Being ‘just friends’ with Steve is easy until it’s not.
wc: 5k
warnings: 18+ | season five steve, flirting, tension, semi sneaking around, semi public unprotected p in v smut in The Squawk, praise kink, big dick steve talking you through it, cream pie, a little rovicki angst with the beginnings of ronance. steve slandering Beetlejuice because i know he would hate that movie.
author’s note: i don’t know what to tell you, this is pure smut. my ovulation has turned me into a rabid animal.
It was hard not to notice Steve Harrington. Everyone did.
Especially when he’s sitting across from you in the studio on a worn down rolling chair, legs spread wide in tight fitting denim. His big hands work the rubix cube with the utmost concentration, forearms flexing underneath the pushed up sleeves of his worn-in WSQK sweater. Every flick of his wrist stretches the fabric over his broad shoulders with each movement, as long deft fingers move rapidly to solve the puzzle in small clicks of plastic. Concentrated eyebrows furrow under that one swoop of hair that won’t just stay back, as he very badly pretends to listen to Robin’s regaling of another fight with Vickie about Nancy for the third time tonight.
The air around him has always rivaled the kind of humidity that suffocates your skin on the hottest Indiana summer day. A palpable energy that's buzzed around the two of you since Robin introduced you at one of Rick’s parties a few months ago. It’s the kind of chemistry that’s recently become very hard to ignore as introductions turned into third wheeling late night shifts at the squawk, and regular invitations to movie nights at their shared apartment. The biggest culprit of them all though? Steve’s incessant need to always drive you home. It doesn’t matter to him how late it is, or out of his way it is, even if it’s a blizzard or a torrential downpour — walking or catching the bus is never an option. Not if he has anything to do with it.
The quiet conversations that happen inside his BMW are always easy, even a little bit flirty when Robin isn’t around. On those nights, he makes it a point to rest his hand on the stick shift so close to your thighs they search for each other, squirming in his leather seat. Those are the ones that always end with him parked in front of your place for hours. Both of you losing track of time talking about anything and everything while learning those little things about each other that turn into something bigger over time. Unfortunately for you, that time feels a lot like now, and the silent promise to never act on whatever this is starting to feel nearly impossible to keep.
Steve’s eyes flit towards you for no particular reason, catching you staring, sparking something inside of them that warms deep in your belly. Something unmistakably dangerous.
Forcing yourself to look away, embarrassment blooms on your cheeks as you clear your throat with a shake of your head. But it doesn’t take long for your eyes to find their way back to him because it’s all they seem to want to do these days. With one side of his mouth tugged up, his full attention is on you now while his fingers don’t stop their mission to finish the puzzle he’s solved a million times before. Something about that has you biting the fat of your bottom lip, shifting in your seat perched on the side of his desk.
The whites of his teeth shine in a playful flirty grin as he rocks back in his chair, spreading his legs wider, earning that roll of your eyes he was looking for. Fast clicks of the rubix cube catch louder in your ears as all of the colors line up perfectly in his hands, and that grin on his stupidly handsome face turns into a proud beam like its the first time he’s accomplished this feat.
”Still got it!” He winks, tossing the toy up casually before catching it.
”Were you even listening to me, Dingus?” Robin hisses, smacking the cube out of his hand and you try not to giggle at the dejected look on his face that quickly turns into its factory setting of annoyance.
”Yeah, I was listening to the story you’ve told me three times today.” He snaps, leaning over to grab the toy off the ground, almost falling when the chair threatens to go off kilter. “Maybe, just maybe there’s a reason Vickie keeps getting mad.”
You’ve watched them have this conversation at least once a week for the past month where Steve tiptoes around getting Robin to admit her inconvenient crush on Nancy Wheeler.
“Hey! Who’s side are you on here?” She snaps, with a glare that wrinkles the top of her forehead.
Steve opens his mouth to reply but she quickly cuts him off before he even has a chance.
“You know what, no. No! I can’t be here, I need to go.” Robin deflects like she always does, grabbing her messenger bag she storms out of the soundproof room, and right out of the station’s double doors. Leaving you and Steve alone.
He scoffs, staring out the glass after her, a silent argument with himself on whether he should follow or not evident on his face. He runs a hand through his hair with a bouncing knee, taking a deep breath through his nose before bringing his gaze back to you, that rogue strand flopping back across his forehead.
“I wasn’t trying to be an asshole.” He groans defeated with eyes that plead for some kind of reassurance. “Should I go find her?”
“I think she just needs a minute.” You reply softly, legs dangling. “If she does have feelings for someone else, that’s gotta be overwhelming. She’s new at this, ya know?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, jaw ticking taking one last look outside before you see him visibly let it go with a sag of his shoulders.
”Always am.” You tease with a smile, doing your best to lighten the mood.
His eyes shift back to you, that dangerous thing from before returning ten fold twinkling in the gold specs inside of them. Suddenly the realization that the two of you are alone consumes the entire room, air turning thick with something that feels inevitable, that small little joke of yours working too well.
“Now don’t get crazy.” He scoffs, using his long legs to roll his chair towards you.
Something swoops in your belly, fingers curling around the wooden edge of the desk while you try to keep your composure, watching his Nike’s close the space.
“Name one time I’ve been wrong.”
Your challenge comes with a tilt of your chin, and an arch of your brow. The smirk you get in return has your teeth digging into your bottom lip, thighs closing the small gap between them. It still isn’t enough to stop the warmth between them from spreading, especially when he stops right in front of you. His face aligns with your knees from his seat, sending your body humming with his proximity to the place that’s wanted more of him for months now.
”How about when you said Beetlejuice was a good movie?” He snorts, meeting your gaze from under his lashes, something baiting inside of it.
”Are you kidding me? It’s an incredible movie! Tim Bur—“
”It was weird.” He cuts off with an irritated face, like just the memory of it is enough to annoy him.
”You’re weird.” You retort immediately, glaring with a scrunch of your nose.
Steve raises his eyebrows at you, before his narrowed gaze trails slowly down the length of your body. It lingers on your exposed thighs that he’s started to see a little more frequently thanks to warm spring days, and he’s never been more thankful to Mother Nature or your sun dresses. You swallow hard seeing him lick his lips, heart skipping a beat at the glazed over look in his eyes that makes your chest ache.
You have to leave.
”I — uh, I should go.” You stammer, starting to wiggle off the desk but Steve doesn’t let you get very far.
”Wait! Don’t — “ Standing up, the rest of that sentence fades as his hands find your knees, electric currents running through his finger tips that spread them apart so he can fit his hips between your thighs. His eyes hold you inside of them, hooded and begging before finishing it in a whisper. “Don’t leave.”
The two of you sit there unmoving, mouths so close it feels like you’re breathing each other in. His hands inch up your bare thighs, goosebumps pebbling along hot skin as his fingertips brush the bottom hem of your dress.
”Steve.” You manage to murmur, somehow finding your voice. “It’s a bad idea and you know it.”
The protest sounds weak leaving your mouth, especially when the backs of your heels hook and pull him closer. Your hands grip harder at the edge of the desk, needing something to anchor you while the tip of his nose runs up the bridge of yours. The spice of his cologne wraps around you, and the hint of cinnamon mixed with the amber is new.
“What’s so bad about it? Give me one reason.” He mocks your previous challenge with a flash of his teeth, grabbing at the soft fat under his palms.
”Robin.”
“Well she doesn’t have to know.” He snorts like it’s obvious, wandering hands sliding up higher.
”Okay, then what happens if this blows up in our face and we end up hating each other?” Your argument would feel more valid if you weren’t straightening your spine, getting so close to him that your chests touch.
”You really think you can hate me?” He fake pouts with a furrow of his brows, that infamous swoop of hair tickling your forehead.
”Steve! I’m being serious.” You whine a little defeated because you know you’re about to give in, and because all you want is for him to just kiss you already.
You think he knows that too.
He exhales a breath through his nose, one hand finally becoming bold enough to slip under your dress to wrap around your hip, while the other cups the apple your cheek. The pad of his thumb tilts your chin up to keep your gaze on him, lips so close that they almost touch.
”And what if it doesn’t blow up in our face?” He challenges, letting his top lip graze your bottom. “What happens if we end up really liking each other? What then?”
Your lashes flutter, feeling his warm breath kiss your skin, butterflies rioting inside the crevices of your ribcage. Your fingers let go of their death grip on the edge of the desk, and spread over his stomach. He inhales sharply at the contact, his grip on your hip tightening as your palms work their way up his chest before sliding along his neck and into the thickness of his hair at the nape of it. Steve tugs you closer as your legs wrap around his waist, the tip of your nose nudging his warmed cheek.
”Because I don’t know if you can’t tell or something but I already really like you.” He confesses hot against your mouth with the softest brush of his lips. “I have for a while. And you know what I think?”
”Hmm?” You manage with lust clouding your vision and fingers curling into his roots.
”I think you like me too.”
You don’t bother giving the answer he already knows, instead you close what little distance is left. It takes Steve a moment to realize what you’re doing, that this is actually happening but when he does, he takes control of the kiss immediately. His lips feel hungry moving against yours, devouring you like it’s been a craving, claiming your mouth like it’s already his.
A deep groan rumbles from his chest at the feel of your tongue swiping along his bottom lip. The blunt ends of his nails dig into the soft skin of your hip when he opens up for you and they finally meet. They massage each other moving languid and slow, relishing in the feeling. Back bending, your fingers curl deeper in his roots, somehow needing more.
As if he can read your mind, the pad of his thumb tugs at the corner of your mouth, opening you up more. He explores every inch of you like he’s trying to memorize it, swallowing all the sounds that are somehow better than his imagination. Your hips rock against him, the thin cotton of your panties leaving hardly any barrier. A breathy gasp escapes the back of your throat feeling just how big he really is.
Steve takes this moment to catch his breath, pulling away with a heaving chest. He presses his forehead against yours, eyes taking in your flushed cheeks and kiss bitten lips.
“You know how many times I’ve thought about this?” He sighs, the pad of his thumb stroking your cheek. That permanent teasing edge to his voice is absent for the first time tonight.
His confession erupts across your body that bends for him, silently asking for more all on its own. Holding his gaze in the depths of yours, the pointed roll of your hips is slow enough to feel the entire length of him pressed against his zipper. It twitches underneath the metal, the pressure against your clit only covered by a thin pair of cotton earning him a quiet whimper.
”I think about you all the time, Steve.” You say in a low voice, looking at him from under the thick hood of your lashes, rolling your hips again.
“Honey.” He hisses through his teeth, his grip on you tightening hard enough to hold you still. A shiver ripples through him as he desperately tries to find his self control. “We should stop —“
Your hands untangle from his hair, sliding down his jaw that you hold in your palms. The pad of your thumb traces the curve of his full bottom lip that you want nothing more than to feel between your teeth. He inhales another sharp breath watching the way your eyes darken, his thick lashes fluttering kissing the tops of his cheeks like he can read your mind.
”What if I don’t want to stop?”
All you’ve ever done with Steve is hold yourself back. And now that you’ve had him, you don’t want to do it anymore. You can’t do it anymore.
”I’m tired of not getting what I want.” You reaffirm, tilting your head to meet his eyes, brushing your lips against his kiss bitten ones before whispering, “aren’t you?”
He holds your gaze down the slope of his nose, the hand on your hip moving to wrap around the small of your back pulling you close, while the other trails down to cup the side of your neck. The pad of his thumb rests at the hinge of your jaw, a flurry of emotions swirling inside his stare as he takes everything in, making sure he’s not misreading any signs. It’s not until he feels the quiet way you say his name against his lips that he comes back to his body, snapping out of his nervous lapse in judgement of what’s happening.
”You have no fucking idea.” Steve growls, finally capturing your mouth without anything holding him back anymore.
This kiss is different from the last one, his lips move against yours with something possessive behind them — greedy. Your tongues don’t wait for permission, tangling together with an intensity that has your teeth scraping together. Completely lost in months of late nights and lingering stares, his hand slides down your neck, and across your shoulders bringing your dress strap with it. He finishes his path joining his other hand under your dress, both of them meeting and curling around the apple of your ass. Squeezing harshly, he pulls you closer with a hard slam on the wood of the desk.
Moaning into his mouth, you tug at the collar of his sweater, silently urging him to take it off. He catches on quickly, but struggles to break himself free, obsessed with the taste of you — the feel of you in his hands. It’s the whine that peels itself from the back of your throat and the way you push yourself closer searching for friction that he finally pulls himself away with a suck of your bottom lip. Letting it go with a loud pop, the pout on your face turns his lovesick grin cocky as he plucks the collar of his sweater from the back and tosses it to the side of the studio in one fell swoop.
Your lids grow heavy, eyes glazing over at the thick smattering of hair on his chest. Throat drying up at the sight of his permanently sun kissed skin dotted with mini constellations of freckles and moles that your fingers itch to trace. He runs a hand through his hair, drinking in the sight of you too. The wild look on your face with your dress rucked up around your hips, legs spread revealing the wet patch in the middle of your panties that he’s the culprit of. Both straps dangle loosely off your shoulders, leaving just the red ones of your bra, the swell of your breasts teasing him.
“Jesus, I knew you were gonna ruin me.” He mutters to himself in disbelief, slowly walking back to his place between your legs.
His hands trail up your thighs, squeezing at the soft dough under your dress appreciatively with lick of his lips, before curling his fingers around the elastic. It’s the only thing left keeping him from a part of you he’s thought about more times than he’d ever admit.
“Tell me what you want.” He breathes against your lips, brows furrowed with need.
Your fingers find their way to his belt, expertly undoing the gold buckle before popping open the button and tugging down the zipper of his jeans. He hisses at the release as you lift your head, capturing his mouth in something so sure there’s no room left to argue, pulling away just enough to whisper.
”You.”
That’s all Steve needs, yanking your panties down in one swift motion, capturing your lips as he does the same with the straps of your dress. It pools around your lap, just like his jeans do at his feet. Kicking them off along with his shoes, he grabs one of your legs hitching it over his waist, pointedly running his hard covered length along your wet seam. You both moan into each other's mouths at the contact, your fingers tangling in his hair, anchoring yourself to him as he licks into you, rolling his hips again.The way your slick instantly wets the fabric of his briefs makes it feel like he’s teasing himself too.
”I don’t — I don’t have a condom.” He murmurs, using all of his strength to pull away with panic set in his eyes like maybe he’s ruined this whole thing.
Sucking your bottom lip between your teeth, you let one of your hands slide down his chest, greedily scratching your nails along the dark hair there, before following it down his happy trail. The muscles in his stomach twitch, along with his cock that only grows bigger when you cup it, and the feeling of just how thick he is has you squirming at the thought of making it fit.
“I’m on birth control.” You admit quietly, your fingers dipping into the waist band of his underwear, the tips of them running along his pelvic bone.
”Jesus Christ.” Steve’s eyes pinch closed, the grip on your leg tightening to something almost bruising.
”Is that okay? Do you want to —“
“Yes, yes, god yes, that's okay.” He interrupts with an enthusiastic nod of his head.
Bend bending down, he claims your lips again as your greedy hands push his boxers past his hips. Your touch is tentative wrapping around the weight of him, but the moan you get in return is loud enough to echo off the glass encasing you, encouraging you forward. The first pump has him shuddering underneath your palm, a big hand grabbing your chin, using it to tilt your head to the side. He takes your slow torture out on the base of your throat in the form of open mouthed kisses, dragging his teeth along your pulse point that jumps for him.
“Steve you’re so - you’re so -“
He flattens his tongue, licking a path that has your eyes roll back, killing off the rest of that sentence by latching onto that sensitive spot behind your ear and sucking hard. It’s replaced by a breathy whine that comes out at the same time the pad of your thumb swipes against his leaking tip. He grunts into your neck, hips bucking into your touch.
“I know baby, I know.” He murmurs into your ear, nipping at the lobe before enveloping it into the heat of his mouth, letting it go with a loud pop. “I’m gonna make you feel so good, I promise.”
The endearment has your legs spread wider in a silent plea to keep his word. He smiles wide against your skin, sneaking his hand between you to replace yours that go back to their new home in the hair at the nape of his neck. You decide it’s your favorite place. He pulls away enough for your noses to bump, blown out wild looking eyes meeting yours before they drop down to a view he’s only ever imagined. His mind didn’t even come close to doing it justice.
”Fuuuuck.” He groans to himself, face twisting into something tortured, swiping himself through your glistening folds with another shudder ripping through his spine. “You’re so wet, honey.”
Steve says the last part almost like he can’t believe it, like there’s no world where you’d want him just as bad as he wants you. But when he does it again and you mewl in a way that sounds just as desperate, he knows it's true.
“You’re not the only one who’s wanted this for a long time.” You confess a little shy despite your current position, softening his features with the kind of smile that feels a lot like he’s already smitten.
The pad of his thumb on the hand still wrapped around your hitched leg traces circles on the goose pebbled skin underneath it.
“Yeah?” He sighs, eyes turning heavy bringing himself close enough to fit at your entrance. “Let’s make up for lost time then.”
Your fingers weave tighter in his hair, forehead pressing to his with a slack jaw at the first stretch of your walls. It feels like he’s everywhere, filling you so much as if he has nowhere else to go even though he’s only half way in.
”Oh my god, Steve, you feel — holy shit.” You pant, pulling at his roots so hard you know it hurts as he pushes himself to the hilt with one final stroke.
”You’re doing so good though, look at you.” His praise comes out against your lips, the tip of his nose nudging against your cheek. He feels the way his words tighten around him, a new wave of arousal coating every ridge and dip.
Steve gives you a minute to adjust to the size, only starting to move when you lean forward to steal a messy kiss. Desperation evident in the encouraging swipe of your tongue. He starts off slow, rolling his hips in languid strokes that match the way he licks into your mouth basking in the little noises escaping from the back of your throat. It’s not until you nip at his bottom lip that he lets go the way he really wants too.
Breaking away from your lips, he brings his attention to your face, needing to see the way it twists up when he pulls nearly all the way out before slamming himself back in. Your eyes go wide at the feeling, the silk of your walls fluttering, begging him for more that he gives without any hesitation. His palm finds it way back to your cheek that has to be searing against his skin, collecting your mouth again with a hunger that’s easy to lose yourself in.
He keeps a steady pace, hiking your leg further up his hip, somehow going even deeper. The tip of him hits the spot that no one else has ever been able to find, earning a loud moan of his name that he thinks sounds best when it comes from you. Using the opportunity that presents itself to him, he starts a path of open mouth kisses down your jaw, along your neck, gently pushing you back to lay against the desk, peppering them across your collar bone.
The new angle has you trying to cover the scream that's begging to fill the empty studio, and Steve keeps going. Tugging down your bra, sucks your pert nipple into the heat of his mouth. Your back arches, nails dinging into his shoulders when he brings his attention to the other one with a flick of his tongue.
“Perfect, you’re perfect.” Groaning his praise against your skin, he licks a stripe up your sternum before nipping at the curve of your breast.
Steve stands up straight, bringing his hands to your hips stretching you out even more. His eyes take in your heaving chest, dark eyes, and skin shining wet from the work of his mouth and he thinks he might cum right now.
”You ready for more, pretty girl?” He coos with the softest grind of hips, lips twitching at the way your eyes hit the back of your head because of it.
”Please.” You beg, finding the strength to look at him from underneath your lashes.
Your stare breaks any self control he might have left, the first snap of his hips pushing you further up the desk, sending some of the eight tracks clattering to the ground.
“Oh my god.” You cry out, grabbing onto his forearms. The blunt ends of your nails digging into his freckles when he does it again.
”You feel so fucking good.” He grits out between his teeth, the grip on your curves turning bruising as his head rolls back lost in the silk of your walls that keep sucking him in every time he tries to leave.
His praise makes your hips meet the next roll of his, sending another flurry of cuss words spilling out of his mouth, that turn into your name the more you keep up with his pace. Tugging you back to the edge of the desk, he folds over you, palms finding purchase on either side of your head.
That swoop of hair tickles damp against your forehead, his face contouring into something dazed watching the way you try to catch your breath. The quick grind of his hips punches the air out of your lungs with every thrust, the thick thatch of hair at the base of your demise rubbing against your clit with just the right of pressure.
You know you're not going to last much longer as the heels of your feet dig into his ass pushing him deeper. He grunts into your mouth, collecting a sloppy kiss rolling his hips in a circle, the tip of him pushing right against the spot you need him most.
“Come on, honey, let go. I know you want to. Let me finally make you feel good.” He murmurs encouragingly, grabbing both your wrists and pinning them above your head, sending a notebook and some pens flying to the ground.
The new position tightens the coil deep inside your gut tight enough to snap, your walls constricting around him as you tumble over the edge with nothing but his name spilling from your lips. Seeing something he’s only ever daydreamed about in the dead of night sends him flying right after you. He lets go of your hands catching himself on the desk, body shaking with a loud groan rumbling from his chest painting your insides with months of wanting you so much that it aches in his chest.
He keeps up the slow grind of his hips until you both come back down, with goofy love sick smiles twisting up your lips. You giggle when he nudges his nose with yours, getting a blinding flash of his white teeth in return.
“What?” Amusement dances in his eyes, brushing the apple of your cheek with the back of his hand.
”This just isn’t where I imagined it would finally happen is all.” You grin, leaning into his touch. “So out in the open.”
”It’s not like anyone’s here —“
”Steve, look, I’m sorry.” The sound of Robin’s voice echoes out through the empty station.
”Oh fuck me.” He yells in a whisper, wide panicked eyes meeting yours before dropping to the ground out of sight. You try your best to adjust your bra and dress into place.
“You know I hate when we figh— oh.” Robin stops in her tracks in the common room, confusion painting her features taking in your disheveled look and the lack of Steve in the room.
“H-hey!” You squeak out, voice cracking and she narrows her gaze at it.
”Where’s Steve?” She asks, the question coming out slowly in that suspicious kind of way.
”Uh - he uh - he went to the bathroom.” You offer, scratching the back of your neck while the man in question scrambles to get his clothes back on at your feet.
Tilting her head to the side, she squints at you clearly not believing a word coming out of your mouth. Realization dawns on her features, annoyance replacing any confusion that was left.
”You have got to be kidding me!” She throws up her hands, “Steve I know you’re there. You guys suck at lying.”
”Shit.” Steve mutters, pulling on his shirt before slowly standing up, buckling his belt with a sheepish smile.
”Hey.” He waves, running a hand through his damp hair.
something about stoner!steve teaching you how to smoke 😵💫
you watch as steve expertly rolls up his own joint, you were so dialed in on the way his fingers were moving with practiced ease. you were completely caught off guard when he held up the sticky side of the rolling paper up close to you.
“lick this for me?”
you hesitantly lean in to lick the paper, he then seals the joint.
“thank you, baby.”
steve lights up his joint, and takes a long drag, he tilts his head back and exhales the smoke up in the air. the scent of marijuana fills the room, a soft cloud lingering throughout the more he smokes. you watch him with wide eyes. before steve, you thought smoking, especially weed, was disgusting. a gross habit. but how is it that he can make anything look sexy? curiosity got the better of you.
“steve?”
“yeah, baby?” he responds, his voice tight as hes in the middle of an inhale.
“could i maybe try it?”
a smirk plasters itself on his face, he exhales the smoke. “you sure?”
you nod. he signals for you to come sit on his lap, which you oblige to. one of his arms snake around your body.
“alright, so heres what youre gonna do,” you can feel his hand rub your thigh, like hes trying to soothe any nerves you might have. “its real simple. youre just gonna suck it like its a straw, and then inhale.”
“just like this,” he brings the joint to his lips, takes a slow pull, and inhales before exhaling a thin stream of smoke. “see? pull first, then you inhale.” he repeats the actions once more, exaggerating it just enough for you to follow: pull, inhale, exhale.
“think you got it?”
“i can do it,” you nod, your voice sounds small and nervous.
steve can hear the hesitation in your voice, the last thing he wants to do is push you to do something thats out of your comfort zone. he gives you the opportunity to back out, “you know baby, you dont have to if you want to.”
“no, i do! im just a little nervous.”
he huffs out a small laugh at your honesty. “i know, dont worry. i got you.”
your hand moves to grab the joint, but steve is quick to stop you.
“ah, ah, ah,” he tuts. “pretty girls dont hold their own joints. i got it for you, baby.”
he guides the joint to your lips and watches in awe as your lips wrap around it. his brows furrow in concentration as he watches you, “there you go, pull. nice and easy.”
you do as he says, taking a slow, experimental drag before inhaling. you can feel the smoke hit the back of your throat, harsh and hot, causing a burning sensation in your chest. your face grimaces, and youre quick to exhale, dissolving into a fit of coughs.
“easy, baby,” steve rubs your back, “how was that?”
“gross. and it hurt.”
“yeah?” he grins, “most people dont love it the first time around. ‘s always pretty rough,” steve explains, taking another hit. “you dont have to do it again if you dont wanna.”
“no, no, i do,” you murmur, already leaning towards the joint. steve loves how eager you are.
“alright, this time, maybe try holding it in for a little when you inhale?”
you already knew what to expect this time around, so you felt a little bit more prepared.
“easy,” he reminds you. “no big hits. youre not trying to keep up with me.”
you take a slow drag, allowing yourself to inhale the smoke, holding it momentarily. when you exhaled, you still coughed just enough for it to sting your throat, but it wasnt nearly as bad as last time.
“see? there we go, good job baby. little bit better, right?”
you giggle at his praise, nodding. steve had suggested you wait a little before you try again, just to let you ease into the feeling of it all. in the meantime, he continued to take multiple drags. after a couple of minutes, you didnt even really realize it was happening until you caught yourself staring, well, gawking really, at him for way too long. the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, how his voice sounds so smooth and soft, every aspect of him is way more captivating than it had been just a few moments ago. youve never felt like this before, its like you can feel every molecule in your body and the sensation of his hand on your back suddenly feels a lot more.. prominent? its almost like his palm was melting in your skin.
“you with me?”
steves voice snaps you out of your thoughts.
“uh-huh.”
“okay, ive got an idea. lets try something,” steve says, with a small grin pulling at his mouth, “you trust me?”
“yes,” you nod, “what is it?”
“youll see,” he shrugs, the grin on his face growing. “just let me guide you. your only job is to sit there and look pretty, ‘kay?”
the joint crackles as steve takes another drag, he doesnt inhale, though. he just holds the smoke in his mouth. steve leans in closer to you and your breath catches. he gently grabs your chin, coaxing your lips apart. hes so close to you, his lips are hovering right over yours. steve slowly exhales the smoke into your mouth, you were so mesmerized by him you almost forgot to inhale, but you managed to breathe it all in. steve pulls away, watching you with a dopey grin on his face.
“that is called shotgunning.” he tells you, as he stubs the joint into the ashtray. “its hot, right?”
“I wanna smoke,” you said, slurring the words, “anyone?”
You looked around the table as you stumbled to your feet—they all shook their heads and, all at the same time, murmured each their own excuses. Like a choir of denial.
JJ muttered something about waiting for Aaron and Dave to come back with everyone’s drinks. Emily was dragging Derek to the dance floor. Spencer—well, you didn’t want someone to go with you that much. You didn’t mind going alone at all, in fact.
So, you shrugged, plunging your hand into your purse to dig out the pack and made for the door. A little wobbly, perhaps, but that was the world spinning. Not your fault.
There was always someone smoking outside, and if no one wanted to join you, you would join them. It was always a great time, anyway. Guaranteed.
Something in common, an instant connection formed by a shared desire to ruin your lungs. What else could you possibly ask for? It was the perfect option for a drunken act of self love—well, the most perfect option one you had, considering your surroundings.
The only thing that could top lighting a cigarette between your lips, was a dick in your mouth. But you were in public. And despite your… influenced state of being, along with the pool between your legs (from just entertaining the idea for the split second it existed in your mind), you still managed to keep your control intact. Outwardly. For now.
The smoking area was a small patio (although, it was more like five planks of dark stained wood and a railing), and it was crammed. You really didn’t mind, it was like one giant group hug under the cloudy sky.
But the comforting embrace of people ended before you could even fish out the stick of cancer. The crowd pushed their way back inside through the door, the entire ground on earth shaking and trembling from the force of their steps. Had you not managed to press your back against the wall, you would have been stampeded. Like those bulls in Spain, or whatever.
You would have thrown your guts up.
Thankfully, the globe fell back into its slow waves, nothing more than a current affecting your balance.
With a sigh, you picked out a cigarette and placed it for safekeeping between your lips, while you patted your pockets for the lighter you were sure you had brought with you. That’s when the door swung open, drawing your attention to the broad shoulders of Aaron Hotchner (because that was all you could see, he really filled your vision) as he stepped onto the sad excuse of a patio.
“Since when do you smoke?” he said, more-so than asked, while leaning back against the wall. You took one look at him, at his messy hair and sideways grin, and you knew he was—well, whatever his version of shitfaced was.
“I don’t,” you replied around the stick and shrugged—then beamed with victory as you felt the square metal of your lighter shift against your skin, nestled right between your side boob and your bra.
“Here,” you giggled, picking the cigarette from your lips and lifted to the tips of your toes to reach him, “hold this.” Aaron didn’t even object, not moving an inch as you placed the stick between his lips.
With both of your hands free, and a wobbly landing back onto the soles of your feet, you started the complicated operation of digging your lighter out of your bra.
You made a victorious fist and raised it high in the air, showing the world your greatest achievement (fishing your baby blue lighter out of your baby blue bra, because aesthetics matter).
A small step forward, a lift back up to the tips of your toes, you lit the cigarette between his lips. He inhaled (just to make sure it caught, is what he told himself), before you reached up to take it. To place it between yours.
“Since when do you smoke?” you smiled, puffing the cloud of cancer out into the night. Shoulders dropping as the nicotine settled, adding another pattern of waves to ripple the ground.
“I don’t.” Aaron tilted his head, a boyish grin on his handsome face. A momentary (and very deliberate) distraction: an opening for his fingers to pluck the cigarette from your lips and return to his.
i would give you my resume on homemade pink stationery and you'll tell me that i'm unique and that you wouldn't want me to change that but you're not nerdy enough to understand.
summary: you've spent years convincing the bau that your love life is chaotic, casual, and completely detached—while quietly dying every time aaron hotchner looks at you. but when your dating profile attracts the wrong kind of attention and your unit chief is forced to look a little closer, it turns out there are very few things more dangerous than being profiled by the man you're hopelessly in love with.
notes: i've been a little conflicted about posting lately, but... it's my birthday, and i want aaron hotchner—so here you go! i've been working on this for a while and had a very very smart friend help me with the "profiling" parts (especially reid) so i hope y'all enjoy! i also really wanted to actually write the smut, but this fic hit the block limit so hard and fast it actually hurt. as always, please please let me know what you think!
warnings: swearing / cursing, blushing, italics, reader wears a skirt (and heels), reader has a cat, implied age gap, best friend!reid, some pretentious ranting, horny thoughts, likely incorrect behavioural and psychoanalytical information, likely incorrect technical information (sorry garcia), canon-typical themes (homicide, etc. referred to off page), stalker / stalking behaviour, ambiguous use of "online dating" (because i tried to keep it vaguely around s6/s7 era), kind of rushed ending? and... fade to black / implied sex (i’m so sorry) 18+ only still, mdni.
word count: 19001
MONDAY 9:25AM
Working for the FBI means having secrets is difficult. Working with the BAU makes it downright impossible.
Not because your colleagues are nosy—no, they’re just… perceptive. Which means if you want to keep something to yourself, you need to know how to manipulate their perception. Even if it doesn’t work on all of them—you glance at Reid, already seated at the round table with his nose buried in a book—at least it works on most of them.
At least, it works on Aaron Hotchner.
Your boss. Your unit chief. The man who absolutely cannot find out about your big, fat, massively inconvenient, deeply inappropriate crush on him.
Reid glances up from his book as you drop into the seat beside him. “You’re wearing a skirt.”
You cross your legs and lean back. “Excellent observation, Reid.”
“It’s impractical,” he says simply. “Especially with heels. Your centre of gravity shifts forward by almost fifteen degrees, which shortens your stride length and reduces balance recovery time. You’re significantly more likely to trip while running.”
You roll your eyes. “Good thing I’m not planning on fleeing the scene of a crime today.”
“Ignore boy genius, baby girl,” Morgan says as he steps into the room, heading straight for the espresso machine. “You look good.”
You flash him a grin. “See? Somebody appreciates me.”
Reid hums as he glances back down at his book. “Interesting how your clothing choices become statistically less practical in direct correlation to Hotch’s proximity.”
Your stomach flips. “Spence.”
He lifts one shoulder. “What? He’s not listening.”
You glance back at Morgan, whose eyes are glued to his phone, brow furrowed just slightly as he waits for the whirring coffee machine to fill his cup.
“That’s not the point, Spencer,” you mutter, turning back to him. “You need to—”
The conference room door swings open again and Hotch walks in—files tucked under one arm, the rest of the team trailing behind him.
“Morning,” he says, dropping the files on the table. “Hope everyone had a good weekend.”
Morgan snorts. “What weekend?”
“Yeah,” Prentiss mutters, dropping into the seat beside Reid. “I was here until five on Saturday finishing geographical profiles.”
“That’s because you alphabetise your paperwork,” you point out.
She gives you a look. “I enjoy being proficient.”
“Well,” you say lightly, leaning back in your chair “some of us managed to finish our paperwork on Friday and still have a very enjoyable weekend.”
Garcia gasps dramatically as she falls into the last empty chair, coffee in hand. “Ooh, look at you. Was there a man involved?”
You shrug one shoulder, biting back a smile. “I’m choosing to plead the fifth.”
Morgan points across the table. “That means yes.”
“Or,” Reid says without looking up from his book, “it means she enjoys making people speculate.”
“Aw, Spence,” you tease. “Don’t sound so bitter.”
He finally looks up from his book and fixes you with a look so flat it borders on threatening—because he knows what you’re doing. It’s what you always do. It’s how you manipulate their perception. How you keep your secret.
You perform.
You scroll through dating profiles, talk about men, brag about your weekends without ever being too specific. You flirt with almost everyone on the team—Reid more than the rest, because he’s your scapegoat... and your best friend.
He’s the only one who can see through the charade. Not because he’s emotionally perceptive, but because he did the math. He noticed the pattern. He realised very quickly that every time Hotch walks into a room or says your name, you react in a way that can only mean one thing:
Hotch is the secret you’re trying so hard to hide.
Because if you give a team of profilers an easy explanation—harmless flirting with a messy dating life and a weakness for attention—they won’t notice the way your entire body betrays you whenever your infuriatingly gorgeous boss gets too close.
Hotch clears his throat. “Well, lucky for all of you, it’s a quiet week.”
Reid shuts his book and sets it on the table.
“No active cases as of this morning,” Hotch continues. “Which means we’ll be catching up on consults, court reports, and the mountain of paperwork everyone’s apparently been neglecting.”
His eyes meet yours for the briefest second, and your pulse skitters.
“I’m bored already,” Morgan sighs, leaning back in his chair.
Hotch ignores him. “We’ve got two local consult requests from Fairfax County and a follow-up review from the Richardson case. Dave, I’ll need your notes finalised by this afternoon.”
Rossi nods once. “You’ll have them.”
“Garcia,” Hotch continues, “the Milwaukee office wants that digital forensic review by Wednesday.”
Garcia gasps softly, pressing a hand to her chest. “But I already colour-coded my entire week. That review wasn’t supposed to be due for another fortnight.”
Morgan blinks. “You colour-code your schedule?”
“Obviously,” Garcia says. “How else would I maintain my sparkling personality under crushing institutional pressure?”
Reid straightens. “Technically, organising information activates the same reward pathways as—”
“Don’t,” Prentiss says immediately.
Reid frowns slightly. “I was just going to say gambling.”
You snort softly before you can stop yourself, covering it quickly with your hand. Reid shoots you a look. Prentiss just shakes her head. And when your eyes finally flick back to the front of the room, Hotch is already watching you.
Not the team. You.
Your stomach twists.
That signature Hotchner scowl should not be as hot as it is. It shouldn’t make you cross your legs a little tighter or make your heart race the way it does. You should be used to that scowl by now. You’re on the receiving end of it often enough—whenever you crack a poorly timed joke or flirt a little too hard with Morgan.
Yet somehow, you still feel like you can’t breathe until his gaze finally shifts.
“Moving on,” he says evenly, “JJ will forward the consult details after the meeting.”
He spends the next thirty minutes briefing the team on consults and court appearances while you do your best to stay focused—but it’s hard. It’s hard because every time you look at him, your gaze drops to his mouth and your mind fills with all sorts of filthy ideas. Then he starts moving his hands as he explains something and you can’t help but wonder what they might feel like wrapped around your waist, your thighs, your throat.
His voice is a low rumble at the back of your mind, warm and firm, but you have no idea what he’s actually saying. All you can do is think about how that voice might sound, wrecked and rough, telling you how pretty you look when you—
“The briefing ended three minutes ago,” Reid says.
You blink hard. “What?”
He closes his notebook with a sigh. “The meeting’s over. You can stop internally monologuing now.”
You frown. “I’m not—”
He gives you a look.
“Ugh,” you groan. “You’re so annoying.”
You push up from your chair and walk out of the conference room without waiting for him, but you’re not surprised that he’s right behind you by the time you reach the bullpen. You drop down at your desk with another indignant huff, watching Reid do the same from the corner of your eye.
Everyone else is already settled at their desks—keyboards clicking, pens scribbling—and there’s a fresh stack of files next to your computer with a sticky note on top that reads: Fairfax files. Prioritize pages 12–18. – Hotch.
You want to laugh at the little sign-off, as if anyone else would have put these files on your desk. Your fingers trace over the note once before you peel it off and stick it to the bottom corner of your computer screen.
Reid snorts. “You know most people throw those away, right?”
You glance sideways at him. “I don’t want to forget the page numbers.”
He hums. “Sure.”
“You know,” you say, turning your chair to properly face him, “you’re being particularly judgemental today. What’s your problem?”
He stares at you for a moment, then glances back at the sticky note still attached to your monitor.
“I’m experiencing prolonged second-hand embarrassment,” he says plainly. “And repeated exposure tends to increase irritability.”
You roll your eyes. “Yeah, well—you’re increasing my irritability.”
“Exactly,” he says, already turning back to his computer.
You glare at the side of his head for a long moment, searching for a comeback—but your mind is completely blank. So with another irritated sigh, you turn back to your own screen, scoot your chair into the desk a little harder than necessary, and settle in for what’s shaping up to be a very boring Monday.
The next two hours pass by in a blur of interview transcripts, witness statements, and crime scene photos. The Fairfax County PD files detail the death of a woman in her late thirties who accidentally overdosed in her Reston home early last week. No prior history of substance abuse, financial instability, or high-risk behaviour—until forty-eight hours before her death.
In just two days, she withdrew a large amount of money, missed work without explanation, visited several bars she’d never been to before, and bought herself thousands of dollars’ worth of expensive jewellery and lingerie.
To anyone else, it might look like some sort of breakdown—an impulsive spiral that led to the kind of recklessness you can’t come back from. But to you, the behaviour feels too... artificial. As if someone is trying to construct the narrative of a troubled woman—checking all the right boxes to give investigators an easy explanation for a tragic overdose.
Only there isn’t enough concrete evidence to support your instinct. No stalker. No ex. No clear unsub who could have orchestrated this kind of ruse to cover what might actually be homicide.
You sigh. “Reid.”
“Hm?”
“Tell me if I’m overthinking this.”
Reid pushes back from his desk and scoots across the narrow stretch of carpet between your workstations. He doesn’t stop until his chair bumps the side of your desk, causing your pen cup to topple over and spill across the files you’ve got carefully laid out.
“Oops,” he says absently, pushing the pens aside.
You roll your eyes and start gathering them while he scans the files.
“The behavioural shift feels manufactured,” you say, dropping the pens back into their cup. “But there’s enough legitimate stressors here that I can’t tell if I’m forcing a pattern because it’s too clean.”
Reid examines the highlighted timeline for another few seconds.
“You’re focusing too much on the existence of the stressors,” he says. “Stress explains escalation. It doesn’t explain inconsistency.”
You frown slightly.
“She suddenly becomes impulsive socially, financially, and sexually, but her organisational habits never change.” He taps the timeline. “She still pays bills early. Still meal preps. Still attends a dentist appointment two days before her death. Real behavioural deterioration isn’t usually selective.”
Your brows lift. “So, I’m right?”
Reid nods, leaning back in his chair. “You’re right.”
“What’s she right about?”
You nearly jump at the sound of Hotch’s voice—low and even, a little rough around the edges in that way that always makes your stomach tighten.
“She thinks the behavioural shift is staged,” Reid says. “And I agree.”
He scoots back slightly as Hotch leans in, one hand braced on the back of your chair while the other pulls the file closer so he can read it properly. His tie falls forward, brushing lightly against your thigh—and suddenly, you can’t breathe.
He’s close. Way too close. You can feel the heat of his breath on your skin. Smell the bitterness of coffee beneath his cologne. Hear the quiet creak of leather from his belt as he leans in further.
“It’s too compartmentalised,” Reid says, his voice more distant than it was just a second ago. “Real behavioural spirals usually bleed into every aspect of a person’s routine. Sleep disruption, missed payments, changes in grooming habits, social withdrawal—something.”
Hotch lifts his hand off the desk and presses his thumb to the tip of his tongue—then flips the page.
Your pulse jumps so hard it almost hurts. Heat crawls up the back of your neck. Your whole body feels too hot, your clothes suddenly too tight, the bullpen too small—but you can’t move. Not with Hotch’s hand still on the back of your chair.
“But this is curated,” Reid goes on, tapping the timeline with the end of his pen. “The impulsive behaviour escalates while the foundational routines stay completely intact, which suggests intentional narrative construction.”
Hotch turns his head just slightly, dark eyes finding yours. “You caught that?”
You clear your throat. “I just... thought the escalation pattern felt off.”
“Her behavioural analysis is spot on, actually,” Reid says. “I can’t find a flaw in it.”
Hotch hums quietly as his eyes move back over the file.
“Good girl,” he says absently.
Your entire nervous system short-circuits.
“Keep it up,” he adds, smoothing his tie as he straightens.
You don’t say anything as he turns and walks away. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.
Reid just sits there, hands folded in his lap as he watches Hotch disappear into his office before slowly turning back toward you.
“You know,” he says thoughtfully, “the age-gap preference is actually more interesting than the authority fixation.”
You finally blink. “What?”
“Because the authority thing makes perfect sense. High-pressure careers tend to reinforce attraction to competence, decisiveness, emotional restraint—especially in workplace environments where leadership qualities become psychologically linked with safety and stability over long periods of exposure.”
You frown. “What are you—”
“But the older man preference is statistically more complicated because you don’t actually display the attachment markers usually associated with paternal absence or instability.”
Your eyes go wide. “Spencer—”
“You have a healthy relationship with your father, no documented authority issues, and relatively secure interpersonal attachment patterns, which suggests the preference is less psychologically compensatory and more rooted in behavioural reinforcement.”
“Reid.”
“For example,” he goes on, ignoring you completely, “you spent your formative professional years surrounded almost exclusively by older men in positions of intellectual and behavioural authority. Gideon, Rossi, Hotch—which likely created a reinforcement pattern where emotional competence became unconsciously associated with attraction, arousal, and sexual interest.”
You freeze. “Reid, I swear to—”
“You don’t react this strongly to older men generally,” he continues. “You react strongly to Hotch because he’s emotionally controlled, professionally authoritative, intellectually intimidating, and—”
He pauses, tilting his head.
“Very obviously your type.”
You glance frantically around the bullpen, scanning the desks for the rest of your team.
Morgan has his headphones on, completely focused on whatever report he’s typing. JJ’s desk is empty, as usual—she’s probably with Garcia. And Prentiss is only halfway back from the kitchen, still stirring her fresh cup of coffee.
Your gaze cuts back to Reid. “You are so lucky no one heard that, Spencer.”
He shrugs. “Wouldn’t matter if they did.”
Your brows pull together. “What’s that mean?”
“You’re good at redirecting attention,” he says, slowly pushing his chair back toward his desk. “You’re less good at hiding physiological responses.”
Your hand flies up to your cheek, palm pressing flat against the burning skin.
“Whatever,” you mutter. “It’s warm in here.”
Reid glances around the bullpen. “It’s sixty-eight degrees.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
You shoot him one last glare before turning back toward your computer, aggressively waking up the monitor with your mouse.
You stay chained to your desk for the next few hours, finishing up the victimology report for the Fairfax files before taking them to Rossi for final review. Then you head out with JJ to grab a late lunch from the deli down the street, and when you get back, there’s a brand-new stack of files on your desk—only this time, with a tall takeaway cup of coffee set on top.
“Hotch got dragged into some last-minute Section Chief meeting across town,” Morgan says, pushing his headphones down. “Said he needs those cross-referenced before tomorrow morning.”
“Great,” you mutter, dropping into your chair.
Morgan chuckles softly as he pulls his headphones back up, turning back to his own pile of reports.
You grab the coffee from the top of the files and find a sticky note stuck beneath it—written quickly but still in his unmistakable handwriting: I owe you one. – Hotch.
Your stomach flips.
God. That’s pathetic.
You peel the note off and drop it into the top drawer of your desk, not wanting another psychoanalytic lecture from Reid if he were to spot that note stuck to your monitor.
The rest of the day passes the way every other caseless Monday afternoon does. JJ’s the first to head out—not long after five—taking advantage of the slow week to spend a little extra time with Henry. Rossi leaves about an hour later, announcing to the bullpen that he’s got a date with a bottle of wine and reruns of his favourite medical drama. Morgan manages to clear the files on his desk before seven, finally putting his headphones away before bidding the rest of the team farewell.
Prentiss and Reid linger until nearly nine, and only when the motion sensor lights blink out does Prentiss finally glance up, realising how late it is. She gathers her things and nudges Reid, who’s been firmly stuck in hyperfocus mode despite the rest of the world quietly slowing down around him.
“You coming?” he asks, adjusting the strap of his satchel.
You look up slowly, your brain buffering as it untangles itself from the files spread across your desk.
“Not yet,” you reply, blinking tiredly. “Hotch needs these by morning.”
Reid tilts his head. “Want me to wait?”
You wave a hand. “Nah, go ahead. I’ll get security to walk me to my car.”
“Alright,” he says, already turning away. “Just remember that positive reinforcement loses effectiveness when the subject becomes emotionally dependent on it.”
You glare at his back. “I’m reporting you to HR.”
“You’d have to explain the context,” he calls over his shoulder.
You roll your eyes as you turn back to the last file on your desk, taking a deep breath and flipping it open.
With the bullpen almost completely silent and the promise of sleep so close you can taste it, you manage to get through it in record time. You even give it a quick second pass to make sure you didn’t miss anything glaringly obvious in your tired state—but you’re used to working through sleep deprivation, and by ten p.m., you finally start packing up.
You organise the files back into a neat pile, then open the top drawer of your desk for Hotch’s note. You stick it to the top file and grab a pen, scribbling just below the words he wrote: Dangerous thing to promise me.
And, just as he did, you sign off with your name.
Then you gather the whole stack in your arms and cross the bullpen toward his office. Unlocked, as usual. You nudge the door open with your foot, warm lamplight casting an orange glow over the quiet space. It smells faintly like coffee and his cologne—enough to make your heart start racing the second you step inside.
You set the files neatly on his desk, trying not to linger on the quiet traces of him scattered throughout the room.
There’s still half a mug of cold coffee abandoned beside some paperwork, and the cashmere sweater he’d been wearing beneath his jacket this morning is draped haphazardly over the back of his chair. Quiet evidence of just how suddenly he’d been called away.
It makes you feel a little better knowing you really have helped him out.
You adjust the files until they’re perfectly straight, then take the sweater from the back of his chair and fold it neatly before setting it on the chest of drawers beside his desk. You hesitate for just a second before grabbing the mug of cold coffee and heading out of his office, straight for the break room. You empty it, wash it, dry it, then return to his office, placing it back on his desk exactly where you found it. Then you switch the lamp off on your way out, pulling the door most of the way shut behind you—the way it’d been before you stepped inside.
It doesn’t take long for you to gather your things, head down to security, and badge out. One of the guards escorts you to the parking garage, waiting until you’re safely inside your car with the engine running before he takes the elevator back up.
Once home, you quickly feed the yowling Leia—your cat, who’s very unimpressed by your late arrival—take a quick shower, change into your comfiest, threadbare sleep shirt, then crawl into bed with your laptop balanced on your knees. You know you should just try to get some sleep, but you’ve been ignoring a few personal messages and emails for a couple days now, and you know that if you don’t get to them soon, you’ll start to feel guilty.
You open your emails, reply to a couple, then pull up a new browser tab and type in the login address for the dating site Garcia set you up for. Not that you couldn’t have set up your own profile if you’d really wanted to.
No—this profile is just the unintentional byproduct of your ongoing attempt to redirect attention.
One slow Thursday evening in the bullpen, while you’d been loudly complaining about how impossible it was to meet men with a job like yours, Morgan had the brilliant idea of making you a dating profile. Garcia immediately lit up at the idea, pulling the site up on her computer while Reid launched into a rambling statistical analysis about the probability of finding genuine compatibility online.
Hotch hadn’t contributed to the conversation, but you’d known he was listening.
That had been the whole point. You always perform a little harder when Hotch can hear.
The site finally loads and you type in your credentials, waiting a few seconds for your profile to pop up.
Twelve notifications.
You click on the ‘messages’ tab and start scrolling. There are a few old conversations that fizzled out and you’ve long since decided not to reply to. There are a couple of messages from people you never intend on starting a conversation with. Then there are two new messages—ones you’d seen pop up on your phone but couldn’t be bothered to engage with over the weekend.
After all, you’re not actually looking to date anyone.
But one of the messages catches your eye.
DCRunner00: You seem like the kind of person who’s either very funny or very mean. I’m willing to risk it.
You snort, then type out a reply.
You: Unfortunately for you, those traits aren’t mutually exclusive.
Just as you hit enter, Leia leaps up onto the bed.
“Hey, sassy girl,” you coo, moving your laptop to reach for her.
Your fingers graze her soft coat, and she gives you an incredibly disapproving look.
You roll your eyes. “Alright. Sorry for loving you.”
You settle back against the pillows as she makes her way to the other side of the bed, curling up as far as she can possibly get from you.
Ping! Ping! Two more messages pop up.
DCRunner00: That’s probably the best possible answer you could’ve given.
DCRunner00: So what’s your worst personality trait? I feel like that’s more interesting than hobbies.
That answer comes a little too easily.
You: Workaholic. You?
DCRunner00: I get bored easily.
DCRunner00: Which usually means I either start running or annoying people for entertainment.
You: Sounds like a public safety issue.
DCRunner00: Depends who you ask.
DCRunner00: You should probably get some sleep, Workaholic. It’s late.
You glance over at Leia as she rolls onto her side, stretching her front legs, and only then do you realise you were actually smiling at your screen.
You shake your head, typing quickly.
You: Yeah, I should.
You: Night, Running Man.
Then you shut your laptop before he can send another message.
TUESDAY 9:50AM
“Morgan, you’re with me at district court this afternoon,” Hotch says, closing the file in front of him. “The defence attorney’s pushing back on the Richardson testimony, so we’ll need to review our timeline before the hearing.”
He’s wearing a grey suit today.
You can never think straight when he’s wearing a grey suit.
Morgan sighs dramatically. “Nothing says excitement like four hours in a courthouse basement.”
Hotch ignores him completely.
“JJ, I want the media requests filtered through Strauss’s office before lunch. Reid, finish the geographic overlays from the Fairfax case and send them to Rossi when you’re done.”
He glances once around the table.
“If anything urgent comes in, you’ll be notified. Otherwise, continue using this downtime to catch up on reports.”
Then he gathers the files into a neat stack and stands, turning toward the door.
The rest of the room starts moving slowly. Morgan mutters something to JJ about the court hearing, Prentiss turns to Reid, asking something about a case you don’t quite catch, and Garcia is already explaining something on her laptop to Rossi, who’s watching the screen with quiet concentration.
Which leaves you to shamelessly stare at your boss’ ass as he walks out of the room.
“You should probably blink.”
Your head snaps toward Reid, frown already forming. “I’ll blink when I want to blink.”
He presses his lips together to keep from laughing, and you know he’s fighting the urge to launch into some deeply unwanted psychoanalysis of your behaviour—but thankfully, the rest of the team is still too close for him to risk it.
Eventually, everyone starts filing out of the conference room and back into the bullpen. You end up being the last to leave, behind Reid and Garcia who are chatting animatedly about some new phone app they’re both obsessed with.
You’re just about to pass Hotch’s office door when—you hear your name.
You turn your head, and he gestures for you to come in.
Reid glances briefly over his shoulder, an irritatingly knowing look on his face as you turn and step into Hotch’s office.
You clear your throat, stopping a few feet from the desk. “Sir?”
“How late were you here last night?” he asks.
You lift a shoulder. “About ten.”
His jaw shifts as he leans back in his chair. “That’s late.”
“Morgan said you needed them done by the morning.”
“I didn’t mean first thing,” he says, smoothing the end of his tie. “You could’ve finished the rest before lunch.”
You blink. “Oh.”
His gaze holds yours for a second too long.
“You don’t need to stay late to impress me.”
Your eyes widen slightly before you force out a small, awkward laugh. “Oh—uh—good to know.”
He glances briefly at the navy-blue cashmere sweater still folded neatly on the chest of drawers.
“Still,” he says, lower this time. “I appreciated it. The files, and… everything else.”
Your breath catches softly in your throat.
“Anytime, sir,” you manage.
He nods once, then drops his gaze back to the paperwork on his desk.
You don’t need any more of a dismissal than that, so you turn quickly and step out, pulling the door shut behind you. He prefers it closed, even if he won’t admit it because he doesn’t want the team to think he’s shutting them out. He’s just more comfortable in private—it helps him focus.
By the time you get back to your desk, everyone else is already settled and working quietly. Not even Reid glances up or offers a teasing remark.
You drop into your chair and wriggle your mouse, grabbing your phone while you wait for the screen to wake up.
Two new messages from DCRunner00.
DCRunner00: Running Man?
DCRunner00: Great book. Slightly concerning nickname, though.
You can’t help yourself, so you type out a quick reply.
You: Better than ‘Workaholic’.
You: You read Stephen King?
“Hey, you busy?”
You glance over at Reid. “Aren’t we all?”
He tilts his head. “You’re on your phone.”
“I could be working.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Good,” he says, shuffling the files on his desk. “Hotch wants us to prep the full geographic and timeline package for the Fairfax files in case it turns into an active investigation.”
You sigh, already pushing back from your desk. “And by ‘us’ you mean...?”
“I could use your help.”
“Fine,” you mutter, setting your phone down.
He scoots over as you roll your chair toward his desk, settling in beside him. The files are all laid out, including your victimology report with Rossi’s few annotations. There are crime scene reports, autopsy summaries, witness statements, geographic overlays, and maps—everything needed to justify escalating the case into a full BAU investigation.
“Where do you want to start?”
“I’m trying to rebuild the geographic timeline digitally,” he says, “but half the field reports were logged out of sequence and now the movement patterns don’t align.”
You nod. “Okay, walk me through where it stops making sense.”
Three hours later, you feel like your eyeballs are bleeding. You’ve read the same witness statement at least twenty times now, but with every pass it only makes less sense. How could Annabelle Hutton possibly be placed in two different counties less than forty minutes apart?
“It’s physically impossible,” you mutter, rubbing your eyes.
Reid hums quietly beside you. “Not necessarily.”
You stare at him. “Care to elaborate?”
“Well, depending on traffic conditions, inaccurate timestamp reporting, and the reliability of eyewitness memory retention, there are at least four scenarios where the timeline could still technically work.”
You sigh, leaning back in your chair and staring up at the ceiling. “If you know so much, then why can’t you figure this out?”
He still doesn’t turn away from his screen. “I will. Eventually.”
You groan softly, dragging both hands down your face just as a familiar voice cuts through the quiet bullpen.
“No, listen to me carefully.”
Both you and Reid glance up automatically.
Hotch is walking slowly past the desks with his phone pressed to his ear, expression calm but impossibly stern in a way that immediately makes heat crawl beneath your skin.
“You don’t need to explain the problem again,” he says evenly. “You need to tell me how you’re fixing it.”
He pauses briefly beside Reid’s desk, listening.
“Then prioritise the transfer first,” he says. “If the paperwork isn’t filed before opposing counsel reviews discovery, the timeline becomes vulnerable and the entire testimony gets picked apart.”
He rests a hand on the partition between the desks, gaze fixed somewhere distant as he listens to the person on the other end.
“No,” he says after a moment, voice lower now. “I’m not asking you to stay late. I’m telling you this needs to be finished tonight.”
Your stomach flips.
This absolutely should not be as hot as it is.
“Good,” he says calmly into the phone, straightening again. “Call me when it’s done.”
Then he keeps walking, cutting through the bullpen before turning sharply toward his office.
You stare after him, the thought slipping out before you can stop it. “Do you think he talks you through it?”
“Probably,” Reid says, turning back to his screen. “High-control personalities usually prefer maintaining verbal direction in intimate situations because it reinforces predictability and compliance dynamics.”
You go still. You hadn’t actually expected an answer.
“Someone like Hotch would probably place a pretty high psychological value on responsiveness,” Reid continues. “The immediate compliance aspect reinforces authority, which means verbal direction would likely become part of the overall intimacy dynamic rather than just communication.”
Your face heats.
“Especially because he’s not impulsive enough to rely on unpredictability. He’d want constant awareness of how the other person is responding emotionally and physically, so talking them through things would help maintain control of the situation while also reinforcing trust.”
Oh my God.
“And honestly,” Reid goes on, “people with highly structured leadership personalities usually develop pretty strong positive associations with obedience because it confirms stability, attentiveness, emotional investment—” He pauses briefly. “Which means he’d probably find it disproportionately attractive when someone follows instructions immediately or responds well to praise because it validates both the authority dynamic and the emotional trust beneath it, so statistically speaking he’d—”
He stops.
Then slowly turns toward you.
“...I crossed a social boundary somewhere in there, didn’t I?”
You nod slowly, your voice coming out unnaturally high. “Just a couple.”
He sighs, dropping his chin slightly as he turns back to his screen.
You huff out a breathless laugh and lean back in your chair again. You need a minute to recover from that, because now you’re hot all over and the only thing you can think about is your boss hovering over you, praising you in that low, steady voice while his hand settles around your throat—
Fortunately, it doesn’t take Reid long to start rambling about geographic overlays again. You do your best to focus on what he’s saying, but after another hour of scrutinising the timeline inconsistencies, you decide you need an actual break.
You grab your phone and your jacket and head out of the office, sending a quick text to the team chat asking if anyone else would like a coffee from the cafe down the road. It’s a thousand times better than break room coffee.
When you step out of the elevator on the ground floor, you bring up your messages with DCRunner00. You’re not sure why, because normally you only check your profile when you feel like you need to keep up the act, but something about this guy keeps making you want to reply.
DCRunner00: I’ve read a few.
DCRunner00: What does a workaholic do for fun?
You type your reply as you step out of the building.
You: Work, mostly.
You: And sleep.
By the time you return to the office with a tray of four coffees, you have two new messages—but you can’t reply to them until you set the tray down at your desk.
“Thanks, pretty girl,” Morgan says as he takes one, flashing you a grin.
You smile back. “Anything for you, gorgeous.”
Then you pull your phone out of your pocket and bring up the message thread.
DCRunner00: What’s your schedule even like?
DCRunner00: You strike me as an “answers emails at midnight” type of person.
You: Nah. That’s my boss.
You: My schedule is chaos, though.
“Thanks,” Reid says as he takes his coffee, leaving only two.
You set your phone down and take the last two coffees out of the tray, leaving one at your desk before taking the other to Hotch’s office. You can see through the window that he’s not on the phone—for once—so you knock twice on the slightly ajar door before stepping inside.
He glances up, his brows pulling together slightly. “I didn’t ask for coffee.”
“I know,” you say quickly. “But it’s almost three, and you always need another coffee around three, and I figured you probably didn’t answer the team message because you still feel bad about me staying so late last night, which you shouldn’t, by the way.”
He straightens, brows drawing tighter.
“And I know you’ve got court with Morgan this afternoon, and you’re going to try to leave early, but someone’s definitely going to call at the last second and derail that plan, so you’ll only have enough time to get to the courthouse—not enough time to stop for coffee.”
You set the cup down in front of him.
“So,” you tilt your head, “coffee.”
He leans back in his chair, studying you for a second.
“That’s some pretty solid profiling, Agent.”
Your face heats instantly.
“Well,” you say, backing slowly toward the door, “maybe now you owe me two.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, just slightly, but it’s enough for the butterflies in your stomach to explode. You can’t help but grin as you turn away, slipping quickly out the door before your lungs forget how to work entirely.
You spend the rest of the day at Reid’s desk, finishing the case package for the Fairfax files and complaining about unreliable witnesses. Hotch and Morgan head off to court just after three, announcing to the rest of the team that they won’t be back. JJ is the first to head home again around five, followed by Prentiss, then Rossi—then you and Reid finally decide to call it a day just after six.
Which is also when you finally check your messages again.
DCRunner00: Chaos how?
You type a quick reply while you wait for your car’s AC to warm up.
You: Long hours.
You: Weird hours.
You: And a deeply unhealthy relationship with caffeine.
Then you tuck your phone away and head out of the parking garage.
Leia is already yowling by the time you step through your apartment door. She’s always hungry, even though she has an automatic feeder for dry food—but apparently that isn’t good enough. She prefers the wet stuff.
You quickly peel open a packet of fishy-smelling chicken jelly sludge and drop it into her bowl before washing your hands and moving into your bedroom. You flip the ensuite light on and start the shower, pulling your phone out of your pocket while you wait for the water to warm.
DCRunner00: Ah. So you’re one of those people.
You: Rude.
He replies almost immediately.
DCRunner00: Accurate, though?
You: Unfortunately.
You drop your phone on the bed and start undressing.
Ping!
DCRunner00: What do you actually do?
You hesitate. It’s not like you can just say you’re in the FBI. Contrary to what some people might think, real FBI agents can’t just go around bragging about their highly classified work status. It’s dangerous.
You: Mostly admin.
You: Governmental stuff.
You toss your phone back onto the bed and turn into the steamy ensuite. You shower quickly, dry off, run product through your damp hair, then pull on a shirt and a pair of sweatpants before heading back out into the kitchen.
You’re not in the mood to cook tonight, so you grab a protein bar out of the cupboard and start boiling the kettle while you check your phone for what feels like the hundredth time.
DCRunner00: Sounds boring.
DCRunner00: Do you get days off, though?
You drop a teabag into your mug before typing out a reply.
You: Sort of.
You: But if my boss calls, I answer.
He replies instantly again.
DCRunner00: I’m starting to think you secretly enjoy being overworked.
You: I think I’d get bored otherwise.
You pour the boiling water into your mug and watch his next reply pop up.
DCRunner00: That sounds suspiciously unhealthy.
You: Probably.
What about you? What do you do?
You tuck your phone into your pocket, then grab your tea and protein bar and head to the couch. There’s nothing you’re really interested in watching—since you don’t usually have the time to keep up with any shows—so you turn on the nightly news before grabbing your laptop and pulling up a new browser.
He’s already replied by the time you log in.
DCRunner00: Run.
DCRunner00: Read.
DCRunner00: Annoy people professionally.
You: That sounds made up.
You open your protein bar.
DCRunner00: It mostly is.
DCRunner00: So your boss actually calls you outside work hours?
You hesitate at the sudden redirection. Most men on dating apps prefer talking about themselves. Their jobs, hobbies, gym routines, childhood dogs—whatever makes them seem interesting—but this guy seems far more interested in observing than being observed.
You type out a vague response.
You: Sometimes.
You: Occupational hazard, I guess.
DCRunner00: And you always answer?
You: Pretty much.
You: He’d only call if it mattered.
His next reply takes almost two minutes to come through.
DCRunner00: Hm.
DCRunner00: I’m starting to think your boss gets more attention than I do.
You almost choke on your tea.
That’s... weird.
Maybe you have mentioned your boss a little more than strictly necessary, but he’s the one asking all the questions about your job. It’s a little hard not to mention your boss when your life practically revolves around him—in more ways than you care to admit.
You: Jealous already, Running Man?
DCRunner00: Should I be?
You sit up straighter, suddenly a little nauseous.
You: I think you’re spending too much time talking to strangers online.
DCRunner00: Maybe.
DCRunner00: You still replied, though.
“Okay,” you say, startling Leia who was half-asleep on the other end of the couch. “That’s enough.”
You: I’m going to sleep.
You: Try not to spiral while I’m gone.
His last message pops up just before you shut your laptop.
DCRunner00: No promises.
WEDNESDAY 8:10AM
“Come on,” you mutter, mashing the elevator button for the doors to close.
You’re a whole thirty minutes earlier than usual this morning. You didn’t even make a coffee in your travel mug before running out the door. You just woke up, brushed your teeth, checked your messages—and decided you needed to talk to Garcia immediately.
“Hey—woah.” Reid steps out of your way as you rush into the bullpen. “You’re early.”
You drop your bag on your desk and quickly shrug off your jacket.
“Is Garcia in yet?”
He frowns slightly. “I think so. Why?”
You pull your laptop out of your bag.
“I just—I need her.”
You’re already walking away before he can press any further, moving back through the bullpen with your laptop hugged against your chest. You’re just about to round the corner toward the elevators when—
“Hey—” Hotch stops short just as you nearly run into him. “Slow down. You alright?”
His hand is hovering near your waist—not quite touching, but close enough for you to feel its warmth.
You blink up at him. “Sorry. Yeah. Uh—totally fine. Just going to see Garcia about... a case.”
His brows pull together slightly.
“Alright, well, Garcia’s not going anywhere,” he says evenly. “Take a breath.”
You nod slowly, already stepping around him.
“Right,” you mutter. “Breathing. Got it. Sorry, sir.”
You can almost swear you see the corner of his mouth lift—but then the elevator dings behind you, and you have to hurry to slip through the doors before they slide shut.
It feels like an eternity before they finally open again, but once they do you practically sprint down the hall to Garcia’s lair and burst through the door without warning.
She startles so hard she nearly drops her coffee. “Sweet mother of encryption, knock first!”
“Sorry,” you say, breathless. “I need you.”
“Well, obviously,” she mutters, checking her shirt for any spills. “I’m the backbone of this entire operation.”
You drop down into the spare chair and open your laptop, setting it on her desk.
“You cannot judge me for what I’m about to show you.”
She glances up, brows lifting. “Oh. So this is serious?”
You grimace. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Slightly less reassuring than I was hoping for. Tell me what’s happened.”
You take a deep breath, then let it out in a rush.
“You remember the dating profile you set up for me?”
She nods.
“Alright, so, I won’t lie, I haven’t really met anyone on there yet, but I check the messages occasionally. When I’ve got time, you know? And I don’t have a whole lot of ongoing conversations, but this one guy sent me something that was kind of funny, so I responded, and the conversation was pretty normal for the most part. I couldn’t reply all that quickly, but he didn’t seem to mind.”
You shift awkwardly, scooting your chair closer to her desk.
“Nothing really felt out of place until—well, he wouldn’t talk about himself much, which is strange because most people on dating apps are usually more interested in presenting themselves than gathering information. He kept asking questions about my job, actually. Not that my job is on my profile, but he was really curious about my schedule, or—I guess—lack of schedule.”
You wince.
“So now that I think about it, that was probably the second sign something might be off. Or maybe he just wanted to meet up, I don’t know.”
You hesitate.
“But then he sent me this message at like... two a.m.”
She squints at the screen.
DCRunner00: Bet you answer your boss faster than you answer anyone else.
“Mmm. Nope. Don’t love that,” she says, shaking her head. “That is not a normal amount of emotional investment for a stranger.”
You sink back in your chair. “That’s what I thought.”
She starts scrolling back through the messages.
“Have you told Hotch?”
“Nope.”
She glances at you from the corner of her eye. “You answered way too fast for that to be a normal response.”
“Because the answer is no,” you say firmly, leaning forward again.
“Mm-hm.” She keeps scrolling. “Okay, well... technically this could still be nothing. He could just be some lonely basement cryptid with Wi-Fi and poor social skills.”
You groan, dragging both hands over your face.
“You do mention Hotch kind of a lot.”
Your head snaps up. “He’s my boss.”
Garcia gives you a long look.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Sure.”
“Garcia.”
“I’m just saying, if a man talked about a woman this much online, we’d all be making faces.”
You point at the screen. “Focus.”
“Right. Yes. Creepy internet man. Sorry.”
Her expression settles into something more focused as she turns back toward her array of monitors.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t block him yet.”
You sigh. “I don’t love that idea.”
“Neither do I, babycakes, but if he’s routing through the website normally, I might be able to pull connection data if we keep him talking long enough.”
You frown. “In English?”
She gives you another look. “Timestamps, login patterns, regional pings, possible VPN usage, device signatures if he slips up—basic digital stalking fun.”
“Oh, of course,” you say sarcastically. “Normal stuff.”
“For me, it is normal.” She points toward the laptop. “Now reply to him. Something casual. I want to see if he responds immediately again.”
Your fingers hover over the keys for a second before you type out your reply.
You: I thought I told you not to spiral.
He replies so fast that even Garcia flinches.
DCRunner00: Relax. It was a joke.
DCRunner00: Mostly.
She stares at the screen. “Okay, I officially don’t like him.”
You lean back in your chair again, nausea twisting low in your gut. “I feel sick.”
Garcia’s expression softens slightly. “Maybe you should tell—”
“No.”
She sighs quietly. “Okay. Fine. Can you keep replying from your phone?”
You nod.
“Good. Don’t overdo it, just enough to keep him engaged.” Her fingers start flying across the keyboard. “I’ll work my magic down here and call you if I find anything.”
You push yourself out of the chair, clutching your phone a little tighter.
“You’re the best, Pen.”
“I know.” She waves a hand without looking away from her screens. “Now go pretend to be emotionally stable upstairs.”
By the time you get back to your desk, almost everyone is already in the conference room ready for the morning briefing. You drop your phone beside your keyboard—too anxious to have it with you during the meeting—then quickly unpack your things and grab a notebook before making your way up.
Reid nods at you from his usual seat, gesturing to the empty one beside him.
“Hey,” you mutter as you drop down next to him.
His brows pull together. “Everything alright?”
You nod. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll explain later.”
Hotch keeps the morning briefing quick. He goes over yesterday’s court hearing, outlines the Fairfax briefing package in case it escalates into an active investigation, then gets JJ to run through the highest priority consultation requests.
You spend most of it toying with a loose thread on the cuff of your blouse. You’re pretty sure it’s the first briefing in years where you haven’t spent at least part of it staring at Hotch instead of your notes—and when the room finally relaxes and everyone starts to filter out, Reid turns to you.
“Okay, now I’m concerned,” he says.
You glance at him. “Why?”
“You didn’t look at Hotch once during that entire meeting.”
You roll your eyes. “Spence—”
“Something must be seriously wrong.”
You let out a long exhale, glancing briefly around the almost empty room. Only Morgan and Rossi are left, halfway to the door, deep in discussion about something that happened at the court hearing yesterday afternoon.
“Okay,” you say quietly, turning back to Reid. “I’m having some... trouble, I guess, with a guy.”
His brows shoot up. “A guy—”
“Online,” you add quickly.
He tilts his head. “I’m confused again.”
You sigh. “Remember that dating profile Garcia set up for me?”
“You mean the profile you allowed Garcia to create as part of your increasingly unsustainable performative dating strategy?”
You glare at him. “Yes. That one.”
“Then yes, I remember it very clearly.”
“Well,” you mutter, pinching the bridge of your nose, “I had this guy message me a couple days ago. It was normal at first but now it’s gotten... weird. So, I’m getting Garcia to look into it.”
His forehead creases. “Have you told—”
“No.”
“Maybe you should—”
“I said no.”
“Alright.” He raises both hands in surrender. “Okay. I’m dropping it. It’s just…”
You narrow your eyes at him.
“Well, statistically speaking, the majority of uncomfortable online interactions don’t escalate into actual stalking behaviour. Most people displaying premature emotional fixation online are socially isolated rather than violent.”
You lift a brow, waiting for the punchline.
“However,” he adds, “cyberstalking offenders also tend to develop parasocial attachments disproportionately quickly because the perceived emotional intimacy bypasses a lot of normal social barriers, which means escalation patterns can become highly personalised in a very short period of time.”
You stare at him.
“In cases where the fixation becomes grievance-oriented, the offender is usually highly organised rather than impulsive, so the behaviour tends to be significantly more deliberate and psychologically targeted.”
He pauses, frowning faintly.
“That was supposed to be reassuring.”
“…Thanks, Reid,” you mutter, turning away from him slowly. “Now I feel so much better.”
When you get back to your desk, you decide it’s time to reply again. You grab your phone and bring up the messages, taking a minute to think about what to type—knowing Garcia will be seeing the conversation too.
You type out the only mildly casual response you can think of.
You: You’re weird.
He replies just as fast as usual.
DCRunner00: You disappear a lot.
You: Workaholic, remember.
You: I told you my schedule was chaos.
You’re about to turn your phone over on your desk when a different notification pops up—from Garcia.
Garcia: If this is your version of flirting, baby girl, I think I just figured out why you’re still single.
You snort softly, typing out a quick reply.
You: Trust me, that’s not the reason.
Garcia: So there IS a reason?
You: Shh. I’m working.
Garcia: Boo!
You huff another quiet laugh as you turn your phone over, nudging it toward the edge of your desk in the hopes that you might be able to focus on work rather than creepy internet man for at least a few hours.
It doesn’t work.
Barely half an hour later, you lift your phone to check for another notification—but there’s nothing there. You pull up the message thread again and scroll up, checking the timestamps to see if he’s ever gone quiet on you before—but he hasn’t. Not really. So you type another message.
You: You went quiet. Should I be concerned?
It’s a calculated move. If he’s paying attention to response patterns—and at this point you’re pretty sure he is—then following up first helps maintain the illusion that nothing has changed. No sudden distance. No obvious discomfort. No reason for him to think you’re pulling away.
If he is dangerous, the last thing you want is for him to feel rejected.
An hour later, Rossi drops a legal pad onto your desk, asking you to take another look at a witness timeline that doesn’t feel right—which keeps you occupied for a good forty-five minutes. Then Morgan leans over the partition between your desks, asking if you can translate Reid into English. That takes up another hour of your day, and by the time you grab your first afternoon coffee, you’ve got three notifications.
One is a missed call from Garcia. The other two are from creepy internet man.
DCRunner00: Depends. Are you worried about me?
DCRunner00: Blue looks good on you, by the way.
Your stomach drops. “Oh my God.”
You immediately call Garcia back.
She answers on half a ring. “Are you wearing blue?”
“You saw me this morning.”
“I can’t remember,” she says. “Are you?”
You drag a hand through your hair. “Yes.”
“Holy shit,” she whispers. “You’ve got to tell—”
“No.”
“Are you insane?”
“Maybe, but—” You squeeze your eyes shut for a second. “Okay, just—hear me out. Blue is a statistically safe guess. It’s a neutral professional colour with high frequency in workplace attire, especially in government buildings.”
Garcia goes quiet for a second.
“And does this unsub know you work in a government building?”
“Don’t call him that,” you snap. “And—well, kind of. I didn’t tell him exactly, but I said... government adjacent.”
“I swear to God,” she mutters, “if I have to identify your body next week, I’m going to kill you.”
You press your free hand against your forehead.
“You won’t,” you say firmly. “Alright? We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
Garcia scoffs loudly.
“Seriously,” you insist. “It could still be nothing. A weird coincidence, maybe an awkward guy with boundary issues and too much free time. We deal with actual predators every day. I can handle a few creepy messages.”
The line goes quiet again—then she sighs.
“Why are you so against telling Hotch?”
“Because I don’t want to bother him,” you say quickly. “We’ve got a quiet week, he finally seems slightly less stressed, and I don’t want to cause a whole fuss over something that might turn out to be nothing.”
She sighs again, louder this time. “Fine. I won’t go to Hotch.”
Your shoulders sag. “Thank you.”
“On one condition,” she adds. “I’m sleeping over tonight.”
You nearly choke. “What?”
“Non-negotiable.”
“Penelope, that’s insane.”
“No,” Garcia says firmly, “what’s insane is you trying to casually explain away potential stalking behaviour while actively refusing to inform your unit chief.”
“He is not stalking me,” you protest, keeping your voice low.
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“And yet,” Garcia says, “if you die, I become morally complicit because I knew about creepy internet man and failed to intervene.”
You frown. “…Morally complicit?”
“Accessory to murder-adjacent,” she corrects. “And my guilty conscience requires eight hours of sleep minimum, so congratulations. We’re having a slumber party.”
You let out a long sigh. “Okay. Fine.”
She hums, satisfied.
“I need to reply to him again.”
“Well, don’t ask me,” she mutters. “You’re the one who’s apparently fluent in creepy internet freak.”
You laugh despite yourself. “Thanks, Pen.”
“Mm-hm. And just so we’re clear, tonight we are watching wholesome romantic comedies and eating enough sugar to kill a Victorian child.”
“I was actually thinking psychological thriller marathon.”
“Absolutely not.”
You smile faintly, leaning back in your chair. “Fine. Romantic comedies it is.”
“Good,” Garcia says firmly. “Now hang up before I change my mind and march upstairs to Hotch’s office myself.”
You roll your eyes as you hang up, then open the message thread again. You don’t have to think too hard about what to type. You don’t want to escalate or accuse him, but you need him to stay engaged. You want him to explain himself to see how he reframes the behaviour.
You: Lucky guess.
The next few hours slip by in a strange blur of routine tasks and fragmented conversations.
At about three o’clock, Prentiss drops a file on your desk and asks if you can double-check a victim timeline while she’s stuck on the phone with Chicago. Then Rossi calls you into his office to sanity-check a profile theory he’s working through out loud—which means fifteen minutes of listening to him argue with himself while you sit there trying not to focus on Hotch’s voice through the wall.
When you finally get back to your desk, Reid spends twenty minutes walking you through a probability model nobody asked for but everyone somehow ends up listening to anyway. He only stops when Hotch appears, carrying a stack of files from the Richardson case he wants Morgan to look over before he signs them off—and for the first time in God knows how long, you don’t stare shamelessly at his ass as he walks out of the bullpen.
By six p.m., JJ and Rossi are gone, Prentiss is helping Morgan with the Richardson files, and Reid is building a tiny tower out of paperclips while he reads over a file Rossi dropped on his desk before he left.
At exactly six-fifteen, your desk phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Pack your things, baby girl. Your government-issued sleepover is about to begin.”
You snort softly. “Alright. I’ll see you soon.”
You hang up the phone and start clearing your desk, organising paperwork into piles and packing away stationery while you wait for your computer to shut down.
“See who soon?” Reid asks.
You glance at him. “Garcia.”
He tilts his head.
“She’s staying over tonight.”
His brows lift. “Because of your stalk—”
“Girl’s night,” you interrupt, eyes widening. “That’s all.”
His gaze narrows. “Should I be worried?”
You scoff. “About me? Never.”
You slide your arms into your jacket then finally pick up your phone, finding two new notifications from creepy internet man waiting for you.
“Really?” Reid asks, turning his chair to face you. “Because you’ve spent most of the day staring at your phone like it’s a bomb, you spent most of Rossi’s profile discussion peeling the label off your water bottle instead of contributing, and you reorganised the same stack of paperwork three separate times.”
You pause mid-motion.
“Also,” he continues, “you usually correct Morgan when he misquotes case statistics and today you let him do it twice, which honestly might be the most concerning—”
“Okay!” you cut in quickly, slinging your bag over your shoulder. “Good talk. Love the observational skills. Bye.”
He doesn’t say anything else as you walk away, murmuring goodbyes to Morgan and Prentiss as you pass, but you can still feel him watching you. You’re just about to press the button for the elevator when—
“Agent.”
You stop automatically, turning to find Hotch with a file tucked under one arm and that signature frown etched between his brows. Only this time it isn’t frustrated or disapproving—it’s curious.
You force a small smile. “Sir.”
His eyes move over your face briefly. “You alright?”
You nod once. “Of course.”
He takes a step forward, his voice dropping lower. “You sure?”
Your breath catches.
He’s close now. Too close. You have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes. You can smell his cologne, feel his warmth, count the beauty marks dotted across his cheek.
“You’ve seemed distracted today,” he says.
You swallow hard. “Uh—no. No. Sorry, I just—I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
His brows draw a little tighter, and he opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something else—press harder, maybe—but then seems to think better of it.
“Alright,” he murmurs. “Get some rest tonight.”
Then he nods once and steps back, his jaw tightening for just a second before he turns away.
You don’t move immediately. You can’t. Your mind is reeling, your pulse is still hammering, and your breath is caught somewhere between your ribs while your lungs try to remember how to work.
“Hello?” Garcia calls from behind you. “I cannot hold these doors forever, babycakes.”
You shake your head. “Shit. Sorry.”
You turn and hurry into the elevator, slipping in beside her just before the doors slide shut.
For a moment, neither of you says anything.
Then—
“So, that thing you said earlier about there being a reason you’re still single…”
You shut your eyes. “Penelope.”
“I’m just saying,” she continues lightly, “unless I hallucinated whatever just happened in that hallway, I’m starting to develop theories.”
You ignore her, watching the numbers on the elevator slowly descend like counting down the days you have before the entire team figures out your secret. Because if this guy really is a creep, if you do have to tell Hotch, then it’s only a matter of time before the BAU are dissecting your dating life and realising what a ruse it really is.
And you know better than anyone that once these profilers start looking too closely at something, they rarely stop until they’ve pulled it apart completely.
The second you step through the door to your apartment, Garcia rushes past you to sweep the place. Leia startles almost immediately, running from the couch to your bedroom while Garcia complains about the fact that Leia is the only cat she’s ever met that doesn’t like her.
“Leia hates everyone,” you tell her, kicking your shoes off by the door. “Even me.”
Garcia just rolls her eyes, continuing from room to room to check the window locks and balcony doors.
Once she’s satisfied that everything is secure, she sets her laptop up on your kitchen counter and starts running a program that looks like hieroglyphics to you.
“Have you seen his latest messages?” she asks.
You shake your head, setting your phone on the counter. “No.”
She opens your laptop and logs into the dating site—because apparently she knows your password now.
DCRunner00: Maybe.
DCRunner00: Or maybe you’re just easier to read than you think.
You type out the first response you can think of, not wanting to seem like you’re overanalysing this.
You: Or maybe I’m just not trying so hard to be mysterious.
Garcia then spends the next ten minutes trying to explain her process to you in terms that almost make sense. So far she’s managed to narrow him down to a general region through login patterns and routing behaviour, but she still can’t lock onto a direct IP address. Not because she can’t—apparently that part would actually be pretty easy—but because doing it properly would mean running requests through systems that leave a trail. And right now, this definitely isn’t an official investigation.
“The second I start pulling the fun federal strings,” Garcia says, typing furiously, “there’s paperwork, access logs, oversight, and approximately twelve thousand ways for this to become a whole thing.”
You lean against the counter. “We don’t want that.”
“Not yet.” Her expression sharpens slightly. “Also, if creepy internet man is more sophisticated than he seems, there’s always a chance he’s monitoring for targeted tracing attempts. If he realises someone’s looking too closely at him before we know who he is, he could disappear completely.”
Your stomach twists. “Or escalate.”
You spend the next couple of hours keeping creepy internet man engaged while Garcia rambles tech jargon that makes less sense the longer the night wears on. At some point, you order pizza, then you migrate to the couch, and eventually you both end up sitting through the credits of Two Weeks Notice while waiting for one last reply in the hopes that he might finally answer something about himself.
DCRunner00: Refreshing
DCRunner00: Most people hide too much.
You: Depends what they’re trying to hide.
DCRunner00: What are you trying to hide?
You: Besides the fact that I’m exhausted? Nothing.
DCRunner00: You seem distracted tonight.
You: Long day.
DCRunner00: I noticed.
You: How was yours?
You wait until almost midnight before finally deciding to call it a night.
Garcia checks all the windows and doors again while you brush your teeth and change into pyjamas. When you step back out of your bedroom to say goodnight, Garcia is trying her hardest to lure Leia onto the couch with her, but Leia is very stubbornly curled up beneath the TV unit.
“Night, Pen,” you murmur, rubbing your eyes. “Thanks again... for everything.”
“Night, gorgeous,” she calls, peering over the back of the couch. “Wake me up if you hear literally anything suspicious. Or if Leia finally decides it’s my time.”
You laugh softly, blinking slowly as you turn back into your room and fall face first into bed.
THURSDAY 6:45AM
You’re not sure whether to be relieved or concerned when you wake up to no new messages from creepy internet man. He hasn’t gone quiet for this long before—but if he is just a normal, slightly awkward guy with boundary issues and an internet connection, well... it’s not that hard to believe he might just be sleeping.
Garcia is already up making coffee by the time you step out of your room, trying to bribe Leia out from under the couch with a tube of tuna paste.
The second she sees you, she jumps up and launches into another long-winded explanation about login activity and movement patterns across different access points. Apparently, creepy internet man logged in from three different geographical locations over the course of a few hours last night—which is normal, right? That means he was out doing normal human things, not just lurking in his mother’s basement, stalking women online.
Garcia isn’t entirely convinced that him moving locations is enough to get him off the hook as the BAU’s next unsub, but it at least shuts her up until you’re both back at the office.
“Hey,” Reid says as soon as you walk into the bullpen. “You haven’t been murdered.”
You frown slightly. “Good morning to you too, Spence.”
Morgan glances up from the file on his desk. “Uh—why are we getting murdered?”
Reid gestures vaguely in your direction. “Because she’s potentially being cyberstalked by a—”
“Oh, wow, look at the time,” you interrupt, glaring at Reid. “Wouldn’t it be such a shame if we all started minding our own business right about now.”
Prentiss turns in her chair, brows raised. “Cyberstalked?”
“Nobody is cyberstalking anybody,” you say as you drop into your chair. “And nobody’s getting murdered—but great start to the morning, everyone. Love the energy. Now leave me alone.”
Morgan chuckles quietly. “Damn. Thought you said you got laid last weekend.”
Your hands slip off the desk as you try to pull yourself closer.
“Technically,” Reid says, “she only implied it by refusing to answer Garcia’s question during Monday morning’s briefing.”
“Ah.” Morgan leans back in his chair. “I knew this was a drought issue.”
You scowl at him. “A drought issue?”
“Statistically speaking,” Reid adds, “people experiencing prolonged romantic or sexual dissatisfaction often display lower frustration tolerance and increased agitation in familiar social environments.”
Morgan looks at him. “Man, just say she needs to get laid.”
“Oh my God,” you snap. “I do not need to get laid. I am having a completely normal amount of sex already, thank you very much—and frankly I think it’s deeply inappropriate that you’re all this invested in whether or not I’m orgasming regularly.”
Reid tilts his head. “You’re having sex?”
Morgan’s brows shoot up, Prentiss chokes on her coffee, and you open your mouth to fire back at him when—
Someone clears their throat behind you.
Heat crawls violently up your neck—but you don’t turn around. You can’t.
“Briefing room. Five minutes,” Hotch says, his voice dangerously even. “JJ’s got an update on the custodial interview with Wallace.”
Morgan presses a fist against his mouth, trying—and failing—to smother the strangled sound of laughter.
Very slowly, you turn in your chair.
Hotch is standing at the edge of the bullpen with a coffee in one hand and a file in the other. His expression is almost perfectly composed, but there’s something dangerous lurking beneath it—something suspiciously close to amusement in the tightness of his mouth.
“Be right there, sir,” you blurt, lifting two fingers to your forehead in the most ill-timed attempt at a salute the FBI has ever seen.
Hotch just looks at you, the muscle in his jaw jumping once before he turns away.
You want to die.
The second his office door clicks shut behind him, Morgan drops his fist and smacks his palm flat against the desk with a choked laugh.
“Oh, you are never recovering from that,” Prentiss mutters, smirking behind her coffee cup.
Morgan leans back in his chair, grinning. “Baby girl, that was painful to watch.”
You drop your head into your hands.
“You somehow escalated the situation at every possible opportunity,” Reid says thoughtfully.
“I hate you all,” you mumble into your palms.
You spend the next half hour with your nose buried in your notebook, avoiding eye contact with the entire team while JJ explains the month-long back-and-forth that it took to finally get approval for the Wallace interview.
Apparently, the prison is limiting the interview to a single hour and reserving the right to terminate it early if the inmate becomes uncooperative—which Rossi thinks is less about policy and more about Wallace trying to dictate the terms of the interaction.
It’s not ideal, especially considering you were the one who convinced Hotch to push for the interview before Wallace is transferred to death row. His case was one of the first you ever studied during the BAU training programme, and there isn’t much you wouldn’t give to pick the sociopath’s brains. One hour with him feels dangerously short—that is, assuming Hotch actually picks you to be in the interview with him.
“We don’t have enough time to waste managing personalities in the room,” Hotch says, gathering the files in front of him. “I’ll decide on a second agent and send out the interview schedule later today.”
Chairs start scraping back almost immediately, files and notebooks snapping shut as everyone gathers their things and starts filtering out of the room—but you don’t move. You stay firmly planted in your seat, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of your cheek while you debate whether to follow Hotch into his office and ask to be part of the interview. You don’t even have to be asking the questions, you just want to be there. You were the one pushing for it in the first place.
But then your brain very helpfully reminds you that Aaron Hotchner heard you say the word orgasming less than an hour ago and suddenly, being on death row yourself feels infinitely preferable to making eye contact with your unit chief.
“You alright?” Reid asks, lingering beside you.
You sigh heavily, finally closing your notebook. “Yep. Just thinking about how I’ll probably have to fake my own death and change my name after this morning.”
He shrugs. “Hotch probably isn’t even thinking about it anymore.”
You glance up at him hopefully.
“Morgan definitely is, though.”
You roll your eyes, letting out another resigned sigh as you stand up and follow him out of the briefing room.
The rest of the morning manages to pass without incident. You stay chained to your desk, reviewing reports and processing any files that come your way while very deliberately not glancing up any time Hotch steps out of his office. At around eleven, Morgan and JJ head out to the cafe down the street and come back with coffees for the whole team. Then there’s a printer jam that gives the rest of the office a rare glimpse at just how angry Emily Prentiss can get when frustrated.
It isn’t until just before midday that you finally get up to go to the bathroom, and when you return to your desk, there’s one new notification in your inbox.
From: Aaron Hotchner
Subject: Wallace Interview
You’re with me next Thursday. We leave at 0700.
Your stomach flips.
“Wow,” Reid says, suddenly standing right beside your desk. “He picked you pretty quickly.”
You shoot him a warning look. “Spence.”
“I’m just saying, he usually deliberates longer.”
You glance back at the screen, rereading the first five words that make your pulse skip a little faster.
“You and Hotch do work unusually well together in confined conversational environments,” Reid adds.
You turn back to him, frowning.
He tilts his head. “That sounded more suggestive than I intended.”
You open your mouth to tell him how deeply unhelpful he’s being when your phone buzzes twice against your desk—like it does several times a day, but something about it feels different this time. Wrong.
You reach for it slowly, your stomach twisting tighter as you turn it over.
Two new notifications from creepy internet man. The first since last night.
You open the message thread—and your stomach drops.
DCRunner00: [Image attachment]
DCRunner00: Did you and your friend have fun last night?
The image is of your apartment building. It’s grainy, slightly crooked, clearly taken from somewhere across the street—but your living room windows are unmistakable. Warm light glowing through the glass. The blurred silhouette of someone inside.
Ice floods your bloodstream.
You stop breathing.
“Is that... your apartment?” Reid asks, leaning over your shoulder.
You don’t answer him. You can’t.
The bullpen dissolves into white noise around you.
Until—
“I’m done!” Garcia’s voice cuts through the static. “I can’t do this anymore!”
She’s marching right toward you, your laptop—that she’d still been monitoring—tucked under one arm.
Reid gasps. “Wait. Is that—”
Morgan straightens in his chair. “What’s happening?”
“Hotch’s office,” Garcia says, her expression dangerously stern as she stops beside your desk. “Now.”
You nod slowly, your shoes almost slipping against the carpet as you push your chair back. Reid steps aside just enough to let you stand, but before he can get too far, you reach out and wrap your fingers around his wrist, silently dragging him with you as you follow Garcia back through the bullpen.
Hotch glances up the second Garcia pushes open his office door.
“What’s going on?”
His tone is calm, automatic, already slipping into that low, calculated cadence he uses when he’s trying to talk someone down from the ledge. His gaze moves from her to you—and something in his expression shifts. Hardens. That muscle in his jaw ticking just once before he turns back to Garcia.
“What happened?” he asks, sharper now.
Garcia crosses the room quickly, opening your laptop and sitting it on his desk while you hover uselessly in the doorway with Reid still caught in your grip.
Hotch glances at the screen, his eyes flicking through the messages.
Then he looks back up—right at you—and something unreadable settles across his face. Something dangerous.
“Who sent this?”
Garcia spends the next five minutes explaining the entire situation at hyper speed while you just... stand there, leaning slightly against Reid like the whole world has tilted on its axis.
It’s funny how you can spend years building a career around finding bad people. Thinking like them. Predicting them. Profiling them. But the moment something happens to you—something real—that’s when all the theory suddenly stops feeling theoretical. And maybe it’s because you know exactly what people like this are capable of, or how quickly situations like this can escalate once someone decides they’re emotionally invested in you.
Or maybe it’s just the horrifying realisation that some part of you knew where this was heading all along. And you still didn’t do anything about it until now. Not until you put yourself—and your friend—in danger.
“Get everyone in the briefing room,” Hotch says the second Garcia finishes. “Now.”
Garcia nods once before slipping back out the door, and only then do you finally let go of Reid’s wrist—making a mental note to apologise later for the excessive physical contact.
Hotch’s eyes drop down briefly, following the movement almost automatically. Something tightens in his expression for half a second before his attention snaps back to the laptop still open in front of him.
“Reid,” he says. “Print the entire message history and document everything. Full timeline, screenshots, attachments—all of it. I want copies ready for the team in ten.”
You swallow hard. “The—the entire message history?”
“Yes,” Hotch says simply. “Every message.”
Could this day get any worse?
Fifteen minutes later, you’re back in the briefing room with the entire team flipping through printed copies of your dating profile and messages. It almost feels like an out-of-body experience. Like one of those mortifying dreams where you watch everything unfold from above without any real ability to stop it.
“Okay,” Prentiss says. “Where do we start?”
“Victimology,” Morgan answers immediately—then he glances at you. “Sorry, baby girl.”
You wave him off. “Reid’s been profiling me all week. Go for it.”
There’s a quiet ripple of laughter around the table, but Hotch barely blinks. He’s sitting on the opposite side, between Prentiss and JJ, with his arms folded tightly across his chest and gaze fixed on the copies spread out in front of him like he’s trying very hard not to look directly at you.
“We need to be careful building a victimology this early,” he says evenly. “Especially considering how well we know the victim. Personal familiarity creates bias.”
Reid tilts his head. “Normally, yes. But stalking crimes are often highly individualised.” He starts flipping through the printed messages as he talks. “Statistically speaking, stalking victims are usually targeted for a very specific reason. The motivation is generally rooted in either resentment, fixation, revenge, or romantic obsession.”
You grimace. “Fantastic.”
“Most victims also know their stalkers,” Reid continues. “Approximately seventy-five percent of stalking cases involve some form of prior relationship or perceived emotional connection.”
“Okay,” JJ says carefully, looking toward you. “Is there anyone you can think of who might hold a grudge against you? Someone you arrested, rejected, testified against—anything like that?”
You snort quietly. “Does every criminal I’ve ever interviewed count?”
The room goes still for half a second.
“Wait,” Prentiss says, sitting forward slightly. “Actually, that makes sense.”
Hotch’s eyes flick up as Prentiss pushes one of the printouts into the middle of the table, tapping the page.
“This escalation happened fast. Less than a week. That’s not somebody slowly building emotional trust from scratch—that’s somebody who already came into this interaction emotionally invested.”
“Or angry,” Morgan adds.
“Exactly,” Prentiss says. “He doesn’t lash out until she has Garcia over. That’s jealousy. Possessiveness.”
You sink lower in your chair.
“And he starts reacting every time she brings up her boss,” Rossi says, flipping through the printouts. “That’s territorial behaviour. He’s fixating on a prominent male figure in her life.”
“Not the only one fixating on him,” Reid murmurs beside you.
You elbow him immediately.
“Ow.”
Hotch glances up sharply. “Something to add, Reid?”
Reid straightens. “Uh—no. No, I think Rossi covered it.”
Hotch’s eyes narrow slightly, like he knows there’s something he’s missing, but he lets it go.
“Garcia,” he says instead, “tell me you found something useful.”
“Oh, I found things,” Garcia says immediately, the rapid clacking of her keyboard echoing loudly through the conference room speaker. “Deeply unsettling things. Our creepy little internet goblin has been very busy.”
Prentiss frowns slightly, mouthing ‘internet goblin’ across the table to JJ.
“Okay, so—profile was created nine days ago using a burner email and a VPN bouncing between three different states, which normally would make me want to set my computer on fire, but our boy got sloppy.”
Hotch leans forward slightly. “How sloppy?”
“Sloppy enough that one login pinged off a public Wi-Fi network less than six blocks from her apartment last night,” she says. “And before anybody asks, yes, I’m already pulling traffic cams.”
Hotch nods once, already shifting into command mode.
“Morgan, Prentiss—start canvassing within a ten-block radius of her apartment. Garcia will feed you anything useful from the traffic cams. JJ, coordinate with local PD and see if there’ve been any complaints of suspicious activity in the area. Peeping, prowlers, stalking complaints—anything that fits this escalation pattern. Rossi, start pulling names from old cases. Anybody with a history of fixation, stalking behaviour, or inappropriate attachment to investigators. Garcia, keep digging and keep me posted.”
Everyone starts moving immediately, papers shuffling and chairs scraping back as the room shifts into motion.
“I want to help,” you say suddenly. “This is my mess, let me fix it.”
“You can help,” he says evenly, “by going home, locking your doors, and staying there until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
You open your mouth to argue.
“I mean it,” he adds, voice low.
“I’ll take her,” Reid offers immediately.
“No,” Hotch says, gathering the printouts into one neat pile. “You go with Morgan and Prentiss.”
Then his eyes flick up, meeting yours.
“I’m taking her home.”
The next hour is one of the strangest of your life.
Hotch tells you to take your laptop back down to Garcia, who’s already in full FBI investigation mode—her screens covered in maps, metadata, CCTV stills, and enlarged screenshots of your own dating profile staring back at you in horrifying definition. When you finally make it back to your desk, Rossi spends twenty straight minutes walking you through every violent offender you’ve interviewed in the last three years, forcing you to revisit dozens of interactions you’d long since filed away as routine.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, Morgan drops a schematic of your apartment building onto your desk and starts questioning you about entrances, exits, blind spots, and security cameras while Reid quietly replaces the coffee you forgot existed an hour ago. It isn’t until Morgan leaves and JJ immediately takes his place beside you that you realise nobody has let you out of their sight for more than a few minutes at a time.
Then, finally, Hotch steps out of his office—files in one hand and his go-bag in the other, like he fully intends on staying the night if necessary.
“Ready?” he asks, stopping beside your desk.
You stare at the go-bag for one long, deeply horrified second.
“Yep,” you manage, voice tight as you slowly push out of your chair.
Hotch drives. You don’t even try to argue. You just sit in the passenger seat with your knees pressed together and your heart beating out of your chest. It’s not like you haven’t been in the car with him before. You have, plenty of times. This just feels... different.
Neither of you speak until he cuts the engine in the parking garage of your building, and you have to try very hard not to dwell on the fact that he hadn’t asked for directions the whole way here.
“Wait,” he mutters before climbing out of the car.
He grabs his bag from the back, then moves around the car and opens your door.
It takes an embarrassingly long time for you to unbuckle your seatbelt—your hands are shaking and your pulse is still pounding hard enough to make you dizzy—but once you finally do, you slip out of the car and lead him toward the fire stairs.
He never leaves more than a foot of distance between you. Never checks his phone. Never glances down. He stays glued to your side like a real protection detail. And thanks to your avid and wildly inappropriate imagination, you’ve already mentally written an entire bodyguard romance plot starring Aaron Hotchner and yours truly by the time you finally reach your apartment door.
“I—uh—wasn’t really expecting company,” you say as you push the door open. “Sorry.”
The second you step inside, Leia leaps off the couch with a loud, rumbling trill—probably wondering why you’re home before dark for the first time in years.
Hotch pauses, his brow furrowing slightly. “You have a cat.”
You glance back at him as you kick your shoes off and nudge them out of the way. “Is that really the most surprising thing you’ve learned about me today?”
He watches Leia for another second before glancing back at you. “It’s unexpected.”
You roll your eyes, trying to ignore the way your heart skips when he quietly toes off his shoes beside the door without even asking. Like he already expects to stay awhile.
Leia chirrups again as she pads through the living room toward you, no doubt about to demand an early dinner—until she catches sight of Hotch and abruptly stops short. Her ears flicker, her tail waving from side to side as she assesses the new man in her apartment.
Hotch crouches slightly, holding one hand out toward her.
“Oh, she doesn’t really like people,” you say quickly. “So don’t take it personally if she—”
Leia immediately walks straight up to him. She sniffs his hand once before pressing directly into his palm with a loud purr rumbling through her entire body.
Your eyes go wide.
Traitor.
Hotch’s mouth twitches faintly as Leia leans harder into his hand.
Oh my God. Are you jealous of your cat right now?
He gives Leia one final scratch behind the ears before straightening, the softness in his expression fading almost immediately as he slips back into work mode. He scans the apartment briefly before setting the files down on your tiny dining table and shrugging his jacket off, draping it over the back of a chair.
You stand there for a second longer than you probably should, watching him move through your apartment with the same calm focus he brings to crime scenes and briefing rooms and interrogation tables. He checks the windows, the balcony doors, glances briefly—thank God—into your bedroom, then double-checks the locks on the front door.
The whole thing feels weirdly surreal. You’ve imagined Aaron Hotchner inside your apartment a thousand times in a thousand different ways—just not like this. And nothing you imagined could have possibly prepared you for the reality of it. The way everything feels so much smaller. Warmer. More exposed.
Every object in every room suddenly feels mortifyingly personal.
If he lingers long enough in your kitchen, he’s going to notice the unusually empty trash can and realise you survive almost entirely on caffeine and convenience. If he looks too closely at your bookshelf, he’s going to find an unhealthy collection of romance novels with more trigger warnings than plot points. And if he looks into your bedroom again and turns his head just a little more to the right, he’s going to see your vibrator sitting on the nightstand—and then you’ll actually have to fake your own death.
Because you’ve spent years carefully curating a version of yourself that keeps people from looking too closely. Flirty. Casual. Detached enough to joke about bad dates and hookups and sex without anybody ever realising that none of it means anything. It’s easier that way. Easier to let everyone assume your attention is scattered in every direction instead of fixed very specifically on the one person you absolutely cannot have.
But this?
This feels dangerously close to being found out.
The next couple of hours pass in strange, uneven waves of normalcy and low-grade psychological torture.
Hotch sits at your tiny dining table without complaint, dwarfing it as he hunches over files and asks careful questions about your routines, your neighbours, and whether anyone in the building has seemed overly interested in you recently. His phone rings a lot, which isn’t unusual, and every time he answers it you spend almost the entire conversation staring unashamed at the way his shirt pulls tight across his back when he reaches for another printout.
Which is wildly inappropriate considering the circumstances, but you can’t really help it. You’re strung out, on edge, and, as Morgan so helpfully pointed out this morning, severely under-fucked.
And Leia, unfortunately—but not unsurprisingly—remains no help whatsoever.
By seven o’clock she’s fully abandoned you in favour of draping herself across Hotch’s lap while he reviews new data from Garcia, completely oblivious to the fact that you haven’t been able to breathe normally since he walked through the door.
“Are you hungry?” you ask eventually, moving back into the kitchen as if you have anything in there to offer.
Hotch glances up from his laptop, one hand resting absently against Leia’s back while she purrs in his lap.
“I’m fine.”
You lean a hip against the kitchen counter, folding your arms tightly across your chest. “Any updates?”
He glances back down at his screen. “Garcia narrowed the traffic footage down to three vehicles that stayed in the area longer than they should have—Morgan and Prentiss are running the plates now. And Rossi’s pulling relatives connected to your previous cases. Family members who attended trials, sentencing hearings, interviews. Anyone who might’ve had access to your name outside the official reports.”
You nod slowly, silence settling again for a moment before you exhale sharply.
“Are you sure sitting here doing absolutely nothing is really the best use of me right now?”
His eyes flick back up, that signature Hotchner scowl set between his brows.
“You think this is nothing?”
His voice stays calm, but there’s something firmer underneath it now.
“You’ve spent the last four days being threatened, surveilled, and followed by someone we still haven’t identified,” he says. “Morgan, Prentiss, and Reid are out chasing leads because somebody targeted you. Rossi’s pulling case files because somebody targeted you. Garcia’s been at her desk for six straight hours because somebody targeted you.”
His jaw tightens slightly.
“My job right now is making sure nothing happens to you,” he says quietly. “Let me do that.”
Your breath catches, something warm and uncomfortably familiar twisting in your chest as Aaron Hotchner just sits there watching you like he hasn’t said anything unusual at all.
Which, to him, maybe he hasn’t.
He’s just doing his job. Looking out for his team. He’s not here because he wants to be. He’s here because someone threatened one of his agents.
That’s all.
You clear your throat, pushing away from the counter before the silence stretches too long. “I’m—uh—I’m just going to shower quickly. If that’s alright.”
He nods once. “Want me to clear the—”
“No,” you say immediately. “God, no. No. It’s fine. Totally fine.”
His brows pull together slightly, confusion flickering briefly across his face before you turn and hurry into your bedroom, shutting the door a little harder than necessary behind you.
Then you take the longest shower known to mankind. You stand beneath the scalding spray for at least ten minutes before even touching anything. Then you scrub, exfoliate, shave, condition, rinse twice, and stand there for just a little longer before finally gathering the courage to step out. All the while trying desperately not to think about the fact that your unit chief is only two thin walls away while you’re dripping wet and completely naked.
You rummage through your dresser until you find an oversized sweater that isn’t totally threadbare and a clean pair of pyjama shorts. Technically, they’re just striped flannel pants you cut into shorts, but at least they’re not as short as the rest of your pyjama collection that definitely needs replacing.
If only you actually had time for things like shopping... and emotional stability.
“No, wait for Morgan before you approach,” Hotch says as you step quietly back into the living room, phone pressed against his ear while he paces slowly beside the dining table. “If the registration’s fake, I don’t want you making contact until we know exactly who’s inside.”
He pauses, expression sharpening slightly.
“Alright. Keep me updated.”
He lowers the phone slowly before looking over at you for the first time since you re-emerged—and for half a second, he visibly loses his train of thought. It’s only tiny. Barely there. Just a brief pause before his expression shutters back into place.
“Garcia tracked one of the vehicles from the traffic footage to a motel outside Arlington,” he says, glancing back down at the files scattered across the table. “The driver’s been masking his activity through multiple VPNs, so she couldn’t pull a clean trace from the motel Wi-Fi, but only one room in the motel was actively using the network.”
Your stomach tightens.
“The name on the reservation was fake,” he continues, “but the room was paid for using a credit card belonging to Daniel Mercer.”
The name hits you immediately.
“Ethan Mercer’s brother,” you say quietly.
Hotch nods. “Rossi confirmed it about twenty minutes ago. Morgan and Prentiss are waiting for local PD before they move in.”
You nod slowly, your pulse fluttering anxiously in your throat as you move toward the kitchen. Not because you actually need anything in there, but because standing still feels almost impossible right now.
“Ethan barely spoke during the trial,” you murmur, folding your arms as you lean back against the counter. “I don’t think I ever even met his brother.”
“You wouldn’t need to,” Hotch says, already gathering the files into a neat pile. “People build attachments to investigators without ever interacting directly. Especially when they’re looking for someone to blame.”
Your skin prickles. “You really think it’s him?”
“It fits,” Hotch replies evenly. “Established emotional investment, personal motive, no prior record. Which explains the inconsistency. The escalation without follow-through. The long gaps between contact attempts. He knows enough to be cautious, but not enough to stay controlled.”
He straightens, turning back toward you—and for the briefest second, his eyes drop to your bare legs before snapping back up to your face almost immediately.
He clears his throat. “This probably isn’t something he’s done before. But his brother has.”
The apartment falls quiet again after that. Hotch returns to collecting files while you stare absently toward the dark balcony doors, your pulse still refusing to settle beneath your skin.
“Well,” you mutter eventually, gripping the edge of the counter to hoist yourself up. “On the bright side, I still think I’ve dated worse.”
The joke leaves your lips lightly enough, the same way they always do—easy, detached, halfway between genuine and ironic so nobody ever pauses long enough to look too closely.
Except this time Hotch does pause.
“Why do you do that?”
You frown. “Do what?”
“Deflect.” He straightens again, one hand still holding a stack of printouts. “Every time something gets too serious, you make a joke. Or you flirt. Or you say something just inappropriate enough to throw people off balance.”
You lift a shoulder. “Maybe I’m just charming.”
“No.” His eyes narrow slightly, brows pulling together. “No, because it changes depending on the situation.”
Your pulse stutters.
“With Morgan it’s competitive,” he continues, setting the papers back on the table. “You tease him because he pushes back and it keeps conversations superficial. Garcia gets exaggerated stories because she responds emotionally instead of analytically. Half the things you say to Reid are specifically designed to make him flustered enough to stop examining what you actually mean.”
“Wow,” you murmur, shifting your weight against the countertop. “Starting to feel a little attacked here.”
But Hotch doesn’t seem to hear you.
“The dating profile doesn’t fit,” he says, almost to himself. “Neither does the apartment.”
Your stomach twists as his gaze moves briefly across the room. The bookshelves. The carefully organised clutter. Leia now curled up asleep on the couch.
“You project someone impulsive. Social. Sexually confident. But nothing in here supports that.” His eyes flick back toward you again. “You live like someone who protects their space carefully. Even the cat.”
“Leave Leia out of this.”
“She doesn’t like strangers.”
“She likes you.”
The words slip out too quickly, and something in his expression shifts.
“You keep people at a distance,” he continues slowly, close enough now that you can hear the quiet rasp beneath his voice. “Even the team. You let people think they know you because it keeps them from looking closer.” He hesitates, brow furrowing. “Except Reid.”
Your fingers tighten instinctively around the edge of the counter.
“You trust him,” Hotch says. “Not just socially. Behaviourally. You anchor yourself to him when you’re stressed. Physical proximity. Eye contact. Redirecting conversations through him.” He pauses, watching you carefully now. “And earlier you said he’d been profiling you all week.”
Oh God.
“Which means Reid already noticed the pattern.”
He goes quiet for a moment, his expression tightening almost imperceptibly as he looks back over the last few months—years—in real time. You can practically see it happening behind his eyes. Every interaction. Every joke. Every look you thought you’d hidden quickly enough.
“You track me.”
The words come quieter now. Less certain. Like he’s still realising them.
“You know my routines,” he continues slowly. “You anticipate questions before I ask them. You look up when you hear my office door open even when you can’t see me.” He steps closer again. “You know when I need coffee before I do. You watch my reactions before anyone else in the room.”
Your breath stutters.
And Hotch notices immediately.
His expression shifts slightly as his eyes flick across your face, your posture, your hands still locked around the edge of the counter hard enough that your knuckles have gone pale beneath the kitchen lights.
“Your breathing changes when I get too close to you,” he says quietly.
He takes another slow step forward, close enough now that you have to tilt your head back slightly to keep looking at him.
“You stop fidgeting,” he continues. “You go completely still.” His gaze drops briefly to your hands before lifting again. “Like you’re afraid movement alone is going to give you away.”
Your heart is beating so hard now you’re half-convinced he can hear it.
“You lose verbal fluency,” he says, voice lower now. “You trip over words you normally wouldn’t. Your pupils dilate. Your heart rate increases. And every single time I get close to noticing it—”
His eyes lock onto yours.
“You redirect.”
You can barely breathe now.
He’s standing right in front of you, close enough that the heat rolling off him sinks straight into your skin, close enough that one more step would put him between your knees where you’re perched on the counter.
And somehow the worst part is that he still sounds calm. Thoughtful. Like Aaron Hotchner is profiling you with the same careful focus he’d bring to an unsub—except this time the thing he’s slowly uncovering is the fact that you’ve been hopelessly in love with him this entire time.
You swallow hard, your gaze catching just briefly on his mouth before you drag it back up to his eyes, pulse hammering so hard you can barely think straight.
“Figured it out yet, Agent Hotchner?” you ask softly.
He goes still for half a second, something unreadable flickering across his face as his eyes drop to your mouth before lifting back to your eyes again.
The apartment suddenly feels oppressively quiet.
His throat shifts slightly.
And then—
His phone rings.
He steps back immediately, his expression shuttering back into something careful and unreadable.
“Hotchner,” he says, pressing his phone against his ear.
You don’t hear much after that. Not really. You recognise Morgan’s muffled voice, but you can’t quite hear what he’s saying. Not while Hotch slowly paces your living room. You catch fragments of the conversation. Questions. Short answers. The low, steady cadence of his voice slipping effortlessly back into work mode while your own nervous system continues actively collapsing in on itself.
Because holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
What the hell just happened?
“They got him.”
Your head snaps up. “They what?”
Hotch moves back to the dining table and starts gathering his things.
“It was him. Daniel Mercer,” he says. “Morgan and Prentiss found him in the motel room with multiple burner phones, printed screenshots from the dating profile, and enough surveillance material to establish intent.”
“Oh.”
“Local PD recovered notebooks too,” he continues. “Names, schedules, work addresses. Everyone connected to Ethan Mercer’s conviction. Judges, prosecutors, witnesses. You were first because you were the arresting agent.”
A cold shiver slips down your spine.
“Garcia also confirmed the motel Wi-Fi matched the same VPN chain used to access the dating profile,” Hotch adds. “Once Mercer realised the Bureau was involved, the direct contact stopped. After that he shifted to surveillance. Morgan said the room was covered in trial material. Photos. Notes. Newspaper clippings. He’d been building the grievance for months.”
He pauses, then looks at you.
“But they got him.”
“Good,” you say quietly.
Hotch nods once before turning back to the dining table, slipping his laptop into his bag with careful efficiency before gathering every file and printout into one neat pile.
“Local PD will hold Mercer overnight until federal transport clears,” he says, sliding the papers into his bag. “Garcia’s already started coordinating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. You’ll need to give an additional statement tomorrow regarding the dating profile.”
You nod. “Okay.”
Hotch reaches for his jacket, draping it over one arm.
“There’ll still be additional officers patrolling the area tonight,” he says. “And if you don’t want to be alone, I can have Reid or Garcia stay here.”
“I’ll be fine,” you mutter, glancing down at the kitchen tiles. “You can stop babysitting me now.”
Hotch stills.
Then slowly, deliberately, sets his jacket on the table.
“Babysitting?” he repeats.
“You know what I mean.”
He steps toward you, brows drawn. “I don’t think I do.”
“You solved the case,” you mutter, heat crawling up the back of your neck. “You profiled me. Thoroughly. So congratulations, I guess. You figured out the whole sad little secret, the weird avoidance issues, the entire personality disorder cocktail—” You let out a short, humourless laugh. “You can go back to pretending none of this ever happened now.”
He closes the distance between you before you even fully realise he’s moving, stopping directly in front of the counter again. Exactly where he’d been when you asked him if he’d figured it out. Close enough that you can feel his warmth. Close enough that you can see the day-old shadow of stubble lining his jaw.
“You’re being deliberately provocative now because you’re embarrassed,” he says. “But embarrassment isn’t actually your primary response here.”
His gaze drops to your mouth again, and your pulse stumbles.
“If it was,” he adds quietly, “you wouldn’t still be looking at me like that.”
Your breath catches in your throat.
You want to say something. Anything. Another joke. Another deflection. Something sharp enough to cut through the tension in the air and stop him looking at you like this. Exposing you like this.
But you can’t.
All you can do is stare at him. At the steady intensity in his eyes. At the way his tie has loosened slightly over the course of the night. At the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the white shirt you’ve spent an embarrassing number of years picturing on your bedroom floor.
You swallow hard, and he notices. Of course he does.
Something shifts in his expression then. Something softer. Less guarded.
His hand comes up beneath your jaw, his thumb pressing gently into your chin as he pulls you closer. You fall forward without hesitation, and he leans in, dark eyes still searching yours as if he isn’t entirely sure he has permission yet.
Then he kisses you.
It’s not rushed. Not messy. If anything, the first press of his mouth against yours feels almost unbearably controlled, like he’s still holding himself back even now.
But the restraint doesn’t last long.
Your hand catches his tie, tugging him closer, and something rough slips from the back of his throat as he steps in, his hips slotting between your thighs. His hand slides from your jaw into your hair, fingers tightening just enough to tilt your head back exactly as far as he wants it.
Your lips part against his with a broken sound, and he deepens it slowly, his tongue moving against yours like he has all the time in the world. Tasting you. Learning you. Mapping every small sound and ragged exhale with the same focused intensity he brings to everything—and somehow that’s what undoes you the most. Not urgency. Attention.
His breath mingles with yours, hot and uneven, and when his teeth catch your bottom lip it’s deliberate, measured—a sharp little spark shooting straight through your spine. Your hips roll toward him without permission, and his answering groan rumbles through his chest, vibrating beneath your palm and making you ache everywhere you’ve been starving for him.
Then he pulls back just enough to look at you properly again. His hand still tangled in your hair. Thumb dragging once across your jaw. His eyes move over your face with the same intensity he uses in every debrief, every case, every crisis, except right now you are the thing he’s making sure of.
Like he needs to be absolutely certain this is real.
“Aaron—”
“Bedroom,” he says immediately, voice low and rough enough to send heat crashing straight through you. “Now.”
FRIDAY 6:15AM
Your alarm blares somewhere beside the bed, startling you awake hard enough that your heart immediately starts pounding. You reach for it blindly, determined to silence it before it wakes—
Oh God.
The second your hand hits the snooze button, you freeze.
Your heart is beating faster now, your pulse thrumming in your throat as you turn slowly—so slowly—toward the other side of the bed, where Aaron fucking Hotchner stirs sleepily.
Your stomach swoops.
You slept with your boss last night.
With a shallow, shaky breath, you carefully start to move. His arm is heavy at your waist, but you manage to slip out from underneath it without fully waking him. You shove the covers off and shiver at the sudden exposure, leaning over the side of the bed to find your discarded sweater. You pull it over your head before quietly padding toward the ensuite, refusing to glance back at your very hot, very naked unit chief still tangled in your sheets.
You only just make it around the other side of the bed before something tugs at the back of your sweater. You stop, glancing back to find Hotch half-awake, eyes half-lidded with one hand caught at the hem of your sweater.
“Do you really get up this early?” he asks, voice rough with sleep.
“Yeah,” you murmur. “Most days.”
His brows pull together slightly. “Why?”
You let out a small, breathless laugh. “Because my boss is kind of a hard ass about punctuality.”
Something that almost resembles amusement flickers across his face.
“Sounds like a terrible boss,” he murmurs.
Then he tugs on your sweater again—hard enough this time that you let out a startled laugh as you stumble backward onto the mattress and into him. He catches you easily, one arm wrapping around your waist before you can even fully recover, pulling you back against the warmth of his chest.
“Yeah,” you murmur, laughing softly as his mouth brushes beneath your ear. “He’s awful. Very demanding.”
He hums, breath warm against your skin.
“He’s really hot, though,” you add, smiling despite yourself. “So I like having time to put in a little effort, you know? Hope he notices.”
“Oh, he notices.”
Your stomach flips. “Really?”
“Mhm.”
His arm tightens around your waist. “He notices the skirts.”
Heat floods your face. “Aaron—”
“He notices the tights.” His mouth brushes against the nape of your neck. “The ones with the seam up the back.”
“Oh my God.”
You try to turn your face into the pillow, but he just holds you tighter, pressing his lips firm against your neck.
“And the red bra,” he murmurs.
Your breath catches.
“Noticed that so much I had to wait until everyone left the conference room before I could get up.”
You let out a strangled sound, squirming in his arms, but it’s no use. His chest vibrates against your back, something suspiciously close to laughter.
“My washing machine broke that week,” you whine. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Mm, sure.”
You twist around immediately. “I’m not lying.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he doesn’t quite believe you, but before you can protest again—he kisses you. Warm, slow, sleep-soft. His mouth moves against yours almost lazily, his hand tightening slightly at your waist when a pathetic little whimper slips out before you can stop it.
“Careful,” you murmur, breathless against his mouth. “Don’t want to be late.”
You feel his lips curve.
“Good thing I’m the boss.”
10:35AM
You made it to work well on time. Even after three orgasms, a shower, and an awkward attempt at a ‘What Now?’ conversation—that ended in the aforementioned third orgasm. Because fortunately for your rapidly fraying nervous system, Hotch hadn’t even hesitated when you’d finally asked what happens next. In fact, he’d answered a little too quickly.
The first thing he’d asked was whether you’d be comfortable keeping things quiet for a while. Not because he’s worried about the team finding out—he trusts them. Trusts you. The concern is Strauss, and the Bureau, and keeping you in the BAU while he figures out exactly how much trouble the two of you have just created for yourselves. At some point he’d even started muttering about reporting structures and supervisory chains, half-thinking out loud while pulling on his tie. Something about possibly moving your reporting line over to Rossi. Something else about needing to review the Bureau’s fraternisation policies before making any moves.
That was when you kissed him—effectively, and very quickly, kicking off round three.
Because he’d clearly been thinking about this for a while, which means Aaron Hotchner has been noticing a lot more than just short skirts and inappropriately coloured underwear. It means that the second he decided to kiss you in your apartment last night, he’d already known exactly what he was getting himself into.
“Alright, gorgeous,” Morgan says, startling you as he raps a knuckle against your desk. “They’ll be ready for you downstairs in ten.”
You glance up at him, brows drawn—and it takes an embarrassingly long second for you to figure out what he’s talking about.
“Oh.” You blink. “Right. Yeah, I’ll head down soon. Thanks.”
Prentiss looks over from her desk. “You gonna be okay?”
You lift a shoulder. “Sure. What’s another case report?”
Morgan frowns, dropping into his chair. “It’s not exactly every day you’re the victim, baby girl.”
“Yeah, but nothing really happened.”
Morgan and Prentiss both stare at you.
“Because of the team,” you add quickly. “You guys caught him before he actually did anything. So... you know, nothing bad happened.” You plaster on a smile that feels reasonably convincing. “Thanks for that, by the way.”
Prentiss narrows her eyes, but before she can say anything else, Reid appears.
“You’re in a remarkably good mood for someone who was being actively cyberstalked twelve hours ago,” he says, stirring his second coffee of the day.
You turn back to your screen, trying to ignore the heat creeping into your cheeks. “Maybe I just have a newfound appreciation for life.”
Reid studies you for a moment, clearly unconvinced—but he doesn’t push. He just moves slowly back toward his desk, setting his coffee down with unnecessary care while the rest of the team turn away, finally deciding to mind their own business.
You force your attention back to the report in front of you, determined to at least look productive for the next ten minutes—when a familiar voice cuts through your concentration.
“Rossi’s taking Wallace with you next week,” Hotch says, setting the file down on your desk.
You blink up at him. “I thought you were leading the interview.”
“I was.”
Something in his expression tightens briefly before he lowers his voice.
“Wallace has a long history of using sex, intimidation, and emotional targeting to destabilise people during interviews,” he says. “Especially women.”
You frown. “Hotch, I—”
“And if he says something to you in that room,” he continues evenly, “or looks at you the wrong way, I need to know the agent sitting beside you is still capable of thinking objectively.”
Your stomach flips as his eyes meet yours—steady, intense, devastatingly honest.
“Right now,” he says quietly, “I’m not sure that’s me.”
Then he’s gone. Moving through the bullpen back toward his office like he hasn’t just set your pulse racing and your head spinning. You watch after him for a moment before shaking your head, glancing back at your computer screen as if you’d been focused on it at all in the first place.
“…Huh.”
You turn toward the sound and find Reid staring at you again. Not rudely. Just watching with the same focused curiosity he’d been wearing since your suspiciously cheerful comment about cyberstalking.
Robby likes to touch, especially after a few drinks. Unfortunately, he likes to touch you.
If it was any other man, you'd curl your nose, tell him to fuck off, but something about Robby's steady hand, firm and comforting at the same time, keeps your mouth shut. You melt at his hand on the back of your neck, resting there like you're his while he tells stories about "the old days" to your fellow residents.
It's embarrassing how they look at you– or, it should be, but you're too busy soaking up the way Robby's voice sounds so close to your ear right now. Trinity looks like she wants to jump across the table. Dennis is blushing to his ears right next to her. It's only Cassie and Victoria, sitting slightly too close to one another, who hide their judgement, for nothing if not to appear less hypocritical than their thoughts.
You wonder if they look at Samira and Abbot the same way. Though, you already know the answer, because the two of them are at the bar right now, each with hands roaming far lower than Robby's. And you also know know why they don't. You feel it. It's the same reason why you like Robby touching you like this.
Every time he makes contact, from a mere accidental brush in the halls at work to these nights of drunken handsiness, your heart races. It's the closest you've ever felt to being prey, and you're not entirely sure what the predator is. You know well enough to say it's Robby with his claws that can't help but sink into you, but the lingering eyes and the whispers of your peers when they think you're not around to hear it feel just as dangerous.
So you seek him out, sit next to him and giggle at his every joke, and share sips of his drinks and offer him some of your own. You bear the glares because the thrill of Robby occupies your sleeping and waking mind.
And when the night you're dreaming of eventually does arrive, it doesn't take you by surprise one bit. When Robby leans in, his hand already teasing the inside of your thigh, and asks if you have somewhere to be tonight, you simply smile.
warnings: mentions of cancer, death, light angst, she’s crushing hard, age gap (22&26), secret/forbidden relationship, patriotism rawr 🦅, reader had glasses & braces, long enough hair to curl, sweetheart is HORNY!, past underage drinking, implied drunk driving (nothing happens), navy inaccuracies, maturity gap, slight angst, making out, unprotected sex, slut shaming, cumming inside, fingering, aftercare
summary: in which… some summer bliss & some summer ignorance with jake seresin.
m’s notes: written in the app, bad smut! not proofread universe link
all rights reserved @backtoarkansas
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after a reluctant introduction to your mother, jake seresin snags an invite to dinner— not just any dinner, but tom kazansky’s annual navy summer cookout, or whatever he called it these days. all of your uncles and aunts from the service piled onto the lawn and the house, around the lake.
you loved the summer, especially the cookout. at fifteen, you’d snuck your first beer— gotten hammered on the shitty bud lights in the coolers scattered around. bradley realized first, and panicked. he was acne faced and scared. bradley was enlisting soon, to the detestation of his mother.
carole bradshaw was like an aunt to you— your mother and her were good friends, getting lunch and going to book clubs together whenever it was possible. you don’t remember when uncle goose died; but daddy told the story a lot, how he went down while mav was flying: don’t bring up that kind of thing around him, won’t get you any good. he’d warn.
when carole got sick, it was all hands on deck to take care of both her and bradley. she passed at the end of that summer, pete pulled bradley’s papers from the academy, and you seemingly were with rooster every night. it was a tough couple months, trying to be there for bradley while also balancing school. he was forever grateful for your presence that year, though. it helped him feel less alone, mad at the world.
bradley’s sitting beside you on the deck. you’re focused elsewhere however; across the yard, jake is stood beside your father at the grill. every guy you’d ever brought home was infatuated with your father, asking him questions, hearing his stories. it was different though, jake was navy too. your father harbored deep admiration for any and every aviator.
bradley shoves at you— grinning. he was like an older brother, he really didn’t want jake to break your heart. he loved his friend, he did. but bradley also knew what jake was like. he knew what jake did to girls. he didn’t want you to be another one of jake’s conquests. “what, squirt? worried that ice is taking your boyfriend from you?”
you scowl, elbowing him. you don’t take take eyes off jake across the lawn, muttering: “he’s not my boyfriend, keep it down— but, like— what could they possibly be talking about over there?” bradley leans over, confused. you turn to look at him and huff. his brown eyebrow raises, and the two of you start to bicker— you threaten to rip his mustache off his upper lip, when jake appears before you.
“do you two ever do anything other than argue?” he smirks. he’s eyeing you over his sunglasses; you can feel his glare in your gut, heat curling around your belly. since yesterday on base, he occupied your thoughts. bradley shoves at your shoulders. you nod frantically;
“we— yes, we do.” you sputter over your words. jake looks around the lawn, hands tucked in his pockets.
jake grins down at you, making a soft clicking noise with his pretty lips and nodding toward the house. his fingers beckon you closer, like calling a dog. you make an effort to peer around— your whole family is focused on other things, bradley shrugs. you reach for jake’s hand, letting him pull you toward the house.
the house is cold, empty. charlie’s napping on the couch in the foyer, some football game on the TV. jake stops at the top of the grand staircase, you collide with his back, cursing. he’s taken a framed photo off the wall, and is holding it, grinning. it’s of you, from graduation.
jake holds it up beside your face. “oh honey, aren’t you just a little cutie pie?” he coos, mocking you. you shush him, batting at his chest— yanking the photo from him. carefully, you hang it back on the wall. you shove jake into your bedroom, closing and locking the door behind you.
growing up, you weren’t allowed a lock on your door. you’d snuck over one too many boys in highschool— but when you’d graduated you managed to convince your father to reinstate it; if only he knew now.
your bedroom hasn’t changed since highschool. your comforter was pink and frilly, pictured with girls you didn’t even talk to on your bulletin board— old color coded calendar reading may 2016 jam packed with parties and shifts from the ice cream parlor downtown. posters hang on the walls of old favorite movies and artists you haven’t listened to in years.
jake hums, finger tracing over a photo of you grinning with bradley. he runs his finger over your cheek— the nosy bastard is taking his time savoring your space. six years ago, when you were starting highschool, he was in college. you’re a bit embarrassed of your childish little bedroom.
he finds a picture— your school photo from freshman year. you were wearing your purple glasses, braces. your hair was curled all cute and you looked adorable. jake turns to you; “hey, baby? can i keep this one?”
you shrug, nodding. “i don’t see why not— why do you want it?” you bounce on the balls of your feet. jake pockets the picture:
“want it for my wallet.” he smiles, stepping closer to you, he lifts your arms, wrapping them snug around his neck. you smile up at him, bashful. he was so dreamy, a prince charming. it was like he’d come right off the page of a fairytale. tall, tan, blonde.
“we shouldn’t—” you whisper quietly, your warm breaths rolling from your lips. his dexterous fingers lift, brushing hair behind your ear. you tried— really tried— not to get too attached to jake. it had been literally one day.
usually, you had to force yourself to like a guy. the ick came quickly; bad breath, ugly laugh, stupid haircut. you tried to find it with jake, but he was perfect. you could never tell him that, though. that son of a bitch.
“why?” he hums, he’s not pushy. his eyes are focused on yours so intently it makes you shiver. you turn your head, looking away from him. he lifts two fingers, moving your fake to look back at him. “not so fast, little miss.”
you glare up at him “my whole family is here, and men you respect from the navy. anyone could walk in and— i’m not in the mood to deal with it.” he sighs, backing away a step. you feel cold, instinctively wrapping your arms around yourself.
he turns to you, tugging you close by your hips. stumbling, you collide with his chest. you peek up at him, embarrassed. “think you can lie to them tonight?” he hums, “after fireworks or whatever?” you nod, confused.
“yeah— why?” you tilt your head.
jake smiles, flicking your forehead. “you could stay over my place, baby. tell ‘em you’re staying at a friends house or somethin’. you were teasin’ me all day today and yesterday. need you f’real.”
you smile up at him, nodding. he was a real sweet talker— he could talk you into anything. “fine. after fireworks.” you point at him, “and no funny business. it’s bad enough bradley knows!” your voice is scolding, but jake cuts you off with a kiss.
“no promises.” he coos against your lips. you nudge him away, brushing past him on your way to the door. jake delivers a firm smack to your ass on your way by— shrieking, you slap him.
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later that evening, you’re stood on the dock, next to bradley. jake’s on his other side, eyes fixed on you. you’ve got a blanket wrapped snug around your shoulders— you loved fireworks. even as an adult.
you and your sisters help your mother clean up the lawn as people slowly start filling out one by one. jake and bradley are talking with your daddy and charlie. your dads loud, abrasive laugh echoes across the warm night air. the two men approach you next—
“see ya later, birdie.” bradley smiled, pressing his lips to your temple. he smells like beer, sweat, and his cologne, it was weird to say, but his smell always put you at ease— it was so uniquely bradley bradshaw. jake turns to you and nods. you’d almost forgotten you were sneaking over to his place after.
“later princess.” he nods, before turning and shaking your mothers hand— thanking her for her hospitality. she was a big fan of lieutenant seresin. she reminded her of your father; that’s why. they depart soon after, and your phone lights up with a text:
jake
address is 74 wood field ave
my neighbors are old
text me when u get here ;)
you can’t help but roll your eyes at jake’s texts. he texted like a college kid still, even at twenty six. you send him a thumbs up and approach your mother. “hey mama?” she hums, looking up at you curiously.
“do you mind if i stay at melanie’s tonight? i haven’t seen her in a while.” you smile— laying it on real thick. your mama was the glue of the household, sarah kazansky had a sixth sense for sensing bullshit; which meant you were a fantastic liar. she nods, telling you to drive safe.
in the house, your dad is in the living room, reading some old war book. you walk up to him, smiling. “i’m heading over to melanie’s for the night, daddy. i’ll see you tomorrow. love you.” you kiss his cheek and he smiles— for a man called ice man, he was a big softie.
“alright, lovebug. careful driving— people drink and drive a lot on the fourth.” you nod; before making your way upstairs. you pack overnight clothes into a little bag, and change into your sexy underwear. jake made you feel giddy.
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you send jake a quick ‘here’ text when you pull up in the driveway. his house is cute— an american flag on the flagpole, white with blue shutters, a manicured lawn. you can imagine his elderly neighbors watching him mow his grass— you feel hot.
jake is leaving in the doorway, waiting for you. as you prance your way up the steps of the porch, you grin at him. “lieutenant.” you salute, smiling wider. jake rolls his eyes, pulling you inside with him. he makes quick work at kissing you, sliding your bag off your shoulders and letting it drop on his welcome mat.
you pull away, giggling. shouldering past him, you look around his house— the pictures of family on the mantle, the throw blanket on the couch, the magnets on his fridge. it’s neat, military clean but lacking personality— he’s watching you dissect him, smiling.
“not bad, seresin.” you grin at him, returning to your spot before him. “less of a bachelor pad than i was expecting.”
jake grins. “didn’t have much faith in me, did you?” you didn’t, really. he laces his fingers with yours, bringing you down the hall to his bedroom. the wooden floorboards creak below your feet. jake nudges the door closed behind you both.
you lift up a photo of a woman on his nightstand. “who’s this?” you hum softly, “she’s beautiful.”
jake’s usually cocky expression is gone now, watching softly. “that’s my mama.” you didn’t know much of anything about jake’s family. you knew he had sisters and was from texas, but that was it.
you hum, biting your lip. “how many siblings do you have again?” jake reaches his hand out, tugging your lip free from your teeth.
“four, just like you. three sisters n’ me.” he hums, “i’m second in the order— my sister charlotte’s three years older, than me, stella was two years after me and my baby sister julie is eighteen.” he gets this soft little look in his eyes when he talks about his sisters, its cute.
he lifts his gaze to look at you, and reaches over to flick your forehead. “i don’t want to talk about them now. i want to focus on you.” his voice is all low and gravelly, it makes you swoon.
you sit back blindly on his bed, the backs of your thighs brushing the quilt. he moves closer to you, cupping your face in his hands.
jake’s lips are warm and soft against yours, and you can taste his chapstick on his mouth and smell the sunscreen on his cheeks. he kisses with purpose; holding your face like it’s sacred and smacking his lips against yours.
he nudges you back against his bed, grunting. his hands are everywhere; tugging your dress up, feeling up the warm skin of your thighs. your breath stills in your throat, jake pulls back enough to look into your eyes.
“you still okay with this?” you nod, frantic. jake smiles, kissing you again. your hands come up to pull at the black t-shirt he’s wearing. slowly, he pulls it over his head. you take a minute to admire him. the navy has been kind to jake seresin.
you drink him in. each ridge and valley of his tanned skin. the golden hair leading your gaze down to his jeans— he’s perfect. muscular in his arms and shoulders. your fingers come up to trace over his abdomen.
jake nudges your hands away, moving his hands to shift the straps of your dress down your arms. his fingers then shift to unzip the dress— freeing you. jake’s mouth moves down the column of your throat, your chest, and belly. you squirm under his touch.
“fuck,” you whine, nails making purchase in the skin of his shoulders. jake’s teeth scrape over the apex of your thigh. he wraps his big, heavy palms around your thighs; using them to nudge your legs open wide enough for him to lie between.
his eyes are heavily lidded, staring up at you. your fingers sift through his blonde hair, jake’s fingers lift, looping through your panties; sliding them down the length of your legs— he tosses them behind him.
“last chance t’say no.” he whispers, licking his lips. you shake your head at him, you would never dream of saying no to him, not when he looked at you like this.
jake makes his way back up your body— kissing a dark hickey into your throat. one of his hands is pressed firm against your belly, keeping you from thrashing around. “you finally gonna let me fuck you?” jake murmurs against your neck.
“please, jake,” you whine, hips lifting up off the mattress to smash against his. “m’so wet—” you plead, fingers snaking their way down into your panties. with one hand, jake collects both your wrists; pinning them over your head.
“baby, stop fuckin’ talking.” he smiles at you. “keep blabbing on and on, just lemme take care of you, yeah?” you trust him wholly, you do. slowly, you nod. lip between your teeth.
“open,” he murmurs, fingers pressed against your lips. obliging, your lips part wide enough to welcome his pointer and middle into the warm heat of your mouth. they press a gentle weight against your tongue. his eyes haven’t left yours; you whine around his digits—
jake released your wrists, his now free left hand moves under your back, unclasping the black lace bra you’re wearing. inch by inch, your bare skin is revealed until you’re fully nude before him. he looks wolfish, pupils wide in his pretty eyes.
your hands fumble with his belt, shaky and desperate to see him fully. he nudges your hands away, pulling his belt free in one swoosh. slowly, he unzips the denim and pulls it down his legs, stepping out of them. you feel like an animal, waiting for dinner.
he’s standing before you in his calvin klein underwear, smiling like a centerfold model. your hands move on their own, pulling him impossibly closer. jake laughs heartily, kissing you.
his fingers come down, brushing against the wet heat of your cunt. you’ve been dripping down your thighs since you got in his bedroom— he slips a finger inside of you, thumb rubbing against your clit. you’re squirming beneath him, tiny noises crawling up your throat and tumbling out of your lips.
he smiles, kissing the corner of your mouth. “please—” you beg him, eyes staring up into his. he nods, free hand brushing your hair from your face.
“gotta get you ready, baby.” he grins, cocky. “s’gonna hurt.” your nails dig into his shoulders, hiccuping desperately. jake pulls his fingers away, glistening. he brings them up to his lips, lapping them clean.
“don’t make me wait any longer, please,” you beg so pretty that jake can’t resist anymore. he’s propped himself above you, hand beside your head supporting his weight. he frees himself from his boxers. golden hair leads your gaze down his navel. he’s sculpted; his cock is slim, but long— a vein along the underside, his slit already leaking with precum.
you lick your lips subconsciously. jake positions his hips against yours. pelvis pressed against you. your hand guides him along to your hole, the head of him pressing into you. he inches inside slowly, the stretch makes your toes curl. when he finally bottoms out, jake presses a firm kiss to your head.
“okay, baby?” he coos, “you okay?” you nod. jake smiles.
he starts to fuck into you slowly, grunting with each press against you. you make yourself busy, peppering kisses along his face each time it reaches you. jake groans deep whenever you clench around him.
“fuck— m’already fuckin’ close,” he murmurs, adjusting his pace. your head tips backward, moaning quietly into the still air.
“me too, fuck,” you hiccup. “please, jake. m’so close.”
“c’mon, baby— where do you want it?” he whispers, fists clenched around the pillows by your head.
“inside, jake, please— m’on the pill.” you beg him. you’d been dreaming about feeling him deliver his load inside of you all night. jake almost cums when you beg— but holds off another minute before he lets go.
you manage to hold on a few seconds after, finishing while he’s still sheathed inside of you. the both of you pant loudly for a moment before jake pulls out, grabbing a damp cloth and cleaning you up.
the wetness of the towel is cold against the heat of your cunt— and jake is careful, pressing kisses to your thighs. when he’s finished cleaning up, he curls up into his cool sheets beside you. you’re zonked; drooling on his pillow.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
a few nights later, its girls night. you’ve been drinking at the hard deck since four— it’s currently ten thirty. everyone was back in town for the week, so you and some highschool friends were catching up over some drinks.
jake strolled in with his naval friends at nine fourty five— your head lifted, as if sensing his presence. his eyes meet yours, and he gives a firm nod. that was all you got? a nod? bradley spots you soon after, walking up and hugging you. he knows all your friends from highschool— he makes quick work greeting them all with polite handshakes.
it’s different, this time. usually you were the one to ignore your fling at the bar. hardly ever serious with any guys from school— it felt good to hurt their egos. without realizing it, you were suddenly on the receiving end of that ignorance.
your friends leave around ten fifteen— and you’ve spent the last fifteen minutes trying to work up the courage to go up to them. his friends all know you through bradley; slamming your empty bottle on the table, you approach.
you snake your arms around jake’s slender waist, he yells in surprise— spinning around to look at his attacker: you. he looks confused. “uhm, hello?” he looks so handsome when he’s pretending to be a stranger.
you giggle up at him, reaching to squeeze at his cheeks. he nudges your hands away, holding your wrists down by your sides. he gives a nervous look around— nobody’s watching. “why are you ignoring me?” you whine, beaming up at him.
jake’s grip on your wrists is tight. “anyone who knows your father could be texting him right now— don’t risk this, baby.” he’s scolding you.
you huff, glaring at him. “so— what’re you saying? you’re embarrassed to be seen with me or somethin’?” your words are slurred, and jake realizes just how drunk you are. he hasn’t been this plastered since sophomore year of college.
he’s getting frustrated. “no, baby. you know it’s not that. we’re keepin’ this a secret, remember?” his brow lifts. his final straw comes when you try to lean up and smush your lips against his. jake firmly grasps your shoulders, steering you toward bradley and the other pilots.
“hey, rooster.” jake sighs, “she’s hammered. i’m gonna bring her home.” bradley nods, looking you over. you’re sweating, dress rumpled and pouting up at jake. bradley sighs.
“alright man— just. keep her safe and don’t be an ass. she’s sensitive.” jake nods, guiding you out of the bar. you stumble over your own feet, bradley watches like a hawk as the two of you leave.
natasha looks up, following bradley’s gaze. “he’s not— right?” she has heard all about jake’s lady killer behavior. “she’s like— really drunk.”
bradley shakes his head. “god no— he’s driving her home. offered to do it for me.” he nods. he can’t exactly tell the pilots jake had been sleeping around with their admiral’s daughter for the past few weeks.
javy whistles, smiling. “bagman’s trying to earn some brownie points with ice?” it’s a joke— but it suddenly dawns on bradley that this is what jake was doing. playing with your feelings for a promotion in the ranks; his jaw tightens.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
in the car, you fiddle with the AC, turning it way up and letting out a frazzled moan as the cool air blasts your overheated skin. jake’s gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles are white. you turn to look at him, sighing.
jake pulls up outside your parents house and you dart up in your seat. you were under the impression he was bringing you back to his place. “why are we here?” you slur, half yawning.
“where else would i bring you?” jake looks confused. “my place?” his tone is joking— but that is what you had thought. you’d been looking forward all night to crawling into his bed.
you pout, nodding. “yeah— don’t you want me, jakey?” he laughs, shaking his head. the age gap between you two had never been so apparent to him than right now. you were whining and pouting like a damn teenager.
“sweetheart, you and i both know that’s not the issue.” his tone is strict, like if he let his walls down he’d melt and lean across the console to kiss you silly.
“but i want you.” your tone is needy, jake sighs and shakes his head.
“you’re drunk out of your mind.” he’s not looking at you anymore, eyes fixed ahead of him. “i’m not going to take advantage of you.”
“you’re drunk too—” you try to argue, but you know deep down he’s sober. he would never drive you while he was drunk, he would never drive at all drunk.
“don’t try.” he’s interrupts, “i’m not going to fuck you tonight.” the words are clipped, they have to be.
“but—”
jake cuts you off again: “how many times do i have to fucking say it? i’m not going to take advantage of you!” he’s loud, voice raised. you shrink back in your seat.
“but i want you to!” you whine, arms crossed over your chest.
jake scoffs, turning to look at you. “what, you want me to take fuckin’ advantage of you? that shit turn you on?” you scowl, embarrassed. he’s usually all southern manners— but he’s swearing. it’s how you know he’s angry.
the two of you sit in tense silence for awhile. the only noise is the engine of his truck and the ticking of his watch.
you finagle with the door handle. beside you, jake sighs. he gets out of the car and comes around to open your door. you glare at him, taking his hand and climbing out of the car. he walks you to the door, hands on your shoulders.
before you unlock the front door he turns to you, he looks tired. he brushes your hair behind your ears and presses a firm kiss to your head. “call me. tomorrow.” you nod, he continues, “when you’re sober.”
he waits until you make it inside to get back in the car, he rests his head against the steering wheel, frustrated and tired. his phone dings— a text from bradley.
bradley
she get back okay?
jake
big fight. she’s home now
bradley
it’ll be okay
she’s a tough drunk
jake thumbs up the message, and drives back to his place.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
inside, you lean against the door, letting out a big breath. stood at the foot of the stairs is your mother— she’s been awaiting your arrival home.
“was that jake seresin bringing you home?” your mother crosses her arms over her chest. she had a serious expression on her face; guilt builds in your belly for making her wait up on you.
you nod. “yeah— he offered so bradley could stay at the bar—”
she cuts you off. “don’t you lie to me.” she reprimands. “i know your ways, little girl. don’t you mess up that boy’s life cause you want to rebel a little.”
your eyes widen— what?
she continues. “he has a future ahead of him in the navy. and he is four years your senior. you do this to nice boys all the damn time. so before you think about doin’ anything— don’t.”
you glare at her. “okay, mom— jesus. i’m not going to do anything. i don’t know why you think i’m such a slut.”
she gasps, scandalized. “don’t you use that language with me!” you throw your arms up and turn on your heel, marching upstairs to your bedroom. you slam your door behind you, collapsing into bed. instinctively you text jake.
summary: declan's marriage is in dire straits. moving to the Cotswolds has not only changed his relationship with his wife, but also his working life. amidst all the chaos, he met you. a little spark in the dark.
characters: declan o'hara x reader
contents: age gap, cheating, sexual tension, guilt trip, forbidden relationshiop.
word count: 3.2K
Hello! I'm here to say that this is my very first fic of Rivals and I'm really excited! I wrote this for a dear friend, but I decided it was worth posting here too. Also, this will probably be a three-part story, so there will be more chapters to come.
It was only supposed to be a one year job.
Maybe a few months at Corinium. Something respectable to put on a CV. Something that might open doors later. Instead, you found yourself working for Declan O'Hara.
Most people at Corinium seemed to orbit chaos in one form or another. Tony Baddingham generated it smoothly. He could fill a room simply by walking into it, leaving everyone else to reshuffle themselves around his aura.
Declan was different.
You spent most of your days keeping track of his schedule, making sure he arrived where he was supposed to be, reminding him of meetings he’d inevitably forget and intercepting phone calls before they became someone else's emergency. It wasn't glamorous work, but he always thanked you for it.
A surprisingly rare quality in television.
The launch party for his programme was in full swing by the time you escaped to the drinks table.
Champagne flowed freely. Cigarette smoke curled toward the ceiling. Across the room, James appeared far more interested in Sarah Stratton than whatever story she was pretending to tell him. Tony and Cameron were also secluded, and everyone pretended not to notice the palpable sexual tension between them.
“Careful there, kid.” The voice came beside your shoulder. You startled hard enough that champagne sloshed dangerously close to the rim of your glass. Declan looked entirely too pleased with himself.
“God, Mr. O’Hara.” You snorted, feeling slightly lumpish for holding eye contact for more than five seconds.
Declan smirked.
“What's the verdict?” he asked.
“On what?”
“The party.”
You glanced around the room.
“It feels very expensive.”
A laugh escaped him.
“Tony's favourite sort.”
For a moment, neither of you said anything. The noise of the party faded into the background. Then Declan nodded toward your glass.
“Go easy on that.”
“Oh, it's just champagne.”
“Exactly.“
“Should I be worried?”
“Nah, not worried.” His mouth twitched. “Just keep an eye out. Corinium's full of opportunists.”
“And you're warning me because….?” You nodded, a smug smile playing on your lips.
“Because you're far too decent for this place.”
You almost choked. Almost. Before you could think of a response, he reached past you, stole an appetiser from a passing tray and stepped away.
“Enjoy the party, darlin’.”
You watched him disappear into the crowd. The ridiculous part wasn't what he'd said. It was how long you stood there afterwards thinking about it… What on earth was that?
That night, alone in your car on the way home, you replayed that moment over and over again, like a schoolgirl. You relived the way his eyes had lingered on yours, and how he’d curled his lip and given you an impish smile. You squeezed your eyes shut tight and blamed the drink. It was just a daydream. An alcoholic delusion.
You’d imagined it all. Declan O’Hara would never even look at you, let alone flirt with you.
By six o'clock, Corinium had emptied out. Except for you. The corridors that usually buzzed with ringing telephones and hurried conversations were quiet, save for the distant hum of equipment somewhere deeper in the building. Most people had fled the moment Friday afternoon became Friday evening.
You, unfortunately, had not been granted that luxury.
The production team had left the scripts for next week's episodes in Declan's office, and somebody had to make sure he actually took them home. That somebody, as always, was you.
You pushed open the door and reached for the light switch. The room flooded with soft yellow light. The blinds were drawn and there was a distinct smell of whisky in the air. You barely noticed the chair positioned toward the window as you crossed the room and gathered the stack of scripts from the desk. You tucked them against your chest and turned toward the door.
A metallic squeak cut through the silence as the chair spun.
“Fuck me!” The scripts slipped from your hands and scattered across the carpet.
For a second, all you could hear was laughter. Declan leaned back in the chair, thoroughly entertained by your misery.
“Oh, that's cruel.” But his laugh only worsened.
"Sorry, darlin’." He stood up, still laughing. "Thought it was someone else for a mo."
“It's fine.” With a sigh, you crouched to collect the pages. The sound of another movement made you glance up. Declan was kneeling beside you. “It's no problem, you don't have to help.”
“Probably not.” He picked up a loose page and handed it over. “But, if they're out of order, you'll blame me, ay?”
You grab the papers with a smirk on your face.
“I mean, I’d have to tell my boss about it.”
“Exactly.”
You stand up whilst you arrange the papers inside the pad so they don’t fall out again. Declan's smile faded first, you notice.
“I'm gonna head off, then." You nod towards the door without taking your eyes off Declan, whose gaze is somehow hellishly magnetic.
"Have a good weekend, darlin’"
You walk towards the door, but over your shoulder you see him sit down and swirl his whisky glass. You hear the ice clinking against the glass just as his expression blackens even further.
You should leave. The prudent thing would be to leave.
Wish him a good weekend. Go home. Stop wondering why a man with a successful programme, a beautiful wife and a family waiting for him was sitting alone in a dark office drinking whisky.
Instead, you heard yourself speak.
“Mr. O’Hara, are you all right?”
The question slipped out before you could stop it. Declan swivels his chair round, the glass clinking in his hand. You hold your breath, thinking you’ve overstepped the mark. You immediately regretted it.
“Sorry. That was probably none of my business.”
“Probably.”
You winced.
“Right.”
You looked up. Declan slowly frowns as he looks at you. You feel so bare before his eyes.
“S’that obvious?” he asked.
“No.” The answer came too quickly.
His eyebrow lifted. You sighed.
“Maybe a little…?”
A soft laugh escaped him.
“Ah.” The amusement faded as quickly as it had appeared. “I'm fine,” he said.
You recognised the lie immediately. Apparently, so did he. Because a second later he exhaled through his nose and shook his head.
“No. S’not true.”
Eventually, he glanced up.
“I'm not goin’ to bore you with my problems.”
“Oh, you wouldn't.”
Declan snorted.
“That's generous.”
“I'm serious.”
“You shouldn't be.” He swirled the whisky. “I'm considerably older than you.”
“So?” You shrug your shoulders.
“So you've probably got somewhere better to be on a Friday night than listenin' to a middle-aged man complaining about his life.”
You laughed hard. The sound echoed through the office.
Work has made any socialising in your life pretty difficult. Worse still, you can’t even remember the last time you made out with a guy at a bar or had any real fun. Adult life is such a bitch.
Declan studied you for a moment.
Then he stood. You instinctively stepped aside as he crossed the room. Instead of heading for the door, he set the scripts back down on the desk. A second glass appeared from somewhere in the cabinet behind him. Then he pours half a glass of whisky on the rocks and hands it to you.
“In that case,” he said, “you might as well stay for one.”
You were grateful the office was empty, so no one could hear your laughter bouncing off the walls of Corinium. You and Declan spent hours in the room chatting. At some point, the whisky ceased to be the reason you were both still there.
You talked about everything from politics and television to childhood stories and whatever silly thing happened to be on your mind at the time.
Talking to him was easy. He was funny, honest, intelligent, and very observant. He could make you laugh with the greatest of ease. When you laughed, he’d look at you as if you were from another planet until he started laughing along with you.
The hours passed without you noticing. The bottle of whisky on the table was now half empty.
Everything seemed smaller now. You felt more comfortable, as if you were in a bubble that you couldn’t bring yourself to leave.
You sighed with ease as you leaned back on the sofa at the end of a chuckle. But then your gaze fell on your wristwatch and an alarm went off in your mind:
“Oh, my God.”
Declan followed your gaze.
“What?”
“It's nearly ten.”
Neither of you had realised how quickly time had passed, and Declan raised an eyebrow.
“I should go.” Your voice sounded almost disappointed. He agreed.
“Probably.” He said. “I can give you a lift.”
“Oh, no. It’s fine. I’ve got my car.”
You both stood there, neither of you moving. For a few hours, everything had been easy, it had been too comfortable. Declan had hardly seemed like your boss during the time you’d spent getting to know each other a little better.
He walked you to the door. It was a perfectly normal thing to do, except that neither of you reached for the handle.
You were standing much too close, closer than was necessary. A silence fell between you that was louder than ever before. It was then that Declan looked at you, the haze that had lifted during hours of conversation now gone.
“Y’know,” he said quietly. “That was probably the longest conversation I've had all week that wasn't about ratings.”
You smiled.
“Is that meant to be a compliment?”
“S'not meant to be anything.”
For some reason, it was there, in that smile and those worn-out eyes, that all the charm lay.
You felt a tightness in your chest, an alarming sensation. At the same time, you saw something shift in his expression. You saw him realise it at exactly the same moment as you did. The distance between you suddenly became impossible to ignore. Declan glanced briefly at your lips, looked away, only to look again.
A huge mistake. You both knew it, and that should have been enough to stop the thoughts from coming. Instead, neither of you pulled away.
The kiss happened almost by chance, the two of you moving towards each other and colliding softly. Declan wrapped one hand around your neck, then he gently ran both hands over your face. He was waging a battle within himself, his brow furrowed painfully.
It was a slow, tongue-filled kiss with a hint of whisky. It lasted a second before you both remembered all the reasons why it shouldn’t have happened.
Declan was the first to pull away. Not far enough. Never far enough. His forehead almost brushed yours, his strong, whisky-scented breath kissing your cheek.
Then he let out a silent breath.
“Well.”
You laughed nervously.
“That’s one way to end a conversation.”
Declan shook his head, a faint smile appearing despite himself.
“Terrible idea.”
Your heart was pounding.
“Probably.” His eyes flickered shut again when you brushed your lips against his.
“Definitely.”
Yet neither of them moved to put an end to it.
After the kiss, you found yourself thinking it had been a mistake. Not a romantic mistake, because that’d have implied there had been something romantic about it in the first place. Declan was married. He had children, for god’s sake. A life that existed entirely outside the walls of Corinium. You were his assistant. The facts of the situation seemed straightforward enough when laid out plainly, which only made it more irritating that you couldn't stop thinking about him.
As a result, you threw yourself into the deeply mature strategy of avoiding him altogether. If lunch happened to fall at midday, you'd leave ten minutes early. If someone needed a message passed on, you'd scribble it on a note and leave it on his desk rather than deliver it yourself. If a conversation could be reduced to three words, you'd reduce it to two. It was childish, and you knew it.
Declan noticed almost immediately.
Every morning, he'd appear with a coffee in one hand and a stack of papers tucked beneath the other arm. Every morning, he'd greet you with an easy "Mornin', darlin’," and every morning you'd suddenly discover something on your desk that required your immediate and undivided attention. The look he gave you afterwards suggested he wasn't fooled for a second. It wasn't accusatory, exactly. More curious. As though he were trying to work out a puzzle and finding himself short a few pieces.
By the end of the month, Corinium had secured a sizeable contract. Flamboyant as he is, Tony decided that a party was the best way to celebrate. You debated whether to go, staring at your reflection in the mirror for so long that the idea of wearing a crimson lippie seemed like a bad one. The navy dress stayed, largely because there wasn't enough time to find anything else and because, if you were being honest, it looked rather good.
Promises, Promises drifted through the room beneath the hum of conversation, while waiters threaded their way between clusters of guests carrying trays of champagne. Laughter rose and fell in bursts. Cigarette smoke curled lazily towards the roofing. Across the room, Cameron sat beside Tony while he entertained a semicircle of executives with all the subtlety of a man auditioning for his own legend.
You made a beeline for the drinks table, as usual.
At some point, Sarah appeared long enough to tell you your dress looked lovely before immediately disappearing back into a conversation with Beattie. Charles arrived a few minutes later, topped up your champagne and announced that he'd rather be at home than spend another evening watching Tony parade Cameron around like a prize-winning racehorse. You laughed, and the two of you fell into conversation. Or rather, Charles talked while you contributed the occasional nod and suitably interested noise.
The truth was that your attention kept wandering. It wasn't intentional. At least, that's what you told yourself.
Across the room, Declan stood with a whisky in one hand, listening to some unfortunate executive explain something that was clearly boring him senseless. Every now and then he'd rub the back of his neck, glance towards the bar, or shift his weight impatiently from one foot to the other. There was something oddly comforting about seeing him look slightly out of place amongst all the polished smiles and expensive suits.
You looked away whenever you caught yourself staring. The problem was that every so often, against your better judgement, your eyes found him again. You felt self-conscious, but you couldn't help but notice him. Declan O'Hara had a habit of drawing attention without ever appearing to ask for it.
Even from the other side of the room, his presence seemed to alter the atmosphere around him. People gravitated towards him. When he laughed, his biceps flexed, making his suit look like a mere scrap of fabric under his skin. You hated that you noticed these stupid things.
At one point, in the middle of a fit of laughter, as though responding to some instinct he wasn't entirely aware of, he glanced over his shoulder. Looking for something… or someone. That’s when your eyes met, as if for the first time in a long time. The spark that had ignited when you kissed was back, more fiery than ever. You considered breaking off eye contact and pretending to be interested in the conversation, but neither of you did.
“Charles, excuse me,” you said abruptly. “I'm just going to find the loo.”
Charles waved you away without missing a beat. You left him near the balcony just as Kiss took over the party and got everyone moving. You put your glass on the railing and pushed through the crowd to find somewhere you could breathe without being consumed by Declan’s magnetic presence.
Relieved to have lost sight of him for a moment, you stepped into one of the hallways.
“Lookin’ stunnin', love.”
Your heart gave a traitorous lurch. One ankle crossed over the other, arms folded loosely across his chest. Declan looked like a deity. His hair was perfectly groomed, with uneven ends. Beneath his thick moustache lurked a devious smile.
This man was the Lucifer incarnate.
You should’ve damned the day you kissed, because ever since then, he’d been fuelling all your worst thoughts.
“Thanks.”
Outwardly, you appeared calm, but you could feel your heart thumping in your ears. Amidst the coloured lights dancing across faces, every shadow made Declan appear increasingly lecherous.
Declan's gaze travelled briefly over your dress before returning to your face.
“Blue suits you.”
You laughed softly.
“You're very determined to make this awkward, aren't you?”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“S'good to know I've still got some talents left.”
Despite yourself, you smiled. “Let’s put an end to this, shall we?” You took a deep breath, closing the gap between you.
“We certainly should.”
Declan stepped away from the wall, his tall, broad frame looming over you. Still, you forced yourself to meet his gaze.
“What happened…” You began. “It was a mistake.”
It felt good to say it out loud, to put a name to things.
“It was.” Declan grunted, nodding his head.
You blinked a few times. Relief flickering through you.
“Right.” You folded your arms across your chest. “I'm really sorry it happened.”
Declan frowned, his smile turning down at the corners.
“What?” Your stomach clenched.
“‘Can’t say the same, darlin’.”
“Declan…” Your gaze shifting between Declan’s eyes and his downturned lips.
“Well, I’m serious.” He took a step towards you. You stepped back.
“You're agreeing it was a mistake.”
“I am.”
“Then what are you saying?” Your voice was little more than a whisper. By now, you were cornered like an animal. Declan looked you up and down as if he could devour you.
A humourless laugh escaped him.
“I'm saying it shouldn't have happened. I've spent the entire week tellin' myself to forget about it.” His voice purrs in your ear and you take a deep breath, trying to keep your wits about you.
Your mind screams to back away, but your body says the exact opposite.
“And?”
“And s'not gone particularly well.”
Despite himself, a laugh threatened.
“That's not funny.”
“No,” he agreed quietly. "S'not.”
The noise of the party drifted faintly down the corridor. Music and laughter. The distant clink of glasses. It all felt very far away.
“We can't do this.”
“I know.”
“You have a wife.”
The words landed heavily. Something flickered across his face.
“I know that too.”
Neither of you seemed capable of leaving. You became painfully aware of how close he was standing. Of the way his eyes lingered on yours. Of the fact that every sensible thought you'd arrived with seemed to be abandoning you one by one.
“It won't happen again,” you said. The conviction you were aiming for never quite made it into your voice.
Declan's mouth twitched. “It won’t.”
“Declan…” You purr, your lips parted as he takes hold of your chin, lifting your head.
“Yes, love?”
A moment passes.
“It won’t happen again.”
He agrees. Your eyes met for a moment, certain that this really is a lapse. Your breathing becomes erratic and Declan studies tiny details of your face.
One more second is enough.
Your mouths collide fiercely in a kiss. There’s a taste of whisky and champagne on your tongue. Declan hovers over you, cupping your face with his large, broad hand, burying his fingers at the nape of your neck. You’ve grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him close, closing any gap that might exist between you.
“Christ.” he breathed. Chest rising and falling like a crescendo. “This is a proper disaster.”
having to call your ex john logan when your car breaks down in the middle of the night…
john logan x reader smut
18+ minors do not interact.
details: piv, oral (f-receiving), public sex in a hidden area, on the hood of a car, past lovers, jealousy, angst & emotions, not pure enemies to lovers but definitely some bickering.
your car breaking down on the side of the road is not how you wanted to spend your night. especially when the worst heartbreak of your life is literally a mechanic, who you haven’t spoken to in a bit… your roadside service gave you an estimate of a 3 hour wait which feels cruel at the hour. you knew better than to try driving it, but there was a party which means there was a distraction available.
despite your distraction attempt, the universe won’t let you let him go. you stared at his contact in your phone for a few minutes as if it would suddenly change, like all the unspoken tension could resolve itself. if it was daylight you would tough it out and let your ego win, but it’s 10 pm.
it only rings twice giving you no time to change your mind. “yeah?” logan answers, no greeting with a coldness in his voice that makes your stomach sink.
“oh, hey…” you say beginning to think this was an awful idea.
“…what’s up?” he asks.
“i’m great. i just– well, my car isn’t. it died on me and i’m–” you spill nervously before he quickly registers and cuts you off.
“where are you?” he asks with his voice a lot more gentle now.
“by main street… well, a bit before it on some grass” you say.
you now hear shuffling which makes you assume he’s busy. it takes everything in you not to start wondering what he’s doing or who he might be with.
“look, a tow will be here in a couple hours. i can get it fixed this weekend. but i could really use some instructions on how to get it on long enough to pull to a store or something where there’s actual lights on. i tried googling but i don’t even know what to google.”
“what’s it doing?” he asks, sounding uninterested in your ramble.
“uh… this noise, kind of like a rattle? then it decided it was done driving.” you say.
“should i bother to ask how long has this supposed rattle been happening?” he asks voice showing amusement now, clearly fighting a laugh at your attempt at car terms. you missed hearing joy from him, even if it’s for half of a second.
“it just started…” you lie.
“mm, right.” he responds sarcastically, a familiar sound that infuriates you. he knows you better than you know yourself, and you’re not in the mood to see the smug look reminding you of that.
“don’t start. can’t you just tell me how to jump it or-” you ask trying to back out of this situation quickly.
“i’ll be there in five.”
—
“i told you not to get a fuckin altima…” he mutters.
leaned over the hood of your car like it’s a puzzle to solve. it’s hard not to stare when his biceps are on display in a white tank top and jeans with car grease scuffs, clearly just coming from the shop. you wonder why he must have been there so late but have to remind yourself he’s not your problem anymore.
he managed to drive it to a lot that was fortunately around the corner, behind an abandoned convenience store with just enough light with a dying streetlight.
you sit on the hood of his car, trying to look at anything else besides him biting down on his lip focused. you’re snapped back to reality when he starts speaking again, “seriously, when was the last time you got an oil change?”
you avoid answering with a look on your face giving you away. he turns to face you to wonder why you’re not answering, but instantly reads you. “don’t tell me i was the last one to change the oil.”
“no, of course not.” you say. another lie from you.
–
the last time the oil was changed was at the shop on a hot summer day. your feet kicked on the dashboard, playfully whining for him to hurry up while he insisted on changing it. he pulls open the passenger door resting his hands on your bare thighs, his sweating forehead pressed against yours teasing “you’re such a spoiled brat, you know that?” making you giggle and pull him in.
you shake that memory from your mind fast. thinking about that weekend and how it all went wrong will only make your night worse. the reminder of the distance between you two physically right now is infuriating enough.
“you’re not the only mechanic on earth, john…” you say frustrated at the whole situation just thinking about it. he rolls his eyes at the name because he fucking hated when you used his first name, but then he stops in his tracks with a realization.
“so who’s the new guy?” he asks, not making eye contact or show he’s phased.
“what?” you ask, caught off guard.
“the mechanic…?” he clarifies, but you know he’s full of it. he doesn’t care who touches your car. he cares about who’s been touching you.
you don’t give him the satisfaction of answering, so he breaks your annoyed silence himself… “fine. well tell whoever’s been touching it hasn’t been doing very well, because she’s still acting up.”
“she?” you question.
“the car.” he lies. you should really start keeping tally of everyone’s lies tonight.
heaviness fills the air as he finishes up. you try to distract yourself with looking at literally anything else; the flickering street light that probably hasn’t been redone in ages, your shoes, the rock on the pavement. fortunately he always knows what he’s doing and it doesn’t take long.
“until it gets a full rework, make sure you check on this before you use it. if it looks anything like that again, don’t drive. take an uber. you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.” he lectures, while you shrug off the protective speech. “knock it off and come look. you need to know what you’re looking for unless you want to break down on a highway or something worse.”
you hesitate for a moment wondering if you can behave yourself to be that close to him again but the sincerity of his tone clear with worry at the fact you risked it. he would’ve never let you drive this but he has no say anymore. he gives you a soft reassuring expression, almost as if he’s begging for you to take it seriously before meeting him at the hood.
leaning against it by his side, he rambles on with car terms but all you can watch is his hands. truthfully you aren’t going to remember any of it even if you tried. he probably knows that. when he’s done, he closes the hood and leans against it to face you.
“so, who was it?” he asks.
“what?” you ask.
“the new guy.” he says.
“you’re still on that? god, you’re unbelievable.” you sigh frustrated. you know he won’t take that as an acceptable response. “why do you care all of a sudden?”
“just curious who’s house you were coming from dressed like that.” he nods to your skirt, watching his gaze on your thighs making you shiver.
“you used to like me in short skirts.” you say confidently, boldly looking up into his eyes now. his clear jealousy makes you feel like you can play back.
“well you used to like me taking them off.” he retaliates, not breaking.
“did i? i don’t recall.” you play. he sneaks behind you on the hood, leaning over you just an inch away from your skin. he knows what he’s doing, and you can’t let him win. the usual smell of his cologne you loved hits your heart making this much harder. he hasn’t changed.
“mm… right. remember the costume party where you insisted on staying to dance with allie? totally a set up from you two. you grinded up against me in that crowd for like a half hour until i had to drag your ass to a room. that skirt came off pretty quickly.” he says tilting his head closer, placing a hand on your jaw.
“well, you seem to remember it well.” you respond.
“how can i forget?” he says with a lower tone, making your breath catch. his lips so close yours now, the next move has to be a decision. whether you leave everything behind or open this door back up again.
“then what happened… in this room?” you seal your fate.
“i could tell you…” he places his hands on your hips, before putting his lips against your ear tauntingly “or just show you.”
“you should do that.” you whisper out, earning a chuckle from him while yanking you closer to break the distance of your lips. his mouth crashes against yours hungrily, your hands immediately go to their favorite spot his hair fighting the urge to tug him desperately but you refuse to show it yet.
the aching slowness of the kiss feels like punishment for everything, unsure of who’s punishing who at this point. not allowing your need to take over first, he lets his. his tongue finally slips into your mouth sending familiar shivers down your spine, then moving to your neck to tease you with soft taunting kisses.
“logan…” you whine out, feeling his smirk when you finally call him by his preferred name.
“missed that sound.” he lets a smile slip into his last kiss making his teeth mark a bite on your shoulder, making you squeal out.
he gets off the hood hardly breaking contact, stepping directly in front of you letting your legs wrap around his body. “if you want me to drive you to my place, i can. or i can fuck you here where there’s nobody but us… or we can just turn back now–” he asks, while you glance around at how far you are from life. it would be hard to get caught this late, and at this point you hardly care.
“you have a big enough backseat.” you say.
“yeah, if you want… but i have a hood too.” he says, quickly yanking your skirt up before getting on his knees in front of you. pulling your panties to the side, his mouth kisses along your thighs before opening your legs around his face. his tongue tastes your folds softly, purposely slow, making you gasp. “still so sweet.”
your moans get louder as he devours you. one hand on your toying with your clit, how he remembered used to make you cry in pleasure. the sight of the boy you’ve missed so much in front of you on his knees eating you out, makes you orgasm come much faster.
“cum f’me.” he mumbles what he can out against you, refusing to release on his tongue from your sweet spot. you hold your hand over your mouth to keep it down while the pleasure floods through your body.
before you can catch a breath, he stands gripping your thighs pulling you close to his waist as he unbuckles his jeans. your hands find the zipper for him aching for more.
“unless you want to call your other mechanic…” he snickers, making you blush playfully hitting his shoulder.
“fuck me before i change my mind.” you beg while he grinds himself against you, still so sensitive from your orgasm. his eyes are filled with a familiar affection in awe of you, but he still fights it and grips his hands tight in your hair.
“tell me how many first…” he says.
“how many w— fuck. are you serious?” you argue, but your voice still begging. “you’re almost inside me and you’re starting shit.”
“not starting anything, baby… just finishing our conversation.” he teases your entrance nipping your ear while he speaks. you roll your eyes both in pleasure and frustration, knowing he knows the answer already or he wouldn’t be being so cocky.
“there hasn’t been anyone, since you…” you beg.
“i know.” he groans pushing into you, his thickness filling you up and stretching you out. “can’t touch anyone else either.”
he thrusts into you roughly, still possessively keeps an eye on your skirt, adjusting it so you’re covered enough despite no one being around and the fact they’d still see you getting railed regardless but he can’t help it. “fuck– perfect. you’re still fucking perfect.” he mutters.
“i missed you…” you cry out letting your guard down, whimpering at the feeling of him picking up the pace now. you buck your hips as much as you can to meet his.
“i assume so considering you’re letting me fuck you in a parking lot…” he teases unable to stop the comfort of your banter he missed so much, before softening again “been a mess without you.”
you both get sloppy as you both come close to the edge, the thrill of how messy this is heightening every nerve in your body. the feeling that he’s needed you this much makes you hold back a smile, even though you both let out a few glancing at each other’s sounds.
he always knows when you’re close and he can’t hold back either. he leaves one last soft claiming kiss on your lips like he doesn’t want this moment to end, before giving you the cue.
“my favorite girl… cum with me, sweetheart.” he chokes out as his own orgasm takes over, yours following the second you feel him twitch inside you. your hands encouragingly rub down his back, finding joy in the fact you make him feel so good too. he groans against your neck, letting his body collapse melting into you.
you both sit in the silence for what feels like forever, but likely just a few seconds. not wanting to move or pull out or deal with the mess you just made (physically and mentally) he finally says gently–
Morning always made Logan softer. Not in the most obvious ways, but it managed to make his edges quieter. You’d wake up to one of his arms banded heavily around your waist, his skin warm beneath your cheek as you’d rise to the view of his hair flattened from one side of sleep and his voice a lower baritone than usual.
The room was pale with early light. A thin, grey-blue wash coming in through the blinds, catching on the dresser, the abandoned hoodie near the chair, the water glass on the nightstand, the edge of the shirt you were wearing.
His shirt.
Because at some point during the night, after the party had ended and the hockey house had gone quiet in waves, you had stolen it from the floor and put it on without asking. It smelled like Logan. Laundry detergent, skin, something warm and clean beneath it. It hung loose over your body, soft from use, the hem falling high on your thighs when you shifted.
You had woken before him.
That was rare.
Rarer still was the fact that you had not immediately moved. Normally, your brain began making lists the second your eyes opened. Things to do. Texts to answer. Hair to fix. Lip balm. Water. Breakfast. Whether it was socially acceptable to leave without speaking to Dean if Dean was in the kitchen.
But Logan was behind you, breathing slow against the back of your neck, and his hand was tucked beneath the shirt at your stomach, palm warm against bare skin.
So you stayed.
For a while, at least.
Then he woke. You knew because his fingers moved first. A slow flex against your stomach. Then his breath changed, mouth brushing the back of your shoulder in something too lazy to count as a kiss.
“Morning,” he murmured.
His voice did something unfair to your spine.
You closed your eyes again.
“Morning.”
His hand shifted under the shirt, not quite purposeful yet, just finding you. His thumb dragged softly over your skin. You felt him inhale against your neck, felt the pause that followed.
Then, lower, “This my shirt?”
You smiled without meaning to.
“No.”
“No?”
“I found it.”
“In my room.”
“Possession is complicated.”
His mouth pressed to your shoulder,“You look good in it.”
You opened one eye,“You can’t see me.”
“I know.”
“That’s not how looking works.”
His hand slid over your stomach, fingers spreading against you, pulling you back a little more firmly into his chest, “I remember.”
Your body warmed so quickly it was embarrassing,“Ridiculous.”
“Yeah.”
But his mouth had moved to your neck now, lips slow and warm, and ridicule became difficult to maintain under such conditions. His hand moved higher under the shirt, then lower again, teasing in no particular hurry. Morning Logan did not rush. Morning Logan seemed to have decided that time was something other people worried about.
You tilted your head without meaning to.
He noticed, “There?” he asked, mouth at the side of your throat.
You swallowed, “You know.”
“I want to hear you.”
You made a small, irritated sound and his hand stilled.
“Too early for that?”
“It is too early for you to be smug.”
“I’m not smug.”
“You’re horizontally smug.”
He laughed quietly against your skin, and the sound made your stomach tighten.
Then his hand slipped lower, suddenly you stopped caring about smugness.
Your breath caught, and Logan’s arm tightened around your waist, holding you steady as his fingers moved beneath the hem of his shirt. Slow and careful.
The room grew smaller.
It was always like that with him when he touched you in the morning. There was no lipstick to hide behind. No dress. No heels. No red nails arranged carefully around a glass. No sharp little comments delivered from a position of social control. Just your bare legs tangled in his sheets, your hair loose against the pillow, his shirt riding up your thighs, his hand between your legs while he kissed your neck like he had all morning to learn you again.
“Logan,” you breathed.
“Yeah?”
You had no follow-up and he smiled into your skin like he knew that too.
His fingers circled slowly, and your hips moved back before you could stop them. He inhaled sharply.
That was when you felt him properly, hard against you, warm through the thin fabric of his boxers, pressing into the back of your thigh.
Your eyes opened.
He went still, “Sorry,” he said immediately.
You turned your head slightly, though you could not fully see him from this angle.
“Why?”
His mouth brushed your shoulder again.
“Didn’t mean to rush you.”
“You didn’t.”
A pause.
“I like it.”
His hand on your waist tightened, “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He kissed your neck again, this time with intention. His fingers moved again, and your thighs parted under the shirt, one knee sliding forward over the sheets.
“You want me?” he asked.
Your breath left you in a soft laugh, “What a humiliating question.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you know.”
“I still want you to say it.”
You closed your eyes.
The curtains glowed faintly with morning. His hand moved steadily. His mouth was warm at your shoulder. Your body was already softening for him in a way that made denial feel stupid.
“Yes,” you breathed, “I want you.”
His breath changed.
“Good.”
The word settled low in your stomach.
You would have complained, but he chose that moment to push his fingers inside you, and your complaint dissolved into a gasp.
“There you go,” he murmured.
You reached back, hand finding his hair awkwardly, fingers sliding into it as he worked you open with a patience that made you want to crawl out of your skin. He knew you too well now. Not fully, and there were still discoveries. But it was enough to make you resent his competence when it was being used against you.
“Slow,” you said, though you were not sure whether you were telling him or yourself.
He kissed your shoulder.
“I’ve got you.”
When he finally rolled you onto your back, the shirt slid up your thighs, and Logan looked down at you like the sight had interrupted every remaining thought in his head.
You looked away immediately, “No.”
His hand paused at your hip, “No?”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re making notes.”
His mouth curved.
“You’re wearing my shirt and nothing else.”
“That does not require documentation.”
“It might.”
“Logan.”
He leaned down and kissed you, smiling into it, one knee pressing between your thighs. You bit gently at his lower lip because he deserved it. He groaned because apparently punishment and reward had become indistinguishable to him.
The kiss deepened.
Morning softened, then heated.
His boxers went somewhere. You did not know where. The shirt stayed, though by the time he rolled a condom on and came back over you, it had been pushed up over your waist, bunched beneath your ribs, leaving you bare under him except for the fabric tangled around you like a weak argument.
He kissed you when he pushed in.
You needed that. The first stretch made your fingers dig into his shoulders, mouth opening against his.
He stopped immediately.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Colour?”
“Green.”
His forehead lowered to yours.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Just-morning.”
He huffed a soft laugh.
“Morning?”
“Everything feels more.”
His expression changed into something warmer, more focussed on your reactions.
“I’ll go slow.”
At first, he did, slow, deep strokes that made the room blur at the edges. His chest brushed yours, his mouth moved against your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your lips. Every sound you made seemed louder in the quiet morning, every shift of the mattress too obvious, too intimate.
He kissed you again, and his hand slid beneath your knee, lifting your leg higher around his hip, and you stopped thinking about daylight entirely.
For a while.
Until he shifted.
Until one of his hands slid to your waist and the other braced beside your head, and his mouth paused near your ear.
“Cherry.”
You made a small sound of acknowledgement.
“Can we try something?”
Your eyes opened.
He lifted his head so you could see him properly.
“What?”
His thumb moved once over your waist.
“Turn over.”
Your stomach dipped.
You looked at him and he held your gaze.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“We can stay like this.”
“I know.”
“Colour?”
You swallowed, “Green.”
His eyes darkened.
“You sure?”
You nodded.
Then, because nerves made you sharp, “Logan, I’m asking you to fuck me, not invest in a pension.”
He blinked and then laughed, head dropping briefly to your shoulder, “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You’re impossible.”
“You like me.”
“I really do.”
The softness of it made you quiet.
That was inconvenient.
He kissed you before you had to answer.
Then pulled out slowly, carefully, and helped you turn onto your stomach. The first thing you noticed was how exposed it felt. Which felt stupid because you had just been naked under him in the morning light. But for some reason, this felt different. You were on your knees now, forearms against the bed with his shirt falling beneath you, the hem still twisted around your waist. The second thing you noticed was that you couldn’t see his face- couldn’t read the little changes there, couldn’t watch his mouth part when you shifted against him. You couldn't see whether he looked wrecked, whether he looked too composed, whether he was looking at you the way you wanted him to.
You could only feel his hands.
One on your hip, the other smoothing up your back beneath the shirt.
“Still green?” he asked.
His voice came from behind you, lower than before. Different.
Your fingers curled in the sheets, “Yes.”
He kissed the back of your shoulder. Which helped as he guided himself back to you and pushed in slowly.
Your breath caught immediately and he stopped, “Too much?”
You shook your head quickly, “No.”
“Cherry.”
“No, it’s good.” You closed your eyes. “Just different.”
His hand moved along your spine.
“Different good?”
You exhaled, embarrassed by the answer before you gave it.
“Yes.”
He stayed still for another second, letting you adjust. Then he moved.
The angle made your whole body go tight.
“Oh.”
The sound left you before you could make it pretty.
Logan’s hand tightened on your hip.
“Yeah?”
You pressed your face into your forearm.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Sound pleased.”
“I am pleased.”
“Quietly.”
His laugh was rough.
But he listened.
For a few strokes, there was only the quiet rhythm of it. His hips meeting yours slowly, the bed shifting beneath you, his breathing getting heavier behind you. One hand stayed on your hip, guiding. The other moved under the shirt, over your back, over your waist, like he was trying to keep contact with as much of you as possible.
It was good. It was very good in fact.
It was also strange. Not in a bad way that made you want to change colours, but strange enough that you went quiet. Too quiet.
Logan noticed after maybe ten seconds and slowed,“Hey.”
You swallowed.
“What?”
His hand moved up your back again.
“You with me?”
“Yes.”
“You got quiet.”
“I’m allowed to be quiet.”
“You are.”
There was no argument in his voice. No push. Just his observation.
Then his body leaned over yours, chest pressing to your back, mouth near your shoulder, “I just like knowing where you are.”
Your breath caught for a reason that had nothing to do with the angle.
You turned your head slightly on your forearm, trying to see him- but you could not.
Logan seemed to understand at the same time you did.
“Oh,” he murmured.
Your face heated,“What?”
“You can’t see me.”
“I can see the pillow.”
“Not the same?”
“Not remotely.”
He laughed softly and kissed the back of your shoulder again.
Not teasing this time.
“You want to stop?”
“No.”
“You want to turn back over?”
You hesitated. Because no, you didn’t. The position was too much and not enough and exactly enough, all at once. You wanted to stay there. You wanted him behind you. You wanted the weight of his hands and the sound of his voice and the sharp, deep pleasure of the angle.
You also wanted to see him.
Logan’s hand slid to your jaw, gentle, turning your face just enough for him to kiss your cheek.
“Cherry.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Okay.”
“I just…” You exhaled, “I don’t like not knowing what your face is doing.”
He went still for half a second.
Then his forehead dropped between your shoulder blades.
The sound he made was not quite a laugh, and not exactly a groan.
“You’re worried about my face?”
“Not worried.”
“No?”
“I like evidence.”
His hand tightened on your jaw.
Then, low, “Evidence.”
You immediately regretted the word.
“No.
His mouth brushed your shoulder.
“No evidence?”
“Do not start.”
“I’m not starting.”
“You absolutely are.”
He kissed the top of your spine, still half over you, still inside you, and the intimacy of that nearly took your knees out.
“Look at the dresser,” he said.
You blinked.
“What?”
“The mirror.”
Your head lifted.
The dresser mirror sat across from the bed, half cluttered by a water bottle, his watch, and an abandoned roll of tape someone had left in his room for reasons you did not understand. It caught the bed at an angle. Not perfectly. But enough.
Enough to see yourself on your knees in his shirt. Enough to see Logan behind you, bent over your back, hair messy, jaw tight, eyes dark and fixed on your reflection. Your whole body reacted.
Logan felt it and his gaze flicked to yours in the mirror.
“There she is,” he murmured.
Oh. That was worse. That was so much worse.
You looked away immediately.
His hand slid from your jaw to your throat, not squeezing, just resting there, guiding your face back up.
“No hiding.”
“You are behind me.”
“Still no hiding.”
“That is unreasonable.”
“Look.”
Your pulse jumped.
“Bossy.”
“Green?”
You swallowed.
“Green.”
“Then look.”
You did.
Your eyes met his in the mirror, and Logan moved again. Your mouth fell open.
His face changed behind you, composure cracking just enough for you to see it. His jaw flexed. His eyes went darker. One hand gripped your hip while the other stayed at your throat, holding you steady and visible.
That was what you had needed.
Not to be looked at like an object.
To be seen. To know he was with you. To know he was losing it too.
Logan’s voice dropped, “Good girl.”
Your body clenched around him.
His eyes shut for half a second, “Fuck.”
You would have smiled if you had not been too busy trying to remember how breathing worked.
He straightened behind you, just enough for you to see more of him in the mirror. His hands moved to your hips again, dragging you back onto him with careful pressure.
“Still good?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“You like seeing?”
You made a sound that was not an answer.
He slowed, “Cherry.”
You glared at his reflection.
“I hate when you require verbal participation.”
His mouth curved, “I know.”
“Then why do you keep doing it?”
“Because you like it.”
You did not answer. Which was the answer he was looking for.
He leaned over you again, mouth near your ear, eyes still on yours in the mirror, “You like seeing what you do to me.”
Your fingers twisted in the sheets and a flush washed over your body.
“Logan.”
“You do.”
“Don’t make it sound like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know.”
His hips rolled into yours, and your answer broke apart, “I do know,” he murmured.
The next stroke made you drop your head. Immediately, his hand came to your jaw.
“Uh-uh.”
You groaned.
“Logan.”
“Look.”
You did, because apparently your body had decided obedience was the theme of the morning.
And there he was.
Behind you in the mirror.
Flushed and focused and so visibly affected by you that the exposure no longer felt one-sided. His hands on your hips. His body moving behind yours. His shirt bunched around your waist. Your own face wrecked in the reflection, mouth parted, eyes glossy, hair loose around your cheeks.
It should have embarrassed you more.
It did.
But the embarrassment fed the heat instead of stopping it.
“There you go,” he crooned, “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying not to be.”
“Try harder.”
His laugh broke into a groan when you pushed back against him, just a little, just enough to prove you could. His hands tightened.
“Oh, you’re gonna be like that?”
You glanced at him in the mirror, “Like what?”
His eyes darkened, “Careful.” He shifted the angle, one hand sliding around to your stomach, pulling you up slightly so your back arched against him.
The next thrust stole your breath. “Logan.”
“I know.”
His hand pressed gently over your stomach.
“Right there?”
You nodded, too fast.
He kissed your shoulder.
“Words.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Your eyes fluttered as his mouth brushed your ear, “So good for me.”
You hated the sound you made.
Logan loved it.
You knew because his rhythm stuttered, his hand slid lower, fingers finding you beneath the shirt, and your arms almost gave out.
“Wait-”
He stopped instantly. Everything stopped, his thrusts paused suddenly, his breathing was still heavy behind you but his spine had straightened as his hand lifted away.
“What? Too much?”
You shook your head, breathless.
“No. Just-” You laughed once, broken and embarrassed,“I need a second.”
His hands went gentle at once.
“Okay.”
He stayed still inside you, chest against your back, mouth at your shoulder, breathing hard. The restraint in him made your head spin almost as much as the pleasure had.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Still green?”
“Yes.”
His hand moved slowly over your side.
“No rush.”
That was the thing that ruined you. As if he was perfectly content to stay there, holding you together, waiting for your body to catch up to what it wanted.
You turned your head enough to find his mouth.
He met you halfway, kissing you awkwardly over your shoulder. It was not elegant. The angle was terrible. Your neck protested. His nose bumped your cheek. Somehow, that made it better.
When you pulled away, you were smiling faintly.
“What?” he asked.
“This is logistically complicated.”
He huffed a laugh.
“Yeah?”
“Emotionally also.”
His expression softened in the mirror.
“Yeah?”
You looked at him, then nodded.
He kissed your shoulder again, “Good different?”
You closed your eyes.
“Unfortunately.”
His laugh warmed your skin.
Then, carefully, his hand returned between your thighs. He moved slowly at first, building you back up with maddening patience, fingers circling in time with the deep drag of him inside you. The mirror kept catching pieces of everything. His face. Your hands in the sheets. The flex of his arms. Your own expression every time he found the right angle.
You could not hide from it.
After a while, you stopped trying.
“That’s it,” Logan said, voice rough, “Look at you.”
Your breath broke, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Say things.”
“You like when I say things.”
“I like when you are quiet.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you admitted, because there was no point lying to someone currently making you shake, “I don’t.”
His eyes met yours in the mirror, “There she is.”
Your body tightened.
Logan felt it immediately, “Close?”
You nodded.
He kept you there. One hand between your thighs, the other at your hip, his mouth at your shoulder, his gaze holding yours in the mirror as the pleasure built fast and bright and inescapable.
You tried to drop your head when it hit.
His hand caught your jaw gently.
“Look at me.”
You did.
And came with your eyes on his reflection, Logan’s name breaking out of you as your body clenched around him. He held you through it, hips stilling, fingers working you softly until you were trembling and breathless beneath him.
“That’s it,” he murmured, “I’ve got you.”
Your arms gave out properly then.
He caught you before you collapsed fully, easing you down onto the mattress, turning you gently onto your side without pulling away too quickly. His body curved behind yours, one arm around your waist, mouth against the back of your neck.
For a few seconds, all you could do was breathe.
Logan’s breath was ragged too.
“You okay?” he asked.
You nodded.
“Words, Cherry.”
“Yes.”
“Too much?”
“No.”
“Good different?”
You shut your eyes, “Very.”
His forehead rested against the back of your shoulder and you could feel his smile.
“Don’t be pleased.”
“I’m a little pleased.”
“You would be.”
He kissed your shoulder, “I liked that.”
Your face warmed.
“I noticed.”
“Yeah?”
“You were not subtle.”
His hand moved over your stomach beneath the shirt.
“Neither were you.”
You opened one eye.
“I was extremely subtle.”
“Baby.”
“What?”
“You came looking at me in the mirror.”
Your whole body went hot.
“That was an accident.”
“Was it?”
“An emotional accident.”
He laughed softly.
You turned your face into the pillow.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No discussing.”
“Okay.”
“Immediately.”
“Okay.”
A pause.
Then, because he was himself, “Just one thing.”
You groaned into the pillow.
“Logan.”
His mouth brushed the back of your neck.
“You were so pretty, “His arm tightened around your waist, “Not teasing,” he said quietly.
You swallowed.
The morning light had gone warmer now, spilling across the sheets, catching the bare line of his arm over your body, the wrinkled fabric of his shirt still on you, the reflection of both of you faint and softened in the dresser mirror.
“Thank you,” you said, very softly.
His hand flattened over your stomach.
“You’re welcome.”
You lay like that for a while, half tangled, half dressed, both still trying to become normal again.
Eventually, because you could not allow sincerity to remain unattended for too long, you said, “That was logistically intense.”
His laugh hit your shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“And suspicious.”
“Suspicious?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I feel like you learned something.”
“I did.”
You turned your head slightly to find him smiling against your skin.
You narrowed your eyes, “What?”
“You like seeing my face.”
“That is not new information.”
“You really like seeing my face.”
“That phrasing is vulgar.”
“You asked for evidence.”
“Don’t.”
He laughed harder when you elbowed him lightly, “Sorry.”
“You are not sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re going to become insufferable.”
“Probably.”
You sighed.
He kissed behind your ear.
“But not right now.”
You softened despite yourself.
“No?”
“No.” Another kiss, lower this time. “Right now, I’m going to clean you up, get you water, and maybe steal my shirt back eventually.”
You looked down at the shirt. Then pulled it closer around yourself.
“No.”
“No?”
“This is mine now.”
“It says Briar Hockey.”
“It says mine.”
He laughed.
“Fine.”
You smiled into the pillow.
Behind you, Logan’s hand moved slowly over your waist.
summery: after discovering his wife has been sleeping with the one man he truly despises, declan o'hara finds an unlikely confidante in the girl who is sort-of dating his son. somewhere between secret birthday parties, private conversations, and seemingly being the only two loyal people left in rutshire, things get complicated.
note: reader description is kept minimal beyond mentions of long hair.
word count: 4502
divider credits: @strangergraphics
The O'Hara kitchen smells of coffee and vanilla extract.
Sunlight spills through the windows, catching on copper pans and glass jars and the thin layer of flour dusting the worktops.
For once, you're not here for Patrick. You’re here for Taggie.
Standing in front of a mixing bowl, you wonder whether cake batter is supposed to look like that. You suspect not, which is precisely why you’re in Taggie O'Hara's kitchen instead of your own.
"I've ruined it," you blow out a frustrated breath, dropping your arms down to your sides.
Taggie glances up from where she’s measuring ingredients, "you haven't."
"I absolutely have," you reply, peering down into the runny goo you’ve created within the few minutes you’ve been left unattended.
"You haven't," Taggie repeats, sounding entirely too confident in you.
You point at the bowl and she leans over, inspects it for all of two seconds, then gently takes the whisk from your hand.
"You've just put a bit too much milk in, that’s all."
"Is that bad?" you wince.
You've been staying with Aunt Lizzie for a couple of weeks now, long enough to learn that half of Rutshire's social life revolves around secrets.
This week's secret happens to be a birthday party.
Aunt Lizzie's party is tomorrow, a day before her actual birthday, and Rupert Campbell-Black had somehow convinced half of Rutshire to conspire against her.
The plan involves a surprise party and a very carefully curated guest list. You, meanwhile, have somehow ended up responsible for the cake.
Only, you can't bake.
"It’s easily fixed," Taggie's answer comes immediately, comfortingly.
You watch as she adds something from a small bowl.
"What was that?" you ask, continuing to watch as she mixes it until it looks like normal batter.
"A little more flour."
Thank the heavens above you have access to a professional who’s willing to help.
You groan dramatically, embarrassed by such a simple mistake, and Taggie laughs, the sound filling the kitchen.
“You are a genius, Tag,” you tell her, the smile on your lips growing when she blushes.
“Oh, not really,” she dips her head down as she pours the batter into a tin, her reddish fringe hiding her eyes from view.
You have a feeling nobody's ever really told Taggie she's smart.
“Honestly,” you say, scooping up what's left in the bowl onto your finger and bringing it to your lips, “cooking is a real science, baking even more so.”
You are halfway through licking batter off your fingertip when the slapping of bare feet echoes into the kitchen.
"Taggie!" an Irish cadence calls out before Declan O’Hara is stood in the doorway, fresh from the shower.
“Have you seen my shirt? The white one.”
He’s wearing only a towel, slung low around his waist. Water clings to his hair and drips down his shoulders, entirely ignorant of the effect it might have on any innocent visitors present.
Taggie doesn't even look up from where she’s placing the cake into the oven.
“In the airing cupboard,” she says absently, closing the door and double checking the temperature.
“I looked in the airing cupboard,” Declan replies, each word landing with quiet irritation, carefully contained.
“Then you didn’t look properly.”
He tilts his head to you then, a quiet exhale through his nose, as if protesting the implication that his daughter underestimates his competence.
You’re still licking frosting from your fingers when he moves, your eyes following him as he leaves without you really meaning to. A delayed, inconvenient realisation hits that you were staring at him the entire time he had stood there.
It’s mortifying, but you could hardly be blamed. How, exactly, did a father of three grown children still look like that?
“So, how are you planning to keep this all hidden from James?” Taggie asks, moving you both on from her fathers brief interruption.
“Oh,” you snap back into the conversation, a slight flush to your face, “hopefully everyone at Corinium will still be at work, and then everyone at Venturer will have the afternoon off,” you explain.
You’ve never really warmed to Uncle James, and staying with them these past few weeks has made that impossible to ignore.
He is, quite frankly, an awful husband.
“That’s very optimistic,” Taggie muses, bending down to give her puppy some attention.
“Yeah, well, Rupert's mostly organising that part,” you say, crouching to pet Gertrude, the older dog, before realising your slip up.
Patrick had attempted to catch you up on all the local scandals, but you’re still not really sure what had happened between his sweet little sister and the notorious politician.
Taggie, however, doesn't so much as blink. She is far too gracious to make you feel awkward for mentioning him.
"That's kind of him," she says, gathering up the dirty dishes to take to the sink.
“Yeah,” you smile timidly, helping her clean up all the mess you’ve created.
Taggie glances towards the oven, "I've got the cake from here."
“Are you sure?” you ask, eyes widening, “I feel like I kinda dumped this on you.”
“Of course,” Taggie smiles, “I don’t mind. Go see Patrick, he’ll still be in bed.”
“You are an angel,” you wrap your arms around her neck in a big hug when you feel her stiffen slightly. She laughs, though, patting your arm like you are something mildly chaotic but ultimately harmless.
You pull away reluctantly, already backing toward the door, “thank you!”
By the time you reach Patrick's bedroom, you're sure the house had acquired an extra corridor since the last time you’d visited.
When you spot him, he is indeed still in bed.
“Hey, lazybones, it’s almost noon,” you flop down on top of him.
“Hey,” he grins sleepily, reaching up to stroke your hair back, “what are you doing here?”
-
The morning of the party begins, as most mornings in the Vereka household do, with James being irritating.
You hear him in the bathroom practising his affirmations in the mirror, which he does religiously each day, reminding himself of his extremely important job as a television presenter for Corinium.
Tony Baddingham's number one guy.
Urgh. How does Aunt Lizzie live with him?
You’ve heard about the managing director of Corinium, though never in any context that made him sound particularly pleasant. Tony is a man who apparently runs his company like it is a kingdom and expects everyone inside it to behave accordingly.
All of it is very interesting, slightly intimidating, but not what you need to focus on right now. That doesn't help you get Lizzie to her party.
The difficulty with surprise parties, you are discovering, is that the surprise party has to remain a surprise. Unfortunately, the person being surprised by the surprise party must also somehow arrive at the surprise party and still remain surprised.
Which means your current task is to get Lizzie to Rupert's house at one o'clock-ish without telling her why she needs to be at Rupert's house at one o'clock-ish.
Eventually, James leaves for work and the house improves immediately, even with the chaos of your niece and nephew getting ready for school.
You stay on the sofa with a bowl of cereal you’ve mostly forgotten to eat, mentally running through the increasingly fragile structure of the day while you wait.
By the time you leave the house, the children are half-cooperative and Lizzie is in a familiar state of organising everyone else’s morning into something vaguely functional.
You fall into step beside her on the walk to the kids’ school, hands in your pockets, trying not to look like someone actively scheming.
For a while, your presence goes entirely unremarked upon. Lizzie's attention is occupied by her children running wild across the Cotswold countryside.
Eventually she glances at you.
“You’ve never voluntarily joined the school run,” she says, her tone slightly suspicious.
You shove your hands deeper into your pockets, “thought I'd keep you company.”
“Mhm,” she hums. It's the sort of response that contains absolutely no words of accusation and yet somehow feels vaguely accusatory.
The silence stretches.
“I have a favour to ask.”
“What is it?” she asks, turning her head towards you.
“Taggie needs something picked up from Rupert’s house,” you say, keeping your tone deliberately casual.
It is, of course, a lie.
“Oh?” is how Lizzie responds, eyes drifting back to follow her children running free rein up ahead.
“Yeah, and I thought,” you hedge gingerly, “since I don't know him that well and you do, you’d come with me?”
The truth is, you've spent the last several days exchanging secret messages with the older man who happens to be possessed of more sex scandals than you could count on both hands.
In your defence, every message had been entirely innocent. Unfortunately, "I've been secretly communicating with Rupert Campbell-Black all week" sounds considerably worse than it is.
“It would make it less awkward,” you add, a shy smile barely tugging at your lips.
“He has a reputation, but Rupert’s a good man really,” Lizzie says. She looks at you then and smiles, “but, of course. I'll come with you if you want me to.”
“I do!” you exclaim, then quickly reel yourself in. You need to act casual. So casual.
“Thank you,” you say, calmly this time, though a genuine smile stretches across your face.
As you approach the school gates, Lizzie seems more concerned with shepherding the children through than questioning your suspicious enthusiasm for helping Taggie.
By the time you're heading back towards the house, the morning has brightened considerably. The rest of the day passes in a blur, and before you know it, it’s already a quarter to one when the all-clear message comes through.
Rupert Campbell-Black: All ready
By just after one o’clock you’re both in the car, heading towards the party.
Rupert's front door is already open by the time you pull up, with him standing there in front of it, waiting.
"Why is he standing outside?" Lizzie asks, leaning over the steering wheel to get a better look at her friend.
"No idea," you shrug, feigning confusion.
Rupert ambles over with a big grin, on his way to open Lizzie's door. He greets her with a hug and an audible smooch on the cheek.
The moment Lizzie steps through the front door, the room erupts.
"Surprise!"
There’s applause and at least one party popper that goes off late, and Lizzie's hand flies to her mouth as she stares at the crowd gathered inside Rupert's entrance hall.
You leave her to the inevitable wave of hugs and celebrations, slipping through the crowd yourself.
Taggie catches sight of you first. "You did it!" she laughs as you pull her into a hug.
Caitlin is next, followed by Patrick, who receives an additional quick kiss on the cheek.
You glance across the room, at all the people here to celebrate Lizzie. Most of the faces belong to friends she rarely gets to see these days. Friends from Venturer. Friends James had gone as far as to ban her from fraternising with.
You spot Declan standing at the edge of the crowd, already working his way through a glass of champagne.
He doesn't look like a man celebrating. If anything, he looks like a man making a determined effort not to think about something.
His jacket has already been abandoned somewhere, shirt sleeves rolled up, one hand wrapped tightly around the stem of his glass.
Around him, the party swirls on happily, though Declan appears entirely separate from it.
He catches you looking, lifts his glass, then takes another long drink.
His wife is nowhere to be seen, not that you'd expected her to be. Most of the guests are from Venturer, and Maude O’Hara collaborates with Corinium now.
It's only when you catch him reaching for another glass of champagne that her absence starts to feel more meaningful.
“You did wonderful, darling,” Rupert approaches to wrap his arm around your shoulders, grinning down at you proudly.
“What? You did all the work,” you deflect, dipping your head when you feel your cheeks flush, “and Taggie made the cake.”
Rupert lifts his gaze from you, moving it to where Taggie stands besides you. “Did you, now?” he addresses her.
You slip out from under Rupert’s arm before you get in the way of whatever is happening there.
By now, you’ve had a few glasses of fizz and are starting to feel it in that light, floaty way that makes everything slightly softer around the edges.
Your heels are long gone somewhere in the reception room, abandoned in favour of bare feet on cool floorboards. There’s no hope of finding them anytime soon, and the need to find the loo is no longer something you can ignore.
When you find it, you push open the door.
Only, the room is already occupied… by your aunt and another man.
They are kissing in that unambiguous, completely unaccidental way that rearranges the room the moment you see it. For one suspended second, your brain refuses to attach meaning to the image in front of you.
Quietly, before they can notice you, you close the door again. Only once it is securely shut again, do you release your breath.
Crist on a crumpet.
Lizzie Vereker is cheating on her husband with Freddie Jones.
You stand there in the corridor for a second too long, staring unseeingly at wood-paneled walls.
Under any normal circumstance, this would be exactly the sort of thing you’d feel fairly certain about being against. But, in this moment, you can’t quite summon the outrage you think you’re supposed to feel.
Not that it’s really any of your business. It doesn’t affect your life in any meaningful way. You just want the best for your aunt, who always wants the best for everyone else.
You need somewhere quiet for a moment to process these thoughts, somewhere away from the noise of the party.
The library is dimmer than the rest of the house, all heavy shelves and soft light filtering through old curtains. It feels, briefly, like somewhere the world might not follow you into.
You close the door behind you and let out a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding.
Pressing your fingers lightly against the edge of the bookshelf, grounding yourself in something solid and real, you try to make sense of what you’ve just seen.
That’s when you realise you are not in here alone.
Declan O’Hara is sitting in one of the armchairs by the unlit fireplace, an empty champagne flute dangling loosely from his fingers.
Tilting your head slowly in his direction, you peer at him from underneath your lashes to find that he’s already staring at you.
If you’re being honest, you've had a crush on Declan O'Hara ever since you watched him punch a vicar on live television.
He'd called him a "filthy, hypocritical old git" beforehand, so you'd always figured the Reverend must’ve had it coming.
“Sorry,” you say automatically, turning to leave.
“No, don't," he says, standing as if he should be the one to leave.
You listen and remain where you stand near the door.
“Are you alright?” Declan studies you for a moment, “is it Patrick?” he asks.
There’s a flicker in his expression as he says it, something sharper underneath the calm in his voice. The suggestion seems to irritate him almost as soon as he’s voiced it, like he’s offended on your behalf by the idea of his son being the cause.
“No,” you say quickly. “It’s not Patrick.”
He nods, the tension easing from his shoulders slightly.
“He’s a good lad,” he says eventually. “Just misguided when it comes to relationships. I suppose Maud and I are hardly the best example.”
There’s something clipped in the way he says it, like he’s bitten the words off before they could soften.
“Oh,” you say, “Patrick and I aren’t really anything serious.”
You’ve never had any illusions that you and Patrick would ever turn into anything. What you two have is just a bit of mutual fun while you’re visiting your aunt, nothing more complicated than that.
“Right,” Declan nods, before the room stretches into silence.
You watch him, while he watches you.
“So,” you say quietly, “why are you hiding in here?”
Declan's jaw tightens, a flicker of something uncomfortable passing across his face as if he’s just remembered what’s been sitting wrong with him all afternoon.
“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” he says, his voice gentle despite the obvious tension to his body.
You’re still watching him carefully when he looks away slightly, his jaw clenching once more as he mutters, under his breath, “Tony fucking Baddingham.”
“Tony’s here?” you ask, your heart rate picking up at the mention of his name.
You’d hoped to have avoided that man during your visit here, after all the scathing descriptions you’ve heard of him. Now he’s here, uninvited, and bound to ruin your aunt's well-deserved celebration.
“No, no,” Declan steps towards you, “He’s not here.”
His warm palm lays heavily on your bare shoulder, a comforting effort to calm you down.
“He’s been sleeping with my wife,” he explains quietly.
“Oh,” you say numbly. Do you have any other words left in your vocabulary? If you did, you can’t think of them now.
Declan exhales a soft breath through his nose. A laugh, sort-of. “Yeah, oh.”
The rivalry between Corinium and Venturer is threaded through everything in Rutshire in ways you don’t entirely understand but are increasingly aware of.
And at the head of it all are Declan O’Hara and Tony Baddingham.
“I’m sorry,” you offer weakly, and Declan squeezes where he's still holding onto your shoulder.
“I bet you’re an honest man,” you say, keeping your chin down, but moving your eyes up to his. “I’m not sure someone like that deserves your loyalty.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” he grits out, not looking down to meet your gaze. “Maud has cheated on me before, and she always will. I’ve accepted that, I still love her,” he takes a deep, angry breath, “but with Tony fucking Baddingham?”
You lay your palm on his chest, unthinking. You just want to calm him down, like he had done with you.
When Declan's eyes shift back to yours, his gaze is intense.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” he asks in a whisper.
When you nod, his focus drifts to where a shaky breath leaves through your parted lips.
“Yeah,” he agrees, holding his eyes there as he speaks, “you wouldn’t ever stray, were you committed to someone,” he hums. He leans down towards you then, closer than you’ve ever been before.
When you shake your head, answering a question he never actually asked, your lips come so close to touching.
The hand on your shoulder lifts, moving to grab a fistful of your hair. Declan holds it in a gentle handful at the back of your head.
“Fuck, you’re a good girl,” he breathes into your mouth.
You moan softly and he can’t hold back, crashing his lips down onto yours.
You fall against him, leaning into the kiss desperately when his hand in your hair tightens and his other curves around your waist.
The brush of his moustache against your tingling, sensitive lips is unlike anything you’ve felt before and you reach up onto your tiptoes to chase it.
You’re in your own world, kissing Declan O’Hara, so when you are suddenly lifted off the ground as if you weigh nothing at all, you gasp in surprise.
When you wrap your legs around his sturdy waist, Declan hums in response. The sound vibrates down through your whole body, making you shiver.
You can feel his hardness when you bear down, even through his trousers and all the bunched up fabric of your dress in the way.
You whine, your lips barely lifting from his for a moment, the need to be rid of these layers between you suddenly pressing.
“I know,” he murmurs against your mouth, taking a few wide steps backwards with you still in his arms. When you both reach the armchair he was sat in earlier, Declan lowers himself back into it.
You're in his lap now, sitting on his muscled thighs. Your lips leave his, one final lick up to touch the edge of his moustache with the tip of your tongue, before moving down to scrape your teeth at his jutting chin while your fingers fiddle with his belt buckle.
At the same time, Declan's hands smooth their way up your thighs and disappear underneath the skirt of your dress. You look down at the simple cotton, embroidered with tiny daisies around the hem. It suddenly feels absurdly innocent for a moment that has become anything but.
You feel his fingertips trace the lacy edge of your thong and shift your hips forward slightly, encouraging him to touch you there.
“Please…” you beg. Your teeth drag down his throat as your torso falls forward against his.
“Yeah? What do you want?” he asks, his voice the slightest bit strained, his irish vowels just a bit rougher.
“I don't care,” you whine. He's still not touching you.
“Tell me, sweetheart,” His thumb strokes so lightly at the fabric over your clit. You barely feel it, yet it still sends a shock of electricity to your core.
“Yes,” you hiss, “there.”
His thumb presses down harder, resting against your clit as it throbs at the contact.
“Okay,” he whispers, breath hot against your ear before he sucks the lobe into his mouth and swirls his tongue around it.
His cock is rock hard. You feel it jump beneath where your palm is absently resting over it and instinctively tighten your grip, squeezing it with slender fingers.
Declan hums, deep and rough, but you need more. You bear down more forcefully against his thumb, moaning wantonly.
His thumb stays where it is while two fingers from his other hand slip underneath the lace edge of your underwear, stroking you bare. You’re slick and needy, and you draw his fingers in so easily.
“Thats it,” he murmurs roughly, “you’re so wet,” he curls his fingers.
You moan, squeezing his cock too hard in reaction to the intrusion, far too lost in your own pleasure to pay much attention to his.
You swipe under the weeping head of his cock with your thumb in apology.
“Fuck,” he groans.
Without warning, Declan's hands leave you, his rough fingers trailing along your hips to grasp at your arse with greedy handfuls. When he pulls you closer, the front of your soaked thong meets his bare cock and you both moan.
You push up on your knees slightly, causing friction between you, then tilting your pelvis forward, you rock against his straining length.
Declan moves one of his hands out from beneath your dress to wrap around the length of hair between your shoulders. He tugs and it forces you to lean back, one arm reaching back to hold onto his thigh in order to stabilise yourself. Your other hand pushes the edge of his shirt up, exposing that impressive stomach as your hips stay grinding against him.
“Just like that, sweetheart,” He tells you. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
“More,” you whimper, and it’s pathetic. You’re so needy.
“You want more?” he asks and you nod desperately, unable to answer verbally.
With the hand that was still kneading at your arse, he grips onto the back of your thong, fingers curling into the lacy fabric so he can tug it down and out of his way.
His eyes are half lidded as he leans back to watch you sink down onto him.
“Ah,” you gasp at the stretch of it, your nails scratching down the taut skin of his stomach, leaving behind little red lines.
You try to widen your thighs but are restrained by the lace wrapped around them, until Declan's hand smooths up your leg to rip them off of you.
“Oh, fuck, urgh,” you moan, throwing your head back as you fall fully onto him. You're pelvis to pelvis, Declans whole length buried inside of you.
“You’re so fucking tight,” Declan grounds out, rolling his hips against yours in the slightest, most intentional way.
You clench your muscles, pulsing on his cock, and he groans, low and long. When you're ready, you lift your hips before grinding down again.
With one hand now at your waist, Declans other travels up to cup your breast over the cotton of your dress. He squeezes and your stomach flutters in arousal.
You can hear the wet, squelching sound of his cock moving, but you're frustrated at not being able to see it go in and out, getting slicker and slicker with your mess. Declan, too, seems unsatisfied with being denied full access to your tits.
“Unzip me,” you lean down to whisper breathlessly into his ear, stroking his sweaty black hair back as you do.
Without a word, Declan reaches behind you with deft fingers and swiftly tugs the zipper down your back. He helps push folds of fabric over your head until you are free of it and bare above him, your long hair falling messily around your face.
The reality of the situation hits, and you realise that you're completely naked in a room with an unlocked door and several dozen people celebrating just beyond it.
Somewhere along the way, Declan's trousers had ended up pooled around his ankles. He kicks them aside now without a second thought, so at least you’re not alone.
He wraps his hands around your waist, helping guide you up and down as he thrusts up into your pussy. Eventually, one returns back to your arse while the other drifts down your side, thumb tugging down the centre of your stomach, over your pelvic bone, and stopping at your clit.
“So close, so close,” you chant, feeling the pressure mount as Declan fucks into you.
“Fuck!” he shouts, hot spurts of cum shooting into you without warning.
Your hips stutter, dragging slowly against his softening cock as you follow with your own orgasm.
When it’s over, you follow as he flops back deeper into the armchair, panting against him.
Declan hums in satisfaction, the vibration of it going through your whole body as he strokes your wild hair back.
But all you can think now is fuck, I’ve just shagged a married man.
declan o’hara is such a man, he doesn’t even have to think about it. he holds open doors, picks up heavy things so his girl doesn’t have to, walks on the outer side of the sidewalk, keeps a hand on the small of her back, redirects the waiter to her first at every restaurant, always pours the drinks, always pays the tab, comes home with a small gift every single day just to show that she was on his brain while they were apart, eats pussy like it’s the first time his taste buds have ever worked, makes sure she always cums first, and then a few times after that. breakfast in bed, remembers her morning tea or coffee ritual, offers to iron her clothes for the day, sits patiently on the bed as she decides what she’s even gonna wear, never complains about her taking too long to get ready, compliments her when she finally appears in his line of sight. all without breaking a sweat. and that’s not even the half of it.
Summary: When your car battery dies, there's only one person who can help you.
Pairing: john logan x graham! reader
A/N: based on this request :) i just finished watching off campus and i am obsessed UGH i love them all so much. kinda thinking about a part two where we get more of Logan's view on reader?? idk what it would be like yet though. reader is written as graham's sister, but as i am a WOC i never think of my readers as white-- so this could be read as like an adopted sibling/half sibling vibe! whatever works for your experience of reading it.
Word Count: 2.3k
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything related to DC, I am merely a nerd who hyperfixates a lot. I do not consent for my works to be reuploaded on other websites, plagiarised, translated, or fed into AI media.
Warnings !: reader is thirsty LMAO, hopeless pining on your part, unclear whether or not john returns your crush?? mentions of hannah. I have also never read the books— so this is solely based off of show logan :)
"G, don't panic." Are the first words out of your mouth when you call your brother. This of course has the opposite effect. In the background, you can hear Garrett hastily quieting the others.
"What happened? Are you hurt? Where are you?"
"I'm fine. I'm not hurt, but I'm—"
"Are you alone?"
"Yes, but—"
"Are you somewhere safe?"
"Garrett, if you let me speak, I could tell you that I'm fine." You sigh, a hand coming up to run through your hair. "I think my car battery died. I'm somewhere on the side of the road in Arlington."
A beat of silence. You can kind of hear the chatter from the other line, the absurd overlap of four, twenty-something-year-old, hockey players, discussing what's happening. Then, somewhere in the background, you hear someone — you don't even have to guess who, you could pinpoint him in any hectic frenzy— say "G, is she okay?"
Garrett ignores him, "What do you mean you think the battery is dead?"
"I mean I was driving back to campus when my lights started flickering and the next thing I know everything in my car is off."
"While you were driving?"
"Yes. What was unclear from the story?" You say bluntly.
"Holy shit, Y/N, did you get into an accident—"
"Relax, Gar. As I said, I managed to pull off to the side. I was the only person on the road. The point is, there's no one around to jump my shit and everything is closed."
"Okay, Okay. I can be there in like, twenty minutes—"
"Thought you were meeting with that philosophy tutor at 9— it's 8:48." You hear him let out a frustrated huff.
"I can cancel—"
"No. You can't, Garrett. Cancelling twelve minutes before a session is fucked up and you need the help." Another pause. You can practically hear him deflating.
"I'll send Logan."
Garrett hangs up before you can protest.
You stare at your phone for a second, then at the road, then at your phone again. Arlington is dead quiet this time of night, just streetlights and the distant sound of the city somewhere behind you. You lean back against the car and try not to think about the fact that John Logan is currently getting in his truck to come and look at your now sad, broken down wrangler.
Which you of course fail at.
Your phone buzzes.
John Logan flashes across the screen and you take one full second to compose yourself before answering.
"I'm in Arlington. Somewhere off Mass Ave, like in the suburbs somewhere? I can send my location—"
"Hello to you too."
You close your eyes. "Hi. I'm about a mile past the intersection off Mass Ave, pulled over by the—"
"Are you alright?"
It's a simple question. One that shouldn't make you lose your breath the way it is right now.
"I'm fine."
"G said you were on the road when the battery died?"
"Yeah." You try to brush off the obvious concern in his voice.
"Must have been scary. Are you alright?" He asks once more. Perceptive as always. There's a pause, but you can hear what sounds like the start of Logan's car. You dodge his question by just staying silent.
"Sit tight. I'm twenty minutes out."
You nod, though he obviously can't see. "Okay. See you soon."
You hear his car before you see it.
The low rumble of his engine cuts through the quiet of Arlington like it owns the street, headlights sweeping around the corner and finding you immediately. You straighten up, cross your arms, and do your best to school your expression. It's just Logan. He's just being a good friend and doing your brother a favor. His car pulls up right in front of yours and he kills the engine, hopping out of the car with both of his hands in his jacket pockets.
He doesn't say anything yet, just looks you over, and then the car.
"Get the hood?"
You furrow your eyebrows. "What?"
"Can you pop the hood?"
"Oh. Yeah, sorry." You mumble, walking to the front of the car where the latches of the hood are, and pop them open. You get the center hook, and Logan is there to put the prop rod up.
You take a step away from the car, giving Logan space. He pulls his phone out,turns on the flashlight, and takes a look at the battery inside. You lean against the driver's side door and watch him work, which feels awkward, so you look at the street instead. Then at your nails. Then back at him because there is genuinely nothing else to look at.
"When's the last time you replaced the battery?" He asks, not looking away from it.
"Um. I don't know."
He does look up at that. Just briefly.
"Garrett bought it used for me about two years ago."
"…So never, then?"
"So never." You pause, approaching his side and peering into the hood as well.
"Is that bad?"
The look he gives you is somewhere between amused and pained. "Yeah."
"Cool." You pull your cardigan around yourself just a bit tighter. "So it's my fault."
"That's not at all what I said—"
"It was implied."
"I implied that your battery was old." He turns to you. "That's not your fault. It's just what it is. Do you have jumper cables?"
"Do I look like I own jumper cables?"
"You look like a car owner, which means you should have jumper cables."
You open your mouth to argue, but close it. He is right. He tosses you the keys to his car, which you narrowly drop.
"Cables are in the trunk."
You take a deep breath, and walk towards his car trying to compose yourself. You can't help just how undone you feel around him. Like all sense of composure ceases being. When you open the trunk of his car, you get a waft of the air inside. It, much to your surprise, doesn't smell like sweaty hockey gear, but like Logan himself. A rich cedar with citrusy undertones to balance it. You locate the cables quickly, which means you have no reason to keep standing there, breathing him in. You grab the cables, and with a little more force than necessary, slam the trunk closed.
When you get back to the Wrangler he's crouched by the front again, looking at something on his phone, and he glances up when he hears you coming. You hold the cables out and he stands, taking them from you.
"Thanks," he says.
"Yep," you say.
Very normal. Totally fine.
"Okay." He holds the cables out toward you instead of the car. "Come here."
You blink. "I don't need to—"
"You should know how to do this." He says it simply, like it's obvious, like he's not just voluntarily extending the amount of time you have to stand next to him in the dark. "Come on."
You oblige.
He walks you through what needs to be done patiently. No condecension in his tone. You imagine if this is how he talks to the freshman boys on the hockey team…or if this is the tone he takes up when talking someone through it.
Pushing that thought to the back of your brain where you hopefully never find it again, he holds the cables out to you. One red and one black clamp.
"Two hands. Don't let these touch. Get into the habit of it." You nod, but reach for the cables with one hand, to which he pulls them out of your reach and shoots you a deadpan look. You shake your head in an attempt to get your mind back.
"Sorry." You take them with two hands, and he continues to talk about how the cables work.
"Red to dead first." He nods toward your battery. "Always."
You crouch down next to him and clip it where he points. "Red to dead," you repeat.
"Then red to donor." He reaches past you to attach the other end to his own battery, and for approximately one second his arm is right there and you are very focused on the cable. "Then black to donor."
"Black to donor."
"Last one goes on bare metal. Not the dead battery." He guides your hand — just barely, just enough — to a bolt on the engine block. "Ground it here."
You clip it.
He doesn't move his hand immediately.
"Why not to the battery?" you ask, because you are super interested in the car, and not the fact that he's so close to you right now. Definitely not that.
"Sparks," he says. "Dead batteries can off-gas hydrogen. You don't want a spark near that."
"Oh." You look at the cables, then at him, which is a mistake because he is still right there. "That's probably important to know."
"That's why I'm telling you. Now, we wait a few minutes before I start my car."
He leans against the front of the Wrangler, arms crossed, looking out at the empty street. Not at you. You mirror him without thinking about it. Leaning against the hood next to him, not close enough to be something, just next to him. The streetlight above you is doing that orange late-night thing where everything looks a little warmer than it actually is.
It's quiet for a moment.
"You doing okay out here? You know, before I got here."
"It was fine."
"I'm sure it was. But that's not what I asked." He turns his head to look at you.
You look at the road. A car passes at the far end of the street, headlights sweeping briefly over the pavement, and then it's quiet again.
"It was a little scary," you admit. "When everything shut off. The car kept rolling and all I wanted to do was get out."
He nods. Doesn't make it a big deal, doesn't say I knew it or you should have said so. Just nods, like he's filing it away somewhere careful.
"You called Garrett right away?"
"Immediately."
The corner of his mouth moves. "Good."
You look at him. "You're not going to tell me I should have roadside assistance or something?"
"Do you have roadside assistance?"
"No."
"Then there's no point in telling you that now." He looks back at the street. "Now you know you should have it."
You almost smile. "Yeah. Okay."
~
"Okay." Logan pushes off the hood. "Let's try it."
He gets in his car first and you get in yours, and when he starts his engine you can feel it faintly through the steering wheel from the cables still connecting you. You wait the way he told you to. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. Then you turn the key.
The Wrangler shudders, clicks, and then —
Catches.
The dash lights up all at once and the radio comes back on mid-song and you let out a breath you have been holding since 8:48pm.
You get back out. Logan is already unclipping the cables in the right order, black from ground, black from donor, red from donor, red from dead, staring at the way his hands look wrapped around each clamp
"You're good," he says, coiling the cables back up.
"Thank you." It comes out quieter than you mean it to. "Really. You didn't have to—"
"Garrett asked me to."
"Right." You nod, a pang of embarassment filling your chest. Right. This was a favor for his best friend— your brother. Nothing more. "Still."
He looks at you for a second, then holds out the cables. "Keep these in the car."
"What about you? I can just buy some online when I get home."
"Really? Are you actually going to?" He tilts his head skeptically.
Unfortunately, he is correct in his assumption that you will likely forget. You sigh, but take them, fingers lightly brushing his as you pull the cables away.
"I'll follow you home," he says, and then he's walking back to his car before you can tell him he doesn't have to.
You watch his headlights in the rearview mirror the whole way home.
It's a twenty three minute drive back to campus, and you are aware of him for every single one of them. Every turn signal, every stop light, the way he stays exactly two car lengths behind you like he's done this before. You turn the stereo up just a little bit louder in an attempt to drown out any more thoughts of him from your brain, which of course, fails miserably.
You pull into your complex and he pulls in behind you. You were half hoping he'd just — flash his lights and keep going, waving you off into your dorm room. Instead, he parks.
You meet him just outside of the entrance to the dorm hall, pulling your jacket just a bit tighter around your shoulders.
"Thanks again." you say again.
"It's fine."
"I know…but thank you. I really appreciate it, Logan."
Something shifts in his expression. Just briefly, just enough that you notice and then immediately question whether you imagined it.
"…Call Triple A in the morning. They can come replace your battery." You nod obediently, and he tilts his head towards you just a little bit.
"Get some sleep," he says.
You nod. "Yeah."
He doesn't move for exactly one second too long.
You watch him walk off into the darkness of the parking lot. You keep standing there even after you hear his car start, and even after the sound of his engine fades out down the street. Finally, you scan your ID and let yourself into the building taking a deep breath once you're inside.
You are completely normal about John Logan. Completely.
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