All you need is love, love. Love is all you need. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE 2007, dir. Julie Taymor
trying on a metaphor

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
One Nice Bug Per Day

JBB: An Artblog!
Sweet Seals For You, Always

★
wallacepolsom

@theartofmadeline
🪼

Origami Around
Cosmic Funnies
styofa doing anything

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TVSTRANGERTHINGS
AnasAbdin
todays bird

Kiana Khansmith

if i look back, i am lost

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil

seen from Germany
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from Canada
seen from T1
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany

seen from Türkiye
seen from United States

seen from United States
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seen from Vietnam

seen from Malaysia
@generation-zero
All you need is love, love. Love is all you need. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE 2007, dir. Julie Taymor
Statistically Speaking - Brendon “The Shark” Park x Reader
Chapter Three: Dana Evans
Series Summary: After completing your residency, you join the staff at the Pitt, the hospital where your husband of nearly ten years (who you already have five kids with) works. With a common last name and radically different personalities, you make a bet on how long it'll take everyone to figure out that you're married.
Chapter Summary: Dana's the one to catch you in the bathroom when you come down with a stomach bug.
Tags/Notes: wife!mom!doctor reader, some hurt/comfort, sickfic?, softie sweet tender hubby brendon
Content: vomiting/emetophobia, discussion of pregnancy
A/N: love this one i fear she's very cute and waaahh to me
Word Count: 3.5k
You make it through two full months with nobody finding out about you and Brendon, everybody in on it keeping their lips zipped and everyone else happily oblivious, but that changes one random day when you wake up feeling like shit.
“You should just stay home, baby,” Brendon murmurs as he watches you slog through getting dressed, clearly exhausted and feeling off. “The ED can survive without you for one day.”
You shake your head and insist, “All I need is breakfast and a coffee and I’ll be all set. Just didn’t sleep well.”
“Alright, I trust you,” he sighs, dropping down so he can tie your shoes the way he has every morning for more than 3,000 days. “Take it easy though. For me. There’s that nasty bug going around and if this is the start of it-”
“I’m fine, Bren,” you assure as he stands up. “You worry too much.”
He kisses your forehead and murmurs, “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sweet,” you reply, nudging up to kiss him softly. You know he only worries about your health so much because he had to watch you nearly lose your life a few years ago; you’re sure you’d be ten times as bad if the roles were reversed. “Let’s go get the kids up, yeah?”
He nods solemnly. “I’ll start pancake duty.”
You pat his ass and push him toward the bedroom door. “Good boy.”
Annoyingly, though, you really aren’t feeling better by the time you’ve had your coffee and breakfast and snuggles with your mama’s boy. Still, you take a deep breath, get the little ones in their car seats, and head to the hospital with a determination to get through the day since you have the next two off.
You don’t even make it to lunch.
Your breakfast decides to make a dramatic reappearance out of nowhere, sending you running to the staff bathroom at code speeds. After puking, your skin is about ten shades grayer than usual while you slide down the wall next to the bathroom trash, head spinning and forehead shining with sweat.
The next person to push inside the bathroom is Dana, having watched you hustle away with an expression every mom recognizes when there’s a bug going around. When she spots you, she immediately drops down and touches the back of your clammy forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but, Jesus, you look terrible.”
“Thanks for that.” You grimace as she grabs one of the little paper cups and fills it with water for you to sip on.
“You’ve gotta go home; you look like you’re gonna pass out. Can I call someone for you?”
Shit, you left your phone in your locker this morning. You manage to mumble out as much to her and say, “If you have your phone, I can tell you my husband’s number.”
He picks up on the last ring after excusing himself from supervising a more-than-capable resident, knowing an unknown number could easily be the kids’ school or daycare. “Hello?”
Your voice creaks through. “Hi, hon, I left my phone in my locker. Borrowing Dana’s. I think I’ve got the bug that’s going around. I’ve been throwing up for like half an hour.”
“I’m so sorry you’re sick, sweetheart,” he soothes softly. “You need me to come down and take you home?”
Dana’s head cocks to one side. That’s a familiar voice, but she can’t quite place it because she’s never heard it sounding sympathetic before.
“Yeah, I think so,” you reply, feeling defeated and exhausted. “This thing’s really knocked me on my ass. Literally, actually. I’m on the bathroom floor.”
Brendon’s voice gains intensity as it lowers in volume. “Are you okay? How serious is this?”
“I’m alright,” you reassure him, “just needed to sit down somewhere cool and quiet. Dana’s here with me being amazing. You’ll come down soon?”
“Yeah, baby, of course,” he sighs tenderly. You hear him shuffling things around, already reorienting his day at the first sign of you needing him. “I’ve got one more quick post-op and then I’ll grab you, okay? Can you find somewhere to hang tight until then?”
“Mhm,” you offer queasily. “I’ll wait for you in Occupational Health, maybe? I can lay down and get some meds there at least.”
“That’s a good idea. Tell them I want blood and cultures. Don’t forget that you want trimethobenzamide, not Zofran, for the nausea. Zofran always makes you too fatigued.”
“Yes, doctor,” you reply with an eye roll. But when the eye roll makes the world spin which makes your stomach flip, you groan, “Thanks, Bren.”
As she puts all the baffling dots together, Dana steps in and tells him, “I’ll bring her up to OT. She looks like she could go down any second, so I’m gonna stick with her.”
Brendon sighs. You know he’s pinching the bridge of his nose to stop himself from getting too upset that he can’t fix everything right away. “Thanks, Dana, I’ll see you both soon.”
Dana manages to get you to Occupational Health without catching any stray questioning stares. After being briefed on your symptoms, the OT nurse gives you a sympathetic smile as she preps her kit. “It’s probably the flu, but we’re going to draw some blood and take a couple cultures just to be safe, alright?”
Dramatically presenting your arm for the poke, you murmur, “As if my husband would let me leave without a battery of tests for a seasonal virus half a Pittsburgh has.”
She smiles knowingly. “Park definitely seems like the protective type.”
“Park the fuckin’ Shark,” Dana sighs, still disbelieving, as she shakes her head. “So tell me: Was he nice when you first met or were you mean?”
Seeing Brendon’s broad form in the corner of your eye, you turn toward him and sigh romantically, “He’s always nice to me.”
The moment he catches your eye, Brendon’s expression softens. Dana’s never seen that before. He strides quickly to your side and takes your free hand as the nurse does your blood draw. With a quick squeeze to your palm, he asks gently, “How’s the patient feeling?”
You tilt your head back and pout. “Supremely crappy. Sorry, baby, I know you told me to stay home this morning.”
Brendon shakes his head and presses his lips to your hair. “Never apologize for needing my help; that’s the job. You’ve been nauseous half of your adult life and you’re used to pushing through it. Shit happens. Let’s just get you home, baby.”
Dana watches the exchange with befuddled eyebrows. Suddenly the mountain of a frown she’s come to know is a gentle giant, his eyes concerned and his expression tender. He’s had baby blue eyes this whole time? Jesus. She never would’ve guessed after avoiding eye contact so long. She gestures broadly and half-laughs as she asks Brendon, “You’re telling me all those precious angels she’s got covering the inside of her locker belong to you? The meanest man in the hospital?”
“Guilty as charged,” Brendon confirms as he once again kisses the top of your head. He’s rubbing your back, too, unable to stop touching you as a way of grounding himself. “We’ve been together almost ten years now.”
She whistles, impressed. Turning to you while the nurse disappears with your tests, she asks, “Any reason you don’t talk about him at work besides the fact that he’s undeniably awful?”
“I talk plenty about my husband,” you laugh softly, not able to muster much energy to tease, “you all just don’t think my cute stories could be about him.”
Suddenly recontextualizing countless adorable accounts, Dana disbelievingly says, “Brendon Park takes his girls to their father-daughter dances every year in a tie that matches their dress. Brendon Park writes notes for his kids’ lunchboxes and takes them all on dad dates so they don’t miss out on quality time with him.” She shakes her head and laughs, “No wonder he keeps his family a secret; I think you might be the sweetest man in the world, Dr. Park. I’m never gonna look at you the same way again.”
“That’s all hearsay,” Brendon snaps back through a chuckle. Then he sighs and tells her, “Look, surgery may be my life, but those kids are my world. Family’s everything.”
Dana can’t help smiling. “God, now I’m gonna be sick.”
You make kissy lips at Brendon and say, “I tell you guys all the time: My husband’s a huge softie.”
Brendon shakes his head and jokingly covers your ears with his hands. “She’s delirious; don’t listen to a word she says.” Then, while you get cleared to leave, he nudges Dana on the arm and adds, “Hey, don’t tell anyone about us, alright? We’ve got a whole bet going.”
And she gives the only response heard in the Pitt: “Can I get in on the action?”
Just as you’re about to go home after your first shift back a few days later, feeling much better after resting and hydrating as with Brendon’s mom coming over to dote on the kids, Dana touches you on the shoulder. Her eyes are sharp and her voice is low. “Do you have a few minutes?”
You glance at your watch. Brendon’s grabbing the boys from daycare, so you can spare a few minutes. “Now?”
She nods and you can see something serious hiding behind her eyes. Immediately you worry about the particularly fragile patient she assisted you with a few hours ago. “No time like the present.”
“Um, yeah, alright.”
She leads you into a private room and closes the door behind her. Inside, she picks up a chart and a few packets of paper she had waiting.
Swallowing hard as your mind easily supplies all sorts of horrible news, you check, “Is this about a patient?”
“Ah, kind of,” she replies, gesturing for you to sit on the bed. You hop up and she steps closer. After a deep breath, she hands over the clipboard – your chart from your visit to OT last week – and says, “No point beating around the bush, I say. You’re pregnant.”
The floor falls out from under you.
Your ears start to ring. Staring down at the litany of blood tests, your eyes settle on that firm POSITIVE next to a sky-high hCG level.
While your heart thuds its way into your throat, Dana adds softly, “I’m guessing you’re already well into your first trimester based on those numbers. Maybe 10, 12 weeks.”
Not quite processing, you blink fast and ramble out, “I- I’m so good about my birth control pills. Same time every day. Never miss them. With five kids, you don’t miss your birth control.”
“I read over your chart, honey,” she explains, standing next to you now so she can place a hand on your upper back. “One of the medications you’re on – the modafinil, for your sleep issues – reduces the effectiveness of hormonal birth control.”
Tears sting at your eyes as you scoff, feeling stupid and confused and jarred, “How did I not know that? I’m a fucking doctor.”
“You’re not a psychiatrist. If they didn’t tell you that, you should sue as far as I’m concerned.” She hands you a couple stapled packets of paper and a pamphlet. Studies, you realize. “Look, take a day and talk about it with your husband, whatever you need to do, but if you decide to stay pregnant, you’ll need to stop taking it because first trimester exposure can cause some complications and malformations.”
If the floor fell out of you at the first news, it’s the ceiling flying off this time. Your hand goes over your mouth as you choke back a sob. “Oh, god.”
“Don’t go panicking yet,” she soothes, rubbing your back how your mother would when you were little. “The chance is still low and you know as well as I do there are things we can screen for and most of them are fixable, treatable, or manageable even if they’re present. All your numbers look fantastic and you’ve got a nice long history of healthy pregnancies, right?”
You wipe the tears from your cheeks and take a deep breath, steadying yourself as much as you can. “Right. Right, yeah. Okay. Everything’s okay.”
Dana gives you a sympathetic, understanding smile. “Do you want a minute alone? Or I can walk you out to your car?”
You sniffle and try to force your face into a grateful expression, genuinely thankful she’s being so kind and taking the time to be supportive. “That would be nice.”
With her voice low and her arm slung protectively around your shoulder, Dana guided you out of the back entrance and to your waiting car. She says goodbye with a tight hug that lingers, promising you everything will be okay.
Then, alone in your car, your mind finally settled enough to relax, you feel that tiny little spark.
Underneath the shock, underneath the panic, underneath the confusion, peeking out like a sprout growing through a crack in the concrete, there’s that familiar bloom of pure love. That soft, sacred, quiet thing that grows unrelentingly inside of you when everything else threatens to crumble.
Love without boundaries, without conditions, without a name. The same love that has you sewing custom Halloween costumes, baking preschool graduation cakes, and wiping sniffly noses all cold season long. A love made from you and the man who’s rerouted and dedicated his entire life to making sure you and your children are safe and adored.
As you turn over the engine, you touch your lower abdomen and murmur softly, “We’re doing this again, aren’t we?”
You hate to say it, but you’re grateful when Brendon is pulled into an emergency surgery at the end of the day, sending his mom to pick up the boys at daycare. It’s nice to have some time to think while you make dinner and help the older ones with homework.
While everyone settles into the evening, you catch yourself watching the kids playing with each other, leaning in the doorway with a soft, far away expression. You’d felt so finished having kids after Felix, but suddenly you can see another baby to bounce as you chase the others around. You can see it so clearly that your eyes sting with tears. Even when you imagine that baby with any myriad of complications, you love it. You want it.
Late that night, all the kids in bed save your littlest one, Felix is half-asleep on your chest, his thumb in his mouth while you watch the TV on low. You just can’t bear to stop moments like this when you know they’re so fleeting. Running your fingers through his hair, just like Brendon’s downy waves, you murmur, “What do you think about becoming a big brother, little man?”
He stirs slightly and gives you a heavy-lidded smile. With a half-giggle that always melts you, he muses, “Baby sister?”
“Baby something,” you confirm gently. “I just have to tell daddy.”
He nods as if knowingly, nestling his forehead into your side. “Daddy happy.”
“I hope so.”
“Know so.”
You’ve convinced yourself that you’ll manage to wait to tell Brendon until after he’s had a solid night’s sleep. But then he comes home. And, in a matter of minutes, you remember it’s impossible for you to keep a secret from him, especially one this big. That’s the problem with being married to your best friend; he’s the one person you want to talk about everything with, even when it’s not the best time.
“I got my bloodwork back,” you tell him tentatively as you watch him go through his bedtime routine from the bed, “and I don’t have the flu.”
After he finishes flossing, he heads into the closet and asks, “Norovirus?”
Your hands start to sweat. This feels very, very different from your other pregnancies. The shadow of Felix’s birth clouds you both. You swallow hard and squeak out, “Not quite.”
Stepping out in nothing but his boxers, a few droplets of water still on his chest from his recent shower, Brendon sits next to you on the bed and cups your cheek. With a furrowed brow, he urges, “I can read you like a book, angel. Spit it out.”
Searching his blue eyes for any islands to rest away from your anxiety, you whisper, “I’m pregnant.”
Every time you’ve told him before, he’s scooped you up into his arms and spun you around and celebrated. This time, the blood drains from his face. His palms go clammy. The world stills.
After a minute, he asks in a voice that’s jumbled up with fear and grief and love and hope and desperation, “You want us to keep it?”
“I think so,” you reply quietly, “but not if you don’t want another-”
“I’d raise as many kids as you’d give me, baby, that’s not what I’m nervous about.” Brendon turns to you, clutches your hands in his, and shakes his head like he’s trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch. Through tears that just won’t stop falling, he whispers, “After everything last time, after almost- almost fucking lose you, I don’t know if I can- if I can handle it.”
You rush back, “That won’t happen again, Bren.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
Brushing his wet cheeks with your thumbs, you remind him, “I can know it to 99.99994 percent based on the latest research. We both know the odds are astronomical that that complication would happen more than once.”
Unable to speak, Brendon buries his face in your shoulder and takes a deep breath. His arms wrap around your waist and he pulls you effortlessly into his lap to hold you as tight to him as possible.
You massage his scalp with your fingertips and soothe, “I’m okay, Bren. I’m just pregnant.”
“I know, baby, I know.” He pulls back and kisses your hand over and over with his eyebrows pinched together. “But you’re older now, and-”
“Sweetheart, I’m not even thirty,” you chuckle and shake your head. “The average woman hasn’t even started having babies by my age.”
“You’re really on one with the statistics tonight,” he half-laughs, wiping his tears and taking a deep breath. After a minute of studying your features the way he always has when he wishes he could read your thoughts, he checks, “Are you sure?”
You nod and give him the first secretive smile. “Completely.”
Brendon hugs you close once again and sighs out all his fears with his next breath. “Then I’m sure with you.” Sliding his strong arms beneath your ass, he offers a mischievous smile and asks, “Feel secure?”
You roll your eyes and grin and nod – and he hoists you up into the air. Letting out a needed laugh, you lock your legs around him and kiss him hard as he spins you around. With your forehead pressed to his, you giggle out, “We’re gonna have a baby.”
“I love you so fucking much,” he says, kissing across your cheeks. Once he’s got you laughing and thrilled, he flops you back on the bed and kisses your stomach. Finally, propped on his elbows next to you, that boyish smile of his blooms in full force. He says seriously, “At least this means we have some wiggle room for our ultimate frisbee lineup. Margot’s not exactly shaping up to be an athlete with all her musical theater.”
You snort run your fingers through Brendon’s hair as he rests his head on your stomach, eyes closed reverently as he once again reimagines his future with another baby. “Hear that, kiddo? Daddy’s gonna teach you to throw as soon as you’re out of there. Work extra hard on building up that right hook.”
“Nah, we need a Southpaw,” he corrects with the most adorable smile you’ve ever seen. Then he just shakes his head happily and snuggles closer to you, the picture of domestic bliss. As he softly kisses anywhere he can, he muses, “We’re gonna have to go ring shopping again.”
You poke him in the pec and balk, “You want me to wear a six carat diamond? My hand will fall off, Bren. We could send one of the kids to college with that.”
He holds up his hand to stop you in your tracks. “One carat per baby; that’s been my rule for a decade and I’m not about to betray my values now.”
With a snicker, you reach back and turn off your bedside lamp, getting cozy under the covers together. “I can’t even wear my ring to work.”
He counters, “But I like when you wear it on dates.”
“Because you like to show me off like some trophy wife.”
Dramatically, he sighs out, “God forbid a man be madly, spectacularly in love with a gorgeous woman and want everyone in a ten-foot radius to know.”
“Fine,” you relent, unable to stop smiling even in the dark, “six carats it is.”
In lieu of my ko-fi, please consider donating to my mother's long-term dementia care fund.
i have [gestures vaguely] my tendencies
trying to create an ebay account to sell smthn and tell me why I can't use my REAL LEGAL LAST NAME because it includes "dick" which ebay considers offensive
BUT THEN IN THEIR MISREPRESENTATION POLICY THEY SAY YOU CAN'T COLLECT MONEY TO A BANK ACCOUNT THAT'S NOT IN YOUR BUSINESS OR LEGAL NAME. BUT MY LEGAL NAME INCLUDES DICK, WHICH YOU CONSIDER OFFENSIVE.
the sanitization of the internet is so fucking stupid we live in the stupidest time
affirmations they will not kill me at work today. it is not in my job description to get killed. if they did kill me at work that would be weird and probably not worth it for them
What Happens in Vegas Never Stays in Vegas
Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch x Reader
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Summary: After a drunken Vegas wedding, Robby disappears by morning, leaving you with nothing but a ring and a mistake that was supposed to stay in Vegas. But when a pregnancy and state paperwork force you to track down the husband who vanished, Robby learns the truth and this time, walking away isn’t so easy.
WC: 13K
Tags: Drunken Vegas Wedding, Runaway Husband, Unexpected Pregnancy, Forced Reunion, Second Chance Romance, Robby Wants to Stay, Romantic Comedy vibes with some Angst, No use of Y/N
A/N: I would like to apologize. I’ve come to the realization that I can only write one shots or lengthy chapter stories. I can’t write anything in between. With that saying I don’t know how long this story will be but it will definitely be more than the 10 chapter goal I had… sorry 🫥
The movie had been on for almost forty minutes.
You knew that because you’d checked the clock three times in the last ten minutes. Not because you were waiting for Robby. Because you were watching the movie. Obviously.
You shifted deeper into the corner of the couch, blanket tucked over your legs. Rain tapped softly against the windows. The dishwasher hummed in the kitchen, and a covered plate waited in the microwave. Robby’s dinner.
Somehow, that had become normal too. Not just making it. Not just leaving it covered in the microwave. The expectation that eventually the front door would open, his boots would hit the floor, and another day would end the way most of them ended now. Together.
Not always in the same room. Not always talking. Just existing in the same space. Some mornings, you woke up to a travel mug waiting beside the coffee maker because he’d left before sunrise and knew nausea hit hardest before breakfast. Some nights, he came home to dinner already made because cooking for one felt ridiculous when there were two people living in the house.
You texted him when you couldn’t find something. He texted when he was running late. Neither of you had discussed when that started. It just had. A routine forming quietly around the edges of everything neither of you knew how to name. The strangest part was the evenings.
At first, Robby disappeared into his room after work. You understood why. The hospital took pieces out of him some days. Nothing dramatic or visible. Just enough that by the time he got home, he looked like a man whose battery had hit the blinking red line.
Then one night, he wandered into the living room carrying a glass of whiskey and sat in the armchair without explanation. You had been reading. Neither of you said much. An hour later, he finished the drink, said goodnight, and went to bed. The next day, it happened again. And again. Until sitting in the same room became another habit.
Sometimes, he talked. About the elderly patient who finally agreed to use a walker. About a diabetic whose numbers looked better for the first time in months. About a resident who finally got a difficult procedure right after struggling with it for weeks. Little victories most people would never think twice about.
Other nights, he barely said a word. He sat in the chair with his whiskey while you read, watched television, or pretended to understand whatever movie was playing. The silence never felt awkward. Just shared.
You still weren’t entirely sure what that made the two of you. Friends felt wrong. It wasn’t the coffee or the groceries or the dinners. It was the assumption underneath them. The quiet certainty that tomorrow would probably look much the same. Him leaving for work. You being here when he came home. But more than friends felt wrong too.
Neither of you had said anything like that out loud. Neither of you had crossed any lines. You weren’t dating. You weren’t together. You weren’t even sure what pretending would look like. Most days, you weren’t sure what word belonged here.
The father of your child? Technically true.
Except that sounded like somebody you exchanged custody schedules with. Not the man who left coffee beside the machine before work because he knew mornings were rough lately. Not the man who listened to you complain about grocery-store strangers with the same attention he gave trauma reports. Not the man who sat in the living room after impossible shifts because somewhere along the way being alone had stopped feeling preferable.
So maybe there wasn’t a word for it. Maybe that was why it felt so strange. Maybe that was why you kept checking the clock. Because whatever Robby was now, his coming home had quietly become part of your day.
The lock turned.
Your head lifted before you could stop it. A second later, the front door opened and Robby stepped inside, bringing the damp smell of rain and hospital air with him. His helmet hung from one hand. His bag was slung over one shoulder. His jacket was unzipped over rumpled scrubs, and his hair was flattened in the back like he had dragged his hand through it too many times before getting on the bike.
One look was enough. He didn’t have to say anything. You knew. A normal day came through the door talking. Usually with some dry observation about the least catastrophic part of his day. Tonight was not that. His shoulders sat lower than usual. The crease between his brows was faint but familiar now. Not angry. Not frustrated. Tired. The kind that lived deeper than sleep.
He closed the door behind him and stood there for a second, staring at nothing in particular before his eyes finally found you on the couch.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
His gaze lingered briefly, checking. You were starting to realize he always did that. A quick inventory.
Are you in any pain?
Need anything?
Still awake?
Still here?
The usual.
Somewhere along the way, his check-ins had stopped feeling like a doctor assessing symptoms and started feeling like someone coming home.
You lifted your phone slightly. “Dinner’s in the microwave.”
Something softened in his expression. Not enough to erase the day. Enough to acknowledge the gesture.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
That earned the smallest hint of a smile.
“Thanks.”
You nodded, but your attention had already dropped back to the phone in your hand.
The notification was still there.
Women’s Health Associates, Appointment Reminder: Wednesday – 10:00 AM Ultrasound Appointment
You stared at it. Then locked the screen. Then unlocked it thirty seconds later. Tomorrow. The word felt heavier than it should have. You were having an ultrasound.
Not the first one. Planned Parenthood in Nevada had done one early on, enough to confirm what the test and your body had already told you. Enough to give you a grainy picture you’d barely been able to look at for more than a few seconds at a time.
This one was different. It was mostly for the new doctor. Baseline measurements. Dating. Making sure the records started somewhere solid now that you were transferring care. Practical. Routine. Except now Robby was here.
Now he was ten feet away, exhausted from a bad shift, with dinner waiting in the microwave and no idea you were sitting on his couch trying to decide whether to ask him to come. And somehow, telling him about it felt less like sharing information and more like giving him a place beside you. It should have made you feel safer. Mostly, it made everything feel harder to pretend away.
Robby shifted near the door, and you looked up again. He was still watching you. Not obviously. Not in a way that demanded anything from you. Just enough to tell you he had noticed your attention kept falling back to your phone.
“You okay?” he asked.
You closed your fingers around it. “Yeah.”
He did not look like he believed you. He also did not push.
Another thing you were learning about him. Robby brought bad days home with him. He just didn’t open them where anyone else could see. You could feel them anyway. In his face. In the set of his shoulders. In the quiet that entered the room before he said a word.
Mostly, he locked it down. He didn’t unload it onto whoever happened to be nearby or spend hours dragging every terrible thing back into the light. He just carried it until it changed the air around him. You were still learning how to tell the difference between wanting to be left alone and not wanting to be alone.
He rubbed one hand over the back of his neck and glanced toward the hallway.
“I’m gonna shower.”
“Probably for the best.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“You smell like hospital,” you added.
He glanced down at himself, then back at you. “That bad?”
“You’re not a biohazard, but you are giving strong antiseptic-and-regret energy.”
This time, he almost smiled. Almost. “Fair.”
He set his helmet on the small table by the door, dropped his bag beside it, and headed down the hall. A minute later, the shower turned on.
You looked back at your phone. The appointment reminder still waited on the screen. You chewed lightly on the inside of your cheek. Maybe you’d bring it up after he ate dinner. Maybe when the movie ended. Maybe tomorrow morning.
The fact that you were strategizing a simple conversation like it required a full operational briefing probably wasn’t a great sign. Neither was the fact that part of you already knew you wanted him there. You just had not figured out how to say it yet.
The shower shut off. You looked toward the hallway before you could stop yourself. A few seconds later, cabinets opened in the kitchen. The microwave beeped. A fork scraped lightly against a plate. Small sounds. Familiar sounds. The kind you were starting to recognize without meaning to.
When Robby came back into the living room, his hair was still damp, his T-shirt clinging slightly at the collar. He carried the plate you had left him in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He paused at the edge of the couch, just long enough to ask without asking.
You shifted your legs under the blanket, making room. “You can sit.”
His mouth moved faintly. “Good to know.”
“Don’t get sentimental.”
“I’ll try to control myself.”
He sat beside you, not close enough to touch, but closer than he would have two weeks ago. The couch dipped under his weight. The movie kept playing, ignored by both of you.
For a while, he ate in silence. You tried not to watch him too obviously. He was quieter than usual. Even for a bad day. His fork moved slowly. His eyes stayed on the television without following any of it. Every so often, his jaw shifted like he was holding a thought in place with his teeth.
You waited until he set the plate down on the coffee table.
“Bad?”
His eyes flicked toward you. He understood you weren’t asking about the shift. Not really. He seemed to understand that, because he didn’t answer right away.
Then he leaned back against the couch and let out a slow breath through his nose.
“Yeah,” he said. Simple. Flat. Honest.
Your fingers tightened once in the blanket.
He looked back at the television. “Just one of those days.”
You nodded. No questions. No digging. No careful attempt to pull the story out of him and make it smaller. You were learning that pushing Robby rarely opened anything. Usually, it only made him seal the door tighter. So you let it go.
The movie filled the space between you badly. Someone on-screen shouted a name into the rain. Neither of you reacted. After a minute, you looked down at your phone again. Locked. Unlocked. The appointment reminder waited there like it had patience.
You swallowed once. “Are you working tomorrow?”
Robby’s attention shifted to you. “No.”
You kept your eyes on the screen. “No?”
“I’m off.”
“Rare.”
“Try not to sound too impressed.”
“I’m overwhelmed.”
That earned the smallest breath of amusement from him.
He picked up his beer, then set it down without drinking. “I was probably going to stop by Duke’s for a bit.”
“The shop?”
“Yeah. Bike needs looking at.”
You glanced over. “That’s usually what people say right before they spend a thousand dollars.”
“Hopefully I’m lucky and it’s something cheap.”
You snorted softly. “That is not how bikes work.”
Robby looked over. “You suddenly an expert?”
“No,” you said, too quickly. “I just know ‘something cheap’ usually means ‘I haven’t found the expensive part yet.’”
His eyes stayed on you for half a second longer.
“What kind of sound?” you asked.
His brow lifted. “What?”
“The bike,” you said, nodding toward him. “What kind of sound is it making?”
For the first time since he’d come home, his attention sharpened for a reason that had nothing to do with the hospital.
“A rattle,” he said.
“When?”
He blinked. “When?”
“Cold start? Idle? When you throttle? Under load?”
Robby stared at you.
You stared back. “What?”
“You know what under load means?”
“Michael.”
“No, seriously.”
You looked back at the television. “If it rattles cold and settles once it warms up, check the cam chain tensioner.”
The room went quiet. Not the heavy kind this time. The surprised kind.
Robby slowly set his fork down. “You know what a cam chain tensioner is.”
“I know lots of things.”
“No normal person knows that.”
“Maybe I’m secretly fascinating.”
“I already knew that,” he said, then seemed to realize he’d said it.
Your eyes flicked toward him. His jaw shifted once.
You looked away first. “My dad rides.”
“Rides?”
“A lot.”
His expression changed slightly. Not teasing now. Careful. “How much is a lot?”
You adjusted the blanket over your legs. “Enough that I spent half my childhood holding flashlights and being told I was pointing them wrong.”
That got a quiet laugh out of him. “Universal childhood experience.”
“Yeah, well, most kids weren’t learning the difference between primary chain noise and valve train tick before they learned long division.”
Robby’s eyes stayed on you long enough that you felt yourself trying to make the story smaller.
“He tried to teach me to ride when I was six.”
“Six?”
“Dad of the year. My feet didn’t even reach anything. Obviously, it was a very professional operation.”
“Obviously.”
“My grandma chased him with a broom. Called him every name in the book.” You smiled despite yourself. “He laughed the whole time.”
The memory settled over you before you could shove it back. Hot pavement outside an open garage bay. Bikes lined up in crooked rows, chrome flashing under the sun, engines ticking as they cooled. Men in worn leather vests and oil-stained jeans stood around with paper coffee cups, cigarette smoke, and too many opinions.
Someone laughed loudly near a toolbox. Someone else was already arguing about the right way to fix a problem that had probably been solved twenty minutes ago. Your dad crouched beside a bike with grease on his hands, grinning like trouble was a language he spoke fluently. You loved that part. You didn’t always like admitting it.
There had been something satisfying about the noise and the order hidden underneath it. About listening closely enough to tell the difference between a healthy engine and one begging for attention. About watching your dad take something rough and stubborn and coax it back into smoothness with patience, profanity, and the absolute confidence of a man who believed every machine owed him an explanation.
You used to like riding too. Not the reckless parts. Not the stupid parts. Not the nights when the whole crowd rolled out together and your grandmother watched from the porch with her mouth pressed into a thin line.
But the quieter parts. The hum under your ribs. The wind pulling the world open around you. The feeling of everything narrowing to road, sound, balance.
You glanced down at your stomach and let out a small, dry laugh. “Obviously not doing that anytime soon.”
“No,” Robby said, a little too fast.
You looked over.
He exhaled. “That was a doctor answer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I have a license. I feel obligated to use it.”
“Even off the clock?”
“Especially off the clock. Nobody can stop me.”
His mouth twitched when you laughed.
Robby picked his fork back up, but he didn’t interrupt. Just kept eating slowly, like he had nowhere else to be and nothing better to do than listen to whatever pieces of yourself you were accidentally handing over.
That made the joke fade a little.
“My dad had friends,” you said. The words came out lighter than they felt. “Bike friends.”
Robby’s gaze lifted.
“He had a very committed group of biker friends,” you said lightly.
Robby took a sip of his beer. “Biker friends?”
“They had matching jackets and everything.” Your mouth pulled into a small smile before you could stop it. “Very organized. Charity rides during the day, questionable decisions after dark.”
Robby looked over. “Questionable decisions?”
“I’m being generous.”
“That bad?”
“I said questionable, not the kind of story that starts with, ‘Allegedly.’”
His mouth twitched.
You almost smiled too, but it faded before it fully formed. “Sometimes both.”
The room quieted. Robby didn’t make you explain. He just nodded once, slow and understanding.
“Duke was part of a biker club. He’s told me a story or two,” he said.
You looked at him. “Then you get it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”
You looked back at the television. “My grandmother actually liked most of his friends.”
Robby glanced over. “Most?”
“She said they were perfectly nice right up until they all got together.” A smile tugged at your mouth. “Then suddenly everybody started having terrible ideas.”
“Group effort.”
“Exactly.”
He took another bite of dinner. “And your dad?”
A laugh escaped before you could stop it. “Usually the one suggesting them.”
That earned a real laugh. Not a polite one. A genuine one.
“That sounds suspiciously specific.”
“Because it is.” You shook your head. “My grandmother used to swear there was a direct correlation between the number of motorcycles in the driveway and the likelihood somebody was about to make a terrible life choice.”
“Solid research.”
“Peer reviewed.”
“Naturally.”
The smile lingered a second longer this time. “She loved him, though.” The words came quieter. Easier somehow now that you weren’t looking at him. “Drove her absolutely insane. But she loved him.”
Robby nodded, not because he knew your grandmother, but because he understood loving somebody who wasn’t easy.
You looked down at the blanket gathered in your lap. “He really was a good dad. Not perfect.” A short laugh escaped you. “Obviously.”
Robby smiled faintly.
“But he never missed birthdays. Never forgot Christmas. Never made me wonder if he loved me.” Your throat tightened unexpectedly. “A lot of things in his life were a mess. His temper. His choices. The people he scared when he decided they weren’t his people.” You shrugged. “But me? That wasn’t one of them.”
The room settled around the confession. Robby nodded once, quiet and certain.
“My dad would’ve liked your bike,” you said after a moment, trying to pull the conversation back into safer territory.
Robby glanced over. “Yeah?”
“Oh, absolutely. She’s a pretty thing. He would’ve pretended not to. Walked around it twice, made some deeply insulting comment, then asked for the keys.”
“That does sound like a healthy level of respect.”
“Very traditional.”
His mouth twitched. “Would he have diagnosed it?”
“Immediately. Then he would’ve been unbearable about it.”
“Naturally.”
“That was kind of his brand.”
Robby looked down at his plate, the faintest smile still there. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You should. He’ll judge your maintenance.”
“Good to know I have supervision.”
You smiled, smaller this time, then let the blanket slide between your fingers. For a few seconds, neither of you said anything. The movie kept going. The rain kept tapping against the glass.
Then Robby said, quiet and almost casual, “I’d like to meet him someday.”
You looked over before you could stop yourself. He was still looking at his plate, like the comment hadn’t cost him anything. Like it was simple. Like meeting your father was a normal thing to want.
It should have made you nervous. Maybe it did. But underneath that, something in your chest softened. Because you had just handed him one of the messier pieces of your life, and he hadn’t stepped back from it. Hadn’t made your father smaller. Hadn’t made you explain why you still loved him. He just wanted to know him.
“You say that now,” you said.
Robby’s mouth shifted faintly. “That bad?”
“He once inspected a bike so silently the owner apologized.”
“For what?”
“Existing near him, I think.”
A small laugh slipped out before you could stop it. And somehow, after giving him a piece of your past you hadn’t meant to hand over, the next part felt a little easier. Not easy. Just possible.
You looked down at your phone again. The reminder waited there. Wednesday. Ten o’clock. Ultrasound. Your stomach tightened, but not as sharply this time.
“Michael?”
He looked over.
You kept your eyes on the phone. “I called that OB you recommended.”
His attention shifted immediately. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just completely.
“Yeah?”
“They got me in tomorrow.”
Robby’s fork stilled near his plate. “Tomorrow?”
“Ten.”
He nodded once, carefully. “Okay. That’s good.”
You turned the phone over in your hands, then back again. “She wants to do another ultrasound.”
His expression changed. Barely. But you saw it.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” you said quickly. Too quickly. “Yeah, it’s routine. Since I’m transferring care, she wants her own measurements and scans and all that. Dating. Records. Making sure everything lines up.”
“Okay.”
“It’s mostly for the new doctor,” you added. “Planned Parenthood already did one early on. You saw that one.”
“I remember.”
His voice was quiet enough that something in your chest pulled tight.
You looked down at the phone again. Your thumb rubbed nervously along the edge of the case. This was the part. Not telling him. That was information. This was asking.
“You can come,” you said quickly. “If you want. I mean, you obviously don’t have to. It’s your day off, and you said you were going to Duke’s, and it’s mostly routine anyway. It’s not some huge dramatic first ultrasound moment or anything. They just want their own scan because I’m switching doctors, and I didn’t want you to think I was making it a thing, because I’m not. I mean, it is a thing, obviously, because there’s a baby, but it’s not—”
“Hey.”
Your mouth closed.
Robby was looking at you now, careful and quiet, one hand still wrapped loosely around his fork.
“Breathe,” he said softly.
Heat rushed into your face. “Right.”
You looked back at your phone. “I just didn’t want you to feel obligated.” The words came out smaller than everything before.
Robby’s expression shifted. Not hurt. Not exactly. Something quieter than that.
“I know.”
For a second, neither of you said anything.
Then he asked, voice low, “Do you want me there?”
Your fingers tightened around the phone. That was the question, wasn’t it? Not whether he could come. Not whether he had a right to know. Whether you wanted him beside you.
You swallowed. “Yeah,” you admitted. “I think I do.”
Robby looked down for half a second, jaw shifting once like he was trying not to let too much show.
Then he nodded. “Then I’m coming.”
Simple. Immediate. Like there had never been another answer.
Something loosened in your chest so suddenly it almost hurt.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
The movie kept playing.
Neither of you watched it anymore.
—
Something had changed on the couch the night before. Not enough to name. Not enough to touch. But enough that when Robby woke up the next morning, the house felt a little less unfamiliar than it had before.
At 8:03, he knocked softly against her bedroom door.
“You awake?”
His voice came out low. Careful. Like he wasn’t entirely sure what the rules were now either.
Silence from inside.
Then her voice, still rough with sleep.
“Unfortunately.”
Robby’s mouth twitched.
“You need coffee?”
Another stretch of silence.
“Maybe.”
Robby stood on the other side of the door with one hand still raised near the frame. He had already made the coffee.
The smell of it still lingered through the house along with butter warming in the pan and the faint sweetness of cinnamon. He’d gone to the grocery store the night before after she’d gone to bed, because somewhere between ultrasound and I think I do want you there, his brain had apparently decided French toast was a reasonable response.
He stared at the door another second anyway. She was awake. She was still there. That thought had started happening before he could stop it. Not in words at first. More like instinct. A glance toward the her room—no, guest room—when he woke up. Relief when he heard cabinets opening in the kitchen. The automatic habit of checking whether her shoes were still by the door before leaving for work. Still here.
He lowered his hand from the frame.
“I made breakfast,” he said instead.
“What kind?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“It depends on whether you’re pretending to hate French toast this morning.”
Silence. Then, through the door, “I have never pretended to hate French toast.”
“Good. Because I already committed.”
A soft laugh came from inside the room. Small. Sleep-roughened. It did something unfortunate to his chest.
Robby leaned back against the hallway wall for a second, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. The appointment wasn’t until ten. He had been awake since six anyway.
He had checked the time three times. Not because they were late. They were aggressively not late. He had just apparently become the kind of man who made French toast at eight in the morning and knew exactly how long it took to get to an OB appointment with traffic. Which was fine. Normal. Fine.
Robby went back into the kitchen mostly so he had something to do with his hands. The French toast was already done. The coffee was already done. He had run out of practical tasks twenty minutes ago. Which was unfortunate timing.
He leaned against the counter and stared into his coffee for a second. Ultrasound. The word still did something strange to his chest. Not panic. Not exactly. Just pressure.
Like his brain had not fully caught up to the fact that this was real enough now to have appointments and doctors and blurry black-and-white pictures taped to refrigerators someday.
He exhaled slowly and stared into his coffee. The first ultrasound had happened in the middle of chaos. Shock. Paperwork. Vegas hanging over both of them like a bad decision neither of them knew what to do with. He remembered looking at the photo in her hand and feeling the floor tilt beneath him.
This one felt different. Quieter. Worse, somehow. Because now there was routine wrapped around it. Coffee mugs in the sink. Her blanket on the couch. Dinner in the microwave waiting for him after shifts. Her toothbrush beside his.
Things that made it dangerously easy to picture more. Things he had no business picturing yet. Things he pictured anyway. Robby had wanted this. That was the ugly part. The dangerous part.
The part he never said out loud because wanting made people stupid, and he had spent too many years being practical to start being stupid now.
He had wanted a kitchen that smelled like coffee and breakfast. Someone half-asleep at the counter. Someone to ask if they were nervous before an appointment. A life that didn’t end at his front door every night with silence and takeout containers.
He had wanted it for years. Longer than he cared to admit. When he was younger, before life had gotten sharp around the edges, the dream had been simple enough to embarrass him now.
Two kids. A house near a pond. A woman who loved him enough to stay. That was it. Not impressive. Not complicated. Not some grand ambition. Just a life. The kind other people seemed to stumble into without realizing they had been handed something holy.
Robby had stopped saying it out loud somewhere along the way. Then he had stopped thinking about it. Or he had tried to. Because at some point, wanting started to feel less like hope and more like setting himself up for disappointment. Now the dream felt impossible and close enough to touch at the same time. That was the problem. Because he didn’t know what she wanted.
He knew what she needed right now. Safety. Insurance. A stable doctor. A room with a bed that belonged to her. Breakfast before appointments. Someone who would show up when asked. But need was not the same thing as wanting. And as far as Robby knew, she had never planned on staying.
Not after the baby came. Not after the dust settled. Not once she figured out what her life was supposed to look like without Vegas, without panic, without him as the emergency option.
Maybe she would want to go back. Back to her own life. Back to something that had existed before he had the nerve to imagine himself inside it. The thought sat under his ribs, sharp and quiet. Because he had no idea how to change her mind. Worse, he didn’t know if he had the right to try.
The bedroom door opened down the hall. Robby looked up before he could stop himself. She wandered into the kitchen slowly, still heavy with sleep, hair twisted up lazily like she had only halfway committed to getting ready for the day. One of his old T-shirts hung loose over leggings, the fabric shifting softly around the small curve of her stomach as she walked.
Not big yet. Still enough to change the shape of her.
Her hand rested there absently for a second before dropping again. Robby’s chest tightened so fast it almost annoyed him. Because she looked comfortable here. Not settled. Not permanent. He knew better than to let himself believe that. But comfortable enough to move through his kitchen half-asleep, reaching for the coffee mug he’d set out like she was starting to know where mornings lived in this house.
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon and coffee and butter warming in the pan. Morning light spilled through the windows over the sink, soft against the countertops, against her face, against the quiet way she moved through the room like she had already learned its rhythms.
Home.
The thought landed hard enough that he had to look back at the stove before his face betrayed him.
She stopped beside the island and blinked slowly at the counter.
“You actually cooked.”
Robby glanced over. “I can cook.”
“I know. I just didn’t expect…” She trailed off, smiling a little to herself.
“Didn’t expect what?”
Her fingers curled loosely around the coffee mug.
“I don’t know.” Her voice softened. “This.”
The kitchen. The breakfast. Him standing at the stove in sweatpants looking half nervous and half determined to pretend he wasn’t. Home, some dangerous part of him thought immediately.
The realization hit hard enough that he had to look back at the stove. Because this was exactly the kind of thing he had spent years convincing himself he was too old, too tired, too late for. And somehow she had walked into his house and made it feel possible again without even trying.
He picked up the plate and set it carefully in front of her. Ridiculously careful. Like French toast required precision.
She noticed.
“You’re acting weird.”
“I’m always weird.”
“No. This is… specific.”
Robby leaned against the counter and crossed his arms loosely.
“Maybe I just want today to go okay.”
Her expression softened instantly.
“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “It will.”
The confidence in her voice sounded fragile around the edges. Like she was trying to convince herself too.
Robby swallowed once and nodded. “Okay.” It came out softer than he intended.
She smiled at him over the rim of her coffee mug. Sleepy. Nervous. Warm in the morning light. The thought surfaced again, unhelpfully. Temporary, he reminded himself.
Robby reached for the syrup before the thought could get worse.
She watched him move around the kitchen for a second before smiling faintly down at the plate. “You even made it look nice.”
“That was accidental.”
“Mm.” She didn’t sound convinced.
He set the syrup beside her and leaned back against the counter with his coffee.
“Eat,” he said gently.
Her eyes lifted to his for a second before she nodded.
“Yes, doctor.”
The quiet that settled afterward felt warm around the edges.
She took another bite, then glanced up at him carefully.
“You know you don’t have to look this stressed about it.”
“I don’t look stressed.”
“Michael.”
“Okay,” he admitted, “maybe a little stressed.”
“It’s just an ultrasound.”
“You say that like there isn’t an entire tiny human involved.”
Her expression changed at that. Softer. Quieter. Like hearing him say tiny human did something to her too.
She looked down at her plate. “Tiny human,” she repeated softly.
Robby’s mouth moved like he might take it back. He didn’t.
“Yeah,” he said. “Tiny human.”
The kitchen went quiet again. Not uncomfortable. Just careful.
She set her fork down and rested one hand lightly against her stomach, almost without meaning to.
Robby noticed. His gaze dropped for half a second, then lifted again quickly, because the last thing he wanted was to make her feel watched.
She smiled faintly. “You’re doing the doctor face again.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
He looked down into his coffee. “Different face.”
“Oh?”
The answer left his mouth before he could stop it. “Father face.”
The words landed between them. Soft. Awkward. Too honest. Robby froze like he hadn’t meant to say them out loud.
She stared at him. For a second, he thought he had ruined it. Then her expression softened.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
His chest tightened. “Okay?”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “But maybe save the father face for the appointment.”
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Small. Relieved. Real.
The tension eased after that. Not completely. Just enough for breakfast to finish without either of them saying anything else that might change the shape of the morning.
By the time the plates were empty, the appointment had started creeping back into the room. Neither of them mentioned it. The clock did enough of that on its own.
Robby loaded the dishwasher while she rinsed mugs at the sink. A normal chore. A normal morning. The kind people did every day. The fact that it felt so normal was probably the problem. When the last dish disappeared into the dishwasher, she dried her hands on a towel and glanced toward the clock.
9:02.
Her shoulders shifted slightly. Robby noticed. His eyes flicked toward the clock too. Then away. Then back again.
“You’ve looked at that thing six times,” she said.
“I have not.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “You absolutely have.”
“Five.”
She rolled her eyes.
The corner of his mouth twitched. Neither of them moved.
Then she pushed away from the counter. “I should probably get dressed.”
Robby nodded once. “Probably.”
She took three steps toward the hallway before stopping. Turning back. “Michael?”
“Yeah?”
Her fingers twisted together briefly. Just once. “I’m glad you’re coming.”
Robby went still. Not dramatically. Just enough. His gaze lifted to hers.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, “Me too.”
Something crossed her face. Soft. Scared. Almost gone before he could name it.
Then she pointed at him. “Don’t make this weird.”
His laugh followed her down the hallway. Then the house went quiet again. Robby stood in the kitchen for a second longer, one hand braced against the counter, listening to the soft sounds of her moving around in the guest room.
A drawer opened. A closet door shifted. The old floorboards creaked beneath her feet. Normal sounds. Temporary sounds, he reminded himself.
He looked down at the mug she had left beside the sink. Then at the hallway. Then back at the clock.
9:06.
Plenty of time, which somehow made it worse.
Robby pushed away from the counter and headed for his own room to change, telling himself he was not the kind of man who cared what shirt he wore to an ultrasound appointment. Five minutes later, standing in front of his closet, he realized that was apparently a lie.
He had rejected one T-shirt for looking too much like sleepwear. Then a button-down for looking like he was trying too hard. Now he was holding a plain dark shirt and wondering when clothing had become complicated.
“It’s an ultrasound,” he muttered.
The shirt remained unhelpful.
Robby pulled it on anyway. By the time he stepped back into the hallway, her bedroom door had opened again. He heard her footsteps pause near the entryway mirror.
Then she came into view, smoothing the front of her sweater with one hand, her bag already hooked over her shoulder. Her hair was neater now, though a few loose strands had escaped around her face.
She looked like herself. Nervous. Still a little sleepy. Standing in his hallway before a doctor’s appointment she had asked him to come to.
Dangerous, his brain supplied. Because he was starting to like that far too much.
She caught him looking. “What?”
Robby glanced down at his keys. “Nothing.”
“That was definitely a something.”
“I changed my shirt three times for a doctor’s appointment.”
She blinked. “Three?”
“We’re not discussing it.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. “Oh my God.”
Her mouth twitched, but the nerves were still there. He could see them in the way she adjusted the strap of her bag twice.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Define ready.”
“Shoes on. Purse. Phone. Willingness to enter a medical building.”
“Three out of four.”
“Good enough.”
That got a small laugh out of her.
Robby opened the door, then paused. “Do you want me to drive?”
She looked at him. The question hung there, gentle and practical. Not because she couldn’t. Because he was offering one less thing for her to carry.
After a second, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “If you don’t mind.”
He shook his head. “I don’t.”
And somehow, when she handed him the keys, it felt like more than driving.
Robby closed his fingers around them before he could examine that thought too closely.
The morning air was cool when they stepped outside. The driveway still glistened from the rain.
She started toward the truck while he locked the front door behind them. By the time he caught up, she was reaching for the passenger handle. Robby stepped around her automatically and pulled the door open first.
She stopped. So did he. For half a second, they just looked at each other.
“Sorry,” he said immediately.
Her eyebrows lifted. “For opening a door?”
“It was a reflex.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “What a monster.”
“I know.”
“Someone should probably stop you.”
“Probably.”
She shook her head and climbed into the truck.
Robby shut the door gently behind her. Then stood there for a second longer than necessary. Because somewhere between Vegas and now, little things had started mattering. And that was becoming a problem.
The drive took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes Robby had made a thousand times before. He knew every turn. Every traffic light. Every shortcut.
Usually, he drove toward the hospital thinking about patients. Charts. Residents. Coffee. Today, he spent most of the drive trying not to think about the fact that there was a baby waiting at the end of it.
Beside him, she stared out the window. Quiet. Her fingers twisted once around the strap of her bag. Then stopped. Nervous. He recognized it immediately. Because he wasn’t exactly calm himself. The hospital came into view. And for the first time in years, walking into Pittsburgh Trauma didn’t feel routine. Usually, the hospital put him on autopilot. Badge. Waiting room. Coffee. Floor.
Today, he found himself checking whether she was keeping up. Which was ridiculous. She was walking directly beside him. Still, every few steps, his attention drifted back anyway. Not because she needed help. Just because she was here. Beside him. At his hospital. For his baby.
That familiarity usually made him comfortable. Today, it mostly made him aware of where they were going. Women’s Health. Ultrasound. Baby.
Beside him, she adjusted the strap of her bag again. Nervous. Somehow reassuring. At least one of them was behaving normally.
They rode the elevator up in silence. Not awkward silence. Elevator silence. The kind everyone fell into when trapped in a metal box with strangers. A woman carrying a toddler got off on the third floor. An older man with a cane got on. The doors opened and closed.
The hospital moved around them in its usual rhythm, which made it stranger when the Women’s Health waiting room appeared around the corner and his stomach immediately tightened.
A receptionist looked up from behind the desk.
“Good morning.”
She stepped forward before he could. Which was probably better for everyone involved. He had already caught himself reaching for her paperwork twice in the parking garage.
She handled the check-in while he stood beside her pretending not to notice that he was suddenly very interested in a framed poster about prenatal nutrition.
A few minutes later they were sitting side by side in the waiting room. Not touching. Not talking much. Just waiting. Across from them, a couple flipped through a baby name book. Somebody’s phone played a lullaby from across the room trying to soothe their baby. A nurse appeared in the doorway and called another patient’s name. The room settled again.
Robby looked over. She was staring at a spot on the floor. Thinking. Worrying. Probably both.
“Hey.”
Her eyes lifted. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
She exhaled through her nose. “Ask me again in an hour.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Fair.”
For a while, neither of them spoke. Somehow, sitting beside her made all of it feel different. The appointment sat only a few doors away now. No longer tomorrow. No longer later. Just waiting.
The waiting room door opened. A nurse stepped out with a tablet in one hand, glanced down at the screen, then looked up.
“Robinavitch?”
Robby’s chest tightened before he could stop it. Strange. Almost nobody called him Robinavitch.
He was Robby. To patients. To nurses. To friends. Hell, half the hospital probably wasn’t entirely sure Robinavitch was his actual last name. Usually when he heard it, it meant paperwork. Administration. Somebody looking for a signature. Something official.
Beside him, she looked up too.
Robinavitch.
Her name now. Technically. Legally. Temporarily, he reminded himself. Except it didn’t sound temporary coming from someone else’s mouth. It sounded real. Like the world had decided what they were before either of them had figured it out themselves.
The nurse glanced between them.
“Robinavitch?”
She stood first. “That’s us.”
Us.
The word shouldn’t have done anything. Casual. Harmless. Meant to answer a nurse’s question and nothing more. Instead it landed somewhere behind his ribs and stayed there. Because first it had been the house. Then breakfast. Then the drive. Then walking through the hospital together. And now a waiting room full of strangers hearing a name neither of them quite knew what to do with.
Robby stood a second after her. The roller coaster had officially left the station.
The nurse smiled politely, either not noticing or choosing not to.
“This way.”
Robby stepped beside her as they followed the nurse through the door. The hallway beyond was quiet. That was the first thing that threw him. Not hospital quiet. Outpatient quiet. No alarms. No trauma pagers. No shouted orders. No wheels rattling too fast over tile.
Just muted voices behind closed doors, posters about prenatal vitamins, and the soft click of the nurse’s shoes ahead of them.
Robby knew the ER. He knew the route from ambulance bay to trauma room half-asleep. This side of the hospital was different. Not foreign exactly. Just not his. Not in the way the ER was his. And this was her first time here with this office. Her first visit with the new doctor. Her first step into the version of care he had helped point her toward. That realization made him keep his hands in his pockets.
The nurse glanced over her shoulder. “Any changes since you scheduled?”
She answered before Robby could even think about helping.
“No. Everything’s the same.”
Robby kept his hands in his pockets. Better. Because every instinct he had was already leaning too far forward. She didn’t need him to take control. She just needed him here.
The nurse pushed open the exam room door.
“You can go ahead in. The sonographer will be with you in a few minutes.”
She stepped inside first. Robby followed. The room was smaller than he expected. Not cramped. Just close. The exam table sat against one wall, covered in fresh white paper. Cabinets lined the other. A large monitor screen hung opposite the bed, dark and waiting.
Robby’s eyes immediately landed on it and stayed there.
“Well.”
She glanced over. “What?”
He pointed at the screen.
“I see where the hospital budget went.”
Her eyes followed his. The corner of her mouth twitched. “The monitor?”
“That thing is bigger than the TV at the house.”
“That seems like a very specific complaint.”
“It is.”
She shook her head.
Robby nodded toward the screen.
“Meanwhile, there’s a supply cart downstairs that only turns left.”
A small laugh escaped her. It wasn’t much. But he’d take it.
The paper crinkled softly as she sat on the edge of the table. Robby looked away before his brain could do anything stupid like offer a hand she didn’t need.
Instead he dropped into the chair beside the wall. Not too close. Not too far. Close enough that if she wanted him there, he was there.
The room settled around them. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made every thought louder.
His gaze drifted back to the screen. Still dark. Still waiting. Because the second that screen turned on, this stopped being an appointment. It became a baby. Her baby. His baby. Their baby. The thought hit harder than he expected.
He cleared his throat.
“So,” he said, because apparently silence was no longer an option, “what are we hoping for today?”
She looked over. “A healthy baby?”
“Good answer.”
“I feel like there was a right answer and I missed it.”
“There wasn’t.”
Her smile softened. “Then healthy baby.”
Robby nodded once. Healthy baby. Simple enough. The problem was that his chest had already moved several steps beyond simple. And judging by the way his eyes kept drifting back to the dark screen, it wasn’t slowing down anytime soon.
The room settled into silence again. Not awkward. Just waiting. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed. Voices drifted briefly through the wall before fading again. The hospital carried on around them. Appointments. Lab work. Routine. Ordinary.
Robby had spent years watching people walk into rooms like this. Nervous. Excited. Terrified. Sometimes all three at once. Then they came back out carrying grainy black-and-white photos like they had been handed proof of magic. He understood it in theory. He wasn’t sure he understood it in practice.
Beside him, she adjusted the hem of her sweater. A small movement. Restless. His eyes dropped automatically. Seventeen weeks. Still early enough that most people probably wouldn’t notice. Early enough that she could still hide it beneath loose clothes if she wanted. Not that she had been trying lately.
His throat tightened unexpectedly. Because there was a baby in there. An actual baby. Not paperwork. Not a Vegas mistake. Not an abstract future problem for Responsible Future Robby to figure out. A baby. Their baby.
The exam room door opened before his brain could make the situation worse. A woman in navy scrubs stepped inside carrying a tablet. Smiling.
“Good morning.”
Robby immediately sat up straighter. The sonographer looked between them and smiled.
“I’m Melissa. How are we doing today?”
Robby opened his mouth. Then immediately closed it. Because the question wasn’t for him.
Beside him, she let out a breath. “Nervous.”
Melissa laughed softly. “Good. That means you’re normal.”
Robby glanced toward the giant screen. Melissa followed his gaze, amusement softening her face.
“First ultrasound together?” Melissa asked.
Robby cleared his throat. “You can tell?”
“Little bit.”
Beside him, a quiet laugh escaped her too. “We’re being subtle.”
“Extremely,” Melissa agreed.
“Good,” Robby said. “That was the goal.”
The smile stayed on Melissa’s face. “Trust me. You wouldn’t be the first nervous parents I’ve seen.”
Parents. There it was again. Another word that should have felt simple. Another word that somehow didn’t. Beside him, the mother of his child shifted slightly on the table.
Melissa picked up the ultrasound wand. “Alright,” she said gently. “Let’s meet this little person.”
And just like that, every thought in Robby’s head disappeared. The room got very quiet.
Melissa dimmed the lights. The screen glowed softly against the wall. The sonographer rolled the stool closer and pulled the machine beside the table. Routine. Efficient. Movements they probably performed thousands of times.
Robby watched every single one.
“Alright,” Melissa said gently. “This gel is going to be a little cold.”
“I’ve been warned.”
Melissa laughed. “Good.”
The bottle clicked softly against the counter.
A second later, a sharp breath escaped from the table.
Melissa smiled. “Cold?”
“I feel like that question answers itself.”
Melissa picked up the probe and turned toward the monitor.
Robby’s gaze followed automatically. Nothing. Gray static. Shadows. Shapes he couldn’t make sense of. His heart started pounding anyway.
Beside him, the tension coming from the exam table matched his own. The room seemed to shrink. Melissa moved the probe slightly. The image shifted. Then shifted again. Melissa’s smile softened.
“There we go.”
Robby leaned forward before he realized he’d moved. On the screen, something appeared. Not a blob. Not this time. A baby. Small. Curled. Unmistakably a baby.
Robby’s breath caught. Seventeen weeks. He knew what seventeen weeks looked like. He knew the developmental milestones. He knew the anatomy. He knew all the medical facts. None of them prepared him for seeing it.
Seeing them. Tiny arms. Tiny legs. A head. A spine. A whole person where his brain had apparently still been expecting an idea.
“Wow,” came the soft whisper from the table.
The word barely made it out.
Melissa smiled at the screen. “Baby’s moving all over the place today.”
As if on cue, one little arm jerked upward.
Robby stared. Then stared harder. Because the baby had moved. Actually moved. Not in theory. Not in a textbook. Not on someone else’s ultrasound.
Hers.
His.
Their.
The realization hit so hard it left him momentarily speechless. Which, judging by the way she immediately looked over from the table, was unusual enough to be concerning.
“You okay?” came the soft question from the table.
Robby didn’t answer right away. His eyes never left the screen.
“That’s a baby.”
Melissa laughed. “That is generally what we’re hoping for.”
He heard the joke. He even understood the joke. But he couldn’t stop staring.
Because somehow, somewhere between Vegas and this room, a future he’d spent months trying not to imagine had just waved at him from a television screen.
Melissa clicked another measurement, then another. “Growth looks right on track.”
From the table beside him, a breath slipped out like it had been held too long. Robby looked toward her, but her eyes stayed fixed on the screen. So did his.
“Everything looks good so far,” Melissa said gently.
Good. The word should have helped. It did. It also made something in him worse. Because now there was room for the feelings he had been keeping behind locked doors.
Melissa adjusted the angle again. “Have you heard the heartbeat yet?”
Robby’s eyes lifted.
Beside him, the question seemed to freezed the room for a second.
“No,” came the quiet answer.
Melissa smiled. “Want to?”
The answer was obvious.
Still, Robby couldn’t seem to find his voice.
Beside him, she nodded first. “Yeah.”
Melissa adjusted something on the machine. For a second, there was only static. A rushing sound filled the room.
Then—
Fast. Steady. Unmistakable. The heartbeat filled the small room.
Robby froze. Completely. His eyes stayed on the screen, but the sound moved through him before he could do anything to stop it.
That wasn’t a possibility. That wasn’t paperwork. That wasn’t Vegas. That wasn’t a mistake he could organize into something manageable. That was a heartbeat. His child had a heartbeat. The sound kept going. Rapid and strong and real.
And Robby felt something inside him give way. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just enough that the breath left his chest and did not come back right. He blinked once. Then again. It didn’t help. From the table, a small sound slipped out, barely more than a breath. He still couldn’t look at her. If he looked at her, he was done. So he stared at the screen. At the tiny shape. At the flicker of movement. At proof.
Melissa kept talking softly, explaining the rate, explaining that everything sounded good, but Robby barely heard the sonographer.
The heartbeat was too loud.
Not in the room.
In him.
It filled every place he had tried to keep empty. Every careful corner he had used for logic. Insurance. Appointments. Schedules. The guest room. The car seat he had not let himself think about yet. The crib he had refused to picture. The future he had kept folded up small enough to pretend he wasn’t holding it.
There was no folding this.
No making it manageable.
No pretending this was still an abstract problem two adults could calmly solve if they just stayed reasonable enough.
That sound was not reasonable. It was alive. Fast and steady and stubborn.
His child. His child was real.
Not someday. Not later. Not after they figured out what they were, where she would live, whether she would stay, what name would go on the forms, how much of this life he was allowed to want.
Now. Right now.
On a screen in front of him. Inside her. Beside him.
Every thought Robby had been using to hold himself together split clean down the middle.
He blinked once. Then again. It didn’t help. The heartbeat kept going. Rapid. Relentless. Beautiful. And somewhere between one beat and the next, he realized he was crying.
Quietly. Completely. Without any ability to stop it.
He tried to look away. Couldn’t. Tried to breathe through it. Couldn’t do that right either. The tears slipped down before he could stop them, hot and quiet against his face.
Robby lifted one hand, like maybe he could wipe them away quickly enough that no one would notice. Too late. From the table, movement shifted. Then her hand found his. Not careful. Not pitying. Just there. Warm fingers sliding into his like she had decided, in the middle of all that sound, that he didn’t have to stand outside it alone.
Robby looked down at their hands. At first, he didn’t move. Then his fingers closed around hers. The heartbeat kept going. Fast. Steady. Alive.
Melissa said something about the rate being strong, but Robby barely heard it.
Robby looked back at the screen, heart cracked wide open, and thought helplessly that if this was what temporary felt like, he was in serious trouble.
He still didn’t fully trust his voice. On the monitor, the baby shifted again, one tiny leg kicking out before disappearing into gray.
A breathless laugh slipped from the table. “That’s so weird.”
Robby looked down. Her bright eyes stayed fixed on the screen.
“Yeah,” he said roughly. “A little.”
Melissa smiled. “I can print some pictures for you.”
Robby’s chest tightened all over again. Pictures. Something real. Something to take home. He glanced over before he could stop himself. This time, he wasn’t the only one looking.
Neither of them spoke. Then the hand in his squeezed once.
“Yeah,” came the soft answer. “We’d like that.”
We.
Robby looked back at the screen before his face could do anything else stupid.
Melissa printed the pictures before they left.
Robby accepted them like he knew how to hold trauma shears, scalpels, a whole human life in his hands, but not this. Not paper. Not proof.
—
The drive home was quieter than the drive there.
She rested her head against the window, one hand curled loosely over the folded strip of ultrasound photos in her lap. Robby kept both hands on the wheel and did not look at the pictures again.
Not because he didn’t want to. Because he wanted to too much.
Back at the house, she made it halfway through lunch before the exhaustion caught up to her. He noticed the yawn. Then the second one.
By the third, he said, “Go lie down.”
She argued on principle. Badly. Ten minutes later, her bedroom door clicked shut. Her room. Robby stopped with one hand on the counter. No—guest room—Temporary. The correction sat badly in his chest. Then the house went quiet.
Robby stood in the kitchen. The ultrasound pictures sat on the counter. Her mug sat beside the sink. Her shoes were by the door. The house looked exactly the same as it had that morning. It felt completely different.
He looked at the pictures. Then away. Then back again. One small strip of glossy paper, and somehow it made the whole house feel rearranged. He picked one up carefully, thumb resting against the white edge so he wouldn’t smudge the image. Tiny profile. Tiny spine. A shape he could recognize now.
His throat tightened. “Jesus,” he muttered.
The picture did not answer. Probably for the best. He set it down. Then immediately picked it back up. Worse. Definitely worse. The baby was real.
Not that the baby hadn’t been real before. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew how biology worked. He had known since she came to Pittsburgh, since the first ultrasound photo she’d shown him, and every insurance form and practical conversation after.
But there was knowing. And then there was hearing. There was seeing movement on a screen. Hearing a heartbeat fill a room. Bringing home proof in glossy black and white and setting it on his counter beside her half-finished glass of water.
That was different. Worse. His gaze drifted toward the hallway. Nothing moved. She was asleep. As she should be. She needed it. He told himself he was checking. Not lingering. There was a difference. Probably.
The house pressed in around him. Not unpleasantly. That was the problem. It was warm. Lived in. Quiet in a way that had started meaning something else now. Her mug. Her shoes. Her room. No. Guest room.
Robby exhaled sharply and set the ultrasound picture back on the counter like it had personally complicated his life. He grabbed his keys before his brain could start another argument. He needed air before the house started feeling any more like something he could lose.
Twenty minutes later, he was on the bike. The city moved around him in familiar pieces. Wet pavement. Traffic lights. A delivery truck double-parked in a lane it had no business occupying. Construction cones that had apparently become permanent residents of the street.
Usually, riding helped. Usually, the engine gave his brain something simple to hold onto. Throttle. Brake. Lean. Balance. Road. Today, all it did was make the quiet inside his helmet louder. He stopped at a red light and looked straight ahead. A woman crossed the street pushing a stroller with one hand and holding a toddler’s raincoat hood with the other.
Robby stared. The light turned green. Someone honked behind him. He rolled forward.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.
That was the problem, apparently. Three weeks ago, he would not have noticed the stroller. Or maybe he would have noticed it, because he noticed everything, but it wouldn’t have landed. It would have been a detail. A scene. Somebody else’s life happening at the edge of his.
Now everything had hooks. A car seat in the back of a minivan. A man carrying a diaper bag over one shoulder with the stunned expression of someone who had not slept since 2005. A kid in yellow boots stomping deliberately through a puddle while his father pretended not to see it.
Ordinary things. Everywhere. Ridiculous. Unavoidable.
The bike turned onto Duke’s street almost by habit. Robby didn’t remember deciding to go there. Which was probably telling. He pulled into the lot and cut the engine. The silence after the engine died felt too sudden.
For a moment, he stayed there, helmet still on, both hands wrapped around the handlebars, staring at the shop doors. Temporary. The word surfaced again. He hated it more every time. Finally, he climbed off the bike and headed inside.
Duke was bent under the hood of an old truck when Robby walked in, one arm buried elbow-deep in an engine bay, a rag hanging out of his back pocket. The radio played low from somewhere near the workbench.
He didn’t look up right away.
“You’re late,” Duke said. “I was starting to think the bike fixed itself.”
“It didn’t.”
“Good.”
Robby frowned. “Good?”
“If it fixed itself, I’d be out of a job. What took so long?”
“Got distracted.”
“By what?”
“Life.”
Duke stared at him. “That’s usually a bad sign.”
“Hasn’t killed me yet.”
“Give it time.”
Robby snorted.
Duke tossed the rag onto the workbench.
“So,” he said, turning toward the bike. “You gonna tell me what it’s doing, or am I supposed to commune with it spiritually?”
“It’s got a rattle.”
“Beautiful. Very descriptive.”
“Cold start mostly.”
Duke’s expression shifted slightly. Not much. Just enough to show the mechanic in him had taken over.
“Idle?”
“Yeah.”
“Settles once she warms up?”
“Usually.”
Duke crouched beside the bike and tilted his head like he was listening to something that wasn’t there yet.
“Mileage?”
Robby told him.
Duke made a face.
“That your professional opinion?”
“My professional opinion is that you should’ve brought her in sooner.”
“Helpful.”
“I try.”
Duke reached for a flashlight from the rolling cart and angled it toward the engine. “Could be a couple things.”
“Such as?”
“Cam chain tensioner’s high on the list.”
Robby looked down at the bike. “That’s what she thought.”
Duke paused just long enough for Robby to notice.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“She heard it?”
“No.”
Duke blinked. “No?”
“I described it.”
Duke stared at him for another second, then slowly looked back at the bike. “You described a noise.”
“Yes.”
“And she landed on cam chain tensioner?”
“Apparently.”
Duke was quiet and crouched again, flashlight sweeping along the bike. “She ride?”
“Not really. Her dad does.”
“Worked on his own bikes?”
“Yeah, taught her how to fix them and everything.”
Duke nodded slowly. “Sounds like it.”
Robby watched him work a little longer.
The shop smelled like oil, metal, rubber, and old coffee. Familiar. Easier than the house had been. Easier than the hospital room. Easier than the strip of ultrasound pictures still sitting on his kitchen counter.
Duke stood and stretched his back.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s right.”
Robby looked away too fast.
Duke saw it. “Well.”
Robby immediately frowned. “What?”
“Now I’m curious.”
“About what?”
Duke looked at him like the answer should have been obvious. “The woman you’ve got hiding in your house.”
“She’s not hiding.”
“Living in your house.”
“Temporarily.”
Duke’s eyebrows lifted. “Sure.”
Robby sighed. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“Probably.” Duke grinned. “I’m just saying, most people describe a motorcycle noise with words like weird.”
“Fair.”
“They don’t usually jump straight to possible causes.”
“Like I said, her dad taught her.”
“Apparently he knew what he was doing.”
Robby shrugged, but it came out too small to mean much. “Apparently.”
Duke looked at him for half a second longer, then seemed to decide something. He reached for a wrench and tossed it toward him.
Robby caught it automatically.
“You helping or standing there looking tragic?”
“I don’t look tragic.”
“You look like a man who lost a fight with his own face.” Duke pointed toward the side panel. “Take that off.”
Robby crouched beside the bike without arguing. That was easier. Tools were easier. Metal was easier. Engines made sense. A rattle meant something was loose, worn, tired, misaligned. There was always a reason. Always a source. Always something to tighten, replace, adjust, or take apart until the problem finally admitted what it was. People were worse.
He loosened the first bolt. Duke worked on the other side of the bike, quiet now. Not ignoring him. Just waiting. That was the thing about Duke. He acted like a pain in the ass, and usually was, but he knew when to shut up better than most people Robby knew.
The ratchet clicked between them. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then Duke said, not looking up, “Ultrasound today?”
Robby’s hand stopped. Only for a second. Then he kept working.
“Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
Duke nodded once. “Good.”
Robby loosened another bolt. The word sat there. Good. Simple. Too simple.
He stared down at the bike. “We heard the heartbeat.”
Duke didn’t look up right away. Just handed him another tool.
“That’s a hell of a thing,” he said.
Robby swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than he wanted. “It is.”
Duke kept the flashlight steady.
Robby stared at the bike. “I’ve heard thousands of heartbeats.”
Duke glanced over.
Robby kept his eyes on the engine. “Probably tens of thousands at this point.” His fingers tightened around the wrench. “Trauma bays. Exam rooms. ICU monitors. Ultrasounds.” He shrugged. “It’s just physiology.”
Duke’s mouth twitched. “Just physiology.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Robby looked down. “Heart’s supposed to be beating at seventeen weeks.”
“That’s generally the goal.”
“Everything looked normal.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
Duke adjusted the flashlight.
“And that’s not what’s bothering you.”
Robby stared at the bike.
“No.”
Duke nodded like he’d expected that answer.
“Didn’t think so.”
Normal didn’t settle. Because normal wasn’t the problem. That’s what he’d been trying to explain to himself all day. Nothing was wrong. Nothing. Healthy pregnancy. Healthy baby. Appropriate development. Appropriate heart rate. Every box checked. Every milestone exactly where it was supposed to be. And somehow that had made it worse.
Robby stared at the bike for a long moment. “I spent weeks thinking about this like it was a problem to solve.”
Duke stayed quiet.
“Insurance. Housing. Appointments. Logistics.” Another turn of the wrench. “Action items.”
“You like action items.”
Robby exhaled. “Then today happened.”
The words hung there.
“And?”
Robby laughed once. Short. Disbelieving.
“And apparently that’s not an action item.”
Duke’s eyebrows lifted. “Hearing your kid’s heartbeat isn’t a problem you can solve.”
Robby’s jaw tightened. “No.”
Because that was the thing. He couldn’t organize it. Couldn’t schedule it. Couldn’t chart it. Couldn’t put it in a folder and come back to it later. It had simply happened. One second there was a monitor. The next there was a person. And Robby had not been prepared for the difference.
Duke didn’t answer right away. He just shifted the flashlight slightly and let Robby sit with it. That was worse, somehow.
The shop sounds filled in around them. The low radio. A socket rolling somewhere on the workbench. Traffic hissing past outside on wet pavement.
Robby turned the wrench again. Too tight. He stopped before he stripped the bolt.
Duke noticed.
“Careful,” Duke said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Robby shot him a look.
Duke only lifted his brows and held the flashlight steady.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
Then Robby looked back at the engine and said, quieter, “I thought the baby was what scared me.”
Duke stayed still. “Isn’t it?”
Robby’s jaw shifted once. “No,” he said. “Not anymore.”
The admission sat between them, small and ugly and too honest for the middle of a mechanic’s shop.
Duke waited. Robby hated that too. He loosened another bolt. Set it carefully on the floor beside him.
“I can handle being a father,” he said, like he was trying the words out for size. “I mean, I’ll screw things up. Everybody does. But I can show up. I can learn. I can be there.”
Duke nodded once. “Yeah.”
Robby stared down at the bike. The next part got caught somewhere behind his ribs. He almost swallowed it. Almost.
“She’s probably going back to Nevada.”
Duke’s hand stilled around the flashlight. Not much. Just enough.
“There it is,” he said quietly.
Robby’s mouth tightened. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said ‘there it is.’ That’s something.”
“Barely.”
Robby exhaled through his nose and looked toward the open garage door. “She has a life there.”
“Does she?”
“I don’t know.” The answer came too fast. Too sharp. He forced his voice flatter. “Friends. Work. History. A place that isn’t here.”
Duke was quiet.
Robby kept going, because apparently the damage had already started.
“This was never supposed to be permanent. The house. The room. Any of it.” He glanced down at the wrench in his hand. “She needed somewhere safe. I had somewhere safe. That’s all it was.”
“Was?”
Robby closed his eyes for half a second. Damn it. Duke didn’t even sound smug. That made it worse.
Robby opened his eyes and looked back at the bike. “I don’t know what it is now.”
Duke nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.” Duke shifted the flashlight again. “Sounds like you’re waiting for her to decide what your life looks like.”
Robby’s head snapped up. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“No?”
“No.”
Duke gave him a look.
Robby hated the look.
“I’m trying not to decide it for her,” he said.
Robby looked back at the bike. “She didn’t ask for this. Any of it. Vegas happened. The baby happened. Then Pittsburgh happened because it was the practical choice.”
“Practical,” Duke repeated.
“Yes.”
“You hate that word right now.”
Robby tightened his grip on the wrench.
Duke leaned back against the workbench. “You want her to stay.”
Robby didn’t answer. The silence did it for him.
Duke nodded once, like that was all the confirmation he needed.
Robby stared at the engine. “I want the baby to have both of us.”
“Sure.”
His jaw flexed. “That’s a good reason.”
“It is.”
“And the house has room.”
“Also true.”
“And it would make appointments easier. Schedules. Work. Childcare.”
Duke’s mouth twitched faintly. “Lot of action items.”
Robby looked at him.
Duke lifted both hands. “Just saying.”
Robby exhaled hard and looked away. Because Duke was right. Those were reasons. Real ones. Good ones. They just weren’t the whole truth. The whole truth was quieter. More selfish. More dangerous.
The whole truth was that Robby had come home too many times to her dinner in the microwave. Her blanket on the couch. Her voice from the kitchen asking if he wanted coffee. Her shoes by the door. And now he knew what the house sounded like with her in it. Which meant he knew exactly what it would sound like without her.
“I don’t know how to ask,” he said finally.
Duke’s expression softened, but only barely. He wasn’t cruel enough to joke there.
“Then don’t ask yet.”
Robby frowned. “That your advice?”
“That’s my advice.”
“That’s terrible advice.”
“No,” Duke said. “Terrible advice would be telling a pregnant woman who just moved her whole life across the country that you’ve decided she should stay because your house feels less depressing with her in it.”
Robby winced.
“Yeah,” Duke said. “See? Bad pitch.”
“Glad you’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying you finally having a problem you can’t organize into a spreadsheet.”
“I don’t use spreadsheets.”
“You know what I mean.”
Robby rolled his eyes.
Duke leaned back against the workbench.
“Besides, you’re looking at this wrong.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
Duke shrugged. “You’re acting like she’s already got one foot out the door.”
“She does.”
“Does she?”
“Nevada’s home.”
“Nevada’s where she used to live.”
Robby frowned.
Duke pointed a wrench at him. “Not the same thing.”
“That’s a stretch.”
“Is it?”
Duke walked back toward the bike. “Let me ask you something.”
Robby immediately regretted that sentence. “No.”
“She’s been in Pittsburgh how long now?”
Robby told him.
“And what’s she doing all day?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said.”
Robby shrugged. “Reading. Cleaning. Watching TV. Grocery shopping.”
“That’s it?”
“Mostly.”
Duke made a face. “I’d lose my mind.”
“She’s pregnant, not imprisoned.”
“Same difference after enough weeks.”
Robby snorted despite himself.
Duke nodded. “See?”
“See what?”
“You’re talking about Nevada like she’s sitting around homesick all day.”
“Maybe she is.”
“Maybe.”
Duke set a socket on the workbench. “Or maybe she’s bored.”
Robby looked at him. “What?”
“She’s a nurse, right?”
“Was. Then a bartender.”
“Still has the brain.”
“Fair.”
Duke pointed toward the shop. “Girl diagnoses a motorcycle from your description and you’re telling me she’s happy sitting around a house waiting for the next appointment?”
Robby opened his mouth. Closed it.
Duke's mouth twitched. “Thought so.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is she sounds like she’s got a brain that doesn’t do well sitting still.” Duke folded his arms. “Half the reason this place still exists is because people smarter than me occasionally stop me from doing something stupid.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“What I’m saying,” Duke continued, ignoring him completely, “is maybe she needs something that’s hers.”
Robby’s eyebrows pulled together.
Duke gestured around the garage. “I’m not talking about a job.”
“Then what?”
“Somewhere to go. Something to do. A reason to leave your house that isn’t an appointment.”
Robby didn’t answer.
Duke shrugged. “I hate answering phones.”
Despite himself, Robby laughed. “You do.”
“I hate ordering parts.”
“You definitely do.”
“I hate customers describing noises.”
“Nobody likes that.”
Duke pointed at him. “Exactly. And apparently she’s better at it than half the people who walk in here.”
“So your solution is to put a pregnant woman in a garage?”
“My solution is giving a smart woman somewhere she can be useful without feeling trapped.”
Robby looked away.
Duke’s voice softened just a little. “There’s a difference.”
And the worst part was, Robby could actually picture it.
Her sitting behind the counter. Arguing with Duke. Rolling her eyes at customers. Calling him an idiot when he ignored obvious advice. Laughing. Comfortable. Like she belonged there. The image settled somewhere dangerous in his chest.
Duke caught the look on his face. “See?”
“Don’t.”
Duke grinned. “Didn’t even have to say anything.”
Robby looked down at the wrench in his hand. “You’re making it sound simple.”
“It’s simple.”
“It’s not.”
“No,” Duke agreed. “But it’s less complicated than whatever you’re doing in your head.”
Robby huffed a humorless laugh.
Duke picked up the flashlight again and angled it toward the engine. “You don’t have to ask her to stay forever tomorrow.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Robby shot him a look.
Duke ignored it. “You know, this isn’t really about her.”
“Here we go.”
“No, hear me out.”
Robby immediately regretted staying.
Duke pointed between them. “You need other people involved.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means right now her entire Pittsburgh social circle is you.”
Robby stopped.
Duke shrugged. “That’s a lot of pressure for two people who are still figuring out what the hell this is.”
“That’s annoyingly reasonable.”
“I know.”
“I hate it.”
“Also know that.”
Duke pointed toward the office. “Bring her by sometime.”
“Terrible plan.”
“Best I’ve got.”
Robby looked toward the open garage door. The idea sat there. Small. Practical. Dangerous. Not asking her to stay. Not asking her to choose Pittsburgh. Just giving her one more place where she could breathe. One more person who might know her as something other than pregnant, displaced, temporarily living in his house. One more root. The word made his chest tighten.
Something in Duke’s face softened.
“You want her to stay?” he asked.
Robby didn’t answer.
Duke nodded once, like the silence had done the work for him.
“Then don’t build a cage,” he said. “Build a place she might actually want to come back to.”
Robby looked at him then.
Duke shrugged and turned back to the bike. “And maybe start with the shop. Low stakes. Worst case, she hates me.”
“She probably will.”
“Perfect. Common ground.” Duke snorted and ducked back toward the bike.
After that, they worked in silence. Real silence this time. Not empty. Just easier.
Robby loosened bolts. Duke muttered insults at the engine. Somewhere outside, tires hissed over wet pavement. The radio kept playing low, some old rock song neither of them commented on.
The conversation didn’t fix anything. That was the annoying part. The baby was still real. The house still felt different. Nevada still sat somewhere in the back of Robby’s mind like a door he couldn’t lock. But the panic had shifted shape. Not gone. Just smaller. Something he could hold without bleeding all over it.
Duke tapped the side of the bike with the wrench. “Yeah. I’m gonna need to get in there properly.”
“Expensive?”
“Emotionally or financially?”
“Duke.”
“Probably both.”
Robby sighed.
Duke grinned. “Tell the motorcycle whisperer she may have been right.”
Robby looked down despite himself, mouth twitching. “I’ll mention it.”
By the time Robby left the shop, the sky had started clearing. The streets were still damp, but the clouds had thinned enough for late afternoon light to catch in the puddles along the curb. He pulled his helmet on and stood beside the bike for a second longer than necessary.
The shop. Low stakes. A place that wasn’t his house. A person who wasn’t him. One small root. Robby swung onto the bike and started the engine. This time, when the rattle caught beneath the idle, he heard her voice in his head before Duke’s.
Cold start?
Idle?
When you throttle?
Under load?
His mouth twitched inside the helmet.
“Motorcycle whisperer,” he muttered.
Then he pulled out of the lot and headed home.
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Indiscretions - Chapter 3
Andrew "Pope" Cody x fem!reader
For three years, you were the only thing keeping Pope from losing his mind in Folsom. A bright-eyed, too-good-for-this-world social worker who still believed even a broken system could sometimes manage to do some good. For three years, you tried not to want Andrew, your client, a man with emotional scars that cut too deep for you to ever heal and a violent temper that, for some reason, never turned on you. Now that no guards and no bars remain between you, Pope cannot understand why you insist you can never see him again.
Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Chapter 3 | Ch. 4
Words: 8,4 k
Content: Older Man/Younger Woman, Prison!Social!Worker!Reader, Protective Pope, Forbidden Love, Mututal Pining, Eventual Smut, Breaking and Entering - or 'Pope trying to flirt', Inappropriate Behaviour - Pope is desperate for you and won't take no as an answer, reader's father is a serial killer and a psychopath
No use of y/n!
Read on Ao3 or below the cut:
You peeled your eyes open under great effort, sleep clinging to your eyelids and body like putty, attempting to drag you back down anytime you made a sliver of progress.
You hadn’t set an alarm.
It was Saturday morning, and you really needed any extra minute of sleep you could get after the week you had. Not that it was worse than usual; you just had to deal with the knowledge your crazy father was on the run again, probably killing innocent people right this moment. You couldn’t help but feel guilty for not doing anything against it, even though the rational side of your brain knew there was nothing for you to do.
His actions were not your responsibility.
He wasn’t even really your dad. Fucking your mom in the kitchen of some diner didn't make him your dad.
You were thirteen when you wanted to know where you came from, and nothing in the world could have ever prepared you for what you found… nor the consequences a single letter sent to an inmate three states away who had your eyes and your smile would have…
You jolted upright at the sight of the bouquet of flowers lying on the pillow next to you.
You definitely didn’t put that there!
“Dad?!” You called out, voice high with hysteria despite knowing your father would never hurt you and also never leave flowers for you.
No reply came.
You reached under your pillow and pulled out the firearm you kept there.
You worked with violent offenders, and not everyone was grateful for your help, and a particularly determined one would have little trouble looking up your license and therefore finding your address.
It hadn’t been an issue yet, but you’d rather have the gun and not need it, than need it and not have it.
You swung your legs out of bed and padded across the bedroom just to hesitate when passing your dresser. The books piling high on it had been rearranged. Some tension eased off your shoulders. What intruder would rearrange your books?
In the kitchen you found your fridge magnets sorted by colour, then size. Your shoes by the door stood in a new order as well - trainers, boots, pumps, high heels.
You only lowered your gun once you had checked the entire apartment and were sure nobody was hiding, lying in wait for you to lower your guard.
“What the fuck?” You picked up your dish sponge from the windowsill in the kitchen, frowning. You had not left it there. You had a little holder for it in the corner of your sink.
“Andrew.” You hissed under your breath and tossed the sponge into the sink.
You slipped into the first sundress your fingers touched when you reached into your wardrobe, and were out of the house quicker than ever before in your life.
The leather of the steering wheel scrunched under your tight grip as you rehearsed what you'd say to the man and navigated your piece of shit car through the streets of Oceanside. You didn’t know where Andrew was staying, but you knew where the Codys lived, and you were too furious to think further than that.
Did you mean that little to him?
Not that you should mean anything to him! Not that you were mad you didn’t- you-
You were confused.
You were so utterly and completely confused and overwhelmed and sleep-deprived, and you just wanted someone to tell you what to do, how to deal with this situation and Andrew’s unwillingness to accept the boundaries you fought so hard for.
You didn’t want to call the cops on him. Ever. You didn’t want him rotting in Folsom. You got him out of there. But what else were you supposed to do at this point if the man was even breaking into your apartment?
Was it not bad enough that he'd been following you last week? Oh, he thought he was being sly, but you saw him.
Andrew couldn’t fool you!
You stopped at the gate and swallowed your fury to introduce yourself in an even tone when the voice crackling through the intercom at the gate demanded to know what you wanted.
“I am looking for Andrew. Is he here?”
“What do you want from him?”
You emitted a bitter laugh you couldn’t stop in its tracks fast enough. “Oh, he knows.”
Miraculously, Smurf - and you assumed it was Smurf - let you in.
It was Smurf.
Short blond hair, crossed arms, pursed lips, radiating all the hatred of a woman who did not allow anything ever to be important to her son but her. She gave you a fake smile that reminded you of your own mother, the one that did not reach her eyes and looked more like a grimace - the one she spotted in front of teachers and acquaintances and the social worker so nobody realised just how little she actually cared about you - and invited you inside.
“Where do you know my Andrew from?” She purred sweetly as she led you into the kitchen. Client confidentiality forbade you from disclosing even just that you were his social worker without his explicit permission, not that you would share any more than you absolutely had to with a woman like Smurf.
She'd find a way to use any shred of information against the people they concerned.
You returned the false, sweet smile.
“Well, that’s between him and me, isn’t it? Where is he?”
Oh, Smurf did not like how standoffish you were. Whatever she planned to say was cut off by one of Andrew’s brothers - tall, tattooed, long dark hair curling against his shoulders, the tips just beginning to dry - pointing towards the large window facade looking out onto the pool and saying around a mouthful of food over there. Or at least you thought that’s what he said. Your training kept you from grimacing in disgust, but it was a close thing.
How could Andrew be related to that hunk of clearly coked-up man?
You didn’t miss the haphazardly treated shoulder wound. Not that it surprised you. You'd be a fool to assume Andrew was now walking the straight and narrow - or that his family ever would.
The other two brothers merely stared on, clearly stunned to have a woman asking for Andrew standing in their kitchen.
“Thank you.” You chirped and stepped outside, making sure to close the sliding door behind yourself.
Your fingers were trembling, adrenaline surging in your blood even just after that short interaction with Smurf. You were no fool. You’d worked with enough violent criminals to know the type. The ones who only acted in moments of great emotional pressure, those who took pleasure in it, those who were willing to do whatever they believed necessary. Smurf was no doubt a woman who’d take extreme measures to not lose the control she held on so tightly.
But you weren’t here for her.
Andrew stood with his back to you. His very bare, very muscular, very sweaty back.
“You got something you want to say to me?” You called over to him as you made your way past the pool. Even that relatively small body of water gave you the heebie-jeebies. You made sure to stand at a distance from it, something Andrew noticed the second he swirled around at the sound of your voice.
And you must have been a truly horrible person in a past life to deserve having this massive distraction shoved into your face when you were already struggling to hold onto your principles.
The pair of snug jeans Andrew wore sat low on his hips. His bare, toned chest was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and a copious peppering of freckles that your eyes started to track immediately. A pair of dark sunglasses concealed his eyes, though a bit of tinted glass would never be enough to stop his intense stare.
It made a shiver rush down your back.
This was his home, you realised belatedly.
This was the garden he grew up in. This was his space, and standing in it, across from him, made the entire confrontation feel that much more intimate than any of your conversations in Folsom ever had. More intimate even than sitting in the aquarium together, a place that came closest to what you might consider a safe space for yourself.
You crossed your arms to shield yourself against the wave of uncertainty crashing into you, washing away some of the rage that had led your rather rushed decision-making process so far.
Andrew stared, and even with the sunglasses, you could feel his gaze roam over your body, your exposed legs and arms and chest he’d never seen.
You were always dressed so modestly at Folsom.
He lowered the sledgehammer in his hands to the ground slowly, almost as if caught in a trance. You watched him curl in on himself, head hanging low, when it began to vanish.
“No.”
“No?” You raised a brow and took a step forward. ”I didn’t wake up to a bouquet of flowers on the pillow next to me then? I didn’t open my eyes this morning just to immediately fear for my safety, to assume a former inmate found my address and broke into my place? Not all of my clients are happy with me, Andrew. Some of them wish me real and serious harm, Andrew.”
His name came out sharper the second time, and he flinched ever so slightly. It was obvious he had not considered that a possibility.
And he didn’t.
You were fantastic. You were so warm and kind and invested in helping him - how could someone want to hurt you? But he’d be lying if he claimed a part of him had not always hoped that you were only that invested with him. That you only cared so much about him. That he was different from your other hundred clients.
“The books and the magnets and the shoes gave it away, though. The fucking dish sponge on the windowsill threw me off for a moment. That made no conceivable sense to me, but I know compulsions don't always do.”
“The sun cleans it better than all that chemical shit.”
You blinked at Andrew. "I have UV filtering foil on my windows. I don't fancy skin cancer."
You wanted to kick yourself for getting snappish with him so soon. He was like a fucking termite, eating away at the professionalism and control you spent years perfecting, until the foundation was riddled with so many holes, the entire thing collapsed.
Andrew had the audacity to smirk. As if he’d achieved something he’d set out to do a long time ago.
You wanted to throw something at him.
Preferably a shirt so his pecs would stop staring at you.
Why did he have to be handsome? Were you not punished enough already with the cards the universe dealt you?
You sighed and dug your fingers into your temples to fight the headache spreading along the inside of your skull.
“I don’t know what to say anymore, Andrew. I- you clearly don’t care about the boundaries I try to set. You clearly don’t care how much trouble I could get into. But breaking into my place? Your former social worker’s place? Your PO would have your ass back in prison so fucking fast if he found out about this! What were you thinking?!”
You hadn’t meant to raise your voice. Andrew obviously had not expected you to raise your voice. He stared at you, lips parted slightly, stunned.
You’d never raised your voice at him or anyone as far as he knew. He was truly baffled to find out you were capable of it.
He liked it.
Perhaps a little too much.
“Did you like the flowers?”
“Jesus!” You hissed between clenched teeth. “It’s like you don’t listen to a single word I say.”
“I do.” He rasped. “To everything. Always.” He cast an apologetic smile at you. “You just happen to be talking bullshit.”
You opened your mouth, but this time you were too stunned to speak.
You took a deep breath and counted to ten in a futile attempt to ground yourself. The pool was making you nervous, an added hurdle to this conversation you really didn’t need on top of a half-naked, sweaty Andrew and his mother’s hateful glare burning into the back of your neck.
You shook your head. You couldn’t believe this. You couldn't believe him.
“Do you want to go back?” You asked quietly. “Do you want me to lose my license and everything I built for myself? Is this some game to you? Does it amuse you to drive me crazy? I-” You swallowed the feeling of dry sand spreading through your mouth. “That’s something I expect from other inmates. Not you. Never you. I- I am so disappointed, Andrew.”
That knocked the wind out of his sails and the self-satisfied smirk off his lips.
“I am used to clients ignoring the help I offer, or going back on everything we worked on as soon as they are out, or trying to get a rise out of me, but… fuck… I thought it would be different with you. This is not- I didn’t put my neck on the line for you, threatening the warden with a fucking lawsuit to get you out, just for you to piss this chance away like it means nothing! Yeah, disappointed doesn’t even begin to fucking cut it.”
“You-” Andrew staggered on the spot. He licked his lips, frowning behind his sunglasses. “Threatened the warden? For me?” His voice broke.
“I’ve been doing my best to protect you in there for years, Andrew.” You sighed. “I am still trying to protect you! Protect you from yourself while you are hellbent on forcing this.” You gestured from him to yourself and back.
“Protect me…” Andrew muttered, repeating the words to himself as if only by hearing them off his own tongue could he start to make sense of him.
Was the thought so outlandish to him?
The possibility that someone would want to do what he has been doing for his whole family all his life so remote he simply couldn’t believe it?
You sighed again, and this time the audible exhale of air seemed to grow thorns that cut right through you on its way out. “I will not be the reason that all your therapeutic progress is set back to zero, Andrew. Please stop pushing me into a corner on this thing. Do you think I am enjoying this? That I get a kick out of rejecting you? What do you think this does to me? How it feels for me? To have my no continuously ignored by someone I care for deeply?”
“You care for me?”
You wanted to scream.
You - honest to god - wanted to scream. Frustration and want and heartache were pushing against your composure and self-control, as though they were trying to break down a door, a door you could never allow to break.
Your phone rang.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, you peeled your eyes away from Andrew to fish it out of your pocket and glance at the called ID. Your breath hitched.
“I have to take this.” You muttered, already turning away from him, already pressing accept call. “Mum? Mum! H-how are you? Is everything okay? I’ve been trying to reach you for a week!”
You were distinctly aware of Andrew hovering behind you, eyes boring into the back of your head. Your mother was very terse on the phone, much like she was in person. At least around you. It was fascinating how a single phone call could make you feel like that ignored, neglected, disregarded little girl again, you thought you had left in your past many years ago…
“Police protection? But- he’s never threatened you before? Did he try- yeah… okay… no- no. I get it. Stay safe.”
She hung up without saying goodbye.
You stared at your phone.
“How are you? How are you taking this? Are you alright? Are you safe? I love you. That’s what a mother would have to say in this situation, you’d think.” You muttered to yourself, suddenly furious with yourself for even trying to reach out to her in the first place. You knew not to expect any motherly affection from her, especially not with your father on the run again.
You knew it was a huge burden on her, never knowing when he’d make a run for it again, but knowing - and being proven right time and again - that the prisons he was sent to couldn’t hold him. It was laughable, really, how he kept managing to find weak spots and exploited them so skillfully.
But it sure would have been nice to have someone concerned for you, someone who cared whether you were safe or not, or dealing with this whole thing.
You slumped down on a deck chair and buried your head in your hands, still holding your phone.
Andrew cleared his throat awkwardly. The sound of it pulled you from the whirlwind of emotions threatening to drown you. He did not miss the tears gleaming in your eyes.
“What did you tell them? Who you were?” He nodded towards the house.
“That it wasn’t their damn business. You have complete confidentiality, aside from things I have to report. I cannot legally tell anyone that I am or was your social worker.” You sounded tired. Just so tired. None of your rage remained.
Andrew hated it.
“So I can tell them whatever I want?”
“Sure.” You muttered, already over the detour this conversation took and over the crooked grin on his lips. Over him.
“I could tell them you’re a hooker?”
You squinted your eyes at him. “Sure. If you fancy picking your teeth up off the ground.”
He laughed, low and suppressed in that way everything about him was suppressed to some degree, and a shiver rushed down your back.
You shoved your phone back into your pocket and wiped at your eyes in what you thought was a nonchalant, discreet motion, but Andrew noticed your fingers coming back wet.
Of course he did.
“Let me drive you home.”
“No.” You said without even thinking. “I drove here.”
“I’ll bring you your car later.”
“Andrew.” You groaned. You gave a jump when you looked up, just to find him standing directly in front of you.
“Why?”
You raised a brow at him.
He lowered himself to his knees in front of you. Your insides flipflopped at the sight.
“Why don’t you let me do anything for you?”
“That’s not the way this works.”
“When you were my social worker. You aren’t anymore.”
You were tired of trying to make him understand that this simply didn’t work that way. You suspected he understood it well enough, he simply didn’t care, and you didn’t know which scenario was more exhausting anyway.
“You aren’t my social worker anymore.” Andrew repeated. He reached out to brush a strand of your hair behind your ear, the fabric of his work glove scraping softly over your cheek, lingering, making you shiver. “So you don’t have to worry about me anymore either. Or try to protect me. But you still do anyway, so you can’t tell me that I don’t get to care about you.” He liked his lips, his eyes flicking nervously across your face as if a part of him could not quite fathom that you were here, in his yard, with no guards around to stop him from touching you.
“And you said nobody ever gets to tell me how to feel. You can’t tell me I can’t have feelings for you.”
“I’m not. I’m saying we can’t act on them.”
“I’ve never been good at following rules.”
You chuckled, a sound so soft it was barely more than a forceful exhale of air, but it made Andrew grin nonetheless.
“We have that in common.”
“Yeah? You holdin’ out on me, sweetheart?”
His fingers slipped down your cheek to cradle your chin. He leaned forward.
You didn’t stop him.
“A very smart woman once told me we all need someone to look out for us sometimes…”
His breath brushed against your lips.
You still didn’t stop him.
“Let me look out for you.” He whispered, his voice so quiet you almost didn’t hear him. His words oozed suppressed yearning that cut right through you and made your stomach clench painfully, the need for him becoming so overwhelming it felt as though it had grown teeth.
You didn’t stop him when he pressed his lips to yours.
You cradled his neck in your hands, fingers sliding against sweaty, bare skin and sinking into short, choppy hair. His tongue traced across the seam of your lips, and you parted them for him, biting back a pathetic little mewling moan when his taste filled your mouth, his tongue sliding against yours in a wet, hot drag.
Andrew’s hands found your hips, fingers digging into your flesh through the thin fabric of your dress.
You had to bend down to him since he was still kneeling in front of you. Your hair fell around him, concealing his peripheral view, encasing him in the scent of your shampoo - shampoo he took an indulgent and shameful sniff of last night when he was in your apartment and could not resist the urge to find out more about you.
“Put on a fucking shirt.” You muttered, breaking the kiss that was so soft it felt dangerous, and looked away from him, ignoring the muffled cheers coming from the kitchen. Andrew dropped his forehead against your chest. His lips brushed your bare skin just above the neckline of your dress, chasing a rush of goosebumps down your arms.
“I don’t need my elderly neighbour keeling over because of you.”
His shoulders rose and fell in silent laughter. His hands moved up your body, grasping at your waist and pushing up your dress in the process. He bent down to press a kiss to your exposed thigh.
“Yes, ma’am.” Andrew muttered against your skin. He took his time peeling away from you. You had to fight the urge to not let go of him.
Andrew had uncovered a gaping, festering wound that cut throughout your entire existence, and it left you feeling raw and vulnerable, a feeling that only worsened when he did get up, forcing you to watch him move away.
You had no one.
An absent, cold mother. A psychotic father on a murder spree. An ex-biker ‘friend’ whose overprotectiveness stemmed more from a misplaced sense of duty and obligation because he helped you reach your father’s prison when you were fourteen rather than genuine affection for you, you were sure of it.
You had no other relatives.
No real friends.
No lasting relationships of any kind.
You never stayed in one place long enough to grow roots.
Not even a pet.
Your father was possessive and jealous, and after your best friend ended up in the hospital the time he broke out when you were in college, you’d started to subconsciously distance yourself from everyone you’d ever been a little close with. You walled yourself off, unwilling to ever be the reason someone got hurt again.
You had your job to keep you busy and exhaust you to the point you didn’t have to lie awake at night at the mercy of your own thoughts.
But Andrew… Andrew could take care of himself.
Though… you had seen what your father was capable of. He enjoyed killing people who were bigger and stronger than him.
Andrew pulled a tight, black shirt over his head as he made his way back to you, and honestly, between the shirt clinging to him like a second skin and the jeans leaving little to the imagination, he might as well not have bothered.
He fixed his sunglasses and turned his head at you every so slightly, discomfort and nerves coming off him in suffocating waves. You sighed and got to your feet. You didn’t argue when he took your hand or when he tugged you past the pool and towards a shiny, brand-new black truck.
You didn’t even roll your eyes when he opened the passenger side door for you.
You stared out of the window and drifted off into your mind as the city rushed by you.
Andrew knew where you lived. Neither of you were pretending he didn’t. He parked the car in front of the apartment complex and took your keys from you the moment he helped you step out of his truck. He took your hand and led you up the stairs and towards your door.
“Someone once told me talking helps.” He whispered after a sheer endless moment of silence in which you just sat next to each other on your sofa.
You snorted. “Was she right?”
Andrew shrugged. “Wasn’t worse than being silent.”
“You never really told me much.”
“I told you more than I told anyone before.” Andrew whispered. “And not because you were my social worker. I wanted to talk to you.”
You sighed and dropped your head into your hands. “My father escaped from prison a week ago.” Your voice came out muffled against your palms. “I don’t know why it’s messing with my head so bad this time. He’s broken out before.”
“Southern-accent guy.”
“Yeah.” You huffed and slumped back into your sofa, staring up blankly at the water-stained ceiling. “I’d actually been awake all night talking to the Marshals when you showed up in the parking lot. It- I guess it brought up a lot of shit I never really dealt with.”
“Am I making it worse?” The question sounded so… small. You didn’t like the pained expression slipping over Andrew’s face. Not at all.
You shook your head. “I’m making it worse.” You murmured. “The fact I fucked all this up so badly.”
“You didn’t fuck it up.”
“Andrew, this is wrong.”
“Why?” Rage welled up in his hazel eyes. “Because- because of prison? I swear if you say transference one more time I'm gonna punch something! I looked it up, you know? In the library, and it’s not- it’s not what I’m feeling! I know that because I’ve never felt this way for anyone.” Andrew slipped off the sofa to kneel in front of you and clutched your hand with his own. He stared up at you with wet puppy eyes, all but pleading with you to believe him.
“It’s still wrong.”
“Because I talked to you?” His voice dipped into a low whine. "Because I opened up to you? Is that the price I pay? Aren’t- aren’t people supposed to talk about that shit with the people they love? I know you won’t use what you know against me.”
You cupped his cheek with your hand softly, letting your thumb brush over sun-kissed, freckled skin. “I don’t want to hurt you. If this turns bad, how will you ever trust a social worker again?”
“And when your profession tears the only woman I’ve ever loved from me, that won’t happen?!” He emitted a bitter laugh. “I’m never talking to a social worker again, sweetheart. I never spoke to a social worker in the first place. I talked to you!”
“You don’t even know me, Andrew.” You sounded so tired, and Andrew didn’t know what to do to change it, just that every molecule of his being burnt to.
“Then let me know you! I will never hurt you.”
“I know.” You brushed your thumb over his cheekbone. You ran your hand along his cheek, watching your fingertips disappear in his choppy, auburn hair. “My father is dangerous.”
“I’m dangerous.” Andrew growled.
“Not like that. Not like him. Andrew, my father is- he is a serial killer. He’s got thirty victims he’s admitted to, but the police suspect there are a lot more. From what he told me, I know there are.”
He pursed his lips, pressing them into a thin line. Rage blazed in his hazel eyes, only soothed by your fingers running through his hair. He hated seeing you so small. Hated seeing the burden of your father’s sins crushing down on your shoulders.
“He’s… sick. His father has done horrible things to him, and it messed him up good. Sometimes he’s stable. He’ll live an almost normal life for a few months, but then something always happens that knocks him right back. He just… snaps. He’s possessive and obsessed, and it’s all my fault.”
“Why? What- did you do?”
“I… I’ve always been very independent, you know? Had to be. I could cook dinner by the time I was four. I took myself to school when I was six. I got groceries when I was eight. By the time I was twelve, I was secretly selling bracelets and snacks at school to earn some money. I made sandwiches and sold them for way too much money to the rich assholes getting high on the beach. Mom sometimes forgot to give me lunch money or get food for me too.”
“Forgot?” A deep crease formed between Andrew’s brows as if he could fathom how a mother could forget to feed her child. Even Smurf made sure they never went hungry.
You shrugged. “When I was thirteen, I wanted to know more about my father. My mom she… she barely even saw me, you know? It was like it made no difference whether I was there or not, and I was just so- I thought when I’d just find my father, he’d take me away, and I’d finally be like all the other kids at school. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“I found out about mom’s postpartum psychosis, about the drowning, and- and why. I found my father’s name and I- I found him. He was in prison. Wrote him a letter anyway. I didn’t expect an answer, but a week later there was a letter addressed to me in the mailbox. I’d- I’d never gotten a letter. He seemed so happy to find out about me. To find out he had a daughter, and he asked a million questions about me, and nobody ever asked about me. He wanted me to call him. Even told me where I’d find the forms I’d need to get added to his phone list. I forged my mom’s signature.”
A car backfired in the distance. The seagulls outside your window, your stupid neighbour kept feeding screeched. Neither of you flinched. Andrew’s eyes remained on you, unwavering, unshrinking.
You wrang your fingers in your lap. Andrew placed his hand above yours. You intertwined your fingers with his, letting his large hand consume yours, heavy, strong, rough from callouses.
“It took some time, but then he called. He was… nice. He asked me about school and just… life. It felt like all the things a parent would ask, would want to know. He gave me advice on how to handle the mean girls at school. I really thought he- he loved me. I think he does, at least in his own way. We talked every other day. I felt like he cared, and fuck, nobody had ever cared. He became strange though. He’d get closed off when I mentioned friends or our social worker or my teachers, anyone I liked who were a part of my life. A few months in, I missed a call with him because I was at the mall with my friends, and he- he said some horrible things. He never talked to me that way, and I started crying and apologising. He just hung up. The next time we talked, he acted as if nothing happened.
“He started pressuring me into visiting him. I forged my mom’s signature again, because I was a minor, I needed her permission to visit him. I left, and she didn’t even realise. I hitchhiked halfway across the country. That’s where I first met Marvin. He gave me a ride for the rest of the way and even brought me back home, probably figured he couldn’t stop me and it was better the fourteen-year-old rode on his bike rather than ending up in the back of some creep’s car.”
“Fourteen?” Andrew whispered, trying to picture it, picture you on the side of a road with only a forged permission slip to see your deranged father in prison, because you were so desperate for any shred of love you’d accept the poisoned honey he offered.
“My father could hand you a banana and convince you it’s an apple, and also that apple is going to cure everything going wrong in your life. Took me years to realise just how fucked up it was of him to pressure me into taking that trip.” You muttered bitterly.
Andrew brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear. You leaned into his touch, nuzzling his hand, accepting the affection you craved so much even though you knew you shouldn’t.
You forced a deep, shuddering breath into your lungs. “I visited him four times. Then he broke out. He showed up at our house when I was fifteen. I was home alone, and there he stood. On our porch. That was the first time I was hugged, I think. I- I went on the run with him. For almost five months. We stayed under the radar. He stole cars along the way, we never used one more than a few days, and robbed a few gas stations. He’d- he’d send me in first and then grab me, holding a gun to my head to get the cashier to hand over the money. And every couple of weeks or so, he’d take me to a truck stop. He’d tell me to go up to the truckers and lead them back to him. I figured… I figured a guy who’d agree to pay twenty bucks to fuck a fifteen-year-old against his truck deserved what they had coming, you know? Better them than someone innocent. My father- he- he gets these compulsions, you know? He’d get antsy and restless and really aggressive when he needed to kill. I don’t know how much of it was real or manipulation, I don’t know, but I- I went along. I started being really scared of him at one point. He just got so weird, but he was my dad, and he was sick, he needed help, and I had no one but him, so I stayed.”
You dropped your forehead against Andrew’s. He curled his free arm around you, automatically, without hesitation or conscious decision-making necessary. His large hand cupped the back of your neck, blunt nails scraping softly along your scalp in an attempt to soothe the grief that made tears gather in your eyes.
“When we got caught eventually, he screamed at the cops to not touch me, even while they had him pinned to the ground. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t care, right? I mean- If I’d been nothing to him, why bother? But he’s also just… so possessive. Like I’m- he used to call me ‘his creation’. That I was the best thing he ever did. Those five months he’d lose his shit anytime someone touched me, even if they just shook my hand. The cops, they’d been treating the case as an abduction at first. I was a minor, and he was a violent killer - obviously, I went with him against my will. I had to have. They interrogated me without my guardian’s permission and presence. Showed me pictures of his crimes to try and make me tell them things. They lied and threatened, and… they were just awful. Later I was charged with- uhm- aiding and abetting a fugitive, accessory to murder, armed robbery, fraud and uhm, a few other things. Spent a year in juvie, but a psychological evaluation made them reverse most of the convictions, and they released me into a psychiatrist despite the remaining ones. I could eventually get them expunged.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” You emitted a bitter laugh and pulled away, wiping your eyes on the back of your hand. “He’s broken out two times since, and both times he’s somehow found me. He finds my number when I change it. And I’m- I don’t want to move again, Andrew. I like it here. I really like it here. I don’t want to have to find another job again, and start all over.”
“Then stay.” Andrew pulled you closer. “With me.”
You wanted to.
You wanted it so badly.
“My father will hurt you.”
“Let him try.”
“Andrew… I’ve watched him kill men bigger, stronger and meaner than you.”
“You’ve never seen me be mean, sweetheart.” He cupped your face in his large hands, forcing you to meet his eyes. “I am a big boy. I can take care of myself. And you are worth the risk.”
“You don’t know me.”
Andrew shook his head. “I know enough.” He murmured, sounding so damn convinced, you almost believed it without questioning it. “I’ve seen your heart. You show your heart in everything you do, what else would I need to know?”
“Andrew-”
Andrew closed the distance between you to press his lips to yours. Your protest died on your tongue and was swiftly wiped away by his tongue delving into your mouth.
It was the fourth time Andrew kissed you. The first time had been sloppy and desperate, the second long and needy, the third so gentle it carved a hole into your chest you were still bleeding from, and this… somehow this one combined them all into one in an irresistible, deliriously delicious, ruinous way.
And you- you could no longer resist.
Andrew’s hands against your body - big, rough, forged for violence and destruction yet so achingly careful with you - forced you to realise just how starved you’d been for affection and touch. Andrew touched you in a way meaningless one-night-stands to stave off daddy issues and loneliness never did. His touch was hard and almost forceful in his own touch-starved wanting, but it never turned brutal or cold. He curled his fingers around your throat but never applied pressure. He grasped at your breasts through your dress, filling his hands with your soft flesh like he’d never held something that felt as good as your tits, but never crushed, pinched or slapped. He cradled your waist as if you were something precious and stroked the flat of his palms up your thighs, slipping under your dress while peering up at you through his lashes in a silent quest for permission.
You watched Andrew reach under you, lifting your hips to let him peel your already damp panties off. You watched him pull them down your legs, watched him lick his lips and pull you closer, hands firm around your knees, spreading you open for him.
Need punched through your body with all the force of a wrecking ball. The moan you held back slipped out when Andrew pulled your legs over his shoulders and dived between your thighs. Your hands shot up to find purchase, to hold onto something - anything - finding Andrew’s short hair. You remembered how it had looked when he was first looked up, those bouncy, soft curls.
It was a fucking crime the prison mandated it be shaved off upon incarceration and kept short as lice prevention, despite the assumption that lice didn’t settle in short hair having been disproven long ago.
Andrew groaned against you, hot breath unfurling across your mound as he lapped greedily at your folds. You dropped your head back against the sofa, eyes fluttering shut. Arousal and pleasure curled around you, filling your lower abdomen and unfurling throughout your body, spreading like prickling tendrils.
What he lacked in patience and consistency, Andrew made up with sheer animalistic enthusiasm. He made you feel every single day of the past three years he spent thinking about this, about you, you and him.
He lapped at your folds, dipped his tongue inside you to taste the rush of arousal slicking up your cunt and assaulted your clit as if he had a timer breathing down his neck. Broad, dizzying strokes alternated with precise, hard flicks.
“Andrew- fuck-” You swallowed the urge to cry out and pushed against him, panting.
Andrew looked up at you like a beaten puppy. “Not good?”
“It’s good.” You reassured him softly, though your voice still sounded breathless. “Just too much, too fast.” You rubbed your middle and ring finger over his shoulder in an even, slow, tight circle pattern, the same way you touched yourself at night when you were definitely not thinking about his eyes, when you were definitely not picturing him standing above you staring at you.
Andrew’s eyes widened ever so slightly as realisation hit him, followed by his eyes darkening. He lowered his head again and copied the pace you showed him.
Nobody could claim Andrew was not a diligent person.
He had you whimpering and moaning his name a few short minutes later, legs crossing behind his back to pull him closer. You rolled your hips into his until he grabbed your hips to pin you down. Your protest was undermined by the sob it chose to vocalise itself with. Andrew chuckled against your heated flesh.
“Fuck- Andrew- Andrew- fuck! I’m gonna- I’m- ohmygod-”
You grasped helplessly at the sofa cushion and Andrew’s shirt, digging your nails into fabric hard enough you feared they might break. The muscles in your thighs twitched and tensed up, further and further, being pulled taut as pleasure seared through your nerves and painted white spots across your field of vision.
You fell apart with a suffocated moan on your lips, shuddering in Andrew’s grip. He didn’t stop. He groaned against your cunt and sucked your swollen clit between his lips. Every touch felt like too much, but the mere thought of him pulling away was unbearable.
You managed to drag your legs off his shoulders. Sad hazel eyes looked up at you, just for the expression to be replaced by one of surprise and wonder when you pushed him backwards, down onto the carpet and straddled his thighs.
He groaned your name, eyelids fluttering shut, when you rolled your hips against him. You felt his cock through his jeans, already so fucking hard for you. Andrew fumbled with his belt and popped the button open, drew his cock out, hissing when his fingers brushed against the sensitive flesh.
You managed to reach your purse without pulling away from you. Blindly you dug through it while Andrew cradled your face in his hands and pressed his lips to yours. You tasted yourself on his lips, and for some strange reason the thought made your head spin and your cunt clench around nothing.
You shoved the condom into his hands.
It was a perk of being a social worker, though before now you’d never thought of it that way. If something you owned had pockets, there was a condom in there. Every jacket, pair of pants, cardigan, purse and backpack had at least one condom.
“I’m clean.” Andrew rasped.
“You fucked a whore last week. Wear the fucking rubber, Andrew.”
Andrew moaned. “Yes, ma’am.” The wrapper crinkled. You chewed on your bottom lip, waiting impatiently, watching Andrew take his cock into hand. “You gonna fuck me on the floor? ‘m not even allowed on the sofa? nghh- you like it filthy, sweetheart?”
“If you want to stop and walk to my bedroom, be my guest.”
Andrew grunted. He threaded his fingers through your hair and pulled you down. “Fuck that.” His lips crashed against yours.
“That’s- what I thought-” You muttered between kisses, just to bury your face against his neck to stifle a needy moan when his tip breached you. It had been a while for you, and Andrew was thick.
“Ah- fuck-”
Andrew noticed the way you tensed up above him and stopped, forcing laboured breaths through his teeth to keep himself from moving. You braced your hands against his chest and sat up, rolling your hips to ease him inside while using gravity to your advantage, slowly lowering yourself on him.
Andrew struggled to not come right then and there. The sight of you, hair mussed from your orgasm and lips swollen from his greedy kisses, sitting on top of him while you struggled to take him after three goddamn years of yearning for you was almost too much for him to take.
Almost.
As it was, Andrew was very determined to make this last.
You cursed under your breath, then without warning, you grabbed the hem of your dress and pulled it over your head. A thin sheen of sweat covered your whole body, making your skin gleam deliciously in the hot afternoon sun.
“Fuckig hell-” Andrew squeezed his eyes shut, but the sight of you, naked, tits out, legs spread around him, had burnt itself into his retinas. He still saw you with his eyes closed.
He doubted he’d ever stop seeing you.
“Feeling good?” You purred, dragging your nails across his chest. His shirt did nothing to stave off the teasing sensation. He shivered.
You ground against him when he didn’t reply, coaxing a tortured groan from him.
“Mh?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Yeah? You feel good? My pussy feel as good as you pictured it would?”
“Better-”
“Mhh, better…” You hummed, clearly amused by his current inability to string two or more words together. Emboldened by the state of mental disintegration the feeling of your cunt wrapped around his cock had put him in, you leaned down, breath brushing across his face. “Your cock sure feels better than I could have ever imagined.”
The most deliciously depraved, unravelling, guttural groan rumbled in Andrew’s throat. You pressed your face against his throat, stifling your own giggling against his skin. You started rocking against him, back and forth in a torturous glide, moaning softly at the way his hard length pressed against your fluttering walls, the weight of him inside you-
“I won’t- won’t last- last long-”
“That’s okay, handsome.” You purred and lifted your hips just to sink down again, slipping into an even, rolling pace - slow enough to drag out the sensation of his rubbing against your inner walls but fast enough to not be teasing. Andrew’s hands clamped down around your waist, both holding onto you to not fall apart beneath you and guiding you, helping you bounce on his cock as good as he could with his quickly waning mental capacity.
“You ate me out so well, Andrew… no need to force yourself to hold on any longer than you can.” You braced your hands against the floor on either side of his head, bending down until your chest was flush with his. His shirt rubbed against your damp, sticky skin, over your hardened, sensitive nipples. “Take what you need, love. Come on, Andrew… fuck me like you need to, like you pictured yourself doing late at night in your bunk.”
Andrew shook his head. His breathing was rapid, gasping, grunting breaths that had his chest rising and falling hard against your chest. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”
You chuckled. Your lips grazed his earlobe when you bent down to whisper in his ear, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut, fingers digging mercilessly into your waist.
“You said it, Andrew… I like it filthy. You can’t hurt me, love…”
Maybe your words were the permission he’d felt he needed, maybe the fragile restraint a man like Andrew Pope Cody was capable of had simply snapped, whatever the reason, his arms wrapped around you tight like a snake trapping its prey. You grinned against his neck and melted into the possessive embrace, eyes falling shut with the last pathetic remnants of your reservations evaporating as Andrew fucked up into you. His thrusts were short and coming in rapid succession, hard enough to bruise.
You moaned his name into his neck, reduced to a puddle of pleasure and lust in his arms, urging him on to fuck you harder, faster, to don’tstopandrewfuckpleasedon’tstop-
His breath was loud in your ear. He alternated between kissing your jaw, sucking on your neck and forgetting how to do either. Your knees ached against the carpet, thighs protesting against the position you forced them to stay in, but you didn’t care. You didn’t care about anything but Andrew, Andrew’s firm, strong body beneath you, his cock inside you, his breath against your ear, the salt of skin on your lips and tongue-
He fell apart with a series of grunts so low, so animalistic, so deliciously filthy they had you tumbling into another orgasm. Your cunt clamped down around him, squeezing him, sucking him in and pushing him out at the same time as though it could not quite decide whether it wanted more or less.
Andrew muttered your name into your hair, a broken prayer of depraved devotion and tormenting desire.
You rode out the last waves of your release against him, rocking your hips back and forth while pressing your lips to his in a hard, uncoordinated, deep kiss, one that had your teeth clicking together and far too much saliva being exchanged between the two of you, but neither of you cared.
You collapsed against Andrew, breathing hard, spent, cunt pulsing faintly still from the assault of pleasure on your nerve endings.
Eventually, Andrew would gather you in his arms and carry you to your bed. Eventually, you’d lie there, limbs tangled together, staring at each other, hands idly wandering, fingers walking along bare arms and running through hair. Eventually you’d tuck your head under his chin and find the first few hours of sleep you’d had since your father broke out of prison, knowing you were safe with Andrew - Pope - in your bed to watch over you.
But for now… for now you just lay on the ground of your living room surrounded by your discarded clothes and listened to the beat of Andrew’s heart slowly evening out beneath you, savouring the way his fingers brushed along your spine in a lazy yet reverent caress.
Next Chapter
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With Teeth (Brendon Park x f!Reader)
18+ mdni
Summary: Brendon loses a patient. You give him back control in the only way you know how.
WC: 6,447
Warnings: established relationship; angst; hurt/comfort; unprotected piv (jfc wrap it before you tap it); d/s dynamics; bdsm, but like, vanilla bdsm?; oral (m receiving); fingering (f receiving); overstimulation kind of; unhealthy coping mechanisms? idk; use of a sex toy; seriously, use a condom
A/N: set six-ish years before The Pitt (Park is mid-30s); you can’t tell me Park is OOC because man was on the screen for half a second; technically part of the “Closet Gremlin” universe but can be read as a standalone
—————————————————
Brendon doesn’t get home until eleven.
You’re curled on the couch under the fluffy shark-patterned blanket you’d gotten him for his birthday (he’d told you it was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen, then proceeded to use it basically every day since), and the TV is playing some Netflix romcom you don’t really care about. He’d texted you somewhere around six telling you there was a trauma incoming and to not wait up for him, which meant you’d of course waited up for him.
In the year the two of you’ve been together, you’ve learned that there’s no way to predict how trauma cases will impact him. There are days he comes home like nothing happened, days he comes home even more smug than usual. Then there are the days where he loses a patient or the outcome isn’t what he was hoping for, but he’s typically quick to make peace with it. He’s calculating, pragmatic. He knows when the odds are unfavorable and doesn’t dwell when they beat him.
Then there are days like today.
Days when you know something has gone wrong the moment he steps inside the house. He’s not particularly talkative as a baseline, but usually he’ll at least call a greeting. Today there’s nothing but stony silence. The only sounds are the slight shuffle of him taking off his shoes and the click of the closet opening so he can hang up his coat. When he finally steps out of the mudroom and into the den, he does barely more than nod at you before disappearing upstairs.
You’re not upset. You might have been, once upon a time, but you know him well enough by now to know this is just how he copes. He’ll probably take a shower, eat something sad and beige and protein-heavy, then curl around you in bed like you’re the only soft thing in a world full of edges. He might talk to you, he might not. But he’ll hold you, and you’ll let him, and that’ll be enough for both you.
You sit quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the shower come on, and are startled when he instead comes back down the stairs wearing training shorts and an old t-shirt.
“Bren?” you question softly.
He pauses. His spine is rigid, his jaw tense, and you can see the weight of every life he’s ever held resting on his shoulders in that moment. Something heartbreakingly vulnerable flashes in his eyes so quickly you almost miss it, before he hides it behind iron walls.
“Go to sleep,” he says.
Then he disappears into the basement. A few moments later, the sound of weights clanking together floats up the stairs.
Your heart squeezes, but you don’t follow him. You know he needs to work through whatever it is on his own. Instead, you turn the volume on the TV up to give him some privacy and busy yourself with cleaning.
You grab his bag from where he’d dropped it in the mudroom and unpack it — putting the food he didn’t eat back in the kitchen and plugging in his laptop to charge. You wash the few dishes in the sink by hand and then spend some time prepping lunches for both of you for the following day. Then you go upstairs and throw his dirty scrubs in the wash along with a few other things. Really, there’s not enough laundry to warrant a load, but you need something to occupy you. No matter what he said, you won’t be able to sleep knowing how upset he is.
Eventually, the load finishes, and you put it in the dryer. Then that finishes, too, and Brendon is still in the basement. A glance at the clock tells you it’s nearing 1:00 AM. You bite your lip. You’re exhausted, so you can only imagine how tired he must be. He’d been out the door by five that morning, and you know he’d had no break between his regular shift and the emergency trauma. You also know he hadn’t eaten much throughout the day, if his mostly untouched lunch was anything to go by.
You start folding laundry while glancing at the clock every five seconds. You want to give him his space, but you’re also getting increasingly worried. You’re not quite sure where the line is between letting him process and leaving him to suffer alone. Eventually though, when you’ve reorganized your nightstand twice, when the hour hand is closer to the two than the one, you decide you should at least check on him.
You pad softly down the stairs to the first floor and then pause at the doorway to the basement. You can no longer hear weights shifting around down there. In fact, it’s eerily silent aside from the low hum of the TV, and you feel a frisson of nerves as you descend the dimly lit stairs.
“Bren?”
He’s sitting on the FID bench facing the wall of mirrors. Several dumbbells are discarded at his feet. Sweat stains his shirt and his brow, and he’s still breathing heavily from whatever set he just finished. He’s still apart from the rising and falling of his chest though, his eyes fixed unseeingly on one of the heavy rubber mats lining the floor. He doesn’t even move when you say his name, and you’re not sure if it’s because he can’t hear you or because he doesn’t have the energy to respond.
The two of you exist in silence for a long moment, and you know he won’t break it unless you do. Carefully, like you’re afraid any sudden movements will make things worse, you cross to the mini-fridge on the back wall. You grab a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap as you walk back across the room to stand next to him.
“You should drink something,” you say softly, holding it out to him.
He might not want to talk about anything, but you can at least take care of him physically. Or you can try. He doesn’t take the water, and you only hold it out for a second longer before recapping it and setting it at his feet. Worry grips your chest like a fist.
“Do you-”
“You should go.”
You freeze. Your first reaction is hurt, which you quickly shove as far down as you can — this is about him, not you. Then comes the instinctual urge to obey. If he wants you to go, then you will. But just as your body is about to turn and move on its own, your mind catches up.
“You said I should go,” you venture carefully. “Does that mean you want me to?”
He doesn’t say anything, which tells you more than if he had.
Feeling steadier now than you did a second ago, you go to round the bench and stand in front of him, only for his hand to shoot out and keep you from coming closer.
“You can’t be around me right now,” he reiterates tightly.
“Because of me? Or because of you?”
His gaze snaps up to you then, and you inhale sharply at what you see there. Fury, bright and sharp, cuts through you like a blade. Right alongside it is grief so raw it’s almost anger in itself. There are other emotions buried there, too — frustration, self-loathing, hopelessness — so many that he looks like he’s drowning in them.
“Careful,” he says lowly.
Your heart stutters nervously, but you don’t back down.
“If you want me to leave, I will, but don’t tell me to go because you think you’re protecting me.”
His jaw tightens, and he stands. Towering over you like he’s trying to intimidate you. It works and it doesn’t. Your body responds the way it always does when he’s this close — your heart rate picks up, your breathing goes uneven, and awareness prickles across your skin. But you’re not scared of him. You don’t think you ever could be.
“You want to be soft right now,” he grits out, teeth bared. “You want to be sweet and gentle until everything’s better.”
You shake your head slowly.
“I want to be whatever you need me to be,” you tell him.
Wrong answer, or right one. You don’t know. All you do know is he makes a low, mean sound, and takes a predatory step towards you. You instinctively back up. The backs of your knees hit the bench, and you drop down on it with a graceless oof. Now it’s your turn to sit while he stands over you.
“You have no idea what I need right now,” he snarls.
Realization hits you so fast you feel dizzy, then ridiculous for not realizing sooner. The way he’s practically vibrating in his skin. The way he’s been down here punishing his body for nearly three hours. The way he seems to want you close and also want you as far away as possible.
He feels out of control.
He’s not just angry, he’s not just grieving. He’s spiraling. Tough cases always challenge his need for control, but he’s also pragmatic enough that he usually bounces back quickly. Whatever control he felt he lost with this trauma, he can’t get it back. He’s been trying to — down here alone, for hours — but it’s clearly not working.
He must see the realization in your face, because his expression shutters further, and he makes a low warning sound in his throat.
“Don’t,” he grits.
You don’t say anything, just reach out slowly and grab one of his hands. It flexes almost spastically in yours, but he doesn’t pull away. At least until you bring it to your mouth and brush a soft kiss across his knuckles. Then he tries to jerk it back, but you won’t let him.
“I can’t be gentle right now,” he scrapes out.
“I don’t need you to be gentle.”
He growls in frustration and crowds even closer.
“You don’t get it, I don’t trust myself around you.”
Your heart breaks, even as determination solidifies in your mind. Slowly, slowly enough that he can pull away if he really wants to, you lift his hand to your neck. His fingers twitch as you wrap them carefully around your throat, and his breath punches out of him like you struck him.
“I trust you,” you whisper.
A brief pause—
And then he’s moving. He spits out a curse and then he’s hauling you to your feet. His mouth crashes into yours, and it’s all teeth and anger wrapped in desperation. The awareness that’s been humming under your skin since he got home morphs into arousal from one breath to the next. Your hands scrabble for purchase against his shirt as you do your best to keep up with his relentless pace.
“Brave fucking girl,” he hisses against your mouth.
You whimper in response, concerned, relieved, and turned on all in equal measure. He kisses you like he’s punishing you. He kisses you like he can burn out his anger through your body, and you kiss him back like you want it. You do, you think, when he yanks your head back so his lips can find your jaw. You want whatever he wants, want to be whatever he needs.
He worries a bruise onto your neck, more teeth than lips. It’s petty, mean. It makes your cunt clench around nothing. You tilt your head further back to give him more access, and he rumbles a low sound of approval.
“So eager for me,” he mutters against your skin.
You nod frantically — you are, you always are.
You tug at his shoulders to bring his mouth back to yours. He allows it, indulgent. One hand is still buried in your hair, while the other bands like steel around your waist, and it presses you as close to him as possible and then closer still. He seems content for a moment, letting you guide the kiss, at least until he nips sharply at your lip and slides his hand back to your throat. It tightens just enough to make you work harder for every breath, and the feeling goes through you like lightning.
“Hmm, you like it when I get to decide if you breathe?” he asks.
Your only response is a whimper, and his eyes flash dangerously. You feel dazed, floaty, and he’s barely touched you yet. The same thought must cross his mind, because his grip loosens for a second, and the hand at your throat reaches up to brush a strand of hair back from your face.
“I mean it,” he says, voice rough with restraint. “I don’t know how to be gentle right now.”
You hear him fighting to keep his voice calm, to truly give you the out if you want it, and that more than anything makes your decision for you. He might not trust himself, but you do. You know he won’t hurt you.
Slowly, keeping your eyes locked with his, you sink to your knees.
Something complicated crosses his face. Longing and vulnerability mixed with love so deep it’s pain. He looks at you like you’re tearing him apart and remaking him at the same time, like he’s dying and you’re the only thing keeping him alive. His hand, steady enough to piece bodies back together, shakes as it reaches out to touch your face. His thumb brushes reverently over your cheek.
“Brave girl,” he whispers again.
Then all the softness disappears behind steel. You watch him physically piece his armor back together— his breath evening, his shoulders straightening. His eyes glint like ice, and the hand on your cheek grabs your chin and forces you to look up. You stare at him, feeling small and exposed.
“Clothes off.”
The words are quiet, but there’s no doubt they’re an order.
Your breath hitches, but your hands move to obey without thought. They grab them hem of your sweater and pull it off. Next comes your bra, and you blush a little when you drop it on top of the sweater. He’s seen you naked a thousand times before, but there’s something about it that feels especially vulnerable when you’re on your knees like this. You start to get up, so you can take off your shorts, but his voice stops you.
“I didn’t say you could stand.”
A shock of heat lances through you and goes straight to your cunt. You make a small sound, somewhere between a squeak and a whimper, and stare up at him with wide eyes. He stares unblinkingly back. Hands unsteady now, you hook your thumbs under the waistband of your sleep shorts and panties and start tugging them down. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and mildly embarrassing trying to wiggle out of them while still kneeling. You have to contort and do a sort of shuffle to get them off, but you finally manage it.
Now naked, you look up at him and wait for whatever comes next. The air in the basement is cooler than the rest of the house, and you feel your nipples start to pebble. The subdued lighting that usually feels soothing now feels too bright, too revealing. The only sound is the quiet hum of the fridge, which makes you hyper aware of your own breathing.
Part of you is uncomfortable, itching to move, to say something — anything to break this silent standoff. It doesn’t matter how safe you feel with him, the stark power imbalance between the two of you — you naked and kneeling, him clothed and towering over you — never fails to tug at something soft and unprotected within you. You force yourself to remain still though. As strong as the urge to retreat is, the need to obey is stronger.
“Eyes closed,”he says at last, and you comply gratefully. “Stay here.”
You’re startled when you hear him disappear up the stairs, but you obey and stay still. You think you hear him continue to the stairs to the second floor, but you can’t be sure. Then there’s nothing. Alone, waiting, the anticipation feels sharper. The rubber mat under your knees feels slightly too firm, and the air feels slightly too cold. Your legs are starting to cramp. Time passes oddly while you wait, and you’re relieved when you hear him coming back down.
Anticipation runs down your spine like a physical touch when you hear him come to a stop somewhere behind you. Your eyes are still closed, and you have no idea what he’s doing or if he’s even looking at you. The uncertainty, the feeling of being completely at his mercy, makes your thighs clench together. The action makes you suddenly aware of how wet you are, and an involuntary sound escapes your throat.
One of his hands comes to rest briefly on your head at the sound, grounding, then vanishes.
“Hands.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but you know what he means. Carefully, you stretch your hands behind you. He moves, looping something around your wrists and securing them at the small of your back. You test the bindings once — snug enough they won’t slip off, but loose enough you could get out of them without much effort. They’re more symbolic than anything, but they still make your cunt pulse.
Next he slips something over your eyes. You open them on instinct, but aside from a vague haze of light, you can’t see anything through the fabric. Now truly unable to see and with your hands bound, your awareness of everything else around you skyrockets. You can feel the heat of his body behind you, hear the measured rhythm of his breathing. He trails a hand lightly down one of your arms, barely anything, and it sets off fireworks in your body.
He stands, and you feel more than hear him walk around you. He stops in front of you, one hand coming to rest on your face. You feel his fingers press against your lips, and you open obediently.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.
Your cunt clenches around nothing again. You suck lightly on his fingers, wishing it was his cock instead, and feel yourself getting steadily wetter. Your breasts feel heavy, your nipples tight, and you want him to touch you so badly it’s nearly pain.
“Good girl,” he repeats, then draws his fingers out. “Open.”
You do and are rewarded with the slide of his cock over your tongue. You make a grateful sound that would have been embarrassing if your brain was functioning. Instead, all you care about is the weight of him in your mouth and the low hiss he lets out when you start sucking.
“So eager to have my cock in your mouth,” he mocks.
You hum in agreement, lost in the taste of sweat and skin and the slightly bitter flavor of pre-come.
He lets you play for a while, his hand resting lightly on the back of your head. You alternate between sucking the flared head, tongue flicking the slit until his hips twitch, and sinking down further until your jaw aches. His fingers card through your hair, misleadingly gentle, and you think then that you could stay like this forever. Your knees ache, and your shoulders are starting to protest, but all that matters is this. Him, his taste, the sounds he makes. You’re actively clenching your thighs together now, trying to get any friction on your clit. He lets out a mean laugh when he notices, but he doesn’t stop you.
You know his patience won’t last though, and you’re proved correct when his grip suddenly tightens.
“I’m going to fuck your pretty throat now,” he says darkly.
You make a sound that might be agreement, might be a plea, and then his hips snap forward sharply. You nearly gag around the intrusion — too much, too fast — but you force yourself to breathe through it. He hums in approval, and you fairly whine.
He sets a slow rhythm, steadily fucking his way deeper with every thrust. His hand at the back of your head holds you in place, and you moan at the feeling of him bullying his way into your throat. You gag around him a couple times, spit sliding down your chin and tears pricking your eyes. He doesn’t stop. He knows if you really wanted out, you would slip the loose bindings and tap his thigh. But you don’t, and he mutters filthy encouragement as he slides even deeper.
“So fucking pretty like this-”
“Feels so good-”
“Fuck, baby, just like that.”
By the time you’ve finally taken all of him, you’re shaking, hips grinding down against nothing. Your jaw aches and you can feel the tears on your cheeks, but all you want is more. You make a desperate sound, and he groans in response, before slowly drawing back. A pause, then he returns with a harsh snap of his hips, and you’re whining. The tip of his cock bruises the back of your throat, and you relish it. You want him everywhere, stamped on your body inside and out.
His breath punches out of him harshly as he fucks your face, and for a brief second you think you could come like this. Untouched, just the taste and feel of him and the sound of his voice spewing filth.
“My perfect girl, take- ah, take my cock so fucking well.”
You swallow around him, and his hips spasm.
“Shit, don’t-. Baby-, fucking Christ.”
You know he’s getting close. He’s spending longer down your throat with each thrust, grinding your nose against his pelvis. His breathing goes ragged, and his grip in your hair tightens to the point of pain. Sure enough, one, two thrusts later and he’s yanking you off his cock with a curse.
You hear the obscene slide of his fist over his spit-soaked cock, and then you feel the first splash of come hit your cheek. He grunts as he fucks his fist, painting your face and chest. You moan at the feeling.
“Fuck, you did so well,” he says when he’s finally spent.
You preen under his praise.
“You think you deserve a reward?”
“Please.”
You sound wrecked, desperate, but you don’t care. Your body is hot, your skin too tight, and you want his hands on you more than you want your next breath.
He makes you wait for a minute.
He moves away from you, and you hear a rustle of cloth. You think he’s wiping his hands off, but you can’t be sure. Then he’s coming back over to you, and you’re nearly squirming in anticipation when he lowers himself behind you. His chest touches your back, and you feel his legs on either side of yours. It can’t be comfortable for him, but he doesn’t seem concerned.
“Spread your legs,” he tells you.
You do, ignoring the way your knees protest the movement. Now that you’re not focused on his cock, you’re fiercely aware of how long you’ve been kneeling. He doesn’t tell you to get up though, and any discomfort vanishes a moment later when his arms come around you and then his fingers are running through your folds. Your hips jerk forward.
“Oh, sweetheart. Did you get this wet just sucking my cock?”
You don’t answer right away, too focused on the feeling of finally, finally being touched. But his fingers stop when you stay silent, and you cry out in protest.
“Answer me, baby.”
“Yes,” you gasp.
“Yes, what?”
Even after everything he’s already done to you, even with his come drying on your face, saying the words makes your cheeks burn.
“Yes, sucking your cock made me this wet.”
“Good girl.”
And then he shoves two fingers inside you without warning, and you nearly fall over. There’s no build up, no ease in. Just his fingers crooking in a practiced motion and rubbing relentlessly at the spot that makes you see stars. You moan, high and helpless. Your head drops back against his shoulder, and your hips move gracelessly as you chase his fingers. His thumb eventually moves to swipe against your clit, one brief moment of fire-tipped pleasure. Then his hand is withdrawing, and you nearly sob.
“Bren,” you cry pathetically.
He body pulls away from yours, but before you can protest, you feel something else moving between your legs. Not his fingers-
“Oh,” you gasp.
It’s a dildo. Not as thick as his cock, but definitely thicker than his fingers. Your walls clamp down around the intrusion. He fucks you shallowly with it, teasing more than anything, but you’re grateful for anything after waiting for so long. It’s more than enough to get you there, and your hips are starting to stutter when he says-
“No coming, baby.”
He actually laughs at your cry of distress.
“Don’t you want to be good for me?” he asks.
That alone almost makes you come.
Your cunt spasms around the dildo, and everything in your body pulls tight. Yes, you want to be good for him, it’s all you want right now. Sometimes you think it’s all you’ve ever wanted. You garble out some version of that and preen at his murmured approval.
“Spread your legs a little more-, just like that. Sink a bit lower-”
You obey, not quite knowing what he’s trying to do yet, when you feel something against your clit and it clicks. Oh. You know exactly which dildo he’s using now. The dark purple one with the rabbit attachment at the base, which means-
The vibrator switches on, and you make a sound like you’re dying.
“Hmm, feel good?”
You’re nodding, babbling, something.
“Now be a good girl and keep that in for me.”
He stands then, and while part of your mourns the loss of his warmth behind you, most of you is too focused on the incessant buzzing against your clit to care. It feels like it’s been years since he first kissed you, and you’ve moved past arousal into physical distress. You try to focus on something else, anything else. Your attention turns to your legs, which are cramping badly now, and your knees, which are aching as they dig into the ground. It doesn’t work though — you still feel like you’re a breath away from coming.
That’s when you hear it.
A scraping sound, followed by the click of weights hitting each other. A few footfalls hitting the floor, then the same sound again. Your brain short-circuits. He’s working out. You’re kneeling bound and blindfolded, his come drying on your skin and a vibrator shoved up your pussy, and he’s working out. He must see the understanding dawn on your face, because he huffs out a laugh.
“Focus, baby.”
It takes a moment for your brain to come back online, even longer to notice the dildo is slipping out of you. You’d started rising up on your knees without realizing it, until only the tip is left inside of you. Startled, you drop back down without thought, only to yelp when the movement slams the rabbit into your clit.
Another laugh, meaner this time, and then he goes back to his workout.
Time ceases to matter. You can’t see anything, and your attempt to count the seconds that go by lasts approximately ninety seconds before you give up. The only thing you have to mark the passing of time is the rhythmic sound of him breathing his way through every rep, punctuated by longer pauses between sets.
The base of the dildo perches precariously on the ground, held upright only because it’s inside of you. When you sink all the way down, it rests snugly inside of you, but it also pushes the rabbit directly against your clit. The stimulation is somehow too much and not enough at the same time — almost numbing after so long, but still just one wrong twitch away from making you come. But every time you rise up to get away from it, the dildo threatens to fall out. You can only lift a couple inches without it slipping, and the awkward half-kneel makes your already-trembling thighs scream after only a minute.
You can’t stay pressed against the vibrator without coming, and you can’t get away from it without the dildo falling out. Either way, you’re going to disobey him. The thought fills you with dread, and you fight to be good, cycling between both agonizing positions. You don’t know how long passes like that. Your body is on fire, but your mind is full of static, the only clear thought you have: be good. You repeat it in your head until it’s all you know, all you are.
You start drifting, experiencing things through a haze, like they’re happening to someone else. The need to come is still there, but it’s not as urgent anymore. It’s been muted by distance. You’re somewhere else, floating and far away and-
A hand lands on top of your head and you come crashing back into your body.
Sensation comes back, ten times sharper than before, and your body convulses as you fight the sharp, stabbing need to come. You make an agonized noise. You’re sweating, trembling, and you’re so wet you can feel it dripping out of you. Every nerve ending is on fire, your legs feel like they’re going to collapse even though you’re already kneeling, and you need to come, you-
“Shh, breathe, sweetheart.”
You gasp out a breath.
“That’s it. Focus on me.”
He starts taking deep, even breaths, and you fight to mimic him. Slowly, the frantic energy in you eases into something manageable. His hand stays on you the whole time. It’s not gentle, not rough, but it grounds you enough that you’re able to settle all the way back into your body.
“Good girl, I’m going to turn this off now okay?”
His fingers tap lightly at the vibrator, forcing a whine out of you. But you nod, and he murmurs more praise. The buzzing switches off, followed by him removing the dildo altogether, and you don’t know whether to sob in relief or to wail at the loss.
“Fuck, baby, you made such a mess. Are you sure you didn’t come without permission?”
You shake your head frantically. No, you were good. You’re always good. Panic wells up in you, and you garble out a protest. You wouldn’t do that, you-
“I believe you, sweetheart. Always so perfect for me.”
You wilt in relief.
“Next is your wrists, okay?”
He waits until you nod before slipping the bindings off. Your shoulders scream in protest when you bring your arms back in front of you. His hands are there immediately though, rubbing carefully to help you through the worst of it. And even though it hurts, even though your knees ache and the muscles in your legs feel like they’re on fire, you still moan at the feel of his hands on you. Your body is caught somewhere between overstimulated and touch-starved, and you arch into his touch even though it’s painful.
“Alright, sweetheart, hands and knees. Do you think you can do that for me?”
You honestly don’t know if your limbs can hold you up anymore, but you try. You’d do anything he asked you at this point. Anything if he’ll finally let you come. You place your hands on the floor in front of you and lean some of your weight on them. Encouraged when they don’t give out right away, you shift slowly forward until you’re properly on all fours. You’re shaking, but you don’t fall.
“Doing so well, my perfect girl.”
The praise washes over you like a physical touch, and your pussy spasms weakly.
“Listened so well; I’m going to fuck you now, okay?”
You’re beyond words a this point, but you make a desperate sound of agreement and arch your back as best you can. He makes an appreciative noise at the sight. One hand finds your hip, the other running down the length of your spine, and you feel all of it like you’ve touched a live wire. Then he’s moving behind you, positioning himself, and the noise you make when you feel the head of his cock against your swollen pussy is feral.
“So fucking wet,” he says, dragging the tip through your folds.
And then he slams into you in one, harsh thrust, and you choke on a scream.
He sets a brutal rhythm immediately, his hands bruising your hips to hold you in place. The respite you got when he took the dildo out vanishes, and you’re suddenly back to teetering on the edge of coming. His cock is so much thicker than the dildo, so much longer — you can feel him in your throat. You can feel every ridge, every vein as he fucks you like he’s trying to mold you to the shape of him.
“Shit,” he snarls when a particularly rough thrust makes you clench around him. “This perfect-, ah, perfect fucking pussy.”
His shifts slightly behind you, and you wail at the change in angle. Every thrust sends lightning down your spine, pleasure so sharp in hurts. Your arms shake, then give out, and you collapse forward onto the floor. He doesn’t pause though, just tightens his grip on your hips until you know you’ll wake up with his fingerprints on your skin. The thought makes you moan.
“That’s it, baby, taking my cock so well. Like it’s all you’ve ever wanted.”
Your breath is coming out in pathetic little moans every time he buries himself inside of you, but you try to respond, try to say yes. The only thing you manage is an incoherent approximation of his name.
“My smart girl, so cock drunk you can’t speak.”
You don’t know which part of that sentence affects you more. Either would suffice to ruin you, and you feel your wetness start to drip down your thigh. You’re so wet you can hear your cunt trying to suck him back in every time he withdraws. The sound is loud, obscene in the small room, but you don’t care. You want more. Want him closer, harder, more.
Like he can hear your thoughts, he hooks one arm around you and reaches between your legs. He thumbs your clit lightly, barely a touch, but you clamp down so hard you nearly force him out.
“Jesus fucking-, hngg, fuck, fuck.”
His hips stutter, the first crack in his iron control. He keeps rubbing your clit though, and you know without a doubt that if he doesn’t stop, you’re going to come.
“P-please,” you gasp. “Bren, please. Please let me c-come. I-, ah, I need to come.”
“Sweetheart-”
“Please.”
You’re outright crying now. Crying, begging, willing to do anything if he’ll let you come. It’s not a matter of willpower anymore, it’s a matter of survival. Your body has been denied for so long that you’re either going to come or pass out.
“Shit, alright. You’ve been so good for me, baby, you can come.”
He delivers a particularly brutal thrust and pinches your clit, and you detonate.
Lightning explodes through you. Your body spasms with it, your hands scrabbling for purchase against the floor. Pleasure so intense it’s agony forces a sob out of your mouth. It’s too much, and you feel like you’re going to break under the pressure of it, but you can’t escape. His hands are still pinning you in place, and you’re too weak to move, so all you can do is lay there as it tears you apart.
Dimly, you’re aware of him coming, too. His hips stutter, then slam forward one more time before he’s twitching inside of you. He holds you through it, spewing a litany of curses and praise, but it’s like you’re hearing from underwater. You’re still coming, drenching his cock with it. Every time you think it’s over, another wave hits you, and your vision actually greys out for a second.
When you finally settle back into your body, you feel hollowed out. Everything is too much, too sensitive. Your breath is coming in broken gasps, your legs are shaking, and you can’t stop crying.
When he pulls out, it’s relief and loss all at once. You make a distressed noise, but quiet when he scoops you up into his arms. He sits on the ground and settles you in his lap, and you immediately burrow as close to him as humanly possible.
“Shh,” he soothes. “You did so well, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you.”
The words are like a balm to your ragged nerves.
“Listened so well, my perfect girl.”
You’re an absolute mess — a mixture of both your releases dripping from between your legs and tears mixing with the remnants of dried come on your cheeks. He ignores all of it, cradling you close. For a while, there’s only the sound of him murmuring reassurances in your ear, only the feeling of being totally surrounded and safe. He doesn’t rush you, and eventually you calm enough to accept the bottle of water he holds to your lips.
“Can I take off the blindfold?” he asks once you finish drinking.
You nod.
The overheads in the gym are dimmed all the way down, but you still wince at the first stab of light. You have to blink several times to adjust, and the first thing your eyes settle on is the reflection of you and Brendon in the mirror. You look about as wrecked as you feel, and though he looks similarly exhausted, you can immediately tell that the simmering anger from earlier has cooled. His pelagic eyes are calm as they stare back at you, his hand steady as it cards through your hair.
“You with me?” he asks softly.
You hum in agreement, and he huffs a laugh.
“Words, sweetheart.”
A weak spark of arousal runs through your body.
“‘m with you,” you mumble.
Silence falls, and you close your eyes again. You know the two of you will eventually have to get up — he’ll take you upstairs and help you take a shower before wrapping you in the fluffiest towel you own. He’ll make you drink more water and force you to eat something sad and beige and protein-heavy. Then the two of you will climb into bed, and he’ll curl around you like you’re the only soft thing in a world full of edges. He might talk to you, he might not. But for now, he’s holding you, the world has settled, and that’s enough for both of you.
pavlov's dog — jack abbot
in the aftermath of pittfest, jack wants nothing more than to let you drag him back into the routine he shares with you. ( 2.2k words )
warnings : allusions to the events of s1 but they're not touched on very much, age gap (reader is mid/late 20s, jack is canon age), brief angst, sooooo melodramatic and sappy, mentions of jack's wife, cw suggestive 18+ slight somnophilia mention, mentions of sex and arousal but nothing really happens
note : this was originally going to be full on smut but i haven't been able to write it in a way i liked, so please accept this as it is. i miss jack abbot every day and accidentally ate an inadvisable amount of hot sauce earlier tonight so i hope you enjoy this i am going to sleep now but i love you thank you for reading
Jack knows that the drive home isn’t actually longer than the drive to work. He knows it’s a matter of perception, of time stretching and ebbing. One way he’s waiting to clock in, waiting to spend a cool twelve hours covered in blood and spit and a third fluid that varies from day to day. The other way, he’s waiting for the warm embrace of his bed and the warmer embrace of the girl in it.
He slips into the apartment quietly. You’d been awake when he’d left but it’s been hours since then, the oven clock blinking 10:28 at him as he gets himself a glass of water, not bothering with any of the lights.
Jack usually gets home a little after 7:30, and you don’t have to be up until after eight, so most mornings he gets a lovely forty-six minutes in bed with you. This thing between the two of you isn’t new; you’ve been seeing each other for the better part of nine months now. Long enough for you to have a key to his place, to spend most nights in his bed, for him to have memorised the noises you make when you’re half asleep. Long enough that when he comes home after a long shift, half asleep and aching all over, his lips find your collarbones and his hands find a spot much lower, like he’s still getting used to where you start and where he ends.
Coming home always feels the same, a cloud draping itself over the moon, fleeting and sinking. Lowering himself onto the mattress and pulling the duvet up to his shoulders, inhaling the scent of your presence in his room. Golden hour still filtering in and hitting your face, the dust particles forming a TV static that hums behind his eyes as he half rolls over to plant a kiss under your ear.
Now, though, it’s pitch dark in his room. You’re curled up on your stomach, he’d told you not to wait up for him, not knowing how long he was going to be at the hospital. The ache in his limbs is bone deep, his leg screaming for relief, but Jack drags himself to the chair in his shower before collapsing in bed. As he situates himself on his back, he doesn’t even have to wait a full five seconds before you’re rolling over and are curling your leg into the spot below where his ends, filling it instinctively in an effort to be close to him even while you sleep.
The two of you don’t share his bed for longer than an hour as often as Jack would like these days. Getting to hold your forearm with both of his hands as you hang it over his midsection, the sound of your breath hitting his cheeks, it’s not something he gets to revel in with your opposite schedules.
He’s so fucking tired he can’t even enjoy it. He’s got the next four days off, and he knows you’re going to be off work for three of them. Jack’s not sure when he got so old that he’s looking forward to getting to both fall asleep and wake up in the same bed as his partner. The noise from the hospital stays with him, lingering in the background of the hum of your sleep; the sound of devastation catching in Robby’s throat, the pinch of the needle hitting his arm, the blood of a teenager soaking into his skin. The shower hadn’t been enough that night, hadn’t gotten in soon enough before it hardened and mixed with his bloodstream before he had the ability to scrub it off.
Jack’s been doing a lot better over the past year. He has you, and a therapist he started seeing a while before he met you. Still, some nights when he feels like it lingers in the surrounding air, it’s hard to be able to see past the number of people who almost died that day.
He’s getting older now, he’ll be fifty in a few months. You mentioned going away with him, wanting to take a trip somewhere. He’ll follow anywhere you go until his good leg gives out. And you’re so lovely - that’s the best way to describe you. You’re made of something immaterial, filling in the gaps between his bones and the air in his lungs, made of love.
Sometimes he worries he won’t be able to keep up with you for long enough to hold your interest. Jack knows you love him, knows you’d never do anything to be cruel. But is it cruel to put down an old dog?
He kisses the side of your face - the only part of you he can reach without moving - and sighs. An amalgamation of soul and death, holding everything from the hospital in a spot behind his ribs and only letting it out now that he’s alone with your subconscious. Most people go their entire lives without seeing someone die in front of them. That’s something that grounds him; this is abnormal. There is an entire world that doesn’t experience carnage.
You’re so soft, he can’t quite comprehend how you can exist in the same plane of the universe as despondence.
Getting to wake up in the mornings with Jack is a luxury you don’t take for granted. It’s your favourite part of the day - that half hour where the sun is hitting your face as he greets you. You really, really love Jack. He’s not usually asleep as you wake up, though. You very rarely get the opportunity to see Jack in slumber.
The two of you have your set routines - he comes home and wakes you up, you spend the morning in bed together, you go to work while Jack gets some sleep, and then you spend a nice few hours at home before he has to leave for work.
Days like this, where you’re both off work, they feel almost like a sweet summer rain; something you don’t quite realise how much you need it until it happens.
The morning comes through the open curtains slowly, like it’s been warned not to startle you. The sun streams in, a honeyed bay of light that slides across the wall and finds purchase on your face. It seeps into your muscles and heats your soul. Your mind is lagging behind your body as the warmth spreads, sinking deeper into the mattress and closer to Jack.
He’s so warm, you curl around him in tendrils as the smoke to his flame, the solid heat of him at your side. Jack smells like disinfectant and the vanilla bean moisturiser you’d got for him to help combat the dermatitis he’s developed after years of rigorous sanitising. He feels like an old sun-lit room, hot and heavy and so familiar it’s like you grew up with it. One of your hands drifts over his chest absently, fingertips trailing over the skin with a featherlight touch.
Most mornings he’s awake when you wake up, nudging into you as he gets home from the hospital. Kissing your cheeks and selfishly pulling you from sleep to make sure he gets to see you for as much time as possible before you need to get ready for work. You love Jack so much, with such intensity, that you would follow him into another life. Crossing from sleeping to waking is a decision that doesn’t even need to be made.
This morning he’s out cold. You’re not sure how long he’s been home, if he had got to the hospital and realised they didn’t need him, turning straight back around to return to you. Or if he’d worked the entire night shift and only just crawled beside you, too tired and too content with the knowledge of your upcoming shared day to bother waking you up. He hadn’t been scheduled to work last night and had gone in to help with some sort of situation, that’s all that Jack had told you. You’ll probably find out later, but for now it’s out there and you are in here.
You blink your eyes open slowly. It’s all golden, sunlight stretching long across the sheets. Jack is still flat on his back beside you, mouth open, exhaustion etched into every line of his face even in sleep. In the morning light you can still see hints of the auburn he swears he was sporting before you met him, woven into the silver you love so much. Your chest aches so hard it feels almost frightening.
You’ve never loved anybody the way you love Jack. You know he was married before you, you know she was lovely and he’d probably thought her his soulmate and potentially still does. Jack loving you has never been something you’ve ever had to doubt, it’s occasionally the rest of it that keeps you up at night.
All of your friends had been skeptical when you got together. Jack is handsome and kind and loving, but you’re well aware of how an age gap such as the one you two share is viewed. He’s so much older than you, he’s widowed, he’s using you as a midlife crisis. But the thing that had really been the nail in the coffin was that he worked nights.
You’ll never see each other.
It’s said with complete and utter certainty. You work a nine to five in an office, he works 12 hour night shifts. He’s almost fifty, almost twice your age, he’s been to war. One of you will realise you are lonely and the whole thing will collapse under the weight of unpracticality.
And maybe that would’ve happened if anything about loving Jack felt practical. You remember the first morning you woke beside him, how careful he’d been with you despite the fact that you’d been the one to climb into his lap of your own accord.
He’d looked embarrassed. He couldn’t believe you’d let him fuck you, how close he’d been allowed to get to you, the most beautiful thing he’d ever contextualise within himself. Now your toothbrush lives beside his, you share closets, dishes, bedsheets.
There are moments with Jack that feel so unbearably tender, the love inside you has nowhere it’s allowed to travel. It sits beneath your ribs like panic, grief’s kinder cousin.
His hand is wrapped around your wrist, reaching for you even in his unconscious mind. This is what love has to be, you think. Him coming home while you sleep, exhausted beyond reason and still showering before hitting the sheets because he knows you sleep there too. Your hand rests on his chest, right above his heart. A rhythm that has existed long before you perceived it but that feels solely and entirely yours.
You somewhat forget yourself around him, but it’s so hard not to when you’re so eagerly pulled under with him, swallowing grateful around the lethe, gulping desperate mouthfuls of oxygen from his own mouth. Jack has never in your lifetime with him, made you feel anything other than a constant and permanent fixture in his life.
From where his nose is pressed to your hairline, Jack exhales slowly. “You’re thinking too loud.”
You jolt violently enough that he laughs, eyes still shut. “Asshole.” Your heart rate spikes. “How long have you been awake?”
His eyes crack open finally, unfathomably fond and unfocused in the morning light. For a moment he looks at you, one large hand resting heavy against your spine like he doesn’t quite believe you’re real in the daylight. He looks at you like he already loves every version of you that will ever exist.
“Not long,” he says. “Woke up when you started groping me.” He brings the hand holding your wrist to rest on top of yours on his chest. “C’mere,” he says, as thought you could possibly be any closer.
The soft morning makes him look almost boyish, sweet and lovely and you’ve never loved anyone quite as much as you love him. In the year that you’ve been together he’s gone a lot greyer, something which you can tell bothers him but is really working for you.
It doesn’t take very long for the warmth to spread from your chest, lower and lower, until it comes to a stop between your legs.
“Hi,” you whisper. There’s always something almost startled in his face the few times you do get to watch him wake up. Like he can’t believe you are here.
He grins at you. “Hi, sweetheart.” He knows without you needing to tell him about the arousal that’s pooled between your legs. “It’s so early,” is all he says, rubbing your back with his large palm.
“Not my fault,” you say, cheeks warming. If Jack wasn’t wholly dedicated to showing you exactly how into you he is you’d probably be a little more embarrassed. It’s hard to feel shame around it when your boyfriend’s libido seems to be impossibly increased in his old age. “It’s how you usually like to wake me up when you get home from work.”
He laughs at that, conceding to you. Sometimes it’s all that can ground him when he gets home from a hard shift, you and your unfathomable softness and how beautifully you take him. The noises you whine into his ear, the way you let him steal the air directly from your lungs.
If anyone’s at fault for the pavlovian response brought forth from your normal morning routine, Jack can’t argue against it being him. Especially not with him pressed into your hip, brought forth entirely from your own want.
The space between you closes the rest of the way without intentional effort from either of you. Your mouth is hot and warm against his, both his hands worming under your light pyjama top, not hurried but immensely enjoyable in the familiarity of the thing.
“You alright?” Jack asks against your lips.
You nod, less of an answer and more serving as permission. “Yeah,” he mumbles, almost as if you’re not in the room. “Okay, I can do that for you.”
It’s the least he can do, really.










