𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| now that you and Mark are finally together, loving him begins to feel less like a risk and more like coming home. through quiet courthouse routines, late-night office visits, soft laughter, stolen kisses, and the tender intimacy of being fully chosen, the chapter shows Mark slowly letting his walls fall while you both settle into something real, steady, and deeply romantic. by the end, your love feels certain—not perfect, not simple, but worth every complicated moment. wc: 5.6k
warnings|| NSFW; 18+ content, workplace romance, emotional vulnerability, anxiety/insecurity, fear of losing love, intense romantic tension, kissing/making out, suggestive content, explicit sexual content, oral sex, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, praise/possessive language, love confessions, aftercare, and deeply emotional intimacy.
Chapter Seven: Guilty on All Counts
The strange thing about finally being together was how natural it felt.
Not dramatic. Not confusing. Just… right.
As if the two of you had spent months slowly building toward something inevitable.
The courthouse noticed immediately. Mostly because Mark stopped pretending he wasn’t hopelessly gone for you.
He still worked impossible hours. Still carried exhaustion in his shoulders and court files beneath his arm like permanent extensions of himself, but now he smiled more. Not often—Mark Callan would never become sunshine personified—but something in him had undeniably changed. It was as if letting you deeper into his life quieted a part of his constant tension.
He would glance at you in a hallway and his whole expression would shift, the lines around his mouth easing, the guarded distance in his eyes replaced by something warmer.
The relationship gave him small moments of certainty, reminders that he wasn’t alone in fighting for every day. Even on the worst mornings, you could see it: Mark letting himself be cared for, and in return, letting pieces of his affection show, and everyone noticed.
Especially around you.
He started meeting you downstairs in the mornings, with coffee already in hand. Started walking you to your car after late nights. Started touching you casually in ways that completely ruined your ability to function normally.
A hand on your lower back in crowded hallways.
Legs brushing yours beneath cafeteria tables.
Absentmindedly fixing your necklace while discussing witness schedules like he wasn’t actively shortening your lifespan.
It was domestic in the quietest, most dangerous way.
One Tuesday evening, you found him asleep at his office desk at nearly midnight, head resting against crossed arms beside a mountain of trial binders.
Your chest physically ached at the sight. Loving Mark like this, seeing him finally at rest, chipped away at all your old defenses.
The memory flashed back—those endless nights when he would push himself past the point of exhaustion, barely giving you a glimpse beneath his steady exterior. You thought of all the times you had wished you could ease this heaviness for him, imagined what it would feel like to be the person he let in. Now, watching him like this, vulnerable and trustful, it made your chest burn with something sharper than affection. It was hope, and gratitude, and a kind of awe that left you feeling completely undone.
The lamp on his desk cast soft gold light across his face, exhaustion written into every inch of him. He looked younger asleep, less guarded.
You set the takeout bag down quietly and brushed your fingers gently through his hair.
Mark woke instantly. Years of prosecutor stress had apparently destroyed any normal sleep cycle. His eyes blinked open in confusion before landing on you and softened.
“There you are,” he murmured sleepily.
Your heart nearly exploded, his voice still sounded heavy with sleep, warm, real.
“You fell asleep again.”
Mark sat up slowly, rubbing tired eyes. “I was resting strategically.”
“You drooled on a homicide file.”
“That feels defamatory.”
You laughed softly as he reached automatically for your wrist, pulling you closer between his knees. The intimacy of that simple movement still affected you every time.
Especially when he rested his forehead briefly against your stomach with a quiet, exhausted exhale.
Mark looked up at you. There was that look again, like you caring about him still surprised him every single time.
You bent down and kissed him softly, slowly, sleepy.
Mark sighed quietly against your mouth before his hand slid along your waist.
“You know,” he murmured, lips brushing yours again, “you showing up in my office after midnight is becoming a pattern.”
“You’re predictable.”
His eyes closed briefly as the words hit somewhere tender.
Then he kissed you again, deeper this time, smiling faintly when your fingers slid into his hair.
“God,” he whispered against your lips, “I missed you today.”
Your chest ached instantly because he said things like that so honestly now. No hesitation. No walls. Just truth.
Somewhere along the way, the relationship stopped feeling fragile. Mark let you close instead of pretending he was fine, and you let yourself hope this softness was real.
That evening, with the courthouse silent and the world narrowed down to just the two of you, it became clear: you were both still choosing each other, even at your most worn out and unguarded.
Maybe that was it, the precise moment the relationship settled into something solid, lasting. It wasn't a grand gesture, just the steady comfort that grew from being trusted, from staying and letting yourselves be seen.
Not because life got easier.
But because the two of you stopped fighting the fact that this was real.
Weeks passed like this.
Quiet happiness unfolded in courthouse hallways and stolen evenings, the hum of fluorescent lights and distant stamping of court files trailing behind you.
Dates slipped in between impossible schedules, each one feeling rare and almost illicit. At tiny Italian restaurants after late hearings, the air would be thick with the scent of garlic and roasting tomatoes. Candlelight would shimmer against Mark’s tired face while outside, traffic rattled softly along rain-slicked streets.
On rainy bookstore afternoons, the smell of old paper and fresh coffee hung between the shelves. Mark would follow you through aisles, umbrellas dripping quietly by the door. He pretended not to enjoy himself, but you caught him inhaling the scent of a new hardcover and always, always secretly carrying every book you picked up.
One memorable disaster involving ice skating ended with you falling six separate times and Mark nearly throwing out his back catching you.
“You skate like a newborn deer,” he informed you while helping you upright for the fifth time.
“You still love me, though.”
Mark looked at you over the collar of his coat, dark eyes warm despite the winter cold.
“Hopelessly.”
The word hit so hard you forgot how to breathe, and you slipped again.
Mark caught you with a laugh against your temple.
“See?” he murmured. “Hopeless.”
Tonight, though, the courthouse was finally empty.
Rain pressed softly against the windows of Mark’s office while the city glowed gold and silver beyond the glass.
You sat curled sideways on his office couch, wearing his suit jacket over your clothes, because the building air conditioning was trying to kill you personally.
Mark sat at his desk finishing edits on a closing statement. Tie gone, sleeves rolled up, seading glasses low on his nose, and honestly? It should have been illegal.
You watched him quietly while pretending to read through deposition notes.
Mark noticed instantly, because of course he did.
“You’ve reread the same paragraph four times.”
You blinked innocently. “No I haven’t.”
“You just turned the packet upside down.”
You looked down. The packet was indeed upside down.
“…That feels nitpicky.”
Mark’s mouth twitched. God, that tiny, almost-smile still destroyed you.
He leaned back slightly in his chair, exhaustion lingering beneath his eyes but softened now by something warmer.
Home.
That was the terrifying thing. Somewhere along the way, the two of you had started feeling like home to each other.
“You should go home,” you murmured softly. “You’ve been working since six this morning.”
“So have you.”
“I’m less noble about it.”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
Then silence settled again, comfortable. Rain is tapping softly against the windows, the low buzz of dim lights. Mark was watching you with that unbearable fondness that still made your chest ache.
Eventually, you stood and stretched before walking toward his desk.
Mark’s gaze followed, always.
You stopped beside him, fingers brushing lightly through the slightly messy hair at his temple. His eyes closed briefly at the touch, a tiny reaction, but still enough to make warmth bloom low in your stomach.
“Tired?” you whispered.
Mark turned his face slightly into your hand without thinking.
“Yes.”
The honesty of it softened something inside you instantly. You leaned down and kissed his forehead gently, then his cheek, then the corner of his mouth.
Mark exhaled shakily once. “Careful.”
You smiled softly against his skin. “Why?”
His hands settled slowly at your waist, warm, steady.
“Because I’ve been trying to finish this motion for twenty minutes,” he murmured, “and you standing this close will make that impossible.”
Heat curled low in your chest. “You looked stressed.”
“I am stressed.”
“So I’m helping.”
Mark opened his eyes, finally. Dark and tired and impossibly soft when they looked at you like this.
“You are not helping.”
His hands tightened slightly at your waist. Then he kissed you, slowly at first, like he wanted to savor it.
Nothing desperate anymore, nothing stolen. Just Mark kissing you deeply and thoroughly, and warm enough to make your knees weaken.
You melted into him immediately. His chair rolled backward slightly when you moved closer between his knees. Mark made a soft sound against your mouth that nearly unraveled you entirely.
Your fingers slid into his hair automatically. The kiss deepened, slower somehow. More dangerous because there was no rush now, just wanting.
Weeks and weeks of growing intimacy settled between the two of you until even silence had become charged.
Mark’s hands moved carefully along your waist beneath the oversized suit jacket. Reverent almost, like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to touch you this way.
Your breathing turned uneven when his mouth brushed slowly along your jaw.
“Mark…” The sound of his name in your voice visibly affected him.
His forehead rested briefly against your shoulder. You felt the rough exhale against your skin before he looked up again.
“You should know,” he said quietly, voice low and rough around the edges, “that my ability to think rationally around you has deteriorated significantly.”
You laughed softly.
Then his hand slid carefully along your thigh, and the laughter vanished immediately.
The room changed all at once, the air heavier now. Your pulse stumbling hard beneath your ribs.
Mark looked up at you slowly, like he was giving you every chance to stop this.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
For a split second, anxiety slipped through the warmth. What if this softness was temporary, or you let yourself hope too much? It was so easy to get used to being wanted like this that the idea of losing it made something sharp and uncertain flicker in your chest. Before you could pull away or hide the fear in your eyes, Mark's hand tightened gently on your leg, and he pressed his forehead briefly to yours, steady and grounding.
In that quiet moment, you remembered that neither of you was going anywhere, not now, not later. Choosing each other had become a daily promise, and beneath everything else—the nerves, the hope—was the certainty that you were both in this to stay.
"Hey," he murmured, voice soft but certain, "I'm not going anywhere."
The simple reassurance eased something knotted inside you. You forced yourself to breathe, to stay present, to trust that you were both still here.
You nodded immediately.
His thumb brushed lightly against your leg once before he kissed you again. This time deeper, needier, like restraint was becoming harder lately.
You climbed carefully into his lap before you could overthink it. Mark inhaled sharply against your mouth. His hands steadied automatically at your hips. Warm and strong and careful even now, always careful with you.
The kiss broke briefly when your forehead bumped his. You burst into helpless laughter immediately. Mark stared at you for one exhausted second before laughing too.
“Romantic,” he murmured.
“Shut up.”
“You just headbutted a prosecutor.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Barely.”
You smiled against his mouth before kissing him again, softer this time.
Outside, thunder rolled quietly through the city.
Inside Mark’s office, the world narrowed down to warmth and rain and his hands sliding carefully up your back beneath his jacket.
Every touch unhurried, intentional.
Your heartbeat felt enormous now because this was different, not frantic, not impulsive. Just intimacy unfolding slowly between two people who had already fallen hopelessly in love, and Mark kissed you like he knew it, too.
The courthouse gala.
Which sounded significantly more glamorous than it actually was. Mostly, it involved attorneys drinking expensive wine while pretending they enjoyed networking.
Still, it mattered. The gala was one of the few nights when every attorney, judge, and staff member would gather outside the courtroom, their professional masks slipping just enough for everyone to see each other as people.
For you and Mark, it felt like stepping into the world as a real couple for the first time—no secrets, no keeping your distance. It wasn't just an event. It was a quiet announcement to the people who had become a kind of family, proof that everything between you had changed, and apparently, dressing up mattered to Mark far more than expected.
You discovered this when he showed up at your apartment to pick you up and completely stopped moving the second you opened the door.
Silence, long silence. Your stomach flipped nervously.
“What?” Mark just stared, actually stared.
Dark suit. Black tie. One hand still frozen against the doorway like he’d forgotten why he was there.
“Mark?”
His eyes lifted slowly back to yours. The look on his face nearly destroyed you.
You had spent an hour getting ready. Soft black dress, hair curled, makeup carefully done, but the way Mark looked at you now made you feel devastatingly beautiful.
“You look…” He stopped once, visibly collecting himself. “Jesus Christ.”
Heat flooded your cheeks instantly.
“You clean up okay yourself.”
Mark laughed quietly under his breath, still staring.
Then softly, “I had a whole speech in my head on the drive over.”
Your heart fluttered helplessly. “Yeah?”
“It’s gone now.”
You smiled.
Mark physically looked affected by it, like every soft thing you did still landed somewhere deep inside him.
Then his gaze dropped slowly down the length of your dress before returning upward, and the temperature changed suddenly.
Your pulse stumbled. “Mark.”
“That dress is deeply unfair.”
You laughed breathlessly. “We’re already late.”
“I’m aware.”
Yet somehow neither of you moved.
Mark stepped inside slowly instead, one hand settling at your waist. Close enough now that you could smell his cologne and feel warmth radiating through his suit jacket.
“You know what the problem is?” he murmured.
“What?”
“I’m trying very hard to behave like a professional adult.”
Your heartbeat turned catastrophic. “And?”
His eyes dropped briefly to your mouth.
“You opened the door looking like this.”
You kissed him first; you couldn’t help it.
Mark made a low, surprised sound against your lips before immediately kissing you back harder, one hand tightening at your waist while the other slid into your hair carefully, like he already knew exactly how to hold you.
You stumbled backward into the apartment wall with a breathless laugh. Mark followed instantly, kissing you deeper until both of you forgot entirely about the gala for several dangerous minutes.
By the time you finally arrived at the courthouse ballroom, both of you looked suspiciously flushed.
Evelyn noticed almost instantly. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “You two absolutely made out in the parking garage.”
“We did not,” Mark lied calmly as you nearly choked on champagne.
The night passed in a blur after that.
Music. Laughter. Crystal glasses clinking beneath warm gold lights while attorneys and judges drifted through the ballroom pretending they weren’t all deeply exhausted people wearing expensive clothes.
Mark’s hand rested against your lower back nearly the entire evening, not possessive, instinctive. Like somewhere along the way, his body had simply decided this was where he was meant to keep you.
People kept stopping him for work conversations, but even as he discussed motions or witness timelines, his attention kept drifting back to you every few seconds. Checking, always checking, like he still couldn’t fully believe you were there.
At one point during a slow song, Mark pulled you gently onto the dance floor.
You stared up at him in surprise. “You dance?”
“Badly.”
“You prosecute organized crime.”
“That skillset does not transfer.”
You laughed softly as his arms settled around you, and suddenly the ballroom noise faded away.
There was just Mark, warm hands, tired eyes, softer than you’d ever seen them before.
“You happy?” you asked quietly.
Mark looked at you for a long moment before answering.
“With you?” His thumb brushed gently along your waist. “Always.”
Your heart folded in on itself, and you rested your forehead briefly against his shoulder, smiling helplessly when his arms tightened around you.
“Careful,” you murmured. “People might think you like me.”
Mark’s mouth brushed your temple.
“Let them.”
The music swelled softly around you. For a while, neither of you spoke. You just swayed together beneath ballroom lights while rain tapped quietly against courthouse windows far above the city.
Then Mark glanced down at you again, and the look on his face nearly stopped your heart.
Not longing, not tension, something quieter, fuller, like love had settled so deeply into him it had become part of the way he looked at the world now.
“You know,” he said softly, “you’re wearing my ability to think clearly.”
You blinked up at him. “What?”
“That dress.”
Heat rushed instantly into your cheeks. “You mentioned that already.”
“I’m mentioning it again.”
“You’re impossible.”
Mark hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe.”
Then, lower, “Maybe. But you have a terrible habit of making impossible feel worth it.”
Your breath caught, because he said things like that now — softly, casually devastating — like honesty had become second nature between you.
Later, much later, after the gala ended and the courthouse emptied into cold midnight streets, Mark drove you home in comfortable, exhausted silence.
The city lights blurred gold outside the windows, rain streaked softly across the windshield, while low jazz hummed quietly through the speakers. His hand rested loosely over yours on the center console the entire drive.
When you reached your apartment building, neither of you moved immediately.
Mark looked so handsome; it was dangerous.
“You should come upstairs,” you said softly.
His eyes lifted to yours instantly, and the air changed.
“Are you sure?” The gentleness of the question made your chest ache, because even now, Mark treated your heart like something precious.
You nodded once. “Yes.”
Silence settled between you then, heavy now, meaningful.
Mark leaned forward first and kissed you softly before either of you could get nervous.
The elevator ride upstairs felt impossibly intimate. His hand rested warm against the small of your back the entire way. Neither of you spoke much once the apartment door closed behind you.
You didn’t need to. The tension between you had changed over time into something deeper than desperation, trust, wanting, love.
Mark loosened his tie slowly while watching you across the room, and your heart skipped hard at the sight.
“You’re staring again,” you whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” he replied immediately, like it wasn’t even a question anymore.
The honesty of it hit deep.
You stepped closer first. Mark’s hands found your waist instinctively, gentle, always gentle with you.
The kiss this time was slower than before. No frantic courthouse urgency. Just warmth, affection. Months of built-up tenderness are finally given space to breathe.
You felt the exact moment the restraint left him, not roughness, just honesty, like Mark had finally stopped holding himself back from loving you fully.
He kissed you carefully between soft laughter and whispered reassurances, forehead resting against yours every few moments like he needed to stay close.
“You okay?” he murmured quietly at one point.
You nodded immediately, fingers brushing his jaw. “Yeah.”
Mark kissed you again, softer this time, reverent enough to make your throat tighten emotionally. The rest unfolded slowly, tenderly.
Your fingers loosened his tie fully before pulling it free, and Mark watched you the entire time, dark-eyed and quiet, like he was barely holding himself together.
Clothes abandoned piece by piece between quiet kisses and nervous smiles, and Mark looking at you like he still couldn’t believe this was real.
There was nothing hurried or careless about him. He touched you like someone learning something sacred by heart, and you melted into him instantly, your hands sliding into his hair as his mouth moved against yours with growing warmth.
There was no rush, no urgency, only intimacy unfolding softly between two people already hopelessly in love. Even when the kiss deepened, his hands stayed gentle along your back and waist, careful in a way that made your chest ache, like he was still afraid of pushing too far too fast.
You broke apart only long enough to breathe, and Mark rested his forehead briefly against yours.
“You can tell me to stop at any point,” he murmured softly.
Your heart physically hurt, not because the words surprised you, but because they didn’t; because this was who he was with you—attentive, tender, and terrified of hurting you even accidentally—so you touched his face gently.
“I know.”
His eyes closed briefly at that, like the words had reached somewhere tender in him.
Then you kissed him first, and something in Mark unraveled completely.
The restraint softened after that—not into anything rough or overwhelming, but into something more honest, more wanting. He kissed you like he had spent months holding himself back and still couldn’t quite believe you were here in his apartment, touching him back.
Your fingers slipped slowly beneath the collar of his shirt, finding warm skin and the steady beat of his heart. Mark inhaled sharply when your hands moved against him.
“You’re shaking,” you whispered softly against his mouth.
A rough, quiet laugh escaped him.
“So are you.”
The nervousness might have embarrassed you with anyone else, but not with him, because Mark looked nervous too. Not uncertain, just emotionally exposed in a way you had never seen before, like this mattered to him enough to make him vulnerable.
That realization softened every remaining edge of fear inside you.
You kissed him slower, then gentler, and Mark made a quiet sound against your lips that nearly shattered your heart.
“Come here,” he murmured softly after a moment.
The bedroom felt strangely intimate in the low apartment light, not because of what might happen, but because it was his.
There were books abandoned on the nightstand, half-finished case notes beside the bed, and reading glasses folded neatly near the lamp—small pieces of a life no one else really got to see.
Mark sat on the edge of the bed for a second, looking up at you as you stood between his knees, and suddenly the air shifted again.
It was quieter now, more serious, and your heartbeat fluttered nervously beneath your ribs.
Mark noticed, and his hands settled carefully along your hips.
“We don’t have to do anything tonight,” he said softly.
The sincerity in his voice nearly undid you.
You smiled shakily. You were breathing hard, skin flushed, eyes wide. “I know”
Mark reached up. Brushed your hair from your face. His voice, when it came, was low. Steady. Reverent. “And I mean that.”
“I know,” you repeated gently.
His eyes searched yours carefully, like he was making absolutely certain.
Then your fingers brushed softly along his jaw.
“I want this too.” You reached for him. He had his hand in his hair. Lips trembling.
The look on his face afterward was almost unbearably tender, like those words meant more to him than you realized.
Mark kissed you again slowly, drawing you closer between his knees as his hands slid carefully along your back. Every touch felt deliberate and reverent, as if he were trying to memorize you, too.
He undressed you slowly, reverently—each movement full of aching tenderness, as if he wanted to memorize the taste and feel of your skin. He never rushed, never took more than you were willing to give, letting you feel cherished and adored in every careful touch.
He kissed every inch he revealed: your collarbone, the soft swell of your breasts, the trembling skin of your stomach, each kiss accompanied by a whispered promise, a gentle reassurance that you were beautiful, wanted, and safe. When his fingers hooked the band of your panties, he paused, gazing up at you through the dim light, his eyes dark with devotion and longing. In that moment, you felt completely seen.
You nodded, biting your lip. “Please.”
He eased you back onto the bed with infinite care, then dropped to his knees before you, as if worshiping the very ground you lay upon. His lips brushed the inside of your thigh, slow and reverent, and the soft groan that left him was full of awe at your vulnerability and trust.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered, voice raw. “I haven’t even touched you properly yet, and you’re already trembling for me.”
Your head fell back against the pillows as his mouth found you, his tongue moving in gentle, worshipful circles—first soft and teasing, then deeper, as if he needed to learn all the ways he could bring you pleasure. Each stroke was a vow, each moan a confession of how much he needed you.
“Mark—oh—”
The sound of his name on your lips made him shiver. He moaned into you, tongue moving slowly, savoring the taste of your desire. Your thighs quivered around his shoulders, hands tangling in the sheets as you surrendered to his tenderness.
“You’re mine,” he murmured against you, his voice a velvet promise. “Say it.”
You gasped, breathless. “I’m yours. Always.”
“Again,” he pleaded softly, his mouth never leaving your skin.
“I’m yours—Mark, I’m—” Your voice broke on a trembling moan as he coaxed you higher, his lips and tongue worshipping you until you shattered beneath his touch.
You came like a wave breaking gently but powerfully on the shore—your body arching, shaking, his name torn from your lips. And still, he didn’t stop. He kissed and licked you through every aftershock, his low moans reverent, until you lay trembling, overcome by the depth of his love.
“Mark—please, need you…”
He rose from between your legs, face flushed, mouth glistening with the evidence of you.
“You sure?”
“Please.”
He undressed slowly, every movement reverent, one hand always reaching back for you—brushing your cheek, tracing your jaw, as if he couldn’t bear to lose contact for even a heartbeat. It was as though he wanted you to feel cherished in every lingering touch, to know you were precious, wanted, adored.
You took him in—every muscle, every quiet strength, and all the vulnerable, human parts he’d hidden from the rest of the world. In this moment, he was wholly yours, and your breath caught with the wonder of it.
He stood before you, completely bare, and you saw not just his body, but the love he offered so openly—unshielded, unguarded. The sight of him, so beautiful and so entirely yours, made your heart pound with something deeper than desire.
He lowered himself over you, hands tender in your hair as he pressed soft, lingering kisses along the heated curve of your neck, each one a silent vow.
“I’m going to go slow,” he whispered, voice trembling with emotion. You felt the restraint in him, the way he held himself back, even now, for you. It made your chest ache with love, with gratitude for the care he showed you, even as he came undone in your arms.
When he entered you—inch by inch, your body stretching to welcome him, drawing him deeper—you felt the fullness of being loved completely, and for a moment, you forgot how to breathe.
“God,” he groaned, voice breaking. “You’re perfect. You’re everything.”
Your legs opened to him, welcoming, and your hand found his arm, fingers curling into his skin as if to anchor yourself to this moment.
Your hips met his, rocking together in a slow rhythm, each deep thrust a steady promise—a devotion wordless and true.
You clung to him, pressing trembling kisses to his neck, his jaw, his lips, each one a confession, a prayer, a thank you for all the ways he loved you.
“I love you,” you whispered, voice trembling with awe and certainty.
Mark’s rhythm faltered instantly, his whole body stilling for one breath as his face softened above you. He looked at you like the words had reached straight through him, past every defense he had ever built.
Tears blurred your vision, not from fear, but from the overwhelming tenderness of it all—the trust, the devotion, the terrifying certainty that you would have handed him your heart in any room, in any life, and known he would hold it carefully.
His hand found your face again, his thumb brushing the faint quiver of your bottom lip.
“I love you,” he whispered back, voice low and unsteady.
He kissed you with aching softness, and fucked with you slowly, completely, one hand cradling your face while the other held your hip, grounding you to him.
Every touch felt like a promise, his palms running slow and deliberate over the curve of your back, tracing fire along your spine. His breath warmed your neck, the scruff of his jaw brushing your sensitive skin as he pressed close.
Your skin prickled with sensation when his thumb circled just beneath your breast, careful, reverent, lingering as he mapped every inch of you with his hands. The scent of him—clean soap, sharp cologne, the faint salt of sweat—filled the softness between your bodies, anchoring you in the moment.
Every breath between you felt like surrender. The slide of his body against yours made you keen quietly, the friction dizzying, your thighs trembling around his hips as you rocked together. He asked for nothing you did not give willingly, and you gave it all to him gladly, arching into his touch, trusting the tenderness in his hands as much as the love in his voice.
Your moans filled the room—his low and guttural, yours high and desperate. This was him being careful with you.
Your fingers brushed through his hair, and he leaned into the touch like he had been starving for it longer than either of you knew.
“You’re okay?” he whispered against your mouth.
The question cracked something open inside you.
You nodded, though your eyes burned again. “More than okay.”
His expression softened so deeply it almost hurt to look at him. You pulled him down and kissed him before the ache in his voice could ruin you completely.
His hand laced with yours against the pillow, fingers tightening as if he needed something to hold onto. His body was warm over yours, every movement steady and consuming, drawing you deeper into the aching heat building low inside you.
The pleasure rose slowly at first, then all at once, sharp and overwhelming, until that desperate, unmistakable want filled your chest and pulled you closer to the edge with every breath.
“Mark,” you gasped, his name breaking from you like a plea.
His lips brushed your skin, voice rough and breathless.
“I know,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
You whimpered his name, soft and trembling.
“Please, Mark—”
He answered by pressing his forehead to yours, breath breaking as he held you close. Every movement slowed into something deeper, more tender, less like hunger and more like surrender.
With a broken moan and a final, achingly deep thrust, and when he finally came apart with you, he spilled inside you, flooding you with warmth, every muscle in his body trembling as he surrendered to the pleasure. He let out a quiet, shattering moan that spoke of love as much as longing, leaving you both utterly undone.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Your bodies stayed tangled beneath the sheets, hearts still racing, warmth settling slowly between you as the room softened around the edges. You held him, and he let himself be held.
Soft.
Safe.
Curled together beneath the dim apartment light, Mark kept you pressed against his chest in complete silence for a long time. His fingers moved lazily through your hair, gentle and absent, like he needed to remind himself you were still there.
You traced gentle, sleepy patterns across his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your fingertips—a rhythm you already knew by heart. “You know…”
Mark hummed quietly, his warmth surrounding you in the hush of the room.
“You were right about one thing.”
His arm tightened around you, pulling you closer, as if he could tuck you even deeper into his embrace. “That’s rare. Continue.”
You smiled softly against his skin, letting the affection in you spill over.
“You are complicated.”
A low, fond laugh rumbled through his chest, and you felt it vibrate against your cheek. “Yeah?”
You tilted your head up, meeting his eyes in the dim light, searching for all the things you couldn’t say out loud.
“But you’re worth it every minute of it.”
Mark went very still, something shining in his eyes that made your breath catch.
He pressed his forehead gently to yours in the darkness, a silent promise echoing between you.
When he kissed you again, it felt less like falling and more like coming home to the place your heart had always been searching for.
Later, as dawn pressed quietly at the edges of the blinds and the first sounds of the city rose from the street below, you woke tangled together, warmth and comfort anchoring you to the moment.
Mark was still asleep beside you, his arm draped over your waist, breath slow and soft against your shoulder. For the first time in a long while, you realized there was no rush to untangle yourself, no urge to put any distance between you.
You thought of the day ahead—coffee shared in the kitchen, long hours at the courthouse, lunches snatched between hearings—but this time, you faced it as a team.
When Mark blinked awake and smiled, you both knew you’d keep choosing each other, not just tonight, not just in this room, but in all the mornings still to come.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| after the fight, the courthouse feels emptier without the quiet warmth you and Mark had built together, and both of you are left aching from the love he was too scared to trust. while you try to survive the hurt of his distance, Mark finally realizes that pushing you away was never protection—it was fear wearing a mask of selflessness. when he comes to you at last, exhausted and heartbroken, every unsaid feeling comes pouring out until the two of you finally confess the truth: you love each other, not because it is easy, but because choosing each other has always felt worth the risk. wc: 4k
warnings|| SFW; romantic angst; no smut yet, emotional conflict, relationship fight, miscommunication, self-sabotage, fear of abandonment, insecurity, emotional vulnerability, crying/near-crying, guilt, loneliness, jealousy aftermath, unwanted romantic interest, workplace gossip, courthouse/workplace setting, intense kissing/making out, public intimacy risk, fear of not being enough, fear of being left, mentions of parental emotional neglect/workaholism, and love confessions.
Chapter Six: Closing Arguments
The courthouse felt wrong after the fight. Quiet, too bright, and everything off-balance—as if the world had shifted just enough overnight to unsettle you.
You avoided the litigation floor entirely on Monday morning. You took the long route to records, skipped the cafeteria, and ignored the pain in your chest each time you remembered Mark by the elevators, looking at you like he wanted to say something and didn’t.
Which, unfortunately for you, was constantly.
Rita watched you unpack files in miserable silence for approximately three minutes before speaking.
“You look like someone canceled Christmas.”
“I’m working.”
“You alphabetized office supplies.”
You stared down at the paperclips in horror.
“…Oh.”
Rita sighed softly, less teasing than usual now.
You swallowed hard. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad?”
You laughed once, small and painfully tired. “He told me I should go out with Tyler.”
Rita’s face changed immediately. “Oh, that idiot.”
Something sharp twisted behind your ribs, because that was the worst part. Mark wasn’t cruel; he wasn’t careless. He genuinely believed he was protecting you, which somehow hurt even more. He always seemed to brace for loss where others hoped for happiness.
Maybe it came from old wounds he never talked about, or from years of convincing himself that love was just one more thing he could fail at.
The way he walked through life, always looking for what might go wrong, had shaped him into someone who mistook distance for safety.
Letting you go was his attempt to protect you, not from his mistakes, but from the heartbreak he was sure he would eventually cause.
"He thinks he’s bad for me," you admitted quietly.
Rita leaned back against the desk. "Honey, Mark Callan thinks sunlight is probably bad for people."
You managed a weak smile despite yourself, then it faded.
“He looked at me and basically said wanting him was a mistake.”
Rita’s expression softened immediately.
“Oh sweetheart.”
You looked away quickly before your eyes could betray you.
Meanwhile, across the courthouse, Mark was having an equally terrible morning.
Evelyn found him in his office staring at the same page for ten straight minutes.
“You look insane,” she said casually.
Mark didn’t look up. “Good morning to you, too.”
“You fought with her.”
Silence.
Evelyn sat down across from his desk. “Okay. What did you say?”
Mark pinched the bridge of his nose.
“That’s already a bad sign.”
“I told her maybe she should go out with Tyler.”
Evelyn blinked slowly.
“Oh, you absolute idiot.”
Mark closed his eyes briefly, exhaling.
“She deserves someone better than me.”
"No," Evelyn shot back immediately. "She deserves someone who stops making decisions for her because he’s scared."
Mark’s jaw tightened.
“I’m not scared.”
“You are terrified.”
He looked away, which was answer enough.
Evelyn sighed heavily. “Mark.”
“She looked hurt.”
"Well, yes," Evelyn replied. "You essentially told the woman you’re in love with to date another man."
The words landed hard; hearing them made it impossible to hide anymore.
Mark stared down at the case file in front of him without seeing any of it. The terrifying thing was—he couldn’t even deny it anymore. It had happened slowly, then all at once.
Somewhere between coffee runs, courthouse lunches, and memorizing the sound of your laugh, it happened.
Somewhere between catching you when you stumbled and watching you smile at him, it happened. He realized he was more than just the exhausted prosecutor everyone else saw.
He loved you, and instead of saying it, he’d hurt you.
Evelyn watched realization destroy him in real time.
"Oof," she muttered sympathetically.
Mark laughed once under his breath, humorless.
“Told you.”
“You know what your problem is?”
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
“You think loving someone means preparing for the moment they leave.”
The words hit too close.
Mark looked away again because once upon a time, someone had left, and before that, his father had loved his work more than his family. Mark had spent his entire life learning that people eventually got tired and chose easier things.
How could he not believe the same would happen here?
Evelyn’s voice softened slightly. "She’s not asking you to become somebody else."
Mark swallowed hard. “She should.”
“No,” Evelyn said firmly. “She should get to choose.”
Silence settled heavily afterward, then Evelyn stood.
“For what it’s worth,” she added casually, “I’ve never seen you happy before her.”
The office door closed quietly behind her, and Mark sat there alone for a long time afterward.
You were trying very hard not to cry over transcription files, which felt deeply humiliating.
You were reorganizing depositions when someone knocked softly against the records doorway.
Your heart betrayed you immediately, then sank just as fast when you looked up and saw Tyler Greene instead.
"Oh," you blurted before you could stop yourself.
Tyler winced slightly. “That reaction was brutal.”
Guilt flashed instantly. “Sorry.”
"It’s okay." He shoved his hands into his pockets awkwardly. “Actually… I kinda deserved that.
You blinked.
Tyler leaned against the doorway carefully this time, noticeably less cocky than before.
“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “I didn’t realize how serious whatever’s happening with you and Callan was.”
Your chest tightened, the sensation painful and sharp.
“We’re not…”
You stopped because suddenly you didn’t know what to call it anymore.
Tyler seemed to understand anyway.
“He looks at you like you’re the last good thing on earth,” he admitted. “Honestly, it’s a little intense.”
A helpless laugh escaped you, eyes burning unexpectedly.
Tyler immediately straightened. “Okay, wow, he really screwed this up.”
You laughed harder, despite yourself, wiping quickly beneath your eyes.
“This is so embarrassing.”
"No, embarrassing is me asking out a woman who was clearly already emotionally invested in somebody else," Tyler said.
That startled a real laugh out of you, warm, small, still enough that Tyler smiled slightly in relief.
Then his expression softened.
"For the record?" he said quietly. "You deserve somebody who’s brave enough to let you love him back."
Your chest ached immediately. because that was the problem, wasn’t it?
Mark loved you, you knew he did, but he was so terrified of ruining it that he kept pulling away the second happiness got too close.
Sometimes your mind circled back to the way he used to gently tap your mug with his pen every morning until you remembered to actually drink your coffee, or how he once spent a Saturday teaching you how to properly shuffle a deck because you kept losing bets at game nights.
Every time you replayed that Sunday in your head—the shift in his eyes, the way his voice went flat as he told you to go out with someone else—a new ache splintered inside you.
You couldn't stop wondering if he was battling fear or if, somehow, you were to blame for not making him feel safe.
A quiet, persistent voice kept asking what you could have done differently. Should you have been more patient when he pulled away, more reassuring when he doubted himself, or less open with your own hopes?
In weak moments, you convinced yourself that maybe your wanting too much had made him retreat, as if loving him the wrong way had tipped the balance.
It was twisted comfort, thinking self-blame might at least mean there was something you could fix, something you could control.
The worst part was how part of you still reached for hope, desperate and stupid, because even now you missed him in ways you didn’t know how to put into words.
Mornings felt emptier. The ache wasn't only in your chest, but in your hands that wanted to touch, in your breath that kept catching when you remembered the promise of how things used to be—the warmth of his shoulder brushing yours as you both tried not to smile during long afternoons in his office.
You kept telling yourself to move on, to choose pride instead of longing, but every quiet moment brought back memories of him, and you hated how powerless it made you feel.
Still, part of you realized, slowly and with effort, that all the blame in the world wouldn't change the truth.
Choosing to love someone fearfully was never a mistake, and maybe it was time to stop apologizing for wanting him to stay.
Tyler glanced toward the hallway before stepping back.
“I’m gonna save my own life and leave before Callan senses me talking to you again.”
Despite everything, you smiled faintly.
“Probably smart.”
Tyler pointed once toward you as he walked backward away from records.
“For what it’s worth? He’s miserable too.”
Then he disappeared down the hall.
You stood there quietly afterward, heart aching in complicated directions, because the worst part was— you already knew.
Mark lasted exactly three more days before completely unraveling.
Not publicly, because Deputy District Attorney Mark Callan would rather throw himself into Lake Michigan than have a public emotional crisis.
But privately? Privately, the man was deteriorating.
He stopped sleeping properly, started forgetting meetings, and twice, Evelyn caught him staring blankly at unopened case files, as if he no longer remembered how words worked.
Which, considering this was the same man who once cited criminal procedure from memory during a power outage, was deeply alarming.
“You need to fix this,” Evelyn told him Thursday afternoon.
Mark rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “I know.”
“No, like immediately.” She pointed toward him aggressively with a legal pad. “You’ve been glaring at vending machines.”
“They’re badly designed.”
“You walked into the wrong courtroom yesterday.”
Silence, then reluctantly. “…That happened once.”
“Mark.”
He leaned back heavily in his office chair and stared at the ceiling.
The problem was, he didn’t know how to undo the damage he'd caused. Courtrooms made sense, arguments made sense, evidence, logic, but you?
The apology hung in his mind like a heavy file, waiting on his desk, daring him to pick it up and do something right for once. He turned the words over restlessly.
Would you even want them? Would you believe them?
Each possible scenario played out—saying too much, not enough, pushing too hard, or waiting until there was nothing left to say.
Fear of rejection warred with shame for having hurt you; he wanted to run, to fix, to retreat, all at once. But this, he told himself, required more courage than any closing argument. It was time to try.
You had somehow become the one thing in his life capable of reducing him to a man standing in an elevator hallway saying exactly the wrong thing because he was too scared to say the right one.
He missed you, God. He missed you constantly. Missed your voice in his office, missed your coffee cups abandoned beside his paperwork, missed the way you smiled sleepily at him during late lunches, like just being near him made your day better.
The realization hollowed him out because he had finally gotten something good, only to immediately try to push it away.
Evelyn watched him self-destruct for another minute before sighing dramatically.
“She cried, you know.”
Mark went completely still; the air in the office changed instantly.
“…What?”
Evelyn’s expression softened slightly. “Not in front of everyone. But yeah.” She crossed her arms. “Congratulations. You emotionally damaged the nicest person in this building.”
Guilt hit hard enough to physically hurt. Mark closed his eyes briefly because he knew exactly what your face probably looked like when you were trying not to cry, and the thought nearly killed him.
“She deserves someone better,” he said quietly again, weaker this time.
Evelyn looked genuinely exhausted now.
“Okay, I need you to listen carefully.” She leaned both hands against his desk. “That woman walks around looking at you like you personally invented safety. Do you understand how rare that is?”
Mark looked away.
“She knows what your job is.”
Silence.
“She knows you’re difficult.”
Longer silence.
“She still brings you lunch.”
Something in his chest twisted painfully because she did, you always did. Even when he forgot himself entirely, somehow you remembered him.
Evelyn straightened with a sigh. “At some point, this stops being selflessness and starts becoming cowardice.”
The word landed cleanly—cowardice.
Mark stared at the files spread across his desk, then, finally, stood.
Across the courthouse, you were trying very hard to survive your day with dignity.
Unfortunately, dignity became difficult when you still instinctively looked for Mark everywhere, and you hated it.
Hated how your eyes searched hallways automatically, how your chest tightened every time footsteps slowed outside records, how every coffee tasted disappointing now because none of them were brought to you by a tired prosecutor who remembered exactly how much cream you liked.
It was pathetic, absolutely pathetic.
You were midway through reorganizing transcripts when Rita appeared beside your desk.
“Don’t panic.”
You looked up immediately. “That sentence guarantees panic.”
“Callan’s coming.”
Your heartbeat betrayed you instantly, and before you could respond, Mark appeared in the records doorway.
The room went silent, actually silent. Even the printers seemed emotionally invested.
Mark looked exhausted, not just courtroom exhausted, but fully, deeply human. His tie hung loose at his collar. Shadows beneath his eyes were deeper than usual. His hair was slightly messy, as if he had been dragging frustrated hands through it all day.
But the second he saw you— something in his expression cracked open. Relief, so immediate it hurt to look at.
Rita looked between both of you once and immediately grabbed three random employees by the shoulders.
“We’re leaving.”
Nobody argued, and within seconds, the records room emptied entirely.
The door clicked shut behind them, and then it was just you and Mark standing in the quiet. Neither moving, your pulse hammered painfully.
Mark spoke first.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came rough, immediate, like he’d been holding them in for days.
You swallowed hard but said nothing. Mark stepped closer carefully, not enough to crowd you, enough that you could see how tired he looked.
“I hurt you.”
Your eyes burned unexpectedly.
“Yes,” you admitted softly.
The honesty visibly hit him, and Mark exhaled shakily once before continuing.
“I thought if I gave you an out now, it would hurt less later.”
Your chest tightened.
“Later?”
“When I disappoint you.”
The quiet certainty in his voice broke something in you instantly, because he really believed that, believed loving him would inevitably lead to regret.
You shook your head slowly. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I know.”
“You keep acting like caring about you is some burden I haven’t thought through.”
Mark looked down briefly.
“Maybe because every person who’s loved me eventually realized it was.”
The confession settled heavily between you, not dramatic, not manipulative, just painfully honest.
Something softened painfully inside your chest.
“Mark.”
His eyes lifted slowly to yours, and God, He looked terrified, not of rejection, but of hope. You stepped toward him before fear could stop you.
Mark immediately stopped breathing.
“You know what I think?” you whispered.
His voice came quieter now. “What?”
“I think you’re so used to being needed that you don’t know what to do when someone just… wants you.”
The words wrecked him, completely. You saw it happen in real time, his composure cracked wide open, leaving behind something unbearably vulnerable beneath.
Your throat tightened instantly.
“I don’t care that your job is hard,” you continued softly. “I care that you stop eating when you’re stressed. I care that you sleep on your office couch instead of going home.” Your eyes burned.
“I care that you fold your notes into tiny, perfect rectangles before every trial, because you think neat edges keep you calm, and that you still keep the silly wooden gavel from law school on your desk even though you say it’s ridiculous. I care that you look at me like loving you is something I’ll survive instead of something I already chose.”
For a moment, Mark struggled to breathe. His voice broke, and he shook his head once, overwhelmed. “You always notice things other people miss.” He swallowed hard, reaching for something solid to hold onto.
“You have this habit of humming under your breath when you’re trying to focus—it gets stuck in my head for hours. Or the way you scribble little doodles in the margins of meeting notes and always act embarrassed when you think I see them. There are mornings when I walk in, and I see that you’ve put the lemon scone at the top of the pastry bag just because you remember it’s my favorite. Or the way you leave those little sticky notes on my files—dumb jokes or stuff you think will make me laugh. I never say it, but it’s those small things that always make me feel like maybe I could be good, just because you chose me.”
Silence.
Mark stared at you like you’d reached directly into his chest, then quietly, almost helplessly:
“How are you real?”
A watery laugh escaped you.
“Unfortunately, very.”
Mark made a soft, broken sound somewhere between a laugh and an exhale.
Then suddenly he crossed the distance between you, fast enough to steal your breath.
His hands framed your face carefully, almost reverently, and when he kissed you—it felt different this time, not stolen, not desperate, intentional.
Weeks of restrained affection poured into one devastatingly tender kiss, and you melted into him instantly.
Mark’s forehead rested against yours afterward, breathing unevenly.
“I’m so in love with you,” he whispered before he could stop himself.
The entire world stopped. His eyes widened slightly like he couldn’t believe he’d said it aloud. Your heart shattered beautifully inside your chest because there it was, finally, Real.
You touched his face gently.
“Good,” you whispered back. “Because I’m ridiculously in love with you, too.”
Mark laughed then, actually laughed, relieved, disbelieving, and maybe a little emotional.
Then he kissed you again right there in records while the entire courthouse probably listened through the walls.
Somewhere in the corridor, muffled voices rose and then hushed completely, the way gossip gathers itself before bursting. You could already imagine the whispers by the coffee machines, the speculative glances in morning meetings, every knowing look as word inevitably spread faster than case files on a Monday.
You didn't care—not about the rumors, not about the stares—but the aftertaste of anticipation lingered, sharp and bright.
The aftertaste of anticipation lingered, sharp and bright.
Mark felt it too.
You saw it in the way his eyes flickered toward the closed records-room door, the way his jaw tightened as if he remembered, all at once, where you were. The courthouse. The middle of the day. Surrounded by thin walls, nosy clerks, and a building full of people who lived for evidence.
But then his gaze came back to you.
And whatever sensible thought had crossed his mind died there.
“Mark,” you whispered, but you didn’t know whether it was a warning or a plea.
His thumb brushed over your cheek, slow and trembling, like he still wasn’t fully convinced you wouldn’t vanish beneath his hands. “Say it again.”
Your breath caught. “What?”
His voice lowered, rougher now, scraped raw by feeling. “That you love me.”
The words stole through you like warmth under the skin.
You reached up, curling your fingers carefully around his wrist, feeling the fast, unsteady beat of his pulse beneath your thumb. For once, he wasn’t composed. He wasn’t sharp-edged and untouchable. He was standing in front of you completely undone, his mouth parted, his eyes dark and desperate with hope.
“I love you,” you said softly. “I love you so much it’s embarrassing.”
Something broke across his face.
Not pain this time.
Relief.
He kissed you before either of you could breathe.
This kiss was not careful.
It began with his hands tightening around your face, with a quiet, wrecked sound caught in his throat, with your back pressing into a shelf of old records as his body crowded yours—not harshly, never harshly, but with the helpless urgency of a man who had spent too long starving himself of something freely offered. His mouth moved against yours like he was trying to memorize the shape of every breath, every tremble, every soft noise you failed to hold back.
He tasted faintly of coffee and mint, warm and familiar, and beneath that something entirely him—something steady, aching, and intoxicating. His lips were firm, then softer, then seeking again, each kiss deeper than the last.
Every time you thought he might pull away, he came back like he couldn’t bear the distance, like even an inch between you was too much after everything that had gone unsaid.
Your fingers slipped into his hair.
Mark shuddered.
The reaction was so immediate, so vulnerable, that it made your heart twist. His hands slid from your face to your waist, gathering you closer, not enough to hurt, only enough to make you feel the truth of him—how badly he wanted, how carefully he was trying not to take. That restraint made the kiss even more devastating.
He held himself back with visible effort, his breath breaking against your mouth, his forehead touching yours for half a second before he kissed you again, slower this time, deeper, like love had finally given him permission to fall apart.
You clutched the front of his shirt, wrinkling the crisp fabric he always kept so neatly pressed.
For once, he didn’t seem to care.
“Do you have any idea,” he murmured against your lips, voice uneven, “what you do to me?”
You tried to answer, but he kissed the words away.
This time, the kiss was warmer, almost dizzying in its tenderness. His mouth dragged gently over yours, once, twice, before settling there with a kind of aching patience that made your knees feel weak. It wasn’t just passion. It was gratitude. It was fear. It was every morning glance, every remembered scone, every note left on a file, every almost-touch that had haunted the space between you for weeks.
You felt it all in the way he kissed you.
Like he was apologizing.
Like he was confessing.
Like he was finally allowing himself to believe he could be loved without earning it first.
When you pulled back, barely enough to breathe, his lips followed yours instinctively, and the sight of it nearly ruined you.
“Mark,” you breathed, smiling despite the tears in your eyes.
His gaze dropped to your mouth again. “I know.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I know I’m going to kiss you again.”
A laugh escaped you, soft and breathless.
Then he did.
And this kiss was slower, but somehow even more intense. He tilted your chin with his fingers, his touch delicate in contrast to the hunger in his mouth. The courthouse disappeared beyond the door. The muffled voices, the fluorescent lights, the stale paper smell of records and ink and dust—all of it blurred until the only real thing was Mark pressed close to you, kissing you like he had been waiting his whole life to be wanted instead of needed.
When he finally stopped, he didn’t move away.
He rested his forehead against yours, eyes closed, his breathing ragged and warm over your lips. His hands stayed at your waist, his thumbs moving in small, absent strokes like he couldn’t stop reminding himself you were still there.
“I’m scared,” he admitted quietly.
Your chest ached. “Of what?”
His eyes opened, and there was so much tenderness in them it almost hurt to look at him.
“That I’ll wake up tomorrow and convince myself I don’t deserve this.”
You swallowed past the tightness in your throat and touched his face again, brushing your thumb along his cheek.
“Then I’ll remind you.”
His expression crumpled softly.
“Every day?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
You smiled through the ache. “Every day.”
For a second, he only stared at you.
Then Mark kissed you once more, not because he had to hide anything, not because he was afraid, not because the moment was stolen.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| you and Mark slip into something that feels almost like a relationship, built through quiet acts of care, shared lunches, stolen kisses, and growing tenderness. but when Tyler shows interest in you, Mark’s jealousy and fear of not being enough push him into self-sabotage, leading to a painful fight where you finally admit you want him—and he still lets you walk away. wc: 4k
warning|| SFW; workplace romance, jealousy, possessive tension, unwanted flirting, emotional self-sabotage, romantic angst, insecurity, argument, fear of abandonment, workplace gossip, kissing/making out; no smut yet, heartbreak.
Chapter Five: A Brief Recess for Emotional Catastrophe
Somewhere between the fire-alarm kiss and the third coffee Mark silently placed on your desk without ever asking how you liked it, the two of you slipped into something dangerously close to a relationship.
That territory stayed suspiciously uncharted. No official talks, no labels, no 'what are we?'. Yet, by week two, Mark had memorized your breakfast order by heart, and you started stashing protein bars in your bag so he wouldn’t starve until late afternoon.
“You’re enabling him.” Evelyn eyed you as she watched you slip a turkey sandwich into your purse. One she knew you were planning on dropping by Mark’s office between hearings.
“He had pretzels for breakfast.”
“He’s a grown man.”
“He’s a prosecutor,” you corrected. “That’s basically the same thing as a raccoon digging through survival supplies.”
Evelyn pointed at you accusingly. “See? This is exactly how it starts.”
“What starts?”
Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
The thing about Mark Callan was that he loved quietly, not with speeches or grand gestures, but with small, careful acts that slipped beneath your skin before you even realized they mattered.
What you never saw was how deeply these acts cost him, how each gesture was the product of a dozen silent decisions.
Mark’s mind spun constantly around you, cataloging your preferences and making quiet promises to himself that he would notice, remember, protect.
He never said it out loud, but every morning, every gently placed coffee, every watchful glance in a crowded hallway, was Mark’s way of telling you what he didn’t yet know how to say.
Like the way he automatically moved you away from crowded hallways with a hand on your lower back, or how he’d started leaving sticky notes on your desk attached to coffee cups.
Eat lunch with me today.
You forgot your scarf.
Don’t climb anything while I’m in court.
You kept every single one, which felt equal parts romantic, pathetic, and maybe a touch concerning for your mental health.
Until one Tuesday morning, when Rita walked into records and saw Mark setting a blueberry muffin beside your keyboard.
“Oh, so we’ve entered domesticity.”
Mark barely looked up. “Good morning, Rita.”
“You brought her breakfast.”
“She skipped it yesterday.”
Your mouth fell open. “How do you know that?”
Mark finally glanced at you.
“That’s not important.”
The terrifying thing was, he genuinely meant it.
Of course, he noticed things like that, as if it mattered by default. Your chest warmed painfully.
Rita looked between both of you, her expression that of a woman witnessing the slowest courtship in human history.
“You two are one shared grocery list away from retirement.”
“We are not together,” you protested weakly.
Mark handed you your coffee without even looking away from the file in his hands. You stared at him in betrayal while Rita physically wheezed.
She wasn’t entirely wrong. Over the next few weeks, your routines quietly tangled—dangerously so.
You started eating lunch in Mark’s office because pretending you didn’t want to see him was harder than you thought. At first, it was by coincidence, then it became normal.
You'd walk in, balancing takeout containers and iced coffees, while Mark sat buried beneath case files at his desk, tie loosened, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
Every single time, the second he saw you, something in his face unknotted, eyes softening with a glow that belonged only to you. Without fail, a small, unguarded smile would break through, and your heart would thud with giddy affection.
God, you loved being the reason he smiled.
You realized it one mortifying Thursday, when Mark smiled at something ridiculous you said over cafeteria soup, and your whole chest ached with something softer, deeper than affection.
You began noticing the little things, too.
The way he pushed his coffee toward you automatically when you reached for it absentmindedly.
How he remembered which pens you liked because you “complain dramatically” about the bad ones.
The way he silently moved dangerous obstacles out of your path after witnessing enough of your accidents to lose faith in your survival instincts entirely.
After days of slipping into routine, you stepped into his office one rainy afternoon, shivering from your dash through the parking garage, umbrella forgotten.
Mark looked up from his desk, noticed you shivering, and immediately stood, concern evident on his face.
“You’re soaked.”
“I noticed.”
“You didn’t bring a coat?”
“It looked sunny earlier.”
“That was six hours ago.”
“Time is fake in this building.”
Mark sighed softly like a man carrying an unbearable burden. Then he shrugged off his suit jacket and walked toward you. Your heartbeat instantly stumbled.
“You’ll freeze.”
“Mark—”
“Take the jacket.”
You stared at him helplessly as he settled the jacket around your shoulders himself, his hands carefully draping the fabric and smoothing it down.
The jacket was warm from his body and smelled like dark coffee, cologne, and him.
Your pulse hammered, wild and unfair, as his hands lingered by your collar, fingers warm and close, heat prickling along your skin. He was always too close now, close enough for your heart to trip and your breath to catch.
His eyes dropped to your mouth automatically, then back to your eyes.
Silence filled the office, heavy and familiar, the kind that always ended badly for both of you.
“Tell me,” you whispered softly, “that you’re thinking very respectful thoughts right now.”
Mark looked genuinely offended.
“I’m a prosecutor.”
“That is not an answer.”
His mouth twitched faintly. Then he stepped closer, and your breath caught immediately.
“You’re standing in my office wearing my jacket,” he murmured. “I’m doing my best here.”
Heat flooded your entire body.
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet,” he said quietly, “you keep coming back.”
Your heart folded painfully in on itself because he still sounded almost bewildered, as if he couldn’t quite grasp why you wanted him.
Warmth climbed up your throat as you reached up—almost without thinking—to straighten his crooked tie, your hand trembling with tenderness.
Mark went completely still, the intimacy of the gesture striking you both at once. When your fingers accidentally brushed the warm skin of his throat, his breathing shifted—subtle, but enough.
“Careful,” he said softly.
You looked up. “Why?”
His eyes darkened immediately.
“Because I haven’t kissed you all day.”
Your stomach dropped; your hands turned sweaty and hot.
The room seemed to shrink, every sense narrowing to him. Suddenly, you needed air and more of him all at once.
You barely had time to inhale before Mark’s hand slid along your jaw and he kissed you.
It started restrained. Careful. A soft press of his mouth against yours like he was still pretending he had self-control left.
Then you kissed him back harder.
Mark made a low, rough sound in his throat that sent heat spiraling straight through you, and suddenly the carefulness cracked.
He guided you backward until the edge of his desk pressed against your hips, his hand firm at your waist now, fingers tightening just enough to make your breath catch.
The kiss deepened fast after that.
Hotter. Messier.
Like weeks of tension had finally found somewhere to go.
Your fingers slipped into his hair instinctively, and Mark swore softly against your mouth before kissing you deeper immediately, like that tiny pull unraveled the last thread keeping him composed.
His mouth moved against yours with growing urgency, slow enough to savor but rough enough to leave you dizzy, and every shallow breath you managed to take tasted like coffee and him.
A quiet sound escaped you before you could stop it.
Mark’s reaction was immediate.
His hand slid higher along your waist, thumb brushing beneath your shirt as his forehead knocked briefly against yours, both of you breathing unevenly now. His eyes stayed half-lidded on your mouth like he was trying very hard not to lose the remainder of his restraint.
“You are so much trouble,” he murmured against your mouth.
“You kissed me first.”
“You fixed my tie.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“It should be.”
You let out a breathless laugh. Mark smiled against your lips and kissed you again—slower this time, gentler, drawing out the moment.
The office door suddenly rattled.
“CALLAN!” Evelyn shouted from outside. “If you’re emotionally compromising each other again, your witness is waiting.”
You covered your face at once. Mark braced a hand on the desk and laughed, helpless and warm enough to make your chest ache.
After a moment, he looked at you again, and the smile faded into something quieter, fonder, dangerously real.
“You should probably go before I forget I have a job to do.”
Your heart did a painful little flip, and the worst part was that you didn’t really want to leave either.
—𝜗𝜚—
Mark Callan did not get jealous easily. Mostly because Mark Callan did not allow himself many things easily. Anger, sometimes. Exhaustion, constantly.
But jealousy was new to him, dangerous and tucked away, like something sharp hidden quietly behind his ribs.
You noticed it for the first time on a Wednesday afternoon. A subtle shift: a new investigator from downtown lingered too long near records, smiling at you. His name was Tyler Greene.
Pretty in an aggressively polished—expensive watch, perfect suit, the kind of man who leaned in too close when he talked, assuming women enjoyed that kind of thing.
You were only being polite.
Mark knew that.
Unfortunately, Tyler apparently mistook basic human kindness for encouragement.
Mark saw the whole thing from halfway down the hallway.
The investigator leaned casually against the records counter. You laughed nervously at something he said—not real laughter, just your polite one.
Mark could tell the difference now; God help him, he knew all your different laughs.
Tyler smiled wider anyway, then he touched your arm—briefly, casually, but enough to make something sharp move beneath Mark’s skin.
Rita noticed immediately from her desk. “Oh boy,” she muttered.
Mark didn’t answer, but his jaw clenched once—nothing more.
He kept walking, maintaining his professional, controlled, untouchable facade, but ten minutes later, while reviewing witness statements, he realized he’d missed an entire page—Tyler Greene’s laughter from records still ringing in his ears.
Absolutely pathetic.
He hated how his attention kept drifting,hated the irrational irritation crawling under his skin.
Most of all, he hated the ugly little thought that kept whispering beneath it all.
He can give her things you can’t; time, ease, normalcy, a life that didn’t revolve around homicide trials and emotional exhaustion.
Mark forced himself back to work, but his focus only lasted approximately twenty minutes.
Then, when he walked into the break room for coffee, he heard Tyler’s voice around the corner.
“…I’m telling you, she’s adorable.”
Mark slowed automatically. Another investigator laughed quietly. “The records girl?”
“Yeah. Sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Something possessive and immediate twisted low in Mark’s chest at the phrase ‘records girl’. As if you weren’t a person, just something soft to point at.
“Bet you she blushes if you say literally remotely sexy to her.”
The other man snorted.
“What, you trying to ask her out?”
“I mean…” Tyler laughed. “Maybe. If Callan doesn’t murder me first.”
Mark went still, and the second investigator laughed harder.
“Oh come on. They’re not actually together.”
“Still,” Tyler replied. “Guy looks at her like he’s one inconvenience away from putting somebody through drywall.”
They laughed again.
Mark should’ve walked away; he knew that.
He was a prosecutor, an adult man; this was ridiculous, but then Tyler spoke again.
“She’s probably worth the trouble, though.”
Instantly, something in the wording hit wrong—not admiration, but assessment, like Tyler was talking about winning a prize rather than a person.
Mark felt his irritation sharpen, turning cold and precise—the same controlled anger he channeled in court.
Without giving himself time to reconsider, Mark stepped around the corner.
Both investigators straightened at his approach, Tyler’s smile fading first.
“Callan.”
Mark looked at him evenly.
“You have work to do?”
The other investigator vanished instantly. Coward. Tyler recovered slower. “Just grabbing coffee.”
Mark nodded once. Then quietly:
“Then grab coffee.”
The silence afterward felt suffocating. Tyler shifted first. “Look, man, I wasn’t—”
“She works here,” Mark interrupted calmly. “She’s not entertainment for bored investigators.”
Tyler’s expression tightened slightly. “I was just talking.”
“You were talking about her like she wasn’t standing ten feet away.”
The younger man looked uncomfortable now—which was good. Mark stepped closer; not threatening, but somehow worse.
“You want to ask her to dinner?” Mark said evenly. “Do it respectfully. You make comments about her with your friends again, we’ll have a different conversation.”
Tyler stared at him.
“…Are you her boyfriend?”
The question landed squarely in the center of everything Mark had been trying not to think about. Technically, no—you weren’t his, even if his entire body reacted to you as though you already belonged there.
Mark’s jaw flexed once before he answered, careful and measured.
“No.”
Tyler relaxed slightly. Big mistake.
“But,” Mark continued quietly, “you should still be careful.”
The younger man swallowed.
“Right.”
Mark held his gaze for another second before stepping away—conversation over, control restored. Or so he told himself. Yet his chest felt tight for entirely different reasons, because the question lingered:
Are you her boyfriend?
No, not officially.
Suddenly, that realization bothered him far more than it should have.
By the time Mark made it back to his office, he was thoroughly exhausted with himself. Of course, that was precisely when you appeared in his doorway with two coffees and a paper bag.
At the sight of you, his entire nervous system relaxed—an infuriating response he couldn’t control.
“There you are,” you said. “You forgot lunch again.”
Mark stared at you for a second too long. You noticed instantly.
“…What?”
In that moment, he looked tired—not with the usual courtroom fatigue, but with something deeper. You slipped into the office quietly and set the coffee on his desk, your movements gentle in response to his mood.
“Hey.”
Mark leaned back in his chair slowly, watching you.
“You flirt with everyone like that?”
Your eyebrows lifted. “What?”
“The investigator.”
Realization flickered across your face, and to his horror, a gentle smile appeared—not mocking, but softly amused.
“Oh,” you said quietly. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
Mark exhaled through his nose. “I dislike him.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“I know enough.”
You moved closer slowly, warmth flickering in your eyes now, and somehow that made it worse.
“You know,” you murmured, “you get very broody when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“You look one minor inconvenience away from prosecuting somebody emotionally.”
“That’s my normal face.”
You laughed softly, and the sound made Mark’s chest ache; in that moment, all his irritation melted away, replaced by something far more dangerous: affection—deep enough now to terrify him. You stopped beside his desk, standing close.
“Mark.”
His eyes met yours immediately, and that unbearable pull between you surfaced once more.
When your fingers brushed lightly against his tie—a tiny touch, yet still enough to unravel him instantly.
“You know I only bring lunch to one grumpy prosecutor, right?”
The jealousy vanished so quickly it almost embarrassed him, replaced in an instant by something warmer. He let his hand settle gently around your wrist, the gesture instinctive and tender.
“You shouldn’t say things like that during work hours.”
Your heartbeat stumbled at the low roughness in his voice.
“Why?”
Mark looked at your mouth. Gone. Absolutely gone.
“Because I’m trying very hard to behave.”
—𝜗𝜚—
The fight began because Mark Callan loved you enough to suddenly believe someone else could make you happier.
Which, unfortunately, was the worst thing to say to a woman already halfway in love with him.
It happened on a Friday—of course it did. Fridays at the courthouse were always strange: everyone was exhausted, emotionally frayed, and surviving on caffeine and bad decisions.
You were already struggling when Tyler Greene intercepted you near the elevators.
He didn’t physically corner you, but strategically positioned himself between you and the exit, that too-smooth smile in place again.
“Hey,” he said easily.
You adjusted the files in your arms. “Hi.”
Tyler shoved one hand into his pocket. “Listen, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to grab dinner sometime.”
Your stomach sank—not because he’d asked, but because you already knew this would get complicated.
Reaching for gentle honesty, you replied carefully.
“That’s nice of you, but—”
“C’mon,” he interrupted with a grin. “One date.”
You shifted slightly. “I’m actually not really looking—”
“Is this about Callan?”
Your expression gave you away at once, and Tyler caught it, his knowing smile appearing immediately.
“There’s nothing happening there, right?”
The question hit harder than expected, because technically, what was happening between you and Mark? Stolen kisses, shared lunches, hands lingering a moment too long; he looked at you like you mattered. Still, there were no labels, no promises, nothing solid enough to explain.
Sometimes you wondered if you were making it all up in your head, if all those unspoken moments could really add up to something real.
You wanted to ask, to pull the words into the open, but fear kept you silent: fear that putting a name to whatever this was would break the fragile, lovely tension or turn it all into something casual.
Longing twisted quietly in your chest for something you could point to, something you could call yours—something more certain than coffee and glances you almost understood.
Your hesitation lasted just a beat too long, and Tyler’s expression softened slightly.
“Then let me take you out.”
Before you could respond, the elevator doors slid open behind Tyler, and Mark stepped out. The timing might have been funny if your life weren’t in the process of unraveling.
Mark’s eyes found you first, then Tyler, then the unmistakable tension between you both.
Instantly, something shuttered behind his expression.
“Callan,” Tyler greeted casually.
Mark’s gaze stayed on you. “Everything okay?”
You nodded too quickly. “Fine.”
Tyler leaned back slightly. “I was just asking her to dinner.”
A heavy silence fell, and your pulse spiked instantly. Mark glanced at Tyler, then at you—and for one horrible second, you caught it: that flicker of hurt, almost immediately buried beneath professionalism.
His jaw tightened once before he nodded.
“That seems reasonable.”
Your stomach dropped.
Tyler looked surprised; you, devastated. Mark didn’t seem to notice either reaction—or maybe he saw both and chose to keep going anyway.
“She should probably say yes.”
The words hit like a physical impact and you stared at him.
“What?”
Mark finally looked directly at you. He was calm, too calm.
“Tyler seems nice.”
Betrayal bloomed slowly, hot and sharp beneath your ribs.
Tyler glanced awkwardly between the two of you, suddenly realizing he’d stumbled into something dangerous.
Then it was just you and Mark, stranded near the elevators in terrible silence.
Your chest hurts, actually hurts, because suddenly, every soft thing between you felt humiliating.
Every lunch, every kiss, every moment, you’d started believing maybe this was becoming real.
Mark lowered his voice carefully. “You deserve someone who can give you more than this.”
“There it is.”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“The self-sabotage thing you do whenever something starts to matter.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?” Your voice cracked slightly despite your best effort. “Because you kiss me in your office, you look at me like— like I matter to you, and then the second someone asks me out, you tell me to go?”
Mark looked stricken instantly.
“You matter too much.”
“Do you hear how insane that sounds?”
The hallway fell unnaturally quiet around you, people nearby pretending not to listen—cowards. Mark stepped closer, lowering his voice even more.
“I’m trying to be realistic.”
“No,” you said softly, hurt blooming wider now. “You’re trying to decide for me.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is pushing me away every time you get scared.”
The words landed hard, and you saw the impact immediately—because beneath Mark’s composure was a man held together almost entirely by guilt and exhaustion.
A heavy, terrible silence settled between you—because you were right.
Mark looked away first, and that hurt worst of all.
When he finally spoke, his voice was tired.
“People like Tyler don’t come home at midnight carrying every verdict they couldn’t save, and closing arguments still bleeding through their teeth.”
Your chest tightened painfully.
“They don’t cancel plans because a witness disappears. They don’t cancel dates or spend night sleeping in their office.”
“Mark—”
“You want honesty?” His laugh came rough and joyless, the sound scraped raw from somewhere inside him.
There was a long, fragile beat before he continued, and when he finally spoke, his words faltered, thin as glass.
“Fine. I like you enough that I notice every time you enter or exit a room. Enough that hearing another man talk about you makes me irrationally angry.”
Mark swallowed, struggling for the right words, his gaze dropping to the floor as if ashamed.
"Sometimes it feels like everything in me is wired wrong—like loving you is a test I'm always failing even when I try."
He forced himself to look back at you, every defense peeled away, voice trembling now. "And I still think you’d be happier with someone easier to love."
The ache in your chest turned unbearable because he believed it completely. You stepped closer before you could stop yourself.
“You don’t get to decide what makes me happy.”
Mark looked wrecked now. Utterly wrecked.
“You say that now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means eventually this stops being charming.”
Your eyes burned unexpectedly.
“Wow.”
“I’m serious.”
“And I’m serious too,” you shot back. “Why would you do this to me? You say that you care and then act as if it wouldn’t matter. That you’d rather go out with Tyler Greene?”
Something in Mark’s expression cracked at that, as if hearing it out loud wounded him.
Good—you were hurting too.
“You think I want easy?” you whispered. “I want you.”
An enormous silence followed. Mark stared at you, as if he couldn’t breathe, as if your words had physically wounded him. For one horrible moment, you thought he might finally say it too—but instead.
“You shouldn’t,” he said it quietly.
That was the breaking point—pain flashed hot across your face before you could hide it, and you stepped backward at once.
“Wow, got it.”
Mark’s expression changed instantly. “That’s not what I—”
“No,” you interrupted softly. “I think maybe it is.”
The hurt in your voice embarrassed you instantly.
You hated that he had this power over you—and hated, too, how miserable he looked.
Neither of you moved.
Finally, you shook your head once.
“I can’t do this today.”
You turned before he could stop you.
“Wait—”
But you kept walking—quickly enough that he couldn’t see your eyes burning or hear the tremor in your breath.
You stepped into the elevator alone, jaw clenched tight, throat burning. For the first time since falling for Mark Callan, he didn’t follow.
Each second he stood there settled like a cold weight in your chest.
By the time the doors slid shut, you pressed your back to the mirrored wall and let a silent tear slip down, furious at yourself for wishing he stoped you from going, even now.
The ache was sharp and absurdly hopeful—that maybe, just maybe, he’d still come after you.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| a late-night fire alarm pushes you and Mark past weeks of tension, leading to your first kiss in the records room. after getting caught by Rita, Evelyn, and security, courthouse gossip explodes, forcing you and Mark to finally talk honestly about what you mean to each other—and what risks come with wanting more. wc: 3k
warnings|| SFW; workplace romance, public embarrassment, courthouse gossip, fire alarm, accidental fall/tripping, intense kissing; no smut yet, emotional vulnerability, workplace relationship concerns, anxiety, romantic tension.
Chapter Four: Counsel for the Defense Has Completely Lost His Mind
The first time Mark Callan kissed you, it happened because of a fire alarm. That seemed fitting, given what you and he had become—chaotic, overdue, and always on the verge of falling apart.
It started late Thursday evening, after most of the courthouse had emptied, leaving only exhausted attorneys, overworked clerks, and the quiet hum of fluorescent lights.
The faint shuffle of footsteps echoed down the marble hallway, mingling with the distant metallic rattle of a custodial cart. The air smelled strongly of toner and a hint of floor polish.
You were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the records room, surrounded by transcrip files, terrible vending machine coffee, and the deeply uncomfortable realization that you were hopelessly in love with Mark Callan.
Then the doorway darkened, and there he was. His tie was gone, sleeves rolled up, dark hair a little messy, and exhaustion clear on his face.
He looked so drained that a sharp concern twisted in your chest, but when his eyes met yours, relief eased across his face, and affection softened the exhaustion.
The mix left you feeling seen and unexpectedly hopeful.
“You’re still here,” he said quietly.
“So are you.”
Mark glanced toward the pile of files surrounding you. “How long have you been sitting on the floor?”
You looked around vaguely. “Time has lost all meaning.”
“That’s concerning.”
“I had a system.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“That feels judgmental.” He stepped inside with two coffees, and when your fingers brushed as he handed you the cup, that familiar spark moved between you again.
“You brought me caffeine?”
“You looked half-conscious three hours ago.”
“That’s just my face.”
Being around Mark had become easy now—dangerously easy. The silence that followed didn’t feel awkward anymore. Instead, your nerves tingled with the sense that something was changing between you.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
You noticed the tension in his shoulders, the way he absently rubbed his wrist.
“Your hand bothering you?” you asked softly.
Mark glanced down like he’d forgotten he was doing it.
“Old injury.” He said it quickly, as if the explanation should be enough, but you caught the way his eyes darted away for a moment, distant and shadowed.
Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, you had seen him flex his left hand over and over, like he was testing its memory against something that once hurt much worse.
Whatever it was, you sensed that pain still lingered, more in his mind than his body.
“You should rest.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “You say that like it’s an option.”
“It should be.”
When he looked back at you, the room shifted in that sudden, unbearable way it always did between you, and your chest tightened with anticipation.
“You worry about me a lot,” Mark said quietly.
“You make it very easy.”
Before either of you could say anything else, the fire alarm screamed overhead.
You jolted up too quickly and caught your foot in your bag strap. Mark reacted on instinct, one hand grabbing your wrist and the other steadying your waist.
Unfortunately, this still sent you crashing directly into him, coffee spilling forgotten onto the floor as you found yourself pressed against his chest, his hand firm at your waist, red emergency lights flashing across his face.
Neither of you moved.
Your heart thudded wildly with fear of what might happen and desire for something you’d wanted for so long. You could feel his hesitation in the way his hand stilled, unsure whether to let go or hold on.
The alarm blared around you, but all you could focus on was Mark’s warmth, his slow, slightly uneven breathing, and the way he looked at you like every careful wall inside him had finally started to crack.
When his gaze dropped to your mouth, your entire body reacted with nervous anticipation and hope, and you saw the exact moment he realized you had noticed his internal struggle.
“Mark,” you whispered.
His jaw tightened with restraint, as if holding back a storm of feelings, but when you whispered his name, something in him finally broke free.
His hand rose to your face slowly, almost carefully, his thumb brushing your cheek like he was afraid you might disappear.
“You have no idea,” he said, his voice rough and unsteady, “what you’ve done to me.”
The honesty of it ruined you.
You leaned into his touch, just barely, a silent confession of your feelings, and that was enough to send relief and urgency through you.
Mark exhaled sharply, a breath full of pent-up longing and fear, then kissed you like he had been trying not to for weeks, desperate and finally unrestrained.
At first, the kiss was careful, almost hesitant, as if both of you feared what this meant, but when you made a helpless sound against his mouth, relief and overwhelming desire deepened it.
The courthouse, the alarm, the spilled coffee—everything faded away.
There was only Mark, his hand cradling your face, his other hand tightening at your waist as he kissed you with all the intensity he usually kept buried beneath professionalism and restraint.
His mouth was warm against yours, firm at first, almost careful, like he was still trying to be good, still trying to hold back even as every part of him gave away how badly he wanted this.
He tasted faintly of coffee and peppermint, sharp and warm and impossibly him, and when his thumb brushed along your cheek, the tenderness of it made your knees feel dangerously unreliable.
You clutched the front of his shirt, feeling the crisp cotton twist beneath your fingers, and Mark responded like the touch broke something in him.
His mouth moved deeper over yours, slower now, more deliberate, like he was learning the shape of you, memorizing the way you softened against him.
He kissed you once, then again, each press of his lips a little less restrained than the last, his breath unsteady against your mouth when you made a small, helpless sound you couldn’t swallow.
The low sound he made in return nearly undid you completely—rough, quiet, and pulled from somewhere deep in his chest.
His hand flexed at your waist, drawing you closer before he seemed to remember himself and loosened his grip just enough to make it careful again.
That only made it worse somehow, the restraint, the way he kept trying to be gentle even while kissing you like he had been starving for this. Like he had spent weeks imagining your mouth and still wasn’t prepared for what it would do to him.
When he finally pulled back, both of you were breathless, foreheads nearly touching while the alarm still screamed overhead.
Mark looked stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened; anxiety flickered through his wide eyes, mixed with a kind of amazed vulnerability that left him uncertain how to react.
“That was a terrible idea,” he murmured.
You stared at him breathlessly. “You say that after kissing me like that?”
For a heartbeat, a sharp ache of uncertainty filled your chest. Fear and insecurity flared as you worried that this moment might ruin everything between you.
Mark was stubborn and flawed, but his quiet kindness, the way he made you laugh even on the worst days, and the rare gentleness in his touch remained in your mind.
He listened when you spoke, remembered the smallest details, and made you feel safe, even when the world felt impossible. Wanting him was terrifying, but the chance for warmth, laughter, and steady affection felt like a risk worth taking.
You stared at him, feeling both exposed and brave, and told him he had no right to say that after kissing you like that.
“You should not look that pleased right now,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry,” you said, still dizzy, still smiling helplessly. “I think my brain melted fifteen seconds ago.”
A helpless laugh escaped him, and then he smiled—really smiled, relief and joy breaking through his usual guardedness, making your chest ache with happiness and affection.
Then the records room door slammed open.
Rita burst in with Evelyn and two courthouse security officers, and you and Mark sprang apart so violently it looked criminal.
Silence fell, long and horrifying, as Evelyn looked from your flushed face to Mark’s, then down at the overturned coffee on the floor.
"Oh," she finally said, her tone stuck somewhere between shock and delighted suspicion, while Rita clutched her chest like she had just witnessed the most important moment of her life.
For a split second, Evelyn's eyes widened, her mouth opening as if to say something before she pressed her lips together to hide a dawning grin.
Rita blinked twice, caught between gasping and beaming, she looked back and forth between you and Mark, her excitement almost impossible to contain.
—𝜗𝜚—
You quickly learned there were almost no dignified ways to recover after being caught making out with Deputy District Attorney Mark Callan during a courthouse fire alarm, especially when Rita and Evelyn were the witnesses—the two women immediately became unbearable.
“You know,” Evelyn said the next morning while pouring coffee in the break room, “most people wait until at least the second date before violating municipal safety procedures.”
Without missing a beat, you shot back, “We’re just overachievers. Some of us like to make a good impression with the fire marshal.”
Evelyn waggled her eyebrows. “Is that what the kids are calling it now?”
You buried your face in your hands. “Please stop talking.”
Rita looked delighted beyond reason. “No, no, let’s really unpack the fire alarm aspect. Symbolism matters.”
“It was not symbolic.”
“You literally kissed under flashing red lights.”
“Accidentally,” you argued weakly.
Evelyn nearly choked on her coffee. “You accidentally tongue-kissed a prosecutor?”
You felt like you could die from embarrassment.
Across the room, Simon from intake whispered, “Tongue-kissed?” to another clerk with the urgency of a man receiving state secrets.
“Oh my God,” you whispered.
The rumors spread through the courthouse before noon, and they were not subtle.
By lunch, someone had anonymously left a tiny fire extinguisher on your desk with a note reading: For future workplace passion emergencies.
You wanted to die from embarrassment, mortification burning under your cheeks. Rita, meanwhile, was on another level.
Not content with merely enjoying the spectacle, she kept sneaking pictures of your horrified face every time Mark’s name was mentioned, already scheming about the perfect photo collage for your as-yet-nonexistent wedding.
Every time you caught her eye, she grinned even wider and mouthed, "You’re welcome," like she had orchestrated the whole thing.
When someone walked past your desk with a knowing look, Rita would lean over and whisper outrageous ideas about T-shirts and group chats, all with the delight of someone who lived for this kind of drama, her loyalty always taking the shape of relentless, infuriating cheerleading.
Meanwhile, Mark Callan had become impossible to look at directly because now you knew what his mouth felt like, how his hands tightened when he kissed you deeper, and the rough sound he made when you touched him back.
Your brain replayed it constantly like a cursed movie trailer.
Unfortunately, Mark seemed equally unsettled, the memory of the kiss flickering in his eyes and a tension clinging to him that matched the electric nervousness you felt inside.
You noticed right away when he walked into records that afternoon, looking composed—too composed, the kind of composed that screamed barely holding it together inside.
His tie was perfect, his suit immaculate, but his eyes found yours instantly, and suddenly the entire room felt too warm.
Nobody spoke, mostly because the entire records department was openly pretending not to watch.
Mark cleared his throat once.
“I need the Benson files.”
Rita handed them to him immediately without breaking eye contact with either of you.
“Thanks,” Mark muttered.
A heavy silence settled between the two of you because neither knew how to act normally anymore.
Not after last night, not after he kissed you like he was starving.
You tucked your hair nervously behind your ear.
Mark’s gaze followed automatically, dropping to your mouth before snapping away, sending your heartbeat into public health concern territory.
“Can I talk to you?” He finally said.
The room instantly erupted into fake coughing, and you glared at everyone while Mark looked one second away from prosecuting somebody personally.
You followed him into the empty conference room beside records, your pulse hammering violently, and the second the door closed, silence swallowed both of you whole.
Neither of you moved, and there was a brief silence until you spoke simultaneously.
“I’m sorry—”
You both stopped.
Mark exhaled sharply through his nose. “You first.”
Your stomach twisted nervously. “I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
He stared at you like you’d said something incomprehensible.
“You think you’re the problem here?”
“I mean…”
He took one step closer, not enough to touch, but enough to make breathing difficult.
“You are the only easy thing in my life right now.”
Your heart broke instantly because he sounded exhausted, honest, and completely defenseless as he dragged one hand down his face before continuing quietly.
“I’ve spent two weeks trying not to cross lines with you.”
You swallowed hard.
“I know.”
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think you do.”
His eyes met yours fully, dark, intense, and completely wrecked.
“You smile at me, and my entire day changes.” His laugh came rough and tired. “You trip over air, and somehow I still think you’re the most beautiful woman in every room.”
Heat flooded your chest so painfully it almost hurt as Mark stepped closer again, still careful, always careful with you.
“I hear your voice in hallways before I see you,” he admitted quietly. “I know the sound of your footsteps now.” His jaw tightened slightly. “And last night…”
He stopped like he didn’t trust himself to finish the sentence, and when you finally spoke, your voice came out tiny.
“Last night what?”
Mark looked at you in a way that completely unraveled your nervous system.
“Last night I kissed you,” he said softly, “and realized I’ve been wanting to do so for a lot longer than I realized.”
Your eyes burned unexpectedly, because there it was again—that terrifying sincerity, no games, no smooth charm, just honesty—and you stepped toward him before fear could stop you, making Mark go still immediately.
"You know what the worst part is?" he whispered.
“What?”
“I think it started when you covered my files in coffee stains.”
A startled laugh escaped you, warm and doubtful.
“You have terrible judgment.”
“So I’ve been told.”
That look crossed his face again, the one that made him seem emotionally doomed, as his hand lifted slowly toward your face and paused halfway there like he was still asking permission.
“You tied my shoelace…”
“You nearly concussed yourself on six separate occasions.”
“…and you caught me every time.”
You leaned into his touch immediately, and the relief in his expression nearly destroyed you as his thumb brushed softly across your cheek, his forehead resting briefly against yours until both of you simply breathed, quiet and close, like the world outside the conference room didn’t exist for a minute.
“You scare me a little,” he admitted softly.
Your heart squeezed painfully. “Why?”
“Because I like you enough to ruin this.”
You pulled back slightly to look at him properly.
“Mark.”
“I mean it.” His eyes searched yours. “This courthouse— my job— people talk.”
“People already think we’re one workplace incident away from marriage.”
A helpless smile tugged at his mouth before fading again.
“I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.”
For a split second, you thought about all the ways this could go wrong—the courthouse rumors already out of control, HR policies neither of you had bothered to look up, the real possibility that one or both of you could get written up or worse if anyone decided to make an issue of it.
It wasn't just gossip, it was jobs and reputations and the countless ways people you barely knew could have power over your happiness.
The weight of it pressed against your chest, sharpening your worry, but even knowing the risk, the thought of not taking the chance with Mark felt even scarier.
The tenderness of that almost undid you, because even now, he was worried about you, and you touched his wrist carefully.
“Hey.”
His eyes lifted immediately.
“You’re allowed to want something good too.”
Something in Mark’s expression cracked at the words, like nobody had ever told him that before.
When his mouth found yours, it wasn’t desperate or consuming—it was soft, lingering, the kind of kiss that asked you to stay instead of trying to take anything from you.
You melted against him before you even realized you were moving.
He exhaled quietly into the kiss, forehead leaning against yours afterward, his nose brushing yours once in a way that felt almost shy.
Then a knock slammed against the conference room door.
“CALLAN!” came Evelyn’s voice from outside. “If you’re done secretly making out again, your witness is here.”
You covered your face instantly while Mark closed his eyes in visible defeat and actually laughed, full and helpless, and somehow hearing that sound mattered almost as much as the kiss itself.
As the sounds of laughter faded and the world outside pressed in again, you felt something new settle in your chest—a cautious, hopeful certainty that this was only the beginning.
No matter how complicated tomorrow might be, you found yourself smiling, heart open and eager for whatever came next, ready to see where this would take you.
𝜗𝜚 press release (declano’hara x journalist!f!reader)
summary|| Being part of Corinium has always been a dream come true. However, when your boss, Tony Baddingham, brings on board the boisterous Irishman from the city, you realize that your once pleasant workplace is about to change for the worse. wc: 5.5k
Declan O'Hara, an Irishman, determined journalist, cutthroat talk show host, loving father, by every visible measure, and devoted husband.
As well as the most dangerously handsome, intelligent man you had ever been unfortunate enough to meet.
The time you'd spent working at the studio, you'd never met anyone like him. Compared to him, James Vereker looked like a schoolboy, and Sebastian Burrows a child. Declan O'Hara had been more man than anyone you'd ever met, and it was hard to ignore.
The way his voice carried around the office. It was earthy, his vowels were long and soft, but there was a flatness that gave it roots. You'd come accustomed to it, echoing around the building the more he tested Lord Baddingham and Cameron Cook.
It had been New Year's Eve the first time the two of you had spoken. You were leaving early for the day, hoping to get a table at your favorite restaurant before going back to your humble abode.
You entered the elevator turning around to press the lobby button only to be met with the front of Declan O'hara's chest.
Taking a quick step back before you crashed straight into him, he crowded your space, pushing you farther into the elevator.
"Floor." His voice was harsh, as it hummed in your ears. The look on his face was stern and impatient.
"Excuse me?" You asked in confusion.
His face relaxed and his voice softened. "Which floor, love?"
oh! "Lobby." You said quickly, stepping to the side, creating more space between the two of you.
The ride down felt awkwardly long, the tension lingering. You anxiously stood next to him. Fixing the strap of the bag slung over your shoulder and adjusting the jacket folded across your arm.
His gaze, not leaving you as the elevator continued its descent. You definitely could feel the way his eyes shamelessly gawked at your figure. The buttons on your blouse became tighter, and the length of your skirt suddenly felt too short.
"Declan." His name broke the silence, causing you to look over at him. His hand was stretched out toward you, waiting for your own.
You hesitated before reaching out, and when your fingers brushed, shocks shot through your hand. You mewled out your name, followed by a "...nice to meet you".
With a nod of his head, you bitterly slipped your hand from his, letting it fall back to your side.
Casually eyeing you up and down. His gaze raking over you, his eyes seem to betray a mixture of desire and restlessness.
There was something so enticing about you and the more he looked at you, the more his interest piqued. All this time he'd been working here and he hadn't noticed a woman like you walking around.
The silence dragged, and he felt the words build on his tongue. "Are you going somewhere?" He asked.
"What?" You answered, surprised he was still speaking to you.
He chuckled deeply at your tone, leaning his shoulder against the wall, getting closer. His head turned in your direction, his gaze fixed intently upon you.
"For New Year's, are you going somewhere?" He repeated slowly, his eyes never leaving yours once as he waited for a response.
The lilt of his voice made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The Irish was thick and sultry on his tongue, his accent like rolling thunder.
"I was going to dinner." You answered hesitantly, unsure why he was even asking. In the soft light of the elevator, he took in the details of your face, the way your bottom lip caught between your teeth as you fidgeted nervously.
You were a quiet one, most women he'd come in contact with had done anything to gain his attention. Yet you stayed quiet, reserved, shy. A woman so beautiful, so… alluring, could have easily caught his eye, yet he'd never even noticed you. "Was?"
"I'm afraid I've waited too long, missed the reservation window." You told him, and he chuckled again. That earthy sound that seemed to completely fill the space.
Taking in a deep breath, you were suddenly encompassed by his scent, a mix of musk, and tobacco, something manly. You'd never known a man to have such a presence, the way he filled the room made you feel so small next to him.
"Pity." He hummed, the corners of his mouth twitched into a small smile, his gaze roaming your face slowly, taking in every fine feature. "You should come by my wife's party tonight, then. She's invited the whole office, you're welcome to join."
"Thank you, Declan. That's very kind of you." You said quietly, your eyes falling down to the floor. The butterflies in your stomach were fluttering around in a panic.
Did he just invite you to his house for New Year's?
Your mind was still racing, unsure of how to respond. You had just met the man, but the way he was looking at you made your head feel fuzzy, and you couldn't bring yourself to say no.
The thought of spending an evening in his presence was both thrilling and terrifying. "Of course..." You stuttered, trying to keep your voice steady. "...I'll try and make it."
As soon as the words left your lips, a satisfied smile spread across his face. "The party starts at eight o'clock." He spoke, tilting his head.
The elevator dinged loudly, signaling that you'd reached the lobby. The doors opened slowly and Declan stepped out of the lift. "I hope to see you there." His accent seemed to make his words sound almost teasing as he said his farewell, and you felt a blush creep up on your cheeks.
I hope to see you there…
The words echoed through your mind like a mantra.
The doors started to close, blocking him from sight, and it brought you back to reality. You quickly shot your arm out to stop them from shutting and stepped into the lobby, taking a deep breath.
The party was in full swing, and you arrived in the midst of it all. It was a typical extravagant upper-class party, the house was lit with an array of colorful, sparkling lights. The house was filled, everywhere you looked there was a person.
You caught glimpses of unfamiliar faces, all blending together into a sea of strangers. You took a moment to look around the room, in search of that familiar head of dark chestnut hair.
The warm ambiance of the room helped ease the tension in your shoulders, and you couldn't help but hope, looking for any sign of Declan, he wasn't a hard man to miss.
Despite the crowd, it didn't seem like Declan was anywhere to be found. You couldn't help but wonder where he was, the thought of spending the night searching for him made you anxious.
Across the room, leaning against the wall beside his daughter's, was Declan; his arms crossed over his chest as he scanned the room with a watchful eye. His gaze roamed over your figure shamelessly, taking in the way your dress clung to you.
Your petite frame, the way your skirt hung around your thighs, the length of your hair. There was a shyness, something timid and he fixated on your body, the way your eyes darted around the room.
A loud commotion caused everyone to turn their heads in the direction of the entrance to the living-room. A woman dressed in a bright green dress entered, riding in on a camel?!
"Jesus christ." Declan said, the sound of his voice drawing you to him.
He stood a few feet away, dressed handsomely, his dark hair slicked back, and a hint of a five o'clock shadow on his jaw. He was wearing a crisp, tailored suit that accentuated his broad shoulders, and a pair of trousers that hugged his muscular legs. The sight of him was almost intoxicating.
The crowd of guests parted as the woman in the vibrant green dress dismounted from the camel. Cheers erupted throughout the room as she stood there victoriously. You watched as people congratulated and welcomed her.
Your eyes went to Declan, seeing his gaze had already made it back to you. Standing solely amongst the crowd, looking like a mouse in the center of a lion's den.
He almost looked embarrassed, Declan could feel his shoulders tense in annoyance, a scoff escaping his lips. He hated when Maud did things like this, rightfully so when he was the one paying for it. It was one thing that had initially attracted Declan to her, but now, it felt like an old pony trick.
He'd never understood her need for attention. There was no doubt in Declan's mind that this party was more for her than it was for their son. She was thriving off it, soaking up every last bit. He clenched his jaw, frustration building within him.
The night pressed on. The room slowly returned to its normal pace as people continued with their conversations, drinks in hand.
The guests now mingling together comfortably, the music softer, more gentle. The lights were dimmer now, allowing for a much more intimate setting.
Declan, stood among the others, and his eyes caught sight of you once more.
You were sitting on the couch, legs tucked up underneath you. A soft smile appeared on his face as he watched you, unable to take his eyes away.
You looked up, your eyes meeting his as he approached. "Having fun?" He asked, his deep voice, gravelly and laced with whiskey.
He gives you a charming smile as he steps closer, his gaze drifting down your figure, pausing at the low plunge of your dress before returning to your face.
Taking a seat next to you, he leaned back, his body turned towards you; his eyes drifting over your figure.
A sly smile tugged at his lips as he watched you blush under his intense stare. He chuckled gruffly, finding your reaction endearing. The way you tried to hide your bashfulness, but couldn't help the way your body betrayed you.
He noticed the way you fidgeted nervously. It made his heart swell in his chest. He couldn't help but enjoy the effect he had on you, as your cheeks flushing an attractive shade of pink.
The tips of your ears burned when you realized just how close he was. You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to keep your eyes on him while resisting the urge to look away.
Why the hell was he looking at you like that?
He was older than you, a man of authority and power, and yet, right now he made you feel like a shy schoolgirl with a crush. You couldn't remember the last time someone had looked at you this way, like you were the only person in the room
"I'm glad you decided to come tonight." He spoke low enough that nobody else could hear him but you. His voice rumbled in your ears, and sent a shudder through your body.
His gaze drifted down to your neck, a soft smirk forming on his lips as he watched the chill run down your spine.
"So am I. Thank you, for inviting me ...and for the booze."
He continued to look at you, his gaze roaming over you openly without any shame or reservation. He took a sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving your face. You were a sight to behold in this light, soft skin, wide eyes, it was almost hypnotizing.
"You look lovely." He hummed, his eyes still wandering over you. His gaze was intense, his voice deep, and velvety.
You thanked him softly, your breath catching in your throat when you noticed the desire in his burning gaze. His body was pressed up against you; his thighs touching yours, you could feel each breath with the rise and fall of his chest against your arm.
There was a moment of silence between the two of you, the tension in the air thick. You tried to distract yourself, but there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes that made you feel like a bird trapped in a cage.
Your heart rate quickening, and a warmth spreading through your chest. His gaze felt like a physical touch, making your skin tingle. His deep voice rolling off his tongue, the sound was like a low rumble, making your body hum with something you'd never felt before.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" He asked, breaking the silence. His voice was soft, quiet, meant just for you.
"Y-yes." You managed to stutter, your heart racing. "Quite."
"You looked a bit lost earlier." He chuckled in reply, his eyes never straying.
"Not lost." You confessed, your voice small in the presence of his dominating aura.
His eyes narrowed as he leaned closer, his body almost pressed flush against your shoulder. "Then what?" He asked, his voice now a mere whisper, deep and seductive
His hand reached out, fingers brushing a stray strand of hair away from your face, his touch linger for a moment longer than necessary. His fingertips were rough but warm, as he gently brushed the hair behind your ear.
You could feel his hot breath against your neck, his eyes fixed upon you intently, like a man possessed. You tried to maintain a sense of composure, but it was difficult when he was this close to you, his face was inches away from yours.
He was close enough that you could make out every small detail; the indentations in his lips, the faint shadow of stubble around his jawline, the way his eyes seemed to darken with each passing minute.
"I've noticed you've spent most of your evening alone." He began, his lips almost brushing your ear.
His fingers still playing with the loose locks of your hair, his knuckles just barely grazing your skin. You felt your heart skip a beat at his touch. His hand lingered on your cheek for a moment too long, leaving your skin buzzing with electricity.
He leaned back, his demeanor calm and collected, but a hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I haven’t been a very good host, have I?" He said softly, taking a deep breath, his eyes still fixed on you.
For a moment, the room around you seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you in this secluded little corner. The sounds of chatter and laughter felt distant, as the world seemed to slow to a halt.
Your breath hitched in your throat as you looked back at him. He was watching you again, his eyes boring into yours, drinking you in. Your body was alive, your skin burned where it touched his.
He was older, more experienced, and had a presence that demanded attention. There was something dangerous about him, like a predator stalking its prey. Yet, he was charming and smooth, and there was an undeniable attraction pulling you to him.
"Declan..." You stuttered, feeling your nerves kicking in.
His eyes scanned your face, pausing briefly on your lips. His dark eyes seemed to look right through you, and you found yourself unable to pull away from him.
"Just hear me out..." He rushed, his hands getting comfortable as they slid down your hips, but the glimmer of his wedding band on his finger made your stomach sink.
You stood up quickly, stumbling as your legs adjusted to the amount of alcohol you'd consumed. "No... I-I don't... you're married, Declan."
Declan watched as you stumbled, a look of surprise etched on his features. He stood up quickly, reaching out to catch you, his hands gripping your waist for stability.
He held you like that for a moment, your eyes filled a mix of fear and contemplation. His fingers tightened involuntarily against the softness of your hip. The heat from his touch burned through the fabric of your dress.
"Wait-" He spoke, his voice a deep grumble, almost primal, that made your hairs stand on end.
"Let me go..." You muttered breathlessly, trying to break free from his firm grasp. He held you tighter, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your hip.
He paused for a moment, his jaw clenching, his eyes flickering down to your trembling lips. He slowly let go of your waist, his hands lingering for a moment before they fell.
He still had you trapped, a few feet from the nearest group of people, the only way out was through him. His breathing was uneven, hot against your face, and the only thing you could hear was your heart thudding loudly in your ears.
"Can we just go somewhere quiet …to talk." His voice was commanding, but laced with desperation.
You swallowed hard, the thought of being alone with him made your heart skip a beat.
You gave him a slight nod, and his body turned, angling away from the crowd.
He slowly began making his way through the crowd, his hand resting on your lower back, gently guiding you.
Everywhere his skin met yours left you burning, his touch sending a wave of fire through you. He led you through the room and into a hallway.
The music and chatter faded as you turned the corner, and suddenly it was just the two of you.
Declan pushed a door open at the end of the hallway, guiding you into what appeared to be his office. You stood awkwardly for a moment, the room was small but cozy, a desk and a chair were positioned in the corner along with a leather couch.
The glow of a lone desk lamp illuminated the room, casting dancing shadows across the walls - which were covered in framed pictures; various awards, certificates, and one lined in bookshelves.
He leaned his back against the door, and for a long moment he stayed silent, watching you. His eyes were sharp underneath the dim light, his lips parted slightly, before his jaw clenched.
He couldn't keep the desire hidden, he let his eyes roam up and down your body. The way the dress hung on your hips, the way your chest rose and fell with each breath, the way your hair fell around your face. It was enough to drive him mad.
He looked relaxed yet on edge. He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a deep breath. This time there was something different in his eyes, something you couldn't quite place. Still a mixture of desire, and frustration, but something else.
"You're right. I'm married." He said, his voice firm, almost cold. "And I'm not trying to pretend otherwise." He began, his eyes fixated on your face.
He stepped closer, his body pressing against yours as he spoke. His hands reach out towards you again. He touched your chin, gently tilting your head back, forcing you to look at him. Your breath shuddered as his touch sent a shiver down your spine.
Declan's brow was low, making him look almost intimidating, but his eyes remained soft, almost pleading. "I'll just say one thing?"
"It's …complicated ...bird." He spoke slowly, his voice a low rumble. "I can't tell you it's perfect ...but I'll be damned if I don't admit that I want you."
The look in his eyes was fierce, possessive almost. His eyes watched every minute reaction your body had to the way his hands held you.
He wanted to keep you close, the way you leaned into him made his pulse race. His fingers moved from your hip, slowly trailing down the side of your exposed thigh, his touch was hot.
Your breath caught in your throat as his hand glided down your skin, leaving a trail of fire on your flesh. His words echoed in your mind, confusing you and sending your heart racing. You should be outraged, you should be pushing him away.
Declan's mouth dropped open as you forcibly shoved him away. Your hand sting as it connected with his cheek.
He stood there for a moment, heart hammering against his chest. His fingers brushing the red mark appearing on his cheek where you'd just struck him.
He looked at you, brow furrowed as his wild eyes searched your face, trying to gauge the situation.
Finally, he spoke from behind his hand. His voice low, almost a whisper. "I'm sorry."
The room was deadly silent, the only thing you could hear was the faint hum of music as your heart pounded heavily in your ears.
"You're sorry?" You repeated, your voice trembling as you spoke. "You're married, and that's all you have to say?" You said incredulously, your voice shaky. "You're sorry?"
Declan's eyes are glued to yours, a mix of regret, shock and pain etched across his face. He looked almost guilty, his eyes falling to the floor.
Your breathing was heavy, your chest rising and falling quickly, a mix of anger and attraction coursing through you.
This man, this married man, had just told you that he wanted you, had just touched you in a way no man should ever touch a woman who's not his wife, and it sent pleasure through your entire being.
He winced as you spoke, his jaw twitching as he clenched his teeth. He looked at you with a mixture of remorse and hurt, you knew better, he didn't deserve your sympathy.
Declan took a deep breath, his eyes flickering back to you. "It's not…" He paused, his voice low and rough. "…that simple." Even still, something about the way he looked at you, the way he spoke, it tugged at something deep inside your chest.
He wearily took a step forwards, reaching ever so slowly to hold you. Only you backed away quickly, trying to put distance between the two of you.
"That's what they all say." The words come out harsher than you intended, and you watch a flicker of pain in his eyes.
You stumbled back against the wall as he quickly closed the distance between you. "For god's sake …it's the truth." He breathed, his pleading eyes never straying from yours.
It was a strange feeling, to feel pity for a man who had just confessed his feelings for you.
Yet, watching his pained expression, and the way his eyes seemed to implore you, it made your stomach twist. "That's a bit unfair, don't you think?"
Declan's body pressed against yours, trapping you against him. "Fair?" His accent thick as he spoke in a low rumble under his breath, almost like a growl. "You think I give a fuck about fair?"
Declan made the space between you completely non-existent. One hand rested on the wall beside your head, his face inches away from yours. His other moved up to your cheek, fingers tracing the side, before cupping your jaw.
He could see the hurt, the fear, the confusion. Yet, underneath it all, he could see the heat, the want, the need in your eyes.
He leaned forwards, his lips hovering just above yours. You swallowed hard, your mind racing. You knew he was wrong, you knew this was wrong, your body betraying you as you fought against yourself.
His kiss made you feel unsteady. The way his hand tangled in your hair, his arm wrapped around your back kept you close to him, and his firm hold on your hip made your head fuzzy.
You breathed him in, and the soft sound of vanquish that escaped your lips filled him with pride as he savored the flavor of you for the first time.
With a hand pressed firmly against his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt to ground yourself. The other, clutched at the wrist of his that had drawn you into him.
"You know what's unfair? How much you torture me in this dress. How I've had to hold myself back from pulling you into the nearest room just to rip it off of you ...and you want to talk about being fair?"
Declan gently turned you both around, guiding you a few steps backwards until your lower back met the surface of his desk. His lips kept you quiet as you wrestled with the realization of what was happening.
Suddenly, he took you by the shoulders, spun you around, and bent you over the wooden surface. With your arms down at your sides, you felt his presence looming over you, his hands gliding down your back and across your hips.
Standing on your tiptoes, barely grazing the floor, as he pressed himself against you from behind.
You could feel him everywhere; tangling through your hair, delivering a playful smack to your backside that made you gasp, humping against your core as your skirt rose higher and higher.
"There ...now we're even." He hummed teasingly, soothing the sting by gently massaging your heated skin.
You let out a scoff, subconsciously rocking into him. A smirk played on his lips as he slowly sank to his knees.
With a quick movement, he raised the hem of your skirt, his powerful hands parting your thighs before pressing his warm mouth against your panty-covered center.
You gasped his name, arching your back as you shot up from the table. Your feet almost slipped out from under you, threatening to send you crashing face-first into the desk.
He quickly stood back up, preventing you from moving any further. His face filled your senses, his mouth warm and wet as it buried into your cheek.
His hand gripped the nape of your neck while he swept your tousled hair to one side. "Do you enjoy that, birdy? Is it my mouth you want on you? Do you need to feel my tongue before you're wet enough for me to slip my cock into, hmm?"
You closed your eyes, attempting to breathe, but that turned out to be a mistake.
The subtle aroma of alcohol mixed with desire surrounded you; he smelled of sex and temptation. The image of him leaning in to kiss his wife goodnight, the lingering taste of you on his lips, was undeniably provocative. Scandalous and alluring, and yet you found yourself becoming even wetter at the thought.
He gently pushed you back down, laying you flat on his desk, the cool wood contrasting with the warmth of your flushed cheek.
He pressed another kiss to your neck, his lips lingering, before capturing your hands and guiding them to rest beside your thighs at the edge of the table.
"Stay still," he whispered while trailing down your body, eventually finding himself back on his knees.
His fingers danced along the edge of your panties before gently pulling them aside. Your hips fell limp against the edge of his desk, your knees buckling beneath you. His hot breath fanned across your soaked core.
His slick tongue flattened, delivering a long, tantalizing stroke before enveloping your cunt with his mouth. His mustache, rough against the tender skin of your supple thighs, ignited a searing heat that flowed like molten lava, feeding into the deep ache in your belly.
"Ohmygod..." You shrieked, a hand shooting out to grasp his hair. "Declan!"
You bit your lip, attempting to stifle the moans that threatened to escape as he hungrily explored every inch of you.
Your fingers tangled in his hair; you began to tug his mouth off of you, as the overstimulation became almost too much to bear.
He yanked your hands away, pinning them down, and crossing your wrist over your lower back, before you felt the slip of his fingers part your wet folds. He pressing them into your entrance.
The combination of both his fingering and his tongue teasing your slit quickly sent you over the edge, and you shuddered against his parted lips. "Please, Declan ...don't stop.”
You cried out his name, as his tongue drank up the mess you made all over his mouth—which remained attentive yet gentle, even after your body stopped convulsing—leaving you shivering from the overstimulation.
Standing up as quickly as you could on shaky legs, you spun around to face him. His lips met yours as his hands found their way to your hips. Bunching up your skirt, he laid you out over his desk.
He pushed you back, his strong hands reaching up, peeling your dress off your shoulders and chest, gripping at every new part of your soft skin that was revealed.
Pinning you in place by your neck, he reached down. The pinching and snapping of flimsy fabric felt raw, carnal, against your skin as he tore your panties from your body. "You enjoy it when I'm rough with you, don't you, birdy?"
His hand reached down to unbuckle his belt. You squirmed beneath him, pulling your arms the rest of the way out of your dress. You reach for the buttons of his shirt, despite the anxious shake of your hands, meeting him halfway, after he'd rid himself of his tie.
You pushed his pants down just enough to reach inside and pull out his aching cock, swollen and eager, leaking pearls of translucent pre-cum. Gently thumbing at the tip of him, red hot and slick in your grasp as you coated him in his own release.
His hands reached for you, gripping your hips to help line himself up with your entrance, before taking your face gently in his other hand. A gasp escaped your lips as the tip of him brushed against your sensitive clit while he parted your swollen cunt.
He pushed into you eagerly, and the stretch of him filling up you was thrilling. Declan caged you between him and the sturdy desk, his body like a furnace against your skin.
Your hands fell to his chest, dragging the nails of one over his shoulder, and latching onto his muscular back.
A shaky moan slipped from your lips as he delved even deeper, his tip igniting a spot you'd never been able to reach. You could feel every vein and ridge as he pulled back slowly, then dove back in forcefully.
It was tight, the sheer size of him had you second guessing your confidence, yet as the tip of his head grazed your cervix it eased the ache in your lower abdomen. Your heart races at the realization that he has completely ruined you for anyone else.
You flushed, the feeling of his body against yours was too much; the smell of his skin, the way his chest hummed against yours with every groan he released against the crease of your neck, his breath a cloud of spiced whiskey and you.
The hand gripping your hip, tangled in your hair, gently cradling the back of your head as he pressed his wet lips against yours. The pressure of his kiss and the warmth of his breath pulled the air from your lungs, instinctively parting your lips and allowing his tongue to lick into your eager mouth.
The coarse hair of his pelvis brushed against your clit, causing your eyebrows to furrow in delight. "Declan!" His name, a prayer on your lips as he leaned his forehead against yours.
"Shh, Shh, Shh..." You could feel him in your throat. Each thrust was forceful, causing the desk to shake with every merciful connection of your hips.
"Jesus ...you feel so good, birdy. Gripping me so tight, such a good girl." He mumbled breathlessly against your skin.
He couldn't stop himself from gripping onto you tighter, his nails digging into the soft flesh as his hips rut into you over and over, continuing their own steady rhythm, perfectly meeting every one of your thrusts.
The sensation is overwhelmingly intoxicating; it’s a perfect blend of pleasure and pain. You’ve never experienced anything quite like this, intertwining soft cries of bliss with whimpers of overstimulation, creating the most beautiful symphony of pleasure.
Your hands grip onto his shoulders, anchoring you as you fall apart in his hands, your hips moving eagerly, chasing that sweet moment of release.
"You're so well behaved when you finally get some cock in you." You flutter around him, his tongue teasingly tracing your pulse, your walls gripping him tightly, too helpless to reply.
A gasp of delight escaped your lips as he continued to abuse your sensitive cunt.
"So warm, and tight ...so good to me when you're getting what you want." He breathed heavily, his thrust remained unwavering.
"Declan, please..."
"What? What is it birdy, use your words." Declan playfully taunted, gently nibbling on your lower lip.
Your hands tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, fingers weaving through his tousled strands as you drew him down for a searing kiss.
He silenced your moans of pleasure, your cries for him fading away as your body writhed beneath him.
It only took a few moments before he joined you. With a firm grip on your hip, he pulled you closer to him. His body stilled, pumping you full of his seed while your tongues danced together in tandem until his shoulders sagged and you began to tremble.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| Mark tries to avoid you, but the tension only grows stronger when he finally admits you distract him more than he wants to confess. between archive-room honesty, courthouse gossip, cafeteria tenderness, and one very public hand-touching moment, it becomes clear that neither of you can keep pretending this is harmless. wc: 3.3k
warnings|| SFW; workplace romance, emotional tension, mutual pining, anxiety, avoidance, accidental touching, romantic jealousy/gossip, mentions of violent crime cases, work burnout, family/financial stress hints, public embarrassment, unresolved feelings; no smut yet.
Chapter Three: Motion to Dismiss Your Feelings
After the hallway incident, Mark Callan began avoiding you.
Not in an obvious way. That would have been easier.
No, Mark avoided you subtly, almost carefully, with the precision of a man trying desperately to remain professional while failing at it internally.
He stopped lingering in records. Stopped finding excuses to “coincidentally” appear wherever you were working. Stopped looking at you for more than a second at a time.
Somehow, that hurt far more than it should have.
By Monday, your mood had become so visibly pathetic that even the courthouse security guard paused while checking IDs and gave you a sympathetic look, as if even he could sense your disappointment.
“You okay?” Rita asked, eyeing you slumped over your keyboard.
“No.”
“That bad?”
“I think he regrets me.”
Rita made a face immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“He’s avoiding me.”
“He’s trying not to fall in love with you in a government building.”
You dropped your forehead onto the desk, overwhelmed by helplessness.
“That is not helping.”
“Honey, that man looks at you like you personally invented hope.”
You groaned into the wooden surface, but unfortunately, Rita’s encouragement stopped working around lunchtime.
When Mark walked into records looking devastatingly handsome and emotionally unavailable, which, honestly, should have qualified as workplace harassment.
He was wearing a charcoal suit with his tie slightly loosened, the circles beneath his eyes looked deeper than usual.
The exhaustion was unmistakable, etched not just in his face but in the way his shoulders slumped, weighed down by case files and the impossible expectations of the DA's office.
The second you saw him, your heart ached with a terrible mix of worry and longing.
You wondered if it was only the mountain of trial prep draining him, or if something heavier was pulling at him from outside the courthouse walls.
Once, you'd caught a glimpse of a crumpled envelope peeking out from his briefcase, its corner marked with a bank logo and handwriting that did not look like his—hinting at a complicated family relationship.
Sometimes, late in the day, you heard him on tense phone calls, his voice tight, layered with the kind of worry you recognized from experience.
Occasionally, there would be a reluctant mention of his brother or flashes of half-finished sentences about someone 'back home' before his voice dropped to a low murmur the second anyone passed by.
“Callan,” Rita greeted casually.
“Rita.”
His eyes flicked toward you automatically, then away too fast, as if even making eye contact cost him something vulnerable, exposing feelings he was not ready to share, and the thought sent a sharp, anxious ache through your chest that made it hard to breathe for a moment.
“I just need the Davidson files,” he said.
“I’ll grab them,” you offered too quickly.
Mark hesitated.
“Okay.”
The word came softer than expected, so you disappeared into archive storage, desperate to escape before your humiliation became impossible to hide.
Naturally, the Davidson files were on the highest shelf imaginable, because even fate—or God—seemed personally committed to targeting you in your moment of vulnerability, and you climbed carefully this time, muttering under your breath as you reached for the box.
“Okay,” you whispered. “No falling. No humiliation. We’re evolving.”
The box caught awkwardly, so you tugged harder.
Three additional binders immediately slid off the shelf directly toward your face.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me—”
One hand caught a binder midair while the other grabbed the ladder before it could fall, and when you looked down, of course, it was Mark, because apparently the universe had officially typecast him as your personal emergency response team.
“You know,” he said dryly, “most people retrieve files without entering combat.”
“I was ambushed.”
“By office supplies.”
“They moved first.”
His mouth twitched faintly despite himself, and you climbed down carefully this time—which meant, naturally, your shoe caught on the final rung.
Mark steadied your waist automatically before you could stumble, his hands lingering for barely two seconds, but the brief touch still sent a jolt through your body, rattling your nerves and leaving you dizzy.
Then his hands dropped immediately, like he had remembered, he wasn’t supposed to touch you anymore.
The realization stung more than it should have, leaving you feeling foolishly exposed as you quietly handed him the Davidson files.
“Thanks.”
Mark nodded once, and then silence settled between you—awkward, heavy, and instantly unbearable. You hated it, hated how thick the air felt now, how it seemed to amplify every uncomfortable emotion twisting inside you.
“I haven’t seen you much,” you blurted before your brain could stop you.
Mark’s expression shifted subtely.
“I’ve been busy.”
The answer was technically true, which somehow made it worse, and you stared at him for a second too long, unsure what to do with the uncomfortable honesty sitting between you.
“You’re avoiding me.”
Straight to jail.
Your soul left your body the moment the words escaped, and Mark looked genuinely startled—not offended, but caught.
The room went painfully quiet before he finally exhaled once through his nose, like he was trying very hard not to react.
“Yes.”
Your heart sank, a cold heaviness settling in your chest as disappointment took over.
“Oh.”
Mark’s jaw tightened immediately. “That’s not—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I do, actually.”
The intensity in his voice pulled your gaze up, and your stomach somersaulted with nervous hope.
Mark ran one tired hand across the back of his neck before speaking carefully.
“You make this difficult.”
Your pulse stumbled painfully, the reality of his words stunning you into silence.
“…What?”
His gaze locked onto yours fully for the first time in days, and suddenly, all the oxygen disappeared.
“You walk into a room,” he said quietly, “and I stop thinking about everything else.”
Your heart skipped a full beat, and Mark looked almost frustrated by his own honesty now, as if the words had slipped out before he could pull them back.
“You smile at me, and I forget what I’m saying mid-sentence.” His laugh came rough and humorless.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is for a prosecutor?”
You stared at him in complete silence, because surely this was a stress hallucination.
“I spent three hours yesterday rereading the same witness statement,” he continued quietly.
“Because I saw you in the hallway and my brain stopped functioning afterward.”
Heat flushed through you so suddenly it was almost unbearable, a dizzying rush of shock and hesitant yearning, because Mark Callan looked wrecked, as if every honest word had cost him something he had not meant to give away.
“And that,” he said finally, “is why I’ve been avoiding you.”
The ache in your chest shifted, softening into a tenderness so sharp it made your eyes sting, because he sounded scared—not of you, but of wanting you too much.
In that moment, your own fears pressed in alongside his, twisting through every part of you. Some old memory flickered beneath the surface, the familiar echo of a love that unraveled when you let yourself hope a little too much, the disappointment of trusting someone who promised to stay but chose to leave instead.
You wanted so badly to believe in the hope shining in his eyes, but under it pulsed the old, familiar panic: What if you reached too far? What if you rushed everything by hoping for more than he could give?
The vulnerability felt impossible, like standing at the edge of something breathtaking and terrifying at the same time. But still, you couldn’t let go of the hope that maybe he was just as afraid of losing this as you were.
When you finally spoke, your voice came out softer than you intended, trembling at the edges with nervousness and an honesty you could no longer hide.
“You make me nervous, too.”
Mark went still.
“I know.”
That admission hit hard, sending a rush of relief and vulnerability through you, because of course, he knew. Mark noticed everything.
Silence stretched between you then, thick with all the words neither of you knew how to say properly, heavy with feelings too fragile to name, until finally, softly, you whispered.
“Mark…”
Your phone rang, and you nearly screamed as the noise shattered the tender moment, jolting you out of your feelings and back into reality.
You fumbled it from your cardigan pocket while mentally apologizing to every known deity, and Mark actually laughed under his breath—warm, helpless, and dangerously fond.
You answered the phone too quickly. “Hello?”
Rita’s voice blasted through immediately.
“WHY IS CALLAN STILL IN RECORDS?”
You closed your eyes in mortified horror, feeling embarrassment boil over. Across from you, Mark looked genuinely delighted for the first time all week.
“I hate everyone,” you whispered into the phone.
“Evelyn says you two have been missing for fifteen minutes, and she’s taking bets now.”
“Oh my God.”
“Also,” Rita added cheerfully, “if you kiss him in archive storage, I need at least twenty dollars from somebody.”
You hung up immediately, and silence fell for one suspended second before Mark laughed—really laughed, low, helpless, and completely devastating.
You stared at him, stunned, your heart skipping at the sound, because there it was again: that rare, unguarded version of him, beautiful enough to make your chest physically ache.
“You know,” he said once he recovered slightly, “your coworkers are terrifying.”
You smiled helplessly. “You should hear what they say when you walk by.”
His eyes softened instantly at your smile, and suddenly it felt as if your hearts recognized each other all over again, the room quieting as the laughter faded and the air thickened between you.
Mark looked at you for too long, and you looked back, neither of you moving until he finally spoke.
“We should probably get back.”
“Yes,” you whispered.
Neither of you moved, the tension pulsing quietly between you as you lingered on the edge of something more again.
Mark’s gaze flicked briefly toward your mouth before he caught himself, sending your heartbeat into catastrophe, and then he stepped back first—always first—but this time, before he fully turning away, you spoke softly.
“For the record…”
You swallowed hard.
“You make it difficult, too.”
He walked out of archive storage shaking his head, leaving you standing there alone with a heartbeat that felt like a full legal confession.
—𝜗𝜚—
After the archive storage incident, the tension between you and Mark became unbearable—not awkward, but worse, mutual. It lived in lingering eye contact, unfinished sentences, accidental brushes of hands that left both of you silent afterward, and the way Mark started appearing beside your desk with coffee you never technically saw him buy.
It was in the way you began memorizing the sound of his footsteps without meaning to, and it was becoming a problem, a huge one, because now the entire courthouse watched the two of you like a live television drama.
There were whispers in the break room, knowing glances exchanged in the halls, and suddenly every late afternoon coffee or shared smile felt like it might end up as the next headline of courthouse gossip.
At moments, you caught your supervisor watching a little too closely or heard your own name paired with Mark's in a low-voiced conversation that quieted the second you appeared.
There were protocols against workplace relationships here, or at least enough unspoken rules to make your cheeks flush every time an email popped up from HR. Just existing in the same space with him felt riskier now, as if the next slip could turn rumors into real consequences neither of you wanted to face.
“Morning, lovebirds,” Simon from intake greeted Tuesday morning.
You nearly dropped your bag.
Mark, standing beside your desk reviewing a file, didn’t even look up.
“Good morning, Simon.” He said.
Simon blinked. “Wow. Didn’t deny it.”
Mark calmly turned a page in the file, and your soul left your body.
“Oh my God,” You whispered.
Simon physically clutched his chest. “OH MY GOD.”
“Get out,” Mark said dryly.
Simon fled immediately to spread destruction elsewhere.
You turned slowly toward Mark in horror. “You cannot do things like that.”
Mark finally looked up.
“What things?”
“You just— you—”
“I answered a greeting.”
“You answered it like that.”
A tiny flicker of amusement appeared in his eyes.
“You’re blushing.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet,” he replied calmly, “you keep talking to me.”
Your mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but nothing came out.
Mark looked unbearably pleased with himself for approximately two seconds before professionalism settled back over him, which was deeply unfair.
“How’s the Wilson transcription going?” He asked.
You narrowed your eyes suspiciously. “Are you pretending to be normal right now?”
“I’m always normal.”
Yesterday, he’d stared at your mouth for six full seconds while you explained copier issues.
“Sure.”
Mark’s gaze softened for the briefest second before his expression shifted, and you noticed immediately.
“Wait,” You said slowly. “You look awful.”
He blinked once, as if the statement surprised him. “Thank you.”
“No, I mean—” You lowered your voice. “Have you slept?”
Mark looked away, and your chest tightened at once, because there it was—the answer was absolutely not.
“You’ve been here all night again, haven’t you?”
“It’s trial prep.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Something frustrated and tender twisted painfully inside you, because he said things like that so casually, as if exhaustion was normal, as if running himself into the ground didn’t matter, and you stood before you could overthink it, making Mark look immediately wary.
“That expression concerns me.”
“You need food.”
“I eat.”
“You had pretzels for lunch yesterday.”
“You remember my lunch choices?”
“You remember my near-death experiences.”
“That’s because there are so many.”
You ignored that. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“The cafeteria.”
Mark stared at you like you’d suggested armed robbery.
“I have work.”
“And you’ll still have work after consuming one vegetable.”
“I’m not sure the cafeteria legally counts as vegetables.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“You dragged me away from a homicide file.”
“You prosecute murders better when your organs function properly.”
Something warm flickered across his face—quickly gone, but there all the same—before he sighed and finally set the file down.
“Five minutes.”
“Ten.”
“Seven.”
“You negotiate literally for a living.”
“And I’m excellent at it.”
You smiled before you could stop yourself, and of course, Mark noticed. His expression softened instantly in that dangerous, quiet way that always made your heartbeat feel suddenly unstable.
“Seven,” you agreed softly.
The courthouse cafeteria was mostly empty at that hour as you carried your tray carefully toward a corner table, Mark walking beside you with black coffee and what looked suspiciously like an actual sandwich. It was progress.
Unfortunately, the second you sat down, your sleeve caught the edge of your plastic fork, sending it flying dramatically across the cafeteria.
A woman at another table ducked.
Mark closed his eyes briefly, as if asking the universe for patience and e none.
“I genuinely need scientists to study you.”
“I’m having a hard day.”
“You threw cutlery.”
“It was accidental.”
Mark laughed quietly into his coffee, and there it was again—that impossible warmth, the kind that still startled you every time.
You watched him take a bite of his sandwich, exhaustion lingering heavily beneath his eyes, and without the sharpness of the courtroom or the constant noise of the courthouse halls around him, he looked different sitting there.
Softer.
Lonelier somehow.
Enough to make your chest ache unexpectedly. You had the sudden urge to reach out, to find the right words that would lift the heaviness from his shoulders, but all you could do was sit with the ache in your chest and hope he felt less alone just from your quiet presence.
For a moment, you almost whispered something honest—a small confession about wanting to help, about how hard it is to see someone you care about struggle and not know how to fix it—but the words caught in your throat, fragile and unspoken. Still, you lingered there in the hope that he might feel it anyway.
“What?” Mark asked suddenly.
You blinked. “What?”
“You’re staring at me.”
Mortifying.
You looked down instantly. “Sorry.”
Mark was quiet for a second.
Then:
“Don’t apologize for that.”
Your heart absolutely folded in on itself, and suddenly the cafeteria felt too small, too warm, too full of things neither of you were saying.
Mark leaned back slightly in his chair, studying you with those unbearable dark eyes, as if he could hear every frantic thought your face was trying to hide.
“You know,” he said quietly, “most people are intimidated by me.”
“I am intimidated by you.”
“No,” he murmured. “You’re nervous around me. Different thing.”
Your pulse stumbled.
“You cross-examine murder suspects for fun.”
“I do not do it for fun.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
A reluctant smile tugged briefly at his mouth before it faded, the exhaustion returning so visibly you could almost watch him retreat back into it in real time.
“How long have you been doing this?” you asked softly.
“Too long.”
“That’s not a number.”
Mark looked down at his coffee for a moment before answering.
“Eight years in the DA’s office.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever think about stopping?”
His eyes lifted slowly back to yours, and suddenly something deeper moved beneath his expression—something tired, aching, and far too honest to hide.
“I don’t know how.”
The honesty of it hit hard because he didn’t sound dramatic; he sounded sincere, as if somewhere along the way work had consumed everything else.
Your chest ached painfully for him, and before you could think better of it, you reached across the table and touched his hand, just lightly, warm skin beneath your fingertips.
Mark froze instantly, his eyes dropping to your hand before lifting slowly to your face. You should have pulled away, absolutely should have, but instead your thumb brushed once against his knuckles, the smallest movement imaginable, and still enough to change the entire atmosphere.
Mark inhaled sharply, not loudly, but enough to make your heartbeat turn catastrophic as the cafeteria noise faded into something distant and meaningless.
His gaze locked onto yours with an intensity that made breathing difficult, and then he said quietly, rough around the edges, “You really need to stop doing that.”
You swallowed hard. “Doing what?” His voice dropped lower.
“Touching me like it doesn’t affect you.”
The words landed somewhere deep and dangerous because he sounded like he was barely holding himself together, and maybe, horrifyingly, so were you. Your voice came out barely above a whisper.
“It does affect me.”
Mark looked wrecked, absolutely wrecked, and his hand turned slightly beneath yours before he could stop himself, like instinct, like he wanted more contact. Your breath caught, and then suddenly, Rita’s voice rang across the cafeteria.
“Oh my God.”
You jerked apart instantly as Rita stood there holding a salad and the expression of a woman witnessing live theater. Behind her, Evelyn Price looked one second away from screaming.
“You two are insane,” Evelyn informed both of you, while Mark leaned back in his chair, visibly resigned, and you considered immediate death.
Rita pointed aggressively between you. “Hand touching in public? During business hours? In this economy?”
You opened your mouth weakly. “It wasn’t—,” but Evelyn cut in with,
“What are you, a Jane Austen protagonist?”
Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can either of you behave professionally for one minute?”
“No,” both women answered immediately.
You buried your face in your hands, but across from you, Mark looked dangerously close to smiling again, and somehow, that made everything worse.
You peeked between your fingers, your embarrassment still prickling, and caught the hint of warmth softening his features.
For a split second, it felt like it was only the two of you at that table. Despite the chaos around you, something hopeful settled between you.
Mark glanced away with the trace of a secret smile still hiding in the corner of his mouth, and you couldn’t help wondering if this was the start of something neither of you had enough courage yet to name.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| jealousy and courthouse gossip begin to close in as Mark’s protective side becomes harder to hide. between whispered rumors, near-falls, accidental touches, and overheard confessions, both of you are forced to face the truth: whatever is happening between you is no longer harmless. wc: 3.6k
warnings|| SFW; workplace gossip, jealousy, mild possessive/protective behavior; no smut yet, unwanted flirting, mentions of violent crime cases, emotional tension, anxiety, near-fall/stair accident, accidental eavesdropping, romantic angst; no smut yet.
Chapter Two: The Rumor Mill Finds You Guilty
You told yourself you were not jealous.
That would be insane.
You barely knew Mark Callan. Technically, your entire relationship consisted of workplace disasters, emotional whiplash, and one deeply upsetting blueberry-jam incident.
You had no claim to jealousy.
And yet, Friday morning, you found yourself standing behind the records counter, pretending not to notice Assistant District Attorney Evelyn Price talking with him, while leaning against the office doorway, with the kind of ease that only came from familiarity.
She was beautiful.
Of course, she was.
She was tall, elegant, composed—the sort who never tripped over cords or stapled her sleeves to a documents.
Meanwhile, you were still haunted by the memory of walking into a glass door last month—an embarrassment that made your cheeks burn every time it resurfaced.
“You’re staring,” Rita warned under her breath.
“I’m observing.”
“You look like a Victorian woman dying of tuberculosis.”
You tore your gaze away. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Unfortunately, Rita was right.
You were staring because Evelyn was laughing softly at something Mark had said, and he was smiling—a real smile, not the tiny, almost-smiles you usually got, but something relaxed and comfortable, as if it happened often.
Something sharp twisted unexpectedly beneath your ribs, jealousy and disappointment flaring up, and you hated how quickly it hurt.
‘Maybe they’re dating,’ your brain whispered unhelpfully.
You tried focusing on work instead.
Keyword: tried.
Unfortunately, your emotional stability was already hanging by a thread, which meant the universe naturally chose that exact moment to make it worse.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
You looked up automatically and immediately regretted it.
Brandon Pike from clerical support stood at the counter, grinning at you.
Brandon was handsome in a loud way. Too much cologne, too-wide of a smile, the confidence of someone never humbled.
He flirted with literally everyone, usually harmlessly.
Today, however, after everything, you suddenly found him exhausting, your patience worn thin by your own swirling feelings.
“What do you need, Brandon?”
“Ouch,” he said dramatically. “No good morning?”
“It’s nine-thirteen.”
“Still counts.”
He leaned casually against the counter. “You doing anything tonight?”
Rita made a noise suspiciously close to a snicker.
You narrowed your eyes at her before looking back at Brandon. “Probably reorganizing my life after repeated public humiliation.”
“So dinner’s a maybe?”
“Dinner’s a no.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll recover.”
Brandon grinned wider. “C’mon. One date.”
Before you could answer, a voice cut cleanly through the room.
“Pretty sure she already said no.”
Every nerve ending in your body recognized Mark instantly.
Mark approached slowly, case file tucked beneath one arm. His expression was calm, too calm, which somehow felt worse.
“She answered you,” Mark said evenly. “That should’ve ended the conversation.”
Heat flooded your face, as a mixture of embarrassment and gratitude battled inside you as everyone watched.
Brandon laughed awkwardly. “Jesus. Didn’t realize she had a bodyguard.”
Mark’s eyes didn’t leave him.
“She doesn’t.”
The silence afterward felt dangerous, not dramatic, just sharp enough to cut.
Brandon cleared his throat first. “Right. Okay.”
Then, apparently deciding self-preservation mattered, he backed away down the hall.
As soon as he disappeared, everyone in records became very invested in their paperwork.
Cowards.
You looked up at Mark, who was already looking down at you. Suddenly, your heartbeat became a real problem—nervousness and anticipation rippling through you.
“You didn’t have to do that,” you said softly.
“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation. “I did.”
The certainty in his voice startled you, a flutter of relief and hope catching you off guard.
Something vulnerable flickered across your face before you could hide it, and you were sure Mark had noticed it.
“You looked uncomfortable,” he added, quieter now.
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I know.”
The words should not have affected you as much as they did. He wasn’t dismissing or belittling you, he was simply saying he hadn’t liked seeing you cornered—and somehow, that was worse, much worse.
Your chest felt painfully tight all of a sudden, anxiety and longing mixing until you could barely breathe.
“Thank you,” you said after a moment.
Mark nodded once, but he still hadn’t moved away, and neither had you.
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm.
His tie was loosened, and his sleeves were rolled to his forearms. He looked tired in that beautiful, devastating way—as if exhaustion was part of him.
“You shouldn’t let people talk over you,” he said quietly.
You blinked. “What?”
“Men like him.”
His jaw tightened faintly.
“You already said no,” he continued. “You don’t owe anyone softness after that.”
Your heart ached unexpectedly because there was anger beneath his calm—anger that surprised you, because it wasn’t possessiveness or ego, but something protective that touched you and left you shaken.
You studied him carefully. “You sound experienced.”
For the first time since walking in, Mark looked away. A tiny movement that was barely noticeable, but there.
“I prosecute enough cases,” he said flatly, and suddenly you felt heavy with understanding, a sadness settling across your shoulders.
The ache in your chest deepened.
Sometimes you forgot what his job was beneath the suits and sarcasm.
He spent every day seeing the worst in people, no wonder he looked tired all the time, no wonder he carried himself like someone permanently braced for impact.
“Mark—”
“CALLAN!”
Evelyn’s voice echoed from the hallway.
You physically watched the walls go back up around him again, so fast it left you dizzy.
Mark stepped back, professional distance restored.
“I’ve got court.” he said.
The softness vanished so fast you almost wondered if you imagined it.
Then his gaze dropped, and you glanced down—your shoelace was untied, again.
Before you could react, Mark crouched.
Your entire brain stopped functioning.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll trip.”
“That is statistically fair, but—”
His fingers moved quickly, looping the lace neatly.
The records room had gone silent again.
You could feel Rita vibrating somewhere behind you.
Mark tied the knot, then looked up, and somehow that was worse.
Something about a man on one knee looking up at you with tired dark eyes felt catastrophically intimate—especially when his expression softened, and he quietly said, “There.”
Your heart genuinely stuttered.
Mark stood immediately afterward like nothing unusual had happened, as if he hadn’t just altered your brain chemistry.
Then he picked up his case file and walked toward the door.
Halfway out, he paused. Didn’t turn around, but you heard it anyway.
“Try to survive the rest of the day.”
Then he disappeared into the hallway.
There was silence, long, heavy silence.
Then Rita slowly emerged from behind a shelf.
“Oh,” she whispered.
You stared blankly ahead. “I think that was the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done to me.”
Rita placed a hand dramatically over her heart.
“Honey,” she said, “that man is in trouble.”
—𝜗𝜚—
The problem with Mark Callan was that he kept doing things that were romantic without realizing they were romantic.
Which somehow made it worse.
If he had flirted openly, you might have been able to handle it. Possibly. Maybe. Fine—not really, but at least then there would have been rules.
Instead, Mark lived in a gray area, tying your shoelaces with courtroom focus, then leaving like he hadn’t just undone you completely.
You spent the whole weekend thinking about it, which was humiliating.
By Monday morning, your brain had become completely unusable.
“Okay,” Rita said, sliding into the chair beside your desk with a coffee. “You look haunted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You just typed his name into a witness transcript.”
You froze. Slowly, horrifically slowly, you looked down at your computer screen.
Halfway through a burglary deposition, the sentence read:
The defendant entered the residence at approximately Mark Callan—
“Oh my God.”
Rita burst into laughter so violently that she nearly spilled her coffee.
You dropped your forehead onto the desk. “I’m quitting.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’ll become a shepherd. Move to the mountains. Never know love again.”
“You’d trip over a sheep.”
“That feels unnecessarily personal.”
Unfortunately, Rita was still laughing when Simon from intake appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, records need the Ellis trial exhibits delivered upstairs.”
Rita pointed at you. “Perfect. She can take them.”
You lifted your head slowly, fixing Rita with an accusing look. “Why do you hate me?”
“Character building.”
“It’s emotional warfare.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
Ten minutes later, you found yourself carrying two heavy exhibit boxes through the courthouse halls, muttering threats under your breath.
Naturally, the elevators were full, which meant you had to take the stairs.
“This is how I die,” you whispered dramatically while climbing.
Halfway up the second flight, one of the boxes slipped against your hip.
You adjusted awkwardly. Then your shoe caught the edge of the stairs and time slowed.
“Oh no.”
The box tipped, papers burst into the air, and your body pitched forward with the terrible certainty that you were about to die in the most humiliating way possible—until one hand caught your arm before impact and another caught the box.
You gasped sharply as your momentum slammed you directly into a solid chest instead of concrete stairs.
For one dizzy second, all you knew was warmth. Strong hands and the sharp scent of dark coffee and cologne.
Then Mark’s voice above you:
“…Every time I see you, gravity appears suspiciously aggressive.”
You squeezed your eyes shut.
“Please let me die here.”
“That wouldn’t be fair.”
You realized very suddenly that one of his arms was still around your waist. Not casually, firmly, he had grabbed you hard, as if the thought of you falling had scared him.
Your pulse stumbled violently. Slowly, you looked up to find Mark already watching you—much too close, his gaze intense.
The courthouse stairwell suddenly felt unbearably quiet.
His chest rose sharply beneath your hands because, apparently, in your panic, you had grabbed his suit jacket.
Your fingers loosened. “Sorry.”
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze dropped briefly to your hands, then back to your face.
“You okay?”
The softness in his voice nearly undid you on the spot.
You nodded too fast. “Yes. Totally. Thriving.”
Mark’s mouth twitched faintly. Still, he didn’t let go immediately, and you couldn’t stop noticing things.
The warmth of his hand at your waist, the faint shadow of exhaustion beneath his eyes, the slight looseness of his tie as if he had been working too hard again—every small detail made him feel dangerously real, and far too close.
“You really need safer hobbies,” he said, his tone somewhere between amused and exasperated.
You swallowed hard, nervous. “I didn’t realize carrying boxes counted as an extreme sport.”
“With you involved? Apparently it is.”
You laughed weakly despite yourself, and there it was again—that dangerous look he got whenever you laughed, as if, for half a second, he forgot he was supposed to keep himself guarded.
Then voices echoed from above, and the moment broke instantly.
Mark stepped back first. The loss of his warmth was intant and painfully unfair, but before you could embarrass yourself further, he bent to gather the scattered exhibits.
You crouched automatically to help, heart still stumbling over the space where his hand had been.
“Careful,” he said.
You blinked. “What?”
“You almost just fell down a staircase.”
“That was five seconds ago.”
“Yes,” he replied flatly. “A traumatic five seconds.”
Something unexpectedly tender bloomed in your chest, soft and unwanted, and you tried to ignore it only to fail spectacularly.
As you gathered the papers beside him, your fingers brushed once.
Then again, tiny, accidental touches that somehow felt louder than conversation.
You reached for the same photograph at the same time, and Mark’s hand settled briefly over yours and both of you froze.
The air shifted, thinning into something fragile and dangerous as his eyes lifted slowly to meet yours.
You stopped breathing.
There it was again—that impossible tension, building quietly between you without permission, without warning, as if neither of you knew how to stop it and neither of you were brave enough to name it.
When you finally spoke, your voice came out softer than you meant it to.
“Mark…”
He looked wrecked suddenly, not visibly, not dramatically, but something in his expression tightened like he was fighting himself.
Then—
“Callan?”
A man in a gray suit appeared at the top of the stairs, and Mark pulled his hand away immediately.
The warmth vanished with him.
In an instant, Deputy District Attorney Mark Callan returned—controlled, professional, untouchable, as if whatever had passed between you had never happened at all.
“We’re waiting on you for pretrial,” the man said.
“I’m coming.”
The man nodded once before disappearing again.
Silence settled between you afterward—awkward now, fragile in a way it had not been moments before.
Mark stacked the final exhibits carefully into the box, his movements precise and controlled, as if order could undo whatever had just passed between you.
Then he stood.
You rose too and lost your balance again because, apparently, God had taken a personal interest in humiliating you.
Mark caught your elbow with frightening speed.
For one suspended second, you just stared at each other.
Then, to your absolute horror, he laughed.
Not politely, not under his breath, not with that careful restraint he wore like armor.
An actual, helpless laugh.
“You cannot be real,” he said under his breath.
You covered your face. “I hate this building.”
His hand lingered on your arm one second too long before he let go. When you looked up again, something in his expression had softened completely—not amusement, not irritation, but something worse: affection, real and unmistakable.
Your heart did something violent and painful inside your chest. Suddenly, the possibility became terrifyingly real: Mark Callan liked you—actually liked you. Not in passing, not by accident. Judging from the look on his face right now, that realization scared him almost as much as it scared you.
He stepped backward first, always first, like he didn’t trust himself standing too close.
“I should go.”
You nodded even though disappointment struck.
“Right. Court.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of you moved, the silence stretched, then Mark glanced at the stairs beneath your feet.
“…Do you want me to carry the boxes upstairs?”
Your heart melted so fast it was humiliating.
“You already saved my life.”
“You tripped carrying paper.”
“It was a near-death experience emotionally.”
For the first time today, Mark smiled openly, small, tired, and beautiful enough to ruin you entirely.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
And before you could recover, he lifted both exhibit boxes effortlessly and started up the stairs beside you.
Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
—𝜗𝜚—
By Tuesday morning, the entire courthouse had apparently decided you and Mark Callan were having an affair.
You discovered this when a bailiff winked at you in the hallway and said:
“Morning, Mrs. Prosecutor.”
You nearly walked directly into a water fountain.
“WHAT?”
The bailiff laughed himself into another dimension while you stood there in horrified silence, clutching a stack of transcripts.
This was somehow Rita’s fault; you could feel it.
You stormed into records to find her humming cheerfully as she organized files.
“What did you do?”
She didn’t even look up. “You’ll need to narrow that down.”
“People think I’m dating Mark!”
Now she looked up, and the woman had the audacity to grin.
“Oh,” she said. “So it’s spreading.”
You stared at her in betrayal. “Spreading?”
“Honey, the two of you have the subtlety of a hospital fire.”
“We are not—”
"You look at him like he hung the moon."
“I do not.”
“And he watches you, like you might accidentally kill yourself if left unattended.”
“That feels unfairly specific.”
Rita pointed a pen at you. “He carried your boxes upstairs yesterday.’’
“He was helping.”
“He glared at Greg from evidence for asking if you were single.”
This could not be happening. You were not workplace-romance material. You were workplace-workers-compensation material.
Unfortunately, your humiliation only worsened around noon, because you were delivering signed affidavits to the litigation floor when you heard voices drifting from one of the partially open conference rooms.
“…seriously, Callan?”
You slowed instinctively, not intentionally. Okay, maybe a little intentionally.
Inside the room, Assistant District Attorney Evelyn Price leaned against the conference table with crossed arms while Mark stood near the window reviewing a file.
“You’re imagining things,” Mark said flatly.
Evelyn laughed softly. “Am I?”
“You are.”
“Then why did you nearly bite Brandon Pike’s head off last week?”
Your entire body froze. Mark didn’t answer immediately, which somehow felt louder.
Evelyn tilted her head knowingly. “That’s what I thought.”
“This conversation is inappropriate.”
“So is staring at the records department every twenty minutes.”
You physically stopped breathing.
Inside the room, Mark looked profoundly exhausted.
“Evelyn.”
“Oh relax,” she said. “I’m not judging you. Frankly, it’s nice seeing you care about something besides work for once.”
Something complicated flickered across his face then, left too quickly to fully understand.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Evelyn’s expression softened slightly.
“I know you haven’t looked at someone like that in years.”
Silence. Heavy silence.
Then Mark said quietly:
“She deserves someone less complicated.”
The words hit you directly in the chest—not because they were cruel, but because they weren’t. They sounded honest, painfully honest.
You stepped back on instinct before they could realize you were standing there. Your heartbeat thudded too fast, too heavy, as if it had forgotten how to breathe.
You should have left, you absolutely should have left, but instead, like the emotionally intelligent woman you very much were not, you shifted your weight at the worst possible moment, and the affidavits slipped from your arms.
Paper exploded across the hallway floor.
Inside the conference room, silence fell.
“…Oh my God,” you whispered.
The door opened, and Mark stepped out first. His eyes found you kneeling among scattered paperwork, then flicked to your face, your guilty expression, and something in his own changed instantly.
“Were you standing here long?”
“No,” you lied terribly.
Evelyn appeared behind him, looking openly delighted.
“Well,” she said. “This is awkward.”
You wanted to die, preferably swift.
Mark crouched automatically to help gather papers. “You should’ve said something.”
“I was leaving.”
“You were eavesdropping,” Evelyn corrected.
You made a wounded noise.
Mark picked up several affidavits before speaking quietly without looking at you.
“You heard that.”
Not a question.
You swallowed hard. “Some of it.”
The hallway suddenly felt much too small.
Evelyn looked between both of you before sighing dramatically. “I’m going to go before this turns into a slow-burning legal drama.”
Neither of you acknowledged her.
She left anyway, muttering something about emotional constipation.
You stayed kneeling on the floor beside Mark in painful silence.
“You think you’re complicated?’’ You ask softly.
Mark exhaled slowly.
“You shouldn’t have heard that.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
His hands paused briefly on the paperwork. Then he looked at you—really looked at you—and something in his expression shifted.
He seemed worn in a way you hadn’t seen before: not just physically, but emotionally.
“I work seventy hour weeks,” he said quietly. “I miss holidays, birthdays, most nights I sleep in my office.”
You tried speaking, but he kept going.
“I prosecute violent crimes. Half the things I see follow me home.” His jaw tightened slightly. “And people around me…” He paused once. “Eventually, they get tired of coming second to the job.”
Your chest hurt because none of that sounded arrogant. It sounded lonely, painfully lonely.
Mark looked down at the papers again. “You deserve easy.”
The words came out rougher than intended, and somehow that hurt even worse, because it sounded like he had already decided he couldn’t be what you needed.
“Who said I wanted easy?” You said before you could stop yourself.
Mark went very still, and the air shifted dangerously. His eyes lifted slowly to yours, and there it was again, that unbearable tension, like both of you were standing too close to something neither of you knew how to describe.
Your pulse hammered painfully as Mark’s gaze dropped briefly to your mouth.
You noticed
God, you noticed
Then footsteps echoed at the end of the hall, and the moment was shattered.
Mark stood first, retreating behind professionalism with visible effort as he carefully handed you the last affidavit. His expression controlled again, but not quickly enough to hide what had almost happened between you.
“Our hearing starts in ten minutes.”
You stared up at him from the floor.
“Right.”
But neither of you moved, not yet, not while the air between you still felt too fragile to disturb.
Then Mark did something that completely destroyed what little remained of your emotional stability.
Very gently, almost absently, he reached down and fixed the crooked collar of your blouse, his fingers brushing your shoulder with a tenderness that felt far too natural, far too instinctive, as if some part of him had moved before the rest of him could remember he was supposed to be careful around you.
Your breath caught hard.
Mark seemed to realize what he had done at the exact same moment you did, and his hand withdrew.
The look on his face afterward was almost alarmed, as if touching you had become dangerous, as if the softness he kept letting slip was beginning to frighten him more than anything else.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked away down the hall, leaving you kneeling there with a stack of papers in your arms and a heartbeat that no longer felt survivable.
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| a coffee spill makes one ordinary intern impossible for Mark Callan to ignore. what starts as an embarrassing accident turns into ruined muffins, falling files, nervous laughter, and unexpected romance. wc: 3.5k
warnings|| SFW; teasing banter, embarrassment/social anxiety, workplace/courthouse setting, mention of a murder case file, mild injury risk/falling, food and drink spills, romantic/jealous tension; no smut yet, mention of a past fiancée/relationship ending badly.
Chapter One: The People v. Your Dignity
The first time you met Deputy District Attorney Mark Callan, you'd spilled your coffee across a murder file.
Not cutely, and not in the delicate, rom-com sort of way where a few drops landed near the corner, and everyone laughed because it’s meaningless.
No, you managed to knock over an entire cup of scalding hot, overpriced courthouse coffee right across Exhibit B, three witness statements, and the sleeve of Mark Callan’s perfectly pressed white shirt.
For one terrible second, the world stopped. Mark looked down in disbelief, and the paralegal beside him made a sound of pure despair.
You clutched your notebook to your chest like it might shield you from prosecution, and the devastating reality of his stare.
“Oh, my god. I am so, sorry.”
When Mark Callan looked back up at you, it was determined that he was the kind of handsome that seemed almost unfair.
Sharp cheekbones, tired eyes, and a mouth that looked like it never smiled without good reason. His hair was neat, his tie was straight, and his expression was the kind you’d expect in court right before something life-altering happened.
For a ridiculous moment, you forgot how to breathe. Up close, Mark was both intimidating and enticing.
You, on the other hand, wore a sweater with ink-stained cuffs and had, on more than one occasion, committed a caffeine-based felony.
“This is the People’s case file.” he said calmly
You winced. “I can see that.”
“It is no longer legible.”
“I can also see that.”
His gaze dropped to the spreading coffee stain. “…and now it smells like hazelnut.”
“That part might be my fault.”
“Really?” he asked. “I was about to blame the defendant.”
You blinked, then, because you were nervous and apparently possessed absolutely no survival instincts, you laughed—a small, terrified sound that slipped out before you could stop it.
Mark didn’t laugh, but something shifted in his eyes, something that wasn’t quite warmth but came dangerously close, like the smallest crack of light beneath a door he usually kept locked.
“I’ll fix it,” you blurted. “I’m a scribe—well, I’m interning with records, but I type fast. I can redo everything. I’ll stay late. I can—”
“You can start by not touching anything else.”
Your hand froze midair, and God help you, because Mark Callan had looked at you like you were going to be his newly appointed, biggest problem.
Mark sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What’s your name?”
You told him it. He repeated it once, as if he were filing it away under future liability.
When he left, coffee dripping from the edge of his file folder onto the courthouse floor, leaving a path for you to follow as he walked down the hall.
You should have felt relieved. Instead, your stupid heart gave one hard, humiliating kick from inside your chest.
—𝜗𝜚—
The courthouse had its own soundtrack: ringing phones, shoes striking marble, muted arguments leaking beneath office doors, and the steady hum of overworked officials trying to hold the justice system together with nothing but caffeine and spite.
You’d only been there exactly twelve days, and somehow, in less than two weeks, you had already earned a reputation.
It wasn’t terrible, but it was enough that when you entered the records office Monday morning carrying three folders and a blueberry muffin, someone immediately looked up and said, “Careful, Callan’s in the building.”
You groaned. “I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Rita said from behind a stack of deposition transcripts. “You’re too sweet. Honestly, it’s irritating.”
You dropped your purse into the chair with a dramatic sigh. “He still hates me.”
Rita snorted. “Deputy District Attorney Mark Callan hates everyone.”
“That is not comforting.” You left your coffee and phone on your desk as you shrugged off your coat.
“That’s because you’re young enough to still want comforting.” She turned back to her laptop and placed her glasses back on her face, getting back to whatever Brenner had asked from her.
“You sound like a woman who’s seen things.” You said, and began unwrapping your muffin.
“I’ve worked in this building twenty-two years,” Rita replied. “I have seen things. Including Callan making a defense attorney cry in open court.”
You paused before getting up. “Seriously?”
“She deserved it.”
You appreciated her honesty.
“That’s… weirdly reassuring.” She shrugged, “He’s good at his job,” she said simply. “Too good, honestly. Men like him are pretty much robots, surviving on legal pads and self-loathing.”
You tried not to think about that for too long, but unfortunately, your brain betrayed you immediately, because now you were imagining Mark late at night in his office, sleeves rolled up, jaw shadowed with exhaustion, rubbing tired eyes over stacks of files beneath dim lamplight.
You didn’t even like him, not really. You liked the idea of him; there was a difference. A tragic one, admittedly, but still a difference.
“Earth to disaster girl.” You turned around and blinked. “What?”
Rita grinned knowingly. “You’re doing the thing again.”
“What thing?” You asked.
“The staring-into-space-like-you’re-in-a-period-drama thing.”
“I do not do that.”
“You absolutely do.”
You opened your mouth to defend yourself and, with devastating timing, walked your muffin directly into the edge of the filing cabinet.
It launched from your hand, and Rita screamed, but you screamed louder.
Blueberry filling exploded across the floor just as someone stepped around the corner. Polished black shoes, stopping mere inches from the scene of complete pastry destruction.
Silence fell.
Slowly, your eyes traveled upward—dark slacks, an expensive-looking belt, strong hands holding a trial binder—and finally landed on Mark Callan himself, staring down at the murdered muffin between you with disbelief. He had expected many different types of disasters that could happen this morning, but somehow, not this.
“…Again?” he asked.
You wanted the ground to open beneath you. “Okay,” you said weakly, “in my defense—”
“I’m fascinated to hear this.” He raised his eyebrows at you.
“I forgot the cabinet existed.”
“The cabinet has not moved.”
“That feels unnecessarily judgmental.”
Rita had physically turned away so he wouldn’t see her laughing—Traitor.
Mark crouched before you could stop him, picking up the surviving half of the muffin with a napkin from his pocket. His motions were surprisingly careful. Mark’s hands were large, veined, precise; everything about him seemed controlled. Even annoyed, he never wasted energy.
“Here,” he said, standing again and handing you the least destroyed half.
You blinked up at him. “You salvaged it?”
“It seemed important to you.”
“It was blueberry.”
“That explains the emotional attachment.”
Your lips twitched before you could stop them, and for the first time, Mark almost smiled.
It was tiny, gone in less than a second, but it changed his entire face. It made him look younger somehow, less severe, and less like a man permanently braced for impact.
You turned away first. Big mistake, because as soon as you moved, your elbow clipped the stack of folders on your desk, and paper exploded everywhere.
“Oh my God.”
Mark closed his eyes as Rita fully burst into laughter.
You dropped to the floor in horror, scrambling to gather loose witness statements before they slid under desks. “I’m quitting,” you muttered. “Actually, I’m fleeing the country.”
A page drifted past Mark’s shoe; he bent automatically to help.
“You don’t have to—”
“You’ll only make it worse.”
“That is so rude.”
“It’s also statistically likely.”
You glared up at him from the floor. He looked back down at you, and suddenly the space between you thickened.
Your knees pressed against cold tile as you fell to your knees to gather the half of them.
His hand brushed yours as he reached for the same page. It was warm, just barely, but still enough to send heat racing embarrassingly fast up your arm.
Heat crawled up your neck before you could stop it. It was ridiculous, humiliating even, how one accidental touch could undo you so quickly, but your body reacted before your pride could catch up.
Your pulse jumped hard beneath your skin, and suddenly the courthouse felt too quiet, too small, too aware of the two of you crouched there on the floor together.
Mark stilled, his eyes lifted to yours. They were dark brown, tired, and intense in a way that made you feel seen right through.
For one awful, suspended second, neither of you moved. Then someone shouted for “CALLAN!" from the hallway.
Mark stood first, expression locking back into place like a door slamming shut. He handed you the papers without another word and stood up. He walked away, leaving you with the lingering warmth of his fingers and the sudden ache of his absence.
You stayed kneeling on the floor long after he disappeared down the hall, and Rita slowly leaned over her desk. “…Well,” she said.
You stared blankly ahead. “I think I just died.”
A smile broke out across her face. “Yeah,” Rita replied. “That’s usually how it starts.”
—𝜗𝜚—
By Wednesday, you had developed a system.
Rule one: avoid carrying beverages near Mark Callan.
Rule two: avoid carrying food near Mark Callan.
Rule three: avoid carrying literally anything near Mark Callan; Sadly, this left very few options for functioning as a human being.
As it turned out, the courthouse required carrying things constantly; files, boxes, coffee, evidence binders, and your rapidly deteriorating sense of stability, and for some reason, Mark was always there to witness the worst moments.
You were beginning to suspect he appeared only when your dignity was in danger.
And, right on cue, the evidence presented itself.
“Why…” Mark Callan said slowly, “…are you on a ladder?”
You froze halfway up the records room ladder, balancing a storage box against your hip, and looked down to find him standing below you with the exact expression a man might wear upon discovering a raccoon in his office.
The ladder wobbled violently; you tightened your grip instantly, and Mark closed his eyes for one long suffering second.
“You've got to be kidding me.”
“I’m fine.” You said, though the breathless little laugh that followed didn’t make you sound very convincing.
“You are visibly not fine.” He added.
“I do this all the time,” you reasured, but the words came out too soft, like you were comforting yourself more than him.
“You shouldn’t admit that out loud.”
You scowled down at him. “You’re weirdly bossy for someone who isn’t my supervisor.”
“And you’re weirdly committed to workplace injuries.”
Your soul left your body as the box slipped, but Mark moved faster than your brain could process. One minute, the files were falling. The next, he caught the box against his chest with a sharp grunt while his hand shot out toward you, and before you could even process the danger of nearly falling, his palm closed around your ankle, firm and warm even through your tights, stealing the breath straight from your lungs.
The room went dead silent as you looked at each other, both of you frozen in sudden, dramatic stillness, neither one of you moving.
“Oh,” you said faintly. His hand loosened immediately, like he’d realized what he was doing.
“You were about to fall.” Something flickered across his face. It was not embarrassment, but something worse, awareness.
“I was.” Your thoughts jumbled wildly, heart thundering in your chest, skin prickling everywhere his hand had touched.
“You still might.” The air between you felt different now, stretched tight and trembling, as if every molecule in the room was waiting to see what would happen next.
“It’s possible.” You suddenly felt exposed, like he'd pulled back every layer of defense.
“You should come down.” A flush crept higher on your cheeks as you struggled to keep yourself steady, heat washing over you in a dizzying wave. In that moment, you could almost sense his pulse matching yours.
“You’re very close to my leg right now.” The silence felt thick, hushed, and you were certain Mark could see the commotion behind your eyes.
His gaze tethered you, sharp and questioning. You wondered if he felt it too—the silent, undeniable pull just beneath the surface.
Mark broke first. “Get off the ladder.”
You climbed down with all the grace of a newborn deer, which was to say, none at all, and the second your shoes touched the floor, one heel caught awkwardly against the tile.
Mark caught your elbow before gravity could finish humiliating you again, and for a breath, all you could do was stare at him while he stared back with the exhausted expression of a man slowly losing a battle inside himself.
“This cannot keep happening,” he muttered.
“Don’t think I’m doing it on purpose.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
You shouldn’t have noticed how close he was. You definitely shouldn’t have noticed how good he smelled: clean soap, coffee, and a hint of expensive cologne under all that courthouse fatigue. Most of all, you shouldn’t have noticed his hand still on your arm.
Unfortunately, your brain had become deeply unhelpful lately.
His fingers flexed once before he let go.
“Thank you,” you said quietly.
Mark nodded once. Then his gaze dropped to your face properly for the first time all morning. He was not distracted, not irritated, just... looking.
Your stomach fluttered with nervous anticipation.
There was something risky about being watched by someone who spent his life noticing people’s weaknesses. Mark Callan seemed to catch everything: your nervous habits, the way you tucked your hair behind your ear, how you pressed your lips together to hide a smile, and probably even your racing heart.
His gaze lingered briefly —his jaw flexed, and you caught the quick rise and fall of his chest before he refocused, looking almost as if he was fighting to contain his own expression.
It made you wonder, wildly and against your better judgment, if maybe you weren’t the only one struggling to keep your feelings at bay.
You suddenly became very aware of your heartbeat, your breathing, and his eyes that had not yet left yours.
“You missed a spot,” he said quietly.
Your brain short-circuited. “…What?”
He lifted one hand slowly toward your face, and you stopped breathing entirely. His thumb brushed softly beneath your lower lip, wiping away a tiny streak of blueberry jam from breakfast.
A rush of heat went through you so quickly it was embarrassing. Mark looked at the smear on his thumb, then at you, and suddenly the air between you felt too thick to breathe.
The records room door slammed open.
“You still alive in here—” Rita stopped dead.
You jerked backward so fast you nearly hit the filing cabinet.
Mark stepped away immediately, expression snapping back into professional neutrality with terrifying speed.
Rita’s eyes moved between both of you, then downward, then upward again.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh my God,” you whispered.
Mark picked up the box of files as if absolutely nothing had happened.
“Your intern needs safer hobbies,” he told Rita.
Then he walked out, leaving you standing there red-faced and internally combusting.
Rita waited exactly three seconds before shrieking.
You buried your face in your hands. “Don’t.”
“He touched your face.”
“It was jam.”
“He touched your face because of jam.”
“I’m quitting.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m moving to another state.”
Rita leaned against the desk, grinning like a delighted menace. “Honey, that man hasn’t flirted with anyone in this building in three years.”
Your hands slowly lowered.
“…What?”
“Oh yeah,” Rita said casually. “Ice king routine. Doesn’t date. Barely sleeps. Eats vending machine pretzels like a divorced father of two.”
For some reason, that made your chest ache.
“Why?”
Rita’s smile faded slightly. “Work mostly. He had a fiancée once, years ago. Didn’t end well.”
Something uncomfortable twisted low in your stomach.
You hated how quickly curiosity bloomed, hated it even more because beneath it was something softer, something far more dangerous.
Before you could ask another question, Rita pointed toward the doorway dramatically.
“Also,” she added, “he absolutely likes you.”
You made a strangled sound.
“He does not.”
“He touched your mouth.”
“There was jam!”
“Men don’t touch women like that because of jam.”
Your face burned hotter, and though you wanted to argue, wanted desperately to deny it, your stupid heart had already started doing something far more terrifying: hoping.
—𝜗𝜚—
You spent the next two days avoiding Mark Callan with the tactical precision of a fugitive, which would have been easier if the courthouse itself had not apparently decided the two of you were part of some deeply unfunny cosmic experiment.
Every hallway led to him, every elevator opened to him, and every innocent coffee run somehow ended with Mark standing six feet away, looking tired and devastatingly handsome while your nervous system collapsed like wet cardboard.
It was ruining your life, and worse, Rita had noticed.
“You’re spiraling,” She informed you Thursday morning.
“I am not spiraling.”
“You alphabetized sticky notes yesterday.”
“That was organizational.”
“You labeled your lunch.”
“It got stolen last week.”
“You wrote ‘Property of a woman on the edge.’”
You looked down at your yogurt. “That was emotionally honest.”
Rita snorted into her coffee.
You tried focusing on your transcription work instead.
Unfortunately, your mind was no help.
Every sentence turned into thoughts about Mark: the way his voice dropped lower when irritated, the faint shadows beneath his eyes, the rare moments where amusement slipped through before he buried it again, and the way he’d touched your face, almost like it surprised him too.
Which was ridiculous; you were reading too much into it. Men like Mark Callan did not look twice at women like you. He was composed, intelligent, and brutally competent. You once tripped over absolutely nothing while carrying soup.
These were different species of people.
“Hey.”
You looked up too fast. Mark stood in the doorway of records holding a legal folder, and your stomach jumped.
“Hi.” Very smooth, very normal, definitely not the voice of someone seconds away from cardiac arrest.
“I need the McAllister deposition transcripts.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.”
You stood up too quickly, your chair rolled backward, directly over the hem of your cardigan.
The cardigan yanked tight against your throat as the chair wheels locked, and you made a horrible choking noise.
Mark stared.
Rita physically had to turn away.
You untangled yourself, trying to act like this sort of thing happened to everyone.
“Here,” you squeaked, grabbing the wrong folder entirely and shoving it toward him.
Mark glanced down. “…This is a cafeteria inventory report.”
You closed your eyes. “Perfect,” You muttered. “Great. Love that for me.”
For one terrible second, silence hung between you. Then a sound escaped him, it was small, rough, and almost disbelieving.
Your eyes snapped upward. Mark had turned slightly away, one hand covering his mouth. His shoulders moved once.
“…Are you laughing at me?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You literally are.”
His composure cracked completely.
It wasn’t a big laugh, Mark didn’t seem like the type, but it was real, low, helpless, and startlingly warm.
And God, it changed him; the tension in his face eased, his eyes softened a little and for a second, he looked less like the intimidating deputy district attorney and more like someone who hadn’t let himself relax in a long time.
Your own breath caught, and suddenly, you understood something dangerous.
Mark Callan was beautiful when he smiled, absolutely breathtaking. The realization hit you so hard you forgot how to function.
Mark recovered first, clearing his throat and straightening again, but the damage was done. You had already seen it now and realized you never stood a chance.
“You’re enjoying this way too much,” You accused weakly.
“You handed me lunch inventory.”
“I’m under pressure.”
“We’re standing in records.”
“You’re very intimidating.”
That flicker of amusement returned briefly. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“You spilled coffee on me the first day we met.”
“That was an accident.”
“You nearly concussed yourself with a filing cabinet yesterday.”
“That was also an accident.”
“And you climbed unstable scaffolding.”
“It was temporarily unstable.”
Mark looked at you for a long moment. Then he shook his head once, like you exhausted him in some fundamental way.
“I’ll come back later for the transcripts.”
“No, wait— I can get them.”
“You seem one minor inconvenience away from a full systems failure.”
“That feels dramatic.”
“You’re holding the yogurt upside down.”
You looked down as blueberry yogurt slowly dripped onto your shoe.
“Oh, come on.”
Mark laughed again—actually laughed this time, quiet but unmistakable—and before you could stop yourself, you laughed too.
The sound seemed to startle both of you.
Something shifted in the room after that, softening at the edges, as if the space between you had become a little less careful and a little more familiar.
Then Mark looked at you again with that dangerous, steady focus, and just like that, the air changed.
Your laughter faded first, but his eyes stayed on yours a second too long, long enough for your pulse to stumble and the courthouse noise outside to feel suddenly, impossibly far away.
“You know,” he said quietly, “most people are nervous around prosecutors because we can ruin their lives.”
You swallowed hard. “And me?”
His gaze dropped briefly to the yogurt dripping sadly onto your shoe, then returned to your face.
“You look at me like you’re trying to outlast it.”
The words landed directly in your chest. Hard, because the worst part was that he wasn’t wrong. Before you could answer, a sharp voice cut through the hallway outside.
“CALLAN!”
Mark looked away first, jaw tightening slightly like he’d been pulled back into himself.
Assistant District Attorney Evelyn Price appeared around the corner with a case binder tucked against her chest. She stopped the second she saw you, her gaze flicking from your face to Mark’s, then back again.
Something in her expression shifted almost too subtly to catch, but neither surprise or recognition.
“Oh,” she said slowly.
Mark’s entire demeanor cooled by several degrees.
“I’m coming,” He told her.
Evelyn’s eyes lingered on you a second longer than necessary before she turned away.
Something uncomfortable twisted in your stomach when Mark glanced back at you once before leaving. He was not cold, not distant, just unreadable.
You watched him disappear down the hall beside Evelyn Price, both of them talking quietly about trial prep and witness scheduling. Professional, Effortless, like they belonged in the same world.
Rita appeared beside you silently.
“…You okay?”
You stared down at the yogurt on your shoe, which somehow felt less embarrassing than the ache blooming unexpectedly behind your ribs.
“Who’s Evelyn Price?”
Rita grimaced instantly.
“Oh boy.”
Your stomach dropped.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you should maybe not overthink it.” Rita said carefully
𝜗𝜚 objection, your honor! he’s insufferable! 𝜗𝜚 (dda!markcallanxclumsy!reader)
summary|| some love stories begin with a spark. this one, however, began with a spill. coffee stains across case files, in the courthouse, where softness is hidden behind manuscripts and closing arguments. one clumsy courthouse scribe and a sharp-eyed prosecutor create one giant mess of documents, pastries, and personal desire, and the terrifying realization that they’ve become suddenly become each other’s favorite part of the day. wc: 27k
warnings|| MDNI; 18+ content, slow-burn romance, romantic comedy, mild sexual content/fade-into-explicit romance, angst with a happy ending, workplace romance, recordsroom/courthouse setting, mutual pining, emotional repression, “ldiots in love” energy, grumpy x sunshine, forced proximity, yearning, tension & restraint, jealousy, hurt/comfort, protective!mark callan, soft domestic moments, late-night office scenes, courtroom gossip, coffee as a love language, touch-starved characters, stolen kisses, emotional vulnerability, praise & tenderness, fluff & angst balance, love confessions, emotional slow build, lots of banter, men written pathetically in love, falling in love through routine, “she falls first but he falls harder”, trauma & self-worth Issues, fear of being loved.
chapter 1: the people v. your dignity publish date: 5/22
chapter 2: the rumor mill finds you guilty publish date: 5/25
chapter 3: motion to dismiss your feelings publish date: 5/28
chapter 4: counsel for the defense has completely lost his mind publish date: 5/31
chapter 5: a brief recess for emotional catastrophe publish date: 6/3
Pairing: Benjamin Poindexter x Nun!Reader
Word Count: 12.7k
Warnings/tags: 18+ MINORS DNI, religious angst, some pretty intense sacrilege if you're Catholic, NunWithAPast!Reader, set during DDBA, but really he's closer in personality to the netflix version, sub!Dex, Domme!Reader, slow burn- as much as a one-shot can be a slow burn, banging in a church, oral F!receiving, finger sucking, Dex being a very good boy, dacryphilia, begging, light stalking, no beta we die like Father Lantam, also a first draft.
a/n: Can you believe this was meant to be a 5k throwaway project? Idk what happened. Anyway, I'm back in the fucking building again. This is the first fic I've posted on tumblr in about 10 years, and I'm going to try to keep it up! Hope y'all enjoy!
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A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of Poverty, Obedience, and Chastity.
The first night you met Benjamin Poindexter, you were alone, working late, preparing for your weekly Young Adult Bible Study, much to Mother Superior’s chagrin. She never liked the idea of you, a “free thinker” within St. Agnes, working to mold young minds. The problem was, you were the only one around willing to field the hard questions. Kids that age were challenging, all with valid questions and challenges to their faith that deserved answers. You weren’t afraid of that.
You were, however, a little afraid when you heard the chapel doors slamming from all the way in the back classroom. Before speaking to the newcomer, you cracked open the door of the classroom, peering through to the chapel to see him.
He was tall—towering, really—wearing a policeman’s uniform that fit awkwardly against his bulky frame. His eyes were wide, wild, searching. The way he clenched his fists, you could sense danger over him like a shroud. He walked forward through the pews with an irregular gait; it reminded you of a foal, freshly born and on new, shaking legs.
“Anyone here? I need… I need help.” His voice cracked on the admission.
In that moment, you realized that wild look wasn’t what you expected. It was desperation, pure and fervent in its need. You remember thinking, this is what I’m here for, to help those who need it most. It was enough to pull you out from behind the office door, to reveal yourself fully to him.
His reaction was immediate, stumbling forward to approach you, but he seemed to catch himself in the middle, as if realizing what he was doing. He took a shaking breath, swallowing before unclenching his fists and putting one hand over the other. He must have been military, easily settling into an ‘at ease’ stance, only keeping his hands in front instead of behind. As if he wanted to make sure you knew he was keeping his hands to himself. That you have nothing to fear from him.
“I’m looking for Sister Maggie. Do you know her? I need to talk to her,” he said, quieter, more even.
You could still see it in his eyes, though; the sweat beading in his hairline. He was trying his hardest to maintain composure in your presence, but it was like he was a puppet held together by burning string. Any moment that string would simply burn away, leaving him as nothing but a broken heap on the ground.
Sister Maggie was a familiar name, albeit one you hadn’t heard in a while. She was one of the more experienced nuns who had trained you when you were first assigned to St. Agnes. It had been a long time since you’d seen her, though. She’d left without much word.
“She’s not here,” you answered truthfully, and that seemed enough to burn whatever was left holding him up.
To his credit, the man tried to keep himself together, at first. Several emotions flit across his face, anger, fear, desolation, each more hopeless than the last. It hurt your heart to see. You found yourself wanting to reach out to him as he slowly sunk to his knees.
“Shit, I was really…” he whispered, barely more than a croak in the back of his throat.
You took a step forward, then another. There was a time when you weren’t so different from him. On your knees, ready to give up on everything, no hope in the world. Nowhere to escape. Nowhere, except here. As you got closer, it was like an itch buzzed just under your skin, a frenzied instinct to touch him. Get your hands on him.
Your fingers grazed the man’s cheek. There’s a scar there, rough and badly cared for when it was still fresh. His skin was warm, feverish, almost. Slightly damp with sweat. The beginnings of stubble caught against the pad of your thumb.
Startled by your touch, a breath hitched in the man. He looked up at you, wide-eyed, red-rimmed with unshed tears. His lips parted wordlessly as he hesitantly pressed a gloved hand against yours, urging you to stay.
The chapel was silent, wide as a yawning cave. The only sound was his breath, echoing across empty pews. His chest juddered with a wet inhale. He didn’t speak, but the look in his eyes was enough for you. He was an open book, just for you to read.
Please, his eyes said. Please help me.
A dark thought struck you then, something dangerous. A kind of thought you swore yourself away from the day you kneeled before the altar and pledged yourself in service of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You swallowed the thought down, refusing to let it seed and bear fruit in your mind.
“It’s alright; you’re safe here,” you said. “What’s your name?”
He didn’t let go of your hand. He kept it there, clutching it against his face like a lifeline. Your fingertips prickled with sensation you’d forgotten you could feel.
“Dex,” he breathed. “Call me Dex.”
“Dex,” you repeated with a nod, letting your index finger trace the shape of his jagged scar. He shivered under your touch. That close, you could get the scent of him: blood and metal. It didn’t scare you as much as it should have.
“What do you need?” You asked, barely above a whisper. It might as well have been a cannon in the chapel’s silence.
Dex’s hand closed over yours, squeezing your fingers. Your nerves were so frayed, so hyperaware, you could feel the roughness of every single groove that lined his glove.
“Absolution.”
You closed your eyes. His voice was so full of emotion, choking with it. That dangerous thought came back to you, revealing itself just a little more within your psyche. You should have pulled away from him, his warmth. You couldn’t help him the way he clearly needed.
Slowly, with great hesitation, you pulled your fingers from Dex’s grasp. He seemed to waver in the wake of your absence, swaying on his knees, no longer supported by your touch.
“I… I don’t have the authority to give that to you.” You tangled your fingers together in the rosary knotted to your belt; a distraction from the tingling under your skin. Father Patrick might still have been awake; he was a night owl. “Let me—”
You had turned away, thoughts on next steps to help the poor man on his knees, but you hadn’t taken more than a step before you had a vice-like grip on your arm. The iron hold stopped you, your words, dead in their tracks.
“No, wait,” Dex said in a rush. You turned back to him, and the expression you wore on your face must’ve been something like shock or alarm, because he immediately pulled his hands away, taking a step back. He didn’t go back to the parade rest as before, but he still kept his hands in plain view for you to see.
It made you wonder if he often scared people in his life, often enough to be so quick to try to seem non-threatening.
“I don’t care if you don’t have the authority or whatever.” Clearly not a Catholic, then. The thought almost made you smile. “Just… please don’t leave. Maybe we can talk?” He spoke so fast, as if he were expecting you to leave in the middle of it all.
Man, is by nature, sinful; from the moment Adam took a bite of that apple, or the moment Eve touched it at all, depending on who you ask. That first sin seeping through to stain every single human thereafter. While you’ve always been aware of this, the original corruption that you were born with, the last few years had been good to you. Your time at the convent, then at St. Agnes had almost made you forget the near-irresistible pull of earthly temptation. There, in that moment, with Benjamin Poindexter, the habit-shaped leash pulled taught.
Which sin would be worse: leaving a man in need of help, or knowingly entertaining a situation that could lead to damnation?
You took a breath, for courage. Instead of returning to your journey to Father Patrick, who you knew would be able to give Dex the absolution he clearly needed, you smiled at him. You sat in a pew and patted the space next to you.
“Alright. Tell me what you want to talk about,” you said.
The look of utter relief that crossed Dex’s features was nearly enough to make it all worth it. Whatever thing that held the rigid tension in his body was finally cut. His shoulders sagged as he settled next to you. As he did so, his knee gently grazed yours, something barely there, then immediately gone. You weren’t sure if he noticed it as he began to talk because that first thought reared it’s ugly head for a third time, fully formed and burying malevolent roots into your subconscious.
He looked so beautiful on his knees.
Poverty: Embracing a life of simplicity, where personal items belong to the community, detaching from material possessions to focus on God.
“How’s Mrs. Smithers?” You asked as Dex approached, squinting against the bright sun behind him.
Several weeks had passed since that first meeting in the chapel. Since then, you’d created a habit of meeting him a couple of times a week at a nearby park. Routine was important for him, and thankfully, routine was also an important part of dedicating one’s life in service to God. Routine leaves less room for sin. Or something. All you knew was that it was nice to spend a moment to relax in the sun three times a week.
“I think she’s starting to warm up to me. You were right about the quiche.” Dex sidled up next to you, sitting on the other end of the bench. He held a greasy bag out to you, which you took after only a brief hesitation.
He hadn’t touched you, not since that first night, and in the daylight, you were grateful. Without the touching, you could almost make yourself believe this was a normal situation, that your budding attachment to this man was something mundane and excusable. At night, however…
“Every time we have a potluck, she always eats at least three slices. Once I’m almost certain she put an entire thing in her purse. Mrs. Liston is still looking for her pie dish.” You dug into the bag, inhaling the oily scent of a bacon, egg, and cheese on a croissant.
It was a rare treat, a greasy little sandwich like that from a nearby bodega. Over at St. Agnes, food was made in bulk for the children and nuns alike in a cafeteria-style kitchen. Money was tight, always tight at St. Agnes; anything made outside of the kitchen was reserved for special occasions.
One bite in, and you already felt the delicate flakes of the croissant falling into your lap, grease from the bacon on your chin.
Being a person in the modern world, you had seen several advertisements and the like describe food as decadent. When a commercial or a magazine described a decadent food, it was a reference to its richness, the quality of the ingredients, and several other evocative phrases to convince possible customers the treat was worth its price tag. If one were to look in the dictionary for decadent, they would find references to moral corruption, hedonism, self-indulgence.
That’s how you felt as salt, and butter, and warmth melted across your tongue. On the edge of a precipice toward gluttony. You needed to stop; you hadn’t even properly thanked Dex for the gift, just taken it without a word and taken bite after bite, as if you couldn’t fit enough of it into your mouth.
By the time your hands were empty, you were practically out of breath, almost cold without the heat of the sandwich. As you woke from your food-induced fugue state, you looked to Dex, who stared at you wide-eyed and rapt.
Shame burned in your cheeks. You must’ve looked like a beast, just a few steps off from unhinging your jaw and swallowing the thing whole. A servant of God should not be so distracted by sensual pleasures. He came to you for help, and there you were, forgetting the world over a sandwich.
“Sorry,” you muttered, absently wiping your chin with the back of your hand, something else Mother Superior would chide you for if she were there. “Thank you for the treat, Dex.”
“You liked it?” His voice was small, almost shy, as he said it.
His tone woke a long-buried instinct in your mind. Back when hedonism and self-indulgence ruled your existence. Bodies upon bodies upon bodies in the throes of pleasure. You, taking your time, taking special care to learn their pleasures so you could inflict it upon them at your will. Always standing above them, benevolent or pitiless, depending on what they needed. Either suited you if it meant you could take what you wanted.
He wants to be good. He wants you to tell him so. He wants to be a good boy so bad, he would beg for it, he’d be on his hands and knees—
“Yes, it was very good,” you said, carefully avoiding the phrasing the dark parts within yourself wanted to use. “Thank you again, Dex.”
A smile, hesitant but genuine, twitched at Dex’s lips. Such a small compliment, but you could see it glowing from the inside out of him. Just like that first night, a tension eased away as he sagged into the bench. Dex was like that, constantly holding himself rigid, hypervigilant of the way he moved through the world, only relaxing when he finally received assurance that he was doing alright.
Warmth, different from the heat of the sandwich, or the searing nature of your previous thoughts, spread through your chest at the sight. Despite his past sins, despite the myriad of ways he had gone astray, moments like that reminded you he truly wanted to be a good man. That was why you were there: to help him back onto a path of righteousness. You smiled back at him.
“You like living at St. Agnes?” He asked, a question that mildly shocked you.
Thus far, your conversations had almost exclusively revolved around Dex. His past, his rage, his need to make up for what he’s done, relearning how to build positive relationships after what happened with Wilson Fisk and living in the hospital. Yes, he had been able to needle a few things out of you, hence the sandwich, but there had always been more pressing things to talk about. This was the first time he had asked you about your life so plainly.
“I do, working with the children is rewarding, and the quiet during contemplation is soothing.” You shrugged. “Of course, it has its challenges, but—”
“Challenges?” Dex leaned forward. “Tell me about them.”
You regarded Dex with slight suspicion. Awfully curious all of a sudden.
“If you wanted to practice your interpersonal skills, you could’ve just asked, you know,” you said with a light huff. “Remember what I said about open-ended questions. ‘Tell me about…’ doesn’t count.”
“I’m working on it. Mrs. Smithers doesn’t complain, though,” he replies easily, almost cheeky, which just makes that warmth inside you bloom farther.
“Mrs. Smithers only needs a quiche and a pet for her cat to win her over.” You slid your gaze to Dex. “Not everyone is so easy.”
“You’re not easy, Sister,” Dex said with sudden seriousness. His gaze on you was heavy, like a weight as the bout of playfulness slipped away. “We’ve been talking about me forever, and I wanna ask about you. That makes it fair.”
You took a breath, nodding. Over time, you had come to see that Dex had trouble identifying nuance in the world around him. Keeping track of actions and “keeping the scales balanced” seemed to be a big concern for him. To an extent, you could understand. For someone for whom selflessness doesn’t come naturally, it’s a good way to keep from seeming self-involved to others.
“You’re right, Dex. I’ve been so preoccupied with learning about you that I haven’t been very forthcoming about myself.” You could stand to be a little honest with him, in exchange for all the things he had told you.
But something inside you still tensed. Over those last weeks, Dex had come to depend on you for your moral guidance. You enjoyed that, it made you feel like you were doing something right in the world, but those thoughts that popped up about him from time to time— he didn’t need to know about that. Honesty, to an extent.
Dex was still looking at you expectantly, his hand tensing over the back of the bench.
“When I took my vows, I had to renounce everything I owned. The vow of poverty we take means that we cannot hold ownership over any material possessions. We share everything with everyone in the community.”
Dex nodded, that rapt expression returning to his face. He looked at you like a puzzle he was trying to solve, or a present he wanted to unravel, you weren’t quite sure. He was a smart man, he had to be to reach where he got in the FBI. Violence just happened to be the thing he excelled at.
“Go on,” he said.
“For the most part, I do like the way we all pool our resources. It’s very rare that anyone ever feels any lack. But…” you swallow. “Sometimes I miss having something to myself. Sharing everything also means that I don’t have much privacy. Anything in the prayer book I use is subject to be read or used by someone else because it doesn’t belong to me.” You bit your lip, fingers toying with your rosary. “Before I took my vows, I journaled a lot. I felt like I could do that, I could write whatever was filling up my mind, get out any scary or evil thoughts I had and it would stay in there, secret. Now, sometimes I feel my thoughts building, but there’s nowhere to put them. At least, nowhere I won’t worry it’ll be seen.”
The admission came out of you in a rush, leaving you feeling a little lighter for it. It was such a small thing, not big enough for you to mention in your weekly confessions, but somehow letting it out made you feel like you had taken your first breath of fresh air in years.
“That sounds hard, really hard,” Dex murmured. He’d told you about that phrase once. That, and others he had practiced with Dr. Mercer as he grew up. The level of sincerity he was able to muster in those words always shocked you, despite his issues with empathy.
“You’ve really got that one down,” you said back with a weak smile.
Dex was smiling at you again. A smile so wide that it made the scar on his cheek crinkle a little at the edge.
“I think I might actually mean it this time, Sister.”
You clutch your rosary tighter. Hard enough to hurt.
The rest of the day went by as normal. Dex and you parted ways after a small conversation about his day and his plans for the week, which seemed innocuous, though something in the back of your mind told you he was holding something back. You wanted to press, but time wouldn’t allow it that day. You needed to be back at St. Agnes to help serve lunch to the children.
At the end of the day, you wandered to your bedroom, your knees ached from the time you spent in prayer. Of course, you prayed every day, but these days any free time you had not dedicated to Dex or the church, or St. Agnes was spent in prayer. Praying to God to release you from the thoughts you had about your new charge, for the strength to help him selflessly, for him to triumph over his nature. You hoped it was enough.
You removed your veil, feeling a cool breeze on the back of your neck. Turning, you found your window slightly ajar. You didn’t remember leaving it that way. It’s possible one of the other nuns had opened it to air out the musty smell that seemed permanently attached to the walls. You closed the window, it was going to be cold that night.
After changing into your nightdress and going through your nightly routine, you laid your head on your pillow, only to feel something hard beneath. In the dark, with searching fingers, you found a book that was not there before. You turned the light back on with it in your hand, finding a plain black leather notebook. The cover was supple, luxurious in feel, but still austere in its way. You had your suspicions where it could have come from, why your window was open, and they were only confirmed when you opened the front cover. On it, in chicken-scratch handwriting was:
Just for you. — D
Obedience: Surrendering one’s personal will in faithful trust, listening with humility to God’s call as expressed through the community and its leaders, and seeking to follow His guidance with devotion and unity.
You looked both ways before you crossed the street, casually checking over your shoulder as you reached the sidewalk on the other side. No one from the church seemed to be watching. With one last casual glance around for wandering eyes, you opened the door and stole into Dex’s apartment building.
This was… wholly inappropriate, meeting a man alone in his apartment. However, you had been careful. You had taken a Vow of Obedience, which meant if one of the church leaders gave you orders, you must abide by them. But, if those leaders didn’t know enough to give you orders to avoid something, the Vow was still technically unbroken. What Father Patrick and Mother Superior didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
On Dex’s floor, you were sure to not only keep quiet, but also an eye on Mrs. Smithers’ door. She was a nosy one, and if she were to see you there, the rest of the parish would know about it in the blink on an eye. You softly knock on his door, eyes flicking between that and Mrs. Smithers’.
A faint click, and creak alerts you that Dex has opened the door, and you, eager to be out of sight of Mrs. Smithers’ front door, quickly move forward to enter.
Dex, apparently, was not ready for your sudden movement. Before you you could comprehend what was happening, you were making contact with smooth, heated skin.
He was not wearing a shirt. Your cheek, your mouth pressed into him. Smooth, plush skin layered over hard and well-worked muscle. Dex’s smell was still mostly the same: blood, metal, but now with an added sting of aftershave. This close, the smell surrounded you, enveloped you in the danger of it. The only reason he’d still smell like blood is if he wasn’t telling you the whole truth of what he’d been up to since your first meeting. In fact, that was why you were there in the first place.
You should have been angry, or at the very least afraid. Then again, you should have been afraid all the way back when Dex confessed to you how many people he had murdered. You weren’t, though. The way he looked at you that first night, you felt a bone-deep certainty that he was no threat to you. It was the same certainty you had when you decided to join the church, that you would find your calling there. In a way, you were starting to believe you had, but maybe not the way you expected.
You couldn’t remember the last time you had skin-to-skin contact with a man. Especially not a man you were having unclean thoughts about. The reaction in your body was immediate and utterly overwhelming. It was like his warmth completely leeched into you, filling your body with a wanton shiver. Just like the day he gave you that sandwich, the force in which your body craved more, more, MORE, stole your breath away.
Taste him, touch him, bite him, make him cry. He’d love it. He’d say “thank you” and ask for more.
“Sister?” Dex’s voice pulled you away from your thoughts. Enough for you to take a step back and look up to see his expression of confusion and concern.
At first, you were at a loss for words. Why had you come there? Your mind was reeling, completely stopped short of what you were supposed to be doing. Instead, you could only take in the sight of him. Low-slung sweatpants, so much bare skin. A dusting of blond fur over his chest and leading perilously down from his navel. You’d seen the suggestion of muscle under his clothes, the way he carried himself. In that moment, you could see it all on full display. You had felt it.
“I…” You breathe. Think, think! You closed your eyes against the onslaught of almost-sensation coursing through your body. Touch, but imagined, leaving your nerves prickling and reaching for more. Another breath to clear your mind. “I’ll let you get dressed first, then we can talk.”
It was the best strategy you could think of. Get space from Dex and a moment alone to gather yourself, remind yourself that you’re more than a beast in heat.
Dex nodded with hesitation, replying, “Sure,” before disappearing into what you assume was his bedroom.
Without him so close, you were finally able to breathe normally again and take in your surroundings. Much like your own quarters at St. Agnes, his home was as austere as it was tidy. No pictures, very little decoration aside from necessary furniture. Very beige.
You’re just settling into one of the two seats at his small kitchen table when Dex reappears in a beater that seemed to cling to all the things you were hoping a shirt would hide. It’s enough, though, for you to keep your focus.
“You want some coffee, Sister?” He asked, unsure. “I don’t have any creamer, or anything like that, but—”
You cut him off. “Was it you that killed all those AVTF agents at the hospital yesterday?” Remembering the reason why you’d come, and how easy it had been for all of it to fly out the window by the mere sight of bared skin made something in your stomach sour.
Dex was quiet for a long time, something hardening in his eyes, even as he avoided your gaze. He flexes one of his wrists, rolls his hand in a circle. You let him stew in whatever he was feeling in the moment, let him take his time to answer, even though you yourself were still reeling between two violently conflicting emotions.
“They’re bad guys, Sister,” he finally said. “They’re taking good people off the streets and making them scared. And God gave me this gift, remember you said that? We talked about him giving me opportunities to use it for good.”
You had to fight not to rub your temples. This was your own fault, to try and help someone with issues you were far from qualified to handle. You thought — maybe pride was more your sin than gluttony or lust. Or maybe it was all three. Maybe you were more corrupted than you thought. You had thoughts that maybe Dex had been brought to you as a test, and that still felt right, but maybe not the kind of test you’d initially thought. Maybe you’d already failed.
“You can’t kill people, Dex. Even if they’re bad guys, even if they’re scaring good people. It’s not up to you to decide who lives and who dies.”
Dex slammed his fists onto his counter, the gunshot of a sound making you jump despite yourself. “Then why did He make me like this?” He flicked his wrist.
There was a sound, a blur too fast to see as a fork bounces from wall, to ceiling, and then down into the wood of the table directly in front of you. You did not flinch. When you looked at Dex, you could see a shadow over his face, nearly identical to the one that weighed him down when you first met.
You stood, approaching him slowly. His brow was creased with anguish, clutching the edges of his counter so tight that his arms shook.
“Take a breath, Dex, please,” you murmured. Together, as his hazel eyes met yours, you took one breath in, counted to three, then exhaled. At the very least, it stopped the shaking enough for you to touch his hand.
“Have you considered God is presenting you opportunities to overcome your urge to hurt?” You asked gently. Your hand slides up the back of his, fingers circling his wrist to feel the flutter of his pulse. Fast, but slowing in degrees.
Dex swallowed thickly, eyes glossy. He did not move away from you, in fact, you could feel him leaning closer, so slowly it was almost impossible to notice. You weren’t even sure if he was doing it consciously.
“Why does it feel so good to hurt them? Why would He make me feel like that?” Dex asked, barely above a whisper.
“There are a lot of things that feel good that we should stay away from.” And you knew that more than most. Yet there you still were, letting a man who just a few minutes ago nearly made your knees buckle with the force of lust you felt lean his weight onto you, forehead on your shoulder.
“I have to balance the scales, Sister,” he croaked. “They made me kill so many good people. I have to make it even.”
“That’s not your job, Dex.”
“It is,” he countered. “I feel it the same way you said you felt it when you decided to go to the church. Don’t you all always say He works in mysterious ways? Maybe He made an exception for me.”
You clutched his wrist a little harder, felt his muscles shift under his skin. This was going too far, it had been too far, long before that moment. Dex was killing people, was going to continue killing people. You needed to tell someone, before he started killing again.
Who would you tell, though? If you went to the police, he would go right back to Rikers, where he would most assuredly die. If you did so, would that be as good as killing him? Maybe you wouldn’t be holding the knife, but it certainly felt like sending him back there would ultimately be the same thing. But if you didn’t tell anyone and Dex killed someone else, that blood would be on your hands as well.
Lord God almighty, you prayed, I see now that this was a test I failed. Please do not let more die because of my weakness. Please help me help this man who has been led astray in pursuit of your forgiveness. Amen.
Slowly, you pulled away from Dex, and the way his face fell made your heart squeeze painfully. He looked lost, afraid.
“Wait—” he grabbed your arm, a little too tight. “Sister, are you leaving me? You can’t, please—”
A scream, coming from outside stopped Dex from continuing. He turned his head to listen, and you both heard another faint cry. The change in him was instantaneous. His posture straightened, tension like a rod in his spine as his eyes hardened. Gone was the man begging for you to stay, now in front of you stood the one who killed and killed and killed.
“Stay here,” Dex muttered and pulled away too fast for you to catch him. Absently, he grabbed several forks from his drawer before swiftly retreating to his bedroom. By the time you followed him in, Dex had already pulled on a mask and had deftly climbed out the window.
With your heart in your throat, you stuck your head out the window to find someone unfamiliar on the ground, curled into a ball. He was surrounded by men wearing spray painted skulls on their bulletproof vests. One had a gun trained on the man on the ground.
You watched, helpless as Dex silently descended from the fire escape, flexible and confident. The metal didn’t even squeal under his weight.
“We didn’t have to do this, you know,” one of the AVTF said to the cowering man below him. “If you’d just told us where your little friend is, we’d leave you alone, but now…” you could hear the sound of the gun cocking all the way from the window.
The gun fired, a blast that echoed deafeningly through the alleyway. You threw yourself away from the window, gripped by a primal fear of watching someone die. Adrenaline zoomed in your veins. Your hands wouldn’t stop shaking as cold sweat pushed its way through your pores.
At first, you’re transported back to the kitchen at St. Agnes, at the height of lunch hour. A cacophony of sound, cutlery squealing, slicing, stabbing through meat and veg. There’s a bang, just like the echoing noise of a rubber ball thrown against the wall too hard. You would chide them for that, but no real punishments would be doled out. Just fun and and games. No one hurt. No one—
You flinched with each successive blast, covering your ears as cold fear gripped your insides. You had to check on the children. It was your job to make sure they were safe. BANG! BANG! BANG!
But there’s a whistle, too. A singing of metal through the air. Cutlery and meat. An aborted cry. There was a part of you that wanted to stay rooted right to your spot, unwilling to bear witness to the violence you knew would greet you outside that window. But another, stronger part needed to see. Needed to make sure Dex was okay.
As the noises died down, you approached the window on wobbling knees.
Please, God, let him be okay. Please, please, please let him live. Amen.
Peering down the alley, there was a heap of bodies, all dressed in black with those painted skulls. The man who had been on the ground was limping away, and Dex stood in the middle, chest rising and falling with exertion. Evidence of what he’d done was all over him. Blood, on his face, the white beater, his bare arms, his sweatpants. No tears, no limping. He seemed completely fine. In fact, after waiving the victim off, he just casually picked up the forks he’d used and made his way back up the fire escape.
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill. Though shalt not kill. Thou shalt not—
You backed away as Dex entered through the window, casually wiping the blood off his forks and onto his pants. With his mask on, he looked like something out of a horror movie, and for the first time since you’ve known him, you were afraid of him. Afraid of the things he could do.
Tossing the forks onto a nearby dresser, Dex finally looked at you. At first, all you saw was that hard gaze, a killer’s eyes. You took a stumbling step back, feeling as if your legs were jelly.
Instantly, Dex threw off his mask, and there he was again. The man you knew, the one trying desperately to be better in a world that kept asking him to commit unspeakable violence. His hands were in front of him, open and beseeching, a reminder that he did not intend to hurt you. He would never hurt you.
“Please, hear me out,” he was saying. “Can’t you see? It was divine timing. He wants me to help people. This is how He wants me to atone.”
Slowly, step by step, Dex moved forward, and you were rooted to the spot. What did this mean? You had watched a man kill, breaking an inviolable law, both legally and spiritually. You had to tell someone; you had to do something about it.
He took your hand. Blood smeared against your skin. You smelled him. Blood and metal and aftershave. He dropped to his knees, pressing his cheek into your stomach. You let him, let his warmth seep back into you to calm your shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into the softest part of you, hands fisted in your skirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me.”
Thou shalt not kill. Was it the heat of his skin that you were feeling? Or blood soaking into your clothes? That man would’ve died. The gun was pointed at his head. They were going to kill him. Dex saved him. Thou shalt not kill. Five men were dead. Five men who were also going to murder someone who could not fight back. Thou shalt not kill.
God’s timing was always right. He worked in mysterious ways. You must tell someone. You must obey the law as it pertains to the Code. You Vowed to do so.
He told you God gave him a gift, called him to action to help those who could not help themselves. God’s timing was always right. Would He call someone to kill? Is that possible? He worked in mysterious ways. Humans were not meant to comprehend His will.
You brought a hand up, fingers weaving into Dex’s hair. In just the few minutes he was fighting, sweat had already beaded into his scalp. He was wet all over. The strands were delicate, soft. He sighed into you shakily.
The first time you tried to speak, nothing came out. Your voice caught somewhere between your chest and your throat. You swallowed, breathed.
“I’m not going anywhere,” you whispered. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Chastity: Committing to a life of consecrated celibacy, offering one’s whole heart and body to God, and relinquishing exclusive human relationships and sexual indulgences.
The spray of the tub faucet was slow to warm against your outstretched hand. Dex was sitting on his bed, looking more than a little like a child in trouble as he stared at you through the door. There were dark stains in your dress, but you were confident in your ability to explain it away as grease stains from working in the kitchen.
Once it reached a comfortable temperature, you gestured for Dex to approach. The floor creaked under him as he did so. After witnessing his silent descent down the fire escape, you knew he was being deliberate. Trying not to scare you away.
“Your clothes,” you said. “Give them to me; I’ll wash them.”
Dex nodded wordlessly, first pulling off his stained shirt. You took it from him, folding it neatly on the bathroom counter. He hesitated, hands on the waistband of his sweats. You trained your gaze on his face, watching him unblinkingly with one hand out. His Adam’s apple bobbed once, and you don’t miss the widening of his pupils just before he silently pulled them down. You only broke your gaze to nod to the tub and fold his sweatpants the same way you had his shirt.
The water sloshed behind you with Dex’s descent. You took a washcloth from a nearby cabinet. Turning to face him once more, you’re struck by the amount of space he takes. The tub was much too small for him, forcing Dex to sit with his knees up and ankles crossed. You smiled, despite yourself. It would be funny if not for all the red on him.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, you dipped the washcloth in the water, and Dex watched with wide eyes as you pressed it to his shoulder.
The blood hadn’t had much time to settle into his skin, it was easy to clean away. As the looped fiber of the washcloth passed over his bicep, his forearm, his skin pebbled, fine blond hairs standing at attention under your ministrations.
Dex’s breath had shallowed, almost imperceptibly, by the time you brought the cloth to his back. You weren’t sure how it got there, but blood had found its way to the back of his neck, droplets meandering down, following the path of his spine.
There was a scar there, too, a long one stretching all the way down his back. You remembered Dex telling you the story, Wilson Fisk had broken his back, and the hospital had replaced the bones in his spine with steel. Then, they proceeded to give him a complicated cocktail of drugs to keep him drooling in art therapy. Anger was a sin deadly, but there were times, when you thought about the Fisks, that you burned. It was a rage that kept you awake at night. The things they’d done to him. Unforgivable.
You traced the ridges of that scar, much cleaner than the one on his cheek, but no groove that perfectly hugged the shape of your finger. His muscles shifted with your touch, Dex letting out a short breath. He had gone rigid under your attention. His hands clutched hard at his knees. His skin was cool to the touch, smooth, coated in gooseflesh.
“Sister—” he breathed.
Your answer came before you had a chance to think. As if the spirit of yourself from before your Vows had possessed you.
“Am I hurting you?” You knew you weren’t. You knew pain, and Dex’s shaking breath was not one of suffering. Not the painful kind of suffering, at least.
“No,” Dex answered with great effort, then let out a hysteric bark of a laugh. “No, not at all, Sister.”
With a small smile, you withdrew your hand, taking up the washcloth once more. Sweat prickled at the back of your neck, under your veil. Suddenly his compact bathroom felt almost stifling. You took his chin into your other hand, tilting his head to look up at you. Most of the blood was splattered against his front. Up his neck, onto his clavicle, then a few mushed stains where it had soaked straight through his shirt.
Dex was malleable under your touch, easily moving wherever you directed him. You pretended not to notice his cock, hard and steadily leaking under the water. Meeting his eyes, his irises were little more than thin lines of color around his blown pupils.
His lips parted, letting out a soft noise as you brought the washcloth to his neck. You followed the sharp line of his jaw, down to his pulse-point, and to the dip in his clavicle. All the while, he looked at you with a glassy sheen to his eyes, his breathing steadily increasing.
You had barely done anything and already he was putty in your hands. It made your mouth dry, your hands tremble. You’d heard this man murder five people just minutes ago, and he still looked at you like he was made to serve you.
Maybe he is. Maybe God made him a weapon for you to wield.
You would never use him the way the Fisks did, to murder innocents who threatened their criminal empire. You would only bid him to help those who needed it most. Dex would listen. He would do as you say. In exchange, you would keep him good, keep him true. You passed the washcloth down his chest.
“Fuck,” he whimpered. His hips shift under the water.
Touch him. Make him beg. Make him cry. Touch him touch him touch him touchhimthouchhimtouchhimtouchhim—
No, not like that. Not that way.
You dropped the washcloth back into the water, slotted your index finger in that jagged scar on his cheek.
“Benjamin.” His eyes cleared faintly at the sound of his first name. “I see now what you meant when you said that was what you were made to do.”
Dex leans into your hand, brows creasing. It was a look of hope, of gratitude.
“I won’t report you, and I won’t leave you either.” You took his other cheek into your other hand to make him look at you fully. “I just need you to promise me three things.”
Slowly, trembling, he nodded.
“First, what you’re doing is ultimately a service to the community. A commitment to defending the weak and vulnerable. When you take violent action, you will do so with that in mind.” The bathroom was so silent that your voice seemed to echo. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“Second, you must obey me. If I tell you not to kill someone, you will not.”
“Yes.”
You swallowed, feeling a lump in your throat. A tear slipped from Dex’s eye that you gently swiped away. The way he looked at you, with such utter trust and total devotion. It was a taste of divinity upon your searching tongue. A power to be regarded with as much honor and integrity as he would dedicate to you.
“And finally,” you said, your voice wavering. “You need to take care of yourself, too. You, your body, must be treated with respect. You will not take unnecessary risks, and if you are injured, you will come to me.”
Dex’s final “yes” was little more than a broken exclaim, but it was enough. You pressed your lips to his forehead, a lingering kiss to seal his oaths.
“Thank you, Benjamin,” you hummed into his skin.
With promises made, you left Dex’s apartment before you did something else unforgivable. What had you done? His blood-soaked clothes were in your arms, and you had asked him to make promises as if you were—what? You couldn’t bear to think about it.
Dex was on your mind the rest of the day. Watching his clothes tumble in the wash, you thought of the pink tinge in his bathwater as he let you maneuver him as you pleased. The evidence of his want rising from the water, leaking pearlescent.
As you helped prepare dinner for the children, you thought about the bodega sandwich. How eagerly you devoured it, how much you wanted to devour him. The pull was almost physical, calling you to return, to finish what you’d started earlier.
Your mind was like a highlight reel of all those little moments, no matter what task you were completing. Soft skin, hard muscle, a crooked and hesitant smile, jagged scar perfectly shaped to your finger, glassy eyes, letting go, panting, softly keening.
He wants it. He wants you. He wishes you touched him. He probably touched himself as soon as you left. He rut into his hand with that washcloth stuffed in his mouth. He came with the taste of your touch and someone else’s blood on his tongue—
“Sister?” You were jarred out of your rapidly escalating thoughts by one of the other nuns looking at you, concerned.
You looked down, finding a knife in your hand and a carrot still uncut. How long had you been standing there, salivating and pulsing at the thought of Dex touching himself?
“Are you alright? You seem… distracted,” she said with a mouth quirked worriedly. “I don’t want to trouble you, but the others have been talking. Everyone’s starting to get worried about you. Is something wrong?”
Yes. I made a man swear obedience to me to assuage my own guilt while he murders. My thoughts of him are impure, and every time I see him, I get closer to succumbing to temptation. I’m losing my way, I’m becoming the person I used to be, the kind of person I tried so hard to escape from.
You said none of that. Instead, you placed the knife back on the cutting board. You smiled at the other nun, though you were sure it wasn’t very convincing.
“Everything is fine. I’ve just been feeling under the weather. Maybe I should rest.”
“Maybe you should,” she said, unsure. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” you muttered. “Just rest, I think.”
You didn’t wait for her reply, just breezed out of the kitchen in search of your room as the exhaustion of the day seeped deep into your bones.
Even in your dreams, you did not escape Dex. It was not quite linear, no true story to make sense of. Just disjointed sensation that burned under your skin. Salt and blood on skin, throbbing, rolling, thrusting. Open mouth, gasping. A slash of a smile, tongue reaching out, tasting. Clenching rhythm, growing stronger with every roll.
Hazel eyes, peering up. Bacon grease on his chin. No, not grease, but shining wet.
“Delicious, Sister. Thank you.” He said, breathless, grateful. So close, just a little more, such a good boy, Dex. Please, Lord, please. Almost. Dipping low, tongue parting your—
You woke, deep in the night with feverish skin, shaking. Your thighs were wet, soaking. Every single frayed nerve sitting atop a precipice. You pulse between your legs. Just a little more, just a touch in that slick place in exchange for satisfaction. It would have been easy, your body knew what to do, exactly what it wanted. Rutting animal friction for animal pleasure.
You couldn’t control the sound that whimpered from your throat as your fingers grazed your pubic bone. Barely anything, not a real touch that would break everything. But you might as well have, for the way your clit throbs with ravenous and neglected insistence. So long, it had been so long and you had been so good. God forgave those who asked.
Humans were fallible, corrupted. Man was born sinful in nature, prone to mistakes with an affinity toward evil. Dex was only human. You were only human. Your fingers dipped under the waistband of your panties.
“Oh my God.” Your spine arched without conscious thought, urging you just that little inch lower. Almost there. Fuck, just barely a touch and it would be enough. A little more. It would be so easy.
The sound of a nearby car alarm jarred you from your thoughts, like a bucket of cold water dumped unceremoniously over your lascivious trance. You pulled your hand away from yourself as if burned, panting. You stumbled out of bed with unsteady legs. You needed to get out of that room, somewhere, anywhere else. You barely had enough thought to grab your rosary from the bedside table before wobbling your way out.
The cool air in the chapel was like a balm for your overheated skin. Relief, finally. You look up, peering at the crucifix rising high above the altar. The injured and suffering gaze of Jesus avoids you, weak and cast down. You didn’t deserve his gaze. You, who had broken two of your three solemn Vows. You fell to your knees, clutching the miniaturized version affixed to your rosary hard enough for a well-deserved bite of pain.
“I’m so sorry. I failed You in almost every way possible. You gave me so many opportunities to overcome my base nature, and I turned away every time.” Tears spilled freely. You pressed your forehead to the altar, on the ground, where you belonged. “Please, Father, forgive me. Please, forgive me.” Your voice was hollow and shaking. You felt scooped out. Like someone had opened your ribcage and taken your heart into a fist to squeeze out every last bit of vitality you had to offer.
“Sister.” A voice, soft and gravel-rough, came from behind you.
No, not then. Not when you were at your weakest. You turned, and like an apparition from your sweetest dreams and worst nightmares, Dex was there.
He stood, holding the open door of the chapel. A slash of moonlight on him like a blue spotlight. The door fell closed behind him as he approached. You were too weak for this. With every step, the deepest, darkest parts of you called out to him. You were indecent, just a thin white nightdress and no veil.
Touch me, taste me, swear to me. Kneel. Beg for me.
You couldn’t tell him he shouldn’t be there, though you wanted to. The church was always open to any who seek refuge. So, you stayed silent in his approach, shifting to watch him. He kept his hands open and in front for you to watch as he kneeled at the bottom of the steps to the altar. He made no move to get any closer.
“What are you doing here, Dex?” You could not keep the broken and weary shake from your voice.
It took him a while to answer, you could see the conflict written over his face. Was he going to try to lie to you? Maybe it would make things easier if he did. If he lied, you could banish him away for it, hide and pretend you hadn’t violated nearly every rule you’d set for yourself.
No. You’d never do that to him. You’d made many mistakes in your time with him, but to abandon him would be unconscionable. If you did, the eternal suffering that awaited you after your death would be the least you deserved.
“I saw you,” he finally admitted. “When you were sleeping, you said my name.”
You’d had your suspicions, since receiving the journal, that Dex had been watching you. Keeping an eye out in the spaces you couldn’t see, couldn’t perceive. Sometimes you’d had this sensation under your skin, an awareness of a pair of eyes keeping track.
If you were being honest with yourself, it had flattered you. You had so little privacy already at St. Agnes, and if he was watching you, it meant he wouldn’t be spying on someone else who would be afraid. With the exception of your unclean thoughts, there was nothing you wished to hide from him. Those had stayed in the journal, and you trusted Dex to let you have that for yourself.
“I did,” you whispered. “I shouldn’t—”
“You were beautiful.” When had he gotten so close? Dex had advanced a step or two up the altar, close enough to touch. His hand, on the carpet, centimeters from your bare ankle. You could feel his heat like the shadow of a touch. Your skin pebbled with anticipation. “Sister, you’ve helped me so much; let me help you too.”
The chapel was still, silent. Not even a groaning from the wind. It was as if all of New York City, the whole world held its breath as Dex’s rough hand made contact with your ankle. You were so attuned to him, you could almost feel the whorls of his fingerprints. Every callus made contact with a reaching nerve, sending white-hot fire through you.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dex continued. “I know He sent you to me, to keep me good, to keep me straight.” His hand caressed up your calf. Soft. So, so soft. Your heart sped, your knees fell open in inches. “But I think He sent me to you, too.”
Dex pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, and you couldn’t stop yourself from sighing. The habit-shaped leash frayed, holding on by a quickly diminishing thread. He pressed another kiss to your inner thigh, barely an inch from the first, but his other hand took your other calf and gently urged your legs wider. More room for his advance. His gaze was dark and heady on you. You shivered, nipples peaking under your nightdress.
“Dex—” you beseeched breathlessly. You could feel eyes on you, pressing like a weight. It wasn’t Dex’s wanton gaze. It was powerful, all-knowing. The ceiling of the chapel curved over you, an impossibly large space. God was watching. He could see you, desecrating this Holy altar with your depravity. Dex passed his tongue over your skin in an open-mouthed kiss, and your eyes rolled with a shaking inhale.
“I think He sent me to reward you. To give you what you deserve for all the time you spent serving Him, and for leading me to what I was meant to do.”
He was centimeters from your core. Dex’s breath fanned hot over where you were wettest. You throbbed for him, you clenched in anticipation of a thick intrusion. The leash creaks in your mind. God was watching, holding the Earth still until you overcame or yielded.
And suddenly, Dex pulled away, leaving you reeling. Why did he stop? Why were you suddenly so cold? Your thoughts jumbled and zoomed a mile a minute, refusing to organize into anything that makes sense. What you could identify, however, was a simmering indignation rising unpleasantly in your belly.
How dare he stop.
“Sister,” Dex said with shining, glassy eyes. His tongue swiped over his lower lip before croaking, “Please.”
The leash snapped. Let Him watch, the old pervert.
You leaned forward with speed that surprised even you, and your fingers found their place on the back of his head, pulling at his fine blond hair. His breath caught in his chest, going rigid, just as he did in the tub. Moonlight filtered through the stained-glass windows behind you, leaving a spotlight over his bared neck. You could see the flush creeping up his skin. You wanted to sink your teeth into him until he cried.
“I don’t remember telling you to stop,” you said lowly, dangerously. Dex’s Adam’s apple bobbed enticingly. “Finish what you started.”
His mouth fell open in a soft keen as he nodded eagerly. “Yes, Sister, yes,” he sighed breathlessly, beautifully. “I wanna taste you, I’ll make you feel so good, please, please…”
You released Dex to his work, and his mouth was back on your thigh. Moments ago, he was tentative, slow, giving you an opportunity to stop him, you realized. Now, with your permission, your demand, he feverishly sucked at your skin as if a man starved. Every pass of his tongue had an accompanying groan.
Clumsy hands reached for your panties, pulling them away, dropping them somewhere. You couldn’t be bothered to wonder where, because Dex was mouthing eagerly above your slit.
As his tongue finally parted your folds, grazed your clit, maybe you saw God, maybe you didn’t. Regardless, you felt something that could only be described as true sanctity. As he drank from you, you were holy, providing sustenance to a supplicant in need. Your body responded in kind, coating his tongue as a reward for his service.
Dex’s tongue circled, gentle upon your sensitive and needy bundle of nerves. Despite his bruising grip on the backs of your thighs, he was careful with you, reverent. Distantly, you could see his hips working at the steps of the altar, a desperate bid to rid himself of the building pressure in his cock. You shuddered at the thought, crying out, and he stuttered under you as if in response.
Your body tensed again and again, as a rising tide rose under your skin. Dex’s lips closed over your clit and sucked. You called out his name, echoing in the empty chapel. The build to that space you were in your body when you were dreaming was rapid. After so long without being touched, you were sensitive, as if your body was eager, greedy for release.
Close, so close. Your fingers found purchase in Dex’s hair, and you kept him still as you ground into his mouth.
“Yes, yes…” you found yourself saying, breathlessly, mindlessly, driven by a primeval instinct to reach that peak. “Good boy, almost there. I’m almost there, baby. Just a little more.”
The sound Dex made in response was broken and needy.
“Please, Sister,” he begged fervently, desperate. “Show me, please. I wanna see, wanna make you feel good. Fuck, I need it. Oh my God, please.” He was half-muffled, half unintelligible, pressed between your legs as he was.
You were right. Dex was beautiful when he begged. The whine in his voice, the pure, unadulterated commitment to your desire. Oh, fuck. Oh, God. He sucked again, your spine arched.
“Right there, baby. Don’t stop—don’t stop—”
Your toes dipped over the edge of a towering cliff, growing higher, higher. Your nails dug into Dex’s scalp as every individual muscle in your body bears down to focus on the singular point of rising sensation between your legs.
Your lungs froze, breath stopped in your throat. It was right there. There, there, please, theretheretheretherethere—
“Oh.”
Sanctity. Rapture. You convulsed with it. It spread its warmth from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. Your body belonged to you, but in that moment, you belonged to your shaking, sobbing, clenching body. You were a temple, hallowed and sacrosanct, meant for exactly. This.
A—fucking—men.
As all things must, the sensation fades. It should have left you languid, satisfied. Flexible bones melting into the floor.
However.
As Dex caught your gaze, lifting himself from your core, his chin glistened. He watched you with half-lidded, hazy eyes, panting like he’d run a mile. His lips quirked up in a hesitant, hopeful smile. Had he done well? Was he still a good boy? You could read it all over him.
He’d never been so beautiful. And you had never been so ravenous.
“Dex, come here,” you beckoned him with a curl of your finger.
Dex silently moved forward on hands and knees, climbing over you. With each inch approached, you let the tips of your fingers graze his fever-hot skin. His cheek, down the lines of his jugular, you could even feel it straight through his shirt. He must’ve been red all over.
“Did—“ he started.
“Shh…” you hush him with lips close enough to touch his. You let him lean forward, try to capture you in a kiss before pulling back at the last moment. Instead, before he’s able to feel too bereft at the loss, you allow yourself an indulgence.
Tongue out, you tasted yourself on his lips, his chin. The heady taste of his skin mixed with your own climax coaxed a sigh of pleasure from you as Dex’s breath froze- only to stutter right back to life as your hand reached its destination.
“You poor thing,” you cooed, pressing the heel of your hand into the twitching bulge in his pants. Hard as steel and throbbing. How long had he neglected himself? The thought made your mouth water.
“Oh fuck—” Dex’s voice caught as he pressed hard into the pressure of your touch. His arms shook, suddenly a struggle to keep himself upright.
“This probably hurts, doesn’t it, baby?” You stroked along his full length through layers of fabric, but Dex didn’t seem to care. He just nodded mindlessly, with hips stuttering in rhythm to your hand.
The urgency in which Dex moved against you, he would come just like that, wouldn’t he? He hadn’t asked, hadn’t indicated a want for more. Just you, the suggestion of your touch. He let out a high little whimper. Close, already.
“Sister,” he sighed, though his body did not stop. He pressed harder against you. “If you keep doing that…”
You removed your hand, reveling in the aborted grunt from the back of his throat as Dex clenched his teeth. His whole body seemed to lock up, reeling from the loss of you. You smiled, pressing a kiss under his ear just to feel him shiver.
“How long have you been like this?” You asked innocuously. He did not answer immediately, just panting against the bared skin of your neck. “Dex, answer me.”
“Since—” he swallowed. “Since earlier. In the bath.”
“That’s a very long time.” You let your lips graze along the shape of his scar. “Did you want to touch yourself?”
“Yes.” Dex was shaking again as you took the lobe of his ear between your teeth. Sensitive all over, he was.
So he hadn’t touched himself. Though he wanted to, oh, did he want to. That much was apparent from what you could feel under his jeans. What a sweet boy, keeping his hands off himself. Just how far would he go, if you asked?
“But you didn’t. Why?”
“You didn’t…” he trailed off, eyebrows twitching together in thought. “I didn’t think you wanted me thinking of you like that.”
Oh, he wanted your permission. The thought had you melting, dripping all over again. Something inside clenched deliciously. You graze your lips against the shell of his ear, petal-soft.
“If I told you to go home right now, to keep your hands off yourself forever, would you do it?” You knew the answer; you both did. You just wanted to hear him say it. The unfurling darkness you’d kept inside for years salivated for it.
“Yes, Sister” he whimpered, despite the twitch in his hips. Your skin prickled. “I’d never touch myself again. I wouldn’t. Not ‘til you told me to. I promise.”
Hearing him say it aloud, the words coursed through your veins like dominance. It tasted like power, like godliness. He’d worship at your feet, give you your pleasure, taking nothing for himself. And he’d thank you for it. You were so fucking wet.
“That’s the right fucking answer,” you said and surged forward.
Your lips crashed into Dex’s in a vicious kiss. Teeth, tongue, and hunger. You swallowed every sigh, every sound he gave you like they were little wordless prayers. He would take what you gave him and be happy for it, but that didn’t stop him from hoping for your benevolence. A loving touch, not because he needed a reward, but simply because it was your choice to bestow upon him. You sucked on his tongue, tasting your combined essence, and Dex keened.
You pulled back, but not before biting his lip hard enough to taste blood welling to the surface. Dex was ruined, hair mussed and clothes rumpled, a stripe of red across his mouth, but his heavy-lidded smile told you he was exactly where he wanted to be. He touched his tongue to the blood and folded his lip over his teeth to suck it away with the same pleasure he took from tasting you. You wanted to bite him all over, just to see if he’d lap that up, too.
“Take off your clothes,” you ordered with a smile. “Slow, I want to appreciate you.” To appreciate all the places you could bruise him, mark him as yours.
Dex swallowed, nodding. He backed away, standing at the bottom of the altar stairs. First, his jacket. As he pulled it from his shoulders, he revealed strong, flexible arms. Veins bulging under skin. You shifted your hips, just a little.
Next, his shirt. Peaked nipples and hard muscle. With every shifting of his shoulders, you could see the lines underneath, a veiled look at the inner machinations which propelled his body. You’d tasted his skin, felt it under searching hands. Now, there was so much of it, and nothing preventing you from taking. Already, you were aching again. Dex unbuttoned his jeans.
“Slower.” You wanted to feel the anticipation, rile yourself. Enjoy the creeping pleasure sinking back into your nerves. You graze the inside of one thigh, still wet from his saliva and your nectar.
Dex smiles, eyes locked on the hem of your nightdress, hiked high and hiding nothing. The evidence of his work on you glistened in the moonlight. With each pair of teeth separated in the zipper of his jeans, you inched closer to the place your body craves, already so greedy again after just being touched.
Dex eased his pants down his hips, revealing light gray briefs. They do little to hide the swollen length of him. He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d been hard since you left his apartment. The stain of his precum was still wet, shining in the limited light, clinging to the shape of his cock.
Letting your fingers finally graze the slickest parts of you, you sighed at the sight of him. An Adonis, truly, and leaking for you for hours. You stroked a little circle and Dex watched with rapt attention, lips parted and panting. One callused, overworked hand twitches. Oh, he wants to touch himself, wants to relieve that building pressure so bad. He’d been holding it in for so long.
But you hadn’t given him permission.
You were starting to pant a little yourself by the time he pulled down the soaking briefs to bare himself fully to you. His cock bounced against his stomach, leaving a mouthwatering smear of liquid. He was engorged, aching, and flushed with deep color. God, he was beautiful. And he was all yours. Your pussy clenches in anticipation. It had been a very, very long time since you’d last felt that stretch, the sensation of being filled right to the brim.
“You’ve been very good, Dex. I think you deserve a reward, don’t you?”
Dex swallowed, his cock twitched, he nodded.
“Please, Sister.”
With only a small hesitation, you pulled your fingers away from yourself. Your clit pulsed, deliciously unhappy. But your cunt was ready. You nodded your head toward a nearby pew.
“Sit. Hands at your sides.”
He obeyed easily, and you let yourself enjoy the sight of his body in motion. Years of diligent work to hone himself into a vehicle for bloodshed, now ready to be used to bring your body alive. How’s that for a balancing of the scales?
Once Dex settled into the pew, you approached him, pulling away your nightdress. His jaw slackened, his breathing stuttered. What did you look like to him in that moment? An angel? A messenger from God, come to grant absolution at last?
If that were true, no one told you.
You could hear the creak of the wooden pew under him. He was gripping the edge hard enough to turn his knuckles white. You were close enough to touch now, and he kept himself in check. He wanted to be a good boy. He wanted to truly earn the reward you would give him.
With the fingers you used to touch yourself, you touched the head of his cock, still leaking, still soaked. Dex hissed, involuntarily thrusting into the touch. How cute. You spread your index and middle fingers, watching liquid thread cling with tenuous connection.
Dex eyed your fingers, licked his lips.
Greedy boy. But you could humor him.
You placed one knee on either side of his lap, towering over him, letting him crane to look up at you. It was a heady feeling.
“Open.”
He did so, tongue peaking just past his lips.
“Good boy.”
You slid your fingers over his tongue, coating him in your combined taste. Dex let out a hungry groan, closing his mouth over them, sucking hard. The sounds he made were obscene, wet, desperate. Another taste of ambrosia for him, a reward in and of itself.
As you pulled your fingers away, he chased you with swollen lips and dilated pupils. You stop him with a gentle touch on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” he slurred. “Thank you, Sister.”
And you hadn’t even had to ask him. How sweet. Your entrance twitches, impatient. He was right there for the taking.
“Shh, baby,” you whispered, one hand at the side of his neck, thumbing at his gulping Adam’s Apple. “I have one last gift for you tonight. Do you want it?”
“Yes, please.”
“That’s what I thought.” you kept your voice low, pressing your forehead against his. “I’m going to fuck you now. You will not come until I say.”
“I wont—I won’t come. Please, Sister, let me feel you. Let me—”
You didn’t let him finish. Instead, you took him into your hand and settled your weight down. He parted you, stretched you, filled you, and you both shared a shaking sigh. Dex’s head fell back.
“Thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you—”
Your hand tightened on his neck, stopping his exclaim short. You could feel him twitch inside you.
“God isn’t the one fucking you right now, Dex.”
With that, you started moving in earnest. A slow, excruciating rhythm that has you rolling your eyes. It only takes a slight shifting of your hips before he’s rubbing against that perfect spot inside, one that leaves you panting and shuddering.
Dex, however, is gone. With every downward press of your body, he’s calling out, slurred and unintelligible. Sometimes ‘thank you’ sometimes ‘please’, sometimes something altogether incomprehensible. He was flushed all the way down his chest, a sight that made your mouth water. His hands had not moved from the edges of the pew. They shook with pale knuckles and red fists.
“Touch me, sweet boy. Fuck me.”
The instant your order was given, Dex was in motion. One hand with a bruising grip on your thigh for purchase, and another arm around your back, pulling you close as he delivered a powerful thrust upward. He panted, open-mouthed and trembling against your neck.
“Fuck, thank you Sister. Thank you. Oh fuck, oh fuck…”
Finally unleashed, Dex’s pace is punishing, but the pain, the battering of your most sensitive parts, was exactly what you need after so much neglect. You meet him, thrust for thrust, feeling a rapid building of newly familiar sensation.
“Just like that. Perfect,” you cry breathlessly.
Dex cried out with every thrust, sweat beading over his body. He was already losing his rhythm, close, chasing.
“Are you close, baby?”
“I’m so close. I want—please let me. Please, I’m so close.” Dex’s voice cracked, wet.
Gripping his hair, you pulled his head back and clenched hard at the sight. Tears, freely running down his cheeks. Lashes wet. A beautiful crier. Begging and pathetic. You grind down hard as a full-body throb wracks through you.
“Not yet, baby.”
“I can’t. I can’t—”
“You can.”
You rolled your hips, now in pursuit of your own building climax. Dex crying, panting, moaning body moves on it’s own, as if he has no other function than to rut into you. And as far as he was concerned, it doesn’t. He was a machine whose only purpose was to submit to your pleasure.
Clutching his chin, you maneuver his head to the side, tasting the tears running down his face. The salty flavor burst over your tongue and you shiver. Another thrust. Another. Fuck, you might come.
Dex’s eyes were rolling. He was beyond words. just clutching your body and moving. His cries were high and broken and desperate.
“Almost, baby, almost. You’ve been so good. Such a good boy.”
You grind down again, once, twice. Oh fuck. Your clit rubbed against him. Almost there. Fingertips brushing the precipice. You wove your fingers in his at your thigh. He held it like a lifeline. Your body clenches.
Yes. Yes. Oh—
“Come for me, baby.”
The sound Dex made didn’t sound human. It sounded animal as his entire body shook, consumed with throbbing sensation taking complete control over his faculties. You felt him burst inside you, warm and filling just as you clamped down. You were only able to shake with him as your bodies worked in tandem for their basest functions.
As you came down from that final, fully satisfying high, Dex had his face buried in your neck, shoulders shaking as he struggled to control his breathing.
“Thank—you—thank—you…” he was muttering between sobs.
Hearing him, feeling Dex clutch to you so hard, you were filled with such affection that it nearly scared you. You wrapped your arms around him, running your nails along his back, scratching at his scalp as he slowly calmed down.
He wanted to be a good man. He was trying. He just needed someone to guide him in the right direction. He needed a North Star, an Angel to be his conscience. Maybe you weren’t the best person in the world, you’d broken nearly every promise you’d made, but you knew what he needed. You knew you could be what he needed.
You pressed a kiss to his temple, and Dex let out such a soft sigh that it nearly broke your heart.
He was a good boy. He deserved a chance to redeem himself, and you would help him. No one, not even God could stop you.
Summary: Simon f*cks you stupid. He's not sorry, and neither are you.
18+ (Can't stress this enough)
CW: smut. that's it. that's the plot. it's just PWP. it's got a little fluff at the end, but it's smut.
Masterlist 🦊
𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬
Pain should be something evil, shouldn’t it? Yet you’re mostly positive that Simon’s hands aren’t evil – at least, not when they land on you.
But it's hard to prove your words right when he has his fingers curled into a tight fist around a handful of your hair. It's difficult, if anyone were to see, to convince them that he isn't trying to split you in half, by the way he has you curve your back in an impossible angle.
However, you’d gladly give a Ted talk about how un-evil he is being.
Naturally, the image might not seem the most innocent, so you’d have to work tirelessly to sound convincing. On all fours on the mattress of his own bedroom, with your feet dangling off the edge of the bed. Curled toes and stiff calves. Head so thrown back that your eyes are locked to the ceiling – or, well, they would be.
If they hadn’t been rolling back for the past – what? Night? What time is it, exactly?
In truth, the only thing you’re seeing is the back of your eyelids. Luckily the ceiling ain’t all that to look at.
Your throat is so tight and coiled that your breaths come out ragged and – bloody fucking hell – almost pained. And again, there is a bit of pain. A pinch of it.
It would be a lot, with your hair being pulled and your back forced into an arch, but the pleasure is just so overwhelming you feel nothing else. The sting of your scalp and the ache of your spine only enhance what’s happening at the other end of you.
How good he’s fucking you.
It’s deranged, honestly.
Someone must be thinking a bleeding homicide is occurring in the Ghost’s quarters. You'd love to have more privacy, currently you’re forced to act like a prude even if he's pounding his cock right into you something fierce.
But your neck is so thrown back that the groans coming out of you are mostly punched out by the man himself each time he thrusts in and simultaneously pulls back at your hair to slam you against himself.
On the other hand, his grunts are muffled by the fabric of his stupid balaclava.
Before the whole ordeal started, you told him you wouldn’t fuck him if he wore that thing.
“Not even sure you wash it, L.T.” You’d said, smirking and sounding so proud of having something to mock him for – because he's always so bloody perfect on the field, isn't he.
But he’d shut your mouth spare minutes later, when he’d throw you on your back on his bed, making you feel like you weighed a pound and few spare coins. Lifted his mask up to his nose. Snatched your khakis and knickers off all at once.
And ate you out with such fervor and insistence you were almost positive you’d stopped breathing for a while during the whole meal.
Then, he’d taken off the mask, wiped his mouth with it after you’d soaked it with your orgasm, and put it back on.
“Washed it now.”
Smug cunt.
But now pride and ego and whatnot feel like fickle things, much like your aching back, burning throat, and the impending cramps in your calves.
Now, as your mind melts in a puddle of itself, almost disassociating, Simon must notice it. And oh, he doesn’t like that in the slightest. Where are you going, with your pretty little head, when all your blood should be pumping down to where he needs you warm and wet.
“Come back ‘ere,” he grunts, bending forward and pulling your head further back at the same time. He hooks one arm around your front so that he can keep you up when he notices you're all loose and flaccid.
Palm flat to your chest, he presses you flush against his own.
His eyes are hooded and heavy as they lock with yours. Your face is so flushed and sweaty you must look on the brink of collapse, and he can’t deny it has him a little worried.
“Good?” He asks gruffly, and although concerned, his onslaught on your pussy is relentless.
You smile, all teeth. Your lips have drool smeared all over. Your eyes are glossy and heavy. He's been pounding into you for the past hour, you came into his mouth once and on his cock at least twice. The sounds he's punching out of your lips are raunchy and downright pornographic.
It makes something weird and warm swim in his chest.
Fucking hell.
“Words, love.” It’s a demand, but it’s not said unkindly. He’s more than alright with the idea of fucking you stupid, but not so much with the thought of fucking you into a blackout.
And when you don’t respond and get lost in your body again, eyes rolling back once more, he harshly tugs at your hair. “Sergeant.”
Tears are prickling the corners of your eyes when you open them. However, the contrast is striking, with the wheezing moan that concomitantly leaves your lips.
You fucking like it, don’t you? Dirty slag.
A discovery, you are. Truly.
He loves it.
“Solid,” you stutter. Your voice is raspy and wet. "Sir."
He loves that too.
And admittedly finds it almost humorous, how he can make you unravel like that. You came to his door that night, all commanding as if you had any right over him, saying the two of you should stop dancing around each other and get it over with. That you’re adults and that if he was going to use the regulations excuse you were going to blow a gasket because everything you lot do on the field is against the so-called rules, hence a shagwould be the least of you two’s problems.
He hadn’t even had time to rebut. You were so right it hurt his pride. So, he fucked all that arrogance out of you.
And God, did it feel good. You felt good.
You were right, after all. He won't tell you, though. Doesn't need to chub up your ego any further, it's already fighting for space with his own.
He hums at your response. Leaves the hold around your torso and you flop forward like a wet rag, face first in the sheets.
Simon grabs your hair to lift you up, delighted to hear your ecstatic laugh as your head is yanked back once again.
He growls, “Good fuckin' girl."
And he rams into you again, using the grip on your hair as leverage. Your groans are guttural and fierce, so loud that even he is a little worried someone might eavesdrop on some of them.
Of course, this is no time for worries and concerns, all sublimated by the scorching heat between your legs. Warmest fucking place he’s ever been in.
‘S a lot to say, he thinks, since he’s been through hell and back already.
However, he does feel a little merciful. Sure, you’re heavenly in this position, completely at his service, but it’s been a while and you must be aching. You're going to wake up, later, with the worst back pain of your life and a few cracking joints.
Right, not that he cares. But you’re already a pain to deal with when you’re all healthy and cracking jokes and smiling like you give two shits about him, he can’t imagine how whiny you must be when you’re knackered and it's because of him.
He bends forward, then, chest to your back, and curls his free arm around your belly. Fingers sneakily reach down and trace your pussy. Palm cupping your mons while his ring and middle finger outline your lips. For just a second, he settles at the base of his cock, feeling how the shaft plunges so easily right inside of you. The stretch of your hole sucking him in. How wet you are – Christ.
Like this, he has his mouth next to your ear, but he’s not pounding into you with the same fierceness he’s used until now. And your voice has dulled, probably because he’s relented the grip in your hair, letting your head loll forward.
He looks at you through the haze of sex, trying to push through the mist of bliss you’ve shrouded him in. And your face is different. Your eyes are wide, staring blankly ahead, lips parted to take in sharp breaths.
He panics for a moment, but it quickly melts away when he pushes in a little deeper and you keel over with a groan. He must be hitting something new, something different.
Something good.
Which is why he hits it again. And again. And you keen and moan, fisting the sheets and punching the mattress.
“Bloody fuckin’ hell, look at ya.” He rumbles with a chuckle you can feel rippling in his chest against your back.
In the meantime, because he is so un-evil, the hand he had on your pussy finally finds purchase on your clit. He can feel how raw it must be. How stiff and puffy it is under the rough pads of his fingers.
Your breath hitches the moment he starts rubbing it. Doesn’t bother to be gentle with it, because he’s found out you like it when he barks and bites.
He’s proven right because the tears that were prickling your eyes before are now flowing freely down your cheeks. Your lips tug at the corners and you wheeze, one hand of yours grasping at the forearm of the same hand giving you bliss. Cheek to the mattress.
You dig your nails into his flesh – scar-thickened skin covered in black ink.
You’re squirming under his weight, with your arse up and back in a pretty arch, as he works you inside and out with hands and cock all the same.
The groan you let out now truly sounds as if you're in pain. Your free hand lifts to grip the fabric of his balaclava on top of his head, as if you were trying to find purchase on his hair but found cotton instead.
“Oi,” he grunts, sounding uncharacteristically worried, but doesn’t stop until you say so.
And thank Christ he doesn’t, because mere seconds later your cunt clenches so tight around him it threatens to chop his dick off. You go ramrod stiff under him. Throat tight and allowing only the passage of mewls that pitch upward.
Three fingers swipe side to side over your clit. He pounds into you once, twice – again, again, again, until he’s pushed out of you.
“Jesus –“
You’re splashing on his cock, a thick stream spraying directly on his sheets. Muffled sounds of water hitting fabric. You’re so fucking silent he bets you’ve stopped breathing as you came, because not even a second later you’re catching your breath with a guttural groan that goes straight to his dick.
He’s dumbfounded and burning, but thankfully has still enough brainpower to realize he has to fuck you through it – and so he does just that. Puts it back in and lays fully above you, flattening your front to the bed. Your thighs are quivering, and your pussy is still clenching rhythmically around him. He thrusts in more and feels tinier splashes gushing out of you each time he pulls out.
Fuck, you’re so wet he barely feels any friction.
A whine escapes you at the intrusion, but you obediently lay your cheek on the mattress, exhausted, and catch your breath, looking over your shoulder up to him.
You’re flushed and so pretty. Looking like an angel and not like the devil that you are, who’s just squirted over his bedsheets.
You deserve a little reward for the show you put on for him because he's surely not going to forget how your cunt fluttered around nothing when it gushed on his bed. It's going to stay imprinted in his forebrain and he's going to relive it whenever his hand won't feel like enough.
He snatches the balaclava off his head and tosses it on the floor. He sees your eyes soften at the sight of the disfigured man underneath, but he won’t have any of that – this is just sex. Just fucking sex.
Before he can have his head wander to unwanted (kinder) places, he roughly grabs your jaw and keeps fucking you raw. His lips slam onto yours in a kiss that sizzles with lust and resentment – because you can’t bring feelings into this, and he will forever hate you if you dare.
“Fuckin’ pretty,” he grunts in your face, as he ruts into you, now propped on his forearms. “Think you can do tha’ again?”
You huff. Probably not.
“Depends how – fuck – good y’ are.” As if he didn’t just wring you dry.
He chuckles darkly, and bites down your shoulder, making you hiss. “Smartarse. Don’t you dare, now.”
“Dare what, L.T.”
Oh, you little devil.
“Stop with the lieutenant shite.” He chides.
You snake a hand in his palm and intertwine your fingers with his. He clenches his fist to tighten the hold because he's a weak, weak man.
“What should I call you, then?” You ask through heaving breaths, “Ain’t calling you Ghost, surely.”
He leans down and kisses your cheek.
You know my name, bird.
“Fuckin’ brat.” He grunts, and surrenders. “Simon will do.”
He feels your cheek lift under the pressure of your smile, right against his lips.
𝜗𝜚 press release (declano’hara x journalist!f!reader)
summary|| Being part of Corinium has always been a dream come true. However, when your boss, Tony Baddingham, brings on board the boisterous Irishman from the city, you realize that your once pleasant workplace is about to change for the worse. wc: 5.5k
Declan O'Hara, an Irishman, determined journalist, cutthroat talk show host, loving father, by every visible measure, and devoted husband.
As well as the most dangerously handsome, intelligent man you had ever been unfortunate enough to meet.
The time you'd spent working at the studio, you'd never met anyone like him. Compared to him, James Vereker looked like a schoolboy, and Sebastian Burrows a child. Declan O'Hara had been more man than anyone you'd ever met, and it was hard to ignore.
The way his voice carried around the office. It was earthy, his vowels were long and soft, but there was a flatness that gave it roots. You'd come accustomed to it, echoing around the building the more he tested Lord Baddingham and Cameron Cook.
It had been New Year's Eve the first time the two of you had spoken. You were leaving early for the day, hoping to get a table at your favorite restaurant before going back to your humble abode.
You entered the elevator turning around to press the lobby button only to be met with the front of Declan O'hara's chest.
Taking a quick step back before you crashed straight into him, he crowded your space, pushing you farther into the elevator.
"Floor." His voice was harsh, as it hummed in your ears. The look on his face was stern and impatient.
"Excuse me?" You asked in confusion.
His face relaxed and his voice softened. "Which floor, love?"
oh! "Lobby." You said quickly, stepping to the side, creating more space between the two of you.
The ride down felt awkwardly long, the tension lingering. You anxiously stood next to him. Fixing the strap of the bag slung over your shoulder and adjusting the jacket folded across your arm.
His gaze, not leaving you as the elevator continued its descent. You definitely could feel the way his eyes shamelessly gawked at your figure. The buttons on your blouse became tighter, and the length of your skirt suddenly felt too short.
"Declan." His name broke the silence, causing you to look over at him. His hand was stretched out toward you, waiting for your own.
You hesitated before reaching out, and when your fingers brushed, shocks shot through your hand. You mewled out your name, followed by a "...nice to meet you".
With a nod of his head, you bitterly slipped your hand from his, letting it fall back to your side.
Casually eyeing you up and down. His gaze raking over you, his eyes seem to betray a mixture of desire and restlessness.
There was something so enticing about you and the more he looked at you, the more his interest piqued. All this time he'd been working here and he hadn't noticed a woman like you walking around.
The silence dragged, and he felt the words build on his tongue. "Are you going somewhere?" He asked.
"What?" You answered, surprised he was still speaking to you.
He chuckled deeply at your tone, leaning his shoulder against the wall, getting closer. His head turned in your direction, his gaze fixed intently upon you.
"For New Year's, are you going somewhere?" He repeated slowly, his eyes never leaving yours once as he waited for a response.
The lilt of his voice made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The Irish was thick and sultry on his tongue, his accent like rolling thunder.
"I was going to dinner." You answered hesitantly, unsure why he was even asking. In the soft light of the elevator, he took in the details of your face, the way your bottom lip caught between your teeth as you fidgeted nervously.
You were a quiet one, most women he'd come in contact with had done anything to gain his attention. Yet you stayed quiet, reserved, shy. A woman so beautiful, so… alluring, could have easily caught his eye, yet he'd never even noticed you. "Was?"
"I'm afraid I've waited too long, missed the reservation window." You told him, and he chuckled again. That earthy sound that seemed to completely fill the space.
Taking in a deep breath, you were suddenly encompassed by his scent, a mix of musk, and tobacco, something manly. You'd never known a man to have such a presence, the way he filled the room made you feel so small next to him.
"Pity." He hummed, the corners of his mouth twitched into a small smile, his gaze roaming your face slowly, taking in every fine feature. "You should come by my wife's party tonight, then. She's invited the whole office, you're welcome to join."
"Thank you, Declan. That's very kind of you." You said quietly, your eyes falling down to the floor. The butterflies in your stomach were fluttering around in a panic.
Did he just invite you to his house for New Year's?
Your mind was still racing, unsure of how to respond. You had just met the man, but the way he was looking at you made your head feel fuzzy, and you couldn't bring yourself to say no.
The thought of spending an evening in his presence was both thrilling and terrifying. "Of course..." You stuttered, trying to keep your voice steady. "...I'll try and make it."
As soon as the words left your lips, a satisfied smile spread across his face. "The party starts at eight o'clock." He spoke, tilting his head.
The elevator dinged loudly, signaling that you'd reached the lobby. The doors opened slowly and Declan stepped out of the lift. "I hope to see you there." His accent seemed to make his words sound almost teasing as he said his farewell, and you felt a blush creep up on your cheeks.
I hope to see you there…
The words echoed through your mind like a mantra.
The doors started to close, blocking him from sight, and it brought you back to reality. You quickly shot your arm out to stop them from shutting and stepped into the lobby, taking a deep breath.
The party was in full swing, and you arrived in the midst of it all. It was a typical extravagant upper-class party, the house was lit with an array of colorful, sparkling lights. The house was filled, everywhere you looked there was a person.
You caught glimpses of unfamiliar faces, all blending together into a sea of strangers. You took a moment to look around the room, in search of that familiar head of dark chestnut hair.
The warm ambiance of the room helped ease the tension in your shoulders, and you couldn't help but hope, looking for any sign of Declan, he wasn't a hard man to miss.
Despite the crowd, it didn't seem like Declan was anywhere to be found. You couldn't help but wonder where he was, the thought of spending the night searching for him made you anxious.
Across the room, leaning against the wall beside his daughter's, was Declan; his arms crossed over his chest as he scanned the room with a watchful eye. His gaze roamed over your figure shamelessly, taking in the way your dress clung to you.
Your petite frame, the way your skirt hung around your thighs, the length of your hair. There was a shyness, something timid and he fixated on your body, the way your eyes darted around the room.
A loud commotion caused everyone to turn their heads in the direction of the entrance to the living-room. A woman dressed in a bright green dress entered, riding in on a camel?!
"Jesus christ." Declan said, the sound of his voice drawing you to him.
He stood a few feet away, dressed handsomely, his dark hair slicked back, and a hint of a five o'clock shadow on his jaw. He was wearing a crisp, tailored suit that accentuated his broad shoulders, and a pair of trousers that hugged his muscular legs. The sight of him was almost intoxicating.
The crowd of guests parted as the woman in the vibrant green dress dismounted from the camel. Cheers erupted throughout the room as she stood there victoriously. You watched as people congratulated and welcomed her.
Your eyes went to Declan, seeing his gaze had already made it back to you. Standing solely amongst the crowd, looking like a mouse in the center of a lion's den.
He almost looked embarrassed, Declan could feel his shoulders tense in annoyance, a scoff escaping his lips. He hated when Maud did things like this, rightfully so when he was the one paying for it. It was one thing that had initially attracted Declan to her, but now, it felt like an old pony trick.
He'd never understood her need for attention. There was no doubt in Declan's mind that this party was more for her than it was for their son. She was thriving off it, soaking up every last bit. He clenched his jaw, frustration building within him.
The night pressed on. The room slowly returned to its normal pace as people continued with their conversations, drinks in hand.
The guests now mingling together comfortably, the music softer, more gentle. The lights were dimmer now, allowing for a much more intimate setting.
Declan, stood among the others, and his eyes caught sight of you once more.
You were sitting on the couch, legs tucked up underneath you. A soft smile appeared on his face as he watched you, unable to take his eyes away.
You looked up, your eyes meeting his as he approached. "Having fun?" He asked, his deep voice, gravelly and laced with whiskey.
He gives you a charming smile as he steps closer, his gaze drifting down your figure, pausing at the low plunge of your dress before returning to your face.
Taking a seat next to you, he leaned back, his body turned towards you; his eyes drifting over your figure.
A sly smile tugged at his lips as he watched you blush under his intense stare. He chuckled gruffly, finding your reaction endearing. The way you tried to hide your bashfulness, but couldn't help the way your body betrayed you.
He noticed the way you fidgeted nervously. It made his heart swell in his chest. He couldn't help but enjoy the effect he had on you, as your cheeks flushing an attractive shade of pink.
The tips of your ears burned when you realized just how close he was. You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to keep your eyes on him while resisting the urge to look away.
Why the hell was he looking at you like that?
He was older than you, a man of authority and power, and yet, right now he made you feel like a shy schoolgirl with a crush. You couldn't remember the last time someone had looked at you this way, like you were the only person in the room
"I'm glad you decided to come tonight." He spoke low enough that nobody else could hear him but you. His voice rumbled in your ears, and sent a shudder through your body.
His gaze drifted down to your neck, a soft smirk forming on his lips as he watched the chill run down your spine.
"So am I. Thank you, for inviting me ...and for the booze."
He continued to look at you, his gaze roaming over you openly without any shame or reservation. He took a sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving your face. You were a sight to behold in this light, soft skin, wide eyes, it was almost hypnotizing.
"You look lovely." He hummed, his eyes still wandering over you. His gaze was intense, his voice deep, and velvety.
You thanked him softly, your breath catching in your throat when you noticed the desire in his burning gaze. His body was pressed up against you; his thighs touching yours, you could feel each breath with the rise and fall of his chest against your arm.
There was a moment of silence between the two of you, the tension in the air thick. You tried to distract yourself, but there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes that made you feel like a bird trapped in a cage.
Your heart rate quickening, and a warmth spreading through your chest. His gaze felt like a physical touch, making your skin tingle. His deep voice rolling off his tongue, the sound was like a low rumble, making your body hum with something you'd never felt before.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" He asked, breaking the silence. His voice was soft, quiet, meant just for you.
"Y-yes." You managed to stutter, your heart racing. "Quite."
"You looked a bit lost earlier." He chuckled in reply, his eyes never straying.
"Not lost." You confessed, your voice small in the presence of his dominating aura.
His eyes narrowed as he leaned closer, his body almost pressed flush against your shoulder. "Then what?" He asked, his voice now a mere whisper, deep and seductive
His hand reached out, fingers brushing a stray strand of hair away from your face, his touch linger for a moment longer than necessary. His fingertips were rough but warm, as he gently brushed the hair behind your ear.
You could feel his hot breath against your neck, his eyes fixed upon you intently, like a man possessed. You tried to maintain a sense of composure, but it was difficult when he was this close to you, his face was inches away from yours.
He was close enough that you could make out every small detail; the indentations in his lips, the faint shadow of stubble around his jawline, the way his eyes seemed to darken with each passing minute.
"I've noticed you've spent most of your evening alone." He began, his lips almost brushing your ear.
His fingers still playing with the loose locks of your hair, his knuckles just barely grazing your skin. You felt your heart skip a beat at his touch. His hand lingered on your cheek for a moment too long, leaving your skin buzzing with electricity.
He leaned back, his demeanor calm and collected, but a hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I haven’t been a very good host, have I?" He said softly, taking a deep breath, his eyes still fixed on you.
For a moment, the room around you seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you in this secluded little corner. The sounds of chatter and laughter felt distant, as the world seemed to slow to a halt.
Your breath hitched in your throat as you looked back at him. He was watching you again, his eyes boring into yours, drinking you in. Your body was alive, your skin burned where it touched his.
He was older, more experienced, and had a presence that demanded attention. There was something dangerous about him, like a predator stalking its prey. Yet, he was charming and smooth, and there was an undeniable attraction pulling you to him.
"Declan..." You stuttered, feeling your nerves kicking in.
His eyes scanned your face, pausing briefly on your lips. His dark eyes seemed to look right through you, and you found yourself unable to pull away from him.
"Just hear me out..." He rushed, his hands getting comfortable as they slid down your hips, but the glimmer of his wedding band on his finger made your stomach sink.
You stood up quickly, stumbling as your legs adjusted to the amount of alcohol you'd consumed. "No... I-I don't... you're married, Declan."
Declan watched as you stumbled, a look of surprise etched on his features. He stood up quickly, reaching out to catch you, his hands gripping your waist for stability.
He held you like that for a moment, your eyes filled a mix of fear and contemplation. His fingers tightened involuntarily against the softness of your hip. The heat from his touch burned through the fabric of your dress.
"Wait-" He spoke, his voice a deep grumble, almost primal, that made your hairs stand on end.
"Let me go..." You muttered breathlessly, trying to break free from his firm grasp. He held you tighter, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your hip.
He paused for a moment, his jaw clenching, his eyes flickering down to your trembling lips. He slowly let go of your waist, his hands lingering for a moment before they fell.
He still had you trapped, a few feet from the nearest group of people, the only way out was through him. His breathing was uneven, hot against your face, and the only thing you could hear was your heart thudding loudly in your ears.
"Can we just go somewhere quiet …to talk." His voice was commanding, but laced with desperation.
You swallowed hard, the thought of being alone with him made your heart skip a beat.
You gave him a slight nod, and his body turned, angling away from the crowd.
He slowly began making his way through the crowd, his hand resting on your lower back, gently guiding you.
Everywhere his skin met yours left you burning, his touch sending a wave of fire through you. He led you through the room and into a hallway.
The music and chatter faded as you turned the corner, and suddenly it was just the two of you.
Declan pushed a door open at the end of the hallway, guiding you into what appeared to be his office. You stood awkwardly for a moment, the room was small but cozy, a desk and a chair were positioned in the corner along with a leather couch.
The glow of a lone desk lamp illuminated the room, casting dancing shadows across the walls - which were covered in framed pictures; various awards, certificates, and one lined in bookshelves.
He leaned his back against the door, and for a long moment he stayed silent, watching you. His eyes were sharp underneath the dim light, his lips parted slightly, before his jaw clenched.
He couldn't keep the desire hidden, he let his eyes roam up and down your body. The way the dress hung on your hips, the way your chest rose and fell with each breath, the way your hair fell around your face. It was enough to drive him mad.
He looked relaxed yet on edge. He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a deep breath. This time there was something different in his eyes, something you couldn't quite place. Still a mixture of desire, and frustration, but something else.
"You're right. I'm married." He said, his voice firm, almost cold. "And I'm not trying to pretend otherwise." He began, his eyes fixated on your face.
He stepped closer, his body pressing against yours as he spoke. His hands reach out towards you again. He touched your chin, gently tilting your head back, forcing you to look at him. Your breath shuddered as his touch sent a shiver down your spine.
Declan's brow was low, making him look almost intimidating, but his eyes remained soft, almost pleading. "I'll just say one thing?"
"It's …complicated ...bird." He spoke slowly, his voice a low rumble. "I can't tell you it's perfect ...but I'll be damned if I don't admit that I want you."
The look in his eyes was fierce, possessive almost. His eyes watched every minute reaction your body had to the way his hands held you.
He wanted to keep you close, the way you leaned into him made his pulse race. His fingers moved from your hip, slowly trailing down the side of your exposed thigh, his touch was hot.
Your breath caught in your throat as his hand glided down your skin, leaving a trail of fire on your flesh. His words echoed in your mind, confusing you and sending your heart racing. You should be outraged, you should be pushing him away.
Declan's mouth dropped open as you forcibly shoved him away. Your hand sting as it connected with his cheek.
He stood there for a moment, heart hammering against his chest. His fingers brushing the red mark appearing on his cheek where you'd just struck him.
He looked at you, brow furrowed as his wild eyes searched your face, trying to gauge the situation.
Finally, he spoke from behind his hand. His voice low, almost a whisper. "I'm sorry."
The room was deadly silent, the only thing you could hear was the faint hum of music as your heart pounded heavily in your ears.
"You're sorry?" You repeated, your voice trembling as you spoke. "You're married, and that's all you have to say?" You said incredulously, your voice shaky. "You're sorry?"
Declan's eyes are glued to yours, a mix of regret, shock and pain etched across his face. He looked almost guilty, his eyes falling to the floor.
Your breathing was heavy, your chest rising and falling quickly, a mix of anger and attraction coursing through you.
This man, this married man, had just told you that he wanted you, had just touched you in a way no man should ever touch a woman who's not his wife, and it sent pleasure through your entire being.
He winced as you spoke, his jaw twitching as he clenched his teeth. He looked at you with a mixture of remorse and hurt, you knew better, he didn't deserve your sympathy.
Declan took a deep breath, his eyes flickering back to you. "It's not…" He paused, his voice low and rough. "…that simple." Even still, something about the way he looked at you, the way he spoke, it tugged at something deep inside your chest.
He wearily took a step forwards, reaching ever so slowly to hold you. Only you backed away quickly, trying to put distance between the two of you.
"That's what they all say." The words come out harsher than you intended, and you watch a flicker of pain in his eyes.
You stumbled back against the wall as he quickly closed the distance between you. "For god's sake …it's the truth." He breathed, his pleading eyes never straying from yours.
It was a strange feeling, to feel pity for a man who had just confessed his feelings for you.
Yet, watching his pained expression, and the way his eyes seemed to implore you, it made your stomach twist. "That's a bit unfair, don't you think?"
Declan's body pressed against yours, trapping you against him. "Fair?" His accent thick as he spoke in a low rumble under his breath, almost like a growl. "You think I give a fuck about fair?"
Declan made the space between you completely non-existent. One hand rested on the wall beside your head, his face inches away from yours. His other moved up to your cheek, fingers tracing the side, before cupping your jaw.
He could see the hurt, the fear, the confusion. Yet, underneath it all, he could see the heat, the want, the need in your eyes.
He leaned forwards, his lips hovering just above yours. You swallowed hard, your mind racing. You knew he was wrong, you knew this was wrong, your body betraying you as you fought against yourself.
His kiss made you feel unsteady. The way his hand tangled in your hair, his arm wrapped around your back kept you close to him, and his firm hold on your hip made your head fuzzy.
You breathed him in, and the soft sound of vanquish that escaped your lips filled him with pride as he savored the flavor of you for the first time.
With a hand pressed firmly against his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt to ground yourself. The other, clutched at the wrist of his that had drawn you into him.
"You know what's unfair? How much you torture me in this dress. How I've had to hold myself back from pulling you into the nearest room just to rip it off of you ...and you want to talk about being fair?"
Declan gently turned you both around, guiding you a few steps backwards until your lower back met the surface of his desk. His lips kept you quiet as you wrestled with the realization of what was happening.
Suddenly, he took you by the shoulders, spun you around, and bent you over the wooden surface. With your arms down at your sides, you felt his presence looming over you, his hands gliding down your back and across your hips.
Standing on your tiptoes, barely grazing the floor, as he pressed himself against you from behind.
You could feel him everywhere; tangling through your hair, delivering a playful smack to your backside that made you gasp, humping against your core as your skirt rose higher and higher.
"There ...now we're even." He hummed teasingly, soothing the sting by gently massaging your heated skin.
You let out a scoff, subconsciously rocking into him. A smirk played on his lips as he slowly sank to his knees.
With a quick movement, he raised the hem of your skirt, his powerful hands parting your thighs before pressing his warm mouth against your panty-covered center.
You gasped his name, arching your back as you shot up from the table. Your feet almost slipped out from under you, threatening to send you crashing face-first into the desk.
He quickly stood back up, preventing you from moving any further. His face filled your senses, his mouth warm and wet as it buried into your cheek.
His hand gripped the nape of your neck while he swept your tousled hair to one side. "Do you enjoy that, birdy? Is it my mouth you want on you? Do you need to feel my tongue before you're wet enough for me to slip my cock into, hmm?"
You closed your eyes, attempting to breathe, but that turned out to be a mistake.
The subtle aroma of alcohol mixed with desire surrounded you; he smelled of sex and temptation. The image of him leaning in to kiss his wife goodnight, the lingering taste of you on his lips, was undeniably provocative. Scandalous and alluring, and yet you found yourself becoming even wetter at the thought.
He gently pushed you back down, laying you flat on his desk, the cool wood contrasting with the warmth of your flushed cheek.
He pressed another kiss to your neck, his lips lingering, before capturing your hands and guiding them to rest beside your thighs at the edge of the table.
"Stay still," he whispered while trailing down your body, eventually finding himself back on his knees.
His fingers danced along the edge of your panties before gently pulling them aside. Your hips fell limp against the edge of his desk, your knees buckling beneath you. His hot breath fanned across your soaked core.
His slick tongue flattened, delivering a long, tantalizing stroke before enveloping your cunt with his mouth. His mustache, rough against the tender skin of your supple thighs, ignited a searing heat that flowed like molten lava, feeding into the deep ache in your belly.
"Ohmygod..." You shrieked, a hand shooting out to grasp his hair. "Declan!"
You bit your lip, attempting to stifle the moans that threatened to escape as he hungrily explored every inch of you.
Your fingers tangled in his hair; you began to tug his mouth off of you, as the overstimulation became almost too much to bear.
He yanked your hands away, pinning them down, and crossing your wrist over your lower back, before you felt the slip of his fingers part your wet folds. He pressing them into your entrance.
The combination of both his fingering and his tongue teasing your slit quickly sent you over the edge, and you shuddered against his parted lips. "Please, Declan ...don't stop.”
You cried out his name, as his tongue drank up the mess you made all over his mouth—which remained attentive yet gentle, even after your body stopped convulsing—leaving you shivering from the overstimulation.
Standing up as quickly as you could on shaky legs, you spun around to face him. His lips met yours as his hands found their way to your hips. Bunching up your skirt, he laid you out over his desk.
He pushed you back, his strong hands reaching up, peeling your dress off your shoulders and chest, gripping at every new part of your soft skin that was revealed.
Pinning you in place by your neck, he reached down. The pinching and snapping of flimsy fabric felt raw, carnal, against your skin as he tore your panties from your body. "You enjoy it when I'm rough with you, don't you, birdy?"
His hand reached down to unbuckle his belt. You squirmed beneath him, pulling your arms the rest of the way out of your dress. You reach for the buttons of his shirt, despite the anxious shake of your hands, meeting him halfway, after he'd rid himself of his tie.
You pushed his pants down just enough to reach inside and pull out his aching cock, swollen and eager, leaking pearls of translucent pre-cum. Gently thumbing at the tip of him, red hot and slick in your grasp as you coated him in his own release.
His hands reached for you, gripping your hips to help line himself up with your entrance, before taking your face gently in his other hand. A gasp escaped your lips as the tip of him brushed against your sensitive clit while he parted your swollen cunt.
He pushed into you eagerly, and the stretch of him filling up you was thrilling. Declan caged you between him and the sturdy desk, his body like a furnace against your skin.
Your hands fell to his chest, dragging the nails of one over his shoulder, and latching onto his muscular back.
A shaky moan slipped from your lips as he delved even deeper, his tip igniting a spot you'd never been able to reach. You could feel every vein and ridge as he pulled back slowly, then dove back in forcefully.
It was tight, the sheer size of him had you second guessing your confidence, yet as the tip of his head grazed your cervix it eased the ache in your lower abdomen. Your heart races at the realization that he has completely ruined you for anyone else.
You flushed, the feeling of his body against yours was too much; the smell of his skin, the way his chest hummed against yours with every groan he released against the crease of your neck, his breath a cloud of spiced whiskey and you.
The hand gripping your hip, tangled in your hair, gently cradling the back of your head as he pressed his wet lips against yours. The pressure of his kiss and the warmth of his breath pulled the air from your lungs, instinctively parting your lips and allowing his tongue to lick into your eager mouth.
The coarse hair of his pelvis brushed against your clit, causing your eyebrows to furrow in delight. "Declan!" His name, a prayer on your lips as he leaned his forehead against yours.
"Shh, Shh, Shh..." You could feel him in your throat. Each thrust was forceful, causing the desk to shake with every merciful connection of your hips.
"Jesus ...you feel so good, birdy. Gripping me so tight, such a good girl." He mumbled breathlessly against your skin.
He couldn't stop himself from gripping onto you tighter, his nails digging into the soft flesh as his hips rut into you over and over, continuing their own steady rhythm, perfectly meeting every one of your thrusts.
The sensation is overwhelmingly intoxicating; it’s a perfect blend of pleasure and pain. You’ve never experienced anything quite like this, intertwining soft cries of bliss with whimpers of overstimulation, creating the most beautiful symphony of pleasure.
Your hands grip onto his shoulders, anchoring you as you fall apart in his hands, your hips moving eagerly, chasing that sweet moment of release.
"You're so well behaved when you finally get some cock in you." You flutter around him, his tongue teasingly tracing your pulse, your walls gripping him tightly, too helpless to reply.
A gasp of delight escaped your lips as he continued to abuse your sensitive cunt.
"So warm, and tight ...so good to me when you're getting what you want." He breathed heavily, his thrust remained unwavering.
"Declan, please..."
"What? What is it birdy, use your words." Declan playfully taunted, gently nibbling on your lower lip.
Your hands tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, fingers weaving through his tousled strands as you drew him down for a searing kiss.
He silenced your moans of pleasure, your cries for him fading away as your body writhed beneath him.
It only took a few moments before he joined you. With a firm grip on your hip, he pulled you closer to him. His body stilled, pumping you full of his seed while your tongues danced together in tandem until his shoulders sagged and you began to tremble.
His question hit like a punch, and the pressure of it lingered in the air, heavy and suffocating. Armed Forces Day? Three years ago? A sharp jolt of recognition hit you, though the details of that night remained fuzzy. The memories were there, but they felt distant—like something you hadn't allowed yourself to fully remember after becoming a mother.
You steadied yourself, trying to mask the unease rising in your chest. “What are you talking about?” you tried to sound steady but the tightening grip on your purse betrayed the rush of nerves running through you.
Simon shifted, his broad frame nearly eclipsing the dim light of the bar. His jaw tightened, and for a moment, he seemed to wrestle in his own head, as though each word carried a burden too heavy to bear. “There was a night,” he began, his tone low and rough, every syllable deliberate. “Here. Three years ago. You were here. So was I.”
Your heart skipped, a wave of realization hitting with an almost physical force. The hazy recollections of that night flooded back, slowly accumulating together—laughter, drinks, an unexpected connection. Something that hadn’t felt planned but had burned far too bright to ignore.
The knot in your stomach twisted painfully, every part of you urging you to push it away, but the truth had already begun to sink in. “You’re…” The words stalled in your throat, heavy and lodged, the sentence unfinished as the reality stung like an accusation between you.
Simon exhaled sharply, part sigh, part laugh—but there was no humor in it. His gaze locked onto yours with unsettling intensity, and for a moment, it felt like he was waiting for you to break. “Yeah,” he replied simply, the word thick with certainty. “And she’s mine, isn’t she?”
A cold shiver ran down your spine, your body instinctively stiffening. The truth strung in the silence between you both, too glaring to avoid. Heart racing, every sense screamed to deny it, to distance yourself from this conversation before it spiraled out of control. But anything that could be said felt wrong, heavy on your tongue as you forced them out: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Simon’s eyes held yours, filled with something you hadn’t seen before—a desperation that cut through his usually composed demeanor. “Please,” he urged, the plea more potent. “Just tell me.”
How could this be happening? How could something so raw, so unspoken, suddenly spill into the air between the two of you? The weight of the moment anchored you, and for a moment, you couldn’t find a way to move past it.
“She is,” you muttered at last, the confession slipping out like an unwanted secret. Fingers clenched tightly against the table’s edge, grounding yourself against the suffocating reality pressing in. “I never thought… never thought you'd come back into the picture.”
A brief silence stretched out before you spoke again, everything tumbling out in a rush. "I didn’t even know your name. All I recall was you kept making me." The admission hung in the air, lighter than it was, an attempt to lighten everything you didn’t want to say.
The memory refused to stay buried. His face from that night, the intensity of his stare under the bar’s muted glow, how his presence seemed magnetic and overwhelming all at once—it all surfaced, unbidden. The connection had been undeniable, but that was your secret to carry. He didn’t need to know the details you still clung to..
“I don’t even know how it happened,” The sentence barely made it past your lips. “We used protection.” Doubt crept into your mind, unraveling the careful narrative you’d built for yourself. Did we? The past, fogged by alcohol and blurred moments, refused to come into focus.
Simon blinked, the blankness in his expression giving way to confusion, then disbelief. “Did we?” he asked with an edge of uncertainty. He was searching for answers neither of you seemed able to provide. Silence filled the space between you, heavy with unspoken questions.
"That parts a bit fuzzy," you admitted quietly, thoughts drifting away, the edges of the remembrance blurring with every passing second. “And clearly we didn't given our current situation.”
Meeting his gaze, you knew this was the man from that fortunate night. Only different. More mature as if life hadn’t been kind to him. “All I know is… I woke up, and it was just me.” The recollection hung heavier than expected, twisting in your chest. "I never imagined I’d run into you again."
A heavy silence settled between the two of you, the gravity of everything left unsaid pressing down on the air. Neither of you knew how to move forward, or even if moving forward was possible.
“I knew she was mine,” Simon muttered, his hand clenching into a fist at his side. He looked like he was trying to hold something back, fighting against his own emotions threatening to break free.
You blinked in disbelief, the reality of his revelation settling in like ice in your veins. “You saw her?” The shock was evident. The idea that he had been so close—watching, perhaps even knowing—yet remained silent was almost too much to process.
Simon nodded, his gaze never meeting yours as he began. “Last month. When you were leaving the café with her. Johnny stopped you, and I was there.” He hesitated, swallowing hard as if the bulk of it all was pressing on him. “Johnny and the lads, they were the first to say they saw a little girl with my face. I was skeptical at first But then… then I saw the two of you together. And I saw it. Saw me in her. I had no idea she was even a possibility. Or that you were, for that matter."
Your breath hitched, a sharp sting rising in your chest. The anger that had been simmering beneath the surface, the hurt, and the confusion all collided in one sudden wave. “Why didn’t you say anything?” The question shot out before you could stop it, the accusation sharp and loaded with all the frustration. He had been so close. Watching. Why didn’t he speak up?
Simon paused, his gaze dropping to his hands, fingers flexing as if he were trying to grasp for something he couldn’t hold. The silence stretched long between you, the tension palpable, as if the room itself was holding its breath. He wanted to say something, anything, but nothing came.
“I…” He started, staring at his hands as though they might hold the answer. “I’m not good with things like this, love.” He rubbed the back of his neck, having a hard time fully expressing how he felt but this moment needed authenticity. “I needed time to figure out if I could step into a life that was already doing fine without me. I was afraid of complicating things, of ruining something that was just fine without me."
You didn’t expect what he said to hit you so hard. The impact of his confession—that he had stayed away because he wasn’t sure if he was fit to be a part of your life, Adira’s life—settled deep within you, heavier than you could have imagined. You’d been fine, hadn’t you? Raising Adira, carving out a life on your own. But there's always been that lingering voice in the back of your mind, that small, quiet thought of “what if?” What if things had been different? What if he had been there from the start? Maybe you wouldn’t have had to quit those overpriced mommy-and-me classes because of those judgmental women who gossiped behind your back. Maybe things would’ve been easier.
“I wasn’t about to just waltz in, love,” Simon’s voice softened, more vulnerable now, like he was carefully weighing his thoughts. “I needed to know if you’d even want me here. You and her…” His gaze darkened for a moment, his voice trailing off as though unable to bear too much out in the open. “I wasn’t sure if I was the right person to step into something already so… perfect.”
In those words, there was something you hadn’t expected to hear from him: honesty. He was afraid. Afraid of being the one to ruin what you had built. Afraid of not being enough for you or for Adira.
“I guess I understand,” you said quietly. "I just wish you showed up sooner."
Simon didn’t answer right away. Something within him flickered with guilt, and for a moment, you both stood there in silence. He glanced down at his hands, fingers twitching like he wanted to reach out, but wasn’t sure if he had the right to.
"Can I meet her?" Simon asked nervously, a grown man fidgeting in his seat, the weight of his request sinking in.
"Now?" You chuckled, trying to brighten the moment. "It's late. I'm sure she's already asleep."
Simon’s gaze flickered with hesitation, but the desire was clear. He was barely holding it together, as if afraid that the chance to meet his daughter would slip away if he didn’t ask now.
"I understand," he mumbles after a pause, almost to himself, but there was a longing there you couldn’t ignore. "I just…I need to see her. To know her. Even if just for a moment."
The magnitude of the situation pressed down on you again, this wasn’t something you had expected when you woke up this morning. You had no clue what to do with all of this, with him, with Adira’s future—your future. But still, you could hear his sincerity.
"Tomorrow," You decided. "We can meet up tomorrow, but it has to be on her terms. She's not exactly the warmest with new people."
Simon nodded, his expression a mix of relief and determination. "I can wait."
You gave him a small smile, a silent acknowledgment of the moment. There was still so much to figure out, but at least now, for the first time, there was a possibility. A chance to rebuild what had been lost. "Bring toys," you suggested sincerely, thinking about what would make her happy. "She likes trains. Doesn’t need to be anything cartoon-ish, just a proper train."
Simon blinked, a touch of confusion in his gaze. "She doesn't like dolls? Like most girls?" His tone had a hint of disbelief, as though he couldn’t quite picture a little girl who wasn’t into the typical, pink frilly things.
The thought of dolls made your stomach tighten, and you shook your head vehemently, as if to expel the very idea. "God, no," you replied, unease creeping into the conversation. "Please, don’t bring dolls. That’s the last thing I want." You shuddered as you spoke, recalling all the unnerving memories. "She gets all Sid from Toy Story with them."
Simon’s brow furrowed even deeper, clearly unsure. "What does that mean?"
You visibly grimaced, the image flashing vividly in your mind. "It means I wake up to doll heads scattered all over the place," you say, your voice low and serious. "And it's... creepy. Like she's planning something with them. It’s like waking up in a horror movie."
Simon chuckled at first, but as he saw the unflinching seriousness in your expression, his laughter quickly turned uncertain. His grin faded, and the unease that filled his eyes told you that he was realizing this wasn’t some joke. "You’re messing with me, right?"
Your stare at him, completely deadpan. "I wish I was."
For a moment, Simon just stared, taking in your unwavering expression. His lips parted, a nervous laugh escaping him as he absorbed warning. "Alright," he said slowly, now understanding your cautious warning. "No dolls. Trains. Got it."
You gave a relieved sigh, feeling the baggage lift off your shoulders. The tension hadn’t fully gone, but for now, at least the toy issue was settled. There were plenty of bigger things to confront later, but this? This was a small victory.
This one is a little shorter than the rest, simply because I want the meet up chapter to be really long for yall! :3
Sleeping next to Logan means that you never have to worry about feeling cold again by @whispersfromaeons
Lumberjack!Logan by @groovyangelkisses - Dinner on a cozy fall night.
Lumberjack!Logan by @bpmiranda - Logan who is all too happy to deliver lumber in your part of town even though it is very much out of his way.
Oldman!Logan Sitting in his lap by @nymphoniah
Oldman!Logan and his obsession with the cute diner girl by @thinkinonsense
Dogtags by @silverskyeline - You’re wearing logos dogtags as you ride him.
Jailbait by @dollverine - logan and his controversially young girlfriend.
I was made for loving you by @hanasnx - “I’m gonna take care of you.” Those six words—six—have defined your relationship with your husband, Logan howlett.
Raw by @eloquentlytired
Needed little thing by @nymphoniah - Logan is a munch, and he is absolutely shameless about it.
Smoking out the window by @nymphoniah
My little princess by @bratscave
Belt buckle by @gothgoblinbabe
fics & imagines |
This is ours by @d1stalker - It's your first time back at your grandparents' farm in years, and while many things are the same, one thing is not: they've hired a new farmhand. moodboard!by@divinesols
Moanin’ and groaning’ by @shellshocklove - Working for your father's timber business isn't what you saw yourself doing, but when the wolverine comes looking for work it's suddenly not so bad, especially when he can teach you a thing or two.
Ain't gon' ever deserve you by @awxcoffeexno - Logan has a nightmare and hurts you by accident - or - the one where you worship his claws the way they deserve.
Guilty as sin by @logansbaby - The entire time you’ve known logan howlett, you’ve tried to keep your longings locked. then, one night, all that effort goes to waste when you’re confronted about your feelings.
Slippin’ and slidin’ all over you by @sceletaflores - Logan forgot to fix the ac. pretty much anything from their masterlist!
I can fix him and fuck him by @filmstarved - Nobody can break through logan's walls with ease like you can. and he actually lets you, welcomes it even. he needs it to breathe and when he's ready to walk out of the gifted youngsters door, there you are again.
Fortnight by @pretty-little-mind33 - Your dad sends Logan over to help you build some furniture in your new apartment, unaware you'll end up with Logan's head in between your thighs.
Would you be so kind in lending a hand? by @malavera - That friendly neighbor of yours is helping you with your wash day.
Your perfume is holding me ransom by @retrosabers - The scent of you is driving Logan crazy.
Unexpected tendencies by @figsnpassionfruits - Basically just bathroom sex w/Logan.
Stain ‘em baby baby by @darnell-la - Logan had just became apart of the x men. he’s always been known to flirt with whoever he could, but when you came around, he realized she was the only one he wanted to smell like.
Claws and marks by @mrsimpurity - Getting logan’s name tattooed on you earns you a very unexpected reaction.
A peaceful repose by @d1stalker - After some time away on a mission, Logan comes home, and all he wants to do is be around you.
Time after time by @hyper-fixates - 4 times you end up in Logan’s bed, and the 1 time he does something about it.
Knuckle velvet by @ohcaptains - Logan walks you home, then lets himself in.
Give me all of the ultraviolence by @joelsgoldrush - It’s common knowledge that all humans have needs. Try as you may, there’s a primitive side that you can’t spare yourself from. In which you can’t help but suck Logan off.
series/multi part |
Don't be late by @bucketslutz - You've spent your entire academic career trying to hide who you really are. First day of grad school you meet someone that sparks something deep inside you. Your history professor, Logan, makes you feel things you've never felt from someone before. moodboard!
Broken promises by @not-neverland06 - Bodyguard Logan falls in love with congressman's daughter.
Cross that line by @healmydesires - For a long time, you were content hiding your feelings, but lately, the longing for someone you can’t have has become unbearable. Despite knowing he could never be yours, you still cherished the sweet ache in your heart whenever he smiled or gave you a warm, platonic hug. Then, one day, everything changed.
First Drink by @eyesxxyou - You were everything Logan shouldn't want, young, religious, innocent, you were sweet to everyone, and you've never been touched.
Oldman!Logan howlett
Be my baby by @cavillscurls - Logan fucks you in your sundress.
Cant get started by @dollfacefantasy - Logan can't get it up one night and is humiliated. but that just means he'll have to prove he can still satisfy you.
Chauffeur by @nanivinsmoke - Mean old logan can’t help but to push the best thing away in his life. and you can’t help but to let go of your worst.
Like the first time by @eufezco - It has been a long time since you and logan had sex. you should show him that despite everything he hated about himself, you still craved him.
Look at me by @silverskyeline - Logan can't fuck like he used to, but you don't care. you get on top, gladly taking care of him in return.
Never is a broken promise by @joelsgoldrush - You are everything Logan isn’t: sweet, trouble-free, much younger—and, to top it off, Charles' caregiver.
The grave of lust by @moonlight-prose - When his body doesn't work as it used to and the weary bones that poison his soul begin to ache, you take the lead in a dance you know well.
Sweetness of the damed by @moonlight-prose - When night falls and wine overflows in glasses of crystal, logan finds his home in between your thighs.
Road trip stop by @fake-bleach - Taking a small road trip where you’re halfway to where you need to be, and you're bored out of your mind. unluckily for you, your boyfriend won't possibly give into your antics.
Quiet drive by @wlwloverwrites - Logan likes quiet drives, but there’s only way that can happen when you’re sitting in the passenger seat.
Sweet revenge by @eyesxxyou - After catching your boyfriend cheating, you and his father, Logan, go on a road trip to confront him, though, you don't make it far
Oldman!Logan by @inkedells - Logan is sick and tired of you treating him like he's fragile. He'll ignore his relentless pain to show you what it's like to be taken apart, rough and slow, then fast and agonizing.
Fix you by @logansbaby - Logan is dying. You both know it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
Room for rent by @hauntedhowlett-writes - Logan finds a new roommate.
disclamer! none of these are my works all credit to the authors! Thank you, to every single one of you, for allowing me to fuck Logan Howlett, in every way imaginable. Y’all deserve your pussies ate from the front and back!
He’ll go down first by @pinkandblueblurb
Scars by @letterstotheflr
fics & imagines |
Perfect to us by @kdogreads - Daryl and his wife, y/n, enjoy a quiet evening with with their little family before spending some nice time alone.
Been awhile by @eclipseiz - A quick run is never really quick with Daryl.
Your ivy grows by @letterstotheflr - It's his fault. daryl knows that. he should've realised sooner that he knew exactly what those mushroom's would do to you once you ate them.
Love on the brain by @ddaz3d-and-cc0nfused - Daryl knew jealousy was ridiculous, but it was as if there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to you or for you.
Secrets I have held in my heart by @ssa-montgomer - Daryl misreads laughing and joking with Rick as flirting which leads to a fight between the pair where Daryl's hidden feelings are revealed. Little does he know, she's felt the same way the whole time.
In the woods somewhere by @ssa-montgomery - You don't know what kind of life is waiting for you at Alexandria, but you certainly aren't expecting the complicated relationship developed with Daryl.
Teach me by @onlydarylnormanfic - Almost getting bit on a run and Daryl is furious with her. They get back to the prison and she asks him to teach her a thing or two about self-defense against walkers and people.
Fate by @lu-vin-it - Daryl and Y/N are split at the beginning of the apocalypse. When a new group comes to the farm, maybe fate will be on your side.
In my imagination, you're waitin' lyin' on your side by @ssa-montgomery - Sexual frustration over Daryl gets the best of her and she takes things into her own hands, but what she wasn't counting on was Daryl seeking her out mid-session.
Knots by @pinkandblueblurb
series/multi part |
I love you, and I don't say it enough by @frenziedslashers - Daryl returning to Alexandria after escaping from Negan.
Go get him by @theteasetwrite - You've known Daryl for a long time, and you've flirted with him for a long time, too. Today's the day you finally take things to the next level and show him just how much you want him.
disclamer! none of these are my works all credit to the authors. I just loved them so much figured I'd give them a shoutout!
His best girl by @malusmagpie - You two used to be thick as thieves but The Council split you up. Anakin isn't having that go on any longer.
Teachers pet by @s-brant - Anakin and Y/N’s relationship has always remained professional. Despite her obvious feelings for him, he never let himself entertain thoughts of reciprocating them…until now.
The power of the dark side by @darlingdekarios - Anakin promised that he would always find you, but you would never run from the dark.
Distant and time between us by @petersnya - “i hate you— but i want you more.” and you couldn’t deny it. the force and your heart wouldn’t allow you to- no matter how much distance and time was between you.
Naboo by @earlgreydream - Wearing a beautiful and revealing nightgown, and Anakin just can’t control himself anymore.
Dry distractions by @x-childish-x - Anakin has had a rough day at work and it's up to you to help cheer him up.
Stupid, stupid, stupid by @x-childish-x - While in the middle of a heated argument with Anakin, you try to refrain from kissing him.Mirror, mirror by @x-childish-x - Anakin decides that you deserve to see the beautiful view you are during sex.Get out of my head by @wheresmybuckyhoes - An innocent training session with Anakin turns into something slightly more sexual.Amongst the stars by @distortionbobble - You’ve been anakin skywalker’s best friend for as long as you can remember, and you’ve loved him for just as long. anakin loves padme, but has it truly been you all along?
au. fics & imagines |
Cherry on top by @coryosbaby - Flashing your dad’s best friend leads to making milkshakes and a pounding on the kitchen counter.
Babysitting singledad!anikin by @fuckmyskywalker - You stay at his house while he's at a boring fundraising event of the company he works for, so, you do what you love to do when he's not home. Lock yourself in his room, inside your fantasies, pretending he's yours. You lay down on his bed, imagining his touch, his voice, it feels so real. But, it's just an illusion, right?
Final girl emo!anikin by @hanasnx - The neighborhood serial killer has a soft spot for you. you didn’t realize how really close you were to him. after your best friend confesses his feelings for you, he confesses something else as well. something far more sinister.
disclamer! none of these are my works all credit to the authors. I just loved them so much figured I'd give them a shoutout!
