Figured I’d start a masterlist of my fics and works in progress! Heavy on the yearning and I’m a slut for a good slow-burn. All of the stories are strictly 18+, have smut/smut-heavy. MDNI!
Please let me know if you want to be tagged in a specific fic list or all of them!
The stories are also available on AO3 🖤
andrew “pope” cody x reader
in progress
pope’s girl 🖤 | series masterlist | age gap + angst + smut + yearning + emotional slow burn
thinking about a smutty and yearning lil’ jack abbot x reader one-shot from jack’s pov 👀
jack abbot, who should be asleep after a long night shift but misses you too much to stop scrolling through your photos while he waits for you to come home 🤍🤍
would you read a jack abbot x reader fic from jack’s pov? 🙈
but kiss me & i might...
⤷ jack abbot x nurse!reader ⌇ 23.1k
✶ ― SYNOPSIS. the 5 times jack abbot walks you home + the 1st time you invite him in.
warnings.ᐟ mdni! no use of y/n, night-shift nurse!reader, colleagues to lovers, slow burn, smut (jack pussy pleaser abbot and his big dick, soft dom jack, fingering, piv, unprotected sex, praise, creampie, cum play, cum eating, smothering?, sex against a wall + cowgirl, hair pulling [jack receiving], slight dubcon as they are both tipsy), age gap (reader is early 30s), fluff, pining, longing, workplace romance, mentions of mental health struggles + therapy as consequence of the pittfest tragedy, violence + workplace assault, jack calls the reader kid but it's only as a coping mechanism!!! (he's down bad), one too many references to drop dead by olivia rodrigo, no mentions of jack's late wife or his wedding ring, 1 reference to a scene from the movie fresh. i tried my best to represent jack's life as an amputee as respectfully as possible, deepest apologies if i failed to do so.
ᯓ★ hyde's input. wrote most of this in the hospital, boots on the ground journalism.
𓂃✍︎ dt. huge big fat sloppy wet kiss for miss @pinksplace for popping my beta-reader cherry and reassuring me that this was not straight up buns, no hotdog. your friendship means the absolute world to me, the fact you match my freak is just a bonus. and to my cousin @iamthatonefangirl for telling me to watch the pitt back in february, you helped awaken something in me that had been dormant for months. & to me for continuing my tradition of posting a fic on my birthday, finishing this was my present to myself.
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The first time feels like a fluke.
A rare silver lining of good stroked through the grey devastation that was today; after hours of wading through blood and gore, you at last strike gold.
“You heading off too, kid?” Despite the questioning tone in Jack’s voice, you know it’s an order.
He’s staring down at the park bench, eyes hovering over you and how tightly you’re still clutching that fourth can of beer, zoned out and completely oblivious to how everyone else has already packed up for the night and headed home. Not to sleep, no. It’s doubtful any of you will get much sleep, not after the events of today.
Robby had slipped away first, not without sharing a few final words of wisdom aimed at soothing everybody’s aching soul. Javadi followed soon after, abandoning a half-drunken beer as she went racing off to answer her mother’s beck and call. Mateo, Princess and Samira called it quits together, each heading off in different directions. Even Donnie left eventually, the now empty cooler in tow, his wife waiting patiently for him to crawl back to their newlyweds home and into her arms.
Then there were two.
Abbot and you.
Neither of you dared to interrupt the silence that had rolled in, minds too busy swimming in pools of thought, struggling against violent currents and attempting to escape the deep end.
Moonlight crept through the crevices between the branches above, cicadas came together to sing in disjointed harmony, and the world around you both kept moving, completely oblivious to how your own life had come to a halt. Somewhere between waking up to the screech of your pager and rushing through the doors of the PTMC to find it in a state of chaos, different and bloodier than you’d known it to usually be, you had shutdown.
Jack knew better than to force you out of that state.
He saw himself in your blank stares and the bouncing knees, remembered how it felt to be young, bright-eyed, and finally forced to reckon with how brutal this field could be. He didn’t need to ask to know: this had been your first mass casualty event.
Maybe that’s why he sat with you, the passing of time irrelevant, and let you fester in your shock. Let whatever cracks were forming in your heart deepen, because he knew it was the only way they’d be able to solidify. Let you exist on the periphery of life for however long you needed, his own senses fully intact and ready to watch over your body while your mind drifted elsewhere.
Only when he noticed you stifling a yawn did he act.
Jack, conscious of not startling you, moved slowly. Calmly.
He started with his prosthetic, lifting it off the bench and placing it back down onto the ground before safely attaching it. Then his bag, hands rummaging unnecessarily as though to check everything was in place — he’d already checked before leaving the locker room, but he figured another revision and a few more minutes for you to sit with your thoughts couldn’t hurt. Slinging one strap over his right shoulder, he pushed his frame off the wooden bench and came to a stand, the sickly-sweet gravel of his voice perforating the silence at last.
“Hmm?” Your reply is practically nonverbal, a simple hum. Enough to acknowledge the fact he’s spoken, yet not enough to answer his question.
Hazel eyes zero in on your own, observing how they’re tired, blinking just a little bit too lazily. The beer has warmed your cheeks, sped up your heart, and slowed your mind. Dancing on a tightrope between tipsy and inebriated, the last thing Jack is about to do is send you off home alone.
“C’mon,” he gruffs out, prying the can from your hand and laying it to rest on the bench. He replaces the weight of it in your palm with his touch, thick fingers effortlessly engulfing your own. To his delight, you give way easily, rising to a stand as he tugs you up. “Let’s get you home.”
You attempt some version of, “I’m fine.”
Jack pays it no mind.
Instead, he grabs at your familiar pink duffel bag. Something settles in his chest, dark and sickening, at the sight of dirt staining the bottom of the fabric, ruining your usually polished belongings. How apt it seems, a perfect mirror to how today has the left a smudge on you.
You stare at him all of a few seconds, eyes red. There’s no tears in sight, just the remnants of those that have already fallen. Then, when the older man shifts his weight off his right leg, you finally begin walking.
The journey is slow.
Jack’s unsure if you set the pace to accommodate to him or to put off the inevitable of going up to a lonely apartment, where all that work you’ve done to suppress the storm of emotions building inside you will prove useless the moment you step into the quiet of your home, the furthest place from danger and, yet, where all your troubling thoughts will at last catch up to you.
He thinks he’s better off not knowing, chooses to believe you’re doing it for his sake.
Some of your steps are swayed. The sight of your unsteady feet and teetering body are enough to keep his mind alert, fighting off the exhaustion that threatens to find him soon. This was supposed to be his day off, after all. He was supposed to be catching up on sleep right now, not watching over one of his nurses and worrying himself sick with thoughts of how today’s horrors will linger with you for years to come.
It was supposed to be your day off too, after all.
Neither of you should have been at the Pitt.
One man and a weapon had changed that.
You come to a stop abruptly, catching the doctor off guard and sending his solid frame crashing into your back. Before either of you can stumble too far, Jack’s snaking his free arm around your waist and stabilising you against him.
Maybe it’s the warmth of his palm, large and imposing and seeping through the cotton of your top. Maybe it’s the gentleness behind his touch, the way it anchors your feet to the pavement and silently promises that it- he won’t let you fall. Maybe it’s the weight of today finally shaking your unbreakable self, your arms too weak to keep holding you above water for much longer.
The reason doesn’t ultimately matter.
What matters is you’re finally speaking.
“Did you litter?”
Not exactly what Jack expected you to say.
It startles him for a moment, has him forgetting how today was full of horrors and has him wondering, instead, if you recycle.
It shouldn’t be so easy to picture you, bed head and a wrinkled shirt (preferably one that originally belongs to him), huffing and puffing your cheeks while you shoot around his kitchen, bags scattered along the island as you berate him.
Jack, how many times have I told you. Yellow is for plastic and cans, blue is for paper, green is for glass!
And wouldn’t it be so hard for him to fight back a smile, heart bursting with joy? A lovesick fool, happy to be lectured on the complex recycling system if it means having you, half naked, half awake, frowning at him as soon as you notice the shake in his shoulders.
Sorry, sweetheart. Promise it won’t happen again… And his hands finding your waist, pinning you to the marble counter-top so there’s nowhere for you to run from his mouth, trailing molten kisses up the expanse of your neck, lips lingering just to feel the steady thrum of your carotid pulse, physical evidence that you’re real, and here, and in his arms-
The blaring of a horn pulls Jack Abbot back onto the sidewalk.
You’re still in his arms but his lips are far from your neck and the speed of your heart is testament only to the anxiety speeding through your veins.
“Yeah. Maybe. I- I’m not really sure,” try as he might, he can’t remember if he ever moved your can from the bench. Is it still there now, half empty and waiting for its owner to return? “I’m sure someone’ll throw it away.”
Like you can’t dwell on the thought for too long, you move on, and finally say what’s really been troubling you.
“I don’t know if I-” the words catch on your throat, dry from the beer and raw with emotion. “How do I go back?”
Vague, unspecified.
Jack, with years of becoming fluent in you, understands.
“You find a way.” He wishes he could give you something more helpful, more reassuring. All he can offer you is the truth. “It’ll be hard. Different to how it was before.”
“I don’t think I can-” once more, emotions cut you off.
You’re not crying, not yet.
Stubborn as he knows you to be, steadfast in your need to remain strong until the very end. It wounds him in a way that feels a little too deep for a man who should see you as nothing more than a coworker.
Attending physician. Nurse. Colleagues.
Those are the only three words that either of you should use to describe the other. Jack knows, has known so for years. So, why does he keep having to remind himself?
“I don’t think I belong there, Doctor Abbot. You saw it, I froze. I hesitated. You had to ask me twice for the scalpel, and then- We lost him. If I had just- I should have-”
The hand at your midriff finds your shoulder, turns you around, and then his eyes find yours.
“Stop that, now. That man, he was good as gone when he reached us,” it’s a brutal truth but one that needs to be said. Jack knew it then just as much as he knows it now; that red wristband was destined for peeds. “You could have handed me that scalpel at the speed of light, and it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing, okay?”
You take a steadying breath.
It doesn’t work.
Instead, Jack watches it shake right through your frame. Your eyes drift from his own, like if he stares too long, he might catch a glimpse of every self-blaming thought racing through your mind.
“D’you even realise how many lives you helped save today?” The question comes tumbling out before Jack can stop it, some enate part of himself screaming at him to reassure you, to scramble up all the fractured pieces of you and slot them back together. That’s an attending’s job, right? To keep watch over the crew, to take care of the crew. So what if you’re off-the-clock? “One-hundred and six.”
“I only worked on-”
“Doesn’t matter who you personally worked on. Every one, you hear me?” He gives a squeeze of your shoulder, tells himself it’s because he wants to get you to look at him. If the touch happens to ground him too, it’s a coincidence. “Every life we saved tonight, you had a hand in that. You being there mattered, we couldn’t have done it without you.”
The words settle over you like a blanket, wrapping you in warmth and promising you shelter.
They don’t erase the sadness, don’t make it dissolve into a puddle on the ground, left to be forgotten on the dirty surface of the sidewalk. But they do enough to ease the tension between Jack’s brows and to wipe a layer of uncertainty from your eyes.
Then, unable to help himself, Jack adds, “I know I certainly couldn’t. Can barely intubate without my favourite nurse at my side.”
You laugh, slightly.
It eases something in Jack’s chest, nonetheless.
“Doctor Robby says it’s not right for attendings to play favourites.”
Now Jack is the one laughing.
You take the chance to pry your bag from his grasp, throwing the strap over your shoulder. The first act of Goodnight.
“Yeah, well, come to me again when Robby starts taking his own advice.”
There is no grand goodbye between you.
Just an exchange of fractured smiles, a subtle nod of approval from Jack as you take the first step towards the building’s entrance, and the wave of your hand before you turn fully and dash to safety.
Before you can slip through the crack you make in the building’s heavy door, Jack calls out, “I’ll see you tomorrow, kid.”
Once again, not a question. An order.
The second time is all about convenience.
It’s the last night of your monthly seven-days-on, the kind of shift where the hours stretch themselves impossibly thin and it feels like you’re crawling towards the end, a goalpost that keeps moving an inch out of reach each time you start to feel relief. By the time you officially clock out, shooting off towards the locker rooms before Whitaker can ask you to accompany another patient for a CT or Princess can enquire on any night shift gossip, you’ve worked an extra two hours and the bags beneath your eyes feel so heavy, they may as well be dragging by your feet.
Out of your scrubs, back into clothes that only partially carry the sterile stench of bleach and blood, you busy yourself with cramming things into your bag while trying your best to let Mateo’s generosity down softly.
“It’s fine, really,” even you have to admit that you don’t sound as sure as you mean to be. For a moment, you mull it over, imagine the comfort of letting yourself sit back and relax in the passenger seat of Mateo’s car. The sooner you’re home, the sooner your week off can start, right? Still, something within forces you to decline. He lives on the opposite side of the city and, with gas prices rising and his body’s tank running on empty hours before his next shift, the last thing you want to be is a nuisance. “I don’t mind the walk, gives me the chance to decompress.”
Your fellow nurse looks at you with a level of distrust, doubting the reassuring smile you cast his way.
“Are you sure?” Mateo pushes, dragging his tired body along the lockers until he stands behind yours. His curls, freed at last from the constraints of a hair-tie, peek out from the door. “I really don’t mind taking you. I mean, no offence, but you look like you belong on the set of Night of The Living Dead right now. Don’t wanna send you off just to later find out you tripped over air and wound up back here as a patient.”
Slamming your locker shut and giving his shoulder a shove — with no force behind it and doing little to move the man — you roll your eyes, “I’m fine, dingus.”
“Dingus? What are we, five?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one treating me like a toddler.”
“Like a toddler-?! I’m trying to be a good Samaritan. A gentleman!” You dodge Mateo’s hand as it reaches for your duffel bag. “Now quit being stubborn and let me make sure you get home safe-”
Everything happens so suddenly, your brain is forced to compartmentalise every action, step by step, as they unravel.
Mateo reaches for the bag, again.
You dodge it, again.
You glide to the left.
You run shoulder-first into a solid wall of warmth.
And there he is. Jack Abbot, freshly changed out of his scrubs. Hair wet from a shower, an overly woodsy scent clinging to damp skin, black t-shirt stretched a little too tightly over his chest. Despite his attempts to scrub the night away, he’s thrown on the same pair of cargo pants he spent the last fourteen hours rushing around in.
You almost want to chastise his stupidity, until you remember you can’t.
Not only is he your colleague, he’s your senior.
What business do you have telling a man like him to do anything?
“I’ll take her home.”
Never a question, always an order.
Unlike weeks ago, world turned upside down and veins full of sickly beer, you have half the mind to turn him down this time. To inch away from where your body collides with his. To reinforce your grip on the pink strap of your bag. To shake your head and offer a polite, though bashful, smile.
“Doctor Abbot, it’s fine, really! You don’t have to offer me a ride, I really do prefer walking-”
“I’m not offering you a ride,” Jack shuts you up with a pointed look, eyebrows jumping as though he’s daring you to shoot him down again. “Car’s in the garage, something’s up with the exhaust. I’m walking your way anyway, may as well let me keep you company.”
The truth is, you’re not sure why you are so hesitant to accept his offer.
Jack is a good guy, and he’s certainly not a stranger.
You’ve known him since you first stepped foot in the emergency room. Younger and brighter, the both of you. Back then, he was still new. Back then, you were still a student. Time passed, as it tends to do; Jack became a trusted figure of authority, you graduated right into the night shift. Brief exchanges of good morning, good night, and how are you? during the shift handovers blossomed into good job, good call, and I need you with me.
Lena likes to tease you, throwing looks over the top of her glasses every time he saunters up to the nurses’ station, raps his knuckles upon the desk and tilts his head towards whatever room he needs you in.
He likes me because I talk to the patients, is typically your explanation while Lena looks at you otherwise. Keeps them busy while he works.
He likes you because you’re a pretty young thing, Lena never fails to retort between answering the every whim of the staff, like the charge nurse she is. Gives those hazel eyes something to ogle.
“C’mon, are you really gonna run away from a disabled vet?” Jack pushes, shooting you that infamous silver-fox smirk. Damn him and those arms, muscles pulled taut as he crosses his hands over his chest, impatiently waiting for you to give in. “What if I stumble and there’s no one there to catch me? That’ll be on you, kid. Think you can handle it on your conscience?”
“Yeah, imagine you come back next week and find out gramps here split his head open on the curb,” Mateo chimes in from the sidelines, only for the amused expression to melt the moment you pin a glare on him. “What? The man made a good point!”
“Yeah, kid,” you barely have the chance to register how swiftly Jack tugs the duffel out of your grip, staking claim over your belongings and securing himself as a guardian to guide you home. “I made a good point. Now, are you gonna keep me waiting? ‘Cause I’d really like to see the tail end of this place at some point today.”
So you let him walk you home.
Steps less swayed, back more stiff, you try your best not to think about the last time you both walked this path. You, drowning in sorrows; him, swimming effortlessly with his head above the water.
The sun is rising slowly, rays of golden warmth kissing over the city. It’s not enough to fight away the bitter chill of winter, sending your hands diving into the pockets of a flimsy coat, reaching for a warmth they never quite find. Beside you, Jack is unshaken, barely bothered by the way his breath reflects back at him with each exhale.
“You did good today,” Jack says today in place of last night, the true mark of what the night shift does to a person’s perception of the world. Daybreak becomes dusk, while dusk becomes sunrise. Where others prepare to start their daily ritual of adhering to capitalism, you’re crawling into bed and giving in to the sweet relief of sleep. “Calmed that kid right down.”
You know immediately who he’s referring to.
James. A sweet baby boy, barely a day past 6 months, running a fever of a hundred and three, and sporting a nasty ear infection.
Understandably, he had been screaming up a storm.
Unfortunately, a certain patient nursing a headache was screaming even louder, profanities that pleaded for someone to Shut that fucking baby up!
Jack had offered to shut the patient up.
You had a more peaceful idea.
“Oh, uh, thanks,” god, you feel pathetic.
Praise is far from something foreign to you. Patients, colleagues, and friends alike are always firing off at you, sweet words that affirm the simple gestures and quiet good you bring into their lives. Whether it’s through fluffing a pillow, aiding in procedures, or gifting out your time freely; praise always worms its way into your ears.
But this is different.
Jack is different.
Every good job, every well done, every thanks, kid; it shoots right through you. Lightning that electrifies you, takes you from a state of near asystole to tachicardic in as little as the few seconds it takes his lips to shape the words. Your cheeks warm, your palms sweat. Words run from you, leaving you to grab at the few you can manage and stumble over half-formed sentences.
Worst of all, you think he knows.
He has to, right?
A man like him has lived through enough — lived long enough — to recognise the tell tale signs of the effect he has on people. Hardly anyone is immune or safe from his charms, from college kids that wind up in a gurney after having a little too much fun with a fake ID, to elderly women rushed in by their panicking children, afraid a bad cough or a sore back could be the sign of something far more sinister in the aging body.
“How did you know it would work?” It takes you an embarrassing amount of time to realise Jack is talking again, head turned to watch as you walk alongside him rather than focusing ahead. “Flipping him over?”
Right.
James.
The crying baby.
Your peaceful idea.
That’s what you’re both talking about.
“Old wives tale,” you finally answer, mind drifting back to the memory of your quick thinking. The screaming baby, the screaming patient. Your hands, gentle as they picked James up. The questioning look from everyone in the room as you flipped the infant over, face down and hovering a few inches off the basinet. And then, silence. No more screaming baby. “My mum used to do it to me, flip me over when she couldn’t get me to stop. It just, y’know, shocks the system. It’s like flipping a switch, turning the baby off.”
“Huh,” somewhere above, a bird chirps, singing a song of good morning. “I’ll have to remember that.”
And then, before you can think any better or question the possible implications, you open your big mouth, “Why? Thinking of stepping into fatherhood?”
Jack gives you the worst possible answer he could have come up with: “No such thing as too late, right?”
“Yeah, maybe. If you’re a man,” you huff. “I, on the other hand, am running out of time on my biological clock as we speak.”
“Then you should get to work on changing that. If you ever need any help with it, I’m always here.”
He says it so casually, like each syllable doesn’t inch you closer to an imaginary ledge.
But his words aren’t what move you to silence.
It’s the imagery they conjure.
Positive tests and hospital visits.
The cold touch of gel on your belly, the warmth of a hand clasping your own.
Sweat rolling off your skin, limbs tangling with yours upon a mattress.
You have to physically shake yourself out of the… Fantasy? Nightmare? Mortifying hell-scape where you’re envisioning what it would be like to let a very handsome attending bend you over and get you pregnant?
“Oh my god,” you half whisper, half yell. “Doctor Abbot, did you just seriously offer-”
“Oh, you’re a pervert!” he has the audacity to exclaim as he swings your bag and bumps it against your thigh, the mischief in his eye the only thing that gives him away. This is Jack, after all, a notorious and shameless flirt. His words didn’t mean anything beyond making you flustered. “I was just offering up my kind and professional aid, as a healthcare provider and an avid champion behind women’s health.”
Head shaking and shoulders bouncing; you’re caught under the influence of Abbot’s charm. Completely unaware of the false sense of safety he’s lured you into, taking you by the hand and dragging you out to sea, waiting until your feet no longer reach the bottom, and then he let’s go, leaving the currents to pull you under…
In simpler words, he asks you the very thing you’ve been avoiding: “How's therapy going?”
“Good. Great. Yeah, I definitely feel a lot… Better. Thanks,” the words taste bitter on your tongue, bursting out of you with an urgency.
Maybe, you figure, if you say it fast enough, there will be no space to doubt it, no time to notice the lie.
“That’s amazing,” he nods curtly, only for that easy-going lilt on his lips to twist into something a little more sinister, a little more interrogative. “Cause when I spoke to Caleb, he said you haven’t been showing up. You wanna pretend you found someone else, or are you gonna tell me why you’re not using the help that’s there?”
You knew this conversation was bound to happen, from the moment Jack referred you to the PTMC’s trauma specialist, high-strung and hell-bent on fast-tracking your progress to mental wellness.
Jack hadn't known about the nightmares.
Or the sickening doubt.
Or the fact you remember every face you treated that day.
Even then, he knew you enough to notice the shift in your demeanour in the days following the Pittfest tragedy. He knew you enough to pull you aside and introduce you to Doctor Jefferson.
Deep inhale, slow exhale. Eyes focused on the pavement ahead, you finally answer, “I just… I don't like it.”
Jack scoffs.
“Nobody likes therapy.”
“It makes me feel… weak. Like I'm not cut out for this.”
You make it to your apartment building sooner than you expect, despite knowing the exact time it takes to trek from your door to the entry of the PTMC.
Any smarter woman would use it as an escape plan, as an excuse to duck out of a conversation that has you shifting weight from one foot onto the other and searching for anything to look at other than the whirlpools of brown that the doctor has pinned on you.
It turns out, you’re not as smart as you think you are, because your feet remain planted on the ground and there’s a feeling hollowing out your chest at the thought of parting from his side.
You will yourself to strip your bag from his grasp.
“Look, kid, I can’t force you to go. I don’t want to force you.” It would be easier to focus on what Jack is saying, if he didn’t have to sound so distracting. Soft-spoken, deep voice, on the verge of begging at an altar if it will get you to listen. “But I know what this job does to people, how it rots away at us if we don’t cure our wounds. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it. I don’t want that for you. So just… Try, would you? If not for you, then for the poor old attending who really needs the help of his favourite nurse and her magic hands that manage to soothe even the weepiest of babies?”
Echoes of Mateo’s voice ring in your ear, his overly enthusiastic exclamation of The man made a good point! on loop.
There’s every chance you’ve been damned by some higher power, afflicted to live this life with a particular weakness to the man before you. It’s the only thing that makes sense, truthfully, when you find yourself conceding without a fight.
“Okay.”
How unfair it is, for eyes like that to light up so easily, “Okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll give it a try.” This time, there’s no bitter aftertaste to your agreement. Just the cold hard truth on your tongue: you’ll take a step down the path towards help, the path Jack put you on. “Can’t make it any worse, I guess.”
“That’s my girl.”
His words hit you like a sucker punch, straight to the gut and leaving you winded.
You stumble, both on your words and on the stairs, as you bid him goodbye and dash into your apartment building.
Safely tucked away at last, a whole week ahead without the threat of mortifying yourself in front of Jack Abbot.
The fourth time is a matter of protocol.
Jack once heard Dana ask Robby, “is it really a shift in the ED if you don’t end it wanting to quit?”
Today more than ever, he feels an itch to see resignation papers.
Not his own.
Yours.
Wrapped up in the active war zone of a multi-vehicle collision, Jack’s hands, eyes and mind were too focused on the woman actively bleeding out on the table to notice you slipping out of the OR, called upon by the charge nurse.
She needed you to check on a patient.
A favour, quick and simple. That’s all it was supposed to be.
There was never supposed to be a grapple for power. Or the clatter of metal meeting the ground. Or the crack of a skull following suit. Or the sickening sound of someone calling code Hula Hoop, when Jack’s hands are too occupied to run towards the source of violence.
It takes him twenty-eight gruelling minutes to make it free from the trauma rooms.
Jack strips himself of the PPE with haste, gloves and gown practically disintegrating under the force of his need to get out of the room and find out what happened, who it happened to.
He knows the answer is you before Mateo even gets the chance to speak.
Lena is on the phone, barking orders down the line. By the few words he manages to catch through his own deafening panic, the police no doubt sit on the receiving end of her call.
There are other patients to attend to, and other matters that are far more pressing — from an outsider’s point of view — that call for Jack’s immediate attention. He brushes them all aside, near blind to any consequence as something commands his feet across the department floor and straight for Exam Room 3, where the tiniest glimpse of you waits behind glass.
Shen is already tending to you, planted firmly by your bedside while the Pitt’s newest resident, Nazely, runs through your vitals. One of your arms is bent backwards, holding a compress to the back of your head. There’s a spatter of blood down the shoulder of your scrubs, splotches of a deep red staining the grey fabric. If Jack looks at it for too long, he’ll throw up, so his eyes shift to your face instead.
When he finds you smiling, a flood of anger finally collapses the immovable dam within him.
Jack frowns before he can even think to stop himself.
“What the hell happened?” Disgust stains each of his words, bleeding all over the room and stiffening the shoulders of those who potter around you, Nazely and the nurses alike.
Only Shen is unmoved by his outburst, turning to meet him with a deadpan stare and a mocking finger pressed to his lips, before he breathes out a gentle shh. “Watch it, old man, my precious patient’s got a nasty headache.”
There’s a likelihood Shen doesn’t get the chance to witness Jack’s eye roll, as the older man slips right through the gap between your gurney and his fellow attending. Without a word of acknowledgement tossed your way, he pries the cold compress from your fingers, commanding you to drop your arm and yield the task of holding it against your head over to him.
This time, Jack speaks a little softer, “Are you gonna tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know, Doctor Abbot, there’s this thing called HIPPA-”
“John, I swear to-”
“It was my fault,” your voice cuts through the bickering of the two attendings, snapping the heat of Jack’s gaze off of Shen and onto you. The frown lines along his forehead ease ever so slightly, against his will, as you insist on flashing him an even bigger smile than before. “Lena, she told me- warned me the guy was in an altered state of mind. I shouldn’t have- I know better than to turn my back on a patient in that state. But it’s fine-”
Jack starts up immediately, hackles rising on the back of his neck as he takes the stance of a defensive mutt, ready to fight tooth and nail to protect its owner, “It’s not fine-”
“I’m fine, Dr Abbot,” pathetically placid, the brush of your fingertips as they graze his arm is enough to neutralise his outrage, nostrils no longer flaring with each puffed out breath of frustration. “He grabbed me, we tussled, and then I slipped on my own untied shoe lace.”
“And where is he now? This altered patient,” his grip slips slightly on the compress, apologies flooding his tongue at the slight wince the action wakes in you. Ignoring your pain, you take more notice of the hostility in his stance, quirking an eyebrow up at him in a silent question. “Don’t give me that look. I’m a doctor, I want to make sure he’s getting the standard of care he deserves.”
When you try to shrug off his interrogation, Shen finally proves he can do something other than get on Jack’s nerves this evening and unveils the truth, “He took off, slipped out the ambulance bay when they called the code.”
“Son of a-”
“CT’s back,” Nazely, quiet as a mouse, had managed to slip out the room unnoticed, and now shoulder-barges her way back in, carrying your results and cutting off Jack’s foul mouth. “Other than a nasty bump, you’re in the clear.”
It’s not that Jack doubts the intern’s ability as a doctor.
And it’s certainly not that he doesn’t trust Shen.
It just so happens that, when the young resident goes to hand-off your CT scans to one of the attendings, Ellis comes knocking on the door, demanding the input of her most trusted attending.
Jack’s never been more relieved to come in second.
Hawk eyes scan over black and whites images, and only once he’s confirmed with his own two eyes that you truly are in the clear does Jack feel that tension in his shoulders begin to unwind.
In a room that now only houses two, he lets himself stand as close to you as he needs, shifting his stance to keep watch on the doors on either side of the room — a guard dog that can never deny it's nature to protect, even as it nestles into its owner.
He doesn’t quite nestle into you, careful to obey that fine line of decorum that exists between colleagues, between a junior and a senior, between a girl your age and a man as weathered as him. No matter the itch in his palm that begs to be scratched by skin no other than your own, he resists the urge to touch you.
Until you move.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Puzzled by the sternness in his usually nonchalant voice, you gaze over your shoulder at him, now sat upright and with both legs swung over the other side of the bed, “To finish… my shift?”
And that is how his hand finds your arm, a grasp that is gentle yet firm, allowing him to guide you back into your previous position. In his other hand still sits the ice pack, as he continues pressing it to your head.
“Uh-uh,” the denial is followed by a tsk, as he slips back into Doctor Abbot mode and puffs out his chest, taking on the persona of big, bad, commanding professional who knows exactly what his patient needs. “Your shift ended the moment that head of yours hit the ground. And since that asshole-” a pointed look shoots his way, warning in your eyes. Jack corrects his previous verbiage, “altered patient who did this took off, new protocol says I can’t let you leave hospital grounds on your own. Now unless you know someone kind enough to pick you up at 4 am, I suggest you take the opportunity to get some rest. I’ll come wake you when the morning shift zombies start strolling in.”
He leaves no room for debate.
He leaves the room, drawing the curtains and switching off the light.
If Jack were even a modicum more brazen, he’d shamelessly have locked the doors, ensuring you can’t slip away to return to your duties. In the end, he doesn’t have to worry about catching you back out on the floor, as when he checks on you some time after five fifteen, Jack finds you curled into the bed, the ice pack now fully melted and discarded halfway down the foam mattress.
By the time he wakes you, the clock has long struck seven and Robby is breathing down his neck, urging him to open Exam Room 3 back up to actual patients and not just that nurse you like to ogle.
Something in your demeanour has shifted.
Quiet, slow, weighed-down. You don’t walk; you drag yourself to the lockers. Head turned to the floor, body pulled in on itself, voice soft as you bid people good morning and goodbye.
Jack follows in your footsteps, hovering in the periphery of your every move, from your locker out into the street.
You don’t acknowledge him, barely even look at him, yet you yield easily to the way he takes the weight of your bag off your shoulder, slipping it onto his own. And so he gives you your space, walks a few paces behind as you both inch along the path back home — your home.
A shiver forces him to break the silence.
It creeps down your spine, from top to bottom, and settles into your hands, a subtle shake that not even shoving them into the pockets of your coat can quell.
“Wait a second, would you, kid?”
Jack’s never fought so hard to keep his voice soft. Despite his efforts, you startle at the interrupted silence. When your feet pause on the concrete, it’s unclear if it’s because of his request or your shock.
Instead of dwelling on the thought for too long, Jack focuses on his self-assigned task, shrugging his bag off of one shoulder and manoeuvring it to lay against his chest, allowing him to observe the contents as his hand riffles through it. Digging way down past rolls of bandage, a tube of specialised moisturiser, a few odd pairs of compression socks, and various other miscellaneous wonders, his fingers finally happen upon what they’ve been seeking: hand warmers.
“Here,” he starts up, as he hastily rips a packet open and shakes the bag. “This should get the cold out your bones.”
Jack has always prided himself on his rationality. Controlled and composed, with eyes that have payed witness to more horrors than the heart can cope with, it is a rare — if not impossible — feat to catch him sporting a heart rate higher than seventy three.
Watching you envelop the warmer in both your palms, soothing out the shake brought on by early morning chills and the residue panic from your attack, he’s tachycardic.
Months of awaiting the rise of an opportunity — since that second time he walked you home and watched you attempt to hide your skin from the wind’s bite with the flimsy pockets of your coat — buying those hand warmers has at last payed off.
He’s not quite finished digging through his bag.
Untangling the ball that has become of his wired earphones, Jack awaits permission before slipping one bud into your ear, the other into his own. He plugs them into his phone, swipes along his catalogue of playlists, and hits play on the first one that catches his eye. Medicine in the form of music, doctor’s orders.
And just like that, you’re both on the move again. The silence between you now carries a soundtrack, a mixture of eighties rock and seventies funk marking the beat of each footstep. Jack no longer hovers a few paces behind, welcomed back to your side by the short string of wire dangling between you.
Halfway through The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, Jack catches himself entranced in the shape of your lips as they mouth along to each lyric, and it strikes him, then and there, that maybe a moment like this is what inspires a musician to write, to eulogise an emotion through the eternal art of music.
For a man who long ago stopped talking to any version of a god that may exist, walking along by your side, hands brushing occasionally, bodies drifting closer to each other’s orbit; it’s as close to heaven as Jack may ever get.
Jack doesn’t leave you at the entrance to your building.
He holds the heavy door open for you, follows you in. Learning quickly that you live on the third floor, he bites back a comment about how shaky the elevator is, enduring the ride up. Following as you weave through the hall, right down to the end, he keeps quiet as you pause outside a door.
For a moment, he thinks that you’re going to say goodbye. That you’re going to thank him for walking you home, again, even after he’s told you it’s no bother. That you’re going to fish out your keys and slip through the door, starting the countdown on the clock of when he’ll get to see you again, later tonight for another shift in the pitt.
What Abbot isn’t expecting is for you to turn to him, cheek already streaked by a rogue tear, with another dancing on your eyelashes and promising to follow soon.
You take a moment to find your voice, lips parting and delivering the promise of your voice, “I’ve never felt unsafe at work.”
He doesn’t answer immediately, wanting to let your words simmer.
You have other plans.
“But when he-” the crack in his heart echoes the one in your voice, lips trembling over silent vowels as you fail to speak.
Tears roll down like waves, crashing against your chin and dripping onto the neckline of your sweater. And all Jack can do is clench his fist, hold it close to his side as blunt nails tattoo their print into the flesh of his palm. He cannot risk letting his guard slip, risk acting on an impulse you might not welcome.
“I was scared.” You breathe out, like the words you utter are a grave sin, the weight of guilt at last ripped off your shoulders. “Which is stupid, I know. I was fine, it was just a- I shouldn’t of-”
“It’s not stupid,” he interrupts, daring to take a step closer, hands still glued to his sides. “You were attacked.”
Like hearing it spoken aloud clicks something into place, gravity kicks in and you finally come crashing down, waves of tears now aided by a storm of overwhelming emotions. Shoulders shaking, breath stilling, eyes landing on every inch of the hallway but the place he stands.
Jack is no stranger to stomach-churning sights.
He’s withstood the horrors of a war zone, watched bullets hit their marks and shrapnel claim countless victims — his leg, to name one. From the brutality of war to the chaos of an emergency department, he’s bit back the acrid burn of bile at the back of his throat; it comes with each life he fails to save. There are nights where he cannot count the dead on both hands, never mind one. He has reckoned with the missing piece of him, where empty space now occupies the flesh that once extended below his right knee. Perched upon a shower bench, or throbbing with a phantom ache, or soothing vaselines and creams into an angry red stump, Jack learned to endure the pain.
But this — you, breaking down before his eyes, barely a step between you both — brings on a pain like no other, something he can't quite describe.
Cracks are forming in his composure, a trait he wears like armour, threatening to spill onto the dirtied floors of the building's hallway. His fingers slip, no longer balled into fists but pressed flat against the top of his thighs, drumming a nervous rhythm into stained cargo. When Jack tries to clear his throat of the ball forming within, he nearly breaks out in a cough, choking on the comfort he longs to speak into existence.
You interrupt his collapse of self-control.
Two steps is all it takes for your forehead to kiss his shoulder. Dampness overcomes the grey fabric of his shirt, your tears staining it a darker shade. Jack freezes at first, hands unwilling to move beneath the growing fear of touching you wrong, scaring you off. Then, slowly, as the weight of you presses deeper into the crook of his neck, his arms find themselves taking full possession of you, fingers splaying up the length of your spine and pulling you tighter against him.
For a moment, the outside world holds no consequence. Jack is not an attending, you are not a nurse. There's no decade of time between the age of your bodies, nor a quiet though respectful history of admiration between you as coworkers. That acceleration of his heart is not a reason to panic but a reason to rejoice, no fear of any wicked woes from years gone by sneaking back up to remind Jack of troubles past.
No, none of that matters in this moment but you, Jack, and the syncopation of your breathing.
One of his hands finds your hair, equal parts warm as it is large when it cups the back of your head and smothers you closer into his pulse point. Suddenly he’s grateful he reached for the expensive cologne today.
Clearing his throat, Jack attempts to self soothe from the sharp pain in his chest that grows with every sniffle from you, “Fear doesn’t make you any less brave.”
Your reaction is delayed, barely acknowledging the fact he spoke at first, until you’re bursting into a fit of subdued giggles.
While laugher wasn’t exactly what he was aiming for, Jack can’t help but feel like he's succeeded at something.
“Who knew you could be so deep, Jack,” he wrestles with his body at your soft reply, willing himself to not imagine you mentioning deep and his name in a much racier setting, preferably splayed out on the navy of his bedsheets, hair a soft halo that further cements your image as an angel… An angel he wants to commit every carnal sin against.
You move too soon for Jack’s liking, who nearly clings onto your figure until logic kicks in and reminds him how pathetic of an image that would paint. There's a streak of colour down your cheeks, stains where tears have dragged away the subtlest hints of makeup, yet Jack swears he’s never seen you in a prettier light than this: beneath the cold, buzzing light of the hallway, stepping back from his arms with a look in your eyes far lighter than the one you sank into him with.
“Easy on the teasing, kid,” the nickname has never felt more like a lie, sour on the back of his tongue. The last thing Jack Abbot considers you is a kid. Younger? Of course, but nothing short of a woman, in shape and in mind. “I stole that quote from my therapist actually, I’ll have you know.”
Then, for reasons less related to muscle memory than he would dare to admit, Jack shoots a wink in your direction.
Goodbyes exchanged and apologies for wet shirts successfully curved, Jack lingers by your door until he hears you twist the lock shut behind you, a solid frame of wood bringing the abstract divide between you into the world of the tangible.
Right then, right there, still running on that same spike of adrenaline from when he first heard the horrid cries of code Hula Hoop, Jack Abbot is struck over the head with a horrific realisation.
One taste of you in his arms is not enough, and it never will be.
Jack needs more.
The fifth time is a matter of routine.
You’ve always been a fiend for structure; a creature of habit. Doctor Jefferson reckons it’s the perfect trait to balance out the chaos your field of work brings into your life — when you reiterate that explanation to Jack, him retying his laces for the third time in a row and you reshuffling the same stack of papers for a fifth time, the attending is quick to agree.
“Have you seen yourself eat a sandwich?” Jack’s defensive retort comes no sooner than a moment after your hand teasingly swats his shoulder. Unbeknownst to you, the sudden sway he gives has less to do with the force behind your hand, and everything to do with how your touch grips at his soul. “You’re the only person I know that takes the exact same order of bites, every time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” your protest is far from filtered through any seriousness, words that are soon followed by an amused snort. “No I do not!”
“Uh yes, you do,” back on his feet and standing straight, Jack’s gaze lowers to meet your own, sitting prudently at your desk and finding any measly task to occupy your hands for five more minutes, if only to continue giving your feet the break they need from running here, there, and everywhere. Force of his own habits, or perhaps a nervous tick, you watch as the attending occupies his hands with the shape of his stethoscope, two fists dangling from his neck as he curls his knuckles and tugs on the object.
With your apparent eating habit now dragged into the spotlight, Jack dismisses himself with nothing more than a cheeky lift of his lips, and a muttered Duty calls! as a set of EMTs come strolling in with a gurney.
The rest of your shift passes in a Jack-less blur, your eyes and ears too occupied as you trail next to Parker.
She had lay claim over you no more than seven minutes into your shift, face lighting up like a Christmas tree at the sight of you strolling out from the locker room, still rubbing the sleep from your eyes as your body familiarised itself with the shape of your scrubs. Without even so much as a hello, Ellis grasped a hand around your forearm and tugged you off towards triage, paying no mind to Jack’s questioning gaze as you both shot right past him. All she offered him was a, “Sorry, Abbot, your girl is mine for tonight.”
Abbot didn’t correct her.
Your girl.
Every part of your psyche is aware it’s a minuscule thing to get hung up on, to feel your stomach fluttering with an unknown anxiety each time you replay the scene; yet it happens all the same.
As you assist Dr Ellis, passing her a scalpel.
As you rip off dirtied gloves and replace them with a new pair.
As you stir sugar into your third coffee of the night, eyes staring blankly ahead while Ellis talks your ear off, venting about her recent misadventures in love.
“And then guess what she said!” Parker’s voice may as well be going in one ear and out the other, because you’re far from listening, eyes too busy following the shape of Abbot as he cuts down the length of a hallway, one of the younger residents glued to his side and pitching their newest case.
Has the casual dominance he wears like another layer of clothing always had this effect on you, firing off error warnings in your mind as you watch him steer his resident out the way of an oncoming gurney — a motion that reads as second nature, not even so much as a moment’s thought running through him before he’s executing the action.
Ellis snaps you out of it, fingers clicking in your face and blinking her back into focus.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Huh? What?” It’s torture not to let yourself get wrapped up in Jack again as he perches himself across from you both, elbows braced on the nurse’s station and arms straining at the seams of a navy top you swear is purposefully two sizes too small. “Yeah, of course I am.”
“Then guess what she said next,” despite the distrusting glint in her eye, Dr Ellis spares you the humiliation of telling you she caught you staring at her attending.
“Uh… That she’s not ready for a relationship, even though you met on a dating app?”
“Worse!” she exclaims, right as you notice Jack’s hazel gaze meet yours, intrigue practically dripping off his eyelashes with every involuntary blink. “I don’t date Virgos. I mean, can you believe that? The girl is navigating her love life by letting goddamn starry shapes guide her!”
“Hey,” you feign a face of offence, hand clasped your chest as though to shield your heart. “Some of us just like the comfort of fixed compatibility.”
You watch as the betrayal settles over Doctor Ellis, glazing over her already dead-pan stare with a look of pure judgement, “Et tu, brute? Go on then, shove your knife deeper, would you ever date a Virgo?”
“I don’t know. I guess? I’ve never really thought about what signs I wouldn’t date,” you pause, the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention as a strange sensation of being watched creeps over you. But as you look back over in Jack’s direction, you find him engrossed in his phone. A pitiful feeling dawns over you, baptising your heart with a hollow ache only disappointment can conjure. “Weirdly though, all my exes have been either a Pisces or Gemini. I don’t know what that says about me but-”
You finish on time, for once.
No last minute emergencies, no lingering to help Jack as he squeezes one last case into his already-finished shift, no letting your scrubs overstay their welcome; you pry them off like they are caught ablaze. And then you linger.
Hands occupy themselves with minuscule tasks, organising and rearranging the items in your locker; then unzipping your bag and going through each of your belongings. Eyes take the occasional peek towards the entries of the lockers, and ears perk up each time footsteps grow closer.
It’s only when Jack steps through the door at last, defeat written all over his face, that your mouth moves. First, stretching into a smile, and then forming a few words.
“Rough night?”
Relief ripples his features at the sound of your voice — like finding a streak of sunlight on a rainy day— bringing the tiniest spark of joy back into his sunken eyes, “Thought you’d have gone by now, kid.”
You waver, something about his question feeling accusatory, even if he delivers it in the gentlest of voices.
Why haven’t you left?
A troublesome cat, an unfinished box-set, and a bowl of leftover pasta sit in the confines of your apartment, practically begging you to race home back to them and delve yourself into comfort, that momentary pause to the chaos of the PTMC you struggle to find in the hours between shifts. A few months ago, you would already be a glass of wine deep and settling in for just one more episode of many, far from lingering like a bad scent amongst the lockers. But then again, a few months ago, the road home was a lonely one.
At what point did that seventeen minute walk become the highlight of your day?
Something warm meets your nostrils, dragging your attention across to where Jack now stands, spritzing his sweat-ridden neck with a few pumps of cologne. You don’t mean to notice the bottle has less than a quarter of its amber liquid left. You also don’t mean to reminisce on the first time you saw the bottle, clasped in Jack’s hands. The memory was one you thought would be singular, never once before having witnessed the older man groom himself after a shift.
Instead, it’s become his signature.
Clock out, hit the lockers, drown the stench of bleach with a warm musk, and then…
“Do you have any gum?”
You know this scene all too well, you almost get ahead of the script and answer before he even asks. Fortunately, you manage to play it cool, “Uh, let me check… Yes!”
Jack doesn't need to know that you didn’t really need to check.
And Jack definitely doesn’t need to know that you never used to carry gum, not until the first time he asked.
But does he need to move closer, that cloud of freshly sprayed cologne enveloping you in its arms, just to pluck the strip of gum from your outstretched hand?
Mint blankets over the notes of bergamot and black pepper, and Jack washes away the stale coating in his mouth, jaw wound tight as he crushes the white rubber beneath his molars.
He doesn’t inch away, retreat back to where he once stood. Instead, his hand finds your own, fingers bumping against yours and silently commanding you to relinquish control… Of the strap of your bag, of course, index and middle finger hooking beneath the padded fabric and slinging the bag over his own shoulder.
“You know,” you say, because you have to. If you don’t distract yourself with speech, you’ll drown in those hazel eyes, too close for comfort and, yet, nowhere near close enough. “You should really start bringing your own gum. Or a toothbrush, if you’re that scared of having a bad breath. What if I switch to day-shift, huh?”
Maybe Jack scoffs in disbelief, knowing there’s not a version of reality where you elect to work days. Or maybe the scoff is a way of downplaying his irritation at the thought, possessive over the sheer possibility of losing his girl to the likes of Robinavitch, hot-head extraordinaire with a touch of suicidal tendencies.
Whatever his reason, Jack is quick to mask the original expression on his face with an easy smile, one corner of his lips twisting upwards as he shrugs, “It’s less to do with not wanting a bad breath, more to do with the fact I like being in your debt.”
Frozen in shock, mouth slightly agape and brows furrowing, you barely register as Jack starts to make his way down the hall, snapping out your trance only as he calls your name.
Like a dog called to heel, you scurry off to join his side.
Jack stops informing you that he’s walking you home.
Without fail, every shift, he shows up, steals your gum, invades your space, and takes your baggage hostage, guiding you out of the ER with the ghost of his touch against your lowers back, steering you through the crowd of ailing folks and stopping you from diving in to help.
Conversation is no longer something the space between you demands, a comfortable silence settling in; the wind down of a hectic shift sound-tracked by the sound of a city waking up, the smack of your footsteps hitting the ground, and the occasional exchange of words.
Like today, as you pass by a unit under construction and Jack reads over the sign: a soon-to-open sushi restaurant.
“You ever been to Japan?” He asks, curiosity practically beaming from his eyes.
“Never. You?”
“Once, when I was young-” he hesitates, like he intended to add -er to the end of his word but decided against it. “Would you ever go?”
“To Japan?” He nods. “Yeah, maybe.”
His reply arrives like a confession, gentle and lacking the confidence you’ve come to associate with Jack, “I’ve been meaning to visit again.”
Silence keeps you both company the rest of the way, until your feet come to a halt outside your apartment block. Jack doesn’t intend to follow you to your door, not like the last time. Instead, he shrugs off your bag and helps you slip it over your own shoulder, using those large hands to scoop your hair up, rescuing you from the sharp sting of feeling the strap pull down on it.
Then Jack announces, just as lacking in confidence as the last time he spoke: “I’m not a Virgo.”
You stare at him, blinking slow, letting his words settle into the grooves of your brain and sink down until some part of you starts to make sense of them.
The more he speaks, the clearer it becomes what he’s attempting to say, “Or a Gemini. Not even a Pisces.”
Suddenly, those moments as you stood listening to Dr Ellis’ romantic woes, with the nurses station between you and Jack and fleeting glances snuck between nurse and attending, it all feels less innocent, less casual. More intentional.
Jack had been listening, hanging on to your every word as you entertained Parker and pretended to allow astrology to rule over the romance in your life.
“Just, thought I should let you know,” much to your dismay, Jack’s fleeing quicker than you can chase him, a sheepish smile overcoming his face and a hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. “In case you were ever wondering.”
Finally, there is the time where lines blur.
“Come on,” the tell-tale whine of a tipsy Trinity Santos rings out of your phone’s speaker, interrupting an intimate evening for three: you, your cat, and a cheesy horror movie, where the only thing scarier than the lacklustre VFX are the plot inconsistencies. “Even Crash- Ow! Sorry, I mean, even Vic is here!”
The last thing you want to do on your night off is to squeeze yourself into a pair of jeans and spend it in the presence of the exhausted day-shifters, four-drinks too deep for you to ever catch up, no matter how many shots you throw back.
Unfortunately for you, the only thing more convincing than Trinity’s pleading is Whitaker’s tipsy bellow of your name, followed promptly by, “I need a karaoke partner! Santos ditched me for Mel!”
It’s only with a groan that you agree, “Okay. Fine, yeah, whatever. I’ll come. But I’m having an early night! No seven am walks of drunken shame like last time!”
“Don’t worry meemaw, we’ll get you tucked into bed before three, latest,” Santos’ laugh rings down the line, the alcohol coursing through her veins amplifying the humour she already finds so easily in her own words. “Now hurry, the bar closes at eleven, then who knows where the night might take us!”
You enter the bar, already braced and ready for the impact of the Pittlings swarming you, like bees drawn to honey, a tangle of arms wrapping themselves around you. Only as Mel let’s you go — the last to do so — do you notice a figure you had not anticipated.
Dr Robby, sat in all his grumpy glory, greeting you with a tightlipped smile and a single wave of his hand. Before you can even open your mouth, ready to return the greeting, you take a step forward, heel landing in a puddle of spilled drinks, and nearly slip… only to find there’s a presence at your back.
Not touching you, but there; hovering, lingering. A buzz of energy trapped in the minimal space between the small of your back and the warmth of a hand.
“Careful, kid. There’s better ways to fall head over heels.”
Without even having to turn your head, you know it’s him.
You do so, anyway, and welcome in the sight of Jack Abbot clad in a pair of dark jeans, dark boots, and a white button up, sleeves rolled below his elbows and with the buttons undone enough to tease the way his collarbones sit dusted by freckles. Familiarity is in his scent, a cloud of his cologne settling into the atmosphere above your head, and the low lights of the bar catch on his pupils, reflecting warmth.
A million thoughts run through your head: how he’s no doubt come to keep Robby company, how the sleeves of his shirt are practically choking his biceps, how wrong it feels to see him surrounded by the Pittlings, how much of a relief it is to see him.
But all your mouth can manage is an unpleasant, “Why are you here?”
The table’s chatter comes to a pause, all eyes on you two as an exchange of chuckles, whistles, and even a soft ouch crawls its way out of Robby’s lips.
“No! Sorry, I-” hellbent on embarrassing yourself, it seems, you groan as your face dives into the safety of your palms, cheeks hot to the touch. “That’s not what I meant-”
Fingers seize your wrists in a gentle grasp, momentarily soothing over your rapid pulse point before they tug your hands away from your face, putting you back on display to the rest of the bar. All you see is Jack, in front of you, biting back laughter and fighting off a teasing grin.
“I know what you mean,” by the grace of something merciful, he lets go of you, sending your hands dropping back down to your sides. “I swapped with Shen. He needs my Sunday off.”
At the mercy of God, or the universe, Samira puts an end to your humiliation ritual and jumps out her seat, lacing her arm with yours, and drags you off in the direction of the bar, “Let’s get you a drink. Alcoholic, preferably!”
A half hour passes in the blink of an eye, clock striking ten and beginning the countdown to the bar’s closure. You down your first drink - a concoction of fruit juice, and syrup, and cheap liquor. The second is one you treat a little kinder, nursing your glass of vermouth and giving it the attention it deserves, each sip a chance to let the flavours melt into your tongue. By your third, the sweet feeling in your chest is enough to counter the bitterness of any drink, and so you move onto the cheap beer Trinity clings to like a lifeline.
Jack sits furthest from you, alternating between sophisticated sips of a bourbon and gulps from a beer bottle his hand engulfs entirely too easily. Despite the fact he sits knee-deep in conversation with Robby — who has spent most of his night complaining, no doubt, about a recent run-in with Gloria — while you lend an ear and a smile to Dennis as he pleads his case to you on why his friendship with a certain widow is perfectly innocent, the two of you orbit each other.
With eyes that wander, drawn from one side of the table to the other. At first, it’s bashful: whenever you catch him, Jack’s neck snaps his attention right back to his fellow attending. But as the drinks flow and time ticks on, it grows bolder, transitioning into a challenge; hazel eyes pinning your own into a staring contest as they watch you over the rim of his glass. You lose, conceding to whatever force draws your eyes down like magnets to the sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
With fingers that toy a line between distance and friction. When you reach for the handful of nuts at the centre of the table, Jack’s fingers meet your own in the bowl. The graze is minute, barely a whisper of contact between skin, yet it shakes you to the core. Familiar fingers meet your skin as Jack makes his way around the table, excusing himself with needing a trip to the bathroom. It’s as he passes you that he strikes, a teasing drum of fingertips against your shoulder — mimicking the call of someone searching for your attention — that has your head turning to the right, only to find no one there. By the time you catch onto the fact it was Jack, he’s standing in a queue for the toilets and offering you a challenging raise of his brows. What the challenge is, you don’t quite know yet.
You’re not given the chance to dwell on the thought, not when Santos slams an empty bottle down into the centre of the table and declares, “Time to find out all your dirty secrets. Truth or Drink!”
A chorus of groans echo from the surrounding party, yourself included… Yet you all entertain her all the same, no one daring to challenge her pointed stare as she spins the bottle.
It lands on Mel, whose excitement lasts all of the seven seconds it takes Trinity to dish up a question.
Have you ever tried to break up a marriage?
Mel drinks.
Victim #2, much to Trinity’s delight, is Javadi.
Javadi, who already is nose deep in her glass before a question can even hit the table, slamming her empty cup down onto the table with a sheepish smile.
“Dammit, I was gonna tell Mel to ask about Mateo,” comes Santos’ disappointment.
The younger girl is just as quick to reply, “Why do you think I drank?”
Poor Robby ends up roped into the game next, following in the footsteps of the previous players and drinking instead of answering Javadi’s interrogation, “Do you follow me on TikTok?”
It’s when Dennis takes a swig of his colourful cocktail that Samira groans, surprising the entirety of the table as she throws her head back and exclaims, “Oh my God, you people are so boring! All too chicken to answer!”
Jack seems to take that as a challenge, for when the bottle comes to a halt, neck pointed in his direction after Dennis spun it, his arms remain firmly crossed over his chest.
“Shit. Wow, okay,” the younger boy is startled, no question burning on the tip of his tongue for a man he barely knows. So he settles with something simple, something impersonal, something with no deeper intention behind it to humiliate the man: “When was the last time you lied?”
Jack doesn’t answer immediately.
No, he makes a show out of turning his wrist up to his eyes, squinting as they read of the dials and his face settles into an emotionless expression, “Like… an hour ago?”
Quick as a whippet, Trinity dives at the first chance to investigate, “Who did you lie to?”
“That’s a different question,” Jack fires right back, reaching for the empty bottle to spin.
For some reason, his eyes are pinned on you. Even as the bottle lands on Trinity, they linger on your frame, that same unknown challenge in his stare.
The bar spits you all out at four minutes past eleven, bodies spilling out into the street. It’s chaos, voices of strangers mingling in with those of your coworkers. You’re being tugged each and every other way, a million questions fired in your direction.
C’mon, don’t you agree we should go Downtown?
No, no! We have to head to Passion!
Ew, Passion sucks. Every surface is… sticky.
Can’t we just go anywhere that offers karaoke?
Poor, unsuspecting Dennis is left flinching back in shock as a unified bark of No! comes from all the girls, disgusted eyes burning him for so much as daring to suggest such a thing.
“Wherever you kids are going, it won’t be with her,” Jack, emboldened by the booze in his veins, finally lets that hand of his fully press against your lower back. Your head turns to find him already watching you, amused by your puzzled look. “You’re working tomorrow.”
“So are they!” You exclaim, hand pointing out to the crowd of Pittlings. “They have work sooner than I do!”
“And that’s Dr Robinavitch’s cross to bear. You, on the other hand,” a finger drags down the slope of your nose, taping against the tip as Doctor Abbot leans down to your ear, like you’ll suddenly lose the ability to hear him over the noise of the city streets. “You’re my problem.”
It’s hard to breathe; the night air too cold, too thick, too drenched in Jack’s cologne.
You know his reputation; you’ve been victim to it. Jack Abbot, shameless flirt, tongue always locked and loaded with a comment capable of shaking even the most stable of heartbeats. But this is different.
This is his hands on you, this is his voice claiming some form of ownership over you, this is his stare tearing through the fabrics of your being and embedding itself inside your chest, awakening a kind of warmth that even the hottest Pittsburgh summer day would envy.
“Boo!” It’s Victoria who cries out, cutting right through the budding tension between nurse and attending, one-too-few seconds away from blossoming into something far from the professionalism of colleagues. “You’re leaving already!?”
Your mouth opens, ready to answer.
Jack steals the words right out your mouth, “Yes. I think it’s about time we leave, don’t you agree?”
Spotlight pointed at you, he puts you on the spot for the entire group to watch how you fumble over a simple, “Uh, sure.”
The hand against your lower back sticks to you like a magnet the whole way home.
A journey longer than the one you usually stumble down with Jack by your side. It would have made more sense to hail a cab, any rational adult would recognise that, yet neither of you dare to suggest it. Crowds of drunken fools spill out from bars and invade the sidewalk — the kind of stumbling messes that activate a cynical part of you, wondering just how many of them will wind up in the care of your colleagues before the end of the night — Jack answers their invasion by drawing you closer, footsteps fading to the back of yours as he guides you to walk ahead of him, the burn of his hand reminding you that he’s there, that you’re safe, that no wave of foreign faces is going to sweep you up and drag you away.
Even as you make your way up the stairs to your apartment floor, elevator out of service, Jack lingers a few paces behind, watching your every move.
It’s as your fumbling around in your purse, fingers blindly rummaging through loose change and half-empty lip gloss tubes in search of the keys to your apartment, that Jack takes it upon himself to start spewing revelations.
“It was you,” he says, pauses and, when met with your questioning eyes, glancing back at him over your shoulder, clarifies. “The last time I lied, tonight. It was to you.”
A few seconds pass in silence, and then, “Oh.”
“Shen doesn’t need Sunday off.”
“Oh.”
“I knew you were off tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” he leans down, enters your orbit and invades you with the knowledge of how solid his chest feels pressed against your back, and how warm his breath feels, brushing against the shell of your ear as it mimics your repetitive exclaims of shock. “‘S that all you know how to say?” Before you can politely beg him to back up, for the sake of your sanity and your fraying willpower, hanging on by a single thread that seems more than eager to snap and unleash the burning in your loins upon the older man, Jack shuffles a few steps back and takes a deep breath — the kind that has his shirt straining against the growing width of his chest. “It’s not the first time I’ve lied to you.”
“Oh- Wait,” Cut off by your own confusion, you spin on your heel a little too quickly and stumble forward, hand inches away from rediscovering the meaning of balance against his chest. “What have you lied about?”
“There we go, finally using that pretty voice properly again,” if you had known this was what a tipsy Jack Abbot behaved like, you would have offered him a drink months ago. Especially with the way his cheeks sit blushing in red, a shy imagery to contradict the growing boldness in his words. “My car was never in the garage. I even drove it to work that day. But you wouldn’t accept Mateo’s offer for a lift, so I figured I’d need a real good excuse to walk you home.”
Clarity washes over you not in repeated waves, but in one single tsunami.
Overwhelming, a wall of emotions flooding over your being. You mentally retrace each step you’ve taken in his company. Each walk home, each careful conversation exchanged between you. Every cloud of worry that hovered overhead, convincing you of a reality where your presence and the act of accompanying you home is nothing but a burden to Jack Abbot, a simple kindness that’s gotten out of hand and now he does not know how to back out of.
But his words bend that reality, until it snaps in half and ceases to exist. Because here Jack is, telling you he orchestrated reasons to walk you home, excuses to linger in your presence after the night shift came to an end and patients are no longer a force that brings you into one another’s proximity.
Jack Abbot wants to be around you. So why on Earth would you part from him now, just because your finger had hooked itself around a keyring?
“Jack,” in the quiet of the hallway, his name echoes off your lips, uttered more intimately than ever before. “Do you want to come in for a drink?”
Your confidence is a case of easy come, easy go; dissipating before you can even wait for a proper reply from the man. Anxious thoughts dialled up and overloading, you turn back to face your front door, shakily shove the key into the door, and unlock something that feels a little more than just your apartment, a point of no return awaiting in it’s premises should Jack choose to accept your offer.
Walking in before Jack can speak, you get your answer with the gentle closing of the door behind you and the clearing of Jack’s throat, swallowing back what may just be a similar ball of emotion swelling within your own.
If you had anticipated Jack Abbot standing in your living room tonight, you would have at least attempted to tidy up.
Then again, if you had anticipated this, there’s other things you would have done differently… You would have made sure you actually had something to offer him to drink, for starters.
“Uh… I don’t have any beer,” you mutter, more to yourself than Jack, one hand holding the fridge door open and the other rummaging through the half-empty shelves, like you might somehow unveil a surprise bottle of anything-worth-drinking. “I can offer bourbon? Maybe? Or I’ve got leftover wine. Might have gone bad though. Shit, sorry, I really don’t have anything to offer.”
Closer than you anticipate, hovering by the entry to the kitchen, Jack rasps a careful, “Just you is fine. ‘S all I’m really here for.”
Like two opposing magnets drawn together by an unseen force, distance becomes null and void as eyes meet and you both inch closer, devouring the space between you with careful steps. Face to face at last with everything that has been brewing beneath the surface of your interactions, you barely squeeze out a whisper of his name before Jack claims your mouth as his prisoner.
Lips lock like shackles, trapping you in place against the older man. Hands find one another’s frames, his large palm staking claim over the back of your neck and tilting your face into the perfect angle for him to deepen the kiss, tongue teasing with a graze over your lower lip, the beginning of a chuckle bubbling in his chest as you answer his touch with a pitiful whine, before he finally licks into your mouth. Your own hands carve out a path for themselves, sliding over the expanse of his broad shoulders, curling around the tightness of his biceps, trailing down his waist to find the worn out leather of his belt, two finger hooking beneath and drawing his body closer — like any space still exists between you.
He lets you move him all the same, walking yourself backwards and dragging him along until your back hits whichever wall sits the closest. Any memory of the layout to the apartment you’ve spent the last five years living in has melted away in the heat of Jack’s mouth, kissing you like he has something to prove and this is the only chance he’ll ever get.
Squeezed flush against one another, no barrier but clothes sitting between, you feel the shape of him pressing into your hip and making you painfully aware of the fact Jack Abbot, the older attending you forced yourself to learn to observe quietly and cautiously from a safe distance, now has his semi-hard cock straining against you. That realisation must run through you too viscerally, for Jack’s soon tearing his mouth away from you.
“Shit- Sorry,” he just about gasps the apology out, lips incapable of drifting too far for too long, a smatter of kisses meeting the edge of your jaw as you feel Jack angle his hips away from you. “Been a while since I last-” He’s cut off by his own groan, reactionary to the weight of your hand landing atop the bulge of his jeans, palming at the length of him in hopes of finding out just how hard he can grow. “And I’ve just been thinking about this, ‘bout you for so long. Just-” greedy mouthed, even his desperate please for apology are interrupted by the drag of his tongue over your pulse point. “Ignore it, I’ll keep myself in check. Don’t wanna come on too strong, scare you off.”
It’s a bit late to retreat now, is what you want to say, with the way your thighs are squeezing together in search of any friction and the cotton of your panties sticks uncomfortably against your folds.
But Jack is blushing enough as it is, tips of his ears as red as you imagine his hair once was, face burning hot as he burrows it deeper in your neck. So you spare him some kindness and settle on the buckle of his belt, choosing direct action over teasing words.
A switch seems to flip at the brush of your fingers as you reach for Jack’s belt, attempt to dive beneath the waistband of his boxers. The older man stiffens against you, in more ways than one, head rising from your neck like a cobra enchanted by the notes of a flute. Thick fingers curl around your wrist, prying your hand from him gently yet accompanied by the disapproving tut only an authority figure could conjure, moments away from teaching you a lesson.
His chastisement isn’t vocal but physical, dragging your wrist up to his mouth and greeting it with the gentlest press of lips, right where your pulse recounts a soliloquy on the affect this man has on you, heart rate spiking. Jack lingers, face turning to brush the tip of his nose against your skin while his eyes slip shut, like he’s drowning himself in the fading notes of your perfume. Then, he jumps right back into action, manoeuvring both your arms above your head and pinning them against the wall.
“No one ever tell you to keep your hands to yourself, sweetheart?” No man’s condescension has ever sounded so appealing, so soft. A softness he pairs with the brush of fingers, his free hand tracing a path for itself down the length of your torso, catching on the waist of your jeans and lingering, only to continue its descent over the shape of your thigh. “‘S okay, I don’t mind being the one to teach you.”
“Doctor Abbot,” you breathe, something stirring in your bones the longer the man stares at you, eyes spilling secrets of every degenerate thought passing through his mind.
“Really?” Jack reclaims your skin with his mouth, teeth scraping over your clavicle before his tongue tastes your flesh, a slow drag of the wet muscle halfway up your neck. Your pulse, a bass drum thrumming against the restraints of your veins, brings him to a pause, luring him into peppering a series of chaste kisses over the spot. All the while, his hand is familiarising itself with the curve of your thigh, fingertips dragging over the seam of your jeans and following its journey north, inching towards your clothed core. “Still calling me that, even while I’ve got my hand between your thighs?”
Maybe the alcohol is clouding your judgement, eradicating any hint of the usual hesitation that has ruled over past encounters like these, leaving you shy and bashful, and far from the kind of person willing to rip their aching desire right out their chest and present it to it’s new owner, heart in hand and lust in eyes.
The unexpected confidence boost has your hips shamelessly rolling into the palm of Jack’s hand as he engulfs the expanse of your core. Breathing stalls as the inseam of your jeans brushes against your lace-covered clit, pulsing with anticipation of whatever the older man plans to do with you.
“You’re beautiful, y’know that?” It’s unfair, hearing such earnest words falling from his lips, a touch of breathlessness to further sweeten the desperation in his voice; all the while one hand tightens it’s grip on your fidgeting arms and the other, firm and steady, undoes the button of your jeans and begins drawing the zip down at an agonizing pace. “Dangerously so. Might have to file a complaint soon, tell the board how inappropriate it is of you to distract me with just a smile while we’re meant to be saving lives.”
A sigh, delicate as silk, robs you of the satisfaction of replying instantly, body too busy accustoming itself to the intrusion of his hand on your skin, explorative touches that dip beneath your waistband and drag slowly through your folds.
Stealing yourself and silencing the part of you that wants to melt into his hand and let him remould you into something new, you eventually manage an amused, “I can always change departments, Dr Abbot. They’re always looking for extra hands with the inpatients.”
“Do that, and I’ll drag you back, kicking and screaming, if I have to.”
Beneath your clothes, the tip of Jack’s middle finger has taken to dipping between the warmth of puffy lips, collecting a dollop of your liquid pleasure, and lathering it over the desperate nub of your clit in gentle circles. His movement is casual, careless, not a hair out of place or a shaking of nerves evident on the man in front of you. Just the hungry eyes of a man in control, ready to take his time tearing you apart bit by bit, in a way only he can put you back together after.
“Fucking soaked,” Jack’s comment feels aimed at his own ears, a passing acknowledgement of your state that you just so happen to hear as he brings a second finger up to lazily play with your clit, all the while the wet patch soaking into your panties grows, no doubt seeping through lace and staining denim. “‘S actually a little pathetic, kid. I’ve barely even touched her and she’s weeping for me.”
Heat burns at your cheeks, the foul nature of the words leaving his mouth bringing you to a confusing state of embarrassment mixed with the headiness of lust, clouding your better judgements and axing whatever part of your brain is in charge of overthinking, just in time to halt a spiral down into the dreaded pits of sleeping with a coworker, a man you’ll have to continue to see nearly everyday, for better or for worse — everything hinges on how tonight ends.
There’s no time to worry about the end when Jack is just beginning.
Those same fingers that teased at your clit dip lower, nestling themselves between your folds. As though shocked by your warmth, you feel more than hear the man groan into your neck, a half-bitten back string of curses parting from his pretty lips.
“Can I, sweetheart?” His plead for permission pulls you out of your body momentarily, mind drawn away as it attempts to recall the last time a man bothered himself with asking before taking. “Need to know how she feels, ‘s all. Can you let me do that, hmm? Let me fill her with my fingers? Promise I won’t ask for more, won’t push my luck. Christ, already know I’m pushing it now, thinking an old man like me has any business messing with a pretty thing like-”
“Yes, Jack!” Cutting off his rambling mouth, your hips keen into the tantalising drag of his fingers through your slit, a back-and-forth motion he’d spent his whole monologue performing idly, with an occasional torturous catch of his fingertips on your entrance, threatening to delve deep only for him to course-correct and set them back on the track up the length of your slit. “Please, God, just- Touch me.”
“Greedy girl,” he tuts, face winding it’s way out from your neck just for his hazel eyes to observe your face as he finally breaches his fingers past your entrance. “Am I not already touching you?”
Replies are lost to the kitchen air, breath knocked out your chest in one foul swoop as he burrows his fingers knuckle-deep. Your lips part, your eyes roll back, and you grind down against his hand, as if by some grace of god he’ll hit some place deeper inside, fingers already pressing against that spot inside you as Jack curls them towards himself, putting the come in come-hither.
The angle is awkward, movement hindered by the tight squeeze of your jeans around his wrist, yet Jack works through the strain, digits pulling out at a slow, agonising pace, only to slip back inside equally as slow. It’s like he’s making you savour the feeling, imbedding every ridge and wrinkle along his fingers and knuckles into your memory, so the next time you find yourself hot under the blanket and struggling to sleep at night, your own hand won’t bring you half the relief.
His fingers fall into a rhythm, a back and forth tease that sets your nerves ablaze and unravels a ball of desire you long ago tossed aside, four weeks into working at the Pitt and telling yourself that those pesky butterflies you felt every time a certain attending crossed your path were nothing but newbie nerves. Marking the tempo of his touch, the repeated squelch of your cunt being filled by his fingers rings out; the deeper he dives, the wetter you grow. Your moans follow along to his beat, a perpetual huff of half-formed whines and hitched breaths, echoes of pleasure that claw their way out your throat and shamelessly sing him a song of praise.
“Ah, ah,” Jack mimics you, hot breath brushing against the shell of your ear as he feeds your moans right back to you in a tone so condescending, you feel your toes curl. “‘S that all you know how to say?”
Those same words and that same mocking tone from the hall have your skin crawling with need. A need to press yourself closer, until all your frayed edges tangles themselves in Jack. A need to fight against the hold of his hand, wrists squirming and fighting for release in hopes of winding your arms around his broad shoulders. A need to give in to the overwhelm, dive head first into the waves of desire that roll over you… So you do.
Jaw slack, toes curled, head thrown back. An orgasm crashes into you with the force of an ocean, sweeping you under and flooding the palm of Jack’s hand with the sticky sweet evidence of how good he’s making you feel.
His fingers fuck you through the experience, lazily curling and stroking the fire, drawing out your pleasure for as long as your body allows him, until a dry sob racks through your chest and tears dance along your lash line, head shaking as you protest the overstimulation.
The retreat of both Jack’s hands, slipping from the waistband of your jeans and relinquishing the grip on your wrists, it does not grant your poor heart respite, a chance to calm the beating it’s delivering against your chest. Instead, he doubles the speed, raising the fingers stained in your own slick and brushing the tips against your lower lip.
“Say ah,” not a question, a demand. Jack is an expert at ordering you around in a manner soft enough, confident enough to have your head reeling and will bending to his every wish.
Under the effect of his darkened gaze and the intoxicating scent of his cologne mixing with the beer on his breath, how can you do anything but let your mouth fall open?
Your first thought is disbelief, running cold down your spine at the unexpected sweetness that coats your tongue; sweetness that melts into a sharp tanginess, giving way to a thirst like no other, glands going into overdrive and wetting your palate. Drunk on yourself, you let your eyes slip shut and your lips wrap around the stretch of Jack’s fingers, a pleased hum bubbling up your throat as his digits apply the slightest of pressure against your tongue, testing the waters of your gag reflex as he slowly pushes himself deeper in your mouth, soaking himself in your spit.
“That’s it, pretty girl,” Jack’s spare hand has found its way down to your waist, slipping over the slopes of your curves and perching itself atop your hip, where he delivers a firm squeeze. “Made a real mess of my hand, ‘s only right you clean it up.”
By the time Jack pulls his hand back, a string of saliva connects his fingers to your lips and a craving is reawakening between your thighs. Afraid to fracture the fragile atmosphere between you and the attending, you choose to lead with action again, one hand grappling at the buckle of his belt while the other begins to hastily drag your jeans down the swell of your ass, skin-tight fabric stubbornly refusing to give way and grant you the freedom of air against your legs.
You only make it so far, barely managing to pry apart his belt when Jack intercepts your desperate touching, hands reclaiming possession over your own and shooing them away. With a pause for consideration, the mental cogs visibly turning behind his eyes, you watch as the attending descends the path of your body, peeling down your jeans along the way. A hiss is bitten back as he bends his knees, one foot planted firmly on the ground the other — his right knee — kissing into the kitchen floor, prosthetic calf laid behind him.
It’s the brush of a breath against your thigh that has you lurching back into your body, ignoring the worried nagging voice that wants to drag him off his knees for the sake of his health and comfort… and instead focusing on the part that wants him off his knees for a far more selfish reason.
“Jack,” your attempt at protesting is pathetic, a well-intended firm call of his name fracturing midway and collapsing into a whine as the man takes to laving his tongue up the expanse of your inner thigh, inching dangerously close to where you can feel your centre throbbing, crying out for him in morse code, desperate for the simplest of touches so long as the one delivering it is the older man currently kneeling on your kitchen floor.
Fingers wind in greying curls, the faintest burn of auburn and copper tickling against your knuckles. You attempt a tug, gentle enough to do no harm yet firm enough to get the point across of what you want: Jack, up and on his feet.
The man does not take the hint, instead he inches further up your leg, nose nuzzling against your mound. Blood rushes in every direction as you witness him pull in a sharp inhale, flooding himself with the intoxicating scent of your would-be pheromones.
“I want to taste you,” he says it with a fire behind his eyes, words impassioned by an animalistic desire; any woman would be mad to not throw herself at him, plead him to take anything and everything from her, however he should please.
Which makes the confusion burning his features more than understandable as he takes in your shaking head and your gentle mutters of no, followed swiftly by, “I need you to fuck me, Jack.”
Hands seek purchase on your hips, grip squeezing a little tighter as he steadies his prosthetic back onto the floor and brings himself back to his standing height. You can see the hesitation, in his eyes and in his fingers, as he slowly continues the undoing of his belt, slow and calculated movements that drag cracked leather free and loosen the clutch his jeans have around his waist.
“Who knew the Pitt’s sweetest nurse could be so demanding?” he muses, like joking might distract you from the cloud of doubt that has so visibly rolled in and settled above you both.
You entertain him, even if only for a moment, “Only when I don’t get what I want. Are you gonna deny me, Jack?”
“So you’re a brat,” bypassing your question, Jack drags the zipper of his pants down and leans his face in, lips brushing against your own with the ghost of a kiss. “Noted.”
His kisses paint a pretty picture of distraction, peppering affection over inches of skin that had spent so long being neglected, you’d nearly forgotten they existed. Over the swells of cheeks, down the slope of a throat, onto the point of a shoulder and back up to the shells of an ear. While your heart wants to sink into the feeling, fall back and let him lather you in every mouthful of affection he can sear against your burning skin, your brain takes the reins of the situation and forces your hands onto his shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” Direct and to the point, you avoid the time-waste of skirting around the subject and confront the change in his demeanour head-on, the sudden hesitancy. A sense of panic licks up your spine, filling your mind with thoughts of Jack regretting having started this, crossing over the safe lines of coworker and marching across into trickier territory. “If you don’t want- I’d understand, okay? If you say it was just the heat of the moment, and the beer, and that you no longer want-”
“What? Baby, I promise this is anything but- Fuck,” Jack practically collapses into the groan that tears out of him, hand falling over his face and pressing into the corners of his eyes as he struggles to get the words out fast enough, a soul-crushing need to put an end to the rejected twinkle in your eyes as you offer him a gentle smile, the kind offered by politeness instead of happiness. Jack hates it on you. “I don’t know how to explain without sounding conceited.”
“Oh-kay,” your confused exclaim melts into acceptance, though your eyes remain sceptical as they trail over the attending’s face, awaiting further explanation. When it doesn’t come, your eyebrows jump, a visual nudge that has Jack finally spilling confessions all over your kitchen floor.
“I’m… Big.”
And cue the laughing track.
Watching as the tips of his ears bleed a bright red, you bite back and swallow down a comment about how his height is a little over average at best. Because when a puppy-eyed Jack Abbot warns you of his size in a manner that implies real danger, the last thing you should do is turn his panic into a joke.
“How big?”
“I don’t know-” Then he cuts himself off, like reality has struck him over the head and he remembers he is, in fact, a medical professional and, though he may never have measured his own endowment, surely he can guesstimate. “Maybe like eight. Inches, I mean. And, um…” what a thrill to see Jack reduced to a mumbling mess, a man so usually consumed by his flirty nature, a charm so potent that it pours off him in rivers, soaking all who wind up in his vicinity. Yet here he stands, barely enough space for a deep breath between you, shyly detailing the heat he’s packing beneath the waistband of his trousers. “I’m- I mean it’s pretty thick, too.”
Silence haunts the space between you.
A sick satisfaction pools in your loins, knowledge renewed on the fact you’re bare from the waist down yet all the power seems to sit in the palm of your hand in this moment, Jack’s fate hanging in the balance of however you choose to react to his assumed shameful confession.
So when all you offer is cocked head and a tongue poking against the inside of your cheek, Jack just about falters into insecurity, seeking validation before you even have time to utter a word.
“I’m not bragging. Or, you know, talking myself up. It’s just- I don’t want to hurt you, or to-”
“Take it out.”
His neck practically snaps as his gaze flies from the floor to your eyes, hazel rings that grown thinner under the enlarging of his pupils, lust bleeding into his stare as he managed a careful, “What?”
“This big dick of yours,” emphasis to your words, you finally let yourself look down and catch sight of him, firm and heavy beneath the confines of dark blue denim. The view of his bulge alone is enough to have your mouth watering, but you can’t let it slip, not when your grip on the reins is finally secured. “Let me see it, Doctor Abbot.”
The switch is instant.
Bashfulness melts away and the cloud of doubt is blown away as a cockiness overcomes Jack’s features, face splitting into a shit-eating grin. Fingers work fast this time, dipping beneath the elastic of his boxers and granting his cock freedom at long last.
No trace of a lie in his words; Jack is big. Uncut, with a rosie red tip that’s already made itself known, glistening with the rogue drops of precum that smear the mushroomed head. At the base sits a bush of hair, groomed enough to show you he cares enough to trim it yet overgrown enough to tell you it’s been a few weeks, silver locks threaded through a valley of dark auburn. Freckles dust his skin in subtle specs, while a vein draws a colourful line up the length of him.
You can practically feel yourself throbbing, calling out for him with each moment that passes, your eyes glued to the phallic shape. Jack, evil incarnate, has the gall to lick a stripe up his palm, hand wrapping around himself and daring to give a slow pump.
“I’m gonna need you to stop looking at me like that,” Jack cuts himself off with a hiss, teeth taking his bottom lip hostage as a chuckle rustles out from the depth of his chest. In that moment, you swear nothing has ever been more attractive than the gentle disapproving shake of his head as he rakes his stare down the shape of you, eyes clinging to where your thighs sit squeezed together, stealing any amount of friction you can find. “‘Else I might cum all over myself like some desperate college kid.”
You reach your hand out, searching for traction and finding it in the belt loop of his trousers, still clinging to his tree-trunk thighs. And thank god for that, for it allows you to tug the man closer, chest to chest, knuckles brushing over the hood of your clit as he works his hand over his cock one last time.
“Then give me a reason to stop looking, Doctor Abbot,” swallowing back any lingering shame or shyness a less hornier version of yourself possesses, you curl a hand over the top of his and stare into pools of hazel as you speak, “Don’t you want to make my eyes roll back?”
Never has a man looked so eager to part your legs, the skin of his knuckles burning white as he takes a hand to the back of one of your knees and hooks it over his waist. Left with no choice but to keep your thighs spread, you indulge yourself by glancing down at the view. Visual sin, erotica live in emotion, Jack guides the blushing tip of his cock up the length of your cunt, soaking himself in your arousal. A mutual gasp echoes out into the kitchen on his second swipe, head catching on your entrance only to be denied easy access, hips rolling only to watch himself press against your clit.
“Don’t care if it hurts,” bordering on lost in lust, you barely register the words as your mouth moves. Jack, on the other hand, clings to every syllable, awaiting whatever salvation they promise to bring him. “Just wanna feel you, Jack. All of you, please.”
“Shh, shh,” his hushing is full of mockery, like the last thing he really wants is to silence the desperate plea in your voice. He does so, unintentionally, by finally lining himself up with your entrance. “Don’t need to beg, baby. I’m gonna give it to you, all of it. Just be sure to cry real pretty for me if it gets too much.”
Something animalistic comes over you as Jack feeds the first inch into your cunt.
The burn is there, the stretch of long-unused walls remoulding themselves around the shape of Jack. But any pain is sweet, the kind that tickles at your nerves and has your heart speeding up, adrenaline activated and intoxicating your bloodstream.
Jack, conscious of the crease between your brows, is tentative, careful. He gives a barely-there thrust, letting himself inch just a little deeper into the pulsing warmth of your pussy. There’s a vein across his forehead that makes itself known, the force of his concentration paired with an accelerating heart rate drawing it to front and centre stage of his face. All it does is make you want him more, deeper, quicker.
Words cease to serve any purpose as the two of you give in to the physical, hands that grasp and pull and anchor themselves atop one another’s skin. You think you breathe some version of his name, but the letters are knocked out of you as your fingers tangle themselves in grey curls and, in the blink of an eye, Jack’s pelvis sits flush against your own, cock buried right to the deep hilt and face collapsed into your own, foreheads exchanging sweat as his temple kisses against yours.
A pitiful whine claws its way from you, suddenly painfully aware of how well Jack fills you, stuffed to the brim in a way no man before has quite achieved. You feel him in your cunt, in your guts, in your lungs with every shaky breath you pull; you are drunk on the attending and the feeling of his cock pulsing deep within your gummy walls.
“Sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” apologies are overflowing from the fountain of Jack’s mouth, brushing against your cheek in tiny puffs of breath as the older man blesses you with a whimper so pathetic you nearly come undone right then and there, cunt ready to spill all over his throbbing cock. “Didn’t mean to- shit. Wanted to take it slow, ease him in, but god… You’re just so tight. And warm, and- Ahh! And your nails, they- they scrapped against my scalp and you were tugging on my hair and I couldn’t help it, baby.”
How can you even contest or complain, when you feel like a live wire, thrumming with a deadly kind of energy that threatens to burn everything and anything that touches you and isn’t Jack Abbot?
His hips rock back slightly, only for him to fuck back into you, tip to cervix. The leg hooked around his waist tightens around him, holding Jack as close to you as possible. The scene between you plays out with an intensity one could cut with a knife.
Slow and shallow rolls of hips, punctuating each shaken breath you pull and forcing the air out of you in pitiful whines and moans, songs of praise for Jack's viewing pleasure.
Foreheads together, breaths mingling until it’s hard to tell where your exhale stops and his inhale starts. Both nurse and attending, junior and senior, woman and man; whatever title you and Jack may be addressed by, you’re equal measures of the same mess, staining one another with nails that scrape over freckled skin and five o’clock shadows that burn at cheeks.
“Look at you,” Jack marvels, one hand scooping up to cup your face and remind you of how big his hands look — hands you spent weeks wishing would reach for yours during quiet walks home. Yet now one cradles you while the other grips at your body, tilts your hips at angle that drives him just that little bit deeper. “Taking it like a good girl, no whining or complaining that it hurts.”
What really hurts is that he is still moving at an agonisingly slow pace, torturous drags of his thick length along your walls. If you weren’t speechless under effects of his ministrations, you’d maybe find the ability to tell him this.
“You’re just grateful to have something to fill this pussy, huh?” Something catches in Jack’s throat, a fractured groan that raises a sudden alarm. It feels different to previous ones, born from somewhere deeper, more painful in his chest. “If I knew you’d be do eager, I wouldn't have waited this long to come inside.”
You stomach three more measured rolls of Jack’s hips before you cave into the anxious feeling hollowing your pleasure, the wince on his face having grown deeper and more concerning.
All it take is a hand to his shoulder and a barely formed Jack, wait, for the man to tear himself off you, putting immediate distance between you despite the hand that remains on your face, holding it steady as his gaze sweeps over you in search of evidence of your well-being.
“What’s wrong, kid?” Just like that, you watch him slip back into the practised role of a caretaker, Dr Abbot taking centre stage and relegating Jack, the man keen on seeing you come undone at his touch, to the wings. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, I told you- Warned you, baby.”
His rambling would be endearing, if you weren't aware of the sudden empty feeling of your cunt clenching at nothing and, worse, the bitten-back wince of pain that pronounces itself across his face as he shifts weight from one foot onto the other.
So you take matters into your own hands to silence his spiralling mind.
Literally into your hand, fingers wrapping themselves around the thick swell of his cock, standing at attention and smearing the evidence of your lust over Jack’s lower abdomen. The reaction is instant: hips bucking into your touch in a stuttered thrust, mouth falling agape and silent as you envelop him in your gentle touch.
“You didn’t hurt me,” quite the opposite, the tight fit of his dick bordering on nothing short of heaven. “But you’re hurting yourself.”
Before Jack can demand a much earned explanation, you trade his cock for one of his hands, threading yourself to him and enduring he can’t let go as you begin guiding him to your bedroom, the gentle jingle of his loose belt slapping against his thigh announcing each step he takes.
Lit only by the silver light of moon, you turn to him as you reach your humble queen size bed and try your hand at that stern yet caring look Jack has mastered — the look that’s held your heart hostage since you first witnessed it directed at you.
“Your leg. It’s hurting,” now you wish you had opted for switching on a light, because you swear you see the subtlest hint of a blush taking over Jack’s cheeks, guilty and caught when he thought he was doing such a good job to mask the dull ache of his limb. “Take it off, Jack. Or at least let yourself rest on the bed, let me do the work.”
Your silver fox puts up little fight, mouth opening and swiftly closing before any empty protest can flee. The mattress squeaks beneath his weight as Jack sits down on the edge, both legs bent at the knee and feet planted on the floor — he makes a conscious effort to keep his boots from touching the small carpet that runs along your bedside, unwilling to taint the cream coloured fur.
As he hunches over, hands peeling back the leg of his trouser to expose the sight of his faux-calf, a fragile quiet befalls you both. You watch entranced as he removes the prosthetic, a practised ritual he performs with the ease of a man who long ago came to terms with the cards that were handed to him. Freed at last, unwinding a strip of bandage from the stump, Jack takes to removing his clothes next, while you take to filing away his previous movements into a part of your mind labelled later, a future in the shape of a question mark, the possibility of some day needing to remove it for him.
There is something decidedly cruel about the sight of Jack Abbot sitting at the edge of your bed, completely undressed and pinning you beneath his stare as his hands now occupy themselves with more nefarious actions, one gripping at his cock and indulging himself in a languid stroke while the other takes claim of the bottom of your shirt, balling the fabric up in a fist as he tugs you close so abruptly, it’s only natural that you slip and tumble into his naked lap.
An awkward repositioning is punctuated by your own nervous laughter, a shy giggle making itself known as you straddle the doctor, the hand between his legs now teasing at your core, dipping into your honeypot just to soak himself in your sweetness before diverting his attention to your clit, pointer and middle finger rubbing an agonisingly slow circle over the nub.
“You’re gorgeous,” Jack whispers, honesty rolling off him in waves as his eyes ravage the newly exposed sight of your naked chest, t-shirt and bra tossed behind you in the blind chaos of falling into Jack. “You know that, right?”
There is urgency in his voice, like his worldview might just collapse if you tell him otherwise, and the desperation is enough to have you giggling all over again, a noise that quickly is intercepted by a gasp, eyes slipping shut as the man welcomes himself to the taste of your flesh, mouth swooping forward to take the right nipple between his lips, “You might have mentioned it before.”
“Then let me mention it again,” mumbled into your chest, he marks the sentence with a kiss to the opposite nipple, “And again,” the next kiss lands back on your right nipple. “And again.”
Both of you groan at the other’s ministrations, your hand threaded back in the silver locks of his hair and tugging at them just sharp enough to have Jack’s hips rutting up into you, bodies searching for the sweet release of friction yet neither of you rushing to give in as you slowly wade into the depths of lust, grinding desperately against one another like a pair of inexperienced college students.
“Jack,” you breathe his name, hand tilting his head back from your chest and granting you the freedom to plant your mouth against him, tongue dipping into the cavern of his mouth, the taste of beer and bourbon still on his lips.
“Hmm,” Jack hums, hand cradling your cheek.
Between you, tensions rise as your folds spread around his cock, rubbing up the length of him as he rocks himself against you.
“Are you going to fuck me,” is all he lets you get out before he drags you in for another kiss. “Or are we going to sit like this all night?”
“I don’t know, feels pretty good to me,” he’s teasing you, enjoying the sight of you growing more and more dishevelled by your own carnal needs, your nails digging into his freckled shoulders. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Sighing with nothing but sexual frustration, you recapture those earlier reins and slip your hand between you both, grabbing at Jack’s cock and lining it up at your entrance, thigh muscles burning as you hover, “Well I would.”
You sink down onto him slowly, eyes incapable of resisting the urge to roll to the back of your skull as you feel that sweet familiar burn of him stretching your walls.
Jack is speechless, but far from quiet, mouth open and singing you the prettiest songs of guttural praise. His hands are on your hips, gripping you in a way that threatens to bruise, all the while you are savouring the flush press of your bodies, your soaked folds kissing the base of his cock with a creamy ring.
When you finally begin to move, a careful raise of hips, you condemn both of you to a world polluted by lust, and pleasure, and the aching need to keep stimulating friction.
The rhythm comes naturally, a slow build-up of you fucking yourself down onto him, stuffing your cunt full to the brim. Jack has given in, handed himself over to you for you to use how you please, while his hands rake over every sliver of skin they can reach. Smoothing over your thighs, grabbing at your waist, pinching at your hard nipples, guiding your mouth down to meet his, a kiss that is more an exchange of breaths than a battle of lips.
A symphony composed entirely of sin, the darkness of your bedroom is set ablaze by the wet slap of skin meeting skin, a squelch punctuating each time he fills your cunt and a new wave of your arousal drips down his thighs and stains your bedsheets.
“This fucking pussy,” Jack speaks like you have personally wounded him, your forehead meeting his shoulder as you let out a squeak, the hands on your waist no longer sitting idle but now guiding you, bouncing you down to meet the upward rut of his hips. “‘S so tight, and warm, and perfect. You’re perfect, letting me stretch this little hole. Taking all of me.”
“Love it, Jack,” You’re babbling into his shoulder, mind turning to unusable mush the faster Jack slams you down on him.
“Love what, kid?”
“Your cock.”
“Yeah?” Oh, the smugness in his voice should be illegal, but you have only yourself to blame. “Who knew my pretty nurse was so good at taking dick. Can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me all this time.”
A chord is winding inside you, drawing tighter and tighter as Jack continues to bounce you down on his cock, pausing every few thrusts to let you savour the full stretch, grinding up and biting back laughter as you greet him with the whites of your eyes.
“Holding- ahh! Out?” Your walls flutter around him as you feel yourself closer to the edge of an orgasm.
“Yeah, sweetheart, holding out,” a kiss lands on the side of your head, as though Jack is incapable of not showering you in as much physical affection as possible. “Ignoring all my flirting, never giving me a sign that you want me just as much as I want you.”
“Flirting?!” Head out from his shoulders, you gaze down at him in disbelief, refusing to take the blame for why it has taken so many months for the pair of your to wind up here, naked and desperate and staining your sheets together. “How was I supposed to know? You flirt with everyone- Jack!”
His name is more shriek than moan, tearing out of you as his fingers press themselves to your clit and send you head-first into an orgasm.
Jack fucks you through it, slower rolls of his hips stretching out your state of euphoria and granting him a longer view of your mouth spewing profanities and your eyes rolling back and your hips bucking atop him, both fleeing from and feeding into his touch.
A sudden bang interrupts the scene, cutting your bliss short and forcing you to swallow back a moan.
Frozen in place, fingers to your clit and cock half-way buried inside, Jack’s wide-eyed gaze watches you with a questioning glance. Silence isn’t given the chance to settle fully between you, as soon another sound — from the same direction as the bang — echoes through your bedroom.
“Hey! Keep it down, some of us are trying to sleep.”
Jack is the first to react, laughter shaking his shoulders. His head tilts back, disbelief gripping him in its clutches. Collapsing back onto your bed, he drags you down with him, sweaty chest pressing to sweaty chest. You follow him into laughter too, your own muted chuckles spilling into his neck as you shyly bury your face away, mortified by the thought of one of your neighbours hearing you and Jack.
Apparently, it has the opposite affect on him.
Because instead of crippling mortification, Jack has already begun rutting back into you, shallow thrusts that he somehow manages to deliver, despite the fact his cock already fills you to the brim. Nerves aflame from a ruined orgasm, your body is quick to submit to him, hips tilting to welcome him deeper, back arching into his body. But the moment your lips dare to part, a chastisement is quick to follow, a disapproving tut coming from the man beneath you.
“Shh,” despite his hushing, he makes no attempt to slow his thrusts, the very cause of your fracturing sanity, mouth no longer in control of the noises you let out. Neighbours be damned, you would happily dare any of them to feel the sweet release of Jack stretching them out and not turn into raving banshees. Well, not quite so happily, for you are very quickly growing not only fond but possessive of the attending. “I know, kid, I know. Feels good, right? So good you just wanna scream, don’t even care if someone hears?”
Whether you realise it or not, you nod along to his mockery, desperate please for more, please, just like that, Jack proving his point perfectly: you don’t care.
The only thing you can do is feel him, all of him.
“That’s it, let it out,” he croons, faux sympathy in his voice while he cups your face and swipes away at a tear, the overwhelm of feeling so full and so close to cumming for a third time finally getting the better of you. Tear gone, the hand on your cheek drifts down to cover your mouth, smothering you into silence, muffling the shriek you let out as his hips grow sloppy, desperate, fucking you deeper, harder, faster each time, his own orgasm creeping over the horizon. “I’ll take you to my place next time. ‘S a detached bungalow, can be as loud as you need to be. And, god, I plan on giving you reasons to be loud, put you in every possible position, make you cum so many times you lose count.”
Every moan and groan and whine of his name that leaves you is muffled by the heavy palm of his hand… Which turns out to be a blessing in disguise when a third and final orgasm collides, head first, right into you, leaving you a mess. As you writhe and wriggle, one of the muscles in your calf cramping as your toes curl and your body pulls itself taut, Jack is fighting his own personal battle, hips stilled and limiting the friction as much as possible while you fall apart atop him.
Fingers tangled in his hair, face engulfed by his heavy hand, thighs squeezing around his hips; the image of you cumming is the kind that pushes a man to pick up a paint brush, all in the hopes of memorialising the art in motion onto canvas. Jack can barely focus on you, however, eyes squeezing shut as he steadies his breathing and struggles to hold back a flood.
“‘M gonna cum, baby,” Jack strains out, pulse near visible along his jugular as his heart rate shifts into overdrive. “Need you to lift these pretty hips off me or else- ahh!”
The whimper you pull from him is damn near heartbreaking, right from the gut and full of a fractured sincerity. Unwilling to so much as let him finish any thought of pulling out, never mind his sentence, you’ve staked your claim, shook your head, and cemented yourself flush atop him, cock stuffed to the brim and left no choice but to spill into the pulsing heat of your walls.
Hot, thick ropes of Jack’s cum flood your pussy, painting a pearly white mess inside of you. Overflowing and with nowhere else to run, you feel the unmistakable stickiness of his cum, now mixed with your own orgasmic bliss, leaking out of you and staining both your skins in the act. Breathless and minds drifting far away from the physical plane, you crash down atop Jack, overstimulated and overspent, and drift into the comfort of his arms enveloping you, holding your sweaty figure against his own in an embrace that says stay without uttering a single syllable.
Frozen in time, the pair of you remain glued to one another. Your breathing falls in sync, each rise of his chest matching perfectly with your exhale, and a gentle rocking remains between your bodies, an invisible stream of desire that ebbs and flows, manipulating Jack into rocking up into you and teasing you into grinding down to meet his movements, in spite of the teeth clenching sensitivity tingling at your skin.
You are the first to move, a careful rise from his chest. Already softened within you, his cock slips out of you and you pull a breath in through a grimace. The muscles in your thighs have turned to mush, more unstable than jelly, and so it is nothing short of a miracle to feel Jack’s steady touch settle itself on your hips, hands supporting the dead-weight of your lax body and guiding you to hover over his lower abdomen. You quickly realise he has less than pure intentions, as you watch satisfaction creep back into his pupils when a string of his cum dribbles out from your cunt and drips down onto his skin.
Admiring the picture you paint over his lower stomach, Jack has the nerve to mock the tired whine he coaxes from you as fingers swipe through the white mess and slip between your folds, feeding his spend right back into your walls.
Back hitting the mattress before you can protest, you struggle over a gasp and a barely stringed together sentence while the attending slips down the length of your body, pausing only when his head reaches your thighs.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Jack, with reflexes quick enough to match his wit, intercepts your legs before they can crush his head between them, your hips bucking and your heart unsure whether you are trying to chase after or run from the teasing stripe he licks up your cunt. “You cleaned your mess, now let me clean mine.”
Your heads hit the pillow as the Sun hits the horizon.
By nine, birds chirp by the windowsill and sunlight cuts through the sliver in your curtains, forcing your half-asleep form to retreat into the safety of Jack’s chest. He answers your cry for help instantly, arms pulling tighter around your waist as he continues to venture through a land of dreams, lips parted in the softest snore.
By noon, the city is awake. Cars honk their horns, voices fill the streets, doors slam from floors above and below. But in your apartment, not a creature stirs, bodies clinging to one another and sleep with equal fervour. If you drift left, Jack soon follows. If Jack flips onto his front, your palm is quick to flatten itself over his back. Magnets connected by an unseen force, the pair of you toss and turn beneath wrinkled bedsheets.
By four, the bathroom mirror is fogged. You are a nervous wreck contained behind the nervous smile of someone who is trying their best to be supportive despite the shampoo stinging at your eyes and the grown man you are supporting against your frame. Unwilling to let you drag one of your leather dining chairs into the cubicle, Jack had insisted he would be fine to shower standing, so long as you kept him company.
By six, your apartment is empty. Clad in the familiar shapeless clothing that is sure to keep you comfortable throughout your shift, you’re struggling to find the right time to ask Jack to hand you your bag back, too used to his habit of prying it out your hands to even notice he had done so as you both departed from your front door. No choice but to throw on last nights clothing, Jack is silent at your back, one arm pulling you against him as yet another neighbour slips into the confines of the elevator — freshly fixed yet sending a shiver down your spine with each shake it gives in its descent down to the ground floor.
By some miracle, you make it out onto the street.
Which maybe, now that the fresh air hits your cheek, you are beginning to lament. Because this is it, the point of no return; where you go one way and Jack will go the other, trailing home to enjoy the rest of his night off while you no doubt will spend your entire shift dreading where the events that transpired between you — the stolen kisses, the lustful whines, the rolling hips — leave you both standing.
Taking your bag from him seems like the correct first move to make towards goodbye, but when you reach your hand out, Jack answers your silent plea with his empty one threading itself into your hold, fingers entwined in a manner so perfectly it has you reminiscing on how your bodies lay atop your mattress.
The attending has already tugged you halfway down the street before your mouth catches up with your feet, choking out a dumbfounded, “Where are you going? You’re off today.”
“So?” Jack barely offers you a bothered shrug of his shoulders, glancing back at you with a look in his eyes so warm, you worry you might just melt into the asphalt. “That doesn’t mean I can’t walk you to work.”
+ extra hyde!
· this fic was meant to be short, believe it or not... my first proper fic of 2026, yippee!
· olivia, girl... never stop making albums for me to cry to.
· pov: jack abbot, the biggest flirt who turns into a bumbling idiot when faced with the person he actually wants:
chapter nine of pope’s girl 🖤 | series masterlist | also on AO3
summary: Pope has always known how to wait, but this time he’s learning how to ask. As the two of you try to find your way back to each other, old names start meaning something new, and Smurf realizes there are some places she can’t walk into anymore.
notes: This chapter is all yearning and smut is back, baby!! Thank you to my lovelies for continuing to support my writing 🖤
warnings: 18+ only, explicit smut, oral sex , fingering, piv sex, emotional/reunion sex, possessive/protective pope, Smurf being Smurf, canon-typical Cody violence, swearing, pet name “baby”, no use of Y/N, Pope is a yearner
Please do not translate, repost, redistribute, or adapt this story on any platform without my explicit permission. Reblogs are welcome and encouraged!
chapter 9 | andrew
A week passes before anything starts to feel familiar again.
Pope texts before he comes over now, not much and not in a way that crowds you. Just enough that you know where he is. Just enough that you don’t have to wonder if silence means he’s gone, waiting outside, or driving because sitting still has never been something he’s good at when there’s too much in his head.
Some nights, he doesn’t come by at all.
On those nights, your phone lights up once or twice.
home
you sleep yet
He doesn’t push when you answer late. He doesn’t ask why you didn’t answer sooner. If you say you’re tired, he tells you okay and leaves it there. That means more than pushing would have.
The nights he does stay, he keeps his boots by the door and his keys on the counter. He sleeps on his side of the bed until you make the first move. He doesn’t reach for you in the dark or pull you against him like the last few weeks didn’t happen. There are times you feel him wake beside you, feel the shift of the mattress and the restless way he settles again, but he waits until your fingers find his before he lets himself hold on.
You miss the old ease. You miss the weight of him behind you and his hand under your shirt, warm against your stomach, like he belonged there because you had both stopped pretending he didn’t. You miss all the little things that used to happen without asking.
You miss them, but you know why he waits.
On the seventh morning, you wake with gray light through the blinds and Pope beside you, already awake.
He’s always stayed long enough for you to wake up. Even before either of you called it anything real, he said goodbye before he left. He drove you to work when your shifts lined up. He waited while you locked the apartment door and walked you to his car like he didn’t trust the street between your door and his car. That part isn’t new.
What’s different is the way he lies there with space still between your bodies, one arm bent beneath the pillow and the other resting over his stomach, careful even in bed.
“Morning,” you say.
Pope turns his head on the pillow. “Morning.”
His voice is rough from sleep, and you look at him longer than you mean to. His hair is messy, stubble dark along his jaw, eyes tired but open on yours.
“You sleep?” you ask.
“Some.” His gaze moves over your face. “You?”
“Some.”
He nods once, like both answers make sense to him.
“Do you need to leave soon?” you ask.
Pope reaches for his phone on the nightstand, checks the screen, then sets it back down. “Not yet.”
You move closer before you can talk yourself out of it. Your knee touches his under the blanket, and his eyes drop to where the fabric shifts before coming back to your face. He doesn’t put his hand on you.
So you move the rest of the way, pressing your forehead near his shoulder. Pope exhales through his nose, and his mouth brushes your temple, barely there before he lets it stay.
“Missed this,” he says.
Your eyes close. “I missed it too.”
His hand moves then, slow enough that you can stop him if you want to. You don’t. He rests it at your waist over the blanket, palm warm and still, and the weight of it makes your chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
“You working today?” Pope asks.
“Yeah. Later.”
His thumb stays still against the blanket. “Can I pick you up?”
You lift your head enough to look at him.
Pope knows how to wait. He’s done it outside your work, outside your door, in his car with his hands tight on the wheel. This is different. This time, he asks first.
“Yeah,” you say.
His eyes stay on yours.
“I’d like that,” you add.
Pope nods. “Okay.”
You settle back against him, and when his hand tightens slightly at your waist, you let him keep it there. His mouth rests against your hair, his body warm beside yours, and you both let the touch stay where it is.
The Pig is quiet when you come in, early enough that the chairs are still stacked near the back tables. Deran is behind the bar with the register drawer open, counting bills with a pen tucked behind his ear.
“You’re early,” he says.
You drop your bag under the counter. “That a problem?”
“No.” He adds another bill to the stack. “Just weird.”
“You want me to leave and come back late?”
Deran shuts the drawer and turns the key. “Don’t start doing charity work on my account.”
You tie your apron and start helping him open. Deran checks the taps while you restock the clean glasses and make sure the bottles behind the bar are where they should be. The two of you move around each other without needing to talk through any of it.
He waits until you’re replacing a bottle near the register before he says, “So he done being a pain in the ass?”
“Mostly.”
“Good.”
“That’s all?”
Deran folds the towel over his shoulder. “What do you want me to say? He was being a pain in the ass. Now he’s being less of one.”
“Very supportive.”
“I’m being nice.”
“This is nice?”
“For me, yeah.”
You put the bottle back in its place. “He’s trying.”
Deran’s expression turns more serious. “He better.”
“He is.”
He nods and leaves it there.
“Is Adrian back from Hawaii?” you ask.
“In a few days.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yeah.”
You turn toward him. “You did?”
Deran gives you a look. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
You let that go. “So what happens in a few days?”
“I’m picking him up.”
“From the airport?”
“Yeah.”
You keep your face still.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“How long is he staying?” you ask.
“Don’t know yet.”
Deran reaches into his pocket and tosses a set of keys across the bar. You catch them before they hit the floor.
“What’s this?” you ask.
“Second set.”
“To the bar?”
“I need you to open in a few days.”
“What time?”
“Eight.”
You turn the keys over once before sliding them into your apron pocket. “I’ll open.”
Deran nods and reaches for the towel again.
“I’m glad you called him,” you say.
He looks toward the front windows. “Yeah.”
You don’t ask for more. Deran goes to unlock the front door while you finish checking the bottles behind the bar.
Your phone lights up a little after seven, while you’re wiping down the last few rings of condensation from the bar.
still okay if i pick you up?
You read it twice, even though there isn’t much to read. The words are plain, almost awkward, but Pope has never been careless about showing up for you. He used to wait outside because that was what he did, because he knew your shifts and your routes and the hours you hated walking home alone. Now he asks first.
You type back before you can make too much of it.
yeah
The reply comes a minute later.
be there soon
You slide your phone into your back pocket and finish closing with Deran, who doesn’t say anything about the smile you’re trying not to wear. He only takes the rag from your hand when you wipe the same part of the counter twice and tells you to go.
Pope’s car is outside when you step out of the bar, parked close to the curb with the engine running and the headlights low against the street. He’s behind the wheel, one hand resting at the top of it, his face turned toward the front doors before you reach the sidewalk. It’s close enough to the old routine that your chest tightens before you reach the curb.
He gets out before you reach the passenger side.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
Pope glances at your face, then at the bag on your shoulder. “Good shift?”
“Quiet. Deran complained about paperwork for half of it.”
“Sounds like him.”
“He also said you were being less of a pain in the ass.”
Pope’s mouth shifts, barely. “Sounds like him too.”
You almost smile, and this time you let yourself. Pope opens the passenger door for you and waits until you’re settled before he shuts it.
When he gets back in, the car smells faintly like him and the cigarettes he hasn’t smoked with you in it, the air warm from the heater running low. He pulls away from the curb with both hands on the wheel. The old version of this drive had his palm on your thigh before the first light, heavy and familiar, his thumb moving over your jeans while the two of you talked about nothing or didn’t talk at all.
Tonight, his hand stays where it is.
“You hungry?” Pope asks.
“Yeah, actually. I am.”
“There’s a place still open near your place. We can grab something before I drop you off.”
You turn your head toward him. “Do you want to come up?”
His hands tighten once on the wheel, then ease. He doesn’t answer too fast. “If that’s okay.”
“It is.”
Pope keeps his attention on the road, but something in his shoulders settles. “Then yeah.”
You let your hand rest on your own thigh. The car moves through the dark streets toward your apartment, his hand still on the wheel and yours resting near the place his used to be.
By the time you get back to the apartment, the food has gone soft in the takeout bags. Pope carries everything upstairs without asking, waits while you unlock the door, then steps in after you and shuts it with his shoulder while you kick off your shoes. He leaves his boots beside yours by the door, keys going on the small table in the hall before he follows you into the living room.
The apartment still feels half-empty from Chrissy’s boxes. Pope being there takes some of the edge off it.
He puts the bags on the coffee table and sits beside you, close but not crowding. The TV plays low across the room, some old movie neither of you is watching, and you eat from the containers on the table with your knees angled toward each other. The blanket is folded over the arm of the couch now, the cushion underneath cleaned as much as it’s ever going to be, and you try not to think about Craig bleeding there or Baz’s voice in your apartment.
Pope sets his food down before he speaks. “Had a job today.”
Your fork pauses over the carton. You don’t lift your head right away because if you do, he might stop.
“Me, Craig, J,” he says. “Went to see Pete. He’s got a garage out nearby. Knows Smurf. Does shit for her sometimes.”
You set the carton down. “What kind of shit?”
“Cars. Plates. Parts he doesn’t ask about.” Pope leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them. “Smurf thinks somebody’s been taking from one of her storage places. She’s been losing it over that and Baz, Cath, Lena, all of it. Thinks maybe Baz is spiraling and grabbing whatever he can.”
“Do you think it was Baz?”
“No.” Pope shakes his head. “None of us knew about the storage place until a few days ago. Smurf hides shit, then gets pissed when nobody knows where she hid it.”
It isn’t the kind of thing he would’ve told you before. Maybe pieces, if someone else said too much first. Tonight, he tells you first.
“Where was Baz?” you ask.
Pope’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t shut down. “Following something the PI gave him.”
Your stomach turns. “About Cath and Lena?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he’ll find them?”
“No.” His answer comes quickly, but not carelessly. He sits back against the couch, one hand dragging over his thigh before he lets it rest there. “Cath’s not that stupid. She got out because she planned it. Baz thinks wanting something bad enough means he gets to have it, but Cath knew him. She knew Smurf too.”
You look down before he can read too much relief on your face. You think of Cath’s hands on the wheel, Lena asleep in the back seat, and the warning not to ask anything you couldn’t lie about later. For the first time since they drove away, not knowing where they are doesn’t feel quite as close to panic.
“So he’s gone?” you ask.
“For now.” Pope looks toward the TV, though his attention isn’t on it. “Smurf let him go. Keeps him busy. Keeps him away from me.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” you ask.
Pope looks at you and takes his time with it. “Trying something different.”
You wait.
“Don’t need you knowing every part of it,” Pope says. “Some of it’s better if you don’t. But I can tell you where I am. Who I’m with. When I’m coming back.”
You nod, looking down at the carton in your hands. “Okay.”
Pope watches you. “That enough?”
“It’s a start.”
He takes that in with a small nod. “Okay.”
The TV keeps playing low across the room. You pick up your fork again, but you don’t eat. Pope stays angled toward you, waiting to see if you’ll ask for more.
“Pope,” you say.
He turns his head.
You don’t know what you meant to say after it. Maybe thank you. Maybe something else. His name comes out instead, soft enough that his eyes drop to his hands.
“Baz gave me that name,” he says.
You sit back. “What?”
“When we were kids.” He looks down at the space between his feet. “Thought it was funny. Everybody else started saying it, so it stuck.”
You think of Baz saying it. Craig. Deran. J. Men at the house. Men at jobs. Smurf when she isn’t using Andrew like a leash. You’ve said it too, over and over, never thinking about who put it on him first.
“You hate it?” you ask.
“Sometimes.” Pope’s jaw works before he keeps going. “Mostly depends who’s saying it.”
“When I say it?”
He looks at you then. “Don’t mind when you say it.”
“Why?”
Pope leans forward again, forearms on his knees, hands hanging loose between them. “People who don’t know me call me that. People who hear shit. People who need something done.”
You stay quiet.
His eyes move back to yours. “Don’t want you not knowing me.”
You place the carton on the coffee table and turn more fully toward him. “You ever think about asking me to call you Andrew?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
Pope looks down before he answers. “A while.”
He looks like he has more, so you wait. You don’t fill the quiet for him this time.
“A lot more lately,” he says.
Your chest aches at the way he says it. He wanted the name from you before he knew how to ask.
You say it carefully. “Andrew.”
His hand stills against his knee.
The name feels strange in your mouth, but not wrong. Softer than Pope, though not smaller. You’ve heard Smurf say it sweet enough to make your skin crawl, watched him answer even when he hated it.
This doesn’t feel like that.
Pope doesn’t look smaller when you say it. He looks like he heard you.
“That sounds different too,” he says.
“Bad different?”
“No.”
“Good different?”
His eyes stay on yours. “Good.”
You look down at your hand, then back at him. “It might take me a little while.”
“I know.”
“But I can try.”
Pope nods once. “Okay.”
You reach for his hand. He lets you take it, palm turning under yours, fingers closing around yours.
“Andrew,” you say again, quieter this time.
His grip tightens once.
The TV keeps playing, the food goes cold on the coffee table, and neither of you reaches for it again.
You get up first and start clearing the coffee table.
Pope follows after you, gathering the napkins and empty cartons while you carry the plates into the kitchen. He stays beside the counter while you rinse the forks, close enough that you know he’s there.
You shut off the tap and dry your hands on the towel. “Let’s go to bed.”
Pope looks at you. “You tired?”
“A little.”
He nods and follows you down the hall, turning off the lamp in the living room before he comes into the bedroom. You change in the bathroom with the door half-closed, then come back in an old shirt and sleep shorts while he stands by the dresser, folding his jeans over the chair instead of dropping them on the floor. It’s such a small thing, so like him, that it makes your chest hurt a little. Even here, even now, Pope keeps order where he can.
He gets into bed after you. You turn onto your side facing him, and he lies on his back at first, one arm bent over his stomach, eyes on the ceiling. He leaves a little room between you, enough that you can move first.
You move closer.
Pope turns his head toward you, and his hand shifts against the blanket but doesn’t reach. You slide your fingers over the sheet until they touch his. His palm opens right away, rough and warm beneath yours, but he waits until you curl your fingers around him before he holds on.
“Good night, Andrew,” you say.
Pope doesn’t answer right away, but his hand tightens around yours. Then he turns onto his side, facing you.
“Good night,” he says.
You close your eyes with his hand still in yours. He doesn’t pull you closer. You keep your hand in his, and he holds on until you fall asleep.
A few days later, Smurf comes into The Pig while Deran is still out.
It’s early enough that the bar hasn’t filled, but late enough that the lunch crowd has cleared and left rings on the counter you’ve wiped twice already. You’re restocking the little tray of cherries behind the bar when the front door opens and Smurf steps in wearing white slacks and sunglasses pushed into her hair, too clean for the bar.
She smiles when she finds you behind the counter.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
You set the cherry jar down and wipe your fingers on a towel. “Deran’s not in yet.”
“I know. I can still look in on the place.” Smurf walks farther in, taking in the tables, the bottles behind the bar, the stack of clean glasses near the sink. “Besides, I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m working.”
“So you are.” Her smile widens, but nothing about her softens. “Andrew seems better.”
Your hand closes around the towel, but you keep your face even. “Does he?”
“He does. Little steadier.” Smurf reaches the bar and rests her purse on top of it. “Hard to get ahold of, though.”
“Maybe he had somewhere to be.”
“Maybe.” Smurf watches you with that patient, sweet look she uses when she’s waiting for someone to step wrong. “I stopped by the house yesterday.”
You keep the towel in your hand. “Oh?”
“Let myself in and everything.” Her smile doesn’t move. “He wasn’t there.”
The words sit wrong. She meant them to. You turn and take a clean glass from the rack, setting it near the sink. “You want something to drink?”
“No, baby. I’m fine.” She tilts her head. “You always do that.”
You look back at her. “Do what?”
“Make yourself busy when you don’t want to answer me.”
The door opens again before you have to decide whether to answer at all.
Pope comes in with his keys still in his hand. He stops near the entrance long enough to take in where Smurf is standing, where you are behind the bar, the purse set on the counter like she plans to stay. Then he starts toward you, shoulders set and attention fixed on his mother.
Smurf turns first. “There you are, baby.”
Pope comes to the bar and stands at the opening near the service side, close enough to you that you can feel him there without him touching you.
“Need something?” he asks.
“I came by the house yesterday,” Smurf says. “You weren’t there.”
“I was out.”
“I gathered that.”
Pope looks at her. “You let yourself in?”
“It’s my house.”
“It’s where I sleep.”
Smurf gives a small laugh, almost fond. “You’ve never cared before.”
“I care now.”
Her smile slips at the edge, but she keeps it. “Well. I just worry about you, baby.”
“Don’t.”
“That’s not really how mothers work.”
Pope goes still, his voice staying low. “What the hell would you know about that?”
Smurf’s eyes sharpen. “Andrew,” she says.
Pope doesn’t move closer. He doesn’t look away either.
Smurf puts the concern back on. “See? This is what I mean. He gets himself worked up, and then everybody has to—”
“Don’t put it on her,” Pope says.
Smurf stops.
Pope’s hand curls around the edge of the bar, fingers pressing into the wood before he lets them loosen. “You got something to say, say it to me.”
“I am talking to you.”
“No, you’re not.” His voice stays controlled. “You came here because Deran’s not here and you thought she’d be easier.”
Smurf looks at you, hurt surprise already waiting on her face. “Is that what he tells you?”
Pope steps into the opening at the bar, not touching you, not touching her. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You came here to.”
Smurf looks at him for a long time. Then she reaches for her purse, slow enough to make sure both of you know she’s leaving because she chose to. “I just came to check on the bar,” she says.
“Then check on the bar.”
Her mouth curves, but there’s no warmth left in it. “You look tired, Andrew.”
Pope doesn’t answer.
Smurf turns to you. “You take care now.”
You nod once. “You too.”
She walks out calmly. The door closes softly behind her.
Pope stays where he is, one hand still on the bar, attention on the door until her car pulls away from the curb outside.
Only then does he turn toward you. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“She doesn’t need to come here and bother you.”
“I’m used to Smurf.”
Pope’s mouth tightens. “Doesn’t make it okay.”
You let the towel fall onto the counter and take a step closer to him. “You handled it.”
“Wanted to do something else.”
“I know.”
You reach for his hand where it rests on the bar. He lets you turn it over, lets your fingers slide into his palm.
“Deran’s gonna be pissed he missed her,” you say.
Pope looks at you. “No, he’s not.”
“He likes having something to complain about.”
“He’s got Craig.”
That pulls a small laugh out of you before you can stop it. Pope’s hand closes around yours, careful but sure.
Smurf’s car is gone. Pope stays beside you at the bar, his hand still around yours.
Chrissy comes by the apartment the next afternoon for the last of her things.
She lets herself in with the key she still hasn’t given back, calling your name from the hallway before she appears with her hair pulled up and an empty tote bag hanging from one shoulder. There isn’t much left for her to take anymore: a few books from the shelf near the kitchen, the sweater she kept forgetting in the hall closet, and a chipped mug she swears is hers even though you’re pretty sure you bought it at the thrift store down the street.
“I’m taking this,” Chrissy says, holding it up.
“You always do.”
“Then it’s basically mine.”
You’re sitting cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table, folding laundry into uneven piles. You started doing it to keep your hands busy and lost the system somewhere after the first load. Chrissy steps around the basket and lowers herself onto the couch, the tote bag dropping beside her.
“You look better,” she says.
You smooth the shirt over your knee. “Do I?”
“Yeah.” She leans back against the couch. “Less like you’re waiting for something bad to come through the door.”
“That bad?”
“You looked like shit.”
You throw a shirt her way before she tosses it back to you.
“Pope been coming around?” she asks.
“Some nights.”
“Good some nights?”
You nod, setting the shirt in the pile near your knee. “Good. Careful.”
“Careful’s probably not the worst thing.”
“No,” you say. “It’s not.”
Chrissy picks at a loose thread on her sleeve, then looks toward the blanket folded over the couch arm. She doesn’t say anything about it. You’re grateful for that.
You reach for another shirt from the basket. “Things with Andrew feel different this time.”
“Andrew?” Chrissy asks.
Your hands slow over the fabric. “Yeah.”
“That’s new.”
“Feels new.”
“Good new?”
You smooth the shirt over your knee. “I think so.”
Chrissy nods and lets that be enough. She moves around the apartment, picking up the last things she left behind without meaning to. You helped her pack most of it already, but this feels different. This feels final.
Your phone buzzes on the coffee table.
Chrissy looks at it before you reach for it. “Him?”
You pick it up and read the text.
can you come to the house?
Then another one.
beach house
Your thumb hovers over the screen.
everything okay?
The reply comes less than a minute later.
yeah
want to show you something
You read it twice, then type back.
be there soon
Chrissy is already reaching for her keys from the couch. “I’ll drive you.”
“You don’t have to.”
She grabs the tote bag with one hand and the mug with the other. “Fine. I’m nosy, and I want to know if he’s showing you something sweet or something weird he fixed.”
“It’s Pope.”
“Exactly.”
You laugh, and Chrissy looks pleased enough that you know she was aiming for it. She walks to the kitchen and sets the mug carefully into her tote instead of tossing it in with the books.
You text Pope that you’re leaving soon, then glance toward the hallway. Chrissy’s room is almost empty now, the door half-open, the last of her things gathered into one bag and one stolen mug. She follows your gaze and gives you a small shrug.
“I’ll still come by,” she says.
“I know.”
“And you’re still coming over for dinner. Simon bought too much food again.”
“Again?”
“He thinks two people eat like six.”
“You kinda do.”
“Rude.” She points the mug at you from inside the bag. “Accurate, but rude.”
You stand and push the laundry basket closer to the couch with your foot. Chrissy waits by the door while you grab your bag, and when you step into the hallway, she locks up behind both of you like she still lives there enough to know the deadbolt by heart.
On the way to her car, Chrissy bumps her shoulder lightly against yours. “Andrew, huh?”
You look down at the keys in your hand. “Yeah.”
Chrissy drives you to the beach house with the windows cracked and the radio low. She doesn’t ask too much on the way, and you’re grateful for that. She lets the quiet sit until the houses thin out and the ocean appears between buildings, gray-blue under the afternoon light.
When she pulls up outside the beach house, she leaves the engine running.
Pope’s car is in the driveway. The porch is empty. You look at the door, then down at your phone, even though there’s nothing new on the screen.
Chrissy follows your eyes. “I’m not coming in.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know. I’m saying it before you get polite and weird about it.”
You reach for the door handle. “Thank you for driving me.”
“Text me later.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
You turn back to her. “I know you do.”
Chrissy’s face softens, but she keeps one hand on the wheel and doesn’t make it a whole thing. “This is good, right?”
You look at the beach house again, at Pope’s car, at the door he asked you to come through.
“I hope so.”
Chrissy nods once. “Go find out.”
Chrissy waits at the curb until you reach the porch.
The front door opens before you knock. Pope stands inside with one hand on the edge of the door, his hair a little messy, his T-shirt pulled close across his shoulders, his eyes on you before you’ve finished climbing the last step.
You turn and lift your hand toward Chrissy. She gives you one small wave from behind the wheel, then pulls away once you’re inside. Pope closes the door behind you.
“Andrew,” you say.
His hand stays on the knob before he turns back to you. The name is still new enough that you feel it after it leaves your mouth. Not wrong. Just close.
He looks at you for another beat. “Hey.”
“You said you wanted to show me something,” you say.
“Kitchen.”
You follow him down the short hall and stop when you reach the counter.
The old deadbolt is sitting near the sink with the screws and scratched metal plate, the pieces laid out in a neat row because Pope would never leave them scattered. A toolbox is open on the floor by the back door, and there are faint marks near the frame where he must have worked the old piece loose.
You look from the counter to him. “What happened to the door?”
“Changed the locks.”
“Why?”
Pope wipes his hands on a rag and sets it beside the hardware. “Smurf had keys.”
You look toward the front hall, then back at the metal on the counter.
“She doesn’t anymore?” you ask.
“No.”
Pope reaches into his pocket and takes out a key on a plain silver ring.
He holds it out to you. “This one’s yours.”
You stare at it before taking it. The key is warm from his pocket, the teeth pressing lightly into your palm when your fingers close around it.
“Mine?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Pope leans back against the counter, arms loose at his sides. “Chrissy’s gone more now. I know that.”
Your grip tightens around the key.
“But that’s not why,” he says.
His gaze drops to the key in your hand. “Want you to have it. Not just when I bring you here. Not just when I’m here. If you want to be here.”
He isn’t trying to fill the space Chrissy left. He’s giving you access to a place Smurf can’t unlock anymore, and for Pope, that says more than almost anything else could.
You turn the key in your hand. “You sure you want me able to show up whenever I want?”
“Yeah.”
“You say that now.”
The corner of his mouth pulls a little. “Said what I said.”
You look down before your face gives too much away. “That’s dangerous.”
“What is?”
“Giving me a key.”
Pope’s eyes stay on you. “I know what I’m doing.”
You set your bag on the counter and slide the key into the inside pocket, careful with it. When you look back at him, he hasn’t moved.
You walk over to him and stop close enough that your knees almost touch his.
Pope’s hands stay where they are, resting against the counter behind him, but his gaze drops to your mouth and comes back up. He holds himself still, and it makes something low in your stomach pull tight.
“You’re doing that thing again,” you say.
“What thing?”
“Waiting for me.”
His jaw works once. “Trying to.”
You step between his knees and take his right hand from the edge of the counter. His fingers are rough around yours, his palm warm and still when you place it at your waist.
“You can touch me,” you say.
Pope’s hand closes slowly, just enough to make the shape of you real under his palm. His other hand comes up when you lean in, settling at your other side as your arms slide around his neck.
His forehead lowers to yours.
“I missed you,” he says.
“You’ve said that a lot.”
“It’s true.”
You kiss him before he can say anything else.
Pope answers slow at first, his mouth firm, his grip tight at your waist. You press closer, fingers tightening in his hair, and that’s when he starts to give. He opens for you. His body comes in harder. The kiss turns slower, hotter, until you can’t stand the space between you.
He walks you backward out of the kitchen, one hand at your waist and the other at the back of your neck, not rushing, not letting you get far enough away to cool off. Your shoulder brushes the hallway wall, and he shifts with you, keeping his body between you and the harder edge before kissing you again.
By the time you reach the bedroom, your shirt is already pulled loose from your jeans and his hands are under it, warm against your skin. You get his shirt off first. He lets you tug it over his head, lets you put both hands on his chest after, and the feel of him under your palms makes the wanting in you turn heavy and familiar. You missed this. Missed the heat of him, the solid weight of him, the way your body wakes up under his hands.
Pope watches you while your fingers move to his belt. His palms stay at your waist.
You undo the buckle, then the button, and drag the zipper down. His cock is already hard when your hand slides over him through his briefs, and the groan he gives against your mouth makes your legs press together.
He pulls back just enough to get your shirt over your head. Your bra follows, then your jeans, and Pope lowers with you as you step out of them, his mouth moving over your shoulder, your collarbone, the top of your breast. He takes his time even when his fingers dig in like he’s close to losing patience. Your underwear goes down your legs with the rest of your clothes, and when he touches between your thighs, you have to hold onto his shoulders.
It feels too good too fast.
He kisses you again while his fingers work over your clit, steady and sure, his other arm low around your back to keep you against him. You rock into his hand, chasing the pressure, and he follows the movement without making you ask. The first sound you make into his mouth pulls him closer. His fingers slow just enough to make it sharper, then circle again until your hips move on their own and your grip digs into his shoulders.
He lowers his mouth to your neck, then your chest, then keeps going, guiding you back until your legs meet the edge of the mattress. You sit when he guides you down, and he drops to his knees between yours. Your hand goes into his hair.
The first pass of his mouth has you gripping his hair harder, pleasure spreading hot through your stomach and down your legs. Pope holds your hips and keeps you where he wants you, his mouth working against your clit with the same focus he brings to everything that matters. You missed this too, missed the blunt devotion of him between your legs, the way he gives like it matters and still makes you take it.
His fingers press into you while his mouth stays on your clit, and the stretch makes your grip tighten in his hair.
“Andrew,” you say.
His fingers slow inside you. You look down at him, his mouth still close enough that the next touch pulls a sound from you.
Pope groans against you. “Fuck—”
The word is rough against your skin, almost lost before his mouth is on you again. He goes back to it harder, holding your hip firm when your body tries to move.
“Say it again,” he says.
“Andrew.”
His breath comes hot against you. “Again.”
“Andrew…”
“Fuck.” His voice comes out low, wrecked. “Don’t stop saying it.”
He presses in harder, and the pressure builds until your legs draw tight around his shoulders.
“Fuck—Andrew, I’m gonna come.”
He groans into you, fingers working deeper, mouth staying exactly where you need it.
“Come for me…”
You do, his name breaking in your mouth as pleasure takes you hard, your body tightening around his fingers.
He works you through it, slower after the first rush, his mouth still moving until your hand loosens in his hair and your legs shake against him.
When he rises over you, his face is flushed, his mouth slick from you, and there’s so much want in him that you reach for him before he can decide to hold back again. He pushes his briefs down and steps out of them, and then he’s over you on the bed, skin hot against yours, his cock pressing between your thighs while your hands move over his back.
“Baby…”
The word comes out rough against your mouth, like he didn’t mean to let it out.
Your fingers slide into his hair. “Say it again.”
Pope lifts his head enough to look at you, breathing hard, his hand braced beside your ribs.
His voice drops. “Baby.”
You kiss him for it, open and deep, pulling him down until his weight settles over you.
“Fuck,” he says against your mouth. “Missed you… missed this.”
His arm hooks under your thigh, lifting it higher along his hip, and when he pushes into you, the pressure makes your mouth open against his. He goes slow enough for you to feel every inch, slow enough that the ache of missing him and the feel of having him again tangle together until your eyes burn.
He pushes all the way in and stops there, forehead near yours, his body tight with the effort of not moving before you’re ready.
You move first.
Pope makes a low sound and starts to thrust, deep and controlled at first, but the control doesn’t last the way it did before. He’s fucking you now, not holding himself away from you anymore, his mouth brushing yours every time your hips lift to meet him. Every drag of his cock reminds you exactly what the last week made you wait for. It feels good enough to make you angry with how much you missed it, good enough that your nails press into his back and your hips lift to meet him again.
His rhythm falters, and you use the break to push at his shoulder. Pope follows you when you guide him onto his back. He lets you climb over him, lets you take his cock in your hand and sink down onto him with both of his hands hovering near your hips until you grab them and place them where you want them.
One at your waist.
One at your breast.
His fingers close carefully at first, then harder when your body moves over his.
“Fuck,” he says, low and strained. “You feel…”
He doesn’t finish. His head tips back against the pillow, jaw tight, chest rising hard under your palm.
You move over him slowly. “Say it.”
His eyes come back to yours.
“You feel so fucking good…”
You take him deeper, and his grip tightens at your waist.
“Andrew…”
“Keep saying it,” he says. “Fuck—keep saying it.”
You fuck him slowly at first, letting yourself feel the stretch, the heat, the sound caught in his throat every time you take him deeper. His thumb drags over your nipple while his other arm holds you steady, helping you find the rhythm that makes your thighs burn. It feels good. So good your thoughts scatter into the places his hands touch and the place where he fills you again and again.
Pope sits up without pulling out of you. The shift brings your chest against his, your arms sliding around his neck as he holds you close and starts thrusting up into you. You grip his shoulders as the angle changes, your knees tight on either side of his hips. His lips are at your throat, his palms spread over your back, and each drive of his hips pushes against the place still sensitive from his mouth.
You make a sound you can’t hold back. “Right there,” you say.
Pope’s grip tightens. “There?”
“Yes… fuck, right there—”
He moves harder while he kisses you again. The kiss is messy now, too much teeth and heat, both of you breathing hard through it as his fingers slide between you. The first touch to your clit makes you fold closer, forehead pressing to his shoulder.
“Come for me…” he says against your ear.
You try to answer, but the pleasure is already too close. Pope keeps moving, keeps touching you, holding you there when it gets too much. Your nails scrape over his shoulder, and then you come around him, hard enough that your legs pull him in and a sound tears out of you before you can stop it.
He holds you through it, one arm tight around your back while his fingers keep working until you’re shaking against him.
“Baby…” he says, strained now.
You lift your head. His face is close, wrecked with it, his mouth parted, eyes fixed on yours because he wants you there with him when it happens.
Pope’s hips drive up into you again, harder, less even now. “I’m gonna come.”
You kiss him, too far gone to hide what that does to you, how close he is, how close you still are because his fingers are still on your clit and his cock keeps hitting every sensitive place inside you.
“Come for me…” you say against his mouth.
Pope’s arms close around you, and the last of his control goes with a harsh sound that spills into your kiss. He comes deep inside you, hips pressing up as he holds you hard against him, and the feel of him letting go pulls you with him again. Your next orgasm comes slower, heavier, while he keeps you against his chest.
His arms stay around you, one hand spread between your shoulder blades and the other low on your back, holding you through the tremors until your body settles against his. Your face is tucked into the side of his neck, your skin damp against his, your thighs still around his hips while he softens inside you.
Pope turns his head and presses his mouth to your hair.
You close your eyes and let yourself stay there, with him still inside you, the new key tucked away in your bag and Smurf’s old lock left on the kitchen counter.
You lie beside him after, one leg still tangled with his under the sheet, your body warm and heavy in a way you haven’t let yourself think about too much this week.
Pope is on his side facing you, close enough that his knee brushes yours when either of you shifts. His hand rests between your shoulder blades, moving slowly over your skin. Your fingers drift against his chest while his breathing settles under your palm. He’s quiet, but he keeps looking at you.
“What?” you ask.
Pope shakes his head.
“You keep looking at me.”
His thumb moves once near your spine. “I know.”
“That’s all?”
He takes his time answering. You let him. The lamp beside the bed is still on, low and yellow, catching the edge of his cheekbone and the dark line of his jaw. He looks tired now that the hunger has gone softer, but he doesn’t look closed off.
“Didn’t know if I’d get this back,” he says. He doesn’t say it like he wants you to comfort him. He says it because it’s true.
You slide your hand up to his neck, thumb resting below his jaw. “You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
You lean in and kiss him. Pope kisses you back, slow and warm, his hand flattening against your back.
When you pull away, he doesn’t go far. His mouth brushes your temple, and the words come out quiet and rough.
“I love you.”
You stop moving against him.
Pope keeps his hand on your back. He can’t take it back now. The words don’t sound planned. They sound like they got out before he could stop them.
You lift your head.
“Don’t say it because I did,” he says.
Your throat tightens.
“Not saying it so you forget what happened,” Pope adds. “I know you won’t. Don’t want you to.” He looks away once, then back. “Just don’t wanna keep going like you don’t already have it.”
You touch his face, letting your thumb move over the rough line of his cheek. He turns into it just enough that you almost lose the words.
“I love you too, Andrew.”
His eyes close, and his hand tightens at your back. When he looks at you again, he can’t hide what it did to him.
You kiss him before he has to answer.
Pope meets you halfway, one hand sliding into your hair while the other keeps you close. The kiss is slow, his mouth warm against yours, and he doesn’t let go when it ends.
After, you turn onto your side with your back to his chest, and Pope follows only when you bring his arm over your waist. His palm settles against your stomach, warm through the sheet, and this time, you’re the one who put him there.
Pope’s mouth rests near your hair, his breathing evening out behind you, and you let your eyes close with his arm around you.
You fall asleep in the house he made harder for her to enter, with his hand on you and his love still warm against your skin.
summary: Someone wants leverage over the Codys, and taking you seems like the fastest way to get it. But you’re not as easy to break as he thinks, and Andrew Cody has never been good at letting go of what’s his.
notes: No thoughts except for the fact that I was HORNY! This is A LOT more different pacing than pope’s girl, but I hope you enjoy! Enjoy Andrew being possessive, desperate, and needy!! 🫣
warnings: 18+, MDNI. Kidnapping, physical violence, gun violence, blood/injury, reader is tied up, slap/hit to the face, brief unconsciousness, gun to reader’s head, canon-typical Cody violence, Possessive!Pope, Needy!Pope, rough explicit smut, oral sex, fingering, creampie, dirty talk, “good girl,” pet name “baby,” no use of Y/N.
word count: 7.2k
divider by: @/cursed-carmine
Please do not translate, repost, redistribute, or adapt this story on any platform without my explicit permission. Reblogs are welcome and encouraged!
the bait
Andrew calls you while you’re walking out of the diner.
The night air smells like fryer oil, cigarette smoke, sour trash and hot pavement. Your shoes ache from standing through the late shift. Your skirt clings to the backs of your thighs, and your button-up is soft from too many washes, the cuffs rolled to your elbows because the kitchen always runs too hot.
You tuck your phone between your shoulder and ear while you dig through your purse for your keys.
Andrew says nothing. He called you a few minutes ago and has barely spoken since. He does this sometimes. Calls, listens, lets the line sit open like hearing you breathe on the other end is enough to get him through whatever job he’s trapped in with his brothers.
A car door shuts on his end. Male voices move around him.
Craig says, “Tell him he’s being a dick.”
Baz answers, smooth and bored, “He knows.”
Deran mutters, “Can we not do this shit right now?”
You smile tiredly, pushing the door shut behind you with your hip. “Sounds fun over there.”
Andrew’s voice comes in low. “Where are you, baby?”
“Leaving work.”
“Alone?”
“Andrew.”
“Answer me,” he says.
You roll your eyes, but there’s no real bite in it. He gets like this when he’s restless, when something with the family has him wound too tight and his head starts building exits and threats out of every ordinary thing.
“Yes, alone. I’m walking to my car. I’ve got my keys in my hand. You want me to check under it too?”
“No.”
“You sure? Could give you a full security report.”
“Get in the car.”
“I’m almost there.”
“Stay on the phone,” Andrew says.
Your car waits near the far end of the lot, half under a tired streetlight with a bad flicker. “You miss me or something, baby?”
Craig laughs on the other end, too loud and too close. “Oh, he fuckin’ misses you.”
The phone shifts with a rough scrape.
“Fuck off, Craig,” Andrew mutters.
Craig laughs harder somewhere farther away. You’re tired, but he still gets half a smile out of you.
Then Andrew says, “Yeah.” One word. Quiet. No joke in it.
Your hand tightens around your keys, the tiredness in your body shifting into something warmer, heavier, lower.
“Andrew,” you say, softer now.
You reach the edge of the lot when something moves near the dumpster. Your smile fades.
A man steps out from beside it, cap pulled low, shoulders hunched like he’s been waiting too long. Another is near your car, leaning against the passenger door with one hand in his jacket.
Your feet slow and Andrew hears the change in your breathing immediately.
“What?” he asks.
You look from one man to the other, keys sliding between your fingers. “Nothing.”
“Baby.”
The man near your car smiles, and the look of it sends something cold through your stomach before you even understand why.
“Andrew,” you say.
The first man grabs you from behind.
You twist hard before he can lock his arm around you. Your elbow drives back into his ribs, and he swears, grip slipping. You swing your keys at his face and feel metal drag across skin.
“Fuck!” the man yells.
The phone drops to the pavement. Andrew’s voice cuts through the speaker near your foot. “Baby?”
You kick back, catching the man’s shin. He stumbles, and you almost get low enough to grab the phone, but another hand catches your hair and yanks hard enough to make your scalp burn.
“Get her hands!” one of them shouts.
You bite the closest hand hard enough to taste skin and salt and something metallic, and the man screams as he rips himself away from you. You spit, swing again, and drag your nails down another man’s cheek when he tries to get in close.
“Jesus Christ, Marco said she’d be easy!”
“Then Marco’s a fuckin’ idiot,” you snap, and drive your knee up.
The man folds with a choked sound.
You run, getting two steps and then a third before a hand catches the back of your shirt and jerks you off balance. You slam into the side of your car, shoulder first, pain flashing hot down your arm, but you shove backward anyway, heel scraping pavement until you catch someone in the knee.
The phone is still on. Andrew is still calling your name. You hear it through the scrape of shoes and your own breathing.
“Baby!”
You reach blindly for anything. Your keys. Your purse. A loose chunk of gravel near the curb. Your fingers close around nothing useful.
Then the slap cracks across your face.
Your head whips sideways. Pain blooms sharp and bright across your cheek, spreading fast into your eye. The lot tilts, but you stay on your feet. You spit blood and lunge again.
“You stupid bitch!” one of them spits.
Something hard clips the side of your head, and your knees finally go out.
Andrew’s voice is the last thing you hear.
“Baby!”
Then the pavement disappears.
You wake up angry.
The pain comes after. Head first, pounding behind your eyes. Then your cheek. Your mouth. Your wrists. Your shoulders.
You blink against the low light and find yourself tied to a chair in the middle of an old garage.
Concrete floor. Oil stains. Workbenches against the walls. A rusted car frame under a blue tarp. The garage door is shut, but it doesn’t quite meet the floor. Warm air slips in underneath, carrying the smell of asphalt and oil.
Your wrists are tied behind the chair, rope pulled tight enough to make your fingers feel thick. Your ankles are tied to the legs. Your purse sits dumped out on a table nearby. Lip gloss, cigarettes, loose change, your keys, your cracked phone.
One of the men stands near the table with a towel wrapped around his hand.
You move your tongue over your split lip and smile. “That from me?”
He glares.
Another guy leans against a workbench, scratches dragged red down one side of his face. He keeps touching them like he can’t believe you managed it.
You hope they scar.
Marco steps into view. You’ve seen him twice before. Once outside a warehouse where Andrew told you to stay in the car. Once from across a room while Baz handled the talking and Craig looked bored enough to start a fight for entertainment.
Marco isn’t big enough to be careless, but he carries himself like he wants people to think he is. Thick shoulders, dark hair, gold chain at his throat, gun tucked into the front of his jeans. There’s a bruise blooming along his jaw.
Good.
Marco stops in front of you, then crouches. “You always this much trouble?”
You pull against the rope again. It bites into raw skin. “Only when men grab me in parking lots.”
His mouth lifts. “You’re funny.”
“No. I’m pissed off.”
The man with the scratched face says, “Should’ve gagged her.”
Marco keeps his eyes on you. “Nah. Pope’ll wanna hear her.”
“His name is Andrew.”
The man with the towel around his hand looks at Marco. Marco studies you closer, and whatever he finds makes his smile come back slower.
“Andrew,” Marco repeats.
You don’t answer.
Marco stands and walks to the table with your phone. “You know what he does, your Andrew?”
“Yeah.”
“He ever tell you about me?”
You stare at him.
He laughs without humour. “Course not. They never tell their girls anything useful.”
“You don’t seem useful.”
His hand cracks across your mouth so fast you barely see it coming.
Your head snaps to the side. Pain bursts through your lip again, wet and hot. You breathe through it until the room steadies.
Marco’s shoes step into your line of sight.
“You boys all hear that?” Marco says. “She’s loyal.”
You spit blood on the floor near his feet. Marco’s smile disappears.
He grabs your jaw, thumb digging near the swelling. “I set up part of a score for your boyfriend and his brothers. My guy got them through the back. My place held the cash overnight. I got paid, sure.”
“Sounds like you should’ve saved it.”
His fingers tighten. “But then I hear the take was bigger than Baz said.”
“Take it up with Baz.”
“I am.” Marco lets go of your face and holds up your phone. “Baz’ll talk me in circles. Pope won’t.”
Your phone lights up in his hand. Andrew’s name fills the cracked screen. Your stomach pulls tight.
Marco answers and puts it on speaker.
Andrew’s voice comes through low and flat. “Put her on.”
Marco paces slowly in front of you, phone in one hand. “You listening now, Pope?”
“Put her on,” Andrew says again.
Baz’s voice comes through faintly behind him. “Marco, man. You got what we agreed on.”
“I got what you said I was getting.”
“It was your share,” Baz says.
“Bullshit.”
Craig cuts in, closer now. “You took her over fuckin’ money?”
Marco smiles at you. “I took the only thing Pope Cody gives a shit about.”
The line stays quiet. You stare at the phone.
Marco keeps going, too pleased with himself to know when to stop. “I want the rest of my cut. He comes alone, brings the money, and maybe she walks out breathing.”
Baz says, “You’re not getting him alone.”
“Then she dies here.”
Andrew speaks again, same voice, lower now. “Put her on.”
Marco crouches beside you and holds the phone near your mouth.
You swallow around blood and dryness. “Andrew?”
The line goes quiet enough that you hear the faint sound of him breathing.
“Baby,” Andrew says.
Your eyes burn and you hate it.
“I bit one.”
Andrew’s voice drops. “Yeah?”
“Hard.”
“Good.”
Marco pulls the phone away.
Andrew says, “Put her back on.”
Marco laughs. “No. You’re listening now.”
He points the phone at you. “Tell him what happens if he doesn’t bring my money.”
You breathe in through your nose. “Don’t come alone.”
Marco’s face hardens.
Andrew says your name.
You keep your eyes on Marco. “He’s got more guys than he said.”
Marco grabs your hair and yanks your head back. Andrew hears the sound you try not to make.
Marco lifts the phone to his mouth. “Fifteen minutes, Pope.”
He ends the call.
Marco lowers his face near yours. “Think you’re tough?”
“No.”
He smiles.
“I think you’re stupid.”
The smile leaves him slowly.
You brace for another strike, but Marco only straightens and looks toward the men by the door.
“Watch the front.”
Time starts dragging. You count through pain instead. The man with the bitten hand keeps pacing, scratched-face keeps glancing at the garage door, and Marco checks his gun twice, then his phone, then the door near the back.
You keep pulling at the rope when no one is looking. The skin around your wrists is wet now, and the chair creaks under you, but nothing gives.
Outside, a car passes. Everyone stops.
It keeps going.
Marco swears under his breath. You smile before you can stop yourself.
“What?” Marco asks.
You lean back against the chair, pulse hammering. “You’re scared.”
The first shot cracks outside, and everyone in the garage reacts at once. Marco ducks behind the workbench, shouting toward the front while the guy with the bitten hand runs for the garage door and drops before he gets close. The guy with the scratches fires through the gap near the floor, cursing so hard his voice breaks.
You work your wrists lower while they’re looking away. Pain rips up your arms, hot and sharp, but the knot slips enough for one hand to move.
The lights flicker as more gunfire pounds against the walls. Craig yells from outside, close enough now that you know the Codys are at the door.
“Move!” Craig shouts.
The lights cut out. Gunfire lights the garage in broken flashes — Marco behind the bench, the gun in his hand, the side door opening behind one of his men.
Deran steps through and fires, and the man drops.
“Fuck,” Deran says, crossing to you fast. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
He gets his knife under the rope at your wrists and starts cutting through it, keeping low while another shot cracks near the front. Craig yells a string of curses from somewhere outside. Baz’s voice cuts through after, sharp and pissed off.
Deran gets the rope loose, and your hands fall forward, numb and burning.
Andrew steps in with blood on his shirt and a gun in his hand, his face empty in a way that makes your stomach pull tight.
“Andrew,” you say.
A man comes at him from the side. Andrew turns, fires, and keeps moving toward you like the man was barely worth looking at.
Deran slices through the rope around your ankles. “She’s loose!”
You stand too fast. Your knees buckle, and Andrew catches your arm before you hit the floor. His grip is hard through your sleeve, his eyes moving over your face, your mouth, your wrists, your throat, the side of your head.
“Baby,” Andrew says.
“I’m okay.”
His hand comes up to your face but stops before he touches your swollen cheek.
“They hit you,” he says.
“I hit them first.”
“I heard.” The pride in his voice is buried under fury, but it’s there.
Then Marco moves behind you. You hear him before anyone else does.
Marco yanks you back, one arm locked hard across your chest. Cold metal presses to your temple, and everyone stops.
Craig shouts from the front. “Fuck!”
Baz snaps, “Pope!”
Marco breathes hard against your ear, blood wet in his voice. “Nobody fuckin’ move!”
Deran’s gun is up, but the angle is bad. Craig is half-hidden near the front, weapon ready. Baz stands behind a rusted car frame, face hard, eyes flicking between Marco’s gun and Andrew’s hands.
Andrew only looks at Marco. “Let her go.”
Marco’s arm tightens around you. “Back up.”
The gun presses harder to your head. You wince, and Andrew’s expression goes blank. Marco feels it. His breathing turns shaky.
“You move, she’s dead!” Marco shouts.
Andrew says, “Baby.”
You know what he wants. You know what he needs. He can’t get a clean shot. Not with Marco behind you. Not with the gun at your head.
Marco shifts his weight behind you.
You slam the back of your head into his face.
Pain explodes through your skull. Marco yells, grip breaking, and the gun jerks away from your temple. Andrew moves before your legs can hold you. Your vision blurs white at the edges as Marco is ripped away from you, and when your knees give out, Andrew catches you around the waist before you hit the concrete.
Gunfire cracks again. Once. Twice.
Then the garage goes quiet except for breathing, the ringing in your ears, and Craig swearing under his breath.
Andrew holds you against him, one hand cupping the back of your head.
“You hurt yourself,” Andrew says.
“He had a gun to my head.”
Craig steps closer. “We gotta go.”
Baz steps in close and takes the gun from Andrew’s hand.
Andrew lets it go without looking at him.
Then he bends and lifts you before you can argue.
You grab at his shirt. “I can walk.”
“No.”
His arm hooks under your knees, the other behind your back, and then you’re off the floor.
You press your face against his shoulder because the lights are gone and the garage smells like gunpowder and blood.
Andrew carries you out. He doesn’t look down at Marco.
You keep your face against his neck.
The ride to Andrew’s house is quiet at first.
You’re in Andrew’s lap in the back seat because he won’t put you anywhere else. Deran drives. Craig sits in front with one hand braced on the dash, breathing like he wants to crawl out of his own skin. Baz is in another car behind you.
The highway moves dark outside the window, streetlights sliding over Andrew’s face and disappearing just as fast. His hand stays at the back of your head, careful where you struck Marco, while his other arm stays locked around your waist.
“You can loosen up,” you murmur.
“No.”
“I can breathe.”
“Good.”
Craig turns his head. “She hit him with her head.”
Deran says, “I was there.”
Craig looks back at you, still breathing hard. “That was kinda badass.”
You manage, “Thank you.”
Deran’s eyes flick up in the rearview mirror. “Don’t encourage her.”
Deran’s gaze cuts to your face again before he looks back at the road. “You need ice. Water too.”
Andrew’s arm tightens around you.
Deran catches it in the mirror and softens his voice without making a thing of it. “We’re almost there.”
Andrew’s mouth brushes your hair.
“Stay awake,” he says.
“I am.”
“Talk.”
“About what?”
“Anything.”
Your eyes close, and his hand shifts carefully at the back of your head.
“Baby.”
You open them again. “I heard you.”
Andrew’s eyes stay fixed ahead through the windshield.
“On the phone,” you say. “I heard you.”
His throat works. “You stopped talking.”
“I tried.”
“I heard them hit you.”
Your fingers curl into his shirt. “I tried to get back to the phone.”
Craig looks back from the front seat, quieter now. “You fought hard.”
Deran’s gaze flicks up in the mirror. “Yeah. She did.”
Andrew doesn’t answer.
“They shouldn’t have touched you,” Andrew says.
“No.”
His voice drops. “Shouldn’t have taken you.”
You rest your forehead against his neck. “You got me back.”
He doesn’t answer, but his hold on you says he’s still somewhere between the garage and the back seat.
Andrew carries you into the house.
You don’t fight him. Your body has started shaking, delayed and useless, little tremors in your hands and legs that get worse the more you try to stop them.
Craig hovers near the entry while Deran shuts the door behind him. Andrew doesn’t set you down.
“I’ve got her,” Andrew says.
Craig looks at you, then at Andrew. He nods and steps back toward the door.
Deran tosses the keys onto the small table near the entry. “We’ll handle the cars.”
Andrew doesn’t look away from you. “Go.”
Deran opens the door again. Craig is already halfway out.
“Call if you need anything,” Deran says.
Andrew’s jaw shifts, and that’s the only answer Deran gets before the door shuts behind them.
The house goes quiet.
There are no brothers, no voices through the walls. Just the faint hum of the fridge down the hall and Andrew’s breathing against your cheek.
He carries you down the hallway to the bedroom and sets you on the edge of the bed. The lamp clicks on with a rough twist of his wrist, warm light spilling over the sheets, the dresser, your bare knees, and the blood dried near your mouth.
Andrew kneels in front of you. His hands close around your wrists, and you hiss before you can hide it.
His face changes. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
His thumbs hover beside the rope marks. The skin is red and raw, rubbed open in places. Your fingers still feel wrong, pins and needles moving under your skin.
His jaw flexes.
You touch his cheek before he can say anything else. “Andrew.”
He leans into it, then turns his face enough to kiss your palm. His mouth stays there, hot and dry, against the centre of your hand.
You curl your fingers lightly against his cheek.
Then he stands. You hear him in the bathroom. Water running. Cabinets opening. He comes back with a wet cloth, gauze, a towel, and an ice pack wrapped in a shirt.
He wipes your face first. The cloth touches your lip, and you flinch.
Andrew freezes.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep lying.”
You almost smile, but your lip hurts too much.
He cleans around the cut with careful focus. Blood comes away on the cloth. His hand steadies your chin, but his fingers don’t press into the bruised side. He remembers every sore place after seeing it once.
Andrew’s eyes drop to your mouth again. He folds the cloth, exposing a clean side, and drags it gently along your lower lip.
Then he presses the wrapped ice pack into your hand.
“Hold this.”
Your fingers close around it, cold biting through the fabric as he lowers his attention to your wrists.
He wraps them next.
Not perfectly. But carefully, with gauze over the worst of the rope burn and tape pressed down with his thumb instead of his fingers. He turns each wrist like it might break if he moves too fast. The towel sits beside his knee, already marked with blood and water, and his eyes keep going back to the bruises on your face.
You set the ice pack beside you on the bed and reach for the hem of his shirt.
His eyes snap to yours. “What are you doing?”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“None of it’s mine.”
“I still want it off.”
Your fingers curl in the fabric and tug. He lets you pull the shirt up, but he’s the one who takes over after that, dragging it over his head and dropping it to the floor. His chest is bare under the lamplight, marked with old scars, fresh streaks of blood, and the hard rise and fall of breathing he can’t slow down.
You touch him, just your fingertips at first, over the centre of his chest. His muscles tighten beneath your hand.
“You’re shaking,” you say.
“So are you.”
“Mine makes sense.”
His eyes lift. You slide your hand lower, over his stomach, and his breathing changes.
“Baby.”
The warning is there. So is the want.
Andrew catches your wrist and brings your hand to his mouth. He doesn’t kiss the bandage. He kisses beneath it, where your pulse is still beating hard under your skin. His lips stay there too long, hot and still, and when his eyes lift to yours, your stomach pulls tight.
His thumb moves carefully beside the raw mark from the rope.
“They had you,” he says.
His other hand slides to your thigh, possessive enough to make your body react before you can stop it. “Had you tied up. Hurt you.”
“They don’t now.”
“No.”
His hand presses harder into your thigh. His eyes move over the gauze, the bruises, the blood cleaned from your mouth.
You’re here. On his bed. Under his hand. Alive.
He leans in before you do. The kiss starts at the corner of your mouth, careful of the split in your lip, but it doesn’t stay soft. His hand cups the back of your neck, and the sound he makes against you is low and rough, like he’s been swallowing it since the parking lot.
You say his name against his mouth, rough and quiet.
Andrew pulls back only enough to look at you.
“I need to touch you,” he says.
Your fingers tighten against his chest.
His mouth tightens like he wants to pull the words back. He doesn’t.
“I need—” His jaw works. “Need to know you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
His eyes drop to your mouth again, then lower to his hand spread over your thigh.
You slide your hand down his stomach, over the place his breathing keeps pulling tight.
“I want your hands on me,” you say. “Your mouth. I want you inside me, Andrew.”
His grip digs in once at your thigh.
“I want you to fuck me like you need me.”
His mouth is back on yours before you finish saying it, rougher this time, still careful enough not to split your lip worse but hungry enough to make your body lean into him. His hand slides under your skirt, fingers spreading over your thigh, and he drags you closer to the edge of the bed.
“Andrew…”
His mouth drags to your jaw, then your neck, restless and rough, like he can’t keep himself in one place long enough. Teeth at your throat. Tongue over your pulse. His palms move up your ribs, down your waist, over your hips, then back to your thighs, pulling you closer even though there’s nowhere left for you to go.
“Can’t stop touching you,” Andrew says against your skin, almost angry with it. “Can’t—baby, I can’t.”
His hands move up to the buttons of your shirt. He gets the first one open, then the second, then the third. His patience disappears before he gets any farther. His fingers curl into the fabric, and he rips the rest open hard enough to send buttons scattering across the floor.
Andrew looks at the torn shirt hanging open over your bra, then at you.
He drags the shirt off your shoulders, careful where your arms ache, then shoves your bra down until your breasts spill free. His mouth lowers over the newly exposed skin, lips pressing to your stomach, your ribs, the underside of your breast. His hand covers the other one, rougher now, thumb dragging over your nipple until your back arches.
“Need this,” he mutters.
His mouth closes around your nipple, and your fingers twist in his hair as his breath breaks hot against your skin, tongue working over the peak, teeth grazing just enough to make your hips lift. His cock presses hard against you through his jeans, his hips grinding once before he catches himself.
A rough little gasp gets out before you can stop it. Andrew’s whole body goes tight.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your breast. “That sound…”
His fingers dig into your thigh. “Need you to sound like that. For me. Please, baby… lemme hear you.”
You pull his hair, and when he lifts his head, his eyes are dark and fixed on you.
“Again,” he says, voice rough. “Do that again, baby.”
You pull harder.
His mouth goes back to you, rough and hungry, moving from one breast to the other. He sucks your nipple until your body bows into him, then opens his mouth over the curve of your breast and the spot beneath your throat where your pulse keeps giving you away. His hand slides between your thighs, dragging your underwear aside, fingers moving through how wet you are, and his hips press hard against the edge of the bed.
“Gotta taste you,” Andrew says against your skin.
His fingers press in a little harder as his voice goes thin.
“Gotta have you. So fuckin’ bad.”
His fingers move through you again, slower this time, slicking over your clit until your hips lift into his hand. His mouth returns to yours, swallowing the sound that leaves you when his fingers press harder, and he kisses you deep while his hand works between your legs with steady pressure.
“So wet,” he breathes against your mouth. “Baby…”
His fingers push inside you, and your mouth falls open. Andrew watches you take them, jaw tight. Then he curls them, and your hips lift sharply against his hand.
“There,” Andrew says. “Take ’em. Fuck… you’re right there. I feel you.”
You clench around him.
His fingers curl again, and your back arches. His mouth goes back to your breast, sucking your nipple while his fingers fuck you, and you start coming apart before you can fight it.
“Andrew, fuck…”
“Gotta feel you.” His mouth drags up to your neck. “Wanna feel—baby. Wanna feel you come.”
“I’m gonna—”
“Good.” His fingers move harder. “Lemme feel it. Please… lemme feel it.”
You break around his fingers, thighs shaking, one hand fisted in his hair. Andrew moans against your throat, still touching, dragging it out until your body won’t stop clenching around him. The pleasure keeps rolling through you in sharp little pulls, too much and not enough, and when you try to close your legs, his hands keep them open.
“Andrew!”
“Again.”
“I can’t!”
“Please, baby.”
The words are rough, almost ruined, and your body answers before you can. You’re still sensitive, still shaking, but his fingers curl again and the pleasure catches hard enough to make your back arch.
His eyes darken.
“One more. Gimme—fuck, gimme another.”
He slides down your body, pushing your skirt higher as he goes. Your underwear is still hooked to one side, soaked and twisted against your thigh, and Andrew’s hand tightens there before his mouth follows. He moves over your stomach, your hip, the inside of your thigh.
“Gotta taste you…” His mouth drags over your inner thigh. “Lemme taste you.”
His mouth moves between your thighs.
The first touch of his tongue makes your knees pull around his shoulders. He groans into you like he’s the one being touched, hands gripping your thighs, holding you open while he licks you deep and slow, then harder, rougher, until your hips start chasing his mouth.
“So fuckin’ wet for me,” he says against you.
His tongue drags through you again, and your hand tightens in his hair. His hips move against the mattress when you pull, like he can’t help it. His mouth goes back to your clit, tongue working you while his fingers slide back inside, and your breathing turns thin and useless.
“Andrew—please…”
He doesn’t lift his head. He grips your thighs harder and keeps going, rougher now, pulling pleasure out of you until you’re shaking under his mouth. It breaks through you with a cry, messy and overwhelming, your thighs locking around his head as he groans into you.
He doesn’t stop right away. That’s what makes it too much. His mouth stays on you while your hips move weakly against him, and every lick drags another pulse through your body before the last one has faded.
“Andrew—fuck, wait…”
He lifts his head enough to look at you. His lips are wet. His face is wrecked.
“Need more,” he says.
Your chest rises hard. “You have more.”
His hand presses your thigh wider. “Not enough.”
He lowers his mouth again before you can answer, tongue dragging through you slower now, rougher, like he wants every bit of what he already pulled out of you. You gasp, legs shaking, one heel digging into the mattress when his tongue presses flat against your clit.
Your legs spread wider for him, shaking under his mouth while he works you again. You’re already too sensitive, already wet enough that every movement sounds like proof, and when his fingers press deeper, your body gives hard.
“Andrew—fuck—”
He moans into you as you soak his mouth, his chin, his fingers. His hands lock on your thighs, keeping you open when your hips try to pull away.
“Yeah,” he says, rough against your clit. “Like that. Give it to me again.”
“I can’t—”
“You are.”
His voice breaks against you. “Fuck, baby… you are.”
You can’t stop it. That’s what makes your head turn against the sheets, what makes your hands twist in his hair like you’re trying to pull him closer and push him away at the same time. It feels so fucking good it hurts, and your body keeps giving him more, shaking open under his mouth while he holds you through it.
“For me,” Andrew says, almost buried against you. “Please, baby.”
You come again before you can fight it, harder this time, a cry tearing out of you as your fingers twist in his hair. Andrew keeps his mouth on you through every pulse, like he can feel each one, his hands firm on your thighs until you’re trembling under him and saying his name like it’s the only thing you still know.
When he finally lifts his head, his breathing is uneven, his mouth wet, his eyes fixed on you like he still isn’t satisfied.
You barely get his name out before he’s climbing over you, pushing you back from the edge of the bed until your shoulders hit the sheets, one hand already working his jeans open.
He shoves them down only as far as he needs to, too impatient for more. Your skirt is pushed up around your hips, your underwear still shoved aside and soaked against your thigh.
He looks down at you spread beneath him, bruised and shaking and reaching for him anyway.
He takes his cock in his hand and drags the head of it through how soaked you are, once, twice, every pass catching on your clit until your hips lift.
“Can’t wait,” he says, voice rough. “Fuck—open your legs wider for me.”
You spread your thighs wider.
“Need to be inside you,” Andrew says, voice breaking at the edge. “Need you full of my cock.”
He pushes inside slow enough to make you feel every single inch. His head drops near yours, his body going tight over you as he fills you.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Baby…”
You wrap your legs around him.
He doesn’t move right away. He stays buried deep, hips pressed hard to yours, breathing rough against your mouth like being inside you is the first thing that’s reached him since the phone cut out.
It feels too good, having him this deep. The thick pressure of his cock inside you, the heat of him, the weight of his body holding yours down. You’re sore already, open and shaking under him, but every part of you still wants more.
Then his hands find your hips. His fingers dig in.
“Need you full,” Andrew says. “Need my hands on you. My mouth. My cock. Need—fuck, baby…”
His hips pull back and drive in hard enough to push you up the mattress.
You cry out before you can stop it.
Andrew does it again.
The headboard knocks the wall, and his hand slides behind your head before you can hit it. Even like this, even rough and desperate and half gone, he protects the places that hurt.
“You have me,” you say.
His hips snap harder as your nails drag down his back.
He fucks you harder, thumb finding your clit while his mouth moves over your throat, your jaw, the top of your breast. His body covers yours, heavy and hot, his cock dragging deep every time he pushes back in, and it feels so fucking good you can’t get a full word out. Just his name. A curse. Your nails digging in when he finds the right place and keeps going like he can feel exactly what it does to you.
His hips slow only enough to make you feel the next thrust all the way in.
“Your pussy’s so wet for me.”
Your body clenches around him.
He does it again, grinding deep, thumb pressing harder to your clit until your mouth falls open against his shoulder.
“Andrew, fuck…” you breathe. “Feels so fucking good.”
“Yeah.” His voice breaks around it. “That’s it. Right there.”
Your body gives under him.
You come around his cock with a broken cry, hips lifting into him, clenching hard enough to make his rhythm falter. Andrew keeps fucking you through it, jaw tight, eyes on your face like he needs every bit of it.
“Don’t stop,” you breathe against his mouth. “Don’t—fuck, Andrew, don’t stop.”
He shifts your thigh higher over his hip while you’re still pulsing around him, changing the angle until he’s deeper than before. The next thrust drags another wave through you so hard your hands grab at his shoulders, nails biting in.
His grip tightens at your thigh, and his hips drive deep again.
“Take it,” he says, voice rough against your mouth. “Fuck, baby… I’ve got you.”
You want him to stop. You want him closer. You want his weight, his mouth, his cock deeper, even while your body shakes like it can’t take another one. He slows only enough to make each thrust heavier, more devastating, every drag of him sending aftershocks through you until you’re past words, with nothing left but his name, half curses, the wet sound of him fucking you and the rough scrape of his breathing near your mouth.
His mouth drags down your throat.
“Gotta make you feel me after,” he says. “Want you to walk around tomorrow with me still inside you.”
Your body clenches hard as his rhythm stutters.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “You want that.”
You can barely speak. Your hand slides into his hair.
He presses his thumb harder to your clit, and your hips lift against him.
“Want you feeling me tomorrow,” he says against your throat. “Want this pussy sore from me.”
Your whole body tightens under him as his mouth drags over your throat, open and hot.
“Good girl.”
He fucks you rougher, one hand gripping your thigh, the other braced beside your head. His mouth finds yours, careful of your lip even now, then drops back to your throat when he can’t hold back the sounds coming out of him.
“Gonna fill you,” he says against your skin. “Fuck, baby… need to come deep inside you. Need it.”
“Andrew…”
“Need it,” he says, almost through his teeth. “Need my come in you. Need you full of me.”
Your nails drag over his back.
He drives in harder, thumb working your clit with the same rough focus, and the pleasure starts building again too fast. Too sharp. It hasn’t even left your body all the way, and he’s already dragging it back up.
Your thighs shake around his hips, and Andrew feels the way your body goes tight around him.
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“I’m gonna—”
“I know.” His hips grind deep. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it.”
“I can’t stop—”
His mouth opens against your throat. “Don’t.”
You come again, harder and messier, your body clenching around him in hot pulses while your mouth opens against his shoulder. Andrew groans, almost losing it, his thrusts going uneven before he forces himself through it.
“Fuck. Fuck, baby…”
His eyes drop between you again, and his rhythm nearly breaks.
“You’re taking all of it,” Andrew breathes. “Fuck… your pussy’s taking all of me.”
Your face burns, but you can’t look away from him. His control is slipping now, shoulders tight, mouth parted around every rough breath, and when he drives in again, the pressure of his cock deep inside you makes your nails dig harder into his back.
Andrew feels you tighten. His hips drive deep, and this time he doesn’t pull back right away. He grinds into you, cock buried as far as your body will take him, his thumb still moving against your clit.
“Need one more,” he says.
Your head turns against the sheets. “Andrew—”
“One more. Then I’ll come inside you.”
The words make your thighs tighten around him.
He fucks you harder again, rough and uneven now, chasing it from you and fighting his own body at the same time. You’re already open, already shaking, already too sensitive, but your body still lifts for him when his mouth moves over your throat, your collarbone, your breast. His teeth graze your nipple and his cock drives deep at the same time.
You come around him with a sharp cry, your body locking under his, tight around his cock in a way that drags a groan out of him.
Andrew buries his face against your neck.
“Fuck—baby…”
His hips stutter.
You drag your hands up his back and hold onto him. “Come inside me.”
His whole body goes tight.
“I want it,” you breathe. “Fuck, Andrew… I want it.”
His forehead presses to yours, his breathing rough and uneven.
“Need your pussy full of me,” he says, voice ruined. “Need you full.”
You nod against him, barely breathing.
“Andrew…”
“Fuck, baby…” His voice breaks. “I’m gonna—”
Andrew buries himself inside you with a rough, wrecked sound against your throat.
The bed knocks the wall again, harder this time, and his mouth closes over your throat while his body shakes above you.
The first hot pulse of him spilling inside you makes your thighs tighten around his waist, and then there’s more, deep and wet and overwhelming enough that your mouth opens against his shoulder. Andrew groans like he feels you answering it, his hips grinding down as he fills you until there’s nowhere for it to go but around him.
It feels so fucking good you can’t get a full breath in. His cock is still inside you, his come warm and thick, and every small movement makes your body tighten around him again.
He thrusts in deeper, slow and rough, and his come spills out around his cock. Your nails drag over his back while he holds himself there, your body tightening around him again.
Andrew’s hand grips your hip.
His eyes drop between you, just long enough to take in the mess between your thighs, and his rhythm breaks into one more slow, deep thrust.
More of him slips out, warm between your thighs, and Andrew’s mouth presses hard to your throat as he pushes in again, like he can’t stand it and still can’t stop himself.
He stays inside you after that, heavy over you, breathing hard, one hand sliding under your back to pull you closer.
He kisses your neck, then your jaw, careful when he gets near your mouth. He presses his forehead to yours instead, eyes still open.
You touch his chest, fingers slipping over warm skin.
When your thighs loosen around his waist, his gaze drops between you.
Then he pulls out slowly.
Your mouth opens on a sharp inhale. His come slips out of you almost right away and Andrew’s jaw tightens at the sight. His hand stays on your hip, thumb pressing once into your skin like he has to stop himself from reaching between your legs again.
He reaches for the blanket and pulls it over your hips before he moves away from you. The mattress shifts under his weight, and he sits beside you, one hand still on your thigh while the other reaches for your wrist.
“Lemme see,” Andrew says.
You give him your hand.
He checks the gauze he wrapped before, thumb careful along the edge of it. The tape has shifted, but the worst of the rope burn is still covered. He fixes it with two short presses, then turns your other wrist and does the same there.
“Hurts?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
His fingers stay careful on the edge of the gauze.
“I’m okay,” you say.
Andrew’s eyes lift to yours.
You hold his gaze. “I am.”
He doesn’t argue. He just reaches past you, shuts off the lamp, and gets into bed beside you. His arm goes around your waist, pulling you back against his chest carefully, his hand spreading over your stomach once you’re settled.
Your body aches everywhere. Your wrists. Your cheek. Your thighs. Between your legs.
Still, you press closer.
Andrew’s mouth brushes the back of your neck. “Sleep,” he says.
You cover his hand with yours. “You gonna?”
“No.”
His fingers rest near your pulse.
“You’re still checking,” you murmur.
“Yeah.”
You turn your hand over and lace your fingers through his. “You still look like you’re waiting for someone to take me.”
His arm draws you closer, and his mouth presses to the back of your neck.
“You’re mine,” Andrew says.
You swallow. “Yours?”
His fingers spread slightly over your stomach. “Mine,” he says again, lower now.
“Yours,” you whisper.
This time, his body finally loosens behind yours. His hand stays on you until you fall asleep.
summary: Someone wants leverage over the Codys, and taking you seems like the fastest way to get it. But you’re not as easy to break as he thinks, and Andrew Cody has never been good at letting go of what’s his.
notes: No thoughts except for the fact that I was HORNY! This is A LOT more different pacing than pope’s girl, but I hope you enjoy! Enjoy Andrew being possessive, desperate, and needy!! 🫣
warnings: 18+, MDNI. Kidnapping, physical violence, gun violence, blood/injury, reader is tied up, slap/hit to the face, brief unconsciousness, gun to reader’s head, canon-typical Cody violence, Possessive!Pope, Needy!Pope, rough explicit smut, oral sex, fingering, creampie, dirty talk, “good girl,” pet name “baby,” no use of Y/N.
word count: 7.2k
divider by: @/cursed-carmine
Please do not translate, repost, redistribute, or adapt this story on any platform without my explicit permission. Reblogs are welcome and encouraged!
the bait
Andrew calls you while you’re walking out of the diner.
The night air smells like fryer oil, cigarette smoke, sour trash and hot pavement. Your shoes ache from standing through the late shift. Your skirt clings to the backs of your thighs, and your button-up is soft from too many washes, the cuffs rolled to your elbows because the kitchen always runs too hot.
You tuck your phone between your shoulder and ear while you dig through your purse for your keys.
Andrew says nothing. He called you a few minutes ago and has barely spoken since. He does this sometimes. Calls, listens, lets the line sit open like hearing you breathe on the other end is enough to get him through whatever job he’s trapped in with his brothers.
A car door shuts on his end. Male voices move around him.
Craig says, “Tell him he’s being a dick.”
Baz answers, smooth and bored, “He knows.”
Deran mutters, “Can we not do this shit right now?”
You smile tiredly, pushing the door shut behind you with your hip. “Sounds fun over there.”
Andrew’s voice comes in low. “Where are you, baby?”
“Leaving work.”
“Alone?”
“Andrew.”
“Answer me,” he says.
You roll your eyes, but there’s no real bite in it. He gets like this when he’s restless, when something with the family has him wound too tight and his head starts building exits and threats out of every ordinary thing.
“Yes, alone. I’m walking to my car. I’ve got my keys in my hand. You want me to check under it too?”
“No.”
“You sure? Could give you a full security report.”
“Get in the car.”
“I’m almost there.”
“Stay on the phone,” Andrew says.
Your car waits near the far end of the lot, half under a tired streetlight with a bad flicker. “You miss me or something, baby?”
Craig laughs on the other end, too loud and too close. “Oh, he fuckin’ misses you.”
The phone shifts with a rough scrape.
“Fuck off, Craig,” Andrew mutters.
Craig laughs harder somewhere farther away. You’re tired, but he still gets half a smile out of you.
Then Andrew says, “Yeah.” One word. Quiet. No joke in it.
Your hand tightens around your keys, the tiredness in your body shifting into something warmer, heavier, lower.
“Andrew,” you say, softer now.
You reach the edge of the lot when something moves near the dumpster. Your smile fades.
A man steps out from beside it, cap pulled low, shoulders hunched like he’s been waiting too long. Another is near your car, leaning against the passenger door with one hand in his jacket.
Your feet slow and Andrew hears the change in your breathing immediately.
“What?” he asks.
You look from one man to the other, keys sliding between your fingers. “Nothing.”
“Baby.”
The man near your car smiles, and the look of it sends something cold through your stomach before you even understand why.
“Andrew,” you say.
The first man grabs you from behind.
You twist hard before he can lock his arm around you. Your elbow drives back into his ribs, and he swears, grip slipping. You swing your keys at his face and feel metal drag across skin.
“Fuck!” the man yells.
The phone drops to the pavement. Andrew’s voice cuts through the speaker near your foot. “Baby?”
You kick back, catching the man’s shin. He stumbles, and you almost get low enough to grab the phone, but another hand catches your hair and yanks hard enough to make your scalp burn.
“Get her hands!” one of them shouts.
You bite the closest hand hard enough to taste skin and salt and something metallic, and the man screams as he rips himself away from you. You spit, swing again, and drag your nails down another man’s cheek when he tries to get in close.
“Jesus Christ, Marco said she’d be easy!”
“Then Marco’s a fuckin’ idiot,” you snap, and drive your knee up.
The man folds with a choked sound.
You run, getting two steps and then a third before a hand catches the back of your shirt and jerks you off balance. You slam into the side of your car, shoulder first, pain flashing hot down your arm, but you shove backward anyway, heel scraping pavement until you catch someone in the knee.
The phone is still on. Andrew is still calling your name. You hear it through the scrape of shoes and your own breathing.
“Baby!”
You reach blindly for anything. Your keys. Your purse. A loose chunk of gravel near the curb. Your fingers close around nothing useful.
Then the slap cracks across your face.
Your head whips sideways. Pain blooms sharp and bright across your cheek, spreading fast into your eye. The lot tilts, but you stay on your feet. You spit blood and lunge again.
“You stupid bitch!” one of them spits.
Something hard clips the side of your head, and your knees finally go out.
Andrew’s voice is the last thing you hear.
“Baby!”
Then the pavement disappears.
You wake up angry.
The pain comes after. Head first, pounding behind your eyes. Then your cheek. Your mouth. Your wrists. Your shoulders.
You blink against the low light and find yourself tied to a chair in the middle of an old garage.
Concrete floor. Oil stains. Workbenches against the walls. A rusted car frame under a blue tarp. The garage door is shut, but it doesn’t quite meet the floor. Warm air slips in underneath, carrying the smell of asphalt and oil.
Your wrists are tied behind the chair, rope pulled tight enough to make your fingers feel thick. Your ankles are tied to the legs. Your purse sits dumped out on a table nearby. Lip gloss, cigarettes, loose change, your keys, your cracked phone.
One of the men stands near the table with a towel wrapped around his hand.
You move your tongue over your split lip and smile. “That from me?”
He glares.
Another guy leans against a workbench, scratches dragged red down one side of his face. He keeps touching them like he can’t believe you managed it.
You hope they scar.
Marco steps into view. You’ve seen him twice before. Once outside a warehouse where Andrew told you to stay in the car. Once from across a room while Baz handled the talking and Craig looked bored enough to start a fight for entertainment.
Marco isn’t big enough to be careless, but he carries himself like he wants people to think he is. Thick shoulders, dark hair, gold chain at his throat, gun tucked into the front of his jeans. There’s a bruise blooming along his jaw.
Good.
Marco stops in front of you, then crouches. “You always this much trouble?”
You pull against the rope again. It bites into raw skin. “Only when men grab me in parking lots.”
His mouth lifts. “You’re funny.”
“No. I’m pissed off.”
The man with the scratched face says, “Should’ve gagged her.”
Marco keeps his eyes on you. “Nah. Pope’ll wanna hear her.”
“His name is Andrew.”
The man with the towel around his hand looks at Marco. Marco studies you closer, and whatever he finds makes his smile come back slower.
“Andrew,” Marco repeats.
You don’t answer.
Marco stands and walks to the table with your phone. “You know what he does, your Andrew?”
“Yeah.”
“He ever tell you about me?”
You stare at him.
He laughs without humour. “Course not. They never tell their girls anything useful.”
“You don’t seem useful.”
His hand cracks across your mouth so fast you barely see it coming.
Your head snaps to the side. Pain bursts through your lip again, wet and hot. You breathe through it until the room steadies.
Marco’s shoes step into your line of sight.
“You boys all hear that?” Marco says. “She’s loyal.”
You spit blood on the floor near his feet. Marco’s smile disappears.
He grabs your jaw, thumb digging near the swelling. “I set up part of a score for your boyfriend and his brothers. My guy got them through the back. My place held the cash overnight. I got paid, sure.”
“Sounds like you should’ve saved it.”
His fingers tighten. “But then I hear the take was bigger than Baz said.”
“Take it up with Baz.”
“I am.” Marco lets go of your face and holds up your phone. “Baz’ll talk me in circles. Pope won’t.”
Your phone lights up in his hand. Andrew’s name fills the cracked screen. Your stomach pulls tight.
Marco answers and puts it on speaker.
Andrew’s voice comes through low and flat. “Put her on.”
Marco paces slowly in front of you, phone in one hand. “You listening now, Pope?”
“Put her on,” Andrew says again.
Baz’s voice comes through faintly behind him. “Marco, man. You got what we agreed on.”
“I got what you said I was getting.”
“It was your share,” Baz says.
“Bullshit.”
Craig cuts in, closer now. “You took her over fuckin’ money?”
Marco smiles at you. “I took the only thing Pope Cody gives a shit about.”
The line stays quiet. You stare at the phone.
Marco keeps going, too pleased with himself to know when to stop. “I want the rest of my cut. He comes alone, brings the money, and maybe she walks out breathing.”
Baz says, “You’re not getting him alone.”
“Then she dies here.”
Andrew speaks again, same voice, lower now. “Put her on.”
Marco crouches beside you and holds the phone near your mouth.
You swallow around blood and dryness. “Andrew?”
The line goes quiet enough that you hear the faint sound of him breathing.
“Baby,” Andrew says.
Your eyes burn and you hate it.
“I bit one.”
Andrew’s voice drops. “Yeah?”
“Hard.”
“Good.”
Marco pulls the phone away.
Andrew says, “Put her back on.”
Marco laughs. “No. You’re listening now.”
He points the phone at you. “Tell him what happens if he doesn’t bring my money.”
You breathe in through your nose. “Don’t come alone.”
Marco’s face hardens.
Andrew says your name.
You keep your eyes on Marco. “He’s got more guys than he said.”
Marco grabs your hair and yanks your head back. Andrew hears the sound you try not to make.
Marco lifts the phone to his mouth. “Fifteen minutes, Pope.”
He ends the call.
Marco lowers his face near yours. “Think you’re tough?”
“No.”
He smiles.
“I think you’re stupid.”
The smile leaves him slowly.
You brace for another strike, but Marco only straightens and looks toward the men by the door.
“Watch the front.”
Time starts dragging. You count through pain instead. The man with the bitten hand keeps pacing, scratched-face keeps glancing at the garage door, and Marco checks his gun twice, then his phone, then the door near the back.
You keep pulling at the rope when no one is looking. The skin around your wrists is wet now, and the chair creaks under you, but nothing gives.
Outside, a car passes. Everyone stops.
It keeps going.
Marco swears under his breath. You smile before you can stop yourself.
“What?” Marco asks.
You lean back against the chair, pulse hammering. “You’re scared.”
The first shot cracks outside, and everyone in the garage reacts at once. Marco ducks behind the workbench, shouting toward the front while the guy with the bitten hand runs for the garage door and drops before he gets close. The guy with the scratches fires through the gap near the floor, cursing so hard his voice breaks.
You work your wrists lower while they’re looking away. Pain rips up your arms, hot and sharp, but the knot slips enough for one hand to move.
The lights flicker as more gunfire pounds against the walls. Craig yells from outside, close enough now that you know the Codys are at the door.
“Move!” Craig shouts.
The lights cut out. Gunfire lights the garage in broken flashes — Marco behind the bench, the gun in his hand, the side door opening behind one of his men.
Deran steps through and fires, and the man drops.
“Fuck,” Deran says, crossing to you fast. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
He gets his knife under the rope at your wrists and starts cutting through it, keeping low while another shot cracks near the front. Craig yells a string of curses from somewhere outside. Baz’s voice cuts through after, sharp and pissed off.
Deran gets the rope loose, and your hands fall forward, numb and burning.
Andrew steps in with blood on his shirt and a gun in his hand, his face empty in a way that makes your stomach pull tight.
“Andrew,” you say.
A man comes at him from the side. Andrew turns, fires, and keeps moving toward you like the man was barely worth looking at.
Deran slices through the rope around your ankles. “She’s loose!”
You stand too fast. Your knees buckle, and Andrew catches your arm before you hit the floor. His grip is hard through your sleeve, his eyes moving over your face, your mouth, your wrists, your throat, the side of your head.
“Baby,” Andrew says.
“I’m okay.”
His hand comes up to your face but stops before he touches your swollen cheek.
“They hit you,” he says.
“I hit them first.”
“I heard.” The pride in his voice is buried under fury, but it’s there.
Then Marco moves behind you. You hear him before anyone else does.
Marco yanks you back, one arm locked hard across your chest. Cold metal presses to your temple, and everyone stops.
Craig shouts from the front. “Fuck!”
Baz snaps, “Pope!”
Marco breathes hard against your ear, blood wet in his voice. “Nobody fuckin’ move!”
Deran’s gun is up, but the angle is bad. Craig is half-hidden near the front, weapon ready. Baz stands behind a rusted car frame, face hard, eyes flicking between Marco’s gun and Andrew’s hands.
Andrew only looks at Marco. “Let her go.”
Marco’s arm tightens around you. “Back up.”
The gun presses harder to your head. You wince, and Andrew’s expression goes blank. Marco feels it. His breathing turns shaky.
“You move, she’s dead!” Marco shouts.
Andrew says, “Baby.”
You know what he wants. You know what he needs. He can’t get a clean shot. Not with Marco behind you. Not with the gun at your head.
Marco shifts his weight behind you.
You slam the back of your head into his face.
Pain explodes through your skull. Marco yells, grip breaking, and the gun jerks away from your temple. Andrew moves before your legs can hold you. Your vision blurs white at the edges as Marco is ripped away from you, and when your knees give out, Andrew catches you around the waist before you hit the concrete.
Gunfire cracks again. Once. Twice.
Then the garage goes quiet except for breathing, the ringing in your ears, and Craig swearing under his breath.
Andrew holds you against him, one hand cupping the back of your head.
“You hurt yourself,” Andrew says.
“He had a gun to my head.”
Craig steps closer. “We gotta go.”
Baz steps in close and takes the gun from Andrew’s hand.
Andrew lets it go without looking at him.
Then he bends and lifts you before you can argue.
You grab at his shirt. “I can walk.”
“No.”
His arm hooks under your knees, the other behind your back, and then you’re off the floor.
You press your face against his shoulder because the lights are gone and the garage smells like gunpowder and blood.
Andrew carries you out. He doesn’t look down at Marco.
You keep your face against his neck.
The ride to Andrew’s house is quiet at first.
You’re in Andrew’s lap in the back seat because he won’t put you anywhere else. Deran drives. Craig sits in front with one hand braced on the dash, breathing like he wants to crawl out of his own skin. Baz is in another car behind you.
The highway moves dark outside the window, streetlights sliding over Andrew’s face and disappearing just as fast. His hand stays at the back of your head, careful where you struck Marco, while his other arm stays locked around your waist.
“You can loosen up,” you murmur.
“No.”
“I can breathe.”
“Good.”
Craig turns his head. “She hit him with her head.”
Deran says, “I was there.”
Craig looks back at you, still breathing hard. “That was kinda badass.”
You manage, “Thank you.”
Deran’s eyes flick up in the rearview mirror. “Don’t encourage her.”
Deran’s gaze cuts to your face again before he looks back at the road. “You need ice. Water too.”
Andrew’s arm tightens around you.
Deran catches it in the mirror and softens his voice without making a thing of it. “We’re almost there.”
Andrew’s mouth brushes your hair.
“Stay awake,” he says.
“I am.”
“Talk.”
“About what?”
“Anything.”
Your eyes close, and his hand shifts carefully at the back of your head.
“Baby.”
You open them again. “I heard you.”
Andrew’s eyes stay fixed ahead through the windshield.
“On the phone,” you say. “I heard you.”
His throat works. “You stopped talking.”
“I tried.”
“I heard them hit you.”
Your fingers curl into his shirt. “I tried to get back to the phone.”
Craig looks back from the front seat, quieter now. “You fought hard.”
Deran’s gaze flicks up in the mirror. “Yeah. She did.”
Andrew doesn’t answer.
“They shouldn’t have touched you,” Andrew says.
“No.”
His voice drops. “Shouldn’t have taken you.”
You rest your forehead against his neck. “You got me back.”
He doesn’t answer, but his hold on you says he’s still somewhere between the garage and the back seat.
Andrew carries you into the house.
You don’t fight him. Your body has started shaking, delayed and useless, little tremors in your hands and legs that get worse the more you try to stop them.
Craig hovers near the entry while Deran shuts the door behind him. Andrew doesn’t set you down.
“I’ve got her,” Andrew says.
Craig looks at you, then at Andrew. He nods and steps back toward the door.
Deran tosses the keys onto the small table near the entry. “We’ll handle the cars.”
Andrew doesn’t look away from you. “Go.”
Deran opens the door again. Craig is already halfway out.
“Call if you need anything,” Deran says.
Andrew’s jaw shifts, and that’s the only answer Deran gets before the door shuts behind them.
The house goes quiet.
There are no brothers, no voices through the walls. Just the faint hum of the fridge down the hall and Andrew’s breathing against your cheek.
He carries you down the hallway to the bedroom and sets you on the edge of the bed. The lamp clicks on with a rough twist of his wrist, warm light spilling over the sheets, the dresser, your bare knees, and the blood dried near your mouth.
Andrew kneels in front of you. His hands close around your wrists, and you hiss before you can hide it.
His face changes. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
His thumbs hover beside the rope marks. The skin is red and raw, rubbed open in places. Your fingers still feel wrong, pins and needles moving under your skin.
His jaw flexes.
You touch his cheek before he can say anything else. “Andrew.”
He leans into it, then turns his face enough to kiss your palm. His mouth stays there, hot and dry, against the centre of your hand.
You curl your fingers lightly against his cheek.
Then he stands. You hear him in the bathroom. Water running. Cabinets opening. He comes back with a wet cloth, gauze, a towel, and an ice pack wrapped in a shirt.
He wipes your face first. The cloth touches your lip, and you flinch.
Andrew freezes.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep lying.”
You almost smile, but your lip hurts too much.
He cleans around the cut with careful focus. Blood comes away on the cloth. His hand steadies your chin, but his fingers don’t press into the bruised side. He remembers every sore place after seeing it once.
Andrew’s eyes drop to your mouth again. He folds the cloth, exposing a clean side, and drags it gently along your lower lip.
Then he presses the wrapped ice pack into your hand.
“Hold this.”
Your fingers close around it, cold biting through the fabric as he lowers his attention to your wrists.
He wraps them next.
Not perfectly. But carefully, with gauze over the worst of the rope burn and tape pressed down with his thumb instead of his fingers. He turns each wrist like it might break if he moves too fast. The towel sits beside his knee, already marked with blood and water, and his eyes keep going back to the bruises on your face.
You set the ice pack beside you on the bed and reach for the hem of his shirt.
His eyes snap to yours. “What are you doing?”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“None of it’s mine.”
“I still want it off.”
Your fingers curl in the fabric and tug. He lets you pull the shirt up, but he’s the one who takes over after that, dragging it over his head and dropping it to the floor. His chest is bare under the lamplight, marked with old scars, fresh streaks of blood, and the hard rise and fall of breathing he can’t slow down.
You touch him, just your fingertips at first, over the centre of his chest. His muscles tighten beneath your hand.
“You’re shaking,” you say.
“So are you.”
“Mine makes sense.”
His eyes lift. You slide your hand lower, over his stomach, and his breathing changes.
“Baby.”
The warning is there. So is the want.
Andrew catches your wrist and brings your hand to his mouth. He doesn’t kiss the bandage. He kisses beneath it, where your pulse is still beating hard under your skin. His lips stay there too long, hot and still, and when his eyes lift to yours, your stomach pulls tight.
His thumb moves carefully beside the raw mark from the rope.
“They had you,” he says.
His other hand slides to your thigh, possessive enough to make your body react before you can stop it. “Had you tied up. Hurt you.”
“They don’t now.”
“No.”
His hand presses harder into your thigh. His eyes move over the gauze, the bruises, the blood cleaned from your mouth.
You’re here. On his bed. Under his hand. Alive.
He leans in before you do. The kiss starts at the corner of your mouth, careful of the split in your lip, but it doesn’t stay soft. His hand cups the back of your neck, and the sound he makes against you is low and rough, like he’s been swallowing it since the parking lot.
You say his name against his mouth, rough and quiet.
Andrew pulls back only enough to look at you.
“I need to touch you,” he says.
Your fingers tighten against his chest.
His mouth tightens like he wants to pull the words back. He doesn’t.
“I need—” His jaw works. “Need to know you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
His eyes drop to your mouth again, then lower to his hand spread over your thigh.
You slide your hand down his stomach, over the place his breathing keeps pulling tight.
“I want your hands on me,” you say. “Your mouth. I want you inside me, Andrew.”
His grip digs in once at your thigh.
“I want you to fuck me like you need me.”
His mouth is back on yours before you finish saying it, rougher this time, still careful enough not to split your lip worse but hungry enough to make your body lean into him. His hand slides under your skirt, fingers spreading over your thigh, and he drags you closer to the edge of the bed.
“Andrew…”
His mouth drags to your jaw, then your neck, restless and rough, like he can’t keep himself in one place long enough. Teeth at your throat. Tongue over your pulse. His palms move up your ribs, down your waist, over your hips, then back to your thighs, pulling you closer even though there’s nowhere left for you to go.
“Can’t stop touching you,” Andrew says against your skin, almost angry with it. “Can’t—baby, I can’t.”
His hands move up to the buttons of your shirt. He gets the first one open, then the second, then the third. His patience disappears before he gets any farther. His fingers curl into the fabric, and he rips the rest open hard enough to send buttons scattering across the floor.
Andrew looks at the torn shirt hanging open over your bra, then at you.
He drags the shirt off your shoulders, careful where your arms ache, then shoves your bra down until your breasts spill free. His mouth lowers over the newly exposed skin, lips pressing to your stomach, your ribs, the underside of your breast. His hand covers the other one, rougher now, thumb dragging over your nipple until your back arches.
“Need this,” he mutters.
His mouth closes around your nipple, and your fingers twist in his hair as his breath breaks hot against your skin, tongue working over the peak, teeth grazing just enough to make your hips lift. His cock presses hard against you through his jeans, his hips grinding once before he catches himself.
A rough little gasp gets out before you can stop it. Andrew’s whole body goes tight.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your breast. “That sound…”
His fingers dig into your thigh. “Need you to sound like that. For me. Please, baby… lemme hear you.”
You pull his hair, and when he lifts his head, his eyes are dark and fixed on you.
“Again,” he says, voice rough. “Do that again, baby.”
You pull harder.
His mouth goes back to you, rough and hungry, moving from one breast to the other. He sucks your nipple until your body bows into him, then opens his mouth over the curve of your breast and the spot beneath your throat where your pulse keeps giving you away. His hand slides between your thighs, dragging your underwear aside, fingers moving through how wet you are, and his hips press hard against the edge of the bed.
“Gotta taste you,” Andrew says against your skin.
His fingers press in a little harder as his voice goes thin.
“Gotta have you. So fuckin’ bad.”
His fingers move through you again, slower this time, slicking over your clit until your hips lift into his hand. His mouth returns to yours, swallowing the sound that leaves you when his fingers press harder, and he kisses you deep while his hand works between your legs with steady pressure.
“So wet,” he breathes against your mouth. “Baby…”
His fingers push inside you, and your mouth falls open. Andrew watches you take them, jaw tight. Then he curls them, and your hips lift sharply against his hand.
“There,” Andrew says. “Take ’em. Fuck… you’re right there. I feel you.”
You clench around him.
His fingers curl again, and your back arches. His mouth goes back to your breast, sucking your nipple while his fingers fuck you, and you start coming apart before you can fight it.
“Andrew, fuck…”
“Gotta feel you.” His mouth drags up to your neck. “Wanna feel—baby. Wanna feel you come.”
“I’m gonna—”
“Good.” His fingers move harder. “Lemme feel it. Please… lemme feel it.”
You break around his fingers, thighs shaking, one hand fisted in his hair. Andrew moans against your throat, still touching, dragging it out until your body won’t stop clenching around him. The pleasure keeps rolling through you in sharp little pulls, too much and not enough, and when you try to close your legs, his hands keep them open.
“Andrew!”
“Again.”
“I can’t!”
“Please, baby.”
The words are rough, almost ruined, and your body answers before you can. You’re still sensitive, still shaking, but his fingers curl again and the pleasure catches hard enough to make your back arch.
His eyes darken.
“One more. Gimme—fuck, gimme another.”
He slides down your body, pushing your skirt higher as he goes. Your underwear is still hooked to one side, soaked and twisted against your thigh, and Andrew’s hand tightens there before his mouth follows. He moves over your stomach, your hip, the inside of your thigh.
“Gotta taste you…” His mouth drags over your inner thigh. “Lemme taste you.”
His mouth moves between your thighs.
The first touch of his tongue makes your knees pull around his shoulders. He groans into you like he’s the one being touched, hands gripping your thighs, holding you open while he licks you deep and slow, then harder, rougher, until your hips start chasing his mouth.
“So fuckin’ wet for me,” he says against you.
His tongue drags through you again, and your hand tightens in his hair. His hips move against the mattress when you pull, like he can’t help it. His mouth goes back to your clit, tongue working you while his fingers slide back inside, and your breathing turns thin and useless.
“Andrew—please…”
He doesn’t lift his head. He grips your thighs harder and keeps going, rougher now, pulling pleasure out of you until you’re shaking under his mouth. It breaks through you with a cry, messy and overwhelming, your thighs locking around his head as he groans into you.
He doesn’t stop right away. That’s what makes it too much. His mouth stays on you while your hips move weakly against him, and every lick drags another pulse through your body before the last one has faded.
“Andrew—fuck, wait…”
He lifts his head enough to look at you. His lips are wet. His face is wrecked.
“Need more,” he says.
Your chest rises hard. “You have more.”
His hand presses your thigh wider. “Not enough.”
He lowers his mouth again before you can answer, tongue dragging through you slower now, rougher, like he wants every bit of what he already pulled out of you. You gasp, legs shaking, one heel digging into the mattress when his tongue presses flat against your clit.
Your legs spread wider for him, shaking under his mouth while he works you again. You’re already too sensitive, already wet enough that every movement sounds like proof, and when his fingers press deeper, your body gives hard.
“Andrew—fuck—”
He moans into you as you soak his mouth, his chin, his fingers. His hands lock on your thighs, keeping you open when your hips try to pull away.
“Yeah,” he says, rough against your clit. “Like that. Give it to me again.”
“I can’t—”
“You are.”
His voice breaks against you. “Fuck, baby… you are.”
You can’t stop it. That’s what makes your head turn against the sheets, what makes your hands twist in his hair like you’re trying to pull him closer and push him away at the same time. It feels so fucking good it hurts, and your body keeps giving him more, shaking open under his mouth while he holds you through it.
“For me,” Andrew says, almost buried against you. “Please, baby.”
You come again before you can fight it, harder this time, a cry tearing out of you as your fingers twist in his hair. Andrew keeps his mouth on you through every pulse, like he can feel each one, his hands firm on your thighs until you’re trembling under him and saying his name like it’s the only thing you still know.
When he finally lifts his head, his breathing is uneven, his mouth wet, his eyes fixed on you like he still isn’t satisfied.
You barely get his name out before he’s climbing over you, pushing you back from the edge of the bed until your shoulders hit the sheets, one hand already working his jeans open.
He shoves them down only as far as he needs to, too impatient for more. Your skirt is pushed up around your hips, your underwear still shoved aside and soaked against your thigh.
He looks down at you spread beneath him, bruised and shaking and reaching for him anyway.
He takes his cock in his hand and drags the head of it through how soaked you are, once, twice, every pass catching on your clit until your hips lift.
“Can’t wait,” he says, voice rough. “Fuck—open your legs wider for me.”
You spread your thighs wider.
“Need to be inside you,” Andrew says, voice breaking at the edge. “Need you full of my cock.”
He pushes inside slow enough to make you feel every single inch. His head drops near yours, his body going tight over you as he fills you.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Baby…”
You wrap your legs around him.
He doesn’t move right away. He stays buried deep, hips pressed hard to yours, breathing rough against your mouth like being inside you is the first thing that’s reached him since the phone cut out.
It feels too good, having him this deep. The thick pressure of his cock inside you, the heat of him, the weight of his body holding yours down. You’re sore already, open and shaking under him, but every part of you still wants more.
Then his hands find your hips. His fingers dig in.
“Need you full,” Andrew says. “Need my hands on you. My mouth. My cock. Need—fuck, baby…”
His hips pull back and drive in hard enough to push you up the mattress.
You cry out before you can stop it.
Andrew does it again.
The headboard knocks the wall, and his hand slides behind your head before you can hit it. Even like this, even rough and desperate and half gone, he protects the places that hurt.
“You have me,” you say.
His hips snap harder as your nails drag down his back.
He fucks you harder, thumb finding your clit while his mouth moves over your throat, your jaw, the top of your breast. His body covers yours, heavy and hot, his cock dragging deep every time he pushes back in, and it feels so fucking good you can’t get a full word out. Just his name. A curse. Your nails digging in when he finds the right place and keeps going like he can feel exactly what it does to you.
His hips slow only enough to make you feel the next thrust all the way in.
“Your pussy’s so wet for me.”
Your body clenches around him.
He does it again, grinding deep, thumb pressing harder to your clit until your mouth falls open against his shoulder.
“Andrew, fuck…” you breathe. “Feels so fucking good.”
“Yeah.” His voice breaks around it. “That’s it. Right there.”
Your body gives under him.
You come around his cock with a broken cry, hips lifting into him, clenching hard enough to make his rhythm falter. Andrew keeps fucking you through it, jaw tight, eyes on your face like he needs every bit of it.
“Don’t stop,” you breathe against his mouth. “Don’t—fuck, Andrew, don’t stop.”
He shifts your thigh higher over his hip while you’re still pulsing around him, changing the angle until he’s deeper than before. The next thrust drags another wave through you so hard your hands grab at his shoulders, nails biting in.
His grip tightens at your thigh, and his hips drive deep again.
“Take it,” he says, voice rough against your mouth. “Fuck, baby… I’ve got you.”
You want him to stop. You want him closer. You want his weight, his mouth, his cock deeper, even while your body shakes like it can’t take another one. He slows only enough to make each thrust heavier, more devastating, every drag of him sending aftershocks through you until you’re past words, with nothing left but his name, half curses, the wet sound of him fucking you and the rough scrape of his breathing near your mouth.
His mouth drags down your throat.
“Gotta make you feel me after,” he says. “Want you to walk around tomorrow with me still inside you.”
Your body clenches hard as his rhythm stutters.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “You want that.”
You can barely speak. Your hand slides into his hair.
He presses his thumb harder to your clit, and your hips lift against him.
“Want you feeling me tomorrow,” he says against your throat. “Want this pussy sore from me.”
Your whole body tightens under him as his mouth drags over your throat, open and hot.
“Good girl.”
He fucks you rougher, one hand gripping your thigh, the other braced beside your head. His mouth finds yours, careful of your lip even now, then drops back to your throat when he can’t hold back the sounds coming out of him.
“Gonna fill you,” he says against your skin. “Fuck, baby… need to come deep inside you. Need it.”
“Andrew…”
“Need it,” he says, almost through his teeth. “Need my come in you. Need you full of me.”
Your nails drag over his back.
He drives in harder, thumb working your clit with the same rough focus, and the pleasure starts building again too fast. Too sharp. It hasn’t even left your body all the way, and he’s already dragging it back up.
Your thighs shake around his hips, and Andrew feels the way your body goes tight around him.
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“I’m gonna—”
“I know.” His hips grind deep. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it.”
“I can’t stop—”
His mouth opens against your throat. “Don’t.”
You come again, harder and messier, your body clenching around him in hot pulses while your mouth opens against his shoulder. Andrew groans, almost losing it, his thrusts going uneven before he forces himself through it.
“Fuck. Fuck, baby…”
His eyes drop between you again, and his rhythm nearly breaks.
“You’re taking all of it,” Andrew breathes. “Fuck… your pussy’s taking all of me.”
Your face burns, but you can’t look away from him. His control is slipping now, shoulders tight, mouth parted around every rough breath, and when he drives in again, the pressure of his cock deep inside you makes your nails dig harder into his back.
Andrew feels you tighten. His hips drive deep, and this time he doesn’t pull back right away. He grinds into you, cock buried as far as your body will take him, his thumb still moving against your clit.
“Need one more,” he says.
Your head turns against the sheets. “Andrew—”
“One more. Then I’ll come inside you.”
The words make your thighs tighten around him.
He fucks you harder again, rough and uneven now, chasing it from you and fighting his own body at the same time. You’re already open, already shaking, already too sensitive, but your body still lifts for him when his mouth moves over your throat, your collarbone, your breast. His teeth graze your nipple and his cock drives deep at the same time.
You come around him with a sharp cry, your body locking under his, tight around his cock in a way that drags a groan out of him.
Andrew buries his face against your neck.
“Fuck—baby…”
His hips stutter.
You drag your hands up his back and hold onto him. “Come inside me.”
His whole body goes tight.
“I want it,” you breathe. “Fuck, Andrew… I want it.”
His forehead presses to yours, his breathing rough and uneven.
“Need your pussy full of me,” he says, voice ruined. “Need you full.”
You nod against him, barely breathing.
“Andrew…”
“Fuck, baby…” His voice breaks. “I’m gonna—”
Andrew buries himself inside you with a rough, wrecked sound against your throat.
The bed knocks the wall again, harder this time, and his mouth closes over your throat while his body shakes above you.
The first hot pulse of him spilling inside you makes your thighs tighten around his waist, and then there’s more, deep and wet and overwhelming enough that your mouth opens against his shoulder. Andrew groans like he feels you answering it, his hips grinding down as he fills you until there’s nowhere for it to go but around him.
It feels so fucking good you can’t get a full breath in. His cock is still inside you, his come warm and thick, and every small movement makes your body tighten around him again.
He thrusts in deeper, slow and rough, and his come spills out around his cock. Your nails drag over his back while he holds himself there, your body tightening around him again.
Andrew’s hand grips your hip.
His eyes drop between you, just long enough to take in the mess between your thighs, and his rhythm breaks into one more slow, deep thrust.
More of him slips out, warm between your thighs, and Andrew’s mouth presses hard to your throat as he pushes in again, like he can’t stand it and still can’t stop himself.
He stays inside you after that, heavy over you, breathing hard, one hand sliding under your back to pull you closer.
He kisses your neck, then your jaw, careful when he gets near your mouth. He presses his forehead to yours instead, eyes still open.
You touch his chest, fingers slipping over warm skin.
When your thighs loosen around his waist, his gaze drops between you.
Then he pulls out slowly.
Your mouth opens on a sharp inhale. His come slips out of you almost right away and Andrew’s jaw tightens at the sight. His hand stays on your hip, thumb pressing once into your skin like he has to stop himself from reaching between your legs again.
He reaches for the blanket and pulls it over your hips before he moves away from you. The mattress shifts under his weight, and he sits beside you, one hand still on your thigh while the other reaches for your wrist.
“Lemme see,” Andrew says.
You give him your hand.
He checks the gauze he wrapped before, thumb careful along the edge of it. The tape has shifted, but the worst of the rope burn is still covered. He fixes it with two short presses, then turns your other wrist and does the same there.
“Hurts?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
His fingers stay careful on the edge of the gauze.
“I’m okay,” you say.
Andrew’s eyes lift to yours.
You hold his gaze. “I am.”
He doesn’t argue. He just reaches past you, shuts off the lamp, and gets into bed beside you. His arm goes around your waist, pulling you back against his chest carefully, his hand spreading over your stomach once you’re settled.
Your body aches everywhere. Your wrists. Your cheek. Your thighs. Between your legs.
Still, you press closer.
Andrew’s mouth brushes the back of your neck. “Sleep,” he says.
You cover his hand with yours. “You gonna?”
“No.”
His fingers rest near your pulse.
“You’re still checking,” you murmur.
“Yeah.”
You turn your hand over and lace your fingers through his. “You still look like you’re waiting for someone to take me.”
His arm draws you closer, and his mouth presses to the back of your neck.
“You’re mine,” Andrew says.
You swallow. “Yours?”
His fingers spread slightly over your stomach. “Mine,” he says again, lower now.
“Yours,” you whisper.
This time, his body finally loosens behind yours. His hand stays on you until you fall asleep.
chapter eight of pope’s girl 🖤 | series masterlist | also on AO3
summary: Three weeks after Pope walked out, you’re still sleeping beside an empty pillow and listening for his car outside. You told him he still had you. Now he has to decide what to do with that.
notes: This chapter is full of angst and YEARNING — but they’re working through it!! Cannot thank everyone enough for the love this little fic of mine is getting. Love you all sooo much!! 🫶
warnings: 18+, mdni, canon-divergent timeline, heavy angst, relationship conflict, emotional hurt, mentions of sex work/transactional sex, injury aftermath, blood mention, physical violence mention, toxic family dynamics, smoking, swearing, no use of y/n
this chapter’s song: To Be Alone With You - Sufjan Stevens
divider by: @/cursed-carmine
Please do not translate, repost, redistribute, or adapt this story on any platform without my explicit permission. Reblogs are welcome and encouraged!
chapter 8 | stay
Craig’s blood doesn’t come out of the couch the first time, or the second.
By the third, the bowl of water on the floor beside you has gone pink, and the rag in your hand looks worse than the cushion itself. It’s been three days since they showed up at your door with Craig bleeding through his shirt. Almost three weeks since Pope walked out of your apartment after what he said.
You sit on your knees in front of the couch, one bare foot tucked under your thigh, scrubbing until your knuckles start to ache. The bruise there has faded into something dull and ugly, almost gone if you don’t look too hard. The scrape on your arm is healing too, except when you reach too far or twist wrong and it pulls enough to make you remember the brick against your back.
You twist the rag out over the bowl, and pink water drips from your fingers. “Jesus Christ, Craig,” you mutter, quieter than you mean to.
The stain has soaked deeper than you thought. It isn’t bright anymore, not like it was when Craig was stretched out on your couch trying to talk over the pain while Deran told him to shut up and hold still. Now it’s darker at the edges, stubborn in a way that makes you press the rag down again even though your hand already hurts.
The cushion gives under your palm, and you stop before that night can come back too clearly. You don’t let yourself have all of it. Just Craig’s shoulder under the towel. Deran’s voice low and tight. Baz near the wall, mouth still sharp even after Pope let him go. Pope walking out because staying would’ve made it worse.
You scrub harder, and pain sparks through your hand, sharp enough that you hiss and drop the rag into the bowl.
“Fuck!”
You sit back on your heels and flex your fingers slowly. The knuckles are tender. Not broken. Deran had checked twice, his thumb careful around the bruising even while his mouth made it sound like you were the problem.
The apartment is quiet around you. Quieter than it used to be. Chrissy’s room is mostly boxes and open drawers, her closet door pushed wide because she took the hangers too. There’s a bare square on the dresser where her jewelry dish used to be, and the corner by the window looks wrong without the laundry basket she always swore she was going to empty. She still comes back. She still has a key. She still calls this place home sometimes and then catches herself, mouth twisting like she wants to take it back.
You never let her. You don’t want her feeling bad for being happy. When she comes by, you pull the old blanket over the couch before she gets too far inside. Chrissy looks at it, then at you, and starts talking about Simon’s ugly plates and how he owns one pan and thinks that’s normal. You let her. You love her for it. You hate that loving her now means watching her leave in pieces.
Your phone lights up on the coffee table, and you reach for it before you can talk yourself out of checking.
Pope.
you okay
It sits there on the screen, small and plain.
He doesn’t text like he did before. Not one after another until your phone felt hot from being ignored. He doesn’t send can we talk or need to see you or please, the way he did that first week, when that word from him had too much weight and you kept turning the screen facedown just to breathe around it.
Now it’s one text, then nothing. You pick up the phone with your good hand and stare at it until the screen dims.
The parking lot at your apartment comes back in pieces. Pope against the car. The cigarette burning low between his fingers. His face when you said what you said, like he wanted to believe you and didn’t know if he was allowed.
You have me.
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t enough to fix what he’d said or bring him all the way back. It was still true.
Your thumb hovers over the keyboard. You set the phone down, then pick it up again.
Outside, a car slows near the building, tires rolling over loose gravel in the lot. Your eyes go to the window before you can talk yourself out of it. The car keeps going.
You look back at the phone and type before you can decide not to.
i’m okay
You send it and immediately wish you could pull it back. Not because it’s wrong exactly, but because it’s too small to hold everything it’s trying to carry.
Pope answers after a minute.
okay
That’s it. No push. No question after. No opening for more. You stare at the word until the screen goes dark in your hand.
The rag is cold when you pick it up again. You press it to the stain, but you don’t scrub this time. You just hold it there, palm flat, feeling the damp seep through to your skin.
By midnight, the bowl is in the sink, the rag is rinsed and hanging over the tub, and the blanket is pulled back over the cushion. The apartment smells like upholstery cleaner and old coffee. Chrissy’s door is open a few inches, the room beyond it dim and half-empty.
You stand in the hallway longer than you need to. There used to be noise from her room. Music through the wall, her yelling your name because she couldn’t find something that was usually in her own hand, her laugh on the phone, bright and careless when she forgot anyone could hear her.
Now there are boxes. You close the door halfway, then leave it.
In your room, you get into bed without turning on the lamp. The sheets are cool. The pillow beside yours is too flat because you keep moving it, throwing it off the bed, picking it back up, telling yourself it doesn’t matter where it is. Tonight it’s on the floor again, half under the bed where you kicked it sometime before you started on the couch.
You lie on your back and stare at the ceiling.
A car passes outside, and you stay where you are.
Another one slows near the building, and your eyes close before you can look. You tell yourself you need sleep, not Pope standing on the other side of your door with that look on his face like he has nowhere else to put what he’s carrying.
The car door doesn’t open. No footsteps come up the stairs. The engine fades down the street.
You turn onto your side, facing the wall. You don’t want him at your door just because he can’t sleep. You don’t want him there because he’s hurting badly enough to need somewhere to put it.
You want him there because he knows why you’re still awake too.
That’s the part that keeps you awake.
The apartment stays quiet. Somewhere outside, another car goes by, and this time you don’t open your eyes.
You only listen until it’s gone.
Deran is already there when you get to The Pig.
The front door is unlocked, but the lights aren’t all on yet. Chairs are still upside down on tables, the floor is damp in patches from the mop, and the place smells like cheap lemon cleaner over old liquor. Deran is behind the bar with the fridge open, loading bottles into the bottom row from a case at his feet.
He looks over when you come in. “You’re early,” he says.
“So are you.”
“I own the place.”
You set your bag under the bar and reach for the napkins stacked near the register. “Must be nice.”
“Not really.”
He goes back to the fridge, sliding bottles into place with more attention than beer bottles need. You start filling the metal holders because it’s easier than being home with the blanket pulled over the couch, and for a while, the only sounds are glass clinking, the cooler humming, and Deran moving around behind the bar like he’s trying to get the whole place ready by himself.
Then he says, “About the other night.”
Your hand slows around the next stack. You don’t look at him. “What about it?”
Deran shuts the fridge with his hip. “Shouldn’t have brought them to your place.”
You press the napkins down until the edges sit flat. “Craig was bleeding.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t have a lot of choices.”
“I know that too.”
You look at him then. Deran has one hand on the fridge door, the other at his side. He looks annoyed, but not at you. More like the conversation is already pissing him off because he knows he has to have it.
“Still,” he says. “Shouldn’t have.”
You start to answer, and he shakes his head.
“Don’t make it easier.”
Your mouth closes. He looks down at the case by his feet, then back at you.
“Pope didn’t want to go there,” he says. “He tried to get us somewhere else. Body shop, one of the safe houses, anywhere that wasn’t you.”
You don’t say anything.
“Baz wouldn’t shut up. Craig was bleeding through his shirt. J kept saying cops were circling the usual spots.” Deran’s jaw shifts. “I made the call.”
Your fingers tighten around the napkins.
“That’s on me.”
You look down at the bar. Deran reaches for another bottle, then seems to realize the row is already full. He sets it back in the case.
“About Baz,” he says.
“He knew what he was doing.”
“Baz always knows what he’s doing when he’s being a piece of shit.”
That should feel better than it does. It doesn’t.
“He wanted Pope to react,” you say.
“And Pope did.” Deran doesn’t soften it. He doesn’t argue. He just says it and reaches for the towel tucked near the sink, dragging it once over a clean patch of bar before tossing it aside.
You grab another stack of napkins from under the counter. “Is this where you tell me Pope didn’t mean whatever he said?”
“No.” The answer comes fast enough that you look at him. Deran meets your eyes. “I don’t know what he said. He didn’t tell me.”
Your hand stills.
“He just said he fucked up.”
“He did.”
“I know.” Deran rests both hands on the counter, shoulders slightly hunched, like it’s taking work not to move. “I’m not asking you to forgive him. That’s not why I’m saying any of this.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because he’s my brother.”
Your chest tightens, but you keep your face still.
Deran looks toward the front windows, then back at you. “And because you didn’t deserve that shit in your apartment.”
The answer is too blunt to be sweet. That helps.
“Whatever he did or said,” Deran says. “That’s on him.”
You wait.
“But Smurf fucked us all up.” Deran says it flat, but his mouth has gone tight. “Pope got it worse.”
You don’t answer. Deran keeps his eyes on the windows.
“Something ugly needed doing, she sent Pope. Something went wrong, she sent Pope. Somebody needed to be scared…”
He stops there, then looks down at the floor. “Pope.”
He doesn’t stay quiet long. Deran never does when a thing starts getting too close. “Doesn’t make what he said okay.”
“No.”
“Doesn’t mean you owe him shit.”
You breathe out slowly. “I’m so fucking tired of everyone acting like him being messed up by Smurf, or Baz, or whoever else, means I have to be less hurt.”
Deran looks back at you. “I’m not saying that.”
He says it fast enough that you believe him.
Outside, a truck rolls past the front windows. Deran bends for the empty case, crushes one side in, then leaves it by his foot.
You look toward the back hallway, then at him again. “Is that why Adrian’s never around?”
His eyes narrow a little, more reflex than anger. “That’s not—”
“Deran.”
He looks away first. For once, he doesn’t have something ready. His hand comes up to rub over his mouth, and when he drops it, his face has already closed off.
“Why do you think he’s not?” he says.
You don’t answer.
Deran looks toward the front door. “If someone matters, Smurf figures it out,” he says. “Then she starts pushing on it.”
Your fingers press into the napkins hard enough to bend the top one.
You think of Chrissy packing boxes in your hallway. Cath leaving through the alley with Lena asleep in the back seat. Pope driving past The Pig and never coming in. Adrian kept far enough away that Smurf has less to hold on to.
Deran looks back at the beer case. “I’m not here to talk you out of being pissed,” he says.
The words seem to bother him as soon as they’re out.
He picks up the empty case. “He’s my brother. So it’s fucked.”
That almost gets you to smile. Almost. “Very comforting.”
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
“No, I can tell.”
His mouth moves a little before he looks down again. “He came by this morning.”
Your body reacts before you can stop it. Deran catches it, but he doesn’t call you on it.
“Didn’t come in,” he says. “Sat outside for a while. Left.”
You look down. “I don’t want to know that.”
“Sure.”
You glance up. Deran gives you a look. You hate that it works.
“He’s not good,” he says.
You don’t answer.
“And before you say it, I know. That doesn’t fix anything.” Deran shifts the empty case against his hip. “But I’ve seen Pope lose it. I’ve seen him angry, spun out, whatever. This isn’t that.”
Your throat tightens. “He doesn’t get to come back just because he’s hurting.”
“I know.”
“He has to actually be sorry.”
“He is.”
You look at him.
Deran holds your stare for once. “I’m not saying that means anything unless he says it to you. But he is.”
You look away first. “It can’t just be because he misses me,” you say. “Or because he can’t sleep. Or because he wants things how they were.”
“No.”
“It has to be because he knows what he did.”
Deran nods once. “So make him say it.”
Deran adjusts his grip on the case and starts toward the back, then stops. “For what it’s worth,” he says, not looking at you, “I’m sorry.”
You don’t rush to tell him it’s okay. You don’t tell him he had no choice. You let him hold it. Deran glances back once, nods like that’s enough, and disappears through the swinging door.
You stay behind the bar with the napkins under your hand, the place still not open, and no one asking anything else from you yet.
By the time you get home, Chrissy’s room is darker than the rest of the apartment.
You leave your keys in the bowl by the door and stand there with your bag still on your shoulder, looking at the open doorway. More boxes are gone now. The carpet has a flat, square dent where her chair used to sit by the window, and there’s a strip of wall near the closet that looks too clean because one of her old posters came down with the tape still curled at the corners.
You don’t turn on the light.
The blanket is still pulled over the couch cushion. You check it without meaning to, eyes going there first, then away, because looking too long doesn’t help and looking away doesn’t change it. Your hand aches when you set your bag down, a dull pulse across the knuckles, and you flex your fingers before heading to the kitchen for water you don’t really want.
You drink half the glass standing at the sink, then pour the rest out.
There’s a missed call from Pope when you check your phone. One. No voicemail. No text after it.
You set the phone facedown on the counter and leave it there while you wash your glass, dry it, put it away, then take it back out because you didn’t get the spot near the rim. You do small things until there are no small things left to do. Every sound carries too far now. The cabinet shutting, the water cutting off, the glass settling back on the shelf.
By midnight, you’re on the couch with the TV on low and nothing from it getting through. The blanket is pulled up under your arm, the covered cushion beside you untouched. You must drift closer to sleep than you realize, because the knock folds into whatever half-dream you’re having before your eyes open.
Two quiet hits against the door. Then nothing.
You sit up slowly. Your body already knows before your head catches up.
You cross the apartment barefoot, the floor cool under your feet, and stop with your hand on the deadbolt. You stand there, listening. He doesn’t knock again. Then you open it.
Pope stands in the hallway with his hands at his sides. The black eye has faded, yellowing at the edge, purple thinned under his cheekbone. The rest of him looks worse. His hair is pushed back rough, his mouth tight, his shoulders held in that locked way he gets when he’s forcing himself not to move too fast. He looks like he’s been driving for hours and still came up with nowhere else to go.
His attention stays on your face. “I tried not to come here,” Pope says.
Your hand stays on the door. “Why did you?”
His jaw works before he answers. “Can’t sleep.”
You don’t move.
“Can’t eat.” He looks down the hall, then back at you. “Can’t sit still. I drive around. Go to the house. Leave. Go to jobs. Come back.”
The hallway light hums above him. “Keep thinking if I get tired enough, it’ll stop.”
You already know what he means. You ask anyway. “What will?”
Pope’s mouth tightens before he answers.
“You.”
Your fingers tighten on the edge of the door. Pope sees it and shakes his head once, quick.
“I’m not saying that so you feel bad.”
You stare at him.
“I did this,” he says. “Need to say it right.”
You think about closing the door. Not because you don’t want him there. That would be easier. You think about closing it because some part of you still wants to reach for him before the hurt is done talking. You think about the couch, the stain under the blanket, Baz’s voice in your apartment, Pope’s forearm under his throat. You think about the first night he left, almost three weeks ago now, and the way the lock sounded after you turned it.
Pope looks at the floor between you.
“Please.”
It’s not loud. It’s not pretty. It barely makes it past his mouth.
You step back.
Pope doesn’t come in right away. He looks at the space you’ve made for him, then at you, like he still isn’t sure it’s meant to be used. When he finally crosses the threshold, he does it carefully, keeping distance between his body and yours.
You close the door behind him. He stands in your living room with his arms at his sides, taking in the half-empty apartment, the low TV, the blanket over the couch. He keeps staring at the covered cushion until he has to look away.
“I told them not to come here,” Pope says.
“I know.”
“I told them.”
“I know, Pope.”
He drags one hand over his mouth, then drops it again.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Craig. Baz. All of it. Shouldn’t have been here.”
He looks down at his hands.
“I’m sorry I put my hands on Baz here.”
“You left,” you say.
His eyes lift.
“Before it got worse.”
His mouth tightens. “Because it was gonna.”
You believe him. That hurts too.
Pope’s gaze drops to your hand where it rests against your side. The bruising is faint now, mostly yellow and gray, but he finds it anyway.
“And the alley.”
“You stopped him.”
“I didn’t stop.”
“You did.”
“When Deran made me.”
The words sit there. Pope swallows once. “I heard you.”
Your hand curls before you can stop it.
“You said my name,” Pope says. “I didn’t stop.”
You look away.
“I saw you pull back.”
“That wasn’t because I was scared of you.”
“I know.” He says it too fast, then has to sit with how fast it came out.
His voice is lower when he speaks again.
“I know.”
You look back at him.
“I hated that I made you look at me like that.”
Your chest pulls tight. Pope doesn’t turn it into more than he can say. He gives you pieces.
“After I said it. At the bar. In the alley.” His eyes move once toward the couch. “Here.”
He means your apartment. He means all of it.
“It was still there,” you say.
“I know.”
He takes that without defending himself. Then his mouth tightens again, and you know before he says it.
“What I said.”
You go still.
“About the money.”
The apartment is quiet enough that you hear the TV change scenes behind you, some laugh track low in the living room. Pope stays where he is. He doesn’t try to get around it.
“I knew it would hurt.”
You keep your face as steady as you can. “It did.”
His jaw moves once. “I wanted it to.”
You hate that he says it so plainly. You hate more that he’s right. He knew exactly where to cut, and he did it anyway.
Pope stands there and lets you have that.
“Baz has been saying it since the beginning,” you say. “Smurf knew where to press. You knew what it felt like when they made it sound like that was all I was to you.”
Pope doesn’t look away.
“And then you did it too.”
His jaw works once before he gets it under control.
“You made me feel like they were right.”
“I know,” Pope says. The answer is rough.
You shake your head once. “I’m not trying to make you feel worse.”
“I know,” he says again, quieter.
“I just need you to understand that.”
“I do.”
You believe him. You’re too tired for it to feel like relief.
Pope looks down, like he needs to get through the next part without moving toward you.
“You were never that to me.”
Your throat tightens. “Then don’t ever make me feel like I was.”
He nods once. “I won’t.”
You stay there until you can’t anymore. Pope doesn’t step closer. He doesn’t ask for your hand. He doesn’t turn the hurt on himself in a way that makes you clean it up.
“Not asking you to forgive me tonight,” Pope says.
You look at him.
“I just needed you to know I get it. What I did.”
There’s no speech after. No promise big enough to fix it. Just Pope standing in your living room, worn down and quiet, knowing the apology doesn’t earn him anything except the chance to have said it.
“I know,” you say.
He nods, small and almost lost, then looks toward the door.
“I should go.”
The words come out like he’s already decided for you, like leaving is the only decent thing he has left to offer. Your body moves before your pride can stop it.
“Pope.”
He stops with his hand half-lifted, not touching the knob yet.
You cross the space between you and catch his wrist. Not hard. Not even enough to hold him if he really wanted to leave. But he stays.
His skin is warm under your fingers. His wrist shifts once under your hand, then goes still. He turns back slowly, looks at your hand around his wrist, then at you.
Pope doesn’t move until you do. You let go before it becomes too much and step closer anyway.
His forehead comes down to yours, careful and slow. No kiss. Just the weight of him there, familiar enough to hurt and new enough that both of you stay too still inside it.
“I’m sorry,” Pope says.
His breath touches your mouth. You close your eyes.
“I know.”
He breathes in like he’s trying to keep it together, and for one breath you think he might. Then his forehead slips from yours, and his head drops to your shoulder.
“Baby…” he says.
Barely there.
Your whole body answers it, even hurt, even tired, even after everything. Your eyes burn hard and fast, and the first tear gets out before you can stop it.
His arms come around you with a care that makes another one slip down your cheek. Not tight at first. Not taking. Then his breath catches against your neck, once, then again, and his shoulders start to shake while he tries to hold the rest down.
You wrap your arms around him. Pope folds into you then. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a broken breath against your skin, his face pressed into your shoulder, holding himself so tight that the shaking barely has anywhere to go.
You slide one hand up to the back of his neck. “I’m here,” you whisper.
His grip tightens.
“You still hurt me.”
He nods against your shoulder. You wipe your cheek against his shirt because your hands are busy holding him. A fresh tear slips out anyway, and you hold him through it.
“But I missed you.”
Pope tries to answer, but all that comes out is a rough breath against your neck. His hand presses between your shoulder blades, fingers spread there like he needs to know you’re real and doesn’t trust himself to ask for more.
“I need you,” Pope says, voice wrecked.
The words should scare you more than they do. Maybe they would have before.
Now they only make you close your eyes and hold him tighter, because he isn’t using them to pull you back. He’s already there, breaking quietly in your arms, not asking you to fix what he did.
You stand there until your arm starts to ache and his breathing finally settles against your shoulder.
Standing there starts to hurt after a while.
Your arm goes first, the scrape pulling where your hand rests near the back of Pope’s neck. Then your knees. Then the rest of you, worn down from the late hour and too many nights of not sleeping right.
Pope lifts his head from your shoulder. His eyes are red. He looks away before you can look at him too long, one hand dragging over his face like he can wipe it off.
“You should sit,” Pope says.
You almost tell him you’re fine. You don’t.
The two of you move to the couch without talking about it. You sit on the end farthest from the blanket, and Pope sits beside you with enough space between you that it doesn’t feel like he’s assuming anything. The covered cushion stays on the other side. You both keep your eyes off it.
Pope’s eyes move toward the hallway. “Chrissy coming home?”
“She’s moving in with Simon.”
He nods. “Good for her.”
You turn your head toward him. He looks down at his hands.
“You don’t sound like you mean that.”
“I do.”
It comes out too fast, so he tries again. “I do. I just don’t like you here alone.”
There’s no order in it. He doesn’t tell you what to do. He doesn’t tell you to come with him. He only says it and leaves it there.
You look toward Chrissy’s room, half-empty through the open door. “I’m not alone right now.”
Pope goes quiet. The TV keeps playing low across the room, some late-night commercial neither of you is watching.
“No,” Pope says. “You’re not.”
You look down at your hands. “I’m sorry too.”
Pope turns his head right away. “No.”
“Pope.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m not taking back what you said,” you say. “I’m not making it okay.”
His jaw tightens, but he nods.
You rub your thumb over the side of your hand, near the bruising. “I’m not sorry Cath got out.”
Pope doesn’t move.
“I’m not sorry Lena got out. I’m not sorry I didn’t give anybody a chance to stop them.”
“I know,” Pope says.
“And I’m not sorry I didn’t tell you about Patrick right away because I thought you were stupid. Or because I thought you couldn’t understand.”
His eyes stay on you.
“I was scared,” you say.
Pope doesn’t interrupt.
You keep your voice low. “Patrick was a cop asking about Cath. I knew what that meant around your family. I was scared you’d go after him. Or Smurf would. Or Baz. Someone would decide he was a problem, and you’d be the one who ended up paying for it.”
Pope looks down.
“I didn’t want you back in prison,” you say. “I didn’t want you hurt. I didn’t want you dead because I told you something and it set everything off.”
He stays quiet, and this time, it doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for his turn to be hurt. He’s just listening.
“But I handled it alone,” you say. “I kept thinking if I held enough back, I could keep you safe.”
Pope’s hands are open between his knees.
“Maybe that wasn’t fair to you,” you say. “That’s what I’m sorry for.”
He doesn’t take it like it fixes anything. He sits with it, shoulders forward, eyes down.
Then Pope says, “I should’ve been someone you could tell.”
You look at him.
“You are.”
He lifts his head too fast, like he wants to believe that before you’ve finished saying it.
So you give him the rest.
“You weren’t then,” you say. “Not with that.”
Pope nods once. “Okay.”
No argument. No trying to make you say it differently.
You breathe out and lean back into the couch.
Pope’s eyes drop to your hand. “Still hurt?”
“A little.”
“Deran said it wasn’t broken.”
“Deran also said I punch wrong.”
“You do.”
Your head turns toward him.
Pope’s mouth changes a little, not quite a smile, but close. “He’s not wrong.”
“You’re taking his side?”
“No,” Pope says. “Just don’t like that you had to.”
That almost gets you. Enough that you have to look down before your face gives you away.
“He deserved it,” you say.
Pope’s mouth flattens, and the warmth leaves his face just enough for something harder to show through. He drops his eyes to the floor before it can turn into anything else.
“Yeah,” Pope says. “He did.”
He doesn’t add anything after that. He doesn’t reach for you. He only stays beside you on the couch, close enough that you can feel the heat of him there, not close enough to ask for more.
You don’t mean to fall asleep on the couch.
Your shoulder has started to ache from the way you’re sitting, and your eyes keep closing, opening again when your head dips too far toward your chest. Pope sits beside you without touching you, forearms on his thighs, hands loose between his knees. He looks tired enough to sleep sitting up, but tired has never meant much with him.
“You should sleep,” Pope says.
You blink at the TV, still on low across the room. “I’m fine.”
Pope turns his head toward you. He doesn’t argue. That should make staying awake easier. It doesn’t.
You remember closing your eyes with your cheek tipped toward the back cushion, the blanket bunched near your elbow, Pope still warm beside you and careful with the space between. You hear the click of the TV being shut off, then you’re moving, lifted out of the dip in the couch with one arm under your knees and the other behind your back. Your eyes open halfway as your hand finds his shirt.
“Pope?” you murmur.
“I got you,” Pope says. His voice is low near your ear.
You don’t answer. The words are familiar enough to hurt.
He carries you down the hallway carefully, his hold loose around your scraped arm, his steps slow when your knee bumps his side. In your room, he lowers you onto the bed and keeps one hand behind your back until you’re settled. The sheets are cool under your legs. His hand leaves you slowly.
Pope straightens beside the bed and looks down.
The pillow is still on the floor, half under the bed where you kicked it earlier, the case wrinkled from too many nights of being moved around and put nowhere useful. Pope finds it, but he doesn’t ask. He bends, picks it up, brushes one hand over the pillowcase, and sets it beside yours. Not where it used to be. Close enough.
He pulls the blanket up over you, higher than you usually bother with, tucking it around your shoulder because he knows it slips when you sleep. He does it quietly, like knowing that much is something he doesn’t want to use against you.
Then he steps back.
“Pope,” you say.
He stops. “Yeah?”
“Can you stay?”
Pope doesn’t answer right away.
“I can sleep on the couch.”
“You can sleep next to me.”
Pope doesn’t move.
“I wasn’t—”
“I know,” you say.
He wasn’t asking for the bed. He wasn’t asking for your body. He wasn’t trying to turn sorry into permission.
You’re tired and hurt and too worn down to make it come out cleaner.
“Stay.”
Pope looks at the floor, then at the door, then back at you. After a few breaths, he bends to untie his shoes and sets them side by side near the wall. He comes around to the other side of the bed and lowers himself onto the mattress.
The bed shifts with his weight.
You lie on your back at first, eyes open to the ceiling, aware of him beside you. Pope lies flat too, one arm along his side, the other bent over his stomach.
After a while, you turn your head, not fully, just enough to catch him already looking at you. Pope looks away first, and it hurts in a small, strange way because he’s never been good at looking away from what he wants. Now he does it before you have to ask.
You face the ceiling again.
Your hand rests on the blanket near your hip. His is a few inches away on top of the sheet, open and still. You could move your fingers and touch him. He could do the same.
Your hand stays where it is. So does his.
Then you feel him looking again. When you turn your head, Pope doesn’t look away this time. His face is tired, the bruise at his eye faded in the dark, his mouth softer than it was when he stood in your doorway. He doesn’t reach. He doesn’t say anything.
You look away first because if you keep looking, you’ll be the one to cross the space, and you don’t know what that means yet.
You turn onto your side, facing the wall.
Behind you, the mattress moves as Pope turns too. Away from you.
There’s space between your backs, but it doesn’t feel like him leaving. He isn’t turning away because he wants distance. He’s giving you the only kind he can while still staying.
You can hear him breathing behind you, rough at first, uneven from the crying he tried to hide and the exhaustion he brought in with him. After a while, his breathing slows. Yours starts to follow.
The couch is still covered in the living room. Chrissy’s room is still half-empty down the hall. Nothing is fixed because he’s in your bed.
But Pope stays.
That’s all he takes.
That’s all you give.
His breathing turns heavier before yours does. You keep your eyes open until you can’t anymore.
For the first time in weeks, both of you sleep before the sun comes up.
summary: What starts as a mutually beneficial arrangement between you and Pope Cody slowly becomes something far more complicated once the lines between lust, comfort and attachment begin to blur. But the deeper you get pulled into the Cody family, the more you realize people like Pope were never really meant to belong to themselves.
notes: Thank you to everyone reading! I’m so happy people are enjoying the story so far. If you haven’t watched the show, there will be spoilers ahead!
overall warnings: canon-divergent timeline, 18+, mdni, yearning with smut, female-gaze, swearing, alcohol, smoking, age gap (reader is mid-late 20s, pope is early 40s), pope is a yearner, obessive!pope, no use of y/n, mildly uncomfortable male encounters, pope gets possessive, jealousy, emotional manipulation, unhealthy family dynamics, mentions of sex work
Please do not translate, repost, redistribute, or adapt this story on any platform without my explicit permission. Reblogs are welcome and encouraged!
This is such a damn fine series, the angst, Baz 😡(I hate him) and Pope being Pope!!!! I cannot wait for chapter 8 as the last couple of chapters are so gorgeously angsty!!! Please tag me in any of your stories Evan
Needy Pope whose girl gets kidnapped and, once he gets her back, he needs proof she’s safe and that she’s all his. 🥵🔥
Chapter 8 is being written as we speak and will still drop next Wednesday but I fear a HORNY AF one-shot is also forming in my head (and my Notes app) 👀👀
It’s more explicit than pope’s girl’s usual pacing but I’m excited to write it 🙈
Let me know if anyone wants to be put in a taglist for pope's girl or the one-shot!
Needy Pope whose girl gets kidnapped and, once he gets her back, he needs proof she’s safe and that she’s all his. 🥵🔥
Chapter 8 is being written as we speak and will still drop next Wednesday but I fear a HORNY AF one-shot is also forming in my head (and my Notes app) 👀👀
It’s more explicit than pope’s girl’s usual pacing but I’m excited to write it 🙈
Let me know if anyone wants to be put in a taglist for pope's girl or the one-shot!
