summary: jack returns home from work, earlier than you expect him to, and catches you getting off to another's man voice. (2k)
pairing: jack abbot / fem!reader
contents: established relationship, shy!reader, basically just an excuse to write smth about that shawn hatosy quinn audio lol, not proofread, cw for smut 18+ (MDNI), caught in the act, oral (fem receiving), while listening to audio porn
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
In retrospect, Jack knew something was off the second he stepped through the door.
It was the strange quiet that tipped him off — your absence, more so. There was no soft padding of your footsteps down the hall, no half-distracted greeting from the couch where you’re usually curled up and watching some reality TV show (that Jack swears he hates but always gets a little too invested in), no absentminded “hi, honey” tossed over your shoulder as you tend to daily household chores.
Jack, for the first time in a long time, is greeted by nothing but silence. The clinking of his keys hitting the coffee table sounds much louder in the foreign quiet — so does the sound of his creaking footsteps down the hall. He worries that you’re sick, or worse, and then forces himself to shake away that thought as he heads for the bedroom.
“Baby?” he calls into the quiet, as his fingers twist on the cold brass knob. The silence he gets in return is hardly reassuring.
He pushes the squeaking door open, then freezes in the threshold when he finds you there — perfectly well and languishing in the unmade sheets. Your bulky headphones are snug over our ears; your head is tossed back against the pillow; your eyes are fluttered shut. Your phone rests just beside you, the screen glowing faintly in the lamplit room.
And, in the stillness, Jack can hear a subtle and unmistakable humming sound coming from beneath the blankets, where your knees are bent and spread.
Jack almost retreats. His instinct tells him to — to give you your privacy, to close the door, to pretend he hadn’t walked in on such an intimate moment. But something deeper roots him in place; the strange warm feeling swirls in his chest, maybe.
There’s something strangely intimate, he finds, in watching you when you think no one is looking — when you have nothing and no one to perform for. You look peaceful, completely undone, totally in your own world.
Jack freezes in the doorway when you shift on the bed, sinking further into the mattress as you adjust the vibrator between your thighs. It seems to hit the spot, as you exhale a whimpered sigh a second later.
So Jack just decides to watch you — he migrates to the desk chair, in hopes of relieving the strain of his prosthetic, but the old floorboards betray him with a soft creak.
You don’t react immediately, but your expression flickers a bit, as a subtle awareness prickles up your spine. You worry, briefly, that someone may be watching you — you always are, in a way, especially when your headphones are on — but you struggle now to shake the feeling.
Your eyes flutter open, if only to prove to yourself that there’s no one there, and they widen in shock when they land on Jack in the corner of the room.
“What the fuck—?” you exclaim, clicking the vibrator off with one hand and slinging off your headphones with the other.
Jack startles, too. His hands lift in surrender as a laugh sputters from his lips. “Sorry! Sorry, I— I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Your face burns red-hot. You can feel the heat climbing up your neck and to your ears as your eyes flit to his eyes and away again. “H-How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long,” he shrugs and crosses his strong arms over his chest. His freckled biceps strain against the sleeves of his black tee, which he wears tucked into his camo fatigues. A crooked smile tugs slow at his mouth as he tilts his head. “Two minutes. Give or take.”
“I thought you weren’t coming home until later— Why didn’t you say something?”
“I tried to,” he quips, brows raised to his hairline. “But then I realized you were having a pretty good time in here, so… I didn’t want to interrupt.”
You bury your burning face into your hands. “That’s so embarrassing…” you groan, muffled into your palms.
Jack’s laughter doesn’t make you feel any better.
“Why is it embarrassing?” he chuckles as he closes the distance between you.
You can tell that he’s limping from the quiet scuff in his step. The mattress sinks under his weight as he sits on the edge of it, relieving the ache in his amputated limb that he’s been carrying all day.
He looks over his shoulder at you, lips curling into a sly smirk when he can still hear your headphones playing from just beside you. It’s a muffled, indistinct humming that he can’t quite make out, but it’s very obviously someone else’s voice.
He nods towards it, silver curls turning golden in the amber light. “What are you listening to over there, huh?”
“Nothing,” you answer, a little too quickly, as you take the headphones back into your hands.
“Oh, yeah?” he hums. “Let me see.”
You jerk them away when he reaches out for them. “Don’t…” you murmur, all shy, like a scolded child.
“I’m not upset, baby,” he assures with a gritty laugh. “I just wanna know what you’re into. That’s all.”
He eases the headphone from your grip; this time, with little protest from you. He holds your weary gaze with his glimmering one as he slips them over his own ears. He’s met with a bassy, masculine voice: “—God, you’re so sexy… Look at how you’re dripping on my fingers, baby…”
You watch, mortified, as confusion etches across his weathered face — eyes squinting and brows lowering. “Who is this?” he asks.
“No one,” you mutter, gaze averted, as you pick at pills of cotton on the blanket with anxious hands. “He’s just… some guy on the internet. I don’t even know what he looks like, he just makes… You know… Audio stuff.”
“Audio stuff, huh?” Jack echoes with raised brows, before huffing a quiet laugh. “God, I’m old…”
He slides the headphones from his silver curls and passes them back to you with something different etched across his features now, something thoughtful. Curious. Interested, even.
“…You’re not mad?” you wonder in a timid voice.
“Why would I be mad?” he scoffs, then bounces a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I think it’s hot. I like knowing what you’re into.”
He leans in to kiss you, and your stomach does a back flip. His scruff brushes your delicate skin when his lips meet yours. You melt against him with a heavy sigh through your nose, as some of the embarrassment from before slips from your skin.
“C’mon,” he slurs between his kisses. “Keep listenin’ for me…”
You pull back, features screwed. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he nods once, without taking his unwavering stare off yours.
Your fingers tremble with hesitancy as you go to put the headphones back over your ears. Jack’s hand catches your wrist in a soft, calloused grip — redirecting you with a gentle touch.
“No,” he says in a gravelly voice, eyes low and lidded. “Let it play.”
He reaches over and taps your phone screen with his pointer finger — once to disconnect the wireless headphones and second to unpause the audio. The voice resumes, sounding a little foreign now as it plays throughout the otherwise silent bedroom.
“—You always get so sweet for me when I kiss your neck,” the masculine voice slurs.
Jack doesn’t miss a beat.
He props his fist beside your blanketed thighs and twists his upper body to lean in closer. His warm breath fans over your jaw right before he plants a wet kiss to your neck. Your jaw tightens as you fight back a shiver.
“See? I can feel your heart racing for me…” the stranger mumbles between mimed kisses. “Let me see if I can find that sweet spot, huh? Right… here…”
Jack’s teeth graze over your pulse point — not enough to hurt, but enough to make your breath hitch. You raise your hands to his shoulders, balling the fabric of his shirt into your fists. His mouth curls into a slow smile against you, and you sigh when his scruff brushes your delicate skin.
“You love this, huh?” Jack mumbles into your skin.
“This is…” you trail off in mild anguish. “Both incredibly hot and wildly embarrassing.”
“Why is it embarrassing?” the older man laughs, as his lips slide over the thrumming tendon of your neck.
“I don’t know…” you mumble, trailing your hands up and over his broad shoulders until your fingers find the silver curls at the nape of his neck. “I feel like… Like you just caught me watching porn or something, and now we’re watching it together— It just feels weird.”
Jack hums against you, as if it were a proposition that needed considering.
“Sounds pretty fun to me,” he hums and pulls off of you with a quiet click. His mouth is softly swollen from his kisses, and his eyes are lidded and glittering with mischief when they lock with yours. “Wanna try that later?”
You swallow hard, features crumpling in distant shame as you squeak out, “Yeah…”
Jack’s grin widens right before he presses it to your mouth — in a lengthier and more languid kiss that pushes you slowly back into the mattress again. You sigh hard through your nose when his tongue licks into you, like velvet in your mouth. Your fingers tug harder at his silver curls, and you smile to yourself when he groans quietly against you.
He follows the direction of the foreign male voice spilling from your phone, and it leads him to your spread legs — where a wet patch has already started to form in the thin cotton of your underwear. You melt into the mattress when his strong arms wrap around your thighs to hug you close against him.
“Look at how wet you are for me, baby… Your pussy’s just begging for my mouth, huh? God, you’re such a little slut for me, aren’t you?”
Jack freezes, mid-kiss on your inner thigh. He flashes you an amused look up your clothed body, clad in one of his oversized t-shirts that’s slipping off your shoulder now.
“Do you like being talked to like that?” he asks.
Your mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water for an embarrassing moment. “I… I don’t know… Maybe?”
“Hm… Good to know,” Jack nods and gets back to work.
“I’ll warm you up with my tongue first, okay? Nice and slow…”
Jack takes the instruction in stride.
He slips his pointer finger in the hem of your panties, slipping the fabric to the side, until your drooling pussy is on display for him — already needy and craving the orgasm it missed beforehand.
Jack ducks down to lick a fat stripe up the length of your cunt in time with the sound effects of the audio. His tongue slots just perfectly within your silken folds.
Your mouth parts in a silent moan as your head tips back against the pillow. You feel Jack smiling against you when your hips buck instinctively to chase his mouth.
“You like that?” he mumbles, in time with the foreign voice playing just beside you.
You exhale a breathless laugh that turns into a moan when Jack returns to your pussy, kissing you there like he would your mouth. He groans against you when your fingers twist harder in his curls; the vibrations only add to your sensitivity. Your whine swells within the walls of the quiet bedroom, entwining with the wet sounds from the audio and the realer ones coming from between your thighs.
“Now… How about I suck on the pretty little clit, huh? Get it nice and swollen for me…”
Your face flares at the overtly crude language.
Jack doesn’t miss a beat.
He spreads your velvety folds with his thumb and forefinger, bearing the most sensitive part of you for him. His lips wrap around your clit a second later, and your thighs clench instinctively around his head. His scruff prickles at your delicate skin when you jerk against him. A cry spills from your parted mouth before you can stop it.
“Wait, wait, wait—” you hear yourself say.
Jack pulls off of you with a quiet smack. His eyes are lidded; his mouth is swollen; his chin is coated in a layer of your slick. “Too much?” he asks.
You lift your head to stare down your body at the man between your thighs, nodding until the words catch up to you. “I’ll— I’ll cum too fast if you keep doing that.”
His brows lift as something teasing swims in his heavy eyes. “Isn’t that the point?”
Jack returns to your weeping pussy, licking and sucking you there, with noises far more lewd than the ones spilling from the speaker beside your head. There is no further protest from you, as he drags an orgasm from your trembling body — a much more powerful one than you would’ve gotten with just your vibrator, had he not walked in on you. His fingers threaten to dig bruises into the plush of your thighs as your hips twitch wildly against his face.
“Good girl— Good fucking girl,” the stranger’s deep voice croons throughout the quiet bedroom, coaching you through the orgasm Jack gives you with nothing but his tongue.
He caresses you gently on the comedown, with his calloused hands and his wet mouth, molding you back together again as he kisses his way back up your trembling body.
The voice on the phone continues while the two of you work with graceless limbs to undress — your fingers scramble with the buttons of his camo pants while he tugs his shirt up and over his body by the neckline.
A heavy sigh grumbles in the back of Jack’s throat when you free his half-hard cock from the confines of his boxers, pulling the hem down beneath his heavy balls. His muscular chest, flushed with need, heaves as you take him into your hand.
“I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?” the masculine voice continues to slur. “You don’t have to beg for it, baby, I’m gonna give it to you. I’m gonna give you all of it—”
Jack reaches for the phone again while you massage his cock the rest of the way hard; he feels like heavy velvet in your fist. He taps the screen to pause it.
“Alright, enough of that,” he huffs as he shifts on his knees. “I need to focus.”
You blink up at him, a little dazed from your lingering orgasm, as a smile curls slowly at your lips. “Aren’t you supposed to be good at multitasking, Dr. Abbot?”
“Multitasking’s for paperwork, baby,” the older man quips with a smug smirk and a pair of squinted eyes. He takes his stiff cock in his fist and eyes you carefully as you lean back onto your elbows, thighs nice and spread for him. “And this—”
He nudges the drooling tip of his cock against your already sensitive clit and grins wider when your head tips back with a moan.
“This deserves my full attention, don’t ya think?”
summary: jack abbot has made it his life's mission to take care of you, so obviously he doesn't take it very well when he finds out you've been living on the abandoned floor of the ptmc. (3k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, roommate whitsantos crumbs
contents: sugar daddy jack abbot universe, established relationship, protective!jack, hurt/comfort, cw for brief mentions of harassment and allusion to smut 18+ (MDNI)
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
There is nothing about you that Jack Abbot wouldn’t immediately notice.
He nurses a sweaty can of beer in his right fist from where he sits on the opposite side of the park bench, keeping several agonizing inches of space between you in front of the rest of your coworkers. It leaves a wet ring on the thigh of his camo fatigues when he forgets to drink it, far too busy looking at you looking at Whitaker, who rants about a hefty surcharge on his Lyft account across the way.
“I thought she was a nice old lady! How was I supposed to know she was racist?”
“Well, you know what they say,” Santos croons from beside him, cheers-ing with her near-empty can. “No good deed, St. Fuckleberry…”
Jack knows you’re about to laugh before you’ve even done it. He’s got it down to a science, almost. He knows the signs too well: the way your eyes crinkle at the edges first, and the way your nose bridge scrunches slightly second. A laugh sputters from your mouth a second later, coated in sunshine and painting the starry night a vivid shade of flaxen gold.
The rays hit him square in the chest.
He can almost time when you’re about to take a drink, too — the way your fingers fidget around the chilled aluminum, right before your tongue darts out to wet your mouth. You tip your head back with the can to take a quick sip, then lick your lips again when you bring the beer to your lap again.
It’s subtle and mostly unconscious, but Jack can’t help but notice all of it.
The same way he can’t help but notice how flustered you get when he asks, “Did you get that dress I bought you?”
Your head snaps in his direction. Your eyes widen with a set of owlish blinks. The smile you had before softens slightly as your shoulders tuck in, going painfully shy in a flicker.
It’s not so much the reminder that Jack scoured the internet for the butter-yellow dress Kate Hudson wore in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days — after a passing comment you made about it during movie night some weeks back. It’s more so the reminder that you didn’t get it because you no longer had a real address to receive it at.
Because you’d rather die than tell him you’ve been sleeping in the PTMC for the past week.
“Uh… No. I-I don’t think so,” you stammer.
Jack’s brows lower. “Really? The e-mail said it was delivered yesterday.”
You glance away again — fingers fidgeting, tongue darting. “Maybe it went to the wrong place?” you shrug and bring the can up to your mouth again.
Jack notices how you shift awkwardly on the bench beside him; how you struggle suddenly to meet his gaze, and how you try and fail to tune back into Whitaker’s rambling. There’s something more going on inside your head, something more you’re not telling him, but he figures prying after a twelve-hour shift probably isn’t the best idea.
“Yeah…” he says slowly. “Maybe…”
There’s a long beat of silence between you thereafter, filled by members of the dayshift exchanging staggered goodbyes. Jack takes a quick sip of his beer. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing, and turns to you with the sheen of alcohol coating his lips.
“I should probably start heading out to,” he clears his throat. “Want me to walk you home?”
You fake a shy smile, instead of telling him that you have no real home to go to.
“I’m a big girl, Abbot. I think I can get there on my own,” you lilt drily. Jack’s stare hardens into an unwavering deadpan; not mean, just firm. You cave with a roll of your eyes. “You go ahead. I’ll walk with Trinity and Whitaker— They live closer to me, anyway.”
Jack hesitates for a lingering beat.
He wants to tell you that it makes him feel better when he walks with you, that sometimes he thinks he lives and breathes only to protect you, but he’s self-aware enough to know how insane that sounds. So he just nods with a slow exhale.
“Okay… Just— Call me when you get home?”
You give him a soft smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Of course.”
Jack takes the long way out to give you enough time to pack up your things and head out in the opposite direction with Santos and Whitaker.
He cuts around the block instead of heading straight out, positioning himself just far enough away from the entrance that he can still see it. When he turns the corner, he spots you brushing shoulders with Trinity and tipping your head back to laugh at something he can’t hear from here.
The sound of your giggling is carried on the summer’s evening breeze, along with your words as you veer suddenly towards the side of the hospital again. “Shit— I left my keys in my locker. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up with you.”
You slip inside through the automatic doors.
Jack straightens his back and tightens his hold on the strap of the camo bag slung over his shoulder. He gets a strange feeling in his chest that he just can’t shake and decides to follow you back inside the PTMC. He figures it’s better to be safe than sorry — better to seem insane by following you like a creep instead of risking something bad happening to you, anyway.
He weaves through the noisy emergency department with strong shoulders and a sharp gaze. He checks for you in the locker room first, then the break room second, then doubles back for Shen at the workstation.
“Said she left something up in ortho,” the attending shrugs through a short sip of his iced coffee. Then he jokes,“What do you wanna bet she’s screwing around with Park the Shark?”
Jack's chest flares, but he tries not to let it faze him as he makes a beeline for the elevators.
He knows you’re lying — you wouldn’t have said something different to Trinity otherwise — not unless you really were sneaking around with Dr. Park, that is. Jack has to shake the thought physically from his head, which Shen had unknowingly planted there, the entire ride up to the eighth floor.
No one goes up there anymore — no one other than you and Jack — and it’s the only other place he hasn’t yet looked to find you. The west wing of the upper floor has been nothing short of abandoned, and is eerily quiet compared to the E.D. below, save for the faint buzzing of fluorescent lights that are bound to die out any day now.
As he passes the old rooms, left clean and untouched, he hears a faint song playing from behind a shut door. One of those old 2000s pop songs you always play in the car when you’re together. He knocks first and, when he receives no answer, pushes it slowly open with a call of your name.
This room, unlike the others, is not abandoned. Not exactly. There are blankets folded neatly on the edge of the bed; a duffel bag tucked in the corner by the nightstand; and a pile of books stacked on the windowsill. A laptop sits open on the pillows, where music spills from its speakers.
“‘Cause every time we touch, I get this feeling; and every time we kiss, I swear I could fly—!”
It’s all so organized, so lived in. Jack feels his chest tighten accordingly. He wonders how long you’ve been staying here, how long you’ve been lying to him.
The drumming water faucet shuts off from behind the closed bathroom door. He hears your voice behind it, singing softly to the music, and freezes when the door clicks open a few moments later.
“Can’t you hear my heart beat so, I can’t let you go! Want you in my—” You cut yourself off with a scream when you find a figure standing in front of your bed.
Your hand rises instinctively to your mouth to muffle the sound. Your chest deflates with a breath of relief when you realize it’s Jack, then tightens again when you realize that it’s Jack.
“Fuck…” you huff. “You scared me…”
Your free hand readjusts the fluffy white towel wrapped around your body, still warm from the shower and glistening with droplets of water. As the steam rolls out from behind you, he gets a whiff of your sweet body wash — and, as you shift awkwardly on your feet, he notices that you’re wearing a fluffy pair of house slippers. All of which tells him you’ve been staying here for way, way longer than he initially thought.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jack squints, a little harsher than he means to be.
“What are you doing here?” you retort. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I was worried about you,” the man shoots back, firm hands propped on his hips as he sways slightly on his aching prosthetic. “And obviously for good reason— What is this? Are you living here?”
Your mouth opens to argue, but you hesitate with a wavering breath in. You adjust the towel on your naked form and fight back a shiver as the humming AC cools the water on your skin.
“I’m… I’m just… I’m in between places right now. That’s all.”
Jack lets a short, disbelieving chuckle. His stern stare never wavers as you duck past him for the desk across the room, where your pajamas sit on the back of the chair.
“In between places?” he echoes. “What does the even mean?”
You sigh, gaze averted, and try to get dressed without dropping your towel.
“You remember when I told you about my creepy landlord? You know, the one who won’t stop calling me?” you ramble, sliding on a pair of underwear before reaching for your sweatpants. “Well, I was going to move to a new place, and I had already started the process of moving out, but I didn’t get approved for the apartment I wanted—”
The canvas of your bare back is revealed to him when you throw the towel to the side and reach for the sweatshirt laid out before you. Your voice goes slightly muffled as you shove it over your head.
“—And I can’t go back to my old place, obviously, so I just… Moved in here. You know. For the time being.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack presses. “I would’ve helped you.”
“I know,” you roll your eyes. “Because you’re always helping me. Because I can’t do anything for myself—”
“That’s not what I said—”
“You don’t have to say it,” you snap, flashing him a wide-eyed glare. “That’s just what it is. And I can’t keep going to you every single time I have a problem that needs fixing.”
Jack shrugs, oblivious. “Why not?”
Your face twists at his confusion.
“Because I can’t just rely on you for the rest of my life, Jack! That’s not— sustainable,” you rant, gesturing wildly with your hands. “I mean, what if you get bored of me? What if this stops— being fun for you, and I become a burden? Then where does that leave me?”
The words hang in the quiet, still, sweet-smelling air between you for several long moments.
Jack’s stern expression melts into something softer as a white-hot feeling sears his chest from the inside out.
“You aren’t a burden to me, honey— You’ve never been a burden to me,” he tells you, closing the distance between you in a few short strides.
You peek through your lashes to meet his gaze when he towers over you. The corner of his mouth flickers into a smile as he huffs a breathless laugh.
“I mean, not to sound like a selfish asshole here, kid, but this is more for me than it is for you… I don’t buy you stuff just because you want me to; I do it because it makes me happy. I take care of you because it makes me feel good…” Jack trails off, going foreignly sheepish as he crosses his arms and bounces his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Us being in love with each other is just a… super cool bonus.”
You blink up at him with wide, wet eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “And you know what would make me feel really good?”
You hesitate for a moment, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “…What?”
“If you stopped squatting in an abandoned hospital room, and come stay with me at my place,” Jack says. “And if not with me, then at least in my guest room. That way, I know you’re sleeping in an actual bed. And have access to a real kitchen— What have you been eating, anyway?”
You cower under his squinted stare.
“I don’t know... Uber Eats on a good day. And whatever’s in the vending machine on a bad day…” you answer shyly. “And cafeteria food on a really bad day…”
Jack nods slowly, smacking his lips against his teeth.
“Yep,” he deadpans. “You’re coming home with me.”
Home, as it turns out, wasn’t so bad.
You had been to Jack’s place before, to be sure, but never with the intention of staying long term. It makes the place feel a bit foreign to you as you try to find your footing within it, when you arrive with nothing but a bathroom bag and your haphazardly-packed duffel, ‘cause Jack assured you he’d get all the rest of it for you later.
You leave your things in his guest room while he orders you something for dinner. You eat together in his living room, like usual, and wind up inevitably in his bedroom before the night is over.
Casino plays on the television, bathing the dark room in its flickering neon glow. You lie on your stomach with your legs kicked up behind you, while Jack slouches against the headboard, legs spread to accommodate your body between them. He holds your right foot against his chest with a pair of wide hands, massaging the ache in the ball of it with his fingers.
“God, I would die for that coat…” he hears you mumble to yourself, as Robert De Niro slides the white fur over Sharon Stone’s shoulders. (He makes a mental note to find that one for you, too, and send an email to recover the dress from yesterday.)
“Isn’t this so much better than a hospital bed?” Jack wonders aloud.
You scoff a faint laugh, lifting your heavy head from your fist to flash him a deadpan look. “I think the floor would be better than that hospital bed.”
Jack chuckles quietly to himself before realizing, “…That’s why you’ve been complaining about your back so much, isn’t it?”
You feel him shift behind you, bed frame creaking under his weight. Your foot falls to the mattress as he sits between your legs, careful to keep the weight off his amputated limb as he kneels on the mattress.
His warm, calloused hands smooth under the fabric of your sweatshirt. His thumbs dig into the unrelenting ache between your shoulder blades. You exhale a slow sigh and drop your head between your arms, melting under his touch.
You don’t realize he’s leaning over you until his lips brush your neck. You fight back a shiver when his silver scruff brushes the delicate skin.
“From now on…” Jack mumbles against you, low and quiet and just shy of menacing. “I want you to come to me the next time you need or want anything, alright? Anything.”
Your breath catches. Something warm pools in the pit of your stomach.
“Don’t keep it from me… Don’t brush me off…” Jack continues with a voice like honey as his hands press firmly against your back. “Come to me— directly. That’s my job now. Understand?”
You don’t trust your voice, so you just nod in response. Jack can feel it with his lips still pressed against your skin. You can feel his mouth curling into a smile as his hands smooth down the length of your spine, with a tenderness that sends chills pebbling across your skin in his wake.
You forget how to breathe when his fingers curl in the hem of your sweatpants.
“Who takes care of you, honey?” he murmurs lowly in your ear.
“You do…” you hear yourself say, half-muffled with your head still bowed.
Jack grins. He pulls your bottoms and your underwear down the curve of your ass in one fell swoop.
“Can’t hear you, baby,” he says in gritty monotone before sitting back on his haunches.
You lift your heavy head, blinking away the haze of desire clouding your vision when you glance at the man behind you. You find him kneeling there, with a hand shoved down his pajama bottoms, massaging himself the rest of the way hard.
Jack smiles wider when he catches you staring. He feels his cock twitching in his fist at your heavy-eyed and wanting gaze.
“Who takes care of you?” he echoes, more firmly this time, but with a teasing squint in his light eyes.
The corner of your mouth lifts in a mischievous half-smile. “You do,” you repeat, more eager this time.
Jack nods once, almost approvingly so, and sighs as he squeezes hard at his stiffening cock. “Hell yeah, I do…” he murmurs to himself, proud.
summary: when jack abbot runs into you at a bar after your shift on the fourth of july, he teaches you what it means to unwind and you teach him what it means to feel loved again. (6k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!loser!reader, trinity and mel at karaoke, baran al-hashimi
contents: friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, jealousy, age difference, power imbalance, so much yearning, jack abbot hasn't had sex in eight years confirmed cw for mentions of trauma and grief, and smut 18+ (MDNI)
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
The bar pulses like a living thing with a heartbeat. The buzzing of a hundred different conversations and the wailing of a distant guitar sting overhead presses hard on either side of you. If you concentrate real hard, you think you can still hear Mel and Trinity butchering another Alanis Morissette song back in the private karaoke room — which isn’t nearly private enough, considering the way their drunken devotion bleeds out into the main hall.
You left them a while ago to order a drink, which melts slowly in the sweaty glass between your fingertips now. You bring it to your lips and try to take a sip, but something in your throat refuses. The taste feels wrong; the burn feels wrong. Actually, the more you think about it, everything feels wrong — like your body is still calibrated to the relentless rhythm of the ER, to the work you can never quite seem to leave behind.
Even now, as your eyes meet your reflection in the mirror behind the liquor bottles, you look like something you don’t quite recognize — dressed in a velvet red number pulled from Trinity Santos’ closet instead of your usual scrubs; with your hair done instead of carelessly shoved back. It’s like looking at a stranger wearing your own face.
“Long time, no see, Doc—” A masculine voice cuts in, so familiar that you wonder if you’ve been thinking about the PTMC so long that you’ve begun to hallucinate your coworkers.
Your head snaps over your shoulder. Your tired eyes widen at the sight of your attending sliding in beside you. Jack Abbot is still donned in his scrubs, you find, as he leans against the bar — black uniform, brown undershirt, and navy pants — like he dressed himself in the dark before he came into work. His freckled biceps strain against the short sleeves as he folds them across the polished wood.
There are two glasses half-full of amber liquid before him. He lifts one in his right hand and eyes you over the top of it. “How long has it been?” he quips with narrowed eyes before taking a quick sip.
You blink away the shock of seeing him here, all casual, like he wasn’t just elbows deep in a trauma with you.
“About…” You lilt and glance at the clock behind the bar. “Half an hour ago, I think?”
His mouth curves with a slow, suspicious smile as his steady gaze refuses to waver. “What are you doing here all by yourself, huh? Gotta hot date I don’t know about?”
You scoff a quiet laugh and turn away, looking down at your untouched glass as you spin it in an anxious hand. “Yeah— If that’s what you wanna call watching Trinity and Mel butcher Alanis Morisette’s entire catalog…”
Your head tilts to your shoulder to flash him a lazy grin, which falters at the edge when you catch his unflinching stare. You clear your throat, remember that you’re talking to an attending, and stammer out, “Uh, what— What about you?”
Jack bounces a lazy shoulder and lifts the glass in his right hand. “This was the nearest place to get a good whiskey, so…” he trails off before taking another sip.
His eyes never leave yours as he peers at you from over the rim of the glass, studying you almost, analyzing you in a way that makes your skin feel too tight.
Your nose scrunches in protest of his staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?” you wonder through a breathless chuckle.
“I don’t know…” he admits, quieter now. “It’s just the first time I’ve seen you out of your scrubs…”
His light eyes flicker over your form again — from your bare shoulders and exposed chest, to where your dress clings to your ass and stomach.
“It’s different…” he hums. “A good different…”
Heat crawls up your neck. You turn away on instinct, finding it very suddenly difficult to meet his stare, as a disbelieving laugh slips from your mouth.
“What are you laughing at?” Jack presses with a chuckle of his own.
“Nothing,” you dismiss with a shake of your head. “I just… I think you might be a little tipsy there, Dr. Abbot…”
“This is only my second glass, I’ll have you know,” he argues, playfully offended. “What? You think I can’t handle my alcohol.”
He straightens slightly and takes a step closer. Still leaving several inches of space between you, though it takes a lot of strength from you not to slide off your bar stool entirely.
“No! I just—” You stumble over yourself as the words tangle on your tongue. “I just feel like you probably wouldn’t be talking to me like this otherwise.”
“I talk to you every day,” he scoffs.
“Well, yeah, but you don’t flirt with me every day.”
His brows raise as something short of amusement flickers across his face. “Oh. So you think I’m flirting with you?”
An awkward silence drops like a leaden weight upon you, like an anvil in one of those ancient cartoons. It knocks the breath out of you accordingly.
“…No,” you answer after a few long moments. “Of course not.”
Your grip tightens on your drink as you turn away from him again. You hardly think twice before bringing it impulsively to your mouth, downing two long sips of the watered-down gin and tonic. Your face screws at the bitter taste and at the burning sensation on your tongue, which turns into a dull sparkle when it settles in the pit of your stomach.
“Well, I was, so…” Jack quips, too casual for his own good. “I guess I’m gonna have to try a little harder now, aren’t I?”
His eyes cut to you, expecting you to laugh at him, or to stammer out another one of your painfully shy replies. You forget to respond entirely, though, too focused on the way the alcohol singes your tongue. (You spend a long moment debating whether or not it’s numb or swelling in your throat with a thousand-yard stare.)
Your silence is not reassuring.
“Unless—” Jack’s voice tightens slightly as he clears his throat. His charming resolve slips as he stammers, “Unless you don’t want me to. Obviously. Then I can just, you know, fuck off—”
“No, it’s not that!” you blurt. “It’s just…”
He leans in, just slightly. “Just what?”
You hesitate for a moment, calculating the words, though they seem to slip off your tingling tongue before you can stop them.
“I feel like I haven’t… learned how to be a real person yet, you know?” you confess with a sheepish, lopsided grin. “Like… People my age are supposed to go out for drinks, and sing karaoke with their friends, and flirt with cute guys—”
You don’t notice your slip-up, but Jack does, and he hides his smile behind his glass.
“But I think I’ve just been working so much that… That I don’t know how to do anything but work, you know?”
“Yeah…” he hums softly. “Trust me. I know the feeling—”
There’s a distant call of his name. A faint “Abbot,” half-swallowed by the thrumming music and surrounding conversation. Your head turns in the direction of the sound to find Dr. Al-Hashimi appearing from the crowd. Her fluffy brown curls are out of their usual clip, languishing now at her shoulders. Her lavender jacket is gone, too, to reveal her lean body beneath her slim scrub top.
You blink owlishly at her for a few moments, unused to the sight of her outside the white walls of the E.D.
“You were supposed to be bringing me a drink,” the woman quips drily, smiling as she reaches for the touched whiskey next to Abbot. “Not holding it hostage.”
“Shit…” Jack exhales. “I’m sorry. I-I got distracted…”
“Dr. Al,” you greet with a waver in your voice. “I… I didn’t know you were here.”
“Yeah, well…” she shrugs. “I heard this was the best place to get a glass of whiskey, so…”
You nod slowly, suddenly unsure of yourself — of what to do with your hands, your voice, with Jack. You swallow hard as your eyes flit wildly between the two attendings standing before you. You struggle to shake the feeling that you’ve interrupted something.
“I’ll, uh— I guess I’ll get out of your hair then…”
You muster an artificial smile and abandon your gin and tonic as you slide off the bar stool.
Jack calls your name, but it gets lost in the crowd that swallows you whole as you disappear out of sight.
You stomach through one and a half more songs that Mel and Trinity shout into the void of the private karaoke room. They take a quick break from “You Oughta Know” to sing a strikingly heartfelt rendition of “Head Over Feet” that very nearly brings a tear to your eye.
It’s not their sloppy singing, exactly, but rather the reminder of how alone you feel just now — the only audience member on the pleather sofa, bathed in the strobing neon glow from the overhead lights, watching the fun from afar while your friends forge an unlikely bond.
While Jack and Dr. Al laugh over drinks together—
You rise abruptly and catch them between verses to tell them you’re heading out for the night. Their protests come wrapped in song.
“But we’re having so much fun!” Trinity whines in drunken slurs, then locks in when the chorus hits. “You’ve already won me over, in spite of me! So don’t be alarmed if I fall, head over feet—!”
The song follows you the entire way out of the bar, where the night air outside washes over you like fine silk. You catch yourself humming the tune as you shrug on the brown bomber jacket you borrowed from Trinity’s closet — just in case you felt the need to hide. You falter when your fingers brush something in the front pocket.
You reach in with a pensive twist to your features, surprised to find a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter shoved inside. You stare at it for several long moments and wonder briefly what it would feel like to smoke one. (You’re unable to shake the impulsive thought from your brain until you’ve done it.)
You pull one cig free and stick the orange filter between your lips. You flick the lighter three times before it finally strikes. You hold your free hand over the flame like they do in the movies and inhale when it finally lights.
You regret it instantly.
Grey smoke billows from your mouth as you cough. You double over on the worn sidewalk like a total loser, eyes watering and chest burning as your lungs rebel against your very poor life choices.
“Those things kill, you know—?” Jack’s voice cuts in again.
(He has a way of finding you in the most embarrassing situations, it seems.)
You blink away the tears in your eyes and turn to find the older man standing just a few feet away with his hands in his pockets. He watches you attentively, with something close to amusement twisting his scruffy face.
“I can tell—” you rasp as your coughing fit ebbs. “There’s no way this is enjoyable for people.”
“Eh,” he shrugs. “It’s not so bad when you get used to it.”
His sneakers scuff the cracked pavement as he saunters over to you, holding his hand out with a glittering look in his eye. “Can I?”
You don’t think twice before passing him the lit cigarette.
“By all means...”
Jack pinches the stick between his thumb and forefinger. He places his mouth around the filter, inhales once, holds the breath, and exhales through his nose a second or more later.
You can’t seem to stop staring at the silver hair on his tilted chin; or the tendons in his corded neck; or the singular vein in his freckled forearm when he snuffs the cigarette out on the brick wall. He drops it into the receptacle there when he’s done.
“So…” He exhales the remaining smoke from his mouth, which leaves in grey wisps that hang in the air between you for a few lingering moments. “I guess you’re headed out now?”
“Yeah…” you sigh. “Guess so…”
He observes the empty sidewalk for a moment before wondering casually, “Want me to walk you home?”
“No, it’s okay,” you shrug. “You’re busy, and I… I only live, like, a block down the road, so—”
“So, then, it’ll be quick?” Jack presses with raised brows.
Your eyes narrow. “…You’re not gonna take no for an answer here, are you?”
Jack shakes his head, lips smoothing into a knowing grin. “Not this time, kid. No.”
The walk back to your place feels borderline suffocating, though you can’t exactly place why. The air is made of thick satin as the heat of the day washes away, leaving something silken and breathable in its wake, as the wind ripples in your dress. Everything smells very distinctly of summer — of dewy grass, and gunpowder from distant fireworks, and the faint sweetness of something that’s just been barbecued.
You can hear the fireworks crackling somewhere in the distance, though you struggle to see them from the buildings overhead. You can feel each thundered boom in your chest, along with the heavy bass of a passing car playing music far too loud as it barrels by.
There’s something oddly peaceful about it. Intimate, even, as your shoulder brushes Jack’s broader one with each step. The silence is not particularly awkward, but you can’t shake the feeling that you should say something. You rack your brain for a conversation starter, and end up blurting out the one thing you didn’t want to say out loud—
“So…” you lilt, tripping over the conversation like a loose wire. “You and Dr. Al…?”
“…Are very good coworkers, yeah,” Jack nods, silver curls turning gold beneath the amber streetlights. He catches your uncertain gaze and shrugs. “She had a tough first day, you know? Figured I’d treat her to a few drinks.”
“That’s nice…” you murmur with an averted gaze.
“It was nothing,” Jack assures you.
Your apartment building comes into view around the corner, painted a garish canary yellow with vivid orange doors, aptly named Sunset Tower. It used to be a motel, you assume from the layout, probably before you were born; and was renovated into an apartment complex likely not too long after you were born.
You don’t think twice before starting up the rusty staircase to your third-floor apartment — not until you notice the slight hitch in Jack’s step as he follows behind you, favoring his prosthetic limb more than he realizes. It must be hurting him, you figure, after being on it for hours at the PTMC.
“Shit,” you huff. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”
“Told me about what?” Jack scoffs despite his grimacing as he swings his leg another step. “I can handle a few stairs…”
“I can’t make it up on my own, if you—”
“Hey,” he snaps, a little harsher than he means to, as he glances in your direction. A far-off firework glimmers in your gaze, soft and sympathetic around the edges in a way that makes his chest ache. “I’m good. Don’t worry about me, alright?”
You continue the ascent despite your better judgment, despite the way Jack’s steps lose rhythm just beside you. You catch him stumbling in the corner of your eye when he steps up a beat too early. His prosthetic twists unnaturally, angering the already raging skin of his amputated knee.
You’re at his side without blinking. Your hands reach for his arm, steady him with your fingers cradling his wrist and elbow.
Jack nearly protests, but stops himself short.
You hold onto him the rest of the way up.
Your place is exactly how he imagined it would be — not that he’d been picturing what the inside of your apartment looked like, of course, because he’s not a total creep. He just finds a very apt representation of you wedged with the quaint walls of the old, old building. It’s cluttered but not messy; with numerous blankets and books and potted plants strewn about. There are half-used candles littered on just about every surface, filling the air with a sweet scent of musky-vanilla-raspberry.
The grass green couch pushed against the wall caves under his weight when you ease him down onto it. It smells like a mixture of your perfume and the side of the road you must’ve pulled it from when you moved in.
“Wow…” Jack hums, if only to conceal his wincing as he adjusts himself on the cushion. “Nice place…”
“No, it’s not,” you scoff an awkward laugh and stand to full height above him, adjusting the skirt of your dress from where it had ridden up. “Do you, uh— Need anything?”
“No. I’m good.”
“‘Cause I have some first aid supplies if your prosthetic is bothering you—”
“Really. I’m good,” he echoes. “You don’t mind if I take it off, though, do you?”
“Of course not!” you blurt. “I’ll, um… I’ll go get you some water.”
You scurry the short distance to the kitchen. The hissing faucet pervades the silence as you fill two glasses at the sink, along with the soft clanking of the heavy prosthetic as Jack unscrews it from the limb. You find him massaging the scar when you return.
“Do you— Do you need me to call you an Uber, or…?”
Jack tilts his chin to smile up at you. A playful laugh tumbles from his mouth. “Wow… Trying to get rid of me already, huh?”
Your face floods with horror. “No! O-Of course not! I just— With your leg, I— I don’t want you to walk all the way home, you know?”
“I think I can make it, sweetheart,” he tells you, and only vaguely notices his slip-up. “I just needed a second… Thank you—” He nods in appreciation when you set the water down on the coffee table in front of him.
You keep several inches between you on the sunken couches as you sit gingerly at his side — very palpably tense, like you’re a stranger in your own home. You wring your clammy hands together in your lap as a long silence stretches thin between you.
“And I wasn’t— I wasn’t trying to… kick you out. Or anything,” you add, softer now.
“I know, kid,” Jack assures.
“Good…” you breathe a sigh of relief. “‘Cause I— I don’t want you to leave… Wait, that sounded weird— I just meant that… I like your company. I’m not, like, trying to hold you hostage or whatever, I swear.”
Another awkward laugh spills from your mouth.
Jack’s lip quirks with a smile as he sits up straight again. “I wouldn’t mind it if you were, to be honest…” he hums, only halfway joking. “But unfortunately, I do have SWAT early in the morning, so… If you could free me around 6 a.m, that’d be great.”
“Oh, right,” you scoff and bring your water to your mouth. “The side hustle where you get shot at for fun?”
“It’s good to have a hobby,” Jack shrugs and leans back against the sofa, throwing a strong arm around the back of it, as he studies you with narrowed eyes. “What do you do for fun, hm? Outside of work, I mean.”
You think for a long moment, spinning the glass between your fingers. “…I once watched Love Island for thirty-one straight hours. That was pretty fun.”
Jack snorts. “So what I’m hearing is, you don’t have any hobbies?”
“Work is my hobby.”
“So what do you do to… unwind?”
“…Have panic attacks in the supply closet at work,” you confess. “What about you?”
“Get shot at,” Jack quips in the same gritty tone.
“Well, at least you get to do something outside of the E.D…” you monotone with a far-off stare. “This is the first time in months I’ve been somewhere other than here and the PTMC. I mean, I have my groceries delivered now— I’m too boring to even go shopping...”
“What do you mean?” he scoffs. “You’re young— You should be going out every weekend.”
“Well, I don’t…” you huff mournfully and slouch back against the sofa. The thin sleeve of your velvet dress slips off your shoulder, giving Jack a brief glance of the top of your breast before you adjust it back over your collarbone again.
“What about dates?” he presses with his chin to his shoulder. “You don’t go on any of the apps?”
“Well, first of all, no one calls it the apps. And second of all, god no,” you laugh drily, then flash him a sheepish look from the corner of your eye. “What about you?”
“Nah…” Jack shakes his head. “I haven’t been on a date in about… Eight years—”
“Eight years?!” you blurt before he can properly get the words out, leaning forward with wide eyes. “Jesus. How does a guy like you go around without getting hit on for eight whole years?”
(You’re starting to think those three sips of gin from before are getting to you now.)
“Well, it’s a lot easier than you think,” the older man deadpans. ‘Cause it’s not like he was actively avoiding dates; he just wasn’t exactly seeking them out.
He lost the urge to after his wife died, and then, when the urge to live came back around, he’d catch himself flirting every now and then, but never wanting to do much more than that. Then he blinked, and eight years had passed without him noticing.
Eight years with nothing but his own hand to get himself off — though, it only starts to seem pathetic when you look at it that way.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” you scoff. “The last time a guy showed even a modicum of interest in me was… in med school, probably.”
“Okay, well, that’s just not true,” Jack argues. “That vitrectomy patient from earlier definitely had a crush on you.”
Your eyes narrow in a cynical squint. “He was drunk. With half a bottle rocket stuck in his eye. That hardly counts.”
“Well, I’ve had… About a whiskey and a half,” Jack calculates. “Do I still count?”
The air thins in an instant, or maybe his words have just knocked it all straight out of your lungs.
Your skin burns red hot beneath the dress that feels suddenly way too tight, ‘cause you think he must be joking — that taking the piss out of your obvious crush on him is his idea of playing around.
“That’s not funny,” you tell him with a wavering smile.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” the man insists with a scoff. “I haven’t been funny since 1994.”
Another laugh sputters from your mouth. A real one this time — not the fake ones you’ve been giving him just to fill the silence, or to try to seem less nervous than you really are. It makes him smile wider than he probably realizes.
“There you go…” Jack hums with a proud nod.
“There I go, what?”
“You’re unwinding…”
You scoff, still grinning wide despite yourself. “Am I?”
“Yeah,” he hums. “And you’re doing a great job so far— a solid B-minus.”
“B-minus?” you echo. “I’ve had a 4.0 GPA since I was in fourth grade.”
“Well…” Jack shrugs with a knowing grin. “Better step it up then, kid.”
Something inside you tips in that moment. It’s his teasing, maybe, or just the way he’s looking at you. Either way, you catch yourself leaning forward before your brain has properly thought it through. You close the distance between you in a flicker — brushing a chaste kiss to his mouth before pulling away just as fast.
You can feel your pulse pounding in your throat as you quip, “What does that get me?”
Jack blinks for a second, momentarily caught off guard. He fights the urge to lick his lips, to try and actually taste you. “Probably a couple HR violations?” he jokes after a few moments.
Your stomach drops. You find yourself praying that this old couch swallows you whole, or that the world would just end altogether, because even that would be a kinder fate than this.
“Oh. Shit. I-I thought that— I thought we were... Fuck, I totally misread this whole thing—”
You turn away entirely and drop your face in your hands, utterly mortified.
His laughter doesn’t make it any better.
You feel the sofa caving beneath you as Jack shifts to your side. His hands are warm and softly calloused as they cradle your wrists in a firm and gentle grip, urging them downward so he can see your face again. He ducks his head to meet your wet eyes and flashes you a reassuring smile.
“You didn’t misread a damn thing,” he assures you with a shake of his head, voice lower and smoother than honey. “Of course, I want to kiss you— I always want to kiss you.”
The mournful twist in your features never wavers. “Then why don’t you?”
“Because it’d be wrong,” he shrugs. “I’m your attending. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that I— that I pressured you into something.”
“Well… We both know you didn’t, right?” you argue softly, eyes glittering with hope as they dart back and forth between his. “And, I mean… It’s not like anyone else would have to know. We’re not getting married, we’re just… unwinding. Right?”
“…Yeah,” Jack hums, softer now, with something mischievous squinting his gaze. “Right...”
You’re not making it easy for him.
Jack’s trying not to cum in his pants before you’ve ever even touched him, and you’re making it damn near impossible.
He drags you into his lap when you lean in to kiss him again — for real this time, licking sweetly into his mouth so he can taste you truly — and you knee him right in the thigh before you can straddle him properly. You pull away with a smack when he groans in pain against your mouth.
“Shit…” you pant with his spit still on your lips. “I’m sorry.”
Jack shakes his head until the words catch up to him. “It’s okay,” he assures through uneven breaths, knotting his fingers in your hair to pull you into him once more. He kisses you again, hard, like it’s muscle memory for him — from a life he hasn’t let himself live in a long, long time.
He cradles one hand over the crown of your head and the other just over your spine, where your dress dips down in the back. He keeps your warm weight pressed flush against him while the kiss turns languid and heavy, full of tongue and teeth and spit. You curl your fingers into his greying curls to keep him impossibly close all the while.
You feel his chest hitch with a startled breath beneath you when you grind down over his lap. Your velvet dress rises over your hips from the angle as you move down his thighs and up again — you can feel the ghost of his erection hardening beneath his scrubs with every pass.
There’s a noticeable hesitance in the way you move. It’s not graceful or entirely practiced. It’s laced with a palpable uncertainty, rather, as you struggle to navigate the honeyed moment you’ve stumbled so suddenly into.
And Jack can hardly take it. ‘Cause hasn’t let himself want like this in years; he hasn’t let himself reach out for anything other than his grief or his work. For so long, his life has been defined by restraint and the careful art of not needing anything. And now you’re here, moving clumsily on top of him, completely undoing him.
It hits him all at once, how suddenly sensitive he is, after so long ignoring the touch of another. The friction, the pressure; the smell of you, the taste of you. It’s all too much. He knows he won’t last long if he keeps going this way, so he pulls back.
And he hates himself for it.
“Hey—” He clears his throat when the word comes out a little rough. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. His glassy eyes dart back and forth between both of yours as he peers up at you through a layer of honey. “Hey, you… You have condoms, right?”
You blink back at him for a long moment, slightly dazed at the sight of your spit on his rosy mouth. You nod with a stuttered breath. “Uh, yeah. Yeah— I think— Somewhere…”
(There’s an unopened box collecting dust under the sink in the bathroom, but he doesn’t need to know that.)
He mourns your warmth when you slide off his lap, rushing off down the hall with your dress still caught around your hips. The sight of your plain cotton underwear cradling the curve of your ass makes his chest tighten as you disappear down the dim hallway. You toe off your shoes halfway down, and the sound of your padding footsteps echoes in the quiet.
“Jesus Christ…” Jack huffs and slouches further into the couch.
He drags his hands down his face and tries to regulate his breathing, tries to think of anything other than the aching erection in his pants. He stares up at the ceiling and attempts to will his body into something resembling composure when you return.
Your dress has fallen back down over your hips, but the right sleeve is still slipping down your shoulder when you stand before him. You’re not sure what to do with the condom in your hand, so you toss it to him over the coffee table. Jack catches it against his chest.
“Take that dress off…” he tells you with a voice like honey. “I wanna see you.”
You try and fail to reach for the zipper, which Mel had helped you with at Trinity’s place before you left for the bar. So, instead, you worm your arms out of the sleeves and shove the fabric down your hips with trembling hands. It hits the floor around your bare feet with a dull thud, leaving you in a heart-patterned bra you’ve had since high school and a pair of plain pink panties.
You’re hardly a thing worth looking at, really, but Jack didn’t seem to get that memo.
He beckons you forward with heavy eyes. “C’mere…” he murmurs.
You take slow, tentative steps towards him.
His calloused hands are warm and slightly trembling when they curl around the backs of your thighs. He leans in to press his mouth to the silk bow in the middle of your underwear, and his mouth waters at the wet spot gathering in the center of the cotton.
His scruffy chin brushes your stomach when he turns to look up at you, lidded eyes glimmering with a desire you didn’t know you were capable of drawing out of a person.
“I wanna make you cum with my mouth,” Jack murmurs. “Can I?”
You nod wordlessly, and can’t shake the feeling that you’re dreaming when his pointer finger hooks through the hem of your panties. You feel a little cold when he slides the cotton to the side, only for him to press his warm mouth there a second later.
Your knees threaten to buckle when his tongue slots through your silken folds, and Jack doesn’t miss a beat. He braces your ass in one wide hand while his other slips down to the bend of your knee, urging you to prop your foot on the couch beside him. Your moan swells throughout your empty apartment at the new angle, which allows him to lick at your sensitive clit with greater precision.
He forgets to take things slow with you, too busy trying to make up for this time. He drags an orgasm out of you like the world’s soon to end, and the last thing he wants to do on this earth is to taste you on his tongue.
You cum on his mouth with your head tipped back and with your fingers knotted in his hair. He’s wearing your glittering slick down to his chin when he’s done with you.
You fall gracelessly into his lap when your legs turn to jell-o. You straddle his waist, ball his shirt into your fists, and bury your burning face into his neck — still whimpering as your high is slow to ebb.
Jack cradles you against him the entire length of your comedown, running his warm hands up and down your spine. His scruff brushes the delicate skin of your shoulder when he presses a chaste kiss there.
“That wasn’t too much, was it?” he pants into your ear.
You shake your head until the words catch up to you. “No… No, it was— It was good…” you stammer through uneven breaths, and pull just far enough away to meet his eyes. “I wanna ride you now… Is that okay?”
And who is Jack to deny you of a damn thing?
You brace yourself on his shoulder with one hand and use your free one to line his bulbous tip at the entrance of your weeping pussy. His cock drools an embarrassing amount of pearly precum — he can feel it all underneath the condom — and he’s momentarily grateful that you can’t see any of it.
You exhale a wavering, punched-out breath as you sink down over him and take a long moment to get used to the distant stinging sensation.
Jack’s grateful for that, too.
His jaw hardens to choke down the groan that rumbles in the bottom of his throat. He tilts his head against the back of the couch and squeezes his eyes shut to fight away the overwhelming desire to explode entirely. He holds you in place when you try to move again, with fingers that threaten to leave bruises on your thighs.
“You okay?” you pant, eyes darting wildly over the pained twist on his scruffy features.
Jack nods, jaw clenched tight. His words come out half-strangled.
“Yeah, yeah. I just… I wasn’t lying about the whole eight-year thing.” He exhales a hard breath through his nose that’s supposed to be a laugh, though there isn’t really a smile to accompany it. “I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna cum too soon, you know? I wanna— make it good for you. That’s all.”
Your fingers brush over his temple and through his silver curls, in a touch so gentle it nearly makes him cum right then.
“It’s already good for me,” you assure him. “I want it to be good for you, too.”
You grind over him with the same hesitance from before, down his thighs and back again, slowly finding your rhythm. Jack’s hands grip hard at your hips, like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. He can just barely find the strength to keep his eyes open to watch you chase your orgasm on top of him.
His eyes flit from your blissed-out features to where his cock disappears inside of you. The thatch of curls above his cock glistens with your honey — he can feel it wetting the hem of his scrubs from where they’re shoved beneath his heavy balls. You’re bound to cum just as quickly as he is, no doubt.
He can feel it in the way your pussy flutters around his twitching length — in the way your pacing falters slightly on top of him.
“Nuh-huh. Don’t run away from me,” Jack mutters in your ear as he shifts underneath you, slouching further to hit somewhere deep inside of you. He cradles your head with one hand and grips hard at your ass with another, helping you move on top of him.
Your whine gets buried in his sweat-slick neck.
Jack smiles into your hair. “Yeah. There it is, honey. There you go…”
He feels a little proud of himself when he manages to hold off just long enough to feel you cumming around him, twitching against his chest and tugging hard at his silver curls. He follows right after — going rigid underneath you a second later as his cock jerks wildly within your fluttering confines.
His groan mixes with your whining as you milk him of his orgasm, in a sinful symphony that swells throughout your silent apartment.
Then the room goes quiet, with only the sound of your heavy breathing to fill it. You rise and fall with each of Jack’s panted breaths beneath you. Your limbs are loose and borderline boneless; tension ebbs from your body like an unwinding thread. You think you’d turn into a puddle on top of him without his hands smoothing up and down your back, molding you back together again.
It’s the only way Jack can stay anchored, really — with his hands on you, and with your weight settled on top of him. It’s foreign and familiar all the same: the strange absence of urgency he feels underneath you. The way his body, usually wound tight with panic, dissolves in time with yours. For the first time in eight years, he feels his heartbeat finally steady.
Until a far-off firework rattles the walls and sends the two of you jerking against each other.
The honeyed moment shatters in an instant. Jack holds you tighter when you flinch on top of him, laughing through a grumbling moan as you clench instinctively around his softening cock.
“You okay?” Jack mumbles against you, before pressing a brief kiss to your temple.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you nod, half-breathless, as you pull away from him for the first time in several minutes.
You blink away the haze of your dwindling orgasm while Jack swipes drool from the corner of your mouth with his thumb. You lean instinctively into his palm and exhale a breathless laugh.
“I just… I don’t know what normal people do in this situation…” you confess through uneven pants. “Like, I feel like we should… high-five or something.”
Jack scoffs a tired breath but doesn’t say a word.
There’s a fleeting moment, then, where you worry you’re maybe being too much. Your stomach aches with it, too, because you think your stupid half-joke would’ve ruined the moment for anyone else. Anyone other than Jack. His hand slips from your back and lifts lazily for a high-five without a second thought.
You cage your bottom lip between your teeth and clap your palm against his.
Your breathless laughter fills the quiet apartment.
“We make a good team, don’t we, Doc?” Jack hums with heavy eyes.
“Well, you make a good teacher…” you answer sheepishly, pulling at a rogue thread in his scrub top. “You know, helping me unwind, or whatever…”
“Right, well…” Jack trails off, mouth curling into a sly half-smirk as his eyes narrow into thin slits. Your stomach pools with red-hot warmth once more at the look he gives you, then, and at the words that spill from his lips like honey. “I think I still got a few more lessons in the chamber, sweetheart…”
Summary: Getting pregnant with Dr. Abbots baby was never in your cards. From a sloppy one night stand to a passionate relationship, Jack becomes the protective boyfriend you always wanted. Going into labor a month early, Jack ends up delivering your baby himself.
A/N: I have literally never written smut a day in my life so this is strange for me but IM TRYING, OKAY? Catholic guilt goes crazy.
TW: 18+, accidental pregnancy, implied age gap, childbirth, preterm labor, probable medical inaccuracies (what know about childbirth is based on my own experience giving birth myself. shit sucks btw.), fluff, poorly written smut
Word Count: 3.3k
Not Beta Read
You had always hoped your child would be conceived after a night of romance. Something out of a movie. Perhaps a candle lit dinner followed by passionate love making? Growing up in the age of Nicholas Sparks novels certainly skewed your romantic view of the world. You certainly never expected it to be with your stone cold attending Jack Abbot, in a night of well...alcohol fueled fucking. Jack putting you in positions you didnt know were humanly possible, and having you making noises you didnt even know you could make.
"Thats it baby, give me more." he growled into the crook of your neck as he fucked you through your second orgasm. Slowly stroking in and out of your squelching cunt as your body arched and contorted beneath him. Your moans echoing through his loft apartment. His rough hands anchoring you as he stretched you out, his cock fitting almost perfectly inside of you. He loved watching you lose control, your eyes rolling back with each deep thrust, your toes curling as he hit that spongey spot that made you come undone.
And he wasn't finished. You see, Jack was a gentleman, chivalrous as some would say. He took his time. He didnt dare let himself reach his climax until he was pleased with his work. Until he felt your pussy squeezing and throbbing against him, gasping for breath and beginning for his cum. He fucked slow and deliberate, stretching you out- filling up every single inch. Only when until you demanded he fuck you faster…harder, did he really lose himself in you. Your legs resting in his broad shoulders, him holding onto your thighs, fingers digging into your soft flesh.
The sweat dripped down his forehead as he fought to stay in control. You were so tight, twitching around him with each thrust, it felt euphoric. Just when you thought you had nothing left, his hand traveled down to your swollen clit, drawing circles with his thumb, rendering you breathless.
"Fuck, Jack..." you whimpered. Your breathing was erratic- mouth dry, longing for his tongue to explore yours once again. He knew you were close again, it didnt take him long to discover what made you tick, and what made you lose all control.
"That's it, good girl. Let go." and thats all it took for you to erupt. He fucked you ferociously through your orgasm, the bed crashing against the wall with each thrust until he collapsed on top of you. You both struggled to catch your breath.
No wonder the condom broke.
When you stood the bathroom of the Pitt looking at the two blaring pink lines it felt like you had the wind knocked out of you. You saw your entire residency crumble beneath you. You contemplating not telling him, writing a script for mifepristone and misoprostol yourself. But after work that night, you found yourself at his apartment. Your hand hovered over the door before you heard a voice behind you.
"Y/n?" Jack stood with his backpacked slung over his shoulder, wondering what the hell you were doing at his place. After sleeping together weeks prior not much changed between you. You never spoke of it and carried on like work colleagues. Maybe he stood up a little straighter when you walked by, maybe your cheeks felt flushed whenever he brushed up against you during a trauma.
By the look on your face, Jack knew something was wrong. He fumbled with his keys as you stepped aside enough for him to unlock the door. He pushed it opened and ushered you in first.
"I'm sorry, I know that was a rough shift b-"
"Whats going on? You alright?" he cut you off, kicking off his work sneakers and setting his stuff down by the door. He watched as you fumbled in your bag, searching for the positive pregnancy test that seemed to be buried under your empty snack wrappers and old receipts. You hesitated before pulling it out of your bag.
His hand hovered before reluctantly taking it from you, looking at you beneath his furrowed brow. He had been to war, he had been surrounded by complete destruction, he had seen the worst of humanity, and yet he had never been more scared than in this moment. He inspected it, flipping it over, holding it up to the light, but the two lined were as clear as day. Dark. Blaring. Indisputable.
“I’m sorry. I-“ you couldn’t find the words. Your mouth opened and closed liked a fish out of water as your thoughts faltered.
“Why are you apologizing?” Jack asked, confused, dry and deadpan.
“I don’t know."
"It’s not your fault. I mean I was there too.” He said, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.
Your eyes burned as the tears began to well up, blinking ferociously to stop them from falling. However soon one fell, and then another, and another. Before you knew it you were sobbing in Jacks arms. The two of you stood there for what felt like an eternity as he traced circles along your back. It felt strangely comfortable, his arms holding you against him, the smell of sweat and antiseptic on his scrubs filling your nose.
"What do we do?”
“We figure it out. If you want to keep the baby or if you don't, we figure this out. You aren't in this alone. ”
And you did. As your bump grew, so did your closeness and love for each another. You almost missed the first time he told you he loved you. You were cooking him dinner, something you loved to do despite your multitude of food aversions. Hips swaying side to side to a spotify playlist as you glided around his kitchen. He was trying to watch the Steelers game but kept finding his eyes on you.
“I love you.” He called out quietly. You felt your heart jolt.
“Huh? Did you say something?” You asked in disbelief, turning down your music to make sure you heard him right. Jack hesitated, trying to gauge your face and reaction before repeating himself.
“I said, I love you.” And he took you right there on the living room floor, fucking you senselessly as the pasta boiled over on the stove. You ordered takeout that night instead.
However, aside from in the bedroom, Jack wasn’t especially affectionate, especially not in public; and while he tried to make more of an effort, he didn’t say “I love you” often. But it certainly wasn’t lost on him.
You found him reading books about obstetrics in his free time, he instinctively put his hand on your belly when a patient was being especially combative, he signed the both of you up for a childbirth class where he took notes, or he would text you “you craving anything?” on his way home from the hospital on your nights off. All the subtle things he did made you realize he was completely and utterly head over heels in love with you.
The first time Jack felt the baby flutter, you don't think you had ever seen him so happy.
On mornings after a particularly rough shift, and Jack couldn't sleep from the adrenaline, the two of you would watch the morning news until one of you eventually folded, usually you. His hand rested on your swollen bump that you could no longer pass as bloating to your nosey coworkers. Of course Dana was the first the sniff it out. Jack rubbed circles on your belly, it helped calm him, ground him, and have at least something to help keep his head above water. Suddenly he felt a little kick, jumping up so quickly he almost tripped, running his fingers through his hair with the dumbest smile on his face.
"Did you feel that? Was that my baby girl?" he started to pace, unsure of how to process this other worldly experience.
"Girl?" you chuckled, raising your brow, "How are you so sure its a girl?" the two of you decided you wanted to be surprised. You were certain it was a boy, but he shot down all the baby boy name suggestions because, "it didnt matter anyway." He liked the name Grace.
"Yes, my girls are both right here. Hi Gracie girl." he knelt down next to the bed, rubbing and kissing your belly as you rolled your eyes.
But the comfortable bliss of the second trimester was short lived as you entered your third. Growing more and more uncomfortable as the weeks pass and your bump grows. You don’t want to be touched, your back hurts, waking up nearly every night from heartburn, and those damn Braxton Hicks contractions making your abdomen tighten like a vice grip.
After every shift, Jack meets you on the couch to rub your swollen feet, not before checking your blood pressure of course.
“Jack, I don’t have pre eclampsia.” You’d protest and the cuff tightened around your arm.
“You know just as well as I that it can sneak up on you quick… 118/72…”
“See? I told you I was fine. I’m swollen because I was on my feet for the past 12 hours.” You elevated your legs on his lap, kicking his thigh with your foot before he started to rub them.
“Are you sure you’re okay working? You can always go out on maternity leave early.” Jack was particularly protective of you right now, no matter how many times you protested you didn’t need light cases loads at work. He’d make you take frequent breaks, and show up at the nurses station with a water bottle and crackers. You spent more time in the bathroom from all the water he made you drink rather than tending to patients.
“So I can sit at home and go stir crazy? No way. I’m only 36 weeks. I have a month left of this hell.” You threw your head back as he massaged a particularly tender spot. You took a long bath and changed into one of Jacks Army t shirts and a pair of his sweatpants, his clothes were the only things that fit you comfortably at this point. The shirt was ratty and nearly falling apart at the seams, but it was your favorite to wear. His smell embedded into the fabric no matter how many times it’s been washed. The sleeves stretched from his biceps that you loved to bite and nibble on when you two laid together.
You crawl into bed next to Jack who has already pulled down the blackout curtains and turned on your white noise machine you can’t sleep without. He looped his arm around you, nuzzling his head into your damp hair that now smelled of lavender and lemon verbena. It wasn’t long before you felt his breathing slow and his arm grow heavy over your bump.
You tossed and turned, feeling incredibly restless. Unable to settle, you flipped on the bedside lamp and started reading one of Jacks medical journals, hoping your eyes would eventually become too heavy to fight it. That feeling never came. It felt as if though you just ran a trauma, adrenaline coursing through your veins. You decided to go for a walk, your back aching, stopping ever so often to breathe through those damn Braxton Hicks. God you were so over this.
You spent the rest of the day cleaning whatever you thought was necessary. The baseboards, the inside of the freezer, and the top of the fans that you made him dust only last week. Had Jack known you were on top of a ladder, he’d have had a conniption. Soon you heard Jacks alarm go off and him shuffle out into the kitchen, his eyes tired and heavy.
“You get any sleep baby?” He asked, planting a kiss on the top of your head.
“Not really. Just too restless.” You shrugged as he poured himself a cup of coffee. You watched at he changed into his black scrubs and threw some extra things into his backpack. Today was your night off.
There was a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach, sometime inside screaming for Jack not to leave. You shook it off. Maybe it was just the indigestion. He grabbed an apple off the counter to eat on the way in. He held it in his mouth as he zipped his sweatshirt before taking a bite.
“You need anything before I head out?” He asked, grabbing the keys to his pickup. You watched the clock behind him, timing the minutes between the pains in your lower abdomen.
It’s just Braxton Hicks. It’s too early. You’re probably tired. Dehydrated. No, no, it’s just too early.
“Baby?” Jack called out again.
“Oh no I’m fine. Have a good night, my love.” You walked over, lacing your hands around his waist and planting a tender kiss on his lips, tasting the apple he’d just eaten. Then another twinge in your stomach. How long had it been?
8 minutes.
20 minutes.
5 minutes.
15 minutes.
3 minutes.
Something was happening. These felt different than the Braxton Hicks contractions that plagued you for weeks. Water. You had the primal urge to be in water. You ran another bath, submerging your belly, holding onto the sides of the tub as the surges continued to come, and then a low groan. You were vocalizing now. You had to be in active labor. You sat there for 2 hours, adding more hot water to the tub whenever you caught a chill.
Before you knew it, it was 6 am. You wanted to call Jack. You needed him. But he’d be home soon, God willing.
You no longer could concentrate, low, guttural moans escaping your mouth during peaks of your contractions. You didn’t even have a hospital bag packed. You started throwing stuff into a bag, none of it made sense. A tooth brush, a t shirt, a scarf. What? Why would you need a scarf? The pain was too intense. Why was this all going so fast? This was your first baby. You’d heard horror stories your entire pregnancy of women laboring for 24 or even 48 hours.
When you heard the jingle of his keys and the knob turning, you were hit with the strongest contraction yet.
“Ba-,” As Jack opened the door his eyes widened. He immediately threw his stuff down and rushed to you, who was leaning over the kitchen counter, rocking your hips and moaning. “Baby how long have you been like this? How far apart are your contractions?” The birthing classes immediately kicked in, bracing himself behind you and giving you hip squeezes until the contraction passed. It felt like heaven.
“They started before you left for work… and uh… 3 minutes now.” His face fell.
“Why didn’t you call me?” He asked, your face in his now shaking hands. Before you could answer you were hit by another contraction that now sent you on your hands and knees. He grabbed a cool rag and placed it on the back of your neck as you roared. The counter pressure he applied to your back no longer offered any relief. He coached you through the contraction that felt like it would never end, and all you wanted was for him to shut the fuck up. Suddenly the lights were too bright. His voice was too loud and your shirt was too tight.
“Off.” Is all you could say and you tried to take your shirt off yourself. Jack helped pull it over your head, the fabric peeling away from your damp sweaty skin.
“Baby, I wanna check you.” He asked, putting on gloves he grabbed from his bag. After giving him a nod, he rested one hand on your back before checking your cervix. He cursed under his breath. “You’re 9cm and 100% effaced. We have to go. Now.”
“But I’m only 36 weeks” you began to cry as you were hit with another contraction. Getting to his truck felt like ages. Stopping what seemed like every 30 seconds to double over through another surge. The second you sat down in the passenger seat you felt a pop and a gush between your legs. Your water broke.
“Thank god I laid those towels down first, huh?” Jack tried to joke through shaky breath as he barreled out of the driveway. You didn’t find it funny.
The hospital was a 15 minute drive, 30 with traffic. Unfortunately for you both, it was morning rush hour. You couldn’t sit, undoing the seatbelt you braced yourself against the headrest. Jack trying to rub your back with his free hand.
“Want your birthing playlist?”
“Fuck you!” Is all you could muster.
And then the urge. The incredible and uncontrollable urge to bear down.
“Jack… I have to push.” And his face went white. He quickly pulled to the side of the road and jumped out, grabbing his go-bag from the back seat before sprinting to open the passenger side door. He could see the baby start to crown and immediately pulled out some gloves, a fresh towel and his stethoscope from his bag. You always teased him about this go-bag. He couldn’t wait to tease you about this later.
“Okay my love, I see baby’s head. She’s almost here. She’s got a head of hair!” He was STILL so set on this baby being a girl. His voice cracked from fear and emotion that he was about to deliver his own baby.
You felt the ring of fire, your legs shook as you tried to push past the burning pain.
“I can’t do this! I can’t fucking do this!” You protested, still on your knees, now leaning over the center console.
“Yes you can baby, listen to your body. You’re doing so good. The hardest part is almost over. We’re gonna have a birthday today.” And you screamed again, pushing as hard as you could, the veins popping out of the side of your neck, your face growing redder and redder. You roared your baby out. Then relief. Sweet, sweet relief.
Jack caught your baby in his hands, his eyes clouded with tears that immediately began to fall. He helped your turn back over and brought your sweet baby to your chest.
“It’s a girl!” Jack sniffled. He was right. He was always fucking right.
“Why isn’t she crying, Jack?”
“Just give her a minute. Rub her back.” he pulled your shirt down again to do skin to skin. He’d by lying if he wasn’t panicking too. “Come on baby girl, let’s hear those strong Abbot lungs.” And then you both heard it. The most beautiful shrieking cry from your little girl. You threw your head back in relief and he rested his forehead against your temple, crying. You’d never seen him cry before.
“I just had a baby in the car, Jack.” You looked at him, in a daze. High on adrenaline and oxytocin.
“And you were a rockstar.” He kissed you before checking you and the baby before continuing to the hospital. You delivered your own placenta as you stared in awe at your little girl. She had his nose, his eyes, his chin… the more the looked the more you realized she was a spitting image of her father. Of course YOU do all the hard work for her to look nothing like you.
Jack pulled into the ER ambulance bay to find Dana already outside smoking a cigarette. He jumped out and screamed for a wheelchair. Snuffing the cigarette out with her foot she rushed over,
“What’s going on, Jack?” She had already paged Robby at the sight of him, looking dazed.
“It’s y/n, she just had the baby in the car. Page the NICU, baby seems fine but she’s only 36 weeks. Placenta delivered and intact.” He gave her the rundown before opened the passenger door to you latching your baby to the breast for the first time. You could not take your eyes off of her. Robby came out once he heard the page to find everyone huddled around the truck, helping me into the wheelchair.
“What’s this?” He asked, a goofy smile on his face.
“This is your niece, Grace Michaela Abbot. Michaela after her Uncle Mikey.” You smile up at him, absolutely beaming.
I didn’t participate in Kinktober like I wanted so I’m throwing everything in this one fic. 💀
MNDI! 18+
Warnings: age gap, readers dad is deceased, oral (m & f receiving), squirting, pussy smacking, p in v sex, spanking, overstimulation, forced orgasms, Jack is a depraved sexual lunatic, and I need him so bad!!!!!!!!!!
It had been 5 years since you’d been back to Pittsburgh. Finishing your bachelors in Arizona and then immediately your masters, you and your boyfriend had signed a lease in Mesa. After your father had passed, you had no reason to come back to the Steel City. But when you came home to find your boyfriend in bed with his coworker, you found yourself on a plane with everything you can fit in your duffle. You could feel the chill of the Pittsburgh winter the second the planes wheels screeched on the tarmac. You were home. Not exactly sure where home was, but you were home.
You drove past your father’s old house that his brothers forced you to sell. The light in the garage that was always illuminated was burnt out. Solidifying all these years later he was truly gone. The hours he had spent with his buddies in the garage drinking beers, and tinkering on his never ending car project; it was all a memory now. Booking a room at the Marriott downtown you sat on the balcony nursing a cigarette you knew you wasn’t allowed. The grief hit like a freight train. The cheers echoing from Acrisure Stadium echoed across the Allegheny drowning out the thoughts that kept flooding your mind.
Snuffing out the cigarette beneath your slippers, you texted your old friends from high school who were more than excited to get drunk catch up. Which is how you ended up at Gooski’s. A dive barin the Strip District that never glanced twice at your fake ID when you 18. You were 27 now but the place hadn’t changed: the brick exterior and cheap red lighting, the smell of stale beer and bad decisions, the sound of some shitty live music drowning out the people arguing over billiards.
The first shot of tequila put hair your chest as you tried to throw it back flawlessly, you were never good at taking shots. By the third shot, you found yourself with your heels off in the middle of the dance floor. The hand on your shoulder caused you to spit around quickly, you were ready to throw your drink on whatever creep that touched you, but stopped yourself when you saw a girl in scrubs.
“Are you single?” She yelled over the music. Boy were you ever. The audacity of your boyfriend to fuck another girl in the bed YOU bought, from the mattress, to the duvet, to the decorative pillows you swapped out with each season. All bought with YOUR paycheck.
“Uh— I just got out of a relationship, so I’m no—“
“Because I have a friend who thinks you’re really hot but he’s too pussy to come over himself.” She pointed to the group of people at the booth in the corner, half of them still in their scrubs. It didn’t take much to decide she meant the little one who looked like he hasn’t slept since 2009 and refused to look up from the table. “Unless you’re gay or something, in that case I’m Trinity.”
“I’m not, I mean, you’re hot for sure, but— I don’t think so?” You chuckled. You glanced back at the table, scanning the girls who were still teasing the poor kid who looked like he wanted a sink hole to swallow up the entire establishment. But there was someone else at the table now, make that two. A tall man with a beard and a hoodie, and— “you’re fucking kidding me.” You mumbled to yourself as you brushed past Trinity.
His face fell when he saw you, jumping up immediately before you could reach the table.
“Well look what the storm blew in.” He teased as he wrapped you in a big, warm hug. He smelled of cedar and bleach, not the way you remembered. Covered in motor oil as you fetched him and your dad another beer, and another, and another.
“Jack! Oh my god!” The tears pricked behind your eyes. The last time you saw Jack was at your father’s funeral, when he slipped you a check for 10k to cover all the expenses. Your dad’s brothers refused to pay and well, where was a college student gonna get 10 grand? When your uncle Peter showed up to the funeral with a black eye, you didn’t know what happened, but you had your speculations.
“The hell are you doing here? I thought you swore you’d never set foot back in this town. Where was you ran off to? Arizona?” He pushed the man over, who you soon learned was named Robby, and let you sit. He introduced you to the rest of the table. You met Dana, Ellis, Shen, Jivadi, Dana, Cassie, and Dennis. Poor Dennis who still wouldn’t look you in the eye.
The two of you talked, filling each other in from the past 5 years. He was older now, grayer, his smile lines deeper, but still just as handsome. You’d be lying to yourself if you said you never had a crush on your dad’s best friend. He was kind, smart funny, protective, pretty much everything your ex boyfriend wasn’t.
The drinks kept flowing, the alcohol in your veins making the shitty cover band somewhat tolerable. Jack watched you dance with your old friends and now new ones. Trinity, Jivadi, Mohan joining you all on the dance floor.
“You and Abbot go way back?” Trinity yelled over the music.
“Yeah, he was my dad’s best friend.”
“Awkward.” She grimaced.
“Huh?”
“He’s totally been checking you out since he saw you!”
“Oh my god, what? Yuck!”
“No he totally has,” Mohan chimed in, “guess he’s a boob guy.”
“I’m gonna throw up.”
“Oh my god, don’t be dramatic! You’re totally hot!”
“No— like I’m actually gonna throw up.” And then you booked it. The cold Pittsburgh air brought comfort to your clammy skin, as you found yourself vomiting in the street. You felt strong hands on your back drawing circles and pulling the hair away from your face. You wiped the tears from your face trying not to ruin your makeup before turning to find Jack.
“You okay, honey?” You whimpered a bit, the emotions of the entire week coming crashing down on you. “Alright, alright. None of that, come on I’ll take you home.”
“I wouldn’t call the Marriott home, Jack.”
“And then I come home from work and he’s fucking some bitch in OUR bed, Jack! After I already fucked him that morning!” You gritted through sobs as he drove you back to your hotel. “Can’t say I blame him though, she was prettier than I am.”
“Doubt it.” Jack mumbled beneath his breath and he listened to you vent what felt like years of pent up anger.
“What?”
“I said I doubt she’s prettier than you.”
“You didn’t see her, Jack. Blonde hair, blues eyes, ass and tits like a porn star. What every guy wants, including mine.”
“And I still doubt she’s prettier than you.”
“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better, you know?”
“Have you ever known me to be a liar?”
“No…”
He loosened his grip on the steering wheel. Something in the air had shifted, your stomach began to tingle and your mouth was a bit dry. As he pulled up to the Marriott he hopped out of the car and quickly walked around to open the door for you.
“I don’t think he ever opened a door for me in the 7 years we dated.”
“Honey I don’t think he’s much of a loss. Not exactly Rudolph Valentino by the sound of it.”
“Who?”
“Alright let’s get you inside.”
When you stepped into the elevator you stalled, the metallic walls showing off your reflection. The running mascara, the swollen eyes, messy hair. You looked like you went through hell and back.
“Your nose still gets red when you drink.” Jack chuckled with his hands in his pockets.
“What?”
“When you drink, the tip of your nose turns pink. You used to come home from parties in high school trying to act completely sober, but your nose always gave you away.”
You looked at your reflection again. Something you never noticed about yourself. You began to laugh, truly laugh, for the first time all night. As the elevator lurched to a halt you lost your footing, Jack pulling you tightly to his chest to stop you from falling. His thumb found your jaw, tracing across the sharp edge. Your eyes shut, almost rolling back at the sensation of his hands on your body.
The doors opened with a ding, snapping you both back to earth. When you go to your door you turned and smiled.
“Thank you, it was nice to see you and catch up, Jack.”
“Definitely a pleasant surprise. Well… goodnight honey.” He leaned in slowly, pressing a kiss to your temple. Your back hit the door with a thump. Your hands found his chest like it was a magnet. He stiffened, but didn’t move, instead his hands found your waist, his face buried into the crook of your shoulder.
“Do you wanna come inside?” You mumbled, almost breathless.
“I cant… I’ve known you since you were a kid.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.” You tugged up at his curls to meet your gaze. The curls you remembered being red, now salt and peppered.
“No,” he whispered, “you’re not.”
The door to the hotel clicked as the key slid in, and the two of you stumbled inside. Pulling at his coat before dropping to your knees and toying with his belt. Your fingers shook with anxiety and anticipation. His head hit the door as you spit on his length and jerked his cock in your hand. Slipping him into your mouth, you both moaned at the sensation. Your mouth full, tongue teasing around the head, flicking the frenulum before taking him deeper, your nose brushing against his mound of pubic hair.
“Your father would fucking kill me.” He growled as he rutted his fingers through your hair. You withdrew with a pop, your lips swollen and chin covered with saliva.
“Please don’t talk about my dead father as I’m sucking you off.” You groaned. He pulled you up off the floor by your hair, before his lips met yours. Sloppy and hungry. He picked you up, your legs instinctively wrapping around his sturdy frame. Jack carried you to the bed with the sterile white hotel bedding.
“Not too bad for an old man, huh?”
“I must say I’m impressed.” You smirked up at him, his cock bouncing freely in front of you. He dropped to his knees now, pulling you by your ankles to the edge of the bed. His fingers traced along your legs and up your thighs before skimming under your dress. He found the edge of your underwear, a black laced thong.
“Oh fuck, honey. Like you were waiting for me with this thing.” You intended on getting laid tonight, just not by the guy who taught you how to parallel park. Before you could respond, he spread you open in front of him, taking in your glistening cunt before licking all the way up your slit. Your back arched off the bed as he sucked your clit into his mouth. His tongue swirled around the sensitive bud before he teased your entrance with his finger.
You groaned, trying to rock your hips into him, chasing the sensation as you clenched around nothing.
“Gotta stretch you out first, baby. Don’t wanna split this tight pussy clean in half.” He curled his middle finger inside, settling on the spongy spot hitch just inside your walls. You were impossibly wet already, and fucking mortified at the squelching that filled the room as he finger fucked you, “fuck, listen to her baby. So pretty.”
Then his ring finger joined his middle finger inside of you. The “come hither” motion he was doing making you twitch beneath him. He worked you open, his mouth never leaving your clit. You tapped his shoulder frantically,
“Waitwaitwait, Jack. Hold on a sec, I’m gonna— I think I gotta pee.” You felt him actually smile against your pussy. As you tried to wiggle away from him, his grip on your thighs that were draped over his shoulders only tightened. He ate you like a man starved, shaking his head side to side, burying himself inside your pussy. “Jack please I can’t hold it.” You cried out before the band snapped and the orgasm ripped through you. Your juices sprayed his chin as he drank every single drop.
Mortified you propped yourself on your shoulders, your chest heaving and your eyes completely glazed over.
“Jack I’m so sorry,” you fought to catch your breath. “I told you I had to pee!”
He laughed at you. Actually laughed at you.
“Honey that wasn’t pee.”
“What?”
“You squirted, baby. And I’m gonna make you do it again,” he began to kiss up your legs, “and again,” your stomach, “and again” your breasts, “and again, until you’ve got nothing left to give me.”
Your breath shook, your chest feeling like it was going to cave in on itself.
“Oh.” Was all you could say in a rare loss for words.
“Oh what is it?… shy now are we?” He shoved his fingers back into your cunt, causing you to cry out. Gripping his tricep, you tried to brace yourself for the second orgasm that was now building. Again, you erupted in an orgasm that was more powerful than the last. Soaked the bed beneath you, your back arched violently as your body contorted. “Fuck that’s it…”
Jack gathered your slick on his fingers, brushing against your clit that was now swollen and sore. He licked himself clean before shoving his tongue into your mouth so you could taste your own sweet nectar.
He was on top of you now, kissing along your breasts, taking the bud in his mouth before kissing and nibbling your neck. The two of you were tangled together in the sheets, rolling around until you were on top, straddling his hips.
Fingers traced down his chest until you grabbed his cock in your hands. Notching it at your entrance before sinking down painfully slow. Rocking your hips you found a rhythm that was euphoric. Mouth hanging open, Jack tilted your hips so he could fuck up into your g spot.
He traced his hands along your stomach, squeezing at the supple flesh before grabbing your breasts.
“Fuck, look at you.” He rasped, “so fucking perfect bouncin’ on my cock like this, chokin’ me.” You sped up, rocking and bouncing against him until you collapsed from your third orgasm. He fucked you through it before flipping you over and railing into you once more.
“Jack— fuck!” You screamed, clawing at his chest, his back, the sheets. Anything to keep yourself grounded and he relentlessly plowed into you. Your moans were obscene, the sound of your wetness were almost embarrassing, but he only looked at you, smirking. “T—too much.”
“Want me to stop, baby?” He asked, starting to pull out, which you responded by chasing his dick with your cunt and sliding back down so your bodies were once again fused together.
“N—no. Don’t you— don’t you dare fucking stop.” Orgasm after orgasm had left you sore and sensitive, but if he stopped you may actually die.
“Tap me if you need me to stop, mkay? Or say red.”
Teetering between pain and pleasure, Jack took you over the edge by thumbing your clit. You screamed, really screamed, as he brought you to your fourth orgasm. So loud he pressed his hand firmly over the sides of your throat, adding a new sensation you had never experienced, and it was euphoric. As he tried to pull his hand away you forced it back, chasing the feeling once more. Your eyes were bloodshot as he kept squeezing over and over again, each time your pussy fluttering and pulsing around him.
“One more,” he growled, “just give me one more.”
“I—I can’t” you could barely speak, barely catch your breath. He pulled out of you, leaving you empty and squeezing around nothing. His hand came down on your sore pussy with a loud smack. “Oh god! Fuck, Jack!”
“I said one more. Turn over.”
You obeyed, flipping onto your stomach before he yanked your ass into the air to meet him. With a hard spank, he pushed back into your slippery walls. He was slow, pulling out just so his head was left teasing your entrance, only to sink back down. Your eyes rolled back at each painfully slow thrust, your head buried deep into the fluffy pillow. His hand found its way around your throat again, the other grabbing your wrists. They both fit effortlessly in his large, thick hand. He held them behind your back as he fucked into you. Picking up the pace, you felt another orgasm building. You tried to squeeze your legs together, unsure you could take another explosion that was about to wreck you.
“Keep that pussy open for me.” Jack demanded, forcing your legs apart with another hard smack to your ass. “I’m not fucking done with her.”
Removing his hand from your throat, he trailed back to your clit that was absolutely throbbing. Your eyes squeezed shut, mouth hanging open as he quickly rubbed the bundle of nerves. The orgasm hit like a freight train, the force so strong it nearly pushed his cock from your pussy. He held himself there as you nearly choked him, throbbing and absolutely dripping around him.
He turned you over as he painted your tits with his cum, his head falling backwards as the spurts decorated your chest. You looked up at him; eyes and lips both red and swollen. Your pussy still throbbed, still pulsed and squeezed around nothing. Jack left before returning with a hot towel to clean off his cum and press the warmth against your sore cunt. You melted into the wash cloth, running your fingers through his hair as he methodically inspected every inch of you.
“You did so good for me.” He mumbled into the crook of your neck. “Fucking perfect.”
summary: when an abandoned baby takes the e.r by storm, and seems to only be comforted by you, jack takes a keen interest in the maternal streak he didn't know you had. (5k)
characters: jack abbot / wife!reader, dana evans, emma nolan, michael robinavitch, whitaker and his ducklings (joy and ogilvie), baby jane doe!!!
contents: grumpy!reader, established relationship, angst, hurt/comfort, humor, not proofread cw for mentions of child abuse (r had a bad upbringing), smut 18+ ft. breeding kink!!
FIC #3 / 20 FOR 20
The smell of fresh coffee clings to the stale air of the empty break room, mixing with the stubborn scent of antiseptic that always seems to follow you and the ghost of Shen’s egg salad that he just had to pack for lunch. You sit slouched in a plastic chair at the round table, with one leg hooked over the spare one at your side, and a clipboard resting on the thigh of the other.
You hope to spend the next hour or so of your shift right here, pretending to stay busy flipping through MRI results and procedure notes until it’s time to go.
“I won’t tell anyone you’re camping out here if you promise to do the bulk of the driving to the cabin tonight,” Jack had told you when you found him in the break room, passing you the mug of steaming coffee he’d made for himself without a second thought.
The caffeine is the only thing keeping you going this far into your shift; along with the fact that you’ll be spending the rest of your Fourth of July with him in his countryside cabin — the furthest from the PTMC either of you has been since you got married.
“How about you don’t tell anyone, and you do the driving?” you propositioned, flashing the man a faux-innocent look from over the top of the rim as you brought the cup to your mouth. The fresh brew singed the tip of your tongue a bit, just enough to jerk your exhausted mind awake.
“Fine…” Jack caved with a slow huff; his first good breath all day. His following words came out slightly muffled as he leaned forward to press a fleeting kiss to your temple before walking on by you. “How much we got left on our sentence, huh? An hour? Two?”
“Sixty-four minutes, but… Who’s counting?”
“Well, that’s plenty of time for something fun to happen.” Jack turned in the doorway to flash you a knowing grin that you met with a tired scowl.
“Don’t jinx it,” you called to his retreating figure.
You’ve given enough of yourself for one night, you think; and after a rather urgent thoracotomy that nearly killed both the patient and you (though mostly in the metaphorical sense), you feel like you’re owed the small break. Now that the day shift is trickling slowly in, you’ve decided to stay hidden until somebody absolutely needs you.
You sink deeper and deeper into the plastic chair, willing yourself into invisibility, until a baby’s cry shatters the sacred quiet.
The high-pitched whine cuts through everything — your heavy exhaustion, your simmering headache, and the steady hum of the emergency department you’ve learned to tune out over the years. You drag yourself from your seat with a distant groan in the pit of your throat, ‘cause you know you won’t be able to relax until you know someone else has got it handled.
You trudge to the door and take a peek down the hallway, if only to say that you did, and find the long corridor bustling with an energy much livelier than you are. When the crowd parts, you spot Dana walking your way with something tiny swaddled in her arms — much too small to be as loud as it is now.
Her eyes light up at the sight of you.
“Dr. Abbot— Just the person I was looking for!” the older woman croons in her usual gritty monotone, with a knowing smile sitting crooked on her mouth. “We got a baby Jane Doe, ditched in the bathroom.”
Your features crumple under the weight of your exhaustion. Your head tips back to groan a long and theatrical, “No…” though your sneakers scuff the floor as you trudge her way despite yourself. “I only have one hour left on my shift— Please don’t make me do anything else.”
“Well, I also got a central line placement in Central 13,” Dana deadpans. “You know, if you’d rather not waste time takin’ care of this perfectly nice baby.”
The swaddled thing fusses when it’s shifted in her hold. Your eyes flit from its scrunched face, round and wet with tears, to the wise look in Dana’s eyes. She grins at your obvious hesitation.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
You sigh and step forward, like a martyr to the gallows. You trade the clipboard in your hand for the baby in Dana’s. She sets the thing gingerly in your hold — a warm and delicate weight between your arms, fitting just perfectly against your chest.
You had done a rotation in pediatrics before you settled on emergency medicine some years back. You know what it means to take care of a baby in the most technical sense, though none of it ever seemed to come totally naturally to you.
You move like a robot accordingly, all tense and methodical. The whining baby settles into your hold with a gentle coo anyway, like a switch suddenly flipped.
“Well, look at that,” Dana hums with an arched brow of amusement. “You’re a natural.”
“You’re evil,” you deadpan.
“So they say,” the woman quips drily, patting you on the shoulder with a warm hand. “C’mon. Show my shadow how to do a proper pedes check-up— Dr. Abbot’s not as mean as she looks, Miss Emma, I promise.”
You flash the young, fresh-faced nurse a polite smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes before leading her towards the pediatric unit across the way. She’s made of bright smiles, braided chestnut curls, and sunshine incarnate as she scurries just behind you. She’s got a sparkling look in her dark eyes that you’re pretty sure you lost somewhere around your first week of residency.
You pass the workstation with a sort of tunnel vision zeroed in on the vibrantly painted pedes room. You nearly miss Jack standing there, leaning over the desk with his arms folded and his biceps straining against his scrub sleeves.
The silver-haired man briefs a newly arrived Robby on the morning cases and pauses at the sight of you — his whole entire life, cradling a much smaller one in her arms, with an exhausted frown on your face that you don’t bother trying to hide.
Robby traces the man’s suddenly distracted gaze over his shoulder. His brown eyes follow your form, lighting up at the sight of you the same way Jack’s do.
“Well…” the older man croons. “Would you look at that—”
“Don’t,” you cut in sharply, and don’t bother slowing your stride as you pass them.
Jack’s quiet laughter follows you across the room. His eyes do, too, as he drinks up every ounce of you and the tiny thing swaddled in your arms. He finds himself getting drunk on a craving he didn’t know he had until that very moment.
Robby’s dark eyes squint. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re mentally siphoning through a bunch of baby names right now?”
“I always liked the name Milo for a boy. And Iris for a girl— but the missus is pretty allergic to pollen, so I’m not sure she’d go for that,” Jack answers without missing a beat, as though the thought had haunted his head at least once before. He only turns to face Robby again once you’re out of view. “What do you think?”
Robby just scoffs out a laugh. “I think you’re screwed, brother.”
Baby Jane Doe is mostly stable, all things considered.
Physically, she’s perfect. She had obviously spent the bulk of her little life being properly cared for. And, if you had to guess, she spent most of the time being held — if her immediate protest at being left in the warmer had anything to say about it. Her breathy whines fill the otherwise silent room as you perform a routine evaluation with practiced hands. You pay little attention to her annoyed cries and slip into teaching mode despite your palpable fatigue.
Emma hovers just behind you, with empathy glittering in her dark doe eyes. “Gosh,” she sighs. “How sad…”
“Eh,” you hum with a lazy shrug. Your gloved fingers lift the hem of her tiny white t-shirt to check for any bruising on her soft, pale skin, or for any other markers that might indicate signs of infection. You ramble on, half-distracted, “If you think about it, this baby got pretty lucky— If it really was abandoned, I mean. Better to be left here than with a family that can’t love it properly, right?”
Emma’s eyes widen at your cynicism. She can’t shake the feeling that you’re speaking from experience as she swallows hard and nods once in response. “Right…”
The door swings open across the room. The noise of the E.D. swells for a brief moment, before muffling when it clicks shut again a second later. Robby steps in first, with Jack following close behind. The former stands on the opposite side of the warmer and keeps his suddenly softened gaze on the cooing baby before him.
Jack migrates to your side the same way he always does — never as close as he’d like to be while on the clock, but never more than a few inches away from you when he can be.
“What are we thinkin’ here, Doc?” he asks.
“Normal pulse. Normal BP,” you rattle off with an air of indifference. “She’s well-hydrated, too. No visible sign of infection, either — though I guess we can’t rule out a benign virus just yet.”
“Do you think she qualifies for Safe Haven?” Emma wonders from Robby’s side.
You shake your head, lips softly jutted. “No. Either this baby is gigantic, or it’s well past the twenty-eight-day mark for Safe Haven. Worse-case scenario at this point is obviously abandonment. She’ll likely be put in foster care after a full evaluation.”
The young girl’s face falls slightly.
You soften despite yourself.
“But,” you add, if only to make her feel a bit better. “Past experience tells me that her parents might’ve just needed a break. Maybe they— I don’t know— stepped out for a cigarette or something. God knows, I’d need one if I had to take care of an alarm clock twenty-four-seven.”
Robby scoffs a weak laugh and shakes his head. “I’ll get Lupe to make an announcement in Chairs. See if anyone’s looking for her— If you’ll excuse me,” he nods with a polite smile down at the squirming baby below before sauntering out of the room.
The baby jerks when the noise of the crowded E.R fills the room again, startled by Dana’s yelling, who seems to be telling off a rowdy patient down the way. Her wet eyes squeeze shut as her gummy mouth opens to bellow a tiny wail. You reach out to comfort the baby, if only to hear less of the thing, with a methodical palm placed against its frail chest.
It whines for a moment before softening with a contented sigh.
“Look at that… You’re good with her,” Jack mumbles, taking a step closer to peer over your shoulder — until you can smell the coffee on his breath and the musky cologne lingering on his skin. A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth as he watches you with glittering eyes. “Told ya you should’ve gone into pedes.”
You flash him an emotionless scowl. “Don’t patronize me,” you scold.
“Have you guys ever thought about having kids?” Emma wonders with a kind smile, having assumed your marital status from your matching last names and golden wedding bands. She cowers instinctively when your eyes turn to her in sync, fearful she might’ve said the wrong thing. “Or is that super rude to ask? I’m sorry—”
“No, it’s not rude at all,” Jack assures her, reaching to wrap his hands around either end of the stethoscope around his neck. It makes his freckled biceps strain against the black sleeves of his scrubs as his silver head swivels slowly to look at you. Something mischievous swims in his blue-green eyes as he lilts, “We’re just… going with the flow. Right, Dr. Abbot?”
You meet his tightlipped grin with a deadpanned look. The two of you agreed long ago that, while neither of you is totally opposed to having children, you’d also be perfectly happy living a completely childfree life.
But instead of getting into all of that with less than an hour left on your grueling shift — in front of the newest addition to the nursing team, no less — you just nod with an artificial smile.
“Right. Yeah,” you say, already inching back towards the door. The baby starts to cry again a second later, in a series of revving whines that lead to a sharp shriek. You flash an apologetic grimace over your shoulder from your place in the doorway. “You guys have fun with… all that.”
You spend the next half hour finishing up your already-completed charting. You reword, backspace, and click occasionally at your mouse — pretending to work to keep from being bothered, though it isn’t quite as foolproof as you would’ve liked. Whitaker rushes your way with one of his interns in tow, sporting a worried sort of glint in his wide puppy dog eyes that he only gets when something’s going wrong.
“Hey… Dr. Abbot. Are you— Are you busy at the moment?”
“Nope,” you answer in a monotone, without looking up from the bright-white computer screen ahead of you. “And I’d very much like to keep it that way.”
“Well, uh…” Whitaker falters, shifting awkwardly on the other side of the desk. “We— We kinda need you. In pedes.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Baby Jane Doe hasn’t stopped crying since you left,” the woman behind him says, standing several inches shorter than the boy and sporting a heavy pair of glasses and a glittering silver septum in her nose.
Your eyes dart toward the stranger — Joy Kwon, MS3, the badge on her chest reads.
“That was, like, twenty minutes ago,” you say with an incredulous twist to your features.
“Exactly,” she deadpans.
You huff and lead the duo the short distance back to the pediatric unit. The crying hits you before you’ve even crossed the threshold — a sharp, unrelenting wail that adds to the headache you’ve been nursing all day.
You find a lanky, blonde-haired man who eerily resembles Whitaker in the vibrantly painted room, though his badge reads James Ogilvie, MS4. The young med student flashes you a wide-eyed look of horror, holding the writhing baby in a visibly awkward hold.
“Please help me,” he pleads.
You don’t bother trying to hide your apathy as you trudge across the room to close the distance between you. You slip the tiny baby back into your hold, where it settles almost instantly, heavying against your chest with another breathy whine. You rock it gingerly in your arms the way you were taught to. Its wet eyes flutter slowly shut as fat tear drops trail down its reddened cheeks.
Whitaker gestures with a dazed smile. “See? Knew it. Total natural.”
You flash the boy a deadpanned look over your shoulder. “Because I’m a woman? That means I’m automatically a natural-born caretaker?”
His light eyes widen with an immediate panic. Joy tries and fails to hide her amused smile as she purses her lips to the side of her mouth. Whitaker, meanwhile, stumbles over himself to get the words out.
“W-What? No! No, not at all! I just—”
“She’s just messing with you, kid.”
Jack’s voice drifts in as he steps through the door, saving the boy from his own stuttered-out apology. He’s perhaps the only one in Pittsburgh who can decipher your usual monotone from your humorous one, which he was only able to master after years of loving you.
“Oh…” Whitaker says, deflating with a relieved sigh, though his pink cheeks are slow to lose their newfound color.
“Go check on Mr. Alvarez for me, will ya?” you tell him, jutting your chin back towards the door. “You know, since I have to take care of… this thing.”
Whitaker leaves and takes his interns with him, who trail after him in line like ducklings. They pass by Jack in the doorway, who peers at you over their heads with a pair of wide eyes.
“This thing?” he scoffs.
You bounce a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I’m not getting attached to it.”
“It?!”
You huff and adjust the baby in your arms, with one hand resting on its diapered bottom and your other rubbing gently over its tiny back. You sway gently back and forth, far too sweetly for the following words out of your mouth.
“The entire reason I got into emergency medicine was so I could help people without having to deal with all the— baggage that comes with him.”
“Well, babies don’t have baggage, honey,” Jack laughs as he strolls slowly towards you. “They’re brand new— that’s literally their whole thing.”
“Yeah. That’s because the parents give it to ‘em through… years of psychological torment.”
Jack studies you for a long moment with a pair of squinted eyes. “I think you might be projecting a little bit here…”
“I know I am,” you scoff. “Which is why I’d be a horrible mother. ‘Cause I’d just be a mirror of my mom, and our kid would just be a mirror of me, and it’ll just be a whole cycle of… emotionless, unaffectionate women...”
You trail off with a heavy sigh, lifting your gaze from the calming baby to the man towering over you. You find him wearing a much softer gaze than you expect him to. He tilts his silver head to his shoulder, eyes narrowing and lips curling slowly.
“Our kid?”
Your eyes flick away and back again. “…What?”
“You said our kid,” Jack clarifies with a wider grin.
You roll your eyes at him despite the way your cheeks blaze beneath his unwavering stare. “Well, we are married, you know? Who the hell else would I be having kids with— Robby?”
“God, I hope not— Poor kid,” Jack quips drily before leaning in to press a soft, fleeting kiss to your temple. His silver scruff brushes our delicate skin when he pulls away, far sooner than you would’ve liked. “And, just for the record, I think you’d be an amazing mom.”
Something warm flickers in your chest at his words, like embers stoked suddenly to flame. You recoil physically from the foreign feeling, with a grimace twisting your features.
“Eugh…”
“What?”
You shake your head in response, parting from him to set the now-slumbering baby into the warmer at your side. You lay it gingerly onto the blankets before stepping away with your hands splayed out, as if it had burnt you in some way.
“It got too real for a second there,” you mutter with a look of disgust on your face. “I started feeling all… warm and… and fuzzy— I didn’t like it…”
Jack laughs.
“Yeah, that’s what they call happiness, Dr. Abbot,” he jokes in a gritty deadpan. “And I’m glad you’re finally getting to experience it after three whole years of marriage.”
Jack can’t get the sight of it out of his head. You, in the rocking chair in the corner, with the pedes room dimmed to a dull lamplight, cradling a sleeping baby to your chest and looking half-asleep yourself.
“Thought you weren’t getting attached?” he whispered into the serene silence from his place in the doorway.
“’M not,” you mumbled back, head lolled to your shoulder, eyes half-closed. “‘M just using this as an excuse to shut my eyes for a second.”
Something about it all catches him off guard. Not the baby, exactly — he’s seen a thousand babies before — held them, handed them off, charted them like any other patient in a sea of a hundred different patients. They were always temporary things to him, always someone else’s.
But then he sees you — his future, his eternity — with someone else’s baby tucked to your chest as if it had always been there. You had one hand instinctively supporting the weight of her head while your other smoothed up and down her back. And your voice, often edged with sarcasm dry enough to sand wood, had softened into something warm and low and honeyed. And the seemingly orphaned baby, who could cry loud enough to rattle glass, goes instantly still in your arms like it finds sanctuary in you alone.
It does nothing more than pique his curiosity at first — the idea of having kids with you, of how great a mom you would be — which isn’t a completely rare thought, but one that is typically fleeting. But then the thought lingers. Festers. Settles somewhere in the pit of his chest until he can’t breathe without thinking about it.
By the time you’ve settled in the empty cabin, six hours away from the PTMC, the desire has rooted itself somewhere far deeper than he’d like to admit.
Jack, freshly showered, reclines on the clean sheets of the familiar bed, smelling of detergent and time gone by. The bedroom settles slowly into a lamplit darkness in time with the late night. Fireworks crackle faintly in the distance, in mere echoes rolling across the midnight-colored lake outside. The quiet feels borderline suffocating compared to the never-ending chaos of the E.D.
You move through the space as if you had always been there. Jack watches you from his spot on the bed, which gives him a perfect view of you in the adjacent bathroom.
Your hair is still slightly damp from the shared shower, dripping onto the t-shirt swallowing your body whole. Your bare feet pad softly along the tile as you complete the last steps of your skincare routine; your attention flitting between your reflection in the mirror and the video playing on your phone.
It strikes him somewhere deep — swells from his stomach, to his chest, to his throat, until he gets the very sudden urge to cry.
“Should we have a kid, you think?” Jack blurts, as if the question were as simple as asking you if you wanted pizza for dinner.
You still in place in the golden-lit bathroom. Your fingers freeze on your cheeks, mid-swipe of moisturizer, as you flash him a deadpanned glare from the doorway.
“…Do you hear that?” you wonder in a monotone.
“The sound of my sperm dying?” Jack jokes
“The sound of quiet,” you correct before turning away to continue your work in the mirror. “Which doesn’t exist when you have kids. I mean, think about it— We wouldn’t have even been able to come here today if we had a kid. We wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“Well, that’s just not true,” Jack scoffs, folding his arms behind his silver curls until his biceps strain beneath the sleeves of his black undershirt; the hem rises just enough to reveal the tuft of light brown-blonde hair trailing down into his sweatpants.
His silver scruff brushes his freckled skin when he turns his head. “Parents take their kids places all the time— or alarm clocks, as you so lovingly called them.”
“Yeah, well, not mine,” you murmur distantly as you chuck your crumpled cotton pads into the bin beside the sink. “They always told me that I was the reason we couldn’t afford to do anything. ‘Cause apparently feed and clothing me was such a burden to them— as if I asked to be here.”
“Your parents were just assholes, babe.”
“The crazy thing is, they were actually pretty nice…” you sigh, bare feet padding softly across the floor as you trudge to bed, plugging your phone into its charger on the nightstand. “Just not to me. Like I ruined them or something.”
Jack’s chest flares with a white-hot warmth that makes his eyes sting. “You know that’s not your fault, right?”
You don’t answer him with words. You just bounce your brows and tilt your head, though he struggles to tell if it’s an agreement or not. He shifts on the mattress when you pull the fluffy comforter down to slide into bed beside him, brows lowered as he keeps his unwavering stare locked on your face.
“Is that why you don’t want kids?” he wonders gently. “Because you think you’ll end up like your parents?”
You scoff, kneeling on the mattress until you settle into place next to his reclined form. “Isn’t everyone terrified of ending up like their parents?”
“Sure, but… You’re nothing like them. I mean, I saw you with that Jane Doe today— You were perfect.”
“Well, you have to say that.”
“No, I don’t,” Jack scoffs. “If I thought any differently, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But I know you’d be a great mom because I saw that today— Saw the rest of my whole goddamn life in that place…”
He trails off with a faraway look in his eyes.
You watch him with a suspicious glint in yours.
“…You really mean that?” you murmur, halfway shy, picking at pills of cotton on the blanket thrown over your legs. “The part about me… You know, being a good mom, I mean?”
“Of course I do,” Jack laughs like it’s obvious, eyes glittering as he peers up at you. “And it’s not like I expect you to change your mind right now— or ever, if that’s what you want. It’s just… Something to think about, you know?”
“Well…” you tilt your head and trail off with a mischievous sort of lilt in your voice. “They do say the best part of having kids is trying for one.”
Jack grins up at you, brows raised to his hairline. “Do they?” he hums lowly.
“Mhm,” you nod.
“Should we test that theory out, you think?” he teases, all giddy like a teenage boy.
You shrug lazily, t-shirt sleeping off your shoulder, pretending to remain uninterested despite the excitement flaring red-hot in your chest. “Well, what the hell else are we gonna do?”
Something about your indifference makes Jack ravenous. It always has. It makes him feel like he’s got something to prove. And there’s nothing he loves more than watching your mask slip, than watching all your attempts to tease him fade into moans you couldn’t hold back if you tried.
You melt for him first, when his long fingers slide your pretty panties to the side, dragging an orgasm from you with an expert hand — and then further when he presses his mouth to the wet spot in the thin cotton, drinking the honey you leak from him until he licks another twitching orgasm from your buzzing body.
Jack’s wearing your slick down to the silver scruff on his chin when he crawls back up your trembling form, massaging his stiff cock through his boxers. “You’re not too sensitive, are you?” he wonders gently despite the proud smile sitting crooked on his face and the honey still coating his tongue.
Your hips buck on their own accord, chasing a pleasure you’re not entirely sure you can take.
“Fuck a baby into me,” you plead in a half-drunken slurs, etching scratch marks long his back in an attempt to ground yourself. “Wanna make you a daddy, Jack— Want feel you leakin’ outta me…”
“Jesus Christ,” Jack huffs, like you’ve just punched all the air out of his lungs. “You can’t talk like that, baby— I’ll cum before we’ve even started.”
He knows it’s just the previous two orgasms talking, ‘cause you’re still on the pill after all — having a baby now is pretty much out of the equation even if you really wanted to. But Jack isn’t in the business of depriving you of what you want. So he gives you all he has for the time being.
He folds your knees to your chest with a pair of wide, calloused hands, keeping your drooling pussy spread for him as he pierces you slow. The head of his cock, glowing red with need, disappears inside your pulsing confines. His throaty groan entwines with your quiet whimpers as your cunt suckles him further in. Once he’s sheathed fully inside, he stills just against you, with the greying thatch of coarse hair above his cock nestled against your sensitive clit.
“Yeah, you feel that?” Jack croons with a breathy laugh, which turns into a moan when your nails rake down his muscular chest. “You’re so full of me, aren’t you, baby?”
Your heavy head nods lazily against the pillow, eyes bleary and wet with desire. They squeeze shut a second later, when Jack’s hips drag back, until only the head of his cock is left inside you. Then he slides back into you, slow enough that you feel every ridge and vein of his cock, and smiles when your back arches off the mattress.
“I’ll give you a baby one day, honey, I promise,” the man babbles, choppy between his measured thrusts. “Fill you up so much it’ll be leakin’ outta you for days—”
You whine, hips bucking into and away from his cock all at once.
“Yeah, that’s it… I’ll get you all round and full… ’Til you’re walking around the E.D… Showin’ everyone what I did to you— how good I make you feel…”
“Please,” you whine.
“Yeah?” Jack coos sympathetically, beneath the wet schlick, schlick, schlick sound of his thrusts inside you. “That what you want?”
You nod, head tilted back and eyes squeezed shut, though the pathetic “please, please, please”’s continue spilling from your kissed mouth.
“Take it then, baby— Take it.”
He buckles down over you, punching into you with shallow thrusts that slowly start to lose their rhythm. He talks you through every inch of your orgasm, which hits you so hard it makes tears swell in the corners of your eyes.
“That’s it, honey. Let me have it,” he murmurs in your ear as your body starts to twitch beneath his muscular one. “Give me all of it, baby. That’s it.”
Your stomach pools with heat a second later when Jack tenses on top of you, burying his groans in his neck as his jerking cock spits thick ropes of warm cum inside of your pulsing confines. He deflates on top of you when he’s finally spent, sticky body melting with yours, until both of you are melting into the tousled sheets below.
“You okay?” Jack asks through panted breaths, muffled into your sweat-slick neck.
You nod wordlessly, swallowing hard as the high fades, and shoving lazily at his bare shoulder. “Get off— I gotta go to the bathroom,” you huff.
Jack slides off your body and falls heavily onto the other side of the mattress. He watches with lidded eyes as you hurry to the bathroom with your thighs clenched together. You clean yourself up inside and return some minutes later to Jack having wiped himself off and tucking his soft cock back into his grey boxers.
“Do you wanna… talk about all that?” he asks with a knowing squint in his eyes.
“Remind me tomorrow,” you sigh, feet heavy as you trudge back into bed.
Jack scoffs a laugh, knowing you’ll likely tell him the same exact thing tomorrow, and flips off the lamp on the nightstand. The golden bedroom delves into a midnight-blue darkness.
His limbs entwine with yours on nothing short of muscle memory when he slides back into bed with you. His long legs slot with yours beneath the covers as he throws a heavy arm over your stomach, folding his free one beneath his head.
Quiet settles over the dark bedroom like a blanket.
“Actually,” you blurt into the silence, catching Jack right before he falls asleep.
“Yeah?” he mumbles, warm breath fanning over your shoulder.
“It’ll probably take about— I don’t know, three or so days for all the results to come back. You know, for Baby Jane Doe’s workup,” you murmur, half-shy. “And we’ll be back to work by then, so… I was thinking maybe we could… Never mind, it’s stupid.”
Jack lifts his head before you can shrink back into yourself, eyes flitting across your shadowed profile. “No, what is it?”
You roll onto your back to meet his darkened gaze with a far more sheepish one. “Maybe we could take her, you know? Just foster her on an emergency basis until we can find her family. Or someone who can foster her long-term. Like a…”
“A trial run?” Jack finishes for you with an audible grin. “Yeah, that’s definitely one way to pitch it, honey.”
You grimace, hiding your burning face behind your hands. “I told you, it’s stupid,” you whine, muffled behind your palms.
“It’s not stupid,” Jack assures you with a quiet laugh. He pries your hands from your face with gentle fingers wrapped around your wrist. “I think it’s a great idea. We can, you know, taste the waters about the whole baby thing and help a kid in need at the same. Sounds like a win-win to me.”
“Yeah?” you hum with a soft wince.
“Yeah,” he nods. “We can look into it when we get back.”
Your chest swells with a sunshine sort of warmth when he settles back into bed beside you, tossing a muscular arm over you to tuck you back into his bare chest. It’s a pure, unadulterated feeling of overwhelming happiness that weirdly makes you feel like crying. ‘Cause only Jack would agree to foster an abandoned baby you found at work not even a day ago; only Jack would see all of you and still love you completely, for a reason you still can’t name.
“I hate when you’re supportive,” you grouse on instinct as you bury your head back into the pillow, even though you mean the exact opposite.
Jack knows this, too, so he just grins into your hair and jokes, “Yeah, I know. It’s definitely my worst quality.”
summary: jack abbot, after hypothesizing that you might be a little touch-starved, decides to take matters into his own hands and change that. (or: the three-ish times jack abbot holds you, and the one time you finally hold him back). (2k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, michael robinavitch, parker ellis, crus henderson
contents: part 2 to this fic but can be read on its own, friends in love, fluff, hurt/comfort, jack abbot being a d1 yearner yet again, not proofread cw for medical inaccuracies, medical procedures, mentions of grief and trauma
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Jack had not yet forgotten the way you melted into his touch. The way he held your face in his hands on that rooftop, and the way you heavied into his palm as he tricked you into staying alive for him. He can still feel the weight of you against his fingertips; a phantom sort of pressure that hurts him far worse than the one in his leg.
Maybe that’s why he can’t seem to stop touching you — a feeble attempt to relieve him of that ache. It’s usually nothing more than faint nudges of his shoulder against yours, or gentle pats on the back after a job well done, or sympathetic brushes of the hand after a job done not-so-well.
It’s swift and always subtle; just enough to stop his aching, but never enough for anyone else to notice.
Most of the time, anyway.
When Jack comes up behind you at the busy workstation, he splays a wide hand along the base of your spine to squeeze through the growing crowd there. The quiet of his touch gets lost beneath the relentless bustle of the afternoon rush, but makes you forget how to breathe for a half second or more all the same.
Sometimes you think your body has grown so unaccustomed to tenderness that any touch registers immediately as terrifying.
You blink the fleeting shock away and force yourself to keep typing when Jack’s steady hand never wavers on your spine. “Are you sure about this?” you hear yourself ask.
“Of course I am,” he shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
You glance back at him with an expectant gaze, wide eyes glimmering with worry. “Because we could get in trouble if someone found out— serious trouble.”
Jack exhales hard through his nose in place of a laugh, because this wasn’t the first time he’s low-balled a few measurements to help a patient get an abortion they want, and it probably won’t be the last.
His mouth flickers upward in a soft smile, but his eyes stay stern as he tells you in a calm and unwavering voice, “Well, I’m the attending here, right? So, technically, I’d be the only one getting in trouble.”
“That’s worse,” you agonize in a sharp whisper, fingers trembling over the keyboard. “I don’t want any of us getting in trouble— not her and especially not you.”
“Good thing no one’s gonna find out then, huh?”
Jack arches an expectant brow.
Your eyes soften around the edges with apprehension.
Robby’s gritty voice cuts through the never-ending noise and the tension between you as he drops off a clipboard at its assigned rack. “What are you two whispering about over here?” he quips drily.
You flounder instantly at the simple question.
Jack takes it in stride. “Oh, nothing— Just, you know, conspiring against you. Figuring out the easiest way to overthrow your authority. That’s all.”
“If you wanna take over, then by all means…” Robby jokes with his hands splayed in surrender before stalking off in the opposite direction. “Put me out of my misery.”
You exhale a wavering breath when he’s gone and turn back to the computer in front of you. You adjust the girl’s gestational sac and biparietal diameter measurements to meet the mandated eleven-week cutoff.
Jack’s warm hand never leaves your back.
You fail to notice that your fingers no longer shake.
Trauma 2 swells with heat — both from the increasing temperature of the unconscious burn patient rushed in by the EMTs, and from the rising tension as the young man’s sats begin to plummet without warning. An unrelenting beeping noise fills the tense air, along with the sound of shuffling as you all scramble to throw on disposable PPE.
You fumble with a pair of gloves like it’s your very first day in the ER, while Jack helps tie a paper gown around your neck and spine.
“What’s your call, Doc?” he asks from behind you.
“I-I don’t know,” you stammer breathlessly. “Maybe a— a lung injury from the fire?”
“Explains the sudden respiratory distress,” Jack nods affirmingly, warm fingers brushing the base of your neck. “But doesn’t explain the high peak pressure or the low tidal volume.”
“Okay… Uh…” you waver and swallow hard. It takes a long moment for your brain to finally click. “Then it’s a— A restrictive pattern. The burnt skin is losing elasticity. The chest wall’s getting too tight.”
You miss the proud smile Jack gives you in response.
“That’s right,” the older man praises as he finishes knotting the tie in your gown. He turns to announce to the rest of the room: “Let’s get these dressings off and prep him for an escharotomy, shall we?”
A nurse readies a medical tray. You freeze when Jack passes you the scalpel in a gloved hand. Your wide eyes flit wildly between it and him.
“I… I’ve never done one of these before. I wouldn’t know how to—”
“That’s okay,” Jack nods, with a voice much softer than the chaos surrounding you. “You hold the blade. I’ll cut. We’ll take it slow. I promise.”
When he steps in behind you, you can smell the musky cologne on his skin and the coffee on his breath — beneath the bitter scent of charred skin and antiseptic. His right hand rests firmly on top of your smaller one, warm like a furnace, and guides your fingers to the man’s blistered side.
“Start at the lateral clavicle…” Jack instructs lowly in your ear. “And then down the anterior axillary line…”
“How much pressure?” you ask, fighting off a shiver.
“Just about… this much.” He applies the slightest bit of guidance. The scalpel pierces the skin. Fatty tissue blooms underneath, tainted by the deep scarlet blood that spills out. “Now just go around to the lower rib margin…. Yep, that’s it… You’re doing great…”
Your chest warms at his praise.
The rapid beeping quietens shortly thereafter.
“Peak pressure’s already down in the thirties,” Ellis comments from the opposite side of the room, dark eyes steady on the monitor. “And tidal volume’s already coming up.”
“See?” Jack lilts in your ear, a smile audible in his voice. “There we go.”
You exhale a wavering sigh; a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.
Jack finds you in the break room afterward, when the patient is finally stable again. Your back is facing him as you make yourself a coffee, all slow and methodical — ‘cause this is the only place in the PTMC where you’re truly allowed to take your time.
“Hey…” the man greets gently to keep from startling you. He smiles when you glance over your shoulder to look at him. His chin bows in a nod of approval. “You did good in there.”
You shake your head and turn away, ripping open three square sugar packets in one fell swoop. “No. That was… That was all you, Dr. Abbot…”
You tap the pink wrappers with your pointer finger. White granules come spilling out, dissolving instantly in the steaming liquid — a little like you do, when Jack towers suddenly at your side, leaning back against the counter with his arm brushing yours.
His freckled biceps strain against his scrub sleeves when he crosses them over his chest. His scruffy chin ducks softly to flash you a stern sort of look.
“You did the left side and the horizontal incision,” Jack reminds you. “So just take the win, kid.”
You peer up at him from beneath your lashes. A reluctant smile tugs at the edges of your mouth. “Thanks…”
His kind eyes drop to the mug in your hands. “Though, to be honest, I’m not sure how much of a good idea that caffeine is. I know your adrenaline’s spiked— always happens when you get to do something new in here.”
“I know. I just… needed a second to breathe,” you confess. “I was actually making it for you…”
Jack’s brows lower in a dubious look. “…Really?”
You nod, smiling quietly but still wider than you realize. “Two creams, three sugars, right?”
His expression softens as something red-hot burns through his chest. He nods once, with a shy smile, and with calloused fingers that brush yours when he takes the mug from your hand.
“Yeah…” he hums, breathless for a reason he can’t name. “That’s right.”
The MCI hits the PTMC like a tidal wave.
The emergency department turns into a blur of blood and bustling bodies and bellowed commands as a series of GSWs are rushed in from a shooting at a local concert. The day shift is called in despite the late night for extra hands, while the rest of the bottom floor is cleared out to make room for incoming patients.
A young boy is carried in, limp and bloodied. His concert tee is two sizes too big and ripped at the stomach from where a bullet had torn through his skin and wedged into his abdomen.
You’re reminded immediately of the boy who was rushed in the same way, some months back, with differing injuries but on the brink of death all the same — Barry, who now lives with his grandmother, and had just celebrated his fifth birthday, and is going to start kindergarten in the fall.
You don’t have time to think about all that now — not about the child from before, or how the sight of this one reawakens a trauma you thought you’d gotten over. You just move.
Your hands move fast and steady despite your racing mind. You’re wrists-deep in the boy’s small, round stomach when sudden intestinal failure causes his sats to drop. You work fast to stop the hemorrhaging and to repair the rupture in his small intestine before he’s taken to the OR for more intensive monitoring.
“Sats are stabilizing,” you hear Crus say from beside you, as the rapid beeping of his monitor begins to slow. “Heart rate’s normalizing. Blood pressures trending upwards— Let’s get him to the OR.”
You don’t realize Jack had been with you the whole time until the room is cleared out.
You remain in place, covered in bright red blood that isn’t yours — with your gloved hands limp at your sides and your glassy gaze focused on the crimson footprints smudged on the linoleum below.
Jack steps into your tunnel vision then, silver head bowed and light eyes swimming with concern behind his safety glasses.
“Hey…” he coos. “You with me?”
You blink hard, trying to clear the haze of adrenaline from your vision. You nod on muscle memory, until the words catch up with you, “Yeah. Y-Yeah, I just—”
Your voice breaks, betraying you instantly.
“It’s okay,” Jack murmurs. “You did good, kid. You did everything right— He’s okay…”
He reaches out for you, weathered hands tense with hesitancy. Your wide eyes are filled with lingering fear as you watch him inch towards you, but you don’t stop him when his fingers brush your wrists.
He peels your bloodied gloves from your trembling hands with a warm and steady touch. Your paper gown goes next, and then your glasses. You stay still, letting Jack take care of it all, while your brain struggles to catch up to the current moment — still stuck somewhere in the chaos from before.
“I thought—” Your breath stutters in your chest. You struggle to tear your eyes off the blood on the floor. “I thought he was— that he was going to—”
“I know,” Jack hums, more distant now. “I know. But he’s okay. That’s what matters.”
Your head swivels over your shoulder. You find him standing at the bin across the room, chucking away your PPE gear before tossing in his own — his gloves, then his gown, then his glasses. The two of you are left in your heavy black scrubs, unstained, but still smelling of the heavy metallic blood in the room anyway.
His eyes are narrow and attentive as they flit across your face — the beads of sweat on your forehead, the glazed-over look in your eye, the bite marks of worry etched into your mouth. He hasn’t seen you like this since the day he found you on the roof.
“Go ahead and take a breather, kid— I’ll come find you in a second.”
Any other time, the thought of a break would’ve terrified you. But now, you catch yourself nodding before you’ve even really considered it.
“Okay…” you hear yourself waver in a faraway voice. “But can you, uh— Can you check— Make sure he’s… that he’s okay in the OR—”
“Yeah,” Jack nods instantly. “Of course.”
His words hang in the quiet, heavy, blood-soaked air for several long moments — the weight of them more so — the notion that no one has ever cared for you in your whole life the way Jack Abbot has cared for you in the past few months.
You feel your feet moving before your brain has truly processed it.
The steps you take towards him are not planned; they’re not all the way thought through, either. You gravitate towards him with all the same instincts as the tides to the moon. You don’t even realize you’re hugging him until your arms are already wrapped around his waist — until your warm cheek is pressed to the soft fabric of his scrubs, until you can hear his heart beat thudding in your ear.
You hold him tight — scared that he’ll sleep away, or maybe that you will.
Jack freezes for half a heartbeat. Because, even though he’s made a habit of being next to you in every room he’s in, it isn’t lost on him that this is the very first time that you’ve touched him without him initiating it first.
Once the fleeting moment of shock has passed, his strong arms wrap just as tight around your form — one hand firm between your shoulder blades, and the other cradling gently at the back of your head. He keeps you close while you bury your nose in his chest, breathing him in, grounding yourself in his warmth.
“You’re okay…” he coos. “I got you, kid. You’re okay…”
You can feel the words humming in his chest.
And for the very first time, you start to believe them.
summary: on your very first day as an attending at the ptmc, you're forced to navigate the chaos of the night shift, a code silver, and the fact that jack abbot would (and did) take a bullet for you. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, samira mohan, john shen, crus henderson, princess de la cruz, michael robinavitch, jack's dead wife also gets a wee mention
contents: friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, heavily inspired by greys anatomy s6ep24, not proofread soz cw for so many medical inaccuracies (like so many), hostage situations, heavy mentions of blood and gore, mentions of trauma and grief
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
It was your first day as an attending, and almost your very last.
Other than your newfound position, there was little else different about this night compared to all the others. The late evening was filled with all the usual chaos that you’ve come to find a strange sort of refuge within. Your first patient of the day was a woman in a pretty sequined dress, who’d sustained a collapsed lung after screaming a little too hard to “Bohemian Rhapsody” during karaoke — something you’d only find while working the night shift.
“First needle aspiration as an attending…” Jack Abbot said with a nod of approval when the procedure was done. “How’s it feel?”
The simple question made you dizzy. It was as much of a reminder of your new ranking as the foil balloons in the break room, bobbing lazily against the ceiling tiles. Or the crooked banner strung above the coffee maker, reading CONGRATS in cheap gold letters. Or the plastic container of store-bought cupcakes someone definitely bought last-minute, with neon-colored frosting smeared slightly on the lid.
But what really sent you reeling, though, was the inadvertent acknowledgment of the simmering tension between you and Jack — which had always been there in some ways, but was much easier to ignore before now.
The constant will-they-won’t-they between you was buried under layers of hierarchy, rules, and morals — under the unsaid understanding that whatever this thing between you was could never be acted upon. Not while you were his resident, anyway.
The obvious power imbalance was a line Jack Abbot would not let himself cross, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
Only now, that wretched line isn’t there anymore. For the first time since he met you, you’re both on even ground. The world is your oyster, as it were; all the opportunities lie now at your feet. You need only to reach out and take it.
“First intubation as an attending,” Jack hums from the opposite side of the hospital bed, eyes glittering with amusement behind his safety glasses. “How’s it feel?”
You scoff a quiet laugh and shake your head. “That question got old about the fourth time you asked it, Dr. Abbot…” you deadpan, sewing the trachael to the unconscious patient’s neck.
Reggie Brice; thirty-two-year-old male; exhibiting crush injuries to the chest and pelvis from a gnarly car pile-up. Seven people, including this one, were rushed in requiring immediate assistance. The rest were brought in with sustained head injuries, concussions, or minor fractures that needed tending to. You know that there has been at least one confirmed death.
“Well, it’s a big deal,” the man scoffs. “Why do you think we all chipped in two dollars to decorate the break room? Those grocery store cupcakes actually mean something, you know?”
“Well, I am honored…” you sigh in a distracted monotone.
Jack squints. “Yeah, I can tell. You look downright emotional—”
You take a step back to assess, gaze flickering to the monitor at your side. You find the man’s blood pressure continuing to climb, which is less than ideal for the injuries he’s sporting now.
“Pressure’s too high. We gotta fix that, or he’s gonna crash,” Jack announces in a sharper tone, though it never quite loses its laid-back edge. He always works best under pressure, in truth. “We could always crack the chest, cross-clamp the aorta— buy him some time till we get him a room.”
“What about preperitoneal packing?” you suggest, gesturing over the patient’s lean stomach with gloved hands. “We do a simple midline incision below the umbilicus, pack like hell around the bladder, keep the bleeding in check until we get him upstairs.”
Jack’s silence is less than reassuring.
You peer at him behind the glasses sitting low on your nose, stumbling over yourself as you brace for an inevitable rejection. “I know it’s more of an OR procedure, and I’ve only done it once, but—”
“Hey…” Jack cuts in softly, brows raised to his hairline. “You’re the boss here, kid. Remember? We’ll do whatever you wanna do.”
Your eyes narrow, despite the funny feeling flaring in your chest. His voice, all deep and gravelly and gentle, has always had a way of piercing right through you.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Abbot,” you remind him.
So there’s nothing standing in your way anymore, old man, you’re really saying.
Jack grins wide, like he can hear it in your silence.
“Force of habit,” he shrugs. “Now, c’mon. Let’s do it your way, boss.”
You’re wrists-deep in the conscious man’s pelvis, packing the blood clot around his bladder while Jack holds the Deaver retractor in a steady head. You fall into a strange sort of rhythm together, the way you always do, moving with each other without ever having to speak. Though, for some reason, you can’t seem to stop your hands from shaking.
“This is good, right?” you murmur behind your mask, shoving more gauze beneath the man’s sliced skin.
“You’re doing great,” Jack praises muffedly, without missing a beat, though he flashes you a stern look behind his glasses a second later. “You’re an attending now— You know what you’re doing.”
You swallow hard with an unsure nod. “Right… Yeah…”
Jack smiles at your sheepishness — a stark contrast to how methodically your hands move — though the expression gets hidden behind his blue surgical mask. “Don’t worry. It’s always a little weird at first. You’ll settle in in no time.”
You scoff a harsh breath through your nose. “You’ve been uncharacteristically sweet to me today. You know that?”
“I’m always sweet,” Jack squints. “But I can always get meaner, if you want. You know, if my kindness isn’t impressing you.”
“Hm,” you shrug and swipe your gloved fingers under the fatty tissue of the fleshy linea alba. “Jury’s still out.”
“Well,” his brows bounce. “I guess I’m just gonna have to try a little harder, then, aren’t I?”
“What can I say? I have high standards, Dr. Abbot.”
Your concentrated gaze flickers from the incision to the man standing across from you. Something mischievous glimmers in your eyes, crinkling at the edges with a smile he can’t see behind your mask. The air between you charges in a flicker.
“You doin’ anything after this shift?” the man wonders suddenly, passing you another stack of gauze with his free hand. “You know, to celebrate?”
“I don’t know…” you sigh and turn away again. “I guess it depends.”
“On?”
“Whether someone can give me something better to do than collapsing face-first into my bed.”
“I think I could make a pretty strong case,” Jack quips.
“Ooh…” you hum. “Do tell.”
“Something involving food. Definitely,” he starts. “Maybe something a lot more filling than two-dollar vending machine snacks.”
“Very compelling start, Dr. Abbot…”
“And maybe— if you’re so inclined,” he croons drily. “Something where we don’t talk about work for an hour. At least.”
You flash him a deadpanned stare. “Well, now, that’s just way too far.”
“Hm. It was worth a shot,” he shrugs.
“I guess we’ll just have to see how the rest of your performance goes...”
His eyes widen in amusement at your sudden teasing, not nearly as shy as he’s grown accustomed to. “Oh, so I’m the one being evaluated now?”
“Yep,” you nod once, popping the p.
“And what happens if I pass?”
You meet his gaze once more, with something a little shier around the edges. “Then I’ll… let me take you somewhere for breakfast in the morning,” you shrug, trying to be casual, though your wavering voice gives you instantly away.
A smile curls slow at Jack’s mouth behind his surgical mask. You can see it squinting the very edges of his light eyes as he nods in response. “Looking forward to it—”
The glass door across the room swings open without warning.
Your heads whip simultaneously, half-expecting to find a grey-scrubbed nurse standing there, hopefully with some information about the state of the suddenly flooded OR. You find a strange man there instead — late fifties, bearded, tall but with a beer gut that hangs over the top of his baggy jeans. There’s dark blood on his t-shirt and the collar of his beige jacket, dripping from a cut on his temple.
His narrow face is strikingly hollow; his eyes are painfully empty. You figure he must be one of the victims from the pile-up. He wears the shock of it all over, no doubt.
“This is a sterile room, sir,” Jack tells him, authoritative but never unkind. “If you’re family, I’m gonna need you to wait outside. I’ll have a nurse give you the details— and maybe take a look at the cut of yours.”
“I’m not his family,” the man says in an even monotone, with a gritty drawl that insists he’s from somewhere further south. There is little inflection in his voice, the same way there is little emotion on his bearded face. He just lingers there in the doorway, frozen still in a way that feels almost uncanny.
Your wide eyes flit to Jack, glimmering with apprehension. Your stomach twists with it, too.
Jack’s firm gaze never wavers from the stranger across the room. “Either way, sir, you can’t be in here—”
The older man’s weathered right hand reaches slowly for the inside pocket of his jacket. Something silver glints beneath the bright white fluorescents overhead. It takes you a second too long to realize what it is — a gun.
The world narrows in an instant. The oxygen gets sucked out of the room all at once. Your chest hitches for a breath it cannot take.
You don’t realize until then that you’ve never seen a pistol this close before — or at all. Your brain detaches in an instant accordingly, protects you now by convincing you that this is no longer your reality. That you’re only dreaming. That everything around you is just a movie you’re watching from faraway.
“Hey, hey, hey…” Jack cautions on bated breath, bloodied hands raised in surrender.
His wide eyes dart between the man and the glass door, where the stranger is just out of view of the hallway. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, as he takes slow steps towards the assailant.
“Let’s just— Let’s just take a breath here, alright, man?”
The monitor beside you begins to beep wildly when your hands freeze. Your body jerks when the sound fills the silent room.
Your gloved hands move on autopilot, adjusting the Deaver retractor in Jack’s absence and continuing to pack the bladder with the remaining gauze. The work is the only thing anchoring you now — the glaring acknowledgment that, if you don’t finish up here, the man in the bed will die before he makes it to the OR.
“That man there…” the stranger says in a distant voice, like he’s not all the way here either. “He was driving the car that hit my wife… Blew a red light… Came out of nowhere…”
Jack’s expression shifts. He reaches for his jaw with slow hands, plucking the surgical mask from his right ear, and letting the left side hang by his chin — allowing the man to see his face.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“He killed her… On the scene…” the man continues, gravelly voice tighter now. “I was trying to scoop her brains back into her skull— Do you have any idea what the kinda shit does to a person?”
“That’s hard, man,” Jack nods sympathetically but stands his ground at the head of the hospital bed all the same, planting himself firmly between you and the stranger across the room. “I get it.”
“You don’t—” the man snaps, harsher now.
You flinch when his voice rings suddenly through the room, trying to pack the wound tight with half-numb fingers.
“You don’t just get to— to fix him like nothing happened. Like her life didn’t matter—”
“It does matter,” Jack assures with a rapid nod. “Your wife matters, I promise.”
“Then let me do something about it—”
Jack’s chest tightens when the man’s knuckles turn white around the gun. He holds it steady despite his troubled state, like he knows exactly what he’s doing with it. Jack understands, then, that if he lets that gun off, it’ll hit exactly whatever this man wants it to — wherever he wants it to.
“There are two other people in this room who had nothing to do with what happened to your wife, man,” Jack tells him. “And I know you don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I know that.”
“You’re right… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt…” the man nods, voice heavy and trembling. “So tell her to stop—”
The gun shifts over Jack’s shoulder, aiming right for your head.
A pained whimper sounds in the pit of your tightening throat. You can hardly see the incision below you as burning tears gather at your waterline. Your shaking fingers scramble for the sutures to stitch him back up again.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Jack blurts, stepping in front of the gun again without a second thought. He keeps his gloved hands raised, but his sympathetic stare turns stern in a flicker. “You’re talking to me right now, alright? So put the gun back on me— We’re gonna figure this out together.”
“I said— tell her— to stop!”
His thumb flicks the hammer of the gun with a daunting click.
“I know, kid…” he says without looking back at you, with a voice much more even compared to yours. “I know. Just keep going.”
“Stop!” the man bellows. “Or I swear to god, I’ll shoot you both in the goddamn head!”
Jack is not perturbed by his yelling. He wants him to yell, wants him to cause a scene so that someone’ll check in and call in a Code Silver. He just doesn’t want that gun to go off. So he keeps his voice calm as he counters gently, “And what happens next? If you kill us— If you kill him. What are you gonna do after?”
The man hesitates for a moment. His grip falters on the gun, as if he hadn’t considered the question until that very moment.
“I know you want your wife back… But this isn’t gonna make it any better.”
“Maybe not,” the man says. “But it’ll make it stop.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what ‘it’ exactly is, but Jack doesn’t need him to. He’s been where this man is standing — not physically, maybe, not with a gun in his hand; but in the deep, dark void reserved only for a special, gut-wrenching sort of grief.
“It won’t. Trust me,” Jack says with a shake of his silver head. “I lost my wife ten years ago. Not like you did, but it still hurt like hell, man, I can tell you that…”
The man softens slightly. It’s the first time since the crash that someone’s tried to level with him, that someone’s actually understood.
Jack takes a hesitant step forward when he catches the stranger’s resolve starting to slip.
“And I can tell you it doesn’t stay that way forever…” he continues. “Whatever you’re feeling right now, I know you think it’s never gonna stop. But it will. You just have to let it.”
Another step forward.
“You see the woman you’re pointing that gun at?” Jack wonders with raised brows, nodding his silver head in your direction. “I like her… I really like her. And I didn’t think I was capable of feeling anything again.”
Your chest aches at his words. Your glasses fog from the warm tears clinging to your bottom lashes. Your clammy hands fumble with the surgical needle.
The man’s finger loosens slightly on the trigger, and Jack takes another cautious stop.
“And this is really bad timing, man, ‘cause I was gonna take her out after this,” he confesses with a not-quite smile. “But for that to happen, I need us to walk out of here. All of us.”
The beat of silence thereafter feels borderline suffocating. It wraps its cold hands around your neck and strangles you.
Jack almost thinks he’s gotten through to the man. He can see the cracks starting to fissure throughout his hollow face; the flicker of hesitation, the realization of what he’s doing — where his dark mind has led him.
“So you’re saying…” the man trails off and swallows hard. His drawl is much too soft for the words that spill from his mouth a second later. “…If I shoot her, you’ll understand how I feel?”
Your blood runs ice cold in an instant.
Jack’s shoes squeak hard against the tile as he lunges for the man before you can blink. He pushes him into the wall with an aggressive thud and tries to shove his gun out of your direction. You bend over the bed on instinct, covering your patient without a second thought.
Two shots ring out.
You expect to feel both of them, or perhaps nothing at all, as your limp body hits the floor. You keep your eyes shut and your jaw clenched tight, bracing yourself for pain or certain death.
The harsh ringing in your ears is slow to fade. When your hearing finally returns to you, and your eyes peek slowly open, you find a sea of bodies crashing into the room like a tidal wave — and you, yourself, still standing.
Your head swivels on your shoulder, still half-hunched over your patient. Your gaze drags unwillingly past the blur of bodies and dark scrubs until it finds Jack, lying flat on the ground instead of you.
It takes your brain a long moment to make sense of it — the strangle ngle of his body, the stuttering of his chest, the tear in his shirt from the bullet, and the wet crimson darkening the tile beneath him. The sight doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong. Not to Jack, anyway; not to the man who’s far too steady, too solid, to ever look like this.
And the worst part of it all — the part that will follow you long after this moment ends — is that that bullet was meant for you, and that Jack didn’t even hesitate to take it instead.
The ED descends into a different sort of chaos than you’re used to. The PTMC fractures, splinters into something unrecognizable, as voices overlap and distort in your ears. “Gunshot wound— Attending down!” you hear someone shout, followed by a quieter, “Help me get him up,” and a harsher, “Someone get me a fucking line!”
None of it feels all the way real.
It’s like looking through the rest of the world through a fishbowl, where everything is blurred and warped and muffled. You can see armed guards detaining the crying gunman in the foreground of it all, along with Jack’s body being transferred to a stretcher, right before Samira ducks into your tunnel vision.
Her dark brown eyes are lined with exhaustion from her double shift as they dart attentively across your face — the first person to reach out for you in the midst of all the chaos.
“What do you need me to do?” is all she says.
Your voice comes out strangled. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else entirely as you choke through panted breaths, “F-Finish up his— his sutures, and… and get him to the OR... Walsh has a… has a room ready for him, I think—”
Your legs feel half-numb as you step back from the patient before you, left totally unaware of the chaos surrounding him. You stumble for the entrance, peeling off your stained gown and bloodied gloves as you go, and follow Jack’s body as they lead him out of the room.
You migrate to his side like it’s muscle memory to you, struggling to find your footing in the midst of the growing crowd as the doctors rush the gurney to the elevators. For every step you take, Shen and Crus seem to take three more. It makes it nearly impossible to keep up in your stupor.
You crane your head to catch a peek of the man from behind the towering bodies before you. “I-Is he okay?” you wonder breathlessly.
The gurney jerks too hard around the corner, scraping the side of the wall.
“Motherfucker!” Jack groans.
“Well, shit— He definitely sounds the same,” Parker quips from beside you.
“How are you feeling?” Crus calls from the man’s side. “Talk to me, Abbot— You’re still with us, right?”
“Not unless you two learn how to maneuver a goddamn gurney,” Jack jokes through gritted teeth.
“Page Walsh,” Shen tells Lena with a stern nod, pushing the button for the lift. “Make sure she’s got a room open.”
The doors part with a ding. They wheel the stretcher inside, and you make sure to squeeze in with them, elbowing past the attendings and nurses to get to Jack’s side.
He’s clammy and pale when he comes into view, writhing in place as he clutches at his ribs. His black scrubs are stained a darker color from the blood spilling from the wound, which turns the white towel pressed there a deeper shade of scarlet than you think you’ve ever seen.
Your trembling hand reaches for him on instinct. You press your palm over his bloodied knuckles — keeping some pressure there, reminding him that you’re still here.
“Jack?” you call to him in a voice taut, as your teary eyes dart wildly across his scruffy face. “Jack? A-Are you okay?”
He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His head turns slowly, just enough to find you, and he blinks wildly to clear the blur in his vision. The corner of his mouth twitches in a faint hint of a smile when he spots you standing over him.
He clears his throat, but his words still come out a little gravelly as he arches an expectant brow and says, “Told ya…”
You shake your head, features screwing in confusion. “Told me what?”
“That I’d make a good case…”
Your chest flares. Something wells suddenly in your throat, though you can’t be sure if it’s a laugh or a sob. You just scold him instead. “It’s not funny, Jack—”
“Hey. You’re the one who said you had high standards, kid…” he rasps.
His eyes fall over your form, trying to assess you despite his dwindling vision. You watch his scruffy features twist with concern a second later. His chest stutters as he questions breathlessly, “Whoa— Is that… Is that my blood? Or yours?”
You tilt your chin to follow his gaze. Only then do you feel the warm blood trickling down to your elbow; only then do you feel the white-hot, searing pain of the bullet that had grazed your shoulder.
You feel very suddenly like the world is spinning around you.
The stares you get return, as everyone else seems to notice too, only adds to the dizziness.
“You’re bleeding,” Shen observes sharply. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you got hit?”
“I-I’m fine,” you insist despite the waver in your voice, shaking your head to fight the lightheadedness away. “I can’t— I can’t even feel it, okay? I swear.”
“Get someone to take a look at that when we get upstairs, alright?” Shen commands with a stern glare. “I mean it.”
Your wet eyes harden in an instant. “I’m not leaving—”
Jack’s hand, still weak on his side, twists over the damp towel to grab yours. His bloody fingers are cold and trembling as they struggle to find purchase on your smaller ones. You hold him with enough strength for the both of you.
“You got hurt ‘cause of me, kid. At least let someone—”
“Hey,” you snap, meaner than he’s ever seen you. “That was not your fault.”
“Let ‘em take a look at you, alright?”
You shake your stubborn head. “I need you to focus on yourself right now—”
“I am,” he insists. His gravelly voice never loses its humorous edge, and neither do his glassy eyes lose their tenderness as they flit back and forth between yours. “And I’m not gonna be okay if you aren’t, alright? So just… please.”
Your features crumple at the pleading look he gives you — with his eyes all squishy around the edges, and glazing over with unshed tears.
The elevator stills with a ding, shattering the tense moment. It jolts faintly, just enough to make your swimming stomach feel sicker. You catch yourself nodding despite your better judgment.
“Fine…” you tell him in a fragile voice.
Jack tries to smile but finds the strength to slowly leave him, a little like the blood trickling from his side.
“I’m in good hands,” he assures you, then turns to the attending on his left. “Right, Dr. Shen?”
The younger man’s brows lower. “Didn’t you just call me a motherfucker?” he quips.
Jack’s weathered face twists as he’s wheeled out of the elevator. “…Did I?”
Your hand slips from his as you watch him go. Something about it feels wrong, though you can’t exactly place why. You just know it feels like something ripping in two — like the torn skin of your bloody shoulder, times a thousand.
The room they put you in is achingly quiet; the kind of quiet that makes everything else seem ten times louder. The green-white fluorescent bulb clicks and buzzes mercilessly over your head, drilling straight into your skull. The AC hums gently alongside it in a mundane sort of symphony that matches the empty room you’re in — where only one hospital bed sits beside a shuttered window, in front of a porcelain sink and mirror.
Everything smells like stale air, sharp antiseptic, and metallic blood.
You stand before the cloudy mirror with your scrub sleeve pushed up your shoulder, kept awkwardly in place by your chin. You struggle to do your sutures with a hand that won’t stop trembling.
You don’t realize how ardently you’re still shaking until the needle slips across your skin — not enough to do any real damage, but enough to make you hiss through your teeth when it stings. You clench your jaw and pull the thread through, until the raging skin around the laceration pinches together again. Your features flicker as you try and fail to ignore the dull burn that spreads up and down your arm a second later.
The fiery sensation is the only thing keeping your mind distracted from all the rest of it — the way the gunshot made your ears ring; the way Jack’s body jerked before it hit the ground; the way the man called out for his wife when security pinned him to the floor.
You tug the sutures harder, relishing in the sting. You push the needle through once more, harder than necessary, and let it slip a little sloppier than you should — anything to take your mind off of it.
“Careful…” a voice cautions from the doorway.
Your head whips over your shoulder. You blink rapidly as your brain struggles to catch up — like you half-expect to find yourself back in that room; like you half-expect to find the man from before standing there.
You feel a little like the ground has been pulled from underneath you when you find Robby there instead, rubbing disinfectant between his calloused palms.
Someone downstairs must’ve called him about Jack, and about the Code Silver currently turning the PTMC to shambles. And, based on the surgical mask sticking out of his jacket pocket, you figure he must’ve just gotten back from checking in on him in the OR.
His dark eyes flit from your face, to your shoulder, and to the supplies scattered across the sink before you.
“They said you were supposed to be getting looked at,” he says. “Not playing DIY surgeon.”
You huff out a breath that would’ve passed for a laugh any other time.
“Everyone else is busy… At least I can make myself useful this way…”
You can’t bring yourself to meet his gaze. You can’t stand the way he’s looking at you now. His gaze is too sharp, too focused. It’s like he’s studying you, cataloging, assessing — the same way you do with your patients. The thought of being so helpless makes your stomach twist.
Robby doesn’t argue, but instead lets his eyes linger on the slight tremor in your hands. The leftover adrenaline is likely buzzing like electricity in your veins just now. You’re bound to crash at any second.
“I know you don’t want my help,” he starts slowly, sauntering further in with his arms crossed over his chest. “But at least lie and say I did your sutures— so Jack doesn’t try to kill me when he wakes up.”
“I think he’ll know you didn’t do ‘em when he sees how neat they are,” you joke drily.
“Rude…” Robby scoffs, sneakers scuffing as he plants himself at your side. You can see the leftover slumber in his swollen eyes more clearly now, as he ducks down to look at you. “Want me to get you something for the pain, at least?”
You shake your head instantly, not trusting your voice enough to speak without wavering.
“You sure?” he presses.
“I’m fine,” you snap. “I’m not the one in surgery.”
He is not dismayed by your anger. He knows it’s not meant for him.
“Well, Jack’s doing just fine. Walsh is finishing up with him now,” he tells you. “Honestly, I think the hardest part is gonna be keeping him off his feet for the next little while…. ‘Cause there’s about a hundred percent chance he’s gonna want to come back to work when he’s discharged.”
You exhale sharply through your nose in place of a laugh as you tie the sutures and cut the excess with a pair of small medical scissors.
You just barely catch sight of your delirious smile in the cloudy mirror before a chuckle sputters suddenly from your mouth. The sound of it fills the quiet room as you tumble into a fit of half-drunken giggles, bowing your head and propping your gloved hands on the porcelain sink.
Your shoulders shake as your laughter turns quickly into sobs.
Robby softens instantly. “Shit… I’m sorry…”
“I’m fine,” you blurt once more and shake your head. Your voice is strangled through the tears in your throat, but you dismiss him anyway. “I’m fine. I-I don’t even know why I’m crying, so..”
“You went through something traumatic tonight,” he coos. “Everything you’re feeling is completely normal.”
You shake your head again. “I should’ve gone with him— I should be helping in there—”
“You’d just be a liability,” Robby shrugs, a little blunt but not entirely unkind. “You’re still in shock. Your hands are still shaking— I wouldn’t let you anywhere near an OR like this… You’re better off here, and you know it.”
You turn your head to flash him a teary-eyed look. Your chin quivers as your taut voice trembles, “He asked… He asked me if I wanted to go out with him when we got off,” you confess in a strangled whisper.
Robby’s brows raise to his hairline. “Did he?”
You nod slowly. “And I was gonna say yes…”
“Good…” the older man nods, lip flickering into a smile beneath his beard. “About time…”
“So he can’t… He doesn’t get to…” You stumble over yourself to get the words out. “He doesn’t get to not come back after that.”
Robby’s sympathetic grin widens at the stern, wet-eyed glare you give him. He takes a slow step closer and splays a warm, comforting hand along your back.
“Jack Abbot is the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” he tells you. “If there’s even the slightest chance of him coming out of that OR just to take you out, then… He’s gonna take it. Trust me.”
“Yeah,” you quip drily. “He better…”
Jack wakes after surgery to a tingling ache in his side and a heart monitor beeping faintly overhead, pervading the strange silence surrounding him — a silence he doesn’t usually allow himself.
His eyes crack slowly open, dry and unfocused for several long moments. They dance across the ceiling tiles as he blinks the haze of sleep from his gaze. He struggles to recall how he got here — in this dim recovery room, which he had never seen as a patient until now. He remembers the stranger with the gun first, the warmth of the blood that came spilling from his side second, and the way you cried from him third.
Your name spills from his dry mouth like it’s the only word he remembers.
“Great. Now I owe Crus twenty dollars,” he hears a familiar voice joke from his side. Jack’s head swivels until he finds Princess standing there, checking the IV hanging by his bed. She smiles softly down at him and quips, “He said the first thing you’d do is ask for her. I thought for sure you’d want a beer.”
“Yeah…” Jack rasps, then clears the gravel from his throat. “I could go for that, too…”
“Want me to go grab her for you?”
He hesitates. “Is she… Is she okay?”
“She’s great. Last I heard, Robby was patching her up,” the woman grins. “And, for what it’s worth, she was asking about you, too…”
The anticipation of seeing you again was somehow worse than the pain, blooming something sharp in his abdomen, and only slightly ebbed by the morphine drip.
The minutes drag on. The heart monitor at his side counts the seconds instead of his pulse. His fists curl against the stiff hospital sheets when he remembers the sticky red blood that had dripped slowly down your arm — the way you so easily brushed it all off, the way you so desperately wanted to stay at his side.
The door creaks softly open.
Something tightens in his chest.
You linger in the doorway for several long moments, as if you aren’t allowed to come any closer just yet. You’re bathed in the shadow of the lamplit recovery room and backlit by the too-bright hallway outside. He can only vaguely see the outline of your features from here — weighed down with fear and exhaustion and relief.
The laceration on your arm has been cleaned and sewn. It’s still raging a little around the marred edges, but will heal into a thin scar in a few weeks’ time — a story you’ll tell for years to come.
Jack grunts as he struggles to sit further up on the raised bed, but hides it by clearing his throat. “You look good…” he observes in a rasp.
“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Abbot?” you joke with narrowed eyes.
“I am,” he quips back. “Thanks for finally noticing.”
You scoff a faint laugh and shut the door behind you with a quiet click. You can’t help but feel a little like the air has thinned as you walk further inside. You focus on your wringing hands the entire way to his bedside. You don’t have the strength to meet his unwavering stare, still puffy from a medically induced slumber, but never once straying from your face.
“You okay?” he wonders aloud, shattering the silence between you.
You huff a weak laugh. “I’m not the one who just came out of surgery, Jack…”
“Fair point…” he nods.
“But yes… I’m okay,” you add, if only to appease him. “What about you? How do you feel?”
Jack exhales a heavy breath, chest deflating behind his thin hospital gown. “…Like I got shot.”
That almost gets a real laugh out of you.
“Yeah. That— That makes sense…”
You flounder in place for a moment, before reaching for the chair by the curtained window and dragging it closer to his bed. Jack is able to eye you more clearly when you settle into the cushioned seat by his side. He can see the redness in your eyes, the tension in your jaw, the way your clammy hands hover like you’re not quite sure what to do with them.
Whatever closeness you had before those shots rang out is long gone now. You orbit around him like he’s a stranger to you, like you’re not quite sure what to do with him, like you’re too scared to get any closer.
He bows his head, made of mussed silver curls, in a feeble attempt to meet your stare. He silently begs you to look back at him, but you never do.
“I’m okay, you know?” he coos to you, equal parts because it’s true and because he knows you need to hear it from him.
“No, I know, I just—” You cut yourself off when your fragile voice finally breaks. You shake your head to yourself and swallow hard, picking at the skin of your thumb until it starts to bleed. The scratch there blurs as burning tears gather once more in your gaze. “I can’t stop thinking about it, you know? If you wouldn’t have— have gotten as hurt if… you know, if you weren’t standing in front of me like that—”
His chest twists at the thought of you blaming yourself for it. The burning sensation there hurts him far worse than the one at his side.
“You would’ve gotten it a lot worse if I hadn’t.”
Your eyes snap finally to meet his gaze, though your stare is much more hardened than he’d like.
“But what if something worse had happened to you? Huh? What if you died, Jack?” you scold in words that spill faster from your lips than you can stop them. “Were you even thinking about that?”
“No.”
His honesty stops you cold as much as his lack of hesitation.
“I guess I was just thinking about you…”
The room goes eerily quiet, saved only by the even beeping of the monitor at his side and the distant voices talking in the hall.
Jack holds your gaze even as it weakens around the edges, even as it glazes over with burning tears you can’t seem to keep away. A rogue droplet clumps your bottom lashes together when your eyes flick down to his abdomen, to the place beneath the blanket where you know the damage lies.
“You’re not supposed to do that to a person, you know?” you whimper. “It’s cruel.”
Jack’s brows furrow. “Do what?”
“Make someone like you, and then— And then get yourself shot,” you stammer, gesturing wildly with your anxious hands. “Make someone almost lose you before—”
Your breath hitches.
Jack leans further in. “Before what?” he presses gently.
“Before they’ve even gotten to have you…”
His lip flickers with a weak smile. “You do have me,” he assures. “You’ve had me way before I ever asked you out— You know that.”
“Yeah,” you scoff with a grin of your own, much sadder in comparison. “So much for that date, huh?”
Jack’s eyes narrow in a challenging stare. “And what makes you think it’s not happening?”
You blink owlishly back at him. “Do you want a list, or…?”
That earns a weak chuckle from him, until he winces at the ache it puts in his side a moment later. He cradles the bandaged wound with a grimace, and your chair scrapes the tile when you stand. “I’ll tell Princess you need more morphine,” he vaguely hears you say, though he reaches for your hand before you can stray too far.
You still in place. Your wide eyes fall to the fingers around your wrist, warm like a furnace, and calloused like softly textured velvet.
“I’m okay,” he tells you, then takes a wavering breath in before repeating more firmly. “I’m okay— And you’re not going anywhere— And I’m not missing our date for the world, alright?”
Your features screw, hardly convinced.
“We’ll order something here,” he shrugs. “Hell, we can eat the cafeteria food for all I care, just… Don’t leave. I mean, I kinda got shot, so…The least you could do is indulge me a little…”
You cave instantly under the weight of his light-eyed stare. Your chest hitches with a quiet laugh. “It’d be a pretty grim first date…” you quip.
“Yeah, well…” he trails off, smoothing his thumb over your knuckles. “I plan on having plenty more, less grim ones with you, so…”
Your eyes narrow in a cynical squint despite the smiling tugging at the edges of your mouth. “That’s very presumptuous of you, Dr. Abbot…”
“Well, you could always so no,” he croons drily.
“Not a chance,” you argue without pause, gripping his hand with great strength — an unsaid promise. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Getting rid of you?” Jack echoes with a scoff, wincing when it hurts him but smiling up at you anyway. “That was never a part of the plan, kid— I took a bullet trying to keep you, in case you forgot."
ik you’ve written fauxcest for soldier boy before but can you pretty pretty please elaborate on how he’d be worse about it 🙏
( in reference to this post ) cw: fauxcest — reader is 18+
okay, so stepdad!soldier boy just straight up thinks he’s your dad, and so he acts like it to a sickening degree whenever he can. he takes great pride in people thinking he’s your biological father, and even greater pride when the word ‘dad’ mindlessly slips from your lips in front of anyone.
he drones on and on about his little girl and how lucky he is to have been able to step up as a dad, despite himself. the twinkle in his eye as he talks is almost believable; it’s the same speck a real father would have for his daughter, except both you and ben know you’re anything but that.
“c’mon, baby, tell daddy what you’re feeling,” he pants out, breathing heavily into your fucked-out face from above.
you whine loudly from your agape mouth at the brutality of his thrusts and how quickly his words minimise you into a soaking mess. that pathetic sound is the best you can do.
ben tuts, not slowing his pace for even a second. “kid, i asked you a question. a little baby noise ain’t an answer.”
you gasp, hips flailing up off the sheets, chest rising and falling. “feels s-so good,” you brokenly sputter out.
“yeah, i’m makin’ my daughter feel good?”
he says it with such an intensity, like there’s truth to his words, like you are his daughter, despite the lack of biological attachment between the pair of you.
“fuckin’ answer me. tell dad how good he feels in his daughter’s cunt. you’re fuckin’ squeezing me like you want me to fuck a sibling into you. needy fucking kid.”
he knows he’s a messed up man… and an even worse father figure, but what’s he supposed to do when you look up at him with stars in those sweet teary eyes?
warnings: fauxcest (dad/daughter), squirting + a mention of golden showers/watersports, age gap (not specified but reader is above 18yrs), breeding kink mentions
ben’s a little ooc here, but it’s just because he loves his daughter so much!
wc: 1.3k
part 2: porches and prologues
part 3: making love on movie nights
Ben had always wanted a kid.
A son, preferably. A mini him; a boy to raise into a real man, one who won’t grovel and take shit like he did when he was young. Unfortunately, that plane just never took off. He’d never settled down, the main reason being that he never really wanted to with any woman he’d dated.
Thankfully for him, his best friend did have a kid. A daughter, to be more specific.
You.
He was always kind of.. there. No rhyme or reason, just in the house to hang out with your dad. But he was relatively nice, always called you cupcake or sweetheart. Doll if he was being extra sweet, like right now.
..How in the world had it gotten to this point?
It felt like just a year ago you were calling him uncle Ben and running up in his arms, to which he’d lift you up and kiss your round little cheeks.
His daughter by proxy, he’d call you.
“Christ. My babydoll and her sweet little pussy..”
Ben kissed your cheek, taking you out of a lust-filled daze. Your back rested against his bare chest, your sweat mixing together. The only thing filling your ears were the sounds of his sweet nothings against your skin and the wetness from your cunt.
Ben’s fingers were curling against that sweet, spongey spot that made you twist and turn. You couldn’t really move, actually, with his other hand holding up one leg to your chest.
You sniffled and whined softly when he rubbed the edge of his palm against your puffy, sniveling clit. It’d been starved for attention for a long enough time that it’d started literally throbbing. It wasn’t even like he didn’t notice, either. He just wanted to be an ass.
“Fuck, dad, j-just.. just keep doing that, please.. please..” An unexpected sob of need ruptured through you when that small bit of relief was taken away. He shushed you, gently hooking your leg into the crook of his arm to wipe away sweat and a sudden stream of tears that’d started coming down your face. Cooing softly, he spoke again. “‘S okay, cupcake. Dad’s gonna take care’a you soon. M’just getting you ready, yeah? Remember the last time you tried takin’ me without this?”
And, man, did you remember.
The first time you had sex of any kind was, horribly enough, a quickie out on your porch in the dead of night. That night was mostly a blur, but it was hard to remember anything in your current headspace.
“Yeah..” You murmured softly, feeling his hand cup your face and squish your cheeks so he could tip your head back. He pressed his lips against yours, soft and wet, just as he started ramming his three perfectly curated fingers inside you like a madman.
He was hitting everything.
Your ‘special place’ (as he made you say), your cervix, and more notably your bladder. Your eyes rolled back so hard it felt like you’d rip your eyes out the sockets, but all he did was groan and shove his tongue against yours.
“Gonna cum? Yeah?” He growled—yes, actually growled—into your mouth, not really waiting for an answer before he started rubbing his palm on your clit again. “That’s okay, it’s okay.. My sweet fuckin’ girl. Daddy’s girl gonna cum on his fingers? M’gonna let you cum, okay?”
It was like the second coming of jesus just happened; a bright white light filling your vision, your hips rolling into his hand as you squirted all over his fingers like a hose. It was getting all over your sheets, but you didn’t care or notice. That was for later. Live in the present, y’know?
Ben pulled his fingers out and held your head against him as he kissed your forehead. He didn’t let go without an extra rub to your sensitive clit. “For good luck.” He joked.
This wasn’t a time to be joking, you thought.
Anyways, he lifted you up with such ease you forgot you’d let go of all your weight and relaxed into a pile of mush. Settling you onto your back, you managed to lift your head enough to catch a glimpse of him and his detrimentally hard cock. Frankly, it could split you in half, and you were shocked it hadn’t yet.
(One day you’ll figure out the volume of it. You’ll just need go and dust off some old high school textbooks.)
The tip of his cock rubbed against your over sensitive clit. Instinctively, your hips twitched and you moved away from him with an overdramatic whine. It wasn’t much of an effort since his hand came down to grip your hips and pin them onto the mattress below.
“Don’t move. You know not to move.” Ben scolded, continuing to rock his hips gently against your soft, glistening cunt. “Came once and now you’re fucking brain dead. Stupid little girl.”
You shook your head mindlessly with tears in your eyes. “No.. m’not stupid, m’not.” You managed, covering your eyes with your arms when the light started burning it. Ben could’ve laughed at how stupid you looked, all flushed and spent from only his fingers, but he didn’t.
The first thing you felt was something prodding at your sensitive hole, the discomfort making you clench around nothing until you actually were clenching around something.
You screamed into your arm. “Fuck!”
Ben groaned animalistically. “Fuuck.”
He didn’t give time to adjust. He never did. Just rubbed your stomach and rested his palm right there while he reached that hard, fast pace that made you sick enough to cough up bile.
“Shit. Can you feel it, cupcake?” He moaned. His voice was strained from actively ramming your cervix as hard as he possibly could without killing you, but the corners of his mouth were still upturned into a giddy smile.
You nodded your head, finally moving your arm out to look at him with tears in your eyes and drool dripping into your ear canal.
“Words. Dad needs words; don’t want me to think you’re incompetent, yeah? I’d have to fuck the stupid out of you if that happened.” He threatened gently, reaching over with his free hand and grasping onto one of your breasts.
“Y..yeah.. can feel it, ‘s so fuckin’ deep!” You squealed, hiccuping softly when he pinched your nipple between his fingers. There was that pressure again, the familiar one you felt earlier before you saw god.
He slapped your tit, a harsh red mark leaving itself behind and an annoying sting replacing the earlier sensation of his fingers.
“M’so fuckin’ close, dollface.” Ben panted against your leg, dutifully kissing your ankle and foot. You nodded your head eagerly. “G-Give it to me. Please. Dad, please cum in me already!”
He rolled his hips just right, so perfectly that you jolted up like you’d been electrocuted. “Alright, m’gonna give you a fuckin’ sibling. You want dad to give you a little brother? That it?” He gasped, his thumb finding its way against your clit. “Cum, sweetheart. Milk my fucking cock—get every last drop. You can do that right at the very least, can’t you? Or do you not want a brother?”
Oh, you could do more than that.
That same white-hot light flashed before your eyes, and that sweet.. sweet release.
“Christ on a fucking cross,”
It took a little bit before it really clicked. That the release wasn’t hard or fast. It was actually very slow. Eerily slow.
All Ben was seeing was a golden shower right against his wiry, black bush of pubic hair, and that got him. He groaned and keeled over, filling you up to the brim with all of the cum he could physically produce. There were a few more spirts of piss that came out of you, but he just kissed your neck and rubbed your nipple through it all.
After a while of soaking everything up in that position, he laughed. Your brows furrowed when you managed to come out of whatever daze you’d been in for the last two hours.
“What’s so funny?” You slurred softly. He shook his head, nose rubbing against your skin.
“Could fill up a kiddie pool with your piss, cupcake. Y’know that?”
Okay, i know you have request closed but if i don’t write it down I’ll forget. First love your soldier boy dad writing! I have binged it all now! But what if soldier boys comes back and he realizes his baby needs him cause homelander is like freaky obsessed with her. And like she meets with homelander or something and HL hurts her so she runs to her dad cause he’s the only one that can really protect her and soldier boy gets so mad at HL
I'm a sucker for dad!soldier boy and soldier girl 😭
Suddenly
Warnings: homelander being a creep, reader devastated that he isn't the brother she grew up with, hl giving off incesty vibes, papa soldier boy coming back into the picture, this time he's not going to disappoint his baby girl, dark themes, you've been warned, homelander giving ick vibes, assault, fighting back
Time in Russia had Ben coming to terms with cold, hard truths. By now Payback was never going to rescue him. Not like he'd hoped. Maybe due to his personality being on the constant 'dickhead' switch, no one was really in a hurry to save him. There was no leaving Russia alive for him. Another painful fact. Nowhere near as agonizing than the fact he'd royally fucked up as a parent. He didn't spend the time he should have with you and Homelander. Soldier Boy regrets not using a softer tone and hand with Homelander when he was disciplining the boy. Shouldn't have shooed you out of the way when all you wanted to do was show him a fucking picture you'd drawn.
He replays the last time he saw his kids. Your birthday was coming up soon. Your 18th birthday, a milestone. Soldier boy would never consider himself a sentimental man, but something in his battle weathered heart thawed and warmed that his little girl wasn't so little anymore.
You never asked for anything for your birthday. The most Soldier Boy would do (if not given a hint from Homelander as to what you'd want) is give you money and maybe a doughnut in lieu of an actual birthday cake. Regardless of what Soldier Boy bought you, you always gave him a genuinely grateful smile, appreciating that he was performing the bare minimum. Homelander's gifts always blew whatever Soldier Boy gave you out of the park anyway. He was the one who really knew you.
It dawned on him that he shouldn't have relied so heavily on his son to care for you when Homelander was a child himself. The two of you ended up developing an unhealthy attachment. Moreso Homelander than you (Vogelbaum had brought this to his attention some years ago).
An 18th birthday was something to fucking party about though. When Payback's military grade helicopter landed in Nicaragua, Soldier Boy had been thinking about where he'd hidden your special present. For once he was excited about something that didn't involve killing or fucking.
"Hey, earth to Ben." Your voice catches him off guard, pulling him from his dark revere.
He's not in Russia anymore.
He's not even in the same year as he had been when abducted.
Ben stares at you for a moment. That vacant stare of his has you going on guard just in case something triggered his PTSD.
You're older than 18 now. A full grown woman standing in a rundown, shitty little motel kitchenette. The pan you were using was set aside and you turn off the burners of the stove before facing your dad.
"You good?"
Blinking once, Soldier Boy shakes off whatever spell was cast over him. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?"
You understood the moments of displacement you 'd feel when you realized your father was alive and right in front of you. He hadn't aged a single year since his supposed death that Stan Edgar convinced you happened. It was just so fucking weird.
"I was saying that I need to run out for an errand. Hughie and Butcher will be here if you need anything."
The usual Soldier Boy returns with a roll of his eyes. He exchanges a glance with Butcher who was intently watching Vought News in the armchair near the motel window. Butcher merely offers him a shrug.
You doubt he would actually need anything. The Boys hooked up your dad with several pounds of weed, alcohol and cigarettes that would last a normal person a lifetime. This was nothing to Soldier Boy. He would demolish it within a couple of days.
Hughie leans in to whisper in your ear "Are you sure you want to go back to Vought? Annie said she had everything under control over there."
Watching Soldier Boy eat his breakfast and taking a swig of some good old fashioned morning whiskey, you lower your voice so only Hughie could hear. "I love Annie and respect her, but I HIGHLY doubt even she has control in regards to Vought and the Seven."
Before leaving, you shoot the three of them a menacing look. "Behave. All of you."
You'd lied to Hughie though.
When Butcher returned from Russia with Soldier Boy and after the incident incident with Crimson Countess, you thought of the brother you used to know frequently. It wasn't long ago that Homelander had been your best friend. You hoped beyond all hope that you could bring that brother back.
You'd purchased a burner phone and, memorizing Homelander's personal number, called him. His immediate reaction was to curse you out, naturally. You let him before reminding him of the bond both of you built through years of surviving Soldier Boy's home together. Making something of yourselves without the looming shadow of your father. You'd told him that if there was any chance of reconciliation that he should meet you at a disclosed area. Just the both of you. There was guarded refusal. You could be luring him into a trap. Finish him off once and for all. And like the rest of the world, Homelander didn't believe you when you finally told him that Soldier Boy was alive.
That was enough for Homelander to agree.
One might consider you paranoid by the many times you'd looked over your shoulder as you flew to the top of Vought Tower. A semi-public place where if a struggle ensued, many people would be tipped off below. You'd also have more options of escape in the open air.
The door to the top of the roof opens. You stand taller and square your shoulders off.
Homelander lets the door fall closed behind him. His strides to you are slow and calculated, imitating a predatory animal circling a scrumptious morsel of meat. Blue eyes dart around you, assuring himself you didn't bring any unwelcome visitors.
"He's really alive?'' Was Homelander's greeting.
You toss him the cheap burner phone that was capable of taking subpar pictures. Homelander eyes you before leaning down to pick up the flip phone. His lower lid twitches when he makes out Soldier Boy in the picture sitting across from Butcher at some small table.
Adam's apple bobbing, Homelander's expression difficult to read. "How?"
"Apparently the Russians had him. Payback was working with them as well as Vought to get rid of Soldier Boy." Would he believe you?
Scoffing, he tosses back your phone but there's no point in keeping it anymore. You crush it in your grip, fingers opening to let the crumbled remnants be carried away by the wind.
"John, please. I miss my brother." The man in front of you was a stranger wearing your brother's face.
He tilts his chin up. "You're the one who ruined us. YOU fucked right off to join William Butcher and his band of miscreants. And its you who has no one to blame but yourself."
"John-"
He's fast, his hand inches away from grabbing your face before you dodge out of the way, deftly avoiding him. His temper has grown worse, you observe, since you left the Seven. Homelander was already on a rapid decline mentally after killing Madelyn Stillwell. Your abandonment was simply icing on top of the shitty cake.
You had to tread VERY lightly around him.
What was your aim for this interaction? Homelander would never leave Vought or the Seven nor would he want to join you and the other vigilantes. Hell, the Boys would never accept him.
You wanted to see for yourself if there was any piece left of your childhood within him.
Starting into his red rimmed eyes, you saw nothing of the boy who held your hand as the both of you crossed the street to get to school. He was gone.
"You" He points a red gloved finger in your direction "betrayed me."
He won't listen to reason.
"I didn't want to." You whisper, recalling the moments when Homelander actually made you feel unsafe just before you made the decision to leave. How he'd started to stare at you for an uncomfortably long time. His simple, innocent gestures and caresses were becoming. . . worrisome.
You'd thought it was just you imagining things. Homelander was just like that with you. He practically raised you after all. Homelander was the one to make your sack lunch for school. The one who got you ready, choosing your clothes for the day and braiding your hair.
His touches had changed though. They lingered and tightened on you, becoming possessive with each passing day since Stillwell's murder.
There was an instance when he'd captured your face in both his hands. You'd thought maybe there was something on your face, remnants of lunch, but no. He'd nearly kissed you full on the lips. For once you're grateful for the Deep popping up out of nowhere. It was the only thing that had Homelander dropping your face and returning to a semi-normal facade.
You see that Homelander right in front of you. The one that made your stomach curdle and goosebumps prickling upon your arms.
"I never thought you'd become an ungrateful bitch." With each step he took closer to you, you took another one back. "You're mine. You have always been mine from the moment Soldier Boy brought you home, you've been mine." His hands kept clenching up as if he was trying to will restraint in himself.
You're ready for a fight.
What you aren't ready for was Homelander being faster in grabbing your arms so you couldn't escape and smashing his lips against your's. You feel yourself scream as a struggle begins. He's trying to keep you in his arms, pull you down to the ground. His kiss turns aggressively desperate with teeth biting down on your lower lip when you try to turn your face away.
Heart rate freaking out, you go by pure animal instinct to get out of Homelander's hold. Your teeth sink down into his forearm, tearing cloth and skin alike. Letting out a howl, Homelander throws you to the ground, reeling back to examine the sizeable bite mark you gave him. He wasn't used to seeing his own blood.
He forgot that he should have been just as fearful of you as you were with him and his own powers.
The stickiness of his blood covers your mouth as you glare at him.
Since the brother you once loved was no longer present in Homelander, you weren't afraid anymore of pulling punches.
You stand up to your full height and feel the heat of your lasers burn in the back of your eyes.
Homelander seemed to match your feelings as his heated glare literally shines from his eyes. "I'm not letting you get away to go back to him."
"That's unfortunate. I've got no plans on staying here." You snarl and just as you levitate off of the ground, Homelander is grabbing you by the ankle and tries to slam you back down.
He could easily rip your leg off.
Your panicked jerking manages to free you from his grasp.
Like a bullet you take off across the sky. Looking back every so often just to make sure he wasn't following you. He wouldn't dare to make a scene where civilians can easily spy the both of you from the ground.
You're certain you've broken a few records by how fast you flew across the city to get back to the hideout.
Nearly ripping the motel door of it's hinges, you startle the men in there. Hughie gapes at the actual bruises developing on your face and the red smear across your mouth. Everything about you must have looked a horrifying mess.
Soldier Boy stands from where he'd been sitting on the bed. Eyes wide as he takes you in. "What the fuck happened to you?" He's the first one to take action and go to you.
Looking at him now, the feelings you'd tried pushing back start trickling forth. You realize Homelander had not just physically assaulted you, but it had nearly turned into a sexual assault too.
You damn the tears that well up your eyes, distorting the image of your father. "I. . . John. . ."
"John? John did this to you?" The words felt hollow coming out of his mouth as he stood in a daze. Homelander had harmed you? That didn't sound right. Then again, a lot had changed.
Mentioning Homelander's birth name caught the others' attention.
You touch your mouth where Homelander had kissed you. You realize the blood around your lips may not just be Homelander's blood. Where he'd bitten your lower lip is a tender gash that is also leaking red.
"Sit down. You're shaking." Soldier Boy, taking on the role of a caring father (and surprising everyone with his gentle tone) pushes past Butcher and Hughie who helplessly watch. Using your shoulders to guide you to the arm chair, your dad sits you down. He kneels in front of you to get a good look at the wounds all over you. "Tell me what he did."
Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you're focused on your hands and the specks of red on them. "He tried- I don't know. . . He. . ."
Gently, Soldier Boy uses his index finger to raise your face up. "Tell me, baby girl."
That got you. The tears were now freely rolling down your face when you meet similar blue eyes.
"I wanted to see if there was anything left of the brother I knew." You whimper, voice warbling. "Dad. . . he didn't try to kill me. He tried doing something worse."
Ben's eyes widen, as if dots were being connected. His soft demeanor which he'd revealed just to you hardens into something ugly. You didn't like how quiet the motel room had become.
You flinch when Soldier Boy attempts to hug you. He stops and not wanting to upset you further, didn't try again. You're the one who wraps your arms around him.
Fiercely, Soldier Boy returns the embrace.
"I promise you, I won't ever let him lay a hand on you again." He feel his jaw tighten as he snarls out. "The next time I see him, I'm going to kill him."
dad!soldier boy x daughter!reader .𖥔 ݁ ˖⭐️˖ ݁𖥔 . angst, fluff
wc: 1.7K
You’d think the child of a war veteran (several times over), of a man dragged from decade to decade and dropped into a world he never quite fit into, would be an emotionally constipated train wreck. All sharp edges and daddy issues. A casualty of tough love and colder lessons.
You are the opposite.
You are soft in a way that feels almost defiant in the face of expectations. All warmth and kindness and open heart, like something that shouldn’t have survived being raised in his orbit. It’s as if every missing piece of gentleness in him found a home in you instead. And whatever scraps of it he did have, he saved carefully and deliberately for you alone.
It’s an easy misconception to make, really. People hear ‘daughter of Soldier Boy’ and they fill in the blanks themselves.
They’ve seen the movie version of you.
In The Soldier Boy Story II, you’re played by an actress who looks nothing like you: jaw set hard, shoulders squared, fists clenched like weapons. A pint-sized, badass echo of him. Leather jacket. Smart mouth. Violence sharpened into something marketable.
So when they’re met with the reality of you, your soft dresses, careful smiles and eyes too gentle for a building like Vought Tower, it doesn’t quite compute.
The girl on the screen and the girl standing in front of them don’t match.
Most importantly, your relationship with your dad isn’t anything like the silver screen sells it as. It isn’t sarcastic banter traded between punches, or fighting side by side like matching weapons.
It’s quieter than that.
It’s adoration. It’s being cherished. It’s the world feeling steadier — whole, even — just because the other is close enough to touch. It’s knowing, deep in your bones, that there is one place you are always safe.
That’s why you’re so excited to meet him after work.
It isn’t something you usually do. Vought makes everything complicated, and his schedule is a mess of classified missions and half-kept promises on the worst of days, which occur far more often than he’d like. But today, somehow, the stars have aligned. He told you he’d be back from his mission early. He told you to come by.
And he promised you milkshakes if you did.
That alone is enough to have you waiting in the lobby, heart light, eyes glued to the doors, completely unaware of how badly the world is about to misunderstand you.
Or, more specifically, the intern stationed at the front reception desk.
You don’t recognise him. He must be new.
Security is effortless, like it always is. They wave you through with familiar nods, polite Miss’s and practiced smiles. One of them compliments your Soldier Boy T-shirt, voice warm, almost fond.
In hindsight, that T-shirt probably doesn’t help your case.
Once you’re past the metal detectors and the glass turnstiles, you don’t slow down. You don’t think to. You walk straight past reception, heels clicking softly against the polished floor, already scanning the lobby for him.
You don’t see the intern stand up until he’s calling after you.
“Excuse me, ma’am, that area is restricted.”
The voice is sharp enough to make you stop mid-step. Polite on the surface, but tight underneath, like he’s already decided you’re a problem.
You turn, a little startled. “Oh—sorry. I’m just—”
“You can’t be back here,” he cuts in, already moving around the desk. His eyes flick down to your clothes, the shirt, the way you don’t look panicked enough. “Do you have authorisation?”
You blink. You’ve never needed it before.
“I’m meeting my dad,” you say, instinctively, like that should explain everything.
His mouth quirks. Not a smile. “Right. And who would that be?”
You tell him.
And just like that, his expression shifts from bored to amused, from amused to dismissive.
“Uh-huh,” he says slowly. “Look, you can’t just wander into Vought Tower because you’re a fan. If you’re looking for an autograph, you’ll need to wait outside with everyone else.”
Your stomach sinks.
“I’m not—” you start, heat creeping up your neck. “I come here all the time.”
“Ma’am,” he interrupts again, firmer now, “I need you to step back toward the exit.”
You hesitate. Not because you’re intimidated, but because none of this is making sense. Your brows knit together, confusion outweighing embarrassment now. You open your mouth to try again, to explain it in a different way —
And then the elevator doors slide open.
Your heart jumps instantly.
You see him before your brain fully catches up. Broad shoulders still dusted with ash and concrete, suit jacket half-off, hair mussed from combat and sweat. There’s dried blood on his knuckles. His presence bends the air around him the way it always does, heavy and undeniable.
Dad.
Your face lights up without permission. Relief floods you, bright and unguarded, and the word is already on your lips as you step forward.
“Dad—!”
You don’t even look at the intern as you move past him.
Big mistake.
“Hey—!” he snaps, panic bleeding into authority as you ignore him completely. “Ma’am, stop—”
You’re already walking, sneakers quickening into something like a run, eyes locked on Soldier Boy as he turns at the sound of your voice. For half a second, his expression is still carved from post-mission hardness—
Then he hears you.
He doesn’t even need to see you yet. The sound of your voice cuts through the lobby noise, familiar and bright, and a crooked smile tugs at his mouth before he can stop it. The tension in his shoulders eases on instinct, like his body knows you before his eyes do.
He’s just starting to turn fully toward you—
And you don’t get to reach him.
Hands grab your arm from behind, rough and sudden, fingers digging in as the intern rushes out from behind the desk. He yanks you back hard enough that you stumble, grip tightening like you might bolt.
“Ma’am, you are not authorised—!”
“Let go of me!” you gasp, shock cutting sharp through your chest. You twist instinctively, free hand coming up to brace yourself, heart hammering now for an entirely different reason.
Your voice carries.
Too far.
Too clear.
Too familiar.
The lobby seems to freeze.
Ben stops dead.
The sound that leaves him isn’t a word, it’s a low, furious bark of your name as his head snaps toward you. His eyes lock onto the intern’s hands on you, the way you’re pulled off-balance, the fear blooming across your face.
And something in him goes cold.
Dead calm. Deadly.
He starts moving.
The world narrows.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
His voice detonates across the lobby. Loud. Flat. Dangerous in that way people only realise too late is real.
The intern flinches but doesn’t let go fast enough. Keeps talking. Keeps touching you.
“Sir, she’s not authorised—she rushed the floor, I was just restraining her—”
Restraining.
That word does it.
Ben crosses the lobby in long, violent strides, boots pounding marble. Every step is restrained fury barely leashed by habit. By years of being told to smile for cameras, to swallow his instincts, to play nice for the brand.
Not today.
He grabs the intern by the collar and rips him backward like he weighs nothing. The hands on you disappear instantly, replaced by a yelp as Ben slams him into the reception desk hard enough to rattle glass.
“I’m gonna say this real fuckin’ slow,” he snarls, nose to nose now, breath hot and sharp. “You ever put your hands on my daughter again, I will snap of your arms and beat you with them, feed you your teeth, and then make you apologise to her with whatever’s left of your mouth. You got that, you little suit-wearing fuck?”
The intern’s face has gone white. Eyes darting. Hands shaking.
“I—I didn’t know—”
“No,” Ben cuts in, pressing his forearm harder into the man’s throat, “you didn’t ask. Big fuckin’ difference.”
Security is frozen. Nobody moves. Nobody’s stupid enough to.
Only then does Ben turn back to you.
And the shift is instant.
His rage doesn’t vanish, but it redirects, folds inward, softens at the edges where you’re concerned. His hands are suddenly gentle, hovering, not touching until he’s sure it’s okay.
“Hey—hey,” he says, voice dropping, rough but careful. “C’mere, sweetheart. You alright?”
He looks you over like he’s cataloguing injuries — arms, wrists, shoulders, face. His jaw tightens when he sees the red marks already blooming where you were grabbed.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, deadly quiet now. “You tell me if he hurt you.”
You shake your head quickly, breath still uneven. “He just—he grabbed me. I was trying to get to you.”
That’s it.
Ben exhales hard through his nose, a sound halfway between a growl and a prayer. He pulls you in then, one arm wrapping around you, solid and protective, your cheek pressed against his chest. You can feel his heart hammering like it’s still mid-battle.
“I got you,” he murmurs, brushing a hand over your hair, over and over. “I got you. You’re okay. Nobody touches sweetheart. Not here. Not ever.”
He looks back at the intern over your head, eyes like cut glass.
“You’re done here,” he says casually. “And if I see your face in this building again, I’m gonna introduce it to the sidewalk outside. Repeatedly.”
The intern nods frantically. Stumbles back. Gone.
Ben doesn’t watch him leave.
He’s too busy tilting your chin up gently, inspecting you one last time. “You scare me like that again, sweetpea,” he mutters, softer now, “I’m gonna have a heart attack.”
Then, quieter:
“C’mon pumpkin. I owe you a milkshake. And maybe an extra treat as a fuckin’ apology for letting this place think it could lay a finger on my kid.”
And with an arm secure around your shoulders, Soldier Boy leads you out, thumb brushing gentle circles into your sleeve like he needs to remind himself you’re real.
Because the world has never mattered half as much to him as you do.
hi! i love your soldier boy hcs! 😊🫶 i was wondering if you could write what kind of nicknames he would call his girlfriend? thank you!! 🤍
𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐲
✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ Soldier Boy is the sort of man who loves control, and nicknames are part of that. They roll off his tongue with ownership, roughened with humor or heat depending on his mood.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ “Doll” is his favorite. He says it real lazy, sometimes with a smirk, and always in a growl. It’s versatile and certainly fits every situation. You'll hear it as a tease or a warning. The context really depends on you.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ “Sweetheart” slips out when he’s in a good mood, especially after sex or when you’re lying down, head against his chest. It’s a softer one, always gentle, and Ben uses it sparingly.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ “Baby” happens more often than he means it to. It slips out when he’s distracted or trying to talk sense into you. If you're in the middle of an argument, Ben's tone will peddle between affection and authority.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ When he’s being a smartass, it’s always “Sunshine" paired with an irritating grin. It's condescending, the way he says it, and usually slips right after you’ve scowled at him.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ In the bedroom, the names get filthy if he's feeling particularly raunchy. Otherwise, “Good girl” is pressed out like a reward. “Angel” gets spoken when he’s feeling unexpectedly sentimental.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ If you’re hurt or shaken up, he switches tones completely. You’ll get a quiet “Hey, honey,” or “Easy, baby girl,” whispered under his breath. He sounds almost human then.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ You once caught him calling you “Kid” during a mission. He brushed it off with a laugh, but its cadence was clear, and you recognized the worry in his face. He's protective of you, is all. Dotes on you, though he'd never admit it.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ When he’s proud, his voice drops. “That’s my girl,” he’ll mutter, palm heavy on your hip. He means for it to sound possessive, especially if there are others in the vicinity.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ He calls you “Babe” when he wants something. His eyes gleam when he says it, and you’ll learn quickly that it’s his way of buttering you up.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ His favorite thing to call you? Your first name. All his sharp edges soften when he calls you by your name because in that moment, it isn't Soldier Boy talking. It's Ben.
────────⊳⋆⊲────────
Realistically, I'm certain his nicknames would be obscene.
𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 — 𝐜. 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝 (𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤, 𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭; +𝟏𝟖) | um. no idea where this came from other than the fact that this guy seems horrible to me and i need to write about him. the fic that @ovaryacted inspired me to the max and it needs to be hung in the louvre fr. (in fact, go read that one first. you’ll thank me later.) also treat yourself to @abbotjack and her thoughts on charlie fingering you in a car. mind blowing. magical. also anything having to do with charlie written by @flofaiiry and @erwinsvow. i’m sent to another planet when i read they’re work. :)
warnings include dark elements, age gap (reader is 24ish, charlie is 49 smut), reader becomes his son’s gf (oops), dark!charlie reid (starting off easy-ish tho), possessiveness, you are the prey and charlie is the hunter, oral sex (m receiving), rough sex, (p in v), and drinking. this is not a story about good decisions. is this a new series? who the fuck knows… word count is an easy 0.9k <3
Charlie Reid saw you first. Sipping beer with a sour expression that told him you were only knocking it back in hopes of impressing those around you, and tucked nicely into a top that he’s certain you want people to see your nipples poking through.
Old enough to be here but young enough to miss that you probably shouldn’t have walked in through the door.
Not with him sitting at a seat near the back, lingering in the dim of weak bulbs. Stare poisoned with a heat that makes people the bad kind of weak. A hot that stalks and slithers into the deepest parts of anything, hooking with sharp teeth and only letting go when it's satisfied with a belly full of soul.
And on this night, Charlie’s fire is hungry for you.
He grabs another drink from the bar before heading for your booth, leaning at the counter and cutting his eyes over the glass of liquor to keep inspecting you. The liquid is swallowed down in three thick gulps and covers his insides in an agreeable, loosening smooth.
When his legs start to move again, it’s to take Charlie the long way around. Allows him the chance to circle you with sharp eyes and wide wings from high above, setting the hunt into motion.
Your body jerks with a short startle when Charlie appears next to you, hand squeezing the leather of the seat near you back as he lulls into your line of sight from behind. Your eyes flick upwards, staring at him just as he knew you would–blinking and unsure–and you don’t lift your study of the man when he plops into the place across from you with an easy sigh.
The silence passes thickly, loitering over the pair of you until Charlie exhales again. Leaning back, the man settles an easy arm atop the table, swirling the pad of his thumb along the top of his other fingers.
The weight of control, over the space and the conversation, slips a winning hand in his direction before he even has to say anything.
“That’s a nice blouse,” Charlie begins, peeking at the way your throat bobs with a tough swallow. “Almost as pretty as your eyes… this your first time here?”
Two months have passed since that night, and Charlie doesn’t let himself think about you very often. He pushes the sight of you from his visions, locking them behind a red door inside his mind and ignoring the way they scratch and scream at the wood—similar to the way you raked nails across his back and cried into his hand for him to keep going after the man had whisked you away to his empty residence.
Sometimes, the scenes win the war of distraction, however. Flooding him with the tale that ties together your single night together.
You weren’t three steps into Charlie’s house before he had slammed the two of you against one another, a single hand on each side of your head while he snogged you messily. His tongue was stronger than yours, twining into your mouth however he wanted it to. After, he fucked you the same way he worked…
…calculated to the highest degree. Always listening intently and storing things that didn’t matter now but might matter later; how loud you squeaked or fast you gasped when he fucked at this angle rather than that one. With a clamping grip that moved you how he liked. Choking you on his cock through the lens of his desires.
The first time he hit the back of your throat, you gave a wet choke and pulled away with an apology. Charlie interrupted it with a short pat to your cheek and bending peck to your lips.
“Don’t worry ‘bout any ‘a that now, okay? I like the mess… more for me to clean up after, huh?”
When he finally sheathed himself inside your dripping hole, the world collapsed around you and every thing became him.
All else foreign, you only saw Charlie.
Wicked snarls. Lines of age and worn. Freckles in the pattern of overlapped constellations. And eyes of a man who has seen so much bad that he’d become it.
When you came around him, wailing his name, it scorched your very being to his. Etched the workings of you into the marrow of his bones and affirmed your existence alongside his. His. That’s what you were, regardless if he never saw you again after that night.
Maybe that’s what makes this month's visit to his son’s place in West Loop so unexpectedly agonizing. You’re there, and haven’t looked at him since Liam rattled off your name and introduced you as his girlfriend. Tense with struggling breaths while the younger man is too clueless for his own good.
Liam. His only child. The Irish version of Ulliam, which means protector… warrior… helmet of will.
‘Bout a month and a half strong, Pop. Teaches kids down at Decatur, which is where we met actually. Was working on a little reno in the school's gym when I heard a parent getting testy with her. Backed her up and she took me out to dinner as a thank you.’
Charlie blinks with nothing behind his stare. It isn’t until he clears his throat with an outstretched hand that you finally look at him, all-knowing.
With a crushed chest you shake his hand, nearly collapsing when he smirks at you.
𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐱 – 𝐜. 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝 (𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭; +𝟏𝟖) | okay lovelies. i remember doing this 2478912 years ago for another character i was once in love with in another life and the idea popped back into my head late last night. this is not the only one i'll be doing because i'm down very badly for so many fictional fucking people lol. next up... pope cody? eneeways, thank you to the beauties @ovaryacted and @stellamarielu for beta-ing this for me last minutes. another thanks to @ozarkthedog for speaking the words "charlie reid" and "pussy spanking" into the universe, as i was too much of a coward too until i saw her delicious blurb (go check it out 🫵🏾)!! please heed the warning(s) on this one guys, all of them listed below <3
warning(s): some dark content, language, smut, female pronouns used, safe word (mentioned), spanking/pussy spanking, rough sex, unprotected sex (p in v), possessiveness, dirty talk, bodiily fluids, oral sex (f +m receiving), facefucking/throat fucking, breath play (mentioned), mean!charlie (at times), dark(ish)!charlie, sex toys (mentioned), degradation, public sex, exhibitionism, crying, desk sex, charlie calls the reader names: “slut” + “whore” + “cum rag”, creampies (mention), charlie’s version of aftercare; w/c is 1.8k
✩ To start off, this guy’s a growler. It wouldn’t make sense to deny it, not with how often his vocal cords tighten and razor out the rough sound. It’s usually in the form of your name or a curse, Charlie strains to keep his eyes from rolling at how wet you feel wrapped around his cock. You just take his cock so god damn perfectly… stretched out all pretty and taking every inch he stuffs inside you.
He can’t help the way the noises seep from the back of his throat. Raw and feral Charlie sounds, fucking you the same way with an untamed pace and hands grabbing you with such a heat, you wouldn’t be surprised if his palms were to sear a scar in the shape of his grip. Forever marking you with a him-shaped grope and a pussy full of his seed.
✩ Charlie also never fails to remind you that you are his. He’s a possessive person, remarkably so when it comes to you. No one else makes him feel the way you do–light-headed and running hot and damn near drunk–and makes most of the other things throughout the world insignificant. Not much else is good enough for you except him, and he doesn’t want much to do with anything except you. ‘You’re mine. All fuckin’ mine, baby, you got that?’ he mumbles while he’s buried inside you, exhales mixing with yours. Partially for you, mostly for himself, Charlie builds himself up around the mantra. Wholly convinced of the fact and you belong to him and ensures that it stays hidden from the many evils of the world that you and all of your sweet have him wrapped tight around your finger.
✩ Two words: pussy spanking. Charlie might be a little obsessed with it but no more than he’s obsessed with you. How you whine and jerk when the flat of his fingers pat a sharp smack against your center. He always makes sure to follow it with slow, sopping kisses against the stinging skin, lapping his tongue around your to soothe away the ache before spanking you again, pupils tinting black a soul-sucking abyss at the way you clench around nothing. Crying as you stare back at him, your slit oozes out a slick of warm arousal. “Blubber all you want, doll. Pussy’s leaking out more tears than those eyes and you haven’t even thought about saying ‘red’ yet, have you?” A sick grin splits Charlie’s lips when you arch and shake your head. That’s my girl.
✩ Another one of his addictions is fucking your throat. You’ve got the most gorgeous lips and he’ll never get enough of how they looked stretched wide at the base of his cock while you choke at the way his tip nudges your throat. Charlie likes it messy. He likes you teary-eyed and drooling, and gagging all over him while he holds your face with two hands and a belly full of grunts. The man had to train you up to it but now you’re completely in tune to how he wants you–a complete and utter mess for him to unsoil once it’s over.
After he’s held your nose and busted a load down your throat, he’ll pull out and gather all the spit from your chin and face on his fingers, sliding them into your mouth for you to finish. Sometimes Charlie can’t help himself, forcing his thick digits back until they’re sliding at the back of your tongue, another wet gag jerking your body as he gazes at you, biting at his lip to stifle his groan. Mmhm the man hums, cock twitching with fast-returning life and a rush of heat… all for you.
✩ One of Charlie’s hands is usually what acts as a dampener for the moans you release when he’s fucking you in public. It’s sublime, the way you spill out his name through choked gasps and thick pants. So much so that Charlie purposefully sees how loud he can get you. Whether it’s behind the locked door and closed shades of his office or in the backseat of his cruiser, he makes sure his cock brushes at the angle he’s certain will tear the most gruttal sounds from you possible.
You try so, so hard to keep them in, keep them hidden. You want to feel good, you wanna fall apart in places where that isn’t allowed but don’t wany anyone to know just how willing you are to let him make that happen. It’s a dichotomy that only drives Charlie to extensive, piercing strokes that yank an uproar of wails that he is just barely able to engulf with his cupped palm. “You don’t get to take my cock and not scream for me, baby. That just ain’t happenin’. Let em go or I’ll pull the fuck out, drive you home, and tie you to that vibe you think you’ve managed to hide from me…”
✩ You’ve come to expect it regularly these days–the sound of your panties snapping in half or being ripped to make room for the fat of his cock to stick through and fuck you like he so badly desires. Charlie’s forearms and biceps bulge as he tears the fabric with little to no regard, barely flicking his eyes from the sight of your pussy that’s finally revealed by his ravaging of your hole. Ignoring your gasps, Charlie just smirks while rubbing a palm along your ass and squeezing.
Your underwear, they just… they just always manage to get in the way. He doesn’t even know why you bother with them most of the time, as he has zero patience when it comes to watching you slip them off and fold them all pretty before putting them to the side. If he’s feeling nice, sometimes Charlie will just slide them over to gain access to you. Other days, all he’ll do is tear them and strike a smack to one of your cheeks with a growl. Hush. You already know he’s gonna buy you more.
✩ Charlie is a verbal lover in the sense that he makes you say what’s feeling good… what you want him to do. Speak it into existence for him, and he’ll give you the entire world. Has it been a bitch of a day and you need his cock in your mouth so you can stop thinking? Say it. Your hole is achy and dripping and empty without his fingers packed inside you? Say it. You want him to fuck you into the matress until you forget your name and only know his? Say that shit.
S’not hard, baby, and you look so pretty doing it. Charlie knew your true self the moment he met you. He could sense just how much you not only wanted but needed someone like him–only him–to ruin you the way you want. Smelled it from a mile away. But he’s only gonna give it to you if you tell him, no matter how cute you are when you act like you can’t speak.
✩ When he’s done fucking you, the two of you aren’t really done. Not until you suck your spend off his cock and he kisses you until you can’t breathe. Charlie will usually let you work on your own, a hand on the back of your head guiding you more gently than usual. He stares you down, eyes following every swirl of your tongue across the head and veins, and you lick all the way down to his balls before letting them pop out with a sleepy smile. He’s pulling you up to him right after, hands palming your ass as he slips his tongue inside your mouth, mumbling something like that’s how he likes his girl. All cock drunk and sweet for him.
✩ Charlie grinds his cock deep inside you while you’re atop his desk at least once a week, sometimes three. It’ll have been after you bring him lunch with the prettiest smile or bring something he’d purposefully left behind. He’ll spend a few minutes listening to how your day has been so far–only half-way listening to the words you’re rambling because you’re just so damn distracting. Looking at him like that. Smiling at him like that. Just asking for trouble, so he gives it to you.
It’s noisy but Charlie doesn’t care. Pens rattle and the screen of his computer shakes, yet the thought of them falling is secondary to the way you’re creaming the length of his dick. “Didn’t even ask ‘f you were good for me today… should I even be fuckin’ you like this? You done anything to earn me givin’ it to you this good? Hm?” You try to answer but a loud groan slips out instead. Your chest is pressed into the desk and you’re holding the wood for dear life.
Charlie’s hands fist at the hem of your shirt, bunching it up to hold and force you back onto him until he can’t push any further. So full and tispy his cock is making you, head pulsing as it crams its way inside your hole. “You’ll take it either way won’t you? So greedy. Happy to take all my cum and walk out with it dripping down your thighs, aren’t you? My pretty girl… my slut…”
✩ “Look at you, takin’ it all… pussy stuffed all full’a my cock. You like that, doll? Hm? ‘Course you do. Love it when I fuck you stupid. ‘Til you’re drooling for it like a good little whore. You gonna be a proper hole and keep taking it? Lemme fill you up, flip you over, fill you up again? Or maybe I’ll paint this face. Turn you into the prettiest cum rag anyone’ll ever see…”
In other words: degradation.
✩ (BONUS) Charlie knows he goes hard. Hell, everything about the man is 99% right angles of either glacial frost or blazing heat… until he’s with his girl. The usual impenetrable nonchalant demeanor is pierced by you easily as he wipes you down with a towel, placing long kisses to your thighs in between each soft rub. His hands are the opposite of the hard spanks you received before… now, they caress you and squeeze gently, voice low and rumbling as he blinks through his own haze to praise you and wipe away the tears. “No more’a this now, okay? Did real good for me. Real good, ‘m very proud, baby. Now we’re gonna go pee, then you’re gonna drink and eat somethin–hey. No, no sleeping ‘til you eat a little and get some water down, alright? Pee, water, eat, then I’ll call your work so you sleep the next two days ‘f you really want…”
Series Summary: Jack Abbot takes you, your baby, and your dog in when you finally leave your abusive boyfriend.
Chapter One: Bird by Bird (3.9k) ⚠︎
Chapter Summary: It's not the first time you've shown up at the ED because of your boyfriend, but, this time, Jack Abbot's going to make sure it's the last.
Chapter Two: As Long As You Want (2.8k)
Chapter Summary: Jack helps you get settled & you start to learn to accept his help.
Chapter Three: Guest of Honor (4.8k) ☆
Chapter Summary: You join Jack for the ED picnic, leading to a serious discussion between you and Dr. Robby.
Chapter Four: Explosive (2.1k) ⚠︎
Chapter Summary: In moments when you expect the worst, Jack consistently shows you the best.
Chapter Five: Chocolate Cherry Cake (3.4k) ❀
Chapter Summary: The day before & of your ex's sentencing hearing, Jack never lets you falter. And, for maybe the first time, you really see him next to you.
Chapter Six: No Place I'd Rather Be (3.6k) ♡
Chapter Summary: You make it perfectly clear to Jack that the feelings are mutual.
Material Girl (Complete)
Series Summary: Opposites attract: Serious, intense, widower, army veteran, and emergency room doctor Jack Abbot finds love in a sweet, sexy, silly bimbo.
Chapter One: Sincere (3.3k)
Chapter Summary: During a night out, you end up in the ER with a hurt ankle and can't resist flirting with the handsome attending, who ends up taking you on a date.
Chapter Two: Gentleman (3.7k) ♡
Chapter Summary: Jack Abbot is old-fashioned when it comes to dating, it seems. You, on the other hand, are not - and you decide to take matters into your own hands when it becomes frustrating.
Chapter Three: Jackie (4.8k) ❀ ☆
Chapter Summary: After he gets called in early, you bring Jack lunch at the Pitt.
Chapter Four: Boss-Ass Bitch (4.5k) ♡
Chapter Summary: Jack brings you flowers to thank you for lunch (and then continues thanking you in your back office).
Chapter Five: Pity Party (4.2k) ☆
Chapter Summary: After getting ready with the girls, you attend the Pitt's holiday party, where Michael Robinavitch absolutely steps in it with you and Jack.
Chapter Six: Love, Actually (2.8k) ❀
Chapter Summary: You and Jack celebrate Christmas together & it's really sappy.
Chapter Seven: Taste (4.9k)
Chapter Summary: Christmas dinner at your place featuring your little sister, your father, Dennis Whitaker, and Jack Abbot.
Chapter Eight: With Sparkles & Rainbows (2.6k) ❀
Chapter Summary: At your New Year's party, Robby finally finds a way to apologize.
Material Girl Universe (Ongoing)
Peanut (3.3k)
Summary: Hosting your Halloween party turns into a visit to the ER when you discover an adult-onset peanut allergy.
Ceremonial (3.0k)
Summary: After you win a prestigious award, Jack's stressed-out dismissiveness leads to your biggest ever fight.
First (Robby x Reader & Jack x Reader) (Ongoing)
Series Summary: A love triangle develops between you and the ER cowboys, with Jack becoming infatuated after you hook up while you fall for Robby in earnest.
Chapter One: Consult (6.4k)
Summary: On a recommendation from one of your nurses, you ask Dr. Jack Abbot to take your virginity in the name of sexual experience.
Chapter Two: Hypothetically (3.5k)
Summary: When a TORCH virus hits Pittsburgh, you lend your time and expertise to the Emergency Department, putting you in close contact with both Robby and Jack.
One Shots
Never Have I Ever (8.9k) ♡
Summary: An uncomfortable, childish game between your coworkers stuck together during a power outage at a medical conference leads to you revealing that you're still a virgin - until you end up in bed with the attending you've been crushing on for ages.
Quitting Time (4.9k) ♡
Summary: You want your husband Jack to knock you up, but that means it's finally time for the both of you to quit smoking. He comes up with an unconventional way of helping your withdrawal.
That Kind of Man (5.7k) ❀
Summary: Jack Abbot doesn't know how to express his feelings in words, so he does what he knows best: Action.
Too Old For This (3.1k) ♡
Summary: Your fiance Jack doesn't like going out to clubs, but a fight with you might convince him otherwise.
Every Other Perfect Thing: Part 1 (6.9k) ♡ & Part 2 (2.8k) ♡
Summary: Jack Abbot hasn’t been with anyone since his late wife, which means he’s a little pent up when he finally gets up the courage to go home with the new fellow he’s been crushing on (who turns out to be a total freak).
Vices (4.1k) ♡ ⚠︎
Summary: When you use your key to Jack’s apartment for the first time, you discover that he has a vice you never knew about.
Family Secret (6.4k) ❀ ⚠︎ ☆
Summary: You've managed to keep your relationship and family with Dr. Jack Abbot private from his work for an entire decade. But your last pregnancy doesn't seem to care about that as you get brought to PTMC for an emergency delivery.
Stupid (16.5k) ⚠︎ ♡ ☆
Summary: When you’re lost in a sub drop spiral after being ghosted, Jack’s the one person who realizes what’s actually going on – and knows how to fix it.
Ficlets & Blurbs
singing "baby got back" in the shower (.4k) ❀
body worship (.5k) ♡
caught in the supply closet (.7k) ♡
explaining to him that you're dating (.7k) ❀
caught trying for another baby (.8k) ♡ ☆
bruises/hickeys (1.0k) ♡bad at flirting (1.0k) ❀
sex toys used on restrained jack (1.0k) ♡
breeding & corruption (1.1k) ♡ ⚠︎
dark!jack virginity loss somnophilia (1.1k) ♡ ⚠︎
foot fetish (1.2k) ♡
cozy cockwarming (1.5k) ♡
rabbot x reader breeding (2.1k) ♡
stepdad!jack virginity loss & impregnation (2.2k) ♡ ⚠︎
cherry chaser (2.3k) ♡ ⚠︎
As Titus Danforth's sugar baby, you don't know much of his secretive, wealthy lifestyle. But when he accidentally gets you pregnant with a potential Danforth heir, it's decided that you'll be joining the family. There's no manual as you're plunged into their world of extravagance and violence.
Chapter Summary: After finding out you're pregnant with his child, Titus must secure his family's approval in order to make you a unique proposal: Become the new Mrs. Danforth.
Tags/Notes: marriage before romance, established sugar relationship, also ft. ursula and daddy danforth, meeting the family, possessiveness & protectiveness, obscene wealth, predator/prey dynamic, brat!reader, piv, mating press, creampie, oral (f receiving), messy sex, edging, denial, spitting, mouth covering, titus lowkey whipped already
Content: pregnant reader, canon-typical content, a brief instance of body shaming
A/N: since I already posted most of what was initially chapter one as a teaser during my 3k celebration, i decided to be silly and give you a mega chapter one instead!
Word Count: 14.1k
Ursula Danforth slaps one perfectly manicured hand across her twin brother’s cheek. He doesn’t even flinch; he’d been expecting worse. “You’re so selfish. Stupid and useless like a child. Knocking up a sugar baby, of all things.”
Father paces across the large sitting room with a clenched jaw. Eventually, he stops in front of his son. “How dare you do this to us? Right before the most important hunt of this family’s life, too. I can’t believe you’d be so irresponsible.”
Ursula sneers, “I believe it. This is what happens when a spoiled brat grows up. Poor baby Titus always has to have everything exactly how he wants. Probably never bothered with condoms because ‘it just doesn’t feel as good, sweetheart.’”
“Don’t be so crass, Ursula,” Father spits in her direction before returning to his son. “I assume you’ve communicated that abortion isn’t an option.”
“Of course,” Titus replies, keeping it curt to avoid a verbal lashing. Or a physical one, given the tension thick in the opulent room full of blades and guns. Father demanded the conversation be moved to the innermost room of the estate when Titus told them in front of a few members of staff. This sort of thing is best discussed in private, even with the most discreet staff money can buy.
The abortion discussion had gone better than expected, considering you told him you’d be keeping it before he could even get to the ‘my family would sedate you through delivery and then discard you before they let you abort a Danforth’ thing. He’d given you a line about supporting you however you needed in order to stall you while he discussed what to do with his family. Ultimately, your fate wasn’t his decision but a collective decision for the betterment of the Danforth name.
But Titus does, admittedly, dislike the idea of abandoning you. Despite your lack of status, money, or power, he feels an…affection for you. Similar to the affection one might have for an injured bird. He’d been raised to put creatures like that out of their misery, but your only brokenness was being part of the masses. That could be improved upon. So, to advocate for you, Titus swallows hard and offers, “This may not be a bad thing. Our family needs an heir, after all.”
“Not under circumstances like this,” Ursula scoffs. “You should marry advantageously. Within the seven families, at least. How could you even think-”
Father raises his right hand.
Silence falls.
“You may be right, Titus. We’re long overdue for a new generation of Danforths and neither of you seem particularly close to finding anything akin to a real relationship. Your mother would be horrified.” Father drapes himself in his authentic Jacobean austere velvet armchair in the corner, beneath a grand window he’s spent hours and hours ruminating out of through the years, especially since his wife died. Without looking at his son, he asks, “This…girl of yours: Is she good stock?”
Titus considers that. He imagines how very lovely you look obediently presenting yourself for him on the hotel beds where he’s taken you multiple times a week for the last six months, gazing up at him with reverent eyes and an innocent sort of expression that doesn’t necessarily match your occupation of choice. “I’d say so. She’s young. Pretty.”
Ursula rolls her eyes. “Of course.”
Father gives her a lethal gaze. “Don’t interrupt. This is important.” His eyes turn back to his son and he asks, “Her personality?”
“Sweet,” he answers right away. That’s the first word that comes to his mind. It’s the thing he likes most about you; you’re so, so far from everyone he knows. Kind and tentative and eager to find reasons to smile. The kind of girl who brakes for pigeons. After a moment of thinking, he relents, “A bit stupid, at times, but charming. Docile. I’ve never seen her disagree with someone.”
That seems to please Father. He doesn’t like women who fight back, even his own daughter at times. He probes further, “Does she have any family?”
“She’s estranged from her parents. No siblings.”
“Good. How about education?”
“She’s getting a master’s degree.”
“In what?”
“I don’t know,” he replies with a chuckle. “Something with books, maybe. I’m not usually with her for the stimulating conversation, Father.”
“Don’t be vulgar. Does she have a criminal history? Any connections in our world?”
“No. I vetted her thoroughly before selecting her as a…companion.”
“Boring. But that could be useful in its own way.” Father thinks it over as he watches the gardeners outside tending to the hedge maze across the pond. Winter is beginning to melt off the extensive grounds and they’re preparing for the glory of spring blooms. For vibrant fresh blood, too, in the coming months with the vernal equinox and other traditional celebrations fast approaching. He asks the final question, the only one that matters: “Could she be a Danforth? Or will we have to be rid of her once the baby is born?”
Titus thinks of your laugh, your ease, your total lack of darkness. It’ll be difficult to balance the reality of his world with you, but he’s intrigued by the challenge. With a steady voice, he admits perhaps the deepest secret of this whole situation: “I’d like to keep her.”
The tension eases at that. Keeping up appearances will be best. And if there’s one thing the Danforth family does well it’s keeping up appearances.
With the first smile of the day, Father stands, embraces Titus, and announces, “We can make this work, son. We will.”
Titus stiffens at the rare show of affection, trying not to reveal that he’s pleased with the decision. That would only show a chink in his armor. He would’ve handled the other option, keeping you in the dungeon as a toy of sorts until the birth, but it’ll be better for everyone if he has a wife and his child a mother instead of a nanny. “Thank you, Father.”
“She’s going to have to move in,” Ursula tsks as she, too, gives her brother a short but earnest embrace. “We can’t take risks with the baby.”
Father adds, “And there will have to be a wedding, of course. With all the families invited.”
“A wedding?” Titus gripes, “Isn’t it enough to just-”
“No,” Father interrupts. His fingernails dig into his own palms. “Just because you started this improperly doesn’t mean you’ll continue it that way. In two months’ time, before she starts showing, we’ll have a wedding.”
“Everyone will know it’s a shotgun wedding,” Ursula points out. “Even the most asinine of our associates can manage basic addition and subtraction.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Father insists. “It’s the 21st century. The baby will be born with its mother sharing the Danforth name. Nothing else matters.” He levels his gaze at Titus. “Go and tell her. I expect to see her moving in here before the weekend’s up.”
“Yes, Father,” Titus agrees, already taking his phone from his pocket to dial you. Before leaving the room, he takes a deep breath and says once more, “Thank you. I won’t disappoint you.”
Father gives him a wink. The thought of the first baby born to the Danforth family in four decades lifts everyone’s spirits. It’ll be a good change. “Careful, or you’ll make us think you like the girl.”
He expects you to make a fuss about it. Fully prepares himself to have to drug you, tie you up, kidnap you, and make it clear you don’t actually have a choice in the matter, as distasteful as that would be to him. At the very least, he anticipates resistance. For it to take more than one brunch. Modern women want careers, don’t they? It’s part of why he’s always sworn off girlfriends and dating in the standard sense. Ever since it became relatively acceptable for the elite, he’s strongly preferred paying for the company of simple, complication-free women procured by the family lawyers. He doesn’t want a girlfriend. He wants…a pet. A well-trained companion. Something reliable and reliant. A pretty, obedient creature to recline on the couch who makes no demands and listens with rapt attention to his every order.
So he’s pleased beyond belief at your reaction to his offer, outlined to you at your favorite chichi breakfast place in one of the nicer hotels downtown.
You gaze up at him over your streaming mug and ask bluntly, “What’s the catch?”
“There isn’t one,” he lies. Smooth as butter. “I want to take care of you and the baby and I have the means to do so.”
“You’d already be doing that just by paying me at the rate you already do. With my job and your payments, I can afford a comfortable life,” you point out. “But you want me to marry you. Move in with you. So I have to assume there are rules. Catches.” You take a sip of the caffeine-free tea he’d ordered for you, savoring the spicy and citrusy notes. The ginger helps soothe your stomach. “Look, you’re obviously very wealthy. And I know you’re not rich because of something…normal, if you don’t mind the word.”
Titus snickers, “Not at all. Go on.”
“Before you made us exclusive, I’d been with a lot of secretive, rich men,” you explain slowly, “but you don’t seem like most of them.”
The waitress approaches your table. Titus rattles off quickly, clearly annoyed at the intrusion, “We’ll both do the three-course menu. I’ll have the foie gras torchon with prosciutto and figs, the filet mignon as rare as you’ll serve it, and the caviar trio in lieu of dessert.”
The order doesn’t surprise you after countless meals spent together. His food is always expensive and tastes of life cut short.
The waitress gives you a warm smile. “And for you, darling?”
“Don’t call her that,” Titus says, curt and emotionless. “She’ll have the yogurt parfait with the pistachio granola, lobster eggs Benedict, and the baked apple strudel.” Then he gives you a glance that borders on affectionate. “And I’m guessing she’d also like the gelato flight after.”
“You spoil me,” you lilt with batting eyelashes. Then you tell the waitress, “And a ginger ale, if you don’t mind. Thank you.”
As she disappears, Titus’ typically flat expression transforms into one of concern, which you haven’t seen on him often. He observes, “Ginger ale. Ginger tea. Morning sickness?”
You sigh and confirm, “That’s been the theme of week seven.”
“Seven weeks,” he muses, sounding almost wistful. “Does that mean you’ll have your first ultrasound soon?”
“Monday morning,” you tell him with a tentative smile. “You can come, if you want.”
“I will. Definitely.” Titus sits up straighter and adjusts the sleeves of his charcoal-gray button-down, a nervous habit since his custom-tailored clothes always fit perfectly on his chiseled body. “You were asking about rules. Saying I don’t seem like most men.”
“Right, yes.” You touch his hand across the table and he lets you. Titus never asks for affection, but you know he craves it. Deeply. Otherwise he would never have sought you out in the first place. Sex is cheap; companionship is priceless. While rubbing the back of his hand with your thumb, you muse aloud, “You don’t brag about your money, which means you’ve always had it. It’s just a part of you; you’ve never been without it. Your schedule has too much freedom to be a doctor, you don’t dress like a lawyer, you’re too private to be a CEO or anything you’d want to peacock about, and you’re not annoying.”
He smirks at your analysis. “What does that rule out?”
“Tech bro. Anyone who works in blockchain or AI.”
“Smart girl,” he praises with a short chuckle. “What’s your theory, then?”
“Something dark and secretive,” you tease, clearly joking with the low, spooky voice like a Halloween recording you put on. He doesn’t react like it’s a joke, though. So, more seriously, you say, “Maybe private security? Something with weapons; I know you try to be subtle, but I’ve always seen your carrying a gun.” That pleases him; you’ve already noticed his danger and didn’t flinch away. “I doubt it’s really illegal, like drugs, because you’re so clean about everything. I mean, my main point of contact the first three months was your lawyer,” you remind him with a laugh. Then you lean forward and continue, “Regardless, I can tell you have the kind of life where you’re not just going to marry and whisk away the first girl you knock up without some rules.”
Sounding amused, he sips his expensive cocktail and teases, “I can’t just want to be an honest man for the mother of my child?”
“You can, sure. But that’s not you.”
“You’re right about that,” he concedes after a moment. With a deep breath, he sits back in his chair and tells you, “I wouldn’t call them ‘rules’ so much as, perhaps, guidelines. Expectations. I won’t force anything on you. And I won’t abandon you if you go against them.”
That’s a patent lie, but he doesn’t think you’ll defy him, so he keeps it to himself.
You cross your arms over your chest. “Let’s get down to it, then, because I can imagine worse fates for this baby and me than having a rich, handsome daddy to take care of us. But I want to know what I’m getting into.”
“Very sensible. I can appreciate that.” The first round of food arrives and he gestures for you to dig in while he begins, “Your first priority would be growing a healthy pregnancy, of course. Go to all of your doctor’s appointments, follow their recommendations to the letter. You’d quit your job. Continue your classes if you’d like, but you’ll need to cut out any unnecessary stress. You’d move into the family estate; you can decorate and rearrange our building however you’d like as the lady of the house. I don’t care about things like that.”
“What do you mean by ‘the family estate’?” You give him a teasing raised eyebrow; you’re the only person he allows to look at him like that. “You live with mommy and daddy?”
“My father lives in the primary mansion on the grounds, yes. Mother is dead. There are a lot of different outbuildings along the property; it goes on forever. I don’t even know how many acres anymore; the lawyers buy up adjacent properties whenever they go for sale. We’d be in my private house, which is further back on the estate.”
“Like a guest house?”
“An eight-bedroom guest house, but yes.” Without giving you much time to process that, Titus goes on, “You’d have some social responsibilities as Mrs. Danforth. My mother’s passed now, so you’d be the official host when our family holds events, which we do often. You’d just have to look pretty, though, which you’re phenomenal at already.” As your cheeks warm, he assures you, “We have a whole team to handle the planning side if you aren’t interested in those sorts of things.”
You give a timid smile. “I like planning and hosting parties. It’d be nice to have some occasions to show off all the fancy dresses you’ve bought me.”
That makes him smile. Really smile. Like he can see you slotting into his life. “Good. Great. Well, you can have as much or as little involvement in our social circles as you’d like as long as you’re willing to put on one of those dresses and sit next to me adoringly when needed.”
“So far, that fits my resume to a tee.”
“And, in that vein, there are certain standards of dress and, let’s say, etiquette, for lack of a better word, that my sister can help you with getting used to.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yes. Ursula.” He toys with his fork, hovering it over the decadent spread. “I suppose we still have a lot to learn about each other.”
“I’m an open book,” you retort with a cheeky smile. “You’re the one with the secrets. I don’t even know your last name.”
“Danforth,” he says quietly. Like it’s a secret. Maybe it is. “Titus Victor Danforth.”
“Very stately name.” You wrinkle your nose a bit. “Does our baby have to have a name like that? It’s hard to imagine calling a newborn Titus Victor.”
“We’ll agree on a name like any other couple,” he chuckles. “But, for the record, I have family with much worse names than Titus.”
“Like Ursula,” you joke, earning a conspiratorial snort. You nod and drink some more of your tea as you consider everything thus far. “So I have to learn to sit pretty and do tricks. Got it. What else?”
His voice darkens and so do his hazel eyes. “The most important thing is that you’ll allow me to keep you safe and protect you. Against anyone and anything. By any means necessary.”
Your own voice drops to a whisper. “You say that like I’ll be in danger.”
“Sometimes you will be.”
Not taking it all too seriously, you check. “But you’ll always protect me? And our baby?”
He puffs up his chest and insists seriously, “With my life.”
No matter who or what tries to get in my way.
You narrow your eyes at him. “And you’ll take care of everything financially?”
“Yes.” Zero hesitation. “Always.”
You don’t doubt he can keep that promise, at least. When you take on sugar clients, you make sure to have proof of funds before agreeing to any arrangements. Titus passed that test with flying colors; you’re sure there’s incalculable wealth behind the many, many zeroes you’ve already seen. He’s always driving around in tinted luxury cars, wearing suits by $10,000-a-piece designers, handing over heavy black cards for quadruple digit dinner dates with no dobut on whether they’ll clear.
With a tiny smile, you press, “And you’ll marry me?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Can I have a real wedding?”
“Here I was thinking I’d have to convince you of that,” he laughs. Something unfamiliar is knocking around pleasantly in his ribs. “Our wedding would be very, ah, socially significant. You’ll be impressed by the guest list, I’m sure.”
“Give me a teaser.”
“Let’s just say if a bomb were dropped on it, the world’s economy would collapse.”
“Yeah, alright,” you giggle. He’s looking forward to the day you realize he’s telling the truth on that matter. “So I’d be a wife. Hm, okay.” You jokingly tap your chin and squint like you’re really thinking hard about it. “Does that mean I’ll have to cook for you?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“How about cleaning? Laundry? I hate doing laundry.”
“That’ll all be handled.”
“So we’ll have…servants?”
Titus can’t help but notice the way you’re already saying ‘we.’ He doesn’t mind the sound of it; you’re right where he wants you. Needs you. “We prefer to call them staff, but yes, we do.”
Curiosity piqued, you press, “How many?”
He starts running through the mental rolodex; the estate’s goings-ons don’t interest him much, so they’re at the periphery of his mind. “Full-time, on-site staff? We have three chefs – one in each house’s kitchen, of course – and an estate manager who oversees a handful of groundskeepers, gardeners, and housekeepers. There’s an incredibly effective security team. Part-time? Lawyers on retainer, naturally. And we have connections for anything you’d want. Ursula has her tennis coach and her pet pool boy. Father has his favorite mixologist and, ah, massage therapist. I’ve got my golf caddy as well. Each of us has our own driver, but you’d probably share mine a while. That’s a high-trust position; I’d want to personally hire yours for the safety of the baby. You’d also have your own personal assistant to help with whatever you need day-to-day. And you’ll be in charge of hiring out any childcare support you want, when the time comes. Nannies, tutors, those sorts of things.”
“Wow.” Your fork is stuck mid-air. “So you and your family are…rich rich.”
His lips curl up slightly. It’s nice to be around someone who isn’t used to snapping their fingers and having whatever they want in moments. Charming. “That would be a fair assessment, yes.”
Titus notices a selfish, almost cute little shimmer lighting up your eyes as you ask, “So I can have whatever I want?”
He cocks his head to the side and considers that. What it might mean to someone who didn’t grow up in the world he did. “Within reason.”
Your eyes narrow. “How about a car? Like a really ridiculous one – a neon yellow Lamborghini?”
Almost offended at the idea, he scoffs, “A car? Of course you can have a car. I thought you were going to say something ridiculous like an elephant.”
You pout and cross your arms playfully over your chest. “So you’re saying I couldn’t have an elephant if I really, really wanted one?”
Feeling indulgent beneath your delight, he sighs dramatically, “I suppose I could reopen and repurpose the stables for the mother of my child.”
“The stables?”
“My mother loved horses. We were raised on dressage but never really took to it. When she died, my sister and I-” let those wretched horses free and hunted them with arrows “-decided not to keep up the responsibility.”
“Could I have a horse?”
He almost winces at the memory of countless on-site animals becoming casualties in the family games, intentional or otherwise. Still, because it’s important, he relents, “If you want, sure. I don’t see the appeal, but you’ll have whatever hobbies make you happy and keep you occupied.”
“Don’t worry; I hate horses. Just curious.” You can tell he’s amused by your version of an interrogation, so you go on, “Will you still take me on dates?”
That puzzles him. Do you like these dates with him? He’s always assumed you just see him as a paycheck, which he doesn’t mind, but the idea of a real relationship does tantalize him to a certain extent. So he says, “If you’d like that. I do enjoy your company, after all.”
“And sex whenever I want?”
A laugh punches out of him. They’re rare from Titus, so it makes you grin, too, for a second. He rolls his eyes and nods. “Of course; that’s one of my favorite parts of your company.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to give that up with you, considering the, ah, quality.”
Blush tinges the apples of his cheeks and you know better than to point it out. Titus has never been shy about his sexual prowess, but he also grew up in a family where it’s not acceptable to talk about those things over brunch. Titus clears his throat and checks, “What else do you want to know to decide?”
“To recap, I’ll be fed and housed and safe and spoiled beyond my wildest dreams?”
He nods, pleased. “Exactly.”
You bite your lower lip and ask, “But what if something happens to you? I’d be giving up all my independence and relying on you. I don’t want the baby’s security depending on whether or not you’re around for us.”
He doesn’t assure you that nothing will happen to him the way you’d anticipated. Instead, he admires your practicality. You can tell his life is dangerous, but you aren’t flinching. “You’ll be written quite handsomely into the family estate. Above my sister, actually, since you’ll be the mother of an heir. That’s permanent, even in the event of death or divorce.”
“An heir?” You almost choke on your food. “You’re not royalty, are you?”
He laughs, “Not in the sense you’re thinking of, certainly.”
Softer and more seriously as you consider the implications of everything said so far, you touch your lower abdomen and ask him, “Will our baby be safe?”
“Safer than you’ve ever been in your life here in the ‘real world,’” he says with actual sarcastic finger quotes. Then he squeezes your hand, meets your eyes with a new kind of warmth in his, and affirms, “I swear that nothing will ever harm our children.”
You smirk and tease, “Didn’t realize we had more than one on the way.”
He shrugs modestly. “I always liked having a sister.”
“And I always wished I had siblings.”
“Sounds like you agree.”
You let out a sharp laugh, the ridiculousness of the conversation hitting you at once. This is the kind of arrangement people agree to in the dark romances you read when you’re ovulating and here you are actually considering it for the rest of your life. After a minute of eating and thinking, you tell him, “I just have one more question.”
“Anything.”
“Will you love me, Titus?”
He takes his time thinking about the answer, which you appreciate. He isn’t just going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear. Honesty is more attractive to you than his silvering curls or glass jawline, though those definitely do it for you. Always have.
You’ve wasted a lot of time on men who lied to you, who strung you along, who took advantage of your lack of security. As strange as it may be, the thought of someone being very clear about their expectations and giving you everything in return has an appeal after all of that. You’d never have to worry about the things that currently absorb 90% of your time again.
You’ve finished your dish by the time Titus collects his response. Slowly and carefully, he lifts your hand to his lips and kisses each finger; you can’t stop the fluttering of your heart in response. Titus murmurs, “You may have to teach me how, bunny.” Gradually, he meets your eyes and offers, “If it matters, in the time we’ve known each other, I’ve already grown quite-” he struggles to find the word; you wonder if he’s ever been given ones for this variety of feelings “-fond of you. Which is unusual for me.”
A smile blooms over your lips. Relief punches Titus in the gut and he’s not so sure why. You take your hand from his and press it gingerly to his silver-scruffed cheek. “Fondness will do.”
“Are you sure about this?” Your best friend, Natalie, asks for the fiftieth time as you finish packing your suitcase. Titus had arranged for professional packers, movers, and cleaners for your entire apartment over the weekend, so all you had to do was pack for a long weekend. “It just seems a little fast to me.”
You shrug and try to brush it off, “I’ve known him for six months already.”
She balks, “As a client.”
“Well, unplanned babies tend to rush relationships,” you cut back. “It’s not like he’s a murderer or something; he’s just a rich guy who needs company. Plus, look at these pictures he sent me.”
You unlock your phone and toss it to her where she’s rifling through your closet, taking her turn to pick over it since you’re going to be switching to maternity clothes soon enough and, it seems, designer after that. Natalie scrolls through the grand Danforth estate and her mouth slowly falls open the same way yours did when Titus showed you. Water features both natural and man-made, meticulously maintained flower gardens, a hedge maze, marble sculptures around the grounds. Not to mention the interior. He’d only sent pictures of his residence on the property, which was styled minimalistically compared to the opulence elsewhere, but you could already imagine outfitting it exactly how you want.
Natalie scoffs, “Are you serious? I didn’t even know places like this still exist. Are you sure this isn’t all, like, a catfishing scheme and he’s just going to lure you into the woods and keep you chained up in a cabin or something?”
You roll your eyes and tell her, “After he made the offer, he showed me everything on his iPad. Titles, holdings, all the legal stuff. I guess his great-great-times-a-million grandparents built half the trade infrastructure in America and then used the money for real estate and investments and now they just have mega money. He told me that there are a lot of families like his that have old money managed by lawyers that’s just accruing more and more money by being in banks.”
She raises a curious eyebrow. “So he doesn’t have to work?”
“Sort of.” You try to explain to the best of your understanding, paraphrasing from the spiel Titus gave that you admittedly kind of zoned out during, “Since his dad retired, he’s got a seat on the board of basically every company in the country, so he has a lot of meetings and travels a lot.”
Natalie changes into one of your dresses and inspects herself approvingly in the mirror. “Does that mean your baby is gonna have to be a boring businessman?”
“Or boring businesswoman,” you laugh. “This one’ll be the oldest, so they’ll have responsibilities, yeah.”
“The oldest?” Her eyebrows go up again. “You and gramps are having more than one?”
“He’s not that old,” you start, a bit more exasperated now, “and he’s going to be my husband. If I want more kids, who else would I have them with?”
“Jesus, you’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”
“You’re here pilfering my closet, aren’t you?” The intercom buzzes by the door and you tell her, “Finish up; that’s my ride.”
“Is that him? Mr. Moneybags?”
You peek out the window and see the dark-tinted black Rolls-Royce idling in front of the door. The white-gloved, black-capped chauffeur who’s driven you around a handful of times before stands by the passenger side with his hands linked in front of himself. You mutter, “No, it’s his driver.”
“His driver? Damn.” Natalie takes the things she wants off their hangers and starts to walk you out. “When do I get to meet this guy, anyway?”
The two of you take the stairs together and you suggest, “At the wedding, I guess. Two months or so.”
Natalie scoffs and shakes her head. “Two months to plan a bachelorette party for a pregnant bride.” She squeezes you into a tight, warm hug. “It’s a challenge, but I’m up to it.”
“I know you are,” you giggle. “I can have the driver drop you off somewhere, if you want. I’m sure Titus wouldn’t mind.”
“No, thanks; I’ve got a job interview right up the street.”
Natalie insists on bringing your suitcase down the stairs, setting it on the stoop and scampering away before she has to ‘pretend to be fancy in front of one of your servants.’ As she disappears around the nearest corner, you wave and smile at the driver, hopping off the raised entry to meet him by the road. “Hi, Chip, thanks for coming to get me.”
“Good morning,” he says warmly. He hefts your luggage easily into the trunk and assures, “It’s no trouble at all, Mrs. Danforth.” At your curious look, he explains before you can question, “Master Danforth instructed all the household staff to refer to you with your new title so you get used to hearing it.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Master Danforth?”
Chip cracks a rare conspiratorial smile. “The usual title for the eldest son while his father is still alive. His father is Sir Danforth, but I’m sure you’ll call him Father like Titus and Ursula do.” He opens up the back door for you and assures, “It’s a lot to get used to, but you can ask any of the staff for help with anything.”
You slide onto the smooth leather, lowering the partition between the driver and the back, which Titus never does. As the car leaves the city and starts the winding path into the countryside, you glance at Chip and pose, “I’ve wanted to ask before, but now that I’m gonna be family I think I’m allowed to know: How much do the Danforths pay you?”
Surprised by your frankness, he just laughs, “More than enough.”
“C’mon, you can tell me,” you lilt like you’re doing a heist together. “I can dig it up anyway; Titus says I get free rein of the whole property.”
“Really?” Chip chuckles under his breath. “You must be awfully special to him.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Not even Miss Danforth has full access to the entire estate. Their father mainly stays in the front house these days, too,” he explains, “so Titus must think highly of you to allow you unsupervised access.”
You joke, “Or he’s lying to make me feel safe and thinks I won’t meddle.”
Chip glances at you in the rear view mirror, no joking in his expression. “That’s also a possibility.”
You chew on that for a second and then press, “That doesn’t mean you get out of answering me, by the way. If I’m marrying into a family where the staff are underpaid, then-”
Chip almost wheezes out a laugh, caught off guard by the assumption. “I suppose I shouldn’t let you think that about your future husband.” He takes a long breath and explains, “Discretion is expensive. Security is expensive. And loyalty is priceless. I’ve worked for this family since Titus started high school and needed his own driver. Most of the staff have been with the Danforths for a decade or more. I’m sure the hiring process for your personal employees will be rigorous – background checks, security clearances. My starting salary was $80,000. By year ten, that had doubled. I’ve never had to ask for a raise; my salary just gets silently adjusted at the start of the year. Especially since Titus took over the family’s management, their generosity has been staggering. If you include all the above and beyond benefits – he pays for my daughter’s private school tuition outright, covered every penny when my wife went through chemo a few years back – and the bonuses, it has to be about a quarter million by now.”
You let out a low whistle. “Jesus.”
“Security all makes twice that,” he goes on as he pulls the car off the main road through a massive automated iron gate. Your skin prickles at the knowledge of getting closer. The view is shrouded by thick trees, making the whole estate feel hidden. “Trust me: You’re surrounded by the most loyal, discreet staff in the world.”
You huff out half a laugh. “Should that make me less nervous?”
“Nothing to be nervous about,” he lies lightly.
As the car finally breaks through the trees, the magnificent grounds come into view and the air leaves your lungs. You press your forehead to the glass to get a better view of the property. At the base of the grand front house with its storied old stone and hand-carved Grecian details being devoured by brilliant green ivy, you see the unmistakable shape of Titus in one of his usual charcoal gray suits, strong and broad in a soldier’s stance. He’s waiting at the bottom of a staircase which opens onto a large half-circle drive that reminds you of something out of The Princess Diaries. A man you recognize as a member of his security detail flanks him; you’ve only spotted him at the periphery before, lingering at the entrances of the restaurants Titus takes you to or waiting in the lobby of hotels. He makes a point of being unnoticeable, but you make a point of rarely letting your guard down.
You hear the gate shutting behind you, a thud instead of a click. Deep. Final.
Stopping the car a few feet from Titus, Chip slides out, opens your door, and smiles earnestly. “Welcome home, Mrs. Danforth.”
The moment you’re out of the car, Titus is lifting his arm for you to slip into, which you do.
“Hello, darling.” Titus loops his hand around your lower back and pulls you close enough to smell his brisk, masculine aftershave. He plants a chaste, claiming kiss to your forehead and then holds your chin between his thumb and forefinger. “How are you feeling?”
“Good. Nervous,” you tell him sheepishly. Before he can jump on that, though, you add, “Nausea hasn’t been too bad today.”
He nods slowly, examining your expression carefully. “I’m glad. Let me know if that changes; you can have whatever you want whenever you want now that you’re here.”
“I’m still waiting on my elephant,” you reply lightly, leaning up onto your toes to kiss him.
He hadn’t been planning to let you kiss him in front of any staff, but he’s pathologically unable to resist you when you look so soft and so ready to submit to his plans for you. Your wide eyes are longing for reassurance, for steadiness, for him to produce the scaffolding of your new life together. When you step back down, he cradles your face and teases, “All in due time, princess.”
Then Titus gestures for his bodyguard to step forward. Up close, you can see pockmark scars over all the skin visible around his dark sunglasses and black-on-black suit. There’s also a feathery brown bruise on his jaw and you can’t help but wonder if he got it in the line of fire, so to speak. Titus introduces, “Smith, my personal security detail, will be yours while I hire a new one.”
You cut him a sideways look. “You don’t need your own security detail in the meantime?”
He gives you a cocky, handsome smirk in return. God, he’s devastatingly beautiful when he’s like that. The ruler of his domain. “I can handle myself, bunny.”
You needle, “Then why have one in the first place?”
“I like to be underestimated,” he replies easily. Not wanting to let you dwell on the implications of that, Titus continues, “Smith will check any and every room before you go into it and then remain stationed by the nearest door. He’ll also do some personal training with you on the family security protocols to make sure you’re prepared.”
You swallow hard and nod, extending your hand toward the bodyguard. “Good to meet you.”
Smith glances at Titus, who nods briefly. Only then does the security guard shake your hand – once, firm, quick. More scars over his knuckles. “It’s an honor, ma’am.”
You gesture between them with a suspiciously pointed finger. “What was that?”
A smirk flickers on Titus’ mouth. You’re too observant for your own good and he hates how much he likes it. So he explains honestly, “Nobody is allowed to touch you without my permission.”
You narrow your eyes. “And if I give them my own permission?”
You can’t.
My word is law.
A chill goes down your spine at the possessive darkness in his eyes. You might have your own security guard now, but there’s a level of safety above that, one that only comes from being under the protective wing of Titus’ unyielding power.
Titus chews on his response a moment and then amends, “Male staff are not allowed to touch you unless it’s an emergency.”
You tsk and tease, “Jealous, jealous.”
“You really shouldn’t talk to me like that,” he admonishes, but you know it’s more of a contradictory plea. Titus craves being challenged as much as he hates it. He can’t tolerate it in business or from family in case it’s perceived as weakness, so he yearns for it from you, the one person who has no desire to actually challenge him. With a shake of his head, Titus dismisses Chip and then says, “I’ll give you a tour of the central grounds and our home. Then I have to go out on business for the afternoon before dinner with my sister and Father in the main house. In the meantime you can get settled and play.”
You laugh, “Play?”
“Whatever it is you want to do to entertain yourself,” he replies with a hand wave and a shrug. “Explore the grounds, interrogate the staff, snoop around all the places you shouldn’t.”
You offer a small conspiratorial smile. “Sounds good to me.”
Then Titus does something new and unexpected: He threads his fingers through yours. You get the sense that he’s practicing behaving like a normal, convincing couple. But you still notice that his palm is slightly clammy. Nervous. Titus Danforth gets nervous about holding a pretty girl’s hand for the first time. Cute.
For half an hour, he guides you around the few acres of land that sit between the three main houses, which are in a U formation. There’s a hedge maze that he warns you not to go into unless you have a few hours to kill, a drone to map it out from above, or a helicopter on standby. Then a tennis court (“you can page our trainer from the gate”) and a pool that’s half inside and half outside (“heated, of course, with a hot tub attached”). At the center of it all sits a series of fountains with emotive sculptures captured in such vibrance you’d believe they come alive at night.
“The tableau of Artemis and Actaeon,” Titus explains as he points out the features – a beautiful nude woman in a righteous stance with a bow raised, a muscular stag fleeing, a hoard of gnashing dogs tight on its heels. “Actaeon wandered away from his companions and found the virgin goddess Artemis bathing when she didn’t want to be seen. To punish him for breaking the boundary between the mortal and the divine, she turned him into a deer and sent his own dogs after him.”
You study the series of sculptures, water running down features like blood, and ask softly, “And your family liked that story enough for this whole water tribute thing?”
Titus chuckles and explains, “Artemis is sort of the Danforth version of a patron saint.” His hand drags slowly, pointedly down the center of your back until you shiver. “Goddess of the hunt. She’s a good omen for the family.”
“Goddess of the hunt,” you repeat curiously. “Interesting.”
He raises an eyebrow and starts to lead you toward the second largest house on the left side of the property. “Is it?”
You snicker and match step with him. “Most families go for, y’know, saints of unity, love, that sort of stuff.”
“She’s also the patron and protector of women and children,” Titus adds on the walk through the rose garden that leads to your new home. “And she chooses when to bring wellness or illness. She’s a good woman to have in your corner.”
You give him a coy sideways glance and muse, “I’ll try not to piss off her statue, as then. I want to stay on the good side of anyone who’s going to protect me and TJ.”
“TJ?”
“Oh, yeah, the baby,” you giggle far too adorably to be allowed on the deathly quiet Danforth Estate. “I’ve been calling him Titus Jr. in my head to try to get used to all of this.”
Something you haven’t seen before glitters in his eyes at the comment. “You think it’ll be a boy?”
“It’s too early for me to even think it’s real,” you reply with a soft laugh. “I can’t believe we’re going to actually hear the heartbeat on Monday.”
“I can’t wait.” He gives your hip a little squeeze that feels much more relationship-y than he usually gets. Then he gestures proudly at a large swath of empty land. “Welcome to the final stop of our tour before the house.”
“It’s, um, lovely,” you offer as you gaze at the undeveloped ground, parts of it divided up with unintelligible spray paint marks. “I’ve always wanted a half acre of empty space. My dream.”
“It’s going to be a space for the children,” he explains with something close to softness in his voice. Like he’s scared you’ll reject the sweet idea from a man you know mostly to be harsh, biting. “I thought…Well, I thought it might be nice for them to have a playground, a splash pad, those sorts of things. The property isn’t very child-friendly; there hasn’t been a baby here in more than forty years now. Time to change that.”
Your heart grows about three sizes at the thought. Titus isn’t just inviting you into his life; he’s carving out space for your shared future. “If you didn’t have anything to play with here at home, what did you and Ursula do for fun as kids?”
“We didn’t have fun,” he almost scoffs. You can tell the memories behind the sound are painful but far away, like reaching through a broken chain link fence. If he pulls back, the pain will become real. “My parents were-” Titus searches for the right word a while before deciding on one that’s close enough“-severe. Dour, often. They thought children should be trained and disciplined, not raised. Father thinks the idea of cherishing a child is the same as spoiling them.”
You shrug and give his hand an affirming squeeze. “I guess they got what they wanted; you’re successful, clearly. Driven, strong, powerful.”
“But not fulfilled,” he murmurs, only loud enough for you to hear. He wouldn’t want the staff knowing his feelings. He takes his hand and rubs your back almost absently, like a nervous habit. With a sideways glance, he labors out, “I think being a parent should be about giving your children more than you got. But I got everything. Always. So what can I give to my children, who will have more than they’ll ever need?”
“A space to play,” you finish for him. You lean up on your toes and plant a kiss on his scruff, unable to conceal the smile that comes at Titus talking about fatherhood so softly. “You’re going to be a great dad.”
He blinks hard a few times. His organs feel like they’re in the wrong order, but it’s not unpleasant. Winding his fingers with yours once more, he almost smiles. “You really think so?”
“Wouldn’t have agreed to all of this-” you gesture to the ridiculous property all around “-if I didn’t. I’d kind of figured being the softie would be my job, but I’m happy to share the load.”
Titus downright pouts. “I am not a softie.”
You nod toward the grass and lilt, “The evidence to the contrary is pretty compelling, sweet pea.”
“That’s too far,” he sighs, suppressing a laugh, “even for you, my little terror.”
As you approach Titus’ house – your house – Smith steps out in front and opens up the ornate wooden door. There’s a golden, roaring lion’s head knocker that clicks slightly as the door swings open to reveal the marble foyer. No amount of pictures Titus texted you could do the place justice. Every detail is strikingly opulent from the golden chandeliers and Italian marble checkerboard floors to the sheer embroidered curtains and high ceilings.
The only thing you don’t love is, well, Titus’s taste. You wrinkle your nose as he shows you through the sitting room and dining room. “You really like black and gray, don’t you?”
He watches you inspect his living space. It’s been a very, very long time since he’s had a woman here. At home. “They match everything. It’s easy.”
“I guess,” you mutter, running your hand over a black leather couch that’s smooth and cool beneath your fingers. You point out, “It’s a little cold for a family. I can’t really imagine a baby toddling around, can you?”
“No,” he replies honestly, “but that’s why I have you. I’d like you to change it all so it’s…warmer. Hire a designer or pick out everything for yourself, whatever makes you happiest.”
As your eyes rove along the under-decorated hallway toward the living wing, already imagining how you might redesign the space, you ask him, “And how would I do that? Will you give me a check or something?”
Titus rolls his eyes and laughs. “A check would imply a budget and supervision; I don’t want any part in it unless you truly think my input would be valuable.”
“That’s hot,” you laugh. “More men should act like that.”
He hums, amused, and then reaches into his jacket, removes a sleek wallet, and hands you a heavy black card. The Black Card, you realize as you stare down at the centurion engraved on dark steel. “That card is yours for whatever you like. You’re already an authorized user on the account; I had the legal team take care of that. It auto-pays every month and I won’t even look at it, so I better not catch you overthinking your spending habits.”
“Ooh la la,” you say, taking the card from him and turning it over in your hand. You’re more than familiar with money, even his money, but it’s never been yours to spend however and whenever you want. No budget, no restrictions, no instructions. It feels almost like getting your first car; that shitbox meant freedom. Your eyes go to his and you ask, “What’s the limit?”
Opening up one of several bedroom doors, he tells you like it isn’t even interesting, “It’s NPSL.” You swallow hard. No Preset Spending Limit. Before leading you inside, he turns around and gives you a mischievous smile. “In fact, there’s a minimum. To maintain our status with the company, you’ll need to spend $350,000 a year on that card.” He smirks at your open-mouthed shock and muses, all cocky and coy, and touches the tip of your nose affectionately. “Can you do that for me, princess?”
“Are you joking?”
“I don’t joke often.”
You balk, “What would I even spend that kind of money on?”
He laughs out loud. “Ursula could spend that much in an hour; I’m sure you’ll find something. For example, where have you always wanted to buy jewelry from?”
You bite your lower lip and reply, “Tiffany.”
“Right, of course. I got you those earrings for Christmas,” he remembers fondly, especially fond of the mind-numbing orgasm you’d ridden out of him wearing nothing but said diamond earrings. “Any time you want, you can take your cute little ass downtown to the shop and get everything else from that collection. Better yet,” he goes on, taking his phone from his pocket and sending a few texts, “I’ll get an appointment for you at their flagship in New York and you can use your fun new card on some first-class tickets for you and a friend and buy out the damn store just to show off.” Before you can roll your eyes and scoff out a response, he presses his index finger to your lips, kisses your forehead, and coos, “You’re filthy rotten rich now, kitten, you’ll have to discover ways to act like it. Now, may I continue my tour?”
You give him a giggly mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
He debates jumping on it but bites his tongue, trying to keep a modicum of self-control with his regular staff lingering nearby. So he takes a breath and leads you through the open door into a vast, relatively blank bedroom, leaving Smith stationed outside. He tells you, “Until we’re married, you’ll stay here in one of the guest rooms. Anything else would be inappropriate.”
You nudge him with your hip, a little too confident. “Inappropriate like all the kinky premarital sex we’ve already had?”
In response, Titus grabs you hard by the waist, flipping you around and pushing you against the nearest wall, hand behind your head. There’s a caution to his touch, though, and it steals your breath away. He’s certain not to be too rough with you. He cups your face in one large hand and studies your features intently. Your eyes widen as you look up into his stoic hazels, finding something dark and unreadable in them.
And then he kisses you. Deep, serious, claiming. Your knees go weak as he presses the curve of your spine, pulling you as close as possible to his body. It feels like a warning more than an act of affection. When he pulls back, he gently touches the tip of your nose with his pointer finger, drawing out a smile, and tuts, “You’re going to have to learn not to talk like that in front of others. It’s bad form.”
“No sex jokes in front of the posh folk,” you tease with a serious nod. “Got it.”
“Good girl.”
“You shouldn’t call me that if you want me to behave.” With embarrassingly warm butterflies taking flight in your stomach, you push out your lower lip and give him your best puppy dog eyes. “I really have to sleep alone?” You wrap your arms around the back of his neck, leaning your weight on him. “In an unfamiliar place?” You drag your lips up his rough neck and suck his sensitive skin, smiling to yourself when he draws in a sharp and wanting hiss. “With my big strong fiancé all the way across the house?”
Titus gives a low chuckle, looking at you like a puzzle. He traces his finger up your neck and along your jaw until he reaches your chin, tilting it upward. He turns your face from side to side, examining you, and you shiver from the intensity. His lip twitches at the corner. “Would you really prefer to sleep in bed with me? Why?”
You take his hand in yours and guide it down to your hip. His other hand instinctively follows and they roam around to your ass, which you arch out to be more enticing. He follows by squeezing your flesh and grunting softly under his breath. You ruck your hands up beneath his shirt and rake your fingernails over his abs until you feel him tremble ever so slightly. On your toes, you whisper against his ear, “I get cold at night.”
Titus sucks in a sharp breath when you take his earlobe between your teeth and nibble ever so slightly. He leans his head back and groans, “Mmm. You’re too powerful for your own good.”
“Just powerful enough.” Then you nibble your lower lip, avert your eyes, and add bashfully, “And I might need you.”
His brows furrow in genuine confusion. “Need me? For what?”
You shrug and try not to sound too vulnerable. “I mean, I’m pregnant. What if I wake up and something’s wrong?”
Titus sets his jaw, considering that. He brushes his thumb over your cheek and studies one of the many emotions he doesn’t have much experience with: Worry. Lowering his voice, he assures you, “Nothing’s going to go wrong. Not if I can help it.”
With a sad little smile, you reply, “Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t stop me from being scared of complications. Or worse. I don’t want to have to wonder where you are if I wake up afraid.”
At that, he nods solemnly, takes your hand, and starts leading you to the opposite wing of the house. He may not experience anxieties like that, but he understands that his job is to quell yours. “Come on, then; I’ll show you our bedroom. Don’t tell Father; he wouldn’t understand.”
Your eyes narrow. “Will you get in trouble if he finds out?”
“Yes,” he says with a dark humor in his tone and a glint in his eyes. “He’d put me in time out and take away all my favorite toys.” He’d have one hour to hunt me while I remain unarmed. Titus presses a kiss to the center of your forehead. “Don’t worry, bunny; I can handle myself. Handling you is what I’m worried about.”
As he pushes open a set of opulent double doors, you poke his firm shoulder and protest, “I’m a perfect angel.”
“Precisely my concern.” As you step into the suite, he raises a silent hand to stop Smith from following. Closing the doors, Titus strides to where you’re admiring the space, wide eyes greedy over the California king, the floor-to-ceiling windows with grand velvet curtains, the massive his and hers closets. “I know it’s plain right now; I don’t have much of an eye for taste – except in women, of course.”
You smack him lightly on the arm. “Flatterer.”
His deeply ingrained instincts urge him to flip your arm around, pin it behind your back, twist you into submission. But then you smile at him and it’s so warm and open and trusting and earnest that he almost smiles back. “Only for you.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” You traipse into the adjoining bathroom suite and gawk at the oversized soaking tub, practically its own pool with jets and a head rest, and add, “I get the impression you have to flatter a lot of people in your world.”
“They have to flatter me,” he corrects. You feel his hand on your back and catch sight of him watching you in the large mirror above the double vanity sinks. His first finger trails up your spine and he smiles when you shiver. “And soon they’ll have to flatter you, too.”
“If they have to suck up to you, and you have to suck up to me,” you muse, turning around into his arms, “does that make me the boss of the whole world?”
Titus cradles your face in one hand. His expression is completely and totally confident as he tells you, “I spent the first thirty years of my life watching my mother snap her fingers-” he punctuates it with a click of his own “-and get whatever she wanted from whoever she was speaking to. She commanded attention, power, money. Everyone listened when she spoke. She was the only woman – person – my father ever acquiesced to or listened to. Nobody on earth has more power than Mrs. Danforth,” he finishes, pressing a kiss to your forehead, “and very soon that will be you.”
For a second, you’re breathless, taking in the intensity simmering in his eyes. Then you avert your gaze a second, swallow hard, and look back at him with your usual mischief. “Mommy issues much?”
Rolling his eyes dramatically, Titus swats your ass and laughs, “Father is going to hate you.”
With a raised eyebrow, you needle him, “You say that like it might actually be a good thing.”
Titus confirms, “Being hated by my father is always a badge of honor. He can’t stand me.” Then he takes your hand, leads you back to the bedroom, and sits you down on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. “Now, I have to leave for some business before I introduce you to the family tonight, but I do have one thing I need to give you in the meantime.”
“A welcome home gift?”
“Something like that,” he replies, walking over to his bedside table and removing a black velvet box. He kneels in front of you, your legs on either side of his shoulders, and your heart starts to pound. As he opens it to reveal the ridiculous ring inside, he begins, “Now, bunny, if you want a proper proposal with a string quartet or a sunset on the beach, I’ll do that, but for-”
“Titus, shut up,” you whisper. “Is this…for me?”
Your eyes are glued to the ring. You’ve never seen anything like it. Clearly it’s an antique piece; the metalwork and stones have been meticulously maintained and show a high level of craftsmanship. The large center diamond is black – an almost surreal color, both drawing light in and flinging it out, seeming at once opaque and transparent from different angles – and surrounded by a halo of small pearls and diamonds set in fine platinum. It’s not eye-catching so much as jaw-dropping.
Your heartbeat thuds and whooshes in your ears as Titus removes the ring from the box and takes your left hand in his. You splay your fingers to give him better access.
“My great grandfather had it made for his wife and my mother held onto it for me to give to mine, not that she believed I’d ever find one. It won’t be the most expensive piece in your collection, but it’s the most precious and rare to our family name.” Titus slides it onto your finger and then kisses the skin just above it, his lips softer than you’ve ever felt. He holds your hand in his and urges. “I never want to see you without it.”
“I should take it off to shower and sleep,” you point out absently, still staring at the ring. You flick your eyes up to his. “And I assume you’d still like to see me those times.”
“I’m going to have to start punishing you for all this flirting, you know.”
You raise an eyebrow. “Is that a promise?”
He shakes his head and lets out a sharp, amused breath. “Oh, you’re in for it now.”
In the next breath, Titus smirks and lifts you easily, tossing you up onto the bed. As you shriek out a laugh, the plush fabric and thick mattress catch you like a cartoon cloud. Titus pounces on you like a panther while you’re still getting your bearings, hiking your skirt up around your waist and yanking your panties down hard enough to rip the elastic. You don’t complain; for every pair of your underwear he’s ruined, Titus has always gifted you five more from nicer shops.
His fingers circle your clit hard and fast, working you up frantically, and you know exactly what his game is. It’s one he plays often and well. You’ve got no choice but to enjoy the expert way he touches you, months of knowing how to get you off and bring you down painstakingly memorized.
Then, as you expect, the very moment your walls start to clamp down, Titus stops all touch and slaps your clit hard. The sting rockets up your spine and you gasp. Your thighs shake and he laughs at your mewling.
Before you can even start to think , he pulls his shirt off, casts it aside, and crawls onto the bed next to you. Then his middle two fingers are on your clit again and his lips lock onto yours and you’re moaning and whining and hoping, hoping, hoping he won’t-
He slaps your clit once more and you nearly knee him with the force of your body’s reaction. He stills your leg with a smirk and coos, “Careful, princess, you’ll pull a muscle. Can’t have that.”
You challenge him with narrow eyes. “Then how about you pin me down and fuck me so I don’t squirm?”
“So goddamn greedy,” he huffs. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today.”
“I wonder whose fault that is.”
You watch, mouth watering, as he takes off his belt and slacks. You even notice the brief hesitation as the leather belt runs over his fingers; you’ve been known to beg for a whipping with it on more than one occasion. But he’s being gentle with you – for Titus, at least. He returns to you on the bed with a wolfish gaze, spreading your legs apart and admiring you for long enough to make your breath hitch. When you feel the tip of his swollen cock nudging at your entrance, it’s with a toe-curling gentility that makes your body sensitive.
Titus always thrusts into you agonizingly slow, no matter how worked up either of you are. He savors the little flutters and twitches that come with filling your pretty cunt millimeter by breathless millimeter. Once he’s seated inside of you, feeling the way your hips instinctively roll back into his and how your cunt is clamping onto him like it needs reassurance, Titus presses his thumb to your lower lip and orders, “Beg.”
And even though you’re having to actively hold back from squirming and moaning, you know he loves the chase, so you grip his curls tight and reply, “Why should I?”
“God, you fucking brat.” He spits on your face and you lick it off your lips, never dropping his eyes that trace your movements. “If you won’t beg for what you want, then I expect you to stay there and take whatever I give you.”
Your eyes widen in a mix of lust and fear, right on the primal line that Titus so loves to play with. One of his hands goes down to cover your mouth. There’s a millisecond where his eyes flick up to yours, asking permission, and it’s gone as soon as you give an imperceptible nod. When you and Titus fuck, your minds run parallel to one another; the same temptations and ideas call both your attention.
Once his salty, heavy palm is clamping your mouth shut, Titus fucks you like he needs. Your pleasure becomes entirely secondary to him; he only touches your clit because it amuses him to watch you squirm and kick and writhe, unable to speak or moan or do much of anything besides take it.
When he hikes your legs higher, working you into a full mating press that lets him fuck you hard and deep, your eyes roll back and your moans turn into squeaks. His thumb continues its strumming on your clit as you start to shake from pleasure. He purrs, “There we go.”
And then he cums.
Unannounced, unplanned, unrepentant. He pulls out and gives your thigh an affectionate pat.
You grab his hand and wail, “No, no, no no no nonono! Titus!”
He lifts your fingers to his lips and kisses each one softly, “Didn’t I say this was a punishment? You have to learn to behave yourself.”
You lean back, raise your arms above your head so that your tits are on beautiful display, and look up at him like an innocent, needy puppy. After a beat of charged silence where his eyes ravish your body, you say the one word you’re always careful to withhold from him until the right moment: “Please.”
Above the bed like a god, Titus gazes down at you, panting and disheveled and leaking his cum. He tsks and sighs, “How am I supposed to punish you when you take me so well?” Then he drops to his knees, hooks his arms beneath your legs, and tugs you to the end of the bed as if you weigh nothing. “When you’ve done everything I’ve asked without complaint?” He slides two fingers into your sopping cunt, curling them toward himself and grinning when you arch your back and whine out in pleasure. He nips your inner thighs with his teeth and rests his free hand on your lower abdomen, over your womb. Leaning toward your wrecked pussy, he murmurs at last, “When you’re carrying my child? I couldn’t possibly deny you.”
And he descends on your swollen, aching clit. The taste of his own cum mixed with your juices drives him wild. The taste of his ownership. After all the edging, you’re mere moments from tumbling over the precipice.
He doesn’t make you wait any longer.
He growls into your cunt as you spasm around his fingers, the orgasm burning up your spine and boiling beneath your cheeks. Your back arches and he refuses to let you stop cumming, keeping his tongue just as firm and fast as you punch into overstimulation. It’s so good it borders on painful and that’s what he loves the most. The moment when you cry out his name and try to push his shoulders back because it’s just too much and only he can finally release you.
Your chest heaves as you collapse back onto the bed. Titus slowly withdraws his fingers from your pussy and licks them clean, drunk on the taste of the two of you becoming one. You can’t talk or think as you rest the back of your hand on your forehead to cool it down. After a few moments of breathing, you smirk up at him and tease, “I knew you’d cave, you big softie.”
He kneels over you again. “I assure you it was completely selfish; making you cum strokes my ego.”
“Mhmm. Whatever you say.”
Titus tuts out a chuckle and checks his watch before swearing under his breath. After a searing kiss that gives you the sense he wants nothing more than to start a second round, Titus sighs, “Three hours as my live-in trophy wife and you’re already making me late.”
You nip his collarbone. “Bite me.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He holds your chin and orders gently, “Ask Chip to take you downtown. Designer district. Buy an outfit that makes you feel perfect and be home in time for dinner at six.”
At 5:58, Titus knocks on the door of his own home with a bouquet of white roses. He can already imagine you rolling your eyes at his display before Smith opens up the door on your behalf. Titus is pleased to see that you let him open it without argument, already beginning to accept having others watch out for you.
You step into the moonlight and Titus hands off the flowers to Smith, who falls back behind you. For a moment, Titus is at a loss for words. You’ve always made a point of dressing up and looking beautiful for him; that’s a part of your arrangement, a part of the business of being a professional sugar baby. He’s even paid for you to get plenty of lovely pieces to add to your wardrobe.
But this?
You’ve spent the handful of hours since he left (and attended several excruciating meetings) pampering yourself into a state more akin to divinity than humanity. He may not have the eye for fashion that his sister does, but he can easily identify the trappings of a woman feeling confident about herself: Freshly French-tipped nails, sleek high heels with a thin strap around your ankle, makeup subtle and feminine. The burgundy halter dress hugs your curves, the silk crepe just structured enough to be formal but swinging enough to be sweet and flirty.
He wants to devour you.
And when he kisses you hello, he makes it obvious, dipping you far backwards and gripping your hip like it owes him money. He can feel the designer quality of the dress, soft as butter, under his fingertips. Then he rakes his hands up your thighs and growls against your ears, “I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you in the one situation where I absolutely have to.”
You give him a modest twirl and ask, “You really like it?”
With his hand on your lower back, Titus guides you toward the main house and purrs, sounding both proud and possessive, “You look perfectly at home in luxury, kitten.”
You try to quell your nerves as you walk up the marble steps to the back entrance of the home, where Smith opens the large glass doors to usher you both inside. Unlike Titus’ – and your, you have to keep reminding yourself – house, the main house is opulently designed, drenched in old-school grandeur. Everything is antique, hundreds of years old, in dark woods and rich silks. It’s more like walking through a museum than a home.
When Titus brings you into the grand dining room, you can see just how well his father and sister match the decor. Thin, severe, expensive. His sister is drop-dead gorgeous in a very ‘90s leading lady way while his father has the sort of face and demeanor usually reserved for stereotypical evil wizards or vampire counts. Titus has to push you into their eyeline when you find yourself shrinking beneath their stares.
Mr. Danforth and Ursula both stand to greet you but don’t move otherwise. Titus takes a deep breath and announces, “Father, Ursula, I’d like to introduce the future Mrs. Danforth.”
Father offers you his hand first, but you’re clearly not supposed to shake it, so you just present your own. He lifts your hand to his lips and kisses your skin softly. “How lovely to finally make your acquaintance. My son has sung your praises extensively.”
“That’s very sweet.” You bite your tongue despite how easy it would be to tease Titus because you know for a fact he never would’ve mentioned you to them at all if it weren’t for the baby. You stick with a polite albeit slightly stiff, “Mr. Danforth, it’s an honor to meet you.”
Titus’ gentle, affirmative pat to your arm almost makes you laugh – the situation is too weird for words – but you still hold back. It’s a truly herculean effort not to point out how otherworldly this whole thing is. You haven’t exactly met people who just reek of power and status, their presence so effortlessly commanding that you want to laugh so you don’t cry or hide.
Then it’s Ursula’s turn with you. She doesn’t shake hands, doesn’t hug, doesn’t even speak for a solid thirty seconds. You can feel Ursula’s eyes on every inch of you, dissecting and analyizing. It’s like she’s trying to see through your skin or maybe telepathically peel it off your bones. You’re holding your breath until she finally says, “You’re very pretty.”
“Thank you.” Swallowing hard, you force a wobbly smile and tell her, “You look stunning, exactly like I expected from how your brother talks about your fashion sense.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Please; Titus wouldn’t know fashion sense if I smacked him over the head with it. And I’ve tried.” Before you can try to come up with any possible response, she gestures to your dress and asks, “Where is this little number from? It looks appropriately expensive for the occasion. A gift from our Titus, I assume?”
“Um, yes, he sent me shopping today.”
She gives you a pitying sort of smile and squeezes your forearm in a way that feels truly predatory. “He’s always so generous with his playthings.”
Titus clears his throat. “Ursula.”
“I’m just teasing,” she laughs without any humor. Then her narrowed eyes return to you. “Really, though, where did you find a dress like this in our dingy little city?”
You smooth out the fabric and tell her, “It’s, um, it’s Yves Saint Laurent.”
“Looks like something I would wear.”
You try on a soft, self-deprecating laugh. “I told Chip to take me somewhere you would shop.”
“Maybe I’ll go and pick one up in my size,” she muses, still scanning your body for every flaw, which you’re suddenly painfully aware of, coming up with brand new insecurities every second her focus moves. “I’d ask to borrow it, but yours would drown me.”
Titus cuts her off sharply, “That’s enough.”
She pouts at her brother. “Don’t be so sensitive, ducky; I’m sure she can-”
“No.” You’ve never heard Titus’ voice as stone cold and commanding as when he tells her, an order and a punishment, “Never speak down to her. Never.”
Ursula rolls her eyes and plops herself dramatically in one of the oversized dining chairs. She pouts and says, “Fatherhood is already making you so boring. Now I’m going to have to weaponize her against you so I have someone to complain with about how boring you are. Sigh.”
And dinner goes just about like that.
Mr. Danforth unabashedly interrogates you about your life, your family, your history. Ursula critiques your answers. Titus snaps at them both when they push too far. You just try to hold onto your fork and sneak bites of decadent food in between the family bickering. You can tell there’s a kind of affection entirely foreign to you in the way they jab and dodge each other’s barbs. The way rich people talk to each other – all subtext and speed – is surreal to listen to. Eyes rolled about memories in St. Barts and arguments over clients in Aspen; it’s like they’re speaking a different language from the one you learned growing up.
By the time you’ve finished pretending to like flan because you’re terrified of being rude, they seem to have hashed out all their regular arguments, everyone beyond ready to leave the rest alone. Titus can tell you’re getting overwhelmed by their equally intense presences fighting for dominance, so he slides his hand protectively onto your knee and announces, “I think we’ve kept my fiancée awake late enough, haven’t we?”
Ursula pouts, leaning across the table and snatching your left hand into hers for examination. “You already gave her mother’s ring and I missed the grand proposal? How tragically unromantic.”
Father sighs, “They’re doing things a touch out of order, darling.”
“I wouldn’t want an extravagant proposal anyway,” you manage to squeak out. “A nice private moment between the two of us was perfect.”
“Ah, so she’s the one making you boring,” Ursula laughs. Then she lowers her gaze and adds, “If you don’t like extravagance, you may be marrying into the wrong family. Your wedding guest list is already 250 people long.”
“I’m definitely looking forward to all of it,” you assure as you desperately try not to sound either meek or ungrateful, “but Titus is being kind enough to ease me into the waters. Trust me: The beautiful estate and stunning, personal ring made as much of a statement as any proposal.”
Father smirks at you with a pleased satisfaction that seems to surprise Titus and his sister. “What a diplomatic response. My daughter will be lucky to learn from your decorum.”
As Titus stifles a laugh, Ursula stands up dramatically from the table and reminds him, “I’m literally a diplomat, Father. Try telling the people of Monaco that I’m anything but diplomatic when I personally broke ground on the country’s latest arts center.”
“That was for optics,” Titus cuts back, adding under this breath, “unlike my work in Geneva.”
Ursula brandishes her knife like she might really use it on him, making you gasp gently under your breath, and that’s when Father officially clears his throat and stands with a curt, “I think that’s enough family time for one night.”
“I completely agree,” Titus replies, rolling his shoulders before he stands up. After pulling your chair out and guiding you to your feet, he says, “We’ll see you both at the Governor’s Ball on Saturday.”
Titus shakes his father’s hand at the end of dinner and, once again, you have to remind yourself not to tease him. Thankfully, it’s a surgical extraction from there and Titus has you walking back toward your house in no time.
After Titus dismisses Smith for the night and arms the extensive home security system, he meets you in the primary bathroom, where you’re unclasping your jewelry and examining yourself in the mirror. Titus must’ve had someone on staff put away your things because your bedtime skincare routine is laid out on the countertop. Before reaching for any of it, you bite your lip and ask Titus, “Be honest: Did I do okay?”
He comes up behind you, slipping his strong arms around your waist. “You did great. I’m only sorry Ursula was so very-” he struggles to find the right word “-Ursula.”
“I expected worse,” you tell him with half a smile. “I didn’t expect you to stand up for me, though. To your sister.”
“Ursula is the family the universe gave me. She’s my best friend and my closest confidant – and she’s a nightmare. A hellion.” Titus kisses your forehead and gently touches your stomach. “You’re the family I’m choosing. That means you come first, button. I’m not going to have my children watch their father sit idly by while their mother is insulted. I’m practicing setting a good example.”
You stand up on your toes and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
Titus runs his hands up your spine and fiddles with the halter tie at the back of your neck. “Now let’s get you out of this very lovely dress so you can sleep. Do you need a back rub? Some ginger tea?”
You raise an eyebrow as you slowly take out your cleanser and reusable cotton rounds. “Are those real offers or are you teasing me?”
“Real offers. From either a masseuse I can have here in fifteen minutes and our chef or from me personally.” He tugs the dress down your body, guides you to step out of it, and discards it in the bathroom hamper like you didn’t pay $3,200 for it a few hours ago. “No funny business, just relaxation and rest, especially well earned after spending a few hours with my family.”
“I could probably tolerate a foot rub before bed,” you giggle as he kisses across the tops of your shoulders.
“Go on, then.” He strips off his own shirt and makes quick work of his belt and slacks, too. Looking deliciously sturdy in just his black boxer briefs, he leans against the bathroom doorframe and says. “Finish getting un-ready and come lie down with me, princess. I’ll make sure to get you nice and relaxed before bed.”
“You want me to do my whole bedtime routine topless?”
“I’ll grab you something from your closet,” he offers, frowning a little because he admittedly does like the idea of watching you traipsing around with your tits out. When he returns with a tank top and silky shorts, he notices you still haven’t started taking off your full face of makeup. Too knowingly, he strolls into the bathroom with the pajamas and asks, all low and teasing, “Are you nervous to take off your makeup in front of me?”
You toy with the damp cloth, studying him in the mirror, and admit, “A little. And not just the makeup.”
He crosses his arms over his chest and laughs, “I’ve seen you naked, kitty.”
You scoff, “Naked and made up with at minimum highlighter and mascara. Or in very manicured outfits.”
He offers, “I’ve also seen you in pajamas before.”
“Lingerie,” you correct. “You don’t really think I sleep in slutty little negligees and teddies, do you?”
“A man can dream.”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, typically you rip those off me, fuck me unconscious, and then leave before my actual bedtime routine,” you reply, poking him in his hard chest. As you tug on the tank top and shorts, you go on, “I usually wake up around midnight, get room service on your tab, and sleep in my ugly sweats since you never spend the night.”
Clearly amused by the whole thing, he presses, “Are you worried I’ll rescind my proposal to the mother of my child because you aren’t a model in your sleep?”
“I don’t know!” You huff and glare at him, knowing full well you’re being hormonally dramatic now. “This is all very new to me, Titus. I have to wear a four-figure dress to dinner and go to the fucking Governor’s Ball, I guess, but I still have to be me at bedtime? All while figuring out how to be your fiancée and not just your sugar baby? It’s weird.”
Titus closes the space between you, each step stern and confident. He takes the makeup removal pad and cleanser from you, gently lathers the cloth, and starts to work it over your face without saying a word. Titus says the most when he's silent. Right away, you melt beneath his touch. His totally sturdy gaze. Quietly, he relents, “It’s a lot. I know that. You don’t have to come to the big social events right away; we can start smaller than the fucking Governor’s Ball.” He smiles when you crack one of your own. “If you aren’t ready to jump right into being my wife, there are plenty of other bedrooms you can stay in and have your own space.”
“I don’t want my own space,” you whisper back. “I’m just scared of taking up too much of yours, I guess. Or not fitting into your life the way you expect. Of being Mrs. Danforth correctly. Not looking expensive enough or beautiful enough or-”
“Quiet now,” he interrupts, words harsh and clear but tone nothing but warm. “Do you know what I want from Mrs. Danforth?” Titus finishes wiping your face of its mask and then examines your products and selects your moisturizer. He massages it into your face and neck with fingers so tender you could cry. When he’s finished, he holds your face in one large hand and murmurs, “I want you to sit by my side and sleep in my arms. You. We have the rest of our lives to work out the details.”
For the first time, you feel the real you slip out in front of Titus. No flirting, no pushing, no hiding. All you can manage to whisper is, “Thank you.”
He gives you a soft kiss and then goes on, quiet but urgent. “As for worrying about your appearance, you have never been lovelier to me than you are right now,” leading you to the bed and sitting you down with your feet in his lap, he finishes, “because you’re mine. And that’s the most perfect thing you can be.”
