𓂃 ₊ ⊹ ꒰ 🍷 ꒱ . . . ALYSSIA/LYSS ೀ she/her ೀ smut/angst centric blog ( aka mdni ) ೀ june cancer ೀ the pitt fanatic ೀ part time healthcare worker ೀ full time student ೀ twenty-one
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━━ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . jack abbot x morgue tech!reader ; after your shift, you go upstairs to the er looking for jack and you run into a few of your boyfriend's coworkers, they bring to your attention just how large jack abbot really is ━ 4.2k
field trip ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . to THE MORGUE
By the time you finished shift change down downstairs, the hospital had already begun its slow transition from night to morning. The morgue never changed much regardless of the hour.
The fluorescent lights still hummed overhead with the same dull persistence they had at midnight. The air stilled smelled faintly of antiseptic and cold metal and the industrial cleaner the day shift janitors liked to use too heavily.
The prep tables remained clean and pristine despite the three autopsies that you had preformed. It was peaceful for lack of a better word. But upstairs, however, the hospital would be just beginning to wake up.
The emergency department at six in the morning was an entirely different beast than the morgue tucked neatly beneath it. This place moved fast even when exhausted.
The whole floor pulsed with motion and noise and overstimulation.
You hated it.
Don't mistake your dislike for the environment for the dislike of the people inhabiting it. You wouldn't say you were friends with the ER staff, but you were on chit chatting terms with a lot of them since beginning dating Jack. But the sheer amount of everything put you especially at unease.
Too many voices, too many bodies darting from one side of the ER to the other, and that meant too many opportunities for someone to accidentally touch you in passing.
Which is why you usually stayed downstairs until Jack came to get you. That had become your routine somewhere along the line. Most mornings, by the time you clocked out and gathered your things, Jack was already leaning against your desk in the morgue office with that perpetually exhausted look on his face and a coffee in his hand.
Then the two of you would leave together before either of your brains fully registered another twelve hour shift had passed.
This morning, however, he hadn't shown. You were a little disappointed but you weren't outrageously upset about it. You knew that Jack got held up all the time and while this meant you would have to brave the ER again, it wasn't his fault.
Trauma cases sometimes came in unexpectedly, shift hand off lasted longer when it was busier than usual, and you knew that Robby had a tendency to trap Jack into talking about things that didn't have anything to do with the hospital. Like his new on again, off again situationship with Noelle Hastings from social work.
So after a few minutes, you simply slung your bag over your shoulder, grabbed your water bottle, and made your way upstairs. The elevator ride alone nearly convinced you to turn around.
By the time the doors opened onto the ER floor, the department was already in full swing. Phones rang somewhere in the distance. Someone laughed too loudly near the nurses’ station. A monitor beeped insistently from one of the trauma bays, while an exhausted nurse muttered something under her breath about needing a Red Bull.
You immediately regretted coming up here.
Keeping your head down, you slipped towards the break room near the back hallway, careful not to drift into anybody's path. The last thing you wanted after twelve hours underground was to become collateral damage in the organized chaos of emergency medicine.
You set your things down carefully on the small table inside the break room before leaning your head just barely out the doorway. To the left sat the employee lockers and a supply alcove. To the right was the command desk, where everyone eventually flocked and housed the patient boards.
Jack stood there with Robby and Dana, one hand braced against the edge of the counter while the other rested loosely on his hip.
Even from across the department, you could easily see the exhaustion that sat heavily across his shoulders.
The dark scrub top stretched across his back whenever he shifted slightly, and the dark wash cargo pants he wore instead of scrub bottoms sat low on his hips beneath the hem of his shirt.
You couldn't hear from where you were, but you could see Robby's mouth moving and Dana's wholly unimpressed look. You can only imagine what they were talking about. Jack, meanwhile, looked like a man mentally calculating how quickly he could escape the conversation.
Whether he saw you immediately when you entered the ER or simply felts your stare, you didn't know, but his head turned after a moment.
His eyes landed on you instantly and his whole expression changed, annoyance discarded and replaced with pure unadulterated affection. The change was small enough that most people wouldn't have noticed it. But you spent more time staring at Jack Abbot's face than most, so it was easy for you to spot.
Jack's brows lifted slightly before he brought his hands together in a quick apologetic and his mouth formed the word sorry from across the room. You smiled at him despite yourself. He glanced down at his watch before holding up five fingers.
You nodded once. His mouth curved with something guilty and fond all at once before his expression returned to what it was before he saw you and he turned back towards Robby. It was almost comical how fast the stoicism settled over his face again like armor sliding back into place.
You watched him for another moment longer than you probably should've. Long enough to notice the slight tension around his jaw. Long enough that you begun to wonder if his prosthetic was bothering him after being on it all night and then forced to stand there while Robby prodded him for dating advice.
Long enough that the clap against your back caught you completely off guard and nearly sent your soul directly out of your body. You startled violently. "Oh my god—"
"Morning, Morgie."
You turned to find Trinity grinning at you like she'd just caught you with your pants down and your hand in the cookie jar. Dennis lingered behind her with the distinct energy of a man who already regretted participating in whatever conversation was about to occur.
You exhaled slowly, trying to calm your pulse. "Hi, Dr. Santos."
"You headed out?" she asked, a mischievous look in her eye.
"Trying to," you answered honestly.
Trinity barely acknowledged the response. She leaned casually against the doorway beside you like the two of you were old friends instead of occasional workplace acquaintances who primarily exchanged polite nods in passing.
You had known people like Trinity your entire life. Loud people, you mean. People who filled silence immediately and naturally. People endlessly willing to push boundaries just to see what would happen. That wasn't to say you didn't like her.
If anything, you suspected under different circumstances you could probably even be friends. Unfortunately, friendship required social energy you often did not possess after working nights in basement with dead people.
Still, you tried. If not for your sake, then for Jack's. These were his coworkers and you were his girlfriend, you were bound to run into them more often than not, so a good relationship was paramount in your opinion.
"How are you doing?" you asked politely. She had ignored the question entirely, opting for her own line of questioning. "So," she started, eye bright with mischief already, "you and Abbot are like a thing, right?"
You stomach dropped. "What?" Never in a million years did you think that was going to be her question.
Dennis looked like he wanted the floor to open and consume him whole. Trinity, meanwhile, looked absolutely delighted with herself. "Oh, come one," she said. "You guys are not subtle."
You blinked at her.
You genuinely had not realized that people knew. You and Jack were not actively hiding your relationship persay. The two of you just simply hadn't announced it. You didn't exactly have a social circle to update, and Jack was not the type to stand in the middle of the ER making declarations about his personal life.
But apparently none of that really mattered.
Apparently the entire hospital had functioning eyeballs. Before you could figure out how to respond to that, Trinity continued. "But I gotta ask," she said lowering her voice slightly despite the wicked grin still pulling at her mouth, "is he packing? Because that man walks like it's heavy."
Your brain stalled completely.
Packing? Walks like it, what? Those were only some of the thoughts running through your head. You frowned in confusion. "What?"
Trinity stared at you, disbelieving. "You know," she waved her hands slightly as if that would suddenly make you understand what she was referring to.
"No," you admitted slowly, "I actually don't."
For one horrifying second, you genuinely thought she was talkng about his prosthetic. You eyes flicked instinctively toward Jack again. He shifted slightly near the desk, probably trying to relieve pressure from standing too long.
Concern immediately sparked in your chest. Was his leg hurting him?
"Santos," Dennis whisper hissed, scandalized, "you cannot ask people stuff like that."
"What?" she asked. "I've been catching print for the last hour. I'm curious!"
Now you were even more confused. What did that even mean, catching print? Surely she wasn't referring to his prosthetic. You didn't have the greatest view of his leg as it was obscured by the other, but even so it was very difficult to notice it under his cargo pants even under the right circumstances.
"Catching what?" you asked.
She blinked at you incredulously. Dennis covered his face with one hand. "You don't know what that means?" she asked.
"Should I?"
In hindsight, the grin that spread across Trinity's face then should have terrified you, but all you felt was embarrassment beginning to creep up your neck. "Oh my god," she breathed. "Okay. Wait."
Before you could react, she stepped closer beside you and pointed subtly towards the command desk. You followed her gaze automatically. Jack still stood talking with Robby and Dana, completely unaware he was currently the subject of discussion.
"I'm confus—"
"Wait for it," Trinity interrupted.
Jack shifted his weight to his good leg, trying to relieve some of the pressure. You noticed immediately because you always noticed when he was compensating with his good leg after a long shift. You eyes dropped instinctively toward the prosthetic, mentally cataloguing the stiffness in his posture and the slight adjustment of his hips.
Beside you, she groaned dramatically. "Higher," she muttered.
Your brows furrowed but you did as you were told and slowly your gaze dragged upward. Past the heavy line of his thigh. Past the dark wash cargo pants that stretched tighter from the weight shift. You finally understood as your gaze landed on his crotch.
Oh.
Oh.
Your entire body stilled because now that you saw, there was no way for you to unsee it. The fabric across the front of his pants had pulled taut enough to reveal the unmistakable outline of him beneath.
It wasn't obscene or at all intentional. But it was incredibly, horribly noticeable once pointed out. Your stomach dropped directly into hell. Which is exactly where you felt you were. Was it getting hot in here?
It wasn't like this was new information to you. It wasn't like you hadn't seen him naked plenty of times before. It was quite the contrary. You knew exact what Jack looked like beneath his clothes.
You knew the weight of him in your palm, the way his hands gripped your hips when he lost control, you knew the vulgar things that came out of his mouth when he got worked up enough.
This was different. This was public.
This was your boyfriend standing in the middle of the emergency department discussing hospital operations while his coworkers apparently conducted active investigations into the outline of his dick.
Another reason you hated the ER, pointless conversation about topics that were better left unspoken.
And to make matters worse, Jack clearly had no idea. Because you knew that had Jack been turned on right now, his neck would be flushed under his stubble, his fists would flex unconsciously, his shoulders would tense.
Instead he remained entirely relaxed, still focused on whatever Robby was saying. Meaning that it was simply him. Your face went hot enough to physically hurt. Beside you, Trinity looked seconds away from tears from how hard she was trying not to laugh.
You couldn't speak.
You couldn't breath.
Trinity watched your expression transform in real time and absolutely lit up with satisfaction. Because not only had she succeeded in getting her answer, she had effectively embarrassed the life out of you.
"There it is."
Your eyes remained locked on Jack against your will. Because now that you noticed, your brain seemed insistent on replaying memory after memory. Dear God.
Had it always been that noticeable?
You felt mildly sick and somehow even sicker knowing Trinity was watching you realize it. "I, um, have nothing to say on the matter." She finally broke and a loud laugh burst out of her before she slapped Dennis on the shoulder.
"Come on, Huckleberry," she cackled, still grinning wildly. "We've ruined Morgie's morning enough." Then she simply walked away. Leaving you standing there in the break room doorway, staring at your boyfriend across the ER.
You almost didn't answer the door.
The thought had crossed your mind somewhere between your bed and the kitchen island, sometime after you'd buried yourself beneath your comforter and convinced yourself that if you ignored the problem it would eventually disappear.
Unfortunately, simply not answering the door wouldn't make everything alright again, because Jack wasn't actually the problem.
The problem was you.
It was how Jack made you feel.
Jack was thoughtful and kind.
The sort of man who noticed when you skipped meals, remembered your favorite takeout order and worried when you took the bus home when he was supposed to drive you.
The sort of man currently standing in your apartment hallway balancing enough food to feed a small family. You chewed nervously on your lip for a moment as you stared through the peephole.
You hesitated opening the door but ultimately unlocked the dead bolt and pulled open the heavy door. "Jack?" you questioned.
The second the door opened, his attention settled on you. "Hey, pretty girl."
The greeting came naturally as if it had been your name forever rather than just for the last few months. His gaze moved over you quickly but it didn't feel invasive or scrutinizing. You could tell he was looking for signs of the sickness you had told him you'd suddenly come down with.
"Can I come in?"
You didn't really understand why but with those four words, your guilt doubled. Your stomach lurched as you stepped aside without argument. "You didn't have to do all this."
"Yeah, I did," he muttered.
He leaned his crutches against the kitchen island as he began to pull out the various food items.
The apartment suddenly felt smaller with him inside it, and it wasn't because his large frame took up most of your kitchen. His broad shoulders seemed to take up more space than physically possible. But more importantly, when he was here, it felt warmer and homey. Jack made your tiny studio feel different simply by existing in it.
"You look better than I expected."
You could tell the statement was carefully curated. Meant to reassure himself of your state but not as to blatantly say I knew you were lying when you said you were sick.
So you did what you do best in these situations. You doubled down. "I told you it wasn't serious," you explained.
"Mhm." The hum could have meant absolutely anything and the different possibilities were making your head spin.
You watched him continue unpacking the food. Container after container appeared. Then you also noticed the drink carrier and the large water bottle he pulled out from under his arm.
"I didn't know what sounded good," he explained. "So I got options."
You stared. "Jack . . ," you trailed.
"Breakfast sandwich. Turkey club, incase you were thinking lunch and chicken noodle, if you're feeling nauseous." Another container joined the lineup. "Hash browns, too."
"Jack, thats too much."
"I know you forget to eat sometimes and I am almost ninety nine percent sure that's what's making you feel sick." He finally glances over at you. "So please. Eat."
Your chest tightened because there it was again. That awful problem. The caring and the concern. The complete inability to stop looking after people.
You had spent the entire bus ride home feeling ridiculous. Now you felt ridiculous and guilty. A terrible combination, especially when it came to you.
"You sure your head's the only thing bothering you?" Your eyes snapped upward.
Jack had settled on to the couch now, crutches leaned against the coffee table as he pulled off his prosthetic. Then leaned back against the cushions with the exhausted posture of a man who had spent twelve hours standing.
He tilted his head back and rolled his neck. His legs spread as he shifted further into the couch. Your eyes gravitated towards his thighs and for the first time, you noticed he was wearing gray sweatpants. You immediately looked elsewhere.
"I'm just tired," you said quickly, averting your eyes by any means necessary.
"Baby, you've been tired before." His voice remained calm, very matter-of-fact. "This is different," he continued.
You cursed yourself for letting this silly situation spiral like this. You cursed yourself for letting him in the door and most of all, you cursed yourself for being so damn readable.
He had been in your apartment for all of ten minutes and he had already noticed the change in your behavior. Very Jack Abbot of him and very much the bane of your existence.
You groaned loudly, "Oh my god, I'm acting weird."
"A little." You hadn't expected him to agree with you so outright, so your face fell a little when you heard his words. Jack immediately softened. "Not bad weird. Just a little off."
The apartment fell quiet. You looked away. Suddenly finding everything else more interesting. The outside city noises. A dog barking somewhere down the street. The soft hum of your ancient refrigerator.
"Honey?"
"Hm?" You respond but you definitely don't look towards him.
"Tell me what's going on."
You continued to stare stubbornly at the floor. If you didn't answer maybe he'd forget. At least that's what your were foolish enough to think. Unfortunately for you, Jack Abbot possessed the patience of a man who spent his life talking terrified patients through terrible situations.
Silence didn't scare him. It merely encouraged him to wait longer. When you sill didn't answer, he sighed. A change in tactics was in store for you. "C'mere."
You blinked, confused, "What?"
"Your shoulders are practically touching your ears." He tipped his chin towards the couch. "Sit down," he ordered.
"I don't think—"
"Sit."
His command wasn't malicious or harsh. It wasn't even particularly forceful. Yet somehow you found yourself crossing the room anyway. He shifted immediately to make space for you. The moment you sat down, he maneuvered you until your back was facing him and his hands settled on your shoulders. You nearly folded in half at the feeling.
"Oh my god."
"I told you." His thumbs worked slowly through the knots gathered at the base of your neck. You hadn't noticed how tense you'd gotten until this moment. How every muscle in your body had tightened up in your fucked up sense of self preservation.
But as his hands continued to work over the area, the more you relaxed and in more ways than one. The problem was that Jack's hands felt entirely too good. The problem was also that Jack himself felt entirely too good. The problem was definitely not helped by the gray sweatpants and the fact that you were still very much in the proverbial doghouse you had put yourself in.
"You're tight as hell," he mumbled and a strangled sound escaped before you could stop it. Jack froze, one eyebrow raised. "Okay, seriously. What is going on?"
You immediately covered your face as heat flooded your cheeks. "Hey." A hand squeezed your shoulder. "Come on, baby. We talked about communicating, it's important to me."
You groaned into your hands. "Ugh, it's so embarrassing. I don't wanna tell you."
"Well, now you have to," he teased. "It's just me."
"Exactly my point. It's you." You swear if he lifted his eyebrows any further they'd brush his hairline. "Alright, now I'm definitely confused."
You debated lying again. Considered a different excuse, something wholly more believable. But again, Jack had that way about him, which somehow made honesty inevitable.
"While I was waiting for you," you finally muttered, "Santos came up to me and she said—"
Jack straightened immediately. "What? If she crossed a line, I'll have a talk with her."
"No." You sat upright and turned to him so fast his hands slipped from your shoulders. "No. That would definitely not help."
"Okay," he conceded, though suspicion still laced his voice. "Can you tell me what she said?"
You sighed. "She was just being . . ." You searched for the appropriate description. "Being Santos."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"No, I know." You looked down at your hands. "She asked if we were together."
Jack frowned. "Does that make you upset? That people know?"
"No." You almost shout, the answer coming immediately. You softened slightly. "I mean, I know we weren't necessarily hiding it. I just didn't realize how many people knew."
Understanding flickered across his face. Then disappeared almost as quick as it had appeared. "Alright," his voice gentled. "Then what's got you so twisted up?"
And there it was.
This was the moment. The point of no return.
You stared at the wall. Then the floor. Then your hands. Anywhere except Jack. Finally, mortified beyond belief, you mumbled, "she asked if you were 'packing.'"
The silence that followed was immediate.
"What?"
You squeezed your eyes shut, mentally preparing for your next words. "And then she said—and I quote—'he walks like it's heavy.'"
For one glorious second, Jack looked too stunned to react. Then he laughed.
It wasn't a cruel laugh or mocking. Just genuinely surprised. Which somehow made it worse. "Oh my god." You buried your face in your hands. "You're laughing at me. I knew this was stupid."
"No, baby." He was still smiling but he was shaking his head and waving his hands. "I'm not laughing at you."
"You literally are," you said bluntly because he really was still laughing.
"It's just kinda silly," he confessed.
"Silly?" you repeated. "What about this is silly?"
Jack shook his head. "So what if people noticed?"
"You don't understand."
"No. I do."
The corners of his mouth twitched. "So what if you noticed? Ain't nothing you haven't seen before."
"Jack."
"What?"
His expression remained entirely too innocent. "It's the truth."
"Jack!" Your panicked voice earned another laugh. You groaned dramatically. "Stop laughing."
"I'm trying." He absolutely was not. The smile gave him away.
"C'mere." His hand found your wrist before you could retreat again. The gesture was gentle and familiar. "Baby." The amusement faded slightly and he continued, "you're acting like this is some terrible thing."
"It is terrible."
"Why?"
"You weren't there."
"No." His thumb brushed across your skin."Sounds like I missed a hell of a conversation though," he joked.
You glared. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he looked unbearably fond. “I just—" you exhaled. "I know what you look like, okay? Obviously. But that's private."
Your hand waved vaguely between the two of you. "That's ours."
For the first time since arriving, Jack's smile softened completely. "Then suddenly she points it out and now I'm standing there staring at your pants in the middle of the ER like some kind of pervert."
"Oh."
You narrowed your eyes. “What do you mean oh?”
The grin returned instantly. "Are you jealous other people noticed?"
"No!"
You stood without really thinking it through. This was how it was with you. Your instinct was always flight over fight. Unfortunately, Jack caught your wrist. "Nope." The grin widened. "You started this conversation. You're finishing it."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
His eyes lingered on your face. "You're embarrassed because Dr. Santos pointed out something you already spend a lotta time thinkin' about."
Your mouth dropped open.
"I do not."
One eyebrow lifted. You immediately looked away. Which told him everything he needed to know.
His laugh returned. "Hey." Your eyes remained firmly fixed on the opposite wall. "Pretty girl."
"Jack, that's not helping."
"You know I like knowing you think about me like that, right?"
Your face somehow became hotter. "Stop."
"What?" His expression remained shameless. "Sweetheart, we've slept together. More than once."
"Please stop talking."
"There is nothin' embarrassing about bein' attracted to me." You stared. Jack shrugged. "Frankly, I'd be a little concerned if you weren't."
Despite everything. Despite the embarrassment. Despite Trinity Santos. Despite spending over two hours making yourself miserable, a laugh escaped.
The moment it did, Jack's expression softened.
"There she is."
You rolled your eyes. The words settled somewhere warm despite your best efforts to resist them.
And the knot that had been sitting in your chest since sunrise finally began to loosen.
━━ ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . jack abbot x morgue tech!reader ; after your shift, you go upstairs to the er looking for jack and you run into a few of your boyfriend's coworkers, they bring to your attention just how large jack abbot really is ━ 4.2k
field trip ⋆ . 𐙚 ̊ . to THE MORGUE
By the time you finished shift change down downstairs, the hospital had already begun its slow transition from night to morning. The morgue never changed much regardless of the hour.
The fluorescent lights still hummed overhead with the same dull persistence they had at midnight. The air stilled smelled faintly of antiseptic and cold metal and the industrial cleaner the day shift janitors liked to use too heavily.
The prep tables remained clean and pristine despite the three autopsies that you had preformed. It was peaceful for lack of a better word. But upstairs, however, the hospital would be just beginning to wake up.
The emergency department at six in the morning was an entirely different beast than the morgue tucked neatly beneath it. This place moved fast even when exhausted.
The whole floor pulsed with motion and noise and overstimulation.
You hated it.
Don't mistake your dislike for the environment for the dislike of the people inhabiting it. You wouldn't say you were friends with the ER staff, but you were on chit chatting terms with a lot of them since beginning dating Jack. But the sheer amount of everything put you especially at unease.
Too many voices, too many bodies darting from one side of the ER to the other, and that meant too many opportunities for someone to accidentally touch you in passing.
Which is why you usually stayed downstairs until Jack came to get you. That had become your routine somewhere along the line. Most mornings, by the time you clocked out and gathered your things, Jack was already leaning against your desk in the morgue office with that perpetually exhausted look on his face and a coffee in his hand.
Then the two of you would leave together before either of your brains fully registered another twelve hour shift had passed.
This morning, however, he hadn't shown. You were a little disappointed but you weren't outrageously upset about it. You knew that Jack got held up all the time and while this meant you would have to brave the ER again, it wasn't his fault.
Trauma cases sometimes came in unexpectedly, shift hand off lasted longer when it was busier than usual, and you knew that Robby had a tendency to trap Jack into talking about things that didn't have anything to do with the hospital. Like his new on again, off again situationship with Noelle Hastings from social work.
So after a few minutes, you simply slung your bag over your shoulder, grabbed your water bottle, and made your way upstairs. The elevator ride alone nearly convinced you to turn around.
By the time the doors opened onto the ER floor, the department was already in full swing. Phones rang somewhere in the distance. Someone laughed too loudly near the nurses’ station. A monitor beeped insistently from one of the trauma bays, while an exhausted nurse muttered something under her breath about needing a Red Bull.
You immediately regretted coming up here.
Keeping your head down, you slipped towards the break room near the back hallway, careful not to drift into anybody's path. The last thing you wanted after twelve hours underground was to become collateral damage in the organized chaos of emergency medicine.
You set your things down carefully on the small table inside the break room before leaning your head just barely out the doorway. To the left sat the employee lockers and a supply alcove. To the right was the command desk, where everyone eventually flocked and housed the patient boards.
Jack stood there with Robby and Dana, one hand braced against the edge of the counter while the other rested loosely on his hip.
Even from across the department, you could easily see the exhaustion that sat heavily across his shoulders.
The dark scrub top stretched across his back whenever he shifted slightly, and the dark wash cargo pants he wore instead of scrub bottoms sat low on his hips beneath the hem of his shirt.
You couldn't hear from where you were, but you could see Robby's mouth moving and Dana's wholly unimpressed look. You can only imagine what they were talking about. Jack, meanwhile, looked like a man mentally calculating how quickly he could escape the conversation.
Whether he saw you immediately when you entered the ER or simply felts your stare, you didn't know, but his head turned after a moment.
His eyes landed on you instantly and his whole expression changed, annoyance discarded and replaced with pure unadulterated affection. The change was small enough that most people wouldn't have noticed it. But you spent more time staring at Jack Abbot's face than most, so it was easy for you to spot.
Jack's brows lifted slightly before he brought his hands together in a quick apologetic and his mouth formed the word sorry from across the room. You smiled at him despite yourself. He glanced down at his watch before holding up five fingers.
You nodded once. His mouth curved with something guilty and fond all at once before his expression returned to what it was before he saw you and he turned back towards Robby. It was almost comical how fast the stoicism settled over his face again like armor sliding back into place.
You watched him for another moment longer than you probably should've. Long enough to notice the slight tension around his jaw. Long enough that you begun to wonder if his prosthetic was bothering him after being on it all night and then forced to stand there while Robby prodded him for dating advice.
Long enough that the clap against your back caught you completely off guard and nearly sent your soul directly out of your body. You startled violently. "Oh my god—"
"Morning, Morgie."
You turned to find Trinity grinning at you like she'd just caught you with your pants down and your hand in the cookie jar. Dennis lingered behind her with the distinct energy of a man who already regretted participating in whatever conversation was about to occur.
You exhaled slowly, trying to calm your pulse. "Hi, Dr. Santos."
"You headed out?" she asked, a mischievous look in her eye.
"Trying to," you answered honestly.
Trinity barely acknowledged the response. She leaned casually against the doorway beside you like the two of you were old friends instead of occasional workplace acquaintances who primarily exchanged polite nods in passing.
You had known people like Trinity your entire life. Loud people, you mean. People who filled silence immediately and naturally. People endlessly willing to push boundaries just to see what would happen. That wasn't to say you didn't like her.
If anything, you suspected under different circumstances you could probably even be friends. Unfortunately, friendship required social energy you often did not possess after working nights in basement with dead people.
Still, you tried. If not for your sake, then for Jack's. These were his coworkers and you were his girlfriend, you were bound to run into them more often than not, so a good relationship was paramount in your opinion.
"How are you doing?" you asked politely. She had ignored the question entirely, opting for her own line of questioning. "So," she started, eye bright with mischief already, "you and Abbot are like a thing, right?"
You stomach dropped. "What?" Never in a million years did you think that was going to be her question.
Dennis looked like he wanted the floor to open and consume him whole. Trinity, meanwhile, looked absolutely delighted with herself. "Oh, come one," she said. "You guys are not subtle."
You blinked at her.
You genuinely had not realized that people knew. You and Jack were not actively hiding your relationship persay. The two of you just simply hadn't announced it. You didn't exactly have a social circle to update, and Jack was not the type to stand in the middle of the ER making declarations about his personal life.
But apparently none of that really mattered.
Apparently the entire hospital had functioning eyeballs. Before you could figure out how to respond to that, Trinity continued. "But I gotta ask," she said lowering her voice slightly despite the wicked grin still pulling at her mouth, "is he packing? Because that man walks like it's heavy."
Your brain stalled completely.
Packing? Walks like it, what? Those were only some of the thoughts running through your head. You frowned in confusion. "What?"
Trinity stared at you, disbelieving. "You know," she waved her hands slightly as if that would suddenly make you understand what she was referring to.
"No," you admitted slowly, "I actually don't."
For one horrifying second, you genuinely thought she was talkng about his prosthetic. You eyes flicked instinctively toward Jack again. He shifted slightly near the desk, probably trying to relieve pressure from standing too long.
Concern immediately sparked in your chest. Was his leg hurting him?
"Santos," Dennis whisper hissed, scandalized, "you cannot ask people stuff like that."
"What?" she asked. "I've been catching print for the last hour. I'm curious!"
Now you were even more confused. What did that even mean, catching print? Surely she wasn't referring to his prosthetic. You didn't have the greatest view of his leg as it was obscured by the other, but even so it was very difficult to notice it under his cargo pants even under the right circumstances.
"Catching what?" you asked.
She blinked at you incredulously. Dennis covered his face with one hand. "You don't know what that means?" she asked.
"Should I?"
In hindsight, the grin that spread across Trinity's face then should have terrified you, but all you felt was embarrassment beginning to creep up your neck. "Oh my god," she breathed. "Okay. Wait."
Before you could react, she stepped closer beside you and pointed subtly towards the command desk. You followed her gaze automatically. Jack still stood talking with Robby and Dana, completely unaware he was currently the subject of discussion.
"I'm confus—"
"Wait for it," Trinity interrupted.
Jack shifted his weight to his good leg, trying to relieve some of the pressure. You noticed immediately because you always noticed when he was compensating with his good leg after a long shift. You eyes dropped instinctively toward the prosthetic, mentally cataloguing the stiffness in his posture and the slight adjustment of his hips.
Beside you, she groaned dramatically. "Higher," she muttered.
Your brows furrowed but you did as you were told and slowly your gaze dragged upward. Past the heavy line of his thigh. Past the dark wash cargo pants that stretched tighter from the weight shift. You finally understood as your gaze landed on his crotch.
Oh.
Oh.
Your entire body stilled because now that you saw, there was no way for you to unsee it. The fabric across the front of his pants had pulled taut enough to reveal the unmistakable outline of him beneath.
It wasn't obscene or at all intentional. But it was incredibly, horribly noticeable once pointed out. Your stomach dropped directly into hell. Which is exactly where you felt you were. Was it getting hot in here?
It wasn't like this was new information to you. It wasn't like you hadn't seen him naked plenty of times before. It was quite the contrary. You knew exact what Jack looked like beneath his clothes.
You knew the weight of him in your palm, the way his hands gripped your hips when he lost control, you knew the vulgar things that came out of his mouth when he got worked up enough.
This was different. This was public.
This was your boyfriend standing in the middle of the emergency department discussing hospital operations while his coworkers apparently conducted active investigations into the outline of his dick.
Another reason you hated the ER, pointless conversation about topics that were better left unspoken.
And to make matters worse, Jack clearly had no idea. Because you knew that had Jack been turned on right now, his neck would be flushed under his stubble, his fists would flex unconsciously, his shoulders would tense.
Instead he remained entirely relaxed, still focused on whatever Robby was saying. Meaning that it was simply him. Your face went hot enough to physically hurt. Beside you, Trinity looked seconds away from tears from how hard she was trying not to laugh.
You couldn't speak.
You couldn't breath.
Trinity watched your expression transform in real time and absolutely lit up with satisfaction. Because not only had she succeeded in getting her answer, she had effectively embarrassed the life out of you.
"There it is."
Your eyes remained locked on Jack against your will. Because now that you noticed, your brain seemed insistent on replaying memory after memory. Dear God.
Had it always been that noticeable?
You felt mildly sick and somehow even sicker knowing Trinity was watching you realize it. "I, um, have nothing to say on the matter." She finally broke and a loud laugh burst out of her before she slapped Dennis on the shoulder.
"Come on, Huckleberry," she cackled, still grinning wildly. "We've ruined Morgie's morning enough." Then she simply walked away. Leaving you standing there in the break room doorway, staring at your boyfriend across the ER.
You almost didn't answer the door.
The thought had crossed your mind somewhere between your bed and the kitchen island, sometime after you'd buried yourself beneath your comforter and convinced yourself that if you ignored the problem it would eventually disappear.
Unfortunately, simply not answering the door wouldn't make everything alright again, because Jack wasn't actually the problem.
The problem was you.
It was how Jack made you feel.
Jack was thoughtful and kind.
The sort of man who noticed when you skipped meals, remembered your favorite takeout order and worried when you took the bus home when he was supposed to drive you.
The sort of man currently standing in your apartment hallway balancing enough food to feed a small family. You chewed nervously on your lip for a moment as you stared through the peephole.
You hesitated opening the door but ultimately unlocked the dead bolt and pulled open the heavy door. "Jack?" you questioned.
The second the door opened, his attention settled on you. "Hey, pretty girl."
The greeting came naturally as if it had been your name forever rather than just for the last few months. His gaze moved over you quickly but it didn't feel invasive or scrutinizing. You could tell he was looking for signs of the sickness you had told him you'd suddenly come down with.
"Can I come in?"
You didn't really understand why but with those four words, your guilt doubled. Your stomach lurched as you stepped aside without argument. "You didn't have to do all this."
"Yeah, I did," he muttered.
He leaned his crutches against the kitchen island as he began to pull out the various food items.
The apartment suddenly felt smaller with him inside it, and it wasn't because his large frame took up most of your kitchen. His broad shoulders seemed to take up more space than physically possible. But more importantly, when he was here, it felt warmer and homey. Jack made your tiny studio feel different simply by existing in it.
"You look better than I expected."
You could tell the statement was carefully curated. Meant to reassure himself of your state but not as to blatantly say I knew you were lying when you said you were sick.
So you did what you do best in these situations. You doubled down. "I told you it wasn't serious," you explained.
"Mhm." The hum could have meant absolutely anything and the different possibilities were making your head spin.
You watched him continue unpacking the food. Container after container appeared. Then you also noticed the drink carrier and the large water bottle he pulled out from under his arm.
"I didn't know what sounded good," he explained. "So I got options."
You stared. "Jack . . ," you trailed.
"Breakfast sandwich. Turkey club, incase you were thinking lunch and chicken noodle, if you're feeling nauseous." Another container joined the lineup. "Hash browns, too."
"Jack, thats too much."
"I know you forget to eat sometimes and I am almost ninety nine percent sure that's what's making you feel sick." He finally glances over at you. "So please. Eat."
Your chest tightened because there it was again. That awful problem. The caring and the concern. The complete inability to stop looking after people.
You had spent the entire bus ride home feeling ridiculous. Now you felt ridiculous and guilty. A terrible combination, especially when it came to you.
"You sure your head's the only thing bothering you?" Your eyes snapped upward.
Jack had settled on to the couch now, crutches leaned against the coffee table as he pulled off his prosthetic. Then leaned back against the cushions with the exhausted posture of a man who had spent twelve hours standing.
He tilted his head back and rolled his neck. His legs spread as he shifted further into the couch. Your eyes gravitated towards his thighs and for the first time, you noticed he was wearing gray sweatpants. You immediately looked elsewhere.
"I'm just tired," you said quickly, averting your eyes by any means necessary.
"Baby, you've been tired before." His voice remained calm, very matter-of-fact. "This is different," he continued.
You cursed yourself for letting this silly situation spiral like this. You cursed yourself for letting him in the door and most of all, you cursed yourself for being so damn readable.
He had been in your apartment for all of ten minutes and he had already noticed the change in your behavior. Very Jack Abbot of him and very much the bane of your existence.
You groaned loudly, "Oh my god, I'm acting weird."
"A little." You hadn't expected him to agree with you so outright, so your face fell a little when you heard his words. Jack immediately softened. "Not bad weird. Just a little off."
The apartment fell quiet. You looked away. Suddenly finding everything else more interesting. The outside city noises. A dog barking somewhere down the street. The soft hum of your ancient refrigerator.
"Honey?"
"Hm?" You respond but you definitely don't look towards him.
"Tell me what's going on."
You continued to stare stubbornly at the floor. If you didn't answer maybe he'd forget. At least that's what your were foolish enough to think. Unfortunately for you, Jack Abbot possessed the patience of a man who spent his life talking terrified patients through terrible situations.
Silence didn't scare him. It merely encouraged him to wait longer. When you sill didn't answer, he sighed. A change in tactics was in store for you. "C'mere."
You blinked, confused, "What?"
"Your shoulders are practically touching your ears." He tipped his chin towards the couch. "Sit down," he ordered.
"I don't think—"
"Sit."
His command wasn't malicious or harsh. It wasn't even particularly forceful. Yet somehow you found yourself crossing the room anyway. He shifted immediately to make space for you. The moment you sat down, he maneuvered you until your back was facing him and his hands settled on your shoulders. You nearly folded in half at the feeling.
"Oh my god."
"I told you." His thumbs worked slowly through the knots gathered at the base of your neck. You hadn't noticed how tense you'd gotten until this moment. How every muscle in your body had tightened up in your fucked up sense of self preservation.
But as his hands continued to work over the area, the more you relaxed and in more ways than one. The problem was that Jack's hands felt entirely too good. The problem was also that Jack himself felt entirely too good. The problem was definitely not helped by the gray sweatpants and the fact that you were still very much in the proverbial doghouse you had put yourself in.
"You're tight as hell," he mumbled and a strangled sound escaped before you could stop it. Jack froze, one eyebrow raised. "Okay, seriously. What is going on?"
You immediately covered your face as heat flooded your cheeks. "Hey." A hand squeezed your shoulder. "Come on, baby. We talked about communicating, it's important to me."
You groaned into your hands. "Ugh, it's so embarrassing. I don't wanna tell you."
"Well, now you have to," he teased. "It's just me."
"Exactly my point. It's you." You swear if he lifted his eyebrows any further they'd brush his hairline. "Alright, now I'm definitely confused."
You debated lying again. Considered a different excuse, something wholly more believable. But again, Jack had that way about him, which somehow made honesty inevitable.
"While I was waiting for you," you finally muttered, "Santos came up to me and she said—"
Jack straightened immediately. "What? If she crossed a line, I'll have a talk with her."
"No." You sat upright and turned to him so fast his hands slipped from your shoulders. "No. That would definitely not help."
"Okay," he conceded, though suspicion still laced his voice. "Can you tell me what she said?"
You sighed. "She was just being . . ." You searched for the appropriate description. "Being Santos."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"No, I know." You looked down at your hands. "She asked if we were together."
Jack frowned. "Does that make you upset? That people know?"
"No." You almost shout, the answer coming immediately. You softened slightly. "I mean, I know we weren't necessarily hiding it. I just didn't realize how many people knew."
Understanding flickered across his face. Then disappeared almost as quick as it had appeared. "Alright," his voice gentled. "Then what's got you so twisted up?"
And there it was.
This was the moment. The point of no return.
You stared at the wall. Then the floor. Then your hands. Anywhere except Jack. Finally, mortified beyond belief, you mumbled, "she asked if you were 'packing.'"
The silence that followed was immediate.
"What?"
You squeezed your eyes shut, mentally preparing for your next words. "And then she said—and I quote—'he walks like it's heavy.'"
For one glorious second, Jack looked too stunned to react. Then he laughed.
It wasn't a cruel laugh or mocking. Just genuinely surprised. Which somehow made it worse. "Oh my god." You buried your face in your hands. "You're laughing at me. I knew this was stupid."
"No, baby." He was still smiling but he was shaking his head and waving his hands. "I'm not laughing at you."
"You literally are," you said bluntly because he really was still laughing.
"It's just kinda silly," he confessed.
"Silly?" you repeated. "What about this is silly?"
Jack shook his head. "So what if people noticed?"
"You don't understand."
"No. I do."
The corners of his mouth twitched. "So what if you noticed? Ain't nothing you haven't seen before."
"Jack."
"What?"
His expression remained entirely too innocent. "It's the truth."
"Jack!" Your panicked voice earned another laugh. You groaned dramatically. "Stop laughing."
"I'm trying." He absolutely was not. The smile gave him away.
"C'mere." His hand found your wrist before you could retreat again. The gesture was gentle and familiar. "Baby." The amusement faded slightly and he continued, "you're acting like this is some terrible thing."
"It is terrible."
"Why?"
"You weren't there."
"No." His thumb brushed across your skin."Sounds like I missed a hell of a conversation though," he joked.
You glared. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he looked unbearably fond. “I just—" you exhaled. "I know what you look like, okay? Obviously. But that's private."
Your hand waved vaguely between the two of you. "That's ours."
For the first time since arriving, Jack's smile softened completely. "Then suddenly she points it out and now I'm standing there staring at your pants in the middle of the ER like some kind of pervert."
"Oh."
You narrowed your eyes. “What do you mean oh?”
The grin returned instantly. "Are you jealous other people noticed?"
"No!"
You stood without really thinking it through. This was how it was with you. Your instinct was always flight over fight. Unfortunately, Jack caught your wrist. "Nope." The grin widened. "You started this conversation. You're finishing it."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
His eyes lingered on your face. "You're embarrassed because Dr. Santos pointed out something you already spend a lotta time thinkin' about."
Your mouth dropped open.
"I do not."
One eyebrow lifted. You immediately looked away. Which told him everything he needed to know.
His laugh returned. "Hey." Your eyes remained firmly fixed on the opposite wall. "Pretty girl."
"Jack, that's not helping."
"You know I like knowing you think about me like that, right?"
Your face somehow became hotter. "Stop."
"What?" His expression remained shameless. "Sweetheart, we've slept together. More than once."
"Please stop talking."
"There is nothin' embarrassing about bein' attracted to me." You stared. Jack shrugged. "Frankly, I'd be a little concerned if you weren't."
Despite everything. Despite the embarrassment. Despite Trinity Santos. Despite spending over two hours making yourself miserable, a laugh escaped.
The moment it did, Jack's expression softened.
"There she is."
You rolled your eyes. The words settled somewhere warm despite your best efforts to resist them.
And the knot that had been sitting in your chest since sunrise finally began to loosen.
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you were just a child when the world ended—raised in fear, shaped by survival, protected so tightly that your parents still treat you like you’re made of glass. jackson sees you as soft.
but joel miller sees the truth.
you’re his patrol partner—sunlight with a rifle, warmth in a world that froze over long before the snow came. and joel is the man who lives in the cold. the man who keeps watch. the man who would never dare touch what he wants.
( best read in descending order — but not necessary )
A MOTH TO A LANTERN FLAME
in which tommy finds out about joel's crush on you
GOOD AS NEW
in which joel fixes your glasses
HELPLESS AND FRAGILE
in which your parent express their dislike for you going on patrol and more specifically, you going on patrol with joel
SAFE HAVEN
in which after your fight with your parents, you escape to maria's house
OPEN DOOR
in which you stay the night at joels house
. SALVIFIC /salˈvifik/ adj. leading to salvation
ex. “the man who dragged you from the dark was not holy, but he was salvific all the same.”
ᯓ 𝜗𝜚 MANKIND'S DIVINE PUNISHMENT
⤷ you were raised on scripture, silence, and a father who mistook control for faith. rick grimes wasn’t looking for a miracle when he opened the locked door beneath the church—but he found you anyway and now the man who speaks for god has finally met someone he cannot command
ᯓ 𝜗𝜚 FORGIVE ME FATHER
⤷ three days since rick grimes found locked in a closet in the basement of your church. three days and you still haven't seen him again. three days and you still haven't received punishment from your father
━━ john logan x graham!reader ; wc 3.5k
tw ; mention of parental abuse ( phil graham ) , secret relationship/brothers best friend , kissing , unedited
part one \ part two \ part three
You should have been asleep.
Honestly, you had every intention of staying asleep.
You'd barely stirred when Logan carefully untangled himself from around you a few hours earlier. The second Logan's warmth disappeared from around you, sleep had abandoned you completely. You remembered the sleepy press of lips against your temple, remembered him whispering something about emergency practice before disappearing back through the bathroom with more effort than a six foot hockey player should have needed to move quietly.
You had laid there for nearly twenty minutes staring at the ceiling while cold air slowly replaced the heat his body had left behind. That had been the end of sleep.
Eventually, you gave up and grabbed your laptop instead.
Which was how you ended up cross legged in the middle of your unmade bed at six in the morning, drowning in English literature notes while wearing one of Logan's old briar jerseys like a sleep shirt.
The sleeves hung past your wrist, and the stitched hem brushed against your thighs whenever you shifted beneath the blankets. Your laptop sat balanced on your knees in front of you while color coded note card littered the comforter around your legs in chaotic little piles.
The room smelled faintly like vanilla coffee creamer and Logan's cologne. The thought probably should have bothered you more than it did. Garrett would lose his fucking mind if he saw this.
The thought flickered through your head so automatically it barely registered anymore. By now sneaking around with Logan had become muscle memory. You were half way through rereading your notes on gothic symbolism when the bathroom door connecting your room to his clicked softly.
You barely looked up. That alone probably should have been alarming. But the only people who used that bathroom were you and Logan.
He paused halfway through the doorway, one hand still resting against the door knob as surprise crossed his face. His dark hair was damp from a rushed shower after practice, curling slightly at the ends, and he’d traded his gear for gray sweatpants and a black Briar Hockey hoodie that looked like he’d pulled it on without fully drying off first.
“You’re awake?" His hockey bag hit the bathroom floor softly behind him as he nudged the door shut with his foot.
You hummed absently, eyes still scanning the highlighted paragraph glowing on your laptop screen.
A beat of silence passed.
“Tell me I didn’t wake you when I left.”
That finally dragged your attention toward him.
You scrunched your nose automatically, guilt flashing across his face the second he saw it.
“Oh, baby,” he groaned quietly.
You shrugged one shoulder, trying to dismiss it, but Logan already looked annoyed with himself as he crossed the room.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight when he dropped onto the bed beside you, close enough that his thigh pressed against yours immediately. Warmth radiated off him in sleepy waves, carrying traces of cold winter air, clean soap, and lingering hockey equipment beneath it all.
“I’m sorry.”
"You're loud," you mumbled, teasingly.
"I was not loud."
"You're, like, genetically incapable of being quiet."
"That is offensive."
“What’d they drag you guys in so early for anyway?” you asked, eyes drifting back toward your screen.
Logan rested his chin against your shoulder, close enough that his voice vibrated lightly through your skin when he answered.
“Cody got drunk at a frat and fell off a table. Dislocated his shoulder.”
You snorted softly.
“And you have a game tomorrow,” you murmured, piecing it together out loud. “Hence the emergency practice.”
He hummed against your shoulder in confirmation, the vibration making you shiver slightly before his mouth followed after it, pressing a lazy kiss against the fabric stretched over it.
Then another.
Then another higher up near your neck where the oversized collar slipped low against your skin.
Your fingers paused over the keyboard.
“Come on,” Logan mumbled against your throat. “Take a break?”
You ignored him on purpose.
It was almost impossible to study with Logan around. Not because he was obnoxious about it but mostly because he wanted your attention with the same attention he wanted ice time, and when John Logan wanted something, he tened to throw his whole body at it.
Which, unfortunately for your GPA, usually worked.
He sighed dramatically.
“Baby.”
“Logan.”
His mouth curved against your skin at the warning in your voice.
Logan lifted his head just enough to pout at you, and unfortunately for your concentration, he looked unfairly good like this—fresh from practice, slightly sleepy, soft around the edges in a way nobody else ever got to see.
He knew it too.
“I missed you,” he added, pouting still. You laughed quietly before you could stop yourself, turning your head enough to look at him properly. Logan immediately brightened like he’d won something. “You were at practice for like two hours.”
“Hey,” he said, nudging your knee with his. “Don’t be mean just because I like you.” The teasing grin lingered for only a second before something softer settled over his face.
His hand slid over your thigh absentmindedly, thumb brushing against the bare skin beneath the hem of his jersey. “I’m serious, though,” he said quietly. “I really like you.”
The words still did strange things to your chest no matter how many times he said them. Not because you doubted him. But because part of you still wasn’t entirely used to being wanted this gently.
You looked at him fully. “I know,” you said softly. “I like you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His entire face changed.
It hit you suddenly sometimes, how different he was with you compared to everybody else downstairs. The version of Logan most people got was loud laughter, easy flirting, cocky one-liners, and chaotic energy spilling into every room he entered.
With you, he was soft in a way nobody would believe if they only knew him from hockey games and party stories and whispered puck bunny gossip around campus.
This version belonged only to you.
Before you could process the thought too deeply, Logan reached over and closed your laptop. “Hey,” you protested immediately. “I’m studying.”
“Nuh uh.” He grabbed the laptop before you could reclaim it and set it carefully on the nightstand. “Break time.”
“Logan.”
But he was already gathering your note cards into one messy stack, ignoring your increasingly offended expression entirely.
“You are the worst,” you informed him.
“Mm. Keep talking. Gets me all hot.” He tossed the final stack of cards aside before turning back toward you fully. Your pout barely lasted two seconds before he kissed you.
Heat crept into your face immediately. You hated how easily he could still do that to you. Logan was your first relationship.
Briar had been your first real school, your first time living around people your age instead of watching normal life through windows and secondhand stories from Garrett.
Your first sememster had felt like everybody else had recived some invisible handbook you'd somehow missed entirely. Parties, flirting, hookups, dorm drama, it all seemed to come naturally to everyone exept you.
Especially hockey culture.
You still remember Garrett standing in the kitchen before the semester started, arms crossed while Dean snickered into a beer beside him. "No hockey players," Garrett had said flatly.
You remember rolling your eyes so hard it hurt. Dean had immediately pointed at himself and Tucker. "What about us?"
"You especially," Garrett had laid the law. At the time, you'd thought it was stupid, embarrassing overprotective older brother bullshit. You'd assumed Garrett simply didn't want to hear locker room stories about his little sister from his teammates.
Now, with Logan's mouth brushing yours softly while morning light spilled gold across your tangled bedsheets, it almost felt funny.
Logans kisses were slow, not rushed the way your kisses sometimes became when you were sneaking around the house trying not to get caught.
This kiss felt like exactly what he’d said earlier.
I missed you.
Your fingers curled automatically into the front of his hoodie as he kissed you deeper, patient and unhurried as he pulled you closer across the mattress.
Even now, months into sneaking around, it still caught you off guard sometimes—the way he touched you carefully without making you feel fragile, the way he held your waist like it belonged beneath his hands naturally, the way he kissed you like he genuinely missed you after only a few hours apart.
Your hands slid into his damp hair as he shifted closer, and suddenly your laptop and exam and notecards felt impossibly far away. “Missed you so much,” he mumbled again against your mouth.
You smiled helplessly into the kiss. “Needy.”
“For you? Yeah.”
Somewhere between one kiss and the next, you ended up in his lap.
One second he was beside you and the next his hands were spread warm against your waist, guiding you over his thighs while your knees pressed into the mattress on either side of him. The position pulled a quiet sound from him, one that made your pulse jump embarrassingly fast.
The jersey had ridden dangerously high up your legs by now.
Logan noticed. His hands slid carefully from your waist to your hips, fingertips brushing beneath the hem just enough to make your breath catch against his mouth.
The look he gave you afterward nearly unraveled you completely.
Your heart hammered hard enough to make your chest ache. Maybe this would be the moment. The thought arrived suddenly and stayed there.
Heat bloomed low in your stomach when Logan kissed you again, slower this time, one hand slipping up your spine while the other settled low against your hip.
The knock at your bedroom door barely registered. You froze. Neither of you had time to move before the door opened.
Garrett stepped inside.
For one horrible second, nobody moved.
His gaze swept across the room slowly. The abandoned study notes, Logan’s practice bag at the foot of the bed, your bare legs over Logan’s lap, his jersey hanging off your body, Logan’s hands still spread across your body.
The silence turned suffocating.
You scrambled off Logan immediately, yanking the jersey down your thighs as heat flooded your face. Garrett looked stunned until his expression twisted. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
The words cracked through the room so sharply that it felt like the temperature dropped with them.
Garrett stood frozen in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame completely, hockey hoodie half-zipped. His eyes moved once more across the scene in front of him like he still couldn’t quite make sense of it.
You in Logan’s jersey.
Logan sitting on your bed.
His practice bag on your floor.
Your flushed face.
The way Logan’s hands had only just left your body.
You and Logan began speaking at the same time. "Garrett—"
"G—"
"No," Garrett snapped immediately, voice rough enough to cut skin. "Don't 'Garrett' me right now." Logan stood slowly from the bed to stand beside you.
Garrett laughed once under his breath, but there was nothing amused about. "How long?" The question was simple enough but neither of you answered fast enough.
Garrett looked at you then. Anyone else might have mistaken his expression for just pure rage, but you could see the fear in his eyes. "You promised me."
Your stomach twisted. Because you remembered it. You remember Garrett standing in this exact house, telling every guy under this roof to stay away from you and more importantly you had promised, no hockey players.
"G, listen, man—"
"Do not call me that right now!" Garrett barked. The force of it made silence slam back into the room. Then Garrett looked at Logan fully for the first time since walking in, betrayal twisting ugly across his face.
"Out of every girl at Briar," he started harshly, "you just had to pick my baby sister to get you fucking dick wet?"
"What the fuck, bro?" And again, you and Logan spoke simultaneously. "Garrett, back off!"
The second the words left your mouth, Garrett went still. Something flickered across his face so quickly most people probably wouldn't have caught it, but you knew Garrett too well not to.
It was shock. Not because you had yelled but because you had defended Logan. And suddenly Garrett was looking at the two of you like a pissed off older brother anymore.
Logan stepped forward slightly. "I swear it's not like that, man," his voice was strained now, confused and defensive all at once, "we haven't had sex."
You actually thought, for one horrible second, that maybe that would help. Maybe if Garrett understood that this wasn't just some reckless hookup, he'd calm down. Maybe if he understood that Logan cared about you, really cared about you, the situation would stop spiraling so fast.
Instead Garrett covered his whole face with both hands. "Jesus fucking Christ."
You chest tightened, you hated what this secret had done. "I really care about her, G," Logan confessed.
Garrett dropped his hands slowly, then he laughed. Not because anything was particularly funny, but because he knew he was on the brink of loosing control. The sound had come jagged and breathless and it had made a knot form in your throat.
"You care about her?"
Logan frowned immediately, he was really trying to not get worked up. But his defensiveness got the better of him as he yelled, "Yeah," he shot back. "I really fucking do."
The volume of it bounced off the bedroom walls. You recoiled, but the only person who saw was Garrett because Logan stood in front of you. The motion had practically confirmed every fear that Garrett was trying to prevent.
And then suddenly he wasn’t standing in your bedroom anymore.
You could see it happen in real time.
His eyes stopped focusing properly. His jaw locked so tightly a muscle ticked there. Whatever Garrett was seeing now wasn’t you and Logan anymore—it was memory layered over reality until he couldn’t separate the two.
“What happens after a bad game?”
“Garrett—”
“What happens when your pissed off and she the only one home?”
Your blood ran cold. Logan's brows furrowed in confusion. “Garrett.” You try to pull his attention to you, anything to get him to stop talking, but his sights are solely set on Logan. “What happens when you start drinking too much and she says the wrong thing—”
“Garrett!”
The shout ripped out of you loud enough to sting your throat.
Garrett sucked his top teeth with his tongue hard enough for you to hear it. It took him a second to drag his glare away from Logan and back toward you.
Beside you, Logan had gone very still.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
But Garrett wasn’t even looking at him anymore.
Your palms were slick with sweat now. Your heart hammered so violently it made your ribs ache. Logan was standing right there. Right there. And Garrett was too angry to stop talking and Logan was far too smart not to put the pieces together eventually.
One more sentence.
That was all it would take and the one person in the entire world you tried to shield this from, would know everything.
“You think dad walked around acting like a monster all the time?” Your stomach dropped. “Stop it, Garrett!” You stepped forward until you were standing in front of Logan, closer to Garrett. You don't know what you were going to do, but some insane part of you wanted to shield Logan even though he probably already understood what was happening.
“You think mom didn’t love dad once too?”
The room tilted. You made the mistake of glancing toward Logan and immediately regretted it because there it was.
That look.
Your entire body flushed hot with humiliation so intense it almost made you dizzy.
“Fuck you, Garrett!”
“Woah, baby—” Logan started but he was quickly cut off by Garrett.
“Fuck me?” Garrett snapped, pointing at himself before swinging that same finger toward Logan. “No, fuck him!” If not for pointing at Logan, you might have thought the him he was refering to was your father.
Your chest hurt.
You suddenly couldn’t stand the way Logan was looking at you. Couldn’t stand the fact that he knew now. Maybe not every detail, maybe not every ugly memory, but enough.
Enough to understand.
“I watched mom make excuses for him for years—”
“I know,” you fired back instantly, voice shaking now. “I was there too.”
Garrett’s expression cracked for half a second. Then hardened again. “Then why are you making the same mistakes she did?”
“Shut up!” The words tore out of you so violently they almost sounded broken. Silence crashed over the room. Nobody moved. Your breathing sounded too loud. So did Logan’s.
Garrett stared at you like he wanted to say more and knew he shouldn’t. Logan looked like somebody had knocked the air out of him entirely. You suddenly felt sick standing in Logan’s jersey.
Like your own skin didn’t fit correctly anymore. “Get out,” you whispered. Garrett hesitated.
“Get out!”
The shout echoed off the walls.
Something ugly flashed across Garrett’s face then, anger winning over reason for one disastrous second. He slammed his fist into the hallway wall hard enough to shake the framed picture hanging beside your bedroom door.
The sound cracked through you instantly. You flinched before you could stop yourself. Tears burned your eyes immediately afterward, humiliation following close behind them. Because Garrett saw it. You knew he saw it.
Garrett looked horrified for exactly half a heartbeat. Then he walked out. The bedroom door stayed open behind him. Silence swallowed the room again.
Logan moved first, slowly and carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal. “Baby—” You stepped backward immediately.
“Oh my god,” you whispered, shaking your head before he could touch you. “Just please get out.”
He stopped a few feet away from you, chest still rising hard from everything that had just happened. His eyes flickered over your face quickly, like he was trying to figure out which version of this situation he was standing in now.
The girl he’d been kissing five minutes ago.
Or this one.
The one standing barefoot in the middle of her bedroom looking like the floor had dropped out from beneath her.
“Baby,” he said carefully, voice quieter than you had ever heard it. “Please just let me—”
“Get out!” Your breathing shook. Logan froze completely.
Heat crawled viciously up your throat. You suddenly couldn’t stand the feeling of the jersey against your skin anymore. Couldn’t stand standing there wrapped in something that belonged to him while he looked at you like that.
Before you could stop yourself, your fingers hooked beneath the hem of the oversized Briar jersey and yanked it harshly over your head.
Logan’s eyes widened instantly.
The cold air hit your skin all at once, leaving you standing there in nothing but your bra and underwear, chest heaving unevenly.
For one horrible second, nobody moved. Then you threw the jersey at him.
The fabric smacked against his chest before falling halfway down his arm, and Logan caught it automatically out of reflex more than anything else.
The expression on his face wrecked something inside you further. He was in complete and utter shock. Not because you were half-dressed, he’d seen you in less before.
Shock because he understood what you were doing.
Your eyes burned. “Take it,” you snapped, voice trembling despite your best efforts. “Take your shit and just go.”
“Baby—”
“No!”
Your gaze caught on the hockey bag sitting at the foot of your bed. Still sitting exactly where he'd dropped it after practice because he had come straight here. Like this room had become home to him too.
The thought made something sharp twist painfully in your chest. Before you could think better of it, you grabbed the strap and hurled the bag toward him. It hit the floor beside his feet heavily with a dull thud, one skate shifting loudly inside the bag from the force.
Logan stared at it for half a second.
Then at you.
You hated how careful he looked now, how cautious. That look was exactly what you had spent your entire relationship terrified of.
Your throat tightened painfully. “Please,” you whispered this time, weaker now. “Just leave.”
Something else flickered across his face but it wasn't pity like you expected. God, somehow that would have been easier, you think.
It was the look of pure heartbreak. Which was way way worse. Logan swallowed hard once before bending slowly to pick up his bag. He gathered the jersey after it, fingers tightening around the crumpled fabric for a brief second.
At the bathroom door, he hesitated but you couldn’t look at him anymore so you kept your gaze on the floor.
I think we're like fire and water | @mutantvampireearthquake
John Logan meet cute
Best Friends Sister | @bitchinbarzal
logan falls for garretts twin sister. garrett is not happy.
Find You | @/bitchinbarzal
you broke up but still call logan when you need help.
PUCK ME SIDEWAYS | @conradsmirrorball
John Logan and Dean Di Laurentis are special guest on Puck Me Sideways podcast after Y/n said in a lie detector machine that he was her crush.
The Deal With The Devil | @/conradsmirrorball
Y/n is tired of her friends keep assuming she has a crush on Garrett Graham, her best friend’s boyfriend. Her best solution? Make everyone believe she’s dating John Logan.
Idiots in love | @residentheartache
you are at party when you get cornered by a guy who can’t take a hint luckily Logan is there to save you
Death Wish | @g0ldendesiree
john logan may be in love with you, only problem? if your brother finds out then he’s a dead man walking.
Unclaimed Baggage | @/g0ldendesiree
what happens when you've got the right person in front of you, but your pasts haunt you to the point of holding back?
Mom and Dad | @/g0ldendesiree
what happens when the mom and dad of the group become, well, mom and dad?
NUMBER TWELVE | @edawgz
John logan was a firm believer that love at first sight was fake, then he saw you get checked into the boards at full strength. That was enough to convince him you were his soulmate.
My Brothers Best Friend | @saturx5
while watching your best friend and brother start to fall in love you try your hardest to hide that fact that you’re dating your brothers best friend
Jealousy | @writingsforfandoms-multi
reader gets jealous at a party
a rom com kind of love | @buckpunny1
You’re a hopeless romantic who loves romcoms. John Logan is determined, through a series of grand gestures, to prove to you that true love can be even better than the movies.
Forever | @/buckpunny1
Your exes have left you with a ton of trust issues. Lucky for you, John Logan is the most patient, perfect man for you.
Unparalleled | @/buckpunny1
Your relationship with John is freshly in bloom and you find yourself struggling with puck bunnies throwing themselves at him. Logan is right there, through it all, to prove your love is truly unparalleled.
Imagine | @sourcherryandsprinkles
Ruin the friendship | @alierecss
Falling for your brother’s best friend is already a terrible idea. Falling for John Logan, while Garrett Graham watches the two of you like a security threat, is even worse.
I said “I love you”. You say nothing back | @/alierecss
the arrangement was simple: keep it casual, don’t catch feelings, don’t ask for more than what’s on the table. 338 days later, you’re starting to think simple was never really an option with john logan.
Night Skates, part 2 | @baby-alien11
as long as you want | @folkloure
the first time you stay with him until the morning.
good luck charm | @/folkloure
logan looks really fucking hot in a suit and it just makes you a little unhinged.
Late-Night Fuel | @andy-15-07
Bed on Fire | Masterlist | @natywrites
No one knew about John Logan’s crush on Hannah Wells except for Y/N L/N, because every time she was looking at him, he was looking at her.
unprofessional conduct | @puckingcuckbunny
The Briar hockey team treats the sports medicine clinic like their personal emergency room, Logan Tucker treats it like a second home. But the team can’t confirm nor deny your relationship… well until now
pretty little baby | @/puckingcuckbunny
It’s the end of finals week! that means that John Logan’s long time girlfriend can finally let loose at the first party post-exams, but letting loose, means a whole lot more for this man than he thought. OR you teasing Logan by calling him pretty alot.
clinical notes on loving him incorrectly | @/puckingcuckbunny
They were never casual enough to survive pretending they were
Mr. Dating Coach | @gwellsy
you pour your thoughts to logan saying you've never fallen in love and he says that you should open your heart to be able to find your person, yet when you do, he regrets giving you that advice
GRAHAM’S LITTLE SISTER | @darkkdamsel00
You return to Boston for spring break determined to keep your secret relationship with your brother’s best friend hidden, but one look from John Logan is enough to unravel every boundary you swore you’d keep.
happy thanksgiving, baby | @myfictionalcorner
logan never had a proper thanksgiving, and his girl is about to change that...
John Logan x Garrett!Reader, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 | @0miffytiffy0
ICE HEART | @beeewee
A frustrated figure skater who transferred from Illinois has only one goal: keeping her athletic scholarship this season, and she’ll do anything to change the way people on campus see her — especially if it means improving her image for pairs skating. Even if it costs her a fake relationship with the same person who spread the nickname that turned her into “Ice Heart.”
Seven steps, one word | @fezrus
from an irritated "oh, fuck!" to a confident "fuck it", your entire relationship with John Logan can be mapped out in seven specific exclamations of his favorite four-letter word.
Twelve Hours | @briarafterdark
Three weeks ago at Hannah's Halloween party, John Logan almost kissed you in a hallway. You panicked. You laughed. You stepped back. Neither of you has talked about it since. Now you're trapped in the hockey house during the worst snowstorm of the year — just you, just him, just twelve hours and nowhere to go.
What starts as a simple repair turns into late-night diner runs, coffee deliveries to the garage, and a growing attachment neither of you expects. Logan likes that you talk too much when you're nervous. You like that Logan becomes softer when nobody’s watching. But as pressure mounts with Logan's hockey career and real life starts pulling at you from opposite directions, you begin to wonder if you’re just a temporary stop in Logan’s fast-moving future. And Logan realizes far too late that somewhere between oil stains and midnight drives, you became the closest thing he’s ever had to home.
━━ john logan x graham!reader ; wc 3.5k
tw ; mention of parental abuse ( phil graham ) , secret relationship/brothers best friend , kissing , unedited
part one \ part two \ part three
You should have been asleep.
Honestly, you had every intention of staying asleep.
You'd barely stirred when Logan carefully untangled himself from around you a few hours earlier. The second Logan's warmth disappeared from around you, sleep had abandoned you completely. You remembered the sleepy press of lips against your temple, remembered him whispering something about emergency practice before disappearing back through the bathroom with more effort than a six foot hockey player should have needed to move quietly.
You had laid there for nearly twenty minutes staring at the ceiling while cold air slowly replaced the heat his body had left behind. That had been the end of sleep.
Eventually, you gave up and grabbed your laptop instead.
Which was how you ended up cross legged in the middle of your unmade bed at six in the morning, drowning in English literature notes while wearing one of Logan's old briar jerseys like a sleep shirt.
The sleeves hung past your wrist, and the stitched hem brushed against your thighs whenever you shifted beneath the blankets. Your laptop sat balanced on your knees in front of you while color coded note card littered the comforter around your legs in chaotic little piles.
The room smelled faintly like vanilla coffee creamer and Logan's cologne. The thought probably should have bothered you more than it did. Garrett would lose his fucking mind if he saw this.
The thought flickered through your head so automatically it barely registered anymore. By now sneaking around with Logan had become muscle memory. You were half way through rereading your notes on gothic symbolism when the bathroom door connecting your room to his clicked softly.
You barely looked up. That alone probably should have been alarming. But the only people who used that bathroom were you and Logan.
He paused halfway through the doorway, one hand still resting against the door knob as surprise crossed his face. His dark hair was damp from a rushed shower after practice, curling slightly at the ends, and he’d traded his gear for gray sweatpants and a black Briar Hockey hoodie that looked like he’d pulled it on without fully drying off first.
“You’re awake?" His hockey bag hit the bathroom floor softly behind him as he nudged the door shut with his foot.
You hummed absently, eyes still scanning the highlighted paragraph glowing on your laptop screen.
A beat of silence passed.
“Tell me I didn’t wake you when I left.”
That finally dragged your attention toward him.
You scrunched your nose automatically, guilt flashing across his face the second he saw it.
“Oh, baby,” he groaned quietly.
You shrugged one shoulder, trying to dismiss it, but Logan already looked annoyed with himself as he crossed the room.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight when he dropped onto the bed beside you, close enough that his thigh pressed against yours immediately. Warmth radiated off him in sleepy waves, carrying traces of cold winter air, clean soap, and lingering hockey equipment beneath it all.
“I’m sorry.”
"You're loud," you mumbled, teasingly.
"I was not loud."
"You're, like, genetically incapable of being quiet."
"That is offensive."
“What’d they drag you guys in so early for anyway?” you asked, eyes drifting back toward your screen.
Logan rested his chin against your shoulder, close enough that his voice vibrated lightly through your skin when he answered.
“Cody got drunk at a frat and fell off a table. Dislocated his shoulder.”
You snorted softly.
“And you have a game tomorrow,” you murmured, piecing it together out loud. “Hence the emergency practice.”
He hummed against your shoulder in confirmation, the vibration making you shiver slightly before his mouth followed after it, pressing a lazy kiss against the fabric stretched over it.
Then another.
Then another higher up near your neck where the oversized collar slipped low against your skin.
Your fingers paused over the keyboard.
“Come on,” Logan mumbled against your throat. “Take a break?”
You ignored him on purpose.
It was almost impossible to study with Logan around. Not because he was obnoxious about it but mostly because he wanted your attention with the same attention he wanted ice time, and when John Logan wanted something, he tened to throw his whole body at it.
Which, unfortunately for your GPA, usually worked.
He sighed dramatically.
“Baby.”
“Logan.”
His mouth curved against your skin at the warning in your voice.
Logan lifted his head just enough to pout at you, and unfortunately for your concentration, he looked unfairly good like this—fresh from practice, slightly sleepy, soft around the edges in a way nobody else ever got to see.
He knew it too.
“I missed you,” he added, pouting still. You laughed quietly before you could stop yourself, turning your head enough to look at him properly. Logan immediately brightened like he’d won something. “You were at practice for like two hours.”
“Hey,” he said, nudging your knee with his. “Don’t be mean just because I like you.” The teasing grin lingered for only a second before something softer settled over his face.
His hand slid over your thigh absentmindedly, thumb brushing against the bare skin beneath the hem of his jersey. “I’m serious, though,” he said quietly. “I really like you.”
The words still did strange things to your chest no matter how many times he said them. Not because you doubted him. But because part of you still wasn’t entirely used to being wanted this gently.
You looked at him fully. “I know,” you said softly. “I like you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His entire face changed.
It hit you suddenly sometimes, how different he was with you compared to everybody else downstairs. The version of Logan most people got was loud laughter, easy flirting, cocky one-liners, and chaotic energy spilling into every room he entered.
With you, he was soft in a way nobody would believe if they only knew him from hockey games and party stories and whispered puck bunny gossip around campus.
This version belonged only to you.
Before you could process the thought too deeply, Logan reached over and closed your laptop. “Hey,” you protested immediately. “I’m studying.”
“Nuh uh.” He grabbed the laptop before you could reclaim it and set it carefully on the nightstand. “Break time.”
“Logan.”
But he was already gathering your note cards into one messy stack, ignoring your increasingly offended expression entirely.
“You are the worst,” you informed him.
“Mm. Keep talking. Gets me all hot.” He tossed the final stack of cards aside before turning back toward you fully. Your pout barely lasted two seconds before he kissed you.
Heat crept into your face immediately. You hated how easily he could still do that to you. Logan was your first relationship.
Briar had been your first real school, your first time living around people your age instead of watching normal life through windows and secondhand stories from Garrett.
Your first sememster had felt like everybody else had recived some invisible handbook you'd somehow missed entirely. Parties, flirting, hookups, dorm drama, it all seemed to come naturally to everyone exept you.
Especially hockey culture.
You still remember Garrett standing in the kitchen before the semester started, arms crossed while Dean snickered into a beer beside him. "No hockey players," Garrett had said flatly.
You remember rolling your eyes so hard it hurt. Dean had immediately pointed at himself and Tucker. "What about us?"
"You especially," Garrett had laid the law. At the time, you'd thought it was stupid, embarrassing overprotective older brother bullshit. You'd assumed Garrett simply didn't want to hear locker room stories about his little sister from his teammates.
Now, with Logan's mouth brushing yours softly while morning light spilled gold across your tangled bedsheets, it almost felt funny.
Logans kisses were slow, not rushed the way your kisses sometimes became when you were sneaking around the house trying not to get caught.
This kiss felt like exactly what he’d said earlier.
I missed you.
Your fingers curled automatically into the front of his hoodie as he kissed you deeper, patient and unhurried as he pulled you closer across the mattress.
Even now, months into sneaking around, it still caught you off guard sometimes—the way he touched you carefully without making you feel fragile, the way he held your waist like it belonged beneath his hands naturally, the way he kissed you like he genuinely missed you after only a few hours apart.
Your hands slid into his damp hair as he shifted closer, and suddenly your laptop and exam and notecards felt impossibly far away. “Missed you so much,” he mumbled again against your mouth.
You smiled helplessly into the kiss. “Needy.”
“For you? Yeah.”
Somewhere between one kiss and the next, you ended up in his lap.
One second he was beside you and the next his hands were spread warm against your waist, guiding you over his thighs while your knees pressed into the mattress on either side of him. The position pulled a quiet sound from him, one that made your pulse jump embarrassingly fast.
The jersey had ridden dangerously high up your legs by now.
Logan noticed. His hands slid carefully from your waist to your hips, fingertips brushing beneath the hem just enough to make your breath catch against his mouth.
The look he gave you afterward nearly unraveled you completely.
Your heart hammered hard enough to make your chest ache. Maybe this would be the moment. The thought arrived suddenly and stayed there.
Heat bloomed low in your stomach when Logan kissed you again, slower this time, one hand slipping up your spine while the other settled low against your hip.
The knock at your bedroom door barely registered. You froze. Neither of you had time to move before the door opened.
Garrett stepped inside.
For one horrible second, nobody moved.
His gaze swept across the room slowly. The abandoned study notes, Logan’s practice bag at the foot of the bed, your bare legs over Logan’s lap, his jersey hanging off your body, Logan’s hands still spread across your body.
The silence turned suffocating.
You scrambled off Logan immediately, yanking the jersey down your thighs as heat flooded your face. Garrett looked stunned until his expression twisted. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
The words cracked through the room so sharply that it felt like the temperature dropped with them.
Garrett stood frozen in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame completely, hockey hoodie half-zipped. His eyes moved once more across the scene in front of him like he still couldn’t quite make sense of it.
You in Logan’s jersey.
Logan sitting on your bed.
His practice bag on your floor.
Your flushed face.
The way Logan’s hands had only just left your body.
You and Logan began speaking at the same time. "Garrett—"
"G—"
"No," Garrett snapped immediately, voice rough enough to cut skin. "Don't 'Garrett' me right now." Logan stood slowly from the bed to stand beside you.
Garrett laughed once under his breath, but there was nothing amused about. "How long?" The question was simple enough but neither of you answered fast enough.
Garrett looked at you then. Anyone else might have mistaken his expression for just pure rage, but you could see the fear in his eyes. "You promised me."
Your stomach twisted. Because you remembered it. You remember Garrett standing in this exact house, telling every guy under this roof to stay away from you and more importantly you had promised, no hockey players.
"G, listen, man—"
"Do not call me that right now!" Garrett barked. The force of it made silence slam back into the room. Then Garrett looked at Logan fully for the first time since walking in, betrayal twisting ugly across his face.
"Out of every girl at Briar," he started harshly, "you just had to pick my baby sister to get you fucking dick wet?"
"What the fuck, bro?" And again, you and Logan spoke simultaneously. "Garrett, back off!"
The second the words left your mouth, Garrett went still. Something flickered across his face so quickly most people probably wouldn't have caught it, but you knew Garrett too well not to.
It was shock. Not because you had yelled but because you had defended Logan. And suddenly Garrett was looking at the two of you like a pissed off older brother anymore.
Logan stepped forward slightly. "I swear it's not like that, man," his voice was strained now, confused and defensive all at once, "we haven't had sex."
You actually thought, for one horrible second, that maybe that would help. Maybe if Garrett understood that this wasn't just some reckless hookup, he'd calm down. Maybe if he understood that Logan cared about you, really cared about you, the situation would stop spiraling so fast.
Instead Garrett covered his whole face with both hands. "Jesus fucking Christ."
You chest tightened, you hated what this secret had done. "I really care about her, G," Logan confessed.
Garrett dropped his hands slowly, then he laughed. Not because anything was particularly funny, but because he knew he was on the brink of loosing control. The sound had come jagged and breathless and it had made a knot form in your throat.
"You care about her?"
Logan frowned immediately, he was really trying to not get worked up. But his defensiveness got the better of him as he yelled, "Yeah," he shot back. "I really fucking do."
The volume of it bounced off the bedroom walls. You recoiled, but the only person who saw was Garrett because Logan stood in front of you. The motion had practically confirmed every fear that Garrett was trying to prevent.
And then suddenly he wasn’t standing in your bedroom anymore.
You could see it happen in real time.
His eyes stopped focusing properly. His jaw locked so tightly a muscle ticked there. Whatever Garrett was seeing now wasn’t you and Logan anymore—it was memory layered over reality until he couldn’t separate the two.
“What happens after a bad game?”
“Garrett—”
“What happens when your pissed off and she the only one home?”
Your blood ran cold. Logan's brows furrowed in confusion. “Garrett.” You try to pull his attention to you, anything to get him to stop talking, but his sights are solely set on Logan. “What happens when you start drinking too much and she says the wrong thing—”
“Garrett!”
The shout ripped out of you loud enough to sting your throat.
Garrett sucked his top teeth with his tongue hard enough for you to hear it. It took him a second to drag his glare away from Logan and back toward you.
Beside you, Logan had gone very still.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
But Garrett wasn’t even looking at him anymore.
Your palms were slick with sweat now. Your heart hammered so violently it made your ribs ache. Logan was standing right there. Right there. And Garrett was too angry to stop talking and Logan was far too smart not to put the pieces together eventually.
One more sentence.
That was all it would take and the one person in the entire world you tried to shield this from, would know everything.
“You think dad walked around acting like a monster all the time?” Your stomach dropped. “Stop it, Garrett!” You stepped forward until you were standing in front of Logan, closer to Garrett. You don't know what you were going to do, but some insane part of you wanted to shield Logan even though he probably already understood what was happening.
“You think mom didn’t love dad once too?”
The room tilted. You made the mistake of glancing toward Logan and immediately regretted it because there it was.
That look.
Your entire body flushed hot with humiliation so intense it almost made you dizzy.
“Fuck you, Garrett!”
“Woah, baby—” Logan started but he was quickly cut off by Garrett.
“Fuck me?” Garrett snapped, pointing at himself before swinging that same finger toward Logan. “No, fuck him!” If not for pointing at Logan, you might have thought the him he was refering to was your father.
Your chest hurt.
You suddenly couldn’t stand the way Logan was looking at you. Couldn’t stand the fact that he knew now. Maybe not every detail, maybe not every ugly memory, but enough.
Enough to understand.
“I watched mom make excuses for him for years—”
“I know,” you fired back instantly, voice shaking now. “I was there too.”
Garrett’s expression cracked for half a second. Then hardened again. “Then why are you making the same mistakes she did?”
“Shut up!” The words tore out of you so violently they almost sounded broken. Silence crashed over the room. Nobody moved. Your breathing sounded too loud. So did Logan’s.
Garrett stared at you like he wanted to say more and knew he shouldn’t. Logan looked like somebody had knocked the air out of him entirely. You suddenly felt sick standing in Logan’s jersey.
Like your own skin didn’t fit correctly anymore. “Get out,” you whispered. Garrett hesitated.
“Get out!”
The shout echoed off the walls.
Something ugly flashed across Garrett’s face then, anger winning over reason for one disastrous second. He slammed his fist into the hallway wall hard enough to shake the framed picture hanging beside your bedroom door.
The sound cracked through you instantly. You flinched before you could stop yourself. Tears burned your eyes immediately afterward, humiliation following close behind them. Because Garrett saw it. You knew he saw it.
Garrett looked horrified for exactly half a heartbeat. Then he walked out. The bedroom door stayed open behind him. Silence swallowed the room again.
Logan moved first, slowly and carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal. “Baby—” You stepped backward immediately.
“Oh my god,” you whispered, shaking your head before he could touch you. “Just please get out.”
He stopped a few feet away from you, chest still rising hard from everything that had just happened. His eyes flickered over your face quickly, like he was trying to figure out which version of this situation he was standing in now.
The girl he’d been kissing five minutes ago.
Or this one.
The one standing barefoot in the middle of her bedroom looking like the floor had dropped out from beneath her.
“Baby,” he said carefully, voice quieter than you had ever heard it. “Please just let me—”
“Get out!” Your breathing shook. Logan froze completely.
Heat crawled viciously up your throat. You suddenly couldn’t stand the feeling of the jersey against your skin anymore. Couldn’t stand standing there wrapped in something that belonged to him while he looked at you like that.
Before you could stop yourself, your fingers hooked beneath the hem of the oversized Briar jersey and yanked it harshly over your head.
Logan’s eyes widened instantly.
The cold air hit your skin all at once, leaving you standing there in nothing but your bra and underwear, chest heaving unevenly.
For one horrible second, nobody moved. Then you threw the jersey at him.
The fabric smacked against his chest before falling halfway down his arm, and Logan caught it automatically out of reflex more than anything else.
The expression on his face wrecked something inside you further. He was in complete and utter shock. Not because you were half-dressed, he’d seen you in less before.
Shock because he understood what you were doing.
Your eyes burned. “Take it,” you snapped, voice trembling despite your best efforts. “Take your shit and just go.”
“Baby—”
“No!”
Your gaze caught on the hockey bag sitting at the foot of your bed. Still sitting exactly where he'd dropped it after practice because he had come straight here. Like this room had become home to him too.
The thought made something sharp twist painfully in your chest. Before you could think better of it, you grabbed the strap and hurled the bag toward him. It hit the floor beside his feet heavily with a dull thud, one skate shifting loudly inside the bag from the force.
Logan stared at it for half a second.
Then at you.
You hated how careful he looked now, how cautious. That look was exactly what you had spent your entire relationship terrified of.
Your throat tightened painfully. “Please,” you whispered this time, weaker now. “Just leave.”
Something else flickered across his face but it wasn't pity like you expected. God, somehow that would have been easier, you think.
It was the look of pure heartbreak. Which was way way worse. Logan swallowed hard once before bending slowly to pick up his bag. He gathered the jersey after it, fingers tightening around the crumpled fabric for a brief second.
At the bathroom door, he hesitated but you couldn’t look at him anymore so you kept your gaze on the floor.
━━ frank castle x senator's daughter reader ; wc 6.3k
tw ; mention of attempted sa + spiked drink + one use of the r word , lots of family disfunction + mother abandonment , bad coping mechanisms + weaponized sexuality
The first thing you became aware of was the taste.
Not the taste of alcohol, that you knew. Expensive champagne at political fundraisers where old men kissed your cheek and called you beautiful while staring too long at your chest.
Cheap vodka that burned warm beneath neon lights in fraternity basements.
Tequila shots taken off strangers because your security detail hated it when you disappeared into crowds with people they couldn’t vet first.
You knew the taste of liquor the way some girls knew scripture.
This was different.
It left a bitter taste all the way down to your stomach. Something metallic and wrong. It sat heavy on your tongue as the black SUV carved through the empty stretch of highway, headlights cutting pale ribbons through the dark Virginia countryside while your head lolled against the cold window hard enough to ache.
The glass vibrated beneath your temple every time the driver crossed uneven pavement, and somewhere in the front seat one of the agents spoke quietly into an earpiece, his voice low enough that you couldn’t make out the words. Not that it mattered. You already knew who they were talking to.
The senator.
You closed your eyes and swallowed against another wave of nausea, fingers tightening around the edge of the leather seat. Your mascara had long since dried stiff beneath your eyes hours ago, your lipstick long gone except for the smeared remnants still clinging to the corner of your mouth, and your dress, silver and microscopic and purchased specifically because it made your detail visibly uncomfortable, had ridden dangerously high up your thighs during the struggle of getting you into the car.
One of your heels had disappeared somewhere between the alley beside the club and the curb where your security team finally caught up to you.
You hoped whoever found it sold it online.
The silence inside the SUV was thick enough to choke on. They always did this after incidents. No engagement. No arguing. Your father had trained them well.
But that only made you crueler.
“Oh my God,” you muttered, letting your head roll sideways against the seat as you stared at the broad shoulders of the agent sitting in front of you. “You people are genuinely un-fucking-bearable. Do they remove your personalities during orientation or is that just a side effect of working for him?”
They gave you nothing. Not even a blink. It made your blood boil.
Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Right. I forgot. The senator said not to engage with the emotionally unstable daughter when she's in a fit.”
Still nothing.
You hated that more than yelling. At least yelling meant somebody still cared enough to lose control.
Outside the window the city lights had long since disappeared, swallowed by endless dark stretches of trees and old money estates hidden far back from the road.
You recognized where you were headed nearly an hour ago, and with every mile your mood had curdled further into something venomous and mean.
The country house sat just outside of DC, though calling it a house felt ridiculous. Estate sounded more accurate. Mansion, maybe.
Your mother used to call it the retreat in the brittle, performative voice she used at campaign dinners, smiling too wide while your father rested a hand against the small of her back like they were still in love.
You hadn’t stepped foot there willingly in almost four years.
Not since you left college, or when your refused to return home for break and especially not since your mother packed two suitcases during one of your parents’ screaming matches and walked out the front door without looking back at either of you.
The senator still kept the place exactly the same.
Same hydrangeas lining the driveway. Same cream-colored furniture no one actually sat on. Same framed family photographs frozen like insects trapped beneath glass.
Sometimes you thought your father genuinely believed that if he kept the house untouched long enough your mother might eventually come back and slide neatly into the life she abandoned.
Sometimes you thought he looked at you the same way.
Like something else he’d failed to keep in line.
You pressed your tongue against your teeth, fighting another dizzy spell as fragmented pieces of the night drifted unpleasantly through your head.
Music loud enough to shake the floorboards beneath your heels. Christian’s face appearing and disappearing through the crowd all evening.
The sickly sweet taste of the drink somebody handed you near the bar. The moment the room started tilting sideways beneath fluorescent pink lights while sweat slicked the back of your neck.
Christian.
Your detail treated him like a credible threat. You treated him like an annoyance.
Sure, he was obsessive. Sure, he sent flowers to your sorority house and waited outside lecture halls and somehow always seemed to know where you were going before you got there.
Sure, your father had nearly detonated Capitol Hill trying to get the restraining order processed quietly.
But men became obsessed with you sometimes. That happened when you were the daughter of one of the most recognizable senators in the country and pretty enough for people to project things onto you.
It wasn’t your fault half the world mistook visibility for intimacy.
And honestly, Christian never scared you the way he did your father. Because the only thing Christian ever wanted from you was you.
Your father wanted ownership.
There was a difference.
You had ditched your detail just after midnight. It wasn't particularly difficult. It never was.
They underestimated you because your father insisted on hiring men who still viewed you as a politician’s daughter first and a grown woman second.
You knew how to disappear into crowds. You knew which bathrooms had secondary exits and which bouncers accepted cash to look the other way.
You knew how to weaponize the assumptions people made about spoiled rich girls.
But the detail found you anyway. Half stumbling, half swaying into the alley behind it while your pulse thundered wrong beneath your skin and your vision blurred at the edges.
You remembered one of the agents grabbing your shoulders. Remembered shoving him hard enough that he nearly lost his footing. Remembered screaming obscenities loud enough to turn heads halfway down the block.
And behind them, Christian, standing at the mouth of the alley. Watching you until the agents spotted and then he bolted.
Your stomach twisted violently.
You hated this part. The part where your brain tried assembling fear after the fact like a puzzle with missing pieces.
The part where you started wondering what would have happened if your detail had been five minutes later. Or ten.
The part where your father would look at you tonight and see confirmation of every terrible thing he already believed about the world.
You straightened suddenly, glaring toward the front seat. “If he sends me back to campus with even more guards after this, I swear to God I’ll start fucking all of you on principle.”
The driver’s jaw visibly tightened.
Satisfaction flickered hot and ugly through your chest.
There she is.
This was the version of yourself you understood best. The vicious one. The unbearable one. The girl who could always make the room hurt worse than you did.
Because if you stayed mean enough, loud enough, difficult enough, people couldn’t abandon you unexpectedly. They left because you drove them away. There was power in that. A sense of control that you coveted like your most prized possession.
Your mother leaving had taught you that much.
The SUV turned sharply through iron gates, tires crunching over gravel as the country house emerged slowly from the darkness ahead, all warm golden windows and sprawling white stone illuminated against the black countryside like something haunting.
Your pulse immediately spiked with familiar dread. Home, in the worst sense of the word. You laughed quietly to yourself, though there wasn’t anything funny about it.
The SUV rolled to a smooth stop beneath the covered entryway, headlights washing over the massive hydrangea bushes lining the front steps, pale blooms glowing ghost-white in the dark.
The agents didn't hesitate, one climbing from the passenger seat while the other opened your door before you could reach for the handle yourself.
The cold night air hit you like a slap.
Your stomach churned violently. “Easy,” one of the agents said, reaching for your arm as your heel, well, your oneremaining heel, caught awkwardly against the pavement.
You jerked away from him instantly. “Don’t fucking touch me.” Your balance failed almost immediately after that.
The world tilted sideways beneath your feet, the drug still lingering thick and ugly in your bloodstream despite the hours in the car.
Your knees buckled hard enough that the agent caught you before your face hit the gravel, large hands locking around your forearms while irritation flared hot and mean through your chest.
“There she is,” you snapped bitterly, trying unsuccessfully to wrench yourself free. “Capitol Hill’s finest. Do you people get bonuses every time you manhandle a drunk woman or is that just included in the health insurance package?”
Neither of them reacted.
You shoved hard against the agent’s chest, nails scraping briefly against the fabric of his suit jacket. “I said let go of me.”
“Miss—”
“Oh my fucking God, don’t miss me right now,” you hissed. “You lose me in Manhattan for three hours and suddenly you all remember how to do your jobs?”
The second agent moved toward the front door, likely to warn your father you’d arrived, and panic flared sharp and immediate beneath your ribs at the thought of walking inside.
Of seeing him. Of having this conversation in that house with your makeup smeared and your bloodstream poisoned and your pride hanging somewhere in a filthy alley behind a nightclub.
You planted your feet stubbornly against the gravel.
The agent sighed in annoyance and exhaustion. That somehow pissed you off even more. “What?” you snapped, glaring up at him. “You exhausted? Tough night babysitting the senator’s fucked up daughter?”
The silence stretched.
Then, abruptly, your entire demeanor shifted.
It happened like a survial instinct.
You softened against him suddenly, fingers sliding lazily up the front of his tie while your lashes lowered dramatically.
The agent went rigid almost immediately as you stepped closer into his space, the lingering haze in your system making everything warm and reckless and sharp around the edges.
“Miss—”
“Oh, come on,” you laughed softly, dragging your hand deliberately down the center of his chest. “You’re telling me you’ve followed me around for almost a year and never once thought about it? That’s honestly kind of insulting.”
“Enough,” the second agent barked sharply from behind you before the first could even respond.
You twisted around with a crooked grin. “Aw, is somebody jealous?”
The first agent physically removed your hands from him then, firm but careful, stepping backward immediately like proximity itself had become dangerous.
Your father’s rules regarding the security detail were legendary at this point. No drinking with you. No socializing with you. No personal contact whatsoever.
One agent had gotten fired because you kissed him at a New Year’s party in front of paparazzi cameras after he confiscated your fake ID.
You weaponized humiliation beautifully.
It was one of the few things you were genuinely talented at.
Unfortunately, the second the adrenaline burned off, the nausea came roaring back with catastrophic force.
Your face twisted. “Oh no,” one of the agents muttered.
“You better fucking move—” You barely made it three staggering steps before collapsing beside the hydrangea bushes lining the front walk.
One hand braced desperately against the stone border as you vomited violently into the flowers your mother planted herself almost fifteen years ago.
Classy.
The cold night air stuck damp strands of hair against your cheeks while your whole body shook miserably from the force of it, humiliation burning hot beneath your skin as one of the agents hovered awkwardly nearby while the other quietly handed you bottled water and pretended not to notice the sound of you getting sick.
You ripped the cap off with trembling fingers. “If either of you tells him about this,” you rasped between breaths, “I’ll accuse you of kidnapping me on national television.”
The first agent crouched beside you carefully, expression unreadable beneath the porch lights. “He already knows what happened.”
Something ugly twisted deep in your chest at that.
Of course he did.
The senator always knew everything eventually.
You stared down at the ruined hydrangeas, breathing unevenly while the drugged haze continued pulling strangely at the edges of your thoughts.
Somewhere inside the house a light flicked on upstairs. Then another. You laughed quietly under your breath, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before looking up toward the glowing windows of the country house with pure venom curling warm in your throat.
“Fantastic,” you muttered. “Let the fucking execution begin.”
The agents practically shepherded you through the front doors before you could decide whether you wanted to fight them again or collapse dramatically across the marble entryway instead.
The warmth of the house hit you immediately, thick with expensive cedarwood polish and for one dizzy second you were seventeen again, sneaking back inside after midnight with vodka on your breath and mascara smudged beneath your eyes while your parents screamed at each other somewhere upstairs.
Only now the house was quieter.
That was the difference after your mother left.
Your bare foot slipped slightly against the polished floor as you stumbled forward, muttering a curse beneath your breath while one of the agents steadied your elbow for half a second before immediately letting go again.
You yanked your arm back anyway on instinct, glaring at him over your shoulder while you struggled to tug the microscopic silver dress lower over your thighs with what little dignity remained.
Not much, admittedly.
Your appearance had deteriorated significantly since Manhattan.
Mascara streaked black beneath your eyes. Lip split open and crusted with dried blood from where you’d eaten pavement in the alley behind the club.
One knee scraped raw and angry beneath the hem of your dress and one shoe missing entirely.
The senator’s daughter.
America’s fucking princess.
You almost laughed.
The agents led you deeper into the house, past towering windows and dim hallway sconces casting long shadows across the walls, and with every step your mood blackened further.
One of the agents stopped outside the office doors and knocked once.
Your stomach twisted hard.
You hated this room most of all.
The office smelled like your father in the worst possible way. Expensive cologne, coffee, old paper and stunk most of all like control.
“Bring her in,” came his voice from the other side, low and calm enough to immediately put you on edge.
The doors opened.
And there he was.
Still in his suit despite the hour, though the jacket had been discarded somewhere and the sleeves of his white button-down rolled neatly to his forearms.
His tie hung loosened around his neck, silver threaded through the dark hair at his temples beneath the warm office lighting.
He stood near the massive mahogany desk facing the doorway, one hand braced against the back of a leather chair while his eyes swept slowly over you from head to toe.
Something sharp flickered across his face before disappearing almost immediately behind practiced political composure.
The agents quietly retreated from the room, the heavy doors shutting behind them with a soft click that sounded suspiciously like a prison cell locking.
Silence settled instantly.
You refused to let it intimidate you.
“Well,” you announced loudly, swaying slightly as you limped farther into the room. “Good news. I’m not dead. You can call off the fucking national guard.”
Your father said nothing. That calm expression remained fixed firmly in place. It made you want to claw at the walls.
You laughed harshly, gesturing vaguely around the office. “What? No speech prepared? I figured by now your communications team would’ve drafted at least three statements about your troubled daughter spiraling publicly.”
Still nothing. His restraint felt intentional. “Oh, come on,” you snapped, the bitterness rising hotter now. “At least pretend this isn’t embarrassing for you. That’s the part you’re best at, remember? Pretending.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
You stepped closer immediately, sensing blood in the water. “Do you know how fucking insane this whole thing is?” you continued, voice climbing sharper with every word.
“I’m twenty-four years old and you still have armed babysitters following me into bars like I’m a flight risk. Normal people’s parents stop grounding them after puberty, but congratulations, senator, you found a way to turn it into a federal operation.”
“You were drugged.”
The interruption came calm. You rolled your eyes instantly even as your stomach twisted unpleasantly at the reminder. “And?”
"And a man with an active restraining order followed you out of the club.”
“Oh my God,” you groaned dramatically, throwing your head back. “Christian is pathetic, not dangerous.”
“He has sent over forty-three documented messages threatening your detail.”
“It's not like he's writing manifestos. He is not a fucking terrorist! He just wants to fuck me!” You don't really know why you are defending Christian. You weren't particularly fond of the guy following you around either but you refused to stand on the same stance as your father right now.
“Watch your language! Anything could have happened in that alley!” your father yelled.
“And yet somehow I survived the experience,” you shot back viciously. “Should make for a great boost to your campaign.”
Something flickered across your father’s face again then. Thought still not anger exactly.
It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, but you saw it anyway and immediately hated yourself for noticing.
So you got crueler.
Because that was always easier.
“You know,” you said lightly, pacing unevenly across the office despite the way the room still tilted faintly around you, “this might actually be your fault when you think about it. Maybe if you’d spent slightly less time trying to save America and slightly more time raising your fucking daughter, I wouldn’t spend half my time trying to get strangers to ruin it for me.”
The words landed hard. You knew they would. That was entirely the point. Your father inhaled slowly through his nose, the only visible crack in his composure so far.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
You barked out a laugh. “Don't tell me what to fucking do!”
“You’re in no state to—”
“What?” you cut in sharply. “Embarrass you further? Relax. I already threw up on mom’s hydrangeas outside. We’ve really captured the full family experience tonight, Dad!”
You stared at him for another long second, chest rising unevenly beneath the silver fabric of your dress while the office swayed subtly around the edges from whatever had been slipped into your drink.
The anger was easier to hold onto than the nausea. Easier than the humiliation. Easier than the tiny, ugly part of yourself still replaying the image of Christian standing at the mouth of the alley while your vision blurred and your legs stopped working correctly.
So you chose anger.
Obviously.
Your laugh came brittle and sharp as glass as you backed toward the office doors. “You know what? I actually cannot do this right now.”
Your father straightened slightly. “You’re not leaving this conversation.”
“Oh, I absolutely am.” You reached blindly for the door handle behind you, smearing dried mascara further across your cheek when you tried to wipe away the angry tears from your cheekbones.
“You’ve got your dramatic little lecture out of the way. I got drugged, your security detail failed spectacularly, Christian is apparently the zodiac killer now, and you’re about to threaten me with even more armed Ken dolls following me around campus. End scene.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Enough!”
That finally snapped sharper than before, enough authority bleeding into his voice to make the room still for half a heartbeat.
You smiled meanly anyway.
It was actually a instinct at this points. Your defense was automatic.
“Fine,” you said mockingly, throwing your arms wide despite the way the motion made your stomach churn. “Gear up your newest batch of emotionally constipated ex-marines and let me go home so we can do this all again in three to five months. Nice seeing you, dad.”
The word dad dripped sarcasm so heavily it practically poisoned the air.
Your father’s expression hardened slightly, exhaustion finally beginning to crack through the carefully maintained calm.
For a moment he simply looked at you standing there barefoot and bloodied in the middle of his office, mascara streaked beneath your eyes like war paint, all sharp teeth and shaking hands and self-destruction wrapped in a designer dress.
Then he shook his head once, slowly. “No,” he said. You frowned faintly.
“No?”
“We’re done with security agents.”
Your fingers slipped from the door handle.
Because for one impossible, dizzying second, hope cracked straight through the center of your chest before you could stop it.
Not dramatic hope. Nothing huge. Just small little prickle at the edge of your amored heart.
Your father watched the realization move across your face, watched the fight briefly loosen from your posture, and something unreadable flickered behind his eyes before disappearing again.
You swallowed hard. “...what?”
“We are clearly past the point where standard private security is effective.” The wording immediately made your stomach drop.
Your expression cooled instantly. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Your father didn’t answer right away.
Instead he moved slowly around the desk, every inch the composed senator again despite the fact that it was nearly three in the morning and his daughter looked like you crawled out of a crime scene.
He stopped beside the fireplace near the far side of the office, gaze fixed steadily on you while your pulse began thudding harder beneath your ribs.
“You need someone equipped to handle the reality of the situation.”
“Oh my God,” you laughed suddenly, ugly disbelief curling through the sound. “What did you do? Hire the fucking CIA?”
His face remained unreadable. Your mouth slowly flattened. “What did you do?”
“You are no longer going back to campus alone.”
“There it is,” you snapped immediately, rage flaring back to life so fast it almost made you dizzy. “There’s the authoritarian bullshit I was waiting for.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“Everything about my life seems to be non-negotiable to you.”
“You were roofied tonight. You were almost raped.”
“I was drugged at a club, not trafficked across state lines, Jesus Christ.”
“He was waiting for you outside.”
“And your precious little detail found me, didn’t they?” you shot back viciously. “Congratulations. Give them medals.”
Your father’s jaw flexed hard enough for you to notice this time and finally you were getting something real. “You think this is a game because you’ve never had to see what people are capable of.”
“And you think locking me in a cage is the same thing as loving me.”
The words hit the room like a gunshot.
For the first time all night your father looked genuinely affected by something you said. But it lasted less than a second.
Then the senator returned.
“This conversation is over.”
You barked out a laugh. “Oh, fuck you.”
“No,” he said evenly. “You’re going to listen to me for once in your life!”
The authority in his voice made something instinctive in you rear up immediately. You straightened despite yourself, glaring at him across the office while your heartbeat thudded unevenly in your ears.
Then your father turned slightly toward the office doors, opened it with the grace of a man who hadn't just ruined your life. He peaked his head outside for a moment before opening the door all the way and stepping aside.
Every muscle in your body went still.
For a moment you didn't even turn to look. You were still too busy glaring at your father across the room, chest rising hard with anger.
The silence stretched strangely behind you, heavy enough that instinct finally forced you to look.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
The man standing in the doorway did not look like security.
That was your very first thought.
Not because he lacked the size for it. Quite the opposite, actually. He was broad shouldered in a way that made the doorway itself seem smaller, dark jacket hanging open over a plain black shirt that stretched tightly across his chest and forearms, both rough enough to look dangerous even from several feet away.
Older than you by enough to matter, late thirties maybe, with dark hair cropped short and a face that looked less handsome in a traditional sense and more like something carved slowly out of violence and exhaustion.
There was a scar disappearing beneath the edge of his collar. Another near his knuckles. His nose looked like it had been broken at least once in his life time.
Twice, maybe.
And his eyes—
Jesus Christ.
Empty in the way soldiers in documentaries looked empty after coming home from wars they never really left.
For the first time all night, you forgot to speak.
The man’s gaze swept over you once, quick and efficient. Bloody lip, bare foot, smudged makeup, tiny silver dress, trembling hands. He catalogued the damage with brutal quick efficiency and all without a single emotion in his eyes.
Then his attention shifted back toward your father.
Not to you but to the senator.
Your irritation immediately returned full force. “Well,” you said slowly, looking between the two men. “You somehow managed to make this significantly more fucked up.”
Your father ignored the comment entirely.
“This is Mr. Castle.”
The man said nothing.
You tilted your head slightly.
The silence coming from him felt fundamentally different than the agents outside. The other security details stayed quiet because they were trained to. This man stayed quiet because he genuinely did not care whether you spoke or not.
That realization irritated you instantly.
Your father folded his hands behind his back, fully back in senator mode now. “Mr. Castle will be with you moving forward.”
You stared at him.
“With me?” you repeated flatly.
“Yes.” Something ugly began uncurling slowly in your chest.
Your father continued before you could interrupt. “He will accompany you to classes, to campus housing, and to any approved activities deemed necessary.”
Your mouth fell open slightly.
“Approved—”
“There will be no more clubs.”
You barked out a disbelieving laugh.
“No more drinking.”
“Are you actually insane?”
“No more disappearing your security detail. No more reckless behavior. No more acting out simply because you think you are invincible.”
“Oh my God,” you snapped, turning toward him fully now. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“You’re assigning me a fucking parole officer?”
“A bodyguard.”
Your laugh came sharp and vicious. “Right. Because that’s so much less psychotic.”
Still, Mr. Castle said absolutely nothing.
That somehow made his presence feel larger.
He remained near the doorway with his hands loose at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that paradoxically made him seem more dangerous, like violence sat so naturally inside him he didn’t need to posture about it.
Most men in security tried to look intimidating. This man looked like he simply was.
And worse?
He still wasn’t looking at you.
Men always stared at you eventually.
Especially dressed like this.
Especially looking like this.
But Mr. Castle looked almost aggressively uninterested, which immediately triggered something deeply competitive and irrational inside you.
You pointed at him suddenly. “What’s his deal?”
Your father’s expression hardened. “His deal is keeping you alive.”
“No, seriously,” you continued, eyes narrowing as you looked him over openly now. “Did you find him in a back alley somewhere? Is he house trained? Does he bite?”
“Enough.”
“Oh, don’t start pretending like this is for my own good,” you shot back. “You hired some giant ex-hitman looking motherfucker to stalk me around campus twenty-four hours a day.”
You don't notice it because you are vehemently protesting to your father, but for the first time since entering the room, Mr. Castle looks directly at you.
His expression is controlled but had anyone one been paying attention, they'd of seen the amusement written across his whole face.
“I have already explained, this arrangement is non-negotiable.”
You laughed in disbelief, dragging both hands through your tangled hair. “You cannot seriously expect me to just accept this.”
“I don’t expect acceptance,” your father replied evenly. “But I do expect compliance.”
“Fuck you.”
“You are alive tonight because your detail found you in time.”
“And now what?” you snapped. “You think parking a six-foot-four murder suspect outside my room is going to magically fix me?”
“I’m not there to fix you,” Mr. Castle’s voice hit the room like gravel dragged across concrete.
Your breath caught embarrassingly for half a second. Because of course that’s what he sounded like. Of fucking course. Low and rough and the most fuck me voice you think you've ever heard from a man.
His eyes stayed fixed on you now, steady and unreadable beneath the warm office lighting while something dangerously close to awareness prickled suddenly beneath your skin.
“I’m there,” he continued evenly, “to make sure nobody gets close enough to try that shit again.”
The room went still. Not because he raised his voice. Because he didn’t. Because unlike your father, who wrapped fear in politics and control and carefully chosen words, this man spoke about danger like he knew it intimately.
Like he’d lived inside it before.
And for the first time since the alley behind the club, genuine unease curled quietly beneath your ribs.
The room stayed painfully still after he finished speaking.
Your father looked relieved by it. Relieved that Mr. Castle wasn't intimidated so far by your ugly attitude. Like he genuinely believed this man standing in the doorway behind you was the solution to a problem that had been bleeding him dry for years.
Like dragging some terrifying stranger into your life was the first thing that had allowed him to breathe properly in months.
You hated him for that.
You hated both of them for that.
The silence stretched long enough for the grandfather clock somewhere down the hallway to begin chiming softly in the distance.
The sound echoing faintly through the enormous house while your pulse hammered hot beneath your skin.
You looked at your father one final time, waiting for something to crack through the senator facade. Some flicker of guilt or doubt or even a splash of humanity.
Instead he simply held your gaze steadily, exhausted but immovable.
The decision was made. The conversation over. Something bitter curled sharply in your chest. “Unbelievable,” you muttered.
Then you turned toward the door.
Toward him.
Mr. Castle stepped aside automatically to let you pass, though aside hardly felt accurate considering the man still occupied an absurd amount of physical space even standing still.
Up close the damage became more obvious. Faint scar near his jaw. A nose crooked, broken and healed incorrectly.
The subtle smell of cold air, gun oil, and something darker lingering beneath the expensive cedar scent of your father’s office.
You stopped directly in front of him. Too close in your father's opinion. Close enough that normal men usually shifted uncomfortably. That was the point.
You tilted your head upward, mascara-streaked eyes narrowing while your fingers tightened around the hem of your dress.
He looked even larger from here, broad chest rising slowly beneath the black fabric of his shirt while his expression remained unreadable.
Still calm and still one hundred percent unaffected. God, you wanted to ruin that immediately. “Don’t expect a fucking thank you,” you said coldly.
Mr. Castle answered you without hesitation. “Oh,” he said, voice low enough to scrape against your ribs, “I expect nothing of the sort, princess.”
Princess.
The word hit strangely. He’d already figured you out in under five minutes and found the entire performance vaguely exhausting.
Your irritation flared instantly hotter because your proximity had done absolutely nothing. No awkwardness. No flustered glance downward. No discomfort.
Every other agent your father hired eventually folded beneath the pressure of you invading their space like this, touching ties, brushing hands, testing boundaries until they either quit or got reassigned.
Mr. Castle didn’t even blink.
That felt intolerable.
You scoffed sharply and shoulder-checked him hard as you pushed past.
The impact barely moved him. You stormed toward the office doors barefoot and furious. You glanced back just in time to see the man pause near the doorway, posture straightening slightly.
“Goodnight, sir,” he said evenly. Then he turned and followed you out.
The realization made your eye twitch almost immediately.
You barked out a harsh laugh and continued limping upstairs anyway, one hand dragging along the polished banister for balance while your head continued pounding viciously from the lingering effects of the drug.
Frank followed several steps behind without crowding you, his heavy footsteps steady against the hardwood staircase while fury continued bubbling hotter and hotter beneath your skin with every passing second.
This was insane.
Actually insane.
You reached the second floor landing and whipped around suddenly, nearly losing your balance in the process. “What, are you planning on standing outside the bathroom too?”
“If necessary.”
“Oh my God.”
You resumed walking, faster now despite the uneven limp caused by your scraped knee and missing shoe. Family portraits blurred past along the hallway walls as you headed toward the bedroom you hadn’t willingly slept in since your mother disappeared from this house.
Your old room sat at the very end of the corridor. Your father always said it was because you liked the privacy as a child.
Your mother once admitted quietly that it was because your tantrums echoed less from farther away. You reached the bedroom door and shoved it open hard enough for it to slam against the wall behind it.
The rage that carried you through the office downstairs had started dulling around the edges now, softened unpleasantly by the lingering effects of whatever had been slipped into your drink.
Your body felt heavy in strange places and weightless in others. The room tilted ever so slightly when you turned your head too quickly. Even the anger itself felt harder to hold onto properly.
But it was still there.
And now it only had one target left.
You turned toward Frank Castle standing calmly in the doorway while his eyes swept methodically around the room, cataloguing exits and windows with an ease that felt almost unconscious.
It was unsettling watching him exist inside a space. Nothing about him relaxed fully. Even standing still, he looked prepared for something terrible to happen.
You hated how much that fascinated you already.
“What,” you asked lazily, leaning one shoulder against the vanity table, “you gonna stand there all night?”
His gaze shifted back toward you. “Pretty much.”
The bluntness irritated you immediately.
You scoffed softly, though the sound lacked some of its earlier bite. “God, you’re boring.”
Frank said nothing.
The silence stretched again, but unlike your father’s agents downstairs, his quiet never felt submissive. It felt deliberate. He genuinely saw no reason to waste energy reacting to your bullshit.
Which only made you want to push harder.
Your fingers slid slowly around your neck to rest against the back as you held his gaze. “What exactly are the rules here, Castle?” you asked, voice lowering slightly. “You gonna watch me sleep too?”
“No.”
“Watch me change?”
“No.”
“You sure?” Your mouth curved faintly. The dizziness rolled harder through you then, warm and disorienting, and you reached automatically for the wall to steady yourself before immediately pretending you meant to do it.
Humiliation flared hot beneath your skin. You hated feeling out of control. Hated that your body still didn’t entirely belong to you tonight.
So you lashed out the only way you knew how.
By becoming unbearable.
You kicked off your remaining heel carelessly across the room, the shoe striking the wall with a sharp crack before collapsing sideways onto the carpet. Frank didn’t so much as blink.
“Oh, come on,” you muttered. “At least pretend I’m difficult.”
“You are difficult.” Your brows lifted slightly.
The answer came so calmly it almost sounded factual rather than insulting. You stared at him another second before reaching toward the zipper tucked beneath your arm. “And yet,” you said slowly, “you still took the job.”
Frank arms folding loosely across his chest.
Then you dragged the zipper downward.
The silver fabric loosened immediately around your ribs, the top of the dress slipping lower against your chest while your eyes stayed locked on his face, waiting for the reaction that always eventually came from men.
Discomfort or interest or something more akin to embarrassment.
“What?” you asked lightly. “Does it make you all hot and bothered watching a drunk girl strip?”
The words came cruel on purpose, sharpened by exhaustion and humiliation and the desperate need to regain some kind of control over the situation.
Your fingers pushed the straps down your shoulders inch by inch until cool air kissed bare skin, the dress hanging precariously low now.
You’d dressed for a club, not a hostage situation so your lack of a bra was no surprise but your lack of underwear was a bold choice.
Frank’s expression never changed. No sign that he was flustered from staring at your naked form after only meeting you five minutes ago. No cold expression like he held with your father either.
If anything, he just looked tired.
And somehow that irritated you more than lust ever could have.
His gaze lifted once toward your face and held there steadily for a long moment before he pushed himself away from the doorway.
“Get some sleep,” he said evenly.
Then, after the smallest pause, “Goodnight, princess.”
And before you could spit another insult at him, he pulled the bedroom door shut behind him with a soft click, leaving you standing undressed in the middle of your childhood bedroom with your pulse thundering unevenly beneath your skin.
━━ frank castle x senator's daughter reader ; wc 6.3k
tw ; mention of attempted sa + spiked drink + one use of the r word , lots of family disfunction + mother abandonment , bad coping mechanisms + weaponized sexuality
The first thing you became aware of was the taste.
Not the taste of alcohol, that you knew. Expensive champagne at political fundraisers where old men kissed your cheek and called you beautiful while staring too long at your chest.
Cheap vodka that burned warm beneath neon lights in fraternity basements.
Tequila shots taken off strangers because your security detail hated it when you disappeared into crowds with people they couldn’t vet first.
You knew the taste of liquor the way some girls knew scripture.
This was different.
It left a bitter taste all the way down to your stomach. Something metallic and wrong. It sat heavy on your tongue as the black SUV carved through the empty stretch of highway, headlights cutting pale ribbons through the dark Virginia countryside while your head lolled against the cold window hard enough to ache.
The glass vibrated beneath your temple every time the driver crossed uneven pavement, and somewhere in the front seat one of the agents spoke quietly into an earpiece, his voice low enough that you couldn’t make out the words. Not that it mattered. You already knew who they were talking to.
The senator.
You closed your eyes and swallowed against another wave of nausea, fingers tightening around the edge of the leather seat. Your mascara had long since dried stiff beneath your eyes hours ago, your lipstick long gone except for the smeared remnants still clinging to the corner of your mouth, and your dress, silver and microscopic and purchased specifically because it made your detail visibly uncomfortable, had ridden dangerously high up your thighs during the struggle of getting you into the car.
One of your heels had disappeared somewhere between the alley beside the club and the curb where your security team finally caught up to you.
You hoped whoever found it sold it online.
The silence inside the SUV was thick enough to choke on. They always did this after incidents. No engagement. No arguing. Your father had trained them well.
But that only made you crueler.
“Oh my God,” you muttered, letting your head roll sideways against the seat as you stared at the broad shoulders of the agent sitting in front of you. “You people are genuinely un-fucking-bearable. Do they remove your personalities during orientation or is that just a side effect of working for him?”
They gave you nothing. Not even a blink. It made your blood boil.
Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Right. I forgot. The senator said not to engage with the emotionally unstable daughter when she's in a fit.”
Still nothing.
You hated that more than yelling. At least yelling meant somebody still cared enough to lose control.
Outside the window the city lights had long since disappeared, swallowed by endless dark stretches of trees and old money estates hidden far back from the road.
You recognized where you were headed nearly an hour ago, and with every mile your mood had curdled further into something venomous and mean.
The country house sat just outside of DC, though calling it a house felt ridiculous. Estate sounded more accurate. Mansion, maybe.
Your mother used to call it the retreat in the brittle, performative voice she used at campaign dinners, smiling too wide while your father rested a hand against the small of her back like they were still in love.
You hadn’t stepped foot there willingly in almost four years.
Not since you left college, or when your refused to return home for break and especially not since your mother packed two suitcases during one of your parents’ screaming matches and walked out the front door without looking back at either of you.
The senator still kept the place exactly the same.
Same hydrangeas lining the driveway. Same cream-colored furniture no one actually sat on. Same framed family photographs frozen like insects trapped beneath glass.
Sometimes you thought your father genuinely believed that if he kept the house untouched long enough your mother might eventually come back and slide neatly into the life she abandoned.
Sometimes you thought he looked at you the same way.
Like something else he’d failed to keep in line.
You pressed your tongue against your teeth, fighting another dizzy spell as fragmented pieces of the night drifted unpleasantly through your head.
Music loud enough to shake the floorboards beneath your heels. Christian’s face appearing and disappearing through the crowd all evening.
The sickly sweet taste of the drink somebody handed you near the bar. The moment the room started tilting sideways beneath fluorescent pink lights while sweat slicked the back of your neck.
Christian.
Your detail treated him like a credible threat. You treated him like an annoyance.
Sure, he was obsessive. Sure, he sent flowers to your sorority house and waited outside lecture halls and somehow always seemed to know where you were going before you got there.
Sure, your father had nearly detonated Capitol Hill trying to get the restraining order processed quietly.
But men became obsessed with you sometimes. That happened when you were the daughter of one of the most recognizable senators in the country and pretty enough for people to project things onto you.
It wasn’t your fault half the world mistook visibility for intimacy.
And honestly, Christian never scared you the way he did your father. Because the only thing Christian ever wanted from you was you.
Your father wanted ownership.
There was a difference.
You had ditched your detail just after midnight. It wasn't particularly difficult. It never was.
They underestimated you because your father insisted on hiring men who still viewed you as a politician’s daughter first and a grown woman second.
You knew how to disappear into crowds. You knew which bathrooms had secondary exits and which bouncers accepted cash to look the other way.
You knew how to weaponize the assumptions people made about spoiled rich girls.
But the detail found you anyway. Half stumbling, half swaying into the alley behind it while your pulse thundered wrong beneath your skin and your vision blurred at the edges.
You remembered one of the agents grabbing your shoulders. Remembered shoving him hard enough that he nearly lost his footing. Remembered screaming obscenities loud enough to turn heads halfway down the block.
And behind them, Christian, standing at the mouth of the alley. Watching you until the agents spotted and then he bolted.
Your stomach twisted violently.
You hated this part. The part where your brain tried assembling fear after the fact like a puzzle with missing pieces.
The part where you started wondering what would have happened if your detail had been five minutes later. Or ten.
The part where your father would look at you tonight and see confirmation of every terrible thing he already believed about the world.
You straightened suddenly, glaring toward the front seat. “If he sends me back to campus with even more guards after this, I swear to God I’ll start fucking all of you on principle.”
The driver’s jaw visibly tightened.
Satisfaction flickered hot and ugly through your chest.
There she is.
This was the version of yourself you understood best. The vicious one. The unbearable one. The girl who could always make the room hurt worse than you did.
Because if you stayed mean enough, loud enough, difficult enough, people couldn’t abandon you unexpectedly. They left because you drove them away. There was power in that. A sense of control that you coveted like your most prized possession.
Your mother leaving had taught you that much.
The SUV turned sharply through iron gates, tires crunching over gravel as the country house emerged slowly from the darkness ahead, all warm golden windows and sprawling white stone illuminated against the black countryside like something haunting.
Your pulse immediately spiked with familiar dread. Home, in the worst sense of the word. You laughed quietly to yourself, though there wasn’t anything funny about it.
The SUV rolled to a smooth stop beneath the covered entryway, headlights washing over the massive hydrangea bushes lining the front steps, pale blooms glowing ghost-white in the dark.
The agents didn't hesitate, one climbing from the passenger seat while the other opened your door before you could reach for the handle yourself.
The cold night air hit you like a slap.
Your stomach churned violently. “Easy,” one of the agents said, reaching for your arm as your heel, well, your oneremaining heel, caught awkwardly against the pavement.
You jerked away from him instantly. “Don’t fucking touch me.” Your balance failed almost immediately after that.
The world tilted sideways beneath your feet, the drug still lingering thick and ugly in your bloodstream despite the hours in the car.
Your knees buckled hard enough that the agent caught you before your face hit the gravel, large hands locking around your forearms while irritation flared hot and mean through your chest.
“There she is,” you snapped bitterly, trying unsuccessfully to wrench yourself free. “Capitol Hill’s finest. Do you people get bonuses every time you manhandle a drunk woman or is that just included in the health insurance package?”
Neither of them reacted.
You shoved hard against the agent’s chest, nails scraping briefly against the fabric of his suit jacket. “I said let go of me.”
“Miss—”
“Oh my fucking God, don’t miss me right now,” you hissed. “You lose me in Manhattan for three hours and suddenly you all remember how to do your jobs?”
The second agent moved toward the front door, likely to warn your father you’d arrived, and panic flared sharp and immediate beneath your ribs at the thought of walking inside.
Of seeing him. Of having this conversation in that house with your makeup smeared and your bloodstream poisoned and your pride hanging somewhere in a filthy alley behind a nightclub.
You planted your feet stubbornly against the gravel.
The agent sighed in annoyance and exhaustion. That somehow pissed you off even more. “What?” you snapped, glaring up at him. “You exhausted? Tough night babysitting the senator’s fucked up daughter?”
The silence stretched.
Then, abruptly, your entire demeanor shifted.
It happened like a survial instinct.
You softened against him suddenly, fingers sliding lazily up the front of his tie while your lashes lowered dramatically.
The agent went rigid almost immediately as you stepped closer into his space, the lingering haze in your system making everything warm and reckless and sharp around the edges.
“Miss—”
“Oh, come on,” you laughed softly, dragging your hand deliberately down the center of his chest. “You’re telling me you’ve followed me around for almost a year and never once thought about it? That’s honestly kind of insulting.”
“Enough,” the second agent barked sharply from behind you before the first could even respond.
You twisted around with a crooked grin. “Aw, is somebody jealous?”
The first agent physically removed your hands from him then, firm but careful, stepping backward immediately like proximity itself had become dangerous.
Your father’s rules regarding the security detail were legendary at this point. No drinking with you. No socializing with you. No personal contact whatsoever.
One agent had gotten fired because you kissed him at a New Year’s party in front of paparazzi cameras after he confiscated your fake ID.
You weaponized humiliation beautifully.
It was one of the few things you were genuinely talented at.
Unfortunately, the second the adrenaline burned off, the nausea came roaring back with catastrophic force.
Your face twisted. “Oh no,” one of the agents muttered.
“You better fucking move—” You barely made it three staggering steps before collapsing beside the hydrangea bushes lining the front walk.
One hand braced desperately against the stone border as you vomited violently into the flowers your mother planted herself almost fifteen years ago.
Classy.
The cold night air stuck damp strands of hair against your cheeks while your whole body shook miserably from the force of it, humiliation burning hot beneath your skin as one of the agents hovered awkwardly nearby while the other quietly handed you bottled water and pretended not to notice the sound of you getting sick.
You ripped the cap off with trembling fingers. “If either of you tells him about this,” you rasped between breaths, “I’ll accuse you of kidnapping me on national television.”
The first agent crouched beside you carefully, expression unreadable beneath the porch lights. “He already knows what happened.”
Something ugly twisted deep in your chest at that.
Of course he did.
The senator always knew everything eventually.
You stared down at the ruined hydrangeas, breathing unevenly while the drugged haze continued pulling strangely at the edges of your thoughts.
Somewhere inside the house a light flicked on upstairs. Then another. You laughed quietly under your breath, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before looking up toward the glowing windows of the country house with pure venom curling warm in your throat.
“Fantastic,” you muttered. “Let the fucking execution begin.”
The agents practically shepherded you through the front doors before you could decide whether you wanted to fight them again or collapse dramatically across the marble entryway instead.
The warmth of the house hit you immediately, thick with expensive cedarwood polish and for one dizzy second you were seventeen again, sneaking back inside after midnight with vodka on your breath and mascara smudged beneath your eyes while your parents screamed at each other somewhere upstairs.
Only now the house was quieter.
That was the difference after your mother left.
Your bare foot slipped slightly against the polished floor as you stumbled forward, muttering a curse beneath your breath while one of the agents steadied your elbow for half a second before immediately letting go again.
You yanked your arm back anyway on instinct, glaring at him over your shoulder while you struggled to tug the microscopic silver dress lower over your thighs with what little dignity remained.
Not much, admittedly.
Your appearance had deteriorated significantly since Manhattan.
Mascara streaked black beneath your eyes. Lip split open and crusted with dried blood from where you’d eaten pavement in the alley behind the club.
One knee scraped raw and angry beneath the hem of your dress and one shoe missing entirely.
The senator’s daughter.
America’s fucking princess.
You almost laughed.
The agents led you deeper into the house, past towering windows and dim hallway sconces casting long shadows across the walls, and with every step your mood blackened further.
One of the agents stopped outside the office doors and knocked once.
Your stomach twisted hard.
You hated this room most of all.
The office smelled like your father in the worst possible way. Expensive cologne, coffee, old paper and stunk most of all like control.
“Bring her in,” came his voice from the other side, low and calm enough to immediately put you on edge.
The doors opened.
And there he was.
Still in his suit despite the hour, though the jacket had been discarded somewhere and the sleeves of his white button-down rolled neatly to his forearms.
His tie hung loosened around his neck, silver threaded through the dark hair at his temples beneath the warm office lighting.
He stood near the massive mahogany desk facing the doorway, one hand braced against the back of a leather chair while his eyes swept slowly over you from head to toe.
Something sharp flickered across his face before disappearing almost immediately behind practiced political composure.
The agents quietly retreated from the room, the heavy doors shutting behind them with a soft click that sounded suspiciously like a prison cell locking.
Silence settled instantly.
You refused to let it intimidate you.
“Well,” you announced loudly, swaying slightly as you limped farther into the room. “Good news. I’m not dead. You can call off the fucking national guard.”
Your father said nothing. That calm expression remained fixed firmly in place. It made you want to claw at the walls.
You laughed harshly, gesturing vaguely around the office. “What? No speech prepared? I figured by now your communications team would’ve drafted at least three statements about your troubled daughter spiraling publicly.”
Still nothing. His restraint felt intentional. “Oh, come on,” you snapped, the bitterness rising hotter now. “At least pretend this isn’t embarrassing for you. That’s the part you’re best at, remember? Pretending.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
You stepped closer immediately, sensing blood in the water. “Do you know how fucking insane this whole thing is?” you continued, voice climbing sharper with every word.
“I’m twenty-four years old and you still have armed babysitters following me into bars like I’m a flight risk. Normal people’s parents stop grounding them after puberty, but congratulations, senator, you found a way to turn it into a federal operation.”
“You were drugged.”
The interruption came calm. You rolled your eyes instantly even as your stomach twisted unpleasantly at the reminder. “And?”
"And a man with an active restraining order followed you out of the club.”
“Oh my God,” you groaned dramatically, throwing your head back. “Christian is pathetic, not dangerous.”
“He has sent over forty-three documented messages threatening your detail.”
“It's not like he's writing manifestos. He is not a fucking terrorist! He just wants to fuck me!” You don't really know why you are defending Christian. You weren't particularly fond of the guy following you around either but you refused to stand on the same stance as your father right now.
“Watch your language! Anything could have happened in that alley!” your father yelled.
“And yet somehow I survived the experience,” you shot back viciously. “Should make for a great boost to your campaign.”
Something flickered across your father’s face again then. Thought still not anger exactly.
It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, but you saw it anyway and immediately hated yourself for noticing.
So you got crueler.
Because that was always easier.
“You know,” you said lightly, pacing unevenly across the office despite the way the room still tilted faintly around you, “this might actually be your fault when you think about it. Maybe if you’d spent slightly less time trying to save America and slightly more time raising your fucking daughter, I wouldn’t spend half my time trying to get strangers to ruin it for me.”
The words landed hard. You knew they would. That was entirely the point. Your father inhaled slowly through his nose, the only visible crack in his composure so far.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
You barked out a laugh. “Don't tell me what to fucking do!”
“You’re in no state to—”
“What?” you cut in sharply. “Embarrass you further? Relax. I already threw up on mom’s hydrangeas outside. We’ve really captured the full family experience tonight, Dad!”
You stared at him for another long second, chest rising unevenly beneath the silver fabric of your dress while the office swayed subtly around the edges from whatever had been slipped into your drink.
The anger was easier to hold onto than the nausea. Easier than the humiliation. Easier than the tiny, ugly part of yourself still replaying the image of Christian standing at the mouth of the alley while your vision blurred and your legs stopped working correctly.
So you chose anger.
Obviously.
Your laugh came brittle and sharp as glass as you backed toward the office doors. “You know what? I actually cannot do this right now.”
Your father straightened slightly. “You’re not leaving this conversation.”
“Oh, I absolutely am.” You reached blindly for the door handle behind you, smearing dried mascara further across your cheek when you tried to wipe away the angry tears from your cheekbones.
“You’ve got your dramatic little lecture out of the way. I got drugged, your security detail failed spectacularly, Christian is apparently the zodiac killer now, and you’re about to threaten me with even more armed Ken dolls following me around campus. End scene.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Enough!”
That finally snapped sharper than before, enough authority bleeding into his voice to make the room still for half a heartbeat.
You smiled meanly anyway.
It was actually a instinct at this points. Your defense was automatic.
“Fine,” you said mockingly, throwing your arms wide despite the way the motion made your stomach churn. “Gear up your newest batch of emotionally constipated ex-marines and let me go home so we can do this all again in three to five months. Nice seeing you, dad.”
The word dad dripped sarcasm so heavily it practically poisoned the air.
Your father’s expression hardened slightly, exhaustion finally beginning to crack through the carefully maintained calm.
For a moment he simply looked at you standing there barefoot and bloodied in the middle of his office, mascara streaked beneath your eyes like war paint, all sharp teeth and shaking hands and self-destruction wrapped in a designer dress.
Then he shook his head once, slowly. “No,” he said. You frowned faintly.
“No?”
“We’re done with security agents.”
Your fingers slipped from the door handle.
Because for one impossible, dizzying second, hope cracked straight through the center of your chest before you could stop it.
Not dramatic hope. Nothing huge. Just small little prickle at the edge of your amored heart.
Your father watched the realization move across your face, watched the fight briefly loosen from your posture, and something unreadable flickered behind his eyes before disappearing again.
You swallowed hard. “...what?”
“We are clearly past the point where standard private security is effective.” The wording immediately made your stomach drop.
Your expression cooled instantly. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Your father didn’t answer right away.
Instead he moved slowly around the desk, every inch the composed senator again despite the fact that it was nearly three in the morning and his daughter looked like you crawled out of a crime scene.
He stopped beside the fireplace near the far side of the office, gaze fixed steadily on you while your pulse began thudding harder beneath your ribs.
“You need someone equipped to handle the reality of the situation.”
“Oh my God,” you laughed suddenly, ugly disbelief curling through the sound. “What did you do? Hire the fucking CIA?”
His face remained unreadable. Your mouth slowly flattened. “What did you do?”
“You are no longer going back to campus alone.”
“There it is,” you snapped immediately, rage flaring back to life so fast it almost made you dizzy. “There’s the authoritarian bullshit I was waiting for.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“Everything about my life seems to be non-negotiable to you.”
“You were roofied tonight. You were almost raped.”
“I was drugged at a club, not trafficked across state lines, Jesus Christ.”
“He was waiting for you outside.”
“And your precious little detail found me, didn’t they?” you shot back viciously. “Congratulations. Give them medals.”
Your father’s jaw flexed hard enough for you to notice this time and finally you were getting something real. “You think this is a game because you’ve never had to see what people are capable of.”
“And you think locking me in a cage is the same thing as loving me.”
The words hit the room like a gunshot.
For the first time all night your father looked genuinely affected by something you said. But it lasted less than a second.
Then the senator returned.
“This conversation is over.”
You barked out a laugh. “Oh, fuck you.”
“No,” he said evenly. “You’re going to listen to me for once in your life!”
The authority in his voice made something instinctive in you rear up immediately. You straightened despite yourself, glaring at him across the office while your heartbeat thudded unevenly in your ears.
Then your father turned slightly toward the office doors, opened it with the grace of a man who hadn't just ruined your life. He peaked his head outside for a moment before opening the door all the way and stepping aside.
Every muscle in your body went still.
For a moment you didn't even turn to look. You were still too busy glaring at your father across the room, chest rising hard with anger.
The silence stretched strangely behind you, heavy enough that instinct finally forced you to look.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
The man standing in the doorway did not look like security.
That was your very first thought.
Not because he lacked the size for it. Quite the opposite, actually. He was broad shouldered in a way that made the doorway itself seem smaller, dark jacket hanging open over a plain black shirt that stretched tightly across his chest and forearms, both rough enough to look dangerous even from several feet away.
Older than you by enough to matter, late thirties maybe, with dark hair cropped short and a face that looked less handsome in a traditional sense and more like something carved slowly out of violence and exhaustion.
There was a scar disappearing beneath the edge of his collar. Another near his knuckles. His nose looked like it had been broken at least once in his life time.
Twice, maybe.
And his eyes—
Jesus Christ.
Empty in the way soldiers in documentaries looked empty after coming home from wars they never really left.
For the first time all night, you forgot to speak.
The man’s gaze swept over you once, quick and efficient. Bloody lip, bare foot, smudged makeup, tiny silver dress, trembling hands. He catalogued the damage with brutal quick efficiency and all without a single emotion in his eyes.
Then his attention shifted back toward your father.
Not to you but to the senator.
Your irritation immediately returned full force. “Well,” you said slowly, looking between the two men. “You somehow managed to make this significantly more fucked up.”
Your father ignored the comment entirely.
“This is Mr. Castle.”
The man said nothing.
You tilted your head slightly.
The silence coming from him felt fundamentally different than the agents outside. The other security details stayed quiet because they were trained to. This man stayed quiet because he genuinely did not care whether you spoke or not.
That realization irritated you instantly.
Your father folded his hands behind his back, fully back in senator mode now. “Mr. Castle will be with you moving forward.”
You stared at him.
“With me?” you repeated flatly.
“Yes.” Something ugly began uncurling slowly in your chest.
Your father continued before you could interrupt. “He will accompany you to classes, to campus housing, and to any approved activities deemed necessary.”
Your mouth fell open slightly.
“Approved—”
“There will be no more clubs.”
You barked out a disbelieving laugh.
“No more drinking.”
“Are you actually insane?”
“No more disappearing your security detail. No more reckless behavior. No more acting out simply because you think you are invincible.”
“Oh my God,” you snapped, turning toward him fully now. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“You’re assigning me a fucking parole officer?”
“A bodyguard.”
Your laugh came sharp and vicious. “Right. Because that’s so much less psychotic.”
Still, Mr. Castle said absolutely nothing.
That somehow made his presence feel larger.
He remained near the doorway with his hands loose at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that paradoxically made him seem more dangerous, like violence sat so naturally inside him he didn’t need to posture about it.
Most men in security tried to look intimidating. This man looked like he simply was.
And worse?
He still wasn’t looking at you.
Men always stared at you eventually.
Especially dressed like this.
Especially looking like this.
But Mr. Castle looked almost aggressively uninterested, which immediately triggered something deeply competitive and irrational inside you.
You pointed at him suddenly. “What’s his deal?”
Your father’s expression hardened. “His deal is keeping you alive.”
“No, seriously,” you continued, eyes narrowing as you looked him over openly now. “Did you find him in a back alley somewhere? Is he house trained? Does he bite?”
“Enough.”
“Oh, don’t start pretending like this is for my own good,” you shot back. “You hired some giant ex-hitman looking motherfucker to stalk me around campus twenty-four hours a day.”
You don't notice it because you are vehemently protesting to your father, but for the first time since entering the room, Mr. Castle looks directly at you.
His expression is controlled but had anyone one been paying attention, they'd of seen the amusement written across his whole face.
“I have already explained, this arrangement is non-negotiable.”
You laughed in disbelief, dragging both hands through your tangled hair. “You cannot seriously expect me to just accept this.”
“I don’t expect acceptance,” your father replied evenly. “But I do expect compliance.”
“Fuck you.”
“You are alive tonight because your detail found you in time.”
“And now what?” you snapped. “You think parking a six-foot-four murder suspect outside my room is going to magically fix me?”
“I’m not there to fix you,” Mr. Castle’s voice hit the room like gravel dragged across concrete.
Your breath caught embarrassingly for half a second. Because of course that’s what he sounded like. Of fucking course. Low and rough and the most fuck me voice you think you've ever heard from a man.
His eyes stayed fixed on you now, steady and unreadable beneath the warm office lighting while something dangerously close to awareness prickled suddenly beneath your skin.
“I’m there,” he continued evenly, “to make sure nobody gets close enough to try that shit again.”
The room went still. Not because he raised his voice. Because he didn’t. Because unlike your father, who wrapped fear in politics and control and carefully chosen words, this man spoke about danger like he knew it intimately.
Like he’d lived inside it before.
And for the first time since the alley behind the club, genuine unease curled quietly beneath your ribs.
The room stayed painfully still after he finished speaking.
Your father looked relieved by it. Relieved that Mr. Castle wasn't intimidated so far by your ugly attitude. Like he genuinely believed this man standing in the doorway behind you was the solution to a problem that had been bleeding him dry for years.
Like dragging some terrifying stranger into your life was the first thing that had allowed him to breathe properly in months.
You hated him for that.
You hated both of them for that.
The silence stretched long enough for the grandfather clock somewhere down the hallway to begin chiming softly in the distance.
The sound echoing faintly through the enormous house while your pulse hammered hot beneath your skin.
You looked at your father one final time, waiting for something to crack through the senator facade. Some flicker of guilt or doubt or even a splash of humanity.
Instead he simply held your gaze steadily, exhausted but immovable.
The decision was made. The conversation over. Something bitter curled sharply in your chest. “Unbelievable,” you muttered.
Then you turned toward the door.
Toward him.
Mr. Castle stepped aside automatically to let you pass, though aside hardly felt accurate considering the man still occupied an absurd amount of physical space even standing still.
Up close the damage became more obvious. Faint scar near his jaw. A nose crooked, broken and healed incorrectly.
The subtle smell of cold air, gun oil, and something darker lingering beneath the expensive cedar scent of your father’s office.
You stopped directly in front of him. Too close in your father's opinion. Close enough that normal men usually shifted uncomfortably. That was the point.
You tilted your head upward, mascara-streaked eyes narrowing while your fingers tightened around the hem of your dress.
He looked even larger from here, broad chest rising slowly beneath the black fabric of his shirt while his expression remained unreadable.
Still calm and still one hundred percent unaffected. God, you wanted to ruin that immediately. “Don’t expect a fucking thank you,” you said coldly.
Mr. Castle answered you without hesitation. “Oh,” he said, voice low enough to scrape against your ribs, “I expect nothing of the sort, princess.”
Princess.
The word hit strangely. He’d already figured you out in under five minutes and found the entire performance vaguely exhausting.
Your irritation flared instantly hotter because your proximity had done absolutely nothing. No awkwardness. No flustered glance downward. No discomfort.
Every other agent your father hired eventually folded beneath the pressure of you invading their space like this, touching ties, brushing hands, testing boundaries until they either quit or got reassigned.
Mr. Castle didn’t even blink.
That felt intolerable.
You scoffed sharply and shoulder-checked him hard as you pushed past.
The impact barely moved him. You stormed toward the office doors barefoot and furious. You glanced back just in time to see the man pause near the doorway, posture straightening slightly.
“Goodnight, sir,” he said evenly. Then he turned and followed you out.
The realization made your eye twitch almost immediately.
You barked out a harsh laugh and continued limping upstairs anyway, one hand dragging along the polished banister for balance while your head continued pounding viciously from the lingering effects of the drug.
Frank followed several steps behind without crowding you, his heavy footsteps steady against the hardwood staircase while fury continued bubbling hotter and hotter beneath your skin with every passing second.
This was insane.
Actually insane.
You reached the second floor landing and whipped around suddenly, nearly losing your balance in the process. “What, are you planning on standing outside the bathroom too?”
“If necessary.”
“Oh my God.”
You resumed walking, faster now despite the uneven limp caused by your scraped knee and missing shoe. Family portraits blurred past along the hallway walls as you headed toward the bedroom you hadn’t willingly slept in since your mother disappeared from this house.
Your old room sat at the very end of the corridor. Your father always said it was because you liked the privacy as a child.
Your mother once admitted quietly that it was because your tantrums echoed less from farther away. You reached the bedroom door and shoved it open hard enough for it to slam against the wall behind it.
The rage that carried you through the office downstairs had started dulling around the edges now, softened unpleasantly by the lingering effects of whatever had been slipped into your drink.
Your body felt heavy in strange places and weightless in others. The room tilted ever so slightly when you turned your head too quickly. Even the anger itself felt harder to hold onto properly.
But it was still there.
And now it only had one target left.
You turned toward Frank Castle standing calmly in the doorway while his eyes swept methodically around the room, cataloguing exits and windows with an ease that felt almost unconscious.
It was unsettling watching him exist inside a space. Nothing about him relaxed fully. Even standing still, he looked prepared for something terrible to happen.
You hated how much that fascinated you already.
“What,” you asked lazily, leaning one shoulder against the vanity table, “you gonna stand there all night?”
His gaze shifted back toward you. “Pretty much.”
The bluntness irritated you immediately.
You scoffed softly, though the sound lacked some of its earlier bite. “God, you’re boring.”
Frank said nothing.
The silence stretched again, but unlike your father’s agents downstairs, his quiet never felt submissive. It felt deliberate. He genuinely saw no reason to waste energy reacting to your bullshit.
Which only made you want to push harder.
Your fingers slid slowly around your neck to rest against the back as you held his gaze. “What exactly are the rules here, Castle?” you asked, voice lowering slightly. “You gonna watch me sleep too?”
“No.”
“Watch me change?”
“No.”
“You sure?” Your mouth curved faintly. The dizziness rolled harder through you then, warm and disorienting, and you reached automatically for the wall to steady yourself before immediately pretending you meant to do it.
Humiliation flared hot beneath your skin. You hated feeling out of control. Hated that your body still didn’t entirely belong to you tonight.
So you lashed out the only way you knew how.
By becoming unbearable.
You kicked off your remaining heel carelessly across the room, the shoe striking the wall with a sharp crack before collapsing sideways onto the carpet. Frank didn’t so much as blink.
“Oh, come on,” you muttered. “At least pretend I’m difficult.”
“You are difficult.” Your brows lifted slightly.
The answer came so calmly it almost sounded factual rather than insulting. You stared at him another second before reaching toward the zipper tucked beneath your arm. “And yet,” you said slowly, “you still took the job.”
Frank arms folding loosely across his chest.
Then you dragged the zipper downward.
The silver fabric loosened immediately around your ribs, the top of the dress slipping lower against your chest while your eyes stayed locked on his face, waiting for the reaction that always eventually came from men.
Discomfort or interest or something more akin to embarrassment.
“What?” you asked lightly. “Does it make you all hot and bothered watching a drunk girl strip?”
The words came cruel on purpose, sharpened by exhaustion and humiliation and the desperate need to regain some kind of control over the situation.
Your fingers pushed the straps down your shoulders inch by inch until cool air kissed bare skin, the dress hanging precariously low now.
You’d dressed for a club, not a hostage situation so your lack of a bra was no surprise but your lack of underwear was a bold choice.
Frank’s expression never changed. No sign that he was flustered from staring at your naked form after only meeting you five minutes ago. No cold expression like he held with your father either.
If anything, he just looked tired.
And somehow that irritated you more than lust ever could have.
His gaze lifted once toward your face and held there steadily for a long moment before he pushed himself away from the doorway.
“Get some sleep,” he said evenly.
Then, after the smallest pause, “Goodnight, princess.”
And before you could spit another insult at him, he pulled the bedroom door shut behind him with a soft click, leaving you standing undressed in the middle of your childhood bedroom with your pulse thundering unevenly beneath your skin.
I’m gonna reblog again bc I should’ve said more but you’re REALLY skilled/talented at writing the genuine pain inside self destruction inside the “spoiled brat” trope. On the surface I’m sure she’s insufferable but she’s so realistically twisted and complex and fallible and I love her already. And I can’t wait to see how she interacts with Frank!! Wait… this IS a series, right??? 👀
━━ frank castle x senator's daughter reader ; wc 6.3k
tw ; mention of attempted sa + spiked drink + one use of the r word , lots of family disfunction + mother abandonment , bad coping mechanisms + weaponized sexuality
The first thing you became aware of was the taste.
Not the taste of alcohol, that you knew. Expensive champagne at political fundraisers where old men kissed your cheek and called you beautiful while staring too long at your chest.
Cheap vodka that burned warm beneath neon lights in fraternity basements.
Tequila shots taken off strangers because your security detail hated it when you disappeared into crowds with people they couldn’t vet first.
You knew the taste of liquor the way some girls knew scripture.
This was different.
It left a bitter taste all the way down to your stomach. Something metallic and wrong. It sat heavy on your tongue as the black SUV carved through the empty stretch of highway, headlights cutting pale ribbons through the dark Virginia countryside while your head lolled against the cold window hard enough to ache.
The glass vibrated beneath your temple every time the driver crossed uneven pavement, and somewhere in the front seat one of the agents spoke quietly into an earpiece, his voice low enough that you couldn’t make out the words. Not that it mattered. You already knew who they were talking to.
The senator.
You closed your eyes and swallowed against another wave of nausea, fingers tightening around the edge of the leather seat. Your mascara had long since dried stiff beneath your eyes hours ago, your lipstick long gone except for the smeared remnants still clinging to the corner of your mouth, and your dress, silver and microscopic and purchased specifically because it made your detail visibly uncomfortable, had ridden dangerously high up your thighs during the struggle of getting you into the car.
One of your heels had disappeared somewhere between the alley beside the club and the curb where your security team finally caught up to you.
You hoped whoever found it sold it online.
The silence inside the SUV was thick enough to choke on. They always did this after incidents. No engagement. No arguing. Your father had trained them well.
But that only made you crueler.
“Oh my God,” you muttered, letting your head roll sideways against the seat as you stared at the broad shoulders of the agent sitting in front of you. “You people are genuinely un-fucking-bearable. Do they remove your personalities during orientation or is that just a side effect of working for him?”
They gave you nothing. Not even a blink. It made your blood boil.
Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Right. I forgot. The senator said not to engage with the emotionally unstable daughter when she's in a fit.”
Still nothing.
You hated that more than yelling. At least yelling meant somebody still cared enough to lose control.
Outside the window the city lights had long since disappeared, swallowed by endless dark stretches of trees and old money estates hidden far back from the road.
You recognized where you were headed nearly an hour ago, and with every mile your mood had curdled further into something venomous and mean.
The country house sat just outside of DC, though calling it a house felt ridiculous. Estate sounded more accurate. Mansion, maybe.
Your mother used to call it the retreat in the brittle, performative voice she used at campaign dinners, smiling too wide while your father rested a hand against the small of her back like they were still in love.
You hadn’t stepped foot there willingly in almost four years.
Not since you left college, or when your refused to return home for break and especially not since your mother packed two suitcases during one of your parents’ screaming matches and walked out the front door without looking back at either of you.
The senator still kept the place exactly the same.
Same hydrangeas lining the driveway. Same cream-colored furniture no one actually sat on. Same framed family photographs frozen like insects trapped beneath glass.
Sometimes you thought your father genuinely believed that if he kept the house untouched long enough your mother might eventually come back and slide neatly into the life she abandoned.
Sometimes you thought he looked at you the same way.
Like something else he’d failed to keep in line.
You pressed your tongue against your teeth, fighting another dizzy spell as fragmented pieces of the night drifted unpleasantly through your head.
Music loud enough to shake the floorboards beneath your heels. Christian’s face appearing and disappearing through the crowd all evening.
The sickly sweet taste of the drink somebody handed you near the bar. The moment the room started tilting sideways beneath fluorescent pink lights while sweat slicked the back of your neck.
Christian.
Your detail treated him like a credible threat. You treated him like an annoyance.
Sure, he was obsessive. Sure, he sent flowers to your sorority house and waited outside lecture halls and somehow always seemed to know where you were going before you got there.
Sure, your father had nearly detonated Capitol Hill trying to get the restraining order processed quietly.
But men became obsessed with you sometimes. That happened when you were the daughter of one of the most recognizable senators in the country and pretty enough for people to project things onto you.
It wasn’t your fault half the world mistook visibility for intimacy.
And honestly, Christian never scared you the way he did your father. Because the only thing Christian ever wanted from you was you.
Your father wanted ownership.
There was a difference.
You had ditched your detail just after midnight. It wasn't particularly difficult. It never was.
They underestimated you because your father insisted on hiring men who still viewed you as a politician’s daughter first and a grown woman second.
You knew how to disappear into crowds. You knew which bathrooms had secondary exits and which bouncers accepted cash to look the other way.
You knew how to weaponize the assumptions people made about spoiled rich girls.
But the detail found you anyway. Half stumbling, half swaying into the alley behind it while your pulse thundered wrong beneath your skin and your vision blurred at the edges.
You remembered one of the agents grabbing your shoulders. Remembered shoving him hard enough that he nearly lost his footing. Remembered screaming obscenities loud enough to turn heads halfway down the block.
And behind them, Christian, standing at the mouth of the alley. Watching you until the agents spotted and then he bolted.
Your stomach twisted violently.
You hated this part. The part where your brain tried assembling fear after the fact like a puzzle with missing pieces.
The part where you started wondering what would have happened if your detail had been five minutes later. Or ten.
The part where your father would look at you tonight and see confirmation of every terrible thing he already believed about the world.
You straightened suddenly, glaring toward the front seat. “If he sends me back to campus with even more guards after this, I swear to God I’ll start fucking all of you on principle.”
The driver’s jaw visibly tightened.
Satisfaction flickered hot and ugly through your chest.
There she is.
This was the version of yourself you understood best. The vicious one. The unbearable one. The girl who could always make the room hurt worse than you did.
Because if you stayed mean enough, loud enough, difficult enough, people couldn’t abandon you unexpectedly. They left because you drove them away. There was power in that. A sense of control that you coveted like your most prized possession.
Your mother leaving had taught you that much.
The SUV turned sharply through iron gates, tires crunching over gravel as the country house emerged slowly from the darkness ahead, all warm golden windows and sprawling white stone illuminated against the black countryside like something haunting.
Your pulse immediately spiked with familiar dread. Home, in the worst sense of the word. You laughed quietly to yourself, though there wasn’t anything funny about it.
The SUV rolled to a smooth stop beneath the covered entryway, headlights washing over the massive hydrangea bushes lining the front steps, pale blooms glowing ghost-white in the dark.
The agents didn't hesitate, one climbing from the passenger seat while the other opened your door before you could reach for the handle yourself.
The cold night air hit you like a slap.
Your stomach churned violently. “Easy,” one of the agents said, reaching for your arm as your heel, well, your oneremaining heel, caught awkwardly against the pavement.
You jerked away from him instantly. “Don’t fucking touch me.” Your balance failed almost immediately after that.
The world tilted sideways beneath your feet, the drug still lingering thick and ugly in your bloodstream despite the hours in the car.
Your knees buckled hard enough that the agent caught you before your face hit the gravel, large hands locking around your forearms while irritation flared hot and mean through your chest.
“There she is,” you snapped bitterly, trying unsuccessfully to wrench yourself free. “Capitol Hill’s finest. Do you people get bonuses every time you manhandle a drunk woman or is that just included in the health insurance package?”
Neither of them reacted.
You shoved hard against the agent’s chest, nails scraping briefly against the fabric of his suit jacket. “I said let go of me.”
“Miss—”
“Oh my fucking God, don’t miss me right now,” you hissed. “You lose me in Manhattan for three hours and suddenly you all remember how to do your jobs?”
The second agent moved toward the front door, likely to warn your father you’d arrived, and panic flared sharp and immediate beneath your ribs at the thought of walking inside.
Of seeing him. Of having this conversation in that house with your makeup smeared and your bloodstream poisoned and your pride hanging somewhere in a filthy alley behind a nightclub.
You planted your feet stubbornly against the gravel.
The agent sighed in annoyance and exhaustion. That somehow pissed you off even more. “What?” you snapped, glaring up at him. “You exhausted? Tough night babysitting the senator’s fucked up daughter?”
The silence stretched.
Then, abruptly, your entire demeanor shifted.
It happened like a survial instinct.
You softened against him suddenly, fingers sliding lazily up the front of his tie while your lashes lowered dramatically.
The agent went rigid almost immediately as you stepped closer into his space, the lingering haze in your system making everything warm and reckless and sharp around the edges.
“Miss—”
“Oh, come on,” you laughed softly, dragging your hand deliberately down the center of his chest. “You’re telling me you’ve followed me around for almost a year and never once thought about it? That’s honestly kind of insulting.”
“Enough,” the second agent barked sharply from behind you before the first could even respond.
You twisted around with a crooked grin. “Aw, is somebody jealous?”
The first agent physically removed your hands from him then, firm but careful, stepping backward immediately like proximity itself had become dangerous.
Your father’s rules regarding the security detail were legendary at this point. No drinking with you. No socializing with you. No personal contact whatsoever.
One agent had gotten fired because you kissed him at a New Year’s party in front of paparazzi cameras after he confiscated your fake ID.
You weaponized humiliation beautifully.
It was one of the few things you were genuinely talented at.
Unfortunately, the second the adrenaline burned off, the nausea came roaring back with catastrophic force.
Your face twisted. “Oh no,” one of the agents muttered.
“You better fucking move—” You barely made it three staggering steps before collapsing beside the hydrangea bushes lining the front walk.
One hand braced desperately against the stone border as you vomited violently into the flowers your mother planted herself almost fifteen years ago.
Classy.
The cold night air stuck damp strands of hair against your cheeks while your whole body shook miserably from the force of it, humiliation burning hot beneath your skin as one of the agents hovered awkwardly nearby while the other quietly handed you bottled water and pretended not to notice the sound of you getting sick.
You ripped the cap off with trembling fingers. “If either of you tells him about this,” you rasped between breaths, “I’ll accuse you of kidnapping me on national television.”
The first agent crouched beside you carefully, expression unreadable beneath the porch lights. “He already knows what happened.”
Something ugly twisted deep in your chest at that.
Of course he did.
The senator always knew everything eventually.
You stared down at the ruined hydrangeas, breathing unevenly while the drugged haze continued pulling strangely at the edges of your thoughts.
Somewhere inside the house a light flicked on upstairs. Then another. You laughed quietly under your breath, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before looking up toward the glowing windows of the country house with pure venom curling warm in your throat.
“Fantastic,” you muttered. “Let the fucking execution begin.”
The agents practically shepherded you through the front doors before you could decide whether you wanted to fight them again or collapse dramatically across the marble entryway instead.
The warmth of the house hit you immediately, thick with expensive cedarwood polish and for one dizzy second you were seventeen again, sneaking back inside after midnight with vodka on your breath and mascara smudged beneath your eyes while your parents screamed at each other somewhere upstairs.
Only now the house was quieter.
That was the difference after your mother left.
Your bare foot slipped slightly against the polished floor as you stumbled forward, muttering a curse beneath your breath while one of the agents steadied your elbow for half a second before immediately letting go again.
You yanked your arm back anyway on instinct, glaring at him over your shoulder while you struggled to tug the microscopic silver dress lower over your thighs with what little dignity remained.
Not much, admittedly.
Your appearance had deteriorated significantly since Manhattan.
Mascara streaked black beneath your eyes. Lip split open and crusted with dried blood from where you’d eaten pavement in the alley behind the club.
One knee scraped raw and angry beneath the hem of your dress and one shoe missing entirely.
The senator’s daughter.
America’s fucking princess.
You almost laughed.
The agents led you deeper into the house, past towering windows and dim hallway sconces casting long shadows across the walls, and with every step your mood blackened further.
One of the agents stopped outside the office doors and knocked once.
Your stomach twisted hard.
You hated this room most of all.
The office smelled like your father in the worst possible way. Expensive cologne, coffee, old paper and stunk most of all like control.
“Bring her in,” came his voice from the other side, low and calm enough to immediately put you on edge.
The doors opened.
And there he was.
Still in his suit despite the hour, though the jacket had been discarded somewhere and the sleeves of his white button-down rolled neatly to his forearms.
His tie hung loosened around his neck, silver threaded through the dark hair at his temples beneath the warm office lighting.
He stood near the massive mahogany desk facing the doorway, one hand braced against the back of a leather chair while his eyes swept slowly over you from head to toe.
Something sharp flickered across his face before disappearing almost immediately behind practiced political composure.
The agents quietly retreated from the room, the heavy doors shutting behind them with a soft click that sounded suspiciously like a prison cell locking.
Silence settled instantly.
You refused to let it intimidate you.
“Well,” you announced loudly, swaying slightly as you limped farther into the room. “Good news. I’m not dead. You can call off the fucking national guard.”
Your father said nothing. That calm expression remained fixed firmly in place. It made you want to claw at the walls.
You laughed harshly, gesturing vaguely around the office. “What? No speech prepared? I figured by now your communications team would’ve drafted at least three statements about your troubled daughter spiraling publicly.”
Still nothing. His restraint felt intentional. “Oh, come on,” you snapped, the bitterness rising hotter now. “At least pretend this isn’t embarrassing for you. That’s the part you’re best at, remember? Pretending.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
You stepped closer immediately, sensing blood in the water. “Do you know how fucking insane this whole thing is?” you continued, voice climbing sharper with every word.
“I’m twenty-four years old and you still have armed babysitters following me into bars like I’m a flight risk. Normal people’s parents stop grounding them after puberty, but congratulations, senator, you found a way to turn it into a federal operation.”
“You were drugged.”
The interruption came calm. You rolled your eyes instantly even as your stomach twisted unpleasantly at the reminder. “And?”
"And a man with an active restraining order followed you out of the club.”
“Oh my God,” you groaned dramatically, throwing your head back. “Christian is pathetic, not dangerous.”
“He has sent over forty-three documented messages threatening your detail.”
“It's not like he's writing manifestos. He is not a fucking terrorist! He just wants to fuck me!” You don't really know why you are defending Christian. You weren't particularly fond of the guy following you around either but you refused to stand on the same stance as your father right now.
“Watch your language! Anything could have happened in that alley!” your father yelled.
“And yet somehow I survived the experience,” you shot back viciously. “Should make for a great boost to your campaign.”
Something flickered across your father’s face again then. Thought still not anger exactly.
It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, but you saw it anyway and immediately hated yourself for noticing.
So you got crueler.
Because that was always easier.
“You know,” you said lightly, pacing unevenly across the office despite the way the room still tilted faintly around you, “this might actually be your fault when you think about it. Maybe if you’d spent slightly less time trying to save America and slightly more time raising your fucking daughter, I wouldn’t spend half my time trying to get strangers to ruin it for me.”
The words landed hard. You knew they would. That was entirely the point. Your father inhaled slowly through his nose, the only visible crack in his composure so far.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
You barked out a laugh. “Don't tell me what to fucking do!”
“You’re in no state to—”
“What?” you cut in sharply. “Embarrass you further? Relax. I already threw up on mom’s hydrangeas outside. We’ve really captured the full family experience tonight, Dad!”
You stared at him for another long second, chest rising unevenly beneath the silver fabric of your dress while the office swayed subtly around the edges from whatever had been slipped into your drink.
The anger was easier to hold onto than the nausea. Easier than the humiliation. Easier than the tiny, ugly part of yourself still replaying the image of Christian standing at the mouth of the alley while your vision blurred and your legs stopped working correctly.
So you chose anger.
Obviously.
Your laugh came brittle and sharp as glass as you backed toward the office doors. “You know what? I actually cannot do this right now.”
Your father straightened slightly. “You’re not leaving this conversation.”
“Oh, I absolutely am.” You reached blindly for the door handle behind you, smearing dried mascara further across your cheek when you tried to wipe away the angry tears from your cheekbones.
“You’ve got your dramatic little lecture out of the way. I got drugged, your security detail failed spectacularly, Christian is apparently the zodiac killer now, and you’re about to threaten me with even more armed Ken dolls following me around campus. End scene.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Enough!”
That finally snapped sharper than before, enough authority bleeding into his voice to make the room still for half a heartbeat.
You smiled meanly anyway.
It was actually a instinct at this points. Your defense was automatic.
“Fine,” you said mockingly, throwing your arms wide despite the way the motion made your stomach churn. “Gear up your newest batch of emotionally constipated ex-marines and let me go home so we can do this all again in three to five months. Nice seeing you, dad.”
The word dad dripped sarcasm so heavily it practically poisoned the air.
Your father’s expression hardened slightly, exhaustion finally beginning to crack through the carefully maintained calm.
For a moment he simply looked at you standing there barefoot and bloodied in the middle of his office, mascara streaked beneath your eyes like war paint, all sharp teeth and shaking hands and self-destruction wrapped in a designer dress.
Then he shook his head once, slowly. “No,” he said. You frowned faintly.
“No?”
“We’re done with security agents.”
Your fingers slipped from the door handle.
Because for one impossible, dizzying second, hope cracked straight through the center of your chest before you could stop it.
Not dramatic hope. Nothing huge. Just small little prickle at the edge of your amored heart.
Your father watched the realization move across your face, watched the fight briefly loosen from your posture, and something unreadable flickered behind his eyes before disappearing again.
You swallowed hard. “...what?”
“We are clearly past the point where standard private security is effective.” The wording immediately made your stomach drop.
Your expression cooled instantly. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Your father didn’t answer right away.
Instead he moved slowly around the desk, every inch the composed senator again despite the fact that it was nearly three in the morning and his daughter looked like you crawled out of a crime scene.
He stopped beside the fireplace near the far side of the office, gaze fixed steadily on you while your pulse began thudding harder beneath your ribs.
“You need someone equipped to handle the reality of the situation.”
“Oh my God,” you laughed suddenly, ugly disbelief curling through the sound. “What did you do? Hire the fucking CIA?”
His face remained unreadable. Your mouth slowly flattened. “What did you do?”
“You are no longer going back to campus alone.”
“There it is,” you snapped immediately, rage flaring back to life so fast it almost made you dizzy. “There’s the authoritarian bullshit I was waiting for.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“Everything about my life seems to be non-negotiable to you.”
“You were roofied tonight. You were almost raped.”
“I was drugged at a club, not trafficked across state lines, Jesus Christ.”
“He was waiting for you outside.”
“And your precious little detail found me, didn’t they?” you shot back viciously. “Congratulations. Give them medals.”
Your father’s jaw flexed hard enough for you to notice this time and finally you were getting something real. “You think this is a game because you’ve never had to see what people are capable of.”
“And you think locking me in a cage is the same thing as loving me.”
The words hit the room like a gunshot.
For the first time all night your father looked genuinely affected by something you said. But it lasted less than a second.
Then the senator returned.
“This conversation is over.”
You barked out a laugh. “Oh, fuck you.”
“No,” he said evenly. “You’re going to listen to me for once in your life!”
The authority in his voice made something instinctive in you rear up immediately. You straightened despite yourself, glaring at him across the office while your heartbeat thudded unevenly in your ears.
Then your father turned slightly toward the office doors, opened it with the grace of a man who hadn't just ruined your life. He peaked his head outside for a moment before opening the door all the way and stepping aside.
Every muscle in your body went still.
For a moment you didn't even turn to look. You were still too busy glaring at your father across the room, chest rising hard with anger.
The silence stretched strangely behind you, heavy enough that instinct finally forced you to look.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
The man standing in the doorway did not look like security.
That was your very first thought.
Not because he lacked the size for it. Quite the opposite, actually. He was broad shouldered in a way that made the doorway itself seem smaller, dark jacket hanging open over a plain black shirt that stretched tightly across his chest and forearms, both rough enough to look dangerous even from several feet away.
Older than you by enough to matter, late thirties maybe, with dark hair cropped short and a face that looked less handsome in a traditional sense and more like something carved slowly out of violence and exhaustion.
There was a scar disappearing beneath the edge of his collar. Another near his knuckles. His nose looked like it had been broken at least once in his life time.
Twice, maybe.
And his eyes—
Jesus Christ.
Empty in the way soldiers in documentaries looked empty after coming home from wars they never really left.
For the first time all night, you forgot to speak.
The man’s gaze swept over you once, quick and efficient. Bloody lip, bare foot, smudged makeup, tiny silver dress, trembling hands. He catalogued the damage with brutal quick efficiency and all without a single emotion in his eyes.
Then his attention shifted back toward your father.
Not to you but to the senator.
Your irritation immediately returned full force. “Well,” you said slowly, looking between the two men. “You somehow managed to make this significantly more fucked up.”
Your father ignored the comment entirely.
“This is Mr. Castle.”
The man said nothing.
You tilted your head slightly.
The silence coming from him felt fundamentally different than the agents outside. The other security details stayed quiet because they were trained to. This man stayed quiet because he genuinely did not care whether you spoke or not.
That realization irritated you instantly.
Your father folded his hands behind his back, fully back in senator mode now. “Mr. Castle will be with you moving forward.”
You stared at him.
“With me?” you repeated flatly.
“Yes.” Something ugly began uncurling slowly in your chest.
Your father continued before you could interrupt. “He will accompany you to classes, to campus housing, and to any approved activities deemed necessary.”
Your mouth fell open slightly.
“Approved—”
“There will be no more clubs.”
You barked out a disbelieving laugh.
“No more drinking.”
“Are you actually insane?”
“No more disappearing your security detail. No more reckless behavior. No more acting out simply because you think you are invincible.”
“Oh my God,” you snapped, turning toward him fully now. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“You’re assigning me a fucking parole officer?”
“A bodyguard.”
Your laugh came sharp and vicious. “Right. Because that’s so much less psychotic.”
Still, Mr. Castle said absolutely nothing.
That somehow made his presence feel larger.
He remained near the doorway with his hands loose at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that paradoxically made him seem more dangerous, like violence sat so naturally inside him he didn’t need to posture about it.
Most men in security tried to look intimidating. This man looked like he simply was.
And worse?
He still wasn’t looking at you.
Men always stared at you eventually.
Especially dressed like this.
Especially looking like this.
But Mr. Castle looked almost aggressively uninterested, which immediately triggered something deeply competitive and irrational inside you.
You pointed at him suddenly. “What’s his deal?”
Your father’s expression hardened. “His deal is keeping you alive.”
“No, seriously,” you continued, eyes narrowing as you looked him over openly now. “Did you find him in a back alley somewhere? Is he house trained? Does he bite?”
“Enough.”
“Oh, don’t start pretending like this is for my own good,” you shot back. “You hired some giant ex-hitman looking motherfucker to stalk me around campus twenty-four hours a day.”
You don't notice it because you are vehemently protesting to your father, but for the first time since entering the room, Mr. Castle looks directly at you.
His expression is controlled but had anyone one been paying attention, they'd of seen the amusement written across his whole face.
“I have already explained, this arrangement is non-negotiable.”
You laughed in disbelief, dragging both hands through your tangled hair. “You cannot seriously expect me to just accept this.”
“I don’t expect acceptance,” your father replied evenly. “But I do expect compliance.”
“Fuck you.”
“You are alive tonight because your detail found you in time.”
“And now what?” you snapped. “You think parking a six-foot-four murder suspect outside my room is going to magically fix me?”
“I’m not there to fix you,” Mr. Castle’s voice hit the room like gravel dragged across concrete.
Your breath caught embarrassingly for half a second. Because of course that’s what he sounded like. Of fucking course. Low and rough and the most fuck me voice you think you've ever heard from a man.
His eyes stayed fixed on you now, steady and unreadable beneath the warm office lighting while something dangerously close to awareness prickled suddenly beneath your skin.
“I’m there,” he continued evenly, “to make sure nobody gets close enough to try that shit again.”
The room went still. Not because he raised his voice. Because he didn’t. Because unlike your father, who wrapped fear in politics and control and carefully chosen words, this man spoke about danger like he knew it intimately.
Like he’d lived inside it before.
And for the first time since the alley behind the club, genuine unease curled quietly beneath your ribs.
The room stayed painfully still after he finished speaking.
Your father looked relieved by it. Relieved that Mr. Castle wasn't intimidated so far by your ugly attitude. Like he genuinely believed this man standing in the doorway behind you was the solution to a problem that had been bleeding him dry for years.
Like dragging some terrifying stranger into your life was the first thing that had allowed him to breathe properly in months.
You hated him for that.
You hated both of them for that.
The silence stretched long enough for the grandfather clock somewhere down the hallway to begin chiming softly in the distance.
The sound echoing faintly through the enormous house while your pulse hammered hot beneath your skin.
You looked at your father one final time, waiting for something to crack through the senator facade. Some flicker of guilt or doubt or even a splash of humanity.
Instead he simply held your gaze steadily, exhausted but immovable.
The decision was made. The conversation over. Something bitter curled sharply in your chest. “Unbelievable,” you muttered.
Then you turned toward the door.
Toward him.
Mr. Castle stepped aside automatically to let you pass, though aside hardly felt accurate considering the man still occupied an absurd amount of physical space even standing still.
Up close the damage became more obvious. Faint scar near his jaw. A nose crooked, broken and healed incorrectly.
The subtle smell of cold air, gun oil, and something darker lingering beneath the expensive cedar scent of your father’s office.
You stopped directly in front of him. Too close in your father's opinion. Close enough that normal men usually shifted uncomfortably. That was the point.
You tilted your head upward, mascara-streaked eyes narrowing while your fingers tightened around the hem of your dress.
He looked even larger from here, broad chest rising slowly beneath the black fabric of his shirt while his expression remained unreadable.
Still calm and still one hundred percent unaffected. God, you wanted to ruin that immediately. “Don’t expect a fucking thank you,” you said coldly.
Mr. Castle answered you without hesitation. “Oh,” he said, voice low enough to scrape against your ribs, “I expect nothing of the sort, princess.”
Princess.
The word hit strangely. He’d already figured you out in under five minutes and found the entire performance vaguely exhausting.
Your irritation flared instantly hotter because your proximity had done absolutely nothing. No awkwardness. No flustered glance downward. No discomfort.
Every other agent your father hired eventually folded beneath the pressure of you invading their space like this, touching ties, brushing hands, testing boundaries until they either quit or got reassigned.
Mr. Castle didn’t even blink.
That felt intolerable.
You scoffed sharply and shoulder-checked him hard as you pushed past.
The impact barely moved him. You stormed toward the office doors barefoot and furious. You glanced back just in time to see the man pause near the doorway, posture straightening slightly.
“Goodnight, sir,” he said evenly. Then he turned and followed you out.
The realization made your eye twitch almost immediately.
You barked out a harsh laugh and continued limping upstairs anyway, one hand dragging along the polished banister for balance while your head continued pounding viciously from the lingering effects of the drug.
Frank followed several steps behind without crowding you, his heavy footsteps steady against the hardwood staircase while fury continued bubbling hotter and hotter beneath your skin with every passing second.
This was insane.
Actually insane.
You reached the second floor landing and whipped around suddenly, nearly losing your balance in the process. “What, are you planning on standing outside the bathroom too?”
“If necessary.”
“Oh my God.”
You resumed walking, faster now despite the uneven limp caused by your scraped knee and missing shoe. Family portraits blurred past along the hallway walls as you headed toward the bedroom you hadn’t willingly slept in since your mother disappeared from this house.
Your old room sat at the very end of the corridor. Your father always said it was because you liked the privacy as a child.
Your mother once admitted quietly that it was because your tantrums echoed less from farther away. You reached the bedroom door and shoved it open hard enough for it to slam against the wall behind it.
The rage that carried you through the office downstairs had started dulling around the edges now, softened unpleasantly by the lingering effects of whatever had been slipped into your drink.
Your body felt heavy in strange places and weightless in others. The room tilted ever so slightly when you turned your head too quickly. Even the anger itself felt harder to hold onto properly.
But it was still there.
And now it only had one target left.
You turned toward Frank Castle standing calmly in the doorway while his eyes swept methodically around the room, cataloguing exits and windows with an ease that felt almost unconscious.
It was unsettling watching him exist inside a space. Nothing about him relaxed fully. Even standing still, he looked prepared for something terrible to happen.
You hated how much that fascinated you already.
“What,” you asked lazily, leaning one shoulder against the vanity table, “you gonna stand there all night?”
His gaze shifted back toward you. “Pretty much.”
The bluntness irritated you immediately.
You scoffed softly, though the sound lacked some of its earlier bite. “God, you’re boring.”
Frank said nothing.
The silence stretched again, but unlike your father’s agents downstairs, his quiet never felt submissive. It felt deliberate. He genuinely saw no reason to waste energy reacting to your bullshit.
Which only made you want to push harder.
Your fingers slid slowly around your neck to rest against the back as you held his gaze. “What exactly are the rules here, Castle?” you asked, voice lowering slightly. “You gonna watch me sleep too?”
“No.”
“Watch me change?”
“No.”
“You sure?” Your mouth curved faintly. The dizziness rolled harder through you then, warm and disorienting, and you reached automatically for the wall to steady yourself before immediately pretending you meant to do it.
Humiliation flared hot beneath your skin. You hated feeling out of control. Hated that your body still didn’t entirely belong to you tonight.
So you lashed out the only way you knew how.
By becoming unbearable.
You kicked off your remaining heel carelessly across the room, the shoe striking the wall with a sharp crack before collapsing sideways onto the carpet. Frank didn’t so much as blink.
“Oh, come on,” you muttered. “At least pretend I’m difficult.”
“You are difficult.” Your brows lifted slightly.
The answer came so calmly it almost sounded factual rather than insulting. You stared at him another second before reaching toward the zipper tucked beneath your arm. “And yet,” you said slowly, “you still took the job.”
Frank arms folding loosely across his chest.
Then you dragged the zipper downward.
The silver fabric loosened immediately around your ribs, the top of the dress slipping lower against your chest while your eyes stayed locked on his face, waiting for the reaction that always eventually came from men.
Discomfort or interest or something more akin to embarrassment.
“What?” you asked lightly. “Does it make you all hot and bothered watching a drunk girl strip?”
The words came cruel on purpose, sharpened by exhaustion and humiliation and the desperate need to regain some kind of control over the situation.
Your fingers pushed the straps down your shoulders inch by inch until cool air kissed bare skin, the dress hanging precariously low now.
You’d dressed for a club, not a hostage situation so your lack of a bra was no surprise but your lack of underwear was a bold choice.
Frank’s expression never changed. No sign that he was flustered from staring at your naked form after only meeting you five minutes ago. No cold expression like he held with your father either.
If anything, he just looked tired.
And somehow that irritated you more than lust ever could have.
His gaze lifted once toward your face and held there steadily for a long moment before he pushed himself away from the doorway.
“Get some sleep,” he said evenly.
Then, after the smallest pause, “Goodnight, princess.”
And before you could spit another insult at him, he pulled the bedroom door shut behind him with a soft click, leaving you standing undressed in the middle of your childhood bedroom with your pulse thundering unevenly beneath your skin.
we all know jack abbot is thiccc ( thank you hatosy 🤤 ) and i've been seeing those catching print pictures of him alllll day got me thinking how morgue girl would handle it
anyways a blurb incoming but i can't decide where in the timeline to put it
pre or during relationship???
pre-relationship ( aka before she sees the product )
