⋅˚₊‧ ଳ ‧₊˚ ⋅ RECENTS sun-split lovers • tender is the concrete • lullabye (goodnight, my angel) • failure of imagination • lovin’ you is just like sipping on straight syrup, sugar, sticky soda • a man with no stake in it
ᯓ𝄞 ˎˊ˗ CURRENTLY LISTENING mr. incorrect by malcolm todd
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⋅˚₊‧ ଳ ‧₊˚ ⋅ minors block the tag #not safe for anything
Maria I absolutely need you to get into formula one because I just know you'd write the BEST f1 romances 😫
ahhhhh thank yew 🤭🤭💖💖 occasionally they will pop up on my feed and i take a moment to admire however ive always been of a fictional character type girly 💔💔💔💔💔 i have accepted that most if not all high profile/celebrity peeps will do something to eventually disappoint me 💔💔
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be a part of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
langdon telling reader all the cool procedures he got to do at work while she rides him...
"— so I realigned his spine," he laughs breathlessly, shakes hair out of his eyes and squeezes at the fat of your hips while you ride him. "his spine, baby. without neuro."
"that's so hot,” you gasp into his mouth, “you’re so hot.”
“had his head in my hands and then i j-just—snap,” his laugh is more delicious this time, and then it gets cut off by a moan when you squeeze around his cock. “fuck, sweetheart, you feel so fuckin’ good.”
“better than a spine realignment?” you smile n bite his lip while he chuckles.
“i don’t know if I’d go that fa—” the rest of his sentence is muffled by a pillow over his face while you gasp in faux outrage through a fit of giggles :’)
spencer reid is impossible to understand, but that’s never stopped you from trying.
pairings: spencer reid x reader
warnings: emotional introspection, existential themes, soft angst if u squint, established relationship, domestic spencer reid, fluff, romance but make it neurotic
wc: 0.8k
There are certain things in this world, no, this universe, that stretch so far beyond human comprehension they almost feel made up. Concepts so massive, so vast, your brain sort of… crumples in on itself trying to hold them. Like the fact that there are more galaxies than grains of sand on Earth. That some starlight began its journey toward your retinas before the first human ever took a breath, and it’ll keep going long after your bones are dust.
And that everything you’ve ever touched, loved, cried over, laughed with… all of it is clinging to a spinning rock in the middle of an uncaring, expanding nothingness.
Okay. That got dramatic. Morbid. Kind of existential crisis-y.
That’s not the point.
The real point, if there even is one, is this: you believe your brain is too simple to grasp these concepts.
And not in a self-depracting, boo-hoo, please feel bad for me way. Just… realistically. Most people have simple brains. That’s the rule, not the exception.
The exception is Spencer Reid.
And your simple brain, your gloriously limited, thoroughly overwhelmed brain, keeps trying to make sense a seperate phenomenon that is Spencer Reid. The lovely exception.
Your mind keeps circling back to the same maddening crossroad, the same deadlock between two options: try to understand him, or accept that you never really will.
You always pick the first one. Of course you do. Curiosity has sharp teeth, and yours is practically rabid when it comes to him.
You wonder if his thoughts mirror your own, if they’re just as erratic and messy beneath the surface.
You imagine they must be, because he’s far too intelligent for anything as neat as a straight line of thought. You picture his brain as a series of train tracks running parallel and intersecting at impossible angles, thoughts switching rails without warning, momentum never fully stopping. One idea triggers another, then another, until you’re not sure where it started or where it’s going, only that it's moving fast, and he’s always already ahead of it.
You purse your lips and press two cold fingers to the side of his face. He’s warm like he’s been sitting in a sunbeam too long, like dough straight out of the oven, soft heat and pliable flesh moving to your will.
His breath stutters in his throat as he turns into your palm, lips brushing the heel of your hand.
“Bored?”
You shake your head. The tingle of his voice doesn’t just stay in your chest, it happens to shoot straight to your toes, sock-clad and curled against the floor.
“It would be hard to be in company like this.”
Ugh. Okay. Yeah. It’s corny. It’s so corny. But you don’t bother correcting. You’re not in the mood to be cool.
“You flatter me so,” he says, tone all mock-aristocratic, and it makes you want to either kiss him or hide under a pillow. Possibly both.
He moves your hand from his face, trapping it in his and lowering intertwined limbs to his lap.
It’s weird seeing him so comfortable in your kitchen. Almost as if the universe accidentally fast-forwarded into a version of your life you weren’t sure you were allowed to want yet. He looks natural here. Barefoot, coffee in hand, hair a little messy from sleep.
You love it. You love him. You wonder if it would be too bold to ask him to move in. You decide it would. Scaring him off is a terrible thought.
“I’m just thinking,” you decide to say.
“Care to share those thoughts with me?” He lifts a finger and presses it into the tension surely forming between your brows.
You glance at him through your lashes. “What do I get in return?”
That earns you a laugh, full and bright and vibrating through his chest. You have this horrible, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it urge to bottle the sound. Tuck it away for later. For worse days. For a version of reality where he doesn’t laugh like that around you anymore.
Another terrible thought. You shove it back with the other dangerous ones, the strings and lines that threaten to pull you somewhere you’re not ready to go.
“I think I’m starting to detect a pattern with you,” he states, calloused hands coming to your chin, “very reward driven.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Not even a little,” he says quickly. “I’d argue I’m partly responsible.”
“Only partly?” You raise a brow. “Feels like you’re underselling your influence.”
“Influence tends to be mutual.”
“Oh, so this is a both of us being bad influences on each other thing.”
“I’d call it symbiotic.”
“Of course you would. Bet you’ve been waiting all day to use that word on me.”
“I’m a very patient man.” He is. His being with you is first-hand evidence. “I mean, I waited my whole life just to meet you.”
There’s still a part of you that wants to dissect everything. The odds, the science, the emotional mechanics of it all.
The probability of love forming between two people in a universe as indifferent as this one.
But you think, maybe, if you keep trying to quantify it, you’ll miss it.
You don’t need to understand the whole system to know you’ve landed somewhere good.
💌 masterlist
taglist has been disbanded! if you want to get updates about my writings follow and turn notifications on for my account strictly for reblogging my works! @mariasreblogs
5 times frank langdon manhandles you and the 1 time you manhandle him back
bet u wanna read my masterlist! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
pairing: frank langdon x intern!reader
warnings: fem!reader, sunshine!reader, intern!reader, power dynamics, mild manhandling/rough physical guidance, touch-starved characters, mutual pining, mean!langdon, slow burn, frank langdon is grumpy asf, mild panic attacks and dissociation, caretaking to the MAX, i had my med student best friend proof read this so if it’s wrong blame her not me!!!!
wc: 4.4k
1 Unauthorized Draping in a High-Risk Zone
Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe. It’s not a conscious thing you do, but you move anyway. You figure it’s your nervous system trying to siphon off all the anxious energy that perpetually resides within you.
This is just how your body chooses to cope, with tiny, repetitive motion, as if it can shake the dread loose before it calcifies into tears or sweat or both.
You make an effort to stop. To try and plant your feet, tell yourself to be good and normal and someone who belongs in this intimidating world.
But your brain pipes up with its favorite playlist: don’t touch anything blue, don’t lean on anything that costs more than your rent, don’t talk unless someone with a PhD says your name first, don’t be weird, don’t be you.
Not you-you. Not the klutzy, apology-powered wind-up doll who says “sorry” when someone else steps on your foot and once high-fived a paper towel dispenser by accident (don’t ask).
“Wrong hallway. Wrong badge.”
Shit.
Every neuron in your body slams on the brakes at once, and when you turn, it’s with the same slow, dawning horror of someone realizing they’ve just wandered into the morgue by mistake, except instead of toe tags and chillers, you’re greeted by six feet of brutal posture and eyes that look like they haven’t seen joy since the inventions of pagers.
You look down at his own badge and frown. Dr. Langdon. The senior resident with the god complex and the too-loud temper and the rehab stint.
He’s severe. That’s your first thought. Gaze that makes your mouth dry up and hate how immediately attractive you find him in that hyper-competent, morally disapproving kind of way.
You open your mouth to say something, anything, hi, sorry, I swear this was an accident, maybe even please don’t kill me but you don’t get the chance, because he’s already moving.
Coming close enough that you can see the indent on his chin, flexing with every angry breath he takes.
His hand then moves to your shoulder while the other catches the tie at your gown and tugs it with quick efficient impatient.
What is happening?
Your ears burn, heart going loud, obnoxiously so, like it’s trying to escape your ribcage and run laps around the hallway.
This is the part where you do something. Step back maybe? Speak? React? Anything that might come across to the effect of: hey stranger danger why are you touching me like that?
Instead, you freeze completely, letting him reposition you like an object with poor spatial awareness, standing there like the world’s most pathetic statue.
“I — wait, I thought —” you squeak, and it’s not a strong performance, not even close, just a frantic jumble of syllables strung together with the blind optimism that maybe, just maybe, he’ll let you explain yourself.
He doesn’t. He talks right over you, his words slicing through your sentence.
“You’re not cleared,” he says, cool and direct, the kind of tone that doesn’t invite conversation so much as it ends it. Then, as if the knife needed twisting: “No one told you to suit up.”
He undoes the final knot, as if he’s unwrapping an inconvenience instead of peeling the last bit of your dignity off your shoulders, and when you don’t drop the gown fast enough he just takes it from you, tossing it in the linen bin.
He shoves a chart into your hands.
“Triage notes need updating,” he says. “Do that.”
You’re still rooted to the spot, stunned into inaction, gripping the clipboard like it's the only thing keeping you upright.
You manage one step backward. Then another. It feels like learning to walk again.
Behind you, he adds, “And drink some water. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
2 Manual Dexterity: Failed Check
You’re staring at your hands. More specifically, the gloves that reside there. They feel weird on your skin, too loose at the fingertips, too bunchy on the palms.
There’s this awful puff of air trapped between your fingertips and the latex, and you keep flexing your hands like that’ll make it better, but it only makes the squish-snap worse.
You could take them off and grab a better-fitting pair, but that would involve drawing attention, and you’re already pushing the acceptable intern limit for “visible fumbling.”
Especially not with Dr. Langdon standing nearby. Dark hair, cutting eyes, that carved-from-contempt expression that already seems to say you’re wasting his time just by existing. His whole aura screams, I have better things to do than acknowledge your carbon footprint, and it works, you’re been trying to stay out of his way since the Gown Incident (capital G, capital I), but he has this unnerving talent for appearing exactly where you don’t want him to be.
And you could maybe cope with that, if your body didn’t decide to implode every time he got close. Five feet is the threshold, apparently. Any closer and all the blood rushes to your cheeks.
You’re so focused on pretending to be normal (chin up, shoulders back) that you don’t even realize he’s moved until it’s already happening.
A common theme, apparently.
His hand is around yours, lifting up your own like it’s some sort of misfiled lab result and brings it up under the light. He turns it over once. Then again.
You think for a second he might have forgotten it’s attached to a living, breathing person.
His brows furrow in what you assume is either concentration or deep disappointment. Probably the later.
“What are you doing?” you whisper, because that’s all your vocal cords will give you right now and you’re deeply afraid of drawing more attention than he already has.
He doesn’t answer, but rather just releases you hand. The loss of contact leaves a strange chill behind.
He stalks off toward a shadowy corner of the room that apparently hides a second supply cart.
A cart you’ve walked past, what, twenty times? He crouches, grabs a glove box from the bottom shelf, glances at the size like he’s memorized your hands from the quick thirty second glance over he gave them, and straightens in one fluid motion.
He’s back in front of you before you can fix your face, reaching for your hand to unpeel the glove in a way that makes your knees whisper things like maybe buckle now?.
The material slides away with a snap, leaving your hand bare and tingling in the open air.
“I can do it,” you hiss, “I knew they looked weird. I mean, not my hands, the gloves obviously, my hands are normal, at least I think they’re normal, unless you — no, sorry, what I meant was — I just didn’t know there were any smaller ones and I didn’t want to slow anyone down and —”
He positions the new, correct-sized, glove and slides it onto you, smoothing it down with expert hands.
He has really nice hands you realize. You mourn the second the go out of view.
“Wrong size compromises dexterity.”
“Oh,” you say, and then immediately regret it, because oh is not a real response to anything, so you tack on a breathless, “Thank you. I mean — for noticing. And fixing it. Sorry again.”
You’re smiling now. Why are you smiling?
“Don’t thank me.”
“Right,” you say, nodding. “No, yeah. I didn’t. I mean, I did, but… un-thank you. Consider the gratitude rescinded. Retracted. Gone.”
What a loser.
You wish the floor would do you a solid and just open up, suck you in, maybe relocate you to a dimension where you’re not inventing new ways to embarrass yourself in front of the grumpiest man alive. Preferably somewhere tropical and remote. With no gloves.
He looks at you like he’s deciding whether or not to dignify that with a response.
Then: “You done?”
“Uh-huh,” you say, “Done. Done talking. So done.”
He lifts his chin, gestures down the hall toward curtain three, and starts walking.
You follow like a kicked puppy. A very polite, professionally dressed, medically licensed kicked puppy.
3 Redirecting a Human GPS Malfunction
“She’s hyponatremic but still alert, which makes me think it’s chronic rather than acute, and the reflexes were intact except for a slight delay on patellar, so I’m leaning away from neuro, but if her cortisol’s low again I think we need to rule out secondary adrenal insufficiency, especially since her ACTH levels haven’t come back yet and nobody seems concerned about the mild orthostasis.”
Dr. Langdon hums low in his throat. It’s not disapproval. But it’s not agreement either. It’s a sound that lives somewhere in the neighborhood of try again, but smarter.
“And if the ACTH comes back low?”
“Then I’d want a CRH stimulation test to see if the pituitary’s response because if both ACTH and cortisol are low, we could be looking at hypothalamic suppression instead of adrenal failure, and at that point, imaging the pituitary would be the next step. Unless she’s been on chronic steroids, but I didn’t see anything in her med list to suggest that.”
“Good. But keep an eye on the sodium trend, if it spikes with fluids, you might be chasing the wrong diagnosis.”
Good.
It’s one word. One syllable. Not even said warmly, more of a clinical stamp of temporary adequacy. But your brain grabs onto it like a starved plant seeing sun for the first time in weeks.
You want to keep your face still. You really try. You train every muscle into neutrality, schooling your expression like a child behind glass. But inside… inside it’s glowing. Confetti. Champagne. Tiny internal high-fives.
You got a good. From him. From Dr. Langdon, who looks at most people like they’re bad test results. Who’s allergic to praise. Who speaks in critiques and glares and weaponized silence.
“Yep. Sodium. Absolutely,” you nod eagerly. “You know, I read this case study once where a woman presented with severe hyponatremia after a hot yoga retreat and it turned out she’d been drinking like three gallons of water a day because she thought it was detoxing her live, and her sodium dropped to 118, which is horrifying, but she was totally asymptomatic until she passed out in her car.”
He looks at you. “You ever do that?”
You blink. “Sorry, do what?”
“Hot yoga.”
“I have! Um, I went through this whole phase junior year where I was like, trying to become one of those ‘balanced’ people who wake up early and do gratitude journaling and drink matcha and just like, glow all the time? So I signed up for a free week at this studio that was supposed to be ‘soul-transforming,’ which in hindsight should’ve been a red flag, but I was optimistic, and kind of desperate — anyway, I made it halfway through the first class before I realized I’d accidentally worn fleece-lined leggings, and then I couldn’t leave because the instructor locked the door for ‘heat-integrity,’ and —”
His fingers close over your collar, tugging you just enough to redirect you a few steps to the left before you cheek meets drywall.
“— and I was already sweating like crazy but trying to act normal because everyone else looked so serene, and then —”
He stops walking. You stumble to a halt just behind him, trying to get a handle on your breathing and your mouth, which have both been sprinting ahead without a permit.
“Watch where you’re going,” he says, flat and unbothered. “I’m not doing that again.”
You’re not quite sure what he means, but apologize anyway, “Right. Sorry.”
He pauses. Glances over his shoulder. “And stop apologizing.”
“Mhm. Got it.” You give him a weird little salute. Loser strike two.
“Go check on your patient.”
“Going!”
You make it three steps before his fingers wrap around your elbow. He spins you back around with minimal effort. “Wrong way.”
You glance sideways. “Thought you weren’t doing that again.”
He doesn’t let go yet. Just raises one eyebrow. “Don’t be a smartass.”
His mouth twitches. A small, tiny flicker of amusement. It feels like a secret you weren’t supposed to see, so you pretend not to.
4 Medical Intervention (Sandwich Required)
You’re not even sure when you stopped standing and started leaning, all you know is the supply cart is cool and metal and solid under your palm, which is more than you can say for your knees.
Sixteen hours in, eight traumas logged, and your internal organs are currently operating on a diet consisting of two cups of hospital coffee (burnt and betrayal flavored) and a single saltine you found crumpled in your pocket.
You blink against the sudden fuzz crawling at the edges of your vision, but it’s no use, the black spots are doing synchronized jumping jacks now. Little warning flares that you’re probably pushing your luck. Again.
Dana steps into your line of sight, eyes narrowing. “You okay, kid?”
You slap on a smile like a band-aid over a bullet wound. Your special-sauce if you ever had one.
“Yup! All good. Just needed a minute. Long day. A lot of… exciting cases. You know how it is.” You do a vague jazz-hands motion. “Crushing it.”
Your vision pulses again. You do not, in fact, appear to be crushing it, you’re very sure of that. Maybe in the way a soda can gets crushed under a steel-toed boot.
“And I’m the Queen of England.” She takes one long look at your pale face and glassy eyes. “Sit. Before you faceplant and I have to explain to Gloria why we lost one to stubborn optimism.”
“I promise I’m fine! I just — stood up too fast.”
“Bullshit.”
His hand appears at the same time as his voice, both faster than your excuses.
One moment you’re vertical and the next you’re yanked with just enough force, like he knows how much pressure you can take without crumbling.
His grip is all calloused heat, palm pressing into your arm as he pulls you into the chair.
The world tilts once, then slams back into place. Cold metal bites into your thighs. His hand lingers a second too long, fingers flexing like he’s still gauging whether you’ll tip over again.
“I could’ve sat on my own, you know,” you grumble half-heartedly.
You glance toward Dana, hoping for backup, or at the very least a supportive eyebrow raise. She meets your gaze, chews her gum, and shrugs one shoulder in a perfect display of girl, please. Entirely unsympathetic. Possibly amused.
“Nope,” she says. “You were about one sway away from eating tile. Survival of the smartest, sweetheart. ”
“Don’t care if you could’ve,” he says as he crouches. “I’m not scraping you off the floor because you’re too much of a hard head to sit when you’re clearly crashing.”
Then, without asking (because when does he ever ask), he takes your wrist in his hand, thumb pressing gently into the inside. You try not to squirm.
“There’s a difference between committed and careless.” His brow furrows as he counts the beats under his thumb. “Right now, you’re leaning toward the wrong one.”
“I wasn’t trying to be careless, I swear. I just lost track of time, which is funny because I’m usually really good at that, like I even set alarms for hydration, but I ignored all of them because I didn’t want to miss rounds and then one trauma turned into five —”
You stop when you realize he’s still holding your wrist. And staring.
He exhales hard through his nose and shakes his head.
“You’ve got ten minutes here with food,” he says. He jerks his chin at Dana, who nods and heads for the cart without needing more. “Then fluids. Then, and only then, you can check on the lac in bay four.” His eyes cut back to you. “And if I see you wobble even once, you’re off the board for the night.”
“Yes. Yes sir – uh, not sir, just — yes. I’m staying.”
Dr. Langdon nods once, brushes his fingers briefly over your shoulder in what might be the lamest pat in human history (the universal ‘don’t make me come back’ signal), and walks off without another word.
Dana returns with a sandwich and a raised brow.
You unwrap it slowly. “Is he always so — uh — intense?”
She barks a laugh. “That was him being gentle.”
5 Objects in Motion (You) Meets Immovable Force (Also You, Apparently)
“—I’m telling you, he’s been on my ass before the sun even showed up,” Santos grumbles, tapping her pen against the desk. “I said good morning, and he looked at me like I suggested we kick a puppy together. Someone pissed in his Cheerios, and now I’m the one getting crucified for it.”
You tilt your head. “Maybe he just needs a snack. Or like… a hug.”
She snorts without looking at you. “I was thinking more along the lines of a double whiskey and a week locked in solitary with nothing but his own guilt complex, but sure. Hugs. Why not.”
“That’s so mean! Dr. Robby is not that bad. He just… glares at people like they personally ruined his life on occasion. He’s usually very kind.”
“Next you’re gonna tell me he’s just misunderstood and has a good heart underneath it all.”
“I mean… yeah. I kind of believe that about everyone. Doesn’t mean I’m right, but like… I’m not not hoping.”
Santo swivels in her chair, stares. “Even Langdon?”
You falter there. Step back. Physically, even, as if that’ll help distance you from the question, from the thought, because now it’s in there.
Dr. Langdon. Frank Langdon. The man who speaks in flat tones and judgmental silences. Who glares like it’s a sport and you’re always losing.
And now you’re thinking about him with… layers. Like, not just as a terrifying force of workplace intensity, but as someone who maybe carries all that stormy energy because he doesn’t know what to do with the softer parts.
Someone who maybe, just maybe, has a good heart buried underneath a mile of barbed wire
You chew on the thought like it’s an overcooked piece of gum — rubbery, bitter, sticking to the inside of your skull even as you try to spit it out — and you’re not even sure what part is more disturbing: the possibility that Langdon has hidden depths, or the fact that your brain insists on exploring them like a museum exhibit you weren’t emotionally prepared for.
But before you can get to the part where he maybe owns houseplants or secretly feeds stray cats behind the loading bay, the thought shatters, violently, like someone dropped a wine glass in the middle of your mental dinner party.
Noise. Sudden. Loud. A voice shouting something urgent, boots hammering the floor, movement that feels too fast for the space.
You flinch instinctively, start to pivot toward the commotion, but before your body can even decide what direction to go, a hand snaps around your waist and then you’re moving, pulled into something broad and unyielding and extremely human-shaped.
Specifically, Dr. Langdon-shaped.
Your cheek brushes the starchy edge of his scrub top. His arm curls in front of you, protective like a steel beam, while a crash cart screams past, inches from where you were just standing, the air it kicks up biting against your skin.
You realize, distantly, that you would’ve been directly in its path if not for him.
You can feel his heartbeat through the wall of muscle between you and everything else.
You can smell him, too. Clean, masculine soap invading your senses.
You shift, just slightly, enough to tilt your face upward.
He’s looking down at you like you’re a particularly complicated equation he’s trying not to solve out loud. And for a second, you don’t breathe. Not really. Because his grip tightens and you swear, you swear, his eyes flick down to your mouth.
“Jesus,” Santos mutters, breaking the spell as she peers after the cart. “You good? That thing was flying.”
You blink, realizing a second too late that Santos was talking to you.
“Huh?” You clear your throat, a sound that comes out way too dry. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
At the same moment, Langdon steps away. Lets go. And the absence is bizarrely loud, like someone hit mute on the part of your body that had been braced against him.
You’re suddenly hyper-aware of not being touched. Of gravity reasserting itself. Of how your arms feel too light and your chest feels too tight and none of it makes any damn sense.
“You could’ve gotten flattened,” he mutters, jaw tight. It sounds like criticism, but there’s something else under it. Concern, maybe. Or frustration aimed more at the situation than at you.
You rub at your forearm, pretending it itches instead of tingles. “Yeah, well. I’m thinking of investing in high-vis tape and a ‘please don’t run me over’ sign.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just stares at you with that signature flat, heavy-lidded expression like even he can’t believe how often he has to save your life from your own proximity to disaster.
You can’t really believe it either.
“I won’t say thanks,” you say. “I know you hate that. And apologizing. But uh… I didn’t die. That’s… cool. For both of us. I mean, mostly me. But also you, probably, because paperwork would’ve sucked. I’m gonna leave before I say something dumber than that, which is a very low bar, so —”
“Do you really believe that?” he says behind you.
You stop.
“What?”
“What you said earlier. About everyone?”
It takes a second. He’d heard that?
You scratch your cheek, suddenly feeling exposed.
“Yeah,” you say finally. “I really do.”
+1 Please Just Stay
The stairwell is freezing, cement bones and rebar spine, and you’re crumpled against the wall like a misfiled piece of paper. It’s quiet here, except for the stupid way your breathing bounces off the walls and makes it sound like someone else is crying too.
But it’s just you. It’s always just you. The tears keep coming, hot and salty and mortifying. You wipe them away with the back of your hand, again and again, but they just keep returning, stubborn as guilt.
Everyone said it wasn’t your fault. In serious tones people use when they want to sound very sure. As if it makes a difference. It really doesn’t.
It was your first patient death.
He was somebody’s father. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s son. And in the end, you were the last person to touch him. You watched the monitors go still. You felt his hand lose its warmth.
Footsteps echo up the stairwell.
Your body reacts accordingly, jolting upright like you’ve been caught doing something illegal (crying isn’t illegal, you remind yourself, but it sure feels like it), and your hands fly to your face.
Both of them. Too rough, too fast, trying to erase the emotions by brute force.
Your shoulders curl in, chin tucking down so far it could hit your collarbone. Hide, hide, hide. You try to stop the sniffling, will it down your throat, but it stutters out of you anyway, weak, wet, pathetic. Perfect.
“Oh — shit. Sorry.” It takes you half a second to recognize the voice. A half second too long, because by the time it clicks, it’s already too late. Dr. Langdon.
Your stomach flips so intensely it feels like it’s trying to escape through your throat, a sudden swoop of nausea and disbelief tangled together. Of all people.
You hear the shift, his footsteps faltering, uneven now, breath snagging mid-step before everything goes still. The stairwell swallows the sound.
Then: “You’re crying.”
You let out a exhale that stumbles out halfway between a laugh and a cough.
It sounds pathetic, honestly, but you don’t have the energy to care. “That obvious, huh?”
Silence stretches long enough to get awkward, and you start to hope maybe he took the hint. Maybe he backed away, quietly, like a decent person who knows how to pretend they didn’t just catch someone crying their face off in a desolate place. Maybe you get to keep your breakdown private.
However, you aren’t so lucky.
“First time I lost a patient, I threw up in the supply closet.” He doesn’t sound embarrassed by it, just matter-of-fact, like he’s naming a side effect. “I told the attending that it was food poisoning. It wasn’t.”
You twist toward him, shoulders still hunched, face hot and raw. You’re sure you look like hell, and he sees all of it, but he doesn’t react. No flicker of discomfort. No awkward glance away.
“Does it… ever get easier?”
It sounds fragile on your tongue. Like you’re scared of the answer, but more scared not to ask.
He looks past you for a second.
“No,” he says. Then, almost like an afterthought, “If it did, that’d be worse.”
You swallow around the lump in your throat. “Yeah,” you whisper. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
He nods and you see the look on his face that suggests maybe he wants to say more. But he doesn’t.
“Take a minute. If you need anything…” He hesitates. “Come get me.”
He turns, just slightly, like he’s giving you privacy. Respect. Distance.
And maybe that was what you needed. What you thought you wanted not even two seconds ago. But not anymore.
Because the second he turns, the second his body shifts and his presence starts to pull away even by the smallest degree, panic claws its way up your chest like a reflex, like a toddler reaching out in the dark, and your hands shoot forward without asking permission from the rest of you, both of them closing tight around the soft fabric of his scrubs. Clumsy and fast and maybe too hard.
You don’t even know what you're holding onto exactly, not really, except it’s him, and he’s warm and real and not going anywhere, not unless you let him, and for a second you just stand there like that, fists full of fabric, heart full of please don’t leave.
“Don’t —” you choke, the word cracking like it’s too big for your throat, and you bite it down fast, try again, quieter this time, like whispering might make it less desperate. “Can you just… stay. Just a minute. Please.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, and for a terrifying, breath-holding moment, you think maybe you misread it, maybe he’s about to step back, untangle himself from your grip, do the polite thing and leave you to cry in peace like people do when they don’t want to deal with someone else’s damage.
His eyes drop to where your fists are bunched in his scrubs
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah. Okay.”
His arms come around you. Not expertly either. It’s real and maybe a little uneven, a little unsure, like he’s not totally certain where his hands are supposed to go.
But he does it anyway, one hand finding the back of your head, fussing with the tag on the back of your shirt, the other curling around your back.
And for the first time all day, you don’t feel like you’re falling.
you show up at the hospital to bring jack lunch wearing a very short skirt. robby acts like an ass about it. eventually he apologizes in the way he knows best... with his tongue
bet u wanna meet the reader! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
pairing: michael robinavitch x princess!reader
warnings: 18+ MDNI, fem!reader, AFAB!reader, dizty!reader, abbot!reader, grumpy x sunshine, robby is NOT nice, their relationship is toxic fo sure, girly reader, emotional slow burn disguised as smut, so much flirting, skirt related issues, explicit sexual content, oral sex, f!receiving, fingering, age gap (reader is in 20s), secret relationship, situationship, fwb, brother's best friend af, jealosuly, possessive behavior, robby is a dick tbh (what's new), emotional manipulation???, praise kink, power dynamics, idiots in love but they would hate that phrasing
wc: 6.8k
Robby is having a conversation with Perlah. At least that is what the situation would appear to be from an external perspective (he really fucking hopes).
Her mouth is moving, words continuing to emerge from it in a steady, organized stream assembling themselves into little sentences that travel through the air in neat succession. And he has remained physically present for the duration of the exchange, occasionally nodding, even. By most definitions this would qualify as participating.
The difficulty arises if anyone were to ask him what she has been saying.
If someone were to pause the moment and ask, Dr. Robby, what has Perlah been saying for the last four minutes. He would be forced to produce an answer that lived in the gray area between honesty and self-preservation.
Because the truth is that he is listening in the same sense that a television left running in an empty room is being watched. The sound is there. The program continues. But nothing of meaningful substance is actually being received.
Because you are the devil.
His devil, specifically.
Equipped with great legs, an even nicer ass, a beautiful face to match, and a skirt that is short enough to sabotage every ounce of competence he has spent the last fifty-something years cultivating.
And somehow he is the one left standing here acting as the devil’s advocate, delivering closing arguments in your favor.
Insisting, repeatedly and with increasingly questionable credibility, that you are harmless. Oblivious. Entirely unaware of the destruction you leave in your wake. Meanwhile the prosecution continues submitting new evidence every time you shift your weight forward onto the front of your shoes.
At present you are leaning over the nurses’ station chatting with Jack, having came here to bring him lunch, which you promptly forgot in the car, necessitating a full trip back outside to retrieve. You’re just being a good, dutiful sister, as you often are.
Save for the occasion you screw his much older best friend in the hospital garage after shifts.
Robby hadn’t known you were coming in today.
Had he known, he might have taken the necessary precautions.
Mentally fortified himself. Adjusted his expectations for the day. Taken some sort of prophylactic measure against the disruption you introduce simply by existing within a thirty-foot radius.
The skirt, once again, is really not helping.
It has not helped since the moment he first saw it. And the angle you are currently standing at is doing even more damage, the backs of your supple bare thighs of full display.
Robby finds himself mildly astonished that he cannot quite see the pink lace you favor underneath it from this distance.
He knows you favor them because last night you were stretched across his kitchen counter, and that same pink lace had been the final, fragile piece of fabric separating him from a remarkably comprehensive understanding of every sound you are capable of making.
And you make quite a few, as it turns out. A collection. A symphony, really.
You make lovely noises. Lovelier faces.
Your head tipped back against the cabinet, his name in your mouth like something rare you’d been saving up all evening.
Christ.
He needs to get a grip.
Robby scrubs down his face and turns back to Perlah, who has apparently said something that ended in a question mark and is now waiting, with what he recognizes as rapidly diminishing patience, for an answer.
He gives her one.
It feels, to him, perfectly adequate. Perlah’s expression suggests it was not adequate at all.
Unfortunately he cannot currently locate the portion of his personality that would normally care about that distinction, because he is suddenly becoming aware of where everyone else in the room is looking.
Langdon. Santos. Garcia. Fucking Ogilvie.
All relatively subtle.
Garcia considerably less so.
All trained with laser point focus on your backside.
Idiots, the lot of them.
He slips his hands into his pockets and says nothing, which is currently the most controlled and adult response available to him given both the circumstances and the uncomfortable sensation beginning to establish itself in the center of his chest.
It is not jealousy. He is not calling it jealously.
Situational awareness, maybe. A boss noticing all the variables within his environment. Because that’s his job, isn’t it? That’s a fair argument to make.
But it burns suspiciously like jealousy. A quick and pulsing flare in his stomach. His pulse climbing in a way he could easily attribute to sympathetic nervous system activation, catecholamines doing what catecholamines have always done when a body decides something in the vicinity represents a threat.
It is the same heightened awareness that neatly concludes his so-called conversation with Perlah and propels him across the hallway.
“Abbot.” He stops just short of the counter. “Nguyen’s tox panel come back yet?”
He doesn’t specify which Abbot.
You turn before Jack does.
Your eyes land on him and your entire face lights up with such immediate, unfiltered pleasure that it derails the irritated line of thought he had been cultivating during the walk over here.
It is the reaction of someone who either lacks or has purposely discarded the internal mechanism most adults develop to regulate their enthusiasm.
He thinks it’s the former.
“Oh!” you say, the small delighted sound slipping out of you before you seem to realize it has. “Hi, Dr. Robby.”
“Hi.” His answering smile is brief and tight-lipped, the smile of a man keeping several different thoughts on a very short leash. “Didn’t know you’d be here today.”
He means it pleasantly. He means it with every intention of pleasantry.
What he also means, beneath said pleasantry, in a more specific frequency meant exclusively for you, is a heads up would have been useful and that fucking microscopic shred of fabric you are currently calling a skirt is not, by any recognized standard of measurement, a skirt at all and possibly just why.
He braces an arm against the counter and shifts his weight, settling into place.
In doing so, he very conveniently positions himself between your ass and the rest of the department.
He briefly entertains the idea of flipping everyone off behind his back as well, but suspects that particular behavior might become difficult to defend if Gloria were to hear about it.
“Came to feed me.” Jack says it fondly. He refrains, very graciously, from mentioning the car. You look extremely grateful for that mercy. “And the tox panel —” He taps a few keys, bringing up the results on the computer. “Came back about half an hour ago. All negative.”
“Hm.” Robby studies the screen rather than the person standing beside him. “That’s not what I was expecting.”
“Means whatever’s going on isn’t pharmaceutical.” Jack frowns at the monitor. “Which opens up a whole other can of worms.”
“Okay.” You straighten up from the counter. “I’m going to go before this gets too medical-ish for me.” You hug Jack sideways. “Eat your lunch.” Then you turn, offering Robby a bright smile. “Good to see you, Dr. Robby.”
Your hand brushes beneath the counter as you step past him, your fingers pressing briefly against his leg, quick and subtle and gone so fast it almost feels like something he might have imagined.
He’s still not convinced.
“You too.” The response comes out through gritted teeth.
He gives it fifteen seconds. Counts them out in his head because anything less would look suspicious and he is, if nothing else, a man who understands the value of not looking suspicious.
Because this precarious situation you both balance can go south very quickly if people get suspicious.
At sixteen he steps back from the counter.
“I need to make a call.”
It is technically addressed to Jack, though Robby is already moving away with the relaxed, neutral stride of a man whose next destination has nothing whatsoever to do with the hallway you just turned down.
He finds you just before the exit, the automatic doors still exhaling cold air from whoever walked out before you.
“Abbot.”
The specification is clear this time.
You pivot towards him once again, and the movement sends the skirt flaring outward in a light, careless circle that rises just enough to make his jaw tighten, muscle popping under flesh before he can stop it.
The reaction lasts half a second at most before he forcibly reins it back in.
“Oh good,” you say. “I was hoping you’d come chase me down. Makes me feel very important.”
His gaze flicks down and then returns to your face with visible effort.
“What were you thinking? Coming across here like that.” It comes out more accusatory than he intended for.
You look down at yourself with a frown, turning one foot slightly as if the answer might be written somewhere near your shoes.
“Like… walking?” you ask. “Because I did walk here, yes. That’s generally how hallways work.”
He thinks, immediately, that he’s made you self-conscious.
You wouldn’t make an outward performance, that’s unlike you, but your left hand moves to fidget with the with the ring that sits of your right hand pinky. Your tell.
He hates himself for it. Briefly. Then not so briefly. Lately he seems to spend a disproportionate amount of time disliking the things that come out of his own mouth when you’re involved.
He’s used to conversations being navigable terrain. Clearly marked roads, visible turns.
With you it feels like trying to cross a river by stepping stones and realizing, too late, that the distance between them is wider than it looked from the bank.
You probably just saw the outfit somewhere.
One of those endless places the internet produces now. Maybe from that app you tried to show him once. Tick… tack? Tik talk?
You’d pressed your phone into his hand and waited while he squinted at the screen like it was written in another language, until eventually he had to put his glasses on and hold the phone halfway across the room to see anything at all.
You laughed at him for that. Entirely too much, actually.
Or maybe it was from Pinterest. Another digital ecosystem he understands only conceptually.
You thought the outfit looked fun or cute or something along those lines. That was almost certainly the entire decision-making process.
He knows this.
And still his mouth, apparently operating without supervision, is already lining up the next sentence like it intends to spit venom anyway.
“Like,” he says, voice mild in a way that is not especially reassuring, “in an outfit that has half my staff forgetting how to do their jobs.”
Robby becomes aware of the flaw in the sentence the moment it leaves his mouth. There are, in fact, several flaws, most of them related to the fact that the statement sounds like something a chauvinistic man would say.
Unfortunately, the sentence has already been spoken, and Robby has never been particularly skilled at retreating once he has committed to a position.
He is stubborn like that.
You cross your arms.
Your lips push forward in a small, stubborn pout that he knows with an intimacy that comes from spending too much time studying your face at close range.
It is a very specific expression with a very specific solution.
The correct response, historically speaking, involves stepping closer and kissing it away before you can say anything else.
Unfortunately he is currently standing in a hospital hallway.
And behind him there is an entire collection of people who possess functioning eyes.
Wandering eyes. Curious eyes. Eyes that have already been drifting toward you all afternoon in ways he has been attempting, with mixed success, to ignore.
Everyone looking at something his mind and body and soul insists on categorizing as his.
Which you aren’t.
You very specifically aren’t. The arrangement you have with each other was built carefully around that exact premise. That you don’t belong to him in any capacity outside of very specific rooms and places and circumstances.
All involving less clothing (if that’s possible) than what you’re wearing.
His brain, however, does not appear particularly interested in honoring those contractual terms at the moment.
“I mean… I’m not the one forgetting how to do my job. So that seems… unfair?”
“Life contains a number of unfair situations,” he says quickly. “They’re adults. I’m not excusing them. That still does not mean I am particularly pleased that you chose to walk into my ER dressed like that.”
You glance down at your outfit again.
“I thought it was cute,” you say after a moment. “Jack said it was cute.”
Robby opens his mouth.
This is, in retrospect, a tactical error, because it gives you exactly enough time to continue talking.
“I just don’t understand what the problem is,” you say, frowning now. “Why are you lecturing me like I — like I did something wrong? I wore a skirt. It’s a skirt.” You gesture down at it. “And you, for the record, have historically have been very enthusiastic about my skirts, so the sudden objection is a little confusing. Like the time you bent me over your —”
“That’s different,” he cuts in immediately.
The words leave his mouth with a sharpness that successfully stops the sentence mid-flight while he exerts a frankly heroic amount of restraint to avoid clapping a hand over your mouth before the remainder of that particular memory becomes public knowledge.
Your eyes narrow. “How?”
This is the point where the smarter version of Robby (the allegedly mature, emotionally regulated adult who has survived decades of complicated human interactions) would slow down and choose his words with extreme care.
That version of him would recognize immediately that there is no answer to that question that ends well for him. And the honest answer, which is because when we’re alone it belongs to me and right now it doesn’t, is both indefensible and incompatible.
He is, unfortunately, not currently being governed by that wiser version of himself.
If that version exists at all. He suspects it doesn’t.
“It just is.”
You stare at him.
“Great, that clears that up,” you say after a beat. “I’m going home.”
“Christ, that’s not —”
But you’re already turning, already walking away before he can figure out what the rest of that sentence was supposed to be.
Which is a problem, because the unfinished sentence had been intended to stop you from doing exactly what you are currently doing.
So Robby stays where he is. Maybe one of the smartest decisions he’s made in the last five minutes. He’s sure you might have back handed him were he to follow you.
You might turn around just to back hand him now as he lists the several reasons why he shouldn’t stand here like an idiot and watch you walk away.
Chief among them being the skirt. The skirt he has spent the last ten minutes complaining about. The skirt he currently hates on principle. The skirt that, annoyingly, looks fucking incredible on you.
Would it be cliche of him to say he hates to see you go but loves to watch you leave?
He mutters something under his breath.
—
He gives you two hours. (Conveniently the exact amount of time he had left in his shift when you left.)
This is considerably more restrained than he usually manages when you’re concerned.
His first instinct was to call you immediately and get it over with.
Hear your voice, confirm you’re not as furious as he imagines you are, restore the natural order of things.
But you hate cold calls. You explained this once in a surprisingly passionate monologue about anxiety and boundaries, which he assumes is an exaggeration, because you have neither of those things.
You are the opposite, in fact. Anxiety and boundaries fear you.
But nevertheless, calling you would not help. Calling you would annoy you. And the last thing he needs right now is to make things worse.
So he does the responsible thing and sends a text instead, thumbs hovering over the screen for a moment before he finally types: I handled that badly.
He puts the phone face down on his desk like that might somehow remove the temptation entirely, like if he can’t see it he might remember he’s a grown man with a fully functioning frontal lobe and not someone whose mood for the rest of the evening currently hinges on a three-inch screen.
Nothing.
Thirty minutes pass before he caves and sends another message
You’re right. You didn’t do anything wrong.
Still nothing.
I’m an asshole.
Silence.
At this point pride has clearly decided it will not be participating in tonight’s events, because his thumbs move again before he can talk himself out of it.
Can I come over?
Your response takes long enough that Robby has ample time to fully experience the consequences of his decisions. He’s a fucking idiot. An idiot with no dignity, no less.
Eventually the screen lights up.
Abbot #2
i’m in for the night.
It’s not a no. It isn’t a yes either, but it isn’t a no, and that small opening is apparently all the encouragement he needs.
I know. Can I come over?
The typing bubbles appear almost instantly.
Abbot #2
robby
The next word costs him something. It always does. You know that. You’ve known it for a long time, which is probably why it works, because you’re soft all the way through even when you attempt to pretend you’re not, and both of you understand that about you.
Please.
Abbot #2
fine
He's already reaching for his keys.
—
By the time Robby reaches your apartment he has already practiced three different speeches in his head, each one engineered somewhere between the hospital garage and your building like he’s preparing opening statements for a situation he would frankly prefer not to be involved in.
He could’ve avoided this entirely if it weren’t for the anger and frustration with the world that seems to perpetually take up residence in his throat, begging to be released and taken out on others.
He focuses on the speech.
Version one is calm and mature. Version two apologizes just enough to count without turning him into a pathetic middle-aged man showing up on your doorstep with emotional baggage. Version three is honest without accidentally inviting the kind of conversation that forces both of you to acknowledge what this thing actually is, which neither of you seems especially eager to do.
In theory, they’re excellent speeches.
In practice they do not survive the door opening, because the door opens and you’re still wearing the skirt.
This will be more difficult than he accounted for.
And now, if anything, the skirt looks shorter than it did earlier, the hem resting a breath above the midpoint of your thighs and ending just below the place where your underwear should theoretically begin.
His eyes do the automatic scan before he can stop them.
“…Are you going to say something or are we doing like a silent staring activity?”
Robby blinks once. Right. Words. He did, in fact, come here with the intention of producing several of them.
“Yes,” he says, mostly to buy himself time. “I did plan to say something.” Another pause arrives, uninvited, as the rest of his thoughts fail to assemble themselves into anything useful. Excellent. Great start. “Can I come in?”
You don’t answer. You just step back and pull the door open a little wider, which he decides counts as consent, so Robby walks past you into the apartment, already aware of the small betrayal happening in his peripheral awareness.
His left hand lifts slightly. Reflex.
Normally he would touch you in passing and in private without thinking about it, some small absent gesture. Fingers at your waist, a hand against your back, the inside of your arm as he moves around you.
He had never thought of himself as a tactile person before you, which in hindsight might simply mean no one had ever made him notice the difference between contact and the lack of it.
“Looks clean in here.”
You turn toward him immediately. “You say that like it’s usually not.”
He gives you a look because the alternative response would be lying, and for all his flaws, he generally prefers observable reality to polite fiction.
Your apartment is many things. Charming, for one. The old brick walls and the accent wall you painted last spring (personally, against all advice, because apparently you believe interior design should occasionally be a solo athletic event) still shows faint brush lines if someone were to actually examine it.
But the word clean isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
More like: cluttered.
You own an impressive number of things and your primary organizational strategy involves setting those things down wherever you happen to be standing when your brain abruptly moves on to the next idea.
Books sit half-read across multiple surfaces like abandoned conversations. Magazines accumulate in slow-growing stacks. Ceramic bowls migrate around the apartment with no consistent destination.
And there is almost always at least one pair of shoes sitting in the middle of the floor like you stepped out of them mid-thought and never circled back.
“Well,” he says, glancing around once more, “those were your words, not mine.”
You roll your eyes and head for the couch, planting yourself down on the cushions and look at him like a judge granting the floor to a particularly unprepared witness.
Well, you have the floor, your eyes say plainly enough.
So he lowers himself into the chair opposite of you, spreading his legs as he settles. He drags his palms down the front of his slacks in an attempt to disguise the fact that his hands are a little too warm.
You cross one leg over the other and his eyes follow the movement.
Your skirt lifts just enough to make the line of your thighs more visible than it should be, the suggestion of what’s beneath the fabric briefly possible if he leaned forward or changed his angle.
If he were a worse man than he already suspects he might be.
He doesn’t. But he wants to.
He is a weak man, after all. And a weak man is not immune to the possibility of getting a peak of the perfect anatomy he knows resides under there.
Perfect anatomy that he has practically memorized at this point. With his fingers, with his mouth, with his cock.
He clears his throat.
“I’d like to clarify,” he says after a moment, palms moving from his thighs to the arms of the chair, “that my intention earlier was not to make you feel bad.”
“I know,” you say immediately, and the sound of it comes out a little softer, a little whinier than you probably intended, which unfortunately lands in Robby’s brain like a lit match tossed into dry brush. It takes him a second to drag his attention back to the conversation instead of the completely separate thought that he would very much like to solve that particular tone by fucking it out of you. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
Sometimes he wishes you’d give more of a fight. You’re just so good. And young. And impressionable.
And a wise woman once told him he was very pressionable.
There’s a pause while you keep thinking, and because you possess one of the most transparent faces he has ever encountered, every thought passing across it like subtitles.
“You just — you get this tone.” You wave a hand in his direction, specifically toward his mouth. “Like. You know. The tone.”
As if this is a universally acknowledged phenomenon. As if there is a documented Tone he should be familiar with. Which, fine, he is familiar with.
He looks at you for a moment. Then, with great and terrible patience: “Poor thing.”
Your arm is up before he’s even finished the second word.
“Yes. That. Right there.” Fully extended, finger pointed directly at him like you’ve just located the exact source of the problem.
“I’m just —”
“You’re doing the face. And the voice, Robby, it’s a whole —” you circle your hand at him, “You get so — what’s the word — I couldn’t think of it for like two weeks, I asked my friend, she didn’t know, I ended up just Googling it —”
“You Googled how to describe me.”
“Self-righteous,” you continue, ignoring him. “And condescending.”
“Look at you,” he says, the faintest hint of amusement slipping into his voice. “Doing your research. ‘M proud of you.”
Something flashes across your face before you can stop it, that tiny involuntary almost-smile that always appears when he manages to get under your skin in the exact way he intended.
You do well with praise, he’s learned.
You catch yourself a second too late and point at him again like you’re trying to reclaim the momentum of the argument, but the energy has already shifted, the accusation losing some of its bite.
“Don’t.” You lean forward, eyes narrowing. “Don’t be nice right now, I’m mad at you —”
“Are you?”
“I’m — yes.” The finger wavers. “I was.”
“But you’re not now,” he says eventually. “Too sweet to stay that way for long.” His gaze stays steady on yours. “Aren’t you, baby?”
“I’m not too sweet,” you protest immediately, genuinely affronted by the suggestion in a way that only reinforces his point. “I can stay mad. I can be really, really mad. And I can be just as mean as you when I want to be.”
The reality is very contradicting.
Then he stands. He moves the edge of the couch and reaches down, sliding two fingers beneath your chin and tipping your face upward.
You go with it so easily, completely without resistance.
“You want to be mean like me?” The faintest curve touches the corner of his mouth. “Sweetheart, you couldn’t be mean like me if someone handed you a manual.”
His gaze drops briefly as a small flash of pink tongue slips out to wet your lips.
“You don’t have a cruel bone in your body and I have —” he pauses, forcing himself to look back up at your eyes instead of the mouth that’s distracting him, “ — significantly more than that.”
“That’s not something to be proud of,” you say quietly.
“No,” he agrees simply. “It isn’t.”
His thumb drags slowly across your bottom lip, collecting the trace of moisture your tongue left behind.
He feels the suck intake of breath on the rough pad of his finger.
“But you like that about me,” he says. “Don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
He doesn’t even feel an answer is necessary given your voice suddenly comes out soft, almost dreamy.
Your pupils are blown, adding to the wide and helpless and completely undefended thing you do, as if the idea of protecting yourself against him has simply never occurred to you.
Robby feels his pants tighten and does not risk shifting his stance.
“Because you have spent your entire life surrounded by people who are entirely uncomplicated in how they feel about you. And you are kind to all of them. You love all of them. But that’s not what keeps your attention, is it? You like that I don’t make it easy. You like that I'm mean because it means you have to earn something from me. And you —” his thumb moves, just barely, “— you like earning things.”
Your eyes are almost completely black now, head cocking slightly to lean into his touch. He doesn’t think you’re even conscious of it.
“That is — that is a lot of information about me. And I don’t think it’s fair that you can just — say that, like you’ve had it figured out for a long time and you’ve just been waiting —” You stop. “Have you had that figured out for a long time?”
Longer than would be astute of him. But there’s no particular benefit in saying that out loud.
So he says instead, “Can’t give away all my secrets.”
His hand leaves your chin slowly, fingers trailing along the line of your jaw before catching the loose strand of hair at your temple and tucking it back behind your ear with a care that feels suspiciously gentle for someone who was just admitting to being cruel.
He watches your thighs press together.
“Let me make up for my bad behavior,” he says.
There’s a thread of desperation in it that he doesn’t bother disguising.
“You’re still behaving badly.”
“Yes,” he agrees, without any particular remorse. “Are you going to stop me from making it up to you or are you just pointing out the problem?”
“I don’t know,” you say, tilting your head like you’re attempting something that might qualify as coyness. “I’m not sure anything could actually make up for it.”
The line might carry more credibility if your teeth weren’t caught in your bottom lip right now, worrying the skin there in slow, thoughtful pulls.
Or if your eyes hadn’t made a very quick and very telling detour down to his thighs before finding their way back up to his face like nothing happened.
Or if your bare foot weren’t moving in that slow, absent drag along the length of your calf, the one you do whenever you’re trying to look relaxed and are, in fact, extremely not relaxed.
So he moves.
He drops down in front of you in one smooth motion that leaves no room for misinterpretation, because there’s really no graceful way to narrate what he’s doing.
He’s on his knees. In front of you.
Which is not a position Robby occupies for anyone. Has never occupied for anyone. But here he is anyway, settling there like the decision made itself.
His hands come to rest lightly on your knees. Goosebumps pebble under his calloused hands.
“At least let me try.”
Robby watches the last pieces of the act fall away, the careful indifference dissolving into something much more honest in the way your shoulders relax and your eyes stop pretending they’re not paying attention to him.
“Robby.”
“Let me try,” he says again.
You hesitate for a second and then give a small nod.
That’s all it takes. Robby breathes out through his nose and dips his head forward, turning slightly until his mouth presses against the inside of your leg just below your knee.
He can feel his own pulse everywhere, can feel the saliva pooling at the back of his throat.
If there was a version of him capable of embarrassment in front of you, this would probably qualify.
Because how humbling is it to be so insatiable for one single person?
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says softly, against lush skin.
You smell wonderful. You always smell wonderful.
Above him, you make a small sound, barely audible, and Robby takes it as encouragement whether you intended it that way or not.
His cock stirs at the it, very susceptible to those lovely noises you make.
His mouth moves higher along the inside of your leg, pressing another kiss there, then another, advancing upward in small increments, following the path towards God’s greatest gift.
You are warm.
It dissolves under his mouth in familiar waves. He finds himself stalled by the simple fact that his brain does not have a word for the way your skin feels or the way it tastes.
Clinical language can explain the structure of skin in exhausting detail. Sebaceous glands, lipid barriers, surface pH.
But none of that vocabulary has any interest in describing the experience of it, none of it explains why pressing his lips to you feels less like contact and more like a trespass into something he should probably apologize for afterward.
For the sacrality of it, perhaps.
His current theory, admittedly not one he would ever publish anywhere, is that your sweetness (that you are currently denying) isn’t behavioral at all. It’s physiological. Systemic. It runs through you at a cellular level and eventually works its way outward until it reaches the surface of your skin because there’s nowhere else for it to go.
“You’re welcome,” you squeak. “Wait —” He can hear the wince in your voice before he even looks up. “That’s — I don’t know why I said that. I just meant —”
The rest of the sentence dissolves into nervous rambling that never quite finishes assembling itself, and Robby doesn’t interrupt it with words.
Instead he reaches up, pushing your skirt higher with both hands, the fabric gathering beneath his palms as he slides them underneath it and moves upward along your thighs.
And then he stops. The rambling you produce stops too.
Christ.
There’s nothing there. No lace, no soft cotton, no barrier of any kind between his hands and bare skin all the way up to your waist.
His palms settle on your hips and remain there, suddenly very, very still.
Robby draws in a careful breath through his nose.
“Please,” he says, and his voice has dropped somewhere unsteady, hands tightening on your hips by one degree, “tell me you did not come to the hospital like this."
“What? No.” The answer comes out almost offended, like the suggestion itself is mildly ridiculous, and then you giggle, this soft little sound that moves straight through his bloodstream like it has a direct path there. “I took them off when I said you could come over.” The explanation is delivered with the simple clarity of someone describing something obvious, something that should require no additional context. “I figured — you know.”
He pulls your ass forward, dragging you to the edge of the couch in one controlled movement that still manages to force a startled squeak out of you.
His nose brushes the inside of your thigh.
He’s making a very valiant effort not to allow his fingers to press in hard enough to leave marks on flesh that yields so easily beneath his hands.
It’s not a particularly successful effort.
“So this was the plan,” he says quietly, his mouth moving against you, tickling the skin there. You shiver. “Get me all worked up. Have me sitting there worrying about you, texting you, coming over here ready to grovel.” His nose drags a little higher along your thigh as he exhales. “And the whole time you were just…” He pauses briefly. “... waiting for me.” Another breath fills the small space between you, yours noticeably shallower now. “You playing games with me, sweetheart?”
You avoid the question entirely. Instead a small embarrassed sound slips out of you and your hands slide back along the couch until your fingers curl into the cushions like you suddenly require structural support.
“You make it sound so dirty,” you mumble.
Robby pulls back just enough to see your face properly
“You are dirty,” he says mildly. “Just a little bit, aren’t you?”
“‘M not —”
“Maybe,” he continues, his grip on your hips relaxing as though he’s genuinely reconsidering his involvement in this situation. As if it were ever a question. “I don’t actually need to make it up to you afterall. Call it even?”
Your fingers dive into his hair and grab, pulling him forward again with a strength that bypasses any polite conversational structure you were trying to maintain, your hips chasing him instinctively.
“No — please, I’m sorry —”
He laughs.
“You fold so easy, honey” he murmurs, his lips now brushing against your cunt without quite landing. “What happened to being just as mean as me? Holding your grudges. All of that.”
You say his name again and it comes out tangled between a question and a plea and several other things he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t recognize.
Robby decides that’s answer enough and lowers his mouth on you.
He takes his time.
The pace of his mouth against you is slow and steady, patient in a way that is less about kindness and more about control, because the rest of the evening has slipped out of his hands and this small piece of it has not.
You’re already soaked beneath his tongue before he’s done anything worth crediting.
This is no surprise to him. You always are. The wet warmth of your pussy spreads across his beard, coating him completely.
He picks up pace only when you make him.
When your hips jut forward and take the decision out of his hands, when the coos falling from your parted lips start running together into something less subdued, your fingers tightening in his hair and pulling without any clear intention behind it, just need, just the blind animal fact of warning more and not being able to stop your body from saying so.
You taste so fucking sweet.
He needs a better word for you. A more precise word. But sweet is what keeps arriving and sweet is what it is.
Sweet is the one that keeps arriving anyway. Sweet in the way early spring smells when the air is warm after rain. Sweet without effort. Sweet without intention.
If he were a more poetic man he might try to articulate that properly. Instead he keeps his mouth where it is and focuses on the work.
“‘S so good —” you mumble, the words barely forming, barely recognizable as language. “It’s — Robby, it’s —” a breath slips out of you, loose and unsteady, “— ‘m sorry, by the way, about — about earlier, I didn’t — I was being —”
It falls apart on your tongue (and on his).
Robby pulls back, slickness dripping down his face as he replaces the stimulation with one finger. Your gummy walls nearly suck him in, tightening as if you plan to push him right back out.
He won’t allow that.
“Funny,” he says. “I was under the impression I came here to apologize to you.”
“Oh,” you say, blinking. Then: “Yeah.”
That nearly makes him laugh. The sound stays trapped behind his teeth.
“Yeah,” he repeats, curling his finger once while his eyes stay fixed on your face, watching the way your lips part again. Such a pretty face, you have. Prettiest ones he’s ever seen. “You’re not thinking clearly right now, are you?” The words are observational more than teasing. His thumb moves slowly over your swollen, aching clit. Your breath breaks. “That good, baby?”
“You already know,” you murmur, “you already know it is, don’t do that.”
“You’re right,” he says, and the apology and action arrive at the same time, his mouth moving again as if the words barely slowed him at all, humming against your sopping cunt. “I’m sorry, honey. Going to keep saying it until you come for me.”
He is not sorry. The opposite, actually.
Especially when he notices how pliant you’ve gone, grinding against him in desperate circles, hands moving from his hair to the couch to his shoulders.
Your legs are draped over those same shoulders, ankles keeping him trapped right where he is. As if he’d ever consider leaving.
He’s messier this time, tongue dragging long, languid strokes from back to front, nose bumping your clit every other pass. You reward him with tiny mewls everytime.
His hand moves to press down on your stomach and you fight him at first, little whimpers escaping as you say something he can’t quite hear over the blood rushing and flowing to his ears.
He’s so fucking hard right now. Doesn’t think he’s ever been this hard. Though he thinks that often when he’s with you.
It hurts a little, has been for long enough that the pain has become just another ambient fact.
He’s been ignoring it, or trying to, which is a different thing, trying being the operative word because his body has stopped taking direction from the more disciplined parts of him and has been nearly humping against the couch cushion like a teenager.
Pathetic.
He groans as he makes quick work of pulling your thighs flush to his face.
If he were to pass away now, he’d die a happy man.
Though Jack might not be.
“I can’t —” the word tears out of you, “— I can’t, it’s too much, it’s — Robby, please, I’m — it’s so —” the babbling just continuous now, a current of half-finished things, your hips rolling and stuttering and rolling again.
He can feel how close you are. Wants to take it so badly. Wants to feel you on his tongue.
His mouth pulls away once more, just to replace it with two, thicker fingers, moving his lips to your clit and sucking. He’s gentle at first, then harsher, your whole body arching off the couch to meet the rhythm of his thrusts.
He pumps his fingers faster, deeper, and then twists his wrist on the next strike. A specific angle only he knows, that he has known long enough that knowing it has transformed into muscle memory. Something now engrained into his ring and middle finger.
Your thighs lock around his head, replacing his hearing with a muffled white noise as your hands move to fist his hair.
He feels you come around his fingers, the noise you produce a broken sob as he works you through every last second, siphoning every last drop of pleasure he can, until you stop trembling and go heavy against the couch.
He kisses each thigh softly, working his fingers out slowly. You hiss at the loss.
Eventually your thighs unclamp from around his head.
He sits back on his heels and looks up at you. You look down at him.
Your hair is completely wrecked, half falling out of whatever arrangement it started the evening in, and your skirt is still bunched up high around your hips in a way that suggests you have made no meaningful attempt to recover it.
Your expression has an unfocused quality to it, the pleasantly evacuated look of someone whose brain has temporarily stepped out of the room.
He makes quick work of kissing you, allowing you to taste yourself through him.
When he pulls back you say, very gently “Hi.”
“Hi.”
There’s a pause while you seem to gather a thought from somewhere far away.
“So,” you say eventually, “I think that was a pretty good apology.”
Robby lets out a quiet breath through his nose. “High praise.”
“I’m serious,” you insist, tugging your skirt back down with approximately thirty percent of the coordination you normally possess. “Like, top five apologies I’ve ever received, probably.”
“Top five.”
“Maybe top three,” you add. “I’d have to consult the full rankings.”
“I appreciate the transparency,” he says finally. “Very helpful feedback.” His eyebrow lifts slightly. “Do I get notes for improvement, or are we just celebrating the current ranking?”
You perk up instantly.
“Oh, I’m so glad you asked.” Your eyes flick toward your bedroom in the casual way someone might glance at the weather before returning to him. “Because I was actually thinking,” you say thoughtfully, “that maybe the apology process could continue… in another location.”
Your gaze lowers then, landing on the clear line of his erection in his pants before drifting back up to his face.
“You know,” you add lightly, “for thoroughness.”
“Well,” he says, standing and reaching for you, “we wouldn’t want to leave the apology unfinished. I have a lot of making up to do.”
He blames the skirt.
you can find my michael robinavitch masterlist here!
you are trying to read on the beach. jack abbot is nearby shirtless. this proves to be a problem.
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ interested in how the pitt crew got approved for a week in greece? the original invitation is still posted
PAIRING: jack abbot x flirty!dramatic!reader
WARNINGS: fluffity fluff, flirty reader, mutual pining, pre-relationship pining, beach setting, team bonding, shirtless jack abbot, reader is down catastrophic, heavy ogling, reader day dreaming ab abbot, horny but trying to be respectful, suggestive content
PROMPT: here!
WC: 1.3k
A/N: early release for maria’s summer in santorini ♡ consider this your sneak peek before the trip officially begins
Reading on a windy beach, you discover, is less a leisurely seaside activity and more a long-standing personal feud between you and the Mediterranean climate.
You lift your magazine. The wind instantly slaps your hair directly into your eyeballs. You tuck it behind your ear. Another gust undoes the effort two seconds later.
You’ve convinced the island is purposefully heckling you. Perhaps some Greek god you pissed off in another life.
The open page flutters lazily in your lap, corners lifting and settling again, the glossy print catching sunlight in quick flashes, and at this point the whole thing feels more ornamental than informative.
Not that it really matters. You haven’t actually absorbed a single sentence.
Instead your attention keeps slipping down the shoreline where Dr. Abbot and Dr. Robinavitch are standing near the water.
Jack remains on the darker band of sand where the waves compress everything flat. Earlier in the week he explained, very plainly, that prosthetics don’t sink and flex like a real foot does, which makes loose sand unpredictable.
So he stands right where the ocean keeps the ground firm, tide washing forward and retreating around his feet in slow intervals.
Meanwhile you’re staring at the same paragraph you were staring at before, trying to remember what page you’re on and failing.
And the task becomes significantly harder when you factor in the additional complication of Dr. Abbot’s physique. Which is, to put it politely, extremely distracting.
There are several far less polite descriptions currently doing slow laps around your brain that you’re making only a very half-hearted attempt to wrangle back into something respectable.
Because seriously, how does someone even acquire pecs like that? Is there a class? A sign-up sheet? Do you collect punch cards at the gym until eventually a trainer appears out of nowhere and goes congratulations, sir, you’ve unlocked Advanced Chest Geometry?
The thought would almost be academic if it didn’t immediately lead somewhere less professional.
Namely the realization that he would probably look very good hovering over you. The breadth of his shoulders, the long plane of his back, all of it forming the kind of structure that seems, purely hypothetically, like it would benefit from a few well-placed scratch marks.
Thankfully, your sunglasses are large and, in Jack’s words, “obnoxious” enough to provide some degree of visual privacy.
They cover half your face, which means whatever extremely not-safe-for-work message your eyes are currently broadcasting in his direction remains safely concealed behind tinted lenses.
Mel, who is perched in the chair beside you with one leg tucked beneath her, suddenly turns her head.
“Out of curiosity,” she says, squinting toward you against the brightness. “Are you aware that you keep staring at Abbot?”
Shit.
Immediately you realize the fatal flaw in your sunglasses strategy, which is that from Mel’s angle, she can still see your eyes perfectly fine from the side, completely unobstructed, your entire operation exposed.
You turn to face her.
The wind has blown a scattering of sand across her cheeks, tiny pale grains stuck there like freckles.
You push your sunglasses up briefly to sweep your hair out of your face, buying yourself a moment to look like you’re thoughtfully considering her question.
There isn’t really any point in lying to her.
“I mean… can you blame me?”
Mel glances back toward Abbot, giving him a slow, methodical once-over, the kind that feels less appreciative and more clinical.
“I don’t think I understand the premise of the question,” she says.
“Okay, hypothetical,” you say, sitting up a little. “You know when you encounter something extremely aesthetically pleasing and your brain just sort of… locks onto it? Like it would actually be irresponsible not to look?”
“You mean like scenery?”
“Yes,” you say immediately. “Exactly. Thank you.” You gesture vaguely toward Jack with the lazy authority of someone presenting a landmark. “That is a very impressive piece of scenery.”
Mel looks at him again.
“He’s a person.”
“Sure, technically.” Your gaze follows him as he turns slightly, the water moving around his ankles, shoulders shifting under the sun. “But calling him just a person feels reductive. Like calling the Sistine Chapel a ceiling. Or the Mona Lisa a lady sitting down.”
Mel stares at you.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she finally announces. “Ever, really.”
You shrug, sliding your sunglasses back down your nose as the wind grabs another handful of your hair.
“I get that a lot.”
You sink a little deeper into the chair, the canvas warm against the back of your thighs.
Down by the shoreline Abbot and Robby finally start heading back toward the loose constellation of towels and bags everyone abandoned earlier.
Sunshine catches on the line of sweat sliding down Jack’s neck, tracing a slow path across the expanse of his chest, tiny shining rivulets threading through the scatter of dark chest hair before vanishing beneath the waistband of his swim trunks.
You swallow. Your tongue flicks across your lips without thinking. They feel suddenly dry, parched almost. Probably the sun. Or the salt air.
Definitely environmental factors and not the fact that the man appears to have been carved specifically for dramatic beach lighting.
Robby breaks off first, veering toward the cooler with the purposeful stride of a man thinking about cold beer, leaving Abbot to continue forward alone.
He stops directly in front of your chair, turning to say something to Whitaker somewhere behind you, and in doing so he blocks the sun entirely, a broad warm shadow falling over you, the wind cutting off too.
Which would be pleasant if the exchange didn’t also mean that, from where you’re sitting, your line of sight now lands very squarely at the level of his swim trunks. And his abs. And the narrow trail of hair beginning just below his navel and following the sweat into his shorts.
You wonder, briefly and very seriously, if he would object to you following that little trail with your tongue, just once, purely out of scientific curiosity, a sort of field study in —
“— you with me?”
You jolt, the thought snapping in half like a rubber band.
“Sorry — what?”
Jack is watching you now. Not openly amused exactly, but observant, arms folded loosely across his chest as his gaze dips downward toward where you’re sitting.
Which, given the previous direction of your attention, feels incriminating.
“I asked if you’d seen Whitaker’s phone.”
“Oh. No. I — no.”
His gaze lingers for half a second. Then he crouches down in front of you, suddenly right there at eye level. It feels like a tactical maneuver. You’re certain he’s closing distance in a very calm ambush.
“You know your sunglasses are see-through, right?”
You think maybe you stop breathing.
“What?”
“I can see your eyes,” he says, using his forefinger to tap on the side of your knee. “Very clearly, actually.”
You narrow your eyes at him over the rim of your sunglasses.
“…you can?”
Abbot’s mouth twitches in a restrained, almost private way.
“Not exactly subtle,” he quips.
“I was reading.”
He gestures toward your lap.
“Your magazine’s upside down.”
You glance down.
It is.
You stare at it for a moment. The wind lifts the corner of the page in a smug little flutter, like it’s personally delighted to be involved in your public humiliation.
You slowly close the magazine.
“Well,” you say, and there is dignity in your voice, real dignity, you put it there intentionally, “that’s… actually how you’re supposed to read it in Europe.”
“Upside down?”
“It’s a regional thing.”
“Uh-huh.” His gaze dips down to your legs. When it comes back up, there's something in his face that makes the afternoon feel several degrees hotter than it already is. “Should I turn around,” he asks mildly, “or were you getting everything you needed from that angle?”
You die.
Briefly, but completely. You are in the active process of leaving your body, dissociating into the sun, formulating a serious plan involving a fake name and a one-way ferry, when Mel — Mel, who you have known for years, Mel, who you have trusted — opens her mouth.
“Oh she was getting everything she needed,” she says helpfully.
“Mel.” It comes out strangled, barely a name at all.
Abbot’s gaze flicks briefly between the two of you. The corner of his mouth tilts. A wicked little thing.
“Good,” he says mildly, patting the side of your leg before moving to where Robby had laid claim over two chairs closer to the water.
You are throwing these damn sunglasses directly into the Aegean.
Possibly yourself as well.
this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini
𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!
when pope tries to protect you from his family's crude conversations, he ends up having to answer your uncomfortable questions about sex
PAIRING pope cody x bunny reader
WARNINGS suggestive content, explicit talk about sex, obsessive behavior, innocent reader, craig being a dick, mention of crying during sex, pope has dirty thoughts about reader, possessiveness, coercive undertones, age gap, emotional dependency, crude language, if u don't like it don't read!!!!
WORD COUNT 1.9k
The Cody house can be a very uncouth place to be.
Loud in every way possible, in volume and temperament too. Filthy-mouthed. Mean for the pleasure of it.
Craig says something disgusting every third sentence just to hear himself say it, just to get a laugh, just to see who flinches and who doesn’t. Deran’s no better when he’s in the mood to needle. And Smurf, when she wants to, can make a whole room feel dirty with one lifted eyebrow and six words.
Pope has never minded crude things. Never saw much use in pretending to. This place is what it is. He’s used to it. This is his life. This is simply the way he grew up.
But now you’re here, Smurf’s latest little acquisition, her new ornament to polish and put in the window.
Another pretty doll in her crooked collection. All polished and docile and good manners, brought in to handle the things Smurf considers beneath her. Logistics. Errands. Paperwork. Loose ends. The harmless-sounding parts, at least on the surface.
Pope can’t decide how much you actually know. About any of it, really — where the money comes from, whose hands get dirty, which names to never mention again.
He bets you don’t ask, though, and Smurf must love that. Probably loves that you move through the work the way you do everything else: sweet and unassuming, smiling vacantly like you’re still asleep, floating somewhere in the middle of the ocean, eyes closed, nothing beneath you but endless dark water.
Open-hearted, oblivious, too easy and good to survive here.
So now the vulgarity of the Cody house grates on him. Makes him tense. Makes his shoulders bunch up near his ears.
“So this chick tells me she can take it, right? Says she can handle anything. Five minutes later she’s cryin’, tellin’ me it’s too good.”
You stand against the fridge, spoon paused midway to your lips, yogurt abandoned as Craig’s drunk slurred chatter hangs in the air.
Pope watches closely, your expression a cloudy haze, eyes soft and curious and unaffected by words that should shock you into silence.
Pope’s fingers twitch at his side, the urge rising like nausea to shake you awake, to wrench you away to somewhere safe.
He stays rooted instead, his muscles aching from the strain of keeping still as your curious voice cuts through the air.
“Why would she be crying?”
Craig looks at you blankly, his mouth hanging open as incredulity colors his face, like he’s never encountered something quiet so baffling.
A clueless girl in the Cody kitchen. It’s almost funny. It’s definitely not funny to Pope.
Deran, at least, thinks it’s funny, he makes a garbled choking sound and swivels away, a strangled laugh breaking through his arm.
Craig continues to gape, finally managing a long breath, punctuated by hard edges: “Are you fuckin’ serious?” He tries again, mouth twisting into a smirk as he attempts an explanation, “I mean sometimes people cry when they’re gettin’ fu —”
Pope moves before his brain can catch up. His body knows something his mind hasn’t yet processed, and one second he’s pressed flat and invisible against the wall; the next he’s behind you, palms cupping over your ears.
Your startled intake of breath dies softly under his touch, your confusion vibrating delicately against his fingertips.
“Don’t,” he growls, gaze sharp, locked onto his sibling’s stunned face. “You finish that sentence and you’ll spend the afternoon putting your jaw back together.”
Craig shakes his head. “The fuck's wrong with you? She's a grown woman. What, you think she's gonna burst into flames if she hears the word sex?”
Pope’s eyes darken, narrowing into slits as he tightens his hold ever-so-slightly around your ears.
“Maybe she will. Either way, you won’t be around to see it.”
Craig lets out a low laugh, running his hand through his hair like this whole standoff is just another joke, palms upraised like he’s dealing with a wild animal.
“Alright. Relax. Whatever you say, man.”
Pope watches him retreat out of the room, Deran trailing not far behind him, likely to finish his story elsewhere.
And that’s fine. As long as he stays over there and out of ear shot of you.
The tension lingering in his tendons only just starts to loosen when he’s out by the pool.
He feels your hands reach up to pull his wrists away from your ears, fingers tentative around his rough palms. Rough palms that make him notice just how soft you feel, petal-pink nails sinking into the course terrain of his own skin.
The contrast is jarring. Scarred knuckles, raised veins, and a web of old cuts meeting hands that have never know real violence.
You pivot in his space, turning to stand toe-to-toe with him.
You smell like whipped vanilla and candied pears. He forces himself not to lean closer, not to draw in another desperate breath because he wants to pin the scent down, memorize it, peel it apart note by note until he knows exactly what clings to your skin and your hair and your clothes.
“What was that for?” you ask.
Pope looks at you. “You don’t need Craig ‘splainin’ things to you.”
“Does that mean you’d rather explain things to me?”
Is that what he meant? Pope isn’t sure, and the uncertainty bothers him more than he wants to admit. The idea of you coming to him with your honest confusion, earnestly asking him to explain the gritty specifics of things he can hardly voice — no, that sounds like a terrible idea.
You have to know the basics, surely. Isn’t that enough? Pope thinks so. He thinks, really, the less detail you know, the safer your carefully maintained sense of self remains. The longer you stay wrapped in that protective bubble, unblemished by knowledge you shouldn’t have, the better.
Pope doesn't want to be the one who breaks it open.
“I’m no good at explaining things like that,” he says finally. “Just don’t need Craig putting ideas in your head either. Or anyone else for that matter.”
You take a small step back, and Pope feels like he’s finally getting air into his lungs again. It’s short-lived. You scoop another spoonful of yogurt into your mouth, pretty lips pursed around the spoon, before you tilt your head and look at him thoughtfully.
“Then… how am I supposed to learn anything?” you ask.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, aware of the incremental tightening of his pants. Fucking pathetic, he thinks.
He clenches his jaw tight before speaking. “You don’t need to know everything. Some things you’re better off not knowing, yeah?”
Your brows knit together. “But wouldn’t it be better if I at least knew —”
Pope cuts you off sharper than he intends. “No. You heard me. Drop it.”
You look away from him, nodding as your shoulders sink a little. “Right. Sorry.”
The frown on your face settles like a shadow Pope desperately wants to wipe away.
It sits wrong there, out of place, disturbing, even. He realizes, abruptly, that he hates seeing you even the tiniest bit upset. He’s not used to it; your smiles come so easily that your unhappiness feels tangible, something he’s placed there.
Something he’s responsible for. It’s rare to see your features drawn up like this.
God, he’s really fucking this up, isn’t he?
He’s always been a little awkward, always a little too blunt, and no good at smoothing things over. He doesn’t know what comes next, doesn’t understand how to mend whatever he’s broken. Maybe that’s always been the problem, that hollow feeling at the back of his brain, the missing part, the empty gap everyone else seems born knowing how to fill.
“Shit, listen, kid,” Pope clears his throat, running a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean anything by it, alright? I just meant Craig talks a lot of bullshit and there’s stuff said around here that you really don’t need to learn. But —” He sighs, glancing down at his knuckles. “You’re an adult. If you wanna know things, it’s your call.”
You lift yourself onto the counter, legs swinging gently as you bring another distracted spoonful of yogurt to your mouth.
“So if I do decide I wanna know something…” You pause, eyes turned up to the ceiling as if testing the air, probing at an unknown territory. “You’ll tell me about it?”
“Yeah,” Pope says slowly.
He can’t quite meet your gaze, his eyes tracking the linoleum pattern like it’s the most compelling thing in the room. He knows he has no real choice in the matter. Better he’s the one who delivers the hard truth rather than you seeking answers elsewhere. With someone else.
“So…” you say slowly, voice dipping into something quieter, almost shy now. You lift on foot onto the counter, unthinking, the fabric of your skirt slipping upward. Soft pink underwear flashes at the edge of Pope’s vision. “Why exactly was that girl crying — with Craig?”
He takes two steps towards you, broad shoulders angled slightly to shield you from the rest of the room should someone walk in.
He keeps his eyes steadfastly fixed on your face, even as his fingers curl tense at his side, nails biting deep into his palms.
It’s torture, but he doesn’t glance down. Not even for a second.
He hesitates at your question, searching for words that fit just right. He’s not sure he’ll find them, but he forces himself through it anyway.
“Craig was, uh — he was tryin’ to say she was crying because the sex was good, I guess. But, it’s not always just that. People cry for all kinds of reasons during sex. Could be physical, emotional, whatever. It’s complicated sometimes.” He pauses again, clearing his throat. “People have complex reactions to physical stuff like that.”
“Have you ever —?” Your teeth press carefully into your lower lip. He can see the follow-up question forming in your eyes. “Have you ever cried, you know… during?”
“Yeah.”
Your eyes widen slightly. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs, uncomfortable already. “Happens.”
The word feels too small for it. Happens. Like it’s the same as catching a cold.
“Oh.”
And then his brain takes a turn and he’s picturing you. A common theme. You with glassy and wide eyes, dark mascara streaking down your cheeks in inky lines as he pounds inside you.
He can almost hear your breath catching, a soft sob, the slick slide of tears along your face for him to kiss away.
Given your question, Pope doubts you’ve ever felt something so intensely vulnerable. Probably never cried during sex.
Maybe you haven’t even had sex, though he tries not to assume things. Still, it seems likely, given your blushes, your hesitations, the way your eyes widen at even the most indirect innuendos. You could have some scattered experiences, maybe, fragments of intimacy without ever fully grasping how it all works.
He doesn’t like the sudden flare of possessiveness he feels; he doesn’t want to imagine anyone else ever seeing you like that.
Pope clears his throat, banishing the image away. “So, uh, did that… answer what you wanted to know? You satisfied now, or?”
Your fingers move to twist the hem of your skirt. You look up through your lashes.
“Yeah,” you murmur finally, a little unsure and entirely too sweet. “I mean, I think so. For now.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You let me know if that changes, then.”
Craig’s voice cuts through the kitchen before either of you can say anything else, his footsteps heavier than usual as he strides back inside from the glass doors.
Pope reaches out and pulls your leg down, adjusting the hem of your skirt in the process.
His skin burns from where he touched you.
“I’m tellin’ you, if she can’t fit both —”
Pope interrupts him by stepping forward, giving him a swift shove against the wall. Hard. Craig smacks shoulder-first into the wall with a loud thunk.
“Jesus, Pope. What’s your damage today?”
Pope steps back with a neutral expression, shaking out the tension in his knuckles. “Just doing everyone a favor.”
He avoids your eyes, heat still burning up the back of his neck.
A/N - this reader series will be a lil different than my usual i think... will end up being pretty dark and twisty!!! read at your own risk! and to reiterate!! if you don't like, don't read!
you know how people always have their comfort show playing in the background? or how people always have to play the perfect youtube video while they’re eating their favorite food? this is how i feel abour your fics. just absolute perfection. like genuinely i get so excited when i get a notification that you posted
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wow so i think this means we are in love and we have to kiss now idk i don’t make the rules 🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧 ilysm you are too sweet 💖💖💖💖
