night, window cracked open and the ocean humming somewhere in the dark, you muffled his name into your pillow, trying to quiet yourself, imagining his hands instead of yours. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.
──────────
Andrew is used to ending his nights alone because wanting people to stay never goes well for him.
So, when the party finally ends at four in the morning, he does what he knows best: throwing the bottles into the trash, making sure no one is passed out in the backyard or asleep in one of the bedrooms and…cleaning.
First the diving board, even if Craig is still making out on one of the lounge chairs with a girl whose name Andrew can’t remember and doesn’t try to (he knows best). Next, the counter, twice in a row for good measure. Then the sink, while Deran claps a hand on his shoulder with a “Don’t stay up too late, okay?” before heading out.
(One. Two. Three. Four. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. He counts the second you spend in the bathroom.)
He stands in the kitchen for a moment before realizing it might look strange and make you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing he wants.
He rushes back to his room (he wouldn’t exactly call it ‘sprinting’. sprinting would mean he is trying to avoid you. which he is not. not at all.).
He doesn’t bother turning on the light when he decides to lie on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling because he knows that sleep won’t come. It never does.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks.)
Every time he closes his eyes, something crawls up from beneath his ribs and he is once again plagued by his ghost: Julia’s voice, Cath’s smile, Baz’s forgiveness. Smurf’s words cutting straight through him.
He thinks about the pool and how easy it would be to let the water close over his head. How all the voices would finally be silent forever, his own included.
(Bad thoughts. One. Two. Three. Four. He recites the number of cameras in the bank for the incoming job.)
He forces himself to think of something else.
Of you, earlier, laughing at Craig’s story (and the immediate, unwelcome ache in his chest as he wonders if there’s something between the two of you, if this will end the way things always seem to, if you’ll be another Cath: close to him before preferring his brother).
Then he thinks about the way he made you laugh on your first skateboard lesson, all because he wanted to make you feel safe and seen, how the simple feel of your waist had nearly made him press his forehead to your shoulder and beg for you to stay and keep looking at him like that.
He thinks about that night when you called him for help, and how he didn’t hesitate for even a second when reaching for his keys, truck already running before you even finished explaining because the simple thought of you alone somewhere in the dark, waiting and frightened, had felt like acid running through his veins, the kind of fear that made him beg to the sky “Not here, not her, not again. I won’t fail her”.
He presses his palms against his eyes until he sees bursts of purple light.
(Breathe. One. Tw-)
A faint knock against the door makes him freeze.
Nobody knocks in this house, his brothers just…barge in.
He is already on his feet before he realizes it, his hand finding the handle before he opens to find you there.
Barefoot, hair loose and messy, the mascara smudged at the corners of your eyes and the dress wrinkled. Earlier, Andrew thought you looked like an ethereal angel, something untouchable and holy.
But now…now you just look human, real and warm, which is worse because real things like you can stay as well as leave.
“Hey.” You murmur, leaning against the doorframe.
He grips the handle tightly to steady himself.
“Something wrong?”
“I was supposed to sleep on the couch,” you begin, talking with your hands the way you always do when you try to explain a situation, “but signor El Craigo has decided that it’s now his new make out spot with Sam and I really don’t need that image burned into my brain. And of course, I thought about taking his room in retaliation, but I don’t trust his conception of hygiene,”
That makes him huff.
“So…” you add, rubbing your arm, almost shy which doesn’t make sense in his mind because you haven’t been shy with him in a long time with the skatepark lessons or with the ‘hallway accident’ you both had together, “Can I stay here tonight?”
You don’t say ‘with you’ nor ‘in your bed’, but Andrew understands and he is pretty sure his brain short circuits for a second or two.
You didn’t text Deran or try to Uber home. You just came to him. Because you trusted him.
“Yes.” He replies too fast, stepping back from the door.
“You sure?”
He nods to avoid confessing that he would give you the bed. The room. The house. The air in his lungs.
You slip past him into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed before looking back at him and asking gently, “You’re not sleeping, right?”.
“No. Not…not really.”
“Yeah, figured.”
You lie down beneath the covers first, curling onto the side of the bed closest to the wall, leaving him space.
“Don’t think about staying on top of the covers, Andrew.”
The warning in your tone almost makes him laugh so he complies, lying down beside you, fully clothed and aware of every inch separating the two of you.
He stares at the ceiling again.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breathing.)
The mattress shifts while you slowly roll onto your back before turning fully toward him, your shoulder brushing his arm.
“Sorry,” you mumble sleepily. “’m cold.”
“It’s fine.” He says it like the ghost of your breathing over his collarbone didn’t just set every of his nerves on fire, like he was not terrified to shift even an inch.
After a few minutes, you drift closer in your sleep, chasing warmth without thinking, your knee pressing against his thigh, your hand sliding across the sheets until your fingers come to rest on the fabric of his shirt, right over his heartbeat and for a moment he genuinely forgets how to breathe.
Your palm is so warm, and he is painfully aware that you can probably feel how hard his heart is pounding.
Nobody has ever touched him like this, like he is something safe and out of everything that has happened to him: the underground fights, the prison, the jobs…none of that ever made him feel this defenseless.
His eyes suddenly burn because he wants to turn so much to see your peaceful face, tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, pull you closer to know just once in his life what it’s like to hold something good without destroying it, to press his face into your hair and breathe until the ghosts quiet down, but he doesn’t.
He stays exactly as he is, lying in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breaths again. Then the seconds between them. He thinks about the fact that you’re here and the miracle of it.)
Sleep doesn’t come, but for the first time in years, the night doesn’t feel empty.
Because you’re here. Warm. Alive. Trusting him.
So, Andrew stays awake until morning, guarding the only good thing that ever chose him.
──────────
You were so, so late.
You had told Andrew on the phone that you would be at his skatepark at 5:15 sharp after work, and it was now 5:42 and you were sprinting the half mile that separated the coffee shop from there, bag smacking against your hip, your lungs burning, already sweaty before you even reached the entrance, trying to slow your breathing with a few useless deep inhales, hands braced on your knees, pretending that you were not seconds away from passing out.
(First lesson and you were already late and a disaster. Great. Very impressive.)
You straightened, wiped your forehead, and stepped inside, scanning the park before finding Andrew, board tucked under one arm, sleeves riding up his biceps, curls messy from the wind and sweat and you were now positively sure that you had some drool at the corner of your mouth (the universe had decided to sabotage you and that was fucking unfair.)
You watched the tiny smile he had as a girl showed him her board, proud and beaming at him like he had personally hung the sun in the sky (no, you didn’t need to think about him being good with kids. you didn’t need to picture him with kids, him gentle, him…stop. shut up.).
The second his head lifted and locked eyes with you, you were pretty much done for. It was ridiculous, really, how one look from him could short-circuit every coherent thought in your brain, how your feet just…moved, carrying you toward him instinctively, dropping your bag by the fence without breaking your stride as he met you halfway.
His gaze dragged over you once: your face, your hair, your chest.
“You ran here?”
“Yes. And I’m sweating…a lot. Please don’t judge me.”
He took a few seconds, a storm passing through his eyes before he added.
“You’re late.”
“I know,” you rushed, your hands quickly moving and your words tumbling over each other like they always did when you got flustered around him. “but a guy ordered for his whole ‘cheaper by the dozen’ family like three minutes before we closed. I’m probably sure he sensed my despair and fed on it.”
A small huff escaped him. “You didn’t have to run.”
You shrugged, eyes to the ground. “Didn’t want you to think I bailed on you.”
You felt it, his head tilting down just enough to catch your gaze again, stubborn about it.
“I wouldn’t. Now you ready?”
“Born ready.” You lied through your teeth.
“You look terrified.”
“I can do both, you know,” you shot back quickly. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
There was the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, Whitman.”
“Y-You know Whitman?”
A pause.
“I mean…not that I don’t believe you or think you can’t read poetry or anything…that’s actually super hot, so good job!” you gave him a thumbs-up, aware you had just lost every ounce of dignity you had ever possessed. “It’s just that last week Craig asked me if ‘Pride and Peace’ was a good book to impress a girl, so…my bar was very low.”
Andrew stared at you for a moment. “Pride and Peace.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not…”
“I know, I know. But don’t worry, I did a good deed for society and told him not to mention any book ever. You and Deran are safe from now on. You’re welcome.”
And there it was again: that quiet amusement on his lips, the roll of his eyes like he couldn’t help himself, making you feel the stupid and dangerous need to continue to jest (keep talking, say anything, make him do it again).
He shook his head once. “C’mon Whitman. Let’s see what you got.”
You trailed after him without thinking and the first few attempts were…humiliating to say the least: your balance was nonexistent, your feet refused to cooperate, your arms stood uselessly at your sides, and you had absolutely no idea where you were supposed to look while Andrew hovered nearby like he was ready to intervene at any moment.
“I look stupid!” you complained.
“You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine! This is deeply humiliating. I can barely stay upright and there are twelve-year-olds doing tricks behind me! Tricks, Andrew!”
“You’re doing good.”
“I almost died.”
“You didn’t.”
“Socially, I assure you I did.”
Your heart did a stupid little skip when a tiny, amused sound escaped him.
(You could bottle that sound and live off it. You were now pretty sure you would commit crimes for it.)
“Makes sense you’re friends with Craig,” he muttered. “Dramatic.”
You gasped, unable to contain your grin. “Excuse you mister Cody, but I am layered! I am complex!”
He looked unimpressed and repeated “Dramatic.”
You opened your mouth to argue before your foot slipped, the board shooting forward, and for one horrible second you thought that worse than falling off in front of children was falling off in front of the guy you had a crush on.
But you never got to know the feeling before his hands were suddenly there, at your waist, catching you fast and steadying you while you became acutely aware of every nerve under his palms, of his thumbs grazing your hipbones, of his breath brushing your cheek as heat pooled between your legs.
He moved behind your back, still holding your waist before murmuring “Don’t lean and bend your knees.”
(You were starting to suspect he was fucking with you on purpose.)
But still, he adjusted you gently, palms rotating your hips and guiding your stance before kneeling to help place your legs on the board and you couldn’t stop yourself from blurting:
“I haven’t shaved my legs. Sorry.”
“Me neither.” He huffed, his breath warm on your calf and the faintest hint of amusement threading through his voice.
(Was that…a joke? Was he joking? Since when was he doing that? You liked that. You wanted that.)
Andrew pushed himself back on his feet, stepping away just enough for you to feel the sudden absence of his body, leaving you oddly cold, like you had stepped out of the sunlight.
“Try again.”
You nodded, realizing that his joke had somehow shaken the worst of your nerves away, before pushing off, your knees bent like he had shown you, your weight centered and the board rolled.
“Oh my God, I’m doing it! Andrew, I’m really doing it!” you exclaimed happily.
“You are.”
You risked a glance over your shoulder, and he was watching you with his usual careful intensity, hands half-raised and prepared to catch you, like protecting you was the only thing on his list right now.
So (naturally), you did the dumbest thing possible and tested him. Just a little bit. Just to know.
You leaned and let your weight tip forward just enough to know if…
His hands immediately caught you, his hands on your ribs, scanning up and down if you had been hurt, “You okay?”
You swallowed, realizing that you had never doubted a second he would be there. And that settled something warm and terrifying in your chest.
It was not a silly crush, not your friend’s brother that you thought was hot and interesting, no. It was falling. Headfirst, no parachute.
And judging by the way his hands hadn’t moved from your waist yet, you weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t falling a little too.
──────────
You are screaming and he is too late.
He is always too late.
Your voice breaks into something small and terrified, the kind of sound that doesn’t even feel human anymore, and he is running but his legs don’t cooperate, move in slow-motion, the floor stretching longer and longer beneath him and the house smells like chlorine, metal and something sour he recognizes too fast.
You’re in the pool, face down and the water is red. And you are so, so still. He tries to move, to drag you out, but he can’t.
You turn toward him, eyes open and your mouth spilling blood.
“You were supposed to be there, Andrew. Why weren’t you there?”
He jerks awake, his whole body snapping upright while air refuses to enter his lungs, a pain in his ribcage so intense he thinks it might split him open from the inside out.
He doesn’t understand why at first: why his pillow feels cold and damp to the touch, why his throat burns, until he drags a shaky hand across his face and touches something wet, the realization feeling nauseating.
He has been crying in his sleep for God knows how long.
He presses his palms hard into his eyes like maybe the pain will help him, like maybe if he suffers enough the images will disappear. That you won’t be floating face down in the pool, covered in blood, your blood, your voice joining all the others, the same disappointed tone he’s memorized over the years with his ghosts.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He tries to count but it doesn’t work.)
The house is quiet for once, too quiet, and Andrew has this awful, crawling sensation lodged under his sternum, something cold and irrational that he can’t help but spiral into.
(What if…No.)
He is already moving, because lying back down would mean closing his eyes again and he can’t, he fucking can’t risk seeing you like that again, can’t hear the sound of your voice pleading and begging for him to save you when you are already gone, can’t add you to the long list of ghosts that wait for him every night.
Halfway down the hall, he gets as quiet as he can manage, moving through the house like he is on a job, because it feels the same: this sick, urgent need to verify something, to be sure that you are here, that you are safe.
The living room is glowing faintly blue before he even steps in, the light spilling on the floor and he hears it: a narrator speaking about sharks and the distant sound of recorded waves.
You always pick sea life documentaries when you stay over.
He doesn’t know when you figured out he liked them.
He stops at the threshold and sees you: curled on the couch, hidden beneath a blanket and alive.
(Your chest rises. Then falls. Rises. Falls. You’re not floating. You’re not gone.)
His lungs finally unlock and he breathes sharply, the sound loud enough that you look up immediately, like you sensed him there, like you are now tuned to him in a way he doesn’t understand, and your expression softens the second you see his face.
“Hey,” you say, voice thick with sleep. “Everything okay?”
He nods automatically but knows that he can’t bullshit you.
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine,” he manages, but the words come out wrecked and dragged through his throat.
Your eyes examine him slowly and it clicks behind them. “Nightmare?”
(Oh, he hates this word. Hates how small it makes him feel. Hates how childish it sounds. Hates how accurate it is.)
His jaw locks so hard it aches and he can’t force out anything more than a stiff, miserable nod, his nails digging crescent moons in his palms as he braces himself for questions, for having to justify why he is standing there at three in the morning, shaking over a bad dream. But you don’t push.
You just scrub a hand over your tired face before moving your legs and lifting the blanket, creating space beside you.
“Come here.” You mumble, looking at him, patient.
He crosses the room slowly, the couch dipping under his weight as he lowers himself beside you, hyperaware of every inch of distance, of your arm brushing his, of the warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of your shirt, of how close your knee is to his thigh and how easy it would be to accidentally touch.
Your hand bumps his and even if he should pull away, he doesn’t. The contact is small, just skin against skin but for Andrew, it’s the closest to heaven he’s ever been.
Your fingers linger, uncertain, like you’re giving him time to decide, like he is allowed to decide. His thumb moves before he can stop it, brushing lightly over your knuckles, slowly, reverently, like he needs to make sure you are solid and not a trick of his mind. You feel warmer than him.
(Alive warm. Not water cold. Not bloody and floating. Not like in the pool.)
The memory hits so hard it hurts.
He jerks his hand back abruptly, his breathing going wrong again, shame creeping hot and fast because for a moment he wanted something and asked for it, letting the walls go down.
But you don’t comment, don’t tease and don’t pull away in response to his neediness and instead, you shift closer and you help settling the blanket over both of you, your arm following, tugging him in gently, like there has never been a version of this world where he wasn’t permitted to be here.
He stiffens when your hand finds the back of his neck and he wants to reassure you that it’s not because he wants it to stop but because he wants it too much, and he doesn’t deserve it. But your fingers brush his scalp, and suddenly he is nothing but starving for it, leaning toward it instinctively.
You guide him down gently, so gently and he can’t win this fight tonight, his ear pressing against your chest.
The documentary keeps whispering about tides and sharks, but he barely hears it now because all he can focus on is the rhythm under his cheek and the way your fingers keep caressing his curls in slow strokes like you were calming a frightened wild animal.
He wants to move. To slide his arm around your waist. To press his face into your shirt and breathe you. To hold you tight enough so nothing could ever take you away.
But he stays still, terrified of ruining it and breaking something with the weight of his want.
Your fingers drift lower to cradle the back of his head while your other arm tightens around him and pull him fully into you, closing the remaining space between your two bodies. His relief is immediate and overwhelming, pulling a whimper out of him, emptying him of his thoughts.
His chest caves inward on a shaky exhale, his hand finally moving hesitantly until it rests lightly on your waist, barely touching and giving you room to pull away if you want to, but you don’t. You tuck him closer, your chin brushing his hair.
“I’ve got you. You’re okay, Andrew, I promise. I’m here.”
The words land deep and it takes him a moment to realize he is sobbing in your arms, the tears soaking your shirt while he presses his forehead closer to your chest, just to confirm that the heartbeat under him is real.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your heart now.)
“Shh…It’s going to be okay, Andrew.”
The storm in his head – the ghosts, the pool, your voice – slowly quiets for the first time all night, dissolving under the simple, undeniable fact that you are here and breathing under his cheek, speaking to him, comforting him.
And somewhere, between one beat and the next, his body finally gives up the fight, his sobs stop, exhaustion dragging him under gently this time, no drowning, no screaming, just the steady rhythm of you and your quiet voice drifting above him.
“I’m not leaving Andrew.”
He knows that for tonight at least, no nightmare will come at him.
You promised.
──────────
“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.”
Craig was the worst and you were absolutely going to kill him. Not even metaphorically, but in the sense where you would pick up the nearest heavy object and aim for his head the next time you saw him, if only you were able to find him right now instead of wandering through a house you didn’t know that smelled aggressively of weed and alcohol.
Deran and Andrew would forgive you, you were sure of it, if you murdered their brother under these circumstances. Hell, they might even help you bury the body. Because you could have had a regular evening at home, watching for the hundredth time Shawshank Redemption but no, you had to be alone in a stranger’s kitchen, trying not to panic.
The party had shifted, you felt it about twenty minutes ago.
It had stopped being loud fun and started being loud wrong when little bags started to be passed around, people disappearing in rooms and coming back with pupils blown wide and white powder on their nostrils.
You had looked for Craig. Texted him. Called. Nothing.
You had found someone who vaguely resembled one of the friends he introduced you to earlier, and when you asked if they had seen him, they laughed and replied something about “upstairs with Renn so it might take a while, Sweetheart,” and you stood there for a second, scared. Really scared.
Because you didn’t know anyone there, not really. And you were now surrounded by idiots who were snorting cocaine.
(Okay. Calm down. Breathe. Don’t cry. It doesn’t help your situation at all.)
A guy you didn’t recognize slid a drink toward you with a grin that lingered too long, and the fact that your very first thought was ‘I wonder if he put something in that’ made your decision for you: you were leaving. Immediately. Whatever Craig was doing upstairs with Renn was officially no longer your problem.
The night air hit your face, making you regret for the lack of jacket.
You stood on a sidewalk for a moment, trying to calculate the distance back to your apartment. You were too far, with no car and a phone at nine percent.
“Craig is dead. He is fucking dead. I will kill him myself,” you muttered under your breath as you started walking anyway, heels dangling in your hand, bare feet against the cold concrete, just to put some distance between you and the house.
But the further you got, the louder your heartbeat became, pounding in your ears, the fear crawling up your spine.
Still, you kept walking, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, repeating ‘You’ll be fine,’ over and over to your brain.
(You were not fine. You were alone. In the middle of the night. Walking barefoot down a street you didn’t know. Why were you like this? Why didn’t you just stay? Why didn’t you drag Craig out by his stupid hair to drive you back home?)
You didn’t want to try to call Craig again and waste your last percentage of battery on someone who would not answer.
And before you could talk yourself out of it, before you could rationalize or be embarrassed…your thumb was already pressing Andrew’s name.
(If you called him, he would come. He wouldn’t hesitate. You knew it.)
The phone only rang once before he picked up.
“Yes?”
That was all it took for you: the sound of his steady and low voice to make something inside your chest collapse, the fragile composure you had been clinging to dissolving instantly as you let out a shaky exhale, thanking all the Gods above for Andrew Cody’s existence.
“Andrew,” you said, your voice betraying you immediately with a crack right through the middle of his name. “I-I’m sorry. It’s late, I know. I just…”
“What happened.”
You swallowed, trying to force the tears to back down. “I’m at this party and…and Craig left. I mean…he is upstairs with Renn doing I don’t know what and he won’t answer me. I left the house because it got weird there and I’m trying to walk home but I think that was a stupid idea and I just…”
(You hated how your voice wobbled. How small it sounded. You should have bought pepper spray.)
“I’m so scared.”
In the background, you could hear keys jangling, a door closing and his truck starting.
“Where are you?”
No ‘why’, no ‘what were you thinking’. Just that.
You gave him the street name and the closest intersection you could see, wiping your face with the back of your hand and trying to steady your breathing so you didn’t sound like you were seconds away from a breakdown.
“I’ll be there in five.”
You let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. “It’s at least ten.”
“Five.”
The line went dead before you could argue, the call cutting off abruptly as your screen went black. Dead battery.
You stared at your reflection for half a second on the dark screen, heart hammering while you counted the seconds in your head, hoping that somehow it would summon him faster.
It took less than three hundred for you to see headlights cut around the corner of the street faster than the required speed limit, relief crashing into you. He didn’t even fully stop before the driver’s door was already swinging open, crossing the distance to you in three long strides, eyes sweeping over you from head to toe then past you to the houses.
“You okay?”
You nodded too quickly and he stared at you, jaw locked so hard you could see the muscles twitching. He looked furious.
“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door, one hand braced on the roof as he helped you climb up into the seat, taking your shoes to put them in the back seat.
You stayed silent, not wanting to know to whom his anger was directed at. It was only once you were down the street that he finally spoke again, eyes flicking between the road and you.
“Did anyone hurt you?”
You blinked at him. “No.”
“Touch you?”
“No.”
“Follow you?”
You shook your head, watching his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.
“Say anything to you?”
“Just…offered me stuff,” you admitted quietly, wrapping your arms around yourself again. “But I said no. I would never do that. You know I would not.”
You weren’t sure why you felt the need to add that, why you wanted him to understand that you hadn’t been reckless. That hanging out with Craig didn’t mean being like him. That you wouldn’t caught yourself in drugs. You knew better.
The streetlight caught the side of his face and for a split second you saw something raw there before it slipped behind his mask of control. The silence continued to stretch, heavy.
“Are you angry at me?”
The truck slowed to a stop at a red light, allowing him to turn his head toward you fully, eyes dark and intense in a way that made your whole body pulse in response, not from fear but from the weight of being seen.
“I’m not angry at you,” he said, holding your gaze. “I’m angry you were there alone. Angry that my stupid brother left you. Angry that I wasn’t there sooner. But not at you.”
The light shifted to green, but he didn’t move right away. His eyes remained locked on yours, unblinking, making sure you understood the distinction.
“You call me,” he added quietly. “The second you have a problem, you always call me. Okay?”
You nodded, fingers twisting in the fabric of your dress. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You don’t.”
And there was something in the way he said it, like he was wounded at the idea you thought you might ever be an inconvenience to him, that made you blush.
The truck finally rolled forward, but the air between you felt different, heavier in a way that you’ll only be to shake off with a cold shower.
You watched the way his shoulders remained tense all the way to your home and understood then that he had come because he had been frightened, that the thought of you alone in the dark had unsettled something in him, and that he had needed to fix it.
And the scariest part was that something warm and traitorous inside your chest responded to that.
You liked that he had been scared.
You liked that he came in less than three hundred seconds.
That he didn’t even hesitate when you admitted you were frightened, he simply moved.
And you liked the way he refused to let you walk barefoot to your apartment, carrying you, as if the idea of your skin touching the cold pavement was something he would not allow.
He didn’t put you down immediately. No, he held you all the way from his truck to your doorway, one arm firm beneath your legs and the other steady at your back, your shoes dangling loosely from his fingers, your body tucked close enough to feel his breathing through his shirt, making you aware of how easily you fit there.
When he finally set you down at your threshold, his hands lingered at your waist a second longer than necessary.
“You’ll be good?” he asked quietly, handing you your shoes, your fingers brushing his in the exchange.
You nodded, incapable of trusting your own voice, because if you opened your mouth, you were fairly certain that something reckless would fall out, something dangerously close to ‘stay’ and you were overwhelmed enough by the urge to step over, to reach for him and press your forehead against his chest just to see if his heart was still beating as fast as yours.
He was still staring at you, something unspoken passing like electricity.
“Good night,” he whispered, the softness of it almost undoing you.
“Good night, Andrew.”
You closed your door slowly, pressing your back against it, listening to his boots on the pavement, realizing that he hadn’t moved until he heard the lock click.
Only then did he walk back to his truck.
You would maybe not murder Craig after all.
──────────
Andrew spends the entire day watching for the moment you are going to change your mind and run from him.
And you don’t act differently when you wake up: you drink coffee while humming along to the songs on the radio, trying to coax a laugh out of him, but he keeps waiting for it anyway: the flicker in your eyes that says you’ve seen too much of him now, that holding him while he sobbed was enough to scare you off for good.
He replays the night while you are in the shower. How he cried in your arms. How your fingers combed through his curls. How you held him pressed against your chest. How he let himself need you.
He wonders if he should apologize, or explain, or at least even just…acknowledge that you saw him at his weakest and that he was thankful it was you.
Instead, he washes the dishes twice in a row to calm his brain, avoiding looking directly at your body when you step back into the kitchen in your coffee shop uniform, hair damp.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on his mug.)
You ask him if he is still taking you to the skatepark after your shift, and he wants to say no. The word sits right there on his tongue, ready to spill, because the park means proximity and proximity means touch and desire which always ends with something being taken away from him.
But you smile at him in such an open and easy way, and if it was something you really wanted to do, far be it from him to deny you after last night when you held him like he was something that could be saved, that was worth saving.
So, he nods and the way your whole face lights up makes him think, not for the first time, that he would probably give you anything you asked for.
That is the part of himself that scares him.
And now that he is finally at the skatepark with you on this late afternoon, he knows that he should be tracking your stance and foot placement the way he always does, but today he notices different things about you instead: how you are not pulling away from him, not avoiding him, how you stand close when you talk, lean into his space without hesitation.
And somehow that unsettles him more than distance would have. Because, if you are not afraid of him, if you are not stepping back after seeing what he is like during his worst nights, then what does that mean?
You sway on the board.
He sees it, but his brain is still half-caught in the memory of your heartbeat under his ear, still waiting for the recoil that doesn’t come and by the time his body reacts, you’re already too far from his reach.
You hit the concrete hands first, palms slamming down on instinct before your knees follow, the skin scraping on the ground with a sound that makes his stomach drop. The impact steals the air from your lungs and for a fraction of a second you manage to hold yourself up before your face strikes the ground with a sickening thud.
Andrew is already moving before you even understand what happened, the board rolling behind you while he drops to his knees so fast, he doesn’t register the sting tearing through his own skin, doesn’t feel the way his jeans split at the knee or how his knuckles scratch raw when he catches himself, because none of it matters to him. He is scanning, assessing and cataloguing the damage, forcing his mind to clear before he dares to touch you.
Your palms and knees are damaged through the torn denim, but it’s the blood beginning to run from your eyebrow that makes him feel abruptly cold. It gathers at the edge of your lashes and runs along the curve of your nose, bright red against your skin, and for a second, the world tilts.
(Blood. So much blood. He knows blood. Knows how to stop it. How to clean it. How to stitch it close. Pope is good with blood.)
The thought lands with cold precision, and even if he hates the name, even if it sounds wrong in his own head, he can’t afford to hate the part of himself that steps forward first right now - efficient Pope, steady Pope, the one who does not panic.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and his voice is low, measured, trying to reassure you the way you reassured him last night while he broke apart against your chest, even though his heart is hammering through his ribs.
Your eyes flutter, dazed, before you try to sit up, but he is already there, placing one hand at the back of your neck and the other on your shoulder to help you.
“It’s okay sweetheart, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay,” he murmurs, and there is something almost pleading behind his words that has less to do with your eyebrow and more to do with the memory of the pool and your voice accusing him of being too late.
He swipes his thumb gently beneath the cut to assess its depth, his other hand moving to brace your jaw so you don’t move, and when fresh blood coats the pad of his finger, he feels the familiar switch inside him flips into place.
(His breathing slows. His hands stop shaking. This he understands. This he can control.)
“It’s not deep,” he says after his inspection, even though he knows you’ll need stitches. “You still with me?”
Your hand lifts and finds his wrist, fingers curling around it, and the contact sends something through him that is not adrenaline and not fear but softer that frightens him more because it makes him aware of how much he needs you to be okay.
“I’m fine,” you whisper, though your voice is small.
He shakes his head once, tearing a strip from the hem of his shirt. “Let’s get you home so I can clean this properly, okay? Keep pressure there,” he instructs, guiding your hand back to your eyebrow and pressing it into place.
You nod, and that’s enough for him.
He slides one arm behind your back, his broad palm spanning the length of your shoulder blades, the other slipping beneath your knees to lift you, ignoring the sting of his knees and the sticky blood drying across his knuckles because none of it is important compared to the steady rhythm of your breath brushing his collarbone.
He carries you toward the truck, opening the door and lowering you carefully into the passenger seat, one hand coming up to your jaw, his thumb resting lightly on your cheekbone to make sure your eyes focus on him.
“Stay with me,” he says softly.
Your lips twitch despite the pain. “Bossy.”
He goes to buckle your seatbelt, adjusting the strap and closing the door gently before circling the truck, wiping his bloody hand against his jeans.
While driving back to your apartment, his eyes keep darting to you every few seconds.
“Talk to me,” he says after a moment.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
You take a moment before starting to talk about your day at the coffee shop, just mindless little moments. He doesn’t interrupt, he listens and nods at the right moments. You are grounding him on purpose, he realizes, dragging his thoughts back to something ordinary, something alive.
(You are not in the pool. You are breathing. You are not telling him he failed you. He counts your breaths.)
Inside your place, he works methodically, like he always does when someone comes back from a job hurt and bleeding – controlled, shutting everything else out. He lays out all your medical supplies on your desk with a precise spacing: first gauze then antiseptic, needle, sewing thread…The order is important. Order means control.
You sit on the edge of your bed, looking at him and continuing the pressure of the piece of his shirt against your eyebrow.
“Alright,” he says quietly, stepping between your knees so he can reach your face properly. “Hold still.”
He cleans your palms first, his concentration absolute because his entire world has narrowed down to the square inch of skin beneath his fingers.
“I should have caught you.”
“It’s not your fault, Andrew. Don’t punish yourself for it, okay? I’m fine, I promise I’m fine.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t trust himself to.
Instead, he goes silent and returns to the work in front of him, bandaging thoroughly your hands before taking off your pants and doing the same with your knees, making sure everything stays in place.
Finally, he allows himself to look fully at your face again, examining the cut on your eyebrow and tilting your chin upward with two fingers, feeling your breath ghosting on his lips in the small space between you.
“You’re going to need stitches,” he murmurs.
You study him for a second. “You’re very serious about this.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not dying, Andrew.”
“I know.”
“You look at me like I am.”
His jaw tightens and for a moment, he almost says it. Almost tells you that in his head, he’s already seen that version of you, floating and gone, but he swallows it back.
“Hold still,” he says instead.
He cleans the wound carefully by dabbing away the dried blood, and when you flinch, his free hand comes up automatically to steady the side of your head, thumb resting near your temple, not commenting on the way you lean into that touch.
The first puncture makes you inhale sharply.
“Breathe,” he says low, “Just breathe slow for me.”
You obey, focusing on him rather than the pull of the thread, your eyes locking on his face. He works carefully, tying each stitch with precision, trying not to falter at your gaze and even less at the reckless, intrusive thought about pressing his mouth to your brow to undo the wound.
When he finishes, he doesn’t move right away. He studies the line of the sutures, checks for tension, checks for bleeding or anything he might have missed before studying you.
“You’re okay,” he says, trying to convince himself.
You give him a small, tired smile. “I told you. I’m tougher than I look,” you say before your gaze drops, narrowing as you notice what he has been deliberately ignoring. “Andrew.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
He shrugs, dismissive, trying to pull his hand back so you can’t look too closely. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not nothing,” you murmur, reaching for him before he can retreat, your fingers tracing carefully over his knuckles, making him go still. “You can’t patch me up and ignore yourself.”
He swallows, and before he can argue, you’re already reaching for the antiseptic with your bandaged hand, fumbling slightly. He catches the bottle before you drop it, his other hand covering your instinctively.
“You shouldn’t…”
“None of that,” you interrupt, and there is a flicker of stubbornness there that makes his mouth twitch despite himself.
You tug his hand toward you, and this time he lets you clean the scrape on his hands. He doesn’t look at the wound. He looks at you.
At the crease between your brows as you concentrate. At the way your lips press together. At the way you treat his injuries as if they matter. No one ever does.
Your fingers tie the bandage clumsily but securely, and when you finish, you don’t let go right away. Your thumb lingers, stroking slowly over the back of his hand. He is not sure how to breathe. The room feels so much smaller now. Quieter?
You lift your eyes up to him and whisper. “Can you stay? Just for a bit. So…we can check on each other.”
He could tell you it’s starting to get late and he was supposed to meet Deran and Craig for their next job.
He could tell you he’ll call you tonight to see how you feel.
But there is nothing in him that wants to leave this room.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I can stay.”
He helps you shift properly onto the bed, careful of your knees. When you lie back against the pillows, you reach for him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
It takes him a second of hesitation before lying down beside you, stiff at first, but you roll toward him, your bandaged hands pressing against his chest as you settle close, your head finding the space beneath his chin.
He exhales through his nose before lifting his arms and resting them around you.
After a few minutes of silence, when he thinks you might already be drifting, you murmur. “I like it when you called me sweetheart.”
He presses his mouth lightly into your hair.
“Go to sleep now.”
You nod, your body going slack after a few minutes while he stays wide awake, his hands moving slowly along your spine.
“You scared me,” he whispers into the quiet, once he is sure you’re gone.
His fingers move to brush lightly just above the stitches of your brow.
“I can’t lose you,” he breathes, pressing his forehead gently against yours.
(He counts your breathing. One. Two. Three. Four. Not because he is afraid. But because he simply likes knowing the rhythm.)
When sleep finally comes at him, he knows there won’t be any nightmare.
Because you’re there.
──────────
You did not mean to end up alone with Deran.
In fact, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you had carefully avoided being alone with him since you met, not because he had been hostile to you, but because he seemed to have this unnerving habit of seeing through people and you were not a fan of subjecting yourself to that.
Craig had dragged you to the bar “just for a bit,” (which in Craig language meant ‘indefinitely’) before promptly disappearing with a girl, leaving you at the counter, nursing a soda because you had work in the morning.
Deran was wiping down the bar in front of you.
“El Craigo has already left?” he asked without looking up.
“’Flee’ would be a better word to describe what happened.”
“And so now you’re just…” he gestured vaguely toward you with the cloth, “…miserably contemplating on drowning yourself in your drink?”
“It’s a soda.”
“You know what? That’s so much sadder.”
You exhaled, dragging a hand over your face before saying, “Can I ask you something without you telling Craig?”
That caught his attention immediately, making him glance up.
“Depends how embarrassing it is.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” you protested automatically, then faltered. “Fine. It’s…a little embarrassing.”
“A little?”
“A lot,” you admitted.
He huffed once, almost amused, tossing the cloth over his shoulder. “Fine. What?”
You took a breath, suddenly aware of how absurd this was and how you were feeling like you were sixteen instead of twenty-nine. “It’s…” you cleared your throat. “It’s about Andrew.”
(Fuck. This was so deeply humiliating. But Craig was not an option. He would weaponize the information and never let you live it down.)
Deran blinked once before leaning his forearms on the counter, a smirk spreading on his lips. “Oh, I see.”
You groaned immediately. “Oh, please, can you not react like that? You’re making this worse.”
“I haven’t reacted! I’m just…not quite surprised about this discussion. Come on.” he waved a hand. “What’s your question?”
“It’s just…” you stopped. “I don’t know how to tell if he…”
(Oh my God. You had faced worst things than this. You could finish a sentence.)
Deran tilted his face slightly, with a shit-eating grin that you absolutely hated. “If he…what?”
“If he likes me,” you blurted out in one breath.
The silence fell for exactly two seconds before he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“You’re fucking with me. Right?”
Your face burned instantly. “Okay, great. Never mind, I’m just gonna dig my gra-”
“Easy tiger. Don’t get your panties in a twist. He’s obsessed with you.”
You stopped, your stomach flipping violently.
“That’s not true.”
“It is deeply true,” Deran replied flatly. “He reorganized the shelves in the kitchen.”
You blinked. “Well…I thought he just liked order.”
“Oh yeah, he does. Trust me, he fucking does. But…not that much.”
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Surely that doesn’t mean…”
“He drove across town at three in the morning to get you out of a party,” Deran continued, counting off on his fingers now. “He cancels family meetings to go to the skatepark with you. He did his ‘scary stare’ to me the last time I drank in your mug.”
Heat crept up your cheeks as you stammered, throat dry. “B-But he doesn’t…He doesn’t say anything.”
Deran snorted. “Yeah, that’s Andrew.”
“It’s just...sometimes I don’t even know what he’s thinking.”
“Neither do we,” he deadpanned. “Welcome to the family.”
You exhaled, frustration spilling over. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”
Deran considered you for a moment. “Just…let him try to go at his own pace here. He is not good at the whole…relationship thing.” he said, his voice stripped of its usual sarcasm before adding. “And for the record, the way you look at him? Not subtle. Like, at all.”
You nearly choked on your own spit. “I am subtle!”
“I mean, yes,” he conceded dryly. “You are subtle…for Andrew and Craig. So don’t be proud about it. That’s the lowest level of subtility possible.”
“I hate you, Deran.”
“Yeah?” he replied with an amused smile. “Well, get in line.”
There was a pause before he said quietly. “You’re good for him. Just…don’t screw it up. You’re in the tribe now. Which means I have to tell you this…”
You straightened slightly.
“…if you’re not sure about this, about yourself, you go now. Not in a few months. Not after he lets himself think this might be real. You don’t get to backpedal if it gets complicated. He wouldn’t recover from it.”
You shook your head immediately. “I swear, I won’t hurt him. He’s…he’s-”
You stopped, because the word felt too large to say aloud. But Deran looked at you intensely enough for you to finish.
“He’s important. To me. I don’t want to fix him, because I don’t think he’s broken. I like him the way he is. I...I think I wouldn’t recover from losing him too.”
Deran held your gaze for a long moment. “Alright.”
You tilted your head. “Alright?”
“Alright,” he repeated. “You pass.”
“Was-Was it an interview? Are you serious?”
“Yep. And congrats, you got the job.”
You rolled your eyes, but your chest felt lighter than it had in quite some time while Deran smiled, a real full grin, almost boyish, making it easier to see the younger brother under his usual cryptic attitude.
“I forgot what it was like,” he said after a beat.
“What?” you asked.
“Having a sister you can annoy.”
“That’s…extremely sweet of you.”
“Don’t ruin it,” he warned, pointing the towel at you. “I will absolutely deny this conversation ever happened if you mention it to my brothers.”
You laughed despite yourself, shaking your head.
Then, he leaned forward and whispered to you. “And if you hurt him, I’m stealing your car and slashing your tires.”
“O-Okay.”
He had a little smile before straightening up. “Welcome into the family.”
──────────
He has not told you.
No one has told you about the job.
Craig said it wasn’t necessary, that you would make a big deal out of it. Deran said it was cleaner that way, the less people know, the less risk and Andrew didn’t argue, telling himself it was better if you didn’t know the details, better if you didn’t have to sit there, waiting for them to come back and spiraling about what could be happening to them.
He told himself that ignorance would keep you safe.
The screen door slams and your voice, sharper than he has ever heard it is rising against Craig, who’s following you in the backyard like a kicked puppy.
Andrew doesn’t turn immediately from his spot, staring at the water of the pool. He closes his eyes, preparing himself for the loud noises.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the tiles of the pool.)
“You asked me to babysit Nick,” you’re saying, your voice shaking like you are about to start crying, “and you made it sound like it was for a date or something stupid! You didn’t say it was because you were going to fucking rob a jewelry store!”
“Jesus, lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice? How about you shut your mouth you liar!”
It isn’t only outrage in your voice, Andrew feels it. It’s fear. A raw, unfiltered fear for them. For him. And he doesn’t know what to do with that because no one has ever been afraid of losing him. When he went to prison years ago, his family moved on, sold his place and went on with their lives. For them, it was an inconvenience, for him, it was three years in Folsom.
Andrew turns then.
You’re standing a few feet from Craig, hands still bandaged, the thin line of stitches above your eyebrow visible, pointing a finger at Craig angrily while he tries to stay calm, running a hand through his hair.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re breaking into a jewelry store, Craig. That’s not exactly Disneyland.”
“We’ve done jobs for years,” he snaps. “We’re good at it.”
Andrew watches the way your shoulders rise and fall too fast with your breath, the way your fingers flex like you’re resisting the urge to grab something and throw it at Craig.
“You know what happens if you get caught, right? You know what that would do to Nick?”
Craig’s jaw tightens. “We don’t get caught.”
You let out a bitter sound that is half a laugh, half a sob.
“Repeat this in the eyes of your brother, I fucking dare you. That’s not how life works, and you know it. You can get caught.”
Andrew feels the words hit him in the chest and rip something out of him. He doesn’t know when you learn about it. Doesn’t know who told you or the extent of your knowledge about those three years of fights and isolation.
If you know – truly know - why aren’t you running away? Why are you still here?
(He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. It’s too much. It’s too little. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks on the floor.)
“We’re not idiots, just trust us, okay?” Craig argues, rolling his eyes.
“You left me alone at a party in a house full of people doing coke,” you fire back, your finger jabbing hard against his chest. “You are the exact definition of an idiot, Craig.”
Craig winces. “We don’t have to do this right now, okay? I already told you I was sorry about it. Pope, back me up.”
Both of you turn toward him at once, the weight of the fight landing on his shoulders. He doesn’t move immediately. Doesn’t speak either. Andrew has never been good at splitting himself in two, at giving his opinion. He was raised to follow orders.
Craig gestures toward you. “She’s acting like we’re amateurs.”
You slap his arm, wincing, forgetting for a moment about your bandage. “Fuck.”
Andrew walks up to you, checking your hand while you keep repeating him. “I’m okay, Andrew. I promise.”
He lifts his eyes to yours, angling his head to catch them, and when your gaze finally locks with his, he holds it, stubborn and unblinking. Your eyes shine brighter tonight than they usually do, so he doesn’t give himself permission to look away.
(You’re about to cry. It’s his fault. It must be his fault. He should have been better. But the voices are too loud. He doesn’t like when it’s too loud. One. Two. Three. Four. He remembers your breaths when you sleep.)
“I just…I thought you all trusted me,” you say, your voice breaking halfway through, fighting back tears of frustration.
Craig’s shoulders drop while Andrew’s thumb strokes over the back of your hand, grounding himself.
“We do,” Craig says, less combative now. “That’s why I asked you to watch Nick.”
“That’s not making me feel like you trust me. It’s making me feel like I’m a convenience.”
The word hangs there, making Andrew feel like he failed something. He has never wanted you to feel like this. He wanted you to be protected.
His gaze doesn’t waver as he keeps your hand in his, stroking over the bandage.
Craig looks between the two of you, seeing the hand, the closeness and mutters, “Jesus, bro, this is the worst time,” under his breath.
“Okay,” he exhales finally, turning fully toward you. “I fucked up. Massively. About the party. About not telling you. About…probably a million other things. I didn’t mean for you to feel unsafe.”
You don’t look convinced.
“Trust me,” Craig adds quickly, throwing Andrew a sideways glance, “I got my ass kicked enough by Pope to regret this party for the rest of my life.”
Your lips twitch a little, trying to keep it contain.
“Now, if you could hand me back my brother, I would be very grateful because we have a job to do, and you have a kid to entertain,” Craig says, rolling his eyes and retreating inside the house.
Andrew doesn’t let go of your hand, refusing to blink and terrified of losing a moment of you. He has the irrational feeling that if he does, something will waver on your face, the moment when you realize what this life looks like and he won’t be able to see his failure in time.
“We’ve planned it,” he murmurs finally.
You hold his gaze. “And if something goes wrong?”
He doesn’t answer right away because he knows the answer to this, and he is certain you don’t want to hear it.
(If something goes wrong, he goes down first. He makes sure Deran and Craig are safe. He doesn’t come home because he won’t ever go back to prison. He prefers to die trying to escape than go back in a cell. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your eyelashes.)
You are still waiting, searching his face.
“Then I handle it,” he says quietly.
You shake your head, your jaw working as if you’re trying to physically hold yourself together. “Promise me to come back safe.”
His hand lifts before he can stop himself to settle against the side of your face, his thumb resting just beneath your eye, making you go very still, waiting for what he will do next.
His thumb caresses your cheekbone once, just enough to fill his mind with the memory of your skin.
“I won’t let anything happen to me,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if it’s meant as a vow or a lie he’s trying to force into becoming true. “I promise,” and before he allows himself to overthink it, he presses a careful kiss to your forehead, his lips brushing just above the line of stitches.
He can hear you catch your breath and it makes him pull back, his lips tingling at the contact. He knows it now: if he stays longer, if he lets himself feel the warmth of you, he might not leave at all.
He memorizes the sight of you like this: looking like losing him would break you and it does something unfamiliar to his chest. No one has ever been scared at the thought of him disappearing. No one has ever demanded that he come back.
He turns quickly, putting distance between the two of you before he changes his mind, the promise he made echoing in his head.
He hears it when Deran cuts the alarms. Promise me to come back safe. When he cuts through the back entrance. Promise me. And when Craig tries to improvise. Promise. He is not one to do reckless things but tonight, he is particularly unyielding each time the job almost goes sideways.
He knows you are in the house with Nick, probably pacing the kitchen and waiting to see the outcome of his word. So, when he finally reaches the main display room, he is quick to reach for the highest value pieces that will be cut down and reshaped. No traces or evidence will be left, they have done this long enough to know how to make everything disappear completely.
Andrew’s hand hovers for half a second over a particular velvet cushion before picking up the thin gold chain, a small heart-shaped pendant set in the center. It’s delicate and quiet, reminding him how it feels to bask in your light. He turns it between his fingers once, twice, imagining it resting just below the hollow of your throat, his thumb brushing over it absentmindedly while you are both sitting on the couch and watching a documentary.
He slips it securely into the inner pocket of his jacket, pressing it flat against his chest for a brief second before stepping back into motion and leaving with his brothers without any alarms or police sirens cutting through the night.
And when they get at the warehouse to stash the duffel bags, Andrew doesn’t stay like he usually would to make sure about getting his fair cut of the job. He nods once, quiet, ignoring their snickers and comments about him being ‘down bad’ all the way to his truck.
The house is dim when he enters, a soft glow coming from Craig’s bedroom and before he sees you, he hears your voice. It’s so soft.
“And baby whale swam all the way across the ocean to find mama whale,” you murmur.
He quietly walks up to the threshold to see you sitting on the bed with Nick lying, his eyes dropping with sleep, his thumb in his mouth and clutching to his monkey plushie. You slowly close the illustrated book before pressing a kiss onto the his hair and something expands in Andrew’s.
(You would be good at this. At building something steady. He can picture you pregnant, swelling with a child. His curls and your smile on a being that would never know the kind of hurt he had to go through.)
You stand up from the bed and see him, the relief crossing your face so achingly tender it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.
“Andrew.”
He nods once, trying to convey his feelings, “I came back.”
You smile, closing the bedroom door behind you and stepping close to him, scanning for injuries the way he did for you at the skatepark. He lifts his hands, showing you his palms.
“I’m fine. I promised you I would.”
Your shoulders drop in a way that tells him you’ve been holding yourself rigid for hours, managing a barely audible, “Thank God.”
His lips tilt upward before reaching into his jacket’s pocket, “Turn around,” before adding a quiet, “Please.”
“Bossy,” you reply, amused, before turning your back to him.
He closes the one last step between you, pulling out the necklace from his pocket, careful not to let his hands shake as he lifts your hair to expose the back on your neck. He fastens the chain, the clasp clicking softly into place and for a second he doesn’t step away, the pad of his thumb grazing at the nape of your neck.
“Andrew,” you whisper, turning back toward him, your fingers lifting to trace it. “It’s…It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
He keeps staring at the pendant who rests exactly where he imagined it would be, then at your mouth before quickly going back to your eyes. You are close enough that he can feel your breath on his face, the world narrowing to the space between you.
He wants to close the distance, to press his mouth to yours.
Instead, he rests his forehead gently against yours, grounding himself with your scent, refusing to close his eyes.
“You should sleep,” he murmurs.
You smile softly and suddenly, Andrew wonders how he can extract a memory and preserve it forever in resin.
Because this moment feels like the dawn of his existence.
──────────
When Andrew was seven years old, the house was already too loud.
Somewhere down the hall a door slammed hard enough to be heard from the bedroom he shared with Julia, who was sitting on the floor with a deck of cards spread between them while he lined them into exact rows instead of playing War.
He liked the rows and the symmetry of it. It calmed him each time the edges were precisely following the pattern of the carpet. With this, he didn’t need to count.
In the backyard, someone shouted about money, making the twins flinch in fear. Julia reached for his hand, and they sat like that for a long time: her fingers curled tightly around his, his eyes fixed on the the cards. (Hearts. Diamonds. Clubs. Spades. Everything will be all right.)
Smurf emerged in the doorway with her bright smile, eight months pregnant with their little brother, tilting her head, “My baby is a strange one,” she whispers to his new stepfather, “But useful.”
Andrew heard it. He didn’t know what strange meant exactly, but he knew it was something you said when you didn’t want to say wrong.
At school, boys kept snatching his skateboard, tossing it across the asphalt because he rode the same loop over and over during recess, memorizing how many pushes it took to reach the fence.
(Fourteen. Fourteen every time. An even number. He liked them. That’s why he always counted till four.)
The first time a boy shoved him and called him a freak, Andrew didn’t respond. Just took back the board and kept doing his loops. The second time, when the board got kicked away and Julia was not there to held his hand, Andrew swung without warning. He couldn’t remember deciding to, just the sound of the impact and how the noise inside him went blissfully silent.
After that, teachers called him difficult, the kids stopped approaching him and Smurf congratulated him with a kiss on his mouth.
At night, when Julia was asleep beside him, Andrew kept staring at the ceiling, wondering something he couldn’t say out loud to his mother or his sister: would anyone ever see that he was trying? Trying to keep himself together so he didn’t explode? Trying to be good? Trying to stop the noises in his head?
-
When you were seven years old, the house smelled like warm cookies.
You were sitting on the couch, your small arms cradling your cousin, afraid to drop her. You didn’t know how to act with a baby. Your parents had sat you down a few months ago at the kitchen table and told you that you were their little miracle, that Santa sometimes forgot things and that maybe it would always just be the three of you – which sounded a little sad until your father had squeezed your hand and told you that three was already perfect.
But it was alright, because now, you had your cousin’s fingers clutching onto your hair, “She’s holding me!” you squealed, delighted and in awe because here, in this house, you were allowed to be amazed and to grow at your own pace.
The day you scraped your knee on the sidewalk, trying to teach yourself how to roller skate, you cried for less than a minute before your mother knelt in front of you, cleaning the wound and kissing the sting away. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said, and you believed her.
At school, you had a best friend who whispered to you how babies were made, and that made you giggle all day, the teacher shaking his head and calling you incorrigible, even though you had no idea what that meant and decided it must be something wonderful if it made you laugh that hard.
And the day you asked what you could be when you grew up, no one laughed. “You can be anything my little monkey,” your father had told you, and you thought about it for the whole day. Because anything was a lot for your brain: a teacher, a vet, a marine biologist. You always circled back to the same answer: something to help people.
And at night, as you looked at your glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, you wondered about other things: would someone look at you the way your father looked at your mother when she was singing in the kitchen, with that love that said I am home?
──────────
Deran’s bar is louder than usual tonight, crowded by sports fans watching a game between Los Angeles and Atlanta. Craig has tried to tell him why it was so important to win at least five times since their arrival, but Andrew’s attention remains elsewhere entirely, watching you from across the room the way he has been watching you for four months now: trying to read something in your posture or in the tilt of your head that could give him an answer.
Because the truth is…he doesn’t know what you are after last night and if what happened in the hallway, or every night you’ve spent wrapped together, mean the same thing to you that they mean to him. He wants to ask, to spill the question out before it eats him alive: what are we?
Andrew hates not knowing. On a job, he knows every camera, every blind spot, every possible way things can go wrong but with you, there’s no map. And he hates that he can’t predict your next move.
You are standing at the bar, ordering a drink, your back half-turned to him and wearing a dress that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public. It makes his pants grow tighter and has him readjusting on the stool, trying to pretend he isn’t affected while his brother sits three feet away and would never let him live it down if he knew.
And he knows he shouldn’t be staring, but you keep touching absentmindedly the necklace, your fingers tracing the pendant as it moves with your breathing, and before he can stop himself, he’s counting it.
(One. Two. Three. Four.)
You had said thank you last night in a way that felt like you meant something more, had let him secure the necklace around your neck and had met his eyes when you called it beautiful as if you were promising you would always wear it.
Always.
(Oh, how he doesn’t trust that word. Doesn’t trust anything that implies staying. He knows better. He should know better.)
And yet, there you are, wearing it for everyone to see, which does nothing to steady his accelerated pulse, and leaning across the counter to collect your cocktail from Deran. The movement doesn’t reveal much more of your skin, but it still sets ablaze Andrew’s brain, his lips going dry as he tries to resist the urge to walk up to you and beg for you to tell him that he isn’t the only one picturing rings, and a cradle in a quiet house and your head on his chest until he is old and grey.
“You’re not being subtle, you know that?” Craig says, cutting through the haze of his thoughts.
“Don’t start.”
Craig raises his hands innocently. “Jesus, relax.” He immediately reaches for the bowl of peanuts on the table, and Andrew feels his jaw tighten at the thought of how many unwashed hands have touched that bowl already. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you tonight?”
What’s wrong is that he just stole diamonds worth more than all of the jobs he did last year and it doesn’t compete to the way you look with the chain resting against your collarbone.
What’s wrong is that he would give back every dollar from last night if it meant waking up beside you for the next fifty years.
What’s wrong is that he is one second away from walking across that bar and lowering himself at your feet for your hands to baptize him clean, as if loving you were the only absolution worth asking for because whatever heaven exists for a man like him begins and ends with you.
And what’s wrong right now is that a man slides into the empty space beside you, leaning too close and touching your arm to get your attention. You turn toward him politely, your lips curving into the small smile you once called your ‘customer smile’. You had explained it to his brothers and him: that you always kept the worst-case scenario in the back of your mind and that a smile felt safer than a hard no since it could mean the difference between walking away or not.
(Andrew doesn’t know the names or the faces of those who made you feel like that but he wants to find them. He wants to press them on the ground and feel their pulse panic under his thumbs. He wants them to understand what fear tastes like when it turns metallic into the mouth. He wants the air stolen from their lungs the way it must have been stolen from yours when you felt scared. He no longer wants to count. He wants to hurt. To see this man’s blood on the bar.)
Andrew starts walking towards you before he even formulates the thought, shoulders squared, already calculating how much force it would require to grab the stranger by the collar and steer him outside of the bar.
His vision narrows as he sees the stranger laughing, his hand lifting to linger near your elbow as if he was testing whether he can push for more and that makes Andrew’s vision blur at the edges. He is three steps away. Two.
Your eyes find his instantly, and something shifts in your expression. Your hand leaves the cocktail and you smile at him. It’s not the customer smile. No, it’s the real one that unravels him each time.
“Hey, honey,” you say brightly as your arm wraps around his neck and you press a kiss to his cheek, your hand traveling down his side before sliding into the back pocket of his pants, settling against him.
Andrew is almost sure he died at some point on the way there because he is pressed against you and now, he is no longer Andrew or Pope. For a brief moment, he gets to just be honey, and the word makes him happier than any name ever has.
The stranger glances between you. “Oh. I didn’t realize…”
“My boyfriend,” you cut him off with a smile, looking up at Andrew’s face.
His eyes were already on yours, searching for the smallest flicker of fear. Because if the man has dared put some in them, Andrew would dig an unmarked grave without blinking. When he finds none, his hand comes to your waist, his thumb strolling along your hip as he dips his head and presses his mouth above the faint line of stitches on your forehead.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs, low enough that the word belongs only to you.
He feels your breath hitch against his skin before turning to the man and saying lightly. “No worries, he always gets a little intense about men crowding me,” you tilt your head, thoughtful. “Not sure if it’s the boxing or the prison time. But don’t mind him…he almost doesn’t bite.”
The stranger’s smile falters just enough to satisfy something dark in Andrew’s chest. “Oh, um…yeah. Sorry man, I didn’t know she was taken.”
Andrew doesn’t raise his voice or move, he just stands there with your hand in his pocket, letting the silence stretch until it feels suffocating. “She is.”
“Right. I’ll go back to…the match.”
Andrew doesn’t blink and keeps track of the man’s back until he is laughing again at his friends’ table like nothing happened and only then does he let his focus shift back to you. You, who’s still close and warm, holding onto him like you have no intention of letting go.
His hand remains at your waist as he turns toward you, the movement bringing your faces close enough that your noses almost brush and your breaths mix between you. He lowers his head slightly, almost enough to kiss you.
“You okay?” he murmurs while his thumb keeps its slow movement on your hip.
You nod, your mouth curving up in that smile he loves. The real one. The one that you have at the skatepark each time you manage to stay upright a little longer than the day before: proud, bright and stubbornly pleased of yourself. And he can’t help but think about those lips and the way they said ‘honey’.
(He wants to hear it again. Wants to hear it softly. Wants to hear it moaned in the dark and against his mouth. He wants to kiss them every day for the rest of his life. To learn them. To know how they would part as he pounds into you. Stop. He has to stop.)
He blinks twice, grounding himself in the feel of your waist.
“Andrew. I’m good, I promise,” you murmur, sliding your hand out of his pocket and lace your fingers with his instead, interlocking them. “Let’s get out of here, please. It’s too loud.”
He doesn’t say it out loud, but relief settles at your suggestion. The bar feels too loud, too crowded and the idea of how many unwashed hands like Craig’s have been over the counters keeps coming back at him. So, when you tug gently at his hand and turn toward the door, he follows without hesitation, grateful that you were the one saying it.
The door swings shut behind you and the noise from the bar dulls instantly, reduced to a muted thud. The air is cooler than inside, smelling like the salt of the ocean mixed with your shampoo and he doesn’t understand how he gets to still have your hand in his and your thumb moving across his knuckles.
It’s only when you stop beside the truck and turn toward him that his eyes drop to the thin gold chain resting around your neck. His free hand lifts carefully to brush the chain first, following it down until the pad of his thumb rests over the pendant itself, flattening it against your skin.
“Still got it on,” he murmurs, tracing the outline of the pendant.
(He imagines doing this, years from now. In the kitchen. In bed. In the shower. Adjusting it before you leave the house. Brushing it aside before he kisses the curve of your throat. Seeing it against your skin when you are carrying his child.)
“Looks better on you than it did in the store,” he adds.
Your fingers slide slowly between his, guiding his hand so it settles flat over your heartbeat. He can feel it beating loud and fast under his palm, matching his own.
You tilt your face enough to find his eyes back. “Thank you for what happened in there, Andrew. You were good.”
His eyes slip shut for half a second because he doesn’t trust himself to survive the way you are looking at him, smiling at him with such warmth he shivers of pleasure.
(Good. You think he is good. If that’s what you want, he can be good. He can kneel. He can find how to rebuild himself from the bones if it means you keep calling him good.)
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he says under his breath.
“Why?”
“Because I’d do anything if you asked.”
Your fingers start to caress the back of his hand. “Anything?”
He nods, his gaze unwaveringly focused on your eyes. “If you told me to walk away from the jobs, I would.”
Your hand pauses against his.
“Andrew…” you murmur, but there’s no panic in it, no immediate rejection. “You know why I wanted to reject him, right?”
He doesn’t answer, too scared of startling the moment with another word.
“You know why I’d reject any other guy in that bar and why I wanted him to know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m not available.”
“You’re not?” he asks, as his mind races.
“I don’t know,” you say softly. “Are you?”
The question hangs there, in the small space between your bodies, his mind fumbling with a thousand overlapping questions.
(Are you with him? Calling him yours? Defining what this was? Finally answering the question that has been rattling his brain for weeks?)
“Are you available Andrew?” you repeat gently, your hand lifting up to cup his face.
He exhales slowly, trying not to whimper at the contact, shaking his head.
You lean closer, your nose brushing his and your voice dropping lower. “No?”
“No.”
Your thumb traces patterns along his cheekbone and it takes him a few moments to realize that you were mapping his freckles. “How long?” you whisper.
He feels too weak to reply, overwhelmed by the tenderness of your touch. If his heart had not been already yours, he would lay it at your feet right there, so long as you promise to treat him with this gentleness and care for the rest of his life.
“Before the party? When I called you to help me?” he nods. “Before our night on the couch?” another nod. “Before our first skateboard le-?”
“When we met. And you brought pastries,” he replies, on the verge of a sob, shameful to confess that he keeps thinking about you on top of him, under him, any way you want it as long as he could disappear into your light and be drown whole by your grace to wipe out every horror he has ever seen or done for the sake of others.
“Andrew. Honey. Please, look at me.”
He keeps his gaze darted to the ground, like looking anywhere but you might prevent him from saying anything more revealing about the depth of his feelings, before his eyes close on their own instinctively, only realizing a heartbeat later that it’s because your lips found his.
And for the first time in Andrew’s life, that deep pit of misery in his heart goes completely silent, frozen for a flash before kissing you back.
Your lips are warm and a little reckless, tasting like mint and something entirely yours that he knows he will crave for the rest of his life. Your fingers thread into his curls, pulling a groan he can’t control out of him. He moves closer without thinking, his hand sliding along your waist until your back meets the metal of the truck door.
The second he registers the force of it, he pulls back just enough to search your face, to scan for any sign that he has gone too far, but the pause barely lasts a breath before your fingers tighten in his hair, guiding him back down as your body arched into his, slipping his tongue past your parted lips.
You are an oasis and he is nothing but a thirsty man wandering in the dark who gets to finally know what it’s like to drink every drop of it. You taste dizzy and intoxicating and he knows that he has been feeding on scraps of affection all his life and now…now he understands what it means to be full.
He is about to tell you how much sweeter you taste than in his fantasies before you bite down on his lower lip, drawing another sound of his throat.
You tilt your head, your arms wrapping fully around his neck as his drop to your hips, steady and sure, to raise you higher against the door, a gasp spilling out of you that he swallows eagerly and your dress hiking up as your legs wrap around him, denying any space between your bodies.
He feels you pull away for air by an inch or two, making him whine at the loss of contact, but he quickly recovers as he sees the flushed smile on your kiss-swollen lips. “Show off.”
“Yeah?” he asks while one of his arms tightens under you, anchoring your body to the door while the other frees itself to trail up your body and adding a smug, “Yeah,” skimming your inner thigh and marveling at how many sounds he can coax out of you, wondering how much more he’d pull if he could trace his thumb along your heat. But instead, he cups again your cheek, tracing slowly the bow of your lips.
“Dimples,” you murmur.
“What?”
“Dimples, Andrew,” you repeat, delighted, like you’ve just discovered something rare. “I didn’t know you had them.”
(Oh. Of course. You can see them because he is smiling. For real. A real one. Not the tight, guarded version. Not the twitchy one. A full unguarded smile. When was the last time he did that?)
“I do,” he says, trying and failing to smooth it away. “So do you.”
Your eyebrows lift. “I do not.”
“You do,” he insists quietly, shifting his hold slightly to keep his arm secure around you, his thumb pressing gently at the corner of your mouth. “Right there…”
Inside the bar, the crowd erupts in a wave of shouting, making you glance at the door before erupting in laughter, eyes wide.
“Oh, fuck,” you whisper, incapable of stopping your giggles. “I forgot.”
Andrew exhales through his nose, trying to calm the blood pumping hard all the way down his length. He knows that you’ve been feeling him against you the whole time, your hips still rubbing together, and for once in his life, he doesn’t want to excuse himself or feel ashamed of his desires, of how much he wants. He has spent too many nights thinking about how you’d taste, how you’d moan. Too many cold showers to try get rid of his hard-on whenever he was picturing you.
“Maybe…” you murmur against his mouth, pecking soft kisses along his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
He looks at you, at the way your lips are still swollen and glistening from kissing, at your panting and the tremors of your legs.
He nods, lowering you carefully back onto your feet, his hands still trailing along your sides to still have some ways of being connected to you before reaching for the door handle of the passenger seat and helping you in.
He feels, walking around to the driver’s side, that he is still smiling. Dimples and all.
──────────
“Maybe…” you sigh, struggling to keep your composure and pressing kisses along the freckles dusting his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
The intensity of his eyes on you, trailing along your body and taking in your rampant arousal, feels like he is on the verge of taking you against the door. You are pretty sure that if he’d ask you for permission, you’d grant it promptly. You want him. You want to know how long it would take for his unwavering hazel eyes to become pleading wet just by your lips telling how good he is to you.
But he just nods, jaw tight before lowering you carefully back onto your feet, making you bite down a protest at the loss of contact, like even the air feels like too much distance, until you feel his fingertips dragging over your waist.
He opens the door for you and not so long ago, you would have described his current behavior as controlled and cold, but now that you know him…you recognize a man who’s trying to contain himself, like a wild animal finally freed.
(Devour. You want him to devour you. To ruin you. Four months of trying – miserably – to have a date with him and it took only a gross man and a ‘honey’ to get him to kiss you like that and tell you he would quit everything? Fuck. Focus.)
He starts the engine, snapping you out of your thoughts, before pulling out of the parking lot, still smiling. You stare at his profile: the line of his jaw that has now faint traces of your lipstick, the way his tongue briefly drags across his lower lips like he can still taste you and his hand on the gear shift that slowly drifts to your thigh.
Your breath stutters the moment his palm settles just above your knee, the pads of his fingers tracing patterns over it while he keeps his eyes on the road. That definitely doesn’t help your craving for more.
(How much can be a fine for having sex in a car anyway? Andrew has money. Plenty from what you understand so…that would just be a drop in a bucket, right?)
You slide your fingers over his, intertwining them on your lap and stilling his slow, absent movements. He glances at you immediately, probably to understand why you stopped him. But the look you give him is enough to answer his question.
His eyes trail your face a fraction too long before looking back to the road, purposefully, the streetlights passing by a little faster.
“We’ll be there in five,” he declares without looking at you.
“Andrew, it’s at least ten minutes away,” you say, with a barely contained smile.
“Five.”
“I’m timing you, you know,” you smirked, pointing at the car clock.
The truck moves through an intersection just as the light turns yellow - once, then again at the next block – while Andrew doesn’t do so much as blink.
“See?” he says, the hint of a smug smile on his face when the car finally parks home.
You check the dashboard clock. Four minutes.
You shake your head, laughing as you both unbuckle your seatbelts. “Show off.”
Of course, you should know better now, he is not a man to stop there. So, when he opens the door for you before you even reach for the handle, and offers his hand, you should see it coming.
He helps you down carefully and for half a breath you think that maybe this time he’s not going to do it. No, you definitely should know better cause the moment your feet hit the ground, his arm slides behind your knees, sweeping you off while the other moves behind your back.
A breathless gasp escapes your mouth. “Andrew!”
(God you are so fucking gone for him. Is this what it would feel like? Crossing a threshold with him as a young bride? Completely besotted in a white dress? No. Not would. Will.)
He shuts the door with his hip, adjusting you against his chest as your arms loop around his neck automatically, your body relishing his touch as the thought slips out before you can stop it: “I feel like your bride right now.”
His steps slow on his way to the door, just enough for you to notice and wonder if you should just tell him to brush off your stupid words. That you are just drunk (you barely had the time to drink a sip of your cocktail earlier) and tired (you just spent two nights in a row sleeping like a baby in his arms).
The garage light flickers as he reaches the front door. “You are.”
He carries you inside like he’s done it in a million other lifetimes while you are still gaping, mouth wide open at his words. You shake your head a bit wobbly before moving your hand from the nape of his neck to the place on his cheek where you know a dimple is hiding.
“Careful,” you murmur, smiling softly. “Keep talking like that and I might start looking for a dress rea-”
Your words are being cut off by his mouth, kissing you like he is trying to drown in the sensation, tilting his head to fit you better, to take more of you, and you can’t stop the moan passing your lips. It feels like stepping into the fire and realizing you don’t ever want to be pulled out.
Your feet carefully find back the ground as his hands slide along your backbone, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades. His lips part yours with the same confidence he has when he catches you at the skatepark. You feel him everywhere and you still want more.
(Is it ever going to stop? This feeling? This whole tremor that dances under your skin every time he touches you? Every time he kisses you like he means forever?)
He pulls away just enough, heavy breath mingling with yours, hazel eyes half-lidded in pleasure and his nose brushing yours softly with your foreheads pressed together, “We can just kiss. If that’s what you want. I don’t need more. Just you,” he murmured in a broken voice.
The words settle deep in your chest, heavy and large as if they have roots. It makes you want to answer him with your mouth, to kiss him until his doubts leave his bones entirely. You bring your fingers to the bow of his lips and he kisses them gently, one after the other, the softness of it making you tremble.
“Andrew,” you say quietly, smiling despite your racing pulse. “Take me to bed.”
He regards you for a long moment, his eyes moving slowly over your face as though he is searching for hesitation and when he finds none, a smile begins at the corner of his mouth, enough to carve that rare, gorgeous dimple into his cheek. “Bossy,” he smirks before lifting you back by the waist so your legs can wrap up around his waist, walking around the house guided only by his memory since his lips are too busy coaxing moans out of you.
You are almost blacking out from the lack of oxygen when the kiss suddenly breaks. In the soft lighting of his bedroom, you distinguish most of his expression: lustful and bewildered that this is finally happening.
“I want to taste you. Please,” he breaths and you nod, not trusting yourself to reply.
The look that passes through his hazel eyes is hazy, fingers finding the hem of your dress and carefully pulling it up.
“Don’t want to mess it,” he says, folding it neatly on his chair. “You look pretty in that.”
You sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to feel too self-conscious about being only in your underwear, braless as he kneels down to the floor, still fully clothed and face a few inches lower than yours, prying your legs apart.
“Andrew,”
He doesn’t respond, pressing his lips to the inner corner of your thigh and moving further up between your legs.
“You don’t have to Andrew.”
He only lifts his gaze up to yours, unwavering as he continues his kisses, “You don’t want it?”
“I…I’m not saying that. I just…I don’t want you to feel obligated to it. I know it’s not…what men like the most,” you gasp, your hand finding his curls and twisting them around your fingers, making him grunt.
“It’s what I want to do the most, right now,” he says with a sinful gaze. “Can I?”
“Yes. Okay. Sure,” you choke, closing your eyes and lying down as he continues his torturous path, his hands slowly tugging the last piece between him and your pussy.
You don’t think you have ever been this wet with a man. Or a woman. Or anyone at all. Normally, you feel a bit uncomfortable with men going down on you cause they never seem to know what they are doing or are too impatient of having ‘real sex’ to let you finish. But here with Andrew, you are nothing but pleasure, his lips fiddling with you like you are an instrument that he is tuning to his own harmony.
You gasp as his tongue finally probes your folds stopping just underneath your clit, earning from him a low whimper.
“You taste delicious,” he goes, coming up for air by an inch. “Just like how I dreamt,” he adds, making you feel close to delirious.
He lowers his face again, tongue working its way up your pussy again, finally reaching for your clit and rolling over it, making you shudder and writhe on the bed, incapable of keeping your moans down and your hands running through his scalp.
“Andrew, please. Just like that. It’s perfect,” you praise him, feeling how it makes him pick up the pace.
Your last straw is the sight of his face between your legs, eyes burning with nothing but want, his hands used to stealing and hurting now holding onto your legs to keep them open and making you come with a hoarse cry. If there’s a heaven on Earth, you know now that it must only exist in this man. In his hands, his chest, his mouth, his eyes. He is nothing but your sanctuary, your promised land and your altar.
When your orgasm subsides, you feel Andrew crawling over you and pressing his lips against you, making you taste yourself on his mouth as you slip your tongue in it. The small noise of pleasure from the back of his throat is the most delicious sound you’ve ever heard.
“You,” you breathe against him, your lips brushing his, pupils probably wide. “I want you. Like right now. So please…take off those clothes. I love them. Really. But take them off.”
His lips twitches again to the side, “Anything.” as he starts to undress, folding them before going above you, his hard cock pressing against your heat.
His eyes keep searching your face, looking for an ounce of backtrack in your eyes before slowly entering you. That’s when you realize how grateful you are for the previous climax because in any other situation, you would have probably wince at his thickness. Thankfully, he seems to catch on with it - probably due to his gaze not leaving your face and refusing to blink – and takes his time to be fully inside you.
For a couple of minutes, the two of you don’t move, give you the time to marvel at how good he feels inside of you. You know now that you’ll have other days and nights to ask him to stay like this for hours, just to be one.
Andrew presses his forehead against yours, lips brushing yours as he whispers. “I love you.”
The word hums through your body. Love. Love. Love. Andrew loves someone and it’s you. From your scalp to your toes, you can feel it resonating through you. Love. Love. Love.
“I love you, Andrew. My Andrew,” you murmur happily, moving a drenched curl from his forehead. “So good to me.”
His face ends up in your neck, trying to cover his reaction to your words. “You really think I’m good?”
“Of course you are. Look at me, honey,” you say, holding onto his chin to bring back his face close to yours as your legs wrap around his waist. “You are good. You are kind. You keep making me feel safe. And…I’m so lucky to have you,” you add, rolling your hips and making him shiver.
You drink in the sight of him: his sweaty hair sticking to his head, curls messy from where your fingers had run through, the freckles dusting his chest and the traces of old wounds that you’ll ask about one day. But the most important of all is the way he is looking at you – as if he loves you. Because he does. He said it. I love you. I love you. I love you.
You keep whispering sweet nothings into his ear, just to see the flush spreading on his cheeks, his ears, his chest and encouraging his thrusts to go harder, deeper. Soon enough, you are quivering around him, your nails digging in his skin as you bite on his lower lip in retaliation for making you wait so long for this moment.
He lets out a desperate moan. “I won’t…last long. ‘m sorry. You feel so…”
“It’s okay,” you encourage him. “I want you to come.”
He slams his cock one more time and goes. “Wh-Where?”
“In me,” you beg, and you know you have hit the right nerve from the way his whole body trembles.
“Really?” he breathes.
“Please.”
The sight of his body, eyes fighting to not shut tight from the pleasure, mouth pursuing yours, mixed with how good he is making you feel, is too much. Your back arches as you reach your second climax tonight, quickly followed by Andrew, clinging to you as his warm load fills you up. Both of you are gasping for one another, time almost freezing as your eyes are sharing the same thought. I love you. I love you. I love you.
After a couple of minutes, Andrew slips out of you and lays most of his body against your side, putting his head above your breasts, on your heartbeat, intertwining your hands together.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
You brush a kiss on top of his head. “What?”
“Tomorrow, we’re picking out your dress.”
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Warnings: MDNI 18+, smut, p in v, Somnophilia, Stalker!Pope, slight breeding kink
Pope wasn’t exactly sure when he started to watch you sleep at night. But it was his favourite thing to do. Especially when he fisted his cock, as he watched you. Imagining himself fucking you in your sleep.
Pope watched on his phone the video feed of the cameras he had set up in your house. When he noticed you were sound asleep, he got out of his truck, and made his way to the open window of your front room.
As he climbed through the open window he was grateful that you made it so easy for him to get in. Of course you had no idea what Pope had been doing all this time.
Pope was glad that he waited outside in his truck as he waited for you to fall asleep. Last thing he wanted was anyone breaking into your place to rob you, or even hurt you. That always made him feel better about what he was doing, and that you slept with your windows open, even though anyone could break in. He knew he could be here to protect you if he had to.
Pope made his way to your bedroom and immediately got hard at the sight of you.
There you laid completely naked. Your covers on the floor. Your body glistening with sweat from the summer heat. You had a fan pointed towards your body, in an attempt to cool you down.
Of course Pope already knew you were naked from the video feed as he watched you go to sleep. But the feed was a little grainy he couldn’t make things out very well.
This was even better than he imagined. Pope watched as your chest rose and fell with every breath you took. The way your mouth hung open muttering something in your sleep. The swell of your breasts. Your hardened nipples. And god that gorgeous pussy.
Pope wanted you right then and there. He knew he shouldn’t but he made his way over to your bed. He gently sat on the edge of your bed, making sure not to wake you. He watched you for a few minutes making sure you didn’t wake up. Then he trailed a finger between your folds. You were wet. Was it from arousal or was it from sweat. He had no idea. Were you thinking of him as much as he was thinking of you.
He lifted his finger which was now wet to his lips so he could have a taste. Yep you were definitely aroused. Were you dreaming of him. Or had you been thinking of him as you were drifting off to sleep. He knows when he’s trying to sleep he’s always thinking of you. Hell he’s thinking of you every waking minute too. He’s obsessed with you. He knew this was wrong. But he slowly started to rub your clit.
Your hips bucked at the sensation. Pope worried about waking you kept an eye on your face for any sign that you were waking up. But still you were asleep.
“Pope please. I need you.” You begged.
Fuck. Pope felt his cock twitch. You were dreaming of him. Pope applied more pressure to your clit, your thighs started shaking and then your eyes flew open.
Pope stared at you in shock. His rubbing on your clit stopping, but his hand not moving.
You tilted your head to look at him confused. Then a smile made your way onto your lips.
“Took you long enough.” You chuckled grabbing his face in your hands and pulling him towards you to crash your lips against his.
Pope groaned against your lips. Surprised by your reaction. He expected you to scream, yell at him, kick him out. Anything but this.
Pope pulled away and looked at you confused.
“I don’t understand. Why aren’t you creeped out? Yelling at me? Anything?” He asked confused.
“You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing Pope. Breaking into my house every night to watch me sleep. Fisting your cock. The cameras you’ve installed. The tracker on my car. You lurking outside in your truck until I’m asleep. Stealing my panties then returning them the next day and repeating the cycle. Always being around when I’m in trouble. You’ve been stalking me long enough you think I don’t notice these things?” You laughed.
“How? When?” Was all Pope could ask.
“You’re not as subtle as you think. I also haven’t been fully asleep sometimes. Why do you think I purposely leave my window open for you? And a few weeks in I started noticing little things. Then eventually I figured it all out.” You said.
“And you didn’t put a stop to it?” Pope asked even more confused than he already was.
“And why would I put a stop to having my own protective stalker. Maybe I like it. Maybe the thought of you being so protective and stalking me gets me off. Maybe because I want you as bad as you want me.” You said pressing your lips to his again.
This time you pushed him on his back. Removing his trousers and boxers you groaned at the sight of his hard cock.
“Fuck Pope. You’ve been hiding this from me.”
“I may have known you’ve been stroking your cock whilst you watch me sleep, but I never risked peeking, only listened as I didn’t want you to know I was awake. But fuck look at you.” You said as you straddled him.
Lining his cock up with your soaking wet entrance, you sunk down onto him.
“Fuck.” Pope groaned as he felt you clenching around him.
He reached up to grab your tits as you slowly started bouncing up and down.
“How does that feel baby?” You asked.
“Fuck so good. Please make me cum. I need you.” Pope begged.
“That’s it baby. Beg for me. Beg for me to let you cum. Would you like to cum in my pussy? Get me pregnant? Would you like that Pope?” You asked.
Pope grunted as he thrusted his hips up to meet yours.
“Please.” Pope begged.
“Do you want to be a daddy?” You asked.
“Yes. Please let me breed you. Fuck I want you to have my babies.” Pope groaned as you increased your pace.
“Then cum for me. Cum deep inside of me. Breed me. Make me yours forever Pope.” You said.
Pope was quick to reach his climax. He couldn’t help it. The way you were talking to him. The fact that you wanted his babies as much as he wanted to get you pregnant. Fuck he was a wreck when you laid back down next to him.
“I’m sorry.” Pope said.
“What for?” You asked looking at him confused.
“All of this. The stalking. The touching you while you’re sleeping. The being protective of you.” Pope said avoiding looking at you.
“Pope look at me.” You said.
Pope didn’t.
“Now!” You yelled and Pope finally looked at you.
You placed a soft kiss on his lips.
“Don’t you ever be sorry for any of it.” You said caressing his cheek.
“But it’s wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.” He said.
“I don’t care. Hell you can carry on stalking me if it means I get to be with you. It makes me feel wanted.” You said pressing another gentle kiss to his lips.
“I do want you so bad. But I shouldn’t be obsessing like this. It’s wrong. You should be afraid of me.” Pope said.
“And why would I ever be afraid of someone who only had good intentions behind his stalking. It would be different if you were forceful with me. Or if I didn’t want any of it. But you’re not. Deep down you’re a sweet guy and people just don’t know that about you. But I care about you Pope. I always have. And you make me feel safe.” You said.
“What does this mean for us?” Pope asked.
“Well. We can go back to the way things were. With you only stalking me. Or you can carry on stalking me, being protective of me, but also being my boyfriend.” You said.
“The second option please.” Pope begged. He had dreamed of this for so long.
“Then I’m all yours Pope.” You said kissing him once again.
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