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@ker0senebunny
LET'S DANCE!
(navigation)
WHO HAS A CIG? ✭ (about me)
olive. daughter of cain.
22. she/her. socialist. bisexual. woc. little monster & 365 partygirl.
likes; fur coats, spidery eyelashes, skinny cigs. when i’m the dj.
☆⌒★ minors, ageless blogs, and bigots do NOT interact. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN MEDIA CONSUMPTION! ★⌒☆
WHERE'S MY LIPLINER?✭ (masterlist)
JUST RIPPED MY TIGHTS! ✭ (rules + guidelines; requests - CLOSED)
I KNOW THE DJ! ✭ (recent works)
[NEW] mornings (finnick odair x gn!reader); lazy, peaceful mornings with finnick (fluffy blurb)
meet me behind the mall (steve harrington x fem!reader); steve was never yours to lose. you went in knowing that, but god, you'd give anything to go back to that summer. a tale of childhood enemies, kisses in cars, and the best summer of your life. inspired by my favorite track from folklore. enemies to almost lovers. focuses primarily on seasons 2, 3, and 4. (angst, fluff, smut)
LET'S GO TO ANOTHER CLUB! ✭ (what i’m working on)
piece of me; clark kent x popstar!reader the entire world wants a piece of you. fame and fortune follow you wherever you go. but your life feels hollow, even though you're about to embark on the biggest tour of your career. can an encounter with an adorably awkward reporter change that?
honey, it’s a sideshow; steve harrington x reader a continuation of meet me behind the mall, focusing on reader and steve’s relationship throughout season 3. fourth of july kisses under bright bursts of fireworks. secret makeout sessions in the back of steve’s car — the same backseat you promised never to be in. a bout of russian drugging forces a confession, words that neither of you can take back. (angst, smut) part ii of iii
BUMP THIS ✭ (an update, a reminder to be kind)
© ker0senebunny. all rights reserved. all original posts of writing are my own words, with the exceptions of quotations from songs, movies, and other media. my work is NOT to be crossposted to another platform, copied by anyone, used with an AI in any manner, or translated without my express and explicit permission.
You're Just A Man, It's Just What You Do- M.R.
PAIRING: Michael Robinavitch x Pedes Fellow!Reader
WC: 6.5k
SUMMARY: Robby hasn’t spoken to you in three months, since he left for his sabbatical. So why should you care when he walks into a PTMC charity gala with another woman on his arm?
CONTAINS: 18+ SMUT MDNI, unprotected p in v sex, robby finishing early, oral (f receiving), semi public sex (on a secluded balcony), angst to smut to fluff (? kind of), brendan park and noelle hastings being used as plot devices </3, they're lowkey toxic but also trying, alcohol consumption, very briefly proofread, horribly rushed ending like always, lmk if i missed anything!!
MASTERLIST | INBOX | LATEST WORK
Low lights dangling from an extravagant chandelier greet you as you arrive at PTMC's annual charity gala. Pairs of eyes burn through you as you make your way through the crowd. It'd mostly men, wearing an eager expression that begs the question— what are you ding here alone? Many of them have their own dates on their arms, and the expressions they wear are much less inviting.
Thus, you're quite eager to find the E.R. table. A wave of relief washes over you as you spot Dana, waving you over, a glass of champagne in each hand.
"I can only hope one of those is for me," you tease, though you're hopeful.
"Right on, darlin'," she croons, passing you the full glass and polishing off her own.
There's a light clatter in your glass, and you spot a small cube at the bottom of the fizzy liquid.
Furrowing your brows, Dana jumps in before you can even ask.
"Sugar cube," she explains, continuing when you still don't get it. "It's an old wives' tale, protects you from the devil, so he doesn't prey on your happiness. Got it from Moonstruck."
You smile, though your heart sinks at the thought of who she's protecting you from. Robby's supposed to be here tonight, the first time you'll see him in three months. He's not here yet, though, his burly frame a blatant absence from your department's many tables.
"You're a godsend," you redirect your focus to Dana, eyes twinkling with what you hope looks like appreciation.
"He's not here yet," Dana supplements, and your cheeks flame.
You couldn't have been that obvious, could you? Nevertheless, you lean into your main coping strategy of the last three months— repression.
"I don't know what you're talking about, I was looking for Park," you say, the defense immediate.
Guilt bubbles in the pit of your stomach, not only for lying, but lying by using the man that's been a rock for you these past few months.
"Huh, didn't realize he joined the E.R.," she quips, your sick tummy twisting. "Ortho's that way, babe," she nods her head to a group of tables across the ballroom.
Your eyes scan the area to find Park, already looking in your direction. Your heart skips at his intense gaze, and though you wish it was out of desire, it's just…average. A plain jolt of someone watching you. Nothing more, nothing less.
Guilt prods at you once more, a fire poker to the ashy emblems of your heart, though it's soon replaced by a buzz— the one you'd kill to gt from Park, the bartender, anyone other than the man who just walked in.
You feel his eyes the second the find you, burning a hole through the back of your head. You're not brave enough to face him, even less so when Dana mutters a pained, "Shit," under her breath.
You keep your eyes trained on Park, who's undoubtedly spotted he-who-shall-not-be-named. A slight crease to his ever-lax brow gives him away.
If you heart had sunk earlier, it's now swirling in an aggressive tide, clamoring for shore. You're finally brave enough to flit your head towards the door. Immediate regret washes through you, as he's not alone.
Your eyes adjust to the sight of Michael Robinavitch with Noelle Hastings on his arm. Your heart's an anchor now, hopeless at the bottom of the ocean.
Your mind latches on to the little details— the ones that bear the evidence of three months away. Shaggier hair, longer beard, kinder eyes.
The sight of him is a car wreck, a nasty, 40-car pile up that sends your hazards flashing. In every universe, he's a nuisance, your biggest distraction.
He makes his way over to the table, a wolfish, proud grin turning your insides. The sight of him turns you inside out, raw, vulnerable, and full of want.
The rest of the room melts away in favor of the man in front of you— the endless chatter of party-goers like a sad song underwater, muffled and melodramatic. His eyes find yours, and it's instant mesmerization.
Everything you'd pushed to the side for the last three months comes roaring back— the love, the desire, the consuming anger, the utter fury. He feels it too, you can tell. The shine of his brown eyes give you deja vu- back to the day he left, the day he let you go.
He pats Noelle's hand, the rest of the ballroom roaring back to life. Your heart pounds, leaking venom with each smack against your ribcage. Eyes darting to where they connect, your body moves before your brain can catch up.
Slamming your champagne on the table, you ignore the stares, the liquid sloshing over the lip of the glass, and walk away. So much for keeping the devil at bay, Dana.
Saddling up at the bar, you lean your forearms on the hardwood, a slight arch in your back. You don't miss the bartender's eyes, the way they drag over your frame, the deep neckline of your dress.
"One second, sweet thing," he croons, your tummy twisting.
As you wait, your eyes scan the other patrons. One so happens to be a man, one you can place to radiology, though you don't know him super well.
"Hi," he mutters, a shy smile on his face.
Your heart picks up at the sight of him, the sudden onslaught of attention a mix of sugar and spice, and absolutely nothing nice.
"Hi," you respond, giving him your name and department.
"I'm Nick Barker," he supplements, offering his hand to shake. "Radiology."
"I thought I recognized you!" You chirp, giving him your own name. "You came and helped us out when we went analog this past summer, you saved our asses."
"Ah, yes, I remember," he thinks back with fondness. "It was chaos down there, I don't know how you guys do that."
"If I had a nickel for every person who's told me that, I'd be able to give my two weeks," you quip, tapping your nails on the bar.
"Isn't that the dream," he replies, and your heart picks up at his sweet smile.
"What can I get ya, gorgeous?" The bartender asks, a sinister smile curling his lips.
"Oh!" You gasp, your gaze snapping back to the bartender.
The heat of their gazes burns through you like a laser, an animal hunted for prey. There used to be a time where you'd revel in this attention, pop your hip and bask in it like a cat would the sun.
Now, all you can think about is-
"Dirty Shirley with tequila," a voice calls from behind you.
Your eyes widen, heart nearly dropping out of your ass at the low timbre rumbling behind you. Whipping your head around, you find Robby, his forearm resting against the bar, mirroring you.
It's instant, the way you straighten your spine, dropping your arm from the wood. Cheeks aflame, palms sweaty, and heart racing, you turn back to the bartender and stumble out a pathetic, "Uhm-yeah, yeah, that."
You feel his smile, cocky and shit eating, from beside you. You refuse to look at him.
"Barker, good to see you," he croons across you, and his voice is enough to bring tears to your eyes.
"Robby, hey!" He exclaims, reaching a hand over to shake his.
You stumble back, incredulous at the clear disrespect. Digging your heels in, you inch toward Barker, desperate to give the false impression that you're there together. The Cheshire grin on Robby's face shows that you're wholly unsuccessful.
"You got a really sweet girl on your team, we were just reminiscing on the Fourth of July, felt flattered someone so pretty remembered me," he says, and your cheeks heat from the attention.
Your eyes lock with Robby's, the mere mention of the Fourth an alarm bell ringing between you two. The last day you saw him, the last day you spoke. The day he broke your heart.
All the hurt comes rushing back, a tsunamic wave of heartbreak. You lean into it— the nastiness, the pride that swells in your tummy at Robby's wide eyes, his flared nostrils.
Adding fuel to the fire, the bartender comes back, placing your drink on the bar for you.
"Dirty Shirley with tequila," he rings out, a slight wink in his right eye. "Enjoy, beautiful."
Robby clears his throat as your hand reaches for his, fingers brushing as you accept your drink.
"Thank you!" You chirp, swirling your tongue around the straw and taking an appreciative sip.
The earthy sting of tequila makes its way through your bloodstream, the throb in your heart ever so sensitive. Damn it, your drink was supposed to repress those feelings, not exacerbate them.
"Well, it was good to see you. Robby." Barker shakes his hand, and, if your eyes don't deceive you, goes slightly pink as he turns to you. "And you, as well, beautiful."
You smile at the compliment, though it sounds grating compared to the names Robby peppered over you in your most intimate moments.
Every man over the past three months has existed in this dichotomy— Robby and Not Robby. The Not Robbys fell short, every single time. This time is no different, and your heart wrings itself out like a dirty dish towel.
Baker's words elicit an ache that you could only wish was born of an aggressive fondness— the lurch in the heart coming home to a pet after a long day, the patter in your chest when you're kissed for the first time.
No, it's none of that. It's darker, more sinister. The gut punch when you're told devastating news, the sickly twist that pools in your stomach when you've told a lie, inflicted damage onto someone else. Guilt wracks you, desperate to be different, to love someone, anyone else.
Then, it's just you and Robby.
His proximity is a toxic waste, exuding between you until you feel green. The soft sniff of his nose, his same old woodsy aftershave, his thick thigh in your peripheral— it's overwhelming.
"You do look beautiful," he mutters, and your heart falls deep into your stomach at his rich timbre. "They're not wrong."
Your heart pulls, and there it is, that tingle, the pang that only seems to appear when you're around Robby. It triggers your deepest endorphins, releasing them through your whole body until you're warm and fuzzy.
"I wasn't doubting them," you quip, taking another desperate sip of your cocktail.
"Good," he replies, his gaze lingering on you a moment too long. Your eyes are focused on the many party-goers, but you can tell. You always can with Robby.
Scanning the party, you lock eyes with Park, a look of concern etched in his brow. That familiar guilt returns, the collision of both men in the immediate vicinity dizzying.
"You come with him?" He asks, pointing his beer in Park's direction.
"Wha-" You whip your head towards Robby, cheeks burning at his small smile. "No, uhm- no. I didn't. I came by myself."
"That's a shame," he remarks, tipping his beer bottle to his lips.
You're stuck on his mouth, closing around the glass, the liquid traveling down his thick throat. You swallow, hard, grabbing your drink and standing.
"Though, I'm no stranger to coming by myself. Story of my life, right?" You joke, letting him choke on the fizzy drink as you walk away.
You make a beeline for Park, swaying your hips as you feel three sets of eyes follow you. A prick of confidence pokes at your belly, a childish glee replacing your sorrow with each sip. Park's got a sardonic smile as you approach, propping your hand on his forearm.
"Hey!" He coos, a soft smile on his face. "How'd that go?" He mumbles, nodding his head back to the bar.
You're feeling a little brave, whipping your head back to where Robby still stands. His eyes are dark, almost mean as he continues to clear his throat. He pumps his fist against his chest, refusing to tear his watery gaze away from you.
You smirk, just a little, before turning your gaze back to Park. He clocks your expression immediately, your soft eyes, supple mouth. It snaps you out of the haze Robby seems to always put you in, and you feel so, so idiotic.
Your mouth twists downward, a sickly feeling bubbling in your stomach as you fight the pounding of your heart. Each beat reverberates one name throughout your whole body— Robby, Robby, Robby.
Tears gloss your eyes, holding your head down to hide it from Park. There's a guilt that never seems to go away when you're with him— an ache born from crying over the same man for months, from his never-ending patience, his arm that always finds its way around your shoulders.
Like now, his soft smile finds you, even when you do everything in your power to avoid it. You can't help but smile back, ears perking to the song that the band strums up. The Way You Look Tonight.
Memories flood your mind— chest to chest with Robby, soft socks on separating your skin from the cold hardwood of his kitchen, the refrigerator light your only company. You hear his voice in your ear, the gentle way he sang each lyric to you.
You allow yourself the briefest moment to wonder if he's thinking about this, too. When you turn, though, you see him, beckoning a gleaming Noelle to the dancefloor, and you're back at square one.
"Come on," Park says, and you snap your head to find his hand extended. "Let's go. Don't wanna see you cry over him anymore. Let's have a good time tonight, yeah?"
You nod, accepting his offer. Your belly is a firepit, sparking and cracking at your indifference to the man before you. You have a lot of love for Park, but not the kind he's looking at you with now.
His eyes shine as he spins you around the floor, warm hands riding along your calloused skin. Your heart twists, lurching and desperate to love him instead. To love anyone else.
If you were a better woman, you'd have accepted his date proposal months ago. Instead, you'd given him a phony excuse, something about how you're not ready for another relationship yet.
He'd been so gracious, has been ever since. Happily biding his time with your friendship, never any pressure to push things further.
You know, though, that his patience is wearing thin, that there's only so many times a man you're not sleeping with can pick up these pieces.
This still doesn't stop your eyes from finding Robby, swaying to the beat with Noelle over Park's shoulder. Instinct pulls you closer to Park, your nails clutching his suit coat as you rest your chin on his shoulder.
He huffs out a surprised chuckle at this, his chest shaking with the action. You smile against him, giving him a light squeeze. The whole time, your eyes burn into Robby.
Your heart lurches at his tall frame, broad and soft and well lived. The smile on his face fills you with enough rage to burn down a small city. This was your song, many moons ago.
His eyes meet yours over Noelle, and the earth stops on its axis. White noise drowns in your ears, the exhilaration of him flooding your fiery veins.
It's embarrassing, how much you missed him— his gaze, his attention, his love. He doesn't deserve it. He hasn't earned it.
Your heart simply refuses to accept this. Refuses to accept that he's dancing with another woman, refuses to accept that it's this song, that he'd do this to you.
This wasn't the Robby you thought you knew. You can't believe how wrong you were.
Sinking your teeth into your glossy lip, your eyes start to well with tears. His brows furrow ever so slightly, and your shoulders shake with a quiet cry.
Park goes still against you, pulling you away from him just so.
"What's going on, hm?" He mutters. "Let me get a good look at you."
You're frozen, unable to tear your eyes off him. Park sighs, and your heart sinks. It's only then you whip your head to him, tears finally spilling over your lash line.
"I'm so sorry," you shake your head, lip trembling with the pressure.
"It's okay, it's okay, I know," he mumbles, pulling you to him.
He palms at the back of your head, shushing every now and again.
"You love him," he admits, pulling you away from him once again. "You always have. I'm not an idiot," he remarks with a sad smile.
"I hate him," you breathe, and he lets out a sardonic chuckle.
"No you don't."
And with that, you're alone on the dance floor, a sort of final chapter in your relationship with Park.
You watch Park retreat to his table, a small fraction of your heart cracking as he goes. You choke on a breath, remembering the real problem at hand.
Whipping your head back to Robby, you find him talking to Noelle— kissing her on her temple and making his way to you.
Panic courses through you, eyes going wide as you act on pure instinct. Flitting your head the other way, you find a large door that leads to a balcony. Darting across the dance floor, you twist the knob and step out into the night.
The early November frost sends a chill down your spine, your heavy breath echoing in the night. Goosebumps prick your skin, your arms flying to protect yourself, soon regretting your decision.
The door behind you clicks, and your heart sinks. Your chin sits on your shoulder, feeling Robby's presence even though you refuse to look at him.
"Take a hint," you choke out, sniffing hard through your nose. "I don't want you out here."
"You should've locked the door, then, sweetheart," he muses, and you feel the sudden urge to deck him in the face.
"I didn't know there was a lock, jackass," you snap, turning to face him. "And how dare you call me sweetheart?" You poise, your finger pointed right at him.
His eyes widen, a cocky smirk stretching his lips.
"We're getting right into it, huh?" He asks, and you roll your eyes.
"You broke my heart, Michael," you insist, his eyes shining with something sad that you can't quite place. "You come back, you order my drink for me, compliment me like nothing's wrong. What do you expect me to say?"
"I don't know," he shakes his head, taking in the view behind you. "I didn't mean to break your heart, honey."
There's a nail in your heart with each pet name, bleeding poison into your belly.
"You have to stop that, Robby," you croak, wiping your damp cheek.
"Back to Robby now, huh?" He asks, and you scowl.
"How can you be so nonchalant about this?" You pose, tossing a hand out in disgust. "We were together for three months, you told me you loved me," you choke, the memory threatening to suffocate you.
"Then, you left. Never told me why, dated Noelle, then took off for three months."
Your voice is small and petulant, words tapering off into a pool of shame.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, his own eyes glossy now.
Gritting your teeth, you flit your eyes away. You can't stand to look at him, to take in his tears.
"After all of this— leaving me, coming back and bringing Noelle, chasing me out onto this fucking balcony, you have the fucking nerve to cry?" You're shouting now, thankful for the thick wooden door separating you from the rest of the party.
"You're right," he croaks, running his tongue over his bottom lip. Your eyes follow the action, desperate and hungry. "I'm sorry. I've been crying a lot more since I started therapy. He says it's healthy for me."
Your heart drops, getting stuck in your throat.
"Therapy?" You choke on the words, tears falling at a rapid pace.
A shiver runs down your spine at the revelation, your numb nose sore and uncomfortable. He leaps into action, slinking his jacket off and placing it around your shoulders.
You let him, resigned and sad, but too cold to deny it. He revels in this a little, you can tell by the small quirk in his lip.
"Thank you," you mutter, turning away from him and facing the open greens that greet you.
"You're welcome," he croons, and your heart aches.
You know that voice. The low timbre that rasps in the morning, praises you in the E.R., coos at you in his bed while he drives himself in and out of you.
His eyes burn a hole in the back of your head. His gaze is inevitable, it could follow you across the earth if you let it.
"It's beautiful," you mutter, too wiggly from the silence to let another moment pass.
"Yeah, it is," he's looking at you the entire time he speaks, taking a few steps closer to you.
"You're an asshole," you reply, not daring to look at him.
"So I've heard," he remarks.
"Noelle's probably missing you," you lean forward, arching your back in his line of sight.
He clears his throat, and you smile, your heart rate picking up.
"And Park won't be missing you?" He poises, and you shrug.
"We were never together," you admit, the truth bitter on your tongue.
"But he likes you," he supplements, and your heart sinks.
"Don't remind me, I feel bad enough already," you groan, letting your head fall into your hands.
"Yeah, well, I'm not much better. I took Noelle as a friend. Well, an ex. We broke up a while ago," he shrugs, and you finally look at him.
The sight of him is like a gunshot— rugged and broad and oh, so handsome. It knocks the breath clean out of you, catching in your throat on its way.
"A while ago?" You poise, and he just shrugs.
"Didn't last maybe a week into the sabbatical," he says, now parallel with you against the rung of the balcony.
"And you asked her to be your plus one to this?" you scoff, disbelief coloring your words.
He nods, and you can't help but laugh.
"God, you're the worst!" You chuckle, and he can't help but do so himself.
"Is that really bad?" He asks, pursing his lips.
"Yeah, really bad," you tease, a soft smile playing on your lips.
A foreign warmth spreads between you two, a buzz you haven't felt in months. It's soft, like a homecoming. You've felt at home with Robby for longer than you'd remember.
"Your smile is so pretty, I missed it," he murmurs, and you scoff. "I'm serious. I missed you, so much."
"You're not allowed to say shit like that to me," you snark, and he chuckles. "At least not until you tell me why you left."
He looks down, heavy breaths racking his broad shoulders. The temperature between you two drops again, plunging into ice.
"I was scared," he admits.
You roll your eyes.
"No shit."
"Ha, I deserved that," he scruffs, a sad chuckle leaving his lips. "I was, though. Scared. I know it's a shitty excuse, but you were real. I wasn't ready for it."
"But…you are now?" You supplement, daring to look at him once more,
He's so pretty, you want to throw up.
"I am. If you'll have me," he stands up straight, hands in his pockets.
You ponder his offer, the anger you've carried for months now dissipating at the idea of having him in your arms again. Frustration pricks at your stomach, a burning rage in your stomach.
"You make me feel like such an idiot," you spit, and he shrinks.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to-"
"You don't mean to?" You cut him off, eyes wild. "You break my heart, date someone else in front of my face, take off, come back with her, and I still love you. How am I supposed to feel?"
His eyes shine, and he takes a deep breath before he says, "You love me?"
"Of course I do, Robby!" You flail your arms. "What did you expect?"
"I'm sorry, I'm so fuckin' sorry," he pleas, tears spilling from his big, brown eyes. "You deserve so much better than what I put you through, and I'm an idiot."
"I won't disagree," you deadpan, though your breath is shaky. "Why did you ask Noelle? Why didn't you ask me? If you're so sorry."
"Wasn't as scary. I told you, I'm a fucking coward," he laughs, sardonic and poisonous. "You scare me. I love you, and that fucking terrifies me."
"So, what's different?" You ask, taking a step closer to him, his breath mixing with yours in the cool night air. "You come back, tell me you love me, spin me this whole story about how you're in therapy now, and- and what? I'm supposed to just- fall to my knees and take you back?"
"No, God, no, of course not," he coos, brows furrowing. "I guess- I don't know what's different," he admits with a scoff.
What he does next simply knocks the breath out of you. He sinks to his knees, his hands coming up to rest along your hips.
His touch scorches you, his sad, wide eyes shooting through you like stars.
"I don't know what's different, I can't promise that I'm fixed, or I'm better, I don't even know how much I've really changed," he starts, and you roll your eyes.
He grips your hips tighter, forcing you to look back at him.
"What I do know, is that I love you. I thought of you everyday I was gone. I'm sorry I didn't message you for your birthday, but I went and got you diamonds. They're in the car," he whispers, your heart throbbing at the gift— both the diamonds, and a grown man on his knees before you.
"I'm going to regret this tomorrow," you murmur, crashing your lips to his.
He's smoky, lips soft and smooth as they devour yours, his body slowly rising to full height again.
You positively melt into him, arms wrapping around his neck, leg popping out behind you.
His big hands trail over your skin, eliciting a shiver ripping through your spine. He slides his jacket off of you, tossing it on the patio furniture littering the balcony.
Wrapping his arms around you, he keeps you warm from the chill that permeates your skin. Hands finding your ass, he lifts you against him, dress riding up in accommodation of the large man now between your legs.
His warmth between your legs sends a jolt of heat through you, punching a sweet "oh!" out of you. You squeeze your eyes, clinging to Robby tighter than before.
"Ooh, feels good being back in my arms, hm?" He asks, pressing you deeper into him.
You whine, burying your face in his neck, a quiet nod laced with shame. Your pussy pulses against his tummy, stretched taut over his white dress shirt.
He feels it, you know he can, purely from the shine in his eye, the darker hue to them. It makes you whimper, rocking your hips against his stomach.
He coos, patting the back of your head as he carries you over to the white, acrylic couch set against the railing.
He groans as he sits you both down, wiggling your hips to get comfortable. His eyes shut, he sucks in air through his teeth, and you smile.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" You ask, lacing your arms around his neck once more, rocking your hips against his.
"Hah!" He huffs out, head falling back and eyes squeezing shut as you maneuver above him. "Baby, baby, fuck, feel so fucking good on top of me, y'gotta stop."
"I missed your rambling," you slow your movements, pressing a kiss to his Adam's apple.
"I don't ramble," he grumbles, pinching your ass before giving you another sweet kiss.
You stay there for a moment, at home in his arms, tongues rolling over each other. You'd missed this— his smell, his taste, the way he took his time with you,
A wave of desperation rolls over you, all these sensations hitting at once, and you pick up your hips once more.
"Baby, stop," he orders, gripping you tight.
"Mmph!" You whine, throwing your head back, wriggling in his grasp. "I want you Mikey, please, been so long."
"Jesus fucking Christ," he grits under his teeth. "Alright, up." He motions for you to move with his hands, raising a brow when you pout, stay put on his now hard cock.
"What, you think I'm gonna put you through all this then make you ride me?" He asks, wide eyed. "I'm not a total asshole, babe. Up, c'mon. Bend over the railing."
A rush of excitement rolls through you as you finally listen, a quiet "good girl" echoing in your movements.
Flipping your hair over your shoulder, you rest your chin there, slipping your strap down, the other one following suit. You let the silky fabric fall to your feet, stepping out of it so you're left in a black bra, matching panties.
"Fuck, oh my God," he groans behind you, and you lick your lips as you approach the railing. "God I missed this, missed this fucking body so much."
You hear his breath hitch, a sardonic smile on your lips as he grips your hips with his large hands. He pulls you into him, shoving your bodies together.
Pressing a gentle hand on the small of your back, he encourages you to bend, to rest your arms on the cool metal rail.
"Good job, such a good listener when she wants to be, yeah?" He teases, moving your hair to the side, fastening his grip on the back of your neck.
"Yes, Mikey, God," you whine, wiggling your backside into his fully clothed front.
He chuckles at this, a sweet coo on his tongue.
"Sorry, honey, not super fair of me," he says, and you can hear his jacket being shed behind you. "And it's so cold, too. Left you all alone half naked for me without giving you a thing. So mean, aren't I?"
You shake your head in a playful nod, resting your cheek on your arms so you can look back at him.
He's unbuttoning the bottom of his shirt, exposing his belly, his hairy chest to the cool night air. He shivers, and you roll your eyes.
"Such a baby," you joke, and he smiles, cracking a hand down on your ass.
"Ooh!" You whine, lurching forward at the contact ever so slightly.
He grips the back of your sheer panties, bunching them up, sliding them as far between your ass cheeks as they'll allow.
"Thereee we go," he croons, and you can practically hear the sardonic smile on his lips. "Now you're remembering how to act right, hm?"
Your cheeks burn, head nodding a desperate yes.
"Good girl," he says, smacking your ass once, twice, thrice more before letting the fabric go.
The panties rest between your cheeks, the skin there still sore from his rough hand. His cold hands stroke up and down your back, calling forth a shiver all through you.
"Hands are cold," you mumble, reaching for your panties, yanking them down and sliding them over your heeled feet.
"'m sorry, baby," he rasps, fingers finding your bra clasp. "You can't complain too much when I'm getting you naked, though, no?" He teases, bending over you so his smooth voice is in your ear.
You shake your head against him, leaning back on his shoulder.
"Love you, Mikey. Do you love me?" You ask, eyes big and wide and burning a hole through him.
"Of course I do," he whispers, pulling you in for a kiss.
It's sloppy, rough and messy, not unlike your relationship with this man. He pulls back, just enough to husk against your lips,
"Love you so fuckin' much, can't believe I ever left you," he confesses, placing his big hands over your tummy, squeezing the excess skin there.
He uses the newfound pressure to sink into you, the head of his cock intruding your tight pussy.
"Fuck!" He nearly shouts, throwing his head back as his tip slots inside of you. "God, how did I go without you for three whole months? Even before that, Jesus, I'm a fuckin' idiot, love you so much."
Your nails grip the rail in front of you, knuckles aching from the pressure. A gasp rocks through you as he sinks in another inch, then another, and another.
"I love you, Mikey," you whine, arching your back as he bottoms out inside of you. "Better not leave me again," you demand, craning your neck to look back at him.
The sight that greets you is only one you've imagined in these past couple months. Robby, eyes bright and shiny, full of love, as he slams his hips into you.
"God, I dreamed of this for months, Mikey," you mewl, a fire brewing deep in your belly. "Would rub my clit and think about this, about you."
He groans, picking up his speed inside of you. The slaps his skin lets out against yours is lewd, unmistakable as he moves at full speed.
The tip of his cock nudges your special spot with each thrust, rolling your eyes back in your skull at the building pressure, going limp in his arms.
"Fuck, say more, baby, keep going," he nearly begs, cracking another spank onto your skin.
A strangled noise wrestles itself from your throat, your pussy tightening around him at his actions, his words.
"I did," you whine, squeezing your eyes shut as you take in the sensations, your impending orgasm. "Every night, thought about you and how you made me feel. Even before you left. Sometimes I'd even rub my pussy thinking about you, while Brendan was on my couch."
This confession takes you by surprise, eyes shooting open as that reality crashes down on you. At the same time, Robby snaps.
He growls, throws his head back in a strangled, "FUUCCCKK", his hips stuttering as his cock throbs inside of you.
"I'm sorry, baby," he utters, your pussy still milking his orgasm. "I'm so sorry, fuck. Oh my God, you can't say shit like that to me, gonna make me go fucking insane."
You giggle at this, squeezing extra tight around him, encouraging the last few drops from his weeping tip.
"Fuck, fuck," he presses a hand into his forehead, a disbelieving chuckle on his tongue. "Get on the fuckin' couch and spread your legs. I mean it," he demands, spreading his jacket over the patio furniture.
You clamor over on shaky knees, keeping them apart as Robby settles between them. You lift them up as he does, the spike of your heels resting against his back.
"Mmmm. God, missed this pretty cunt," he exhales, running his nose from hole to clit.
You gasp when it attaches to your bundle of nerves, even louder when he wiggles himself into you.
"Mikey! Please! I wanna cum so bad," you beg, shameless and desperate. Wiggling your hips in his face, you chase the friction that had you so close just moments ago.
"Shhh, shhh," he coos, circling his lips along your clit. "Calm down. I got you, never gonna let you go again, y'hear me?"
You nod, sinking your fingers into his hair as he makes out with your cunt, wet and sloppy and loud. It's lewd, the smacking sounds, the grunts that omit from his lips. You love it.
You tell him so, again, and again, and again.
"Love you, God," you throw your head back, the coil in your belly springing up once again, tighter than ever. "Oh! Love you so much," you whine, flinching as he adds a finger.
"Mmm," he groans against you, vibrations running through your whole body. "Cum for me, please?" He mumbles into you, big, brown eyes boring into yours. "Missed the way you taste, can you show me again?"
He laps you up, plays with your wetness as he continues to slide his long digit in and out, in and out.
He's got you right at the edge, and you allow yourself to teeter there for a brief moment before fully letting go.
Your vision turns to black as your orgasm creeps over you, the earth stuttering on its axis as the high hits you.
It's overwhelming, relentless heat surging through you, trails of fire rippling in your veins.
"Michael!" You cry, lurching forward, grinding your hips into his face.
"Yeeeessss," he drawls out, pulling you closer into him, helping you ride out even more of your orgasm. "Keep cumming, I got you, don't worry about a thing and just keep fucking cumming."
You obey, because of course you do, tiny explosions still reverberating through your body. Your body finally relents, shivering at the smallest hint of overstimulation.
"Mikey, Mikey, 'm good," you giggle, breathless. "I'm good, 's too much, God! It's too much."
He finally lets up, a wave of relief washing over you as you fall back into the couch.
Your eyes focus on the night sky, though you feel his on you. Turning your gaze downward, you think Robby is the happiest geezer you've ever seen in your life.
"Hey, beautiful," he rasps, resting his cheek against your thigh.
"Hi, handsome," you coo, reveling in the shiver that sends down his spine.
"Wanna get out of here?" He asks, placing a kiss to your sensitive skin.
"More than anything," you breathe, turning to find your panties.
"Ah!" He tuts, followed by a light smack of your thigh. "Got 'em right here," he admits, pulling them out of his pocket, and sliding them up your thigh.
"Michael Robinavitch, you are a pervert," you tease, sticky love dripping from your lips.
"Maybe, but you love me," he repeats your earlier confessions, eyes wide and shining.
"I do, love you so much," you murmur, cradling his face in your hands.
"Here's what I want to do," he starts, sitting up on his knees and beginning to redress you.
"What's that?" You poise, a cute smile on your face. He melts at the sight before continuing.
"I want to get you all nice and dressed and comfy again," he says, slipping your dress over your head, your bra going into his back pocket. "I want to take you home," he continues, pulling his own pants back on. "I want to put you in those diamond earrings I got you for your birthday," his shirt follows, shaky fingers buttoning himself back up. "And I wanna fuck you while they glow in the moonlight. You hear me?"
You nod, eyes wide and full of want.
"Good," he smiles, sliding you off the couch and onto your feet. "Go get your stuff, we have many months to make up for."
You've never moved so fast.
LOVE THIS DOWN (and lov u queen)
˚ ༘ ೀ⋆ ┄┄┄ the nanny!reader x single dad!robby ; life turns upside down in the robinavitch household when robby hires you, a nanny with zero experience, a heart of gold, and too short skirts. quick notes: reader is referred to as miss honey on accounts of— well, you'll see ♡ dennis and trinity are the same age (13) and victoria is 6, all three are adopted!
"dr. robby? you called for me?"
robby lifts his head from where he's pouring over paperwork and tuition invoices for the kids when you stick your head into his office. as always, his gaze drags down your tight little outfit, a matching set of a blazer and skirt that looks like something from a wet dream. despite the fact that it doesn't quite feel appropriate for your occupation, you still manage to make it work even after stopping trinity from throwing wads of gum into her brother's hair.
"miss honey, come in," robby sighs as he removes his glasses to rub at his eyes.
"you know, the kids call me miss honey. you can just call me 'honey'," you quip without missing a beat, hips swaying as you circle the desk to hop onto his desk.
robby releases a long suffering sigh, still rubbing at his eyes although he snags a peek of exposed thigh when your skirt rides up a centimeter or two. "miss honey, please."
the nickname itself had nothing to do with your real name but a happy accident when you've shown up on his door a year and a half ago with the full intention to just sell girl scout cookies with your niece. your niece and victoria had hit it off instantly, tugging you and her inside just around the same time robby had been waiting on a nanny from the agency to arrive.
one thing had led to another and robby had been taken instantly with how quick you were able to work with his kids. victoria, a genius in her own right, had been able to make a friend her age with little interference. trinity had found her match with you and your quick wit. dennis found his voice when you give him the support he's been seeking.
sure, you're unconventional and perhaps prettier than the nannies he's been interviewing but your lips had tasted like honey when the kids had locked you into a closet thinking you could be their new mommy.
when victoria had eagerly called you 'miss honey', the nickname stuck.
"alright, alright. what is it now?" you sigh as you absentmindedly push back his hair. by now, robby knows better than to swat your hands away.
"there's a hospital and foundations gala happening this weekend," he replaces his glasses back on, leaning back in his leather chair. "i know saturdays are usually your day off but i was hoping—"
"aw, dad, why can't you bring miss honey with you? you can make uncle jack watch us instead!" trinity crows, sauntering into the office with a little grin that tells you and robby that she means trouble.
"because uncle jack is attending the same gala," robby answers.
trinity smiles like she's gotten exactly what she wanted. "then maybe you could leave us—"
"you three alone? absolutely not. miss honey will be staying here and watching you."
you raise a brow, legs crossed temptingly. "on my day off?"
"there'll be a shopping spree in store for you the following day, miss honey."
"throw in a movie date with you and i'm sold."
"... deal."
———
the gala goes by swimmingly. as in, he and jack schmoozed up to high-profile investors and stuffy rich folks for exorbitantly priced donations with still a shred of their dignity left. it's more than they can say the last time they attended one of these things.
"want a drink before you go?" robby asks as the town car rolls to a stop in front of his home. jack hums, unbuttons his tux jacket and loosens his tie with a nod.
"sure, why not."
both men enter to a dim living room with just the light of the TV illuminating three sleeping children while the credits roll for finding nemo.
(victoria loves the movie, especially after jack confirmed that it's the most scientifically accurate disney movie made. trinity and dennis won't admit that they love it just as much.)
the four of you are curled up together on the long sectional, you in the middle with victoria on your lap, trinity and dennis asleep on either side of you. you're halfway to dreamland when you look up to see both men staring. jack, looking like a tired but doting uncle who comes in to gently pick up dennis, and robby (who has an odd sense of deep longing in his eyes that you refuse to acknowledge) who carefully lifts trinity into his arms as well.
you smile and gently maneuver victoria to easily carry her up the stairs first with robby and jack following. both men disperse to tuck the kids in while you enter the last room down the hall to tuck victoria in yourself.
"love you, mom..." victoria mumbles as you bring the covers up to her chin. your heart gives a resounding thud as you stifle back your tears.
"good night, sweetheart," you whisper and press a kiss onto her forehead.
"don't let... don' let trini take my snacks," she mumbles one last time as she curls into her side, hugging her stuffed animal to her chest before sleep finally pulls her in. you bite back a soft chuckle.
behind you, robby smiles at the sweet moment before his eyes catch onto your backside again, your silk bathrobe doing very little to disguise your perky ass. a self-satisfactory smile before he sees movement in her peripheral; jack has joined him and he's also staring at your rear.
"that's my nanny," he mutters with a sharp jab to his friend's side.
jack chortles under his breath.
"seems like she's becoming more to you than that."
thank you for reading ! this is just a little brainworm from after binging the first two seasons of the nanny but my inbox is open if you have any ideas or blurbs you'd like to see between nanny!reader and robby!
the nanny taglist : @ceriseangels (throwing you in here my love bc this is for you!) @thethyri
i've never seen brown eyes look so blue
synopsis: robby calls you out of the blue one night to come over; you do. he just needs to be held and you are more than willing to offer your lap as an offering. pairing: michael "robby" robinavitch x neighbor!reader ratings: slight angst, mommy issues galore, yearning, touch-starved!michael robinavitch, nothing spicy in here tho! word count: 2.5k note: yeah i started writing this and lost motivation towards the end but still wanted to put it out. i proofread this like once so sorry for errors! based off of this post
Yearning wasn’t unusual for Michael Robinavitch. It was like breathing; second nature to him. Yearning for a life he believed he didn’t deserve. That the wife, kids, and love he once desired must be past him because of the added “ish” when his age is mentioned. He doesn’t deserve the “happy ending” he’s seen his coworkers live with, strangers on the street, his neighbors. He’s had spurts of it, sure. Seen bits and pieces in flashes of relationships, being the dad to a girlfriend's kid, playing husband to whatever hookup he had at the time, being a provider, a partner, a lover, all in different ways but never to stay.
So, when you moved in next door; bright, fresh, and a pretty young thing. He didn’t think twice about if he was going to have a happy ending with you. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve you. Not to mention you were more than half of his age, lively and clearly just starting your life. He didn’t want to be the anchor to your newly found wind in your sails. But, then there was this little creeping issue of how fond he’d grown of you. How he loved watching you spruce up the house with color, how you brought light into a once dreary property, and how you made brick walls feel like a home. Suddenly, it was everything he’d ever wanted personified in a place, a person, a moment in time. But he would never admit it; he’d rather die with his pride.
Whereas, the first time you met Michael Robinavitch, you knew, you could tell he was hurting. No matter the stoic or friendly exterior, you could still tell. You saw him like he was like a wounded animal; a bear caught in a steel trap, oozing blood, no fight left in it but still holding on, looking out to the forest it could no longer run in, stuck in time and slowly losing its resolve to ever break loose.
Every part of you leapt at the opportunity to unlatch him of the trap he was stuck in. The savior complex in you needing to fix him, save him, keep him.
Every time he pushed you away it just kept you wanting him more, trying harder to break into his barricaded heart.
You couldn’t leave him oozing out. No, you brought gauze and pliers and waited for him to let you get close enough to help him.
It took months to get anywhere further than the surface level of Robby. But you didn’t mind. You’d catch him at the local bar, in his garage with his bike, sitting outside in the mornings with a cup of coffee. In the beginning, he tried everything to keep you at bay, the bear flashing its fangs, making you aware he wasn’t friendly. At the bar he would sigh, let you sit next to him in a stool and occasionally say something of interest to you but listen intently to every word falling from your lips. When you would show up at his garage with something you’d baked a surplus of he would refuse it at first, reluctantly accepting when you wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the mornings he was out reading the paper you dragged a chair from your own porch and invited yourself to sit next to him, quietly sipping on your own cup and watching the school children ride by on their bikes. After a while, he got used to having you around. He’d come over with his tools to help you with some renovations and you brought some color into his monotone home. It was as if he was letting you get close enough to place your hand on the wound. But never quite close enough to pry the trap open. That is, until tonight.
“Hello?” Your voice rang out in the emptiness of your home. Glasses propped in your hair as you got up from your bed, book pages closing in your lap.
“Hey,” He began, his voice wavering. You perked up at the sound, unsettled by the silence.
“Everything alright?” You knew it wasn’t, otherwise why would he call?
“Yeah, yeah,” it sounded as if he was pacing, working up the courage to speak.
“Actually–” you could tell he had stopped. “Would you–” he hesitated, so unsure of the outcome of his request.
“Would you come over?” There was no suggestive tone to his request, only unadulterated yearning in his voice. It was a lightswitch within you, the inherit need to fix his problem.
“Yeah, I can come over.” You didn’t even bother putting a bra on, only draping a fluffy robe on top of your silk pajamas and walking over to his house.
When you knocked on the door he was already waiting at the entrance, opening up to reveal a clearly distraught Michael Robinavitch. It was all in his eyes; his exhaustion, his hurt, his difficulty reaching out. It was all there and all ready for you to embrace. Robby looked down at you, looking like hell; dark bags under his clearly red and glistening eyes, still in his disheveled black scrubs, and he looks at you like he’s about to go under, a drowning man in need of a lifejacket. You step in, closing the door behind you and placing your back on the door.
“Robby, you look like shit,” you say, furrowed brows and worried palms on the hardwood. It earns a chuckle out of him, palm running down his face then hands stopping at his hips.
“I’ve had better days.” He can barely look you in the eyes, gaze now transfixed to the floor.
“Have you eaten anything?” Maybe getting his mind off of whatever is troubling him will help. He only closes his eyes and shakes his head, “Not hungry.”
“What about tea, we can do tea right?” It’s not like you’re trying to baby him, not overtly trying to mother him, it just comes out naturally. You reach out to touch his hand, unhooking his hand from his hip and holding it. A closed hand embrace, your thumb rubbing against his calloused palm.
Robby looks at where you two are intertwined, then back to you.
It’s a lifejacket.
Even with your worried, furrowed, expression you still manage a smile. Robby can only nod in response, sure if he speaks everything wrong will come out.
You don’t wait, dragging him to the kitchen and leading him to a seat at the kitchen island, motioning for him to sit. But he doesn’t respond, squeezing your hand as if saying, “Don’t let go.” You let out a quick breath of air through your nose as a laugh; he was making it difficult not to be motherly towards him. Nonetheless, this would be simple enough. The kettle had already been on the counter so you just pressed for it to start warming up.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” then begin dragging him to his bedroom. You went straight for the attached bathroom, going to the shower and running the water, steam clouding the mirrors. The two of you pause, hand still intertwined. He gently lets go, understanding his task and you walk out of the bathroom and rummage through his drawers to set a pair of grey sweats and an old t-shirt out for him. When he comes back to the living room, you have a cup ready for him, one in your own hand, and pat the spot next to you on the couch. A grin reaches your lips as he trod over, hesitating to your offering but accepting it nonetheless.
Mug of comfort in hand, you pause, “Do you want to talk about it?” Robby shakes his head, focused on the warm liquid. You nod in return and you just start talking; about your day, your latest project on the house, the kids that drove past this morning, the mailman’s mix up on your guys’ mail, the latest gossip by the old woman two doors down, the amount of hummingbirds that have visited you since you put up that bird feeder, your local possum friend that you’re work shopping names on, you talk about anything and everything to get his mind off of whatever horrors he’s seen today.
Soon enough your cups are empty and the late pm has turned into an early am but you don’t have it in you to leave. A yawn escapes you and Robby looks at the time on the oven clock, 1:34am.
“You should go home,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it.
You shook your head in defiance. “Just a little sleepy, but I don’t want to go home.”
You know he never would, so you decide to suggest it.
“Can I stay here?”
It’s like a deer in headlights; his expression. Sudden and caught off guard, unsure if he should stay still enough for you to run him over or run away. And he doesn’t hate the idea; he just isn’t sure.
You can see it all pass through him, so you try to reassure him. “I’m not asking anything from you Robby, we can just sleep.”
He’s still unsure, but one thing he is sure of is that he doesn’t want you to leave. So he simply nods, and you lead him to his bedroom once more.
The big light is off, soft lamp on his nightstand the only thing illuminating the room. The fluffy robe you once adorned now hanging on the foot of the bed. Navy sheets crinkle under your touch, the smell of them fresh and soaked with Robby’s scent. You sit on the bed, waiting to see if he’ll join you.
The jaws of the trap opens.
Robby’s weight dips in the bed, the subtle creak of the mattress as he sits beside you. But you turn to face him and he does the same. You can’t help it, not when he’s looking so solemn at you and not when you’d been holding back for so long. Fingers go up to his face, palm cupping his course cheek. Robby’s eye lids close as he leans into your touch, mouth falling open as he takes a deep breath in.
You drink him in; spearmint, sandalwood, linen. Skin warm and hair damp. Ripples of skin against his eyes, freckles kissing his skin, peeking grey hairs down to his eyebrows.
You catch your own breath against his beauty, wishing nothing more than to pepper his weary face with kisses. Your neck cranes to reach him, the other hand resting on his shoulder, and you place a soft kiss at the corner of his mouth.
He lets you in.
Robby opens his eyes and it’s all there; you’ve saved him from drowning, you’ve become his God-given solace, his anchor in the waves, his changed luck. Calloused fingers reach up to your face, thumb rubbing across your cheek. You lock eyes with a man who’d been starved for too long. He leans down and stops right at your mouth, his hot breath against you, gaze hesitant but longing. It was as if he was being leashed, pulling himself back from you. But you catch a handful of his shirt in your hand and gently tug on his face with the other, signifying you too have been deprived of him for too long.
The wounded animal escapes.
Lips collide slowly; his bottom lip is plush, the coarse hairs of his salt-and-pepper beard rub against you harshly, but you don’t mind. The taste of the tea you two enjoyed still lingers on his tongue. It’s a high unlike any other, chasing the feeling of wanting to consume one another. But it’s not hungry like it’s gluttony. It’s starvation like savoring every single bite of your favorite meal, making each piece on your fork the perfect amount of flavor to make the perfect bite. Lips are gentle even if they’re hungry for more; your hands are clawing but only out of affection. His hands are soft and warm against you, the one hand at your face and fingers trailing into your hair, the other falling at the small of your back and pulling you deeper into him. It’s slow, sloppy, but so so sweet. And once it feels like you’re full enough you smile against him, still peppering some kisses in between pulling away.
No words need to be spoken. Just the acceptance of the moment as your hand goes to the back of his neck and scratches at the base of his scalp.
“Ready to sleep?” You whisper, wanting to keep the moment feathery as long as possible.
Robby shakes his head slightly and whispers against you, “No, not yet.”
He leans into your hand as you continue scratching, a deep groan escaping him at the sense of relief. His reaction gives you an idea and you scoot back on the bed, enough to make room in your lap. You pat at your thighs, signifying a place for him to rest his head. And he obeys like a dog obeys its master; not another word needs to be uttered.
Robby lies down on the bed, head facing away from you and resting against your thighs.
The ticklish feeling of his beard against your warm skin, the softness of his hair skimming through your fingers, the steady breath of the largest man you'd ever known.
One of his hands rests right at the swell of your butt, his large hand covering much of the surface area but not squeezing. The other rubs circles against your knee, a constant pattern.
“Will you just—stay here, like this, with me, until I fall asleep?” It’s more of a prayer than a question, his warm breath against your skin.
Leaning down, you place a soft kiss against his head.
“Of course.”
He peppers a kiss on your leg, a soft and gentle gesture and unlike anything you'd ever felt from him.
Slowly but surely, Robby finally falls asleep.
In the morning, he gives you a key, makes space in his cupboard for your mug, and brings out an extra chair for the porch.
no pressure taglist: @lady-milford @purplekitty2019 @ceriseangels @redd-blushing-roses @spider-starry
so sweet n soft 🥺
THERE'S NOTHIN' MORE WE COULD GET OUT OF HERE, BABY DRIVE ✮⋆˙
a doctor walks into a strip club not expecting to find his most timid patient
MASTERLIST | RULES | INBOX
PAIRING michael robinavitch x stripper!reader
WARNINGS 18+ MDNI fem!reader, shy!reader (on occasion), strip-club setting, private/lap dance, er!barbie mention if u squint, depression themes, burnout, reader wears skirts, partial nudity, social anxiety, sexual shame and insecurity, fear of emotional intimacy, i make robby wear his glasses all da time… sue me, doctor/patient meet cute, minor head injury, needles/sutures, objectification and male-gaze framing, jack is a lil sleazy in this for narrative purposes, reader calls robby michael!, sex-worker/client power dynamics, references to marital infidelity (not between mcs), alcohol and smoking, clothed grinding, authority/instruction kink, praise kink, lots of pet names, light condescension/dumbification, dom!robby, hair pulling, clothed clitoral stimulation, fingering, multiple orgasms / overstimulation, age gap, car sex, brief mention of oral sex (f receiving), non-graphic mention of maternal suicide
WC 14k
Today has been a shit day to be Michael Robinavitch.
And yes, Robby understands — hard not to, with the department he runs thrumming behind him like a hive full of grief — that he is hardly the sorriest soul within earshot. Blood hits the floor. Heartbeats quit. Lives learn, fast and loud, that the Almighty can be blunt as a brick to the face.
In this place, Robby has witnessed enough human catastrophe to know that his own shit day should rank somewhere below minor inconvenience.
Knowing it, unfortunately, doesn’t ease the drag.
Because there’s this fucking tiredness that lives in him now by strata, each year pressed flat beneath the next, until whatever came before has been fossilized beyond recognition.
He remembers only fragments of that earlier man, someone who laughed without effort, someone who did not hear his name and immediately feel another small portion of himself being requisitioned.
They ask, and he gives. They ask again, and he gives again. That is the work. That is who he is. The two have grown around each other so completely that separating them would require cutting into bone.
But usually, the work of the emergency department can still pull him above the fatigue. Adrenaline is useful that way.
Today has offered no such mercy.
Hence, shit.
Just a steady procession of petty failures. Interruptions. Demands. Death by thumbtacks. Laughable, except there is barely enough of him left to puncture.
At six, a pipe bursts over radiology and turns half the department into a damp, swearing migraine, ceiling tiles sagging with dirty water while everyone responsible for maintaining the building becomes mysteriously unreachable.
At seven, a confused patient pulls the fire alarm because nobody will let him smoke beside the oxygen tanks which, if nothing else, demonstrates a level of commitment to a terrible idea that Robby almost respects.
Almost.
At eight, he discovers that the overnight attending (cough, Jack, cough) has left him a waiting room packed to capacity, two unsigned charts, and one impressively hostile email from the hospital’s administrative assistant whose pink signature and tiny heart-shaped bullet points do nothing to soften the phrase “ongoing efficiency deficits.”
And by ten, his coffee has been knocked out of his hand, his lunch has been stolen from the refrigerator, and Whitaker has called out sick.
That leaves Robby down a physician and picking up whatever cases he can cram into the narrow spaces between one thing and the next.
Curtain Seven holds an uncomplicated eyebrow lac.
Practically a gift. A tiny, finite problem for a man whose entire life currently feels composed of open tabs and unfinished sentences.
Five minutes to assess, ten to irrigate and close, two more to recite the standard warnings about dizziness, vomiting, confusion, unequal pupils, and the many creative ways a minor head injury can become his problem again by midnight.
In and out. Straightforward. Painless, at least for him.
Then back to the several other problems already elbowing for space inside his overtaxed brain.
But the moment Robby pulls back the curtain, straightforward goes comprehensively to hell.
Medically speaking, it is exactly as the chart advertised. A small cut above your eyebrow. Manageable. Routine. Boring, even.
You are none of those things.
You sit perched on the edge of the gurney as though you have been placed there for safekeeping and warned not to touch anything. Spine stick-straight, hands gathered neatly in your lap.
Your cardigan is a soft color he doesn’t have a name for, but he thinks it’s pretty, buttoned almost primly to your collarbones, tiny pearl buttons marching down the front.
Your skirt spills modestly over your crossed knees, sheer tights covering the rest of your legs, and a pair of neat ballet flats dangle just above the floor.
One toe traces a nervous little semicircle through the air before you catch yourself and hold still.
At the sound of the curtain, you turn, and your eyes find him immediately, enormous and worried and so wholly fastened to his face that doe-eyed no longer feels like a figurative term.
Robby nearly takes a step back.
He has not eaten. That must explain the dizziness.
He clears his throat and looks down at the chart, seeking temporary asylum among the intake notes. His eyes catch on your name. Pretty name. Naturally. Pretty woman, pretty name, the universe apparently committed to the theme.
He says it aloud and glances up to confirm the pronunciation. You nod quickly, almost eagerly.
“I’m Dr. Robinavitch,” he tells you, then relents before you can attempt the full four syllables. “Dr. Robby, if you like.”
That earns him another look — good grief.
It’s a look that should be reserved for lifeboats at three a.m., that trembling instant when you realize the sea might still let you live. You shouldn’t waste that on a man built mostly of leaks and patch jobs.
“Hi, Dr. Robinavitch,” you say softly. “It’s lovely to meet you — well, I suppose it isn’t, really. Lovely, I mean. I’d rather not be in the emergency room.” Your mouth sours at your own words. “Sorry, that was rude. I don’t mean I’d rather not meet you. Just not like this. With this —” A limp hand flutters at your face. “— whole facial fiasco.”
It’s strangely funny, hearing his full name from your mouth. Most people seize the abbreviation when offered. But you cradle Robinavitch like fine china, intent on returning it intact.
“Right. That,” he says, taking a few measured steps closer. “Can you walk me through what happened?”
Robby can practically see the debate flicker across your features. Truth in one corner, lie in the other, both taping up their knuckles. The lie comes out swinging first, something vague and graceful rising in your eyes, but your conscience cheap-shots it before the bell.
“I, um, ran into a door.”
“And how did that happen?”
He has the answer assembled before you can give it to him, because there are only so many roads that lead a grown woman directly into a stationary object.
Too much wine, perhaps. A phone held three inches from your nose. Some spectacularly avoidable mishap born from distraction, intoxication, or the particularly lethal combination of both. People do not generally collide with doors while demonstrating excellent judgment.
You duck your head, and your thumb drifts to one of the pearl buttons on your cardigan, nudging it back and forth in its buttonhole, rubbing over the thread until the tidy cross-stitch has gone soft and fuzzy at the edges.
Not a new habit, Robby thinks. The button has been loved nearly to death.
“Do I have to tell you the exact details?” you ask, already shrinking from the question. “Because I would really prefer not to.”
That does not help your case. Something irresponsible, then.
“I would prefer it if you did,” he prods. “I need to know if anything threw off your balance before impact. Vertigo, alcohol, low blood sugar, a sudden loss of consciousness. Anything like that.”
He keeps the rest to himself, the way his own interest is tunneling deeper, a quiet animal gnawing through wood to find the soft center.
“No, um, nothing like that,” you insist. “I was reading while I walked and I just… didn’t look up soon enough.”
Robby blinks. “You were reading.”
It’s not a question, really, only a small correction entered into the file he had already begun assembling in his head.
So he was wrong.
Entirely, which perhaps he should’ve anticipated. He was just trying not to judge a book by its cover. But your cover is proving remarkably faithful to the contents.
Without meaning to, Robby begins sketching the rest of you around it. You work somewhere quiet, he decides. A library, maybe, or some obscure university office tucked behind a corridor nobody visits without an appointment, surrounded by tidy shelves and coworkers who instinctively soften their voices around you.
You pack your lunch the night before in a regiment of matching containers. Drink tea, not coffee, probably something floral and faintly medicinal. Buy pens only after testing how smoothly they move across paper. Say sorry when other people bump into you.
Probably apologized to the door afterward, too.
A laugh falls out of him before he can decide whether it’s appropriate, soft at first, then edged with genuine amusement. “Must’ve been a hell of a book.”
“You know, I don’t think doctors are supposed to derive entertainment from their patients’ poor spatial awareness,” you mutter, lashes lowering the instant the words escape, as if the joke were a spark you need to smother before anyone sees the smoke.
A small, stubborn curve clings to the edge of his mouth as he cants his head in concession. “Fair point. You’re right, and I apologize.”
The words are properly contrite. The twinkle in his eyes says he’s enjoying every second anyway.
Then he moves closer, and the witty spark in your eyes gutters out on cue. He catches the exact sputter of your breath — one skipped beat, a sharp sip of air — as he settles between your knees and towers over where you sit, broad shoulders eclipsing your view of anything but him.
“Let’s take a look,” he murmurs.
As soon as his thumb brushes the corner of the bandage, you begin talking.
“It probably looks worse than it is. I mean, I haven’t actually looked, because I thought that might make me feel faint, which is ridiculous because I’m not squeamish, usually, except with my own blood, apparently, and I did clean it, I promise, I just wasn’t sure if hydrogen peroxide was still considered good or if everyone decided it was bad while I wasn’t paying attention —”
“Hydrogen peroxide is still considered good,” he cuts in, trying to drape calm over your runaway syntax.
Robby eases the tape away slowly, one inch at a time.
The wound beneath is nothing: a shallow scrape, the faintest puff of swelling. Still, annoyance sparks anyway, a quick, irrational flare. Ridiculous. A red skid mark above your eye — insignificant, yes, but on that face it feels like graffiti on marble.
The reaction inside him is almost comically paternal, a stern memo from some inner guardian demanding the universe exercise better stewardship over its delicate masterpieces.
Robby cradles your cheek with latex-clad fingertips, pressing gently around the scrape to check for deeper swelling. You flinch, shoulders stiffening, mouth pursing around a startled hiss.
“Tender there?” Robby asks, the lines of his eyes tightening with concern.
Your lip disappears beneath your teeth, eyes darting up through thick lashes. “A little. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” His thumb drifts along the unbruised ridge of your cheekbone, touch light as breath.
Honestly, with the number of apologies flying between you, he ought to be wearing a mason jar on a string around his neck — your coins on one side, his on the other, rattling like wind chimes every time either of you says the word.
“I just don’t want to make your job harder by… y’know being uncooperative.”
He stifles another laugh.
The idea is so backwards it’s almost endearing.
Patients usually fight him like toddlers at bath time. If you were any more compliant, you’d offer to suture yourself up while reciting after-care instructions.
“You’re a dream compared to the gentleman who tried to bite me for even suggesting stitches.”
Also, a dream in other respects, but he’ll keep that to himself.
“Stitches?” you echo, pupils flaring wide as if you’ve spotted the needle already.
Robby raises both gloved hands in the universal easy there gesture. “Yes, stitches. Two, maybe three. We’ll numb the area, you won’t feel a thing. Promise.”
Your gaze flicks from his gloves to his face, searching for any hairline crack in the reassurance he’s offered.
Robby feels suddenly exposed, half-convinced you’re also reading the shallow crow’s-feet and the faint gray at his temples, those watermarks that say used but serviceable even on his best days.
However, whatever you see must satisfy you; the tension in your jaw eases, and you exhale through your nose, giving him a small, firm nod.
“M’kay. Should be fine,” you murmur, offering a tentative half-smile that wobbles at the edges.
“Will be,” he corrects, voice dipping to the same rhythm as the cotton pad he draws along the cut. Outward strokes, clearing dried blood.
The antiseptic smell billows up, but it falters against the subtler warmth of you. Clean skin, faint lavender shampoo, sun-warmed wool, the sweet trace of whatever lip balm you worried away earlier.
He sets the cotton aside, swaps it for the syringe of lidocaine, and pitches his voice to the same hush one might use coaxing a skittish foal.
“Tiny pinch coming — deep breath with me.”
You obey promptly. The needle slips under the skin. He feels the faint give, watches your lashes flutter but not fall.
“Good,” he praises. “Halfway done with the worst part.”
While the numbing spreads, he cups your jaw with his free hand, thumb tracing an idle circle well clear of the scrape. He doesn’t know why he does it. Can’t stop either. An anchoring touch, perhaps. Nothing more.
Your pulse beats quick beneath the glove, bird-wing frantic, yet you keep still, eyes trained on his like you’ve decided they’re the safest coordinates in the room.
Thread, needle, forceps. He moves through the motions with ritual care, narrating each step.
“Little poke,” he says as the curved needle dips. “Pulling through, just a tug.”
You tense, then relax when the promised pain never arrives. He snips the tail, smooths a fresh swab over the line of the suture, and starts the next pass. Two stitches.
Then, for safety, a third, fine as spider silk, barely visible against your skin.
“All right, last one. Another deep breath.”
Your inhale is shaky but obedient. He mirrors it, slow and exaggerated, so you can match pace. In those three shared seconds the world shrinks to the hush of fabric, the faint click of instruments, the muted roar of blood in his ears.
The final knot seats neatly. He studies the trio, a tiny constellation guarding the fragile universe of your eye, and feels a swell of pride, as though he’s fitted diamonds into marble rather than nylon into flesh. A dab of antibiotic, a butterfly dressing laid with careful hands.
“Gorgeous work,” he jokes, meaning the repair but, embarrassingly, meaning you as well. “You’ll hardly know it’s there in a week.”
Your shoulders sag in a relief so tangible he could cup it in his palms. He steps back only after giving your cheek one last feather-light pat.
“Bravest patient of the night,” he declares, peeling off his gloves with a snap and dropping them into the bin.
A slow exhale pours out of you, followed by a smile so earnest it could power streetlamps.
“I barely felt a thing,” you say, eyes tracking him as though he’s some rare object and you’re afraid to blink it away. “Thank you, Dr. Robinavitch.”
“You did great.” He feels the need to add that one. He’s not sure why. Surely not because you instantly perk up at the praise. “Don’t get it wet tonight. And, um, starting tomorrow, cleanse only daily with diluted baby shampoo, blot dry, tiny dab of ointment. This will all be in the instructions you’ll be given. These stitches come out in about six days. Any signs of streaking redness, increasing tenderness, yellow drainage, or sudden headache, you come back in. Deal?”
“Deal,” you say, quick nods punctuating every syllable.
He reaches for the handle, then pauses. “Oh, and the book stays closed anytime your feet are moving, yeah?”
You clutch the strap of your bag and give him a tiny, chastened nod. “Right. Yes. Books and walking are officially divorced.”
Robby hasn't been able to stop thinking about you.
He isn’t entirely sure why, and in the interest of preserving what remains of his peace, he has elected not to investigate. Ignorance is bliss, after all, and bliss is already more than a man with his age, schedule, and accumulated wreckage ought to expect.
Romance is not something he can sustain. He has made peace with that, mostly. Fleeting companionship is different.
A drink, a laugh, the uncomplicated relief of a warm body beside his for seven weeks or so. He is good at beginnings. Endings even more so, particularly when he can arrange them before a woman begins leaving things in his bathroom or asks him to describe the future as though he has ever possessed one.
Love and similar things demand room he does not have. Time he cannot promise. Parts of himself he suspects have already been spent elsewhere.
And you seem like you deserve more than a man who’s only confident in the temporary.
Which is all theoretical anyway. Seventeen minutes is not enough time to determine whether a woman is interested in you. You gave him no indication you wanted him. And he has no intention of making a fool of himself by looking for one retroactively.
More importantly, life is not generally so obliging as to place the same stranger in his path twice.
It has been four days already, and his memory has begun eroding in all the wrong places.
You are still there, technically, but less in full and more in fragments. Your face keeps blurring at the margins no matter how often he finds himself, coincidentally, trying to call it back.
He remembers your nails. Neat, he thinks. Maybe rounded. Something careful about them, as though you spent time making sure even your hands caused no offense. The cardigan was pale, soft enough that he remembers wanting to touch the sleeve, although now it is cream, now pink, now some color he suspects you never wore at all.
Your mouth resists him most.
Presented as a still, it flat-lines. He only revives it by remembering kinesiology rather than anatomy, the subtle concavity when you spoke, and then, abruptly, the entire feature reanimates, pulsing with life he can’t keep.
The thought of you persists, even here, in a room thick with stale cigar smoke that rasps over his tongue like powdered charcoal.
Robby presses his thumb into the bridge of his nose until color sparks behind his eyelids. Creams and pinks.
He refocuses on Jack, who has sprawled comfortably into a low leather chair. A cigar glows between his fingers, the ember brightening each time he makes a point to Mateo and Parker, orange-red, then dull, then orange-red again.
How he allowed himself to be dragged here, of all places, remains unclear. Jack’s talent for weaponized rationality probably played a role.
It began innocently — one drink, Robby, come on — then snowballed into you’ve been a hermit for half a year, and ended with Jack beside Robby’s car holding his keys hostage until he agreed to accompany them.
At no point had anyone mentioned that the “quiet place Mateo knows” employed women in six-inch heels. And by the time he clocked the neon, tacky signage, the silhouette of a woman wrapped around a pole, he was already wedged in the back seat between Parker and a cooler.
Jack catches him staring and lifts his brows. “Try to look less like you’re waiting for the health department to arrive.”
Robby exhales through his nose. “Give me two more whiffs of this carpet and I’m calling them myself.”
“You’ve been here twelve minutes, pal.” Jack taps ash neatly into the tray beside him. “Loosen up. Have a drink. Let a pretty woman remind you that the human body occasionally does things other than crash and burn.”
“I’m well acquainted with its full range of functions, thanks,” Robby says, finally lifting the glass he’s ignored all night. The ice has surrendered to a sad film of water, flavor leached out before he even tasted it.
Parker tears her attention from the stage, lashes still raining glitter, and pins him with a look that borders on pity. “With all due respect, Robby, I think you may have forgotten a few of the more recreational applications.”
Robby tracks the path her eyes abandoned, just in time to glimpse a quicksilver blur twining up the pole before the lights swallow it whole.
He hasn’t forgotten. He has simply not mistaken remembering them for needing them, or so he has been telling himself since his last fling ended four weeks ago. There was sex, plenty of it, an indisputably recreational application that, for forty-five minutes at a time, returned his body to something other than a piece of shiftwork machinery.
Then it was over, the loan period expired, and the instrument went back on the surgical tray.
Jack salutes Parker with his glass in agreement.
Robby swings his gaze between them, unimpressed. “I’m old enough to remember when that kind of commentary would’ve at least been whispered behind my back.”
“Night crew’s a different animal, man. After midnight, we’re all equals.” Mateo lifts one shoulder, entirely unrepentant.
Robby snorts. “No, we aren’t.”
“And that attitude right there —” Mateo lifts a finger and aims it straight at him “— is exactly why Jack dragged your ass out tonight.”
Robby inhales to fire back, but the song ends on a hard cut, swallowing his comeback in a wave of cheers. Silver lights bleed instantly into velvet red, and an anticipatory murmur travels across the room with remarkable speed. Glasses thunk onto tables. Spines straighten as though tugged by the same invisible string.
A man near the front actually elbows his friend into silence, eyes fixed on the curtain.
A familiar woman steps out.
Or, more accurately, Robby’s eyes insist she is familiar, and his mind arrives several seconds later, scrambling for an explanation.
Robby has seen that happen often enough. A limb arranged at an angle the body was never designed to hold. Blood arcing with such absurd force it looks less like injury than special effects. The first look rejects it. The second begins the unpleasant work of believing.
He trusts the second look because panic is an unreliable witness, because fatigue smears what’s real, because a person under strain will borrow a stranger’s face and fasten it onto any recognizable outline if recognition feels safer than confusion.
So that is what this must be. A trick of light. A bad angle. His weary mind reaching backwards four days and dressing an unfamiliar woman in the remnants of you.
But the second look is the same as the first.
The woman remains you. A vision rendered in arterial red, lace curling over your body in ornate filigree, satin bands drawing the eye down the sleek length of your legs to crimson stilettos that land against the stage with sharp, ceremonial clicks.
Light pools in the soft hollow of your waist, slides over the swell of your hips, catches on the bounce of cleavage held in scalloped cups.
He could still call it resemblance, perhaps, if not for the small interruption above your eyebrow. The cut. The one he irrigated, aligned, closed. His handiwork sits there like a signature on a painting, ruining every alternative.
A bolt of percussion fires through his veins. One huge, discordant thud that reverberates all the way up into his skull.
“Jesus,” Parker whistles, lounging into her elbows. “Alright, I see why she’s got regulars.”
Robby does too, though agreement seems a flimsy response to what’s happening.
You’re… wrong word, wrong word, wrong word.
Pretty is flowers in glass jars and daylight and picnic tables. Sexy is no better, insufficient and boyish, a word that is used in locker rooms and bad dating apps.
What you are now is something closer to magnetic, maybe.
You draw the room toward you molecule by molecule, the way the moon hauls entire oceans across the earth without asking permission. Even Robby, professional skeptic, finds his spine tilting, happy to pretend the leash isn’t there while secretly begging you not to drop it.
A flush climbs his neck, prickling beneath the starched edge of his shirt, so he sneaks a finger inside for air.
Jack notices, turning just enough to smirk around the rim of his glass as if to say told you so. But he doesn’t know the real reason Robby feels suddenly suffocated.
Robby shrugs deeper into the leather, posture telegraphing cool indifference like a man impervious to heat.
He isn’t. And he’s even less impervious to the whiplash of matching this siren to the shy patient who sat in his ER.
The woman in the ER had nearly apologized herself into a corner over the possibility that saying hello wrong might make her rude. This woman keeps a hundred people waiting on one slow turn of her hip and does not apologize to any of them. Four days ago, you could barely hold his gaze without softening it with a timid smile. Now you meet the eyes of strangers one by one, choosing them, releasing them, granting each man the brief narcotic thrill of being singled out before moving on fast enough that none of them can confuse attention with ownership.
It should feel like performance. A costume, a trick of lighting, confidence painted on as carefully as whatever dark color shines across your mouth. Except nothing about it reads false.
You are not pretending to command the room any more than you had been pretending to be nervous with him. Both things are true, somehow, two states held inside the same body without either invalidating the other.
Schrödinger’s woman, collapsing into whatever form the environment demands.
The possibility unnerves him more than a lie would: that he never really sees all of anyone, that patients arrive in pieces and leave with the rest of themselves still undisclosed. That the same could be said for him.
At work he’s precision incarnate, voice pitched to steady the hands of interns and family members alike. Off the clock, the same voice can’t convince him to answer texts or fold laundry that’s been clean for a week. He’s the doctor who tells grieving spouses to hydrate, then forgets to eat until his vision tunnels. Two truths, both real, both incomplete.
On the next pass your eyes collide with his, momentum juddering so fiercely the rest of you almost follows.
Almost.
You decant the shock into a languid pause while your hand trails over the valley of your waist. The crowd drinks it in as pure seduction, none the wiser. Robby is. He witnesses the recognition bloom hard behind your pupils before you bury it. For a second he was seeing Curtain-Seven-You blinking up through the polish, startled to discover her doctor reclined with a sweating glass and a stare he can’t pretend away.
One blink later the mask reseats itself. The woman he sutured melts back beneath the gloss-hard shell of the woman steering the room by its collective bloodstream.
You prowl towards the pole.
The knot of men ringing the stage is already rowdy, but your proximity behaves like accelerant. One slaps the rail, another looses a lewd invitation, all of them bending forward to peak at the whisper-thin scrap stretched over your ass.
Robby’s molars meet with a crack at the wet, barking laughter of appreciation that follows.
You appear unbothered, palm sliding up chrome, spine unwinding as you lift onto the lethal points of your heels, a slow ascension that leaves the pack panting.
You draw one leg behind you and tip forward, lace disappearing between parted thighs as you roll downward.
His hand lifts to his mouth, knuckles pressing against his teeth, and then he bites down because Christ, because fucking hell, because apparently the human body still does plenty other than crash and burn.
His, for one, springs to attention violent enough that he has to shift in his chair and pass the movement off as a casual adjustment, pretending the sudden pressure behind his zipper is nothing more than a quest for better lumbar support.
Rising inch by inch, you draw yourself back up.
A gentle press of your wrist sets you spinning once unhurried around the pole. Your gaze rides the rotation, finding one patron, then another, gifting each a fraction of electric eye contact that has wallets loosening like reflex.
When the orbit swings you toward Robby, you turn your chin a breath away, letting your hair curtain the sight of him, withholding the current he suddenly realizes he wants more than air.
“Well?” Jack suddenly murmurs, nudging him with the side of his arm. “She doing anything for you?”
“She appears to be doing something for everyone,” Robby replies, dryly, lifting his glass as though the room’s collective reaction has nothing whatsoever to do with his own.
“Maybe you should find out what she does one-on-one,” Jack says mildly, like he’s suggesting another round. “Private dances are a thing here, I’m told.”
“I think I’ve seen enough,” Robby replies, aiming for bored and landing somewhere closer to strained.
He has not seen enough, not even enough to satisfy the first sharp edge of curiosity. A dozen questions are now cracked open where one used to be. Enough is nowhere in sight.
You never look at him again.
The song winds down. The room stands for you. Applause swells while you gather the scattered bills with calm hands, then slip behind the curtain without so much as a backward glance.
Good, Robby tells himself. Better this way.
The lie rides home with him in the passenger seat.
The first vintage car Robby bought had already been abandoned once. He found it beneath a collapsing canvas cover behind a house outside Pittsburgh, all four tires sunk into the earth.
He traced the rain-carved rivulets of rust down its fenders as the homeowner, beer resting on a potbelly, bragged about a future overhaul spoken in the casual, uninterested tone of a man who’d rather let weather finish the job.
Robby bought it before he had anywhere sensible to keep it. And for two long years Robby spent his evenings and weekends nursing seized pistons free, lathing corrosion off gears, feeding the straight-six new gaskets and hope until it almost sounded like itself again.
He called it a hobby, later upgraded the label to cheaper than therapy, but never once spoke the truest thing — that some stubborn, eight-year-old corner of his heart was trying to prove that abandoned didn’t automatically make a thing unworthy of rescue.
“Hi, Dr. Robinavitch.”
Robby straightens, throat clearing more than once. “Hi. It’s… nice to seeing you again.”
A poor choice of words.
He knows it from the way the sentence seems to remain in the room after he has finished speaking.
Nice to seeing you again here, he means. In the emergency department, fully clothed in a yellow sundress, purse clasped between polite hands. Not nice seeing you again since the strip club, where he’d gone home afterward and wrapped his fist around his cock like some middle-aged sleazeball with no better use for his imagination.
Surely you will assume he means the emergency room. Any reasonable person would.
“Um, I followed all your instructions. For the aftercare, I mean.” Your hand rises halfway toward your eyebrow before seeming to think better of it. “It looks all right, doesn’t it?”
The upward tilt at the end gives you away. Robby recognizes the bid for praise, though he is less prepared for how instinctively he wants to satisfy it.
It is profoundly disorienting to see you like this, returned to his most timed, sweet patient.
“It looks great,” he promises, lips tipping into a smile he can’t stop. “Seems you did everything right.”
Relief melts your shoulders, an overlarge reaction to a modest bit of validation. Robby feels an equally outsized glow at having caused it.
Drawn in, he shortens the distance between you, leaning over the gurney to parse the neat ladder of scabbed flesh.
“Any redness, swelling — any drainage? Fever? Swelling?”
“No.”
“Kept it dry?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
You blink up at him. “I showered.”
“Everyone showers,” he points out.
The answer comes out drier than intended, though not unkindly. You seem to consider this, lips parting and then closing again, as though reviewing the entire history of human bathing for a more defensible response.
Robby waits and dislikes how charming he finds the hesitation.
“Right, well, yes,” you concede at last, cheeks warming. “But some people are better at keeping their faces out of the water than others.”
He nearly lets the grin escape. “And which category would you place yourself in?”
Then he makes the mistake of letting the sentence form an image. Water coursing over cheekbones, pooling in clavicles, dress adhering to the soft body beneath.
He does not need to imagine much. His memory has become inconveniently exact where your body is concerned.
The swell of your breasts, full and heavy. He has seen the smooth plane of your stomach, the dip at your navel, the round flare of your hips, the way that scrap of satin vanished between the fat curve of your ass when you bent over and held the room there with you.
The sundress feels suddenly fraudulent, a modest little curtain drawn over a body his mind has no trouble stripping bare.
“Uh… the less-graceful division.” A nervous little smile flickers and dies.
“Well, fortunately, shower water isn’t acid,” he teases, sliding a latexed thumb beneath the healing seam. “Once the wound has had a day or two to seal, brief contact is generally harmless. Prolonged soaking, scrubbing, contaminated water — those would concern me. Your inability to lean backward does not.”
There is really no reason for him to be here today. The department is fully staffed, plenty of nurses, plenty of docs. Suture-snipping is a five-minute chore, and anyone with gloves and passable vision could handle it.
Langdon even volunteered — “I’ll take the stitch removal” — surely looking for something easy to do in between back to back GSWs. But Robby’s eyes caught your name on the board, and before the words could stop themselves, he’d stepped in.
“I’ve got it.”
He didn’t think it was rude. More curt, maybe. Decisive. Perhaps carrying the implication that Langdon should fuck off and find a different patient. He recovered by invoking continuity of care. He knows how the wound looked initially. He can assess healing against the baseline.
All true points.
And plus, Robby likes to finish what he starts. That’s what he told himself about the car, too, during that second frost-bitten winter, when the engine still wouldn’t turn over and more pragmatic voices egged him toward the scrapyard.
It justifies the way he looks at you now. He intends to finish with you as well. Finish what, though? A repair? A detour? He can’t name it yet, only feels the torque of wanting to see the job through.
“Does removing them hurt?”
“Not usually.” Robby adjusts the goose-neck lamp above you. “There’s some pulling. Maybe a sting if the skin has started growing around one of the knots. Compared to the laceration itself and the anesthetic injections, this should be the easy part.”
You nod and brace yourself, chin tipped up, lips pressed into a thin determined line. Your fingers close around the edges of your handbag, knuckles tightening. Robby is not sure why you haven’t set it aside. Perhaps you expect to flee halfway through.
Robby angles the forceps and offers a calm, “Try not to tense.”
A terrible instruction, really. You go rigid beneath his hand.
He places one gloved hand along your temple, thumb resting just above your cheekbone, and brings the scissors to the first knot.
The surgical scissors dip, catch, snap. He eases the filament clear.
Your nose wrinkles.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… felt weird.”
“That’s the official technical term.” He huffs a laugh, swiping a finger at the injury. “Look at that — one down, two to go.”
He snips the second knot, giving his hands more concentration that the task requires. You study a blank patch of wall beyond his shoulder. Robby trains his eyes on the shears, the tray, anywhere but the soft sweep of your lashes.
Each time your lines of sight drift close, you both twitch a millimeter off course. An awkward pas de deux so perfectly in sync it reeks of rehearsal.
“So, um.” You exhale like you’re stepping off a ledge. “Is the plan to keep acting like you didn’t see me?”
For a breath the tiny blades hover, silver comma in the sentence. Robby’s hand moves again before the moment can form into trouble.
“I assumed that was what you preferred.”
Snip. The last blue thread lifts away. Robby drops it into the tray and peels his gloves.
“Well — yes. Usually,” you admit, eyes tracing anything but his. “It’s just awkward now, and I’m sure it’s awkward for you, too, and I feel like I put you in a strange position by being here.”
Robby inspects the thin pink line left behind, then cleans away the faint crusting with a square of saline-dampened gauze.
The edges have knitted neatly enough that he decides against Steri-Strips, though he smooths a small bandage over it for protection anyway.
“You came here for medical care,” he says, pressing the adhesive down with his thumb. “You didn’t put me in any position. You had stitches that needed removed, and I’m a doctor.”
“I know, but you didn’t know what I did before, and then you saw me doing it, and now you have to do this while we both pretend you haven’t seen significantly more of me than is appropriate. That feels like a strange position.”
He stares at you.
“To be fair, I’m the one who came into your, um, place of work and saw you like that. You didn’t bring any of it in here.” He gives a stiff chuckle, then rushes, “Not that I make a habit of visiting those kinds of places.”
You face falls, though only by degrees, nothing he could accuse himself of causing if he wanted the escape, only a tiny collapse around the eyes before they drop to your lap.
Shit.
“Right,” you murmur. “I understand.”
He does not think you do. You understand what his tongue accidentally suggested: that he considers himself separate from men who go to strip clubs and, by extension, considers you separate from women deserving uncomplicated respect.
“I only mean it wasn’t planned,” he corrects quickly. “On my part. Not that there’s anything wrong with where you work.”
You push yourself off the gurney too quickly, knees nearly catching its metal frame.
“You don’t have to explain, Dr. Robinavitch.” The title returns with enough formality to put several safe feet between you. “Really. I understand.” You smooth the skirt of your dress, though there is nothing wrong with it, eyes darting toward the curtain. “I should go, anyway. I have another appointment.” A pause. “Am I all right to leave?”
A firm no hovers on his tongue.
He could claim the adhesive hasn’t fully bonded, that follow-up education on UVA vs UVB protection is suddenly urgent. Hell, he could ask about nausea, tinnitus, sleep patterns — whatever buys an additional thirty seconds so he can reel his arrogance back in rather than watching you walk away with it.
“Yes, you can go.” Robby steps back, creating a polite corridor of air even while every muscle in him strains to close it again. “The wound is closed. No signs of infection.”
You nod, murmur another thank-you, and leave with the brisk determination of someone escaping a small fire.
He tosses the gloves, scans the room to be sure nothing’s missing, and steps into the hall.
By Friday, you have almost convinced yourself that Dr. Robinavitch’s opinion does not matter.
Because it doesn’t, really. Why would it? You don’t know the man. You don’t even know his first name. You only know how he looks in navy scrubs and how he looks in a dark green hoodie with the sleeves shoved to his forearms and you know how he blinks behind askew glasses when the universe throws a curveball.
None of that grants him jurisdiction over your self-worth, you remind yourself — for the sixth, seventh, eighth time in the last hours (which is absolutely a rational number of times for something that totally, unequivocally does not bother you)
You have no idea what his favorite color is, what he does on his days off, whether he reads before bed or falls asleep with the television on, whether he has friends who tease him or children who call him when they need something fixed. He could be boring. He could be unbearable.
He is functionally a stranger, and the opinions of strangers should pass over you without leaving a mark.
Except there had been a moment during that first visit when he had not felt like a stranger at all.
Some tiny aperture had opened in your mind, no more substantial than a daydream caught between blinks, and through it had been an entire future built from nothing. He would maybe ask for your number. You'd manage polite astonishment, of course, pretending the last ten minutes hadn't been an obsessive loop of ask me, ask me, ask me.
Then coffee. Maybe dinner. Conversation that would wander past the pleasantries and into the real questions. Everything happening in the normal order, the one other people seemed to enter without needing a script.
A man likes a woman. He asks her out. She says yes.
There would be no transaction or discussion of time or disclaimers about boundaries or fees. Just interest migrating, cell by cell, toward intimacy.
That little fantasy had been naive. Nothing in your life had ever been handed over with both palms open. You had fought for every apartment, every paid bill, every small square of stability you could defend as yours, and even stripping had begun less like a choice than as the only unlocked door in a hallway full of deadbolts.
It was never meant to be forever.
Forever had looked a little quieter when you pictured it, something involving the degree you had worked for, maybe kitten heel shoes that wouldn't destroy your arches, perhaps a desk with a small green plant you would remember to water because in this imagined life you were also the kind of woman who remembered such things.
Instead, your diploma yellowed discreetly on the wall while your student loans siphoned off money earned in rhinestones and six-inch heels, the sort of circular joke capitalism might have written after three drinks: you had gone into debt to become qualified for work that could not support you, then used supposedly disreputable work to pay for the qualification.
But the work does keep you housed.
It keeps the electricity on and the refrigerator stocked and (miracle of miracles) lets the rent clear without taking the rest of your life with it. As survival strategies go, it beats overdraft fees and lukewarm Ramen by a mile.
And plus, you are good at it.
A song lasts three minutes, sometimes four, and for that small illuminated span your life became beautifully finite.
Eight counts, a mark beneath your stilettos, the angle of your chin timed to the bass. Nothing accidental, nothing capable of catching you unprepared. Under the lights you swell to mystic size, pure glitter and gravity, and the house confuses being watched with being known.
You give them a body, a smile, the suggestion of closeness. Not one thing more.
“Someone’s askin’ for you.” Candy — six feet of sunset-red hair, glitter-lidded eyes, and a cigarette behind her ear — materializes at your elbow.
She worries a cocktail straw between teeth painted Revlon Fire & Ice, shifts weight onto one stiletto and fixes you with a look.
Candy had been at the club long enough to remember three owners, two renovations, and at least a dozen girls who had arrived with stage names chosen in the parking lot and disappeared before anyone learned their real ones.
She was not material, she would have corrected anyone who suggested it, largely because she considered children loud and motherhood an elaborate pyramid scheme.
Still, she had taken one look at you on your first night and decided you were hers to keep alive. Somebody had to.
You glance toward the hallway. “Who?”
“Didn’t ask. Tall. Glasses, maybe.” She stabs her straw toward the lobby, cherry lipstick parting in a half-smirk. “Or not. Lighting’s shit out there.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” you say with a laugh, tightening the cap on your mascara.
Through the mirror Candy tips her chin, curls spilling forward like spent matchsticks. “Trust me, honey, you won’t miss him. Sticks out like a sore thumb in there. Real stuck-up face. Could be handsome under all the disapproval.”
“Reassuring,” you murmur, sliding the tube into your makeup bag. “All right. I’ll go talk to him.”
You step away from the mirror’s glare, padding down the corridor that smells of hairspray and stale Mojitos.
Being requested has long since stopped surprising you.
The frequency still does, perhaps, because it happens more to you than to most the girls and you cannot quite identify the mechanism, what small thing you do that makes men single you out from an entire room of beautiful women.
You suspect it might be the distance, the impression that some essential part of you remains elsewhere. Men enjoy a locked door when they believe money might furnish the key.
So a summons from the floor means little, a private-room request, which you're sure is to follow, even less.
The steeper the fee, the holier they feel. And your fees are steep.
You have learned the taxonomy by now: the overexcited ones who can barely sit still, the grabby ones who pretend they misunderstood, the married ones who turn their rings inward, the unmarried ones who act as though that makes them virtuous.
Odds are Tall-Maybe-Glasses will slot into one category or another. They always do.
What you find is not remotely what you expect.
Even under the club’s shit lighting you recognize him instantly, despite the bodies cutting between you, despite every reasonable part of your brain insisting there must be hundreds of men in Pittsburgh with broad shoulders and glasses, hundreds who own dark green long sleeve shirts and jeans, hundreds capable of sitting stiffly around a drink they must regret ordering.
But only one of them blinks at disaster the way he does.
Only one is Dr. Robinavitch, and he is already looking directly at you.
You consider turning around and pretending Candy found the wrong girl. Too late. You feel her surfacing already, that other side he seems uniquely equipped to excavate. The fumbling girl who never knows where to put her hands and whom you have worked very hard to keep out of this room.
By the time you reach him, whatever elegant greeting your usual persona here might have offered has abandoned you completely.
“Dr. Robinavitch,” you say, stopping before him with your arms held awkwardly at your sides. “What are you doing here?”
“You can call me Michael,” he says, holding your gaze. It looks like he almost regrets saying that, but he continues on. “We’re not at the hospital.”
It is a nice name. Simple, strong, well-suited to him. It belongs in kitchens lit gold before sunrise, in slow Sundays and coffee cooling on the counter, in a voice calling up the stairs that breakfast is ready. It belongs to people who know him well enough to shorten it when they are teasing and draw out every syllable when they are cross.
“Michael, then,” you say, testing the shape of it while pretending it does not make him seem suddenly, inconveniently more human, then repeat, “What are you doing here?”
Michael lifts the glass to his lips, the ice chiming. “Having a drink.”
“Thought you didn’t frequent places like this.”
It’s cheap. Petty, even. You know it the second you say it, but that sentence has been bruising beneath your skin all week, tender every time you press at it.
Michael looks down into his drink. “I deserved that.”
Your posture slips by a degree, less certain of itself.
“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad,” you say automatically, then wince because that is plainly untrue. “Well, I was. A little.” Your finger finds the edge of the bar, worrying at it. “But only because you made me feel bad first, which is childish, I know, and not that it even matters because you don’t owe me anything, I just…” Stop. Breathe. Locate the point. You make yourself meet his eyes again. “Could you answer the original question honestly, please? Because the drinks here are terrible.”
You have never been particularly good at cruelty, not sustained cruelty, anyway.
When you were eight, you once cried harder than your cousin after shoving him off a swing because he had called you stupid, then spent the rest of the afternoon bringing him popsicles and checking his scraped knee as though guilt itself might cauterize the wound.
Even now, one flicker of remorse in someone's face and your anger begins eating its own tail.
“I wanted to see you. To apologize.” His mouth pulls taut, irritation aimed inward. “I didn’t know where else to find you.”
“Oh.” A rogue strand of hair is tucked away, buying you a second to breathe. “Well, that’s… nice. Unnecessary, but nice.” You give him a shrug. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I’m just a little sensitive sometimes, apparently.”
“No. You’re not too sensitive. I was insensitive.” He pauses, as though deciding whether to risk the rest. “And I’d like the chance to —”
A hand lands lightly at your elbow.
“There you are.” A voice interrupts. “You free for a private?”
The club rushes back in all at once. Damp skin. Sugared alcohol. A bartender shouting over the room as ice spills hard into a metal sink.
You turn and find one of your regulars smiling down at you. Married category. Grabby-hands category. Frequent overlap.
He is broad through the middle, expensive watch flashing at his wrist, his face polished into the benign affability of someone who says my wife doesn’t understand me like he has personally discovered marital dissatisfaction.
Once, after three bourbons, he had shown you a photograph of said wife and two daughters without the faintest sense of irony. Beautiful family. Matching white shirts on a beach somewhere, everyone squinting happily into the sun.
Then he had tucked the phone away and laid both hands on your thighs despite having been told twice not to.
You had removed them one finger at a time.
He had called you feisty.
Those are the moments that blur the professional laminate of the job, makes you wonder whether a woman who participates in other people's dishonesty are still allowed to want honest things for herself.
Your mouth opens, closes. “I — uh.” The word sticks, unfinished promise in Michael’s gaze tugs at you, but the house cut doesn’t wait. A practiced smile slips into place. “Absolutely. Room three’s free. Go grab a seat, I’ll be right behind you.”
Before the man can move, Michael’s voice cuts in.
“I’ll take that room instead — at double your usual rate.”
You lashes jump. “Sorry, what?”
“I need a private moment with you,” he clarifies. “Whatever it costs, I’ll double it and add another hundred.”
The regular bristles, shoulders squaring. “Pal, you can’t just buy my slot.”
“That’s exactly what I’m offering.” Michael swings his gaze to you. “Triple.”
You start to shake your head. “Micheal, that’s not procedure. I have to —”
“Take care of customers, I know. So let me be the customer.” He trails off on customer, like he's only now realizing that buying your time might require more than throwing numbers into the air.
“Rich boys and their wallets.” The man scoffs, the sound thick with bottom-shelf whiskey and wounded vanity.
But he does unclamp his fingers from your forearm, wiping the phantom scorch across faded denim as if your skin left a welt.
The grumble from Mr. Grabby fades behind you, leaving you alone with Michael again.
Michael and that unreadable face, solemn eyes and a tightly ironed flat mouth, giving away nothing. Refusing to hint at what he expects to happen when you breathe in a smaller room together.
You sift his features one last time, hoping for a spark, for motive, or leak of feeling, but the shelves are bare tonight, so you assemble a customer-service smile, flash the bouncer your wristband, and angle your chin toward the corridor.
“Um — this way, please.”
He ducks in behind you, almost too big for the narrow hall, one shoulder skims peeling latex paint, the other nearly takes out a exit-sign wire. His fists stay buried in his pockets.
Neon leaks through the frosted door ahead, flooding everything in pink-blue prisms. When you step inside and catch your reflection in the mirror, you look like a broken candy heart flashing on and off in a vending-machine light show.
“Clock starts when the door shuts,” you say, palming the latch.
“Then shut it.”
Baritone honey pours over you and a tide of goosebumps rise in its wake. You're grateful for the anonymity the lighting provides, hiding the way your mouth parts like you've never heard a command before.
Snick.
The door seals and silence rushes in, puffing outward until it fills every corner of the room.
He lowers himself into the narrow armchair, long legs arranged with care, spine straight, hands folded together over his lap. No ring on his left. Still no ring, because yes, you checked again, and yes, you had checked the first time you met him too. You tell yourself it's not a weird thing to notice. People notice hands.
“Okay, there’s a couple rules before we start.” Your voice nearly snags as you move in front of him, every shift of your sequined costume scattering red flecks over his face. “First, no touching unless I initiate. If I do, you let me lead.” You lift another finger. “Second, stay seated unless I tell you to move. And third… anything said or done here disappears when the timer goes off.”
He nods.
Normally, this part requires almost no thought. Muscle memory takes over and your mind slips away into its little palace of useless thoughts. What you will eat after work. Whether Candy ever returned your lip liner. How many payments are left on your student loans.
You think about anything but the man in the chair.
But tonight, when you tap the music to life, the little door in your head refuses to open. It remains here, aware of him, aware of yourself through his gaze, awareness folding over awareness until the whole thing feels less like performance than standing between two mirrors and watching the image multiply.
Still, your body knows where to go.
You skim two fingers along the wall, static skittering beneath their pads, and then you turn.
Your left knee softens, weight melting into the floor through the arch of your foot as your shoulders roll into the first down beat. Three slow steps carry you neatly between his knees.
One hand plants on the chair-back above his head, the other glides down your own thigh, tracing its curve until only a sliver of air remains between your skin and his, rule one perserved by the narrowest margin.
Michael’s shoulders iron themselves to the seatback, eyes flicking up to yours, down, immediately back up, panicked by the prospect of settling anywhere too long. His thumbs sneak under the armrests, improvised restraints for hands that clearly no longer trust themselves.
You let one painted nail trace the shallow notch of his collar and feel the shiver it pulls it loose.
Then you turn again, hips sweeping slowly over his lips before planting your hands on his knees and folding forward until his exhale punches hot against the back of your thighs.
“Listen —” He stalls, throat clicking around the word like it’s too wide to pass, “I never meant to belittle you. Before. In the ER.”
A soft, warning little “mm-mm” escapes your lips as you lift one hand before he can continue, pivoting back toward him as you sink into the space between his parted knees, palms gliding slowly up the hard planes of his thighs.
“You're wasting very expensive minutes, Dr. Robinavitch.”
“Michael,” he corrects automatically, then drags in a breath. “But you need to know...” He blows the sentence out through flared nostrils, gathers the rest like loose change and dumps it at your feet. “I never thought less of you. If anything” — he swallows, pride shrinking a size — “I’m far too invested in what you think of me. So I’d really prefer it if I didn’t leave here with you convinced I’m some condescending asshole.”
Your fingers tighten just enough to gather a pinch of his trousers. “Why?”
His brows crash together. “Why what?”
“Why are you so invested in what I think of you?” The words tumble out softer than you intend, but there’s no stuffing them back inside now.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I just… do.”
You answer by rising onto your toes, sliding forward until your knees plant on either side of his thighs and gravity pulls you down, snug, perfectly aligned. You can feel how hard he’s trying not to rock up into you; the tension turning his thighs into steel beneath your calves.
You cup the back of the chair with one hand, the other drifting to the nape of his neck, fingertips teasing the short hair there while your hips settle, testing his restraint like a match teasing gasoline.
“Did you really come here just to apologize?”
“Yes.” It lands flat and Michael's gaze flinches sideways. You can practically hear the second half of that lie thrashing in his throat, begging for a more believable host.
“I don’t know that I believe you.” Your hips tip forward in a languid circle, coaxing a muted groan that reveals far more than his answer did.
His mouth parts around the sound and an impulse sparks — close the distance, lean in and test whether his kisses are as buttoned-up as every other part of him. But kissing would not be part of the dance. A kiss would be yours, not the performer's, and you've already bared more of yourself with him than intended.
“Do you think I have ulterior motives?” His eyes flick down to your lips then snap back up as though caught.
Your nails trace the neat seam of his shirt, an excuse to keep touching him while you marshal courage. “I think a man who shells out triple the rate has some motive. Whether that's ulterior or not is still up in the air.”
One corner of his mouth tugs upward, a brittle almost-smile. “Touché.”
A sharp beep-beep-beep interrupts the charge in your chest.
“Time.”
You don't move right away, hands now resting on the broad shelf of his shoulders as if checking for something you forgot. A heartbeat passes before you ease back, letting air slip in.
“If that’s… all you needed, apology accepted. Promise.” Your voice skips like a stone. “I’ll just— grab the door.”
Before you can slide from his lap, his hands move to your waist.
The touch is tentative for all of half a second, waiting, perhaps, for you to remind him of rule one.
When you don’t, his hands forming a firmer pressure into your sides. “That’s not all I needed.”
Heat sparks under his thumbs, soldering whatever resolve you had to stand up.
“What does that mean?”
“It means —” A muscle jumps in his cheek. “I did come here to apologize. I just didn’t anticipate wanting... considerably more than your forgiveness.”
Your inhale stalls mid-rib. “Such as?”
“First,” he murmurs, leaning in until his breath ribbons across your mouth. His lips graze, barely, a static spark you could almost pretend you imagined. “I want to kiss you. Will you let me do that?”
Your body tilts toward him on instinct, gravity picking sides, but you slam the brakes a centimeter from his mouth.
Heat still flares across your cheeks as you remind both of you, “I don’t kiss customers.”
His hands ease from your waist. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” you blurt, half-expecting the bargaining to start.
He blinks, brow pleating. “Did you expect a fight?”
He almost looks hurt by the idea.
But that's almost exactly what you were primed for. Just like that the negotiation table collapses, all your rehearsed rebuttals clattering to the floor while he simply pockets his desire and honors the line. No counteroffer, no charm as defense, nothing.
He’s the first customer who’s ever heard no and decided the period at the end was permanent, and the respect tastes oddly like defeat.
“You could ask me again when I’m not working.”
“Could I?”
Your pulse jumps at the invitation you just opened and you curse your mouth for racing ahead of your fear, yet the idea of him wanting you outside this neon fishbowl sends a ridiculous bloom of warmth through your body.
“If you still want to,” you say, pretending cool confidence while your mind is screeching please say yes, please say yes.
“I will.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No,” he concedes. “So tell me when you’re not working and give me the opportunity to find out.”
“And if you change your mind?”
“I won’t,” he says, voice trimmed of hesitation. His stare pins you in place. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll wait until then to say I told you so.”
Three Thursdays later, Michael Robinavitch still hasn't cashed in his told-you-so, even though he earned the right to say it several times over (turns out he's far too charitable for that), but you've learned two things about him all the same.
The first is that his kisses are anything but buttoned-up.
You learned this after your first date, which began at a little restaurant with linen napkins and candles guttering inside cloudy glass jars and ended with the servers stacking chairs around you.
Michael asked you questions with the same concentration he gave everything else, chin tipped into one hand, eyes fixed on your face as though every silly tangent might eventually prove significant.
And there were tangents.
The glow-in-the-dark stars you stuck to your childhood ceiling in accurate constellations, the library card you considered your first real possession, the disastrous apartment with the radiator that screamed at three every morning and a kitchen drawer that came completely free of the cabinet if you pulled too hard.
In return, he told you about the cat who bullied him awake before sunrise, the grandmother who still called to ensure he was eating properly, the years he’d spent letting work devour every other part of his life.
By dessert, he was no longer merely the doctor from the ER or the man who had paid you to dance for him.
He was Michael. You were you.
Somewhere between stealing bites of his chocolate cake and defending tiramisu as a perfectly respectable morning food, the invisible Plexiglas box marked Stranger slid right off its hinges and vanished.
And then after he drove you home, he stood outside your apartment door, beneath the jaundiced porch light and asked, “Will you let me kiss you now?”
A gentleman right until you said yes.
Then both hands framed your face, broad palms swallowing your cheeks, and his mouth came down with startling hunger.
Michael did not kiss so much as take possession of every breath you tried to draw, lips parting yours, tongue sweeping in with an appetite that turned your knees watery and your fingers useless.
The take-home box slipped from your hand and landed upside down between your shoes.
Neither of you noticed.
The second thing you learn is that the restored car taking up half his garage is less an object than a private history he has kept alive by hand.
He has loved it patiently, replaced what failed without resenting the failure, returned to it year after year with a consistency few people have managed to draw from him — or so you've been told, courtesy of Candy, who knows a girl whose brother is dating someone with a cousin who works in the same hospital.
You try not to think about that part too much. About the consistency. About how few people have managed to keep him, or be kept by him, and what that might eventually mean for you.
Because for all the ordinary sweetness of this undefined thing, dinners and garage tours and his hand finding the small of your back without thinking, there is still a clock somewhere.
The car proves Michael is good at returning to the things he choose. You have no proof you are one of them.
So you enjoy each moment as it comes and refuse to count how many might be left, which is another way of admitting you already believe they are finite.
For now, though, there is this one: Michael bent beneath the raised hood of said car, bare forearms streaked with grease.
His glasses keep slipping down the bridge of his nose while he works, and every few minutes he nudges them back into place with the cleanest part of his wrist, unaware that this only leaves another dark smudge near his temple.
“This is still the original carburetor,” Michael explains, tapping some hidden component with the wrench. “I rebuilt it twice before I got the idle where I wanted it. Replacing it would’ve been easier, but then you lose part of what makes the car —”
“Mm-hm.”
“— worth preserving.”
“Absolutely.”
Your gaze crawls from knuckle to wrist to the ropey lines of his arms, lingering on a bead of sweat the slips toward the cuff he he's shoved past his elbow. Above that: a slash of collarbone and the thin vee of skin beneath his open button.
He eases to his full height, one hand braced against the frame. “What am I pointing at?”
The question yanks your attention toward the car so quickly your neck nearly protests.
“The… engine?”
Michael’s brow arches. Wrong answer, apparently. You follow the line of the wrench and find not one tidy solution but a chaotic constellation of bolts and hoses, none generous enough to wear a nametag.
“That specific part of the engine,” you amend.
“Technically correct.”
Heat rushes into your cheeks. “It’s just — there are so many pieces.”
“There are.”
“And you were talking very quickly.”
His mouth twitches, but he mercifully turns back beneath the hood. “I’ll slow down.”
“To be fair, I learn better by doing,” you tell him, nudging a stray nut with the toe of your sandal. “Maybe you should let me drive it.”
His head emerges from the engine bay again, eyeing from your painted toes up to your face. “You know how to drive a manual?”
“I know how to drive in the broad, point-A-to-point-B sense,” you offer.
“That was not my question.”
“You could teach me.”
His gaze maps your face, skepticism eroding under a tide of fond exasperation. “You’d have to do listen very carefully and do exactly what I tell you.”
An unexpected knot draws your stomach in on itself.
“I could do that.”
He lets the silence stretch, eyes fixed to yours, until the faintest sliver of a grin breaks through.
“We’ll see.”
Twenty minutes later, you confirm, beyond reasonable doubt, that you cannot operate a stick shift.
The poor car bucked, stalled, lurched forward with all the dignity of a go-cart missing one wheel, and by the time you finally limped back into the driveway, Michael looked as though the lesson has carved twenty years off his remaining lifespan.
“It really wasn’t that bad.”
His hip now rests against the fender, knuckles drumming against it. A few new worry lines have set up camp across his forehead and you're fairly certain each of them bears your initials.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know.” You reach up, smoothing a grease-free patch on his sleeve. “But thank you for trying.”
“I said it wasn't that bad. I didn't say the car enjoyed itself.” His gaze drops to your hand on his sleeve, a slow warmth softening the lines fatigue carved earlier. “You listened. Mostly. We can work with mostly.”
You smooth the same spot on his sleeve again, mostly to keep touching him. “Would you call me a promising student?”
“Promising implies measurable improvement,” he says. Only when your mouth falls open in offense does his expression finally give with a crooked little smile. “You're very promising. In more ways than one.”
You drop your head, squinting at a phantom smear on the glossy hood because looking at him feels reckless.
“I — um — thank you.” The smile you manage is small, shaky, painfully earnest, before retreating to the safety of your shoes. It takes a full second for your tongue to unstick. “Guess I'll try to keep the... improvement curve steep.”
He reaches over, thumb hooking a wild curl and tucking it back, then lingers, knuckles grazing the angle beneath your jaw.
“You don't have to prove anything to me,” he murmurs, coaxing your gaze upward with the barest pressure. “You’re allowed to be learning. I happen to like teaching you.”
Up close, you notice the daylight trapped in his irises. Minute gold dust swirling through dark syrup, copper shavings glinting every time he blinks. The color is so glossy, so mirror-deep, you catch your own startled face rippling back at you.
“Even if I put your beloved car through the garage wall?”
Michael leans closer, his hand sliding from beneath your chin to rest lightly at the side of your neck. “If you put my car through the wall, I’ll be very upset.”
You swallow, and the motion bumps against the pad of his thumb; he follows the leap of your pulse like he’s tracking wildlife.
“You wouldn’t forgive me?” you tease, letting the words skim the edge of a pout. “I’d hate to disappoint you.”
“I'd forgive you,” he murmurs, mouth tipping farther into a smile. “But you'd have to prove you learned your lesson.”
You narrow your eyes at him, though the smile tugging at your mouth ruins the effect. “That’s interesting. I distinctly remember you saying I didn’t have to prove anything to you.”
“You don’t have to prove anything right now,” he corrects, leaning close enough that his breath warms your mouth. “But after putting my car through a wall? I’d keep you up all night making sure the lesson stuck.”
Excitement unwinds through you, fed by every almost Michael has left smoldering between you. His hand beneath your skirt but never under your panties. Your bra loosened beneath his fingers, only for him to kiss the exposed slope of your shoulder and fasten it again before leaving.
The night you climbed into his lap and ground against him until both of you were breathing like you had run somewhere, only for Michael to murmur that you should slow down while his own hips revealed his truth once, rutting beneath yours.
You have been circling this for weeks, close enough to feel the warmth of it without ever stepping fully inside. Now the circle seems to have opened.
You glance at him from beneath half-mast lashes. “All night?”
“Would that be so terrible?” he asks quietly. “Spending the night showing me you can follow directions?”
You nuzzle lightly against his palm.
“I can follow directions,” you say at once, the words nearly tripping over each other in their hurry to reach him.
“Let's see it.” His thumb traces your lower lip. “Turn around, press your palms to the hood, and wait there until I join you.”
A thrill fizzes through your limbs as you turn. Each step towards the hood feels electric. You place your palms flat against the glossy surface, worrying the inside of your cheek, adjusting yourself by small, nervous degrees until you think you resemble what he asked for.
Boots scuff behind you.
Michael's palm settles at your lower back while the toe of his shoe nudges one ankle, widening your stance by inches.
His hand slides to the nape of your neck and presses until your breasts mold to the hood and your breath fogs the paint.
“Good,” he murmurs near your ear. “Stay just like that.”
He fits his palms atop your smaller ones, trapping them to the metal, the heat of his skin bleeding straight through.
His legs slot behind yours, hips pressing in until the hard length of him is an unmissable line against your ass.
You're keenly aware of how little space he's left you — and how much you like it.
One hand releases yours, patience pooling in every inch of its downward glide down your waist. The soft hiss of fabric follows until his fingertips catch the skimpy hem of the skirt you wore on purpose, pinching it like he's checking its integrity.
Lately you've treated riskier hemlines as negotiating tools. Flash a little more leg, tip the scale from almost to yes. From the way his grip tightens, the strategy seems to be paying handsome dividends.
“Tell me if this is too fast,” he says, but the desperation lacing the words makes it very clear he hopes the answer is no.
“It's not.” You arch the smallest amount into his hand, offering proof that you have no desire to slow him.
“Let me hear it — tell me I can finally do everything I’ve wanted since you looked up at me in that prim little blouse with those pretty doe eyes.”
“Whatever you want, Michael,” you manage, voice catching on a soft gasp. “I’m yours — just tell me how to please you.”
A dark chuckle rumbles out of him.
“You have no idea how much you’re pleasing me.” His lips skim the fine hairs at your nape. “So relax and let me take care of you, honey. That’s all I want.”
His free hand skims under your skirt, knuckles dragging upward until he finds the thin cotton he intends to ruin.
He cups you through the barrier, pressure light, exploratory.
“All this for me, baby?” There's genuine surprise hidden beneath a teasing tone, fingers prodding at the damp material, zeroing in until they find your clit.
You brace on the slick metal, nails scraping for purchase that isn't there as a sharp breath escapes you.
You grind back into his hand and he rewards you by gathering a fistful of your hair, guiding your head back so you're forced to listen.
“I asked you a question,” he rasps, fingers still stroking where you need them. “Answer me, honey — who’s all this for?”
“You,” you gasp, pushing harder into his touch.
“Thought so.”
His fingers keep circling, not faster or harder, refusing the impatient escalation every man before him seemed to mistake for skill. There had only been two, technically three if you counter the college boyfriend whose idea of foreplay lasted approximately the length of a commercial break, but enough to teach you that pleasure usually required instruction, negotiation, the subtle repositioning of a wrist followed by exaggerated encouragement so nobody's ego bruised.
Michael needs none of it.
He reads the staccato hitch in your breath like sheet music, easing pressure when your thighs tense, adding the tiniest grind of his palm each time your exhale fractures.
“Can you come like this, baby? Just from having your clit rubbed?” His fingers press a fraction more firmly, listening when your breath splinters. “Is this how you touch yourself at home?”
Your thighs tense around his hand, not from the pressure this time but from the sudden, ridiculous urge to hide. He has you bent over his car with your skirt around your hips, yet apparently being asked about your masturbation habits is where modesty finally draws the line.
“Yes,” you mumble, cheek burning against the paint.
“Nothing to be shy about.” His lips brush the back of your shoulder, almost sweet enough to distract from his hand. “Perfectly normal. Besides, I’m very interested in learning exactly how you make yourself come.”
“Usually I — I have to concentrate harder than this.”
Usually there is work required. A whole tedious committee meeting between brain and body, several false starts, the refusal to think about laundry or tomorrow or whether you locked the door.
With Michael's hands on you and his weight suffocating against your back, the entire process collapses into something almost simple. It feels good, then better, then suddenly far too good, the pressure rising so quickly you cannot locate the moment it became inevitable.
“Yeah?” he murmurs against your ear, the smile audible in his voice. “Poor thing. All that cleverness, and a few touches have you going empty on me.”
Whatever remained of your mind gutters out. Pleasure crowds every available space, swelling in your organs, beneath your stomach, down the backs of your shaking thighs.
“S’too good,” you breathe, barely forming the consonants. “Michael, I can’t… ’m gonna come.”
Your voice sounds distant even to you, drowned beneath the blood rushing in your ears.
“Already?” Michael murmurs, pleased surprise warming the word. “Didn’t stand a chance, did you?” His palm presses more firmly against you. “Go ahead. Show me how pretty you are when you come.”
Your climax detonates like a string of firecrackers, first a bright spark at the center of you, then rapid-fire pops that ricochet up your spine and down your thighs.
Your vision goes pointillist, tiny pinpricks of white dancing at the edge of sight, while your hips jerk once, twice, a third time under his palm. Every new burst feels sharper than the last, until the sparks fade to a soft glow that leaves you boneless against the hood.
With careful hands, Michael tucks your hair away, mouth brushing the place where neck becomes shoulder. Then he urges your chin toward him, and captures your lips in a slow kiss you answer weakly, all pliant mouth and lingering shivers.
The kiss keeps your soft and unsuspecting while his fingers hook beneath the edge of your panties and draws them aside.
Cool air reaches you for half a second before the pad of his finger finds your bare clit, slick and swollen from the orgasm he has barely finished coaxing out of you.
You jerk instantly, a startled cry catching between your joined mouths as your knees threaten to fold. His free arm bands around your waist, hauling you tighter against his chest when you squirm at the overstimulation.
“I know, honey. I know it’s sensitive,” Michael murmurs, tightening his arm when another helpless squirm runs through you. “You can come for me again, can’t you, sweetheart? Hmm?”
“You’ll help me?” you ask, voice small and fractured, as though he is not already doing exactly that.
“Course I will.” His fingers dip through your folds. “Gonna do all the work. You just be my pretty girl, yeah?”
He gathers the wetness there, coating one finger before easing it into you. Your walls flutter around the intrusion. Michael pauses at the first tense pull of your body, lips brushing your shoulder while he waits for you to soften around him, then advances another careful inch.
He crooks the finger slightly as he begins to work it in and out, testing the angle until your knees weaken and a garbled moan tumbles from your mouth.
You try his name once and lose it halfway through.
After a minute, Michael stills with his finger buried deep.
“Think you can take one more?”
You manage something between a nod and a whimper. Apparently it is answer enough. A second finger joins the first, spreading you slowly while his arm tightens around your waist to hold you steady through the stretch.
“That’s it,” he praises, easing in until both knuckles press flush. “Good girl. Open up for me.”
“More,” you plead, words pouring out without supervision. “I can take more than your fingers. I want you, Michael, please.”
“Not bent over my car.” He pumps both fingers into you slowly, as though proving denial does not mean deprivation. “When I finally fuck you, I intend to take my time. Properly.”
“Please,” you babble, clenching desperately around him. “I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
A rough sound leaves him. His fingers plunge into you harder, once, twice, forcing your mouth open around a broken moan.
“You think I don’t want to?” he rasps. “I’m trying to do this right. So don’t tempt me into giving you less than I intend to.”
You try to tell him you do not want less, that having him here would feel like everything, but his fingers drive back inside before you can shape the sentence.
They curl, withdraw, return harder, each stroke pulling pleasure tighter beneath your stomach until your hips begin meeting his hand of their own accord.
The argument dissolves somewhere between one breath and the next. You still want him, God, you want him enough to feel hollow without him, but the approaching orgasm seizes control of every available muscle and leaves your tongue useful only for begging him not to stop.
“There you go — knew you’d listen.” His voice is a rough purr against your ear. “You’re close, aren’t you? Give it to me, baby, right on my hand.”
You obey.
And this time it isn't an explosion, but a long, rolling pull that drags pleasure through every muscle. And gone before you can process the full weight of it, leaving your lungs empty and your legs shaking so hard his arm has to catch all of you.
He keeps you upright while he withdraws, then spins you gently to face him. A quick kiss lands on your forehead before he parts his lips and sucks the taste of you from his knuckles.
The sound he makes is all satisfaction. “Sweetest thing I’ve had in this garage.”
Your cheeks burn, words tangling on your tongue. Michael must sense it, moving to smooth your skirt as one plam stays at your lower back.
“Easy, honey,” he murmurs, thumb brushing your cheek. “How’re you feeling?”
“Good,” you breathe, then reconsider because the word is painfully inadequate. “Better than good. I just can’t really think yet.” You press your burning face into his chest, hiding there with a small, mortified laugh. “Don’t make me talk until my brain comes back.”
“That could take a while,” he says, laughter rumbling beneath your cheek. Before you can protest, his arms tighten around you. “Lucky for you, I’ve cleared my evening.”
Seven weeks is usually when Robby begins looking for an exit.
It isn't a conscious thing. He does not circle the date on a calendar or wake on the forty-ninth morning possessed by some biological imperative to sabotage his own happiness.
It happens by accumulation. Small expectations begin collecting around his ankles, almost weightless individually, until he notices he is standing in something deep enough to drown in.
And Robby — who has spent most of his adult life being needed by more people than he can satisfy — feels the familiar urge to escape before he disappoints one more.
Seven weeks just happens to be enough. Enough to enjoy a woman. Enough to leave before enjoyment turns into dependence, or dependence turns into something he cannot provide without cutting into himself for spare parts.
Tonight, however, Robby is parked behind the club at nearly six in the morning, waiting for you in the restored car while dawn begins thinning the darkness around him.
His phone sits facedown on the passenger seat, though he does not need to look at it to remember what is waiting inside: dinner reservations for next Friday, a reminder to teach you how to change a tire the week after that.
Plans stacked neatly beyond the seven-week mark, each one entered by his own hand, each one quietly assuming there will still be a you and him when the date arrives.
If he has anything to do with it, there will be.
The contradiction does not escape him. It has, in fact, been sitting in the passenger seat all night.
The engine idles beneath his hands, every vibration familiar.
He has already checked the clock four times, although your shift ended seven minutes ago and he knows closing rarely means leaving. There are tips to count, makeup to remove, men to steer toward the exit after alcohol has convinced them money can interrupt the rotation of the Earth.
The metal door finally swings open and you emerge in pieces he once would have considered incompatible.
Above the collarbone you are still dusk-lit velvet with eyes rimmed noir, lashes casting soft shadows against your cheeks, a comet's tail of glitter charting the dip of your throat. But flats have replaced your heels, a swollen paperback bulges from your tote, and the cardigan you've buttoned askew is pale pink.
Mystery solved.
You spot the car and stop so abruptly the red-haired woman behind you mutters a curse, forced to sidestep you.
Through the windshield Robby watches your mouth shape a tiny, startled no, as if the word could turn the headlights off by itself.
By the time he climbs out, you are approaching with the wary steps of someone encountering an unattended explosive.
“You brought that here?” you ask, eyeing the vehicle.
Robby glances back at it, though he hardly needs to.
It's got new imperfections now. The little hooks your nails carved into the paint the first night in his garage, when he had you trembling against the hood. The smudged scrape across the rear panel from the night he fucked you over it. The faint scratches along the passenger side, left by your shoes while he knelt on the concrete and ate you out until your thighs shook around his ears.
None of it is damage he has been able to treat as damage.
When he waxed the car last Sunday, he polished around the marks from your nails with ridiculous care, preserving them as neatly as initials cut into wet cement.
“I said I'd pick you up,” he says, lifting one shoulder.
“But in this car?”
You look past him again at it, visibly appalled on his behalf. You know how he feels about the car, which means you also know downtown is a minefield of shopping carts, careless doors, drunk pedestrians, and parallel parkers who believe bumpers are instructional.
You know that he loves the car. He's told you so, himself.
He might love you more.
Unfortunately, that sentence is considerably harder to say than it is to diagnose, so he'll keep it tucked away for a little while longer.
Instead he fishes the keys from his pocket and holds them toward you.
Your eyes fall to them, then rise slowly to his face. “What are those for?”
“The car.”
“I know what keys do, Michael.”
He is still not entirely used to that.
Michael.
Nearly everyone has called him Robby for so long that his first name feels less like an identity than a fact printed on hospital credentials. He had not used it socially since around the time his mother took her own life, a softer version of him then sealed somewhere on the wrong side of that loss.
Robby is what remained. Robby became a doctor, became useful, became someone too busy tending other people’s emergencies to examine his own.
But that night he offered Michael to you anyway.
Now he likes hearing it in your voice, likes the strange sensation of watching you resurrect a name without resurrecting the grief attached to it.
“Good. We’re already ahead of where we were with the carburetor.”
Your eyes narrow, but your hand remains firmly at your side, apparently unwilling to implicate itself in whatever terrible idea he has conceived.
Robby reaches for it anyway, turns your palm upward, and deposits the keys there before you can refuse them on principle.
“You need practice,” he explains.
Your fingers curl around the metal with great reluctance. “Do you not remember what happened last time?”
“I remember there wasn’t enough road,” he replies. “And now there’s more road.”
You look past him toward the empty street, then back again. “You keep saying things you think are reassuring, and they are not.”
It makes him smile, though he conceals most of it while opening the driver’s door for you.
You settle behind the wheel and begin arranging everything with a process he thinks might be better suited to launching an aircraft. Seat forward. Mirror down. Mirror up again. Hair tucked behind one ear, then untucked when you decide the ponytail is pulling too tightly. Your bag lands between you, paperback still protruding from the top as though prepared to flee independently if the lesson turns ugly.
Robby waits through the entire ceremony, then calmly reminds you where the clutch is after you press the brake instead.
Your first attempt kills the engine anyway.
“Vehicular manslaughter,” you whisper.
He can feel the laugh pressing against the back of his teeth, but keeps his voice level. “Start it again.”
The second attempt gets you three feet. The third carries you out of the parking space and onto the service road, the engine smoothing beneath your hands. Your shoulders slowly descend from around your ears, one hand loosening its death grip on the wheel.
Robby has always been better at beginnings and endings. For once, he does not think about either.
“Where am I going?” you ask.
Robby looks toward the empty road ahead. “Doesn’t matter. Just drive.”
So you do.
MARIA NOTE fourteen thousand words. FOURTEEN. all because i thought it would be hot for robby to unexpectedly see shy reader’s tits at a strip club. hubris is real and she has punished me severely. unfortunately, i regret nothing. thank you for reading this absolute beast <3
YOU CAN FIND MY MICHAEL ROBINAVITCH MASTERLIST HERE ⭑.ᐟ
BITCHHHHHHHHHH SO FUGKEIBGRBBSBD. GOOD
lover
✦Read on aO3! - Masterlist - Dean Masterlist✦
✦summary: dean learns, slowly, that he's actually pretty good at being boyfriend material. it would be nice if you'd stop pining after him long enough to notice✦
✦warnings/tags: Dean Winchester x female!reader, no use of y/n, no description of reader, friends with benefits to lovers, age gap (20s - 40s), angst, overprotective, bad at feelings dean, pining, idiots in love because it's the best way to be, dean's down so bad, shameless smut (facesitting, praise kink, big dick dean, fingering, pussy spanking, teasing, dean's dirty talk, spanking, fingering, stripping, body worship, degredation kink, soft!dom Dean, size kink, begging, soft and rough sex, messy, creampie, mean dean, dean has an orgasm rule and you. benefit. dumbification), love confessions, fluff✦
✦wc: 12.5k✦
✦author's note: request! super normal about this one✦
You tell yourself, over and over again, that this is going to be the last time. It’s not something that’s meant to be held onto, so you can just… let go.
But then you find yourself here. Between tangled sheets with your legs spread wide, your nails digging into Dean’s bicep and his cock dragging through your wet, sensitive cunt.
“There you go,” he coos in your ear, every thrust deep and rough. “That’s my girl, takin’ me so good, so- Good-“
Dean moans, pressing up against the soft, gummy spot inside of you, and your eyes roll back in your head.
He always does this. He knocks on your door and grabs your face between big hands, and suddenly all that resolve and determination—never again—dissolves with your willpower. His hands are rough and calloused, but trace your hips and hold you down so gently, you can almost pretend he cares if you break. His cock is thick and impossibly long, and he always drags it between your soaked heat and bumps it against your clit before pushing himself in just right. His lips are chapped and soft, sucking possessive marks into your neck that he has no right to claim, but that doesn’t stop you from running your fingers through his hair and holding him right where he is. He wouldn’t dare to leave. Not in the middle of this. Not before you’ve both gotten what you want.
What Dean wants. You don’t let yourself pretend that this is everything you need anymore. It’s the only hope you have of one day telling him no, because the rest of you control rests on a thin rope, and it always slips from your hands the moment Dean touches you like you matter.
You never walk away from him with an aching, unsatisfied body. A few nights ago he put you on his face and made you ride until your thighs were shaking and tears were springing into your eyes. Before this, he spit on your cunt and scissored you open with thick, careful finger, kissing and nipping at your thighs as your greedy pussy swallowed him right up to the knuckle. Even now, as every roll of his hips becomes smaller—as his face twists in concentration and his mouth against your jaw becomes desperate—Dean’s thumbing at your clit, trying to get you over the edge with him.
“C’mon, baby, c’mon-“ He pushes himself up to his knees, forcing a deeper, rougher angle. “Show me what you’ve got, I know you can do it, come on-
You whimper, staring up at him under lidded, glazed eyes. The whole world is just a blur of color at this point, but Dean is bright and clear. The heave of his broad shoulder and chest, every muscle in his arm as he wraps it around your waist and makes you arch your back, the flex of his abdomen as he ruts forward like a feral dog. The sharp, unforgiving thrusts are making your head spin with pleasure, turning you into a boneless wreck of need. You grab his arm, trying to steady yourself against something, and Dean’s attention rips up.
He says he likes to watch himself fuck you, and you’ve never doubted that for a second. He’s spent whole sessions just staring at his cock or fingers splitting your cunt open. He likes putting you on his face because he can watch you react. You like it better like that, usually. The eye contact is too close. Too intimate. Too real.
But you grab him, and he looks at you, and it’s almost like a shot. His eyes are blown-out and so strangely soft, staring at your wrecked, open expression with too much, too much, too much-
“De- Deeean-“ You cry it out like a pray, because it is. Dean grunts, hips snapping, the wet sound filling up the air and his eyes never leaving yours. “Dean- Dean- Fuck, please- Please-“
You’re babbling. You never do that with anyone else, but Dean is Dean, and he makes you do things you never counted yourself capable of. He groans your name, and you squeal when he drags you up, off the mattress and straddling his thighs. Your clit drags against his abdomen, his cock bullies right against your g-spot, and Dean grabs your jaw with a single, painfully gentle hand.
“Cum for me, sweet girl,” he rasps, still holding your gaze, even as your eyes start to cross. “Soak this fuckin’ cock, baby, cum-“
You almost scream as your orgasm rips through you, and Dean crashes his mouth against yours, eating every whimper and moan with harsh lips and his tongue down your throat. You press into him, pussy gushing and fluttering around his dick, and he makes that deep, rumbling sound that always comes right before-
“Shit-“ Dean gasps against your mouth, pulling you so close you can’t feel anything but the heat of his bare chest, the sensation of his cock twitching and pumping in your cunt. “Fuuck-“
Dean moans your name, and a warm, pleasant heat starts to spread through your tummy and drip between your thighs. He doesn’t stop moving until his cock is softened, and you don’t try to stop him. You’re barely more than a limp doll right now, returning his kisses with tiny mewls, eyes crossed and body limp.
For a moment after it’s done, you stay tangled together. You always do. It’s the most dangerous part of the whole thing, because it feeds that tiny little fool in your chest, who refuses to believe that this is just sex. Who takes your heartstrings and weaves grand worlds where Dean loves you back, and you’re going to be just fine.
Dean kisses your brow, and your eyes flutter closed. There’s an advantage, to being a crybaby whenever he fucks you stupid. He never once has considered that the tears might be real.
“Think you can walk?” He mutters, still buried deep inside of you, still holding you like he cares.
You shake your head, and his mouth twitches against yours.
“Alright, pretty girl. I’ve got you.”
And you press your face into the crook of his neck, letting that fool take you over. She takes his words as gospel. My girl and I’ve got you and Baby, they’re exactly what he means and nothing more, nothing less.
When the logical part of your brain wakes back up—Dean’s always had this ability to hit a button in you, sliding his hand around the back of your neck and making all your thoughts just bubblegum feelings and electric colors—you’re going to remember why you always say this has to be the last time.
He’s perfect, and he’s not yours. He makes that perfectly clear, until he pulls these little stunts and ends up buried between your thighs. You agreed that he wasn’t yours, when this arrangement started.
Safer with someone you know, he’d told you, like he hasn’t fucked his way across the entire country. Easier. Nothing to worry about, when it’s you and me.
And you’d been a starry-eyed, gooey hearted fool who just wanted whatever part of Dean he was willing to show you. The burning love you kept tended in your ribs hadn’t seen a problem with adding fuel to the wildfire, even if Dean was never going to see it. But now he’s carrying you to the bathroom like a princess, and he’s going to be gone in the morning, and that wildfire is an inferno. He doesn’t know. He can’t know. You can map out everything he’d ever say in response to your feelings, from the harsh sneer he would’ve given when he had the Mark of Cain, to the kinder let down you’d get now.
You’re too young, he’d say, like it was a consolation prize. And I like you, sweetheart, but I don’t do this kinda thing. Not with girls young enough to be my daughter. Not with kids that I hunt with. Not with you.
You press your face further into his neck. He’s always so warm and sturdy, a massive tree that’s offering you just as much shade crushing, unbearable weight and tangled roots that keep you pressed down. He smells like leather and whiskey and something perfectly, faintly spice. You want to drown in it. You want to drown in him.
“You good?” Dean asks, and his voice is too gentle. It rattles the little fool, screaming for the rest of you to listen and just accept that he loves you.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t.
“You’re bein’ quiet, even for- Y’know-“ He chuckles, that low, insufferably charming pride crawling into his voice. “After I fuck you dumb.”
“You did not fuck me dumb,” you mumble against his skin, and you can hear his grin.
“Big words from the girl who couldn’t talk five minutes ago.”
“That was unrelated.”
“Unrelated,” he echoes, his thumb dragging a small circle against your spine. “Always forget how bratty you get after, sweetheart. Dangerous.”
You roll your eyes, and hug him tighter. He laughs, and kisses the side of your head, and he has the nerve to call you dangerous.
“You wanna watch a movie?” He asks, leaning down to run the water, still keeping you tucked so carefully against his chest, and all you can do is nod. Dean sighs. “C’mon, gimme a little more than that-“
“Yes, please,” you mumble, and he pauses.
It’s only a fraction of a second. You don’t understand it, and you don’t want to. Not when he feeds your delusions and kisses your brow again, then your cheek, then your lips. And you let him. You always let him, because you’re a foolish, stupid, lovesick idiot. You don’t want his affection, not like this. But you don’t want to lose him—it would be like ripping a vital organ out of your ribcage, even if you didn’t know you had it a year ago—and you can’t ever tell him to stop being so sweet without explaining yourself, and getting that gentle, horrible let down.
You don’t want it. You don’t want any of it. And this, this had to be the last time.
You hold the line. You don’t know how, but you hold that line with white knuckles and grit teeth and a taste like bile in the back of your throat.
Dean knocks on the door, only two nights later, and you don’t answer. He calls your name and you sink into the mattress, praying he just thinks you’re asleep.
“I just- Uh- I wanted to talk?” He says, and you press your face into the pillow like that can somehow shield you. “Really, that’s it. Just talking, so- If you could-“
Dean sighs. You can hear the please, hanging between every word, but Dean doesn’t really say please. He just begs with everything else in him, or gives up. And you can picture him running his hand over his face, the heavy look in his eyes, the defeated sag in his shoulders. It’s like a knife being driven through your gut, and you sit up, ready to open the door-
“Alright,” he mutters, and you freeze. “Night, baby. Sleep well.”
Footsteps retreat, and you stay there on the mattress, frozen and lost, adrift in a sea you dove into.
But you did it. You held the line.
And you keep it. It makes sweat bead and your skin burn, but you close the door and don’t open it back up. You’re done, and you’re going to keep it that way.
Dean doesn’t ask questions. You don’t know if you want him to or not, but it doesn’t matter, because you catch him staring and giving out signals, but he’s taken your no in stride, and doesn’t seem to have any plans to push back against it. When this started, you agreed to leave out a specific book on the war room table if either of you wanted something. Dean starts to leave it out every night, and you never go to his door, and one night, it vanishes.
And that’s fine. That’s exactly what you wanted.
And if it feels like you’re dying because of it, and if you spend an hour over the toilet dry heaving that night, that’s no one’s business but your own.
“Dean’s been grumpy lately,” Sam says one morning, and you blink at him over your coffee.
“Grumpy? Dean? That’s- Woah-“
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Sam gives you a flat look. “You know what I mean. Grumpier.”
You shrug, looking back to your mug. “Maybe he needs to get laid.”
“Uh huh.”
You can feel Sam’s stare. It makes you itchy and small, and you’re not sure if you want to punch him or run. You settle for staring at your coffee harder. It’s the easiest course of action.
“Dean needs to get laid,” Sam repeats your words, something strange—almost sharp—in his tone, and you nod.
“That’s what I said.”
“Dean-“
“What’s up?” Dean walks into the kitchen, stopping right behind you, and you hunch over like you can grow a shell to protect yourself.
Even just a few feet away, he’s always so warm.
“Uh- Hey, Dean-“
“Hey,” Dean mocks back, and Sam huffs.
“Dude-“
“Shut your face-“
“I didn’t say anything- I-“ Sam says your name, and you glance up. His brow is furrowed with worry, his eyes locked on Dean behind you. “We were just-“
“Just what?” Dean snaps. “Just talking? Shooting the shit, getting real comfortable?”
Sam sighs. “Dean-“
“I got a gun, Sammy,” Dean points firmly, and you stare at his finger like a woman driven mad with thirst. “Don’t forget that.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “We all have guns, that- That threat doesn’t do anything-“
“I’ll show you doing something- Hey-“
Dean says your name, and you freeze. You’d been trying to slip out while they fought, but Dean—goddamn him—had noticed. He always notices. You love him so much it’s going to make you cave in on yourself, and maybe take the whole bunker with you, like a dying star.
He catches your arm, and you can’t stop yourself from looking at him. His brow is knit, his jaw locked, and his handsome face has deep lines you only used to see when the world was ending. There are bags under his eyes. Deeper than usual. You want to smooth the lines with your thumb and kiss his jaw until he relaxes, but that’s not your ache to soothe.
Dean doesn’t say anything. You can’t say anything. He looks exhausted, and there’s a lump forming in your throat.
“You- You hungry?” Dean rasps, and you’re starving.
“No,” you breathe before you can think, and Dean swallows.
“Well, when you’re hungry- There’s a diner in town-“
“Henry’s?”
“No, uh- A new one. I- I was wonderin’ if you wanted to go, later, or something.”
“Or something?” You tilt your head, and Dean nods.
“Whatever you want.”
God, he’s cruel. He’s perfect and cruel, and you want to vomit on his flannel and kiss him until you pass out.
“Oh- Okay,” you say, because you’re only so strong.
The lines in Dean’s face relax. His grip loosens. Then Sam coughs, and Dean lets you go.
The diner is… nice. Nice and easy, in a way you haven’t felt in longer than you want to admit. Dean insists on driving you, and paying, and sitting in one of those booths with your feet bumping under the table.
He presses his knee forward, while he orders. You swallow and don’t allow yourself to think much of it. He’s warm through his jeans, but he’s always warm, and he hasn’t tried anything in a few weeks, so you allow it. Your love for him hasn’t been flickering out, but the harsh wind of his absence has made everything feel colder. It’s okay, to indulge yourself in something so small. You’re still keeping it together. You’re still holding the line.
“So, uh-“ Dean clears his throat, turning his bottle in his hands. “How are you?”
“How- Am I?” You blink at him, and he nods tightly. “I- I’m okay. How are you?”
“Good. Great.” He frowns at the table. “You know. Same as always.”
You almost laugh. “You’re always great?”
“I focus on the positives, sweetheart-“
“No, you don’t.”
He rolls his eyes, glancing up to hold your light, amused gaze. His mouth twitches. His fingers tap against the glass, and you try not to let yourself sink too deep into the attention.
It’s okay to drown a little. A long as you don’t drop the line.
“Maybe I’m turning a new leaf,” he says, and your face splits into a full smile.
“You?”
“Yeah, me. Why’d you say it like that-“
“Because you’ve never turned a leaf in your life-“
“Ah-“ He points the head of his bottle at you with a grin. “Not true. Remember when I started learning guitar?”
“Yeah, you smashed it on a werewolf’s head after a month.”
“That was a tactical choice, I would’ve kept playing if the wolf didn’t get in the way.”
“Uh huh.” You lean back in your seat, crossing your arms. “What songs had you learned to play?”
Dean’s nose wrinkles. “Hey, we don’t need to talk about that-“
“I think we do.”
“Nah, I mean- I only had a month-“
“You learned how to work a rocket launcher in a week.”
“That’s just buttons and triggers, sweetheart. Even you could work it.”
“Even I?” You raise your brows—trying not to let the delight shine too bright in your voice—and Dean freezes.
“I mean- uh- You’re not great with guns, and- I could teach you-“
“You could teach me.”
“Maybe? If you wanted- Or-“ Dean groans, slumping back. “Stop givin’ me that look.”
“I’m not giving you any look,” you tease, and Dean sighs.
“Will you stop if I say I’m an idiot?”
You soften slightly. “You’re not an idiot, Dean-“
“You sure?” He grumbles. “Kinda feeling like one right now.”
You laugh, but it’s gentle. You can almost see him pushing down into himself. It makes you heavy for him, like you’re trying to take that invisible weight off his shoulders, even if he can’t feel you helping the pain. “You’re a dork,” you say, bumping his knee under the table. “But you’re not an idiot.”
Dean grunts, watching you under hooded eyes, and you smile easily.
You missed this, more than you want to tell him. Just talking, without worrying that it’s going to end in world-changing, back-breaking, beautifully heart-aching sex. He feels like your friend again, closer to your fingertips than he’d been when he was balls deep inside of you.
“Wonderwall,” he grunts suddenly. “And Hallelujah.”
You blink. “What?”
“Those were the songs,” he mutters, picking at the label of his bottle. “That I got, before I smashed the guitar.”
“Oh,” you pause. “I love Hallelujah.”
“Yeah. I know.”
You stare at him, and he stares right back. A faint flush is threatening your cheeks, so you duck your head to hide it, and Dean lets out a soft laugh.
“You alright-“
“Yep. I- I’m good-“
“You look good.” Dean laughs again, when you shoot him a glare. “Don’t gimme that face, I’m saying something nice-“
“You’re being a butt,” you stick out your tongue, and his eyes dance with an easy kind of light that almost makes your heart stop.
“You’re the one who was callin’ me old earlier,” he drawls, and you roll your eyes.
“You are old.”
“Yeah, but that’s never stopped you, has it.”
Your mouth falls open, eyes going so wide it almost hurts, and Dean grins at you. If you weren’t shocked into static, you’d slap him or- or lunge across the table and kiss him-
Hold the line.
“Aged wine is supposed to be better,” you manage to say, somehow, and Dean laughs, loud and free.
“That all I am to you? Some wine?”
“No,” you smile at your plate. “You’re also very good cheese.”
“Good cheese, huh.”
“Mhm.” You point a stern finger at him. “No puns.”
Dean rolls his eyes, but dips his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
There’s the flush. You’d keep trying to hide it, if Dean didn’t start talking about something unimportant and easy, and suddenly you forgot to be embarrassed. He’s not trying to kiss you or get you back to the car. He’s just… Talking to you. Dropping that light, teasing praise like it’s nothing, then telling you a story about when he used a tuba to beat a poltergeist, grinning like a winner every time you laugh.
When lunch is over, he rests a hand lightly on your lower back, but doesn’t do much more. He kisses your cheek when you get back to the bunker, and asks if you want to watch a movie tomorrow night. You swallow, locking your hands together like they can force the line to stay firm. Dean says your name, almost panicked, and you blink up at him.
“Just a movie,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Out in town, at- Uh- That shitty theatre next to the coffee place. Or- I can try and find a drive-in, if those still exist-“
“They do,” you say softly, and he swallows. “There’s one out in Beloit.”
“Beloit,” Dean mutters. “Yeah- Yeah, okay. You wanna go there?”
You nod, and he grins. You smile back, and it feels… Different. Shy, in a way you haven’t been around him since he first started fucking you. Almost delicate. You weren’t supposed to let this feel like something delicate.
Dean jaw works, and you can almost see the thoughts turning behind his eyes. He lurches slightly, brow furrowed, then pulls back up. You’re seconds from asking him what’s wrong when he just leans down and… does it.
His lips graze your cheek, his hand brushing against your waist, and you almost melt right into him.
But then he stands back up, and takes a large step away. You swallow, resisting the urge to reach up and brush your fingers over where he kissed. It’s not like he’s never done that before, but again.
It just feels different.
“See you tomorrow,” he murmurs, and you nod weakly.
If you had a mind that was thinking in more than bursts of glee and songs of Dean, Dean, Dean, you’d tell him that you live together, and he’s always going to see you tomorrow. But he walks away, and you let him, and it doesn’t hurt. There’s a space that he left, but something in you seems to think he’s going to come back. You can’t tell if it’s the fool or not.
For once, you decide not to try.
The movie is nice. Dean rests his hand on your knee, but doesn’t go any higher. You lean into his side, and his arm goes around your shoulders, but there’s no kissing or dragging into the back seat, and you didn’t know there could be a better way to be close to him. Sex is great. Looking up and finding him already watching you is better.
He brushes some hair from your face, and you half expect him to kiss you. His eyes dart down to your lips like he wants to. Your fingers curl in his shirt, and his throat bobs.
“You likin’ the movie?” He whispers, and you nod.
“Good find,” you breathe, and he grins.
“Thanks. Eat the popcorn, it cost me a billion bucks.”
You roll your eyes, and throw some of the over-buttered, half-burnt popcorn at his face. He laughs, catches a kernel in his mouth, and grabs your chin between two fingers. Your breath catches. He just turns your face back to the screen, and pulls you a little closer into his side.
The movie ends the same way the diner did. Dean walks you to your bedroom door like it’s the porch of your house, kisses your cheek, then walks away.
Then, after the movie, you play mini golf. You win, but you know he let you. He buys you a snow cone and licks it off his nose when he eats it like a rabid dog. You wipe a little extra off his cheek, and he stares at you, but still doesn’t kiss you. Not fully. His hand seems to always rest on your lower back, now, but that’s all the contact you get. All that you allow.
Hugs are on the table, too. They’re somehow more dangerous than the forehead kisses. After the hugs, he sometimes just stares at you and cups your cheek, and your heart moves into your throat until you think you’re going to spill it out all over his chest.
You manage to keep it together. For the sake of this new, slowly growing garden of what your friendship is becoming, you swallow your love with greater ease and more bile than you ever did while you were fucking. After the mini golf you get dinner and see another movie. You convince him to go on a walk with you, and he hates it less than he pretends to. You eat together in the bunker and call when he’s on a hunt with Sam and go to a car show and it all feels like breathing.
Sometimes he still looks at your mouth, and you freeze up, unsure if you want him to kiss you or not. You know you want him, but somehow you’ve found even more to lose than before, and if it slips through your fingers, you’re not sure they’re ever going to stop shaking and groping at the empty spaces again. You can take holding his hand in the bookstore while he peers over your shoulder, pretending to be interested for no real reason other than to make you smile.
“There are so many of them,” he mutters, and you giggle.
“There’s a lot of ways to write words, Dean.”
“Yeah, but- You’d think there would be repeats or something.”
“There probably are,” you shrug, running your fingers over the spines. “But they’re still all fun.”
Dean sighs, squeezing your upper arm. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
You hum, leaning back to smile at him, and all his features relax.
“You want some coffee?” He brushes some hair from your face and you nod.
“There’s a shop next door, could you get me-“
“Hey,” Dean flicks your nose, grinning roguishly. “Trust me, I know what you want.”
You nod a little stupidly, and his smile falters. He looks to your lips again, then almost shakes himself, taking a small step.
“Don’t move,” he squeezes your arm again, then backs away. You watch him go, unable to help yourself, and smile when he looks back. He does that all the time now. And he always smiles back.
You turn back to the shelf, looking at the books without actually looking. You already miss him, and he told you not to move, but that can’t count if you’re going to stand next to him in the coffee line, can it-
“Hey.”
You fumble slightly, turning to find a man leaning against the shelf and smirking at you. You blink, and his smirk widens.
“What’s girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”
“The… Bookstore?” You frown, and he laughs. You don’t think you said anything all that funny.
“Look, I just- I saw you from over there,” he nods vaguely, and you frown. “And I thought you were cute. Can I get you some coffee or something?”
“My- My friend is already getting me coffee,” you say, and your voice sounds strangely far away.
The man nods, but doesn’t retreat. “Alright, then can I get your number? Maybe beat your friend to coffee next time?”
And you don’t want to say yes, but this is a chance. To hold onto this new friendship with Dean while also getting over him at the same time. This man isn’t ugly. Compared to Dean, no one really stands a chance anyway, and you have to get over him eventually.
So you give him your number, and try not to feel like you just did something wrong.
Dean clears his throat from behind you, and you spin around on your heels, a sour guilt twisting in your gut.
“You- You’re back,” you say, and he grunts.
He’s not look at you. He’s glaring at the man with the same, deadly glint that he gives monsters and demons before he cuts them in half. You touch his arm lightly, and he tenses. You feel sick.
“Hey, buddy,” he snaps at the man, who—not seeming to understand the gravity of Dean’s glare—grins back.
“Hey.” He winks at you, slowly backing away. “Have fun with your friend.”
Dean’s coffee spills over the top of it’s lid. He doesn’t look away from the man when he leaves the store. He shoves your drink into your hand, not meeting your gaze.
“Dean-“
“I’m gonna go wait in the car,” he mutters, and you swallow.
“Oh- Okay.”
Your arm wraps around your stomach, and you press a little away from him, from the wrath seeming to wave off his body like a volcano. He glances down, jaw tight and a vein in his brow ticking. You stare at his neck, unable to hold the weight of his gaze. He lets out a sharp breath, and shakes his head.
“Get your book.”
You shake you head. “No- It- It’s okay-“
Dean says your name, and your mouth snaps shut. “Just- Get the damn book.”
He looks like he’s in pain, and you don’t know how to fix it, so you do as he says. You get a cheap one, that worm of guilt burrowing deeper and deeper into your gut until you can’t even drink your coffee without feeling like it’s going to come back up.
Dean’s fingers dig into your back, when he guides you out the door. He starts the engine by almost punching in the keys, and holds Baby’s wheel like he’s trying to strangle it. You can see all the anger brimming under the surface of his skin, and worried you’re just going to make it worse. You don’t even know where it came from. It’s not like you’re together, or the guy said something rude. You open and close your mouth too many times to count, then give up, shrinking back into your seat.
Dean looks over at you. You try to look out the window, and nowhere else.
A loud, sharp breath escapes him. “Son of a- Alright.”
You look over with a frown, then squeak when he yanks the wheel off to the side.
“Shit- Dean-“
“Just- Fuck-“ He bows he head, glaring down at his legs, and you swallow.
You fidget with your fingers, watching him nervously, waiting for him to break the silence. It takes while. So long you think about just getting out of the car to give him space.
But then he looks up, and your heart gets cleaved open. His face is twisted in pain, his lips parted and his voice quieter than you’ve ever heard.
“What-“ He takes a deep breath, scanning over your openly confused features. “What else am I supposed to be doin’?”
You blink at him, fingers curling in your lap. “What?” You ask softly, and his throat bobs.
“I- I’m really trying,” he mutters, looking back to his hands. “I swear to god, baby, I’m tryin’ my best, and- I know I ain’t amazing at this but- If you could throw a guy a rope when he’s never- I’ve never done this, alright.” He waves between your bodies, jaw clenched tight. “And I’m really givin’ it my best shot, but I’m still not allowed to kiss you, and you’re takin’ numbers right- Right in front of me- So just- Something.” He gives you a pleading, broken look, eyes shining on yours in the dark. “Anything.”
You open your mouth, but you can’t even figure out what the fuck you’re supposed to say. You know all the words he’s saying, but it’s like he’s speaking a language you never learned, spitting out a code you’re just supposed to magically understand. Dean’s jaw ticks, when you don’t answer, and you try to sputter out an answer, but he’s too loud to hear your confused whimper.
“Look, just- Whatever the hell you do need me to do, I’ll do it, I swear I’ll do it, but- You gotta tell me, sweetheart-“
“Tell you what?!” You almost shout, and Dean leans back in surprise. “Dean, I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dean huffs a low laugh, looking back out to the road. “Yeah. Alright,” he grabs the keys, voice rough and pained. “Sure. Whatever-“
“No.” You grab his wrist before he can start to the engine. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“It doesn’t matter-“
“Yes, it does-“
“Nah.”
“Dean-“
“You wanna call that guy, call ‘im.” There’s an almost toxically bitter sound to the words, and Dean’s making a face like he just got shot. “Whatever. See if I care.”
Your nails dig into his wrist, when he tries to yank it away. He shoots you a glare, the bags—gone, after months of ease—already starting to form.
“C’mon, kid, just- let go-“
“Would you care?”
Your question is small, but it makes Dean recoil like it burned. He scoffs, but it’s too loud, and you hold him tighter.
“Would you care-“
“No, I fuckin’ love watching douchebags parade around with my girl, who would care about something like that?”
Something snaps, right at the base of your spine. You sit so tall you’d think someone is dragging you by the nape of your neck, and Dean blinks in something close to surprise.
“What-“
“Your girl,” you whisper. “That’s- I’m- Why would you say that?”
Dean blinks. “Why wouldn’t I say that?”
“Because you and I- We’re not- That’s-“ You lean back, letting go of his wrist, and when you look down, you’ve left little crescent marks in the skin. “No- No- You didn’t- You said no- No strings-“
“Yeah, and then you stopped fuckin’ me, and I-“ Dean says your name as you press back against the window, brow furrowed in worry. “Baby, it’s- It’s alright, I’m not that pissed-“
“You were yelling,” you choke out, and he swallow.
“Well, I was- Just- C’mere.”
He reaches out, cupping your cheek with the same gentle touch he used to use, right before he kissed you. You gape at him, head spinning, panting like you just ran a marathon.
“I’m not mad,” he rasps, almost pleading, and you shake your head.
“You were-“
“Sweetheart-“
“Why?” You whisper, grabbing his wrist, your nails sinking back into the marks. “Why- Why would you care?”
Dean swallows. He shakes his head, looks out the window, and chuckles.
“Dean-“
“I don’t want you goin’ out with him. And- Call it possessive, or stupid man shit, or- Whatever the hell you want,” he drags his thumb over your cheekbone, voice dropping to something tender, something soft. “You’re my girl. And I want you here, telling me what to do, how to- To be what you need.” His voice cracks. “Come on, baby. Just- Tell me what to be.”
You stare at him, a lot of pieces colliding into each other at once in your head. The diner and the movie and the touching and the caution and-
“Are we dating?” You choke out, and Dean frowns.
“What’d you mean, are we dating?”
“I mean are we dating, Dean, are you- Are you my boyfriend?”
“Uh- Boyfriend kinda makes it sound like we’re sixteen and necking-“
“What the fuck is necking?”
Dean groans, dropping his head. “Don’t say that, sweetheart. Makes me feel fuckin’ fifty.”
Your lips twitch. “You are almost fifty,” you say, and he chuckles.
“Yeah. Guess I am.” He looks back up to you, caution lining his features. “You always seemed to like it.”
You swallow. You did. You’d never been sure if it was the older thing itself, or the fact that it was just Dean, but you’d liked it. You always liked all of him, from the uglier wounds to the beautiful, glowing heart that almost managed to peak through, no matter how thick his steel and iron walls became.
He glides his thumb back and forth over your cheekbone, and your breath hitches. He swallows, closes his eyes, and mutters your name.
“Did you… Not think we were dating?”
You shake your head, and Dean snorts dryly.
“Huh,” his mouth curves into a tight smirk. “Makes sense why you wouldn’t kiss me, I guess.”
“You guess?” You squeak, and Dean nods.
“Yeah, makes a lotta sense, actually-“
“How long have we been dating?!” You almost shriek, and he gives you an amused look.
“’Bout three months.”
“Three months?!”
“That’s what I said, baby-“
“Shut- Shut up-“ You plant a hand over his mouth, and he raises his brows. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me we were dating, you- You butt?!”
Dean’s eyes sparkle, looking pointedly down to your hand, and you release him with a scowl. He rubs his jaw, grinning at you like you’re some cute bunny, and you lean back in your seat with a huff.
“Sweetheart,” he says gently. “I thought you knew.”
“How would I have known-“
“’Cause I asked you on a date? And you said yes?”
“That- That never happened.” You snap, and Dean frowns.
“Yes, it did. Sammy- He was there-“
“Sam was there-“
“Yeah, and- I said there was a new diner in town, and you said you’d go with me, and we started dating!”
You stare at him, mouth hanging open. Dean stares pointedly back, and you can’t help yourself. You bark out a loud, sharp laugh.
“That was not asking me on a date, you fucking- Oh my god!” You shake your head, and Dean’s frown becomes almost puppy like.
“Yes, it was-“
“You have to actually say it’s a date, Dean! You can’t just- Just ask me to do something, I thought we were just hanging out! As friends.”
He’s pouting now. If you weren’t pissed, it would be adorable. “I- Uh- I paid for everything. And got you gifts.”
“Friends do that-“
“Do friends kiss your face all the time?” Dean twists to fully glare at you, and you pause.
“Um- Maybe?”
Dean snorts. “No, they don’t-“
“But I thought that was just you!” You protest. “You- You’re always- You know-“
“I know?” He mocks, and you scowl.
“We were fucking for a year, Dean,” you snap, tipping up your chin. “I thought you were comfortable with me.”
“I am comfortable with you,” Dean shrugs, leaning slightly forward. “Real comfortable.”
Your nose twitches. He’s too close, now. Consuming your vision, making your vision all stupid and fuzzy. “You’re comfortable with everyone,” you sniff, and he laughs.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he drawls, running a hand slowly up your thigh. “We both know that ain’t true.”
You make a tiny, involuntary sound when his fingers dip under your skirt, teasing sensitive, neglected skin. He hasn’t touched you there in so long. Too long. You have to hug yourself to stop your body from flying at him.
“I haven’t fucked anyone else in eighteen damn months,” Dean mutters, holding your gaze. “I’ve been waiting around for you for months, wondering what the hell I was doin’ wrong, and you thought I was just being nice?!”
You swallow, your voice suddenly small. “You are nice,” you whisper, and Dean snorts.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re nice to me-“
“Because I-“ He cuts himself off, fingers pressing into the soft skin of your thigh. You grab his hand, holding it against you, and his eyes dart down. He heaves a long breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and bows his head.
“Dean?” You whisper, and he shakes his head. “Dean, I- I’m sorry I didn’t- You said we were just going to be casual-“
“I know what I said,” he grunts, glaring at your hands. “But I- I didn’t- I thought it would help me.”
You swallow. “Help you?”
“Yeah.”
“With what-“
“You know what.” He finally looks at you, and you’ve never seen him this vulnerable. Almost bowing before you, holding onto your hand like it’s the last thing keeping him alive. “And I can’t- I don’t know how to-“ He takes another ragged breath, gives you another pleading look. “You stopped letting me pretend, you started- You started telling me no, and I couldn’t- I couldn’t.” He swallows. “I’m tryin’ to do this right, baby.” He squeezes your hand, leaning a little closer. “Please let me do this right.”
You blink at him, tears watering in your own eyes, and nod. Dean’s shoulders shudder, and he holds your hand so tight you think he’s trying to just mold you together. He glances at your lips, but doesn’t move. So you do it for him.
Dean stares at you, completely still as you lean forward, his chest so still you’re worried he’s not breathing. You rest your hand lightly on his chest and press the lightest kiss you can to his parted lips. He shakes, one hand flying to your waist, his touch still heartbreakingly delicate. You kiss him again, a little harder, and a low rumble starts in his chest.
You pull back, pressing your brows tight together. Dean stares at you, eyes glossy and blown out, the restraint ticking in his jaw, and you smile softly.
“I love you,” you breathe. “And I- I know you can’t- You know, say it back, but- I love you, Dean.”
His breathing his ragged, and he’s still gaping. You laugh nervously, looking down to your fingers, fiddling with the collar of his shirt.
“If- If you could say something, though, that would be- Um- Nice-“
Dean grunts, and your words fall off into a squeak as Dean drags you forward into his lap.
And this. This is a real kiss. Dean’s mouth slots perfectly against yours, his arm wrapping fully around your lower back, his fingers digging into your hips and his other hand cradling the back of your head. He kisses you like he’ll die if he doesn’t, pushing his tongue down your throat and moaning against your mouth. You pull on his shirt and he gropes at your ass, dragging you further into his lap. The pressure of his thigh against your core makes your head spin, but that might just be the lack of oxygen. Neither of you seem to be willing to come up for air, taking sharp, tiny breaths between sloppy kisses.
You whimper, already going limp, and Dean leans back with darkened, shining eyes. You know that look. You used to pray for and dread it all at once. It always made you feel like something close to prey, paralyzed and unable to flee his spell.
But this time is different. This time, there’s nothing you’d rather do but fall into his charm.
Dean presses another, small kiss to your lips, dragging his thumb over the tingling swell. Your tongue flicks against the pad of the finger, and he groans, pushing it slowly between your lips.
You wrap around him, sucking lightly, giving him your best, sweetest Bambi eyes. Dean’s throat bobs, his fingers digging into your ass.
“We’re goin’ home,” he mutters. “Then I’m gonna fuck you.”
That’s a lovely plan. You smile around his thumb, and he says your name, pulling his thumb away with a small pop.
“Jesus, you- You gotta tell me yes-“
“Just fuck me here,” you whisper, pulling on the collar of his shirt.
Dean glances to the backseat, then to you. “Uh- I mean- That’s- If you’re sure-“
“Please,” you push a little further forward, dropping your hand to press against the bulge in his jeans. “I need you, Dean. Now.”
And for a second, you think he’s going to demand going all the way back home. Say something about you deserving a soft bed and gentle loving, when you just want him, filthy and raw and yours. You’re so busy giving him doe eyes, you don’t notice his hand dragging down your spine and your ass, right up until it dips under your skirt, and cups your pussy through your panties.
You gasp, and Dean smirks, slowly rubbing his hand back and forth.
“Need me?” He drawls, pushing his thumb against your clit. “Like this, baby? This how you need me?”
“Ye- yes-“ Your lips brush over his, your hips starting to grind down as he drags his thumb in tiny circle, his hand still rocking back and forth. “Just- Just like that, Dean- Shit-“
You push down, kissing him with a sloppy, uncontrolled mouth. Dean grunts, splaying his free hand against your neck and pushing you down. He’s massive and warm, the hand working your pussy offering just enough friction to work you up, but nothing more. You wrap your arms around his neck, panting against his lips and moving you hips to chase more friction.
“That feels good, doesn’t it,” he mutters, kissing you between every word.
You coo, trying to kiss over his face, and Dean slaps your pussy once, leaning back with a stern glare.
“Doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” you answer immediately, already getting heavy-eyed and dazed. “So- So good, Dean, feels so good, just- More-“ You claw at his shoulders, trying to at least get to some bare skin, and settle for pressing your mouth back over his. “More- Need some more, De, now-“
Dean silences you with a deep, rough kiss, and taps his thumb against your clit in quick, harsh movements, pushing his palm down hard against your aching pussy. You cry out, trying to force your hips further down against him, and Dean squeezes that back of your neck.
“Look at you,” he mutters, almost in awe. “Few months without some cock and you get bossy, don’t you.”
“No- No,” you manage to protest. “You’re just- You’re being slow-“
“I’m being slow?” He mocks, running his fingers over the line of your panties. “Baby, I’ve barely fuckin’ started.”
You try to roll your eyes at him, but he uses his hold on your neck to turn your head, forcing your gaze back down to his. Your eyes widen, and he smirks slightly, raising his brows.
“You gonna break out some manners for me?” He asks, slowly dragging your panties to the side. “Or am I gonna need to teach you again?”
“Te- Teach me?” You choke out, and Dean hums.
His thumb drags down from your clit, parting the lips of your pussy and smearing your arousal. Your heart is trying to hammer out of your chest, every nerve in your body seeming to respond to the mockingly sweet touch.
“Dean,” you press your hands against his chest, unsure if you want to push him away or drag him closer. “Don’t- Don’t be mean-“
“I’m not bein’ mean,” he hum, the gleam in his eyes something else all together. “I’m giving my girl exactly what she wants, how she wants it.”
You blink at him hopelessly, and he chuckles, pulling you down into a long, slow kiss. It would be romantic and loving, if it wasn’t for his thumb pushing at your weeping entrance, refusing to dip even a fraction of the way inside.
“Remember how you used to beg for me?” He mutters, and your face burns with a mix of arousal and shame. “I sure as shit do. Spent hours thinkin’ about it lately, planning how I was gonna take you when you let me again. But,” he switches out his thumb for the very tips of his fingers, yanking slightly on your hair when you try to look down. “Jesus, baby, I’m worried I’m gonna break you.”
You shake your head frantically, and Dean raises his brows.
“Words, pretty girl,” he reminds you, pushing his fingers just a little big deeper. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got it, talk to me-“
“I can take it,” you breathe out, watching him under fluttering lashes. “I- I can take it. I promise.”
Dean works his jaw, his grip on your hair tightening. “Sweetheart-“
“Please,” you breathe, leaning down until your noses bump. “I need it. I need you.”
Those are the magic words. Dean stops trying to play noble, stops trying to hold back for the sake of romance. You loved him when he fucked you like a whore and gave you nothing soft, and you’re going to love him even more when he treats you like a toy, then kisses you everywhere after.
Dean smashes his lips against yours and eases his fingers into your waiting pussy, groaning under his breath when you clench down around him.
“So fuckin’ tight,” he mutters, scissoring them inside you. “Never gonna get over how fuckin’ tight you are, sweetheart, like you were made for me. Made to be mine.”
He almost snarls the last words against your lips, pushing himself fully up to the knuckle. You mewl as he finds your g-spot with that precision that makes it look easy, that’s always made you sure you couldn’t ever enjoy someone else if you tried.
Dean pumps his fingers slowly, crooking them so they drag against that spot, and pulls you back to watch your face contort with pleasure.
“That’s it,” he grunts, pulling almost all the way out before slamming them right back in and twisting to bully against that sensitive spot. “That’s just how you like it, huh? Already gettin’ like this from just my fingers,” he chuckles, grinding his hips up against your thighs. “Imagine how you’re gonna be on my cock, sweet girl, if you can barely fuckin’ take this?”
“That- That’s not fair-“ You choke out, every word breathy and weak, and Dean just smirks.
“Isn’t it?”
You try to protest, but Dean pushes your head back down, and his kiss knocks almost every thought from your head. It’s all just the familiar, perfect way his mouth moves against yours, rememorizing something that never stopped being his. The wet sound of his fingers working you open fills the car, and your whole body burns with desire and shame. He’s right. You’re already soaked and ready for him, your cunt clenching down and still begging for more. You need that full, impossible split of him. After months of nothing, you’re worried his cock is the only thing that’s going to be able to do it.
But Dean seems to like proving you wrong today. A coil, tight in your stomach, starts to wind tighter and tighter. He drops his grip on your hair for a second to push down on the base of your spine, forcing your cunt almost right over his bulge. He reangles his hand, forcing in another finger, and you make a strangled sound.
“De- Dean-“
“We’re gonna get you relaxed, baby,” he mutters, twisting his wrist so the drag against your g-spot almost rips through your body. “Nice and relaxed ‘f me, you can do it.”
You let out a shaky breath, trying to listen, and your clit pushes down against Dean’s cock, still tight in his jeans. The pressure is perfect, combined with the brutal thrusts of Dean’s hand, and you press your cheek to his.
“That- That’s good,” you pant, clinging to the hem of his shirt. “So- Soo good-“
You whimper, and Dean hums. He’s rubbing your back, and that’s somehow almost as good as the hand obliterating your cunt. “There she is,” he mutters. “Always so good at listening when I got my hands on you, aren’t you sweetheart.” He kisses the side of your head. “That’s my girl.”
That’s what does it. My girl.
The coil snaps, and your orgasm rips through you, making your eyes cross and your body curl limply into Dean’s arms. His hand coaxes you through it, his palm rubbing against your pussy as you mewl and clench around nothing, the light pressure helping you ride it like a long, easy wave.
Dean kisses your cheek when it’s done, then right under your eye, then your nose.
“That’s one,” he mutters, and you whine. He chuckles, hiking your skirt up with light touches. “Come on, you know the rule.”
“Stupid rule,” you grumble. “Never agreed to it.”
“Never heard you complaining before,” he points out, peeling your dress off, and you stick out your tongue.
“That’s because I always forget- Dean!”
He smacks your ass, and you squeak, pussy clenching around nothing. He’s forming a tent in his jeans as he looks up at you, and you narrow your eyes. You fingers brush against the head of him, and his groan falters, his head tipping back against the bench.
You smile, pushing your hand down against his cock, and he catches your wrist, shooting you a stern glare.
“Not at young as I used to be,” he warns, and you giggle.
“But I want to,” you try to pull your hand free, and roll you eyes when he won’t let you. “Oh- Come on-“
“Nope,” he grunts, even as his dick jumps against the fabric. “You know the rule-“
“Dean-“
“Three to one,” he mutters, a dare gleaming in his eyes. “You give me one, I give you six. That’s the fuckin’ deal.”
You laugh, but his mouth doesn’t even twitch, and slowly, your smile falls into something more serious. More determined.
Damn this stubborn beautiful man and his orgasm rules. Damn you, for thinking he ever wouldn’t want to fuck you when he made you orgasm rules that weren’t proportional or fair at all.
You yank your wrist away, stick out your tongue again, and pull your underwear fully off. Dean watches you with his hands tight on your waist, eyes shining with curiosity, but patient.
And you’ve never been good at riding him, but you’ve always been good at this. You climb over Dean’s lap so your ass is near his shoulder and your face in his crotch, your back arched like some animal in heat, your pussy bare and on full display.
Dean’s never been able to help himself. One hand immediately slides around the arch of your back, then the curve of your ass, then settles back against your pussy. The other slides in your hair, petting your hair while you fumble with his belt. He chokes out your name, and you shoot him a glare, pulling out his cock with light, careful hands.
He’s so hard you’re worried he’s going to hurt himself. Pre-cum is beading around his tip, his veins throbbing like a porno. You stroke him slowly, and he lets out a sharp breath between his teeth.
“I’m serious, baby-“
“Prove it,” you say, before licking a slow, teasing stripe up his shaft.
And you know how this game ends. You’ve played it a million times before. The beautiful thing about it is that—especially when Dean thinks he’s winning—you can never lose.
You take him into his mouth, and the sound that he makes is sinful. It’s a choked, rough version of your name that sounds holy from his mouth, and comes with his fingers dipping into your heat like it’s a comfort toy. You take him until he bumps against the back of your throat and hum, swirling your tongue. Dean grunts, and pushes your head a little further down. You wiggle your ass, pussy cold and throbbing, and Dean groans.
“Jesus, woman- Gonna kill me- Fuuuuck-“
You start to bob up and down, sucking with that perfect pressure you know he likes, getting what can’t fit in your mouth in your hand. You can take him better and better with every second, letting his push against your gag reflex, and you drop that hand to play with his balls. Dean’s already giving shallow uncontrolled microthrusts, repeating your name over and over until it’s more of a choked moan.
“Can’t- Shit, baby, I can’t- That damn mouth, you’re gonna- Shit-“
You squeeze his balls and suck as hard as you can, and Dean almost roars your name, his cock jumping as he shoots thick, white ropes of cum down your throat. You swallow every drop, licking the rest off your fingers as you rise back up. There’s going to be a handprint on your ass, from where he was holding onto you. You hope you feel it in the morning.
And when you smile at Dean, you know you’re in trouble. Naked and wet for him, crawling forward so your tits press into his face and kissing him as sweetly as possible. Dean grunts, one hand shooting up to cradle the back of your head, and his responding kiss is deceptively gentle. He lets you lead it, groaning when your tongues press together, tasting himself on your lips. He lets you pull his shirt over his head and lets you trace over the lines of his muscles. You smile against his lips and lean back, and there’s that predatory glint again.
Dean’s hand twitches on your back. He wipes your chin, gathering some stray cum and slowly pressing his against your lips. You clean it off obediently, and his jaw ticks.
“Back seat,” he grunts. “Now.”
You almost scramble to listen. Rolling off of him and trying to climb over, making it halfway before you feel massive hands wrapping around your waist, holding you in place. You swallow, trying to twist over your shoulder to look at him, but Dean blows a sharp breath over your clit, and you double over with a squeak.
“De- Dean-“ You plant your hand on the bench, blood rushing to your cheeks. “Dean- wait-“
“Hmmm.” He kisses one curve of your ass, then the other. “Wait for what?”
You’re not really sure. “This- I- I can’t hold myself up,” you fumble, and he chuckles, kissing right over your clit.
“That gonna be a problem?” He teases, pressing smaller, faster kisses over the sensitive button. “Or,” he spreads your ass cheeks, humming against your heat. “Do dirty girls get what they asked for?”
Shit. “It’s uncomfortable,” you whisper, and Dean pauses.
He sighs, then kisses your clit again. You squeak when he drags you back down, and melt into his chest as he kisses all over your face, rocking you back and forth in his arms.
“’S why I wanted the bed,” he mutters, and you sigh.
“’M sorry-“
“No,” he kisses the corner of your mouth, massaging your hips with steady hands. “I’ve got it, just- uh-“
He glances up, and you watch him frown around the car with an openly adoring expression. The work of his jaw and furrow of his brow as he thinks, how he holds you so tight in his arms, it’s impossible to not love him.
“Got it,” he mutters. “Trust me?”
You nod easily, and he glances back down. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and this kiss isn’t feral or brutal. It’s just… slow. Adoring, a silent promise of what you’ve sort of always known.
Dean is going to take care of you.
He lays you out in the backseat, rubbing your thighs as you settle into the cushioned bench. You watch him with your heart in your throat, arms wrapped tight around your stomach. Sometimes, under his attention, you’re not sure what to do with yourself. He’s too pretty, too big, too much in the best possible way.
“Getting’ shy on me?” He teases, pushing up your knee, and you flush.
“N- No.”
“Hm,” Dean pins your leg against the bench, guiding the other one so it hooks over his shoulders. “Sounds like you’re gettin’ shy.”
You swallow, hugging yourself tighter, and he chuckles.
“All that work to make you relax,” he mutters, kissing his way up your thigh. “And you’re already wound back up.”
“You took too long,” you whisper, and Dean laughs.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He kisses just the side of your cunt, and your breath hitches as he sucks a small, firm bruise into the skin. “You know I’m gonna make it up to you, yeah?”
You nod weakly, then blurt, “Yes!”
Dean’s mouth twitches, and he grabs one of your wrists, guiding it down to his hair. You weave it between your fingers, your breathing already ragged, your whole body lit up with anticipation.
“Easy,” Dean murmurs, kissing the other side of your cunt, massaging your thigh and pushing your leg a little higher. “Nice and easy, pretty girl.” He kisses you pussy, open-mouthed and wet, and you let out a high, shameless sound.
His mouth should be classified as a sex toy or something. It moves and works against you like a machine, kissing you with so much fervor you already start to see stars. You had some recovery from the fingering, but Dean’s already stripping it away with sharp, unrelenting kisses and grazes of his teeth against your clit.
“Taste so fuckin’ good,” he groans against you, the word vibrating through your body. “Never wanna live without this pussy again, baby girl, shit-“
He groans and dives back down, starting to work you open like a man starved. You push on his head, silently begging for more, afraid to open your mouth. The sounds that leave you will be embarrassing, and you’re already too far gone for them.
But Dean likes you loud, and he won’t let you hold back. He hooks his arm fully around your leg, dragging you further down, giving him a better against your pussy. You mewl when he wraps his lips around your clit, sucking impossibly hard, and Dean laughs against your cunt.
“Fuck- Fuck-“ You grab at the front bench, yanking mindlessly on his short hair. “De- Dean- Oh my god-“
He groans, pushing his face impossibly further. His tongue is deliberate and thick, pumping in and out of your cunt before pressing flat on your clit and dragging back and forth. It’s enough to drive you mad, making the coil in your stomach burn and burn and burn until your whole body is shaking with the sensation.
“De- Dean-“ You whimper. “You- Fuck-“
He nips at your clit, dragging a long, slow stripe up your pussy. Your eyes lock, and you swallow, a broken moan falling from your lips. The first time he did this, he told you that he loved it. That there was nothing better than a woman, right on his face, dripping and sweet for him. It didn’t take you long to believe him.
Here, he looks at you like you’re some kind of heaven he’s been allowed to touch. His mouth never stops moving against you, his eyes lidded and almost drunk, and your arousal shining on his face whenever he reangles it to devour you a new way. It’s a sight that could knock you off your feet, if you had any left to stand on. Dean on his knees, his broad, freckled shoulders forcing your knees apart, his attention a drug you never want to bother being clean from again.
You start to shake, your stomach seizing up as you fight off your orgasm, but Dean doesn’t tolerate that either. His mouth goes back against your clit, his tongue darting up and down and back and forth in tiny motions, almost tickling it, making the little nerves light up and-
You cum with a loud, choked sound that’s really supposed to be Dean’s name, and push at his head. You expect him to stop, and finally get on top of you.
But you forgot about his stupid orgasm rule, and he doesn’t stop. His grip tightens and he starts to make out with your overstimulated pussy. You squeak, pushing weakly at his head, and his eyes gleam.
“De- Dean- Fuuuuck- That’s-“ Your eyes roll back, your body seizing up again, almost unable to take so much. “Oh- Oh my gooood-”
Dean groans against you again, and it’s worse than a vibrator. It’s warm and deep and Dean, mixed with his filthy mouth and stubble, scraping against soft skin.Your thighs lock around his head and he lets them, his eyes never leaving yours as he slowly pulls you fully onto your back, pushing himself up onto his knees. His cock bounces against his stomach but he ignores it, using his now free hand to grope at your breast. You moan, clenching around nothing as he laps at your clit and pussy.
“I- I can’t-“ Tears spring at your eyes. “Dean- Please-“
He hums, rolling your nipple between deft fingers, and you throw your head back with a broken moan.
Warm, thick fingers weave through yours, and you blink at him under watery lashes. He’s let go of your breast to hold your hand. His thumb is dragging slowly back and forth, and his mouth isn’t slowing down, but you don’t want it to. You can see the challenge shining in his eyes. You take a ragged breath, give him the smallest nod, and he smiles against your pussy.
You didn’t know the human tongue could move that fast. You’re sure it’s not supposed to, but Dean’s never cared about things like that. He drinks you up like wine, rapidly toying with your clit—swirling and kissing and flicking and sucking like it’s candy—and your eyes roll back in your head as your third orgasm springs through your body like a geyser.
Dean lowers you down slowly, pressing one last kiss to your swollen kiss before rising back up, wiping his chin of your release and cleaning it off his fingers with a smug grin. His cock is at attention, and your mouth waters. He always gets it in. You’re a little afraid of it right now.
“Six?” You breathe out, and Dean snorts.
“You’re the one who pushed for it, princess.”
“It- It’s your stupid rule-“
“You love it,” he shrugs, slowly settling himself back between your legs. “And you’re gonna take it, aren’t you, baby.”
You wrinkle your nose, and Dean gives you a stern, amused look.
“Aren’t you?” He taps the head of his cock against your cunt, and you squeak.
“Dean-“
“You’re the one who got bratty and cocky, sweetheart,” he drawls, pushing your leg back down. “So you’re gonna take it, ‘cause I know you can.”
You swallow, giving him your best doe-eyes, and he just chuckles. Dean lowers himself down, presses a gentle kiss to your brow, and murmurs against your skin.
“That ain’t gettin’ you out of this.”
You press your face into the crook of his neck, and Dean smiles, kissing the side of your head.
“All shy again,” he mutters, dragging that massive cock between the lips of your pussy. “Let’s take care of that, huh?”
You cling to him as he rolls you both over, guiding your legs to straddle his torso and lining up his cock with your weeping, abused pussy. He pulls you gently up, rubbing your side and watching you a painfully adoring gaze. You try to cover yourself again, and he catches your hand, shaking his head.
“Come on,” he mutters, weaving your fingers together. “Let me see you.”
And damn him for being so soft and sweet, you don’t think you could tell him no if you wanted.
“Take it easy,” he says, wrapping both of his hands around your waist. “All you, baby. Show me what you want.”
“I- I can’t-“
“Yes, you can.”
You believe him, in a way you’d never believe anyone else. It might be how he looks at you. Like you’re an angel over him, like you’re really, truly letting him enter paradise as you sink down onto his cock.
He grunts, his fingers tightening against your body as his cock slowly splits you open. Even with how much he’s worked you open—your pussy so wet it’s already dripping onto his thighs—it’s a tight fit. You can feel every vein dragging inside of you, the hard curve pressing right into your g-spot and making you flutter around him.
Dean jerks his head up, squeezing his eyes shut, and you swallow.
“Sorry-“
“’S- ‘S alright,” he exhales sharply, relaxing back into the seat. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, baby. I’m good.”
A smile ghosts over your lips, even as you start to only breathe through your nose. “You look it,” you tease, and Dean gives you a half annoyed, half impressed look.
“You’re tight,” he grunts, and your smile widens.
“You’re big.”
He groans, throwing his head further back, and you giggle again. He’s sitting just right again, his chest rippling under your hands, and you feel like that angel. You feel like a goddess, with how his hands are dragging over your body, how your name falls from his lips.
“So fuckin’ perfect,” he mutters, eyes raking over your body. “So perfect.”
You take a deep breath, and start to grind down onto his cock. Dean groans, one hand dragging down to squeeze your ass, but he doesn’t move. He won’t unless you beg him, and you’re determined not to. You can ride him until your thighs give out. His cock bumps against your g-spot, and his abdomen drags near your clit, and it feels good. You rock back and forth a little faster, your breath catching, and Dean groans.
“Look at you,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Pretty fuckin’ girl, riding my cock like the needy little thing you are, aren’t you. So fuckin’ wet for me, baby, so- so tight-“
He groans, and you push down on his chest, picking up your pace.
“So big, Dean,” you moan, pushing up your chest like a pornstar, trying to make him break first. “You’re so big, feels so- so good-“
You moan, tossing your hair, and Dean makes an almost feral sound.
But he doesn’t break. The bastard never breaks, and you’ve never been good at riding him. Your thighs are already sore, and they quickly start to ache, making your movements smaller and weaker. Dean watches you start to whine, your brow furrowing in concentration, and just smiles. You both know what he’s waiting for. You don’t want to give in.
“So quiet, sweetheart,” he coos, running his hand up to palm at your breast. “Someone drove by, they’d think I wasn’t fuckin’ you properly.”
You glare at him, unable to even speak, and he chuckles.
“You know what you gotta do, baby girl.”
“Fu- Fuck you-“
“I will,” he winks. “If my girl says please.”
Your eyes narrow. His grin widens, and you think you might be about to fly apart with how bad you need it. Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid face that you love and his big cock that makes you all jelly and dazed thoughts and useless.
“Please-“
The word barely leaves your mouth before Dean moves. A single, well-aimed thrust up into your cunt that makes you fall apart. You fall forward onto his chest with a scream, and Dean groans, giving shallower, gentle thrusts to work you through the orgasm.
“I know,” he murmurs in you ear, his words painfully soft in comparison to the pleasure wracking your body. “I know, princess. Two more to go.”
You don’t think you can take two more. Four has been your max for a very long time, and that was with a lot more prep time and space between orgasms. But Dean doesn’t seem like he’s going to give you much of a choice.
You’re a doll in his arms again, when he hauls you up into his lap. His cock leaves you for a single second, just for the adjustment, and you whimper at the loss.
Dean hums, kissing all over your face as he slides back in.
“That’s my girl,” he starts to rock your hips back and forth with steady hands, picking you up then dropping your back down so his dick drags through every inch of your heat. “Takin’ me so good. Just like that, feel that, baby-“ He pushes on your lower back, making his cock slam against your g-spot, and you sob against his neck. “Feel how fuckin’ good we fit together, my girl.”
Dean’s voice is lined with something darker now. More possessive and hungry. He fucks up into your like an animal, dips drilling forward and mouth attached to your neck. All you can do is take it, over and over until your eyes are crossing and the only words you can remember are babbles of Dean and please.
The neck orgasm is slow, blooming from where he’s slamming against your cervix and spreading pleasantly through your body. Dean moans against your skin, mouthing at your jaw and neck, his tongue dragging and kisses messy. When you try to kiss him back, it’s mostly with a mewl and lips that follow his lead. Everything is humid and light in your body, everything is Dean around you, and there’s a new, strangely hot sensation in your core that’s demanding all of your attention.
It’s tighter than the usual coil, and gets hotter and hotter with every thrust of Dean’s cock. He’s getting uneven now, his own words falling into pants and moans, his balls slapping against your ass and hands leaving prints as he folds you fully over his chest.
“One- One more-“ His voice is gravelly, almost as wrecked as you feel. “Milk my fuckin’ cock, baby girl, cum for me-“
You open your mouth to warn him about the strange feeling, but it’s too late. Dean slams home, crashing his mouth against yours, and you cum with a hoarse scream. Hot cum shoots into your cunt, right as something gushes out of you in wet, burning waves. It feels good, so good you can’t think, so good your mouth hangs open and your moans turn into pathetic, weak babbles.
“Fuck- Fuck-“ Dean groans against your mouth. “Fuckin’- Yes-“
Your body seizes and twitches around him, but even when he’s done, Dean doesn’t pull out. The last of your release pushes itself out and her collapses backward, rubbing your back and craning his neck to grin at your cockdrunk expression.
“Gettin’ stupid?” He teases, and you can’t manage to raise an arm, so you just bite his nose. He laughs, leaning up to steal another, quick kiss from your lips before settling back down.
You curl over him, resting your head against his shoulder while he pets your head, both of you still panting and coming back down. You might be there for a hundred years, or just an hour. It doesn’t matter. The car is going to reek of sex for maybe a year. Sam might never agree to ride in it again. But it was worth it. More than worth it, when you look up at Dean, and find him—just as always—already looking back.
“We’re still dating, right?” You whisper, because you have to be sure.
Dean grins, and kisses you slowly. You hum, letting your eyes flutter shut. Letting him carry you, whenever he thinks is safe to go.
“Yeah,” he mutters, and you can hear it in his voice. All the love he’s been trying to show you, for who knows how long. “We are."
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ORPHANED DREAMS (1) michael robinavitch x camgirl!reader [8.3k]
— ⟢ SUMMARY: dr. robby has spent decades patching up strangers while quietly falling apart himself. unable to shut his mind off long enough to rest after another exhausting shift, and aching for a connection that doesn’t come with expectations, he finds himself on a live cam site. there, he meets you—a mischievous, sweet vixen who loves... big things. — ⟢ CHAPTER WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI; she/her pronouns for reader; age gap (reader is mentioned to be in her late 20s); a little medical jargon (I study linguistics lol so I apologize in advance); angst; themes of loneliness, depression & grief; lonely!robby; self-deprecation & insecurity; smut; daddy kink; masturbation (f & m); sex toys; mention of exhibitionism; robby is hung (he has a complex over it, poor baby); slight overstimulation; nipple play.
A/N: first robby story and first fanfic after almost a month of inactivity, kinda nervous 🥹 hope you’ll enjoy! next chapter | series masterlist
Robby has been staring at the glow of his laptop for far longer than necessary. The cursor blinks patiently on an empty screen, indifferent to the quiet war unfolding in front of it.
At last, with the reluctant resolve of a man about to cross a bridge he can’t see the end of, he opens a private browser window. It’s an unnecessary precaution, he knows, there is no one here but him; his apartment is small, comfortably worn, and it only bears the evidence of long shifts and forgotten meals. No nosy friend is going to walk through the front door and go straight for his laptop, no partner is waiting up for him.
The website appears in the search bar before he’s even finished typing the first three letters, something that he indulges in only in nights like these, when exhaustion settles so deep into his bones that it should be enough to knock him unconscious, yet his mind refuses to surrender. Every flutter of his eyes brings back flashes of fluorescent lights and blood-stained gloves, as conversations he should have had differently resound in his mind like distant murmurs. Because the emergency department never really lets him leave when he clocks out, it just follows him quietly like a sad ghost, but no less relentless.
A familiar warmth creeps up the back of his neck as he presses enter. It feels indecent, like being caught hovering over a magazine he wasn’t supposed to read at fourteen, but the silence of the apartment stretches too wide some nights. After all, Pittsburgh can offer any kind of spectacle but little comfort.
After twelve hours deep in the chaos of monitors beeping left and right, the stillness should feel like a relief. But lately, it has begun to feel more like damnation.
So he exhales slowly and rubs a hand over the salt-and-pepper beard shadowing his jaw, ready to look for a pretty face to jerk off to, which definitely sounds much more exciting in theory than in practice. When the page finally loads, though, his body stills as a subscription prompt blooms across the screen: a sleek black box, impossible to dismiss without making a choice.
Continue with Premium Access.
Monthly Membership.
For a second, Robby just stares. Right, the month-long free trial ended a few days ago, but he was too tired to do something about it and ultimately passed out on the couch, which his back made him pay for dearly the following day.
The language is all teasing confidence, because the site knows exactly why he’s here.
At the very bottom, in text so small it feels almost mocking, runs a single line: you must be over 18.
A dry scoff escapes him. Of course he is of age—embarrassingly, pathetically so, to be lurking on this side of the internet. Still, the cursor hovers uselessly over the button.
A weary sigh echoes in the dim-lit room, filled with the discomfort of recognizing a routine he’d never intended to develop. Robby has spent enough years telling patients to pay attention to patterns and habits that become dependencies before they realize it. But this isn’t that, he keeps telling himself. No, it’s not. It’s just another way of quieting a mind that has forgotten how to rest on its own.
Sometimes, taking the edge off is enough to trick his body into sleep.
But tonight, faced with the inescapable choice of creating an account or forgetting the existence of this website forever, Robby feels pathetic enough to hesitate.
The idea of getting himself off to a stranger on the internet has always felt like checking a box rather than satisfying a need: an efficient, predictable matter over in a few minutes—a little depressing when reduced to a chore, yes, but at least it does the trick. Which is probably why his mind keeps traitorously coming back to the same uncomfortable thought.
It slips through the cracks when he’s tired enough to let his guard down, when a shift has run long, when he catches himself lingering in the hospital parking lot with nowhere in particular to be.
Sex has never really been the problem, yet somewhere along the way the rest of his life narrowed into work and recovery from work. One shift bleeding into the next, one year folding into another, the hospital full of people who knew him well enough to trust him with their lives, but not to call on a day off just to ask how he was doing. And he makes a conscious effort to ignore the sting. Still, there are moments when the realization catches up to him in brief, unwelcome flashes of clarity. Watching colleagues leave at the end of a shift because someone is waiting at home, passing families in the grocery store… It all makes sitting alone at his kitchen table at three in the morning with nothing but the hum of the refrigerator for company feel like he has somehow failed at life.
Because the truth is that even meticulous, irascible Dr. Robby craves for a connection.
A partner.
A presence that might soften the long evenings that have become dull routine. Someone to share the silence with after a grueling day in a place where desperation and hope blend together. Someone who wouldn’t mind waiting up when a shift runs late, or falling asleep on the couch while he reheats leftovers neither of them have the energy to eat.
There was a time when Robby assumed the rest would simply happen after finding a stable job, that somewhere between a chest tube insertion and a code gray, he’d stumble into the kind of life everyone else seemed to build without much effort: a marriage, a family, holidays that didn’t have to be traded away to younger colleagues because there was someone expecting him at home.
Instead, medicine kept asking for more, and Robby gave in all the time.
However, he never treated it like a sacrifice, the choice was made gladly at the thought of another patient walking out of the ER because he’d been there to help them. Then the years accumulated without him noticing, marked by new classes of residents, by colleagues retiring and children of coworkers growing old enough to apply to medical school themselves.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, life became something that happened to other people. The losses didn’t help, nor the failed relationships—if he could even call the handful of brief, half-hearted entanglements that followed that. Robby considered them patterns that ended before they had time to become anything real, leaving behind little more than a few shared nights and the uncomfortable irony of having once mistaken convenience for intimacy.
Grief, on the other hand, hollowed out spaces he didn’t even know could be emptied, then quietly settled into them as though it had always belonged there. Some mornings, Robby can almost convince himself he’s learned to live around it. Other days, it feels like thorny branches constricting around his lungs.
Now, when he catches his reflection in the darkened window after another sleepless night, the man looking back seems older than fifty-three: the lines around his eyes have settled too deeply to blame fatigue alone, his beard surrendering to more gray than brown. Proof of the time spent taking care of everyone else that the idea of someone choosing to take care of him feels almost risible.
Perhaps he has simply missed his moment, he finds himself thinking more often than he likes to admit while the city beyond glitters with other people’s lives.
It’s not as though he’s made himself particularly approachable, either. With a temperament that has only grown sharper with age and too many ghosts weighing on his conscience, letting people in has begun to feel like a risk not worth taking. It’s easier to be the brilliant, impatient attending than the man who is haunted by outcomes he couldn’t change. Even if beneath the wrinkles and the barked orders, lies a clear, painful truth: Robby is lonely.
His colleagues have friends, spouses, lovers, children… lives waiting beyond the doors of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room. But what does Robby have? An apartment big enough to fit a nursery that grows impossibly cold and quiet day by day, and a body too exhausted to even rest properly.
It’s a bleak conclusion, and not a particularly useful one. Dana would tell him to stop catastrophizing, Jack would probably remind him that he’s simply “vintage” and then jokingly suggest a cane with his coffee. Langdon, if he caught him in the right mood, would make some smart-ass remark just to get him to roll his eyes.
And maybe they’d all be right. But it doesn’t make the apartment any less empty.
He’s probably romanticizing this more than it deserves. It isn’t as though subscribing to a cam site is some quiet admission of defeat, nor is it a desperate attempt to fill the void in his chest with something they never promised to provide. Robby is grown enough to not expect companionship from a woman whose job is to make strangers feel wanted for an hour. That particular fantasy belongs to younger men, foolish enough to mistake attention for affection.
A humorless chuckle escapes under his breath, he’s really debating whether a monthly subscription to a pornography website is a worthwhile expense. It’s only a distraction.
The tightness in his shoulders eases a little, replaced by the brittle sort of resolve that comes with lowering one’s expectations. The box disappears almost instantly after he sets a quick profile and links his payment information, and the page refreshes again. What replaces it is a familiar mosaic of little squares competing for his attention all at once. Hands concealing intimate body parts, bare legs crossed, backs turned, coy smiles… and then there are more crude images that leave nothing to the imagination, yet Robby’s gaze drifts across them the way he might eye a dessert menu, already knowing he won’t order anything.
By now, the rhythm is always the same: he scrolls for a while, sometimes he sighs when he realizes he has been staring blankly at the same corner of the screen, only to resume scrolling a moment later, before eventually clicking into a room if someone catches his eye. He stays enough to come and then turns off his laptop, trying with varying degrees of success to sleep.
Names blur, faces too. He rarely returns to the same camgirl twice, because this works better when everyone remains a stranger. Coming back would invite the kind of attachment he has neither the time nor the right to indulge.
His index finger idly rolls the mouse wheel as a faint grimace pulls at his mouth. Objectively, there is nothing wrong with any of them. He really shouldn’t be this picky with his unkempt stubble and wrinkly forehead. Robby should just settle on one, instead he keeps scrolling, until he mindlessly leads the cursor toward the red x, half-considering closing the site altogether.
But then his hand stills when his eyes mindlessly wander across the page.
A beautiful woman appears in one of the smaller thumbnails, languidly leaning forward with a clear toy glinting in the light. Robby stares at the image for longer than he should, a warm sensation already coiling tight in his lower belly. It’s not just the pose, nor even the suggestive promise of the scene… it’s your eyes.
Even reduced to a thumbnail no larger than a postage stamp, they catch him off guard: bright, unmistakably alive. There is an ease to your expression that doesn’t look rehearsed, a flicker of amusement lingering at the corners of your mouth as though you’re sharing a joke with the people on the other side of the screen. Your eyes twinkle with playful determination, perhaps even a touch of recklessness, the sort that suggests you know exactly what you’re doing… and you’re enjoying it.
Robby has seen enough of this to know that a camera and a few whiny words can manufacture intimacy, making a smile feel personal and a glance deliberate.
This should be no different.
And yet, Robby doesn’t scroll past.
His gaze inevitably drops to the title of your stream, and he almost chokes on his breath.
“Can Daddy fuck me better than my toy?”
Robby’s jaw tightens.
The site is littered with titles like that, he’s scrolled past several of them over the past few weeks without a second thought, if not with the occasional roll of his eyes at those who didn’t sound even remotely sexy in this particular context. “Daddy” has been stripped of any real meaning by repetition until it feels almost cartoonish to him.
So why does it feel like he’s just been strapped into a rollercoaster?
His eyes drift back to your face.
You look impossibly young—but not enough that the word feels like a mere gimmick.
His first instinct is to scoff at himself. For God’s sake, you’re talking to thousands of anonymous viewers, the title wasn’t written for him any more than it was for anyone else. It’s marketing, a carefully chosen fantasy designated for horny losers like Robby to take the bait.
Yet for the first time, he doesn’t really mind playing that role.
Swallowing thickly, he clicks on the stream with an abrupt motion before he can think himself out of it.
The sound reaches him first, a breathy moan leaking from the speakers.
“Fuck—ah ’s too big.”
Robby immediately fumbles with the volume out of habit more than embarrassment. The quiet feels too fragile tonight and he isn’t in the mood to have it broken all at once.
His ears burn at the sight as his eyes betray him, lingering on the screen despite his hands clumsily looking for his glasses abandoned somewhere on the desk. Your naked form enthusiastically rides the clear dildo beneath you, your body shifting with an easy confidence that makes his breath hitch. Even if your face is drawn tight with pleasure, the warm glow of the ring light softens your features.
The sight sends a strange jolt of heat through him, quickly followed by a prickling sense of discomfort. Despite the entire performance being part of the principle that keeps the site running, for the first time ever the moment feels faintly exploitative to Robby.
And yet, his lips part in awe.
You are... gorgeous, yes. There is something captivating about the way you move, a rhythm that feels spontaneous, though guided by a cheeky familiarity. The sounds that slip past your lips are sweet and breathy, threaded with bliss in a way that sends an unexpected shiver down his spine. It’s a pleasant respite from the loud, tacky sounds that most camgirls put up for show, sometimes they are so irritating he needs to put them on mute. Yours are genuine enough to feel almost intimate, as though Robby has wandered into a moment not entirely meant for him.
Your body responds to pleasure with a fluid grace, from the slow roll of your hips, to the subtle tension that travels through your thigh with each movement. When your back arches, it’s instinctive, unguarded, and it pushes your breasts forward in a way that feels both vulnerable and mesmerizing. For a fleeting second, the pose appears nearly sculptural, the soft light catching along your delicious curves before you relax again with your breath uneven.
Robby shakes his head lightly, suddenly aware of how intently he has been watching you.
It’s not the obvious lewdness of the performance that holds his attention, but that spark of boldness that reveals itself across your expression, and your confident movements in front of the camera’s gaze.
Beautiful, certainly. But more than that, impossible to ignore.
Your giggle at some message in the chat melts into a gasp as you lower yourself until your folds graze the base of the toy. Your hazy eyes roll back in ecstasy as heat coils violently in your lower belly, prompting you to start bouncing up and down like a hopping bunny, your palms flat on the floor to help your hips roll more easily.
Robby didn’t know how much he needed this. Each gesture, each subtle provocation draws out something unfamiliar in him—shame at how much he’s enjoying this, laced with undeniable arousal. His hand tightens briefly at the edge of the desk, and a low, unbidden hum escapes his throat before he can stop it. His pulse hammers in a way that feels almost worrying. It’s disorienting, intoxicating, and entirely new.
And he’s only just begun.
“I wish you were here to feel how wet I am.” You sigh. “Can you hear it?” Your filthy words pull a sharp huff out of Robby as his focus automatically latches onto the subtle soppy noises complimenting your moans.
Your chest heaves, glossy lips opening in a perfect circle as you look up at the camera with an innocence that only heightens the intensity of the moment. “Are you close, Daddy?”
Robby can’t even remember the last time his sweatpants have been this unbearably tight, so he unties them hastily, lowering them along with his boxers enough to expose his erection. He wants to touch himself, to lose himself in this perverted fantasy against the nagging thought at the back of his mind insisting that you are probably half his age.
“That’s it, baby.” You cry out, circling your hips so the toy rubs against your walls. “Please, please wanna feel your cum leaking out of me all night.”
Your dirty mouth and sweet manners have him completely dizzy, and Robby can no longer resist the burning urge to grant his cock some sort of relief. Quiet groans fill the space as he gives his hard and throbbing girth a few experimental strokes. Fully erect, Robby’s cock is imposing, longer and thicker than the large dildo you are bouncing on.
He can’t stop the memory from creeping in: his most recent, humiliating sexual experience. A woman he met at a bar took one look at his dick and promptly looked back into his eyes with disbelief, before climbing out of bed and inventing some poor excuse about not feeling well. The sting of that action lingered far longer than it should have—along with his erection, since his not-so-little friend had apparently decided to take a vacation that day, so Robby was forced to secretly swallow a little blue pill after the woman had expressed her interest to go back to his.
He reckons that you too would be horrified by his size, but for this fleeting moment, he will allow himself to pretend otherwise, wishing to bask into the fantasy of your gaze eyeing him approvingly, your small, teasing smirk meant for him alone. It’s absurd and delusional, and Robby would probably slap himself later, but it feeds a buried, rare warmth in his chest that he ignored for too long. It craves to be seen, for appreciation for the part of himself he is most ashamed of, because even if he had a fair share of good sexual experiences, the difficulties of making it fit and the backhanded compliments were always there.
“See how good I’m taking it? I told you it’d fit!” He almost chokes on his own saliva.
Maybe you could really take him just fine with a little careful preparation.
The tip alert has been going off this whole time, and the doctor thinks he understands now. There is something about you that pulls at his chest; he wants to shower you with everything he has to offer: his focus, his praise, his money, the small gestures that might make you notice him amongst the countless people competing for your attention.
It’s not just lust, or simple curiosity. The thought of being acknowledged and leaving a trace of himself in your world, however fleeting, claws at his chest with dangerous eagerness.
Anticipation churns violently in his belly, urging him closer to the screen. To you.
“Oh God! Daddy, I’m coming, come with me—please, please…” You whimper, your breasts perky and bouncing with every thrust of your hips.
“Shit.” Robby grits out as his orgasm takes him by surprise.
His legs shamelessly part as his cock spurts over the hand he has wrapped around it, lost in the sad illusion that it’s your pussy gripping him so tight. He milks every last drop, soiling part of his belly and pants as well, but his mind is too blinded by pleasure to acknowledge the mess.
Your moans grow louder and higher, and the sight of your cunt stretching so deliciously around the silicone stops Robby from leaving his cock alone. He keeps the strokes going, squirming at the twinge of overstimulation.
“Fuck.” Your hips jerk forward once, body sinking down on the whole length as you curl up on yourself. Your hips twitch and your chest heaves with each gasp while your climax washes over you. Your eyes roll back and Robby’s spent length jerks in interest, it has been far too long since he has felt this good after masturbating.
He should be ashamed of jerking off to a young woman calling him daddy and begging to be filled with his big cock, but frankly he couldn’t care less.
Your eyes squeeze shut at the way your sensitive walls clench around the toy once more, before you tiredly push yourself up on your knees to gently pull it out.
“Look what you’ve done to me.” You sit back on the beige towel you probably laid on the floor before the stream, your legs opening to allow your fingers to spread your folds for the camera. Then you reach for the dildo again, parting your lips enough for your tongue to peek out and give the length a teasing lick.
“Fucking hell.” Robby mumbles, his eyes jumping back and forth between your stretched lips and your fingers lazily playing with your glistening pussy. You can’t be real.
He frowns at his cock. No, he’s too tired and sensitive for another round; it would require too much time, even if you keep stoking the fire inside him with every little lick.
“Hm, bet you’d love the taste.” Suckling on the tip, you stare directly at the lens, as if to challenge him.
Robby rubs his stubble, a tired huff escaping his nostrils at the desperate need to wrap his hand back around his length just to come again at the sight of you tasting yourself. You hollow your cheeks one last time, letting the dildo out of your mouth with a resounding pop.
“I had so much fun tonight, guys.” You smile, and Robby swears his heart stutters a little. “I really needed it.”
“Oh!” You perk up. “Look what I got today…” You reach for something off-camera, coming back a few seconds later as you proudly dangle a nipple chain in front of you.
Your eyes flick to the side, presumably reading the chat as texts quickly pour one right after the other. The relentless speed at which they race across the screen is enough to make Robby look away before a headache has the chance to settle in.
You giggle—a refreshing melody that makes him lean back in his chair with a quiet sigh. “Not tonight, you perverts! Your baby girl can only take so much.”
Your baby girl, his mind repeats unhelpfully.
It’s almost impossible to reconcile the two images in his mind: the woman who was eagerly making herself feel good in front of an audience, and the adorable, radiant sweetheart chatting naked with five hundred viewers, as if it were just another Tuesday for you.
It leaves Robby completely smitten.
“Well, have a good night.” You conclude, offering a casual wave. “See you on Thursday!” A playful blow of a kiss follows, and then the notice that the stream has ended covers the screen, leaving your lovely smile frozen behind it.
Silence abruptly engulfs the room with Robby sitting motionless before the screen where a handful of your recommended videos line the sidebar. He scarcely has time to register the fact that, until now, he has never stayed long enough to watch a stream until the end, before the cursor is already hovering over your username, clicking through to your profile almost on its own accord.
Details about private shows and video requests are listed, along with your regular schedule, so Robby promptly opens the calendar app on his phone and makes a note with careful precision. He perks up once he notices the photo gallery: images of you posing in colorful lingerie that compliments your skin tone, teasingly aware of the camera; a few shots of you naked and on your knees before a full-length mirror, body angled sideways and one arm shielding your chest; and then a picture of you lounging in bed, lips wrapped around a red heart-shaped lollipop.
But there are also videos, which his cardiologist would almost certainly advice against.
Some are very short, like the one where you stand in front of the camera, the only parts visible being your mouth and your torso as you pull your tight top up to let your tits bounce free. Some are a little longer, a taste of what to expect in your streams, like the one where you are in a car—presumably yours—giving a dildo a blowjob. The toy has a suction cup attached to the window on the driver side, and you are enthusiastically sucking it off in the middle of a dark underground parking garage, your chest bare and your hips thrusting desperately into the air to find a bit of stimulation for your pussy. If his breath hitches at the thought of you loving the possibility of getting caught, Robby almost has a heart attack at the next one. Because you are lying on your bed, gasping and writhing as you bully your clit with a pink vibrator, body covered by a long, flimsy cardigan left open, the color suspiciously close to the old Burgh zip-up hoodie he wears at work.
He decides to close the tab once he realizes he has been looking for familiar signs in the background of the first video.
Without hesitation, Robby subscribes to your account, confirming the payment before his hands hover over the keyboard at the box asking if he wants to send a tip. Money is not something he has in abundance, but decades dedicated to medicine and no one else depending on his paycheck have afforded him a certain comfort. Enough, at least, that the occasional indulgence never requires much deliberation.
His right palm rests on the desk, fidgeting nervously when his eyes catch the optional box to leave a message alongside the tip.
It would be nothing, just a sentence. But even that feels like a step too far. He could already see how it would unfold: he’d check back later, and then again, pretending not to care, measuring the hours by the absence of a reply. And if you do respond, even briefly, neutral, it would lodge somewhere deep and stubborn inside his chest. Another invisible weight he would carry alone. The thought makes him ache with a stinging, familiar recognition.
Wanting has always been the dangerous part: it turns fleeting moments into promises no one has made.
Shaking his head, Robby lets out a humorless chortle. He can’t believe himself. This is how it starts, isn’t it? Convincing yourself that a few words might change the shape of things, that you can step out of the misery you built your life around just by being sincere enough.
The cursor continues its patient blinking.
Not even an hour ago, you had been another fish in the sea. Another room to wander into before sleep for a quick orgasm. Another name destined to dissolve into the rest by morning. That has always been the appeal of this place: no history, no expectations.
Robby drags a hand down his face.
Christ, in the span of a single night, he’d managed to break every rule he had set for himself.
He stayed until the end. He subscribed. He caught himself searching the screen for scraps of a life that has nothing to do with him. He fucking put the reminder of your next streams in his calendar.
That’s enough.
Robby has spent too many years indulging impulses in the ED, where every instinct tells you to keep going and order one more test, ask one more question, chase one more possibility. Reality, on the other hand, teaches you that there comes a point when doing more isn’t helping anymore, but it’s only delaying the moment you have to let go.
This feels too familiar.
With his jaw clenched, Robby withdraws his hand from the keyboard. The message box disappears with a single click and soon his face is the only thing staring back at him through the black screen.
By Wednesday morning, the startling revelations of the night before have already begun to dissolve beneath the familiar rhythm of the hospital. Ambulances arrive in relentless succession, one of the residents spirals during a thoracotomy and Robby has neither the time nor the gentleness to pull them back together, and Gloria corners him again in the hallway with another quality report tucked beneath her arm, causing Robby to ask whether patient satisfaction might improve if they stopped expecting miracles from a skeleton crew.
He snaps more sharply than he intends to, but then forgets the entire exchange before the end of the shift.
His apartment keeps feeling less like a place to live and more like somewhere to leave his shoes between shifts. Sleep comes reluctantly in fractured stretches interrupted by dreams he never quite remembers and alarms that sound so cheerful it feels almost mocking.
He doesn’t really have the opportunity to think about his stupid slip-up.
Although the thought of you surfaces once or twice during rare quiet rides in the elevator, the ED has a way of demanding every tiny crumb of his attention. There is always a patient to reassess, another family waiting for answers he can’t always give.
On Thursday night, he is halfway through a documentary about the deep-sea ecosystem—something slow enough that doesn’t require much thinking—when a soft chime causes him to startle.
His phone lights up on the coffee table, a groan rumbling in his ribcage when Robby stretches towards it and his lower back stings. He’s already slipping into the Chief mentality, before he freezes.
It’s not a text desperately asking for his presence at work, nor one of those useless spam emails from random websites he accidentally subscribed to. It’s a calendar alert.
For your stream.
He completely forgot he’d set a reminder.
His thumb hovers over the notification without touching it.
Deleting it would be the sensible thing to do.
Instead, he lets the documentary continue in the background, the narrator calmly explaining with his British accent the migration patterns of creatures that spend their lives in perpetual darkness while Robby stares at the screen until it goes black again.
He was doing perfectly well. Better, even. The last forty-eight hours returned everything to its rightful order: work, home, sleep—when it came.
Opening that website again would accomplish exactly nothing.
He has spent years building his life around restraint to mistake a passing desire for a reason. Wanting is not the same as needing, curiosity is not permission, and whatever restless pull has taken hold of him tonight is only that, a disturbance. Still, it lingers tightly beneath his breastbone, refusing to ease no matter how deeply he breathes, or how firmly he reminds himself that he has already crossed enough lines as he briefly stood at the edge of something he had no business approaching. That should have been enough to shut down whatever foolish part of him wanted to see you again.
But the ache keeps asking for one more indulgence. He can feel the shape of temptation clearly enough to name it for what it is: pure humiliating desire to feel something other than the dull, disciplined exhaustion that has become part of who he is.
Maybe that’s all this is, of course. The week has been unforgiving: he’s slept poorly, eaten worse, his afternoon spent untangling problems that should have never reached his desk in the first place. For fuck’s sake, he’s over fifty years old, the Chief of one of the busiest emergency departments in the city... He is not the sort of man to be unmoored by a woman he has seen once in his life. You don’t even know of his existence beyond a subscription notification.
And this... well, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Or at least that’s the lie he settles on for tonight.
Before he has fully decided otherwise, Robby is already reaching for the laptop resting at the other end of the couch.
This time you’re dressed in a snug top and a pair of shorts, looking all pretty and sinful at once as you sit cross-legged on the floor in front of your bed.
There’s a delicate warmth to your presence, that same teasing energy he witnessed two days ago reflecting in the slight tilt of your head. Your effortless grace makes it impossible for Robby to look at you with anything short of admiration dancing in his own eyes.
“Thank you for joining me today.”
The chat is already alive, and you greet a few viewers whose usernames are marked with colorful emblems. They must be regular donors.
Robby wonders how much they must have spent to earn that kind of attention. For a dangerous moment he considers typing a greeting himself, but the words feel too heavy, still awkward, so he sets on quietly basking a little longer in your presence.
“As I wrote in my Instagram story, tonight I feel like doing a Q&A, nothing too tiring, if you’re all up for it. I’m exhausted.”
You have an Instagram account. Maybe he will follow Santos’ advice and set one too.
The messages slow just enough that Robby can finally make out actual words instead of random blurry spots.
You squint at the screen. “Okay, first of all, whoever keeps spamming the same question in all caps…” Your lips twitch. “I’m not answering it out of principle, just so you know.”
A row of laughing emojis floods the chat.
“See? Actions have consequences.”
You silently observe the texts for a while.
“Do you actually read all of these messages? Absolutely not. Have you seen yourselves? You type faster than I can think.” You snort. “Which, to be fair, isn’t something I like to do after nine p.m.”
“How am I doing tonight? Thanks for asking, milf_fucker86.” Robby rolls his eyes at the username. “As I mentioned before, I’m drained. It’s one of those weeks where every single day feels like it should’ve been Friday.”
You frown, freezing as you are tucking one leg beneath yourself.
“Actually, tomorrow is Friday.”
kneel4mommy
Same
real_tom_thanks
girl me too
softboiii69
LMAOOO
“Thank God it’s not just me.” You shake your head with a chuckle before leaning forward to look for more interesting messages.
“What do you do when you’re not streaming?” You sigh. “I recover from streaming.”
A few people protest.
“No, seriously.” You stretch your arms above your head, and Robby tries unsuccessfully to keep his eyes from wandering to your turgid nipples straining against the tight fabric.
“I work, I bother my friends with stupid reels, I spend an embarrassing amount of time convincing myself I’ll start going to the gym next Monday…” A forlorn sigh escapes your nostrils.
kneel4mommy
Which monday?
“Okay, that’s exactly the kind of negativity I don’t need.” You look gravely at the camera, before a small smile brightens your face.
“Favorite book? Oh, don’t do this to me.” You grimace. “I can’t just pick one, it depends on the day. I have, like… categories.” You keep your eyes on the chat as you hum pensively.
“Right now I’m halfway through this novel… It’s about this woman who keeps finding handwritten notes in library books from someone she never meets.” You put your hands in front of you, palms open and pointed at the camera. “Now, I know how that sounds.” Your voice is cautious, but the chat immediately starts teasing anyway.
“Oh my God, it’s not cheesy!” You scoff a laugh, squinting slightly. “Well, okay, no maybe it’s a little cheesy. But the writing is really good! It’s less about romance and more about… hm, I don’t know.”
You look sideways, pursing your lips in thought.
“The weird ways people leave pieces of themselves behind without meaning to.” You speak carefully. “Don’t know if that makes any sense, my brain is too fried to be this profound at this hour.”
“Okay, next question!” You perk up, clapping your hands once, and Robby feels his lips stretch into a smile of his own.
“Dumbest thing you’ve done recently? Oh, that’s easy. I tried baking cookies for my best friend’s birthday party.” The chat fills with hearts.
“Nah, don’t ‘aww’, it was a complete disaster.” You grimace. “I forgot baking soda.” An embarrassing silence fills the room as the chat fills with emojis ranging from confusion to resignation.
“Which apparently is important.”
touched_grass_once
apparently?????
“Listen, they looked fine!” You shrug. “They were just… a little flat.”
The chat erupts with laughter.
“My apartment smelled like fucking smoke for two days.” You grin sheepishly. “BUT! My best friend still ate one.”
You suddenly burst out laughing. “Yes, froyo_baggings, that’s the same friend who called me crying two months ago because she thought someone had broken into her apartment. For anyone who doesn’t know this story, she rounded the corner, saw a figure standing in the hallway and immediately dialed my number. That person was her. Because she’d bought a full-length mirror that morning.”
You shake your head. “Yes, of course she loved the cookies! It’s the thought that counts after all.”
More questions race past about your job, but you are careful to keep it vague enough to not give out too many details. Though Robby must repeatedly remind himself this is only your online persona, he is hopelessly invested. So much that he completely ignores the small ding from his microwave, where a now cold lasagna sits forgotten. You are so entirely captivating that the impossible thought of meeting someone like you in real life presses against his chest, sharp and tender all at once.
“Where do you live? No.”
“What’s your real name? Fuck no.”
“Can we see your apartment? The fuck?” Yet you still smile as you say it, enough that it never feels like a full rejection.
“I don’t mind sharing little things about my life, but some things get to stay mine.” Your smile turns tight as you continue, something you decide to hide by biting your bottom lip and focusing back on the questions.
“Dream vacation? You know what’s funny?” You change position, crossing your legs again. “Every time somebody asks me this, they expect me to say something like Greece or the Maldives.” You shake your head.
“Absolutely not.”
The chat explodes with question marks.
“Because if I’m on vacation I don’t want to come back more exhausted than when I left. I can’t stand the heat, and spending an entire week on the beach under the sun would put me directly underground. I prefer somewhere cold.”
byteme
you’re insane
“Am I?” One of your eyebrows lifts skeptically.
No, Robby thinks you are actually one of the sanest people he has ever met.
“You’ve never had tea by the window while it rains outside? You’ve never sat in one of those tiny cafés where you can’t understand a single thing about what everyone around you is saying but somehow that’s the most peaceful place in the world?”
Your voice softens just a fraction.
“I think I’d like that.” You nod slowly, but the sentimentality does not last for long.
“What’s your favorite organ?” Recoiling, you stare at the camera in horror. “Who raised you people?”
Robby lets out a quiet laugh, an involuntary reaction that he kills on the spot by setting his lips into a thin line. The sound would be ordinary for any other person, but it catches him completely off guard, because he can’t remember the last time he laughed like that, particularly with one one else in the room.
It’s in that moment that the doctor finally becomes aware of himself and the apartment that continues existing around him without asking anything in return. The clock in the corner of your stream says it’s been almost thirty minutes, and Robby frowns at it as if it has personally offended his whole family.
It’s not possible. He had meant to stay for ten, fifteen minutes at the absolute most. Again, long enough to let the day loosen its grip from his shoulders, not watching you talk about books and fucking cookies.
But somewhere along the way he stopped hoping for your clothes to come off. And while his body is no less tense than it was when he opened his laptop, and the stinging behind his eyes lingers as he decided to forgo his glasses this time, the urgency that has driven him here in the first place has receded silently. It’s embarrassing how, instead, Robby has been devouring every single word falling from your lips like a starved man: the detours, the way you gesticulate animatedly when the chat teases you, your soft smiles…
And now he knows that the same woman whose real name still remains a mystery, whose face is illuminated by a ring light instead of the morning sun, can’t tell a story without accidentally collecting three others along the way. That she loses the thread when something makes her laugh, only to stumble upon it several minutes later. That her fingers play with the little moon-shaped pendant of her necklace whenever she needs to reprimand some of her rowdiest viewers, because there is something about confrontation that evidently makes her nervous—for a second Robby wonders whether anyone else noticed it, or whether it has now become a little secret shared between the two of you. That she wants to visit some cold, faraway place, and Robby realizes he has spent so many years leaving Pittsburgh only for conferences that he’s forgotten people sometimes travel simply because they want to.
Which destination would you choose? Perhaps somewhere with narrow streets, surrounded by mountains and lush vegetation. The sort of place that holds no expectations.
As though the simple act of looking elsewhere might be enough to dispel the thought, Robby tears his eyes from the screen and looks at the untouched mug on the coffee table.
His gaze lingers there for a moment too long, before drifting absently to the lone sock lying beneath it, abandoned there when Robby had stretched out on the couch after his shower. Outside, rain has begun tapping softly against the windows, and only when he turns curiously to look at the sky a dull stiffness catches at the base of his neck, making him wince. He rolls one shoulder experimentally, because he’d scarcely moved in the better part of an hour, save for the single time the armrest had begun digging sharply into the bone.
Lastly, the television. It is now playing a crime documentary about stalkers and obsessions.
Robby can’t help but feel his stomach churn uncomfortably, because he can’t remember a single thing from the creatures living thousands of feet beneath the ocean’s surface, but can picture with alarming clarity the way your face lights up when you laugh. Your eyes disappear first, then your head automatically ducks as though you’re trying to hide the shape of your mouth—sometimes it’s a hand that covers it—and Robby asks himself what made you so self-conscious about it. Was it a toxic ex? A middle-school bully? But then you always look back at the camera with the same irrepressible grin still lingering at the corners of your mouth.
“Ah!” Robby startles at your loud exclamation, his brown eyes immediately jumping back to the screen. “vibemike wants to know my favorite role play. Okay chat, let’s see how well you know me.”
“Professor and student? That’s hot but not my favorite.” You nod, before your eyebrows raise in surprise. “Repairman and homeowner? Hm, interesting. What do you think? Me opening the door in a sweater and no panties?” You giggle.
Leaning forward, you squint at the chat again as Robby shakes his head at how human beings can sexualize even the most innocent of interactions.
“Strangers at a bar!” You exclaim, straightening up. “That’s something I’ve always wanted to try but I’m pretty sure I’d end up ruining it. I’m sorry, it’s just so funny that I have to flirt with the other person as if I don’t know what they look like naked.”
“Okay, okay. You gave me a lot of good ideas but it’s something I’ve never actually mentioned before.” Your torso lean forward just a little bit, as if to share an important secret.
“Lately I’ve been really into the doctor kink.” You whisper.
Robby’s heart falls to his feet.
“I know.” You giggle. “I just want to be thrown on an examination table and have my handsome doctor force my legs open while reprimanding me about how important it is to have my pussy inspected once in a while.” A tiny sigh escapes your parted lips as you tuck your legs closer to your chest, resting your chin on top of your knees.
“Maybe I’d let him fuck my mouth, you know, for good luck before he goes off to save his other patients.” You wink, already laughing as Robby swallows dryly.
You wet your lips, before glancing down between your legs. “Well, would you look at that.”
His gaze instinctively drops to the empty space between his knees, tiredly dragging a hand down his flushed face as his bulge is hot under his sweatpants.
“Jesus Christ.” He mumbles.
“No, I’m not wearing a bra, super_sp3rm.” Chuckling, you get up on your knees to give your viewers a nice close-up of your chest, your nipples erect and begging to be worshipped.
With a knowing grin, you keep chatting leisurely, both of your hands rubbing and squeezing your tits until your breath hitches faintly.
“I wasn’t planning on playing with you tonight.” You gasp as your manicured nails lightly tease your covered nubs. “But my panties are all wet now after thinking about some hot doctor playing with my pussy. What do you think? Should I take care of it?”
The tips have been quite slow... until now. Robby has a feeling this was your wicked plan all along.
A chuckle bursts out of you as you look at the chat. “God, you’re filthy.”
Your teeth chew on your bottom lip as your free hand sinks beneath the fabric of your shorts, starting little circular motions.
“This is all your fault. I just wanted to talk to you guys.” You whine softly. “So this is all you get for tonight.”
Robby is a little disappointed as your pussy stays hidden, but seeing you rubbing yourself under your shorts as your fingers leisurely pull and flick your covered nipples is enough for his heart to pick up its pace in anticipation.
You moan under your breath. “Fuck, ‘s so sensitive.” Your brows furrow in pleasure, before your eyes momentarily fly to the chat.
“Are you going to come with me, hm?” With your head falling back, your fingers twist your left nipple hard enough for you to cry out. “Oh!” You gasp, back arching and eyes rolling back.
Robby stares in awe at your body shaking, before your hand languidly comes out of your shorts for you to slowly taste your glistening fingers, quietly sucking on each digit as you stare directly at the camera.
“Hm, so good.” Then, with a little impish grin, “Maybe that could be you cleaning me up next time.”
The messages grow increasingly dirtier, but from the way your eyes slowly blink at the camera, Robby knows you must be too tired to continue. A few viewers clearly expected more, so you assure them next week you’ll be back with your usual content.
Robby observes silently, not quite hard but still sated, the promise of more hanging in the air as a faint bitter taste in his mouth lingers at the thought of having to wait four days to see you again.
“Just a little reminder that this week I’ll be available on both Saturday and Sunday for private shows. So hurry up and book your slot!” You wink, completely unaware of how you just undid Robby with a few simple words.
“Just send me an inbox if you’re interested.”
After your stream ends, he quickly opens your profile and decides to type a short, respectful line, easy to ignore, and send a tip.
Thank you for the company.
The moment it’s gone, the action fully settles in. Your inbox must already be crowded with names and small attempts at catching your attention, all blurring together. He is just another stranger passing through, another line you’ll never have the time to read.
The couch creaks softly as he slumps back, wondering why the sole knowledge hadn’t stopped him—that despite knowing how insignificant he might be in a sea of faceless users, he still had let himself indulge in this little attempt at connecting with you.
But when Robby logs in the next day—totally not to check if you had replied—there is a small, red number one sitting at the top of his inbox. His fingers pause over the touchpad, brown eyes blinking once, twice, hardly believing it.
Hey DoctorR! Wow!! Thank you so much for the generous tip 🤍 Were you interested in a private show?
A small smile unconsciously tugs at the corners of his mouth. He is genuinely surprised you answered. Even from behind a screen, your acknowledgment makes his heartbeat flutter dangerously fast, leaving Robby both elated and unnervingly aware of how much he wants to matter to you, despite the stubborn conviction that he is doing this just to entertain himself—and of course to pay you back for the incredible orgasms.
His eyes then flick to the amount he sent, just to make sure he didn’t add too many zeros by mistake. But no, the number is exactly as intended: one hundred dollars. The amount hardly seems like a generous tip; after all, your time is surely worth far more.
His eyes slide over your words again and again, until the weight of your question finally prompts his hands to hastily move against the keyboard at the prospect of a call just between you and him. He sends a quick message confirming his interest in a private show, and caught up in the thrill of what’s to come, sends another twenty dollars.
Before he can log out for tonight, though, your reply appears: another cheerful omg thank you!! followed by another text to let him know your availability for Saturday night. He asks if it’s a problem for you to set the call at eleven—just a precaution since he never actually clocks out at nine—and you reassure him it’s completely fine with you.
Your exchange is straightforward and short, and Robby is oddly comforted by that. He will be paying for your lovely company, so even if he is as dull as the people around him have recently told him, you will at least be compensated.
Perhaps this weekend he won’t be as miserable as usual.
— ⟢ END NOTES: thank you so much for reading 🤍 my masterlist → winteryn's masterlist
🏷️ general robby taglist: @obsessed-oops @bikinibottomspeach @verss88 @macbaetwo @dugiioh @the-girl-wh0-cries-w0lf @eliza7up @kittymeowmeow17 @mimi-ro @mmb77 @lrosenblut26
💋 series taglist: @kristinee @unfortunatelyhuman765 @aestheticsunflower19 @catgirlpwr @takethistoheartxxx
pope cody x reader brainworm when you text him that you can't cover your rent as part of a tiktok trend
--
you: my rent just went up and I don’t think I can cover it this month :((
There’s a long pause after you send the text. A very long pause. You watch three dots appear. Disappear. Andrew never takes more than a minute or two to reply to your texts. Immediately, you feel guilty for the innocent little TikTok prank on your serious, attentive, intense boyfriend.
Your phone buzzes. Finally. Chest tight, you check the notification.
Zelle: ANDREW CODY sent you $2500.00
Your eyes widen and your fingers hover over the keyboard.
andy: Is that enough for this month? andy: Send me the link to your rent portal. andy: I’m going to cancel your e-payments and start paying it in cash. you: you don’t have to do that! i’ll figure it out i promise andy: What? andy: Have I not made it clear enough that I’ll always take care of you? I'm sorry. andy: You don’t need to be worrying about rent. andy: We’ve been talking about you moving in with me anyway. Let’s just do that now, okay?
A slow grin spreads over your lips, breaking through the guilt of putting him in this position.
you: wait you: are you being serious?? andy: Wish you were here all the time anyway. I’ll just have to get you out of your lease. you: huh? how? andy: Does your landlord live in your building? you: um yeah on the first floor?? why?? andy: Don’t worry about that. andy: I’ll come over tonight to talk to him. Then I'll take you out for the night.
This time, your eyes widen for an entirely different reason. You know how Andrew 'talks' with people. He's had a few 'talks' with your last boss, your creepy ex boyfriend, and a bar patron who got a little too familiar. His version of conversation usually ends with bloody knuckles.
you: andy baby omg it was a prank im so sorry you: don’t murder my landlord Zelle: YOU sent $2500.00 to ANDREW CODY
Another long pause. You imagine him on the other end of the chat, head tilted at the words like a puppy.
andy: No. Zelle: ANDREW CODY sent you $2500.00 andy: Find some movers for this weekend. andy: And I wouldn’t have MURDERED him. you: mhmmm andy: I wouldn’t. andy: Murder and battery are two very different things.
--
a little brainworm for @forever-dreaming-of-life as part of my fundraiser game (still taking donations through the end of july!). thank you for playing and for the prompt <3
can't stop thinking about season 1 pope and his old cellmate talking about how pope kept referring to cath as his wife but instead of cath he kept telling everyone one that you were the wife waiting for him at home. you, deran's friend who is closer to his younger brother's age but who was always nice to him, not afraid to be alone with him, showed him too much kindness. you who didn't shrink under his intense stare, not thinking it was intimidating. he never made a move on you because he was confident you were dating deran - why else would you be around the house so often, around smurf and put up with craig? you sleep in his bed whenever you stay over.
but on his hardest days inside of folsom, he thinks of the times your thumb ran over his cheek, underneath the raised skin of a new scar from fighting with one of his brothers or the feeling of your hands in his hair whenever he built up the courage to ask you to give him a haircut. he remembers the one time you came out of deran's room at two in the morning, joining him on the couch after fetching yourself a glass of water. he's watching a nature documentary he's watched at least three times already, but he doesn't tell you that when you're sitting so close that your thigh is pressed against him and the heat radiating off you is making the tension he always carries in his shoulders melt. that night you fell asleep with your head against his shoulder, your arms clutching his bicep as you curled into him.
smurf didn't put you on the visitation list, which he won't admit out loud but he's grateful for it. he doesn't want you to come in and see him like this and, selfishly, he doesn't want any of the guys in here to see what you look like. they don't deserve to. but he does call you once a week, just to make sure you're doing okay and nobody's giving you any trouble, though he's sure deran's taking care of you. the thought turns into acid in the back of his mind. even though he's convinced you belong to his brother, he can't help the fantasy from bleeding into his new life in prison, telling anyone who'll listen that he's got a pretty, young thing waiting for him at home. that he's going to propose as soon as he gets out. that you two are planning to have a family. that he can't believe you're out there waiting for him.
so he can't help the surge of panic that surges through his body like a lit match when, a month after he's been out, he's out to lunch with you when he runs into his cellmate, vin.
"so, you must be the missus. huh?" he teases in snarky voice, his eyes raking over you in a slow perusal that makes andrew's blood boil hotter than the flush across his skin, his fist clenching to stop himself from lunging at him.
"the missus?" you ask, laughing a little as you glance at pope. your laugh dies down when you notice the intense look he's giving this guy and the red splotches across his neck. your attention is pulled back to whoever this random guy is when you hear your name come from him. "uh, yeah. that's me. sorry, do i know you?"
"oh, i'm sorry. i guess i ruined the surprise," vin lips his lips, nodding toward your hand. "guess popey here hasn't popped the question. just confused. he wouldn't shut up about you in there, only talked about getting back to his girl. he kept talking about finally cuffing you up when we were inside, just thought he'd do it pretty quickly after getting out. still just the girlfriend, then?"
"o-oh," you stutter out, your face flushing as you glance back at andrew. his face is pinched in that way it does when he's trying to calm himself down, remind himself to breathe. his focus on his cellmate doesn't break until he feels your fingers ghost down his arm. when he finally looks at you, your stomach turns at how quickly his expression softens.
you always thought there was something between you and pope. the first time you came to a cody party, you weren't at all prepared for how overwhelming it'd be. you had been hanging around the cody's for almost two months now after meeting deran at one of adrian's local surf competitions. it was also the day you accidentally walked in on him and adrian being... intimate. you reassured deran that you didn't care, you already knew about adrian being gay and you never told anyone about him so his secret would be safe with you, too.
the night of the party, you made it about an hour before deran completely ditched you to jump off the roof with craig into the pool, the activity quickly becoming competitive between the brothers. you decided you were over it before wandering inside, quickly isolating yourself in the one room you knew no one would find themselves in: andrew "pope" cody. you hadn't expected to find him there already, sitting rigidly on his bed, facing the window. his head snapped over toward his door when you opened it, his posture loosening when he noticed it was just you.
"you okay?" he asked quietly, his voice strained from not using it.
"s'too loud out there, and deran ditched me. i don't know anyone else." you walked further into the room, climbing into pope's bed after toeing your shoes off. "do you mind?" you suppressed your smile when he shook his head with no hesitation. he wordlessly grabbed a shirt and a pair of shorts from his drawer before tossing them at you.
"change." he demanded softly, frowning before adding, "please. outside clothes."
since that moment, you and pope had grown attached to the hip. you came over even without deran just to spend time with pope, which confused him at first considering you two mostly just either sat on the couch in silence of laid in his bed after you changed into his clothes. surely you had more fun with deran. but he never questioned you, afraid you would take it the wrong way and stop coming over.
but you didn't realize pope thought of you as his girlfriend. not that it bothered you.
"popey was a little loopy most days in there. was he talking out of his ass about his pretty, young thing?" vin interrupts the look between you and pope, bringing you back to the present.
"if pope said i'm his girlfriend, then that's what i am," you say easily, giving his hand a squeeze. he squeezes your hand back, tugging you a little closer toward him.
"well, s'nice to meet you, sweetheart," he gives you a wink, his gaze returning to pope. "give me a call sometime, pope. we've got some things to catch up on," he says pointedly, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking away, his shoulder brushing past pope's.
"vin was my cellmate," he offers quietly. "told him, everyone about... well, you. i-i'm sorry."
"for what?" you say softly, one of your hands coming up to brush through pope's steadily growing hair, the curls starting to take form again, much to your delight.
"you're not mad?" he frowns, his brows furrowing when you shake your head. "you're not gonna tell deran?"
"why would deran care?" you say, laughing a little.
"he's your actual boyfriend. i would care."
"what!" you shriek, rearing back in disbelief. "deran is not my boyfriend."
"he isn't?"
"pope, if deran was my boyfriend i'd be an awful girlfriend. i used to sleep with you in your bed. i'd sneak out of his room to sit with you on the couch whenever i did pass out in his room. i've thought about you everyday that last three years you've been away." you sidle up closer to him again, reaching over to grab his other hand so you were holding both of them. "if i'm anyone's girlfriend," you shrug, giving him a sheepish smile, "i'm yours."
"yeah?" he mumbles, letting you maneuver his hands to wrap around your waist, fighting the urge to pull you flush against him when your arms come up to wrap around his neck.
"yeah," you mumble back, leaning in to kiss his cheek. "now," you continue, your lip still pressed against his skin, "let's go get some lunch." your lips press against his cheek one more time before moving to hover just above the corner of his mouth. "i'm starving."
and god, so is he.
frank langdon has a cheap black plastic headband in his nightstand and its sole purpose is to keep his hair out of his face so he can eat you out and maintain eye contact
i can't really explain it but yn and reader are two completely different people
Tender — Jack Abbot
pairing — jack abbot x college!reader
summary — the worst-cared-for girl in the county keeps washing up in jack’s er, and he can’t help but start paying attention.
warnings — 19.2k. large age gap (jack’s fifty/reader’s in twenties), doctor/patient dynamic initially, power imbalance (attending/nursing student, age, life experience), yearning!jack, protective!jack, jealous!jack, and literally every single word in the book, mutual pining, slow burn, he falls first, hurt/comfort, reader shows signs of adhd but it isn’t explicit, alcohol use (recurrent drunkenness, mention of alcohol poisoning, ER, and repeated intoxication played somewhat lightly), loneliness/self isolation, low self-worth, it’s very difficult for her to accept care, lack of family support/implied estrangement, financial stress and overworking, she’s also spending an unrealistic amt of time hanging out in the ed but it’s fanfic so it’s ok, jokes about financial stress, injuries (sprains, split lip, bruising, gravel burns), medical setting, blood, referenced patient death (patient dies, off-page, Jack grieves), making out/heavy kissing, suggestiveeee content (thumb-in-mouth beat, grinding) but nothing explicit.
notes — oops sorry this fic is so so self-indulgent 🫶 i literally loved writing them tho i was thinking about them for days on end. tried to take a swing at this based on this idea i had + thank you @ker0senebunny for inspriring the shoe scene!!!! inspired by this post + my er visits where i was literally the worst patient ever
Friday and Saturday after midnight, the board filled up with the same predictable words; alcohol poisonings, bar-fight lacerations, the kids who’d taken things they couldn’t name and showed up convinced they were dying when they were mostly just twenty and having a large thought. Jack triaged it on autopilot, and he’d stopped finding any of it interesting somewhere around year seven.
Sure, sometimes there were some cases that got a mild laugh out of him or turned his head. There was a kid who’d superglued his halloween mask on his own face for a dare. The guy who’d lost a bet and swallowed something he wouldn’t name in front of his mother, who was present and furious. The occasional genuinely strange thing the human body did that still, after all these years, made Jack think huh, that’s interesting, the small grim curiosity that was about the only part of the job the years hadn’t fully sanded down. He kept those and told them to new nurses over shitty coffee at four a.m. because he supposed that was a better story than what he could say about the Middle East.
The first time you came in, he’d handed you over to Shen. You were a sprained wrist and a BAC that explained the wrist, sixteen other things were louder, and Shen was free then.
He’d clocked you for half a second on his way to a GI bleed in bay nine: girl on the gurney, one heel too high on, and one somewhere in the greater metropolitan area, some little pink lace-trimmed thing sliding off one shoulder, telling Shen with enormous seriousness that she was so sorry, she didn’t usually do this, she’d had a singular margarita. Only.
Singular. He’d categorized it under the thousand other single margaritas he’d sworn to in this department and forgotten you before he’d reached the bleed.
The second time, he didn’t take you either, but he noticed the wrist.
Same wrist. Different night — a Saturday, three weeks in, the sort of shift where the waiting room sounded like a kennel — and he caught it sideways while he reviewed another chart. It was the same left wrist, taped this time, the nails on that one hand done in some soft pinky color gone chipped at the tips as though the week itself outlasted the manicure, somebody walking you through the discharge paperwork you clearly were ignoring. Something thought for him instead of him thinking much for it, some pattern-recognition thing buried under twenty-some years of reading bodies fast, the same instinct that made him glance twice at something almost normal. A wrist that kept coming back, he supposed. A thread snagging on a nail, there and gone.
The third time, it was Shen, breezing past the station with his Dunkin, saying over his shoulder, “Frequent flyer’s back.”
He shrugged, not yet placing that you were the frequent flyer, and went to bed four.
And that — somewhere between the third time and a number he stopped keeping an honest count of — was where it stopped being a chart and became some sort of thing. A bit, he’d say. The nights the bars let out and the board lit up, he’d find himself reading the incoming names a half-second longer than triage required, and feeling something wrong in his chest when yours wasn’t in them.
Pittsburgh was notoriously interesting, Jack learned through you, in that it apparently contained an infinite supply of ways a girl could get herself in trouble. He was convinced he could’ve drawn a map of the city by your injuries. There was the ankle, of course, a recurring grievance, always the shoes, never your fault. There was one time you’d burned your hand on a curling iron getting ready tipsy and come in more upset about the makeup you’d had to redo (because of crying it off) than the blister. The night you’d gone over in a parking lot because you refused to look at the ground while walking — looking at the ground, while drunk, you informed him, was how you trip — and the time you sliced your finger open trying to shotgun a White Claw with a key because someone had bet you couldn’t. You were really proud of the last one, you’d won the bet.
You were never the same disaster twice, he had to give you that. A little too keen on busting yourself up here and there, sure, but at least it was the wrist once, then a knee that met a curb, then a memorable evening involving a fence you’d been certain you could clear. You came in apologizing — always apologizing, to him, to the nurses, once, memorably, to the wall — and you came in sweet, which was the part that got under him, because drunk people in this ER were a lot of things and sweet was rarely one of them.
“Mmm,” you hummed the fourth or fifth time, the second your eyes found him through the gap in the curtain, going boneless with relief like Jack was the cavalry and not the man who was meant to flash light into your eyes for thirty seconds. “The pretty one.”
Jack let out a huff. “Thanks, doll.”
“Doll,” you repeated, the word going gummy in your mouth. “He calls me doll.”
“Eyes open. Follow the light.”
“You call everyone that, Dr. Abbot?” you said, his name coming out in a cluster like you were losing thread of it, the Abbot dissolving into something closer to a hum.
“Sure do,” he lied. “Track the light.”
You looked at his mouth, then his hands, then back up, a slow uncoordinated sweep because your eyes had stopped reporting to anything in particular, much less what they had to. Pupils blown wide and lazy. He thumbed your eyelid up a fraction to get the light where he needed it; your lashes were clumped and starry with whatever mascara had survived the night.
He held the penlight steady and waited you out. He had nowhere to be. That was the thing about the dead hours after bars closed; the bleed had been signed up to the floor, the chest pain turned out to be a panic attack and a large energy drink, and there was just you, and the saline ticking into your arm one slow drop at a time.
“What’d you get up to tonight?” he murmured, thumb finding the pulse at your wrist, counting without meaning to.
“S’fast ‘cause you’re here,” you said, sounding very pleased with yourself.
“Sure it is. Where’d you hurt yourself tonight?”
“... stairs,” you said after a moment, like your brain had to run a few laps to get to the word.
“Oh, yeah?” He hummed. You lifted your free hand a little off the mattress, lost track of it, and dropped it back down. “How many?”
“Mm. Four?” You squinted at the ceiling. “Maybe three. I dunno. Not the Great Wall or somethin’. Promise.”
“I believe you.” He nodded, then turned your forearm to the light, finding the scrape you’d come in with. It was gravel-burn, raw, the heel of your hand and a stripe up your wrist. Nothing that needed more than cleaning. You watched him do it with your head tipped against the pillow, gone quiet so the talking had run out for a second, which never lasted.
“Should I get a better first aid kit?” you asked, then clenched your jaw for a second like you felt something was wrong with it. “S’I don’t have to bother you all the time?”
“Might be a good idea to invest,” he said. He pulled the swab through the gravel-burn slowly, and you hissed and tried to pull back the hand on reflex. “Easy.” He kept it, his grip light yet unmoving around your fingers. “Almost done. Don’t fight me.”
You hummed, like you wanted a different answer.
Jack wet his lips, shaking his head slightly. He worked the grit out of the scrape, a fleck of it catching raw skin, and he tilted your arm to the light, getting it on the second pass, and wiped it on the gauze. Your hands twitched in his, and he pressed your fingers flat to the mattress with his thumb, and they stayed.
“You’d have to do it yourself, though,” he said. “Bathroom sink at three in the morning with one hand.” He reached for fresh gauze. “You’d make a mess of it.”
You frowned at the ceiling, nodding. “Sounds a little bad.”
“It’s a lot bad.” He laid the gauze over the scrape, thumbed the tape down at the edge of your wrist slowly, smoothing it flat where it wanted to lift. His knuckle dragged once over the thin skin there, and he felt your pulse jump under it. “You’d scar, probably.” His thumb passed the chipped polish, the chunky gold ring you’d kept on, even for this. “You’ve got nice hands. Shame to wreck ‘em over the sink.”
It took you a second. “You think so?”
“Don’t wreck ‘em.”
“You like when I come in,” you said, delighted.
“What I’d like,” he said, flat, lifting his eyes to yours, “is you off the stairs and down to the one drink.” His thumb settled over the back of your hand again. “But if you’re set on flinging yourself down, then you come here. Deal?”
Your fingers had curled around two of his somewhere in there loosely, without you noticing. He felt them settle, and he held very still so as to not spook you. He chose to not acknowledge it or look at it.
“Deal,” you mumbled, somewhere far off, probably forgetting the front half of the terms.
He let it go at that, taping down the last edge and turning over your wrist once more to be sure of it. Then he set your hand back on the mattress, yours still loosely hooked through his, going nowhere.
“Anyone out there to get you home?” he asked.
“Dunno.” Your nose scrunched. “Was gonna Uber.”
He sighed through his nose. “Where’s that girl — the one you came in with last time? Why don’t you call her?”
“That’s annoying, Dr. Abbot,” you said, almost in a whine.
“Yeah?” He kept looking at the wall behind you. “What’s annoying about a ride home?”
“Calling people. Making it a thing.” Your free hand flopped vaguely. “Then they gotta come get you, and they’re all — have to be nice about it, but you can tell.” Your nose scrunched. “It’s a whole production.”
He pressed his thumb flat back over your hand where your fingers were still caught in his.
“Oh? Nothing annoying about it, sweetheart. You call, she comes. Simple as that.” He turned to face you. “But if you insist on it, I’m not signing you off until you’re good enough to go home alone. So you call your girl, or you sit right here and keep my department company till you’ve cleared enough that I’ll sign off on it.”
Your eyes narrowed as you looked at him as though he’d spoken a different language. “Second one?”
“Obviously you pick that one,” he said.
He pulled the stool over and sat. For a few minutes, he had nowhere to be, and now, apparently, neither did you.
It wasn’t that you simply didn’t let people help you, either. Jack had never seen anyone so committed to being simply fine. Jack had met the stoic kind before; construction guys who walked in with rebar through a forearm acting like it was a small inconvenience; old ladies who’d been having a heart attack since last Tuesday and didn’t want to be a bother. But Jack had always believed those people to be suppressing, and you were just convinced, somewhere down in the foundation, that needing anything was an imposition.
That was also why the shoes confused him so much.
“This is the same damn ankle,” Jack said, turning your foot in his hands, watching the swelling outside of it.
“You don’t have to remind me. Most men buy me a drink before they get this familiar with my ankles,” you said, then groaned as you looked at his eyes going over the swelling.
“No drink.” He pressed along the bone. “Not my fault you keep handing your ankle to me.”
You tipped your head back against the pillow, groaning again. “Dr. Abbot, they look so bad. I feel like I’m pregnant.”
“I can do a quick blood draw and we can rule it out.” His palm flattened on the mattress beside your feet, leaning over to meet your eyes again. “But I think it’s those heels of yours, doll.”
Your eyes snapped to him. “Don’t be a dick, Dr. Abbot.”
He tilted his head, then pointed at the laminated paper stuck to the wall. “Aggressive behavior of any kind toward healthcare workers is a felony.”
“Then arrest me, doctor. I’ll die on this hill — and they’re not heels.” Your lips pursed, and the corner of your mouth kicked up. “Cuffs may be a little forward for a date, but I won’t stop you.”
“Aren’t you just so sweet,” he muttered. “What are they, then?”
“Bottega Lido Mules.”
The words meant absolutely nothing to him — could’ve been a pasta dish, a town in Italy, a wine — but they clearly did to you, so he remembered them.
“That’s nice, doll. They’ll be the reason I see you again.”
“Maybe, ‘cause I’ll never stop wearing them.”
You said the words your whole face, hands coming off the mattress to make the point with a drunk theatrical conviction as you argued something that genuinely mattered to you. Jack thought, not for the first time since he’d met you, that you’d have been magnetic stone-sober at a dinner party, the kind of girl that made a table lean in. It was just that he only ever got the 3am version.
At least you had a hill you’d die on and didn’t apologize for, Jack supposed.
“You married, Doctor?” you asked as he started icing your ankle.
“No,” he said, holding your eyes for a second. “Why — you got a boyfriend I should know about, then?”
He almost wished you did have one. He wished that there were somebody whose name you’d have said just now who’d be in the waiting room with his jaw tight because you’d gone and hurt yourself again. Somebody who’d take care of the ankle when you walked out of here in crutches, who took the keys when you had too many. He wished there was a person in the world whose job you were.
And you weren’t his first patient who he’d understood to not have someone taking care of them. He knew that if he carried them all, he’d drown inside a month if he tried to be the person nobody else had been. He’d never once had it turn into a wish, standing here with an ice pack in his hand going slack in his hand because he was too busy resenting someone who didn’t exist for not being in the waiting room.
He wondered when down the line you’d stopped letting the people in your life around you be the ones you could call, became a girl who said sorry for bleeding and had nobody, nobody, and looked at him like he was the warmest place she’d been in all week.
You laughed. “If I had a boyfriend, would I be laying it on so thick?”
He let out a breath through his nose, despite himself. “Stop wearing the heels, doll. Not nice to not have a foot.”
The next time you came in, it was a Thursday. With some pileup of bad luck, you came in somewhere past one with a split lip and a story about a dance floor he only half got the shape of. Jack hadn’t even been assigned to you yet, he’d just seen your name on the board, and reassigned himself quietly enough that dared anyone on shift to comment. Nobody did.
“Lip’s not bad,” he said, tilting your chin up under the light, thumb at your jaw. The split was already going fat and shining at the center of your lower lip, and he found his eyes stayed on your mouth a second past the part that was his job, on the soft unhurt swell of it under the hurt. He moved his thumb. “Doesn’t need anything. You bit it when you fell down. That’s all.”
“S’throbbing, Doctor,” you mumbled, the word coming around muffled around the split.
“It’ll throb. You’ve got a swollen lip.” He let go of your jaw and reached for the penlight. “Eyes on me.”
“I was so cute before this,” you said through a groan.
The huff that came out of him was almost a laugh, dragged out against his own will, and he shared a fleeting look with Bennet — a fairly new nurse — who had tilted his head briefly and was too afraid to meet your eyes.
“Alright. Still the prettiest girl I’ve treated tonight,” Jack said when your brows had furrowed together.
“You treat other girls?”
“It’s a hospital,” he said. “Few hundred a week.”
Your face looked wounded. “Few hundred.”
He leaned in slightly, faking a whisper. “You’re my top three.”
You were further gone than usual tonight. He’d noticed it the second he came around the curtain, the way your head was having a hard time holding itself up, the loose unmoored swim of your eyes that took longer than it should to find his finger. A piece of hair had come loose and stuck to the gloss at the corner of your mouth and you hadn’t the coordination to deal with it, and he had the unprofessional impulse to, and didn’t.
Bennet kept working the blood pressure cuff up your arm, half an eye on you, half on his own work.
“Track the light,” Jack murmured. “Slowly.”
“Too bright.”
“Tough.” The corner of his mouth moved up slightly. “You can bat your lashes at me when we’re done. Right now, I need ‘em open.”
You batted them anyway, slowly and theatrically, just to be a problem about it. They were long, and the theater of it was so ridiculous, and Jack had to bite down the inside of his cheek to keep his face flat to wait you out, until you gave up and tracked the finger. Your pupils were reactive, equal, and lagging half-a-beat behind. He clicked the light off.
“Too bright,” you said again.
“It’s off,” he drawled, chuckling.
Bennett thread a line into the back of your free hand, and you watched him sink it with a drowsy focus.
“Why’s it go in the back of the hand?” you mumbled. “More nerves there. Hurts more. Why not the — inside. By the elbow.” You tilted your head slightly to let your eyes wander to the crook of your arm. “Bigger vein. The antec—antecubital,” you said carefully, sounding out each syllable, afraid of messing it up. You wet your lips and turned to face him, then Bennet. “Why’s nobody use the good one?”
Jack pursed his lips and looked at you for a moment.
“Saves the good one,” he said, catching up, eyes going back to your chart. “AC vein blows easily when somebody’s moving around, and you —” He tipped his head at you, raising a brow, the squirming drunk of you. “ — Are gonna move around. Back of the hand’ll hold. I’d rather you be sore than re-stuck twice ‘cause you couldn’t sit pretty for thirty seconds.” He paused as he saw your eyes glaze over. He sighed. “Ask me how I know that about you.”
You’d gone busy, lips moving slightly like you were repeating it back to yourself so it’d stick, and Jack felt something in his chest shift a degree as he watched you do it.
He sighed, dragging a palm over the lower half of his face. “Where’d you learn that, then?”
“School,” you said to the ceiling, a small hint of pride taking over your voice. “M’gonna become a nurse. Gonna be good at it.”
Bennet snorted, finishing the tape. “Gonna be patching up drunk girls just like you then, huh,” he said. “Full circle.”
Jack watched the pride go out of your face slowly, like a house losing its power. Your chin dropped and your eyes slid from Bennet to the curtain as your hand fisted in your lap.
“Yeah,” you said, almost curiously. “Guess so.”
Jack’s jaw clenched involuntarily. It wasn’t the guy’s fault, not really. It was a nothing joke, the sort the whole department tossed off a hundred times a shift, the gallows shorthand that kept you sane at two in the morning. Jack had made worse about patients who’d never know, about drunks who wouldn’t remember, about exactly this, exactly girls like you. He’d just never had one of them go quiet before, watched the bright thing fold itself up and get tucked away.
“Bennet, you done?”
“Yeah, line’s good — ”
“Then go take vitals on six. I’ve got her.”
Bennet went, and it was just the two of you again.
Jack pulled the stool over with his foot and sat — lower than he had to, level with you, taking himself out of the column of people standing over you tonight and telling you what you were — and waited until your eyes came up off the curtain and found him.
“There she is,” he said when your eyes found him. He turned your taped hand over under the light like there was still something to do with it. There wasn’t, he just wanted his hands on something of yours while he undid what the room had done. “Look at me. Nothing good on the curtain.”
“How’s school treating you then, doll?” he asked, aiming for offhand and not steering you off whatever Bennet had knocked loose.
“Hard,” you said, but a small smile had crawled up your lips. “But I like it.” Your shoulders came up loosely.
“Yeah?” He kept his thumb moving over the back of your hand slowly, like he could press the bright thing back up to the surface where it belonged. “I think you’ll be good at it.”
It was such a strange feeling, Jack distantly noticed, to feel this utter conviction. He was rarely sure of anything good anymore. Sure of plenty else; sure within ten seconds of a bad rhythm which way the night was going to break, sure of which of the kids wheeled in at 2 am he’d see again and which he wouldn’t, a grim accumulated certainty that had nothing in it he’d ever wanted to be right about.
The job had made him an expert on the downslope of things. He could read the exact moment a body wanted to quit better than he could read most of what people said to his face. And here you were, and he was so sure of the other direction, and he felt the same weight of it behind his sternum, except it had swung and pointed at something good for once. You were going to be excellent at this.
It bothered him a little, how much he wanted to be there to see it, whoever you were going to be once you stopped washing up on his floor on the worst nights of your week. He’d known you, what, a handful of shifts as a frequent flyer, a bit, a name his eyes unconsciously caught on. He had no business feeling certain of anything about you, and he was, and he’d let himself feel it.
Your eyes found him properly again. “Liar.”
He huffed out a short laugh. “Tell you what. You finish that program, you get through all that mess where they try to drown you.” His thumb smoothed over the tape. “Then you come find me here and we’ll see if we can get you here with me on nights. Clearly you’re at your finest then.”
It was maybe something silly to say, and Gloria may have his head for it. He had no actual standing to say anything like it, even though you’d never remember it. He knew better; hope was a controlled substance in his field and he was stingy with it on purpose, because he’d seen the withdrawal.
But God, he’d love to see the part of you he could only catch glimpses of through the wreck like a light under the door. He’d love to be the one who taught you which arrogance to keep and which to let the job take away. He’d love, plainly and without anywhere to put it, to watch you become who you’d just told him you were going to be.
It was a lot of loving for a girl who’d been in his department and wouldn’t recall his face or a word of this by tomorrow morning. He was getting sentimental, or old, or both; the years stacked up behind his eyes until he started mistaking everything for a second chance at something.
Your lips moved. “So I can patch girls up like myself?”
“Nah.” He kept looking at your hand. “You can patch up old bastards like me, too.” Then, he pointed his index finger of his free hand at you, mock-stern. “Gotta make sure you’re not at point three BAC, though. Will have to do that work to get you working with me.”
“Mm.” Your eyes flickered up to the ceiling, weighing it with the enormous gravity of the very drunk as though he’d posed a very real proposition to you. “Okay. For you, I’d stop.”
“For me?” he repeated, mostly to buy himself a second.
“Mm-hm.” You turned your face to him and said it with such ease, no glance away to leave yourself an exit. “You’re worth not drinkin’ over.”
Your words went in clean, the way the best and worst things do, under the ribs where he kept nothing armored because nobody ever aimed there. Jack felt the back of his neck go warm and was abruptly, intensely grateful for the light that wouldn’t display it.
Jack huffed, having to look away at the floor then. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all year, and you’re not gonna remember it. Hell of a thing.”
When he made himself look back up, you’d tipped your face into the pillow, watching him from the side with your eyes gone soft and heavy, the smile arriving unguarded across your mouth. The split tugged one corner of it, that small wince folded right into the sweetness, and you seemed to not feel it.
He had the sudden, idiotic wish to have met you on a night you’d remember. To have perhaps caught you when you fell at the bar, to have been the stranger whose arm happened to be there, not the doctor it eventually routed you to. Perhaps he could’ve been a man in your night instead of a stop in it.
He shook his head. “You’re trouble, you know that, right? Saying all these nice things. What’s a man supposed to do with that?”
He’d have liked to have been remembered, was the bottom of it. By you specifically. He’d spent decades being the man people were grateful to and glad to forget.
“What’s your name, Doctor Abbot?” you asked, drowsy.
He looked down at his badge, then back up at you. “Take a wild guess?” Then, he added, “You never looked at my badge?”
“Sorry. Didn’t read.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It’s Jack.”
Jack was doing his usual rounds this Friday, on a rush from a chest pain in two that turned out to be a panic attack and a kid in five who’d put a kitchen knife through the meat of his own palm trying to halve a frozen bagel when Ellis caught him by the elbow at the board.
“Heads up, Abbot,” she said, grinning. She nodded toward triage, toward the doors. “Bed three. Your, uh—” The grin tipped over, delighted with itself. “Girlfriend’s got a boyfriend.”
It was a running thing now. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you’d washed up on his shift the staff had started on it — your frequent flyer, your stray, your girl’s back — and Jack had stopped bothering to deny it because that’d only feed it, and he’d learned not denying it had a way of starving the joke faster.
He looked, and was immediately able to notice what you weren’t doing more than what you were; you weren’t grinning at the ceiling, weren’t doing that boneless sweet-relief thing. You were sitting up too straight on the bed, hands folded in your lap, and there was a guy fitted to the chair beside you with one arm slung along the back of yours and a hand resting on your knee like he’d put it there to mark the spot. He was saying something low to the side of your face, and you were nodding at it, and not looking at anybody.
Jack felt a muscle tick in his jaw, immediately not feeling anything nice about the situation. “I got it — you mind taking six for me? I’ll come in a couple minutes.”
By the time he’d made it to you, he’d settled his face into something unbothered. You could read it, he’d realized at some point during your frequent visits, and that only meant he had to be on his better behavior around you.
“Evening.” He pulled the curtain half-round behind him, glanced at the chart clipped to the foot of the bed, then at you. “What’d we do tonight?”
“She caught an elbow,” the guy answered. “Some asshole on the dance floor. It’s nothing — she’s fine. She’s just a lightweight, aren’t you — ” A little squeeze on your knee. “ — didn’t even really need to come in, but y’know. Better safe.”
You weren’t a lightweight, he immediately wanted to correct. He’d seen you put away enough over the months to know your tolerance better than this guy apparently did; he knew the difference between the nights you were genuinely wrecked and the nights you came in clearer than you let on, and looking at you, tonight, you weren’t anywhere near the state implied.
“You,” he said, tipping his chin in your direction. “Not him. Where’d it get you?”
You lifted your hand up from your lap and touched your cheekbone, movement slow, and Jack stepped in and tipped your head up toward the light with two fingers under your chin, thumb resting just shy of the scrape. The skin had gone dark along the bone, tender, an elbow’s worth of it. Nothing that needed more than an ice and a night, but you were still holding still under his hand and not meeting his eyes, and that he didn’t like at all.
“It’s okay,” you said. “Really. S’not even — ”
“Let me be the judge of that, sweetheart. Gettin’ paid for this.” His eyes flicked down to yours and caught, holding it there a second with a small question in the rise of a brow, before he went back to the bone, thumb tracing the edge of the bruise so light you barely felt it. A small frown pulled at the corners of his mouth at the sight. “Follow my finger. Eyes only.”
You followed, pupils fine and equal. No concussion in it.
“She’s fine, I told you,” the guy said from the chair, a little laugh under it like he was inviting Jack in on something. “Hardly. She bounces back.”
Jack clicked the penlight off and turned to the side. “Gonna need the room.”
“I’ll stay.” The hand went back to your knee. “I’m all good here.”
“Can’t clear a head strike with people in the room. You get it.” Jack tilted his head to the side, raising a shoulder. “Liability. Coffee machine’s down the hall. Give me two minutes with my patient.”
The easy smile on the guy’s lips went thin around the edges, looking for a thing to push against and not finding it. He stood up slow, making a show of it, squeezing your knee and letting you know he’ll be back in a minute, babe, a hand trailing your shoulder on the way past, all of it aimed less at you and more at Jack holding the curtain. Jack pressed his lips in a thin line as he met the guy’s eyes.
The second the curtain closed behind him, a breath left you, tiny and involuntary, and your shoulders came down in the empty room.
“Sorry, Dr. Abbot,” you murmured. “I keep being a mess at this place.” You took in a short, almost shaky breath. “Sorry.”
“None of that,” he almost grumbled, penning your chart. “Your folks down here, sweetheart?”
“No,” you said to your lap, picking the edge of the blanket. “Back home. A few states over.” You let out a laugh. “Just me out here. S’nice.”
Jack forced a small smile, having to look at the ceiling while you looked down at your lap, shaking his head, more of an action for himself than for you. He pulled the stool over with his foot and sat, getting level with you.
“What’s goin’ on with you, huh?” he asked quietly, making sure there was nothing sharp in his tone at all. “Honest. I like seeing you but not like this bruised up with a guy who talks for you.” His thumb found your wrist. “So talk to me. What’s going on?”
“He’s fine,” you said. “Just likes being around.”
Jack tilted his head, dipping his head to meet your eyes that were still facing down. “Not the important part of the question, and you know it.”
You sighed. “Sorry, Jack.”
“Quit it. The only thing I want from you tonight is some honesty, alright?”
A corner of your lip kicked up, even though the dimness in your eyes held. “Your eyes look really pretty tonight.”
“Heard that one before,” he drawled. “Had ‘em fifty years. Try a new one.”
“Your neck’s going red,” you mumbled, fingers reaching up to press flat to the warm of his skin, right there below the jaw, like you just had to feel whether it was true.
Jack stilled. Your fingers were cold on his neck. He distantly registered his pulse was probably going under your fingertips, and you’d feel it if you held there a second longer. And then you caught yourself, hand snapping back to the blanket.
“Sorry. Sorry — I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that — ” you said, the words coming out in a taut string.
“Easy,” he said, voice coming out rough. He swallowed. “Got me all flustered and now you’re gettin’ all shy?”
You huffed a small laugh, your hand still fisted in the blanket where you’d snatched it back. “I’m not allowed to do that. I don’t think.”
“Had no idea you knew how to behave,” he leaned a little back from the stool, crossing his arms. “Should I be worried about that guy out there?”
“Jealous, Doctor?”
He rolled his eyes slightly, not responding.
You sighed when you realized he wasn’t taking the bait. “He’s fine. He just likes being around.”
He stood off the stool and reached for the discharge clipboard at the foot of the bed.
“Whatcha doing there?”
“My job.” He clicked the pen. “Clearing you. You’ve got no concussion. You’re not dying tonight.” He scrawled on the paper. “And I’m writing you a script for the bruise and a code for an Uber — ”
“No, no,” you said immediately. “Please don’t do that.”
He raised his hand with the pen, palm open. “You never let me Uber you back when you’re alone. At least have this.” Your face scrunched up, and he could practically feel the guilt building in you. “Don’t need to use it now. Or ever. You can keep it for whenever.” He set the slip on your lap before you could push it back at him, the matter completely closed on his end. “Goes in your phone case. You can forget it exists until you need it.”
“You can’t keep handing me stuff — ”
“Department’s got a whole stack. You’re not special.” He capped the pen, though the corner of his mouth made it slightly visible that his words were false. “Don’t flatter yourself, doll.”
You looked down at the slip, your thumb worrying the edges of it. “I don’t like taking things.”
“I noticed. A few hundred times now.” He tucked the pen back in his scrub pocket, and his voice came down a notch. “If it really makes you feel so bad, though, then maybe we can start taking care of ourselves so you don’t have to keep ending up here?”
Jack was in the middle of hand-off, Robby doing his thing before Robby left and did whatever the hell he did. They were at the board, Robby running down the floor. It was six-fifteen in the ugly hour, the in-between where the day shift was dragging itself toward the door and the night hadn’t started biting yet, the light through the ambulance doors gone gold and slanted and almost decent for once.
And then the doors slid, and you came through them. Jack’s attention peeled to you the second your shape entered the room, except this was wrong, he distantly registered. It was daylight and six in the evening and you were on your own two feet, upright and, assumedly, sober and walking in through the front like a person as opposed to a patient. You were wearing a jacket that swallowed you, and he assumed underneath it was shorts of some sort. He could see a stripe of navy cotton peeking from under the collar of your jacket as you adjusted a tote bag on your shoulder.
You looked, frankly, like a completely different species from the one he scraped off bed four on weekends. The jacket was too big — his first thought was that it was a man’s, and his second thought, which he didn’t care for, was about whose — sleeves shoved up to your forearms, a stripe of soft navy cotton on the collar, and below it bare legs and shorts and sneakers that had likely never seen the inside of a club. Your hair was up and a little damp at the temple and your face was scrubbed clean.
You looked like somebody’s whole good day, he thought. You looked around around the waiting room with slightly widened eyes, a lost expression coating your features like you’d built up a lot of nerve to walk in here and had no idea what to do with it.
“ — and the tox screen is still pending, so don’t let them,” Robby was saying.
“Mhm,” Jack said, attention already halved.
And Bennet, breezing past the triage desk with cheerful obliviousness, caught your figure and said, out loud, “Don’t tell me you’ve started day drinking. It’s barely past six, you gotta pace yourself — ” He let out a small laugh at his own joke, and kept walking, and didn’t see the way it landed.
Your body stiffened, and you looked like a deer in headlights. Your mouth opened, some sort of flustered apology forming, he was sure.
Jack let out a short groan, shaking his head. He set the tablet on the counter, already moving to cross the floor toward you. “Finish the hand-off with Shen. I gotta go deal with something.”
Robby said something at his back — deal with what? — but Jack was already gone, crossing the floor slowly but somehow still eating the distance fast, and he watched you spot him coming and watched the relief crash over your face. Except you were sober now, in the daylight, and your whole face was going soft and grateful and just slightly wrecked at the sight of him.
He stopped a couple feet short of you, closer than a doctor, further than he stood to you at night. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands — there was no chart to hold (he should’ve brought the tablet) or wrist to take or a penlight to shine — so he clasped them behind his back, and tilted his head to get a better look at you.
“Hi,” you breathed.
“Hey,” he said, eyes doing a quick once-over to make sure you really didn’t have any new injuries.
You shifted the tote under his gaze and clutched whatever was in the bag a little tighter.
“Jack —” you started, stopped, like the name had come out wrong. “ — Dr. Abbot.” You winced, pinching your eyes shut for a second. “Jack?” you tried to say again, smaller, your eyes flicking up to check his face to check if you’d overstepped. “Sorry, I don’t know which — ”
“Jack’s great.” His mouth tugged up, despite himself. “You’ve called me a lot worse. Jack’s a step-up.”
You let out a startled little laugh, your mouth coming over your mouth like you could catch it, as your body eased a degree.
“I’m sorry — I don’t — God, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
“You know how many times you’ve apologized to me? Quit it.” He rubbed a finger over his lips. “What’s got you here today, then?”
“Um, I came to see you.” He raised a brow, and you let out a short breath, then continued, “I might not remember a lot of it, but I remember you took really good care of me. And my friends who came in with me sometimes said you took really good care of me.” The words came out softer now, flowing, more earnest. “Even though I was a mess. Especially when. So I just wanted to —” You shrugged, smiling slightly. “ — come say thanks.”
Jack felt the complete warmth of you land somewhere he kept no armor. “It’s the job,” he said quickly, before he could stop himself. “You didn’t have to come down here for that. That’s — it’s what we do. Anybody on shift would’ve done the same.”
Your expression faltered for a moment, and your eyes dropped to the tote at your side as your shoulders came in. You shook your head, a small motion, then smiled again.
“Right. No — yeah, of course.” You chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it a — I know it’s your job.” You shifted the bag, then shifted your weight from one foot to another. “Still, though. You did, so I wanted to.”
Jack already wanted to take his words back, but he couldn’t, so he just shook his head. “Hey, you’re my problem, though. So thank you. For the thanks. We’re even.”
Your shoulders eased and you nodded. “Well, I also have something for you.” You hauled a container out of your tote and held it out to him with both hands before you could chicken out. “It definitely doesn’t make up for all of the times you helped me.” You looked down at the container. “And I don’t know if you’re lactose intolerant, or have a peanut allergy or anything. I’m sorry if you do — I can — ”
“I’ve got a cast-iron everything. The cookies won’t kill me.” When you pushed the container further to him, he took it off your hands, eyes quickly scanning the round chocolate chip cookies, forcing a smile down. He swallowed whatever had lodged in his throat.
“These are homemade?” He weighed the container in both hands, absurdly. You nodded. He swallowed whatever on earth had lodged in his throat at that.“Didn’t have to do all that for me.”
“I wanted to,” you said quickly. “I wasn’t sure how the food here is, so thought it might be a nice change.”
“Worse than you’re imagining,” he said, then tipped his head to the side as the memory crawled into his brain, uncalled for. “You’ve actually thrown a sandwich across the room.”
Your palm came up to your mouth, and you let out a muffled, “I’m so sorry.”
Jack snorted, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he cleared his throat before it could get away from him. He looked back toward the board, then at you, knowing time was slipping and he’d have to go back to work and you’d have to go somewhere else, most likely.
“You got finals or anything coming up soon?” he asked.
Your lips curved down, and you nodded. “Yeah, in a couple weeks.”
“Am I gonna be seeing you getting wheeled in wasted?”
“I want to say no,” you said, smiling a little crooked. “I’m working on it. But I’ve said that before and ended up here. So.” You shrugged, lips jutting out like you were also unimpressed with yourself. “Ask me again in a couple weeks, I guess. I’d like it if you didn’t, though.”
“Then quit doing the hard nights alone,” he said, leaning in just slightly. “You keep yourself off the stairs, and you can come bother us instead here with a textbook.” He raised a brow as he held your eyes. “We’ve got a family room that’s almost always empty at night.”
“I couldn’t — ”
“Won’t be a bother. Trust me. You’d be silly not to use people’s help when they’ve clawed through the same exams to get the badge. You get stuck, somebody’ll know it cold.” He shrugged. “Half of ‘em are bored out of their minds some nights. You’d be doing us a favor.”
You let out a breath, brows pinching together. “That’s — yeah.” You let out a short laugh, looking away for a second. “I’d like that. A lot. Thank you, really. As long as you don’t mind.”
“This is a teaching hospital, doll. I don’t mind, so long as you don’t mind the company. Might be nice for me, too.”
You smiled and for a moment, neither of you moved to end it. Then you shifted the tote back up your shoulder, and Jack felt the pull to keep you here one more second before he could stop himself.
“Go home,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll be looking for you. So actually turn up, don’t make me look for nothing.”
The whole sun of you came up at that, stunned, like you hadn’t expected to be looked for by anyone. Jack felt the ground go quietly out from under him, the vertigo of having reached for a person’s happiness on purpose and connected, of being, for once, the cause of a face doing that. He’d gotten so used to delivering news that took the light out that he’d forgotten it ran the other way, too.
“I’ll turn up. I promise.”
He nodded, clearing his throat and turning for the board, bidding you a throaty goodbye.
“She’s the girl that everyone on night talks about?” Robby asked immediately, falling into step beside him.
Jack looked at him sideways, shaking his head. “You got something to say, too?”
“No,” Robby said, rubbing his palm at his chin like he was holding something in. “You like her or something?”
Jack halted for a second, pointing his index at Robby as he lowered his chin. “You shut up. She’s gonna be a nurse.”
“Oh, yeah,” Robby laughed. “Looks like she’s gonna be your nurse, old man. You’ll need it soon enough.”
Thank god you did turn up. Jack had the sense that maybe he’d scared you off altogether by his offer, and the line he’d toed had two very alternate spectrums: you’d find a new hospital altogether to go to in the metropolitan area after your falls or poisonings, or you’d be here a lot more often, which he still wasn’t sure would’ve been often enough.
The first time you came in, it was well past midnight and Jack had unfortunately not been able to catch you off the bat because he was in an emergency surgery. He’d walked out of it with his blood-stained surgical gown still on to be met with the sight of you by the nurse’s station, writing something down on the back of a discharge form for Lena, with another Tupperware laying on the table. He made the guess that you’d brought the whole floor something and were three minutes from having Lena eating out of your hand.
You’d found a corner of his department and made yourself a small soft home in it inside of ten minutes, and you were leaning in, and Jack stood there for a moment with the bad night still ringing in his ears and felt something unclench in his chest by a fraction.
“ — no, but you gotta,” you were saying to Lena in earnest as Jack approached closer. “If you put the brown sugar in while the butter’s still hot, it’s just — it’s a different cookie.”
“You taking the recipe, Lena?” Jack asked then, fully submerging into the knot you’d made with his charge nurse.
You turned to face him, a smile forming on your lips almost immediately, and then your eyes dropped over him, to the gown, the rust-brown stain dried dark across the front of it, the set of his shoulders.
“I am,” Lena replied. “Gonna make these for the kids.” She punctuated her sentence by holding up one of the cookies.
“Gonna make some for us, too, then?” Jack asked, raising a brow, and settled his elbows over the table. He turned his neck to face you properly, putting on his best smile.
Lena laughed shortly. “I don’t like you enough.” She pushed off the counter with some forms in hand. “Her, maybe. You can have whatever she leaves behind.” She shot you a look that was almost warm before she went and disappeared down the hall.
“Could be you someday,” Jack said, tilting his head in the direction of Lena’s chair.
You shook your head, then pushed the container in his hands. “I’ve got to graduate first. And pass pharm, which is currently — ” You patted your tote bag, textbooks heavy. “ — trying to kill me.”
Jack nodded toward the family room, placing the container on the table for a second beside him. “C’mon, then, doll. Let’s see what the pharm’s doing to you.”
“You don’t have to — ” Your eyes flicked down the gown again. “You just came out of surgery. You don’t have to help me study.”
“Actin’ like I’m the one who got the surgery,” Jack muttered, chuckling slightly. He was already peeling off the gown one-handed, balling it up to toss. He started walking, and you followed behind him. “C’mon. It’s pretty empty right now.”
It’d been pleasant that night and the few after to have five to ten minute increments of sitting with you helping you study in between doing his actual job. He’d duck in between things — a lull after discharge, the dread stretch while he waited for a CT scan, the ten minutes a trauma took to roll in once the call came — and you’d be there in the family room with your stack of cards on the couch. He’d drop on the chair across you or the couch beside you and pick up wherever you’d left off like he hadn’t left at all. Then his pager would buzz and he’d be gone, and you’d still be there an hour later when he came back, and he’d sit back down, and both of you’d pretend this was a completely normal way to study.
It’d annoyed him the first night how badly the flashcards were failing you; he’d seen you stare at the words and your eyes would glaze and slide right off it like they were greased. You’d memorized or retained nothing. And then he’d said, half to himself, a story for the why to click, and he’d watched it lock in you.
So he’d stopped quizzing you primarily off the cards and started telling you stories instead and you’d talk it back to him, reasoning out loud, getting there in the saying of it the way you never got there on the page.
The nights stacked up. The first week, you’d sat at a table across from him. By the second, you’d migrated to the chair beside him. Your coffee, the one by the far end of the table, was right by his elbow. Lena started leaving a second cup at the station when she saw you come in, his and yours, and never commented.
You’d stopped apologizing for taking up his time somewhere in there. He noticed when you’d started saving him the worst looking cookie on purpose because he’d once told you he liked the ugly ones. He’d noticed when you learned the rhythm of his pages; you’d go quiet and just hand him the next card when his eyes drifted to the board through the window of the door, would have it ready when he came back, like you’d kept his place for him while he was off keeping someone alive.
He noticed that he more than looked forward to it. Somewhere in the dead middle of a bad shift, his feet would take him toward the family room before his brain could catch up on the why of it all. An empty table on a night you didn’t come in sat wrong with him, a tiny disappointment he didn’t have anything in him to figure out why.
Sometimes, like now, you’d get distracted. Jack had learned. He’d walked into the family room to see you and Ellis folded into opposite ends of the couch, the flashcards abandoned in a fanned mess on the cushion between you, both of you mid-argument and enjoying yourselves too much.
“Poaching my study hall, Ellis?” he said, finally moving in.
Ellis pointed one stern finger in your direction as she pulled herself off the couch. “Do the crossword, not the sudoku.”
“She’s gonna make you a worse student,” Jack said to Ellis’s back.
“She’s making me a worse doctor,” Ellis said cheerfully, already at the door. “I’ve been here twenty minutes. I have patients.” She turned to you one final time. “Crossword. You’ll thank me later.”
She gave Jack a knowing look on her way out, one he didn’t want to read too much into, and she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her in one slow plunge.
You watched the door settle, and the entire wattage of your attention turned to him. He hadn’t gotten used to that, and he didn’t think he ever would. “Looks like I’ll never be a nurse.”
“Don’t say things like that.” He came around and lowered himself onto the couch beside you. “What’re you stuck on? Hit me.”
Your palm met his upper arm, a small smack.
He narrowed his eyes at you. “Hit me all you want. You’re not getting out of this.”
“But Jaaaack,” you drawled, tipping your head back on the couch. “Not here to study today.”
His eyes flickered over to your form briefly as he gathered the cards and squared them. “Oh, no? What’re you here for then?”
“Dunno.” You pulled your knees up to the couch. “Didn’t wanna be at mine. And work was a lot and boring.” You turned to face him then, a small smile growing on your lips. “Thought I’d bother yours instead.”
He set the squared deck on his knee. “Lucky me.”
He’d caught it, though, how you’d folded the sad thing in the middle of the sentence where it’d draw the least attention and moved on before it could sit. He let it move on, but he kept it. The image of you on a Tuesday, work behind you, and the choice you’d made was to drive to a hospital rather than go home to your own quiet. He was getting a picture of what that quiet looked like and learned that he didn’t like it very much.
“Work was boring, huh,” he said, though he couldn’t imagine what a fun day looked like as a waitress. “You working more?”
“Mm. Saturday girl quit, so now I’m on Saturdays, too.” You picked at your sock. “S’okay. Tips are good. I learned that old guys tip better when you call them ‘sir.’”
He huffed. “Do they?”
“Huge. It’s a cheat code.” You tilted your head at him, smiling shyly. “You’d tip well, I think. You’d overcompensate.”
“I’m not gonna sit here and get profiled by you in the only few minutes where I can catch my breath.” He held the card up, front to himself. “And I tip twenty-five percent like every functioning adult, thank you.”
You groaned. “Where can I get tipped more than that?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
“I do. I do. I’m a broke student. Point me to the money — where should I apply?” You shifted on the couch, fully facing him now, the cards apparently abandoned for the moment. “C’mon. You’ve lived a hundred years. You’ve gotta know where I can make some quick cash.”
“You’re sweet to me, doll,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. He set the cards down and looked at you, genuinely considering it now. He tried to ignore the fact that you likely had money troubles and tried to think about how he could actually help. “Define quick.”
“Like — by next Thursday.”
“Legally?”
“No.”
“Legally, you can sell plasma. Twice a week, they pay you, you sit there with a juice box.”
Your nose scrunched. “I don’t love needles in me sober.”
“You’re gonna be a nurse.”
“In other people. That’s totally different.” You waved it off. “Next. What else?”
“Sleep studies pay you to sleep. Egg donation pays a whole lot but it’s a whole process, not a Thursday deal.” He was ticking them off on his fingers, now fully committed. “Medical research’ll pay you to test things. Phase-one trials. You take an experimental drug and they watch you for side effects.”
“That’s the one.” You sat up. “How much?”
“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I bring you in here to keep you from blacking out. I’m not gonna have you volunteering to get poisoned for a quick four hundred bucks.” He pointed at you. “Maybe start laying on the ‘sir’ a little too thick from now on.”
“Sir.” You tested on him directly, dropping your voice, leaning in an inch, lashes going slow. “Could you help me out, sir? Tips have been so slow, sir.”
He turned his face away from you, now making himself look out the window. “I’m not entertaining this.”
“Oh, but sir.” You’d fully abandoned the cards now, scooting closer, a hand under your chin, the picture of innocence. “I’m just a girl. A poor, hardworking girl trying to be a nurse. Don’t you want to help me out, sir?”
“I am trying.” He pulled up the flashcards. “If it’ll help, I’ll bring my SWAT buddies into your place and they can run up a tab.” He waved a card in front of your face, trying to get your attention back to it. “You do this, I’ll have eight cops eating mozzarella sticks in your section by Friday, overtipping ‘cause I saved their lives. Won’t even have to call ‘em sir.”
“Right. No, that’s — ” You let out a little laugh too quickly, eyes widening at his words, and you took the card out of his hand mostly to have something to do with yours. “You don’t have to do that. Obviously. I was kidding — ” You batted the whole thing away with a shake of your head. “God. No. I’m okay, I promise. I was kidding.”
“I’m half-kidding,” he said, raising a brow. “I do know those guys. It’s no skin off me. But it’s okay.”
He let the offer sit like that, and he saw you pinch your eyes shut. He watched the whole thing happen on your face, the small involuntary recoil you always had when anyone offered you real kindness. You were bad at it. For a girl who lied so charmingly about how much she drank and how her night went, you had absolutely no poker face for being cared about. You had not the first idea how to hide it.
He found it unbearably endearing.
You opened your eyes and looked a little caught, a little sheepish as your thumb worried the corner of the card.
“You’re a strange girl,” he mumbled, fond, before he could stop it. “You know that?”
“Shit — Jack,” you said through a small laugh, shaking your head. “I don’t — I’m — ” You pressed your lips together and your shoulders came up almost to your ears in a stiff shrug. “Is there anything I can do for you? I can’t just accept — all your help.”
He snorted. “What help? I give you a study room and review flash cards.”
“Let me do something. I’m a good cleaner — ”
His head went back slightly, shaking his head. “You’re really not.”
“Okay,” you continued, rallying. “A dog? Guys like you always have dogs they don’t walk ‘cause of their hours. I can walk dogs.”
“No dog.” He raised his hand when he saw your mouth move again, stopping you. “You pay me back by passing your boards. You can pay me back plenty if you end up working here, doing good at the job.”
You went quiet for a second. “That’s just me doing my own thing. That’s not real.”
“That’s real to me.” He shrugged, like he hadn’t just made your whole future the price of his kindness. “I get a good nurse out of it someday.” He pulled himself off the couch. “And now I gotta go. Floor’s not gonna run itself.”
“Boo,” you said, pulling the entire deck on your lap now. “You’re the worst study partner. You leave constantly.”
Tonight, Jack had come into the family room after leaving you for a longer stretch of time than usual — a multi-vehicle situation that had eaten two hours and most of his patience — and found the studying had long since lost.
You’d migrated to the couch at some point. The textbook was open face-down on the cushion beside you like a small tented roof, your flashcards fanned across the middle seat, and you were folded in the corner with your knees pulled up and cheek mashed into the worn armrest, fighting your eyes and losing completely. You’d dimmed the overhead lights, lighting the lamp in the corner, the one nobody used, throwing everything low and gold.
He paused in the doorway. “You awake?”
“Mhm. Need a cat nap, though,” you murmured.
Jack snorted, shutting the door behind him as he walked closer to you. “How far’d you get?”
“Far enough.” Then, you added, “Cat nap.”
“Sayin’ it like I’m gonna not let you have one.”
Your eye cracked open a sliver, tracked him, then fell shut again. “Feel like you’re gonna make me do more cards.”
He toed the leg of the coffee table aside, reached down, and started clearing your mess off the cushions. He lifted the textbook and shut it around the receipt you’d jammed as a bookmark; gathered the flashcards and squared them in his palm; capped the highlighter and pocketed it. You watched the cleanup through one half-open eye, not lifting a single finger, your cheek staying flat to the armrest.
“There. No more cards. You’re done for tonight, doll.”
“Hooray,” you mumbled.
He nudged your socked foot where it had crept up across the cushion. “C’mon. Budge up a second. Don’t want you wrecking your neck sleeping like that.”
You made a small sound of protest but you went, peeling your cheek off the armrest with reluctance. There was a crease pressed into your skin where the fabric seam had been and your hair was flat on one side and mushed on the other. You blinked up at him, swaying where you sat, eyes glassy and unfocused in the gold lamplight.
He sank into the space he’d cleared, the cushion dipping, tipping the two of you a fraction into each other. That was all the invitation your body apparently needed, because you folded into him without a beat of thought — too tired to second-guess it, he supposed — your temple finding the warm of his shoulder, your whole side melting against his. You drew your knees up and tucked them against his thigh. Your hand came to rest on his chest, palm flat, fingers spreading once before they went still. You exhaled after a moment, long and slowly, and burrowed your nose into his neck.
Jack stilled.
“Ten minutes,” you murmured, the words barely coming out as words.
He took his arm off the back of the couch and settled it around your back, broad hand spanning between your shoulder blades and drawing you that last fraction deeper into him. You went boneless with it, a small contended hum slipping out of you.
Because he couldn’t help himself, he tipped his head down a fraction to say into your hair, “Been doin’ really well, y’know that, sweetheart?”
You hummed, the sound of it vibrating against his throat, your fingers curling the faintest bit in his scrubs. “Thanks, Jack.”
“Gonna be a good nurse,” he murmured, thumb moving once along your shoulder.
“Gonna work with you,” you mumbled, three-quarters gone. “You said.”
“Mhm.”
“Holdin’ you to it.”
“Yeah, I know you are.” The corner of his mouth flicked up where you couldn’t see it. “Go to sleep. You can hold me to it in ten minutes.”
When you didn’t answer for a second, Jack realized you were already gone. You were warm and trusting at his side, your hand slack over his heart, your breath sinking deep and even into his neck.
Jack let his head tip back against the couch, pinching his eyes shut at the feeling of you, at the feeling you caused. His hand spread slowly across your back, feeling the breath go through you — the proof of you — and he let his thumb find the curve of your shoulder and rest there, keeping his eyes shut. He sat with the enormous fact of you, the girl he’d not seen anyone circle back for, gone soft and so pliant in his arms like she’d always belonged there, and he stopped pretending he wasn’t already lost.
The ten minutes came and went. He let them. He’d have given you the whole night, the whole shift, the whole of whatever this was turning into. There wasn’t one place on the earth worth standing up for, and he’d known it for weeks, and only now, with your breath slow against his throat, did he let himself sit all the way inside of the knowing.
Jack came out of the OR and signed — albeit distantly, mind running a meter a minute about nothing good — what needed signing and said the things he was meant to, feeling the familiar piece of his own damn soul rotting away in the place those things went to rot. He knew the spot by now. It’d been decades of depositing them into the same place, and the place didn’t fill, exactly, but it never emptied, either. It just sat there, getting heavier, like things usually do when you keep adding to it and never take anything out.
This one would sit a while. Jack had started to sense it around the first year in this job; the ones that stayed had a weight, and you knew on the table whether you were getting one of those or whether it’d wash off by morning. This one wouldn’t.
He stripped his gloves, and somebody said something he answered without hearing, and then his feet simply walked past the board, carrying him down the hall toward the one door on the whole floor that wouldn’t have somebody else’s catastrophe behind it.
His hand was flat on the door. He was still wearing the gown, and he looked down and registered it too late. He should’ve changed it, left the thing in the dirty bin with the rest of what the shift had taken, the way he always did before he came to you, kept the two halves of the floor separate on purpose.
He opened the door. You were on the couch, one leg tucked under you and the other foot on the floor and a half-empty cup of coffee on the table going cold. You’d been doing something on your phone, or nothing, when the door opened, and you looked up with the easy expectant expression on your face you always had before it dropped. He watched it melt.
“Hey,” you said, making your voice soft.
“Hey.” His voice came out rough, and he almost winced as he heard it himself.
You set your phone face-down on the cushion and unfolded yourself from the couch and stood, crossing the room to close the gap between you. You stopped in front of him and looked up, your brow doing a small worried thing, and he let himself be looked at.
“Sit down,” you said. “You look like you’re gonna fall through the floor.”
He distantly registered you walking him to the chair — your hand finding his forearm, a light touch — and he let you. He folded into the chair like the strings of his own body had been cut, his elbows finding his knees and head dropping.
He heard you move, small domestic sounds of you filling a cup, the tap somewhere down the hall turning on then shutting off. Then your socks were back in his eyeline, toes pointed to him.
“Here.” You crouched, came into his lowered field of vision, and pressed a cup into his hands — water, cold — and folded his fingers around it when they were slow to close. “Drink it all.”
He drank because that was the path of least resistance. The water caught something he hadn’t registered was bone-dry. You took the empty cup out of his hands when he was done, setting it on the table behind you, and then he felt your hands find his shoulders.
He flinched just slightly, the smallest involuntary thing, for nobody touched him like that. Nobody put their hands on him that weren’t shaking one of his or needing something from him. You settled your thumbs into the iron base of his neck and pressed slowly, working the knots the night, the days, the weeks, and probably the year had wound there.
Your thumbs were unsure of themselves — you weren’t good at it, you weren’t trying to be, you were simply trying — and that was somehow worse because it got further to him than skill would have; there was the unpracticed earnestness to it, like you’d simply decided his shoulders had been holding too much and you wanted to put your hands there to take some of it down.
He felt his head drop lower, coming forward on its own, the tension bleeding out of his neck by degrees under your hands. Your thumbs found a place at the top of his spine that had been clenched so long that it had stopped registering as pain, and you pressed there, and a fraction let go. He felt his shoulders drop the inch they’d been holding up all night, and an uneven breath went out of him.
You kept your hands moving, your thumbs working the meat of his shoulders through the cotton, occasionally finding a knot and leaning your weight into it until it gave.
His head tipped a little forward after a stretch of time — chasing, or simply falling — and it found the soft of your stomach. His forehead rested against the front of you, where you stood close in the gap between his knees. He hadn’t intended for it, or maybe he had, somewhere under where the intention happened, his body had chosen to stop holding its own weight and give it to the nearest thing that felt like it’d take it. His eyes were already shut, and he stayed there, hands coming up on their own to rest at the sides of your waist. His fingers anchored into the fabric of your shirt.
“Shitty job sometimes,” he mumbled after a moment.
“Yeah,” you said softly above him. “I bet it is.”
Your fingers had found his hair, threading through the curls. Then, you added quietly, “But you’re really good at it.”
His fingers tightened a fraction at the fabric on your waist as he let out a short huff.
“Didn’t help him,” he said finally, the words coming out muffled behind his own mouth. “Whatever I’m good at didn’t help him.”
“Maybe not.” Your fingers scraped carefully at his scalp. “I think you were the best shot he had.”
He breathed you in, choosing to let the words rest in his skull for a while instead of fighting them.
“I’m — ” He heard you take in a breath and felt it go through your whole body. “I’m really grateful I met you, Jack.”
For some reason, he waited for you to take it back. There was a primally fast thing in him that told him that you’d take the words back, and he’d have understood.
“You don’t have to say anything,” you added. “I just wanted you to know. While you’re here being all — ” Your thumb moved at the back of his neck, tender and so gentle. “ — Figured it was a decent time to tell you I’m glad you exist.”
He took in a shaky breath against you, fingers tightening again.
“Thank you, sweet girl,” he said, and it sounded like it’d been punched out of him. “Likewise. More than you know,” he finished, his arms wrapping around the rest of your waist now, pulling you in like he could just fold himself smaller if he held hard enough.
Your fingers kept moving slowly in his hair, your other hand coming around the back of his head to hold him there. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d let anybody do this; as far as he could remember, he’d decided in some wordless permanent way that he’d carry his own weight from then on, that it was cheaper, that needing somebody was a bill that came due eventually and he’d rather not run the tab.
“You should sit,” he said after god knows how long without letting go. “Selfish, keepin’ you standing here.”
“It’s okay.”
He hummed, thumb moving once at your waist. “Two more minutes then.”
“Whatever you need, Jack,” you said, voice quiet. “I’m not going.”
Jack’s phone lit up on the arm of the couch at 10:52, face-down, buzzing itself a quarter-inch off the leather before he caught it.
He’d been working his way, with grim completionist patience, through an iceberg video you’d sent him three days ago with the message ‘THIS rabbit hole i need you to fall down.’ You’d followed it up by telling him, ‘do Not skip tiers!!’ He hadn’t skipped tiers. He was, in fact, ninety minutes deep and only about two-thirds down the pyramid, somewhere in the tier where a young man with a serious voice was explaining internet folklore he couldn’t believe was real.
He was fairly sure it’d been invented by some teenager, but Jack only shrugged, distantly wondering why on earth anyone would spend the labor — the diagrams, alone — hoaxing a thing this elaborate for an audience of complete strangers. He also wondered why on earth you were so interested in this. As quickly as the thought arrived, he realized that he was working down the iceberg himself.
Working down a thing you’d handed him felt adjacent to sitting next to you, and his apartment had become the sort of quiet that made adjacent worth ninety minutes of contemporary folklore. He’d sooner have chewed glass than admitted it out loud.
It was a good apartment and an unwitnessed one. He’d realized somewhere in the past year it was untouched by any hand but his. Every object was exactly where he’d last set it down, for there was no second person to nudge the remote three inches or leave a hair tie on the counter or ask why there was a mug in the sink and no bowl. His leg was off for the night, propped against the arm of the couch, the whole standing weight from his night shift to SWAT calls finally set down somewhere it was allowed to stay.
So, the phone going off, went off loud in the silence that had become almost-permanent. Your name lit across the screen, and the picture with it (one you’d set yourself, commandeering his phone to do it). It was already strange that it was a call. You never called; you texted in floods, six messages deep before he’d gotten to the first, but the ringing meant the thing had gotten past the point where typing it out would hold.
He looked at your laughing face buzzing on his phone for a second too long, the cold little instinct, and thumbed it green.
“Hey,” he said. “You know it’s almost eleven on my night-off. This better be good.”
You stayed silent for a second, and he could hear your breath and the hollow of a call connected in a car, the cooling engine’s tick and automotive acoustics.
“Hey,” you said finally, and Jack felt it wrongly. The back half of the word had gone soft and unsteady at the end.
Jack was already sitting up. “Hey, yourself,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He heard you swallow quickly. “Sorry. God, this is so dumb. You — were you asleep?”
“I was almost through with your iceberg, if you want the truth.”
You made a sound that tried to be a laugh but didn’t clear the runway, breaking apart halfway. “You watched it?”
“Almost.” His fingers were drumming against his prosthetic leaning by the couch now. “Are you out?”
“I’m —” You paused, then hummed like you were debating. “I’m kind of near your place, actually?” Your voice rose toward the end, like you were embarrassed or questioning it all yourself. “I know. It’s creepy. But I think I need to — talk to you.”
“Yeah?” He tried to keep his voice light, though he could already feel something in his body start racing, panicking. “You break something?”
“No. No. Promise. It’s nothing like that.”
For some reason, that put a deeper hook in him. If it wasn’t a wrist, an ankle, or your body doing something it shouldn’t, then it was the other kind, and he had no idea how to hold something like that. He wasn’t sure what he could do with a sprain he couldn’t ice.
“Okay — ”
“Wait,” you interrupted, voice pitching higher, and he could see you were psyching yourself out. “I could just say it now, honestly. It’d probably be easier over the phone.”
Jack’s eyes widened a fraction at that. His stomach suddenly felt cold.
“No,” he said, voice rougher than he’d intended. “I won’t make it hard. Whatever you want to say, I promise. Just — not like this, okay? Come here.”
He listened to you breathe as you weighed it and knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he wouldn’t like what you were going to say. “Okay,” you breathed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Jack opened the door after the first knock, unembarrassed of waiting. You’d come as you were, a coat thrown open over sleep clothes, good wool hanging loose over a thin cami with lace at the collar and soft shorts and bare legs down to the sneakers you hadn’t laced properly. The second fact that registered to Jack was that you’d been crying; there was a soft ruin around your eyes, the mascara long gone, wiped with a sleeve somewhere back in the evening. Your hair was up and losing, a claw clip hanging looser than he believed it was meant to.
“Hi,” you said, eyes raising to meet his. “Thanks for letting me come by.”
Jack felt his shoulders rise to his ears just slightly at the formality. He felt like a bucket of ice had been dropped upon him because somewhere in the past few weeks, you’d stopped apologizing to him as much, which had felt like a small victory he never told you he was counting. And here it was again, your stiff little courtesy, the door swung back shut on a thing that had been open. Jack didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
“You don’t thank me for coming by,” he said gruffly, opening the door wider.
You came in, but only just. Before he could steer you to the warmth of his apartment, you were already reaching into the bag on your shoulder — hands shaking, he realized, with a fine tremor — and pulling out a folded piece of paper, creased hard down the middle and then again like you’d tried to bundle it up into a fist.
He unfolded it and smoothed out the edges, eyes looking for yours briefly, but you’d already looked away. Your bottom lip was between your teeth and you were looking at the ground. He forced himself to look down.
It was your pharmacology exam. Your cramped looping handwriting scattered the margins, a star drawn to one question because you starred everything. There was red pen all down the side and a number circled on the top. The number, Jack saw immediately, was not catastrophic, not a failure even. It was a low pass, the sort of grade that would’ve stung for Jack in his school days and evaporated by the next exam. He’d expected worse from the way you’d been shaking holding it.
He looked back at you, confused more than anything. “Congratulations, you passed.”
Your jaw tightened, and he could see your eyes go bright and wounded. “It’s a seventy-one.”
“That’s a pass.”
“Barely. Barely.” You took the paper out of his hands, folding it away like you couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. “And you helped me with this so much and I still couldn’t. I’m so tired of — ” You stopped, looking up at the ceiling as you pressed your lips flat. “It’s not about the test.”
“Okay.” He leaned back against the counter, giving you the whole floor of the room. “Talk, then.”
You looked at him, and he watched you gather it all up, deciding, as it settled into your face, your mouth, whatever you’d come here to say.
“I don’t wanna waste your time anymore,” you said, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as your eyes landed on the wall behind him. “I can’t — it’s not fair.”
Jack felt the whole floor shift under him and felt his brows go up an inch as he tried to keep his face seem collected.
“You’re you,” you continued. “You’ve got a whole life, a hard one, and I’ve been just — dumping mine on you. Making you sit there and hold my hand through studying and I’m — ” You shook your head, face going grim as you said the words. “It’s not fair to you. You’ve been carrying me for so long, and it’s not fair. None of this is yours to carry. I’m not yours to carry.”
His nose scrunched just slightly, something like burning blooming at the center of his face. Something in his chest had cracked along the seam he had no idea was there, because he’d never had to look at it once straight on. It was easy to carry your own weight when there was no one asking to take some. It was easy to call solitude a principle when nobody had ever made the alternative real. And you had. You’d made it real for months, and here you were proposing — no, telling — to take it back, to hand him his loneliness again because of some measurement of fairness.
The horror of how much Jack didn’t want it — how badly, how completely he didn’t want to go back to how it was before you — was the first honest look he’d taken at himself in longer than he could stand to count.
“That so?” was all he could say, voice roughening as his brows narrowed at you.
“Yes.” You mistook the roughness for agreement, or maybe you just needed to do so, because you kept going. “You don’t have to help me. The only thing I can think is you’re — you are a good person and I was there. And you help people, it’s what you do.” Your hand waved in the general direction of him as your voice cracked. “So help someone who’d actually make it worth it. Who won’t barely pass and keep getting too drunk and — ” You laughed slightly, and it was all wet and terrible, the sound. “I’m a bad use of you. You’re this — you are so much, Jack, and I’m a bad place to put it. So put it somewhere better.”
Jack had to force a swallow when you ended your words with a sharp intake of breath, the pool behind your eyes slipping free slowly down your cheeks. You’d run out of anything that’d make you wipe it away now, and that undid him worse than the crying itself, that you were standing there and letting it fall, done hiding, wrung all the way out.
“I’m sorry — ” he started.
“It’s okay,” you said immediately, shaking your head.
“For making you think that’s what it was,” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s on me, that you talked yourself into thinking this has been some sort of charity.” He cocked his head to the side then, wishing you’d look up at him. “But you’re gonna quit shaking your head for one minute, and hear the rest, ‘cause you got it wrong. All of it, backwards and upside down.”
He came off the counter and closed the space himself, until you had to lift your chin to keep his eyes.
“I’m not a man who spends his nights on a stray out of the goodness of his heart. Ask anyone I work with what I’m like. I don’t have that lying around spare.” His jaw tightened. “So take the halo off. That’s not what this was.”
“Then why — ”
“You,” he said plainly, for he learned it cost him nothing to do so, and a lot if he didn’t. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone. There’s nowhere else I want to put it.”
He watched everything in your face tighten at his words, the disbelief and reflex to argue all curdling underneath.
“If you don’t want this.” Me. Me, he wanted to say. “Say it. I’ll leave you alone. You don’t owe me anything.”
“That’s not — ”
“But don’t act like it’s some favor for me.” He was closer now than he’d been. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving for my sake. That’s a lie.”
“It’s not — ”
“It’s a lie,” he said, voice going flat and so final, as he slowly nodded his head. He looked at you a second, lips coming between his teeth, then looked away as he felt something physical seize over his entire body.
Jack himself had to process the words as he said them, because he was only just realizing how much truth they held.
“You make it good.”
He forced himself to look back at you, and you had tilted your head now to look up at him, caught and still as stone, the arguing gone completely off your face now and replaced with something more frightened.
“Don’t — ” One of Jack’s shoulders came up in a half-hearted shrug. “You’re the one part of my day that doesn’t take anything out of me. Just — get that straight, sweetheart.”
You were just looking up at him with your whole face undone, the tears gone still on it, as though his words had knocked your own clean out of you.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” you said quietly. “People don’t — that’s not a thing that happens to me, Jack. Being — ” Your sentence broke apart and your hand had come up and fisted loosely in front of his shirt without either of you deciding it should, holding on, holding him there. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Nothing.” His hand came up slowly and covered yours where it fisted in his shirt, holding it flat there against his chest. “It’s just true.”
You made a small, pained sound and dropped your forehead against his sternum, right where his hand held yours, and he felt the whole strung-tight weight of you gave at once and settled into him. He felt you breathe against his shirt at the same time he felt his own pulse going too fast on your knuckles; he wasn’t bothered enough to try and slow it, because there was no point now. You’d already found out.
“Very grateful for you,” he murmured, his other hand pulled up to rest over the back of your skull. “Told you so earlier. Meant it more than you let yourself hear.”
You huffed against his shirt — half a sob, half a laugh, maybe the ruined cousin of both — and he felt it go through the cotton and land warm against his skin, felt your fingers uncurl a fraction from the fist they’d made then re-fist, like even now some part of you was checking he was still there to hold onto.
Jack held still for it, same as you had in the family room for him. He was good at holding still, it was half the job, but this was a different kind — he supposed — where there was a plain animal willingness to be a wall for as long as you needed one and not move a muscle that might spook you out of it.
He rested his chin at the top of your head, murmuring, “I don’t have to tutor you anymore, if that’ll help.” He swallowed, closing his eyes as he breathed in your faint perfume. “We can scrap the whole thing, if that’s what’s making you feel so bad.”
You stilled for a second, then made a small sound against him.
Despite himself, despite it all, he let out a short chuckle. “S’okay. I’m the reason you got a seventy-one. You’re allowed to switch.”
“You’re the reason it’s a seventy-one and not a thirty,” you said, and it came out muffled and immediate. You almost sounded cross, like you didn’t want the slander against him to stand even now.
After a moment against him, you added, “I don’t want to be just someone you help, I think. I don’t want to be somebody — I guess — that you’re just good to.”
When Jack hummed, you continued, “I don’t know what I wanna be instead. Just — a friend — or, I don’t know. Something that goes both ways.”
Jack’s chest swelled at the words. He felt that he’d have been anything you asked of him, simply because it had just become how it was. It was almost outrageous how, if you’d asked, he’d have handed it over, the whole rest of it, whatever you wanted the name to be, whatever box you needed him in.
A man his age was supposed to be past this. He was supposed to have calcified somewhere in the second decade of the job into something that didn’t reorganize himself around what someone he’d known properly only for the better part of the year had asked him.
“Consider it done,” he murmured, letting the word settle. Friend.
You breathed against him, and Jack felt himself want to remain exactly here and knew that he shouldn’t. He knew that the kind thing now was to give you somewhere to put your face that wasn’t his chest, some ordinary ground for you to set your feet back down on.
“C’mon.” He got a hand on your shoulder and eased you off him gently, a slow, slow reclaiming of the eight inches of air between your body and his. He dipped his head to catch your eyes, which were pink-rimmed and swollen and doing their utter best to avoid his now that the worst was out of you. “Do you want me to order food?”
Your neck rolled back slightly as you met his eyes, caught slightly off-guard at the shift of tone. You blinked. “That was a lot, and now you’re asking about food?”
“It was a lot,” he agreed. He reached up and thumbed a smudge of leftover mascara from under your eye briskly, and you let him. “And now it’s done. So, food, and we can watch the stupid video you sent me before you head home.”
It had been six days since you showed up at his apartment, and Jack had embarrassingly counted every single one of them. You’d left his apartment somewhere past two with your eyes finally dry and a paper bag of his leftover Thai you’d protested and taken anyway, and he’d walked you down to your car and stood in the lot like some idiot in a movie until your taillights turned off his street, and then he’d gone back up to a quiet that felt, for the first time in years, like something had been in it.
Since then it had gone like it always had and nothing like it; you still turned up with flashcards and left a graveyard of half-drunk coffees on every surface. But he’d noticed how you started letting him sit closer now, let a compliment land without flinching off, and once, mid-story, had reached over and fixed his scrub top where it had folded under, casual as breathing.
Friend was the word you’d settled on. Jack was thinking about that when Shen dropped into step beside Jack with a cup of fresh Dunkin sweating in his hand.
“You know it’s not standard to let your girlfriend occupy the family room for three hours of your shift, right?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jack immediately clarified. It seemed more important to do now than it was earlier, when people only knew you when you came in as an emergency. Still, it felt wrong, like a key going in the wrong hole. “And you got a problem with it?”
Shen lifted the coffee in surrender, unbothered. “You know we’ve grown to her. She and I do the Wordle every midnight.” Then, he spread one hand. “Administratively, she’s not staff. She’s not a patient. She’s not family of a patient. Which leaves the category I’d have to call —” He tilted his head, faux thoughtfulness. “ — Abbot’s girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s in the handbook.”
“Try again,” Jack drawled, thumbing a form he wasn’t reading that didn’t need to be read. “She’s a nursing student getting hours of free tutoring off a board-certified attending. Put that in the handbook. Teaching hospital. I’m teaching.”
Shen shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “Alright. Alright. She’s not your girlfriend. Mind if I ask her out, then?”
Jack snorted. “If you could only be so lucky.”
“Clearly she has a type for attendings,” he pressed, grinning. “Or is it just the ones with gray hair?”
Jack looked at him sideways. “This is getting a bit weird, even for you.”
“I’m happy for you, man. Even if you’re gonna make us all watch you not do anything about it for the next six months.”
“Mind your own damn business.”
“Sure,” he turned, lifting a hand over his shoulder as he went. “Close the blinds anyway. There’s a window on that door. Everyone can see her making you dumb.”
Jack looked down the hall and set the form down before going there to close the blinds — telling himself it was for the window, for Shen’s real talk — and knowing, somewhere under that, that he was really just going to you.
He could see you through the window in the door before he reached it, which was, he supposed, exactly Shen’s point. You had a textbook open in your lap and you were chewing the end of your highlighter, brow pulled in, mouthing something to yourself, working a card over your head. You’d pulled the sleeves of one of his old sweatshirts down to your hands, the one you’d swiped from his locker two weeks ago and never given back and that he’d never once asked for, because he’d found he didn’t want it back, found he liked seeing it swallow you.
You gave him a smile when he walked in. He reached up and tipped the blinds shut on the window with two fingers, the floor outside tipping away.
“Why’d you close them?” you asked, slightly bored.
“Apparently the whole department’s been getting a show.”
You furrowed your brows then. “A show of what? Me failing?”
“Somethin’ like that.” He let it go at that, coming around and lowering himself onto the couch beside you, the cushion dipping and tipping you toward him a degree, what it always did that neither of you ever corrected. “How’s it going? Honest.”
“Honestly?” You blew out a breath, closing the highlighter. “I’d kill for a drink.”
“Oh?” Jack settled back against the couch, his arm coming up along the top of it behind you. “Telling that to the one man who’s seen what you look like at the bottom of the bottle.”
“Jaaaack,” you said, almost in a whine. “Let’s go to a bar.”
He snorted, dragging a hand down his face. “Now I’m wondering what’s pushing you toward the edge.”
He picked the flashcard you had set on the textbook, the one you’d been studying. He read the front of it without much intention — your handwriting was cramped and looping, a star drawn next to it — and turned over and checked the back. He did the same thing he always did, the story, the image; he’d done it a hundred times by now. He could do it half-asleep, and most nights he half was.
You thought about it for a second, your bottom lip tugged between your teeth, then walked yourself to the answer.
“Mhm. See. Good,” he murmured. He flipped the card to the back to check you, and you’d had it. Of course you’d had it, you’d had more of this than you ever gave yourself credit for. “Tell you what. Get the next three right, and I’ll get us a drink once your exams are done.”
Your brows narrowed. “Bribe?”
“It’s an incentive.” He held up the next card, eyes on you. “Don’t think. Just answer me.”
You did. One, then the next, then the one after. You were quicker now that there was something on the end of it, your lip caught between your teeth as you walked yourself there each time. He noticed you worked when there was something to earn. After all three, he hummed. “See. Good girl, there you go.”
He felt you go still beside him, and his eyes flickered up to you to see your eyes dropping to your textbook. He stayed silent a second, eyes raking over you, your thumb running the worn edge of a card back and forth.
Jack knew better than to point out how you being flustered was almost silly when he’d said the same words many times while taping you up or shining a penlight in your eyes. He let his arm stay where it was along the couch, hand not quite touching your shoulder, and watched the side of your face.
“You wanna do some more?” he said finally, voice coming out rougher. “Or are we done for the night?”
You held up a finger, as if telling him to wait.
“Okay, then,” he mumbled, leaning back further against the couch. “Take your time.”
After a second, he turned to say something dry to break the silence. You’d turned your head, too, and were closer than he initially realized, your eyes coming up off the card and finding his, near enough that whatever he had bubbling in his throat died there immediately.
Jack hummed involuntarily. You closed the sound by pressing your mouth to his, the feeling of the plushness so very featherlight, there and barely there, the softest press.
He went still as stone, every system in him locking at once. His hand was still along the back of the couch and his mouth hadn’t answered yours, not because he didn’t want to — God, he did — but because the entirety of him had gone still with the disbelief of it, with the you, here, choosing this — him — and the half-second of nothing stretched into a second, too damn long.
He’d seized on you, the fact you’d nearly walked, had stood in his kitchen finding the kindest way to disappear, and here you were, closing the last of the distance yourself.
You pulled back like you’d touched a stove, a gasp leaving your mouth, replacing where his own had been.
“Oh god.” Your hand flew up to your mouth, your eyes going wide before pinching shut completely. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, Jack. I read that so, so wrong. You’ve been so nice and I — fuck, I’m sorry.”
Jack made a pained sound that was lost somewhere in your ramble, at the sight of you snatching it back. Nothing had gone wrong. Jack knew you’d read nothing wrong, and that the only thing that had happened was that he’d been too slow, too stunned, too thirty-years-rusty to catch what had been handed to him in good reflex.
His hand came off the back of the couch and he caught your jaw, thumb on your chin as he pushed slightly against your skin. He was distantly aware that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so afraid about leaning in to kiss a woman, and went in to try and give you back the second he lost, mouth finding yours the exact way every bone in his body knew he should’ve the first time.
You made a startled sound against him before the entirety of you melted. His mouth worked against yours, thoroughly, making sure not to fumble it twice. His thumb stayed on your chin, tilting your face the half-degree he wanted it, and when your lips parted on half a breath, his entire upper body leaned in to follow it, deepening it.
It was you who moved first. Of course, it was you, always you. You followed it, the kiss pulling you up and forward, your knee coming over his thigh, and then you were settling over him. Jack let out the throatiest of a chuckle, still intent on keeping your mouth, as your hands slid from the front of his scrubs to his jaw.
Jack’s hands caught yours on instinct — one at your waist, one at your hip — steadying you down to him, your hips still slightly in the air like you weren’t sure you could close the last of the distance, your weight held in the suspended air in the ache of almost, thighs braced on either side of his.
Jack pulled back just enough to look at you, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch, dragging his eyes up the length of you poised over him. He blew out a short breath, the corners of his lips kicking up as his palm glided up and down on the side of your waist, catching onto your tank top on accident to show a sliver of skin at your lip — warm, soft, the band of your shorts sitting low — and he watched his own hand do it before he dragged his eyes back to your face.
“Nothing halfway with you, huh?” he said, the words practically coming out from his chest. His thumb rested against that bared sliver of you. “Climbing me at my work.”
You lowered your head, and your nose grazed against his. “You started it.”
“I did?”
“You closed the blinds.”
He let out a surprised laugh. “I can promise you I didn’t expect this when I did that.”
Your lips ghosted over his for a second, and his chest swelled at the sight of you trying to tamp down the sweetest smile. “Problem?”
“No.” The words came out immediately, because apparently somewhere in him, there was still something insatiable and teenage that had lurched up at the sight of you. “No. No problem.”
His hand spread flat and warm against the small of your back, fingers slipping under the hem of the top to your warm skin there, and he drew you down, finally, that last suspended inch collapsing as he settled your weight flush over him.
He had to pinch his eyes shut a second, then open them again to take in the whole sight of you. His hand came up to your jaw. The light caught the loose hair at your temple, the bare line of your shoulder where the strap had slipped. Your mouth was full and flushed from his, parted slightly, your breath coming. The skin under his hand at your back was hot to the touch, and he spread his fingers wider against it just to feel more of it.
You were trying not to smile. Your lip caught between your teeth, the corners pulling anyway.
His finger perched against your jaw moved to your lips, dragging slowly across the lower one, parting it under the pad of his thumb. He watched it give, your breath warm against his skin.
Your eyes flicked up to his as your lip closed around the first knuckle, your tongue hesitantly pressing flat against the pad, the wet heat of it catching him so completely off guard that the air went out of him in a rough exhale. His other hand fisted at the small of your back, turning over to gather the hem of your tank in his grip.
“Oh.” His eyes had dropped to your mouth and fixed there, his jaw slack as his head cocked to the side. “Pretty.”
His gaze was locked on the sight of his thumb disappearing past your lips, no hesitation in it, that same no-halfway boldness turned filthy and sweet all at once. The tired man in him went down all at once.
His thumb dragged free, catching on your bottom lip and tugging it down before it slipped loose. His chest heaved harder now under the warm weight of you.
“Where’d that come from?” he muttered gruffly, almost to himself, thumb pressing the slick of your own lip back against you. His palm moved to cradle your face, tapping your cheek softly once. “Can’t be doing things like that here, doll. I’m on call.”
“Then don’t make it so easy.” Your lips brushed his thumb, then you moved down to press your mouth to the line of his jaw, the stubble catching your lips, then lower to the warm of his throat.
“You callin’ me easy?” he said through a chuckle, letting his head tip back. You scraped your teeth over the cord of his neck and felt the whole of him go tight underneath you, his fingers flexing hard into the bare skin of your back.
“Alright.” His voice had dropped to stone. “You’ve had your fun.. No more of that,” he said, though made no move to stop you.
You peppered a line of pecks down his throat down to where his collar had started, your lips dragging over the jut of his collarbone through the thin cotton. He swallowed. One of your hands slid up to the back of your neck, fingers pushing into the soft gray at his nape, scratching light, and the other flattened over his chest, over the steady-then-not rhythm, fisting slow in the fabric just to feel him breathe wrong because of you.
You sat back an inch to look at him. His head was still tipped back against the couch, his throat bared where you’d left it momentarily pink and glossy, his eyes half-lidded. His hands had gone heavy and possessive at your hips, giving up pretending he wanted them anywhere else, you anywhere else.
You dragged your thumb over his bottom lip, watched it give, the same way he did to you.
“Can I ask you something?” you asked, quietly, your hips settling more firmly into his lap.
“Mm.” His hands spread wide, settling you down harder against him. “My social security number is — ”
You laughed.
“Two-two-six — ”
“Jack — ” You swatted at his chest, the seriousness dissolving into something giddier. “I’m being serious. Stop.”
“Okay, okay.” The corners of his mouth lifted up, and his hands squeezed slightly at your hips. He pulled his head up off the couch to meet your eyes properly. “Shoot. Doubt I could stop you.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
He let the question sit, humming. His thumbs moved idly at your hips, head tilting against the couch like the question required any real thought. “There’s a few women,” he said, lowering his voice as he looked at you, like he was letting you in on a secret. “There’s a nice lady who brings me fruit baskets.”
Your hand, on the flat of his chest, slid up slow to his throat and he kept talking like he didn’t notice.
“ — there’s this nurse on days who keeps leaving me her number at the station — ”
You leaned in and closed your teeth slightly on his earlobe. He let out a short laugh, one that was dragged out of him, his head tipped to give more of it to you without permission.
“Alright. Okay,” he said as your nose dragged the line of his jaw. “Stop doin’ that. I don’t wanna explain teeth marks to the whole floor.”
Your hips set firmer into his lap. “Jack,” you warned. “I can’t do this if you’re seeing fifty other women.”
He sobered a degree, his thumb going still at your waist, his eyes coming up to actually hold yours. The joke drained out of his face as he realised the edge of seriousness you tried to tamp down, and he momentarily short-circuited at how it was even possible for you to wonder.
“Hey.” His hand came up off your hip, pushed the hair back from your face and stayed there, cradling. “Until five minutes ago, there were zero women. Forget fifty.”
Your only response to that was a smile and your cheek leaning further against his palm. He let his thumb move once across his cheekbone, watching the way your cheek turned into his hand. Your eyes drifted half-shut. There was a speck of dried highlighter ink on the side of your finger where it curled against his throat. The strap of your top had slid off your shoulder again; he looked at all of you and stopped bothering to pretend, even to himself, that he was looking at anything other than the only thing in the room he wanted.
“What about you? You seein’ anyone?” His thumb stayed where it was, but his voice had gone quieter. “‘Cause I’ve seen people bring you in. And I never liked one of ‘em.”
You huffed a small laugh, your nose grazing his. “Jealous, Doctor?”
“Yeah.” He watched the laugh stall on your face at how easy he gave it up. “If there is, he should be worried. I’d like to take you on a nice date to change that.”
“Ohhhh,” you drawled through a laugh. “There’s no one, but I won’t say no to the date.”
“Then you’ve got yourself one, doll.” He kissed you on it — short, sure, his hand still cradling your face — sealing the thing as the corner of his mouth caught yours before he pulled back. He let his forehead rest against yours for a second and breathed you in.
Then, with a short groan, he tipped his head back off of yours.
“I gotta get back out there.” His thumb was still moving at your jaw, clearly working against the very thing he was saying. “My work ethic’s going wrong and my residents might actually report me.”
Then, his hands found your waist and he lifted you off, setting you off his lap and onto the cushion beside him where the entire thing had started. You landed with a small affronted sound, your hand fisting in his collar a beat longer before he had to let it go.
You flopped back into the cushion where he’d deposited you, one hand pressed flat to your chest, the picture of wounded. “I guess it’s true what they say about old men. They use you. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”
He stood up and scrubbed his palm down his face like he could wipe the last ten minutes off it before he had to walk out and be a doctor again. He could still feel the heat sitting at the back of his neck and even though he’d tried to scrub your gloss off, he was sure there was a remnant somewhere the worst possible person would notice.
“Yup, got exactly what I wanted. Thank you, ma’am.” His hand came down to rest at the top of your head and gave it a slow, condescending pat, ruffling the wreck of your hair worse than it already was. “I’m a terrible man. You’re welcome to stay here while I go be one somewhere else.”
He made himself step back and snagged his pen off the table, the badge, the small armor of the job clipping back into place piece-by-piece. The whole time his eyes kept catching on you, sprawled and rumpled where he’d set you down, looking up at him like the night had gone exactly where it was supposed to. He’d seen this room a thousand nights. He’d never once not wanted to leave it.
“Mm. Gotta go home. S’almost three,” you mumbled. “And you get off at seven.”
“I do.”
“So.” You pushed yourself off the cushion, slow, gathering your hair back off your face and pushing up your strap, putting yourself back together piece by piece the same way he was, the night closing in on both ends. “I’ll go and let you be a doctor. You’ve been very neglectful.”
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He watched you reach for your textbook, your highlighter, the flashcards, and sweep it all back into your bag, feeling the small stupid pull of not wanting the room to empty out.
He stepped in before you finished, catching your jaw, tilting your face up to kiss you once more. You went still under it, the bag forgotten halfway zipped, your hand coming up to rest light on his chest. He pulled back an inch to look at you.
“Text me when you get home,” he said, thumb dragging along your jaw.
You chuckled, brows pulling in. “It’s a ten minute drive.”
“Text me. Humor an old man, since I’m so terrible to you already.”
my goat wrote this and it’s effing AMAZING
Please stop filling the ‘x reader’ tags (and smut/angst/fluff) with responses to your inbox
I’m searching for a fic, not your response to an ask.
it’s not x reader, it’s not a oneshot/blurb/chapter, so please don’t put it in the tag where people go to find fics.
I get that people may really love a fic of yours! and will send things in your inbox and you have every right to answer them and the praise is well deserved!
but I’m clicking on the tag to read fics, not to read the responses to your asks as if it’s an Instagram stories “ask me anything” question box…
I specifically avoid blogs where I see their inbox in tags more than I see their fics…
no hate to anyone! Please don’t take this as me hating on you or saying you should not respond to your inbox, you should! Just don’t do it in the ‘x reader’ (smut/fluff/angst) tag!
I acknowledge that this is hypocritical, as I’m using the tags im asking people not to use in posts that aren’t a fic - but I’m using them ONCE, to spread some awareness of me asking this, to the tags, some people may agree with me and agree it’s annoying and some may not.
Either way, this is ONE post, I won’t tag them again, so you can go back to browsing for things to read :)
alright, i'll be the one to say it. ao3 and tumblr becoming "mainstream" did so much damage to the community and the writers. i have seen loads of videos and posts about:
1. people hating on writers and fics. writing is something we do for free and for fun. if you stumble upon a fanfic that isn't necessarily your cup of tea or you just don't like, scroll. dont read it. literally leave their page. you don't know if this could be the author's first work that they're so excited about, you dont know if the language they're writing in isn't their first language, you dont know that the writer could be a literal teen and loads of other reasons. fanfictions don't HAVE to be perfect. you write what you want to write because we do it for fun and enjoyment and we want to share that to the world. seriously, what is the wrong with that?..
2. x reader consumers getting WAY too entitled. the number of tiktoks i've seen that say "i run a strict program when it comes to reading fanfics." girl you aint running shit. this is FAN FICTION you're reading. F A N F I C T I O N. there is no denying that most fanfiction writes are beyond talented but just because you read one fanfic that exceeds your expectations doesn't give you the right to talk down on others that don't. people have their own personal writing style, their way of doing things and you talking shit on that isn't right.
at the end of the day, we are all humans, reading and writing is what we do and what we're meant to do. and for you to talk shit about a person WRITING is so insane. we are humans. not some robots that you can tell what to do so you can consume it.
i've seen so so many authors take down their fanfics and losing all motivation to write because of a hate comment. DONT LIKE DONT READ‼️
and to every author reading this, this community values your work and your contribution. we love u and, please, never let anyone's negative words have an effect on you.
summer mornings with robby…
the sun was barely even up and you felt robby shift beside you. you stirred, shutting your eyes tight as you fell out of your rem cycle. your legs were sore, moving around under the comforter as you pulled the sheets closer.
the night before was… a lot. robby had a particularly bad day at work, which prompted you to encourage him to take it out on you, per usual. it was hot and heavy rounds, which he was even surprised he could pull off.
you hadn’t done much the day before, but your sleep schedule was highly trained into the later hours of the evening and the later hours of the morning. who could blame you, though— summer.
not that you were a light sleeper, but something in you head rang an alarm for robby’s absence. your arm swung up and down the sheets, feeling the suddenly cold folds and wrinkles of cotton.
you remember falling asleep while rubbing your hand up and down the hair on his torso, from his chest to the swell of his belly. you were making some joke out of it, but it ended it up being really soothing. his hand over yours was the last thing you felt before the lights went out on you.
lifting your head, you peeked over your shoulder to see that the sun hadn’t even surfaced the windows yet. robby’s alarm clock had a bright red 5:53 shining at you.
“robby!” you groaned before stuffing your head back in the pillows.
“yeah, sweetheart?” you heard the sound of his electric toothbrush buzzing as he padded back into the bedroom from the en suite. he was undoubtedly scrubbing over his teeth harshly, like his life depended on it.
popping your head back up, you peeked at him again. he was blurry from a distance and still in his boxers. his hairy tummy spilling over and hair damp from the shower, he came slightly closer to the bed.
“too early.” you complained, gesturing for him to get back in.
“go back to bed then, honey.” he said before you groaned again, throwing the duvet over your head.
you didn’t realize that you had fallen back asleep. you were cocooned under the sheets, snug and comfortable. you didn’t want to move until you realized you were about to lose robby for twelve hours (likely more).
robby was sitting up in his scrubs at the edge of the bed, checking his phone, when you perked up. rubbing your eyes, his back facing you came into focus, as did the alarm clock. 6:20.
“morning, baby.” you sighed, reaching your arms out to him. your body lazily drooped over the mattress to meet his backside as your arms slung over his shoulders.
“morning, gorgeous.” he mumbled, leaning into you. his hand anchored onto your forearm. he had his glasses perched on his nose, turning his head over to attempt to see you. “i was thinking about waking you up to say goodbye, but ‘s early for you. go back to bed.”
you kissed the back of his neck with a tired whine, “uh, uh. want you.”
“got work, sweetheart.” he put his phone down as your arms grasped together.
you pulled your legs up to wrap around his waist. tiredly, you hoisted yourself onto his backside. you shifted around until you got comfortable, body practically crawling up his. you settled as you strapped to his back. resting your chin on his shoulder, you kissed him on the cheek.
“what’re your plans today, baby?” robby asked, looking at you as you squeezed your legs around him. he reached a hand to ruffle your hair.
“gonna go swimming at liv’s.” you mumbled, shutting your eyes. “uv’s eight today.”
“don’t forget sunscreen. i got the one you like… smells like bananas?” he said, brushing your hair out of your face. you peeked an eye at him as he spoke. “it’s in the hallway cabinet with the towels.”
“thank you, doctor.” you gave him a wide smile before leaning in for a kiss. his beard brushed your chin as you did so, and you could taste coffee on his mouth.
“doin’ anything else?” he asked, reaching his arm around you to pull you into his lap. his hand squeezed your waist as you maneuvered your legs over him.
you got comfortably on his lap, the small of your back fitting into his arms. your legs hung off his thigh and onto the bed. your side against his torso, his warmth radiated onto you and his hands found your skin.
slinging your arms around his neck, you looked up at him as you settled, “lunch and maybe some shopping.”
he grinned down at you as you adjusted his glasses up his face.
“well, of course.” he nodded, hand going to hold the side of your face. “you gonna send me pictures, baby?”
“of the pool or lunch or shopping?” you smiled
“i think you know the answer to that.” he chuckled, surfacing a hand over your thigh. “better see some charges on my card today.”
“you know me.” you yawned, resting your head in the nook of his neck
“you should get some rest. got a big day ahead, sweetheart.” he placed a kiss on your temple.
been thinking about crawling up robby’s back lately… like i wanna jump him affectionately? idk. is this beautiful life too much to ask for?
THAT PARTTTTTT
i love robby’s salt and pepper beard sm ☹️💗 like imagine him on a day off reading a book (glasses on), slightly slouched against the headboard as you lay on top of him and play with his beard and lay soft kisses against his jaw, i can’t 😭💗
cuddling with robby
you climb on top of robby, nudging his book where it rests on his chest to lay your head down in its place. robby lifts it to allow you to settle in before resting it on your back to continue reading, his other hand resting on your lower back rubbing slow circles between turning pages.
you place one hand on his chest to support yourself, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath. you press of a soft kiss against his jaw, the corner of his lips quirk up in a smile, his cheeks turning a light shade of flushed pink.
you reach your free hand up and cup his jaw, combing your fingers through his beard, nails scratching softly at his skin beneath the hair.
robby huffs a small contented sigh, “what’cha doing, honey?” he smiles, pressing a kiss to the top of your head before turning his attention back to his book.
“nothin…just loving you.” you giggle softly as his cheeks grow hotter under your finger tips, his smile growing wider.
“oh, well…in that case, carry on.” he chuckles, giving your side a little squeeze.
fluff! fluff! fluff! fluff! fluff! val’s written fluff everybody!!
want to be added to my robby taglist .ᐣ reply to this post ᝰ.ᐟ ( taglist is tagged from another acc )
robby masterlists
