in which compatible bodies does not always mean compatible minds, but spencer reid is all too kind when you're like this, so perhaps you're allowed to forget that for a night.
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader
genre: smut (18+ mdni)
tags: fingering yay. soft dom! spencer. situationship. sooo much kissing oh my god. lowkey asshole spencer but only if you go stanislavski on reader. no foreplay and i won't hold your hand during this. lowkey brat tamer spencer…
word count: 1.8k
a/n: a toxic situationship with a man who only wants you for sex is good for the soul btw <33333
cedar’s masterlist ✿
"even if i see you again, i will never see you again." (margaret atwood)
Your skin always tingles beneath his fingertips. His hands delicately map you out beneath him like you are a blank piece of parchment. Every single time. No matter how attentive to your every detail he is; how much of you he has committed to his unbeatable memory. He still starts all over again the second you're naked and in his bed.
Every fucking time.
There's a nerve on the side of your left knee that makes you shiver when he kisses it, and so he does, over and over again. Hands that slide up the backs of your legs to entwine with your own fingers. Thumbs rubbing circles onto the skin as he kisses his way up your body.
He murmurs the sweetest things as he reaches for your underwear. As he always does. Quiet whisperings of, "You're so pretty," and, "I know, sweet girl. There's no one else. Just you." Sentences you've always wanted to hear him say to you, and he says it with so much conviction you forget he is not actually yours. With so much verity, you believe him.
He is just so kind to you when he's sliding lacy fabric down your legs, shushing your mewls with his lips on your own, and comforting your need with fingers threaded through yours.
"What do you want tonight?" he asks you quietly, as he asks you every week.
You never have the courage to utter his name aloud in response.
"Fingers," you mumble, absentmindedly, as the mentioned limbs erupt goosebumps on your thighs as he skims them up.
He takes your lack of full attention as pleasure, and he smiles. You let him think so, because he's kissing you again, and you fear if you protest, this will all go away. Testament to your self confidence — or lack thereof — how little of him you're willing to take, because at least it is something.
He complies with your request, fingers lifting to the apex of your thighs, slipping beneath your folds and swallowing the whine that escapes your lips at the feeling with another kiss. Or maybe the same one bleeding into the last. You're barely there you don't know anymore.
"My beautiful girl," he mumbles, index finger circling around your clit. Teasing you until you nip his bottom lip in irritation, and his breath fanning your skin as he laughs.
You try not to focus on him putting my at the beginning of his sentence. You basically fail.
Your face contorts when he dips a finger into you, the intrusion as strange as it is familiar, and you hear him hiss from your unconscious biting of his lip.
"Sorry," you murmur ever so quietly, incredibly half heartedly. He knows you aren't sincere.
"It's okay," he whispers in response, watching you as he lets his finger push in as far as you'll let him. You imagine he's committing every single twitch of your facial muscles to memory; every breath hitch when he moves his hand.
He won't be. He'll focus on you all up until you leave, and he won't think about the way you look taking his fingers beneath him the way you think about his fingers inside of you. You'll receive a violent reminder how painful one sided attraction can get when he calls and asks when you can come over next week, and you'll tell him Friday night anyways.
But for now, he is touching you, and he is telling you all the kind things in the world, so you will choose to ignore the pit in your stomach that's hours away from coming back.
"Spence," you whine, breathlessly, as he pushes a second finger in, curling them.
"Hm?" he responds to your call of his name with the most annoying smug expression, probably thinking about how easy you are to tear apart. Probably not aware of just how many ways he is.
"Too fast."
"Ah," he pulls his fingers out, instead focussing his attention on your clit to soothe you. "Sorry. Got distracted."
"Distracted?" you question him, searching his face for the truth behind his words.
"By you," his voice is a gentle hum as he kisses the corner of your mouth, and your heart flutters.
"I have that effect."
He laughs, head dropping to the bridge between your shoulder and neck, lips pressing a gentle kiss there.
"You do," he agrees. "Can't get through a day without thinking about you."
Jesus, give you a gun.
"Yeah?" you opt for asking instead, hoping the one word answer will hide the screaming of your brain.
"Mhm," he nods. You think you're successful. "How are we doing?"
"Good. Better. You can... um... continue."
He returns a finger into you, and you moan again, and he swallows it with a kiss. Again. As if choreographed, he touches you with so much knowing. Too much awareness of how your body ticks to be a man you see weekly for nothing more.
He bruises your mouth with his fervent kisses in the way you wish he would bruise your neck. But there is that voice that screams at you to say he is not yours, no matter how many universes you beg, and so your skin will remain unmarked, and you will remain forced to settle.
After one too many minutes of just a singular finger inside of you, your hips lift to meet his hand in a silent beg for more.
"I know you have a mouth you can use," he tells you, and an exasperated huff leaves your lips.
You hate him.
"Want more," you say, hands dropping down to his wrist, pads of your fingertips running along the skin in a plea of their own.
"You want more?" he asks, gently prying your hands off of him with his free hand. "More of what, sweet girl?"
"Spencer," you grit.
"I want to help you, I do," he coos, too many words cutting into the time you want him to spend pleasuring you, "but I can't if you don't tell me what you want."
"You're mean," you say, petulantly, hips wriggling for friction against his now completely still hand, until he has enough mind to stop you. "Please."
"I'm hearing a lot of misplaced frustration with me, and not a lot of communicating what it is you want."
You give in, annoyed. "Another finger. God."
He nips your bottom lip. "Try again."
You catch his gaze when you choose to shoot him a glare, and he is — annoyingly — all too amused with the position he's gotten you into.
You really hate him.
"Can you please put another finger in me?"
"Yes, I can," he complies almost instantly, and you relax as he slips a second finger in again. "Thank you for communicating."
You're too focussed on the way he's working you open with his fingers to bite back, and maybe he knows that.
His thumb reaches up to attack your clit the second you start moaning again, thus stripping you of any normal vocal ability. Your voice turns breathless and your moans become whines, and you're all too overwhelmed with how good he feels to think about being quiet.
If your noise is a problem, he doesn't say anything. In fact, he's leaving kisses all over your skin as he pushes his fingers in and out of you even faster, as if it is not gently pulling you apart limb by limb.
"Spencer," your voice cracks as he twists his hand, and the heel of his palm meets your clit, over and over again. "Oh."
You writhe, and this time he makes no effort to keep you still. He doesn't really need to. He has almost full autonomy over how far away from him you can get, with legs on either side of your body. You couldn't escape him even if you tried to.
His eyebrows pinch together when you clench around his hand, and he's back to kissing you, swallowing your louder than normal moan.
"Gonna cum," you whimper, brokenly, into his mouth.
He responds by picking up the pace of his fingers. Again.
He stops kissing you when your hips lift off the mattress to meet his, watching as your face twists and your lips part in a soundless moan, your orgasm wracking through you and making you look so beautiful.
He pumps his fingers in and out of you even when you slump back on the mattress. Waiting for your conscious to return, and you to beg him to stop.
Which takes longer than normal, for he is watching you roll your hips against his hand, seeking more from him. He happily complies, really, and you can distantly hear him laugh as you crack beneath him, every vein in your body pouring out onto the soft sheets.
You run warm, and you twist, and finally jerk your body away from him, mumbling an incoherent string of, "No. Mm-mm. Spence... ah, stop it."
"One more?" he asks, but you're shaking your head and still trying to get away from him, whining. "Okay, okay. I'm stopping. Shh, it's okay."
Your eyes flutter open once it's been a few moments of regaining control of your mind, and you catch your favourite part of any of this; the way he looks at you. You are the most perfect thing in the world to him when you've just came, and it's so easy to forget how complicated this all is when he's staring at you like you are a piece of artwork.
Once you're fully back, he gives you another kiss, and you melt once more, chasing his lips when he pulls away.
"Spencer," you grumble, and you can hear him huff a short laugh from his bathroom he's disappeared into.
"I'm not disappearing forever. Relax," he says, cloth between his hands.
The bed dips beneath his weight again as he hovers back over you, the damp fabric sliding up your legs as he wipes down every surface of your skin.
Sometimes this is your least favourite part. Forced to watch him erase any proof that he ever put his hands on you; that he ever loved you. Even physically.
And it means it's over. And once he finishes cleaning you up, you will have to put your clothes back onto your body, and walk out of his apartment like it means nothing to you the same it does for him.
"I'll call you when I'm free next week," he says.
"Okay," you say, quietly, biting the bullet and sitting up once he stands again. "I'll see you then, I guess."
"Get home safe. Text when you do?"
You feel ridiculous when your heart stutters in your chest. He does not care the way you want him to, and his words are always common courtesy. Never interest.
frank coaxes an overtired tired, tipsy you into his lap and takes over the job of caring for you
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ interested in how the pitt crew got approved for a week in greece? the original invitation is still posted
PAIRING: frank langdon x er!barbie reader
WARNINGS: fluff, tipsy!reader, au where they are together and in love already!!!!!!, little PDA, lots of yearning, established relationship, protective frank langdon!, kissing, lap sitting, sleeping/passing out
PROMPT: here!
WC: 1.1k
Sometimes Frank thinks he should put you on a leash.
Get one of those toddler backpack rigs with the little animal character on it and clip you in. Maybe that would preserve what remains of his peace.
Morifying for you, humiliating for him, definitely probably a terrible look in public, but at least you’d stay within a five-foot radius and he could stop living in this permanent state of low-grade vigilance you seem to provoke as casually as breathing.
And he loves you. Deeply. Completely.
That’s the problem. Love, with you, is surveillance. It is anticipatory. It is watching for the exact point at which your glittering, social, I’m-fine performance starts to come apart at the seams while you insist it isn’t happening.
You just never seem to know when to stop.
And tonight you are all over the pool patio with a mojito slicking one hand cold and damp, dribbling little sacrificial offerings of rum and mint over the stone, while the other hand keeps straying to the bikini strap at your hip.
Restless. Fidgety. Smiling at everyone. Talking too loudly.
A little drunk, a little sleepy, and, as ever, too stubborn to concede either.
The moment you glance his way, Frank tilts his chin and crooks two fingers in a come here.
A gesture that should not, by any reasonable standard, contain so much possession in it, and yet your expression changes all at once, brightening with buzzed delight as you cross toward him.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite person to be bossed around by,” you say when you reach him, voice dipped in honey. You stop beside his lounger, smiling down at him. It’s such a pretty smile. “Did you miss me terribly?”
“I usually do.”
There’s no point in pretending otherwise.
That gets you.
“Yeah?” You tip forward a little, closing the distance with shameless interest. “Can I get a kiss, then?”
Frank’s mouth twitches. “You can get whatever you want, sweetheart.”
He lifts a hand to your jaw and draws you down, sealing his mouth over yours in a kiss that has to be brief by sheer circumstance, though not so brief he misses the cool, fizzy ghost of lime on your lips.
Sugary and faintly effervescent, the taste of it lingering for one extra second after he pulls back, temptation rendered in citrus.
Frank has never been especially talented at self-control where you are concerned.
It’s why he’s not a fan of PDA. Public affection is never only that. It is a beginning. A permission slip.
One kiss and suddenly he is keenly aware of all the ones he is not having, all the ways he would rather be kissing you if the two of you were alone.
So he stops there, because he has to, and leaves your hand at your jaw instead, thumb brushing once over your cheek.
“What do you say we go find you something to eat?”
You make a face immediately, lower lip pushing out in a sulky little pout. “‘M not hungry.”
“That’s fascinating, because you look like you’re about two minutes from falling asleep standing up.”
“You make everything sound so dire.”
Frank snorts. “Pot, meet kettle.”
Then, in a flawless little proof-of-concept, you sway backward with all the structural integrity of a wilting palm tree.
Frank moves before the thought fully forms, hands shooting out to catch the back of your thigh, fingers splaying over the soft curve just beneath your ass as he drags your forward. One quick tug and there you are, neatly slotted between his legs.
Your hands land on his shoulders and you giggle, as if nearly toppling over into a concussion is somehow charming rather than precisely the kind of thing that keeps shaving years off his life.
He squeezes once, firm and corrective.
“Okay, well, what do you say you keep me company for a while?”
He could tell you to sit down. You might even listen, eventually, but not without first delivering a brief theatrical monologue on authoritarianism and oppression and how cruel it is to stifle your sparkle.
So. Better not make it about obedience. Frank has learned this the hard way, or at least the repetitive way.
There are only so many reliable methods of keeping you where he can see you, and most of them depend on reframing the situation until it no longer sounds like containment.
You resent being managed. You respond beautifully to being needed. Especially by him.
“Mm, okay,” you murmur at once, whatever resistance you had dissolving on contact.
Before Frank can offer any further guidance, you’re already hauling yourself into his lap with spectacularly poor mechanics, all grabby hands and misfiring limbs, nudging him backward against the lounger.
And after a moment of awkward shifting and a fair amount of readjusting, you finally settle into him in a drowsy little heap, half draped across his lap and half tucked into his side.
Frank extracts the mojito from your hand just before the remainder can go down the front of his shirt, though not before a bright cold splash hits his chest anyway.
He puts the glass aside and looks back at you.
Brushes your hair off your face. Once, twice, again, until there you are properly visible beneath it.
You blink up at him, visibly straining to keep your eyes open, lashes heavy with the effort. “You know what Parker told me earlier?”
“Hmm?”
“That you’re not supposed to compliment the moon here.”
Frank’s fingers drift through your hair again. “And why’s that?”
“Apparently,” you say, lowering your voice, “it’s bad luck. Like if you say it’s pretty, then something in your life gets ruined out of jealousy.”
Your finger wanders over his shirt, drawing something looping into the cotton, your nail a shiny petal-pink that matches the sparkle dusted over your eyes.
He asks, “Should I be concerned you’ve already told it how pretty it is?”
A tiny crease appears between your brows.
“Maybe a little.” Your nail catches on his shift before drifting on again. “But it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? Because Selene is the moon, and Helios is the sun, and they’re siblings, I think, so maybe he gets weird about it… because if everyone keeps talking about how beautiful the moon is, and nobody’s complimenting the sun, that could create resentment. Familial resentment. Which is, like, one of the oldest forces in mythology.”
Frank opens his mouth, halfway to saying that while the ancient Greeks certainly contained enough familial instability to support the theory, he strongly suspects Parker is still just screwing with you, and then he looks down.
You are asleep.
He huffs a laugh through his nose, quiet enough not to disturb you, and shifts his hand higher along your back, settling you more securely against him.
This, too, is part of loving you, he thinks. The rare and fragile privilege of being where you land when the night catches up to you.
Around you, the patio goes on glowing. Voices blur. Glass clinks somewhere in the distance. Water shifts blue-black under the moonlight.
He leans his head back against the lounger and lets himself look out at it for a second. It is a pretty moon.
If Selene is listening, she can be flattered. He’ll take the risk.
this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!
Ask me what my favourite dynamic is. Go on. Ask. It’s drunk reader and her bf who loves her. Thanks for asking. I’m gigglingggg this was so cutie wow there’s nothing else for me to say but that could have smth to do with the fact that it’s 4am anyways #iloveyoufranklangdon #iloveyoumariasont
in which spencer reid doesn’t follow through one time, and you really hate that he has a psychology degree.
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader
genre: hurt/comfort
tags: daddy issues. shoutout to the girls with inconsistent fathers this ones for you. established relationship. readers mentioned wearing makeup, a dress and heels. rational bf!spencer reid fuck i would hate a profiler bf.
word count: 1.8k
a/n: not a trauma dump fic not a vent fic do not read into this fic at all don't even start to speculate on my life and where these emotions came from they're all fake made up not real make pretend. no photos no aesthetics just me, a tumblr account, and a dream for this baddie.
In all your months of dating Spencer Reid, he had never forgotten anything. Not a date, not a work event. Or, at least, he's never forgotten to call. Even when you had been so busy one week you could barely spare him more than a ten minute phone call a day, he remembered what was going on in your life enough to be there for you.
A false blanket of security draped over your relationship, is what it is now.
A blanket he seemingly had no trouble ripping off you a random Friday evening, throwing it in a fire and watching it — and your trust in him — burn into dust.
Perhaps a tad dramatic for what was happening, but you were always one for theatrics when it came to your emotions. Usually, he welcomed it. He was (abashedly) similar, after all.
Not that he was even here to welcome it.
You'd looked pretty. You'd felt pretty. Past tense, for your shoes were strewn somewhere across the floor after throwing them in frustration, and your makeup was ruined after unwelcome tears had streamed down your face an hour ago. You had been ready for a dinner date you and Spencer had scheduled in only three days ago — penciled in, for you never knew what his work schedule was going to end up being.
You're not sure how long you sat in that one spot on the couch, mind going through every single possible scenario that could've happened between the text he sent you that morning saying he was excited to go out tonight, and the lack of his appearance this evening.
The logical conclusion is that he got too busy, and he forgot. But Spencer Reid's whole thing is that he doesn't forget. Oftentimes he considers it a curse. You never really agreed with him. Until now, it seemed.
The less than logical, emotionally driven conclusion, is that he actively chose to stay at work to avoid coming home because he didn't want to see you. Or he didn't actually want to go to dinner, and he didn't know how to tell you. Or his team offered to go out and he'd rather hang out with them instead of you.
Really, the reasons are endless, and any rational conclusion was lost on you. Mind swallowing you whole as you continued to stare off into space, visibly shaking and head beginning to pound from the crying.
A glance at the clock told you it was near midnight by the time you heard the door handle rattle and twist open, tired, puffy eyes blinking to adjust to the light filtering in from the apartment hallway.
"Hey. Why're you out here? It's late. I thought you'd already be in bed," Spencer rambles absentmindedly, voice so disconnected from you it only made the ache in your chest worse. As he flicks the light on and assesses the state of the apartment, he asks, "What're your shoes doing on the floor?"
You blink a few times. Was he pretending to be dumb on purpose?
You stand on cramped legs, stretching them for the first time since you'd sat unknowingly on the couch nearly six hours ago, dress bunching around your waist. You didn't bother to fix it.
Like a switch, he clicks, his bag sliding off his shoulder and falling to the floor with a thud, realisation settling into his features.
"Our date. Oh, God, I'm so sorry, angel."
"Yeah. I'm sure," you croak, voice hoarse as you pick up your shoes pathetically in front of him, the heels clacking together as you walk towards your bedroom door.
He calls your name, and after you make no effort to return to him, you hear his feet against the wooden flooring, carrying himself to you.
You're in the ensuite, beginning to take makeup off you probably should've removed four hours ago. It was stupid hope you held on to, anyways.
"You're upset. I know. It was awful of me to forget our date," he stands in the doorway, staring at you through the mirror. Even indirectly, you can't make eye contact with him.
"You forgot," you repeat back to him, almost dumbfounded. "You forgot?"
"Forgot isn't... the best word," his fingers dig into his eyes for a split second, and you watch him think. "I got caught up at work. We had a case, then we didn't have a case, then we did, so we started looking into it, and time just... escaped. From all of us."
"Time just escaped."
Your parroting wasn't doing much to further the conversation, and you watch as Spencer averts his gaze to the floor to take a deep breath, before his eyes land back on you again.
"It isn't the best reason, I know. But it's the truth," he says.
"Uh-huh," you mumble, discarding your cotton pads stained with your makeup into the trash.
"Can you stop being evasive?" he catches your wrist before you can return to the sink. "Talk to me."
"What do you want me to say?" you ask, almost earnestly. "It's okay that you forgot, Spencer. I won't take it personally at all, and things between us are just dandy!"
"I want to know what you're actually feeling," he replies, voice flat with his irritation, before he forces himself to soften it. "I can't reassure you if all I know is that you're angry."
"Hurt. Forgotten. Disregarded. Disliked. Irritated we're doing this in our fucking bathroom."
At that, he leads you into the bedroom, turning the ensuite light off. "Forgotten and disregarded are synonyms, so I'm assuming that's what you feel the most."
"You're the psyche expert," you mumble, bitterly.
"I'm not trying to be your psyche expert," he quips, and your heart sinks. "Why're you feeling forgotten?"
You stare at him, dumbfounded, for a beat. "Because my boyfriend quite literally forgot about me?"
"I didn't forget about you—"
"—No, you're right. You just forgot about the date that you literally fucking texted me about this morning!" you snap, voice rising in a way that makes you cringe. Yet, you can't stop it. "You! Spencer Reid! Forgot!"
"Don't yell at me, please," he takes a step towards you; you take a step back.
"Why did you forget? Did you choose to? Are you pretending that you forgot about it all to save your ass?"
"No," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I didn't. I told you what happened. You're choosing not to believe me."
"How am I meant to believe that? It's a shit excuse—"
"—It's the truth—"
"—God, you can lie, Spencer! Men lie!"
He goes silent, as do you. You become trapped in an uncomfortably intense staring contest with him, as you watch his brain slowly tick over and decipher what you were saying, and come up with a response. Yours, however, splits open with your own self hatred. Disdain for what you had just said to him.
"Okay," he exhales, very slowly. "I'm going to tell you what I think, and you can tell me how right I am."
"You're going to profile me?"
He pauses. "I'm sure it'll come off that way. I'm not trying to," when you don't protest again, he continues. "I think you're less upset about the fact that I didn't come home for a date, and more about the fact that I didn't message you about it. I've not shown up for dates before. I've always contacted you prior to let you know. And I've promised I would always contact you if something came up that interfered with our plans. Ultimately, I said I would do something, and I didn't follow through. That is on me, and I'm sorry. What isn't on me, is how you're reacting. Which is childish, honey. You're acting like a petulant child, and I don't mean that as an insult, because I'm almost certain I know why."
Your silence is his cue to continue, but he pauses to collect his thoughts. Your lower lip is beginning to wobble, and he feels awful.
"You know how our childhoods affect us," he says, and the second what he's about to say to you clicks in your brain, your teeth clamp over your lip, and your eyes drop to the ground. "Reactions from parents to things we do, things others do, things they do, all builds up in our subconscious. Having a parent who didn't show up for you time and time again, built up in your subconscious. So yes, you're reacting to me not following through with something childishly. I will not take that back. But that reaction is not your fault. It's in response to a trigger, and the person in control of that emotional response is not adult you. It's the little girl who got let down by her father. I won't ever hold that against you."
Your sniffle breaks the deafening silence that follows his tangent. You allow him to envelop you into a hug, at which you break down into a fit of sobs akin to the ones from earlier.
"I hate you," you stutter out in between sobs, voice muffled by his chest.
"You can't say that while hugging me," he counters. It was true, as your hands had wrapped around his waist just seconds ago.
"I hate you," you repeat, punctuating your words with a poke to his back.
"I love you," he replies, instead. His fingers thread through your hair as he cradles your head with his other hand. "I'm sorry I didn't contact you about being busy."
You swallow the lodged sob in your throat with a hiccup. "I'm sorry I acted like a petulant child. And I'm sorry that my dad sucks."
"I'm sorry your dad sucks too," you feel him kiss the top of your head. "Have you eaten?"
"Mm-mm," you shake your head, and he pulls back, hands slipping down to your cheeks, catching the tears.
"Do you want to eat?"
"The restaurant we were going to is closed," you mumble.
"Maybe. But the Thai place isn't."
"I'm pretty sure it is," you counter, and his eyebrows furrow. "It's past midnight now."
His face falls, he waits a beat, before his hand drops to your own, and he's tugging you towards the door of the bedroom. "Okay. Fine. Well, the Spencer Reid Kitchen is never closed."
"I asked for pasta last night and you said the kitchen was closed."
"You asked at three in the morning," he deadpans, as you make yourself comfortable on one of the stools.
"The Spencer Reid Kitchen is never closed," you mock his voice from earlier.
"The Spencer Reid Kitchen rules are made by Spencer Reid."
"The rules should be lenient of Spencer Reid's girlfriend."
"Do you want pasta or not?"
"Yes," you quickly say with a firm nod. "Sorry."
He spends the first hour of that Saturday making you pasta; and making up the missed date.
now that off campus is trending can i make a confession. my college spencer reid fic was originally a john logan fanfic from 2023. i lied when i said it was from may 2024.
you approach everything clinically, including poorly constructed sex scenes in books. dr langdon decides to take that as an invitation to give you a proper sex ed lesson.
pairings: nerd!reader x frank langdon
warnings: 18+ MDNI, explicit sexual content, reader reading smut, virgin!reader (kind of implied more than outright stated), innocence kink, corruption kink, langdon supplying reader with an sex book?, literally so freaked out and for what, female masturbation, phone sex, langdon talking you thru it!!!
wc: 6.2k
You’ve always had a somewhat fraught relationship with imagination. People say you lack it, to put it plainly. They say you’re too literal. As if being literal isn’t the reason airplanes stay in the air and bridges remain standing.
But you just happen to find reality plenty beautiful. More than beautiful, actually. Reassuring. There is dignity in a thing that can be tested, reproduced, and counted on.
Newton’s law. The sodium-potassium pump. Entropy. Even the grimmer systems at least are consistent if nothing else.
So naturally, medicine was what you pursued in college. Everything means something. Everything is attached to something else. Symptoms are not random; bodies are not whimsical.
Even if an answer is hidden, it exists, and if you are willing to stay with a problem long enough, turn it over enough times, peel it apart layer by layer and build it back from the inside out, eventually it reveals itself.
Fiction does not afford you that courtesy. Fiction wants you to tolerate blank spaces and gaps. You hate gaps. You love knowing.
Fiction gives you half a scene and waits expectantly, like congratulations, now you do the labor.
Build the room. Place the bodies. Infer the angles. Ignore, apparently, that the human body is not an abstract concept but a heavily regulated system of hinges and limits and gravity and very obvious spatial constraints.
You are experiencing one of those gaps now, staring so hard at the page your eyes begin to sting a little, focus tightening to a punitive little point. You think if you look at it severely enough the scene might resolve into something you can understand.
The book says the woman is “on top,” which should be clear enough on its own, except the next sentence immediately ruins that clarity by describing angles that do not, as far as you can tell, exist in three-dimensional space.
And you have so many questions.
Is there a bed involved here? A couch? A floor? Any surface at all?
You reread the line. Maybe you overlooked a prepositional phrase hiding in plain sight. A detail that will clarify whose leg is bent and why it apparently now has the range of motion of a paper clip.
Nothing. No luck. Still opaque.
Possibly more vague now, because repetition has begun to dissolve whatever confidence you had in your own reading abilities.
It is difficult to overstate how humiliating it is to be bested by mediocre smut.
You sigh and look to your watch. 9:18 p.m. Late. The bus is always late. That’s why you have this book in your hand in the first place, wanting to turn dead time into something educational. Unfortunately that’s not how it’s going.
You blow out a breath as another gust of wind snakes over the exposed strip of skin between your socks and the hem of your jeans.
They used to hit lower on your ankle, but courtesy of your building’s shitty communal dryer, they don’t do that anymore.
“Interesting reading choice.”
It is not a voice you prepared yourself to hear. You weren’t prepared to hear a voice at all, really.
So when you hear the familiar pitch of Landon, your body overcorrects, sending you backward like a startled deer losing traction on ice.
You see the next ten seconds in a flash: the hollow thunk of your head on the pole behind you, the stuttering apologies delivered as your vision tunnels, the concussion protocols that will surely haunt you for weeks, months, possibly forever.
But those ten seconds never actually happens.
Instead, you cautiously peer up into the flat, coolly appraising expression of Langdon, whose hand is placed behind your head, taking the brunt of the impact.
“Oh. Hi. Dr. Langdon. I, um, this isn’t — I’m not —” You’re already floundering, trying to assemble something defensible out of a situation that is not defensible. “It was recommended,” you say at last, which is true, though not in a way that sounds remotely exculpatory once spoken aloud. “By Javadi. She said it was good, which I assumed meant, like, well-written, not — this. Which I know sounds — I hear it, I hear how it sounds, but I didn’t just, like, seek this out independently. I was curious from a clinical standpoint.”
Shit.
You just lobbed Victoria under the bus didn’t you? And unlike the literal bus, this metaphorical one arrived enthusiastically on time, probably even honked.
You add it to the growing ledger of things you owe her. Coffee, at the very least. Something artisanal, thoughtful, handcrafted.
A note, handwritten in apology, because email would be cowardly and texting would feel insufficient, and really — after what you’ve just done, you’re not sure anything short of ink, paper, and a tangible record of shame could suffice.
He removes his hand, the pressure at the back of your head disappearing as he shifts to rest it along the bench behind you instead.
“Clinical,” he repeats. His eyes flick briefly to the book in your hands, then back to you, unimpressed. “And what have you concluded so far, doctor?”
“Not a doctor yet,” you point out. Not sure why you do. “But, um, just that it’s just not very clear? Like, the scenes move really fast, and I feel like I’m missing steps in between, so I keep trying to visualize what’s happening and I just end up getting stuck on, like… where everything is supposed to go and —” You stop, frowning now. “You — you probably didn’t actually want an answer to that, did you?”
His mouth pulls just enough to suggest he’s entertained despite himself. “Not initially.”
You nod. “Okay, good, because I definitely wasn’t planning to provide detail. Just, you know — general plausibility stuff. Realism concerns.”
“Let me see,” he says, and before your frazzled brain can form an adequate objection, he's already reaching forward, extracting the paperback from your suddenly slackened grasp.
You stand abruptly, the bench scraping in a terrible sound against concrete as you reach for the book.
“You really don’t have to do that.”
A correct statement. Useless, however, as he lifts the novel out of reach without even looking at you, arm extending just enough to make it clear that this is not a negotiation, and also, somewhat insultingly, not even difficult.
You briefly consider climbing him. Scaling him like a distressed, socially compromised marsupial and retrieving the book by force.
It feels like a viable solution. You dismiss it only on the grounds that in the last five minutes alone, accumulated enough embarrassment to sustain a normal person for at least two lifetimes.
And theoretically there should be a cap.
There is not, apparently.
Because after a brief glance at the page, he starts reading aloud: “She sank down on him with an aching slowness, savoring the stretch of it, the sweet friction that made her pulse flutter faster with every roll of her body. His hands gripped her waist, guiding her, keeping her there while the pleasure mounted in teasing waves until she was shaking with it, desperate and almost there.”
You feel the heat spark up your spine and towards you neck before saturating your face. The intensity momentarily blurs your vision.
Your hands tighten uselessly at your sides, a strange, unfamiliar tightness coiling low in your stomach.
You try your very hardest not to let your mind start making substitutions. You try not to let the faceless bodies on that page acquire identifiable features. A chin dimple, for instance. You try not to let the voice in front of you fuse itself any further to the text than it already has.
You wrench your gaze upward, fixing it somewhere behind his left ear, hoping that physical distance might somehow dilute your newfound imagination that just five minutes ago you were bashing.
He closes the book with a snap, eyebrow arched. “Sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“I mean, maybe,” you respond, a little too quickly. “If there were just… more specifics? Like, about the positioning. The angle, or where —” You take a quick breath. “Never mind.”
“And exactly how would you clarify it?”
“I’d probably just… add another line,” you say. “Like, specify that her hips are lower, or that her weight is shifted forward so her center of gravity is closer to his. Just so it’s clear what’s actually happening.”
He doesn’t say anything right away and when his eyes flick forward again, they look a little different beneath the dark of the sky, the blue of them deepened into something richer. A little less straightforward, you think. Lapis held in low light, saturated in silver strips and a little too pretty.
You watch as his tongue drags across his lower lip, the briefest glimpse of moisture highlighting the subtle contours and fine, shallow ridges of texture there.
“If you’re that concerned with accuracy,” he murmurs, “I’m sure there’s ways to run a practical demonstration.”
You have a hard time understanding what he means by that and when your mind does attempt to furnish the words with imagery, you have to recoil from your own thoughts.
Does he mean with him?
No, surely not, that is not where he wanted this conversation to go, and besides, that interpretation feels reckless, egotistical even, considering he is almost certainly saying it in the most neutral, solution-driven sense possible.
If that’s what he’s saying at all. He might not be. You can’t tell.
He is offering a suggestion for you.
You are the one making it weird.
“Oh. Well, it’d probably end up being more complicated than it’s worth. I’d need a controlled setup, probably multiple attempts, and at that point it’s less a demonstration and more a full reconstruction.”
A muscle feathers along his jaw as he tips his face towards the moon-lit sky. He seems to do that a lot. Like he’s appealing to some higher power for fortitude to deal with you. Or maybe not you specifically, which would be preferable, expect it does feel rather like you are the central to the current crisis, you just aren’t sure how.
Then he exhales a small laugh, thin with disbelief, and shakes his head once.
“You’re right,” he says, voice deadpan. “Clearly I wasn’t thinking this through. Practicality first.” He glances pointedly at his watch. “It’s late. I’ll give you a ride home.”
You accept his offer without arguing, you’d be a fool not to, and trail him out toward the parking lot. A step behind, then a half step, then back again. You can’t quite decide on the appropriate proximity.
When you reach the row of cars, you realize you’ve never seen his before.
It’s nice. Grey, practical, a four-door SUV that screams fiscal responsibility and weather-appropriate footwear, a vehicle with divorced-dad energy so specific you can practically invent the rest of the man around it: patient at youth soccer, quietly resentful in a grocery store parking lot, pretending not to be wounded by logistical disappointments.
The interior only deepens the impression. It is clean, but not in a forbidding way, not scrubbed of personality.
There is a toy in the cupholder, a crumpled napkin tucked into the side compartment, a few fast-food receipts scattered near the floor like the residue of a life conducted at speed.
It feels lived in, which is somehow more intimate than if it had been spotless.
It is, disconcertingly, human. More human than you expected from a man who often carries himself like a sealed document.
Nice, you think again, and then, unhelpfully, him, the two notions beginning to blur together before you can stop them.
It’s a relatively quiet drive to start. The radio tuned to some Catholic station it must have picked up nearby, murky and hard to decipher, while streetlights drift past in bands of orange and green, staining the inside of the car with color and then taking it back.
“Javadi really recommended that?” Frank asks suddenly, piercing the silence.
“Yeah,” you admit, then wince almost immediately. “Well, sort of. I mean, I probably should not make it sound like she shoved it into my hands in some kind of corrupting-the-youth campaign. She mentioned it, but I was already curious. It was not not my idea.” You glance down, suddenly very interested in your own hands. “I’ve just been trying to do a little research, I guess.”
His fingers tap once against the steering wheel.
“And what, specifically, are you hoping to learn?”
Your mouth presses thin for a second. You’re not sure if you should continue.
“I was mostly just trying to get a better sense of... how certain things work in real life,” you say, picking each word carefully. “As opposed to in theory. Or in whatever version of reality people usually pretend is self-explanatory.”
He says nothing at first. Then through grit teeth: “You mean because no one’s explained it to you?”
You glance over, caught a little off guard by the question. “Well, not in any useful sense.”
His jaw flexes.
“And the alternative,” he says slowly, “was assigned reading.”
You wince. “When you phrase it like that, it does sound bleak.”
“When I phrase it like that, it sounds like you’re trying to teach yourself something most people learn by experience.”
“Well,” you mumble, “yes. More or less.”
The light changes and he brakes, the red wash from the signal pouring through the windshield and across his face, tinting his skin rose-gold.
He screws his eyes shut for a brief second, hands drawing tighter on the wheel before he exhales.
“In that case,” he says, opening his eyes again, “I’m not entirely convinced that’s the most reliable educational resource.”
“Why?” you ask, with enough sincere confusion to make it clear you are not arguing so much as requesting clarification.
The light turns green.
“Because it’s not source material. It’s entertainment.” His tone stays level, but only just. “It takes whatever is most dramatic, most flattering, most appealing, and presents it like it’s standard. It leaves out the parts that are inconvenient or unsexy, which means if you treat it as educational, you’re going to come away with a very distorted sense of how any of it actually works.”
“I guess that makes sense,” you say. “There were definitely sections where I kept thinking, surely that cannot be how that happens. Or at least not without significantly more preparation, flexibility, or orthopedic intervention than the text was willing to acknowledge.”
“So I gathered.”
You fall quiet after that, though not for lack of further questions. In fact the opposite is true, because now he has accidentally positioned himself as a person with knowledge of how sex works.
But that would be inappropriate on at least six different levels.
He is driving you home as a favor, not volunteering to become some kind of after-hours consultant on the mechanics of sex, and there is no universe in which asking for elaboration would make you seem anything other than catastrophically unwell.
You almost ask him anyway.
But before you can make what would almost certainly be the worst possible decision available to you tonight, the car slows, turns, and then stops.
You stare at the windshield, disoriented by the fact that you are suddenly at your apartment.
“Right,” you say, gathering your bag with the abrupt, clumsy movements of someone trying to recover from her own thoughts. “Thank you. For the ride.”
He gives a brief nod, one hand still resting on the wheel. “It was no trouble.”
You do not believe that for even a second. Still, you murmur goodnight and let yourself out, hurrying inside with as much dignity as can be salvaged after a conversation like that.
A couple days later, you’re sitting in the breakroom with your head propped in your palm, devoting a frankly heroic amount of effort to not drop face-first into the laminate.
You are exhausted, which is surely unrelated to the fact that you stayed up too late conducting what can only be described as independent research.
There is, it turns out, an astonishing amount of positions.
More than seems necessary, honestly. Far too many names. Far too many diagrams. So many that appear to require either exceptional upper body strength or a level of mutual coordination that feels statistically unlikely in the average civilian population.
Some are perfectly straightforward. Many are not. Several seem just down-right wrong.
The door opens and you glance up, prepared to offer some vague nod of recognition to whoever has come to interrupt your private collapse.
Langdon.
“Oh,” you say, straightening a little too quickly. “Hi, Dr. Langdon.”
That seems to be your automatic response to his presence.
His eyes narrow. “Rough morning?”
You give a small shrug. “M’fine.”
“You’ll have to excuse my skepticism.” He drags the chair across from you and sits.
“Just stayed up too late.”
You hope that doesn’t inspire follow-ups.
He slides something across the table toward you. A book. You stare at the cover. Then at him.
“This,” he says, tapping two fingers once against the cover, “is at least designed to explain things.”
Slowly, as if touching it too fast might make this more real, you pick it up and turn it over.
The back is dense with tidy paragraphs about desire, arousal, and the science of how women’s bodies actually work, all written in the reassuring language of expertise, which would be comforting if your pulse were not currently behaving like it had something to hide.
“That’s… unexpectedly thoughtful,” you murmur. “Thank you.”
“Don’t make too much of it.”
“I won’t,” you say, which is a lie so poorly constructed it barely qualifies as one.
You are, in fact, almost certain to make too much of it later, probably in bed, probably while staring at the ceiling.
Then the door opens again. You nearly jump. You pull the book against your chest like you are protecting classified material. Langdon’s eyes narrow a fraction.
Garcia steps inside a second later, pauses, and looks between the two of you.
“...Am I interrupting something weird?” she asks.
You stand so quickly the chair legs scrape against the floor.
“Nope,” you say. “Not at all. Nothing weird. Not even slightly.” You clutch the book tighter. “I do, however, suddenly need to go be elsewhere. For work-related reasons. Very legitimate ones.” You nod once. “Okay. Bye.”
It’s late when you finally start to read the book Langdon gave you. Your first mistake, really. You have to be up in four hours. Four.
But the book turns out to be more useful than expected. It has information. Real information. Terminology and diagrams and explanations that move in a sequence a human brain can follow, one thing leading intelligibly to the next instead of that gauzy, vague, everyone-just-knows-what-to-do, magical event nonsense.
And this all should, theoretically, be enough to satisfy you.
Except every answer you get splits open into three more questions, hydra-style, the whole thing multiplying the second you think you have a grip on it.
And yes, sometimes Google is enough. But sometimes it is not.
Too broad, too contradictory, too many tabs open at once, too many Reddit posts written by men with misplaced confidence.
So now you are sitting on your bed staring at your phone, typing a message, deleting it, retyping it, deleting it again. Because this is weird. It is weird to text him.
But then again, he did hand you the book.
He did, in a very real sense, amplify this situation. And maybe giving you additional reading material counts as tacit approval for further questions. A follow-up. Continuing education.
You hit send.
hi dr. langdon. sorry. i have a question about the book!
It takes only a couple seconds for him to answer.
Go ahead.
You sit up so fast the book slides off your leg and drops onto the bedspread with a soft thump.
You stare at the screen.
You expected eventuality, a response tomorrow morning maybe, sometime after sunrise, sometime under the polite cover of daylight when everybody involved could collude in pretending this was a normal academic exchange and not you texting a senior resident after dark about sex-adjacent material like you were requesting clarification on electrolyte imbalance.
You glance at the clock and frown.
What is he even doing up?
Surely you didn’t wake him. You cannot imagine he sleeps with his ringer turned up loud enough for that. No, he feels like a phone-on-silent, notifications-curated, emergency-contacts-only kind of man.
You spend four minutes composing the question. You send six words.
what does “building sensation” actually mean?
Need more context than that.
You photograph the page. You send it. You put your phone face down on the quilt and do not look at it for a full minute.
When you finally make yourself turn the phone over, he’s answered.
It’s the physiological buildup to orgasm. Increased blood flow, heightened sensitivity, pelvic muscle tension. Sustained and constant stimulation. The sensation compounds on itself.
Your thumb catches idly on the hem of your pajama shorts, worrying the fabric back and forth while you stare at the screen. It takes a long amount of time to realize you’re doing it. You stop. Then start again without meaning to, fingertips slipping under the edge to press against your thigh.
is consistency about location or pressure or both? the book implies they're interchangeable.
Both. Generally location first, then pressure. If you keep changing where you’re touching, it’s harder to build anything. If the location is consistent but the pressure is erratic, same problem. They’re related, but not interchangeable.
Your free hand has drifted north to the waistband of your shorts, thumb pressing little crescent moons into overheated skin. Almost feverish.
Location first.
An unfortunate instruction to receive while being aware of the exact location in question, muted now by two thin layers of cotton.
You should stop there. Obviously.
You should set the phone down, turn off the lamp, go to sleep, and revisit all of this in the morning when you are less suggestible.
Instead your hand keeps moving, slow enough that you can perhaps pretend you have not consciously decided anything, slipping lower until it hovers over your underwear, where your clit presses back against the fabric. Swollen. And then lower than that, wet.
That startles you more than anything. From what, exactly? A sex manual? A few texts? Him?
No. That last one is inadmissible. Wildly inappropriate.
So you drag your mind back to the book instead, using it as a kind of corrective, something technical to blunt that he is, however indirectly, implicated in this.
Start with indirect stimulation. Let the body acclimate. Don’t rush the thing. Let the thing, apparently, arrive on its own like a skittish woodland creature you are trying not to scare off.
Fine. Whatever.
You press your thumb down and make a circular motion, sucking in a breath so sharply it almost hurts, mostly because the sensation is immediate and strange and good. You wouldn’t say overwhelming. Though maybe you would. You can’t think straight. Surprising, then. Concentrated.
Like pressing a bruise, except the complete inverse of that, if they lit up instead of aching. It makes you want to do it again.
So you do.
Small circles. Experimental. Testing the waters.
And it’s not like this is technically new. You have tried before.
But before was rushed and graceless and was the sort of thing done half-curiously and abandoned quickly, with no patience for your own body.
You were raised sheltered, and beyond that, serious. Preoccupied with things that seemed more pressing, more worthy of your attention, as though this part of yourself could be indefinitely postponed without consequence.
You pick the phone back up with your unoccupied hand.
okay. that makes sense.
You stare at it, dissatisfied. Too final. Too capable of ending the conversation. You add another line before you can overthink yourself out of it.
and if the sensation is building, when are u supposed to switch? like to inner stimulation, i mean. or are you not supposed to unless what you’re already doing stops working?
The typing bubble appears instantly.
You don’t have to switch. That’s the first thing.
External stimulation is usually more important, especially early on. Inner stimulation is optional, not a required next step.
Little gasps keep escaping you as you refine the motion, not changing much, just enough pressure to sharpen it, back arching into the mattress.
It feels good. You don’t remember it ever feeling this good.
Maybe because before did not involve a very attractive doctor explaining your own body back to you in real time.
It is getting harder to text. Harder to think in complete sentences. Still, you manage, so if it’s working, is it better to not change anything? even if it starts feeling a lot more sensitive?
Your phone starts ringing.
You freeze when Frank's name flashes across the screen.
For a moment you can only stare. Your pulse jumps in your throat, fluttering there like something trapped, and then you are yanking your hand from your shorts and grabbing for the phone with fingers that suddenly seem to belong to someone much less coordinated than you.
“Hi —,”
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” you ask, though your voice already sounds guilty, chest rising and falling unevenly. “I’m — nothing. I’m just reading.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
You frown at the dark ceiling. “I hate the confidence with which you say things.”
“It’s usually earned.”
You make a face at that, even though he cannot see it.
“I wasn’t prepared for a pop quiz,” you mutter. “You called out of nowhere.”
“A call seemed appropriate,” he says through the soft buzz of static.
“Why?”
Your whole body feels keyed up now, strung too tight, humming with a surplus of energy like you have been plugged into the wall and simply left there to glow.
It's hard to keep still under the blankets. Harder with his voice in your ear, that low grain of it roughened by the hour, touched with that tired edge that makes him feel closer than he is. He sounds warm. He sounds half-undone.
You can picture him without trying. In bed. Hair rumpled from sleep or from his hand shoved through it one too many times, one stray piece fallen near his eyes. Maybe in pajamas. Maybe not. Either option is equally disruptive. You brain offers a shirt pushes up a little, one arm behind his head, a strip of stomach, a line of hair disappearing into plaid boxers.
You shift on the mattress. Your hand trails back down your front, fingers resuming their place on your underwear.
“Because your last text didn’t read like a theoretical question,” he says. “I wanted to hear whether I was right.”
The words move through you, like he has reached through the phone and pressed a hand flat to your lower stomach.
“And were you?”
Your hips shift on the mattress again, angling into your own touch.
You bite your lip around the small throb of pleasure that follows.
“Yeah. I was.” His voice comes through coarser now, the line fuzzing around it, but not enough to hide the change. “And if I’m hearing you correctly, you haven’t stopped.”
You squeeze your eyes shut.
“...maybe.”
There's a brief pause on the line. You hear the rustle of him moving, before he speaks again. “Tell me exactly what you're doing.”
“I’m, uh…” You mouth goes dry. “I mean, you know.”
“I can’t tell you what to do if you won’t tell me what you’re doing,” he says. “You need to be specific.”
You swallow.
“I’m touching over my underwear,” you admit finally, the words coming out hushed and a little uneven. “Just with my thumb. I’m not really… doing anything more than that.”
A soft exhale crackles through the phone.
“That’s good,” he murmurs. “Tell me if it feels good.”
Your lashes flutter at the words. Your thumb keeps tracing the same spot, a little more rhythmically now, and every so often your hand falters when the sensation catches unexpectedly bright, a live wire under your skin.
Flashing hotter and hotter and hotter until you can barely stand it.
Your thighs draw in on instinct, then ease apart again, restless, unable to decide whether they are trying to hold the feeling or escape it.
“Mhm.” It’s all you can manage.
You start to picture him again. Existing in real time in the dark on the other end of the line now.
It sends the throbbing in your cunt up tenfold, sharp little bursts of color flying behind your eyelids, green and orange and something almost gold.
You use your imagination to conjure up the image of him doing the same. Him with the phone in one hand and the other moving in lazy unhurried strokes around his cock, like this is no great strain for him, like he is as controlled in private as he is everywhere else.
You wonder what it looks like. His cock. Probably big and pink and veiny.
You know, rationally, that he is probably not doing that at all. He is probably just lying there in the dark, listening, talking, being composed for both of you.
But it is a nice thought anyway. More than nice, really. Your body answers it before you can caution it otherwise, your clit going heavier and more swollen, as you move to touch yourself without the barrier of your panties. It’s more sensitive that way. And your whole lower half seems to lean vainly into your own hand, practically preening toward the touch.
“Now I’m, um, touching myself directly.”
“Alright. Want you to try something. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah,” you say quickly. A little too eager. “I can.”
“Good girl.” The praise makes your stomach tighten. “Want you to slide two fingers into yourself a little. Not all the way, just enough to get them wet, okay? Then bring them back to your clit and keep using your thumb, or your fingers if that feels easier. Same pace as before.”
You nod even though you know he can’t see it and slip two fingers down, enough to feel the sticky warmth of yourself, coating your digits.
You bring it back up, smearing it over your nub.
“Oh,” you mumble breathily.
“Yeah?” he teases quietly. “That better?”
“A lot.”
“Good. It’s easier like that. Less friction. If you’re getting more sensitive, too much drag starts working against you.”
He’s right. He’s always right. You feel a little strange and floaty now, like your whole body has narrowed down to one incandescent point.
“How do you know all this?” you prod.
A pause. Then, “Experience.”
“Right. That.” Another circle, another spark of pleasure down your spine. “I don’t exactly have that.”
“I gathered.”
Something in his tone makes you go a little still. Not enough to stop, but your hand falters, tightening around a thought before you can even identify it.
He notices immediately. He has some terrifying sonar for you specifically, some private frequency calibrated to every tiny shift in your breathing, every dropped beat, every half-second hesitation.
“Hey,” he says pointedly. “Don’t get in your head now. Never said it was a bad thing. Keep going. Think about something else.”
“Such as?” you whisper.
There’s the sound of breathing from the phone before he answers, “that’s up for you to decide.”
You suck in a sharp breath, squirming as you adjust phone closer to your ear
“Can you just… keep talking to me?”
There’s a huff on the other end, almost a laugh. “That’s not very specific.”
“I know.” You’re sure you’re not making much sense right now. “I just — don’t stop. Please. Just wanna hear you say anything.”
He’s quiet for a second, like he’s trying to decide what, exactly, you’re asking for. The problem is, you’re not entirely sure either.
You only know there’s a strange, tightening warmth low in your stomach, something gathering there, and his voice seems to nurture it instead of breaking it apart.
You hear something clang on the other end of the phone.
“Fuck. Okay. First need you to breathe, okay? You're tensing up, I can hear it. Relax your legs.”
You try to do as you're told.
In. Out. In. Out.
Each breath feeding the whole thing oxygen, driving you nearer and nearer to the vanishing point until your eyes threaten to roll back and your body feels like on extended nerve.
“I —” A breath. “Sorry, I just —” Another one. “Frank I think I'm — I'm close, I think, I don't — It's really intense and I don't know what I'm —” You lose the thought entirely. “I just don't know what I'm supposed to do when it starts feeling like this. Do I stop, or —”
“Shit baby, you've never gotten there before? Not even —”
“No,” you manage.
“Oh, poor thing.”Quiet. Almost to himself. “Okay. ‘S okay. Don't stop. I need you to stay with me and just let it happen, can you do that?”
“I think —”
“Don't think,” he cuts you off. “For once in your life, don't think. Just feel it.”
Something in you finally gives.
You feel all of it at once.
Your orgasm peaks so fast it almost feels like losing power everywhere at the same time, every room going dark together, and your back comes off the pillows and your hand presses harder before you even mean for it to and a gasp tears out of you, high and helpless and so unlike anything you have ever heard from yourself that for a second it barely sounds like yours.
“That’s it,” Frank says, low in your ear.
It rolls. That's the only word for it.
It rolls outward from your pussy in a slow, stunned series of tremors moving through your thighs, your spine, your chest, each wave its own distinct thing and yet not distinct at all, each one its own event, its own brief undoing.
You cannot do anything except lie there and take it, receive it as it passes through you, because there is nothing else available to you now, no other function left online, no thought, no dignity, no language, only this long bright aftershock and your body answering it whether you understand it or not.
Your breathing takes a while to come back to anything recognizable.
At first it is just air dragged in and let back out. Sweat has glued a few strands of hair to your forehead. Your hand has gone slack.
“You still with me?”
That is when your brain comes back. All at once. Hard. Fast.
Because now you are not just a body coming down from an orgasm.
Now you are yourself again. And Frank Langdon just talked you through getting off.
Frank Langdon, your coworker. Frank Langdon, your superior. Frank Langdon, whom you have just used as a combined anatomy instructor, practical demonstration guide, and live sex education resource.
“Yes, yeah, sorry.” You swallow, wipe at your forehead with the heel of your hand. “I'm here.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Your sensitivity's going to be elevated for a minute, so just let your muscles relax and let your breathing even out. If you feel shaky, that's normal. If you heart's racing, also normal. Get some water when you can. Sit up slowly if you're going to move.”
“Okay,” you murmur, because he sounds so certain that for a second it is easy to borrow some of it. You try to unclench by degrees, thighs, stomach, shoulders, one thing at a time. “I am a little shaky, which is good to know is normal and not, like, a sign that I’ve accidentally broken something."
“No,” he says, and there is that low note of dry amusement under it now, just enough to catch. “You didn’t break anything. If you had, trust me, we’d be having a very different conversation.”
“Right, no, I know. Though sex-related injuries are not exactly unheard of. Do you remember that girl in the ER who had a condom stuck in her for over two months and didn't realize it? That would suck."
"Mm. It would," he agrees. "Protection is important. Equally important to make sure it actually comes back out with you."
You let out a small giggle at that and shift on the bed, drawing yourself up a little slower this time, careful like he told you to bed. The quilt bunches under your legs.
A quiet opens up. And it might be comfortable if it with anyone else. But it is not with anyone else.
You break first.
“So what happens now?” you ask, trying for light and missing by a little. “Do we pretend this was a totally normal educational exchange and never speak of it again?”
“I don’t think you’re capable of pretending that,” he says.
You flush hot all over.
“And you are?”
A pause.
“No.” The room goes still around you. You wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t, but he does say: “You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” you murmur. “Probably.”
You have to be up in three hours now. Have to see him in four.
Another beat. Neither of you hangs up.
Then, very quiet, very even, he says, “Next time, ask sooner.”
“Next time?”
“If you’re going to use me as a reference source,” he says, all dry composure again, though now it feels a little put on, “I’d prefer a more reasonable hour.”
Your cheeks heat with the power of a thousand suns.
“Oh, well, Dr. Langdon, I think —”
“Goodnight.”
The line clicks dead.
You lie there staring into the dark, phone still pressed to your ear, and understand with awful, perfect clarity that this has not ended anything at all.
More gaps in your knowledge.
And you really hate gaps.
A/N: this has been sitting in my drafts 4 ten thousand yrs!!!!!!!! thinking about writing a part two but we shall see. anyway thanks for reading!! love ya always
imagine my surprise when i clock out of the worst shift i’ve ever had the displeasure of working to see mariasont frank langdon smut on my dash. imagine the instantaneous brightening of my day. 😁!!!!
“If you’re going to use me as a reference source,” he says, all dry composure again, though now it feels a little put on, “I’d prefer a more reasonable hour.”
this was an absolutely diabolical thing to have him say btw Maria you are depraved and disgusting. Me too. i want him to say it to me rn. what can you do to get frank langdon in my bed eta tonight.
Bought the Quinn subscription for Shawn Hatosy and it's worth every penny to hear Jack Abbot say good girl four times. Lord almighty I'm not okay I need that senior citizen
i am not a shawn hatosy girl the way the rest of you are i’m afraid i really do wish i could be because you all look like you’re having so much fun however my response to shawn hatosy on quinn is patrick ball Please reheat shawn hatosy’s nachos Please Please Please Please Please Please Please 🙏
"try saying this sentence to a victorian child omfg" I FELT THAT 🙏🏻
wow hello from my sideblog… No but i wrote it out and then i looked at it and i was like none of these words are in the bible bro. what am i even talking about.
summary: your boyfriend accidentally brings home his stethoscope, so you use it to check his heartrate.
pairing: frank langdon x girlfriend!reader
tags: 18+, mdni, afab reader, no use of y/n, established relationship, fluff, small bit of grinding, sitting on frank's lap, mischievous seduction
word count: 1.8k
notes: why doctor boyfriend if not do doctor stuff to him :]
please reblog if you enjoy! also, check out my masterlist!
The day is winding down. Aureate light streams in through your half-unfolded blinds, flooding your living room with natural lighting. The only other sources of lights are the numerous candles littering all flat surfaces, matching the sunset that’s dimming outside.
Evening tends to be your favorite part of the day. No more responsibilities now that your workday was over, just finishing up on the numerous things that had to be done before you were able to tuck yourself into bed and let the day wash away. Plus, that meant your boyfriend would be leaving his day shift, heading straight to your apartment to slouch into your arms and moan about how exhausting his day had been.
Bubbles pop in your sink as your hands duck into the warm water, fingers closing around the silverware floating near the bottom. You hum softly to the music floating through your house from your living room TV, fully entranced by the repetitive task of scrubbing at dishes and placing them in your drying rack. A single plate of dinner sits on the other side of your kitchen, covered in saran wrap to stay warm and clean, ready for Frank when he gets home.
You raise your head at the sound of keys outside your door, a smile already pulling at your lips. The door creaks open a moment later, revealing your boyfriend one glimpse at a time. His fingers around the door, his shoe, then his knee, slowly followed by every other part of him.
As usual, he looks ragged, weary from a long day. Multiple strands of hair droop over his forehead, tickling his eyebrows. He looks down as he kicks off of his shoes, those pieces staying stubborn as he lifts his head back up.
“Hey, baby,” he greets quietly. His voice usually tended to be softer when he came home, ears still ringing from the loud environment of the hospital, but you didn’t mind it. It fit the quiet and calm environment you tried to turn your apartment into for his arrival.
Keeping your hands in the sink, you lean back against him when his arm curls around your waist. His chin tucks into the dip between your collarbone and neck, watching as you scrub leisurely at a dish.
You tilt your head to press your temple against his head, smiling like a lovestruck fool. “How was work?” You ask, moving as slowly as possible to tuck the dish into the drying rack. One hand reaches in to pull the plug from the drain while the other reaches behind you to curl around his waist, squeezing at him playfully. “Save any lives?”
He groans, face pressing further into your skin as he rubs his cheek against your jaw like a cat. “Exhausting. Glad to be home with you.” The words are muffled as he presses his mouth to your neck, placing a chaste kiss there.
Once you’ve finished drying off your hands, you turn to face him, both hands now sliding around his waist. You press your chin into his sternum, blinking up at him. “I’m glad you’re home, too.”
As if reading your mind, he dips his head down to press a gentle kiss to your lips, shoulders lowering as he relaxes against you. After he pulls away, he bumps his nose against yours, moving to press a kiss to your cheekbone before finally untangling from you apart from one hand on your hip.
“‘m gonna shower.” Frank raises his hand to brush it through his hair, giving your skin a squeeze. “And then we can watch a movie?”
You nod, covering his hand with your own. “As long as you don’t fall asleep.”
He gives you an almost bashful smile. “No promises.” Leaning down, he presses a parting kiss to your forehead before finally disappearing out of the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”
After he leaves, you busy yourself with more cleaning up. Once he was out of the shower, you would be too busy spending as much time with him as possible, leading to your mess piling up until you managed to find another moment of free time. You always had to find these windows of opportunities to actually focus on getting things done.
The shower is still running by the time you finish tidying your kitchen, a groan every once in a while the only sign that Frank hadn’t fallen asleep beneath the spray. You glance around to assure you’ve finished everything, focus landing on his backpack, lying abandoned next to his shoes.
Well, there was no such thing as a bad time to gain some girlfriend points.
Kneeling on the floor, you unzip the backpack slowly. Reaching in, you expect to pull out just his lunchbox, however your fingers brush against something cool and metal instead. Curiosity quickly wins out, untangling it from whatever he had shoved in there and pulling it out.
His stethoscope glimmers beneath the golden glow in your apartment. The calligraphy “L” on the bell glints at you tauntingly, as if mocking you with how expensive it is. Frank had lost his old one a few months ago, meaning that you had to listen to a few days of whining about how he had to spend seventy-five-ish dollars just to do his job.
Placing the ear tips in both ears, you press the bell to your own chest and listen to the thud of your own heart. It’s so loud in your ear that you don’t hear Frank’s sock-covered feet padding towards you, hair still wet from his shower.
“Fuck, did I bring that home?” He groans, louder now that he’s had some time to relax. Both hands go onto your hips as he stands above you. “Meant to leave it in my locker.”
You grin as you look up at him, pulling one of the tubes out so you could hear him better. “I’m not complaining. This is fun.”
Taking off the stethoscope, you hang it around your neck. One hand curls into the fabric of his sweatpants to pull yourself up off the ground, his hand curling beneath your forearm to help you up. You use that as an opportunity to grab his wrist, turning and pulling him over to the couch. “Sit, sit, sit.”
Frank watches you with a look of pure amusement as he settles back on the couch, stretching out his legs as you settle beside him. Returning the headset back onto your ears, you press the bell to his chest. “How do I know if something’s wrong?”
“It doesn’t sound like badump, badump?” He jokes.
You scrunch your nose up in playful annoyance, the hand not holding the chestpiece reaching out to poke at his chest. “Be serious, doctor,” you scold. “I’m trying to make sure you’re not dying on me.”
That pulls a laugh out of him, heartbeat thumping a bit faster in your ears. An idea sparks in your brain at how easy it was to audibly raise his heartrate, the corner of your mouth pulling up into a smirk.
“Excuse me.” You sit up on your knees before throwing a leg over his lap, situating yourself down on his thighs. Your knees press into his hips as you squirm slightly, attempting to get comfortable.
Once you’ve settled, his hands on your thigh and thumbs rubbing circles into your skin, you focus back on his heartbeat. You must seem really focused on the way it picks up, because he laughs again. “Are you having fun, baby?”
“I have a diagnosis.” You sing-song the words, glancing up at him. You squirm once more, the apex of your thighs pressing directly in the spot that makes his legs tense beneath you. “I think you have a crush on me.”
Frank’s fingers tighten from where they’ve settled at the top of your thighs, fingertips pressing pale circles into your skin, exposed from the way your shorts ride up higher. Despite the way his pulse thrums even faster in your ears, he still smiles as he watches your face. “What led you to that conclusion?”
You hum in response, giving him a look before shrugging. “Your heartrate picks up when I do this.” Bracing the hand not holding the diaphragm against his abdomen, you give a singular roll of your hips, just enough pressure to hear a sharp intake of breath through the stethoscope’s headset. His grip on you also tightens, a subtle attempt of making you stop moving.
“We call that tachycardic,” he breathes out. His pupils have slowly grown in size, usurping the baby blue you’ve loved since the first time you looked into them. “Heartrate faster than normal resting rates.”
A smirk blooms on your lips, sitting a bit higher on his lap. The bell falls a bit lower, unable to hear his heartbeat and only slightly able to hear his breathing now, but you’re more focused on how he looks like this. Hair unruly as it airdries, pupils blown as he watches you, lips parted to breathe out all of his heavy exhales.
As much as he tried not to be, Frank was always easy to read. In the way he shoved his hands into his pockets when faced with a situation where he needed to think harder, or how he propped his arm up on the back of the couch whenever he wanted you to tuck yourself into his side. Maybe it was the fact that your eyes never strayed far from him when he was in your space, but it was pretty easy to tell what he wanted at all times.
And right now? His eyes are only on you.
Your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, body rolling to drag along his again. Finally, he pushes back on your hips, grunting as he attempts to push you away.
“I have a diagnosis of my own for you,” he murmurs into the quiet bubble surrounding the both of you. His spine straightens off of the back of the couch, breath brushing against your lips.
Fingertips trace a spark up your spine before his hand curls around the back of your neck, applying pressure to the sensitive spots beneath your ears. “You have ulterior motives.”
A grin blossoms on your lips, head leaning back into his touch. A challenge of your own. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
Frank gives you a hum of mock acknowledgement, eyes flickering down your body, gaze molten at the sight of you perched in his lap. When he glances up at you, he’s wearing a matching smile. His fingers move from the back of your neck to the back of your head, pulling you down. “C’mere and kiss me, baby.” He mumbles in the limited space between your mouths.
You let a giggle slip out right before you finally press your lips to his, the sound muffled by the kiss. His hand stays in your hair the entire time, manuevering your head to kiss you deeper, until your lungs are sparse of oxygen and your lips are kiss-bitten and rosy.
When he finally pulls away, he grins against your lips. “I’m assuming no movie tonight?”
Begging the tiktok link went through but omg this edit of Santos and Langdon parallel to Spencer and Emily... My niche
would you believe it’s been seen liked saved and sent to both sam and margot already as of april 21… like wow… we (you and me) r so locked in with each other…
prguitarman
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
