dopedreamobject

in my 20s crisis era, I reblog 18+ content act accordingly

[antinousletmehit]

She’s busy lil bro

You pull a harmless prank on them when they just genuinely wanna spend time w you

Warnings: Tim’s a weirdo, fem reader, definitely ooc

DICK GRAYSON

JASON TODD

TIM DRAKE

DAMIAN WAYNE

BRUCE WAYNE

[crookshanks-07]

Something for Talia: Al Gun Damien had a wet nurse or wet mother, and Talia has a passion and appreciation for her.

I really hope you like this and I'm so sorry it took me so long bestie! This is not proof read also :/

Asks/requests are still open! Gotham Database

The League of Assassins was built upon discipline. Every movement had purpose. Every title carried responsibility. Every life belonged to something greater than itself. So when the heir to Ra's al Ghul was born, no detail of his upbringing was left to chance. The finest physicians were summoned before Damian ever took his first breath. Scholars prepared lessons years in advance. Master swordsmen argued over which style the young heir should learn first. And among them all, Talia made one decision that surprised no one who truly knew her.

She refused to entrust her son's earliest care to just anyone. The woman she chose would need more than experience. She would need patience. Compassion. Steady hands. A calm heart. Someone who would nurture Damian not because he was the heir to an empire, but because he was a baby. That someone had been you.

The first time Talia placed Damian in your arms, he had been only a few days old. His tiny face was scrunched in displeasure, his cries echoing softly through the quiet chambers. You adjusted your hold carefully, speaking in little more than a whisper. "Hello there." His cries didn't stop immediately. You weren't expecting them to. Instead, you gently rocked him against your chest, humming a tune your own mother had once sung to you. Gradually...The crying softened. Then stopped altogether. Damian's little fingers curled around yours with surprising strength, as though he had decided you were acceptable.

Behind you, Talia watched in silence. Most people mistook her silence for coldness. You had learned it meant she was observing. Thinking. Measuring. Finally, she stepped closer. "He approves."

You looked up with a small smile. "I think we're simply getting acquainted."

"Perhaps."

Her eyes never left Damian. "He does not trust easily."

"He gets that from you?" The question slipped out before you could stop it. For a brief, terrifying second, you wondered if you had overstepped. 

Then...The faintest smile appeared on Talia's lips. "So I've been told." It was so subtle that anyone else might have missed it. You smiled back. From then on, caring for Damian became part of your daily life. You fed him when he woke hungry in the middle of the night. You carried him through the gardens when he refused to settle indoors. You soothed him after frightening thunderstorms, humming until his tiny fists unclenched and his breathing evened out. Whenever Talia returned from League business, she always came to see him first. No matter how exhausted she looked. No matter how late the hour. She would quietly step into the nursery, remove her gloves, and stand beside his cradle. Sometimes Damian was asleep. Sometimes he reached for her the moment he saw her. Sometimes he remained tucked against your shoulder, already dreaming. Never once did Talia ask you to hand him over immediately. Instead, she would simply stand beside you. Watching. Listening to the soft rhythm of his breathing.

One evening, after a particularly long absence, Talia found you sitting beside the nursery window with Damian asleep against your chest. The moonlight spilled across the room, bathing everything in silver. You hadn't noticed she'd entered until she spoke. "He slept?"

"Not at first."

You smiled down at the little boy. "He insisted on staying awake."

"Already stubborn."

"I can't imagine where he inherited that."

Another nearly imperceptible smile. "You seem fond of teasing me."

"Only a little."

She stepped closer, brushing one finger gently across Damian's dark hair. He didn't stir. "He is comfortable."

"He always sleeps best after being held." For several quiet moments, neither of you spoke. The silence wasn't awkward. It rarely was. At last, Talia broke it. "You love him."

You blinked, surprised by the directness of the statement. "I do."

"As though he were your own."

You looked down at the sleeping child nestled against you. "I know he isn't."

"I know." There was no jealousy in Talia's voice. No possessiveness. Only quiet certainty. "You have never tried to replace me."

"I never could."

"You never wished to."

You shook your head. "He already has a mother."

Talia met your eyes. "And yet... every child deserves someone whose only concern is whether they've eaten enough, slept enough, or smiled today." Her gaze drifted back to Damian. "I can teach him how to survive." Her voice softened, just enough to notice. "You teach him how to simply be a child."

The words settled over the room like a blessing. You felt your throat tighten. "Talia..."

She interrupted with a gentle shake of her head. "When League business calls me away, I do not worry." Her emerald eyes met yours with unwavering sincerity. "Because I know my son is loved." For the daughter of Ra's al Ghul, a woman who trusted almost no one, that was perhaps the greatest gift she could ever give.

The years passed quietly. Not because the League was ever peaceful. But because children had a remarkable way of making even the harshest places feel softer. Damian grew quickly. One month he was taking his first unsteady steps through the palace corridors, stubbornly refusing to let anyone catch him when he stumbled. The next, he was running through the gardens with a wooden practice sword nearly as tall as he was.

You had learned there was little point in telling him no. Redirecting him, however... That usually worked. "Where are you going?" you asked one morning as Damian marched determinedly through the hall, his little boots tapping loudly against the stone.

"Training." He couldn't have been more than four.

"And have you eaten breakfast?"

"...No."

"Then where are you going first?"

He frowned as though the answer offended him. "Breakfast."

"Very good."

"It is inefficient."

"It is necessary."

He sighed dramatically. "You sound like Mother."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was not one."

You laughed, earning an unimpressed look from the little boy before he climbed into his chair at the breakfast table with as much dignity as a child his age could muster. Not even a minute later, he was swinging his feet beneath the chair. Patiently waiting. You placed a bowl in front of him. His favorite. He looked at it. Then at you. "I did not request this."

"No."

"You remembered."

"I did."

"...Thank you." The words were so quiet they almost disappeared beneath the clink of silverware.

You smiled as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "You're welcome." 

Across the room, Talia had been reviewing reports brought by League scouts. Without looking up from the parchment in her hands, she spoke. "You thanked her."

Damian stiffened immediately. "I am capable of showing gratitude."

"I know."

"You sound surprised."

"I sound pleased."

His cheeks colored ever so slightly. He muttered something under his breath before focusing all of his attention on breakfast. You caught Talia's eye. For just a moment, the two of you shared an amused smile.

That afternoon, Damian returned from training covered in dirt. His hair was windswept, one sleeve was torn, and there was a scrape across one knee. He looked entirely unbothered by any of it. "I won."

"I'm sure you did," you said, kneeling in front of him. "Come here."

"I am fine."

"I can see that."

"There is no need."

You held out your hand anyway. "There is."

He hesitated. Then, with the reluctance of someone making an enormous sacrifice, he stepped closer. You gently cleaned the scrape while he sat perfectly still, refusing to flinch. "It stings," you observed.

"It does not."

"It does."

"It is insignificant."

You dabbed the last bit of salve over the scrape before smoothing the fabric of his trousers back into place. "There."

"You fuss."

"I care." Before he could hop down from the bench, you reached up and brushed a streak of dirt from his cheek with your thumb. He froze. "You had something on your face."

"I was aware."

"Mhm."

"You are smiling."

"I am. I think it suits the moment." He huffed, trying very hard to look annoyed. Then he quietly leaned into your hand for the briefest second. So brief that anyone else might have missed it. But Talia, standing unnoticed in the doorway, saw it. She saw the instinctive way Damian sought comfort before remembering himself. She saw the trust in his posture. The ease with which he let you care for him. Most of all, she saw that her son had never needed to question whether he was loved. Talia turned to leave before either of you noticed her.

A young League member waiting in the corridor fell into step beside her. "The Young Master seems very attached to her."

"He is."

"Does that not trouble you?"

Talia's answer came without hesitation. "No." The assassin looked surprised. Talia continued walking, her expression calm. "When Damian is older, the world will demand strength from him every day." Her voice was quiet but resolute. "If there remains one place where he may simply be cared for..." A small, genuine smile crossed her face. "...then I have succeeded as his mother."

The older Damian grew, the less he welcomed affection. Not because he disliked it. Because he believed he had outgrown it. He no longer reached for your hand in the corridors. He insisted on carrying his own books. He poured his own tea. Prepared his own training gear. If you reminded him to wear a cloak before winter patrols, he would sigh dramatically and insist he'd already thought of it. More often than not... He hadn't. "You'll catch cold."

"I will not."

"You forgot your cloak."

"I was conducting an experiment."

"Oh?"

"To determine whether I required one."

"And your conclusion?"

Damian looked toward the snow falling outside the palace windows. "...The experiment was inconclusive."

You smiled. "It seems we'll have to repeat it tomorrow."

"...Perhaps." He accepted the cloak from your hands with only the faintest hint of embarrassment.

Talia found the two of you in the library later that evening. Books covered nearly every surface. Damian sat at one end of a long table, brow furrowed as he copied Arabic calligraphy onto fresh parchment. You sat opposite him with a book in your lap. Neither of you spoke. The only sounds were the scratching of ink across paper and the crackling fireplace. It was... peaceful. A rare thing within League walls. Without looking up, Damian spoke. "My stroke is uneven."

You glanced at the page. "It is."

"I knew it."

"You've improved since yesterday."

"...Have I?"

"You don't believe me?"

"I require evidence." You slid your own notebook across the table. Inside was one of Damian's practice sheets from nearly six months earlier. The difference was unmistakable. His characters had become steadier. More elegant. More deliberate. He stared at the pages longer than you expected. "...I had forgotten."

"That's why I kept them."

"So I could prove you've always been improving." A small silence followed. "...Thank you." His voice was quiet. Almost shy. Talia lingered unnoticed in the doorway. It struck her then that you had never praised Damian simply because he was exceptional. You praised him because he had worked. You celebrated effort. Not perfection. It was a lesson neither she nor her father had ever been taught. Perhaps... One Damian needed more than another lesson in swordsmanship.

The following morning, Damian returned from sparring with a split lip. "It is nothing," he announced before either of you could ask.

"It certainly looks like something."

"It bled for only a minute."

"So it bled."

"It has stopped." You retrieved a clean cloth and motioned him closer. "I can manage."

"I know."

He crossed his arms. "I have treated worse injuries."

"I know."

"I am perfectly capable."

"I know."

"...Then why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you're still standing over there."

A long pause. Then Damian sighed the dramatic sigh of someone enduring great injustice. "...Very well." He walked over and sat beside you. You dabbed away the dried blood with practiced hands. He didn't complain. Didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. Instead, he quietly rested his elbows on his knees and let you work. "You worry too much."

"I probably do."

"...It is unnecessary."

"It probably is."

"Then why continue?"

You smiled softly. "Because caring about someone isn't something you stop doing just because they get older."

Damian didn't answer. He simply looked down at the floor. "...Mother says something similar."

"Oh?"

"She says..." He hesitated, as though repeating the words felt strangely vulnerable. "'Love changes shape. It does not diminish.'"

You smiled. "She sounds very wise."

"...She usually is." Before either of you realized she had been standing just outside the room, Talia quietly continued down the corridor. She had no intention of interrupting. Instead, she carried with her the image of her son, older now, sharper around the edges, already becoming the formidable heir the League expected. Yet still willing, in moments no one else was meant to witness, to sit patiently while the woman who had first held him as an infant cleaned a split lip with the same gentle hands. For all the power Damian would one day possess, Talia hoped he would never mistake gentleness for weakness. If anything, she thought, it was one of the greatest strengths a person could carry.

By fifteen, Damian had become nearly impossible to read. His expression rarely betrayed his thoughts. His posture was immaculate. His words were measured, concise, and often intimidating enough to send League members scrambling to correct even the smallest mistake. To those who didn't know him, he seemed every bit the grandson of Ra's al Ghul. You knew better. "...You've skipped lunch."

Damian didn't look up from the reports spread across his desk. "I ate."

"No." You placed a covered plate beside the stack of papers.

He glanced at it. Then at you. "I am busy."

"I noticed."

"I'll eat later."

"You said that yesterday."

"I did."

"And the day before."

"...Possibly." You folded your arms. He mirrored the gesture. Neither of you spoke. Several long moments passed before Damian finally sighed. "...You intend to remain here."

"I do."

"Until I eat?"

"Mhm."

"You are remarkably stubborn."

"So I've been told."

"...By Mother?"

"Mostly by you." A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before disappearing almost immediately. Without another word, he picked up his fork. "There." You smiled. He took another bite. "You've won."

"I wasn't aware we were competing."

"We always are."

"I don't think that's true."

"It is."

You laughed quietly. "You still sound like the little boy who argued that vegetables were a tactical disadvantage."

"They were poorly prepared."

"They were carrots."

Later that evening, Talia found Damian training alone. The rhythmic sound of steel striking steel echoed through the courtyard. He moved with precision. Every strike was deliberate. Every step perfectly placed. When he finished, he exhaled slowly before lowering his sword. "You've improved."

Damian turned. "Mother."

She approached, accepting the practice blade as he offered it. "You've trained for nearly five hours."

"I did not notice."

"I imagine someone else did." Damian's eyes drifted toward the palace. "...Perhaps."

"Told you to eat?"

"...Yes."

"And you resisted."

"...Initially."

Talia's lips curved ever so slightly. "You still listen."

Damian looked almost offended. "I choose to."

"Of course."

"It is not because she insists."

"No?"

"...She worries."

"And?"

He looked away. "...Someone should reassure her."

Talia was quiet for a moment. Then she rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. "When you were born," she said softly, "I worried that duty would demand so much of you that there would be little room left for tenderness." Damian listened without interrupting. "I was wrong."

He frowned. "I don't understand."

"You have become strong." She met his eyes. "And because someone loved you without asking anything in return..." A rare, unmistakably warm smile crossed her face. "...you learned that strength and kindness were never opposites."

For perhaps the first time that day, Damian didn't have a clever response. He simply stood beside his mother in the quiet courtyard, considering her words. After a long silence, he asked, "...Do you think she knows?"

Talia already knew who he meant. "I believe she does."

Damian looked toward the palace windows, where a warm light still burned in the kitchen. "...Good." He said nothing more. He didn't need to. Talia smiled to herself. Some bonds were forged through blood. Others... Through years of scraped knees, forgotten meals, bedtime stories, and quiet acts of love that asked for nothing in return. And in her eyes, both were equally sacred.

Years later, the League looked at Damian and saw its future. A warrior. A commander. The heir to Ra's al Ghul. Very few remembered the little boy who once insisted carrots were a tactical disadvantage. Fewer still remembered the woman who had carried him through sleepless nights before he was ever capable of holding a sword. You never forgot. To you... He was simply Damian.

It was late when you heard the knock against your chamber door. Three measured taps. You smiled before opening it. "I wondered how long it would take."

Damian stood in the doorway, now nearly as tall as his father. "You were expecting someone else?"

"No."

"Then how did you know it was me?"

"You've knocked exactly like that since you were seven."

His brows knit together. "I have not."

"You have. I would remember." You stepped aside, allowing him inside. "What brings you here?"

"I wished to speak with you." His tone was as composed as ever, yet there was something unusually hesitant beneath it. You waited. He looked around your room instead of meeting your eyes. Nothing had changed much over the years. The same bookshelf. The same embroidered cushions. The same blanket folded neatly over the chair where he'd once fallen asleep countless times as a child. "You've kept everything."

"I have."

"...Why?"

"Because it feels like home."

His gaze lingered on the old rocking chair near the fireplace. "...I remember that chair."

"You used to refuse naps unless I sat there."

"I did not refuse."

"You screamed."

"I protested."

"You screamed Damian.”

"...There may have been some screaming."

You laughed. "So there was." 

For the first time that evening, a small smile escaped him. It disappeared almost as quickly as it came. "I found something today." From inside his coat, Damian withdrew a tiny wooden carving. Its edges were rough. Uneven. Clearly made by the hands of a child. You stared at it before softly taking it from him. "...The little bird. You kept it."

"Of course I did. When you made it, you believed it resembled a falcon."

"It resembles a potato with wings." He sounded almost offended by his younger self.

"I told you it was beautiful."

"You lied."

"I encouraged. There is a distinction." You turned the little carving over in your hands. The wood had worn smooth after years of being carefully preserved. "I remember helping you carve this."

"You mostly prevented me from removing my own thumb."

"I considered that a worthwhile goal."

"So did I." Silence settled comfortably between you. Not empty. Never empty. Damian watched as your thumb brushed across the tiny bird's wing. "I used to think..." He stopped himself.

"You used to think what?"

"...That I would eventually stop needing you." Your heart ached. Instead of speaking, you simply listened. "Mother always said that dependence was temporary." He folded his hands behind his back. "I assumed affection was as well." His voice was quiet. "So I spent years trying to prove I no longer required your guidance."

"I noticed. You insisted on sewing your own clothes."

"They were terrible."

"They held together."

"Barely." Another reluctant smile. "I also attempted cooking."

"You nearly set the kitchens on fire."

"...That happened once."

"Twice."

"...Twice." You both laughed. It faded into another peaceful silence. Then Damian looked at you fully. "I understand now."

You tilted your head. "Understand what?"

"That you never cared for me because I was incapable." His voice was steady, though softer than usual. "You cared for me because you loved me." He swallowed almost imperceptibly. "And... those are not the same thing."

The room became very still. You stepped closer until only a small space remained between you. Without thinking, you reached up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his shoulder. The same absentminded gesture you'd made since he was small. Damian didn't pull away. He simply let you. "I'll let you in on a secret," you said.

"Hm?"

"You never stopped needing me." His eyes widened just slightly. "Not because you couldn't survive without me." You smiled gently. "But because every person deserves someone who loves them without expecting anything in return."

For a long moment, Damian said nothing. Then, in a movement that was almost shy, he leaned forward just enough for his forehead to rest briefly against yours. It lasted only a heartbeat. A gesture no one else would ever see. "Thank you," he whispered. Not for tonight. Not for the bird. Not for the countless meals or stitched uniforms. For everything.

When he stepped away, there was no embarrassment on his face. Only quiet certainty. Outside the partially open door, Talia stood in the corridor. She hadn't intended to overhear them. She had come only to tell Damian that supper was ready. Instead, she found herself smiling. She slipped away before either of them noticed. There was no place for her in that moment. Nor did there need to be. Some conversations belonged only to a mother... And to the woman who had helped raise her son.

The League had changed. Not all at once. Not enough that anyone outside its walls would notice. But the sharpest edges had softened. Its halls no longer echoed only with the sounds of steel meeting steel. Sometimes... They echoed with laughter. Damian liked to think he had nothing to do with that. He was wrong.

The evening air was cool as he crossed the palace gardens, reports tucked beneath one arm. He slowed as familiar voices drifted through the jasmine bushes. "...You're avoiding the question."

"I am considering it."

"You've been considering it for ten minutes."

"I prefer thoroughness." Damian smiled despite himself. Some conversations never changed. He rounded the corner just enough to see the two women seated beneath the old cedar tree. Talia sat with perfect posture, a porcelain teacup balanced effortlessly in one hand. You sat beside her, one knee drawn up, looking entirely at home. Neither of you had noticed him. "You know," you said, "for someone feared across continents, you're remarkably stubborn."

Talia lifted an eyebrow. "I was under the impression that was one of my better qualities."

"It depends."

"On?"

"Whether I'm trying to convince you to rest."

"I rest."

"You worked until midnight yesterday."

"I rested afterward."

"You fell asleep over paperwork."

"I was... reflecting." 

“Talia, you were snoring.” 

“I do not snore.” Talia looked positively scandalized. Damian quietly stepped behind a nearby column. He had no intention of interrupting. Besides... This was entertaining. You laughed, the sound carrying through the garden. "I've heard it."

"You imagined it."

"I could imitate it."

"...You would not dare."

"I absolutely would." For perhaps the first time in years, Damian watched his mother laugh without restraint. Not a polite smile. Not the small curve of her lips reserved for private moments. A genuine laugh. Warm. Unburdened. It suited her. More than he realized. The laughter slowly faded into a comfortable silence. Talia looked toward the koi pond. "I owe you an apology."

You frowned. "For what?"

"For many years..." She turned to face you. "I thanked you for loving my son."

"You never needed to."

"I did." Her voice remained steady. "I thanked you for every scraped knee you bandaged. Every nightmare you soothed. Every meal you insisted he finish." A faint breeze stirred the branches overhead. "But I never thanked you..." She hesitated. "...for staying."

You blinked. "I never wanted to leave."

"I know."

Talia's expression softened. "Even so..." She reached across the small space between you. Her fingers rested lightly over yours. "When Damian was born, I believed I was asking you to help raise the heir to the League." Her thumb brushed gently across your knuckles. "I did not realize..." A small smile found her lips. "...that I was asking you to become part of my family."

Emotion welled in your chest. "Talia..."

"You gave my son a childhood where I could not always provide one."

Her green eyes never left yours. "And somewhere in those years..." A quiet chuckle escaped her. "I seem to have fallen in love with you."

You stared. Not because the words were unexpected. Perhaps, deep down, you had always known. But because hearing them spoken aloud by a woman who guarded every emotion as carefully as she guarded the League... Made them feel all the more precious. "You picked a strange time to tell me."

"I did."

"You've only known me..." You pretended to count. "...Damian's entire life."

"I am occasionally slow."

You laughed through the tears gathering in your eyes. "So I've noticed." 

Talia's hand remained over yours. "If my feelings are unwelcome..."

You stopped her with a gentle squeeze. "They're not." A hopeful look flickered across her face. "I think..." You smiled. "I fell in love with you somewhere between watching you pretend you weren't worried every time you left on a mission...and hearing you insist you didn't snore."

"I maintain my innocence."

"You've lost that argument."

"So it would seem."

You leaned closer, giving her every opportunity to pull away.She didn't. Instead, Talia met you halfway. The kiss was gentle. Unhurried. Not the beginning of a romance... But the quiet acknowledgment of one that had been growing for years. When you finally pulled apart, your foreheads rested together. "You know," you whispered. 

"Hm?"

"I think Damian has known before we did."

Talia sighed. "He has always been observant."

"You know," Damian said from behind the column, "your hiding place is terrible." You jumped. Talia closed her eyes briefly. Neither of you had realized he was there. Damian stepped into view with all the composure of someone discussing tomorrow's weather.

"I have been standing here for approximately twelve minutes."

"...How much did you hear?" you asked.

"The relevant portions."

Talia pinched the bridge of her nose. "You could have announced yourself."

"I considered it."

"And?"

"I was curious."

You couldn't help laughing. "So?"

Damian looked between the two of you. Then, with all the seriousness in the world, he nodded once. "I approve."

Talia blinked. "You... approve?"

"You have made one another happier for many years." He folded his hands behind his back. "It was statistically inevitable."

You laughed outright. "Was it?"

"Yes." He looked toward you. "You have cared for me since before I could remember."Then to Talia. "And Mother has looked at you the same way for nearly as long." His expression softened into the smallest smile. "I simply wondered how long it would take for the two of you to notice."

There was a long silence. Then all three of you laughed. For years, you had been bound together by duty. By trust. By the love shared for one extraordinary little boy. Now, at last, you were simply a family. And for Talia al Ghul, there was no greater victory than that.

[champagneholland]

Imagine being Sammy's creative girlfriend (with a real talent, not like T***i) and taking a very cute video to celebrate Nate's first birthday, that left Sammy all teary eyes because he was not expecting you to do something so cute as you hadn't been dating for so long. And the video came of course with a tiny cake you baked with your own hands just for Sammy and Nate.

Flashforward to Sammy fighting to get Nate's full custody and social assistants had to inspect his house so you volunteered to make it more homely and decorated Nate's room starting from painting the room and drawing anima figures to building his crib and creating spaces for him to explore and be autonomous (true Montessori style).

Sammy would be so proud to show everyone the things you do. You see this beautiful porch? Guess who build it! The painting in the living room? Of course you made it. And you would of course be Sammy's social media manager, all his pictures were either with you or taken by you!

[lunaris-literature]

I rarely do full romance on this page anymore but in my inebriated state (wee pain management) I can't stop thinking of romancing Tim as his collage roommate.

You weren't supposed to be assigned to his room, no one was. He'd paid Gotham U to ensure it didnt happen; and yet here you were a tired smile on your face as you introduced yourself to him. At least you weren't having a fan freak out.

Tim wouldn't even be in this doorm/apartment thing if it hadn't been a rule for the university. One year of classes they have to stay on campus. Most chose to do it freshman year but here he was in his final year being forced to stay here. He asks if you're a freshman and you laugh a little before telling him all about your old collage and how much of a pain transferring credits here was.

You were so painfully open. If he asked you answered and took each inquiry well; you almost seemed amused by the way he subtly tested your boundaries.

And he supposed after a few months living together you were a pretty good roommate. You never questioned when he was out late, nor did you snitch on him. The worst you did was nag him to get some sleep. You were under the impression he was a secret party boy. Not an unfair assumption given his father figure (Bruce).

Then as time passed with you as his caring chatty roommate the more he realized he was going to miss living with you. You who shared food and coffee with him even though you only worked part time, who during break-outs waits up for him worried despite not knowing he was fighting, you even helped record lectures he misses for business meetings. How you convinced his most technology is bad professor to do so he will never know but he's grateful. You dont even share classes yet you record his.

In winter he realizes he's in love with you, how? Because he caught the flu, and with his missing spleen it was rough. Some would say he should go to the hospital, in fact his family might push for it. So he lied and said *you* have the flu and he had to help. But you were helping him uncaring if you got ill. All that gross and you never judged, never pushed him to go to the hospital; though you did ask if he wanted to a few times.

The point was in his crazy life you were a source of warmth, normality, and he'd be lying if he didn't find it enduring.

[skymouth]

out in the cold — jack abbot x reader

You experience a sub drop after hooking up with a date. Dr Abbot takes care of you.

Pairing: Jack Abbot x Reader Word count: 9.5k+ Tags: Requited unrequited love; Dom/sub dynamics; Sub drop; Subspace; Soft Dom Jack Abbot; Assumed sexual assault (it never happened); Reader has tattoos; Reader is multilingual; Negative self talk; implied Bad BDSM etiquette (from previous partner); AFAB reader; NSFW content (Oral sex, Fingering, P in V sex). Credits: PSD colouring by gloomglimmer. Template inspired by louestat. Textures by cavalierfou. Notes: Title is from Hadestown’s All I’ve Ever Known. Consider it the 1 song playlist to this fic/series. Probably inaccurate sub drop/subspace experience but fuck it, we ball. Abbot also thinks that you were SA’d but it didn’t happen so tread carefully if that’s a trigger for you.

Cross posted to AO3.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

You hand him the wrong sized needle.

“14 gauge,” Jack snaps.

You blink, hard. Frowning. How the Hell did you mess that up? You swap out the needles, uttering a quick sorry.

Head in the fucking game, you tell yourself. Eyes on the target—you cannot fuck up in the middle of a procedure. Just because some guy can’t be bothered calling you back? People are literally dying in the walls of the hospital. You cannot afford to be so vapid that you’re more worried about unread text messages and zero call backs.

You refuse to fail anywhere else, hovering, anticipating the doctors’ needs before they verbalise it. This is what makes you valuable to the team. They’ve said it again and again—they need more nurses like you.

And especially in front of Jack. You admire him—respect him a lot. You never wanted to be a doctor, but you love working as a nurse. With him. Being useful to him and the night shift.

“Swap out with Tim in Trauma 1,” Jack says, eyes darting to you.

“You got it, boss.” You don’t even try to argue with what you think is his judgement call of getting you out of his way. Making you someone else’s problem.

The thing was, he noticed. Of course he fucking noticed. Nothing happened in the ED, to his staff, without his knowledge. It was his job as an attending to ensure he was on top of it.

He noticed it in your docile greeting, normally a little more upbeat. He noticed it in the questioning look that Parker shot him when you were quieter than usual, citing the fact that you were tired. When Shen picked up on your dour mood, offering some coffee that you flatly dismissed, telling him you weren’t in the mood. For coffee, or for him; you left it up to interpretation.

It was downright rude. Rude and you didn’t go together. It was why they liked having you on night shift.

It worries him. The not knowing. The questioning. The way everyone looks to him for answers and he can’t provide them. You’re usually the kind one, the one that’s happy to help. But today, there’s a cloud hanging over you. Something bogging you down.

“What’s going on?” Shen whispers, nodding his chin towards you. You’re at the desk in central, blankly staring at the screen more so than typing the notes you should be inputting.

“Don’t know,” Jack confesses, and he hates that he doesn’t know. So much for being the one that protects the hive. As much as he makes himself the reliable one that everyone, especially his night shift team, can depend on, someone always falls through the cracks. “Been weird all day.”

“There you are,” Lena says, walking up to lean against the desk. Hovering over you. “We need you in central 8. Patient barely speaks English. Wanna see if you know what language she knows?”

You shoot her a clearly unimpressed look. “Right, because I must speak every language under the sun,” you bite out.

Lena pauses, eyes narrowed at you. “Are you—?”

“Hey.” Jack steps in, frowning. Not that he thinks it’ll escalate into a fight, but he’d rather not entertain that possibility. Night shift was meant to be chill; have less personality clashes compared to day shifts. Less staff, as well, which was why it was essential everyone worked well within the team. “Lena asked for a favour.”

You look away from him, cowed. Chastised—again. “Central 8, yes sir.”

You scurry off to the patient in central 8—Indonesian, which happened to be a language that you taught yourself for the fun of it, years ago. This isn’t even the first time they’ve asked you to try and communicate with a patient in another language. Ridiculously, it’s the first time you’ve taken offence to it.

You and Princess have a bet on who could learn the most additional languages. It’s been a long 18 months since she and Perlah initiated the bet. You refuse to lose, and Princess is competitive. Between the two of you, you’ve got a conversational handle on a minimum of 15 languages right now. It’s circulated around the hospital like common knowledge at this point.

“Hey.” Lena follows you when you’re exiting the room. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to imply anything—”

“It’s okay,” you say, quick. You feel embarrassed by your earlier reaction. “Really. I’m sorry. I’m feeling really crabby today, and I took it out on you. I’m really sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” You’re absently massaging the back of your neck in a self-soothing fashion, and it’s the only reason she sees.

“Whoa,” Lena gasps. “Hey, did someone hurt you?” Ever the medical professional, she steps close, reaching.

Really, it’s on you. The bodily flinch before she makes contact with your shoulder. You both know she’s done it before—calming, gentle touches. Reassuring. Maternal. Her and Dana, mother henning the hospital when they step into the role of the respective shift’s charge nurse. You’ve always accepted those.

Except this time, your skin feels like it’s burning and itching at the same time.

She stares at you.

You feel frozen, heart thudding too fast in your chest. A dramatic reaction to a familiar touch. A mountain out of a mole hill.

“Hey—” Lena starts, softer. Like you’re a wounded animal in need of comfort.

“South 16’s opened.” Jack’s voice, clear and sharp.

You wince, pivoting to the side, where his eyes are on you. “I don’t need—”

“Get in there.” And his tone brooks no room for argument. “Now.”

With a sigh, you march yourself into south 16. Jack follows after a few minutes, no doubt gathering whatever supplies he thinks he needs. Door closed, curtain drawn.

You’re both silent, waiting for the other to cave. You’re perched on the edge of the bed. He’s standing by the door.

He breaks first. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

His jaw clenches. Takes a seat on the stool. Wheels it to the foot of the bed. “I need to see how bad it is,” he says, carefully. Like he’s actively choosing every word.

“Nothing’s bad. Nothing hurts.”

Which, apparently, is the wrong thing to say, based on the breath released between his teeth. Maybe the right thing would have been to deny any source of pain.

He says your name, eyes analytical as he studies you. Something in his face softens. Pushing the stool back. “Would you be more comfortable if I got Dr Ellis or Lena to do the examination?”

You frown. “What examination?” You look—really look, this time—at the supplies he brought in. One of them is a white cardboard box, Sexual Assault Evidence Kit printed in bold letters among other black ink. You’ve catalogued enough of them to know you’re not mistaking it for any other kit. Have done a few on patients as well.

“I’m not—this, this wasn’t—” You take in a breath. Eyes boring into Jack’s, trying to impart the determination of your next words. “It was consensual.”

It’s silent in the room, with the door closed. With neither of you speaking. Jack doesn’t move; you barely breathe.

“Are you sure?” he asks, finally.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” And just like that, the weighted worry drops. He’s still concerned, of course. As soon as Lena had asked if someone had hurt you, everything in his mind jumped to a horrifying conclusion. He’s glad their shared assumptions aren’t correct. In his relief, he’s forgotten about your other symptoms—the moody countenance. “Can I still check you over? For my peace of mind?”

“Sure,” you sigh out. Shuffling further on the bed, back turned towards him, shucking your scrub top, then turtleneck beneath it. You know where the worst of it is.

“Jesus, kid,” he hisses. With you turned away, you don’t see the way his jaw ticks, compelling his fingers to unfurl from taut fists. He forces his attention to remain on the bruises and red wounds, and not the black lines of intricate artwork sprawling further down your back. Accentuating the lines of your body.

You hear the snap of the disposable blue gloves.

“It looks worse than it is,” you say.

“Bruising looks like it’s at least a day old.” His voice is clipped. Tight. Overcorrecting professionalism into cold and distant.

They must be purpling by now, you assume. “It’s been—uh, since Saturday night.”

You feel the cool swab of antiseptic on the bruises; the bite marks, the scratches.

“You know,” Jack says, and you feel his warm breath fan across your bare skin. That, alone, makes you shiver. “Even if you changed your mind part way through, it’s still sexual assault.”

You shoot a look over your shoulder at him.

He attempts a poker face. Do not react.

“I didn’t change my mind,” you say, firm. You turn back to face the wall. Stare down at the bed beneath you. “It’s—” And maybe it’s easier to admit when you don’t have to look at him. “I wanted it to hurt. For him to be rough.”

Jack breathes in. Do not react. He’s a doctor. He’s also tended to previous partners like this before. His own wife, even. Clinical hands; he’s seen this before. He cannot treat this like a new thing, just because it’s you.

“Where’d you even find the guy?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking. To twist the knife lodged between the fourth and fifth ribs, maybe.

“On an app.”

“What? Just a random dating one?”

“No. It’s—you know, specifically for hook ups of the non-vanilla kind.”

“The what kind?”

Oh my God, he’s going to make you say it outloud. Gaze resolutely stuck on the creases of the white, sterile bedsheets. “The kinky kind.”

A pause. “They have those, now?”

You can almost hear the beginnings of a ‘back in my day’ spiel. And isn’t that a thought? Dr Jack Abbot searching for his own BDSM partners—in his youth, maybe. You don’t want to think about his exploits in his current era. You’re already topless in front of him. You cannot bare yourself to him any more than this.

“Yeah,” you chuckle, a little breathlessly. Get it together. You can’t get all giggly in front of your boss. “They do, grandpa.”

“Hey. Careful now,” he remarks, amused. Something loosens in his chest, allowing him to breathe easier. It’s probably the first time he’s heard you express something akin to a laugh during this shift. He doesn’t realise how much he missed that today; how much he needs it to carry him through.

The ED can be a harrowing place, but it’s a lot less dark with you by his side.

You hum, letting the silence relax you. It must be past 3 AM, you think. There’s always that patchy, tranquil moment after the sporadic rush between midnight and 3 AM.

“So what?” he asks. Cotton swab dabbing ointment onto the wounds. “Your date just fell asleep and forgot to take care of you?”

You let out a huff, humourless. Head dipped. Embarrassed, again. It flushes down your neck. “He left as soon as he was done.”

Jack goes deathly still. The swab hovers, pinched tightly between his fingers. “What?”

“He, uh—left,” you sniff. Do not fucking cry over this. “And I’m pretty sure I got ghosted too, because I’ve been trying to—um, call him. Or text him. Which sucks, because, I…” You suck in a breath. “We took our time. Went on three separate dates before Saturday. Dinner. Movie. Museum. Four fucking months of talking and he dipped as soon as he got his dick wet.”

Jack is uncharacteristically silent over your shoulder.

You shuffle around, facing him.

He’s frowning. Lips downturned. Eyes stormy. Lines of his body wound tight. An older man outraged by the woes of modern dating, you assume.

“It’s fine,” you say, because you feel the sudden need to mollify that anger. To appease him. You try to covertly rub your eyes to wipe the tears that have collected. “Honestly, I’ve always been a bit bad about handling rejection, but I’m working on it.” It explains your shitty mood since Saturday. The dull awareness after he left.

Jack blinks, jaw unlatching at your words. Stares at you. “Is that what you think this is?” he asks, hollowly. “You feel hurt because of a little rejection?”

You make an obviously face. “I’ll feel better by next shift.”

“How much research did you do?”

“I read a few articles; people’s blog posts. There aren’t any peer reviewed journals on this.”

“I know,” he huffs out. He remembers his own reading journey, all those years back. “Did you read anything about dropping? Sub drops?”

Your forehead creases in thought. It sounds vaguely familiar. “Maybe?”

Jack doesn’t say anything, waiting.

You stare. The confusion eventually smooths out. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh,” he echoes. “You’re in a sub drop.”

You have been, since Saturday. That’s—mortifying, you think. Your kinky extracurricular affairs brought forefront and centre to your attending because you weren’t a good judge of character.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. Something humiliating thickens your throat; wells tears into your eyes. They avert from him, dropping somewhere low. “Fuck, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s—hey. Look at me,” Jack says.

You’re not listening.

“Fuck. Hey. Hey, quit spiralling. Listen to me.” Jack yanks the gloves off his hands.

This is disgusting. You’re disgusting. This was something that was supposed to remain within your bedroom walls, far, far away from the hospital. Instead, you brought it right to the night shift’s front porch.

A rough palm slotted against your cheek.

The effects are near instantaneous—a shuddering inhale, a trembling whine. Glassy eyes shedding tears as they slide close. Cheek nuzzled against callused flesh.

His hand tipping your face upwards. “Open your eyes.”

And you do.

Shiny, blinking. Unfocused, then landing on him. Something registers, clicks in your mind. “Please,” you whisper. You don’t know what you’re asking for.

But he does. Something bittersweet in this throat. “I know,” he rasps. He wants this. Fulfilment delivered on a silver platter. But not like this. Not from someone else’s abymal attempts.

He’d seen the way you brightened when he passed by with a compliment. A well timed ‘great work in there’, and your shy smile followed him. Like a sunflower chasing the sun. Maybe it’s his ego stinging, now. Maybe it’s something else; something tender, something primal.

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle.

Jack hushes you. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” If he could get his hands on the man that called himself your date, he wishes for once, he could take back the sworn oath to do no harm.

“I’m sorry,” you say again.

He manoeuvres himself onto the bed. Pulls you into his lap, chests aligned. His arms encircle your waist, avoiding the bruises decorating your upper back. Settling on top of the tattoos. “Breathe with me,” he instructs.

So you do.

In and out. In and out. Inhale, exhale. Again and again.

Just until the dizziness fades a little. Until you feel like you have a few fingers back on the ledge.

“I’m sending you home,” Jack says.

“I don’t want—”

“Do not,” he demands, tense, “argue with me.”

Your mouth clicks shut. Face buried into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Sorry,” you whisper.

“You go home,” he says, “you get yourself cleaned up. Eat. Rest. I’ll come by and take care of you when I’m done here.”

You suck in a breath. “No—”

“What did I just say about—”

A noise of complaint in the back of your throat, hand wrapped around his bicep, squeezing. “Red,” you utter.

It jolts him. Admittedly, it’s been a while, but the colours are ingrained in him as much as the safewords that he used. This isn’t a scene, but you’re so far down that you can’t tell.

“What?” he asks, around the thudding in his chest. He overstepped, somewhere. He doesn’t know you like this, can’t anticipate your needs like he would in the ED.

“I can’t,” you tell him, quiet. Small. “You can’t.”

“I can’t what?”

“Take care of me.”

Jack inhales gravel. Pissed off. “Did he tell you that? Is that why he left you alone?”

“No,” you say.

“Then what is it?” One of his hands lift from your waist, guiding your face away from where you’re hiding. Thumb brushes across tear stained cheek. “Talk to me,” he murmurs.

You peer down at him, positioned higher only because you’re straddling his thighs. You swallow against this heavy thing in your chest.

How do you even admit that the sole reason you started researching BDSM in the first place, is due to the man in front of you? Due to the way he doled out praises in the ED, unlocking something within you? You imagined it was him, pinning you down, hands around your neck, teeth sinking into skin, telling you to be good for him.

“I can’t have you mean nothing,” you whisper, eventually.

Jack swallows past the lump suddenly in his throat. “What does that mean?” A burgeoning of hope. “Sweetheart, what does that mean?” And maybe that’s the cruelty in him, a manipulative side that fools him into thinking that if he calls you as such, you can remain tucked inside his heart. Can convince you to stay there.

“You’re everything,” is all you say. Maybe it’s enough.

“Everything,” he repeats.

“Yes.”

Jack’s hand is a gentle thing against your cheek. No pressure, no guidance. Just slight pressure tracking your movements as you nose against his jaw. Scrape your skin against stubble.

His hand slides to the back of your scalp. “And that means I can’t take care of you?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Why?”

“I…” You’re not selecting words. Just trying to find them through the fog. “Because it’s only for today. Until I feel better.”

“And you don’t want that.”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“Everything,” you say again. And your lips land on his pulse point, You feel it thrum. “With you.”

He doesn’t know how much of this is the drop. How much of this is you. All he knows is that you wouldn’t admit any of this if you were in the right mind.

Fingers flex at the roots of your hair. He tugs you up to look at him.

Your hips buck on their own accord. You keen, thighs tightening around him. Teary eyed.

His other hand against your waist digs in. Stopping your movements. “Fuck,” he swears, hoarse. “Sorry.”

“Feels good,” you murmur, reassuring.

He can’t do this. Here. While you’re like this. He needs you up and out of sub drop before he can have this conversation with you. But you don’t want his help unless he can promise you everything. He can only hope he knows what that means.

“Please,” you utter.

“I know,” Jack soothes. His hand braced against your cheek again.

You lean forward, weight against him. Lips almost on his.

His fingers lead you away. “No,” he murmurs, sandpaper in his throat.

You let out a cracked whine. He doesn’t want to kiss you.

“No,” he says, sharp, like he can see what conclusion you’re reaching. “Not yet.” His lips against your forehead. “Not here.”

Jack doesn’t know how long it takes. He can’t spend the whole shift in there with you, as much as he wants to.

The contact helps. His touches, the soft susurration aimed into the soft flesh of your neck. At some point, you’re coherent enough to be functional. Turtleneck and scrub top on.

Jack tells you to go home. You do.

Lena meets Jack’s gaze. Worried. Questioning.

He shakes his head. It wasn’t what she initially thought, but he’s still concerned. Not completely out of the woods yet.

The final two hours of his shift stretch. All he can think of is you. By the time he sees Robby, he feels dead on his feet.

“You good, brother?” Robby claps him on the shoulder, frowning.

“Long story,” Jack says, scrubbing at his face.

“Yeah? You don’t got time?”

“I gotta head out. John can hand off.”

“Seriously?” Robby blinks, surprised.

Jack’s never passed on a hand off before. But he feels like Shen was probably more present, anyway. Less distracted.

“Robby, my guy,” Shen says.

Robby fixes the other attending with a deeply unimpressed look. “John.”

“See you,” Jack says.

“I better get the short version some time,” Robby says.

“Me too!” John adds.

“You don’t even know what we were talking about…”

Their voices trail away as Jack walks. No rooftop. No drinks in the park. Just over to your apartment, the address memorised from your staff profile. Probably a privacy concern, but Lena turned the other way when he said he wanted to check on you.

You’re asleep on the couch when he comes. You were cogent enough to text him your apartment number and a picture of your welcome mat, letting him know your key was under there.

Not the most secure hiding place, but by the time he arrived, it was still there.

The back of his hand pressed against your forehead, taking your temperature. Fingers brush through your hair.

You stir. “Dr Abbot?” Spoken softly, eyelids heavy.

“Hey, kiddo.” He shifts, handing you your water bottle you’ve left on the coffee table.

You sip from it, blinking yourself awake. Scrubbing at bleary eyes. “Are you wearing shoes?” you ask around a yawn.

Jack blinks, not having expected your question. He looks down at the shoes he’s wearing—one on his foot, the other on his prosthesis. “Yeah.”

“Shoes off,” you say. “There are guest slippers in the bottom cubby hole.”

“Bottom cubby hole,” he repeats. More so to remember, than mock you.

“Please,” you add.

He rumbles a laugh before he follows your instructions. He takes out the ointment from his backpack before depositing it near the coat rack at the door. He shuffles back towards you, now clad in the slippers. “Did you eat yet?”

You hum your confirmation. “I have leftovers in the fridge. And I showered. You can use the shower too. Towels are in the cupboard in my room.”

“Alright. When I’m done, I’m going to check your back again.”

“Okay.”

He lingers. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Feeling like yourself?”

You think. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

When he’s done, you’ve relocated to your bedroom. It’s a strange situation for him to be in, invited into your apartment and encouraged to explore the place himself. Complete trust in someone else’s life.

He finds you curled under the soft blanket you have spread over your king single bed. Sprawled out, sleeping in a prone position. He pops his prothesis off.

Ointment in hand, he gently tugs the blanket down. Sees you in sleep shorts, no shirt on. The consideration of making your back easily accessible isn’t lost on him. He touches up the ointment while you remain asleep. Fingers applying pressure, massaging tense muscles even though you’re not awake for it. He feels you relax under his touch.

“What am I going to do with you?” he wonders aloud.

And he stays there, next to you, until he too, falls asleep.

When you wake up, you kind of forget what happened. It feels like a blur—something you could write off as a dream if you didn’t have any reminders. And in this moment, you don’t. Tiredly stumbling to the bathroom, then to your bedroom, wrapped in a towel.

You’re, somehow, too out of it to hear the noises in the kitchen. Once you’re in comfortable loungewear, you take your reusable water bottle with you. The intention is to fill it, grab some snacks, then head back into your room. Maybe pop on a show. Let your brain turn off.

“Hey.”

You startle, almost dropping the bottle. Pivoting to see Dr Jack Abbot in front of your stove. Cooking—something. Eggs, you think. It’s one of the things you always stock up in the fridge.

Yesterday in the hospital was not a dream. It was real. Very real. And he came to check in on you in your apartment. And stayed over.

“Hey. I…” you start. Trail off.

“Forgot?” Amusement lifting the corner of his lips. Trying to hide it for your sake.

“No,” you say, quick. You both know it’s a lie. Lips pressed into a line, heading to the water dispenser attached to the fridge to fill up your bottle.

Jack grins when you’re no longer looking at him. “Eat first.” The toaster pops with two slices. He’s made himself at home, studying your kitchen. Pantry, fridge, cupboard, drawers. He’s memorising the layout. Two plates, eggs, toast, slices of ham. You, apparently, didn’t have bacon. He searched.

Sitting at the tiny thing you call a dining table, Jack waits for you to tuck into your food. Despite the fact that you’re more lucid, he can tell you’re still off. As he eats, you’re not. Pushing food around. Tearing off pieces of your toast to nibble at.

Since Saturday, he remembers. Wonders if you treated all your meals like this before coming into the Pitt. You must have been running on fumes. Wonders how many times you’ve done this; if this is your first time, or just the first time it’s gone wrong.

Jack clears both the plates away. His empty; yours mostly full. Half your toast gone. He decides to glad-wrap yours, putting it in the fridge. Cleans his own plate in the sink, washing his hands after.

“You didn’t have to… be here,” you say. To stay. To make you food.

“I said I’d take care of you,” he responds, evenly. Leaning against the sink. Eyes on you.

And you both remember what happened after. What you said. Not unless you could have everything.

You feel—embarrassed. You meant it, of course you meant it. A stupid torch you’ve carried for two years. The humiliating realisation that it wasn’t going away. You tried to put those feelings onto someone else, tried to go out, go on dates. You were young. And yet.

The sinking knowledge that this wasn’t just some kind of silly crush born of proximity and praises.

“It’s not your responsibility,” you state. “You’re not my—” Mouth snapping shut, self-editing.

Even if you don’t finish it, the tilt of his head, the challenging tick of his eyebrow says he heard it. Arms crossing over his chest.

You can’t help the way your eyes fixate on the stretch of the short sleeves of his t-shirt around tensed biceps.

“I’m not your what?” Jack asks.

You clear your throat, moving to stand up. To get away, even if for a second. Even if he’s trying to do you a favour by being here.

“Stay down.”

You almost do. The chair scrapes backwards, instead. “Fuck off, Abbot,” you snarl, standing fully.

Hostility rearing its head again. Like with Lena, except this time, you’re not restraining yourself at an attempt at professional conduct. You’re biting. Pushing.

Jack knows there’s probably a few ways he can take this. Can respond. “Don’t do this.”

Gone is the sweet thing he held in his lap yesterday. Instead, you’re aching, scared of rejection and lashing out because of it.

“Quit patronising me. You’re not my—anything. And I’m not yours.”

His teeth scrape together, jaw squeezing. Jack knows this game. Can read you like a book. He can’t fall for the bait; if his temper wins, he proves you right.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, voice soft despite the urge to snap. He knows this is born of insecurity. One that was fed by some prick that abandoned you on Saturday. “I’m not like him—”

“Don’t,” you hiss out.

“—I’m not going to leave.”

It makes something ripple inside you. An age-old wound that tells you you’re unlovable. Something complicated passes over your face. You can’t decide if you want to believe him or squash it down. False hope.

Jack moves towards you. Three steps to close the distance between the sink and table.

Your eyes are wet, bright with tears. “Dr Abbot—”

“Jack,” he corrects. Chest twisting.

“Jack,” you say.

He nods, eyes darting between yours. Eye contact connoisseur. “Can you sit down?” He changes his approach. “Please?”

You do. Slipping into the dining chair. The backrest to your side. Legs facing him and not tucked under the table.

And Jack.

He sinks.

One of his knees makes contact with the floor. His other leg bent, foot on the ground. His hand resting on the flesh above your knee, balancing.

A tremulous breath releases from you. Shock. “What are you—?”

“You wanted everything,” Jack says. “Let me give you everything. Please.”

And hasn’t he been carrying a torch for you, too? Your first day with the night shift wasn’t anything special. It’s not that he was struck by you immediately—the consequences of being an attending physician, having a million things on his mind, and a hundred other things clamouring for his attention.

You were always quick. Responsive. Observant. At his elbow, two seconds before he asked, handing him everything he needed like you were a mind reader. It was fascinating, in a way.

He hadn’t even registered when the change happened. There was no adjustment period. One day you were that damn good nurse on his team, and the next day, he realised he couldn’t take his eyes off of you.

Watching, always watching, when you pushed the gurney from the ambulance bay into the trauma room; when you playfully saluted Parker after she asked for an IV on her patient; when you adopted that childish voice to say Nurse Lena, Nurse Bridget is being mean to me again, just to make them laugh after a tough patient; when Shen tried to get you to learn Mandarin but that was already in Princess’ arsenal, and the only rule established was no repeats.

As time went on, he noticed the way your tightly wound shoulders would relax at his words. The way your gaze lingered, like you wanted to ask for more. You never did, and he never pushed.

How could he? He was an attending. Much, much older than you. Had skeletons in his closet that he would rather shove down than let anyone sign up for.

Somewhere, he fell. Softly, then all at once.

You reach out, fingers drifting across his cheek. “Jack,” you whisper, an incredulous sound.

“Right here, sweetheart.” He cups your hand, angling his head to kiss your palm. Eyes never straying from yours.

Tears knocked loose. “I’m sorry,” you say, wet. Once again, ashamed of your behaviour.

“You did nothing wrong.” If he could spend the rest of his life reassuring you, he would. Maybe he can. Everything, after all.

“But I… yelled.”

Jack grins, wry. “I get yelled at all the time.” By patients. By admin. It’s no skin off his back.

“I said…” You inhale, wobbly. “I said I wasn’t yours.”

And there, that darkening of his eyes. Studious. Trained on nothing but you. “Are you?”

“I want to be.”

“So you are. Mine.”

You wet your lips. His eyes track the movement, unabashed. “And…” you say.

He waits, patient. Lets you find your words.

“You’re mine?”

“Yes. Yours,” he rasps. Kneeling before you, whatever else could he be?

“Get up. Please.” A murmured plea.

He does. It’s not a swift movement, but you’re past paying attention. You stand, slot your body against his. He’s meeting you halfway. Your palm splayed against his chest; his hand cupping your cheek.

A soft capture of your lips. Jack’s thumb sweeping, tugging lightly at the corner of your mouth. Fingers digging into the sharp of your jawbone tucked beneath your ear.

You let out a stuttering breath at the pressure, something fuzzy clouding your eyes. He slips his tongue inside your mouth. A welcomed weight against your tongue, a spit slicked slide.

A drawn out noise, broken into pants.

His hands gathered at your waist. Walking you backwards into the table. It grates against the linoleum floor, thudding into the wall. Neither of you pay it any heed. You’re perched on the table. He steps between your legs, hitching one thigh against his side.

“Please,” you gasp into the infinitesimal space between you, “I’ll be good.”

“I know,” Jack whispers. Something gentle and soft and so, so sweet tucked against him. Honeyed and viscous, coating his throat. Choking, unbidden tears in his eyes. “I’ll give you everything,” he promises.

Your arms hooked around his shoulders, lifting your core, angling up. Pressing the heat between your legs against his growing bulge.

“Fuck,” Jack groans. A palm laid against the surface of table, the other keeps a bruising grip on the flesh of your side. Stabilising himself. His face tucked to your neck, kissing a line against your throat. Buying himself time. “Fuck, you’re perfect,” he says.

“Jack.” A breathy moan, as his lips trail down. Hips rolling up against him. You reach, fingers scrabbling against the waistband of his pants.

“Uh uh.” Digits wrapping around your wrist, pressing your hands against the cold wood beneath you. “Hands on the table.”

“I want—” Despite your protesting words, your palms remain flat on the smooth surface. “I want to make you feel good.” To get on your knees for him, to feel the heavy weight of his cock in your mouth, the stinging strain in the corners of your lips as you struggle to fit him, an aching in your jaw. You know he’d be big enough for that.

“I know, sweetheart.” His lips on yours again, a reassuring kiss. The problem isn’t you—it never is. It’s the fact that he’d finish within minutes if you got your mouth around him. He’s strung tight, and he knows his refractory period isn’t as short as it used to be. The reality is he’s old.

“Please,” you whine.

“Hands on the table,” he reminds, despite the fact that you hadn’t moved. He lowers himself to the ground, eyes on you. Watching you watch him. Roughened fingers tugging your pants down. Lips pressed to the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. Kissing up further and further.

Air catches in your throat.

Jack leans forward, closes his mouth around your clothed core. Tongue finding the split between flesh.

You moan, breath hitching at his touch. Fingers twitch against the table. You want to bury them in his grey curls, but he told you to keep them where they are.

“Good,” he whispers, hot breath fanning across your skin. “You’ll be good, won’t you?”

“Yes,” you gasp.

Jack pulls down your underwear. Rests his cheek against the side of your thigh. Stubble scratching against overheated skin. “Look at you,” he says, reverent. “You’re so wet, baby.”

You whimper. Your hands inch further behind you. Angling your body. “Jack.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Fingers around your calf, hiking it over his shoulder. Every touch, searing.

“Please.”

“So sweet,” he purrs. And then his tongue, finally, finally glides into the drenched heat. He hums through the wrecked sound you make, licking up. A brief kiss to your clit before his lips seal around it. Tongue lands, tip of the muscle working up and down repeatedly, then around.

You—shatter. No other way to describe it. Your hands are still somewhere behind you, maybe numb at this point. Your leg still hooked over Jack’s shoulder, heel digging into the stretch of his back. Hips rolling upwards, into his face. “Jack,” you cry, heavy with relief and something fractured, all at once.

His eyes are dark, captivated by you, preoccupied with taking in every reaction, every movement. His tongue never ceases. Fingers collect the slick from your opening, using his thumb to rub it along his middle and fourth finger.

Whining aloud. Fingertips digging into unrelenting wood. You want to touch him. You try to enclose your legs around him.

Jack pushes his free hand against your thigh, the one that’s not on his shoulder. Keeping you open. Then he sucks, tongue flicking against your clit at the same time.

Your hips grind upwards. “Jack—”

He presses his middle finger into you. He doesn’t take his time. Pumps it once, twice.

“Jack, please, please—”

He draws his finger out. Pushes his ring finger inside at the same time. You feel the stretch with two fingers, wider than yours. Longer than yours.

Jack doesn’t mean to rush, but he feels so lightheaded with want. Knows his knees will probably complain tomorrow morning. He needs you to come, wants to hear you fall apart. Crooking his fingers towards your belly, feeling around the wet insides. Pads of his fingers massaging.

You feel it building in your core. Breaths escaping. “I’m—oh, fuck, I’m—please—”

You can feel him responding, fingers moving faster. Working you from inside. And he keeps the suction on your clit.

“Jack, please, I need—” Almost there but not quite. You feel right at the precipice, but you can’t tip over. Chasing it, though, the way you grind into his face. Onto his fingers. Hands splayed on the table, head tipped towards the ceiling. Every sound punched out of you.

He hums, a deep thing that sends vibrations through you.

“Talk to me, please, Jack, please I want to hear you.”

Jack shifts, mouth opening, tongue pressed flat against your clit. The hand pushing your thigh moves, fingers rubbing against the sensitive nerve. Still fucking you with the fingers inside.

“Yeah?” he asks, and his voice is frayed. “Need me to talk you through it?” There’s spit and you on his chin, glossing his lips. Tongue swipes across petals, swallowing like it’s nectar. Cheek resting against your upper thigh. Stubble scraping against skin.

You shudder. “Yes, yes please, Jack, please.”

“Yeah. Need me to tell you’ve been good, honey?” A kiss pressed to your leg. Your sensitive skin burning, itching every time he moves. The scratch of his shadow. His eyes are lava on you, even if you can’t see him.

“Just like at work, is that it? I tell you you’ve done a good job and you walk around the hospital all wet and pent up? Tell me, baby, do you come home and think of me when you get yourself off? Hear me in your head?”

The nail knocked on the head. The hole-in-one.

You can’t be surprised, and yet, somehow, you are, that he figured it out. You’re clenching around his fingers, tight. Gasping. You don’t even need to verbalise that you’re coming. He can feel it. Your hips bucking up, his elbows digging into the meat of your thighs to keep your legs apart.

Wordless litanies of moans. High pitched and wrecked. Jack pushes his fingers in further, letting you ride yourself through it. And he doesn’t stop his ministrations over your clit. “Jack,” you sob.

“There you go, baby. This is what you wanted, right?” Jaw clenching, hips stuttering against air. He’s so painfully hard. It could almost be concerning, how ready he is. “Fuck me, you’re beautiful.”

He stands, knees cracking, back sore. Yet, he keeps his fingers moving. Inside and outside. Your thigh slides off his shoulder. He positions himself between them, your legs drawing up at his sides. He leans down towards you, hissing something ragged when his cock makes contact with your thigh. “Come here,” he says.

You weep with relief, arms moving from behind you, wrapping around his shoulders. You meet his lips. The fingers inside stop moving, but press insistently on that spot. He keeps rubbing your clit, just to hear you moan, to feel the tremors of your body, to feel the way you contract around his fingers. Imagining that it’s his cock.

“Jack,” you heave. “Too—ah, too much—”

“No, baby,” he says, “I say when it’s too much.”

“Jack,” you whine. “Please. Please, I need you.”

Oh, the unfair games you’re playing, begging like that. He huffs impatience through his nose, jawline ticking. “I’m right here, sweetheart. Not going anywhere.”

And you feel it—the way you’re falling into the second orgasm. One of your hands gripping his bicep. Harder than necessary, maybe. Complaining. Retaliating. “Fuck, mmm, Jack, I’m—oh, I’m coming—”

Your back arches upwards into him. Hips grinding down between his fingers again. Fingers crooked inside you, rubbing against the soft spot. Fingers rubbing your clit. Sensitive.

He grunts, head falling onto your shoulder. Hears the pathetic little sounds that you don’t even realise you’re making.

Your head’s fuzzy, your ears dulled like you’re underwater. And yet, so aware of where he’s touching you. Every point of contact ignited, like he’s leaving a brand on this mortal vessel that was created to contain nothing but love for him.

“I know, baby, I know,” he hushes. And finally, his fingers still. Small mercies as he removes the hand from your clit. Not yet sliding his fingers out.

Jack kisses you. Your chest heaving, craving air. Trembling, clenching around the fingers still inside you. “Fuck,” he breathes out. “There you are.” Observing those glassy eyes. The lazy limbs that cling to him. Lips pressed to your temple.

You cup his erection through the fabric of his pants.

He hisses, jerking into your touch. “Fuck,” he swears.

You stroke him, feeling the length.

“You—shit—you gotta stop, sweetheart,” he says.

You make a questioning noise. You want to make him feel good.

“You really want our first time to be in the kitchen?”

You’re slow to gather your words. “Anywhere,” you slur out. Too much effort to talk. “Whatever… you want.”

Jack huffs out a chuckle. “Yeah,” he whispers, tender at your deference. He kisses you again, sliding his fingers out of you. He parts momentarily, eyes locked on yours as he brings his fingers into his mouth. Licking, fingers splitting, tongue moving down the space between slick digits.

Your hips twitch, a lazy movement that brings you flush against his body. Smearing your come and his spit against the fabric of his pants. He’s still fully clothed, you realise.

“Bed,” you croak, even though you told him it was his choice, just moments before.

Jack laughs, a gentle thing. Nose bumping against yours. Hands lifting you. Legs wrapped around his waist. “Get your bottle,” he says.

You blindly grab for it before he walks you towards your bedroom. Door closing behind him, even though there’s no one else here. He deposits you on the bed. Tells you to take a sip of water before placing it onto the nightstand.

You don’t move. You’re exactly where he left you on the bed when he turns back to you.

He sits on the edge of the mattress. “C’mere,” Jack says.

You shuffle towards him. He’s expecting you to crawl into his lap, maybe. What he doesn’t expect, is the way you slide off the bed to kneel by his feet.

His breath hitches in his throat. Fingers twitching, as your cheek rests against his thigh. Digits threading into your hair. You angle your face to look up at him, blinking. Slow.

“Hey,” he says, fraught with something delicate. Raw and soft.

You nuzzle against him. Head feeling stuffy. Floating. Sinking. Contradictory, yet somehow. True.

“What do you need?”

Nothing. Everything. Wordlessly, you feel at his leg, calf down. Almost like you’re palpating it. Onto the next leg. You unbuckle the prosthesis, hearing him hiss at the twist, at the unlatching. Pained or relief, you can’t tell. Pressing a kiss to the bend of his knee when you remove it, prosthesis intentionally placed aside. You want him comfortable.

You’re slotted back against his thigh, like you didn’t just change his world, like you didn’t just show him the kind of tenderness he never thought he’d deserve after losing the leg.

Jack breathes, unsteady and ragged, but you blink up at him like you’ve never been surer of anything in your life. Complete trust.

You inch forward, nosing closer towards his crotch. Mouthing a long, lingering kiss to his dick. Slow and muted through layers of clothes. Sucking, wetting fabric. An unspoken request.

Jack groans, hips jerking. Fingers reach out, cradling. Callused pads against your jaw, thumb sliding across your lips.

You part them.

His thumb slips in, access easily granted, applying pressure against your tongue. Gliding down. Molten eyes on yours. Your brain is hazy with static. Blissful. Half-lidded eyes. Moaning as you swallow around his digit.

Jack laughs. You feel the reverberations of it, rather than hear the sound. His thumb lets up, still inside your mouth, but no longer pressing down. You blink your eyes opened, questioning, protesting.

“I asked what you prefer, baby,” he rumbles, corners of his lips lifting. Revelling in the way you’re so lost, so dazed. “Do you want me in here?” Thumb circles your tongue. “Or in here?” His good foot shifts, tucked under where you’re kneeling. Front of his ankle catching just right on your bare clit.

A hitched whine, hips grinding down. Sticky heat on his skin.

“I can only do one, sweetheart. You’re killing me, here.” He’s so gone on you, it’s almost devastating. Man made soldier, thickened skin to take on the sins of the world. And his Achilles heel is a precious thing by his knee.

You lap at his thumb, tongue flexing along the grooves of his fingerprint. For a second, he thinks this is how you want him, but you move. An obscene, wet pop as you back away from his hand. You treat it as if it were his dick, licking, tongue against nail and skin, like it’s the leaking seam of his cock.

“Jesus,” Jack groans. You’re going to be the death of him. Completely and absolutely. No differential diagnoses required.

You rise into his lap, nothing shy or uncertain in the way you straddle him and grind yourself against his clothed erection. Lips against his, kissing like you need it to breathe. Need him to breathe. Maybe you do. A low and quiet buzz in your head.

Fingers bracing against your jaw, then lips travel down your neck. You’re still rolling your hips against him. It feels heavenly, the graze of fabric against your already sensitive clit.

Jack lets out a pained noise, shifting. One moment to the next, you went from being in his lap, to facing the ceiling, back against the soft blanket. You rise to your elbows, blinking, eyes moving to the foot of the bed.

He doesn’t make a show of taking off his clothes. It’s quick, the way he removes his shirt, pants, and briefs. He’s pretty sure that if you continued moving on top of him like that, he was just going to come in his pants like he’s in college again.

“You’re killing me,” he says again. He crawls towards you. Body on yours. Divests you quickly of your top.

The slide of his palm to one of your breasts. Cupping. Squeezing. “Been thinking about this since your first scrub change.” Fingernails pinching the tip of your nipple.

You cry out.

Lips over your other tip, a mimicry of the attention he paid to your clit. Licking. Tongue slathering. Then, teeth, biting.

You rut up against him, one leg hooking over his back. Feel the length of him against you. “Please,” you whine.

His hips stutter. “Fuck me,” he groans. Inhales, then lets it out heavily.

“Trying to.”

He laughs, then, a sound that’s disbelieving, even though he should have expected nothing less from you. You’ve been hanging around the night shift too much. A hand in your hair, tugging, born of your insolence. Stealing the sound you make with a kiss. Fucks his tongue into your mouth again.

You feel like you’re losing your mind with the need to feel him. The slide of him, the delicious drag of him against your walls. To clench around and feel his dick inside you. Instead, you’re still empty.

Gasping when you part for air. “Jack,” you plead. “Please, I want to feel you.”

Jack smacks a kiss to your cheek. “Where are your condoms?” He has some in his bag—was part of his prepared care kit alongside the ointment he brought. But he’s left that by the doorway, and he doesn’t want to leave this bed with you in it, wrapped around him.

A hand smoothing over his chest, up his shoulder, clasping around his nape. “No, we don’t need—”

“Uh uh, no,” he says. “Not today.”

“But I’m—”

“No.” Stern. Lifting up, leaning back. “If you don’t listen to me about this, we’re not doing this today.”

“Sorry,” you hiccup, the easiest acquiescence. “Sorry. Nightstand. Bottom drawer. Sorry.” Tears in your eyes. Gripping at his arm, then letting go, undeserving. “Don’t go. I’m sorry.”

Jack lets out an agonised noise. You both know that if you were more cognisant, you would agree with him, would want this too. But it doesn’t make it any less hard to say no when you’re like this. “I’m not mad,” he whispers, leaning in to kiss you again. Soft. Apologetic. The last thing he wants to do is to let you believe that he could up and leave you so easily. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bottom drawer,” you say again.

Jack gets up, moving towards the nightstand to grab what he needs. The distance is close enough that one leg remains on the bed for balance. Tucked under rumpled towels, a box of condoms. And if he happens to see some toys, cuffs, other accessories you’ve clearly purchased for yourself, haphazardly hidden—oh, that’s something that he can use next time.

Packet torn, condom slipped on. Muffled groan at the relief of being touched, even if it’s just himself. Returning to the bed, to you. You’ve been watching him the whole time, eyes dragging over his skin, his body.

He doesn’t feel shy under your gaze. Exposed, though, is a different feeling.

“Can I go on top?” you ask.

He falters. He usually doesn’t. Usually surefooted. But this—you. You have a tendency to cleave apart his every defense. Every sure thing he knows about life. “You want to?”

“Yes,” you say. “Feels better.”

Tucked and saved somewhere safe. To keep and know about you. “Okay,” he says, and settles at the head of your bed, back against the wall. You draw close, slipping your pillow under his calf. Then you climb into his lap, a soft sigh releasing, like homecoming. Kissing him again, a silent addiction. His arms are warm and weighted around your middle. And he lets you take your time.

Once again, the slow rolling of your hips down to his. Your entrance flushed against the length of his dick. The torturous drag, up and down.

Jack grips your waist, lips against your collarbone. Harsh breaths of air. “Fucking Hell.”

And when you seem content to let it draw on like this, he bites at the flesh under your collarbone. Warning.

You downright mewl at the threat his teeth breaking through your skin. “Ah—mhm.”

“You gonna let me fuck you anytime soon?”

It takes a little to register that not only has he asked you a question, but you should probably respond as well. “If you want to,” is what you end up saying.

“If I want to.” Mocking, a dangerous scoff. He feels like he’s on fire. Lifting you, one hand around his cock, lining it up against your entrance. Tip catching between your folds.

And finally, you’re sinking down on him.

The hitched sounds coming from you, trapped in your throat. Arms hooked around his shoulders, keening into the side of his throat. The stretch of your walls making way for him. The soft insides, swallowing, welcoming. And it keeps going.

Your fingers digging into the corded muscles of his arm, his hands petting the sides of your stomach. Soothing. “You’re—you feel—oh—” Sinking further around his girth. Until you’re sure he’s completely inside you.

Jack lets out a low groan. “Fuck.” Breathes in deeply. Holds it. Then out.

You try to rise.

His arms immediately snap a tight brace around you, holding you in place. “Fuck. Give—give me a minute.”

“Jack—”

“You,” he grinds out, “have no idea how tight you feel. Just give me a minute, sweetheart.”

And of course, that involuntary spasm of your walls around his cock.

Jack swears. Forehead thuds against the space above your sternum. “Quit that.”

“Wasn’t on purpose.”

He notices the lack of apology. “Brat,” he says fondly, and kisses you again.

You don’t know how long you stay like that for. Lips and air. Arms refusing to budge around you. His cock inside you. You swear you feel him in your diaphragm. Your skin feels like fire. “Can I move?” you beg. “Jack, please, can I move? Please, I need—can we—I want to feel you—”

“Shhh, baby, it’s okay. I got you, honey. You’re okay.” A hand reaches up to wipe a thumb across your cheeks.

It comes away wet. You hadn’t realised you started crying.

“Please,” you sob.

His hips snap upwards.

Your next breath comes trapped between a moan and a cry.

Both arms wrapped around you again. An iron band. Then he fucks up into you.

“Oh,” you whimper. “Oh, fuck, ah, ah—thank you, thank you thank you—”

The noise Jack releases is inhuman. He keeps an unrelenting pace, punching out moans from you. He’s flooded by the need to feel you come around him. “Yeah, that’s it. You’re doing so well, honey. Taking what I give you.”

You’re meeting him halfway. Grinding down against him, desperately keening. You feel his hand slip between you, thumb against your clit. You white out. Pressure, more so than stimulating you. Fucking yourself onto his cock, then up against his thumb, making you chase what you need. “Please, more, more, please.”

“Yeah? You want more? You want to come again? You want to come with my dick inside you?”

“Yes, please, I need it. I need you, please.”

“Yeah, you do.” Unmoored, slightly. His thumb rubs circles on your clit. “Come on, baby, I wanna hear you.”

Your chin hooked over his shoulder, angling your lips towards his ear. Discarding every notion of shyness. Every sound, every cry, every thought about him; needing him, wanting him, released. The burgeoning that starts in your belly. The fiery licks of something wonderful.

Jack hears it in your gasping breath, feels it in the velvet walls convulsing around him. “There you go, sweetheart. Give me another one. Fuck, you’re so fucking perfect.” Tenderness in the way his lips press against your shoulder.

You whine. Close.

“Poor baby needs to hear my voice to come, is that it? So fucking obsessed with me. Be good and come for me, baby, let me hear you—fuck—there you go.”

Holding you in place, your hips riding through the orgasm that crashes into you. His thumb rubbing incessantly on your clit. He stops fucking his cock into you, but his hips still move. Rolling, grinding.

You’re outright crying, heaving in gasps of air. Overstimulated. His thumb never stops. Your walls spasming around him, again and again.

“I know, baby, I know. I’m almost there. Can we keep going until I’m done? Is that okay, baby?”

“Yes,” you sob. You’re so so gone. Floating. “Please. Use me.”

You’re flattened on the bed.

From one blink to the next, Jack had shifted up, pressing you onto the mattress. Legs around him. The pillow at his calf tucked under your hips. The angle slides him in deeper. “Fuck,” he grinds out, hoarse. “Fuck. You’re perfect. So fucking perfect, baby. So fucking good for me.”

“Yes, yes yes yes yes yesyes.” Litanies of yesses, completely overloaded with pleasure. With the feeling of him inside. Everywhere. The fingers digging into your thigh. Forehead shoved against your chest, somewhere above your heart.

Then, the broken groan. Low, ragged. “Fuck. Coming, baby, I’m coming.” His thumb back on your clit, circling once more. Fucking into you while your walls flutter around him.

You’re completely spent. Keening, whining, hiccupping.

He stops, eventually. Dragging his hand over your belly, stroking. Up your chest. Petting overheated skin. Then cups your face to kiss him.

You feel so faraway. Numb. On fire. Both.

He flips you both, somehow. Arms straining. You’re folded into his chest, his dick still inside you.

And he stays.

You’re too out of it to realise he’s reached over to the nightstand until the straw to your bottle is pressed against your lips.

“Drink,” he says.

You do. Eyes fluttering shut. Cheek against his chest.

“You did so good for me, baby,” Jack murmurs. “You were so perfect. You are perfect.”

His fingers trace the tattoo that sprawls along your back. You shiver, accidentally grinding against him again. You both hiss.

Tilting your head up, lips finding yours again. Kissing. Gentle. Soft.

“Love you,” you whisper.

Jack lets out a tremulous breath. Kisses you again. He’ll talk about this—say it back tomorrow after you’re coherent enough to remember. But for now, it’s just this sweet thing in his lap.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

[skymouth]

Don't know how I missed the rabbot × reader bdsm followup but oh WOW. So good. Love the dynamic between Jack and Robby. "Robby likes to watch" is killing me.

Reader gets a little bratty and is like we watch with our EYES and not our HANDS (jack is losing his shit behind her). Jack trying out shibari and Robby inspecting, circling reader in the middle of the living room all detached and clinically judgy?

Thinking about them at work and reader getting a panic attack and Robby giving a giant rib squeezing hug to help bring her back to her body. Or reader being like "i like praise...perhaps my fave attendings also need praise at work" and all of them being completely unprepared for what happens when someone is consistently telling Robby and Jack that they are doing a good job at work (Robby gets SO RED. He's in charge of the whole ED. He doesn't need to be told he's doing a good job. He's saving lives that's what matters. Nevermind that everyone needs to be told they are doing a good job at some point. Feel like maybe he would get meaner in bed in response? But more possessive? You're not just a needy little slut, your HIS needy little slut type thing)

HI I love you mentioning the reader being bratty because I like to think that that’s a sign of you (the reader) becoming more comfortable in the dynamic, and feeling safe and secure enough to “act out”. Jack fucking loves it and gives into your demands in the moment, but will make you regret it later.

It’s the tail end of an exhausting shift. You’re clicking the seatbelt into place in his car when he decides to ask.

“Did you get a chance to eat today?”

You can’t help the sigh you release, shaking your head like the very act of speaking is well above your energy levels in this moment. “Did it look like anyone got a chance to eat?”

“Alright,” Jack says, frowning. “I’m guessing no. Anything you’re craving in particular?”

“If you keep talking to me, I will scratch my own eyeballs out.”

Jack blinks. Shuts his mouth, and wordlessly drives.

You end up in a tiny breakfast diner and he doesn’t speak again until you ask him a mundane question after your body has digested some of the food.

But later? When you’re not feeling as ragged and overstimulated by the joys of an additional four hours of overtime?

Yeah, you’re pinned down on the mattress, Jack draped across your back. His arm wrapped around your neck, lips by your ear.

“Where’s your attitude now, sweetheart?” His voice is low and dark, while you’re whining and squirming under him, begging for him to put you out of your self-inflicted misery. He usually gives into you by now, but Jack finds that he’s enjoying denying you.

And after that show of attitude? It’s not about your pleasure anymore. Poor little thing doesn’t get to have that today.

But Robby??? Good luck with that. Robby is the Chief Attending. What he says goes. Jack probably told Robby about your moment of brattiness and Robby gets a good laugh out of it, but he doesn’t expect you to ever turn it onto him.

(Robby’s still fairly unsteady when it comes to his standing in this already established relationship.

See, he’s observant enough to internalise all the times that Jack calls you sweetheart and baby. Those are terms of endearments that are reserved between the two of you. Robby cannot intrude on that too. He calls you honey in those soft, intimate moments. Calls you baby when he slips up and forgets his place.

So what if he thinks of himself as a surrogate or a fun, bonus add-on to Jack? That he’s not an equal part of the relationship? That’s neither here nor there. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things, really.)

You don’t really engage with this dynamic the three of you have when other people are around. Something that never really got spoken about, but happens.

There’s a get together at a bar. The reasoning is not important. What feels important, is the way that Robby refuses to touch you. He acknowledges your existence, but treats you as warmly as he treats his other coworkers. His residents and students and other nurses that are gathered.

Every time you try to get close to Robby, he engages with you for a few minutes before excusing himself to talk to someone else. Like he’s trying not to draw attention to the two of you socialising.

You’re pissed off. You’ve downed two shots of something that Princess called for that burns down your throat.

There’s a guy. Princess, who thinks you’re still painfully single, nudges you towards him. Winks at you, waggling her brows; however it ends, she’ll get entertainment from this.

You eye Robby, who’s still not paying attention to you, head ducked as he’s deep in conversation with Jesse. You think, why the fuck not? You could do with some socialising. Maybe some more free drinks if you do this right. You head over to the pool table with the guy. Play up being not great at the game for your first few shots.

On your next one, he’s helping you line up. Behind you, guiding your elbow. Angling the pool cue. And when you take your shot, it sinks into the pocket.

“Hey, look at that. You’re pretty good when someone’s teaching you,” he says.

“Got a good teacher.” You kind of feel bad—he’s nice. You position yourself near the white ball to take your turn again.

“Hey, I’m heading out.” Robby’s standing by the pool table. Whilst you had been concentrating on not fumbling your shot, he noticed how close your new friend was getting. Excused himself to insert his presence.

“Sorry?” the man asks, confused by the newcomer. You don’t even remember his name.

Robby’s attention firmly on you. Ignoring the man. “If you need a ride, I’m heading out now.”

Your gaze flickers behind him, a quick sweep to see how the others are fairing. “I’m good,” you say.

“You know him?” the man asks.

“Yeah, we’re all here for a work thing.” You gesture to the bar and tables that everyone else is scattered by. You can see Princess inching closer from the bar, pretending she’s interested in the tacky posters on the walls. Trying to eavesdrop.

“We’re good, man,” the man says, clearly trying to dismiss Robby.

Robby still hasn’t moved from the pool table.

You meet his eyes. Tongue wetting the corner of your lips, smug grin on your face. Oh, you know you’re pissing him off at this point. Especially if the way he huffs through his nose is of any indication. The barely there upward tick of his lips—not because he’s amused, but because his anger’s on a barely there rein.

You don’t know how it happens. Robby has a broad hand on the back of your neck. You’re pretty sure you end up having to placate the other man before a real fight breaks out.

You don’t even make it outside. He shoves you—not to the bathroom, but Robby’s familiar with this bar enough to breeze through staff areas without any of them batting an eye at his presence. Some kind of dark supply closet.

“The hell am I supposed to tell Jack, huh?” His kisses are bruising. A hand spread across your jaw, slanting your face up. “You got some other man all over you while I’m supposed to be watching you.” Robby’s hands gripping, rough. Unbuttoning your pants.

“You can tell him that you were ignoring me all night.”

“Oh, is that it? I was ignoring you?” Robby’s fingers in your mouth, and you even though you started the night off bratty, you’re still obedient as you suck on his digits. “So you thought it was okay to be an attention whore just because you thought I wasn’t paying attention to you?”

Your underwear parted to the side, his fingers sliding in. You’re already wet. Ever since he started talking to you at the pool table, you’re pretty sure.

“Fuck, you get wet thinking about this? About pissing me off?”

And he fucks you on his fingers, until you’re begging and so so close. But he pulls away. Laughs at the wretched noise you make. “We’re not done, yet. Get in the car.”

Read the rest of the universe.

[skymouth]

sunlight all around — rabbot x reader

You asked Jack for everything. That includes Robby.

Pairings: Jack Abbot x Reader x Michael Robinavitch (Rabbot x Reader) Word count: 15.3k+ Tags: Dom/sub; BDSM; Threesome; NSFW Content (Thigh riding; Fingering; Sex Toys; Sexual overstimulation; P in V sex; Oral sex; Blindfold; Restraints); AFAB reader; Strangulation; Slut-shaming language; Dom Jack Abbot; Dom Michael Robinavitch. Credits: PSD colouring by gloomglimmer. Template inspired by louestat. Textures by cavalierfou. Notes: title from hadestown’s all i’ve ever known.

Cross posted to AO3.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

When you wake, it’s to your alarm.

An immediate jolt of your body. You stretch to fumble for your phone, faltering at the arm around your waist.

“Turn it off.” Jack’s gruff voice behind you. Face buried into your back.

Oh. Oh, last night happened. Last night was definitely real.

“We’ve got work,” you say, voice thickened with sleep, sliding the alarm off from your phone.

“I called us out.”

You pause. “When?”

“Last night. I forgot that you probably had an alarm.”

You rub your eyes, blearily staring at a message from Lena that tells you to take it easy and to reach out if you need anything else.

“C’mere.” His breath fanning across your back.

You can’t help the shiver that runs through you at the sensation. Phone placed flipped down, turning around to face him. “Thank you.”

He hums.

“But don’t manage my schedule without consulting me first,” you say. “Please.”

Jack blinks at you. You both know the added Please is just to appear polite. “Okay,” he relents.

“Thank you.” Shuffling into him, your eyes drifting shut again.

The next time you wake, you’re riding his thigh. You don’t even remember if you had been dreaming or not. Just that you’re awake, chasing your pleasure. Fuck. This is embarrassing.

“Uh uh, baby.” Jack’s awake. Was woken up by you grinding yourself against his thigh. It took everything in him not to get himself inside you while you were asleep.

This feels doubly embarrassing for you. He’s witnessed you acting like a teenager with a wet dream.

“Don’t stop just because you woke up.” And his hand grips your hip, dragging you up his thigh. He pushes his knee in closer.

Your forehead thumps against his chest. Moaning. “Jack.”

His fingers nudging your underwear aside, smearing your slick along his fingers. Catching your clit.

You buck up, whining. Sensitive, still. From last night. Yesterday. Whatever time of day it was. Night shift has long altered the way you perceive time.

“Three wasn’t enough for you, sweetheart?” he murmurs. “You need more than that? I’m not taking care of my baby, is that it?” Two fingers sliding inside of you.

You muffle your gasp into his sternum. “No,” you keen. “You do.” Pushing yourself closer to him. Like you want to crawl behind his ribcage, insert yourself right next to his heart. “You do.” You can’t have him thinking less of himself. The problem is you, it’s always you. Too needy. Too much.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay, honey. I’m not mad,” Jack says. His thumb against your clit. Rubbing. “Just take what you need.”

Tears in your eyes, fucking yourself into his fingers. It feels good. Too good. Your clit still feels sensitive. “Hurts,” you whine.

“Yeah? You want to stop?”

“No.” Mouthing at his skin, along his collarbone. A hand gripping his bicep.

“You still want to come?”

“Yes,” you utter. “Please.”

“Yeah, of course you do. Just sleeping next to me made you so horny you started humping my leg in your sleep, huh? Couldn’t even let me fucking rest. You wanted this, baby. Show me what you wanted to take from me.”

You could combust into flames, with the way he’s talking, the way he’s making you feel. Fire broiling beneath your skin. Exhaled with the moans you release.

Your orgasm crashes into you. Body shuddering, soft little ah, ah, Jack, ah, please emitted. Your arm hooked around his shoulder, riding his hand. Down on his fingers, up into his thumb.

“Fuck,” Jack groans. Lazy kisses along your jawline, his other hand against the crown of your scalp, angling your head back. His fingers still moving. “God, you’re so perfect.”

Trembling with the overstimulation. High pitched whimpers escaping from your throat. Tears leaking.

“Too much?”

You nod. Make a complaining noise, unable to speak.

“Okay, baby.” Shuffling closer to kiss you, lips on yours as he slides his fingers out. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.” Murmuring. Shifting back down.

“Don’t go.” Words pressed against his neck, into his carotid.

“Never.” A promise woven between the two of you, legs tangled together.

Jack keeps staring at you.

The confines of your apartment walls, a meal shared during the sunlight hours after yesterday.

You’re both on your couch. It’s not a large one, but still big enough that you can occupy the opposite ends with your feet in his lap.

You put down the book you’re reading, looking up at him. His focus on you.

“What?” he asks.

“That’s my question to you.”

“You’re staring.”

“So are you. You’ve been staring since we woke up.”

“I can’t look at you?”

Despite the way you were completely exposed to him yesterday, you get shy at his question. Looking away, teeth sinking into your lower lip as your face scrunches, a smile that you don’t sanction stretching across your lips.

Jack studies you, grinning. “Getting shy?”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“I’m trying to talk to you.”

His eyes are like fire when they’re trained on you. “So talk.”

“I… hm. You gotta stop looking at me like that.”

A sly smile on his face. Definitely aware of his effect. “C’mere.” Straightening up, hand rubbing up your ankle.

You place the book on the rug below, crawling across the couch to decrease the space. Perch yourself in his lap. Palms to his face, cradling. His attached to the side of your thighs. You’re both quiet, studying each other. “You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”

Jack slides one of his hands to one of yours, angling his head to kiss your palm. Somehow you knew him well enough to know that about him. “You were out of it, but… you said you love me. Yesterday.”

You smile, a small thing. “I do. I’m not expecting you to say it back. I know it’s complicated, um—with you being a widower.”

Jack forehead creases. “I was—”

“It’s okay.”

“But I—”

You lean in to kiss him. Maybe because you want him to understand that you don’t have the expectation. Maybe because you don’t want to feel like him saying it is merely an obligation to respond, just because you said it first.

“It’s okay,” you say. Bumping you nose against his. “I mean it. Please don’t say it yet.”

Jack frowns. “Okay,” he says. The obvious answer, simply because you asked. And he will give into you, time and time again.

Nothing changes.

At work, that is. Outwardly.

You’re still professional, maintaining an invisible degree of separation.

If Jack looks at you and thinks about the noises he knows you make; the way you become eager and desperate for him; the way you submit for him; and is a little heavy handed with the praises just to see you squirm? Well. That’s only for him to know.

And for him to deal with, after your shared shifts are done. In the privacy of his or your bedroom walls.

In the wake of Jack taking a day off for you, you’re told you’ll be shunted with a double shift—starting with the day shift, then staying for your regularly scheduled night.

Weeks later, they finally cash it in. You should have known the rare weekend off was too good to be true. 48 hours off just to body-slam you with 24 hours on. Whoever managed the schedules had a sense of humour that rivalled the wishes made to a monkey’s paw.

You come in half an hour before shift change. Part of it is to ensure you get to see night shift. The other part of it is to maintain a good relationship with the day shifters. There’s only been a few occasions where you work with them. Most often than not, it’s an outstanding MCI. During those times, the last thing on your mind was a good impression.

“You better be in one piece when I come back,” Lena says, winking at you.

You can’t help the laugh. “Of course I will be.”

Dana grins. “Day shift has less wild patients. We’ll be fine.”

“20 bucks,” you say. “20 bucks to Dana if I’m in one piece by the time night shift gets back.”

“Deal.”

“You betcha.”

A handshake between the two charge nurses. You’re both the bet objective and witness. You make yourself scarce as they hand-off their duties.

“Here you go.” Dr Shen gifts you an iced coffee.

Your mouth drops opened. Regardless of how many times you’ve wheedled the attending for one, his Dunkin traditions remain a solo thing. “For me?”

“Quit making it a big deal before I take it back.”

“Wait, no take backs.” You grab the cup.

“Good luck. You’re repping night shift today.”

You almost feel like a kid being dropped off at school. “With you running things? I don’t think we have much of a reputation.”

Shen makes a face. “I’m taking the coffee—”

“No take backs!” You scamper away. Or, at least, try to. A two person collision, resulting in a firm hand gripping your shoulder to steady you.

“Careful—”

A sucked in gasp. “I’m so sorry, Dr Robby.” Thankfully, whatever coffee deity exists has deemed you worthy enough that the beverage hasn’t splashed onto him. You think you could die from mortification if it did.

“Just as I was talking about repping the night shift,” Shen mutters, assumedly under his breath, but it ends up being loud enough for you to hear.

Robby eyes your drink, then his attention flickers between the two of you. He shakes his head. “There cannot be two of you.”

“Of course not,” you say, quick, before Shen can impose whatever untruths he considers necessary. “I’m nothing like Dr Shen. You can actually rely on me, Dr Robby, sir.”

“Remind me to never do anything good for you, ever again,” Shen says, scowling. Evidently, you’ve never heard of the saying ‘never bite the hand that feeds you’.

You press your lips into a line, trying not to giggle. You make the mistake of meeting Robby’s gaze, who looks like he, too, is fighting a losing battle to mirth.

There are two of you. He doesn’t know how Jack does it. He can already feel the beginnings of a headache, and he hasn’t even officially started yet. Hell, Shen is meant to be going home soon. He shakes his head.

“Hey, there you are.” Parker rescuing you from the testosterone party at Central. An arm hooked around your shoulders, a quick greeting to Dr Robby before she waylays you. “I know we’re going to do hand-offs soon, but I’ve got a kid in Central 11. I really need your touch in there.”

“Yeah, of course. You got it, Dr Ellis.”

“Thank you.” She takes note of the iced coffee, grinning. “Shen was missing you today. We all did.”

“I’ll be back with you guys in 12 hours.”

“Is this your first 24?”

“First full 24.” You’ve done less hours before. Unscheduled overtime that saw you doing 18 hour days, sometimes. Woes of working in a hospital.

“Good luck. Have fun. But remember you’re stuck with us, not them.”

“Oh really, us and them?” McKay sidling up to the conversation, raising an eyebrow at Parker.

“You can’t poach our nurses,” Parker says.

“Don’t act like you guys aren’t trying to poach Mohan and Santos.”

“No comment.”

McKay turns to you.

You silently mime zipping your lips. You’re sworn into silence.

“This is why we don’t like night shift.”

“Hey,” both you and Parker protest.

McKay only laughs. “Alright, you can head out, Parker. We’ll take care of the stray.”

Parker salutes the both of you before she heads for the break room.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just haven’t pulled a 24 yet. They’re just making sure I’m good for it.”

McKay gives you a look that says she means more than just today. The last minute day off that Dr Abbot had taken had circulated the rumour mill around the Pitt. Time is the only thing that buried it.

But the way that McKay looks at you—it’s like she remembers that she had missed seeing you during that shift change. People had been so preoccupied with Dr Abbot that they forgot about the night shift nurses—the absent one, and a worried charge nurse.

“If you ever need to talk to someone,” she trails off.

“Thank you,” you say, because it’s easier than telling her that you would rather not. Jack finding out had been embarrassing enough. You were lucky that he was him. That you were you. That it worked out for the both of you.

As if sensing your unwillingness to talk, McKay squeezes your shoulder before she walks away. “I’m in chairs if you need me.”

“Got it, Dr McKay.” You take yourself back to Central. You try not to make in abundantly obvious that you notice Jack there. Arms crossed talking in low tones with Robby.

Jack sends you a lingering, sidelong look that you pretend doesn’t make you shiver. A slow tilt of his head towards the break room, an eyebrow raised. A silent request. And like all his requests, you obey. You make your way there. Busy yourself with washing the dishes dumped in the sink. Not technically your job, but it keeps your hands occupied.

Two minutes later, Jack’s in the break room, the door closing behind him.

Robby doesn’t know what compels him to follow, waiting until Jack’s no longer paying attention to him.

“Just take care of him like you would me,” Jack says.

Robby’s creeping. He knows. He doesn’t hear you say anything, but you must reply with a look, because Jack laughs. It’s something soft and fond. Not a sound he usually hears inside the walls of the Pitt.

“Alright. Maybe not.” Then he snorts. “Not unless he wants to.”

“Unless he—what?” you ask.

Jack hums.

From the sliver of opening, Robby sees Jack lean in close to you. Oh. Jack’s kissing you. Pieces falling into place. The long story that Jack never really told him in full. The day off he had taken. The only explanation he provided to Robby was that something’s wrong with one of my nurses.

It was you, all those weeks ago.

Really, Robby should have known. Jack’s ambience in the Pitt changed, not a drastic one, but something that usually followed in the wake of one of those nights. Sometimes Robby found Jack a willing partner when he noticed that the other attending was in his own head; sometimes they were each other’s fulfilment. It’s been a long friendship, the two of them. There was very little that wasn’t shared between them.

And yet, not a word about this.

Interesting.

Robby walks away before anyone starts to get suspicious of his presence outside the closed break room.

The thing about scrub change during night shift is they don’t get the luxury of taking time. Not like the day shift. And especially not between the heathen hours of midnight to 3 AM. Those three hours are always filled with intoxicated people, alcohol poisoning, and an abundance of vomit and blood.

With a smaller pool of staff, Jack has forgone squirrelling away into a bathroom for scrub change. It’s not an enacted rule, per se, but when every one of his doctors are balancing a higher volume of patients and fluids, it’s hard to spare the extra ten minutes to change clothes, get the new scrubs, then change again in a bathroom.

It’s something that the rest of the night shift has also adopted. Shen, Parker, Tim, Bridget. Lena, in the rare occasions that she leaves her station at the Central desk. All the other nurses and doctors that you work with.

It had taken you a while to get used to it. You didn’t have the years of familiarity when you first joined. But it had been one of those nights. A toddler crying so forcefully they made themselves sick. A man found unconscious in his home, and the first thing he did upon waking was expel the contents of his stomach. A woman with an arterial bleed.

“Scrub change!” you called out to Lena. She waves you off. As long as Lena knows where everyone is, the department will run smoothly. It was one of the first things you learned when starting. Tell Nurse Lena everything. She’ll take care of it.

Usually you’d change in the bathroom. But. You can hear how the night is getting to everyone. Even in the quick way that Lena waved to acknowledge you, hair plastered to her forehead.

You don’t have time. You need to get back out there.

You’re stripped down, goosebumps across your skin. Old scrubs in. Waiting for your new ones.

And that’s how Jack finds you. Directed towards the scrub machine by Lena when he asked for an extra pair of hands. He knows that his new staff are a little more uncertain about changing right in front of the machine. So he’s expecting to find you there clothed.

He says your name. “I need—”

“One sec.” Hopping with a knee bent, sliding into your pants. The top pulled on after. “Yes, sir?”

Jack’s looking away, jaw set. It’s not the first time he’s seen his staff out here. But it’s the first time he’s seen you. He had no idea you had any tattoos. Scratch that—why the fuck would he need to know that about you?

“Need you in Trauma 2,” he says, eventually.

“You got it, Dr Abbot.”

So.

Night shift scrub change. Different from day shift. A fact you forget after helping Dr Whitaker with an arterial bleed.

“Whoa!” Dana’s the one that drapes a spare patient gown over you.

“What—?” You blink at her.

She blinks at you.

“This isn’t night shift,” you breathe out your realisation.

“This isn’t night shift,” Dana agrees.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” a new voice. Crap. “If I had a body like that, I’d show it off too.”

“Thank you, Myrna.” You flee into the bathroom. Fucking hell. So much for not embarrassing yourself in front of the day shift. Donning the patient gown, you’re back at scrub change, waiting for the new set of scrubs. It already feels like a longer process. You’d already be in new ones at this point. Jack was definitely onto something when he made the decision.

New scrubs obtained, then back into the bathroom to change. Patient gown discarded.

“So, when you guys are trying to talk me into joining nights,” Santos’ voice, walking alongside you to Central. “Is this what I have to look forward to? A free show?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “You saw that?”

“Oh, come on, who didn’t?” she says, cackling at the groan you let out.

“It’s just faster,” you try to defend. You’re at Central, eyeing the board above you.

“Fucking Jack,” you hear Robby mutter under his breath. He’s sliding his phone into his back pocket, leaning over the computer.

“I’m really sorry,” you say, shuffling closer to him. You think you’d bury yourself if an authority figure was mad at you. “Please don’t take me to HR.”

Robby shakes his head. It’s already happened a number of times when any night shift staff had to do a stint during the day. Jack Abbot remains the bane of his existence. “No HR. Just try not to let it happen again.”

“Yes, sir.” You don’t notice the way he looks at you at that.

He’s thinking, probably too much, about things he shouldn’t be ruminating on. The way you are with Jack. The dynamic you share. If any of that obedient yes sirs make their way into it.

“There’s a head lac in North 3,” Robby says, instead.

You look at Santos.

“Hell yeah,” Santos grins.

You follow her in there.

An Anna Morales. Late 20s, will probably need stitches. An accident that she’s being vague about. She didn’t want to deal with the cost of an ambulance, so her boyfriend drove her to the PTMC. When he realised there was going to a wait, he told her he’d go home and wait for her call if she ever got into the ER. She had just called him a few minutes ago when McKay got her through chairs.

A stellar review of a boyfriend that has you and Santos trading judgemental looks.

“Hey, they told me to find you in… here.”

You had already been stepping aside when the door opened.

Turning towards the newcomer.

Oh. Shit.

The boyfriend.

You recognise him. Kevin N. Early 30s. Pictures on an app. Four months of talking, of dates. Then a Saturday when you decided to take the leap. To put trust into him. And he left. Ghosted you. No texts, no calls. Radio silence.

Santos says your name, a little too annoyed for it to be the first time.

“Yes, sorry.” You busy yourself with setting up a tray with the tools she needs. Sterilised and clean tools. Avoiding the way Kevin looks at you as he takes a seat by the bed. By Anna.

You try not to throw up while you help Santos. Hoping that she’ll dismiss you as soon as she doesn’t need you anymore.

Santos keeps up a steady stream of conversation as she works. Her bedside manners have come a long way since she first started. You chime in every now and then. But you know you’re not as engaged as you usually are. Your skin’s crawling every time you feel Kevin’s gaze on you.

“Excuse me,” you say. Your tether’s cut short. You exit the room, shutting the door behind you. Technically, there’s no need for you and Santos to both be in there.

You’re heaving as you escape into the restroom. Your first instinct is to call Jack. You make it to the third ring before you hang up. Feel the static in your head as you watch his contact light up the phone screen. You slide to decline the call.

Sent: sorry was just missing you Jack: It’s okay. I have time to take your call. Sent: don’t worry about it. just got busy. sorry Jack: I miss you too, sweetheart.

Breathe. In and out. You pocket your phone and head to the break room next door. You know that caffeine would only increase the shaking, but you don’t think you can afford something that’s supposed to help you relax. You’d only fall asleep. You’re not even halfway through your 24 hours yet.

The door opens as you’re waiting for the coffee.

Robby steps through. “You alright, kid?” Though he knows he has a tendency to pull long hours, he knows how tough a 24 hour shift can be. They don’t get assigned often. And when they do, the attendings and charge nurses are always alerted.

You paste on a grin, nodding. Attempt to ignore the thudding in your chest. “Hanging in there.”

“You need anything?”

You take a sip from your mug. “Real coffee.” The break room’s sludge tastes like coffee-flavoured water. Even paling in comparison to the iced coffee that Shen had gotten you. And that was finished hours ago.

The corner of Robby’s lips twitch upwards. “And you say you’re nothing like Dr Shen.”

“Wait—no. No, I didn’t mean it like that.” This is easy to fall into. A little ribbing. Not thinking about the patient and her boyfriend that you just left with Santos.

Robby grins a little more openly. “You know, you can talk to me if you need anything, right?”

“I know. Thank you, Dr Robby.” Again, it’s easier to thank the generosity than dismiss them altogether. Something you’ve learned from dealing with people that you know mean well.

“You don’t have to wait for Jack.”

Your gaze snapped onto the attending, trying to swallow past the thick thing in your throat. “Um—I’m just. Used to working with the night crew.” Not quite a lie, not quite the truth either. You know Robby’s prodding, but you’re not sure what for. You can’t exactly deny that you’d rather have these talks with Jack—you’ve been working with him for two years, now. It would make sense that you’d trust him more than the day shift attending.

“I know he told you to take care of me.”

Oh shit. Jack said that in the break room when it was the two of you, alone. And unless Jack later relayed that to Robby within their own conversations you weren’t privy to, Robby wasn’t meant to know that. You remain frozen.

“But you also need to take care of yourself,” Robby says.

You blink. You have no idea where he’s trying to lead this discussion. “I’m—I’m okay.”

“You seem stressed.”

“I’ve still got 15 hours left on my shift.”

Robby nods, but remains unconvinced by your words. “Hey.” And his hand lays heavy on your shoulder.

The weight of it stills you, eyebrows creasing as you peer up at him. Waiting. He probably has some kind of wisdom he wants to impart onto you.

But he stays silent. Breathing. You don’t realise you’re matching it until your face eventually smooths out.

His thumb drifting, rubbing up and down over the juncture where shoulder meets neck. “Relax,” he murmurs.

And you can’t resist the way your eyelids flicker shut in response. To his touch. The tone of his voice.

“Good,” he whispers.

You don’t realise you’re swaying into him until you feel his solid chest against you. Feel the rise and fall of his breathing. Letting out a noise. Half complaining, half comforted.

“There you go.” Low tones. Soft. Talking you down from trembles that you hadn’t even noticed have wracked your frame. “I know something’s got you stressed out. I just want to take care of you like Jack would.”

The mention of Jack’s name is like cold water dumped on you. Sobering. You suck in a breath and draw away from Robby. Blinking wildly. “I—um—I have—I have to go.”

“It’s okay—”

But you’ve already left the break room.

Robby sighs, taking out his phone to send off another text to Jack.

It’s still not shift change yet. Guilt is a heavy thing in your chest, and what was once you looking forward to it, turns into dread.

You have to tell Jack what happened with Robby, even if you don’t fully understand what exactly transpired. It just felt comforting.

You’re bypassing dispatch to head towards the stairwell. You don’t realise you don’t hear the door close behind you.

You need a breather, and you’re kind of apprehensive of heading to the usual places. Robby might be there. Not to mention, Kevin and Anna are in the ED.

“Hey.”

You pivot, fast. Not having expecting anyone to follow you out. Much less…

“Kevin,” you say. Swallow thickly.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. He’s approaching like you’re a cornered animal.

Maybe you are. Your eyes flicker to the door behind him. The stairs present another way out.

“I wanted to apologise.”

“Right now? While I’m at work?” You can’t help baring your teeth.

“You haven’t been making it easy for me.”

You blink. “You ghosted me.”

Kevin drops his head into a nod. “Yeah. And I’m apologising for it.”

You still haven’t heard him say the word ‘sorry’. “I’m not going to say anything to Anna, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s water under the bridge at this point.” Part of you wants to laugh. Him being an asshole to the nth degree landed you right into Jack’s arms.

“Water under the bridge?” Nose flaring. Jaw ticking.

“Yeah. It’s fine. I’ve moved passed it.”

“Moved passed—?” Scoffing, lips forming a scowl. “Moved passed it? Passed me?”

“You left. It’s been weeks. And clearly, you’ve moved on too.”

He shoves you backwards.

Stumbling, your head colliding into the wall behind you. Starbursts of white flashing across your vision. “Ow, what—?!”

An arm barred across your chest. “You do not get to move on—”

Trying to push at him. “Get off of—”

“Shut up. You fucking bitch.” His fingers around your throat. Cinching, pushing on top of your trachea. Fingers and thumb digging into the flesh on the sides. “You don’t get to fucking move on from me.”

You try to kick, fists furling, punching at his arms. Shoulders. Anywhere you can make contact.

“Stop fucking struggling. You like being choked. You want this, you fucking slut.”

Stars dancing in your vision. Unable to get air in.

“Hey—oh, fuck—!” A voice breaking through the ringing in your ears.

“We need security out here!” Another voice.

A blur of movement. The weight forcibly removed from you. You slide down the wall, hacking out coughs. Inhaling lungfuls of air.

“Holy shit. Are you okay?” Whitaker kneels in front of you, crowding into your space. Fingers going for your neck.

You shy away from him.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. But I really need to check on you.”

“What the hell happened?” Another person.

“I got him!”

Blinking, looking over Whitaker’s shoulder, down the hall to see Santos on Kevin. He’s face down, trying to wriggle out from whatever hold Santos has whilst she’s perched on him.

You see Mike move towards them. Cuffing Kevin. He yells something.

“Come on, let’s get you up.” Whitaker helps you stand. You don’t know what it is that makes you feel unsteady on your own feet. Adrenaline. Fear. A previous lack of air. Something else. But you’re grateful for the support he provides.

Santos pushes the door open. “Dr Robby!”

“We need an empty room!” Whitaker calls out. He has one arm around you, helping you walk.

“Six is opened!” Dana relays.

“Holy shit, what happened?” Princess follows you in.

“Mike has him,” Santos says. She’s gloving up. “Fucking asshole was choking—”

“What the hell?” Robby.

There’s too much happening.

Princess shines a light into your eyes, checking your pupils. Lifting your eyelids. “Robby.”

His arms are crossed, watching them mill around. Steps in closer at Princess’ alert. “Subconjunctival hemorrhaging,” he murmurs.

The flashlight blessedly clicked off.

Princess holds out a finger, making you track her movements.

When she’s done, Santos elbows Whitaker out of the way, gingerly tilting your head back to inspect your neck. “Does it hurt to breathe?”

You nod.

“Hurt to swallow?”

You swallow. Nod again.

“What about talking?”

You take a second. “I think—hurts,” you wheeze, wincing.

“Did you lose consciousness?”

You’re caught between shaking your head and nodding.

“Vision went fuzzy?”

You nod again. Thank God for Santos. She’s questioning in a way that allows you not to speak. She’s going to be a great doctor, you think, even if she decides her future is outside the walls of the Pitt.

You raise a hand. Guide it to the back of your head.

“You hit your head?” she asks.

You confirm.

“We need a CTA. Let’s keep this room for observation,” Robby says. “Minimum six hours. You know the protocol.” And this, he directs to you.

You dip your head. There goes the rest of your 24 hours shift.

Whitaker’s across from Santos on the other side of the bed. Checking the back of your head. “No bleeding.” Fingers on your scalp, palpating.

You flinch.

“Responsive to pain. A little tenderness but no lacerations. That’s good news, right?” His gaze flickers from Robby, then to Santos.

“We’ll wait for the scans,” Robby says. No false hope.

Whitaker presses his lips into a line, as if attempting to give you a reassuring look.

He, Princess, and Santos make themselves scarce.

Robby lingers in the room, sitting on the stool beside the bed. “I called Jack,” he says eventually.

You look at him.

“We both know I had to. He’s already on his way.”

You shoot him a tired thumbs up.

Silent, again. Then, Robby huffs out a chuckle. A hand at the back of his neck, massaging. “Shit. Jack’s never going to let me borrow you for day shift again.”

You can’t help the laugh. Then you wince. “Ow,” you manage, hoarse.

“Sorry, kiddo.” A hand on your shoulder, peering at you.

Again, you can’t help the way that you seem to settle under it.

Princess reappears. “CT’s ready for us.”

Robby feigns checking the bruises around your neck. Hand moving away. “Let’s go.” Between Robby and Princess, they push your gurney to the elevator to get your scan.

By the time you’re done and returned to your comfortable prison in room six, Jack arrives. A rap of knuckles on the door, then it’s opening.

Jack’s face—his eyes on you. Face stony. “Robby,” he says, nodding at him, both a greeting and dismissal.

“Alright. See you out there.” It doesn’t take further prompting for him to leave. The curtain drawn, door closed behind him.

Jack performs the same exams that Princess, Santos, and Whitaker have done. Eyes the monitor quietly tracking your vitals—you muted it as soon as Princess hooked you up. Silent as he does so. You know there’s something brewing in his eyes, dark. The tenseness of his frame. You watch him move around. Never settling.

“Jack,” you say. Your voice is still raw.

“Don’t talk,” he says, from where he’s standing by the computer. Scrolling through your chart.

“Jack,” you croak again.

He turns, eyes hardened as he levels his gaze with yours.

“Can you just come here?”

And he does, because he has never known what it’s like to not yield before you. Crossing the room. You don’t hesitate to reach for him, grabbing his arm to pull him closer. Face buried against his broad chest as you allow yourself to finally shatter.

“Okay,” he murmurs, and pushes the guardrail to the gurney down. Removing the barrier that separates you.

The trembling of your body, held together by strong arms enveloping around you.

“Okay.” A kiss pressed to the top of your head, a hand rubbing up and down your upper arm. An understanding of what you need from him in this moment.

He’s holding you like you’re something fragile, something gentle settling in his chest. A method of soothing himself as well as you.

The tightening of his muscles ever since Robby had called him to let him know that you had gotten hurt. The way he couldn’t let himself calm down until he saw you. And even when he did see you—God, the bruises around your neck. The red spots in your eyes. Your voice still hoarse.

To hold you in his arms, reminding himself that you’re alive. Hurt, but alive. That’s what he needs, and if that’s what you need, then he will give in, tenfold. He would immolate himself to keep you warm, if you ever asked. How dangerous a love like this.

“Hey,” Jack says, and his voice is equally hoarse for a different reason. Shifts back for a moment, hands framing your face. Thumbs wiping against your wet cheeks. “Hey. Fuck. You scare the shit out of me sometimes, you know that?”

You open your mouth.

“Don’t say sorry.”

You shut your mouth.

Jack shakes his head, chuckling gruffly. Leans in to kiss you. A thumb brushing against your cheekbone.

You grab one of his hands, pulling it down. As soon as it glides past your chin, his hand attempts to slide out of yours. You hold fast.

“Baby—” he starts.

“Please,” you manage. “Please, I just want to feel you.”

He stares down at you, eyes dark. He doesn’t say anything, but you note the moment his resolve falters. The breath he releases, the way his eyelids flicker as they shut. Jack kisses you again, and his palm rests against the side of your throat. Not pressing. Not firm. Just his touch, present.

You feel yourself melt into him. His other hand on the gurney, like he’s stopping himself from grabbing onto you.

There’s a knock on the door. “It’s Robby.” The door’s opened, but he hasn’t pulled back the curtain yet.

“Yeah?” Jack pulls back just enough to meet your gaze. His hand still on your throat, thumb brushing against your chin.

“Police are here. They need to take a statement.”

You frown. “I’m not pressing charges.”

“It’s hospital policy. NFS,” Jack reminds you.

Non-fatal strangulation. Again, it’s protocol you know from working here for two years. You never expected to be on the receiving end of it.

“Can you stay?” you ask.

“Robby can. He’s chief attending.”

Robby clears his throat. The curtain slides, metal rings clinking against each other as he pulls enough to step into the room. The curtain ruffles behind him.

You feel your heart thud wildly, like you’ve been caught.

Jack doesn’t move away.

Robby’s gaze fixes on Jack’s hand against your neck. Flickers between your deer-in-the-headlights expression, and Jack’s relaxed look angled over his shoulder. “John’s out there,” he says, instead of commenting on anything. “He can take care of things for a little bit. He knows we’re in here.”

Of course. You completely missed that night shift started. That meant Robby was officially off the clock. And Jack was meant to be working, not babysitting you.

You move back, like you’re wanting to detach yourself from his hand. “It’s—it’s okay—”

Jack turns back to you. His hand remains where it is, thumb digging lightly into the line of your jaw. “Robby said I’m good to say.”

“But—”

“I’m staying.”

Your eyes shifting to Jack, then over his shoulder to Robby, still near the curtain. Just one step into the room. “Thank you,” you say.

Robby dips his head in acknowledgement. “You feeling alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Your heart rate’s pretty high.”

All three of you now studying the monitor.

“Uhh,” you manage. That’s embarrassing. You feel like you’re still riding the adrenaline high from when Robby came in and Jack hadn’t moved away from you. He still hasn’t. “I just… wasn’t expecting you to come in.”

Robby snorts. “Not the most compromising situation I’ve seen him in.”

Jack just laughs. Thumb brushing against the angle of your jaw before his lips graze your temple. “Robby has a thing for watching,” he murmurs.

Your mouth drops open, frowning. “You’ve—you’ve done things together?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, casual as ever. Grins down at you before he steps away. Sinking into the stool beside the bed with a muted groan.

You have more questions that they apparently, will leave unanswered.

Robby pulls back the curtain, opening the door. “Ready for you,” he calls out.

Two police officers enter, and the room feels smaller. They introduce themselves to you. Officers Reyes and Boyd.

“This should be fairly straightforward,” Reyes says. Kind eyes, despite the years weathering her face. “A few standard questions and then we’ll be out of your hair. It’s protocol for us to respond to these situations.”

“I appreciate it, officers,” you say. You cross your arms over your chest.

Boyd flips open a notepad.

“Do you remember if you said anything to him that could have been taken as hostile? I know people can get angry about the wait times here,” Reyes begins.

Your brows knit together. “He’s not a patient,” you say. Maybe your brain is sluggish from being starved of oxygen for a few seconds, but you’re slow to realise what’s happening.

Boyd blinks up from the notepad he’s jotting in.

“He’s a visitor. He came in for a patient. In North 3.”

“Right. And what was his relation to the patient?”

“A partner. The patient’s his girlfriend, or something. This wasn’t a random—I knew him.”

And just like that, it’s out in the open. You keep your attention on the two officers, but you can see Robby shifting behind them, lax as he leans against the wall. And Jack—you don’t want to look. Because you know how smart he is. He’ll connect the dots as soon as he even has a fraction of the picture.

Conflict welling inside you. You wanted him to stay, but you also want him out of the room in this moment.

Reyes looks at you. “Are you sure you don’t want to press charges?”

“I’m sure.” A long a messy process, you think.

She sighs. “Okay. What’s your relation to him?”

“An… ex-something. It wasn’t really labelled.”

An honorary scoff from the older woman. “Dating these days.”

“And how long did you know him?” Boyd asks.

“Four months.”

A brief moment from the corner of your eye, you can tell it clicks for Jack. The quiet intake of air. The shift of the stool.

“And the last time you talked to him?” Boyd asks.

“A month or so ago, maybe,” you answer.

“So you coincidentally met him today?”

“Yes. I was helping a doctor with a patient. I wasn’t expecting to see him here.”

“Prior to this attack would you say this kind of violent behaviour is typical or atypical for him?” Reyes asks.

“Um… atypical,” you say.

Boyd flips to another page of the pad. “When you saw him today, did he say anything that could be taken as hostile?”

“No. I didn’t talk to him. He didn’t talk to me either. I figured we were going to ignore our… history because his girlfriend was in the room.”

More notes from Boyd. It kind of unnerves you, but you know it’s part of his job. “So when you finally got to talk to him…”

“I went out into the stairwell to take a break. He followed me out there. He said he wanted to… apologise for how we left things.”

“And how did you leave things?” Reyes, this time.

You give her a wry look. “I slept with him and then he ghosted me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Men,” she says, derisive. She carries herself like an auntie that you would want to gossip with, wine glass in hand.

You smile a little in response to her. “I told him it was water under the bridge and he seemed… angry at that.”

“And then he attacked you?”

“Yes. He pushed me. I stumbled. I hit the back of my head on the wall. And then he…” And your gaze fall to your hands. Absentmindedly wringing your fingers. Running your nail against the pad of your thumb. “He—um—choked me.”

Reyes says your name, soft. “At any point, did you fear for your life?”

“Yes,” you breathe out, and you feel cold and small for admitting it. “I, um, I tried fighting back but I couldn’t—do anything. Against him.”

“Okay,” Reyes says, gentle.

“Did he say anything? While he was choking you. To make you think he was threatening your life?” Boyd asks.

“Um—no.”

“But he said something?” Reyes again.

“He said I should like it,” you tell her. Even though your voice carries to the other occupants of the room, you feel safer directing your words to just her. “Because I… asked him to during sex.”

Reyes is already shaking her head, even before you finish speaking. “That has no bearing on what happened—”

“Did you?” Boyd asks.

You blink. “I’m sorry?”

“Did you want him to—?”

“Boyd,” Reyes warns.

Your mouth falls opened. “He tried to kill me—”

“You said he wasn’t typically violent but you were also asking him to—”

“Officer Boyd.”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

Both Robby and Jack are standing. Robby already has the door opened, the noise of the ED disturbing the room again. Jack stands between you and the officers.

“I think it’s time you leave my hospital,” Robby says, curt. It registers to you that he was the one that spoke up just moments before.

“I am so sorry,” Reyes says, to you. “I will be talking to Officer Boyd after we leave.” Half to you, half as a threat to Boyd.

“Thank you, officers,” Jack says, equally short in addressing them.

Robby walks out with them, the door closing again.

You feel humiliation sear your face, clog your throat, burn your eyes. “I’m sorry—”

“No, none of that.” Jack steps into your space, curling his own fingers around yours. Stopping your blind mission of picking them apart. “Look at me.”

With tears in your eyes, you do. Frustrated and ashamed. Face tilted up at him.

Squeezing your hand. “It’s not your fault. What happened wasn’t on you. Never was, alright? Tell me you understand.”

You want to. But a splintered noise in your throat releases as you crumple. And Jack sighs something ragged; this isn’t a wound to be mended in a day, even if it’s what his hands are known to do. Too intimately familiar with the knowledge that healing isn’t linear.

Twenty minutes after the police had left, Robby pops in to tell Jack that he’s leaving, and that the ED needed their night attending on the floor again.

“You alright?” Robby asks you, after Jack leaves with a kiss to your forehead.

You nod, but you can tell that he doesn’t believe you. “Can you tell Dana that she owes Lena $20?”

Robby’s bemused look is enough to make you laugh. “Do I want to know what it’s for?”

“20 to Dana if I made it through to night shift in one piece.”

Robby shakes his head. “Now that’s just tempting fate.”

You grin.

“Yeah, I’ll tell them.”

“Thanks, Dr Robby.”

His hands are braced on the rails of the bed. “You know it’s not your fault, right?” he asks, quiet.

You don’t verbally answer, but the silence is answer enough. Your lips pressed into a line, nodding too late.

Robby blows out a breath. “Yeah, didn’t think so.” He reaches out, cuffing you under your chin.

You blink at the gesture, and he leaves with a soft smile.

Six hours of observation pass without further complications. You’re sent home after Jack checks on your CT results and vitals one last time.

“I’m sending Robby over to yours,” he says.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” you tell him.

“For my peace of mind. Please.”

And you’re not able to say no to him. The way he fights off the smug smile lets you know that he knows that about you.

“Whatever,” you say.

Jack grins. “Thank you.”

Half an hour after you get home, Robby is there. You slide over the guest slippers, letting the door close behind him.

“You really didn’t have to babysit me on your time off.”

“He owes me. I owe him.”

“Right. Because of compromising situations.”

Robby shrugs, gaze firmly on you. “We have… shared interests.”

You shake your head before leading him through to your tiny apartment, heading for the living room. You hear him follow. “I don’t really know what you’re meant to be doing, but feel free to set yourself up in here.” Between the kitchen and the living room, you assume the living room wins that competition, thanks to the couch.

Fluffing out the blanket you have on there. Pivoting, faltering in your turn when Robby is in your space. Not a few steps away like you had assumed, but too close behind.

His arm hooks around your waist so you don’t fall. “Sit. Let me check you.” From his pocket, he fishes out his flashlight.

You swallow, removing your hand from his chest; you had placed it there for balance. “Jack already checked before I left.”

Robby raises his eyebrows at you. He doesn’t even have to speak to argue with you.

You groan, realising your losing battle. Dropping onto the cushions.

Robby lowers into a crouch in front of you. And like personal space is nonexistent, his arm across your knees, stabilising himself as he shines the flashlight into your eyes. Tests your pupils; murmurs to himself about the healing of the blood in your eyes; clicks the flashlight off to perform an eye movement test.

Fingers pushing your chin up and aside, scrutinising the bruises. “Breathing’s okay?”

“Yep. And talking. And swallowing. Probably good to eat.”

“You haven’t eaten?”

“I was hooked up.”

Robby pushes himself up with the arm across your knees. Grunting a little as he does so. He heads into your kitchen.

“We could probably just order something,” you say, frowning as you follow him.

He gives you an unimpressed look. “Jack said to take care of you.”

You’re reminded of Jack coming to yours to take care of you after he found out about the sub drop in the hospital. Different kind of taking care of, you assume.

“You want to call him?” Robby’s phone already sliding out from his pocket, blindly holding it out to you as he digs through your fridge. Like he’s aware of your internal thoughts.

You take it, watch him rifle through your things. Unlocking his phone with a swipe. “You don’t have a password?”

“They’re annoying.”

“Oh my God, you’re so old.” You click onto his contacts. Jack’s is starred as a favourite. You call him, phone to your ear. Heading towards the living room. You’re still within earshot, and Robby’s periphery if he looks over. But it’s gives an illusion of privacy.

“What’s up, brother?” Jack greets.

“No Robby. Just me,” you say.

“Give me—” Rustling, the noise of the ED muffled. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. We’re okay. I’m just—you told him to take care of me.” You don’t phrase it like a question.

But he responds, anyway. “I did.”

“In what way?”

Jack makes a noise, and you know he’s shrugging with the answer, even if you can’t see him. “Whatever way you need.”

“I need you to stop beating around the bush with this. Please.”

“Whatever you would want from me, he can give you as well.”

You’re standing still in the living room. Watching Robby mill around your kitchen. The stove’s on, the flame turned to low. He found your pot from the cupboard. “And you’re okay with it?”

“If it’s Robby, yeah.” Like it’s a simple thing. “We’ve been friends a long time.”

“Just friends don’t do this kind of stuff.”

“Maybe not,” Jack hums. “You okay with it?”

“I’m—trying to wrap my head around it.”

Robby’s hunted down the chopping board and knives. Has dug around your freezer for protein as well.

“You asked me for everything, baby,” Jack says, soft. “That always included Robby.”

You swallow around the cloying thing in your throat. “Yeah.” Something in your chest aches. There’s love there, you think, between them. If not reciprocated by Robby, then at least from Jack’s perspective, it’s present. A hanging thing between them.

“When’s your break?”

“It’s already past 2. I’m definitely not getting one until after 4.”

“Gremlin hours,” you acknowledge distractedly. Still watching Robby. You could do something here. Permission has been granted. Whatever you want from Jack. “Stay on the line.”

“Okay?” Jack says, confused.

You pull the phone away from your ear, press the button to place the volume on speakerphone. Stride into the kitchen. “Robby.”

“Yeah?” He barely has time to look up from the chopping board.

You’re on him. Lips on his.

Robby makes a muffled, surprised noise before the knife clatters on the chopping board. Hands on your waist, stabilising as he kisses you back. Responding. “I take it you had a good talk?” Robby asks.

“He’s still—” You press the phone against his chest. One of his hands grab for it.

Then you sink to the tiled floor. On your knees, looking up at Robby.

“Shit,” Robby huffs, looking down at you wondrously.

“Can I—” You swallow, wetting your lips. “Is this…” Okay? Allowed? Alright with him? With either of them?

Robby seems to sense your hesitance. The other hand stroking your face. “You wanna suck me off while Jack listens to us?”

The phone crackles with Jack’s responding low hiss. Caught up on what’s happening on the other side.

You nod. “Can I?”

“Yeah, honey,” Robby says.

You look at the phone, cradled against his chest. Then back at Robby.

“Jack,” Robby prompts.

“Yeah, that’s okay. More than,” Jack manages.

And somehow, this is you, in your kitchen with Jack on the phone, Robby with his pants pooled around his ankles, leaning against the sink. With you on your knees, lapping at Robby’s balls, digits curled around his hardened cock, pumping him.

Robby’s fingers tightened in the roots of your hair. Groaning aloud. “Fucking hell.”

Then you’re sliding his cock into your mouth. Your jaw feels unhinged with the width of him. He’s big—you feel it in the strain in the corner of your lips.

“That’s it, honey,” Robby grunts. “All the way in.”

You slide further. Gagging around him. Tears in your eyes. Your nose to his pubis. Your ears ringing.

Robby’s mouth moving, saying something. You don’t hear. Talking to Jack, maybe. You hope. His fingers flexing against your hair. Pushing you down.

You stay. Seconds. Then his hand moves and you pull away, sucking in air. Drool all over his cock.

“Look at you,” Robby says. Caressing your face again. “You’re so pretty like this. You want to let Jack see?”

You shiver, nodding, mouthing at his cock again. Take him back into your mouth.

“Look up for me.” Robby takes a picture with his phone. Taps at the screen.

And the moment Jack sees it. “Fuck,” muttered out, hoarse. “Jesus, fuck, you’re killing me.”

You suck in your cheeks, sliding back and forth around Robby’s cock. Despite the crappy apartment, you don’t attempt to hide the sounds emanating from your mouth. Wet. Slurping. All because you want—need Jack to hear it from the phone.

Robby’s fingers are twisted in your hair again. Fucking his hips into your throat. Using your mouth like it’s your cunt. You’re clenching around nothing at the thought of it.

Robby groans. “That’s it, fuck, that’s it. So fucking good like this. Gonna come down your throat. Is that what you needed, you little slut?”

You’re moaning around him. Jack never seemed to want to insult you, and you never asked him to. But this. A hand between your legs just to give yourself some semblance of relief.

And then he’s coming. Spilling dregs of himself down your throat as he groans. And you’re swallowing him down. Everything. His hand keeping you there as he grinds into your face. You let him use you. You want nothing else.

“Fuck. Fuck. Come here.” Robby pulls you up. Still has the phone; Jack’s breathing hard on the other side.

You lean in to kiss him. It’s uncoordinated. Robby walks you backwards into the living room. Deposits you on the couch. Strips you of your bottoms without any ceremony. Tosses the phone next to your head.

You’re bent in half, ankles to your ears. He’s pushing and you’re holding your legs up for him.

And his mouth is on your wet pussy.

You’re gasping, humping into his face.

“He eating you out?” Jack’s voice is rough.

“Yes,” you breathe. “Yes, oh my God.”

Robby eats you out until you’re crying, blubbering for release. And only when Jack says that he needs to return to work in a few minutes does Robby let you come.

Jack’s voice in your ear. “That’s it, baby. I wanna hear how good he’s making you feel. I know. You’re being so good for us, baby.”

Robby cleans the both of you up after he decides when you’re done. You’re whining, holding onto his hand as he tries to move into the kitchen.

“I’m going to put everything away.”

You look up at him. Teary-eyed. Letting go of his hand. “Okay,” you say, despite it being laced with displeasure.

“I’ll be back.” He makes fast work of packing away the ingredients he had prepared. Into containers then the fridge. Turning the stovetop off.

When he’s back in the living room, he dumps himself onto the couch. Pulls you against him. It’s not a big space, but you make it work. He’s laying across the cushions, and you’re tucked against his chest.

You both fall asleep like that.

When you wake up, your head’s pillowed in a lap. Fingers running through your hair. Your awakening dictated by slow movements.

“You feeling okay?” Jack’s soft murmurs. He places the book he was entertaining himself with down, helping you sit up.

You hum, reaching to rub at your eyes.

Jack stops before you can make contact, tutting at your forgetfulness. “Let me see.” A palm slotted to your face, tilting your head. Checking your eyes, then the bruising around your neck.

“What time is it?” You twist his wrist, peering at his watch. 8:37 AM. Already after shift change—Robby must have left; Jack came over to yours instead of going home. You’re not sure on the timeline of it.

“Robby made matzo ball soup. He said you fell asleep before you could eat.”

“Hm, got distracted.”

“Alright. Up. We’re both eating.”

You hum, following him along. Still feeling bleary with sleep. You’re sat on the dining chair. Jack drapes a jacket on top of you. You pull it tighter around your shoulders, studying the fabric. Taking in the scent of it. Unfamiliar to you. “It’s not yours.”

“Hm?” Jack takes out the container from the fridge, two bowls, two spoons.

“The jacket. It’s not yours.”

Jack blinks at you. Then shrugs, bustling around. “Must be Robby’s. He probably forgot it.”

“Isn’t it cold?”

“He’ll live. He’s probably got another one at work.” Two bowls of soup placed on the table. Jack shifts his chair so he’s sitting to the side, diagonal from you, not across. “You feeling okay?”

You hum your confirmation, tucking your spoon into the soup.

He watches you skim the top of it, then again. Not eating. Yeah, you’re definitely overthinking something but being cagey about it. He leans forward, catching your gaze. “Out with it.”

You try not to look away from the intensity of his eyes. You know that if you do, he’ll just chase it again. In a more obvious way. “Was it—was what we did okay?”

Jack tilts his head. “I said it was, didn’t I?”

You’re nodding. “You did.”

“Was it okay for you?”

“Yes.”

“And after?”

“We fell asleep on the couch.”

Jack inclines his head like it just affirms whatever knowledge he already had. Probably insight gained from check-ins with Robby. “Okay.” Attention flickering between your eyes. “You want to see him again?”

“Is… is that okay?”

“More than okay.”

“But we…” You swallow the words down, like you can’t verbalise your thoughts.

“Hey,” Jack says. Pushes both the bowls further into the table, pulls your chair closer to him. It screeches against the floor, but you both pay the noise no heed. “Whatever you want with him isn’t going to take away from us. It’s just more. And that’s okay.”

“For you too?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you lo—”

“I love you.”

And his words sit. Lingers in the space between you. You make a noise, caught between hopeful and wounded.

“I know you have your hang ups about me saying it,” Jack continues. “But I do. Okay?”

You nod, sniffling. “Okay. I love you too.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He watches you, for a second. “Come here.”

You climb into his lap. It’s not comfortable—the chairs are crappy and wooden but he doesn’t make a complaint with you straddling his thighs. Tucking your face into his neck.

Jack rubs his hands up and down your back, your arms. Fingers cradling the nape of your neck. Lifting you out to kiss you. Gentle. “Okay, crybaby?” A murmuring tone, ridiculously fond.

You let out a wet chuckle and kiss him again. And somewhere along the way, you’re grinding into his lap, and Jack makes an amused sound.

“Really?” Fiery eyes turned up to you, voice hoarse. “Robby ate you out and you still need more?”

“Jack,” you say. Beg him.

He kisses your cheek. “Eat first.” He grabs your thighs, spreads out his legs. Slowly thrusts his hips up to your core.

You whimper. “Jack.”

“I know. Eat first, okay?”

“You’re mean.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen mean, baby.”

You’re back in your seat, swamped in Robby’s jacket. Feasting on the soup that he made for you—the both of you.

The healing is straightforward. Your eye returns to normal. The bruises fade. Jack stops acting like you’ll evaporate if he dares to look away.

You don’t know if Jack and Robby talk about you, or their status. But Robby looks at you more during handoffs. Talks to Jack, low tones between them. You have no way of deciphering their conversations.

You pick up a few shifts during the day, not 24 hours, but exchanging them for your regular nights. Covering absences for other nurses; Kim is sick; Jesse’s on a much needed weekend away.

You get to see Robby more. Other than more eye contact and seemingly innocent touches, nothing changes.

And then a coincidental night off for you. Jack’s shift is scheduled to finish earlier than usual. Robby doesn’t work the next day. Maybe not from the hands of fate, but purposefully moulded by them. They are attendings, after all.

A text from Jack, then a call, checking in about plans. Dinner and after.

All of you, in Jack’s place. A slow meal. Jack talks to Robby like they haven’t had a chance to catch up in years. You’re content to listen to them, not quite taking in what they’re saying, but listening to the timbre of their voices.

You don’t realise how much you’re staring until Robby pauses, looking over to you.

“Anything you want to say?” he asks.

“No,” you answer, honest.

“Okay.”

Your leg’s balanced on your knee under the table. Jack cups a hand over your ankle, thumb massaging your Achilles’ tendon.

It’s an otherworldly kind of domestic. Until you end up in Jack’s bed. Naked. Spread out under Robby. His knee between your legs, and you’re rutting against him, tugging him in for a kiss.

Jack digs through the nightstand. Blindfold, ribbon restraints, suction vibrator. Deposits them on the bed. Distracts you with kisses while Robby busies himself with tying you to the bed frame at the head of the bed.

“Not too tight?” he asks.

You swallow, feeling your heart race. Tug at them experimentally. “No. It’s fine.”

Jack kisses down your neck, lips over your pulse. Hums at the rapid thudding beneath. “You’re okay, sweetheart. We’ll take care of you.” He kisses you again, once. “Ready for the blindfold?”

You confirm, and then the fabric over your eyes. Around to the back of your head. Tightening, but not damaging.

“Okay?” Robby asks.

“Yes,” you breathe.

“You can stop at any time,” Jack reminds.

“I know.”

“Okay. I’m going to let Robby have his fun first, okay?”

You nod. “Kiss first?”

Jack swipes a thumb across your bottom lip before he leaves you with another one. Lingering. Heated. Has you instinctively wanting to reach for him, to feel him beneath you fingertips. But the restraints stop you.

“I love you,” he whispers, like a shared secret.

And you’re bucking your hips into air. Wanting to say it back but he moves away. The bed shifts, weight moving. Robby’s hands spreading your thighs open. Situating himself there. He eats you out first. Doesn’t let you come. Just tastes you.

Until you’re begging for more. Until you feel like you’re going to lose your mind. Whining every time he takes you to the edge, then draws back.

“Robby, please,” you cry. “Please, I just—once. Please, let me come, please.” You have no idea how long this has been going on for. Your thighs are messy, sticky with Robby’s saliva and your slick.

Robby hums. “What do you think, Jack? Good enough for you?”

You hear Jack breathe, somewhere to the side. Not knowing where he is, but knowing he’s watching—you didn’t think you would enjoy it, but something is lit within you. “Yeah. Good enough for me.”

Robby licks a stripe up your slit. Takes the vibrator, turns on the suction. Nudges it against your clit.

You almost weep with relief. “Unghh, thank you, thank you, Robby, thank you.” It’s a quick thing, your release. From the edging. From the direct suction. You come. Fall apart. And Robby refuses to move the toy from your clit.

Grips your thighs. Licking, sucking at your entrance.

“You wanted to come, honey,” Robby tuts, when you’re bowling past your second one, and he’s still not letting up. When you’re struggling in his hold.

You haven’t seen mean, yet, Jack had said. This is what he meant, you realise. Robby. Giving into you, but on his conditions.

And you’re crying. Full, heaving sobs, absolutely ruined. The circulation to your hands probably cut off by now, with how tightly you’ve twisted your fingers into the fabric. You’re not sure. Your arms were tingly. Now numb past your elbows to your digits. You don’t pay it too much heed. You could lose your phalanges, and you wouldn’t care.

“Please,” you cry. “Please, Robby. Please.”

You hear him laugh. A mean thing. Tongue delving inside you, the toy buzzing incessantly on your clit. The toy’s the issue. You’re on your fifth, you’re pretty sure. Because of that damn toy. Suction, forcing out orgasm after orgasm.

“Please, Jack—”

“Oh ho ho, no, honey,” Robby says, thick with condescension. And he presses the toy firmly against your clit in response to you daring to reach out to Jack, to disobey the established chain of command. “He’s not going to help you.”

“I can’t. I can’t, please, I can’t—”

“Yeah, you can.” Robby’s slides a finger in, crooked. Dragging out your slick for him to continue to lap up. His beard rubbing against the tender skin of your inner thighs.

“Please.” Halfway fractured. Begging for more and for less. Your legs over his shoulders, heels digging into the expanse of his back.

“Give me your colour.”

You whine. “I don’t—I don’t know.”

You feel him move away. You try to grab a hold of him, but your hands are tied, trapped above you. You sob, legs attempting to tighten around him. “No, please, don’t go. Just—Robby.”

“I need a colour, honey.” And his voice. Softened. Gentle. A far cry from the man that degraded you for needing him.

“Green,” you choke out. “Please, one more.”

“One more and then we pause?”

You’re nodding, tears wetting the blindfold. “Please.”

“You’re okay, baby.” The brief reprieve as his lips ghost over your inner thigh. A barely there kiss. Then the toy back on your clit, his tongue slipping inside you again. Tasting.

You moan through the oversensitivity. The suction well past too much. But you can do this. Can be good for him. For Jack, too, even if you can’t see or touch him. Your fingers flexing against the fabric.

“There you go. You need this, don’t you? Need to come six times like a fucking slut. Being so good for Jack and me.”

A gasp of air. The vice-like clenching around his finger. So hard that he can feel it. You’re trembling into your sixth orgasm. Breathing raggedly, almost like you’re hyperventilating. Pulling on the restraints above you. Outright sobbing.

Hips moving into the toy, and away. Chasing and running. Too much and wanting more.

His tongue slathering, licking into you. You can hear the squelching. Your face feels hot. Embarrassed by the sounds your body makes.

“Robby,” you whimper, shaking. “Pause, you said pause. Please, Robby.”

“Alright. I got you. I got you, honey.” The toy turned off and discarded. Robby moving up your body. Undoing the knot that ties your wrists to the bar of the bed frame. Fingers at the strings of the blindfold.

You whine, shaking your head.

“You want to keep it on?”

“Yes, please.” You think you need the comfort of the darkness, right now.

“Okay, honey.”

You’re being shifted, the both of you lying on your sides, facing each other. Your face tucked against his chest. But you still feel like you’re shaking apart, unable to ground yourself, despite Robby holding you.

You don’t realise you’re crying until you feel Robby speak, more so than hear what he says. His thumbs brushing away tears that leak under the blindfold.

And then the weight behind you. The arms around you. Familiar. Lips against the curve of your shoulders, up the side of your neck.

“I’m right here, sweetheart.” Grazing your jawline.

“Jack.” You hadn’t realised you were uttering his name, over and over again.

“Right here.”

You shift, angling your head. Catching his lips with yours. Fingers gripping the hand that Robby has on the side of your leg. You feel Robby’s knee nudging between yours, thigh aligned with your sticky core. A stuttering breath as you grind yourself onto it. It borders on painful, but riding out the aftershocks helps soothe you. And he knew that, somehow.

“You’re perfect, baby,” Jack whispers. “Taking what Robby gave you? You did so good for us.”

You want so badly to ask Robby if he shares the same thoughts. But he doesn’t volunteer, and asking feels too much like digging a scalpel into your chest, beating muscle on display, for him to discern your worthiness, to leave or to cherish. You’ve always harboured a greed that knows no bounds.

You hate yourself for needing that reassurance from him, too.

Your fingers shifting, interlacing with Robby’s. His digits folding over yours. It should be a moment of tenderness but feels clinical from him. Responding, but not given. The way he touches you feels methodical.

“Hey,” Jack murmurs. “You okay?”

“Yes,” you answer. Maybe you’re not being good enough. Maybe Robby doesn’t like you as much yet. If you’re better, maybe he will.

“Yeah? You good to start again?”

You’re nodding.

Jack gives you another kiss, one that has you melting into it. Lost in him. Jack shifts back to breathe, and every millimetre he pulls away feels like something defined with regret. “Go give Robby some love, sweetheart.”

You’re hiccuping, the blindfold damp against your skin. Unseeing as you shuffle along Robby’s thigh, until you’re pressed against his chest. You feel Jack follow your movements, his lips grazing the back of your shoulder. You shiver.

“Hey, honey,” Robby murmurs.

You reach out, feel the coarse hair of his beard beneath your finger pads. Your thumb outlining the corners of his lips. Dragging to the curve of his bottom lip. Inching in until your lips are on his. Once again, he responds. Answering when you kiss. Starting off gentle until you’re rutting yourself against his thigh, and his fingers are digging into the meat of your side.

Until you’re whimpering with the need for more, despite the overstimulation. You need him inside you. Any one of them.

“Alright, up you get,” Robby says.

You’re unsteady on your knees, Jack in front of you. You’ve long lost the orientation of the room, of the bed you’re on.

Jack kisses you again, tongue sliding into your mouth. Soft and reassuring. Hands roaming, touching. Any time your fingers move pass his bare pelvis, he snags your wrist. Correcting wordlessly.

You hear Robby shuffle behind you.

“Down on the bed, baby,” Jack whispers. “On your front for Robby.”

You move, lying down. Your hands brushing against Jack’s knees, you think. Your hands shifting up, grabbing his thighs for the contact. To feel grounded. His hand covers yours, thumbs circling over the back of them.

Bunched up sheets between your legs. Rolling your hips into it, just for some semblance of friction. You let out a moan.

Robby inhales sharply, watching the tattoos across your back ripple with your movements. “That’s real pretty, honey.” Soft. “But we didn’t ask you to do that.” Fingers catching your hips, seizing your movements. You try not to cry. “Bring your knees up for me.”

With his guidance, you do. Legs drawn up under you, presenting yourself to him. It’s not a position that you’ve done a lot with Jack. You’re too clingy, you think. Would prefer to see him. This feels almost impersonal.

“You want Jack in your mouth?”

“Fuck,” Jack hisses, quiet.

Your brain stutters. Somehow, it hadn’t crossed your mind. “Yes.” Can feel yourself salivating at the thought of it.

“Yeah, course you do,” Robby chuckles, low and dark. He draws himself up. He must be on his knees too, thighs bracketing yours.

You feel the head of his cock slide between the swollen lips of your cunt. Resting there. Teasing. You try to grind back onto it, to take it—take him—into you. You’re keening, a pathetic sound that’s brimming with your desperation to be full.

Robby laughs. The heavy paw of his hand swats the swell of your ass.

You jerk at the sting. Feel yourself clench around nothing. “Robby. Please. I need you.”

“Oh, I know.” Once more, the head of his cock swiping the wetness at your entrance. “I can see you. You’re dripping.”

“Please.”

It’s a slow process. Robby draws it out. A tortuous slide into you. Has you scrabbling against Jack’s thighs, his hands caressing yours. Your face turned, cheek against the mattress in the space between his legs.

Robby’s cock pushing into you, the stretch of your walls. Aching. You moan around it. Through it. The stuttering inhales, the hitching of your breath.

“Jesus, honey,” Robby manages, hoarse. Rolling his hips into you with unhurried movements. Experiments of motions to test how your body responds.

You’re sure you have a bruising grip on Jack’s thighs. You’ve lost yourself in recitations of wordless sounds. Feeling yourself ripple around Robby.

“Alright,” Robby bites out. “Your turn, Jack.”

You hear Jack move in front of you. Hear him groan.

Then.

Robby fucks into you, once. Hard. Pushing you further up the bed. A cry punched out of you.

Closer to Jack. His hands on yours, guiding. “Keep your hands on my thighs. Tap three times if you need to stop.”

You nod.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“Okay. Three times to stop.”

“There we go. You’re doing so good, baby.”

You shudder at his words. Feel Robby jerk into you as you tighten in response. Robby lets out a breath, a quiet chuckle.

You already feel saliva pooling under your tongue. You swallow. Mouth opening, lips over your teeth. Jack rests a hand on the back of your head. Pushes you down over his cock. The stinging of the corners of your lips. The weight of him on your tongue. Sliding further in. You bob your head, up and down. Tongue flexing up against his length, hollowing out your cheeks.

“Fuck,” Jack grunts.

Robby waits. Has been waiting. Only when Jack meets his eyes, and nods, does he starts to move. Fucking into you.

Your muffled noises, trapped. Your mouth and cunt full. A fucking vision to them.

“Fucking knew you’d be good at this,” Robby murmurs.

You feel dangerously warm. Delirious. Like this is occurring in a dream. Hazy, like a smoky fire on a distant hill. You shift, moaning around the slide of Jack’s cock in your mouth. Dipping your head in repetitive motions. Can hear him come apart as you do.

“That’s it,” Robby says. His thrusts are slow, measured. Giving you reprieve, seemingly content to watch you please Jack. “Show me how good you are for him.”

Oh. Robby has a thing for watching, Jack had said. The break room, probably. When you thought it was just the two of you, and somehow Robby knew that Jack told you to take care of him. How much did he watch through the curtain, before he came in to tell you the police wanted to collect your statement?

Lifting off of Jack’s cock, saliva dripping onto him. He groans, a hand cupping your face. Soft in his touch.

You rub your cheek against his palm, kitten licks to the tip of his dick. Then you’re sliding down again. Feel him all the way, the tip of his cock head up against the back of your throat. You stay like that, your head fuzzy. Hear his muted moans, like you’re underwater.

You swallow around him. He fucks his hips up into your face. Fingers buried into the roots of your hair, clenching.

Robby draws out, almost all the way, then fucks into you. Once.

You choke, throat spasming around Jack. Your fingers digging into the muscles of Jack’s thighs. But not tapping out. You tighten around Robby, roll your hips against him.

Robby grabs the flesh of your sides, then does it again. Pulls out, almost unsheathed. Then thrusts back inside.

You whine around Jack’s cock. Coming up for air again, mouthing at the length of him.

“Fuck, you’re perfect, baby,” Jack says, ruined. His thumb brushing against your cheek. Tugging lightly at the corner of your lips. “So good for us.”

You keen. Robby rocks into you, intermittent motions like he’s taking the edge off for himself. Not after your pleasure. Just his own. Different from Jack, but somehow, you find inextricably hot.

He’s using you.

“Come on,” Robby rasps. “Make him come. Then I’ll fuck you after. That’s what you want, right? Don’t even have to say anything. I can feel you clenching around me. Just begging to be fucked. Just like—that.”

Your head bowed, pressed against one side of Jack’s pelvis. Panting. Fuck, you’re burning. All Robby is doing is talking to you, and you feel like you can’t breathe. Something fluttering in your stomach.

“Jesus, Robby,” Jack breathes out. You can feel the twitching of his thighs. Minute reactions to Robby. He’s not unaffected either.

“Fuck,” Robby bites out. Slowly thrusting into you. Once again, the movements are aimless. Not for you. Just to sate himself. “So turned on you it’s making you dumb, huh?” Robby drapes his weight on your back. Pressing his cock in further.

You whine. You’re so sure the tip of his dick is at your cervix. Hips flexing against him again.

A hand in your hair, guiding, pushing. “I said, make him come.”

You try to nod, mewling at the sting of your scalp when you can’t. “Yes, yes sir, please.” Sliding back onto Jack’s cock. Still blindfolded, completely missing the look Robby and Jack share. Something undecipherable, even with the years they’ve known each other. The way Jack jerks into your mouth. The sharp inhale from Robby.

“Fuck,” Jack grunts.

You hollow out your cheeks, heading bobbing up and down like you’re on a mission. Saliva guiding the way. Wet and noisy. The obscene sounds coming from you, from your mouth stuffed full. But you don’t care. No, what you care about is making Jack come. Like Robby told you to.

You can feel Jack’s cock jerking in your mouth. He’s close. You can hear him. You bury his cock all the way down your throat. Move one of your hands to fondle with his balls. Listen to him groan.

Then he comes.

And you swallow around him. His hand, or Robby’s hand, you’re not sure anymore, in your hair. Forcing you down.

You stay. Swallowing. Drinking his release. Then you move again. The hand on your head falling away. You’re lifting your head, up and down. Hear Jack swear as you continue to suck on his softening cock. Slide up his dick, tongue on the slit. Suckling the tip.

“Fuck, fuck.” Jack tries to grab your head.

But you grasp his hand. Interlocking your fingers. Continue. Sliding back down.

You hear Robby chuckle, sinful and deep, by your ear. Spread across your back. “That’s it, honey. That’s a good cockslut. I can see why he keeps you around.”

“Fucking Christ—baby, that’s—” Jack fucks into your mouth with his spent dick. Fingers digging into your hand from where you’re holding his.

And you’re still going.

“Okay, that’s enough, baby. Fuck, that’s enough.”

You pop off of him. Heaving. Mouthing and kissing above his thighs, along the pubic bone and pelvis.

“Did Jack teach you that?” Robby asks, lips grazing the back of your neck.

You shiver at the sensation. “No.”

Jack huffs out a breathless laugh. “I’m pretty sure I saw heaven the first time that happened.”

Robby smiles against the soft skin of your nape. “So you just came along, all perfect for him, hm?”

“Pretty much,” Jack whispers, tone unbearably soft.

“Robby,” you whine. You try to fuck yourself onto his cock. Still inside you. Still hard. “Please, you said.”

“Oh, I remember what I said, honey.” He lifts himself off your back. Kneeling upright again.

“Please.”

“What do you think, Jack?” Robby asks. His fingers trace the black artwork on your back, making you tremble under his touch. “Is it time for me to fuck your slut? Been good enough for you?”

Jack releases a noise. Eyes scorching when he meets Robby’s gaze.

“Please,” you cry. Pushing yourself backwards into Robby. “Please, Robby. You said you would if I made him come. I did, I did. Please.”

Robby laughs, momentarily watching you struggle. “Not me, honey.” Attention back on the other man. “Ask Jack.”

“Jack,” you sob. Lifting your head.

Even though Jack can’t see your eyes, he knows. The way you’d look. Dilated pupils, how shiny and wet they’d be from your tears. How he can’t say no to you when you look at him.

“Jack, please, I want to feel him. Please, Jack, I was good, I promise, please.”

Robby swears, hips grinding into you. You moan.

“You were so good for me, baby,” Jack says, a hand caressing your face.

“Please,” you whisper.

“Yeah,” Jack answers, just as quiet, completely lost to you. “Robby.”

“You wanna lie down?” Robby asks him.

Both Jack and Robby move. With their guidance, you’re kneeling up long enough for Jack to settle comfortably on the bed. Then Robby situates you on top of Jack. You let out a noise, half moan, half sigh. Completely content to feel Jack against you.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs.

You hum, chin tilted. And wordlessly, his lips find yours. A messy exchange of saliva. Jack’s tongue in your mouth. Against yours. A hint of teeth nibbling your lower lip. Carried away by kissing him. Until you’re rutting against him. Hissing when your clit rubs against him.

Then Robby fucks into you. Hard. Punching the air out of you. You keen. Trying to catch your breath but he keeps up the pace. Relentless as he fucks into you. Just as you had been begging him to. He doesn’t think there was ever a world where he could withhold this from you, from himself.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Jack rasps. His hands roam, squeezing. Touch scorching. “Robby making you feel good?”

“Yes, yes, he’s, mhm, yes. Oh—”

“Fuck,” Robby grunts. “Taking me so well, honey.”

You arch your back just a little, feel him slip in further against that spot inside you. You’re both moaning around the deeper slide of him. Feel Robby’s grip on your waist as he fucks into you, again and again. You hope his fingers dig in hard enough to leave bruises. A souvenir to remember this and him by.

Jack’s fingers delving between your bodies, the space made when you curved your spine.

You whimper, reaching to grab Jack’s wrist, to stop him from rubbing circles against your clit. Based on the previous six orgasms that Robby gave you with the toy, you’re still too sensitive.

“Too much for you?” he asks.

You hum in affirmation. “It’s—mm, this is—ah.”

Robby releases a breathless laugh. He fucks into you like it’s his mission, like it was what he was put onto this Earth to do. Hitting that spot, on target with each thrust.

Jack takes your hands in his, fingers interlacing. Lies them on the bed above his head. Until your arms are stretching up. You feel the scorch of it, rekindling the burn of when they had been tied to the bed frame.

You cry out.

“There we go, honey.” Robby leans down, until you start to feel the press of his weight on top of you. Not entirely to suffocate you, but enough of his body aligning against yours.

Your breath hitches in your throat. That fire building in your stomach. Fucking yourself back against him. “Ah, ah, mm. Oh my God, Robby.”

And Jack recognises it. The stuttering of your gasps. The way your mouth drops open in broken off moans. The whimpers in the higher register of your voice. “Holy shit,” he utters, reverent. “You’re going to come, baby? Just from Robby fucking you like this?”

Your forehead against the curve of Jack’s chest. Crying out. “Yes. Yes, he’s—so good, he’s—I’m—” Half formed sentences, lost to wordless noises of pleasure. You’ve never been able to come from penetration alone. You’ve accepted it as a truth about yourself. Even told Jack about it.

And then comes Robby, an act of defiance.

“Yeah?” Robby grunts. His movements are more urgent. Like he needs to see you fall apart under him. To take something from you that hasn’t already been claimed by someone else. “Never been fucked like this before? No one’s been treating this little slut right, is that it? Just needed my cock inside you to—fucking—come like this?”

You’re keening, feeling yourself tighten around him, impossibly. Lava, all encompassing. All around you. On your flesh, consuming.

“Fucking hell, Robby,” you hear Jack groan. His hold on your hands start to bite.

“That’s it. Fucking come for me.” Robby’s reaches, fingers curling around your throat. Lifting your chin up. Squeezing the sides, above your pulse.

You gasp.

“Robby,” Jacks voice.

“You like this, don’t you? Can feel you tightening around me. Need to be fucked like a goddamn whore.”

Robby thrusts, once, twice.

And then you’re coming around him, a forceful avalanche. Imploding supernova. Heaving when Robby lets go of your neck. Riding out your orgasm as Robby buries himself deep, rolling his hips.

“Fuck, baby, look at you,” Jack says.

You’re crying. Sobbing, grinding yourself against Robby. Robby hooks an arm around your stomach, face buried against the notches of your bared spine. Grunting as he comes, hot breath fanning your upper back. You feel his dick twitching with it. He thrusts into you, milking out his own orgasm. And you take what he gives, whimpering with the overstimulation.

“Fuck me,” Robby huffs.

“Come on, I got you.” Jack releases your hands, rubbing up and down your arms.

You’re absolutely gone. Floating. Moving through molasses.

“Robby.”

“Yeah?”

“On your side.”

Robby tucking your back against his heaving chest, still inside of you, softened. Jack shuffles close. You’re nestled between them. Robby has a hand splayed on your stomach. Jack’s hand rests against your chest.

Jack kisses you. His other hand against your cheek. Fingers nudging the strings of the blindfold. “Can I take this off?”

You hum. An affirmative sound, you think, given that Jack gingerly removes it off of you.

You keep your eyes closed. And even if they were opened, the room would be dark. Blacked out curtains framing the windows, no lights on.

Wiping at your wet cheeks. “So beautiful, sweetheart. You did so good.”

You’re shuddering, nosing against his jaw. And yet, something not quite clicking the way it should. That greed within you, again. A gaping hole that swallows.

You’re sobbing, still. Too fractured. Too tremulous.

“Hey, I’m right here,” Jack murmurs, picking up on your erratic breathing. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?” Fingers through your hair, against your cheek. “Baby, hey.”

Robby’s hand soothing up and down your thigh.

“Not good,” you manage, hoarse.

“What? What wasn’t good?” Jack asks.

“Robby.”

And Robby goes still behind you. Deathly so. “Honey—” He tries to move. Back and away. Out of you.

You’re shaking your head, crying. “No.” You clench around his already flaccid dick. You don’t want him to go.

Robby hisses. “Jack.”

“Talk to me, sweetheart. What happened?” Jack asks.

“Not good for Robby,” you utter.

“What wasn’t good for him?” Jack asks. Clarifying.

Robby still feels his heart in his throat.

“I wasn’t,” you whisper.

Robby swallows. Makes an incredulous noise. “Yes, you were. You were so good for me. For us.”

“You haven’t kissed me,” you hiccup.

Robby mouth opens, prepared to argue. He has. Remembers your lips against his. But really, if he’s cataloguing those moments, they’ve not been initiated by him. Too unsure to know where and how he fits in this. What he’s allowed to do and take.

Robby’s fingers gripping either side of your chin, angling your face to him. Kissing you. The scrape of his beard. The push of his tongue against yours. His hand smoothing down, resting over the front of your neck.

You keen, jerking your hips.

Robby parts, swearing at the sensation of velvet walls rippling around him. He can’t go again.

You make a noise. Jack shushes you. Kissing you again. Robby takes the moment to detangle himself from you. Sliding out, throwing the condom away in the bathroom. Cleaning himself up. Then runs hand towels under warm water from the sink.

Bringing himself back to the bed, passing a towel over to Jack. You’re on your back, and Robby’s cleaning you up, towel against your skin. And even though Robby’s sure you’re exhausted from seven orgasms, you buck up lightly at his ministrations.

“How the hell are you keeping up with this, man?” Robby asks, glancing at Jack.

Jack snorts. “I’m not. What do you think you’re here for?” Kisses the curve of your shoulder, gentle.

Robby chuckles. “You’re insatiable, you know that?” Aimed towards you, now.

You’re whining.

“You’re okay, sweetheart. Robby will make you feel better,” Jack murmurs from beside you.

“You think you can do one more?” Robby asks, something raw and hungry in his voice.

He barely waits for your answer, already moving south of the bed, between your legs. A greedy thing, inside of him. An abyss that answers yours, buried in the cavern of his chest. How completely fitting that Jack found the both of you to call his.

You’re whimpering, digits twisting in Robby’s hair. And his fingers are sliding into your sopping cunt and he’s groaning as your hips thrust up when he mouths at your clit. Jack is a solid thing next to you, alternating between gentle kisses and talking you through the oversensitivity.

You’re trembling when you come, and Robby’s rutting his half-hard dick against the sheets beneath him.

Robby cleans you up again. Takes the towels to bathroom. Then he’s back on the bed. Tucking himself on your other side.

When you feel him, you bodily turn, facing him. Your eyes blinking, getting used to the darkness of the room.

Robby thumbs your cheek. “You’re so perfect, baby,” he rasps out, faint words ghosting over your lips before he kisses you again.

You sigh, a quiet sound, sinking against his chest, eyes closing. Robby’s hand rubbing your upper arm. Your breathing gradually evens out, falling asleep.

“You okay?” Jack asks, eventually. His chin hooked over your shoulder.

And when Robby looks at him, Jack’s eyes are already on him. “Yeah.”

“Don’t believe you.”

“Just thinking.”

“Quit thinking. We just had mind-blowing sex.”

Robby huffs out a chuckle. “Yeah, we did.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Jack kisses the back of your shoulder; you shuffle closer into Robby’s chest.

“Yeah?” Sternum cracked open in the quiet room. Gaze moving between Jack and you. Silently daring to wish.

“Whatever you want. ’S always been yours, Robby.” And Jack sounds so sure of himself, so certain, that Robby believes in that quiet hope. Of the three of you crowded in a too small bed, for more than just tonight.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

[skymouth]

Nobody asked but a little blurb for the sub!reader and soft Dom Jack Abbot verse where you attempt to take control at least (1) time.

You get it in your head that you want to make it just as good for Jack as he makes it good for you. Similar to the first time you had spent together, you climb into his lap but refuse him any attempts at touching you.

“I want to do this for you,” you say.

“Oh, you do, do you?” Jack knows how this is going to go but he lets it happen. He’s more amused than anything else.

And when you sink down on his cock, he has to fight everything in him to keep his hands to himself. You asked to do this one thing for him. The least he can do is put in the effort. For you.

You try. Of course you try. The slow up-down movements as you ride him. The little moans you let out. The fixation on the grunts you hear from him.

“Baby,” Jack groans, fingers curling into fists to stop himself from grabbing you. That tether of control is a tight line.

“Feels good,” you tell him.

And he chuckles, because you had said this was supposed to be about him. “Yeah? You getting what you need from me?”

“Ah, mhm, yes.” You get a little lost, a little cock drunk with him inside you. You bury your face against the crook of his neck and start whining because he’s not touching you.

“Jack,” you complain. Like this isn’t a consequence of your own desires.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Need more.”

You feel the rumble in Jack’s chest as he laughs, not unkindly. Enamoured. Incredulous. “Yeah? You want me to take over now?”

As soon as you utter the confirmation, his arms are tight around you, pulling you down into the seat of his lap as he fucks up into you.

You’re crying with relief. Content with his control. Why did you ever think otherwise?

Jack kisses along your jaw. “You’re ridiculous, baby.” The tender tone softens his words. “It’s my job to take care of you. And it’s your job to take what I give. You got that?”

You’re nodding against him, frantic. “Yes. Yes yes, yes.”

“That’s it, sweetheart. Come on my cock. I know you need to. Soon as you had me inside you, it’s all you wanted. I know you tried, baby, but this—fuuuck—this is how it’s meant to be.” Jack’s hand slipping between your bodies, providing that extra stimulation.

You’re coming before you know it. Tightening, walls convulsing around him.

“There you go. Isn’t that better?” Nosing along your cheek.

“Yeah. Yes.”

And it’s the last time you tried something like that.

[skymouth]

out in the cold — jack abbot x reader

You experience a sub drop after hooking up with a date. Dr Abbot takes care of you.

Pairing: Jack Abbot x Reader Word count: 9.5k+ Tags: Requited unrequited love; Dom/sub dynamics; Sub drop; Subspace; Soft Dom Jack Abbot; Assumed sexual assault (it never happened); Reader has tattoos; Reader is multilingual; Negative self talk; implied Bad BDSM etiquette (from previous partner); AFAB reader; NSFW content (Oral sex, Fingering, P in V sex). Credits: PSD colouring by gloomglimmer. Template inspired by louestat. Textures by cavalierfou. Notes: Title is from Hadestown’s All I’ve Ever Known. Consider it the 1 song playlist to this fic/series. Probably inaccurate sub drop/subspace experience but fuck it, we ball. Abbot also thinks that you were SA’d but it didn’t happen so tread carefully if that’s a trigger for you.

Cross posted to AO3.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

You hand him the wrong sized needle.

“14 gauge,” Jack snaps.

You blink, hard. Frowning. How the Hell did you mess that up? You swap out the needles, uttering a quick sorry.

Head in the fucking game, you tell yourself. Eyes on the target—you cannot fuck up in the middle of a procedure. Just because some guy can’t be bothered calling you back? People are literally dying in the walls of the hospital. You cannot afford to be so vapid that you’re more worried about unread text messages and zero call backs.

You refuse to fail anywhere else, hovering, anticipating the doctors’ needs before they verbalise it. This is what makes you valuable to the team. They’ve said it again and again—they need more nurses like you.

And especially in front of Jack. You admire him—respect him a lot. You never wanted to be a doctor, but you love working as a nurse. With him. Being useful to him and the night shift.

“Swap out with Tim in Trauma 1,” Jack says, eyes darting to you.

“You got it, boss.” You don’t even try to argue with what you think is his judgement call of getting you out of his way. Making you someone else’s problem.

The thing was, he noticed. Of course he fucking noticed. Nothing happened in the ED, to his staff, without his knowledge. It was his job as an attending to ensure he was on top of it.

He noticed it in your docile greeting, normally a little more upbeat. He noticed it in the questioning look that Parker shot him when you were quieter than usual, citing the fact that you were tired. When Shen picked up on your dour mood, offering some coffee that you flatly dismissed, telling him you weren’t in the mood. For coffee, or for him; you left it up to interpretation.

It was downright rude. Rude and you didn’t go together. It was why they liked having you on night shift.

It worries him. The not knowing. The questioning. The way everyone looks to him for answers and he can’t provide them. You’re usually the kind one, the one that’s happy to help. But today, there’s a cloud hanging over you. Something bogging you down.

“What’s going on?” Shen whispers, nodding his chin towards you. You’re at the desk in central, blankly staring at the screen more so than typing the notes you should be inputting.

“Don’t know,” Jack confesses, and he hates that he doesn’t know. So much for being the one that protects the hive. As much as he makes himself the reliable one that everyone, especially his night shift team, can depend on, someone always falls through the cracks. “Been weird all day.”

“There you are,” Lena says, walking up to lean against the desk. Hovering over you. “We need you in central 8. Patient barely speaks English. Wanna see if you know what language she knows?”

You shoot her a clearly unimpressed look. “Right, because I must speak every language under the sun,” you bite out.

Lena pauses, eyes narrowed at you. “Are you—?”

“Hey.” Jack steps in, frowning. Not that he thinks it’ll escalate into a fight, but he’d rather not entertain that possibility. Night shift was meant to be chill; have less personality clashes compared to day shifts. Less staff, as well, which was why it was essential everyone worked well within the team. “Lena asked for a favour.”

You look away from him, cowed. Chastised—again. “Central 8, yes sir.”

You scurry off to the patient in central 8—Indonesian, which happened to be a language that you taught yourself for the fun of it, years ago. This isn’t even the first time they’ve asked you to try and communicate with a patient in another language. Ridiculously, it’s the first time you’ve taken offence to it.

You and Princess have a bet on who could learn the most additional languages. It’s been a long 18 months since she and Perlah initiated the bet. You refuse to lose, and Princess is competitive. Between the two of you, you’ve got a conversational handle on a minimum of 15 languages right now. It’s circulated around the hospital like common knowledge at this point.

“Hey.” Lena follows you when you’re exiting the room. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to imply anything—”

“It’s okay,” you say, quick. You feel embarrassed by your earlier reaction. “Really. I’m sorry. I’m feeling really crabby today, and I took it out on you. I’m really sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” You’re absently massaging the back of your neck in a self-soothing fashion, and it’s the only reason she sees.

“Whoa,” Lena gasps. “Hey, did someone hurt you?” Ever the medical professional, she steps close, reaching.

Really, it’s on you. The bodily flinch before she makes contact with your shoulder. You both know she’s done it before—calming, gentle touches. Reassuring. Maternal. Her and Dana, mother henning the hospital when they step into the role of the respective shift’s charge nurse. You’ve always accepted those.

Except this time, your skin feels like it’s burning and itching at the same time.

She stares at you.

You feel frozen, heart thudding too fast in your chest. A dramatic reaction to a familiar touch. A mountain out of a mole hill.

“Hey—” Lena starts, softer. Like you’re a wounded animal in need of comfort.

“South 16’s opened.” Jack’s voice, clear and sharp.

You wince, pivoting to the side, where his eyes are on you. “I don’t need—”

“Get in there.” And his tone brooks no room for argument. “Now.”

With a sigh, you march yourself into south 16. Jack follows after a few minutes, no doubt gathering whatever supplies he thinks he needs. Door closed, curtain drawn.

You’re both silent, waiting for the other to cave. You’re perched on the edge of the bed. He’s standing by the door.

He breaks first. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

His jaw clenches. Takes a seat on the stool. Wheels it to the foot of the bed. “I need to see how bad it is,” he says, carefully. Like he’s actively choosing every word.

“Nothing’s bad. Nothing hurts.”

Which, apparently, is the wrong thing to say, based on the breath released between his teeth. Maybe the right thing would have been to deny any source of pain.

He says your name, eyes analytical as he studies you. Something in his face softens. Pushing the stool back. “Would you be more comfortable if I got Dr Ellis or Lena to do the examination?”

You frown. “What examination?” You look—really look, this time—at the supplies he brought in. One of them is a white cardboard box, Sexual Assault Evidence Kit printed in bold letters among other black ink. You’ve catalogued enough of them to know you’re not mistaking it for any other kit. Have done a few on patients as well.

“I’m not—this, this wasn’t—” You take in a breath. Eyes boring into Jack’s, trying to impart the determination of your next words. “It was consensual.”

It’s silent in the room, with the door closed. With neither of you speaking. Jack doesn’t move; you barely breathe.

“Are you sure?” he asks, finally.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” And just like that, the weighted worry drops. He’s still concerned, of course. As soon as Lena had asked if someone had hurt you, everything in his mind jumped to a horrifying conclusion. He’s glad their shared assumptions aren’t correct. In his relief, he’s forgotten about your other symptoms—the moody countenance. “Can I still check you over? For my peace of mind?”

“Sure,” you sigh out. Shuffling further on the bed, back turned towards him, shucking your scrub top, then turtleneck beneath it. You know where the worst of it is.

“Jesus, kid,” he hisses. With you turned away, you don’t see the way his jaw ticks, compelling his fingers to unfurl from taut fists. He forces his attention to remain on the bruises and red wounds, and not the black lines of intricate artwork sprawling further down your back. Accentuating the lines of your body.

You hear the snap of the disposable blue gloves.

“It looks worse than it is,” you say.

“Bruising looks like it’s at least a day old.” His voice is clipped. Tight. Overcorrecting professionalism into cold and distant.

They must be purpling by now, you assume. “It’s been—uh, since Saturday night.”

You feel the cool swab of antiseptic on the bruises; the bite marks, the scratches.

“You know,” Jack says, and you feel his warm breath fan across your bare skin. That, alone, makes you shiver. “Even if you changed your mind part way through, it’s still sexual assault.”

You shoot a look over your shoulder at him.

He attempts a poker face. Do not react.

“I didn’t change my mind,” you say, firm. You turn back to face the wall. Stare down at the bed beneath you. “It’s—” And maybe it’s easier to admit when you don’t have to look at him. “I wanted it to hurt. For him to be rough.”

Jack breathes in. Do not react. He’s a doctor. He’s also tended to previous partners like this before. His own wife, even. Clinical hands; he’s seen this before. He cannot treat this like a new thing, just because it’s you.

“Where’d you even find the guy?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking. To twist the knife lodged between the fourth and fifth ribs, maybe.

“On an app.”

“What? Just a random dating one?”

“No. It’s—you know, specifically for hook ups of the non-vanilla kind.”

“The what kind?”

Oh my God, he’s going to make you say it outloud. Gaze resolutely stuck on the creases of the white, sterile bedsheets. “The kinky kind.”

A pause. “They have those, now?”

You can almost hear the beginnings of a ‘back in my day’ spiel. And isn’t that a thought? Dr Jack Abbot searching for his own BDSM partners—in his youth, maybe. You don’t want to think about his exploits in his current era. You’re already topless in front of him. You cannot bare yourself to him any more than this.

“Yeah,” you chuckle, a little breathlessly. Get it together. You can’t get all giggly in front of your boss. “They do, grandpa.”

“Hey. Careful now,” he remarks, amused. Something loosens in his chest, allowing him to breathe easier. It’s probably the first time he’s heard you express something akin to a laugh during this shift. He doesn’t realise how much he missed that today; how much he needs it to carry him through.

The ED can be a harrowing place, but it’s a lot less dark with you by his side.

You hum, letting the silence relax you. It must be past 3 AM, you think. There’s always that patchy, tranquil moment after the sporadic rush between midnight and 3 AM.

“So what?” he asks. Cotton swab dabbing ointment onto the wounds. “Your date just fell asleep and forgot to take care of you?”

You let out a huff, humourless. Head dipped. Embarrassed, again. It flushes down your neck. “He left as soon as he was done.”

Jack goes deathly still. The swab hovers, pinched tightly between his fingers. “What?”

“He, uh—left,” you sniff. Do not fucking cry over this. “And I’m pretty sure I got ghosted too, because I’ve been trying to—um, call him. Or text him. Which sucks, because, I…” You suck in a breath. “We took our time. Went on three separate dates before Saturday. Dinner. Movie. Museum. Four fucking months of talking and he dipped as soon as he got his dick wet.”

Jack is uncharacteristically silent over your shoulder.

You shuffle around, facing him.

He’s frowning. Lips downturned. Eyes stormy. Lines of his body wound tight. An older man outraged by the woes of modern dating, you assume.

“It’s fine,” you say, because you feel the sudden need to mollify that anger. To appease him. You try to covertly rub your eyes to wipe the tears that have collected. “Honestly, I’ve always been a bit bad about handling rejection, but I’m working on it.” It explains your shitty mood since Saturday. The dull awareness after he left.

Jack blinks, jaw unlatching at your words. Stares at you. “Is that what you think this is?” he asks, hollowly. “You feel hurt because of a little rejection?”

You make an obviously face. “I’ll feel better by next shift.”

“How much research did you do?”

“I read a few articles; people’s blog posts. There aren’t any peer reviewed journals on this.”

“I know,” he huffs out. He remembers his own reading journey, all those years back. “Did you read anything about dropping? Sub drops?”

Your forehead creases in thought. It sounds vaguely familiar. “Maybe?”

Jack doesn’t say anything, waiting.

You stare. The confusion eventually smooths out. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh,” he echoes. “You’re in a sub drop.”

You have been, since Saturday. That’s—mortifying, you think. Your kinky extracurricular affairs brought forefront and centre to your attending because you weren’t a good judge of character.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. Something humiliating thickens your throat; wells tears into your eyes. They avert from him, dropping somewhere low. “Fuck, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s—hey. Look at me,” Jack says.

You’re not listening.

“Fuck. Hey. Hey, quit spiralling. Listen to me.” Jack yanks the gloves off his hands.

This is disgusting. You’re disgusting. This was something that was supposed to remain within your bedroom walls, far, far away from the hospital. Instead, you brought it right to the night shift’s front porch.

A rough palm slotted against your cheek.

The effects are near instantaneous—a shuddering inhale, a trembling whine. Glassy eyes shedding tears as they slide close. Cheek nuzzled against callused flesh.

His hand tipping your face upwards. “Open your eyes.”

And you do.

Shiny, blinking. Unfocused, then landing on him. Something registers, clicks in your mind. “Please,” you whisper. You don’t know what you’re asking for.

But he does. Something bittersweet in this throat. “I know,” he rasps. He wants this. Fulfilment delivered on a silver platter. But not like this. Not from someone else’s abymal attempts.

He’d seen the way you brightened when he passed by with a compliment. A well timed ‘great work in there’, and your shy smile followed him. Like a sunflower chasing the sun. Maybe it’s his ego stinging, now. Maybe it’s something else; something tender, something primal.

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle.

Jack hushes you. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” If he could get his hands on the man that called himself your date, he wishes for once, he could take back the sworn oath to do no harm.

“I’m sorry,” you say again.

He manoeuvres himself onto the bed. Pulls you into his lap, chests aligned. His arms encircle your waist, avoiding the bruises decorating your upper back. Settling on top of the tattoos. “Breathe with me,” he instructs.

So you do.

In and out. In and out. Inhale, exhale. Again and again.

Just until the dizziness fades a little. Until you feel like you have a few fingers back on the ledge.

“I’m sending you home,” Jack says.

“I don’t want—”

“Do not,” he demands, tense, “argue with me.”

Your mouth clicks shut. Face buried into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Sorry,” you whisper.

“You go home,” he says, “you get yourself cleaned up. Eat. Rest. I’ll come by and take care of you when I’m done here.”

You suck in a breath. “No—”

“What did I just say about—”

A noise of complaint in the back of your throat, hand wrapped around his bicep, squeezing. “Red,” you utter.

It jolts him. Admittedly, it’s been a while, but the colours are ingrained in him as much as the safewords that he used. This isn’t a scene, but you’re so far down that you can’t tell.

“What?” he asks, around the thudding in his chest. He overstepped, somewhere. He doesn’t know you like this, can’t anticipate your needs like he would in the ED.

“I can’t,” you tell him, quiet. Small. “You can’t.”

“I can’t what?”

“Take care of me.”

Jack inhales gravel. Pissed off. “Did he tell you that? Is that why he left you alone?”

“No,” you say.

“Then what is it?” One of his hands lift from your waist, guiding your face away from where you’re hiding. Thumb brushes across tear stained cheek. “Talk to me,” he murmurs.

You peer down at him, positioned higher only because you’re straddling his thighs. You swallow against this heavy thing in your chest.

How do you even admit that the sole reason you started researching BDSM in the first place, is due to the man in front of you? Due to the way he doled out praises in the ED, unlocking something within you? You imagined it was him, pinning you down, hands around your neck, teeth sinking into skin, telling you to be good for him.

“I can’t have you mean nothing,” you whisper, eventually.

Jack swallows past the lump suddenly in his throat. “What does that mean?” A burgeoning of hope. “Sweetheart, what does that mean?” And maybe that’s the cruelty in him, a manipulative side that fools him into thinking that if he calls you as such, you can remain tucked inside his heart. Can convince you to stay there.

“You’re everything,” is all you say. Maybe it’s enough.

“Everything,” he repeats.

“Yes.”

Jack’s hand is a gentle thing against your cheek. No pressure, no guidance. Just slight pressure tracking your movements as you nose against his jaw. Scrape your skin against stubble.

His hand slides to the back of your scalp. “And that means I can’t take care of you?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Why?”

“I…” You’re not selecting words. Just trying to find them through the fog. “Because it’s only for today. Until I feel better.”

“And you don’t want that.”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“Everything,” you say again. And your lips land on his pulse point, You feel it thrum. “With you.”

He doesn’t know how much of this is the drop. How much of this is you. All he knows is that you wouldn’t admit any of this if you were in the right mind.

Fingers flex at the roots of your hair. He tugs you up to look at him.

Your hips buck on their own accord. You keen, thighs tightening around him. Teary eyed.

His other hand against your waist digs in. Stopping your movements. “Fuck,” he swears, hoarse. “Sorry.”

“Feels good,” you murmur, reassuring.

He can’t do this. Here. While you’re like this. He needs you up and out of sub drop before he can have this conversation with you. But you don’t want his help unless he can promise you everything. He can only hope he knows what that means.

“Please,” you utter.

“I know,” Jack soothes. His hand braced against your cheek again.

You lean forward, weight against him. Lips almost on his.

His fingers lead you away. “No,” he murmurs, sandpaper in his throat.

You let out a cracked whine. He doesn’t want to kiss you.

“No,” he says, sharp, like he can see what conclusion you’re reaching. “Not yet.” His lips against your forehead. “Not here.”

Jack doesn’t know how long it takes. He can’t spend the whole shift in there with you, as much as he wants to.

The contact helps. His touches, the soft susurration aimed into the soft flesh of your neck. At some point, you’re coherent enough to be functional. Turtleneck and scrub top on.

Jack tells you to go home. You do.

Lena meets Jack’s gaze. Worried. Questioning.

He shakes his head. It wasn’t what she initially thought, but he’s still concerned. Not completely out of the woods yet.

The final two hours of his shift stretch. All he can think of is you. By the time he sees Robby, he feels dead on his feet.

“You good, brother?” Robby claps him on the shoulder, frowning.

“Long story,” Jack says, scrubbing at his face.

“Yeah? You don’t got time?”

“I gotta head out. John can hand off.”

“Seriously?” Robby blinks, surprised.

Jack’s never passed on a hand off before. But he feels like Shen was probably more present, anyway. Less distracted.

“Robby, my guy,” Shen says.

Robby fixes the other attending with a deeply unimpressed look. “John.”

“See you,” Jack says.

“I better get the short version some time,” Robby says.

“Me too!” John adds.

“You don’t even know what we were talking about…”

Their voices trail away as Jack walks. No rooftop. No drinks in the park. Just over to your apartment, the address memorised from your staff profile. Probably a privacy concern, but Lena turned the other way when he said he wanted to check on you.

You’re asleep on the couch when he comes. You were cogent enough to text him your apartment number and a picture of your welcome mat, letting him know your key was under there.

Not the most secure hiding place, but by the time he arrived, it was still there.

The back of his hand pressed against your forehead, taking your temperature. Fingers brush through your hair.

You stir. “Dr Abbot?” Spoken softly, eyelids heavy.

“Hey, kiddo.” He shifts, handing you your water bottle you’ve left on the coffee table.

You sip from it, blinking yourself awake. Scrubbing at bleary eyes. “Are you wearing shoes?” you ask around a yawn.

Jack blinks, not having expected your question. He looks down at the shoes he’s wearing—one on his foot, the other on his prosthesis. “Yeah.”

“Shoes off,” you say. “There are guest slippers in the bottom cubby hole.”

“Bottom cubby hole,” he repeats. More so to remember, than mock you.

“Please,” you add.

He rumbles a laugh before he follows your instructions. He takes out the ointment from his backpack before depositing it near the coat rack at the door. He shuffles back towards you, now clad in the slippers. “Did you eat yet?”

You hum your confirmation. “I have leftovers in the fridge. And I showered. You can use the shower too. Towels are in the cupboard in my room.”

“Alright. When I’m done, I’m going to check your back again.”

“Okay.”

He lingers. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Feeling like yourself?”

You think. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

When he’s done, you’ve relocated to your bedroom. It’s a strange situation for him to be in, invited into your apartment and encouraged to explore the place himself. Complete trust in someone else’s life.

He finds you curled under the soft blanket you have spread over your king single bed. Sprawled out, sleeping in a prone position. He pops his prothesis off.

Ointment in hand, he gently tugs the blanket down. Sees you in sleep shorts, no shirt on. The consideration of making your back easily accessible isn’t lost on him. He touches up the ointment while you remain asleep. Fingers applying pressure, massaging tense muscles even though you’re not awake for it. He feels you relax under his touch.

“What am I going to do with you?” he wonders aloud.

And he stays there, next to you, until he too, falls asleep.

When you wake up, you kind of forget what happened. It feels like a blur—something you could write off as a dream if you didn’t have any reminders. And in this moment, you don’t. Tiredly stumbling to the bathroom, then to your bedroom, wrapped in a towel.

You’re, somehow, too out of it to hear the noises in the kitchen. Once you’re in comfortable loungewear, you take your reusable water bottle with you. The intention is to fill it, grab some snacks, then head back into your room. Maybe pop on a show. Let your brain turn off.

“Hey.”

You startle, almost dropping the bottle. Pivoting to see Dr Jack Abbot in front of your stove. Cooking—something. Eggs, you think. It’s one of the things you always stock up in the fridge.

Yesterday in the hospital was not a dream. It was real. Very real. And he came to check in on you in your apartment. And stayed over.

“Hey. I…” you start. Trail off.

“Forgot?” Amusement lifting the corner of his lips. Trying to hide it for your sake.

“No,” you say, quick. You both know it’s a lie. Lips pressed into a line, heading to the water dispenser attached to the fridge to fill up your bottle.

Jack grins when you’re no longer looking at him. “Eat first.” The toaster pops with two slices. He’s made himself at home, studying your kitchen. Pantry, fridge, cupboard, drawers. He’s memorising the layout. Two plates, eggs, toast, slices of ham. You, apparently, didn’t have bacon. He searched.

Sitting at the tiny thing you call a dining table, Jack waits for you to tuck into your food. Despite the fact that you’re more lucid, he can tell you’re still off. As he eats, you’re not. Pushing food around. Tearing off pieces of your toast to nibble at.

Since Saturday, he remembers. Wonders if you treated all your meals like this before coming into the Pitt. You must have been running on fumes. Wonders how many times you’ve done this; if this is your first time, or just the first time it’s gone wrong.

Jack clears both the plates away. His empty; yours mostly full. Half your toast gone. He decides to glad-wrap yours, putting it in the fridge. Cleans his own plate in the sink, washing his hands after.

“You didn’t have to… be here,” you say. To stay. To make you food.

“I said I’d take care of you,” he responds, evenly. Leaning against the sink. Eyes on you.

And you both remember what happened after. What you said. Not unless you could have everything.

You feel—embarrassed. You meant it, of course you meant it. A stupid torch you’ve carried for two years. The humiliating realisation that it wasn’t going away. You tried to put those feelings onto someone else, tried to go out, go on dates. You were young. And yet.

The sinking knowledge that this wasn’t just some kind of silly crush born of proximity and praises.

“It’s not your responsibility,” you state. “You’re not my—” Mouth snapping shut, self-editing.

Even if you don’t finish it, the tilt of his head, the challenging tick of his eyebrow says he heard it. Arms crossing over his chest.

You can’t help the way your eyes fixate on the stretch of the short sleeves of his t-shirt around tensed biceps.

“I’m not your what?” Jack asks.

You clear your throat, moving to stand up. To get away, even if for a second. Even if he’s trying to do you a favour by being here.

“Stay down.”

You almost do. The chair scrapes backwards, instead. “Fuck off, Abbot,” you snarl, standing fully.

Hostility rearing its head again. Like with Lena, except this time, you’re not restraining yourself at an attempt at professional conduct. You’re biting. Pushing.

Jack knows there’s probably a few ways he can take this. Can respond. “Don’t do this.”

Gone is the sweet thing he held in his lap yesterday. Instead, you’re aching, scared of rejection and lashing out because of it.

“Quit patronising me. You’re not my—anything. And I’m not yours.”

His teeth scrape together, jaw squeezing. Jack knows this game. Can read you like a book. He can’t fall for the bait; if his temper wins, he proves you right.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, voice soft despite the urge to snap. He knows this is born of insecurity. One that was fed by some prick that abandoned you on Saturday. “I’m not like him—”

“Don’t,” you hiss out.

“—I’m not going to leave.”

It makes something ripple inside you. An age-old wound that tells you you’re unlovable. Something complicated passes over your face. You can’t decide if you want to believe him or squash it down. False hope.

Jack moves towards you. Three steps to close the distance between the sink and table.

Your eyes are wet, bright with tears. “Dr Abbot—”

“Jack,” he corrects. Chest twisting.

“Jack,” you say.

He nods, eyes darting between yours. Eye contact connoisseur. “Can you sit down?” He changes his approach. “Please?”

You do. Slipping into the dining chair. The backrest to your side. Legs facing him and not tucked under the table.

And Jack.

He sinks.

One of his knees makes contact with the floor. His other leg bent, foot on the ground. His hand resting on the flesh above your knee, balancing.

A tremulous breath releases from you. Shock. “What are you—?”

“You wanted everything,” Jack says. “Let me give you everything. Please.”

And hasn’t he been carrying a torch for you, too? Your first day with the night shift wasn’t anything special. It’s not that he was struck by you immediately—the consequences of being an attending physician, having a million things on his mind, and a hundred other things clamouring for his attention.

You were always quick. Responsive. Observant. At his elbow, two seconds before he asked, handing him everything he needed like you were a mind reader. It was fascinating, in a way.

He hadn’t even registered when the change happened. There was no adjustment period. One day you were that damn good nurse on his team, and the next day, he realised he couldn’t take his eyes off of you.

Watching, always watching, when you pushed the gurney from the ambulance bay into the trauma room; when you playfully saluted Parker after she asked for an IV on her patient; when you adopted that childish voice to say Nurse Lena, Nurse Bridget is being mean to me again, just to make them laugh after a tough patient; when Shen tried to get you to learn Mandarin but that was already in Princess’ arsenal, and the only rule established was no repeats.

As time went on, he noticed the way your tightly wound shoulders would relax at his words. The way your gaze lingered, like you wanted to ask for more. You never did, and he never pushed.

How could he? He was an attending. Much, much older than you. Had skeletons in his closet that he would rather shove down than let anyone sign up for.

Somewhere, he fell. Softly, then all at once.

You reach out, fingers drifting across his cheek. “Jack,” you whisper, an incredulous sound.

“Right here, sweetheart.” He cups your hand, angling his head to kiss your palm. Eyes never straying from yours.

Tears knocked loose. “I’m sorry,” you say, wet. Once again, ashamed of your behaviour.

“You did nothing wrong.” If he could spend the rest of his life reassuring you, he would. Maybe he can. Everything, after all.

“But I… yelled.”

Jack grins, wry. “I get yelled at all the time.” By patients. By admin. It’s no skin off his back.

“I said…” You inhale, wobbly. “I said I wasn’t yours.”

And there, that darkening of his eyes. Studious. Trained on nothing but you. “Are you?”

“I want to be.”

“So you are. Mine.”

You wet your lips. His eyes track the movement, unabashed. “And…” you say.

He waits, patient. Lets you find your words.

“You’re mine?”

“Yes. Yours,” he rasps. Kneeling before you, whatever else could he be?

“Get up. Please.” A murmured plea.

He does. It’s not a swift movement, but you’re past paying attention. You stand, slot your body against his. He’s meeting you halfway. Your palm splayed against his chest; his hand cupping your cheek.

A soft capture of your lips. Jack’s thumb sweeping, tugging lightly at the corner of your mouth. Fingers digging into the sharp of your jawbone tucked beneath your ear.

You let out a stuttering breath at the pressure, something fuzzy clouding your eyes. He slips his tongue inside your mouth. A welcomed weight against your tongue, a spit slicked slide.

A drawn out noise, broken into pants.

His hands gathered at your waist. Walking you backwards into the table. It grates against the linoleum floor, thudding into the wall. Neither of you pay it any heed. You’re perched on the table. He steps between your legs, hitching one thigh against his side.

“Please,” you gasp into the infinitesimal space between you, “I’ll be good.”

“I know,” Jack whispers. Something gentle and soft and so, so sweet tucked against him. Honeyed and viscous, coating his throat. Choking, unbidden tears in his eyes. “I’ll give you everything,” he promises.

Your arms hooked around his shoulders, lifting your core, angling up. Pressing the heat between your legs against his growing bulge.

“Fuck,” Jack groans. A palm laid against the surface of table, the other keeps a bruising grip on the flesh of your side. Stabilising himself. His face tucked to your neck, kissing a line against your throat. Buying himself time. “Fuck, you’re perfect,” he says.

“Jack.” A breathy moan, as his lips trail down. Hips rolling up against him. You reach, fingers scrabbling against the waistband of his pants.

“Uh uh.” Digits wrapping around your wrist, pressing your hands against the cold wood beneath you. “Hands on the table.”

“I want—” Despite your protesting words, your palms remain flat on the smooth surface. “I want to make you feel good.” To get on your knees for him, to feel the heavy weight of his cock in your mouth, the stinging strain in the corners of your lips as you struggle to fit him, an aching in your jaw. You know he’d be big enough for that.

“I know, sweetheart.” His lips on yours again, a reassuring kiss. The problem isn’t you—it never is. It’s the fact that he’d finish within minutes if you got your mouth around him. He’s strung tight, and he knows his refractory period isn’t as short as it used to be. The reality is he’s old.

“Please,” you whine.

“Hands on the table,” he reminds, despite the fact that you hadn’t moved. He lowers himself to the ground, eyes on you. Watching you watch him. Roughened fingers tugging your pants down. Lips pressed to the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. Kissing up further and further.

Air catches in your throat.

Jack leans forward, closes his mouth around your clothed core. Tongue finding the split between flesh.

You moan, breath hitching at his touch. Fingers twitch against the table. You want to bury them in his grey curls, but he told you to keep them where they are.

“Good,” he whispers, hot breath fanning across your skin. “You’ll be good, won’t you?”

“Yes,” you gasp.

Jack pulls down your underwear. Rests his cheek against the side of your thigh. Stubble scratching against overheated skin. “Look at you,” he says, reverent. “You’re so wet, baby.”

You whimper. Your hands inch further behind you. Angling your body. “Jack.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Fingers around your calf, hiking it over his shoulder. Every touch, searing.

“Please.”

“So sweet,” he purrs. And then his tongue, finally, finally glides into the drenched heat. He hums through the wrecked sound you make, licking up. A brief kiss to your clit before his lips seal around it. Tongue lands, tip of the muscle working up and down repeatedly, then around.

You—shatter. No other way to describe it. Your hands are still somewhere behind you, maybe numb at this point. Your leg still hooked over Jack’s shoulder, heel digging into the stretch of his back. Hips rolling upwards, into his face. “Jack,” you cry, heavy with relief and something fractured, all at once.

His eyes are dark, captivated by you, preoccupied with taking in every reaction, every movement. His tongue never ceases. Fingers collect the slick from your opening, using his thumb to rub it along his middle and fourth finger.

Whining aloud. Fingertips digging into unrelenting wood. You want to touch him. You try to enclose your legs around him.

Jack pushes his free hand against your thigh, the one that’s not on his shoulder. Keeping you open. Then he sucks, tongue flicking against your clit at the same time.

Your hips grind upwards. “Jack—”

He presses his middle finger into you. He doesn’t take his time. Pumps it once, twice.

“Jack, please, please—”

He draws his finger out. Pushes his ring finger inside at the same time. You feel the stretch with two fingers, wider than yours. Longer than yours.

Jack doesn’t mean to rush, but he feels so lightheaded with want. Knows his knees will probably complain tomorrow morning. He needs you to come, wants to hear you fall apart. Crooking his fingers towards your belly, feeling around the wet insides. Pads of his fingers massaging.

You feel it building in your core. Breaths escaping. “I’m—oh, fuck, I’m—please—”

You can feel him responding, fingers moving faster. Working you from inside. And he keeps the suction on your clit.

“Jack, please, I need—” Almost there but not quite. You feel right at the precipice, but you can’t tip over. Chasing it, though, the way you grind into his face. Onto his fingers. Hands splayed on the table, head tipped towards the ceiling. Every sound punched out of you.

He hums, a deep thing that sends vibrations through you.

“Talk to me, please, Jack, please I want to hear you.”

Jack shifts, mouth opening, tongue pressed flat against your clit. The hand pushing your thigh moves, fingers rubbing against the sensitive nerve. Still fucking you with the fingers inside.

“Yeah?” he asks, and his voice is frayed. “Need me to talk you through it?” There’s spit and you on his chin, glossing his lips. Tongue swipes across petals, swallowing like it’s nectar. Cheek resting against your upper thigh. Stubble scraping against skin.

You shudder. “Yes, yes please, Jack, please.”

“Yeah. Need me to tell you’ve been good, honey?” A kiss pressed to your leg. Your sensitive skin burning, itching every time he moves. The scratch of his shadow. His eyes are lava on you, even if you can’t see him.

“Just like at work, is that it? I tell you you’ve done a good job and you walk around the hospital all wet and pent up? Tell me, baby, do you come home and think of me when you get yourself off? Hear me in your head?”

The nail knocked on the head. The hole-in-one.

You can’t be surprised, and yet, somehow, you are, that he figured it out. You’re clenching around his fingers, tight. Gasping. You don’t even need to verbalise that you’re coming. He can feel it. Your hips bucking up, his elbows digging into the meat of your thighs to keep your legs apart.

Wordless litanies of moans. High pitched and wrecked. Jack pushes his fingers in further, letting you ride yourself through it. And he doesn’t stop his ministrations over your clit. “Jack,” you sob.

“There you go, baby. This is what you wanted, right?” Jaw clenching, hips stuttering against air. He’s so painfully hard. It could almost be concerning, how ready he is. “Fuck me, you’re beautiful.”

He stands, knees cracking, back sore. Yet, he keeps his fingers moving. Inside and outside. Your thigh slides off his shoulder. He positions himself between them, your legs drawing up at his sides. He leans down towards you, hissing something ragged when his cock makes contact with your thigh. “Come here,” he says.

You weep with relief, arms moving from behind you, wrapping around his shoulders. You meet his lips. The fingers inside stop moving, but press insistently on that spot. He keeps rubbing your clit, just to hear you moan, to feel the tremors of your body, to feel the way you contract around his fingers. Imagining that it’s his cock.

“Jack,” you heave. “Too—ah, too much—”

“No, baby,” he says, “I say when it’s too much.”

“Jack,” you whine. “Please. Please, I need you.”

Oh, the unfair games you’re playing, begging like that. He huffs impatience through his nose, jawline ticking. “I’m right here, sweetheart. Not going anywhere.”

And you feel it—the way you’re falling into the second orgasm. One of your hands gripping his bicep. Harder than necessary, maybe. Complaining. Retaliating. “Fuck, mmm, Jack, I’m—oh, I’m coming—”

Your back arches upwards into him. Hips grinding down between his fingers again. Fingers crooked inside you, rubbing against the soft spot. Fingers rubbing your clit. Sensitive.

He grunts, head falling onto your shoulder. Hears the pathetic little sounds that you don’t even realise you’re making.

Your head’s fuzzy, your ears dulled like you’re underwater. And yet, so aware of where he’s touching you. Every point of contact ignited, like he’s leaving a brand on this mortal vessel that was created to contain nothing but love for him.

“I know, baby, I know,” he hushes. And finally, his fingers still. Small mercies as he removes the hand from your clit. Not yet sliding his fingers out.

Jack kisses you. Your chest heaving, craving air. Trembling, clenching around the fingers still inside you. “Fuck,” he breathes out. “There you are.” Observing those glassy eyes. The lazy limbs that cling to him. Lips pressed to your temple.

You cup his erection through the fabric of his pants.

He hisses, jerking into your touch. “Fuck,” he swears.

You stroke him, feeling the length.

“You—shit—you gotta stop, sweetheart,” he says.

You make a questioning noise. You want to make him feel good.

“You really want our first time to be in the kitchen?”

You’re slow to gather your words. “Anywhere,” you slur out. Too much effort to talk. “Whatever… you want.”

Jack huffs out a chuckle. “Yeah,” he whispers, tender at your deference. He kisses you again, sliding his fingers out of you. He parts momentarily, eyes locked on yours as he brings his fingers into his mouth. Licking, fingers splitting, tongue moving down the space between slick digits.

Your hips twitch, a lazy movement that brings you flush against his body. Smearing your come and his spit against the fabric of his pants. He’s still fully clothed, you realise.

“Bed,” you croak, even though you told him it was his choice, just moments before.

Jack laughs, a gentle thing. Nose bumping against yours. Hands lifting you. Legs wrapped around his waist. “Get your bottle,” he says.

You blindly grab for it before he walks you towards your bedroom. Door closing behind him, even though there’s no one else here. He deposits you on the bed. Tells you to take a sip of water before placing it onto the nightstand.

You don’t move. You’re exactly where he left you on the bed when he turns back to you.

He sits on the edge of the mattress. “C’mere,” Jack says.

You shuffle towards him. He’s expecting you to crawl into his lap, maybe. What he doesn’t expect, is the way you slide off the bed to kneel by his feet.

His breath hitches in his throat. Fingers twitching, as your cheek rests against his thigh. Digits threading into your hair. You angle your face to look up at him, blinking. Slow.

“Hey,” he says, fraught with something delicate. Raw and soft.

You nuzzle against him. Head feeling stuffy. Floating. Sinking. Contradictory, yet somehow. True.

“What do you need?”

Nothing. Everything. Wordlessly, you feel at his leg, calf down. Almost like you’re palpating it. Onto the next leg. You unbuckle the prosthesis, hearing him hiss at the twist, at the unlatching. Pained or relief, you can’t tell. Pressing a kiss to the bend of his knee when you remove it, prosthesis intentionally placed aside. You want him comfortable.

You’re slotted back against his thigh, like you didn’t just change his world, like you didn’t just show him the kind of tenderness he never thought he’d deserve after losing the leg.

Jack breathes, unsteady and ragged, but you blink up at him like you’ve never been surer of anything in your life. Complete trust.

You inch forward, nosing closer towards his crotch. Mouthing a long, lingering kiss to his dick. Slow and muted through layers of clothes. Sucking, wetting fabric. An unspoken request.

Jack groans, hips jerking. Fingers reach out, cradling. Callused pads against your jaw, thumb sliding across your lips.

You part them.

His thumb slips in, access easily granted, applying pressure against your tongue. Gliding down. Molten eyes on yours. Your brain is hazy with static. Blissful. Half-lidded eyes. Moaning as you swallow around his digit.

Jack laughs. You feel the reverberations of it, rather than hear the sound. His thumb lets up, still inside your mouth, but no longer pressing down. You blink your eyes opened, questioning, protesting.

“I asked what you prefer, baby,” he rumbles, corners of his lips lifting. Revelling in the way you’re so lost, so dazed. “Do you want me in here?” Thumb circles your tongue. “Or in here?” His good foot shifts, tucked under where you’re kneeling. Front of his ankle catching just right on your bare clit.

A hitched whine, hips grinding down. Sticky heat on his skin.

“I can only do one, sweetheart. You’re killing me, here.” He’s so gone on you, it’s almost devastating. Man made soldier, thickened skin to take on the sins of the world. And his Achilles heel is a precious thing by his knee.

You lap at his thumb, tongue flexing along the grooves of his fingerprint. For a second, he thinks this is how you want him, but you move. An obscene, wet pop as you back away from his hand. You treat it as if it were his dick, licking, tongue against nail and skin, like it’s the leaking seam of his cock.

“Jesus,” Jack groans. You’re going to be the death of him. Completely and absolutely. No differential diagnoses required.

You rise into his lap, nothing shy or uncertain in the way you straddle him and grind yourself against his clothed erection. Lips against his, kissing like you need it to breathe. Need him to breathe. Maybe you do. A low and quiet buzz in your head.

Fingers bracing against your jaw, then lips travel down your neck. You’re still rolling your hips against him. It feels heavenly, the graze of fabric against your already sensitive clit.

Jack lets out a pained noise, shifting. One moment to the next, you went from being in his lap, to facing the ceiling, back against the soft blanket. You rise to your elbows, blinking, eyes moving to the foot of the bed.

He doesn’t make a show of taking off his clothes. It’s quick, the way he removes his shirt, pants, and briefs. He’s pretty sure that if you continued moving on top of him like that, he was just going to come in his pants like he’s in college again.

“You’re killing me,” he says again. He crawls towards you. Body on yours. Divests you quickly of your top.

The slide of his palm to one of your breasts. Cupping. Squeezing. “Been thinking about this since your first scrub change.” Fingernails pinching the tip of your nipple.

You cry out.

Lips over your other tip, a mimicry of the attention he paid to your clit. Licking. Tongue slathering. Then, teeth, biting.

You rut up against him, one leg hooking over his back. Feel the length of him against you. “Please,” you whine.

His hips stutter. “Fuck me,” he groans. Inhales, then lets it out heavily.

“Trying to.”

He laughs, then, a sound that’s disbelieving, even though he should have expected nothing less from you. You’ve been hanging around the night shift too much. A hand in your hair, tugging, born of your insolence. Stealing the sound you make with a kiss. Fucks his tongue into your mouth again.

You feel like you’re losing your mind with the need to feel him. The slide of him, the delicious drag of him against your walls. To clench around and feel his dick inside you. Instead, you’re still empty.

Gasping when you part for air. “Jack,” you plead. “Please, I want to feel you.”

Jack smacks a kiss to your cheek. “Where are your condoms?” He has some in his bag—was part of his prepared care kit alongside the ointment he brought. But he’s left that by the doorway, and he doesn’t want to leave this bed with you in it, wrapped around him.

A hand smoothing over his chest, up his shoulder, clasping around his nape. “No, we don’t need—”

“Uh uh, no,” he says. “Not today.”

“But I’m—”

“No.” Stern. Lifting up, leaning back. “If you don’t listen to me about this, we’re not doing this today.”

“Sorry,” you hiccup, the easiest acquiescence. “Sorry. Nightstand. Bottom drawer. Sorry.” Tears in your eyes. Gripping at his arm, then letting go, undeserving. “Don’t go. I’m sorry.”

Jack lets out an agonised noise. You both know that if you were more cognisant, you would agree with him, would want this too. But it doesn’t make it any less hard to say no when you’re like this. “I’m not mad,” he whispers, leaning in to kiss you again. Soft. Apologetic. The last thing he wants to do is to let you believe that he could up and leave you so easily. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bottom drawer,” you say again.

Jack gets up, moving towards the nightstand to grab what he needs. The distance is close enough that one leg remains on the bed for balance. Tucked under rumpled towels, a box of condoms. And if he happens to see some toys, cuffs, other accessories you’ve clearly purchased for yourself, haphazardly hidden—oh, that’s something that he can use next time.

Packet torn, condom slipped on. Muffled groan at the relief of being touched, even if it’s just himself. Returning to the bed, to you. You’ve been watching him the whole time, eyes dragging over his skin, his body.

He doesn’t feel shy under your gaze. Exposed, though, is a different feeling.

“Can I go on top?” you ask.

He falters. He usually doesn’t. Usually surefooted. But this—you. You have a tendency to cleave apart his every defense. Every sure thing he knows about life. “You want to?”

“Yes,” you say. “Feels better.”

Tucked and saved somewhere safe. To keep and know about you. “Okay,” he says, and settles at the head of your bed, back against the wall. You draw close, slipping your pillow under his calf. Then you climb into his lap, a soft sigh releasing, like homecoming. Kissing him again, a silent addiction. His arms are warm and weighted around your middle. And he lets you take your time.

Once again, the slow rolling of your hips down to his. Your entrance flushed against the length of his dick. The torturous drag, up and down.

Jack grips your waist, lips against your collarbone. Harsh breaths of air. “Fucking Hell.”

And when you seem content to let it draw on like this, he bites at the flesh under your collarbone. Warning.

You downright mewl at the threat his teeth breaking through your skin. “Ah—mhm.”

“You gonna let me fuck you anytime soon?”

It takes a little to register that not only has he asked you a question, but you should probably respond as well. “If you want to,” is what you end up saying.

“If I want to.” Mocking, a dangerous scoff. He feels like he’s on fire. Lifting you, one hand around his cock, lining it up against your entrance. Tip catching between your folds.

And finally, you’re sinking down on him.

The hitched sounds coming from you, trapped in your throat. Arms hooked around his shoulders, keening into the side of his throat. The stretch of your walls making way for him. The soft insides, swallowing, welcoming. And it keeps going.

Your fingers digging into the corded muscles of his arm, his hands petting the sides of your stomach. Soothing. “You’re—you feel—oh—” Sinking further around his girth. Until you’re sure he’s completely inside you.

Jack lets out a low groan. “Fuck.” Breathes in deeply. Holds it. Then out.

You try to rise.

His arms immediately snap a tight brace around you, holding you in place. “Fuck. Give—give me a minute.”

“Jack—”

“You,” he grinds out, “have no idea how tight you feel. Just give me a minute, sweetheart.”

And of course, that involuntary spasm of your walls around his cock.

Jack swears. Forehead thuds against the space above your sternum. “Quit that.”

“Wasn’t on purpose.”

He notices the lack of apology. “Brat,” he says fondly, and kisses you again.

You don’t know how long you stay like that for. Lips and air. Arms refusing to budge around you. His cock inside you. You swear you feel him in your diaphragm. Your skin feels like fire. “Can I move?” you beg. “Jack, please, can I move? Please, I need—can we—I want to feel you—”

“Shhh, baby, it’s okay. I got you, honey. You’re okay.” A hand reaches up to wipe a thumb across your cheeks.

It comes away wet. You hadn’t realised you started crying.

“Please,” you sob.

His hips snap upwards.

Your next breath comes trapped between a moan and a cry.

Both arms wrapped around you again. An iron band. Then he fucks up into you.

“Oh,” you whimper. “Oh, fuck, ah, ah—thank you, thank you thank you—”

The noise Jack releases is inhuman. He keeps an unrelenting pace, punching out moans from you. He’s flooded by the need to feel you come around him. “Yeah, that’s it. You’re doing so well, honey. Taking what I give you.”

You’re meeting him halfway. Grinding down against him, desperately keening. You feel his hand slip between you, thumb against your clit. You white out. Pressure, more so than stimulating you. Fucking yourself onto his cock, then up against his thumb, making you chase what you need. “Please, more, more, please.”

“Yeah? You want more? You want to come again? You want to come with my dick inside you?”

“Yes, please, I need it. I need you, please.”

“Yeah, you do.” Unmoored, slightly. His thumb rubs circles on your clit. “Come on, baby, I wanna hear you.”

Your chin hooked over his shoulder, angling your lips towards his ear. Discarding every notion of shyness. Every sound, every cry, every thought about him; needing him, wanting him, released. The burgeoning that starts in your belly. The fiery licks of something wonderful.

Jack hears it in your gasping breath, feels it in the velvet walls convulsing around him. “There you go, sweetheart. Give me another one. Fuck, you’re so fucking perfect.” Tenderness in the way his lips press against your shoulder.

You whine. Close.

“Poor baby needs to hear my voice to come, is that it? So fucking obsessed with me. Be good and come for me, baby, let me hear you—fuck—there you go.”

Holding you in place, your hips riding through the orgasm that crashes into you. His thumb rubbing incessantly on your clit. He stops fucking his cock into you, but his hips still move. Rolling, grinding.

You’re outright crying, heaving in gasps of air. Overstimulated. His thumb never stops. Your walls spasming around him, again and again.

“I know, baby, I know. I’m almost there. Can we keep going until I’m done? Is that okay, baby?”

“Yes,” you sob. You’re so so gone. Floating. “Please. Use me.”

You’re flattened on the bed.

From one blink to the next, Jack had shifted up, pressing you onto the mattress. Legs around him. The pillow at his calf tucked under your hips. The angle slides him in deeper. “Fuck,” he grinds out, hoarse. “Fuck. You’re perfect. So fucking perfect, baby. So fucking good for me.”

“Yes, yes yes yes yes yesyes.” Litanies of yesses, completely overloaded with pleasure. With the feeling of him inside. Everywhere. The fingers digging into your thigh. Forehead shoved against your chest, somewhere above your heart.

Then, the broken groan. Low, ragged. “Fuck. Coming, baby, I’m coming.” His thumb back on your clit, circling once more. Fucking into you while your walls flutter around him.

You’re completely spent. Keening, whining, hiccupping.

He stops, eventually. Dragging his hand over your belly, stroking. Up your chest. Petting overheated skin. Then cups your face to kiss him.

You feel so faraway. Numb. On fire. Both.

He flips you both, somehow. Arms straining. You’re folded into his chest, his dick still inside you.

And he stays.

You’re too out of it to realise he’s reached over to the nightstand until the straw to your bottle is pressed against your lips.

“Drink,” he says.

You do. Eyes fluttering shut. Cheek against his chest.

“You did so good for me, baby,” Jack murmurs. “You were so perfect. You are perfect.”

His fingers trace the tattoo that sprawls along your back. You shiver, accidentally grinding against him again. You both hiss.

Tilting your head up, lips finding yours again. Kissing. Gentle. Soft.

“Love you,” you whisper.

Jack lets out a tremulous breath. Kisses you again. He’ll talk about this—say it back tomorrow after you’re coherent enough to remember. But for now, it’s just this sweet thing in his lap.

Part 1 | Blurb 1 | Part 2 | Blurb 2 | Series tag.

[skymouth]

thank you 🥹 i’m glad you enjoyed it!!

[the-darklings]

Goofy ass thought but it possesses me: huffing and puffing your cheeks out in the nest or poly au or wherever bc sometimes you just wanna purr back at BB and you can't 😩😖

you try so hard. puffing your cheeks out and making this low rumbling sound in the back of your throat that sounds absolutely nothing like a purr, and everything like a small engine failing to start. your face is scrunched. you're concentrating. you're giving it everything you have and the result is a noise that a generous person might describe as a hum and a more honest person would describe as a broken refrigerator.

bb goes still. head tilted. eyes wide. processing.

and then the grin splits his face so wide the bobby-suit nearly cracks and he's on you. both hands on your cheeks, squishing your still-puffed face, pressing kisses to your forehead, your nose, your scrunched-up eyes. “you're trying to purr,” he says, breathless with delight. “you're—oh, my love is trying to communicate with me—”

“i'm not trying to—it's just—I wanted to—“

he doesn't hear you. he's too busy smothering your entire face with kisses, cupping your puffed cheeks in his palms and pressing his forehead to yours, the purr rolling out of him is so loud and so happy it vibrates against skin. because you tried. you tried to speak his language. you sat in the nest and puffed your cheeks out like a chipmunk and made a noise for him. the cuteness aggression is hitting him so hard he might actually bite you.

he does bite you. your cheek. gently. then kisses the spot. then bites the other one.

you never live it down. you do it again next week because his reaction is worth the humiliation. every single time.

[rockinglikemotley]

pope cody and his weird girlfriend (match made in heaven)

• no one in the family knows how the two of you met, or when either of you got together, you just kinda showed up one day and didn’t leave…

• you hardly ever smiled, unless it was to pope (who you lovingly called andrew) and even then it was tiny smiles.

• everytime craig or baz would try and mess around with you, all they’d get back was a big eyed stare that would creep them out and they’d back off (pope secretly thinks it’s funny)

• one day craig and deran came home to the two of you taking over the living room. pope was sitting on the couch, nature documentary on, and you were sat on the floor between his feet. a gathering of tools sat neatly around you on the coffee table as you held a dead butterfly, carefully pinning its wings to some styrofoam

“what the fuck is that?” craig furrowed his brow as he came over, looking down over your shoulder at what you were doing. “entomology.” pope muttered, glancing down to see you hyper focused on pinning the orange insect down. craig looked even more confused, looking for deran but not finding him anywhere.

“bug taxidermy.” you said monotonously, taking pins between your fingers and pressing the sharp edge down into the pieces of parchment you had covered the wings with. “found her in the flower bed.”

“uh… nice.” craig rushed out of the living room and went to hide with deran.

• pope and his weird girlfriend that communicate through looks and grunts, no words spoken between them whatsoever some days

• the two of you don’t really sleep… up at odd hours of the night… sometimes just wondering around in the dark… you often scare the other members of the house if they are up only to see you, or pope, or the both of you just standing there (you think it’s funny)

• you also have ocd just like your boyfriend, things have to be a certain way… your way. and sometimes that leads to you and pope having little arguments about how things should be placed/ how things should be done, but your little spats never last long

• craig and deran had stopped by your house exactly one time looking for pope bc they hadn’t seen him in days and wanted to make sure he was still alive…. let’s just say they never came back after seeing creepy taxidermy animals all over the place (it didn’t help that you were brushing your raccoon lamp, its beady little eyes staring right into their souls)

• you often like to scare baz bc he’s an absolute dickhead to women and his own daughter,, so sometimes you just randomly show up at his house (he doesn’t even know how you got his address), creepily sit in the corner of lena’s room while she plays and stare at him, or come up behind him when he’s least expecting it, or just saying some odd shit to weird him out

• craig and deran like you surprisingly, you remind them so much of their older brother in certain aspects and they think the two of you are a match made in… they don’t know where, not heaven or hell, perhaps somewhere in between… baz doesn’t like you too much (and part of it’s bc he can’t charm you like he can with other women) plus he thinks your creepy. j knows to keep his distance, but whenever nicky’s around she thinks you’re odd, but cool

• pope and his weird girlfriend that like to sleep naked sometimes and not for any sexual reasons (well only sometimes lol) but for skin to skin contact, wanting to be as close together as possible (you want to be so close to him that you nearly constrict around him like a snake and your nails dig into his back but he doesn’t mind)

• the other family members often find the two of you just staring at one another. like a silent conversation was flowing between the two of you. then you’d smile, laugh softly like he had said something funny (the others are soooo confused by your dynamic)

• pope and his weird girlfriend that shockingly go crazy in the bedroom since they’re so quiet and monotone everywhere else,,, craig had only found out when he went snooping in their room only to find a pair of black fuzzy handcuffs stuffed in a drawer next to their bed and was like ‘??? what the fuck???’ and ran to tell deran who didn’t want to hear a thing about it

• you have a thing with bugs and other sorts of creepy crawlies. you will catch every single moth that flies into the house, attracted by the light over the island in the kitchen, pope will even lift you so you can grab them and put them back outside. you obviously don’t care to pick up dead bugs. you tease pope sometimes with the worms you pick up from the flower beds.

you once came up behind craig, saying ‘i have something for you’ only for him to nearly jump a hundred feet in the air when he seen the giant wolf spider that took over your whole palm. you gave him a little smirk as he flipped out, finding it hilarious

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

i will be making a part twoooowoowooo

as long as the big sad doesn’t get me

[cotheloverkiki]

Thinking about rich yandere who don't give a single fuck. You wanna leave? Sure, whatever. You want to get revenge on him for kidnapping you? Oh fuck off, you can't. With what influence? With what power? Right. You want to hurt him? Sure, go ahead! Don't you really think that he won't find it good, especially coming from you?

But the moment you want to hurt yourself is where he draws the line.

And fuck, that's your biggest hand against him. He treasures you so much so that he just wants to keep you all hidden just for himself. Just be a pretty doll and let yourself be consumed by him, yeah?

And the moment that you become so tired of resisting him that you have no choice but to give in? You know, he's never gonna hurt you. Not even force himself on you, no, no! Trust, he's not like that.

Sure, he may drug, kidnap and isolate you but he draws the line at forcing himself on you. If he's going to be in pleasure, then you should be too. He likes seeing your face all fucked out and-

Anyways. Main point being is that he loves you with all his heart. He really tries to make it a point if you can just stop resisting him and love him just the way he loves you. He has all the patience in the world. He might as well have the time.

He just doesn't like seeing you hurt, ok?

[littlepuppetheart]

˖ ݁♬⋆.˚𝄞 𝐂𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄 !

YANDERE!IDOL x GN!READER — obsessive yandere / delusional yandere / cyberstalking / reader is a fan / fan signing event / he’s painfully awkward / never meet your idols, amiright?

A/N: double posting because it’s my birthday this week (˶>⩊<˶) i had fun w the fake texts & tweets!!

introduction • masterlist

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who almost spits out his drink when his manager tells the group that they’d be hosting a fan signing event in your city.

You’d be there for sure. Right?

Right?

He’s counting down the days immediately. Obsessively checking all your social media accounts for updates as if you were the idol instead, wondering whether or not you’d come to see him.

He’s literally kicking his feet and squealing. Of course you would. You love him too, don’t you? Not in the way he loves you, but you’d get there, once you meet him and speak to him in person. He just knows it.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who goes crazy with his skincare and his haircare and his workouts and his diet — all in preparation for the big day. How could he ever face you if he doesn’t look perfect? He’d simply die of shame.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who doesn’t sleep a wink the night before the event. His racing thoughts keep him up, thousands upon thousands of imagined scenarios flitting throughout his head. What if he confessed to you then and there? Prostrated himself at your feet? What if he ‘accidentally’ bumped into you in the hallway? Orchestrated one of those “meet-cute”s that you love so much? The possibilities were endless.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who is an anxious mess during the event itself. He’s constantly glancing at the queue, hoping to catch a glimpse of you, completely neglecting the other fans sitting in front of him at the moment. His body is running on autopilot — smile unwavering, responses warm and polite — but his attention is solely fixed on finding you.

When you walk through those doors and catch his eye, he starts smiling so hard he genuinely looks as if he’s gone insane. He has a pretty face though, so he looks good no matter what he does. As you shuffle through the queue, he never takes his eyes off of you, not even once. He wonders if you noticed. You probably did, from the way you kept glancing back to look at him.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 whose hands can’t stop shaking when it’s finally your turn to speak to him. His signature is so jerky, and his script looks close to illegible as he hastily scrawls his number underneath his name.

However, you don’t notice, for the rest of his demeanor is flawless, and you are too preoccupied with making small talk with him to pay attention to what he’s doing with his hands. You hardly have the time to exchange three sentences with him before you have to make space for the next fan, anyway.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 whose anxiety goes into overdrive. What if you can’t read his writing? What if you think it was a joke? What if you don’t text him? What if you think he’s weird? Did he act too stiffly? Were his responses normal enough? Was his smile too creepy? Did he look too eager? What if, what if what if —

He’s literally going insane. He can’t even pull out his phone and check your posts to see your true thoughts about him right now. He’s dying. He’s drowning. Is this what suffocating feels like? There’s bile clawing up his throat, poison surging through his veins —

He shoots to his feet, the chair clattering to the floor behind him. Excusing himself, he says he isn’t feeling too well. He bolts out of the convention hall.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who runs and runs and runs — until he runs into you.

You’re already in the parking lot, halfway to your car, and the resulting scene could come straight out of a rom-com.

“Wait!” he calls. It comes out sharp. Desperate. “Y/N!”

You turn around. Brows raising high the moment you realise who it is.

He scrambles up to you breathlessly, the mask of ‘perfection’ he put on as an idol entirely shattered. Hair clings to his sweat-slicked skin, and even with all the makeup he has on, a faint blush peeks through.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 whose mind goes blank when he finally gets the chance to speak to you freely. Every scenario he had imagined, every speech he had rehearsed, every witty one liner he had planned to say... All of it, gone.

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who has a grand total of zero social skills. He started training as an idol at a really, really young age — even dropped out of school to pursue this line of work — and thus has had no chance to interact with other people outside of his group and his bosses. When he is not “an idol”, he is really no one at all.

You blink. He blinks.

He raises a trembling hand to gesture at the signed album in your arms. “I, uhm... My number — You...?”

His face burns with crimson embarrassment. How very eloquent.

“Oh!” you say. You laugh, and it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard in his life. “I was wondering about that. Do you, ah, want to erase it or something...?”

His response comes out much more passionately than he had intended to be. “No! I — I mean, it’s... for you. It’s for you.”

“Oh,” you say, again.

The silence stretches on between the two of you. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead.

He gulps so audibly he swears it echoes throughout the parking lot.

“Text me? Please...?”

Surprise flashes across your face, before a shy smile, like dawnlight peeking through the clouds, blooms. His heart stutters.

“Sure. Is later alright? I have to get going now...”

“You could give me your number instead!” he offers quickly, stumbling over the words. “So I — Just in case you forget.”

“Ah, sure...!”

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄!𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 who doesn’t hear a thing while he’s getting chewed out by his manager. Head filled to the brim with thoughts about you. Fingers twitching, dying to unlock his phone so he can text you. He’s an addict at this point, addicted to the drug that is your attention.

(Yeah. You’re cooked. Unless you’re into that, then by all means.)

[lostalioth]

Consider: terrible-at-being-a-sugar-baby reader. She gets that he’s supposed to buy her stuff, and she lets him! It’s just that the stuff she wants is mostly snacks and experiences. A new bakery opened downtown and she HAS to try half the case. Doesn’t she deserve an $18 cold pressed juice? She has to go to the aquarium with him - they serve cocktails now and she wants to get day drunk with him and look at jellyfish.

A purse? A dress? Ok, if he wants, but can they go to that new sushi spot after and order irresponsibly?

Your choice of Daddy.

✶ match box 14 — 3k follower event.ᐟ

✦. ─ cw: andrew 'pope' cody x 'sugar baby' fem!reader, 1.3k wc, fluff, pope being down bad, not proofread.

→ a/n: no idea if you meant this as a regular request or a event one but here it is!

Pope had more money from jobs than he knew what to do with. 

He didn't blow it on drugs like Craig, he didn't care to open his own business like Deran and hell who knows what Baz spends his cuts on cause it sure as hell was never Lena. Pope is the one who would buy Lena anything her little heart wanted and well there was nothing material anyway that he really desired so he was still stuck with money just sitting around.

He had heard about sugar baby's before when he was locked up and while he didn't exactly like the idea of being a "Sugar Daddy" — cause it felt like a term more meant for creepy old men who want a younger girlfriend and paying them is the only way they can get one. He figured it never hurt to at least look for one, find someone who would use the money instead of it just collecting dust in a bank or a safe.

He's a little picky as he looks through this slightly sketchy site about women in search of sugar daddy's. They're just about all offering their sexual services in turn for money, and none of that appeals to him. That feels too close to prostitution anyway and he's not looking for that part of the arrangement. Just as he is about to X out of the site and give up his eyes catch on you.

He's recognizes you, he's seen you around at Deran's bar and found himself quite attracted to you but when his younger brother caught him staring one too many times he got kicked to the back office so that he'd "Stop scaring the customers". He figured you were out of his league anyway with how damn gorgeous you were and those should be reasons enough for him not to click…his cursor moves anyway. 

His breath hitches a second at the pictures you chose to display on the site, he's never seen you very dressed up. The few times he has seen you around you are more casual clothes, in the profile pictures you chose you are in figure hugging dresses and little skirts that make Pope's face a little flush now. It says in the bio you made the profile as a joke while drunk at a party with friends but decided to keep it up for the fun of it, he can't help the small jealously he feels over other men sending you money. However seeing as it was only created 2 days ago he hopes no one has, cause he thinks he's officially found his sugar baby. 

It's a little easier than he thought to actually get the courage to speak to you, he messaged you on the site and the two of set up a coffee meeting. Maybe you don't recognize his last name when he tells you cause you don't react but you agree to be his sugar baby. He's grateful you don't exactly ask where he gets all the money he spends on you comes from, since when he's not working a job he is with you. 

The part he doesn't expect though is that you don't seem to ask for the typical things he thought sugar babies asked for. He more than willing to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on new purses, new shoes, makeup, new clothes for you. And I mean he does buy you those things on his own when your eye catches on something in the window as you two walk down the strip of stores, handing it to you with an faint smile. You accept it graciously with a "Thank you Pope i love it" and a kiss to his cheek that has him stuttering for a second as he whispers "You're welcome…" waiting on his heart to cool it with the thumping in his chest. But the stuff you actually ask him for are a bit more odd? The two of you end up going on more or less little dates instead of shopping sprees.

"Pope I wanna try out this new bakery" and he's already buckling you into the passenger seat of his truck and headed there. When he wipes frosting off the corner of your mouth with his thumb and you smile at him all dopey high on all the sugar you've consumed he knows he's gone.

"There's this new exhibit at the aquarium and they have themed cocktails after 5 can we go pleaaasee Popey?" You begged him oh so sweetly one afternoon over the phone and he's already springing up so fast from the patio table outside that Craig asked him if something bit him in the ass. Don't tell his brothers but he liked walking by your side through the rows of tanks filled with colorful fish and beautiful creatures. Drinking fruity little blue drinks with those silly shark gummies til you are a giggling mess clinging on his arm telling him how pretty he is and how grateful you are for him.

When you wanna try this ridiculously expensive healthy juice spot he takes you, even if he scrunches his nose up at all the options. When he notices you can't decide between two he tells you "We can get them both, whichever you like least I'll just drink" with a shrug, you wrap your arms around his bicep and coo a thank you at him. He pays 30 dollars for both of your drinks without blinking an eye, sitting outside at one of their tables outside as you taste test them both. 

You choose the sweet strawberry and raspberry one over the greens one and even if it's a little gross Pope drinks the latter like he said he would. When you accidentally sputter out some of the liquid, the juice coating your lips cause he made you laugh a little too hard with his facial expression as he drinks his sludge — he absentmindedly reaches over to wipe the red staining your pout. Same as at the bakery only this time you pop his thumb in your mouth to lick the sweet mess off it and Pope's eyes go a little wide as they stare at your mouth.

The two of you have only so much as held hands for a not long enough time or you will hold onto his arm, but now more than anything he desperately wants to kiss you. I mean you've given him pecks on the cheek or his nose and a few times he's let himself be indulgent and he has kissed the back of your hand. Actually kissing you, on the lips has been something he hasn't allowed himself.

His train of thought is derailed when you slip your mouth off his finger and giggle out a "What?" He shakes his head in attempt to clear it and looks down like the table and your to-go cups of juice are much more interesting and mutters out a small dismissive "Nothing" 

Bending to your every whim comes far too easily to him cause he's a little too whipped already for you, he even does things for you without you asking. Sends you money for your nails when you complain they've grown out too long and you need them redone, pays your rent for you without so much as you bringing it up, he even finds other experiences for the two of you to do together that he thinks you' ll like. 

He just has to remind himself each time to not let too much affection slip, you're his sugar baby after all not his girlfriend…and suddenly he sort of regrets this arrangement he started a bit.

→ a/n: had no idea where to take this and still wrote 1.3k words bc its pope…and yet i feel like i wrote nothing lmao idk how i feel about this but i love this idea at the same time.

[ghouljams]

it doesnt matter who you go clothes shopping with it's going to be a nightmare every time.

Ghost doesn't know his size so you're back and forth from the fitting room a million times while he tries to figure out what isn't working this time. the sleeves are too short on one and the neck is too small on another, he's too tall for all the pants and too wide for the tshirts, where the fuck does this man buy clothes???

Gaz is picky, has a very specific style in his mind and doesnt like anything, so you're stuck wandering the store for hours while he complains about the selection and inevitably doesn't buy anything.

Soap always gravitates towards the most expensive part of the store and then balks at the prices, spends the whole time complaining about how much things cost and refuses to listen when you try to pull him towards more reasonably priced sections.

and Price? Price won't even go to the store with you, he gives you a budget and his sizes and expects you to bring back everything perfect. he sighs when he tries something on that he doesnt like or doesnt fit but it isn't your fault he gets everything tailored and has been wearing the same sweaters since the 80s.

and you thought shopping for yourself was bad...

[llittlekittennn]

Convincing Jack to dig out his old army uniform just so you can see it for… research purposes!

The two of you are in Jack’s attic, you’re standing near the doorway because he doesn’t want you to get sick from all the dusk up here. You’re watching him as he pulls out old totes then brings them over to the doorway as he rummages through them.

Pulling out old picture frames with a large group of military personnel and he’s holding it over to you

“that’s from… when was it ‘96? Yeah ‘96 I think.”

You’re just giggling to yourself as you look over the faces trying to find your Jackie. You’ve only seen about two photos when he was around about your age

You’re pointing to one of the guys that you already know is him because it’s the only one who’s got curly hair and a ‘medic’ patch on. He’s nodding and letting out a sigh

“Yep, that’s me…”

Then his digging around some more, pulling out another frame, this time it’s just him. Dressed all nice and proper. You’re smiling brightly, you feel so honored that he’s able to even show you this stuff. It has to be very emotional for him. Some of these things he hasn’t seen since he was this age.

He’s looking over and handing you the photo you’re practicing dumbfounded that this is your same Jack Abbot. You run a finger over where his shoulder is in the photo as you look at it, his heart melts and he quickly musters up whatever he can.

“That was ‘95 I believe… you weren’t even born yet.”

You flash him a glare.

One he finally finds his box of old tactical gear it’s game over. You’ve got on one of his jackets that he put on your shoulders and a pair of sunglasses that aren’t even silver anymore on your forehead that you pushed up after he placed them on your face.

He’s got old boots he’s showing you. You’ve only seen just know you’ve struck a gold mine. Because little does he know… what you’re conjuring up in that head of yours.

The both of you head back downstairs once you’ve had your fill of nostalgia for the night. You excuse yourself to go get your pajamas on for bed while he starts pulling the covers back.

That’s when you pop up behind him, cute frilly lingerie that looks like it belongs to a museum, and you’ve got his jacket on. You feel like one of those sailor’s girlfriends from the 40’s.

He’s immediately hardily chucking and throwing you onto the bed

“Oh so was this the whole reason why you made me dig out those boxes?”

He sounds so giddy as his hands trial all over your breast and slide under the hem of your bra, he’s leaning down while he hovers over top of you and kissing you so harshly you fear he might be trying to bite your face off. He isn’t. He pulls pack and roams his hands over your body some more.

Sliding down to your panties and he smiles against your lips as he tugs the off in one swift motion

“you sure do know how to make a soldier proud of his country.”

You’re laughing out loud but it’s so quickly cut short by a very large gasp as he’s placing his cock in you. You hadn’t even noticed what he was doing until it was too late and you were now being absolutely stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Each time he bucked his hips up into you a sound left your mouth. He wasn’t being polite tonight. He was being a ruthless animal, taking what he wanted without a second thought. He’s got you all messy. Covered in his cum, trembling as your nails dig into his back.

[one-dimensional-pervert]

”What are you doing?” Pope asked.

You froze. Your cat meowed loudly from behind you, upset that you’d stopped. He was standing with his front legs up on the back of your calves, tail wagging enthusiastically.

“I’m filming,” you said, gesturing to your phone.

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” he replied.

You pursed your lips.

“We’re doing the conga,” you said quietly.

There was a long pause as Pope just stared at you.

“You taught the cat to conga?” he asked

“…yes,” you said.

“You’re ridiculous,” he responded after a beat.

You gave him your most ridiculous, overexaggerated, toothy smile.

“Do you want to join us?” you asked.

Another long pause.

“Do you promise not to post it?” he asked.

You nodded enthusiastically. He thought about it for another beat.

“Ok,” he said, “but I get the front, or else that jealous little shit is gonna bite me.”

“That’s fair,” you said.

“And you better not tell any of them,” he added.

“Of course,” you said. “If I did that, you’d never do it again.”

He stared at you once more.

“I am definitely not doing this again,” he replied.

He knew that was a lie. He’d do absolutely anything to make you happy, even humiliate himself.

—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: this is, indeed, inspired by me trying to figure out how to teach a cat to conga