BED CHEM
ONE-SHOT
pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x fem!reader
summary: Jack Abbot was still wearing his wedding ring the night he kissed you at your apartment door. Widowed and still learning how to want something again, Jack turns the best date you’ve had yet and one charged goodnight into something neither of you is ready to walk away from—and for him, wanting you is one thing, but letting himself have you is another entirely.
wc: 5.3k
a/n: I want this man to fuck the mario coins outta me. not beta read.
warnings: piv, unprotected sex, creampie, fingering, oral/nipple play, praise/dirty talk, canon widower Jack Abbot, grief, emotional vulnerability, first time, age gap-adjacent vibe, couch sex, spit/tongue kissing, body worship, breast play, established relationship (if a few dates counts)
MASTERLIST
Jack Abbot was still wearing his wedding ring when he kissed you.
It had started innocently enough, if anything involving Jack Abbot could still be called innocent after the last few weeks. A late dinner that turned into drinks after because neither of you had been ready to call it a night. A table tucked into the back corner of a low-lit restaurant where the candles guttered in their glass holders and threw amber light over the lines of his face, catching in the silver at his temples and the shadow of stubble along his jaw. The place smelled like charred citrus and expensive liquor and rain drying off the pavement outside every time somebody opened the front door.
He’d looked unfairly good all night.
Not in a polished, trying-too-hard way. Jack never looked polished. He looked lived-in. Worn in all the places that mattered. Dark button-down with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, broad hands around a whiskey glass, wedding ring still on the finger he never seemed to think about until you caught him turning it once with his thumb when the conversation went quiet. Hair a little mussed by the end of the evening, not styled so much as left alone, with that slightly unruly way it had of falling however it pleased. Tired eyes that missed absolutely nothing. A mouth better suited for dry remarks than pretty ones, which only made it matter more when he said something gentle.
Especially tonight.
Tonight he’d been quieter.
Not cold. Never that. Jack’s silence had texture to it. It had weight. It lived between you in the pauses after a joke, in the way his gaze rested on you a beat too long before he looked down at his drink, in the warm press of his hand at the center of your back when the hostess led you to your table. He listened like he always did—completely, with that unnerving kind of focus that made you feel not just heard but studied—but there had been something else under it tonight, something steadier and darker and impossible not to notice.
Want.
It ran beneath everything like a live wire.
By dessert you’d been so aware of him you could barely taste what was on your plate.
By the second drink you’d stopped pretending not to know what was happening.
By the time you stepped back out onto the sidewalk, the city had gone glossy and dark around you, the street damp from an earlier shower, the air cool enough to wake up the skin at your throat. Traffic hissed past. Somewhere half a block over, music thumped behind a closed door. Jack stood beside you while you got your coat settled, one hand low and brief at your waist to steady the fabric, and that simple touch hit with such clean force you nearly lost the thread of whatever you’d been saying.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
His mouth tilted at one corner, not quite a smile. “You good?”
“Fine,” you said, and heard how unconvincing it sounded.
That earned you a soft exhale through his nose, almost a laugh. “Yeah?”
You should’ve been embarrassed. Instead you found yourself smiling back at him, warm all over and a little breathless in a way the cold air did nothing to fix. “Don’t start.”
“Wasn’t starting anything.”
That was the problem. He hadn’t had to.
The walk to your building wasn’t long, but it felt stretched thin with awareness. Your shoulders brushed once at the crosswalk, then again half a minute later, and the second time neither of you corrected it. His stride was easy despite the slight unevenness that was more apparent on longer walks, a detail you never stared at because you knew he’d hate that, but one you were always aware of all the same. He carried himself with that same unshowy competence he brought to everything—like whatever hurt, whatever history he hauled around with him, none of it got to dictate the terms.
He asked if you’d had a good time in that low voice of his, the one that always seemed to land somewhere below your ribs.
You told him the truth. “I had a really good time.”
His glance flicked to you, then forward again. “Yeah.”
“Just yeah?”
“That was me agreeing.”
You laughed softly. “You’re a real charmer, Abbot.”
“I got you out with me twice, didn’t I?”
“More than twice.”
“Then I’m doing better than I thought.”
It should’ve been easy, that exchange. Light. Harmless. But something in his tone kept it from floating away. He said things dry, understated, almost like he was trying to throw a layer over them before they could mean too much. The trouble was, he meant everything.
At the entrance to your building, he reached past you to get the door before you could, his sleeve brushing your bare wrist. The clean scent of his cologne—cedar, soap, the faintest trace of something smoky—slid through the cool night air and settled into your head. You stepped inside first, and he followed you into the quiet of the lobby, where the overhead lights were dimmer than they ought to have been and the old tile floor clicked faintly under your steps.
Neither of you said much in the elevator.
The silence wasn’t awkward. It was the opposite. It was crowded.
He stood beside you with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders loose, looking at the changing numbers over the door like he wasn’t acutely aware of you standing there in a dress he’d spent all evening trying not to stare at. You could feel the heat of him beside you. Feel your own pulse ticking faster with every floor.
When the elevator opened, he let you walk ahead of him down the hall.
At your door, you turned, keys already in hand, and that was where everything slowed down.
There was the hallway, quiet and softly lit.
There was the muffled hum of somebody’s television behind a neighboring wall.
There was the jangle of your keys going still in your hand.
And there was Jack in front of you, close enough now that the details sharpened all at once—the tired set of his eyes, the crease beside his mouth, the shadow at his jaw, the way he looked at you like he’d spent all night being careful and was running out of room to do it.
“Thanks for dinner,” you said, because somebody had to say something.
“Yeah.” His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then came back up. “Anytime.”
He should have left then.
You felt it—the point where the evening could still split into two different endings. One where he kissed your cheek, maybe, or touched your arm and told you to get some sleep. One where he walked back down the hall and the two of you did this again another night, and another after that, stretching the tension until it frayed you both raw.
Instead he stayed where he was.
So did you.
“Jack,” you said quietly.
He inhaled. Held it for half a beat. Let it go.
There was something almost brutal in the restraint of him. He wasn’t a young man fumbling his way into impulse. He wasn’t careless. He looked like somebody standing on the edge of a decision he’d spent a long time refusing to make.
When he finally lifted a hand, he did it slowly enough that you felt every inch of the movement. His knuckles brushed a loose strand of hair back from your cheek. The touch was rougher than it should’ve been, callused, warm. It left your skin tingling in its wake.
“You keep looking at me like that,” he said, voice quiet enough to disappear into the hall, “and I won't trust myself to be a gentleman."
The line should’ve made you laugh. It nearly did. But the way he said it—worn and honest and a little wrecked around the edges—sent a pulse of heat right through you.
“Maybe I don’t need a gentleman tonight.”
Something flickered in his face. Not surprise. Not exactly. More like the last brace of restraint giving under pressure.
He kissed you then.
Not tentative. Not careless either. Just deliberate in a way that made everything in you go still before it all rushed back at once harder than before. His hand moved to the side of your neck, his thumb settling just below your ear, and his mouth covered yours like he’d thought about it too many times not to do it well. There was no rush in it at first. Just heat. A long, deep first taste of him that had your keys slipping against your palm and your free hand catching at the front of his shirt.
He made a sound—low, rough, barely there—and kissed you again like that sound had gotten away from him.
The second one broke something open.
You felt him step in, felt the wall cool against your shoulder blades, felt the shift in him as the carefulness started to burn off. His mouth moved against yours with more urgency now, still controlled, still precise, but the control had stopped being distance. It had become intensity. His hand slid from your neck to your waist and held there, firm enough to make your breath hitch.
When you kissed him back harder, he answered at once, a low sound catching in his throat as his tongue swept into your mouth. The kiss turned deeper, hotter, messier in the span of a breath, all that hard-held restraint giving way to something far more dangerous. You tasted whiskey and heat and the sheer force of how badly he’d been trying not to do exactly this.
That was maybe the most dangerous part of him, the responsiveness. The fact that for all his steadiness, for all the hard-earned discipline in him, he felt everything. Every small shift. Every shaky breath. Every press of your fingers into his shirt.
He pulled back only far enough to look at you.
For a second all you could hear was both of you breathing.
His forehead rested lightly against yours. His eyes stayed closed, then opened. You saw it then, plain as anything—the want, yes, but also the other thing beneath it. The hesitation. The knowledge of what this was.
His hand at your waist tightened once.
“I was trying to take this slow,” he said.
You swallowed. “Maybe slow is overrated.”
That almost-smile touched his mouth and disappeared again. “You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
Jack looked at you for a long moment, not speaking. You knew enough about him by then to understand that silence wasn’t emptiness with him. It was effort. It was him sorting through what he was willing to say, what he was willing to let you see.
When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Lower. Stripped down.
“You have any idea what you’ve been doing to me all night?”
The truth in it went through you even faster than the question itself.
You could have made a joke. Could have eased the pressure, given both of you an out. Instead you said, just as quiet, “Probably the same thing you’ve been doing to me.”
His eyes shut briefly, as if that landed harder than he’d expected.
When he opened them again, there was less distance in them than you’d ever seen.
“I haven’t…” He stopped, jaw working once. Started again. “I haven’t done this in a long time.”
Not dramatic. Not overexplained. He didn’t say her. Didn’t say wife. Didn’t have to.
The history was there all the same, a shadow laid carefully at your feet.
Something in your chest ached.
Your hand came up to his face almost without thinking, palm against the rough warmth of his cheek. He leaned into it before he could stop himself. Just a little. But enough.
“I know,” you said.
He let out a breath that might have been a laugh in a different mood. “Do you?”
“I know this isn’t casual for you.”
“No,” he said, and there was nothing dry in his voice now. “It’s not.”
The hallway seemed to narrow around you.
You could feel the next moment waiting. Could feel the choice still sitting there between you, changed now but not gone.
Jack stepped back a fraction, not far enough to leave, just enough to give you room if you wanted it. His hand slid from your waist but didn’t leave you entirely, fingertips skimming your side once on the way down.
“Tell me to go home,” he said. “I’ll go.”
The generosity of that nearly undid you.
He meant it. Even like this. Even with his mouth still pink from kissing you, his breathing heavier than before, his whole body carrying the strain of holding himself in check. He would go if you asked. He would walk away from this and take it with him.
You fumbled the key against the lock on the first try and heard the tiny metallic rattle it made. Jack’s gaze dropped to your hand. Then lifted slowly back to your face.
“Jack,” you said, opening the door. “Come inside.”
The look he gave you then was enough to make your knees go weak.
Not triumph. Nothing so easy. Something deeper, denser, almost disbelieving in its intensity.
The door swung inward. You stepped back into the apartment, and he followed you in.
The click of the door shutting behind him sounded louder than it should have.
Everything changed with that sound.
The apartment was dim except for the lamp you’d left on in the living room before the date, its warm light spilling across the hardwood floor and the books stacked on the coffee table and the throw blanket half-fallen from the couch. Familiar space, ordinary space. Except not anymore. Not with him standing just inside the door, shoulders squared beneath the dark shirt, looking at you like crossing that small distance had cost him something real.
For a second neither of you moved.
Then Jack dragged a hand over the back of his neck and gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “Christ.”
“What?”
He looked around once, like he needed somewhere to put the force of what he was feeling and found nowhere for it to go. Then he looked at you again.
“You ask me in here,” he said, “I’m not leaving anytime soon.”
Heat bloomed low and hard in your stomach.
“Good.”
That did it.
He crossed the room in two steps and kissed you again, not careful this time. Still controlled—he would always be controlled, even like this—but no longer pretending he wasn’t half out of his mind with wanting you. His hands found your waist, then your back, then settled hard at your hips as he walked you backward until the backs of your knees met the couch. He stopped there only long enough to look at you, chest rising under your palms, eyes dark and fixed on your face like he was giving himself one last second to think better of this.
Then he kissed you again.
Deep. Hot. Devastatingly thorough.
His mouth slanted over yours with enough force to make your breath catch, and when you opened for him, he took full advantage, tongue sweeping into your mouth in a way that felt far filthier than it should have, all heat and intent and hard-won control fraying at the edges. A wrecked sound broke from him when you clutched at his shirt, and he answered by pulling you closer, one hand spread wide at the small of your back, the other still locked around your hip like he couldn’t stand even an inch of space between you. The kiss went molten in seconds—slow nowhere, urgent everywhere—until the room, the lamp, the whole apartment blurred at the edges and there was nothing left but the drag of his mouth on yours, the press of his body crowding you into the couch, and the staggering relief of finally being touched by him the way he’d clearly been denying himself all night.
This close, you could see the tiny shifts in him. The effort. The disbelief. The sheer force of everything he’d spent the whole evening packing down until it had nowhere left to go.
“Still want this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I want this.”
His eyes held yours another second, confirming, grounding, making sure.
He kissed you again, slower this time, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips until you opened back up for him. The sound he made was low, almost pained, and it undulated through you. His hand slid from your back to your hip, his fingers pressing into the curve there, pulling you closer until you felt the hard line of his erection against you stomach.
He didn’t lay you back against the couch, instead turning you both, sitting first then pulling you into his lap so you straddled him. The position was intimate, decisive. Your dress rode up your thighs, the worn microfiber of the couch scratchy against your bare skin.
His hands settled on your hips, holding you there. He looked up at you, his eyes dark in the lamplight. The grey at his temples was silver now. He was studying your face, reading every shift, every breath.
“Jack,” you whispered.
He reached for the first button on his own shirt. His fingers, usually so steady, fumbled for a second. He got it open. Then the next. He pushed the fabric apart, revealing the taut plane of his chest, a dusting of dark hair. He didn’t remove the shirt, just left it hanging open.
His hands returned to you, sliding up your sides, over the dress. He found the hem. Gripped it. Lifted it slowly up your body. The cool air touched your stomach, your ribs. He pulled it over your head, letting it fall somewhere behind the couch. You sat before him in just your bra and panties, exposed in the soft light.
He didn’t move for a long moment. His gaze traveled over you—the slope of your shoulders, the swell of your breasts above the lace, the softness of your stomach. It wasn’t a leer. It was an inventory. A remembering.
“Christ,” he breathed, the word full of awe.
He leaned forward and put his mouth on the skin between your breasts. A hot, open-mouthed kiss. You felt the scrape of his teeth, the wet stroke of his tongue. Your back arched, a silent plea.
His hands went to the clasp of your bra. It gave way. He peeled the lace down your arms, letting your breasts spill free. His control was a visible thing, a tightness in his jaw as he looked at you. Then he bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth.
You cried out. His tongue was rough, his suction relentless. He lavished one breast, then the other, until the peaks were hard and wet and aching. His free hand cupped the weight of you, his thumb circling the neglected peak, and the dual sensation made your thighs clamp around his hips.
“Please,” you heard yourself say, not knowing what you were asking for.
He understood. His hand slid down your stomach, over the front of your plain cotton panties. They were already damp. He pressed the heel of his hand against you, and you rocked into the pressure.
“Is this okay?” he murmured against your skin, his breath hot.
“Yes. God, yes.”
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of your panties and drew them down your legs. You lifted your hips to help him, and then you were bare, straddling him, his open shirt the only fabric between you. The head of his cock, trapped within his dress pants, pressed insistently against your damp heat.
He looked down between your bodies, watching as your wetness darkened the fine wool of his pants. A muscle in his cheek jumped. He brought his hand back, his fingers glistening now with your arousal. He didn’t break eye contact as he brought those fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean.
The groan that left him was raw, unfiltered, your name leaving his lips in a breathy exhale.
His hand returned to your, his fingers sliding through your folds, finding your clit. He circled it once, twice, a slow, maddening tease. Then he pushed two fingers inside you.
You gasped, your head falling back. He was deep, his knuckles pressed against you. He curled his fingers, searching, and brushed a spot that made your vision blur. A wet, squelching sound filled the quiet room as he began to move his hand, a slow, thorough fuck with his fingers.
“You’re so wet,” he said, his voice wrecked. “So fucking wet for me.”
He added a third finger, stretching you, and the fullness was exquisite. His thumb found your clit again, rubbing in tight circles in time with the thrust of his hand. The coil in your belly pulled tight, too fast, too soon.
“I’m close,” you warned, your hands gripping his shoulders.
“Look at me.”
You forced your eyes open, met his gaze. His face was a mask of intense concentration, his eyes locked on yours as he worked you with his hand. He saw the exact moment you started to come. Your cunt clenched rhythmically around his fingers, a pulsing, milking grip, and a broken sound tore from your throat. He kept his hand moving, drawing the orgasm out until you were shuddering and limp against him.
He slowly withdrew his fingers, slick and shining. He brought them to his mouth again, his eyes holding yours, and licked them clean with a slow drag of his tongue.
“My turn,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.
His hands tightened on your hips, lifting you just enough. The sound of his zipper was loud in the quiet room.
He freed himself, his cock springing hard and thick against his stomach. The head was flushed dark, already drooling pre-come. He guided you with a firm pressure, the tip of him nudging against your soaked entrance.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice strained.
You dragged your eyes from where your bodies met, finding his. His gaze was locked on yours, unblinking, as he began to lower you.
The first inch was a stretch, a slow, burning fullness that made you gasp. He stopped, his whole body rigid, letting you adjust. His breath shuddered out.
“Okay?”
You nodded, your fingers digging into his shoulders. “More.”
He lowered you further, another excruciating inch, and the wet, tight slide drew a groan from deep in his chest. He was thick, filling you completely, and the sensation was overwhelming. You felt every vein, every pulse.
He didn’t move, just held you there, impaled on his lap, his cock buried to the hilt inside you. A fine tremor ran through his arms. His forehead dropped to your collarbone, his breath hot against your skin.
Your name was a broken moniker on his tongue.
He lifted his head, his eyes glassy. He cupped your face, his thumb stroking you cheekbone. Then he kissed you, deep and slow, his tongue mirroring the join of your bodies below.
He began to move you. His hands on your hips set a deliberate, rocking rhythm, lifting you almost off him before pulling you back down. The drag was exquisite, a wet, slick friction that made you whimper into his mouth.
The sound of your bodies repeatedly meeting was obscene—a steady, squelching slap of skin on skin, your wetness coating him with every rise and fall. He broke the kiss to watch, his eyes dark with a kind of ravaged hunger.
“See that?” he rasped, his gaze fixed on where he disappeared into you. “See how you take me?”
You looked down. The sight of his length, glistening with your arousal, sliding in and out of your swollen flesh, made you clench around him. He groaned, his hips jerking up to meet your next descent.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Just like that. Keep squeezing me.”
His control was fraying. The measured lifts became more urgent, his thrusts upward harder, deeper. The couch creaked beneath you both. He found an angle that made you cry out, a spot that sent sparks up your spine.
“There?” he gritted out, chasing it.
“Yes—yes. Right there.”
He hammered into that spot, his rhythm turning relentless. The wet slap of your bodies filled the room. Sweat gleamed on his chest. His open shirt was damp, sticking to his skin.
You felt the coil tightening again, a fierce, fast build. “Jack, I’m gonna—”
“Come,” he commanded, his voice raw. “Come on my cock.”
It shattered you. Your cunt clamped down in rhythmic pulses, milking him, and you sobbed his name as the waves tore through you. He watched you fall apart, his expression one of awe and agony.
His own release followed, triggered by your clenching heat. He drove up into you one last, deep time and held there, his body bowing against yours. A guttural sound ripped from his throat as he emptied himself, pulse after hot pulse filling you. You felt the warmth spread deep inside.
He collapsed back against the couch, taking you with him, still joined. His arms wrapped around you, holding you close. His heart hammered against you ear. His breath was ragged in your hair.
When the both of you finally came apart, it was slowly, reluctantly, like neither of you was quite ready to break the spell of it. You stayed where you were for another minute, straddling his lap, foreheads nearly touching, both of you breathing hard, before you shifted off him and onto the cushion beside him, legs unsteady and skin still warm everywhere he’d touched.
The apartment felt quieter than it had before, though nothing outside had changed. The same distant traffic moved below the windows. The same lamp burned in the corner, casting soft gold over the room. Somewhere in the building, plumbing knocked faintly in the walls. But inside the cocoon of your living room—couch cushions displaced, throw blanket dragged half to the floor, both of you breathing easier now—everything had settled into that strange, suspended calm that only came after something long anticipated had finally happened.
Jack sat at the edge of the couch for a moment, elbows on his knees, one hand covering his mouth while he caught his breath.
The sight of him undid you in a wholly different way than before.
Hair a mess now. Shirt hanging open, damp with sweat and pasted to his skin. Head bowed slightly, broad back rising and falling, the hard lines of him softened not by weakness but by exhaustion, by release, by the fact that he wasn’t trying to be anything except exactly what he was. When he finally lowered his hand, he stared down at the floor for a beat, then scrubbed both palms over his face.
You smiled despite yourself. “You okay?”
His laugh was short and rough. “Ask me in ten minutes.”
“Bad sign?”
He turned his head to look at you then, and something in his face gentled so completely it made your chest tighten. “No,” he said. “Pretty much the opposite.”
You shifted closer, pulling the blanket up over yourself. He noticed at once and reached for the edge of it automatically, tucking it around your legs with absentminded affection before leaning back into the couch. The movement was so instinctive, so quietly caring, that it hit even harder than it should have.
Jack looked tired.
Not in the everyday way you’d seen before, not the end-of-shift version of him with that brittle edge to it. This was different. Looser. A little stunned, maybe. As though some locked room inside him had finally been opened and he wasn’t yet sure what all the fresh air in it was going to do.
You touched his arm. “You got real quiet.”
“That surprises you?”
“No.” Your fingertips traced once over the coarss hair on his forearm. “Just trying to figure out if I should be nervous.”
His brows drew together faintly, and he turned more fully toward you. “About what?”
“That you regret it.”
The answer came so fast it was almost sharp. “No.”
You believed him immediately.
Not because he’d said it quickly. Because of how he’d said it. Clean. Certain. Like the idea itself offended him.
Jack exhaled, gaze dropping for a moment to where your hand still rested on him. When he spoke again, his voice had gone softer.
“I don’t regret you.”
The simplicity of it made it land harder than anything more elaborate could have.
He was quiet another second, then added, “I think maybe I’m trying to catch up to the fact that this was a terrible idea.”
Your heart sank for exactly half a beat.
Then his mouth twitched.
“Terrible,” he repeated, “because now I’m not gonna be able to think about much else.”
You laughed, relief bright and immediate, and he finally smiled properly—small, tired, devastating.
“There he is,” you murmured.
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late.”
He shook his head, but there was no argument in it. Only that faint lingering disbelief, like he still couldn’t quite accept that this night belonged to him now too.
For a while you sat there in the warm quiet, tucked against his side, his arm along the back of the couch behind you. Not rushing. Not filling the silence for the sake of it. It was one of the things you had learned fastest with Jack: the right kind of quiet could be its own form of closeness.
At length, he tipped his head back against the cushions and looked at the ceiling.
“I should probably go,” he said, without sounding like he meant it.
You angled your face up toward him. “You should?”
“No.”
“Good.”
That drew a softer laugh from him. He turned then, lifting a hand to brush his thumb over your cheekbone, a gesture so unexpectedly tender it almost made you stop breathing. His eyes searched yours for a moment, not guarded now exactly, but open in a way that felt rarer than anything else he could have given you.
He looked less haunted like this.
Not healed. Not transformed. Nothing that false. Jack Abbot was still Jack Abbot—still a man built from long nights and hard choices and grief he carried with practiced silence. But some of the strain had eased from his face. Some old brace had loosened.
“Come here,” he said quietly.
You went without hesitation, folding into him, his arm coming around you with a firmness that made the whole world outside the apartment feel irrelevant. He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, then rested his cheek there, and the intimacy of that nearly outmatched everything that had come before.
No performance in it. No seduction. Just the truth of him.
After a minute, you felt his mouth move against your hair.
“What?” you asked.
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
He sighed, caught. “I said this date got out of hand.”
You smiled into his chest. “In the best way.”
“Yeah,” he said after a pause. “Yeah.”
The room was warm. The lamp cast everything in honey-colored light. Outside, a siren wailed somewhere far off and then faded, taking the city back with it. Jack’s hand moved once, slow and absent over your back, then stilled there as though he’d found where he wanted it.
If you’d looked up just then, you thought you might have seen it plainly on his face—the knowledge settling in, undeniable now.
Not that he’d wanted you.
That part had been obvious for weeks.
No, the more dangerous thing.
That he was already in much deeper than he’d ever meant to be.
